A TAXING IDEA

Eventually people might quit smoking

Hawaii is far from being alone in hiking taxes on cigarettes. Federal health officials say 14 states, the District of Columbia and the federal government increased cigarette taxes last year, ranging from 10 cents a pack in North Carolina to $1 in Connecticut. Hawaii's tax is now $2.60 a pack and scheduled to rise by 40 cents a pack every September through 2012. The federal tax went from 39 cents to $1.01 a pack last year. The average cost of a pack of cigarettes is now $5.25, according to the Washington-based Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids.

WARMING UP

They were here just awhile ago

The hills are alive with the sound of ... cracking ice.

Most of Austria's glaciers in the iconic Alps are melting. The Austrian Alpine Association says 85 of the 93 glaciers it monitored from autumn 2008 to autumn 2009 had receded, while seven stayed the same, and one grew.

The Innsbruck-based group said in its annual report that the Niederjochferner glacier in the Oetztal Alps melted the most, shrinking by 151 feet.

CHARITY WASTED?

Easy money seems to change people's behavior

A study raises the question of whether international health aid to poor countries has its intended effect, finding that some African nations slashed their own spending on public health programs after receiving billions from abroad to fight AIDS.

Donors believed the aid was being used to supplement the recipient nation's health budget, but the influx of cash prompted some governments to divert their own money to different, untracked purposes, according to the study published in the medical journal Lancet. For every dollar from donors, poor countries transferred up to $1.14 from their own health budgets.

The U.S. is the biggest contributor to international health aid, which reached nearly $19 billion in 2006.