News

It was more than 15 years after moving into her new home that retired nurse Beverley Koonjul first noticed an issue with bamboo. She had asked a professional to bed in two bamboo plants to help create a bit of privacy in the garden of the home she shared with her husband in Hastings in 2007. And they thought nothing more of it until 2022 when the plant suddenly began to sneak beneath their and their neighbour's gardens, with shoots popping up - despite the two properties being separated by a narrow path with slabs on top. 'My neighbours were a bit annoyed,' she said.

King Charles' first official portrait was vandalised by animal rights campaigners today while on display at the Philip Mould gallery in London.   Two protesters from group called Animal Rising climbed over security rope in front of shocked visitors before defacing the painting with Wallace and Gromit-inspired poster. At around midday, the duo covered the monarch's face with an image of the animated character Wallace and stuck a speech bubble to the painting with a message about 'cruelty' on RSPCA farms.

Rotherham's scourge of child sex grooming gangs was once a horrendous secret hidden in plain sight. But 12 years since the scandal was exposed - and with efforts to bring those responsible to justice still ongoing - the South Yorkshire town's name remains inextricably-linked to the problem. Although another seven men were this week found guilty of a horrific catalogue of multiple rapes and sexual assaults, many more trials are in the pipeline - casting a continued shadow over the area. Pictured bottom left are four members of a grooming gang who were convicted last week. Main left: Rotherham abuse survivor and campaigner Sammy Woodhouse, who was just 14 when she was raped and became pregnant, said progress on changes to help victims has stalled.

Watched by wife Akshata, Rishi Sunak tried to get his election hopes back on track with a bold manifesto package to ease the sky-high burden on Brits. Speaking at the Silverstone race circuit after a torrid campaign blighted by his D-Day bungle, Mr Sunak joked it was the perfect place to demonstrate that the economy had 'turned a corner'. Mr Sunak insisted he is not 'blind to the fact that people are frustrated with our party and frustrated with me', acknowledging that 'we have not got everything right'. But he said the 76-page manifesto laid out a 'moral mission' to put money back in people's pockets - pleading with voters not to give Keir Starmer a 'blank cheque'. In a stark warning, Mr Sunak insisted that if Sir Keir wins he will bring the voting age down to 16 to ensure he is 'in power for a very long time'.

Rotherham's scourge of child sex grooming gangs was once a horrendous secret hidden in plain sight. But 12 years since the scandal was exposed - and with efforts to bring those responsible to justice still ongoing - the South Yorkshire town's name remains inextricably-linked to the problem. Although another seven men were this week found guilty of a horrific catalogue of multiple rapes and sexual assaults, many more trials are in the pipeline - casting a continued shadow over the area. Pictured bottom left are four members of a grooming gang who were convicted last week. Main left: Rotherham abuse survivor and campaigner Sammy Woodhouse, who was just 14 when she was raped and became pregnant, said progress on changes to help victims has stalled.

Images from Costa Blanca showed submerged streets, overflowing rivers, and fast-moving water barrelling across dry fields before crashing onto highways. Local media reported that emergency response officials had clocked over 320 incidents relating to the weather as on Monday night. The region most affected has been Spain's eastern Levante area, which includes Valencia, Benidorm, Alicante and Murcia - a popular area for British tourists.

The footage (left) shows Dr Mosley, 67, (right, on TV) walking past a house with a tarpaulin covered speedboat sitting on the road. Clutching his distinctive purple umbrella to protect him from the fierce sun, he is seen at just after 2pm heading for a trail that leads towards Agia Marina 1.5 miles away where he died at 4pm that day. He was intending to head to his holiday apartment where he was staying on Symi after being dropped off by boat at St Nicholas beach at 1.30pm.

Hostages Almog Meir Jan, Andrey Kozlov, Shlomi Ziv and Noa Argamani were taken by Hamas on October 7 and rescued from two apartments in the Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza on Saturday. Shocking video of the moment special forces stormed the apartments shows the terrified hostages cowering in a corner while officers greet them. Soldiers then helped some of the captives to flee the building as gunfire is heard erupting all around them. The operation was 'daring in nature, planned brilliantly, and executed in an extraordinary fashion,' Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said.

Speaking at the end of April about his motivation in comments which are now tragically poignant, the much-loved Mail columnist and TV doctor said his own father, Bill, 'hadn't seen his grandkids grow up'. 'I thought, that's not a road I want to go down,' Dr Mosley told an interviewer. The father-of-four - whose TV series have included examining tip from 'superagers' on how to stay young - has told how his father, a banker, developed diabetes in his 50s, just as he too went on to do. 'My dad, when he retired, basically sat on the sofa and watched sport and that was incredibly bad for him,' Dr Mosley told the Telegraph.

Celebrities gathered to pay their respects on Monday at a service for the author including Vogue editor Anna Wintour, journalist Rachel Johnson, celebrity chef Nigella Lawson and Pink Floyd frontman David Gilmour. Nighy is a devotee to Sir Martin's writing and delivered readings from his works during the service at St Martin-in-the-Fields in London.

