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"I've been threatening to be in a musical for hundreds of years at this point," said Lauren Ambrose (here at the Whitby Hotel).Credit...Natalia Mantini for The New York Times She made her name on the TV drama "Six Feet Under." But her last musical? That was "Oklahoma!" in high school. Now she's playing Eliza Doolittle in "My Fair Lady." "I've been threatening to be in a musical for hundreds of years at this point," said Lauren Ambrose (here at the Whitby Hotel). When the actress Lauren Ambrose arrives in the lobby at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, it takes a minute to recognize that she is indeed Lauren Ambrose. A wide brimmed hat hides her flaring hair. A wool overcoat hides the rest of her. A girlish, clean scrubbed face peeks out in between. That half hidden face will soon be more visible and a lot dirtier when "My Fair Lady," the 1956 Lerner and Loewe musical, begins previews on March 15 at the Vivian Beaumont Theater. Ms. Ambrose, who has been peripheral to the public eye for a few years now, will play Eliza Doolittle, the pert cockney flower seller who transforms her life through sheer force of will and correct vowel placement. She had come to the Met because an art historian cousin had tipped her off to a Renoir portrait of the first Eliza, the Austrian actress Tilla Durieux who created the role in George Bernard Shaw's "Pygmalion," Lerner and Loewe's source text. She thought that maybe it would help her open up "this antique play, find a new way through it," she said. In 2006, she made her Broadway debut as an unhappy wife in Clifford Odets's "Awake and Sing!," directed by Mr. Sher. The next year she was, in Ben Brantley's words, "a Juliet truly to die for," in Shakespeare in the Park's "Romeo and Juliet," outshining her Romeo, Oscar Isaac. She returned to the park in 2008 as a turbulent Ophelia and to Broadway in 2009 in Eugene Ionesco's "Exit the King." Since then it's mostly been TV movies, sporadic series appearances and a few pilots that didn't take. As an actor, she has force, she has nerve, she is queen of the ugly cry. She looks like a Dante Gabriel Rossetti model, minus the consumption, and she has an emotional transparency that makes her sunburnable skin seem see through. That's all true. This is also true: Ms. Ambrose has one previous musical theater credit, as Ado Annie in "Oklahoma!" In high school. If you're wondering why Ms. Ambrose, older and differently credentialed than a typical Eliza, should vault ahead, Mr. Sher put it simply. "There is no better actress working in New York right now," he said. Still that lack of experience could be a worry. "Oh my God," she said. "If I'm going to start listing worries it's going to be a long list." Then she laughed. "I'm kidding," she said. "I'm actually not worried. I'm super excited. It's been a long time coming." Ms. Ambrose never meant to make us wait. "I mean, I've been threatening to be in a musical for hundreds of years at this point," she said. She started performing early, singing in the choir of her Catholic church in New Haven. When she was 11, she appeared on "Star Search," bopping in a purple skirt suit and matching hair bow to a sped up arrangement of "Dancing in the Street." (She lost out to a kid singing the soul stirrer "God Bless the Child," not a fair fight.) As a teenager she began classical training, including a stint at Tanglewood. She figured she'd head to a conservatory, like a lot of her friends did, maybe try for a career in opera. But she booked a couple of Off Broadway plays and then the movie "In and Out" and soon she was in a series and there was never really time for a conservatory, for college, for the commitment a musical requires. In 2009, when she was in town gigging with her Dixieland band, the Leisure Class, Ms. Ambrose told The New Yorker, "I would love to do a musical. Something old fashioned, probably." And two years later she nearly got her wish, when she was cast as Fanny Brice in a Broadway bound revival of "Funny Girl," directed by Mr. Sher. But four months later the financing fell apart; the musical was scrapped. "I don't think it was about me," Ms. Ambrose said. That's mostly true. As Mr. Sher said, speaking by telephone, in a season already packed with revivals, the investors "couldn't really pull together the amount of money they needed." Would a flashier name have made a difference in the financing? "Yes," Mr. Sher said. "You need to have a big, giant star to carry those things in that environment." But he didn't want a big, giant star. He wanted Ms. Ambrose. "She could sing it, she could act it. She had all the heart you need," he said. Why isn't Ms. Ambrose a giant? Back on "Star Search," when Ed McMahon stoops down and asks her to introduce herself, she gives a heart cracking smile and says, "I hope to someday be a great actress and a wonderful performer." It happened. The great actress part. The wonderful performer part. But Ms. Ambrose, who long ago traded Hollywood for a semirural cottage, has always skirted celebrity. Early on there were a few attempts to mold her into a starlet, "narcissism boot camp," she called it. But she never really went along with it; years ago an agent snapped at her about "not playing the game," she said. "I've always just been more of an actor," she said. Other actors build brands and shore up celebrity with glossy magazine shoots, social media posts, sponsorships. She doesn't. Not that she judges anyone who does. "For real. You might be seeing me on Instagram, holding a mayonnaise jar, in like 10 minutes," she said. She rarely gives interviews. But after hiring some personal publicists "to curate how it's done in a way that feels O.K. to me," she agreed to this conversation "because I'm proud of this opportunity and excited and I have to do a bunch of stuff anyway for Lincoln Center." Still, she apologized a couple of times for giving me "nothing to write about." Once, she unconsciously pushed the recorders away. You can plot Ms. Ambrose's ambivalence on a map. When "Six Feet Under" ended in 2005, "somebody with a brain might've continued on in California to further one's career," she said. But she moved to New York to do theater. And then a few years after that she moved to what she calls "the woods." The Berkshires? "The woods," she repeated. "Could be any woods." Just how woodsy is Ms. Ambrose? Let's just say that in "The River," a short film she made with Mr. Handel, she plays a cashier at an organic food co op with keen familiarity. And that she was into kombucha before kombucha was a thing. And that her idea of a rehearsal skirt involves tie dye. And that over dinner at Shun Lee West a week or so after the morning at the museum, she showed photos on her phone of her favorite chicken, Gloria. (Ms. Ambrose ate Peking duck at dinner. Don't tell Gloria.) Last fall, Mr. Sher invited her into the city to audition for Eliza after he already considered "lots and lots and lots and lots of people," he said, many of them prominent musical comedy stars. (No, he didn't name names.) The day that she came in "was kind of a runoff. A little bit of its own reality show in the making," he said. Ms. Ambrose won. "I don't want to create expectations that are too out of control," he said. But then he called her funny and glamorous and furious and wild. Eliza is described in the script as "perhaps eighteen, perhaps twenty, hardly older," but as Ms. Ambrose said, " I think that the story of a woman who is coming into her powers can really happen at any age." (Besides, Mrs. Patrick Campbell, for whom Shaw created the role, was nearly 50 when she played it. So there.) On "Six Feet Under," she and Claire learned how to be artists together. "She never had a false note," Alan Ball, the show's creator said. When she played Juliet, her baby son fired her love for Romeo and the play became a way "to channel all of the possibly overwhelming emotions of new motherhood," she said. Not that Ms. Ambrose works by simple substitution. This isn't algebra. Oskar Eustis, who directed her in "Hamlet," described her work as "always harrowing. She will happily scare you and scare herself." At the museum that morning, at dinner a week later, she was still discovering what the role would teach her, what kind of Eliza she would be. She wasn't alone. Mr. Sher said that he is still working out the central relationships. Even the poster for the show has Eliza's face a blank. Ms. Ambrose knows that "My Fair Lady" can go wrong. She knows that the songs can gloss over the ugly way that Henry Higgins, the eccentric, arrogant phonetician, played here by the English actor Harry Hadden Paton, treats Eliza. She knows that Eliza can come across as merely sassy, spunky, cute. She knows that the ending can seem like a surrender, not a meeting of equals. She won't let that happen. "I'm fighting for the dignity of the character," she said. She sees the Eliza as "a powerful person and an actualized person," a hero. On a rainy Saturday morning, she and Mr. Hadden Paton were rehearsing the scene where Eliza arrives at Higgins's home and demands lessons while Higgins insults her. Script in hand, tie dyed skirt swishing, Ms. Ambrose's shrieking Eliza wasn't yet actualized. She was angry and scared and crushingly brave. A woman determined to change her life. The role could change Ms. Ambrose's life, though it's too soon to know just how. Maybe it will give her the kind of celebrity she's never entirely wanted. Maybe it will make her a Broadway regular. Maybe it will send her back to the woods more in command of her chickens and her powers. The universe hasn't told her yet. "The best is when it's a real surprise," Ms. Ambrose said.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Theater
Try as I might, I could not discern in the Public Theater's Central Park production of "A Midsummer Night's Dream" a single reference to Donald J. Trump. What a relief! Not that it would have been impossible to interpolate the president into the proceedings, as the Public's "Julius Caesar" notably did earlier this summer; the play's capaciousness makes nothing unlikely. If you wanted, you could discover auguries of almost any contemporary flash point in the great comedy: global warming, drug abuse, male privilege, transracial adoption. Happily, the director Lear deBessonet doesn't go there in this production, which opened on Monday night at the Delacorte Theater. Neither period nor modern in style, it does not insist on any one for one relevance. Rather, Ms. deBessonet has brought to the play the high spirits and communitarian pageantry that made her previous park outings including Public Works offerings like "The Winter's Tale" and "The Odyssey" so embraceable. She's a director for everyone. In "Midsummer," though, that has its drawbacks. Any sensible production of the play has to choose which of its currencies to spend; there are simply too many for one evening. A credible version may emphasize the otherworldly charm of its fairyland, the pomp and politics of its nobles, the romantic melee of its lovers or the slapstick antics of its "mechanicals" rehearsing their play or some combination thereof. An ideal production does more: It balances the busyness of all these worlds with the pain and foolishness such busyness engenders. Ms. deBessonet makes hay of the foolishness. Unusually well cast, her production is full of sharply etched if sometimes unsubtle comic performances. As Helena who loves Demetrius (Alex Hernandez), who has eyes only for Hermia (Shalita Grant) Annaleigh Ashford arrives on the scene with mascara streaked down to her jaw. She proceeds to paint her lines, often word by word, using a palette of electric colors and eccentric phrasings she perfected in "Kinky Boots," "Sylvia" and, most wonderfully, "Sunday in the Park With George." Like the other lovers, who also include the puppyish Kyle Beltran as Lysander, she aligns her character with her costume: clashing colorblock separates by Clint Ramos. This makes for a decisively upbeat take on a story that can as easily be agonizing. Though "Midsummer" is set in motion by a supernatural feud between the fairy royals Oberon (Richard Poe) and Titania (Phylicia Rashad), and though the lovers' misalignments and inconstancies are abetted by magic potions dispensed by the sprite Puck (Kristine Nielsen), its core is the human suffering that comes with love and its lack. When the nobleman Theseus warns Hermia to "question your desires," he is telling us something about the play as well: Its humor is built on a profound examination of real, not painted, tears. Real tears are absent in the park, but the play hangs together anyway. Ms. deBessonet focuses on the way the characters, of whatever world, reflect varieties rather than specificities of human affection. Theseus and his Amazon fiancee Hippolyta must convert their former enmity (as opponents in war) into marital unity, which the bloviating Bhavesh Patel and the quietly queenly De'Adre Aziza bring off uncommonly well. Titania and Oberon represent the disgruntlements of a later stage of marriage; beneath her hauteur, Ms. Rashad admits a hint of fallibility, and Mr. Poe, beneath his bluster, more than a hint of guilt. Even the workingmen's presentation of their play, always the most purely foolish element of "Midsummer," sticks to the program: Their text a "tedious brief scene" of young Pyramus and Thisbe is a love story. (Jeff Hiller, deadpanning in drag as Thisbe, gets some real feeling out of the role.) And what is the transformation of Bottom into an ass but a satire of self love gone grandiose? Braying in both human and asinine form, Danny Burstein munches the scenery marvelously. Mr. Ramos's spectacular costumes spell all this out as plainly as SparkNotes, never more so than in the treatment of the assistant fairies, whom Ms. deBessonet has conceived of as elegant elders sometimes shuffling across the back of the stage alone or in groups. (They often wear lovely nightgowns.) This is haunting in a production that is otherwise too unshaded. As a Puck in pajamas with a pixie bob, Ms. Nielsen is as gaudy as a lightning bug, with even more eye rolling than usual for her and a daft cousinship to Kristen Wiig's "Saturday Night Live" character Gilly. When, at one point, she sits on a rustic whoopee cushion, it seems like overkill; she is already a whoopee cushion. But what the production lacks in depth and subtlety it makes up for in clarity and swiftness. David Rockwell's scenic design, dominated by three enormous mossy trees, delivers characters quickly to the audience on revolving platforms and even a woodland slide. Interstitial New Orleans style music by Justin Levine, played by a six man band among the branches and belted by the "fairy singer" Marcelle Davies Lashley, helps frame the action in the manner of sitcom bumpers. Paradoxically, the additions seem to shorten the play by clarifying its structure; in any case, the night flies by despite only modest trimming of the text. For all that, I missed the moments when, in some productions, Helena's desperation first about being unloved, and then, after the potions, about being loved too much lands a punch in the gut. I wished that Hermia's apparent betrayal by her friend would be more than an occasion for a take off your earrings catfight; it should also reflect a sad breach of comity. And I looked in vain for any recognition that the romantic disagreements destabilizing the play are not just pretty plot devices but dangerous disruptions with larger implications. Which is not to ask for a Trumpy Oberon or a Scaramucci Bottom. On a hot night in a hot season, perhaps light comedy, with no minor key overtones, is all we can take.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Theater
Living in the heart of Atlanta, I'm used to the white noise of distant traffic, transit trains and a million hungry lawn mowers. The low, omnipresent hum seeps through windows and doors and blends with the rush of air from the vents of our HVAC unit. So, for the life of me, I couldn't figure out why I was hearing it in the penumbra of an old growth floodplain forest in South Carolina, a forest that once stretched as far north as Upper Virginia and as far west as East Texas. For centuries, more than 35 million acres of beech, oak, holly, sycamore, tupelo, cypress, maple, ash, sweet gum, pawpaw and loblolly pine covered that stretch of land. But in the name of progress, people did what people do. Decade by decade they cut down the trees to make room for dams, cities, roads and houses and furniture to fill them. Craning my head upward, I marveled at what this fertility cycle has borne; trees not quite sequoia or redwood height, yet staggering in their majesty. Some as high as 16 stories, old growth specimens that cover the park. This is why Congaree long ago earned the nickname "Redwoods East." In the canoe with me was Guy Jones, our guide for the afternoon and the owner of River Runner Outdoor Center, 18 miles north in Columbia. A few yards away, my partner skimmed along in a kayak. Her face registered nothing but bliss. We moved at an easy pace, the day temperate and the umber current gentle. No mosquitoes, no gnats to nag us, but there was that murmur. On either side of us, the fluted ankles of bald cypress trees waded into the creek. Tupelo trees, with bottoms like upside down funnels, rose next to them. Every now and then, the trunks of the two species twined into hulking, wondrous masses. In just a few weeks, the trees would leaf out, forming a canopy that spans the width of the shallow waterway, which eventually joins the Congaree River at the lower end of the park. But when we were there, the trees were budding, suggesting the promise of cool, dappled shade to come. Beyond them, on the north bank of the creek, beech and oak trees bore tender, green leaves. Farther in were loblolly pines. They seemed to tickle the blue sky. Bunches of butterweed, lanky and yellow, lit up clearings in the late morning sun. Native azalea, in its final blush, peeked out near great patches of dwarf palmettos. We went a little farther, past a turtle sunning itself. In three hours, we saw few people. Just ahead of us in the stream, two park rangers were giving a creek tour to a dozen visitors. Later, a family of four rolled by us, their own little flotilla. The youngest child warned of "a big snake" ahead. We greeted a young couple in a canoe, their dog seated between them and their cooler. Apart from them and two kayakers, we had the water to ourselves for long stretches. The chirp of summer tanagers and warblers, the rare bloop of fish jumping in the stream and the strokes of our paddles were the only sounds to break the quiet. Except for my yammering. It was hard to break the habits of the city. I fidgeted with my phone. I asked Mr. Jones to identify trees or bird songs. Whenever we passed something delightful such as a brace of ducklings, I said something insipid like "Wow," or "So beautiful." It was as though I'd never spent an afternoon in the woods. Finally, my partner, a woman of few words, had enough. "Yeah," Mr. Jones said. "I'm trying not to talk too much because the silence is really nice." People come to Congaree National Park for the quiet of the big trees, to see the nation's last of its kind forest and to hike the flat terrain. And yet, compared with other national parks of its size, few people visit, and when they do, even though there's a campground, they usually stay half a day, maybe two. There are nine marked trails and a popular boardwalk loop: a raised, accessible wooden pathway that begins at the visitors center and winds 2.4 miles through the woods. Most of these routes are in the park's northwest quadrant. The rest of Congaree isn't within a half mile of a marked trail. Attendance since the early 2000s has usually hovered between 100,000 and 120,000 visitors a year. That has picked up, but only a bit: 159,000 last year, the first year that the tally topped 150,000. In contrast, Sequoia National Forest, home to the world's largest tree, had just under 1.3 million visitors last year. A few weeks after my visit, I spoke with John Grego, the president of Friends of Congaree Swamp and a professor of statistics at the University of South Carolina, about why this gem remains obscure . "There's some hesitation about visiting some place that's a swamp," Mr. Grego told me. "The park doesn't have that kind of awe inspiring scope, like Yellowstone or Glacier. Now, its rewards may be less tangible than other parks, but people who come to Congaree enjoy what they see: the solitude." I remember that kind of peace. When I was a child, it enveloped me on weekend visits to our family's farm in the Florida Panhandle, a region that once formed the lower edge of the original forest from which Congaree is carved. I tangled through thickets of pine, oak, holly and mossy cypress. Afternoons were spent fishing with my great aunts on one of our ponds. On the rarest of occasions, swaddled in a life jacket because I couldn't swim, I went out in a canoe with one of my elders. I came to appreciate the stillness, broken up by the trill of birds and soft lapping of water against the wooden oars. Thinking of this on Cedar Creek, it hit me. The whisper I thought might be faraway traffic was not that at all. It was the breeze creeping through the canopy, not immediately above us a rush I recognized but for miles beyond. Had I really become that disconnected from the natural world? The question caught me short. For a good while after, I had little else to say. When he spoke of the destruction wrought nearly 30 years ago by the Category 4 hurricane, it was as if he was reciting lyrics to a folk ballad he penned himself. "You see, they're all pointing south. That was the counterclockwise winds that came out of the eye of the storm. The eye passed to the east of us about eight miles." "This is all Hugo. This looked completely different 30 years ago. It was completely open. Daylight everywhere." We had just finished a nature stroll along the boardwalk, led by Mr. Cely. He is 70 years old and something of a park legend. Rangers refer to him in hushed tones. For Mr. Cely, a retired biologist with the state Department of Natural Resources and the former head of Friends of Congaree Swamp, the land has been a part of his life since he was a 19 year old college student at Clemson. He volunteers at the park regularly, leading guided walks on the second Saturday of every month. Along with lightning strikes, pine bark beetles and old age, wind is among the main causes of felled trees in Congaree. Hugo hacked the canopy, downing champion trees, the tallest of their kind in the state or nation. Congaree has rebounded. The gaps are filled with saplings. The Hugo casualties are scattered along the forest floor, their carcasses left in situ where they now nurture their own micro ecosystems. Mr. Cely is most at home when he's alone in Congaree's depths. His knowledge is so deep that he has rendered two hand drawn maps of nearly every acre. They are so accurate, copies are sold in the park gift shop. He stands in a long line of people who have loved the land; the Congaree, a Native American tribe that first called the lowland home; European explorers and plantation owners, emancipated African Americans who bought some of the land they had once worked while enslaved and the Chicago lumber baron Francis Beidler. He bought nearly 160,000 acres in the late 1890s when acreage was cheap and Southerners, black and white, had to sell it to survive. Beidler tried to log it but by 1915 had given up because it was too difficult to get logs out of the forest. The family held onto some of the land, allowing a portion of it to be leased as a hunt club. Harry Hampton, an editor and columnist at The State newspaper, was an advocate for the forest's preservation, especially in the 1960s, when the Beidlers began logging again. A duck hunter and outdoorsman, Mr. Hampton took his message of conservation to anyone who would listen, from the Garden Club of South Carolina to the readers of his "Woods and Waters" column. Mr. Cely was his acolyte. Congaree Swamp National Preserve Association formed. Some landowners around Congaree told the press that the preservation campaign was full of a bunch of "outside agitators" whose efforts were "pure and simple socialism." But in 1976, Congress passed the Congaree Swamp National Monument Act and President Gerald Ford signed it into law. Local newspapers at the time reported that the Beidlers were paid about 30 million. The visitors center was built in 2001 and named for Mr. Hampton. Two years later, Congaree was granted national park status. "Never underestimate the power of what an engaged citizenry can do in terms of writing letters, making phone calls, talking to our elected officials, because it took literally an act of Congress to create this place," Mr. Cely said. We were sitting on the patio of the visitors center, waiting for a group to gather for his "Big Tree" walk, a five mile hike to see more prodigious timber. Once assembled, we set off on a ramble that required no more than athletic shoes and a water bottle. Persimmon trees dwarfed us. Pawpaw saplings bent like licorice sticks in my hands. I stood in wonder under a loblolly older than the county it towered over, a 300 year old beauty. And I learned, luckily before I touched it, that poison ivy grows into mighty ropes, a hairy vine that scales into a tree's canopy. But there was a couple behind us who would not stop talking. They yakked about nothing and everything, except what was around them. Finally, the husband said, "This is the forest primeval." "No, never. I guess I'm not that well read." I wanted silence ; me, the person who never seems to stop babbling. For once, the space didn't need to be filled. So, I ran ahead and fell in behind Mr. Cely. Unless he was describing a champion tree, he barely uttered a word. Rosalind Bentley is a writer at The Atlanta Journal Constitution. Her last story for The New York Times was about the Underground Railroad in Florida.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Travel
New York hotels are at the forefront of a boom in complete makeovers, after years of lower capital spending caused by the steep economic downturn. For hotels that had become rundown and were sold or shuttered for a while, like the Milford NYC near Times Square, or establishments like the New York Palace hotel, where the former Le Cirque restaurant space is being overhauled and a French market added, scaffolding has become as commonplace as the city's traffic noise. New research by Bjorn Hanson, the divisional dean of the Preston Robert Tisch Center for Hospitality, Tourism and Sports Management at New York University, confirms the upswing in modernizing travel accommodations on everything from linens to new facades. Nationwide, the United States hotel industry is expected to spend 5.6 billion on capital expenditures this year, exceeding the most recent record of 5.5 billion set in 2008. He estimated that one fifth of hotels would receive such improvements this year up from 15 percent in a typical year. In New York alone, about a quarter of the city's hotels are expected to be upgraded. Spurring the extensive remodeling is a mix of factors. For one, Mr. Hanson said, investors and management companies that waived spending to offset lower profits in a weak economy are now looking at projections showing a much healthier outlook over all. Industrywide, occupancy this year is expected to be at its highest level since 2007, while the average daily rate is expected to rise to what Mr. Hanson estimates will be a record 111. He predicted industry profits would be a record 46 billion. In addition, he said hotel management companies and franchisers wanted to ensure that their brands were associated with quality, not slippage either in service or appearances, now that Americans are traveling again. And for the first time since he first measured capital expenditures in the 1990s, Mr. Hanson said he saw evidence that the myriad travel review sites on the Web, as well as on Facebook or through other social media, were influencing companies' decisions to approve rather lavish outlays of capital for enhancements. He said hotel owners' decisions to upgrade could be motivated by anticipation of critical reviews that "don't go away." He also said owners were proactively seeking positive reviews about recent renovations and innovations, as well as "wow comments" on things like refitted lobbies and fitness centers and unusual food and beverage services. To help hotels that have undergone major renovations, the travel review site TripAdvisor.com said it would delete old negative reviews, to allow them to "start with a clean slate." Ryan Meliker, managing director of real estate investment trusts and lodging at MLV Company, an investment bank, said that although he generally agreed with Mr. Hanson's findings, public companies "with access to capital and stronger balance sheets than private companies were able to invest more in the downturn than private companies." He said real estate investment trusts like Host Hotels Resorts took advantage of lower construction costs during the downturn to invest in their holdings; in fact, he estimated Host's capital expenditures would decline this year to 450 million from 541 million in 2011. Mr. Meliker also said refurbishment of New York hotels was, in many cases, "not just refreshing the rooms," but rather "major renovations to reposition the asset going forward." A prime example of this is the Milford NYC hotel, on Eighth Avenue between 44th and 45th Streets, which was previously owned and operated as the Milford Plaza by the Milstein family, which shut it in 2009. Its new owners, Highgate Holdings and the Rockpoint Group, are putting more than 140 million into capital improvements. Vann Avedisian, a principal of Highgate Holdings, said Highgate and Rockpoint's intention once they purchased the Milford for 250 million in 2010 and reopened it was to convert "a two star, tour and travel hotel with no amenities into a three and a half star lifestyle hotel." To that end, the Milford's refurbishment includes a new glass facade, reconfigured lobby and check in area, and a new restaurant. Guest rooms increased in number by 62, to 1,331 have been fully upgraded. Other additions will include a 4,900 square foot spin studio and fitness center and a 4,000 square foot food hall run by UrbanSpace, set to open by mid 2014 in the space once occupied by Mama Leone's restaurant. The firms Gabellini Sheppard Associates and Gensler are doing the Milford's new design. Northwood Hospitality, which purchased the New York Palace from the Brunei Investment Authority for over 400 million in 2011, has opted to "redo everything," said its president, David McCaslin, because the hotel, which is behind St. Patrick's Cathedral at 455 Madison Avenue, has not had any major renovations since 2006. In addition to the redecorating of the restaurant once occupied by Le Cirque, the 27,000 square feet of retail space in the north wing of the historic Villard Mansion has also been renovated, though it has not yet been rented. Furniture, lighting and televisions in all 909 guest rooms are being replaced, and upgrades in the hotel's towers section occupying the top 14 floors will include a new private reception area near the hotel's 50th Street entrance and complete renovation of three of the largest suites. The work is expected to cost about 140 million. Chef Michel Richard will operate the hotel's restaurants, while interior design is by BAMO, BBG BBGM, Champalimaud and Jeffrey Beers. The only Novotel in the United States, the Novotel New York Times Square, which was sold by Accor to Chartres Lodging Group, Apollo Global Management and Lubert Adler Partners for a reported 90 million in 2012, is undergoing a transformation that its owners hope will lift it from a three star hotel to one that can compete with four and four and a half star hotels and charge commensurately higher rates, said Maki Nakamura Bara, president and co founder of Chartres Lodging Group. Renovations at the hotel, at 226 West 52nd Street, include a redesigned lobby with an expanded lounge area that offers better views of Times Square, and a new restaurant, called Supernova, that Ms. Bara said would serve "comfort foods with a modern twist." All 480 guest rooms are being redecorated according to Accor's Novotel brand standards, and will have new bathrooms, flat screen TVs and soundproof windows. Most of these projects are scheduled to be completed this fall. In addition, the 50 year old Loews Regency Hotel has been shut since January for a 100 million refurbishment, scheduled for completion in January 2014. The project, the first significant overhaul of the hotel in 15 years, includes a redesigned lobby with a new lounge; an increase in the number of guest rooms, to 380 from 350, achieved by reducing the number of suites; and refurnished guest rooms with modernized bathrooms. Sant Ambroeus Hospitality Group will manage the hotel's restaurant, famous for its power breakfasts; the adjacent bar area; and the new lobby lounge. Loews also has leased 10,000 square feet, previously occupied by second floor offices, boardrooms and guest rooms, to the hairstylist Julian Farel for a new salon and spa.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Real Estate
Yves Saint Laurent was an artist of a different kind, and come fall, the fashion designer, who died in 2008, will be honored with two museums. In Paris, the Musee Yves Saint Laurent Paris in the actual house where he designed for almost three decades will open to visitors who may walk through his studio and haute couture salons. And in Marrakesh a city Saint Laurent adored and to which he frequently retreated a new museum's sprawling display will include more than 5,000 pieces of clothing, 15,000 accessories and several thousand sketches that illustrate his creativity coming to life. A museum doesn't have to be new to be newsworthy. The Center for Maine Contemporary Art, in the picturesque coastal city of Rockland and open since last summer, is celebrating its first birthday with the twofold exhibit, "Night Stories" (from August through October). First, see the 15 paintings by the Maine based painter Linden Frederick, whose depictions of rural America have garnered him fame, and then, for each, read the accompanying short story written by one of a group of prominent American authors including Ann Patchett and Richard Russo. A far older institution, the Victoria Albert Museum in London, established in 1852, is getting a 50 million plus upgrade (early 2017) known as the Exhibition Road Building Project. The changes include a porcelain tiled public courtyard. From there, visitors, for the first time since 1873, will see the previously hidden facades and detailed sgraffito decoration of the original 19th century building. The 20th anniversary of "Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone," the first novel in J. K. Rowling's blockbuster series, is another reason to head to London. The British Library is commemorating the inception of the world's most famous wizard with an exhibition (Oct. 20 to Feb. 28, 2018) where wizardry books and manuscripts from the Rowling archives will be on display. From an exhibition to an art fair: Though contemporary art fairs abound, the cognoscenti know that the one to hit is Zona Maco in Mexico City (Feb. 8 to 12), a gathering of global art collectors and more than 120 international galleries representing the works of 1,500 artists. Emerging talent is part of the mix, but high profile names like the sculptor Anish Kapoor and the multimedia Mexican artist Gabriel Orozco will also be among the draws. After all, what's art without some star wattage thrown in?	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Travel
A Tool Kit for the Donor Eager to Grasp All the Risks of Donation SASHA KRAMER, an ecologist, was having success promoting greater sanitation in Haiti when she lost access to her nonprofit's only composting site in Port au Prince: a dump that was being mismanaged. Her group, SOIL, provides toilets to poor households. Each week it sent representatives to empty the five gallon buckets, bring the waste to the dump and turn it into compost, which was sold to farmers as fertilizer. Nearly nine years into the work, though, the local dump fell into chaos when the private company managing it lost its contract. The government ceased to keep access roads clear and began burning trash to clear it. "We managed to keep the compost site open, but we could only get in there once every two weeks," Dr. Kramer said. "There was so much smoke out there that it was becoming a health risk." Worse, she said she didn't know where to turn to get money for another site. Crises like these, which keep nonprofits from doing the work donors support, are not uncommon. About one in five projects run into problems that slow or derail goals, according to the Clinton Global Initiative, which released a report in June on its commitments over 10 years, and a separate one by Open Road Alliance, a nonprofit that aids projects that have hit snags. Despite the likelihood of problems, leaders of nonprofit organizations rarely lay out the risks of their projects, lest any hint of failure scare away funders. On the flip side, donors often fail to dig deeply enough to discuss the obstacles a project may encounter. Among donors, 76 percent don't ask recipients about the risks they face, while 87 percent of nonprofit leaders said grant applications had no questions about risks, according to Open Road Alliance. "This isn't anecdotal evidence," said Laurie Michaels, Open Road's founder. "This is donors and funders reporting that 20 percent of the projects need more money. Yet no one ever asks about this." Spurred by this research, and by its experience with shoring up projects in crisis, Open Road Alliance partnered with the Rockefeller Foundation and Arabella Advisors, a nonprofit consultancy, in convening a group of nonprofit executives to think through risk assessment. The group, which consisted of representatives from two dozen organizations, including the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Goldman Sachs and the law firm Patterson Belknap Webb Tyler, agreed on 10 areas where donors needed to assess risk more rigorously. The tool kit, as the group calls it, will be released next week for anyone to use. "We designed the tool kit very deliberately, so a foundation could take it in total or pick and choose tools a la carte," said Maya Winkelstein, who served as chairwoman of the group, called the Commons. "Our hope is people will print off the tool kit and bring it to their staff meetings or their board meetings or to their C.F.O. of programming." Given the spike in philanthropic giving, the time is ripe to discuss the downsides of giving money away. A study released this week by the Indiana University Lilly Family School of Philanthropy predicted that charitable giving would rise 3.6 percent this year and 3.8 percent next year, based on a strong economy. The biggest increase will come from foundations, which are often financed by wealthy individuals. Foundations will increase their giving by 5.9 percent and 6 percent in the next two years, the report predicted. But with that increase will come the need to apply business fundamentals to grant making and to look at all the potential downsides of a project. FOR the past five years, the Rockefeller Foundation has set aside contingency funding for individual initiatives and broader programs, said Judith Rodin, its president. Her foundation also assesses its grants by low, medium and high risk. "Our tax advantaged dollars create opportunities for us to take risk, but the evidence shows there isn't that much risk taking in our sector," Dr. Rodin said. "Taking smart risk is essential." The risk management tool kit produced by the Commons covers broader areas like helping donors understand their own risk appetite with their grants, and putting together a risk policy statement similar to ones done for a portfolio of investments. But the kit also has seven items dealing with specific conversations donors ought to have with groups they are supporting. These include talking about contingency funding and planning, putting in place their own risk management strategies and monitoring the progress of the project in order to pre empt problems. "Part of the reason we focused on donors is they have the money," said Dr. Michaels, a clinical psychologist who is married to David Bonderman, a founder of the private equity firm TPG. "There's a power differential," she added. "It's hard for a nonprofit to come to a funder and say, 'How are you going to insure us if something gets screwed up?'" Less than a year ago, Reclaim Detroit, which trains workers to salvage wood from homes slated for demolition and repurpose it, lost its warehouse to a blaze. With no wood, no equipment and no work space, it had also no plan for dealing with such a total loss and was in danger of folding. Reclaim Detroit partly supports itself through the sale of objects it makes from the reclaimed wood something it could not do after the fire. But it also receives grants from companies like the JPMorgan Chase Foundation, the PNC Bank Foundation and others that are directed at its job training program and operational expenses. What it didn't have, though, was money to rebuild after the fire. "Some of it went for operating funds to continue to pay our crew, who was paid out of our earned revenues," Ms. Dundon said. "The main part was to rebuild our mill shop and to buy new equipment." Not everyone in the philanthropic community thinks such contingency funding is a good idea. Amir Pasic, dean of the Lilly Family School of Philanthropy, said nonprofits having to ask funders for money after a crisis can create an additional level of bureaucracy when funds are really needed. "It's getting us to continue to think about projects rather than organizations or causes," Dr. Pasic said. "It's allowing us to forget the fact that if you have a really good relationship with your funder and they know what's going on, it doesn't have to be a formal contingency plan." Dr. Pasic, who was not involved with the Commons, said he saw a place for such backstop funding with smaller organizations. But in general, he said, he supported the group's conclusion that larger nonprofits and funders should plan for problems. "You need a joint conversation upfront," he said. "We need to create an honest conversation between both sides so we can be productive." Shelley Whelpton, managing director of Arabella Advisors, said that while the tool kit will start those conversations, it will take time to get donors to think differently. "There is culture change that needs to take place first," she said. The kit, she added, "is a way to start a conversation." IN the case of SOIL, which has an annual budget of 1.3 million, Dr. Kramer said she went back to one of its longest standing funders, the 11th Hour Project, which is backed by Wendy Schmidt, whose wealth comes from Google. Dr. Kramer said she was told the foundation had already made its grants for the year, and she was pointed toward Open Road Alliance, which issued a 100,000 grant for a new composting site. "With our other donors, I have much more of a traditional grantee relationship, where I wouldn't go back and say, 'I need more money for the same project,'" she said. "It just wasn't something I had considered before." Despite losing its dump, SOIL was lucky. Open Road Alliance gave 3 million last year, mostly in the form of small grants. But it operates by word of mouth and referral; it hopes that with the tool kit, more nonprofits will be able to talk to their donors about crises. "It's one thing to get people on board saying, 'You're right, we could be backing up our grantees in a more comprehensive way, but where do we start?'" Dr. Michaels said. "One way to start is to lay out the path and say, 'These steps are not so difficult.' It's an attempt to make it easier for people."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Your Money
Jean Paul Goude, the photographer illustrator filmmaker advertising maven former Grace Jones paramour/Svengali responsible for the Paper Magazine cover of an oiled and naked Kim Kardashian West that "broke the internet" in 2014 has added another hyphenate to his string. Desigual, the Barcelona based, accessibly priced brand known for its teeth clenchingly zany mix of colors and prints, has named Mr. Goude as its first artistic director, in a bid to be taken seriously as part of the style conversation. It's a surprising pairing, and one that is also representative of (and possibly instructional for) this particular moment in fashion. After all, though the house has shown at New York Fashion Week since 2013 (with Katie Holmes and Iris Apfel spotted in various front rows), and has 500 stores in more than 100 countries, and revenues of 860 million euros in 2016, according to Daniel Perez, its head of communications, it doesn't get much industry respect. Jezebel once characterized its aesthetic as "I look like an indecisive parrot, and I want everyone to notice." There is a Twitter account titled desigualisugly devoted to retweeting posts that ... well, make the case. It didn't help that Marine Le Pen has a fondness for Desigual bags. He has all the aesthetic credibility Desigual lacks, except in one area: clothes. And though he is not officially being asked to design (his remit is "visual communications," though it's a loosey goosey definition), his appointment does raise some questions: Which comes first, the image or the products? And can the two actually be separated? It's an issue not just at the heart of this experiment, but also of the industry more broadly, as distinctions among designer, artistic director and creative director become fuzzy, and the drive for social media buzz seems to be, rightly or wrongly, the single greatest imperative behind many creative decisions. Consider that such respected names as Alber Elbaz, Peter Copping, Stefano Pilati, Marco Zanini, Bouchra Jarrar and Riccardo Tisci are all out of full time jobs, and hundreds of new designers flood the market every spring from schools such as Central Saint Martins and Parsons. And consider the fact that Mr. Goude's appointment follows the naming of Rihanna as creative director of Puma (complete with her own line, Fenty Puma); the appointment of Isabella Burley, editor of the British magazine Dazed Confused, as "editor in residence" of Helmut Lang last March; and that of Justin O'Shea, a former buying director of MyTheresa.com, as creative director of Brioni in 2016. As it turned out, Mr. O'Shea lasted less than six months at that job (his decision to use Metallica as a face of the brand James Bond built did not go over well with the old consumer base). Which could be a warning sign. There is another, growing school of thought that says the best way to revive a brand is to hire talented designers and give them power over all consumer touching decisions. See: Gucci, Saint Laurent and Loewe. Mr. Goude, who resembles a grizzled pixie and has a tendency to pair seersucker jackets with nipped in waists with black T shirts, drawstring harem pants and white bucks, is well aware of the risks. "It's a dangerous undertaking," he said. "But it's a challenge! I am having fun. I believe they want to change. I hope so." He may be right, given that one impetus behind his appointment was an internal survey of 16,000 customers. It yielded the primary conclusion that "it's too much the same," according to Mr. Perez. He has been given three years to change that. He has ad campaigns and social media and events and one store with which to experiment. ("The stores are really, really hideous," he said. "Everyone knows it.") He is playing around with the idea of using revolving mannequins on top of a table made of TVs and possibly keeping the store open all night, the better to be a kind of hangout zone. He has been discussing a new face for the brand ("They wanted Rihanna," he said, before adding, "I said, 'I think she's pretty busy.'") And he has the show, which will serve as his kind of opening salvo, and which will take place next Thursday, Day 1 of New York Fashion Week. Mr. Goude has reimagined it as a performance piece (his mother was a dance teacher and he "was raised in the dance world") choreographed by Ryan Heffington, who won a 2014 MTV Video Music Award for choreographing Sia's dance in "Chandelier" and more recently worked on the film "Baby Driver." There will be dancer/models with clothes styled by Mr. Goude and his team. He may not have been able to change the designs, but he can at least recontextualize them. Pointedly, however, the show will also contain a capsule of his own sketches. Though responsibility for the main collection remains with the founder and chief executive, Thomas Meyer, who invited Mr. Goude to the company, Mr. Goude was allowed to create his own looks: ones that involve bigger volumes on the bottom, and exacting, architectural tops. If the silhouettes are well received, he will do a larger collection for winter. "We will build and build!" he said. "I am like a Trojan horse: I come in in a very discreet way, and see if I can influence people to my way of doing something." (He also compared his collection to a group of Navy SEALs infiltrating the company; he likes military metaphors.)	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Fashion & Style
One listens to "Becoming Madeleine" primarily for clues to how such a genre buster of a fantasy novel could emerge in the early 1960s, and from this particular author. The two biographers and narrators are L'Engle's granddaughters. One presents the main narrative in gracious, unhurried prose delivered in level tones suited to a nature documentary voice over; the other intersperses excerpts from L'Engle's vivid journals with greater gusto. The authors cover the first half of L'Engle's life. This includes Florida forebears, a Swiss boarding school education, Smith College, forays into the theater and fiction writing and then marriage and motherhood. The biography leads up to and includes the publication of "A Wrinkle in Time" in 1962. Here the story stops, and sensibly so; children love a triumph. Only scholars care to know what comes next. After "A Wrinkle in Time" brought L'Engle both glory and fame, she became well known as the librarian of the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in Manhattan. When she began to publish adult nonfiction that mentioned her faith, some readers weren't surprised. What is the secret weapon in "A Wrinkle in Time" but love, that most central of Christian virtues? Curiously, "Becoming Madeleine" avoids any mention of L'Engle's childhood piety or lack thereof. Furthermore, the only children's books identified as having been cherished in her youth are, I believe, "Emily of New Moon" and "Swallows and Amazons." Both are robust stories of realism without a scrap of myth or an urge of magic about them. Whence, then, L'Engle's adroitness at fantasy or science fiction, call it what you will, with its reliance on enormous inventiveness, narrative panache and derring do? Born in 1918, Madeleine L'Engle was of her times. Her letters to home and her journals are written with innocence, fervor and adolescent drama. But the story of how young Madeleine L'Engle Camp actually became Madeleine L'Engle, making the leap in one book from midcentury author of domestic dramas to high prophet of earnest confidence in humanity, filled with creative drive, spiritual enthusiasm this remains something of a mystery. And why not? That a stubborn individual shaped by her times can write an accidental masterpiece that lives into the future is always a mystery. Perhaps even a kind of tesseract.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Books
For months, the athletic department at Cal thought it was doing everything just right to keep the coronavirus out and get games going again. The football team's season opener on Saturday was supposed to be the university's first athletic competition since March. Like hundreds of other colleges, Cal was determined to make it happen, safely. "We've designed what we do," Athletic Director Jim Knowlton said. "And we're probably the most strict of any school around." Behind the scenes, university health officials met with Berkeley health officials, whose rules dictate the college's procedures after a positive test. Contact tracing was underway; the unnamed player who tested positive was asked about all his contacts over the previous five days. An entire position group was kept from practice, though no one else had tested positive. Knowlton warned the university chancellor and the commissioner of the Pac 12 Conference that there were concerns about Saturday's home game with Washington. On Thursday, the big news broke: The game was canceled. It was erased over a single positive test. "This one stung worse than when we canceled the season, when the Pac 12 canceled back in July," Jay Larson, a senior associate athletic director overseeing the football program, said in reference to a decision that was eventually reversed. "Just to come this close, two days from being able to do what these guys dream of doing." More than anything, the postponement was a reminder of the fluidity and fragility of playing college sports during a pandemic. But two of its six games scheduled for Saturday Washington at Cal and Arizona at Utah were canceled late this week because players had tested positive. No one seems to be getting a better handle on limiting the spread of the virus. Across college football, dozens of games have been postponed or canceled because of outbreaks. Top coaches and players have had to sit out of games. Coach Nick Saban of Alabama nearly missed a game after a positive test, and top ranked Clemson's quarterback, Trevor Lawrence a leading candidate to win the Heisman Trophy as college football's best player will miss Saturday's game against No. 4 Notre Dame. The Pac 12 cancellations are among at least seven on Saturday. Conferences everywhere are trying to make order from battered schedules and scrambled standings, while insisting that playing college football this fall is a wise and necessary endeavor that has nothing to do with making money. That was the quicksand that the Pac 12 tried to tiptoe into, just as the number of coronavirus cases and deaths in the United States rose steadily again. This fall, The Times has highlighted the challenge facing college sports through the experience of one major athletic department Cal, the flagship campus of the University of California system, with 30 sports and a 100 million annual budget. Like the rest of the Pac 12, Cal initially said it would wait until 2021 to play games, postponing all its fall sports. In October, nudged by the availability of daily testing and the growing sense of peer pressure to join the party, the Pac 12 decided to start football after all. The league created a conference only, seven game season and scheduled it to begin this weekend. There would be no time for bye weeks, because the Pac 12 wanted its champion to be eligible for a four team national championship playoff that starts on Jan. 1. Cal, coming off an 8 5 season, has hopes for a league title behind the experienced quarterback Chase Garbers. Practice began last month. Cal tested athletes before each workout, required masks at all times, had athletes dress and lift weights outdoors, and preached the importance of avoiding the virus. Before every practice, each Cal player is required to undergo a swab test. Results come back in 15 minutes. On Monday, Larson got a call: A player had tested positive. False positives are not uncommon, so there was little alarm. But the player, who was still asymptomatic, was held out of practice and immediately took a genetic test, as all Cal players do twice a week. Those tests are considered more accurate, but results can take a day or more. There was no practice on Tuesday because of Election Day. During a regularly scheduled Tuesday morning meeting involving administrators and the football team's head coach, Justin Wilcox, the group discussed the Pac 12 regulations about isolation in case several players got swept up by contact tracing. The conference requires at least 53 scholarship players to be available for a football game, and minimum numbers for three positions: quarterback, offensive line and defensive line. (Cal officials declined to name the position of the infected player.) On Tuesday afternoon, the positive test was confirmed. University health officials contacted Berkeley health officials, who began contact tracing. The player was questioned about his contacts over the previous five days. Cal even pulled film from previous practices to study which players had extended contact with him. Berkeley regulations state that those in close contact with someone with the coronavirus must quarantine for 14 days. "By Tuesday night, we had a pretty good sense that the entire position group could be impacted," Larson said. Knowlton sent a message to warn the chancellor. On Wednesday morning, Berkeley health officials approved a plan for the football team's practice on Wednesday, without any players from the affected position, and said they would have results from the contact tracing by 11 a.m. on Thursday. Knowlton called the Pac 12 and Washington, and Cal announced on Wednesday evening that a player had tested positive. Wilcox, the coach, acknowledged that Saturday's game was in jeopardy. At about 10 a.m. Thursday, Cal got the word from Berkeley officials: The entire position must quarantine. Depending on when the contacts occurred, Cal's Nov. 14 game at Arizona State might be at risk, too. The university hopes continued negative results might allow it to proceed as scheduled. But Saturday's game with Washington was declared a "no contest" by the Pac 12. Wilcox expressed frustration that one positive test could cancel one or more games, when he has seen teams in other parts of the country continue playing. "I absolutely agree that there are different interpretations of contact tracing," he said in a call with reporters on Thursday afternoon. But Knowlton knew all along how quickly the best plans could be undone. Now he and Larson want to know how to prevent it from happening again. More of the university's sports are supposed to start in the coming weeks. On Friday, Knowlton and Larson held a meeting to figure out what went wrong. By Friday night, they still were not sure. "We don't mind getting our test back that says you got an 'F,'" Knowlton said. "But we're a learning organization. Tell us what questions we got wrong, because we're going to go back and study those areas so that we get A's."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Sports
