Oregon bill would widen seat belt law
Salem
A bill requiring passengers in taxis, shuttle vans and rental limousines to wear seat belts won final approval Wednesday in the Oregon House.
The measure, which now goes to Gov. Ted Kulongoski, was prompted by the death of a figure-skating champion’s mother in a shuttle van during national championships earlier this year in Portland.
Dolores Nikodinov, 48, of San Pedro, Calif., mother of skater Angela Nikodinov, was killed Jan. 12 when the shuttle van in which she was traveling collided with a car, skidded and flipped on its side.
“This bill is about common sense and safety. Seat belts save lives,” Rep. Deborah Boone, D-Cannon Beach, said as the House voted 54-2 to send the measure to the governor. It earlier had won Senate approval.
The bill, which requires seat belt use by people riding in privately owned commercial vehicles designed to transport 15 or fewer persons, exempts taxi drivers from having to wear a seat belt.
Judge steps down in serial killings case
New Westminster, B.C.
The judge in the Robert Pickton serial killings case stepped aside on Wednesday, delaying a pretrial hearing on a defense application for a publication ban until Friday.
Justice Geoffrey Barrow was recently appointed to the case and was scheduled to continue hearing arguments at a pretrial hearing on Wednesday when the surprise announcement came that he was stepping down.
Associate Chief Justice Patrick Dohm told lawyers that scheduling problems made it impossible for Barrow, a British Columbia Supreme Court judge from Kelowna, to continue sitting on the case, which is expected to run well into next year.
Dohm said Justice James Williams, who normally sits in New Westminster, will take over.
Pickton, 55, accused in Canada’s worst serial killer case, faces 27 counts of first-degree murder in the disappearance of women from Vancouver’s downtown eastside over several years.
Dam workers shield salmon from sea lions
Cascade Locks, Ore.
The sea lions that have been feasting on this year’s run of spring chinook salmon have been barred from the Bonneville Dam fish ladders.
Workers have bolted bars across the ladders to shield the salmon from the voracious sea animals.
The custom-made aluminum “jail bars” are 36 feet tall and 12 feet wide across the entrances to the fish passage structures. The $100,000 barrier is the latest in an arms race that has deployed rubber bullets, sounds broadcast underwater and fireworks – all in a futile effort to scare off the sea lions.
A dozen stocks of salmon and steelhead are listed as either threatened or endangered on the Columbia River.
American Indian tribes with treaty rights to salmon in the Columbia have asked Oregon and Washington to kill the sea lions. But the Marine Mammal Protection Act of 1972 makes it a federal crime to injure or kill a sea lion.
This year, officials estimate that sea lions have eaten over 2,500 salmon at Bonneville, over 4 percent of the 60,800 fish which have reached the dam.