New York State

The mourners carried her severed body inside the white brick mosque on a frosty morning before the sun rose, before the children arrived for school. Removing their shoes, wives and mothers shrouded in black passed through the women's prayer area, cordoned off from the men's with white drapes, and made their way to the washing room.

Bar owners, bartenders, pool hall proprietors and smokers rallied at New York City Hall to protest a law that bans smoking in bars and restaurants. "Can the Ban" was brandished on signs and baseball caps and chanted by hundreds of protesters on the day New York state followed the lead of the city, which barred smoking in indoor workplaces last spring over public health concerns. Rob Bookman, lawyer for the New York Nightlife Assn., said the group plans to challenge New York City's law.

Descending through a snowy mist toward Buffalo Niagara International Airport, the crew of a Continental commuter flight noticed a significant ice buildup on the windshield and wings of the plane, despite having turned on the craft's de-icer.

On a rain-spitting Sunday in Lake Placid, Republican Jim Tedisco was out fanning the flames of voter outrage. Tedisco is running for an open congressional seat here and has combined the hot-button issues of the day -- executive bonuses, the economic stimulus package, Wall Street bailouts -- into a drum-pounding campaign message against the Democrats. "The last thing we need [in Washington] is a rubber stamp," he said. "It's been kind of a shopping spree, it seems."

If tragedy brings people together, the still-unexplained crash of a Continental Airlines commuter jet Thursday night forever links Beverly Eckert and Alison Des Forges, two extraordinary women who led separate crusades, against seemingly impossible odds. Eckert was a Sept. 11 widow who turned her grief into powerful advocacy.

A mysterious die-off of hundreds of crows throughout New York state has been linked to the avian reovirus, a pathogen that has threatened the poultry industry in the past, relentlessly sweeping through flocks, state wildlife officials said Thursday. The virus is not likely to jump the species barrier to infect humans. However, state health officials are taking no chances, and scientists at Wadsworth Center, a division of the state Health Department, were studying the virus.

Republican presidential hopeful John McCain raised more than $1 million Tuesday on rival Rudolph W. Giuliani's turf and picked up the endorsement of the former New York mayor's longtime nemesis. Former Sen. Alfonse M. D'Amato (R-N.Y.) switched his allegiance in the presidential race from former Sen. Fred Thompson of Tennessee, who abandoned his bid Tuesday, to McCain. D'Amato has long been at odds with Giuliani.

New York regulators are eager to consider splitting Financial Guaranty Insurance Co.'s core bond insurance businesses to protect municipal credit ratings against costly downgrades and stem troubles in the debt markets. FGIC said last week that it wanted to organize a new domestic financial guarantee insurer to "provide support for public finance obligations previously insured by FGIC." State Insurance Supt.

It was the way she stood there, enduring. Silda Wall Spitzer did not say a word as her husband, Gov. Eliot Spitzer, brusquely apologized to his family and the public after he was allegedly caught on a wiretap doing business with a high-priced prostitution ring. Her face was drawn. But she took her husband's hand as they left the room. This scandal has many salacious details, but it was the image of Silda Wall Spitzer at her man's side that dominated conversations across the country Tuesday.

New details emerged Wednesday about the purported call girl at the center of the prostitution scandal engulfing New York's governor, with a newspaper report identifying her as a 22-year-old aspiring musician from Manhattan. The New York Times reported that the real name of the woman -- identified as Kristen in court papers alleging that Gov. Eliot Spitzer paid more than $4,000 for prostitutes' services -- is Ashley Alexandra Dupre. Don D.