Imagine playing poker with X-ray vision, knowing what cards the other players are holding before theyre laid on the table.

Youd be setting yourself up for quite the windfall.

Wouldnt you like the same power when it comes to the larger pots life brings you, like buying a home?

This is where Unreserved is going all in, by changing the real estate model to the benefit of those buying, as well as those selling, their home. Unreserved is an online auction platform allowing buyers to see up-to-the-minute, real-time bids guaranteeing market value or more for the seller. For the first time in the real estate market, Unreserved is giving complete control to the home buyer and seller.

How many home buyers in the past have raised their bid by thousands of dollars, just because they werent sure how high the counter-bids were?

The CEO of Unreserved, Ryan OConnor, has effectively created a way to see your opponents bid on the same property.

Not even your realtor will know for certain what the competing offers are. Unreserved takes the guess work out of it and provides valuable data in real-time, to eliminate blind bidding, so you stay in control of how much to offer, and when.

But there is more to buying a house than just knowing how much to bid.

Todays real estate market moves so quickly that most buyers get caught up in the emotions of wanting a property at all costs. With so many listings being sold in 24 hours, it gives buyers little time to decide how much to bid and, in most cases, forces buyers to waive a home inspection.

Unreserved has an answer to that, with a two-week viewing period allowing potential buyers the time to decide on whether they are truly interested in the home, allowing them to move forward with confidence instead of buying on emotion.

Interested buyers can book a private showing through their agent or independently if they decide not to use an agent, and can follow it up with their own home inspection, if they so choose.

However, Unreserved goes one step further, conducting its own home inspection before the house is even listed.

Zach, 25, a recent home buyer, dealt with the frustration of houses selling the same day theyre listed, before he and his fianc could even view the property.

We had to waive the inspection if we wanted the house. I wish we knew of Unreserved. It would have been a different story.

Leave it to Unreserved to take the unknown out of the equation, leaving more money in your pocket.

Unless you like to gamble, of course.

Read more here:

Taking the 'gamble' out of buying a home - Ottawa Business Journal

The tanks rolled into Trostianets, a sleepy town 20 miles from the Russia-Ukraine border, in the first hours of the invasion. Russian troops fanned out across the town, occupying a number of buildings: the forestry agency headquarters, the railway station and a chocolate factory.

Their top general set up his office in room 23 at the local administration building, where the councils accountants used to sit. His bottle of single malt is still on the desk, the butts of his slim cigarettes perched on the edge of an ashtray. He slept on a single bed stolen from a nearby hotel.

His men lived one floor below. They appear to have slept, eaten and defecated in the same rooms, and some of them may have died there too, judging by the bloodied Russian uniforms littering the floor.

Thirty days after they arrived, amid a fierce Ukrainian counteroffensive, the Russians left Trostianets in a convoy of tanks, other armour, trucks full of loot and numerous stolen vehicles they had daubed with Z signs, the symbol of their invading force.

The carnage they left behind will be remembered by the residents of this quaint, historical spa town of 20,000 residents for the rest of their lives, and is yet another indictment of the results of Russias unwanted liberation mission in Ukraine.

In the square outside the train station, there is now a grim panorama of several mangled tanks, the whitened carcass of a self-propelled howitzer and a shot-up yellow bus with blood smeared on the seats. Hundreds of green ammunition boxes and casings remain, evidence of the shells and Grad missiles the Russians fired from Trostianets into neighbouring towns. Surviving buildings have been daubed with pro-Russian slogans, and crude insults about the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy.

On a two-day visit to the town, the Guardian found evidence of summary executions, torture and systematic looting during the month of occupation, but it will a take a long time to catalogue all the crimes the Russians committed in places like Trostianets.

For now, the long and difficult clean-up is under way. Ukrainian sappers have removed mines and tripwires from the cemetery, the train station and even the chocolate museum, housed in an elegant villa where the composer Pyotr Tchaikovsky once stayed. Electricity returned for the first time in weeks on Sunday. The first passenger train since the invasion arrived at the wrecked station on Monday. But the streets are still littered with the twisted remains of Russian armoured vehicles, and there is nothing to buy because everything has been looted.

Over the weekend, residents wheeled bicycles to the points across town where parcels of food aid were available: cartons of eggs, jars of pickled cucumbers and plastic bags bulging with potatoes, sent by volunteer groups in other parts of Ukraine. In the orderly but irritable queue to receive them, people embraced acquaintances who they were happy to see still alive, and swapped horror stories from the past month.

Spotting a journalist, ever more people joined in, shouting over each other. They smashed my place up. They stole everything, even my underwear. They killed a guy on my street. The fuckers stole my laptop and my aftershave. A symphony of stories, some of them personal, some of them second-hand, all of them awful.

