Do you panic when you get a text message or call from a number you don’t recognize? 

Forget having to send that awkward ‘sorry, who is this’ text or Googling the phone number – there are several ways to track down the caller.

TikToker Liz Perez posted a recent video detailing what to do when you get a call from an unknown number. 

Here’s how it works: If you get a text from an unknown number, mobile payment apps like Venmo, Cash App, Zelle, or PayPal can help you put a name to that number.

All you have to do is copy and paste the number into your payment app of choice to unveil the mystery sender’s name.

However, this only works if you already have an account with one of those apps, and the sender has to use their real name and number in the app, too. 

Then there’s the flip side. What if you don’t want your name and phone number to be so readily available? 

Be sure to disable your mobile payment app from sharing your name and phone number with other people. The steps vary per app. For example, in Venmo, open Settings, Friends and Social and toggle off Phone contacts.

However, there are also settings in iPhone and Android phones that can figure this out. 

Here is DailyMail.com’s step-by-step guide to revealing mystery callers. 

What about blocked numbers?

Maybe you remember from your pranking years: Dialing *67 conceals your number from someone you call. There are similar numbers you can dial to respond to mystery callers.

The first is *69, which traces the number of the last person who called you. It works even for anonymous or hidden calls, so you can get the phone number and exact time they called. 

Once you have that number, you can block it on your phone so they can’t call you anymore.

In more dangerous circumstances, such as harassment, another number you can use is *57. 

It gets you the phone number and call information that *69 does, but it goes above and beyond by passing that info on to the police.

Your phone service will log a *57 call so authorities can more easily locate whoever is harassing you. 

To get the most out of this, call the police right after a *57 call with a written log of the calls from your harasser so law enforcement can act. 

Your phone company might charge you extra for these calls, so it’s worth checking your plan to see if it supports the shortcuts.

‘I just want it to stop’

If you have an iPhone, you can take a more extreme step and automatically block numbers that aren’t on your Contacts list using Silence Unknown Callers.

Calls from numbers not in your Contacts will still go to your voicemail and appear in your recent calls list, but your phone won’t ring for them. Follow these steps to turn it on:

● Go to Settings, then Phone.

● Scroll down to Silence Unknown Callers. Slide the toggle to the right to enable the feature.

If you have a Samsung Galaxy:

● Open the Phone app and tap the More icon (three vertical dots) at the bottom of the screen.

● Tap Settings, then Call blocking.

● Turn the Block anonymous calls switch to on.

Keep in mind that if you send calls not in your contacts directly to voicemail, there are downsides. You will miss important phone calls, say from your doctor or child’s teacher.

Using a different phone? Search your phone’s model name and “call blocking” for directions if you need them.

Use a (virtual) burner

Giving away your real number to anyone and everyone is always a mistake. Think about all the accounts your phone number is attached to. Scary stuff.

Google Voice gives you a free phone number to use however you like for domestic and international phone calls, texts, and voicemails. All you need is a Google account to get started.

Here are steps for doing this: 

● Download the app for iOS or Android or go to voice.google.com/u/0/signup to get it for your computer.

● Next, sign into your Google account.

● Review the terms and proceed to the next step.

● Choose a phone number from the list. You can search by city or area code.

● Verify the number and enter a phone number to link to your Voice account.

● You’ll get a six-digit code to enter for the next step.

Another option is downloading a burner app. These give you a second phone number and use your internet data or Wi-Fi to make and receive calls and texts.

Burner is one of the most popular apps of this kind. You can route calls directly to your secondary number. The app comes with a seven-day free trial, and plans start at $4.99 monthly for one line.

Hushed lets you create numbers from around the world, so you can go outside your area code or the country if needed. 

A prepaid plan starts at $2.99 for seven days and comes with bundled minutes for local calls and texts. You can step up to unlimited talk and text ($4.99 per month) and international service ($6.99 per month).

Sound like a tech pro, even if you’re not! Award-winning popular host Kim Komando is your secret weapon. 

Listen on 425+ radio stations or get the podcast. And join over 500,000 people who call her free 5-minute daily email newsletter. 

