FORTUNE — Stephanie Mehta: Thank you Tom, and as Dame Zaha makes her way to the stage, let me just take another opportunity to thank Barclays, and our other MPW global partner, Zurich Insurance Group, and our knowledge partner McKinsey & Company. Thanks again to you all. I was going to change into my flats during the break, but now that I see Dame Zaha making her way in these very fabulous shoes, I’m glad I didn’t downscale.

Zaha Hadid: I too brought flat shoes in the car (laughter).

Stephanie Mehta: Well, and your pedicure is spectacular, so I’m ashamed. Zaha Hadid really needs no introduction. She is an internationally known architect. Her reputation precedes her. She’s known as much for her theoretical work as for her built projects. She’s a Pritzker Prize winner, which, for those who are not in that architectural world, that is the equivalent of a Nobel Prize in that realm. Her firm, Zaha Hadid Architects is based here in London. She’s a pioneer in design and an innovator, and among her well-known projects, the London Aquatic Centre, which was built for the 2012 Olympic Games, the Contemporary Art Centre in Cincinnati, and a number of the Soho Galaxy projects in China, and those are truly spectacular for those of you who’ve had a chance to see the designs in various cities in China. So, welcome Zaha.

Stephanie Mehta: You’ve just come from speaking to delegates of the G-8 on the subject of innovation. This year you were named Veuve Clicquot’s businesswoman of 2013. You’re here at the Fortune Most Powerful Women summit. Do you feel like a powerful woman?

Zaha Hadid: Well, I don’t know. Actually I always thought I was powerful, since I was a kid. A friend of mine, who was a student of mine, was asked by an architect colleague, he said to him, “Oh, you know, has Zaha changed since she, sort of — between brackets — became a celebrity?” and he said, “Oh well, no, she hasn’t. She always thought she was one.” So, you know, I think that with architecture, maybe it’s different in other professions, it’s kind of such a sluggish business, you know, so you are fighting all the time, you know, and I’m not saying it’s not fun, but you forget, you know, so in a way it humbles you. You don’t think about yourself as successful or powerful or whatever it is. I mean, I think that the only useful part of it is that, if you are able to help other people in any way, whether other women, or younger women, or people, you know, who want to do architecture, who maybe thought it’s difficult, then I think it’s worth the while that people see you in that light.

Stephanie Mehta: I want to come back to this idea of using your power as a platform, but you also alluded to the long journeys that architects go through to see a project to completion. There was almost a decade period of time between the forming of your design firm and the first built project. Talk a little bit about how you maintained your enthusiasm and your willingness to press ahead during what may have been quite a period of struggle.

Zaha Hadid: I think, I don’t know how we did it. I mean, it was even longer than 10 years. I mean, I finished school in ’77, and our first building was finished in ’93, so it was quite — 16 years, or whatever it is. Post that, there was almost some very difficult turbulent years. I think that, I personally, myself, believed in the work. I think it is absolutely possible to have an alternative. I really thought, because, I mean, it was not the first time it was done, there was a kind of a belief in modernism, and the early part of the 20th century, later in the ‘60s, it was all, kind of modern. Abandoned later, but so I thought there is a possibility. I travelled a lot, and I saw a world where these things were attempted, but I think what were really remarkable were the people that were with me. I refer to them as “the kids,” but, you know, not as my kids, but they were all very young people. You know, I mean, it’s very difficult for those to sacrifice their weekends, their evenings, their nights, sitting there day and night working. I mean, I didn’t ask them, and I think it was that incredible commitment by so many people that made us carry on, and it would’ve been very difficult without this, kind of, incredible support I had.

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Stephanie Mehta: How did you develop your design aesthetic? Your buildings are quite distinctive. What was the process like to develop what now is very recognisable as a Zaha Hadid?

Zaha Hadid: Well, I mean, they just started off as a branch of modernism, but I think that, when I was a student, I really first of all thought, at the time, in the late ‘70s, there was an incredible rejection of modernity, and it was over, kind of, everybody thought that to move forward you had to look backwards, and I could not possibly believe that. Somebody thought maybe because I was, you know, as if it was a critique, that I still had faith because I was not a European. Maybe so, you know, I wasn’t a Westerner, but I really thought that there were other alternatives. I mean, there were a lot of people thinking similarly at the same time that I was a student. I think that, also, there were certain ideas which I could not represent based on what I knew or I knew how to present, I mean, like existing technique of drawing, so I began to investigate other ways of representing or drawing, and that led to, I may say, graphic techniques, but led to ideas and architecture. So, you know, I think, through these, kind of, graphic techniques, or studies, I began to kind of form differently.

Stephanie Mehta: You were born in Iraq. Tell us a little bit about your childhood, and what your family’s expectations were for you.

Zaha Hadid: I had a very nice upbringing in Iraq. Iraq was very, kind of, modern. My father actually went to school in England and first in America, part of the American University of Beirut, the IC in Beirut, in his teens, in the early part of the 20th century, and he went to London School of Economics here in the ’20s. So the family had a connection to England, studying abroad, and I went to a nun school, I mean, my parents are Muslim, but none of us practice.

Stephanie Mehta: Was it a Catholic institution, raised by nuns?

Zaha Hadid: Yes, but it was a very good school, and it had, kind of, Muslim girls, Jewish girls, Christian girls, and I had a fantastic childhood. My parents were very liberal, there was never a moment where I thought, “I will not be a professional.”

Stephanie Mehta: Did your dad want you to become an economist?

Zaha Hadid: No, actually my father didn’t. I mean, I wanted to be an architect, since I was 11. I didn’t know what it meant, but you know, I must have seen a building which I liked at the time. So I remember very well asking, “What do you call the person who does this sort of thing?” And my mother taught me to draw. I was, you know, like, I used to draw a lot. Now, my father thought I should do what I want, but then everybody thought, “You know, architecture is very difficult, no woman does it. Why don’t you become an artist?” Or something like that.

Stephanie Mehta: That may be the first parent in history to say, “Why don’t you become an artist?”

Zaha Hadid: My parents did not mind, I mean, you know, they would have liked me to become maybe a doctor or something, you know, whatever, but it was really up to me, and they never put any pressure on me whatsoever to choose other than that.

Stephanie Mehta: You came to London to study architecture. What was London like for you, coming to school here in the ‘70s?

Zaha Hadid: It was fun actually, at the time. I mean, I had come before that to London, to go to boarding school, so I had some friends. Then I went to Beirut, and I came back here. You know, London was very severe in the ‘70s, you know. There was all the, kind of, coal miner strikers, there were three-day — you know, no lighting. We used to try to draw with gloves on and coats, and we had to migrate from one area of London to the other to avoid the curfew, you know. It was kind of uncomfortable, because you’re quite young, and it was fun, but it was very different to how it is nowadays. I mean, London became a great metropolis, I think. It became extremely very cosmopolitan. There’s every kind of person here, every profession, every race, every lifestyle. It wasn’t like that. I mean, compared to New York, it was like a village. You know, I mean, New York was like that in the ‘80s, and so London I think became increasingly more diversified and opened up. I mean, they still are, kind of, obviously a very strong conservative element here, you know, but it has changed.

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Stephanie Mehta: Do you have a city that you — well two questions. Do you have a favourite city? You travel so much. Then, is there a city that inspires you, which are maybe two different things?

Zaha Hadid: I mean, you know, I used to live in Beirut, and I love Beirut, and I love New York, because it’s like my second home. I don’t have a house there, but I go there a lot, I have many friends. When I first moved to London, people used to ask me why I came here from across the puddle, and it took me a while to understand that a puddle was the Atlantic, but, you know. So these are the cities I love, but of course I spend my summers in Istanbul, maybe not this summer.

Stephanie Mehta: You confessed your other favourite city–

Zaha Hadid: Is Rio, also troubled. No, Rio is an incredible city, and actually, I always thought, I always was very influenced by Brazilian architecture, but these things are sometimes very depressing and very refreshing. When I went to Rio last year, I mean I go there kind of, every few years, but I realized it was very dated. I found that very exciting, because 20 years ago I thought it was very advanced, and everything was amazing, and yet in that, 20 years later, you know, it’s like seeing the film again, it’s not exactly the same. It’s still — there are some great references of modernism. It’s like, you know, going to New York or Chicago. You have these amazing references to 20th century modernism, which only exist in these particular cities, you know, and maybe, you know, definitely in Brazil and parts of America and maybe Italy here and there, but they have amazing pieces.

Stephanie Mehta: Do you design and conceive of projects differently for corporate clients than you do for clients in, say, the arts, or non-profit institutions? Because your portfolio is quite broad.

Zaha Hadid: I mean, I’d like to do more corporate work. I don’t have much corporate work. I’ve done an office building, and we’re doing now some housing. It’s not because of choice. It’s because most of the work we got was through competitions, and in Europe if you do a public building you have to do a competition process. That has helped us a lot, I mean, without it we would not have any. Mind you, the few projects I have done in Europe, like the Vitra Fire Station, was a commission. Strasbourg, the car park and train, was a commission. But all the others, all the other museums, whether it’s the Wolfsburg or the BMW, you know, factory, or the MAXXI in Rome, they are all done through a commission process. The commission process in America and England is different. In America, they do it through an interview process, and it’s really based on whether they like you or not. I mean, it’s nothing to do with whether you do the best scheme or the worst scheme. In France, it’s again, of course, everything is very political, but you do a full stage, you know. In France and Europe you do a full stage, I mean, like, you’re doing a project for four months. So they pick it based on the project. Anything that’s left is very ambiguous, so they pick you.

They have to do the competition process, but they don’t tell you they’re picking you for the project. They say they pick you for the architect, so it’s very different dynamics. I think that yes, I mean, I will try in both cases to do something interesting. There is always pressure on you, I mean, budgets are very important. I don’t think you have an open budget. It’s very rare to have an open budget, where the, kind of, funds are unlimited. You know, even in the most, kind of, wealthy countries, or somebody, whatever, does a house or something. There’s always a consideration, but I think it is, for me, interesting to do corporate work, because if you look at London, the majority of the built work is mostly corporate, or housing. Now they’re building modern housing, but before it was mostly offices. So I think it’ll be important for us to actually do that.

