■UNITED STATES
Cougar caught in Seattle
A cougar that apparently had lived in Seattle for more than two weeks and forced the city’s largest park to close was captured early on Sunday and returned to the wild, state wildlife officials said. The cougar was immbobilized with a tranquilizer in Discovery Park, Department of Fish and Wildlife Captain Bill Hebner said. An enforcement officer and the dogs tracked the animal after authorities were told it had been spotted on Saturday night, the latest sighting in or near the 216-hectare preserve, he said. The cougar is a two-and-a-half-year-old male, weighs 63.6kg and is in very good health, Hebner said. After examining the animal, wildlife agents drove it to be released in the Cascade foothills near Skykomish, about 72km northeast of Seattle.
■UNITED STATES
Gunman says he’s sorry
A white supremacist who killed a postal worker and wounded five people at a Los Angeles area Jewish community center in a 1999 shooting spree said he had renounced his racist views. In a letter to a Los Angeles Daily News reporter, Buford Furrow Jr said he regretted the pain he had caused. Furrow, who is serving a life sentence with no chance of parole, described himself as a “model inmate who has shunned criminal activity.” Ten years ago Furrow wounded three little children, a teenager and an adult at a Granada Hills community center. He later killed letter carrier Joseph Ileto.
■NETHERLANDS
Man is longest TV watcher
A 28-year-old man on Sunday finished 86 uninterrupted hours of TV watching to become the world record holder, Dutch broadcaster NOS said. The time Efraim van Oeveren, from the town of Tilburg, spent awake in front of a TV was six hours longer than the previous award-winning couch potato from New Delhi. Van Oeveren fought exhaustion together with two other Dutch contestants, attended by doctors and a jury. A 20-year-old competitor threw in the towel at 40 hours, while the 30-year-old TV fan held out for 72 hours. The rules of the ordeal allowed contestants one 5-minute pause per hour to rest their eyes or to save the time to allow for showers and so on.
■GAZA STRIP
Dress code dropped
The ministry of justice in the Hamas government ruling the Gaza Strip said on Sunday it was annulling a controversial decision to impose a special Islamic dress code on female lawyers. The decision, originally signed on July 9 by Abdel Ra’ouf al-Halabi, the head of the Highest Council of Justice, was annulled by al-Halabi himself. The July 9 decision triggered controversy among lawyers and human rights groups. They held a series of meetings and considered the resolution as contrary to the Basic Law.
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