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.
While the various controversies rumble on regarding transport, security issues and overly-officious copyright enforcement, a couple of designers is saying what we're all thinking about the Olympics - and putting it on bags .
A mother-of-one has told how she nearly died after contracting toxic shock syndrome from a tampon .
RECORD BREAKING GRAN'S COLLECTION OF NEARLY 800 SHEEP HOTSPOT MEDIA – WITH PICS 0121 551 1004 By Katie Thompson A record-breaking baa-rmy gran with a love for sheep has amassed a collection of nearly 800 woolly wonders .
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These photographs of extreme weather capture storms furiously rolling across the sky above America .
FROM THE world famous Girl with a Pearl Earring painting to a jaguar in the grass, these incredible drawings are created from coloured ballpoint pens .
A DARING duo take their chances and scale this spectacular 82ft frozen waterfall before it collapses .
A support worker was stunned to discover she was eight months pregnant after she was rushed to hospital with 'stomach cramps' .
Meet the real-life Little Bo Peep - a young woman who spends her days tending to her four pet SHEEP .
An artist has NAILED IT by creating beautiful and perfectly precise artwork using a hammer and 30,000 nails .
LIFTING their heads high and bumping beaks, these aggressive pelicans clash over fish .