As a born and bred New Yorker, I never had the inclination to join the Girl Scouts and learn the necessary wilderness skills to survive the jungle otherwise known as Central Park. Just because I can’t figure out how to start a fire by rubbing rocks together and lack the super cute uniform does not mean I can’t appreciate Girl Scout Cookies. My addiction to thin mints is a real problem. If the cookies didn’t already earn my undying devotion for the Girl Scouts, then their first ever duct tape fashion show did. More info, after the jump…

Talk about stealing from the cookie jar. In Dayton, Ohio a former Girl Scout troop leader, Tamara Jo Ward, was convicted of taking $28,000 over the course of five years from the bank account where her troop stored their cookie money. Using a debit card, she used the money to pay her bills, buy groceries, and even go on vacation. But she got caught. And yesterday, she was sentenced to cough up $20,000 in restitution. Ward’s going to have to be a tough cookie to deal with all of those angry girl scouts. Maybe they should make a new badge in her honor? Something with the scales of justice embroidered on it? [Dayton Daily News]

Their uniform isn’t the only thing the Girl Scouts, or “Girl Guides,” as they’re called in the UK, are modernizing; their manifesto is getting updated, too. No longer so focused on sewing, cooking, and making Mother’s Day corsages out of pink tissue paper, modern-day scouts are more concerned with putting a ban on “the airbrushing of models in magazines and a crackdown on peer pressure to have sex too soon.” To create their new manifesto, Girlguiding UK, a publication devoted to all things Girl Guides/Girl Scouts, surveyed 1,000 members about the issues that concern them most. The top ten concerns of today’s Girl Scouts? Find out after the jump. [The Daily Mail]

Mmmm, Girl Scout Cookies. The things I’ve done to a box of those bad boys are too embarrassing to type.  But it turns out I have more that one reason to feel guilty for eating so many. Two 12-year old Girl Scouts in Ann Arbor, Michigan, are refusing to hock the schlock treats because the palm oil used to make them is causing the deforestation of Indonesia. While demand for palm oil is on the rise because is lacks trans-fat, Madison Vorva and Rhiannon Tomtishen have asked their organization to stop contributing to the problem by selling the cookies. The pair have started a petition to stop the destruction, and since the Indonesian rain forest there is home to many orangutans, even Jane Goodall has signed it.  All their hard work has reached Girl Scout HQ, where a spokeswoman for the organization said that ABC Bakers, who produces the cookies, has agreed to only buy palm oil from already established producers. But that’s not good enough for these smart cookies, who promise to continue being Scouts, but won’t stop protesting palm oil’s devastating production. We think they deserve a merit badge for this! [Seattle Times]