People talk 5/23/03

Jean-Paul Gaultier moves to Hermes

PARIS -- Hermes International SA has selected provocative designer Jean-Paul Gaultier to create its women's ready-to-wear collections.

Hermes, the luxury-goods maker known for its silk scarves and leather accessories, said Gaultier will take over after the spring-summer 2004 collection is presented in October.

Departing designer Martin Margiela, who has worked at Hermes for six years, will continue to design for his own fashion label.

Although he's 51, Gaultier is still described as the "enfant terrible" of French fashion. He's created conical bras for pop star Madonna and designed way-out costumes for Spanish film director Pedro Almodovar.

There will be no change in the commercial relationship between the company and Gaultier's fashion business, Hermes said Monday.

New York City mayor wants to meet J.Lo

NEW YORK -- He's a multibillionaire, the mayor of New York City and someone who'd have no trouble finding a date.

But that hasn't stopped Michael Bloomberg from becoming another star-struck fan when the topic turns to Jennifer Lopez.

"Jennifer Lopez is another great New Yorker," the mayor told reporters Wednesday. "She comes from the Bronx, and I'm here to ... umm ... make sure that I'm willing to shake hands."

Lopez is making a film in Canada and was unavailable for comment Wednesday. But the radio station, WKTU-FM, has launched an effort for the two to meet.

The twice-married Lopez, 32, is engaged to actor Ben Affleck. The 61-year-old mayor, who is divorced, has a high-profile relationship with state banking Superintendent Diana Taylor.

Laryngitis sidelines famed Italian tenor

Italian tenor Salvatore Licitra has withdrawn from his first scheduled performances of Giordano's "Andrea Chenier" next month because of laryngitis.

His manager, J.F. Mastroianni, said Licitra had sung Riccardo in Verdi's "Un Ballo in Maschera" in Zurich, Switzerland, "when he was coming down with bronchitis."

"The doctor in Italy said, 'Let's play it safe and just take some vocal rest,"' Mastroianni said Wednesday. "I saw yesterday these reports on the Internet: He did not hemorrhage the chord, he did not burst the chord."

Einstein's papers posted on the InternetHundreds of Albert Einstein's scientific papers, personal letters and humanist essays are now on the Internet.

The documents, some dating back to Einstein's youth, can be found on a Web site run by the Einstein Papers Project at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena and the Albert Einstein Archives at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

The papers became available Monday at http://www.alberteinstein.info. Among the documents are Einstein's papers on relativity, the quantum theory of light and matter, and education, international affairs and pacifism.

The Web site also offers travel diaries and 3,000 digitized images.

Einstein, who died in 1955 at age 76, left the original documents to the Hebrew University in his will.

The Einstein Papers Project is working on publishing 25 volumes of Einstein's writings. So far it has completed eight volumes.

Desmond Tutu receives medal from Columbia

NEW YORK -- Columbia University's Teachers College has bestowed a medal for distinguished service on South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu.

"You who are going out as teachers have an incredible vocation," Tutu, a former high school teacher, told 425 graduates at Tuesday's commencement.

"Each one of us is a masterpiece in the making," he said. "How do you know if in your class you may have a Mother Teresa?

"How do you know if you have a Nelson Mandela? How do you know if you have a Dalai Lama?"

Tutu, 71, spent the past semester as a scholar-in-residence at the University of North Florida in Jacksonville. He won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1984 for his battle against apartheid in South Africa.

Columbia also awarded medals to folk singer Pete Seeger and the Rev. Dr. James A. Forbes Jr., senior minister at Riverside Church.

Photographer releases Bob Marley pics

KINGSTON, Jamaica -- Lee Jaffe says he was "in the right place at the right time" when he photographed Bob Marley and the Wailers as they worked on 1975's "Natty Dread," their breakthrough album.

"I was very conscious of the fact that the Wailers were doing something culturally significant, and being a photographer it was only natural for me to capture that on film," the 54-year-old Jaffe said recently.

His new book, "One Love: Life With Bob Marley and the Wailers" (W.W. Norton & Co.), contains 240 pictures shot by Jaffe over a three-year period. "I guess I was in the right place at the right time," he said.

-- From wire reports