The United States actress and humanitarian advocate Mia Farrow has helped launch a United Nations-supported polio vaccination campaign in Chad, a country which holds the second highest number of registered polio cases in the world.

“To see the eradication of polio would be very meaningful to me personally,” said Ms. Farrow, who had polio as a child and whose son, adopted from India, is paraplegic from polio.

“The challenge here in Chad is to convince all parents that the vaccine is safe and to reach every child, even in the most remote places,” she said at the launch ceremony on Friday.

The vaccination campaign, which is supported by the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF), is part of a global push to eradicate the crippling disease. Last month, India made history by going a full year without a single case. Its success has been largely attributed to a major vaccination drive with millions of volunteers combing the country to vaccinate every single child, as well as an increase in access to clean water, sanitation and nutrition to help children absorb the vaccine and prevent the virus from spreading.

Last year, Chad, which was once polio free, had 132 new cases involving children, with only Pakistan registering more children affected by the disease in 2011. Chad has also exported the polio virus to other neighbouring countries, such as the Central African Republic (CAR) and experts fear that the great strides made in ending polio could be rolled back.

Ms. Farrow, a UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador since 2000, is now visiting the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), which has also seen a re-emergence of the disease. During her trip, Ms. Farrow will visit the Kalemi region before heading to Bukavu in South Kivu province.

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One year after suffering a brutal sexual assault in Egypt, Lara Logan disclosed new details about what it was like coming home after the harrowing attack.

Logan, CBS News’ chief foreign affairs correspondent, suffered “a brutal and sustained sexual assault” in Cairo’s Tahrir Square while covering the celebrations following Hosni Mubarak’s resignation.

Logan later recounted the horrific experience, and revealed that she suffers from a latent form of post-traumatic stress disorder. She vowed to return to Afghanistan and other conflict zones, but decided not to report from Middle Eastern countries in the midst of protests.

T: The New York Times Style Magazine recently profiled Logan, who is scheduled to return to reporting from Afghanistan this summer. CBS News chief Jeff Fager praised her resilience, and said that her children have changed her “drive to be in the frontlines.”

In the interview, Logan recounted the conversation she had with her husband six weeks after the attack. The assault had taken place one week after Egyptian officials took her into custody overnight, and her husband said that in each case, he did not know if he would ever see her again.

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When Marlee Matlin was just 18 months old, a family friend discovered Marlee was deaf. Marc, Marlee’s brother, says her diagnosis changed the family dynamic.

Marketers don’t control their brand… the consumer does.

It’s been the battle cry of social media enthusiasts since The Cluetrain Manifesto was first published over a decade ago. If “markets are conversations,” as the book says, then we can’t be so presumptuous as to assume that the marketers can both control or lead the conversation, can we? It’s actually a myth to think that consumers now control the brand, simply because those consumers can say (and publish) whatever they want and feel about a brand in the online channels.

In the past few weeks, I’ve come across a handful of blogs that are regurgitating this myth about consumers and control. As someone who spends the majority of my time in the boardrooms of some of the biggest brands in the world, please trust me when I tell you that the marketers are firmly in control of the brand.

What? The brands now control the brand message?

Not exactly. The brands control the brand. The consumers can (somewhat) influence the brand message. Brands still choose their products and services, they decide on the pricing, placement and promotion of the brand. They work (either internally or with an advertising agency) to set the tone, feeling and emotions that they want the brand to capture in the zeitgeist of the world. I’d even argue that they’re getting increasingly smarter when it comes to social media and are doing a fairly good job of connecting and engaging in many of the online and mobile channels to give their brands a more human voice and offer consumers an opportunity to have some kind of real interaction between real human beings. When everything goes the way it was planned, it is poetry in motion. When it goes awry, it can get pretty ugly. Either way, the company still decides the brand’s path. The are firmly in control.

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Twenty-five years ago, the 59th annual Academy Awards took place on March 30, 1987, and I had an A-ticket to the show. I was 21 years and 218 days old when I received the Academy Award for Best Actress. I had just stepped into an imaginary world that I’d seen at a distance for years.

In addition to my nomination for Best Actress, I was also asked to be a presenter. I asked if I could present Best Achievement in Sound. Though some at the time thought it was in poor taste and didn’t see the humor (producer Samuel Goldwyn, Jr. thought it was a funny idea), I thought it was great. Hey, this year if the The Artist could rightfully garner Oscar attention for telling a wonderful story with actors barely uttering a single word, why couldn’t it work back then in vice versa fashion for me? That’s my sense of humor, and I’ve never wanted to be treated with kid gloves.

Theoni V. Aldredge had designed my dress for the Oscars. Back then, there were no dress giveaways on the red carpet. As far as I recall, you just bought a dress off the rack. Though I was just a 21-year-old kid with a modest pocket-book, thankfully, Paramount and my publicists hooked me up with Ms. Aldredge who had won multiple Tonys for her costume work on Broadway and an Oscar for her work in The Great Gatsby. The lavender dress she designed had a blend of elegance and romance that I loved. With that beautiful dress, I decided to wear my hair up. Unfortunately, at the last moment, a combination of events left me walking out on the red carpet with baby’s breath in my hair (my hairdresser’s idea) and oversized black horned-rimmed glasses (my boyfriend’s idea who said sarcastically when I wanted to take them off, “You’re not a model”). If I had it all to take back, I would’ve ditched the baby’s breath and glasses. What can I say; it was my youth and it was the ’80s.