In 1990, there were 105,354 women alive with the disease in the United States, according to a new analysis. Now that figure has risen to an estimated 154,794. Metastatic breast cancer is progressive and incurable, but the analysis in Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers and Prevention found that more than 17 percent of women under age 64 whose metastatic breast cancer was diagnosed between 2000 and 2004 survived for 10 years or longer. From 1992 to 1994, the five year survival rate for women under age 49 with newly diagnosed metastatic breast cancer was 18 percent. From 2005 to 2012, five year survival had doubled to 36 percent. Clearly, improvements in treatment are part of the explanation. But better imaging techniques have also resulted in earlier detection of metastatic disease and may help explain the increase in years of survival.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Health
The Knicks have brought in Steve Stoute, a longtime music executive who heads an ad agency, to change how fans and N.B.A. free agents perceive the team. "The New York Knicks are the premier global brand in basketball, period," Steve Stoute, a music executive and the founder of the ad agency Translation, declared recently over breakfast. That night, the Knicks were blown out at home by the Memphis Grizzlies. Fans at Madison Square Garden chanted "Sell the team!" at James L. Dolan, the Knicks owner. The New York Post reported that an irate Dolan had directed security guards toward one teenage chanter. A brawl broke out at the end of the game, and multiple Knicks players were later fined. One of them, Marcus Morris Sr., told reporters after the game that a Grizzlies player had "a lot of female tendencies on the court." Morris who would be traded in eight days apologized on Twitter amid rapid backlash. One week later, Steve Mills, the Knicks president, left the team two days ahead of the trade deadline and less than two months after Coach David Fizdale and an assistant, Keith Smart, had been fired. That's just this season. The Knicks will most likely miss the playoffs for the seventh straight year, creating the longest streak of postseason absences for the franchise since the 1960s. The last two decades have seen a sexual harassment lawsuit against the parent company of the Knicks, botched draft picks, whiffs on most superstar free agents and a turnstile of head coaches (13, in fact). The team has long been a punchline, both in and outside New York City. In an effort to change the public perception of the team, the Knicks announced last month that they had contracted with Stoute's agency "to help elevate the team's overall brand positioning and connection to its fan base." "You've got to put a product on the court that people believe day in and day out every night has an opportunity to win and compete at a high level," Stoute said, adding, "Then I believe there's a lot that can be done around building buzz and excitement around the optimism." Hiring Translation is a rare acknowledgment by the Knicks that they may be losing clout. And it just so happens that across the Brooklyn Bridge, the Nets, a resurgent franchise with a modern arena and plausible dreams of a championship within the next three years, are primed to pick off some of the Knicks' loyal fans. Stoute's goal is to play prevent defense in the marketing sphere. But how can he improve a brand if its most important facet the on court play is among the least competitive in the marketplace? Stoute is a lifelong Knicks fan who said he wants every young basketball fan in the New York area rooting for his team. He founded the music distribution company UnitedMasters and has worked with several musical artists, including the rappers Jay Z and Nas. His ad agency's recent partners include State Farm, the N.F.L., Nike and Anheuser Busch. A core goal of the partnership, Stoute said, is to make the Knicks a desirable destination for free agents again. "One thing I've learned about the organization is they're going to be aggressive at getting great players and bringing great talent to the city," Stoute said. "That's the part of the commitment that fires me up." Last summer, after Dolan said during a radio interview that the Knicks were going to have a "very successful off season," the team missed out on every superstar free agent. Two of them, Kyrie Irving and Kevin Durant, went to the rival Nets, but Stoute dismissed any notion that the Knicks have a culture problem. "You know how many teams missed on free agency? Every other team," Stoute said. "One team got two guys. And the other team which led to an investigation got the other guy." He was referring to Kawhi Leonard's landing with the Los Angeles Clippers and allegations that people close to him had requested benefits not allowed under league rules. But the Knicks' inability to draw top superstars has lasted most of the 21st century, except when they traded for and re signed a willing Carmelo Anthony in 2011 and 2014 and signed Amar'e Stoudemire in 2010. In October, Durant said in a radio interview that the "whole brand of the Knicks is not as cool as, let's say, the Golden State Warriors," the ultimate indictment of a team in a league that prides itself on reaching younger demographics. "I don't think that Durant, who moved to the market, can necessarily make that statement in a very factual way," Stoute said. "That can't be the case when you see all the business results." From that perspective, the Knicks are a resounding success. In most industries, when companies perform poorly for a long time, they go out of business. But the Knicks continue to make more money and haven't needed to cut prices. The franchise was valued by Forbes last year at 4 billion, the highest in the N.B.A. and up from 3.6 billion the year before. The team is in the biggest media market in the country and has a dedicated, if beleaguered, fan base. "But brands are also tenuous, and they ebb and flow based on what's going on," said Rick Burton, a sports management professor at Syracuse University. "In the case of the Knicks, what's been happening on the court has not lifted the brand to the levels it's been at before." There are signs that the relationship with consumers is fraying. According to ESPN, the Knicks sell an average of 95.1 percent of their home seats, good for 18th in the 30 team league. This number has declined every year since 2016, when it was 100 percent. In contrast, the Nets have risen from 83.6 percent in 2016 to 92.7 this season. The Knicks rank 11th in attendance, drawing an average of 18,836 people a game. In 2016, that number was 19,812 fifth in the N.B.A. Burton said there were ways to improve a team's brand even if the on court play remained poor. For example, the Knicks could change the experience at the arena. This could include buzzier halftime acts. Burton cited the model of a minor league baseball team, which may draw fans more for the chance to enjoy an evening outside than for the quality of the baseball. (One key difference: Minor league baseball games are almost always much cheaper to attend than Knicks games, which can cost individuals and families hundreds of dollars.) "Steve may come in and say: 'We can make the game experience better. Even though we can't control the product on the court, we can give people the perception that they're getting their money's worth,'" Burton said. He continued, "But it's really hard if the Knicks continue to lose."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Sports
Florida, it seems, has always been a popular destination. Even the first known Americans gravitated to the state. Of course, they probably went for the mastodons. Underwater archaeologists and other researchers have taken a second look at a sinkhole 30 feet deep in the Aucilla River in northern Florida that is rich with remnants of stone tools, as well as fossilized mastodon bones and dung. Although scientists had studied the location, known as the Page Ladson site, for more than a decade and knew how old some of the material was, they could not come up with definitive evidence that humans and mastodons were there at the same time. David G. Anderson, an anthropologist at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, who specializes in the early history of humans on the continent, and who was not involved in the research, called the new work, reported in the journal Science Advances, "superb archaeological scholarship." The Page Ladson site named for Buddy Page, a diver who first found it, and the Ladson family, which owns the land around it is about 30 feet underwater in a sinkhole in the Aucilla River southeast of Tallahassee, about seven miles inland from the Gulf of Mexico. It was painstakingly uncovered from the early 1980s until the late 1990s by James S. Dunbar, who joined in the new research, and S. David Webb, then a paleontologist at the University of Florida. Together they wrote "First Floridians and Last Mastodons: The Page Ladson Site in the Aucilla River." It is the oldest site with evidence of human activity in the Southeastern United States and one of only a handful of sites that show that humans were living in North and South America by about 14,500 years ago. Until recently, scientists thought that the first humans to come to America were big game hunters who made stone tools in an identifiable style. They were called the Clovis people, after the location of the first discovery of such tools near Clovis, N.M. Researchers put the arrival of the Clovis people in the Americas at around 13,500 years ago. But discoveries in Monte Verde, Chile; Texas; Wisconsin; Oregon; and a few other spots suggested that humans were in the Americas earlier, well over 14,000 years ago, without the distinctive Clovis tools. And studies of modern and ancient DNA have suggested that the first humans to set foot in North America could have come much earlier, perhaps 16,000 or even 18,000 years ago. Michael R. Waters, director of the Center for the Study of the First Americans at Texas A M University, who led the research with Jessi J. Halligan, who was doing postdoctoral research with him at the time and is now at Florida State, said the DNA studies suggested that the first humans in America came down the Pacific Coast. So far, no one knows how they got to Florida. When they arrived, however, they found a climate not much different from today, but the area was drier and more open, and the seas were much lower. The coast would have been about 125 miles from the site, which was then a spring fed pond, in open, upland terrain, not part of any river. The pond was probably frequented by mastodons and other extinct mammals, like ancient bison and rhinoceroses. People and animals would have gone there to drink, Dr. Halligan said, "and, if you were a mastodon, apparently wallow around and defecate a lot." The radiocarbon dating of plant material found in the mastodon dung, plus a discovery that the layer containing the tools was sealed off by another layer on top that was also older than 14,000 years, confirmed the age of the site. The age had been in doubt before in part because of less conclusive tool fragments and questions about whether the river may have churned up the sediments. There was also a mastodon tusk, with cuts that looked like they might have been made by humans. But that evidence was doubted, too, so Daniel C. Fisher, a paleontologist at the University of Michigan, joined the recent investigation to reanalyze the tusk. He said the marks were made exactly where people would have had to cut through a tough ligament to remove the tusk from a carcass and could not have been made another way. Why would the first Floridians have worked so hard? Probably for a stone age delicacy: up to 15 pounds of fat rich pulp at the deep, growing root of the tusk. It's a bit like bone marrow, available at fine restaurants in Miami.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Science
A new study links daytime sleepiness with the accumulation of the plaques in the brain that are a hallmark of Alzheimer's disease. The study, published in Sleep, included 124 mentally healthy men and women, average age 60, who reported on their own daytime sleepiness and napping habits. An average of 15 years later, researchers administered PET and M.R.I. scans to detect the presence of beta amyloid, the protein that clumps together to form plaques. After controlling for other variables, they found that compared with people who reported no daytime sleepiness, those who did had almost three times the risk of having plaques. Frequent napping, on the other hand, was not associated with plaque accumulation. "If you're falling asleep when you'd rather be awake, that's something that needs to be investigated," said the lead author, Adam P. Spira, an associate professor at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. "It could be just insufficient sleep, or sleep disordered breathing, or other conditions or medications that are leading to it."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Well
From about 359 Canadian dollars , or about 272 at current exchange rates . All hotel openings involve some drama, but the St. Regis Toronto the brand's first property in Canada comes with an epic back story. Born in 2012 as the Trump International Hotel and Tower, the mixed use project endured a litany of well publicized problems, from flying glass building panels to political protests. After new owners deleted the Trump name last year, Marriott International took control of the property, temporarily rechristened it the Adelaide, and undertook a swift, stealthy St. Regis rebrand. The "new" St. Regis opened in late November. I was there in late December and, surprisingly, Trump era decor hadn't been updated in most guest rooms; instead, Marriott splurged on an extravagantly modernist lobby, a 5 million restaurant, and two splashy ultraluxury suites. The hotel's location, within the concrete canyons of the Financial District, makes up in convenience what it lacks in glamour. Attractions like St. Lawrence Market, Scotiabank Arena, and Bell Lightbox a cultural center that is the home of the Toronto International Film Festival are less than 15 minutes away on foot. The Billy Bishop Toronto City Airport downtown can take just a quarter hour by cab; five minutes gets you to Union Station, Toronto's grand rail hub. But this stretch of Bay Street can hollow out on evenings and weekends, and you'll need a car or public transit to reach more intriguing neighborhoods or for dining options sexier than nearby chains. My rather cheerless 22nd floor superior king room boasted beige wallpaper, an armchair in chocolate brown damask, and a TV atop a functional looking dresser of ash gray veneer. There was no art on the walls; a monochromatic nature print above the headboard provided the sole decorative touch. Painted silver, a desk at the window offered some whimsy, until I noticed extensive peeling along its sides. An iHome docking clock radio sat on one nightstand. Panels on both sides of the bed allowed full control of lighting and drapes a thoughtful touch. Cotton sateen Frette bed linens, crisp but soft, felt like heaven. The overall mood was mid 2000s corporate affluence; the front desk told me guest rooms are slated for minor tweaks, but not major upgrades.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Travel
How weird can nature get? Try Titan, Saturn's largest moon, almost 900 million cold miles from the sun and even further, perhaps, from the feeble limits of human imagination. This is a world where it rains gasoline. Soot drifts down like snow and is mounded into dunes by nitrogen winds. Rivers have carved canyons through mountains of frozen hydrocarbons, and layers of ice float on subsurface oceans of ammonia. A chemical sludge that optimistic astronomers call "prebiotic" creeps along under an oppressive brown sky. Besides Earth, Titan is the only world in the universe that is known to harbor liquid on its surface and everything that could imply. For almost four centuries, Titan was just a mysterious brown dot in the sky. Then, in 1980, Voyager 1 swerved by the moon on the way out of the solar system and radioed back evidence of a smoggy atmosphere four times denser than Earth's. Time, technology and human ingenuity have since revealed that dot, Titan, to be a natural wonderland. Last month in Nature Astronomy, planetary scientists and geologists from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory and Arizona State University, led by Rosaly Lopes of J.P.L., published what they called the first geologic map of the distant, frigid world. Scores of those features already have names, such as Kraken Mare, Titan's largest sea, which is named after a Norse sea monster. (Astronomers long ago exhausted Shakespeare and Greek mythology as nomenclature sources. On Titan the naming protocol includes planets from Frank Herbert's "Dune" novels and imaginary rivers from other fictional worlds.) Water is the key to Life As We Know It, which is why NASA's exoplanet searches are oriented toward finding planets warm enough to harbor oceans or lakes. But some investigators in the hopeful field of astrobiology "hopeful," because so far the only known astral creatures live on the biosphere called Earth speculate that there might exist a Life As We Don't Know It thriving on some other liquid. And so Titan, with its rains, rivers, lakes and subsurface ocean of ammonia and water, has risen to the top of the list of homes for Possible Weird Life Out There. Awash in organic materials, Titan is thought by many scientists to resemble in some ways the early Earth before evolution caught on. But stuck in a deep freeze, everything on Titan moves much more slowly. NASA and planetary scientists have been dreaming up robot missions to Titan including sending a boat or submersible to Kraken Mare for a decade or so, ever since Cassini verified the presence of lakes there. The agency has now settled on a plan that is only slightly less romantic. An aircraft called Dragonfly would utilize the moon's relatively thick atmosphere to hop around and inspect different regions, with the aim of figuring out how this world, with its strange weather and chemistry, works. Dragonfly would launch from Earth in 2026 and land on Titan in 2034, on the Shangri La dune fields (their actual name) near the moon's equator. Over the next three years, Dragonfly a dronelike helicopter with eight rotors will skip from site to site, poking, measuring and taking it all in. Dragonfly will end its journey about 100 miles away in the Selk impact crater, which, studies suggest, once held water and organic material. What else might lie there, waiting to be born, remains to be seen.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Science
A cynic might call this Mosesville. Ever since the Brooklyn Queens Expressway and the Brooklyn Battery Tunnel were built in the 1940s, courtesy of the powerful city planner Robert Moses, the semi industrial strip of South Brooklyn now called the Columbia Street Waterfront District has been a skinny, scruffy island of a neighborhood cut off from adjacent areas. In recent years, however, the roaring traffic trench of the expressway has been losing its force as a psychological barrier between the up and coming Columbia Street district and the more affluent residential neighborhoods to its east, Cobble Hill and Carroll Gardens. "It's not a problem getting people to cross the B.Q.E. anymore," said Frank Manzione, an associate broker at Realty Collective who has sold real estate in the area for decades. "Years ago, people would say: 'Frank, I can't even buy a pair of nylons. Frank, I can't even buy a greeting card,' " he said. "That's probably still true here, but it's not a problem because people don't care about that as much as they value the seclusion and the distinctiveness of the neighborhood." Elliott Arkin, a sculptor, was one of those who swore they would never move west of the B.Q.E. But in 2004, while living in Cobble Hill, he found himself looking across the highway from the window of his condominium on Degraw and Hicks Streets, pondering the value to be found in the Columbia district. With his daughter nearing kindergarten age, he was also enticed by the highly regarded Public School 29. In 2005, he and his wife, Deborah Wingert, a dance teacher, paid 900,000 for a "dumpy building" on the southwest corner of Hicks and Union Streets, a two story structure facing the highway. The building had three commercial spaces on the ground floor, one vacant and the other two leased by a florist and a chimney sweep. He and Ms. Wingert spent 100,000 renovating the upstairs two bedroom unit in a loft style and adding a glass sculpture studio. The rumble of passing trucks can be felt, but Mr. Arkin is at peace. "I literally only moved two blocks," he said, "and I don't see it as any different in terms of inconvenience. I still go to Court Street and Smith Street as I did before." For shopping he walks to Met Food on Henry Street, traversing one of the few streets that cross the B.Q.E., or drives to Trader Joe's in Cobble Hill or to Fairway in Red Hook. The uncrowded, low rise character of the district gives some blocks the feeling of an urban small town. Mr. Arkin and his family eat regularly at Petite Crevette, the catch of the day restaurant that rents space downstairs from them. Next door, Mr. Arkin runs a vest pocket gallery, through whose window a sculptor has been seen at work on a statue of St. Salvatore for an owner of the Famous House of Pizza and Calzone around the corner. "It's got a more relaxed vibe than Carroll Gardens," said Frank Galeano, who sells real estate out of the Union Street row house, west of the B.Q.E., where he grew up in the 1970s and '80s. "You talk to your neighbor, and you might have a beer standing in front of your house."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Real Estate
MELBOURNE, Australia The first tennis player to capture Novak Djokovic's imagination was a big serving American with a beautiful one handed backhand. A grade school aged Djokovic, living in the Serbian mountain resort town of Kopaonik, watched on television as Pete Sampras won one of his seven Wimbledon titles, and he fell madly in love with tennis. "I did not have a tennis tradition in my family," Djokovic said, adding, "To me it was definitely a sign of destiny to start playing tennis, to aspire to be as good as Pete." Djokovic tried to emulate Sampras's game, right down to the one handed backhand, before his first coach, Jelena Gencic, encouraged him to switch to both hands because that was his natural stroke. But on other things, Djokovic refused to budge. Most significantly, Djokovic never abandoned the belief that he would grow up to be the best men's player in the world, like Sampras, who held the year end No. 1 ranking for a men's record six years beginning in 1993, when a 6 year old Djokovic began playing tennis in earnest. On Sunday at the Australian Open, Djokovic finally and decisively slipped the surly bonds of Sampras. With his 6 3, 6 2, 6 3 defeat of Rafael Nadal, Djokovic secured his 15th Grand Slam singles title, breaking his tie with Sampras. Djokovic took sole possession of third on the list, behind his contemporaries Roger Federer (20) and Nadal (17). When Sampras retired in 2002, he held the record for men's Grand Slam titles. Unlike Djokovic, who has peers to push him, Sampras spent his career in a mostly lonely pursuit of a long retired player, Roy Emerson, who collected 12 major championships, including a men's record six Australian Open titles. Emerson, 82, attended Sunday's final at Rod Laver Arena, and, like the 47 year old Sampras, he had a target on his back. Djokovic's title was his seventh at Melbourne Park. When he met up with Emerson after the trophy presentation, Djokovic said, smiling, that "Mr. Emerson" was mad at him for breaking his record. The careers of Djokovic and Sampras never intersected Djokovic turned pro the year after Sampras retired but their paths crossed in Los Angeles in 2013 when they played together (and lost) in an exhibition doubles match at U.C.L.A. against Bob and Mike Bryan. At the time, Djokovic described it as "a blast" to share the court with Sampras and said he had always hoped to play a match with or against him. Two months before the exhibition, Djokovic had collected his sixth Grand Slam title with his fourth Australian Open crown. But it wasn't considered a given that he would one day share a piece of Grand Slam history with Sampras, much less move past him. "To surpass him with Grand Slam titles, I'm speechless," Djokovic said Sunday. "I haven't had too much time to contemplate on everything that has happened, but I'm planning to do that." In 2014, Sampras returned to the Australian Open as a spectator, and while there, he sat for a news conference in which he fielded a question about the aging process for champion athletes. Sampras was 31, the same age that Djokovic is now, when he retired. The grind of the tour, especially the extensive travel, eroded his motivation, Sampras said. "As you get older, it just gets tougher," Sampras said then. "It gets tougher to play. It gets tougher to travel. Sometimes it gets a little stale." He added: "I just know from my perspective, I was fatigued the last couple years. I was enjoying my tennis, but it was a tough job." Djokovic understands what Sampras meant. He traveled here without his wife and two small children. During the trophy presentation, Djokovic thanked his loved ones in absentia for their forbearance. He expressed gratitude for all the sacrifices they made so that he could maintain what he described as a selfish existence. He said that it was hard to be apart from his family for weeks on end.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Sports
KYLE ABRAHAM, a dancer, got a call two years ago saying he had won an award that came with a 625,000 check. After the initial shock, he decided to pay off 180,000 in student loans. Sally Otto, an evolutionary biologist, got the call, too. She said she didn't need the money so she has donated 500,000 to causes she felt deserved more recognition. Andrea Ghez, an astrophysicist, spent three quarters of her windfall on her children. "Just hiring more help with the logistics of life and not feeling that was a bad thing it was part of doing my job well," Dr. Ghez said. "I was so thrilled that I could have a work and family life." All three were recipients of MacArthur Foundation fellowships, a group better known as the "MacArthur geniuses." The next class of fellows will be announced next week, and each one will receive a sudden surge of recognition as well as 625,000 paid out over the next five years. But can a genius manage a financial windfall better than the average person? There are plenty of studies that show how ruinous lump sums of money can be for recipients. Lottery winners can end up as life's losers at least those who make the news for ending up broke a few years after winning millions. And the financial failures of star athletes are well documented. Mike Tyson, the boxer, made millions but ended up in debt. And there's Lenny Dykstra, the baseball great who served six months for bankruptcy fraud, as well as the fleet of football players who have fast cars but little else when their careers are cut short. But if a group of geniuses get phone calls out of the blue one autumn morning, would they have more to show for the 625,000 windfall at the end of five years? It turns out, judging from a sampling of MacArthur fellows, they would. And how they spent their windfall, which by the terms of the MacArthur awards is entirely up to them, is equally intriguing. For one, the artists and scientists who win a MacArthur are, by definition, completely devoted to what they are doing to the point that the money was not going to change their trajectory. For most, it was only going to enhance what they were already doing. Steve Coleman, a saxophonist who won last year at age 57, said he had created a life over decades that required little money to maintain and could be supported with even less when times were tough. That way, he said, he wouldn't have to worry when recording deals or performances dried up. He could still make music and pay his bills. "All the decisions I make are based on music, and then I try to figure out how am I going to survive with the music things I'm doing," he said. "I live in Allentown, and the reason I live here is economics," he added. "I lived in New York for 13 years," he went on, but moved to Pennsylvania because New York had gotten too expensive. "I wanted to travel and do research." He said he learned a lesson from a music copyist in the 1980s on the importance of budgeting. He took it to heart and started making spreadsheets for all of his projects. "We have to plan the whole thing out a tour, a record," he said. "I can't even tell you how many times that's saved me." When the MacArthur money came in, he put it toward an idea he had started to develop a program that brought musicians together to live in a city for three to four weeks to perform and be part of the community. For Dr. Otto, the money was incidental to her work. Even though she grew up quite poor, she said, she never thought of spending the money on herself and said that her research would not benefit from extra funding. (She uses mathematical models to advance research on genetics and evolution.) So that's what she is doing. So far, she has made three gifts of the entire annual amount to the Nature Trust of British Columbia, an environmental conservation program in Indonesia, and a fund at the University of British Columbia, where she teaches, to pay student researchers working on conservation issues. For other fellows, it was as if they had won the lottery at the moment they needed it most. Edith Widder, a marine biologist and inventor of several submersible vehicles to explore the ocean's depths, said her award in 2006 allowed her to continue to operate the Ocean Research Conservation Association, a research and advocacy organization she founded. She had started the organization a year earlier, after spending decades at an established oceanographic research institute. Dr. Widder said she had thought it would be easy for her to raise money based on her past work, but she found otherwise. "We were struggling financially," she said. "I put every penny of that MacArthur money back into ORCA." But as was true for many other recipients, the recognition from the award itself opened doors. News of what she was doing she had invented a way to measure pollution levels in estuaries that feed into the ocean led to grants from other foundations and eventually from the state of Florida. She was also still able to continue doing deep sea exploration. In 2012, she was part of the team that first photographed a giant squid in its natural environment, about 2,300 feet below the surface. Money, of course, can have a protective quality. If you have your own, you don't have to rely on other people as much. Sheila Nirenberg, a neuroscientist who has developed a way to restore eyesight, said the MacArthur money helped ward off doubters. As part of her research, she created glasses that help bypass damaged cells to bring images directly to healthy cells that allow people to see again. "To do something like this, science wise, everything is hard," she said. "You have to work with annoying people because everyone wants something. The MacArthur was a buffer against that." It also brought her to the attention of investors interested enough to make her idea commercially viable. As for spending the money, years in the lab had made her wants modest. "I had money to order Chinese food or pizza for everyone when we're working late at the lab," Dr. Nirenberg said. "That sounds ludicrous, but it helps. I can also give bonuses to the team to keep everyone happy and incentivized." The downsides of being publicly acknowledged as a genius with new wealth are no different for MacArthur fellows than for anyone whose good fortune becomes publicly known. People they haven't spoken to in years reappear to ask about a loan. Mr. Abraham, the dancer, said one dispiriting moment was when an artist he had worked with in the past tried to take advantage of him, quadrupling his rate to 8,000 from under 2,000. "I said, 'This is how much you charged me in the past, and I think the amount is a bit extreme,' " he said. "After that, they offered their services in kind." Then, there is the problem of taking on so much so fast, like a deluge after a dry summer. Mr. Coleman said he had to think hard about what to do with such a large amount of money, even though it is spread over five years and his money management was more akin to that of an accountant than a saxophonist. "The MacArthur people, they give you the money and they don't do anything else," he said. "They let you make your own mistakes." So far, though, he said he had managed it well. His secret? He has continued to budget just as he has long done a good practice for anyone who comes into a windfall.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Your Money
Our guide to plays and musicals coming to New York stages and a few last chance picks of shows that are about to close. Our reviews of open shows are at nytimes.com/reviews/theater. 'THE BLACK HISTORY MUSEUM ... ACCORDING TO THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA' at Here (previews start on Nov. 1; opens on Nov. 10). This arts complex reopens as an interactive exhibition in Smoke Mirrors Collaborative's immersive piece about race, prejudice and America's fraught inheritance. Inspired by the Black Lives Matter movement, the production takes over the lobby and backstage areas to explore how black history has been disseminated and distorted. 212 647 0202, here.org 'A CHRISTMAS CAROL' at the Lyceum Theater (previews start on Nov. 7; opens on Nov. 20). Ghosts of Broadway past, present and future unite in a new adaptation of the Charles Dickens Yuletide cheer monger. The playwright Jack Thorne and the director Matthew Warchus weave Christmas songs into the tale of a miser redeemed. Campbell Scott stars, with Andrea Martin and LaChanze as spirits. 212 239 6200, achristmascarolbroadway.com 'CYRANO' at the Daryl Roth Theater (in previews; opens on Nov. 7). Edmond Rostand's play about a man with a silver tongue and a less precious schnozz returns courtesy of the New Group. Peter Dinklage stars as the titular cavalier, in a new version adapted and directed by Erica Schmidt. Aaron and Bryce Dessner, of the National, supply the music. Their bandmate Matt Berninger and Carin Besser provide the lyrics. 800 745 3000, thenewgroup.org	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Theater
On the morning of July 16, 1964, James Powell, a 15 year old black student, was shot and killed by an off duty white police officer on East 76th Street in Manhattan, setting off days of protests and riots. On Sunday afternoon at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, about half a mile from where the shooting took place, a member of the Young People's Chorus of New York City read from Langston Hughes's poem "Death in Yorkville," inspired by Powell's death: "How many bullets does it take to kill a 15 year old kid?" You couldn't help but walk the blocks to 76th Street in your mind as the chorus member spoke the lines. The performance was part of the soprano Julia Bullock's residency at the Met this season: a series of programs including settings of the words of black artists from the South and fresh versions of traditional slave songs; a reflection on the legacy of Josephine Baker; "El Nino," John Adams's exploration of the Nativity story; and Hans Werner Henze's oratorio about a runaway slave.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Music
PARIS It was day two at Haute Couture, and Natalie Portman was beaming. She was sitting in the front row at the Dior show, on the grounds of the Musee Rodin in Paris. "I've never been to a couture show," she said. "This is my first time. I'm super, super excited." In the space of 30 seconds, Ms. Portman used the words super and excited a half dozen times. She was dressed head to toe in Dior: a black cashmere top, a black skirt, tweed coat, along with Dior shoes and bag. Her husband, Benjamin Millepied, the new director of the Paris Opera Ballet, was also on hand. A press officer said that Ms. Portman had never been to a Dior show. But this was a breakthrough of sorts: When John Galliano had his infamous anti Semitic outburst in 2011, Ms. Portman, under contract with the house for its fragrance, was one of the most prominent figures to condemn the Christian Dior designer, who was promptly dismissed. In the years since, the creative director Raf Simons has gone a long way in trying to do away with that ugly part of Dior's recent history, making critics excited, even. (Ms. Portman is still under contract with Dior).	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Fashion & Style
This article, relying on statements made in a police memo, includes errors. It refers incorrectly to payments being probed by Japanese police. While some of the payments identified in the police memo were made by Nobumasa Yokoo's companies, the largest payments were related to the acquisition of Gyrus, a company with which Mr. Yokoo had no involvement. The article also omitted the cause of a missing 77 billion yen on Olympus's balance sheet. The funds were logged as an expenditure, rather than income, because of an accounting error. Also citing the memo, the article describes three companies acquired by an investment fund managed by Mr. Yokoo as "front companies with links to organized crime." While Mr. Yokoo was convicted of money laundering and making false claims to regulators to cover up losses at Olympus, he has refuted any links to organized crime, and a subsequent internal investigation by Olympus found no such connections. Investigators have not made public any further evidence to support those claims. TOKYO Japanese officials say that at least 4.9 billion is unaccounted for in a financial scandal at Olympus and are investigating whether much of that money went to companies with links to organized crime. In a memo prepared by investigators and circulated at a recent meeting of officials from Japan's Securities and Exchange Surveillance Commission, the Tokyo prosecutor's office and the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department, officials say they are trying to determine whether Olympus worked with organized crime syndicates to obscure billions of dollars in past investment losses and then paid them exorbitant sums for their services. The memo a copy of which was obtained by The New York Times from a person close to the official investigation appears to link the Olympus losses for the first time to organized crime groups. It also suggests that investigators believe illicit payouts from Olympus went far beyond the roughly 1.4 billion in merger fees and acquisition payments that have come under recent scrutiny, potentially making it one of the biggest scandals in Japanese corporate history. Olympus, a maker of medical imaging systems and digital cameras, recently announced that an internal investigation had found that the company used a series of money losing acquisitions to hide investment losses in the 1990s, keeping those losses off its books for decades. Olympus has said a panel of third party experts is still tallying numbers on how big the losses were. The company has said that all the transactions went toward masking losses. It has denied rumors that it sought the aid of Japan's notorious organized crime syndicates, known as the yakuza, to help orchestrate a cover up. But according to the investigators' memo, Olympus made payments amounting to many times the losses it sought to hide, and investigators suspect much of the additional money went to crime groups. Olympus paid a total of 481 billion yen, or 6.25 billion, through questionable acquisition payments, investments and advisory fees from 2000 to 2009, according to the memo, but only 105 billion yen has been written down or otherwise accounted for in its financial statements. That leaves 376 billion yen, or 4.9 billion, unaccounted for, according to the memo. The memo says investigators believe that over half of that amount has been channeled to organized crime syndicates, including the country's largest, the Yamaguchi Gumi. The memo does not make clear whether Olympus knew about those links. But if confirmed by investigators, an association with organized crime could prompt a delisting of Olympus shares from the Tokyo Stock Exchange, under the exchange's rules. The memo suggests that Olympus may have been coerced by organized crime syndicates that knew about or helped with previous cover ups to channel ever increasing funds out of the company. "Olympus was exploited over its cover up totaling losses of 50 billion yen, and since 2000, over 200 billion yen has disappeared into the underground economy," the memo said. Olympus officials said Thursday that they had no immediate comment. On Oct. 26, when asked about the possibility of the involvement of "antisocial forces" in the scandal, a euphemism for organized crime, the president of Olympus, Shuichi Takayama, said, "I absolutely do not recognize this." So far, three Olympus directors have been dismissed or have stepped down. Questions were first raised about Olympus's acquisitions in August in the Japanese magazine Facta. The scandal deepened in October after Olympus fired its chief executive, Michael C. Woodford, who said he was dismissed after questioning the company's chairman and board about some of the payments. Jamie Dimon walks back his quip that JPMorgan would outlive China's Communist Party. Stocks slip as interest rates rise, while jobless claims drop to their lowest point since 1969. The U.S. effort to cut energy costs may not have the intended effect. Mr. Woodford said Thursday that he planned to return to Japan next week to speak with the authorities about the investigation. Mr. Woodford has also been cooperating in the United States with the F.B.I. and the Securities Exchange Commission, which are looking into the matter, as well as in Britain with its Serious Fraud Office. At the heart of Olympus's action is a once common technique to hide losses called tobashi, which Japanese financial regulators tolerated before clamping down on the practice in the late 1990s. Tobashi, translated loosely as "to blow away," enables companies to hide losses on bad assets by selling those assets to other companies, only to buy them back later through payments, often disguised as advisory fees or other transactions, when market conditions or earnings improve. The Japanese investigators' memo chronicles Olympus's efforts to pay off its previous losses through payments camouflaged as acquisitions and supposedly related advisory fees to buy companies that seemed to have little relation to its main business. The memo confirms some information previously reported by The New York Times, which found that deal payments were largely made by the management consulting firm Global Company, headed by Nobumasa Yokoo, a former banker at the investment bank Nomura. Also helping to arrange those deals, according to those news reports and the investigators' memo, was ITX, a company acquired by Olympus in 2003 and formerly headed by Mr. Yokoo's elder brother, Akinobu Yokoo. The investigators say that in December 2005, ITX bought Tsubasa Net, a software maker, which the memo calls "a front company" known by the Japanese police to be affiliated with the Yamaguchi Gumi. ITX's earnings report for that year shows it paid 16 billion yen ( 208 million) for that acquisition. Meanwhile, Olympus, being advised by Global Company, paid 73.4 billion yen ( 953 million) to acquire three Tokyo based companies Altis, Humalabo and News Chef between 2006 and 2008, and then quickly wrote off the investments. The memo identifies all three as front companies with links to organized crime.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Global Business
This was the year in which theater dared to be outrageously big. And equally, outrageously small. In either case, size mattered in 2018, as shows with the breadth and breathlessness of Victorian novels or the miniaturist precision of New Yorker short stories played with and subverted conventional expectations of scale. The best 25 American plays since "Angels in America." Theatergoers could experience both the audacious expansiveness of Jez Butterworth's "The Ferryman" on Broadway a play of more than three hours, with 21 vividly individualized speaking parts and the microscopic intensity of Richard Nelson's artfully shrunken (105 minutes, seven characters) production of "Uncle Vanya" at a 192 seat college theater. At the same time, the classic big canvas American musicals "Oklahoma!" and "Carmen Jones" were reincarnated Off Broadway in deceptively modest interpretations that did away with orchestras and chorus lines to zoom in on the conflicted human hearts within. And new works by three young women playwrights used tiny stages to blow conventional forms of entertainment into smithereens. Though I have cheated by doubling up within the following list, arranged in alphabetical order, I haven't begun to accommodate all the riches of what proved to be a surprising year of great things in packages of all dimensions. 'Angels in America' and 'Harry Potter and the Cursed Child' Both these British born productions, directed by Marianne Elliott and John Tiffany, respectively, traveled through and bent time and space to remind us that there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamed of in our mortal philosophy. Visually dazzling, impeccably acted and, in their very different ways, reflective of the social upheaval and divisiveness of an anxious 21st century. The directors John Doyle (the Classic Stage Company production of the Bizet scored "Carmen Jones") and Daniel Fish (Rodgers and Hammerstein's "Oklahoma!" at St. Ann's Warehouse in Brooklyn) stripped two musicals from the 1940s, both with a book and lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II, down to their skivvies. In doing so, they shook off the vestiges of costume operettas to discover an abidingly and in the case of "Oklahoma!" disturbingly radical energy at their core. Clare Barron's exciting, nuanced group portrait of a competitive middle school dance troupe excavated the raw terror and exhilaration of being 13, with a splendidly confused throng of adolescents embodied without cuteness or condescension by a cast of adults, directed by Lee Sunday Evans at Playwrights Horizons. What at first appears to be a cozy African American domestic sitcom, in the style of "The Cosby Show," is dismantled and ultimately detonated in Jackie Sibblies Drury's magnificent comedy of discomfort. The Soho Rep production, directed by Sarah Benson, used every theatrical trick at its disposal to keep its audience off balance and reeling. The British playwright Jez Butterworth returned to the epic heights and depths of his earlier "Jerusalem" with this sprawling tale of a Northern Irish family at the height of the Troubles. Directed by Sam Mendes, this show uses the vast scope and the small, character defining detail of great family sagas in fiction, rendered in an iron grip narrative that never slackens. The bloody drama of vengeance common to spaghetti westerns and Jacobean theater is translated into a sharp witted, ever mutating adventure story of two African American sisters on a mission to kill their father. With this unclassifiable play, Aleshea Harris, directed by Taibi Magar at Soho Rep, established herself as an original and resonant voice, a scary surrealist with both feet planted in the all too real landscape of 21st century American culture. Two vintage Kenneth Lonergan plays that finally made it to Broadway, many years after their first performances. As directed by Trip Cullman ("Hero") and Lila Neugebauer ("Waverly"), these productions did full justice to their author's grasp of moral complexity and the inadequate, lonely languages with which we try to communicate. And "The Waverly Gallery" gave New York the priceless gift of the incomparable Elaine May's return to the stage, as a dementia addled woman holding on fiercely to a shrinking life. The most affecting version that I have ever seen of this epochal comedy of discontent, Richard Nelson's soft spoken, self effacing interpretation with a devastating Jay O. Sanders in the title role demanded that we lean in and really listen to Chekhov's forlorn characters. The effect was of hanging out in a family kitchen, and being treated to illuminating confidences that felt almost too intimate to hear. Federico Garcia Lorca's poetic tragedy from 1934 about a childless woman in rural Spain was transported into the London of the 21st century by the playwright and director Simon Stone. With a blistering Billie Piper in the title role, this production (seen in a limited run at the Park Avenue Armory) told its harrowing tale in a glass sided box of a stage. But no walls could confine the all consuming heat of Ms. Piper's portrait of a woman skinned and flayed by an increasingly demented obsession. There was a lot to like in 2018, but the productions that stand out as I look back are those that opened unexpected doors on the world outside the theater. That can happen anywhere, of course even, occasionally, on Broadway but it happened most for me in noncommercial settings Off Broadway or out of town. Here, in order of opening, are the seven plays and three musicals that flung those doors widest and shoved me through hardest. The avant garde has a way of becoming old hat every quarter century or so, as history sifts the culture to see what's worth keeping. But Edward Albee's comedy about decrepitude (or tragedy about survival) has grown only more powerful since its premiere Off Broadway in 1994, as this spring's brilliantly polished Broadway production by Joe Mantello proved. Starring Glenda Jackson in her return to the New York stage after 30 years, the play in fact seemed ageless: fierce and unforgiving. At the end of George Bernard Shaw's "Pygmalion," Henry Higgins and Eliza Doolittle renounce romance and go their separate ways. When Lerner and Loewe turned "Pygmalion" into a musical in 1956, that was hardly a viable choice. Now, it seems like the only choice, and in making it Bartlett Sher not only restored the feminism inherent in the material but also made the Lincoln Center Theater revival the best Broadway musical production of the year. Drama is not just what happens under the lights; it's what happens in your head as you watch it. Jackie Sibblies Drury's daring, despairing new play at the indispensable Soho Rep counted on that duality as it led its audience through formal manipulations of genre from a sitcom about a black family to a satire on racism to something truly shocking. In the end it posed a question that strikes at the deepest assumptions of theatrical culture: Is this play meant for you? In the last year I've seen six new plays about young black men being murdered in America. Though all were powerful, they faced a common difficulty: How to theatricalize in one gesture both individual devastation and collective disaster. Antoinette Nwandu's solution in this searing drama is to weld the story of two black youths in a city like Chicago to spiritual antecedents including enslaved African Americans, biblical Israelites and Beckett's hobos Vladimir and Estragon. In Danya Taymor's production for LCT3, the combined weight of the past and the present was overwhelming. Two productions I saw outside of New York found established playwrights returning to and bettering their top form. Adam Rapp, already a Pulitzer Prize finalist for "Red Light Winter," debuted a new work about a Yale writing professor who discovers in her star student a genius, a mystery and a moral conundrum. All three elements were brought out brilliantly in David Cromer's spooky production for the Williamstown Theater Festival, starring Mary Louise Parker (never better) as the teacher who learns how little it's possible to know. The woes of a provincial family amid portents of sweeping political change are a familiar subject to fans of Richard Nelson's Apple and Gabriel family plays. Yet the intimate, American style of those productions turns out to suit Chekhov's great drama of Russian disappointment just as admirably. Directed for the Hunter Theater Project by Mr. Nelson, this was a revival that felt like a premiere. It also featured a Vanya who, in the brutally unaffected performance of Jay O. Sanders, seemed, like all of us, to be making it up as he went along. The wicked satirist Bruce Norris ("Clybourne Park" and "Domesticated") has sometimes aimed at easy targets. But his latest play, like Adam Rapp's, finds him in "Crime and Punishment" mode, anchoring his weaponized wit in profound questions. The penetrating production by Pam MacKinnon for the Steppenwolf Theater Company in Chicago laid bare the hypocrisy of a culture that believes in rehabilitation and redemption until in the case of four pedophiles living in a post prison halfway house it absolutely doesn't. You don't expect a work that has been in development for 10 years to be electrifyingly topical, but Heidi Schreck's debate of a play about our foundational legal document could hardly have proved more hot button. And not just because it arrived at the New York Theater Workshop, in a production by Oliver Butler, amid the national outcry over the Supreme Court nomination of Brett Kavanaugh. No, this was one of those subversive and eye opening new experiences that is likely to remain provocative for years, at least until the Constitution gets amended or we do. If 2018 was a terrible year for new and revived musicals, a few that were somehow both still excelled. Chief among them was Daniel Fish's chiaroscuro reimagining of the 1943 Rodgers and Hammerstein tale of cowboys and farmers, freedom and restraint, independence and union. As performed by a vivid, twangy cast at St. Ann's Warehouse, this artifact of the first Golden Age of musicals emerged as a signpost for a much needed new one. (Notable in the same category were John Doyle's stripped down "Carmen Jones" for Classic Stage Company and the mamaloshen version of "Fiddler on the Roof" directed by Joel Grey for National Yiddish Theater Folksbiene.) 'Rags Parkland Sings the Songs of the Future' Taking up the challenge of the classic works of musical theater, this sci fi folk blues musical by Andrew R. Butler aimed to update the formal expressiveness of songs as narrative. Set in an underground club 250 years from now, it slipped a political tale about environmental disaster, totalitarianism and dispossession into a concert setting, letting the cliches of pop lyrics (lost love, ticking hearts) do double duty as clues to the realities of a dystopian future. At the same time, in a gorgeously shabby Ars Nova production directed by Jordan Fein, it reassured us that as long as humans (or androids) can gather to hear music, music will have something to say.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Theater
