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San
José, Costa Rica, Wednesday, Dec. 11, 2013, Vol. 13, No.
245
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 Ministerio de Gobernación,
Policía y Seguridad Pública
photo
This is the compartment on the
bus.Ticabus driver
faces allegation
of sneaking in money to country By
the A.M. Costa Rica staff
Anti-drug police found a hidden compartment on a Ticabus S.A. vehicle and have detained the driver for investigation of money laundering. Anti-drug agents said that the bus was headed into Costa Rica after having traveled from México. The compartment was at the rear of the vehicle near rest rooms. They said that they found packages of $20 U.S. bills. The total was $375,000 they said after counting the money. Detained was the driver who has the last name of Loria.  Ministerio de Gobernación,
Policía y Seguridad Pública
photo
Here
are some of the confiscated fireworks.
Police locate
thousands more
of illegal fireworks in Upala By
the A.M. Costa Rica staff
Fireworks continue to flood into the country from Nicaragua. The Fuerza Pública in Upala found the explosives when they came upon individuals sneaking into the country at a location far removed from an official border crossing. When they searched the dozens of illegal immigrants they found the fireworks, they reported. There were 9,893 of them, they said. This is big business around the holidays because the market for skyrockets and other types of fireworks is strong in Costa Rica. The explosive devices are a tradition. The security ministry has set up a task force with 3,000 officers to stop the importation and sale of fireworks. Confiscations like this one are a daily affair. from economics ministry By
the A.M. Costa Rica staff
The economics ministry has checked the prices of tamales and children's toys. A report is scheduled for today. The Ministerio de Economía, Industria y Comercio also said that it would report on a study its inspectors did in conjunction with the Laboratorio Costarricense de Metrología on the accuracy of scales used in commerce. Tamales are a traditional holiday dish steeped in tradition. Most Costa Rican women would be horrified if they thought someone in their home was eating store-purchased tamales. Each family has its own recipe. The ministry checks the prices each holiday for the dough, meat and other ingredients. Usually they find wide differences. Moderate quake's epicenter reported to be offshore By
the A.M. Costa Rica staff
A 5.0 magnitude earthquake took place just before noon Tuesday in the Pacific about 21.5 kilometers northwest of Sardinal in Guanacaste. There were no reports of major damage. The quake happened at 11:28 a.m. The quake was felt moderately as far inland as Upalad as far south as Nicoya, said the Laboratorio de Ingenieria Sismica at the Universidad de Costa Rica.
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| San José, Costa Rica, Wednesday, Dec. 11, 2013, Vol. 13, No. 245 | |
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| For many, today is the last day of the
2013 school term |
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By
the A.M. Costa Rica staff
Today is the day that public school youngsters have been awaiting since last February. Today is the last day of the school term. Homework and tests are over and done. Today is a day for a party and various events, depending on the school. Today also means that parents will have to make additional arrangements to care for their children. A possibility is with the many vacation activities that private and public institutions plan. The Museo Nacional already has an event scheduled for Thursday. The Museo de los Niños said Tuesday that it was accepting signups for its Desafío de Campeones of "challenge of champions." The program contains a series of week-long events in January. Parents might be pleased to know that they have an option to place a child from 7:30 A.M. to 5 p.m. That would be a good option for working parents. The week programs are set up as adventure games with various challenges for the young participants. Some 30 staffers will take care of the youngsters, the museum said. |
 Museo de los Niños photo
The children's museum sent this
photo to promote its vacation events for youngsters. But it sure fits
with the end of the school term. |
Woody vines known as lianas continue to overgrow trees in the forests of the American tropics |
 Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute
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| Tropical spread of vines attributed to
colonization from above |
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By the
Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute
Woody vines known as lianas continue to overgrow trees in the forests of the American tropics. Perhaps their ability to clone themselves by taking root at new sites far from their original roots explains how they gain the upper hand, according to a new report by ecologist Suzanne Rutishauser Yorke and colleagues. In 2002, Oliver Phillips of the University of Leeds published the first study claiming that vines were becoming more common in the Amazon. The amount of liana leaf litter and the proportion of total leaf litter composed of liana leaves increased significantly between 1986 and 2002 on Panama’s Barro Colorado Island. Joe Wright and Osvaldo Calderon reported that in 2004. They are with the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute Stefan Schnitzer is a research associate at the institute and |
