$100M Alien Hunt; Fighting No Abortion in Poland; Robo Bird; Napster Steels Against Cancer; Man's Arm Controlled by Man's Brain; Rain Cells; Street-Legal AI; Sharia Law Without Discrimination; U.S. Under (Simulated) Attack; Pope Greece's Unity; Indian Jews; and UN Reflects Mankind;

Space

Stephen Hawking announces $100M ‘Breakthrough Starshot’ project to find alien life nydailynews v

The Breakthrough Starshot Project was unveiled Tuesday on the 102nd floor of One World Observatory, where Hawking was joined by Russian billionaire Yuri Milner in announcing the ambitious plan.

Abortion

Poland's abortion debate risks shaking government, church sfgate

The climate seems favorable for tightening Poland's anti-abortion law, already one of Europe's strictest, because power is currently held by a conservative government whose members stress they are Catholics and follow the bishops' teaching. Some 90 percent of Poles declare themselves as Catholics.

Drone

Robot bird to make its first flight at airports phys.org

Finally, this is a historic step for the Robird and our company, says Nico Nijenhuis, Master's student at the University of Twente and the CEO of Clear Flight Solutions. "We already fly our Robirds and drones at many locations, and doing this at an airport for the first time is really significant. Schiphol Airport has been interested for many years now, but Dutch law makes it difficult to test there. The situation is easier in Germany, which is why we are going to Weeze."

Also see Robotic Birds That Scare Away Real Birds: Botrification v

Medical

Sean Parker bankrolls project to speed cancer work foxnews

A project to speed development of cancer-fighting drugs that harness the immune system has academic and drug industry researchers collaborating and sharing their findings like never before.

Medical Tech

A Brain Implant Brings a Quadriplegic’s Arm Back to Life wired v

Ian Burkhart has been a cyborg for two years now. In 2014, scientists at Ohio State’s Neurological Institute implanted a pea-sized microchip into the 24-year-old quadriplegic’s motor cortex. Its goal: to bypass his damaged spinal cord and, with the help of a signal decoder and electrode-packed sleeve, control his right arm with his thoughts.

Power Tech

Solar cells that could generate energy from rain interestingengineering v

More recently, researchers from Ocean University of China in Qingdao have discovered that graphene can also help to generate energy from raindrops. It can achieve this because rain doesn’t consist entirely of water, it also contains a number of salts that can be split into positive and negative ions. This in turn means that a simple chemical reaction can be used to harness power, using graphene to separate the positively charged ions, which includes sodium, calcium and ammonium, in order to generate electricity.

Driverless Cars

Nauto raises $12 million for driverless car technology that’s street-legal today techcrunch

Heck explained, “Our systems today help humans drive better, safer, smarter and faster in terms of avoiding congestion and traffic. They retrofit into existing cars, and eventually will enable true autonomy in new or older vehicles.”

Islam

60-year-old 'Christian' woman was caned in Indonesia for breaking sharia law quartz

In the same nation where beachgoers in Bali throw back beers and frolic in bikinis, the woman was whipped nearly 30 times with a rattan cane before a crowd of hundreds, for the crime of selling alcohol. The canings are performed in public with shaming in mind. While many onlookers find the punishments hard to watch, some shout insults at the victims and hold up their cameraphones to record and share the macabre spectacle.

Also Sharia Law Indonesia Canes 'Christian' For Selling Alcoholic Drinks

War

Russian Jets 'Simulated Attack' On US Warship news.sky

On 11 April, two Russian Su-24s made 20 passes of the US Navy ship, according to the officials, passing within 1,000 yards at an altitude of just 100 feet.

Religion Unity

With migrant mission to Greece, pope pushes Ortho washingtonpost

Christianity’s' two most important leaders, still officially divided by a thousand-year schism, will be speaking with an increasingly unified voice that has gone beyond the realm of religion to confronting pressing issues such as climate change and humanitarian crises around the globe.

Jews

India’s Jews renew push for official minority status timesofisrael

“Jews have been part of the Indian society for 2,300 years now. But post independence, we have not been recognized as a minority,” Malekar said.

UN

Can a new boss fix the U.N.? minnpost w!

There is plenty to fix, including a pattern of sexual abuse and rape by peacekeeping soldiers who take advantage of vulnerable people they should be protecting, and an unwillingness to acknowledge responsibility for a cholera epidemic in Haiti that has killed 9,000 people. The U.N. is also facing accusations that it is allowing itself to be a tool of the Syrian government.

The U.N. is, in an odd way, just a reflection of humanity – with all of its aspirations, and all of its warts.

Other...

Loch Ness Monster' discovered at bottom of Scottish lake standard.co.uk

But experts today confirmed it was not the Loch Ness Monster but instead a large prop used in a 1960s film about the mysterious beast.