WARNING: GRAPHIC CONTENT Armed jihadists have killed at least 27 people in a deadly shooting rampage at the Radisson Blu hotel in Bamako, Mali, which also saw 138 people taken hostage. Automatic weapons fire was heard throughout the seventh floor of the 190-room hotel, where it is thought as many as ten militants were going floor to floor taking hostages. One hostage who escaped said the militants were speaking to each other in English. Another witness described how the gunmen allowed around 20 hostages to leave safely after they proved they were able to recite verses of the Koran. US Special Forces stormed the hotel and began clearing the building one floor at a time. All 22 American nationals inside were rescued. The al-Qaeda affiliated group al-Mourabitoun, based in northern Mali, have claimed responsibility for the hotel attack.

Pilots and ground crew wrote 'For Paris' on bombs destined for Syria, in solidarity with the 130 victims of the ISIS attacks on the French capital. Moscow also fired 18 missiles today from its ships in the Caspian Sea (bottom right) at seven targets in Syria, including in Raqqa, Idlib and Aleppo provinces. President Putin was told a strike at one target killed 'more than 600 fighters', however, it was not specified when the strike took place. Moscow stepped up its strikes in Syria (bottom left) with long-distance bombers after confirming for the first time on Tuesday that a bomb downed a Russian airliner in Egypt last month, killing all 224 people on board.

The grievances of the Islamic terrorists who have brought carnage and bloodshed to the streets of Paris twice this year reach far back into history, writes TOM HOLLAND. In their minds, it is not simply wanton violence, but the continuation of a struggle which has raged for more than a millennium. That is what Osama bin Laden was talking about when he warned the Muslim world back in 1996 'that the people of Islam have always suffered from aggression, iniquity and injustice imposed on them by the Zionist-Crusader alliance'. Today, ISIS (inset) nurtures its resentments in a similarly poisonous manner. Main: The conquest of Constantinople by the Ottoman Turks saw the most famous of Christian capitals transformed into a bastion of Islam.

Kim Woodward (left) was a 'naive' 19-year-old student when she met Rupert Ashmore (right with Kim, and inset with Kim and their son Jack), her art college lecturer. But after 25 years, in 2010, their relationship broke down and she was left penniless. The deeds to the home she shared with Ashmore were in his name only. So was the business to which Kim had devoted the best years of her life. It had paid for his Jaguar while Kim, who drove a VW Polo, received just £400 a month. But last week she emerged victorious after winning a £275,000 settlement following a two-year legal battle bitterly defended by Ashmore.

Linda Hunter (pictured) and her husband George paid their mortgage on a house they thought was £120,000 only to find the houses on their Liverpool street sold for £1 after a botched council regeneration plan. The community of Garrick Street in Liverpool has disappeared, with the road lined by boarded-up houses and anti-social behaviour rife.

The Conservatives have descended into a morass of scandal and sordid allegation, with so-called 'Tatler Tory' Mark Clarke accused of bullying an activist to the point of suicide, blackmail and now sexual harassment. The row over how much party bosses knew has become deadly serious after police launched an inquiry into allegations of sexual harassment. One young party activist told the Mail that the married father-of-two used the motto 'Isolate, inebriate, penetrate'.

The Countess of Wessex has told a New York gala that she was a 'rare breed' among royals because she had climbed the career ladder. This is despite the scandal in 2001 when she made indiscreet comments about the Royal Family while she was part of Mayfair-based R-JH PR with her business partner Murray Harkin.

Celebrity chef Gordon Ramsay has submitted plans to bulldoze the 1920s retreat, in Rock, Cornwall, to build a bigger replacement. Lavish plans include a swimming pool, wine cellar and ensuites for each bedroom. Ramsay also wants to put up a three-bedroom grass-covered boathouse in the grounds, which cover one-and-a-third acres with direct access to the beach. Rock has been nicknamed Kensington-on-Sea because of the number of wealthy interlopers with large holiday homes in the area.

The daughters of the Duke of Rutland are causing a stir in British high society with their rowdy antics and lives they share on Instagram. We haven't heard the last from Lady Violet, 22, Lady Alice, 20, and Lady Eliza 18 Manners who been compared to the Mitford girls even though it might be more accurate to liken them to the Earl of Grantham's lively daughters in Downton Abbey.

The sporty royal, who donned tight leggings, brown boots and a helmet, was in high spirits as she buckled up for the activity on a visit to the Towers Residential Outdoor Education Centre in Capel Curig, North Wales. Earlier, inset, Kate donned casual jeans, a £325 coat and knee-high black boots as she and William returned to North Wales - where they happily lived for a number of years after their wedding - for a full day of engagements on Friday. The royal couple, left, who lived in Anglesey and travelled by helicopter, are on a visit to north Wales to meet organisations supporting young people and tackling mental health issues - a cause close to both of their hearts. Kate, who was in high spirits for the trip, chatted to local children and received a beautifully bright bouquet of flowers from a young boy named Theo Hayward, aged three, top right.

When the world-famous feminist wrote the letter to author Amis, right, in 1976, she was in a relationship and hoping to have a baby with another man, old Etonian James Hughes-Onslow. In the end, Greer, left, never sent the letter - and now doesn't want it published. But is it because it shows off her softer and more vulnerable side, asks the Daily Mail's Geoffrey Levy.

Ernest Shackleton (inset) and his crew struggled to survive for months against the odds in the punishing conditions of the Antarctic. They were left stranded after their ship the Endurance became trapped in the ice (left and right) before being crushed. A new exhibition will open at London's Royal Geographical Society on Saturday, 100 years to the day that the magnificent ship sank beneath the Antarctic ice. Haunting photographs in the exhibition reveal never-before-seen insights into the day-to-day struggles of the 28-man crew, trapped and fighting for their lives in the 'world's last great wilderness'.

