Maryland Attorney General Anthony G. Brown joined a bipartisan coalition of 24 attorneys general and the City of New York in urging major credit card companies and payment processors to take stronger action against unlawful vaping sales.

In letters sent to companies including Visa, Mastercard, PayPal, and others, the coalition called for efforts to block transactions that enable the sale of unauthorized e-cigarette products, particularly those reaching young people.

Federal law requires FDA authorization for e-cigarette products, and most currently sold products are not approved, making them illegal to market or distribute. The coalition said many online sellers fail to comply with laws such as the PACT Act, which mandates age verification and other safeguards. While states have taken enforcement actions against retailers, officials emphasized that payment processors play a key role in limiting access and are being asked to collaborate on preventing unlawful transactions.

University of Oregon chemist Christopher Hendon loves his coffee—so much so that studying all the factors that go into creating the perfect cuppa constitutes a significant area of research for him. His latest project: discovering a novel means of measuring the flavor profile of coffee simply by sending an electrical current through a sample beverage. The results appear in a new paper published in the journal Nature Communications.

We've been following Hendon's work for several years now. For instance, in 2020, Hendon’s lab helped devise a mathematical model for brewing the perfect cup of espresso, over and over, while minimizing waste. The flavors in espresso derive from roughly 2,000 different compounds that are extracted from the coffee grounds during brewing. So it can be challenging for baristas to reproduce the same perfect cup over and over again.

That's why Hendon and his colleagues built their model for a more easily measurable property known as the extraction yield (EY): the fraction of coffee that dissolves into the final beverage. That, in turn, depends on controlling water flow and pressure as the liquid percolates through the coffee grounds. The model is based on how lithium ions propagate through a battery’s electrodes, similar to how caffeine molecules dissolve from coffee grounds.

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World number one Jannik Sinner's brilliant form continues as he reaches the quarter-finals of the Madrid Open with a straight-set win over Britain's Cameron Norrie.

A driver crashed into the front of a Z Burger/Maman Joon restaurant in Olney late this afternoon, prompting a response from Montgomery County Fire and Rescue Service crews.

Around 4:45pm, MCFRS units were dispatched to the restaurant on the 18100 block of Georgia Avenue a(near the intersection of Georgia Ave. and Olney-Laytonsville Road) for a report of a vehicle striking the building. A photo from the scene shows a gray SUV up on the curb and into the front exterior of the restaurant, with emergency personnel assessing the situation.

No information has been released yet on injuries or the extent of structural damage. MCFRS remained on scene as of the initial report. Updates will be provided if more information becomes available.

The cuts, which employees had been expecting for weeks, will be Meta's largest layoff since 2023.

Seattle Mariners' pitcher Logan Gilbert "wore one" as he stops a sizzling line drive with his shirt.