New York State

Bar owners, bartenders, pool hall proprietors and smokers rallied at New York City Hall to protest a law that bans smoking in bars and restaurants. "Can the Ban" was brandished on signs and baseball caps and chanted by hundreds of protesters on the day New York state followed the lead of the city, which barred smoking in indoor workplaces last spring over public health concerns. Rob Bookman, lawyer for the New York Nightlife Assn., said the group plans to challenge New York City's law.

The New York State Athletic Commission capped a turbulent episode Tuesday by granting a boxing license to world super-welterweight title challenger Antonio Margarito of Tijuana. Margarito is now free to fight Puerto Rico's Miguel Cotto in a rematch Dec. 3 at Madison Square Garden in New York. Margarito's fate was unclear following invasive surgery on his right eye to remove a large cataract that developed after Manny Pacquiao broke Margarito's orbital bone in their November 2010 bout.

A federal judge ruled Tuesday that New York state cannot stop wineries in the rest of the country from shipping wine directly to state residents in what vintners hailed as their biggest victory yet against such shipping bans. Developments in the case are being widely watched, as New York consumers make up the second-largest wine market in the United States behind California, which is also the country's largest producer.

The New York State Athletic Commission on Friday ordered a commission-authorized eye doctor to examine Antonio Margarito's right eye, raising doubts about whether the Tijuana fighter would be issued a boxing license for his scheduled rematch against Miguel Cotto on Dec. 3 at Madison Square Garden. Margarito, who is training in Mexico for his bout against world super-welterweight champion Cotto, will appear for the exam, his promoter, Bob Arum, said. "We don't know when yet," Arum said Friday, shortly after the decision was announced by commission Chairwoman Melvina Lathan.

Re "We {heart} New York Too," editorial, Nov. 24: Your jealousy of New York is music to this expatriate New Yorker's ears and heart. The No. 1 reason for moving to California and, if I am correct, what seems to be the only reason for moving to California, is the weather. Of course, there is a continental difference in the warmth provided by an external Santa Ana wind (i.e., California) and the internal warmth generated by the passions, fervor, intensity, culture, intellect and candor of an extended family and community (i.e.

New York state has filed a $114-million suit against contractors, designers and engineers of a thruway bridge that collapsed and killed 10 motorists, the state attorney general's office said Thursday. The bridge, a 540-foot span completed in 1954, collapsed in April, 1987.

A tax war between Seneca Indians and New York state grew more divisive Thursday as Indians dropped burning tires off a highway overpass and clashed with state police. Thirteen protesters were arrested early Thursday and seven people, including four state troopers, were injured. More than 200 extra troopers were sent to the Cattaraugus Indian Reservation about 30 miles south of Buffalo, Sgt. Gregory Lang said. The protest focuses on sales taxes.

Twenty-one senior citizens on a boat tour on Lake George in Upstate New York were killed and more than two dozen others were injured Sunday when the boat capsized and sank, Warren County authorities said. The wake from a larger passing tour boat apparently swamped and flipped the Ethan Allen at about 3 p.m. EDT as the smaller glass-enclosed tour boat was turning, according to witnesses in the village of Lake George. Warren County Sheriff Larry J.

As he always does on Sept. 11, Ed Casso spent much of the day last year in his living room watching the solemn memorials on television. It had been precisely seven years since terrorists hijacked commercial jets and crashed them into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Casso, 34, could feel the passage of time taking its toll. "Every year there's a little less coverage," he said. "Every year there's a little less feeling."

The first time Don Pasinkoff saw the Silver Point Beach Club, a row of rickety cabanas stretching out to the ocean, he shuddered. Why would people spend time here, in barracks that looked like they were condemned by Napoleon? But the woman who was showing him around the private Long Island club smiled: "That's what you think now," she said. "In three weeks, you'll be hooked."

Dominique Strauss-Kahn looked considerably better leaving a Manhattan courthouse Tuesday than he did three months ago when he first arrived in police custody, tired and disheveled, to face charges that he tried to rape a hotel housekeeper. This time the French political leader was smiling, even looking like he had lost a few pounds, in a dark-blue suit and striped tie. His wife and legal team were also all smiling: Strauss-Kahn was a free man and, as he later told French reporters, "in a hurry to get home.

