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North London Homeowner Discovers Cannabis Farm and 10 Tonnes of Soil in Family Home

North London Homeowner Discovers Cannabis Farm and 10 Tonnes of Soil in Family Home

(CTN News) – “I turned on the lights and it’s ‘Oh my God, 3ft of soil in my bedroom’,” Charles Reeves recalls, still in shock, as he shows the BBC his home. “I’m surprised the floors are even withstanding all this stuff.”

Mr Reeves, a north London homeowner, returned from working abroad to find his family house had been converted into a cannabis farm.

The perpetrators, posing as renters, poured ten tonnes of earth on the residence, inflicting considerable damage and leaving the family devastated.

According to experts, rental scams involving cannabis farms are on the rise, with crooks allegedly leveraging the lengthy eviction procedure to finish illicit grow operations before fleeing.

As the Reeves family prepared to work abroad, they advertised their property online. An estate agent approached them after discovering they would be absent for a lengthy amount of time. The agent offered them a family of tenants who allegedly worked for a City corporation and had children.

However, the “tenants” turned out to be scammers who never paid rent and instead exploited the property for illegal purposes. It was later uncovered that the estate agent was running a fraudulent website, and the renters were phony.

The police told Mr Reeves that it was one of the worst incidents of this type of crime they had witnessed.

They seized almost 400 cannabis plants from the house, with an estimated street worth of hundreds of thousands of pounds.

Mr. Reeves went to the home after the tenants failed to pay their rent and obtained a court order to enter the premises.

He knocked on the door and was greeted by three guys, one of whom claimed the property was in fine condition. Within half an hour, these men were vanished, and we have no idea what function they had on the farm.

“I couldn’t believe what I was seeing,” Mr. Reeves recalled, recalling the moment he entered the residence. “The cannabis criminals threw ten tonnes of earth in the family bedroom.

“The entire facility had been converted into a narcotics manufacturing. There were holes in the ceiling, wires everywhere, and the odor was unbearable.”

Mr Reeves discovered a complex contraption involving fans, lights, and a ventilation system fueled by stolen electricity. The perpetrators had rewired the property’s electrical system to avoid the meter, letting them to run their large growing operation undetected.

In addition to the tonnes of soil thrown on the upper floor, the property had sustained serious structural damage. Holes had been created in the ceiling and walls to accommodate the complicated ventilation system, which was intended to adjust temperature and humidity for optimal plant development.

The sophisticated lighting equipment, which included specialized grow lamps, had been installed throughout the home. The extreme heat created by these lamps also caused property damage, as seen by burn marks and melted fixtures in various rooms.

“There was a large curtain here. “This is incredible,” Mr Reeves says. “They had fans going, the lights were going, this curtain was being pulled in.”

The family has suffered a significant emotional toll as a result of both the rental scam and the destruction to their property.

Julia Reeves, the husband’s spouse, commented: “When you’re dealing with property, particularly a home that you’re in for nearly 20 years, and raising your child in… It was pretty horrific to feel that you got attacked at the core, that inner sanctum, that place of comfort, that we’d rely on in the city, it’s our home – very emotional.”

Mr. Reeves stated, “Emotionally, it feels like my home has been defiled.” That is what it feels like. The damage, the grime, there’s dirt everywhere.

“This is the first actual home I have ever owned. “We are crushed and devastated.”

According to Metropolitan Police figures, more than 1,000 cannabis farms have been discovered in London in recent years, totaling 1,056 between 2018-19 and 2022-23. However, experts estimate that these figures represent only a small percentage of the cannabis farms now in operation.

According to Allen Morgan, one of the UK’s leading expert witnesses in criminal drug trials and a former police officer who now runs a drug consultancy service, rental fraud involving cannabis farms is on the rise.

“We’re seeing a definite uptick in these types of crimes, with criminals taking advantage of the rental market to set up illegal grow operations,” adds the researcher.

