Illegal | featured news

A team of smokejumpers parachuting into a fire in the mountains of Southern Oregon landed in an illegal marijuana garden being prepared for growing season. The six smokejumpers from a base in Redmond found the site Monday evening, when there was a rash of lightning strikes. Jackson County sheriff's spokeswoman Andrea Carlson says the smokejumpers notified authorities, who hiked into the remote site in the Rogue River-Siskiyou (SIS'-kee-yoo) National Forest. They seized two guns and more than 1,000 little pot plants.

French ex-president Nicolas Sarkozy has been placed under formal investigation over claims his 2007 election campaign received illegal donations from France's richest woman. Mr Sarkozy is accused of accepting thousands of euros from L'Oreal heiress Liliane Bettencourt, now aged 90.

The clock to unlock a new mobile phone is running out.
In October 2012, the Librarian of Congress, who determines exemptions to a strict anti-hacking law called the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), decided that unlocking mobile phones would no longer be allowed. But the librarian provided a 90-day window during which people could still buy a phone and unlock it. That window closes on January 26.

Hong Kong authorities confiscated $26.7 million worth of ivory found in two shipping containers this week. The illegal goods weighed more than 8,000 pounds, making it one of the biggest seizures of ivory in Hong Kong. The containers arrived from Tanzania and Kenya, according to Hong Kong customs officials. The agency seized a total of 1,209 pieces of ivory tusks and three pounds of ivory ornaments from the two containers.

One of the masterminds behind file-sharing website The Pirate Bay was arrested last week in Cambodia, months after he was due to begin a one-year prison sentence in Sweden.

The chief of Full Tilt Poker surrendered to authorities on Monday and pleaded not guilty to charges of illegal gambling and that the online poker operator defrauded its players.

A New York man pleaded guilty Thursday to what experts said was the first ever proven case of black-market organ trafficking in the United States. Levy Izhak Rosenbaum admitted in federal court in Trenton that he had brokered three illegal kidney transplants from people in Israel for U.S.-based customers in exchange for payments of $120,000 or more. He also pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to broker an illegal kidney sale.

Google Inc will pay $500 million to settle government charges that it showed ads for pharmacies that operate illegally, regulators are expected to announce on Wednesday, according to a report in the New York Times.

Mortgage industry employees are still signing documents they haven't read and using fake signatures more than eight months after big banks and mortgage companies promised to stop the illegal practices that led to a nationwide halt of home foreclosures.

The last edition of the News of the World hit stands Sunday morning, as Britain's best-selling newspaper shuts down in the face of a scandal over illegal eavesdropping and bribery.