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The Daily Beast
February 20, 2012
By Peggy Noonan

To write about Harvey Weinstein is to face, first, the history of past brutalities. He’s invariably described in profiles as coarse, threatening, given to outbursts, terrifying, and a thug. Boorish and angry are usually in there, too. At the recent Golden Globes, Madonna called him “The Punisher” and Meryl Streep referred to him as “God.” The French actors from his critically acclaimed and award-winning film The Artist called him “Le Boss.”

Multi-Emmy-winning Family Guy creator Seth MacFarlane will release his debut album on 22nd May 2012. Entitled ’Music Is Better Than Words’, the album sees MacFarlane singing some of the hidden gems of the ‘40s and ‘50s big band era and features duets with Norah Jones and Sara Bareilles.

The creative force behind Family Guy, American Dad! and The Cleveland Show, a franchise with an estimated worth of approximately $2 billion, TV producer and actor Seth MacFarlane’s work has garnered four Emmys and seven Emmy nominations, including one in the Outstanding Comedy Series category.  MacFarlane is also currently working on his directorial feature film debut, TED, which will star Mila Kunis and Mark Wahlberg, and is producing The Flintstones, a 21st century version of the classic animated comedy.

A music enthusiast, MacFarlane is known as one of the few showrunners in Hollywood who utilizes a complete orchestra on a weekly basis to score his shows. An experienced live performer, having played to sold out audiences at the Royal Albert Hall and New York’s Carnegie Hall, MacFarlane voices many of his shows’ various characters and sings on almost all the musical numbers. His voice has been celebrated for its phrasing, richness and consistency, and he jumped at the chance to record his own album. “It’s rare in this day and age to have the opportunity to create an album that celebrates the classic, sophisticated sound of rich, lush swing orchestrations. It was an absolute joy to sing this music.”

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CLARKSVILLE, TENN. — Byron Pitts has come a long way since struggling as a stuttering, functionally illiterate boy.

Pitts, who spoke at Austin Peay State University Monday night, said he has used his struggles in life to his advantage, and they have catapulted him to his dream job as a contributing journalist on “60 Minutes.”

Despite being raised in a single-parent household, growing up poor and told he was mentally retarded and functionally illiterate when he was a child, Pitts said he was determined that he wanted to learn to read and go to college. His mother, who passed away in December, told him, “Smart people have to think through their problems. We have to wrestle with ours.”

By college, Pitts had read only one book for enjoyment, “The Old Man and the Sea,” but mostly because he liked the way the cover looked. In fact, his mother didn’t want him to read it because she thought it was too difficult and would only frustrate the improving reader. He read it anyway.

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Do you know who John Tyler was? What was your first thought? What about James Garfield? No, that is not the full name of the cat in the cartoon! Both of these men are past Presidents of The United States. This week we celebrate Presidents’ Day. Do you know who the twelfth president of the US was? Quick, no running through some poem or little song in your head you learned in third grade. I have no idea who he was; I’m not even going to try and lie about it. Do you know which President died one month into office? Or who the tallest President was? Do you know how many Presidents never attended college or which President was responsible for the annexation of Texas? Isn’t it amazing that this is a day that we set aside each year to honor these men, and yet we know so little about them. What did you do February 21st to celebrate Presidents’ Day?

There really are no traditions set aside for Presidents’ Day as there are for Thanksgiving and Christmas. Some people get a holiday; some don’t. However, this nation has been shaped and molded by the actions of these men we refer to as Presidents. These 44 men have served this country in a way that is unimaginable to me. Most of them go into office facing insurmountable odds. They are expected to make split second life alternating decisions, bring people together in times of stress and strife, and fight for the American way. It’s really hard for me to fathom how they juggle all this, and still try to make time for their personal life. There was actually only one president who was never married. Hmmmm, wondering who he was aren’t you? It was James Buchanan. If you said, oh yeah…you did not know that! Maybe the tradition that we can start is to try and honor these men with our actions and our choices.

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On a blustery weekend afternoon, I am sitting in the living room of Lara Logan’s house in a leafy neighborhood in Washington, D.C., waiting for the CBS reporter to come home from the office. From my perch on a leather sectional sofa, I can see a plastic children’s fort in the garden; hear the creak of the front porch swing; marvel at the length of wooden train track snaking across the floor; peruse a guide to world armies; sip a cup of Nescafé with Coffee-mate. Also anticipating Logan’s arrival are her husband, Joseph Burkett, a work-at-home Congressional liaison, who is doing what all work-at-home dads do, i.e. strategically skirting past areas populated by children; Joseph and Lola, ages 3 and nearly 2, in pj’s and pacifiers, just up from their naps and on the prowl for snacks; and Ruby, the nanny, installed at the kitchen table from which she can attend to everyone’s needs with minimal motion. Logan, a “60 Minutes” correspondent, is now 90 minutes late, but one gets the sense from Burkett’s periodic updates (“she’s just been held up, leaving soon”) that a long office stint on a weekend is not out of the ordinary. When she eventually arrives — in flat boots and skinny fleece, looking freckled, tousled, sporty — she is greeted by the siege on Mommy, an attack of love and neediness all working mothers know too well. “I don’t think about career ambition,” she tells me later. “I don’t think about access. I think about how fast can I get home. That’s it.”

What it means to come home, for Lara Logan, 40, has changed dramatically in the past year. Last February, it was this house to which she returned after being attacked and sexually violated in Cairo’s Tahrir Square by members of the crowd gathered to celebrate the revolutionary end of Hosni Mubarak’s 30-year regime. She is reluctant to discuss the details of that experience again — she gave one interview to CBS last May — but it is clear that she and those close to her are still coming to terms with the ramifications of it for her family and her career. “What happened to Lara is as horrible an event as can happen to a human being,” says Jeff Fager, the chairman of CBS News.

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