Thursday: Recovery Slow, Congress Approves Aid

Rains Soak World Trade Center Site

NEW YORK -- The gruesome search through the remains of New York's World Trade Center continues in spite of bad weather.

Heavy rain and lightning have struck the city. Rescue workers put on orange rain jackets and plastic bags and went right back to work.

Arab, Muslim Communities Suffer Abuse

Arab and Muslim communities around the country are reporting a backlash resulting from this week’s terrorist attacks.

At Arizona State University, a student was beaten up and pelted with eggs Thursday by two men in a parking lot.

A mosque in Denton, Texas, was firebombed and another in Lynnwood, Wash., was splattered with black paint.

All across the country, Muslim-owned stores have been vandalized and their owners showered with insults and threats.

In Laramie, Wyo., a woman and her children were chased from the local Wal-Mart by angry shoppers.

But there are also incidents of compassion.

In Seattle, churches have been offering safe haven and around-the-clock security to Muslims. In Wyoming, somebody left flowers at the door of the Islamic Center of Laramie with a letter that said no Americans should be singled out for hatred.

Airline Workers Breach Security Checkpoint

Three Northwest Airlines employees intentionally breached a security checkpoint at Sky Harbor International Airport in Phoenix on Thursday as flights resumed following the East Coast terrorist attacks.

Two ground crew employees cleared the checkpoint with a pocketknife and a corkscrew while a pilot passed without proper identification, airport spokeswoman Suzanne Luber said. "Once they did that, they turned around and said, 'Hey, look what we did.'"

Airport officials evacuated the north concourse at Terminal 3 and swept it for dangerous materials. Nothing was found and the concourse was reopened.

Luber said she did not know what was happening to the three employees, but airport officials were concerned by the incident.

Airport officials will continue to work with the airlines and the security workers they hire to make sure the airport is safe, she said. "We would ask that nobody intentionally try to break security."

Congress Ready To Appropriate $40 Billion

Determined to show a united front, bargainers for Congress and the White House agreed early Friday on a $40 billion package to fight terrorism and recover from Tuesday's attacks.

The amount agreed to is double the amount requested by President Bush. Part of the money is earmarked to help victims of the attacks in New York and Washington and help pay for the rescue, cleanup and rebuilding. The rest would go to fight terrorism, including improved transportation security.

House Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., said the two sides agreed to drop earlier language opposed by some lawmakers that would also have approved use of force by Bush to "deter and pre-empt any related future acts of terrorism or aggression against the United States." Opponents said the move would have gone too far in eliminating Congress' role in future incidents.

Lawmakers look for House approval Friday, followed quickly by the Senate. A Saturday session of Congress was looking increasingly likely.

House Endorses Tax Break For Victims

The House of Representatives voted Thursday to give families of terror victims tax breaks normally reserved for casualties in war zones. The IRS announced several items of tax relief for affected people and businesses, including those outside the immediate disaster areas.

House Republicans also said they were putting together a broader economic stimulus package including a capital gains tax cut.

The victims' relief bill passed the House on a 418-0 vote and was expected to sail through the Senate, although the timing was uncertain.

The measure would forgive 2001 income taxes for all victims of the terrorist attacks and effectively cut in half any estate tax. It would also make federal disaster benefits tax-free and ensure that no tax applies to payments from airlines to families of passengers killed in the four crashes.

Such tax breaks currently apply only when military personnel and civilian government employees are killed in foreign combat zones. Until Tuesday's terrorist attacks, there had never been a need for similar laws for incidents inside the United States.

Clinton Arrives In New York

Former President Bill Clinton on Thursday told a crowd of family members of missing terrorist bombing victims that it's important to stay strong and support one another.

Clinton was mobbed by the group as they filed missing persons reports at a Manhattan armory.

"We need not to show fear, and not to give in," said Clinton, who arrived at the armory with his daughter, Chelsea. "We need to prove them wrong by how we respond to this."

Families who spent an anguished day at the armory drifted nearer to hear him speak to reporters. Several people showed him photographs of their missing relatives and friends.

"The rest of us just need to keep our spirits up. We need to prove that the people who did this are wrong," Clinton said. "They have a view of the importance of life, and the nature of politics and faith and human nature that is very different from ours."

Responding to questions regarding Saudi fugitive Osama bin Laden, who has been tapped as a top suspect in Thursday's attack on the World Trade Center, Clinton said: "The best shot we had at him . . . was when I bombed his training camp in 1998, and we just missed him by a matter of hours, maybe even less than an hour."

Black Box Found At Pennsylvania Crash Site

Rescuers found the black box -- the flight data recorder -- from United Flight 93, which crashed in Somerset County, Pa.

The voice data recorder, however, has not been found.

In Shanksville, Pa., an FBI agent said the recorder was found in late afternoon in the 8-foot-deep crater caused by the crash. He said it will be analyzed by the National Transportation Safety Board.

The flight data recorder tracks the plane's flight path. The voice recorder tapes sounds from the cockpit.

An FBI investigator said that there was no military action taken on the plane in Pennsylvania, CNN reported.

