On the heels of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s video message last week, Assistant Secretary of State for Educational and Cultural Affairs, Ann Stock, followed up with her own message encouraging more Americans to “[open] their homes and hearts and personally [engage] with people from all over the world”:

The Denver Post profiles the interactions between participants in the Iraqi Young Leaders Exchange Program (sponsored by the Department of State, with this particular program arranged by World Learning) and their peers in Colorado:

“They were like, ‘You think we're all terrorists, don't you?’” recalled Julianna Minton , a 17-year-old from Chicago who is accompanying the group.

Franz Strasser, the BBC reporter who road-tripped across America and recently visited his high school exchange host family in Florida, interviews a number of students working on the Santa Cruz, CA, boardwalk as part of the Department of State’s Summer Work/Travel program.

The final rule on the trainee and intern categories appears in today's Federal Register, available here.

A proposed rule with request for comment with regard to the Department of State Exchange Visitor Program secondary school category appeared in this morning's Federal Register: http://edocket.access.gpo.gov/2010/2010-10168.htm

This a far-reaching and carefully drawn rule--a few key points from this morning's initial read:

- The comment period is 30 days, so comments are due on June 2;

- The Department intends the rule to take effect for the 2011/2012 school year;

Sher Bano, a 17-year-old Pashtun Pakistani participant in the Youth Exchange and Study (YES) Program in Evanston, IL, used her exchange experience in the United States as an opportunity to increase cross-cultural communication and understanding:

One of my American friends once asked me if I traveled by camel in Pakistan. Needless to say, my answer was no. But Americans should know more about life in Pakistan than just this. Pakistanis as a whole are democratic, progressive and mostly secular in their attitudes.

Iraqi government officials announced the start of a program to provide scholarships to Iraqi students for study at universities in the United States and Britain, reports InsideHigherEd.com. While the initial plans for this program called for 10,000 scholarships to be awarded per year, for five years, it will initially proceed more modestly:

Senator Bob Casey (D-PA) sent a letter last Friday to Peter Orszag, Director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), urging Orszag to move forward Subpart A of the Exchange Visitor Program regulations. A revised version of Subpart A, the general provisions of State’s EVP regulations, requires OMB review and approval before being published in the Federal Register.

According to Casey’s letter, provisions within Subpart A would mandate State Department compliance audits of high school exchange programs, thus strengthening State’s oversight.

As a reminder, the below notice on Exchange Visitor Program annual reports appeared in the Federal Register on May 26. Please note that comments are due to the State Department by July 15. To assist in preparing a formal comment from the Alliance, we encourage sponsors to forward their thoughts to us for inclusion by June 30.

The below notice on Exchange Visitor Program annual reports appeared in the Federal Register on May 26. There is a 60-day comment period. To assist in preparing a formal comment from the Alliance, we encourage sponsors to forward their thoughts to us for inclusion as soon as possible.