The New Zealand Herald has an article on the market in smuggling fighters from Syria into Iraq.

From the NZ Herald:

For years, he operated along Syria’s remote border providing young Arabs from as far away as Morocco and the Gulf with passports, guides and weapons as they slipped into Iraq to wage war.

But recently, the Iraqi man known as Abu Ghadiyah began doing even more – launching armed forays into his homeland, United States and Iraqi officials say.

Finally the US lashed out, frustrated after years of vainly pressuring Syria to shut down his network supplying the Sunni insurgency.

The Americans carried out a daylight raid in a dusty farming community known as Abu Kamal, just across the border in Syria.

The US says Abu Ghadiyah and several bodyguards were killed. Syria says eight civilians died.

Whatever Abu Ghadiyah’s fate, the attack targeting him has become a seminal moment, casting rare light on the complex networks that recruit foreign fighters then deliver them across Syria to Iraq.

From the AFP (via Google News);

As deforestation and a loss of natural prey threatens Siamese crocodiles with extinction, the farms that once helped endanger the species are now helping save it, conservationists say.

There are fewer than 50 Siamese crocodiles left in the wild in Thailand and about 200 in the entire Mekong river region, but thousands live on commercial farms designed to transform them into belts, shoes and handbags, or meat for export.

“(People) hunt the young to sell to the crocodile farms. For the big ones, they hunt for the skin, the hide,” says Chavalit Vidthayanon, a freshwater specialist with conservation group WWF.

United Nations Officials believe that the Taliban is hiding opium and preventing it from entering the world drug market to keep prices high.

From Time Magazine:

According to the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime, between 6,000 and 8,000 tons of opium have vanished during the past three years somewhere between the poppy fields of Afghanistan — which produce about 93% of the world’s opium — and the world market. That’s enough to supply all the world’s heroin addicts for nearly two years. The whereabouts of the missing opium is a mystery so far, but international drug- and law-enforcement agencies say they believe the Taliban has begun to stockpile large quantities of the drug, which is worth about $464,000 per ton once it is exported from Afghanistan. When British forces recently occupied Musikalia in Helmand province, they uncovered a stockpile of 45 tons of opium. But that’s a tiny fraction of what has disappeared. “Where is it? We have been asking,” says Antonio Maria Costa, head of the U.N. drug office. He recently appealed to NATO forces and Western intelligence officers to launch an aggressive hunt for the opium.

The U.N.’s estimate of what is missing is based on simple arithmetic and market economics. The world consumes a steady 4,500 tons or so of opium a year, almost all of which comes from poppies grown in Afghanistan, where the crop earns about $1 billion a year for farmers, by U.N. estimates. Yet Afghan farmers have harvested far above world demand in recent years; last year’s harvest was a record 8,200 tons and this year’s crop dipped only slightly to about 7,700 tons, in part because the global food crisis sent the price of wheat rocketing, persuading many Afghan farmers to switch from opium.

It might sound like good news that so much opium has disappeared from the world drug market, but Costa believes the missing opium is a potential time bomb, and many law-enforcement officials agree. That’s because the Taliban is believed to be “stockpiling to control the prices,” says a spokesman for Britain’s Serious Organized Crime Agency, who confirmed that NATO forces have uncovered Taliban stockpiles of opium. Despite the bumper opium harvests, the street price of heroin remains a costly $67 per g in European cities, and the price Afghan farmers charge for their opium has remained about $70 per kg (about $33 per lb.). If the entire crop had been sold during the past two years, “the prices should have collapsed,” says Costa. “But there has been no price collapse.”

A man once dubbed “America’s Sheriff” is standing trail on charges of corruption.

From the AP (via Google News):

A former Orange County sheriff was a sharp, inspiring leader consumed by greed and adept at manipulating his closest co-workers and friends to benefit himself, a prosecutor said Wednesday as the lawman’s federal corruption trial began.

The government alleges that Michael Carona, a three-term sheriff, took hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash, gifts and illegal loans for himself, his mistress and a close group of friends in exchange for political favors, get-out-jail-free cards and the power of his office.

“This is the case of the two Michael Caronas: Sheriff Michael Carona, the bright, articulate, charismatic man who went from being the underdog candidate … to being the sheriff of Orange County,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Brett Sagel said in opening statements.

“Then there’s the Michael Carona … who declared, ‘We’re going to be so rich, we’re going to make so much money.’”

The square-jawed Carona, once dubbed “America’s sheriff” by CNN’s Larry King after vowing to hunt down a child abductor, sat stoically through the prosecutor’s opening statement. He smiled and greeted friends during a court break.

After a recent high-profile killing, Croatia faces questions regarding its ability to confront organized crime within its borders.

