• Over the years, News of the Weird has covered the long-standing campaign by animal-rights activists to bestow "human" rights upon animals (begun, of course, with intelligent orangutans and gorillas). In March, the New Zealand parliament gave human rights to a river -- the Whanganui, long revered by the country's indigenous Maori. (One Maori and one civil servant were appointed as the river's representatives.) Within a week, activists in India, scouring court rulings, found two of that country's waterways deserved similar status -- the Ganges and Yamuna rivers, which were then so designated by judges in Uttarakhand state. (The Ganges' "rights" seem hollow since an estimated one billion gallons of waste still enters it every day despite its being a holy bathing spot for Hindus.) [Washington Post, 3-21-2017]
• In February, federal customs agents seized 22 pounds of illegal animal meat (in a wide array) at the Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport. Among the tasty items were raw chicken, pig and cow meat, brains, hearts, heads, tongues and feet -- in addition to (wrote a reporter) "other body parts" (if there even are any other edible parts). In a typical day nationwide, U.S. Customs and Border Protection seizes about 4,600 smuggled plant or animal products. [WFAA-TV, 2-10-2017]
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