Not just your river in Europe

The anti-tsunami anti-sea-level dam around the entire coastline was not cheap but we knew it would come in useful one day to keep out the Yellow Peril:

Wait, it turns out that "border" is a headline-writer's abbreviation for "airport".

An Indian woman who tried to bring cow urine into the country was fined $400 for not declaring it.
The urine was found at Wellington airport in September after an x-ray of the woman's bag made customs staff suspicious.
The woman intended to use the urine for medicinal purposes. Cows are considered sacred in India.
"When the officers started to inspect the contents of the luggage, they found two bottles of cow urine for medicinal purposes," Ministry for Primary Industries spokesman Antony Owen told 3 News.
He said the belief that certain animal products had a medicinal use often stopped people from thinking they needed to declare it.
We probably get things like this because they are related to culture, religion or traditional medicines. When they fall into that category that can cloud people's judgement sometimes in what they're declaring."
Cow urine was last halted in Wellington airport in 2012.

People are smuggling cow urine into New Zealand, because cows here are such a rarity.

We must fortify the border defenses!

Cow-piss is increasingly popular as a beverage in India (surprisingly, our mainstream brewers have not seen the export opportunities) because of encouragement from the elected Hindu theocracy.

The room reverberates with a droning, mechanical whir, and it’s redolent with a distinctive smell — like when you first open a jar of multivitamins, combined with a gas station men’s room.*
That’s because the clear liquid in the bottles is purified cow’s urine — quite possibly the fastest growing alternative medicine in India these days.
“Cow’s urine is a diuretic. It helps in detoxification of the body, and many other beneficial effects are described in the Sanskrit scriptures, such as helping to expel excess bile,” says Anil Kumar, a vaidya — practitioner of Ayurvedic medicine — employed by the company Divya Pharmacy.
Since successive Indian governments stepped up their promotion of alternative medicine a decade or so ago, unproven health products and nutritional supplements made from cow milk, cow urine and cow dung have become huge business.

Reviving medieval stupidity as an expression of nationalism is what theocrats do best (that, and creating new grifting niches). Perhaps the BJP will re-formalise the caste system as the next step in their appeal to cultural pride.

It is not recorded whether the woman was flying in cattle class.


* The description of the factory does not use the word "inspissate"; I am inconsolable.