“a foreign national”
Well, heavens forbid that we should indulge in hate thinking or profiling, but curious minds want to know.
What country is this person a “national” of?
Don’t these reporters realize that readers are curious? In a sense it doesn’t matter, but I remember a time when we could have said this was a dumb kraut or a crazy frog eater, or whatever, and that would have been taken in the humerous spirit in which it was intended. The frog eaters had equally humorous slang about us. Now I can hardly say it without sounding like a bigot.
Now it’s just close down your mind and shut up, or you’ll be arrested for a thought crime. But was this a Somali, a Muslim, a frightened South Sea Islander, a tourist from Prague, or what?
UPDATE from CBS Boston
Two people have been arrested in connection with a daylong bomb scare on a Greyhound bus in Portsmouth, N.H.
John Smolens of Lewiston, Maine was tasered and charged with resisting arrest after police say he refused to obey orders from the SWAT team during the evacuation Thursday.
Calvin Segar of Brooklyn, New York was charged with two counts of obstruction for lying to authorities.
Both will be arraigned in Portsmouth Friday afternoon.
The bomb scare began Thursday morning when a passenger overheard a man speaking a foreign language on a cell phone, police said.
The passenger then heard someone on the other end of the phone say — in English — that there was a bomb on board and decided to call 911, authorities said.
The 911 call was made around 11:15 a.m., prompting authorities to evacuate buildings and streets and to surround the bus with a bomb squad and sharpshooters.
16 passengers and the driver got off safely, but the man whose phone conversation prompted the scare refused to leave.
Portsmouth Police Chief David Ferland said that man was from Burundi, Africa and was too frightened.
“I do not know the reasons why he was nervous with police,” Ferland said.
“He comes from a different country. We are trained to understand that people react differently.”
Ferland would not reveal his name, but he told reporters at a late morning news conference that the man is legally allowed in be in the United States and that part of the problem was a language barrier because he spoke Swahili.
The bus was searched and no bomb or weapons were found.
“It was not a terrorist-related event,” Ferland said.