associate professor at the
University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee. He and his colleagues concluded
in a 2011 paper that vines continued to overgrow trees at eight sites
from Brazil to South Carolina. Now the results are in from a long-term study at La Selva biological station in Costa Rica. They show that liana abundance climbed by 15 percent and diameter by 20 percent in old-growth forests but not in selectively logged forests between 1999 and 2007. Colonization by plants from outside the study plots contributed significantly to the increases as lianas in the tops of fallen trees put down new roots. “We just conducted a follow-up study at La Selva and found that the pace of liana increase from 2007 - 2012 at this site is still high,” said Schnitzer, “And we also found that on BCI, lianas were increasing in density and the number and level of trees infested was on the rise,” he added using the initials for Barro Colorado Island. |
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| San José, Costa Rica, Wednesday, Dec. 11, 2013, Vol. 13, No. 245 | |||||
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| Research suggests that father's diet is as important to
babies as the mother's |
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By
the McGill University news service
Mothers get all the attention. But a study led by McGill researcher Sarah Kimmins suggests that the father’s diet before conception may play an equally important role in the health of their offspring. It also raises concerns about the long-term effects of current Western diets and of food insecurity. The research focused on vitamin B9, also called folate, which is found in a range of green leafy vegetables, cereals, fruit and meats. It is well known that in order to prevent miscarriages and birth defects mothers need to get adequate amounts of folate in their diet. But the way that a father’s diet can influence the health and development of their offspring has received almost no attention. Now research from the Kimmins group shows for the first time that the father’s folate levels may be just as important to the development and health of their offspring as are those of the mother. Indeed, the study suggests that fathers should pay as much attention to their lifestyle and diet before they set out to conceive a child as mothers do. “Despite the fact that folic acid is now added to a variety of foods, fathers who are eating high-fat, fast food diets or who are obese may not be able to use or metabolize folate in the same way as those with adequate levels of the vitamin,” says Ms. Kimmins. “People who live in the Canadian north or in other parts of the world where there is food insecurity may also be particularly at risk for folate deficiency. And we now know that this information will be passed on from the father to the embryo with |
consequences that
may be quite serious.” The researchers arrived at this conclusion by working with mice, and comparing the offspring of fathers with insufficient folate in their diets with the offspring of fathers whose diets contained sufficient levels of the vitamin. They found that paternal folate deficiency was associated with an increase in birth defects of various kinds in the offspring, compared to the offspring of mice whose fathers were fed a diet with sufficient folate. “We were very surprised to see that there was an almost 30 per cent increase in birth defects in the litters sired by fathers whose levels of folates were insufficient,” said Romain Lambrot, of McGill’s Department of Animal Science, one of the researchers who worked on the study. “We saw some pretty severe skeletal abnormalities that included both cranio-facial and spinal deformities.” The research from the Kimmins’ group shows that there are regions of the sperm that are sensitive to life experience and particularly to diet. “Our research suggests that fathers need to think about what they put in their mouths, what they smoke and what they drink and remember they are caretakers of generations to come,” said Ms. Kimmins. “If all goes as we hope, our next step will be to work with collaborators at a fertility clinic so that we can start assessing the links in men between diet, being overweight and how this information relates to the health of their children.” |
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| What we published this week: | Monday | Tuesday | Wednesday | Thursday | Friday | Earlier |
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| A.M. Costa Rica's Fifth news page |
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| San José, Costa Rica, Wednesday, Dec. 11, 2013, Vol. 13, No. 245 | |||||
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| Senate in Uruguay approves controversial marijuana bill By
the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
