New York raised the minimum age to buy cigarettes to 21 on Sunday, in its latest initiative to encourage healthier behavior among residents.

The law, signed November 19 shortly before former mayor Michael Bloomberg finished his third term, had a six-month waiting period before it came into effect -- but its impact can already be clearly felt.

"Under 21, no tobacco," warned a small sign at the entrance of a small shop that sells smokes, newspapers, candy, coffee and cakes, in the Nolita neighborhood (North of Little Italy).

No tobacco, either, for anyone who can't present a valid ID proving their age. Shopkeeper scan IDs to test their authenticity before handing over the box of cigarettes.

The measure -- unprecedented among America's big cities -- raises the legal age to buy cigarettes from 18. It also applies to other forms of tobacco and to e-cigarettes.

It's the latest of New York's efforts to reduce smoking in the city, which bans cigarettes and, as of April 29, e-cigarettes in restaurants and bars, in parks or squares, and at the city's public beaches. Some private residential buildings have also banned smoking.

Cigarette taxes in the city are also the highest in the country: $5.85 a carton, which brings the overall price to around $12. In addition, the city has established a minimum price of $10.50 a box for cigarettes.

Would you like your pizza home-delivered by an unmanned drone? That may not be impossible in future, for a little-known pizza chain in Mumbai last week succeeded in making a test-delivery less than 3km away from its outlet in Lower Parel by using a remote-controlled, GPS-enabled drone.

The 'customer' was actually a friend of the chain's CEO, so it was technically not a sale, as commercial deliveries by drones are not allowed in India. Yet, in a way, it was a first for a product delivery Amazon has only planned. On May 11, the drone took off from the Lower Parel outlet and, flying at a speed of 30km an hour, manoeuvred its way atop the city's mill district to reach its destination, a high-rise in Worli, in nearly 10 minutes.

The drone dropped the 13-inch plain margherita pizza, weighing half a kilo, on the 21st floor rooftop (where it was collected by the 'customer') before taking off again for the return journey. The speed with which the delivery was made thus beat the record for most leading pizza chains, which manually deliver pizzas within 30 minutes.

The profits of the porn industry in the United States alone is about $13.3 billion dollars. To put that in perspective, that's more than the NFL, NBA and MLB combined.

The global market power of the porn industry is roughly $97 billion, incidentally, just in case 13.3 billion wasn't scary enough. To put that in perspective: the Dominican Republic has a GDP of $99 billion (according to the IMF). Keep in mind, this is based primarily on the registered pornography operations and estimations, excluding some or much of the gray-area online world.

If this industry was a country, it'd be ranked about 36th in the world.

Now, this industry is almost entirely unregulated. There are no unions. There are no oversight committees, no major industry watchdogs. There's no real government oversight whatsoever on a global basis. It is in many ways a free market.

Although some sites report 66% as having sexually transmitted diseases within the pool of actors in the industry, this number is fictitious and disproved through data. Despite that, the fact remains that the incidence of HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases is far higher than officially reported.

A B.C. mother was filmed pummelling another woman on a bus, after the woman allegedly boarded the bus without fare, swore loudly, and attacked the mother's kids when asked to watch her language.

The incident began at about 10:20 a.m. Tuesday in Langley, B.C., when a female passenger began fighting with a bus driver over her non-payment of the bus fare.

Madrid's famous San Isidro had to be cancelled for the first time in 35 years after a bull skewered, trampled and gored three matadors. Half-tonne fighting bulls skewered or trampled all three matadors in an extraordinary upset at Madrid's prestigious Las Ventas bullring, forcing the entire spectacle to be cancelled.

"Drama in Las Ventas" ran the front page headline of conservative daily ABC over a full-page photograph of a huge bull plunging its right horn into the side of the most seriously injured matador, David Mora, before he fell to the ground.

Spanish media devoted broad coverage to the bloody turning of the tables in Las Ventas, reputed to be the most important bullring in the world.

"The festival had to be suspended .. because of the gorings suffered by the three matadors," said a statement issued by the Las Ventas bullring.

Fox News anchor Gregg Jarrett was jailed Wednesday after being arrested in a bar at Minneapolis-St. Paul Airport.

Jarrett, who is a weekend co-anchor on the FOX News Channel was arrested about 12:30 p.m. at Northern Lights Grill in the main terminal, said Patrick Hogan, a spokesman for the Metropolitan Airports Commission.

Jarrett was released from custody shortly after 1:30 a.m. Thursday after a $300 bond was posted, according to Hennepin County Sheriff's Office records. The records show he's due in court on June 6.

Oh high school graduation time. The kids are all excited and the parents are wavering between proud and anxious and everyone is so involved in the whole process that no one can spare a minute to pity the petty tyrants that infest every high school, who are losing yet another crop of kids to control and bully. These folks, who react poorly to their own waning youth by trying to suck the fun out of being young for teenagers, can be found both in administration and in the classrooms. Are they all people who work in public schools? No. But every public school has them. And every year, these petty tyrants watch another group of kids they've been able to push around for four years slide away from them.