Lions Gate Entertainment Corp. scored a significant legal victory Wednesday as a New York State Supreme Court judge dismissed a lawsuit brought against the company by its largest shareholder, Carl Icahn. Icahn filed suit last year over a controversial debt-for-equity swap that diluted his holdings and made it more difficult for him to seize control of the Santa Monica film and television studio. Also named as defendants in the suit were the company's board of directors and investors Mark Rachesky and John Kornitzer.

The West Regional championship game Saturday between Arizona and Connecticut at Honda Center will have more than a little New York attitude and swagger. Arizona's Lamont "MoMo" Jones and Connecticut's Kemba Walker , opposing point guards, grew up friends and spent two years as teammates at New York Rice High. "In practice we would go at it," Jones said. "He would score, then I would score. Elbows would be flying. Trash would be talked. " Bill Plaschke: Kemba Walker is the star of the tournament Now they will try to knock each other out of the NCAA tournament.

WASHINGTON -- Rep. Christopher Lee, a second-term lawmaker representing Western New York state, is resigning from Congress after the release of e-mails the married Republican allegedly sent through an online personals site. The abrupt announcement came just hours after the website Gawker published an exchange between Lee and an unnamed woman, which included a shirtless photo of the married 46-year-old. In the e-mails, apparently sent from Lee's personal e-mail using his real name, he claimed to be a 39-year-old divorced lobbyist.

In an election cycle when some Democratic congressional candidates have distanced themselves from party leaders, the Republican challenger in New York's 24th district race is putting daylight between himself and the conservative " tea party. " "Are they all sophisticated? No," said Republican Richard Hanna in a debate this week in Oneonta, in central New York. "Nobody said you had to be educated, sophisticated or in any way able to articulate your point of view as well as some people might like in order to have a vote.

A former New York state official, who served as sole trustee to a $125-billion public pension fund, pleaded guilty Thursday to charges he took nearly $1 million in bribes from Los Angeles venture capitalist and philanthropist Elliott Broidy. In exchange for the bribes, Alan Hevesi, the elected New York comptroller from 2003 until his forced resignation in 2006, approved the fund's $250-million investment in Broidy's Markstone Capital Partners, a private-equity fund that invests in Israeli companies.

As crime bosses go, Joseph Massino has been strictly old school, a wiseguy more wary than wild in a city that turns reputed mob leaders into celebrities. Unlike John Gotti, who loved fancy clothes, flashy cars and media attention, the alleged head of the Bonanno crime family has long shunned the spotlight. But as Massino prepares to stand trial this month on seven murder charges -- a case that is being billed as one of New York's great mob trials -- notoriety is about to engulf him.

Dan Rather's protracted legal fight with CBS ended Tuesday when New York state's highest court declined to hear the anchor's motion to reinstate his $70-million lawsuit against his longtime employer. Rather was hoping the court would breathe new life into his suit alleging breach of contract and fraud against CBS that a state appellate court had dismissed in September. But the Court of Appeals denied Rather's motion without comment. The decision came as muted denouement to what had been an expensive and at times ugly battle between the veteran newsman and the network that was his home for 44 years.

Put a big event in the Big Apple and you get a really big deal. Like the U.S. Open tennis tournament. It began here Monday, the granddaddy of tennis torture chambers. Win here and you either get a spot in heaven or on "Survivor. " The first of the four majors, the Australian Open, is celebrated in summer heat Down Under by mellow people who tackle most situations with beer in hand. It is early in the year and the pro players aren't angry yet. They are the toast of the town, in a town that toasts a lot. The French Open is in Paris and that's all you need to know.

Authorities probing pension-fund influence peddling on Thursday announced $17 million in settlements with targets of their investigations, including a high-profile California lobbyist and an investment firm founded by President Obama's former "auto czar." The settlements reached by the Securities and Exchange Commission and New York state Atty. Gen. Andrew Cuomo mark the latest development in a yearlong scandal centering on intermediaries who collected commissions from investment firms for brokering deals that brought the firms chunks of pension-fund money to manage.