BOOK OF THE WEEK

THE WEIMAR YEARS 

by Frank McDonough (Apollo £25, 592pp)

A Munich housewife dragged a suitcase full of banknotes to her local grocery store. She left it outside while she went in to do some shopping. When she came out, someone had stolen the luggage, but had tipped out the worthless money.

This was in 1923, at the height of hyperinflation in Germany. A loaf of bread cost 700 marks in January, 100,000 in May, two million in September, 670 million in October and 80 billion in November. A cup of coffee costing 5,000 marks was worth 8,000 marks by the time you’d drunk it.

The jacket of McDonough’s brilliant new book on the Weimar years (a prequel to his acclaimed two-volume The Hitler Years), shows a photo of German children playing on a street, using blocks of worthless banknotes to build a castle. Those notes also made good wallpaper.

What had gone wrong to cause this economic madness? McDonough tells the whole complicated story of the Weimar Republic with superb mastery of his material, lavishly illustrated with full-page photos of mass protests and rallies, and a succession of Chancellors with moustaches, leading inexorably to the rise of the dictator with the moustache.

Frame by frame, through 15 years of well-intentioned but chaotic democracy, we watch the ground being laid for the catastrophe of the Hitler regime.

What this book shows with terrifying clarity is that everything in global politics connects. The seeds of disaster were sown in 1919. The Allied victors of World War I, determined to punish Germany for their ‘war guilt’, demanded enormous, crippling reparations payments.

Under the 1919 Treaty of Versailles, Germany was obliged to pay 20 billion gold marks by 1921, then two billion per year for the next five years, rising to four billion for the following four years, then six billion per year till 1963.

Germany squealed and protested and felt utter revulsion for this punishment. For one thing, it didn’t accept guilt for having started the war. Nor did lots of Germans even accept that Germany had lost the war, as their territory was never conquered. They kept requesting ‘payment holidays’ from the Allies.

The Prime Minister Lloyd George took pity on them, advising the French Prime Minister Raymond Poincaré that this merciless ‘pauperisation of the German people’ was counterproductive. Poincaré strongly disagreed. He would not let up on his extortionate demands. When the Germans started overprinting money in 1922, thus lowering the value of its currency, Poincaré thought they were bankrupting themselves on purpose to wriggle out of the payments. So France carried out its threat of invading and occupying the Ruhr area until Germany paid up.

It was at this humiliating moment that the German government instigated a policy of ‘passive resistance’. Germans were encouraged to go on strike and cease to do business with the Allies. And how did the government finance this policy? By using 30 factories to print bank notes night and day to pay workers and businesses: a version of the ‘furlough’ system. It was a disaster. At the height of the craziness, the highest-denomination was a 100-trillion-mark banknote.

With hindsight, we know that any democracy — however chaotic — was better than the evil dictatorship and killing machine that would follow. But McDonough shows how the Weimar system was fraught with flaws from the outset.

This book acts as a salutary warning of the dangers of proportional representation. During the years from 1918 to 1933, there were just two presidents (Ebert until 1925 and Hindenburg until 1933), but 20 different coalition governments, under a succession of Chancellors who lasted for an average of nine months each.

There were far too many political parties, each with its own acronym, making some of these pages a bewildering mass of capital letters.

Forty-one parties contested the 1928 elections. This was an unworkable fragmentation of politics, whose failure Hitler pounced on to argue for the need for a single strong ‘Fuhrer’. He blamed ‘the November Criminals’ (as he called the politicians who’d signed the Versailles treaty) for unleashing an era of poverty and chaos.

If only the New York Times had been right in 1924. When Hitler came out of his spell in jail after the failed Beer Hall Putsch, they wrote: ‘It is believed he will retire to private life and return to Austria.’ If only the pledge signed by Germany, France and Belgium in the Locarno Treaties of 1925, that they would ‘never attack each other again,’ had been kept.

Thanks to a few moderate, adaptable, fundamentally good politicians, particularly Gustav Stresemann (Chancellor from August to November 1923, then Foreign Minister till his too-early death in 1929), constructive talks were opened up between Germany and the U.S., who came up with the Dawes Plan, then the Young Plan to help Germany meet its (new, slightly lowered) reparations payments by managing its own economy better.

