Trump invokes 9/11 to defend Iran war at somber Pentagon tribute

NEW YORK — President Donald Trump on Friday hailed 9/11 victims, survivors and first responders in a poignant Pentagon ceremony marking the 25th anniversary of the attacks, but also invoked the tragedy to defend his controversial war with Iran.

Trump, who skipped the main memorial at ground zero, eloquently paid tribute to a long and varied list of those who perished in the worst terror attack on U.S. soil at the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and on board a hijacked plane that crashed in Shanksville, Pennsylvania.

“When future generations come here in 25, 100 or 250 years, they will stand in a nation that is free and unyielding in the face of evil,” Trump said. “They will still honor the heroes of 9/11, 2001 who no age will erase from the memory of time. It will never ever be forgotten.”

Hewing closely to a somber script, he recalled a young family that were headed to California and all died in the American Airlines jet that hijackers crashed into the Pentagon. Trump also called on the family of slain FDNY Capt. Timothy Stackpole, who perished while trying to rescue others at the World Trade Center, to stand and accept applause from the crowd.

—New York Daily News

Teaching 9/11 to a generation that didn’t live through it: ‘We just heard tales of it’

LOS ANGELES — Trent Nettles was a toddler on Sept. 11, 2001. Now 27, Nettles is an 11th-grade Advanced Placement U.S. history teacher — too young to remember the day but responsible for teaching it to students who weren’t yet born when it happened. His challenge was to make this lesson more than just another unit on the syllabus.

Nettles told his students this week at Alliance Cindy & Bill Simon Technology High School in Watts, “I just remember, as a kid, that there was a lot of chaos. That’s all.”

Twenty-five years after the attacks, the anniversary has crossed a generational threshold. In a growing share of American classrooms, 9/11 is part of a past era, often taught by teachers with little more memory of it than the students in front of them. Some do recall the morning but struggle to convey the magnitude of pain and fear to students for whom 9/11 is another date in a social studies course timeline.

The shift begins in early childhood, when children may first hear the date amid adult conversation or catch a newsflash. It runs through middle and high schools, where teachers debate how much of this history adolescent and teen students can absorb — and into college lecture halls, where professors who once taught 9/11 as a current event now teach it as decades-old history.

—Los Angeles Times

‘Nowhere for him to go,’ ‘No time to escape’: Van survivor sues 21 Air, Amazon

MIAMI — Roosevelt Sebastian Perdomo Torres saw the Amazon Prime Boeing 767-300 barreling toward him last Sunday as it overshot the runway at Miami International Airport.

Perdomo Torres, 27, was one of seven people in a van owned by Professional Ocean Service Corp, a company that cleans planes. The jet, operated by North Carolina-based air-cargo firm 21 Air, smashed into the Ford Econoline van as well as a Toyota Carola SUV after it blew past the runway.

Five of Perdomo Torres’ colleagues were killed. He remains in the intensive-care unit at Jackson Memorial Hospital’s Ryder Trauma Center. On Friday, attorneys at Podhurst Orseck filed a negligence lawsuit in Miami-Dade County Circuit Court on his behalf against 21 Air, Amazon and the plane’s pilot and co-pilot.

In the complaint, attorneys say Perdomo Torres watched helplessly as the jet rapidly approached the van. “There was nowhere for him to go and no time to escape,” attorney Pablo Rojas wrote in the complaint. The plane hit the van, “leaving it an unrecognizable heap of metal,” Rojas wrote. Perdomo Torres was ejected from the van and thrown to the ground, breaking his leg, ankle and hand, according to the complaint. He was conscious and tried to stand up, but he was unable, his attorneys say.

—Miami Herald

Houthi-Saudi clash escalates as rebels push into key strait

The Houthis advanced toward Red Sea coastal areas bordering the strategic Bab el-Mandeb Strait, as fighting between the militant group and Saudi-backed Yemeni forces intensifies.

The Houthis have gained ground in their attempt to seize Mokha near the southern end of the Red Sea, according to several analysts, with some saying the Yemeni port city has been captured.

The Iran-backed militant group has already disrupted shipping and oil markets in recent years via its control of the port of Hodeida and other territory near the strait. Gaining Mokha would see it take charge of a second important port in the area and further tighten its grip on the waterway.

The seizure of Mokha “can certainly have an impact on maritime security in the region,” said Bjorn Beirens, a shipping-security consultant. “It gives them a foothold from which they could push further south in a bid to get almost full control of the strait.”

—Bloomberg News