The Pantagraph from Bloomington, Illinois • A7

1 The Mond ay, February 26 2018 A7 NATION RICHARD DREW PHOTOS ASSOCIATED PRESS a visitor to the ational September 11 Museum, in ew ork Friday, looks at a model of the World Trade Center parking garage created by the I to demonstrate the scale of the bomb crater of the Feb. 26, 1993 attack. JENNIFER PELTZ Associated Press NEW YORK In a room in the museum, there are a police poignant notes and a flashlight that illuminated the way to safety. Nearby, a letter from a trapped man tells his family, love you very Do wonderful things in your The artifacts from Sept 11, 2001. They are reminders of a terror attack that foreshadowed it: the deadly World Trade Center bombing, 25 years ago Monday.

That shadow fell personally on Lolita Jackson. As a young finance worker, she picked her way down 72 flights of blacked-out stairs on Feb. 26, 1993, and fled the trade south tower again in 2001. The bombing to be forgotten because was such a cataclysmic she says, but the blast has its own place in the lives and memories of an estimated 50,000 people who were in the win towers that snowy afternoon. The explosion killed six people, injured over 1,000, manifested the growing terror threat from Islamic extremism and led to safety improvements credited with helping some people survive Sept.

11. It in many respects, a precursor to says museum President Alice Greenwald. A bomb exploded in a rented van in a basement parking garage shortly after noon, causing a crater several stories deep and a boom felt many floors above. The blast killed visitor John DiGiovanni and five people who worked at the trade center Robert Kirkpatrick, Stephen Knapp, William Macko, Wilfredo Mercado and Monica Rodriguez Smith. Smith was pregnant.

Power was knocked out and pipes were severed, flooding backup generators. Elevators got stuck. A group of kindergartners was stranded for hours on an observation deck. Other people were trapped in the debris-filled garage. Police helicopters plucked nearly two do zen people, some disabled, from rooftops.

Some office workers broke out windows to try to clear smoke while awaiting help. Others made their way down, emerging coated in soot. Jackson feel fearful at first. What was terrifying was the 2 trek down the pitch- dark, crowded, smoky stairs, wondering what she would see at the bottom. know what was going to recalls Jackson, who now works in city government.

Alone in a stalled elevator with smoke wafting in and no idea why, trade center worker Carl Selinger began to think he might not get out alive. So Selinger wrote a letter to his wife and children and waited. He was rescued after 5 hours. dealt with what I had to deal Selinger said at a recent discussion at the Sept. 11 museum.

Within days, a fragment of the rented van began leading investigators to Muslim extremists who sought to punish the United States for its Middle East policies, especially its aid to Israel, according to prosecutors. As they pursued that case and learned about another plot to bomb New York City landmarks, then-Manhattan U.S. Attorney Mary Jo White red lights blinking everywhere about how serious I thought this threat was from international she told an audience Thursday at the museum. Indeed, a letter found on an accused bombing laptop made it chillingly clear the threat over. our calculations were not very accurate this time.

However, we promise you that next time it will be very precise and the World Trade Center will continue to be one of our it said. Six bombing suspects were convicted and sentenced, including accused mastermind Ramzi ousef a nephew of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who would later become the self-professed architect of A seventh bombing suspect, Abdul Rahman Yasin, remains at large and is on the list of most wanted terrorists. After the bombing, the government-run trade center banned underground parking, installed battery-operated lights in stairwells and added security cameras, among other safety upgrades. A memorial fountain was destroyed on Sept. 11.

But bombing names are now inscribed on one of the waterfall pools that bear the names of the nearly 3,000 killed on A room in the Sept. 11 museum is devoted to the bombing, and a special temporary installation marks the 25th anniversary. After poring through the installation one day recently, 1 5-year-old Raven Rucinski, of Michigan, was surprised never heard much about the bombing. Catlin Roberts, 39, from Swansea, Wales, reflected on the legacy of an event she had only dimly recalled. think, when this happened, people understood what the people who did it she said.

World Trade Center bomb remembered after 25 years JAKE COYLE AP Film Writer NEW YORK scored one of the best second weekends ever with an estimated $108 million in ticket sales, putting it on track to rank among the highest-grossing blockbusters ever. Ryan Marvel sensation is on a box-office course that few films have managed, according to studio estimates Sunday. It is only the fourth film to earn $100 million in its second weekend, along with Wars: The Force ($149.2 million), ($106.6 million) and ($103.1 million). Only Force had a better second weekend than which dropped 47 percent after its opening weekend of $201.8 million. has grossed $400 million domestically and $704 million worldwide in two weeks.

The film, starring Chadwick Boseman and Michael B. Jordan, has held even better overseas, where it dropped 42 percent this weekend. Its release in China, the second-largest film market, is set for March 9. your projections for might be, just increase them by 20 percent and you might be on said Paul Der garabedian, senior media analyst for comScore. the question so much if it gets to $1 billion, but how far beyond that number does it The results so far put it in the company of which ended up grossing $1.67 billion worldwide, and which ultimately hauled in $1.52 billion.

Both rank among the top five of all time, not accounting for inflation. is spurring a surge for the industry. The overall box office is up 12.5 percent from last year, according to comScore. And the movie is doing it with an especially diverse audience. This audience was 33 percent African-American, 37 percent Caucasian, 18 percent Hispanic and 7 percent Asian, according to comScore.

The success appear to hurt the handful of new releases. Faring the best was starring Jason Bateman and Rachel McAdams, from Warner New Line. The comedy, which cost about $37 million to make and was directed by John Francis Daley and Jonathan Goldstein, debuted with $16.6 million, coming in slightly above forecasts. Though comedies have struggled at the box office in recent years, got a modest boost from good reviews and perhaps from the waves of moviegoers brought in by that whole rising tide floats all said Jeff Goldstein, distribution head for Warner Bros. Alex sci-fi thriller starring Natalie Portman, also debuted with some momentum thanks to strong reviews.

It opened with $11 million on about 2,000 screens (or about half the number of Paramount earlier sold the international rights (except in China) to Netflix after disappointing reactions in test screenings. Opening weekend audiences largely responded similarly, giving the film a poor CinemaScore. has better 2nd weekend STEVE LEBLANC Associated Press BOSTON One promise of ride-hailing companies like Uber and Lyft was fewer cars clogging city streets. But studies suggest the opposite: that ride-hailing companies are pulling riders off buses, subways, bicycles and their own feet and putting them in cars instead. And in what could be a new wrinkle, a service by Uber called Express Pool now is seen as directly competing with mass transit.

Uber and Lyft argue that in Boston, for instance, they complement public transit by connecting riders to hubs like Logan Airport and South Station. But they have not released their own specific data about rides, leaving studies up to outside researchers. And the impact of all those cars is becoming clear, said Christo Wilson, a professor of computer science at Northeastern University, who has looked at practice of surge pricing during heavy volume. emerging consensus is that ride-sharing (is) increasing Wilson said. One study included surveys of 944 ride-hailing users over four weeks in late 2017 in the Boston area.

Nearly six in 10 said they would have used public transportation, walked, biked or skipped the trip if the ride-hailing apps available. The report also found many riders using hailed rides to connect to a subway or bus line, but instead as a separate mode of transit, said Alison Felix, one of the authors. sharing is pulling from and not complementing public she said. not quite what Uber founder Travis Kalanick suggested in 2015 when he said, envision a world where no more traffic in Boston in five A study released in December found that large increases in the number of taxis and ride-sharing vehicles are contributing to slow traffic in central business district. It recommended policies to prevent further increases in number of vacant vehicles occupied only by drivers waiting for their next trip In San Francisco, a study released in June found that on a ypical weekday, ride-hailing drivers make more than 170,000 vehicle trips, about 12 times the number of taxi trips, and that the trips are concentrated in the densest and most congested parts of the city.

And a survey released in October of more than 4,000 adults in Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles, New York, the San Francisco Bay Area, Seattle and Washington, D.C., also concluded that 49 to 61 percent of ride-hailing trips would have not been made at all or instead by walking, biking or public transit if the option exist. The Boston study found that the main reason people opted for ride-hailing was speed. Even those with a public transit pass would drop it for ride-hailing despite the higher cost. Sarah Wu, a graduate student at Boston University, uses Uber less than once a week but more often if she has guests. She lives near a subway line but will opt for Uber if it looks like public transit will be a hassle.

would prefer to have the Uber take me there directly rather than having to transfer several times and wait at a bus said Wu, who own a car. A spokesman for Lyft stressed that ride-hailing could reduce the number of personally owned cars on the roads. is focused on making personal car ownership optional by getting more people to share a ride, helping to reduce car ownership, and partnering with public spokesman Adrian Durbin said in a statement. Uber is hoping to wean drivers from their cars in part by encouraging its carpooling services, spokeswoman Alix Anfang said. Studies: Uber, Lyft congest cities The names of the six people who died in the Feb.

26, 1993 truck bomb attack at the World Trade Center are inscribed in the bronze border of the north reflecting pool of the ational September 11 Memorial, in ew ork MATT KENNEDY MARVEL STUDIOS DISNEY VIA AP lack was o. 1 at the bo office for a second week..