US: The amplified voices of children reading the names of the 2,792 people who died in the World Trade Centre echoed across downtown Manhattan for 2½ hours yesterday in a moving ceremony to mark the second anniversary of the September 11th attacks.
All of the 200 children and young adults reading the names lost a relative and several had difficulty holding back tears. There were heartbreaking moments, as when 12-year-old Christina Marie Aceto said, before naming her father, Richard Anthony Aceto, "I love you, Daddy. I miss you a lot." On a day as sunny and clear as that when the planes smashed into the twin towers, hundreds of relatives holding pictures and flowers were allowed into the pit known as Ground Zero where their loved ones perished.
They could see the station being built for the PATH train service connecting lower Manhattan and New Jersey, with new signs reading "World Trade Center Station". Some who have not recovered remains knelt to touch the ground or scoop up handfuls of dirt.
"We come here to honour those that we lost, and to remember this day with sorrow," Mayor Michael Bloomberg said, after a children's choir sang the Star-Spangled Banner.
The reading began after a moment of silence at 8:46 a.m. to mark the moment when the first plane hit and was halted three times for further moments of silence to note the time the second plane hit and the towers fell. After the last moment of silence at 10:29 a.m. bells were rung across the country.
After attending a prayer service at a Washington church, President Bush said: "Today our nation remembers. We remember a sad and terrible day, September 11th, 2001. We remember lives lost. We remember the heroic deeds. We remember the compassion, the decency of our fellow citizens on that terrible day." Mr Bush signed a proclamation making September 11th a national day of prayer and remembrance to be known as Patriot Day.
US Vice-President Dick Cheney was to have attended the Ground Zero ceremony but stayed away when Mayor Bloomberg pointed out that it would mean relatives having to arrive hours in advance to go through security. He took part in a memorial service at New York's Riverside Church.
US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld took part in a wreath-laying ceremony at the Pentagon. The 184 men and women who died there were part of "an arsenal of democracy", he said.
At a Justice Department ceremony Solicitor General Ted Olson, whose wife, Barbara, was killed on the plane that dived into the Pentagon, said the best way to remember the dead was to wipe out the terrorism that led to their deaths.