NEW YORK – The selfless spirit that helped mend a stricken nation eight years ago was renewed. Volunteers marked 9/11 Friday by tilling gardens, writing letters to soldiers, setting out flags — and, at ground zero, by joining the somber ritual of reading the names of the lost.
President Barack Obama, who observed his first Sept. 11 as president by declaring it a national day of service, laid a wreath Friday at the Pentagon and, with wife Michelle, helped paint the living room of a Habitat for Humanity house in Washington.
"We honor all those who gave their lives so that others might live, and all the survivors who battled burns and wounds and helped each other rebuild their lives," Obama said. He said the day was meant also as a tribute to the "service of a new generation."
Memorials in New York, at the Pentagon and at the crash site of United Airlines Flight 93 in Pennsylvania all took place under gray skies. A chilly rain fell in lower Manhattan, and those reading names at the World Trade Center site spoke under tents.
"We miss you. Life will never be the same without you," said Vladimir Boyarsky, whose son, Gennady Boyarsky, was killed. "This is not the rain. This is the tears."
In the hours after the attack and for weeks afterward, volunteers responded to New York City's needs, sending emergency workers to help with the recovery, cards to victims' families, and boxes of supplies.
"Each act was a link in a continuous chain that stopped us from falling into cynicism and despair," said New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg.
Across the country, Americans marked the anniversary with service projects.
Volunteers in Boston stuffed packages for military personnel overseas. In Tennessee and West Virginia, they distributed donated food for the needy. Community volunteers in Maine worked on a garden and picnic area for families transitioning out of homelessness.
In Chicago, they tilled community gardens, cooked lunch for residents of a shelter and packed food for mothers and babies. And on the lawn of the Ohio Statehouse, volunteers arranged nearly 3,000 small American flags, in a pattern reminiscent of the trade center's twin towers. At the top was an open space in the shape of a pentagon.
"It's different than just seeing numbers on a paper, when you actually see the flags. It's a visual impact of those lives," said Nikki Marlette, 62, of the Los Angeles suburb of Palos Verdes Estates, visiting Columbus for Saturday's Ohio State-Southern California football game.
At a plaza adjacent to the World Trade Center site, volunteers — from soup kitchens, advocacy groups, the Red Cross, the United Way — joined relatives of the lost to read the names of those killed in the twin towers.
"I ask that you honor my son and all those who perished eight years ago ... by volunteering, by making some kind of act of kindness in their memory," said one of the readers, Gloria Russin, who lost her son, Steven Harris Russin.
Renewing what has become a poignant tradition, some relatives called out greetings and messages of remembrances when they reached the names of their own loved ones.
"We love you, Dad, and we miss you," said Philip Hayes Jr., whose father, long retired from the Fire Department, rushed to the site that 2001 morning and ultimately gave his life.
Theresa Mullan, who lost her firefighter son, Michael, wore a poncho and shivered in the rain as she waited for her son's name to be called. She said she couldn't dream of being anywhere else.
"It's a small inconvenience," she said of the weather. "My son is the one who ran into a burning building."
Moments of silence were observed at 8:46, 9:03, 9:59 and 10:29 a.m. — the precise times that jetliners struck the north and south towers of the trade center and that each tower fell.

At ground zero in lower Manhattan, relatives and friends of victims visited a partially built, street-level Sept. 11 memorial plaza that had not been there a year ago.

The memorial, to be partially complete by the 10th anniversary in 2011, will ultimately include two square pools evoking the towers' footprints, with victims' names surrounding them and waterfalls cascading down the sides.

On Friday, William Weaver placed a single red rose in a temporary reflecting pool at the plaza, a photograph of his son, policeman Walter E. Weaver, pinned to his jacket. He said the memorial was taking too long and he did not like it. "It should have been a graveyard-type of thing," Weaver said.

In Shanksville, Pa., bells tolled for the 40 victims of the fourth hijacked jetliner that crashed there.

Eight years after 2,976 perished in the attacks, Obama vowed at the Pentagon that the United States "will never falter" in pursuit of al-Qaida. "Let us renew our resolve against those who perpetrated this barbaric act and who plot against us still," he said.

On a day already fraught with emotion, the Coast Guard massed vessels in the Potomac River in a training exercise, causing confusion. The exercise took place near the bridge where Obama's motorcade had passed earlier. As a precaution, departures from Reagan National Airport were halted for about 22 minutes at midmorning.

Initial, mistaken reports on two cable news channels said the Coast Guard was firing shots on the river. A group for military families expressed outrage that the Coast Guard exercise was held while families of 9/11 victims were gathered at the Pentagon.

George W. Bush, whose presidency was defined in part by that day, had no public appearances planned. A spokesman said he would be working in his office. In a statement, he said he and his wife, Laura, were thinking of the victims and their families.

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Associated Press writers Verena Dobnik in New York, Nancy Benac in Washington and Dan Nephin in Pittsburgh contributed to this report.

LOS ANGELES – Susan Boyle is bringing her act to America.
The Scottish sensation of "Britain's Got Talent" will make her U.S. TV debut on the season finale of "America's Got Talent," according to a person close to the series. The person, who lacked authority to release the information, spoke Friday on condition of anonymity.
The dowdy Boyle surprised viewers of "Britain's Got Talent" with her soaring rendition of "I Dreamed a Dream." But she herself was taken aback by her sudden fame, which she has said hit her like a "giant demolition ball." She was hospitalized for exhaustion after the British show.
The two-part finale of "America's Got Talent" airs Sept. 14 and Sept. 16 on NBC.

WASHINGTON – The Senate Armed Services chairman Friday added to mounting pressure on the White House to avoid escalating the war in Afghanistan by calling for faster training of Afghan security forces instead of sending more U.S. troops into combat.
A leading Senate Republican quickly countered that deploying more American troops to Iraq is what helped turn that war around.
The Senate panel's chairman, Michigan Democrat Carl Levin, had earlier raised concerns about a possible new troop buildup. But his proposal Friday to focus the U.S. mission in Afghanistan more on training than fighting was a blunt warning to the Obama administration — and it came after other Democratic congressional leaders raised similar concerns this week.
Levin said the trainers would help build a "surge" of 400,000 Afghan army and police officers a year earlier than initially planned. The term "surge" is most recently associated with the 2007 U.S. troop buildup in Iraq that helped bring the nation back from the brink of civil war.
"Our support of this surge of the Afghan security forces will show our commitment to the success of a mission that is clearly in our national security interests," Levin said at a Capitol Hill news conference. "But we would do so without creating a bigger U.S. military footprint, which provides propaganda fodder for the Taliban."
He added: "And we should implement these steps on an urgent basis, before we consider an increase in U.S. ground combat forces beyond what is already planned by the end of this year."
Levin did not immediately know how many trainers would be needed, and conceded that many would be U.S. military troops. He said more NATO forces should also help, a demand that came hours after Spain's government agreed to send 220 more troops to Afghanistan, raising their total to about 1,000.
Additionally, Levin said the U.S. needs to shift its trucks, weapons and other equipment still in Iraq to outfit the Afghan security forces. And he said more efforts need to be made to help reconcile local Taliban fighters — known as the "$10 Taliban" because they usually are hired for specific battles — with law-abiding forces.
Levin's comments came as the Obama administration weighs whether to boost the number of U.S. troops in Afghanistan beyond the 68,000 he has approved to be there by the end of the year. Congressional leaders are expected to be briefed next week on a broad review of Afghanistan strategy recently sent to President Barack Obama by Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the commander of U.S. and NATO forces there.
Defense Secretary Robert Gates is also expected to request additional forces to address what he sees as shortfalls in the military's ability to deal with a rising threat from roadside bombs in Afghanistan. That would not necessarily mean more forces above the current 68,000, but might mean replacing some existing forces with others specializing in bomb detection and removal and medical response.
"Nothing has been decided but there are capabilities he believes need to be addressed," Gates spokesman Geoff Morrell said Friday.
White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said Friday that no decision about troops is expected for "weeks and weeks" and likely will not come until after all the troops in the current ramp-up are in place and the situation can be evaluated with their presence.
"I think it will be many weeks of evaluation and assessment," Gibbs said.
Many military and diplomatic leaders have urged Obama to send thousands more Marines, soldiers and pilots to try to reverse Afghanistan's crumbling security. But leading Democrats in Congress have signaled they do not support a troop increase — especially on the heels of the bloodiest month in Afghanistan for U.S. troops so far.
Fifty-one U.S. troops died in Afghanistan in August, more than any other month since the U.S. invasion in October 2001.
Shortly after Levin finished outlining his plan, Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., said he also believes training for the Afghan forces must be stepped up, and quickly. But he said a "significant" number of additional U.S. combat troops also must be sent to Afghanistan to clear out the Taliban and keep violent extremists from returning.
"I say with great respect that I've seen this movie before," McCain, the top Republican on the Senate Armed Services panel and a Vietnam War veteran, told The Associated Press. He said most Democrats also opposed the 2007 surge, but "they were wrong in Iraq and they are wrong now."
"I think there's significant fatigue and resistance to an increase in troops, McCain said of Congress. "But I saw that same fatigue when we ordered the surge, and it succeeded."

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AP National Security Reporter Anne Gearan contributed to this report.

