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Gasps that emerge from audiences at plays usually belong to one of two categories. There's the authentic, uncontainable gasp of genuine astonishment or dismay, as involuntary as a yelp of pain. Then there's the more conscious version, the self satisfied gasp of affirmation, which can be translated as "I knew it all along." This was the sort of sound that my grandmother regularly made responding to the predetermined plot twists of her favorite soap opera, "As the World Turns." That is also the kind of gasp that is heard among the theatergoers at City Center Stage 1, where Donald Margulies's "Long Lost" opened on Tuesday night in a Manhattan Theater Club production. This dispiritingly predictable portrait of incompatible brothers, reunited after many years of estrangement, is truly surprising only in its failure to surprise. That's because Mr. Margulies, whose "Dinner With Friends" won the 2000 Pulitzer Prize for drama, often brings a refreshing jolt of the unexpected to portraits of familial dysfunction and midlife malaise. This has been true from his early "The Loman Family Picnic" which featured musical fantasy sequences inspired by "Death a Salesman" to later, more subtle studies of the disenchantment of success like "Sight Unseen" and "Time Stands Still." His too seldom produced "The Model Apartment," about an aging New York couple's relocation to Florida, is one of the greatest and most disturbing "gotcha" plays of the past several decades. It is so subversively and ingeniously plotted, that I always hesitate to describe it in any detail to anyone who plans to see, or even read, it. I feel no such reluctance regarding "Long Lost," which is directed with Teflon smoothness by Daniel Sullivan, Mr. Margulies's frequent collaborator. This 90 minute work is so conventionally and efficiently set up and structured, providing full and expected delivery on every teasing promise of things to come, that it might serve as a basic blueprint in a Theater 101 class. That clear cut approach is evident before a single living person sets foot on the stage. The show's opening image asks (to borrow another Margulies title), "What's wrong with this picture?" We see an impeccably appointed office that whispers of big money. (John Lee Beatty did the high gloss, revolving sets.) But wait a minute. What's with those carelessly slung items on the floor and sofa a shabby coat, a battered knapsack, an open bag of potato chips? It would seem a force of disorder has invaded these sterile precincts, the domain of a fat cat financial consultant named David (Kelly AuCoin, of "Billions"). This feeling is confirmed by the ominous shadow cast against the wall, as David changes his shirt. The shadow belongs to a man who has the scruffy and wild eyed look of Willie Nelson on a bender. He leaps into view to pounce upon the unsuspecting David. This is Billy (Lee Tergesen), who evidently still has the power to scare the bejesus out of his younger brother. Though it's been a decade since they last met, David is none too happy to see his unkempt visitor. Billy, it seems, is a reform proof substance abuser and all around wastrel who is responsible for a horrendous family tragedy that put him in prison. Not that Billy ever intended to wreak this kind of havoc. He was just born bad. Or as he tells his successful brother, "Chemistry is destiny, man. You lucked out." Now Billy is dying of cancer, he says. And insisting that blood is thicker and all that, he wants to be put up in the fancy Manhattan apartment David shares with his sleek and fastidious wife, Molly (Annie Parisse), and his son, Jeremy (a very good Alex Wolff) a freshman at Brown, home for the Christmas holidays. Billy makes a lot of promises to David about behaving well, and then systematically violates them. (His betrayals of secrets provide the principal stimuli for the aforementioned gasps.) He also questions the limousine liberal attitudes of his rich relations and single handedly transforms delicate fissures in David and Molly's marriage into what may be irreparable cracks. Mr. Margulies's most fertile dramatic territory has always been the unsteady ground between love and loathing among family and friends, sown with the doubts and regrets that grow and fester with age. Here, though, he only seems to be skimming that terrain. The thoroughly professional cast does as well as can be expected with roles that, on either side of the family divide, rarely engage our sympathy. Molly and David seem as shallow and surface obsessed as Billy accuses them of being. And even at his most destructive, Mr. Tergesen's Billy feels too worn out to unsettle as he should.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Theater
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Anais Maviel accompanied herself on the kamale ngoni harp during the Resonant Bodies Festival at Roulette. There is a back to school feeling at the Resonant Bodies Festival, the immersion in new vocal music that arrives each year just after Labor Day. This week, singers, composers and musicians thronged the lobby and aisles of Roulette, in Brooklyn, chatting about where they performed over the summer and what's coming up this fall. The event has earnest, easygoing charm: Concerts inevitably start late; the intermissions go on forever; Lucy Dhegrae, the founder and director, gives casually unscripted speeches; this year, a duo skittered around the theater during pauses, breaking into impromptu close harmonies. Even the performances, however skilled, give the sense of works in process, of explorations shared in a spirit of generosity and intimacy. The formula is simple: three nights, three performers per night, 30 minutes per set. (It used to be 45 minutes; this is a good change.) Artists can fill that half hour however they choose. There was more range than usual this week, even for an event that prides itself on variety. Read more about how this year's artists planned their sets. This year boasted two bona fide opera stars: the countertenor Anthony Roth Costanzo, on Tuesday, and the mezzo soprano Stephanie Blythe, on Thursday. Well, a mezzo soprano in her day job; here Ms. Blythe appeared as her drag alter ego, the over the top, bearded tenor Blythely Oratonio, belting beautifully mash ups of Italian arias and pop hits. (Think a Baroque ified "Jessie's Girl.") Mr. Costanzo sang six pieces, five of them written for his sensuously floating, moonstone voice. That they fit in so naturally with the other performances speaks to the broad ears of the festival and its audience, even if those other sets were more overtly experimental. But even here there were divergent approaches. Charmaine Lee (on Tuesday) and Erin Gee (on Thursday) shared a wordless vocabulary of pops, whistles, croaks, exhalations, squiggles of sound. But while Ms. Lee's music part of it conjured alongside Conrad Tao, on piano and electronics had a loud, violent, expressionistic charge, Ms. Gee's was whispery and precise, both solo and with musicians of the Argento New Music Project, in examples of her ongoing "Mouthpieces" series. On Wednesday, Kate Soper's voice was sent ricocheting through the theater by Sam Pluta's explosive electronic manipulations; the text, as usual with Ms. Soper, was a dense work of ancient philosophy, given a lively yet earnest spin. She then moved to the piano for "The Fragments of Parmenides ," moving back and forth between speaking and singing as she played with the conventions of singer songwriter cabaret. In the only fully solo set, Anais Maviel accompanied herself on the kamale ngoni harp on Wednesday, plucking a steadily flowing background that her mellow voice sinuously wove around. At the end of an elegant improvised set on Thursday with the pianist Vijay Iyer and the bassist Shahzad Ismaily, who both doubled on electronics, Arooj Aftab sang a soft but reverb soaked chant over a spacey, pulsing low drone. ("Neo Sufi," she aptly describes herself.) Accompanied on Wednesday by a band combining string lushness and rock amplitude, Ted Hearne's voice surged from baritonal belt to airy falsetto in a series of settings of Dorothea Lasky poems that emphasizes their brooding emotiveness more than their wry humor. For a drier dissection of a poetic text, Tuesday brought Jane Sheldon and her adaptation of Alice Oswald's "Dunt: a poem for a dried up river." A riveting study in breath, it was heavy on rhythmic exhalations as an ensemble quietly, droningly evoked a summer night: the low blow of a conch shell, soft bell like ringing, gentle sliding sounds. Ms. Sheldon crawled over a strip of wet clay as she sang, then remained onstage after the house lights had gone up for intermission. With a bashful smile, she said that Roulette wouldn't want her to walk off with her feet so dirty. "But it's over," she said, to the audience's laughter. In its unpretentiousness, the moment captured Resonant Bodies.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Music
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PARIS With the sense of economic crisis deepening in Europe after the United States debt downgrade, investors have played Who's Next with the shrinking list of nations that still hold the top rating of AAA. And their sights have landed on France. Shares of French financial institutions were hammered Wednesday on the Paris stock exchange on mounting fears that France's own sterling credit rating could be cut, if the cost of cleaning up the European debt crisis weighs on the nation and its banks. French banks are loaded up on the debt of Italy and Greece, among other troubled European countries that share the euro. It seemed not to matter that the French government along with the credit raters Standard Poor's, Moody's and Fitch issued statements on Wednesday insisting France's rating was not at risk. The market anxieties spread wildly, engulfing Societe Generale, the second largest French bank. Its shares slumped as much as 21 percent before closing down by 14.7 percent. President Nicolas Sarkozy interrupted his vacation on the French Riviera to return to Paris for an emergency meeting with finance officials to discuss "the economic and financial situation" of France, whose government debt and budget deficit make it look the weakest of any big AAA rated nation. Mr. Sarkozy gave his ministers a deadline to prepare measures to ensure that France meets its deficit reduction targets, which it had trouble doing in the past. Analysts say France also needs to stoke growth and cut its high sovereign debt, which S. P. cited in its note accompanying the American downgrade on Friday. That note projected that France's debt in the year 2015 would be 83 percent of its gross domestic product even higher than the 79 percent S. P. forecast for the United States by that year. S. P. also indicated that it expected France and other AAA rated nations to have their debts and deficits more under control than the United States by then. But the vultures now circling France apparently did not read, or at least heed, that caveat. "There has been a lot of market noise about France, rather than ratings agency noise," said Gary Jenkins, a strategist at Evolution Securities. "On the other hand, there was market noise about the PIGS and the United States before they were downgraded," he noted, using an acronym for the European countries swept up in the debt crisis Portugal, Ireland, Greece and Spain. The annual cost to insure 10 million in French government debt against default jumped to a record 175,000 on Wednesday, up from only 100,000 three weeks ago. The cost also hit records for Societe Generale and BNP Paribas. French banks are among the most exposed to Greek, Spanish and Italian debt, and they also hold huge amounts of French sovereign debt. Societe Generale, a globally interconnected bank that the French government regards as too big to fail, moved closer to the eye of the storm recently. It has significant exposure to Greece through a retail subsidiary there, and it holds vast sums of troubled debt from small and large European economies. On Wednesday, it was hit in particular by talk that Groupama, a large French insurer that owns about 4 percent of Societe Generale, needed to raise money. Groupama did not return calls for comment. But David Thebault, head of quantitative sales trading at Global Equities in Paris, noted that many other European insurance companies, as well as banks, were scrambling after S. P. downgraded the United States to AA from AAA. Many of those companies and banks need to replace their United States Treasury securities because they are required to hold only top rated sovereign debt. "Volatility is very high we're in quasi crisis mode," he said. Societe Generale issued a lengthy statement after the close of trading, saying it "categorically and vigorously" denied all the "completely unfounded" market rumors that affected its share price. The bank, which reported a 1.6 billion euro ( 2.28 billion) first quarter profit last week, said it had asked the French stock market regulator to investigate the source of the rumors. The big fear in the markets, though, is the threat of contagion whatever the reason for the tumult. "We've been really cautious, and the sovereign crisis is now escalating," said Philip Finch, global bank strategist for UBS. "It boils down to a crisis of confidence. We haven't seen policy makers come out with a plan that is viewed as comprehensive, coordinated and credible." Despite France's undisputed influence as Europe's biggest power broker next to Germany, its debt as a percentage of gross domestic product is expected to reach 85.3 percent this year, according to the International Monetary Fund. That would be the highest among any European country in the AAA club. France's budget deficit, meanwhile, will fall to 5.7 percent of G.D.P. this year, the I.M.F. said, still well above the 2.3 percent forecast for Germany, and the second highest after Britain among the AAA rated countries in Europe. And despite an array of world class companies like LVMH Moet Hennessey Louis Vuitton, L'Oreal, Renault and Danone, France's economy is gripped by labor market rules and other factors that keep it from growing faster. The economy is expected to grow only 2 percent this year and next, slower than the 3.4 percent pace of Germany. Unemployment is around 9 percent. Mr. Sarkozy pledged on Wednesday to find new ways to cut the deficit and reduce France's huge debt ratio, which would swell if a widening crisis forced France to supply tens of billions more euros to pay the cleanup bill. But just as President Obama's speech on the American economy on Monday fell on deaf ears, so, too, did markets ignore Mr. Sarkozy's promises.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Economy
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The Lough Cutra Castle in Galway, Ireland, one of the rental properties available with the new Homes Villas program. With hotel companies feeling the competition from the surging home share industry led by Airbnb, Marriott International has decided if you can't beat them, join them. The company, whose brands span from the bargain Courtyard by Marriott to the cosseting Ritz Carlton, is expanding a home sharing experiment into a full fledged division that will rent you a St. Barts villa, a Lake Tahoe mountain home or an Irish castle. The company is betting big on a market where other hotel companies have yet to succeed. The new Homes Villas by Marriott International will offer 2,000 luxury properties worldwide, ranging from a one bedroom home for 200 a night to that castle in Ireland for 10,000 a night. The new division expands on an experiment last year that offered 500 homes in Europe. "The demand numbers are making hotel companies rethink who they fundamentally are," said Makarand Mody, an assistant professor of hospitality marketing in the School of Hospitality Administration at Boston University. In a study he and colleagues published this year, Mr. Mody found that revenue per available room, a common hotel performance metric, fell by 2 percent in 10 major American cities since Airbnb emerged in 2008. Airbnb's disruption of the business, he added, "has been a wake up call for the hotel industry that there is a need to innovate." Marriott's homes are not home sharing in the sense that the owner gives you the keys or the door code, but the term has effectively been stretched to include rentals managed by third party companies. Its partners, including LaCure and Loyd Townsend Rose, vet homes for unique design and appealing locations. Marriott said its trial last year convinced the company to jump in. Nearly 90 percent of renters were members of its loyalty program, Marriott Bonvoy. Most were traveling for leisure and, with an average five day stay, spent three times as long at the property as the typical hotel guest. "People stay at different hotels for different trip purposes," said Stephanie Linnartz, the global chief commercial officer at Marriott. "Sometimes it's a cool weekend with friends at a beach house and then a kid's soccer tournament and you need a Courtyard," referring to Marriott's lower cost brand. "Home sharing is another offering." The company's plan, said Chekitan S. Dev, a professor in the hotel school of the S.C. Johnson College of Business at Cornell University, "keeps any migration of lodging nights from traditional hotels to home sharing in the family." Marriott isn't the first hotel company to dabble in home sharing. In 2017, Hyatt invested in Oasis Collections, offering homes with high end linens and concierge assistance, but sold it a year later. AccorHotels has the similarly serviced collection of homes called OneFineStay, though its year end 2018 financial report indicated the investment had yet to pay off. Early efforts by hotels to compete with Airbnb which offers more than 6 million homes on its platform illustrate the differences between traditional hotels, which may offer 300 similar rooms in one locale, versus a home share service, which rents unique units in possibly thousands of locales. Experts say hotels are challenged in the rental world in delivering the consistency they normally control and learning to manage far flung properties. "Hotel brands come with a seal of approval, but it's harder to enforce," said Eric Breon, the chief executive of Vacasa, a vacation property management company, which recently acquired Oasis. "There's a lot more personality to people's homes. They bought the beach house and furnished it. They're not a hotelier to whom Marriott can say, 'This year we're doing all oval mirrors so you have to get rid of the square ones.'" Marriott's solutions to these challenges has been to stick to luxury properties and to contract with property management companies that take on the on site logistics, including providing premium linens, high speed Wi Fi, in person support and extras like cribs and high chairs. The expanded Homes Villas have a minimum 3 night stay. "Most travelers prefer hotels, so that's still a robust market," said Lorraine Sileo, a senior vice president at the travel research firm Phocuswright, which found that consumers prefer hotels over alternative accommodations by a two to one ratio. Hotel branded homes, she added, may appeal to travelers who want the assurance of "cleanliness, security and amenities and don't want a cookie cutter hotel but aren't ready to share an apartment with a stranger." A key selling point for members of Marriott Bonvoy could be t he ability to earn points and spend them on villa stays. The company plans to integrate its experiential reward offerings like taking a local cooking class or attending a concert with its rentals. "When you're getting your vacation rental home in the south of France, at the same time you will be able to book a bespoke wine and cheese tour in the village," Ms. Linnartz said. "It will all be connected and interrelated."
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Travel
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The contemporary choreographer Sam Kim believes that the dance solo is, well, gross. (Take that, Anna Pavlova and all your dying swans.) In "Fear in Porcelain," Ms. Kim challenges the very idea of a solo, which she sees as being part of a deeply narcissistic tradition. Her aim is to extinguish the ego; this evening length premiere, performed Wednesday at the Chocolate Factory, features not one dancer but four. Ms. Kim and Tess Dworman perform center stage. The others, Amanda Hunt and Katie Dean with their inanimate stillness they seem half human, half mannequin are arranged on two sides of an L shaped platform that surrounds part of the stage. The audience fills in the other two sides, which is telling: This is not just an exploration of solos, but also a look at voyeurism. As we watch Ms. Dworman skitter across the stage while dragging a foot behind her, or Ms. Kim, on all fours, tossing her black hair against the floor, the other two wear masks that render their features invisible. They're also partially nude. Ms. Hunt, in a robe, wears a yellow mask; Ms. Dean, in a short jacket, sports a checkerboard mask. (Costumes and visual design are credited to Ms. Kim.)
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Dance
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Paula Cantos and David Damon got engaged in June and are aiming to be married Jan. 18 in Washington. It will be an outdoor ceremony near the Capitol Building. Odds are good the union will be legal, but as of today no one is willing to guarantee that. Ms. Cantos, 34, and Mr. Damon, 35, are among the many couples whose plans to marry in our nation's capital have been complicated by the partial government shutdown. When the shutdown began on Dec. 22, Washington's Marriage Bureau was one of the nonessential services that closed, leaving couples unable to obtain marriage licenses. Some have postponed their weddings. Others are holding a second, legal ceremony in nearby Maryland or Virginia, said Maggie Gaudaen, a co founder of Pop! Wed Co., a local wedding planning service that specializes in what it calls "flash" weddings at sites throughout the city, like the steps of the Supreme Court. Ms. Cantos and Mr. Damon started planning their wedding months ago. Location, as with most of Ms. Gaudaen's clients, has been their top priority. "David and I met almost two years ago during the women's rally, right outside the Capitol Building near the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool," said Ms. Cantos, who works as a chemist in the government's Bureau of Engraving and Printing, which deals with currency; she and Mr. Damon, who installs solar panels, live in New Carrolton, Md. "That's why we picked the spot. It has meaning for us."
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Fashion & Style
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The American economy is gaining renewed momentum, with data released on Tuesday suggesting strong demand by businesses for airplanes, machinery and other manufactured items, as well as rising confidence among consumers, despite a cooling in the housing market. Overall orders for durable goods in July jumped by 22.6 percent, the biggest one month increase since the Commerce Department began compiling this series of data in 1992. That strength, though, was exaggerated by a huge surge in demand for airplanes made by Boeing. Excluding the always volatile transportation sector, core capital goods orders fell by 0.5 percent in July, but remain up more than 11 percent over the most recent three months on an annualized basis. "The U.S. economy is on solid ground," said Nariman Behravesh, chief economist at IHS. "Europe is struggling, Japan is struggling, but all of this suggests the U.S. is doing quite well." By contrast, he said, growth in Europe is running at under a 1 percent pace, while the Japanese economy is expanding at about 1.5 percent on an annualized basis. Investors were encouraged by Tuesday's data, with the Standard Poor's 500 stock index closing above 2,000, and the Nasdaq and Dow Jones industrial average showing similar modest gains. A healthier job market and the recent surge in stocks, which has lifted the S. P. 500 into record territory, has helped consumer confidence to rebound. On Tuesday, the Conference Board reported in its monthly survey that its main consumer confidence measure rose in August to its highest level since October 2007, before the start of the recession. Although evidence of an upsurge in growth has sometimes worried investors because it could mean a sooner than expected increase in interest rates by the Federal Reserve, those fears have eased lately in the wake of the reassuring speech in Jackson Hole, Wyo., last week by Janet L. Yellen, the Fed's chairwoman. The only weak spot in Tuesday's flood of economic indicators was the housing market, where the S. P./Case Shiller's index of home prices in 20 cities registered a decline of 0.2 percent in June, on a seasonally adjusted basis. Thirteen out of the 20 cities surveyed showed a fall in home prices, and the drop surprised economists, who had expected the index to remain flat in June. "Housing has had a strong recovery in recent years and now it's leveling off," Mr. Behravesh said. "It won't be the engine of growth that it's been, but that's not necessarily a bad thing. We can worry about soft housing prices, but there is no bubble in the making." Guy Berger, United States economist at RBS, added that after a strong performance in 2012 and 2013, homes aren't as undervalued as they were previously. 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. "With rents going up in recent years, it became more favorable to buy," Mr. Berger said. "The easy gains are behind us in terms of housing." More significant than any cooling in housing is that businesses are beginning to invest more aggressively again, he added, citing the strong figures for durable goods orders Tuesday. "The main takeaway from today's data is that businesses' spending is moving at a faster pace," he said. "Some is catch up, and some is acceleration, but it looks set to continue in the third quarter." Economists had expected a big jump in durable goods demand last month because Boeing had announced it received orders for more than 300 planes in July. Still, the eye popping 22.6 percent gain caught some observers off guard, even if the impact on the overall economy from aircraft orders is modest. Airplane orders can have an outsize impact on monthly durable goods data because of the high dollar value of each jet, sometimes causing the figures to swing sharply. Aircraft like Boeing 747s and 777s, for example, can cost nearly 400 million each. "Aircraft made a big splash, but are relatively inconsequential in terms of the broad economy," said Michael Gapen, senior United States economist at Barclays. But he noted that the Commerce Department also revised up its estimate view of June orders of core durable goods, which include factory equipment and the like, now estimating that they rose at a 5.4 percent rate rather than 1.4 percent. That meant that the slight decline in the same figure for July still represented a relatively strong level of demand. Indeed, the healthy data for June and July prompted Mr. Gapen and the economics team at Barclays to increase their estimate for third quarter growth to a rate of 2.7 percent from 2.4 percent.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Economy
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Study of Cellphone Risks Finds 'Some Evidence' of Link to Cancer, at Least in Male Rats None For decades, health experts have struggled to determine whether or not cellphones can cause cancer. On Thursday, a federal agency released the final results of what experts call the world's largest and most costly experiment to look into the question. The study originated in the Clinton administration, cost 30 million and involved some 3,000 rodents. The experiment, by the National Toxicology Program, found positive but relatively modest evidence that radio waves from some types of cellphones could raise the risk that male rats develop brain cancer. "We believe that the link between radio frequency radiation and tumors in male rats is real," John Bucher, a senior scientist at the National Toxicology Program, said in a statement. But he cautioned that the exposure levels and durations were far greater than what people typically encounter, and thus cannot "be compared directly to the exposure that humans experience." Moreover, the rat study examined the effects of a radio frequency associated with an early generation of cellphone technology, one that fell out of routine use years ago. Any concerns arising from the study thus would seem to apply mainly to early adopters who used those bygone devices, not to users of current models. Still, experts argue, even a small demonstrated rise in cancer risk could have wide implications, given that billions of people now use cellphones. The lowest level of radiation in the federal study was equal to the maximum exposure that federal regulations allow for cellphone users . That level of exposure rarely occurs in typical cellphone use, the toxicology agency said. The highest level was four times higher than the permitted maximum. The toxicology program released a preliminary draft of the study findings in May 2016, saying the radiation had "likely caused" the brain tumors. This February, in a draft report, it backed away from that relatively firm conclusion. Like the Science Times page on Facebook. Sign up for the Science Times newsletter. In March, however, a peer review panel of 11 experts from industry and academia voted to advise the agency that it should raise the confidence level from "equivocal evidence" to "some evidence" of a link between cellphone radiation and brain tumors in male rats. (The female rats did not show evidence of a link between the radiation and such tumors.) Two panel members, Lydia Andrews Jones of Allergan and Susan Felter of Procter Gamble, proposed the risk upgrade. Experts say it is not unusual for cancer patterns to vary between sexes in both people and animals, including the study's mice and rats. The rodents in the studies were exposed to radiation nine hours a day for two years far longer even than heavy users of cellphones. For the rats, the exposures started before birth and continued until they were about 2 years old. Some 2 to 3 percent of the male rats exposed to the radiation developed malignant gliomas, a deadly brain cancer, compared to none in a control group that received no radiation. Many epidemiologists see no overall rise in the incidence of gliomas in the human population. The study also found that about 5 to 7 percent of the male rats exposed to the highest level of radiation developed certain heart tumors, called malignant schwannomas, compared to none in the control group. Malignant schwannomas are similar to acoustic neuromas, benign tumors that can develop in people, in the nerve that connects the ear to the brain. The rats were exposed to radiation at a frequency of 900 megahertz typical of the second generation of cellphones that prevailed in the 1990s, when the study was first conceived. Current cellphones represent a fourth generation, known as 4G, and 5G phones are expected to debut around 2020. They employ much higher frequencies, and these radio waves are far less successful at penetrating the bodies of humans and rats, scientists say. In June, at a meeting of scientific counselors to the toxicology agency, Donald Stump, one of the members, worried that the study "will be vulnerable to criticism that it was conducted using outdated technology." The challenge, he added, is how to move forward with experiments that are large enough to be significant yet nimble enough t o keep pace with the rapidly evolving devices. The toxicology agency is building smaller exposure chambers that will let it evaluate newer technologies in weeks or months, instead of years. These future studies are to focus on measurable physical signs, or biomarkers, of potential effects from radio frequency radiation, including DNA damage, which can be detected much sooner than cancer. During a telephone news briefing on Wednesday, Dr. Bucher, the senior scientist at the toxicology agency, said evidence of DNA damage from the current study needed further examination. He said the overall findings of the study 384 pages devoted to rats, 260 to mice had been conveyed to the Federal Communications Commission and the Food and Drug Administration, which regulate cellphones and gauge any risks to human health. Dr. Bucher declined repeatedly to assess the hazard. In a statement, the director of the F.D.A.'s Center for Devices and Radiological Health said it disagreed with agency's finding of "clear evidence" for heart schwannomas, but raised no questions about its citing "some evidence" for the brain tumors. Asked about his own cellphone use, Dr. Bucher said he had never been a heavy user but, in light of the study, was now "a little more aware" of his usage. On long calls, he said, he tried to use earbuds or find other ways "of increasing the distance" between the cellphone and his body , in keeping with advice issued to consumers about how to lower their exposure.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Health
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When workers digging a trench outside the rug designer Luke Irwin's house (far left) in Wiltshire, England, discovered a preserved Roman mosaic, Mr. Irwin couldn't believe his good fortune. As he put it, "The chances of being a rug designer and finding a 2,000 year old floor design 20 yards from your front door have got to be about 20 billion to one." The excavation that resulted not only turned up evidence of an enormous Roman villa dating from A.D. 175 to 220, but also inspired Mr. Irwin's latest rug collection, Mosaic (near left). "I was so overwhelmed by the scale of the discovery and this elaborate and luxurious footprint from the past," Mr. Irwin said, but he was nevertheless determined not to simply copy the Roman design. "What was vital was that we used the inspiration of the mosaic as the backdrop, but that the design and color was relevant to 21st century aesthetics." So while the rugs' texture is reminiscent of a mosaic tile floor, the designs range from orderly geometric patterns to painterly washes of color that look as if they've been eroded over time.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Style
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Bird migrations have stumped the greatest minds for thousands of years. Aristotle thought that the robins living in Greece in the winter somehow turned into redstarts in the summer. In fact, robins migrate from Greece to Northern Europe around the time redstarts arrive from Africa. Scientists have gotten a much better understanding of bird migration in recent centuries, but there's a tremendous amount they have yet to learn. After tracking more than three dozen birds with sensors for thousands of miles, a team of researchers reported on Wednesday that their migration defied the expected course. Instead of simply flying straight from their summer grounds in Denmark to their winter site in Africa, the birds stretched out their journey, stopping at several places along the way for weeks at a time. "It's more of a nomadic life," said Kasper Thorup, a bird migration expert at the University of Copenhagen and co author of the new study. "They hardly have a place to call home." The journey was exquisitely well timed to coincide with high levels of vegetation at each site, he and his colleagues found. These habits, honed by thousands of years of evolution, probably helped them enjoy a good diet of insects on their trip. This may be a common strategy among the world's migratory birds, but Dr. Thorup and his colleagues warn that it may be threatened by climate change. Previous generations of researchers could rely only on indirect clues to the travels of birds. Traditionally, ornithologists caught a bird at its summer breeding grounds, put an identifying band on its leg, and then waited for someone to spot it wherever it ended up for the winter. Such studies said little about where the birds went between points A and B. Today's migration researchers are finally filling in some of those gaps. Some are analyzing millions of crowdsourced bird sightings. Others are fitting birds with miniature tracking devices. "We have all these resources coming online, and so we can replace speculation with observation," said Frank A. La Sorte, a research associate at the Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology. In 2002, the Cornell lab started a program called eBird with the Audubon Society. Amateurs fill out an online form each time they go birding, noting all the species they spot. Dr. La Sorte and his colleagues analyze the records, tracking a number of migratory birds that travel through North America each year. The researchers have found that birds migrate in loops, rather than follow a straight line north and south. In summer, birds heading to eastern North America, for instance, catch tailwinds that help them get over the Gulf of Mexico. The birds end up drifting to the west, but they still save energy despite the longer route. On the way back south, though, they take a more direct path across the Gulf. In western North America, food plays a big part in the migration loop. Birds fly at night and then land to feed on insects during the day. In the spring, their routes take them to places where plants have put on a lot of growth. That's probably also where the birds can find insect larvae to eat. While eBird gives Dr. La Sorte information about millions of birds, it can show him only what birders are seeing. Other researchers are suiting up small squadrons of birds with tracking devices to follow them through their entire migrations. For the new study, published in the journal Science Advances, Dr. Thorup and his colleagues put lightweight devices on common cuckoos. As the birds migrated between Denmark and Central Africa, they sent signals to satellites showing their location. The researchers also tracked two smaller migratory species traveling from Denmark to sub Saharan Africa: thrush nightingales and red backed shrikes. These birds are too small to carry the weight of satellite transmitters, so Dr. Thorup and his colleagues fitted them with even tinier devices called geo locators. These sensors record only sunlight levels throughout each day. When the birds returned to Denmark, the scientists recovered the geo locators and used each day's data to plot the birds' routes. Studying 38 birds in total, the scientists found the animals didn't move directly from their summer grounds to their winter grounds. Instead, the birds would fly for a few days, stop somewhere for a few weeks, and then move on again. Red backed shrikes, for example, leave Denmark and reach southeast Europe in August. In October, they go to East Africa. By December, they're in southern Africa. And in April, they're back in East Africa again. Throughout their journey, the scientists found, the three species timed their flights so that they reached feeding grounds once they were abundant with vegetation. Dr. Thorup suspects that the birds are able to make meals of local insect larvae feeding on the plants. The new data show that even though the birds ended up in the same places in Africa, they sometimes followed different routes. Dr. La Sorte and his colleagues have found similar flexibility in North American birds, which often adjust their route and speed when over the Gulf of Mexico or the Atlantic Ocean, perhaps to cope with changing weather conditions. It's possible that birds somehow combine short range flexibility with a navigation system, hard wired into the brain, that guides them to the places where they can find the most food to eat. "You don't cross the Sahara without knowing it's good on the other side," said Dr. Thorup. That strategy works well when birds can be sure to find food at the same place at the same time each year. But climate change is altering the calculus. In Northern Europe and North America, for example, plants are greening up earlier in the spring. In Africa, rainfall patterns are shifting, changing the times at which plants put on new leaves and fruit.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Science
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On Twitter this week, a scientist at West Virginia University shared his latest experiment: Sugar coated marshmallow bunnies inoculated with a dozen kinds of fungi, and thousands of people are eager to see the results. Welcome to the weird world of fungalpeeps in which Matthew Kasson, the mycologist at West Virginia University and the fun guy behind this experiment, is studying whether common fungi can survive, and potentially thrive, under extreme conditions like the sugary, chemically preserved, water deprived bellies of marshmallow peeps. He hopes to show how a simple, silly experiment can illuminate the basics of studying fungal biology and ecology. "Given it's the holiday season of which peeps are apart of I thought it would be interesting to see if fungi could colonize these things that have a long shelf life," Dr. Kasson said. Like the Science Times page on Facebook. Sign up for the Science Times newsletter. For decades, researchers have lured people to science with sugary treats. Back in 1995, Rice University students conducted "tests with inorganic noxious cakes in extreme situations." They called it the "T.w.i.n.k.i.e.s. Project." And not long after, on the "voyage of the Peep o nauts," NASA sent two teams of peeps to the stratosphere in weather balloons. Later, more scientists worked to characterize the chemical and behavioral properties of peeps. Peeps are a good substrate for fungal research because they contain sugar and corn syrup, which some fungi love. But they also contain potassium sorbate, a preservative that prolongs shelf life and prohibits the growth of many molds and yeasts. So Dr. Kasson bought two packages of yellow and pink peeps (with personal funds) and brought them to his lab. He selected fungi from a stock of cultures he was growing for his daily work investigating their roles in forest pathology. The dozen candidates included fungi common in forests that love sugar, degrade wood, cause diseases in trees or are related to penicillin, which seems to tolerate potassium sorbate. Which would tolerate this environment? Would any thrive? With sterile scalpel blades, he sliced a single vertical incision in each bunny's belly and inserted fungal samples. He repeated this for all 12 fungi in pink and yellow peeps. Twenty four hours later, he added a drop of sterile water "directly into the incision wounds" of a random set of peeps to assist colonization. As of now, the fungal plug recipients are being kept in sterile containers and monitored daily. After two weeks, Dr. Kasson will bisect the subjects to search for signs of growth, like mycelium or spores. When the experiment ends, he will isolate anything that took root, or try regrowing the fungal bits he put into the peeps in a regular medium to demonstrate that the candy didn't kill it. "We will then autoclave them with the rest of the hazardous material," Dr. Kasson said. "There will be no consumption." While this fungal candy transplant may seem kooky, pitting a microbe against environmental forces in a growth medium is the same process he and other microbiologists use to examine a microbe's function and its preferred environment. After just three days, Dr. Kasson has noticed that Penicillium is starting to colonize the peeps. He should know about the others by Easter, April 21, he says. "I had an inclination that people would get a laugh out of this, but I wouldn't imagine that it'd have so many likes and retweets and engagements. It's probably my most popular tweet ever," Dr. Kasson said. Whatever the results, experiments like Dr. Kasson's pull us in, even if just for fun. "It might seem like, "Oh, you're doing that deliberately to get clicks or something'. But that's the point. If what we're doing on social media never connects with the general public, then why are we on there?"
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Science
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For television viewers, the holiday season means commercials filled with rosy cheeked Santas, computer generated polar bears and brand new cars festooned with big red bows. This time around, at the close of a hard year, the annual advertising blitz includes stark reminders of the coronavirus pandemic mixed into the usual images of shopping sprees and festive cheer. "Let's deck the halls over video calls," says the narrator of a Christmas themed Walmart commercial that shows a variety of people in protective masks. A Heineken commercial in a similar vein ends with a tagline that gently acknowledges the challenges of celebrating in 2020: "Happy Holidays. SocializeResponsibly." A melancholy commercial for Chick fil A follows a family of four into the main square of an almost deserted town, where an old timer is having trouble getting the holiday lights to come on. "Seems like everything's off this year," says the mom. The United States Postal Service, perhaps in need of some good publicity after President Trump repeatedly attacked it during a bruising campaign, has released a commercial set to a super slow rendition of "I'll Be Home for Christmas" that shows mail carriers, many of them wearing masks, heroically delivering letters and packages through rain, sleet and snow. A holiday tear jerker from the Texas supermarket chain HEB lingers on a visit between a young girl and her grandmother that takes place on either side of a glass door. In a montage sequence of people doing good deeds, the commercial also shows family members preparing boxed meals for nurses and doctors. "When Texans help Texans, we all shine," the narrator says. After more than 270,000 Americans have died of Covid 19, and many millions have lost their jobs or found themselves working from home as a result of the pandemic, companies would risk seeming out of touch if they put out commercials that were all sleigh bells and ho ho hos, marketing executives said. "Our marketing has tried to be respectful and empathetic to what's going to be a more challenging holiday season," Brad Hiranaga, the chief brand officer for General Mills in North America, said in an interview. "Covid has forced us to shift focus to delivering value to consumers. And showing things that are the opposite of the world they're living in does not do that." A few companies have turned to nostalgia, as if hoping to hit delete on 2020. Aldi makes reference to decades old movies like "E.T." and "Home Alone" in a seasonal marketing campaign, and a Gucci commercial shows a holiday party set during the 1990s. Hershey produced an altered version of its popular holiday ad, which since 1989 had featured a ting a ling bell choir of Hershey's Kisses. The changes it made to the commercial like the addition of actors drew the ire of fans who are seemingly weary of the many disruptions to their lives. The company quickly promised to continue airing the ad in its original version. At time of high unemployment, Target has put an emphasis on affordability, said James Fraser, the head of strategy for the New York agency Mother, which works with the company. "The balance we've been trying to manage is how to acknowledge the realities and challenges of Covid without stripping away the magic of the season," he said. "How do you maintain that the holidays are a time of togetherness and joy, an opportunity to take a breather from the realities of the day to day, without being tone deaf?" The pandemic caused 63 billion in spending to disappear from the global advertising market this year, according to the WARC research group. Since the crisis became a fact of American life in March, ad makers have had to revise their strategies on the fly. "In the beginning, everyone wanted to show, 'Hey, we get it,'" Mr. Fraser said. "But in the summer, there was a shift toward pretending that nothing was happening. Now, most brands have reached an acceptance of the new normal, the limitations on our lives, while still presenting a picture of hope."
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Media
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In February, World View Enterprises collaborated with Ball Aerospace on a balloon test flight that collected images from the atmosphere. This month, the same vehicle is to carry a KFC chicken sandwich on a four day demonstration flight. An Arizona company, World View Enterprises, plans to send tourists on balloons into the stratosphere, high enough to see the curves of Earth and the blackness of space. But its initial passenger will be a tangy fried chicken sandwich. The company said on Tuesday that the first flight of a fully equipped high flying balloon would take off as soon as June 21, with a payload of fast food. Perhaps you've seen the KFC television commercial where Colonel Sanders, (played by the actor Rob Lowe), riffs on John F. Kennedy's 1962 "We choose to go to the moon" speech. The Zinger, a spicy fried chicken sandwich that's hand breaded, with mayo and lettuce, isn't new, but until this spring it wasn't sold in the United States. Created in 1984 for restaurants in Trinidad and Tobago, it is now sold in more than 120 countries. George Felix, KFC's director of advertising, said the concept of the marketing campaign was the dual launch on the ground in the United States and to the stratosphere. The agency in charge of the campaign, Wieden Kennedy, approached World View to help send the sandwich up. "As you can imagine, when we first heard about it, we laughed our heads off," said Jane Poynter, World View's chief executive. "And when we picked ourselves off the floor, we actually thought it was really, really cool." World View was finishing up development of balloons it calls stratollites a mash up of stratosphere and satellites and while a stratollite will not reach the 62 mile high threshold regarded as the edge of space, it is also much cheaper than a sending a rocket to orbit. KFC signed up to take part in the demonstration flight, which will test the full complement of technologies, including solar panels to generate power and the navigational technology that will tap into prevailing winds to steer to any part of the world and then hover over a particular spot. "It's really a shakedown cruise," Ms. Poynter said. If all goes according to plan, the balloon will stay aloft for at least four days. Earlier stratollite flights, testing various components, were in the air for less than a day. Ultimately, stratollites could prove a boon to atmospheric and astronomical research, serving as platforms for long term observations. Downward looking radar could provide data to generate earlier and more precise storm warnings. Other stratollites could serve as internet relays over remote parts of the world. Kenneth Howard, a research meteorologist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, said that although computer models that predict hurricanes and tornadoes have improved, "they're data starved." Ground based weather radar is blocked by mountains. The curvature of the Earth limits the area that a radar station can monitor. And there is no radar coverage at all for weather over vast stretches of the oceans. Mr. Howard envisioned stratollites loitering over Tornado Alley, the slice of the Central United States where the storms strike most often. Weather models can point out two or three days in advance where storms could spawn tornadoes. A stratollite could then be sent to that location to quickly spot tornadoes as they begin to spin and perhaps give people a half hour or more of warning to seek shelter. (Current warning times are less than 10 minutes on average, Mr. Howard said.) Mr. Howard said the agency hoped to fly several demonstrations of radar and other weather instruments on World View stratollites in the coming year. Weather forecasting and the other robotic uses of stratollites weren't part of World View's original business plan. Tourism was. Companies like Blue Origin, founded by Jeffrey P. Bezos, and Virgin Galactic, founded by Richard Branson, are promising rides all the way to space inside rocket powered vehicles, offering a few minutes of exhilaration and weightlessness in what are essentially supersize roller coaster rides. Ms. Poynter and Taber MacCallum, World View's chief technical officer, had also worked on the balloon and craft that lifted Alan Eustace, a Google executive with an adventurous bent, to near the top of the stratosphere for a record setting parachute dive in 2014. Ms. Poynter and Mr. MacCallum, who are married, figured there could also be a market for tourism rides that might not go as high as Blue Origin's or Virgin Galactic's but that would last much longer while offering a similar view of Earth. A much larger balloon would lift a spacious cabin to the stratosphere. During a gentle flight lasting five or six hours, six passengers could walk around and gaze out the windows at the Earth below. That plan is still in progress. Although the company is not saying when it hopes trips with paying passengers would begin, World View is taking reservations at 75,000 per person. A test flight with a full size simulator of the cabin is scheduled for later this year. Along the way, the company discovered a market beyond tourists. "People kept calling. 'Could you fly this payload?'" Mr. MacCallum said. "NASA gave us a contract to fly payloads. And then other folks called and said, 'Could you fly a radar? Or could you do this?' All these ideas started coming in, and we were just like, in the beginning, kind of flat footed about this." World View added stratollites to its business portfolio. It plans as many as 12 stratollite flights this year. First up is the chicken sandwich mission. People will be able to watch the stratollite launch at kfcin.space, a web address that expands into yesweareactuallysendingachickensandwichto.space. KFC plans several promotional events during the four day trip, including dropping a single coupon for someone to find on the ground. Given that it is a first flight of the full stratollite system, KFC planned, as NASA would, for what it would do in case something went wrong. "It's a real space mission," laughed Mr. Felix of KFC. "We've got a lot of different contingencies. We know there are a lot of things out of our control." For Ms. Poynter, the trip will provide a way to show new, cheaper routes to space and not quite space. "If you fly a chicken sandwich to space, why can't you fly anything?" she said. "You're really showing how you can make space accessible to almost anyone at almost anytime for almost anything."
