History museum explores Germans’ view of Britain

As Brexit looms, one of Germany’s main history museums is examining Germans’ views of the British, complete with a countdown clock that may be reset if Britain’s departure from the European Union is delayed.
The “Very British: A German Point of View” exhibition at Bonn’s Haus der Geschichte features among other things a dress worn by Queen Elizabeth II during her visit to West Germany in 1965.
Project manager Christian Peters said Friday aspects include “Britain’s relationship with Europe; Germans’ enthusiasm for the royal family; Britons’ relationship with the past; their obsession, one must almost say, regarding World War II; and of course enthusiasm for British pop culture.”
The show addresses Germans’ dismay at the 2016 Brexit vote, reflected in a carnival float depicting former Prime Minister Theresa May.
The exhibition runs until March 8.

Clampdown on vaping could send users back toward cigarettes

Only two years ago, electronic cigarettes were viewed as a small industry with big potential to improve public health by offering a path to steer millions of smokers away from deadly cigarettes.
That promise led U.S. regulators to take a hands-off approach to e-cigarette makers, including a Silicon Valley startup named Juul Labs, which was being praised for creating “the iPhone of e-cigarettes.”
Today Juul and hundreds of smaller companies are at the center of a political backlash that threatens to sweep e-cigarettes from store shelves nationwide as politicians scramble to address two separate public health crises tied to vaping: underage use among teenagers and a mysterious and sometimes fatal lung ailment that has affected more than 1,000 people.
New restrictions at the local, state and federal level are poised to wipe out thousands of fruit-, candy- and dessert-flavored vapes that have attracted teens. But experts who study tobacco policy fear the scattershot approach of the clampdown could have damaging, unintended consequences, including driving adults who vape back to cigarette smoking, which remains the nation’s leading preventable cause of death.