Two hundred fire fighters have now reportedly died from illnesses related to the September 11th attacks, according to a charitable organization that assists 9/11 first responders with medical needs not covered by insurance. The Ray Pfeifer Foundation confirmed on Twitter Wednesday that two more New York City fire fighters have died due to "9/11 illness," marking the 199th, and 200th FDNY deaths related to the World Trade Center attacks.

Federal officials are considering requiring that all travelers — including American citizens — be photographed as they enter or leave the country as part of an identification system using facial-recognition technology. The Department of Homeland Security says it expects to publish a proposed rule next July. Officials did not respond to requests for more details. More.

In speaking to many of the more than 10,000 Ground Zero responders I represented in their lawsuit against the City of New York and its contractors for the injuries and ailments they suffered as a result of working on the cleanup of Ground Zero, I was struck over and over again by their selflessness and heroism. More.

The 9/11 al-Qaeda attacks stirred the United States and its allies to respond with a “war on terror” that continues to play out today. Al-Qaeda launched another lethal, but less visible, attack that day—on the emergency responders who worked at Ground Zero in New York City for the better part of a year after the September 2001 disaster. More.

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.