But always in the background you hear the drumbeat of the fledgling Nazi party and the increasing success of Hitler and Goebbels’s propaganda method: ‘Find out what people hate and make them hate it more.’

Another inbuilt flaw of the Weimar Republic was Clause 48 of its Constitution, which granted the president powers to appoint and dismiss elected governments, dissolve parliament and suspend civil rights during times defined by him as a ‘national emergency’.

President Hindenburg and his inner circle felt a ‘supreme indifference’ towards sustaining democratic government. In the early 1930s, they were basically running Germany themselves. This paved the way for a dictatorship.

It was Weimar’s penultimate Chancellor Franz von Papen who won Hindenburg over to Hitler, seeing that his popularity was rising inexorably. ‘It is my unpleasant duty,’ Hindenburg said to his circle in January 1933, ‘to appoint this fellow Hitler as Chancellor.’ He stipulated that it must be of a ‘national coalition’. To which we can only utter a hollow laugh.

Those 13 Weimar years had been politically chaotic, but they allowed a remarkable cultural and artistic freedom to flourish. Although this is mainly a political book, McDonough dips in and out of the cultural life.

There were 899 cabaret venues in Berlin in 1930. The all-night dancing, the uninhibited cross-dressing, the liberal attitude towards homosexuality, the wonderful freedom of artistic expression in movements such as the Bauhaus, all had their 13 years to breathe freely, before being snuffed out by puritanical, racist and philistine Hitler.

Yes, the Wall Street Crash of 1929 and the ensuing rise of unemployment didn’t help the Weimar Republic, but McDonough stresses this was not the sole cause of its death and the rise of Nazism.

Britain and the U.S. suffered the same economic crash, but managed to avoid a Fascist dictatorship. He believes Hindenburg’s decision in 1930 to create a presidential authoritarian regime opened the path for Hitler — a catastrophe for Germany and the world.

A TikTok user has revealed the area of your body that is most infested with bacteria — and it’s not where you’d think.

After breathing onto a petri dish, Chloe Fitzpatrick, a designer, found out her breath was crawling with the most microorganisms out of the five areas she tested.

Her fingers were also host to plenty of bacterial colonies, she found, but the petri dishes touched by her toes, ribs and legs showed relatively little growth.

Scientists say a person’s mouth can contain a significant number of bacteria, fungi and viruses, which would explain why Ms Fitzpatrick’s breath produced the germiest petri dish.

The mouth is the second most infested area in the body, containing more than 20billion bacteria, behind only the gut.

While it may seem disgusting, it is completely normal to have these microorganisms in your mouth, scientists said, because they aid with digestion and help the immune system learn the difference between safe and dangerous bacteria. 

But, without proper oral hygiene, they can lead someone to have bad breath and dental problems.

Failing to brush regularly allows bacteria to multiply in the mouth, leading more compounds to build up that can cause bad breath.

For her experiment, Ms Fitzpatrick — who lives in Aberdeenshire, Scotland — touched five places on her body into separate petri dishes.

She then left the dishes in a warm place to grow for several days before viewing the results.

She posted the video to TikTok with the caption: ‘Soo many different colonies!! Ribs always have the prettiest bacteria.’

Some users commented saying everyone should remember that ‘not all bacteria is bad!!!’

Other viewers were less reserved, however, saying the breath sample was a ‘little concerning’ and they were ‘going to take ten showers’.

Dr Priya Deo, an oral microbiologist at Dental College and Hospital in Pune, India, and others have written previously in a study: ‘The mouth with its various niches is an exceptionally complex habitat where microbes colonize the hard surfaces of the teeth and the soft tissues of the oral mucosa.

‘In addition to being the initiation point of digestion, the oral microbiome is crucial in maintaining oral as well as [whole body] health.’

Ms Fitzpatrick says she is a designer who uses bacteria in her artistic work.

For her 2022 project ‘microbiome’, she grew bacteria from plants and parts of her body before preserving them in resin which could be worn as jewelry.

