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Dallas police broke up an alleged cockfighting operation in Southeast Dallas Saturday. The Humane Society of the United States supplied undercover cockfighting video to police that led to the raid at a large run-down building. "Today we found scores of roosters who had been brought to fight to the death with knives tied to their legs," said John Goodwin with the HSUS said in a news release. "Many birds injured in the fights were simply thrown in a pile and left to slowly die. We commend the Dallas Police Department for their quick and efficient action to shut down this...

OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) - A state senator has a plan for saving Oklahoma's gamefowl industry now that cockfighters are legally prohibited from pitting birds fitted with razor-like spurs. State Sen. Frank Shurden, a longtime defender of cockfighting, is suggesting that roosters be given little boxing gloves so they can fight without bloodshed. The proposal is in a bill the Democrat has introduced for the legislative session that begins Feb. 7. "Who's going to object to chickens fighting like humans do? Everybody wins," Sen. Frank Shurden said. Oklahoma voters banned cockfighting in 2002. The practice is still legal in Louisiana and...

OKLAHOMA CITY — Animal-rights activism is colliding head-on with rural tradition in Oklahoma, where voters will decide Nov. 5 whether to ban cockfighting in one of the last three states to allow the bloody spectacle. Supporters of the proposed ban say cockfighting is inhumane and gives the state a bad name. Opponents say the sport, also legal in Louisiana and New Mexico, is a livelihood for people who raise the birds and is no crueler than the way chickens are raised and slaughtered. Cockfighting became legal in Oklahoma in 1963, when the state Court of Criminal Appeals ruled that...

GUNTUR SEPT. 23...Elaborate arrangements are being made for the 110th urs of Hazarath Kale Mastan Shavalia baba at Mastan dargah here. The dargah is being decorated with festoons and serial lights. Huge pandals were erected on the Grand Trunk Road in the town for the festivities.The managing trustee of the dargah, Ravi Ramamohana Rao, told The Hindu here on Monday that the urs would be celebrated on Tuesday. He said that a colourful procession would be taken out from Kannavari thota. It would commence at 11 pm and pass through all the main thoroughfares of the city and culminate at...