It is a wonder that any of it is here at all: The scattered faithful gathering into Beulah Land Baptist Church on a Sunday morning in the Lower Ninth Ward. The men on stoops in Mid-City swapping gossip in the August dusk. The brass band in Tremé, the lawyers in Lakeview, the new homeowners in Pontchartrain Park. More.

The city of Atlanta is joining the National Fallen Firefighters Foundation (NFFF) to host a 9/11 stair climb on Saturday, August 29 at 9:10 a.m. at The Westin Peachtree Plaza in downtown Atlanta. Participants will climb the equivalent of 110 flights of stairs, the same number of floors as the World Trade Center. Registration is $35 and the event is open to the public. More.

Volunteers, especially those with carpentry skills, are needed for the 15th Day of Caring of the United Way of Horry County. The annual event starts the United Way fund-raising drive for 40-plus nonprofits serving tens of thousands of residents. Day of Caring is on Sept. 11 and the date has special meaning for United Way volunteer Esther Murphy who had worked in the World Trade Center in New York. More.

She had taken care of her husband for the last eight years of his life, through his blindness, through cancer and heart failure. After he died in 2002, she sold the Long Island house they’d loved and shared, finding it too filled with memories, and moved to their country home in upstate New York. Friends thought Anne Schomaker was coping well with her loss, she recalled. More.

With two programs that provide health care and financial help for Sept. 11 responders set to expire next month, U.S. Senator Kirsten Gillibrand was in White Plains Wednesday to show her support for making the provisions permanent. More.

The rising toll of Ground Zero responders and others afflicted with 9/11-linked cancers has hit 3,700. The staggering tally of those suffering cancers certified by the feds as 9/11-related includes FDNY members (1,100), cops and other Ground Zero responders (2,134), and survivors such as downtown workers and residents (467). Many have more than one type of cancer.

A piece of history from the Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center in New York is coming to East Haven. PATH Car 745, from the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, was one of two cars found in cast iron tunnel under the North Tower of the World Trade Center during the attacks. That tunnel allowed the cars to withstand the pressures from the collapsing buildings above. More.

It's no longer just New York’s problem. Every state in the nation now has someone suffering from cancer or other illnesses related to the 9/11 terror attacks, the Daily News has learned.

Those receiving aid from the September 11th Victim Compensation Fund vary from just a handful in states like Wyoming, Utah and Alaska to several dozen in North Carolina, sources said. More.