Hogan & Hartson LLP announced today the addition of Man Chiu Lee to the firm’s corporate and securities practice. He joins as a partner in Hong Kong.

Proficient in Chinese, Man Chiu Lee is an experienced corporate transactions and U.S. securities lawyer. His practice covers a broad range of transactions, including securities offerings, cross-border mergers and acquisitions, private equity and venture capital investments, and general corporate and banking matters in Hong Kong, the United States, and Japan.

“Man Chiu Lee complements our strengths in serving private equity and venture capital clients investing in fast growing and high-tech companies in China, and our ability to assist Chinese issuers accessing the international markets,” said Mao Tong, co-managing partner of the firm's Hong Kong office. “We believe our clients will benefit by having additional lawyers with strong capital markets and M&A skills.”

”We are pleased to have Man Chiu Lee join our China practice, which has grown steadily over the past four years and now includes six resident partners and one counsel in our offices in China,” said Steve Robinson, co-managing partner of each of the firm’s offices in China.

Commenting on his arrival, Man Chiu Lee said, “I look forward to working with my new colleagues to continue to establish Hogan & Hartson as one of the leading corporate and capital market law firms in China.”

Man Chiu Lee earned his law degree from Georgetown University and his bachelor’s degree in economics from Harvard University. He is admitted to practice in New York and New Jersey.

About Hogan & Hartson
Hogan & Hartson is an international law firm with more than 1,000 lawyers practicing in offices on four continents. The firm’s broad-based international practice cuts across virtually all legal disciplines and industries.

Through the firm’s exclusive association with Gordon Ng & Co., a Hong Kong law firm, Hogan & Hartson is able to provide clients with a full range of local and international legal advice.

In addition to Hong Kong, Hogan & Hartson has offices in Baltimore, Beijing, Berlin, Boulder, Brussels, Caracas, Colorado Springs, Denver, Geneva, London, Los Angeles, Miami, Moscow, Munich, New York, Northern Virginia, Paris, Shanghai, Tokyo, Warsaw, and Washington, D.C.

For more information about the firm, visit www.hhlaw.com.

LAX was reportedly in close competition with a New York airport over the behemoths plane's debut.

"We're planning for the largest turnout since the Concorde came in 1974," said Paul Haney, deputy executive director of airports and security for Los Angeles World Airports.

Various airlines have said they plan to begin using the huge, 555-seat planes for commercial travel within the next few years. Because it can hold so many passengers, the plane is expected to lower flight costs.

The lawyer for a man convicted of killing Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl said Sunday he will file an appeal using an al-Qaida lieutenant's recent confession that he beheaded the reporter.

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who has claimed that he planned the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, claimed at a U.S. military hearing at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, that he personally beheaded Pearl for being an Israeli intelligence agent.

"I decapitated with my blessed right hand the head of the American Jew, Daniel Pearl, in the city of Karachi, Pakistan," Mohammed told a military panel, according to a Pentagon transcript released Thursday. "For those who would like to confirm, there are pictures of me on the Internet holding his head."

In 2002, an anti-terrorism court in Karachi sentenced Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh, a British-born militant, to death and gave three other men life in prison for involvement in Pearl's killing.

Rai Bashir a lawyer for Sheikh and the other three men said on Sunday that he will study the Pentagon documents on Mohammed's claim and file his confession as evidence to prove Sheikh's innocence.

"He has not abducted Daniel Pearl, and he, along with his co-accused, is innocent ... But now we are happy that this version has been verified by the Pentagon after the arrest of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed," Bashir told AP Television News in a separate interview on Saturday.

Pearl was abducted in January 2002 in Karachi while he was researching a story on Islamic militancy. Months after his abduction, the journalist's body, his throat slit, was found in a shallow ditch in a compound on the outskirts of the city.

Sheikh and the three others _ Salman Saqib, Fahad Naseem and Sheikh Adil _ are in jail and have appealed their convictions.

"What we were saying for so many years in our trial, in the appeal, (is) that Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh is innocent and he has not committed that murder," Bashir said in the interview from the eastern city of Lahore.

Judge Laurence H. Silberman has written a landmark legal decision using the Second Amendment to overturn the DC gun ban. No court has ever used the Second Amendment to overthrow a gun law. The case is known as Parker v. District of Columbia.

With the overturn of the DC gun ban, the very restrictive law on the books before the 1976 ban is once again the law in D.C. But, people can at least once again buy a handgun and keep it in their house.

Judge Silberman’s decision provides a platform for the next challenge to other anti-gun laws in the District. No doubt that is what especially troubles the socialist politicians of the District. The thought of citizens empowered to protect themselves and not having to rely on the ineffective protection offered by the government terrorizes them.

Think about it – if people can protect themselves, they might start thinking for themselves. Isn’t that what is “wrong” with flyover country?

These are some of the highlights of the decision:

“[t]he Second Amendment protects an individual right to keep and bear arms.”

“The individual right facilitated militia service by ensuring that citizens would not be barred from keeping the arms they would need when called forth for militia duty.”

“Despite the importance of the Second Amendment’s civic purpose, however, the activities it protects are not limited to militia service, nor is an individual’s enjoyment of the right contingent upon his or her continued or intermittent enrollment in the militia.”
“With ‘a free State,’ we understand the framers to have been referring to republican government generally.”

“[t]he bar on carrying a pistol within the home [and the requirement to keep it disassembled] amounts to a complete prohibition on the lawful use of handguns for self-defense. As such, we hold it unconstitutional.”

Let me go back and expand on a couple of points in the list above. Silberman showed that the militia was compulsory, requiring men to enroll much as the Selective Service had men register for the draft. Fines were assessed on those who did NOT have their own militia guns, ammunition for them, and keep them in good repair. House to house searches were even conducted to insure that individuals were keeping, and thus able to bear, arms.

