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utes, not for the ivory content," she said. "So they would need to do some fairly substantial detective work to determine the exact details of what's been included in their instruments."
• Professional musicians often spend their careers buying and upgrading instruments before selling them upon retirement, Noonan added, and the new rules jeopardize such makeshift pension plans.
• Hoover acknowledged that documenting the origin of an ivory specimen can be challenging. He said further outreach and education needs to be done to make sure musicians and other groups know how to comply with international trade requirements.
• "Certainly we recognize there's a learning curve here, and we're trying to get the impacted industries up to speed in terms of what the requirements are," he said.
• Sheets said the prohibition on sales of instruments containing ivory could hamper new purchases for the museum, which grew from a private collection into an attraction boasting more than 15,000 pianos, harpsichords, guitars, horns and other items.
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• SIOUX FALLS, S.D. (AP) -- Xcel Energy has asked the South Dakota Public Utilities Commission to authorize an 8 percent rate increase.
• The utility on Monday said the average residential customer will see an increase of $8.50 a month.
• The Minneapolis-based company says the hike was requested to recover the investment it made on the electricity system. The company says 58 percent of the $15.6 million in extra revenue it hopes to obtain will go toward the investment and operating expenses of the Monticello and Prairie Island nuclear generating plants located in Minnesota.
• Xcel has nearly 87,000 customers in South Dakota.
•