Allan Gerson, a Washington lawyer and legal scholar who helped pioneer the practice of suing foreign governments in U.S. courts for complicity in terrorism, representing victims’ families in the aftermath of the Lockerbie bombing and the 9/11 terrorist attacks, died Dec. 1 at his home in the District. He was 74. The cause was complications of Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, a degenerative brain disorder, said his wife, cookbook author Joan Nathan.

Children of 9/11 first responders sickened by illnesses from Ground Zero recovery work will be eligible for a scholarship in memory of hero cop Luis Alvarez. The scholarship is named for Alvarez, the late, cancer-stricken former NYPD detective from Oceanside whose congressional testimony is credited with helping secure benefits for thousands of fellow 9/11 responders. More.

The Department of Homeland Security’s inspector general is investigating whether agency officials retaliated against a whistleblower who criticized cybersecurity lapses in the nation’s bioterrorism defense program. Harry Jackson, a former information security manager at Homeland Security, complained that data from the BioWatch program had been stored on an insecure dot-org website for over a decade, where it was vulnerable to cyberattacks, according to government documents.

In 1614 early Dutch settlers of Manhattan landed on the shoreline of the Hudson River near what is today Greenwich Street, just east of the 9/11 Memorial & Museum. Over the past 400 years, Manhattan’s footprint has expanded outward, having been filled during various periods of development with demolition debris, marine construction, abandoned ships, and city waste. More.

Weekend PATH service between the World Trade Center and Newark Penn Station will open in December, instead of terminating at Exchange Place and leaving customers to ferry to Manhattan. This will go into effect after Thanksgiving on Saturday, Nov. 30, and continue until Jan. 4, 2020. More.

Five freelance photojournalists have filed a lawsuit against the Department of Homeland Security for violation of their First Amendment rights, the ACLU announced yesterday. The journalists are alleging that Customs and Border Patrol agents tracked, detained and interrogated them because of their coverage of immigration issues along the U.S-Mexico border in 2018 and 2019. More.

More than 100 local residents, joined by a very special guest from France, participated in the first-ever Fontana Tunnel to Towers 5K Run at Fontana Park on Oct. 26. The event was one of several Tunnel to Towers 5K races that are held throughout the country to pay homage to the many firefighters, first responders, military members, and civilians who lost their lives in New York on Sept. 11, 2001. More.

James ‘Jimmy’ Boyle, a former two-time president of the Uniformed Firefighters Association, died over the weekend at age 80. And while Boyle may be partly remembered for his difficult contract negotiations with City Hall during the Dinkins administration, he was also the face of 9/11 parents who lost their sons and daughters in the rubble of the World Trade Center after the 2001 terror attacks led to the collapse of the Twin Towers. More.