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Science
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TEL AVIV The day he turned 30, Shamel Pitts put on a show. The setting was his apartment in the American Colony of Tel Aviv, a quiet neighborhood of New England style clapboard homes. Mr. Pitts, a Brooklyn native who for six years had been dancing with the Batsheva Dance Company, Israel's premier dance troupe, had recently been spending his free time in his black painted spare room, undulating and contorting his long body to the sound of a spoken word audio track he had created from his own poetry and other writing. So on his birthday, in February 2015, he invited 30 close friends to that room to witness the performance, which he called "Blackbox" and which lasted, fittingly, exactly 30 minutes. That show, in which Mr. Pitts used movement and words to discuss his blackness, his outsider identity and his tangled relationship with his past and present, has since evolved into both a short film (released online) and a live solo show, which will premiere in the United States on Jan. 6 at the 14th Street Y in New York. This show "is moving things full circle," Mr. Pitts said over coffee near the Suzanne Dellal Dance Center, which houses Batsheva. "I mean, I say that Tel Aviv is my home because I grew up here" during "huge developmental years. But I'm from Brooklyn. So to leave Batsheva and go back to New York is a homecoming." During his time in Israel, Mr. Pitts has become accustomed to attracting attention. Tall and black, he is also fashion obsessed, as was evident when he arrived at our interview in a fur trimmed cape, platform sneakers and a wool fedora. Even in open minded Tel Aviv, he is an anomaly. On one hand, Mr. Pitts, who is gay, has embraced his interloper status. "It's hard core because obviously I'm African American, like one out of one here," he said with a laugh. He rejects the self pity trope, insisting, "I enjoy being an outsider. It's also a joyful thing." On the other hand, the poetry that serves as a soundtrack to the film and live show speaks to a deep conflict with identity, to the loneliness and isolation that have come, as he writes, in a nod to Nina Simone, with "being young, gifted and black." Growing up in the Bedford Stuyvestant neighborhood of Brooklyn, he was teased for not being dark enough. But when he as admitted to the LaGuardia High School of Music and Performing Arts at 14, he had no professional training and was one of only a handful of black dancers. That pool grew even smaller as he went on to study at Juilliard and then began his career, in 2007, with Mikhail Baryshnikov's Hell's Kitchen Dancers and then with BJM Danse Montreal. During that time, Mr. Pitts wrote about his struggles, filling journals with his poetry and essays. Eventually, he started dancing to those words. Aviv Maaravi, a respected Israeli director of commercials, met Mr. Pitts soon after his arrival in Tel Aviv, when he was modeling for Mr. Maaravi's wife, Naomi, a fashion designer. The two men felt an immediate connection, despite their disparate backgrounds. Mr. Maaravi grew up in the Judean Desert near Mount Masada, the biblical fortress that was the site of the mass suicide of a band of Jewish rebels who chose to die rather than surrender to the Roman empire. His parents ran an overnight hostel for the tourists who came to scale the mountain, and there were no other children his age for miles. As he sat in the audience on Mr. Pitts's 30th birthday, Mr. Maaravi said, he was struck by Mr. Pitts's words. Lyrics such as "Childhood is such a strong memory/That we hope to flee it with integrity" resonated. He suddenly felt a need to turn the performance into a film, and shoot it on location at his childhood home, to which he hadn't returned in 20 years. "The show caught me and brought me back to my childhood, to things that no therapy I have ever done over the years has brought me to," Mr. Maaravi said. "We are two people who met in Tel Aviv from different cultures, two people of different colors, and he told me something that night that I have been feeling for years." At the end of 2015, Mr. Maaravi and Mr. Pitts traveled together to the south of Israel, where a production team had created a mock "home" four disconnected walls sheathed in black nylon and filled with furniture in the same vast stretch of desert where Mr. Maaravi had played alone as a child. To crank up the entire production team's emotions, Mr. Pitts and Mr. Maaravi were dropped off about half a mile from the site and had to hike, without directions or a map in the biting morning cold, in order to find the set. The results are intense. In the film, Mr. Pitts, covered in mud and clad in only a loincloth, is a lean, rippling instrument of sinew and layered muscle. His blackness isn't just obvious, it's aggressive; through Mr. Maaravi's lens, he is the modern embodiment of generations of idealized black bodies. Mr. Pitts hopes that audiences who see the film will also see the live show, because it is on stage, accompanied by his lighting director, Tom Love, where he feels he truly gets to play with the concept of blackness." "The show itself has very dark lighting, and the only light source is a projector projecting black light," Mr. Pitts said. "This is also something I'm trying to share that there are so many shades of black" and "so many shades of blackness." Last July, itching for more creative control over his art, Mr. Pitts resigned from Batsheva and began traveling the world as a teacher of Gaga, the movement language developed by the Batsheva artistic director, Ohad Naharin. When the lease on his Tel Aviv apartment expires, he plans to pack up for good. He will continue touring with the "Blackbox" live show around the United States and South America, and for the first time in nearly a decade, he will not have a permanent base. The film's final image shows Mr. Pitts running into the golden desert but turning briefly to look back. It is almost precious in its symbolism. Nevertheless, Mr. Pitts said, it represents him well at this point in his life. "It's a work about how to be brave and how to live inside of our own parameters and then eventually break it all down," he said. "It's a dark work, but it's also filled with light."
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Dance
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New York City Ballet is set to resume live performances in 2021, but not until the fall. On Friday the company announced the cancellation of its winter and spring seasons and shared its plans to return to the David H. Koch Theater in September with a robust slate of programming that includes the debuts of new work by Sidra Bell and Andrea Miller. The company also announced that three principals, Maria Kowroski, Ask la Cour and Gonzalo Garcia, would be retiring during the 2021 22 engagements. "We're deeply sad and we're disappointed that we have to keep ourselves off the stage for this much longer," Jonathan Stafford, the company's artistic director, said in an interview. "Live performance is why we do what we do, to be in front of an audience with an orchestra behind us playing beautiful music." City Ballet is not the first major performing arts organization in New York to extend its shutdown deep into next year. Broadway theaters will remain closed until at least May 2021 and the Metropolitan Opera isn't planning to return to Lincoln Center until September.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Dance
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Imagine that cities and states were considered an industrial sector, like automobiles or airlines. Collectively, they employ about 23 million essential workers like teachers, police officers and firefighters. They contribute over 3 trillion to the nation's gross domestic product. Now imagine that one of the most important industry players was New York City, which employs about 325,000 workers. They, along with the city's 3.5 million private sector workers in finance, entertainment, communications and other industries, add 1 trillion annually to the country's gross domestic product. Would the federal government allow such an enormous industry to fail? There is a realistic risk that this might happen, not just for New York but for states and other cities across the country. Because of the pandemic, these local economies are cratering. Estimates of total revenue losses from 2020 to 2022 for states and cities range from 400 billion to 1 trillion. There is no magic solution to these financial problems. Without federal help, states and cities must cut essential workers and put off equally essential infrastructure projects. Even then, they must take on debilitating debt that will need to be repaid even as they try to recover. Or worse, some cities may be forced to declare bankruptcy. President elect Biden had the right idea when he said on Monday that any relief package must include aid for cities and states. So far, though, the federal government has not come to an agreement to this coming catastrophe. Congress addressed the immediate impact of the pandemic in March with the 2.2 trillion CARES Act, but further action has not been forthcoming. While the House passed the Heroes Act, which offered almost 1 trillion in aid to state and local governments, the Senate failed to act on it, offering a paltry substitute instead. Worse, President Trump and Senator Mitch McConnell, the Senate majority leader, have seen the crisis through a partisan lens. The president said in May that the revenue shortfall was a blue state problem caused by liberal politicians, even though red states are also in trouble. In April, Senator McConnell said states should consider filing for bankruptcy as a solution. Apparently he has never read the Constitution, which does not permit states to avail themselves of the bankruptcy laws. The Federal Reserve Board tried to help by creating an emergency loan program, the Municipal Liquidity Facility, which buys state and local bonds. But this program, which expires at the end of the year, has not been widely popular because it charges an above market interest rate and the loans must be repaid in no more than three years. President elect Biden must address this crisis, as urgently as he has addressed the pandemic. He could start by appointing a task force that should begin by understanding the scale of the problem over the next five years. The task force should then review what conditions should be imposed on state and municipal governments receiving new federal aid, particularly with respect to the uses of this new money. President elect Biden should also consider reinstating former President Obama's Build America Bonds program, which from 2009 to 2010, during the financial crisis, covered part of the interest paid by states and municipalities on more than 181 billion that they borrowed to fund necessary infrastructure. Today there can be no solution without focusing on New York City, not just because of its size but because of its centrality to the nation's economy. New York is the center of finance, entertainment and communications, and if it is seriously encumbered, the entire country is put at risk. New York faces huge losses in income and sales taxes. And in the long term, New York will contend with decreasing revenue from property taxes, which is expected to constitute one third of New York's revenues. Huge numbers of commercial and residential tenants are either not paying rent at all or are paying reduced amounts. That means, the city will be inundated with applications to reduce the assessed value of properties. There is also the substantial risk that businesses and high income individuals will decamp from New York to low tax states, in part because Republicans added to their tax burden by capping federal deductions for state and local taxes. New York State isn't in position to help, given its own rapidly growing debt. In fact, there will surely be reductions in state aid or a reallocation of Medicaid funding. Without help, New York faces an uncertain future. One of the most immediate risks is the public transportation system, without which the city cannot function. Right now, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority's subway system is operating at 30 percent of capacity, not nearly enough to cover expenses. The agency will borrow about 3 billion from the Federal Reserve. That loan would be due in three years and is practically unpayable. This crisis has played out before. In 1975, when New York City was at the brink of bankruptcy, President Gerald Ford turned down Gov. Hugh Carey's request for federal aid.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Opinion
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The choreographer Christopher Williams's works are a bit like a cabinet of curiosities. They reflect his fascination with very old stories, particularly ones that include mythological beings and magical transformations. He has made phantasmagorical dances inspired by the lives and violent deaths of the early saints, by Greek mythology and by Scottish fairy tales, among other wild tales. To say he is an artist of peculiar obsessions is an understatement. The thing is, he believes that these stories have much to tell us about our relation to worlds unknown and to our prehistory. "They have this primal drama we can all relate to," Mr. Williams said recently over vegetarian borscht at an East Village cafe near St. Mark's Church, where his newest work, "Il Giardino d'Amore," will have its premiere this week. "We're all beings that experience things in a similar way because of our evolutionary history." For Mr. Williams, 41, dance wordless and based in the body is the logical medium for telling these stories; as he sees it, dance is "a ritual we use to tell our mythology." A ritual that he reinforces by dressing his dancers in fantastical designs, usually involving sculptural adornments that make them look not quite human. The focus on visual detail (and on musicality) gives his stagings an air of sumptuousness. That he constructs such illusions within the financial constraints and pared down aesthetics of the avant garde dance scene makes him an anomaly. His dances can feel closer to those of Mark Morris, say, than to some of his contemporaries. But the craftsmanlike aspect of his work makes more sense when you learn that, besides being a dancer and choreographer, he is a serious puppeteer, used to making things with his hands. (He has collaborated for years with Basil Twist.)
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Dance
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When Mercedes takes the stage in thigh high vinyl boots and a matching red G string, dollars rain down. She struts, she writhes, she flies around the pole, whipping her hair in time to the music. Then the music fades and the crowd quiets and all you can hear are Mercedes's groans and hard breaths and the creak of vinyl against the pole, chafing the legs beneath. It's a scene from the first episode of "P Valley," a new drama that premieres Sunday on Starz. Set in and around the Pynk, a shake joint deep down in Mississippi's "Dirty Delta," and centering on its crew of dancers, most of them Black women, the series makes the argument as bold as it is obvious that sex work is work. "People have to eat," the "P Valley" showrunner and creator, Katori Hall, said. "People have to shelter themselves. And so, for me, the major political act of the show is saying that women's choices, women's lives, all women's lives, are worthy of being excavated." Prestige television hasn't averted its eyes from sex work, though where those eyes land can be a problem. Many shows have treated dancers and prostitutes as little more than set dressing. Think of the Bada Bing ladies of "The Sopranos," or many of the brothel girls of "Deadwood." The wriggling courtesans of "Game of Thrones" were deployed so cavalierly, they inspired the term "sexposition" (when naked frolicking livens up an otherwise dull bit of exposition). Topless, bottomless or bikini, exotic dance remains a cultural flash point, with the question of whether it exploits or empowers women unresolved. It exists at an intersection of theater, athleticism, circus, sex and glamour. "When you see a stripper perform, there's something about it that's just spectacular, the female body moving live in this way," said Rachel Shteir, a theater professor and the author of "Striptease: The Untold History of the Girlie Show." Hall, 39, an actor and playwright by training whose work typically centers Black bodies, grew up in Memphis, Tenn. She experienced strip clubs as part of the cultural fabric, venues for birthday parties, bridal showers, baby showers. A decade or so ago, after pole fitness classes had begun cropping up at gyms and dance studios, she decided to try one. "It's hard as hell," she said. "I actually remember having to leave the class because I got so nauseated." Which made her curious about the women who danced professionally. So she met them. Over the next six years, she visited strip clubs throughout the American South and along each coast, interviewing more than 40 women. She spent her 30th birthday in the locker room at the Bronx's Sin City. In the Black clubs in the South, she marveled at the theatricality of the shows. "I was like, I can use theater to be able to comment on and excavate this world," she said. The resulting play, which has a title very like "P Valley" but a little more explicit, premiered at the Mixed Blood Theater in Minneapolis in 2015. Reviewers liked it The Star Tribune called it a "daringly raw and raucous drama" but most of them had the same criticism, a criticism Hall shared. The play was too big, too diffuse. "I was like, 'Oh my God, this is not a play, girl, this is a TV show,'" Hall said. Starz greenlit the series, and although Hall hadn't had much TV experience one unspectacular season as a staff writer on TNT's short lived crime drama "Legends" the network approved her as its showrunner. Susan Lewis, the senior vice president of original programming at Starz, didn't want another show that used dancers as props. "Working with somebody who really understands the world and really had a great respect for the women doing the work was the right way to go," she said. Despite a few uncomfortable early conversations when executives (not Lewis) suggested less nudity "Nobody would want to go to that strip club!" Hall said Starz endorsed Hall's vision for the series and her intention to hire women, particularly women of color, as directors. "They understood that the show was going to need a sense of wildness, and a sense of authenticity," Hall said. "P Valley" follows Autumn (Elarica Johnson), a new dancer with a dark past, and Mercedes (Brandee Evans), the club queen bee now nearing retirement. If the show stalks them and their co workers onstage and in and out of the various V.I.P. rooms, it spends just as much time with them as they move, in unglamorous street clothes, from locker room to church to diner to home. Nudity is frequent, but it's typically brief, with the camera lens sliding off the women's bodies as though it has been baby oiled. The production favors what Hall calls a "Delta Noir" aesthetic, saturated colors and lots of shadows, leaving anatomy to the imagination. Hall noted a tradition of hypersexualized Black women in music videos and on film. She wanted to break with it. "We could appreciate, and we did appreciate women's bodies," Hall said. "But we always wanted to make sure that she was more than just her body, more than just her curves." Nancy Schreiber, a cinematographer who shot half of the episodes, used music video techniques for the club scenes Steadicams, crane shots, long lenses. But she was adamant that the camera shouldn't exploit or particularize certain body parts. Reviewing dailies for an episode she didn't shoot, she noticed a scene in which the camera lingered too long on a nude dancer. The scene was reshot. "We were very careful in having our operators pan off after the suggestion of nudity," she said. Preparing the dance scenes and the sex scenes required constant conversation, which began in the audition room. "I wanted to make sure that everyone was good with it, that they were on board for what was going to be a very honest experience and very raw," Hall said. The show hired intimacy coordinators, carefully choreographed each movement and checked in with the actors frequently about what was and wasn't OK, allowing changes up to the minute. While the other principal actresses relied mostly on body doubles for the dance sequences, Evans, a trained dancer, insisted on learning pole dancing and doing many of her own stunts. (Doubles still performed her character's riskier maneuvers.) "Oh girl," she said, as she counted the scars on her legs, "1 2 3 4 5. Yeah, I'm scarred up and I'll be dropping that behind the scenes footage for y'all. But it's worth it. I look at it and smile. I'm not even mad about it because I wanted to know what these ladies truly did." These women, she added, are athletes. And when you see the dancers winging around the pole, sliding, skimming, plummeting, holding their bodies parallel to the floor in a display of core strength that should make your stomach muscles burn vicariously, it would be hard to argue anything else. But "P Valley" maintains a careful ambivalence about the club itself, which Hall describes as a place of both liberation and exploitation. On the one hand, exotic dancing allows for a display of athleticism and artistry. If you don't have a college degree, it pays better than almost anything else. "You surely ain't going to stack a G in one night slinging burgers or manning the layaway over at Marshall's," Uncle Clifford (Nicco Annan), the club's gender fluid mama bear tells a dancer. On the other, several of the "P Valley" dancers have suffered abuse, which doesn't seem incidental. Others are struggling with addiction. Customers are jerks. Degradation is a given. In the show, as in the real world, if women have a decent exit strategy from exotic dance, many of them will take it. Which suggests the Pynk as a place of survival, not empowerment. And yet, onstage, under the pink LEDs, the dancers spellbind. "P Valley" arrives when Hollywood has begun to rethink the stories it tells and who gets to tell them. The show's characters are mostly Black, mostly women, mostly sex workers and mostly working class, a demographic typically underrepresented or misrepresented onscreen. Which makes the show both a course correction and a test case for how much audiences will identify with characters typically dismissed and dehumanized. "We're uplifting these women and giving them power by telling their stories," Hall said. "Because narrative is power, story is power in this world. And everyone I will say this, everyone deserves their story to be told."
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Television
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The United States government has decided to bar Americans from visiting North Korea, the first time in years that the State Department has moved to block travel to another country. The restriction comes amid rising tensions between the United States and North Korea, which has been testing intercontinental ballistic missiles and threatened to attack the United States with nuclear weapons. The ban also follows the death in June of Otto F. Warmbier, the University of Virginia student who was convicted of trying to steal a political propaganda poster from his hotel in Pyongyang. This is the first time in more than a decade that the State Department has taken such strong measures. It was in the early 1990s during Saddam Hussein's regime that travel to Iraq was restricted. "Due to mounting concerns over the serious risk of arrest and long term detention, the department will soon impose a travel restriction on all U.S. nationals' use of a passport to travel in, through or to North Korea," Susan A. Thornton, the acting assistant secretary of the Bureau of East Asian and Pacific Affairs, said in a statement on July 25. United States passports will be invalid for travel to North Korea beginning Sept. 1. "We seek to prevent the future detentions of U.S. citizens by the North Korean regime to avoid another tragedy like that which Otto Warmbier and his family endured." Heather Nauert, a State Department spokeswoman, emphasized the dangers of traveling to North Korea during a news briefing. "I saw in one major newspaper today where people were talking about, oh, there are neat experiences in North Korea, which makes it sound like it's a fantastic place to go," Ms. Nauert said. "Let me use this as an opportunity to remind people: It is not safe for Americans to go to North Korea. Let me remind you, we still have Americans who are being detained in North Korea. We don't want to see any more people go to North Korea and be detained, and that is why we put that travel ban in place." There may be exceptions, though. For example, Ms. Nauert said journalists could apply to enter the country at the discretion of the State Department. For years, Americans have been free to travel to other countries, even places that are dangerous and war torn, including Afghanistan. Travel to Cuba, while at times limited to certain individuals or to those with special licenses, has been allowed since the late 1970s. Still, the North Korea ban is hardly the first time the United States has restricted travel to other countries. The State Department regularly issues strongly worded alerts and warnings to citizens about security threats throughout the world, posting them on its website and social media accounts, and making them available through email alerts. For instance, the department "warns U.S. citizens against all travel to Iraq" and that "U.S. citizens in Iraq are at high risk for kidnapping and terrorist violence." Even so, Americans can still travel there. The same has been true of North Korea. In May, the department warned Americans about the "serious risk of arrest and long term detention" in North Korea, yet it had not barred travel there. "This news has been expected but nevertheless is something of a shock, and we're sorry for anyone who had planned a trip or who had hoped to visit and who now will not be permitted to do so," Koryo Tours, one of several companies that offer tours to North Korea, said in a statement in anticipation of the ban. The company, which is based in Beijing, said that it will continue taking American citizens to other far flung destinations, including Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Mongolia and the Russian Far East. A handful of operators have led Americans on tours to North Korea, including Lupine Travel, which is based in Britain; Uri Tours, based in New Jersey; and Young Pioneer Tours, based in China. Young Pioneer, the company that took Mr. Warmbier to North Korea on a five day tour, advertised "budget travel to destinations your mother would rather you stayed away from." In January 2016, Mr. Warmbier was about to board a plane home when he was detained at the Pyongyang airport. He was convicted weeks later of trying to steal a propaganda poster and sentenced to 15 years of prison and hard labor. He was returned to the United States this year in a coma, and died on June 19. He was 22. Young Pioneer Tours said that Mr. Warmbier's death had led it to reconsider its position on accepting American tourists, and that it would no longer organize tours for American citizens to North Korea. "There had not been any previous detainment in North Korea that has ended with such tragic finality and we have been struggling to process the result," the company said in a statement. "Now, the assessment of risk for Americans visiting North Korea has become too high."
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Travel
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Each week, Kevin Roose, technology columnist at The New York Times, discusses developments in the tech industry, offering analysis and maybe a joke or two. Want this newsletter in your inbox? Sign up here. One perk or hazard, I suppose of being a technology writer for the past few years has been getting invited to ride in a bunch of autonomous vehicles. I've been shuttled around in nearly a dozen self driving prototypes, including a Ford in Michigan, an Uber in Pennsylvania and a Chrysler minivan in the California desert. Whenever anyone asks what it's like to ride in self driving cars, my reply is: "Which self driving cars?" Casual observers tend to talk about the progress of autonomous vehicles as if they're a homogeneous category, but there is an entire spectrum of capability and safety. I've had calm and boring drives, and terrifying white knuckle trips. The best results aren't always from the companies with the most money or the most sophisticated marketing campaigns. This week, the self driving car industry reached a turning point, one at which the mixed progress of self driving car projects became very clear. There was continued fallout from the fatal accident this month involving a self driving Uber vehicle in Arizona, including a blockbuster story from my colleague Dai Wakabayashi about Uber's struggles to get its self driving cars ready for the market. Since the crash, Arizona officials have ordered Uber to suspend its autonomous vehicle testing program in the state, and Uber is not renewing its permit to test self driving cars in California. In addition, Lior Ron, an executive who led Uber Freight and was involved in the company's early self driving efforts, is leaving the company. As Uber's autonomous driving program stalls out, Waymo the self driving car division of Alphabet, Google's parent company is shifting into overdrive. (Sorry about the car puns it's an occupational hazard.) The company announced this week that over the next two years it would order up to 20,000 electric vehicles from Jaguar Land Rover for use in its consumer self driving car service. As my colleague Neal Boudette noted, Waymo's announcement showed that the company has "an audacious vision that goes far beyond even the most optimistic plans of its rivals." Waymo says that by 2020 that is, two years from now its fleet of self driving Jaguars will be doing as many as a million trips per day. Self driving car companies are notorious for overhyping their progress. But the Waymo announcement, complete with specific timetables, cost projections and firm indicators of fleet size, is a really, really big deal. As Alexis Madrigal wrote in a piece for The Atlantic, if Waymo is within even 50 percent of a million daily rides in two years, "the United States will have entered an entirely new phase in robotics and technology." It's unclear if Uber's tragic accident in Arizona will have a broader effect on the autonomous vehicle industry. There could be a regulatory backlash that would hamper all self driving projects, regardless of progress. Manufacturers could decide to be extra cautious when it comes to rolling out their projects on public roads, in order to avoid a worst case scenario. But if Waymo's announcement is an indication of where the rest of the self driving car industry is heading, we shouldn't expect too much of a slowdown. Autonomous vehicle manufacturers believe, with reason, that keeping their test vehicles on the road is a public health issue. The sooner they get safe self driving cars to the masses, they say, the sooner we can avert some of the nearly 40,000 traffic deaths that happen in the United States every year. That means, unfortunately, that more accidents are inevitable and underscores the importance of creating a reliable standard to measure the technological progress of self driving car projects. But it also means that the self driving future could arrive, from Waymo or someone else, sooner than most people think. Kevin Roose writes a column called The Shift and is a writer at large for The New York Times Magazine. You can follow him on Twitter here: kevinroose.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Technology
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On a quiet stretch of the Upper East Side, at the slightly numinous, palindromic address of 17 East 71st Street, just down the block from the Frick Collection, a glass window displays a folding screen, a sculptural column and a single pair of women's shoes, composed with the painstaking precision of a Braque still life. A gallery? A furniture showroom? No. According to the small sign by the door, barely visible to passers by, it is the Row's first New York store, which opened discreetly last week. At the Row, Ashley and Mary Kate Olsen have made discretion, abstention and quiet the cardinal virtues. They generally abjure interviews and stage their collections in presentations in their tastefully designed showrooms or privately, for clients. Many of the women who buy their clothes, which are elegant and faintly monastic, are decades older than the designers, who are not yet 30. And many of them, they have said, are unaware of the Olsens' earlier fame. The label is celebrating its 10th anniversary this year (it has collected handfuls of industry awards along the way), but the New York store is only the Row's second, following one in Los Angeles. For the New York store, they wanted a townhouse, uptown, not on Madison but off Madison Avenue, a list that Mary Kate, dressed in a Row blazer and shirt over threadbare vintage jeans, ticked off from her perch on a sofa on the store's third floor. For the right space, a former Japanese tea shop and later denim store, they were prepared to wait.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Fashion & Style
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This review has drawn significant feedback. It has since been edited. Read our response here. You would think that a sexually polymorphous musical that combines a Renaissance pastoral romance with the songs of the 1980s California rock group the Go Go's would at the very least be a hoot, a show that could get sloppy drunk on its own outrageousness. Yet "Head Over Heels," which opened on Thursday night at the Hudson Theater, feels as timid and awkward as the new kid on the first day of school. Make that the new kid who longs to run with the wild crowd but can't quite commit to being as bad as coolness demands. Directed by Michael Mayer, who has been more than competent at the helm of Broadway rock musicals like "American Idiot" and "Hedwig and the Angry Inch," "Head Over Heels" lacks the courage of its contradictions. It mutters deferentially when what you want is a rebel yell. Paradox is at the heart of this production, which was conceived and originally written by Jeff Whitty ("Avenue Q"), then adapted by James Magruder (best known for his stage versions of literary classics). It was Mr. Whitty who had the idea of reimagining Philip Sidney's "The Arcadia," a 16th century fantasy of trouble in paradise, as a picturesque frame for the pop hits of the Go Go's. That all female band, as you may know (and if you don't, you are not this production's target audience), rode its rough edged combination of punk riotousness and surfer girl sunniness to the top of the pop charts in the early 1980s. Though many of their hits ponder the vagaries of love, they otherwise have little in common with an arcane literary universe that is usually the province of graduate students.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Theater
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Hank Azaria said he will no longer provide the voice on "The Simpsons" for the convenience store owner Apu Nahasapeemapetilon, whose thick accent and penny squeezing ways have led to criticism that the character was a racist stereotype. It was not clear what Mr. Azaria's decision, first reported on Friday by the website Slashfilm, meant for Apu, which Mr. Azaria had voiced since the character was created in 1990. The producers of "The Simpsons" and Fox, its network, would not comment on whether Apu would get a new voice or perhaps be retired from the show. In 2017, the comedian Hari Kondabolu's documentary "The Problem With Apu" forced Mr. Azaria, who is white, to reckon with his portrayal of the Kwik E Mart owner who speaks with a pronounced Indian accent. The film attempted to trace the origin story of Apu and put the character in a broader context of Hollywood depictions of Indians. In the documentary, Mr. Kondabolu, who is of South Asian descent, called Apu "a white guy doing an impression of a white guy making fun of my father." Others featured in the film recounted how the character Apu provided bullies with fodder when they were young.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Television
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When the model Grace Hartzel opened Tom Ford's spring 2017 show in a striking shag haircut, the inspiration was unmistakable at least to those over 40 who watched Mr. Ford's extravaganza. The hairdo paid homage to the one Jane Fonda made supercool as the Times Square hooker Bree Daniels in the 1971 movie "Klute." Alexander McQueen also cited Ms. Fonda as a motivating force of "Deliverance," his spring 2004 collection, which has gone down in fashion history for its dance presentation inspired by Ms. Fonda's performance in the 1969 drama "They Shoot Horses, Don't They?" In her late '60s heyday, Ms. Fonda played her fair share of down on her luck roles. Off screen, she was the ultrachic Paris wife of the director Roger Vadim, and was a front row fixture at shows staged by his friends Coco Chanel, Hubert de Givenchy and Yves Saint Laurent. Recently, speaking by phone from a film location in Colorado, Ms. Fonda, 78, firmly denied her style pedigree. "I am not a fashionista," she said. Ms. Fonda's political activism often overshadowed her status as a sartorial influencer. Highlighting it, however, is her collection of couture, Italian ready to wear and lavish screen costumes that will be auctioned on Friday at Julien's Auctions in Los Angeles. About five of the items are museum worthy. But when asked if she had considered donating an Atelier Versace gown, a Valentino something, even her stripy workout leotard to, perhaps, the Met Costume Institute, she offered an unyielding "No." Ms. Fonda is auctioning her possessions (698 items in all, mostly clothing) in a housecleaning exercise. "I had to do jobs to pay for my storage," she said of the units she had maintained since her 2001 divorce from the media mogul Ted Turner. "Because Ted did not like to carry a lot of luggage on his jet it was too burdensome I would have to buy things in bulk" for their travels to his many properties. Parting with mementos was tough yet ultimately worthwhile. "Lighter," she said of her sense of relief on clearing the space. Here, Ms. Fonda tells the stories behind some pieces going under the gavel. Ms. Fonda had just given birth to her daughter Vanessa Vadim, and during her pregnancy said she had grown horrified watching French television broadcasts of the attacks on North Vietnam. By the time of the Oscars Ms. Fonda was divorcing Mr. Vadim, and though she had hung on to her haute couture, she had exchanged her New Wave lifestyle for a self financed two year antiwar lecture tour across the United States. The Hollywood establishment feared she would use the Oscars as another stop on it. "I wanted to make a speech about Vietnam," Ms. Fonda admitted of the ceremony. Instead, she listened to her father, Henry Fonda, who advised her to refrain from politicking at the podium. "He said to me: 'Just say: 'There is a lot to be said. But tonight is not the time.' So I did. And I wore something that made a statement. It was not a time for showy dresses. It was a time for seriousness." Many of the pieces were selected for Ms. Fonda by Mr. Versace after they met in 1989. In the midst of divorcing her second husband, Tom Hayden, at the time, she had controversially acquired breast implants and was dating a 35 year old Italian soccer goalkeeper, Lorenzo Caccialanza. "I was in Italy with him, and I met Gianni then," Ms. Fonda recalled. "Gianni kind of took me under his wing. And whenever I would do a red carpet, he would supply my clothes. He gave me dresses, belts, gloves and shoes. He was very generous." Ms. Fonda sees no conflict between her political stances and her flaunting of Versace, a label that was often criticized for dressing supermodels in bondage numbers. "I used to think, 'I have to be very serious,'" she admitted. "But being a feminist is not about the antithesis of being sexy or looking good." As the daughter of a Golden Era Hollywood actor, Ms. Fonda likely noticed as his contemporaries, like Lauren Bacall and Audrey Hepburn, often walked off film sets with their wardrobes. The garments were made by skilled costume designers whose work was often on par with couturiers. Ms. Fonda continued the practice, and three dresses by the Oscar winning costume designer Ann Roth, which she wore in the 1981 film "Rollover," are up for grabs. "Rollover," a financial thriller, predated "Wall Street" and "The Big Short." But it flopped. "We couldn't get the script right," Ms. Fonda said. Although her life eventually reflected the part she had played a film star who "gave it all up" to become the wife of an industrialist she made good use of her glam wardrobe. A decade after making the movie, Ms. Fonda quit acting and donned the floor length lace "Rollover" gown to marry Mr. Turner. A sumptuous sequined velvet gown from the film went to the White House when Ms. Fonda accompanied him to a 1994 dinner for the Emperor and Empress of Japan. "I am very much in favor of wearing things more than once," Ms. Fonda said.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Fashion & Style
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AMSTERDAM Elisabeth Samson, an 18th century freeborn black woman, made millions as a coffee planter and exporter using slave labor in the Dutch colony of Suriname. She was one of the wealthiest women of the era, but few people have ever heard her story. That's why her image is one of 13 diverse portraits recently added to a collection of paintings of the city's wealthiest trade groups. Before the additions, the Portrait Gallery of the Golden Age, as it was known, was a sea of all white and mostly male faces. It resides in a wing of the Hermitage Museum in Amsterdam that houses part of the Amsterdam Museum's collection. Among the other new portraits in the display are Elieser, a young black Jewish man who served in the household of a Spanish poet merchant; and Sychnecta, a Native American man who was once displayed in an Amsterdam human zoo. Ms. Schavemaker used the show's opening to announce that the Amsterdam Museum will jettison the term "Golden Age" for the era in the 17th century when the Netherlands was a world leader in art, science and trade, because that term tells only half the story . "We believe that the Golden Age is, in a way, the story of the winners, and it hides the colonial past of the country," Ms. Schavemaker said in an interview. "It hides slavery, but also it covers up poverty more generally. Not everyone participated in the Golden Age, not at all." The announcement was immediately met with widespread condemnation, and the museum's social media feeds were flooded with negative comments. Prime Minister Mark Rutte of the Netherlands called the decision "nonsense" in a televised interview, and said he would keep using the label. Michel Rog, a member of Parliament with the Christian Democratic Appeal, said the museum's decision was "too ridiculous for words," according to the newspaper De Telegraaf. But it's clear that the tide has shifted in the Dutch museum world, and that leaders of several top cultural institutions are reviewing the familiar ways of communicating history to the public, and seeking alternatives. Many curators and scholars say those institutions have to overcome a colonial mind set . "Decolonizing" takes many forms. In Rotterdam, it means changing the name of a contemporary art center called Witte de With, because the Dutch naval officer whose name it bears was involved in colonial enterprises (his name, incidentally, translates to "whiter than white"); in The Hague, it comes about through research into the man behind the name of the Mauritshuis art museum, Johan Maurits, a Dutch governor of Brazil, who initiated the slave trade there; at the Van Loon Museum, the Nieuwe Kerk and the Rijksmuseum, it manifests in exhibitions that explore colonial histories and slavery. Pieter Emmer, a professor emeritus of colonial history at Leiden University cautioned that while expanding our perspectives on other aspects of history is important, we should not "throw out the baby with the bath water. Because that's what's happening now." "If you do away with these historic labels, the past becomes a kind of gray mud of indistinguishable facts and figures," he said. "You need to sometimes typify a period, even if historic labels cover only a part of historical reality," he added. "If you want to use terms like 'the Age of Poverty,' or 'the Age of Slavery,' or 'the Age of Disease,' that applies to all ages. That's not what makes the period stand out." Jorgen Tjon A. Fong, the curator of the "Dutch Masters Revisited" display at the Hermitage, said there's good reason to get rid of vague terms that only apply to select groups of people. "If you talk about the Golden Age, people think they know what that story is about," he said. "What we forget to tell is that it was only about 1 percent of society. People in Holland were stricken by poverty, there were internal wars going on, and on top of that there was slavery as well. The people in the Netherlands today are not just descendants of that 1 percent; they're descendants of the 99 percent as well." Using the more neutral term "17th century," he added, means "You can load it with new stories and new perspectives." Taco Dibbits, the director of the Rijksmuseum, said in an interview that the museum will keep using the term Golden Age, especially when it refers to 17th century Dutch painters represented by Rembrandt, Vermeer, Frans Hals and other old masters. But, he added, the museum "wants to give a more complete picture of history by adding other perspectives." The museum has recently changed some of the terms it uses, removing words such as "Negro" and "dwarf" from art works and their descriptions. More significantly, the museum is addressing the less golden aspects of Dutch history by putting together the major exhibition, "Slavery," set to open in September 2020. The show will center on the stories of 10 individuals, from enslaved people to boat builders and colonial governors, who played a role in the Dutch slave trade, and part of it will be incorporated into a permanent display at the Rijksmuseum when the exhibition closes. Admiral Witte de With was an officer with the Dutch East India Company, which was a key player in the slave trade, and his narrative tells part of that story. That's why the Rotterdam art center is not only changing its name, but engaging the local community in the process, as "part of making visible colonial legacies," according to Sofia Hernandez Chong Cuy, the museum's director. The art center was named in the 1980s, she pointed out, after the street where it's located, Witte de Withstraat, so that it could become a destination in a part of the old city center that didn't have much commerce. Today it is thriving, in part because the art center turned it into a cultural hub. "The name fulfilled its mission," Ms. Hernandez Chong Cuy said. "But our larger mission is to present art and theory, and if we are true to our mission and our values now, the name creates a number of obstacles for us to achieve our goals." The museum has invited a diverse group of young people to collaborate in the process of choosing a new name, she added, but renaming the whole institution will take time. So far, she said, the group has only renamed one exhibition space. The Mauritshuis in The Hague, home to a royal collection of 17th century Dutch and Flemish paintings, including Johannes Vermeer's "Girl With a Pearl Earring" and Carel Fabritius's "The Goldfinch," became the center of a media whirlwind early this year when it temporarily removed a bust of Maurits from its display.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Art & Design
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Staying creative during the pandemic means setting the scene for a cat, a baby, a garden ... or an Instagram account that makes Mom and Dad into art stars. Theater seats are empty, orchestra pits mute and the stages bare and undressed, or still wearing last season's fashions. Among those in the theater industry rocked by the pandemic are the scenic artists who create the environment and aesthetic that defines the works onstage. And though right now the shows can't go on, the designers still must, and many are finding innovative ways to stay busy. "We're artists, so we're used to using our hands and expressing ourselves," said the designer Anita La Scala. "It's interesting in a pandemic what can come out of that, creatively speaking, and I think everyone is being put to that test." Here's a look at what La Scala and some of her colleagues have been doing if not for money, then for an expressive outlet while the world is stalled. Before the pandemic, O'Cathain was working as a production design assistant at the National Theater in London, but since lockdown, she has been living with her parents in Dublin. Her portrait project began as a response to a tweet from the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam that called for art fans to recreate paintings from the museum's galleries. What she called a "five minute form of after dinner entertainment" became a larger series, and she was soon hooked. "Something about working with my parents to stage them and photograph them, and then sending it out to the audience I had gathered on social media started to feel a tiny bit like designing or making a performance for an audience," O'Cathain said. "There was an audience, there was creative content, and there was a response and thus a community." Using fabrics from her mother, who is a textile designer, and odds and ends from the house underwear, blankets, utensils, raincoats, bicycle helmets, yoga mats O'Cathain worked to select and resourcefully stage the artworks. Known for "Into the Breeches" (Alabama Shakespeare Festival); "A Doll's House, Part 2" (Repertory Theater of St. Louis); "The Winter's Tale" (Shakespeare Festival St. Louis) Before things shut down, Neale was at work on immersive theater projects in Chicago and Miami, while sheltering with his wife in the home they moved into about a year and a half ago. One home improvement idea came up quickly: the need for a cat door for their two feline companions, Ted and Rufus (named from the "Bill Ted" movies). Neale wanted to use his self described "wacky" style to create something novel. First thought: Western saloon. But swinging doors seemed as if they'd be an issue for the cats. His wife then suggested a stage instead, as an "homage" to his career. He ended up making the whole thing from scratch, using strips of basswood for the stage, clay cast paw prints for the filigree of the proscenium, and footlights made from casts of bottle caps, with working LED lights inside. Initial reviews from his stars were mixed. Ted, the more "sophisticated" of the two, freely wandered in and out, while Rufus was more reticent and confused. Not everyone, it seems, is born for the stage. Known for "Peter and the Starcatcher" and "Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson" on Broadway Werle was designing the world premiere of "Trevor: The Musical" at Stage 42 and teaching at New York University and Brooklyn College when the shutdown happened. She and her husband, Paul Jepson, a stagehand at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, have been living on what she is being paid for the one class she is teaching at Brooklyn College, as well as unemployment checks. Since both have been out of work, they turned to the yard of their house in Midwood, where they've been living since 2014. Werle, whose father is a landscape architect, began taking classes at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden in 2017 toward a certificate in horticulture. Thinking of how plants can become a part of storytelling, she and Jepson transformed the yard into a whimsical greenhouse teeming with hundreds of plants. Werle designed and painted and Jepson built and lit the structure. The eclectic plantings cucumbers, aloe, marigolds, sunflowers and tomatoes alongside eBay purchases and various props that Werle uses to "break down the boundaries of the garden spatially" is meant to create what she calls a "textured, layered feeling" similar to what she aims for onstage. In February, the married design team were in Belgium, preparing for the Australian tour of "Magic Mike Live," with the set builders in Europe. Returning home to New York City just before lockdown, the couple relocated to a family house in upstate New York with their baby, Emma, who was born in November. Work had stopped. Inspired by how Emma responded to the children's books they were reading to her, La Scala and Bissinger decided to create a whole nautical scene for their daughter. Bissinger transformed Emma's cradle, built by La Scala's father and passed on in the family, into the boat. She came up with the idea of using fabric and beads left over from shows they were working on that were paused or canceled to make the clouds and rest of the backdrop. La Scala said that the project reflects their design approach, showcasing a number of elements and fine tuning from there. "We respond to the story, right?" Bissinger said. "And in this case, the story is Emma." He added: "She's a little baby who really appreciates bright colors, patterns and textures that are soft. So we're kind of responding to her in the same way that we would respond to a play or a show." Puppet and scenic designer (also actor, director and playwright) Known for "Hercules" (Delacorte Theater); "The Woodsman" (New World Stages) Raised on comic books and the 1990s "Batman" and "X Men" animated series, Ortiz has been recreating characters from his youth and for him, it's the villains that hold the most appeal. "I never wasted my time in thinking I was Batman," he said. "I was like, no, I really get what the Riddler's about. He makes a lot of sense to me." Doing roughly one look a week, Ortiz has recreated nearly a dozen characters, each with his own twist. His Scarface and Ventriloquist were inspired by the "dark deco" style of the animated "Batman" series, while his Scarecrow was styled in tribute to "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre." Catwoman who he intended to be a 1940s style Hedy Lamarr or Veronica Lake type turned out more like a 1960s Ann Margret, but with black hair. Known for "Chasing Bono" (Soho Theater); "Talk Radio" (Old Red Lion) Dorey said he was always interested in "the idea of one's own space and contained little worlds" but hadn't had time to explore it before. When lockdown happened a week away from the opening of three shows he was working on and it became clear that the shows would be canceled, he turned to making miniatures, a process he calls "meditative." Dorey uses mundane household scraps, like plastic lids, packaging, electronic parts, discarded toys and sometimes natural items, like wood or stones, to build these miniatures, which reflect his interest in "climate change, isolation and where we are going as a species." Dorey said that he is interested in "the aesthetics of rot and rust and decay," and slowly realized that even his sci fi sculptures, of spaceships and U.F.O.s, fit into the larger theme of a society that has collapsed because of the ravages of climate change. Making the miniatures has been creatively inspiring. "When you are building a model for theater, the focus is on precision and it must be made to a certain set of limitations," Dorey said. "When I sit down I can just start making without any plan, but allow myself to see how it grows in front of me."
