Akwesasne, a Mohawk reservation located in northern New York, is one of the busiest locations in the smuggling of cigarettes between the United States and Canada.

From the Associated Press:

A bit smaller than the Bronx, the reservation straddles New York state, Quebec and Ontario and is sliced by the St. Lawrence River. Border crossers here pass through land controlled by four distinct governments: New York state, U.S.-side Mohawks, Canadian-side Mohawks and Ontario. This geopolitical complexity has helped make Akwesasne a go-to gateway for smugglers at least since Prohibition.

As previously reported, the black market cigarettes in Canada are generally “no-name cigarettes” that are produced without any labels or brand names. These cigarettes are then trucked north to be sold to customers.

Sneaking the goods into Canada is a cat-and-mouse game. Smugglers zip across the river at night in low-profile duck boats with no lights to the Ontario portion of the reservation, which is an island. Then they can take a bridge to Cornwall, Ontario. Or they can boat a dozen miles down-river to any number of coves or marinas on the Canadian shore. In winter, they can drive trucks or snowmobiles over the ice.

Once in mainland Canada, it’s an easy drive to Montreal, Ottawa or Toronto. The contraband cigarettes, often sold at “smoke shacks” on Indian land in Canada, look like any other, except without labels or boxes. They are packed parallel in clear plastic resealable bags.

From National Geographic:

Armed with only tractors and farm tools, Chinese peasants recently attacked police who had come to seize dinosaur bones the farmers had found.

The clash called attention to the rise of a new type of dinosaur hunter in China’s fossil-rich countryside: the “peasant paleontologist.”

The rebellion also set in motion the first court test of a 2006 Chinese law banning “unauthorized” excavation, possession, sale, and export of dinosaur fossils. Offenders are subject to lengthy prison terms or, in serious cases, the death penalty.

The seven defendants—peasants from Shaping village in central Henan Province—are accused of forcibly resisting government orders to hand over a cache of hundred-million-year-old dinosaur bones they discovered.

The US city of Atlanta, Georgia is emerging as a central hub in the child prostitution industry, according to Reuters.

More than 300,000 children are being sexually exploited in the United States, according to a study by the University of Pennsylvania.

Many of them end up in Atlanta, which authorities say has become a hub for prostitution in part because its busy airport makes it a destination for men seeking sex.

Where in the past pimps advertised the girls who worked for them on the walls of men’s rest rooms or on street corners, these days they use online bulletin boards like craigslist (http://www.craigslist.org/).

Customers set up liaisons after seeing girls on the sites, and then pay the girl or the pimp directly on the street, according to the Atlanta Police Vice Department.

Reuters is reporting that major recording company EMI is considering cutting its funding to industry associations such as the RIAA and the IFPI.

British music industry major EMI wants to cut its funding to the industry’s trade bodies, a source familiar with the situation told Reuters on Wednesday, which could deal a blow to the fight against music piracy.

The source said EMI, which was recently taken over by private equity group Terra Firma, was looking at ways to “substantially” reduce the amount it pays trade groups.

The groups, the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI), the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) and other national associations, represent music companies and the fight against illegal piracy.

According to the article, the trade groups receive a total of $131 Million from the 4 major recording companies.

Music Piracy is listed on the Havocscope Contraband Index at $4.5 Billion.

Jeffrey Sheban of the Columbus Dispatch has written an article on the role of Thailand in the global trade in Counterfeit Goods.

Experts consider Thailand, a country of 65 million, to be the primary staging point for counterfeit goods produced in China, where up to 90 percent of the world’s knockoffs are made. Organized gangs with financial ties to Hong Kong and Taiwan are behind much of Asia’s trade in fakes.

Before communist China opened its borders to extensive trade with the outside world, Thailand was a regional center in the production of counterfeit goods, especially clothing. But counterfeiters are subject to the same market forces that draw legitimate manufacturers to China — low wages, a huge work force and undervalued currency.

With a central location and modern ports and airports, Thailand remains an ideal transit hub for black-market goods. It also helps that Thailand shares borders with countries that don’t place a premium on intellectual property rights: Cambodia, Laos, Malaysia and Myanmar, formerly Burma.

Havocscope is listing Thailand’s Counterfeit Market at $805.7 Million.

The Associated Press has reported that 90 percent of the $13 million in settlements recovered by the Business Software Alliance are small businesses.

An analysis by The Associated Press reveals that targeting small businesses is lucrative for the Business Software Alliance, the main copyright-enforcement watchdog for such companies as Microsoft Corp., Adobe Systems Inc. and Symantec Corp.

Of the $13 million that the BSA reaped in software violation settlements with North American companies last year, almost 90 percent came from small businesses, the AP found.

Targeting small business has caused some in the software feild to question the tactics by the BSA.

