New York memorial day planned

Rudolph Giuliani will lead New York's commemorations on September 11 this year - beginning a roll-call at Ground Zero of every person who died in the terrorist attacks there - but schools and businesses will be open as usual to affirm the city's commitment to the future, civic leaders said yesterday.

The mayor, Michael Bloomberg, unveiled what he described as a "simple and powerful" plan for remembrance at a press conference yesterday with the state governor George Pataki, outlining for the first time a sequence of ceremonies designed to be unostentatious, short on speechmaking by politicians, and largely conducted in silence.

Processions of pipers from each of the city's five boroughs will converge at the site of the attacks for a moment of silence at 8.46am, the time when the first plane hit.

After the processions, Mr Pataki will read Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address. Mr Giuliani, the former mayor, will then start the reading of the 2,823 victims' names. A broad range of New Yorkers and others will read the rest of the list.

Every building with a bell in New York state would be asked to ring it at 10.28am, when the second tower collapsed, the governor said, and victims' families will be allowed - many for the first time - to descend into the hole where the towers stood.

The White House confirmed that President George Bush would attend a ceremony in Battery Park, at the southern tip of Manhattan, to light an "eternal flame" - something which has been much requested by relatives of those killed.

Events will be broadcast to several public spaces across the city for New Yorkers to watch, and the evening will finish with candlelit observances and concerts in Central Park, Brooklyn's Prospect Park, and parks in Queens, the Bronx and Staten Island.