ODDLY ENOUGH

July 23, 2010 at 12:00a.m.

ODDLY ENOUGH

Slaughterhouse truck flips, freeing 12 cows on highway

GRAND RAPIDS, Mich.

Police say 12 cows being driven to the slaughterhouse made a break for freedom when the truck that was transporting them overturned in west Michigan.

Police say the bovine escapees hoofed it over highway guardrails, forced traffic detours and caused at least one accident.

The 42-year-old truck driver suffered minor injuries in the accident in Kent County about 4 a.m. Wednesday.

All but five of the fugitive cattle had been rounded up by Thursday morning.

The animals from a farm in Farwell, Mich., had been destined to end their days at a slaughterhouse in Milwaukee, Wis.

Michigan State Police Trooper Joe Young said when all the animals are captured, they will be euthanized.

Man casts line, gets caught fishing under false name

NASHVILLE, Tenn.

A Tennessee man on probation for a dozen hunting violations has been sent to jail for nearly two years after he was caught fishing under a false name in neighboring Georgia.

The Tennessean newspaper reported Thursday that Georgia wildlife agents were tipped by their Tennessee counterparts that 31-year-old Kurt Wesley Ellis was fishing for trout in north Georgia with a license obtained under a false name.

Ellis, from Cleveland in southeast Tennessee, was banned from hunting or fishing on state property for at least 20 years after pleading guilty last year to 12 hunting violations. He served a short jail stint and was on probation.

Because Tennessee is part of an enforcement deal called the Wildlife Violator’s Compact, those same restrictions apply in 33 other states.

Buckingham Palace revokes invitation to far-right leader

LONDON

Buckingham Palace has revoked a party invitation it gave to far-right leader Nick Griffin, saying he had politicized the event.

Griffin leads the British National Party, a far-right, anti-immigrant group whose roots stretch back to Britain’s neo-Nazi and white-supremacist movements.

Griffin was elected to the European Parliament last year and is automatically eligible to attend one of the three annual garden parties at Buckingham Palace over the summer.

The prospect of Griffin’s meeting the queen over cucumber sandwiches outraged many Britons, who called on the monarch to revoke the invite.

The palace says Griffin’s invitation was canceled because he tried to “blatantly politicize” his attendance by boasting about it in the media.

Associated Press