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Theater
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Why are so many nonmajors taking "Introduction to Computer Science" at Harvard or "Introductory Oceanography" at Cornell? Why is Temple Grandin's livestock course at Colorado State always filled, and not just with students at home on the range? Some professors can make a subject sing, and their courses are not just a credit but an event. "I've wanted to take it since freshman year," Rhyann Dozier, a Virginia Tech senior, said of "World Regions," taught by John Boyer, whose high octane style and throwback vibe channels Will Ferrell, turning lectures into performances. What's exciting now is that even universities that prize academic research are putting more emphasis on teaching, says Matthew Kaplan, interim director for the Center for Research on Learning and Teaching at the University of Michigan. "There is pressure to have students engaged in their learning beyond 'Come to the lecture, do the reading.' " He recalls that Michigan's provost spent 55 minutes of a recent hourlong faculty meeting talking about teaching. In inventive teaching, students are not just sponges soaking up content. They apply lessons to life, says C. Edward Watson, director of the Center for Teaching and Learning at the University of Georgia. He adds that "faculty are trying to be more engaging in the classroom" because, for one, "competition is greater than it used to be." The proliferation of online content means in person courses must offer more than just another lecture "video." Professors also face challenges in getting and keeping the attention of students raised on quick takes. Some weave in ways for students to use restless fingers and splintered focus; every few minutes during Prof. Perry Samson's "Extreme Weather" lecture at the University of Michigan, students must respond to questions by phone or laptop. Others design courses with gaming features; students in "World Regions" pick which assignments will help them acquire the points needed for the grade they want. Gimmicky? Maybe. But these courses have imagination and spirit, guided by the passion of the professor. When Matthew Cloutier, a sophomore, learned that Dr. Samson was a storm chaser who helped start the Weather Underground, the first real time Internet weather service, he signed right up, as much for the man as for the meteorology. "I said, 'I've got to meet this guy.' " We looked around the nation for courses with buzz, according to campus newspapers, higher education experts and enrollment numbers. Students still file into lecture halls and classrooms, but once they're seated, it's clear that these courses are different. They mess with the old models. And they give students an experience that might change how they think, what they care about or even how they spend their lives. Class size: With 700 students, CS50 is nipping at the heels of Harvard's biggest class, N. Gregory Mankiw's Econ 10. Class experience: Dr. Malan says that he (and a staff of 102) "are really setting out to create not a course for students, but a college experience." CS50 is popular as a massive open online course through edX, but the real action is on campus. An all night hackathon is fueled by pizza at 9 p.m., Chinese food at 1 a.m. and pancakes at 5 a.m. Office hours, held in various dining halls, can attract 200. A fair to show off final projects, with cake and balloons, draws 2,200, including parents and busloads of curious high school students. There's even an online store where you can buy CS50 apparel at cost to show off your course allegiance. Takeaway lesson: Dr. Malan, a 1999 Harvard graduate who wandered into CS50 as a sophomore government major, wants more students to get comfortable with computer science. Students pick a track "less comfortable," "more comfortable" or "somewhere in between" and are graded only against their peers. In addition, Dr. Malan tries to make complicated concepts like "exponential decay" look simple. To demonstrate, he grabs a phone book in search of "Mike Smith," then rips it, tossing out the chunk without "S." He keeps ripping. Even if it's 1,024 pages, he says, you only have to rip 10 times to find Mike Smith. "In every iteration of the loop," he says, "we are chopping the problem in half." Class size: 200 in spring, 400 in fall (10 to 20 percent wait listed) Class experience: How did the world end up the way it is today? It's a big question, but Dr. Wesch makes it tangible as students plan and play in a world simulation. The 200 level class is broken into groups of indigenous peoples and colonizers. They get bins of limited supplies and must trade for other items to make weapons, following rules they devise in advance. Colonizers typically get blowgun like tools to launch marshmallow tipped straws while indigenous peoples may only use rubber bands. Dr. Wesch started the simulations in 2004 after growing frustrated that most student questions were about grades and how much something was worth on a test. "Those are terrible questions," he says. "I realized I needed to change everything." Yes, there is a final exam, but it's only one question: Why are you here? (He's expecting you to tell the 12,000 year history of mankind and what you plan to do for the planet.) Takeaway lesson: In the first session, Dr. Wesch points out that if the whole world were the 200 people in the room, 38 would be from China, 35 from India and 9 from the United States. "Three of you would be dying, and six would be pregnant. The child born in the U.S. will have 10 times the chance of surviving until his fifth birthday." There's enough food for 2,500 calories a day per person, he said, but 30 suffer from hunger. There's no easy explanation for this: That's the lesson of the course. Class size: 800. The new classroom, Bailey Hall, seats 1,324; Dr. Monger wants to fill it. EC0 ACTIVISM Bruce Monger and students practice what he teaches. Class experience: There is no saltwater for 200 miles, but "Introductory Oceanography" has the largest enrollment at Cornell. Dr. Monger, a charismatic one time logger, focuses on marine science, but a third of the course is activism. Dr. Monger keeps a website for the course, itsmyocean.org (sample post: "Why you should avoid eating shrimp"), and a listserve of 1,700. "I want to stimulate these guys to raise their voices," he says. "I tell them, 'That ocean is as much yours as anybody else's.' " The final assignment is to write Congress, though students are not required to mail the letters. Takeaway lesson: You will learn about tides, waves and microbial processes, but you will also delve into marine policy, global warming and the impact of human activities on coral reefs. Dr. Monger shares these "two things you should care about": half of all photosynthesis on Earth occurs in the ocean the work of algae producing the oxygen we all breathe. Related processes also consume carbon dioxide, with the oceans absorbing more than a quarter of all CO2 produced since the start of the Industrial Revolution. MILES TO GO Walks with the professor, here in the Lake District of England, are a study in the art of "being." Class experience: Wear comfortable shoes because this environmental studies class covers serious mileage. Walks take several hours and typically cover 15 to 25 miles. Readings include philosophers like Martin Heidegger and are discussed during nonwalk days. Dr. Keffer, who began teaching the course in 2002, has offered it on campus in Danville, Ky., and as part of Centre's study abroad program. Last January, in Strasburg, Germany, students walked 17 miles between two villages in the Black Forest, what he calls "Heidegger's office." There is nothing goal oriented or prescribed in the walks; students don't phone or text (it's not banned, they just don't). Covering distance by foot, Dr. Keffer says, opens "a temporal branch of environmental studies." Takeaway lesson: In a highly scheduled existence in which acquiring, categorizing and testing factual knowledge absorb our attention, Dr. Keffer presses students to consider an alternative. "It's very much what Heidegger says," he argues. "The tradition is focused on what we know about the world, not on how we are being in the world. I want to turn the lamp on 'being.' " In his course proposal for the fall, subtitled "Introduction to Boredom on Earth," Dr. Keffer compares the frenetic consumption of time to the exploitation of materials and resources, urging students to consider how they fill time, including the tendency to schedule things, as Heidegger says, "for the sole reason that they take up our time." PHILANTHROPY: CAN WE MAKE THIS A BETTER WORLD THROUGH GENEROSITY?, Princeton PHILANTHROPY: PRIVATE INITIATIVES FOR THE PUBLIC GOOD, University of Virginia Class experience: Having real money, and a deadline for giving it away, lets students feel both the power and the challenge of charitable donations. Since 2011, the Once Upon a Time Foundation has provided some 2.5 million for hands on learning at 13 campuses, including the University of Virginia and Princeton. Fueling the trend, Warren Buffett's sister Doris began an online course last year through her Sunshine Lady Foundation in which participants give away 100,000. At Princeton, Dr. Katz's freshman seminar is as much about learning to reach a consensus with 14 others as it is about tackling big questions. "Some of the disagreements are quite profound," says Dr. Katz, whose students research charities and must persuade classmates to align with them. "Some students feel it makes no sense to give a gift in the United States," while others find value only in "giving gifts close to home." Last fall's class had 25,000 to give away. At Virginia, most of the 50,000 that students are awarding this semester must go to Charlottesville area organizations tackling housing, food or health care access. In December, Dr. Martin solicited proposals from local nonprofits, which students learn to evaluate; they also make site visits to meet organization leaders. Takeaway lesson: Caroline Trezza, a junior at Virginia who advocated funding City Schoolyard Garden, says she learned to evaluate programs and ask, "Are they addressing the problem, or addressing something tangential?" Philanthropy is harder than you'd expect. To help alleviate strife in rural Africa, Princeton students struggled with provocative questions. "You can save a lot of lives administering vaccines," one student noted. Another countered, "But what if the people starve to death?" Class size: This class has grown from 40 to 165 in the past five years; Angell Hall seats only 110. "That is why the class is broadcast," says Dr. Samson. Log in and participate from your dorm. CHASERS Perry Samson and upper level students create "hair raising" videos for his first year class. Class experience: Be glad you are safely indoors. Dr. Samson, who takes upper level students to chase tornadoes, brings the drama of meteorology to this introductory course. "I have some hair raising videos taken by students on the chase," he says, plus stories (his car was bounced across a highway when he got too close to an F4 tornado). Students bring laptops to class and log into a class platform Dr. Samson created. They analyze data from the field and answer questions like: Where on this weather map would you expect wind speeds to be highest? Point and click. Got a dumb question? Type away it's anonymous and Dr. Samson will post the answer. Confused? Press a designated button. If enough do, he'll stop and explain. Oh, and all exams are "open book, open computer, call a friend." In life, says Dr. Samson, rarely will you be asked a question about science that you can't look up. Takeaway lesson: Which 95 degree air is heavier: Phoenix's, with 15 percent humidity, or New Orleans's, with 85 percent humidity? "Most people choose New Orleans," Dr. Samson says. "The correct answer is Phoenix." Air is composed primarily of nitrogen and oxygen so although humid air feels heavier, H2O weighs less than the nitrogen or oxygen it's displacing. How does this matter to weather? When dry air comes out of Arizona or Texas and meets moist air from Louisiana and the Gulf, the hot dry air pushes the moist air up and creates a "dry line" that can create super cell thunderstorms. "Those are the types of thunderstorms that will produce tornadoes in the Great Plains," he says. Class experience: Mr. Boyer favors '70s style plaids (his nom de professor: Plaid Avenger) and student friendly lingo ("Man oh man oh man, dudes and dudettes, we are living through some historic times right now!"). And he doesn't just teach, he performs. Mr. Boyer wants students to "get excited about the world" and lets them choose how they engage. Students participate through Twitter, in class smartphone surveys and old fashioned microphones. They earn a course grade by doing assignments with point values; collect 1,100 points for an A, 1,000 will get you a B. They also decide what class will cover (this spring, it's the Middle East, Russia and China), and Skype with international figures. When he put up a map to talk about Egypt and the Arab Spring, someone said, "How come Jordan doesn't have anything going on?" His reply: "Maybe we should ask someone from Jordan." Less than six hours after a YouTube appeal to King Abdullah II of Jordan, the king's office responded. Takeaway lesson: Think of geography as physical and cultural attributes of a country, from vegetation and terrain to language and religion, that influence current events. The unrest in Ukraine, Mr. Boyer says, has been a decades long battle over which neighbor to align with: Russia or Europe. Check out maps showing linguistic, ethnic and voting distributions and you'll see a sharp east (pro Russian) versus west (pro European) divide. Seeds of the current conflict were sewn during the 2004 election when the pro Russian Viktor Yanukovych defeated the pro European Viktor Yushchenko. The election was believed corrupted by voter fraud, spurring protests and a redo that resulted in a victory for Mr. Yushchenko, but in 2010 Mr. Yanukovych won. "Geography affects everything," Mr. Boyer says. COW SENSE Temple Grandin uses corral design to instruct students in the ways of animals, and humans. Class experience: It's not that students don't see what Dr. Grandin sees. It's that they don't notice the way she does. Do students, for example, spot the way a cow fixates on that streak of sunlight? Usually not, she says. Born with autism and a savant like command of visual details, Dr. Grandin teaches a course that focuses on cattle, but with more than half of students heading to nonranch work, she instills skills that translate: "I want to teach them how to be better observers." For one class, students visit a cattle ranch and then design a corral system for 200 cattle and a slaughterhouse that shows an understanding of animal behavior and that accounts for site restrictions like roads, buildings and streams. "I say, 'Even if you never design anything with livestock, this is visual problem solving.' " Takeaway lesson: Spotting how cattle react to surroundings will help you work better with any animal. Cattle don't like shiny surfaces, so light reflecting on a wet floor upsets them; so do sun spots and shadows. "A white line on a highway will stop a lot of cattle," says Dr. Grandin, a pioneer in designing more humane slaughterhouses. Cattle like to return whence they came, so curved chutes that make them feel they are traveling in a circle make sense. You'll learn that cattle in a crowded pen must see two body lengths ahead or they won't budge. This lesson might apply to humans. "New things are attractive to an animal if they are allowed to approach," she says. "If you shove them into it," expect them to rebel. Class experience: Prepare to take on your demons in this freshman psychology seminar. Dr. Dweck's groundbreaking research has helped shape current wisdom about success and achievement that failure and recovering from it are more valuable than sticking with what you already know how to do. Dr. Dweck tells students to tackle something "they have never had the guts to try." A student belted out "The Phantom of the Opera" on a public bus; another struck up conversations with strangers in San Francisco. Ricardo Flores, a self described introvert, challenged himself to run for dorm co president and, though filled with anxiety, give a campaign speech. He spoke, and won the election. For his next task, Mr. Flores is honing his salsa skills in hopes of performing with Los Salseros de Stanford. Takeaway lesson: Dr. Dweck's research shows that mind set is critical at times of transition. Some people have a "fixed mind set" and believe that qualities like intelligence and personality are set. "So when you struggle or face a setback it means, 'Hey, you just don't have it,' " she explains. Those with a "growth mind set" see that struggles can be overcome with effort, strategy and good instruction. Freshmen can recognize and counter the fixed mind sets that kick in as they arrive on campus and are surrounded by supremely talented peers. "I thought it was the perfect moment for them to understand these ideas," Dr. Dweck says.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Education
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TO those of a certain age, the Batmobile is one of the most recognized and revered cars to have appeared on the small screen. The General Lee Charger, the Munster Koach and KITT from "Knight Rider" pale in comparison to the Batmobile, the prototypical TV hero car. While there have been countless replicas built (and sold in the 50,000 to 150,000 range), the original is still in the hands of its creator, the 88 year old pioneering customizer George Barris. It was scheduled to be auctioned this weekend at the Barrett Jackson auction in Scottsdale, Ariz. The original Batman comics, as well as the big screen versions, were all pretty dark stuff. But the mid 1960s television treatment starring Adam West as Batman and Burt Ward as Robin played it for laughs. Mr. Barris, by then made famous in Tom Wolfe's "The Kandy Kolored Tangerine Flake Streamline Baby," picked up on this when the producer William Dozier handed him a script filled with cartoon violence punctuated with animated "pows," "biffs," "bams" and "socks."
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Automobiles
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President Trump tweeted on Thursday about a report from One America News Network that repeated debunked claims about election software by Dominion Voting Systems. It was not the first time in recent months that the president helped amplify reports from the conservative cable outlet, which has developed a reputation for airing conspiracy theories. In fact, the network appears to have become one of the president's favorite news outlets, along with Newsmax, another conservative cable news network. Neither network has called the election for President elect Joseph R. Biden Jr., while Fox News has. In recent days, One America News has produced a series of videos that include false claims about the integrity of the vote and assertions that Mr. Trump won the election. The videos have collectively been viewed more than a million times on YouTube. YouTube says that it does not consider One America News to be an authoritative news source and that therefore the network's videos do not appear prominently when people search YouTube for election information. The tech company added tags to several of the network's videos, with a note saying that the election had been called for Mr. Biden. YouTube also stripped out ads from the videos but did not remove the segments from its platform.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Technology
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DABABY at Terminal 5 (Dec. 12, 8 p.m.). A member of this year's XXL Freshman Class, this North Carolina based artist is quickly rising through the rap ranks; for proof of his rapidly accumulating clout, check the roster of artists who have tapped him for guest verses in recent months Chance the Rapper, Lil Nas X and Lizzo, to name a few. But DaBaby, born Jonathan Kirk, doesn't just make hits for other people: Riding momentum from his breakout hit "Suge," he has delivered two chart topping albums of his own since March. On Saturday, a few days ahead of his concert in Hell's Kitchen, he makes his debut musical appearance on "Saturday Night Live," sure to be one of the highest profile performances of his career. 212 582 6600, terminal5nyc.com THE HOLD STEADY at Brooklyn Bowl (Dec. 5, 8 p.m.; Dec. 6 7, 9 p.m.). Though their Minnesota roots lend them a certain Midwestern scrappiness, this six piece has long been a Brooklyn institution. Founded in the early 2000s when the New York indie scene was dominated by brooding atmospherics, the Hold Steady instead drew from straightforward classic rock influences and brought the party, with their frontman, Craig Finn, spit singing from a place of triumphant, booze fueled revelry. The group has pulled back on their release schedule and touring commitments. "Thrashing Thru the Passion," from August, is their first album in more than five years, and is backed by just a handful of dates across the country, including this run in their adopted hometown. 718 963 3369, brooklynbowl.com LOMELDA at Union Pool (Dec. 12, 8 p.m.). In 2019, "empathy" teeters on the verge of buzzword status, its meaning hollowed out by the frequency of its use. Hannah Read, the indie folk singer and songwriter from Texas who performs as Lomelda, has the means to fill it back in. On "M for Empathy," a set of short but sweeping tracks released in March, her musings on the inner workings of intimacy, depression and existential uncertainty are marked by consideration and compassion. The emotional richness of Lomelda's work finds a worthy match in the yearning dream pop tunes of Long Beard, who will play an opening set at this haunt in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. union pool.com IDINA MENZEL at Carnegie Hall (Dec. 11, 8 p.m.). This veteran singer actress's voice is celebrated in households across the country, particularly those with young children: As Elsa, the animated snow queen of Disney's "Frozen," Menzel powers the inescapable pop culture juggernaut that is "Let It Go." Though the song is by far the biggest hit of her career, Menzel is no stranger to the anthemic. As Elphaba in Broadway's "Wicked," she belted out tunes about empowerment; as Maureen in "Rent," she preached self respect. This week, Menzel is playing a trio of shows around the New York area in support of her new Christmas record. Given its seasonal relevance, odds are she'll sneak a bit of "Frozen" material into her performance at Carnegie Hall. 212 247 7800, carnegiehall.org SHE HIM at Kings Theater (Dec. 6, 8 p.m.). Holiday music is, almost invariably, laden with nostalgia; this folk pop pair are natural proprietors of the stuff. Together, the duo of M. Ward and Zooey Deschanel sing and play in sepia tones, drawing from a repertoire that includes both originals and classics culled across decades. She Him's penchant for covers has led them to record two albums' worth of Christmas standards, on which they pay homage to holiday giants from Irving Berlin to Mariah Carey. Their renditions of these festive tunes wouldn't sound out of place piping from an antique radio; in lieu of that option, you can see them performed live on Friday at this palatial theater in Flatbush, Brooklyn. 718 856 5464, kingstheatre.com Read about the events that our other critics have chosen for the week ahead. SUMMER WALKER at Terminal 5 (Dec. 7 8, 8:30 p.m.). Titled "Over It," this Atlanta based singer's debut album, which has racked up more streams than any other by a female R B artist, teases a breezily apathetic outlook. Instead, the release delivers a glimpse at a messy, moody interior life, packaged in slow burning, '90s inspired grooves. Walker is currently on tour behind the album, but has been open about ongoing mental health issues that pushed her to ax most of the scheduled dates. Luckily for New York fans, her back to back shows at Terminal 5 were spared. Melii, a Harlem born rapper and singer whose debut album, "Phases," delivers both sweet melodies and hard charging flows, will open. 212 582 6600, terminal5nyc.com OLIVIA HORN STEVEN BERNSTEIN at Dizzy's Club (Dec. 11 12, 7:30 and 9:30 p.m.). Many of jazz's most engaging figures have a way of finding what resonates in the past a style, a method, a spirit and giving it new life without trying to preserve or conspicuously modernize it. (Think of Jason Moran, Cecile McLorin Salvant, Christian McBride: Each has a way of doing this.) Bernstein, a trumpeter who sprang from New York's experimental jazz scene in the 1980s, is one of those musicians. On Wednesday he will perform at Dizzy's with his nine piece Millennial Territory Orchestra which romps through a repertoire ranging from Fats Waller to Ray Charles to the Beatles with the vocalist Catherine Russell joining as a special guest. On Dec. 12 Bernstein will bring his longtime quartet Sexmob, featuring the saxophonist Briggan Krauss, the bassist Tony Scherr and the drummer Kenny Wollesen. 212 258 9595, jazz.org/dizzys JOHNATHAN BLAKE AND PENTAD at the Village Vanguard (through Dec. 8, 8:30 and 10:30 p.m.). Blake, a drummer, has long been one of jazz's more respected sidemen, working regularly with luminaries like Kenny Barron and Tom Harrell. But he's also kept an equally rich (if far quieter) career track running alongside as a bandleader. Earlier this year, he put out the remarkable trio album "Trion," and soon after he unveiled Pentad, a quintet featuring Immanuel Wilkins on alto saxophone, David Virelles on piano, Joel Ross on vibraphone and Dezron Douglas on bass. This weekend that group is at the Vanguard, where Blake is making his bandleading debut. (Kris Davis will fill in for Virelles from Friday through Sunday.) 212 255 4037, villagevanguard.com 'DIASPORA SONGS' at Carnegie Hall (Dec. 6, 8 p.m.). The Beninese vocalist Angelique Kidjo curated this major concert, and put the trumpeter Terence Blanchard in charge of its musical direction. The program that these two Grammy winning artists have assembled addresses the broad range of music that has emerged from the African diaspora in roughly the past century: jazz, gospel, Afrobeat, Afro Caribbean, hip hop and much more. Performers will include Blanchard's quintet, the E Collective; the breakout New Orleans band Tank and the Bangas; the pianist and "The Late Show With Stephen Colbert" bandleader Jon Batiste; and members of the RAREdancework performance group. 212 247 7800, carnegiehall.org IKUE MORI at the Stone (Dec. 10 14, 8:30 p.m.). An improvising drummer and laptop musician, Mori first arrived in New York from Japan over 40 years ago, becoming a major player on the no wave scene centered in downtown Manhattan. Over the ensuing decades she has cut a path through the worlds of jazz, contemporary classical, noise and experimental electronic music. In the coming week at the Stone, she will work in a different group each night. Highlights include Tuesday's show with the saxophonist (and Stone proprietor) John Zorn, the harpist Zeena Parkins, the pianist Sylvie Courvoisier and various special guests and a performance on Dec. 13 featuring Mori's Mahobin Trio (with Satoko Fujii on piano and Kappa Maki on trumpet) and Nate Wooley on second trumpet. thestonenyc.com HARISH RAGHAVAN QUINTET at Jazz Standard (Dec. 11, 7:30 and 9:30 p.m.). A bassist with as much lyrical sensitivity as he has resounding power, Raghavan is best known for his work in the trumpeter Ambrose Akinmusire's esteemed quintet. But he has recently begun to emerge as a protagonist in his own right, leading a five piece group at clubs around New York and showcasing his book of soaring, neatly woven compositions. At this show he and the members of his quintet (Immanuel Wilkins on alto saxophone, Joel Ross on vibraphone, Micah Thomas on piano and Kweku Sumbry on drums) will celebrate the release of their fine debut album, "Calls for Action," out last month. 212 576 2232, jazzstandard.com BUSTER WILLIAMS QUARTET at Smoke (through Dec. 7; 7, 9 and 10:30 p.m.; Dec. 8, 7 and 9 p.m.). Among the most storied living jazz musicians, this bassist has performed with the likes of Nancy Wilson, Herbie Hancock, the Jazz Crusaders and countless others. At 77, he often appears nowadays as a bandleader, funneling his decades of broad ranging experience into a style that's firmly rooted in straight ahead jazz but deeply flexible and funky. He performs this weekend with the same all star quartet featured on his 2018 album, "Audacity": Steve Wilson on saxophone, George Colligan on piano and Lenny White on drums. The group will likely play some of Williams's pithy, melodic originals featured on that album. 212 864 6662, smokejazz.com GIOVANNI RUSSONELLO
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Music
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Wellness has become so encompassing that seemingly anything can be mined for the purposes of living better. There are walking coaches I have been to more than one and self appointed experts who can teach you how to breathe more effectively. Some people are even seeking out that humblest of minerals, salt. I love taking baths, even in the narrow tub in my apartment, and hoard various salts that I pour into hot water after working out: Dr. Teal's or, if I'm willing to spend 18 on a single use blend of hand harvested French gray sea salt, wild harvested seaweed and sustainably farmed spirulina, I'll buy Pursoma Minerals de Mer body soak. Now you can inhale your way (supposedly) to better health with salt rooms, where the act of breathing in sodium chloride is said to help asthma, arthritis, allergies, snoring and that catchall, "stress." Adherents of halotherapy (as it's called) believe that salt has antibacterial, antiseptic, antifungal and antiviral properties that are particularly effective on mucus and inflammation. I have battled hay fever since my freshman year of college, rosacea for the last decade and stress probably since birth. And though there is virtually no scientific research to confirm salt proponents' claims I nonetheless headed to Breathe, which has three salt rooms in Manhattan and two in Westchester County, N.Y., for the most immersive experience I could find. At the Park Avenue location I reserved 25 minutes in a salt bed, which is a single person pod that strongly resembles a glass coffin. It's in a private space so I simply took off all my clothes and lay there naked while "micro particles of pure white salt are dispersed into the air, entering your airways to naturally cleanse and detoxify your lungs, sinuses and air passages," as the website explained. I couldn't really feel the salt spraying on me, but after a few minutes, I could see it gathering on my skin like dust. I breathed. I tried not to think of the news. I was bored but in a pleasant way, like being on the sixth day of a beach vacation. I returned a few days later for Salty Yoga, a yoga class in the main salt room. The room is set up like a tiny beach, with pink Himalayan salt the size of small pebbles piled like sand on the floor and bricks of salt lining the walls. There are chairs for other sessions in the room, but for yoga they're replaced with mats. The day before class, I had received a message to wear socks, along with and a warning that "there will be particles of salt dancing all around, so expect to get some salt on your clothes, but don't worry! it comes off easily!" Class was at 7 p.m., and I came exhausted and slightly wet from rain. I wasn't in the mood to do sun salutations or anything that took much physical or emotional effort. Luckily, Salty Yoga is basically the equivalent of giving yourself a hug, which we actually did at one point in class. There were five of us, and we spent the entire hour either sitting or on our backs in mostly restorative poses, like a modified child's pose with a blanket rolled up under our wrists or gentle twists to the side. Each pose was held for two or three minutes while Masako, the instructor, whispered gentle instructions and encouraged us to breathe and let go. I was so deeply relaxed that I didn't notice until after class was over that I was completely covered in salt. A sweatshirt I had thrown off in class looked like an object unearthed from Tatooine, the desert planet in "Star Wars." My lips stung. The car ride home to Brooklyn felt as itchy and restless as returning from the beach. At home I took a shower, drank two liters of water, a green juice, applied a liberal amount of Kiehl's Creme de Corps on my body, Glossier hyaluronic serum to my face, Elizabeth Arden lip balm and still felt parched from the inside out. For the next 36 hours, I continued to chug water and apply copious amounts of moisturizer because of a phantom sense of saltiness. Despite the lack of scientific evidence as to the efficacy of inhaling tiny salt particles is scarce, I can't say there isn't something to it. After both sessions, I slept a full eight hours without waking up once, which is rare for me. I haven't touched my allergy pills once, and a friend told me my skin never looked better. Maybe instead of trying to flee New York this winter, I'll just make a standing appointment at the salt beach.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Style
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In the 1800s, thousands of Aboriginal Australians were the victims of a terrible trade in the name of science. Anatomists opened their graves and stole their skeletons. After massacres of Aboriginal Australians, police officers sold body parts to museums. Today, many of these bones lie far from home. "Our old people's remains have been stolen from this country, and they're global, whether they be in London, Germany, Sweden, Switzerland even in America," said Gudju Gudju Fourmile, an elder of the Yidniji and Gimuy Walubara people in northern Australia. For decades Aboriginal Australians have been pressing for the return of the bones. "Our old people's spirits won't rest until they're back on their own country," said Mr. Fourmile. In recent years, museums have tried to comply. But progress has been slow, partly because the institutions have little information about where many of the bones came from. The ancestors of today's Aboriginal Australians came to the continent at least 50,000 years ago and branched into 300 so called language groups. How do you match the right bones to the right Aboriginal group? On Wednesday, scientists offered a possible answer. In a study published in Science Advances, a team of geneticists showed they could use fragments of DNA retrieved from bone or hair to determine where in Australia the remains originated. Nanibaa' A. Garrison, a bioethicist at the University of Washington who was not involved in the new study, said that the research could eventually serve as a model for collaborations between scientists and Native American tribes in the United States, who have similar concerns about scientific exploitation. "This work is great as a proof of concept," said Dr. Garrison. The new study began with an usual request. In 2013, 3,400 year old human bones were discovered in an eroding sand dune in far northern Australia, home to the Thaynakwith people. The tooth of an 800 year old Aboriginal Australian killed by a boomerang. Scientists extracted DNA from the tooth. Representatives of that Aboriginal community contacted geneticists to ask if they would search the bones for DNA. "They said to us, 'We really want to know if this is one of our people,'" said David Lambert, a geneticist at the Australian Research Center for Human Evolution at Griffith University. That inquiry represented something of a turnabout in the difficult relationship between researchers and Aboriginal Australians, who have been reluctant to participate in studies because of a fraught history of scientific exploitation. But researchers like Dr. Lambert had been meeting with community leaders like Mr. Fourmile to explain what genetic research can do. A series of studies of the genomes of hundreds of living Aboriginal Australians turned up revealing clues about their history, including evidence that their ancestors arrived as a single population and spread quickly across the continent. Dr. Joanne Wright, a geneticist at the university, traveled to the Thaynakwith people and took saliva samples for DNA analysis. She also returned to the university with a small sample of the newly discovered skeleton to search for genetic material. After two years of effort, she failed: The hot climate had destroyed the skeleton's DNA. But one of the Thaynakwith elders, Tapij Wales, asked Dr. Wright if she could use DNA to repatriate other Aboriginal remains in museums around the world. "He said it was an issue Aboriginal people were upset about," said Dr. Wright. (Mr. Wales died in 2017.) Over the next few years, she and her colleagues got the opportunity to test the idea. One after another, Aboriginal Australian groups were asking the scientists to analyze human remains in their possession bones that had been discovered on their land or that had been returned to them by museums. Mr. Fourmile and his fellow elders wanted to be a part of the new project in the hopes that it might lead to the return of even more remains. "My interest is in connecting with our old people who have been taken away," he said. "If sequencing is the way to find out if you are the right family, then currently that's the best way to find out where they're from." Mr. Fourmile helped arrange for the geneticists to study bones from five individuals returned by the Queensland Museum. They had all been born before European settlement in the region; one individual died somewhere between 1747 and 1803, the scientists estimated. With the permission of local communities, the team went on to recover a substantial amounts of DNA from the remains of 10 Aboriginal Australians, the oldest of whom lived in the 5th century A.D. The researchers compared the DNA to that of people in the regions in which the bones were found and elsewhere. And in each case, the ancient bones were most closely related to people still living nearby. The findings suggest that in the centuries before European colonization, Aboriginal Australians did not move much. So the DNA of living people may be used to identify the origins of the bones interred in museums.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Science
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Re "Vans Full of Families Lined Up for Food" (news article, Sept. 4): Families with children are experiencing alarming rates of food insecurity. Research shows that Black, Latinx and Native American households have been particularly hit hard. The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, serves as the country's first line of defense against hunger. But current SNAP benefits are not nearly enough for parents to feed their children. Congress and the Trump administration must act immediately to flatten the curve on our hunger crisis and get our economy moving by making increased investments in SNAP. The next Covid 19 emergency package should include increases to the entitlement program's maximum and minimum benefit levels. Luis Guardia Washington The writer is president of the Food Research Action Center.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Opinion
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The Challenge: A 63 year old painter develops headaches that become increasingly devastating, associated with changes in the way he sees and interacts with the world. Can you explain why? Every month the Diagnosis column of The New York Times Magazine introduces Well readers to a real life patient and asks them to consider the patient's story and symptoms, along with the medical records, to try to come up with a diagnosis that can explain it all. Today we offer the case of a retired magazine art director who develops excruciating headaches, which seem to change both what he sees and how he thinks. As his headaches become more frequent and more ferocious, the patient becomes withdrawn, forgetful and easily angered. His paintings change from open landscapes to dark fields of underground serpents and half destroyed houses. He sees a series of doctors who can't quite figure it out and refer him on until he finally reaches a doctor who asks the right question and puts it all together. I will provide the information and images available to the doctor who made the diagnosis. You can provide the question you would like to ask to help you make a diagnosis. As usual, the first reader to correctly identify the cause of this man's strange symptoms and come up with the question that led to this right answer will get a copy of my book, "Every Patient Tells a Story," and that great sense of achievement that comes from solving a puzzle that can save a life. The 63 year old man in the backseat was asleep, his head bobbing gently with the motion of the car as it sped across the Golden Gate Bridge. His wife sat silent, grateful to her daughter in law for driving them to see yet another neurologist and thinking about how much the man she'd married 38 years before had changed over the past year. It seemed to have started with the headaches. He was such a tough guy, so stoic, who never complained, so she really had no idea when he first got them, but he first mentioned them maybe nine months earlier. Since then they'd gotten fiercer and more frequent. Recently she'd found him lying with his face pressed against the cool tiles of the bathroom. He wouldn't get up. His head throbbed too much. He'd rather be dead, he told her, than continue with these headaches. Then, four to five months ago, the patient's wife started noticing other things. Little things. Things so subtle that she wasn't always sure at times if it was him or her. He seemed to get quieter. Her husband was never a big talker, but if you asked him about something he'd tell you what he knew and offer an opinion. These days when asked, he'd often just grunt or shrug like he didn't care, or didn't know. She'd asked him about it, and he looked surprised. He didn't know what she was talking about, he snapped. And it wasn't just that. He was clumsier. He seemed to trip a lot. And when he walked or drove, he drifted to the right. He'd never hit anything, but he'd come mighty close. At home he had always been very organized. Thought that there was a place for everything. But lately, she'd find things put in the wrong place. The silverware with the plates; his sweaters in her dresser drawers. It was strange. He'd just look at her like she was nuts when she pointed it out. Her husband had been a painter throughout their marriage. And since retiring he'd switched from acrylic paints and started working in oil. He'd begun by creating bucolic landscapes. But over the past few months his scenes had become darker and more menacing. It was a different medium, she figured, and so lent itself to a different subject matter far from his bright and cheerful acrylic paintings. You can see an early oil painting here. One evening, not long afterward, she sat down and made a list of all the little changes she'd noticed in her husband. It was a long list and she was worried. By this point, the patient had seen several doctors about his headaches. When his headaches worsened despite treatment, his regular doctor sent him for an M.R.I. She called as soon as she saw the results. The M.R.I. was clearly abnormal. The tough tissue that surrounds the brain the meninges is normally seen in imaging as a crisp thin line delineating the outer edge of the brain. In the painter's scan, that line was thick and lumpy completely abnormal looking. You can see an image from the M.R.I. here, with an arrow pointing to the meninges. The doctor referred the patient to one neurologist, and when that didn't pan out, he saw another and then another. All three specialists agreed that the abnormal scan suggested something had invaded the brain perhaps an infection, or maybe a cancer spread from some other part of the body. A second M.R.I., done just a few weeks later, looked even worse than the first. The patient had a spinal tap to look for infection or malignancy. And although there was no evidence of either of those, the spinal fluid did contain more protein than was normal, and that suggested some type of inflammatory process going on in the brain. And so they headed to the University of California, San Francisco, to see their fourth neurologist, Dr. Jeffrey Gelfand, a specialist in sarcoid and other inflammatory diseases of the brain that could cause the lumpy changes seen in the scan. It had taken them nearly a month to get the appointment. Their insurance company was unwilling at first to pay for the new consultant. The wife, now certain of the changes in her husband, wrote to Dr. Gelfand pleading for an appointment, which had thankfully come through, with the insurance company's reluctant blessing. You can see the wife's note here. The woman woke her husband when they arrived at U.C.S.F., and wife and daughter in law helped the man out of the car and to Dr. Gelfand's office. The neurologist greeted them and quickly focused on the patient. Dr. Gelfand liked to get patients to tell the story of their illness. How it was told was often as useful as what was said. But this patient wasn't able to tell a story. When Dr. Gelfand asked a question, it was followed by a long silence, as if the man was considering the answer. The patient would often repeat the question, then hesitate again before answering. His answers were brief, and his speech was quite slow. Dr. Gelfand had the notes from the previous doctors the patient had seen already and both M.R.I.s. He turned to the wife when her husband's answers needed clarification or details and was able to put together the patient's story. Other than his remarkable slowness of speech, the patient's exam was pretty normal until Dr. Gelfand asked the patient to touch his own nose and then to reach out and touch the doctor's finger, which was held out in front of him. As the man reached out toward the doctor, his hand zig zagged dramatically and he couldn't direct his finger to the tip of the doctor's finger as instructed. A simple task, and yet the man found himself unable to do it, with either hand. After reviewing the M.R.I.s with his own neuroradiology team, Dr. Gelfand was worried that the bloated, lumpy meninges might reflect some problem in the blood flow into or out of the lining of the brain. So he referred the patient to Dr. Wade Smith, a neurologist who specialized in diseases of the blood vessels of the brain. It was Dr. Smith who finally asked the question that led to the right diagnosis. Can you come up with the question Dr. Smith asked? And can you figure out the diagnosis? Put your answers in the comments section. As usual, the first person to get the correct answer will get a copy of my book and the honor of figuring out this tough, tough case. UPDATE: Thanks for all your responses! You can read about the correct diagnosis, and the winner, at Think Like a Doctor: The Painter's Headache Solved! Rules and Regulations: The winner will be contacted. Reader comments may also appear in a coming issue of The New York Times Magazine.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Well
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Some called it a gag rule impinging on freedom of speech. Others bristled at the requirement to abandon longtime sponsors at the very moment they would be entering the international spotlight. For years, Olympic athletes have found reasons to gripe about the advertising restrictions written into the 40th rule of the Olympic Charter, which essentially dictates what can be seen and said in the days before and during the world's largest international athletic showcase. But now, thanks to a small amendment to the rule, the advertising floodgates for the Summer Games in Rio de Janeiro have swung open, and the competition over brand positioning has already transformed the once predictable and hermetically regulated Olympics into a crowded race for attention among dozens of brands, big and small. "Not everyone can be an N.B.A. athlete," said Kerri Walsh Jennings, a three time gold medalist in beach volleyball for the United States. "Our partnerships are absolutely essential to what we do." That was the sentiment among many athletes whose sponsors helped support them over four years of training only for those brands to be nudged aside by others that paid millions to secure Olympic advertising and sponsorship privileges. Such blackout periods are not unusual for major sporting events, like the Super Bowl and the World Cup, and the International Olympic Committee considers its official partnerships essential to its funding model. But in an effort to improve its relationship with athletes, the I.O.C. began allowing any nonofficial sponsors an opportunity to compose advertising campaigns tailored to Olympic athletes so long as they did not include any Olympic symbols or overtly mention certain terms. Those can include "Rio", "gold" or even "summer" in some contexts. Companies needed to apply for a waiver by January, and their campaigns, which were subject to approval, had to begin in March. Brands like Under Armour, Red Bull, Gatorade and General Mills were quick to take advantage, generating campaigns that amounted to what John Grady, associate professor of sports law at the University of South Carolina, called "sanctioned ambush marketing." "Exclusive sponsors will keep hyping the logos to signify that there is a sponsorship relationship that they paid for," Mr. Grady said. "But as the space gets cluttered with more and more brands, consumers are less able to identify who is who." Mr. Grady said the I.O.C. was still dealing with "too many stakeholders with divergent priorities." Official sponsors could have reason to worry that their expensive partnerships with the I.O.C. are being devalued. And critics of the waiver process say it is unreasonable to dream up an Olympics ad campaign in January. For example, Brooks, a running shoe company, withdrew its waiver request after the United States Olympic Committee asked for additional details the company was unwilling to share. But others have been more opportunistic. Under Armour, for instance, is already well into a campaign featuring the swimmer Michael Phelps, and GoPro has been heavily promoting its relationship with the swimmer Missy Franklin. "Essentially they've received the same benefit that they didn't pay for," Mr. Grady said. "There are definite fairness issues here." Netflix buys a visual effects company in a move to support its global ambitions. 15 minimum wage for federal contractors will take effect Jan. 30. Tina R. Davis, the head of sponsorships and marketing at Citigroup, an official Olympic sponsor, said her company would need to wait and see how the Rio Games played out before judging the impact of the Rule 40 revisions. "We believe in the power of the Olympic rings, and we believe in our exclusive buy with NBC, which is where the majority of the eyeballs will be," Ms. Davis said. "So we're not concerned with any other brand being able to co opt us." A brand like Visa, which has been an Olympic partner since 1986, was not yet overly concerned, said Chris Curtin, the chief brand and innovation marketing officer. But the company did significantly move up its advertising schedule, releasing ads in June. The Games run from Aug. 5 to Aug. 21. Jon Mason, a spokesman for the U.S.O.C., said he had reassured top sponsors that the organization would be vigilant about protecting their investments during the blackout period, which runs from July 27 through Aug. 24, and from Aug. 30 through Sept. 21 for the Paralympics. "They're running their own campaigns, and they're doing so with the freedom to use the marks and the athletes however they want," Mr. Mason said. "I don't think they're feeling threatened." Nick Symmonds is in a unique position. As a two time Olympic middle distance runner and the co founder of a growing business that produces an energy chewing gum, he would seem to have a platform anytime an NBC camera swings in his direction. But his own company, Run Gum, cannot so much as wish him good luck on Twitter without potentially violating Rule 40. Mr. Symmonds said he would not be able to still compete at age 32 without the income that Run Gum provided him. "At the one point when I could actually get some eyes on my fledgling business, they say I cannot even mention my own name," Mr. Symmonds said. "It's so wrong." Sally Bergesen, the founder and chief executive of Oiselle, a women's athletic apparel company, likewise said she struggled to see how the rule change helped a small company like hers, even though it sponsors Olympic runners like Kara Goucher and Lauren Fleshman. "I think it's a penalty," she said of the waiver process, which her company went through, "because of the amount of money you're going to spend for zero connection." She added that a company like Louis Vuitton could get away with an unadorned image of Mr. Phelps, as it did during the 2012 Summer Olympics. But Ms. Bergesen contends that for every Michael Phelps, there are dozens of less recognized athletes still waiting to capitalize on the benefits the rule change was supposed to provide. Mr. Grady, the professor of sports law, said he was unsure how the conflicting interests might be resolved after the Olympics. Still, he said, "relaxing Rule 40 actually lengthened the interest in the Olympics this year." "In that regard, any interest in the Olympics should benefit the top sponsors," he said. "They shouldn't be so upset."
