By KAREN MATTHEWS and JENNIFER PELTZ

NEW YORK (AP) — Americans commemorated 9/11 Friday as a new national crisis — the coronavirus pandemic — reconfigured and divided anniversary ceremonies and a presidential campaign carved a path through the observances.

In New York, victims’ relatives gathered Friday morning for split-screen remembrances, one at the Sept. 11 memorial plaza at the World Trade Center and another on a nearby corner, set up by a separate 9/11-related organization.

The Stephen Siller Tunnel to Towers Foundation objected to the memorial’s decision to forgo a longstanding tradition of having relatives read the names of the dead, often adding poignant tributes. Memorial leaders said the change for the 19th anniversary of the attacks was a coronavirus-safety precaution.

Kathy Swift arrived early at the alternative ceremony, wearing a T-shirt honoring her slain brother, Thomas Swift, who worked in finance.

“We still have to remember,” said Swift, 61. “The whole country’s going downhill. It’s one thing after another, and now with the COVID. I’m glad they’re still having this, though.”

President Donald Trump and Democratic challenger Joe Biden both planned to go — at different times — to the Flight 93 National Memorial near Shanksville, Pennsylvania.

Trump is speaking at the morning ceremony, the White House said. Biden planned to pay respects there in the afternoon after attending the observance at the 9/11 memorial in New York, where he and Vice President Mike Pence greeted each other at ground zero before the ceremony began with the usual tolling of a bell.

Pence was due later at the Tunnel to Towers Foundation ceremony, where he and his wife, Karen, were to read Bible passages.

In short, the anniversary of 9/11 is a complicated occasion in a maelstrom of a year, as the U.S. grapples with a health crisis, searches its soul over racial injustice and prepares to choose a leader to chart a path forward.

Still, 9/11 families say it’s important for the nation to pause and remember the hijacked-plane attacks that killed nearly 3,000 people at the trade center, at the Pentagon in Washington and near Shanksville on Sept. 11, 2001, shaping American policy, perceptions of safety and daily life in places from airports to office buildings.

Friday will mark Trump’s second time observing the 9/11 anniversary at the Flight 93 memorial, where he made remarks in 2018. Biden spoke at the memorial’s dedication in 2011, when he was vice president.

The ground zero ceremony in New York has a longstanding custom of not allowing politicians to speak, though they can attend. Biden did so as vice president in 2010, and Trump as a candidate in 2016.

Although the candidates will be focused on the commemorations, the political significance of their focus on Shanksville is hard to ignore: Pennsylvania is a must-win state for both. Trump won it by less than a percentage point in 2016.

Around the country, some communities have canceled 9/11 commemorations because of the pandemic, while others are going ahead, sometimes with modifications.

The Pentagon’s observance will be so restricted that not even victims’ families can attend, though small groups can visit the memorial there later in the day.

At the New York memorial, thousands of family members are still invited. But they’ll hear a recording of the names from speakers spread around the vast plaza, a plan that memorial leaders felt would avoid close contact at a stage but still allow families to remember their loved ones at the place where they died.

But some victims’ relatives felt the change robbed the observance of its emotional impact. The Tunnel to Towers Foundation arranged its own, simultaneous ceremony a few blocks away, saying there was no reason that people couldn’t recite names while keeping a safe distance.

The readers stood alone at podiums that were wiped down between each person.

The two organizations also tussled over the Tribute in Light, a pair of powerful beams that shine into the night sky near the trade center and evoke its fallen twin towers. The 9/11 memorial initially canceled the display, citing virus-safety concerns for the installation crew. After the Tunnel to Towers Foundation vowed to put up the lights instead, the memorial changed course with help from its chairman, former Mayor Mike Bloomberg, and Gov. Andrew Cuomo.

Tunnel to Towers, meanwhile, arranged to display single beams for the first time at the Shanksville memorial and the Pentagon.

Over the years, the anniversary also has become a day for volunteering. Because of the pandemic, the 9/11 National Day of Service and Remembrance organization is encouraging people this year to make donations or take other actions that can be accomplished at home.

