Many leadership teams can recite their benefits package from memory, often listing things like subsidised food, wellbeing programmes and training budgets. On paper, these benefits look generous, and in many cases, they are, but the reality is often that most employees can’t use the benefits.

For example, in many workplaces, the canteen closes at 3pm which is perfect for employees who work traditional office hours, but it leaves those on the night shift often going without away. The same goes for lunchtime yoga sessions or mental health drop-ins that run throughout the day shift but aren’t accessible for employees who don’t work typical hours.

Employees can’t use these workplace benefits because there is a problem with how they have been designed and set up.

Offering a benefit is not the same as making it available

There is a meaningful difference between offering a benefit and making it practically available. For example, the subsidized canteen that shuts before the night shift arrives is, for that shift, not a subsidised canteen, it is just yet another inaccessible perk and the scale of this gap is often bigger than many leaders assume. The Office for National Statistics reported that in 2022, 4% of the UK workforce usually worked during the evening or night but not during the day, and a further 23% worked during both daytime and evening or nighttime hours. That is more than a quarter of working people whose hours fall at least partly outside the window most workplace services are built around.

So, when the leadership teams review the workplace benefits, the discussions should not be focused on “what do we offer?” but whether all employees can access it during their working hours, is it relevant to every site and is it realistically going to be used by the employees.

On-site provision is part of operational infrastructure

In shift-based environments, decent staff facilities are not a nice extra added on top of the operation, they are part of what keeps the operation running day to day and food and drink is the clearest example of this.In bus depots and industrial sites, drivers and engineers often start work before nearby shops open, and before any workplace catering is staffed. Breaks can also be short, and they are usually dictated by the timetable or the workload rather than by the clock. So, someone coming off a route at 5:40am with a 20-minute break doesn’t have the time or the option to go out and find something substantial to eat, which means they are limited to whatever is available on site.

Demand also changes depending on the shift times and an employee on the morning shift might reach for something different from an employee on the night shift. There is also a shift in demand between different sites within the same company as it all depends on the employee’s demographics. For provisions to be successful, they need to keep pace with the changing demands, which means reliable equipment and replenishment outside of office hours to ensure the machines don’t run out of stock.
There is a health aspect to consider as well, because the Health and Safety Executive recognises that shift work can affect health and safety and advises employers to assess and manage the risks that come with it.

The Society of Occupational Medicine also recommends that shift workers should have access to healthy, affordable food and drink throughout their shifts. That is not to say that a well-stocked staff area cures fatigue or delivers measurable health improvements on its own, but leaving people to work unsocial hours with no realistic access to food and drink is a choice and it is a poor one.

Replace assumptions with operational evidence

Vending machine operators, like Connect Vending, can use telemetry to analyse each individual site’s sales data to map out their usage and to highlight what time of day people rely on food and drink provisions the most. This sales data helps to inform restocking schedules and indicates when a machine may need servicing to prevent equipment downtime or from running out of stock.

An example of when this data has influenced the operational efficiency of a site comes from Connect Vending, who see this pattern regularly across the bus companies they work with. At one site, the consumption data showed a clear spike in sales at 1am as crews came off their final routes, which is hours after a traditional catering model would have closed and long before it would open again. If the provision had stopped at the end of the office day, that entire period of demand would have been missed, and those employees would have finished their shifts with nothing available to them.

Reviewing the data has also led to ranges and stocking schedules being changed at more than one site because what was being provided simply did not match when and how people were actually taking their breaks. None of this required a survey or a consultancy project, it just required looking at what the operation was already telling them.

A five-question audit for senior leaders

For any CEO or operations leader who wants a quick health check, five questions will highlight most of the gaps:

1. Which of our benefits become unavailable outside standard office hours?
   2. Which sites or shifts receive a different level of provision?
   3. Are our services designed around actual break patterns?
   4. What does our usage data reveal about unmet demand?
   5. Have employees on every shift, at every site, been asked what they need?

CIPD advises employers to make sure benefits are genuinely valued by employees and aligned with wider business and workforce objectives and there is no way to know what a night shift values without asking the night shift.
Conclusion

None of this means that every site needs identical facilities or that a small depot should mirror a head office. Differences are fine when they are deliberate and the real question for leaders is whether differences in location and working hours are unintentionally creating a poorer experience for parts of the workforce, which is usually the parts doing the least visible and least flexible work.

