sept 11 attacks

Rudy Giuliani shares the lead among conservative voters in the Republican presidential race, despite the New Yorker's three marriages and moderate views on abortion, guns, and gays. Yet a close look suggests his support from the GOP's potent right wing is less than meets the eye, according to recent Associated Press-Ipsos polls. Conservatives, evangelical and born-again voters, and strongly loyal Republicans who back Giuliani tend to be less conservative, less religiously active and less supportive of President Bush than those favoring Fred Thompson, Giuliani's chief rival so far, the surveys show.

Leona Helmsley, the cutthroat hotel magnate whose title as the ''queen of mean'' was sealed during a tax evasion case in which she was quoted as snarling ''Only little people pay taxes,'' died Monday at age 87. Helmsley died of heart failure at her summer home in Greenwich, Conn., said her publicist, Howard Rubenstein.