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SYRACUSE, N.Y. – The number of state-taxed cigarette packs sold in New York has plummeted by 54 percent in the past decade. That's far outpacing the 19 percent decline in New Yorkers who have quit smoking over the same time. Instead, more smokers are buying cigarettes in ways that avoid New York's $4.35 per pack tax, the highest in the nation. They cross state lines, shop from black market vendors and travel to Native American outlets to save $6 per pack or more, experts say. New York is losing big. In the past five years, the state's cigarette tax collections...

Dolph Schayes, who polished his game on the Bronx playgrounds, played 15 seasons as a professional and was once voted one of the 50 best players to play in the National Basketball Association, died on Thursday in Syracuse. He was 87. His son Danny Schayes, who played 18 seasons in the N.B.A. as a 6-foot-11 center, said the cause was cancer. At 6 feet 8 inches and 220 pounds, Schayes played the position now known as power forward, becoming a stalwart for the Syracuse Nationals from 1949 to 1963 after earning all-American status at New York University. When the Nationals...

Conservatives have long accused academics of shredding the Constitution, figuratively speaking, but a Project Veritas sting operation recently caught them doing it literally. Undercover video released last week showed administrators at Yale, Cornell, Syracuse, Vassar and Oberlin agreeing to rip up copies of the Constitution handed out off campus after an investigator posing as a student described the document as “triggering” and “oppressive.” “Well, I think that the Constitution means things to different people; like you said it is a flawed document and the people who wrote it are certainly flawed individuals in my mind,” Cornell lead Title IX investigator...

Video from investigative journalism outfit Project Veritas (PV) released Thursday morning shows a Cornell administrator shredding a copy of the U.S. Constitution after a PV journalist posing as a student told the administrator the document is triggering. Elizabeth McGrath, Cornell’s Lead Title IX Investigator, is seen in the video feeding pages from a pocket-size Constitution through a paper shredder after the undercover journalist says it would be therapy for her. McGrath asks the journalist if she would like to participate, an offer she declines. I have my own personal reasons why the Constitution is very triggering for me, the PV...

Mayors from eighteen U.S. cities signed a letter to President Obama saying they are willing to take even more refugees than what has been proposed by the administration. “We will welcome the Syrian families to make homes and new lives in our cities,” wrote the mayors, all of whom are part of the Cities United for Immigration Action coalition. “Indeed, we are writing to say that we stand ready to work with your Administration to do much more and to urge you to increase still further the number of Syrian refugees the United States will accept for resettlement.” “This is...

But a closer look at these claims of independence raises serious doubts. An online search of EPA’s web site revealed that Syracuse’s Driscoll has previously involved as a principal investigator in studies that received over $3.6 million in research grants from EPA. Co-author Dallas Burtraw, a researcher at the think tank Resources for the Future, had been involved in previous EPA grants totaling almost $2 million. Harvard co-author Jonathan I. Levy had been involved in over $9.5 million worth of grants. Co-author Joel Schwartz, also of Harvard, had been previously involved in over $31 million worth of grants from EPA....

The Saudi man arrested by the Joint Terrorism Task Force yesterday in Idaho has ties to close associates of terrorist mastermind Osama bin Laden and to four Arab men charged at the same time with channeling funds to Iraq. Sami Omar Al-Hussayen – a University of Idaho doctoral candidate supported by the Saudi government – was a terrorist bagman, according to a federal criminal justice source quoted by a Seattle newspaper. Saudi student Sami Omar al-Hussayen "He's in touch with people who could pick up the phone, call [bin Laden], and he would take the call," the source told the...

A New York City law firm known for filing class action lawsuits on behalf of chain restaurant workers is going after Dinosaur Bar-B-Que for what it says is the systemic underpayment of tipped workers like servers and bartenders. The law firm of Fitapelli & Schaffer said it has filed a class action lawsuit in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York involving all six New York state Dinosaur Bar-B-Que locations, including the one opened in Troy in 2010. Dinosaur has made tipped workers spend at least 20 percent of their time doing non-tippable work — like rolling...

On Saturday, the police say, parolee Michael Morris dragged his ex-girlfriend halfway across the county – twice putting a gun to her head and threatening to execute her – before he crashed a birthday her family was holding and shot a half a dozen people, wounding some of them severely. This was in Syracuse, New York, at an Irish bar in the old Irish neighborhood known as Tipperary Hill. Twenty-two years old, out of prison in December after doing five years for a crime at 17 he committed while toting a stolen handgun. On the plus side, the bar was...

Syracuse’s Nation of Islam representative Mark Muhammad will join the city’s school board at the mayor’s request ... Muhammad’s ties to the Nation of Islam – he’s Louis Farrakhan’s local representative – that have some questioning how the group’s radical views on education and race will play into his new role. And it doesn’t appear that they will get any easy answers. A Post-Standard reporter questioned Muhammad about his affiliation with the Nation of Islam, and how the group’s beliefs, such as the needed segregation of black and white students, will guide his leadership. ... he doesn’t want the public...

