Miscellaneous

Why must we always punish creativity?

Over in Hong Kong, sixteen members of a gang have been arrested for running an across-the-border smuggling operation. This gang "used a crossbow to shoot [a] cable across the fenced-off border between" Chine and Hong Kong, and then they strung it "from the top of a Chinese highrise down to a viliage house in Hong King." For the next two to three weeks, they then used this as a zip line, rigging up a pulley system to shuttle illicit goods over the border at night:

"They took 10 to 15 seconds to smuggle goods weighing 3-5kg, such as 20-30 mobile phones each time," Leo Sin, a senior Hong Kong customs' intelligence officer was quoted as saying.

Electronics goods worth more than $770,000 were seized, including 3,300 mobile phones and 2,100 computer memory cards, the paper reported.

The newspaper said it was the first time such a method had been deployed by cross-border smugglers, who have in the past dug tunnels to ferret electronics underground and to pump contraband diesel between the two sides.

Full post as published by Quiz Law on June 03, 2008 (boomark / email).