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ORANGE COUNTY, Fla. -- A controversial billboard in Orange County has a picture of the burning World Trade Center and the message, "Please Don't Vote for a Democrat." The man who paid for the ad says he's trying to help Republicans, but officials with both political parties are calling the billboard inappropriate. There are billboards up and down busy Orange Blossom Trail, but this at John Young Parkway (see map) one sticks out. "Just looking at it, I'm not thinking about Democrat or Republican, I'm thinking about the twin towers and all the people killed," resident Mary Anderson told Eyewitness...

The owner of the World Trade Center has abandoned the timetable for rebuilding work at the site of the 9/11 attacks, saying it was "not realistic". Port Authority of New York and New Jersey executive director, Christopher Ward, listed over a dozen issues that had slowed work and raised costs. New dates for the completion of a memorial, skyscrapers and a transit hub are expected to be issued in September. It is unclear if the centrepiece Freedom Tower will now be scaled back. The tower, intended as a replacement for the destroyed Twin Towers, had been scheduled for completion in...

MASSIVE WTC COST OVERRUNS LOOK 'GRIM'FREDRIC U. DICKER State Editor June 28, 2008 Last updated: 5:00 am ALBANY - New Yorkers will be told the "grim truth" Monday about new delays and cost overruns at the World Trade Center redevelopment site by Port Authority executive director Christopher Ward, state officials and real-estate industry sources said yesterday. Ward, in what one source called "the coming grim truth," is expected to outline for Gov. Paterson and the PA more than 20 major problem areas facing the $16 billion redevelopment efforts, including massive cost overruns and unrealistic construction timetables. At least one project,...

Memorial Day: More Than Just a Vacation Day The News & Advance Published: May 25, 2008 Say the phrase “Memorial Day,” and more people than you’d imagine will think of city pools opening, the first three-day weekend of the year, cookouts, the unofficial start of summer, big sales at the mall. Fewer and fewer people today would first think it’s the day to honor America’s war dead. How sad it is that the nation’s most somber holiday has turned into a day for pool parties, grilling up some burgers and dogs and snagging some bargains on markdown. Over the course...

May 06, 2008, 4:00 a.m. Writing BlindA response to Andy McCarthy. By Laurie Mylroie In a mixed review of Andrew McCarthy’s Willful Blindness, I criticized the book for slighting the role of states in terrorism. McCarthy’s outsize response — a 3,000-word pejorative/adjective-laden assault in National Review Online — suggests the review hit upon a significant and sensitive point. Extensive name-calling typically obscures a weak argument, or at least attempts to do so, even as this debate involves the national-security issue of the day, including why the United States is engaged in its most serious military campaign in three decades...

A state appeals court ruled on Tuesday that the Port Authority was liable for damages caused by the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, because it knew about but chose to ignore “an extreme and potentially catastrophic vulnerability that would have been open and obvious to any terrorist who cared to investigate and exploit it.”

He has blown up U.S. embassies and car-bombed a U.S. military barracks. He has hijacked U.S. commercial airliners and murdered Americans. He has kidnapped and tortured a top CIA officer and vowed through terror to drive the United States from his country. Do you know who he is? If you guessed Osama bin Laden, you're wrong. The correct answer is Imad Fayez Mugniyeh (pronounced MOOG-NEE-YEH), a Lebanese Shiite long considered one of the world's most ruthless and elusive killers. The CIA has been tracking him since 1984 when he masterminded the kidnapping in Beirut of CIA station chief William ...

Former EPA chief Christine Todd Whitman cannot be held liable for telling residents near the World Trade Center site that the air was safe to breathe after the 2001 terrorist attacks, a federal appeals court said Tuesday. The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said Whitman apparently made comments reassuring people about the safety around the site based on conflicting information and reassurances by the White House. The appeals court said legal remedies are not always available for every instance of arguably deficient governmental performance. A Department of Justice lawyer had argued late last year that holding the former head...

The following is a transcript of Pope Benedict XVI's remarks at ground zero: O God of love, compassion, and healing, look on us, people of many different faiths and traditions, who gather today at this site, the scene of incredible violence and pain. We ask you in your goodness to give eternal light and peace to all who died here -- the heroic first-responders: our fire fighters, police officers, emergency service workers, and Port Authority personnel, along with all the innocent men and women who were victims of this tragedy simply because their work or service brought them here on...