Getting this right also sends a signal to your employees because it shows that the business understands how its people work rather than just how the org chart says they do. Employees notice when their working patterns have been considered, and they notice just as quickly when they have not.

Twenty-five years ago today, the United States experienced the deadliest terrorist attack in its history when al-Qaida hijackers commandeered four commercial airliners and turned them into weapons, killing nearly 3,000 people in a span of roughly 102 minutes. The attacks unfolded in a precise, devastating sequence beginning in the early morning hours of Sept. 11, 2001, and the exact timeline remains one of the most studied chronologies in modern American history.

All times below are in Eastern Daylight Time, matching the time zone in which the attacks occurred.

The hijacked flights take off

The morning began ordinarily. American Airlines Flight 11, a Boeing 767 carrying 92 people, departed Boston’s Logan International Airport at 7:59 a.m., bound for Los Angeles. United Airlines Flight 175, also departing from Boston and headed to Los Angeles, took off shortly afterward at 8:14 a.m. American Airlines Flight 77 left Washington Dulles International Airport at 8:20 a.m. en route to Los Angeles, and United Airlines Flight 93 departed Newark International Airport at 8:42 a.m., also headed for the West Coast. All four aircraft were hijacked within the first hour after takeoff.

First impact: North Tower

At 8:46 a.m., Flight 11 crashed into the North Tower of the World Trade Center, striking between the 93rd and 99th floors. The impact killed everyone aboard the aircraft and hundreds of people inside the building instantly. Initial news coverage in the moments afterward described the event as a possible accident, with many assuming a small aircraft had strayed off course.

That assumption was shattered 17 minutes later. At 9:03 a.m., Flight 175 crashed into the South Tower, striking between the 77th and 85th floors, in an impact captured live on television by news crews that had already converged on Lower Manhattan to cover the first crash. The scene, broadcast to millions of viewers in real time, made clear within seconds that the United States was under a coordinated attack.

The Pentagon is struck

At 9:37 a.m., American Airlines Flight 77 crashed into the western side of the Pentagon in Arlington, Virginia, killing all 64 people aboard the aircraft and 125 people inside the building. The attack on the Pentagon, the headquarters of the U.S. Department of Defense, underscored that the assault was targeting the core symbols of American military and financial power.

Eight minutes later, at 9:45 a.m., the Federal Aviation Administration made the unprecedented decision to ground all civilian aircraft in the United States, ordering more than 4,500 planes then in the air to land at the nearest airport as quickly as possible. At the same time, the U.S. Capitol and the White House’s West Wing began evacuating, with the House of Representatives and Senate both in session at the time.

The South Tower falls

At 9:59 a.m., after burning for 56 minutes, the South Tower of the World Trade Center collapsed, sending a massive cloud of dust and debris through Lower Manhattan. The collapse came as a shock even to rescue personnel who had assumed the structure could withstand the fire, and it dramatically increased the death toll among first responders who were still inside or near the building.

Flight 93 crashes in Pennsylvania

Passengers and crew aboard United Airlines Flight 93, who had learned via phone calls of the earlier attacks in New York and Washington, attempted to storm the cockpit and retake control of the aircraft from the hijackers. At 9:58 a.m., passenger Edward P. Felt managed to hide in a bathroom and place a call to 911, reporting the hijacking in progress. Shortly afterward, at 10:03 a.m., Flight 93 crashed into a field near Shanksville, in Stonycreek Township, Pennsylvania, killing all 44 people aboard. Investigators later concluded the plane had likely been intended for the U.S. Capitol or the White House, and that the passengers’ revolt prevented a fifth strike on a national landmark.

The North Tower collapses

At 10:15 a.m., a damaged section of the Pentagon’s E Ring, an outer ring of the building, collapsed. Thirteen minutes later, at 10:28 a.m., after burning for 102 minutes, the North Tower of the World Trade Center collapsed as well, completing the destruction of the twin towers and marking the end of the main phase of the attacks.

