Popular News in One Year

A classic Edwardian home in San Francisco‘s Russian Hill with timeless character has been snapped up for $488,000 by a savvy homebuyer. The unusually low price is far less than half of the city’s $1.2 million median list price and an even smaller portion of the property’s estimated $1.4 million value. Though the home might seem like a dream bargain at first glance, it comes with a rather astonishing catch: The new owner may not move into the property for the next 30 years. According to the listing, the property is currently tenant-occupied under San Francisco’s tenant protection laws, and the current lucky occupant, who pays an incredibly low monthly rent of...

Even for a millionaire, Johan Eliasch's country retreat is on the large side. The 1,600 square kilometers, or 617 square miles, of Brazil's Amazon rain forest that the Swedish businessman bought in 2005 would take several weeks to walk across, braving snakes and piranhas along the way. He says he bought it to protect that rich environment but an influx of foreign buyers such as Eliasch is stirring indignation in Brazil, tapping into long-held fears that the country's massive land resources are coveted abroad. The government has begun investigating what officials say may be irregular transactions, including Eliasch's, and said this week it is examining ways to put more controls on...

A Singaporean man got fined thousands of dollars for forging his grandfather’s death certificate so he could get paid leave from his workplace. After finding out his girlfriend had cheated on him, an analyst in a financial services company was upset and could not concentrate on his job. Unwilling to go to work, the 29-year-old Singaporean forged his grandfather's death certificate so he could take paid bereavement leave. Barath Gopal was fined S$4,000 (US$3,000) after pleading guilty to forgery under the Registration of Births and Deaths Act on Wednesday (Feb 5). Gopal had more than four days of annual leave that he could have taken at the time, the court heard. But on Nov 8,...

Leonardo DiCaprio marked his milestone 50th birthday in true Hollywood fashion, by throwing a glamorous (and by all accounts) raucous party that was reportedly held at the ultraexclusive estate of a Walmart heiress, whose home is nestled in one of the most sought-after areas in Los Angeles. The party on Saturday was attended by dozens of A-list stars, from Paris Hilton and Katy Perry to Brad Pitt and Al Pacino, with sources claiming that the party took place in two homes that make up a sprawling compound owned by heiress Sybil Robson Orr and her husband, Matthew Orr. According to Page Six, the evening began with a dinner “catered by Nobu,” which Us Weekly claims was attended...

A staggering trove of 15,000 rare coins, hidden from the Nazis and lost to history for over half a century, has reemerged — and it’s valued at more than $100 million USD (around $160 million AUD). Dubbed the Traveller Collection, this extraordinary cache is about to rewrite numismatic history. ((Hidden from Nazis, Sealed in Cigar Boxes, Buried and Forgotten)) The Traveller Collection began in the aftermath of the 1929 Wall Street Crash, when a European collector and his wife embarked on a decades-long journey through Europe and the Americas. Their mission: acquire the rarest and most historically significant coins on Earth. But as World War II loomed and Nazi forces advanced,...

Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez’s second marriage was a quick and expensive disaster — and nothing is more symbolic of the expensive mess than the white elephant of a home they purchased together for cash. The couple are set to lose at least $25 million on their huge dream home when it eventually sells. While currently idling on the market for $68 million, my West Coast real estate guru says the Bennifer 2.0 manse is not selling — because it’s horrifically overpriced, way too big and in an undesirable location. The home, a 38,000-square-foot monstrosity, has 12 bedrooms, a mystifying 24 bathrooms (two for each bedroom!), sits on five acres, has a 12-car garage and...

A philanthropic man in China who has never married nor had his own kids, has emerged as a “father” to more than 700 of the country’s children. Wang Wanlin, 80, from Hangzhou in eastern China’s Zhejiang province has been providing shelter to wandering children he found on the street since 1979. Wang met his first “son” on the street one evening when he was 34. The 15-year-old child was shivering in the cold weather, and told Wang he just escaped from an exploitative coal mine in another Zhejiang city. He said he was tricked into going there from his hometown in Jiangsu province north of Shanghai. Wang took him home and bought him a train ticket a week...

Japan is renowned for its safety and honesty, where lost belongings often make their way back to their owners, untouched. A Malaysian woman recently experienced this firsthand when she accidentally left her iPad outside what appeared to be a halal ramen restaurant in Japan. TikTok user @_intanizzaty shared a video detailing the nerve-wracking experience. She had unknowingly left her iPad behind at the restaurant where she dined. Realizing her mistake later, she was overcome with distress, even breaking down in tears. To make matters worse, she was unable to contact the restaurant as it had already closed for the night at 10:30 PM. However, the next morning, as she and her husband...

 Must be a perk of Prime. A stretch of Fifth Avenue was closed for a massive delivery to Jeff Bezos’ sprawling NoMad penthouse, according to a mind-blowing video shared on TikTok. A huge piece of wrapped furniture dangled from a rope as a crane last week slowly hoisted it above the intersection of Fifth Avenue and 26th Street, which was lined with caution tape, barricades, machinery and moving company trucks.   (Jeff Bezos shut down part of 5th Avenue so a crane could deliver furniture to his NYC penthouse.William C Lopez/New York Post) Dozens of workers milled about, directing traffic and joining passersby in watching as the item neared the top of 24-story 212 Fifth...

Once envisioned as a luxurious lakeside palace, Canada’s largest home now sits abandoned, with broken windows and unfinished floors serving as eerie reminders of what could have been. The Peter Grant mansion, sprawling across 65,000 square feet on the shores of Lake Temiskaming in Ontario, has been left to rot for more than 15 years. The once-grand estate was the brainchild of Peter Grant, the former president of Grant Forest Products, who dreamed of creating an opulent retreat.   (Once owned by forestry magnate Peter Grant, the home was designed with features like a subterranean boathouse, a golf course and an art gallery.Shutterstock / Freaktography)   (However,...