William Friedkin invented a new kind of car chase in "The French Connection," but at the start of his new documentary, "The Devil and Father Amorth," he puts his reputation for realism under assault. "At the time I made 'The Exorcist,'" the director confesses, "I had never seen an exorcism." Heavens, no! But he knew how to go about getting an exorcist. Father Gabriele Amorth, the authority on such matters for the diocese of Rome, whom Mr. Friedkin wrote about for Vanity Fair (and who died later in 2016), agreed to let him film an exorcism without a crew. Actually, it's a do over exorcism, of a woman called Cristina in the film. Father Amorth "has exorcised Cristina eight times without success," Mr. Friedkin explains. "This will be her night." Well, he hopes.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Movies
Here comes the sun. For all those returning Art Basel snowbirds, Saks Fifth Avenue is bringing a little bit of South Florida to Manhattan. On Thursday, it will open a pop up for the Miami Beach concept store Alchemist with an installation by the artist Awol Erizku. Expect boilers and synthetic flowers and a range of lifestyle products, including a reversible dip dye tee ( 425) and acid washed Baja ( 450) with Mr. Erizku's artwork. That same day, Dyson, the company known for its Supersonic hair dryer (and vacuums, fans and other household appliances), will open a Dyson Demo flagship. Stop by to try the latest version of the Supersonic, a matte black and purple machine ( 399.99), and enjoy free styling. At 640 Fifth Avenue. On Saturday, stop by Saks for a glass of bubbly with Jason Wu, who will be offering free gift wrapping and bottle engraving on his debut fragrance ( 145 for three ounces) from 2 to 4 p.m. Also on Saturday, you can have classic sneakers like Converse Chuck Taylors ( 54.99) and Adidas Stan Smiths ( 74.95) customized by a graffiti artist at the Ones pop up sponsored by Zappos. At Beyond, 229 Hudson Street.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Fashion & Style
Ivan Nagy, a dancer of riveting noble presence who became one of American Ballet Theater's most popular stars in the 1970s as an acclaimed partner to great ballerinas, died on Saturday in Budapest. He was 70. Hungarian born, Mr. Nagy (pronounced nahj) had been working during the past year as artistic adviser to the Hungarian State Opera House Ballet. He and his wife, the Australian ballerina Marilyn Burr, were staging a new production of "La Sylphide," scheduled for May 23. He lived in Valldemossa, on the island of Majorca. His daughter Aniko Nagy said in a telephone interview that Mr. Nagy had felt unwell after a flight from Majorca on Friday. He was visiting a cousin in Budapest for lunch when he died suddenly, she said. No cause was given. Mr. Nagy stunned his many fans in 1978 when he announced his retirement from Ballet Theater in New York at the age of 35, explaining later that his performing career had been "a miserable love affair." Freed of the pressures of dancing after 1980, he embarked on a second career directing ballet companies in the United States and abroad. A highly versatile dancer, he excelled in princely roles in the 19th century classics and also appeared in contemporary works by Antony Tudor, Eliot Feld, Alvin Ailey, Michael Smuin, Dennis Nahat and others, in which his dramatic verve as an alienated or romantic hero could come into play. Nonetheless, it was the chemistry and power of the partnerships he established with Natalia Makarova, Gelsey Kirkland and Cynthia Gregory at Ballet Theater and on tour with Margot Fonteyn that seemed, fairly or not, to define his career. Never a great virtuoso, Mr. Nagy opted to be nothing less than a great partner. Clive Barnes, the dance critic of The New York Times, summed up Mr. Nagy's special gifts in 1976, writing, "He has such style and elegance his manner is at once ardent and self effacing that any woman would just have to want to dance her debut with him." Ms. Makarova in fact made her Ballet Theater debut with Mr. Nagy, as Giselle to his Albrecht, in 1970, shortly after she defected from the Soviet Union. They were seen as a perfect fit; Mr. Nagy had been trained in Budapest by Soviet influenced teachers before he defected to the United States in 1965. As his audiences knew, Mr. Nagy was short on pyrotechnics and had trouble with double turns in the air. Mr. Barnes spoke for many when he wrote that he had grown "weary" of worrying about Mr. Nagy's double turns. Instead, he said, Mr. Nagy should be appreciated for his overall qualities as "a phenomenally gifted dancer and a great artist." Ivan Nagy was born on April 28, 1943, in Debrecen, in eastern Hungary. He began studying dance as a child, with his mother, a ballet teacher. At 7 he entered the school of the Budapest State Opera Ballet (now the Hungarian State Opera House Ballet) and trained there until he joined the Budapest company in 1960. In 1965, as a young soloist, Mr. Nagy was sent to the International Ballet Competition in Varna, Bulgaria, where he won a silver medal. Frederic Franklin, the former star of Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo, was on the jury, and as artistic director of the National Ballet of Washington he invited Mr. Nagy to make a guest appearance with his company. During the Cold War, Mr. Nagy's decision to remain in Washington was considered a defection, but the Hungarian government eventually allowed him to visit his family in Hungary. Mr. Nagy met Ms. Burr at the National Ballet. In addition to his wife and daughter Aniko, he is survived by another daughter, Tatjana Harper; a granddaughter; and a sister. After three years with the National Ballet, Mr. Nagy danced for one season, in 1968, with the New York City Ballet. He appeared in principal roles, notably Balanchine's "Symphony in C," but saw no future for himself there, he said. By July 1968, he had moved to Ballet Theater, where he also partnered the ballerina Carla Fracci and rising young dancers like Marianna Tcherkassky. He retired after 10 years with the company but continued to dance on tours until 1979. In 1980, he appeared briefly to partner Ms. Makarova at Ballet Theater's 40th anniversary gala at the Metropolitan Opera House and received a hero's welcome.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Dance
A Tyrannosaurus rex hunting a pair of ankylosaurs, which were equipped with bony, club like tails. Researchers puzzle as to why more modern animals don't have tail weaponry. With a nearly impenetrable hide covered in spikes, the ankylosaurus was like a dinosaur version of an armored tank. And like any battlefield behemoth, it boasted a fearsome weapon: a bone crushing clubbed tail. The ankylosaurus was not the only prehistoric beast to have an intimidating backside. Stegosaurus sported spear like spikes on its tail. Some sauropods flailed fused clumps of bones from their posteriors toward predators. But in living animals today, formidable tail weaponry is nearly absent. Though porcupines have quills and some lizards lash their tails when threatened, neither animal has the bony armaments seen millions of years ago. To help figure out why, a pair of paleontologists has pieced together a series of traits shared among extinct species that had weaponized their fifth extremity. Their study may help explain why tail weaponry has gone missing since dinosaurs and some ice age animals went extinct. In a paper published Wednesday in the journal Proceeding of the Royal Society B, the team has identified three characteristics in land dwelling mammals, reptiles and nonavian dinosaurs that may be linked with evolving bony tail weapons. They include being large about the size of a mountain goat or bigger eating plants and already having an armored body. "That's a really rare combination no matter what time period you're looking at," said Victoria Arbour, a paleontologist at the University of Toronto and the Royal Ontario Museum and an author on the study. Dr. Arbour and her colleague Lindsay Zanno, a paleontologist from North Carolina State University, were sure to note that the three traits they identified are correlated with animals that have tail weapons, and do not drive the development of these dangerous appendages. For the study Dr. Arbour and Dr. Zanno compiled a data set of nearly 300 extinct and living species of mammals, reptiles, birds and dinosaurs. They plugged in characteristics associated with each like "is herbivorous" or "has a prehensile tail" into a computer program. After sorting through hundreds of characteristics, they identified the handful most closely shared between species that had tail weapons. Included in the anatomical arsenal were tails that evolved to act like flails, spikes, bats and clubs. Stegosaurus and its relatives had spiky, conical bones. And the bat and club were iconic features seen in both ankylosaurus and the glyptodons, which were ancient boulder sized armadillos. The authors hypothesized that developing bony clubs like the ankylosaurus and the glyptodon was a gradual, evolutionary process. "They start with a stiffening of the tail to make it stronger and able to better project force," said Dr. Zanno. "You're swinging with essentially bowling balls at the end of the tails, you're going to rip it off, so it makes sense that it's going to happen in that order." These differed from defenses seen in tails of modern animals because they were made of bone. Living animals tend to have tails with weapons that are made of keratin, like the quills of a porcupine or the scales of a pangolin. Also, modern lizards like iguanas and komodos, which can lash their flexible tails, lack spikes. The exception, the authors noted, was a lizard known as Smaug which does have a smaller bony, spiky tail, they said. Andrew Farke, a paleontologist from the Raymond M. Alf Museum of Paleontology at The Webb Schools in California, who was not involved in the study, said the study made a good case. "Lots of animals were big and herbivorous, but only a few groups had bony skin in place already." he said. "I'm intrigued by the fact that once an animal gets skin armor, there are so many evolutionary pathways toward supporting dangerous tail tips."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Science
More girls are playing high school football, even as the sport draws fewer participants overall in an injury conscious era. As part of Super Bowl LII in Minneapolis, the National Football League organized its third Women's Summit for Friday "to discuss how football and the broader sports world can continue to support the advancement of women on and off the field," said Kamran Mumtaz, an N.F.L. spokesman. The sport remains male dominated, with no women playing in the N.F.L. and few on college teams. But some high school girls, playing on teams of boys, are gaining attention for their achievements. For example, last fall, the high school quarterback Holly Neher threw a touchdown pass in Florida, making headlines as the first girl known to do so in state history. And K Lani Nava, a kicker, became the first girl in Texas to score points in a high school state championship game. But as a growing body of research suggests that youth tackle football is harmful to children's brains, not everyone is cheering. "Why bring girls into it? We should be taking the boys out of it," said Dr. Robert Stern, director of clinical research for Boston University's C.T.E. Center, which studies chronic traumatic encephalopathy, the degenerative brain disease caused by repeated blows to the head. "It doesn't make sense to expose our children to repetitive head impacts during periods of incredible maturation of the most important organ in our body, the brain." None Week 11 Predictions: Here are our picks against the spread. N.F.L. Tightens Covid Protocols: As cases rise and Thanksgiving approaches, the league is requiring masks inside team facilities and increasing testing. The Packers' Defense Is Their M.V.P.: Green Bay's oft overlooked defense has kept the team from falling out of the Super Bowl chase. The Long Path to the Super Bowl: With 18 weeks in the regular season and fewer teams earning byes in the playoffs, the Super Bowl is still a long way off. Playoff Simulator: Explore every team's path to the postseason, updated live. The number of girls playing tackle football is still low compared to boys of the 225,000 athletes in Pop Warner youth football programs, for example, just 1,100 are girls. According to the Sports and Fitness Industry Association, of the 5.5 million Americans who report playing tackle football, 596,000 or 10.9 percent are female. It is notable that more girls want to play even as annual survey by the National Association of State High School Federations reported that participation in high school football went down 3.5 percent over the past five years. Team sports like football provide well established social, physical and psychological benefits. But a Boston University study released last year found that kids who played tackle football before age 12 may be at higher risk for emotional and behavioral problems later in life. Another study took MRIs of the brains of kids before and after a single season of tackle football, removing from the study anyone who had a diagnosable concussion. Those researchers found that there was a change in the brain's white matter after just one season of play. And a study published in January in the journal Brain found the kind of changes typical of C.T.E. in the brains of four teenage athletes who had died after impact injuries. Dr. Stern said that it is important to understand that the real danger for C.T.E. is not necessarily concussions, but subconcussive impacts. That is, repeated hitting is damaging even if it doesn't cause a concussion. Crystal Sacco, league president and co founder of Utah Girls Tackle Football, which started in 2015 and is expecting about 400 girls this season, said she doesn't hear many concerns from parents about their daughters playing tackle football. "I think they feel safe because they're playing against other girls," she said. And Dr. Stern noted that it is not possible to say whether the research which looked only at boys can be generalized to include girls because in an all girls league, the force of the hits could be different. But several studies have found that in sports with comparable rules between girls and boys, the rates of concussion are actually higher in women. Not only that, a 2012 statement from the American Medical Society for Sports Medicine highlighted research showing that female athletes sustain more concussions than their male counterparts, report more severe symptoms and have a longer duration of recovery than men. "When it comes to female athletes' participation regardless of age we're lacking in truly understanding their experience around head injury," said Donna Duffy, co director of the Female Brain Project, a research team at the University of North Carolina Greensboro studying head injuries in female athletes. "We're on the cusp of this; there's a growing body of literature suggesting that biological sex hormones may be impacted or disrupted when a head injury is sustained." But while Dr. Duffy cautions more research is needed, she agrees with other researchers that prepubescent kids should avoid playing tackle football. Parents whose daughters want to play football may feel they have a difficult decision to make. Several programs suggest flag football as a healthier option for both boys and girls, because they learn the strategy of the game and develop agility skills without risking the injuries of tackling. Last month, the Concussion Legacy Foundation, composed of doctors and former N.F.L. players, recommended that no children play tackle football before age 14. They've created the Flag Football Under 14 program to encourage kids who want to play football to start with flag football until they're older, and Chris Nowinski, the foundation's co founder and chief executive, says those guidelines apply to both boys and girls. The N.F.L. has also been promoting its flag football program, which partners with U.S.A. Football to allow kids who play flag football to sport the uniform and logo of an N.F.L. team. The N.F.L. Flag program is open to both girls and boys, and according to Mr. Mumtaz, participation increased 45 percent in the past five years to more than 409,000 in 2017. Girls varsity flag football has been sanctioned as a high school sport in five states. Jen Welter, the first female coach in the N.F.L., founded Grrridiron Girls, a flag football camp program designed to allow girls of all experience levels to participate. Her most recent camp in Boston had 90 participants.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Well
"The Hand Has Five Fingers," a photomontage by John Heartfield, was the election poster of the German Communist Party in the Weimar Republic elections of 1928. The party was designated with the number 5 on the ballot, and the caption reads: "The hand has five fingers! With five, you seize the enemy!" Hostile times don't automatically engender great art. Let's put to rest that chestnut, which resurfaced during and after the 2016 election and which, as the presidency of Donald J. Trump draws to a close, is looking pretty deflated. A crisis can inspire your vision, but just as easily it can wash you out. And rising to the challenges of an anxious age takes ambition, stamina and not a little bravery. That's the conclusion of "Engineer, Agitator, Constructor: The Artist Reinvented," a momentous new show that papers the walls of the Museum of Modern Art with posters, magazines, advertisements and brochures from an earlier age of upheaval. Exactly a century ago, a cross section of artists from Moscow to Amsterdam opened their eyes in a continent reshaped by war and revolution. Rapid advances in media technology made their old academic training feel useless. They were living through a political and social earthquake. And when the earthquake hit, what did these artists do? They rethought everything. They disclaimed the autonomy that modern art usually assigned to itself. They plunged their work into dialogue with politics, economics, transport, commerce. Nothing was automatic for these artistic pioneers, who took it upon themselves to recast painting, photography and design as a kind of public works job. "Engineer, Agitator, Constructor" debuts the acquisition of more than 300 works from Merrill C. Berman, a financial adviser who has spent the last 50 years assembling probably the finest private collection of graphic arts from the 1920s and '30s. With a stroke, this addition makes MoMA (alongside the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam) the world's premier repository of European graphics from between the wars. It also introduces into the collection a host of female artists, including the bold Soviet poster artists Anna Borovskaya and Maria Bri Bein, the Polish polymath Teresa Zarnower and the Dutch designer Fre Cohen. Almost a third of the works here are by women, which, for a show of historical avant gardes, counts as a lot. The exhibition moves, roughly speaking, from east to west. We start in the Soviet Union, the uncontested champion of artistic innovation after World War I where Constructivist artists caught up in a revolution rebranded themselves as organizers, propagandists, fomenters of change. Then the show migrates to Poland and Hungary, Czechoslovakia and Austria, then Germany and the Netherlands. French design is a soft spot, represented only by some welding brochures. A more notable weak point is Italy; we'll get to why. But for now, imagine you are a young artist in imperial Russia, brought up on a visual diet of portraiture, religious painting, pretty pictures of gardens. Then, in 1917, the czar is overthrown. A provisional republic is established, which Lenin topples before the year is out. Russia has tumbled into a civil war. It feels like the fate of not just your country but all humanity is on the line. Of course you jump in. You join a collective Unovis, "Champions of the New Art" where you make posters and signs and clothing as a joint enterprise, like workers in a factory. You embrace new abstract forms, meant to construct a whole new society. Two unsigned Unovis posters here (probably done by Wladyslaw Strzeminski, a young Polish expat in Russia) reroute the abstract geometric forms Kazimir Malevich conceived just before the Russian Revolution into high volume agitprop, papered on buildings all over town. Red circles and black squares appear on the walls of the telegraph office and the sides of streetcars. And this baffling new syntax has a meaning: workers of the world, unite. When revolution comes an artist can't be precious. You have to be "a public person, a specialist in political and cultural work with the masses," in the words of Gustav Klutsis, perhaps the greatest designer of the Soviet era, though he'd have bridled at being called an individual artist at all. Klutsis, from rural Latvia, joined Unovis after the revolution, and would become Europe's most fearless practitioner of photomontage, pasting pictures of soldiers, sportsmen and Stalin at wildly discordant scales and against high contrast backgrounds. Surely the most stunning item in MoMA's Berman acquisition is the cut and paste original of "Electrification of the Entire Country," one of Klutsis's earliest photomontages. If you look closely, you'll see that the artist pasted Lenin's head onto a totally different body, to make him look larger than life. Lenin struts across a perfect gray circle, overlaid by a red square, radiating radio waves: a new man walking into a new world. This show includes 16 works by Klutsis, though it's a thrill to discover here lesser known photomonteurs, including Klutsis's wife, Valentina Kulagina. In one of her pieces from 1929, a gray clad welder, which Kulagina draws at a dynamic 40 degrees, lets sparks fly in front of a skyscraper (actually a photo of Detroit!) and a grid of white and gray struts stretching to the sky. At the welder's feet are white housing blocks, like some dream of an infinite city. "STROIM," shouts a red lettered caption. We are building. Kulagina was one of numerous Soviet women who embraced a new role of artist as revolutionary proletarian. Varvara Stepanova designed journal covers with reworked, vigorous photographs of Red Army heroes. Elena Semenova and Lydia Naumova combined bar graphs and clipped photos for informational posters on trade union membership or factory efficiency a data visualization that should leave today's spreadsheet geeks agog. Semenova also designed a lounge for a prototype proletarian club, complete with windows spanning the walls and blue striped deck chairs for chilling out after a day on the factory floor. There's nothing too good for the working class! The burst of new visions in the Soviet Union would, by the mid 1930s, give way to authoritarian rigidity. Socialist Realism became the country's one official artistic style, and Klutsis was executed, on Stalin's orders, in 1938. But these explosively inventive Soviet artists had counterparts among left wing German photomonteurs, like John Heartfield, who designed a campaign poster for the Weimar era Communist Party with a giant, sooty worker's hand ready to grasp his future or choke a capitalist. In Warsaw, Teresa Zarnower and Mieczyslaw Szczuka founded Blok, a magazine that showcased a Polish avant garde with multilingual articles and discordant layouts. An entire gallery here is devoted to Blok and other boldly designed Central and Eastern European magazines of the 1920s, including Ma, a Hungarian publication based in Vienna, and Veshch/Gegenstand/Objet, edited by El Lissitzky and lasting just two issues. A surprising Dutch discovery is the photomontaged brochures of Fre Cohen, who promoted Schiphol Airport or the Amsterdam harbor with collaged pictures and dynamic, off center red typography. Cohen is one of numerous Jewish artists of the left in this show, and one who met a terrible end. Arrested by the Nazis in 1943, she committed suicide rather than face deportation to a death camp. "Engineer, Agitator, Constructor" is a feast of interwar innovation, but it has an undercurrent that I don't like: a suggestion that progress in art and progress in society go naturally together. The curators Jodi Hauptman and Adrian Sudhalter make this point explicit at the show's entrance, celebrating "profound links between radical art and struggles for social change," and suggesting that these designers' bold invention is "paralleled in the works of countless artists today, also facing crisis and turmoil." Really, an hour inside a Chelsea gallery and another on Instagram should disabuse you of the notion that today's artists are breaking boundaries like these ones did. On the contrary: As artists have made louder and louder noise about political relevance, they've also become more traditionalist in the images and objects they celebrate. For artists, the Trump years turned out to be a period of individualism and nostalgia. Unovis style novelty was not on the table; the art form that rose to greatest prominence was probably portrait painting, one of the most conservative genres of all. Fascist Italy looms as a gaping hole in this show's map of European graphic invention. That's largely because of what Mr. Berman collected; he focused instead on the anarchic photomontages of Bruno Munari, who was not a Fascist party member. Yet the Italian lacuna nourishes a misunderstanding, too common in today's cultural conversation, that good artists must be good people. They needn't be. You can be politically radical and visually doctrinaire, or vice versa, and we shouldn't ignore that the Pan European graphic innovations preserved in Mr. Berman's astounding collection crossed not just borders but ideologies. (Photomontage was well established in Fascist Italy and also in imperial Japan, whose most graphically progressive magazines glorified racial purity and colonial conquest.) I don't know, maybe it's just this current passage in American culture, when right wing artists are so few, that has led us to some bad assumptions. But the best lesson today's artists can draw from this earlier avant garde is that neither ideas nor images are enough on their own. First, picture a new world; then learn to design it. Engineer, Agitator, Constructor: The Artist Reinvented Through April 10 at the Museum of Modern Art, 11 West 53rd Street, Manhattan; 212 708 9400; moma.org. Timed tickets are required.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Art & Design
After Hannah Grey of Pittsburgh earned an undergraduate degree in interior design, she spent several years working for an architectural firm as a commercial interior designer. "I enjoyed it," she said, "but it was definitely more of a desk job." Then she participated in a workshop for architects and designers. "The basis of the program was to show us how the blueprints we design actually translate to real life," said Ms. Grey, 38. It kicked in her memories of growing up in Bedford, Mass., in a mansard style house built in 1840 and learning from her father how to repair and restore woodwork. "It was a fun thing I did with him, working with my hands and helping him fix things," she said. So in 2014 she decided to pursue a career as a carpenter, and she is now on the cusp of completing her fourth year in a carpentry apprentice program at the Keystone Mountain Lakes Regional Council of Carpenters in Pittsburgh. Her skills fit the job: She is detail oriented, which is crucial to making accurate cuts. She is adroit with hand eye coordination and is at ease with the math skills required to gauge measurements. "I have met a lot of people in the program who have college degrees, worked in office jobs and have decided to do this," Ms. Grey said. In Western Pennsylvania, for example, nonresidential construction is booming, and there is no sign of lessening, said Jeff Nobers, executive director of the Builders Guild of Western Pennsylvania. "And starting in 2022, we're going to begin losing some 15,000 people over a five year period to retirement." Mr. Nobers said that he was seeing more people who had graduated from college and started a white collar career moving into the trades. "They got out and worked for a few years and determined they didn't like what they were doing, or realized there was no real upside future," he said. Most transitioning workers learn the trade through an apprenticeship. These programs generally run from three to five years, based on a 2,000 hour year. That breaks down to 10 percent in the classroom, or 200 hours a year, where apprentices learn specific trade skills along with local building codes, blueprint reading, mathematics and more. The bulk of their time, 1,800 hours, is on the job, Mr. Nobers said. There are people at all ages going through a career with a mundane job who have been unexcited about going into work and are looking at these skilled trade jobs with increasing interest, said Bryan Kamm, a work force consultant who is leading an apprenticeship initiative in Florida's Cape Kennedy area called the Space Coast Consortium Apprenticeship Initiative. "These manufacturing apprenticeships are no longer blue collar work," Mr. Kamm said, "but require highly technically advanced skills that include a great command of mathematics, physics, hydraulics, robotics and information technology." American employers have been saying for years that they have a tough time finding workers to fill many skilled blue collar jobs. A 2015 report from the Manufacturing Institute, for example, found that seven out of 10 executives reported shortages of workers with adequate technology, computer and technical training skills. By 2025, nearly three and a half million manufacturing jobs will likely need to be filled and the skills gap is expected to result in two million of those jobs going unfilled, according to the analysis. Factors contributing to the gap: baby boomer retirements and economic expansion. Employment of plumbers, pipefitters and steamfitters, for instance, is projected to grow 16 percent from 2016 to 2026, much faster than the average for all occupations, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. New construction, building maintenance, and the repair of homes and offices are expected to drive demand for these workers. There is not a lot of hard data to suggest a big shift from white collar workers into blue collar jobs, but there is a strong push to recruit them. "If you talk to manufacturers, they will tell you they are working hard to change the image of manufacturing jobs from dirty, dangerous jobs to being quasi white collar," said Paul Osterman, a professor at the Sloan School of Management at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and co director of the M.I.T. Sloan Institute for Work and Employment Research. "And today many of these workers need to be skilled with computers and statistical quality control processes. In some sense, manufacturing looks a lot more white collar ish than it used to." Anthony Carnevale, director of the Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce, said there was not a clear pathway to go from white collar to blue collar. "You've got to have some transferability between the skills you did in one job that transfer to the next job," Mr. Carnevale said. "For most people, there is very little transfer between white collar work, and say, plumbing. There is some transferability, but it's rare." Scott Lacerra, 37, of Rockford, Ill., is another rare one. He has a bachelor of science degree from Drake University, where he majored in finance. After college he worked as a credit analyst, but he said he was miserable crunching numbers on a spreadsheet all day and sitting in a cubicle. Three and a half years ago, he walked into a local manufacturing shop looking for new opportunities. He landed the job at RG Manufacturing and Machining in Machesney Park, Ill., and soon enrolled in the employer sponsored apprenticeship program. He takes classes each weeknight in topics such as blueprint reading and AutoCAD at Rock Valley College, along with 20 other apprentices in the Rock River Valley Tooling Machining Association program. Mr. Lacerra started as a part time operator running a computer numeric controlled heavy machine. Soon he was driving a fork lift, making steel deliveries and training apprentices. "I didn't have any experience, but I showed up every day and after a couple of weeks, I realized I really enjoyed it," he said.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Education
In 2019, the city of Toyota in Japan's Aichi Prefecture wants to show visitors that it is more than just a "car town." Home to the auto manufacturer from which the city of 420,000 takes its name, Toyota City this autumn is hosting major art exhibits and four matches including two marquee games featuring the Japanese and New Zealand squads of the Rugby World Cup. These events are something of a coming out for Toyota City, whose reputation as a manufacturing center belies its rich history and mountain scenery. The city makes for an up and coming addition to any Japan travel itinerary. A 50 minute train ride from Nagoya, Toyota City also has the advantage of being considerably lighter on the wallet compared to Tokyo or Osaka. Event and museum admissions are less expensive, thanks to subsidies from the carmaker, with hotel and restaurant options also being considerably cheaper compared to Japan's big cities perfect for travelers looking to extend their travel budget. Through Oct. 14, the Toyota Municipal Museum of Art will concurrently co host the Aichi Triennale contemporary art festival, as well as an exhibition on the works of the Austrian symbolist painter Gustav Klimt. Adult admission costs 1600 yen per exhibit ( 15) , or 2,000 yen (around 19) for a combined ticket. Constructed by Yoshio Taniguchi the Japanese architect responsible for the 2004 redesign of the Museum of Modern Art in New York City the grounds of the Toyota Municipal Museum of Art also offer scenic views of the city below.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Travel
Rishi Kapoor, a widely popular film actor from one of Bollywood's most celebrated families, died on Thursday in Mumbai. He was 67. The family confirmed his death in a statement, which did not list a cause. Mr. Kapoor learned he had leukemia in 2018 and was admitted to a hospital in Mumbai on Wednesday. The news rocked India just a day after the death of another Bollywood figure, the character actor Irrfan Khan. Read the obituary for Irrfan Khan here. Mr. Kapoor was best known as a romantic hero, and his charm and charisma quickly made him one of Bollywood's leading men of the 1970s and '80s. He later began taking on more supporting roles and character parts.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Movies
Investing in a tangible asset like real estate may seem to offer a greater sense of control. You can walk through a house, after all, which somehow feels safer than subjecting your savings to the whims of the stock market. The idea of buying a house and renting it out may seem especially attractive now, with home prices still reasonable, though rising, in many places, and interest rates at levels practically begging you to borrow. And if you're thinking about retirement, the income can serve as an inflation adjusted annuity of sorts, since rents are likely to rise over time. But our perceptions can be deceiving. "There is a lot of idiosyncratic risk associated with rental income," said Christopher J. Mayer, professor of real estate, finance and economics at Columbia Business School. "That is the word that economists use for when a lot of things can go wrong, even if on average they don't go wrong very often." Still, with a sizable piece of their retirement savings tied up in certificates of deposit earning less than 1 percent, they thought they could do better by buying a house and renting it out. They recently bought a five bedroom house in their hometown, Germantown, Md., for 350,000, and they expected about a 6 percent return on their investment, as well as some tax benefits. "It is high risk, you just have to be careful," said Mr. Vogel, who worked as a geodesist and information technology manager for what was the Defense Mapping Agency. "You have no control over the stock market," he added, explaining that they didn't have the stomach for the volatility after losing half of the 100,000 they had invested in mutual funds during the market downturn in 2000. With a pension accounting for half of their retirement income, the couple may have more room for error than other retirees. They also paid for the property in cash the C.D. money covered half, and they used a home equity loan on their primary home to cover the remainder. If you're thinking about testing these waters, you can expect to compete with cash buyers like the Vogels they represented 32.3 percent of home sales in February, according to the Campbell/Inside Mortgage Finance HousingPulse Tracking Survey. But a lot of those investors have much deeper pockets. In certain spots across the Sunbelt, in particular, the homeowner next door may actually be a faceless private equity firm. The Blackstone Group and other Wall Street investors are gobbling up properties in places like the Tampa Bay area of Florida by the thousands. And their exit strategy could affect yours. Jack McCabe, a real estate consultant in Deerfield Beach, Fla., said he had never seen large investors purchase so many homes in one fell swoop, giving them such great sway over pricing in the market. "A lot of the price increase is not due to a market that is getting healthy, but is due to the influx of hedge funds, and a high percentage of homes are selling at artificially inflated values," Mr. McCabe said. Should you decide to follow the Vogels' lead, there are a variety of calculations you should make, and concerns and questions you should have ahead of time, several of which are sketched out below. DO I NEED FINANCING? Taking out a mortgage obviously increases your financial risk, even if you believe there is a healthy spread between what you can charge in rent and what you owe on the mortgage (and other expenses). In fact, what you're really doing is borrowing to expand the size of your investment portfolio, explained Professor Mayer, which can be particularly risky for retirees who are no longer working. "They can turn their 500,000 portfolio into 600,000 by borrowing, but if you told them you were going to borrow money to buy a REIT, people would say, 'Gee, that's really risky,' " he said. "Well, then why is it less risky to do that with a rental property?" We don't have to look back too far to remember what can happen if home values fall. "If stuff goes down in value, that leaves you much more exposed," Professor Mayer said. "Borrowing money to earn a higher return involves risk." CAN I GET A MORTGAGE? Not only is getting a mortgage on an investment property more difficult than getting a loan on your primary home, it also tends to be more expensive. Mortgages on investment properties tend to carry slightly higher interest rates anywhere from 0.25 of a percentage point to a full percentage point and may require higher down payments, according to Keith Gumbinger of HSH.com, a mortgage data firm. "Things can also get more complicated where the income from the property is needed to support the loan," he added. "The purchaser may need to provide a rental history for the property, if any exists, or they may need to have a rental market analysis conducted." AM I DIVERSIFIED ENOUGH? If you have a 600,000 portfolio, putting 300,000 into one asset is a highly concentrated bet. "People tend to mentally compartmentalize their investments, but really, you should be looking at them together," Professor Mayer added. It may also be hard to tap any equity locked up in the property. Refinancing that involves taking cash out is hard to obtain, and home equity loans or lines of credit are hard to come by on investment properties, Mr. Gumbinger said. VACANCY OR DISASTER PLANS There are the traditional risks that come with being a landlord, like a prolonged vacancy, the possibility that the water heater will die right after you've installed a new roof, or that the tenants will lose their jobs or fail to pay for some other reason, which could lead to eviction. But several experts also said not to discount even more remote possibilities. If your property was in an area ravaged by Hurricane Sandy, for instance, could you financially withstand several months of no rental income and the cost of repairs that might not be covered by homeowner's insurance (and how much insurance is enough, and at what cost)? "You need to have a sizable reserve fund set aside to pay for expenses, whether it's to cover the mortgage for a stretch when the property is sitting vacant or to make repairs, which novice landlords tend to underestimate," said Kenneth J. Eaton, a financial planner in Overland Park, Kan. CAN I MANAGE IT MYSELF? Buying a rental property isn't solely a financial decision. You need to be prepared to screen tenants, run credit checks and get the water heater repaired at a moment's notice. That means you're going to need to establish relationships with a variety of service people, or, if you have the time and ability, do it yourself. So be honest about how big of a commitment owning a house will really be. "I have never had pipes burst at a convenient time they almost also go out in the middle of the night when you are out of town," said Alan Moore, a financial planner in Milwaukee who has owned rental properties and counseled clients about the pros and cons of buying investment properties. You can outsource the job to a property manager, but they can collect anywhere from 4 to 10 percent of the annual rent, depending on where you live and a variety of other factors. THE TAX IMPLICATIONS Rental income is taxed at ordinary income rates, but experts say you can often post a tax loss while still generating a profit. That's because you can deduct the depreciation of the rental but not the underlying land to account for wear and tear (the cost of improvements, closing costs and the cost of appliances are all depreciable, too). In most cases, the building is depreciated over 27.5 years. So if the actual structure is worth 200,000, you can deduct about 7,200 a year. Coupled with operating expenses, that is often enough to wipe out any profit on paper. You're allowed to write off up to 25,000 of losses against any type of income, as long as you own at least 10 percent of the rental property and have substantial involvement in managing the rental (if you don't own 10 percent, the rules get more complicated), said Russell D. Francis, a certified public account and financial planner in Beaverton, Ore. But that 25,000 benefit begins to phase out if you have adjusted gross income of 100,000 and it disappears for people with adjusted gross income of 150,000 or more. The government reclaims part of your savings eventually. The depreciation is recaptured when you sell the property (on which you'll also pay taxes on capital gains). You have to pay a flat 25 percent rate on the amount you depreciated, Mr. Francis said.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Your Money
R. Kelly's girlfriends Joycelyn Savage, right, and Azriel Clary, leaving federal court in Brooklyn after one of his hearings in August. In a series of online posts, Ms. Savage has now dropped her support of the singer. One of R. Kelly's Few Defenders Says She Was His Victim, Too Editors' Note: On Tuesday, Nov. 26, the website Patreon deleted the posts published under Joycelyn Savage's name, saying it could not verify that they were written by her. Over the past year, as the singer R. Kelly was accused of emotionally abusing women and having sex with underage girls, his two live in girlfriends came out repeatedly to support him, speaking in his defense on national television and appearing in court, seated on the benches behind him. This weekend, one of those women said that she was a victim, too. In a series of posts on the subscription website Patreon, Joycelyn Savage, 24, described treatment at Mr. Kelly's hands that was strikingly similar to other accusations against him: He controlled when she ate, bathed and used the bathroom. He decided with whom she could speak. Once, when she didn't address him as "Daddy" or "Master," she said, he choked her until she blacked out. Mr. Kelly, 52, arrested earlier this year, is in jail facing numerous state and federal charges including child pornography, sexual assault, obstruction of justice and racketeering. After decades of rumors and accusations, his behavior was put under renewed scrutiny in January, with the premiere of the Lifetime documentary "Surviving R. Kelly." Several of the women featured in the film described treatment similar to what Ms. Savage said she experienced. Mr. Kelly's lawyer, Steve Greenberg, has insisted that Mr. Kelly is innocent of all the accusations against him. He did not respond to a request for comment on Sunday, but gave a statement to Variety accusing Ms. Savage of attacking Mr. Kelly because he could no longer financially support her. "Obviously if she were to tell the truth no one would pay so she has, unfortunately, chosen to regurgitate the stories and lies told by others for her own personal profit," Mr. Greenberg told the publication. In her posts, Ms. Savage said she met Mr. Kelly at a concert in 2015 when she was 19. She wanted to be a singer and a model, and he told her he would make her famous. "Baby girl," she recalled him saying, "you are going to be the next Aaliyah." In 1994, when he was 27, Mr. Kelly reportedly married Aaliyah, his musical protege who was just 15 at the time. The marriage was annulled. (Aaliyah died in a plane crash in 2001.) Ms. Savage said that she moved in with Mr. Kelly and dropped out of college. But after a few months, the attention he lavished on her changed. He would yell if she didn't call him "Master" or "Daddy." She said that when she showered, one of Mr. Kelly's assistants would stand by the door. He disconnected her phone. "I had bruises around my neck," she wrote of the time he choked her, "and I was told by him to wear a turtle necks or a scarf to cover them up whenever he would take me out in public. I was frightened to tell anyone about this because of what he may do next. His assistant didn't even care, and especially the other girls they were in for the money as well." In 2008, Mr. Kelly stood trial on child pornography charges in connection with a video that showed him having sex with and urinating on a girl prosecutors said was barely a teenager. She and her immediate family refused to testify, and he was acquitted on all counts. Federal prosecutors have accused Mr. Kelly of bribing the girl's family to keep them quiet, and a lawyer for that girl today a woman in her 30s has said she is now cooperating with federal investigators. In a chilling echo of those earlier accusations, Ms. Savage said that "Robert always had a fetish" for urinating on women and girls, and that he had done it to her "numerous" times. There was no indication that the posts were written by someone other than Ms. Savage, but she did not respond to a request for comment to authenticate the material. Gerald Griggs, a lawyer representing her parents, who have insisted that she was being held in what they've described as emotional and sexual captivity, said in an emailed statement on Sunday: "The family is concerned about the allegations made by the social media account purported to be that of Joycelyn Savage. Numerous facts detailed by the account confirm the abuse and coercion that the family has alleged for two and a half years. We are attempting to make contact with Joy and the family is ready to welcome her back with love and open arms." In 2017, Ms. Savage recorded a video published on the celebrity news website TMZ in which she said she was fine and "not being brainwashed." In one of her Patreon posts, Ms. Savage said that she was told what to tell TMZ, and that Mr. Kelly's assistant "would starve me for days at a time until I learned it right word for word." When the police went to Mr. Kelly's Chicago apartment in January to check on Ms. Savage and Azriel Clary, Mr. Kelly's other live in girlfriend, officers reported back that the women told them they were fine and staying there voluntarily. In March, they defended Mr. Kelly on "CBS This Morning," telling the anchor Gayle King that their parents were simply trying to squeeze the singer for money. Ms. King noted on air that Mr. Kelly had agreed not to be present for the women's interview, but that off camera he would "cough very loudly," and that the women were "certainly aware that he was there." It was unclear Sunday whether either woman was still living with Mr. Kelly, and Ms. Clary has not made any public statements. Ms. Savage indicated she would be posting more of her account on Patreon, a site that pays contributors based on the number of reader subscriptions, which begin at 3 per month, they attract. As of Sunday evening, Ms. Savage had nearly 1,600 subscribers. In her third post, Ms. Savage said she had twice become pregnant by Mr. Kelly, whose full name is Robert S. Kelly. Both times, she said, she had an abortion. "It's scary having your first child and aborting them because of some monster that kept me as a prisoner," she wrote. After one of her abortions, she said, "Robert decided to gift me with getting my breast done." Throughout her posts, she explained why she kept staying with Mr. Kelly despite all his mistreatment: a combination of delusion, fear, financial security and the hope that he would make good on his promise to jump start her career.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Music
Credit...Josefina Santos for The New York Times NEW HAVEN It was warm for October, the sun flooding Tschabalala Self's paint splattered studio here, and the last piece left to finish for her first major gallery exhibition in New York City was giving the artist "a lot of trouble." The painting featuring a woman with exaggerated proportions who is shooting a gun in hot shorts, a Western hat and cowboy boots wasn't legible to Ms. Self in the way she needed it to be. Its formal qualities were not quite lining up with the overarching themes of her project, which include identity, mythology and pop culture. But Ms. Self seemed unconcerned about getting it done. Nor did she seem preoccupied by the Black Lives Matter movement churning in the country; she has been dealing with issues of race in her work all along. That consciousness is on full display in the eight canvases on view, starting Nov. 6, at Galerie Eva Presenhuber in Lower Manhattan. The exhibition, "Cotton Mouth," through Dec. 19, explores Black American life in contemporary culture and history. "The methods she uses were always relegated to outsider artists, especially women," the Miami collector Mera Rubell said. The figures in Ms. Self's work, she added, "are fictional characters, but we know them. We know them to be strong, we know them to have honor, we know them to win against all odds, we know them to be people we admire because they carry big loads. She's giving us new heroes." The "heroes" in Ms. Self's work are everyday people composite characters informed by those the artist has encountered or observed on the streets of her native Harlem or elsewhere, like the kinetic young woman in her painting "Fast Girl," or the beefy man with his back to us in a basketball jersey that reads "Sprewell." Yet underlying their accessibility and whimsy are weighty concepts personal narrative and the African diaspora. The "Sprewell" painting, for example, refers to the N.B.A. star Latrell Sprewell, who was suspended in 1997 for choking his Golden State Warriors coach in what the writer Camille Okhio describes in press materials for Ms. Self's show as "a pointed demand for agency and poignant expression of fury and resilience." The title of the exhibition alludes not only to picking cotton but also to "cotton mouth," when the body doesn't produce enough saliva. "It references a tragic history for Black Americans and is a metaphor for the continued silencing of Black Americans," said Ms. Presenhuber, who began representing Ms. Self in 2019. "Her work has always spoken for itself," Ms. Presenhuber added, "but in the current sociopolitical climate, resonates even more." While conversations these days about equity have informed the work in Ms. Self's new show, she said, "I can't say that I personally have come to any new realizations about race this past year." At the same time, she acknowledged that present events bring an urgency and timeliness to her exhibition. "I feel excited to some degree about being able to show my work in this context," Ms. Self said. "Now everyone is looking at it from the same vantage point." Just five years out of art school and 30 years old, the artist is already a rising star. A solo exhibition, "By My Self," is scheduled to open at the Baltimore Museum of Art in 2021, coming off her show at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston, "Tschabalala Self: Out of Body," which closed in September. Her work has been collected by the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Philadelphia Museum and the Studio Museum in Harlem, where Ms. Self completed a residency last year. In its multiyear partnership with the Museum of Modern Art, the Studio Museum featured Ms. Self's work at MoMA PS1 last fall during its annual Artist in Residence exhibition, "MOOD," along with that of Allison Janae Hamilton and Sable Elyse Smith. And Ms. Self's paintings have made their way into the highly charged contemporary art market, which is finally beginning to value the work of Black artists. In just the last year, 26 Self pieces have come up for auction, according to Artnet, with one the flamboyant, hypercolored "Princess," reaching a high price for the artist of 568,000 at Phillips in London last February. Ms. Self even got a splashy spread in Vogue last spring. "It's annoying, given the subject matter, for the works to be traded and sold in that way," she said. "The whole spectacle of it is to me very disheartening. I don't like to be involved in situations where my name is at stake and I don't have control over it." Ms. Self said she stays focused on the larger goal: reaching people through art "that is immediately relevant and interesting." "I want my work to connect to that larger audience," she explained. "I like for it to be rooted in everyday life. I like to have the work be as powerful as it can be." That mix of the quotidian and the unusual is at play on her canvases, which the New York Times critic Roberta Smith in 2016 described as having "a marvelous random intricacy." The scenes are domestic, personal drawn from Ms. Self's own experience. Her characters even wear her clothes the young man in "Sprewell" is dressed in a pair of jeans she outgrew. For the fifth iteration of her "Bodega Run" series, Ms. Self transformed the lobby exhibition space of the Hammer in Los Angeles into one of New York City's ubiquitous convenience stores, including wallpaper made from her line drawings of common foods, a tiled linoleum floor and paintings of customers. She counts as other influences artists like Romare Bearden, Faith Ringgold, Jacob Lawrence and Howardena Pindell. Curators discuss her work in the context of Wangechi Mutu, Mickalene Thomas and Henry Taylor. "I see her very much in a cohort of her generation of artists who are integrating many different materials and opening new paths into thinking about Black life," said Ruth Erickson, a curator at the ICA Boston, who worked with Ms. Self on her show there. Ms. Erickson who drew connections between Ms. Self and Kevin Beasley, who also uses textiles, or Devan Shimoyama, who works in portraiture added that the intelligence and material approach put her work "at the forefront of figurative and identity exploration." That approach is evident throughout Ms. Self's studio in an industrial building here, where scraps of colored, patterned fabric hang in a tangle from the ceiling (which leaks). Image ideas are pinned to the wall. Phrases are scribbled on a chalkboard ("social animal," "made of wood"). Here, too, is the Black Barbie she bought at Walmart, having been captivated by the doll's pronounced Afro. The artist works on the floor, wearing kneepads so that she can maneuver around her large paintings. She talks about the characters in her canvases as people she is getting to know, even as she is the one creating them. And while occasionally Ms. Self gets stuck in the process as she did with the show's final female figure, whose Western gear refers to a story about her family's patriarch traveling from Texas on a horse to Louisiana the artist brings an obvious confidence to her work, the knowledge that she's found her way through in the past and will again, maybe differently this time.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Art & Design
