I am working on Portal News Listing. In the customize web part, there is a
check box for "Ignore Listings in Anchor Area". What is the significance of
it? When it is checked, it renders empty view.

What I am trying to achieve is: three views into the News Listing, (a) Web
Part showing a single Lead Story, (b) couple of Top Stories, and (c) Past x
stories.

Using Highlight feature I can break the news list into two and can format
them as Top Stories and Past x stories. I want to be able to create a third
filter that I can use to set the Lead story. I created couple of Test Groups
(in News List) but apparently groups can sort not filter the items.

Any tip?