News Digest:
Wednesday, August 20, 2008 10:18 AM PDT
GOOD AFTERNOON
OREGON
2 victims of train-car collision identified
CANBY (AP) — Two men who died in a fiery crash with an Amtrak train in view of hundreds of visitors to the Clackamas County Fair & Rodeo have been identified.
They were 33-year-old Neptali Joel Ruiz-Contreras and 32-year-old Arnulfo Ezequel Garcia-Ruiz, both of Woodburn.
Canby Fire District officials said the wreckage was so mangled they couldn’t tell who was the driver and who was the passenger.
The pair had gotten stuck on the railroad tracks along Oregon 99E, which can be confusing for drivers.
THE NATION
Researcher: Bigfoot just a rubber gorilla suit
ATLANTA (AP) — Turns out Bigfoot was just a rubber suit.
Two researchers on a quest to prove the existence of Bigfoot say that the carcass encased in a block of ice — handed over to them for an undisclosed sum by two men who claimed to have found it — was slowly thawed out, and discovered to be a rubber gorilla outfit.
The revelation comes days after a much ballyhooed news conference in California in which the finders proclaimed that the remains of the legendary man-ape had been found in the North Georgia mountains.
Steve Kulls, executive director of squatchdetective.com and host of Squatchdetective Radio, says in a posting on a Web site run by Bigfoot researcher Tom Biscardi that as the ‘‘evidence’’ was thawed, the claim began to unravel.
IDAHO
State drafts rules for gas station fuel tanks
BOISE (AP) — Underground fuel tanks in populous Ada and Canyon counties should be required to have devices that prevent the release of ozone-forming gases, the Idaho Department of Environmental Quality has proposed.
A vapor recovery system could reduce releases of volatile organic compounds by more than 1,000 tons annually when the tanks are filled, agency officials said.
The agency wants to start a voluntary program in October and make it mandatory next summer, pegging the cost at up to $5,000 a tank.
