• Terry Luck, an attorney in Wetumpka, Ala., said two women, ages 60 and 84, who are set to stand trial on charges of feeding and trapping stray cats were actually performing a public service by getting the felines neutered and spayed.
• Sarah Picchi of Los Feliz, Calif., said state wildlife officers rang at her front gate and said, "You have a lion in your backyard," then tranquilized the famed mountain lion P-22 for examination after it may have been hit by a vehicle before killing a leashed dog.
• Michael Robinson of the Center for Biological Diversity said it's "an amazing opportunity for us to restore a native species that was here for hundreds of thousands of years" as the group petitioned the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to help reintroduce the jaguar to the Southwest.
• Sam Haferkorn, a warden with Wisconsin's natural resources department, appealed for tips from the public after an adult male bald eagle was found shot and then died during surgery.
• Kim Gardner, who leads the St. Louis circuit attorney's office that secured Lamar Johnson's conviction for a fatal shooting over a $40 drug debt, is trying to free him after 28 years in prison, telling a judge that a witness was coerced into a false identification.
• Steven Pohorence, a white police officer in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., was acquitted by a jury that included two Black members after being accused of shoving a young Black woman to the ground during a George Floyd protest.
• David Nisleit, San Diego police chief, credited a protective vest after an officer was shot repeatedly by a suspected car thief but was soon in good spirits at the hospital, sitting up and talking, "and that in itself is quite a miracle."
• Kevin Lessard of the Philadelphia mayor's office said the quest continues for a way to let residents "celebrate their heritage and culture while respecting the histories and circumstances of everyone's different backgrounds" after a judge forced the removal of a plywood box covering a statue of Columbus.
• Samantha Steven, a psychic and fortune teller, was sentenced to 30 months in prison and her partner got 38 months for conning a Miami woman out of $3.2 million, with the victim sounding the alarm when she was cut off from the money-cleansing rituals she'd been prescribed because she couldn't afford to pay any more.