Cigarette

Mary-Kate Olsen, half the identical Olsen twin duo, married her long-time boyfriend Olivier Sarkozy (half-brother of former French prez). Naturally, Greek-American actor John Stamos who once played her uncle in popular sitcom “Full House” felt a little nostalgic.

According to a market research of the five leading tobacco companies, the consumption of illicit cigarettes in Bulgaria has registered a decrease.

This was one of the conclusions drawn from the results of the survey, which were presented at a working meeting in the building of the interior ministry on Sunday.

Many of us have probably wondered at some point why it is that some heavy smokers never suffer from any lung related diseases and live to a ripe old age, while people who have never touched a cigarette in their lives die of cancer. The enigma has been solved by scientists who conducted a study on 50,000 people and concluded that it has to do with ‘good genes’.

According to a recent survey, the number of students of US Universities who smoke marijuana on a regular basis is higher than those who smoke cigarettes.

The Financial Crimes Squad (SDOE) said on Wednesday that it seized 975,000 empty cigarette packs in Thessaloniki.

SDOE said the empty packs were copies of a Greek brand and were destined to be shipped to a neighboring country, filled with cigarettes and then shipped illegally back into Greece so they could be sold.

SDOE did not say if any arrests were made.

Seven people aged between 28 and 59 were arrested in coordinated raids across Attica on Thursday, in an operation launched by the Economic Police to crack down on an international network smuggling illegal tobacco products into the European Union through a base in Greece.

The Greek state missed out on total taxes of 2.535 billion euros over the previous seven years (from 2008 to 2014) due to cigarette smuggling, according to an annual European survey on illegal tobacco trading by KPMG.

Last year alone cigarette smuggling grew by 2.8 percentage points of the market to account for 20.6 percent of domestic tobacco transactions.

A Canadian court has ordered tobacco firms to pay 15.5 billion Canada Dollars ($12.4 billion) to smokers in Quebec who claimed they were never warned about health risks linked to smoking.

Imperial Tobacco Canada, Rothmans, Benson & Hedges and JTI-MacDonald said they would appeal the award for moral and punitive damages, which is the largest in Canadian history.

Albania's Ministry of Finance announced that it will stop cars and motorbikes transporting fuel across the borders - to stop Albanians from buying fuel in neighbouring Montenegro, Macedonia and Kosovo to benefit from lower prices there.

Smuggled cigarettes arrive in Turkey from Georgia, northern Iraq and Bulgaria, while there are large sums of money being transferred from the eastern parts of Turkey to Istanbul in line with smuggling activities, according to recent data from Turkey's financial crime investigation board (MASAK), daily Milliyet has reported.