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Major U.S. airlines end trophy hunter shipments after Cecil outcry

Three U.S. airlines have banned the transport of lion, leopard, elephant, rhino or buffalo killed by trophy hunters, in the latest fallout from the killing of Zimbabwe’s Cecil the lion last month. American Airlines said on Tuesday it would join Delta Airlines and United Airlines in banning the transport of animals known in Africa as the “big five”, coined by hunters because they are the hardest to kill on foot.

Family of woman found dead in Texas jail files wrongful death suit

The family of Sandra Bland filed a wrongful death lawsuit on Tuesday against a Texas trooper, a sheriff’s office and her jailers, accusing them of being responsible for the woman’s apparent suicide in a county jail. The suit, which was filed in a federal court in Texas, says that they violated her constitutional rights. Bland, 28, an African-American, was pulled over in her car on July 10 by a white

Special Report: State Department watered down human trafficking report

By Jason Szep and Matt Spetalnick WASHINGTON (Reuters) – In the weeks leading up to a critical annual U.S. report on human trafficking that publicly shames the world’s worst offenders, human rights experts at the State Department concluded that trafficking conditions hadn’t improved in Malaysia and Cuba. The State Department’s senior political staff saw it differently — and they prevailed. A Reuters examination, based on interviews with more than a