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Media
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ZAWIYAH, Libya The bullet holes in the oil tanks have been patched, the damaged backup generator is being repaired, and most important, the pipeline that feeds the giant oil refinery here has been reopened. Oil production is quickly being restored in Zawiyah and around the country, in large part because both the Qaddafi regime and the former rebels, now the interim leaders of Libya, took pains to avoid permanently crippling the country's most important industry during their six month civil war. "Qaddafi wanted to keep the refinery going because he needed the fuel, and the rebels wanted the refinery safe because it belongs to the Libyan people," said Khaled Rashed, shift coordinator at the Zawiyah refinery's control room. Libya's oil production remains at about 40 percent of the level that it was before the revolution began. But none of the country's 40 critical oil and gas fields were seriously damaged in the war, according to Libyan officials and international oil experts. Now, most of the important oil ports and refineries, virtually idled by international sanctions and months of fighting, are ramping back up. Officials boldly predict that by June, the country will once again be pumping 1.6 million barrels of oil a day, although independent experts say that is conceivable only if the country can avoid a relapse into violence. The industry's rapid pace of recovery is a beacon of hope at a time when the interim government is struggling to disarm militias, prevent competing tribes from fighting each other, and rebuild shattered cities. Oil is the mother's milk of Libya's economy before the war, it accounted for about one quarter of the country's economic output, 80 percent of government revenue and 95 percent of export earnings, according to United States government estimates. "In a country like Libya, oil is everything," said Paolo Scaroni, the chief executive of Eni, the Italian oil company that is by far the biggest foreign producer here. "At the end of the day, the government spends most of its time taking care of oil." Unless oil production returns to preconflict levels, the country's economy and political stability will suffer. Conversely, if oil output increases substantially, Libya's 6.6 million people could become quite wealthy unlike those in poorer countries whose governments toppled during the Arab Spring. Egypt's economy, for example, has stagnated since the collapse of the Mubarak regime. Corruption remains a risk. Members of the new Libyan government accuse Col. Muammar el Qaddafi of stealing billions of dollars in oil revenue. The acting oil minister, Ali Tarhouni, said authorities were investigating more than 20 bank accounts of the National Oil Company for fraud. "We will follow every penny," he said. With world oil prices near 100 a barrel, restoring Libyan oil production would also ease supply pressures on global markets. Foreign oil experts caution that even to get production back over a million barrels a day, Libya's interim leaders must end the violence that is deterring foreign oil companies from bringing back expatriate technicians. In a report last week, the International Energy Agency predicted that Libyan oil production would be only 1.2 million barrels a day by the end of 2012. Last week, at least six people were killed in a firefight between two rival militias that occurred around Zawiyah. In the southwestern desert, where some of the largest oil fields are, there was a standoff recently between one militia and Tuareg tribesmen who raided a Qaddafi arms depot and stole some mortars. Eni, Total of France and Repsol of Spain have begun to send in a trickle of staff, mostly to restart offshore Mediterranean fields far from any violence. BP, which had planned promising exploration projects, has so far declined to send anyone back. Over all, only about 20 of the 2,000 foreign oil workers who provided critical technical functions for exploration and production before the war have returned, according to officials at the National Oil Company, which partners with foreign companies. Foreign technicians are critical to restart some of the older oil fields that were abruptly shut down. Older wells tend to fill with water or wax when left out of production for long periods, and they will need to be injected with nitrogen and steam a tedious operation that requires experienced hands and scarce repair rigs. However, the war left Libya's oil fields and facilities in far better shape than past and current revolutions in Iran, Iraq and Yemen. The most serious damage to the fields was when a NATO bomb aimed at Qaddafi forces destroyed a transformer in the eastern Messla field. Repairs are under way and production is back to nearly 70 percent. The As Sidrah oil port facility has been hobbled by a destroyed metering system, but workers are getting around the problem by estimating the amount of oil in tanks and tankers before or after they are filled. Gas compressors at the refinery in Brega were damaged in the fighting, but other refineries are taking up the slack. There was no damage at the Zawiyah refinery, aside from the destruction of a tugboat full of escaping Qaddafi troops. The rebels, rather than blow up an important pipeline between two giant oil fields and the refinery, soldered two valves closed and then stationed guards there to make sure no one would open them until the war was over. "Everything can be fixed because there is not much to be fixed," said Mr. Rashed of the Zawiyah refinery. "I think it is a miracle from God that our oil industry was not severely damaged." Abulgassen Shengheer, the National Oil Company's general manager for exploration and production, said Libyan employees of Halliburton, Baker Hughes and other foreign companies were able to do the bulk of needed repairs so far. Workers are making do without air conditioning in the desert and jury rigging control rooms as best they can under armed protection from militias. Foreign oil companies are pitching in by helping Libya acquire new trucks, computers and spare parts, and Mr. Shengheer predicted that large numbers of foreign workers would be back by early next year. "I can't say we can do everything," he acknowledged. "Some expatriates must be here." Foreign oil giants, including the American companies Marathon and Hess, certainly want to be in Libya, and the jockeying has already begun for the chance to drill new fields on profitable terms. Prime Minister David Cameron of Britain, President Nicolas Sarkozy of France and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton all went to Tripoli soon after its liberation to meet with leaders of the interim government, and foreign oil company executives hope that the diplomatic overtures will help them win lucrative contracts in the future. With proven reserves of 46.4 billion barrels the largest in Africa Libya is a great prize. But historically the country has been a disappointment for foreign oil companies. During his long rule, Colonel Qaddafi granted foreigners drilling rights on small patches of fields and made them sign agreements that gave the regime most of the profits and left them with most of the bills. Decades of Western sanctions also kept most companies away until 2006. Now, a new era could be dawning for a country that 50 years ago produced three million barrels a day roughly double the output of recent years and that might return to such lofty levels with ample investment and new technologies to exploit old and still to be discovered fields deep in the Sahara. Mr. Tarhouni, the acting oil minister, said the current government's priority was to restart production, and it would leave any renegotiation of existing oil contracts or issuance of new ones for a future elected government. "I don't anticipate that the interim government will make any major decisions," he said. Mr. Scaroni, the Eni chief executive, is already angling for more business. His company, which produced 280,000 barrels of oil and gas a day in Libya before the war, was by far the biggest foreign producer and counted Libya as an important source of profits in recent years. Mr. Scaroni visited the rebel leadership in Benghazi last April, flying in via helicopter from an Italian warship, and has been shuttling in and out of Libya. "The countries that have been involved in helping the new government in throwing out Qaddafi will have a strong relationship with the country," he said. "Libya remains a country where we want to be, to stay, and we want to grow our production."
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Global Business
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A replica of a giant telamon, cobbled together in the 1970s from local stone, near the Temple of Jupiter in Agrigento's Valley of Temples. Of all the punishments chronicled in Greek mythology, none were as heavy handed as the one that Zeus meted out to Atlas. Having led the Titans in their losing battle with the Olympian gods for control of the heavens, Atlas was condemned to bear the sky aloft for eternity. And of all the temples built during the ancient Greek empire, none enlisted more Atlases than the one dedicated to the Olympic Zeus in Akragas, a city state now called Agrigento, on the southwest coast of Sicily. Atop massive half columns, 38 Atlases, each 25 feet tall and carved from limestone, seemingly held up the architrave the main beam that rests on the capitals of columns with their bent arms. The Doric temple the world's largest was built to commemorate the victory over Carthage at the battle of Himera in 480 B.C.; it survives today as a heap of tumbled pillars and blocks of stone at the Valley of the Temples archaeological park. Only one of its Atlases, or telamones, remains even semi intact. It stands on display in the Regional Archaeological Museum, badly weathered and footless but upright. This past summer the park's director, Roberto Sciarratta, announced he had commissioned a colossal statue, a sort of Franken Atlas, to mark the founding of Akragas 2,600 years ago. Reassembled fragments from eight of the telamones are to be arranged on shelves within a steel ribbed contemporary sculpture in the shape of the damned Titan. Over the last 15 years archaeologists have recovered and cataloged some 90 artifacts from the ruins of the temple. "The goal is to recompose piece by piece the beams of the Temple of Zeus to restore a portion of its original splendor," Dr. Sciarratta said. "The new statue of Atlas will serve as a guardian of the temple dedicated to the father of the gods." The story of Akragas is not nearly as uplifting as the story of Atlas. The city was settled mainly by colonists from Crete and Rhodes in an area the Romans called Magna Graecia, or "Greater Greece." Akragas came to prominence under the tyrant Phalaris (circa 570 549 B.C.), notorious in legend for his gruesome approach to executions. The condemned were roasted inside a hollow bronze bull, their screams, according to the first century B.C. historian Diodorus Siculus, channeled into small sounding pipes to mimic the bellowing of an enraged beast. It was under the rule of another tyrant, Theron (circa 488 473 B.C.), that the community and the arts prospered. The lyric poet Pindar described Akragas as the most beautiful city "inhabited by mortals," and the philosopher Empedocles, a native son, is said to have remarked that the citizens ate as if they would die the next day, and built as if they would live forever. A reconstituted Atlas statue, or telamon, from the Valley of Temples greets the museum's visitors. Fragments of eight telamons will be assembled into a colossal sculpture to commemorate the founding of Akragas 2,600 years ago. During Theron's reign Akragas' enormous wealth was poured into ambitious public works aqueducts, underground water systems and a series of sacred buildings erected on a rocky scarp overlooking the Mediterranean. Temples were dedicated to Hera, Concordia, Heracles, Castor and Pollux, Demeter, Hephaestos and, further down, on the bank of the river Akragas, Asclepius, the god of medicine. The Temple of the Olympian Zeus, also known as the Olympieion, was built using Carthaginian slave labor presumably prisoners of war captured in the Battle of Himera. The dimensions were roughly the same as an American football field and its end zones: 340 feet long and 160 feet wide, and rose to a height of 120 feet, not including the foundation. Evidently, the work was never completed. When Carthage conquered Akragas in 405 B.C. after an eight month siege, the temple was still open to the sky, perhaps owing to the difficulty of building a roof to span the distance. In detailing the enormity of the Olympieion's scale, Diodorus wrote that the fluting of the outer columns was big enough for a man to stand inside. Unlike most pillars of the period, the temple's were not free standing but demi columns, 23 by 46 feet, engaged in a continuous curtain wall to support the weight of horizontal architectural detailing that composes the entablature. If the scale model in the museum is to be believed, the Atlases stood on a recessed ledge in the upper portions of the bays, hands stretched above their heads. The Olympieion's unstately pile is the result of two millenniums of earthquakes and pilfering. During the mid 1700s, stonework was quarried and hauled away for use in breakwaters and jetties at the nearby town of Porto Empedocle. The concept of the project has been criticized for violating professional standards and, perhaps, good taste. "No archaeologist would endorse the use of ancient sculpture, no matter how fragmentary, to create a modern sculpture, even if the purpose is to highlight the site's antiquity," said C. Brian Rose, an archaeologist at the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology. Nowadays, a copy of the museum's Atlas, cobbled together in the 1970s, lounges near the rubble, roped off from the public. "Many visitors believe the Atlas on the ground is authentic," said Leonardo Guarnieri, a park spokesman, with a shrug worthy of Ayn Rand. "It is not authentic." He added that the hands of the new golem Atlas would be unencumbered. That ought to take a load off his shoulders.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Science
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Before he showed his first collection, Justin O'Shea, the newly installed, heavily tattooed creative director of Brioni, unveiled an advertising campaign that featured members of the heavy metal band Metallica and a fresh iteration of the Brioni logo in a gothic font. The typeface may seem surprising for a brand known for suits that can cost as much as 6,900. But Mr. O'Shea's decision is consistent with the fashion industry's recent infatuation with the ornate style of lettering. The brand Vetements has the phrase "Drink from me and live forever" scribbled down the right arm of a hoodie in gothic text and also up a leg of its jeans. Sweatshirts and T shirts released by Kanye West this year in conjunction with his album "The Life of Pablo" feature a similar typeface. "It's been used for some of the most sacred texts in the Western world," said Michael Bierut, a partner at the design firm Pentagram and a senior critic at the Yale School of Art. "At the same time, it's used by biker gangs, street gangs, heavy metal groups and death metal groups. It seems like Satan has come to own it more than God." Thanks to its longevity, the typeface has accrued a wide range of cultural associations and the versatility to convey both a sense of reverential authority and rebellion. "I think there's always that double edge, a duality that goes on in everything," said Sarah Hyndman, the author of "Why Fonts Matter." The hyperbolic nature of gothic contrasts sharply with the minimalist lettering of established luxury brands like Celine and Chanel. "You could suggest that this is a rebellion against corporate culture," Ms. Hyndman said. The Southern California surf and skate subcultures that have lately had the fashion industry in thrall have long relied on gothic fonts. After publishing his book of photographs, "Palm Angels," which chronicles the Los Angeles skateboarding scene, the Italian creative director Francesco Ragazzi introduced a streetwear label of the same name, using a gothic typeface for its logo. "Today, a lot of hip brands use it, and I see it especially in Los Angeles," Mr. Ragazzi said. Mr. Bierut and Ms. Hyndman noted that dressing up a brand logo in flashy lettering is reminiscent of graffiti, of creating messages hidden in plain sight. "It's a short jump to the idea of exclusivity and defining what a tribe is, and I think that is very much a part of the world of fashion," Mr. Bierut said. "Think of it like this: The message is whatever the word says, and the typeface is the tone of voice."
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Fashion & Style
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New Popeye Videos Show What 90 Years of Spinach Can Do for a Guy Popeye the Sailor, the weathered and quick with his fists cartoon character, is getting a reboot for a series of animated shorts that premiered on Sunday on YouTube. The shorts and a new series of comic strips, which will begin in 2019, were created to celebrate the character's 90th birthday next year. In the animated series, Popeye is being recast as a more youthful, environmentally resourceful fellow, who lives in a washed ashore houseboat, collects rainwater and grows his own spinach. Are skinny jeans and kale salads far behind? "People know and love characters like Nancy, Alley Oop and Popeye," Andrew Farago, the curator of the Cartoon Art Museum in San Francisco, wrote in an email. "Their parents, grandparents and great grandparents know these characters." He added: "Unlike a long form story, a comic strip has about three or four panels to grab a reader's attention. If that reader already knows the characters and the premise of the strip, the strip's going to have that much more impact when you compare it to a new strip with new characters that you've never seen before." King Features is trying something different with the new comic strips, which will be presented online as "Popeye's Cartoon Club": They will be drawn by a different artist each week. The target audience also skews a little older. The series harks back to a Sunday feature from 1934 in which Segar gave step by step instructions for drawing Popeye and printed artwork from fans. The artists are comic book and comic strip creators including Alex Hallatt, Erica Henderson and Tom Neely. In one installment, Roger Langridge reveals the secret of Olive Oyl's youthful glow after Popeye discovers her 1919 birth certificate. In another, Lar deSouza has the "Queer Eye" like Internet Fancy Guys visit Popeye for a makeover and they decide he is already on trend. Jeffrey Brown offers a more classic take on Popeye's relationship when Olive Oyl catches him gazing wistfully at a photograph of her. She assumes he's remembering good times, but the final panel reveals the truth. Popeye thinks, "I wonder if Olive Oyl would bring me some more spinnich."
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Media
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These Cultural Treasures Are Made of Plastic. Now They're Falling Apart. LOS ANGELES The custodians of Neil Armstrong's spacesuit at the National Air and Space Museum saw it coming. A marvel of human engineering, the suit is made of 21 layers of various plastics: nylon, neoprene, Mylar, Dacron, Kapton and Teflon. The rubbery neoprene layer would pose the biggest problem. Although invisible, buried deep between the other layers, the suit's caretakers knew the neoprene would harden and become brittle with age, eventually making the suit stiff as a board. In January 2006, the Armstrong suit, a national treasure, was taken off display and stored to slow the degradation. Of an estimated 8,300 million metric tons of plastic produced to date, roughly 60 percent is floating in the oceans or stuffed in landfills. Most of us want that plastic to disappear. But in museums, where objects are meant to last forever, plastics are failing the test of time. Art is not spared either, as Georgina Rayner, a conservation scientist at Harvard Art Museums, showed at the American Chemical Society's national meeting in Boston this month. Claes Oldenburg's "False Food Selection," a wooden box containing plastic models of foods like eggs and bacon, a banana and an oatmeal cookie, now appears to be rotting. The egg whites are yellowing, while the banana has completely deflated. In museums, the problem is becoming more apparent, Dr. Rayner said in an interview: "Plastics are reaching the end of their lifetimes kind of now." Of all materials, plastics are proving to be one of the most challenging for conservators. "I find plastics very frustrating," said Mr. Collum. Because of the material's unpredictability and the huge variation in forms of deterioration, he said, "it's just a completely different world." "We have a very short history, in comparison to other materials, in understanding how long those materials last," said Hugh Shockey, lead conservator at the Saint Louis Art Museum. Metal, stone, ceramic and paper have survived thousands of years, while plastics have existed for a little over 150 years. In that short time, however, they have risen to dominate the materials we use today. And plastics increasingly appear in art and artifacts nominated for preservation. A walk through various Smithsonian Institution museums makes that clear. There's the art, of course: acrylic paintings, a polyester parabolic lens with a mirror like surface, a fiberglass sculpture of a middle aged woman poised to dig into a melting banana split. There are the triumphs of human ingenuity: the first artificial heart, Ella Fitzgerald's LPs, the Apple I computer, a D Tag device that helped researchers track and save endangered right whales. And there are the mundane objects, the documentation of human life: an electric can opener, a pink Princess rotary telephone, Tupperware, a six by eight array of coffee cup lids, all with different designs. "You have these objects in any museum collection, especially historic objects they take you back to a time. But holding that moment in time in a material sense is tough," said Odile Madden, a plastics conservation scientist at the Getty Conservation Institute in Los Angeles. Dr. Madden leads a small group of scientists at the institute's Modern and Contemporary Art Research Initiative, ModCon for short, who are working to help plastic live forever. The first step for these conservators and others is to determine simply what the plastic is. "We use this word as a monolith, 'plastics,' when in fact it's many hundreds and thousands of different things," said Gregory Bailey, a conservator at the Smithsonian American Art Museum. "Plastic" simply refers to something moldable. Often, plastics are mixtures of polymers big, long chained molecules and small molecule additives. The earliest plastics were made from modified natural polymers like cellulose, but most plastics today are based on synthetic polymers that last much longer. The additives may be so called plasticizers that improve flexibility or fillers that strengthen the matter. "There are opacifiers, pigments and sometimes even glitter," Dr. Madden said. "You end up with an enormous number of possibilities for what a plastic composition could be." Like the Science Times page on Facebook. Sign up for the Science Times newsletter. Perched on a hill, the views from the Getty institute stretch to the Pacific Ocean on a clear day. One afternoon , Anna Lagana, a conservator, rustled through a bin of plastic objects, some faded, others shattered. The objects belonged to a reference collection donated to advance plastic conservation research at the institute. "This is all the drama," she said. She picked out a toothbrush split into two pieces at the middle. At its ends, the plastic handle was transparent, albeit yellowed. But near the breaks, the toothbrush is opaque, as if a cloud of white flowers had bloomed inside it. "The field started with very rudimentary physical tests, like a hot needle test" on a surface to see if the plastic melted, she said. "If it gave off some kind of smell, does it smell piney? Does it smell like burnt hair?" Scientific analysis is usually accompanied by archival research. "We spend a lot of time studying the history of how these things are made," said Dr. Madden. "If it's a piece of Lego made before 1960, I'm expecting it will be cellulose acetate, not ABS." For objects with almost no information, a good technique to start with is spectroscopy, an analysis of how molecules interact with light. Dr. Madden brought out a green and white striped vase and a small, red instrument. The instrument fires infrared light through materials, explained Michael Doutre, a ModCon scientist. After absorbing infrared light, the bonds that connect different atoms within molecules will bend and stretch in distinctive ways, like signature dance moves. By examining the moves recorded on a graph, scientists can identify the type of bonds and try to infer what the molecules are. Ms. Lagana holds the vase steady while Dr. Madden touches the tip of the spectrometer to it. "For me, it's polyethylene or it's polypropylene," said Ms. Lagana, a guess based on the feel and smell of the vase. Mr. Doutre started the analysis on a computer, and a graph appeared on the screen. Ms. Lagana was right the graph indicated nothing other than simple bonds between carbon and carbon atoms, and carbon and hydrogen atoms. "In this case, the absence of things tells us it's polyethylene," Mr. Doutre said. Dr. Madden pulled out what used to be a powder box, its cover now badly warped , cracked and covered in a layer of white powder. "The plastic has lost some proportion of its mass," she said, because its plasticizer had migrated to the surface and emerged as white powder. Without plasticizer, the box became brittle and shrank, and then finally cracked along its sides. Shrinking and additive migration are two of the most common ways plastics degrade. While in storage at the Smithsonian, curators found that a brown stain had appeared on the Armstrong suit's left torso as plasticizer moved out of the air supply tubes, which were made of polyvinyl chloride ( PVC ). That happens because the molecules within plastics are not arranged in the most efficient way, said Jane Lipson, a physical chemist at Dartmouth College. They are like frozen disorganized liquids, containing a lot of empty, random gaps between molecules. Over time, the large polymer molecules will slowly reorganize and pack themselves more efficiently, which looks like shrinking to the naked eye. Any small molecule additives will work themselves out through the gaps until they reach the surface as a sticky liquid or a white powder. When plastics get warm, they degrade faster because the molecules have more energy to move around. "They're sort of finding their way to a place that's more stable," said Dr. Lipson. Often, conservators just try to find the best conditions in which to maintain the artifacts. "Much of the conservation is how do we manage the storage or display environment to slow down the deterioration as much as possible," said Mr. Bailey, of the Smithsonian American Art Museum. That may involve filtering out ultraviolet rays to decrease random breaking of plastic's molecular bonds, a tall order for the museum (it has lots of windows). Preserving a plastic artwork also may mean keeping the temperature low and humidity stable to reduce plasticizer migration, or providing an oxygen free environment to prevent oxidation. Mr. Collum and his team are building a special display case for the Armstrong suit in carefully chosen conditions: 63 degrees Fahrenheit, 30 percent humidity, plus filters to remove contaminants. The conservators hope to have the display ready for next year's 50th anniversary of the moon landing. Even something as innocuous as cleaning an object for an exhibit can be a complex process. It seems easy enough to clear plasticizer from a surface, for instance, but cleaning prompts more plasticizer to emerge, effectively accelerating degradation. "The plasticizer is actually trying to find equilibrium between the outside of the plastic and the inside of the plastic," Mr. Shockey said. "But once you override the equilibrium, you can have a catastrophic event." Despite their notoriety as a major pollutant, plastics have important stories to tell.Even if we move away from plastics, Dr. Shockey said, "I think there's still the need for persistence of memory in human culture." He recalled the story of tortoiseshell and its plastic doppelganger, cellulose acetate. "We nearly hunted a particular turtle to extinction," Dr. Shockey said, "and then we were able to turn away from the natural material to an alternative." "There's a reason why we use them instead of the more traditional materials," said Jeannette Garcia, a polymer chemist at IBM. For the most part plastics are cheap and versatile, lightweight yet strong. Plastic bottles help transport clean drinking water to remote areas, lightweight composites help save energy in automobiles and planes, single use sterile syringes and blood bags help extend lives. Prosthetics help replace failing body parts . "We can outlive our bodies, thanks in part to plastic," said Dr. Madden. Not to mention sending people into space.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Science
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"Otro Teatro," the Spanish title of Luciana Achugar's latest work, translates as "other theater" or "another theater," with the possible connotation of an alternative one. The New York premiere on Wednesday took place in the conventional setting of the theater at New York Live Arts, but Ms. Achugar has some unconventional notions of what might transpire there for performers and audience. A handout suggests a project "to grow ourselves a new body," "a utopian body," "an anarchic body, "a body in pleasure." There is no set; no sounds, save for those made by the body. The piece begins with a body, Ms. Achugar's, shrouded in a fabric like shiny burlap, moaning. The moaning builds to chanting, and her rocking on her knees rises into a circling around the floor. This ritual action repeats, and the work as a whole shares this loose fitting shape of escalating and subsiding. It lasts more than two hours. It's hard to say more while honoring Ms. Achugar's request that critics not divulge surprises. To anyone familiar with her work, it hardly counts as a surprise that she is naked beneath the shroud, her hair unkempt, her skin streaked with red. But without revealing too much, perhaps I could offer some advice to viewers accustomed to conventional theatergoing: When the people around you start moaning, don't shush them. To put it another way, there are several reasons the number of empty seats in the audience keeps increasing. This much seems essential to hint at, since audience experience is key to the work's ambitions and its problems. Your reaction to the moaning is a crucial test. Do you think "I'll have what she's having" or, as I did, "Get me out of here"?
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Dance
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Tear yourself away from the picture postcard Pacific views on Route 1, south of the border between California and Mexico, and you see Valle de Guadalupe undulating to the east, its Mars like boulders and vast stretches of rose gold colored dirt belying the fact that there is some pretty great wine being grown here. Valle is not a new wine region some vineyards date from the 1920s but this Mexican wine country is calling to millennials, with modern, design y wineries and grit that can't be found in Napa or Sonoma. It's also cheaper than those areas, and less likely to be trodden by tour bus crowds more "Choose Your Own Adventure" than Club Med. The valley is also relatively easy to reach, and services have cropped up to let visitors imbibe while someone else takes the wheel. Club Tengo Hambre and Turista Libre offer guided food and wine tours; Uber Valle allows Uber users to hail a wine country chauffeur for a day. S.U.V.s line the parking lot of Lomita, a funky winery with murals by the Mexico City artist Jorge Tellaeche and offbeat knickknacks like an orange chandelier. With his trucker hat, the proprietor Fernando Perez Castro, 39, fits right in with his trendy, tattooed clientele. The property started as a retirement home for his parents; he opened the winery in 2009, in love with a woman (now his wife) who lived nearby and wanting a reason to linger. "Ten years ago, there weren't any roads," he said. "I thought, 'How do I make a place where I will hang out, where I will feel good, where people will think the way I think?' What happened was a lot of people my age came here. It wasn't like I did focus groups." Lights in the barrel room glow neon red; the restaurant out back serves fish tacos in the shade. There is a white wine whose name translates to a Taylor Swift song (Espacio en Blanco, or "Blank Space"). One of the most endearing things about this wine country is that it doesn't take itself too seriously. "This is the junk that didn't work out," joked Phil Gregory, an owner of Vena Cava, as he poured flutes of cantaloupe hued sparkling wine. Next to him, a group of women on a yoga retreat threw back their glasses. "What used to happen in this part of the world was that no one had anything to do and now everyone has appointments every hour," Mr. Gregory said. A native of Manchester, England, who owned a recording studio in Los Angeles, he and his wife, Eileen, first came to Valle de Guadalupe to try the restaurant Laja. Four weeks later, they bought a hillside property that is now home to a winery, bed and breakfast and Corazon de Tierra, whose tasting menu of farm to table Mexican fare clocks in at under 50 per person. Tables book up fast. Food trucks are a thing here. The one parked at Adobe Guadalupe, a hacienda style winery that rears horses as well as grapes, actually takes reservations because the ceviche, duck tortas and marinated mushrooms trounce the reputation of things cooked on four wheels. The eating experience is also upgraded: Instead of a curb to perch on, there are a dozen tables on the picturesque patio surrounding the truck. Scrappiness pervades the valley. "It used to have a very stinky, particular smell; the wine was very bad," said Hans Backhoff, founder of Monte Xanic, a large, polished winery that opened in 1988. "That was part of the challenge." Now, each year brings more visitors than the last, many of whom used to associate Mexico only with beaches and umbrella drinks. "It's been a continuous fight against ignorance," Mr. Backhoff said. Night life in the valley consists of gazing at the riot of stars in the sky, made visible because of the lack of streetlights and skyscrapers. Encuentro Guadalupe, a collection of modernist cube shape hotel suites built into boulders, offers dozens of viewing perches, some with telescopes. Though its accommodations are costly around 500 per night depending on room size the hotel, like the rest of the region, knows how to appeal to pop culture savvy travelers. Shortly after Encuentro opened in 2012, a celebrity and her entourage booked the property for a birthday party. During a tour, a hotel staff member dropped her name with all the weight of a boulder: "Do you know Rihanna?"
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Travel
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Before Jesus became the man god of Christianity, he was a brat. Or so say the Infancy Gospels, gnostic folk tales popular in their day but left out of the Scriptures for obvious reasons. The stories feature a boy Jesus too immature to control his supernatural powers. He kills friends who anger him, then revives them. Teachers who mistake his wisdom for impudence are made to fall down in a faint. His parents don't know what to do with him. 's Jesus trilogy "The Childhood of Jesus" (2013), "The Schooldays of Jesus" (2016) and now "The Death of Jesus" chronicles the life and death of a child with certain resemblances to that holy terror. His name is David, though this is not his real name. Almost no one in the novels knows his or her real name. The trilogy is full of blank spots like that. It is set in a no place in no identifiable era, a faded, barren, vaguely socialist, wholly secular, Spanish speaking utopia with the stuck in time feel of Cuba. People are sincere but lack passion and the ability to detect sarcasm; food is scarce and lacks salt; literal minded bureaucrats appear well intentioned but are borderline malevolent. David, like most of the other inhabitants, arrives as a refugee via a transit camp where he is washed clean of memories, taught Spanish and assigned a new name. David isn't cruel like the gnostic Jesus, but he is unmanageable. He repeatedly upends the lives of his loving guardians, Ines and Simon. He baffles Simon in particular and resists almost all of his attempts to give him an education. When David is 5, a public school teacher concludes that he is learning disabled and has him institutionalized. He escapes by walking through barbed wire, and Ines and Simon have to smuggle him out of town. Arithmetic occasions the fiercest struggles. Simon wants David to learn his numbers. He already knows all the numbers, David says, and names a few: 134 and 7 and 4623551. Simon takes this as insolence, and proof that David can't count. (Actually, he can.) In "The Schooldays of Jesus," his guardians enlist a tutor, who tries to explain numbers to David by putting a white pill next to a white pill and a red pen next to a blue pen to show that each set shares the common property of twoness. Maybe the pills do, David replies, but the pens don't, because one is blue and the other red. "Every object in the world is subject to arithmetic," the tutor insists. "Not water," the boy counters. "Or vomit." The tutor never comes back. If this were a graduate seminar in metaphysics, David might stand a better chance. His responses aren't nonsensical; they're nominalist, which is to say that David, like certain Anglo American philosophers, can't or won't accept the reality of abstract numbers. To him, objects exist only in their singularity, and numbers are objects too. They don't have to be used to count; they need not line up in sequence. David rejects the gift of a watch because "it fixes the numbers in a circular order. Nine o'clock may be before 10 o'clock, he says, but nine is neither before nor after 10." Simon and the tutor, by contrast, are Platonists: They believe in numbers and their relationships as eternal, universal truths. Want to keep up with the latest and greatest in books? This is a good place to start. None Learn what you should be reading this fall: Our collection of reviews on books coming out this season includes biographies, novels, memoirs and more. See what's new in October: Among this month's new titles are novels by Jonathan Franzen, a history of Black cinema and a biography by Katie Couric. Nominate a book: The New York Times Book Review has just turned 125. That got us wondering: What is the best book that was published during that time? Listen to our podcast: Featuring conversations with leading figures in the literary world, from Colson Whitehead to Leila Slimani, the Book Review Podcast helps you delve deeper into your favorite books. Coetzee never uses formal philosophical language, but this clash of viewpoints plays a particularly important role in "The Schooldays of Jesus." A desperate Simon enrolls David in an Academy of Dance, even though Simon suspects that the place traffics in mumbo jumbo. It teaches dance as a mystical practice having something to do with numerology. David's dance teacher rejects arithmetic as too lowly, too utilitarian, to bother with. "The numbers you have in mind," she tells the parents, "the numbers we use when we buy and sell, are not true numbers but simulacra. They are what I call ant numbers." True numbers live "among the aloof stars," and dance calls them down to earth so they may "live among us." David immediately reveals himself to be the greatest dancer the school has ever seen. After David's death (this is not a spoiler; it's in the title of the final book), the school director tells Simon that David was his master, not his pupil. "When David danced he was somewhere else, and if you were able to follow him you would be transported to that place too not always, but now and again," the man says. In "The Death of Jesus," Simon and David argue less about numbers and more about literature, specifically "Don Quixote." When David was 5, Simon checked out of the library a children's version of the novel to read to David; at 10, he refuses to read anything else. Simon begs him to broaden his horizons. "You have a false understanding of what it means to read," Simon says. "It means learning about the world the world as it really is, not as you wish it to be." Because the book is meant to warn readers against "being sucked into an unreal world," Simon answers. David seems unwilling to admit that the quixotic world is unreal, or at least any less real than the one dimensional Flatland of a country that he shares with Simon. "Things don't have to be true to be true," David says later. "That is why you don't like Don Quixote. You think he isn't true." It's hard to imagine anyone other than Coetzee making radical skepticism about the ontological status of numbers and the realness of reality central to the message of God's appointed messenger. Coetzee, a Nobel Prize winner from South Africa, studied mathematics and linguistics and was a computer programmer before he became a writer. You could call him a novelist of ideas, but also a philosopher working in fiction. Many of Coetzee's recent novels have the stripped down quality of philosophical fable. His prose has never been ornamental, but in his later years it has grown particularly spare. This is not unpleasant; rather, it's disorienting, then hypnotic. When Coetzee withholds back story, the reader must learn to tolerate mystery. Conversations between Simon and David have the purity of Socratic dialogue, though with an anti Platonic twist. In these exchanges though Simon won't realize this for a very long time it is David who plays the brilliant provocateur and Simon the foil. As the novel opens, David has been going around telling everyone that he is an orphan. This is true, like everything he says, but also dangerous, since it puts him at risk of being taken away from Ines and Simon. But no matter: He has decided to leave them anyway and enter an orphanage, a grim institution with aggressive older students who are subjected to a bare bones, vocational education, under the direction of one rather slimy Dr. Fabricante. Now it is Simon's turn to ask why. Because he is an orphan, says David petulantly, because Ines and Simon aren't his real parents, because he wants to play on the orphanage's winning soccer team and he has to join the orphanage to play, because "I want to be who I want to be," because "there is no why," because "you don't listen so you don't understand." What doesn't Simon understand, other than anything? Simon seeks the advice of the director of the dance academy, whom he has come to trust. Entertain the possibility, the man says, that rather than being bullied, David could tame Fabricante's rough students, "turning them into model citizens, gentle, well behaved, obedient." "Your son has a sense of duty, of obligation, that is unusual in a 10 year old," the headmaster replies. "He feels a certain duty toward Fabricante's orphans, toward orphans in general, the world's orphans." "The Death of Jesus" is the novel in which David becomes most recognizably a Jesus figure. He has followers, imparts wisdom, suffers martyrdom. One follower is the headmaster; another is Dmitri, a trickster, rapist and murderer straight out of Dostoyevsky who sees in David his redeemer, his master, a comet on a brief visit to earth. As predicted, the orphans also worship David. He develops a mysterious neurological disease. The doctors draw blood and wait for a transfusion that never comes. The orphans visit him in the hospital every day, sitting in an adoring circle as David preaches the gospel of Don Quixote, anecdotes transfigured into fairy tales full of miraculous deeds, flying horses and enigmatic sayings. "O man," David's Quixote tells a man who tries to buy Rocinante, the knight's faithful nag, "you see not the world itself but only the measures in which the world is veiled. Woe unto you, blind one." It is Simon, however, who emerges as the novel's tragic hero. His anguish about David humbles him, and slowly, slowly, he learns how to listen. No longer does David's view of numbers as spinning stars, as music strike Simon as absurd. As he sits by David's bedside, the boy asks his unanswerable questions: "Am I going to be recognized?" "Why am I here?" Simon gets better at finding answers: "To bring light into our lives, my boy, into Ines's life and my life and the lives of all the people who meet you."
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Books
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Creating an audioscape for a movie about a musician losing his hearing is more complicated than it may seem. The filmmakers behind the new drama "Sound of Metal" wanted to take audiences into the experience of its lead character, Ruben (Riz Ahmed), a punk metal drummer who is forced to look at his life differently as he goes deaf. Judging by the overwhelmingly positive reviews, the filmmakers pulled off that difficult feat. In The New York Times, Jeannette Catsoulis raved about "an extraordinarily intricate sound design that allows us to borrow Ruben's ears." The film (streaming on Amazon) often places us in Ruben's aural perspective as he navigates his new reality. (It's worth watching with headphones or a good sound system.) "I had many conversations with people who have lost their hearing and not two people's experience is the same," said Darius Marder, the film's co writer and director. "But one thing that's pretty much true for all people who are deaf is that they don't lose sound entirely. It isn't silence." Instead, Marder and his sound designer, Nicolas Becker, wanted to capture those low frequency vibrations and other tones. The approach was adjusted for different moments in Ruben's experience. In separate Zoom interviews, Marder and Becker focused on three scenes as they spoke about some of the techniques and ideas they used to tap into Ruben's aural experience, including putting microphones inside skulls and mouths. One of the first times there's a notable change in Ruben's hearing comes before a show, as he is setting up the merchandise table with his bandmate and girlfriend, Lou (Olivia Cooke). At one point, he experiences a high pitched ringing, then voices are muffled. Ahmed's response in that moment isn't just acting. The filmmakers had custom fit earpieces made for the actor so they could feed him a high frequency sound they had created. "He's reacting to a very physical process," Marder said. "And that process gives way to a white noise in Riz's ears in real time that doesn't allow him to even hear his own voice, which is a very specific experience, to not be able to hear your own voice. It's what gives rise to a loss of balance and a real loss of control." This moment signals to the audience that the movie will be taking a much more first person approach, that we will often be listening through Ruben's ears. The sequence continues with the band's performance, when Ruben is sitting at the drum kit, the loud beats slowly fading into low, distant tones. In the next sequence, Ruben gets up in the morning to realize his hearing loss has become more pronounced. The sound here comes off as low and rumbly, somewhat cavernous and very internal. That internal feeling is a specialty for Becker, who has created immersive, personalized sound experiences on many projects, from the astronaut drama "Gravity," for which he put on a spacesuit to understand the sound inside it, to the deep sea disaster film "The Command," for which he spent two weeks recording underwater in a submarine. "If I can put people in a real ambient sonic environment, I can create something very specific," he explained. "It's about how you relate sound to your body memory." Becker said that a year before filming "The Sound of Metal," he invited Marder to Paris to visit an anechoic chamber. The room is designed to get rid of sound and reverberations. "After 10 minutes, you can hear your tendons, the pressure of your blood," Becker said. "You reach the physiological limit of your hearing system." Later in the film, Ruben gets cochlear implants. In this scene, he meets with an audiologist, who helps tune the devices. She adjusts them in different ways, with each result more pronounced but still accompanied by a hissy distortion, like a radio dial that doesn't quite reach the right frequency. The audiologist explains to Ruben that it isn't sound the way he remembers it; rather, the implants are tricking his brain into thinking he's hearing. Narratively, the film is drawing a link between the sounds Ruben makes as a drummer, which might seem unpleasant to some listeners, and the sound coming from the implants, which now Ruben deems unpleasant. "It needed to ride that line of being uncomfortable but not unbearable," Marder said of the audio in that scene. To do that, the sounds were heavily processed; each layer of sound also had to be handled individually, with filters put on each element. Then those layers were scattered around channels in the mix "to create the experience of a loss of equilibrium," Marder said. "Because one of the fascinating aspects of that hearing experience is not just that the sound sounds different, but also that our brain doesn't understand directionality. So all of a sudden, that surround sound, you're lost in it."
