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Cargo ship carrying thousands of luxury cars sinks after burning for weeks

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Portuguese Navy/Via Reuters The Felicity Ace is seen in this image supplied by the Portuguese navy. (Portuguese navy/Reuters)

A two-week transatlantic saga ended Tuesday with a massive ship — and thousands of luxury cars aboard — sinking about 250 miles off a Portuguese archipelago after catching fire.

Despite efforts to salvage what remained of the Felicity Ace, the ship and its nearly 4,000-vehicle cargo went down near the Azores Islands about 9 a.m. local time Tuesday, the Portuguese navy said in a statement.

“This morning, during the towing process, which had begun on Feb. 24, the ship ‘Felicity Ace’ lost stability and sank some 25 nautical miles outside of the limits of Portugal’s exclusive economic zone, in an area with a depth of about [9,842 feet],” the navy wrote in Portuguese.

The 650-foot-long vessel, operated by Japanese shipping line Mitsui O.S.K. Lines (MOL), was traveling from Germany to Rhode Island when a fire started in the ship on Feb. 16.

Authorities tried to extinguish the flames, the ship’s 22-person crew was rescued, and no injuries were reported. What initially sparked the fire remains unknown.

MOL Ship Management said in a news release Friday that “the vessel has started being towed by the large salvage craft ‘Bear’ to a safe area off Azores.” That day, the Portuguese navy said experts had arrived by helicopter.

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At the time, the ship appeared to have “no fires on the outside or inside, although there is a high temperature in the central area, with no smoke in its structure,” the navy said

The salvage crew on Tuesday faced “rough weather when the salvage team were first trying to get on board,” Pat Adamson, a spokesperson for MOL Ship Management, told The Washington Post.

“But we cannot say that the sinking was weather-related,” Adamson said.

The stranded ship had fueled concerns about the potential environmental damage to the Azores’ ecosystem, and it was unclear how its sinking may harm the area.

Set in the middle of the Atlantic, nearly 1,000 miles from another shore, the archipelago is home to coral reefs, tuna, sharks and dolphins. Its location along a number of seamounts makes it a key feeding ground for several migrating species such as blue and humpback whales, according to Oceano Azul Foundation, a Portugal-based environmental nonprofit organization.

European environmental groups and government agencies are monitoring the situation, the Portuguese navy said. The ship had been carrying about 2,200 tons of fuel and 2,200 tons of oil — along with other pollutants, such as metallic parts, plastics, electrical wires and paint.

The navy said a tugboat’s water jets were dispersing a “small patch of oily residue” in the area.

As for the luxury vehicles that plunged into the sea, car “brands are working with their dealers and customers to replace these vehicles and find individual solutions,” said Cameron Batten, chief communications officer for Volkswagen Group of America.

Nearly 4,000 Volkswagen Group cars, Batten said, were aboard the Felicity Ace — including about 1,100 Porsches and 200 Bentleys. According to an analysis by the Russell Group, a Britain-based risk management company, the estimated total value of goods on the ship was about $438 million, $400 million of which is the vehicles.

The Felicity Ace’s woes are another problem for the already-troubled global supply chain. Carmakers cut production as the coronavirus pandemic began in 2020, then the industry was hit with shortages in labor and computer chips for manufacturing. All of this taking place as freight takes longer to arrive and American ports face floating traffic jams of container ships.

Those problems show “the precariousness of global supply chains,” Suki Basi, Russell Group’s managing director, said in a news release. “The incident comes at a bad time for global carmakers who are in the middle of a supply chain crisis sourcing semiconductors, resulting in new delays for new cars.”

Angus Fitton, a spokesman for Porsche Cars North America, told The Post on Tuesday that the company is “supporting our customers as best we can,” and that new cars would be built soon.

For two weeks, Kay Murphy has watched from about 3,196 miles away in Jacksonville, Fla., as the ship carrying her Porsche burned, then sank. But a car is just a trinket, she said, in a world embroiled by a pandemic, a Russian invasion in Ukraine and other tragedies.

“My first concern was the ship’s crew,” Murphy said. “As my mother would say, ‘It’s just stuff.’ With all the craziness going on in the world today, that seems more true than ever.”

The Washington Post

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Google blocks 5.5 billion adverts, suspends 12.7 million accounts

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Google blocks 5.5 billion adverts, suspends 12.7 million accounts

Google says it has blocked over 5.5 billion adverts and suspended 12.7 million others for violating its policies.

The search engine giant also said in a statement on Wednesday that it had removed adverts from over 2.1 billion pages.

“Billions of people around the world rely on Google products to provide relevant and trustworthy information, including ads. That’s why we have thousands of people working around the clock to safeguard the digital advertising ecosystem.

“Today, we are releasing our annual Ads Safety Report to share the progress we’ve made in enforcing our advertiser and publisher policies and to hold ourselves accountable in our work of maintaining a healthy ad-supported internet,” it said.

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In 2023, it said scams and fraud across all online platforms were on the rise.

It added, “Bad actors are constantly evolving their tactics to manipulate digital advertising in order to scam people and legitimate businesses alike. To counter these ever-shifting threats, we quickly updated policies, deployed rapid-response enforcement teams and sharpened our detection techniques.”