Wes Unseld of the Washington Bullets grabbing an offensive rebound against John Drew of the Atlanta Hawks in 1979. Wes Unseld, a Hall of Fame center and indefatigable rebounder who was only one of two N.B.A. players to be named rookie of the year and most valuable player in the same season, died on Tuesday. He was 74. His family confirmed the death in a statement posted on the Washington Wizards' website, saying that he had received diagnoses of pneumonia and other illnesses. The statement did not say where he died. At 6 foot 7, Unseld was undersized for a center. But at 245 pounds he was a wide bodied powerhouse who, it was said, could block out the sun. He fixed his opponents with a glower, set bone rattling picks and planted himself under the basket with steely determination to grab rebounds against much taller centers like Wilt Chamberlain, Nate Thurmond and Kareem Abdul Jabbar. Over 13 seasons with the Baltimore, Capital and Washington Bullets (now the Washington Wizards), Unseld's teams went to the N.B.A. finals four times and won the league's title in 1978 over the Seattle SuperSonics. Unseld was named the series' M.V.P. He would later coach the team and serve as its general manager. In a statement, Adam Silver, the N.B.A. commissioner, called Unseld "one of the most consequential players of his era," adding, "Wes elevated the game by mastering the fundamentals." Unseld had a career average of 14.0 rebounds a game; in his rookie season, 1968 69, he finished second in the league off the boards, behind Chamberlain, averaging 18.2. He and Chamberlain are the only players in N.B.A. history to be named rookie of the year and M.V.P. in the same season. Unseld was named to five All Star teams. In a phone interview on Tuesday, Willis Reed, the Hall of Fame Knick center who played against Unseld for nearly a decade, recalled their physical battles during both the regular season and the playoffs. "You always wanted to make sure you got a good night's sleep before you played against him," Reed said. "He was most consciously a rebounder he could shoot, but he didn't emphasize that part of his game and felt that if he did his job right, by getting the defensive rebound and making the quick outlet pass, they would score quickly." That skill was ideal for Unseld, who was unselfish about his scoring. While other players could have emulated him, few did. In 2015, he told The New York Times: "When you throw that outlet pass, you're not going to get the ball back." But others, looking for more glory, he said, "would rebound the ball and they would hold it, give it to a guard to dribble it up, and then post up and get the ball back so they could score." "It just depends on how you look at the game." Westley Sissel Unseld was born in Louisville on March 14, 1946, to Cornelia and Charles Unseld. His father was employed by International Harvester and later worked in construction; his mother was a school lunchroom manager. Unseld was heavily recruited by colleges after leading Seneca High School in Louisville to two state championships. He chose the University of Louisville, where he averaged 20.6 points and 18.9 rebounds a game over three seasons. He was a consensus All American in 1967 and 1968. The Bullets chose him as the second player in the 1968 N.B.A. draft; a future teammate, Elvin Hayes, was selected first, by the San Diego Rockets. The Bullets improved dramatically in Unseld's rookie year, winning 57 games, up from 36 the previous season. The Bullets were in the playoffs in 12 of Unseld's 13 seasons, making it to the finals against the Milwaukee Bucks in 1971 and the Golden State Warriors in 1975 before beating Seattle in seven games in 1978. Unseld averaged nine points and 11.7 rebounds in that series. The next season, in a repeat finals appearance, the Bullets lost to the SuperSonics in five games. The team, known as the Wizards since 1997, hasn't been to the finals since. Unseld retired in 1981 with 10,624 points and 13,769 rebounds, career totals that led to his election to the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in Springfield, Mass., seven years later. "I never played pretty, I wasn't flashy," Unseld once said. "My contributions were in the things most people don't notice. They weren't in high scoring or dunking or behind the back passes." Unseld was named a vice president of the Bullets by the team's owner, Abe Pollin, on the day he announced his retirement. Early in the 1987 88 season, when the team had an 8 19 record, Unseld replaced Kevin Loughery as head coach. Unseld brought stability to the team, which won 30 of its next 55 games and made the playoffs. But he never had a full winning season as coach or another playoff appearance.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Sports
WASHINGTON Inflation is widely reviled as a kind of tax on modern life, but as Federal Reserve policy makers prepare to meet this week, there is growing concern inside and outside the Fed that inflation is not rising fast enough. The Fed has worked for decades to suppress inflation, but economists, including Janet Yellen, President Obama's nominee to lead the Fed starting next year, have long argued that a little inflation is particularly valuable when the economy is weak. Rising prices help companies increase profits; rising wages help borrowers repay debts. Inflation also encourages people and businesses to borrow money and spend it more quickly. The school board in Anchorage, Alaska, for example, is counting on inflation to keep a lid on teachers' wages. Retailers including Costco and Walmart are hoping for higher inflation to increase profits. The federal government expects inflation to ease the burden of its debts. Yet by one measure, inflation rose at an annual pace of 1.2 percent in August, just above the lowest pace on record. "Weighed against the political, social and economic risks of continued slow growth after a once in a century financial crisis, a sustained burst of moderate inflation is not something to worry about," Kenneth S. Rogoff, a Harvard economist, wrote recently. "It should be embraced." The Fed, in a break from its historic focus on suppressing inflation, has tried since the financial crisis to keep prices rising about 2 percent a year. Some Fed officials cite the slower pace of inflation as a reason, alongside reducing unemployment, to continue the central bank's stimulus campaign. Critics, including Professor Rogoff, say the Fed is being much too meek. He says that inflation should be pushed as high as 6 percent a year for a few years, a rate not seen since the early 1980s. And he compared the Fed's caution to not swinging hard enough at a golf ball in a sand trap. "You need to hit it more firmly to get it up onto the grass," he said. "As long as you're in the sand trap, tapping it around is not enough." All this talk has prompted dismay among economists who see little benefit in inflation, and who warn that the Fed could lose control of prices as the economy recovers. As inflation accelerates, economists agree that any benefits can be quickly outstripped by the disruptive consequences of people rushing to spend money as soon as possible. Rising inflation also punishes people living on fixed incomes, and it discourages lending and long term investments, imposing an enduring restraint on economic growth even if the inflation subsides. "The spectacle of American central bankers trying to press the inflation rate higher in the aftermath of the 2008 crisis is virtually without precedent," Alan Greenspan, the former Fed chairman, wrote in a new book, "The Map and the Territory." He said the effort could end in double digit inflation. The current generation of policy makers came of age in the 1970s, when a higher tolerance for inflation did not deliver the promised benefits. Instead, Western economies fell into "stagflation" rising prices, little growth. Lately, however, the 1970s have seemed a less relevant cautionary tale than the fate of Japan, where prices have been in general decline since the late 1990s. Kariya, a popular instant dinner of curry in a pouch that cost 120 yen in 2000, can now be found for 68 yen, according to the blog Yen for Living. This enduring deflation, which policy makers are now trying to end, kept the economy in retreat as people hesitated to make purchases, because prices were falling, or to borrow money, because the cost of repayment was rising. "Low inflation is not good for the economy because very low inflation increases the risks of deflation, which can cause an economy to stagnate," the Fed's chairman, Ben S. Bernanke, a student of Japan's deflation, said in July. "The evidence is that falling and low inflation can be very bad for an economy." There is evidence that low inflation is hurting the American economy. "I've always said that a little inflation is good," Richard A. Galanti, Costco's chief financial officer, said in December 2008. He explained that the retailer is generally able to expand its profit margins and its sales when prices are rising. This month, Mr. Galanti told analysts that sluggish inflation was one reason the company had reported its slowest revenue growth since the recession. Executives at Walmart, Rent A Center and Spartan Stores, a Michigan grocery chain, have similarly bemoaned the lack of inflation in recent months. Many households also have reason to miss higher inflation. Historically, higher prices have led to higher wages, allowing borrowers to repay fixed debts like mortgage loans more easily. Over the five years before 2008, inflation raised prices 10 percent. Over the last five years, prices rose 8 percent. At the current pace, prices would rise 6 percent over the next five years. "Let me just remind everyone that inflation falling below our target of 2 percent is costly," Charles L. Evans, the president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, said in a speech in Madison, Wis., this month. "If inflation is lower than expected, then debt financing is more burdensome than borrowers expected. Problems of debt overhang become that much worse for the economy." Inflation also helps workers find jobs, according. to an influential 1996 paper by the economist George Akerlof and two co authors. Rising prices allows companies to increase profit margins quietly, by not raising wages, which in turn makes it profitable for companies to hire additional workers. Lower rates of inflation have the opposite effect, making it harder to find work. Companies could cut wages, of course. But there is ample evidence that even during economic downturns, companies are reluctant to do so. Federal data show a large spike since the recession in the share of workers reporting no change in wages, but a much smaller increase in workers reporting wage cuts, according to an analysis by the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco. There is, in practice, an invisible wall preventing pay cuts. The standard explanation is that employers fear that workers will be angry and therefore less productive. "I want to be really careful about advocating for lower wages because I typically advocate for the other side of that equation," said Jared Bernstein, a fellow at the left leaning Center on Budget and Policy Priorities and a former economic adviser to Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. "But I think higher inflation would help." The Anchorage school board, facing pressure to cut costs because of a budget shortfall, began contract negotiations with its 3,500 teachers this year by proposing to freeze rather than cut wages. The final deal, completed last month, gives the teachers raises of 1 percent in each of the next three years. Teachers, while not thrilled, described the deal as better than a pay cut. But it is likely, in effect, to cut the teachers' pay. Economists expect prices to rise about 2 percent a year over the next three years, so even as the teachers take home more dollars, those dollars would have less value. Instead of a 1 percent annual increase, the teachers would fall behind by 1 percent a year. "We feel like this contract still allows us to attract and retain quality educators," said Ed Graff, the Anchorage school district superintendent.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Economy
YOU'VE been working hard and paying your student loans on time, and you find yourself with a bit of extra cash. So you decide that instead of spending it, you'll make an extra loan payment, to whittle down your principal faster and save money on interest. But when you receive your next statement, your loan servicer appears to have merely credited you with an early payment for next month, rather than applying the money to your principal. Difficulties in having payments properly applied to a loan balance are among the most common complaints the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau receives about student loans, according to the bureau's second annual report on the topic. The report, released on Wednesday, summarizes roughly 3,800 complaints received from Oct. 1, 2012, to Sept. 30. The bureau oversees student loans from private lenders, like banks; loans made or guaranteed by the federal government are handled by the Education Department. The bureau estimates that private student loans now total 165 billion and that about 850,000 private loans were in default as of July 2012. (In comparison, it estimated this summer that federal student loans exceeded 1 trillion.) But a majority of high debt borrowers have private loans, according to the bureau. Private loans generally have higher interest rates and lack some consumer protections available with federal loans. Rohit Chopra, the bureau's student loan ombudsman, cautioned that the report was not based on a representative sample of borrowers. But the report notes that complaints to the bureau can help show where there is "a mismatch between borrower expectations and actual service delivered," and that there was a "significant trend" in complaints about confusing or inaccurate payment processing. Furthermore, while the report focuses on private loans, many of the companies that service those loans, like Sallie Mae, also service federal loans, he said. A spokeswoman for Sallie Mae, Patricia Christel, said that more than 90 percent of the company's private education loan customers were managing their payments successfully, "and for those experiencing difficulty, we offer customized assistance, including modifications." Many borrowers face "stumbling blocks, snags and surprises" when it comes to payment processing practices, Mr. Chopra said in a telephone call with reporters. One problem, he said, is that few options for refinancing private student loans allow students to take advantage of lower interest rates and reduce their monthly payments. Students who are financially able to reduce their debt may choose instead to make extra payments, to help pay down their principal faster. Borrowers sending in extra payments, however, may find that the money is not allocated in the way they intended. Sometimes, borrowers told the bureau, they received a notice putting them into "paid ahead" or "advanced payment" status. Complicating the problem is the fact that borrowers typically have several loans, with different balances and interest rates, which are bundled together in one "billing group" with a servicer, who collects a single payment and applies it to the individual loans. Just how much benefit a borrower gets from the extra payment depends on how the servicer applies the money. Savings will generally be greater, for instance, if the entire extra payment is applied to the loan with the highest interest rate, rather than being prorated to each loan individually. Here are some questions to consider when making extra payments to reduce your student loan balance: Is there any penalty to prepaying my student loans? No. Private lenders are barred from penalizing students who make extra payments or pay off their loans early. (Federal loans do not have prepayment penalties either, Mr. Chopra said,) How can I make sure my extra payment is allocated properly? Send written instructions to your servicer; otherwise, the servicer may choose how to allocate the extra money. The bureau created a sample instruction letter, directing the servicer to apply extra payments to the loan with the highest interest rate first, which is generally the best option for most borrowers. Pauline Abernathy, vice president of the nonprofit Institute for College Access and Success, said the report suggested there should be a uniform policy, outlining the way payments were applied. "Why force the borrower to specify?" she said. What if my servicer does not follow my instructions? You can file a complaint with the bureau at consumerfinance.gov/complaint/	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Your Money
SAN FRANCISCO Some members of Uber's eight person board were excited about the idea of Meg Whitman becoming the ride hailing company's next chief executive. Ms. Whitman, the chief executive of Hewlett Packard Enterprise and a former leader of eBay, appeared to have many of the right traits for the job: experience, maturity, a level head the kind of qualities that Travis Kalanick, the Uber co founder who stepped down as chief executive last month, mostly lacked. She had even personally invested in the company in the past. Over the past few weeks, Ms. Whitman met with several Uber board members individually, offering advice on how to address the company's problems. The members were encouraged by the discussions, and some believed that she was a natural fit for the vacant chief executive role. And after weeks of searching for a top candidate, they were eager to try to win her over. The jockeying between factions has put billions of dollars on the line, as the Uber board fights over control of the 70 billion ride hailing giant. Interviews with more than a dozen people close to the process, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the discussions are confidential, indicate that board members' relationships have been damaged by leaks, shifting wildly as alliances are forged and then broken. The backbiting has taken a toll. After it was reported that she was a candidate for the chief executive job, Ms. Whitman said last Thursday that "Uber's C.E.O. will not be Meg Whitman." She made her announcement in a series of messages on Twitter just as the Uber board was holding a quarterly meeting, at which they had planned to call a vote on whether to appoint her to the job. The internal divisions mean the search for a new leader may drag on. Even as board members speak with other candidates, including Jeffrey Immelt, who is departing as chief executive of General Electric, about the chief executive job, a lack of cohesion is apparent. Some board members are not convinced that Mr. Immelt is the right choice, given that G.E.'s stock price and profits have stagnated in recent years. Four people are now on the shortlist to succeed Mr. Kalanick, according to one person close to the process. And at an internal meeting with Uber employees last week, Liane Hornsey, the company's senior vice president and head of human resources, said a top candidate was expected to be chosen within the next six weeks. "As Meg has made clear, she is fully committed to H.P.E.," a spokesman for Hewlett Packard Enterprise said. "Our focus remains on driving the company forward and delivering for our customers, partners, employees and shareholders." The Uber board which recently added new members amid a history of internal tensions is mostly split into two camps. On one side is Mr. Kalanick, who is plotting a comeback. On the other are many of the company's other directors, including the venture capitalist Matt Cohler and the private equity investor David Trujillo, who represent Uber investors like Benchmark and TPG Capital. Garrett Camp, an Uber co founder, and Ryan Graves, an early employee, were part of this group in supporting Ms. Whitman's candidacy last week. The positions of some board members such as Wan Ling Martello, a Nestle executive, and Yasir Al Rumayyan, who represents Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund are unclear. As the factions have shifted, Arianna Huffington's role has been particularly fluid. A founder of the Huffington Post who now runs a wellness company, Thrive Global, Ms. Huffington grew close to Mr. Kalanick since being appointed to the board last year, according to two people familiar with the board's dynamics. Yet she advised him last month that resigning as Uber's leader was a good idea. The changing alliances have led to major disagreements within the board. Some members are upset that no chief financial officer has been appointed, even though the job has been vacant for more than two years. There is also debate about the potential investment by SoftBank. Some board members believe that taking the money is unnecessary and potentially risky, given that Uber has 5.5 billion in cash on hand and that SoftBank has backed multiple ride hailing rivals in Asia. Some company executives are concerned that Mr. Kalanick could use a SoftBank investment to dilute other shareholders' stakes while he continues to buy stock back from employees in a bid to amass power. And aligning with Masayoshi Son, the founder and chief executive of SoftBank, could provide Mr. Kalanick with a key ally, especially if Mr. Son seeks to appoint new board members who favor Mr. Kalanick's return as chief executive as part of an investment. According to people with knowledge of the quarterly meeting last Thursday, board members' cellphones started buzzing during the evening with text messages regarding Ms. Whitman's removing herself from consideration. Some board members appeared crestfallen that the person they viewed as the most attractive candidate had taken herself out of the running so publicly days before she planned to spend time with the few board members she had not yet met. In a text message between those involved in the discussions that was shown to The New York Times, one person reacted to Ms. Whitman's announcement with a grim laugh, punctuated by an expletive. After the news of Ms. Whitman's decision sank in, the board members continued the meeting. By the end of the evening, they had agreed to a truce in hopes of avoiding another negative round of media coverage, according to the people familiar with the meeting. Communicating directly and avoiding backstabbing, the directors agreed, was paramount from here on. After all, they still had a new chief executive to find.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Technology
There was a time when IBM was a monopolistic giant that looked indestructible. And there was a time when Microsoft looked like the tech company that could never be beaten. Today, a handful of companies have that sort of iron grip on the industry, but perhaps none quite so much as Google the ad driven heart of the Alphabet conglomerate. Self driving cars may be the future, and bioscience sure is interesting, but it's the ads that pay the bills. Now, even as Google enjoys historic success, a run of bad news has exposed a vulnerability in its automated advertising system. In recent weeks, big advertisers have become increasingly concerned that their brands have been appearing alongside YouTube videos posted by extremists and other unwelcome material.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Technology
The idea is interesting but the implementation is uneven in "Back to the Fatherland," a documentary that looks at two generations of Israelis: one is hopeful, the other wary. The film, directed by Kat Rohrer and Gil Levanon, speaks with several young Israelis who have resettled in Germany or Austria, and hears from their grandparents, who are Holocaust survivors. The older Israelis discuss how they feel about their grandchildren's decisions to move to countries that once set out to exterminate Jews. We watch some of those grandparents travel back to visit Europe, and we listen to the grandchildren contemplate their lives abroad. The filmmakers themselves are part of the story Levanon is from Israel and a grandchild of a Holocaust survivor; Rohrer is from Austria and a grandchild of a Nazi officer.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Movies
The Nine and a Half Months That Shook Fox News The ouster of Bill O'Reilly, the top rated cable news host, from Fox News capped an extraordinary period of upheaval at the company, marked by a series of sexual harassment allegations that resulted in the downfall of Roger E. Ailes, the powerful chairman of the network, as well as a damaging exodus of advertisers. Here is a look at the nine and a half months that shook the network: The accusations do not stop with Ms. Carlson. The law firm Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton Garrison, hired by 21st Century Fox, the network's owner, to investigate Ms. Carlson's allegations, takes statements from at least six women who describe inappropriate behavior by Mr. Ailes, according to people briefed on the inquiry. The details of the allegations are reportedly deemed troubling enough that they lead 21st Century Fox to begin planning the end of Mr. Ailes's reign at Fox News. Despite Mr. Murdoch's pledges of a fresh start at the network, two veteran executives with deep ties to Mr. Ailes are named co presidents of Fox News. Bill Shine, an affable Ailes loyalist who is well liked by some of the network's longest serving anchors, is selected to oversee programming at Fox News and Fox Business Network. Jack Abernethy, a trusted Murdoch hand, is placed in charge of business operations, including finance and advertising sales. Ms. Kelly, a bona fide Fox star who played a breakout role in the presidential campaign when she clashed with Donald J. Trump, leaves Fox months after releasing a book in which she described being sexually harassed by Mr. Ailes. Ms. Kelly's exit is so abrupt that it is announced on the day the network runs a full page ad in The Wall Street Journal trumpeting the ratings of its prime time lineup, with Ms. Kelly prominently pictured. It is later revealed that comments by Mr. O'Reilly about the sexual harassment allegations at the network, along with her deep skepticism about whether the network was truly committed to changing its culture, were factors in Ms. Kelly's decision to leave Fox News for a new role at NBC News, according to two people familiar with the matter. An investigation by The New York Times reveals that five women received payouts totaling about 13 million from Mr. O'Reilly or the company in exchange for agreeing not to pursue litigation or speak about their accusations of sexual harassment or other inappropriate behavior against him. Two settlements had come after Mr. Ailes's dismissal, when the company had said it would not tolerate behavior that "disrespects women or contributes to an uncomfortable work environment." In a one sentence statement, 21st Century Fox announces that Mr. O'Reilly, who had been away on vacation, will not return to Fox News, bringing an end to his two decade reign as one of the most influential commentators in television. The move comes amid new allegations against him.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Media
The Baltimore Museum of Art is pausing its plan to sell three major paintings from its collection. A Sotheby's sale of works by Brice Marden, Clyfford Still and Andy Warhol was estimated to bring in 65 million to fund acquisitions of art by people of color and staff wide salary increases. The decision, on the day of a planned auction of two of the works, came after weeks of criticism from people who opposed the sale and hours after a conversation between leaders of the museum and the Association of Art Museum Directors, a professional organization advancing best practices for art museums. Controversy and recriminations from critics and museum professionals nationwide have trailed the museum's Oct. 2 announcement of the sale. More than 200 former Baltimore Museum trustees and community members signed a letter to Maryland's attorney general seeking to halt the sale. The works by Marden and Still, which were to have been sold Wednesday evening at auction, were the only paintings by each artist in the museum's collection. (Sotheby's was going to handle the Warhol in a private sale.) In a separate letter to the state of Maryland, the museum's former director Arnold Lehman, who was personally active in the acquisition of the Marden and Warhol paintings in the late 1980s, wrote: "I am supportive of paying employees a living wage. However, I am opposed to the manner in which the museum is attempting to reach these goals and the need to cannibalize the heart of the collection."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Art & Design
The Children's Health Insurance Program, better known as CHIP, covers nearly nine million children whose parents earn too much for Medicaid, but not enough to afford other coverage. But the program, which ran out of funding in September, is at a crisis point. Congress passed a stopgap spending bill late last month that was expected to keep CHIP running through March, but the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services said some states could run out of money as early as next week. We asked readers to tell us how they would be affected if their children lost CHIP coverage. Their stories have been condensed and edited for clarity. Rebecca Ribiero, 45, a hospital social worker of Newfield, N.Y. Her husband, Alexandre, 42, is an assistant manager at Cornell University. CHIP covers their son, Max, 12, who has a learning disorder. I worry about what will happen to my kids, and to my husband and me, in the future if CHIP were to go the way of the dinosaur. My husband and I would have to evaluate which of our employers would offer the best deal. We're lucky that's even an option to consider, but insurance through my employer would still be 200 per month, as opposed to the 45 we pay now. We would have to cut back even more, and honestly, find out where to cut. We keep a pretty tight budget and we live simply. We don't have cable. I shop at thrift stores for myself so I can afford a car that works. Max has a learning disorder; his school has done testing and they're able to get some reimbursement through CHIP, and I'm not sure if that would be true through my employer's insurance. It's hard enough for a small school that doesn't have a lot of money; testing is very expensive and it took them years to do so, in part because of financial concerns. The Individualized Education Plan, or IEP, has been very, very supportive. If CHIP folds, what happens to my son, to the school district and to the other kids relying on state subsidized insurance? I can't believe the gross moral negligence of Congress letting this program hang in uncertainty. It's a recipe for a sick society, literally. Without preventative care, sick kids become sick adults. "I have no idea what waits for us this year." Sara Nolan, 38, and her husband, John Gonzalez, 45, of Brooklyn, own small businesses. CHIP covers their son, Ronen, 2, and her stepsons Kai, 13, and Quin, 11. I use CHIP for things like routine visits and immunization. My two stepsons have other issues: they see allergists, optometrists, and perhaps most important, my youngest stepson has had febrile seizures since he was a child. Doctors say it's harmless, even though it's terrifying, and most kids grow out of it, but my stepson has not. CHIP covered his visits to neurologists, additional electroencephalogram testing, a metabolic specialist and now covers a low dose medication to ensure that he doesn't get seizures. None of that would be in anyone's financial reach without borrowing egregious amounts of money; it's that kind of thing we can do with peace of mind. It allows him to have a higher quality of life, less stress childhood that every kid deserves regardless of a family's economic situation. Sarah Mullen Rua, 37, harpist of Bastrop, Tex. Her husband, Cyrus, 44, was laid off after eight years with a touring band. CHIP covers their daughter, Eleanor, 4. We're lucky, we've had an incredibly healthy child, so for the most part, it's been preventative care. But I'm pushing to get everything done as fast as we can just in case CHIP is no longer funded or the A.C.A. goes back on the cutting board this coming year. I had the option at our last checkup to get all of her shots then and I opted to do all of them in December, just in case. I'm not sure how we'd even go about getting a job with employer provided health insurance if CHIP did disappear; they seem few and far between. I'm the only one with a college degree, so that would be up to me if we did. I don't know about any jobs that would get us insurance without one of us going back to school, which has been discussed, but now that my husband doesn't have his touring gig, my income is nearly our entire income. I spent a lot of time learning the system and the ins and outs the best I can, helping friends in this situation and advocating for the plans when I can. It's one of the few political topics I will talk about. The thing that I'm most terrified about is mental health care coverage. Behavioral health requires constant maintenance and therapy, which CHIP is willing to provide, but most insurance carriers cut in half, or worse. The one I was looking at limits Myles's speech therapy to 20 sessions a year, which isn't even one a week. They also limit specialist visits to two per year. Any more and we have to pay 100 percent before deductible, which would include any psychiatrist. Also, a lot of mental health drugs are an "upper tier" product with a lot of insurance carriers, meaning that they cost significantly more than the average prescriptions, even the generic ones. We're incredibly lucky because there are a lot of people that can't go get new coverage because there's nothing else available. For us, it might mean I go work outside the home, it might mean shopping for my kids on the Affordable Care Act marketplace, or that we pull together the funds month to month to pay out of pocket for the specialists that we're not allowed to see on insurance. We would need to tighten our belt more. Our entire continuity of care would get disrupted because we would no longer have access to middle of the day appointments or the ability to talk to the school when needed, which is why I started working from home, for availability. It's scary, I don't know a single person in my circle of this little world under the age of 35 whose kids are not on CHIP right now. The saying "it takes a village to raise a family" doesn't exist anymore, at least from the government's perspective. Now the angle is they're your kids, you deal with it. If we don't get rid of that mentality, nobody from this generation will have kids. "As a Dreamer, I get nervous if I ask for too much help." I'm very blessed that they're very healthy. I've used CHIP mainly for checkups. This past month has been rough for us, they got a stomach bug and we had to go back and forth to the doctor. But it worries me more so than for the other people that struggle more than I do. Like people who have kids who are actually sick it's a lot for them. I have insurance for myself through my job, but not for them because if I put them in the insurance, it's very expensive. As a Dreamer, I get nervous if I ask for too much help or a lot of help, maybe it's wrong for me to think that way but I don't want to ask for too much. If I have to pay, I just prefer to pay than ask for help. It's just me in the house, no husband, I do everything on my own; I also drive Uber during the weekends just to get more money; it's hard. Heidi Sanchez, founder of a start up, of Weslaco, Tex. CHIP covers her daughter, 14, who has Type 1 diabetes. I rely on programs like CHIP to help out with the cost of diabetes, a monthly cost that is more or less 1,200. That's a significant cost and they say they are going to fund it through March, but what about after March? My daughter is the type that would worry and so she knows that her medication costs a lot, but I haven't told her how much it costs. I've been very involved with calling my congressmen; I've got John Cornyn and Ted Cruz in the Senate and they get an earful out of me. Frankly to me, it's just appalling that in America we can't even cover kids. You can be at risk of dying, because you don't have health coverage because you can't afford it. You have to have the insulin to live. Without the insulin, my daughter would slowly starve to death. Follow NYTHealth on Twitter. Sign up for the Science Times newsletter.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Health
Our weekday morning digest that includes information about airlines and airports, with deals, tips and anything else that travelers may want to know. Alaska Airlines frequent fliers will soon see some extra benefits to their membership program once American Airlines completes the final steps of its merger with US Airways. The merger of American and US Airways' reservation system in the fall will move all flights under the American reservation code. For members of Alaska's Board Room program, this means more access to more American lounges and the ability to earn Alaska miles on more than 60 new routes beginning Oct. 17, said Andrew Harrison, executive vice president and chief revenue officer of Alaska Airlines. Miles earned on traditional US Airways routes will count toward Alaska's elite status in its MVP program. Those with elite status will share the same perks as American AAdvantage elites. Also, starting on Aug. 15, Alaska Airlines' Board Room members will have access to all 54 Admirals Club lounges throughout the world. Fine airline food may sound like an oxymoron but carriers are increasingly attentive to meals served on board. Travelers in Lufthansa's business class should see changes to their dining service this month, as the airline begins a new restaurant style service on its long haul flights. The service is designed to emulate the level of attention expected at a high end restaurant, with emphasis on individual needs, said a Lufthansa spokesperson, Christina Semmel. Flight attendants will greet passengers with a drink of their choice, present menus before takeoff, and set tray tables with ceramic tableware. "The culinary offerings are served by hand, and it is up to the individual passenger to decide just when their wineglass is refilled and their dessert is served," Ms. Semmel said. For travelers who would rather eat something before their flight, or for those who have a tight connection, AirGrub, a meal ordering app for travelers on the run, started its service in July at San Francisco International Airport. Beginning this month, passengers can also pre order meals in New York at Kennedy International Airport and Logan International Airport in Boston. Meals are packaged so passengers can either eat before boarding or once they are on the plane. The free app is available on Apple and Android devices, and meals come at no extra charge from airport restaurants. "A lot of us instinctively think when we're traveling we're not going to get good food," said Surya Panditi, the chief executive of AirGrub. "With the AirGrub app, travelers can now order the food of their choice and can order any time, days or weeks in advance if they like, or when they are on the way to the airport, or from the security line, for example without having to wait."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Travel
WASHINGTON As the 26 billion blockbuster merger between T Mobile and Sprint teetered this summer, Makan Delrahim, the head of the Justice Department's antitrust division, labored to rescue it behind the scenes, according to text messages revealed this week in a lawsuit to block the deal. Mr. Delrahim connected company executives with the F.C.C. and members of Congress. And he gave executives insight into the thinking of Ajit Pai, the chairman of the F.C.C. who would also have to approve the merger. He is "open and willing" to discussions about the deal, Mr. Delrahim said in one text message in June, a month before regulators blessed the transaction. The messages between Mr. Delrahim and the executives involved in structuring one of the telecom industry's most significant mergers in generations provide a rare inside look at the hands on work the Justice Department's top antitrust official undertook to shape the deal. While it is not unusual for a law enforcement official to work behind the scenes to help companies overcome antitrust concerns, efforts like the one undertaken by Mr. Delrahim are almost always hidden from view. The text messages show that he played a crucial role in bringing together top executives of T Mobile, Sprint and another company, Dish, for negotiations. The Justice Department has said it would not have approved the merger without the emergence of another competitor like Dish. The Obama administration rejected an earlier proposed merger between the companies, and it remains deeply unpopular with some consumer groups who fear it will increase prices for Americans, especially in rural areas. Mr. Delrahim oversaw the often hostile talks between the companies, while pulling strings to get lawmakers and other regulators on board. "Had a generally good chat with the chairman," Mr. Delrahim wrote to Charles Ergen, the chief executive of Dish, the company that would prove crucial to the deal's passage. The following day he encouraged Mr. Ergen to lobby lawmakers to urge Mr. Pai to approve new deal terms that would give Mr. Ergen more time to build out a competitive telecom business. Mr. Ergen did so. He told Mr. Delrahim that he had "very good" meetings in Washington and that he talked to Mitch McConnell, the Senate majority leader, about the deal, according to the text messages. When asked about the text messages, a Justice Department spokesman said that "the Antitrust Division is proud of its work in reviewing this important merger on behalf of the American consumer," but declined to comment further. T Mobile and Dish declined to comment on the messages, which were submitted as evidence in a legal challenge to the merger led by the New York and California state attorneys general. Sprint didn't immediately respond to requests for comment. The messages also show that SoftBank, the Japanese conglomerate that owns the majority of Sprint, discussed lending Dish money to buy the assets it needed to become a telecom company. In such an arrangement, SoftBank would essentially be financing a competitor to its own company, Sprint. But SoftBank also stood to lose financially if a Sprint T Mobile merger did not happen. In one strained exchange, Mr. Ergen told John Legere, the chief executive of T Mobile, that he was still working to get terms of a deal done, pending board approval and "any other issues from our/your team." "And waiting on Softbank to finance the deal?" Mr. Legere wrote. Mr. Ergen said publicly this week that several potential lenders had emerged to help his company buy assets, including JPMorgan Chase and SoftBank. Sprint and T Mobile, the third and fourth largest wireless companies, announced their latest merger plans in April 2018. The carriers promised their union would allow them to combine resources and bring the next generation of wireless broadband, known as 5G, for fifth generation, to rural America. They would have a combined 80 million United States subscribers. The Justice Department announced its approval of the deal in July, citing the creation of a fourth and new competitor in Dish, which would buy assets from Sprint and T Mobile to become a telecom company. In a parallel review, the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission announced it planned to approve the deal weeks later. The merger is being challenged in court by several states and cannot close until that lawsuit is resolved. State attorneys general in New York and California are unconvinced that Dish will provide true market competition. "Dish is a struggling satellite TV firm with no experience running a mobile wireless business and no current mobile wireless business," Paula Blizzard, California's deputy attorney general, said on a call with journalists this month. "We cannot count on Dish one day in the future somehow growing into a viable wireless company equal to Sprint's reach today." Mr. Delrahim was pressured to block the merger throughout the department's review. Several Democratic lawmakers, consumer groups and state attorneys general said the deal would harm consumers by reducing the number of national wireless carriers to three from four. The reduction in competition would most likely lead to higher consumer wireless bills, the critics warned. To salvage the deal, the companies came up with a solution: bring in Dish Network to buy some of their wireless assets to form another competitor and maintain four national mobile carriers. "You've crossed the line," he wrote. "For full disclosure (which may be a new term to you) I have told Makan I don't believe you are serious about doing a deal." Mr. Delrahim seemed aware of the friction. In one set of messages, he invited Mr. Ergen to a meeting the next day with Mr. Legere and Mike Sievert, the president of T Mobile, in his conference room at the Justice Department. "2pm confirmed," Mr. Delrahim wrote. "I have not told John and Mike the meeting is w you yet, I will tell them in the AM." But the day the meeting was scheduled, Mr. Delrahim gave Mr. Ergen an update about a long talk he had held with Mr. Legere, Mr. Sievert and Mr. Claure. "John is going to reach out to you," Mr. Delrahim wrote. "May make good sense for you all to meet alone at 2, and then we all meet later today? I will make myself available."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Technology
For the first time, a drug is showing promising signs of effectiveness in Ebola patients participating in a study. The medicine, which interferes with the virus's ability to copy itself, seems to have halved mortality to 15 percent, from 30 percent in patients with low to moderate levels of Ebola in their blood, researchers have found. It had no effect in patients with more virus in their blood, who are more likely to die. The drug, approved as an influenza treatment in Japan last year, was generally well tolerated. "The results are encouraging in a certain phase of the disease," Dr. Sakoba Keita, director of disease control for the Guinean Ministry of Health, said in a telephone interview. The drug is being tested in Guinea, one of the three West African countries most affected by the Ebola crisis. The details of the early findings have not yet been announced, but they raise questions about which patients, if any, outside the study should be offered treatment with the drug, favipiravir. "These are very difficult, agonizing decisions," said Susan Ellenberg, a professor of biostatistics at the University of Pennsylvania's Perelman School of Medicine, who was not involved in the research. She cautioned that early results were sometimes not borne out. The drug has been provided on an emergency basis to Ebola patients in European countries, but not in Africa. The Japanese maker of the drug announced in October that it had 20,000 courses of treatment in stock. The epidemic is now ebbing but is not over. The World Health Organization on Wednesday reported 124 new cases in Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia in the week that ended on Sunday, warning of an increased geographical spread in Guinea and a rise in new cases in all three countries for the first time this year. Early reports of the interim results of the drug trial have created unanticipated complications, delaying the testing of at least one other therapy as researchers reconsidered plans and some doctors pressed to make favipiravir more widely available. Researchers and health authorities have been quietly debating whether and when to release the preliminary results of the study. The dilemmas they face echo those from the early years of the AIDS epidemic. Because mortality was so high in a disease with no proven treatment, there was demand to provide experimental therapies to everyone. The results for the drug favipiravir are based on an analysis of 69 patients older than 14 who have received it at two sites in Guinea since December. The survival rates of those with low to moderate levels of virus in their blood were significantly better than those of patients previously treated at a center run by Doctors Without Borders in Gueckedou, Guinea. Avigan, a drug approved as an anti influenza drug in Japan, is showing promise in treating ebola. Caroline Guele, 31, a rice farmer who lost two children and her husband to Ebola, received the drug in January at the site run by the Alliance for International Medical Action soon after she developed symptoms. She said she believed it contributed to her survival. "When I heard I could take the medicine, I actually prayed to God it would help me," she said in a telephone interview Wednesday. In a typical drug study, participants would be randomly assigned to take the drug or not, and the outcomes would be compared to see if the drug made a difference. However, because Ebola is so deadly and there is no known treatment aside from supportive care, all patients in the study were provided with the treatment. Fluctuating death rates during the current epidemic have complicated researchers' efforts to assess whether the new drug should be credited with the reduced mortality. The drug was expected to be most effective in patients receiving it within two to three days of showing symptoms, similar to antiviral treatments for influenza. However, most study participants arrived at the Ebola treatment units later in their illnesses, a median of five days after their symptoms began, so results were analyzed instead in terms of the approximate levels of virus in the blood. Independent boards charged with monitoring the drug trial detected the encouraging findings and recommended that they be made public. Results were submitted for review to the Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infection, which will take place in Seattle at the end of the month. A draft of an abstract of the findings was reviewed by The New York Times. "With Ebola, there's precious little good news," said Dr. Susan Shepherd, who served as medical coordinator at a treatment unit run by the Alliance for International Medical Action, one of two sites where the drug was tested. (The other was a facility run by Doctors Without Borders.) Dr. Shepherd added, "There will, I think, be an enormous pressure and desire to offer the treatment more broadly." The trial is sponsored by the French public research institute Inserm, with support from the European Union, and is run by a consortium of organizations and the Guinean government. After a briefing with the president of Inserm, President Francois Hollande of France issued a statement on Wednesday welcoming the findings and calling them an important step. The drug, also known by the trade name Avigan, was developed by the Japanese company Toyama Chemical, part of Fujifilm Group, and approved for influenza treatment in that country last March after safety testing. The company has said it would produce more doses of the drug in anticipation of the trial. It has also provided the tablets on an emergency basis to several Ebola patients in Europe, according to a company spokeswoman, Kana Matsumoto. She said that the drug had never been provided on that basis to patients in any African country, and that the company had no comment as to whether it would do so in the future given the new findings. "With a medication that seems to be safe, you really don't have a leg to stand on in terms of this person gets it and this person doesn't," Dr. Shepherd said. "The problem we seem to have is it doesn't help at all for people who have high viral loads." Researchers hope that some patients' lives might be saved by bolstering the immune system, including through transfusions of serum extracted from the blood of Ebola survivors, which contains virus fighting antibodies. However, expectations around favipiravir have contributed to a delay in a trial of serum transfusions, also known as convalescent plasma therapy, in Guinea's capital, according to Roeland Scholtalbers, the head of communications for the Institute of Tropical Medicine in Antwerp, Belgium, the study's sponsor. If patients getting the serum transfusions also get favipiravir, as some doctors have urged, it would probably be more difficult to discern whether the serum had an effect. Mr. Scholtalbers said that just because early results for favipiravir came first did not mean that researchers or the public should "put more hope on that solution than any other solution." "There are pretty good arguments to think that plasma can give good impact," he continued. "It will be a shame if we don't manage as a scientific community to test it." Dr. Xavier Anglaret, the lead investigator of the favipiravir trial in Guinea, said that he and his colleagues agreed that the other study was important. "The plasma trial should start as early as possible," he said.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Science
Storm King Art Center has announced it will add its first site specific commission to its collection in nearly a decade with a new work by Sarah Sze. The piece, "Fallen Sky," will be installed at the 500 acre sculpture park in 2020. It will join 10 other site specific commissions, including works by Richard Serra and Maya Lin. Rather than reaching for the heavens like many sculptures at Storm King, "Fallen Sky" will include a 36 foot diameter spherical cavity pressed into the earth. An envelope of mirrored stainless steel will give it a glistening veneer. "I wanted to do something potentially radical in form," Ms. Sze said. "Something that was much more interwoven, intertwined that imitates nature rather than marks it."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Art & Design
