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NEW YORK (AP) — The U.S. government is stepping up its crackdown on the illegal trafficking of wild animal products across the nation's borders, saying some may be linked to terrorists, federal officials said Monday.

"Poaching in Africa is funding terrorist groups," U.S. Trade Representative Michael Froman told a news conference at Kennedy International Airport.

He said such illegal trade is a threat to global security because it's driven by criminal elements, including terrorists using profits from items such as rhinoceros horns and elephant tusks to finance their activities.

On display in an airport cargo warehouse operated by the U.S. Customs and Border Protection was a collection of wildlife products seized at Kennedy — from ivory disguised to look like a wooden statue and the stuffed heads of a lion and leopard to handicrafts, artworks and musical instruments hiding animal parts.

The single priciest item was a rhino horn. It fetches $30,000 per pound — or about 30 percent more than its weight in gold.

Paul Chapelle, the agent in charge of New York for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, said one horn case resulted in 16 arrests, including that of a mobster from Ireland now serving 13 months behind bars.

A dead elephant is worth about $18,000 — mostly from the tusk. Also seized was a small rhino horn libation cup worth tens of thousands of dollars.

Kennedy handles the largest cargo volume of any U.S. airport, about $100 billion a year, said Patrick Foye, executive director of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which runs the airport.

And the wildlife element plays an especially powerful role in national security, said Froman, the chief U.S. trade negotiator and adviser to President Barack Obama.

More than 20,000 elephants were killed last year along with about 1,000 rhinos, meeting a rising world demand resulting in declining populations across Africa, according to officials with the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora.

This treaty was signed by more than 170 countries to protect animals that end up as contraband including live pets, hunting trophies, fashion accessories, cultural artifacts and medicinal ingredients.

U.S. trade officials believe that groups benefiting from the poaching include the militant Lord's Resistance Army in Uganda and South Sudan, the Janjaweed comprised of Sudanese Arab tribes, and al-Shabab, a jihadist group based in Somalia.

In February, Obama approved a new strategy for fighting trafficking through enforcement, as well as partnerships with other countries, communities and private industry. For the first time, U.S. officials are asking trading partners to agree to conservation measures for wildlife and the environment in return for signing agreements.

Kennedy customs officials are reaching out to local businesses, plus auction houses like Christie's and Sotheby's and even Carnegie Hall to alert them to illegally traded valuables that may come their way.

CHICAGO (AP) — Who you know may not be enough to land a job at Chicago's City Hall anymore.

A federal judge on Monday ended nine years of federal oversight of Chicago municipal hiring, agreeing the nation's third-largest city has put effective mechanisms in place to curb illegal patronage, or the hiring of people based on their political or personal connections.

Landing a job with the help of friends in high places was long part of the way things worked in The City That Works, and it helped Mayor Richard J. Daley, the legendary iron-fisted boss of Chicago from the 1950s until the mid-'70s, assemble his vaunted political machine. It was often said, only half-jokingly, that Chicago officials had this attitude about job-seekers: "We don't want nobody that nobody sent."

But this week, nearly a half-century after a lawyer by the name of Michael Shakman first sued over the use of "clout," as they call it in Chicago, U.S. District Judge Sidney Schenkier decided that the city has earned the right to police itself. Schenkier was one of six judges to preside over the case since 1969.

"Changing a long culture of patronage is generally not a revolutionary process; it is an evolutionary process," the judge said. "This evolutionary change has taken a solid footing in Chicago."

Over the years, the city has revamped its personnel department and made other changes designed to make hiring more transparent and fair. It has also given its inspector general authority to track hiring practices, investigate allegations of illegal patronage and recommend disciplinary measures.

"The city has systems in place it didn't have before," Schenkier said.

During a three-hour court hearing, everybody from the judge to Mayor Rahm Emanuel to Shakman acknowledged that the culture that Shakman has battled for so long has not disappeared.