Stephanie Mehta: We’re going to be able to take a few questions from the audience, but before we go to that, Dame Zaha and I had a very interesting conversation over dinner about airline travel and airports. She’s in and out of a lot of them. With your keen architect’s eye focused on the air travel process and airports, tell us a little bit about what you would change, if you could redesign the process from a whole cloth.

Zaha Hadid: Well, actually we are looking. We are advisors for the mayor’s office, for the new airport at the estuary. I just think that at this stage, all form of travel should be slightly more advanced. I mean, the adverts should be nicer, the way you get to them should be better, the way you checked in, the people should be — well, they can’t change people, but, you know, they should wear better uniforms, they should give you better food, you know, everything. I mean, you know, tragic, a salad on British Airways, it’s a killer, you know. I don’t know where they found this petrified green, so, you know, I mean, forgetting about the service, I was telling her earlier, every time I take a British Airways flight, I lose my luggage.

Stephanie Mehta: You’re on the “must lose luggage” list.

Zaha Hadid: I have many assistants carrying all my hand luggage, you know, just to guarantee that I– no, I’m kidding, but it really is a problem if you’re flying somewhere, you have a meeting, you don’t want to be spending two days going back and forth to an airport. I mean, to go back to corporate work, for example, if I take an example of the Galaxy Soho in Beijing, the project we just completed a few months ago, where it is, you know, trying to take kind of, a business district site, the monetary aspect is very tight, but you know, we interpreted the program on the grounds. So we said, “They don’t want towers, they don’t want [inaudible] just like a building around the edge, like a fortification.” They wanted retail, so we had to reinvent the idea of retail, or how to move through a building, or how to use the void, or how to make an atrium. So we just made, kind of like a landscape, with many miniature towers, you know, like eggs, and decided that to operate on one [inaudible] to say, from that point down is all retail, and from that, higher up, so you have a completely kind of, an atmosphere and a space which is immersive, that wherever you are, you see something else. You know, it’s like going to, you know, the park or something.

So you can actually interpret workspace, you know, in a nice way, because if we’re lucky we spend a whole day in an office, if we have a job, and that should have a nice environment, and if you want to go out and wander around, that should also be nice. I mean, I don’t think that you should, you know — so one has to kind of, really study the idea of workspace. You know, we’ve done that with a few buildings, like the BMW factory, it’s kind of, the idea of an open floor plan, but it’s not totally open with no division. Divided, like a terrace thing. So you can interpret these things in a kind of interesting way.

Stephanie Mehta: Do you find it easier to launch projects in places like China, where the regulatory environment is, shall we say, looser? Or a place like Europe where the urban codes are much stricter, but the legacy of architecture is perhaps important?

Zaha Hadid: I don’t know. I think that, you are meant to do things with more freedom in China, only because I think the client body is more interested in your ideas and to test new ideas. There isn’t this kind of phobia about newness, you know, which I think is a very exciting thing. While here, maybe they might build better. You know, I think that in China they’re learning faster, they make things much more — I mean, the time is very short, I mean, this building we did is 350,000 square metres, or whatever it is, and it was done in under three years, while, you know, this might take 10 years here. I don’t know how long it would take. So I think there is that. I think that, you know, I think it’s more psychological.

I think that the West has to understand there is another standard, or there is another formula. We have to re-look at typology, you know, and typology should be questioned, that not every office building in the world is the same type. It’s like saying, “Everybody in the world should be the same,” so I think that, you know, once these, not rules, these, kind of, personal rules change, then I think you have much more freedom to do things, and of course you should have urban rules, and planning rules, so that, you know, there is a kind of consistency in the environment. There is not a, like, haphazard running things, doing whatever you like. You can do it in such a way that, you know, you have certain adjustments, let’s say, or interpretations in the urban field, and I think it could open up the city much more.

Stephanie Mehta: Can we just do one very quick question from the audience? Is there anybody, right in the back here?

Question: Dame Zaha, you have a fabulous piece of sculpture at the summer exhibition. How do you find time to do art when you’re doing all this architecture?

Zaha Hadid: Well, you know, as I said, you know, we have a lot of really enthusiastic people in the office, and we do everything. I mean, people think maybe we do too much of everything. You know, we do jewellery, we do furniture. Furniture I really enjoy doing, especially in the last 10 years when, you know, through computing techniques, it’s possible, I mean, I can do that furniture, not in an afternoon, but one can, kind of, 3-D model a piece of furniture. That changed everything to do with the industry, and I can have it milled, you know, like I send it to a machine and it will mill it, and then of course it’s out of then fibreglass or painted, but I can get an object done based on a 3-D model, very quickly. You know, it doesn’t have to be by hand. It’s very precise. We have a very, I think, beautiful glass table, made of transparent material, which is completely milled, so it’s like a kind of a chiselling machine.

We have stools and marble, also milled. So this milling technology, it can do it for an object, but it can also vacuum form, so you can do fantastic skin for buildings, which is sculpted, perforated, you know, tessellated like a tile. I think that the advancement in material technology is enormous but also impacts on the kind of concrete and the material, ecologically friendly materials. You can begin to learn from the environment, from certain countries, how you can deal with cooling and heating and all of that. What I think what has been very exciting, there are so many tools that allow you to bring all this information together, and re-use it in a very, I think, new and kind of exciting way.

Stephanie Mehta: Well, I probably will never be able to afford one of your sculptures, but if you ever decide to design shoes, I’ll be first in line.

Zaha Hadid: I am designing shoes. We’re launching them next week.

Zaha Hadid: I don’t think anybody can wear them.

Stephanie Mehta: (Laughter) Art pieces. Dame Zaha, thank you so much for your time. Ladies and gentlemen, a round of applause for Zaha Hadid.

Zaha Hadid: Thank you very much.

Summary: The architect Zaha Hadid joined Fortune's Stephanie Mehta on stage at the Fortune Most Powerful Women conference in London this week to discuss design, growing up in Iraq, her favorite cities and more.


Gift-giving season is approaching, and with it comes a twinge of worry for parents of young children: The toys and gadgets that bring joy on holiday mornings often include small parts that can wind up in little ones’ mouths.

Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Brigham and Women’s Hospital, and Massachusetts General Hospital say they believe their latest invention can take the danger out of at least one of those parts — the button- and coin-cell batteries that power watches, musical greeting cards, and some playthings.

Smaller than a piece of candy, the batteries typically are not a choking hazard. And with chemicals securely encapsulated, the poisoning risk is low. Many times they pass through the body with no effect.

But lodged in a child’s esophagus or stomach, they can discharge an electrical current capable of burning a hole in the lining of internal organs. Resulting injuries can be serious or even fatal. Thirty-seven deaths have been reported since 1977 — 25 since 2008.

The local research team developed a battery coating that has been shown in lab tests to deactivate an ingested battery without compromising its performance in electronic devices.

If taken to market, the coating, which resembles a thin patch, would be a significant upgrade over current safety techniques.

Despite child-resistant packaging, warning labels, and public awareness campaigns by manufacturers, emergency room visits due to battery ingestion are on the rise — from about 1,500 in 2000 to 4,800 in 2010, according to estimates by the National Electronic Injury Surveillance System.

“Efforts to prevent swallowing are good, but we all know the gold standard is a safer battery,” said Toby Litovitz, medical director of the National Capital Poison Center, who has published research on battery injuries. “If this new technology works, it would be a game changer.”

Burns are possible because human tissue can mimic the metal contact strips found in the battery cases of electronic devices, drawing out power.

Litovitz, in her research, found permanent damage can occur in just two hours and saw cases where even “dead” batteries had enough residual charge to cause harm.

A harrowing episode four years ago prompted a Peoria, Ariz., couple to start a foundation devoted to educating parents about the hazards of battery ingestion. Their 1-year-old son, Emmett, swallowed a battery he had dislodged from a DVD remote control and needed surgery to repair his badly burned esophagus.

Now 5, the boy still consumes most of his food through a feeding tube that he probably will need for the rest of his life.

“Everybody has button batteries in their house, and so few people know the dangers,” said Karla Rauch, the boy’s mother and president of the Emmett’s Fight Foundation. “I’m just really excited about this coating. I don’t know if it’s foolproof yet, but the fact that people are working on it makes us super happy.”

To prevent injuries to children like Emmett, researchers tested a rubberlike material called quantum tunneling composite, which already is used in computer touch screens. It contains metal particles that are spread too far apart to conduct electricity — until they are squeezed closer together.

On a battery, the composite acts as a layer of insulation between the electrode and a child’s tongue, throat, or gastrointestinal tract, blocking the harmful zap. In a hearing aid, remote control, or other device, however, pressures applied in the battery case are strong enough to push the metal particles together and create a closed circuit for the juice to flow.

“It’s like a switch that converts from an insulator to a conductor, based on whether it’s in the device or not,” said Jeffrey Karp, associate professor at Brigham and Women’s and coauthor of a paper about the battery coating.

Karp’s collaborators include Giovanni Traverso, a gastroenterologist at MGH; Robert Langer, associate faculty member at MIT’s Institute for Medical Engineering and Science; and Bryan Laulicht, a former postdoctoral research fellow at the institute.

Karp said another year or two of testing is probably needed before coated batteries could start showing up in consumer electronics. They have been tested in pigs but not in humans and would need to prove their reliability in a wide range of electronics before manufacturers would trust them.

But battery makers said they welcomed a possible solution to a problem that keeps growing as more electronics enter circulation. In recent years, companies like Energizer and Duracell have started packaging batteries individually to make them harder for children to access and have experimented with coatings that taste bad, hoping kids will spit them out.

“Safety is a top priority, but the issue has been performance,” said Win Sakdinan, a Duracell spokesman. “So we’re always looking at new innovations.”

Summary: A special battery coating developed by a team of local researchers could protect children from painful injuries to their internal organs in the event of an accidental swallowing.


12/09/2014 AT 04:10 PM EST

It was a brutal and macabre killing.

In April 2013, James Sheaffer was drugged, stabbed and strangled. After he was dead, his body was dismembered and cooked in an effort to conceal the crime. His remains were thrown in several dumpsters. He was 36.

But the killing became even more bizarre when Sheaffer's neighbor, Angela Faye Stoldt,

. According to court documents, Stoldt, a Florida mother of two, told police that she had argued with Sheaffer over money.

On Friday, Stoldt was convicted of first-degree murder, abuse of a human body and tampering with physical evidence. It took a jury just three hours of deliberation to come up with the verdict.

