U.S.
Officials unanimously voted to ban e-cigarette sales in San Francisco, the first major U.S. city to take this step. Like traditional tobacco, e-cigarettes can cause lung damage and disease, and their use is skyrocketing in young people—in 2018 one in five U.S. high school students reported e-cigarette use.
France
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Grape seeds found in an ancient refuse pile in the Jura mountains were an exact genetic match with a type of grape harvested there today, meaning local winegrowers have been cultivating the same vintage for roughly 900 years.
Hungary
Despite large-scale protests from scientists about academic freedom, the country's Parliament passed a law granting the government control of more than 40 institutes within the Hungarian Academy of Sciences.
Japan
Japan has withdrawn from the International Whaling Commission and resumed commercial whaling operations after a 31-year hiatus. Two minke whales were killed for their meat in July in the first official hunt.
Nepal
Newly declassified cold war–era U.S. satellite images revealed that Himalayan glaciers have lost ice since 2000 at twice the rate that they did during the previous 25 years.
India
All four reservoirs in Chennai, India's sixth-largest city, have gone dry, forcing more than nine million people in the region to conserve water and rely on government rations. Low rainfall paired with unregulated water use spurred the drought.