She said she chose the bacteria because of their yellow and red colors.

Her experiment comes after another citizen scientist revealed that shaking your hands to dry them may be the most sanitary option.

To research whether hand dryers cover your hands in bacteria, a 33-year-old from Utah held petri dishes underneath the machines.

He sampled machines at public restrooms, gas stations, movie theaters and shops across his local city of Provo.

After leaving the petri dishes for three days, he found the dishes were all crawling with bacteria and fungi, which appeared in white, yellow and black smudges.

The public bathroom dryer appeared to be the most contaminated, he said.

He also found a petri dish waved through the air, to mimic someone shaking their hands dry, remained completely clean.

US officials are quietly shutting down a taxpayer-funded $125million project to hunt for new viruses due to fears it could spark another pandemic. 

DEEP VZN – pronounced deep vision – was launched in October 2021 with the aim of finding and studying novel pathogens in wildlife in Asia, Africa and Latin America. 

While the research was meant to prevent human outbreaks and pandemics, critics, including Biden administration officials, are afraid it could do the opposite and have voiced their fears about the potentially ‘catastrophic risks’ of virus hunting.

And their concerns are amplified due to the growing suspicion Covid emerged from an American-sponsored lab in Wuhan, China – a theory the FBI subscribes to.

The project was meant to run until 2026, but DEEP VZN was shut down in July 2023 after a wide swath of experts stressed concerns over the safety of the research.

Announcement of the closure came Thursday in a feature published in The BMJ by investigative journalist David Williams. 

While this is the most recent to come to light, it is far from the first research the US has conducted on this matter. 

For more than a decade the government has funded international projects aimed at identifying exotic viruses among wildlife that could infect humans someday, sending millions to support various similar projects. 

Money has flown overseas from the Department of Defense and the National Institutes of Health to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars.

DEEP VZN, which stands for Discovery & Exploration of Emerging Pathogens – Viral Zoonoses, was launched by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) in October 2021 and less than two years later, USAID officials informed members of Senate committees with jurisdiction over DEEP VZN the program was being shut down. 

The premature closure of the project came abruptly and was privately relayed to Senate aides by the office of Atul Gawande, USAID’s assistant administrator for global health.

The news was buried in a congressional budget document hundreds of pages long and was discussed during interviews Mr Williams conducted with federal lawmakers and researchers. 

At its launch, USAID said the ‘ambitious new project’ was meant to work with partner countries and the global community to ‘build better preparedness for future global health threats.’

The organization said the project would ‘strengthen global capacity to detect and understand the risks of viral spillover from wildlife to humans that could cause another pandemic.

‘The COVID-19 pandemic has demonstrated how infectious diseases threaten all of society, up-ending people’s lives and attacking societies at their cores. 

‘It is also a strong reminder of the connection between animals, humans, and the environment, and the effect that an emerging pathogen spilling over into humans can have on people’s health and on global economies.’

The project was being carried out by scientists from the Washington State University Paul Allen School for Global Health among other research and partner entities. 

The goal was to collect more than 800,000 samples over the five-year period, mostly from wildlife, to identify a subset of ‘previously unknown’ viruses that ‘pose a significant pandemic threat.’

The university sought to detect 12,000 new viruses throughout the program’s run and scientists hoped the information would not only help prevent future pandemics, but also better prepare health officials if one did emerge. 

‘DEEP VZN is a critical next step in the evolution of USAID’s work to understand and address the risks posed by zoonotic diseases that can be transmitted from animals to humans.’

However, in a statement regarding the closure of the program, USAID said it had determined the research was ‘not an agency global health security priority at this time’ and its decision reflected ‘the relative risks and impact of our programming.’

Now, the organization said it will focus on improving laboratory capacity, disease monitoring, human resources, biosafety and security and risk communication. 

Criticism of the program arose almost immediately after its launch from wide-ranging government figures and advisers, including health, biosafety and security officials, as well as Senators and White House officials.

In a private letter to a USAID administrator in November 2021, members and staff at both the Senate foreign relations committee and the Senate appropriations committee said they were ‘particularly concerned’ about DEEP VZN’s research into ‘studying unknown viruses in areas where there is high risk of animal to human spillover.’

