World Trade Center New York City

The controversial rebuilding at the World Trade Center site will be costlier and even further delayed than projected, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey said in a report released Monday. "The schedule and cost estimates of the rebuilding effort that have been communicated to the public are not realistic," wrote Chris Ward, executive director of the Port Authority, which owns the site and is responsible for the biggest projects on it.

The museum planned for ground zero should include a memorial to workers who died after becoming ill during cleanup of World Trade Center debris, two state lawmakers said, adding they would introduce state legislation to ensure those workers are recognized. "We want to tell the story of the 9/11 workers who rushed here to help put the city back on its feet, who got sick because they did that, and now unfortunately many of them have died," said Assemblyman Michael Gianaris.

Seven insurers have agreed to pay an additional $2 billion to resolve all outstanding insurance claims from the Sept. 11, 2001, destruction of the World Trade Center, speeding redevelopment at ground zero, New York state officials said. The settlement ends more than five years of litigation between the insurers and Larry Silverstein, the site's developer. Officials consider the settlement the last major obstacle to redevelop ground zero.

Ground zero workers who died after breathing in toxic dust from the collapsed World Trade Center ought to be officially recognized as victims of the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the workers' family members say. The official list of victims grew by one this week after the city agreed to include a New York attorney who died of lung disease months after the attack, confusing Sept. 11 family members about what distinguished this death from the scores of others attributed to the aftermath.

Two subjects of a new documentary film joined the chorus of voices determined to focus attention on people who have developed debilitating health problems after breathing toxic dust from the collapsed World Trade Center towers. William Maher and John Graham traveled to Cuba as part of "Sicko," a documentary on the U.S. healthcare system by filmmaker Michael Moore. He brought the men, who had helped clean Lower Manhattan, to Cuba to try to get medical treatment for them at the U.S.

Some of the first responders who were exposed to the cocktail of toxins produced at the World Trade Center collapse are developing a form of cancer often seen in much older people, in what one doctor calls the "third wave" of disorders to emerge from the Sept. 11 disaster. Dr. Robin Herbert, codirector of the WTC Medical Monitoring Program at Mount Sinai Hospital in Manhattan, said a wide range of medical conditions had been detected since the program began in 2001, after the Sept. 11 attacks.

A goal to end the search for human remains at the World Trade Center site by the fall is not realistic, and the effort will continue "for the foreseeable future," a city official said Tuesday. The city medical examiner's office will maintain a presence at the site indefinitely while construction continues in case excavations unearth more human remains, Deputy Mayor Ed Skyler said in a memo to Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg.

Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg and a coalition of relatives of Sept. 11 victims reached a compromise Thursday that would allow them to briefly descend into a small section of the former World Trade Center site, which the city previously had said was unsafe for the annual memorial.

Sitting in a chair just after 7:30 a.m., beneath the amber glow of a hallway light, Carol Ashley leans over and ties the laces on an old pair of sneakers. She slips her good shoes into her purse. She knows it will be muddy in the pit. Outside, the sky is gray and rain slaps her windows. Six years ago on a Tuesday morning nothing like this one, Ashley's 25-year-old daughter, Janice, stood in this hallway wearing a taupe dress suit, a silver watch and her great-grandmother's pearl earrings.

A second Sept. 11 victim has been identified from human remains found underneath a service road at the World Trade Center site, officials said Friday. More than 400 human bone pieces have been recovered from beneath the service road that carried cleanup and construction trucks in and out of the site after the 2001 terrorist attacks. The search at the spot began in October 2006 when utility workers found more than 80 bones in a manhole in the service road.