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Associated Press writers Alexandra Jaffe in Wilmington, Delaware, and New York and Darlene Superville in Washington contributed.

By ALEX VEIGA

AP – Wall Street’s summer-long party fueled by investors’ appetite for some of the world’s best-known technology companies has come to an abrupt, if not entirely unexpected, halt.

The sharp sell-off that began last Thursday has wiped out nearly 7.1% from the S&P 500 as of Tuesday, its first three-day skid in nearly three months.

The Nasdaq composite, home to Apple, Amazon, Zoom, Tesla and many other tech stocks that led the market’s remarkable five-month comeback from its lows in March, has lost more than 10% after setting an all-time high just four days ago — a decline known in the market as a correction.

Call the last three trading sessions a reality check after what many analysts say was an overdone push by traders into technology companies, especially in August.

“The bottom line is that this correction was long overdue and likely has more downside over the next few weeks (and) months as these positions are cleared out,” Morgan Stanley analysts wrote in a research note Tuesday, noting technology stocks had a “parabolic move” last month. Tech stocks jumped 11.8% in August, the sector’s best month since a 13.7% surge in April.

Investors’ craving for technology companies was fueled by low interest rates, customers stuck at home while the pandemic raged, and efforts by the U.S. government to support out-of-work Americans. An improving outlook for corporate profits has also kept traders in a buying mood.

Wall Street also got a big boost from the Federal Reserve, which has taken unprecedented actions to keep markets running smoothly and also encourage borrowing by keeping interest rates extremely low. Meanwhile, a surge in trading in options contracts, which give investors the right to buy or sell hundreds of thousands of shares of stock at a time, also turbocharged the gains.

Between March 23 and Sept. 2, the Nasdaq jumped 75% while outpacing the S&P 500′s 60% gain and the Dow industrials’ 56.5% rally during the stock market’s rebound from its pandemic lows. During the run Apple became the first $2 trillion U.S. company and Zoom itself became worth more than General Motors and Ford Motor Co. combined.

Even with the recent pullback, tech stocks are still leading the other 10 sectors in the S&P 500 with a gain of just under 23% so far this year.

While the reasons that made tech stocks attractive during the pandemic haven’t changed, market watchers have been increasingly raising concerns that the market’s gains were too concentrated in technology companies, driving their valuation to levels that started to sound frothy even factoring in the most optimistic outlooks for company earnings growth next year.

For example, the ratio of the stock price compared to the estimate for earnings over the next 12 months for Apple rose to around 35 last week — an all-time high and well above where the ratio was before the pandemic hit the U.S. economy.

“These stocks just got bought up to the point where even the most optimistic of forward (earnings) estimates won’t be enough to justify these valuations,” said Sam Stovall, chief investment strategist at CFRA.

The timing of the sell-off coincided with fresh concerns that interest rates could move higher after the Fed signaled that it may allow inflation to heat up. That, plus growing unease over the election outcome, may have given investors a green light to pocket some of their recent gains.

“Those are all reasons for something of a pause here,” said Willie Delwiche, investment strategist at Baird. “It’s a case that we’d had so much of a run, everyone was on one side of the ship. It didn’t take much of a hiccup to upset things.”

At this point, Delwiche is assuming that the market will have a “healthy” correction.

Historically, markets tend to correct themselves when they get too euphoric and stock prices push far higher relative to companies’ prospects for earnings growth. The Morgan Stanley analysts suggest this retreat in tech stocks could actually herald the start of more broad-based gains for the market.

“We think there is more downside over next month, but (it) eventually leads to further broadening out of the bull market,” the analysts wrote. “It’s true that valuations have surged, but this is typical early in a recovery.”

The biggest question is whether this blowing off steam for tech stocks will remain just that — a return to sanity for an hugely overbought area of the market — or whether it will drag the rest of the market down with it.

“This is a good reminder that if it feels too good to be true, it probably is,” Stovall said.