Crab fishing boat capsizes, three crew dead

The Coast Guard searches for fishermen aboard the Mary B II. USCG Pacific Northwest

Three fishermen died after a commercial fishing boat, the Mary B II, capsized on Tuesday while crossing the Yaquina Bay Bar near Newport, Oregon, officials said.

Initial reports said the boat may have appeared on the Discovery Channel’s, “Deadliest Catch: Dungeon Cove,” but a spokesman for the network told The Post that the boat was never on the show.

US Coast Guard crews battled 12- to 14-foot seas as they searched for the three men aboard the commercial crab fishing boat just after 10 p.m. Tuesday, the Coast Guard said.

The Coast Guard reportedly was escorting the boat as it crossed the bay before it capsized, TMZ reported.

Rescuers pulled James Lacey, 48, of South Toms River, New Jersey, out of the water, but he was pronounced dead at a hospital. Early Wednesday, crews found Joshua Porter, 50, of Toledo, Oregon, dead near Nye Beach.

They later located the boat’s skipper, Stephen Biernacki, 50, of Barnegat Township, New Jersey, dead with the boat, which ran aground on the beach near the north side of the Yaquina Bay North Jetty, according to the Oregon State Police.

“We did everything we could. Unfortunately, it was just a tragic outcome and our hearts and thoughts are with the family and friends of the crew,” Coast Guard Petty Officer Levi Read told KPIC-TV.

Mexico’s fuel shortage threatens this favorite Super Bowl snack

Reuters

MEXICO CITY — Super Bowl fans may have to go without guacamole this year if avocado farmers in Mexico cannot send their fruit to the United States because of a prolonged fuel shortage.

Like clockwork, Mexican producers ship thousands of tonnes of avocado to the United States in early February every year, where guacamole is a staple living room snack on Super Bowl Sunday.

But the Mexican government’s efforts to clamp down on years of mounting fuel theft has a prompted a week-long fuel shortage that has left many states in central and western Mexico high and dry.

Among those states is Michoacan, the country’s main avocado grower. Producers there expect to ship 120,000 tonnes for this Super Bowl, 20,000 tonnes more than last year.

“Our three most important weeks of the year are this one and the next two. This is when we ship for Super Bowl week,” said Ramon Paz, spokesman for APEAM, a business association representing Mexican avocado producers and exporters.

Modal Trigger

Farm workers pile crates of freshly picked avocados.Reuters

“We have from now to January 24, 25 to ship all that volume. If we don’t ship it (by then), we can’t do so later,” Paz said.

So far, 27,000 tonnes have been sent to the United States for the Super Bowl, which will be held on Feb. 3 in Atlanta, Georgia.

The annual football championship is the most-watched U.S. television broadcast of the year, regularly drawing more than 100 million viewers.

The fuel shortage has not yet affected exports to the United States, but it has begun to hamper transportation in Mexico for workers and harvested avocados, Paz added.

In addition to the Super Bowl, Mexican producers also have to meet commitments with supermarkets and restaurants in the United States.

The crackdown on fuel theft, which has drained billions of dollars from state coffers and is blamed for rising violence in some regions, is leftist President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador’s first major move against criminals and corruption since taking office on Dec. 1.

The move risks angering consumers and hurting the economy.

This interest is the secret to online dating success

Shutterstock

Fall in love with travel.

Sunday is likely to be the busiest day of the year for online daters, according to multiple online dating sites. The reason? Not only are Sundays the most popular day for online dating, but this Sunday, in particular, is one when people begin to commit to their resolutions to find love in 2019.

That could be a boon to the dating services marketplace, which has grown from $2.5 billion in 2015 to an estimated $3.2 billion by 2020, according to MarketResearch.com. But for users, all that traffic on dating sites leads to more competition, which means you’ll need to up your game when it comes to your online profile.

So Marketwatch asked dating apps what people should include in their profiles to increase their chances of getting a date. One prevailing answer: Talk about travel or local adventures (at least, if you’re interested in those things).

Data that dating app Match ran for Marketwatch found that those who mentioned a local adventure or a travel hotspot were more likely to get a response. More than half of the top 20 words mentioned in profiles that increased response rates were related to travel, with people who mentioned Tuscany 934 percent more likely than average to get a response, Machu Picchu 873 percent more likely and Bermuda 587 percent more likely. Other top travel destinations in the top 20 included Nantucket (581 percent), Bora Bora (397 percent), Rome (215 percent) and Ibiza (176 percent).

