The Times reports on the growing demand for tickets to the inauguration of Barack Obama. From the Times Online: There is one booming sector of the US economy into which colossal sums of cash are still being injected: the sale of tickets and hotel rooms for Barack Obama’s inauguration. The excitement over the January 20 swearing in of [...]

Regular coins are being traded on the black market in Argentina as citizens fight inflation at record levels. From the AP (via the IHT): A kiosk owner bribes a bank worker with cookies to break bills. Subway workers let commuters ride free because they can’t change their cash. Bus companies resell the coins they collect at a [...]

UN Officials are stating that the tunnel smuggling in Gaza is large enough to be considered “an industry”. From BBC News: The level of smuggling tunnels between the Gaza Strip and Egypt now amounts to an industry, according to UN officials. A UN report said the tunnels had become a lifeline for Gaza’s Palestinians because of the Israeli [...]

The LA Times reports that the black market in China contributed to the milk scandal that rocked the country. From the LA Times: Milk contaminated with the industrial chemical melamine is blamed for killing four babies and sickening 54,000 others with kidney stones and other illnesses. The food safety crisis, China’s worst in decades, has also led [...]

Spanish authorities arrested 121 people who were operating a child pron ring in Spain. From the AP (via the IHT): Spanish police arrested 121 people in the country’s biggest-ever crackdown on child pornography, seizing discs containing millions of video and photo files shared by a network that distributed them in 75 countries, authorities said Wednesday. Two of the suspects [...]

A German student was caught by Custom Officials with $12.7 million in cash.  From the AP (via IHT): German authorities say they seized €8.7 million (US$12.7 million) in cash from a student this year and suspect the money came from cigarette or drug smuggling. Customs spokesman Wolfgang Schmitz says officers found the money in May. He confirmed a report [...]

Alltell cellphones stolen from a warehouse in the state of Arkansas will probably end up in the international black market, according to analysts.  From the Arkansas Democrat Gazette: Because they are stolen and because Alltel primarily uses Code Division Multiple Access networks, South American nations and parts of Asia are where pilfered phones would likely have the [...]

The Wall Street Journal reports on the popularity of the Silk Market in China. From the WSJ: While Chinese authorities have taken aggressive efforts to protect Olympics-related intellectual property, the Silk Market in central Beijing stands out as a symbol of the enduring struggle against counterfeiters. Silk Street has become central to the Olympic experience. Games organizers highlight [...]

Ticket scalpers in China lost money when Chinese Olympic hero Liu Xiang dropped out of the 110 meters hurdles to injury.  From BBC News: Olympic tickets are being sold for as little as a tenth of their previous black-market value after a Chinese athlete dropped out. The price for tickets to see the 110m hurdles plummeted after athletics [...]

South Ossetia, the semi-independent region at the center fo the Georgia-Russia conflict, is well-known to be a black market haven where illegal goods are traded. In an article back in April 2008 for The Atlantic, Lawrence Scott Sheets wrote about nuclear smugglers in the region. He mentioned South Ossetia as an area where smugglers of all [...]