New to WP, wish to set up a non-blog website

Hi,

I am new to WP. I’m hoping to be able to use it to create a very simple website (without a blog at this point). All that I need are two pages: a “home” page containing text, a picture and links to other pages (top horizontal), and a second “news” page, were I can keep my followers informed of upcoming future talks and other events.

I know nothing about coding and I’m trying to achieve the above in as short a time as possible.

Being more specific, here’s what I would like to do with my home page:
1) Start with a blank page
2) Have two links at the top: Home, News
3) Below the links I would like to have a picture and some text, both allowing me dragging and resizing.
4) I would also like to redo the title, and edit the meta description and meta keywords.

Very minimalistic.

For the News page, I would just like to be able to put in new entries of upcoming events and delete those that are done.

Your help is much appreciated