“Criminals exploit the judicial system and the eviction procedure. They understand that it can take months to evict a renter, even if they cease paying rent. During this time, they can finish numerous grows and make a substantial profit before departing without a trace.”

The absence of regulation in the rental property industry has made it simpler for scammers to operate. Despite dealing with major assets, estate agents are not required to have any qualifications. This makes homeowners exposed to scams and other illegal activity.

“If something sounds too good to be true, it probably is,” Mr Morgan cautions. “If somebody turns up offering to pay cash because they’ve been let down and they need to move in immediately, then alarm bells should start to ring.”

The cannabis trade has progressed from small-scale cultivation to sophisticated multimillion-pound businesses purportedly overseen by multinational crime syndicates. London, with its large local market and extensive transportation network, has become a drug distribution center.

“The issue that London has is obviously it is one of the main distribution hubs for controlled drugs throughout the United Kingdom,” says Mr. Morgan.

“The cannabis trade is so lucrative, what you get is when you convert a rented property, you effectively obtain five, six, maybe seven separate growing areas where you can produce cannabis plants, obviously discreetly and without any sort of evidential link to you.”

Police have claimed that the Reeves family’s situation is still being investigated, but the reality is that innocent landlords are forced to pick up the pieces of London’s expanding drug crime epidemic.

The Reeveses hope that by sharing their experience, they will raise awareness about this expanding issue and keep other homes from falling victim to similar frauds.

“We want people to be aware of the risks and to take every precaution when renting out their properties,” Mr. Reeves added. “No one should have to go through what we did.

“Not only was it the fraud, it was a destruction of our home.”

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Google’s Search Dominance Is Unwinding, But Still Accounting 48% Search Revenue

Google

Google is so closely associated with its key product that its name is a verb that signifies “search.” However, Google’s dominance in that sector is dwindling.

According to eMarketer, Google will lose control of the US search industry for the first time in decades next year.

Google will remain the dominant search player, accounting for 48% of American search advertising revenue. And, remarkably, Google is still increasing its sales in the field, despite being the dominating player in search since the early days of the George W. Bush administration. However, Amazon is growing at a quicker rate.

google

Google’s Search Dominance Is Unwinding

Amazon will hold over a quarter of US search ad dollars next year, rising to 27% by 2026, while Google will fall even more, according to eMarketer.

The Wall Street Journal was first to report on the forecast.

Lest you think you’ll have to switch to Bing or Yahoo, this isn’t the end of Google or anything really near.

Google is the fourth-most valued public firm in the world. Its market worth is $2.1 trillion, trailing just Apple, Microsoft, and the AI chip darling Nvidia. It also maintains its dominance in other industries, such as display advertisements, where it dominates alongside Facebook’s parent firm Meta, and video ads on YouTube.

To put those “other” firms in context, each is worth more than Delta Air Lines’ total market value. So, yeah, Google is not going anywhere.

Nonetheless, Google faces numerous dangers to its operations, particularly from antitrust regulators.

On Monday, a federal judge in San Francisco ruled that Google must open up its Google Play Store to competitors, dealing a significant blow to the firm in its long-running battle with Fortnite creator Epic Games. Google announced that it would appeal the verdict.

In August, a federal judge ruled that Google has an illegal monopoly on search. That verdict could lead to the dissolution of the company’s search operation. Another antitrust lawsuit filed last month accuses Google of abusing its dominance in the online advertising business.

Meanwhile, European regulators have compelled Google to follow tough new standards, which have resulted in multiple $1 billion-plus fines.

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Pixa Bay

Google’s Search Dominance Is Unwinding

On top of that, the marketplace is becoming more difficult on its own.

TikTok, the fastest-growing social network, is expanding into the search market. And Amazon has accomplished something few other digital titans have done to date: it has established a habit.