Uruguay's senate passed a law Tuesday making the South American country the world's first to legalize the production and sale of marijuana under state control. Congress' lower house already approved the pioneering bill, which easily passed the Senate because the ruling coalition controls both chambers. The final vote followed 12 hours of debate. The bill authorizes the production, distribution and sale of cannabis, allows individuals to grow their own on a small scale, and provides for clubs of consumers, all under state supervision and control. The law is an initiative of President Jose Mujica, a 78-year-old former leftist guerrilla who acknowledges the approach is an experiment. He said he personally hates pot and has never smoked it. Ethan Nadelmann is executive director of the New York-based Drug Policy Alliance, a leading sponsor of drug policy reform. He said Uruguay's move is a truly historic moment. "It's the first country in the world to move forward with legally regulating marijuana as opposed to persisting with the failed prohibitionist policies of the past. Washington and Colorado last year became the first two political jurisdictions in the world to vote to legalize marijuana," he said. "Uruguay now becomes the first nation-state to do so." Uruguay's attempt to undo drug trafficking is being followed closely in Latin America where the legalization of some narcotics is being increasingly seen by regional leaders as a possible way to end the violence spawned by the cocaine trade. "What you see more broadly around Latin America is a growing discontent with the global war on drugs and with the aggressive U.S. posture," he said. The use of marijuana is legal in Uruguay but cultivation and sale of the drug are not. Other countries have decriminalized marijuana possession, and the Netherlands allows its sale in coffee shops, but Uruguay will be the first nation to legalize the whole chain from growing the plant to buying and selling its leaves. Several countries such as Canada, the Netherlands and Israel have legal programs for growing medical cannabis but do not allow cultivation of marijuana for recreational use. Polls show two-thirds of Uruguayans oppose the plan, which faces fierce opposition from conservatives. Critics say legalization will increase consumption and open the door to harder drugs, but Mujica said his government's goal is to combat organized crime and reduce drug use. The bill gives authorities 120 days to set up a drug control board that will regulate cultivation standards, fix the price and monitor consumption limits, such as the 40 grams a month any adult will be able to buy from pharmacies. New disease for Americas discovered on Caribbean isle By
the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
A painful mosquito-borne disease found in Africa and Asia has been found for the first time in the Americas. The World Health Organization is reporting two cases of chikungunya in the French part of the Caribbean island of Saint Martin. The disease causes a high fever and headache, along with severe joint pain that can persist for weeks. It is rarely fatal, but there is no treatment or vaccine for chikungunya. Major outbreaks struck Gabon, India and islands in the Indian Ocean in the mid-2000s, according to the World Health Organization. It spread within Europe for the first time in 2007 with a localized outbreak in Italy. Peter Hotez, dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor College, expects to see chikungunya in the southern United States soon. “The mosquitoes are here. That’s an important factor. Second, there may be some component of global warming," said Hotez. And, Hotez adds, the mosquitoes carrying the disease accompany urbanization and poverty, two conditions on the rise in the southern U.S. U.S. lawmakers announce bipartisan budget agreement By
the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
A group of U.S. lawmakers has forged a bipartisan agreement on federal spending levels for a two-year period that will prevent another government shutdown if it becomes law. The accord lessens austerity budget cuts but does not solve America’s long term fiscal imbalances. The deal announced late Tuesday constitutes a compromise between the starkly different budgetary visions of the Republican-led House of Representatives and the Democratic-controlled Senate. House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan hailed the accord at a Capitol Hill news conference. “This agreement makes sure that we do not have a government shutdown scenario in January. It makes sure that we do not lurch from crisis to crisis,” said Ryan. The accord would boost 2014 and 2015 federal spending above austerity levels set under current law, shielding many domestic and military programs from further automatic budget cuts, known as sequestration, that would have taken effect absent a deal. The added spending was a key goal of Senate Budget Committee Chairwoman Patty Murray. “Our deal puts jobs and economic growth first by rolling back sequestration’s harmful cuts to education and medical research and infrastructure investments and defense jobs for the next two years,” said Ms. Murray. The agreement more than compensates for higher spending with a mix of added revenue and budget savings, including making federal employees pay more for their retirement programs. The end result, according to Ryan, is even greater deficit reduction that would be achieved under sequestration alone. “This bill reduces the deficit by $23 billion. And it does not raise taxes. And it cuts spending in a smarter way,” said Ryan. The deal does not address a key Democratic demand for an extension of soon-to-expire benefits for the unemployed. Nor does it address Republican calls for reforms to costly programs that provide income and health care for retirees. But it does accomplish something else, according to Ms. Murray. “This deal does not solve all of our problems. But I think it is an important step in helping to heal some of the wounds here in Congress. To rebuild some trust, and show that we can do something without a crisis right around the corner,” she said. The White House issued a statement from President Barack Obama calling the accord a good first step to addressing America’s fiscal challenges. If enacted, the accord would give Washington a two-year reprieve from the partisan budget wars that have consumed Congress in recent years. A House vote is expected by week’s end, with a Senate vote to follow. U.S. banks now prohibited for trading on own account By