It's a good thing Osama wasn't walking through SoHo yesterday morning. Two sets of confidential blueprints for the planned Freedom Tower, which is set to rise at Ground Zero, were carelessly dumped in a city garbage can on the corner of West Houston and Sullivan streets, The Post has learned. PHOTO GALLERY: WTC Blueprints Found In TrashExperts said the detailed, floor-by-floor schematics contain enough detail for terrorists to plot a devastating attack. "Secure Document - Confidential," warns the title page on each of the two copies of the 150-page schematic that a homeless, recovering drug addict discovered in the public...

"Relying, apparently, on concrete findings, former top U.S. weapons inspector Dr. David Kay said that "the Iraqis had developed new techniques for drying anthrax - techniques that were superior to anything the United States or the old Soviet Union had. That would make the former regime of Saddam Hussein the most sophisticated manufacturer of anthrax in the world." (Washington Post, 16 septembre 2005)

Secret NYPD anti-terror plans would turn Ground Zero into Fort WTC - a bulked-up, battened-down, barricaded Ring of Steel, the Daily News has learned. Some 25 impregnable barriers and 13 guard booths would encircle the World Trade Center footprint under a draft plan circulated in late February. At least 24 blocks on eight major streets would be closed or restricted to traffic under the proposal, which has been reviewed in City Hall and at 1 Police Plaza and is still being revised. Deputy Police Commissioner Paul Browne wouldn't address any specifics in the draft plan. "No decision has been made...

Those who support Operation Iraqi Freedom have welcomed the recently released study on Saddam Hussein's dealings with terrorists.Based on captured Iraqi documents held in a Defense Department database, the Institute for Defense Analysis study makes important points. It clearly demonstrates that no ideological barrier prevented Saddam's "secular" regime from working with "Islamic" terrorists and that his regime had dealings with a wide variety of terrorists.*snip*On the basis of the transcript of a meeting Saddam held with other senior Iraqi figures about the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, the study concludes Iraq was not involved in the attack. Yet other captured...

Larry A. Silverstein, who has won nearly $4.6 billion in insurance payments to cover his losses and help him rebuild at the World Trade Center site, is seeking $12.3 billion in damages from airlines and airport security companies for the 9/11 attack. Mr. Silverstein, the developer of ground zero, sought the damages, whose amount was not previously known, in a claim filed in 2004, that says the airlines and airport security companies failed to prevent terrorists from hijacking the planes used to destroy the buildings. His case was consolidated last week with similar, earlier lawsuits brought by families of some...

Unknown Hero Discovers Himself in 'World Trade Center' By NANCY WEINER Aug. 9, 2006 An ex-Marine had a bit of a surprise while watching a commercial for "World Trade Center": He recognized his own story in the movie clip. "I see these two Marines walking over to the hole, and I said, 'That's us!,'" said Jason Thomas. The courthouse security officer is one of two former Marines who ignored orders to keep off the scalding hot rubble of the Twin Towers on Sept. 11, 2001, to take part in the rescue effort. They found two trapped police officers, whose story...

NEW YORK (AP) — Workers have begun moving a staircase that served as an escape route for countless survivors of the attack on the World Trade Center. The stairway survived Sept. 11 and remains the only aboveground remnant of the trade center complex. Its 37 stairs once connected the outdoor plaza outside the twin towers to the street below. An American flag was placed on the staircase Sunday before it was hoisted onto a flatbed truck by a crane. After years of debate over whether and how to preserve the structure, it's moving about 200 feet west on the site,...

A new U.S. Navy ship to be christened Saturday was built partly using steel from the 9/11 ruins of the World Trade Center. The company says on its Web site that the bow-stem of the ship, the seventh to be named "New York," includes 7.5 tons of steel from the World Trade Center.

Seattle drivers, what do you make of this? The billboard, which faces south from the corner of Western Avenue and Denny Way, states that it was funded by something called "Concerned Citizens for a Better America." You won't find the group's name on Google, except in a wayward comment thread or two. The group is not registered as a Political Action Committee or with the Washington Secretary of State's corporation division. Nor does it have to be -- based on this billboard, anyway -- because its message neither mentions a candidate by name nor appears too close to election time....

Andrew McCarthy has an excellent column today on the fifteenth anniversary of the radical Islamist declaration of war against the United States. In one hour or so, exactly fifteen years will have passed since the first attack on the World Trade Center, a truck bomb that intended to demolish the symbol and home of American economic power. It would take eight more years for the terrorists to finish the job, but their intent was clear from the beginning: Only a few weeks before the bombing, the blind sheikh, who had been in constant communication with his co-conspirators, had attracted a...