The box may shed light on whether passengers on that plane tried to overpower the hijackers.

Also, the Arlington, Va., County fire captain said that rescuers have picked up a signal from the black box from the American Airlines plane that crashed into Pentagon.

But searchers won't be able to retrieve it until they can get into the collapsed area of the Pentagon. That's where the plane's fuselage sits.

Cheney Moved To Camp David

Vice President Dick Cheney left Washington Thursday for the heavily guarded compound of Camp David.

His spokeswoman called it "a purely precautionary measure" following this week's terrorist strikes.

Cheney was expected to rejoin President Bush this weekend.

A law enforcement official tells The Associated Press that Cheney was also taken to Camp David Wednesday, and he spent the night there.

The heavily wooded grounds of the presidential retreat are easier to defend against air attacks than Cheney's official residence -- the gated Naval Observatory on Washington's Embassy Row.

Read The Latest On The Investigation

World Trade Center Cleanup

New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani has requested 30,000 body bags from the federal government. Giuliani earlier told ABC News that they need body bags for each body part and that the number doesn't necessarily reflect the number of fatalities.

Giuliani said that the list of missing people after Tuesday's attack on the World Trade Center has climbed to 4,763 names.

He also said that of the 96 bodies recovered so far, 46 have been identified. And 70 other body parts have been found.

The number of missing includes names from the manifest from the two planes that crashed, as well as other names provided by businesses and families who haven't heard from loved ones or friends.

Adding the missing to the number of dead from the Pentagon attack -- 190 -- and the Pennsylvania crash would bring the total to about 5,000. The four hijacked planes used in the attacks carried 266 people, crew and passengers. None survived.

The questions are heartbreaking for the throngs of people trying to find relatives missing in the rubble of the World Trade Center.

They're filling out a seven-page form that asks such things as the size of the missing person's wedding ring, if they have a pacemaker, and what color they paint their toenails.

They're also being asked to collect anything -- a toothbrush, a hairbrush -- that might hold a tiny bit of DNA that could be used to identify a body, or part of one.

Before turning to DNA, experts can try faster methods of identification -- from fingerprints to dental records to old X-rays.

It's likely to take months to identify all the remains.

New reports say that two firefighters -- not the previously reported five -- were rescued after being trapped in an SUV. In addition, the firefighters had been trapped since earlier today, not since Tuesday as previously reported.

The two firefighters were searching the rubble of the World Trade Center and became trapped in an air pocket Thursday before they were rescued hours later, said Fire Department Capt. Roger Sakowich.

He said only two were rescued. They got lost in an underground pocket beneath the rubble and were pulled out three to four hours later.

Also, several members of the media have been arrested because they've been posing as members of the fire department or as federal investigators in order to get closer to the scene.

The number of missing people -- 4,763 -- from the World Trade Center attack is:

More than the death tolls of the Titanic (about 1,500), Pearl Harbor (2,400) and the worst plane crash in history (582, Canary Islands, 1977) combined.

More than twice as big as New York City's record murder total for an entire year (2,245 in 1990).

The entire population of Taos, N.M. (4,700).

Almost as big as the number of Union and Confederate troops killed (4,800) in the Civil War battle of Antietam.

President Bush has declared that Friday will be a national day of prayer and remembrance to honor those who died. Read the full story.

Other developments Thursday:

Financial services giant Morgan Stanley says that among the 3,700 workers employed at the World Trade Center in New York, only between 30 and 40 were unaccounted for as of Thursday night.

CBS and ABC joined NBC in delaying next week's start of the fall television season.

The New York stock markets are to remain closed until Monday, but these markets opened Thursday: major futures markets, the government bond market, the Chicago Board of Trade, the Chicago Mercantile Exchange.

For the first time ever, the American National Anthem was played in London during the changing of the British Guard at Buckingham Palace.

Bar Owner: Suspects Forecasted Attack

A Daytona Beach, Fla., a strip club owner said it appears terrorists suspected of Tuesday's attacks issued a warning and left a calling card at his business on Monday night.

"When I actually saw the television and then realized what had transpired the night before, I was like, 'Oh my God,'" bar owner John Kap told WJXT-TV in Jacksonville, Fla.

Kap told the station that three men, who he said were of Middle Eastern descent and had been drinking in his bar, boasted to him Monday night that the attacks would happen.

"This guy made this bold, bold statement of saying, 'Hey, America's going to see bloodshed tomorrow.' And within 10 hours, you're seeing planes crashing into the Trade Center, a plane crashing into the Pentagon," Kap said. "We didn't think anything of it until the next day. But then the next day, it came down on us like a ton of bricks."

Kap said that when he saw reports that the terrorists may be linked to Daytona, he said that he called the FBI.

Kap said he told FBI investigators the men in his bar spent $200 to $300 apiece on lap dances and drinks, paying with credit cards, The Associated Press reported. Kap said he gave the FBI credit card receipts, photocopied driver's licenses, a business card left by one man and a copy of the Koran that was left at the bar.

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Copyright 2001 by NewsNet5.com. The Associated Press contributed to this report. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.