As The Block dives into Master Suite Week, the real estate agents who have taken on the daunting task of selling the Hampton East houses have been revealed. 

McGrath, Buxton, Belle Property, Ray White and Jellis Craig have all put their hands up to lead the Blockheads to victory during Auction Day on Charming Street. 

With each couple set to win millions should their houses sell in a few weeks time, Domain has revealed which agents will be jumping into the fire.

Kyle and Leslie’s House 1 nabbed McGrath St Kilda for their big day with co-principals Josh Sterling and Michael Townsend by their side. 

The real estate duo are Block champions after snapping up national recognition for their winning auction campaigns on the renovation series in 2018, 2020 and 2021.

House 1 will see a price guide of between $2.5million to $2.75million.

It is described as having an ‘impressive street presence’ and ‘exquisitely designed interiors appointed to the highest of standards’. 

However, Kyle and Leslie’s renovation is the only one which has four bedrooms while all the other houses boast five.  

Leah and Ash’s eclectic House 2 will see Buxton Hampton East at the helm with their agents Halli Moore and Noel Susay stepping up to the plate.

The two locals are confident they can take the win as ‘the only Hampton East agency handling an auction’ this year.

With their agency ‘commanding between 50-60 per cent of sales’ in the suburb, they may be just the edge House 2 needs for the big win. 

The property is expected to fetch between $2.5 million and $2.75 million if it sells as expected. 

The guide refers to it as ‘glamorous’ and boasting ‘a curved ceiling echoing the curvaceous aesthetic of the main home’. 

House 3, being tended to by Kristy and Brett, will be auctioned off by Julian Cannata and Sam Inan from Belle Property Brighton. 

Julian and Sam are returning after their appearance at The Block auction in 2018, and they are singing praise for Kristy and Brett.

‘Their youth and vibrancy is allowing them to create something that is very special out of their untouched 1950s home and it isn’t something you will see in every magazine,’ they said on their website.

‘They are doing a great job on what is the only corner block in this year’s series, which is a unique selling point within itself.’

House 3 has a healthy price guide of $2.5 million to $2.75 million. It ‘encompasses the largest footprint on The Block’ and is the ’embodiment of designer living’.   

Steph and Gian’s House 4 will have three agents backing them on auction day – Ray White Sunbury’s Aaron Hill, Marin Durkovic and Chelsea Kleeven. 

Aaron and Marin led Omar and Oz into a record-breaking win last season when they pocketed $1.7million in profits after selling their home for $5.586million. 

The shocking win led to a slew of controversy with Adrian ‘Mr Lambo’ Portelli at the centre of it after he was accused of being a dummy bidder. 

House 4 boasts a price guide of between $2.2 million to $2.4 million – the lowest of all the houses. 

It is referred to as ‘an architecturally designed and curated home with melding serene Japanese and Scandinavian harmonious features’. 

Meanwhile House 5, being renovated by Eliza and Liberty, will work alongside Nick Renna and Connor Harvey from Jellis Craig Brighton to sell their property at auction.

‘I’m very excited for Team Renna to be representing Eliza and Liberty from House 5 on this year’s season of The Block,’ Nick wrote on Facebook earlier this month.

‘It’s been great to work through the process with the girls so far and I can’t wait to see what they create.’

House 5 is set to fetch $2.7 million to $2.85 million – the highest of this year’s properties.

‘Absolutely breathtaking with its volume of scale, sumptuous finishes and 7-star energy efficiency, this incredible 5 bedroom 4.5 bathroom mid-century transformation will host the most memorable family occasions,’ the guide reads. 

For a long time, it was a mystery how Jho Low – a rather unassuming Malaysian businessman – became ingratiated with some of the biggest names in showbusiness.

However, when it was revealed that he was lavishing them with gifts, funding their projects and inviting them to Great Gatsby-esque parties across the globe, it became easier to understand why stars kept him around.

Instead, the mystery became how it was that Low could afford his free-spending lifestyle. There was one answer to this question, too: the embezzlement of 1MDB.

Several pictures captured Low rubbing shoulders with the likes of Leonardo DiCaprio, Alicia Keys and Paris Hilton – suggesting that despite often looking out of his depth, he had a knack for making friends in high places.

The suit-wearing 41-year-old was educated at Harrow, one of England’s most exclusive public schools, and he showered movie stars, models and singers with gifts beyond imagining for anyone who doesn’t have access to billions of pounds.

For Australian beauty Miranda Kerr – understood to have been in a relationship with Low in 2014 – he splashed £6 million on jewellery and a crystal piano.

He also once told Kim Kardashian that she could keep his £200,000 casino winnings, and paid £800,000 to Britney Spears to jump out of his birthday cake.

Tales have also told of a single night in St Tropez where Low spent £1.5 million on Champagne, and of another occasion when he flew stars from a New Years Eve party in Australia to another in Las Vegas.

Perhaps his most notable associate was Leonardo DiCaprio – one of Hollywood’s biggest and most recognisable stars.

Low’s film production firm funded the actor’s 2013 box office hit The Wolf Of Wall Street, and he purchased a $30 million mansion close to DiCaprio’s in Hollywood.

He also gifted DiCaprio a £2.5 million Picasso painting and invited him to several parties.

However, Low’s high-flying world came crashing down around him in October 2016 when Interpol published a red notice at Singapore’s request to locate and arrest him.

He has since been charged in Malaysia and the United States for allegedly masterminding the theft of $4.5 billion from state fund 1Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB), and is an international fugitive.

He has consistently denied wrongdoing.

It was with this money, authorities say, that he purchased the extravagant gifts for the likes of Kerr and DiCaprio, bought properties and paid for debauched parties.

Now, a new documentary titled Man On The Run – set to be released in cinemas next Friday – has delved into his fraud.

The documentary is the culmination of years of digging into Low and his associates by British investigative journalist Clare Rewcastle Brown and America’s FBI, and has uncovered Low’s trail of corruption that added to Malaysia’s crippling debt.