Stoldt had never denied the killing – but claimed it was in self-defense.

"I'm sorry, but I put Jimmie where he belonged, in my opinion at the time," she told deputies during her initial police interview. "He starts coming at me and – he didn't even really hit me, but he scared me and I just snapped. He came at me and I stabbed him."

Stoldt was sentenced to life in prison for the murder count. She was given 15 years for the second count and 5 years for the third count. She is not eligible for parole.

Summary: Angela Stoldt was sentenced to life in prison


Standard Chartered said former JPMorgan JPM investment bank boss Bill Winters will take over as chief executive in June to replace Peter Sands, after investors demanded change at the helm following two years of problems.

Asia-focused bank Standard Chartered said Thursday Chairman John Peace will also leave next year, and named other changes to its board in a massive overhaul in management following problems ranging from a U.S. fine for breaking sanctions to a jump in losses from commodities loans.

Winters, 53, is one of the most respected bankers in the industry and has wide experience of investment banking and regulatory issues. Standard Chartered shares jumped 3% on the news of the appointment, although they subsequently gave up a large part of those gains.

He will join the Standard Chartered board in May and take over from Sands the following month, and be based in London, where he has lived for the past 22 years.

Winters joined JPMorgan in 1983 as a trainee in New York and moved up the ranks to become co-CEO of its investment bank from 2004 until 2009, when he left following a falling out with Chief Executive Jamie Dimon.

Winters then became one of five members of a British government commission that analyzed how banks could be made structurally safer. The panel’s recommendations that firms should separate their domestic retail banking operations is being implemented.

“Bill is a globally respected banker and has the right experience and skills to drive the Group’s new phase of growth,” said Peace, who said he will remain in his role until next year to help Winters’ transition.

Investors started calling for change at the top of Standard Chartered last year, citing strategic, governance and operational mistakes, and saying Sands had been slow to address problems and had not gone far enough in cutting costs.

Three of the bank’s top 30 investors told Reuters in December that Sands should be replaced in 2015.

Former McKinsey consultant Sands, 53, steered Standard Chartered through the financial crisis, helping it to 10 years of record earnings. He has been CEO for eight years.

Some investors have urged Standard Chartered to make wider changes in the board, and the bank said on Thursday Jaspal Bindra, CEO of its Asia business, will also leave this year after 16 years with the bank.

It said a further three long standing directors will step down – Ruth Markland, Paul Skinner and Oliver Stocken – and said two new directors will join the board – Gay Huey Evans and Jasmine Whitbread.

Summary: Move comes after repeated run-ins with US regulators and falling returns from emerging markets.


Maybe you’ve heard tell of selkies, fantastical creatures said to live as seals in the sea and as humans when ashore. Maybe you’ve caught screen interpretations, like John Sayles’s “The Secret of Roan Inish” (1994) or Neil Jordan’s “Ondine” (2009). Maybe you have an interest in mythology that’s clued you in to these Celtic legends, or maybe it’s just your Irish pride. Whatever the case, you’ll find it’s a bit of folklore that gets a sweet, aesthetically breathtaking showcase in the Oscar-nominated animated import “Song of the Sea.”

Director Tomm Moore (the 2009 Oscar contender “The Secret of Kells”) crafts a traditionally rendered feature whose doe-eyed characters faintly echo Miyazaki yet offer a beauty all their own. And, oh, the world they live in: a collection of rugged seascapes, cozy quarters, and emerald scenery graced with a picture book’s watercolor nuance. Even a fleeting frame occupied by well water and no characters is an exhaustive mingling of blues, grays, and speckled visual texture.

Do take note, though: the story’s unhurried pace does call for patience, from kids and grown-ups alike. It helps that there’s so much adorably accented charm to the dynamic between young Ben (David Rawle) and his silent little sister, Saoirse (Lucy O’Connell), whose relationship at times plays like a contentious “Charlie and Lola.”

The two live in a lighthouse with their sad-eyed father, Conor (Brendan Gleeson), who still mourns losing his wife when Saoirse was born. Clues abound that the little girl is different, from her strange affinity for those rough seas to her fascination with a shell flute and a mysterious white coat left behind by her mother. When Saoirse disappears for a late-night swim with seals, the audience gets to see her selkie secret revealed. Not the case for the kids’ alarmed granny (Fionnula Flanagan, “Lost”), who packs them off to her home in the city.

Ben and Saoirse run away almost immediately, desperate to return home. A string of enchanted encounters along the way help Ben to understand what his sister is, and that she isn’t just homesick. If she doesn’t get back to the sea and that coat, and find her voice and sing, she and a whole mystical landscape could perish.

High as the stakes are, and for all the adventurousness the kids show, the story doesn’t often stray from its deliberate, gentle approach. It’s a welcome little charge to hear Ben at one point mutter an exasperated “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph!” Or to see the kids suspensefully cornered by an owl witch (Flanagan again) and her minions. But we’ll take the tradeoff of spicier moments for all those picture-book gorgeous ones. If “Song of the Sea” were a book, in fact, you can bet it would come with a shiny gold Caldecott seal on the cover.

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- ‘Focus’ starts strong, then blurs

Summary: “Song of the Sea” superbly animates an Irish legend.


For 20 years, network neutrality — the idea that nobody controlled free open and nondiscriminatory access to the Internet — was the unwritten rule, and all Internet Service Providers, such as AT&T, Verizon VZ and Comcast CMCSA , adhered to it. Last week, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) formalized the non-discrimination tradition on the Internet and preserved net neutrality. This is good news to ensure that the Internet remains a free market for innovation and provides consumers with unbiased choices when it comes to content.

Traditionally, telecommunications services are strictly regulated. However, despite the fact that the Internet provides digital telecommunications services, in 2004 the FCC categorized it as providing “information services.” This implied ‘light’ regulation and prompted AT&T T in 2005 to demand payment from content and applications companies to access AT&T’s customers. In return, AT&T offered to prioritize the content of whoever paid and delivered it before the content of others.

For example, if Microsoft MSFT paid AT&T, AT&T would show the Bing search results to AT&T customers before the results from Google GOOG . That could result in significant distortions in the Internet search market and allow AT&T to determine the winner in that market. If the Wall Street Journal paid for prioritization but the New York Times did not, AT&T’s violation of network neutrality could determine the winner in the competition among newspapers, and similarly for other markets.

You might reasonably ask, why does competition not fix this problem? Why do we need regulation? The answer is simple. There is not enough competition among Internet service providers: typically, residential customers have only two providers. Additionally, it is not easy to switch providers especially because they offer bundles with other services such as telecom and video. Finally, practically all the major telecom and cable TV companies have stated that, if left unregulated, they would introduce paid prioritization and violate network neutrality. Without the protection of network neutrality, consumers will have fewer choices in content, video and telephone services carried over the Internet.

But the biggest consequence would be slowing innovation. New innovative companies that “live” on the Internet rely on a level competitive playing field. While Google or Microsoft could afford an Internet tax charged by telecom and cable companies for preferential treatment, the “next Google” won’t be able to afford the payments demanded by telecom and cable.

One can understand the frustration of telecom and cable TV companies. Tremendous wealth is generated by information packets flowing through their lines, but most of that “Internet gold” flows right past them to content providers and consumers. Even worse, traditional phone services are provided through the Internet by Voice-Over-The Internet services and Skype, and bandwidth-heavy television shows can be downloaded over the Internet. These services directly compete with telecom and cable TV companies and give incentives to them to slow down competing services. Here, strict network neutrality regulation ensures competition is on equal footing.

Violation of network neutrality would allow telecom and cable TV companies to defend their products and profits more effectively. But the discrimination these companies proposed in violation of network neutrality would have been devastating for innovation and choice.

So kudos to the FCC for protecting consumers and innovation.

Nicholas Economides is an economics professor at New York University Stern School of Business.

Summary: The Federal Communications Commission’s recent decision to protect the free flow of content on the Internet will ensure fair competition.


NEW YORK (AP) — Stocks and bonds are rallying after the Federal Reserve indicated that it’s not in a hurry to raise interest rates.

At the end of a two-day meeting Wednesday, the Fed also cut its forecasts for economic growth through 2017 and said that it needs to see more improvement in the job market and higher inflation before it raises rates.

The Fed has kept interest rates extremely low for six years, which has helped drive stock and bond prices higher by making borrowing cheap.

The Dow Jones industrial average jumped 227 points, or 1.3 percent, to 18,076.

The Standard & Poor’s 500 rose 25 points, or 1.2 percent, to 2,099. The Nasdaq climbed 45 points, or 0.9 percent, to 4,982.

The yield on the 10-year Treasury note dropped to 1.92 percent.

Summary: Stocks rallied Thursday after the Federal Reserve signaled that it may move slowly to raise interest rates.


Answer by Scott Wainer on Quora.

Entrepreneur is a broadly defined term. Kids selling lemonade are entrepreneurs. Someone selling widgets at Etsy and supporting themselves at $40,000 a year are entrepreneurs. Co-founders taking a small seed to build a new app to huge traction and selling to Facebook FB down the road for $10 million are entrepreneurs. Someone building a SaaS business to $10 million a year in recurrent revenue, profitably, and without funding, is an entrepreneur.

The idea, though, that anyone can achieve great wealth and independence through entrepreneurship is what’s overhyped and glorified. Learning to be a great entrepreneur is a long road.

Twenty years in, I like where I am and have done well: my first business did $100,000 a year, and I sold it for $4 million at 21. My second business did $6 million a year, profitably, and I sold it for $34 million at 34 (as the sole owner with no debt). What I’ve learned along the way has positioned me to make much better decisions now, about what I want to do next and about how to manifest the best ideas into reality— far better than I would have 20 years ago. The point is, though, it has been a long, multi-decade journey: it does indeed take 10 to 20 years to become an “overnight success.”

There are so many pitfalls with entrepreneurship that it’s no wonder that it’s fraught with peril. It’s very hard to navigate your own venture successfully over multiple years. Those that do it well are called out as shining examples of how great it can be, but for every one of those, there are thousands who didn’t do well.

Here is some of what I’ve learned along the way, for those who are contemplating a life of entrepreneurship:

This question originally appeared on Quora: Is entrepreneurship over-hyped and glorified?

