Publishing firm to reveal details of missing 80

A British conference company that was staging its first event at the World Trade Centre on the day of the attacks is to publish details of about 80 delegates and staff missing since the disaster.

Staff from Risk Waters, which has 16 employees missing, 10 of whom are British, were just 20 minutes into a financial seminar in the Windows on the World restaurant on the 106th floor when the first jet struck.

The London-based conference-organising and publishing company, a leading authority in the insurance sector, has spent the past two weeks painstakingly assembling a list of the feared dead from the 161 delegates who had been confirmed to attend. Although many of those who had booked places had not yet arrived at the twin towers when American Airlines flight 11 struck, some 65 delegates from more than 40 companies are missing.

A spokesman for Risk Waters said yesterday: "We have passed all information to the British consulate and with the permission of relatives we will make the details of the missing available."

Whether the delegates had come from British-based firms or companies in America was not yet clear. Their names are likely to be made public this week.

Despite the discovery of the bodies of two delegates in the ruins, there has been no official confirmation of those feared dead from the seminar, which was being held almost at the top of the south tower.

The company holds conferences and seminars around the world. Because this was its first at the World Trade Centre, a large number of its London-based staff were required to fly to New York.

It said that among the 10 missing British employees were Simon Turner, 39, an executive, whose wife, Elizabeth, is seven months pregnant.

Others included Dinah Webster, 50, and her fiancé, Neil Cudmore, 38, who had planned to marry later this year. Michelle Beale, 37, who had two children and had joined the company in January as a conference director, and Melanie De Vere, 30, who had only started her job in New York the day before the attacks, are also missing.

Meanwhile, the family of Andrew Bailey, 29, from Birmingham, who was working on the 93rd floor of the north tower as a security supervisor for a software firm, paid tribute yesterday to the young father.

A statement said: "Andrew was a happy-go-lucky man with an eight-year-old daughter who he adored. He had the ability to make people laugh. We are distraught and devastated."

The number of British and Irish people known to be missing because of the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington increased to 60 yesterday.

In New York, Rudolph Giuliani, the Mayor, said the number of confirmed dead had increased by 15 people to 276. There were 6,453 people listed as missing but presumed dead. He conceded that rescuers would need "a miracle" to find survivors in the World Trade Centre rubble.

Mr Giuliani, who has previously insisted there was a chance of finding survivors, said it would be unfair on the families of the missing to say there was still hope almost two weeks after the terrorist attacks.

Mr Giuliani told a New York news conference: "I believe it is certainly time to say that the chances of finding anyone would now involve a miracle. Miracles have happened but it would be unfair to offer any kind of broad hope to people."

He said the recovery operation at the site was so painstaking that it would not preclude rescuing anyone who was found alive.

Mayor Giuliani announced plans to speed the process of getting a death certificate if families could prove a missing person was in the building at the time of the terror strikes.