Socialite Rebecca Grossman was sentenced to 15 years to life in prison for killing two young brothers in a 2020 hit and run. Rebecca fatally struck the siblings while speeding behind a car driven by her then-lover Scott Erickson, a former Los Angeles Dodgers pitcher.

Rishi Sunak tonight promised the Tory manifesto will include tax cuts as he attempted to get his party's general election campaign back on track. The Prime Minister, who has been rocked by a huge row over his decision to skip a D-Day event, confirmed he was 'going to keep cutting people's taxes'. 'You'll see that in our manifesto tomorrow,' Mr Sunak told BBC Panorama. It is expected the Tories will unveil a pledge to slash National Insurance by another 2p if they win the general election. This will follow previous cuts to the employee rate of the tax by Chancellor Jeremy Hunt in both his Spring Budget in March, and Autumn Statement last year. The Conservative manifesto is also set to include a promise to permanently abolish Stamp Duty for first-time buyers on the first £425,000 of a property's value. Mr Sunak this evening admitted it had 'got harder' to afford a home under the Tories.

Russia 's defence ministry reported today that a detachment of Navy ships, including the missile cruiser Varyag and the frigate Marshal Shaposhnikov, docked in the port of Alexandria ahead of military exercises in the Mediterranean Sea. The visit was described as a 'business call' to meet with Egyptian naval representatives - but both navies will later this week flex their muscles in drills off the Egyptian coast in the proximity of the Suez Canal. These drills come off the back of reports that Russia is pushing to establish a permanent naval base in Tobruk on the coast of Libya to compliment its other Mediterranean naval facility in Syria 's Tartus.

A Tory adviser stepped in to halt a toe-curling interview with party chairman Richard Holden after he refused to answer questions about his seat selection row. In an astonishing TV interview, Mr Holden repeatedly dodged questions about how he landed a plum Conservative constituency. He was until recently the MP for North West Durham and once claimed he was 'bloody loyal to the North East'. But Mr Holden has been at the centre of a furious row within Conservative ranks after being 'parachuted' into the Basildon and Billericay seat in Essex last week. He will now fight the general election on 4 July as the Tory candidate in a constituency around 300 miles away from his previous seat. In an interview with broadcasters yesterday, Mr Holden ignored questions about his candidacy row and instead attacked Labour's schools policy.

WARNING: SPOILERS AHEAD. Thomas Yeo, 59, of Nottingham, was found in the waiting room of Reading Station on October 15, 1965. He was left well-dressed and tucked under a bench with a spare nappy and bottle. Growing up, he had always known he was happily adopted, but it was only when he became a father himself that Thomas decided to find out more about his start in life - and was shocked discover he had been abandoned as a two-week-old. He enlisted the help of ITV's Long Lost Family: Born Without Trace, with the team eventually discovering the identity of Thomas' first cousin, Martina Evenden. Astonishingly, Martina explained how she was found on the steps of a church in Dublin two years after Thomas, in 1967, after being left there when she was only a few hours old. In emotional scenes, the pair met one another for the first time, with Thomas sweetly saying: 'Even if we don't find anything, we've found each other at least.'

'Granny Smith' came at-bat to get a run during Saturday's game in Eastlake, Ohio, making contact on a swing, at one point, before being helped by Ross Smith - her YouTuber grandson and a viral prankster with 4.5million followers - to make it to first base on time. Cleveland Browns running back John Kelly Jr. was on first base.

On Sunday night, visibly shaken by the humiliating rout of his hand-picked candidates in the weekend's European elections, the French president took to national television to denounce the terrifying advance of what he called the 'extreme Right' and warned of the menace it posed to 'our Europe'. And then he dropped the bombshell: the dissolution of the National Assembly, France's parliament, elected just two years ago.

Eric may have only landed on Netflix less than two weeks ago - but it's already become one of the streaming platform's most popular series. From May 31 to June 6, the TV drama (insets) - starring Benedict Cumberbatch and Gaby Hoffmann - has been watched for over 1bn minutes, beating Bridgerton and Dancing for the Devil to the top spot. The six-part psychological drama, which is set in 1980s New York, follows a desperate father's search for his missing nine-year-old son Edgar. As the show progresses, Vincent (who is the creative director of a puppet show seemingly inspired by Sesame Street) convinces himself that getting Edgar's blue monster puppet on the air will result in his son's safe return. However, the series - which has been dubbed an 'A+' by viewers - appears to share haunting similarities with a real missing child case that only came to a close in 2017. In May 1975, six-year-old Etan Patz (left) disappeared when he was walking to his school bus stop in Soho, lower Manhattan, alone for the first time. The heartbreaking case gripped the US and Etan became one of the first missing children to appear on the back of milk cartons. Here FEMAIL looks back at the tragic case of Etan Patz and how his family (right) spent 38 years looking for answers.