The Software and Information Industry Association (SIIA) has a list of the top ten pirated software by corporations and other organizations in 2007.

From the SIIA Anti-Piracy 2007 Year in Review:

1.  Symantec Norton Anti-Virus

2.  Adobe Acrobat

3.  Symantec PC Anywhere

4.  Adobe Photoshop

5.  Autodesk AutoCAD

6.  Adobe DreamWeaver

7.  Roxio Easy CD/DVD Creator

8.  Roxio Toast Titanium

9.  Ipswitch WS_FTP

10.  Nero Ultra Edition

Read the entire report here.

Software Piracy is a $39.5 billion market.

United States Immigration Officials announced the breakup of a human smuggling ring that brought more than 100 people to the Los Angeles area every week.

From Reuters:

U.S. immigration officials said on Thursday they had dismantled a Guatemalan human smuggling ring that brought more than 100 illegal immigrants a week into the Los Angeles area.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) said 13 people, including two of the suspected ringleaders, face charges in connection with what officials described as one of the largest human smuggling operations uncovered on the West Coast in recent years.

The immigrants paid the smugglers between $1,200 to $3,700.

In North Korea, information and news are considered contraband products and must be obtained in the black market. As radios are manufactured to only receive the official station, CNN reports on a defector in South Korea who is attempting to combat the propaganda of Kim Jong-Il.

From CNN:

It broadcasts only three hours a day. Its on-air reporters use fake names. And its operators don’t know for sure whether their target audience is listening.Free North Korea Radio, based in Seoul, South Korea, broadcasts news of the outside world across the border. It’s illegal for North Koreans to listen to anything other than state-run radio, and all legal radios are fixed so they can play only channels approved by the government. But the founder of Free North Korea Radio, Kim Seong Min, believes that more and more North Koreans are secretly tuning in.

Kim is also a defector. A former propagandist for the North Korean army, Kim says he collected an illegal radio on one of his patrols. He was curious, so he tuned in to a South Korean broadcast.

The program centered on the leader of North Korea, Kim Jong Il. He says it was meant to dispel the myths surrounding the leader, including the story of Kim Jong Il’s birth. North Koreans were taught to believe that Kim Jong Il was born on Mount Paekdu, considered sacred in Korean history. But the radio program Kim heard that day said Kim Jong Il was born in the Soviet Union. Kim started to doubt everything he was taught to believe, and the more he listened, the more he was convinced that he had to leave the country.

Voice of America News reports on the smuggling situation in the Sahara Desert, as smugglers transport goods ranging from counterfeit cigarettes to cocaine.

From VOA News:

The Sahara desert has long been an attractive tax-free zone for entrepreneurs. But getting products through the mostly inhospitable and hostile terrain is hard. There are no auto repair stores for spare parts. Little water. No signs. Everything looks the same.

Mohamed Ekisi, a former customs director in Niger, says nothing can get through the desert without ethnic Tuareg nomads.

Ekisi says the desert Tuareg nomads have few job prospects, so tourism and smuggling are two ways they survive. Ekisi says the Tuareg have transported everything from migrants to fuel, pasta to powdered milk, fake famous-brand cigarettes to, increasingly, cocaine.

One smuggler interviewed stated that he makes $2,000 in gas smuggling.  Other smugglers can make up to $10,000 smuggling drugs from Algeria to Sudan.

The Black Markets in Africa are listed at $1.10 billion.

With a change in leadership, Cubans began speculating that new president Raul Castro would end the two tiered currency system currently in place by trading the country’s convertible peso.

From the Washington Post:

Cubans swamped currency exchange offices Monday and early Tuesday in a brief but intense speculative frenzy fueled by rumors that new President Raúl Castro would end the island’s reviled dual currency system.Hoping to make a quick profit, many Cubans traded the country’s valuable “convertible pesos” — a currency primarily used by tourists, foreign-owned businesses, the elite and black-market vendors — for the weak Cuban national peso, which is used for the salaries and pensions of nearly all Cubans. The speculators believed that Castro, who hinted about gradually changing the dual money system after being named president Sunday, would double the value of the weak national peso or abolish the stronger convertible peso.

Due to the black market, it is not difficult for ordinary Cubans to get the convertible pesos.

Although nearly all Cubans are paid in national pesos, many here have access to convertible pesos because they get tips from tourists or sell items on the massive black market. The convertible peso — which is worth $1.08 — was created in the mid-1990s when Fidel Castro opened the island to tourism to generate hard currency after the collapse of Cuba’s biggest financial backer, the Soviet Union. A convertible peso is worth 24 national pesos.

Cubans cannot use national pesos in the island’s best stores, which carry products — such as beef, soap and cooking oil — that are not available or are in short supply in state-run stores. As a result, the dual monetary system has created resentment among Cubans.

Up to ten countries are currently conducting investigations into banks in Liechtenstein to determine whether their citizens are evading taxes.

