New York City

Authorities using sonar in the search for the missing engine from US Airways Flight 1549 detected something about the size of the massive aircraft part deep in the frigid, murky Hudson River on Tuesday, but divers ran out of daylight before they could locate the object. Crews will resume their search today.

The US Airways jetliner that crash-landed into New York's Hudson River last week experienced an engine compressor failure two days earlier, federal safety investigators said Monday. National Transportation Safety Board spokesman Peter Knudson said the board's examination of the Airbus 320's records show "there was an entry in the aircraft's maintenance log that indicates a compressor stall occurred on Jan. 13." The compressor, or fan, draws air into the engine.

The runway rectangle may be the focus of New York Fashion Week, but discovering next season's go-to trends is just the tip of the Swarovski crystal when it comes to the doings of the style tribe that descends on the Big Apple. And since we've had our stylish boots on the ground here for eight frigid February days, we thought it only fair to share some of the fashion folderol.

A CALL TO ARMS The upcoming fashion exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art's Costume Institute is about the model as muse, but what was on the minds of much of the fashion industry this week was Michelle Obama as muse. Of course there was speculation about whether she would attend any runway shows (we got White House press secretary Desiree Rogers instead). But Obama's presence was felt in other ways. First in the subtle shift in the designer hierarchy.

Shoe Cobbler As the morning Wall Street crowd rushed past Minas Shoe Repair, a group of women in dark business suits stepped inside, sorry-looking pumps in hand. The shoe-shine stations along one wall were full. There was a line of tapping toes and shuffling feet a dozen deep, waiting before the black marble counter. Minas Polychronakis It was 9 a.m. Trading at the New York Stock Exchange, a couple blocks away, would start in half an hour.

A block from my Manhattan apartment, on a still largely mom-and-pop, relatively low-slung stretch of Broadway, two spanking new apartment towers sprouted just as the good times were ending. A massive ground-floor window on one of them displays a message advertising retail space in white letters against a bright red background: "Locate yourself at the center of the fastest expanding portion of the affluent Upper West Side."

Two New York City fried chicken restaurants in predominantly black neighborhoods are under fire for putting President Obama's name on their signs. City Councilman Charles Barron said Friday that he would organize a demonstration next week outside Obama Fried Chicken in his Brooklyn district. Organizers said they also may target Obama Fried Chicken & Pizza in Harlem.

One of the president's official planes and a supersonic fighter jet buzzed over Lower Manhattan just as the workday was beginning Monday. Within minutes, startled financial workers streamed out of their offices, fearing a nightmarish replay of Sept. 11. For half an hour, the Boeing 747 and F-16 jet circled the Statue of Liberty and the Lower Manhattan skyline near the World Trade Center site. Offices evacuated. Dispatchers were inundated with calls.

Whether California will wrest loan guarantees from the federal government is not yet known, but the plea for help is unlikely to inspire the kind of antipathy that met New York when it was on the fiscal ropes in 1975. President Ford's memorable lack of sympathy for the city's plight inspired the iconic headline "Ford to City: Drop Dead." In October 1975, New York City was in a mess, much of it the city's own doing.

Four men were arrested Wednesday night on suspicion of plotting to blow up several targets in the New York City area, including a synagogue, and to shoot down military planes with surface-to-air missiles, authorities said. The four had been under surveillance for some time by an undercover informant, the FBI and the New York Police Department, according to a criminal complaint unsealed late Wednesday. All of them live in Newburgh, N.Y., about 60 miles north of New York City.