When you want to buy anything, you usually go to Amazon, not Google. Amazon then buys adverts to push companies’ products to the top of your search results, increasing sales and earning Amazon a greater portion of the revenue. According to eMarketer, it is expected to generate $27.8 billion in search revenue in the United States next year, trailing only Google’s $62.9 billion total.

And then there’s AI, the technology that (supposedly) will change everything.

Why search in stilted language for “kendall jenner why bad bunny breakup” or “police moving violation driver rights no stop sign” when you can just ask OpenAI’s ChatGPT, “What’s going on with Kendall Jenner and Bad Bunny?” in “I need help fighting a moving violation involving a stop sign that wasn’t visible.” Google is working on exactly this technology with its Gemini product, but its success is far from guaranteed, especially with Apple collaborating with OpenAI and other businesses rapidly joining the market.

A Google spokeswoman referred to a blog post from last week in which the company unveiled ads in its AI overviews (the AI-generated text that appears at the top of search results). It’s Google’s way of expressing its ability to profit on a changing marketplace while retaining its business, even as its consumers steadily transition to ask-and-answer AI and away from search.

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Google has long used a single catchphrase to defend itself against opponents who claim it is a monopoly abusing its power: competition is only a click away. Until recently, that seemed comically obtuse. Really? We are going to switch to Bing? Or Duck Duck Go? Give me a break.

But today, it feels more like reality.

Google is in no danger of disappearing. However, every highly dominating company faces some type of reckoning over time. GE, a Dow mainstay for more than a century, was broken up last year and is now a shell of its previous dominance. Sears declared bankruptcy in 2022 and is virtually out of business. US Steel, long the foundation of American manufacturing, is attempting to sell itself to a Japanese corporation.

Could we remember Google in the same way that we remember Yahoo or Ask Jeeves in decades? These next few years could be significant.

SOURCE | CNN

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2024 | Supreme Court Won’t Hear Appeal From Elon Musk’s X Platform Over Warrant In Trump Case

trump

Washington — Trump Media,  The Supreme Court announced Monday that it will not hear an appeal from social media platform X about a search warrant acquired by prosecutors in the election meddling case against former President Donald Trump.

The justices did not explain their rationale, and there were no recorded dissents.

The firm, which was known as Twitter before being purchased by billionaire Elon Musk, claims a nondisclosure order that prevented it from informing Trump about the warrant obtained by special counsel Jack Smith’s team violated its First Amendment rights.

The business also claims Trump should have had an opportunity to exercise executive privilege. If not reined in, the government may employ similar tactics to intercept additional privileged communications, their lawyers contended.

trump

Supreme Court Won’t Hear Appeal From Elon Musk’s X Platform Over Warrant In Trump Case

Two neutral electronic privacy groups also joined in, urging the high court to hear the case on First Amendment grounds.

Prosecutors, however, claim that the corporation never shown that Trump utilized the account for official purposes, therefore executive privilege is not a problem. A lower court also determined that informing Trump could have compromised the current probe.

trump

Trump utilized his Twitter account in the weeks preceding up to his supporters’ attack on the Capitol on January 6, 2021, to spread false assertions about the election, which prosecutors claim were intended to create doubt in the democratic process.

The indictment describes how Trump used his Twitter account to encourage his followers to travel to Washington on Jan. 6, pressuring Vice President Mike Pence to reject the certification, and falsely claiming that the Capitol crowd, which battered police officers and destroyed glass, was peaceful.

musk trump

Supreme Court Won’t Hear Appeal From Elon Musk’s X Platform Over Warrant In Trump Case

That case is now moving forward following the Supreme Court’s verdict in July, which granted Trump full immunity from criminal prosecution as a former president.

The warrant arrived at Twitter amid quick changes implemented by Musk, who bought the company in 2022 and has since cut off most of its workforce, including those dedicated to combating disinformation and hate speech.

He also welcomed back a vast list of previously banned users, including Trump, and endorsed him for the 2024 presidential election.

