Word: contraband
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...mother and sister have been arrested on felony charges for buying cell-phone minutes and equipment for him. But it is not just family members who help smuggle the phones. Prison authorities say guards have been paid $2,000 - more than a month's wages - to bring in contraband cell phones. Small cell phones and postage-stamp-size SIMM cards are easy to smuggle into prisons in body cavities or simply by throwing them over a fence inside a ball, says Josh Gelinas, a spokesman for South Carolina's prison system, where more than 1,000 phones have been confiscated...
...early July, French President Nicolas Sarkozy will welcome political leaders from across Europe, the Middle East and North Africa to a summit to debate his ambitious agenda for bolstering trade in the region, protecting the environment and cracking down on terrorism and the trafficking of contraband goods, drugs and illegal immigrants. His much touted plan for a union for the Mediterranean looks stillborn. German Chancellor Angela Merkel has worried that it could undermine the European Union; Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi has deemed it a colonialist affront to Maghrebi pride. Yet at its core, Sarkozy's plan has an insight that...
...hell home. While we sat waiting for the police chief to come tell us why we had been re-arrested after having already been set free by the prosecutor, Mohammed deliberately put himself at risk again by offering a cell phone to another detainee. The phone was clearly contraband, as indicated by all the signs hanging around the station. But, for Mohammed, the instinct for self-preservation was overridden by the desire to help the other guy call home. That sealed his fate: The police chief saw the act of disobedience, and Mohammed was thrown into a cell where...
Since the 1990s, popular Mexican singers have been increasingly crooning about Kalashnikovs and cocaine alongside their traditional ballads of hard work and lost love. Take "Contraband in the Border" by Valentin Elizalde, one of the thousands of drug ballads or narco corridos that are played in cantinas and parties from the mountains of Mexico to the immigrant ghettos of Los Angeles. "There was a big shoot-out/With 14 bullet-filled bodies/And the American government,/took away the marijuana" go the lyrics, as tubas and accordions drone out the melody to the rhythm of a German polka. In November...
...scenes reminiscent of Britain's infamous trade of stolen gadgets in pubs, furtive traders today knock at the backdoor of upscale restaurants offering a new contraband: caviar. London's hordes of Russian oligarchs and hedge-fund yuppies have sent demand soaring for "black gold," with top varieties such as Beluga now selling for over $3,000 a kilo, whilst the rarest varieties, such as Almas ($50,000 per kilo), whose eggs are white, have a four-year waiting list. The soaring demand for sturgeon roe has created lucrative opportunities for "caviar cowboys," who sell illegally smuggled caviar to unscrupulous chefs...