KANSAS CITY — Foodservice operators are expanding their menus with limited-time dessert offerings.

Yum! Brands subsidiary Taco Bell partnered with ice cream company Salt & Straw to debut two limited-time items. The churro ice cream taco features a waffle cone shell filled with churro ice cream then covered with puffed rice and a dark chocolate-flavored coating. The choco-waffle chiller combines a vanilla ice cream base that is blended with churro crumbles and waffle cone pieces and encased in a crackable chocolatey shell. While the ice cream taco is available at Taco Bell locations nationwide, the chiller is exclusively available at Taco Bell Live Mas Cafes while supplies last.

“Last year’s collaboration showed us how much joy there is in reimagining a nostalgic favorite, and we’re thrilled to work with Salt & Straw to bring a new ice cream taco to Taco Bell restaurants,” said Liz Matthews, global chief food innovation officer at Taco Bell. “The churro ice cream taco builds on everything fans loved about the original collaboration, with a flavor that feels right at home on our menu.”

Southern-inspired chain Zaxbys collaborated with Ferrara brand Nerds to launch the Nerds strawberry milkshake. The LTO features a strawberry milkshake mixed with Nerds candy pieces and toppings like whipped cream, rainbow Nerds and Nerds Gummy Clusters.

“The Nerds brand is such a fan-favorite, iconic candy, and we knew its signature sweet-and-tangy crunch would take our hand-spun strawberry milkshake to a whole new level,” said Patrick Schwing, chief marketing and strategy officer at Zaxbys. “The pairing creates a crave-worthy treat that brings nostalgic candy flavors together with the creamy indulgence of a hand-spun Zaxbys strawberry milkshake.”

Hardee’s, a CKE Restaurant Holdings, Inc. subsidiary, introduced a s’mores-inspired menu. The limited-edition items include the s’mores ice cream shake, the s’mores fried pie and a s’mores iced coffee.

“Our new s’mores platform keeps those warm, nostalgic summer moments alive,” said Sarah Breymaier, vice president of brand marketing at Hardee’s.

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump told a Pentagon ceremony on Friday that the United States would “never, ever forget” the dead of Sept. 11, 2001, as the country marked 25 years since hijackers flew four airliners into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and a Pennsylvania field.

“In 25 years, a generation has passed since the terror attacks,” Trump said, reading from teleprompters at the Defense Department memorial for the 184 people killed when American Airlines Flight 77 struck the building. “Yet time has not dimmed the honour of that day our country came face-to-face with true evil.”

Nearly 3,000 people died that morning. About 2,700 were killed in New York when two planes hit the Twin Towers. Forty passengers and crew died on United Airlines Flight 93 after they fought the hijackers and the jet crashed near Shanksville, Pennsylvania. Families, first responders and officials gathered at all three sites. In Lower Manhattan, bells and silences marked the times the South Tower fell (9:59 a.m.), Flight 93 went down (10:03 a.m.) and the North Tower collapsed (10:28 a.m.).

Trump tied remembrance to current fighting. “We were all New Yorkers that day,” he said. “But we’re also all Americans.” He praised troops “working right now to ensure the world’s number one sponsor of terror, the Islamic Republic of Iran, will never, ever have a nuclear weapon.”

“Today we renew the sacred oath that we first swore in their names a quarter of a century ago,” he said. “We will never, ever forget. That’s why we fight today.” On days like Sept. 11, he added, “we learn what a country is truly made of. We’re learning right now what we’re made of, and we have to be strong and we have to be smart.”

He closed by saying the attacks “reminded us of the terrible power of hate” and also showed “the power of the American spirit.” “No one can ever prepare for a day like 9/11. But we can always choose to be the kind of nation the world saw in those days after,” he said. “We can raise our children to know that their country is good, that their fathers are brave, and that our flag is a symbol of justice and freedom.”

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who was in ROTC at Princeton when the planes hit, spoke first at the Pentagon and made the same link more bluntly. “Twenty-five years later, America is stronger than ever before,” he said in remarks previewed in ceremony coverage. He described post-2001 wars as “a generation of sacrifice, of valor, selfless and steadfast.” “Even if imperfect, those conflicts were our retribution,” he said.

“There are still enemies who hate us,” Hegseth said. “Every day, enemies plot to curb our power and kill our citizens, including from Islamic terrorists abroad and at home. But we are ever vigilant, especially this place.” Of the campaign against Iran he said: “Over the past six months, we have laid waste to the world’s most prolific state sponsor of terrorism. Our warriors have fought an Islamic theocracy that has wished us death for nearly half a century.”

