American Demand for Furniture Causing Increase in Illegal Logging in Laos

Coutesy: Mongabay.comIt’s only natural that people would want to buy nice furniture for their homes.

Unfortunately, it’s this natural desire for furniture on the part of Americans that authorities say is driving illegal logging halfway around the world.

According to the Environmental Investigation Agency, more and more furniture is being made from timber illegally cut down in Laos and then shipped to Vietnam for fabrication.

According to the agency, although Laos has strict laws to prevent illegal logging, corrupt local officials look the other way. The big losers in all this are the Laotian people, who depend on their forests to earn a living.

For more information, read this Mongabay.com story.

People Try to Smuggle Everything Through the Jakarta Airport

At just one airport, over the course of just one month, people tried to smuggle hundreds of tortoises and lizards, dozens of snakes, 10 crocodiles and three of something called a slow loris, which as this YouTube video shows, are really cute when they’re being tickled.
Unfortunately the slow lorises that were confiscated in a Jakarta, Indonesia airport in November 2011 weren’t being tickled. They were being smuggled out of the country under the clothing of a man, according to this story from Traffic.org.

Another man reportedly tried to get into the country with 464 tortoises, 10 Nile crocodiles, 78 snakes and 254 lizards, all packed in bags and suitcases that had been on a flight from Cairo, Egypt.

Customs officials said the large number of confiscated animals showed “how air travel is being used to traffic wildlife rapidly across the globe.”

Mobsters Move into Recycling Business

For anyone who may not have seen an episode of the iconic HBO TV series “The Sopranos,” the US state of New Jersey has a long history of being home to infamous mobsters.

Trash was always their thing, so it probably won’t come as shock to learn that mobsters are now extending their reach by moving into the commercial recycling business.

A state crime commission recently found that a 1983 state law designed to keep Organized Crime out of the trash business didn’t adequately protect its first cousin, the commercial recycling business.

As a result, “The (recycling) industry today remains open to manipulation and abuse by criminal elements,” the commission found, according to this Associated Press story.

In Britain, Hanging Flower Baskets Seen as Key Way to Stop Crime

Honestly now. Does anyone seriously think that doing something that hanging flower baskets could be a key for cutting crime?

Well, in Great Britain, they do.

A recent poll found that people who are members of neighborhood groups believe that hanging flower baskets and planting public flowerbeds is a key way to cut crime.

Why? Basically, because flowers make everything prettier.

Okay, wait a second. Who are these people?

According to this Daily Mail story the poll’s respondents were members of neighborhood beautification groups.

Well, of course they’d think that!

US EPA Captures Top Woman Eco-Crook

Everyone’s heard the phrase “Most Wanted.” In the US these two words have long been the title of a television show aimed at involving the public in capturing fugitives. (See America's Most Wanted)

When you hear the phrase, you think of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, or FBI, not the Environmental Protection Agency, or EPA.

Get ready for a surprise: the US EPA has its own “most wanted” list and recently the first woman to earn the dubious distinction of making that list, Albania Deleon, was captured.Albania Deleon

Make that recaptured.

As this Consumer Reports story notes, Deleon was captured and convicted in 2008 but managed to escape. She was recently recaptured and sentenced to more than seven years in prison and three years probation for having illegally certified individuals as having had asbestos removal training when they had not.