They continued: ‘Given all of the outstanding questions surrounding the origins of the Covid-19 pandemic, it is critically important that this initiative be adequately vetted.’

Additionally, a biosecurity, biosafety and White House official, advised the same USAID administrator to shut down DEEP VZN in December 2021, Mr Williams wrote. 

After a review of the project aimed to ensure it would be conducted in a way to adequately manage risks, USAID told researchers in March and November 2022 to not collect samples of viruses until proper safety protocols were reviewed. 

However, federal records show through the spring of 2023, USAID continued to fund research while the project leaders established more labs, technicians and support staff needed to handle the volume of genetic samples collected.

In interviews, White House officials told Mr Williams the decision to discontinue DEEP VZN reflected the Biden Administration’s ‘commitment to weigh more rigorously the risks and potential benefits of research projects.’

The officials referenced policy recommendations that only supported research like DEEP VZN’s if there was no other safer method that would produce the same benefits and only after ‘unnecessary risks have been eliminated.’ 

Virus hunting has been a point of contention long before the Covid pandemic and scientists have dismissed the notion it could lead to lifesaving drugs or the prevention of a pandemic. 

Now, in the wake of the pandemic, more people in the science community have raised additional concerns, warning the risks of collecting animal-to-animal transmitted viruses should be highly considered as this type of research typically involves collecting animal blood, excrement or saliva and transporting samples to labs for analysis. 

A misstep at any point in the process could produce a catastrophic outcome and result in a new pandemic. 

In May, three leaders of the Republican-controlled House Energy and Commerce Committee asked the Government Accountability Office (GAO) to examine the benefits and risks of virus hunting, expressing this very concern. 

The lawmakers said in a letter to GAO that while similar research has identified thousands of new viruses, scientists question if collecting animal viruses can ‘accurately predict those that may infect humans, or what the effect would be if and when humans are subsequently infected.’

They continued, according to The BMJ feature, warning that others in the community ‘have suggested these types of programs risk unintentional infection of field or laboratory workers that could result in an accidental outbreak.’

GAO began an audit into DEEP VZN following the letter, but told Mr Williams it would not be completed until spring 2024. 

By Spencer Morgan For Mailonline

Updated: 06:52 EDT, 1 September 2023

Advertisement

Scientists have mapped the Y chromosome for the first time in a breakthrough that could lead to treatments for male cancers and fertility issues.

The small, stumpy Y chromosome distinguishes men from women and has genes in areas that provide instructions for making proteins involved in sperm cell production and development.

Researchers have now mapped its entirety, revealing more than 62 million DNA base pairs – 30 million more than previously identified – and 41 new protein-coding genes that comprise the Y chromosome.

It was partially sequenced in 2003, but only 50 percent was uncovered.

While the scientists are still in the early stages of their discovery, they said the mapping could detect variants and link them to specific traits that can lead to personalized therapies for genetic diseases.

Previous research found that men can lose some or all of that genetic material as they age, but scientists have never fully understood why this happens and the effects it may have. 

The loss can increase the risk of cancer, heart disease, cancer and Alzheimer’s disease, and dwindling sperm counts that cause infertility.

Kateryna Makova from Penn State University and contributor to the study said: ‘The Y chromosome is by far the most difficult human chromosome to sequence and assemble.

‘Deciphering its complete sequence is a major scientific milestone. My group has been working on the Y chromosome for over 20 years, and I did not think it would be possible to obtain its complete sequence shortly.’ 

The X chromosome was fully sequenced in 2020 by researchers at NHGRI, which chose to sequence it first due to its link with a range of diseases, including hemophilia, chronic granulomatous disease and Duchenne muscular dystrophy.

There are 24 chromosomes, including Y and X, which leads to humans having 23 pairs, while other great apes have 24.

The Y chromosome was elusive due to its relatively complex structure. Unlike most other chromosomes, the Y comprises palindromes, or sequences that are the same forward and backward. 