The unnamed British mum, who blogs at Tiaras & Prozac, has taken the internet by storm with her easy parenting hack. After reading an article on a 'Facebook parenting group', she admits she had a 'vest epiphany' regarding the removal of her children's baby grows. She revealed the special fold on the shoulder, pictured inset, allows parents to pull down their newborn's all-in-one when they've made a huge mess, eliminating the need to manoeuvre it over their head. Pictured main, her daughter.

Daniel Helps poked his iPhone under the doors of cubicles in a bid to film girls as young as 13 naked hundreds of times, a court heard. He wept as he was sentenced to 15 months in prison, and blew a kiss to his pregnant wife and his parents as they watched from the public gallery at Swindon Crown Court. Helps admitted six counts of voyeurism and two of making indecent images of children, confessing that he recorded 298 obscene films on 118 different occasions between 2011 and 2014.

I'm A Celebrity... Get Me Out Of Here's Chris Eubank, George Shelley and Kieron Dyer were elected to compete against rival camp mates - Brian Friedman, Jorgie Porter and Spencer Matthews - in a wildly entertaining game of Bush Scrabble during Thursday evening's episode. But nothing could have prepared the six contestants for the challenge which required them to put their basic spelling skills to the test - something which they proved to significantly lack as the game played out. Brian, 38, Jorgie, 27, and privately-educated Spencer, 26, failed at the first hurdle, offering an original and completely inaccurate spelling of 'beams'. 

The Chinese version of Top Gear is raking in the viewers with more than 200million people tuning in since it was launched last month. The most popular episode saw the presenters (right) race across England in all manner of vehicles to get to a football match. The BBC is pushing the motoring show hard throughout China and Taiwan, with a 30ft high Stig (bottom) travelling from city to city.

Shaun Mundin, 34 from Doncaster, weighed 16 stone at his heaviest - but swapped his junk food habits for healthy eating and trips to the gym and lost four stone. Shaun, who used to scoff fast-food, crisps and sugary cereals, said he was mortified by his flabby physique after looking through the images of him with his young children and wife during a trip abroad. Shaun said he wasn't happy with the way he looked in the pictures and so he decided something had to change - and started a calorie-controlled diet before embarking on a weightlifting plan.

Elaine Kao, from Hong Kong, had the corpse of her beloved Golden Retriever, David, flown nearly 6,000 miles (inset) to a pet cemetery in Hollywell, North Wales, after scouring the web to find somewhere to lay him to rest. She had turned to the Internet because she was unable to find a plot for the 13-year-old dog in her home country and could not bear to cremate him. This week, onlookers stopped in the street as a hearse - carrying a small coffin containing David's body, an array of colouful toys and treasured photos - entered the pet cemetery in Brynford. A solemn service (bottom centre) was then held in the chapel of rest, including prayers and Whitney Houston's hit song 'I Will Always Love You'. Pictured: Ms Kao and David earlier this year (right), David's body in his coffin (top) and the dog's tombstone (bottom left).

The video, taken in India, shows a child, believed to be around three to four-years old, sat on the knee of a man who then places a cigarette in the little boy's mouth and lights it up. The most shocking aspect of the video is that a child smoking appears to be some form of entertainment for those watching, who cheer and clap in the background.

Tomorrow is the traditional day for making Christmas puddings and mincemeat.. Royal baker Fiona Cairns, who made the wedding cake for the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, gives her top tips.

Remarkable CCTV captured the thief as he slipped the charity box, containing around £60, into his bag as he paid for a cup of tea at a cat café in Nottingham. But as he was about to leave with the box in one of his bag, 11-month-old cat Daisy is filmed sniffing around the man's feet. At one point the moggy even attempted to open the bag with its paws before being shooed away by the crook.

Niamh Geaney, 26, from Dublin, Ireland, has now met a third lookalike, called Irene Williams, who also hails from Ireland (main image). After first meeting lookalike Karen Branigan (left inset) - and staging a photoshoot that went viral - Niamh was determined to track down her six remaining doppelgängers. Just weeks later, the 26-year-old student and TV presenter found her second lookalike, Luisa Guizzardi (right inset) - but a little bit further away from home in Italy. And now, she has amazingly found her third doppelgänger, Irene Adams, who also hails from Ireland.

A majestic mountain lion called Mufasa, who spent 20 years in captivity as part of a cruel travelling circus in Peru, has been set free. A film crew captured the tear-jerking moment he was released into the wild, having spent the majority of his life shackled in the back of a pick-up truck amongst rusting equipment.

London based Jocelyn Burton (pictured, left) became the focus of a bank probe after she received an order from a wealthy Russian client to cast a pair of lamps in the shape of two intertwined silver dolphins (right). She needed four cast bronze armatures for the lamps, and asked a factory in India to supply them - and sent a payment of £22,000 via Santander. She was surprised to learn that her payment had been stopped because she was believed to be smuggling the endangered marine mammals from India to the UK. Bank chiefs had preve

The unidentified pensioner was angry that a Stagecoach bus in Manchester was pulling away from its stop before she got on, so she chased it down and confronted the driver. The would-be passenger stood in front of the vehicle for two minutes, as traffic piled up and pedestrians protested, before eventually giving up and letting it head off. The scene outside the Chorlton Bus Station was filmed by local resident Martin Guttridge-Hewitt, 31, around midday on Wednesday.It was likened to the famous scene in Tiananmen Square when a Chinese pro-democracy protester stood in front of a tank (inset).

The short clip shows an American husband and wife cracking up laughing while enjoying a meal together and each blowing their straw wrappers at the other. It was taken by a female diner sitting across from their booth, who started recording the moment without the two realizing. What she captured was a funny but tender that shows you can still be silly and have fun with one love. The video has quickly gone viral.