The National Customs Brokers & Forwarders Association of America warned of possible efforts to steal members' login credentials in a July 10 email. "Recently, an individual registered a site that 'spoofed' the NCBFAA site," said NCBFAA. As a result, using a search engine to find NCBFAA's site would turn up the fake address, ncbfab.com, it said. Because of the similarity to "the actual NCBFAA URL, ncbfaa.org, users may have been fooled into opening it and attempting to log onto the imitation site. The offending website has been suspended and clicking on the phony URL now returns the message 'Network Access Message: The website cannot be found.'" NCBFAA suggested that members change their passwords for the site.
CBP determined that two carbon dioxide sampling medical products originate in Israel for government procurement “buy American” purposes, the agency said in a notice. Made by Oridion Medical, the FilterLine and CapnoLine sets are medical devices designed to carry a patient’s breath to a monitor and consist of tubing, a means of connecting to the patient, referred to as the patient interface, and a means of connection to a monitor. The FilterLine set is for intubated patients, designed to connect to ventilator tubing carrying oxygenated air from a ventilator to a patient through an airway adaptor, while the CapnoLine set is for non-intubated patients, which provide a nasal or oral/nasal interface for the patient, said CBP. CBP agreed with Oridion that Israel is the country of origin for both products because that's where the carbon dioxide and/or oxygen tubes are manufactured, the agency said.
CBP has ramped up its outreach efforts to lay out the agency's plans to update Focused Assessment (FA) rules, said customs firm Tuttle Law Offices in an emailed description of CBP's work. Among the proposed changes are a more comprehensive questionnaire and some tinkering in how the agency decides on the number of sample transactions CBP would examine, said the email. The description follows a recent presentation from Elizabeth Chiavetta, director, Audit Policy and Mel Moreland, acting executive director, Regulatory Audit at CBP, said Tuttle.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and its Our Fair Deal coalition (here) partners released two letters to Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) negotiators highlighting how the TPP could strengthen the position of copyright holders, said Jeremy Malcolm, senior global policy analyst, and Maira Sutton, global policy analyst, in an EFF blog post (here) July 9. The letters address TPP's "copyright term extension proposals" (here) and its "intermediary liability proposals" (here), they said. On liability proposals, "countries around the Pacific rim are being pressured to agree to proposed text for the TPP that would require them to adopt a facsimile" of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, said the blog post. "Industry lobbyists are pushing for an even stricter regime, dubbed 'notice and staydown,' that would make it harder than ever before for users and innovators to safely publish creative, transformational content online," it said. Concerning copyright term extensions, the TPP would extend the "rash 20 year extension of the term of copyright protection" to "all other TPP negotiating countries," it said. "This would be a senseless assault on the public domain and on those libraries, authors, educators, users and others who depend upon it," it said.
CBP is extending the comment period to Aug. 11 for existing information collections on vessel foreign repairs or equipment purchases. CBP proposes to extend the expiration date of this information collection with no change to the burden hours.
CBP is extending the comment period to Aug. 11 for an existing information collection related to its Automated Clearinghouse (ACH). CBP proposes to extend the expiration date of this information collection with no change to the burden hours.
CBP is extending the comment period to Aug. 11 for existing information collections for NAFTA origin. CBP proposes to extend the expiration date of this information collection with no change to the burden hours.
CBP issued its weekly tariff rate quota and tariff preference level commodity report as of July 7. This report (here) includes TRQs on various products such as beef, sugar, dairy products, peanuts, cotton, cocoa products, and tobacco; and certain BFTA, DR-CAFTA, Israel FTA, JFTA, MFTA, OFTA, SFTA, UAFTA (AFTA) and UCFTA (Chile FTA) non-textile TRQs, etc. Each report also includes the AGOA, ATPDEA, BFTA, DR-CAFTA, CBTPA, Haitian HOPE, MFTA, NAFTA, OFTA, SFTA, and UCFTA TPLs and TRQs for qualifying textile articles and/or other articles; the TRQs on worsted wool fabrics, etc.
CBP said the following individual customs broker licenses and any and all associated permits have been canceled due to the death of the broker:
CBP outlined a new list of documents the agency may request in order to validate a “first sale” in a recent draft revision to CBP's informed compliance publication (ICP) on bona fide sales. The draft ICP was provided to a number of customs industry members as part of the agency's effort to gather feedback on the potential changes, said Sandler Travis, a law firm that opposes the changes. While Acting Assistant Commissioner for International Trade Rich DiNucci has said on multiple occasions that the proposed changes don't constitute a policy change (see 14061317 and 14041117), the possibility of the changes has created somewhat of a "fire storm," he said recently.