The T2T Consortium, which ran the study funded by the National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI),  applied new DNA sequencing technologies, sequence assembly methods, and knowledge gained from generating the first gapless sequences for the other 23 human chromosomes to solve this mystery.

Adam Phillippy, a senior investigator at NHGRI and consortium leader, said: ‘The biggest surprise was how organized the repeats are.

‘We didn’t know what exactly made up the missing sequence. It could have been very chaotic, but instead, nearly half of the chromosome is made of alternating blocks of two specific repeating sequences known as satellite DNA. 

‘It makes a beautiful, quilt-like pattern.’ 

The 30 million new bases added to the Y chromosome reference will also be crucial for studying genome evolution. 

It will now be possible to study specific and unique Y chromosome sequence patterns, such as the structure of the two satellites and the location and copy numbers of the genes. 

In a second study by the University of Washington, researchers used the reference sequence to assemble Y chromosomes of 43 me with roots to Africa. 

The team found the participants shared a common ancestor from about 183,000 years ago, and the Y chromosomes were vastly different sizes, ranging from 45.2 million to 84.9 million base pairs in length.

Phillippy told Live Science that while developing treatments for diseases linked to the Y chromosome may not happen anytime soon, he is optimistic about the feat.

”This is like the blueprint we’re looking at, and if there are complete holes in it, you might not even know where to begin,’ he said. ‘But by having them filled in, we have the complete picture.’ 

 

The anhinga devil bird is perched on a branch, wings outstretched to dry in the afternoon sun.

Its silhouette resembles Batman crossed with a piano, thanks to alternating black-and-white wing feathers. A fish has just slipped down its serpentine gullet and, below it, lurking in the shade of a mangrove swamp, a 12ft alligator nurtures an egg.

‘I shot the ’gator yesterday afternoon,’ says Bill, a local wildlife photographer. ‘Right where you are standing.’

I am in the boondocks of the Gulf Coast of south-west Florida, on a boardwalk leading to a bird hide on the J.N. ‘Ding’ Darling National Wildlife Refuge. This is a million miles away from theme-park Florida and the busy beaches of Miami.

This part of the Sunshine State has been made accessible by Virgin Atlantic’s daily flights into Tampa, which is only an hour away by road.

The gangplanks here are lined with educational poo boxes containing fecal recognition panels, so you know what you are stepping in.

A plaque next to the ‘Beware of Alligators’ sign announces that they were kindly donated by Jim and Patty Sprankle and a local duck decoy manufacturer.

There is a certain relish to the conversational tone of my new acquaintances. Pythons and very large lizards are also commonplace here.

‘I ran over a python last week on the road to the Everglades,’ says a man with a long lens. ‘Had no choice. She was spread the width of the road — at least 30ft long. She looked startled and whooshed off into the bush.’

Somewhat less assured, I set off to complete my seven-mile cycle tour of the reserve. There are several ’gator warning signs along the way. I change the setting on my electric bike from cruise to sprint and decide to give the kayaking I’d booked earlier a wide berth.

I’m near the city of Fort Myers, and it’s a miracle there is anything to stand on as it’s less than a year since Hurricane Ian — the fifth strongest to hit America — took Florida by surprise, killing 150 people and causing £91 billion in damage.

I have turned right onto the highway that leads from Sanibel Island up to Captiva Island, where I am staying on a narrow isthmus of sand and lush vegetation. It was here that the hurricane made landfall on September 28, 2022.

‘The noise was the most remarkable thing. Like being inside a giant kettle drum,’ says Molly Malone from the seafood stall at the Sanibel Island Farmers Market.

It uprooted houses and trees, hurling them across the isthmus from the Gulf of Mexico into Pine Island Sound, in a random spasm of destruction which, inexplicably, left some properties unscathed.

Some bits of the islands still look battered, but in most areas the sub-tropical foliage has grown back to cover the briefly denuded landscape.

On Captiva, the ’Tween Waters Island Resort & Spa where I am staying is open for business as usual, with nearly everything restored.

The two islands are connected by causeways and bridges to Fort Myers, the county seat of Lee County, and boast some of the best beaches and climate in the world. Most of the time! It’s also home to some of the deepest pockets in America, so it’s little wonder that many of the colonnaded mansions have already been repaired.