Summary: Being a great entrepreneur doesn't happen overnight.


Acquia, a Burlington company that sells software and services for Web publishers and e-commerce businesses, looks like it’s taking another step on the road to an initial public offering.

The company said Tuesday that it has appointed Christine Komola, the chief financial officer of Staples Inc., to its board of directors. Komola will also chair Acquia’s audit committee.

“Our board has always been very keen on ensuring that we manage ourselves and govern ourselves in a way that any company with an opportunity to go public would,” chief executive Tom Erickson said. “This is a key step in that process.”

It is no secret Acquia is on a path to going public. The company has billed itself as “pre-IPO” in the past, and earlier this year said it had $100 million in revenue for 2014, a key milestone for companies seeking to go public.

Acquia helps clients set up and run websites on the Drupal publishing system. The New England Patriots site is among those that run on Drupal, which can be thought of as a business-focused competitor to the popular Web publishing software WordPress.

Lately, Acquia has focused on adding clients in the e-commerce sector. Puma, the German shoe brand that has its North American headquarters in Westford, used Acquia to overhaul its online shopping service last year, Erickson said.

Komola’s experience at Staples, one of the larger online sellers in the United States, will help the company as it continues to seek more e-commerce business, Erickson said. “She hasn’t just been the CFO there. She’s been in product merchandising as well.”

Summary: The company has appointed Christine Komola, the chief financial officer of Staples Inc., to its board of directors. Komola also will be the first chairwoman of Acquia’s audit committee.


Baseball has long been called "America's Pastime," and as time itself passes, the game has grown to encompass that definition -- in a negative way.

A game born in the 19th century has lost its luster among younger generations who have embraced football as "America's Game." Major League Baseball's response? Take away one of the unique features that its fans once treasured: its timelessness.

But will speeding up the game's pace of play with new rules that include a running clock recapture a 21st century audience addicted to the faster pace of football?

"The games are getting a little too long,'' said Steve Berthiaume, television voice of the Arizona Diamondbacks on FOX Sports Arizona. "I hate the idea of a clock on a baseball field. It's not a pleasant sight to me. I tend to want to say leave baseball alone now, but I do think you need to tighten up the breaks.''

In the past 30 years, football has replaced baseball as the most popular sport in the country. The gap -- 1 percent in 1985 -- has bloated to 21 percent in the latest Harris Poll in 2014.

The first game of the 2014 World Series drew 12.2 million viewers, the fewest ever. Nielsen ratings show 50 percent of baseball viewers are 55 or older, up 41 percent over the past 10 years. Little League participation has dropped from almost 3 million in the past 20 years to 2.4 million in 2013.

So how does baseball regain its popularity and bring youth back to what was once America's most revered game?

Speed it up, says new commissioner Rob Manfred, who has made it his major priority.

In 1972, games averaged less than 2 1/2 hours. Last season games averaged 3 hours, 8 minutes. This, coupled with shorter attention spans, translates into a major problem for the game of baseball, especially among youth.

That's the demographic Diamondbacks President and CEO Derrick Hall wants to target.

“Should we be taking as much time in between innings? Should we be taking as much time between pitches or in inning changes? That's what we're focused on, and I like it. I'm thrilled.”

Derrick Hall, Diamondbacks president & CEO

"You really want them to participate in the sport, continue to participate, be fans of the sport for life, but it's not so much whether the game is three hours and 10 minutes or three hours and 30 minutes," he said. "It's more so pace of game in the down times. Should we be taking as much time in between innings? Should we be taking as much time between pitches or in inning changes? That's what we're focused on, and I like it. I'm thrilled."

So is baseball with its early results. Average times for games in the first week of the new season dropped nine minutes to 2:59, the result of tinkering with pace of play rules in the Arizona Fall League in 2014 and spring training this year.

"We won't wait till the season is over, we'll be assessing this as we go along and see where we are," said Joe Garagiola Jr., MLB senior vice president of on-field operations. "I suspect it's a conversation that we'll see continue."

MLB took its first step toward changing the rules last fall in the Arizona Fall League. Batters had to keep one foot in the batter's box, and pitchers were given 20 seconds to throw a pitch. A maximum of three mound visits per game was implemented along with a maximum 2 minute, 5 second break between innings with the hitter required to be in the batter's box by the 1:45 mark.

"We wanted to make changes," Manfred said. "We wanted to be responsive, but we never wanted to do anything with the play of game on the field that's going to change the way the game is played. I think the players are supportive of what we're trying to do with pace of game, and they understand the significance of the undertaking."

Diamondbacks pitcher Archie Bradley played in the Arizona Fall League last season.

"At first guys were pretty conservative with it, making the pitch on time and making the right pitch, but once we got used to it, it really wasn't an issue," he said. "The integrity or fundamentals of the game we don't want to see that messed with or altered. I understand wanting to speed up the game, but there are right ways to do it and other ways I'm not a big fan of."

MLB didn't implement the 20-second pitch clock in spring training or the regular season, and Oakland A's pitcher Tyler Clippard hopes they never do.

"That's not necessary," he said. "The idea doesn't really make sense to me. If you're a pitcher and you work fast, it's better for your team, it's better for your defense, it's better for you. So, for baseball to say it's not good enough and implement a rule that organizations as a whole have been preaching for decades, it doesn't make any sense to me."

The league was comfortable enough with the changes to alter them slightly for spring training and then use them into the regular season. Players must continue to keep one foot in the box and will have 2:25 between innings -- 2:45 if the game is nationally televised. Managers can now also signal instant replay challenges from the dugout.

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Reaction around the league has been mixed, with some who don't see a reason to alter a clock-less game and some who welcome a change.

"I like the fact we're trying to pick up the pace," Los Angeles Dodgers Manager Don Mattingly said. "We don't need to walk around on the mound or the batter's box and do all the other stuff. Honestly, even as a person on the field, when the game is moving slow, it's really frustrating. It's like, 'C'mon man, let's go. Get in the box, throw the ball. Let's play.'"

Starting May 1, a $500 fine will be assessed to batters who step out of the box and pitchers who run out of time on the inning-break clock. MLB has already sent out 10 letters to players who violated the pace of play rules within the first five days of the 2015 season.

Boston Red Sox designated hitter David Ortiz is a vocal opponent of the fining system.

"Well, I might run out of money," Ortiz said earlier this spring. "I'm serious. I'm not going to change my game. I don't care what they say. My game, it's not like I go around and do all kinds of stupid [expletive]. But I have to take my time and think about what that [pitcher] is going to do next. I'm pretty sure every single hitter at this level is on the same page."

While players may be split, their opinions ultimately don't matter. These changes are about drawing more fans back to the game and making new fans along the way. A quicker pace means more money if seats are full.

"If you want speed, then you can go to a hockey or basketball game," said David Smith of Phoenix, a fan watching the Padres take on the Mariners this spring at the Peoria Sports Complex. "But if you're old-school, and I think if you ask anybody over 30 or 40, you'll probably get the same reaction, but it's fine. There's plenty of time to get up and use the bathroom between innings."

The balance between keeping tradition alive and continuous adaptation is delicate. In the first months of Manfred's tenure, he has shown he's determined to move America's Pastime into the 21st century. Whether or not the changes will pay off in the long run remains to be seen.

"It is crucial at this point in the game's history that we hear what the fans have to say and take measured changes to be responsive to what we're hearing," Manfred said. "In terms of quantitative, I certainly want to reverse the trend of increasing the length of the game. I'm really intent on the idea that we're going to have an average game time that's going to start with a two next year."

Summary: Major League Baseball has implemented new rules to speed up the pace of play in hopes of keeping fans more engaged.


A 380kg Welsh woman, who was once dubbed “the fattest teenager in Britain”, had to be lifted from her house in a crane so paramedics could rush her to hospital for vital treatment.

Georgia Davis, 22, was taken from her flat in Aberdare, southwest of Cardiff, yesterday in a seven-hour operation that involved firefighters, police and paramedics.

Local media has reported that French doors at the front of the specially-adapted house had to be removed to allow crews to lift her from the ground-floor flat and into a waiting ambulance.

Paramedics used the crane to shift Ms Davis, while police blocked off the entire street to allow for the operation, neighbours said.

"They had a big crane and the main road was closed for around an hour. It was a complete meltdown, everyone stopped,” one neighbour told Walesonline.co.uk.

Ms Davis, who weighs in at 60 stone – or 381kg – suffers a variety of health issues because of her weight.

The five foot six woman has previously admitted to eating up to 20 kebabs a week, usually washed down with multiple cans of Coca Cola, which earned her the title of “Fattest Teenager in Britain”.

“We can confirm that the fire service was brought in earlier today to assist us with access to a property in order to safely transport a patient into hospital - we do not comment on individual patients,” a spokeswoman for Cwm Taf University Health Board told Walesonline.co.uk.

It’s not the first time authorities have been forced to resort to extreme techniques to help the Welsh woman. In 2012, she was cut free from her house because she had become too large to get through any of her home’s doors.

Part of a wall was removed and paramedics used a specially designed stretcher to move her out.

Ms Davis has battled the bulge for much of her life and was sent to fat camp in 2008 after her weight ballooned out to 63 stone – 400kg. Despite losing 95kg by sticking to a specially designed diet she later put all of the weight back on.

Her mother, Lesley, said Ms Davis began over eating following the death of her father when she was just five.

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Summary: A 380kg Welshwoman, who was once dubbed “the fattest teenager in Britain”, had to be lifted from her house in a crane so paramedics could rush her to hospital for vital treatment.


Bill Madison's office at the Dispute Resolution Center boasts five pictures and ornaments depicting an emaciated Don Quixote riding into the thick of the human muddle on top of his dilapidated steed, Rocinante.

Mr. Madison's affinity for the quirky knight-errant may not be a coincidence since he and his staff spend long workdays in the office at 425 West 144th Street trying to wrest peace pacts from the hundreds of litigious quarrels that are brought to him by feuding neighbors, landlords, tenants, employers, employees, lovers, married couples and friends.

The five-year-old center operates, according to its brochure, ''as an alternative to arrest and prosecution for cases involving crimes between relatives, friends and neighbors.'' It utilizes the techniques of labor arbitration and it has the blessing of the Police Department, the offices of the District Attorneys and the city's courts because it helps ease congested court calendars. All three refer cases to the center.