A College Town Gets Ready for Its Moment Under No Sun CARBONDALE, Ill. During football season, a maroon mob gathers in Saluki Stadium as thousands of Southern Illinois University fans come to cheer their hometown heroes. On Aug. 21, nearly three weeks before the first game, crowds will again pack the stadium. But all eyes will be on the sky, not the field. By some cosmic serendipity, this college town will be among the best places to witness the Great American Eclipse as it whisks across the contiguous United States, the first total solar eclipse to do so since 1918. The moon will block the sun and plunge everything here into an eerie darkness for more than two and a half minutes. The temperature will dip. Birds will hush. And a dazzling, pearly white halo will emerge, demanding everyone's attention. Carbondale, population 26,000, will be host to tens of thousands of visiting skygazers. Padma Yanamandra Fisher, a senior research scientist with the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo., will be among them, studying the solar spectacle. During a visit in May, she stood near the football field's 10 yard line and looked up at the cloudless plot of blue above the bleachers where she plans to point her telescope. "I feel like I'll be lost observing and then forget to take the data," she said. "It's supposed to be such an emotional experience that part of you has to be in check enough to say: 'Don't think about it now. Do the work, do the work, do the work.'" Three years ago, Bob Baer, a staff member at the university's physics department, learned of Carbondale's cosmic destiny: The city is near what NASA calls "the point of greatest duration." It will experience "totality" when the moon completely overshadows the sun for longer than almost anywhere else: a majestic 2 minutes 38 seconds. That alone would propel any town to nerd stardom, but Carbondale is exceptional. It also lies within the line of totality for America's next total solar eclipse, on April 8, 2024. Mr. Baer has played a central role in preparing the university for its moment under no sun. "My main pitch was, 'This isn't a choice,'" he said. "We've got a dot on a map and a crossroads on a map, so everybody's looking at us. They're going to come here no matter what." Coordinating public outreach for one of the most popular astronomical events of the century would be a major undertaking for any university. But for one without an astronomy department, it appeared particularly daunting. So Mr. Baer and his colleagues teamed up with NASA, the Adler Planetarium in Chicago and the National Solar Observatory in Boulder. With the support of those institutions, they plan to entertain and educate thousands of visitors, while ensuring that scientists can take full advantage of a rare opportunity. From 25 seats in the stadium, which holds 15,000 people, attendees will watch a NASA eclipse pregame show on the scoreboard. The university will also participate in a countrywide experiment to film totality coast to coast. Carbondale will host a free music festival called Shadowfest, which officials will spin into an annual event leading up to the 2024 eclipse. But much depends on the weather. If forecasts show cloudy skies in Carbondale, the crowds may not come. Alternatively, if things look dismal everywhere else nearby, then even more people might flock here. Some businesses are skeptical, while others have caught full on eclipse fever. "I think it's hyped up. People are making it bigger than it is," said Jeremy Clow, who runs Saluki Craft, a local art supply shop. "I don't think it'll be as big as everyone says it will be." But the attitude is different a street over at 710 Bookstore. "When people ask what's the big deal, I say 'Google it,'" said Randy Johnson, a managing partner of the bookstore. "For the eclipse groupies, this is Mecca." Already he has sold more than 600 T shirts and has stocked up on eclipse hats, coffee mugs and beer koozies. "Every time I see something I think, 'Wow, maybe we can put an eclipse logo on it,'" Mr. Johnson said. As an eclipse reaches totality, the sun's wispy outer atmosphere, known as the corona, appears to spill out from behind the moon. The ethereal crown has long puzzled astronomers: It blazes at more than a million degrees Celsius, yet the sun's surface burns at around a mere 5,500 degrees Celsius. That's counterintuitive like getting warmer the farther away you walk from a campfire. Normally the corona is invisible from Earth. But it appears when the moon blocks the much brighter solar disk. Totality offers scientists their best opportunity to uncover its scorching secrets. From Saluki Stadium, Dr. Yanamandra Fisher will investigate how light is scattered in the inner part of the corona, a property known as its polarization. The information could provide insight into how electrons inside the corona are arranged, which could help researchers understand the source of the atmosphere's intense heat. During her scouting trip, Dr. Yanamandra Fisher searched for the best place to set up her equipment. She considered the university's "dark site," a location established away from people and bright lights. Its 10 concrete pads were designed as vibration free platforms for telescopes, but scientists who work at the more rugged site will probably need to camp beside their equipment. So she selected the stadium, which offers an unobstructed view of the sky while being closer to the heart of Carbondale. "I'm projecting that the sun will be approximately there when totality hits," she said, etching an imaginary rectangle with her finger. "If I can fit three suns across in a field of view, that would be pretty nice." Her telescope needs that real estate in the sky to capture intricate details of the corona, whose tendrils can stretch millions of miles from the surface. With her location picked out, she must now focus on perfecting her strategy for those 2 minutes and 38 seconds. "You have to go through your procedure over and over," she said, "so you don't make mistakes." Dr. Yanamandra Fisher's study was one of 11 eclipse projects to receive funding from NASA. What makes her work different from other studies is that she plans to return to Carbondale in 2024 and perform the same experiment, comparing the two eclipses to see how the corona has changed. The sun goes through an 11 year cycle, during which its activity changes from being more mellow to becoming more turbulent. This year's eclipse is happening while activity is decreasing, but the one in 2024 will occur as it is ramping up, so sunspots and solar flares are expected to be more apparent then. She is teaming up with another solar eclipse project called the Citizen Continental America Telescopic Eclipse experiment, or Citizen CATE. It consists of a chain of nearly 70 identical telescopes placed from Oregon to South Carolina that will record 90 minutes' worth of totality, which will provide scientists with a movie of how the inner corona changes over time. Jasmyn Taylor, 17, a senior at Carbondale Community High School, will help collect images for the Citizen CATE project. She plans to be 20 minutes outside of Carbondale at Giant City State Park, which will receive two extra seconds of totality. "I'm really excited for the way the sky is going to look," she said. "I'm nervous too, because this is probably the most complicated thing I have ever done in my life." An hour and a half before totality, scientists from the Louisiana Space Grant Consortium will launch two eight foot latex balloons from the stadium. Equipped with cameras and instruments, they will capture the eclipse from above the clouds at 85,000 feet. But some see the eclipse as an important opportunity for their school and city. "A lot of students couldn't care less. Because it's Carbondale, they think it can't be something that big," said Diamond Trusty, 20, a senior who is a volunteer with the campus marketing team for the eclipse events. But she plans to change those sentiments. "I want to let them know this is a landmark historical moment that we have to be a part of." Sam Beard, 23, a philosophy major, agreed. "It offers a chance to prove to the outside that this place is magical, it's a gem, and it's not flyover country," he said.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Science
Art galleries, especially those on the Lower East Side and its environs, can sometimes resemble found objects. Art dealers with shoestring budgets take the spaces as they are, or close to it. At the same time, artists often do more than simply show their work in them; they tweak them or execute substantial makeovers that temporarily turn the galleries into part of the art. Such shows are nearly always on view somewhere in New York's sprawling gallery scene, and at the moment there are three very fine examples within a short distance of one another in downtown Manhattan. Klara Liden' s latest show at Reena Spaulings excellent as usual folds together exterior and interior space, activating both through performance and an invasive video screen. The centerpiece is "Grounding," a short video beautifully shot by Daniel Garcia, that shows the artist striding around the Wall Street section of Manhattan with what seems to be serious , perhaps even heroic, intent. Looking neither right nor left, she falls regularly, picks herself up and carries on. Whatever mission she's on never comes into focus; the suspense, encouraged by the pulsing drone of Askar Brickman's soundtrack, is reduced to anticipating the next fall. The video becomes a parody of masculinity or action films or movie star heroes all suggestions aided by Ms. Liden's androgynous presence and impeccable posture (think of Matt Damon in "The Bourne Identity") and also undermined by her unwavering dignity. At the gallery, "Grounding" is projected onto a large wall of cheap plywood, angled at about 45 degrees. (The grain is sometimes visible through the image.) This architectural intervention also evokes the way the ground seems to rise to meet you when you fall. Another video, this one on a small, flat screen monitor, awaits on the other side of a trapdoor like opening in the plywood wall. Even briefer than "Grounding," it is titled "GTG TTYL" and shows Ms. Liden performing three simple acts of disappearance within the gallery itself. She hides, or takes cover, by climbing behind the gallery's sofa, then a false wall and, finally, a large video screen. These short actions are each segmented into split second moments that are isolated by the monitor's going dark interruptions like the falls in "Grounding." The result is unexpectedly mysterious: choreographed stealth extended, through video, into oddly graceful, deconstructed dance. The German artist Kai Althoff is showing nearly 40 works, mostly small, characteristically strange paintings, in the warren of about 10 glass walled offices that constitutes the gallery Tramps, on the second floor of a mall in Chinatown. Mr. Althoff has altered the vitrine like display spaces, covering the floors with destabilizing sheets of heavy paper over slabs of foam, and the walls with more heavy paper, rice paper and raw cotton. He sometimes paints the paper deep mauve or adds brushwork to the glass. The result is a space that evokes alternating feelings of being oppressed and of being cosseted . The paintings are fantastic and feral, both in execution and in suggested narrative; attenuated, often adolescent, sometimes gnomelike creatures populate them . The scenes often seem to illustrate, or at least conjure European, Japanese or Russian folk tales or children's stories, reminding us that once upon a time such narratives were often violent , intended to warn the young against bad behavior. There are benign scenes, like that of a group hanging up laundry outdoors, or one of a Buddhist teaching acolytes, as well as a series of images of women giving birth. Surfaces are deliberately murky, but careful examination clarifies both the goings on and the artist's eccentric paint handling (often more drawing than painting). Japanese screens; Degas's monotypes of brothels; Vuillard's fraught, richly colored surfaces; and Klimt's lavish patterns may come to mind. But Mr. Althoff's best efforts reveal larger, more ambiguous and dangerous worlds, full of life's inescapable tensions, if not its sorrows. For Cynthia Talmadge's first show at 56 Henry in 2017, her interest in social ritual led her to conflate college residence halls and private rehab centers: She accoutered dorm room like displays, such as Ikea might mount , with pennants, tote bags and sweatshirts emblazoned with the names of treatment facilities like McLean and Hazelden. Now she has turned to the prestigious Frank E. Campbell funeral home in Manhattan, known for celebrating the lives and deaths of New York's rich and famous at its Upper East Side address, which gives the show its title. Like Monet painting the Rouen Cathedral, Ms. Talmadge has painted the funeral home's facade from different angles, in different seasons, at different times of day. But she has sidestepped Impressionism's speedy improvisation for an implicitly static style: the dot by dot pointillism of the Post Impressionist painter Georges Seurat, a method that has all the deliberation and precision of a funeral director preparing a corpse for an open coffin. We see the funeral chapel looking pinkish in the bleaching light of summer, and much darker during a nighttime snowstorm (an especially good rendition). With equal skill, Ms. Talmadge has given 56 Henry's tiny space the high end look and hush of a funeral parlor. A thick, pale carpet covers the floor; other additions include wainscoting and molding, silk wallpaper and velvet trim, and silk cords from which the paintings hang all a single shade of tasteful, soothing jade green. Nothing says money like total color coordination, but none of this would look good if Ms. Talmadge's pointillism weren't so convincing, down to the painted frames. It should be lost on no one that the production values here aren't much different from those lavished upon a conventional white cube gallery, which is a far cry from the stops on this particular tour.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Art & Design
Remera, the Kigali neighborhood housing a soccer stadium and bordering Kigali International Airport, used to be known for little more than flophouses and the city's red light district. But Remera is coming into its own, with this once rundown area in Rwanda's capital now seeing an influx of bars, sustainable minded bakeries and artist led boutiques. Some of the city's best beer and brochettes (chargrilled meat on a skewer, the de facto national dish of Rwanda) can now be found in Remera, and come nightfall, the city's hardest partying revelers are crowding dance floors until sunrise. A pink house with interiors bathed in magenta light, Fuchsia lives up to its name. This cheerful bar and restaurant has been a night life staple in Remera since it opened in 2015, and this past May, its leafy outdoor patio was treated to a face lift. There's live music on Thursdays and Saturdays, but stop by after midnight any day of the week for dance music that lasts till dawn, a lively crowd and signature cocktails like the blush toned Pink Lady, with vodka, strawberry, orange juice and simple syrup.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Travel
Gracie Gold, 23, practicing at the IceWorks Skating Complex in Pennsylvania, where she resumed training last year after treatment for an eating disorder. Credit...Hilary Swift for The New York Times Gracie Gold, 23, practicing at the IceWorks Skating Complex in Pennsylvania, where she resumed training last year after treatment for an eating disorder. ASTON, Pa. The day she covered every mirror in her new apartment because she could not stand the sight of herself anymore was a red flag. But no one was around to register it. And Gracie Gold, a figure skater once on the cusp of Olympic stardom, was in no shape to help herself. Holed up in a Detroit suburb, she kept her lights off so often, she said, that the electric bill one month was less than 20. She slept as much as 24 hours at a time, then stayed awake for three nights straight. A good day was when she managed to brush her teeth and her hair. Her dream of an Olympic gold medal? That had evaporated long ago, during her slow boil of a meltdown that she was struggling to keep a lid on. Gold also realized that she did not relish the idea of returning to Michigan. She is so haunted by memories of her time there that, she said, she rerouted a December trip to California to visit her mother and twin sister because her original itinerary required her to fly through Detroit. Though it was there, in that Stygian apartment, that she bottomed out, Michigan was not where her problems began. Gold and her twin, Carly, were born 40 minutes apart on Aug. 17, 1995, and her family would later say it was only natural that Gracie led the way out of the womb. Throughout their childhood, she was fixated on being first, and flawless. In the classroom, she would furiously, and tearfully, erase an entire sentence if she misspelled a single word. By second grade, she had found an outlet for her compulsiveness, taking formal skating lessons at a rink near the family home in Springfield, Mo. Carly followed her into the sport a few months later and did well, but never rivaled her sister. Unlike Gracie, she was wired more for fun than for perfection. "She didn't cross those lines that needed to be crossed to be an elite athlete," Gracie said of her twin. "She didn't push past the border of being normal and into the realm of insanity." Gold's skating ambitions led to several moves around the country over a decade. Through her teens, she was accompanied everywhere by her sister and her mother, Denise, a retired emergency room nurse. The twins' skating schedules consumed Denise's life and left their father, Carl, an anesthesiologist who had stayed put, a weekend parent financing his children's nascent careers. "I remember when we were in Illinois, a sports psychologist saying, 'Can't you just go to another coach in the area?'" Gold's mother said. "And I said: 'No, skating's not like that. In the whole world there's only a few coaches that are world class caliber." By the time Gold came along, U.S. Figure Skating which had produced an unbroken string of Olympic medalists in the women's competition, including five champions, from 1968 to 2006 was mired in a drought, and the sport's popularity stateside was on the wane. Gold was seen as someone who could reverse America's fortunes, a personality in the mold of Kelly, the Hollywood star turned royal princess. Gold never saw herself that way, but the comparison sounded compelling, and soon she was reflecting back what others saw, describing Kelly in interviews as her style icon. "I almost created this other person," Gold said, adding: "I wanted to be the most flawless, angelic, plastic, Barbie doll face human who just says all the right things and does all the right things and is sterling. And people just don't like her because she's so perfect." Until she was well into her teenage years, Gold said, she didn't fixate on her weight and never counted calories. She would routinely chug a carton of chocolate milk before practice without a second thought, then promptly burn it off her still growing frame. Then one day she weighed herself in front of a coach, a common practice, and the scale read 124 pounds. "That's a big number," she remembered the coach saying. The next two years were a blur of fashion shoots and celebrity elbow rubbing with the likes of the pop singer Taylor Swift. Then came the 2016 World Figure Skating Championships in Boston. Gold entered the competition fresh off winning her second national title and seemed poised to become the first American woman in a decade to win a singles medal at the event. But after finishing first in the short program, Gold faltered on her opening jump sequence in the free skate and tumbled to fourth, two spots behind another American, Ashley Wagner, who skated exquisitely. "It wasn't just her pain," Denise Gold said of what fed her daughter's crushing disappointment. "It was her family's pain. It was her agent's pain. It was the country's pain. It was that she was letting everyone down." Within months, Gold's body, and her psyche, had begun to deteriorate. In the summer of 2016, she arrived in Colorado Springs for one of U.S. Figure Skating's regular monitoring sessions for elite skaters something of a training camp, if you will with an extra 20 pounds on her 5 foot 5 frame and a glower almost perpetually on her face. Gold was depressed, and her deteriorating relationship with food now involved binge purge cycles. Her private struggles became immediately clear to Wagner, her rival, who said recently, "There was just no one home, and that was a scary thing to see." Wagner alerted a skating official that Gold seemed unwell and needed help. Sam Auxier, the president of U.S. Figure Skating at the time, said the association, which makes licensed psychologists and other specialists available to athletes dealing with mental health problems, had acted promptly. But attempts to assist Gold, he said, went nowhere. These days Gold is on better terms with her family. She received a Prozac prescription at the Meadows, but she said she had weaned herself off it. And she comes to the rink in any kind of weather wearing rimless orange sunglasses, which give her a brighter outlook. Gold gravitated back to skating because she sought the kind of structure that had grounded her during treatment. Last spring, she moved to the Philadelphia area for a fresh start with a new coach, Vincent Restencourt, who earned her trust by insisting that she gradually reverse her weight gain. He insists on dining with Gold at least once a week, and at their first meal together he coaxed her into eating at least half a hamburger, emphasizing that she should not starve herself back into shape. Since June, Gold has lost more than 30 pounds, the result of a healthier combination of foods, she said, not any fad diet. She gives skating lessons to young children and adults, trains alongside teenagers and wonders what they must be thinking. "When I was their age," Gold said, "I never had a semiretired, mentally ill Olympian come to my rink." The comeback feels a lot like starting from scratch. The first time Gold executed a clean triple Lutz, she felt an immense sense of accomplishment. "You forget how magical those moments are," she said. Whenever Gold returns to competition, she will have a new long program, the one she planned to unveil in Detroit. It is set to Sara Bareilles's "She Used to Be Mine," a song that she found in her mother's playlist.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Sports
JERUSALEM By the time I married into the family, Bubby Bella's reticence was pronounced. A survivor of Nazi genocide, Bubby had resolutely overcome it, posturing under large brimmed hats while ordering egg rolls and lo mein in Philadelphia's northeast. Whatever demons Bubby knew in Poland were long silenced. Her wounds had in America become scars and like other women of her generation, Bubby kept them unseen. Beneath her traumas, her prewar memories lay dormant. Somewhere inside Bubby, an innocent child was lost. One spring, Bubby flew first class to stay with our budding family in Jerusalem. Aging and not in the best of health, Bubby spent the days before Passover convalescing from her trip. In the company of her great grandchildren, Bubby appeared content. My wife and I could sense our matriarch was at the end of her journey. For the children, however, and for Bubby, the occasion was joyful. I try to imagine Bella as young and without inhibition, but I cannot conjure up a picture. Though I worked hard to understand her mishmash of Yiddish and English, she never confided the details of her wartime ordeal. I know she was pregnant with her son when she and her husband fled to the forest from Korytnica, Poland. Was she in town when Germans forced its Jewish residents into slave labor, when the Germans stole all their valuables and when, in May of 1942, the Gestapo shot most of the remaining Jews in a pit outside the town? What were her defiant eyes made to see? Bubby would never say. Whatever tenderness she had known as a girl had been erased. How much of her childhood did Bubby remember and how much was she compelled by trauma to forget? After the war, Bubby and her husband, Victor, buried their histories and moved on. Severed from their roots, the valiant pair and their children, Mark and Ruth, made their way to Philadelphia, where they tended to tradition in a manner that suited them. From her patois to her potato kugel, Bubby was thoroughly Jewish. Though no longer Orthodox herself, Bubby took great pride in her Orthodox descendants. Just as certain recessive traits skip a generation, a compromised faith can take time to make itself known again. Reclining beside her descendants at the Passover Seder, Bubby looked radiant. Spending Passover with her great grandchildren in Jerusalem was for Bubby a deserved coda to a harrowing life. Customs and rituals came alive that night in ways they had not before as we celebrated freedom with a Holocaust survivor. Tradition can be intoxicating. Bubby had yielded the formalities of Orthodoxy but not the informal rituals of Judaism. On the second night of Passover, my wife and I returned home from a late afternoon outing to find Bubby primping before a mirror. We had left Bubby lounging and expected to find her asleep when we returned. Seeing Bubby in a state of frenzied preparation concerned us. The first night's Seder had lasted long past midnight and sapped Bubby of her energy. Because of her frailty, we had assumed she would make do with the Seder we'd already had. "What are you, meshuggah?" Bubby howled, questioning our sanity in straightforward Yiddish. At that moment, Bubby was more Orthodox than we were. As we broke the middle of three matzos, a highlight of the Seder ceremony, a shiver seemed to run through her as she sat at the head of the table. Bubby had been transported to another place and time. "I remember my father, before the war, hanging a matzo on the wall," murmured Bubby, entranced. Suddenly, there before us, sat a young Polish child with a lifetime ahead of her. On a whim, I placed the object of her fascination in a Ziploc bag and hung it from the curtain rod opposite her gaze. In the company of her great grandchildren, time for Bubby collapsed. Korytnica had come to Jerusalem and the sickening wartime atrocities had never occurred. That mystical matzo shard held Bubby's attention for the duration of Passover.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Opinion
Hart Island is in the Pelham Islands group, officially a part of the Bronx. East of the lively City Island, it is a grave site, New York City's own potter's field a term from the New Testament that has come to denote a burial place for the poor, the anonymous, people without family or without family that can afford a marked resting place. The site is managed by the city's Department of Correction and is not open to the public. Brendan J. Byrne's documentary "One Million American Dreams" guides the viewer through several true narratives of how one might end up there. These stories can be heartbreaking. There's a mother who had no funds to bury her dead infant. And a Cuban emigre working to send money to his family back home, who fell prey to dementia before dying incommunicado. Hart Island, the writer Luc Sante says in an interview, is emblematic of an indifference that all cities cultivate out of practical necessity. But in New York, he notes, the indifference is exaggerated.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Movies
It's a paradox of American childhood poverty that experts routinely devise the most complex solutions for it or in recent parlance "innovations" most of which are elaborate, costly or otherwise impractical to implement. Jeff Madrick is an exception to this rule. In his new book, "Invisible Americans: The Tragic Cost of Child Poverty," he argues for a solution for children so simple that even a child could understand it: Give poor families money for their kids. In clear, spare prose, he lays out a proposal for something akin to a basic income guarantee for parents of children under 18. "Poor children have many requirements, but above all they need money," he writes. He returns to this point repeatedly: "Child poverty is too punishing and harmful to wait years for results especially when cash distributions can help today." Madrick's idea is essentially a subset of universal basic income, a concept championed by an increasing number of prominent Americans from the presidential candidate Andrew Yang to the conservative social scientist Charles Murray and the Facebook co founder Chris Hughes. Madrick, a veteran journalist and economic analyst, imagines a government funded allowance to families that would equal 4,000 to 5,000 per child each year. Every family with children would get some money, which would avoid the problem of only offering the stipend to the guardians of poor youth. After all, there are millions of "near poor" and struggling middle class families as well, trying to pay for their kids out of stagnant incomes. (According to current guidelines, a family of four living on 25,750 or less qualifies as poor; realistically, Madrick argues, the number should be closer to 50,000.) In addition, he would have the allowance ladled out according to a principle of "non paternalism"; in other words, it would be unconditional, like love.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Books
Read about the events that our other critics have chosen for the week ahead. HANNAH FRANK'S 'FRAME BY FRAME' at Light Industry (May 7, 7 p.m.). This program of animation is tied to the posthumous publication of a book by the academic Hannah Frank (1984 2017). In the book, Frank proposes looking at film images not in succession but as individual frames; she applies that approach to studying 50 years' worth of cartoons. This compilation, presented by Sam Frank, Hannah's brother, will include Popeye, Bugs Bunny and works by the experimental filmmakers Robert Breer and Peter Kubelka. lightindustry.org PANORAMA EUROPE 2019 at various locations (May 3 19). This annual showcase of cinema from the Continent opens on Friday with "Mademoiselle Paradis (Licht)," an 18th century costume drama from the Austrian director Barbara Albert. The Polish filmmaker Agnieszka Smoczynska follows her man eating mermaid fantasia "The Lure" with the amnesia drama "Fugue" (on May 11), and the festival will close with the Greek dark comedy "Pity," from Babis Makridis, about a man who begins to take unusual satisfaction in the experience of grief. Most screenings take place at the Museum of the Moving Image, but see the museum's website for full location details. 718 784 0077, movingimage.us 'QUARTET' at the Quad Cinema (opens on May 3). Based on a novel by Jean Rhys, this potentially overlooked 1981 curiosity from the Merchant Ivory catalog is set in Paris of the 1920s. Marya (Isabelle Adjani), who is gossiped about for her ostensibly exotic origins in Martinique, falls on hard times after her husband (Anthony Higgins) is imprisoned on charges of dealing stolen art. With self interested motives, an English couple (Alan Bates and Maggie Smith) offers her residence in their home. The director James Ivory will appear for a Q. and A. at Saturday's 7 p.m. screening. 212 255 2243, quadcinema.com	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Movies
A Tennessee man who became a subject of national scorn after stockpiling 17,700 bottles of hand sanitizer donated all of the supplies on Sunday just as the Tennessee attorney general's office began investigating him for price gouging. On Sunday morning, Matt Colvin, an Amazon seller outside Chattanooga, Tenn., helped volunteers from a local church load two thirds of his stockpile of hand sanitizer and antibacterial wipes into a box truck for the church to distribute to people in need across Tennessee. Officials from the Tennessee attorney general's office on Sunday took the other third, which they plan to give to their counterparts in Kentucky for distribution. (Mr. Colvin and his brother Noah bought some of the supplies in Kentucky this month.) The donations capped a tumultuous 24 hours for Mr. Colvin. On Saturday morning, The New York Times published an article about how he and his brother cleaned out stores of sanitizer and wipes in an attempt to profit off the public's panic over the coronavirus pandemic. Mr. Colvin sold 300 bottles of hand sanitizer at a markup on Amazon before the company removed his listings and warned sellers they would be suspended for price gouging. As a result, Mr. Colvin was sitting on an enormous cache of sanitizer and wipes while much of the country searched in vain for them. The article immediately sparked widespread outrage, with thousands of people posting angry comments across the internet about his actions. Many of those people also contacted Mr. Colvin directly with hate mail and death threats, while one man even banged on the door at his home late Saturday night, according to Mr. Colvin and several messages he shared with The Times. In an hourlong interview on Sunday, Mr. Colvin expressed remorse for his actions and said that when he decided to hoard the sanitizer and wipes, he didn't realize the gravity of the coronavirus outbreak or the severe shortage of sanitizer and wipes. "I've been buying and selling things for 10 years now. There's been hot product after hot product. But the thing is, there's always another one on the shelf," he said. "When we did this trip, I had no idea that these stores wouldn't be able to get replenished." He said the outpouring of hate has been scary for him and his family. He said people have incessantly called his cellphone, posted his address online and sent pizzas to his home. His inbox was flooded with ugly messages, he said. One email he shared with The Times said: "Your behavior is probably going to end up with someone killing you and your wife and your children." "It was never my intention to keep necessary medical supplies out of the hands of people who needed them," he said, crying. "That's not who I am as a person. And all I've been told for the last 48 hours is how much of that person I am." Now Mr. Colvin is facing consequences. On Sunday, Amazon and eBay suspended him as a seller, which is how he has made his living for years. The company where he rented a storage unit kicked him out. And the Tennessee attorney general's office sent him a cease and desist letter and opened an investigation. "We will not tolerate price gouging in this time of exceptional need, and we will take aggressive action to stop it," Attorney General Herbert H. Slatery III of Tennessee said in a news release. Tennessee's price gouging law prohibits charging "grossly excessive" prices for a variety of items, including food, gas and medical supplies, after the governor declares a state of emergency. The state can fine people up to 1,000 a violation. The language of the law could benefit Mr. Colvin. Gov. Bill Lee of Tennessee declared a state of emergency on March 12, activating the price gouging law. The Colvin brothers bought all of the sanitizer and wipes in question before that date, and Mr. Colvin said he did not sell anything after it. A spokeswoman for the Tennessee attorney general's office said that even if the Colvin brothers did not buy or sell any of the supplies after March 12, state authorities "will weigh all options under consumer laws."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Technology
Linda Goldbloom was 79 years old when she died Aug. 29 from a traumatic head injury. It had occurred four days earlier, when she was struck in the head by a foul ball while watching the Los Angeles Dodgers play the San Diego Padres at Dodger Stadium. The ball sizzled over protective netting and into her loge level seat behind home plate. Her daughter, Jana Brody, compared it to a bullet from a gun. "I would love to see higher nets," Brody said in a telephone interview Tuesday. "The trajectory of the ball can only get hit so far until it starts to arc and come down and then be a more manageable ball to catch or whatever. But where she was sitting, there was no chance for it to lob over. It was a straight shot." Brody, who was not with her parents at the game, said that she and her family were in shock after the accident. As the months went by, she wondered why the story had not come out. No telecast had followed the flight of the fatal foul ball, which was hit by a Padres batter during a tense ninth inning. The Dodgers had not publicized the accident, and the family had not contacted the news media. But as Brody researched fan injuries, she noticed an article published last spring that mentioned only one known instance of a fan being killed by a foul ball 14 year old Alan Fish, also at Dodger Stadium, in 1970. (The only other reported death of fan involving a ball occurred in 1943 when a man was hit by an overthrown ball from the field.) Brody contacted the author of the piece, Willie Weinbaum of ESPN, to add her mother's name to the grim list. Goldbloom's death first reported by Weinbaum on Monday occurred during the first season in which all 30 stadiums in Major League Baseball had netting that extended at least to the far edge of each dugout. But that netting did not protect Goldbloom, who sat in Section 106, row C, seat 5, on the level beneath the press box behind home plate. "I realized it was our responsibility to tell," Brody said. "Nobody knew. That was important to me to get just the awareness out yes, the netting got widened, but it didn't go vertical, and that would have been a huge change for my mom if it went up, too." When asked if the Dodgers might extend the netting to protect fans on the loge level where Goldbloom was seated, Joe Jareck, the Dodgers' senior director for public relations, said the team would not comment beyond a statement that expressed sympathy for Goldbloom. It said "the matter has been resolved" between the team and the family. The injury was not publicly disclosed at the time because "the Dodgers generally do not make public reports of accidents that take place at Dodger Stadium," the team said in a statement. "We avoid doing so out of respect for the privacy of the persons involved in the accidents and their families." Major League Baseball in a statement Tuesday defended the safety of its ballparks by saying it had increased the "inventory of protected seats." The statement asserted that teams were "constantly evaluating the coverage and design of their ballpark netting," though stopped short of recommending that the netting be raised, like it is in Japan. "You can see right through the nets, so what's the big deal?" Brody said. "I can't understand why it took so long for them to even widen it." In December 2015, Commissioner Rob Manfred issued recommendations to all teams to install netting extending from the ends of the dugout closest to the plate to within 70 feet of the plate. The Dodgers announced that day that they would comply, but some teams held out, reluctant to alienate fans in expensive lower level seats. The Yankees were one of those teams but relented last January, a few months after a foul ball severely injured a toddler behind the third base dugout. A disclaimer in place since 1913 and printed on the back of every ticket in Major League Baseball warns of the "risk and danger inherent to the game" and the possibility of injury from, among other things, "thrown or batted balls." But baseball has changed greatly since then, and the risk of injury to spectators has risen, mainly from the construction of new stadiums designed to bring fans closer to the action. According to a study published last year in the William Mary Law Review, fans sitting behind home plate are, on average, nearly 21 percent closer to the action at a major league game than they were 100 years ago and the average amount of foul territory has decreased by the same amount. That reduces fans' reaction time in an era that also features bigger, faster and stronger players. Brody said she was not sure which player hit the foul ball that killed her mother "It doesn't matter," she said but she would like baseball to improve the safety for fans. "We don't want fans to have a false sense of security, like, 'We're fine now, the nets are widened,'" she said. "These guys hit balls hard, and they're throwing 100 mile an hour pitches." She said the warning on the ticket was not enough. "We were laughing: On the back of the ticket, 'Enter at your own risk' is in tiny, tiny print, and then 'Buy Farmer John hot dogs' is in like 20 point font," she said. "I mean, stuff like that is kind of ridiculous, too. You'd think that the warning label would be larger than the advertisement." Brody said that the Dodgers had reached out to her family, but she had agreed not to disclose the nature of their conversations. Brody said she would like to see baseball set up a fund for fans and their families who endure injury or the death of a loved one at a game "instead of just saying, "Sorry, you're liable, enter at your own risk.'" After Goldbloom was struck, she began to experience weakness on her left side and was taken by ambulance to a hospital, according to the Los Angeles County coroner's report. At the hospital, doctors discovered a brain hemorrhage and she underwent surgery. Her health deteriorated and she died at 6:15 a.m. on Aug. 29. Brody, who lives in Santa Barbara, Calif., said her father would not be renewing his season tickets. "We love the Dodgers and the game," she said. "But now it's like a bad taste in our mouth, so it's harder. My poor dad, he doesn't have anyone to go with now, his life partner. His kids all live in different cities. That's sad, that that's all come to an end."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Sports
When the N.F.L. Players Association agreed in March to cut payments to some of the league's most vulnerable former players by reducing their disability benefits starting Jan. 1, 2021, the decision was met with outrage and legal challenges from retired players and their families. On Tuesday, the union said that deadline to reduce those payments had been extended by three years. In a statement, the union said its executive committee and board of player representatives had voted unanimously to amend the current collective bargaining agreement so that the 400 or so players who now receive benefits for being totally and permanently disabled will not have their benefits reduced by roughly 2,000 a month until the start of 2024. Those players, who have been deemed unable to work because of injuries they sustained in the N.F.L., receive up to 138,000 a year. That amount was to have been reduced by the value of their Social Security disability benefits, which amount to 2,000 or more per month. The union's willingness to agree to team owners' demand for a reduction in benefits was heavily criticized on social media by the wives of former players on disability. Eric Reid, a free agent safety who last played with the Carolina Panthers, also criticized the union, and his lawyers wrote to the Players Association demanding an explanation.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Sports
When did your bracket get busted? Was it Thursday afternoon, or did you make it into the evening? Was it when Murray State beat Marquette or when Liberty beat Mississippi State? Gregg Nigl's bracket is doing O.K. In fact, 48 games in, it's still perfect. Yeah, he had Oregon. Yeah, he had Central Florida. Yeah, he even had the University of California, Irvine. Nigl, a 40 year old neuropsychologist from Columbus, Ohio, entered his picks in an online game at NCAA.com, which reported that as the round of 16 begins, he has the only remaining perfect bracket. And not just in that pool. NCAA.com also checked the brackets at Yahoo, ESPN and other sites, tens of millions of brackets in all. Nigl's bracket is the last perfect one, 48 for 48. The site has tracked brackets for four years, and this is the furthest anyone has gone without a mistake.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Sports
But going with an authenticator app means you do not need a network connection to get a fresh code which can be helpful when traveling outside your carrier's network. Some security experts consider the app approach safer because you do not have to worry about the phone's SIM card becoming compromised or messages getting intercepted, as the app generates the security codes locally on the phone. Authy, Google Authenticator and Microsoft Authenticator are three popular programs in this category. While it is much better than using a single password, two factor authentication is not completely uncrackable. Skilled criminals have hijacked authentication text messages sent to mobile phone numbers, and the National Institute of Standards and Technology recently stopped recommending that users get their codes by text message because of underlying security issues. Authenticator apps are not infallible, either. Having both your accounts and your codes on the same device can provide a one stop shopping experience for thieves, but the apps are still widely considered harder to crack than code sent by text.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Technology
Letitia Wright broke onto the international stage with her performance as Shuri, the spirited, no nonsense princess of Wakanda in "Black Panther." Four years later, Wright channels similar characteristics to play Altheia Jones LeCointe, a leader of the British Black Panther movement, in Steve McQueen's "Mangrove," the first feature length installment in his anthology series "Small Axe" on Amazon Prime Video. Jones LeCointe left Trinidad in 1965 to study for a doctorate in biochemistry at University College London, then became involved in anti racist activism and education before helping to shape the British Black Panthers. In "Mangrove," Wright's Jones LeCointe is a fierce agent of self determination and political engagement. The five films in "Small Axe," all directed by McQueen, explore various aspects of London's West Indian community, set between the late 1960s and the mid 1980s. "Mangrove" focuses on the 1971 trial of a group of nine Black activists accused of inciting a riot during a protest against the targeted police harassment of patrons at The Mangrove, a Caribbean restaurant in the Notting Hill district of West London. Several defendants including Jones LeCointe represented themselves in court, and they beat the rioting charge. In a phone interview, Wright discussed her introduction to the "Small Axe" project, the layered nature of racism in British society and the importance of telling stories about Black life in Britain on a grand scale. These are edited excerpts from that conversation. How did you first come to be involved in "Small Axe?" In 2015, I saw a listing on IMDb for an upcoming project that would look at the lives of the Caribbean community in England. I thought, "Wow, this is me!" I'm from Guyana. Wright was born in Georgetown, and moved to London at the age of 7. Geographically it's in South America, but our culture is very influenced by the Caribbean, and we are considered Caribbean. I asked my agent to keep track of it, and thank God she did. In 2018 I was on holiday in Trinidad and Tobago, and I got an email saying that Steve McQueen and Gary Davy, casting director wanted to meet me about what was now titled "Small Axe." I was like, "Wow, cool, so they are still making it!" I know Steve is a great artist, but I wanted to pick his brain a bit. Why this story, why now? He said: "The window for our elders' stories to be told is closing. We can't allow them to pass away and become our ancestors without them seeing themselves, their culture and everything they've contributed to the country represented onscreen." I was sold, so, at the end of the meeting, I said "When do I audition?" He looked at me, then at Gary, and said: "You just did your audition. It was all the work you've been doing and creating in the world." He trusted me from the get go, and I will always keep that experience very dear to me. How much did you know about the Mangrove story coming into the project? I grew up with my dad giving me books about Egypt, teaching me about African kings and queens and Mansa Musa, and educating me that, as a people, we weren't slaves but we were enslaved. But, strangely enough, I didn't know about the different aspects of our history in Britain. So I did a bunch of digging. Some of it, about our culture, was beautiful to find. But some of it was heart wrenching, I couldn't sleep at night. I read about the New Cross Fire of 1981 and the kids that died there. Even before Stephen Lawrence a Black teenager who was murdered in a racially motivated attack in London in 1993 , there were lots of names that came up in my research of Black men who were just walking home, and they ended up dead or dead in custody. I'm so used to researching about America, and my heart is always pained in that way. But the British stuff was like: damn, I'm here, on the ground, and it's so hidden. It's not talked about, it's an undercurrent of our existence, and it was shocking to me. But it fueled me to be able to know what I was standing for, and why I was doing the project. I was struck by the skillful way "Mangrove" portrays institutional racism. In Britain there are a lot of layers. A lot of institutional and psychological stuff, where someone might not call you a certain derogatory name outright, but the way they treat you is different. I think the "Mangrove" script does a great job of showing the different layers of racism at play in British society. For Police Constable Frank Pulley the Mangrove's main antagonist, played by Sam Spruell , it's obvious that the Black people he targets have done nothing wrong, it's an underlying hatred. And then in the courts, they're going to find a way to maneuver, weave and sneakily get what they want, break you down bit by bit. The judge is at the top, he is friends with the lawyers, and the lawyers are friends with everybody else. Did you meet Jones LeCointe in preparation for the role? I met her, and I made it very clear that I didn't want to be her, I wanted to represent her spirit: the spirit of a young Black woman who came to Britain at the age of 19 to study biochemistry, and had to deal with her teachers telling her that she came from monkeys. We would talk about the history of the U.K., why her fellow activists did what they did, and why they were standing up for people. We just sat there and held hands and cried. She said: "We were all about organizing the people, and do you see what's happened when we haven't organized? Look at where we are now." Hearing her say that, as an elder, is a little bit heartbreaking, because she expected more from us as young people, to organize and have a proper community. We still love and care about each other today, but there's a little bit of a separation there. There's been at least one occasion where the role of Black women in the British Black Power movement has been minimized in onscreen portrayals. How important was it for you to have Jones LeCointe front and center in this telling of the Mangrove story? It was extremely important. As Black women we've always been a part of history in every sector, but these achievements have been overlooked. So with Steve bringing stories like the Mangrove Nine to the forefront, and focusing on Black women like Altheia and Barbara Beese another member of the Mangrove Nine , it's honorable and beautiful. It's much needed because it shows young Black women where we've been, where we are and where we need to go, and how we need to continue to grow and develop. There's an electrifying scene near the end of the film where you deliver an impassioned speech in court. Can you tell me about filming that? Man, Glory of God over that scene, because we didn't have many takes. Steve trusted his cinematographer, he trusted us. We didn't have marks. It was: get the spirit of what she's saying, and let's go. For me that scene is so important because it represents a message for us as a people: Don't give up, let's keep collectively working together and fighting the good fight for peace, for justice, for love, for goodness! Because if we drop the ball, then how can we tell our kids to pick it up? If I don't fight for what I believe in, my morals, my values, then how can I expect my little son or my little daughter to do that? It was beautiful to be given the opportunity to be a vessel for the words that were in that script. I'm praying that those words will touch the hearts of people, so that as a community not only as Black people, but as humanity we fight for godly values and can continue to be a beautiful light to our kids and the generation coming after us.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Television
The open road in the Big Empty part of the American West has always been therapeutic. Vacant skies, horizons that stretch to infinity, country without clutter. The soul needs to roam, too. After six months of confinement, I was a caged bird gnawing at the bars. Ahead were mountains beyond mountains, rivers that hustled out of tight canyons, and winds strong enough to knock a prairie chicken down. Alas, my map was obsolete. The West of 2020 is very sick. Like much of the country, we Westerners are at one another's throats, struggling to put our lives back together under a madman for a president. But unlike the rest of the country, we're also choking on smoke and staring out at Martian red skies in a world becoming uninhabitable. My map should have included hot spots of the coronavirus and wildfire. I spent as much time checking an air quality index app as the weather forecast. And the live free or die ethos of tumbledown towns defying mask orders turned many a curious detour into a perilous proposition. Even the historical markers, commemorating wagon trains in trespass over Native land, rivers dammed for oligarchs of industry and agriculture, rail lines built on migrant labor, seemed out of sync and out of time. I left Puget Sound with the sun burnishing Mount Rainier's glaciers, a string of bluebird days in the contrails of the season. But I no sooner crested the Cascades than the smoke of the arid interior blotted out the way ahead, a harbinger of a week when the West would blow up. About 330,000 acres of the Evergreen State burned on Monday more land consumed by fire in a single day than all the acreage of an entire typical season in Washington. Yakima Valley, ripe with Christmas ornament apples and pinch me peaches, was monochrome gray, in fierce battle with runaway flames. But it's also one of the hardest hit areas in the country for Covid 19. This year, all that beautiful fruit is picked at a terrible cost, in lives and sickness, to people living in cramped, temporary quarters. Then, I went across the mighty Columbia, the river of the West, and along the Snake, formerly two of the most crowded salmon highways in the world, now held in the harness of hydroelectric dams. Some of the feeder streams the Umatilla, the Grand Ronde, the Malheur looked anemic and infirm. Oregon held California's smoke, and many of its recent refugees. A record 2.5 million acres have burned in the Golden State this year, and the fire season has only just begun. The climate, and the world, are changing. What challenges will the future bring, and how should we respond to them? What should our leaders be doing? Al Gore, the 45th vice president of the United States, finds reasons for optimism in the Biden presidency. What are the worst climate risks in your country? Select a country, and we'll break down the climate hazards it faces. Where are Americans suffering most? Our maps, developed with experts, show where extreme heat is causing the most deaths in the U.S. What does climate devastation look like? In Sept. 2020, Michael Benson studied detailed satellite imagery. Here's the earth that he saw and the one he wants to see. "I have no patience for climate change deniers," said Gov. Gavin Newsom of California, a state with 150 million dead trees and temperatures that recently reached 121 degrees in Los Angeles County. Meanwhile, the world's most dangerous climate change denier continued to spout gibberish. "You gotta clean your floors, you gotta clean your forests," said President Trump, scolding California. That's like telling people to drain their wading pools in advance of a hurricane. Nearly 48 percent of the land in California is federally owned. Those are his floors. And this West in distress is made sicker by his defiance of the globe's existential threat. If ash were falling on his hair, he'd be more alert. We followed a road along the old Oregon Trail into Idaho, then picked up parts of the southern branch into Utah. The historical markers note that immigrants recruited by Mormons pushed and pulled wooden handcarts, essentially large wheelbarrows, across the continent's midsection. It was insane, leading to many deaths. I'd always marveled at those who walked thousands of miles to grab off a piece of dry turf to call their own. But this time around I wondered more about the people whose land was being taken. The Shoshone, Bannock and Northern Paiutes lived well without having to push 300 pound carts over the Continental Divide. I'd never seen southern Wyoming in such a bad way. The sky was white with heat, and then blue white with smoke, the endless beige tableau of the land littered with the detritus of oil, coal and gas extraction. We saw one fire go off like a nuclear bomb. Here is another bit of insanity in the hellscape of this season: Wyoming's desperate effort to hold on to its earth killing coal plants is a contributing cause to all the climate change fires. An unrelated thought: How come Wyoming, with a falling population of 567,000, has two United States senators, while Washington, D.C., with more than 700,000 people, has none? Colorado's skies were blood red, another Rocky Mountain sigh, as we came under the cloud of the Cameron Peak Fire, one of the 10 largest in state history, all of them coming since 2002. The authorities urged everyone to stay indoors. My parked car, in Boulder, took on a coat of falling ash. Overnight, temperatures dropped 50 degrees, and by morning snow was falling on cedars and muffling some of the fires along the Front Range. Back home, an endangered orca named Tahlequah, who had captured the world's attention when she carried her dead baby for 17 days in 2018, gave birth to a healthy calf. New life in the Salish Sea, fresh snow on the Flatirons; it was enough of a hint that nature can make things right, if only we give it a chance. The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We'd like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here's our email: letters nytimes.com. Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter ( NYTopinion) and Instagram. Timothy Egan ( nytegan) is a contributing opinion writer who covers the environment, the American West and politics. He is a winner of the National Book Award and author, most recently, of "A Pilgrimage to Eternity."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Opinion
