Thousands more Downtown residents may now receive compensation for their 9/11-related illnesses, after the federal government agreed to allow those who live as far north as Canal Street to apply.

Sheila Birnbaum, the special master overseeing the new $2.8 billion Victim Compensation Fund, initially proposed to only cover those who lived south of Reade Street.
But after examining photographs and hearing from many residents north of Reade Street who are sick, Birnbaum decided to expand the coverage area roughly 10 blocks north.

Believing that the upcoming 10th anniversary of Sept. 11 is best memorialized in crayon, Really Big Coloring Books, Inc. is publishing a new coloring book entitled “We Shall Never Forget 9/11: The Kids’ Book of Freedom.”

In offering kids the option of coloring the Twin Towers burning, mourning survivors, or the Navy SEALs shooting Osama Bin Laden, publisher Wayne Bell insists that “the doodles represent patriotism,” a “simplistic, honest tool” to “help educate children on events on 9/11.” But many Muslims describe it as, in a word, “disgusting.”

The National Geographic channel is trumpeting an exclusive interview with former President George W. Bush that is to be at the centerpiece of its coverage of the 10th anniversary of 9/11.

In the former president's two-hour interview, National Geographic says, he will tell "his first-person story ... what facts he weighed when Andrew Card first whispered in his ear; the impact of his situation in a classroom full of children and the press corps; his first efforts to communicate with the nation at large; the flow of information from the military, intelligence agencies and news outlets ... he provides intimate detail on what he grappled with as both Commander in Chief charged with protecting his fellow citizens, and as a family man concerned for his loved ones."

In what amounts to a fight over who gets to write the history of the Sept. 11 attacks and their aftermath, the Central Intelligence Agency is demanding extensive cuts from the memoir of a former F.B.I. agent who spent years near the center of the battle against Al Qaeda.

The agent, Ali H. Soufan, argues in the book that the C.I.A. missed a chance to derail the 2001 plot by withholding from the F.B.I. information about two future 9/11 hijackers living in San Diego, according to several people who have read the manuscript. And he gives a detailed, firsthand account of the C.I.A.’s move toward brutal treatment in its interrogations, saying the harsh methods used on the agency’s first important captive, Abu Zubaydah, were unnecessary and counterproductive.