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 [...]

Scalpers in Beijing are in high demand as they sell tickets to Olympic events that are sold out. From AFP (via Google News): Two weeks before the Games opened the organisers announced that every single Olympic event being held in the Chinese capital had been sold out. When a final tranche of tickets went on sale last month [...]

Louisiana is set to become the last state in America to ban cockfighting. From the AP (via Google News): On Friday, Louisiana will become the last state to outlaw the rooster fights, a move that cockfighting enthusiasts say marks the end of a rich rural tradition. “The culture, the custom of the Cajun people, it’s gone,” said Chris [...]

The New York Times has a report on the availability of a suicide drug in the Mexican border town of Tijuana. From the NY Times: “Cocaine?” a hustler working Tijuana’s seedy Avenida Revolución called out on a recent night, his voice not the least bit muted. “How about girls?” When neither offering elicited the desired response, he tried another: [...]

Apple’s iPhone is selling quickly on Asia’s black markets. From Reuters: The new iPhone looks set to be a huge hit in Asia countries where it goes on sale on Friday, but the sleek smartphone is already in high demand in black markets from Shanghai to Bangkok. In Thailand, a Southeast Asian hub for pirated goods where Apple [...]

Armed militia gangs are replacing drug organizations as the main criminal enterprises in the slums of Brazil. From the IHT: Despite Brazil’s economic growth, Rio’s slums, or favelas, have proliferated, and now may number more than 800. The militias have multiplied with them, as battles with drug gangs have taken a toll on legitimate police forces. Low morale and [...]

If you were planning on keeping your illegal contraband hidden from the authorities by keeping it in a safe deposit box, you’re not going to like this story coming out of London. From the Times: Thousands of safe deposit boxes used by the top tier of the criminal underworld were seized by police in an unprecedented raid [...]

Women who undergo in vitro fertilization are selling their leftover drugs on the Internet in order to regroup some costs, according to a news report.  Due to the high costs of the fertility drugs, women selling their leftover drugs are easily able to find buyers to purchase the drugs.  From the Washington DC news station NBC 4: Reproductive endocrinologist Dr. Frank [...]