Emma Gonzalez, a survivor of the mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., at the March for Our Lives rally. No matter that, as the essay's author acknowledges, a few weeks before the shooting Ms. Gonzalez had declared, on her school's Instagram account, that "I decided to cut my hair because it was a pain in the neck, if you'll forgive the pun. It was really hot all the time; it was very cumbersome and very heavy, leading to a lot of headaches. It was expensive to keep it up, and as prom time came around, I figured it would be cheaper to not have to worry about doing my hair." Her original motivation has become shrouded in her advocacy, and in the eyes of the watching world, her head has taken on its own meaning, representative of our failure, of her renunciation. If, a few years ago, it seemed possible that with the advent of models like Ruth Bell and Kris Gottschalk, buzz cuts on women could be viewed as representations of "quirky beauty" and celebrated all over the East Village and beyond, the reaction to Ms. Gonzalez's hair has made it clear that we were deluded. "I don't think you can ever just shrug it off as a matter of personal expression," said Erin K. Vearncombe, a lecturer at Princeton University who specializes in the cultural anthropology of dress. "Hair is intrinsically linked to assumptions about gender and power relations." It has always been, from the myth of Medusa (whose hair was made of snakes, and whose glance could turn men to stone) through the travails of Hillary Clinton as first lady, when her many hairdos came to represent what her opponents saw as her slippery opportunism and the new buzz cuts. Hair, in the eyes of the beholders partly because it is so much in the eyes of the beholders is, as it ever was, a political issue. It is, as the anthropologist Grant McCracken wrote in his book "Big Hair," "our court of deliberation, the place where we contemplate who and what we are." And while such contemplation ebbs and flows, it is, like everything else in this heightened political climate, once again central to the conversation. At least the visual one. Since the release of "Black Panther" in February, the bald heads of the Dora Milaje soldiers, led by Okoye (Danai Gurira), have become clarion calls of black female strength and beauty. And Adwoa Aboah, the Model of the Year at the British Fashion Awards in December, is known for not only her stubbled head but also her Gurls Talk platform and her advocacy on the part of young women's mental health. In all cases, it is almost impossible to separate the image from the activism. Especially because those images exist in stark contrast to those of certain other women in the public eye, in particular the women associated with the Trump family, including the first lady, Melania Trump, and the former communications director Hope Hicks, whose long, lush locks represent what Mr. McCracken call "voluptuous hair" hair in the Rita Hayworth Cindy Crawford mode. It could be a coincidence, though it is also notable that some of the things the women who have shaved their heads stand for represent a group of values and cultural beliefs that the administration does not share: gun control, L.G.B.T.Q. rights. Hair is not solely a female issue, of course; men's hair is also fraught (hello, Samson; hello, skinheads). Though as Dr. Vearncombe said, "because we focus so much attention on the head, especially on the female head, and because this attention is gendered, and because, more than anything, this attention is visible, absent hair on a woman's head can be read as disruptive to the politics of the male gaze. Looking at a woman's face, at her hair, has conventionally been an exercise of desire, and of an assertion of male power. Disrupting this convention, disrupting this gaze, allows us to see a different set of possibilities for the female head. The shaved head 'speaks' in a different way." And what is says is multitudes. It can sometimes speak of punishment: After World War II, women in France who were accused of being collaborators had their heads shaved in public; Natalie Portman's character in "V for Vendetta" had her head shaved during a torture scene. It can reflect discipline and toughness: See Demi Moore in "G.I. Jane" and Charlize Theron in "Mad Max: Fury Road." It can represent instability: When Britney Spears had her breakdown in 2007, she shaved her head in an act that has practically become a synonym in the pop lexicon for unstable. And it can be a direct riposte to a certain set of social and cultural values and expectations. In an excerpt from her book published in i D, Ms. McGowan wrote of shaving her head: "I broke up with you. The collective you, the societal you. I broke up with the Hollywood ideal, the one that I had a part in playing." It was a way of rejecting, she wrote. "The ideal version of a woman that is sold to you by every actress in every hair commercial telling you, 'this the secret to being beguiling, the secret to getting a man to want you.'" This is hair as seen through the Freudian lens, wherein the whole head becomes a stand in for sexuality. Ms. McGowan later went on to say that her hair made her feel like a blowup sex doll. And yet, by rejecting it, by shaving it, she did not escape it (none of us do); she simply transformed its messaging.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Fashion & Style
Letizia Treves, curator at the National Gallery in London, with paintings from the "Artemisia" exhibition. A half hour virtual tour of the show costs just over 10. LONDON Since the National Gallery's blockbuster "Artemisia" exhibition opened in October, art lovers have had to jump through hoops to see it. Travel restrictions have kept international visitors away, the fear of catching the coronavirus hangs over the city's public transportation system, and rolling lockdowns or the threat of them have made life in England uncertain. The latest national shutdown closed the museum entirely from Nov. 5 to Dec. 2. If those circumstances make a visit to London sound unappealing, there is an alternative: a "virtual tour" of the show on the museum's website. In that half hour video, Letizia Treves, the show's curator, takes viewers on a walk through the gallery, pausing in front of a host of Artemisia Gentileschi's huge, brightly lit paintings, picking out tales from the painter's life as the camera zooms in on the sometimes gory details of her work. Since the start of the pandemic, digital tours like this have proliferated, giving viewers at home free access to museums while their doors are closed or visitor numbers limited. The online offerings range from scrappy clips filmed on iPhones and broadcast via Facebook to slick interactive websites. But what makes the National Gallery's virtual tour stand out is that to watch it, visitors have to pay. "Clearly, a film doesn't substitute for being here," said Chris Michaels, the National Gallery's digital director. "But it's a new way of letting audiences in," he added, "and of us generating income, obviously." The National Gallery began the tour last month. It costs 8 pounds, about 10.70 a ticket to enter the show in person costs PS20. It comes at a time when museum finances in Britain are stretched, with many institutions laying off workers. A few days after the National Gallery introduced its paid digital tour, another London institution, the Design Museum, released a "virtual experience" of its own. Based on its "Designs of the Year" exhibition, the tour, which costs PS5, lets users move around a photographic reproduction of the show using their mouse. When they click on an item like a self sanitizing door handle that could help limit the spread of the coronavirus a box pops up with more information about the object's use and how it was made. "Electronic" has been a popular show for the Design Museum. With reduced entrance numbers because of the coronavirus, the exhibition has sold out on many days. But overall attendance at the Design Museum, and at the National Gallery, is down around 90 percent since the pandemic began. The British government this year provided a 2 billion bailout for arts organizations but has also urged museums to do more to raise money themselves. In August, the British culture minister, Oliver Dowden, wrote to the country's leading museums, including the National Gallery, telling their administrators to "take as commercially minded an approach as possible." If they didn't, he added, "I will not be in a position to make the case for any further financial support for the sector." Mr. Michaels of the National Gallery said that the letter from the minister had not played a part in the decision to charge for the virtual tour. "This isn't to tick some box," he said. Since June, the museum had been trying out a host of paid online offerings, including educational courses, he said. "This is just the next step," he added. Some museums in the United States have experimented with charging for online tours but these have been small, private affairs, rather than on demand media for a large audience. The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, for example, offers a service in which an educator meets a group online to talk through works from the collection. Kathryn Galitz, who manages this program for the Met, said in a telephone interview that the museum had done more than 80 digital events so far this year, including birthday parties and a meeting of an all female art history society. But the Louvre in Paris, which is closed because of a second lockdown in France that is scheduled to last until Dec. 16, said in an emailed statement that paid virtual tours were not on its agenda. The museum's digital content was all free, "to keep the link" with potential visitors when closed, the statement added. Bart Ooghe, a spokesman for the Museum of Fine Arts in Ghent, Belgium, said in an email that his museum had not considered charging for virtual tours of its shows, including its much anticipated Jan van Eyck exhibition. This was billed as a "once in a lifetime" experience, but it closed just weeks after it opened, in March. The museum's marketing campaign in the prelude to the show had stressed that it needed to be enjoyed in person, Mr. Ooghe said, "So we felt that it would be difficult, on a moral level, to now begin charging for the digital experience."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Art & Design
Greg Pritikin's "The Last Laugh," on Netflix, is a transparent attempt to do for Chevy Chase what "The Hero" did for Sam Elliott, or "The Last Movie Star" for Burt Reynolds, or "Hello My Name Is Doris" for Sally Field: It places an aging star at the center of a low budget, character driven indie and reminds us of his gifts. And Chase here works overtime: He does schtick, plays dramatic beats, romances Andie MacDowell, even sings and plays jazz piano. But he doesn't really have the chops for this kind of showcase his earlier vehicles, while funny, never required him to be much of an actor. As Al Hart, a retired agent for stand up comics who takes his very first client (Richard Dreyfuss) on the road for one last tour, Chase mostly engages in his trademark mugging, while his earnest moments are smothered by the clumsiness of the filmmaking.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Movies
SAN FRANCISCO For the past week, Mark Zuckerberg has grappled with a backlash from lawmakers, regulators and users over Facebook's mishandling of data privacy. He has also had to face another restive group: his own employees. The Facebook chief executive has taken multiple steps over the past few days to communicate with the social network's 25,000 employees over revelations last week that a British political consulting firm, Cambridge Analytica, had improperly obtained data of 50 million Facebook users. The Silicon Valley company held a staff meeting on Tuesday to answer questions about Cambridge Analytica, featuring one of Facebook's lawyers, Paul Grewal. On Wednesday afternoon, Mr. Zuckerberg addressed employees directly, according to two Facebook employees who asked not be identified because the proceedings were confidential. Mr. Zuckerberg also spoke with staff on Friday at a regularly scheduled employee meeting, said two people who attended the event. Facebook declined to comment on the meetings. Speaking to Facebook's employees was a crucial prong of what has become an apology tour of sorts for Mr. Zuckerberg over the Cambridge Analytica fallout. The revelations have raised calls for Mr. Zuckerberg to appear before Congress to explain himself, as well as a DeleteFacebook movement and other criticism. Mr. Zuckerberg had stayed silent on the matter for days, until he released a statement on Wednesday vowing that Facebook had to do better and gave several interviews to quell the crisis. That has not stopped pressure from Congress, with bipartisan leaders of the House Energy and Commerce Committee saying on Friday that they had sent a formal request for Mr. Zuckerberg to appear in a hearing over Facebook's "harvesting and sale of personal information" related to Cambridge Analytica. Calming employees was particularly vital because morale had sunk at the company, Facebook employees have said, especially after months of scrutiny over how the social network was used by Russian agents to influence the 2016 presidential election. Keeping workers engaged is crucial in Silicon Valley's highly competitive job market, where recruiting and retaining talent often is difficult against deep pocketed rivals. Earlier this week, some Facebook employees had said that colleagues had started looking to transfer from the main social network product to other branches of the company, such as to messaging app WhatsApp and photo sharing site Instagram, which have been relatively unscathed by the recent scandals. "It's such a shocking difference for company employees who are used to having esteem for where they work," said Eric Schiffer, chairman of Reputation Management Consultants, a consulting firm, and who has been speaking with people at Facebook. "Ten years ago, Facebook was the hottest place to go out of college. This year, the best graduates are not necessarily looking at Facebook." When Mr. Zuckerberg did not appear at the Tuesday staff meeting hosted by the company lawyer, Mr. Grewal, his absence made headlines. When he spoke to workers on Wednesday, Mr. Zuckerberg focused on concrete measures that Facebook was taking following the Cambridge Analytica reports, two employees said. Staff members asked questions about how Mr. Zuckerberg planned to regain user trust, especially in light of the DeleteFacebook campaign from users, the two employees said. Mr. Zuckerberg said the social network was investigating apps like the third party quiz app that had obtained access to "large amounts of information" from the social network, which had then been used by Cambridge Analytica. He also said the company would restrict third party developers' access and would notify users whose data had been harvested by Cambridge Analytica. Of the DeleteFacebook campaign, Mr. Zuckerberg told The New York Times in an interview, "I think it's a clear signal that this is a major trust issue for people, and I understand that." Three Facebook employees said morale had improved following the interviews and the internal communications that Mr. Zuckerberg did on Wednesday. One of them said he had avoided a trip home to see his family last weekend because he did not want to answer questions about the company he worked for. On Friday, Facebook's senior managers promised an open line of communication as the company continued to re evaluate its privacy and security measures, said two employees. There was a feeling, said one of the people, that Facebook wanted to take aggressive steps to make sure it could regain user trust. And over all, he said, confidence was up.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Technology
An A.D.H.D. questionnaire is given to a parent at a pediatrician's office in Canton, Ga. A.D.H.D. rarely, perhaps never, begins in adulthood, a new study finds. In just the past few years, researchers have identified what they believe is an adult version of attention deficit disorder: a restless inability to concentrate that develops spontaneously after high school, years after the syndrome typically shows itself, and without any early signs. The proposed diagnosis called adult onset A.D.H.D. and potentially applicable to millions of people in their late teenage years or older is distinct from the usual adult variety, in which symptoms linger from childhood. Yet a new study suggests that adult onset A.D.H.D. is rare if it exists at all. The paper, published Friday in the American Journal of Psychiatry, could deepen the debate over these symptoms rather than settle it. Previously, three large analyses had estimated the prevalence of the disorder at 3 to 10 percent of adults. The new study, while smaller, mined more extensive medical histories than earlier work and found that most apparent cases of adult onset attention deficits are likely the result of substance abuse or mood problems. "This study carefully considered whether each person met criteria for A.D.H.D. and also fully considered other disorders" that might better explain the symptoms, said Mary Solanto, an associate professor of pediatrics at the Zucker School of Medicine at Hofstra/Northwell. "In all those respects, it is the most thorough study we have looking at this issue." Dr. Solanto said the study all but ruled out adult onset A.D.H.D. as a stand alone diagnosis. Other experts cautioned that it was too early to say definitively, and noted that attention deficits often precede mood and substance abuse problems which in turn can mask the condition. The new analysis drew on data from a study of childhood A.D.H.D. that had tracked people from age 9 or 10 up through early adulthood, gathering detailed histories from multiple sources, including doctors and parents. That project, begun in 1994, recruited 579 children with diagnosed A.D.H.D., as well as a group of 289 in the same classrooms for comparison purposes. Of those "control" youngsters, the new study found, 24 would go on to develop attention deficit problems much later on, during high school or after. Classic A.D.H.D. is diagnosed between ages 5 and 12. The authors of the new report, led by Margaret Sibley, an associate professor of psychiatry and behavioral health at Florida International University, carefully examined the extensive records of those 24 with adult onset A.D.H.D. The researchers found that the attention deficits in all but five cases most likely stemmed from other causes, like marijuana use, depression or anxiety. And the remaining five were hardly straightforward cases: One subject had previously had an eating disorder, another had shown signs of mania. "This suggests to me the diagnosis doesn't exist independent of a compelling psychiatric history," said Dr. Sibley. "No one in our group developed A.D.H.D. in adulthood out of nowhere." Some 10 percent of children are given a diagnosis of A.D.H.D., and most grow out of it to some extent. One reason that symptoms may emerge seemingly from nowhere in high school or later, experts say, is that some youngsters have offsetting abilities, like high I.Q., or supports, such as sensitive parents or teachers, that mask the problems early on. In this respect, upbringing and environment may effectively blunt or contain symptoms. Not all experts believe the new report is the last word. "When we take out all those people who have complicating problems, like substance use and mood disorders, we still find that about a third of late onset cases remain," said Jessica Agnew Blais, a postdoctoral research fellow at the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience at King's College London. She was co author of a previous study that estimated the prevalence of adult onset A.D.H.D. at about 6 percent. "What this discrepancy points to is that it's important to look at different populations," Dr. Agnew Blais said of the new findings. "I don't think clinicians should be shutting the door, if the only sticking point is the age of onset of symptoms," she added.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Health
When we mow over, shred or vacuum up leaves, or rake them away from the tree they fell from, we diminish the potential good that the leaves and their various inhabitants all essential players in the food web can do. In the fall, it used to be you cleaned up every last leaf like mad. It was considered good garden sanitation. But now we know otherwise: That's bad for the environment, killing beneficial insects that love all the leaf litter, which keeps them warm during the winter, and interrupting the food web. If we arm ourselves with power tools and aim to skip no section of the garden and leave no debris behind, we risk making a place that's too tidy for the good of its inhabitants. Part of the environmental benefit of making the landscape in the first place could be erased. Except in the vegetable beds, where pest and disease pressures call for a more forceful hand or where the remains of a sickly ornamental plant may need teasing out here and there when it comes to cleanup, less is often more effective. So how do you make a responsible plan that acknowledges both ecology and your horticultural goals? Maybe it's better to think of fall garden cleanup as an editing job not some wholesale, wall to wall regimen like vacuuming the living room. Becca Rodomsky Bish, of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, and Margaret T. McGrath, a Cornell plant pathologist (both serious home gardeners beyond their day jobs), shared advice about how to proceed. "If you clean up every leaf pile in the landscape, you're not only removing or destroying overwintering insects," said Ms. Rodomsky Bish, the project manager for the annual citizen science project Great Backyard Bird Count and a passionate habitat style backyard gardener. "You're also removing insulation for insects burrowed in the ground that rely on the leaf litter to survive harsh winter temperatures like so many species of ground nesting bees." Instead, she suggested, "Let's be a little bit messier." Messier, because the litter is critical habitat for various insects and other anthropods, like bumblebees that provide pollination services. It offers pupation sites for caterpillars of many moth species that birds rely on to feed their young. Detritivores like millipedes that recycle plant debris shelter beneath it for the duration, as do some spiders that contribute extensive pest control to our environments. When we mow over, shred or vacuum up leaves, or rake them away from the tree they fell from, we diminish the potential good that the leaves and their various inhabitants all essential players in the food web can do. Faded plants left standing all winter can play a critical role, too. They may contain seed or fruit, or offer hiding places for spending the off season or reproducing, as the pithy stems of goldenrod, blackberry and elderberry (favored by some mason and carpenter bees) do. This year, in particular, it's urgent, Ms. Rodomsky Bish said, as droughts, wildfires and other climate related events are believed to have driven migratory birds off course, before they had time to replenish their fat stores, and even to their deaths. Identify Where Things Can (and Can't) Remain Looser Nature's example letting everything lie where it falls, or where the wind blows it is the inspiration, but it may not prove feasible for every square foot of the garden. While many gardeners have reduced mowed turf in the name of biodiversity, most still have some lawn. Allowing leaves to mat it down all winter risks damaging the grass. Either mow over the leaves (if there's just a thin layer), returning their organic matter to the soil, or rake and move them to the garden's perimeter or to vegetable beds where they can serve as mulch. You may want to be tidiest along the front walkway and other high traffic spots where slick leaf buildup isn't practical or looks too messy. Other little nods to horticulture: In beds where early blooming minor bulbs like winter aconite (Eranthis), crocus or snowdrops might not be able to push up through heavy leaves, rake those spots now; in the spring, you won't be able to do any raking until after the bulbs flower. And leave little pockets of open soil beneath the spots where you hope biennials and self sowing annuals will grow; mulch will stifle their success. Around ornamental plants with a reputation for harboring diseases that can survive in fallen debris think peonies, roses or fruit trees showing signs of trouble move spore filled material away from the immediate area. One worry voiced by some gardeners, Ms. Rodomsky Bish said, is that less scrupulous cleanup creates a habitat for ticks, creatures of the leaf litter. So here's a compromise: Don't cart away bagged leaves; instead, move them away from areas near the house that you frequent most. Establish looser outer spaces that can accommodate leaf litter, a small brush pile and a gentler overall management style. The Social Pressure to Be Tidy In neighborhoods where a manicured front lawn with not a leaf in sight is the norm or even dictated by the homeowners' association code, there could be pushback. In the Vegetable Garden, Use a Firm Hand Know your enemy, advised Dr. McGrath, an associate professor at Cornell's Long Island Horticultural Research and Extension Center, in Riverhead, N.Y. That's the first tactical step toward vegetable garden health. When she talks to gardeners about disease management, she stresses the importance of removing diseased crop debris when the disease is caused by a pathogen that can survive winter in it. Not all can. "I am especially concerned about fungal tomato pathogens such as anthracnose, Septoria leaf spot or early blight surviving," Dr. McGrath said, "along with various bacterial diseases. So that debris goes out to the municipal compost with other yard waste my husband and I don't want to compost or chip." Although she has the ability to distinguish one pathogen from another (if you don't, her web page for gardeners can help), Dr. McGrath's practice in her own vegetable plot is a thorough cleanup. "Personally, I like a clean vegetable garden, so I remove everything in fall," she said. "By the next season, you will want a clean planting area anyway, unlike in your ornamental beds." Best practice: Remove diseased or fallen foliage as it occurs throughout the season and also any tomato, eggplant or pepper fruit showing signs of anthracnose fruit rot. "Those fruits, or affected tissue removed from a salvageable one, really shouldn't go in the compost unless a gardener knows they have a good and long compost process," she said. In some cases with certain bacterial speck, spot or canker of tomatoes, for instance pathogens can survive the winter on stakes and cages. "Hose them off to remove debris and soil, then disinfect with a bleach and water solution of 1:9 dilution," Dr. McGrath said. The gear needs to soak in disinfectant for 10 to 30 minutes. Sanitation is the organic gardener's best tool for insect pest reduction, too. Thorough cleanup, pulling plants and removing them to a distance can reduce overwintering opportunities for common opponents that includes squash bugs; Brassica pests, such as various cabbageworm species; and cucumber and bean beetles. A thorough cleanup, however, doesn't mean leaving the soil bare, Dr. McGrath noted. Be sure to promote soil health by keeping the surface covered. She keeps hers mulched year round. Use grass clippings or leaves that you've moved off the lawn. Or make some "straw" mulch, as she and her husband do, by chipping the remains of ornamental grasses in the spring after they've been cut down.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Real Estate
WASHINGTON Whenever I called my mom to tell her something bad had happened, she said, "I know." As Daniel Patrick Moynihan famously put it, "To be Irish is to know that, in the end, the world will break your heart." Joe Biden has had his heart broken again and again and again. And yet somehow against all odds, in one of the most remarkable resurrections in political history Biden stood with a full heart before an empty hall to accept his party's nomination. "This is our moment to make hope and history rhyme,'' he said, using the Seamus Heaney line alluding to the Irish finding a way beyond the Troubles to peace. But there's another Heaney line, the one the Nobel laureate chose for his gravestone in County Derry, that suits the moment even better: "Walk on air against your better judgment." That is what Biden is doing. At 77, he has spent half a century running races; he has been dismissed and written off and gotten tangled up in his own missteps. He has been immobilized by grief, slowed by age and imprisoned by this plague. And yet the old war horse has made it to his party's winner's circle and he has a real shot at the Oval. At an Iowa caucus event in 2008, the Biden booth was so lonely, the campaign literature so untouched, I actually picked up a Biden bumper sticker just out of pity. It's still in my office. And look at Uncle Joe now. He is, at long last, walking on air. His roots are a mix of Irish, English and French (hence, his middle name, Robinette). But he has always consciously made a choice to embrace the Irish Catholic side on the advice of his grandmother, who told him, "Remember, Joey Biden, the best drop of blood in you is Irish." While Biden has gotten in trouble for blarney, he does not embrace the Irish propensity, woven through our literature and history, to let the past drag down the present. Through all of his travails and disappointments as he went from being a cocky 29 year old senator elect to a chastened 72 year old vice president pushed aside for Hillary Clinton he never lost his passion for the American ideal that anything is possible if you work hard enough and dream big enough. And that is how he cast his vision for America in mythic terms of light and darkness, empathy and cruelty, decency and despicability. Never naming Donald Trump in his speech, Biden vowed to be "an ally of the light, not of the darkness," and to help us "overcome this season of darkness in America." The antidote to Trump's dystopia, he said, would be the illumination of Ella Baker, a civil rights icon: "Give people light and they will find a way." It was the perfect framing of this titanic fight. Trump does seem mythological, a Grendel wailing and "greedily loping," leaving the villagers in a constant state of anxiety. (Heaney did a renowned translation of "Beowulf.") Trump is, as Kamala Harris suggested in her speech, a predator. The Republicans have an epic war chest this cycle and the Democratic team will need a coat of mithril to withstand the onslaught of vicious attacks from these Orcs. I asked Trump during the 2016 campaign, as he was ratcheting up his racist bile, why he had gotten so dark. Why was he encouraging violence at his rallies and inciting anger at reporters covering him? He thought about it for a moment and answered honestly: "I guess because of the fact that I immediately went to No. 1 and I said, 'Why don't I just keep the same thing going.'" The Obamas' speeches at the convention were real "IN CASE OF EMERGENCY BREAK GLASS" moments. "I did hope, for the sake of our country, that Donald Trump might show some interest in taking the job seriously,'' the former president said, "that he might come to feel the weight of the office and discover some reverence for the democracy that had been placed in his care. But he never did." And, as Michelle Obama said, "Being president doesn't change who you are; it reveals who you are.'' Trump, she added, is "clearly in over his head." Malignant neglect was the theme of the week, capped when Biden charged that Trump's failure to protect the nation during the pandemic was "unforgivable." Conventions lost their spontaneity and bite a long time ago. Ever since I started covering them in 1984, they've been pretty tame affairs, prewashed, prechewed and preordained. There would be the occasional bit of unscripted drama an overcaffeinated Dan Quayle bounding up like a new puppy to be introduced by George H.W. Bush, who looked a bit alarmed; Al Gore trying to prove he was no Bill Clinton with an excruciatingly long, uxorious kiss with Tipper; the non uxorious Dick Morris getting caught hiring a prostitute and sucking her toes, news that broke while he was orchestrating Bill Clinton's family values convention. But mostly, the quadrennial parties of our two parties were lame reality shows with bad lighting. So while the first virtual Democratic convention may not always have been mesmerizing, it didn't have much to measure up to. The chatty Zoom call with the vanquished 2020 contenders Pete, Andrew, Elizabeth, Cory, Beto, Amy and Bernie looked like a reality show reunion special. Hillary must have been tossing darts at the TV screen as she watched Bernie, all apple cheeked and enthusiastic about Biden after he had been so begrudging about her. It was gratifying to hear the Obamas finally say, with such icy contempt, what we knew they were thinking about Donald Trump. And Biden finally got Obama to hand over the electoral Excalibur. The convention did what it needed to do. Now we will see if Biden can handle the debates and if his overprotective staff will let him venture any interviews tougher than MSNBC and People magazine. Of course, the attention addict in the White House did not follow tradition and lay back while the rival party presented its case. He bounced around the country trying to snatch the spotlight, offering some prime examples of projection. The progenitor of American carnage called Democrats "totally stone cold crazy" and said they had held "the darkest and angriest and gloomiest convention in American history." I suppose the Republicans will be pink spun cotton candy when they hold their virtual festival of grievances, starring the penny ante Bonnie and Clyde from St. Louis who waved gats at Black Lives Matter protesters, and programming that is bound to delight the loonies in QAnon. Trump's shady circle, with its cascade of casino games, also pulled focus from the Democrats. The latest scammer to fall was Steve Bannon. It was a delicious irony, given the president's attempts to undermine the U.S. Postal Service, that the architect of Trump's phony populist campaign got yanked off a yacht owned by a fugitive Chinese billionaire by federal postal inspectors. Bannon and his cronies were charged with siphoning funds donated to a private project called "We Build the Wall." The darkness of Steve Bannon's arrest on Thursday was a marked contrast with the lightness of Brayden Harrington's star turn at the convention. In one of the most moving convention scenes ever, Brayden, a 13 year old from New Hampshire, courageously and charmingly talked about how Joe Biden, who has had a lifelong struggle with stuttering, tried to help him with his own stutter. (As opposed to Trump's denigration of the disabled.) Mister Rogers, he of the neighborhood, always said that the worst type of human beings were the ones who made you feel "less than." That is Donald Trump's m.o. Brayden made the case for Biden being the opposite, someone who tries to make you feel "more than." The teenager said that Biden "told me about a book of poems by Yeats he would read out loud to practice." He concluded that he was supporting Biden because "we need the world to feel better." Biden loves to use the Yeats line from "Easter, 1916," about a world "all changed, changed utterly." So, please, change it. Utterly.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Opinion
WHAT IS IT? A back to basics middleweight that punches above its weight. HOW MUCH? At 6,109, including a 310 destination charge, it's something of a bargain. Add 500 for antilock brakes. WHAT MAKES IT GO? A versatile new 471 cc parallel twin engine. IS IT THIRSTY? Not at all Honda estimates 71 m.p.g. THE COMPETITION? While the industry is making an effort to offer affordable entry level motorcycles, the CB500F's main competitors are its mechanical siblings, the sport oriented CBR500R and adventure style CB500X (either one, 6,609). Shoppers might also browse similar size models with different layouts: the retro flavored Yamaha SR400 ( 5,990 plus delivery) and V twin Harley Davidson Street 500 ( 6,799 plus delivery). A Honda CB500F languished in my garage for several days after it had been delivered. A tidy package that was a snap to wrangle through tight spots even with the engine shut off, it seemed so minimalist and small, compared with the hulking Moto Guzzi touring bike that previously occupied the same spot, that I wasn't sure what to do with it. But finally I ventured out for an errand. I was gone and back so quickly, I got the "Didn't you leave yet?" query on my return. I was initially reluctant to get on the freeway with such an unimposing 2 cylinder motorcycle, but soon I was riding confidently circling the highway. What were my initial apprehensions over? Perhaps something related to the effect of the Reality Distortion Field to borrow the phrase that was once a popular description of Apple's ability to captivate consumers afflicting motorcycling that would have us believe bigger was always better. When I began to ride more than 40 years ago, a 500 cc bike was considered a big bike. In 2014, when the escalation of engine displacements has made a 1,000 cc engine seem like a good starting point, and bikes have ballooned in bulk and complexity, a 500 can seem puny. But the CB500F is a capable middleweight, a class that logically includes machines as big as 800 cc. It is astonishingly easy to ride; I wish I could have learned on a bike so agreeable. I found it surprisingly comfortable, even for longish trips. An upright seating position and handlebars that rise a bit in traditional "standard bike" style helped in this regard. It was stable, with exceptional balance. And it was fun to ride maneuverable and easy to thread the needle through traffic especially at low speeds, making it an ideal choice for new riders. It felt a lot lighter than its ready to ride weight of 420 pounds. It wasn't powerful enough for extreme shenanigans, a sensible consideration given its target market. I couldn't seem to run it out of gas. I finally calculated the reason: I was getting over 70 m.p.g. You can travel almost 300 miles on the tank's 4.1 gallon capacity. As economical as it proved, the Honda was no laggard. Acceleration was brisk, and it could quickly get you to any legal speed. It has great brakes. The straightforward suspension no fancy electronics provides 4.3 inches of travel in the 41 mm front fork and 4.7 inches from the single shock Pro Link rear end. I would have preferred stiffer damping; spring preload adjustments are not easy or convenient to make. Another nitpick: Downshifting didn't always yield predictable results, at least with the test bike, as neutral and first were sometimes hard to find. While the new twin cam engine is smooth credit goes to a counterbalancer and 180 degree crankshaft layout and is linear in its power delivery, it winds up to more than 6,000 r.p.m. at freeway speeds. Even though it has a 6 speed transmission, it feels as if it needs a seventh gear. If most of your riding is at highway speeds, you will at some point wish for a windscreen. Honda's answer is the sportier CBR500R, which comes with a fairing and windshield. The CBR500R's handlebar is narrower, a bit lower and does not angle back as much, essentially putting the rider in a bit more of a tucked in position.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Automobiles
On March 2 in Dubai, Roger Federer joined Jimmy Connors as the only male tennis players in the open era with 100 career titles. With a victory on Sunday over John Isner in the final of the Miami Open, Federer, 37, is now eight titles behind Connors's record of 109. The date Federer won his first career title, at age 19, in Milan, defeating Julien Boutter of France, 6 4, 6 7 (7), 6 4. Federer was ranked 27th at the time, Boutter 67th. Boutter reached only two finals on the ATP Tour, winning one, and reached a career high ranking of 46th. His last tour event was Wimbledon in 2004, a tournament Federer won. (The Milan tournament no longer exists.) The number of times he has won the tournaments in Halle, Germany, and his hometown, Basel, Switzerland his most of any events. Number of titles on hard courts, most of any surface. (Hard courts are the most common surface on tour.) He has won 18 tournaments on grass and 11 on clay. His first title, in Milan, is one of only two on indoor carpet. Most titles in one year, in 2006. The first came against Gael Monfils in Doha, Qatar, in January; the last against James Blake at the Masters Cup, the former name of the year end finals, in Shanghai in November. The only year since 2001 in which Federer has not won a tournament. He sustained a knee injury in January and shut down his season in late July in order to fully recover. Number of countries in which Federer has won a title, including Japan, Qatar, Sweden, Canada, Portugal, Turkey and the Netherlands. Number of different opponents, from 25 different countries, who Federer defeated in finals including Novak Djokovic, Jiri Novak, Philipp Kohlschreiber, Mark Philippoussis, Andre Agassi, Igor Andreev, David Nalbandian and Nikolay Davydenko. Twenty five of those opponents are now retired, according to the ATP. Number of times he has beaten Rafael Nadal in a final, most of any opponent. Who's No. 2? Andy Roddick, with seven. Number of times he won a tournament final in straight sets. Length of his shortest title clinching win, a 6 2 6 2 victory over David Goffin in Basel in 2014. Length of his longest title clinching win, a 5 7, 7 6 (6), 7 6 (5), 3 6, 16 14 victory over Roddick in the 2009 Wimbledon final. The victory gave Federer his 15th major title, breaking Pete Sampras's record. His lowest ranked opponent in a final, but it was a familiar name. On Oct. 2, 2005, Federer, then 24, defeated 18 year old Andy Murray, 6 3 7 5, in the final of the Thailand Open in Bangkok. It was the first of 25 career meetings between the two, and the first ATP Tour final of Murray's career.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Sports
Univision fired the talk show host Rodner Figueroa after he said that Michelle Obama looked like someone from the cast of the film "Planet of the Apes." Mr. Figueroa, a fashion and entertainment commentator on the programs "Sal y Pimienta," "Primer Impacto" and "El Gordo y la Flaca," is known for stinging red carpet commentary and fashion critiques. The comment came on Wednesday during a live portion of "El Gordo y La Flaca" ("The Scoop and the Skinny"). Mr. Figueroa and other hosts were discussing a viral video that featured a makeup artist making himself resemble Michelle Obama and other celebrities. "Well, watch out," Mr. Figueroa said. "You know that Michelle Obama looks like she's from the cast of 'Planet of the Apes,' the movie."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Media
"American Idol" fans, rejoice. Ruben Studdard and Clay Aiken are sharing the stage once more, but this time on Broadway. The two former competitors are starring in "Ruben Clay's First Annual Christmas Carol Family Fun Pageant Spectacular Reunion Show," a.k.a. "Ruben Clay's Christmas Show," which begins performances on Dec. 7 at the Imperial Theater and opens Dec. 11. The limited engagement event, which fuses comedy and holiday music, will be Mr. Aiken's second Broadway show. His debut was in 2008 in "Spamalot"; this will be Mr. Studdard's first time on Broadway. The two, both vocalists, faced off in the "American Idol" season finale on Fox in 2003. Mr. Studdard won and Mr. Aiken was runner up. They have been friends since then, they say. "We're polar opposites when it comes to almost everything, and I think that works really well for us, not only onstage but offstage," Mr. Aiken said. He said that on "American Idol" they "went through a very different sort of experience than everyone else did, and I think that's why we became such good friends."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Theater
Moe Moskowitz, the co founder of Moe's Books in Berkeley, was known for a lot of things: his omnipresent cigars; his appalling dancing (sometimes to Cab Calloway on the store's turntable); his political activism; and especially the way he held court at the cash register, riffing like Jackie Mason at a Friars Club podium. The more you know about Moskowitz (1921 1997), who opened the store in 1959, the Beatnik era, with his wife, Barbara, the more you want to know. He was brusque and a bit of a slob. He drove his sports car like a maniac. One of his former employees has written about his "famous flatulence." He was a natural born agitator. Born in New York City, he realized he missed certain eats while out West. He's been given credit for bringing real bagels into Berkeley after founding SAWBABA, the Society for the Advancement of Water Bagels in the Bay Area , in 1962. After he was referred to as a "balding intellectual" in a newspaper article, he founded, in mock outrage, another group: S.F.D.B.I. the Society for the Defense of Balding Intellectuals. (Sign me up.) He helped finance albums by Country Joe and the Fish, the Berkeley based psychedelic band perhaps best known its performance of "I Feel Like I'm Fixin to Die Rag," a Vietnam War protest song, at Woodstock. I could keep going about Moskowitz. If you want to know more, look for a copy of "Radical Bookselling: A Life of Moe Moskowitz," a short, fond biography by his daughter, Doris Jo Moskowitz. She now runs Moe's. Under her watch the store has only gotten better. It remains a landmark, one of America's very best bookstores and worth an epic detour to visit. It still feels a bit raffish, in the best sense. Moe's four floors are packed with more than 200,000 new and used books, with copious sections on academic topics like Medieval Studies and philosophy. The more you know about Moe Moskowitz (1921 1997), who opened the store in 1959, the Beatnik era, with his wife, Barbara, the more you want to know. New and used books are shelved together (as dream bookstores always do it) , and the store's rare book room is a sprawling cabinet of wonders. The store it will most resemble, for Easterners, is The Strand in Manhattan. Moe's began its life on as a small shop on Shattuck Avenue. In the 1960s, it moved to its current location on Telegraph Avenue, four blocks from the University of California at Berkeley campus. It arrived there during the midst of roiling antiwar and other demonstrations. Moe's sells a remarkable poster, taken in front of the store, of a protester hurling an object while surrounded by tear gas. The Moe's logo is clearly visible in the background. Moe's was known as a place where protesters could hide out for a bit if the action got too intense. Dissent was in Moe's blood. When he was younger he was among the picketers arrested in 1945 for calling for the release of from prison of conscientious objectors. His sandwich board read: "Federal Prisons American concentration camps." He had a flair for the dramatic. In 1952, Judith Malina, the co founder of the Living Theater, cast Moskowitz in the first American production of "Ubu Roi," Alfred Jarry's absurdist play. "He was not a beautiful man," Doris Moskowitz wrote about him in her book, "but a beautiful human being." "Moe's is a unique store," Doris Moskowitz told me. "We have employees who in many cases have been with us for a long time. They really care about the place, and we offer them a lot of autonomy. The many decisions we make don't come from above there's a collective spirit." The store, the largest in the Bay Area, has 25 employees and is open from 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. The Moskowitz family owns the building on Telegraph. "The biggest thing that changed since Moe died is probably that we're a little nicer," Doris Moskowitz told me. "Early on I would get in trouble with the staff for being too upbeat, for saying hello, for asking customers if they wanted a bag. I was told, 'You don't have to ask them, they're adults!' " Doris Moskowitz sometimes asks herself, she told me, "WWMD?" (What Would Moe Do?) She makes decisions she can imagine him disagreeing with. It's her store now. "I did have a dream," she said, " in which he gave me the fish eye." She isn't sure that Moe's wild days are entirely behind it. "I've heard stories about people bragging about private moments in the store elevator," she said. "Perhaps these are just rumors. I have no idea, and I'm not sure I want to know." "Books Territory" is an occasional column on the bookstores we love. Follow New York Times Books on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, sign up for our newsletter or our literary calendar. And listen to us on the Book Review podcast.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Books
If you ask Kacey Musgraves the country singer songwriter who won four Grammy Awards last Sunday, including album of the year how her week has been, you'll get a pretty good idea of her default manner. "Mehhh," she said playfully over the phone Friday evening, after a few days of letting it all sink in. "I've had better." Her tongue in cheek deflection spoke to the shock that a progressive, psychedelic drug using Nashville misfit from Texas could have beaten Cardi B, Drake and Kendrick Lamar for what remains the highest annual honor in music. See how Kacey Musgraves made the "Golden Hour" song "Slow Burn." "Golden Hour," Musgraves's third major label album, was critically beloved, but had barely been embraced by country radio still the genre's mainstream driver and was far from a smash. Ahead of the Grammys, the album had totaled about 310,000 in sales, compared to many millions for the favorites in the top categories. Still, in addition to her first album of the year, Musgraves won Grammys for best country album, best country solo performance ("Butterflies") and best country song ("Space Cowboy"), bringing her career total to six. In Musgraves's first interview since her Cinderella moment, the singer reflected on this year's Grammys, her place in the Nashville scene and what's to come. These are edited excerpts from the conversation. Congratulations on a big night. How have you been celebrating? Lots of R R time. Definitely happy moments with the team, but also celebrating with food. Enjoying having some burgers note the plural nature. My husband and I had some down time together spa time, which is a way that I like to take a break. But I'm already back to a week of shows. And how did you celebrate that night did you go hard or just crash at the hotel? I went really hard at Fatburger. I'm not like, hugely into an after party scene, usually. I kind of like celebrating on my own terms. But we did stop by. And then afterward, not only did I have a fried chicken sandwich doused in buffalo sauce, but I also had a cheeseburger with jalapenos on it, and I ate both, 100 percent, and fries. I sat there and ate it in the restaurant in my Valentino dress. I went straight from shaking Mick Jagger's hand to having a fried chicken sandwich in my hand. What do you remember about the moment your name was called for that final award? Disbelief, in general. But weirdly, a sense of calmness. Leading up to an award like that, you have a little hope, I think, that maybe you'll win. But I was fine with not winning because it was just such a crazy compliment to be nominated alongside such giant albums. Huge albums that garnered lots of attention, lots of sales, lots of radio play. So you can hope that you may have a small chance, but I definitely was nowhere near banking on anything. It was a really beautiful moment, and I was somehow able to find the words to get out what I wanted to say. I don't think it's something that you can process until way later. Who's the funniest person who has contacted you to say congratulations? Any heroes, exes or elementary school enemies? Definitely some randoms. Nothing too crazy. No exes, for sure. Laughs Six Grammys now where are you going to put them all? Well, I'm a little limited on shelf space at the house we have a small house! I was thinking maybe I'll give one to my grandma. One for my parents to keep. Maybe one in the car on the hood of the car, so everyone knows. Any standout Grammy moments from behind the scenes? If you could've seen us quick changing into my Dolly Parton outfit and giant hair in a matter of seven minutes, that would've been something to see. If I would've just walked away from that night having just performed with Dolly, that would've felt like the win of a lifetime for myself, because she is the ultimate, as far as I'm concerned. Obviously the Grammys got some flak last year about its representation of women, and this year was an attempt at a makeup. How do you think the show did? I think the Grammys definitely made up for last year's lack of female representation, but the credit also has to go to the women who are the ones making the art. You never want to think that there's a crazy influx a 180 from last year because of tokenism . It would be a shame to feel that way. But in this case there were a lot of really beautiful pieces of work released. So I'm not going to think about it that much. You haven't always been embraced by the Nashville establishment. Were you surprised that you cleaned up in the country categories? Country music itself and the Nashville community have always shown me great support and love from the beginning. When I first moved to town, about 11 years ago, I got a giant education from the Nashville songwriting community. I made a ton of friends, I worked really hard for years there before I was even an artist myself. So I feel really connected to that community, and I feel like they do have my back. That's a whole different side of Nashville. The other side of it is country radio, which has its own problem with women. Do you expect them to look at you differently now? It's been really amazing to see "Rainbow" have such a positive response on all genres of radio after the awards. Like I've said from day one, this album and none of my albums are created specifically for that end goal, but if it ends up there, I'm more than grateful. Can we expect a new album in 2019? My goal, in general, is just to be able to stay somewhat inspired by something, and to be able to tap into some kind of creative vein. So I will go poke around and see if I can catch some kind of creative wind, songwise, at some point soon. There are a couple songs that I really like. I have no idea where that's going to go, but that's the fun of it exploring until you can find something to start packing into the next snowball.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Music
Now Lives: In a fifth floor East Village walk up studio whose decor includes an original Saul Steinberg print and hardwood floors he installed himself. Claim to Fame: Some designers learn their trade at F.I.T. (the Fashion Institute of Technology); Dan Snyder got his experience at the F.B.I . In the late 2000s, as an intelligence contractor at the Federal Bureau of Investigation in Washington, D.C., he was chafing at the baggy olive suits that G men were expected to wear. "I think Joseph A. Bank had a deal in the '90s," he said. Taking style matters into his own hands, he took night classes in tailoring and began doctoring his wardrobe. Fast forward a decade, and Mr. Snyder's sportswear line, Corridor, is sold in 90 stores in 16 countries, with a flagship location on Mott Street in NoLIta. Big Break: In 2012, Mr. Snyder left the bureau to study diplomacy at Tufts University, with plans to join the State Department or the Central Intelligence Agency. While in graduate school, however, he started tailoring and making shirts for fellow students to pay the bills, and demand grew fierce. During a ski trip in Maine, it dawned on him that fashion was his true calling, and after graduation, he shifted focus and started Corridor. (The name was inspired by his peripatetic life along the northeast corridor). The first line was made using capital he raised working for Palantir, the Silicon Valley contractor to American spy agencies, and released in 2014. He introduced a women's line two years later.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Fashion & Style
Horseback riding has long been considered a costly pursuit, especially when payment for individual rides is required. Choosing an all inclusive ranch is one way to keep costs down, and there is an additional value when those properties offer specials. Some ranches offer significant discounts on limited dates. The all inclusive Hideout Lodge and Guest Ranch in Shell, Wyo., has two sets of fall promotions: from Oct. 23 to Oct. 29, and Oct. 30 to Nov. 5. These six night packages include an airport transfer (normally 195 round trip) and waive the supplement for solo travelers ( 275). A party of two would pay 5,370 including horseback riding on the 300,000 acre ranch during the fall promotion versus 6,399 during nonpromotion weeks. The Triple Creek Ranch in Darby, Mont., offers a 10 percent discount on a five night stay with the Montana Getaway package (cost of 6,300 versus 7,000). The all inclusive ranch is an adults only property. Guests can sign up for as many horseback rides as they wish, including more than one a day. While some ranches send out large troops for rides, Triple Creek focuses on smaller groups. "We do not send out more than four guests with a guide," said Kristen Snavely, the head wrangler at Triple Creek. "Our guests all get individual attention." Properties that normally charge per ride occasionally offer riding packages. At the Alisal Guest Ranch and Resort in Solvang, Calif., the 525 per night rate does not include trail rides ( 85 per rider). But the horseback riding special costs 495 per night and includes daily group rides. A similar package is available from the Red Mountain Resort in Ivins, Utah. The Western Adventure Retreat package costs 415 per night, down from the regular rate of 463, and includes riding excursions (normally 150 per person). Longer stays also offer good value. Guests at Lone Mountain Ranch in Big Sky, Mont., who book four nights receive a fifth night free.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Travel
After more than a decade of litigation over James Brown's estate, which he, the Godfather of Soul, had largely bequeathed to underprivileged students in South Carolina and Georgia, the chief justice of South Carolina's Supreme Court seemed irritated. "Has one scholarship been given, pursuant to Mr. Brown's will?" the justice, Donald W. Beatty, pointedly asked at a hearing last October. "So all the people who've gotten any money out of this are the lawyers, thus far?" S. Alan Medlin, a University of South Carolina law professor who represents Mr. Brown's wife, Tommie Rae Hynie, responded, "Maybe some, Your Honor." The judge was not amused. "It's quite bothersome," he said, "considering the will was clear." But now, the state's Supreme Court has taken a large step toward unraveling the tangle of litigation that has trailed the estate since Mr. Brown's death on Christmas Day in 2006. The five justices ruled unanimously last week that Ms. Hynie was not legally married to Mr. Brown because she had not annulled a previous marriage. Legal experts say the decision weakens Ms. Hynie's claim to Mr. Brown's estate, which has been subject to a variety of opinions on its value, from 5 million to 100 million. In addition, there is the potential value of copyrights to classics such as "I Feel Good" and "Say It Loud I'm Black and I'm Proud," which are not part of the estate. While the decision is not the sort of magic wand that will make years of acrimony and potential further appeals disappear, experts said it was a clear step forward in resolving a dispute that has begotten case after case in the courts. In its ruling, the Supreme Court instructed the lower court to "promptly proceed with the probate of Brown's estate in accordance with his estate plan," which called for the creation of a charitable trust to help educate poor children. Ms. Hynie, a singer who met Mr. Brown in 1998 after she performed a show in Las Vegas, has been a key player in the legal battle over Mr. Brown's assets. Independent of what Mr. Brown had spelled out in his will regarding beneficiaries, as his widow, she would have had the right under state law to a third of his estate value, Professor Malagrino said. But when Mr. Brown and Ms. Hynie married in 2001, she was married to another man: Javed Ahmed. She said in court that she had later learned that he had three wives in his native Pakistan. (After Mr. Brown learned of Ms. Hynie's earlier marriage, he filed for an annulment in 2004.) Ms. Hynie's lawyers have argued that Mr. Ahmed was a bigamist and that, as a result, her earlier marriage was void. Lower courts had upheld that view and declared her marriage to Mr. Brown as valid. But, citing its 2008 ruling in another case, the state's highest court disagreed: "All marriages contracted while a party has a living spouse are invalid unless the party's first marriage has been 'declared void' by an order of a competent court." In the case of Ms. Hynie's marriage to Mr. Ahmed, no such declaration had occurred. Robert Rosen, one of Ms. Hynie's lawyers, said in a statement, "We are naturally very disappointed in the ruling." He said he planned to "file a petition to reconsider and rehear the decision." Ms. Hynie, who was entitled as spouse to a share of Mr. Brown's music copyrights under federal law, has already settled part of her dispute with the estate. Under that settlement, Ms. Hynie had agreed to give the charity 65 percent of any proceeds from her so called termination rights copyrights that, though once sold, can return to the songwriter or his heirs after several decades, according to court papers. "Mrs. Brown," said Mr. Rosen, "had given up her contests to the estate and charitable trust and agreed to give substantial funds from her very valuable federal rights to the charitable trust for needy students, which otherwise would not go to the charity. In our opinion, under her plan, many more millions of dollars would have flowed from those federal rights to the charitable trust if she had been confirmed as the surviving spouse." Mr. Brown's will had set aside 2 million to underwrite scholarships for his grandchildren. It designated that his costumes and other household effects were to go to six of his children; the rest of the estate was to go to the charitable trust for the poor, called the "I Feel Good Trust." "We won," Daryl Brown, one of Mr. Brown's children, said by phone last week. "It's a beautiful thing." Much of the value in Mr. Brown's legacy arises from the "termination rights" to Mr. Brown's song publishing, which are not part of the estate. The copyrights sold to a music publisher can be terminated after several decades and the rights revert to the songwriters or their heirs, who can strike deals to sell or license the songs. Some of the 900 songs that Mr. Brown wrote have appeared in commercials by companies including Walmart and L.L. Bean; rappers like Jay Z and Dr. Dre have sampled his music on lucrative hits; and his 1968 classic "Say It Loud I'm Black and I'm Proud Part 1" recently landed atop Spotify's popular Black Lives Matter playlist. "'I Feel Good' alone pretty much could support you and me for the next 100 years," said Walt McLeod, a longtime Newberry, S.C., lawyer and former state representative who has followed the case. As Mr. Brown's spouse, Ms. Hynie sold her share of termination rights in five of the songwriter's works to the publisher Warner Chappell Music for nearly 1.9 million in 2015, according to a federal lawsuit by nine of Mr. Brown's children and grandchildren. The lawsuit accused Ms. Hynie and her son, James Brown II, of "unlawfully" making deals without informing the other children and grandchildren. Ms. Hynie and her son denied that, asserting that the heirs' lawsuit was filled with "misrepresentations and material omissions." Lawyers for the nine heirs negotiated a settlement with Warner Chappell where the heirs also transferred their shares and received half of that money, Mr. Toberoff said, but the federal lawsuit is still pending. Though it is far from a capstone, the Supreme Court ruling is a significant decision in a case that has entangled multiple participants. Although Mr. Brown's 2000 will said that any heirs who challenged it would be disinherited, several of his children and grandchildren sued after his death. They asked to remove Mr. Brown's appointed executors, including the accountant David Cannon; the lawyer Albert H. Dallas (known as Buddy); and the former judge Alfred Bradley. One of the heirs' lawyers early on argued that Mr. Brown, who had drug problems, had diminished mental capacity and was unfairly influenced by these associates, who have since been dismissed from the case. In 2008, Henry McMaster, South Carolina's attorney general, brokered a compromise among the heirs, giving a quarter of the estate to Mr. Brown's children and grandchildren and a quarter to Ms. Hynie. A district court approved the settlement and appointed Russell Bauknight, a public accountant, to oversee the estate. Mr. McMaster, now the state's Republican governor, told The Times in 2014: "We were very, very happy with that settlement. Of course, our preference would have been for the wills to have worked exactly as intended by Mr. Brown, but it was clear that was not going to happen due to the conflicting claims as well as the copyright laws." But the Supreme Court had thrown out the settlement in 2013, saying it led to "the total dismemberment of Brown's carefully crafted estate plan and its resurrection in a form that grossly distorts his intent."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Music
Left, Dalia Khamissy for The New York Times; right, Sima Diab for The New York Times Left, Dalia Khamissy for The New York Times; right, Sima Diab for The New York Times Credit... Left, Dalia Khamissy for The New York Times; right, Sima Diab for The New York Times How do New York Times journalists use technology in their jobs and in their personal lives? Vivian Yee and Hwaida Saad, who report on the Middle East and are based in Beirut, Lebanon, discussed the tech they're using. Vivian, you were previously a New York metro reporter and a national immigration reporter. How has your use of tech changed in covering the Middle East? Vivian: Living in Beirut, I'm lucky I can still get access to most of the same tech products I used back in the United States. The internet isn't censored the way it is for some of our colleagues in other parts of the world, for instance, although the quality of my internet connection in Lebanon leaves something (O.K., a lot!) to be desired. But I cover a region where many governments control the internet and monitor communications to a degree that would be unimaginable to anyone living in the United States. In Egypt, for instance, certain websites considered independent or critical of the authorities were blocked when I tried to follow their coverage of a referendum I reported on. When it comes to countries like Syria, the United Arab Emirates or Saudi Arabia, I have to consider whether I could get someone in trouble with the government for touching on sensitive topics in online or phone conversations. It's also not easy to get journalist visas or press credentials in many of those countries. That means I have to do a lot of interviews from Beirut via WhatsApp, Signal, Telegram or Facebook Messenger instead of going to see the people, as I would normally try to do in the United States, or simply calling them. The reporting restrictions have made me sensitive about the tech I carry with me on reporting trips. As a precaution on my visit to Syria, where I strongly suspected the authorities would track my movements and keep tabs on my communications, I took a new phone without any personal data on it. And because we have to do so much reporting from afar, my whole understanding of social media has changed thanks to watching how Hwaida keeps in touch with Syrians online, as she'll explain. It isn't just monitoring Twitter for eyewitness accounts and photos, though we do some of that. A steady stream of newsy updates, photos, videos and commentary from Syrian civilians and activists flows into my phone through groups on WhatsApp, Facebook and other services sometimes so much of it that it feels more like navigating white water rapids. I've been learning not only to try to keep up with it, but also to sift what seems credible from what sounds like rumor or hearsay. Hwaida, you've covered the civil war in Syria since 2011. How have the tech tools that you've used for that evolved over the past eight years? Hwaida: When I joined The Times in 2007, my laptop and my mobile phone and landline were almost the only tools I used for reporting. Back then, social media wasn't widely available in Syria. Facebook was banned, but people used it discreetly. After 2011, Syrians started to find different ways to communicate with the media. So I activated my Facebook account and created a Skype account. Syrian activists began trying to mobilize international and domestic support for protests against the regime of Bashar al Assad. Uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt in 2011 also inspired Syrian activists, who drew on the same tools and methods used by other Arab activists. They posted videos to YouTube, created Twitter hashtags and attempted to portray a rising nonviolent Syrian protest wave through online media. With the absence of journalists on the ground, social media and the internet proved essential to the international coverage of Syria. I've now used almost every single communication technology to reach Syrian contacts, from satellite phones to Skype to YouTube to Twitter to WhatsApp to Facebook. I used them to chat with people I never thought I would reach. Uncovering the truth. Over several months, The New York Times pieced together the details of a 2019 airstrike in Baghuz, Syria, one of the largest civilian casualty incidents of the war against the Islamic State. Here are the key findings from the investigation: The U.S. military carried out the attack. Task Force 9, the secretive special operations unit in charge of ground operations in Syria, called in the attack. The strike began when an F 15E attack jet hit Baghuz with a 500 pound bomb. Five minutes later, the F 15E dropped two 2,000 pound bombs. The death toll was downplayed. The U.S. Central Command recently acknowledged that 80 people, including civilians, were killed in the airstrike. Though the death toll was almost immediately apparent to military officials, regulations for investigating the potential crime were not followed. Reports were delayed, sanitized and classified. The Defense Department's independent inspector general began an inquiry, but the report containing its findings was stalled and stripped of any mention of the strike. American led coalition forces bulldozed the blast site. Civilian observers who came to the area of the strike the next day described finding piles of dead women and children. In the days following the bombing, coalition forces overran the site, which was quickly bulldozed. You had some issues being blocked by WhatsApp, which is owned by Facebook. Why? Hwaida: I joined about 150 WhatsApp chat rooms, including Islamic State ones that became super active in order to do my reporting. I was blocked by WhatsApp more than once because I was violating its terms by joining ISIS related groups, which are generally barred on the service. Unfortunately, WhatsApp didn't have special rules for reporters, though I tried to explain the nature of my work. Luckily, I managed to get my WhatsApp account back after promising to leave all the suspicious rooms. It wasn't an easy decision since the rooms were vital to tracking ISIS related news. What kind of internet access do Syrian citizens have amid the civil war? Hwaida: An exceptional amount of what the outside world knows or thinks it knows about Syria's nearly nine year old conflict has come from videos, analysis and commentary circulated through social networks. Many journalists and Syrian activists believe that the internet radically changed the ability of the regime to carry out monstrous acts of violence. Syrians inside Syria have joined almost all social tools to communicate with the outside world. The majority prefer to communicate via Facebook and WhatsApp, then Telegram and Signal for security reasons. Twitter remains popular. But not all parties and factions use social media for similar activities and purposes. Outside of work, what tech products are you obsessed with? Vivian: I'm a millennial who recently left all my friends and family in the United States to move to a place where I didn't know anyone, so even though I have real concerns that Instagram is proving fatal to my self esteem and my attention span, I can't go without it. It's the only quick, convenient, vivid way to keep track of how my people in America are doing, or at least what they're eating and where they're going on vacation. (Or maybe that's just how I justify my Instagram addiction.) Before I moved, I never quite understood what VPNs were for, but I want to thank whoever invented them for helping me watch certain TV shows that stream only on the American versions of Netflix and Amazon that is, when my internet is cooperating. This will be nothing new to regular travelers, but I'm also utterly dependent on a portable phone charger (in my case, a Jackery power bank) and a pair of Bose noise canceling earbuds. Other expatriates I know swear by Kindles and other e readers to download new books they can't get overseas, and to carry a library with them across continents and multiple flights, which makes a lot of sense. I, incurably and incorrigibly, am still hauling physical books around.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Technology
'Swallow' Review: Objects in Stomach May Be Sharper Than They Appear None It's easy to mistake Hunter Conrad (Haley Bennett), the woman at the center of "Swallow," for a mid 20th century housewife: She dotes on her husband while wearing pearls and cocktail dresses and has a Jackie Kennedy bounce to her bob. The one deviation is playing iPhone games to relieve her ennui. Viewers will anxiously wait for the "happy" wife to crack in this feature from the writer director Carlo Mirabella Davis. When Hunter's not isolated in her secluded house, she's surrounded by suffocating stereotypes: the wealthy husband (appropriately named Richie) who doesn't really listen; the uncaring father in law and the mother in law whose generosity carries spiky undertones of accusation that Hunter is a gold digger. (There are also hackneyed horror visuals of animal slaughter.) Then Hunter learns she's pregnant. Bennett is exceptional, with an eerie, glazed over expression that seems impenetrable; she flashes her husband a Stepford smile, disguising her true reaction. The pregnancy triggers pica, a compulsion to consume nonfood items. She first swallows a marble, then escalates to more dangerous objects a thumbtack, a chess piece, a battery all potentially fatal to her and the baby. Mirabella Davis, whose crew was largely made up of women, avoids pure body horror sensationalism as he traces Hunter's need for control to a trauma in her past. But given how nauseating it is to watch Hunter perform increasingly perilous acts of self harm in her prison of a mansion, neither the payoff nor the psychology behind her actions makes "Swallow" an illuminating enough addition to the woman on the verge of a nervous breakdown genre.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Movies
THE TATTOOIST OF AUSCHWITZ By Heather Morris Read by 7 hours, 25 minutes. HarperAudio Listening to this novel on my iPhone during the past week while clutching a subway strap, trotting on a treadmill, filling my basket at Trader Joe's, biking down Amsterdam Avenue, walking my dog around the Harlem Meer I began to notice how many other people in the city wear headphones as they go about their daily lives. Having recently moved back into New York City from the suburbs, where I mostly listened to audiobooks in my car, I was struck by how different it is listening to a book on headphones while doing other things. On the one hand it's a peculiarly intimate experience; the narrator speaks directly into your ear, as if to you alone. On the other hand, it can be hard to concentrate on the story, particularly if it's nonlinear or experimental. "The Tattooist of Auschwitz" is neither of these. If I hadn't read that Heather Morris originally wrote this novel as a screenplay, I might've guessed: The story clips along without extraneous exposition, and the dialogue is snappy and convincing. As a reader, I'm usually drawn to dense wordplay and complicated perspectives. But as a multitasking listener, I found the straightforward, chronological narrative easy and pleasurable to follow. Based on the author's interviews with a Jewish Holocaust survivor, "The Tattooist of Auschwitz" is the story of Lale Sokolov, Prisoner 32407, who was transported from Slovakia to the Auschwitz concentration camp in Birkenau, Poland, in 1942 and assigned the task of tattooing numbers on his fellow prisoners' arms. As a Tatowierer, Lale was in a privileged but morally compromised position, "performing an act of defilement on people of his own faith," as the narrator notes. Unlike most prisoners, Lale had agency. He was given his own room, fed extra rations and allowed freedoms most prisoners were denied, like traversing the camp alone and visiting both male and female barracks.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Books
PARK CITY, Utah There was a love fest going on inside the publicist Kari Feinstein's Sundance Style Lounge. Like the dozens of gifting suites that popped up along Main Street during the Sundance Film Festival last week, this one was filled with freebies: leather boots, knitted hats, portable cellphone chargers and, perhaps most outlandishly, a three night, all expenses paid trip to Aruba, valued at 10,000. Justine Ezarik struggled to take it all in. "It's always so weird: They're like, 'No, it's O.K., you can keep it,' and I'm like, 'Are you sure?' " she said, eyes bright and voice bubbly as she bounced from booth to booth. Ms. Ezarik, 30, is better known as iJustine, an Internet personality and avid gamer who has more than seven million fans across YouTube, Twitter, Instagram and other social networks. (What made her famous: a 2007 video about her 300 page iPhone bill.) A tweet or hashtag from her could mean hundreds of new followers for a brand and here's where the love fest comes in she's happy to oblige. "I love products, and I love sharing if I love something," she said. "Like, you can probably guarantee that it's going to be posted, especially if I love it." For more than a decade, gifting suites have been a fixture at Sundance and other celebrity filled events as a way for public relations firms and their clients to get brands in the hands of the famous. Celebrities have been known to walk away with tens of thousands of dollars of free stuff, from leather handbags to bottled water. Now these swag suites, formerly accessible to A list Hollywood stars (and, sometimes, D list reality show ones), actively court social media personalities and their followers. These Instagrammers, Viners, YouTubers, vloggers and bloggers appeal to brands by posting photos of their products, tagging them with the appropriate hashtags like MooseOnTheLoose (for the Canadian clothing brand Moose Knuckles) and integrating the swag to use a favorite word in an "authentic" way. "Some celebrities, they do the gifting suites all the time, and they want to go skiing, they don't want to hear about a brand," said Ally Kemper, the marketing director of Moose Knuckles, which was giving away sweaters and down filled coats at another suite. "But the bloggers, this is what they love." Those social media posts can translate to dollars in a way that tabloid snapshots with a celebrity no longer do. During Art Basel Miami Beach in December, Botkier tapped Marianna Hewitt, a lifestyle blogger and Instagrammer (more than 350,000 followers) to take over its Instagram account and upload photos of her posing with the bags. "We had one style that was relatively new and we hadn't seen much movement on," said Jennifer Maccioni, Botkier's director of digital marketing and e commerce. "She took it to Miami and now it's become the best seller on our website." How many social media followers does one need to be invited to a swag suite? There's no magic number, but the word "engagement" is thrown around a lot, meaning a social media influencer's ability to get followers to like, share and otherwise participate with a brand. Many of the social media personalities at Sundance had millions of followers; others had significantly fewer. "You have your brand building girls who, because they look good and they fit the brand, they could have 3,000 followers, but it's worth getting involved with them and picking them up early," Ms. Manner said. Some social media personalities were even paid to show up, with the agreement that they would post something about the gifting suite. Among them was Sophie Elkus of the fashion and beauty blog Angel Food Style, who was paid an undisclosed amount to be at the Talent Resources suite, which has been at Sundance for seven years and is known for its party atmosphere. For the weekend, Talent Resources took over Blue Iguana, a Mexican restaurant, and set up dozens of display tables. By the entrance, Yellowtail poured wine. In one corner, a ski lift and puffs of fake snow provided an Instagram ready backdrop. "I don't know a ton about movies per se, but I love going to things that I haven't been to before," Ms. Elkus said Friday afternoon as she picked up a python print bag from Botkier, a down coat from Moose Knuckles, CAT boots, two pairs of Vuarnet sunglasses, jewelry from Alex Ani, sweaters from Superdry and OtterBox iPhone cases. Her haul added up to around 4,500. Mike Heller, the chief executive of Talent Resources, said there were no strings attached to the stipend and that Ms. Elkus was free to post whatever she wanted in the interest of "keeping it organic." "That's important to us," he said, "because I want to keep the integrity of what she does." Under the "Dot Com Disclosures" guidelines from the Federal Trade Commission, social media personalities are supposed to disclose gifts and payments they receive from companies. But enforcement is unclear. People who violate the rule can be fined, though the penalties are not clearly defined, said Jonathan Zittrain, a founder of the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard. "There's a lot of discretion in enforcement action as to what the F.T.C. can do," he added. "It usually begins with a letter, and there might be a fine." Nearby, Olga Kay, a YouTube personality known for her pop culture parodies (1.4 million subscribers), was showing off ankle boots she got from the CAT booth, which she carried in a bag with the hashtag earthmovers printed on the side. In addition to YouTube videos, she started uploading Snapchat Stories from Sundance as a way to extend her reach. She's been at it for eight years and now feels as if she's getting Hollywood treatment. "It's amazing that there's a giant presence of YouTube here at Sundance," she said. "It's all changing and I feel like the two worlds are colliding, finally."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Style
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan I am angry. All the time. I've been angry for years. Ever since I began to grasp the staggering extent of violence emotional, mental and physical against women in Pakistan. Women here, all 100 million of us, exist in collective fury. "Every day, I am reminded of a reason I shouldn't exist," my 19 year old friend recently told me in a cafe in Islamabad. When she gets into an Uber, she sits right behind the driver so that he can't reach back and grab her. We agreed that we would jump out of a moving car if that ever happened. We debated whether pepper spray was better than a knife. When I step outside, I step into a country of men who stare. I could be making the short walk from my car to the bookstore or walking through the aisles at the supermarket. I could be wrapped in a shawl or behind two layers of face mask. But I will be followed by searing eyes, X raying me. Because here, it is culturally acceptable for men to gape at women unblinkingly, as if we are all in a staring contest that nobody told half the population about, a contest hinged on a subtle form of psychological violence. "Wolves," my friend, Maryam, called them, as she recounted the time a man grazed her shoulder as he sped by on a motorbike. "From now on, I am going to stare back, make them uncomfortable." Maryam runs a company that takes tourists to the mountainous north. "People are shocked to see a woman leading tours on her own," she told me. We exchanged hiking stories. We had never encountered a solo female hiker up north. When I hike solo, men, apart from their usual leering, offer unsolicited advice, ask patronizing questions and, on occasion, follow in silence. I pretend to receive a call from my imaginary husband who happens to be nearby and wants to know exactly where I am. Even in the wilderness, you can't escape. Years ago, a friend told me about the time her dad beat her up after he saw her talking to a boy outside school. It wasn't the first time. Until she left for college in the United States, she lived in constant terror of when the next wave of violence would arrive. Her mother stood by and let it happen. Internalized patriarchy rears its head often when aunties (an auntie is any older woman who exists to profess her uninvited opinion) are concerned that you are not married. Aunties emphasize that motherhood is your assigned purpose on this planet. Aunties comment on your body as if you are not there. This country fails its women from the very top of government leadership to those who live with us in our homes. In September, a woman was raped beside a major highway near Lahore, Pakistan's second largest city. Around 1 a.m., her car ran out of fuel. She called the police and waited. Two armed men broke through the windows and assaulted her in a nearby field. The most senior police official in Lahore remarked that the survivor was assaulted because, he assumed, she "was traveling late at night without her husband's permission." An elderly woman in my apartment building in Islamabad, remarked, "Apni izzat apnay haath mein" Your honor is in your own hands. In Pakistan, sexual assault comes with stigma, the notion that a woman by being on the receiving end of a violent crime has brought shame to herself and her family. Societal judgment is a major reason survivors don't come forward. Responding to the Lahore assault, Prime Minister Imran Khan proposed chemical castration of the rapists. His endorsement of archaic punishments rather than a sincere promise to undertake the difficult, lengthy and necessary work of reforming criminal and legal procedures is part of the problem. The conviction rate for sexual assault is around 3 percent, according to War Against Rape, a local nonprofit. Mr. Khan's analysis of the prevalence of gender based violence is even more regressive. Fahashi (indecency) in society is the culprit, deflecting responsibility from the police and government. Mr. Khan blamed Bollywood for widespread incidents of rape in neighboring New Delhi, missing the point that, like Pakistan, India suffers from similar issues with policing, public safety and the judicial system. The highway attack shook the women of Pakistan, but it did not shock us. We grew up with stories of women killed for "honor" and women raped for revenge. Women doused with acid and women burned with stoves. Pakistan ranks 164 out of 167 countries on the Women, Peace and Security Index 2019 2020, barely hovering above Yemen, Afghanistan and Syria. In the two months since the highway assault, a police officer raped a woman in her home. A girl was murdered by her cousin and uncle for speaking to a male friend on her phone. A woman waiting for a bus after work was kidnapped and raped. A teenager committed suicide after being blackmailed by the men who raped her and videotaped the assault. A 6 year old was clubbed to death by her father for making noise. Between January and June alone, there have been 3,148 reported cases of violence against women and children. Many go unreported. There are slices of Pakistan where a woman can bare her arms, smoke, drink, escape abroad, become a minister. But class does not protect her from the stares and the fears of assault when she ventures outside. Yet for women in the lower socio economic strata of society, women in rural Pakistan, things are much worse. The insecurity and harassment working class women face daily at a bus stop are experiences that are foreign to those behind the wheel of a Mercedes. On a recent afternoon, I pulled up to a traffic stop. Twenty or so motorcycles zigzagged their way up to right under the light, as they commonly do here. The riders were men. With one exception. I noticed her only because the men around her were consuming her. It's rare to see women driving bikes in Pakistan probably because when they do, they're on display. Although she had her back to me, face obscured by a helmet, I imagined her staring resolutely ahead, pushing through the discomfort, the sheer creepiness, of being watched. A wave of fury passed over me. Don't let the bastards grind you down, I tried to telepathically transmit to her, a refrain from "The Handmaid's Tale" that frequently floats through my head when I'm back here. Fatima Bhojani ( BhojaniF) is a writer from Islamabad, Pakistan. Her reporting on women in Pakistan has been supported by the International Women's Media Foundation's Howard G. Buffett Fund for Women Journalists. The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We'd like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here's our email: letters nytimes.com. Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter ( NYTopinion) and Instagram.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Opinion
In 1918, a new respiratory virus invaded the human population and killed between 50 million and 100 million people adjusted for population, that would equal 220 million to 430 million people today. Late last year another new respiratory virus invaded the human population, and the reality of a pandemic is now upon us. Although clearly a serious threat to human health, it does not appear to be as deadly as the 1918 influenza pandemic. But it is far more lethal than 2009's H1N1 (swine flu) pandemic, and the coronavirus does not resemble SARS, MERS or Ebola, all of which can be easily contained. About 15 years ago, after yet another global contagion the so called bird flu emerged in Asia, killing about 60 percent of the people it infected and threatening a catastrophic influenza pandemic, governments worldwide began to prepare for the worst. This effort included analyzing what happened in 1918 to identify public health strategies to mitigate the impact of an outbreak. Since I had a historian's knowledge of 1918 events, I was asked to serve on the initial working groups that recommended what became known as non pharmaceutical interventions, that is, things to do when you don't have drugs. They involve only advice constantly reiterated today: social distancing, washing hands, coughing into elbows, staying home when sick. None alone provides great protection, but the hope was that if most people followed most of the advice most of the time, the interventions could significantly reduce the spread of the disease, or "flatten the curve," a phrase now all too familiar. This may sound simple, but it is not. As with a diet, people know what to eat but often stray; here straying can kill. As we begin employing these interventions now, we need to recognize what they can and cannot accomplish. Containment the attempt to limit spread of a virus and even eliminate it has failed. China has achieved far more than the most optimistic models predicted, but its initial slowness in responding allowed the virus to spread globally. Once that happened, the virus could not be stopped. Right now it is circulating invisibly in developed countries as well as in developing ones with little public health infrastructure. That means it is here to stay and will constantly threaten to reinfect even countries that initially control it. The United States is now in a phase of intervention labeled "suppression" by the infectious disease expert Michael Osterholm: identifying infected people, isolating them, tracing contacts and asking contacts to self quarantine. Because its incubation period is longer than influenza's, Covid 19, caused by the coronavirus, allows that time. Whether we use that time well will determine whether a month from now the United States looks like Italy, where the virus seems out of control, or South Korea, which seems to have gained control by testing more than 270,000 of its 51 million people. Right now virtually every state in America is in suppression mode, but suppression has no chance of succeeding unless cases are identified. With the United States having tested only about 40,000 of its nearly 330 million people the worst record in the developed world we are struggling to catch up, which will take weeks, all while the virus spreads, possibly so widely that it becomes entrenched and impossible to suppress. Nonetheless, suppression is worth trying because even partial success will slow the virus, giving us precious time to develop therapeutic drugs and vaccines. Assuming suppression fails, we must initiate aggressive mitigation, where communities try to lessen the impact of the disease. The crucial statistic from China is that the case fatality rate inside Wuhan is 5.8 percent but only 0.7 percent in other areas in China, an eightfold difference explained by an overwhelmed health care system. That illustrates why flattening the curve matters; lessening stress on the health care system, especially the availability of intensive care beds, saves lives. Saying that is easier than doing it. The difficulties lie in timing and compliance. Analysis of when cities in 1918 closed schools, saloons and theaters; banned public events; urged social distancing and the like demonstrated that intervening early, before a virus spreads throughout the community, did flatten the curve. That's why cities like New York and Los Angeles have closed schools and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has recommended that all events of more than 50 people be canceled for the next eight weeks. But this raises another issue: compliance. The need for early intervention was well known in 1918. The Army surgeon general demanded "influenza be kept out" of the basic training camps, where new soldiers were being prepared to fight in World War I. "Epidemics of the disease can often be prevented," he said, "but once established they cannot well be stopped." He barred civilians from the camps and ordered that soldiers entering them be quarantined, soldiers showing symptoms be isolated and whole units quarantined if several soldiers were ill. Of 120 camps, 99 imposed those measures. But an Army study found no difference in morbidity and mortality between camps that did and did not follow orders, because over time most became sloppy. Further investigation found that only a tiny number of camps rigidly enforced measures. For interventions to work, people have to comply and they have to sustain that compliance; most of that depends on voluntary efforts and individual behavior. Army camps in wartime failed to sustain compliance, so it will be an enormous challenge for civilian communities in peacetime to do so. At the height of the H1N1 outbreak, Mexico City urged mask usage on public transit and distributed free masks. Usage peaked at 65 percent; 10 days later it was at 10 percent. Today we are still trying to stop the disease from becoming deeply entrenched. If that fails, we will need tougher measures. Scott Gottlieb, a former commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration, has talked of states' shutting down their economies. "That's what's going to need to happen," he said. "Close businesses, close large gatherings, close theaters, cancel events." All of that happened in 1918 in most cities. On Monday, after initially calling for limiting gatherings to 250 people a recommendation based on a desire not to disrupt rather than on modeling the federal government finally recommended that no more than 10 people gather. But many cities and states have yet to take stringent action. They should, and now. In 1918 many cities imposed restrictions, lifted them too soon, then reimposed them. Covid 19's average incubation period is more than double influenza's, so compliance may have to be sustained for months, and openings and closings may also have to be repeated. Again, if the public is going to comply over time, they will have to be led, inspired or compelled. That brings us back to the most important lesson of 1918, one that all the working groups on pandemic planning agreed upon: Tell the truth. That instruction is built into the federal pandemic preparedness plans and the plan for every state and territory. In 1918, pressured to maintain wartime morale, neither national nor local government officials told the truth. The disease was called "Spanish flu," and one national public health leader said, "This is ordinary influenza by another name." Most local health commissioners followed that lead. Newspapers echoed them. After Philadelphia began digging mass graves; closed schools, saloons and theaters; and banned public gatherings, one newspaper even wrote: "This is not a public health measure. There is no cause for alarm." Trust in authority disintegrated, and at its core, society is based on trust. Not knowing whom or what to believe, people also lost trust in one another. They became alienated, isolated. Intimacy was destroyed. "You had no school life, you had no church life, you had nothing," a survivor recalled. "People were afraid to kiss one another, people were afraid to eat with one another." Some people actually starved to death because no one would deliver food to them.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Opinion
The editorial board is a group of opinion journalists whose views are informed by expertise, research, debate and certain longstanding values . It is separate from the newsroom. In 1941, with war tearing through Europe and Asia, and America on the precipice of joining the conflict, President Franklin D. Roosevelt compelled and inspired industries and individuals to rally for the greater good. Food was rationed without rioting, and car plants all but stopped producing automobiles in favor of tanks and fuselages. By 1944, American factory workers were building nearly 100,000 warplanes a year or about 11 per hour. The United States is again faced with a crisis that calls for a national response, demanding a mobilization of resources that the free market or individual states cannot achieve on their own. The coronavirus pandemic has sickened more than 187,000 people around the globe and claimed more than 7,400 lives already. Based on what they know about the virus so far, experts say that between two million and 200 million people could be infected in the coming weeks and months, in the United States alone. If the worst comes to pass, as many as 1.7 million of our neighbors and loved ones could die. How many people are affected depends on the actions that we as a nation take right now. Understandably, many American leaders have been focused on shoring up an economy that's hemorrhaging money and trust. Many of the measures being advanced by Congress, like paid sick leave, are crucial. But the best hope for the economy, and the nation as a whole, is a strong public health response to the coronavirus. Confusion has reigned, among health care professionals and laypeople alike, over when or whether to test patients, quarantine the exposed and isolate the sick even over how worried to be. Part of the problem is a supply shortage that is already growing dire in some places. But another problem is the lack of consistent messages from leaders, President Trump in particular. For weeks now, clear statements for example, that the worst is yet to come have been undercut by blithe assurances that everything is under control. Much of the country is facing a grave shortage of ventilators, intensive care beds, the equipment and chemicals needed for testing, and all manner of medical supplies, including gloves, masks, swabs and wipes. More space is also needed to put these supplies to use healing patients. That means isolation wards for the sick and quarantine facilities for people who are exposed to the coronavirus. A number of hospitals and state and local governments are working to secure those resources. Some cities and states have purchased hotels and turned them into quarantine facilities. Others are in bidding wars with one another for ventilators, I.C.U. beds and other essential equipment. If the current projections hold and if countries in Europe and cities in China are any indication neither these siloed efforts nor the nation's federally maintained stash of medical supplies will be enough to face what's coming. Worse still, pitting states against one another for limited and essential supplies leaves poorer states at the mercy of the rich ones, and the states hit first against those that will be hard hit in the coming weeks. Yet on Monday, Mr. Trump told a group of governors desperate for equipment like ventilators, "Try getting it yourselves." Instead, the federal government needs to step in to sharply ramp up production of all these goods, just as it ramped up production of munitions during World War II. That will most likely necessitate the use of the Defense Production Act, a law that enables the president to mobilize domestic industries in times of crisis. President Trump has not demonstrated the democratic instincts or administrative competence to inspire the confidence that he ought to be trusted with even more executive authority. But he's the only president America's got, and this crisis requires White House action. It's not hard to imagine, with proper organization and support, American factories producing ventilators, masks, hand sanitizer, coronavirus tests and other medical equipment at a scale that would meet what the crisis demands. But it won't happen overnight, and it certainly won't happen without leadership. "We could increase production fivefold in a 90 to 120 day period," Chris Kiple, chief executive of Ventec Life Systems, a Washington State company that makes ventilators used in hospitals, homes and ambulances, told Forbes last week. Mr. Kiple estimated that current worldwide production capacity for ventilators is about 40,000 a year. The government will also need to deploy the National Guard or the Army to convert facilities like convention centers, hotels and parking lots into testing sites, isolation units and humane quarantines. In the absence of government leadership, companies can still take it upon themselves to help the effort. In France, for example, LVMH, which owns luxury brands like Louis Vuitton and Christian Dior, announced on Sunday that it was repurposing perfume production lines to make hand sanitizer and other anti viral products. Once supplies and space are secured, human capacity will need to be addressed. There are not enough health care workers who are trained and equipped to treat emergent, contagious lung infections in intensive care units. If those workers fall ill and are themselves quarantined and isolated as some of them almost certainly will be, given the present lack of protective equipment more will have to be trained and prepared. That challenge will be exacerbated by the fact that large conferences and training sessions are likely to be forbidden in the months ahead. The federal government can help by conveying the urgency of the need and calling on health care workers to volunteer for such training and then by creating the necessary virtual modules and webinars. Federal leaders can also help by calling on states to waive licensing requirements for out of state medical workers, as Massachusetts has already done. There will not be one giant outbreak here in the United States, but rather many smaller ones that will vary in scope, size and duration. That means some parts of the country will have a much greater need than others. The ability of any worker to deploy quickly from a low need area to a high need one will save valuable time as the number of confirmed cases surges in the days ahead. During World War II, housewives, students, retirees and the unemployed moved into the labor force to help build tanks, planes and armaments. It was a full scale national effort and something similar is called for today. This will take some creativity. In Spain, final year medical students are being pulled into clinics and hospitals for more routine tasks to allow the staff to focus on critical cases. In the United States, retired hospital workers are being urged back into the work force to provide needed expertise. But the larger community can also pitch in. The government could train America's newly unemployed to sanitize hospital equipment or to deliver food to the elderly and the immune compromised. Child care for hospital workers on the front lines is desperately needed. Through a new public works program, corps of people could carry out infection control in nursing homes and other high risk facilities or workers of all kinds could be taught how best to protect themselves. There could even be a network of individuals tasked with making phone calls to combat loneliness for people in nursing homes and prisons while they're unable to receive visitors. These are just a few possibilities for putting people to work confronting the crisis, to be sure. Any such programs stand a much better chance of success if the federal government encourages them and directs them through the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In recent days, the president has begun calling on industry leaders to help: to develop vaccines, diagnostic tests and treatments for the virus; to develop websites that might clarify and expedite testing; and to cede their parking lots to the needs of the public. It's time for him to call on the rest of the country as well. Not just to scrub hands and forgo basketball games, Broadway shows and the local bar, but to meet this moment with urgency and altruism. Many Americans are eager to help their fellow citizens. Would they ration their own consumption to help save them, if that's what things came to? During World War II, the American government raised corporate and personal income taxes, pushed the business community onto a wartime footing, drafted millions into the military or civilian defense forces, rationed civilian goods in service of military goals and drastically reorganized society by offering jobs to women and minorities who had long been excluded from them. The society that emerged from the war was different stronger than the one that went into it. It is remarkable what the country can do when the lives of its citizens are in peril, and the final outcome is uncertain. What it takes is leadership to summon that spirit to act in the national interest.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Opinion
Roberta A. Kaplan, a founder of the Time's Up Legal Defense Fund, said on Tuesday that she will represent Moira Donegan, the creator of a widely circulated list of "media men" accused of sexual misconduct. Ms. Donegan is the only named defendant in a lawsuit that was filed against her by Stephen Elliott, one of the men named on the list. Mr. Elliott, a writer based in New Orleans, filed the lawsuit last week in the Eastern District of New York, asking for "no less than 1.5 million," an additional 500,000, and written apologies from Ms. Donegan and other anonymous women who contributed to the list, which was created on a Google spreadsheet last year and spread rapidly in the 12 hours that it was live online. In his suit, Mr. Elliott said that the claims about him on the list, which included "rape accusations" and "sexual harassment," were false and defamatory, and that they had caused him significant professional and personal problems. He is being represented by Andrew T. Miltenberg, a lawyer who has worked on behalf of other men prominently accused of sexual misconduct. The document, commonly known as the "shitty media men" list, created a stir in the industry and preceded the firings of eminent journalists. The men listed were said to have engaged in some form of sexual misconduct; their names were added, often from anonymous sources, through a crowdsourcing effort. Ms. Donegan has said that she meant for the list to function as a digital "whisper network," a way to warn women, who might not otherwise hear rumors about bad behavior, to avoid certain men. In an essay for Quillette, Mr. Elliott denied the accusations, saying he was "shocked to find myself accused of rape" and that the list "derailed my life." Ms. Kaplan, a partner at Kaplan, Hecker and Fink, is most famous for representing Edith Windsor in United States v. Windsor, in which the Supreme Court ruled that the Defense of Marriage Act violated the constitution, a major victory for L.G.B.T.Q. rights. In an interview on Tuesday, Ms. Kaplan said that she had taken Ms. Donegan's case to fight what she saw as an effort to keep women from coming forward with claims about sexual misconduct. "I and other women who are involved in Time's Up have felt pretty strongly for a while that it would be really important not only to represent women who have been harassed or assaulted, but also to defend women in efforts that have been undertaken to stop women from speaking," Ms. Kaplan said. She noted that the standards for bringing a case for defamation are particularly high and difficult to meet in the state of New York and that it was hard for her to see how Mr. Elliott's suit would pass a motion to dismiss. "One can only surmise that the point of the lawsuit is to do something else, and again, my assumption is that the something else is to try to discourage other women from coming forward," she said. Ms. Kaplan has faced Mr. Miltenberg before. In 2016 she represented Columbia University in a lawsuit filed by Mr. Miltenberg's client Paul Nungesser, who sued the university for supporting Emma Sulkowicz, a fellow student who accused Mr. Nungesser of rape. The case was settled in 2017. And just as Mr. Miltenberg has begun to establish himself as a go to lawyer for prominent men accused of misconduct in the midst of the MeToo Movement, Ms. Kaplan has worked on behalf of accusers. Earlier this month, the director Brett Ratner dropped a suit he had filed against her client Melanie Kohler, after Ms. Kohler had accused the filmmaker of sexual assault in a Facebook post last year. In that case too, Ms. Kaplan argued that Mr. Ratner was looking to intimidate women who spoke out more generally. Not long after Mr. Elliott announced his lawsuit, Lauren Hough, a writer in Texas, created a GoFundMe for Ms. Donegan's legal fees. So far, more than 2,400 people have donated and the campaign has raised almost 110,000.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Style