Toll and aftermath

By the time the smoke cleared, the attacks had killed 2,977 people, not including the 19 hijackers, making it the deadliest act of terrorism in world history and the deadliest attack on American soil since Pearl Harbor 60 years earlier. The World Trade Center attacks alone claimed 2,753 lives, including 343 New York City firefighters and rescue workers who died attempting to evacuate the towers and assist survivors.

That evening, President George W. Bush addressed the nation from the White House. “Today, our fellow citizens, our way of life, our very freedom came under attack in a series of deliberate and deadly terrorist acts,” Bush said in his address.

A quarter-century later

The attacks, carried out by 19 hijackers affiliated with al-Qaida under the direction of Osama bin Laden, reshaped American foreign policy, domestic security infrastructure and daily life in ways that persist today, from airport screening procedures to the broader war on terrorism that followed in Afghanistan and beyond. The 9/11 Commission Report later described the day as the moment “the United States became a nation transformed.”

Twenty-five years on, memorial ceremonies are being held Friday at all three attack sites — the World Trade Center site in New York, the Pentagon in Virginia, and the Flight 93 National Memorial near Shanksville, Pennsylvania — as survivors, victims’ families and public officials gather to mark the anniversary. A recent survey found that the vast majority of Americans who lived through the day still recall with vivid clarity exactly where they were and what they were doing when the attacks unfolded, a testament to how deeply the events of that Tuesday morning remain etched in the national memory.

New Delhi: The Election Commission’s ‘Special Intensive Revision’ of Bihar’s electoral rolls has sparked a major political debate. However, this is not the first time that the poll panel has ordered an ‘intensive’ revision of electoral rolls — at least nine such revisions were held from 1952 to 2004, several of which came with similar house-to-house verification and even a ‘de novo’ electoral roll in some cases. However, the EC has seldom ordered a full state intensive revision in a state 4-6 months ahead of assembly elections, as is the case with Bihar.

Factor the last such instances: In June 2004, ECI ordered ‘Intensive Revision of Electoral Rolls‘ in seven northeastern states and J&K.

Alongside, it ordered a ‘special summary revision‘ in Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Goa, Gujarat, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Jharkhand, Karnataka, Kerala, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Orissa, Punjab, Rajasthan, Sikkim, Tamil Nadu, Uttar Pradesh, Uttaranchal, West Bengal, and Union Territories of Andaman & Nicobar Islands, Chandigarh, Daman & Diu, Dadra & Nagar Haveli, NCT of Delhi, Lakshadweep and Pondicherry.Prior to that, ‘intensive revision’ of the electoral rolls was conducted in 20 other states/UTs, including Bihar, in two phases during 2002 and 2003, except the northeastern states and J&K.

BIHAR 2025- A unique case
The 2025 SIR in Bihar is different on several counts. While an ‘intensive’ revision mostly involves a ‘de novo’ exercise, drawing up a fresh electoral roll from the scratch, the Bihar SIR is using the 2002-03 electoral roll as a base to build upon. At the same time, it involves a new pre-printed enumeration form included in the usual house-to-house verification format and document submission, associated with an ‘intensive’ revision. It is, also, very different from previous intensive revision exercises in terms of timing.

EC has seldom ordered a full state and full-scale intensive revision in a state 4-6 months ahead of scheduled assembly elections, as is the case with Bihar. Bihar saw its last intensive revision in 2002, a good three years away from the assembly polls held in October 2005.
Similarly, when the EC, on June 29, 2004 announced an intensive roll revision in eight states, it chose to leave out two states which were pending a similar intensive roll revision. These were Arunachal Pradesh & Maharashtra where assembly polls were due in October 2004.
“In Arunachal Pradesh and Maharashtra, general elections to the assemblies are to be held in the latter half of 2004. Therefore, the programme in these two states will be announced after the completion of the elections,” the EC press note on 29.06.2004 read.
Instead, a ‘special summary revision of rolls’ was announced for Maharashtra ahead of the October 2024 assembly polls with house-to-house enumeration, as per the September-December 2004 EC newsletter.