The word “state” in the Second Amendment is found this way: “A well-regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.” “State” was the word seized upon by anti-gunners to develop a novel theory (in the latter part of the 20th Century) that militias, and thus gun ownership, were strictly a matter of state privilege. Silberman showed that the founders’ use of the term “free State” was a reference to preserving limited, constitutional government – otherwise known as a republican form of government.

In other words, individual gun ownership was seen as essential to preserving individual liberty. Government is not, and was not, the source of those liberties because they predated the creation of the United States by its Constitution.

Justice Silberman is owed a debt of thanks from all Americans, because his opinion has gone a long way to clearing away the confusion around gun ownership and placing it in the proper context: no guns, no freedom.

It should be pointed out that all Silberman’s decision could do was throw out the DC gun ban of 1976. That was all the plaintiffs were able to challenge in court. However, all the prior registration and licensing laws are now fair game for challenge on the grounds that they also violate – “infringe,” to use the Second Amendment word – the individual right to keep and bear arms.

Congress has – and has had all along – the constitutional responsibility for legislation in DC. They can delegate that to the DC City Council, but they cannot remove themselves from the constitutional requirement that they be the final authority for legislation governing the federal enclave.

The elitists in DC are hardly likely to want to clean up the rest of their anti-gun, anti-self defense mess that is still on the books following the Parker decision. Their priorities can be clearly seen by contrasting their reaction to two events.

DC officials are outraged by the Parker decision. They are accusing the justices of judicial activism. The way to understand their double speak is this: A (rare) decision base on and upholding a constitutional principal is viewed by the socialists as activism. A liberal decision that assumes that judges can amend a “living” constitution is “settled law.”

Those same DC officials were totally unconcerned, however, when plaintiff Shelly Parker was being attacked in her home. She wanted to sue the District to get rid of the handgun ban because drug dealers in her neighborhood had tried to break into her home. When they did, one of them shouted: “I will kill you! And I live on this block, too.” Perhaps DC officials are afraid that the thug might have been shot if Ms. Parker had a gun?

It seems more than our elite rulers can understand. They have 24/7 police protection – armed police protection. They experience no crime problem. So, why should the rest of us need a gun?

Since the DC officials are not likely to “get it” regarding the problem the rest of us have with crime, Congress needs to step up to the plate and exercise its constitutional responsibility. Congress should get rid of the pre-ban gun control laws in DC and legislate a concealed carry law similar to the one in neighboring Virginia. I would like to see there be no permit required at all, as is the case now in Vermont and Alaska, but at least a fairly workable law such as Virginia’s would be a big step forward.

If DC residents could legally carry concealed firearms (the way crooks are already doing illegally), watch for crime to plummet. The only people who would really suffer from getting rid of the rest of DC’s gun laws would be the crooks.

Well, there would be some gnashing of teeth heard from City Hall, too.

However, Viacom lawyer, Don Verrilli, has struck at Google's claim of protection under DMCA and at the law itself. Firstly, he said that Google does not fit the criteria needed to take advantage of the safe harbor provisions. He said that under Section 512 of the DMCA, a "service provider" must be unaware of infringing activity and must not make direct financial gain from it.

He believes that Google is aware of the mass-infringement on the site and has no problem filter content for any distribution partners. "YouTube has done a lot of social good that comes with a very significant problem," Verilli said. "And the significant problem that comes along with the good is that there is an enormous, enormous amount of copyrighted video works uploaded onto YouTube and viewed on a staggeringly high level by YouTube users."

He also feels that Viacom and other content companies are in an unfair position under the DMCA. "What that means is we've got to employ an army of people around the clock who do nothing but monitor YouTube, catalog those works, (send takedown requests)...and find out the next day that the works go back up," he said

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Denouncing a conflict entering its fifth year, protesters across the country raised their voices Saturday against U.S. policy in Iraq and marched by the thousands to the Pentagon in the footsteps of an epic demonstration four decades ago against another divisive war.

A counterprotest was staged, too, on a day of dueling signs and sentiments such as "Illegal Combat" and "Peace Through Strength," and songs like "The Battle Hymn of the Republic" and "War (What's It Good For?)."

Thousands crossed the Potomac River from the Lincoln Memorial to rally loudly but peacefully near the Pentagon. "We're here in the shadow of the war machine," said anti-war activist Cindy Sheehan. "It's like being in the shadow of the death star. They take their death and destruction and they export it around the world. We need to shut it down."

Smaller protests were held in other U.S. cities, stretching to Tuesday's four-year anniversary of the Iraq invasion. In Los Angeles, Vietnam veteran Ed Ellis, 59, hoped the demonstrations would be the "tipping point" against a war that has killed more than 3,200 U.S. troops and engulfed Iraq in a deadly cycle of violence.

"It's all moving in our direction, it's happening," he predicted at the Hollywood rally. "The administration, their get-out-of-jail-free card, they don't get one anymore."

Other protests and counter-demonstrations were held in San Francisco, San Diego and Hartford, Conn., where more than 1,000 rallied at the Old State House.

A press release later in the day confirmed the suit had been filed and that the company wanted its logos to appear on the rear quarter panel of the team's car.

Cingular and AT&T merged earlier this year and the Cingular name currently is being phased out, but NASCAR will not allow the newly merged company to put the AT&T logos on the car because of NASCAR's contract with Nextel to sponsor its premier series.

Cingular was grandfathered in as an existing sponsor when the NASCAR-Nextel contract was negotiated in 2003. The 10-year deal began in 2004, but NASCAR has said that it does not allow grandfathered sponsors to change their name.