The center is now operated by the city but the idea for such a place was nurtured some years ago by the Ford Foundation. Its hours are Mondays through Thursdays from 9 A.M. to 9 P.M. and Fridays from 9 A.M. to 5 P.M.

Bill Madison is a spirited, witty man who thrives on the procession of raw material for soap opera, comedy and tragedy that comes before him and remains unjaded by it all. Last year the center mediated 2,601 disputes, in most cases averting court battles.

The center's mediators are laymen trained to listen and to be objective and the staff of 30 usually spends a couple of hours on a case, Mr. Madison says.

''We don't like the word adjudicate, we like the word resolve,'' he says. ''We get them all and some are really out to lunch.'' When a case is resolved the disputers sign an agreement written by the mediator. If the pact is violated, the case can then go to court.

It is a busy morning. The seats in the corridor outside the stark mediation rooms are filling up with disputants, some of them glowering at each other, almost all of them accompanied by what Mr. Madison calls ''the auxiliaries'' - relatives and friends lending moral support.

Mr. Madison is talking about the need for the mediators to create ''a supportive climate'' when the bout of sociologese is interrupted by shouting and cursing in the corridor. He moves quickly to the door of his office and returns with three people - an angry woman named Magdalena, her mother and her husband, Steve.

Magdalena is seething with fury, saying that the other party to her dispute, a woman named Gillian, has insulted her mother in the corridor. Mr. Madison calms her down and sends for James Warren, a mediator. The three are sent back to the waiting area after a little talk on restraint.

Mr. Warren says the dispute deals with a charge of ''excesive noise,'' one of the most common of the center's complaints and one Mr. Madison says is often fraught with racial and ethnic tensions.

The Gillian woman, a waitress who must get up at 5:30 A.M., brought action against Magdalena and her husband for playing their stereo late at night very loudly and murdering her sleep. The antagonism had grown until the two women ended up fighting in the elevator of their building.

The flare up in the corridor occurred after the two parties had met with Mr. Warren and agreed to a truce. Mr. Madison orders the feuding neighbors back into Mr. Warren's office. ''If they're fighting and fussing in the hallway we haven't done our job,'' the director says.

An hour later an agreement is signed. Magdalena and Steve say they'll wear headsets late at night and Gillian agrees to stay clear of any contact with Magdalena.

The young mediator's next case involves a charge of harassment by a tenant, Mrs. Chernak, against her landlord, Mr. Hans. A reporter is permitted at the closed session provided real names are not used.

The room is bare except for a folding table and three chairs. In a soft voice, Mr. Warren says, ''I'm here to assist you in making an agreement to resolve your differences.''

Mrs. Chernak says that Mr. Hans badgered her to vacate her rent controlled apartment in his Queens building so he could install his mother-in-law in it. She says the landlord at one point injured her arm in a hallway bout that involved name-calling.

Mr. Hans says she was rude, calling him a ''rent gouger.'' He denies assaulting her. ''You think you're under rent control you can do anything,'' he blurts.

Mr. Warren skillfully lets them complain - up to a point. When the recriminations get to blown fuses and a complicated back and forth about amperage, the mediator decides enough fuses have been blown and moves in.

''What would you like to see resolved?'' he asks. ''That he stop harassing me,'' says Mrs. Chernak. ''O.K.,'' says Mr. Hans. Mr. Warren draws up an agreement. They both sign, pocket their copies of the pact and , without a glance at each other, leave looking relieved.

Mr. Madison smiles as they leave, and returns to his task of tilting at windmills of human frailty.


It is as something of a flash in the pan that I see the project of Otis Elevator and another company in Westchester looking into cogeneration for more economic energy (''Study Rejects Joint Energy Plan,'' Sept. 20). United Technologies Corporation, its parent company, has had an engineering project looking into cogeneration technology near Washington, D.C., under a contract with the Department of Energy. It also has an energy group on the West Coast, looking into windmill power.

It may be the saddest commentary of all on large corporations doing business for shareholders but seemingly unconcerned about their assets. When unions need to fund an energy study to find out how the plant can run more efficiently and obtain the energy it needs, it is time to wonder whether or not management is in any way competent. The cogeneration option is around in many industries as it is in many localities in the form of district heating and energy.

This, by the way, could be an option for areas in Westchester County, which has among the highest utility r ates in the nation. Cogeneration and district heating is working many areas of New York City boroughs, but Consolidated Edison has op posed it for very real economic reasons - that it cuts into its cust omer base and, the argument goes, contributes to pollution. The very fact that our utility supplier has not encouraged any more economic forms of energysupply to its customers - in view of its shar eholders' sinking values- would seem to argue that it is time energy users demanded more innovation with the enormous capital resource s our utility supplier has at hand.

Cogeneration district heating is being proposed and activated in many smaller cities than New York around the nation. Manhattan has some cogeneration but it is from an old practice. In Bronxville, Lawrence Heat and Power Company is a relic of cogeneration, but no longer viable. Like many other utilities around the country, Con Edison could, if it wanted to, propose energy-efficient projects that would bring down the cost to consumers, but it would be doubtless at a severe cost to its many problems. The question is whether consumers should pay the costs of risk capital for a utility in deep trouble or try to find ways to make their own markets more viable. CAROL HIGGINS Bronxville --------------------------------------------------------------------- The Times welcomes letters from readers. Letters for publication should include the writer's name, address and telephone number. Letters should be addressed to The Editor, Westchester Weekly, The New York Times, 229 West 43d Street, New York, N.Y. 10036. Because of the large volume of mail received, we regret that we are unable to acknowledge or return unpublished letters.


It's encouraging when schools such as Louis D. Brandeis High School in Manhattan can excite students from poor minority neighborhoods with great literature. What was even more striking in Deirdre Carmody's report about Brandeis in The Times, though, is not the words of literary giants but those of a young man from Harlem.

They are a testament to the power of good teaching and good books.

He was asked to write what he had learned from Richard Wright's ''Black Boy.'' He wrote: ''The two themes I read in 'Black Boy' that relate to my life are the desire to escape intolerable conditions and the determination to pursue goals against difficult odds. I live in an area of Harlem that once was good. Crime has now reached the neighborhood like a plague. I'm scared more than anything, but I must be strong. I take knives, sticks and chains every time I leave the house. I think about why somebody would threaten my life without any cause. I pray every day that the day will come for me to graduate. I would leave this prison madhouse forever.''

Summary: CRIMINAL Classic Lesson   It's encouraging when schools such as Louis D. Brandeis High School in Manhattan can excite students from poor minority neighborhoods with great literature. What was even more striking in Deirdre Carmody's report about Brandeis in The Times, though, is not the words of literary giants but those of a young man from Harlem.


The Mobil Oil Corporation has made its mark in the advertising world as a tough media street fighter that has pioneered an aggressive style of advertising in explaining oil industry profits, pricing and policy decisions.

Public relations experts have generally given Mobil high marks for its techniques. But yesterday, many said Mobil might have overplayed its aggressiveness and embarrassed itself with a series of price reversals this week in response to new state taxes on oil companies.

''It looked like they were out to gouge the public,'' said an executive vice president at one of the largest public relations firms in New York. ''It was a serious public relations mistake. They ended up going through a lot of grief they didn't have to.''

Herbert Schmertz, a Mobil vice president and director of its public relations, declined to answer questions yesterday about Mobil's response to the tax legislation.

From the moment the New York State Assembly began to consider a package of five taxes designed to aid mass transit, Mobil was in the forefront of opposition, buttonholing legislators and taking out $80,000 worth of ads in 14 state newspapers. Tax Bill Signed Sunday

This effort, however, failed last Sunday when the package, which included a three-quarters of 1 percent tax on oil company gross receipts and a new formula to calculate oil company franchise taxes, was signed into law.

But the biggest setback came this week, when Mobil announced a 3-cent-a-gallon rise in the price of its gasoline. While other companies hung back, saying they were studying the situation, Mobil defended the increase, drawing denunciations from Mayor Koch and pickets at Mobil stations.

In response, Mobil replied that it had considered raising prices even more, but that market conditions would not permit it. This tough talk was followed by more conciliatory words by the end of the week. On closer scrunity, Mobil said, it now agreed with state officials who had contended that Mobil had misunderstood such key provisions of the legislation as its starting date and the fact that much of the tax fell on retail dealers, not on Mobil. Now, Mobil said, the price increase would only be 1.3 cents a gallon. Company spokesmen, however, told reporters that Mobil was still unable to explain the arithmetic used to reach this conclusion. 'Wanted to Make a Point'

''I don't think they intended to handle it more smoothly,'' said Lloyd N. Newman, an executive vice president with the public relations firm of Manning, Selvage & Lee and former president of the New York Chapter of the Public Relations Society of America.

''I think they wanted to make a dramatic point. They have a confrontational style. I personally would not have handled it that way. I try to concilate things. A lot could have been done behind the scenes, but they didn't choose to do so. That's consistent with their approach,'' he said.

''You don't test the waters with trial balloons and then reverse your position,'' said Howard J. Rubenstein, president of Howard J. Rubenstein Associates. ''That destroys your credibility. It is very important to explain all the factors that go into an increase. And you'd better think that out, so it is not an apparent raw grasp for money.'' There Are Some Admirers

Despite this, some public relations experts said yesterday that Mobil's stance had been effective in shaping public opinion more favorably toward the oil companies and had encouraged other oil companies to adopt more forceful advertising campaigns.

Mobil maintains a $21 million budget for all advertising, from sponsorship of public television programs to lobbying legislators. ''I'm an admirer of Mobil as a whole,'' said Graham H. Phillips, managing director of Olgilvy & Mather. ''They've taken a courageous stance on key issues facing us, and as far as I know they've been effective. Before Mobil's public issue campaign, oil companies took a lot of grief from the press. Our research into the attitudes towards the company shows they've had some success with the managerial segment that reads their ads.''

But, Mr. Phillips said, Mobil's high visiblity brings high risk. ''There is danger with an advocacy campaign that you would create more negatives with positives.''

Indeed, at least once during Mobil's antitax campaign, the company's visibility drew attention to its opposition and gave it a large public forum. A Shouting Match

The incident occurred last Tuesday, when the New York Public Interest Research Group, a nonprofit organization, gave a news conference near Mobil headquarters in New York to criticize the increase. When the speaker called for questions from the audience, one voice raised was that of Mr. Schmertz. Soon, a shouting match ensued between the speakers and the Mobil vice president.

