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By Associated Press

Updates on some of the people in the spotlight in the days following the Sept. 11 attacks:

RUDOLPH GIULIANI: Then in his final months as New York City's mayor, Giuliani was hailed as the man who calmed New Yorkers and was the spokesman for a defiant city as it rose from the ashes. Since leaving office in January because of term limits, he has been in high demand on the lecture circuit and has founded a consulting firm that provides strategic, financial and investment help to businesses.

Giuliani went to the World Trade Center site shortly after the first plane hit, and narrowly escaped the collapse. During a televised news conference on the evening of Sept. 11, the distraught and exhausted mayor told the world that the casualties would be "more than most of us can bear." During the city's one-year anniversary ceremony, he will begin the reading of the more than 2,800 victims' names.

Throughout the year, Giuliani has eulogized friends and colleagues in a stream of memorial services. He meets regularly with a group of victims' relatives, advising them on issues related to the redevelopment of the trade center site.

It has been estimated Giuliani earns as much as $100,000 per speech on the lecture circuit. He also has a $3 million deal with Talk Miramax to write two books: an autobiography and a book on management issues. He was named Time magazine's Person of the Year in December.

THOMAS VON ESSEN: At the time of the attacks, Von Essen had served for six years as commissioner of the Fire Department of New York, which lost 343 firefighters on Sept. 11. He left that position in December and has joined Giuliani's firm as a consultant.

Since the attacks, he has given speeches and written a memoir, "Strong of Heart." The book, subtitled "Life and Death in the Fire Department of New York" and released in August, covers Von Essen's life as a firefighter, union president and finally commissioner, a tenure marked by contention over his efforts to change the tradition-bound department. It begins with an account of how the department dealt with the worst disaster in its history. That morning, Von Essen was called away from the lobby in the north tower to brief Giuliani. There, he had been in the company of the Rev. Mychal Judge, First Deputy Commissioner Bill Feehan and Chief Peter Ganci, all of whom where killed.

BERNARD KERIK: As New York City police commissioner, Kerik helped soothe a shaken city -- first after the Sept. 11 attacks and later as his department, which lost 23 officers at the World Trade Center, responded to the anthrax attacks. Kerik became commissioner in September 2000; he left his post in December to become senior vice president of Giuliani's consulting firm.

Like many New York City officials, Kerik was thrust into the spotlight after the attacks -- at news conferences and on talk shows. His appearance on "The Oprah Winfrey Show" led him to reunite with the daughter he fathered with a Korean woman while stationed in that country in 1975. He now speaks with his daughter several times a week.

Kerik also has established his own security consulting firm, Kerik, Bellistri and Associates. He gives paid speeches, traveling from college graduations to trade show conferences. Gov. George Pataki recently nominated him as chairman of the New York State Athletic Commission.

THEODORE OLSON: On the morning of Sept. 11, the nation's solicitor general received two phone calls from his wife, lawyer and television commentator Barbara Olson, who was on American Airlines Flight 77. Her descriptions of the hijackers' tactics before the jetliner crashed into the Pentagon provided some of the first details of what went on aboard any of the planes.

A book by Barbara Olson critical of the Clinton administration, "The Final Days: The Last, Desperate Abuses of Power by the Clinton White House," became a best-seller upon its publication three months after her death.

In addition to his formal role of handling the federal government's cases at the Supreme Court, Theodore Olson has led the Bush administration's battle for new powers in the name of national security, sometimes taking the unusual step of going to lower courts himself to argue cases. He won all eight cases he argued before the Supreme Court in its latest term. Speaking at a Justice Department remembrance ceremony in December, he said, "We will fight this evil for as long as it takes."

LISA BEAMER: Since her husband, Todd Beamer, helped lead what appeared to be a passenger rebellion against their Flight 93 hijackers, Beamer has been perhaps the nation's highest-profile single mother. She has traveled to Washington, where President Bush praised her husband, spoken at religious gatherings across the nation, made numerous television appearances and attended memorial services, including the dedication of her local post office in honor of her husband.

A month after the attacks, Beamer, 32, of Cranbury, N.J., took the same Newark-to-San Francisco flight her husband had been on, to raise money for a foundation in his name. When she gave birth to her daughter, Morgan, in January, Bush was one of the first to call with congratulations, and news of the birth was carried on media outlets around the globe. Beamer has said it is difficult raising three children alone, but that she has felt support from friends and strangers alike and also draws strength from God.