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BOGOTÁ, Colombia—Minnesota comedian Tou Ger Xiong had fallen in love with the expat lifestyle in the vibrant Colombian city of Medellín: stock trading by day, fine dining and dance clubs by night. He was one of a rising number of Americans and foreign nationals who began flocking to the country after the Covid-19 pandemic, some on new digital nomad visas introduced to help spur a growing startup scene. But hours after prosecutors say he went out on a date on Dec. 10, he was calling family and friends back home to wire him $2,000, telling them he had been kidnapped...

A 300-pound Villager who stands 6 feet 4 inches tall has been sentenced after stalking a resident’s grandson he met through an online dating application. Russell Edward Thompson, 54, of the Village of Springdale, has been placed on probation for three years after pleading no contest last month in Sumter County Court to charges of burglary and theft. A charge of stalking, a charge of criminal mischief and two additional counts of theft were dismissed as part of the plea deal. A man who was living with his 73-year-old grandmother in Village of Santo Domingo met Thompson through an online...

Online dating web site Match.com thought it would be funny, I suppose, to create a promotional video for their matchmaking services that shows a literal Satan going on a date with a woman named 2020, because that is exactly what they did on YouTube today. For those of us who know The Book, anything about this video strike you as funny? What it shows me is that 2020 is exactly the year we’ve been telling you it is, the year when the Spirit of Antichrist appeared over the whole world, because that is also exactly what happened this year. “…but...

A database containing records of tens of millions of users of various dating apps has been found publicly accessible, according to a researcher who says it remains unclear who amassed the data. In a blog Wednesday, security researcher Jeremiah Fowler said he discovered the database and that it was not protected by so much as a password. The 42.5 million records, which appeared to belong to multiple apps, were stored on a U.S.-based server and largely contained the IP addresses and location data of American users. The apps to which the data belongs include Cougardating, Christiansfinder, Mingler, Fwbs (friends with...

A man accused of swindling $80,000 from a Georgia woman he met online has been arrested in Tennessee -- and is wanted in other states for similar scams, authorities said. John Martin Hill, 35, connected with the woman from Alpharetta, Georgia, on Match.com in late March, the Gwinnett County Police Department said Wednesday. Hill took the woman out on a date the same day they met, and the two agreed to get married within a week of meeting, authorities said. He told the woman he's a millionaire, and they decided to invest in a love nest. The woman gave her...

Dating applications can allow users to fall into their own racial biases while searching for a partner, a new study says. But in their study, researchers from schools like Cornell University say the “sexual racism” that plagues apps like Grindr, Tinder and Bumble can be stamped out with a few simple changes. The end goal, the study says, is to promote more diverse pairings on the dating sites. Jevan Hutson, lead author of the study, said in a press release from Cornell University that “it’s really an unprecedented time for dating and meeting online” — which requires a more thorough...

Sinakhone Keodara reached his breaking point last July. Loading up Grindr, the gay dating app that presents users with potential mates in close geographical proximity to them, the founder of a Los Angeles-based Asian television streaming service came across the profile of an elderly white man. He struck up a conversation, and received a three-word response: “Asian, ew gross.” He is now considering suing Grindr for racial discrimination. For black and ethnic minority singletons, dipping a toe into the water of dating apps can involve subjecting yourself to racist abuse and crass intolerance. “Over the years I’ve had some pretty...

A North Carolina woman allegedly shot and killed a man she met through dating site “Farmers Only” after their relationship ended, according to officials. Sheri Williams Jones, 57, turned herself in Monday at the Cumberland County Detention Center in the 2015 murder of 61-year-old Clarence Smith, according to the Cumberland County Sheriff’s Office. The sheriff’s office didn’t say why it took three years for Jones to be charged for the shooting, which she claimed at the time was in “self-defense.”

PARADISE VALLEY, Arizona -- Can you imagine getting 65,000 text messages after just one date? An Arizona woman is accused of doing just that. And it didn't end there. Police arrested 31-year old Jacqueline Ades after finding her in the Paradise Valley man's bathtub. According to investigators, she had met the man online about a year prior, but she wouldn't leave him alone. Court documents say Ades sent the victim about 500 messages a day, which included disturbing ones like, "I want to wear your body parts" and "bathe in your blood." Officers say they found a butcher knife in...

In recent years, somewhere between endless Tinder swipes and countless OkCupid matches, the dinner date has fallen by the wayside. As online dating surges in popularity, few millennials have the time, money, or desire to sit with a stranger over a long meal. Only 7 in 10,000 messages in a recent OkCupid IAC survey suggested “grabbing some dinner” and a somewhat less scientific survey this reporter conducted of several dozen actively dating 20-somethings found that dinner has become a highly taboo first date. Last month, Moody’s Investors Service slashed its operating-profit growth forecast for the restaurant sector. (This appears to...

