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Memorial ceremony under way in New York
The memorial ceremony in New York is under way. Families of the people who died in the city gathered at the 9/11 memorial to commemorate their loved ones.
A moment of silence was held before relatives read out the names of those killed that day.
Vice-president JD Vance and New York City mayor Zohran Mamdani are among those at the ceremony.
You can follow proceedings here:
Key events
Vance and all former living presidents attend 9/11 memorial at World Trade Center
As we noted earlier, Trump has opted to stay in Washington where we can expect him to deliver remarks at the Pentagon, but JD Vance, his vice-president, is in New York, at the memorial service at Ground Zero.
All living former presidents, Joe Biden, Barack Obama, George Bush and Bill Clinton, are also at the commemoration service in lower Manhattan.
Former New York mayor, Rudy Giuliani, who led the city through the attacks and the ensuing recovery is at the event alongside Zohran Mamdani, the current mayor.
A reminder that Giuliani said that it “offends” him that Mamdani would attend the memorial in an interview with Newsmax last week.
In the interview with Newsmax, Giuliani was asked if Mamdani should skip the ceremony. “Well, there’s no question he should,” he said. He also lobbed baseless comparisons between Mamdani’s faith, he is a Muslim, and the 9/11 hijackers acting on the extremist orders of Osama bin Laden, the jihadist militant and terrorist leader killed by US forces during the Obama administration.
Mamdani’s office declined to comment on Giuliani’s remarks.
Mamdani has previously spoken about how an Islamophobic backlash built after the 2001 attacks and had made anti-Muslim prejudice “a fact of life” for Muslim Americans. “It was this horrific day that was also, for many New Yorkers, the moment at which they were marked an ‘other’,” he told the New York Times last year.
This is the first time that Mamdani and Giuliani will be face to face since the former mayor’s comments.
Images of people gathering in New York, Washington DC and elsewhere to mark 25 years since the September 11, 2001 attacks are coming in on the newswires.
At the Pentagon, the names of the 184 victims of the September 11 attack on the Department of Defense are being read aloud.
Alongside Donald Trump and Melania today are Pete Hegseth, the current defense secretary, Dan Caine, chair of the joint chiefs of staff, and Condoleezza Rice the former secretary of state. At the time of the terror attacks, Rice was the national security adviser.
Trump arrives at Pentagon ceremony
Donald Trump and the first lady, Melania Trump, have arrived at the Pentagon ceremony to commemorate the victims of the September 11 attack.
The president is set to speak and take part in a wreath-laying ceremony.
Memorial ceremony under way in New York
The memorial ceremony in New York is under way. Families of the people who died in the city gathered at the 9/11 memorial to commemorate their loved ones.
A moment of silence was held before relatives read out the names of those killed that day.
Vice-president JD Vance and New York City mayor Zohran Mamdani are among those at the ceremony.
You can follow proceedings here:
Watch: Memorial ceremony commences at the Pentagon
The memorial ceremony for the 25th anniversary has commenced at the Pentagon. You can watch the feed at the top of this blog or here:
US inflation remained high in August as military conflict with Iran continues
Gaya Gupta
US consumer prices remained stubbornly high in August as the end of the ceasefire between the US and Iran pushed energy prices up, according to data from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics released on Friday.
The annualized inflation rate was 3.4%, the same as it was in July. The most recent peak was seen in May, when the inflation rate hit a three-year high at 4.2%. Core inflation, which strips out volatile energy and food prices, increased to 2.4% in August.
Despite dipping from its most recent peak, inflation remains above levels that were seen before the war in Iran, largely because of higher energy prices.
Donald Trump will start his day in Washington. In a short while he’ll arrive at the Pentagon with his wife, Melania, for a ceremony and wreath laying to commemorate the 25th anniversary of the September 11 terror attacks.
While Trump will stay in DC, vice-president JD Vance is in New York at Ground Zero with all living former presidents, to attend the memorial service at the site of the attacks in lower Manhattan.
He’ll spend the rest of the day in meetings before traveling to Ireland, where he’ll spend the weekend talking with leaders and the Irish president, Catherine Connolly, and the taoiseach, Micheál Martin.
He saw the first one on September 11 itself. “Missing”, said a hastily designed poster on the window of a bar in Tribeca providing food and water to first responders. It was a plea for information about a person who had vanished in the deadliest terrorist attack in US history.
“I was like, ‘Wow, this is going to be …’” recalls Phil Buehler, an artist and photographer who had watched the twin towers collapse from his office window. “But you knew that there would be very few survivors. You knew it then.”
The missing posters kept coming in the days after 9/11, and Buehler kept photographing them. But having amassed more than 500 images, he put them away in a box on a top shelf because he could not bear to look at them.
As the 25th anniversary of the atrocity neared, he decided to revisit them and will put a selection on public display for the first time this week. Countenance: The 9/11 Missing Posters, an installation at Most Holy Trinity – St Mary’s church in Brooklyn, places 144 pictures across 24 translucent vellum panels, in vertical pairs reminiscent of the twin towers.
The World Trade Center was always a favourite subject for Buehler. He had been photographing it since 1973, when he was 16. On September 11 2001, as an advisory board member for a tech startup, he had been invited to a conference at the Windows on the World restaurant at the top of the north tower, but turned the offer down (a friend intended to go but was delayed).
“The guy that invited us died that day and I think my friend feels guilty about it,” he says quietly by phone, recalling the day on which nearly 3,000 people were killed by hijacked airliners in New York, northern Virginia and Pennsylvania. “You realise how close – everybody had a story.”
David Smith
He has told the story hundreds of times, but it never seems to fade. If anything, it only becomes more vivid. “Oh, gosh,” exclaims Stanley Praimnath, his voice cracking with an “ooooooh!” as if bearing a weight. “It’s like reliving that day.”
Nearly 3,000 people died in the terrorist attacks on New York City and Washington DC on September 11 2001. But Praimnath and another office worker, Brian Clark, were two of only four individuals known to have survived from above the impact zone in either tower of the World Trade Center. The two strangers met in the smoke and fire of the 81st floor of the south tower, and walked down 1,620 steps into the rest of their lives.
Their split-second decisions that day made all the difference. Over the next 25 years, both men moved from middle age into old age and retirement. Both enjoyed family weddings and watched children and grandchildren grow. Both saw US presidents come and go as old wars ended and new wars began. They remained friends through it all.
They also told their story – countless times – in churches, schools, TV studios and elsewhere. “It could be 800, 1,200, a number like that,” Clark estimates.
Praimnath, in a separate interview, muses: “People refer to me as ‘the 9/11 guy’. It doesn’t feel repetitive. It is like unloading baggage from my shoulder, like washing my soul with tears. It is comforting to know that people out there still want to hear.”