the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
The United States has approved new rules to restrict securities trading by banks in a new effort to prevent risk-taking that helped ignite the 2008 financial crisis. Five U.S. financial regulatory agencies adopted rules Tuesday that will mostly bar banks from making trades for their own profits. The agencies have been debating the regulations for three years, with some of Wall Street's biggest financial institutions voicing their strenuous opposition. The new rules will take effect in the middle of 2015. Such securities trades have been lucrative for the country's most prominent banks, including JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America and Citigroup. Wall Street critics say the trades also led to risk-taking that forced the government to bail out several big banks to keep them from collapsing during the depths of the recession five years ago. The new regulations, more than 900 pages long, have been called the Volcker Rule, named after a former Federal Reserve chairman, Paul Volcker, who first conceived them. In 2010, Congress approved wide-ranging new controls on U.S. financial institutions and ordered regulators to draft the securities trading rules. Supporters of the rules say it will make the financial system safer and prevent abuses by big banks, while still allowing them to make trades on behalf of customers. Bank opponents of the rules say they will hurt the broader economy by curbing their profits and limiting some of the biggest securities trades in the U.S. The agencies that have approved the regulations are the Federal Reserve, which is the U.S. central bank, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.; the Securities and Exchange Commission; the Commodity Futures Trading Commission; and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency. Swiss banks begin to agree with U.S. disclosure demands By
the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
The first Swiss banks have signaled their readiness to work with U.S. officials in a crackdown on wealthy Americans evading taxes, and many more are expected to follow in the coming weeks in the latest blow to Switzerland's cherished bank secrecy. The deal between the United States and Switzerland, agreed in August, is part of a U.S. drive to lift the veil of Swiss bank secrecy. In 2009, this led to UBS paying $780 million in a settlement where the bank agreed to hand over U.S. client names with secret Swiss accounts. The U.S. pursuit of tax dollars sheltered in offshore accounts has piled pressure on Switzerland, the world's largest offshore finance center with more than $2 trillion in assets. The Swiss government in June bowed to repeated attacks on banking secrecy, deeply embedded in the country's culture, and will share data on foreign depositors if a global standard is established. Under this latest U.S. deal, Swiss banks were given until Monday by their regulator to say whether they would take part in the government-brokered program open to a host of second-tier Swiss banks. The program, which lapses at year-end, requires the banks to hand out some previously hidden information and face penalties of up to 50 percent of assets they managed on behalf of wealthy Americans. If the banks shun the U.S. offer, individual firms and senior staff risk criminal prosecution. The regulator FINMA said Tuesday that most had done so, and that it expected several more to do so shortly, without disclosing what the banks had decided. Valiant Holding and Berner Kantonalbank, two mainly retail banks, said they would come clean on any past transgressions and face up to fines. The fines are scaled to reflect how egregiously the banks acted in their dealings with U.S. customers. Fines would have to be disclosed to investors because they could have an impact on share prices. A third Zurich-based private bank and securities firm, Vontobel Holding AG, said it would also participate. But it put itself in a category of institutions that have not committed any U.S. tax-related offenses and are therefore exempt from penalty payments. The bank began transferring business with wealthy Americans into an entity registered with the Securities and Exchange Commission in 2008, when the crackdown on Switzerland's banks intensified. How many of Switzerland's 300-plus private banks come forward under the program is also key for banks facing criminal investigations, which includes some of Switzerland's biggest banks such as Credit Suisse and Julius Baer and Pictet & Cie. Super greenhouse gas said to last a long time in air By
the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
