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New York hopes for a 'normal' Monday
NEW YORK (CNN) -- Rescue attempts continued Sunday in the rubble of the World Trade Center, but New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani said the city was ready to get back to work as best as it could after last week's terrorist attacks. City officials again adjusted their count to 4,957 people killed or missing after two hijacked jetliners crashed into the trade center's twin towers on Tuesday. Among the 190 confirmed dead were 32 city firefighters, a New Jersey firefighter, two Port Authority police officers and two paramedics, Giuliani said. "We're going to try to return the city as much as possible to normal activity tomorrow," Giuliani said. "I don't think we can call it normal activity, but kind of approach it as much as possible." As New York prepared to reopen the lower Manhattan business district Monday, Giuliani urged workers coming into the city to "calculate extra time, use public transportation and be a little more patient about things."
"It's probably been the most complex week the city has ever had," he said. "The most tragic thing has happened, and the greatest heroism has been displayed, love and support, and I think the city comes out of the week stronger than it entered it." The blast and subsequent collapse of the 110-story towers devastated the heart of Manhattan's financial district. The New York Stock Exchange was poised to reopen Monday morning after the longest trading halt since the Great Depression with a two-minute period of silence for those killed in last week's attacks. "We have rebuilt the infrastructure to the point where I'm confident that 85 million Americans can be back in the greatest market in the world," NYSE Chairman Richard Grasso said Sunday night. At a service at St. Patrick's Cathedral on Sunday, New York Archbishop Edward Egan mourned the devastation "in what we have come to call Ground Zero, but which I call Ground Hero." Egan said the city would recover, but he warned that "hatred and desire for revenge must never have a part" in the days ahead. "We will not lose heart, because our inner being is renewed each day," Egan said. "We will confirm ourselves in goodness and holiness." Gov. George Pataki said the state and city have agreed to suspend highway construction for a week while the city's transportation system gets back on its feet. The state has also waived a waiting period for drawing unemployment benefits for those knocked out of work by the disaster. Meanwhile, Pataki called a special session of the state Legislature to seek broader state and local police powers to battle terrorism. "One of the most important is they'll be able to engage in wiretapping activities for those who might be suspected of harboring, aiding, financing, sheltering or in any way supporting people in terrorist activities," he said. Another bill "would make it a crime -- a felony -- to issue any bomb threat anywhere." In a solemn ceremony Sunday, the fire department promoted 168 firefighters to replace about 300 of their comrades lost in the towers' collapse. Fires continued to smolder deep in the ruins Sunday night. Earlier in the day, searchers recovered 10 bodies amid limited hopes of finding new survivors in the wreckage of the 110-story landmark towers. "The more I walk it, the more I realize there's less hope," Fire Commissioner Thomas Von Essen said Sunday night. "But we still believe there is hope in some of the mall areas and some of the below-ground areas where enough strength stopped the pressure and there's a void that people could still be in." Giuliani said the city's family assistance center is relocating to Pier 94, on the Hudson River in midtown Manhattan, from its current location in a National Guard armory. "The reason for that is that the armory is too small to deal with the number of people who have so far registered," Giuliani said. "So far we have 3,735 families who have registered. We expect there are going to be more." |
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