Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales today appointed Melanie Ann Pustay as Director of the Office of Information and Privacy. Pustay is a 24-year career civil servant at OIP, starting in the Department in 1983 as an attorney advisor. She has served as Acting Director since January 2007 and replaces Daniel J. Metcalfe as Director.

Pustay manages the Department's responsibilities related to the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), which include developing policy guidance and ensuring compliance with the FOIA, responding to initial information requests made to the senior leadership offices, adjudicating all appeals from denials by any Department component under the FOIA, and handling FOIA litigation matters. "Melanie brings more than two decades of highly relevant experience and a record of both accomplishment and leadership to this position," said Attorney General Gonzales. "OIP and the Department of Justice will continue to benefit from her insight, expertise and dedication to public service. I'm pleased she has agreed to serve in this critical role."

During her tenure as Acting Director, OIP updated and completed the Department's March 2007 FOIA Guide, compiled the Department's report on compliance with Executive Order 13,392, and issued guidance for other agencies on proper reporting.

Before becoming Acting Director, Pustay served for eight years as Deputy Director of OIP. In that capacity, she oversaw the handling of responses to initial requests made under the FOIA for records of the senior leadership offices of the Department. Additionally, beginning in 2003 and continuing today, she has worked with government officials in China, Argentina, Chile and other countries to assist in implementing guidance for openness-in-government initiatives.

Pustay has extensive FOIA litigation experience and has argued cases before the District Court for the District of Columbia and the Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, including handling a case in 1998 involving access to former FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover's official and confidential files. In 1992, she was responsible for the Department's senior leadership compliance with the President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act, which required the federal government to make records of President Kennedy's assassination publicly available.

In 1987, Pustay was given primary responsibility for drafting Executive Order 12,600, which established procedures to provide notice to businesses when their information is sought under the FOIA.

Pustay has received the Attorney General's Distinguished Service Award for her role in providing legal advice, guidance and assistance on records disclosure issues. Pustay worked briefly at a Washington-area law firm before coming to the Department in 1983. She graduated from American University's Washington College of Law in 1982, where she served on Law Review. Pustay received her B.A. from George Mason University in 1979, graduating summa cum laude.

http://permanent.access.gpo.gov/lps9890/lps9890/www.usdoj.gov/ag/foia.htm

Jordan demonstrated a poor human rights record in 2006, according to a report released Tuesday by the Arab Organization for Human Rights. The report singled out for particular criticism the country's controversial Terrorism Prevention Law, passed last year in response to the Amman hotel bombing that killed 57 people in 2005. The AOHR joined opposition parties and UN officials in characterizing its provisions as tantamount to martial law, saying it imposes harsh penalties beyond the scope of the criminal code.

The report also denounced the decision to extradite suspected terrorist Mohammad Zaki Amawi, a dual citizen, to the United States without providing him a prior trial in Jordan. It additionally condemned Jordan's agreement with the US not to deliver any US citizen to the International Criminal Court at The Hague without prior written approval from Washington. According to both the AOCHR report and the 2006 US Department of State Country Report for Jordan, Jordanian officials obtained confessions from detainees by using physical abuse or threats of torture.

North Korea has told a visiting US delegation that it will miss Saturday's deadline to begin shutting down its main nuclear reactor but could start within 30 days, NBC News reported today.

The US delegation believes it convinced the Pyongyang regime it would soon receive funds in a frozen Macau bank account, which had been an obstacle to North Korea's agreement to begin dismantling its nuclear weapons program, the US television network said.

The promise led North Korean nuclear negotiator Kim Kye-gwan to tell the US delegation that it could start closing the Yongbyon nuclear reactor and allow UN atomic inspectors back in within 30 days.

Former UN ambassador Bill Richardson, who led the US delegation in Pyongyang, will announce the agreement today in Seoul when he meets there with the US pointman on North Korea negotiations, Christopher Hill, NBC said.

US State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said earlier that Macau's monetary authority had agreed to open the accounts to their owners.

In the first phase of a six-country agreement reached in February, Pyongyang had agreed to shut down the Yongbyon nuclear reactor by this Saturday in exchange for badly needed fuel oil.

Cablevision's case has been closely watched in the cable TV industry. If allowed to proceed, the remote-storage DVR could allow companies like Cablevision to dramatically increase the rate at which they introduce digital video recording services to their customers.

DVRs allow cable TV subscribers to record TV programs without the hassles of videotape, letting users pause live TV, do instant replays and begin watching programs even before the recording has finished. Viewers can also skip through commercials, something that worries the TV industry.

Cablevision's system would have allowed any cable subscriber with a digital cable box to have DVR-like service by storing and playing back shows on computer servers maintained by Cablevision.

That could allow Cablevision to offer the service to many more customers without having to install the expensive hard drive-equipped DVR boxes in each home, as is currently the case.

A group of Hollywood studios successfully sued Cablevision, claiming that the remote-storage system would have amounted to an additional broadcast of their programs, something for which they haven't given permission.

Cablevision argued its service was permissible because the control of the recording and playback was in the hands of the consumer. A landmark 1984 Supreme Court case found that Sony Corp. wasn't breaking copyright laws if home viewers used Sony's Betamax videotape recorders to record and play back shows for personal use.

"We continue to believe strongly that remote-storage DVR is permissible under current copyright law and offers significant benefits to consumers, including lower costs and faster deployment of this popular technology to our digital cable customers," Tom Rutledge, Cablevision's chief operating officer, said in a statement.

By a 2-1 panel vote in March, the judges deciding Parker v. District of Columbia relied on the Second Amendment to overturn a 31-year old ban on handguns in the District of Columbia. Mayor Adrian Fenty and the city argued that the panel's interpretation of the Second Amendment is "contrary to of nearly every other federal court of appeals, as well as the highest local court in this jurisdiction." The case is widely expected to end up before the US Supreme Court, regardless of who ultimately wins in the DC Circuit Court.

