Families of 9/11 victims confronted former presidents George Bush, Barack Obama and Joe Biden at the Ground Zero NYC memorial, accusing them of protecting Saudi Arabia instead of the families of those killed 25 years ago.

Terry Strada, the widow of 9/11 victim Tom Strada, drew cheers from the crowd as she accused the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia of fomenting ‘anti-American terrorism’ and sending its agents to support the hijackers.

‘And still we have no justice for the role that Saudi Arabia played in your murder,’ she said.

Benedict Sliney never quite lost his flat Boston, Irish street-kid accent.

It was there if you listened for it, lying just beneath the surface of his broader, tougher New York accent, which hid the softer side of a man who had a passion for cooking.

Right out of high school he joined the United States Air Force and was made an air traffic controller. He loved it.

When he came back from Vietnam, he signed up with the Federal Aviation Agency (FAA) to begin a civilian career with them, spending years working towers at airports like JFK, LaGuardia and Newark, while spending nights and weekends getting a law degree from St John’s University in New York.

In 1981, President Ronald Reagan got into a labor dispute with the Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization, which represented around 13,000 members. The union argued that long hours, low pay and outdated equipment contributed to what was already a high-stress environment which, they maintained, was a substantial safety concern.

Reagan reacted by firing 11,000 of them.

he man in the photograph looks almost serene, suspended perfectly upside down in mid-air, for a moment defying the inevitable.

He does not project fear, nor panic, nor anger at a life cut short in its prime. Instead, he appears to have accepted his fate with equanimity, meeting triumph and this, the ultimate disaster, just the same.

It was a horrific dilemma he had faced, of suffocating or falling, and he picked the latter. In doing so, he did not choose death. It was not suicide. He chose 10 seconds more of life, and for those 10 seconds to be peaceful and painless.

Perhaps he was religious and knew he was being called to meet his god. Maybe that explains the lack of flailing limbs, the apparent absence of rage at the dying of the light. He appears to be falling calmly, peacefully.

As he did so, he had no idea that he was in the eye of a camera lens. No idea that the world would come to know him as the ‘Falling Man,’ an enigmatic symbol of the horrors of that awful day 25 years ago.

New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani and Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez were caught laughing together at the 9/11 25th anniversary memorial service on Friday while the names of victims were being read out by their relatives.

The Democrats were seen bursting into laughter at the solemn Ground Zero event in lower Manhattan, as mourners stood silently around them.

At the same moment, loved ones of the victims of the attacks were reading names of the deceased, and others were seen crying at the memorial.

The moment quickly went viral across social media, with viewers commenting that their jovial reactions were a ‘a slap in the face’ to victims.

Mourners gathered in Shanksville, Pennsylvania on Friday morning to mark the 25th anniversary of the United Flight 93 crash.

Hundreds of people paid tribute to the 40 passengers and crew who died on the hijacked plane, which was brought down by heroic victims before it could be targeted at Washington DC.

Family members of the victims read the names of the victims on Friday, and a bell was rung for each name.

The color guard folded a US flag on a large rock at the site, placed at the location of the Flight 93 airliner debris.

A sunlight effect known as the ‘Wedge of Light’ has appeared through the Oculus building in lower Manhattan, next to the Ground Zero site.

The effect, designed by architect Daniel Libeskind, allows two streams of sunlight through the skylight in the Oculus to represent the Twin Towers.

The light moves across the floor of the building precisely between the times that the Twin Towers were struck and collapsed.

Mourners are continuing to read names of 9/11 victims at the Ground Zero ceremony in lower Manhattan.

Patricia Smith, whose NYPD officer mother Moira Smith was killed in the attacks, paid a touching tribute to her as she read her name.

‘My mother died the way she lived, surrounded by people she wanted to help, doing the job that she loved,’ Smith said.

Smith’s mother was credited with saving dozens of lives in the tragedy.

She was among 23 NYPD officers who lost their lives responding to the attacks on the World Trade Center.

Friday night’s ceremonial first pitches at the New York Yankees game will be thrown by a couple who met through a 9/11 support group as children after their fathers were killed in the tragedy.

Brielle Saracini, whose father Victor was the captain of United Flight 175, and her husband Sean McGuire, whose father worked on the 84th floor of the South Tower, will throw out the first pitches.

The couple met as children through Camp Better Days, a support program for children who lost parents in 9/11.

The Yankees said in a post on X that days after the attacks, Saracini wrote a letter to Yankees legend Derek Jeter, ‘detailing her family’s deeply personal loss, explaining that her dad would want her to realize her dream of meeting him.’

‘Jeter invited Brielle and her family to a game, beginning a lasting friendship and connection with the Yankees organization,’ the team said Friday.

Barbara Butcher had spent decades staring death in the face.

In 23 years at New York City’s Medical Examiner’s Office, she investigated more than 5,500 deaths, including almost 700 homicides, and walked into some of the city’s most horrific crime scenes.

But not even the most horrific crime scene could have ever prepared her for the sheer magnitude and devastation of Ground Zero.

What she saw in the aftermath of September 11, 2001, and the worst terrorist attacks in American history still haunts her 24 years on.

The veteran death investigator was tasked with collecting tiny bone fragments from the rooftops of the buildings surrounding the rubble of the decimated Twin Towers.

Those fragments were subjected to repeated DNA testing as Butcher helped oversee the painstaking effort to identify victims.

Despite the process that is almost impossible to comprehend, the heartbreaking reality is that some of the families who lost a loved one still have nothing to bury.

Trump said the nation would ‘never, ever’ forget 9/11 as he told various stories about families who were affected.

‘That’s why we fight today. We don’t have a choice. There can only be victory,’ he told the crowd.

A mourning widow ranted about Saudi Arabia and said the American government ‘withheld evidence’ following 9/11 as she spoke at the 25 year commemorative service today.

The woman had lost her husband during the harrowing attacks in 2001.

‘And my husband, you are missed more with each day that passes. But how can it be twenty five years and still we have no justice for the role that Saudi Arabia played in your murder?,’ she said.

‘For twenty five years, administration after administration, including leaders in front of us here today, chose to protect the Saudis instead of standing with 9/11 families.’