SOURCE | AP

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The Supreme Court Turns Down Biden’s Government Appeal in a Texas Emergency Abortion Matter.

Supreme Court

(VOR News) – A ruling that prohibits emergency abortions that contravene the Supreme Court law in the state of Texas, which has one of the most stringent abortion restrictions in the country, has been upheld by the Supreme Court of the United States. The United States Supreme Court upheld this decision.

The justices did not provide any specifics regarding the underlying reasons for their decision to uphold an order from a lower court that declared hospitals cannot be legally obligated to administer abortions if doing so would violate the law in the state of Texas.

Institutions are not required to perform abortions, as stipulated in the decree. The common populace did not investigate any opposing viewpoints. The decision was made just weeks before a presidential election that brought abortion to the forefront of the political agenda.

This decision follows the 2022 Supreme Court ruling that ended abortion nationwide.

In response to a request from the administration of Vice President Joe Biden to overturn the lower court’s decision, the justices expressed their disapproval.

The government contends that hospitals are obligated to perform abortions in compliance with federal legislation when the health or life of an expectant patient is in an exceedingly precarious condition.

This is the case in regions where the procedure is prohibited. The difficulty hospitals in Texas and other states are experiencing in determining whether or not routine care could be in violation of stringent state laws that prohibit abortion has resulted in an increase in the number of complaints concerning pregnant women who are experiencing medical distress being turned away from emergency rooms.

The administration cited the Supreme Court’s ruling in a case that bore a striking resemblance to the one that was presented to it in Idaho at the beginning of the year. The justices took a limited decision in that case to allow the continuation of emergency abortions without interruption while a lawsuit was still being heard.

In contrast, Texas has been a vocal proponent of the injunction’s continued enforcement. Texas has argued that its circumstances are distinct from those of Idaho, as the state does have an exemption for situations that pose a significant hazard to the health of an expectant patient.

According to the state, the discrepancy is the result of this exemption. The state of Idaho had a provision that safeguarded a woman’s life when the issue was first broached; however, it did not include protection for her health.

Certified medical practitioners are not obligated to wait until a woman’s life is in imminent peril before they are legally permitted to perform an abortion, as determined by the state supreme court.

The state of Texas highlighted this to the Supreme Court.

Nevertheless, medical professionals have criticized the Texas statute as being perilously ambiguous, and a medical board has declined to provide a list of all the disorders that are eligible for an exception. Furthermore, the statute has been criticized for its hazardous ambiguity.

For an extended period, termination of pregnancies has been a standard procedure in medical treatment for individuals who have been experiencing significant issues. It is implemented in this manner to prevent catastrophic outcomes, such as sepsis, organ failure, and other severe scenarios.

Nevertheless, medical professionals and hospitals in Texas and other states with strict abortion laws have noted that it is uncertain whether or not these terminations could be in violation of abortion prohibitions that include the possibility of a prison sentence. This is the case in regions where abortion prohibitions are exceedingly restrictive.

Following the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, which resulted in restrictions on the rights of women to have abortions in several Republican-ruled states, the Texas case was revisited in 2022.

As per the orders that were disclosed by the administration of Vice President Joe Biden, hospitals are still required to provide abortions in cases that are classified as dire emergency.

As stipulated in a piece of health care legislation, the majority of hospitals are obligated to provide medical assistance to patients who are experiencing medical distress. This is in accordance with the law.

The state of Texas maintained that hospitals should not be obligated to provide abortions throughout the litigation, as doing so would violate the state’s constitutional prohibition on abortions. In its January judgment, the 5th United States Circuit Court of Appeals concurred with the state and acknowledged that the administration had exceeded its authority.

SOURCE: AP

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Could Last-Minute Surprises Derail Kamala Harris’ Campaign? “Nostradamus” Explains the US Poll.

Scientists Awarded MicroRNA The Nobel Prize in Medicine.

US Inflation will Comfort a Fed Focused on Labor Markets.

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