The result was that the confrontation received wide news coverage, and the research group, according to Gene M. Russianoff, a staff attorney who was the speaker at the session, got more publicity than if the company had remained silent.

''You had a colorful case of a Mobil Corporation vice president coming down to scream at demonstrators,'' Mr. Russianoff said. ''We got two-minute spots on CBS radio, and I don't think we would have gotten that much coverage alone.''

Illustrations: photo of Herbert Schmertz


A WILD PATIENCE HAS TAKEN ME THIS FAR Poems 1978-1981. By Adrienne Rich. 61 pp. New York: W.W. Norton & Co. Cloth, $12.95. Paper, $4.95.

IMPATIENTLY, my mother used to say to me when I was young, Why is all the poetry you like about sex and death? Maybe she said love and death, but I don't think so. Had she added nature she would have defined for me the major themes of lyric poetry. She wrote occasional poems, observing the beginning of a season, honoring a marriage or a child's birth. Sometimes they were little life histories with a moral point: this was the way life was to be lived, against these odds, at this cost. But whatever the poems were about, they were grounded in female experience, they were personal and they were deeply felt. Ordinary life, she insisted, was to be celebrated, the past was to be used and remembered, and conduct was judged.

Adrienne Rich's poetry is not occasional, but its intent is precisely to celebrate, to bear witness and to forge connections between women's lives and their histories. And it is surely about sex: ''Two women sleeping/ together have more than their sleep to defend.'' We are trying to live in a clearheaded tenderness- I speak not merely of us, our lives are 'moral and ordinary' as the lives of numberless women- It is also fiercely judgmental. ...when did we ever choose to see our bodies strung in bondage and crucifixion across the exhausted air when did we choose to be lynched on the queasy electric signs of midtown when did we choose to become the masturbator's fix

We did not choose to, it was chosen for us, and insofar as we have been powerless before that choice and have not fought against it, we are complicitous in it. In this poem, we is an exclusively female pronoun. But we are men and women both, are we not? And granting, even, that it is women who are most often ''strung in bondage,'' does that truly mean the following: ...I know my imagination lies: in the name of freedom of speech they are lynching us no law is on our side there are no boundaries no-man's-land does not exist. I can never romanticize language again never deny its power for disguise for mystification but the same could be said for music or any form created painted ceilings beaten gold worm-worn Pietas reorganizing victimization frescoes translating violence into patterns so powerful and pure we continually fail to ask are they true for us. From ''The Images''

Adrienne Rich is not asking, she is telling us that these patterns are exclusively of disguise and of violence against women and untrue. But surely there is something else going on in music and art besides the making of female victims. And while I do not underestimate male power, I find suspect her belief in lesbian purity. It is only fair to add that I find questionable the belief in anybody's purity. Her imagination does not lie, and about language she has always been chaste, even severe. What she romanticizes is the self.

In ''The Dream of a Common Language,'' the volume she published in 1978, Rich made this pledge:

...two women, eye to eye measuring each other's spirit, each other's limitless desire, a whole new poetry beginning here.

The poems of ''A Wild Patience'' are not, I think, a whole new poetry, for the uses she makes of language as naming and knowing, of the self in a given and specific place, and of history as an act of the learned and remembering mind have been in her work from the beginning of her career thirty-odd years ago. She is, however, no longer the modest girl Auden introduced in 1951. We are in the presence here of a major American poet whose voice at midcentury in her own life is increasingly marked by moral passion. She is as political, noble and righteous as Shelley was: I want our own earth not the satellites, our world as it is if not as it might be then as it is: male dominion, gangrape, lynching, pogrom the Mohican wraiths in their tracts of leafless birch watching: will we do better? Ourselves as we are in these painful motions of staying cognizant: some part of us always out beyond ourselves knowing knowing knowing From ''The Spirit of Place''

In her best work Adrienne Rich transforms those powerful twin engines of the 19th century which were her legacy, intellect and feeling pitted against each other, into the seriousness of the mind and the delight of the body. It is entirely like her in the long poem ''Culture and Anarchy'' not only to take the title from Matthew Arnold (and to provide a footnote to the source) but to ground the poem in a sort of lyric monologue which she conducts with herself as she considers the 19th-century women's voices that she quotes. There is a politics at work here which is romantic and personal, for she speaks again and again as part of a couple, praising this relationship not only for what it is they share, but also for its charge to her imagination: Upstairs, long silence, then again, the sudden torrent of your typing Rough drafts we share, each reading her own page over the other's shoulder trying to see afresh An energy I cannot even yet take for granted: picking up a book of the nineteenth century, reading there the name of the woman whose book you found in the old town Athenaeum beginning to stitch together


THOMAS HART BENTON, the American regionalist painter who was Jackson Pollock's teacher and Harry S. Truman's favorite artist, has long been associated in the public ken with the earthy art and people of his native Missouri and Middle West. The muralist depicted farmers' scything hay, gaunt Ozark hillbillies, black sharecroppers, soldiers in honkytonks, miners hunched over from years in the pits and riverboats on the Mississippi.

Another view of his work emerges in a biography that emphasizes a less well-known aspect of his creative life -painting the islanders and coastal scenes of Martha's Vineyard, where he spent his summers from 1920 until his death in 1975 at the age of 86. ''Thomas Hart Benton: A Portrait'' by Polly Burroughs is published by Doubleday.

The author, a Vineyard neighbor in the last three years of Benton's life, offers a number of observations based on taped interviews with the artist. Benton, who spent long periods in Europe assimilating its splendors and styles, says that before discovering the Vineyard, he lived ''15 years on my beam-end, rocked by every wave that came along.'' More Repertorial Than Analytical

The biography, more reportorial than analytical, supplements a more comprehensive study of the artist's life and work, Matthew Baigell's ''Thomas Hart Benton,'' published by Abrams. What special vision is there of Benton in the new work?

Miss Burroughs, from her home in the Vineyard, said: ''To me, the most important element is that he quite dramatically turned his back on abstract modern art. Nature got to him on the secluded Massachusetts island. He told me, 'It was in Martha's Vineyard that I first really began an intimate study of the American environment and its people.' Most people thought he was strictly from Missouri in his outlook.

''He was a deeply divided man politically, too. Originally, he had equated American democratic ideals with those proclaimed by Soviet Russia, and he saw communism as an extension of democracy. But in my taped interviews with him in the last summer of his life, he told me that the Stalinist period later proved him right when he turned his back in 1928 on the use of art as social propaganda.'' Lobsterman's Shack in Chilmark

The author recounts the artist's love affair with the Vineyard. It began in 1920, when several fellow-artists and critics in New York, including William Scott and Thomas Craven, informed Benton and his future wife, Rita Piacenza, that a lobsterman's shack could be rented there for as little as $10 a month. The isolated fishing and farming area they settled in was Chilmark, on the western end of the island.

There he painted such subjects as ''Waves,'' ''Man With Boat'' and ''Launching the Boat,'' fusing foaming waves and swirling sky, which Whitney Darrow called ''Benton's hollow and bump'' period.

The western tip of the Vineyard comes to a dramatic climax at Gay Head Cliffs, and Benton executed several versions of the cliffs against the sea. ''The first thing I ever did on the island was a sketch of the Wesquobsque Cliffs,'' on South Beach, the artist told the author.

Benton also portrayed his neighbors. In ''The People of Chilmark,'' he posed his wife, her brother and friends like Mr. Craven engaged in activities from boating to basketball. He explained that the swirling assemblage of figures was a continuation of his Renaissance studies. And he did a self-portrait of himself on South Beach. It included his nephew and wife who, in the eyes of one observer, looked ''less a bathing beauty than a Madonna.'' Flourished During Depression

There are a number of paintings of Menemsha fishermen along the wharves. During Prohibition, Benton painted the local fishermen unloading bootleg liquor. Walking along South Beach, Benton recalled, ''We used to pick up Scotch and rye, good Golden Wedding Canadian Whisky.''

Miss Burroughs says that while most artists barely eked out a living during the Depression, Benton received major commissions; his easel pictures brought up to $5,000. He basked in the spotlight and blasted his artistic adversaries.

''The only place he seemed to let down his guard was on the island,'' the author writes. ''For those closest to him, unless he was drinking, Tom was quiet, reflective, philosophical, embarrassingly frank about himself with an infectious wit, and genuinely sensitive to the poetry of the island.''

Of his role as an American painter, Miss Burroughs quotes Benton: ''Regionalism has become a fashionable term now. It's getting more respectable than when Curry, Grant and I'' - referring to his fellow artists John Steuart Curry and Grant Wood -''were trying to attain the American expression, each in our own way. Although I've never met him, I have great respect for Andy Wyeth. He's a great artist - more more Regionalist than I am, although I was the first, along with Curry and Grant. You see I've covered the country - walking the length and breadth of it for months on end trying to understand it before expressing it. I sketched the whole damn country from New York to Hollywood.''


The last major scheduled test of the space shuttle Columbia was completed yesterday, but space agency officials said that they would not know until late tomorrow if the refurbished insulation on the huge shuttle tank withstood the fueling exercise.

Preliminary inspections, conducted while the 15-story-high external tank was being filled with supercold propellants, disclosed no evidence that any of the cork-epoxy insulation had come unglued, George F. Page, the launching director at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, reported. In a similar fueling operation last January, several large patches of insulation came loose, setting back launching plans and requiring $2.5 million worth of repairs.

A more detailed investigation is to be conducted today and tomorrow after the cylindrical tank's two chambers are purged of the liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen. These are the propellants for the three main rocket engines that are designed to drive the re-usable winged spacecraft most of its way into orbit.

Officials of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration plan an all-day flight-readiness review meeting Tuesday at the Kennedy center. At that time, depending on the results of the fueling test, they are expected to announce a firm launching date, probably no earlier than April 9 or 10. If the inspections reveal any substantial damage to the tanks, however, the Columbia's first orbital flight could be postponed for several weeks.

John W. Young and Capt. Robert L. Crippen of the Navy are set to fly the Columbia around the earth 36 times in 54 1/2 hours, taking off from launching pad 39-A at Cape Canaveral and gliding to a airplanelike landing at Edwards Air Force Base in California. They spent much of the week practicing landings in aircraft at Edwards and training in shuttle simulators at the Johnson Space Center at Houston.

