Backgrounder: World Affected by Sept. 11 Terror Attacks

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Last updated at: (Beijing Time) Wednesday, September 11, 2002

Backgrounder: World Affected by Sept. 11 Terror Attacks

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No one can forget last year's Sept. 11, when the worst terror attacks yet in United States history took place. At the same time, nobody can ignore the disheartening figures in some seriously damaged industries after that day.

These show that, though some of the impact of terrorism on US soil fades away, some troubles still afflicting the United Statesmay drag on for an even longer time.

The attacks, in which some 3,000 people died, have caused not only losses of tens of billions of US dollars, but had a great impact on US airlines, insurance, and tourist industries.

The airline industry is reeling. Statistics show the passenger business of the major US airline companies declined 20 percent, and 70,000 people in the industry lost their jobs in less than twoweeks after the attacks.

US Airways, the country's seventh largest carrier, had to file for bankruptcy protection in August this year after suffering a loss of 2.1 billion dollars during 2001. It became the first majorAmerican airline to file for bankruptcy.

Meanwhile, the insurance industry has not avoided misfortune. It is estimated that insurance companies paid compensation rangingfrom 35 billion to 70 billion dollars.

Aviation, insurance and tourism around the whole world were also heavily stricken by the Sept. 11 terror attacks.

Statistics provided by the World Travel and Tourism Council show that the total amount of tourism in 2001 decreased by 7.4 percent compared with 2000, because of the influence of the attacks. The whole world lost about 10 million employment opportunities and aviation insurance companies had to pay a huge sum in compensations, totaling between four and five billion US dollars.

After the September attacks, the Bush administration put the fight against terrorism at the top of its agenda.

At the end of last year, the first anti-terrorism budget totaling 40 billion US dollars was approved by the House of Representatives and the Senate. In May, the Congress also allocated another 29 billion dollars for the second half of the 2002 fiscal year to finance the military operation in Afghanistan,domestic reconstruction and anti-terrorism actions.

When presenting the budget of the 2003 fiscal year to Congress at the beginning of this year, President Bush sharply increased spending on national security to 38 billion dollars, almost doublethat of last year.

In prevention of possible terrorist attacks on the United States in the future, Bush proposed to the Congress in June the creation of a cabinet-level Homeland Security Department to coordinate anti-terrorism actions among different government organs. About 50,000 national guards and reservists will join the line to safeguard national security.

The United States also increased its military expenditure on a large scale. On Aug.1, the Senate passed a bill for 355.4 billion US dollars to fund the military expenditure in the 2003 fiscal year. The increase of 35 billion dollars in military expenditure is the biggest in past 20 years in the US.

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