U.S. Magistrate Judge Mustafa Kasubhai for Oregon in Eugene denied AT&T’s motion for reconsideration of his granting of summary judgment for Lane County, Oregon, and rejected the company's request that he approve its application that the county denied for a 150-foot cell tower on a five-acre parcel of land near Oregon’s Pacific Coast (see 2311200016), said the judge’s opinion and order Thursday (docket 6:22-cv-01635). In granting summary judgment for the county, the judge held that AT&T failed to exhaust its remedies under Oregon’s administrative land use process. AT&T’s motion for reconsideration “raises no new arguments and fails to demonstrate any mistake” in the court’s reasoning or other reason that justifies relief under Rule 60(b)(1) or (6), said the judge’s order.

Rep. Rosa DeLauro, D-Conn., and two dozen other Democrats, told Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo that it's clear that Vietnam doesn't meet the criteria in law to qualify as a market economy -- and that if the agency were to classify it that way, the way that status that would affect 25 antidumping and countervailing duty orders would threaten American workers.

Electronics distribution company Broad Tech System and its president and owner, Tao Jiang of Riverside, California, pleaded guilty Jan. 11 to participating in a conspiracy to illegally ship chemicals made or distributed by a Rhode Island-based company to a Chinese firm with ties to the Chinese military, the U.S. Attorney's Office for the District of Rhode Island announced. Jiang and Broad Tech admitted to violating the Export Control Act and conspiring to commit money laundering.

The Office of Foreign Assets Control this week sanctioned an Iraqi airline, its CEO and others with ties to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps-Qods Force. The agency said they have helped to deliver shipments to the IRGC-QF or have helped launder money and support Kata’ib Hizballah, an IRGC-QF militia in Iraq.

USDA needs to improve how it collects, tracks and shares information on foreign investment in U.S. farmland, the Government Accountability Office wrote in a report released on Jan. 18.

U.S. Magistrate Judge Mustafa Kasubhai should deny AT&T’s Nov. 17 motion to reconsider and reverse his Oct. 25 opinion and order granting summary judgment for Lane County, Oregon, and to approve AT&T’s application that the county denied for a 150-foot cell tower (see 2311200016), said the county’s opposition Tuesday (docket 6:22-cv-01635) in U.S. District Court for Oregon in Eugene.

The FCC's precision ag task force will convene Jan. 31 at 10 a.m. EST in person for its first meeting of its rechartered term, said a public notice Wednesday in docket 19-329. The task force will meet to introduce members, review the group's duties, and begin discussing strategies to advance broadband deployment on agricultural lands and promote precision ag. The notice also announced task force membership. Michael Adelaine, South Dakota State University chief information officer emeritus, was appointed chair. The previous chair was Teddy Bekele, Land O'Lakes chief technology officer.

The Bureau of Industry and Security this week unveiled a new set of changes to its voluntary self-disclosure policies that it hopes will allow compliance professionals to spend more time and money preventing serious export violations and less resources on reporting minor ones. The agency also said it has seen a sharp uptick in self-disclosures of serious violations over the last year and has been getting more tips from businesses about possible violations committed by their competitors.

The Customs Rulings Online Search System (CROSS) was updated Jan. 11 with the following headquarters rulings (ruling revocations and modifications will be detailed elsewhere in a separate article as they are announced in the Customs Bulletin):

U.S. District Judge Brett Ludwig for Eastern Wisconsin in Milwaukee scheduled oral argument for Friday at 10 a.m. CST on Verizon’s Dec. 4 motion for a preliminary injunction against the city of Milwaukee (see 2312050022), said a text-only docket notice Friday (docket 2:23-cv-01581). Verizon seeks the injunction to force Milwaukee to issue all permits necessary for the installation of small cells and special poles in the city’s Deer District in time for July’s Republican National Convention in the Fiserv Forum. The preliminary injunction motion is on an expedited briefing schedule because Verizon contends it needs approval of its small-cells applications by Jan. 29 to be sure that the special poles and equipment it needs for the installations will be ready in time for the convention. Verizon contends that the city’s denials violate Section 332 of the Telecommunications Act, and that the small cells are needed to prevent coverage gaps and dropped calls during the convention. The city maintains that it can’t approve the small-cells applications for land within the Deer District that it leased away to private entities and now doesn’t control.