This is a place where a decade ago, people had mostly good things to say about Russia, which is just a short drive away and where many people have friends and family. Now they competed to heap insults on the neighbours that had brought misery upon them. Barbarians! Pigs! Bastards!

Yuriy Bova, the mayor of Trostianets, said it was too early to give a reliable estimate of how many civilians the Russians had killed. It was definitely more than 50, but probably not hundreds, he said.

Bova now struts about town in fatigues, a pistol tucked into the front of his body armour. At the time of the invasion, however, he cut a very different figure.

The idea of a Russian invasion had seemed fanciful to him, he admitted. Nonetheless, as the crescendo of US intelligence warnings continued, he called a meeting of those who would like to join a territorial defence force.

About 100 people turned up. There are no military installations in Trostianets, and between them, they had a few hunting rifles, a couple of pistols and a few policemen with Kalashnikovs. They agreed to ask Kyiv for weapons.

But it was already too late. Three nights later, the invasion began. By breakfast time, a huge column of Russian armour was already on the outskirts of the town. Bova sent a group of foresters to cut down trees along the entrance road, which won them a few hours, and in mid-morning he called another meeting of the territorial defence unit.

Trying to fight against tanks with a few rifles would have meant certain death, so I took the decision that we would become partisans, said Bova. People had a few minutes to decide whether they would stay or go. The mayor and his deputies left town, retreating to neighbouring villages.

When Ukrainian forces blew up a bridge to the south of Trostianets, it stalled Russias advance plans, and the town became a hub of Russian servicemen and armour.

Local residents retreated to their basements and waited to see what would happen. Some of the first interactions with the occupiers were relatively painless, residents reported.

We were scared of them, but after a while we started pitying them. They had dirty faces, they stank and they looked completely lost, said Yana Lugovets, who spent a month sleeping in the basement with her husband, daughter and friends.

She said a soldier who had come to search the house where they were staying left without completing the task, his eyes filled with shame as her daughter cried out in fear at the intruder.

Daria Sasina, 26, who ran a beauty salon near the train station, said when she went to check on it and found seven Russian soldiers had broken in and were sleeping there, they were initially apologetic.

I started crying, I was in hysterics. There was a young soldier, and he calmed me down. He said: Listen, Im sorry. We didnt know it would be like this.

Many people recalled similar polite exchanges, or flickers of shame in the eyes of the intruders, but any interaction with the occupiers involved enduring a game of Russian roulette. A few days later, when Sasina, her husband and father went on a risky mission across town to deliver bread to a 96-year-old great aunt, a group of Russian soldiers sprang onto the street behind them and pointed their weapons at them.

There were 20 of them, and they started shouting: Run, bitches! We ran through the mud as fast as we could, our legs were freezing and soaked and we were terrified. They started shooting in the air. We could hear them laughing, they thought it was hilarious.

When Sasina went back to check on her small salon the day after the Russians had left, she found they had stolen thousands of dollars worth of expensive hair dyes, shampoos and nail polishes, the hairdryers, all the cutting equipment, a sofa, all the chairs, several lightbulbs and the art on the walls. An air conditioning unit was left dangling down from the wall, its cables having proved stronger than the desire to steal it.

In return, the Russians had left clumps of their own shaved hair on the floor, and piles of faeces in the neighbouring grocery shop. Somewhere in Russia, the wives and girlfriends of soldiers will presumably soon receive gifts of high-end beauty products. For Sasina, she does not know how she will afford to rebuild her salon.

Everything I worked to build has been destroyed, she said.

The mayor has been criticised by some for his decision to flee, but Bova insists it was the only sensible option. Flicking through photographs on his phone from the occupation days, he showed how people had sent him information about Russian deployments, including from one brave local who managed to fly a drone over their positions.

People told us where theyre sleeping, where theyre eating, where their hardware is, said Bova.

As the Ukrainian army called in strikes on the Russian positions, the Russians became more and more angry.

An expletive-laden audio recording released by the Ukrainian security services purportedly shows a Russian general ordering a missile strike on civilian targets after receiving incoming fire from a nearby village. Wipe the whole place from the Earth from the eastern side to the west, he says.

As they came under fire more frequently, the Russians cut mobile reception in the town, and went house to house, demanding to examine peoples telephones for compromising information. A handwritten note found amid the mess of the soldiers quarters in the train station lists the names of possible enemies to hunt down, with extremely vague identifiers, such as drives a white off-road vehicle.

