A cow found itself in a tight spot when it got its head trapped in a hole in a tree.
Shropshire Fire and Rescue Service was alerted, and a fire engine was sent from Shrewsbury with a rescue tender carrying specialist large-animal rescue equipment.
Attempts to release the animal using strops and equipment from another supporting appliance, dispatched from Wellington, failed. But eventually the cow was lifted in a large-animal harness and freed.
NOT-SO-PRECIOUS METAL
Police officers made an unusual discovery during a raid on a scrap-metal yard - an Ivor Novello music award.
The statuette - whose winners include Elton John and Madonna - was found during a London-wide crackdown on metal theft carried out by the Metropolitan Police.
The award, found by police in Croydon, south London, was among items including 500kg of stolen BT telephone exchange batteries and three stolen pushbikes. Police said it appeared the award went missing during an office move in 1999.
STRESSFUL CITIES
City living alters our daily body clock, making us active for longer and less rested, a study suggests.
Researchers compared the internal rhythms of blackbirds living in the countryside and in urban areas and found they differed significantly. The city birds began their days earlier and ended them later, being active for around 40 minutes longer than the rural blackbirds.
Internal clocks of the city-dwelling birds were "less robust" and more prone to disturbance, the researchers said. The collaboration between Glasgow University and the Max Planck Institute for Ornithology in Germany is published in the latest edition of the journal Proceedings Of The Royal Society B.
BEER BUST-UP
Sri Lanka's government says it will take legal action against an advertising company for featuring a Unesco World Heritage site in a Japanese beer commercial.
National Heritage Minister Jagath Balasuriya said a Sri Lankan advertising company had been given permission to film the Sigiriya rock fortress for a commercial that the firm said was for an energy drink. But it turned out to be for a Japanese beer.
Advertisements on alcohol and tobacco are banned in Sri Lanka, though the commercial was to be aired in Japan. Balasuriya said that the advertising company violated the agreement and that the government planned to file a lawsuit.
REMARKS ROW
A US university president has announced he will retire after remarks he made about "damn Catholics" at a rival university became public.
Ohio State's Gordon Gee made remarks jokingly referring to Roman Catholics at the University of Notre Dame and poking fun at the academic quality of other schools. They were first reported last week by The Associated Press.
The institution said the remarks were unacceptable and put him on a "remediation plan", while he said the row was one of several factors that led to his retirement. Last year, Mr Gee apologised for saying that coordinating the school's many divisions was like running the Polish army, a remark that a Polish-American group called bigoted.
PROTESTER REBUFFED
First lady Michelle Obama threatened to leave a night-time fundraising event unless a protester stopped interrupting her speech.
Mrs Obama was speaking at a Democratic National Committee fundraiser in Washington. According to a pool report of the event, an audience member started shouting in support of an executive order on gay rights halfway through her remarks.
Mrs Obama moved toward the protester and said the person would either "listen to me or you can take the mic, but I'm leaving". The crowd started shouting for Mrs Obama to stay and the protester was escorted out of the event.