I pootle around in a hotel kayak on Pine Island Sound, after being assured there was nothing more dangerous here than manatees. These creatures, known locally as sea cows, resemble walruses, and are only lethal if you let them sit on you.

Then I cycle up the beach road to the Mucky Duck for a sundowner and supper.

People here wave cheerily, especially when they’ve got your credit card. This is the land of Mr Cheerful, and I am reminded of that great film, The Truman Show, in which the protagonist finds that his whole life is in fact a fake, and that he is unwittingly the star of a TV reality show.

I make a stop at The Mucky Duck ‘English pub’ located on the beach.

Next to my table, an elderly man in a stripey T-shirt is sitting on the sand in a white plastic rocking chair, a ‘dark and stormy’ rum cocktail in one hand and his smartphone in the other.

The sun slips into the sea and my splendid new friend puts his arm around a scantily clad Mexican woman who is necking Moet from the bottle. It is clearly time for me to retire for a nightcap back at ’Tween Waters.

Fort Myers has a population of about 90,000. It was put on the map by, among others, those leading lights of the American industrial revolution, Henry Ford and inventor Thomas Edison. These two great friends had neighbouring summer homes that have been turned into a single museum.

I check into the stylish and luxurious Luminary Hotel on the quayside, and take one of its electric bikes out to explore.

This is cigar country, so I go into The Cigar Bar, a crepuscular place oozing high-class nicotine and with a walk-in humidor that is enough to make the most militant anti-smoker pause for pleasure.

Kendyl, the 27-year-old bartender, says the hurricane has made insuring homes too expensive for many locals: ‘So they’re being snapped up by wealthy outsiders. But soon it will be like Atlantis if this climate change continues.’

Televised hockey flickers on the screen through the haze of Montecristo and Davidov, so I slip out and cycle round to Izzy’s Fish & Oyster bar, down the grandly porticoed high street, for some pre-supper bivalves and a glass of Chablis.

Then on to The Veranda restaurant. Here, a car valet takes my bike away and a man in a bow tie shows me to the table where Ben and Barry, whom I met on Captiva Island, await for a last-night blow out. This is the posh South, straight from the film set of Gone With The Wind. Lacquered teak and ceiling fans, fresh seafood and old money.

A more refined taste of Florida. No Mickey Mouse in sight.

Furious Brits arrive at Cyprus resort only to find it unrecognisable amid construction works with huge holes and bare cables… ‘and the holiday rep even wore a hard hat and hi-vis vest’

• Helen Milner, 56, had jetted off to Paphos, Cyprus with her partner Anthony 
• The supposedly luxury hotel was surrounding by fencing and construction works

By Zac Campbell

Published: 06:41 EDT, 21 August 2023 | Updated: 12:03 EDT, 21 August 2023

A group of five French tourists and one Swiss tourist have been arrested after a British teenager was allegedly gang-raped in the holiday resort of Magaluf.

A judge in capital Palma found there were video clips of the alleged rape on at least one of the suspects’ phones, police said. 

She met the suspected rapists on Monday night and later went to the hotel room of one of the suspects, where she was allegedly sexually assaulted by the six, the police press office in Mallorca cited the alleged victim’s statement as saying. 

The Civil Guard showed up at the hotel after receiving a phone call from the hotel’s security staff who found the young woman crying in desperation. 

Police detained the suspects, all of whom are over 20, shortly after.

The alleged victim received immediate medical attention and counselling.

In the first pictures of the six men, one of the suspects held his head down and stared at the ground as he was led into a court in Palma in handcuffs by a Civil Guard officer. 

But the other five, all wearing the same shorts and t-shirt they were arrested in, made no attempt to disguise their faces as they were taken into court for a remand hearing held behind closed doors. 

All the suspects were escorted into the court building in Palma in handcuffs. 

Although the suspects are being held in jail, none of them has been formally charged as yet, as the investigation is ongoing. There were no details released on their identities nor that of the alleged victim. 

Detectives inspected the room where the alleged assault occurred and reviewed CCTV footage of the hotel entrance as part of the ongoing investigation.