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Movies
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In May, after a dozen years in Manhattan, Brian and Kim Olson and their children left behind their Battery Park City rental for a meticulously renovated four bedroom colonial they had bought for 1.775 million in Lloyd Harbor. Suddenly, the treks to the Hamptons that they had so consistently made from the city became a thing of the past. Mr. Olson, who grew up in this northwestern Suffolk County village an hour from Midtown, felt rejuvenated by his return, as if permanently on vacation. The minimum lot size is two acres, and theirs provides its pleasures. The family can walk to a private beach, shared with the 11 homes on their block, in one of Lloyd Harbor's many private neighborhood road associations. Mr. Olson's thrice weekly four mile runs and bike rides provide water views at every turn: Cold Spring Harbor, Long Island Sound and Lloyd Harbor all but encircle this community of 3,400 on its 9.2 square mile peninsula.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Real Estate
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As states struggle to contain the resurgent coronavirus, many officials are laying the blame on an unexpected source: people gathering with family and friends. Household get togethers undoubtedly do contribute to community transmission of the virus. Canada's recent Thanksgiving certainly added to its rising cases; such an increase may happen here, too, as the United States embarks on a holiday season like no other. That's why the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Thursday warned so strongly against gathering with others outside the household during Thanksgiving. But are dinners and backyard barbecues really the engine driving the current surge of infections? The available data do not support that contention, scientists say. Still, the idea has been repeated so often it has become conventional wisdom, leading to significant restrictions in many states. In dozens of statements over the past weeks, political leaders and public health officials have said that while previous waves of infection could be linked to nursing homes, meatpacking plants or restaurants, the problem now is that unmasked people are sitting too closely in kitchens and living rooms, lighting thousands of small Covid fires that burn through their communities. "It's those informal, private gatherings where we're seeing the ignition taking off in terms of the infection rate," Gov. Ned Lamont of Connecticut said earlier this month, as he announced that private events would be restricted to 10 people. Household gatherings have "become a major vector of disease spread," the Health and Human Services secretary, Alex Azar, said in an interview with CNN in late October. But many epidemiologists are far less certain, saying there is little evidence to suggest that household gatherings were the source of the majority of infections since the summer. Indeed, it has become much harder to pinpoint any source of any outbreak, now that the virus is so widespread and Americans may be exposed in so many ways. "Somebody says something, and somebody else says it, and then it just becomes truth," said Julia Marcus, an infectious disease epidemiologist at Harvard University. "I worry about this narrative that doesn't yet seem to be data based." Most states don't collect or report detailed information about the exposure that led to a new infection. But in states where a breakdown is available, long term care facilities, food processing plants, prisons, health care settings, and restaurants and bars are still the leading sources of spread, the data suggest. An analysis of nearly 800 nursing homes in six states experiencing the biggest surges, including North Dakota, South Dakota and Wisconsin, found that these homes are still hot spots of viral transmission and that little has been done since the spring to reduce that risk. It is nearly impossible to compare the relative contribution of social gatherings to the number of cases in different states, or even to find a consistent definition of what constitutes a gathering. Rhode Island, which limited private gatherings to 10 people, helpfully defined the term, including family get togethers, birthday parties, baby showers and sleepovers. But some states also add larger events, such as weddings and funerals, into the category. These gatherings, especially if held indoors, certainly can drive infections. In rural Maine, a wedding with 55 guests ultimately resulted in 177 cases, while a wedding in Washington State led to at least 17. Outbreaks in communities with tight knit social networks, such as the Amish and the Hasidic Jewish population, were also powered by large social events. But the same cannot be said of smaller private gatherings with friends and family. In Colorado, only 81 active cases are attributed to social gatherings, compared with more than 4,000 from correctional centers and jails, 3,300 from colleges and universities, nearly 2,400 from assisted living facilities, and 450 from restaurants, bars, casinos and bowling alleys. In Louisiana, social events account for just 1.7 percent of the 3,300 cases for which the state has clear exposure information. "It's important to give good public health advice about what's coming in the holidays, no doubt about it," said Dr. Tom Inglesby, director of the Center for Health Security at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. "But it is not good to suggest that they are now the preponderance of the source of spread." Social gatherings have become a convenient scapegoat for political leaders flummoxed by the steeply climbing numbers, some experts said. "It seems like they're passing off the responsibility for controlling the outbreak to individuals and individual choices," said Ellie Murray, an epidemiologist at Boston University. "A pandemic is more a failure of the system than the failure of individual choices." A similar narrative played out in September, when universities shamed and expelled students for partying instead of providing them with clear guidelines and resources, Dr. Marcus said. Who should get a booster shot? It depends, Dr. Scott Gottlieb says. "It's a way of distracting from the harder public health work that we need to do," she said for example, by implementing mask mandates, addressing societal inequities and ensuring enough personal protective equipment for health care workers. A constant drumbeat about the dangers of social gatherings may help to convey the seriousness of the current surge, she said. On the other hand, in some states the misperception has led to draconian policies that don't square with science. But the executive order allows places of worship, funeral homes and wedding venues while they are encouraged to hold virtual events to host as many as 250 people indoors. Vermont likewise forbade people from meeting neighbors for a socially distanced and masked walk, but permitted them to dine indoors at restaurants before 10 p.m. These recommendations are unscientific and "bizarre," said Ashleigh Tuite, an infectious disease modeler at the University of Toronto. "If people are going to meet up, doing so outdoors is probably the lowest risk way to do it," she said. "Telling people they can't spend time safely outdoors isn't a rational approach. People are going to recognize that and push back." Dissonant policies also run the risk of fueling mistrust and resentment in a public already beset with fatigue from the pandemic and politics, Dr. Tuite warned. "If you're an average person looking at what's allowed and what's not allowed, it may not make a lot of sense," she said. "I can get together with nine of my best friends and sit around a table at a restaurant. So why can't I do that in my house?" Cracking down on social gatherings suggests that there is clear evidence regarding where people are exposed and that they are meeting more often now than earlier in the pandemic. But the data are not clear: For example, the percentage of Californians who visited friends or had guests over at their homes has hovered around 50 percent since June, according to weekly surveys conducted by the University of Southern California. In most places, the virus is too widespread to claim with any confidence where someone became infected. Where once clusters were obvious in nursing homes and meatpacking plants, for example now there are thousands of small outbreaks in restaurants, bars, bowling alleys, colleges and gyms. "It really feels like there's just little fires all over the place," said Dr. K.J. Seung, chief of strategy and policy for Covid 19 response in Massachusetts. "There's more of these social gathering clusters, there's more workplace clusters, there's more church clusters, there's more youth sports clusters more everything." In this sort of conflagration, it's impossible to estimate how much social gatherings contribute to community transmission. Maryland's public health department has reported that 13 percent of people who were infected said they had attended at least one gathering of more than 10 people. "As an epidemiologist, I don't know what to do with that information," said Jennifer Nuzzo, an epidemiologist at Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security. "I don't know just because they went there that they got it there." In Minnesota, up to the week ending Nov. 12, there were about 202,000 coronavirus infections. Nearly 12,000 were attributed to restaurants, bars and sports sites, and about 17,000 to congregate care settings. Yet more than 115,000 of the cases could not be traced back to a known setting. "Identifying any one activity as the driver of the surge misses the fact that all activities become riskier as local case levels rise," Dr. Murray said. "Household gatherings would be much safer if officials put stricter limits on commercial and nonresidential activities. They are choosing not to, and then saying the fault lies with individuals." Local governments could also provide safer gathering spaces for people, with open air tents, firepits and heat lamps as temperatures drop, Dr. Marcus said: "Then the message becomes a more realistic one. Instead of 'don't gather,' it's 'gather here instead.'" A disproportionate emphasis on private gatherings does not make sense, Dr. Marcus added: "We need to be putting our attention where it's most needed, and I'm not convinced that this is where it's most needed."
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Health
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Although experts frequently assert that nearly 1.7 billion people carry dormant tuberculosis worldwide, that figure may be a "gross exaggeration" of the real threat, a recent study concludes. The study, published last month in the journal BMJ, found that nearly everyone who falls seriously ill with TB does so within two years of getting infected. So called latent infections only rarely become active, even in old age. Researchers "have spent hundreds of millions of dollars chasing after latency, but the whole idea that a quarter of the world is infected with TB is based on a fundamental misunderstanding," said Dr . Lalita Ramakrishnan, a tuberculosis expert at the University of Cambridge and one of the study's authors. The challenge to conventional wisdom comes at an opportune time. On Sept. 18, the World Health Organization issued its annual TB report, and on Sept. 26, the United Nations General Assembly will hold its first high level meeting on the disease. No one questions how great a threat active tuberculosis is. Around the world, the disease kills more than 4,000 people a day; in 2015, tuberculosis surpassed AIDS as a cause of death. Although the incidence of TB is falling slowly around the world, some regions fare much worse than others. For example, South Africa, Mozambique and the Philippines have especially high infection rates. Drug resistant TB remains a crisis, the W.H.O. reported, and just three countries India, China and Russia account for almost half the cases. And the "global treatment success rate" is dropping. The figure was 82 percent in 2016, down from 86 percent three years earlier. Success in treating drug resistant forms is even lower, at 55 percent, although some relatively poor countries, like Bangladesh, Ethiopia, Kazakhstan, Myanmar and Vietnam, do better than average. The BMJ study was accompanied by an editorial endorsing its conclusions, written by Dr. Soumya Swaminathan, a tuberculosis expert and deputy director general of the W.H.O. She argued that experts should focus on the 55 million people at highest risk of active infection: young children with infected relatives, the severely malnourished, and people with H.I.V. or other immunosuppressive conditions. Experts at nonprofits like the TB Alliance and the International Union Against Tuberculosis and Lung Disease agreed with the major conclusions of the new study and the need to focus on active rather than latent disease. But finding tests to tell which carriers of latent infections are most likely to fall ill is still crucial, said Dr. Daniel E. Everitt, the alliance's senior medical officer. Dr. Ramakrishnan's study analyzed reports of local TB outbreaks going back to the 1930s, before antibiotics were invented, in places like the Faroe Islands that were so sparsely populated that it was possible to pinpoint exactly who infected whom and when. Reports on outbreaks as recent as three years ago in the Netherlands and Canada similarly showed that the vast majority of active cases came from recent infections, not latent infections that became active. The misconception that 1.7 billion people are walking time bombs, potentially capable of developing and communicating full blown TB, comes from the fact that skin and blood tests for the bacterium confirm only that the body once mounted an immune reaction to exposure. The tests do not tell if the bacteria are still alive in the body, said Dr. Paul H. Edelstein, an infectious disease specialist at the University of Pennsylvania and a co author of the new study. Like the Science Times page on Facebook. Sign up for the Science Times newsletter. Who succumbs is probably determined in part by genetic makeup, said Dr. Ramakrishnan, who studies the genetics of TB in zebrafish. She cited the "Lubeck disaster," a famous incident in the history of vaccines. In 1929, 250 German infants were given a TB vaccine that was accidentally contaminated with live bacteria. About a third died, and another third fell seriously ill but a third survived unscathed, possibly because they had innate resistance. At next week's U.N. meeting, member states are expected to pledge to increase efforts to treat the infected and to do more research. The organization has estimated that an additional 3.5 billion a year is needed for tuberculosis treatment, along with over 1.3 billion more for research. In August, the W.H.O. issued new treatment guidelines for drug resistant TB that rely on newer oral drugs like bedaquiline and delamanid, rather than older injectables with harsh side effects. But newer drugs are expensive, and months of tense behind the scenes negotiations preceded the high level meeting, according to the Intellectual Property Watch website. The debate pitted South Africa and the medical charity Doctors Without Borders against the United States delegation, which was defending the interests of pharmaceutical companies. The South Africans and the charity wanted the meeting's declaration to acknowledge that, under international treaties going back to 1994, poor countries may override patents and import generic drugs when they cannot afford prices that pharmaceutical companies charge. The final language did not spell that out, but cited the treaties and said intellectual property rights should be interpreted to "promote access to medicines for all."
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Health
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MIAMI As if to illustrate the effects of climate change, Miami City Ballet has set its new production of George Balanchine's two act "A Midsummer Night's Dream" underwater. Transposing the action to the waterways of South Florida, the production is a peak of this company's 30th anniversary season. Although the staging does not makes much sense on its own terms and in no way improves the ballet, its daftness is agreeably harmless: You can vaguely enjoy some of its fantasies while seriously loving the choreography. And the Miamians' dancing has all the wonderful immediacy that makes this company valuable. When Balanchine choreographed Shakespeare's play in 1962, he honored both the classical mythological Greek era in which it was set (Theseus, Hippolyta) and the medieval Renaissance framework of its telling (Chaucer's "Knight's Tale" as well as Shakespeare). The multilayered sense of history (the choreography is evidently of its own day) is part of the charm. Though the original sets, by David Hays, and costumes, by Karinska, are still honored by New York City Ballet and other companies, they aren't sacrosanct, and they've been successfully replaced, as in Pacific Northwest Ballet's 1997 version, with its sets and costumes by Martin Pakledinaz. For this Miami production, the dramaturgy is by Tarell Alvin McCraney, the scenery and costumes are by Michele Oka Doner, and the projections are by Wendall Harrington. When they sometimes refer to the classical/Renaissance time frame, the tone is pleasantly sardonic. Titania is first seen in a frothy farthingale. The one time we see architecture, at the start of Act II, it's a dim view of submerged classical ruins. Bottom is transformed (his head only) into a Thurber like seal rather than an ass; Hippolyta's hunt features not hounds but sea horses; the changing views in the background suggest bubbles and marine fauna rising to an unseen surface. The fairies, most in various shades of white, suggest the gleam of darting silver fish. (In general, the colors are too monochrome, and with too many distressed skirts.) Oberon's outsize crown is foolish; the knee length skirt Titania wears for her first important dance robs her choreography of some of the spectacular scale it has in the usual ankle length frock. (Is that a sponge on which she takes her seat?)
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Dance
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H R Block's new advertising campaign is one of the more ambitious in the company's 62 year history. It hired the actor Jon Hamm for his first on camera spokesman role, a significant coup. And the company ditched its "Refund Season" slogan in favor of a more aggressive pitch: "Get your taxes won." The ads obviously target Intuit's do it yourself Turbo Tax. More subtle is how much the campaign was really influenced by critical words from one heavy hitting personality: Donald J. Trump. It was August 2015, still the early days of the presidential campaign, when Mr. Trump first mentioned that he hoped to "put H R Block out of business" with his plan for a simplified tax code. Sixteen months later, the leading tax preparer is still feeling the effects. "We got kicked around a little bit last year," Kathy Collins, chief marketing and strategy officer, said. "We realized this was the time to do this." As the inauguration nears, Mr. Trump has shown no signs of curbing his willingness to criticize brands that draw his ire, as Boeing, Vanity Fair and Lockheed Martin have realized in recent weeks. The spontaneity of his denunciations and the speed at which his words travel, particularly on Twitter has created a sense of unease among marketing executives, who now must be prepared in case Mr. Trump's insults fly in their direction. It is prompting some brands to pre emptively draft informal contingency plans, and others, like H R Block, to spend money shoring up their reputation. But one thing that industry analysts and crisis management experts seem to agree on: There is nothing in the handbook that instructs executives on how to handle an overnight Twitter controversy created by the president elect. "These are very much uncharted waters for companies," Tim Calkins, professor of marketing at Northwestern University's Kellogg School of Management, said. "Rarely have we been quite so polarized, and rarely have we had a president who is so quick to call out an attack on perceived threats." This puts companies and the executives assigned to handle corporate imaging in a delicate position. It is hardly advisable, Mr. Calkins said, for a company to challenge the authority of an incoming administration, whether on social media or in a formal ad campaign. But being conciliatory or supportive of a divisive figure like Mr. Trump can have negative consequences as well. Mr. Calkins said he thought companies were best served by staying as quiet as possible. But what if your company is criticized? Scott Farrell, an expert in crisis management and the president of Golin Corporate Communications, said there was no formulaic response. "The only thing that applies, no matter what the issue, is speed," Mr. Farrell said. "Slow kills companies fast in a Twitter conversation." Some companies should even expect confrontation, he said, especially if they are in an industry that touches one of what Mr. Farrell calls Mr. Trump's "hot zones," such as trade, immigration, health care or defense. He is advising clients to thoroughly assess every coming public announcement against what it might trigger. "These guys should be wearing W.W.T.D. bracelets What Would Trump Do?" Mr. Farrell said. "If you're thinking of moving offshore, if you're thinking of doing a layoff, if you're thinking of even positive stuff, what would Trump do? Develop a playbook for those contingencies." Andrew D. Gilman, who has consulted with companies like Johnson Johnson, General Motors and Pepsi during crises, is telling brands to prepare for Mr. Trump as they would for a natural disaster an event that is highly unpredictable but poses a big risk if it happens. One contingency is to line up a third party spokesman who can help if the brand's image is dinged. That is essentially what H R Block did in signing Mr. Hamm, the "Mad Men" star, who has had voice over roles in ads for Mercedes Benz and American Airlines but had yet to appear onscreen as a pitchman. He said in a telephone interview that he had been an H R Block customer for years. "The fit between H R Block and myself seemed copacetic and natural," Mr. Hamm said. "And the tone of the creative was clever and outside the box for something as humdrum as taxes." There is no mention of Mr. Trump in the first two 30 second ads featuring Mr. Hamm, and Bill Cobb, H R Block's chief executive, was hesitant to say Mr. Trump's comments directly inspired the company's new effort. But the message is that the tax code is complex. "We've been around for 62 years," Mr. Cobb said. "The tax code was pretty simple in 1955. Yet people have always come here for help." The forceful messaging is a sign of things to come from advertising agencies, said Allen Adamson, a brand strategy consultant. "From conversations I've had, there is a clear sense that in the next administration, companies will have to get their story out much more aggressively and much more quickly than previously," Mr. Adamson said. Vanity Fair's swift response after Mr. Trump reacted to a negative review of a restaurant in one of his buildings by saying the magazine was "dead" could be an example for others to follow, Mr. Farrell said. Its message including banner ads on its website calling itself "The Magazine Donald Trump Doesn't Want You to Read" and asking for subscriptions captured the magazine's voice and identity. More than 40,000 people signed up for new subscriptions. "Vanity Fair played that perfectly," Mr. Farrell said. "'This was the magazine that Trump doesn't want you to read.' I think their response was consistent with the brand's DNA." And while Boeing's shares took a hit after Mr. Trump posted on Twitter on Dec. 6 that he wanted to cancel the order for a new Air Force One, they began to rebound after the company had time to release statements. Still, marketing executives took it as a lesson: Be ready. "If you're a C.M.O., you need to put another filter on your plans," Mr. Gilman said. "Normally you'd never have to worry about a president singling out your company before. Now you do."
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Media
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The board's coronavirus preparedness strictures lined up with recommendations from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention social distancing, frequent hand washing, cough and sneeze into your elbow, please. As the coronavirus figures began spiking, there were new protocols put into place, among them, halting renovations of any sort. When a doorman recently reported that he wasn't feeling well, the co op's management company went through the building's video feed to pinpoint and contact the 40 or so residents who had recently interacted with him. Fortunately, his coronavirus test came back negative; contingency plans are being developed in the event that employees become ill or can't make it to work because of more stringent shelter in place directives. There was a rather knotty item on the agenda during one co op board conference call: whether to make it known if there was a confirmed case of Covid 19 among the shareholders. "We discussed whether we could or should disclose the floor or the particular building," Mr. Wagner recalled. "We weren't restricted by the HIPAA rules of confidentiality but a lot of people were saying no," he said in reference to health care privacy guidelines. Finally, the board members decided simply to encourage anyone with the virus to let them know about it. They also advised shareholders to act as though they had the virus and to treat their fellow residents as though they were similarly afflicted. "Act as if you have it and your neighbor has it," Mr. Wagner said. "Of course, you can't keep that kind of thing a secret." He should know. His wife, Barbara Wagner, a public relations executive, tested positive for Covid 19 in mid March; she was the first known case in the complex. The couple immediately told two of the six neighbors on their floor, and some other friends elsewhere in the co op. Word quickly spread. To help insure that the virus didn't spread, too, the management company brought in a firm to disinfect the lobby, the elevator, the staff's break room and locker room among other areas. The demand for the deep cleaning procedure is skyrocketing. "Before March 1, we had never done it," said Jeffrey Gross, the chief operating officer of Maxons, a property damage restoration firm (but not the one used by the Wagners' co op) "Since March 1, we've done 200, the majority in residential buildings." Fees start at 5,000.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Real Estate
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The Supreme Court just met its first test of the coronavirus era. It failed, spectacularly. I was hoping not to have to write those sentences. All day Monday, I kept refreshing my computer's link to the court's website. I was anxious to see how the justices would respond to the urgent request from the Republican National Committee and Wisconsin's Republican controlled Legislature to stop the state from counting absentee ballots postmarked not by Tuesday's election but during the following few days. A federal district judge, noting that Wisconsin's election apparatus was overwhelmed by the "avalanche of absentee ballots" sought by voters afraid to show up at crowded polling places, had ordered the extra time last Thursday, with the full support of the state's election officials. Was I the only one left in suspense on Monday, holding out hope that the five Republican appointed Supreme Court justices would put partisanship aside and let the District Court order stand? In early evening, the answer landed with a thud. No, they would not. In more than four decades of studying and writing about the Supreme Court, I've seen a lot (and yes, I'm thinking of Bush v. Gore). But I've rarely seen a development as disheartening as this one: a squirrelly, intellectually dishonest lecture in the form of an unsigned majority opinion, addressed to the four dissenting justices (Need I name them? Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan), about how "this court has repeatedly emphasized that lower federal courts should ordinarily not alter the election rules on the eve of an election." Let's think about that. "Ordinarily not alter"? There are quite a few things that should not ordinarily be happening these days. People shouldn't ordinarily be afraid of catching a deadly virus when exercising their right to vote. Half the poll worker shifts in the city of Madison are not ordinarily vacant, abandoned by a work force composed mostly of people at high risk because of their age. Milwaukee voters are not ordinarily reduced to using only five polling places. Typically, 180 are open. (Some poll workers who did show up on Tuesday wore hazmat suits. Many voters, forced to stand in line for hours, wore masks.) And the number of requests for absentee ballots in Milwaukee doesn't ordinarily grow by a factor of 10, leading to a huge backlog for processing and mailing. I wonder how Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh understand the word "ordinarily." And I wonder why the opinion was issued per curiam "by the court." Did none of the five have the nerve to take ownership by signing his name? That the dispute that reached the Supreme Court was the result of intense partisan rancor in a state with a history of Republican devised voter suppression should have been reason enough for the conservative bloc to stay its hand. Instead, it seems to have been catnip: The Wisconsin Republicans, after all, needed the Supreme Court's help if they were to keep voter participation as low as possible. In his ruling last Thursday, the District Court judge, William Conley, declined to take what he called "the extraordinary step of delaying a statewide election at the last minute." Nonetheless, he said, he was persuaded that "the asserted harm is imminent and a timely resolution is necessary if there is any hope of vindicating the voting rights of Wisconsin citizens." Tens of thousands of voters who requested their ballots on time faced little prospect of even receiving them until after Election Day. Consequently, Judge Conley ruled, ballots did not have to be postmarked by Election Day. As long as election officials received a ballot by the afternoon of Monday, April 13, six days after the election, it would still count, no matter the postmark. (In a subsequent order, Judge Conley barred release of the election returns until that date so that late absentee voters would be as ignorant of the outcome as those who cast their ballots on Election Day.) In fashioning his order, Judge Conley noted that the head of the Wisconsin Election Commission had assured the court that moving the deadline "will not impact the ability to complete the canvass in a timely manner." He also observed that "the amicus briefs from various local governments suggest that an extension of the deadline would be heartily welcomed by many local officials." The United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit denied the Republicans' request for a stay. The urgent appeal to the Supreme Court followed. I've described the reasoning in the judge's 53 page opinion in this detail because anyone reading only the Supreme Court's majority opinion would come away thinking that the order was the act of a rogue judge, cramming an extreme remedy for a nonexistent problem down the throat of a resistant public. There is barely a hint in the opinion of the turmoil in the country. Did it not occur to these justices to wonder why they were working at home rather than in their chambers? It was left to Justice Ginsburg in her dissenting opinion to point out that "the District Court was reacting to a grave, rapidly developing public health crisis." While the rest of us are obsessed with the dimensions of that crisis, the justices in Monday's majority were for some strange reason obsessed with the notion that the Democratic plaintiffs had not asked the judge for the precise remedy he ordered; the opinion mentions this on each of its four pages. But as the plaintiffs told the justices in their brief, and as Justice Ginsburg concluded from reading the transcript of the District Court hearing, that wasn't true. The plaintiffs "specifically requested that remedy at the preliminary injunction hearing in view of the ever increasing demand for absentee ballots," she wrote. The other three dissenting justices all signed Justice Ginsburg's opinion; she spoke for them all. Her final paragraph is worth quoting in full: "The majority of the court declares that this case presents a 'narrow, technical question.' That is wrong. The question here is whether tens of thousands of Wisconsin citizens can vote safely in the midst of a pandemic. Under the District Court's order, they would be able to do so. Even if they receive their absentee ballot in the days immediately following Election Day, they could return it. With the majority's stay in place, that will not be possible. Either they will have to brave the polls, endangering their own and others' safety. Or they will lose their right to vote, through no fault of their own. That is a matter of utmost importance to the constitutional rights of Wisconsin's citizens, the integrity of the state's election process, and in this most extraordinary time, the health of the nation." My point is not that the mess in Wisconsin, on full display on Tuesday night's newscasts, was the Supreme Court's fault; most of it wasn't. It's that five justices were unwilling to do what they could to help. Instead, they intervened, with 12 hours to go before the polls opened, to upend the common sense solution that a federal judge had devised with the support of the officials who actually had to carry out the election. (President Trump has been candid about his reason for disliking mail in ballots. They have "tremendous potential for voter fraud and for whatever reason don't work out well for Republicans," he tweeted Tuesday as disarray escalated in Wisconsin.). The court's behavior this week raises the question whether the empowered conservative majority has the situational awareness to navigate the dire situation that faces the country, and whether it can avoid further displays of raw partisanship that threaten to inflict lasting institutional damage on the court itself. It's a moment that calls on everyone in a position of power to display vision and a generosity of spirit. I'm not using the word "leadership," which I would apply to the elected branches of government, because we don't necessarily want the Supreme Court to lead us. But we certainly don't want it to get in the way. As we see not only from the Wisconsin Republicans but from the governors who are cynically and shamelessly using the pandemic as a cover for banning abortion, there are those who will exploit a crisis, even this one, for crass political gain. The American public may well be divided on what it wants from the Supreme Court, but I'm naive enough to suppose that at least it expects the court not to ally itself with the exploiters. In her speech last week to the British people, Queen Elizabeth II expressed the hope that "in the years to come, everyone will be able to take pride in how they responded to this crisis." That goes for the Supreme Court too: History will judge us all. The Supreme Court this week failed not only the voters of Wisconsin. It failed all of us. 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.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Opinion
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Coaster lovers looking for the next thrill can expect something fresh to seek out each year. The rides are an essential part of a park's lure for returning customers and for new ones drawn to extravagant experiences. Below is a look at what's new this year. A roller coaster by the ocean is always a delightful thing. A new one is even better. This ride was built to replace a coaster on the pier destroyed by Hurricane Sandy. It is compact but still not for the faint of heart, packing a tense vertical lift, a steep 97 degree drop and three inversions into its 45 second running time. And it has the Atlantic Ocean as a gorgeous accessory. This year SeaWorld has dipped its fin into the virtual reality space that Six Flags parks began incorporating last year. They sought to resolve some of the issues that riders had: long lines and the constant redistribution of the headsets. SeaWorld has converted one of its steel coasters, Kraken, into this Unleashed enhancement. Riders use a free Spot Saver system to reserve their ride, cutting down on wait times. The virtual reality headsets are connected to the trains themselves and are stored in a box in front of the restraints. They include headphones to provide an aural experience as well. The narrative plunges riders undersea on an adventure that uses the ride's hills and inversions to push its story, and scary sea creatures, forward. It had its debut in June and is one of the better coaster virtual reality experiences thus far. The wooden coaster offerings in the Orlando area are sparse. But this hybrid coaster makes a thrilling addition. While the structure of the ride is steel, its track is wood. The small train (holding 12 riders) and compact track initially make this ride seem as if it won't pack much of a wallop. But it moves swiftly and, well, crazily along the track, picking up speed as it rounds sharp curves and creates intense moments of airtime along the way. Its signature element comes right after its steep first drop: a barrel roll where the twisting track forms a kind of upside down rainbow. And it doesn't let up until its conclusion, which comes too soon. "Don't go in the shed" is the warning riders receive when they climb the lift of Kings Island's latest woodie. The coaster has a haunted woods theme, and the front of its trains resemble a rusted old truck that you're "driving" through the woods. After the first curved drop, it's a feverish trip through those timbers as the track speeds across rivers and through tunnels and then ends at that mysterious shed you were supposed to avoid. What's in there? A pretty good time. The experience is a nice complement to that of the park's classic woodie, the Beast. The SeaWorld parks have consistently been upping their roller coaster game over the years. Now they bring a Jet Ski style coaster, the first to open in North America, to its San Antonio location. Wave Breaker was inspired by SeaWorld's animal rescue team. You straddle the seats and grip the handle bars and, after being assigned a mission to rescue dolphins, sea lions or sea turtles, you are launched over the park's lake. Most of the ride takes place over water to simulate the Jet Ski experience. It's essentially a water ride where you don't get wet. And its relatively low intensity level makes it fun for the family. The Busch Gardens park in Virginia has installed its first wooden coaster, and it's a doozy. It has a Viking theme and riders sail out on a conquest. This was the first crowdsourced ride in which the park, using the hashtag BGProject2017, asked patrons to help design the ride and offer ideas during its development. The collaboration resulted in this knockout coaster with steel structure and wood track that has its first major drop out of a tunnel, then a series of airtime hills to keep riders bouncing on their voyage.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Travel
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The New York Times Company on Wednesday named Meredith Kopit Levien, the news organization's chief operating officer, as its next president and chief executive, making her the youngest person ever to lead its executive ranks. Ms. Levien, 49, will succeed Mark Thompson, the chief executive since 2012, on Sept. 8. Ms. Levien also will serve on the company's board. A.G. Sulzberger, the publisher and a board member, called Ms. Levien "a brilliant and transformative leader." "Everything she has touched in the organization she has made better," Mr. Sulzberger said. Ms. Levien joined The Times in 2013 as its head of advertising. She was promoted to executive vice president and chief revenue officer in 2015 and became the chief operating officer in 2017. That put her in line to succeed Mr. Thompson, who helped transform The Times into a digital centric news operation. In an interview, Ms. Levien said it was "an honor of a lifetime" to be named to the job. She will assume control of the company's business as a divided nation, in the throes of a pandemic, heads into the final months of a presidential campaign. The company's board voted unanimously to appoint Ms. Levien to the post during a meeting on Tuesday. After starting their search for a new chief executive about a year ago, Times board members concluded that "there really was no one else," Mr. Thompson, 62, said in an interview. He added that he had expected to remain in the job for about five to eight years and started talking to the board about his departure in early 2019. "I've had a good, long run at The Times," he said. He hired Ms. Levien shortly after he joined the paper and steadily promoted her over the years, effectively setting her up to succeed him. As chief executive, Ms. Levien said, she will continue to expand the company's strategy of "subscription first journalism," a plan that has helped The Times weather a downturn in advertising while improving its financial fortunes. The Times recently topped six million paying readers, putting it more than halfway toward the company's ambitious target of hitting 10 million subscribers by 2025. Like other news publishers, The Times has suffered a hit to its advertising business because of the pandemic. The company forecast that ad revenue would continue to decline by as much as 55 percent for the second quarter of 2020. (The Times will report second quarter results on Aug. 5.) Ms. Levien emphasized that The Times would continue to invest heavily in its journalism, adding that she also favored the addition of digital games and other non news content. Along with its main news offering, The Times has attracted subscribers with a crossword app and a cooking site. Ford and Rivian no longer plan to work jointly on electric vehicles. Elizabeth Holmes took the stand in her trial. Follow along with our reporters. Ken Griffin, head of Citadel, bid highest for a copy of the Constitution. "We have really big ambitions for The New York Times, and we have big ambitions for independent journalism, more generally," she said. The Times has fared better than many other news organizations since readers started showing a preference for getting their news on screens, rather than print. Newspaper publishers, many now under hedge fund ownership, have cut back staff and resources in recent years. Roughly half of all newspaper jobs were eliminated from 2004 to 2019. The Times Company has a healthy balance sheet, with about 687 million in available cash. Ms. Levien said she would not rule out acquisitions, while adding that the market for additional subscribers was vast potentially as many as 100 million people, she said. "The Times has a big opportunity to go after it," she said. Ms. Levien, who was the chief revenue officer at Forbes Media before joining The Times, said she was skeptical, at first, when she was approached to join the paper seven years ago. "I asked people for advice, and just the sentiment was that it was a great journalism company, but maybe the best days of its business were behind it," she said. "But in the end," she added, "I love the place, and I love the mission." Growing up in Richmond, Va., Ms. Levien did not regularly have access to The Times, she said. When her parents, both native New Yorkers, occasionally brought the paper home, it struck her as different from the local daily she was used to reading. "One was about the things we already knew," she said. "The other was the world." Ms. Levien hit a bump during her steady rise when she was named in a discrimination lawsuit brought in 2016 by two women who worked at The Times. In the suit, the women said Ms. Levien had "made it very clear that she was looking for a very particular work force, one that was filled with 'fresh faces,' i.e., younger employees without families, and who were white." The suit was settled in December. "The Times does not admit to any liability," the paper said in a statement at the time. Ms. Levien said the claims in the suit "had no merit." A former director general of the British Broadcasting Corporation, the London born Mr. Thompson said he was likely to remain in the United States. He has three adult children who have started careers here, and his wife is an American who also has British citizenship. Of Mr. Thompson's legacy, Mr. Sulzberger said, "I don't think you'll find another leader who's done more to prove a path forward in the world of digital media." He added, "I will really miss Mark."
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Media
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Set in the 1940s, the series envisions an alternate history for women of color in the movies. Harrier talked about what she learned from the role and what it was like to wear those amazing clothes. This interview contains spoilers for the series finale of "Hollywood." Laura Harrier was in high school when she first learned about the Oscar nominated actress Dorothy Dandridge, and she was immediately drawn to her beauty and talent. So when Ryan Murphy cast her in "Hollywood" as Camille, a 1940s starlet inspired by Dandridge, it "felt like a gift had fallen from the sky," she said. Inhabiting the role, however, meant tapping into experiences very different from her own. She had earned acclaim for breaking racial barriers as a love interest in the blockbuster "Spider Man: Homecoming." The pioneering black actresses of Dandridge's generation had to face cross burnings and boycotts. In order to play a woman like them, Harrier looked to their lives and films for inspiration. "I also drew a lot from Lena Horne," she said in a phone interview just ahead of the series debut. (All seven episodes arrived to Netflix last week.) "I looked at both of them to understand what it felt like to have a dream to be a leading lady and yet have nobody to look to onscreen." "It's not like when I was growing up and could look at Halle Berry, Angela Bassett, Nia Long and Jada Pinkett Smith," she added. Finding herself in Camille's perfectly polished heels was a process that began with a cryptic audition for an untitled project about a year ago, followed by several months of radio silence. One day, she was brought in for a chemistry read with her co star and executive producer Darren Criss, and the next, she received a call informing her that she had been cast. It all happened so fast, but Harrier was excited for the challenge. "When Ryan Murphy asks you to do something, you don't say no," she said. Harrier was then thrust back in time more than 70 years to play a woman quietly fighting the system much as women like Dandridge and Horne had to fight in their day. She immersed herself in their world and transformed herself on set, down to the impeccably tailored outfits, the coifed curls and the internalized discrimination. "It really felt like I had lived in the 1940s for about five months," Harrier said. "It was very cool, but it was funny going back to real life." "This revisionist history of Hollywood makes me think about what it would have been like today had this happened back then," she said. Back in the present day, from her adopted home of Los Angeles, the Chicago native reflected on her whirlwind ride on "Hollywood." Several weeks into the pandemic quarantine, Harrier was "grateful," she said, to have a house and a backyard where she could chat by phone about what still makes her happy: movies, fashion, inspiring the next generation and rewriting Hollywood history. These are edited excerpts from that conversation. Besides the Ryan Murphy factor, what drew you to the project and Camille's story? I was really interested in telling a story of old Hollywood that was different than we've seen previously. As an actress and someone who loves film, I loved living in that era. It's so glamorous and beautiful. But growing up as a black woman, I never saw myself represented. So, it was something that I admired, but never fully connected to. Getting to tell a black woman's story really excited me. As glamorous and victorious as the series is at times, it's also bittersweet and heartbreaking because black women like Camille never got their due in real life. How did you strike that balance in tone? Yeah, there's such a heaviness to that period against the backdrop of World War II. It's the antithesis of what we're used to seeing onscreen. We're also looking at the stories of real people who led really tragic lives. I really wanted to examine it more deeply through their lens. Since you're not playing a real life person, did you have more leeway to add to the portrayal? I was definitely able to build Camille and make her her own character. But my research started with Dorothy Dandridge, who was a very similar figure. She was so talented, intelligent and beautiful, and had quite a bit of success. But she hit a glass ceiling and was never fully celebrated for the artist that she was. She was oversexualized and occasionally cast in racist roles. I watched a bunch of her movies and listened to podcasts. I wish I had known about her when I was a little girl. It would have inspired me as a young girl to see someone like her so early on. I felt a sense of hopelessness watching Camille help try to get a film like "Meg" made, knowing that it could never have happened. It was easier for me to digest the penultimate episode, when the film is burned, than the triumphant finale. Maybe I'm just conditioned to unhappier endings. I was in the same boat as you when I read that penultimate episode. It's horrible, but it's also unfortunately been the history of people who've been marginalized in Hollywood to not have happy endings or achieve success. I really loved that Ryan, Ian, Janet Janet Mock, an executive producer, writer and director and all the writers made it a celebration of happiness and hope. There's often been criticism of revisionist history onscreen and how it can sometimes sanitize the way things really were. Were you ever worried about that? I wouldn't say that it was something that I was concerned about, given the people that I was working with and their body of work. I know that they have always been on the right side of things. Ryan has been such a pioneer in representation and escapism that is also grounded in reality. The costumes in the series also show such respect for each character regardless of race, class, gender and age. How did they help you authenticate who Camille is? As soon as I put on the costumes, the hair and the red lipstick, as well as the silk slip and garters, it changed the way I walked, my posture and how I carried myself. Camille had respect for her clothing and understood the importance of being put together. She knew what it conveyed at a time when people of color were not universally respected by society and the powers that be. It was really important for Camille because she was going into the studio system as the only black girl. So she had to be a beautiful, glamorous version of herself to show the world that she belongs here.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Television
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DaBaby wielding twin spray cans of Pledge which, unfortunately, is not a disinfectant in his video for "Jump" with YoungBoy Never Broke Again. One minor but ubiquitous consequence of the global disruption caused by the coronavirus has been the emergence of a quarantine aesthetic for celebrities reaching out through their phones and computers trapped in a box, dull backdrop, glitchy connection, only able to emote through a narrow portal. Unless, that is, you're a rapper making a new music video. A few have already been released that explicitly reference the confinement and disinfecting that have become the new normal. While stars in other genres emphasize their isolation and play down the advantages of their fame, in hip hop, the pandemic has merely engendered new ways to flex. Socially distanced? Not so much. There's rarely six feet between the rappers, and when DaBaby frolics in bed with a woman, his surgical mask likely won't offer sufficient protection. Disinfected? The workers use Swiffers and dusters, and DaBaby accepts some dollops of hand sanitizer. But later, he wields twin spray cans of Pledge, which, sadly, does not kill viruses. What happens? Very little, but most crucially, French Montana dances and dances and dances some more in front of a private jet wearing a full Hazmat suit and an actual gas mask. (Perhaps the N95 was too obvious.) Socially distanced? There mostly aren't others around beyond French and his protege, Mr. Swipey Swipey doesn't wear a mask, while French sometimes dons one bearing the logo of his Coke Boys crew. When French's security guard arrives, he's wisely wearing a surgical mask. What happens? Rich Brian and Guapdad 4000 send gifts by drone to their friends across Los Angeles condoms for the singer Cuco, Pizza Hut pizza for Lil Yachty, hair products for the YouTuber Noel Miller, "Rick and Morty" gear for Buddy, and so on. Everyone sends back cash to pay for meals for health care workers, mask production and direct donations to others who need a nongovernmental stimulus. Socially distanced? Extremely. No two artists appear in the same scene. Much of the video follows the drone as it sails across the clear sky, the only safe place. Disinfected? Rich Brian gives the drone a full wipe down in between each trip. Most of his famous co stars avoid gloves, but all the people who receive donations at the end of the clip wisely wear them. The pandemic has been referenced in a handful of other videos via small gestures: In the video for "The Last Sad Song," the Florida sing rapper Rod Wave slips on a surgical mask, and in the latest Lil Wayne clip, which mostly contains footage of him skateboarding moderately well, the interlude is a public service announcement urging viewers to stay inside "... AND THRASH." But perhaps the most curious music industry artifacts of the coronavirus era are the documents of irresponsibility, the social media clips of rappers filming videos without practicing social distancing. The hip hop jester Blueface recently shot a music video at his home in Los Angeles, and posted on his Instagram story a series of clips of several bikini clad models getting into a physical tussle. Around 10 people were in his house, and the only time masks were worn was when the models were twerking for the camera, their masks and swimsuits a matching blue. And last month, Casanova whose catchphrase is "We outside" filmed himself on a Brooklyn video shoot telling the camera, "We all test positive for corona," followed by a mock cough. His mother came by to chastise him, and the police arrived to shut it all down. A couple of days later, Casanova had a change of perspective, apologizing to his family, his friends and the police on his Instagram, and announcing, "WE INSIDE."
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Music
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The fountainhead of the historian Bill Katz's immersion in African American culture was his father's passion for jazz. Ben Katz had derived more pleasure from the music and its historical roots than from his day job as an art director for an advertising agency. Bill also inherited his father's lust for learning and political consciousness. Before he was 10 he marched in a May Day rally to support the Scottsboro Boys, nine young African Americans falsely charged with rape in the early 1930s. His empathy for black Americans only grew. As a high school teacher and in some 40 books written under the name William Loren Katz, he awakened his readers to the integral roles that African Americans from rebellious slaves to cowboys who tamed the West had played in their nation's history. He popularized their contributions in nonfiction narratives for young adults, helping to refashion social studies curriculums across the country. Mr. Katz died on Oct. 25 at a hospital in Manhattan. He was 92 . His wife, Laurie R. Lehman, an associate professor of special education at Long Island University, said the cause was complications of heart disease. Rather than isolating racial or ethnic studies in separate classes or departments, Mr. Katz favored incorporating the contributions of overlooked women and members of minority groups into regular American history courses. "The assertion that the Negro has no history worth mentioning is basic to the theory that he has no humanity worth defending," he told The New York Times in 1968. Who knew, he asked in 1990, that Lewis Howard Latimer , a black inventor, had "drawn up the plans for Bell's telephone"? Or that another black innovator, Elijah McCoy , the son of runaway slaves, had designed an industrial lubricating device so highly valued by machinists that the demand for it inspired the idiom "the real McCoy"? Mr. Katz's first book, "Eyewitness: The Negro in American History" (1967), broke ground by introducing a generation of students to black historical figures who had been neglected in most textbooks. Mr. Katz explored the contributions of African Americans in books like "The Black West" (1973). "The assertion that the Negro has no history worth mentioning," he once said, "is basic to the theory that he has no humanity worth defending." In the late 1960s Mr. Katz edited two series "The American Negro: His History and Literature" and "The Antislavery Crusade in America" that totaled more than 200 volumes of scholarly and out of print texts. The series were published jointly by The New York Times and Arno Press. "He wrote about heroic black women, slave rebellions and antislavery movements when discussing such matters was dangerous and seen as unpatriotic," Jesse Weaver Shipley, a professor of African and African American studies and oratory at Dartmouth College, said in an email. Among Mr. Katz's other books were "The Black West" (1973) and "Black Indians" (1986). "When whites were sending out posses, Native Americans were extending the hand of friendship," Mr. Katz told The Times in 1994. "Almost every Afro American family in the United States has a Native American branch to its family tree, from Michael Jackson to Jesse Jackson, from Frederick Douglass to Langston Hughes ." Mr. Katz was born Loren Paul Katz on June 2, 1927, in Brooklyn to Bernard and Madeline (Simon) Katz, whose own parents were Jewish immigrants. Ben Katz, as he was known, besides being a commercial art director, was an ardent leftist ; Madeline Katz, a former championship diver, died several weeks after Loren was born . His stepmother, Phyllis (Brownstone) Katz, was an editor at Parents magazine. Mr. Katz chose his pen name, Dr. Lehman said, because he had adopted the nickname Bill (his mother was known as Billie ) and decided that William Loren Katz sounded more scholarly than Loren Paul Katz. In addition to Dr. Lehman, whom he married in 1994, Mr. Katz is survived by a daughter, Naomi Katz, from a previous marriage, which ended in divorce; a granddaughter; and a younger stepbrother, Jonathan, whom he mentored and who wrote the trailblazing book "Gay American History" (1976). A son, Michael, died earlier. Mr. Katz grew up in Greenwich Village and was in the first graduating class of the private, progressive Elisabeth Irwin High School in Lower Manhattan. He then joined the Navy and served in the Pacific at the end of World War II. Mr. Katz recalled in an interview with the Zinn Education Project (named after another progressive historian, Howard Zinn) that his provocative opinions had first surfaced in high school, when, in a school project, he devoted the first three chapters of a 200 page history of jazz to slavery . He went on to attend Syracuse University on the G.I. Bill, earning a bachelor's degree in history in 1950. He obtained a master's in education from New York University . He began teaching in Upper Manhattan in 1955 and later taught at Woodlands High School in Hartsdale, N.Y. Mr. Katz recalled that his loyalty to the United States was questioned during the Red Scare by the New York City Board of Education after he had held a classroom discussion in which he raised doubts about whether Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, who had been convicted of conspiracy to spy for the Soviet Union, were unjustly executed in 1953. He was cleared, he said, after reminding board officials that he had volunteered for the Navy and had bought 175 in war bonds. "That was the level of stupidity in the McCarthy era," he said . Inspired by the scholarship of historians like John Hope Franklin and Robin D.G. Kelley , Mr. Katz later acknowledged that reinterpreting the past was challenging under any circumstances. "I have been humbled by the awesome task of rejecting bias," he wrote in "Black Indians ." "I have never sought bland neutrality and have consoled myself that unbiased history has yet to be written."