“The big trend is local activities and travel destinations,” a spokesperson for Match tells Marketwatch, adding that “singles are currently motivated to immediately connect over past, current and aspirational experiences they share with their potential match.”

Travel is hot on other dating apps as well, with Hinge telling Marketwatch that travel photos get 30 percent more likes than photos without location tags and posts about spontaneity (including things like “the next vacation I want to go on is X”) get 139 percent more responses than average. And Tinder says that nearly one in five of its users use the app to find someone to explore with when traveling.

This is all part of a larger trend with both millennials and boomers, in particular, embracing travel. Indeed, millennials prioritize travel over things like buying a home, one survey found, and boomers are so eager to travel, they’re booking trips earlier than ever. That helps explain why domestic travel will grow 2.4 percent year-over-year through April 2019, according to the US Travel Association.

Of course, it’s important to point out that both dating and travel are expensive pursuits. A Match survey of 5,500 singles found that they spend nearly $1,600 on dating every year, including everything from coffee to cocktails to food to clothing. Not to mention that many of us pay for our online dating memberships. Plus, a survey by finance app Trim found that seven in 10 Americans spent money on travel last year, shelling out between $620 and nearly $1,300 per year on trips.

Instagram model’s sexy bikini video fails spectacularly

An Instagram model had the shock of her life when a shower head fell from the wall and onto her head during a steamy bikini video.

Charly Jordan, from Los Angeles, took to Instagram to share the clip with her 1.5 million followers, who found it hilarious.

The blond model was filmed getting into the outdoor shower in a red bikini, before tipping her head backward and allowing the water to flow through her hair.

But just seconds into the steamy clip, the shower head falls from the wall, cracking Jordan on the head.

She immediately flinches and clutches her head, and the injury looks incredibly painful.

But it seems the model saw the funny side, after captioning the clip: “When you get hit with that ‘k’ reply.”

Followers seemed equally amused, with one commenting: “LOL ouch!” While another said: “That’s too funny. But hey, you looked good doing it.”

Another follower called it “Instagram vs reality.”

Others were quick to check if the model was hurt.

One wrote: “I watched this over so many times, and laughed so hard but I also feel the pain… I hope your head is okay.”

Another said: “Is your head okay? @charlyjordan this is just so realistic. *Trying to be sexy af* …. 10 seconds later …. *life happens*.”

Google Photos Changes Unlimited Storage Policy On Unsupported Video Formats

Google Photos, the search engine giant’s unlimited cloud storage service, recently updated its policy on what types of videos are allowed for cloud backup. As of Dec. 6, videos in unsupported formats are no longer supported by Google Photos’ unlimited storage plan.

Google Photos was launched in 2015. It’s a service that allows users to upload and store unlimited photos and video to the cloud. Photos and videos stored in the cloud are compressed by Google, but they still retain a decent high resolution. Whatever users store in Google Photos won’t be counted as part of the storage limit of Google Drive. However, with a new policy in place, there has been a slight change to that deal, as first discovered by Android Police.

If a user attempts to upload and store a video to Google Photos that’s not officially supported by the service, it will eat up the user’s storage space on Google Drive. The only video formats supported by Google Photos are:

• .mpg 
• .mmv
• .tod
• .wmv
• .asf
• .avi
• .divx
• .mov
• .m4v
• .3gp
• .3g2
• .mp4
• .m2t
• .m2ts
• .mts
• .mkv

Fortunately, the list of supported video formats are quite common and majority of users shouldn’t be affected by the slight policy change. Smartphone cameras typically record videos in these common formats. The only video formats that are noticeably absent from the list are RAW and VOB, which are typically used for high-end cameras.

Although the change in Google Photos policy won’t affect the majority of smartphone users today, it could become an issue in the future. Android Authority pointed out that future smartphones might record videos in RAW format. If that happens, users will have to start paying for cloud storage on Google Drive instead of backing it up for free on Google Photos.

So, why did Google change its policy? The company didn’t provide an explanation why it changed its rules. Google just quietly updated its support page and didn’t make any announcement about it. Although the company issue an official explanation, it’s being speculated that it may have been to deter users from abusing the free unlimited storage of the app.

Some users might have been storing entire movies on Google Photos by disguising rips of DVDs into unrecognizable video formats. All they had to do was convert the video file on their PC, put it on their phone and then upload it to the Google Photos app. An entire movie would eat up a lot of storage space if it were uploaded onto Google Drive, which is only able to offer 15GB of free storage. If users exceed the limit, they would have to pay a monthly fee to get more storage space.

Google Photos no longer allow unsupported video formats for its unlimited storage plan. Photo: David Ramos/Getty Images)