A medic checked the woman over and is said to have found grip marks on her arms.

Earlier this month, a 21-year-old British woman told Greek police that she was raped by an Israeli man after meeting him in a nightclub in Athens. 

The young tourist was allegedly attacked at the man’s home in the early hours the previous week after a night out in the Keramikos area. 

She told police that during the sexual assault, the man’s three friends appeared out of nowhere and filmed her with their mobile phones. 

The woman, who had been partying with her friend from Portugal beforehand, told the group she was leaving but the man refused to stop the act, according to local media. 

After a struggle the woman managed to escape the property and told police of the incident.

A case has been filed against the Israeli man for rape. 

Just last month another British tourist accused a 47-year-old Greek man of raping her in a hotel while on holiday on the island of Rhodes, according to local media.

The 21-year-old said she was attacked at around 2am on July 3 in Pefkos and made a complaint to the local police hours later, prompting a case to be opened.

According to Greece‘s ANT1News, the young woman’s lawsuit claims the older man took her from a ‘health care store’ in Lindos, found on the south of the island, to a hotel in Pefkos – the main city on the island that sits around 15 miles from Turkey.

There, the outlet reports, the woman claims the man forced her to have sex with him through threats of physical violence.

Upon making her complaint, the police asked a medical examiner to carry out an assessment, ANT1News said.

She handed over the clothes she was wearing on the night which were reportedly sent to Greece’s Directorate of Criminal Investigations for DNA testing.

According to the same publication, a second British woman made a complaint over an incident in Faliraki – seven miles south of Pefkos – 24 hours earlier.

It reports that the 18-year-old British tourist was attacked in the early hours on Sunday, July 2, at a nightclub in the popular destination.

She has told police she was at the club with two of her friends, when she suspects an unknown person injected her with a narcotic substance in her hand – without her realising that it had happened at the time.

From that moment, she says she suffered from complete memory loss, leading her to suspect that she was secretly injected with some form of drug.

As with the first case, a coroner’s examination has been ordered and police have launched an investigation into the alleged attack.

In yet another grim case, a 21-year-old British tourist was allegedly raped after she was dragged into bushes on a popular Algarve holiday beach last month. 

The woman told police the sex attack took place on the sand by a walkway at Praia da Rocha beach in the municipality of Portimao.

And last month, two Irishmen were arrested on suspicion of raping a British tourist in a hotel in Magaluf. 

The Briton, who has not been named, told police she had been sexually assaulted by the two men in a hotel room in Calvia by Magaluf in the early hours of July 19. 

The Irishmen had reportedly fled the hotel before they were arrested by police officers at the airport as they tried to return to Dublin.

Police had arrived at the hotel on July 19 where the woman claimed she had been raped by the two tourists.

The alleged victim was taken by officers to Son Espases Hospital by the policeman where she underwent an examination of her injuries. The Guardia Civil confirmed that the woman had been raped.

It came days after a British tourist was arrested at the Palma Mallorca airport after allegedly raping his girlfriend at their hotel on the Spanish island.

The 38-year-old was held as he tried to fly home after his 24-year-old partner went to police to say he had forced himself on her in the bathroom of their hotel room.

The couple are said to have been staying at a three-star hotel near the resort of Magaluf when the incident allegedly occurred. 

Meanwhile in May, a British tourist was arrested on suspicion of raping a female friend of his son’s at a hotel in Magaluf. 

The holidaymaker was also held at Palma Airport after allegedly packing his bags and trying to leave the island in a hurry hours later. 

The woman, also believed to be British, told detectives she was raped after falling asleep in her friend’s room, which had an internal door leading into his dad’s room. 

The older man is said to have surprised her in the middle of the night after entering the room while his son was out partying. 

The alleged rape victim, who is understood to be aged around 20, fled the unnamed hotel and raised the alarm at a Civil Guard office near to the Punta Ballena party strip in Magaluf according to local reports. 

By Shania Obrien For Daily Mail Australia

Published: 06:53 EDT, 9 August 2023 | Updated: 17:29 EDT, 9 August 2023