Nebraska Governor Dave Heineman and Kentucky Governor Ernie Fletcher Join the Governors of Maine, Iowa, and Nevada in Recognizing and Proclaiming April 25th as Parental Alienation Awareness Day

Parental Alienation Awareness Organization (PAAO) is pleased to announce that Nebraska and Kentucky are among the states that recognize the importance of Parental Alienation awareness.

Parental Alienation Awareness Organization is working towards having the behaviors involved in Parental Alienation recognized on a statewide level.

Parental Alienation and Hostile Aggressive Parenting inolve a series of behaviors that can effectively alienate a child from a parent. They are often seen in the context of
high-conflict divorce or custody cases and are done by a third party, such as a parent or extended family. Such behaviors interfere with the bond between a loving parent and child.

These behaviors can include: speaking negatively about a parent to, or in front of, a child; interfering with communication and visitation; moving and leaving no contact
information; and discussing inappropriate information with a child, such as details of the marriage, divorce, or court proceedings.

The most common response of a child exposed to alienating behaviors is extreme resistance to contact with, or fear of, a parent without any justifiable cause.

These behaviors are both painful and destructive and can leave deep and long-lasting emotional scars on a child. Research has shown that children who have been alienated from a parent show a greater percentage of depression, low self-esteem, drug and alcohol problems, and difficulties in their own relationships.

While not everyone agrees on the terminology, mental health professionals, legal professionals, and especially adult children who have experienced such behaviors in childhood acknowledge and agree that alienating behaviors are damaging.

These behaviors, designed to take advantage of a child's suggestibility and dependency, leave a child feeling confused, frightened, and insecure.

They can result in the loss of a relationship with a previously loving, supportive, and nurturing parent and in fact send a message that the half of the child that is that
parent is unworthy. The child has "lost" a parent but is given no permission to grieve.

"We are urging the governors of all of the states to learn more about Parental Alienation," states Sarvy Emo, PAAO co-founder.

"Parental Alienating behaviors, under the term Parental Alienation, must be recognized, understood, and addressed to allow a child to love and be loved by both parents, regardless of the parents' relationship to each other," adds Robin Denison, PAAO co-founder.

PAAO urges governors, the professionals who work with children and families, and the public to learn more about Parental Alienation and Hostile Aggressive Parenting by visiting http://www.parental-alienation-awareness.com - for the sake of all children to be able to give and receive all of the love they deserve.

About PAAO

Parental Alienation Awareness Organization (PAAO) is an organization dedicated to increasing the awareness and education of the public and professionals who work with families and children about the causes and effects of Parental Alienation and Hostile Aggressive Parenting, and suggests guidelines as to how to eliminate or ameliorate the effects of these behaviors.

The Third Network of East Asian Think-Tank (NEAT) Financial Cooperation Conference, held in Shanghai on April 7, brought the issue of "establishing a unified currency in East Asia" to the table.

Also discussed at the meeting were topics including the "post Chiang Mai system" and the "Asian bond market."

It is possible, in the foreseeable future, that East Asian countries form a unified currency system, said Wu Jianmin, spokesman for the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference and president of the China Foreign Affairs University, in an interview with the First Financial Daily.

Currently currency swap transactions under the Chiang Mai Initiative (CMI) have reached a total volume of US$79 billion, according to Wu. It is expected to reach US$100 billion in 2008.

CMI is an agreement signed by 13 finance ministers of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and China, Japan and the Republic of Korea, or ASEAN + 3 countries, on the Second ASEAN + 3 Finance Ministers Meeting in Chiang Mai, Thailand in November 1999. CMI aims to create a network of bilateral swap agreements among ASEAN + 3 countries, to address short-term liquidity difficulties in the East Asia region and to supplement the existing international financial agreements.

The CMI system needs to enlarge its scale, extend its functions from the current "rescuing" and assistance to combat financial crisis to others like monitoring hot money and macro-policy adjustment, said Wu. In addition, he suggested to establish some form of "East Asian cooperative reserve fund" by around 2015.

However, Wu pointed out, cooperation among the East Asian countries is still focused in the trade area. Within the ASEAN + 3 region, international trade in the area accounts for 55 percent of the total international trades by the countries.

The figure for EU is 65 percent but that for the North American Free Trade Area is 45 percent. The financial cooperation between ASEAN + 3 countries is comparatively underdeveloped.

Outbound capital flow from these countries are largely long-term investment, while inbound flows are often short-term speculative hot money, which results in high risks for financial crisis, said Bank of China vice president Zhu Min.

The US$79 billion swap transactions under CMI have effectively reduced the chances for another financial crisis and contributed to regional financial stability, but still the CMI system needs to enlarge its scale and extend influences further, Wu stressed.

As for the proposed unified East Asian currency unit or currency index that stirs heated debate among the countries, Wu said it is understandable that so much discrepancy emerged. He believed that there is a concrete demand by the countries to establish a unified currency similar to the euro.

By rough estimation, the cost from currency exchange in international trades accounts for 20 percent of the total. A unified currency may reduce trading cost significantly.

However, it is very hard to persuade a country to give up its constitutional right of issuing own currency. off To develop a proper solution to the problem likely to be accepted by the countries needs great efforts in conducting systematic study, discussion, negotiation and cooperation, which is likely to be a painful and lengthy process.

The first and most urgent step, said Wu, is to set up a cooperative research mechanism to make thorough exploration into the issue finding out the critical points of the problem, maximizing common interestsin the new currency system.

On this purpose, Wu suggested to officially start up a systematic study of the "East Asian unified currency" or "East Asian currency index" issues.