Former football star's ring returned too late

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. -- The long-lost Super Bowl ring of Walter Payton has reportedly turned up under a college student's couch.

The late Chicago Bears star lost track of the ring while speaking to a high school boys basketball team in 1996 about the importance of trust.

As a gesture, Payton handed the ring to Hoffman Estates High School student Nick Abruzzo and told him to hold it for a few days.

Team members reportedly passed it around at Abruzzo's basement but lost track of it, and Payton eventually ordered a duplicate ring.

Phil Hong, a senior, said he found the ring under a couch he'd inherited from the Abruzzo family and planned bring it to Payton's widow, Connie.

"My dog was playing with one of its toys and it got stuck under the couch," Hong said. "I went to get the toy out of there and the ring was sitting right there."

Payton, the Bears' Hall of Fame running back, died Nov. 1, 1999 of complications from liver cancer.

Nun thinks U.S. softening on death sentences

PORTLAND, Ore. -- The author of "Dead Man Walking" says she thinks America is on the verge of rethinking capital punishment.

Sister Helen Prejean was in Oregon on Friday to promote the Life for a Life Campaign, which seeks to get a measure on the statewide November 2002 ballot replacing the state's death penalty with a mandatory life sentence.

Convicts would have to work to pay restitution to victims.

Signature gatherers need 89,000 valid signatures to put the proposed constitutional amendment on the ballot.

"My coming to Oregon to help the Life for a Life Campaign is because this is one of the most hopeful things happening in the United States right now," Prejean told a Portland State University audience on Friday.

Prejean wrote the best-selling book -- which became a movie starring Sean Penn as a repentant killer and Susan Sarandon as the nun who offers him compassion -- based on her work with death row inmates.

She is at work on a new book about people who were executed but who allegedly were innocent.

Blowfish band donates $60,000 to education

TIMMONSVILLE, S.C. -- Pop-rock band Hootie and the Blowfish has donated $60,000 to benefit a family learning and a reading program.

Gov. Jim Hodges at the Timmonsville Education Center on Friday when the band announced its commitment at the center, which holds the town's elementary, middle and high schools.

The band's foundation has worked to benefit South Carolina's children by supporting education and school music programs.

During the mid-1990s, Hootie and the Blowfish became one of the biggest pop acts in America, selling nearly 20 million copies of three CD releases.

The band's 1994 album, "Cracked Rear View," was the biggest-selling debut ever, selling close to 16 million before being dethroned by Alanis Morrisette's "Jagged Little Pill."

'Raging Bull' actress gives birth to third child

LOS ANGELES -- Actress Cathy Moriarty, an Academy Award nominee for her performance in "Raging Bull," has given birth to her third child.

Moriarty, who turns 41 on Nov. 29, gave birth Thursday morning in West Islip, N.Y., to a girl named Anabelle Rose Gentile, her publicist said Friday. The baby weighed 6 pounds, 14 1/2 ounces.

It is the third child for the actress and her financier husband, Joseph Gentile. In September 2000, she gave birth to twins.

"She's wanted a family forever," said her publicist, Henry Penner. "Now she has one, so she's going to get back to her career right away."

-- From wire reports