When it comes to tragedy, there’s a thin line between solemn commemoration and crass commercialization. Actually, it’s often not very thin, and it’s crossed all the time.

The New York Post recently reported that relatives of 9/11 victims are outraged that the National September 11 Memorial Museum will be home to a gift shop that peddles T-shirts, mugs, and rescue dog vests, as well as books and other educational material relating to the deadly terrorist attack. More.

I saw Paul Tagliabue cry once. It was five days after the attack on the World Trade Center in Manhattan; Tagliabue was in the league office on a Saturday afternoon. This wasn’t a weepy kind of cry, but a bottom-lip-quiver, moistened-edge-of-eyes, handkerchief-out, stop-talking-to-compose himself kind of cry. You don’t expect the NFL’s Margaret Thatcher (maybe not the best image, but you get the Iron Lady idea) to cry, but you also don’t expect 9/11 to happen, to change our world forever, to be the most infamous day of our lives, to change the way the NFL operates.

A worn metal bracelet inscribed with the name of a fallen 9/11 firefighter washed up 10 days ago on the shores of New York's Robert Moses State Park. As the surf rolled away from her feet, Marlene Quinn picked it up. For Quinn, it was more than a serendipitous find. More.

"U.S. and French intelligence officials are leaning toward an assessment that the Paris terror attacks were inspired by al-Qaida but not directly supervised by the group, a view that would put the violence in a category of homegrown incidents that are extremely difficult to detect and thwart.