The Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service will on Sept. 18 launch an updated version of the Registered Aquaculture Export Facility (RAEF) inspection program, the agency said. On that date, the agency will begin using “RAEF 2.0 documents and processes,” and will “apply changes to currently enrolled facilities at their next regularly scheduled annual facility inspection and approval,” it said. APHIS will hold a series of training webinars on the new system in September, and will send an email in “the coming days” with a webinar schedule. APHIS also will launch a new website in September “dedicated to aquatic animal export resources ... including step-by-step guides on the RAEF 2.0 inspection program,” it said.

The Census Bureau Aug. 10 launched a new response code in the Automated Export System to alert filers who try to submit a shipment controlled under U.S. Munitions List Category XXI without a valid determination number. The response code, 5C2, will serve as an “informational” error message for at least 90 days, then become a “fatal” error, according to an Aug. 10 CBP CSMS message, and AES will reject the filing.

Future outbound notifications in the Automated Commercial Environment for ocean, air, rail and in-bond's may be delayed two hours “for the foreseeable future,” CBP said in an Aug. 10 CSMS message. The agency said it’s “working on a fix to speed these notifications up and another CSMS will be issued when that has been implemented.”

The Census Bureau emailed tips last week on how to address the most frequent messages generated this month in the Automated Export System.

The Fish and Wildlife Service is removing the golden paintbrush (Castilleja levisecta), a flowering plant native to southwestern British Columbia, western Washington, and western Oregon, from the Endangered Species List, it said in a final rule released July 18. An FWS review indicated that “threats to the golden paintbrush have been eliminated or reduced to the point that the species no longer meets the definition of an endangered or threatened species," the agency said. The delisting takes effect Aug. 18.

The Fish and Wildlife Service is issuing a final rule listing the western fanshell (Cyprogenia aberti), a freshwater mussel species from Arkansas, Kansas, Missouri and Oklahoma, and the Ouachita fanshell (Cyprogenia cf. aberti), a freshwater mussel species from Arkansas and Louisiana, as threatened under the Endangered Species Act. The listing includes a 4(d) rule for these species that prohibits importation and exportation without a permit. New import and export restrictions set by the agency’s final rule take effect July 27.

The Fish and Wildlife Service is proposing to bring back its practice of imposing blanket restrictions on importation and exportation of species listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act, the agency said in a notice released June 21.

The Office of Foreign Assets Control this week revised 15 entries on its Specially Designated Nationals List. The entries have ties either to the U.S.-sanctioned National Iranian Tanker Company or the Islamic Republic of Iran Shipping Lines. OFAC didn’t release more information.

The Census Bureau briefly experienced an “unscheduled outage” of the Automated Export System during the morning of June 7, the agency said in an email to industry. Census activated its AES downtime policy during the outage and reminded exporters to file all Electronic Export Information for shipments that were exported under the downtime policy, along with any new AES transactions, to receive an Internal Transaction Number. "Due to the high volume of shipments that are being processed at this time, please be patient in obtaining an AES response message," Census said. "Do not submit shipments more than once."

CBP this week deployed a new export manifest-related informational response message in the Automated Commercial Environment’s (ACE) certification environment “for the Ocean House Bill Release,” CBP said in a June 6 CSMS message. New message 610 will appear with the description “Empty Vessel (Departure Message – No bill associated to that vessel),” CBP said. “A date for release to the Production environment will be sent in a future message.”