A former soldier who bravely took on penny-pinching NHS bosses in his fight against terminal cancer has died, aged 37. Mark Bannister's wife has revealed how her husband was forced to LIE to doctors in order to get the life-prolonging treatment he had been denied due to a cruel postcode lottery. But after wasting six months of precious time trying to obtain the drug Avastin, Mark's cancer was too advanced for the medicine to have any effect. The dad-of-two succumbed to the brain tumour he had been battling for nine years at around 6am on Monday morning, with his wife Karen, 33, at his side. In tribute to her husband, who served in Northern Ireland and Bosnia during nine years in the army, grieving Karen said: "The Avastin didn't have any effect but we had to fight for six months in order to get it. "In all that time his tumour had been growing. In the end, he had to claim that he was living at another address in order to get the treatment. Who knows what would have happened if he had got the drug sooner - I truly believe it would have helped him.
A SERENE turquoise glow glimmers from underneath these powerful icebergs .
Meet the real-life Little Bo Peep - a young woman who spends her days tending to her four pet SHEEP .
Is your cat bored? Do his usual playthings simply not do it for him anymore? Not to worry - there's an app for that .
DIPPING and diving their way through this bumpy journey, these giraffe's duck for cover as they dodge multiple cables and wires .
A mother-of-one has revealed how a neighbour’s friend ‘mauled’ her face, leaving her scarred for life .
DIVING down at a speed of 75mph, this is the moment a hungry osprey caught his prey .
A single woman, who was granted IVF funding on the NHS, finally has a baby after suffering three miscarriages .
POWERFUL bolts of lightning illuminate the night sky in an incredible autumn storm over the Sardinian coastline .
An Italian photographer travelled to the highlands of New Guinea where he met an Indonesian tribe untouched by the modern world .
A terrified moose, trapped in a frozen lake, bobs her head above the icey water and awaits her rescue .
A woman left disfigured and traumatised by an addiction to lip filler injections has issued a warning to others searching for the perfect pout after the plastic chemicals nearly killed her .
A striped marlin means business as it spots lunch and spears a small fish .