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Books
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They Played Sports at the Highest Level. Now Their Job Is to Save Lives. The four time Olympic gold medalist Hayley Wickenheiser of Canada was around 10 years old when she first had the idea of being both a professional hockey player and a doctor. Wickenheiser, now 41, grew up in Shaunavon, Saskatchewan, a town of fewer than 2,000 people and less than two square miles in size. A young girl in the area had been severely injured after getting hit by a grocery delivery van. "I remember going to the hospital with all the kids in the neighborhood and just being really inspired and intrigued by the doctors and nurses that were taking care of her," Wickenheiser said in a telephone interview. "That's how it all started. At that age, I had two goals: to play for the Edmonton Oilers and to go to Harvard Medical School." After retiring in 2017 as Team Canada's career scoring leader, Wickenheiser enrolled in medical school at the University of Calgary, then took on the role as an assistant director of player development for the Toronto Maple Leafs in 2018. She was in the midst of her clinical rotation in emergency rooms around Toronto two weeks ago, when medical students and trainees were pulled from their assignments as the number of coronavirus cases in the country reached a critical point. As of Tuesday afternoon, there have been more than 1.3 million coronavirus cases and 81,106 virus related deaths recorded worldwide. More than 30 percent of those diagnosed cases are in the United States. Canada is home to more than 17,000 cases, or just over 1 percent. Hayley Wickenheiser has been helping gather personal protective equipment for front line workers. Medical students aren't allowed to directly treat patients who have contracted Covid 19, so Wickenheiser has been gathering personal protective equipment, or P.P.E., for front line workers and helping with contact tracing of diagnosed patients to track the spread of the virus. 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. "I remember when the first Covid patient came through the emergency room doors in the hospital I was at, one of the doctors I was with did not physically want to go into the room," she said. "They didn't feel protected or that they had enough P.P.E. and they didn't really know what they were dealing with." One morning in early March, after a particularly unsettling shift, Wickenheiser, a member of the International Olympic Committee's Athletes' Commission, was stunned to read that the I.O.C. still was planning for the Summer Olympics to continue as scheduled in Tokyo starting in July. "I kept on seeing this blatant, 'We are going ahead no matter what,' kind of attitude and I just thought, 'How can you be speaking?'" she said. "It was making me crazy. Every day I was losing sleep listening to this dialogue." Wickenheiser voiced her concerns to Canadian and international Olympic leaders before publishing a statement to her social media accounts on March 17 imploring the I.O.C. to make a decision about postponing or canceling the Games. "I think the I.O.C. insisting this will move ahead, with such conviction, is insensitive and irresponsible given the state of humanity," she wrote. "We don't know what's happening in the next 24 hours, let alone in the next three months." Five days later, the Canadian Olympic Committee announced it would not send the country's athletes to Tokyo in 2020 and called on the I.O.C. to postpone the games, a decision the I.O.C. made with the Japanese government on March 24. Wickenheiser has since been in contact with the office of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of Canada to help promote social distancing advisories to the public and has contributed to his plankthecurve social media campaign. She isn't the only elite athlete now on the front lines in the fight against the spread of the coronavirus. Duvernay Tardif, who got his medical degree from McGill University in Montreal, hopes to specialize in emergency medicine but isn't currently part of a medical residency program and cannot assist doctors and other medical staff in treating patients. After he returned from his post Super Bowl sailing vacation, he reached out to Quebec government officials asking how he could help. Like Wickenheiser, Duvernay Tardif has been using his social media platforms to communicate vetted health care guidance to his followers, totaling nearly 200,000 between Instagram and Twitter. "So far I've done a bunch of interviews and gone live on different platforms, reinforcing how important it is to do social distancing, basic hygiene like hand washing, and how we're going to manage this thing," Duvernay Tardif said in a telephone interview. Myron Rolle was drafted by the Tennessee Titans in 2010 and spent three seasons playing professional football before retiring to pursue a career in medicine. Rolle, a Rhodes Scholar, is currently a neurosurgery resident at the Harvard Medical School and at Massachusetts General Hospital, where he treats patients with various ailments, including ones that show signs of the Covid 19. Massachusetts has the United States' fourth highest rate of infection per capita, with 15,202 reported cases.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Sports
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The tech faceplant of the week goes to Mark Zuckerberg, the Facebook chief executive, who recently released a video in which he and his wife said they were "deeply shaken and disgusted by President Trump's divisive and incendiary rhetoric at a time when our nation so desperately needs unity." It was a case study in how not to read the room, especially when you are in charge of a huge service that has been one of the main digital tools that has helped the president divide and set fire to the body politic. Mr. Zuckerberg is an easy go to when it comes to pointing out the hypocrisy of the powerful playacting as the aggrieved. It's irksome, and it's also easy to mock, but in truth most of the battles between the digital Davids and Goliaths are much more complex. Consider, for example, the fight this week between Apple and a small tech company a quarrel that you might want to pay attention to since the outcome could have a lasting impact on the power dynamic between Big Tech and the rest of us. And how given that access to the mobile universe is controlled by just two companies: Apple and Google. As one person intimately familiar with the mobile ecosystem noted to me, Apple and Google are the "two tollbooths" for us all. Tollbooth is just the right metaphor. While you can use various services like Hey.com on the web through browsers, when it comes to mobile, app developers are subject to whatever guidelines Apple and Google impose and the fees they charge. Apple has asserted its curatorial might most strongly, by far, often in the interests of taming the sprawling and enormous app deluge. Their oversight includes efforts to protect privacy and eliminate dangerous developers who attempt to foist spam and malware on consumers. Mistakes slip through, but Apple runs a tidy ship. Yet Apple has also changed rules in ways that many developers find capricious and unfair and, more to the point, scary. While complaints have been raised for a long time about what Ben Thompson of Stratechery calls Apple's "rent seeking" practices, many developers do not want to speak out for fear of falling afoul of Apple and, worse, getting banned from its store. But not Basecamp's iconoclastic and outspoken founders, Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson, who took to Twitter and other media to complain loudly after the Hey.com app had been accepted by Apple and then flagged for being in violation of its rules last week. In practice, that means Hey.com cannot make crucial bug updates. The company was awaiting an appeal decision by Apple that came down Thursday and that demands that Basecamp make changes in order to keep its Hey.com app on the platform. Apple executives had told me and others earlier this week that it erred in its original approval of Hey.com, since the email service, which costs 99 per year, did not include the Apple friendly in app payment system as required by its rules. The payment system, the only one available to developers when using Apple's App Store, means Apple gets a huge cut when a customer buys digital goods like an app subscription (30 percent for the first year and 15 percent thereafter). Apple does not get a fee when customers sign up through the app's company website, and it's worth noting that 84 percent of apps are free, and developers pay nothing to Apple. There is no doubt that Apple's payment system is convenient for some developers. And Apple correctly touts that it has created a lucrative business platform for many companies ( 519 billion in overall revenue in 2019). But because of Apple's cut, some companies try to minimize in app transactions, either by avoiding offering in app subscriptions at all (Netflix) or charging more for that particular sign up (Spotify). Hey.com did not include Apple's payment tech in its app. Apple has made exceptions for some services that fall into what it calls a "reader" category and has given other services a pass for a variety of reasons; it has even struck individual deals to bypass grabbing a cut. Still, Apple has decided thus far that Hey.com does not merit special treatment, even though there are also some subscription email apps that don't offer in app purchase technology and are allowed to operate on Apple's platform (for now). Apple's approach can be confusing and definitely irritating. It hasn't sat well with Basecamp, as evidenced in a tweetstorm by Mr. Heinemeier Hansson. While he has a reputation for speaking out, this time Mr. Heinemeier Hansson has ended up in one of the more epic App Store controversies (best boiled down to his accusation that Apple was acting like "gangsters"). He likened Apple's actions to smashing windows and burning down stores. "They count on developers to stay quiet," he said in an agitated interview this week, referring to Apple executives. "We thought we were fighting an email market dominated by Google, but these were the real heavies." Apple obviously does not agree with this assessment. "These rules have been around the App Store since the day we started," said Phil Schiller, who is in charge of the App Store and noted that the company reviews over 100,000 apps every week. "There is no perfection here. We will admit it when we make a mistake and acknowledge that we also need to learn and grow," he said. "But this was rejected for a good reason." This dispute comes just as the European Union said this week that it had opened an investigation into whether Apple unfairly shakes down developers vying to distribute their wares on the App Store. The longtime Silicon Valley thorn Margrethe Vestager, the European Union's antitrust head, said the company had now "obtained a 'gatekeeper' role," and, because of that, "we need to ensure that Apple's rules do not distort competition in markets where Apple is competing with other app developers." She was referring to problems first raised by Spotify, the popular music service, which is now in direct competition with Apple Music. Spotify's complaints of Apple's anticompetitive behavior, filed more than a year ago, led to the European Union move. Spotify's top lawyer, Horacio Gutierrez, said in an interview with me that the situation with Hey.com is strikingly familiar. "I have to say a lot of Hey's experience is reminiscent of what we have been living," he said. "The reality is Apple continues to move the goal posts and change the rules to its advantage and the detriment of developers." At a press event last week about the European Union investigation, Mr. Gutierrez used a sports metaphor, too, saying that "Apple acts as stadium owner, referee and player and tilts the playing field to favor its own services." He added that "their selective and capricious enforcement is designed to put companies like ours at an untenable competitive disadvantage." "We don't want special treatment or a free ride," Mr. Gutierrez said. "We want fair treatment and the opportunity to compete without artificial obstacles put in our way," a point also made by the Basecamp team.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Opinion
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The man, carrying a basket dripping with blood and slick with fresh entrails, was yelling. The sun had set, and in the empty dirt lot north of the old town of Harar, Ethiopia, where a dozen or so people had gathered, the only light came from yellowish headlamps of an old SUV. The man repeated a high pitched shriek that lasted a good four or five seconds, something between a mournful wail and a yodel. After a minute of silence, we heard light, quick footsteps. I saw a sullen, hunched over silhouette, then a pair of glowing eyes. Then two pairs. Hyenas. They were intimidating bigger than I expected, with thick necks and huge jaws. And they were just one of the many compelling things I encountered during my continued exploration of Ethiopia. Having spent several days in the capital, Addis Ababa, I turned my attention to the cities of Lalibela, with its astounding group of rock hewed churches dating to the reign of King Lalibela (around 1181 to 1221 A.D.), and Harar, east of Addis Ababa, the epicenter of Muslim culture in Ethiopia. These trips reinforced my opinion that Ethiopia is one of the more exciting places in the world to visit right now: an attractive mix of ancient tradition and rapid modernization. What's more, it can all be seen fairly economically. Preparing for an Ethiopian adventure requires planning and a certain amount of patience and, in my case, the use of a handy loophole to deal with the sky high airfares some visitors to Africa face. Flying to Africa from the United States isn't cheap, and flying within Africa isn't much cheaper. Visitors to Ethiopia who enter the country on Ethiopian Airlines, however, can take advantage of vastly discounted flights within the country. I usually eschew tours, but I found a deal from Ethio Travel Tours that was just too good to pass up: two nights in Lalibela, a tour guide for two days, entrance to the churches (1,164 birr, if you buy separately), and ground transportation all for just 200. The lodging alone two nights at the Mountain View Hotel, with breathtaking views of the Lasta Mountains would have cost me 130 booked separately. I found the tour to be well worthwhile. Not having to use mental bandwidth fretting about transportation, especially when traveling alone, is invaluable. Was it all seamless? Not quite. After a gorgeous, winding drive from the airport, snaking through the Amhara region, the driver dropped me off and unloaded my bag in front of a shabby looking hotel that was not the agreed upon Mountain View Hotel. When I complained, he shrugged: "The hotel changed," he said. I insisted and showed him my email from Ethio Tours he relented and we continued on. Fortunately, I had a good tour guide. Mareg Asmro, an affable young man who aspires to study in China someday, educated me about the history of the city as we walked toward the first of the group of 11 monolithic churches cut directly into the earth gigantic structures hewed from single blocks of rock. "Lalibela was both a priest and a king," Mr. Asmro said. "King Lalibela wanted to construct these churches because Ethiopian Orthodox Christians wanted to make the pilgrimage to Jerusalem to see the birthplace of Jesus Christ." But many were unable to make or perished during the journey. When King Lalibela saw that, he envisioned a New Jerusalem to which the faithful could make the pilgrimage. We spent the afternoon exploring the six churches in the first group. We began with Bete Medhane Alem (Savior of the World), considered to be the largest monolith church on earth. The reddish brown structure is carved deep into the volcanic rock, with the roof following an imaginary line where the natural landscape would have crested. Everything is built from the same rock, including doors, windows and pillars. Within the cool, dusky interior, heavy carpets are thrown on hard ground for the services that take place. From there, we passed through various series of trenches and tunnels, going from one holy building to the next. Some were larger than others; each had a priest who would go from time to time behind a giant curtain hung within each church. "Behind that is the holiest of holies," Mr. Asmro explained in a hushed tone replicas of the ark of the covenant that only the priests were allowed to view. They were all impressive, but none quite as markedly so as the final church, Bete Giyorgis (Church of St. George), which is set slightly apart from the others. It's this very separation that makes this church so dramatic: The church, which suddenly plunges dozens of feet below ground level has a tawny exterior mottled with green and yellow moss, and, from above, forms the shape of a cross. It can be entered like the others, and requires a downhill trek into what feels like the jaws of the earth to reach the front entrance. Our final stop, on the outskirts of Lalibela, was the Asheton Maryam Monastery, which we reached after a 20 minute car ride. The monastery, while not particularly active, was still beautiful, carved into the side of the hill and accessible via a narrow path. Before parting, I tipped Mr. Asmro 500 birr for the two days we were together a little less than 20. While the churches are Lalibela's biggest attraction, they weren't its only appeal: I also had to eat. A lunch at the Seven Olives Hotel one afternoon proved to be tasty and economical: My meal of gomen tibs, sauteed vegetables served with a generous portion of sour, spongy injera bread, was delicious (55 birr). A less traditional but inventive fusion meal can be had at Ben Abeba, a restaurant off the main highway a partnership between Habtamu Baye, an Ethiopian man, and Susan Aitchison, a Scottish woman. The physical structure of Ben Abeba resembles a hulking spaceship from an old television show simultaneously futuristic and charmingly outdated. There are numerous levels and various ramps that made me feel like I was trapped in an Escher drawing. It's a fun place, and fortunately, the food isn't bad, either. I ordered a half portion of the shepherd's pie (109 birr) and mixed it with some hot, slightly bitter berbere spice paste that was on the table. The classically Ethiopian flavor worked well with the heavy, savory pie. It was enough food to carry me through the next day. I had left Lalibela, transferred through Addis Ababa again and was now in Dire Dawa, the city with the closest airport to Harar. It would be a one or two hour drive to Harar I just had to figure out how to get there. The hotel I was staying at offered an airport transfer for 50 each way, which seemed a bit steep. I headed instead to the bus station in Dire Dawa, and saved a decent bit of money by hiring a private car there (400 birr, less than 15). My Fanta swilling driver pulled small, green leaves from a plastic bag next to him during the whole journey. He was eating khat (pronounced chaat), a small shrub endemic to the area, the consumption of which provides an amphetaminelike rush. He offered me a few choice, tender young leaves, which I tried: It was bitter, with a similar effect to the coca I had tried while traveling in Peru (like coca, it's a controlled substance in the United States). "It's a big problem," said Lishan Ketema, a local man I hired as a guide once I had settled in Harar. (I found Mr. Ketema through my hotel, the Winta Hotel, where I paid 621 birr per night for a passable room). Walking around the old walled city, it certainly seemed like the majority of men were consuming the leaf. He also said the khat was hurting the country economically, as tracts of agricultural land, traditionally set aside for exports like coffee, was now dedicated to cultivating the addictive plant. We took a leisurely stroll through the narrow streets and along Harar's beautifully colored walls. We toured the famous gates (there are five that served as original entry points to the city), visited a local Muslim family's home and stopped by the Arthur Rimbaud Cultural Center, where the French poet once resided. As the sun set, I was getting antsy: It was almost time to go to the hyena feeding area. Mr. Ketema warned me that sometimes the hyenas show up and sometimes they don't. We would just have to get lucky. We got lucky. But the hyena man, who seemed to know them by sight and be able to distinguish between their different personalities, didn't trust the few hyenas that had shown up to allow visitors to feed them. So we waited, the hyena man periodically piercing the silence with his call. After an hour had passed, we were about ready to give up. Suddenly, more hyenas emerged from the darkness. The hyena man, reaching into his basket of glistening entrails, began feeding the animals, which would cautiously gobble a morsel before retreating back a few feet, emitting a whiny, whooping noise. Then the hyena man pointed at me, then pointed to the ground next to him. It was my turn. The bite of the hyena is one of the strongest of any animal on earth, so feeling the hot breath of one of these animals on my ear was disconcerting, to say the least. I did as the hyena man said: knelt down on the ground, not looking at or engaging the animal. He held a piece of meat right around my shoulder. The hyena approached cautiously then gobbled it down, about an inch from my ear. At the hyena man's encouragement, I ran my hand through the animal's coarse, bristly fur. It didn't notice at first, and then, suddenly realizing it was being touched, yelped loudly and scurried away. Then it was my turn to feed. The hyena man handed me a piece of offal at the end of a short stick. I held it near my face as the hyena approached, head slunk down low. Then, all I could see was a thick pink tongue and sharp teeth as the hyena opened its jaws and devoured the meat about a foot from my nose. "O.K., finished," the hyena man said, and I took my place back in the crowd. That was just fine with me. While this was an unforgettable experience to cap off my time in Ethiopia, I felt fortunate to still have a face.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Travel
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Petah Coyne's sculpture "Untitled 1379 (The Doctor's Wife)," made of velvet and wax dipped silk flowers, at her studio in West New York, N.J. The work is the centerpiece of a solo exhibition at Galerie Lelong Co. WEST NEW YORK, N.J. Two shrouded female figures rise from a sumptuous landscape of dark velvet and wax dipped silk flowers. One is imperious in posture, the other turns away in stubborn resistance. Their tense standoff seems to charge the roiling swells and eddies of material between them. This just completed piece by Petah Coyne stretched across the artist's expansive studio here during a late summer visit one of her many extravagant and psychologically complex sculptures. Several Neo Baroque chandeliers dangled from the ceiling, laden with wax flowers, taxidermy birds, religious statuary, tassels, bows and thickets of chicken wire coated with black sand. Silver peacocks, like ladies in waiting, were poised to be pressed into service on future works. The new velvet work, "Untitled 1379 (The Doctor's Wife)," has become the centerpiece of Ms. Coyne's exhibition, "Having Gone I Will Return," through Oct. 27 at Galerie Lelong Co. It's her first solo show in New York in a decade. Ms. Coyne said she first cast the figures in 1997, thinking about the push and pull that can happen between sisters, mothers and daughters, feminists. She returned to the piece two years ago, using as her touchstone a 1966 novel about bitter female competition by Sawako Ariyoshi. Ms. Ariyoshi's book, "The Doctor's Wife," is in turn based on the real life tale of the Japanese surgeon Hanaoka Seishu, whose wife and mother vied with each other to be subjects in his groundbreaking experiments with anesthesia, resulting in his wife's blindness. "The battle that goes on is just horrific," said Ms. Coyne, who sees in the original story something tragically eternal in how women can undermine one another and how such conflict usually works to the advantage of men. "This is such a great time for women, but if we don't evolve we're just going to keep going around and around. I want to see my generation help the next generation." "It was such an interesting group of women and we wanted to make sure that everyone got credit for their work through the ages after they pass on," said Ms. Coyne, who proposed that she and Kathy Grove, a conceptual photographer, become the group's art historians. All 50 some current and former members of the Guerrilla Girls signed on. The work reflects Ms. Coyne's own belief in the power of women to bring about change when they collaborate effectively which she sees now bearing fruit culturally with MeToo. Titled "The Real Guerrillas: The Early Years," the project will include diptychs by Ms. Coyne and Ms. Grove of every woman who took part during the group's heyday, from 1985 to 2000. Each woman chose the pseudonym of a dead, overlooked female artist and each portrait shows her in a gorilla mask, in a setting that recalls the alias she assumed (Hilma Af Klint, Artemisia Gentileschi, and others). A companion portrait of each member without her disguise will be unveiled after her death. Ms. Coyne admires how the anonymity of the group kept the focus on the issues facing female artists rather than on individuals. She and Ms. Grove have completed 35 portraits so far. In an interview, the Guerrilla Girl known as Lyubov Popova said that the long term scope of the project was fundamental to how Ms. Coyne thinks. "It's about reaching younger generations of women and giving them support and knowledge not only of the history of women's art but also of feminist radicalism in art," she said. She sees Ms. Coyne's own art as "strongly feminist but not in a didactic way," adding that her sculptures have become more unabashedly "girlish" over time. Ms. Coyne herself has long called her sculptures "the girls," terminology an artist less comfortable in her own skin might be embarrassed to use. "I feel awkward about it sometimes, but they are my girls, I feel them so deeply," said Ms. Coyne, like a teacher voicing unflagging encouragement for her pupils. Ms. Coyne describes herself as a "war horse." She moved in 1977 with her husband, Lamar Hall, from Ohio to Broome Street in New York, where they still live. She said he can check the security camera in the studio from home "to make sure I'm still alive" and he knows not to break the spell when she's working through the night, listening to books and rapt in a kind dance. The writings of Flannery O'Connor, Zora Neale Hurston and Joan Didion, among others, have long infiltrated her work. "Untitled 1408 (Lost Landscape)," a chandelier sculpture hanging here, is lavishly adorned with dark purple flowers, branches and two wax covered owls. It was named for the memoir by Joyce Carol Oates chronicling the author's childhood obsession with a troubled girl. "I'm listening to this book about a life that's gone out of control as I'm working and this lopsided shape starts to emerge without my realizing it," said Ms. Coyne, pointing to a protruding mound formed from hundreds of red roses. It could be read as a heart, or a tumor. She was dismayed when the weight caused the sculpture to list horribly to one side and credits one of her assistants for the idea of attaching 100 pound dumbbells as counterweights. Raised in a religious Irish Catholic family, Ms. Coyne moved 15 times with her father's job in the military before settling in Ohio. She acknowledges her debt to church pageantry the draping of statues during Lent, the profusion of flowers at Easter. Her use of wax as a core material came in 1994 after she took a dejected artist friend to a church in Rome, where the women lit candles and prayed for work. It apparently worked. After the friend received a show, she mailed Ms. Coyne a box of candles blessed by the Pope in appreciation. Ms. Coyne made the candles into a hat for another friend. When she lit it, the whole thing caught on fire including the friend's hair. The near disaster looked spectacular, though, and it prompted Ms. Coyne to stage a series of dance performances on swinging chandeliers with lit candles. She worked with a chemist she knew, from her former day job as a graphic designer for Chanel, to patent an archival wax formula that she uses in melted form, like a pigment. It has become her signature. "It's my action painting," said Ms. Coyne, who described how she climbed a ladder and threw the molten wax at 227 degrees onto a chandelier. "I have been told that it cools about five to seven degrees as it is flying through the air," she said, adding "Don't try this!" The special wax bonds at 220 degrees, burns the layer below and attaches forever. The result, "Untitled 1410 (Mishima's Spring Snow)," a confection of curled ribbons and drips of white wax, chicken wire fencing and Duchesse satin, is on view at Lelong. (The artist also applies wax in a more targeted way with turkey basters, an idea she got after seeing the kitchen tool at Jackson Pollock's studio on Long Island.)
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Art & Design
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Awkward reunions and tentative introductions are recurring themes of "Marvin's Room," Scott McPherson's comedy drama about two estranged sisters who are forced back into each other's lives by a family health crisis. The play has been performed in many incarnations, including an Off Broadway run in 1991, a year before Mr. McPherson's death from complications of AIDS, and was adapted as a film in 1996, but it has not been presented on Broadway until now. The Roundabout Theater Company's production of "Marvin's Room" (which is in previews at the American Airlines Theater and opens on Thursday, June 29) is also the Broadway debut of its director, Anne Kauffman, best known for staging new Off Broadway plays like Amy Herzog's "Belleville" and Jordan Harrison's "Marjorie Prime." It's the first Broadway outing for Janeane Garofalo, the wry comic and actress ("Reality Bites," "Wet Hot American Summer") who plays Lee, the free spirited mother of two sons. Making their Broadway returns are Lili Taylor ("American Crime," "I Shot Andy Warhol") as Bessie, a dutiful sister who learns she has leukemia; and Celia Weston ("Junebug," "American Horror Story") as their dotty aunt, Ruth, who helps Bessie tend to the sisters' bedridden father, Marvin. During one of their last rehearsals in Midtown Manhattan, Ms. Garofalo, Ms. Taylor, Ms. Weston and Ms. Kauffman gathered to talk about assembling their own stage family and preparing "Marvin's Room." These are edited excerpts from the conversation. You'll be in previews, in front of audiences, just a few days after this conversation. How is everyone feeling? CELIA WESTON You just gave me cottonmouth. My adrenaline just immediately took over, and now my lips are sticking together. JANEANE GAROFALO I was just going through the calendar, and I was like, wait, what? And then I saw: previews. But but but it's only a handful of days away. LILI TAYLOR Which we all have, by the way. How did this production come together? ANNE KAUFFMAN When I came to New York in the early '90s to be a director, this was playing. So, to be reintroduced to myself as a younger person is thrilling. This many years later, I've gone through losing a parent. We're middle aged. Things are falling apart. We've dealt with family members who are ill, and this play is all about what it is to take care of another person. TAYLOR The summer thing wasn't great for me, with a kid. I was like, I don't know, but I'll take the meeting with Anne. And then, within two minutes, I was like giving in "I'll do it." It just felt really right. That was my story. WESTON I had an offer through my agent. I was just thrilled, because I had heard such lovely things about Annie and so happy to be working with a woman director. And I hate that we even have to say that, still. But she was directing a play with three very rich women characters and a family dynamic and all that. I thought, yes, please. Janeane and Lili, had you two met before doing this play? GAROFALO You don't remember this, but I met you backstage at "Three Sisters." I think that's the only time we've been in the same room. But I felt like I knew you because she's on HBO every night with "The Conjuring." TAYLOR We've auditioned for similar roles. I don't believe I've seen you, but I feel like I've been aware of you. GAROFALO We're a similar type, although you have more versatility. I would more likely be the chagrined, hardass, bitter woman. Whereas you have an earnestness. TAYLOR You have the comedy thing, too the funny bone. GAROFALO I read an article about you, and you were quoted as saying you had to gain weight for "Dogfight," and you couldn't. I remember going, "What the expletive ?!?" I was like, I will knock her out. TAYLOR Believe me. You don't want six meals a day. It's intense. And my metabolism is fast. GAROFALO See, this isn't endearing. Don't say that. laughter Did you have the luxury of doing chemistry reads before you committed to your cast? KAUFFMAN I don't even understand them. If I'm going to try to read two people together, I don't know where to look. WESTON Chemistry reads only lead to unnatural sex acts. The lengths to which people will go, to say: "Yeah! Our chemistry is A plus." GAROFALO Celia, do you have any stories? WESTON I do, actually, and I'm censoring myself. Have you been helping one another out with your preparations as performances get closer? GAROFALO Lili taught me a technique for line memorization, based on a book you read on memory retention and neuroplasticity or something like that? TAYLOR A smorgasbord of books. GAROFALO It's a repetition of threes. You say everything three times in a row, almost in a mechanical way. Just go through it like a robot. Every morning, before we come in, I go through the script and I do the drills. And then we're standing here, and it's gone. laughter And it makes me feel so many things. TAYLOR It's new feelings coming in, new impulses that you wouldn't have by yourself. And all of a sudden there's another human being giving you stuff. So it's not a bad thing. WESTON You said it, it's technique. All young actors want it. If everybody could just go to Marshalls and get it at a discount, we would. It only comes with experience. I can remember as a student of Uta Hagen, doing Constance in "King John," at 20 something years old, playing a character who's lost her son, everyone that was around her is dead. When you're too young to have had an experience, you have to write a little soap opera in your head, so that you can bring it to a stage and live it. It's still uncommon on Broadway to see a female directed production with a prominently female cast. Why do you think that is? KAUFFMAN I turn that back on you. It's a question that's asked at every panel I'm on, every time I'm interviewed. People say women are hired on proving themselves several times, and men are hired on potential. And I think that's probably true. My style of working is, I don't come in with a plan that's like, "This is what this is, and we're going to do it this way." I'm like: "I don't know. Let's figure this out. Let's make something." Producers want to be told, "This is what it's going to look like, and it's going to be successful." I could probably say this is going to be successful, but I don't quite know what it's going to look like. TAYLOR It comes from the top. John Ridley, who I just did the TV show "American Crime" with, is great about having more female directors than male directors, more people of minority backgrounds. But those bosses are few and far between. GAROFALO Unfortunately, even us having this conversation is part of the problem. To even take a moment to discuss this, it's like, I'm always asked, will you do a panel of women in comedy? No. Because we're ghettoizing ourselves. TAYLOR I do think the conversation is important. My problem with these panels is, it just feels like we're speaking to the converted. "Marvin's Room" is traditionally set in the 1990s. Are you doing anything to modernize it? KAUFFMAN It feels, already, by casting these three women, it's a 2017 interpretation of the play. We're setting it in the '90s mostly so that Janeane can smoke onstage. It has to be the '90s. GAROFALO It would change everything if there was social media. The kids would be on their phones the whole time.
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Theater
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Obama Plan Would Help Many Go to Community College Free WASHINGTON President Obama said Thursday that he would propose a government program to make community college tuition free for millions of students, an ambitious plan that would expand educational opportunities across the United States. The initiative, which the president plans to officially announce Friday at a Tennessee community college, aims to transform publicly financed higher education in an effort to address growing income inequality. The plan would be funded by the federal government and participating states, but White House officials declined to discuss how much it would cost or how it would be financed. It is bound to be expensive and likely a tough sell to a Republican Congress not eager to spend money, especially on a proposal from the White House. "With no details or information on the cost, this seems more like a talking point than a plan," said Cory Fritz, a spokesman for House Speaker John A. Boehner, Republican of Ohio. Mr. Obama's advisers acknowledged Thursday that the program's goals would not be achieved quickly. The president, however, was more upbeat. "It's something that we can accomplish, and it's something that will train our work force so that we can compete with anybody in the world," Mr. Obama said in a video posted Thursday night by the White House. The proposal would cover half time and full time students who maintain a 2.5 grade point average about a C plus and who "make steady progress toward completing a program," White House officials said. It would apply to colleges that offered credit toward a four year degree or occupational training programs that award degrees in high demand fields. The federal government would cover three quarters of the average cost of community college for those students, and states that choose to participate would cover the remainder. If all states participate, the administration estimates, the program could cover as many as nine million students, saving them each an average of 3,800 a year. Mr. Obama will include the program, which would need congressional approval, in his budget for the coming year, his advisers said, and detail it in his State of the Union address Jan. 20. The plan is modeled after Tennessee's free community college program, called the Tennessee Promise, which will be available to students graduating high school this year. It has drawn 58,000 applicants, almost 90 percent of the state's high school seniors, and more than twice as many as expected. Still, Tennessee Promise has been criticized by some who say it is structured to benefit middle income students more than the neediest. It is designed as a "last dollar" scholarship, paying only for tuition costs not covered by other programs. A low income student who is eligible for a maximum Pell Grant of 5,730 would not receive assistance under the Tennessee program, because that amount would already cover tuition. A more affluent student, however, could get full tuition paid by the program. Mr. Obama's plan, by contrast, would cover tuition costs up front, White House officials said. Representative Diane Black, Republican of Tennessee, said despite the success of her state's program, she was skeptical of the Obama initiative, calling it "a top down federal program that will ask already cash strapped states to help pick up the tab." Chicago, too, has a new free community college initiative starting this year. The program initiated by Mayor Rahm Emanuel, a Democrat, will give Chicago Public School students who graduate with at least a 3.0 grade point average waivers to cover tuition, books and fees at the city's seven community colleges. White House officials acknowledged in a conference call with reporters that the program was unlikely to win quick approval in Congress. Still, they said, in proposing it, Mr. Obama was seeking to press states and community colleges to beef up their investments in high quality education in ways that would have a lasting effect even before federal legislation was enacted. "We don't expect the country to be transformed overnight, but we do expect this conversation to begin tomorrow," said Cecilia Munoz, the president's domestic policy chief.
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Education
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I chose to judge J. Lo and the halftime show at the Super Bowl through a different lens. How does one reconcile the show with the MeToo movement? To be sure, the technical aspects and performances were first rate. But keeping in mind that this is a show watched by all ages and backgrounds, the dance moves and costumes were more befitting a strip club minus the stripping or a prelude to a soft porn video. The show used images meant to excite and seduce. Yet the MeToo movement is all about not objectifying women, not viewing them through the lens of sex and using sex to manipulate, dominate and take advantage. The performers are wonderful dancers and good singers. How about costumes and choreography that showcase these talents without having to exploit the overused "sex sells" approach. I was not offended by the show just sad and dismayed. I was struck by how differently Jennifer Weiner reacted to Jennifer Lopez and Shakira's performance than my friends and I did. Perhaps it is generational my friends and I are a mix of genders and races in our mid to late 20s but we focused very little on their appearances. We were more struck by the enthusiastic display of Latino culture and pride, capped by the unfurling of the Puerto Rico flag, at an event hosted by an organization that often ignores social issues concerning their minority players and viewers.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Opinion
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new video loaded: Take a Test Ride in a Driverless Car
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Technology
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MOSCOW Oleg V. Deripaska, the Russian oligarch, was so deeply in debt at the onset of the financial crisis that Russian and Western banks could have bankrupted his company, the sprawling aluminum giant Rusal, within months. Desperate for cash, Rusal, one of Russia's largest privately held companies, opened negotiations with Middle Eastern sovereign wealth funds and in particular piqued the interest of one, the Libyan Investment Authority. That led to Saif Qaddafi, the son of the Libyan leader, Muammar el Qaddafi, who is sometimes involved in the country's business negotiations, personally setting out to conduct due diligence on Rusal. The talks, while they failed to produce an investment, may have helped Rusal, the world's largest aluminum maker, strike a better deal with lenders. And they did add another player to the unusual cast of characters that populated Mr. Deripaska's scramble for financing, which ultimately resulted in an initial public offering scheduled for Wednesday in Hong Kong. While Mr. Deripaska's approach to the Libyans demonstrated a new range in the global dealings of the oligarchs, it was his skill for survival and success in Russian big business maintaining good relations with the Kremlin that proved to be critical in gaining state bank backing for Rusal's I.P.O. Yet the emergence of Rusal from its debt crisis was the result of more than just remaining in the good graces of his government, according to bankers who advised Rusal in the company's preparations for the offering. A recovery in aluminum prices gave Mr. Deripaska more negotiating leverage. And the search for unconventional financing, while ultimately never tapped, played a role. Mr. Deripaska succeeded by pursuing unusual sources of finance at a time when Western banks, flat on their backs, could offer nothing and continued Russian government bailout money was uncertain. "The trick in these situations is to create opportunities on all sides with wealth funds, with your government, with unusual sources of capital," said a senior Western banker who personally advised Mr. Deripaska on discussions with the Libyans before the decision was made to list in Hong Kong. The public share offering was oversubscribed. On Friday, Rusal set the price at 10.81 Hong Kong dollars ( 1.39) a share, according to bankers quoted in news reports, to raise 2.2 billion in the offering, the first primary listing for a non Asian firm in Hong Kong. It will be used to help pay down 14.9 billion in debt, about half of which was taken on to buy a stake in Norilsk Nickel, another Russian mining company, at the peak of the market in 2008. Mr. Deripaska bought the stake from Mikhail D. Prokhorov, the oligarch who entered the financial crisis cash rich because of the sale, and is now awaiting approval from the National Basketball Association to buy the New Jersey Nets. Because of the many risks, including this debt, the Hong Kong Securities and Futures Commission limited Rusal's share purchases to batches with a minimum value of 1 million Hong Kong dollars, or 130,000, to discourage small investors. One risk is a lawsuit brought in London by Mikhail Cherney, a native of Uzbekistan who now lives in Israel and who contends he is a former partner of Mr. Deripaska. He is suing for the value of 13 percent of Rusal and a decade worth of dividends, which he says totals at least 4 billion. The two men met in a London hotel room in 2001 and signed an agreement to this effect, according to Mr. Cherney. Mr. Deripaska denies that Mr. Cherney owns shares and said in an affidavit that his relationship with Mr. Cherney was one of a businessman being extorted by a crime boss. After the 2001 meeting, Mr. Deripaska paid Mr. Cherney 250 million. Mr. Cherney is wanted by Interpol on a Spanish warrant for organized crime and money laundering charges, but a judge in London has agreed to hear his case against Mr. Deripaska. Coordinating with investors all over the world, Oleg Deripaska positioned Rusal to go public with a listing in Hong Kong. As potential investors in the I.P.O. were left to ponder the meaning of this case, which could add billions to the already vast debt of Mr. Deripaska, so, too, was the Libyan state investment fund as it considered an investment in Rusal, which was reported in November in Asian Times Online. Mr. Cherney said in an interview that he was approached through intermediaries by the younger Mr. Qaddafi about the possible purchase but that he warned the Libyans away. Mr. Cherney said he reminded them of his suit in London court, then offered to sell his 13 percent at a discount, an offer they declined. Mr. Qaddafi also approached Mahmoud Thiam, the minister of mines in the African nation of Guinea, where Rusal has a crucial mine and mill, Mr. Thiam said in a telephone interview. Saif Qaddafi had met Mr. Thiam personally to discuss Rusal's business. Of concern for Mr. Qaddafi, and indeed other potential investors, is that the Guinean government that came in after a military coup in 2008 is nationalizing Rusal's asset in the country, the Friguia bauxite and alumina complex. It is considering reselling it to the Chinese and is suing Rusal for 1 billion. Mr. Thiam said he told Mr. Qaddafi that if the Libyans wanted to buy Rusal, they should consider the company without the Friguia complex, which produces about 7 percent of Rusal's refined bauxite, because it now belongs to the Guinean government. Guinea, he said, has already opened talks with the Chinese. In the I.P.O. prospectus, Rusal says its lawyers are trying to transfer the case to arbitration in Paris. The troubles took some of the gloss out of the novelty of the Hong Kong listing, analysts said, by possibly keeping Chinese state money out of the I.P.O.; buying into Rusal would, in essence, put China in the position of betting on both sides of the Friguia mine dispute. The Libyan Investment Authority did not respond to written questions and Rusal's spokeswoman, Vera Kurochkina, declined to comment on any pre I.P.O. efforts to raise financing. Ahead of the I.P.O., Rusal said four investors the Russian state VEB bank; Nathaniel Rothschild, the European banking heir; Paulson Company, the New York hedge fund; and the Malaysian Chinese tycoon Robert Kuok agreed to take large stakes in the company and hold shares for at least six months. Rusal, anticipating troubles listing on a stock exchange, also considered going public through a so called special purpose acquisition company, according to the senior Western banker who advised Mr. Deripaska, who spoke on condition of anonymity because his comments involved private banking business.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Global Business
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On the Tuesday episode of her show, Megyn Kelly made remarks on blackface Halloween costumes that caused a backlash. On Wednesday, she looked into the camera and apologized. On Thursday, she did not go to work, and a rerun of "Megyn Kelly Today" replaced the live broadcast of her show. Ms. Kelly's absence was a sign that she is not likely to return to the NBC airwaves. Bryan Freedman, a Los Angeles litigator just hired by Ms. Kelly, has started negotiations with NBC about her potential exit from the network, according to two people briefed on recent discussions. With another repeat episode of "Megyn Kelly Today" scheduled for Friday, Noah Oppenheim, the president of NBC News, and Jackie Levin, the show's executive producer, told staff members on Thursday to prepare for a few days off. Mr. Oppenheim and Ms. Levin also informed them that they would be moved into new jobs at the network if the program was canceled, according to two people familiar with the meeting. The offstage machinations took place two days after Ms. Kelly suggested, during an on air round table discussion, that it was appropriate for white people to dress in blackface as part of their Halloween costumes. Update: 'Megyn Kelly Today' show is cancelled in wake of Kelly's 'Blackface' comments.' Ms. Kelly apologized for her comments on two occasions this week once in an email to colleagues, and again on the air. But her demonstrations of contrition did little, it seemed, to improve her standing at the network. Andrew Lack, the chairman of the news division, did not mention her apologies at a staff meeting on Wednesday and said, "There is no other way to put this, but I condemn those remarks." Al Roker, a "Today" fixture, said on the show Wednesday that Ms. Kelly "owes a bigger apology to folks of color around the country." The anchor Craig Melvin called her comments "racist and ignorant." And in an indication of how Ms. Kelly's stock has fallen, she is no longer represented by a talent agent. Ms. Kelly cut ties with the Creative Artists Agency this week, and a rival agency that was poised to sign her on Wednesday, United Talent Agency, backed away in the wake of her "blackface" comments. Such a snub would have been unthinkable less than two years ago, when Ms. Kelly was a sought after free agent looking to leave the Fox News Channel. Adding to her difficulties, guests who had been booked to appear on future episodes of "Megyn Kelly Today" pulled out this week. They included the actor Gary Sinise, the director Ron Howard and the "American Ninja Warrior" host Matt Iseman, as well as lesser known guests like Craig McManus, a medium based in Bergen County, N.J. With no apparent support from her colleagues, her bosses or Hollywood, Ms. Kelly would seem to have a remote chance of remaining at NBC. And her tenure there seemed shaky even before this week. After an extended period of pedestrian ratings, Ms. Kelly and Mr. Lack had a discussion this month on the possible winding down of her portion of the "Today" show by the end of the year, according to two people briefed on the conversation. In addition to her apology, Ms. Kelly devoted part of her Wednesday episode to a discussion with the PBS host Amy Holmes and the journalist Roland Martin on the history of blackface. Partly because of her efforts to make up for her statements, Ms. Kelly believes that NBC executives have been using the "blackface" backlash as a pretext to oust her from the network, according to a person familiar with her thinking, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to reveal sensitive discussions. In an odd twist, Mr. Freedman, Ms. Kelly's recently hired lawyer, made a request to NBC asking that Ronan Farrow a Pulitzer Prize winning reporter who has said NBC impeded his reporting on the Harvey Weinstein story last year join the meeting where they plan to negotiate Ms. Kelly's future, the person said. Ms. Kelly's incendiary remarks on Tuesday were part of a round table discussion of how "the costume police are cracking down" on Halloween costumes, as she put it. Ford and Rivian no longer plan to work jointly on electric vehicles. Elizabeth Holmes took the stand in her trial. Follow along with our reporters. Ken Griffin, head of Citadel, bid highest for a copy of the Constitution. "What is racist?" Ms. Kelly asked. "You do get in trouble if you are a white person who puts on blackface on Halloween, or a black person who puts on whiteface for Halloween. Back when I was a kid, that was O.K., as long as you were dressing up as a character." She went on to cite the example of Luann de Lesseps, a member of the cast of the Bravo reality show "The Real Housewives of New York," who came under fire this year for dressing up as Diana Ross, complete with an outsize Afro wig. Ms. Kelly added that she found the criticism of the "Housewives" star perplexing. In doing so, she displayed little awareness that blackface minstrelsy, a popular form of entertainment in the 1800s that later seeped into Hollywood productions, promoted a racist caricature and presented a distorted view of slavery. Malik Russell, a spokesman for the N.A.A.C.P., issued a statement about her comments: "Maybe in Megyn Kelly's world, offensive acts and racism are O.K., but I assure you for individuals of color, blackface is always racist and never O.K." Read our Critic's Notebook on how Ms. Kelly's background led to her recent troubles. When Ms. Kelly left Fox News in January 2017, NBC gave her a rich deal through 2020 and signaled that she would be a centerpiece of the network. In addition to giving her the third hour of NBC's morning franchise, "Today," the network created "Sunday Night With Megyn Kelly," meant to challenge the CBS stalwart "60 Minutes." The plan also called for Ms. Kelly to provide a boost to election specials and Olympics coverage. In the months before she made the jump to NBC, Ms. Kelly had broken out of the cable news bubble by challenging Donald J. Trump during a presidential debate and writing critically in a memoir about the Fox News chairman Roger E. Ailes, who left the network after multiple women accused him of sexual misconduct. In the book, "Settle for More," Ms. Kelly reported that Mr. Ailes had "made sexual comments to me" and "offers of professional advancement in exchange for sexual favors." At Fox News, Ms. Kelly, a former lawyer, distinguished herself over 12 years as a sometimes prosecutorial interviewer who did not shy away from third rail topics. She was No. 1 in her time slot, sometimes rivaling her colleague Bill O'Reilly as the biggest ratings draw in all of cable news. As she prepared to make the move to a big network, she said a politics free morning program was something she was "born to do." She aspired to become a hybrid of Charlie Rose and Oprah Winfrey, she said at the time. A month after her May 1, 2017, start date, Ms. Kelly's Sunday magazine show debuted to middling ratings. And before long she became the scourge of parents of the Sandy Hook shootings when she interviewed the conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, who had falsely claimed that the 2012 school killings were a hoax, and posted a photograph of the two smiling together. NBC quietly announced this year that the Sunday show would return "periodically." There were more missteps after Ms. Kelly became part of the network's morning franchise in September last year. Throughout its run, "Megyn Kelly Today" has trailed the rival program "Live With Kelly and Ryan" by a significant margin. It even attracted a smaller audience than its predecessor, a genial hour that was hosted by Mr. Roker, Dylan Dreyer and Sheinelle Jones and did not depend on the magnetism of a star performer.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Media
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The March for Science: Why Some Are Going, and Some Will Sit Out Nadia Lelutiu, a laboratory manager working in vaccine research at Emory University's School of Medicine, has never been involved in a public demonstration. But she joined the leadership of the March for Science Atlanta because she said it was time scientists "made some noise." "Science continues to be undermined in favor of political ideology and it is getting worse under the current administration," she said. "This threatens public health and environmental safety, and our livelihood now and in the future." Others expressed opposition to the march, seeing peril in what might come off as a partisan attack on the president and his supporters, even if they support some of its goals. "Throwing our weight behind a protest movement may result in short term gain, but it will more so contribute to the increased politicization of our work and further confound the public understanding of scientific rigor," said Daniel Sharoh, an American working on a Ph.D. in cognitive neuroscience in the Netherlands. He added that wearing the hats of activist and scientists at the same time damages "our need for insulation from daily politics in order to conduct basic research." An entomologist at the University of Florida, Joe Funderburk, described his concerns with the endorsement of the march by the Entomological Society of America, which he warned harms the credibility of its scientists. "I feel that as a concerned American, as well as a scientist, I need to advocate for the use of real, unbiased scientific facts in any policy decisions," said Michele Millham, who does research on personalized medicine at a company in Connecticut and will march in Washington. "Even the concept of 'alternative facts' scares me." The Future of Funding for the Sciences The March for Science was announced before the release of the administration's proposed budget. But concerns about the future of science funded by the federal government were on the minds of many respondents. "People need to be aware that the quality of life and life expectancy they enjoy are largely due to scientific advances and the investment of the U.S. in the sciences," said Seun Ajiboye, a science policy analyst for the International and American Associations for Dental Research, who hopes the march will mobilize the public to support science funding. A number of employees of federal agencies that face cuts in the administration's proposed budget planned to march in Washington and at events in other cities. None were willing to be quoted by name, fearing retaliation in the current administration. "It has been tone deaf to the complexities that underlie a growing distrust of science funded by a removed and distant federal government that locally does not appear to be in service of the public good," she said. "To rebuild trust we must consider new ways to serve the public." But one professor who has received support from the N.I.H. for her research said she would march in Washington because of risks to the next generation of scientific researchers. "Persistent advocacy now by people like me is needed both to reinforce the value of science to all people and to help salvage continuity of scientific progress and careers for the next generation of innovators," said Alice Telesnitsky, a professor of microbiology and immunology at the University of Michigan Medical School. Issues of diversity and inclusion have prompted ongoing debate among organizers and supporters of the march and their critics. Still others agreed that the march's organizers had not adequately considered these issues in their planning, but felt that made it more important to participate. "One of the reasons I will march, I'm not afraid of the naysayers who think science is only for them," said Alfiee M. Breland Noble, an associate professor of psychiatry at Georgetown University and director of the Aakoma Project and Lab, who will be marching with her children. "It's for us all." Emily Nocito, a graduate student and researcher at the University of Maine School of Marine Sciences, offered a similar sentiment. "As a female, I am marching for those who never had a chance in the sciences and for future scientists of all backgrounds," she said. But Daniel Bullock, a professor of psychological and brain sciences at Boston University, who will march with his wife and son in Washington, said that the event could help scientists better connect with the public. "The march is a first chance to work on how to frame key messages and how to organize a nationwide campaign to broaden understanding of inconvenient truths that are being ignored by many policy makers," he said. But getting organized as scientists was also important to some participants, who said that it was time to assert their role as a group. "Communities are not taken seriously politically until they act as a group and make noise," Mary Mangan of Somerville, Mass., who is the president of OpenHelix, a company that trains people to use genomics software. "I don't think quiet reserve is serving us well anymore. Health issues, food issues, climate issues, energy issues we have as much right to speak to these as anyone else, and added responsibility to do so, in my opinion." And ultimately, some said, doing nothing was not an option. "I'm tired of saying we must make the best of a bad situation," said Emily Nicholson, a geologist for an engineering firm in New Jersey who is driving down to Washington for the march. "I recently became a scientist in order to leave a positive mark on the world, and it's time I try harder to."
