The newest political storm of this election-year summer is a House tobacco bill worth millions to farmers and engineered by the irascible Ways and Means Committee Chairman Bill Thomas. Mr. Thomas is promoting a $9.6 billion phaseout of tobacco's Depression-era quota system -- a plan he has attached to a larger corporate-tax bill that Republican business allies want moved through Congress this year. ...

Robert Zangrando claims he has been assaulted by cigarette smoke. The smoke that wafted into his condominium from the cigarettes held outside by his neighbor, Nicole Kuder, was willfully blown in his direction and invaded his home, he says, which led to his additional allegations of battery and trespass. ...

Restaurant revenue in Montgomery County increased in the six months after a countywide ban on smoking took effect, a finding that anti-smoking advocates hope will boost their efforts to enact similar bans statewide and in the District. ...

A constitutional amendment that banned smoking in most restaurants and other workplaces has not hurt those businesses, according to a university study released Monday. ...

The deadline to sign the FCTC is Tuesday, June 29, 2004. The FCTC can only be signed at the United Nations in New York. The following note lists the countries that have and have NOT signed the FCTC according to WHO regions: Americas (AMRO), European (EURO), African (AFRO), Eastern Mediterranean (EMRO), South-East Asian (SEARO), Western Pacific (WPRO). ...

Struggling through a smoky issue, a Senate committee passed a bill Tuesday that would generally ban smoking on state beaches but allow local governments to exempt the sand along their coastlines from the prohibition. ...

After years of suffering silently, Koichi Yasui, a 70-year-old taxi driver, has decided to seek reprieve from the courts. He suffers from pulmonary emphysema, a smoking related disease, and plans to sue the Japanese government for making him sick as a result of its active support for the tobacco industry. ...

Maryland Attorney General J. Joseph Curran Jr. has filed a $5.3 million lawsuit against cigarette maker Brown & Williamson Corp., claiming a hip-hop promotional campaign for its Kool brand violates an agreement not to market tobacco to children. The attorney general's office is asking a Baltimore Circuit Court judge to prevent the company from distributing free radios, lighters and compact discs and to halt the sale of cigarette packs wrapped in hip-hop labels in Maryland. ...

The Illinois Supreme Court's smoke break is about to end. This week could see a key filing in the lawsuit that brought the largest verdict in Illinois history -- one that left the tobacco industry gasping for breath and sparked nationwide calls for litigation reform. The brief, due from the plaintiffs in Price v. Philip Morris, will argue that the state's high court should uphold a $10.1 billion judgment against the country's largest cigarette maker. ...

Philip Morris Cos. officials in the Czech Republic have been distributing an economic analysis concluding that cigarette consumption isn’t a drag on the country’s budget, in part because smokers’ early deaths help offset medical expenses. ...