NEW YORK City

Health registry to monitor effects of air after Sept. 11

From executives to food cart vendors, people who were near the World Trade Center when it collapsed began enrolling Friday in a registry to help determine the long-term health effects of breathing the soot-filled air.

Health officials hope to collect information from up to 300,000 people believed to have been near the twin towers during and shortly after the Sept. 11, 2001, attack.

Data collection began Friday, and a preliminary report is expected this fall. Plans for the registry were first announced last year.

Health officials said the registry was not launched in response to recent accusations that the Environmental Protection Agency gave misleading assurances about air quality in the days after the terrorist attack.

But they called the registry their best chance to know the extent that contaminants affected people’s health. Asbestos, glass particles and caustic powder were found in the air after the attack.

WASHINGTON, D.C.

Bush to address nation about progress in Iraq

President Bush will address the nation Sunday night about Iraq amid growing U.S. casualties and criticism about his handling of the war against terrorism.

The last time Bush made such a speech was on May 1 when he landed on the deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln and declared that “major combat operations in Iraq have ended.”

Since then, the president has not spelled out how much rebuilding Iraq will cost, how long U.S. troops will have to be stationed there or what happened to the alleged weapons of mass destruction that the administration said Saddam Hussein had.

Bush will speak from the White House at 7:30 p.m. for about 15 minutes, officials said. His address will cap an administration media blitz Sunday; Secretary of State Colin Powell and National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice will appear earlier on Sunday television talk shows.

Italy

Arab League chief says Iraq council may be allowed in bloc

Saying there was no alternative, the Arab League secretary-general hinted Friday that it might finally recognize Iraq’s U.S.-picked interim Governing Council as a legitimate government and include it in the bloc.

Amr Moussa stressed that it was up to the Arab League’s council of ministers to decide whether the transitional Iraqi leadership could take its seat at the Arab League’s upcoming meeting Tuesday in Cairo.

Iraq’s seat on the council has remained empty since Saddam Hussein’s ouster, because the Arab League has refused to recognize the governing council — dismissed by many in Iraq and across the Arab world as a puppet of U.S. and Britain.

Moussa said a key agenda item ahead of Tuesday’s meeting was what role the Governing Council would play in the Arab League, and he suggested that some sort of provisional acceptance might be in the works.

“The fact that there is a Governing Council is recognized by the Arab League,” Moussa said on the sidelines of a conference on Lake Como. “Iraq as a country has not been expelled from the Arab League. It still continues to have its seat and its membership.”