The animal broke out of its paddock about and found its way to the private pool on a farm three miles away near St Andrews, Fife.

There was not believed to be anyone else in the water at Kinaldy Farm when the bull took the plunge. Firefighters drained the pool and pullde the stricken beast to safety.

NOVICES ON A WINNER

Greyhound racing novices are just as likely to pick a winner on their first visit to the track as avid formbook students, according to a study.

Random choices of favoured names or jacket colours even outperformed so-called expert picks in an experiment staged at Manchester's Belle Vue Greyhound Stadium.

A team of students from Salford University picked twice as many winners as a group of regular greyhound punters from the Irlam branch of BetFred bookmakers.


CAR GIVEAWAY

Free cars are being given away to buyers of luxury homes in a seaside town.

Bradleys estate agents in Newquay, north Cornwall, said it came up with the idea because the housing market was "a bit slow". The cars will be handed over on completion of contracts to buy apartments or houses sold on that day.

A £249,000 apartment comes with a Smart car, while buyers forking out £500,000 for a home can pick up a Mercedes or Range Rover.


HITLER GIFT REMOVED

Officials in the Austrian city of Linz removed a statue of Aphrodite from a park after learning it was a gift from Hitler.

Officials in Linz say they looked into the background of the statue after someone left a note on it that read: Gift from Adolf Hitler. Historians checked the city archives - and they said today it turns out the claim is true.

The bronze statue had been on display since 1942 in a park in Linz, about 120 miles west of Vienna. Hitler was born not far from Linz, in the Upper Austrian town of Braunau am Inn.


DEATH SPARKS SCARE

A Dutch woman has died from Marburg fever, a rare Ebola-like virus she is thought to have caught from bats while touring caves in Uganda.

To avoid an outbreak of the highly contagious disease, health authorities said they have been in touch with everyone known to have had contact with the 40-year-old woman since she returned to the Netherlands at the end of June.

So far, no one else has reported symptoms, said the National Institute for Public Health and Environment.


IVORY GONE MISSING

China's government lost track of 121 tons of elephant ivory over a dozen years that was probably sold on illegal markets, according to a previously undisclosed Chinese report to UN regulatory officials.

The "shortfall" in ivory described in the document between 1991 and 2002 - equal to the tusks from about 11,000 dead elephants - could provide fodder for representatives of a UN accord to reject China's attempt next week to gain permission to import more ivory.

"We have not been able to account for the shortfall through the sale of legal ivory by the selected selling sites in the country," Chinese officials reported in 2003 to the UN Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora.