NEW YORK (AP) ? One World Trade Center already is New York's tallest building.
And when the last pieces of its spire rise to the roof ? weather permitting ? the 104-floor skyscraper that replaces the fallen twin towers will be just feet from becoming the highest in the Western Hemisphere.
The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey says the spire pieces plus a steel beacon will then be lifted at a later date from the rooftop to cap the building at 1,776 feet.
Installation of the 800-ton, 408-foot spire began in December, after 18 pieces were shipped from Canada and New Jersey.
The spire will serve as a world-class broadcast antenna.
With the beacon at its peak to ward off aircraft, the spire will provide public transmission services for television and radio broadcast channels that were destroyed on Sept. 11, 2001, along with the trade center towers.
Overlooking the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island, the high-rise is scheduled to open for business in 2014.
The tower is at the northwest corner of the site, which is well on its way to reconstruction with the 72-story 4 World Trade Center and other buildings.
Monday's celebration of the reconstructed trade center comes days after a grisly reminder of the terror attack that took nearly 3,000 lives: the discovery of a rusted piece of airplane landing gear wedged between a nearby mosque and an apartment building ? believed to be from one of the hijacked planes that ravaged lower Manhattan.
As officials prepared to erect the spire, the office of the city's chief medical examiner was working in the hidden alley where debris may still contain human remains.
The new tower's crowning spire is a joint venture between the ADF Group Inc. engineering firm in Terrebonne, Quebec, and New York-based DCM Erectors Inc., a steel contractor.
The world's tallest building, topping 2,700 feet, is in Dubai.
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/last-pieces-1-world-trade-center-rising-063927510.html
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In light of the AP’s?high-profile Twitter hacking and a vicious domestic bombing, Americans have not let fear derail privacy legislation. Just this week, the Senate advanced an anti-email snooping law and the controversial Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA) is reportedly on its way to the grave. It appears that the burden of proof has shifted to proponents of government surveillance, and they’ve been conspicuously silent about how spying will keep Americans safe. Two Bills CISPA, which gives immunity to Internet companies for sharing sensitive data with law enforcement, will reportedly not be taken up for a vote in the Senate. “We’re not taking [CISPA] up,” a representative from the Senate’s Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation told US News, “Staff and senators are divvying up the issues and the key provisions everyone agrees would need to be handled if we’re going to strengthen cybersecurity. They’ll be drafting separate bills.” After wavering support from Facebook and other high-profile Internet companies, the White House threatened to veto the bill over privacy concerns, most likely related to ambiguous definitions of what constitutes a cyber “threat” and how agencies would be kept honest. ECPA Reform – The 1970′s law that permits security agencies to access emails opened or older than 180 days, is on its way to a privacy upgrade. Designed before users kept their email indefinitely in the cloud (i.e. Gmail), a few high-level privacy breaches, including the unearthing of General David Petraeus’s romantic affair, have created overwhelming demand to overhaul the antiquated law. Today, an amendment to require a warrant before reading emails was voted on by voice, which means there wasn’t even enough opposition among the Judiciary committee members for a debate. Staff members inside the House of Representatives, where the bill will go if it passes the senate, tell me that there also isn’t much opposition to the reforms on their side of Congress, and that a bill by Rep. Zoe Lofgren (CrunchGov Grade: A) could very well be combined with the Senate’s version for a streamlined change (yes, occasionally things are efficient in Congress). Why Not? Even after the AP’s Twitter account was hacked to spread a rumor about an explosion at the White House and two American men successfully detonated bombs at the Boston Marathon, there’s no reason to believe that either CISPA or ECPA?would have kept Americans safer. Even President Obama’s freak-everyone-out op-ed last year
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A worker collects orders at Amazon's fulfillment center in Rugeley, central England, Dec. 11, 2012. 