Since my original article discussing how an abandoned Catholic church was being converted to a mosque in Syracuse, NY, that city has embraced the Mosque of Jesus, Son of Mary with open arms.  In April, a local publication, the Syracuse New Times, published an interview with Dr. Yusuf Soule, the executive director of the Northside Learning Center, who bought the church and rented it to a still unidentified group of Muslims.  In no news report has the group who transformed the church into a mosque been identified as anything other than a “new Islamic society.”  When asked how the plan...

Syracuse, NY -- An Ohio woman is suing Syracuse's Crowne Plaza Hotel after falling off a bar stool in the public lounge. Antoinette Allison, of Reynoldsburg, Ohio, is seeking up to $1 million for her injuries after falling off the "defective" bar stool on April 14, 2011, according to her lawsuit.

A city board on Thursday gave a Muslim group the go-ahead to remove six crosses from the roof and spires of a century-old former Catholic church so the now-vacant Gothic structure can be used as a mosque. More than 200 people had signed an online petition calling on the Syracuse Landmark Preservation Board to deny an application by North Side Learning Center, the church’s new owner, to remove the crosses and build a six-foot chain-link fence. …

SYRACUSE -- Syracuse's Holy Trinity has a new owner, and some major changes are coming for the former Roman Catholic church. As we first reported on Monday, the church, rectory and its old school, currently used for refugee and immigration programs, have been sold to the North Side Learning Center, a North McBride Street-based all-volunteer organization founded in 2009. Dr. Yusuf Soule, who heads up North Side Learning Center, confirms that his not for profit program has bought the campus and will lease the former church to a new Islamic society, which will name it 'Mosque of Jesus the Son...

SYRACUSE -- A series of public lectures on the future of Interstate 81 will be held this summer and spring. The speaker series bring renowned planning professionals, municipal leaders and community development experts to share their experiences and expertise. The first guest speaker will be Virginia Greiman, a veteran of Boston's Big Dig project and a leader in the field of project management. "Our community can learn a great deal from simply listening to others who have struggled with and overcome similar challenges that we now face," said Onondaga County Executive Joanie Mahoney. "I look forward to welcoming Professor Greiman...

PITTSBURGH -- Tyler Ennis took the inbounds pass with 4.4 seconds left and dribbled up court, weaving through Pitt's defense. He had the option of shooting or passing to Trevor Cooney. The Syracuse freshman guard decided to shoot. It was the right decision. Ennis made the 35-footer at the buzzer and No. 1 Syracuse remained unbeaten with a 58-56 victory over No. 25 Pittsburgh on Wednesday night. ''I saw someone ran over to Trevor and I just had to beat one guy,'' Ennis said. ''I knew they weren't going to let Trevor get it. I just had to get some...

New York man’s home seized after he comes up $936 short on $10,813 tax tab A Syracuse man had his home seized after he paid back $9,877 in city taxes over a six-month period -- but came up $936 short. "I tried so hard. I tried so hard to make these payments," Calvin James, who found out he lost the home when he walked into City Hall on Dec. 6 with a $1,500 check, told The Syracuse Post-Standard. The property had been seized Dec. 4. The paper reported that the city launched an aggressive foreclosure campaign in 2012. The program...

SYRACUSE, N.Y. - Officials at the 174th Attack Wing suspended all Reaper drone flights in Central New York Tuesday after one of the unmanned aircraft crashed into Lake Ontario about 12 miles from the eastern shore during a routine training flight. A Coast Guard helicopter and search vessel were unable to recover the $4 million drone, which crashed about 1 p.m. Tuesday, and were forced to call off the search late in the afternoon because of bad weather, said Col. Greg Semmel, commander of the 174th Attack Wing of the Air National Guard. Semmel said he did not know what...

Some people call it the “knockout game,” local news affiliates in New York prefer to call it simply a teenage “prank,” but whatever the term, Ralph Santiago is dead – one of three men who recently died or suffered permanent brain damage from what police say are unprovoked assaults. Others, however, are saying it’s not some random crime or occasional “prank,” but part of a nationwide pattern of unprovoked racial violence. The rules of the “knockout game” are typically the same no matter where it happens: Start with a group of black people. Find a white person. Punch him in...

SYRACUSE, NY - The U.S. Department of Justice wants to reopen a 33-year-old court case to ensure that minority applicants get a fair shot at jobs as Syracuse firefighters and police officers. Lawyers with the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division filed papers in federal court Friday challenging the state civil service tests that prospective firefighters and police officers must take. A review by the Justice Department of entry-level exams for those jobs in Syracuse showed the exams "continue to have a statistically significant, disparate impact on African-American test-takers," the Justice Department's lawyers wrote in court papers. The Justice Department asked...