Responding to a report of a cougar on the loose, police in Michigan ended up shooting a large toy cat with a Taser stun gun.

A 911 caller reported a spotting a "huge" animal resembling "a 150-pound cat" in an old cement drainpipe in Bates Park. Ten officers were sent to the scene, according to reports.

A bomb disposal team was checking a foreclosed Riverside, California home for possible booby traps Wednesday, a day after fake pipe bombs were found on the property.

Police have arrested, Daniel Gherman, 42, the former resident of the house at North Orange Street, on suspicion of rigging the property with explosive devices.

An improperly connected sewer pipe on a government building housing a state environmental regulatory agency was blamed for polluting a nearby creek with raw sewage.

City workers discovered that while half of the building's sewer pipes were correctly hooked up to the city sewer system that the other half were incorrectly hooked up to the city stormwater system, allowing raw sewage to flow into Burnt Bridge Creek.

Hungry for tax revenue amid mounting deficits the federal government on Wednesday hiked its tax on cigarettes from 39 cents to $1.01 per pack - an increase of 155 percent - making it the single largest federal tobacco tax hike in history.

Cigars, chewing and pipe tobacco will also see tax hikes.

Former self-styled revolutionary Symbionese Liberation Army member Sara Jane Olson, who was imprisoned for trying to kill Los Angeles police officers with pipe bombs and the killing Myrna Opsahl during a 1975 bank robbery, was released from a California prison on parole Tuesday.

Opsahl was at the bank when the SLA tried to rob it. She was shot and killed by Olson's co-defendant Emily Montague Harris, who served eight years for her crime and was released on parole in 2007.