A farmer from Swansea, Wales, was left shocked after discovering dozens of bin bags filled with cannabis plants dumped on his land. Rob Morgan found around 80 bags containing more than 120 mature plants at his Christmas tree farm. Police say the waste appears linked to a large-scale cannabis operation, with an investigation now underway. Source link
It’s illegal to harm or kill the birds, which are a federally protected species. Source link
Virginia Commonwealth University will spend $3.6 million on a memorial for dozens of people, most of African descent, whose bodies were stolen from their graves, dissected by medical students and then dumped in a forgotten well. The Richmond school’s board of visitors voted Friday to fund what VCU calls the East Marshall Street Well Project, an effort to right wrongs committed more than a century ago. Construction of the memorial and burial site are expected to start in summer of 2027. “Years ago, VCU initiated this journey because we recognized a profound obligation to restore the human dignity of the people who were not afforded respect in their physical existence,” VCU President Michael Rao said in a story about the effort posted on the school’s website. “The East Marshall Street Well Project’s sacred mission is to ensure every life is honored with the permanence and reverence they deserve.” The circular memorial will feature a “unity chamber” inspired by the Toguna structures of Dogon culture in West Africa. Its design “is intended to encourage humility and …
A former London gang leader who was described as a “dangerous” criminal and nicknamed “The General” was rehomed in Newport to force him to cut ties with his previous life but he still can’t stay out of trouble. Joland Giwa, 36, was caught with around £17,000 worth of drugs at a property where he was living in Risca near Newport, a sentencing hearing at Cardiff Crown Court heard on Friday. The former gang leader once led an 80-strong south London gang who led a campaign of terror for several years in Croydon. In 2017 the gang was behind a surge in violence on the streets of Croydon which saw stabbings, shootings and murder. A London judge said there was a “significant risk” of him reoffending and the decision was made to send him to south Wales and cut him from his criminal convictions in London. The late MP for Newport West, Paul Flynn, said there was “deep outrage and anger” about him being “dumped” on the area. At the time he wrote to then Home …
A drugs courier who dumped nearly £1m worth of cocaine during a high-speed police chase has been ordered to pay back more than £46,000 of ill-got gains. William Paterson, 37, was jailed for five years and four months in 2024 after pleading guilty to being concerned in the supply of the class A drug, aggravated by a connection with serious organised crime. On Monday, the High Court in Edinburgh ordered him to pay back £46,370 under the Proceeds of Crime Act as it recorded the benefit of his criminal conduct as £205,000. The Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service (COPFS) said the confiscation order can be revisited if further assets belonging to Paterson are identified in the future to repay the full amount. The personal trainer, from Glasgow, was snared as part of Operation Windstriker, which focused on an organised crime group based in the west of Scotland. Police spotted Paterson collecting a black plastic box from another man in the Springboig area of Glasgow in March 2023 and placing it in the boot of …
Get the latest entertainment news, reviews and star-studded interviews with our Independent Culture email Get the latest entertainment news with our free Culture newsletter Get the latest entertainment news with our free Culture newsletter Jill Zarin, the former Real Housewives of New York City star who was slated to appear in a new spin-off series on E!, has been axed due to her controversial comments about Bad Bunny’s Super Bowl Halftime Show. Zarin, 62, ignited backlash after posting a since-deleted rant in which she decried the Puerto Rican rapper’s show and claimed “there were literally no white people in the entire thing.” Her comments came just days after E! had announced a new series, The Golden Life, starring Zarin and her former Real Housewives castmates Kelly Bensimon, Luann de Lesseps, Ramona Singer and Sonja Morgan. Producer blink49studios then released a statement saying the show would move forward without Zarin “in light of recent public comments.” Now, Zarin has claimed in a statement to InTouch that the producers “didn’t even give me a chance.” “I took …
Stay ahead of the curve with our weekly guide to the latest trends, fashion, relationships and more Stay ahead of the curve with our weekly guide to the latest trends, fashion, relationships and more Stay ahead of the curve with our weekly guide to the latest trends, fashion, relationships and more If there was ever a kind way to dump someone, it probably isn’t choosing to do it mere moments away from Valentine’s Day. And yet, today is Red Tuesday, the single most popular day of the year to get dumped. At least, that’s according to new research conducted by Illicit Encounters, the UK’s largest extramarital dating website. A survey of 1,500 members of the website revealed that more than one-third (34 per cent) had ended a relationship in the lead-up to Valentine’s Day. Of those, nearly half (49 per cent) said they had purposely chosen to conduct the breakup on Red Tuesday, aka the Tuesday before Valentine’s Day. As for why, money was one of the biggest motivators, with 41 per cent saying they …
Two men have been arrested in connection to the illegal dumping of thousands of tonnes of rubbish in Oxfordshire. Police officers working with the Environmental Agency (EA) arrested a 69-year-old in Andover and a 54-year-old in Slough on Thursday as part of an investigation into large-scale fly-tipping near Kidlington. The men have been arrested on environmental and money laundering offences, the EA said. Both men have since been released on conditional bail. Image: Two more men have been arrested in connection to the illegal dumping near Kidlington. Pic: PA The arrests follow an investigation into the dumping of a mountain of waste on a site between the River Cherwell and the A34, a busy road running through Oxford and Birmingham. Officers from the South East Regional Organised Crime Unit executed the warrants, working with police from the Thames Valley Police, Hampshire and Isle of Wight Constabulary and Surrey Police. Image: One of the arrests carried out on Thursday in connection with illegal waste dumping in Kidlington, Oxfordshire. Pic: EA Emma Viner, enforcement and investigations manager …
Owen Franken/Corbis Documentary via Getty Images Follow ZDNET: Add us as a preferred source on Google. ZDNET’s key takeaways France is dropping US videoconferencing services in favor of its own open-source program. Visio is being deployed now and will replace other services by 2027. Visio is part of a much larger EU move to digital sovereignty. It’s not about the French government not trusting US tech companies… Sorry, actually, it is. It’s all about France not trusting American companies with its data or services. As David Amiel, France’s minister-delegate for the civil service and state reform, put it: France is committed “to regaining our digital independence. We cannot risk having our scientific exchanges, our sensitive data, and our strategic innovations exposed to non-European actors.” Also: Europe’s plan to ditch US tech giants is built on open source – and it’s gaining steam So, France is pushing US tech giants out of the French government. They’re moving civil servants off Microsoft Teams and Zoom and onto a homegrown videoconferencing platform called Visio — all in the name …
At this point, it’s useful to examine what precisely Kennedy said about the incident in his August 2024 video, in which he is speaking with, for some reason, Roseanne Barr. “I was taking a group of people falconing up in Goshen, New York up in the Hudson Valley,” Kennedy says. (Goshen is in Orange County, NY, home to a bear population that Hynes theorized the cub may have belonged to.) “And then a woman in a van in front of me hit a bear and killed it.” Kennedy claims that he put the bear in his van with a plan to “skin the bear” and “put the meat in my refrigerator” because she was in “very good condition.” “And you can do that in New York State, you can get a bear tag for a roadkill bear,” Kennedy adds. He and his friends had a wonderful time falconing, Kennedy says, and the day grew late. Eventually, he found himself running behind for a trip “right back to the city” for dinner at Peter Luger Steak …