In Bilka, a quiet, windswept hamlet just outside Trostianets, where the Russians based more than 200 vehicles, at least two people were executed. Alexander Kulybaba, a pig farmer who protested against the takeover of his barn, was shot on the spot on 2 March, the day the Russians arrived in the village.

Mykola Savchenko, a kindly electrician with a handlebar moustache, who together with his wife, Ludmyla, had six foster children, went out on the first morning to find somewhere to charge his and his wifes mobile phones because the electricity was already down.

Im just popping out for five minutes, he told her. He never came back.

Ludmyla stood outside her home weeping on Monday, holding a stamped death report from the police that explained in neat handwriting that her husband had been brutally tortured and then killed with a shot to the heart and one to the head. An inspection found broken bones in his fingers and arms.

I didnt say anything to the children, because they are small and they still dont understand everything. Every day they waited for their dad to come home, but he never did. Yesterday, I said to them: Sit down, I will explain everything, she said.

The youngest of her six children is four, the eldest 11. They stood alongside her, lined up like nesting dolls, silent and confused.

Ludmyla insisted her husband had not been active in the resistance to the Russians, but many locals were. On a nearby street, a farmer explained how he hid his smartphone in the dirt inside the pig enclosure, and carried round an old brick phone as a decoy to show to Russian soldiers if asked. Then, in the darkness of night, he would dig up his real phone, scurry to the one spot where he knew there was still reception, and send the new locations of Russian hardware to a relative in the Ukrainian army.

Then they sent in the Bayraktars and fucked them up, he said with a cackle, referring to the Turkish-made drones that Ukraine has used with deadly effect against Russian columns. The Russians are dogs, they are subhumans, they are locusts, he said.

The boiling fury felt towards the Russians in villages such as Bilka, where people speak a mishmash of Ukrainian and Russian and previously felt far removed from geopolitical concerns, will be a lasting consequence of Vladimir Putins grim decision to invade.

Along with the anger, there is confusion and disappointment about the attitudes of ordinary Russians. Nadezhda Bakran, 73, a nurse in the local hospital, cowered in the hospitals basement together with her patients, as a Russian tank took potshots at the building, which is now empty and wrecked. Her nearby apartment block has also been reduced to a skeleton, with all the windows blown out and serious structural damage.

But when she called her best friend in Moscow, with whom she has been on holiday almost every year since they met in Crimea 43 years ago, she heard only sceptical derision and accusations.

I tried to explain it to her, but she doesnt believe me. She believes her television. I said: Your people are destroying my town. She said: You caused this war yourself We were friends, what we had was even closer than just friendship, and she doesnt believe me. I dont understand.

For many, this sense of betrayal from their friends and family has hit almost as hard as the material losses.

Sasina, the beauty-salon owner, listed the losses her family had taken from a month of Russian occupation: her house was destroyed, her beauty salon looted, her mothers toy shop also looted, her friends car stolen, daubed with Zs and then smashed up. Her brother now walks on crutches after his car was shot at on the first day at a checkpoint and a bullet lodged in his lower back. Russian soldiers even shot her grandmothers cat during a house inspection, she said.

When Sasina called her aunt, who lives outside Moscow and had visited her in Trostianets most summers, to inform her of the horrors unfolding, her aunt told her she was talking nonsense. She said its not possible, she said probably the soldiers are Ukrainians dressed up as Russians. She has stopped speaking to me now, Sasina said, shaking her head in disbelief.

The Russian soldiers who made it out of Trostianets alive may never speak about the anger they witnessed and the carnage they caused, as they return to a country where their operation in Ukraine has been referred to by state propaganda as a heroic mission to save their neighbour from the clutches of radicals and neo-Nazis.

Russian television viewers may never see the ugly truth of the cost of their armys unwanted intervention, although many Russian families will now be mourning lost sons and brothers. The yellowed bodies of three Russian soldiers lie unclaimed and unrefrigerated in the Trostianets hospital morgue. A Ukrainian soldier involved in retaking the town estimated that up to 300 may have died here.

In the basement of the train station, weak torchlight reveals an improvised field hospital where the Russians treated their wounded. Silver padding had been placed over two desks to create makeshift operating tables. The floor was littered with tablets and other medical supplies. A medical drip remained, fastened to a coat stand.

On the wall in the corridor outside was perhaps the most jarring sight in all Trostianets. Childrens drawings brought from Russia were taped to the wall, gifts from schoolchildren in honour of Army Day, the day before Russias invasion. The cards were decorated with pretty, colourful flowers and messages of support written in spidery youthful handwriting.

One was signed by Sasha P, first grade, and came with drawings in crayon and a printed message.

It read: Thank you, soldier, for making sure I live under a peaceful sky.