Deputies responded to a home in the 1900 block of Woodside Drive (map) at 5:45 a.m. after a caller reported that the woman had been stuck in the chimney, about 8 feet from the top, for two hours, said Capt. Renee Ferguson of the Ventura County Sheriff’s Department. The county Fire Department’s urban search and rescue team was called to the scene. Photos posted on Twitter by the department showed firefighters on the roof of the house as they worked to reach the woman, who was conscious during the rescue. The flue was lubricated with dish soap before she was...

Married couples who met online are three times more likely to divorce than those who met face-to-face, a study has found. Online daters are also 28 percent more likely to split from their partners within the first year, new figures from Michigan State University in the US suggest. A study of more than 4,000 couples found that relationships were far more stable if couples met in traditional ways such as introductions by friends or through work, hobbies or socializing. Couples who meet online are also less likely to get married and generally have a poorer relationship quality that those who...

I went to a dot com web site today and get redirected to there dot fr (french site)when I populate the dot com address in the address bar Not a member so I couldn't ask tech support there. Any techies have any idea why. Its my assumption the .com is pointing to the .fr some where. My iMac has the us in languages Curious.any thoughts

Researchers recently took data from the Facebook app Are You Interested and found that not only is race a factor in our online dating interests, but particular races get disproportionately high — and low — amounts of interest. Of the 2.4 million heterosexual interactions researchers reviewed, the findings show: Women get three times the interactions men do.All men seemed to be more interested in people outside their race.Black men and women get the lowest response rates to their messages.All women except black women are most drawn to white men, and men of all races (with one notable exception) prefer Asian...

A Finnish man was abducted in Senegal after travelling to the West African nation to meet a woman he met on a dating site. The man travelled to the Senegalese capital, Dakar, to meet who he thought would be a woman he met online; however, the trip turned into a nightmare when he was abducted and held for three weeks. A criminal gang in Senegal is suspected of conning a number of western men to travel to West Africa to meet local women they have met on the dating site. Senegalese police said that the Finnish man recently flew to...

NEW York City's dating scene is so brutal, even Miss USA has to look for love online. A man searching on the matchmaking app Tinder was shocked to discover a profile for 6-foot stunner Nana Meriwether, who won her crown in 2012, the New York Post reports. "It’s funny - the guys I’ve said yes to have all been like, 'Are you real?' " Meriwether told New York magazine. "I’m like, 'Yeah, of course.' Even pageant-title-holders get lonely." Meriwether said it’s a struggle to find love in the Big Apple, where busy singles have short attention spans. "Here’s the thing...

Disclosure: Clayton Coates is on the ChristianMingle Advisory Board. Five years ago, online dating was still considered taboo, but now online dating has become a societal norm and the Christian community is no exception. Christian singles are flocking to Christian dating sites such as ChristianMingle®.com (which just hit its 10 millionth membermark), to find a potential soul mate who shares the same faith and values. While it's rare nowadays to find a single Christian who isn't open to online dating, church leaders may be slower to adopt the evolution of what has become the dating "norm." Pastors are all about...

Online dating is one of those subjects that Christians enjoy debating. In one camp, there are some who believe looking for love online betrays a lack of faith in God's provision of a spouse. In their view, the seemingly endless lists of online profiles creates a superficial consumer mentality that undermines the sacrificial nature of Christ-centered love. The other side counters that online dating is merely a tool God can use to bring two people together – users don't place their faith in the matchmaking site, but in the Lord. They point to their neighbor/sister/uncle/friend that met his/her spouse online...

Many couples celebrated Valentines Day with cards, chocolates and red roses. Sweet expressions of undying love, devotion and affection for that special someone. Sadly, many others celebrated Valentines Day with an online con-artist after being lured into a fraudulent relationship with someone posing as the perfect soul mate. Unfortunately, one online cupid who claimed to be an American businessman working as an Investor in a Ghana Gold Mine Association duped a local woman into believing their long distance romance and business partnership was golden. The woman received an e-mail from the heartless scammer shortly after posting her profile on an...

Today is Valentine’s Day. For the happily married among us, it’s probably not that big a deal. Because when you have someone you love, who you’re doing life with, every day is Valentine’s Day. Things are different for singles looking for love: Those who’ve never experienced holy matrimony. Those who once were married but – for one reason or another – sadly parted ways with their spouse. Those who have lost a beloved husband or wife to illness or other tragedy. As I reflect upon Valentine’s Day, I am reminded of a sermon I heard a couple years ago while...