Department of Commerce January 5, 2016 – Federal Register Recent Federal Regulation Documents

The Department of Commerce (``Department'') is conducting the administrative review of the antidumping duty order on magnesium metal from the People's Republic of China (``PRC''). The period of review (``POR'') is April 1, 2014, through March 31, 2015. This review covers two PRC companies, Tianjin Magnesium International, Co., Ltd. (``TMI'') and Tianjin Magnesium Metal, Co., Ltd. (``TMM''). The Department preliminarily finds that TMI and TMM did not have reviewable entries during the POR. We invite interested parties to comment on these preliminary results.

The Economic and Statistics Administration (ESA) is giving notice of virtual meetings to be held by the following Commerce Data Advisory Council (CDAC) Working Groups (WG): Data Governance, Data Usability, and Commerce Data Advisory Council (CDAC). Each CDAC WG will hold a separate meeting, through virtual means, to discuss perspective WG matters. Agendas for each CDAC WG meeting will be posted the ESA.gov Web site at: https://esa.gov/content/upcoming-past-meetings. Each CDAC WG will meet for approximately two hours for discussion on January 14, 2016. Last-minute changes to the schedule are possible, which could prevent giving advance public notice of schedule adjustments.

NMFS is adjusting the 2016 total allowable catch (TAC) amounts for the Gulf of Alaska (GOA) pollock and Pacific cod fisheries. This action is necessary because NMFS has determined these TACs are incorrectly specified, and will ensure the GOA pollock and Pacific cod TACs are the appropriate amounts based on the best available scientific information for pollock and Pacific cod in the GOA. This action is consistent with the goals and objectives of the Fishery Management Plan for Groundfish of the Gulf of Alaska.

The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) announces the Genome in a Bottle ConsortiumProgress and Planning Workshop to be held on Thursday, January 28, 2016, and Friday, January 29, 2016. The Genome in a Bottle Consortium is developing the reference materials, reference methods, and reference data needed to assess confidence in human whole genome variant calls. A principal motivation for this consortium is to enable performance assessment of sequencing and science-based regulatory oversight of clinical sequencing. The purpose of this workshop is to update participants about progress of the consortium work, continue to get broad input from individual stakeholders to update or refine the consortium work plan, continue to broadly solicit consortium membership from interested stakeholders, and invite members to participate in work plan implementation. Topics of discussion at this workshop will include progress and planning of the Analysis Group, which is analyzing and integrating the large variety of sequencing data for four candidate NIST Reference Materials (RMs), with a particular focus on challenging types of variants and challenging regions of the genome. Other potential NIST RMs that might be developed by the consortium will also be discussed.

NMFS proposes regulations to implement Comprehensive Ecosystem-Based Amendment 1 (CEBA 1), which includes amendments to the Pacific Fishery Management Council's (Council's) four fishery management plans (FMPs): The Coastal Pelagic Species (CPS) FMP, the Pacific Coast Groundfish FMP, the FMP for U.S. West Coast Highly Migratory Species (HMS), and the Pacific Coast Salmon FMP. If approved, CEBA 1 would amend the Council's FMPs to bring new ecosystem component species (collectively, ``Shared EC Species'') into each of those FMPs, and would prohibit directed commercial fisheries for Shared EC Species within the U.S. West Coast Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ). Implementing regulations for CEBA 1 would define and prohibit directed commercial fishing for Shared EC Species, and would prohibit, with limited exceptions, at-sea processing of Shared EC Species.