The legal age to buy tobacco and nicotine products in Maryland will be raised from 18 to 21, and the state will add vaping devices to the list of tobacco products, under legislation signed Monday by Gov. Larry Hogan (R).
The law was passed in response to an uptick in teen vaping, which federal officials have declared an “epidemic.” The law will take effect in October.
“There is no more important job than protecting the health and safety of Marylanders,” Hogan said in a statement.
Read more at The Hill.
{Matzav.com}

Bitcoin jumped to almost $8,000 and didn’t look back, as its longest winning streak since 2013 continued to rekindle the global cryptocurrency market.
Monday’s advance of as much as 26% comes only a few days after the digital asset broke through $6,000 and looks set to boost investor interest in conferences on the technology underlying the biggest crypto asset that are taking place in New York this week. Bitcoin’s latest surge started Saturday, when the two U.S. exchanges carrying futures are closed, making it potentially difficult for short sellers to cover their wagers.

ISIS extremists are using Instagram to promote jihad and incite support for terror attacks on the West, an investigation by The Telegraph has found.
The terrorist group are circumventing the platform’s security checks to post images and text celebrating the killings of “kafir” (unbelievers) accompanied by images of dead soldiers and beheadings as well as threatening terrorist atrocities on the scale of the Sri Lankan suicide bombings that claimed 253 lives.
Some posts brazenly use ISIS’s logo or images of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the self-proclaimed leader of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, as their profile pictures and urge followers to join jihad.
 

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo will raise a host of issues dividing the United States and Russia when he meets with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday, but their conversation is expected to accomplish little beyond the airing of opposing views.
In an indication that little concrete progress is expected when Pompeo meets with Putin and Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, State Department officials say the meeting is “an opportunity to take the conversation to a higher level.”

Nearly two-thirds of Millennials are living paycheck to paycheck – and just 38 percent feel financially stable, according to a new survey.
Overall, 59 percent of Americans live paycheck to paycheck, according to the survey of 1,000 U.S. adults by Charles Schwab.
However, the Millennial generation (people ages 23-38) was the most likely to struggle in between payday, at 62 percent, followed by Generation X (60 percent), Generation Z (55 percent) and Baby Boomers (53 percent).
Similarly, Millennials were the least likely to feel financially stable, followed by Generation X (40 percent), Generation X (45 percent) and Baby Boomers (47 percent).

New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio on Monday warned the Trump Organization to reduce carbon emissions from its buildings, threatening to fine it $2.1 million a year beginning in 2030, according to Reuters.
“It doesn’t matter who you are, even the president of the United States, you have to obey the laws of New York City,” De Blasio, who is reportedly considering a run for president, said in the lobby of Trump Tower on Monday, according to the news service.
The mayor’s office said in a statement that buildings are responsible for nearly 70 percent of the city’s greenhouse gas emissions. De Blasio tweeted an itemized “bill” to Trump properties in the city, including $469,848 for Trump Tower, $239,315 for Trump Palace, and $850,871 for Trump International Hotel and Tower.

Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders on Monday defended freshman Rep. Rashida Tlaib after President Trump accused her of anti-Semitism.
“Mr. President: Stop dividing the American people up by their religion, their race or their country of origin–and stop your ugly attacks against Muslim women in Congress. You are taking Rep. @RashidaTlaib’s comments out of context and should apologize,” Sanders tweeted.
The controversy began after Tlaib, one of two Muslim women in Congress, told Yahoo News’s “Skullduggery” podcast that she gets a “calming feeling” knowing that her Palestinian ancestors lost their land so that Jews could have a safe place to live after the Holocaust.

The number of measles cases in the US is now at 839 for the year, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s weekly measles update.
That’s 75 more cases than the agency reported last week and is inching closer to the 963 cases reported in 1994 which is the highest number of cases in a year in the last 25 years.
Last month, the number of cases this year became the highest number of cases in a single year since the virus was declared eliminated in the US in 2000. The designation means measles was no longer being transmitted within the country.
Read more at CBS News.
{Matzav.com}