From the IHT:

Following the lead of Germany and Britain, at least eight other countries, including the United States, said Tuesday that they were investigating whether some of their citizens were using banks in Liechtenstein to evade taxes at home.The countries involved in the investigations also threw their combined weight behind efforts to change banking secrecy rules in Liechtenstein, a principality nestled between Austria and Switzerland that has a thriving business in managing outsiders’ money.

The investigations started when German intelligence agents purchased confidential banking information from a source.

The investigation goes back to 2006, when German intelligence services paid nearly €5 million for confidential banking data to an informant, apparently a former employee of the Liechtenstein bank LGT Group.

Later, the British authorities paid money to the same person for data on British subjects who had sheltered money in Liechtenstein, and they are now investigating about 100 people in Britain, according to an official close to the inquiry who requested anonymity because the case was continuing.

The U.S. tax agency, the Internal Revenue Service, said Tuesday that it was beginning enforcement action against “more than 100 U.S. taxpayers.”

The countries that are currently investigating the data and looking for tax evaders from their own countries are Germany, the United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, France, Italy, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Sweden and the United States.

Even before authorities went to interview them, 72 people turned themselves in and attempted to settle their cases.

German prosecutors, aided by stolen bank records, began their crackdown nearly two weeks ago, when police searched the home of a prominent German executive.

Since then, 91 of the roughly 150 people so far being investigated have confessed to evading taxes, the prosecutors said. A further 72 people have turned themselves in without a visit from the authorities.

Targets in the inquiry have already paid €27.8 million, or $41.5 million, to begin settling their cases, and the German prosecutors made clear Tuesday that they expected to collect much more money before the inquiry was completed.

Several publications are reporting on the life of Henry Okah, a self-proclaimed militant in the Niger Delta who kidnapped and attacked oil production in the region.

From the BBC:

Little is known about Henry Okah, the Niger Delta militant currently being held by the Nigerian Government.

He has been accused by police of murder, kidnapping, bank robbery, gun-running and putting the state at risk by planning to secede the oil-rich delta region from Nigeria.

Okah was seized in September by the Nigerian Government and oil industry executives are hopeful that production may resume to normal levels.

From the Financial Times:

Having never been seen in public his existence was doubted, but he has held international oil markets to ransom over the past two years as the frontman for the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (Mend), which in 2006 claimed responsibility for cutting almost a quarter of Nigeria’s oil output.

His capture could mark a slowdown in Mend’s activities and put an end to his career as a top arms supplier to the Delta’s armed groups, which have accelerated their attacks on oil facilities, government forces and even each other in recent years.

Newsweek reports on the growing trend in the kidnap and ransom market of Americans being kidnapped and taken into Mexico to be held on ransom.

From Newsweek:

Kidnappings of American residents in the Tijuana area south of San Diego have accelerated dramatically since Roberto’s 2005 abduction. There were 11 such incidents in 2006 and 26 in 2007. Over the last few months they’ve spiked to an unprecedented high—and grown ever more violent. Since Thanksgiving at least 18 U.S. residents have been kidnapped and held for ransom in and around Tijuana, according to Kelly Slotter, the special agent in charge of the FBI’s San Diego office. That averages out to about six per month. Late last month Mexican authorities rescued two female real estate agents—one a U.S. resident—who had been kidnapped on Jan. 19 and arrested three kidnappers, according to the FBI. The bureau would not talk specifically about the case or comment on whether the three men were suspects in any of the other abductions.

Philippine President Gloria Arroyo is facing public demands to resign in the wake of a government inquiry into corruption.

From the AP:

Thousands of Filipinos took to the streets and flocked to churches Monday in a fresh wave of nationwide protests on the anniversary of a 1986 grass-roots revolt, calling for President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo to resign.Left-wing protesters, Roman Catholic church-backed groups, students, teachers and others took part in anti-Arroyo rallies in 15 cities.

They were galvanized by anti-corruption hearings at the Senate that have exposed a telecommunications contract that allegedly involved kickbacks to senior officials and the president’s husband.

The protests stem from possible corruption charges against Arroyo’s husband.

From the AFP:

A government official has testified before a Senate inquiry that Arroyo’s husband Jose Miguel, and former elections chief Benjamin Abalos tried to get millions in kickbacks from a telecoms deal with China’s state-run firm ZTE.

The 339 million dollar transaction was suspended by Arroyo when the allegations first surfaced late last year, fuelling anti-government sentiment in the streets.

From PC World:

U.S. and European authorities seized thousands of pieces of counterfeit computer hardware in a major operation in November and December, they announced Friday.

About 360,000 items, mostly computer networking hardware and integrated circuits, were seized by the U.S. Customs and Border Protection agency and the European Commission Taxation and Customs Union Directorate General, the agencies said.

Counterfeit Technology Products is a $100 billion market.