Human Rivers; Responsible Human Editing; Relit Street Lights; Duterte's South Sea Dance; Sacrifice in Jerusalem; Tuition-Free in NY; and Waiting for Gorsuch

Worshiping the Creature

Ganges and Yamuna rivers granted same legal rights as human beings theguardian

The court in the Himalayan resort town of Nainital appointed three officials to act as legal custodians responsible for conserving and protecting the rivers and their tributaries. It ordered that a management board be established within three months.

And those rivers weren't even the first. See also This New Zealand River Just Got the Legal Rights of a Person smithsonianmag

Mexican Fury; Gorbachev's World View; Eroding North Korea; Russia in Japan's Skies; Allowing Evolutionary Doubt; Frisco Sans Kids; and The Human-Pig

Politics

Mexicans Launch Boycotts of U.S. Companies in Fury at Donald Trump time

The boycotts illustrate the defiant mood brewing in Mexico in reaction to Trump’s tumultuous first week in the White House. President Enrique Pena Nieto canceled a bilateral meeting in Washington on Thursday after Trump insisted Mexico should pay for the border wall. The Mexican government and leading business lobbies have said the country should pull out of the North American Free Trade Agreement, or NAFTA cnn, rather than accept a bad rewrite. And opposition leader Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador has called for a lawsuit in the United Nations against the planned border wall.

Little Fake News Detectors; StemExpress Blinks; Rise of the Auroch; 2-State Liquid; Perching a Plane; Sick Sensors; and Deciding Robots' Legal Future

Society

If state lawmakers have their way, California schoolchildren may be taught how to spot ‘fake news’ washingtonpost

California Assemblyman Jimmy Gomez (D) introduced a bill Wednesday that would require the state to establish curriculum standards and frameworks to teach “civic online reasoning” to middle- and high-schoolers. The intention is to help give youngsters “the ability to judge the credibility and quality of information found on Internet Web sites, including social media,” the bill states.

NATO Makes Nervous; Another Mediterranean Carrier; Israel has Robotic Weapons Too; UN Votes Israel; Losing Russian Citizenship; Brexit...or Not?; Seoul Pride; Equal Destitute is Equality, Too; Reading, Writing, 'Rithmatic, and Robots; Invisible. Wearable. Electronic.; Passenger Drone-Test Approved; Turing Test Beat; Harmful, Thinking Robot Made; NASA and UAE; and Tiny, Dense Bird Brains

Two times in almost as many days, the UN has done something in favor of Israel. The world really must be ending! :) Also, MIT might have beaten the Turing Test with AI that fooled people twice as often as not that the sound added to the video was selected by a human.

War

Nervous Baltics on war footing as NATO tries to deter Russia reuters

Leaders in the Baltic countries and Poland fear the force NATO plans to deploy on their territory is too small and symbolic to deter an attack by Russia, whose 2014 annexation of Crimea is fresh in the memories of the former Soviet-bloc states.

They will this week press other ministers of the western military alliance to help them build an air defense system against Russian aircraft and missiles. But that would be a highly sensitive step, likely to be condemned by Moscow as yet more evidence of a NATO strategy threatening its borders.

Also see NATO To Site 4,000 Troops In Baltic Over Russia