Excerpt from:

'Barbarians': Russian troops leave grisly mark on town of Trostianets - The Guardian

The pandemic accelerated widespread digitization in almost every industry. Moving from hard copy to digital documentation influences many business and legal processes, including the way authorities around the world conduct dawn raids. This is an unannounced inspection by regulatory or criminal investigatory authorities into matters such as antitrust law, financial markets regulation, data protection, and financial crime. They typically occur in the morning and have generally been carried out onsite. However, the rise in remote work has altered investigatory approaches and there has been a notable increase in hybrid raids. Teams can simultaneously raid physical offices and private residences to ensure they collect data on remote worker devices sometimes in multiple countries.

Although dawn raids are not frequent, they occur without warning and can put an organization at significant risk for noncompliance if not prepared. It is important to know who can conduct dawn raids and how investigations are shifting with the remote work culture. This knowledge better positions organizations to proactively create plans limiting risk.

The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) Antitrust Division has the power to investigate anti-competitive behaviors in both civil and criminal contexts. Dawn raids occur more often in the U.S. for matters involving suspected criminal antitrust violations, such as collusion. DOJ officers, FBI agents, and local law enforcement can enter the premises (offices and local residences) to investigate after obtaining a search warrant.

Hybrid dawn raids are also ramping up in other locations around the world. For example, last year the European Commission announced a wave of post-pandemic dawn raids. The Commission has statutory powers to investigate anti-competitive practices affecting trade between EU member states such as restrictive agreements and abuse of dominance.

Penalties can include fines and imprisonment for criminal matters. Organizations can also receive fines for noncompliance with procedural mandates such as failure to turn over requested documentation or concealing evidence.

If organizations handle a dawn raid incorrectly, significant liability may result. The trend of increased hybrid raids can be daunting, as many do not have a solid plan that accounts for custodians working remotely. To reduce the shock factor and keep compliant, it is crucial to be prepared and leverage partnerships that will limit exposure and foster preparedness.

Here are four ways to enhance dawn raid preparedness:

Understanding risk factors: Knowledge of the type of data an organization maintains will uncover which information is at risk and the regulatory bodies that would control potential investigations. Certain business activities increase dawn raid vulnerability, such as communications between organizations that could appear as collusion or collecting sensitive consumer information invoking data protection legislation. A proactive risk assessment allows for earlier custodian identification, notification, and training opportunities.

Mapping data: Many organizations already utilize data mapping as an information governance tool. After determining that an organization could be subject to a dawn raid, specific mapping for high-risk data will aid with investigatory compliance. Mapping should entail identifying, understanding, and plotting what information an organization has, how the data flows through the organization, who has physical or remote access to the data, and where the information is stored. Mapping can also uncover improper data handling by remote workers that organizations need to address. Establishing control and accessibility allows for easier retrieval and assessment of privilege during a sudden investigation.

Forming response teams: The core team should include onsite reception, IT staff, legal counsel, management, human resources, and any outside partner overseeing forensic collection or compliance efforts. Also account for key custodians who could be subject to at-home investigations. Provide proper notice and training on what can happen during a raid including an active search of the premises, interviews, inquiries about storage locations for relevant documents, and seizure of evidence for review off-premises. Regarding electronic data, investigators can seal off premises to prevent interference with data sources, request passwords, copy drives, remove devices, and more.

Second, anticipate challenges that could arise and confirm what constitutes acceptable behavior. Some actions to avoid during a raid include hostile reception, evidence destruction or concealment, providing false or misleading information, and access obstruction. Absence of a plan could also lead to leakage of privileged information, so make sure the team has knowledge of what they can withhold.

Performing readiness assessments and mock exercises: Evaluating and testing policies and procedures will identify gaps. Consider partnering with a provider with experienced experts offering a combination of regulatory knowledge and forensic IT skills to guide assessments. Having an initial workshop can be beneficial to discuss procedures, common challenges, overcoming obstacles, and best practices for dawn raid preparedness. This also provides opportunities to voice anticipated concerns and uncover rick factors.

A readiness assessment can be a valuable tool to create a risk matrix, map data, establish a tailored response framework accounting for hybrid inspections, and determine whether to hold a mock dawn raid. All of this will strengthen the foundation of an organizations dawn raid readiness program. Providers can also work in tandem with the team to improve programs and implement best practices leading up to and during a raid. This includes:

These are just a few key components of a robust dawn raid readiness program. Regular assessments and audits will highlight specific processes that reduce exposure and streamline compliance in the event of a dawn raid, while also accounting for the likelihood of hybrid raids based on the organizations remote work policies.

[View source.]

Go here to see the original:

The Changing Landscape of Dawn Raids: Preparing for Hybrid Inspections - JD Supra