Rio De Janeiro, Dec 16 - Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff has signed a law banning smoking in public spaces.

Smoking in all enclosed public spaces is forbidden in the new law, reported Xinhua.

It also prohibits tobacco advertising such as posters or banners at sale places. Previously the ban was only imposed on TV, radio and billboards advertising.

Washington, Oct 5 - Smoking could cause 40 million excess deaths among smokers, who also suffer from tuberculosis (TB), by 2050, new research says.

Once smokers develop the disease, they are more likely to die from it, meaning that smoking can single-handedly undermine the goal to reduce TB mortality by half between 1990 and 2015, says the research.

Washington, Aug 8 - Smokers who are inclined to take a few puffs soon after waking up may face an increased risk of developing lung, head and neck cancers than smokers who do it later.

Joshua Muscat, from the Penn State College of Medicine, Hershey, and colleagues investigated whether early morning puffing boosts smokers' risk of lung and head and neck cancers.

London, March 07 : A new study has indicated that empowered women smoke more than men.

According to a report, though it was only in the west that smoking among women was associated with empowerment, but this pattern is now repeating itself as women in poorer countries become more liberated.

According to a new study conducted in the US, people today seem to be more addicted to nicotine as compared to two decades ago and found it much harder to quit smoking, including requiring more intensive and individualized treatment.

Dr. David P. Sachs, the lead author of the study and other colleagues from the Palo Alto Centre for Pulmonary Disease Prevention, California and the St. Helena Hospital, Napa, California found severe nicotine addiction had gone up 12% between 1989 and 2006 and the percentage of smokers classified as highly nicotine dependent, as much as 32%.

According to a Finnish study published in the Archives of Internal Medicine, smoking not only shortens your life it also lowers the quality of life in old age. Dr. Arto Y. Strandberg of the University of Helsinki and colleagues conducted the study on 1658 healthy white men born between 1919 and 1934 and evaluated their cardiovascular risks and their smoking habits.

London  - Graphic images highlighting the dangers of smoking are appearing for the first time this month on tobacco products sold in Britain in a bid to urge people to quit the habit.

World Health Organization (WHO) on Friday stated that despite marketing advertisements, the electronic cigarette is not deemed to be legitimate therapy for smokers trying to overthrow the habit.

As an alternative to the telephone helpline, National Health Service (NHS), Scotland has initiated an online chat campaign for those more comfortable with the Internet, where smokers can chat with health advisors trained to help them quit the habit they can’t but would like to kick.

Washington, Aug 1 : Here’s another reason why you should stop smoking: it causes bladder cancer, says a group of researchers who added that not many people are aware of this hazardous effect of lighting up.

New York  - Billionaires Bill Gates and New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced plans on Wednesday to donate 500 million dollars to the worldwide campaign to stop people from smoking.

Washington, July 2: Smokers suffer more chronic back pain, according to a new study.

In 2003, the Robert Koch Institute interviewed more than 8000 private persons in the course of a telephone health survey, which included questions on social and demographic themes, as well as health and life style. 

On the basis of the collected data, Monique Zimmermann-Stenzel and her colleagues examined whether there was link between smoking and chronic back pain. 

Washington, June 11 : A new study has found that obesity and smoking could be linked to permanent loss of hearing.

However, the study, led by Erik Fransen in Professor Guy Van Camp's research team at the University of Antwerp, also showed that alcohol has a protective effect.

The study found that smoking, being over-weight and occupational noise are risk factors in the most common type of hearing loss.

In contrast, moderate alcohol consumption (at least one drink a week) was seen to have a protective effect.

Washington, June 10 : Middle-aged smokers are more prone to memory loss than non-smokers, says a new study by researchers at the Institut National de la Santé et de la Recherche Médicale, Villejuif, France.

A recent meta-analysis concluded that smoking is a risk factor for dementia, according to background information in the article.

Sydney  - Research in Australia has poked a hole in the common view that smoking marijuana is a harmless activity.

Years of heavy use of a substance derived from the cannabis plant can shrink important parts of the brain by 12 per cent, Melbourne University researchers said Tuesday.

Brain scans of 15 men who smoked at least five marijuana joints a day for at least 20 years showed their hippocampus was 12 per cent smaller and the amygdala was 7 per cent smaller than in a control group of 16 men who didn't smoke marijuana.

Wellington  - The number of New Zealanders who smoke daily has fallen to a record low of 18.7 per cent of the population aged 15 and over, according to official figures released Friday.

The rate is down from more than 25 per cent a decade ago and 23.4 per cent in 2003 and is the lowest since the Health Ministry began monitoring tobacco use in the 1970s.

Washington, May 22 : A new study has found that when smokers quit the habit, odds are that the health triumph doesn't occur in isolation.

Instead, the decision to quit smoking is often influenced by social networks, with entire clusters of spouses, friends, siblings and co-workers giving up the habit roughly in tandem.

London, May 12 : Banning smoking in restaurants may not only be good for public health, but also helpful in preventing teens from becoming habitual smokers.

This has been deduction from the analysis of a recent survey of 3834 Massachusetts youths, conducted in 2001 by Boston University researchers.

Melbourne, May 8 : The average Aussie smoker spends a whopping 300,000 dollars in his or her lifetime on cigarettes.

And, smoking an average 20 cigs a day means that a smoker will have puffed his way through 400,000 cigarettes by the age of 65, and 500,000 cigarettes by the time he dies.

Beijing  - Beijing's ban on smoking in public areas, part of the city's pledge to hold a smoke-free Olympics, went into effect Thursday.

Smoking will not be allowed in schools, hospitals and government offices. The ban applies to all Olympic venues including indoor and outdoor stadiums At hotels, restaurants, parks and bars are required to provide smoking and no-smoking areas.

Vienna  - After months of intra-coalition wrangling, Austria's government on Wednesday agreed on introducing smoking bans in cafes and restaurants by January 1, 2009.

Chancellor Alfred Gusenbauer said the compromise found between Social Democrats and the conservative People's Party was a "step in the right direction."

Cologne - Water pipes or hookahs are just as dangerous to your health as smoking cigarettes, according to Germany's Federal Centre for Health Education.

Smoke produced by a hookah contains several poisonous substances.

Hookah tobacco is often mixed with sugar or syrup, which when burned, releases substances that are carcinogenic or aggravate the air passages.

Munich  - Bavaria's anti-smoking legislation was intended as the toughest in all of Germany when it was introduced at the beginning of the year, but putting it into effect has produced paradoxical results.

Pubs across the country's largest state have sidestepped the law by reconstituting themselves as "smokers' clubs."

Washington, Apr 15: Smoking is a health hazard known to all. But if you’re still not able to kick the habit, here’s another reason why you should – smoking encourages infection, says a new study.

According to a new study, nicotine affects neutrophils, the short-lived white blood cells that defend against infection, by reducing their ability to seek and destroy bacteria.

Sydney, Mar 26: Busting a myth around smoking a new study has revealed that while smoking doesn't make girls skinny, it does hinder growth in their teenage male counterparts.

Canadian researchers examined 1,250 youngsters from age 12 to17 and compared smokers to the non-smokers every three months.

The findings revealed that teenage girls whom smoke do not loose weight and had similar height and body mass index (BMI).

The study also found that teenage boys were likely to be shorter by 2.54 centimetres than those who do not smoke.