Islam is one of the fastest-growing religions in the U.S. By the year 2010, America's Muslim population is expected to surpass the Jewish population, making Islam the country's second-largest faith after Christianity.1 The American Muslim community is a mosaic of cultures, its members having come from all of the five major continents. In fact, a recent survey showed that most Muslims are immigrants -- 77.6% versus 22.4% U.S. born.2 This same survey indicated that the ethnic origins of the Muslim community are as follows: 26.2% Middle East (Arab) 24.7% South Asia 23.8% African American 11.6% Other 10.3% Middle East (Not...

NEW YORK - The 1993 World Trade Center bombing left a giant crater in the basement of the 110-story twin towers and an even larger hole in the nation's sense of security. With the 15th anniversary approaching, the days before the bomb blast appear to mark the last time when millions of Americans went about their business, unaware of the dangers posed by international terrorism. "Not an awful lot of people thought about how vulnerable we were," recalled Joseph Guccione, the U.S. marshal for New York. "It was a terrible lesson that was learned." Lower Manhattan tried to armor itself...

Doctor Declared Killed in 9/11 Attacks By SAMUEL MAULL NEW YORK (AP) — A doctor whose disappearance just before Sept. 11, 2001, led her family on a painstaking search for answers was killed in the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center, a court ruled Thursday. The state Supreme Court's Appellate Division rejected a previous ruling that said there was no proof Dr. Sneha Anne Philip, last seen in a department store across the street from the Trade Center on Sept. 10, 2001, was at ground zero during the attack. "The evidence shows it to be highly probable that she...

Giuliani to bring one (1 !) delegate to McCain and the "kiss of Death" .... Run John, RUN away !... ------------------- Despite an awful Waste of many Millions of dollars in useless TV ads, added to a preposterous Publicity by some ridiculous Mass Media obviously cut off from the People, American Citizens clearly decided, again and again, to send Mr. Giuliani out. But, after failing everywhere, in all primaries, now, he wants to bring his ...one (1 !) and only "Delegate" (a poor guy lost somewhere up in Nevada's wilderness..) to front-runner McCain, and give him his "Death Kiss", full...

Summary from NY1 because of copyright restrictions from their site. Summary: This Omnibus Appropriations Bill that President Bush signed was a double edge sword. It put funds in the packages to aid the emergency responders from the 9/11 attack. Bloomberg had been having that coverage denied. From Newsmax News: But this bill withdrew many of their earlier border guarantees promised in the Secure Fence Act. This means the fence cannot be built!

Bucharest and Brussels, 16 Nov. (AKI) - Romania, one two countries accused by Europe's top human rights watchdog of hosting secret CIA jails used to interrogate Islamist terrorism suspects, says it has written to the European Union executive denying the charges. The letter to the European Commission is a response to a request from EU justice and security commissioner Franco Frattini asking Romania and Poland - the other country implicated by the Council of Europe - for an explanation. A Romanian spokeswoman in Brussels, Doris Mircea, said that a committee of inquiry set up by the government concluded that the...

Madrid - Nobel prize winning author Doris Lessing said in an interview published on Sunday that the September 11 attacks had not been "so bad" when compared to Irish Republican Army action. "September 11 was terrible, but if one re-examines the history of the IRA, what happened in the United States wasn't so bad," Lessing - who captured this year's Nobel literature prize - told Spain's leading El Pais daily. The IRA waged a lengthy armed struggle against British rule in Northern Ireland. It declared an end to its armed campaign in 2005. "Some Americans believe I'm crazy. Many people...

An Egyptian student detained after a pilot's aviation radio was found in his hotel room following the Sept. 11 attacks should be allowed to sue an FBI agent over his imprisonment, a federal appeals court ruled Friday. The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said Abdallah Higazy, the son of an Egyptian diplomat, should be allowed to try to prove that the actions of an FBI agent, Michael Templeton, caused him to be unjustly criminally charged and imprisoned for 34 days. Higazy claimed he was charged with making false statements after Templeton coerced him into changing his story several times...

WASHINGTON - Muslim terrorist Ramzi Yousef once bombed the World Trade Center for Allah, but now he purports to have found Jesus and converted to Christianity, according to new reports. The Daily News recently learned that Yousef has shaved his beard, stopped reading the Muslim holy book, the Koran, and now eats pork, which is forbidden in Islam. Yousef, the nephew of 9/11 mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, was convicted and is serving a life term for detonating a truck bomb under the twin towers in 1993 and plotting to blow up U.S.-bound airliners over the Pacific. But since his capture...

