Ted Turner Finds the Game Is Up

--Turner and cougars and bears, oh my. Broadcasting executive Ted Turner faces three misdemeanor counts of violating wildlife laws in Florida, where officials say he illegally brought two cougars and three black bears into the state and released them. Henry Cabbage, a spokesman for Florida’s Game and Fresh Water Fish Commission, said Turner faces up to a $500 fine and 60 days in jail on each count if convicted. After one of the Western cougars was killed by a car on March 9, investigators were led to Turner’s Avalon Plantation near Capps, the commission reported. Turner employees told game officers that the broadcaster had ordered the animals brought from his South Carolina plantation and released at Avalon, Cabbage said. He said Turner, owner of Turner Broadcasting System and the Atlanta Braves, had been denied a permit to move the bears last year and had not sought a permit for the cougars. Dee Woods, a Turner assistant, said he was traveling and had not seen a notice to appear at a May 4 hearing. Assistant State Atty. Jim Hintz said Turner would not be arrested but would be served with a summons. Game officials hope to capture the second cougar but will not try to trap the bears: They can’t be distinguished from the native black bears.

--Five score and 16 years after it opened, the law firm co-founded by the son of Abraham Lincoln will be dissolved at the end of the month. Richard Marcus, a partner in Isham, Lincoln & Beale, said the firm was “no longer viable” because it had lost clients and staff attorneys. He said the Chicago firm’s merger two years ago with the younger Reuben & Proctor firm, during which the Lincoln firm’s financial troubles became public, was “a dismal failure.” Last week, only 80 of the combined practice’s 225 attorneys remained. The Isham-Lincoln partnership was formed in 1872 by Edward Isham and Robert Todd Lincoln, the President’s son who later became a U.S. war secretary and a U.S. minister to Britain. Its clients have included McDonald’s Corp., CBS and Commonwealth Edison.

--At a dinner to honor local heroes, New Bedford, Mass., Mayor John K. Bullard squeezed the chicken out of Amy Macomber. Macomber, 55, was invited because she thwarted a robbery at her liquor store last year by smashing the criminal’s knuckles with a bottle of rum. Bullard was just a guest. “He saved my life,” said Macomber, who was choking on a piece of chicken. “I couldn’t breathe.” The mayor, who applied the Heimlich maneuver, was modest, saying: “Everyone in the room could have done the same thing. I just happened to be the closest.”