The BSA is well within its rights to wring expensive punishments aimed at stopping the willful software copying that undoubtedly happens in many businesses. And its leaders say they concentrate on small businesses because that’s where illegitimate use of software is rampant.

But software experts say the picture has more shades of gray. Companies of all sizes inadvertently break licensing rules because of problems the software industry itself has created. Unable or unwilling to create technological blocks against copying, the industry has saddled its customers with complex licensing agreements that are hard to master.

In that view, the BSA amasses most of its bounties from small businesses because they have fewer technological, organizational and legal resources to avoid a run-in.

Software piracy is listed at $39 Billion, and ranked No.4 on the Havocscope Counterfeit Index.

France has just announced a new policy of cutting of Internet access for users who do not stop downloading pirated movies and music off of the Internet.

From the BBC:

French web users caught pirating movies or music could soon be thrown offline.

Those illegally sharing files will face the loss of their net access thanks to a newly-created anti-piracy body granted the wide-ranging powers.

According to the report, Internet providers will be monitoring what their users are doing and report their findings to the new anti-piracy body.

Net firms will monitor what their customers are doing and pass on information about persistent pirates to the new independent body. Those identified will get a warning and then be threatened with either being cut off or suspended if they do not stop illegal file-sharing.

The agreement between net firms, record companies, film-makers and government was drawn up by a special committee created to look at the problem of the net and cultural protection.

The anti-piracy body comes out of a deal agreed by France’s music and movie makers and its net firms.

France is listed as losing $$7.8 Billion to counterfeiting and piracy.

The Times reports on the corruption and drug trafficking situation in Afghanistan.

The lawmen say they categorise Afghanistan’s 34 provinces as A, B or C states. ‘A’ denotes those with the highest potential profits for drug-running; ‘C’ states are the least remunerative. The bribes to buy a position in an A-grade province can be vast, up to $300,000. The rewards are even bigger. One border police commander in eastern Afghanistan was estimated by counter-narcotic officials to take home $400,000 a month from heroin smuggling.

This summer a border police vehicle was stopped outside Kabul and found to have 123.5kg of heroin, with a value of nearly $300,000, bagged in the back. The five men inside, an officer, three policemen and a secretary, were under the command of Haji Zahir, formerly Border Police commander of Nangarhar province. Haji Zahir was questioned and removed from his post. He was never charged.

Even the lowlier posts in provinces free of poppy traffic have a price. “To buy a position as a detective in any province you pay $10,000,” explained one police colonel, now on indefinite leave because he refused to pay a bribe. “Then you pay your superior a cut of the money you make through bribes or trafficking.”

Afghanistan is listed with a  Global Drug Trade value of $3.1 Billion.

The Los Angeles Times reported this weekend on a robbery that occurred in the Los Angeles region.

The puppies in the window looked secure enough. The pricey pooches were protected by metal bars, two locked doors, alarm sensors and video surveillance cameras.

But for the second time in about two weeks, a pet dealer reported that a thief had squeezed into his Puppy Love pet store in La Mirada early Friday morning and snatched nearly a dozen Yorkshire terriers, Schnauzers and other dogs worth an estimated $15,000.

The possible cause for these robberies?

There has been a string of pet shop thefts in the Los Angeles area. Authorities say a booming black market in pedigreed canines is to blame, and that some animals are even smuggled into Mexico for sale at a steep mark-up.

Sales of the dogs are arraigned through the same manner as other contraband products: through the Internet or communications through disposable cellphones.

In rare cases, purebred puppies have been stolen by force. Earlier this year, four purebred Yorkshire terriers were stolen from a Koreatown home at gunpoint. The puppies had been advertised for sale in a newspaper.

Some stolen puppies have been sold on flashy websites. But in many cases, the black market for these dogs is decidedly low-tech. Authorities say thieves will sell them for cash in parking lots, using disposable cellphones to go undetected.

Puppies that cannot be sold might get dumped, because shelters require a fee and ask questions.

The Economist has an article highlighting the various methods currency traders are using to evade controls placed on the yuan in China.

SINCE a police raid on her firm was broadcast on Chinese state television, To Ling has emerged as one of China’s more intriguing financiers. The 43-year-old Hong Kong resident operated a black-market foreign-exchange business with an outlet in Hong Kong, four branches on the mainland, and a client list that included China National Petroleum and Sinopec, two state-run monoliths. Her firm handled transactions worth more than $1m a day. Now she has landed in jail.

The crackdown on her operations in mid-November has exposed how hard it has become for the Chinese authorities to keep a tight rein on capital flows. Chinese citizens, with well honed trading instincts, have spotted a glaring arbitrage opportunity: subsidised petrol on one side of the border that Hong Kong residents want to get their hands upon, and cheap shares in Hong Kong, compared with their mainland counterparts, that Chinese investors want to buy. Officially, both are off limits to the other. That is where Ms To stepped in, providing the currencies both communities needed to do deals.