The EC has, in fact, often conducted ‘intensive’ revision in certain areas of a state. In Tamil Nadu- after inquiry reports indicated ‘shortcomings in the conduct of different levels of election officers at the time of intensive revision of electoral rolls in 2002’- the poll panel on October 19, 2004 ordered a ‘special revision of intensive nature with house-to-house enumeration’ in six municipal corporation areas across 33 constituencies, spanning parts of Chennai, Salem, Coimbatore, Tiruchirappalli, Madurai, and Tirunelveli.

In the aftermath of Gujarat riots, the ECI on August 16,2002, announced a repeat of the 2002 ‘special revision of intensive nature’.

Types Of Electoral Roll Revisions

Intensive Revision: It’s usually a de-novo process without reference to earlier existing roll; involves at least 2 household verification visits by booth-level officer

Summary Revision: Roll is simply updated; no house-to-house enumeration but objections are addressed before final roll publication

Special Summary Revision: EC can order so if it finds inaccuracies or poor coverage of any area. EC can adopt changes in existing procedure

Partly Intensive and Partly Summary Revision: Existing electoral rolls are published in draft and checked through household verification and put through claims/objection process

Roll revision chronology

1950
Originally Section 23 of Representation of the People Act, 1950 provided for annual revision with March 1 as qualifying date

1952
After first gen election in 1952, EC directed that from 1952 to 1956, annual revision of electoral rolls should cover 1/5th of entire state area so that every locality might have its electoral roll intensively revised at least once before 2nd gen polls

1956
EC directed intensive revision of rolls every year in some areas where electoral rolls were likely to become inaccurate: (i) Urban Areas (ii) Areas with floating labour population (iii) Areas where fairly large movements of population had taken place

1957
Post 1957: Lok Sabha polls: EC directed that during each of the three following years, the electoral rolls of 1/3rd of the entire state area be revised intensively, while during 1961 the revision would be intensive only in urban areas, areas with floating, migratory population and service voters

1960
Following amendments to RP Act, 1950, EC ordered annual revision of rolls between January 1 and Jan 31 of the year

1962
Post 1962 LS Polls: EC directed ‘summary revision’ adequate for 1963 and 1964. In 1965 intensive revision conducted again in 40% of the country; the rest 60% was done in 1966

1966
Post 1966: District Election Officer appointed in each district and summary roll revision conducted in 1969-70 and 1975

1976
Emergency: no Lok Sabha polls in 1976; EC held summary roll revision

1983
1983 on: Staggered intensive revision of all rural constituencies ahead of 1985 LS polls

1987-88
All constituencies revised intensively; special revision in 1989

1992
Summary revision ordered followed by intensive revision in 1993 along with introduction of EPIC card

1995
Intensive Revision comes in

1999-2000
Amid computerisation electoral rolls, no intensive revision in 1999, 2000

2002
Special intensive revision in 20 states; intensive revision in 7 states in 2003-04

Glantz from Rusi thinks that as legitimate businesses close, crime moves in. “Rents are down, there’s a lot of empty spaces, so landlords are willing to pretty much take just about anybody,” he says.

Plumb came up with a new name for these areas: the “shuttered front”, a string of constituencies with struggling High Streets that Power to Change think could play a pivotal role in future elections.

Indeed, Reform’s Nigel Farage and Richard Tice were among the first mainstream politicians to regularly talk about visible signs of High Street criminality.

In 2024, Farage said at an event: “You can see High Streets with five, six, seven barber shops in them.” Tice added: “Seriously, how come lots of these new barber shops have got no customers in them? How come they all want cash only? These are fronts for money laundering and drug money, and someone has to talk about it.”

And in a social media video he made last year – one that quickly set parts of the internet alight – Robert Jenrick, who was then the shadow justice minister, listed “weird Turkish barber shops” as a visible sign of decline, alongside bike theft, phone theft, and drugs in town centres. “It’s all chipping away at society,” he said. He later clarified that he was “obviously not talking about all Turkish-style barber shops”. Jenrick defected to Reform earlier this year.

Some politicians argue the language around High Street decline is in danger of becoming racially coded. In January, Miatta Fahnbulleh, then the devolution, faith and communities minister, agreed when asked by the Guardian if she thought the focus on Turkish barbers had racist overtones. “Yes, I do. The fundamentals aren’t to do with the colour of the skin of people running our High Streets. It’s to do with long-term decline and neglect.”

