Juul Labs Inc. and other e-cigarette makers would face a 10-month deadline to submit applications for U.S. government clearance to keep their products on the market under a proposal that accelerates the deadline for federal review of the growing industry.
The Food and Drug Administration submitted the proposal to U.S. District Judge Paul Grimm in Maryland after he ruled last month in a lawsuit filed by anti-tobacco groups that the agency had illegally allowed e-cigarettes to stay on the market without a safety and public health review.
“The recent epidemic-level rise in youth e-cigarette use is a mounting public health crisis” that requires a robust regulatory response, the FDA said in the remedy brief filed Wednesday.

A federal jury on Thursday convicted a second Libyan militant of conspiracy in the deadly 2012 attacks on U.S. facilities in Benghazi that killed U.S. Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens and three other Americans.
The jury in the Distrit of Columbia, delivered a partial verdict, finding Mustafa al-Imam, 47, guilty on one count each of conspiracy to provide material support to terrorists and maliciously destroying government property, but deadlocking on 15 of 17 other counts, including the most serious charges of murder and attempted murder in the overnight attacks that began Sept. 11, 2012, on a U.S. diplomatic mission and nearby CIA post.
U.S. District Judge Christopher R. “Casey” Cooper directed jurors to continue deliberating.

Unless the president has just accidentally revealed the existence of a top-secret underwater kingdom, he’s dropped another clanger on Twitter.
Writing about his recent trip to Britain, where he met Queen Elizabeth and Prince Charles, President Trump said he’d met with the “Prince of Whales.”
He was almost there—Charles’ title is actually Prince of Wales.
Trump was trying to make the point that he feels he doesn’t need to disclose conversations with world leaders to the FBI. No one has actually suggested that—he was criticized Wednesday for saying he would accept foreign intelligence on a 2020 opponent without informing his intelligence services.

Former Rep. Beto O’Rourke, D-Texas, on Thursday took an aggressive new stance against former Vice President Joe Biden, arguing that a vote for his competitor in the 2020 Democratic presidential primaries would be a return to the past.
O’Rourke’s remarks, made in an interview on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” mark a departure from his previous hesitance to criticize fellow party hopefuls. Biden is currently leading in early polls for the party’s nomination.
Asked what he would tell voters in trying to persuade them to vote for him rather than Biden, O’Rourke replied that “you cannot go back to the end of the Obama administration and think that that’s good enough.”

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo blamed Iran for a “blatant assault” on two ships in the Gulf of Oman earlier Thursday and said the United States would defend itself and its allies against Iran’s actions in the region.
Speaking to reporters for just four minutes and taking no questions, Pompeo offered no evidence of Iran’s involvement in the explosions aboard two oil tankers near the Strait of Hormuz. He said that the assessment of blame is based on intelligence, the type of weapons used and the level of expertise needed, and that no other Iranian-backed militia in the region has the resources or proficiency to pull off such a sophisticated operation.

President Vladimir Putin said relations between Moscow and Washington were getting worse and worse, noting in an interview published on Thursday that the current U.S. administration had imposed dozens of sanctions on Russia.
Putin made his gloomy assessment ahead of a G20 summit in Japan later this month at which he might meet U.S. President Donald Trump.
“They (our relations) are going downhill, they are getting worse and worse,” Putin told the Mir TV channel, according to a Kremlin transcript.
“The current administration has approved, in my opinion, several dozen decisions on sanctions against Russia in recent years.”

Donald Trump has reiterated that he doesn’t believe it’s necessary to tell the FBI if a foreign government approaches him with damaging information about one of his political opponents.

The Toronto Raptors are one win away from the NBA championship — and a free trip to Israel.
The team’s Jewish billionaire co-owner, Larry Tanenbaum, said he will bring the club to visit  Israel if they wins the title.
The Raptors were up 3 games to 1 in the best-of-7 Finals over the two-time defending champion Golden State Warriors. But the Canadian squad could not seal the deal at home in Game 5 on Tuesday, losing by a point, and must win either at Golden State on Thursday in San Francisco or at home in the decider to take the basketball crown.

Sarah Huckabee Sanders will leave her post as White House press secretary at the end of the month, President Trump announced on Thursday.
Sanders’s departure caps off a tumultuous, two-year run as Trump’s top spokeswoman, marked by tensions with the White House press corps and the disappearance of the daily news briefing. During that time, however, Sanders became one of Trump’s closest aides and fiercest defenders.
In his announcement, which was made on Twitter, Trump praised Sanders as a “very special person with extraordinary talents” who could one day run for governor of her home state of Arkansas.
“She would be fantastic. Sarah, thank you for a job well done!” Trump wrote.