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The Associated Press reports on traveling escorts, or “Circuit Girls,” who are heading to Arizona this week to find customers in town for the Super Bowl.
Circuit girls are part of a clandestine sex trade that depends on their ability to blend with the wealthy. Unlike local street hookers, they’ll navigate the high-dollar crowd with ease, [...]

In its campaign against pornographic websites, authorities in China have shut down 44,000 websites and arrested 868 people.
From Reuters:
Chinese authorities shut down 44,000 domestic Web sites and home pages and arrested 868 people while investigating 524 criminal cases during the campaign.
The campaign will continue until September, after the close of the Beijing Olympics.

The article mentions [...]

From the Korea Times:
 The Korea Chamber of Commerce and Industry (KCCI) estimated that the underground economy accounts for about 30 percent of the GDP with the size of the market reaching nearly 250 trillion won.
It said it is imperative for the government to reduce the black market size to that of developed countries, as underground [...]

Steven Levitt of Freakonomics fame has written a paper by collecting data from prostitutes and pimps in the Chicago area.
From the FP Passport Blog:
 The findings? Street prostitution yields an average wage of $27 an hour, hardly worth it considering the extraordinary occupational hazards.
What’s particularly interesting is the authors’ section on bargaining and the law. They [...]

The top official responsible for investigating corruption issues in Nigeria has been sent away for one year to undergo “training”.
From the International Herald Tribune:
Nigeria’s anti-corruption chief, whose investigations have ensnared some of the country’s wealthiest politicians and officials, will be sent to a year-long training course in a remote police academy, according to senior law [...]

From SwissInfo:
Laws will be tightened from the start of January to clamp down on people conducting undeclared work - activity that costs the Swiss economy SFr 39 million ($35 million) a year.
Economics Minister Doris Leuthard announced the war on moonlighting with the backing of unions and employers. Measures include increased controls and sanctions coupled with [...]

The Los Angeles Times reported this weekend on a robbery that occurred in the Los Angeles region.
The puppies in the window looked secure enough. The pricey pooches were protected by metal bars, two locked doors, alarm sensors and video surveillance cameras.
But for the second time in about two weeks, a pet dealer reported that a [...]

The Economist has an article highlighting the various methods currency traders are using to evade controls placed on the yuan in China.
SINCE a police raid on her firm was broadcast on Chinese state television, To Ling has emerged as one of China’s more intriguing financiers. The 43-year-old Hong Kong resident operated a black-market foreign-exchange business [...]

The Washington Post is reporting that insurgents in Iraq are becoming more interested in profit making than in political ideology.
U.S. military commanders say that insurgents across the country are increasingly motivated more by money than ideology and that a growing number of insurgent cells, struggling to pay recruits, are turning to gangster-style racketeering operations.
U.S. military [...]

The Economist has an article on the continued growth of the tunnels in the Gaza strip.
Once a secretive and dangerous industry, smuggling has become open, even respectable. As recently as last year, Israeli jets would destroy any sites suspected of housing tunnels, but now the smugglers are working in clear view of Egyptian border [...]