A woman was scammed out of thousands of dollars in an international romance scam.

The woman met a man on Instagram who claimed to be a Russian astronaut working aboard the International Space Station. The two met in June and continued messaging.

The “astronaut” told the woman he loved her and proposed to her. He told her they could get married when he returned to Earth. The scam “astronaut” asked the woman to send him money for “landing fees” and rocket expenses to return to Earth.

The woman sent him five payments between August and September totaling about $30,000. Still, the scammer continued to ask for money, prompting the woman to contact the police,

Days after Fairview Baptist Church youth pastor Cory Wall handed out “I  hot youth pastors” stickers to kids, the a church says he’s been “placed on administrative leave.”

After the sticker began making the rounds on social media, Wall himself admitted he handed them out in an email, claiming he was just trying to poke fun at what he called the “I Love Hot Mom” culture. He added that the “joke” was a “mistake” and in “poor taste.”

Maybe the most egregious problem is that the church claimed the stickers were merely “offensive to some,” as if the only problem with it was that it upset a few people, not that it suggested a completely inappropriate relationship with “hot youth pastors” and completely ignored the very real sexual abuse crisis in the Southern Baptist Convention (to which Fairview Greer belongs). It also suggests the church leaders were not offended by it.

Apple’s newest phone has been automatically calling emergency services from the pockets of people riding rollercoasters in the US, mistaking the bumps and jerks of the rides as car crashes. The new iPhone can detect car crashes and notify emergency services appears confused by thrill rides.

The latest iPhone 14, as well as newer Apple watches, includes a feature that detects the signs and vibrations typical of a serious car accident – and calls 911 if the owner does not respond to a prompt to cancel.

Since the new model went on sale in September, the Warren County 911 communications centre in Ohio received at least six crash-detection calls from people on rides. All of them were made automatically from Kings Island, an amusement park near Cincinnati that includes the Orion, a 91mph thrill ride that plummets more than 300ft. Other alerts were also triggered by the 12-story Joker rollercoaster at Six Flags Great America near Chicago, Illinois, the newspaper reported.

Car thefts have skyrocketed in St. Louis in recent months, with city leadership threatening lawsuits against Kia and Hyundai for an alleged defect that makes certain makes of the cars easier to steal.

St. Louis has a violent crime problem. What’s causing crime in the city? The Mayor’s war against the police? The prosecutor letting criminals run wild? Evidently city ‘leaders’ think it’s….the cars. Yes—car manufacturers are to blame not criminals You can’t make this stuff up,” he tweeted on Aug. 30.

Thefts of Kias and Hyundais have skyrocketed across the country in recent months, as a TikTok challenge using the hashtag “Kia Boys” grew in popularity. The social media trend challenged people to steal certain models of Kias and Hyundais made between 2010-2021 that are not equipped with an electric anti-theft security device called an immobilizer. The cars can be stolen with just a USB cable and a screwdriver, according to the social media trend. 

$1.5 million floating home prototype sinks into the water at unveiling. If there’s one quality you’re looking for in a floating home, it’s that it floats. You could argue that millions of floating homes already exist in the form of canal boats and fancy yachts designed for living on the water, but this new prototype built by technology company Ocean Builders takes the floating home to a whole new level. Dubbed the SeaPod, the home is designed to be a self-sustaining, eco-restorative home which can provide some of the best sea views available.

On its site, Ocean Builders explains the SeaPod features ‘three half floors’ and more than 300 square feet of living space, all housed 7.5 feet above the waves.

The company said: “At roughly 4:35pm on Thursday Sept 22nd, our SeaPod experienced a ballast tank and pumping system malfunction which caused flooding in the jacuzzi spar. This flooding quickly passed through to the other spars causing what we’re referring to as ‘The Tilt’.”

Police Are Using DNA to Generate 3D Images of Suspects They’ve Never Seen

On Tuesday, the Edmonton Police Service (EPS) shared a computer generated image of a suspect they created with DNA phenotyping, which it used for the first time in hopes of identifying a suspect from a 2019 sexual assault case. Using DNA evidence from the case, a company called Parabon NanoLabs created the image of a young Black man. The composite image did not factor in the suspect’s age, BMI, or environmental factors, such as facial hair, tattoos, and scars. The EPS then released this image to the public, both on its website and on social media platforms including its Twitter, claiming it to be “a last resort after all investigative avenues have been exhausted.”

The EPS’s decision to produce and share this image is extremely harmful, according to privacy experts, raising questions about the racial biases in DNA phenotyping for forensic investigations and the privacy violations of DNA databases that investigators are able to search through.