There’s no tobacco in electronic cigarettes. That’s a fact.

But don’t bring facts to the Food and Drug Administration, which on Monday officially began regulating e-cigarettes (and the businesses that make and sell them) under the provisions of the Tobacco Control Act, the 2009 law giving the FDA regulatory power over tobacco products—and apparently things that sort of look and act like tobacco products too.

The consequences are already being felt at places like The Electric Cigarette Lounge in Sacramento, California, which shut its doors for good this week. The store’s owner told local TV station KCRA that the FDA’s rules snuffed out his business.

Andrew Osborne, the owner of Vapor Trail Electronics in Buffalo, New York, told News 4 that he expects the entire e-cigarette industry to collapse under the new federal rules.

“This is going to wipe out the e-cigarette business and leave Big Tobacco running the industry,” Chris Voudris, who owns four retail shops called Vapor Haus in Ohio, told the Dayton Daily News on Monday. “The cost of regulations will be too costly for small companies to compete.”

From: The FDA’s New Rules for E-Cigarettes Are Already Hurting Vape Shops – Hit & Run : Reason.com

Group of Eight chief executive Vicki Thomson has highlighted the broken state of the system in a wideranging speech she delivered today at the Graduate Employability and Industry Partnerships Forum.

She said the removal of caps on student numbers and the introduction of a “demand driven” system, had led to unintended consequences.

Universities were now pumping out an oversupply of graduates, making it hard for some to get jobs despite spending significant time and money on their education.

Ms Thomson also noted that the value of vocational study had also been eroded, with people forced to consider going to university “or be labelled a failure”.

Almost 40 per cent of Australians aged 25 to 34 years old now had an undergraduate degree, an achievement helped by the world’s most generous income-contingent student loan scheme (HELP).

But Ms Thomson said reaching this goal had not led to the “career utopia” many graduates dreamt of, and had come at enormous financial cost to the country.

From: University reform: Demand driven system has devalued degrees and made some feel like failures

Missouri’s lead public defender ordered Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon to represent a poor client in court, saying Nixon was responsible for ruinous budget cuts that have left the state’s public defender system incapable of performing its duties.

Citing a state law that gives his office the power to “delegate the legal representation of any person to any member of the state bar of Missouri,” Missouri State Public Defender System Director Michael Barrett assigned Nixon, a barred attorney, to defend a poor person in court in a letter released Wednesday.

“As of yet, I have not utilized this provision because it is my sincere belief that it is wrong to reassign an obligation placed on the state by the 6th and 14th Amendments to private attorneys who have in no way contributed to the current crisis,” Barrett wrote. “However, given the extraordinary circumstances that compel me to entertain any and all avenues for relief, it strikes me that I should begin with the one attorney in the state who not only created this problem, but is in a unique position to address it.”

From: Missouri’s Lead Public Defender Assigns Governor to Case in Protest of Budget Cuts – Hit & Run : Reason.com

Michael Phelps will swim his first event of the Rio Olympics on Sunday night, and he’ll do it with noticeable red circle marks splayed all across his back.

If you’ve watched any of the Olympics so far, you’ve likely seen similar spots on other athletes, including some American male gymnasts. The marks are the result of cupping therapy, a healing technique that’s particularly en vogue at the moment among Olympians.

As NBC explained:

Basically, cupping involves a cup attached to a pump. Athletes put the cup on their skin and create suction with the pump. Some say the technique increases blood flow and helps a person’s sore muscles heal.

The spots are bruises from the cups, and can apparently last up to two or three weeks.

From: Michael Phelps has red circles on his back from cupping therapy – Business Insider