The Ohio Supreme Court will get a chance to determine the legality of the state's smoking ban after an appeals court ruled that state officials didn't overstep their bounds when they repeatedly cited a Victorian Village bar for violating Ohio's smoking ban.

Zeno's Victorian Village is fighting a two-pronged battle against the 2006 anti-smoking law, saying that it shouldn't apply to family-owned bars and that authorities are unfairly punishing bars for violating the ban rather than the smokers themselves.

On Tuesday, the Franklin  County Court of Appeals handed Zeno's a big setback. In a  3-0 ruling, judges overturned a trial court's decision that dismissed more than $30,000 in  fines against Zeno's. The trial  court concluded that authorities had singled out bars and  restaurants for penalties while  refusing to cite smokers who  violated the ban.

The February ruling by Franklin County Common Pleas Judge David E. Cain never affected how state and local health departments enforce the no-smoking law. As of the end of August, more than 2,500 fines had been imposed totaling nearly $1.2 million, according to the Ohio Department of Health. State and local officials had collected about $400,000 of that amount.

India's Supreme Court ordered Vodafone to deposit 25 billion rupees ($554 million) within three weeks on its contested $2.5 billion tax bill, a company spokesman said Monday.

The British telecoms company said it also would arrange a guarantee with an Indian bank for the remaining 85 billion rupees ($1.9 billion) within eight weeks, as ordered by the court.

The Supreme Court has not yet delivered a verdict in the case, which is being closely watched by foreign companies fearful that it could set a precedent that might make them liable for retroactive changes under Indian tax law. The next hearing is set for Feb. 24.

The tax relates to Vodafone's acquisition of the Indian telecom assets of Hong Kong's Hutchison Telecommunications International Ltd.

Vodafone, whose joint venture with India's Essar group is one of India's largest mobile operators, maintains that it does not owe tax on the $11 billion transaction because it took place between two foreign entities.

In May 2007, Vodafone International Holdings BV — a Dutch subsidiary of the British telecom giant — acquired a 67 percent stake in CGP Investments Ltd., a Cayman Islands company which held the Indian telecom assets of Hutchison.

The Dutch government has stepped in to try to resolve the case out of court under the terms of a government-to-government tax treaty, Vodafone said, after earlier efforts by British officials to lobby New Delhi.

Discount retailer Loehmann's is filing for bankruptcy after its Dubai government-linked owner failed to reach a debt-extension deal with creditors.

Loehmann's says the Chapter 11 filing Monday in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York is "pre-negotiated," meaning it could play out faster than a traditional bankruptcy filing.

Dubai's Istithmar World investment unit bought New York-based Loehmann's for $300 million in 2006. The 89-year-old retailer sells designer brands at discount prices in 15 states and the District of Columbia.

Istithmar is a subsidiary of troubled state conglomerate Dubai World.

U.S. regulators probing the May flash crash are focusing on a trading practice known as "quote stuffing", in which large numbers of rapid-fire orders to buy or sell stocks are placed and canceled almost immediately.

CFTC commissioner Scott O'Malia told Reuters on Thursday that the futures regulator was reviewing data from Nanex LLC, a trade database developer that issued a study suggesting that computer algorithms used quote stuffing to gain an edge during the May 6 crash.

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, which is investigating the crash jointly with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, is looking at quote stuffing and something called "sub-penny pricing", a person familiar with the flash crash probe said.

The Nanex study uses market graphics and playful names to illustrate quote stuffing, arguing that high-frequency trading firms do this to flood the marketplace with bogus orders to distract rival trading firms.

Investors could make trades under the false impression that those orders were legitimate, only to see liquidity disappear and the market move against them when the orders are canceled -- all in the blink of an eye.