A Malaysian-Chinese born on the island of Penang whose grandfather was from southern China’s Guangdong, Low once described himself on his website as a ‘global investor and philanthropist’ with experience in many companies, financings and projects in media, entertainment, retailing, hospitality and real estate. 

Educated at Harrow, the elite British prep school, and later at Wharton, his family is said to have made its fortune in mining, trading and garment manufacturing.

While at Harrow, he became friends with Riza Aziz, stepson of former Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak, who set up 1MDB to support the country’s economy.

But Najib was ousted in an election upset in 2018 after former leader Mahathir Mohamad, outraged by the scandal, came out of political retirement.

Mahathir reopened a probe into the 1MDB fund, and Najib is currently serving a 12 year prison sentence over his involvement. The Fugees rapper Pras Michel and two Goldman Sachs bankers have also been jailed over the 1MDB scandal.

However, the whereabouts of Low – who went on the run – remains unknown.

Malaysian authorities have previously said Low was believed to be in China, though Beijing has denied it. Others have suggested he is somewhere in the Middle East.

It means that to this day, he has not faced justice for the fraud.

Low first gained the attention of the public eye in 2009, the same year 1MDB was founded, when it was reported how he had sent 23 bottles of Champagne to Hollywood star Lindsay Lohan who was celebrating her 23rd birthday.

A year later, socialite Paris Hilton was seen sunbathing on his yacht in France, and in 2011 he invited stars including Lady Gaga, Beyonce and Jay-Z to a Beverly Hills party.

Documents recently released by the FBI also show that he once gave Kim Kardashian £83,000 to spend on fireworks, and how her ex-husband Kanye West was on the guest list to his 30th birthday party in Las Vegas in 2012.

A year later, he was snapped posing with Alicia Keys on a red carpet, on the way in to a charity ball in New York City.

But speaking to The Sun ahead of the release of the documentary, Rewcastle Brown says what caught her eye was Low’s involvement in Martin Scorsese’s Wolf Of Wall Street – a movie that is itself about financial fraud.

It was Low and Aziz’s Red Granite Pictures which released the film.

The reporter suspected the pair were getting the funds from 1MDB, which at the time was rumoured to be in deep debt.

‘I was waging a Twitter war with Leonardo DiCaprio from the launch of the movie, saying, ‘You better know there is suspicion about the money behind your movie’,’ Rewcastle Brown tells The Sun.

Instead, she was threatened with legal action and DiCaprio thanked Low in his Golden Globe speech when accepting the best actor award for his role in the film.

Despite the threats, Rewcastle Brown persisted with her reporting. 

This made her even more enemies, with Malaysia attempting to have her placed on the Interpol Red Notice list for the ‘terrorism’ of her journalism.

Thankfully, the international body refused.

Rewcastle Brown tells The Sun that she was also followed by private detectives and was even warned that her life was in danger.

Others were also targeted. 

In the documentary, Malaysian opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim, 76, and whistle-blower Xavier Justo, 55, a Swiss banker, say they were jailed for exposing Low.

Eventually, Low’s extravagance caught up with him. In 2016, US special agents filed a civil lawsuit in a bid to reclaim billions stolen from the 1MDB fund.

They revealed £250 million had been spent on a yacht, £30 million on works of art, and £4 million on diamonds for Razak’s wife. 

The Department of Justice also traced $100 million from a deal with PetroSaudi to the purchase of properties in Hollywood, and $40 million to apartments in New York.

DiCaprio is reported to have returned the Picasso he was gifted by Low, as well as a Basquiat painting worth £7 million, while Kerr returned the jewellery.

The DoJ is also understood to have seized royalties from the Wolf Of Wall Street, as well as two other films Red Granite Pictures helped finance.

There is no suggestion of wrongdoing by any of the celebrities linked to Low.

It is now believed that Low was using his associations with big-name celebrities to help strike deals across the globe. Investigators have linked him to deals with China, the United Arab Emirates and Kuwait.

In a trial this year of Fugees star Michel, he revealed that Low was also trying to influence politics in America, particularly related to the president.

Michel was accused of funnelling money from a now-fugitive Malaysian financier through straw donors to Barack Obama’s 2012 reelection campaign, then trying to squelch a Justice Department investigation and influence an extradition case on behalf of China under the Trump administration.

In May, a jury in Washington DC, found him guilty of all 10 counts, including conspiracy and acting as an unregistered agent of a foreign government.

Michel testified in his own defence. He said Low wanted a picture with Obama in 2012 and was willing to pay millions of dollars to get it.

Michel agreed to help and used some of the money he got to pay for friends to attend fundraising events. No one had ever told him that was illegal, he said.

DiCaprio, a former friend of Michel’s, gave evidence on behalf of prosecutors.

The rapper is currently awaiting sentencing.

Meanwhile, Malaysian former prime minister Razak is serving 12 years in jail. He nevertheless pins all the blame on Low, telling the upcoming documentary: ‘I trusted in the wrong people but the system failed me.’

As for the charges against Razak’s stepson and Low’s former associate Aziz, Malaysian prosecutors dropped them in May 2020 after reaching a settlement.

Goldman Sachs banker Roger Ng was sentenced to ten years in prison in March, and his colleague Tim Leissner is awaiting sentencing.

But while those accused of helping Low suffer the consequences, the supposed mastermind behind the fraud remains on the run.

Reports suggest that Low fled to Antarctica on his yacht after he was first linked to the 1MDB fraud by US officials, and in 2019 some say he was spotted in Shanghai.

He has been rumoured to be in other locations including the United Arab Emirates.

Whether he will ever be brought to justice, remains to be seen.

Rewcastle Brown believes he may never be caught.

‘I’m very sceptical Jho Low is still with us,’ she told The Sun. 

‘He has so much toxic information about deals with China, and they can’t have him going to a Western court room to spill all this,’ she said.

If you’ve had your X (formerly Twitter) account for more than nine years, you might want to check on your old tweets.  

Users have noticed that photos and links posted to the platform before December 2014 have been taken out and replaced by dead URLs. 

A famous example is the Oscars selfie posted by Ellen DeGeneres in March 2014, which vanished from her tweet, although it has since reappeared. 

It’s unclear if it’s an accident due to a technical trouble at X or a deliberate cost-cutting exercise to ease the demand of company servers. 

Musk is yet to address the issue, although he admitted in a post on Saturday that X ‘may fail’ – shortly after saying he’ll remove the block feature. 

If you’ve only joined X in the last 8.5 years, this fresh issue won’t affect you.  

But if you’ve been a long-time user and have posted tweets of your treasured photos, it might be worth checking if they’re still there.

To search for your own tweets from before December 2014, type into the Twitter search bar the following: ‘From:[your username] until:2014-01-01’. 

By doing this, MailOnline found that some images were still appearing in tweets from before December 2014, but took screenshots in case their days are numbered. 

It’s also worth downloading your Twitter archive, which lets you save tweets and all the media within them. 

X’s newest problem affects posts containing images but also any hyperlinks converted through Twitter’s built-in URL shortener (t.co), according to the Verge. 

Tweets themselves are displaying, but it’s the content within them that’s having problems being displayed properly. 

Content appears as URLs, but these can’t be clicked on, and copying and pasting them into another search bar only takes you back to the original tweet. 

X user Tom Coates, who detailed the issue in a string of posts, called it ‘more vandalism’ from the Twitter owner and ‘another cost-saving exercise’. 

‘Twitter has now removed all media posted before 2014,’ he said.

‘That’s – so far – almost a decade of pictures and videos from the early 2000s removed from the service.

‘Every image and video removed and replaced with a dead link.’ 

In a message tacked on below Coates’ first post, X said the missing images ‘are still saved on Twitter/X’s servers’ but that the links are broken ‘at the moment’. 

Regardless of this, Coates pointed out that the images ‘are still effectively deleted from the public internet’. 

It’s unclear if Musk’s team is planning to restore the images to the tweets; MailOnline has contacted the firm for more information. 

It’s possible it’s just more temporary technical trouble from the firm, which has experienced outages thought to be due to tweaks to the site by developers. 

Outages have been a fixture ever since Musk began running Twitter, leading to speculation that there aren’t enough staff to fix its problems.

It comes as the billionaire owner admitted in a surprisingly honest message at the weekend that X ‘may fail’. 

On Saturday he posted: The sad truth is that there are no great “social networks” right now. 

‘We may fail, as so many have predicted, but we will try our best to make there be at least one.’ 

Musk recently caused a backlash by stating his intention to remove the ability to ‘block’ other users across X, excluding private direct messages. 

If enforced, it could means users have to contend with more harassment and the consequences of more unregulated free speech. 

While it remains unclear if Musk will follow through on disabling the block feature, many users on the platform pleaded with the billionaire to reconsider.

‘Block is a critical peace of mind issue for many people because it generally gets the cyber stalkers to move on,’ one X user said. 

Musk took over Twitter in October and has just changed its name to X as part of plans to turn it into what he’s described as an ‘everything’ app. 

A shiny ‘X’ logo was installed at the platform’s headquarters in San Francisco before being removed due to complaints from local residents.  

Millions of high-earning Americans to lose popular 401(K) tax deduction – here’s what it means for YOU

• Workers aged over 50 making catch-up contributions to their 401(K)s will only be able to funnel them into a Roth account from next year
• It means they will be taxed upfront – rather than when they withdraw the money
• READ MORE: Is a Roth 401(K) REALLY a good idea? Finance guru issues warning

By Helena Kelly Consumer Reporter For Dailymail.Com

Published: 11:49 EDT, 17 July 2023 | Updated: 08:33 EDT, 2 August 2023

Millions of US taxpayer dollars are being sent to shady laboratories in China to fund cruel and dangerous experiments on animals.

Records show more than $15 million in government grants has funded animal experiments in foreign labs from 2013 to this year, despite concerns that dubious Chinese research may have started the Covid-19 pandemic.

Some of the US-sponsored research involved gathering dangerous avian flu viruses from China’s wet markets and infecting chickens, ducks, and guinea pigs to ‘supercharge’ the viruses and make them more transmissible.  

While not technically illegal, research in China is not subjected to the same stringent ethical and safety protocols in the US.

A previous watchdog oversight investigation found grant money sent to Chinese labs is often subject to little or no oversight.

From fiscal years 2021 to 2023, the National Institutes of Health (NIH), America’s primary agency for medical and public health research and response, awarded 15 grants totaling $3.6 million to institutions in China that perform experiments on animals.

In that same time, the NIH provided at least 92 sub-awards worth $12.5 million to institutions in China.

A sub-award allows another organization to perform some activities for the NIH grant under the NIH’s supervision. 

For example, in some instances, the NIH awarded a grant to an educational institute, which then sent money to Chinese entities performing animal experiments with no oversight.

Federal spending data from 2020 revealed the NIH spent an estimated $140 million on animal experiments in 29 foreign countries.

Watchdog group White Coat Waste Project has been fighting to force the government to stop sending American tax dollars overseas to fund virus and drug testing on animals.

The organization was the first to discover the NIH sent millions of dollars to unmonitored and dangerous animal experiments in China and Russia.

Georgia Tech sent $770,466 of a $2.7 million NIH grant to the Kremlin-linked Pavlov Institute of Physiology, which conducted experiments on cats.

According to the WCW Project, the experiments included implanting electrodes into the cats’ spines and muscles and removing parts of their brains. The felines were also locked in metal frames and forced to walk on treadmills. They were then killed and dissected.

Additionally, between 2018 and 2020, the University of Illinois gave approximately $123,550 of a $1.6 million NIH grant and an undisclosed amount from a USDA grant to the Kremlin-linked Institute of Cytology and Genetics to study the social behavior of silver foxes on a fur farm. The foxes were housed in small and unkempt cages and then killed and dissected. 

In the US, these experiments likely wouldn’t be legal under the guidelines the government has for using animals during experiments, which include providing proper veterinary care, using appropriate anesthetics to minimize harm and using humane euthanasia methods. 

Following the WCW Project’s findings, the group was successful in getting the Biden administration to defund all animal labs in Russia earlier this year. However, animal experiments using American money have continued in China.

Now, the group has teamed up with Rep. Lisa McClain, a Republican from Michigan, to introduce the bipartisan Accountability in Foreign Animals Research (AFAR) Act.

The act was first introduced in 2021 by McClain and has since gained support from other House members, as well as gotten the attention of members of the Senate. Now, it is being reintroduced in Congress. The legislation would prevent the NIH from conducting or supporting all research on vertebrate animals in foreign countries.

Vertebrate animals are those with spinal cords and bony or cartilaginous backbones, including all mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians and fish. 

‘Our tax dollars should never be sent to state-run labs in adversary nations like Russia and China that threaten our national security.

‘My AFAR Act would prohibit tax dollars from being shipped to animal testing labs in any countries that are deemed foreign adversaries’, McClain said in a statement.

Recent data compiled by the WCW Project found that between 2015 and 2023, at least seven US entities supplied a portion of their NIH grant money to labs in China performing animal experiments, totaling more than $3.3 million.

Between 2015 and 2018, Emory University provided Harbin Veterinary Research Institute, which houses one of China’s dangerous high-containment bioagent labs, $515,418 of a $38.6 million Health and Human Services contract for experiments on avian flu viruses.

Researchers collected avian flu viruses from China’s wet markets and injected them into guinea pigs, mice, chickens, and ducks. Taxpayer money was also used to supercharge flu viruses, making them more transmissible. The animals were later killed and dissected.

The study continued through July 2022, years into the Covid pandemic, despite concerns about the origins of the pandemic.

In addition to providing funds to Kremlin-backed labs, the University of Illinois also supplied the Institut Pasteur of Shanghai in 2017 with $149,832 of its $1.7 million NIH grant to infect mice with tuberculosis. The mice were killed after 50 days and had their lungs dissected.

The research ended in 2019.

From 2017 to 2018, the University of South Florida shipped more than $812,900 of a $28.9 million grant it was awarded from the NIH to several Chinese entities to create mutant malaria strains and inject them into mice. The mice were then fed to mosquitoes.

The research is set to continue until March 2024.

In 2019, Eastern Virginia Medical School sent $42,452 of a $35.5 million grant from the United States Agency for International Development to the Qichun County Zhangliang Digging Machine Business Department. The funds were used to test an experimental hepatitis and HIV drug on primates.

According to a description from USA Spending, which compiles information on grants, the study states that primates will be given a ‘treatment’ and then have their plasma analyzed.

The research ran until November 2021.

Also in 2019, the University of California-Irvine gave $216,000 of a $4.3 million NIH grant to the Wuhan Institute of Virology to perform experiments related to neuronal tracing. Experiments included drilling holes in the skulls of mice, rats, and tree shrews and injecting herpes viruses into their brains. The study states there was ‘rapid death of injected animals’ and viral infections.

It only recently concluded in January.

With one of the largest amounts supplied to Chinese animal experiment labs, the late Microsoft Co-founder Paul Allen’s Allen Institute sent nearly $1 million of its $64.7 million NIH grant to China’s Huazhong University of Science and Technology in 2021. The study, which only ended in January, was to create an atlas of mouse brain cells. Researchers killed and sliced the brains of eight-week-old mice to analyze and map them.

As recent as February 2023, the University of Southern California funneled more than $576,400 of its $1.9 million NIH grant to Peking University for experiments in which mice had holes drilled into their skulls and viruses injected into their brains. Scientists inserted electrodes in the animals’ brains and performed imaging experiments.

The research is set to run until 2025.

While the watchdog group revealed the millions of dollars being sent overseas, Americans may never know the exact amount or the specific experiments being conducted because of an NIH loophole exempting foreign grant recipients from following certain animal care guidelines. The WCW Project is currently suing the institution over this loophole. 

In a statement, senior vice president of the WCW Project, Justin Goodman said ‘shipping taxpayer dollars to animal testing labs in China, Russia and other adversarial nations is a recipe for disaster.

‘Our Worldwide Waste campaign has defunded the Wuhan lab, Putin’s kitten tests, and all Russian animal labs, but we’ve uncovered how dozens of animal labs in China are still eligible for more taxpayer money. Over 70 percent of taxpayers—Republicans and Democrats alike—oppose this reckless spending … Stop the money. Stop the madness’.

Book of the week

Highly Desirable: Tales of London’s super-prime property from The Secret Agent

By Anonymous (Headline £22, 374pp)

We hate estate agents — the easy money they make as prices escalate and commissions expand (‘the figures that seemed inconceivable just years ago have quickly become the norm’); the surface-level smarm ‘bordering on obsequious’; the fact they don’t do anything complicated beyond ‘securing the right property at the best possible price’: the conveyancing solicitors do the nitty gritty and earn far less.

Indeed, any idiot can show someone around an empty house and say, ‘This is the bathroom’, or ‘I can picture you having kitchen suppers around that table’. 

You appreciate why Anne Robinson, disguised in the book as ‘an adored international TV personality’, has a policy of telling estate agents to remain silent, on pain of torture and death.

Max Thomas, the (pseudonymous) author, operates in London’s super-prime sphere — £22 million apartments in the City, an £18.5 million house in Regent’s Park, a flat in Chelsea Barracks with a £35 million price tag, which also comes with an £80,000 per annum service charge.

Though Thomas comically tries to make his life sound as exciting as James Bond (‘I’ve got to salvage this deal by 6pm!’), in fairness, he is likeable and diligent, mugging up on ‘speculative costs of refurbishment, pound-per-square-foot value, potential swiftness of transaction’. Thomas has the addresses of builders, architects and feng-shui experts.

He finds himself turning into a psychological counsellor, his clients wanting recommendations for reflexologists, masseurs and private jet charter companies.

The fun of Highly Desirable is learning all about the ‘high net-worth individuals’ whom Thomas encounters. 

‘There are lots of rich people about’, apparently, and you’ll hear them coming because they do nothing except complain loudly about staffing problems, caterers, private tutors, club memberships and beauty regimes. 

Wives and daughters have ‘so much surgery and so many artificial additions’, they can’t be recognised from week to week.

We are told about ‘rich kids spending thousands on champagne and thinking that’s normal’. Private equity managers, venture capitalists, oligarchs, sheiks and gangsters — these are the characters and wannabe Bond villains who travel by chauffeur-driven limousine and in first-class cabins, who are ‘never polluted by contact with the outside world’. 

They expect to dwell in homes with media and massage suites, games rooms and have ‘all the trimmings’, such as lifts and garages for four cars.

Notting Hill has been colonised by the hedge funder, Americans favour St John’s Wood, and Hampstead ‘is full of the moneyed intelligentsia’. 

Holland Park, where houses have a £17 million ticket price, is the location of the late Michael Winner’s palace, now owned by Robbie Williams and rented to Richard Caring, the British billionaire nightclub and restaurant entrepreneur. 

When as a new owner Williams wanted to scoop out the basement for a swimming pool and a cinema room, there was a feud with the neighbour, Led Zeppelin guitarist Jimmy Page, who feared subsidence.

‘I can’t begin to imagine,’ says Thomas, ‘the number of unused underground pools that have been built in London over the last decade.’ 

For the paradox with the rich is that they are seldom in residence. Houses and flats are investment assets, not homes to inhabit. Most of the time the owners are on the yacht or in tax-efficient Switzerland, Monaco or Dubai.

London is simply where a place is needed (‘I feel it is a sensible £2.95 million’) for an occasional drinks party for 40. Often, the rich never materialise in person at all. They just Google-map it and peruse the floor plan, then make Zoom calls with decorators.

Worse than this, the rich openly flout planning permission rules and bypass due process regarding listed building regulations. 

A stucco mansion in Chester Terrace, Regent’s Park, unoccupied for years, is found to have chain metal lights, velvet black walls, leatherette sofas and leopard-skin pouffes.

There’s a Queen Anne property in Chiswick Mall along the banks of the Thames, a riverside flat in Battersea with 24-hour concierge service, an elegant townhouse in Onslow Gardens in South Kensington: once the potential buyer turns up with a cavalcade of bodyguards, days are numbered for any surviving plaster cornices in the drawing room, the craftsmanship of Victorian fireplaces and folding wooden window shutters. 

Everything gets stripped out. ‘It takes a lot of money to look this cheap’, Thomas comments wryly of the results.

The wealthy expect ‘discretion all the way’, buying and selling off-market, ‘without any digital footprint’ or recourse to ‘online portals’, as this risks advertising on the internet, which can be perused by anybody.

Thomas meets a grim old miser in Kensington, whose house contains such original features as a butler’s pantry and kitchen nursery. ‘The whole house has a cloying claustrophobic odour of musk, antique cologne and talcum powder.’ 

I dread to think what the developers did — though the owner is to be applauded for not wanting to sell to foreigners or common sorts, e.g., the Yorkshireman who’d amassed his large fortune from owning care homes.

‘We are dealing with very wealthy people — and they don’t tend to elicit sympathy,’ says Thomas, who is not going to be contradicted by me on that point.

Despite their self-help podcasts, almond cappuccinos, artisanal bread and cupcakes, these yacht-hoppers and villa fillers, who run off with 28-year-old Pilates instructors, or who retrain as therapists having left banking; who need two chefs to pack a picnic, and have ex-spouses ‘who only need £3 million for the house in Queen’s Park’ in North-West London — all these people in Thomas’s book come with an ‘aura of paranoia’.

Beyond doing deals, ‘there’s not much that seems to give them pleasure’, he says.

Eventually, Thomas has a heart attack. ‘You need to be kinder to yourself, you need to minimise the stress in your life and you need to prioritise your needs above the needs of everyone else,’ states his doctor. 

Funnily enough, that’s exactly what my cardiologist told me, when I crashed to the ground the other day with a myocardial infarction.

Except, I live in a mortgaged hut in a shabby South-Coast town. The world portrayed in the highly enjoyable Highly Desirable could be on another planet, it is so alien to my own pitiable state. 

Nevertheless, I wouldn’t want a life of bodyguards and almond cappuccinos, either.

More than three-quarters of Republicans in Iowa want Congress to immediately start the impeachment of President Joe Biden over links to his son Hunter’s shady foreign business deals, an exclusive poll for DailyMail.com has found.

The survey conducted by J.L. Partners found that 77 percent of GOP supporters who are likely to attend January’s highly-anticipated Iowa state caucuses want the president investigated over his family finances.

The growing calls for Biden to be impeached follow damning testimony from Hunter’s business partner Devon Archer and the release of bank records showing the Biden family and associates got $20million from business interests in Russia, China and Kazakhstan.

The poll did show, however, that Republicans in Iowa are wary that impeachment could be a distraction leading into the 2024 presidential election, and dealing with issues such as the economy should be the priority.

DailyMail.com is publishing the poll results as Republican presidential candidates head to Iowa for the State Fair. 

Iowa is vital for their White House aspirations as the state will host the first major contest of the 2024 primary with their caucuses for Republican voters on January 15. 

The poll results leave House Speaker Kevin McCarthy with a dilemma: Does he side with Trump allies in an assault on the president or does he listen to the Republican leader in the Senate, Mitch McConnell who urges caution?

The rank and file in Iowa make clear where they stand.

In our poll of 600 Republicans, only 14 percent said they were opposed to impeachment proceedings.

Among Trump supporters, the proportion of those who want an immediate start rockets to 95 percent. That drops to 79 percent among supporters of Ron DeSantis and 74 percent with backers of Tim Scott.

‘Speaker McCarthy is already feeling the pressure from his members to impeach President Biden – now the voters who will crown the winner of the first caucus of 2024 want to see Biden impeached too,’ said James Johnson, co-founder of J.L. Partners.

‘The signs are that voters will reward those who hit Biden hard and push for his impeachment – though candidates should be careful not to suggest impeachment would be at the expense of all other issues.’

The poll was conducted from April 1 to 7 and the results carry a margin of error of +/- four percent.

They show that while Republicans in Iowa are itching for impeachment proceedings to start, they also say it should not come at the expense of other important issues.

Only 32 percent said it should be the priority for Republicans in the year ahead. Some 64 percent said they should focus on other issues first. 

The results will give a strong indication of who has enough support to contend for a spot on the ticket – and try to close the gap with frontrunner Trump..

Powerful GOP lawmakers, like those leading the Oversight and Judiciary Committees, claim that Hunter used his father’s influence to enrich the Biden family and that the president was, at least partially, involved in the scheme.

The issue exploded into public view on Wednesday.

President Biden was forced to confront the allegations against him and his son when he was confronted by Fox News’ Peter Doocy at a New Mexico windfarm. Biden insisted that he ‘never’ talked business with Hunter.

Instead of speaking about the issue, Biden pivoted to insult. ‘I knew you’d have a lousy question,’ he said.

‘Why is that a lousy question?’ Doocy asked, to which Biden clapped back with: ‘Because it’s not true.

All of this puts House Speaker McCarthy in a precarious position as he faces pressure from pro-Trump rank-and-file members to impeach while centrists are more cautious.

Sen. McConnell weighed in this week, telling the New York Times: ‘Impeachment ought to be rare. This is not good for the country.’

Some die-hard Trumpers want revenge for the two House impeachments against the former president, others want to hold Biden accountable for what they believe is involvement in his son’s business deals. Meanwhile, centrists and vulnerable Republicans aren’t sold on impeachment.

There is even in-fighting among MAGA sweetheart Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) and Lauren Boebert (R-Col.) as they argue over their competing bills to launch an impeachment inquiry against the president.

The poll also gives an update on the overall state of the race among likely Republican caucus-goers in Iowa. 

It suggests that Trump’s third indictment last week is not denting supporters’ enthusiasm.

Trump is leading the pack by 26 points on 43 percent support. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis comes in second with 17 percent and Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.) in third with 11 percent in Iowa. 

It means DeSantis has lost nine points since the poll was last conducted in April, and spells more bad news after he this week rebooted his campaign, yet again. 

A real-life ‘Barbie’ is accused of running a ‘sect’ and putting her followers at risk of poisoning.

Valeria Lukyankova – who has 2.5 million followers across several social media accounts – has suddenly this week closed a £13-a-month ‘club’ where she is alleged to have put her fans at risk with dangerous advice.

Known for years as the Ukrainian Barbie, she also styles herself as alien princess Amatue, and is facing a probe by the Russian police and prosecutors office despite being an avid Putin supporter.

Among the accusations against her is one that she has urged her followers to drink turpentine to rid their bodies of parasites.

Another claim is that she urged her female fans to breathe over mercury because ‘paranormal abilities and memory of past lives awaken’.

Women were also urged to ‘make tampons with tar and essential oil of grapefruit’ to make their sexual organs smaller, said a leading critic Katya Konasova, a blogger and Youtuber who specialises in exposing fake healers.

Lukyanova seeks to encourage women to rid themselves of ‘parasites’ that do not exist, said Konasova.

‘Turpentine is used in the chemical industry. It should not be used inside the human body,’ she said.

‘Lera [Valeria] is convinced that a scary either worm or octopus lives in everyone’s body, something with tentacles that destroys your will and dominates [you],’ she said.

‘If you got scared, don’t you fear – Lukyanova has a private club in which they will open your ‘third eye’ too.’

It is this private club Rex Deus that the wannabe Barbie has this week closed.

Lukyanova – now believed to be 37 – posted a rambling explanation: ‘Why did I close the Rex Deus club?

‘Rex Deus helped thousands of people to find themselves, to learn their mission, to learn how the world works, to master quantum technologies, and to apply them in daily life.

‘Every day I receive words of gratitude from the members of the club.

‘Despite this, I realised that I cannot do it anymore.

‘I have to share information with even more people.

‘We did a lot of research in rejuvenation in the recent years […] this information can not fit into the old club.’

One commenter said the real reason was that Konasova had exposed her.

Another said: ‘How do you sleep at night knowing that you poison people and scam them out of money?

‘So pretty but so rotten inside.’

One woman follower is highlighted saying that after following Lukyanova she ‘wanted to drink turpentine’.

‘I listen to myself now, and I am terrified,’ she said.

‘It saved me that I couldn’t find turpentine anywhere.

‘I tried her cocktails, not cocktails but smoothies, a garlic one, I literally vomited.

‘People mostly do it voluntarily, they sincerely believe [her] and are ready for anything….

‘People listen to [her advice] and put their lives at risk.’

An aide to this Barbie is called Anastasia who – despite having no medical education – is her proponent for cleaning the body of parasites.

Anastasia is also accused of threatening critics in the club, once saying: ‘If some bas**** says even a [negative] word regarding our cleansing, expresses doubt, I will flush you down the toilet, do you understand?

‘Or about me or Valeria.’

Konasova said: ‘What is scary, is that after these threats people are actually afraid to share the dark stuff that happens there.

‘This reminds me a lot of a sect.

‘Such sects should be banned and closed, so that Lukyanova and her accomplices stop making money from it.’

In 2014, Lukyanova arrived in Crimea to boost tourism to the region soon after it was annexed by Vladimir Putin.

‘I tend to cut off anything I don’t need,’ she said at the time.

‘The next step is to cut off Ukraine entirely, because all I get here is s***.

‘Why waste myself on this?’

She is now believed to be in Mexico.

For years, Lukyanova has denied having plastic surgery to create her distinctive looks – other than a boob job – while priding herself on her Barbie look which she put down to ‘Breatharianism’ – surviving on ‘cosmic micro-food’, otherwise known as air and light.

‘All genetics came to me from nature, except my breasts,’ she said.

‘I lost weight and, unfortunately, I have very small breasts.

‘I had to increase my size to feel like a normal girl.

‘But I didn’t subject myself to other plastic surgery.’

She claims to have out of body experiences which take her to other planets.

She explained: ‘I travelled to other planets, which are very far away.

‘They have not been discovered by our scientists, but they exist.

‘I communicated with extraterrestrial intelligence and beings and understood other universes.’

One commenter named Tatiana said: ‘The worst thing about Lukyanova’s sect is how it puts pressure on the psyche, keeping people at bay so they don’t tell anyone, advising dangerous things under the guise of health benefits.

‘As a healthy and seemingly sane person, I felt uneasy from what she was saying.

‘And at the same time, this is excellent bait for everyone who has various forms of eating disorders, because these people have a desire to cleanse themselves of everything ‘harmful’, and lose weight with all sorts of cleansing, despite the consequences for the body.’

Another called diamond2494 said: ‘I was in this sect and barely survived after such experiments.’

She followed Lukyanova’s advice and ended up with severe anaemia, she said. 

Relaxing on a couch in the living room of his newly-built house, former social worker turned short-seller Fraser Perring does not seem like a man who would strike fear into the hearts of executives from New York to Tokyo.

But from a sleepy village near Lincoln he runs Viceroy Research, which makes its money by betting against companies and then releasing research reports into their activities.

I am ferried to his luxury home in a sleek black Bentley SUV, so it looks like his career move has largely paid off.

Aside from his Bentley, he owns another black SUV, an Audi and an orange Lamborghini Urus. He calls them his ‘toys’.

Short-sellers like Perring are often painted as vultures, feasting on crisis and misfortune. Their own view is that they are essential to markets functioning well, often acting as canaries in the coalmine and alerting the wider world to disasters in the pipeline.

Typically, they are fond of secrecy, so our conversation is a rare insight into their mindset and methods.

It is six months since Viceroy’s explosive report into Home Reit – a property investment trust helping homeless and vulnerable people. After the report’s release, Home Reit’s share price sank before trading was suspended.

Several of its charity tenants are now in liquidation and a probe into its accounts is being conducted by auditor BDO.

Forensic accountants Alvarez & Marsal discovered a lack of transparency on the part of the firm’s former investment adviser Alvarium as well as failings of due diligence and the monitoring of the finances of its tenants.

It is music to Perring’s ears who alongside his colleagues at Viceroy profited handsomely from Home Reit’s collapse. He is thought to have made more than £4 million. He won’t reveal the exact sum, merely saying it was ‘a f***ing good trade’.

Perring has no sympathy for those in charge of the business. ‘The board denied our information and said it was utterly false [when published]. As it transpires we were accurate,’ he exclaims.

Over lunch Perring outlined the philosophy behind Viceroy’s process when deciding which firms to target.

‘There is always something missing,’ he says, noting that with Home Reit there had been a gap between what residents had been saying about the quality of its properties and the ‘ESG [environmental, social and governance] bulls**t that was told to the market’.

He also rejects claims that his work is based on underhand tactics. ‘We rely on public disclosures and we give our opinion on a company,’ he points out.

Perring is currently involved in spats with several other companies globally. One of these is Medical Properties Trust, a US-listed healthcare property investment trust that was targeted by Viceroy in January and has since seen its share price plunge by more than 27 per cent. 

In March, the firm decided to sue Perring’s outfit, arguing that its allegations were baseless. But he remains unfazed by the legal battle, saying the company’s business model ‘doesn’t stack up’.

Viceroy is also in a fight with SBB, a Swedish landlord whose founder and boss Ilija Batljan stepped down earlier this month, with his empire facing ruin as it struggles with a £6.4 billion debt pile.

Perring targeted SBB in February and has kept up the pressure ever since. He describes Batljan as ‘a complete and utter fantasist’ for previously dismissing vulnerabilities in the business.

‘If he told me the time, I’d need three other people’s watches to verify it,’ he said. ‘He’s not fit to run a burger van.’

His latest target is Abalance, a Japanese solar panel manufacturer that Viceroy accuses of using a Vietnamese subsidiary to avoid US sanctions against Chinese goods made using Uighur forced labour. Abalance vehemently denies the claims.

Others to have caught his ire include Elon Musk’s Tesla, which Perring shorted early last year on claims that it was overvalued. Another is German-South African retailer Steinhoff, which faced an accounting scandal in 2015.

Perring believes fund managers who put client money into fraudulent firms should be held accountable.

‘If they are found to be involved in fraud they should be penalised,’ he says. ‘Their fees should be reduced. There is currently no penalty for doing bad work.’

Perring doesn’t hold back against critics. Veteran Labour MP Liam Byrne, a former chief secretary to the Treasury, claimed in Parliament in March that Perring was ‘a not infrequent visitor to Moscow’ and called for a Government probe into whether some short-sellers were linked to the Kremlin.

Perring denies the allegations and called on Byrne to repeat his statements outside the House of Commons, and thus without legal protection. ‘He’s a coward and he won’t even provide any information so he’s gone and lawyered up,’ Perring says.

The 49-year-old began short-selling in 2011 while working as a child protection officer. His social worker career ended in 2013 amid allegations that he had failed to contact a foster child’s extended family to arrange alternative care. He was subsequently struck off.

A 2014 report from a regulator accused Perring of forging records and then lying to his supervisors. Perring said he followed protocol, but was punished for questioning the placement of the child.

He later sued his former employer Lincolnshire County Council for mistreatment, defamation and a breach of employment rights. The two sides eventually settled, with Perring receiving £24,000.

He pursued his investment passion full-time and within three months had made more money than during a decade in social work.

His first research company, Zatarra, was set up alongside fellow short-seller Matthew Earl to publish reports anonymously.

In 2016, he met Australian researchers Gabriel Bernarde and Aidan Lau and together they formed Viceroy Research – a partnership that thrives to this day.

Not all of his shorts have played out as well as Home Reit, but the one he regrets most is the one that first put him on the map.

‘Wirecard,’ he says, referring to the German payments giant that collapsed in 2020 after admitting it was missing £1.6 billion in cash, sparking a global scandal that saw the arrest of chief executive Markus Braun, who is on trial.

‘It brought out the best and worst in people, including myself,’ he admits. ‘I became obsessed.’ Perring claims the aggression of Wirecard and its agents was like nothing he had ever experienced.

He says the stress caused transient ischaemic attacks, known as ‘mini strokes’. Some associates thought he had turned alcoholic due to the effects on his speech.

‘Would I do it now?’ he asks himself. ‘Yes, because I know what to expect. But as a way to start off a career in short-selling, I would say absolutely not. I was f***ing nuts. I went swimming with sharks and thought I was in a goldfish bowl.’

Despite the baptism by fire, Perring shows no sign of wanting to change direction.

‘I love it now. Plus I don’t think there’s another job out there for me. Pretty sure I’m unemployable anywhere else.’

Relaxing while sitting in his cavernous living room with a view of his rolling lawn, Perring still feels a need to look over his shoulder.

In 2016, shortly after dropping off his daughter at school, he was trapped in his car by two men who threatened to harm his family unless he admitted writing reports into Wirecard’s business. Out of fear, he lied and denied being behind the reports.

As with many jobs, Perring says it is the people that make it hard, rather than the work itself or the intricacies involved in researching and building Viceroy’s reports.

‘If it wasn’t for the people, short-selling would be the easiest vocation in the world. Do I think short-selling is stressful? No. Do I think the people you expose are? Yes.’

Reddit has been hit with a worldwide outage impacting millions of users as forums ‘go dark’ to protest the website’s increased developer fees.

Issues with problems on the website and app surfaced on DownDetector, a site that monitors online outages, at 10:25 am ET – but reports dissipated about two hours later.

It is unclear why Reddit was down Monday, but it occurred when more than 7,000 subreddits were switched to private in the largest user-led online protest. 

The movement is frustrated over price changes in developer fees, which could amount to millions of dollars for some users.

The protest is set to remain for 48 hours, but some users have warned they will not revert pages to the public if Reddit does not reconsider the increased pricing plans for apps that provide access to the site.

Users flocked to Twitter to inquire about a possible outage hitting Reddit, with one tweeting: ‘Nice to see even Reddit itself getting in on the Reddit Blackout today.’

What is Reddit?

Reddit launched in 2005 as a place for users to explore different topics organized in subreddits – more than 100,000.

Some popular examples are News, Movies, Funny, IAmA, Pics and LifeProTips. 

Users subscribe to these forums, allowing them to see new posts and interact with others shared by members. 

Other users can then determine the popularity of a post by either upvoting or downvoting the post.

And the more upvotes push the post higher up in the subreddit. 

What is Blackout Day?

Users have banned together in protest against Reddit’s April announcement that revealed it is increasing fees starting July 1. 

The change will charge developers access to its application programming interface (API) for third parties with ‘additional capabilities, higher usage limits, and broader usage rights.’

While Reddit sees the change as a way to sustain its future, developers hit back, saying it will destroy theirs. 

Christian Selig, the developer of Reddit client app Apollo, said the increased pricing new pricing would cost him as much as $20 million per year, Variety reports.

Apollo lets users view content from numerous sources, such as Imgur, Reddit and YouTube, in one place.

Other popular apps that connect to Reddit include Reddit is Fun, Sync and ReddPlanet. 

Selig continued explaining that this means Apollo plans to stop operations on June 30. 

He tweeted about the Blackout Sunday, thanking ‘the Reddit community and everyone standing up.’

Twitter users Rebecca Sloane responded: ‘I relied heavily on a subreddit support group during a difficult time in my life. 

‘For months, Apollo was the first app I opened when I woke up and the last one I closed before going to sleep.’

Subreddits for gaming, with more than 37 million members, and music, with over 32 million users, have been switched to private.

Thousands of other forums have joined the movement, some with more than 40 million members. 

What has Reddit said?

Reddit CEO Steve Huffman addressed users’ ‘frustrations’ in a Friday post to the site, laying out how the changes will work.

‘Effective July 1, 2023, the rate for apps that require higher usage limits is $0.24 per 1K API calls (less than $1.00 per user/month for a typical Reddit third-party app),’ Hoffman wrote.

He continued: ‘Reddit needs to be a self-sustaining business and to do that, we can no longer subsidize commercial entities that require large-scale data use.’

While Hoffman is looking out for the future of Reddit, the move could force some app developers to shut down. 

Reddit’s primary revenue stream has previously been its advertising sales and premium subscriptions.

The company’s website posted in April: ‘We’re working to build a more sustainable, healthy ecosystem around data on Reddit, and continuing to roll out moderator tools for Reddit native apps.’

‘To ensure developers have the tools and information they need to continue to use Reddit safely, protect our users’ privacy and security, and adhere to local regulations, we’re making updates to the ways some can access the Reddit Data API:

‘We are introducing a new premium access point for third parties who require additional capabilities, higher usage limits, and broader usage rights[…]