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Science
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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. 'ARTICLES OF FAITH' at the Kitchen (performances June 15 17). Two years ago, a fire destroyed the home and studio of the writer, composer and performer Cynthia Hopkins ("Accidental Nostalgia"). Ms. Hopkins has created a new piece, part of the Lumberyard in the City festival, that was inspired by the incendiary event and its aftermath, with an assist from the designer Jeff Sugg. 212 255 5793, Ext. 11; thekitchen.org 'BELLA: AN AMERICAN TALL TALE' at Playwrights Horizons (in previews; opens on June 12). The writer and composer Kirsten Childs ("The Bubbly Black Girl Sheds Her Chameleon Skin") has a story for you. In this fantastical new musical, she offers an impudent and unlikely account of a voluptuous young woman (Ashley D. Kelley) who turns heads in the 19th century American West. 212 279 4200, playwrightshorizons.org 'JULIUS CAESAR' at the Delacorte Theater (in previews; opens on June 12). Friends, Romans and those lucky enough to get tickets to the Public Theater's Shakespeare in the Park will be treated to Oskar Eustis's production of a Roman tragedy geared to the Trump era. To fuel the political parallels, two extraordinary actors from "House of Cards," Elizabeth Marvel and Corey Stoll, play Antony and Brutus. 212 967 7555, publictheater.org 'CLARENCE DARROW' at Arthur Ashe Stadium (performances June 15 16). On television Kevin Spacey ("House of Cards") perverts the rule of law. Onstage, it's a different story. He first played Darrow, the great criminal lawyer and Scopes trial defender as embodied in David W. Rintels's solo show, at the Old Vic. His new court? Arthur Ashe Stadium, in Queens. 800 745 3000, ticketmaster.com 'NAPOLI, BROOKLYN' at the Laura Pels Theater at the Harold and Miriam Steinberg Center for Theater (previews start on June 9; opens on June 27). The Park Slope of 1960 when twin strollers were scarce and Brooklyn wasn't yet something to celebrate is the setting for this new play by Meghan Kennedy ("Too Much, Too Much, Too Many"). Under Gordon Edelstein's direction, two immigrant families scrabble for a piece of the American dream. 212 719 1300, roundabouttheatre.org '(NOT) WATER' at 3LD Art Technology Center (in previews; opens on June 15). The playwright Sheila Callaghan has an attitude toward language and theatricality that's more of a flood than a trickle. In this new immersive play, created with the director Daniella Topol and produced by New Georges, she will explore the relationship between Homo sapiens and H O. Polly Lee and April Matthis lead the cast. newgeorges.org 'PIPELINE' the Mitzi E. Newhouse Theater (previews start on June 15; opens on July 10). The playwright Dominique Morisseau channels explorations of race, class and privilege into vital conflicts between characters. In this new play, Karen Pittman ("Disgraced") stars as a woman whose son faces expulsion from his prestigious private school. Lileana Blain Cruz directs. 212 239 6200, lct.org 'UNCLE VANYA' at New York City Center (performances June 15 17). As part of the Cherry Orchard Festival, the Vakhtangov State Academic Theater in Moscow offers a version of Chekhov's scenes from country life that's far from bucolic or sleepy. The Lithuanian director Rimas Tuminas reimagines this story of blighted ambitions and unrequited love without a samovar in sight. 212 581 1212, nycitycenter.org 'THE ANTIPODES' at the Pershing Square Signature Center (closes on June 11). Tales short and tall populate Annie Baker's gently surrealistic play about writer's room inhabitants in search of a story. Ben Brantley described the piece, directed by Lila Neugebauer, as an "in all ways fabulous new play about professional fabulators in pursuit of the ultimate yarn." 212 244 7529, signaturetheatre.org 'OSLO' at the Vivian Beaumont Theater (closes on June 18). J. T. Rogers's fact based play about the origination of the Oslo peace accords finishes its run. Ben Brantley described the play, directed by Bartlett Sher and starring Jennifer Ehle and Jefferson Mays, as a work as "expansive and ambitious as any in recent Broadway history." 212 239 6200, lct.org 'PACIFIC OVERTURES' at Classic Stage Company (closes on June 18). John Doyle's revival of "Pacific Overtures," Stephen Sondheim and John Weidman's 1976 musical about American Japanese relations, will conclude its diplomatic mission. Though Jesse Green described the production as "sometimes glorious, sometimes lackluster," he praised it as "delicate and focused enough to make small gestures, such as the closing of a parasol, pay." 212 352 3101, classicstage.org 'SOJOURNERS' and 'HER PORTMANTEAU' at New York Theater Workshop (close on June 11). Mfoniso Udofia's twinned plays about Nigerian immigrants end their theatrical journey. Jesse Green described these "stunningly acted" dramas, directed by Ed Sylvanus Iskandar, as "a moving and powerful corrective to the notion that what immigrants leave behind is always awful, and that what they find is always worth the trip." 212 460 5475, nytw.org
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Theater
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From the moment "The Farewell" opens, its main characters tell lies that flow from their mouths smoothly and deliberately, as if they are speaking in code. Many people of East Asian descent may be fluent in this code. I know I am. There are the petty lies that Billi (Awkwafina), a Chinese American artist in New York, and Nai Nai, her grandmother in China, tell each other on the phone. Billi, in chilly Brooklyn, assures Nai Nai that she's wearing a hat. She's not. Nai Nai says she's visiting her sister, but she's actually in the hospital. They're lying to avoid worrying each other, but that's nothing compared with the core untruth, that Nai Nai (Zhao Shuzhen) has terminal lung cancer, and the family knows but won't tell her. Anxiety over the diagnosis, Billi's relatives argue, could kill her before the cancer. When I was a teenager, my parents, both immigrants, got divorced, and what was most confusing was the aftermath. We never had a discussion about how things would change. We didn't tell family friends or relatives. Instead, we pretended as though nothing had happened. My father did not move out; he slept in a separate room. When we saw relatives for dinner, we acted as a cohesive family, and I was told not to frown. While I could relate to Billi, who was instructed to hide her grief in front of Nai Nai, I lacked a clear sense of the cultural rationale behind the lies. If Billi's family and mine were any indication of how some Chinese families solve problems, I wondered, why don't we just put everything out in the open so everyone can have a say in a solution? And why do we insist on creating the illusion that everything is O.K.? I posed these questions to Jeff Mio, a professor of multicultural psychology at California Polytechnic State University. He was quick to correct me. "It isn't that Asians avoid difficult topics, but rather that Asians tend to have indirect communication," Mio said. In indirect communication, also known as high context communication, what's not said is more important than what is said. Eastern philosophy emphasizes balance and harmony, and indirect communication minimizes conflict. So some Asian cultures prefer communicating in a "show, don't tell" manner and value the ability to decode indirect messages. In the film, repressing truth is indirect communication taken to an extreme. The family members show their love for Nai Nai by keeping mum about her condition. Mio gave the example of a man asking a woman out on a date on Saturday. The woman could reject him by saying, "I would never go out with you." Or she could say, "I think I'm busy on Saturday." The direct rejection sounds harsh and abrupt, which could make both people feel bad. The indirect answer, though ambiguous, does a better job of minimizing conflict, sparing the wooer's feelings while making it easier for the person doing the rejecting. Both get to save face. The notion of saving face maintaining dignity and control over one's emotions is largely derived from collectivism, an Eastern concept that no person is an island; we are each part of a shared consciousness and represent a group. "If you're acting in a way that can embarrass you, in a Western society a parent might say you're embarrassing yourself, but an Asian parent would say you're embarrassing my family," Mio said. In the film, Billi's uncle sums it up this way when his niece is contemplating telling Nai Nai the truth: "You think one's life belongs to one's self." Billi's relatives have reached consensus about what's best for Nai Nai and, by extension, for the family as a whole. The more I talked to people about the film, the less foreign its premise became. Family stories like that of "The Farewell" aren't the norm in Asian cultures, but they also aren't unheard of. Guy Aoki, a civil rights activist with the Media Action Network for Asian Americans, said that when his grandfather, who grew up in Hawaii, was dying of stomach cancer in 1962, the doctor never informed the patient about his prognosis. "I remember saying to my mother, 'Why didn't you let him know? He's got to say his goodbyes,'" Aoki recalled. The decision is still bewildering today to Aoki, a fourth generation Japanese American. Nancy Yuen, a sociologist and author of the book "Reel Inequality: Hollywood Actors and Racism," had an inverse experience. When her mother was diagnosed with lung cancer, Yuen was kept in the dark. She found out about the illness from her aunt, and even after she began accompanying her mother to radiation treatments, they didn't talk about her condition. Her mother died about two years later in 2008. "When she was sick, all we did was eat out a lot," she said. "She never said the word 'cancer' ever."
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Movies
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Nike planned to celebrate the Fourth of July with a new sneaker, a special edition of the Air Max 1 Quick Strike featuring that most patriotic of symbols: an American flag. But rather than including a flag with 50 stars as part of its design, the sneaker's heel featured the 13 star model, a design associated with the Revolutionary War, the Philadelphia seamstress Betsy Ross and, for some people, a painful history of oppression and racism. On Tuesday, Nike canceled the release of the sneaker, again plunging headlong into the nation's culture wars. The abrupt cancellation came after Colin Kaepernick, the former National Football League quarterback and social justice activist, privately criticized the design to Nike, according to a person with knowledge of the interaction. Mr. Kaepernick, who signed a lucrative deal to serve as a Nike brand ambassador last year, expressed the concern to the company that the Betsy Ross flag had been co opted by groups espousing racist ideologies, the person said. Sandra Carreon John, a company spokeswoman, said in a statement on Tuesday that Nike had made the decision to "halt distribution" of the sneaker "based on concerns that it could unintentionally offend and detract from the nation's patriotic holiday." The company's initial acknowledgment of the recall hours earlier did not explain the reasoning behind the decision. While people all across the political spectrum debated the issue on social media, Gov. Doug Ducey, Republican of Arizona, announced on Twitter that he would pull back state support for a Nike facility that would have employed more than 500 people. Nike had proposed to open the 184 million plant in Goodyear, Ariz. "Words cannot express my disappointment at this terrible decision," Mr. Ducey said in a series of tweets, adding that Nike "has bowed to the current onslaught of political correctness and historical revisionism." The governor, who had previously called the factory "an exciting project," also said: "Arizona's economy is doing just fine without Nike. We don't need to suck up to companies that consciously denigrate our nation's history." The Wall Street Journal first reported on the cancellation of the sneaker and Mr. Kaepernick's involvement. Betsy Ross is widely credited with creating the first American flag at George Washington's behest, though most scholars dispute that story as legend, according to the Library of Congress. To many, the flag is merely a relic, a design that shows up at historical sites like Colonial Williamsburg and on government insignia, like the seal of the Department of Veterans Affairs. "People just see it as a symbol of early America and the founding of our nation," said Lisa Moulder, the director of the Betsy Ross House in Philadelphia, which draws more than 1,000 visitors a day. "In Betsy's time, the flag was strictly utilitarian, a military tool." But the flag has, at least in recent years, cropped up in association with racist ideologies. When the Ku Klux Klan tried to recruit new followers in upstate New York last year, its fliers featured a Klansman flanked by the Confederate flag and the Betsy Ross flag. Similar imagery was reportedly included in a letter sent by the Klan to a college newspaper in Washington in 2017. In 2016, a school superintendent in Michigan apologized after students waved the 13 star flag alongside a Trump political banner at a football game, writing in a letter to parents that the flag had come "to some symbolizes exclusion and hate." And according to a 2013 investigation by The Albany Herald in Georgia, at least some local Klan units were required to use either that flag or the Confederate flag at ritualistic meetings. Prominent conservatives argued that Nike's cancellation of the shoe was unpatriotic. "It's a good thing Nike only wants to sell sneakers to people who hate the American flag," Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, a Republican, wrote on Twitter. Herman Cain, the former Republican presidential candidate, tweeted, "Just so you know how this works now: Nothing can happen in America anymore if Colin Kaepernick doesn't like it." Mr. Kaepernick, who led the San Francisco 49ers to the Super Bowl after the 2012 season, became a face of the social justice movement in 2016 after he began kneeling during "The Star Spangled Banner" to protest police violence against black people and racial inequality in the United States. His acts of protest inspired similar demonstrations from other professional athletes, but they came under fire from politicians including President Trump, who argued that they were disrespecting the country and the military, and some fans boycotted the N.F.L. As part of his lucrative endorsement arrangement with Nike, Mr. Kaepernick appeared prominently in an advertising campaign celebrating the 30th anniversary of the company's "Just Do It" slogan. In the wake of the ad, some consumers called for a boycott of Nike, while others destroyed their Nike products. But analysts said that Nike had not suffered financially from its association with an athlete who had become a symbol of the so called Resistance movement. "Pretty much every metric you can look at was positive for Nike their social media mentions went up, their sales rose the week after, and they won a bunch of awards for the ad campaign," said Matt Powell, a sports industry analyst for the NPD Group. "They are clearly aligned with their core customer base the millennial and the Gen Z consumer and if they have alienated others, those are not the folks who buy a lot of Nikes." The decision to cancel the special Air Max shoe is a sign of Mr. Kaepernick's power at Nike, said Americus Reed, a marketing professor at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. "Nike is signaling that they're going to go all in on this road, whatever the consequences are, even if it's going to get some consumers to burn their shoes on Twitter," he said. But it can be risky for corporations to ally themselves with divisive brand ambassadors. "When you get into the game of commodifying social issues in a time of ultra volatile global political sensitivity, you better create a department in your organization that does nothing all day and night but monitors and understands that state of play," David A. Hollander, an assistant dean and associate professor at New York University's Tisch Institute for Global Sport, said in an email. Companies have reacted quickly to brand gaffes in the past. H M apologized last year for using a black child to model a hoodie that said "coolest monkey in the jungle" and removed the sweatshirt from its stores. The year before, Zara withdrew a miniskirt featuring a cartoon that resembled Pepe the Frog, a character designated as an alt right hate symbol. Those examples were more obviously offensive than the commemorative Nikes, several branding experts said. But Mr. Reed, of the Wharton School, said that, for many consumers, the 18th century flag was representative less of the fight for freedom from British rule than of a period of race based oppression. "For lots of people, it's quite similar to, say, the Confederate flag," Mr. Reed said. "The revolution now is one of diversity, of all kinds of dimensions that go beyond just white males women, people of color, people of different sexual orientations. It's a different world, and it's a different flag."
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Media
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Seeking to contain the damage from the Brian Williams crisis and put an end to a series of management missteps that has left NBC News in turmoil, NBCUniversal is preparing to shake up the executive ranks of its news division. The company is in advanced discussions with its former news chief, Andrew Lack, about returning to the network, multiple NBC executives briefed on the discussions said Tuesday. An announcement is expected in the coming days. Mr. Lack, 67, is expected to take on the leading role at the NBC News group, which includes NBC News, MSNBC and CNBC, said the people, who spoke on the condition they not be identified because the talks are continuing. His arrival would signal a broad reorganization of the top level of NBC's news operation, leading to changes for the two executives who have led the unit through a rocky period over the last year. Patricia Fili Krushel, the chairwoman of the NBCUniversal News Group, is expected to be reassigned to a corporate position on the executive team of Steve Burke, chief executive of NBCUniversal. Deborah Turness, the president of NBC News, is expected to remain in her position and would report to Mr. Lack, one person said. The changing of the executive guard comes a month after NBC News was rocked by Mr. Williams's admission that he embellished an account of his role in a helicopter episode in Iraq in 2003. The disclosure undermined his position as the nation's leading news anchor and sent the network into days of crisis control; on Feb. 10, the network suspended Mr. Williams for six months without pay. A former news producer for CBS, Mr. Lack was recruited to NBC in 1993 when the network was reeling from its admission that it had rigged a General Motors truck to explode during a report on truck safety broadcast on "Dateline," its newsmagazine program. Mr. Lack was president of NBC News from 1993 until 2001, and ran up a series of successes during that period. He was celebrated for rebuilding the NBC News division, transforming the look of modern news and establishing close relationships with executives and stars. He later worked as chief executive of Sony Music Entertainment and chairman of the Bloomberg Media Group, where he tried to bolster the company's ratings challenged television operations. He left that post in September and most recently worked as chief executive of the Broadcasting Board of Governors, an independent federal agency that oversees international networks like Voice of America and Radio Free Europe. Mr. Lack is returning to a news division again in disarray. When Comcast acquired NBCUniversal in 2011, Brian L. Roberts, Comcast's chief executive, called the news operation "the crown jewel" of his giant media group. At the time, "Nightly News," the "Today" show and "Meet the Press" were all at the top of the ratings. Since then, "Today" has fallen behind its ABC rival "Good Morning America," "Meet the Press" has suffered ratings declines, and the network's evening newscast was shaken by Mr. Williams's exaggeration and suspension. MSNBC also is in the middle of a shake up, reflecting weak ratings. The television news landscape has also changed starkly since Mr. Lack was last in charge. The standing of the nightly newscast has faded against the onslaught of competition from cable and digital news. The suspension of Mr. Williams was just the latest in a string of setbacks in the news unit since Ms. Turness arrived at NBC in 2013 after working as a top television news executive in Britain. In her short tenure, she removed David Gregory as host of "Meet the Press" because of low ratings, ending his two decade career at the network. She also fired Jamie Horowitz as the head of the "Today" show just 10 weeks after she hired him. In addition, NBC faced criticism last fall when its chief medical editor, Dr. Nancy Snyderman, violated a self imposed quarantine after being exposed to Ebola in Liberia. It is not clear how Mr. Lack's appointment would affect Mr. Williams's fate at the network. An NBC investigation into Mr. Williams and his reporting is continuing. That includes the Iraq incident, his descriptions of his reporting on Hurricane Katrina and other coverage. Elizabeth Holmes Hones Her Defense in Day 2 of Testimony Kevin Spacey was ordered to pay 31 million to the 'House of Cards' studio after sexual harassment allegations. Mr. Lack, who is known to be close with NBC News's roster of performers, played a big role in Mr. Williams's rise to the anchor chair. At a party celebrating Mr. Williams's 10th anniversary as anchor of "NBC Nightly News," Mr. Williams called Mr. Lack the best boss for whom he had ever worked, one person said. Mr. Burke talked with Mr. Lack when NBC executives were assessing their options on how to discipline Mr. Williams, according to people with knowledge of the discussions. But Mr. Burke will make the ultimate decision about Mr. Williams, executives said. Mr. Williams is eager to return to work, tell his story and put the controversy behind him, a friend who spoke to Mr. Williams on Tuesday said. Mr. Williams did not respond to an email seeking comment. His lawyer, Robert Barnett, declined to comment. In December, Mr. Williams signed a new five year contract reported to be worth 10 million a year. A public morals clause in NBC News's standard contract with performers could give the news group a way out of the agreement, said a television industry executive who has seen the contract. The clause states that a situation that brings the employee into "public disrepute, contempt, scandal or ridicule, or which justifiably shocks, insults or offends a significant portion of the community," would give the company the right to terminate the agreement, the executive said. A path to redemption for Mr. Williams is unclear. He ranked as the 23rd most trusted person in the country before the controversy, on par with the businessman Warren E. Buffett and Robin Roberts of "Good Morning America." He has since slid to 3,288, according to the Marketing Arm, a research firm owned by the Omnicom Group whose celebrity index is closely watched by media and marketing executives. News of the potential management changes at NBC News comes as new ratings figures show that NBC's "Nightly News" has sustained its lead over rival broadcasters in the three weeks since Mr. Williams stepped down from the broadcast. Lester Holt has filled in as anchor since Feb. 9. The race remains tight. A total of 9.7 million viewers tuned in to NBC's evening news broadcast last week, beating ABC's 9.5 million and CBS's eight million, according to Nielsen data provided by Horizon Media. Viewership has dropped slightly since Mr. Williams's last week in the anchor chair, when the broadcast drew 10.2 million viewers, but ratings swings can depend on the news events covered during the broadcast. (During the week of Feb. 16, for instance, NBC drew 10.1 million viewers.)
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Media
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The legal battle over the true ownership of an exquisite pink diamond valued at 40 million is headed to trial after an appellate court in New York delivered a ruling in favor of the descendants of an Italian politician who are trying to prove that the stone is rightfully theirs. The diamond, named the Princie, is 34.65 carats about the size of a Cerignola olive. It was sold to a member of the Qatari royal family in 2013 at a jewelry auction at Christie's, the auction house. A lawsuit filed by an Italian family claims that Christie's sold the diamond despite accusations that it had been stolen. At issue is whether the widow of the Italian politician had a legitimate claim of ownership over the diamond and that her son then had the right to sell it. The trial over the Princie was supposed to begin last fall but the New York State Supreme Court's Appellate Division agreed to put the case on hold while it heard an appeal filed by the defendants, which include Christie's. Part of the appeal asked the court to reverse a lower court's finding that the diamond was purchased by Senator Renato Angiolillo, a once powerful politician in Rome whose son and grandchildren are the plaintiffs in the case. In a ruling on Thursday, the appeals court refused to do so, rejecting the defendants' argument that there was lack of proof of Mr. Angiolillo's purchase. Scott Balber, a lawyer representing the Angiolillos, said that they look forward to proceeding with the trial in the New York State Supreme Court "as soon as practicable." The coronavirus pandemic has been a significant roadblock for jury trials over the past few months. Mr. Angiolillo's descendants said that he bought the Princie at Van Cleef Arpels in 1960, the same year that he married his second wife, Maria Girani Angiolillo. Mr. Angiolillo, a wealthy man who owned one of Italy's largest newspapers, Il Tempo, died in 1973; the plaintiffs assert that under Italian law at the time, all of his possessions should have gone to his children, not his spouse, unless they were explicitly left to her. (Mr. Angiolillo's will gave his wife their home in Rome, as well as its lavish furnishings, but it did not mention anything else.) But the auction house and its co defendants counter that the diamond, set in a ring, was a gift to Ms. Angiolillo and was owned by her, not her husband, when he died. Mr. Angiolillo's descendants say that their stepbrother absconded with the diamond after his mother died in 2009, but the stepbrother, Marco Milella, has insisted that he inherited the stone from his mother and that it was his to sell, according to court records. Mr. Milella sold the diamond for nearly 20 million to a gems dealer in Switzerland named David Gol, who is a defendant in the case. Mr. Gol has said that he believes Mr. Milella had a clear title to the Princie and worked to sell it as part of the 2013 auction. In establishing the deceased Italian senator's purchase of the diamond, the appeals court relies on documents associated with Christie's own investigation into the provenance of the diamond. The court's order said that documents generated in the course of the investigation include "unequivocal statements by Christie's outside counsel" that the senator had indeed purchased the diamond. In allowing the case to continue, the appeals court also resolved another legal dispute over which law should be applied: New York's or Switzerland's. The auction house has argued that its client purchased the gem in Switzerland, where property can be acquired legally, despite accusations of theft, if a good faith purchaser pays the full value of the item. The plaintiffs countered that the sale had been administered in New York by a New York auction house, and so Christie's could not pick and choose which law to apply. In another victory for the plaintiffs, the appeals court sided with the lower court in ruling that New York law should be applied. In its decision, the court cited the "strong New York contacts" in the case and the state's "overwhelming interest in protecting the integrity of its market." A spokeswoman for the auction house said, "While Christie's is disappointed by the appellate court's decision, we continue to believe that the evidence at trial will demonstrate that Christie's consignor had the right to sells the diamond at issue" Mr. Gol was the consignor "and that Christie's acted in complete good faith in doing so in April 2013." The spokeswoman said that key pieces of evidence at trial will include the "actions of the Senator's widow in asserting her own ownership of the diamond and plaintiffs' repeated denial to Italian tax authorities that they inherited the diamond." (A judge in the trial court pointed out that no evidence has been presented to show that Ms. Angiolillo, the wife, or Mr. Milella, her son, paid taxes on it, either.)
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Art & Design
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Each week, we review the week's news, offering analysis about the most important developments in the tech industry. Hello there, loyal technology newsletter subscribers. It's Mike Isaac, tech correspondent for The New York Times, bringing you this week's news digest. Let's dive right into it. The biggest story of the moment is the rapid spread of the coronavirus, which can cause a potentially fatal flulike illness and originated in China. The virus and the global attempts to contain it has rocked the business world, sending financial markets into correction territory, down more than 10 percent. In the tech industry, companies with direct exposure to China were the earliest to feel the effects. Apple, for instance, warned investors that the supply of iPhones the company's marquee product, which accounts for the bulk of its revenue every quarter would be hampered by the spread of the coronavirus. Apple relies heavily on factories in Shenzhen, China, and Chinese consumers are an enormous segment of the company's customer base. Days later, Microsoft rang the alarm bell. The tech giant depends on customers who install its Windows software on laptops and Surface tablets, and both of those hardware products are also being hammered by closings and slowdowns in China. Personal computing accounts for roughly a third of Microsoft's revenue. While hardware companies seem to be the most obvious candidates to face trouble, the impact is starting to ripple outward to other, less obvious internet companies. Expedia, the travel aggregator, declined to provide a full year financial outlook because of the coronavirus' disruption of travel. Companies like Didi, the Chinese ride hailing giant, have started providing drivers with plastic barriers to place between the front and back seats, offering another layer of protection from the virus. Dun Bradstreet, the business research firm, said about 51,000 companies had one or more suppliers in regions of China affected by the virus, almost certainly leading to a broader impact in the months ahead. To try to keep their employees safe, some companies are taking preventive measures. Organizers called off MWC Barcelona, the annual global telecommunications trade show in Spain. But the giant RSA security conference still went on in San Francisco this past week, even though big companies like IBM, AT T and Verizon pulled out of it. Facebook canceled one of its advertising events, which is attended largely by employees, and its annual F8 conference one of the company's most anticipated events. That's where it showcases its products and plans for the future to software developers. Mark Zuckerberg, the chief executive, is a mainstay at the event, giving a regular state of the industry keynote address. Karen Weise, my colleague in Seattle, had this tidbit to share: Employees at Amazon's worldwide operations the company's largest division, which runs the technology and operations for warehouses, deliveries, Prime membership and physical stores, among other things were told that they should not travel domestically or internationally "until further notice," according to emails viewed by The New York Times. Dave Clark, the senior vice president who runs worldwide operations, wrote in one of the emails that no group or team meetings requiring travel should be planned until at least the end of April, "by which time hopefully we have a better sense of the virus, its spread and impact." Amazon confirmed that Mr. Clark had emailed his organization on the matter. "We are watching this situation closely with a focus on the safety of our teams and ensuring we can meet customer promises," an Amazon spokeswoman, Kelly Cheeseman, said in a statement. "We are closely following local and international health authority guidance as this situation progresses." The company had already been scrambling to make sure it doesn't run out of popular products that are made in China, and has urgently emailed suppliers to see if they expect to have enough of their best sellers for its all important Prime Day this summer. Rather than forecasting the apocalypse, I've been engaging in a different thought exercise over the past few weeks: What less obvious companies might the coronavirus affect in ways we hadn't anticipated? Will Netflix, for example, see a drastic uptick in hours of streaming television watched, given people aren't leaving their homes anymore? Or consider delivery companies like Uber Eats, DoorDash, Instacart, even Amazon. In a world where people are increasingly hesitant to go outside and mingle with others, will consumers start to rely more heavily on others doing the shopping for them? Investors seem to be doing the same: Shares in Zoom, the teleconferencing software company, skyrocketed over the past week as more white collar workers telecommute from home. I find this Zoom anecdote highly relatable. I've sent my boss more Slack and G chat messages in the past few weeks than I can remember ever sending before. None Intuit, the tax preparation and financial data company, announced a 7.1 billion deal to buy Credit Karma, a major move into creating a financial services and personal data collection behemoth. The idea is to serve as a kind of online financial assistant for people, our reporters Nathaniel Popper and Michael de la Merced wrote, helping consumers get their credit scores, file their taxes and find new loans and other financial products. None Uber plans to start paying drivers to display advertising on digital signs mounted to the tops of their cars, because apparently not enough surfaces in the world contain advertising on them. None LinkedIn is testing its own "Stories" product, hopping on the bandwagon of companies that have ripped off Snapchat's pioneering way of showing disappearing status updates to friends and followers. None Speaking of Expedia: The company slashed more than 3,000 jobs, about 12 percent of its work force. An internal email announcing the move said the cuts were due to Expedia's history of pursuing growth in an "unhealthy and undisciplined" way. None Bob Iger, the chief executive of the Walt Disney Company, abruptly stepped down, replacing himself with another Bob (Chapek, who ran the company's entertainment theme parks division). Though Mr. Iger had long expressed his desire to leave the company, spectators immediately wondered what his next move would be. A Democratic vice presidential pick, perhaps? None And finally, if you somehow missed it, you absolutely have to read The Wall Street Journal's corker of a story on the cutthroat squabbles at the top of SoftBank, the Japanese megaconglomerate, which has billions of dollars in investment spread throughout Silicon Valley and beyond. Having started making waves in the Valley years ago, SoftBank has fallen from grace in recent months after some of its highest profile investments have turned out to be flops.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Technology
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Arnold Schoenberg's 1899 "Verklarte Nacht" ("Transfigured Night") is a tempest of emotion. Inspired by a poem about a woman walking with the man she loves in a cold, moonlit forest, guiltily confessing that she is pregnant with another man's child, the composition surges and crests, pushing late Romantic musical language toward a breaking point. To many dance fans, it is the sound of Antony Tudor's 1942 ballet "Pillar of Fire," a Freudian drama of sex and repression. People don't often make dances like that anymore. But at Baryshnikov Arts Center in Manhattan on Wednesday, the Belgian choreographer Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker's company, Rosas, presented the New York debut of her "Verklarte Nacht." A 2014 revision for three dancers of a 1995 ensemble work, it is intensely faithful to the score, its emotional dynamics and the situation of the poem. It's not a ballet, though. It's barefoot modern dance, so loaded with contraction and release that it could almost be from the 1930s. It begins in silence, with a prologue. In the chilly illumination of a single moonlike light, a woman (Cynthia Loemij) and a man (Igor Shyshko) enact a quick scene of passion and then exit the stage in reverse. After a while, the woman returns and repeats the scene with another man (Bostjan Antoncic) as the first man hovers like a shadow. They all leave, and the second couple returns, remaining on stage for the rest of the 40 minute work. (Mr. Shyshko has traveled from Belgium just to establish the dramatic problem.)
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Dance
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PARIS On the evening of the last show of the last day of the last week of fashion month, the Pyramid of the Louvre was cast in the yellowing light of early evening as the audience filed dutifully past, moving onward to a great glass box in the Cour Carree, to mount a set of stairs and find themselves in the piazza of the Pompidou Center? In all its Play Doh colors and insides on the outside, melting pot glory. Nicolas Ghesquiere, the artistic director of Louis Vuitton women's wear, had transplanted one museum into another, to effect the ultimate in cultural displacement. Or cultural acceptance take your pick. The interpretation is in the mind of the beholder. But for those who were wondering, both institutions embraced the idea of embracing each other. It was a fitting end to a discombobulated season, one that fell into flux in New York and never entirely climbed out. That's O.K., Mr. Ghesquiere was saying. Sometimes you just have to go with the mess of the moment. There is gorgeousness in the chaos.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Fashion & Style
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For the last year or so, the music industry has been buzzing with optimism that its fortunes have finally begun to turn around after more than a decade of digital disruption and plunging sales. Now it has proof. On Thursday, the Recording Industry Association of America, the trade group that represents the major labels, reported that music sales in the United States generated 7.7 billion in retail revenue in 2016, up 11.4 percent from the year before. That is the industry's highest sales figure since 2009 and its best percentage gain since 1998. The increase is largely the result of online streaming, which is rapidly eclipsing all other forms of consumption. Streaming contributed 3.9 billion in 2016, up 69 percent from the year before, and now makes up 51 percent of the business the first time it has had a majority of sales in the United States. The largest and fastest growing chunk of the streaming business is in paid subscriptions to services like Spotify and Apple Music. In the United States, services like these attracted an average of 22.6 million subscribers and generated 2.3 billion, nearly doubling their total from the year before. Spotify has said that it has 50 million global subscribers, and Apple Music has more than 20 million.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Media
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Harvey Fierstein, who donned a dress and won a Tony Award playing Edna Turnblad in "Hairspray," is stepping back into women's clothes for his next role. Expect hats to be part of the wardrobe. Manhattan Theater Club announced on Thursday that its 2019 20 season will include the world premiere of "Bella Bella," a new solo show written by and starring Mr. Fierstein, which casts him as Bella Abzug, the outspoken New York congresswoman and activist. In a news release, press representatives for the theater described "Bella Bella" as "raucous, heart rending and absurdly humorous." A synopsis gives the following description of the show: Set in 1976, on the eve of her bid to become New York State's first female Senator, "Bella Bella" finds this larger than life, truth slinging, groundbreaking, hat wearing icon squirreled away in the bathroom of a midtown hotel awaiting that night's election results while a coterie of family and celebs await her entrance. Kimberly Senior ("Disgraced") will direct the production, which will be staged at the theater's Off Broadway space at New York City Center Stage I, beginning Oct. 1, with opening night scheduled for Oct. 22. Mr. Fierstein's breakthrough play, "Torch Song Trilogy," in which he played a drag queen, was recently revived on Broadway under the name "Torch Song." He has written the book for the musicals "Kinky Boots" and "La Cage Aux Folles." Manhattan Theater Club presented his play "Casa Valentina," about a group of heterosexual men who cross dress at a Catskills vacation home, on Broadway in 2014.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Theater
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Minutes after defeating Tony Ferguson in the headline fight of U.F.C. 249 on Saturday night, Justin Gaethje stood in the octagon and examined his bloodied hands. Gaethje, a power puncher, was being interviewed by the television analyst Joe Rogan, and he offered some understandable gladiatorial bravado: "I told my coaches in the back, 'You're not going to like it, but I'm ready to die tonight.'" But at that moment Gaethje's mind was clearly on his hands, and as Rogan went to shake one, Gaethje instead offered a fist bump. Rogan was having none of it, saying "I don't care" as he grabbed the hand. "All right, corona's way worse, blood won't kill you," Gaethje responded with a smile. And so went the biggest sporting event in the United States in nearly two months. The long shadow of the coronavirus pandemic hung over the pay per view event, which was billed as an attempt to return mixed martial arts to normalcy and to inch the rest of the sporting world in that direction. But as stay at home orders swept across the United States, the Ultimate Fighting Championship insisted that it would overcome the forces that had upended virtually all top sporting leagues. In the week leading up to U.F.C. 249, the promotion company's officials spoke of a 25 page document that laid out extensive health and safety protocols that the organization would follow to ensure a safe event. A review of the guidance in the document the U.F.C.'s "Jacksonville Event Operations Plan," a copy of which was obtained by The New York Times indicates that U.F.C. officials and fighters routinely deviated from the outlined procedures in the days leading up to U.F.C. 249 and on the night of the pay per view event itself. In a statement on Tuesday, the U.F.C. said the plan "provides a road map for a prudent, safe, and responsible working environment" as fighting resumes. It noted that the plan "is not the sum total of our protocols, which also includes Covid 19 antibody blood tests and antigen tests" and said the U.F.C. would be "updating it regularly with key learnings from each event going forward." The U.F.C. plans to hold two more events this week at VyStar Veterans Memorial Arena, with 11 bouts on each fight card. All three events have been approved by the Florida State Boxing Commission. Donald Muzzi, the chief ringside physician for the commission at U.F.C. 249, did not respond to a request for comment. That wasn't the only part of the operation's plan that went unheeded at times. The plan prohibits all "contact based greetings" and said that all personnel "will be required to wear the face masks and gloves in connection with their job functions," an edict that Dana White, the U.F.C. president, repeatedly ignored. On Friday after the official weigh ins, the fighter Ronaldo Souza participated in a stare down with his opponent, Uriah Hall, and bumped fists with White. Seconds later, the fighter Michelle Waterson hugged White before her stare down and embrace of her opponent, Carla Esparza. White believes that holding U.F.C. events can help show that it is safe to end stay at home orders and to resume holding public events. That belief, in part, appears to stem from his longtime friendship with President Trump who, according to White, was looking at U.F.C. 249 as a blueprint. "His whole philosophy was: Let's get sports back first, figure out how to do that safely," White told TMZ. "Then let's start figuring out how do you get people back in the office? How do you get people in cubicles? And then, how do you get kids back in school?" Trump made a surprise appearance during U.F.C. 249 in a recorded greeting, congratulating White and connecting the bouts with the return of more live competition. "Get the sports leagues back, let's play," Trump said. "You do the social distancing and whatever else you have to do, but we need sports. We want our sports back." Most fighters, including Souza, arrived at the U.F.C.'s host hotel in Jacksonville, Fla., on Wednesday and immediately received Covid 19 viral and rapid antibody tests. The viral test used by the U.F.C. takes at least 24 hours to get results, and it was not discovered that Souza had the virus until Friday. Some of the required personnel arrived less than 48 hours before the event began. One judge did not arrive until Friday night, according to two people familiar with the event who spoke on condition of anonymity, meaning that, at best, the result of his viral test could not have been received until the day of the fights. Also, it is unclear whether everybody inside the arena Saturday night followed the same procedures. Arena employees, Florida State Boxing Commission staff members, antidoping administrators and news media members were present along with U.F.C. personnel. The event operations plan says that it does not take into account arena or commission employees, though it notes that some vendors will have to follow its guidelines. Because of the virus's two week incubation period, it will not be apparent for a while whether any people who were present Saturday night might have contracted the coronavirus at the event. Major American sports leagues, especially in team sports, are confronting very different circumstances from those encountered by the U.F.C. They have hundreds or thousands of athletes and even more staff members. They play home and away schedules in two dozen states, each with different local government mandates. They have 500 page collective bargaining agreements with athletes that restrict the terms that commissioners can unilaterally impose. (U.F.C. fighters are not unionized.)