Google blocks 5.5 billion adverts, suspends 12.7 million accounts

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Mother kills daughters, commits suicide amid in-laws’ torture for not bearing son

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Sangita Yadav

Mother kills daughters, commits suicide amid in-laws’ torture for not bearing son

Two minor girls lost their lives after their mother killed them and hanged herself to death on Tuesday, as her her in-laws tortured her mentally due to her inability to bear a son in Bhopal. Tragically, the woman and two of her daughters have succumbed to the ordeal, while her three-year-old daughter fights for her life in the hospital.

The woman, identified as Sangita Yadav, was 28 years old, her daughters Aradhya was 5 years old, and Shristi was 2. The incident occurred in Roadiya village, located 35 kilometers from Bhopal in the Gunaga police station area. The matter came to light on Tuesday afternoon. The bodies of the victims were taken to Hamidia Hospital. According to Gunaga police station in-charge Arun Sharma, initial investigations suggest that the woman committed suicide and murdered her three daughters. However, further investigation is underway to confirm the circumstances.

According to Dainik Bhaskar, the deceased woman’s brother, Neeraj Yadav, has accused the in-laws of harassing his sister. Neeraj revealed that Sangita had sent distressing messages to him at night. In one of the messages, she stated that she was feeling unwell. She mentioned that she was taking poison as nobody would survive, and everyone would die.

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“Neeraj said, “After that, I tried calling her on her mobile phone, but I didn’t get any response. I also called Sangita’s brother-in-law, but he didn’t pick up the phone twice. When he finally answered the third time, I asked him if everything was fine at home. He said yes, everything was fine. I didn’t trust him.” Then, he asked his relatives, who stayed nearby, to go and check once. Thet reached and confirmed, that the bodies of all three kept inside.

Neeraj revealed that his sister was troubled by her in-laws. Whenever she visited her maternal home, Sangita’s husband, Rajat Yadav, would threaten her, saying, ‘If you don’t come back, I will die in an accident. I will electrocute myself.’ On March 4th, there was a wedding in the family, where they drank alcohol and created a ruckus. They took his sister back with them that night. After the wedding, everyone collectively harassed her, which left her distraught, leading her to hang herself along with her daughters.

The authenticity of the suicide note is questionable. Relatives alleged that when Sangita was found hanging, there was a letter stuck to her back, presumed to be a suicide note. In it, she purportedly wrote about a lump in her stomach preventing her from bearing more children and not being able to give birth to a son for her family. However, some family members directly denied the existence of any such letter. Nevertheless, according to the present police officers, a letter has been recovered from the scene.”

Mother kills daughters, commits suicide amid in-laws’ torture for not bearing son

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‘Fake pastor’ with at least 10 wives jailed for marrying two at same time

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Orlando Coleman

‘Fake pastor’ with at least 10 wives jailed for marrying two at same time

A fake pastor who had at least 10 wives has been thrown in jail after marrying two women.

Orlando Coleman trawled black churches across the US under the guise of a travelling bishop, collecting spouses as he went. The 51-year-old would introduce himself to new congregations as a member of the clergy, and was able to dupe at least 10 different women into exchanging vows with him.

Coleman from Houston had presented himself as the founder of several churches as well as a Pentecostal preacher on social media. Despite pleading guilty to bigamy in July 2023 and being placed on probation for marrying two women simultaneously, he wedded another woman two months later.

Now, he has been put behind bars for three years for marrying multiple women since 2019.

Harris County District Attorney Kim Ogg said: “At the heart of this repeat offender’s schemes was a plan to defraud women and take advantage of them for financial gain.

“This man used the church to camouflage his scams and hide from any accountability or responsibility.”

Coleman’s web of deceit started to unravel in 2021 when he married a woman in Houston, but his new wife saw he was receiving money from another woman in Virginia.

When his then current wife contacted the woman from Virginia it was revealed that she too was married to Coleman.

Coleman’s Houston wife then contacted the Harris County Sheriff’s Office with the revelation, who in turn launched an investigation and filed bigamy charges.

In July 2023, Coleman pleaded guilty to bigamy in exchange for three years of deferred adjudication probation.

However, just two months later, while still married to the woman in Virginia, Coleman tied the knot again with another woman in Kentucky, committing another offense of bigamy.

Upon learning about Coleman’s new marriage, prosecutors from the Harris County District Attorney’s Office moved to revoke his probation. In a hearing on March 11, a judge sentenced Coleman to three years in prison.

Prosecutors say Coleman married the women for housing and financial security.

After introducing himself as a Protestant pastor or bishop, Coleman would propose marriage.

If a woman accepted, he would move in with her and allow her to foot the cost of his housing and food.

“That’s the only thing he had to offer and to validate his word – the proposal to marry – that was something big,” Assistant District Attorney Vanessa Goussen told The New York Times.

“Getting proposed to was a big gesture for these women, and that corroborated his guise that he’s a godly person.”

Some of the women filed for divorce after Coleman fled to another state.

Coleman is currently being held at the Harris County Jail.

‘Fake pastor’ with at least 10 wives jailed for marrying two at same time

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