At the time a Reform spokesman was quoted as saying: “This is not a matter of ethnicity.

“The National Crime Agency itself has said many of these establishments are used as fronts for money laundering as well as a whole range of criminality which is why they carried out hundreds of raids on them last year.”

Meanwhile, immigration – the issue that voters consistently highlight as among the most pressing, and that Reform campaigns heavily on – came up in our investigation too. We exposed a Kurdish gang that was enabling migrants to work illegally in mini-marts the length of Britain, by offering to put their own names to official paperwork. Trading Standards told us they find a constant supply of staff from asylum hotels, who are vulnerable to abuse by employers, working in those shops.

Josh Nicholson, a researcher at the Centre for Social Justice think tank, says, “Chaos and flux in Westminster are reflected in our High Streets.

“People feel powerlessness, they look at Westminster and see an inability of politicians to grapple with the basics and that feeds down to a local level.”

This feeling of helplessness came up again and again in our travels.

“Nothing is going to change,” Daniel, in Swansea, told us about the criminality on his High Street, which has become a hub for counterfeit rolling tobacco. He has seen violence on the High Street and an increase in raids on High Street shops. He’s a dual British and Chinese national and was considering moving to Hong Kong.

“It doesn’t make me feel safe. I’ve got kids.”

LOS ANGELES — The Dodgers are placing Shohei Ohtani on the injured list, manager Dave Roberts said Wednesday, after weeks of left-knee, right-biceps and neck pain that the club tried to manage without an official stay.

“We tried to kick the can as much as we could,” Roberts said after a 14-1 win over Cincinnati. “It’s the right thing to do.” As a two-way player, Ohtani must go on the 15-day list rather than the 10-day list for position players. Backdated to Tuesday, the earliest he can return is Sept. 23 — six days before the wild-card round and 10 days before a National League Division Series that would start Oct. 3.

He has not pitched since July 3. He sat six of the past seven games. He returned Monday, went 0-for-3 with two strikeouts and a walk, then sat again. Roberts said a swing Monday “he didn’t feel great on” and that Ohtani “hasn’t totally recovered from Monday.” The club learned of that extra discomfort Tuesday night, after it had planned to use him Wednesday and after it had already kept him available as a pinch-hitter.

“If it were a postseason game tomorrow, he would be in the lineup,” Roberts said. “Now you’re talking about two weeks, 14 days. I feel that that’s substantial. He’ll be in a much better place than he was today. Is it going to be 100 percent? Probably not. But I do think that with this time that we’re taking now, he’ll be in an adequate spot to finish the season.” Asked about confidence in that plan, he said, “Very.”

Hindsight came cheaper. “If we look right now, here today, I would love to go back and put him on the IL,” Roberts said of last week’s four-day rest. “But at that moment in time, we all felt that giving him four days was sufficient. He was agreeable. Getting him out there on Monday with the hope that he would be able to play [again Wednesday]. But where we’re at right now, sure.” He also said the staff had already talked to Ohtani about speaking up sooner. “We did,” Roberts said. “That’s right. We did.”

Ohtani, through interpreter Will Ireton, did not close the subject. “It’s hard to say now with the season still going on,” he said when asked about communication. On pitching, he had already drawn a line after Monday’s game: “Most likely, no. I’m going to be focusing on hitting moving forward.” He called that “disappointing” but said the priority was “making sure that the pitching wouldn’t cause the worst scenario, which was for me to not be able to play at all.”

Josue De Paula, a 10th-ranked ESPN prospect who hit .303 with 27 homers and 31 steals in 124 Double-A games, is expected to take the designated-hitter at-bats when the club opens a trip in Miami. Roberts said De Paula would “likely replace Ohtani as the everyday DH.”

The medical list is a pile, not a single date. Knee trouble drew a lubricant injection at the All-Star break. Biceps soreness flared the day of his last start. Neck pain followed. Since Aug. 8, when he was cleared to throw again, he hit .198 with four home runs in 24 games. General manager Brandon Gomes said earlier this week the slump was not tied to health. Roberts, after Wednesday, treated the body as the story. “The most important thing is him being as healthy as possible, not compromising his swing, and kind of bet on that,” he said. “He’s not supernatural, as much as we think he might be at times.”

