New York City

A school assistant principal who was sick for several days with swine flu became the nation's sixth death linked to the H1N1 virus on Sunday, and the city's first. Earlier Sunday, New York City officials decided to close five more schools today for up to five days because of concern about swine flu, bringing the total number of shuttered schools to 11. Each had students with flu-like illnesses last week.

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.

It was 8 a.m., and the subject was death. A 55-year-old man was wasting away from lung cancer and cirrhosis. His weight was plummeting and his brain was swelling. But he was in denial, refusing to discuss hospice care or consider a "do not resuscitate" order. A bright pink vase filled with yellow mums sat near the window, belying the grim task facing the healthcare workers at Beth Israel Medical Center who had clustered around a conference table. "This has been really sad," said the Rev.

It's tough being an angel, even in as idyllic a setting as the Green-Wood Cemetery, where the leaves of shade trees rustle in the summer breeze and the grassy hills offer vistas of New York Harbor. Acid rain eats away the delicate tips of wings. Marble hands clasped in prayer lose their fingers and thumbs. Noses drop to the knolls. Some cherubs, targets for thieves and vandals, simply vanish. Sure, the full-time residents of Green-Wood might not notice. Leonard Bernstein (1918-90)

The overarching sense of optimism that characterized the first few days of the Spring/Summer 2010 shows at New York Fashion Week here was evident in the men's collections as well as the women's, both in colors -- vivid pops of blue and rain-slicker yellows playing off a variety of gray suiting materials like sunlight peeking from behind the clouds -- and cheery prints and even polka dots. At Duckie Brown, which over the last few seasons seemed to be dressing its men for battle, designers Steven Cox and Daniel Silver sent a stripped-down collection of lightweight shorts and gauzy shirts down the catwalk.

Many of the spring clothes designers are showing this week have a tactile appeal. Maybe it's a signal that we're searching for more depth in fashion, something to touch and feel, not just to look at and discard after one season. Of course, it also helps to justify a high price tag -- because you can actually see the work. The new summer suit as a trend came into focus at Carolina Herrera on Monday, where a sinewy rope-weave raffia vest was paired with linen shorts. Herrera's collection had an organic sensibility and was free of any strict theme.

Abraham Lincoln visited New York City only five times, and only once as president, yet the growing 19th century metropolis played a central role in burnishing his enduring public image. That's the point of a new exhibition, "Lincoln and New York," that opened Friday at the New York Historical Society on Manhattan's Upper West Side to celebrate the bicentennial of Lincoln's birth. The exhibition runs through March 25. It begins with Lincoln's historic speech at the Cooper Union in 1860 and the iconic Mathew Brady photograph taken the same day, more than two months before he won the Republican presidential nomination.

The chain-saw killer struck in the dead of night, targeting young victims in a public park. Locals out for a Sunday walk found the remains the next morning: 12 oak and cherry saplings, their slender trunks sawed through, their delicate branches dangling like broken limbs above the freshly tilled soil. It was the fourth tree-killing this year in Juniper Valley Park in Queens. Police went door todoor looking for clues. Civic leaders offered a $2,500 reward for information leading to the culprit in the Sept.

New York City Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg may have narrowly won a third term this week but he also earned -- or, rather, very handsomely paid for -- a less-welcome distinction: becoming the latest in a long line of politicians to prove that money can't buy everything. It's something Californians know, having rejected a number of rich candidates, and something President Obama can attest to; his path to Washington was paved in 2004 when he beat a wealthy rival who spent $30 million in a U.S. Senate primary.