"The people of Chicago are not naive," said Emanuel, who was elected in 2011 and has called patronage a "stain" on the city. "They know that attempts to influence city hiring won't magically disappear overnight." But, he said, the public has reason to be hopeful, adding: "Today is your day."

Shakman said the mayor's legacy will depend in large part on whether his commitment to patronage reform remains strong after the oversight ends.

The lawyer challenged the practice during the reign of Daley, whose use of armies of patronage workers to get out the vote was legendary. It was Daley's big-city machine — and probably some corrupt ballot-box tactics — that helped propel John F. Kennedy to a narrow victory over Richard Nixon in 1960.

Shakman's litigation led to orders, known as Shakman decrees, for the city to halt politically driven hiring. In 2005, however, a federal judge found that the city under then-Mayor Richard M. Daley — the legendary Boss' son — appeared to be flouting the prohibitions, and the court ordered the federal monitor.

Ever since, a parade of federal judges and a monitor have been working to put an open and honest hiring system in place. Last month came the breakthrough, when both the city and Shakman asked the judge to end federal oversight.

While Chicago is now off the hook, the state of Illinois is under scrutiny. Shakman recently filed a complaint alleging some workers in Gov. Pat Quinn's transportation department were patronage hires. In response, Quinn said he has "zero tolerance" for wrongdoing.

SAN DIEGO (AP) — A San Diego judge determined prosecutors have enough evidence against the alleged operator of a revenge porn site for him to face trial on conspiracy, identity theft and extortion charges, a state spokesman said Monday.

Kevin Christopher Bollaert, 27, appeared before San Diego County Superior Court Judge David M. Gill on Monday and returns to court July 16 for what's being heralded as the first case against a revenge porn site operator, said Nicholas Pacilio, a spokesman for California Attorney General Kamala Harris. Bollaert has pleaded not guilty to 31 felony counts.

His attorney Alexander Landon did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Authorities say the Bollaert earned tens of thousands dollars operating two websites for the scheme.

Prosecutors say at one site, people uploaded nude pictures without permission of those photographed and listed their names, cities and links to their Facebook profiles. When asked to remove photos, Bollaert allegedly contacted victims from a separate website and charged them up to $350. Bollaert voluntarily took the sites both offline when contacted by investigators last year, Pacilio said.

The term "revenge porn" is used because most of the explicit images have been posted online by former lovers in attempts to shame their former partners after a breakup.

The images used can be obtained consensually during a relationship or can be stolen or hacked from online accounts.

The practice resulted in a new California law that makes it a misdemeanor to post identifiable nude pictures of someone else online without their permission and with the intent of causing serious emotional distress or humiliation, though that law was not cited in the charges against Bollaert.

Unlike most revenge porn sites, investigators said Bollaert's requirement that a victim's personal information be included is what led to the identity theft allegations.

Bollaert's also charged with obtaining identifying information with the intent to annoy or harass. The extortion charges are for allegedly charging women to remove those photos through the second website. Victims were unaware that Bollaert was allegedly operating both sites and investigators determined the connection during the probe, Pacilio said.

Authorities say he told investigators during a six-month investigation that he received about $900 each month from online advertising. But PayPal records show he's received tens of thousands of dollars.

In addition to Bollaert, the attorney general has arrested another alleged operator of a revenge porn site. Casey E. Meyering, 28, of Tulsa, Oklahoma was extradited from Oklahoma to stand trial in California two weeks ago, Pacilio said.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court has rejected an appeal from a onetime billionaire hedge fund founder who was convicted on insider trading charges.

The justices did not comment Monday in letting stand the 2011 conviction of Raj Rajaratnam, who is serving an 11-year prison sentence for committing securities fraud.

Rajaratnam wanted the high court to review what role insider information played in the securities trades for which he was convicted. He also asked the justices to look at whether the government properly obtained a wiretap on his cellphone that was used to capture 2,200 private conversations.

The federal appeals court in New York previously upheld the conviction of Rajaratnam, who founded the Galleon group of hedge funds.

His brother, Rengam Rajaratnam, is facing federal fraud charges.