Sept. 11 museum opens this week deep beneath ground zero
NEW YORK — The museum devoted to the story of Sept. 11 tells it in victims’ last voicemails, in photos of people falling from the twin towers, in the scream of sirens, in the dust-covered shoes of those who fled the skyscrapers’ collapse, in the wristwatch of one of the airline passengers who confronted the hijackers.
By turns chilling and heartbreaking, a place of both deathly silence and distressing sounds, the National September 11 Memorial Museum opens this week deep beneath ground zero, 12½ years after the terrorist attacks.
The privately operated museum — built along with the memorial plaza above for $700 million in donations and tax dollars — will be dedicated Thursday with a visit from President Barack Obama and will be open initially to victims’ families, survivors and first responders. It will open to the public May 21.
Philippines protests China’s reclamation of South China Sea land
MANILA, Philippines — The Philippines has protested China’s reclamation of land in a disputed reef in the South China Sea that can be used to build an airstrip or an offshore military base in the increasingly volatile region, the country’s top diplomat and other officials said Wednesday.
Foreign Secretary Albert del Rosario told The Associated Press that the Philippines lodged the protest against China last month after surveillance aircraft confirmed and took pictures of the reclamation and dredging being done by Chinese vessels at the Johnson Reef in the Spratly Islands, which Manila says violates a regional nonaggression pact.
Del Rosario said it was not clear what China would build on the reef, which Manila claims as part of its western province of Palawan, but that one possibility was an airstrip. A senior government official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk about the issue, said China could also build an offshore military and resupply and refueling hub.
Factories burned in anti-China protest in Vietnam
HANOI, Vietnam — Mobs burned and looted scores of foreign-owned factories in Vietnam following a large protest by workers against China’s recent placement of an oil rig in disputed Southeast Asian waters, officials said Wednesday.
The unrest at industrial parks near Ho Chi Minh City is the most serious outbreak of public disorder in the tightly controlled country in years. It points to the dangers for the government as it tries to manage public anger at China while also itself protesting the Chinese actions in an area of the South China Sea claimed by Vietnam.
Vietnam has sent ships to confront the rig which are engaged in a tense standoff with Chinese vessels protecting it.
Lung cancer screening could cost Medicare billions, add $3 to monthly premiums
Every person covered by Medicare would shell out an additional $3 a month if the government agreed to pay to screen certain current and former smokers for lung cancer, a new study estimates.
It would cost Medicare $2 billion a year to follow recent advice to offer these lung scans — and fuel angst about rising health costs that are borne by everyone, not just smokers, the study found.
Joshua Roth of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle said the researchers merely were tallying the cost of screening, and were not “judging value” or saying whether Medicare should pay it. He led the study, which was released Wednesday and will be presented at an American Society of Clinical Oncology conference later this month.
By wire sources