The calendar is now the opponent. Five regular-season games at most if he comes back on day 15. A postseason that the Dodgers still expect him to start as a hitter, not a pitcher. A four-time MVP who had never been on the injured list in Los Angeles, held out until a Monday swing forced the paperwork the club spent a month trying not to file.

I think I speak for a lot of women when I say that when you’re eight months pregnant, all you want to do is sleep.

And when you work the hours that I was working on the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, you dream about sleep.

At the time, I was an anchor at CNBC working a split shift. I would get up at 3 a.m. ET, anchor the 5 a.m. to 7 a.m. premarket show, go home at 7:30 a.m., try to sleep for a few hours, then return to the studio in Ft. Lee, New Jersey, to anchor the 4 p.m. market wrap-up broadcast. Insane hours, I know. 

But about a year earlier, when I was only helming the early morning gig, I jumped at the offer to reach a broader audience in the afternoon. The catch was that I could only have the 4 p.m. if I continued to work the pre-dawn show as well.

AMERICA MARKS 25TH ANNIVERSARY OF 9/11 ATTACKS

Just getting used to the crazy sleep schedule was hard enough, but when I got pregnant with my first child, it quickly became way more difficult. But I gamely plowed ahead. On Sept. 11, 2001, I was a month and a few weeks from giving birth.

After finishing the morning show on that sparkling September day, I headed home, lumbered into my apartment in Edgewater, New Jersey, right on the Hudson River, just a town away from the studio, closed the blackout curtains and was just drifting off when my then-husband, a senior producer at MSNBC, called me. “Turn on Channel 4,” he said. He sounded anxious.

I flipped on the TV and saw smoke pouring out of the North Tower of the World Trade Center. It looked like some idiot had flown a small plane right into the side of the building. “What the hell happened?” I asked. With a more urgent tone he said, “I don’t know, but I’ve gotta go,” and hung up.

25 YEARS LATER, 9/11 MEMORIES ENDURE AS NATION GATHERS TO HONOR NEARLY 3,000 LIVES LOST

I stared at the screen. The shot was from a live, unmanned camera affixed atop another downtown building. The towers bisected a crystal blue sky. Zero clouds. What happened?

Being a business news journalist, I knew a lot of my show guests worked in that tower. I was mentally ticking off who worked on which floor when suddenly a second plane, clearly a large passenger jet, plowed into the South Tower. Instinctively, my right hand flew to my belly and my left hand covered my mouth. I grabbed the phone and woke up my father on the West Coast. “Dad, turn on the news. NOW.”

My father, a surgeon and fully aware his daughter was eight months pregnant, took one look at the TV and immediately adopted his reassuring “doctor” voice. “Liz, I’m sure there’s an explanation for this. Whatever it is, I need you to be really calm, OK?”

“I am calm, Dad. But I’ve got to get back to the studio.” The newswoman in me was kicking in. I hung up and jumped back into my clothes, into the car and sped back to the office.

When I walked in, people looked shocked. Glancing surreptitiously at my stomach, my manager said, “Liz, if you want to go home, we understand. We’ll get someone else to do the show.” I was perplexed. We’re in the news business. The thought of not doing my job at a time like this literally never occurred to me. I thanked him and said, “No, I’m here. Have we figured out which Wall Street firms are on which floors?”

But I already knew the answer. Cantor Fitzgerald occupied the top floors of the North Tower. Huge staff. Fund giant Fred Alger Management was right below them on the 93rd floor. My chest tightened. My dear friend David Alger was their CEO. I silently begged. Please, PLEASE, David, tell me you’re not there.

Sandler O’Neill Partners was on the 104th floor of the South Tower. Co-founder Herman Sandler was a Wall Street legend. He’d be fine, right? Marsh & McLennan. Keefe, Bruyette & Woods. Euro Brokers. I knew people in both towers.

LIZ PEEK: WE CANNOT LET THE LEFT REWRITE WHAT HAPPENED ON 9/11

Whatever hope we had that friends had survived disappeared when both towers collapsed, enveloping lower Manhattan in that awful, sickening gray ash.

