Dozens of people are held by US and Italian authorities targeting an alleged drug-trafficking racket.

A second racketeering trial against the son of a New York Mafia boss collapses as the jury fail to reach a verdict.

A Belfast man who used a stolen Army credit card to buy and resell almost £50,000 of petrol is jailed.

Japan's young people are choosing, or being forced into, a more fluid work style as economic changes take hold.

A reputed mafia godfather goes on trial this week accused of killing a mobster who befriended an undercover FBI agent.

Loyalist paramilitary leaders consider a paper urging an end to drug dealing, extortion and racketeering.

The Office of Fair Trading is launching an inquiry into the store card market, following criticism from MPs.

A House of Commons committee brands credit firms behind store cards of being "designer loan-sharks".

Lawmakers prepare a clamp-down on loan sharks, who have become a growing menace as the country's long recession grinds on.

Ted Duggan applied for the new tax credits months ago, but is still waiting for his payment.

Considered the most powerful of New York's five mafia families, the Genovese mob is disrupted by the arrests of leading members.

More than 70 alleged mafia members are charged after a daring undercover operation against the city's powerful Genovese family.

The FBI defeats an attempt to force it to reveal in detail how it bugged the keyboard of the son of a mafia boss.

A suspected mobster is testing the limits of cutting edge cyber-surveillance technology used by the FBI to fight crime.

Las Vegas is renowned as the archetypal American city - the land of a million 'have a Nice Days' - but a select few are distinctly unwelcome.

A notorious gangster known as "Broken Tooth" is jailed for 15 years in the Portuguese enclave of Macau.

Prosecutors have recommended that one of Italy's most senior churchmen, Archbishop Giordano of Naples, should go on trial.

Italian prosecutors have requested formal charges against one of the country's most senior Roman Catholic leaders, the Archbishop of Naples, for his alleged role in a loan-sharking network.

The son of the Dapper Don, John Gotti, has been arrested along with dozens of suspected gangsters.