From Time Magazine:

The damage from last Thursday’s bomb-blast in downtown Zagreb that killed Ivo Pukanic, one of Croatia’s top media moguls, and his advertising manager Niko Franic, will not be confined to the casualties. The attack has cast doubt over whether Croatia can curb rampant corruption and organized crime, and achieve its goal of joining the European Union next year.

Pukanic, 47, and his colleague were killed by an explosive device placed near Pukanic’s Lexus just after 6 p.m. on Thursday. The police immediately blocked off the city center and called in helicopters, but by Monday, no arrests had been made. A police spokesman described the murder as a “professional hit.”

Human Trafficking from China is the worst offender in Canada.

From Canada.com:

China, Romania, the Philippines and Moldova are the top four worst offenders in international human trafficking to Canada, according to the first national statistics on the extent of the crime in Canada.

And the figure of 31 foreign nationals – four of them minor children – who came to the attention of Canadian immigration officials between May 2006 and May 2008 represents just a small fraction of the total victims.

“This is the tip of the trafficking iceberg,” said University of B.C. law Prof. Benjamin Perrin, who served as senior policy adviser to the minister of citizenship and immigration and is a leading expert on human trafficking.

China contributed the most victims to Canada with a total of 11 confirmed trafficking cases, while four came from Romania, three from the Philippines and three from Moldova, an Eastern Bloc country known for organized crime.

As the Philadelphia Phillies attempt to close out the World Series tonight after rain suspended their game against the Tampa Bay Rays on Monday, Major League Baseball has been keeping busy seizing counterfeit apparel from street vendors.

From the Philadelphia Inquirer:

Since the playoffs began, MLB investigators have seized more than 5,000 counterfeit T-shirts and caps from about 45 vendors hawking them in the vicinity of Citizens Bank Park, said Ethan Orlinsky, general counsel for Major League Baseball Properties.

The fakes are often hard to distinguish from their properly licensed counterparts, although they may be made with substandard materials that won’t wear or wash as well, said Orlinsky, whose office oversees licensing deals for the National and American Leagues and all 30 teams.

To help fans tell the difference, MLB requires that each legitimate item, large or small, be tagged with a silver holographic sticker bearing a serial number and MLB’s silhouetted-batter logo. For this year’s World Series, MLB refined the sticker to include a raised red stitch that mimics the stitching on a baseball.

Merchandise sales are big business for baseball – making it to the World Series is expected to generate at least $4 million in extra sales of Phillies memorabilia. Orlinsky said it was no surprise that the Fall Classic is a magnet for counterfeiters.

Personal data in the black market is facing a recession as prices for individual information spiral downwards.

From Newsweek:

Your personal identity isn’t worth quite as much as it used to be—at least to thieves willing to swipe it.

According to experts who monitor such markets, the value of stolen credit card data may range from $3 to as little as 40 cents. That’s down tenfold from a decade ago—even though the cost to an individual who has a credit card stolen can soar into the hundreds of dollars.
The black market for personal data is even less transparent the market for derivatives and other unregulated financial instruments, but it works like any other market: When the supply of goods is plentiful, prices start to sink.

And in spite of authorities’ efforts to take down the markets that serve as clearing houses for other people’s financial data, the black market in personal identity is flush with product.

Mexican drug cartels were able to infiltrate the US Embassy and spy on anti-drug trafficking operations.

From the AP (via CNN):

A major drug cartel has infiltrated the Mexican attorney general’s office, and one cartel worker says he even spied on Drug Enforcement Administration operations from inside the U.S. Embassy, Mexican prosecutors said Monday.

Five officials of the Attorney General’s Organized Crime unit were arrested on allegations they served as informants for the Beltran Leyva cartel, Attorney General Eduardo Medina Mora said, adding there are indications that other spies still work inside his agency.

The embassy employee, who also worked for Interpol at the Mexico City airport, is a protected witness after telling Mexican officials in Washington that he leaked details of DEA operations, an attorney general’s official told The Associated Press on condition of anonymity. He said he was not authorized to speak on the record.

U.S. Embassy officials had no immediate comment, saying they generally avoid discussing internal operating or security issues.

According to experts, Rhode Island is becoming  a major hub for sex trafficking.

From the Providence Journal:

When most people think of slavery these days, “they think of the Civil War,” says Shanna Wells, director of the Rhode Island Commission on Women.

But in fact, said Wells, slavery is occurring now in neighborhoods around Rhode Island, in the form of the forced prostitution of women and girls — some runaways, some brought here from other countries. Their captors are attracted to Rhode Island, she said, because it is one of only two states that consider prostitution legal, as long as it occurs indoors between consenting adults.

“The word has gone out that Rhode Island is the place to come to to open your brothel,” said Donna M. Hughes, a University of Rhode Island professor who has studied international sex trafficking. “We are rapidly becoming the sex trafficking capital of the Northeast.”