9/11 News

A summary of news and opinion on the current state of the 9/11 community.

Row over plan to build mosque near 9/11 site

Fri, June 25th, 2010 @ 11:08am

PLANS to build a mosque near the site of the September 11, 2001, attacks have touched off a firestorm among New Yorkers nearly a decade after Muslim extremists linked to al-Qaeda slammed planes into the World Trade Centre .

The Cordoba House mosque, part of a Muslim centre to be built two blocks from what is now known as Ground Zero – proposed as a conciliatory move – was overwhelmingly approved by a local community board in May.

“After all, it was 19 Egyptian and Saudi Arabian thugs calling themselves Muslims who perpetrated this heinous crime on September 11th,” said Hossein Kamaly, a professor of Middle Eastern culture at Barnard College, part of Columbia University. “They want to send a message of friendship, but building a mosque where there wasn’t one before, is not the most nuanced way of doing that,” Kamaly said.

But the plans are being resisted by some New Yorkers who say a mosque would be inappropriate so close to the place where nearly 3000 people were killed.

The centre is a project of the Cordoba Initiative, a New York group aiming to improve relations between Muslims and the West. It would feature a 13-story structure with a 500-person auditorium, swimming pool, bookstores and a prayer space.

Cordoba Initiative’s chairman, Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, an Islamic scholar, said the centre would be open to everyone and would help foster better understanding. “My colleagues and I are the anti-terrorists,” Rauf wrote in an editorial in New York’s Daily News. “We are the people who want to embolden the vast majority of Muslims who hate terrorism to stand up to the radical rhetoric.”

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Judge approves settlement for 9/11 first responders

Fri, June 25th, 2010 @ 11:03am

Attorney Marc Bern, who helps represent victims, believes the settlement will get 95 percent approval.

New York (CNN) — A U.S. district judge in New York approved a settlement Wednesday that could pay more than $700 million to thousands of 9/11 first responders exposed to toxic dust at ground zero.

Before approving the settlement Judge Alvin Hellerstein listened to testimony from a sampling of some of the 10,000 plaintiffs at Wednesday's hearing about the health battles that have plagued them since working at the World Trade Center site.

“I intend to approve this settlement, and I now do so as a fair, adequate and reasonable settlement reflecting hard work and a concern for fairness by all parties,” said Hellerstein.

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More 9/11 Human Remains Found At Ground Zero

Search Yields 72 More Fragments; Remains Of About 1,000 World Trade Center Victims Are Stil Unidentified

Fri, June 25th, 2010 @ 10:49am

Just two or so dump trucks filled with never-before sifted debris from Ground Zero have yielded 72 new fragments of human remains in an almost three-month operation that could bring closure to more families of victims of the September 11, 2001 World Trade Center terror attack.

Because of the size and condition of some of the remains the NYC Medical Examiner's office told ABC News there was a good chance of obtaining DNA samples that could lead to new IDs once DNA testing is completed. The remains of about 1,000 victims of the almost 3,000 killed at Ground Zero have still not been identified.

A memorandum summarizing the findings of the operation, in which 844 cubic yards of debris was forensically sifted, was released by New York City officials Tuesday. It stated that including the 72 new fragments, a total of 1845 potential human remains have now been located since 2006 and are at the Medical Examiner's Office and when possible will be subjected to DNA testing.

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Families in 9/11 Financing Case Ask to Have Judge Replaced

Tue, June 15th, 2010 @ 3:33pm

Judge George B. Daniels

Lawyers for families of 9/11 victims have taken the unusual legal step of asking a federal appeals court in Manhattan to replace a judge overseeing a group of terrorism-financing lawsuits, saying he is moving too slowly in resolving key motions.

The judge, George B. Daniels of Federal District Court in Manhattan, has yet to rule on almost 100 motions by defendants to dismiss the case, the lawyers said in a petition to the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit.

The judge’s inaction is “effectively suspending the litigation,” the lawyers wrote, “and immunizing those alleged to have sponsored the attacks from having to answer for their conduct in this nation’s courts.”

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Happy Responders Day: NYC Cuts 9/11 Counseling

Sat, June 5th, 2010 @ 1:55pm

Mayor Bloomberg’s administration left one thing off the roster of events for Saturday’s “World Trade Center Responder Day: A Salute To Heroes” - news that the city is ending its 9/11 mental health program.

The effort serves some 4,500 New Yorkers, including many who do not qualify for other World Trade Center health treatment programs.

But the city has begun warning patients to find help elsewhere starting Jan. 7, describing the effort as temporary in letters being sent patients, the Daily News has learned.

“The NYC Benefit Program has filled an important need by temporarily continuing a privately funded program that ensured cost would not be a barrier for people,” says a copy of the letter obtained by The News.

City officials had been negotiating for federal funding of the $3.5 million effort, but declined to accept an Obama administration requirement to keep the program running after this year if the feds agreed to bail it out.

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