Smoked out

Please pack up your ashtrays and go: An 89-year-old Ohio woman who says she prefers eviction to giving up cigarettes will have to move out of her apartment because the building no longer allows smoking.

The Buzz can’t decide which is more amazing: that someone would choose smoking over having a place to live, or that a smoker can live to the age of 89.

Don’t know much about history: On this day in 1952, the detonation of a 31-kiloton nuclear device in the Nevada desert was broadcast on live national television (Today in History, Page A2).

It remained the biggest bomb on TV until 2010, when NBC put Jay Leno in prime time.

Now it needs some powdered aspirin: Reversing itself, the federal Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau now says it has not yet approved a powdered alcohol product called “Palcohol,” and doesn’t know when it will give the product its OK (Page A7).

The agency says the earlier approvals were issued in error — following, we presume, extensive rounds of product testing conducted into the wee hours.

— Mark Carlson, Herald staff

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