Completion of yesterday's fueling test was delayed three hours because of a minor hydrogen leak at the point where fuel hoses attach to the shuttle. Engineers said that the leak had been sealed and was not considered a serious problem.

Another fueling test, in which even greater stresses were applied to the insulation, was conducted Wednesday and was an apparent success.


HAMBURG, West Germany, Nov. 21— This old German seafaring city has been watching the political winds since the 13th century and observes the present East-West storm with a very canny eye.

Over half of it was totally destroyed in the last world war and has now been restored and modernized with exquisite taste. It is only 20 miles from the Soviet tanks in Communist East Germany. It is also a center of the popular West German publishing houses that have dramatized the European anti-nuclear peace demonstrations.

Accordingly, it is perhaps less impressed by President Reagan's nuclear arms proposals than the present West German Government in Bonn. But even here there is relief that Washington has finally offered a plan for negotiating a pause in the arms race.

This is not much, but at least it is agreed here that there is now hope for a new beginning. Before the President's speech - with Mr. Reagan showing little enthusiasm for arms control talks, with his lieutenants talking casually about limited nuclear war, and the NATO alliance in doubt about the future - this country, already studded with 6,000 nuclear weapons, faced a public revolt against adding new cruise and Pershing 2 nuclear weapons. Mr. Reagan's speech did not quell the anxiety but it certainly helped.

Its effectiveness may be measured first by Chancellor Helmut Schmidt's enthusiastic response, but also by Moscow's savage condemnation of it as a fraud and a deception. We have been listening to Radio Moscow here in Hamburg these last few days. Before President Brezhnev arrived in West Germany, it bombarded this country with an artillery barrage of propaganda, without the slightest suggestion that there was anything in Mr. Reagan's proposals worth considering -all this directed from Moscow at the leaders of the anti-nuclear demonstrators in West Germany.

Moscow's strategy is quite clear. Just as it rejected the Marshall Plan as a trap, and the Baruch, Acheson, Lillienthal and Eisenhower plans for the control of nuclear weapons as American tricks to dominate Europe and therefore threaten the Soviet Union, so it is now condemning the Reagan proposals as another U.S. plot.

By so doing, the Russians apparently hope to encourage the leaders of the anti-nuclear demonstrations in Europe to raise such a public howl in the streets that Mr. Schmidt and the other West European leaders will not be able to agree to the emplacement of any new U.S. cruise or Pershing 2 missiles in Europe and thus leave the Soviet Union's

SS-20 and SS-4 and SS-5 missiles dominating the European balance of power. Yet, it would probably be a mistake to take all these pronouncements out of Moscow and even out of Washington too seriously for the moment. This is not the end, but only the propaganda beginning of a long negotiating process that will start in Geneva at the end of this month.

Between now and then, it might be helpful to avoid, or at least minimize, charges of bad faith, if both sides would try to clarify an important preliminary question.

There is a fundamental conflict in the public statements out of the U.S. and Soviet Governments about the facts of (1) what the present balance of missile power is in Europe and (2) about what that balance or imbalance would be if the U.S. or Soviet proposals were accepted.

So far, the propaganda on both sides has concentrated on the intentions or motives of each other, which is a dangerous guessing game. But the facts can be measured or at least clarified.

President Reagan has defined the facts of the miltiary imbalance, as he sees them. Moscow has rejected Washington's analysis as nonsense and insisted there is no imbalance except the one Mr. Reagan is trying to create with his negotiating proposals.

At best this is a tangle of complicated military and scientific problems, beyond the understanding of most mortals. But it has been thrown into the arena of public opinion, and at least Moscow can take Mr. Reagan's ''facts,'' one by one, and instead of dismissing them as misleading rubbish, publish their answering ''facts'' so that there can be a more rational basis for comparison.

Some progress obviously has been made. The President has finally made an excellent speech, which six months ago might have avoided much trouble with both the allies and the Russians. He has been responsive to the objections of the Soviet Union, the NATO Governments and the leaders of the anti-nuclear movement that he was avoiding negotiations and had no clear proposals for negotiation.

Now, however, he is entitled to a fair hearing from them all. He is getting it from Chancellor Schmidt and the other NATO leaders, and also from some anti-nuclear organizations here.

Yet it is not clear in Hamburg that they will give his concerns as much consideration as he has tardily and reluctantly given theirs. They are not anti-American, they insist, but they are mockingly anti-Reagan, and will not be convinced by his speech until it is followed by serious negotiations on both sides at Geneva.


CALIFORNIA (AL) - Optioned John D'Acquisto, pitcher, to Salt Lake City farm club.

CLEVELAND (AL) - Recalled Ross Grimsley, pitcher, from Charleston farm club. FOOTBALL

HOUSTON (AFC) - Signed following free agents: Mike Gibbons, offensive tackle; Joe Campbell, nose guard; Mike Locklear, tight end, and Paul Miller, wide receiver.

MIAMI (AFC) - Signed Tom Vigorito, running back from Virginia, a fifth-round draft pick.

PITTSBURGH (AFC) - Signed foll [ TEXT OMITTED FROM SOURCE ]

Summary: BASEBALL   CALIFORNIA (AL) - Optioned John D'Acquisto, pitcher, to Salt Lake City farm club.


SAN SALVADOR, May 5— President Alvaro Magana installed his new Cabinet Tuesday night, and it gave virtually equal representation to the three major political parties, as he had promised.

Mr. Magana, in a swearing-in ceremony at the Presidential Palace, said the appointments were a sign that the Government was ''continuing to consolidate its efforts for true national unity.''

Four Cabinet ministers retained the posts they had held under the civilian-military junta, including the Defense Minister, Gen. Jose Guillermo Garcia, and the Foreign Minister, Fidel Chavez Mena, a ranking member of the centrist Christian Democratic Party.

The retention of General Garcia and the lack of a Cabinet role for Gen. Jaime Abdul Gutierrez, who was the ranking military member of the junta, appeared to give the Defense Minister unchallenged control of the armed forces. 2 Other Ministers Retained

Others retaining their posts were Minister of Labor Julio Alfredo Samayoa, secretary general of the Christian Democrat, and Treasury Minister Jorge Eduardo Tenorio, an independent.

A Christian Democrat, Carlos Aquilino Duarte, was named Minister of Education, and another Christian Democrat, yet to be named, will take the post of Advocate General for the Poor.

Members of the ultra-rightist National Republican Alliance were given four ministries. They are Miguel Muyshondt Yudice, agriculture; Manuel Pacas Castro, economy; Benedicto Morataya, external commerce, and Col. Fernando Berrios Escobar, public health.

The party, known as Arena, had run on a platform attacking social and economic changes, such as the land redistribution program, established by the Christian Democrats during the two-year regime of the junta. But whether Arena will be able to use its new posts to alter the programs substantially will depend in part on the action of the Constituent Assembly and in part on who is named to head the Salvadoran Institute for Agrarian Transformation. Advisory Post Filled

Among other major appointments, Francisco Jose Guerrero, a leader of the conservative National Conciliation Party, was named Minister of the Presidency. It is potentially a major advisory post, and Mr. Guerrero, a skilled politician, is expected to use it fully.

Members of the National Conciliation Party will serve in three other posts. They are Ramiro Arturo Mendez Azahar, Minister of Justice; Pio Arnulf Ayala, Minister of Public Works, and Mario Rivera, Attorney General.

A conservative independent, Manuel Antonio Robles, will be Minister of Planning, and another independent, Manuel Isidro Sermeno, will be Minister of the Interior.

The Consituent Assembly unanimously ratified the appointments.


LONDON, Jan. 14— The sinister Christmas issue of a Communist Party paper blaming Poland's troubles on Jews provides a glimpse of the power struggle under military rule.

The paper, the Voice of Szczecin, was published under strict censorship so presumably it has police as well as official party endorsement. It said Jews had been causing trouble for Poland since 1947, and recently tried to take power through dissidents.

This kind of smear is not new. Anti-Semitic graffiti have appeared in Warsaw. Leading Solidarity advisers have been accused of links with ''Zionist centers.'' A shadowy organization called Grunwald emerged a year ago distributing nationalist and anti-Semitic propaganda in a way that to many Poles smacked of police provocation. Grunwald was the site of a battle in 1410 when the Poles beat the Teutonic knights, a medieval symbol.

But the Szczecin paper was far more overt than anything before in giving formal Communist sanction to anti-Semitic demagogy in an effort to divert hostility to the regime.

Similar attempts have been made at almost every time of ferment in Poland since World War II. In 1956, the Soviet Ambassador was caught red-handed (for once the cliche is apposite) distributing unsigned anti-Jewish tracts from his limousine in the countryside. He was replaced afterward, but the campaign was maintained by hard-line Polish Communists.

In the 1967-68 purge of intellectuals and students, the hard-liners made widespread attacks against Jews in their struggle for dominance in the party. The leader of the purge was Mieczyslaw Moczar, a high party official, and a close associate was Stefan Olszowski, now a Politburo member in charge of Polish media.

Mr. Olszowski has played a wavering role in the Polish upheaval, sometimes appearing as a Moscow favorite and sometimes claiming moderate views, but always managing to scramble to the winning side.

The local party committee in Szczecin, a major Baltic port and industrial city, is known as particularly hard-line. Recently exiled Poles interpret the Christmas tirade as a veiled attack on Deputy Prime Minister Mieczyslaw Rakowski, long a moderate and openly opposed to the use of anti-Semitism, and perhaps also on Gen. Wojciech Jaruzelski, who always refrained from joining the campaign. Mr. Rakowski and Mr. Olszowski have been open ri vals in the past.

It feels demeaning to have to read the entrails of such dirty tactics to discern the political battles going on be-neath the taut surface of the military regime. But it is important because it is a sign that whatever General Jaruzelski's intentions, he and his generals are managing no better now to overcome the orthodox factions in the party who blocked efforts at effective reform and the ''renewal'' that he promised to restore.

There are hardly any Jews left in Poland. Some 30,000, the bulk of the tiny community that survived the war, emigrated more or less voluntarily during the 1968 purges. Many of them were Communists, and it is true that Jews played an important role in the security police that imposed the regime under Stalin. Memories of Polish anti-Semitism and the idealistic dogma of Communism in opposition to the Nazis had drawn them in.

