A mural by street artist Banksy has been vandalised just two weeks after it appeared on a wall in a seaside town.

The piece, called Art Buff, depicts an older woman staring at an empty plinth while wearing headphones with her hands clasped behind her back.

But a spray-painted penis was added to the plinth of the artwork in Payers Park in Folkestone, Kent.

Blue light escape in Arizona

A patient has left an Arizona hospital using an ambulance as his getaway vehicle, authorities have said.

Michael Lopez hijacked a parked ambulance outside West Valley Hospital in metro-Phoenix, Goodyear police spokeswoman Lisa Kutis said.

She said a firefighter sitting in the back was able to jump out safely. Lopez was arrested after the vehicle was traced to his home in the suburb of Avondale.

Mystery clowns causing a stir

People dressed as clowns are causing a stir in California’s San Joaquin Valley.

The latest after-dark sighting came on Saturday, when police in Bakersfield responded at around 8pm to a report of a clown holding a firearm.

Officers searched but did not find anyone.

The Bakersfield Californian reported that the latest sighting came during a week when police received numerous calls about scary or mischievous clowns in the area.

Seal pup found in car park

Vets are nursing a baby seal back to health – after finding it in a car park.

Officials from the RSPCA found the young pup in a poor state outside the RNLI’s boathouse in Borth, Cardiganshire, west Wales. Collection officer William Galvin said he believed the seal had come up from the beach, crossed the road and then into the car park.

He said: “It had a few injuries. It was obviously in distress and looked very thin. There were no signs of its parents looking for him.”

Return fare – 24 years later

Cheered by tens of thousands of people, a train decorated with banana plants and colourful flower garlands has arrived in Sri Lanka’s northern Tamil heartland, 24 years after the “Queen of Jaffna” was suspended due to civil war.

President Mahinda Rajapaksa bought a ticket and boarded the train for the last 27 miles of the journey and opened several railway stations along the way.

“Yarl Devi”, as it is known in Tamil, was once a popular mode of transport between the ethnic Tamil-majority north and the Sinhala-majority south but was scaled back in 1990 because of the heightening civil war between the government and Tamil Tiger rebels.

The war raged from 1983 to 2009, when Sri Lankan troops crushed the rebels.