The pain it must cause them, waking up on graduation day and realizing that tomorrow, they have no more control. No more punishing them for having fun. No more enforcing of arbitrary dress codes. No more lectures about how they're rotting their brains with the smart phones and the hip-hop and the TV shows. But before that day comes, the petty tyrants will make one last power grab. They will try to make graduation as unfun as possible, and, of course, scour the earth looking for unauthorized pleasures taken by the students that can now be punished by yanking graduation away from them. You kids think you can just make your jokes and have your laughs, just because school is ending? The petty tyrants will show you who still holds the cards. Grandma will not be seeing you walk across the stage at graduation! How do you like them apples?

New York - The 14-year-old boy sat on the stoop of the Hookah Shop in the Bronx, blood pouring from his chest and filling his lungs, and thought: This is what it's like to die. Moments before 11 o'clock Saturday night, the boy, Javier Payne, had been smashed through the store's plate glass window by a police officer who had stopped him after an altercation with a man on the street, witnesses said.

The boy was bleeding critically and under arrest.

When EMS paramedics arrived at the scene they found the color draining from Payne's face, his clothes soaked in blood and his hands cuffed behind his back. A witness described the police officers on the scene as "nonchalant" about the emergency unfolding in front of them.

"He looked like a young man who was facing down his own mortality," said one city employee familiar with the incident. "This is a kid who was staring at his own doom. He looked like he was going to die. And if he didn't get help when he did, he would have."

An argument ensued between the paramedics and police about removing the teenager's handcuffs so they could treat his injuries. Initially, the police refused, but eventually relented, witnesses said.

One of the paramedics had to hold the boys chest wound closed while they rushed him to Jacobi Medical Center. Medical experts said it may have saved Payne's life.

As he was wheeled into the emergency room Payne was shrieking: "They threw me through a glass window and now I'm going to die, I'm going to die."

Initially, EMS did not rush to the scene because when the officers put the call over they did not indicate that there was a pediatric emergency, a source familiar with the incident said. Instead they used a protocol normally used for drunks.

The office did not issue a "sheet" - an email to the police press corps detailing newsworthy events - on the incident.

Descriptions of Irish mezzo soprano Tara Erraught's weight condemned by leading opera figures

The opera world has reacted with anger to the disparaging remarks made by several critics about the appearance of the female soprano star of this year's Glyndebourne festival opera, Der Rosenkavalier.

Irish mezzo soprano Tara Erraught, who is the principal soloist in the Bavarian State opera ensemble, made her UK stage debut at the 80th anniversary season of the opera festival on Saturday, playing Octavian in Strauss's comic masquerade.

But praise of Erraught's performance was overshadowed by descriptions of the singer's weight by leading critics, who labelled her variously as "unbelievable, unsightly and unappealing", (The Times) "dumpy" (The Independent) and with an "intractable physique" (The Daily Telegraph).

Andrew Clark in the Financial Times added: "Tara Erraught's Octavian is a chubby bundle of puppy-fat." The Guardian described her as "stocky".

Leading opera figures have now spoken of their disgust that the 27-year-old, who is a rising star, should be subject to such comments, with several prominent female singers jumping to Erraught's defence.

Writing for the Guardian website, fellow mezzo soprano Jennifer Johnstone, asked: "How, then, have we arrived at a point where opera is no longer about singing but about the physiques and looks of the singers, specifically the female singers?"

She continued: "Barely any mention of her voice, a gloriously rounded and well produced instrument, was made, and there was little comment on her musicianship, dramatic commitment or her ability to communicate to an audience and to move that audience to tears. Comment was also made about another female singer being 'stressed by motherhood'. I, for one, had thought we as a country had moved beyond the point where women were treated as second-class citizens, but clearly overt sexism is still rife, no matter what we are led to believe.

"All singers need self confidence to perform, and so it is on this level that it is particularly cruel and irresponsible of this set of critics to be so completely disparaging of a singer's appearance."

Jennifer Rivera, a world famous American mezzo soprano, also voiced her anger at the critics comments, which she condemned as demeaning the entire art form of opera.

This image of a starving child with nothing to eat but a football has tapped into Brazil's complex relationship with the approaching World Cup.

Paulo Ito, a street artist, painted the mural on a school in Sao Paulo on 10 May and a photo of the artwork has since been shared more than 50,000 times on Facebook alone.

The city has been at the centre of repeated and sometimes violent protests against the government's £6.5 billion spending on the World Cup when the money is so badly needed elsewhere.

"People already have the feeling and that image condensed this feeling," he told slate.com.

"The truth is there is so much wrong in Brazil that it is difficult to know where to start," he said.