Clearly, the Szczecin paper and the campaign in general were seeking to stir resentments provoked as a result, an attempt to identify Jews with Stalinism - as though the present hard-liners had been honest patriots.

It is a mindless and desperate attempt to find scapegoats. But it is also a general reminder that historic injustice evoked as a pretext to perpetuate hatred serves only the cause of injustice. No nation is pure. Each has suffered and inflicted suffering.

Ugly as the use of anti-Semitism is - in Poland of all places, where millions of Jews were murdered by the Nazis - there are ironies that illuminate the present situation.

Even with resort to outright lies, it isn't easy to concoct propaganda to support the return to terror as the basis of government. Calling for ''national reconciliation'' makes it hard to blame Poles for the debacle, except for a few so-called extremists and discredited Communist leaders.

So an outside demon is needed. The longstanding target, West Germany, is excluded now. West Germany is Poland's biggest creditor, and German-Soviet rapprochement has spoiled the argument that Poland must look to Moscow for defense against German revenge. Moscow may denounce the U.S., but that works poorly in Poland, which still hopes for American aid and where one-fourth of the people have relatives in the United States. America is popular.

That leaves the old cry against Jews. With biting Polish wit, a Solidarity adviser now abroad said: ''These people are going to compromise anti-Semitism in Poland. If they go on, they'll make 'international Zionism' popular.''

If a final proof of the bankruptcy of the Polish Communists were needed, the Voice of Szczecin has given it.


BY some accounts, it dates from the 1920's, but many people believe it actually got started when the author Carter G. Woodson founded Negro History Week in the 1930's, designating it the second week in February.

Whatever its origin, Black History Month has become a tradition each February, bringing with it special performances, films, lectures, exhibits and celebrations, many of them free.

Here is a sampling of the offerings scheduled this year: The celebrations open with flair tomorrow night in ''An Evening With Geoffrey Holder,'' the actor, director, dancer, choreographer, impressionistic painter, designer, composer and author. Mr. Holder is said to do ''a little bit of everything'' in the evening, all of it amusing and entertaining. He will appear at Kendall Hall of Trenton State College at 8 P.M., and admission is $1.

Nikki Giovanni, the poet, will appear at the college on Feb. 17 with a creative writing session at 1 P.M., an autograph session at 4 P.M. and a lecture and poetry presentation at 8 P.M. in the Brower Student Center ($1).

The school is also offering a free ''Gospel Extravaganza'' at 8 P.M. in Kendall Hall Thursday; a panel on Carter G. Woodson, who also wrote ''The Miseducation of the Negro'' in 1931, in the student center at 7:30 P.M. Friday.

The conflict between Booker T. Washington and W.E.B.DuBois will be examined by Joseph Ellis at 8 P.M. Feb. 8, and L. D. Frazier, a singer, lecturer and poet, will speak on ''Evolution of the Black Religious Sound and Its Impact on Contemporary American Music'' at 8 P.M. Feb. 11 ($5), both in the student center.

The college is on Route 31 in Ewing Township. Information: (609) 771-2467 or (609) 771-2264.

Maya Angelou, the singer, dancer, poet, actress and writer perhaps best known for her autobiographical ''I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings,'' will speak at Kean College in Union at 8:15 P.M. on Feb. 9.

On the 18th at 8:15 P.M., Ossie Davis and Ruby Dee, the actors, will appear in ''Inside/Out,'' a two-person celebration of the black experience that includes everything from traditional African folk tales and spirituals to modern black poetry.

Both evenings will be in the college's Wilkins Theater. Tickets are free and may be picked up at the Student Activities Office in the College Center Building or the theater box office. If space remains, tickets will be available at the door. The school is on North Avenue, near Union's border with Elizabeth. Information: (201) 527-2044, (201) 527-2566 or (201) 527-2337.

Two of the most extensive programs for Black History Month are at the Newark Public Library and the Newark Museum, and everything is free.

The museum is getting started Saturday with an exhibit of paintings and sculpture. It includes works by the 19th-century artists Joshua Johnston, Edward M. Bannister and Henry Ossawa Tanner, the early 20th-century artists Charles White, Hale Woodruff and Beauford Delaney, and such contemporary artists as Romare Bearden, Sam Gilliam, Barbara Chase-Riboud and Ben Jones. The curator, Fearn Thurlow, will give a gallery tour at 2 P.M. next Sunday. The exhibit continues through May 15, and two related films, ''Bearden Plays Bearden'' and ''Two Centuries of Black American Art,'' will be shown at 1:30 and 3 P.M. Feb. 28.

Children's programs are scheduled on Saturdays, with a performance at 1:30 this Saturday of ''Benjamin Banneker,'' a historical play for youngsters on an 18th-century black astronomer and scientist who became a symbol for the abolitionist argument for racial equality.

On Feb. 27 at 1:30, the Chuck Davis Dance Company will give a children's performance, and three films -''Umoja: Tiger and the Big Wind,'' ''Kuumba: Simon's New Sound'' and ''The Seven Wishes of Joanna Peabody'' - will be shown at 1:30 and 3 P.M.

Richard Alston, an East Orange pianist, will give a concert at 3 P.M. next Sunday, and the Bobby Watson Quintet will perform on the 21st at 3 P.M.

The museum, at 49 Washington Street, is open daily from noon to 5 P.M. Admission is free. Information: (201) 733-6600. The Newark Public Library has scheduled several lectures and discussions. At 6:30 P.M. Thursday, Dr. Amos N. Wilson, author of ''Development al Psychology of the Black Child,'' will speak, and at 6:30 P.M. on Feb. 10, the speakers will be Jerome Audige, founder of the New Jerse y Haitian -American Cultural Foundation, along with StateSenator Wynona Lipman and Newark Councilman Sharpe James.

On Feb. 25, also at 6:30 P.M., the film producer and director Warrington Hudlin will show his award-winning film ''Street Corner Stories'' and comment on it. And on Feb. 27 at 2 P.M., Susan Robeson will discuss her book ''The Whole World in His Hands,'' on her grandfather, Paul Robeson.

A new exhibit, ''The Black Woman,'' opens tomorrow in the secondfloor gallery and will continue through April 16. It includes photographs, flyers, books, posters, magazines and other items.

Films will be shown each Tuesday at 2 P.M. They include ''Black History, Lost, Stolen or Strayed?'' and ''The Black Woman'' this Tuesday; ''Adam Clayton Powell'' and ''El Hajj Malik El Shabazz (Malcolm X)'' Feb. 9; ''Last Grave at Dimbaza'' Feb. 16, and ''Lorraine Hansberry: The Black Experience in the Creation of Drama'' and ''A Raisin in the Sun'' Feb. 23.

A black book fair will be held in the lobby from 11:30 A.M. to 3 P.M. Saturday. The library is at 5 Washington Street. Hours are 9 A.M. to 9 P.M. Monday, Wednesday and Thursday; 9 A.M. to 6 P.M. Tuesday and Friday, and 9 A.M. to 5 P.M. Saturday. For more details, call Anthony Vacca at (201) 733-7771.

Some of the origins of black art and music will be explored in an exhibit on West African Art at Ramapo College in Mahwah. The exhibit, consisting of artifacts lent by the National Museum of African Art of the Smithsonian Institution, will be in the college's gallery through Feb. 24.

It includes pieces from three tribes, the Dogon of Mali, the Yoruba of Nigeria and the Senufo of the Ivory Coast, such as tribal masks, rhythm pounders, embroidered hand-woven robes, sculptures and headdresses.

A gallery talk, ''The Art of the Dogon, Yoruba and Senufo,'' will be given Tuesday at 7 P.M. by Professor Douglas Fraser of the Art History Department at Columbia University.

And on Feb. 9, Dr. David Welch of Ramapo's music department, will discuss West African music from the religious, cultural and social aspects, including material gathered during a recent sabbatical there.

The college is at 505 Ramapo Valley Road (Route 202). Gallery hours are 11 A.M. to 4 P.M. Monday and Wednesday and 11 A.M. to 8 P.M. Tuesday (closed Feb. 15). Admission is free. Information: (201) 825-2800.

Another comprehensive exhibit, created by the Smithsonian for the Bicentennial, is ''The Black Presence in the Era of the American Revolution,'' which will be at the Bergen Community Museum from Feb. 4 to Feb. 28.

It includes historical portraits, manuscripts and documentation showing the role of black Americans from the Boston Massacre of 1770 to the present, along with an exhibit of paintings and graphics by 25 well-known black artists, such as Romare Beardon, Elizabeth Cattlet and Jacob Lawrence. A number of traditional West African ceremonial art objects are also on display. A separate part focuses on the ''New Jersey Presence in the Era of the American Revolution.''

The museum is at East Ridgewood Avenue and Farview Avenue. Hours are 10 A.M. to 5 P.M. Tuesday to Saturday and 1 to 5 P.M. Sunday. Information: (201) 265-1248.


06/03/2015 AT 06:50 PM EDT

is springing for a meaningful pilgrimage for Rome's most vulnerable citizens.

The pontiff, who has made helping the poor and downtrodden a hallmark of his papacy, has reportedly footed the bill for two busloads of homeless people to visit the famed Shroud of Turin in advance of his own trip to see the artifact many believe to be Jesus Christ's sacred burial cloth.

, Pope Francis, 78, paid for 42 people who frequent a soup kitchen run by a parish near the Vatican to board a bus on Wednesday bound for Turin. The trip includes an overnight stay in Catholic shelters before a visit to the revered artifact on Thursday.

Don Pablo Castiglia, deputy parish priest of the Santa Lucia parish that runs the soup kitchen, told CBS that Bishop Konrad Krajewski, the pope's almoner, was seen giving each rider some pocket money, calling it a "caress" from Pope Francis.

The group reportedly included not only Catholics, but Orthodox Christians and Muslims as well.

The pope is expected to pay for another 70 homeless people to visit the shroud next week, prior to his own visit later this month.

"[The gesture will] prepare the way for the Pope's visit which is scheduled to take place on 21 June: his poor arrive before him," Bishop Krajewski explained in a statement to Italian newspaper

Summary: The pontiff is springing for the trip in advance of his own pilgrimage to the famed shroud later this month