The State Department has approved a possible $46 million military sale to Ireland, the Defense Security Cooperation Agency said April 23. The sale includes “FGM-148 Javelin Missiles and Lightweight Command Launch Units and related elements of logistics and program support,” and the principal contractor will be the Javelin Joint Venture between Lockheed Martin and RTX Corp.

The leaders of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee urged the Trump administration April 21 to give Syria additional sanctions relief to help stabilize the war-torn country.

House Select Committee on China ranking member Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi, D-Ill., is expected to run to replace Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., who announced April 23 that he will not seek re-election next year. Krishnamoorthi has been active on a wide range of export control issues, such as pushing to curb shipments of advanced computing chips to China (see 2501300067).

The U.S. should designate the Polisario Front as a foreign terrorist organization (FTO) for its destabilizing activities in North Africa, according to a new Hudson Institute report.

The U.K. Office of Financial Sanctions Implementation on April 23 added three FAQs to address issues surrounding the use of sanctions licenses that mention Rosbank PJSC and Bank Otkritie.

The Commerce Department should conduct a “comprehensive evaluation” of the export controls it has imposed on the U.S. semiconductor industry in recent years to determine whether they are achieving their goal of protecting national security, the Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA) said.

The Bureau of Industry and Security said April 24 that it added 18 entities to its Unverified List after it was unable to verify the “legitimacy and reliability” of the parties through end-use checks, including their ability to responsibly receive controlled U.S. exports. It also removed five companies from the list. The added entities are located in China, Finland, Italy, Kazakhstan, Turkey and the U.K., while the removed ones are in China and the United Arab Emirates.

Thea Kendler, former assistant secretary for export administration at the Commerce Department's Bureau of Industry and Security, and Aiysha Hussain, Kendler's senior policy adviser, have joined Mayer Brown as partners in the international trade, national security and white-collar defense practices, the firm announced. Kendler served at BIS for three years, joining the agency from DOJ, where she worked as a trial attorney in the national security division. Hussain worked at Commerce since 2020, serving as senior counsel then senior policy adviser for export administration.

The Office of the U.S. Trade Representative has released in the Federal Register its Section 301 determination on U.S. shipbuilding (see 2504180018), meaning that it has confirmed the timelines for when the U.S. government will collect fees on foreign-built vessels docking at U.S. ports. Fee collection will begin Oct. 14.

The Federal Maritime Commission’s chief administrative law judge ordered ocean carrier ZIM Integrated Shipping Services April 22 to pay Samsung Electronics America $3.68 million for charging demurrage fees that violate the Shipping Act.