Accessories maker Mad Catz Interactive wants a federal court to declare it has “no liability” for the controversial “Hot Coffee” modification in Take-Two Interactive’s Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas. The declaratory relief suit was filed July 26 in an unspecified U.S. Dist. Court in Cal., Mad Catz disclosed in a 10-Q report filed at the SEC. The suit names Take- Two and its affiliated Rockstar Games as defendants, the 10-Q said.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) has scheduled the next Customs Broker License Examination for Monday, October 3, 2005.
ATF Open Letter to Firearms and Munitions Importers on Retransfer of Certain Curio or Relic Firearms
The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF) has issued an open letter to federally licensed firearms importers and registered importers of U.S. Munitions Import List articles announcing that the State Department's (State's) Bureau of Political Military Affairs will now, on a case-by-case basis, permit retransfers of certain U.S. manufactured military firearms that are classified by ATF as curio or relic firearms to U.S. private entities under certain conditions.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) has issued a revised version of its informed compliance publication (ICP) entitled, "Bona Fide Sales & Sales for Exportation to the U.S."
U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) has issued a general notice which states that entry summaries cannot be flagged for Reconciliation to account for latent manufacturing defects discovered after importation.
American Shipper reports that in an abrupt change of policy, the U.S. State Department's Directorate of Defense Trade Controls (DDTC) will no longer approve export licenses for freight forwarders that have traditionally managed international shipments for American shippers of military technology. The article reports that the DDTC's policy is now that an applicant must be the entity who is selling the defense article to the designated recipient foreign company. (American Shipper, dated 08/08/05, ShippersNewswire@americanshipper.com )
U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) has issued an administrative message stating that the duration of the regularly scheduled ACS system outage for August 6, 2005 will be extended by approximately two hours to accommodate routine file maintenance. As a result, the outage will begin at 0500 hours on Saturday and end no later than 0900 hours, Eastern Daylight Savings Time. During this outage, transactions submitted to any of the ACS systems, ABI, Air-AMS or Ocean/Rail AMS will be queued for processing, but will not be processed and replied to until the outage is concluded. (Adm: 05-0896, dated 08/03/05, available at http://www.brokerpower.com/cgi-bin/adminsearch/admmsg.view.pl?article=2005/2005-0896.ADM )
Recent CIT Decisions on
Washington Trade Daily reports that on August 2, 2005, President Bush signed the Dominican Republic-Central America - U.S. Free Trade Agreement (DR-CAFTA) into law. (A Presidential Proclamation is still required to amend the tariff schedule, etc. for DR-CAFTA. See ITT's Online Archives or 07/29/05 news, 05072905 for BP summary.) (WTD, dated 08/03/05, www.washingtontradedaily.com )
The Commerce Department (Commerce) has announced that the Committee for the Implementation of Textile Agreements (CITA) has extended until August 31, 2005 the period for making determinations on whether to request consultations with China, and at the same time impose safeguard quotas, on the following China categories for which "threat"-based and/or "actual" market disruption petitions have been filed: