Kourtney Kardashian is doing ‘better’ and has now returned home following a short hospital visit.

An insider told People the reality star, 44, is ‘back home now with her kids’ after she was pictured departing a Los Angeles-area hospital with her husband Travis Barker. 

‘She is feeling better. She is happy to have Travis back home too,’ the source added.

On Friday, Travis’ band Blink-182 announced the postponement of some European tour dates because of an ‘urgent family matter’ that forced him to dash home.

The following day, Kourtney, who went public with her pregnancy in June, was seen leaving the hospital with Travis and clambering into an SUV.

Neither Travis nor Kourtney has disclosed why they were at the hospital, but based on the appearance of her bump as she left, she did not appear to have given birth.

Kourtney was seen walking unassisted as she and her husband surfaced on Friday, piling into a gleaming black Range Rover and heading off.

The reality star, who has not publicly divulged her due date, was decked out in a silver maternity top and matching trousers.

On Friday, Blink-182 announced via Insta Stories that they would have to delay their upcoming concerts on account of Travis’ family emergency.

‘Due to an urgent family matter, Travis has had to return home to the States,’ the band revealed on social media. ‘The Glasgow, Belfast, and Dublin shows are being postponed. More information in regards to his return to Europe and rescheduled dates will be provided as soon as available.’

The Blink-182 tour in Europe was meant to commence Friday night in Glasgow, which is where Travis was when the announcement was made.

Travis then fired up his own social media and cryptically posted pictures of the prayer room at the Glasgow Airport.

Just last week, he and his pregnant wife had been spotted soaking up the sunshine together during a romantic stroll on the beach.

As Travis raced home to Kourtney, his ex-wife Shanna Moakler confirmed that the children she herself shares with him are ‘safe and sound.’

Shanna and Travis welcomed Landon, 19, and Alabama, 17, together, and Travis was also crucial in helping raise Shanna’s daughter Atiana De La Hoya, 24, whom she had with the former professional boxer Oscar De La Hoya.

Meanwhile Kourtney shares three children – Mason, 13, Penelope, 11, and Reign, eight – with her ex-fiancé Scott Disick, whom she dated on and off for nearly a decade.

Kourtney ecstatically revealed to the world in June that she is expecting a baby by Travis, whom she tied the knot with last year.

She dropped the bombshell during a Blink-182 concert, standing in the audience and holding up a sign that read: ‘TRAVIS I’M PREGNANT’ – a mischievous nod to a similar scene in the music video for the band’s song All The Small Things.

Her breathtaking news came over a year after Kourtney pulled the brakes on her IVF journey, which had subjected her to a raft of health issues including depression.

On a 2022 episode of her reality show The Kardashians, Kourtney spoke candidly about the ‘awful’ experience she was having with IVF.

She claimed in a confessional that the ‘medication that they have been giving me, they put me into menopause, literally into menopause.’

Kourtney theorized: ‘I think because I’m so clean and careful about what I put into my body, it’s just like having the complete opposite reaction and working as a contraceptive instead of helping us.’

She explained: ‘I have everything in the world to be happy about. I just feel a little bit off and not like myself. Super moody and hormonal, like I am a lunatic half the time.’

In December of that year, a few months after her wedding, she told the Wall Street Journal that she had stopped her IVF treatments 10 months earlier.

Kourtney, who tied the knot with Travis that May, shared that she ‘took a break to just focus on our wedding and getting married.’

On a subsequently aired episode of The Kardashians, she said: ‘We would love a baby more than anything but I just really believe in what God has in store for us.’

She also spilled that she had ‘seven frozen eggs from years ago before Travis’ – a step she had taken when she was nearing the age of 40.

‘When I was 38 or 39 everyone was like pushing me to do that and most of mine didn’t survive the thaw because eggs are one cell and none of them made it to an embryo,’ the eldest Kardashian sister said.

‘All the thing that came with IVF took a toll on me physically. My health is still impacted because it’s hormones. And also mentally it took a toll,’ she said.

‘So, I think just being happy is most important and being a good parent to my kids. We are just embracing that whatever is meant to be will be.’

Don’t worry too much if you don’t hit the target of 10,000 steps a day — just under 4,000 could be enough to reduce your risk of an early death.

A groundbreaking scientific review, based on almost 227,000 healthy people from 17 separate studies, found the risk of dying early could be reduced in people who walk at least 3,867 steps a day.

It shows people who manage less than 5,000 daily steps, who health experts previously called ‘sedentary’, are probably still doing themselves good.

The craze for recording daily steps, on smart phones and smart watches, has seen 10,000 steps adopted as most people’s target.

But the review also found people’s risk of dying from cardiovascular disease, such as heart attacks and strokes, starts to reduce if they manage at least 2,337 steps a day.

This means the current recommendations may need to be looked at again, according to the researchers, although they emphasise that the more steps people take the better.

Professor Maciej Banach, who led the study from the Medical University of Lodz in Poland, said: ‘People enjoy tracking their daily steps, and are proud when they increase the number.

‘It is a good way to achieve the critical lifestyle changes which may reduce the risk of dying.

‘We found that this applied to both men and women, irrespective of age.’

The review, published in the European Journal of Preventive Cardiology, looked at studies, including six from the UK, in which people’s daily steps were measured for at least a full week.

These people, with an average age of 64, were followed up for an average of seven years to see how many died early, from any cause, or from cardiovascular disease.

This allowed researchers to work out how many steps a day were taken by people who did not die early, compared to the daily step count of those who died.

As a result, they could estimate the minimum number of daily steps needed to fall into the group of people who are less likely to die early.

They found at least 3,867 steps a day, and at least 2,337 steps a day, were the point at which a lower risk of death from any cause, and from cardiovascular disease, appeared to begin.

However the more steps someone can manage each day, the better, the study found, with every 1,000 extra steps a day someone took linked to a 15 per cent reduction in their risk of dying prematurely for any reason.

Every 500 extra steps a day was linked to a seven per cent reduction in the likelihood of dying from cardiovascular disease.

The average person in the UK achieved 5,444 daily steps before Covid, although people may now be slightly more inactive after habits changed during the pandemic.

Being active keeps blood vessels healthy, making a heart attack or stroke less likely.

The studies looked at people who walked up to 20,000 steps a day, and more steps were linked to a lower chance of dying early right up to the full 20,000 steps.

It is unclear if doing more steps would continue to be even better, or if the health effects would level off past a certain amount.

However steps seem to be better for people under the age of 60, who maybe benefit from having had a healthier lifestyle earlier in life.

Professor Banach said: ‘Our analysis indicates that as little as 4,000 steps a day are needed to significantly reduce deaths from any cause, and even fewer to reduce deaths from cardiovascular disease.

‘In a world where we have more and more advanced drugs to target specific conditions such as cardiovascular disease, I believe we should always emphasise that lifestyle changes, including diet and exercise, which was a main hero of our analysis, might be at least as, or even more effective in reducing cardiovascular risk and prolonging lives.’

CITY WHISPERS: Sanctions-hit Evraz, the steel company backed by Roman Abramovich, set to hold unusual annual meeting in Berkeley Square

By Francesca Washtell, Financial Mail On Sunday

Published: 16:50 EDT, 24 June 2023 | Updated: 09:25 EDT, 25 June 2023

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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.’

Warning for short women as tall men are more likely to see them as a one-night stand rather than a partner for everlasting love, study suggests

• In a study, men said shorter women were their preferred choice for a fling
• Women preferred taller men regardless of the nature of their relationship 

By Cassidy Morrison For The Daily Mail

Published: 18:56 EDT, 12 June 2023 | Updated: 19:32 EDT, 12 June 2023

Mike Pence‘s former chief-of-staff Marc Short shrugged off Florida GOP Rep. Matt Gaetz’s criticism of his old boss on Monday night, after the Florida congressman mocked Pence at a young Republican conference over the weekend.

Gaetz told a crowd of millennial and Gen Z conservatives on Saturday night that Pence ‘will never be president’ and said he was a ‘nice guy, not a leader’ in response to speculation over the former vice president considering a White House bid.

The firebrand Republican also ridiculed pro-choice women by stating they are too unattractive and overweight to get pregnant.

‘I don’t know if Mike Pence will run for president in 2024, but I don’t think Matt Gaetz will have an impact on that,’ Short said on CNN.

He took a swipe at Gaetz over his ongoing federal sex trafficking probe involving a 17-year-old girl. The congressman was accused of paying for the teenager to travel across state lines in order to have sex with her.

‘I’d be surprised if he was still voting, it’s more likely he’ll be in prison for child sex trafficking by 2024,’ Short said.

‘And I’m actually surprised that Florida law enforcement still allows him to speak to teenage conferences like that. So, I’m not too worried about Matt Gaetz.’  

Gaetz had laughed off anger at his derogatory comments about women, telling those upset to ‘be offended.’

The Florida congressman on Saturday joked about the demonstrations against the Supreme Court‘s repeal of Roe v. Wade, mocking those who wanted to protect access to abortion nationwide.

‘Why is it that the women with the least likelihood of getting pregnant are the ones most worried about having abortions?’ Gaetz told college students at the Turning Point USA Student Action Summit in Tampa.

‘Nobody wants to impregnate you if you look like a thumb.’

On Monday, he was asked to explain his comments.

‘I’m very pro-life and I make no apology for it,’ the 40-year-old said.

‘I’m grateful that Roe has been overturned and that Dobbs is now the jurisprudence on abortion. I find these people that go out in these pro-abortion, pro-murder rallies odious – and just, like, ugly on the inside and out. I make no apology for it.’

He said he didn’t think everyone who disagreed with him was ‘an ugly person’, but condemned those who protested outside the homes of the Supreme Court justices and called for a ‘night of rage’ in Washington DC.

Gaetz was asked by Channel 3: ‘Is it safe to say that, based off your comments, you’re suggesting that these women at these abortion rallies are ugly and overweight?’

‘Yes,’ he replied.

Asked: ‘What do you say to people who think those comments are offensive?’ the congressman replied: ‘Be offended.’

Gaetz has denied the sex-trafficking allegations against him, and no charges have been filed against him. The New York Times first reported the existence of the federal investigation into Gaetz in March 2021.

‘These people are odious on the inside and out,’ Gaetz said at the summit. ‘They’re like 5’2″, 350 pounds and they’re like, “Give me my abortions or I’ll get up and march and protest.” And I’m thinking, “March?” You look like you got ankles weaker than the legal reasoning behind Roe v. Wade.

‘A few of them need to get up and march. They need to get up and march for like an hour a day, swing those arms, get the blood pumping, maybe mix in a salad.’

It’s not the first time he has ridiculed those campaigning to uphold Roe v. Wade.

In May, when the draft Supreme Court decision leaked, Gaetz made his disdain for their activism clear.

‘How many of the women rallying against overturning Roe are over-educated, under-loved millennials who sadly return from their protests to a lonely microwave dinner with their cats, and no bumble matches?’ Gaetz tweeted.

Tall men typically prefer petite women for short-term relationships while women always prefer taller men, a study has found.

Gravitating toward shorter women for romantic flings is more than just personal preference — it is based on biology and psychology, according to researchers at universities in Cuba, Canada, Norway, and the United States.

A preference for height is widely accepted, especially in Western countries, where an increase in height from the 25th percentile to the 75th — about five inches — is likely to earn a person about nine to 15 percent more in annual salary.

The team’s findings suggested that men, on average, preferred women with heights of about five feet three inches to five feet five inches when looking for more casual, short-term relationships.

The classic female descriptor for a good-looking man – tall, dark, and handsome – held true in the study as well, which found that shorter women prefer men taller than them for shorter and longer term relationships.

The researchers behind the study recruited people from their general populations and included 536 people, 333 of whom were women. The vast majority of them, about 93 percent, described themselves as heterosexual.

On average, the men measured 178 cm in height, or about five feet 10 inches, while the women’s average height was 165 cm, or five feet five inches.

Female participants were shown two sheets of paper that contained five different minimalistic drawings of men from the back measuring different heights ranging from five-foot-five to six-foot-one.

Men received similar sheets showing drawings of women from the back measuring heights from five feet to five-foot-eight. Each drawing was labeled with a height measurement.

Asked their ideal height in a woman for ‘uncommitted’ short-term relationships, men typically chose women shorter than them, ranging from about 164 to 167 cm.

But men tended to gravitate toward women who more closely measured to their own heights for long-term relationships such as marriage, which the researchers said was indicative of ‘assortative mating preferences’.

Assortative mating is a form of sexual selection based on certain observable criteria that more closely mirror theirs, including relative height, social status, personality, and risk of passing along diseases to offspring.

This means that tall men are more likely to marry or remain in committed relationships with taller women.

The authors of the study, published in the journal Frontiers in Psychology, said: ‘Our results further corroborate a positive relationship between participants’ own heights and their mate height preferences, that is, positive assortative preferences for height.

‘However, assortative height preferences were qualified by relationship-context… Taller men preferred relatively shorter women for short-term relationships than for long-term relationships.’

Women, meanwhile, preferred men taller than them on average regardless of the nature of their relationship. This tracks with years of population studies that point to an overall preference among women for taller male partners.

One 2014 study published in the Journal of Family Issues found that less than two percent of women wanted to exclusively date men shorter than them, while nearly 49 percent said they preferred to only date men taller than them.

Men, however, seemed less obstinate with only 13.5 percent saying they would exclusively date shorter women.

Another study published in 2013 in the journal Personality and Individual Differences reported that women care more about having a taller man than men care about dating a shorter woman.

Women prefered and were most satisfied with greater height differences than men, about eight inches, whereas men were satisfied with being just three inches taller.

Many men gravitate toward shorter women for a variety of reasons, but one major one is evolutionary in nature. Men are primal creatures often fixated on filling the role as ‘protector,’ having to protect their female counterparts from the big bad world.

Researchers behind the study said theirs is the first of its kind to measure men’s height preferences across different relationship contexts from one-night-stands to marriage.

They wrote: ‘The absolute height preferences of each sex observed here support a general tendency for raters to prefer taller-than-average men and shorter-than-average women.

‘These observed absolute preferences corroborate studies suggesting that the costs of shortness outweigh the benefits of tallness, particularly for men.’

SHORT STORIES

By Eithne Farry For The Daily Mail

Published: 18:02 EDT, 16 March 2023 | Updated: 18:02 EDT, 16 March 2023

SHORT STORIES

By Eithne Farry For The Daily Mail

Published: 17:04 EDT, 11 May 2023 | Updated: 17:32 EDT, 11 May 2023

Travellers are flocking to this ‘magical’ stretch of rainforest despite being home to one very dangerous animal: ‘It’s paradise’

• Adventures are flocking to Lacey’s Creek Walking Track
• It sits in Djiru National Park in Far North Queensland
• The trail winds through a magical rainforest 

By Louise Allingham For Daily Mail Australia

Published: 01:12 EDT, 5 May 2023 | Updated: 01:15 EDT, 5 May 2023