Some 150 years ago, a congressman from South Carolina, angered by a speech on slavery, entered the Senate chamber and beat a senator from Massachusetts into unconsciousness with a metal-topped wooden cane.
Years earlier on the House floor, a representative from Vermont attacked a colleague from Connecticut — also with a cane — only to be attacked himself with a pair of fireplace tongs.
And then there was the 1838 pistol duel in which William Graves of Kentucky shot and killed fellow congressman Jonathan Cilley of Maine over words spoken on the House floor. (He wasn't even expelled.)
Given those breaches of congressional protocol, it would seem that a mere shout of "You lie!" from a 21st-century South Carolina congressman would be small potatoes. Especially when compared with a global tradition of brawls, scuffles, hurled insults (sometimes fruit, too) and other mayhem in legislatures around the world.
Yet there's little if any historical precedent for a U.S. congressman individually challenging a president during a speech to Congress — let alone accusing him of lying — which is just one reason why some longtime political observers were stunned by Rep. Joe Wilson's outburst.
Presidents didn't even address Congress between 1800, when John Adams held the job, and 1913, says Fred Beuttler, deputy historian at the House of Representatives, who calls the Wilson incident "highly unusual, if not unique."
"Occasionally, members of the opposing party have been known to boo and jeer as expressions of dissent on a specific point," says Beuttler, citing instances during the Bill Clinton and George W. Bush administrations. But before Wednesday, he says, "expressions of individual opposition of members to a president's speech had not been recorded."
Some have compared Wilson's outburst to those that occur routinely in Britain's House of Commons, when the prime minister is answering questions. But one political analyst says this is vastly different, because the prime minister isn't the head of state.
"Our president is the head of government and also the head of state, the combination of the country and the government," says Steven Cohen, professor of public administration at Columbia University. "We expect a certain amount of deference to the president, in the same way as we would for the queen. Here, we combine the two roles."
To another political analyst, it's the nature of the accusation — an elected official calling the president a liar — that is not only a serious breach (accusations of lying are forbidden under House rules) but also extremely rare in politics.
"Accusing someone of lying is impugning their integrity," says Kathleen Hall Jamieson, an expert on political communication at the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania. "It was done in print a lot in the 19th century. But it is not routinely done in political discourse."
Congress is a place of deliberation, Jamieson adds: "If you call someone a liar, you've ended the deliberations. This is such a strong norm that it's been in the House rules since Jefferson."
In Britain, too, despite its lively parliament sessions, lawmakers can be suspended for accusing others of lying. One, Tam Dalyell, was thrown out for doing just that to former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, whom he called "a bounder, a liar, a deceiver, a cheat and a crook."
A British lawmaker was rebuked in 1986 for referring to President Ronald Reagan as Thatcher's "cretinous friend."
Winston Churchill was more subtle about the charge of lying, once describing a statement by another lawmaker as a "terminological inexactitude," now a commonly accepted euphemism for a lie.
Churchill was much subtler than the Labour lawmaker who accused Thatcher of acting "with the sensitivity of a sex-starved boa-constrictor." Or the members threatened with suspension for using terms including "hooligan," "cad," "jackass," "Pecksniffian cant," "coward," "git," "guttersnipe," "stool pigeon" and "traitor." Or Prime Minister John Major, who called Tony Blair, then the opposition leader, a "dimwit."
And royalty hasn't been exempt: The late Willie Hamilton, a Labour MP, was ordered to retract his description of Prince Charles as "that young twerp."
In Asia, it can get physical — all-out brawls are almost an annual event in Taiwan's raucous legislature, where in May 2007, lawmakers exchanged punches, climbed on each other's shoulders and jostled violently during a debate over electoral reform.

In Seoul, hundreds of lawmakers screamed and wrestled in South Korea's parliament in July, scuffling and shouting, grabbing each other by the neck and trying to bring opponents to the floor. Last year, lawmakers used sledgehammers to pound their way into a parliamentary committee room.

In Hong Kong, meanwhile, maverick lawmaker Raymond Wong, nicknamed "Mad Dog," hurled a bunch of bananas across the legislative chamber to protest an old-age allowance scheme.

And in Israel, parliament speeches are often drowned out by shouting legislators leaping out of their seats, pointing fingers and running about the chamber or being ordered out by the speaker. In 2001, Ethics Committee chairwoman Colette Avital circulated a list of 68 insults she wanted banned, including: blood-drinker, boor, fascist, filth, eye-gouger, Jew-hater, Nazi, Philistine, terrorist, traitor and poodle.

Such colorful drama is less familiar to Americans these days, at least since an 1858 debate over allowing Kansas as a state.

"A brawl ensued on the House floor with 50 or more representatives rushing towards one another and wrestling and punching each other as the Speaker, James Orr of South Carolina, pleaded for order," says Beuttler, though he notes the fight ended in laughter as one congressman pulled the wig off another, "which set the whole House of Representatives roaring with laughter."

Recent years have been much less colorful — until this week, and Wilson's remark, the fallout from which continues to saturate the airwaves and the blogosphere.

Many have blamed a culture of talk radio, the Internet and cable TV, where everyone has a point of a view and a platform, for creating an environment where such an incident could happen.

"If we become accustomed to hearing people call a politician a liar everywhere else — for example, in town halls — suddenly it seems more natural in a place where it's never been acceptable," says Jamieson,

But with any luck, she and others say, Wilson's remark may actually serve to prevent future such outbursts, because the swift negative reaction was a powerful reminder of what is not OK.

"I'd imagine that the next time President Obama speaks to Congress," says Beuttler, "everybody will be very polite."

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Associated Press writers Robert Barr, Meera Selva, Kwang-Tae Kim, Dikky Sin, Peter Enav and Ian Deitch contributed to this report.