But I kept thinking, “Surely David Alger had led his troops down the stairwell before the collapse. That’s David.”

I envisioned him gripping a bullhorn, marching north on Broadway. He was larger than life with the best smile ever. I’d seen him just two weeks earlier when he had been a guest on the network. 

I ran into him after that interview. “Liz!” he boomed, flashing that high-wattage smile. He looked down at my belly, put his hand gently on it, looked directly in my eyes and said, “You’re going to be the best mom.” David was the proud father of two daughters, so he knew from whence he spoke.

I would never see David again. He died on 9/11 along with 2,977 others in the towers, at the Pentagon and in Shanksville, Pennsylvania – all victims of the coordinated attack by the Al Qaeda terrorist group. I attended David’s funeral. His daughters were drenched in grief.

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A month and two weeks later, still mourning him, Herman Sandler, and so many others, including the 658 innocent souls who worked at Cantor Fitzgerald, I felt contractions. My obstetrician’s office told me to come in. My doctor’s practice was in the city. They quietly ushered me past a pregnant woman staring blankly in the corner of the waiting room. I later learned her husband had been killed in the World Trade Center attacks. Twenty-five years later, I can still remember thinking, “How can I be happy right now? What kind of world am I bringing this child into?” Any joy felt inappropriate.

That night I gave birth to a healthy baby girl. Of course, I felt happiness, but it was tinged by an unseen gray veil of sadness. Trust me, all of us who were there on 9/11 felt the same way. I took comfort in knowing that all the letters in David’s last name – A, L, G, E and R are woven within the name we chose for our newborn: Gabrielle.

The darkness in the rotted hearts of those who stole lives and futures on 9/11 will never be understood, nor does that kind of evil deserve the effort. What does deserve effort is carrying on, reaching for the stars and living a good life while holding tight the memories of the 2,977 who didn’t get to continue theirs.

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In theory, the inquiry should be impartial and informative – a learning process focused solely on improving passenger safety. But in the case of AI171, the information revealed by the investigation so far has triggered a major backlash from safety campaigners, pilots’ groups and lawyers acting for the bereaved relatives.

A key factor in this has been the preliminary report issued by the AAIB a month after the accident. The 15-page document did not draw any conclusions about the causes of the crash, or make any recommendations.

Nonetheless, just two short paragraphs generated a great deal of controversy.

First, it was noted that according to the aircraft’s flight data recorder, the two fuel cutoff switches – normally used when starting the engines before a flight and shutting them down afterwards – transitioned from the run to the cutoff position seconds after take-off. This would have deprived the engines of fuel, causing them to lose thrust rapidly.

The report then says: “In the cockpit voice recording, one of the pilots is heard asking the other why did he cutoff. The other pilot responded that he did not do so.”

This brief statement, provided without a transcript or any indication of who was speaking, sparked intense speculation about the actions of the pilots. Newsweek, for example, focused on the “troubling possibility: that a seasoned captain may have deliberately doomed his jet – and nearly 250 lives”. Former NTSB chairman Robert Sumwalt told CBS News the report showed “this was not a problem with the airplane or the engines. Instead…somebody in the cockpit shut the fuel off to those engines.”

A few days later, The Wall Street Journal weighed in. Citing people familiar with the matter, it claimed that recordings of dialogue between the pilots suggested it was the Captain, Sumeet Sabharwal, who had flipped the fuel switches.

It is important to note that this was merely a preliminary report, and within days, the AAIB issued a statement condemning “selective and unverified reporting” in the international press as “irresponsible”. It urged the public and the media to “refrain from spreading premature narratives that risk undermining the integrity of the investigative process.”

By then, arguably, the damage had already been done.

“When a pilot is alive he can defend himself” says Capt. CS Randhawa, president of the Federation of Indian Pilots (FIP). “When the pilot is dead, all the agencies can collude – and they put the blame on the pilot, to save the manufacturer. And this is seen the world over. It’s not the first time”.

His organisation, which represents around 6,000 pilots, condemned the preliminary report as “irrevocably compromised”. Together with Sumeet Sabharwal’s 91-year-old father, Pushkar Raj Sabharwal, they took their concerns to India’s Supreme Court, demanding a judicial investigation into the crash.