Habits

Shortly after the midnight on Wednesday, Alina Tronaru regretfully stubbed out her last cigarette in a restaurant.

Together with some other friends, the 32-year-old joined a "farewell" party for smokers in a fancy restaurant in downtown Bucharest.

She is not giving up smoking, however, just giving up smoking in public places.

The number of teenagers trying alcohol or cigarettes before they turn 14 has dropped, especially among girls, according to a World Health Organization study of 42 well-off nations.    

One of the significant changes in Turkish social life under the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) is the smoking ban in public spaces. The first step of this ban came out in 2009, forcing all restaurants and hotels to ban smoking in all closed spaces. Many people at the time believed the ban would never work as Turkey is a heavily smoking nation. But on the whole it did.

Turkey will extend a smoking ban previously issued for indoor areas to outdoors, the Turkish health minister has announced, as President Recep Tayyip Erdo?an wages a large-scale war against the habit.

Serbia will next year enact new legislation to ban on smoking in all enclosed public places, a Belgrade-based daily is reporting.

According to Blic, this will be done through amendments to the Law on Protection of the Population from Exposure to Tobacco Smoke, and will also apply to all restaurants, bars, and cafes.

There are some bizarre rules of etiquette to keep in mind when traveling the globe. So to avoid getting yourself in a pickle it’s good to avoid ‘rock out’ hand gestures in Colombia or giving certain types of flowers to Russians.

While in England it’s rude to be late, in Venezuela it’s polite to be tardy or else they’ll be viewed as greedy!

Here are rules worth bearing in mind:

The Organization for Economic Co-Operation and Development’s report from “Health at a Glance 2015″ shows that how you feel depends on where you live? Charts show how factors are influenced depending on where you live.

Fruit eating habits

"Parks are among the few smoke-free places here," says Larisa Marinescu, 32, pushing a stroller with her eight-month-old girl round a park in Bucharest.

"It is very difficult to find a non-smoking place to eat with a child. This is not normal," she adds.

Marinescu is one of many Romanians who are strongly opposed to smoking.

Greeks are drinking less than they did in 2000 and have now dropped their alcohol consumption to beneath the OECD average.

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’.