THE mastermind of the first terrorist attack on New York's World Trade Centre claims to have converted from Islam to Christianity. Ramzi Yousef, a self-proclaimed Muslim extremist, plotted with others to blow up the twin towers in lower Manhattan. Six people died in the February 26, 1993, bombing. Yousef was sentenced to life in prison plus 240 years for the New York bombing and another on a Philippines Airlines plane in 1994 in which a Japanese man died. A report to be broadcast on 60 Minutes in the US this weekend claims Yousef has now converted to Christianity but the...

Wedding Band From 9/11 Victim Brings Back Lost Spirit By SEAN KIRST   Mark Morabito, who lost his wife on Sept. 11, received her wedding ring back recently. It was found with some of her remains at the site of the crash last month. (Photo by Stephen D. Cannerelli)     SKANEATELES, N.Y. — Mark Morabito does not separate the original meaning of his wife's wedding ring from the way that it was lost. He accepts it all, joy and sorrow, whenever the ring bumps against his chest.Fourteen years ago he bought the ring from a friend, a diamond broker...

When you build a skyscraper, you must heavily insulate the steel beams. This prevents them from melting in case of fire, or at least delays the melting long enough for people to escape the building. When the Empire State Building was built, its steel beams were insulated with concrete. That was a very expensive and difficult process. In the late 1940s, a man named Herbert Levine invented a spray fireproofing composed of asbestos and mineral wool. The World Trade Center was designed to have this asbestos insulation on its steel beams. The contractors completed the first 64 floors using this ...

AS the father of a terror victim, I can no longer be shocked by much. And as a New Jerseyan, I'm used to strange goings-on in my state's government. But I was shocked and surprised to I learn that John L. Esposito will be a featured speaker at next week's state Department of Homeland Security confernce on counterterrorism. Esposito teaches at Georgetown University in its His Royal Highness Prince Alwaleed bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding. To get a sense of the center's purpose, recall that bin Talal is the Saudi prince who shortly after 9/11 blamed the attacks on...

The moment Iran has the capability to create nuclear weapons, the world will change. The moment Iran creates nuclear weapons life will not be the same, like it was on September 12, 2001. Those that choose to believe that a nuclear Iran can be handled (an msm-loved and revered retired general, along with a lot of people), the greater threat to the world is George Bush or any other opinion that avoids possible recognition of the administrations side of the debate; please don't be surprised when much of it comes to fruition, you just weren't listening. From Family Security Matters:...

Hofstra Law School Hosts Sixth Biannual Legal Ethics Conference "Lawyering at the Edge: Unpopular Clients, Difficult Cases, Zealous Advocates" October 14 to 16, 2007 Hofstra Law School, Hempstead, NY: Hofstra Law School is pleased to announce its upcoming 2007 Legal Ethics Conference, Lawyering at the Edge: Unpopular Clients, Difficult Cases, Zealous Advocates, scheduled for October 14 to 16, 2007 in the Sidney R. Siben and Walter Siben Moot Courtroom (room 308) of Hofstra Law School. Conference Director Roy D. Simon has lined up more than 20 dynamic speakers who will weigh in on controversial issues such as prosecutorial abuse, the...

Washington, Sept. 22 (PTI): Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has rubbished the notion that his visit to New York's World Trade Center site will be an insult to Americans as it is one of the most sensitive places in the country after the 9/11 tragedy in 2001. "Why should it be insulting?" President Ahmadinejad has said in an interview to CBS News. "Usually you go to these sites to pay your respects, and also to, perhaps, air your views about the root causes of such incidents. I think when I do that, I will be paying, as I said earlier, my...

Many of his fellow structural engineers were stunned when the twin towers of the World Trade Center crashed to the ground on Sept. 11. But not W. Gene Corley, the suburban Chicago structural engineer who is heading the federal investigation into the collapse. Corley, senior vice president at Construction Technology Laboratories in north suburban Skokie, is an old hand when it comes to figuring out why buildings fall down. His roster of past investigations includes the fatal 1993 fire that occurred during the FBI's raid of the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texas; the 1995 bombing and collapse of ...

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the well-armed fruitcake who is more or less in charge of the government in Iran, knows how to pull the chains of certain wimps in the West. The Iranian president will arrive in New York City on Sunday for a two-day visit to the United Nations, where he will deliver one of his entertaining rants against the United States, Israel and the West. He's entitled, since we're the hosts of the United Nations (and more's the pity). But seeing Manhattan's rich array of temptations not available in the eighth-century world whence he springs, is not enough. He wants...

Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad requested to visit Ground Zero during an upcoming trip to New York. That request was rejected Wednesday. But a source tells Eyewitness News that the decision may not stop him. A law enforcement source says the Iranian mission to the United Nations has informed the Secret Service that the Iranian president intends to visit Ground Zero Monday at 10 a.m. The source says regardless of the NYPD's rejection of the request for a Ground Zero tour, Iran's president and his entourage will be accompanied by a Secret Service protective detail, a detail provided to all heads...

NYPD bars Iran's Ahmadinejad from Ground Zero Newsday, NY - 4 hours ago "It's inconceivable that any consideration would be given to the idea of entertaining the leader of a state sponsor of terror at Ground Zero. ...

NEW YORK (AP) — Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad asked permission to lay a wreath at the World Trade Center site when he comes to New York City next week, but the request was denied, a police official said Wednesday. Ahmadinejad, who is arriving Sunday to address the United Nations' General Assembly, had asked this month for permission to visit the site of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, police spokesman Paul Browne said. The request to enter the fenced-in site was rejected because of ongoing construction there, Browne said. "Requests for the Iranian president to visit the immediate area would...

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has been denied a request to visit the World Trade Center site of the September 11 attacks, New York police said on Wednesday. Ahmadinejad, who regularly accuses the United States of arrogance in his speeches, had asked to visit the site while in New York for the United Nations General Assembly this month. "The site is closed to visitors because of construction there," police spokesman Paul Browne said in a statement. "Requests for the Iranian president to visit the immediate area would also be opposed by the NYPD on security grounds." Police said they were unsure...

The Iranian president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, is in discussions with the New York Police Department to visit ground zero on Monday, Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly said today.

In September, 2001, I was working for a company two blocks off Wall Street, just a five-minute walk from the World Trade Center. It was a good job. A business database company, very much of the dotcom era, easygoing, loose, and lucrative. I worked about half the week at home and half at the office. Living in Jersey at the time, I commuted by way of the PATH train - the single New York area subway in which there is no crime, no graffiti, and no problems. The terminal was at the WTC, deep in the basement of the Twin...

A new mathematical analysis of the collapse of the World Trade Centre has been published by a Cambridge University academic, with results that challenge conspiracy theories surrounding the September 11th attacks. The new paper, by Dr Keith Seffen, uses established engineering models to demonstrate that once the collapse of the twin towers began, it was destined to be rapid and total. Although the causes that initiated the collapse of the twin towers are now well understood, engineers continue to speculate about the speed and totality with which the buildings were demolished during the fateful attacks. Some have even dared to...

September eleven remembered in Poland Created: Tuesday, September 11. 2007 Candles will burn again on the symbolic graves of those from the Podlasie Region in Poland who perished in the terrorist attack on the World Trade Centre six years ago. Among them were Lukasz Milewski from Suwalki and Dorota Kopiczko from Augustow. In the Suwalki cementary, there is a tombstone dedicated to the two who died, which resembles the Twin Towers joined by a crucifix, where candles are lit up on every September 11. The Christ the King Chapel in Suwałki is dedicated to Lukasz and the church bell is...

Several years ago, the Fox News Channel ran a special that purported to expose the Apollo moon landings as a publicity stunt cooked up to scare the Soviet Union. The special included testimony from several "experts" who came up with numerous reasons why the famous footage we've all seen was filmed in New Mexico. With its gloss of respectability and suitably grim, dramatic music, the special was one of the creepiest things I've ever seen - because it was so convincing. I came away thinking that it seemed possible to "prove" anything by making a reasonably impressive video. Thank God...

Hey gang, I'm writing this on behalf of my husband. There is a guy at his work whose driving him bonkers. This bird brain (the co-worker, not my husband) swears that the fall of the WTC was the result of evil-Bushbots,controled demolition, how steel doesn't melt like that at those temperatures... blah...blah...blah... (Like you haven't hear that before, eh?) I told mein alter Mann I remember that many moons ago someone here on FR posted an article that proved, via physics and structural engineering, the how-and-why the buildings collasped as, when, and in the manner they did, etc. So he...

Right Now - A replay of 9/11 Achors and shots of what unfolded on that day! Tune into your MSNBC!

It is said that "powerlessness frustrates and absolute powerlessness frustrates absolutely; absolute frustration is a dangerous emotion to run a world with." Sometimes I wonder why I am so restless, why I cannot cease thinking! It seems like the world we live in reveals to us incessantly, at certain moments or in certain circumstances, just how little we are and how vast the universe is. This world of ours is a very complex world. The world we live in is a world of many brutal voices. It is a world of heavy blows and delirious trances, but it is the...