Former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, national security adviser on the day of the attacks, recalled the first report as a possible accident. “I was at my desk at the White House that day when my executive assistant, a young army officer, told me that a plane had hit the World Trade Center. What a strange accident, I thought.” After the second impact she was moved to a bunker and could not reach Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld after the Pentagon was hit.

“Behind every name that we recite, there is a story, a life that mattered, a future unfulfilled, a void, a vast empty space in the heart of a husband, a wife, a son, a daughter, a sibling, a colleague, or a friend,” Rice said. “We come together today to say that they will never be forgotten, and to honour their memory.”

In New York, former President Bill Clinton and former Vice President Kamala Harris issued statements and Clinton attended the ceremony. Harris said a generation has grown up since the attacks “but our responsibility to remember has not changed.” “We remember the people who went to work that morning and never came home, and we remember the families who have carried their memories every day since,” she said. Clinton said the nightmare cannot be erased, “but we can support the people who have given and lost so much by treating one another with respect.” He also noted those later sickened by toxic dust.

The names of the dead were read again at the National September 11 Memorial, a ritual now older than many of the Americans who watched it. BBC correspondent Nada Tawfik reported that nearly a third of the country is too young to remember the day itself. Clouds blocked the “Way of Light” inside the Oculus transit hall, where two ceiling slits are designed to throw twin beams onto the floor between the first impact and the second collapse. An inscription there reads: “Here the Sun stands at 10:28 am on September 11, completing a wedge of light.”

John Ryan, a retired court officer who lost friends in the towers and the firehouses, sat across the street from the memorial and looked at empty sky. “It was the day that changed the world. The day that changed my life,” he said. He remembered a Friday vigil that week: “That night, everybody stood still. All the cars stopped. Nobody moved. You know, Manhattan, they don’t stop for anything.”

Rich Baktis, who was in high school on Long Island in 2001, said the aftermath — not the morning — is what he wants younger people to know. “Everybody came together, and everybody helped everybody,” he said. That togetherness, he added, was the “best part that came out of that terrible day.”

Gunter Engels, visiting from Belgium, lost a former brother-in-law who worked in the towers and was never found. “The world has never been the same after 9/11,” he said.

At Shanksville, a white marble wall of names faces the flight path of Flight 93, whose passengers are credited with stopping a strike on Washington. The three ceremonies ran on the same clock they have used for a quarter century: impact, collapse, crash, silence. The political overlay was new. The names were not.

Ryanair chief executive Michael O’Leary has refused to apologise to a rape crisis centre which criticised him for describing rival airlines as “high-fare rapists”.

Speaking to journalists, O’Leary said some people were “desperate to get to Ryanair’s low fares because they can’t afford to fly with the high-fare rapists around Europe”.

O’Leary doubled-down on his choice of words when asked about them at the time, and later refused to apologise when the Dublin Rape Crisis Centre (DRCC) wrote to him asking for apology, in a letter seen by the BBC.

Ireland’s deputy premier Simon Harris said it was “clearly an inappropriate use of language” and that O’Leary “should have moved to rectify it”.

Transport Secretary Heidi Alexander told UK radio outlet LBC that victims of rape are “not going to be rushing to book tickets with him, let’s be honest”.

O’Leary made the comments on Thursday while talking to journalists ahead of Ryanair’s yearly meeting with shareholders.

Asked by a reporter from the Press Association whether the language was appropriate, he said: “Absolutely.”

“British Airways, Lufthansa, and everybody else’s high fares, I’ll happily offend them on a regular basis,” he added.

Asked whether it would offend sexual assault victims, he said rape was “a terrible crime”.

Following O’Leary’s comments, the DRCC’s chief executive Rachel Morrogh wrote to O’Leary accusing him of trying to get a headline with his comments.

She said the DRCC had received calls from rape victims who were “upset and distressed because of what you said”.

She offered O’Leary training on the impact of sexual violence and urged him to apologise.

“I can’t imagine you would ever use the term so flippantly again if you truly understood [what] it was like to survive rape,” she wrote.

In response, O’Leary said: “I am quite clear that no remarks of mine could possibly trivialise the heinous crime of rape.”

He added that as he had not “trivialised the heinous crime of rape” he would “not be issuing any apology or accepting your offer of training”.

It is not the first time O’Leary has offended people while talking about his business.

In 2004, he reportedly called the owners of Stansted Airport “a bunch of overcharging rapists”, external in a row over airport charges.

He has also previously called some of his own staff “lazy bastards” and once said to passengers looking for a refund “we don’t want to hear your sob stories”.

In June, he said the airline would “reluctantly” stop charging parents to sit next to children after a watchdog investigation was opened, but insisted its previous policy complied with laws.