Ivo van Hove's staging of the Janacek song cycle "Diary of One Who Disappeared" comes to the Brooklyn Academy of Music in April. PARIS A woman enters a studio apartment, makes herself some coffee and presses play on a tape recorder. "Sit at the piano," a male voice on the tape says. A man stands in front of the projected image of a naked woman, her body imprinted on his white shirt. A couple embraces passionately on the floor as dappled light filters across their bodies. A man sits alone on a narrow bed. "I will be waiting for you," he says, as the lights dim. These are some of the poetic, surprising images from Ivo van Hove's staging of Leos Janacek's song cycle "Diary of One Who Disappeared," which will come to the Brooklyn Academy of Music April 4 6. Angular, lyrical and passionate, "Diary" written for tenor, mezzo soprano, a small chorus of three women, and piano is rarely performed in concert, and it's even more rarely staged. But it is pure drama. Based on an anonymous series of poems published in a Czech newspaper and completed in 1920, it tells the story of a young man who falls wildly in love with a Gypsy girl, abandoning his village and family to follow her. It's an unusual project for Mr. van Hove, the Belgian director who has become one of the most important voices on the international theater scene. He has directed more than a dozen operas as well as classic and contemporary plays; adapted films for the stage; and soon will tackle a signature American musical, with his revival of "West Side Story" scheduled to come to Broadway next year. Three of our critics debate Mr. van Hove's work. "I haven't done anything quite like this before," he said in an interview at the Comedie Francaise in Paris, where he was rehearsing a new production, "Electre/Oreste." "You have to invent more," he added. "An opera composer is thinking about staging, but with this you have to create a theatrical world. It's bringing alive something that was just going to stand there and sing." "The black Gypsy girl in my 'Diary of One Who Disappeared' that was you," Janacek wrote in one of his more than 700 letters to Stosslova. "That's why there's so much emotional fire in the work. So much fire that if we both caught on, we'd be turned into ashes." Mr. van Hove said: "I always adore when an author writes something that is a matter of life and death, which this is, I think, to Janacek. Some of my work, like 'Electre/Oreste' or 'Boris Goudonov,' is very political. But this one is about why we are here on earth, what is this life of ours?" Pulling out a few sheets of paper covered in neatly written notes, Mr. van Hove said that he always began a project by writing down his initial thoughts. "It's important to remember why you want to do it," he said. "This piece is really human. It's not about gods and dramatic events; it's about things that everyone has experienced. Everyone has been in love with someone who hasn't been in love with him or her, or has experienced platonic love." He added that he had long been a fan of Janacek's music; his Flemish Opera production of "The Makropulos Case" in 2002 was one of his first forays into opera. He suggested "Diary" to the Muziektheater Transparant, a small, innovative opera company based in Antwerp, Belgium, with which he has long collaborated; he wanted to bring out Janacek's ability "to write dialogue that became music, to turn language into notes. Even when they are singing, they are talking." He and Mr. Versweyveld began to read Janacek's diaries, and his letters to Stosslova. (The relationship remained almost entirely platonic, and most of her letters were destroyed by Janacek, at her request.) "I think Janacek saw his feelings reflected in the poems," said Mr. van Hove. "It's a kind of self portrait. We started to see a framework to let this short song cycle shine." Since the mezzo soprano part is slight, he decided to give the Gypsy girl, Zefka, more of a voice. He asked the Belgian composer Annelies Van Parys to add more music for the character, which she based on Romany folk songs. "It's full of colors, very personal and sensitive," said Marie Hamard, who will sing the role in Brooklyn. "Annelies gives a true thickness and density to the feminine voice." Mr. van Hove also incorporated extracts from Janacek's diaries that are read by an actor (Wim van der Grijn) who is dressed to resemble an older version of the cycle's tenor protagonist (Andrew Dickinson), emphasizing the similarities between composer and character. Working with the dramaturg Krystian Lada, Mr. van Hove and Mr. Versweyveld decided to make this main character a photographer, and the stage space, in part, a darkroom. "It's an atelier, a world of imagination, in which the pictures that have been taken bring back the past that is sometimes forgotten," Mr. van Hove said. Mr. Versweyveld said the challenge was to create an intimate space in which the character looks back on his life and love, but also to evoke the woods, trees and natural light that he is recalling. The solution was an apartment in which the character lives and works, permeated by golden, mottled light when the memories of glimpsing and meeting Zefka are evoked. "I like to design things that are functional," Mr. Versweyveld said, adding that the mid 20th century modern set was inspired by the interiors of the photographer protagonist's home in the Antonioni film "Blow Up." Similarly, he added, "the light may be striking or beautiful, but it always serves a purpose. When it comes through the walls like light in a forest, it is opening up the space in the most dramatic moment in the show." (Unlike in many van Hove productions, there is no video element.) Mr. van Hove said that his preparation for directing an opera or vocal score begins with finding a good recording, and working with a dramaturg who knows the music intimately. "I really study; it takes me three times as long for an opera as for a theater production," he said, adding that while he doesn't read music, he has learned to understand a score in terms of "where the opportunities are for a director." "If you are not deeply interested in music," he said, "stay away from it as a director, because there has always been a director there before you: the composer." There are also practical issues to take into account. "You have to be sure," he said, "that everything is absolutely constructed for singers, much more than with actors, because they have to take care of what they are singing, respond to others on stage, and also be able to see the conductor." "It's really music theater," said Mr. van Hove, who added that the show's genre a combination of spoken word, music and visual elements greatly interested him. His adaptation of Thomas Mann's "Death in Venice," incorporating music by Weber, Schoenberg and Nico Muhly, will have its premiere on April 4 with the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra of Amsterdam. "What can it give us? What can it bring?" he added. "I would like to think about this in the next years."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Music
Federal prosecutors are recommending that Mary Boone, the veteran art dealer, be sent to prison for as much as three years, saying she deliberately defrauded the government by filing false tax returns and evading 3 million in taxes. Ms. Boone, who is to be sentenced on Jan. 18, pleaded guilty last year to two counts of filing false returns, a charge that carries a maximum three year prison sentence. Her lawyers had asked Judge Alvin K. Hellerstein of Federal District Court in Manhattan to spare her any prison time, writing that her offenses were the product of depression and anxiety brought on by childhood trauma rather than greed. Prosecutors rejected that argument in court papers this week, arguing that Ms. Boone had achieved a measure of financial stability and comfort that "most people can only dream about" and should serve 30 to 37 months in prison. "Boone was the sole architect and beneficiary of this tax fraud scheme and, contrary to her assertions now, engaged in it out of pure greed to line her own pockets by cheating the system," the prosecutors wrote.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Art & Design
In 2007, about seven years before General Motors' recent recall of 778,000 small cars because a jolt or a heavy key ring could turn off the engine and disable the air bags, an investigator for the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration raised the possibility of such danger after researching a crash that had killed two teenagers. The investigator also noted the existence of a 2005 technical service bulletin which was updated in 2006 in which G.M. warned dealers that it was possible the engine could be accidentally turned off because of a problem with the ignition. But the agency never opened an investigation or made an effort to pursue a recall of the cars. G.M. has said it is aware of six deaths and 17 injuries linked to the problem, although the automaker said some of those accidents involved high speeds, alcohol and a failure to wear safety belts. In the crash report detailing the two teenagers' deaths, the traffic safety administration had everything it needed to investigate and prompt a recall, but didn't do it, said Clarence Ditlow, the executive director of the Center for Auto Safety, a nonprofit consumer advocacy group. "This is just a terrible condemnation of N.H.T.S.A," said Mr. Ditlow, who has observed the agency for more than three decades. The crash report "should have raised all kinds of red flags," said Allan Kam, a safety consultant in Bethesda, Md., who worked for the agency for more than 25 years and retired as its senior enforcement lawyer. "It seems pretty poor that they didn't put two and two together." In a statement released Thursday night, N.H.T.S.A. responded, "The special crash investigation report did not determine the cause for the air bag nondeployment or that the failure to deploy was the result of a vehicle design defect or noncompliance with federal motor vehicle regulations." Indeed, the 26 page report did not reach a conclusion about the cause of the air bag failures, but it raised the possibility that "the movement of the ignition switch just prior to the impact" turned off the engine. The investigator said in the report that he did not know whether shutting off the engine would disable the air bags. In its Feb. 13 recall, G.M. said that the air bags would not deploy in a crash if the engine was not running. Joan Claybrook, who headed N.H.T.S.A. in 1977 81, said the safety agency's statement was ridiculous, adding that such crash investigations were not intended to investigate defects. The goal of such an investigation, she says, is to look at the circumstances of an unusual crash to determine whether additional investigation by another part of the agency is needed. The recall announced last week covers about 619,000 Pontiac G5 cars from the 2007 model year and 2005 7 Chevrolet Cobalts in the United States, as well as about 153,000 cars in Canada and 6,100 more in Mexico. However, the earlier technical service bulletin G.M. sent to dealers said the problem could affect four additional models. Had they been recalled, it would have more than doubled the size of the recall in the United States. The United States models not being recalled are the 2006 7 Chevrolet HHR, 2006 7 Pontiac Solstice, 2003 7 Saturn Ion and 2007 Saturn Sky. There are about 643,000 of those vehicles still being used, according to an analysis by Experian Automotive. In an email, a G.M. spokesman, Alan Adler, said the company decided to recall only certain models after devoting "significant time and resources to evaluating this issue." G.M. said the "ignition switch torque performance" was not up to specifications, which meant that the engine could be turned off if the vehicle was jarred or if a key ring used attached to the ignition key was too heavy. That loss of power would also disable the air bags. The crash that caught the attention of federal investigators occurred in Wisconsin in late 2006, and involved a 2005 Cobalt of the type included in the recent recall. The investigation was conducted by a special crash investigation team based at the Indiana University Transportation Research Center in Bloomington. Such teams are assigned "the most in depth and detailed level of crash investigation data collected by the agency." The report said the 17 year old woman driving the car lost control on a dry two lane road. The Cobalt became airborne, landed and hit a clump of trees. Neither the driver nor the two passengers were wearing safety belts, and the air bags did not deploy. The two passengers died and the driver was seriously injured. There was no indication as to why the crash occurred, nor was there any mention that alcohol was involved. The report said the ignition was in the Accessory position and the Cobalt's black box data recorder showed that just before the car hit the trees, the engine was not running. That might explain the failure of the air bags to deploy, the report said. The report also noted that in 2005, G.M. sent dealers a technical service bulletin titled "Information on Inadvertent Turning of the Key Cylinder, Loss of Electrical Systems." That bulletin said it was possible for the driver to accidentally turn off the engine, particularly if there was a large or heavy key chain present and the driver bumped it. That memo, which was updated in 2006, did not indicate whether the problem might affect the functioning of the air bags. General Motors has said that the technical service bulletin "was based on the facts as understood at the time." Mr. Adler, the G.M. spokesman, did not respond Thursday when asked if the automaker knew, when it sent the bulletin to dealers, that turning off the engine would disable the air bags. The report also stated that there were six complaints on the N.H.T.S.A. website from owners who said their engines turned off "when the ignition switch or key chain was contacted by the driver." Ms. Claybrook said the crash investigation included so much information it was a "gift" to the safety agency. "It is like it fell into a deep hole," she said. "It is outrageous that they did nothing."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Automobiles
"In the raging battle between the president and the media, I often felt like I was on the front lines in no man's land," Sarah Huckabee Sanders writes in her memoir, "Speaking for Myself," which comes out on Tuesday. "In one of my first briefings in my new role, I noted that I was the first mom to ever hold the job of White House press secretary, and said to my daughter, Scarlett, 'Don't listen to the critics. Fulfill your potential, because in America you still can.'" "Speaking for Myself" details how she came to heed her own advice when "nothing was off limits to the angriest Trump haters: my character, my weight and appearance, even my fitness to be a mother." Sanders sometimes takes a granular approach sharing the logistics of a prank she pulled along with fellow seniors at Central High School in Little Rock, Ark., or describing chandeliers in the Arkansas governor's mansion, the back dining room off the Oval Office and at the Riyadh Ritz. Elsewhere, she writes about a wink from Kim Jong un, the leader of North Korea, and family visits to the White House, where the president once dropped "an explosive f bomb" in front of her daughter. Sanders briefly mentions several issues that roiled the United States during her time in the Trump administration: health care, the travel ban, race relations, mass shootings and family separation. Some only appear in the text of a satirical poem, written and read by Greg Clugston of Standard Radio at a holiday lunch hosted by White House correspondents in 2017. For example: "In Charlottesville we witnessed long simmering divides, / Trump drew fire citing 'fine people on both sides.'" Here is what readers will learn from "Speaking for Myself." Sanders describes how she felt when she was mocked by the comedian Michelle Wolf at the 2018 White House Correspondents Dinner and again the following summer, when she was asked to leave the Red Hen restaurant in Lexington, Va. (In the six pages she devotes to this episode, Sanders never provides context for the ousting, which occurred in the midst of a national reckoning about the ethics of separating children from their parents at the border.)	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Books
The Mediterranean diet high in vegetables, fruits, olive oil and whole grains, and moderate in protein and animal fats has been shown in many studies to be beneficial in reducing the risk for diabetes, heart disease and stroke. A new study shows it may also be good for the brain. Researchers measured brain volume using magnetic resonance imaging in 401 people when they were 73 years old and again when they were 76. They also ranked how closely their typical diets followed a Mediterranean one. All were healthy and free of dementia at the start of the observational study, in Neurology. After adjustment for education, diabetes, hypertension and other factors, researchers found that the more closely they adhered to a Mediterranean style diet, the less the loss of brain volume. Those with the strongest adherence averaged 10 milliliters greater total brain volume than those with the lowest. That effect is large about half the effect of aging, which is the most significant cause of brain shrinkage. The researchers looked at meat and fish specifically, but didn't find a connection to any particular dietary components, said the lead author, Michelle Luciano, a lecturer at the University of Edinburgh. "It may be that everything in the diet in combination is giving the protective effect."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Well
Some couples are taking a vow to preserve the planet and getting started by incorporating sustainable elements in their weddings. Kira Meskin and her fiance, Yaniv Schiff, both of Chicago, are so committed to gardening, composting, cycling and recycling they are incorporating these sustainable elements into their Sept. 15 wedding. "We try to live a more conscious lifestyle in our daily lives," said Ms. Meskin, 35, an occupational therapist. "In terms of our wedding, we're looking to create a celebration that also reflects our interests and values." As part of their 215 person wedding, Ms. Meskin and Mr. Schiff, 36, a director of digital forensics at QDiscovery, a provider of electronic data, have decided to give guests Hoya kerrii plants as party favors. But that's not all. Alongside 25 friends, they plan to bike from home to their reception at Salvage One, a Chicago events space that also sells pre owned architectural elements and vintage furniture. Their florist, Pollen Floral Design, donates post party flowers to nonprofit fund raising groups, community dinners, and volunteer workshops that transform florals into bedside arrangements for nursing homes, hospice and hospitals. Erickson Design, which they are using, prints save the dates and other wedding stationery in house, using paper made from recycled post consumer materials. Its founders are also committed to planting a tree for every set of invitations they produce. This popcorn box program was printed on recycled paper by Erickson Design. Of their choice of wedding vendors, Mr. Schiff said, "I haven't gotten the impression that they are more expensive than non green vendors. But, also, the slight possible increase in cost is worth it for us." Ms. Meskin and Mr. Schiff also researched eco conscious dining options. FIG Catering, their food vendor, caters 50 to 70 weddings each year. To minimize food waste, Molly Schemper, the owner, analyzes purchasing practices and preparation, and trains her staff to recognize sustainable presentation methods. "If we're getting carrots with greens on the top, we use those greens in some sort of way," said Ms. Schemper. Ingredients that are typically cast aside are sometimes used for stocks, sauces, soups, bitters and cordial drinks. FIG Catering produces buffets upon request. However, to minimize waste, the staff doesn't fill up the table with excess food that might go unconsumed. "If things go out on a buffet, or are served family style, there's no way to salvage that," said Ms. Schemper, who donates untouched, unserved fare to local food pantries. "Those styles of service produce more waste than a plated meal, where we're only sending out what people are going to eat." Between 30 and 40 percent of America's food supply becomes food waste, according to the Department of Agriculture. Ms. Schemper says her business produces less than 5 percent food waste on site. She estimates the wedding industry's average is 15 percent. FIG Catering charges 100 to 250 per person, depending on whether chairs, tables and plate rentals are also necessary, according to Ms. Schemper. (By comparison, the average cost of wedding catering in the United States is 40 per person, or 27 a person if it's a buffet, according to the Wedding Wire.) Robyn Bruns, the owner of Red Letter Event Planning who plans 15 weddings annually, recommends that clients forgo paper plates and plastic cups and use nondisposable tableware and glasses instead. "The rental companies are buying it once, and they're renting it out to hundreds of people over the course of a year," she said. "Yes, it has to be cleaned and has to be transported, but you're not throwing anything away into the landfill." Ms. Bruns, who lives in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho, also pushes for the use of repurposed decor. Brides and grooms can buy pre owned candlesticks, dessert platters and ceremony arches (to be sold again after the wedding). Wedding Recycle and BravoBride offer tablecloths, signs, vases, and bridesmaid shoes, among other items, that have already been used in other weddings. In addition to centerpieces and accessories, tuxedos and gowns can also be reused. Websites like the Black Tux and Preowned Wedding Dresses offer these types of rentals and purchases. For in person shopping, Brides For A Cause, with boutiques in Seattle, Portland, Ore., and Tacoma, Wash., accepts and resells donated dresses, as it raises money for charities. "You're not creating something from scratch," said Juliet Horton, the founder and chief executive of Everly, an online wedding planning platform in the Seattle area, Vancouver and Victoria, British Columbia. "The idea of getting a 200 dress, and it's going to a good cause: Everyone's winning on that front."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Style
This year, the Obies honored five actors, singling out Quincy Tyler Bernstine, who starred in a Lincoln Center Theater production of "Marys Seacole," for "sustained excellence of performance," and also gave prizes to Mia Barron, for "Hurricane Diane" at New York Theater Workshop; Francis Jue, for "Wild Goose Dreams" at the Public Theater; and Cherise Boothe and Heather Alicia Simms for a revival of "Fabulation, or the Re Education of Undine" at the Signature Theater Company. Three playwrights won Obie Awards: Marcus Gardley, for "The House That Will Not Stand" at New York Theater Workshop; Madeleine George, for "Hurricane Diane"; and Suzan Lori Parks, for "White Noise" at the Public Theater. The Obies also honored three directors, recognizing the "sustained excellence" of Jo Bonney and Leigh Silverman , as well as awarding Stevie Walker Webb for "Ain't No Mo'" at the Public Theater. Six designers were recognized: Dede M. Ayite, for sustained excellence in costume design; Isabella Byrd, for lighting design in "Light Shining in Buckinghamshire" at New York Theater Workshop; Palmer Hefferan, for sustained excellence in sound design; Cookie Jordan, for sustained excellence in hair, wigs and makeup; Clint Ramos, for set design in "Wild Goose Dreams"; and Louisa Thompson, for sustained excellence in scenic design. At the ceremony, held at Terminal 5 and hosted by Rachel Bloom, special citations were also given to the playwright Clare Barron and the director Lee Sunday Evans for "Dance Nation" at Playwrights Horizons; to Jordan E. Cooper for writing and starring in "Ain't No Mo'"; to the playwright Jackie Sibblies Drury and the director Lileana Blain Cruz for "Marys Seacole"; to the cast and creative team of "The Jungle" at St. Ann's Warehouse; and to the director Daniel Fish and the rest of the creative team of a revival of "Oklahoma!" that had an Off Broadway run at St. Ann's Warehouse and has since transferred to Broadway.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Theater
In a letter to colleagues announcing his departure as the director of the National Cancer Institute, Dr. Harold Varmus, 75, quoted Mae West. "I've been rich and I've been poor," he wrote, "and rich is better." The line was characteristic of Dr. Varmus: playful and frank, not what one might expect from a Nobel laureate. But it also distilled a central question facing biomedical research today. Is the decline in funding that has shaken universities and research labs here to stay? If so, what does that mean for scientific research? Dr. Varmus, whose last day at the cancer institute is Tuesday, recently reflected on financial constraints in science, the fight against cancer and his own efforts to remain healthy. Our interview has been condensed and edited for space. Q. How has our investment in biomedical research changed? A. Traditionally, the National Institutes of Health has done very well financially. We increased the N.I.H. budget very rapidly, especially from 1998 to 2003, and the numbers of people training to do biomedical research also grew quickly. But now we are facing a problem. Since I arrived here as head of the National Cancer Institute in 2010, the budget has shrunk. The N.C.I. now has less money in actual dollars, not just inflation adjusted dollars, than it did then. We are about 3 percent about 180 million down from where we were. Adjusting for inflation, we are about 25 percent below where we were in 2003. The N.I.H. is fundamental to a huge part of our national economy and our national goals. Our work determines how healthy we are going to be in the next century and what kind of health care is going to be delivered. The N.I.H. supplies a tremendous amount of funding to universities, one of this country's greatest assets. Not to support the N.I.H. in a way that at least keeps up with, or is at least modestly ahead of, inflation just seems like a tactical error. What are the consequences? The obvious things are fewer grants and fewer jobs, each grant less well funded than it should be. But it has also caused something to appear which has not been a characteristic of N.I.H. funded research activities traditionally. A sense of hypercompetition has arisen as large numbers of new scientists are trained for positions and grants that no longer exist. You've got to get this paper into that journal. You've got to compete with 1,000 people to get a job in a distinguished academic institution. You want to have an environment where there is some sense of leisure, so you can think freely and feel that you can take chances. Wasn't it always that way? When I was a newly minted medic and came to the N.I.H. to do my government service, I was interested in finding new things to think about and making a contribution to our understanding of how cells respond to stimuli how they become cancer cells. You weren't guaranteed success. But you were likely to succeed if you had good ideas and did some nice experiments and engaged with your colleagues. My work didn't have to be in one of the three best journals for me to feel like I could get a job. One of things I've tried do as N.C.I. director is to protect our best investigators by giving long term grants. We favor basic research. We want to encourage people to think about difficult, unanswered questions in science. For example, why do certain organs and certain animals not get cancer? Those are hard topics to choose, especially in this competitive atmosphere, because you could work on a problem like that and not get any answers. Right now people feel like they can't afford to fail. Where are we in the fight against cancer? One of the major advances we've had as a result of cancer research is deep recognition of the complexity of cancer. It's not one disease, it's lots of different diseases. Every single cancer is different when you look at it on a genetic level. When the president recently announced his precision medicine initiative, a lot of it was based on the information we are getting from genetic and molecular analysis of cancer. Precision medicine depends on being much more precise about diagnosis. That allows you to target therapies more correctly and make better inferences about likely outcomes. This is the most transforming thing that's happened. We are beginning to understand now how different sets of mutations increase or decrease the likelihood that somebody's going to respond to a therapy. There have been some sensational successes in immunotherapies. Some use antibodies that block the immune system's self regulation. I think there's tremendous promise here. Cancer goes through an evolutionary process that is complex and not fully understood. There's a tremendous amount of basic disease research to be done. Is that basic research getting done? People feel their likelihood of getting funded is greater if they work on things that may have a clinical application. I'm worried about that, because I look at the big things that have changed the face of health care, and it's usually the result of some pioneering discovery not made in conjunction with the notion of how to treat somebody. You've got to do clinical testing, but if we become slackers on funding the absolutely most fundamental things, we will not hit upon the real answers. To understand how a normal cell becomes a cancer cell we can't lose sight of that. I don't want to go to my doctor, ever. I know flesh is heir to disease. I've been taking aspirin every day. It can be protective against cancers, heart disease and some strokes. I believe in keeping cholesterol levels down and keeping a healthy lifestyle. I try to be on my bike or doing something every day. Not just for health I choose the sports I like. It's a social event as well. I'm a bit of a fanatic about exercise, but not because I think every day that I get on my bike or go for a run that I'm somehow extending my life. I just feel better when I do it.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Science
This 3,404 square foot, single story church property in the Morrisania neighborhood of the Bronx has 137 feet of wraparound frontage. The Bronx Congregation of Jehovah's Witnesses had occupied the building since 1968, the year it was built. B Reel, an international creative agency, signed a seven year lease in a newly renovated, 35,978 square foot building in the Dumbo neighborhood of Brooklyn. The building has six stories, five of which are condominiums. The agency will occupy the 6,250 square foot ground floor, which was previously an artist's space. This walk up at the end of a row of three story buildings in the West Village has two residential units and one retail unit. This three story walk up in the West Village was built in 1900. It is 4,275 square feet, with an additional 1,597 square feet of unused air rights. The building has two residential units, which are occupied, and a retail unit, which was occupied by Steve Madden but is now vacant.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Real Estate
Goril Bjerkan, of Baerum, Norway, went to the gym three or four times a week while participating in the study. "I suspect it was more risky to visit the shopping center than to visit the gym," she said. Like many countries, Norway ordered all gyms to close in March to prevent the spread of the coronavirus. But unlike any other nation, Norway also funded a rigorous study to determine whether the closings were really necessary. It is apparently the first and only randomized trial to test whether people who work out at gyms with modest restrictions are at greater risk of infection from the coronavirus than those who do not. The tentative answer after two weeks: no. So this week, responding to the study it funded, Norway reopened all of its gyms, with the same safeguards in place that were used in the study. Is there hope for gymgoers in other parts of the world? "I personally think this is generalizable, with one caveat," said Dr. Michael Bretthauer, a cancer screening expert at the University of Oslo who led the study with Dr. Mette Kalager. "There may be places where there is a lot of Covid, or where people are less inclined to follow restrictions." Norway is bringing its epidemic under control, and the number of new infections has fallen. But the incidence of the infection in Oslo, where the study was conducted, resembles that in such cities as Boston, Oklahoma City and Trenton, N.J. The trial, begun on May 22, included five gyms in Oslo with 3,764 members, ages 18 to 64, who did not have underlying medical conditions. Half of the members 1,896 people were invited to go back to their gyms and work out. They were required to wash their hands and to maintain social distancing: three feet apart for floor exercises, and six feet apart in high intensity classes. The subjects could use the lockers, but not the saunas or the showers. They were not asked to wear masks. Another 1,868 gym members served as a comparison group; they were not permitted to return to their gyms. During the two weeks of the study, 79.5 percent of the members invited to use their gyms went at least once, while 38.4 percent went more than six times. Some were overjoyed to restart their routines. Goril Bjerkan, a 53 year old economist who lives in Baerum, just outside Oslo, went to the gym three to four times a week during the study, using the treadmill, taking classes and doing strength training. "It was fantastic to get back to the gym again after almost 11 weeks of closure," she said. "I suspect it was more risky to visit the shopping center than to visit the gym." Heide Tjom, a 57 year old architect who bicycles into Oslo, leapt at the opportunity to return to the gym four times a week, where she works with a personal trainer and takes group cardio classes. "Keeping fit is very important to me," Ms. Tjom said. "I feel it is important to my existence." Over the study period, there were 207 new coronavirus cases in Oslo. Study participants and gym staff members were tested for the infection on June 8. (Antibody tests of participants are now being conducted.) Dr. Bretthauer and Dr. Kalager also examined Norway's extensive electronic health records database for outpatient visits and hospitalizations among the participants. The results? The researchers found only one coronavirus case, in a person who had not used the gym before he was tested; it was traced to his workplace. Some participants visited hospitals, but for diseases other than Covid 19, the illness caused by the coronavirus. There was no difference in hospital visits between the groups, and there were no outpatient visits or hospitalizations because of the coronavirus. The findings were posted online on Thursday, but had not been peer reviewed nor published. Some experts felt the results demonstrated that returning to the gym was relatively safe but only in places where there were few infections. "This shows us that low prevalence environments are safe for gyms and probably just about everything else," said Dr. Gordon Guyatt, a professor of medicine at McMaster University in Canada. "It is very unlikely you will get infected." "If you were in a different environment where there is a substantially higher prevalence, we don't know what will happen," he added. But Jon Zelner, an epidemiologist at the University of Michigan, did not find the study to be fully convincing: "These findings don't tell me that going to the gym isn't riskier than not going to the gym, even in Oslo," he said. A larger study is needed in places with a relatively low prevalence to determine whether the virus is more easily transmitted in gyms, Dr. Zelner added. Alternatively, a study with fewer people, but in a community with a high prevalence of infection, could answer the question. Such a study may raise ethical concerns, since it may not be safe to send people to gyms in high prevalence communities "kind of a Catch 22," Dr. Zelner said. Still, how low does risk have to be before it is acceptable to reopen gyms and fitness centers? Dr. Guyatt said the risks of infection in a community where the prevalence is low are outweighed by the advantages to society.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Health
When the last name of the real estate agent sounds suspiciously like the brand name of a prominent real estate firm, it's probably no coincidence: the family business has beckoned and an heir who very likely has vast lifestyle options has instead leapt into the iffy role of a residential real estate salesperson. Working for a commission, not a clockwork salary. Working on, not for, the weekend, and weekdays, too. Working for the thrill of the sell; the exhilaration of the buy; negotiating the minefield that is a co op board application. "You can't make any mistakes," said S. Christopher Halstead, at 29 an executive vice president of Halstead Property, a company co founded by Clark Halstead, his uncle. "You have to enjoy every minute of it, or you won't get anywhere," said Michael S. Lorber, 33, a senior vice president of Douglas Elliman Real Estate, a firm co owned by his father, Howard M. Lorber. "We don't clock out, so you really have to love what you do," said Katherine Gale, 26, a great granddaughter of Daniel Gale, whose eponymous firm on the North Shore of Long Island is now affiliated with Sotheby's International Realty. She joined the Cold Spring Harbor office last summer. In Brooklyn, Alexandra Reddish, 38, is the heir apparent of her 93 year old grandmother, Mary Kay Gallagher, whose boutique firm has sold homes in Victorian Flatbush for 50 years. "It's not an easy job," Ms. Reddish said, "but it absolutely lets you define your own success." David Bork, a family business consultant and the author of "The Little Red Book of Family Business," believes complications are a given when a scion joins a family run company. "It's never easy to earn respect when you are the daughter or son of the boss," he said, "and I usually tell the owner of a family business, 'Don't go diving too deep into the gene pool, because you'll probably hit your nose.' " But he doesn't think nepotism is necessarily a negative: "People often get confused between the task of family, which is to give unconditional love and support, and the task of business, which is P R O F I T. But if these youngsters grew up talking real estate at the dinner table, they likely have an affinity for it." These four scions figure real estate is in their genes, but none assumed that taking the reins of a family business was a career endgame. And none seem to expect preferential treatment. In a competitive career like theirs, that could be a game ender. Howard Lorber was appalled when he heard through the hyperventilation prone real estate grapevine that Michael had signed on for Season One of the East Coast rendition of "Million Dollar Listing," the Bravo show that exposes the not necessarily gilded underbelly of the luxury sales market. To say the patriarch threatened his son with termination would be overstating it. But the elder Mr. Lorber a self made mogul whose empire includes the Vector Group, Nathan's Famous hot dogs and Douglas Elliman, a behemoth with a sales force of 4,000 was not on board. He capitulated only after Michael reminded him of his own reality show resume: he appeared as a judge on "The Apprentice" as a favor to Donald J. Trump, a family friend who once served as Michael's boss during a summer internship. "My dad told me, 'They're going to make you look like a spoiled rich kid,' " recalled Mr. Lorber, who joined Elliman in 2006, in another self generated career move that did not immediately sit well with Dad. "My father is not big into nepotism." He was at Vector, in a Fifth Avenue office with doubly aspirational views: the Sony building out the window and the senior Mr. Lorber holding court in an adjacent glass conference room. "He'd be the first guy to fire me," Michael Lorber said. But his powerful father, who chose not to comment on his son's real estate ambitions, was the first to nod approval when Michael decided not to flaunt his listings, and himself, by renewing with Bravo for the current season. "I'm not an idiot I know one of the reasons they picked me for the show is because my dad owns the firm," said Mr. Lorber, 33 and newly liberated from his 300 a month salon habit (he had dyed his gray hair brown for years). "I wanted to prove that real estate brokers aren't just a sleazy money grubbing bunch of people who couldn't make it as developers. That being a broker isn't a fallback position for a guy with a law degree. I'm just another broker around here: my great grandfather was definitely not Douglas Elliman, there's no Michael Lorber Group, and my father does not hand me big listings." His description of his stealth inauguration into the real estate branch of the family business: he "weaseled" his way into its marketing and consulting arm, the Sroka Worldwide Group, before his father noticed. His first sale was a 4.5 million co op on Fifth Avenue; his top sale to date is a 9 million apartment downtown and, on the commercial side, the 8 million building that housed Elaine's. He's not above negotiating a rental or two for a quick influx of commission cash: "I may be spoiled, but I'm not a brat." "I think my father wanted me to be a lawyer or an investment banker, something with a steady salary," continued Mr. Lorber, who specialized in tax law at the Cardozo School of Law and has a master's degree in real estate from New York University. "He actually offered to start me out with something at Nathan's," said Mr. Lorber, who was a senior at Babson College when he bought his first apartment using family money. He bought a small brokerage, Boston Realty Advisors, in 2003, the year his father and Dottie Herman, already partners at Prudential Long Island, acquired the Douglas Elliman brand. He owns several homes, the latest in Palm Beach, Fla., where the company intends to expand its footprint. Naturally, he has applied for a Florida agent's license. These days Ms. Gale lives in a waterfront house that her builder/developer father, Stanley, renovated in Lloyd Harbor. It's across the street from the modest colonial where her grandfather, Kent Gale, 95, who ran the company from the 1950s to 1990 and still holds the title of chairman, lives with his wife, Jean. Twice weekly, the office faxes contracts to Mr. Gale, keeping him in the loop of a mom and pop enterprise that is now a 2.5 billion organization employing 600 agents in 21 offices and, through its affiliation with Sotheby's, has a marketing interest in 13 billion worth of waterfront properties. Ms. Gale is the listing agent for one of them, a 1.6 million estate on Lloyd Neck. "When prospective buyers come to see it," she said, "I don't just take them through the house we jump on a golf cart and tour the property and the beachfront." Ms. Gale said her grandfather, while thrilled to have a fourth generation Gale carrying on the family legacy, has peppered her with admonitions: "He told me there are a lot of sharks out there, and he also warned me not to step on any toes." Like all rookie agents, Ms. Gale wears a tiny gold brooch in the shape of the firm's signature whale; her goal is to sell enough homes to earn an upgraded brooch with a whale encircled in gold. Kent Gale assures her it will happen if she works hard: "The company is our life." He commended her for needing barely a week to sell her first listing: "Eight days and a bidding war," he said proudly. "I guess it helps to have the real estate gene in your veins." Ms. Gale, who has an M.B.A. from Lynn University in Boca Raton, Fla., managed a boutique hotel in Delray Beach and worked a year on a sales team at Nestseekers International in Manhattan before approaching her family for a job. "I understand and always have that there's no such thing as a free lunch in my family," she said. "My father almost fell off his chair when I asked if he thought the company would take me on. The company that my family built and Patricia Petersen runs is so much bigger than me becoming an agent. But because of my last name, I know I have to give it 110 percent." S. Christopher Halstead was a year old in 1984 when his uncle left Sotheby's and, with Diane M. Ramirez, created a niche firm called Halstead Property. Now owned by Terra Holdings, a venture of the developers Will and Arthur Zeckendorf, Halstead employs 1,000 agents and is, according to Clark Halstead, still fulfilling its mission of being "a kinder, gentler sort of company where we don't tolerate stuffiness and there is a credo of partnership among our brokers." Mr. Halstead, 72, the company's chairman, no longer takes part in the day to day management of the firm (Ms. Ramirez, its president, does) and was disappointed when neither of his daughters opted into the family legacy. "At least I got my nephew interested, and he's no slouch," Mr. Halstead said. "Any ascension to management is beyond my engineering, but I do expect him to become one of our most successful brokers. He's come into the company seamlessly, learning the craft from the ground up, and he's done it without swaggering around and bragging about his relationship to me." The younger Mr. Halstead sold nearly 74 million in properties in 2012 and has a 50 million co op among his current listings. "My uncle is one of the more successful self established people I've ever known," said Mr. Halstead, "and when I was in college I always looked to him for advice and mentorship." He was a four year N.C.A.A. swimming champion at Emory University, where his major was English and his career objective wavered between law and marketing. During college, he secured summer internships at Saatchi Saatchi, the advertising firm, and after graduation took a job in the accounts management department; he was based in Los Angeles, and after a year he was promoted to the broadcast production division. But he hadn't found his niche. "The advertising life just wasn't something I was passionate about," he said. "I know it had rather pleased my uncle when I chose marketing over law, and when he suggested that maybe it was time for me to come back to New York and think seriously about real estate, I jumped at it. But I wasn't handed anything. It was trial by fire. "This doesn't mean I'm just the next version of him," he continued, "and I hope people don't have the opinion that this is a nepotism situation. I knew that you don't come into this business and make dollars on Day 1. I lived on my savings for the first year, but since 2009 I think I've begun to establish myself. I don't live in a 50 million apartment, but it's nice to be able to sell them to people who can." The Future of the Franchise Alexandra Reddish was 18 when she got her real estate license; she had helped out her grandmother, Mary Kay Gallagher, at open houses while in high school. Ms. Gallagher ran her business her way, working from home rather than a storefront, refusing to use For Sale signs because she considered them tacky, and finding buyers with the means to handle the considerable upkeep of the century old homes she marketed. That hasn't changed. Ms. Reddish lives a few blocks away in a two family Victorian that she and her husband bought in 2006, a year after the death of her aunt Eileen Cullen, whom Ms. Gallagher had groomed as her eventual successor. The role was then reassigned to Ms. Reddish, who had worked in the financial district and at an Internet start up after graduating from Iona College in New Rochelle, N.Y., with a degree in business and finance. "I didn't think I'd be doing real estate as my career," she said. "I'd gotten my license just because in this family, it's been an unwritten requirement, like getting your driver's license." When she was laid off from her job as office manager for the Internet firm, she and her husband and infant son moved back to Brooklyn from Riverdale, in the Bronx, and she joined her grandmother and aunt. The three generation team shared their listings: "It's not like other brokerages, which can be more cutthroat," she said. "It wasn't like I walked in at 35 and said, 'I'm taking over.' " Her grandmother, she said, is "still the main figure, and I do all the running around." Ms. Reddish says the business has grown more complicated as home prices have risen and corporate firms like Corcoran have expanded beyond Park Slope and Brooklyn Heights: "There is definitely more competition for listings. But we live here. Our reputation is our name. We are a brand in Ditmas Park." According to Ms. Gallagher, last year the firm sold 15 homes ranging in price from 800,000 to 1.8 million. She says she is delighted that her granddaughter decided to forsake Wall Street for Ditmas Park. "She has her finger on the pulse of the business and she's a straight shooter. It's she and me."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Real Estate
PARIS Chanel might be famous for the little black dress. But Karl Lagerfeld , the longtime creative director of the famed French fashion house, who died in February, had another wardrobe staple that he longed to call his own. "If you ask me what I'd most like to have invented in fashion, I'd say the white shirt," the designer once said . "Everything else comes after." A large white banner emblazoned with that quote hung in a courtyard off Saint Germain du Pres Wednesday night , as hundreds of guests at Paris Fashion Week including the American Vogue editor Anna Wintour and models from Kaia Gerber to Karlie Kloss gathered for the latest tribute to the Lagerfeld name.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Style
WASHINGTON In the last year, the International Monetary Fund has performed a major reassessment of how it thinks austerity harms a weak, financially troubled economy. But while warning of the perils of slow growth, it still often insists on austerity for just such economies. The tension between those realities will be on full display in Washington this week, as top economic officials from around the world gather for the spring meetings of the monetary fund and its sister institution, the World Bank. Once again, sluggish growth in advanced economies, and in particular the unfurling economic and fiscal afflictions in the euro zone, will be the central topic of discussion. Political and economic officials agree that most countries, particularly in Europe, desperately need more growth. But they remain sharply divided on how to get it. Officials strongly influenced by the Great Depression thinking of John Maynard Keynes, including some from Europe, want an easing of austerity measures, more expansionary monetary policies and even some stimulus. But powerful northern European officials, including those from Germany, have argued that balanced budgets and fiscal consolidation are prerequisites for restoring sustainable growth. In a somewhat dissonant posture, the monetary fund has split the difference: reassessing its views on austerity, pushing strongly for aggressive measures to bolster growth but all without repudiating its existing programs. "We believe that for most European countries, fiscal consolidation is a must, simply given the level of debt," said Christine Lagarde, the monetary fund's managing director, speaking in New York this month. But she qualified that statement by saying that not all cuts need to be "brutal or abrupt or massively front loaded." She added, "There is a balance to be had between how much is called for and how much is tolerable." Economic fortunes during the recovery from the Great Recession have diverged, with new estimates of growth by the monetary fund expected on Tuesday. But they will not change the basic picture, which Ms. Lagarde has taken to describing as a "three speed" world. Developing and emerging economies are growing apace. Some advanced economies, including the United States, are gaining strength. But a third category of countries remains mired in stagnation or recession. Japan has struggled with a stalled out economy, but has recently engaged in an athletic campaign of fiscal and monetary stimulus. The true laggard is Europe, suffering from rising unemployment and another bout of economic contraction seemingly without the political consensus or economic mechanisms to tackle those problems. "The European Union's precrisis growth performance was disappointing enough, but the performance has been even more dismal since the onset of the crisis," the European research group Bruegel concluded in a recent report, saying weak growth is undermining efforts to reduce debt and fueling bank fragility, all while skills erode for the unemployed. "Low overall growth is making it much tougher for the hard hit economies in southern Europe to recover competitiveness and regain control of their public finances." Bruegel concluded that a failure to turn things around might render Europe's social contract "unsustainable." In light of that reality, the monetary fund and its European partners, the European Commission and the European Central Bank the so called troika have come under continued criticism for the austerity measures imposed on countries including Spain, Portugal and Greece, where unemployment rates extend well into the double digits. The criticism has become louder since the fund said it had determined that austerity had a far worse impact on weak economies than it once thought. That assessment came in the form of a highly technical analysis of what economists term "fiscal multipliers" essentially, a measure of how changes in a government budget affect growth at a given time. At the urging of the monetary fund's chief economist, Olivier Blanchard, its research division last year started to investigate why the fund had overestimated rates of growth for some countries and underestimated them for others. The researchers found that the multiplier used to forecast growth rates had not magnified the impact of government spending policies enough: Both austerity and stimulus had proved stronger than expected medicine. Kevin Spacey was ordered to pay 31 million to the 'House of Cards' studio after sexual harassment allegations. Netflix buys a visual effects company in a move to support its global ambitions. "It was wrong, ex post, but it was not crazy," Mr. Blanchard said of the multiplier the fund had used during the global recession. It "might still be the right number in a normal environment," he said during an interview in late January. "But in the past three years, and presumably the next two or three at least, we should use higher numbers." The fund's assessment stirred major controversy in the rarefied world of international economics. Believers in austerity derided the analysis and picked it apart. Other commentators argued it constituted a mea culpa an admission that the fund's own policies, deployed across the euro periphery, were wrong. But Mr. Blanchard stood by the numbers, and dismissed that analysis. "One of the unpleasant aspects of what happened is that we kept revising forecasts of growth in the euro periphery down," he said. "Part of it, though not all of it, is due to the fact that we just underestimated the effect of fiscal consolidation. "I don't like to be wrong systematically," Mr. Blanchard continued. "But if we had better forecasts, would we have had very different programs? I suspect the honest truth is that, because of financing constraints, probably only at the margin." Political and financing constraints continue to plague the euro rescue plans. Moreover, the monetary fund is only one partner in the troika, experts noted. "When you look at the I.M.F., you can't consider it truly a technocratic organization making decisions based only on the economics," said Simon Johnson, a former chief economist at the fund. "You've got to see it working in a political setting, and it can't go in its own direction against the will of its major shareholders." But the monetary fund and its international partners, including some in Europe, have pushed strongly for more expansionary policies in the stronger countries of Europe to counter austerity in the periphery. The fund and the United States, among others, intend to continue that push at the coming spring meetings. Policies have been proposed to help promote growth across the euro zone and thus around the world. They include more monetary stimulus, pushing for higher wages in Germany, and shaking up rigid labor markets. "The best way to create jobs is through growth," Ms. Lagarde said in her New York speech, underscoring the human costs of the crisis. "This must come first."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Global Business

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