Word: contraband
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...market. Most lucrative item of all was the automobile, legally subject to duties of six times or more its U.S. market value. Second-hand cars shipped to Patagonia from the U.S. were driven north across the border, repainted, equipped with forged papers and sold for profits of 800%. Total contraband within the first year: an estimated $60 million worth of cars, $70 million worth of other luxuries...
...news last week, only a fortnight after they were set up to keep hard-to-handle kids off the streets, and embarrassing headlines out of the school officials' hair (TIME, March 17). The incident: at the Greenwich Village school, boys were lined up for a pre-class contraband check. Among ruled-out items: knives, cigarettes, matches (combs-which make effective face-slashers with the teeth broken out-may be banned next). One student, 15-year-old Charles McDougle, was out of line, refused to obey Teacher Edward Carpenter's command to get back in. Then Carpenter...
While in the building, Elsman had taken pictures of a Negro student, Jefferson Thomas, sitting with white students in a classroom. Outside, Elsman explained that he had never taken a picture in his life, but a representative of Life magazine quickly produced two $100 bills to purchase the contraband film. The Michigan reporter lost little time in turning his camera over to four Life photographers for unloading...
...Cigar Disguise. Etruscan grave robbing is now thought to involve a network of 200 thieves, 25 middlemen and a dozen fences. Last year the government's special contraband corps arrested 89 looters. Not realizing that much of the booty is stolen, and some faked, Americans bought 85% of the Etruscan objects in respectable-looking shops. Customs officers, traditionally easygoing with American tourists, let them pass. "Americans could walk out of Italy with the Colosseum," complained one contraband officer. But last month frontier customs guards caught an Austrian carrying a vase dating from the 6th century...
Disguising themselves as American tourists with cigars and cameras as props, contraband officers called at the fashionable antique shop of "F. Renn-Rain-world famous and unique," just below Rome's Spanish Steps. There was nothing Etruscan to be seen, but the salesman steered them around the corner to a 17th century palace at No. 77 Via della Croce. First, the officers put a watch on No. 77, keeping an eye on middlemen entering and purchasers leaving the place. Last week officers raided No. 77 and confiscated what they called the "greatest hoard of looted archaeological treasures ever found...