Scientists say they have discovered a man-made greenhouse gas 7,100 times as strong as carbon dioxide. More bad news: It has a lifetime of hundreds of years. Researchers at the University of Toronto in Canada say the chemical, perfluorotributylamine, is the most radiatively efficient chemical found to date, breaking all other chemical records for its potential to impact climate. According to Angela Hong, who worked on the project, radiative efficiency describes how well a molecule can trap outgoing heat radiation from Earth. This metric indicates the potential for a molecule to impact climate. “As it turns out, PFTBA has the highest radiative efficiency of all molecules in the atmosphere to date,” she said in an email. Perfluorotributylamine has been in use since the mid-20th century for various applications in electrical equipment and is currently used in thermally and chemically stable liquids marketed for use in electronic testing and as heat transfer agents. Researchers say there are no known processes that would destroy or remove perfluorotributylamine in the lower atmosphere, meaning it could have a lifetime of hundreds of years. Carbon dioxide is used as the baseline for comparison since it is the most important greenhouse gas after water vapor. “Calculated over a 100-year time frame, a single molecule of PFTBA has the equivalent climate impact as 7,100 molecules of CO2,” said Ms. Hong. The results of the study appeared in the Geophysical Research Letters. Amazon has small robot carts already at its warehouses By
the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
Amazon’s idea of using flying drones for speeding up delivery of its merchandise and lowering the cost may be some years off, but the U.S. retail giant is already employing drones of autonomous robots in its huge warehouse in Seattle, Washington. According to reports in Wall Street Journal and technology Web site technologyadvice.com, the warehouse robots could save Amazon as much as 40 percent of the cost of filling orders. About one foot high, battery-powered orange boxes, the size of a lawn mower, with hidden wheels that can drive them in all directions and turn in place, crisscross the smooth floor of the warehouse, lifting and shuttling shelves with different kinds of merchandise. Cameras located underside scan coded directions painted on the floor while the central computer wirelessly gives orders to the cars to deliver the goods to human packers. When a robot receives the order for certain merchandise it identifies the shelf containing the item, lifts it just a few inches off the floor and carries it to a worker, who only has to place the item into a box on a conveyer belt to the shipping department. The robots, designed by Kiva Systems, navigate quickly and efficiently through the warehouse, never colliding and never dropping an item. In its third quarter earnings report Amazon says about 1,400 Kiva robots work in three of its warehouses. The retail giant also disclosed that it actually bought Kiva Systems in March 2012 for $775 million. According to one analyst Kiva robots could save Amazon between $458 and $916 million annually. It is not known how workers feel about the warehouse robots but they clearly replace humans in one of the most exhausting jobs. Kiva robots are employed in warehouses of other U.S. companies like Zappos, Walgreens and the office supply giant Staples. Exercise called one key in lowering risk of dementia By the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
Exercise can significantly lower the risk of dementia, according to a study of 2,235 men over 35 years. The research, which was done at Cardiff University, is the longest of its kind to probe the influence of environmental factors in chronic disease. But exercise alone is not enough. The study identified five healthy behaviors as being integral to having the best chance of leading a disease-free lifestyle: regular exercise, non-smoking, a low body weight, a healthy diet, and a low alcohol intake. Following four of the five behaviors led to a 60 percent decline in dementia and cognitive decline with exercise being the strongest mitigating factor as well as 70 percent fewer instances of diabetes, heart disease and stroke, compared with people who followed none. "The size of reduction in the instance of disease owing to these simple healthy steps has really amazed us and is of enormous importance in an aging population," said Peter Elwood from Cardiff University’s School of Medicine. "What the research shows is that following a healthy lifestyle confers surprisingly large benefits to health. Healthy behaviors have a far more beneficial effect than any medical treatment or preventative procedure.” Elwood added that the study revealed few people follow a fully healthy lifestyle. “Our findings reveal that while the number of people who smoke has gone down since the study started, the number of people leading a fully healthy lifestyle has not changed," he added. Obama, Raúl Castro shake hands at Mandela funeral By
the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
