New Zealand Wants to Go "No Smoking"

NO SMOKING: New Zealand's government on Thursday announced a 40 percent hike in tobacco taxes over the next four years in pursuit of a pledge to wipe out smoking by 2025. About 20 percent of adults here smoke, compared with 16 percent in the U.S., 23 percent in China and 27 percent in France.

NO KIDDING: Already among the costliest in the world, a pack of cigarettes in the South Pacific nation will run 20 New Zealand dollars ($15) on average by 2016.

NO SHELF SPACE: Starting in July, retailers must hide cigarettes for sale below the counter.

New Island Appears in Red Sea

A mysterious new island has appeared in the Red Sea.

The island was created by an eruption that occurred in the Red Sea earlier this month. It is made of loose volcanic debris from the eruption, so it may not stick around long.

According to news reports, fishermen witnessed lava fountains and spouts reaching up to 90 feet tall on Dec. 19, which is probably the day the eruption began, said Erik Klemetti, a volcanologist at Denison University in Granville, Ohio.

This "before" picture from Oct. 24, 2007, shows an area of the Red Sea with open water where the new island now sits.

Ash plumes were seen emanating from the spot Dec. 20 and Dec. 22 by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer, or MODIS, on NASA's Terra and Aqua satellites. The Ozone Monitoring Instrument on NASA's Aura satellite detected elevated levels of sulfur dioxide, further indicating an eruption. By Dec. 23, what looked like a new island had appeared in the Red Sea off the west coast of Yemen.

"I am surprised about how quickly the island has grown," Klemetti, who writes Wired's Eruptions Blog, told OurAmazingPlanet.

The volcanic activity occurred along the Zubair Group, a collection of small islands that run in a roughly northwest-southeast line. The islands rise from a shield volcano (a kind of volcano built from fluid lava flows) and poke above the sea surface.

Scientists will keep a close eye on the new island to see if it has staying power.

Newly emerging islands aren't unheard of. Other newly emerged islands include Surtsey off of Iceland, Anak Krakatau in the caldera of Krakatoa in Indonesia, and Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha'apai in Tonga.

Metro Atlanta Billboard Prompts 911 Calls

An Outback Steakhouse sign on I-85 in Norcross, Ga., touting its wood-fire grilled steaks, is doing it's job and sending people into a tizzy, but for the wrong reason.

Several motorists driving on the Georgia Interstate called 911 to report that the billboard was on fire! It is indeed smoking, but it's not actually on fire. It is just an illusion generated by smoke machines embedded in the sign.

As you can see from the sign, it is smoke that is coming out of the wood pictured on the sign.  I think it's genius.

This brings to mind one time I was in Los Angeles and a movie studio wrapped a building in L.A. to promote a movie, must have been Deep Impact or Armageddon, or a similar movie.  Well, the building wrap made it look like there was a hole in the building.  Motorists on the freeways started calling asking about it and it snarled traffic even more than usual. 

They eventually had to remove the wrap on the building, but it did generate a ton of publicity.