New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo signed a new law Monday to strengthen ethics enforcement for state officials and workers.

The measure, which the Democratic governor proposed and lawmakers approved, establishes a new 14-member Joint Commission on Public Ethics to oversee and investigate compliance by lawmakers. It will also monitor statewide elected officials as well as executive branch and legislative employees while overseeing registration and conduct of lobbyists.

Six members will be chosen by the governor, with at least three from a different political party. Eight will be selected by legislative leaders: four Democrats and four Republicans.

Those functions have been handled by the Commission on Public Integrity, which will close, and the Legislative Ethics Commission, which will have authority to impose penalties following the new panel's investigations. Until the new group is up and running, expected in four months, the current integrity commission with a staff of 46 and with 61 pending cases is stopping investigations and hearings but will continue to collect information.

A federal appeals court agrees with the method a trustee used to calculate how much each investor lost in the multibillion-dollar fraud carried out by Bernard Madoff.

The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said in a written decision Tuesday that investors are only entitled to recover the amount they originally invested with Madoff.

Lawyers for investors had argued that they should be entitled to recover profits as well.

Madoff had told thousands of investors just before his December 2008 arrest that their investments had more than tripled. Madoff claimed the original investment of about $20 billion had grown to more than $60 billion. Prosecutors say it was actually a Ponzi scheme.

Madoff is serving a 150-year sentence after admitting the massive multi-decade fraud.

A court ruling that invalidates Morgantown's ban on Marcellus shale gas drilling gives West Virginia's oil and gas producers the certainty they need to keep expanding operations, an industry leader said Monday.

"We all along believed the city of Morgantown and some other communities in the state don't have the right to pre-empt the regulatory powers of the Department of Environmental Protection," said Corky DeMarco, executive director of the West Virginia Oil and Natural Gas Association.

"It would be very, very difficult for the DEP to do any oversight with the potential of 100 different sets of rules to comply with," he said.

On Friday, Monongalia County Circuit Court Judge Susan Tucker delivered a victory to Charleston-based Northeast Natural Energy in its legal battle with the city of Morgantown.

Northeast is drilling wells above the Monongahela River about a mile from a city drinking water intake. Citing concern over its water supply and the lack of tough state regulations, the City Council passed an ordinance in June to ban deep horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing within city limits and up to a mile beyond.

A federal appeals court on Monday revived a lawsuit brought by a black Connecticut firefighter over a 2003 exam that led to the promotions of more than a dozen white firefighters ahead of him.

The decision of the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan raised new questions about the impact of a Supreme Court ruling in favor of a discrimination lawsuit brought by 18 mainly white firefighters seeking promotions in New Haven, Conn., where white candidates outperformed minority candidates on the exam.

The 2nd U.S. Circuit said the lawsuit by firefighter Michael Briscoe was too hastily tossed out by a lower court judge who referred to the Supreme Court decision in Ricci v. DeStefano, a case brought in 2004.

The Supreme Court ordered New Haven to enforce the results of a 2003 exam that led to the promotions of 17 white firefighters and one Hispanic firefighter and the rejection of Briscoe's promotion quest. The Supreme Court said local governments can nullify the outcomes of such tests only if they can prove there is a "strong basis in evidence" that the tests were discriminatory.

The 2nd Circuit called the Supreme Court decision a "limited holding" and said its restoration of Briscoe's case was consistent with the Supreme Court's intent not to substantially change discrimination law with the Ricci case.

On the 2003 exam, no blacks scored high enough to be promoted to lieutenant or captain. New Haven had refused to certify the results because it said the exam was unfair to minority firefighters and it feared the outcome would lead to liability if the fairness of the results was challenged in court. The three-judge panel of the 2nd Circuit said it was unusual that the Supreme Court did not return the New Haven case to the lower court so the city could see if it had the evidence to prove there was a "strong basis" to show the test was discriminatory.

Briscoe's lawsuit maintained he would have been promoted to lieutenant if the exam followed the industry norm and calculated the results with 30 percent based on answers to written questions and 70 percent based on oral answers, rather than the 60 percent written and 40 percent oral test that New Haven used. His lawyer, David Rosen, said the 39-year-old Briscoe scored the highest among 70 firefighters on the oral portion of the test but did not do well on the written exam.