Women

Alysia Montaño says it's a "visual clue" of her strength and femininity. The yellow flower in the U.S. Olympian's hair was more than that during the first race of the "USA vs. The World" showcase series at Saturday's Penn Relays. It was a sure sign to the 48,871 spectators on a spectacularly sunny afternoon in Franklin Field that something special was happening on the track. Running in splendid isolation on the anchor of the first 4x800 in the 13-year-old history of the popular series of world-class relay races, Montaño brought the baton, the crowd and that bright artificial flower home in record-setting time.

Amanda Steinberg was 2 years old when her parents divorced. She grew up driven by something her mother stressed: Never be financially dependent on anyone. Now 35 and a Mount Airy mother of two going through her own divorce, Steinberg became "a maniacal entrepreneur," she says. She had 15 people working for her by the time she was 23 and had formed six companies in 10 years specializing in website development, app creation, and consulting. She's not too proud to admit that "most of them failed.

WE'LL NEVER know what might have happened had Villanova's women maybe had some fresher legs to run in yesterday afternoon's 4 x 1,500-meter race at the Penn Relays. But the Wildcats used three of the same people - all underclassmen - who had helped them win the distance medley relay for the second straight year the day before, an event that Michigan and Oregon elected to skip. So naturally, it came down to those three teams. And in the end, Michigan and Oregon had just a little bit more, even though anchor Emily Lipari did about all she could to at least give Villanova a chance.

Villanova men's track coach Marcus O'Sullivan joked that the victory by the Wildcats' women in the distance medley relay on the opening day of the Penn Relays took a little heat off his team. But it's the Penn Relays, and the Wildcats are expected to perform well. That's something both the men and women did Friday in their races although they fell short of victory. The men got a terrific anchor leg from freshman Jordy Williamsz in the men's DMR but wound up second to Penn State.

Villanova had pointed for almost seven weeks to this race - the women's distance medley relay at the Penn Relays Carnival. The Wildcats had suffered a disappointing loss to Michigan in the event at the NCAA indoor championships and wanted to make amends. Great idea, but there was a hitch: Michigan decided not to compete in Thursday's race at Franklin Field. Villanova's response: no problem. With Nicky Akande blowing the race open on the third leg, and anchor Emily Lipari running comfortably and confidently, the Wildcats picked up a decisive victory in 10 minutes, 58.84 seconds.

In any other year, their red uniforms would have blurred into the kaleidescope of color at the world's oldest and largest track and field carnival. This year was different for the women who wore those bright tops emblazoned with six large letters: "B-O-S-T-O-N. " "Everybody was saying something to us," said Boston University's Nikko Brady, a senior from New Castle, Del., who ran the opening leg on the Terriers' 4x100 relay team at the Penn Relays on Thursday. "Everybody was like, 'We got you, Boston.

THERE WAS a time when it seemed as if Villanova's women won just about every race they entered at the Penn Relays. Particularly, the distance medley. From, 1984-97, they won it nine times. Then, not so much. Last April, they finished first for the first time since 2006, and 11th time overall. Yesterday afternoon, they took the opening day's marquee event once again, easily, for their first repeat in nearly 2 decades. "It's always a thrill," said coach Gina Procaccio, who was part of the '87 victory.

JERUSALEM - In a landmark ruling on the struggle over prayer at Judaism's holiest shrine, an Israeli court ruled Thursday that women could legally pray at the Western Wall wearing prayer shawls, contrary to Orthodox practice enforced at the site. The ruling came after a string of incidents in recent months in which police detained women who wore the shawls while worshiping at the shrine, saying they had broken a law requiring prayer according to "local custom. " The arrests created an uproar in American Jewish communities and exposed a divide between Israel, where the Orthodox rabbinate has authority in Jewish religious matters, and the Jewish diaspora, where the more liberal Reform and Conservative movements are dominant.

Ain Gordon and Nadine Patterson have walked the ground in Philadelphia. They've been to the spot, on North Sixth Street, where Pennsylvania Hall stood until it was burned to ground, three days after opening in 1838, by a mob worked to a frenzy by the very idea of women speaking out in public. New York's Gordon - actor, writer, director - and Philadelphia-based Patterson - filmmaker and photographer - have visited the city's historic graveyards, searched through records at the Historical Society of Pennsylvania and the Library Company.