Tuesday's memorial service for Nelson Mandela generated some informal diplomacy and political controversy, alongside the praise for the late South African president. In a moment caught by television cameras, U.S. President Barack Obama shook hands with Cuban President Raúl Castro as he walked to the podium. The handshake was notable because the United States and Cuba have not had diplomatic relations since 1961, at the height of the Cold War, and the U.S. maintains a trade embargo on Cuba. Relations have begun to thaw in recent years. U.S. officials say the handshake was not pre-planned. But they say the two leaders did not have a substantive discussion. They only exchanged greetings. White House aides say the United States still has grave concerns about Cuba's human rights situation. Obama also exchanged greetings with Afghan leader Hamid Karzai, but U.S. officials say Obama did not see the memorial service as a venue to do business. The two leaders have been debating an agreement of a continued U.S. troop presence in Afghanistan after foreign forces withdraw in 2014. The United States says Karzai must sign the pact by the end of this year or there will be no choice but to withdraw all American troops after 2014. Obama is popular in South Africa, and thousands of people in the stadium cheered when his image appeared on the giant screen overlooking the field. In contrast, South African President Jacob Zuma was booed each time his image was shown on the screen. Many South Africans have been angered by recent accusations that Zuma spent $200 million in taxpayer money to renovate his private home. In all, more than 70 heads of state and government attended the ceremony, including British Prime Minister David Cameron, French President Francois Hollande, Zimbabwe's President Robert Mugabe and India's President Pranab Mukherjee. |
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| A.M. Costa
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| San José, Costa Rica, Wednesday, Dec. 11, 2013, Vol. 13, No. 245 | |||||||||
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Mexican president
asked to check on editor's protest Special
to A.M. Costa Rica
The Inter American Press Association Tuesday asked Mexico’s President Enrique Peña Nieto to look into complaints being made by the editor of the Chihuahua newspaper El Pueblo, Ildefonso Chávez Olveda, who has been on a hunger strike since Dec. 2. Chávez Olveda began eight days ago to protest the withdrawal of official advertising by the state government and its refusal to pay its debt to the newspaper it owed. In a letter sent to the Mexican president, Claudio Paolillo, chairman of the association's Committee on Freedom of the Press and Information, expressed his organization’s concern at the health risk implied by the journalist’s protest and what brought it about. In addition to the plea to look into the matter Paolillo, editor of the Montevideo, Uruguay, weekly Búsqueda, attached a letter that the Inter American Press Association had sent last week to Chihuahua Gov. César Horacio Duarte Jáquez, which referred to the discriminatory use of official advertising, to a defamatory campaign and to other attacks on press freedom denounced by the journalist. Cuban security forces detain rights marchers By
the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
Cuban security forces have detained about 20 dissidents at the start of an International Human Rights Day march, halting the demonstration before it started. The opponents were seen being taken away Tuesday after their planned protest along a central street in Havana was interrupted. The would-be protesters resisted, but no injuries were reported. It was not known where they were taken. The dissident group, called the Ladies in White, were pounced upon and quickly shoved into waiting vehicles by security personnel and government supporters when they arrived at a busy intersection in the capital. The women, in groups of two or three, came in taxis over a 20 minute period in an apparent attempt to avoid police, but to no avail. The incident was similar to many others in the past and invariably the women are driven home or detained for just a few hours. The organization charged that many other members were stopped by state security agents from attending what was billed as a rally and march for human rights. Under former president Fidel Castro, dissidents often faced long prison terms for their activities, while under his brother, who took over in 2008, the government has changed tactics, temporarily detaining opponents for a few hours, days or weeks and then releasing them, only to repeat the process if they protest again. International rights groups say Cuban laws virtually prevent all forms of protest and dissent while the government says it upholds human rights by providing free education and health services. Pro-government demonstrators gathered in the street to shout slogans for the Cuban revolution. Cuban authorities consider the island's small community of outspoken dissidents to be counterrevolutionaries and charge they accept foreign money to try to undermine the Communist system. |
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| From Page 7: Bill expanding credit possibilities advances By
the A.M. Costa Rica staff
A legislative committee has approved and sent to the full Asamblea Legislativa a bill that allows securing loans with many more types of security. The bill would create a registry of guarantees similar to chattel mortgages. Merchants would be able to use their inventory as security. Farmers could pledge their harvests, and firms could attach their patents, contracts and accounts receivables. The Ministerio de Economía, Industria y Comercio said the use of the non-traditional securities would expand the credit possibilities. The measure is called the Ley de Garantías Mobiliarias, and it was unanimously approved by the Comisión de Asuntos Económicos. The measure was proposed by the executive branch and has the support of a number of financial institutions. The ministry said that a committee of individuals from many backgrounds studied the bill and sought input from experts because the legislative committee saw it. |