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Sports
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Philip Morris and Altria described their proposed deal as an "all stock, merger of equals." The tobacco giants Philip Morris International and the Altria Group are in talks to reunite, the companies said on Tuesday, in a deal that would combine the most popular brands of both traditional and electronic cigarettes. The companies described the proposed deal in a statement as an "all stock, merger of equals," but cautioned that the discussions might not result in an agreement. The number of cigarettes sold in the United States fell 3.5 percent in 2017 from the previous year, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The e cigarette market was worth about 11 billion in 2018, and it is projected to surpass 18 billion by 2024, according to a report from Mordor Intelligence, a market research firm. Altria agreed last year to pay nearly 13 billion for a 35 percent stake in Juul Labs. The proposed merger would be a boost for Altria's investment. Juul has been trying to expand overseas, but it lacks the global distribution network of Philip Morris, which has grown since it was spun off from Altria in 2008. The move would also allow Philip Morris to profit from Juul, rather than compete with it. Philip Morris's marquee product in the e cigarette market is IQOS, a penlike device that warms a tobacco stick and releases a vapor with the taste of tobacco, but has fewer harmful chemicals than cigarette smoke does. It is available in more than 47 countries, but was only recently approved for sale in the United States. The product will be marketed in the United States through a licensing agreement with Altria. The Food and Drug Administration's two year review of IQOS delayed its introduction and gave Juul time to capture the market. E cigarette makers were given a delay in applying for F.D.A. approval , but Philip Morris submitted countless studies and testimony to clear tough regulatory hurdles. It is still waiting for the F.D.A.'s decision on whether IQOS can be sold as a reduced risk product, which means they can be marketed as safer than traditional cigarettes. Shares in both companies fell on Wall Street as investors questioned the deal. Altria's stock closed down 4 percent, and Philip Morris dropped 7.8 percent. But in the global race to market reduced risk nicotine products, both companies would benefit from lower costs and higher production, Bonnie Herzog, a managing director with Wells Fargo Securities, said in an email on Tuesday. "We have long believed a combination of the two companies would make a lot of sense," Ms. Herzog said. One of the benefits of a merger would be more diversified geographic sales, which would reduce the risks to Altria from the F.D.A.'s focus on vaping and nicotine reduction, she said. The spinoff of Philip Morris was intended to insulate it from the smoking liability lawsuits and federal regulatory actions that had plagued Altria. With its global reach, Philip Morris is now much larger than its former parent. Garrett Nelson, a senior equity analyst at CFRA Research, said it might make sense for the companies to reunite, but Philip Morris investors might balk at Altria's debt load of 29 billion, from its investments in Juul and Cronos, a cannabis company. "In our opinion, it makes more sense for Altria, because of the ongoing decline of cigarette sales in the U.S. and the heightened regulatory scrutiny for both tobacco and e cigarettes," Mr. Nelson said. Public health officials were less enthusiastic about the prospect of a merger. "This is very dangerous for public health," said Matthew L. Myers, president of the Campaign for Tobacco Free Kids. "There's a real concern that a strengthened Philip Morris poses an increased threat to tobacco control measures both in the United States and around the globe." Scott Gottlieb, a former F.D.A. commissioner, said it was unclear what the merger would mean for public health. "It's hard to say it's a good development," said Dr. Gottlieb, who initially supported extending the deadline for Juul and other e cigarette companies to seek agency approval, then regretted it as concerns over youth vaping grew. "One would hope the combined entity would be more focused on truly transitioning smokers off combustible tobacco and onto modified risk products for adults who still want to access nicotine." The F.D.A. has had difficulty grappling with the rise of e cigarettes. Initially, F.D.A. officials wanted to encourage their development as an alternative to traditional cigarettes, which kill roughly 480,000 Americans a year. In July 2017, the agency gave e cigarette makers five more years to prove that their products offer more benefit than risk to the public. In the interim, the youth vaping rate skyrocketed. The agency forced Juul and other businesses to show that they could keep their products away from youths. Juul responded by restricting its most popular flavors to online sales with age verification technology. Some companies have followed suit, although others have popped up to take Juul's place in retail outlets. Joshua Raffel, a spokesman for Juul, said the deal would not affect his company's mission. "Altria is a minority investor in Juul Labs," he said. "Just like we control our company, they control theirs. Our focus is and will remain entirely on helping adult smokers switch away from combustible cigarettes, the leading cause of preventable death in the world." Like the Science Times page on Facebook. Sign up for the Science Times newsletter.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Health
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LONDON New Year's Eve is barely a faded memory by the time the January men's wear runway circuit grinds into gear. Christmas is still within spitting distance. For those whose job it is to make or follow men's clothing, who gather with back to school regularity, the post holiday precipice is steep. When the troops gathered in London last week for the newly expanded London Collections: Men shows, many still sported tans. "I went to Tulum," said Ben Cobb, the admirably burnished editor of Another Man Magazine, fresh from the Mexican city that is one of fashion's favorite destinations at the moment. "Everyone says 'hi.' " An industry used to traveling in pack formation tends to vacation in packs, too. But the revels have ended, the collections begun. The four day London Collections: Men is the first stop of the several city tour that will include Florence, Milan and finally Paris, ending two weeks from now. "I always said we'd stick to three days," said Dylan Jones, editor of the British edition of GQ and chairman of London Collections: Men. "But with so much interest from the U.K. and international men's wear industry, it was becoming impossible to fit any more onto what was already a very impressive, yet very packed schedule." By the time of these, his opening remarks, the first show had already marched by: Topman, the British retailer that is the de facto patron of London men's wear, sponsoring not only London Collections: Men itself, but also many of the talent spotting programs and incubators it features. For his Topman Design show, Gordon Richardson conjured a dizzy mix of glam rock and psychedelic tropes, with a splash of tartan, evidently in reference to the Bay City Rollers, the '70s Scottish boy band. With his own show out of the way, Mr. Richardson took in several others. Even in the chummy world of English fashion, where it is common to see designers in the front row at one another's shows, Mr. Richardson was Zelig like in his ubiquity on the first day. There was, to be fair, plenty to see. London in particular tends to run the aesthetic gamut, from the boundary pushers of the emerging talents MAN show (this season, all a tad too reminiscent of MAN's biggest recent success, Craig Green) to the historically minded Nick Ashley at Private White V.C., named for a World War I hero. The week continues to swell with new additions to the London calendar, Anglo standard bearers Aquascutum and Barbour among them. Maxwell Osborne and Dao Yi Chow of the label Public School celebrating their achievement as winners of the first International Woolmark Prize for men's wear. Tom Jamieson for The New York Times London is drawing newcomers from beyond its own borders, as well. Coach, the New York based megalith, came here for its first men's wear show. It offered "a change of scene, a different context" for the brand, said Stuart Vevers, its British born executive creative director, who held court at an after show pub dinner in a pair of the hairy sneakers he'd just shown on the runway. The collection focused on Coach's leathery heritage, with shearling coats whose muzzy volume was all the more awe inspiring given the tropical temperatures the bundled models processed through at the presentation. Well, Mr. Vevers said wryly, "they haven't got much flesh on them." He wasn't the only unquiet American in London. Dao Yi Chow and Maxwell Osborne, the American designers of the label Public School (whose name, no doubt, rings posher in London than back home in New York) won the inaugural International Woolmark Prize for men's wear, beating competitors from Australia, Denmark, Japan and the United Arab Emirates for a prize of 100,000 Australian dollars, or 82,000, and a place on the racks of influential retailers, including MatchesFashion.com, based in London; 10 Corso Como in Milan; and Isetan in Tokyo. For the designers, who had already won a handful of similar prizes in the United States, the award represented inroads to the international market. "It's such a kick start, a boost," said Mr. Chow, at the Marylebone townhouse where Matches hosted a cocktail in their honor on Friday night. "A kick in the rump," added Mr. Osborne, an observation at odds with the tony surroundings, but very much in the spirit of "Made in the U.S.A."
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Fashion & Style
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Big, leafy viburnum bushes have lined yards in the United States and Europe for decades their domes of blossoms have an understated attractiveness. But once the flowers of the Viburnum tinus plant fade, the shrub makes something unusual: shiny, brilliantly blue fruit. Scientists had noticed that pigments related to those in blueberries exist in viburnum fruit, and assumed that this must be the source of their odd hue. Blue fruit, after all, is rare. But researchers reported last week in Current Biology that viburnum's blue is actually created by layers of molecules arranged under the surface of the skin, a form of what scientists call structural color. By means still unknown, the plant's cells create thin slabs of fat arranged in a stack, like the flakes of puff pastry, and their peculiar gleam is the result. Rox Middleton, a researcher at University of Bristol in England and an author of the new paper, had been studying the African pollia plant, which produces its own exotic blue fruit. But viburnum fruit were everywhere, and she realized that their blue had not been well studied. Along with Miranda Sinnott Armstrong, a researcher at the University of Colorado, Boulder, and other colleagues, she set out to take a closer look at the fruit's skin. The pollia fruit's blue is a form of structural color, in which light bounces off a regularly spaced arrangement of tiny structures such that certain wavelengths, usually those that look blue or green to us, are reflected back at the viewer. In pollia fruit, the color comes from light interacting with thin sheets of cellulose packed together. At first the team thought there would be something similar in viburnum. But they saw no cellulose stacks.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Science
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In a galaxy far, far away, a pair of supermassive black holes appear to be spiraling together toward a cosmic collision of unimaginable scale, astronomers said on Wednesday. The final act of this mating dance, perhaps a mere million years from now, could release as much energy as 100 million of the violent supernova explosions in which stars end their lives, and wreck the galaxy it is in, said S. George Djorgovski of the California Institute of Technology. Most of that energy would go into gravitational waves, the violent ripples of space time that are predicted but not yet directly detected by Einstein's theory of general relativity, Dr. Djorgovski said. And there could be electromagnetic fireworks as well. According to theory, he explained in an email, the interactions of the black holes would drive nearby stars away, like shingles in a tornado. "However," he added, "I think that the nature is never so neat." Dr. Djorgovski, one of the authors of a paper published in the journal Nature on Wednesday, will discuss the research at a meeting in Seattle. The lead author is Matthew Graham, a computational scientist at Caltech's Center for Data Driven Discovery. The merging black holes manifested as a regular flicker in a quasar a mass of light and energy in a remote galaxy known as PG 1302 102. The most logical explanation, Dr. Graham and his colleagues wrote, is a pair of black holes circling each other less than a light year apart. "This is the most convincing evidence for a tight pair of black holes with a separation smaller than the solar system," said Avi Loeb, a cosmologist at the Harvard Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics who was not involved in the work, noting that other, less convincing systems have been suspected. He cautioned, moreover, that the evidence is not yet airtight; the apparent variation in the quasar light could be a statistical effect from not checking it frequently enough. If it holds up under scrutiny, the system could be a bonanza for the young field of gravitational wave astronomy. It would also provide a preview of what will happen in our own Milky Way galaxy in a few billion years when it collides with the neighboring Andromeda galaxy, sending the black holes at the hearts of both galaxies into an "intimate (pre arranged) companionship," as Dr. Loeb put it in an email. Black holes are the most extreme consequences of Einstein's theory: maws so deep and dense that not even light can escape. There seems to be one weighing as much as millions or even billions of suns squatting like Dante's Lucifer in the center of every galaxy. Normally they are dormant, but when they feed on stars and gas, burping energy into space, they can light up as quasars, beacons that far outshine the galaxies in which they live. Mergers of black holes should be common in cosmic history because galaxies are forever merging. Indeed, there are dozens of examples of merging galaxies in which the black holes are separated by tens to thousands of light years, Dr. Loeb noted, some of them with beautiful jets coming from one or both of the black holes. Astronomers can rarely see the consummation of these relationships, however, because after billions of years circling each other, the last spasm happens, it is believed, in a million years or so an unimaginably long time to a human, but unimaginably short to a star or the universe. Flanked by a pair of smaller galaxies, PG 1302 102 lies about 3.5 billion light years from here in the constellation Virgo, and has a quasar at its center. It was spotted in the Catalina Real Time Transient Survey, which for nine years has been monitoring the brightness of 247,000 known quasars with telescopes in Arizona and Australia. Dr. Graham found the signal from PG 1302 102 wavered by about 14 percent every 1,884 days, or roughly five years. The only thing that could so significantly affect a giant black hole, Dr. Djorgovski said, would be another giant black hole. He estimated their combined mass is that of roughly 100 million suns. The black holes are circling each other at a range of about 180 billion miles, he said. That is far too small to be resolved by any telescopes on Earth, but spectrographic observations suggest there are two things there, the researchers say. The light variations could be caused by the jets of energy precessing like tops as the black holes sweep around each other, or perhaps warps in the disks of material swirling around them, Dr. Djorgovski said. The closeness of the black holes would mean that the system has evolved well past the point where supercomputer simulations of the merger would work. To find out what happens, astronomers will have to build gravitational wave detectors and wait and watch.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Science
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For 27 years, the Brooks family Isaac and Della, plus their son and daughter lived happily in their six bedroom, three story Arts and Crafts style house in Yonkers. It was less than a 10 minute drive from Horace Mann School in the Bronx, where both Brookses are teachers. Last spring, a good friend of theirs, on the hunt for a one bedroom in Manhattan, visited a co op unit on West 82nd Street. The Brookses went, too. After meeting their friend's agent, Ellen Klein, an associate broker at the Corcoran Group, they started thinking. With their children grown and gone, their 3,000 square foot house was far too big. They were toying with the idea of someday moving to the city themselves. Maybe they could buy a one bedroom, use it as a pied a terre and share it with their daughter, Phoebe, 26, who was living with a roommate in Brooklyn. Her brother, Dylan, 29, lives in Texas. They mentioned their plan to Ms. Brooks's recently widowed mother, Dolly Barr, who lived in a brick rowhouse in Flushing, Queens. "No room for me?" she asked. So they resolved to hunt for a three bedroom for all of them. Waiting for retirement might make it hard to get a mortgage. "When you retire, you are a different kind of risk," Mr. Brooks said. The couple, now in their 50s, wanted a bright three bedroom in a location near public transportation. They preferred the Upper West Side, convenient to their workplace. And both knew the neighborhood, having gone to Teachers College at Columbia University. (They met as undergraduates at the University of Pennsylvania.) The budget was around 1.5 million. Phoebe, an actor, was on board. Living with her parents would allow her to take out of town gigs without paying rent for an unused room or finding a subletter. "The prospect of living in Manhattan overjoyed her as much as it did us," Ms. Brooks said. Ms. Klein suggested the Brookses attend open houses to study the market. They assumed they would sell both houses and rent while they hunted for a long term place. They viewed a co op unit on Riverside Drive near 105th Street, listed at 1.595 million, with maintenance of around 1,800. But the narrow kitchen was a problem. "When Isaac was cooking, he couldn't be with his guests, and that was a very big deal to him," Ms. Klein said. And the walk to the subway was uphill. It sold for 1.625 million. Mr. Brooks went alone to an open house in Morningside Heights, a lovely 1911 condominium building filled with original charm. The listing price was 1.599 million, with monthly charges of around 2,300. It had the light and layout they wanted. To avoid undue influence, Mr. Brooks didn't convey his enthusiasm to his wife. When she went, she loved it, too. The third bedroom was tiny "even by maid's room standards," she said, and the closet space, though ample, was distributed unevenly. "I knew that there was going to be a compromise somewhere," she said. They made an offer immediately and even wrote a letter to the seller, noting their love for the apartment and the opportunities they foresaw for their lives there. Meanwhile, an earlier deal fell through, Ms. Klein said, and their offer of 1.58 million was accepted. The purchase, however, was contingent upon the sale of their Yonkers house. The parties reached a deal whereby the Brookses would rent the apartment and buy it if their house sold within six months. Otherwise, it would return to the market. Within two weeks, they had an offer on their Yonkers house, which they had restored to its original 1908 condition, to the point of flying a 1908 flag, with 46 stars. The family cleared the house out the people running their sale told them the trick was not to decide what they didn't want, but to decide what they did want and moved in the fall, along with their dog, Juno. The Queens house is in contract. City living, and togetherness, suits them. A trip to school previously required a car. Now, though the trip is farther, the Brookses can drive or take the 1 train to Van Cortlandt Park 242nd Street, allowing them to travel separately if schedules don't coincide. The move, Mr. Brooks said, "has reinvented time for us." Errands are quick, as are trips to the theater and museums. One day they went to a matinee and hosted friends in the evening. "That would never have happened in Yonkers," he said. "If you were out, that day was done." He cooked, as usual, for his guests. "If we forget an ingredient," he said, "we just go across the street."
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Real Estate
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What to See in New York Art Galleries This Week None Eddie Martinez's "Yesterday," from 2018, in his show, "White Outs," at the Bronx Museum of Art. The Bronx Museum of the Arts Through Feb . 17 at the Bronx Museum; 718 681 6000, bronxmuseum.org. Painting might be summed up as a process of accretion: You start with a blank canvas and end with a covered one unless you are Eddie Martinez, for whom the act of adding and subtracting remains in play throughout the making. Mr. Martinez's assertive but sly approach is on view in "White Outs" at the Bronx Museum, a selection of recent, ostensibly white paintings. Mounted in a long, white walled space, the show suggests a simulated snowstorm: the artificial version of a natural whiteout. In some works, Mr. Martinez, who started out as a graffiti artist, silk screens his own drawings onto canvas and paints over the colored forms or outlines them with white paint. The idea of blotted out forms producing new ones, as in the abstract shapes created by graffiti painted over in public spaces, is suggested in "Earth Colonic" (all works 2018) and "All That Something...," while "Sand Lines" and "White Blockhead Stack" conjure other line forms, including the whiting out of text. There are obvious allusions and debts here, to Willem de Kooning a similarly gestural painter, but also a chronic over painter and destroyer of his own work as well as to Robert Ryman 's white on white paintings and Jean Michel Basquiat and Joyce Pensato's graffiti influenced Expressionism . (Mr. Martinez was also inspired by Robert Rauschenberg's "Erased de Kooning" from 1953, in which the young Rauschenberg acquired a drawing from the older de Kooning and, using a rubber eraser, reduced it to a near monochrome.) This fascination with appearing and disappearing forms is pushed into three dimensions in a series of small sculptures made from everyday objects or constructed with fragments of junk, then bronzed and painted. These sculptures echo Rauschenberg's and Jasper Johns's rough but exacting execution but add something kind of endearing. Mr. Martinez is like a graffiti artist coming off the street to quarrel with his heroes, except he's more about homage than erasure. MARTHA SCHWENDENER From foreground to back: "Monument (Mantelpiece)," "Monument (Doorway)," "Monument (Corridor)" and "Monument (Coffer)." Backyard: "Monument (Tripartite Arch)." Left wall: Fenestration 1 series. Right wall: Fenestration 2 series, 2018. In advance of her solo exhibition at Spencer Brownstone Gallery, the artist Sonya Blesofsky researched the gallery site and found that it had once been an open lot for a headstone business. For her show, "Sneaking into the monument lot from the building on the right," Ms. Blesofsky has turned the space into a lot of sorts, filling it with archways to nowhere, door frames and makeshift monument s. They look like architectural elements whose purposes, if they were ever determined, have long since been forgotten. Along one side of the room, the artist has carved out rectangular sections of the wall to create D.I.Y. windows for the series "Fenestration 1" (2018). The openings, which were inspired by the sealed up windows in the gallery's backyard wall, showcase the guts of the building: wooden beams, metal wires, insulation. "Fenestration 2" (2018) consists of a series of arches molded on the opposite wall; imperfect and uneven, they crown only the plaster that has dripped and dried below them. On the gallery floor, frames made largely from found wood moldings are propped up like theater flats. Art spaces today are typically pristine and white, or else abandoned places filled with remnants of their former use. Ms. Blesofsky, who recreates pieces of the built environment in order to study how they reflect history, effectively draws on both conventions. She leaves materials exposed to remind us of the labor and the stories they represent. At the same time, she recognizes the value of the color white as a form of blankness. Moved but not overwhelmed by her creations, we can project onto them imagined memories and our own feelings of loss. JILLIAN STEINHAUER The title of this engaging four artist show at Andrew Edlin "April 14 , 1561" is the date of one of the earliest reported mass sightings of possible U.F.O. activity above Nuremberg, Germany. As might be expected alien spacecraft figure, or seem to, in every work on view. And all the artists had, or have, reasons to believe. Ionel Talpazan (1955 2015) claimed that when he was a child in Romania, a U.F.O. flew near him, enveloping him in a blue light. He devoted the rest of his life, half of it spent in New York City, to rendering brightly colored spaceships whose revealed interior structures make them resemble elaborately cut gems. Similarly Paulina Peavy (1901 1999), a West Coast artist who encountered a spirit she called Lacamo when she was 31, ascribed all her subsequent, extremely varied artworks to the directions of this spirit muse. The abstractions representing Ms. Peavy here suggest brightly colored embryos or sleek flying saucers drifting among amniotic fluids or intergalactic ethers. The remaining two artists were subject to parental influence. The father of Karla Knight (born 1958) wrote about U.F.O.s and ESP: Her large beautifully textured drawings in graphite and colored pencil resemble mysterious codes and alphabets or a spaceship's complex control panel. Finally Esther Pearl Watson (born 1973), whose father devoted a great deal of energy trying to build a working flying saucer, bases her small detailed panel paintings on family experiences. They show space modules bolted together from gleaming panels (aluminum foil, actually) hovering above longhorn cattle, police cars and rolling fields, or occasionally touching down. Depicted in a style best described as New Age Grandma Moses, the images have captions like "NASA doesn't seem to understand this" or "There's a magnetic field collaps (sic), and we're out of milk." Ms. Watson excels at night skies. In "You Are Welcome to Visit (Us Anytime You Want)," clouds line up like a legion of dirigibles to greet a visiting U.F.O. ROBERTA SMITH
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Art & Design
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More than 42 percent of Americans between the ages of 18 and 59 are infected with genital human papillomavirus, according to the first survey to look at the prevalence of the virus in the adult population. The report, published on Thursday by the National Center for Health Statistics, also found that certain high risk strains of the virus infected 25.1 percent of men and 20.4 percent of women. These strains account for approximately 31,000 cases of cancer each year, other studies have shown. Two vaccines are effective in preventing sexually transmitted HPV infection, and researchers said the new data lend urgency to the drive to have adolescents vaccinated. "If we can get 11 and 12 year olds to get the vaccine, we'll make some progress," said Geraldine McQuillan, an epidemiologist at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and lead author of the new report.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Health
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On a sun dazzled morning in early July, the actor Leslie Odom Jr. readied himself for another take. At a marble topped table in a Los Angeles bungalow, he pecked at a laptop, waiting for the actress playing his wife to enter. This was midway through a three day shoot for "Love in the Time of Corona," a Freeform limited series that premieres on Aug. 22. A dramedy about couples who are navigating the pandemic, it joins HBO's "Coastal Elites," NBC's "Connecting" and Netflix's "Social Distance," all of which are set amid the Covid 19 crisis and were shot with all the strictures, safety precautions and workarounds that such a crisis demands. The bungalow is Odom's own the laptop and table, too. Playing his wife is his actual wife and fellow executive producer, the actress Nicolette Robinson. The face masked production assistant who sometimes entered the frame? His sister in law. In early March, when U.S. infections first began to spike, film and TV production froze, and despite the push and pull of reopening, that freeze has largely stuck. But a handful of writers and producers refocused catastrophe as opportunity, pitching content that could be made remotely or with the use of a minimal and socially distanced crew. The resulting productions, which mix accidental auto fiction with indie can do ism, will air in late summer and early fall. "It's been a thrill to figure out how to make things in the middle of this and feel a little more human again," Martin Gero, a creator of "Connecting" said. Back in March, a few days after Los Angeles suspended filming, the writer and producer Hilary Weisman Graham managed her pandemic anxiety by texting some of her former "Orange Is the New Black" colleagues. "I have a crazy idea," she wrote. That idea: a remotely produced and shot anthology series. She quickly set up a pitch meeting, and Netflix greenlit eight episodes. "They bought it in the Zoom," Weisman Graham joked. Most other creators described a similar trajectory, a hectic journey from terror to inspiration to pitch to series order to production. The scripts for "Coastal Elites," a series of linked monologues originally intended as a filmed live event, are the only ones that precede the pandemic. When the live part three nights at the Public Theater, in Manhattan became impossible, the writer, Paul Rudnick, adapted the monologues for a new remote reality. (The 90 minute special, starring Dan Levy, Bette Midler, Issa Rae and others, debuts Sept. 12.) As virtual writers' rooms assembled, casting began, with a particular emphasis on friends, couples or families already living together. "We couldn't have an open casting call," Joanna Johnson, who created "Love in the Time of Corona," said. "You're calling agents and you're saying, 'Who do you have that are quarantining together?'" With a cast assembled, the writers began to design stories and then redesign them to accommodate actors' input. Robinson and Odom, offered the roles of online daters, pushed for something closer to their own experience as a married couple with a young daughter. "We love the idea of making something about couples during this time, but us pretending to not know each other is not really what we're after," Odom said. Stories also stretched to include current events, particularly the death of George Floyd and the ensuing Black Lives Matter protests. "There was no way I was going to create a show about this time and not include that," Weisman Graham said. World events evolved quickly, which introduced a particular challenge: Up to the minute scripts became dated an hour later. "You just have to surrender, because I think everyone is thinking: 'Oh my God, what's next? Will there be a tsunami? Will there be a hurricane? What else could happen?'" Rudnick said. In June, SAG AFTRA, the Teamsters and associated unions released "The Safe Way Forward," a white paper suggesting how film and TV production might safely resume, emphasizing a need for frequent testing, protective equipment and limited contact. Each Covid themed production negotiated with the unions, determining best practices and receiving approval for slimmed down crews. At the same time, production designers, directors of photography and prop supervisors arranged Zoom tours of each home and apartment, noting not only layout but also the whereabouts of each wall outlet and circuit breaker. Actors auditioned various rooms, furniture and knickknacks. Some props were ordered online most of them arrived with enough time to guarantee safe surfaces while others were sanitized and left on various doorsteps. No craft services trucks were deployed, but if actors needed food for certain scenes, meals and groceries were delivered, too. For "Social Distance," a production designer with imagination somehow transformed an actor's multimillion dollar ultramodern home into a scruffy studio apartment. ("You couldn't shoot a scene in that kitchen because it was a fantasy kitchen," Weisman Graham said.) Another apartment became a nurse's station. While actors are normally excused from preproduction, the performers in these projects became their own location scouts, design assistants, wardrobe supervisors, hair and makeup professionals and camera crew. "It was cool to see that they were totally willing and excited to go back to their roots and dig into a performance and lug a tripod up their stairs," Weisman Graham said. "Connecting" arranged for contactless filming. "The entire process is designed so that literally no one needs to leave their home," Gero said. Each actor received a mini filmmaking kit several iPhones, grip stands, tripods, sound equipment and then underwent a mini film school to figure out how to use them. The other shows embraced a hybrid model, with crew nearby sometimes in a van just outside, which gave the shoot the feel of a surveillance operation or briefly inside, or in a backyard, though never in the same space at the same time as the actors. "It was very, very strict," Weisman Graham said. She had originally planned to shoot a scene in an otherwise empty restaurant and another inside an actor's car. Netflix decided not to take the risk. "Love in the Time of Corona" delayed filming so that all cast and crew could undergo Covid 19 tests. "Coastal Elites" had an on site manager trained in virus protocol and shrunk its crew down to about five people. (Usually other household members Bette Midler's husband, Kaitlyn Dever's father assisted, too.) "I'm used to working on big sets with hundreds of people," said Jay Roach, who directed "Coastal Elites." This limited footprint meant fewer cameras and fewer angles. He couldn't look away from the remote filming: "Like I'm a submarine commander looking through a periscope." Because the directors worked remotely, they couldn't employ typical techniques like taking an actor aside for a private chat. "You don't get to whisper in their ear because there's probably everybody in our team plus the Korean hackers and the Russians listening in," Roach joked. But workarounds emerged, like Zoom breakout rooms. "Social Distance" hired a Zoom D.J. to create and manage virtual green rooms. Other shows used phone calls and text messages. Would it feel strange to play a character while stuck in your own house, usually in your own clothes, surrounded by your own stuff? Remotely, I observed a few "Love in the Time of Corona" shoots, and the actors seemed mostly to enjoy themselves. "We got to be in our home, playing make believe, so it was actually kind of cool," Robinson said. They definitely didn't seem to mind pitching in on the production side. During that July shoot, Odom looked almost ecstatic as he held a clapperboard and prepared to call the next scene. "My dream job!" he said. When I spoke to these showrunners, in late July, three of their projects had completed production and "Connecting," the fully remote one, was to begin soon. Now, in August, even as the virus has rebounded in many areas, Los Angeles County among them, more and more shows are announcing that they will soon resume production, however limited. Some will even bring performers out of their homes. Which means that these four series already serve as time capsules, both of the early months of a fraught cultural moment and of the limited, disinfectant wiped means of production that the moment and the various entertainment unions allowed.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Television
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It's annoying enough to police your children's digital excesses at home. But precious vacation time being wasted as they socialize virtually instead of engaging in the moment is the bane of 21st century parenting. Heeding parents' frustrations, hotels and resorts have responded with adolescent savvy programming that encourages real world interaction. After a day on the slopes, the BC 3t2 (Beaver Creek Loves Teens Too) program in Colorado kicks into gear (during the winter and spring seasons) with field trips in and around the resort: tubing at Vail's Adventure Ridge, guided twilight snowshoeing, a class for ski and snowboard flips and stunts at the Anti Gravity Center in nearby Edwards. At family run, all inclusive Beaches resorts (Turks and Caicos, Negril, Ocho Rios), teens have their own spa menu, nightclub and games arcade complete with a Scratch D.J. Academy. This year, Island Impact is offering the chance to work with local children on reading and computer skills. A daily newspaper outlines dedicated activities for the 13 to 17 year old set at Aulani, a Disney resort in Hawaii. Aside from an extensive menu of water sports, there are youth specific fitness classes and spa services (along with D.I.Y. product tutorials) at the Painted Sky Teen Spa.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Travel
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This Week in Tech: What on Earth Is a Quantum Computer? Each week, we review the week's news, offering analysis about the most important developments in the tech industry. Hello, my name is Cade Metz. I cover artificial intelligence, self driving cars and other emerging technologies for The New York Times. Today I'm here to give you the lowdown on the latest tech news. As we approach the end of the year, there are a few important questions to ponder: What does the future hold for Google now that its founders have stepped down? Will Elon Musk pay for his "pedo guy" tweet? And what on earth is a quantum computer? Last month, at a lab in Santa Barbara, Calif., a team of Google researchers reached a milestone that some compared to the first flight at Kitty Hawk. They reached "quantum supremacy," building a quantum computer that needed only 3 minutes 20 seconds to perform a calculation that today's computers couldn't finish in 10,000 years. It was one of the most interesting and perhaps one of the most important technological developments of the year. The trouble is that no one can really explain what it is that Google built, at least not in a way that mere mortals can understand. The first thing you need to know is that a quantum computer is experimental technology. It won't be ready for prime time for several more years, if not more. But experts believe it will eventually make today's computers look like toys, handling tasks that would never be possible with traditional machines. It will do this by harnessing the power of quantum mechanics, which is the strange behavior exhibited by things like electrons or particles of light or exotic metals cooled to several hundred degrees below zero. Describing this strange behavior is difficult, because it is unlike anything any of us have ever experienced. If any of us actually looked at the fundamental building block of a quantum computer, called a qubit, it would cease to be a qubit. We asked several top experts to describe a quantum computer in terms anyone can understand. And because attention spans are short these days, we asked them to pack their explanation into 280 characters, or the length of a tweet. Warning: Relating to their explanations might still require an advanced education in quantum mechanics. Marissa Giustina, Google quantum electronics engineer: Quantum computation is about building and controlling a "programmable molecule," then using it to simulate and ask questions of nature. Hartmut Neven, founder of the Google quantum lab: Digital computers use Boolean logic the language of 0s and 1s. A quantum computer replaces Boolean logic with quantum law. As a result, we get a richer set of operations. That allows us to do certain tasks with fewer steps. Dario Gil, director of IBM Research: Classical computers manipulate bits with blistering speed. Quantum computers manipulate qubits with exquisite control, allowing for the interference of information, like waves on a pond, to amplify the answers we seek in a sea of possibilities. Greg Kuperberg, professor of mathematics at the University of California, Davis: A quantum computer is an exotic device that can run algorithms boosted with quantum randomness. For selected questions, a modest array of slow, large qubits will outsmart the entire Earth paved with classical computer chips. Dorit Aharonov, computer science professor at Hebrew University in Jerusalem, who specializes in quantum computing: A qubit can be 0 and 1 at the same time; n qubits can remarkably explore exponentially many computational paths at once. By cleverly designing cancellations between these paths, such that only correct answers remain, we can sometimes gain computational power beyond any imagination. David Bacon, senior software engineer in Google's quantum lab: Quantum computers do computations in parallel universes. This by itself isn't useful. U only get to exist in 1 universe at a time! The trick: quantum computers don't just split universes, they also merge universes. And this merge can add and subtract those other split universes. David Reilly, principal researcher and director of the Microsoft quantum computing lab in Sydney, Australia: A quantum machine is a kind of analog calculator that computes by encoding information in the ephemeral waves that comprise light and matter at the nanoscale. Quantum entanglement likely the most counterintuitive thing around holds it all together, detecting and fixing errors. Daniel Lidar, professor of electrical and computer engineering, chemistry, and physics and astronomy at the University of Southern California, with his daughter Nina, in haiku: Quantum computers solve some problems much faster but are prone to noise Interference helps: cancels paths to wrong answers and boosts the right ones Scott Aaronson, professor of computer science at the University of Texas at Austin: A quantum computer exploits interference among positive and negative square roots of probabilities to solve certain problems much faster than we think possible classically, in a way that wouldn't be nearly so interesting were it possible to explain in the space of a tweet. Alan Baratz, executive vice president of research and development at D Wave Systems: If we're honest, everything we currently know about quantum mechanics can't fully describe how a quantum computer works. What's more important, and even more interesting, is what a quantum computer can do: A.I., new molecules, new materials, modeling climate change ... None Yes, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, the founders of Google, have stepped down from their day to day duties at the company. It's the end of an era for both Google and the tech industry as a whole. None How did this happen? Over to my colleagues Jack Nicas, Conor Dougherty and Daisuke Wakabayashi, who can give you the back story. None In other Google news, Bloomberg reported that four software engineers fired by the company plan to file a complaint with the National Labor Relations Board. Google said they had violated the company's security policies. They said otherwise. None In a Los Angeles court, Mr. Musk took the stand to defend himself against in a defamation suit brought by a British cave explorer. Mr. Musk, the chief executive of Tesla and SpaceX, called this cave explorer a "pedo guy" on Twitter, but he says this was just a generic insult. None Thanks to my colleague Mike Isaac, we now know what Facebook's New Product Experimentation Team (NPE Team, for short) is up to. It's experimenting with podcasts, travel services, and newsletter tools. That is the future of Facebook, apparently. None The Chinese tech giant Huawei has sued the Federal Communications Commission after the agency tried to choke the company's sales in the United States. The F.C.C. sees Huawei as a security risk. Huawei is having none of it. None Bloomberg also reported that the Federal Trade Commission was now investigating Amazon's cloud computing business, looking for antitrust violations. So, the Amazon retail business isn't the only one under scrutiny. None Instagram now requires birth dates from all users as it tries to protect young people from the dark side of the internet. So said Reuters. None This also from Reuters: The autonomous vehicle start up backed by the Chinese tech giant Alibaba has applied to test self driving cars without real human backup drivers in California. That means we will have real self driving cars sometime in the next 100 years. None From the "You can't make this stuff up" department: Sheera Frankel and Mr. Isaac revealed that Facebook has built a chatbot that teaches employees what to say if friends and family ask difficult questions about the company over the holidays. It's called Liam.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Technology
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Between network, cable and streaming, the modern television landscape is a vast one. Here are some of the shows, specials and movies coming to TV this week, September 21 27. Details and times are subject to change. A CRY IN THE DARK (1988) 8 p.m. on TCM. This drama chronicles the story of a New Zealand couple who were tried and later exonerated for the murder of their 5 week old daughter during a fateful camping trip. Streep portrays Lindy Chamberlain "with the kind of virtuosity that seems to redefine the possibilities of screen acting," Vincent Canby wrote in his New York Times review. FILTHY RICH 9 p.m. on Fox. Kim Cattrall of "Sex in the City" stars in this new series as Margaret Monreaux, the matriarch of a powerful Southern family behind a successful Christian television network. When Margaret's husband dies in a plane crash, she's stunned to learn that he fathered three children outside of their marriage, all of whom are written into his will. TIME100 10 p.m. on ABC. Every year, Time magazine selects its list of the world's 100 most influential people to grace its pages and attend its annual gala. This year, the magazine has partnered with ABC to unveil those on the 2020 list ahead of its print debut on Friday, Sept. 25. The special will feature interviews with some honorees and musical performances, as well as a look at the year's biggest stories.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Television
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FRANKFURT Five members of the euro zone, including Italy, fell into recession in the final quarter of 2011, official data showed Wednesday, as the sovereign debt crisis and the imposition of austerity measures discouraged consumers from spending and businesses from investing. But the zone's two largest economies, France and Germany, held up better than expected. The 17 nation euro zone contracted by 0.3 percent from the third quarter of the year, Eurostat, the European statistics agency said the first such decline since the second quarter of 2009. That contraction was smaller than the 0.4 percent economists had expected, but the pain was nonetheless acute among smaller countries and in Southern Europe ground zero of the debt crisis. German output fell 0.2 percent in the quarter, less than expected, while France surprised economists with 0.2 percent growth, defying expectations of a decline as exports of Airbus planes bolstered exports and business investment increased. The data were "a bit reassuring," said Christian Schulz, an economist at Berenberg Bank in London, even if the weakness should continue through the first quarter of 2012. "This shows that Europe is not going into freefall, it's not like the post Lehman crisis."
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Global Business
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Measles cases soared in Europe last year, and at least 35 children died of the highly infectious disease, according to the World Health Organization. The virus found its way into pockets of unvaccinated children all over the continent, from Romania to Britain. The number of recorded cases quadrupled, to 21,315 in 2017 from 5,273 in 2016, a record low. The biggest outbreak last year was in Romania, where there were 5,562 cases and which accounted for most of the deaths. The country's large rural Roma population also known as Gypsies often do not vaccinate their children and may not take them to hospitals promptly when they fall ill. The country also has an underfunded public health system. The second biggest outbreak was in Italy, with 5,006 cases and three deaths; 88 percent of those cases were in people never vaccinated, and another 7 percent in people who had not had all the recommended doses, the European Center for Prevention and Disease Control said.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Health
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Here are our Week 10 NFL picks against the spread. After several upsets last week, the N.F.L. was left with a few top tier contenders (Pittsburgh, Kansas City, Tampa Bay, Seattle) and a wide middle zone of teams that can surprise you on any given week. And, of course, the Giants and the Jets are bringing up the rear. Here's a look at N.F.L. Week 9, with all picks made against the spread. The Colts (5 2) should be an excellent test of the Ravens' resolve. Indianapolis has been nearly as effective as Baltimore on offense and has a defense that is equally adept at defending the pass and the run. For all intents and purposes, this game is something of a tossup, which is less of an indictment of Baltimore than it is an endorsement of Indianapolis. The Ravens could easily bounce back, but this matchup is close enough to lean toward the home underdog. Pick: Colts 2.5 Russell Wilson reminded everyone why he is the front runner for the league's Most Valuable Player Award in last week's win over San Francisco, but the defensive shortcomings of the Seahawks (6 1) were apparent even in that 10 point victory. There are so many reasons to seek out this game. The Cardinals (5 2) have been a delight in Year 2 of the Kliff Kingsbury/Kyler Murray era. When last seen, they were upsetting Seattle in overtime. The Dolphins (4 3) are the surprise of the season, not only by beating the 49ers and the Rams in recent weeks but by romping them. The open question for Miami's offense is if it can get more out of the rookie quarterback Tua Tagovailoa. (The journeyman Ryan Fitzpatrick was undoubtedly antsy watching his replacement pass for only 93 yards last week.) Arizona will have to figure out its running game if Kenyan Drake is out or limited by an ankle injury. 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. Tagovailoa was a Heisman finalist in 2018, when Murray won the award, and if either of them remembers that then maybe there's some motivation for revenge. More realistic: Arizona is further along in its development and playing at home. Pick: Cardinals 4.5 Antonio Brown is expected to play for the Buccaneers (6 2) after serving an eight game suspension from the N.F.L. for his role in a January dispute and for texting threats to a woman who accused him of sexual misconduct. He has played in one game in the past 23 months, so how much he is involved in Tampa Bay's offense may come down to the health of Chris Godwin, who is hoping to return from a broken finger. With Mike Evans, Rob Gronkowski and Godwin on the field, there wouldn't be many targets left for Brown, but if Godwin sits, quarterback Tom Brady may try to lean on the receiver whom he campaigned for his team to sign. Tampa Bay has an ungenerous defense, and plenty of offensive upside, but it is worth wondering if the team should be favored by so much against the Saints (5 2) when it managed only a 2 point win against the Giants on Monday. Pick: Saints 5.5 It was a given that this game would have an enormous point spread since the Steelers have matched the longest unbeaten streak to start a season in franchise history. But if there is any reason to be skeptical of a rout, it is that Pittsburgh has won only one game by more than 10 points this season. A moral victory for the Cowboys would be losing by "only" 9 or 10, but if the team's fourth and fifth options at quarterback don't have a different gear from what DiNucci showed last week, even that seems far fetched. Pick: Steelers 13.5 The Chiefs (7 1) learned a lesson from their monumental letdown against Las Vegas in Week 5. They followed that loss with a convincing road win against the Bills and have won consecutive blowouts, beating the Broncos and the Jets by a combined score of 78 25. That dominance has forced Patrick Mahomes into the M.V.P. debate with Seattle's Russell Wilson and made it clear that Kansas City is a legitimate threat to successfully defend last year's Super Bowl win. The Panthers (3 5) are not so much a pushover as they are overmatched, even if running back Christian McCaffrey is making his much anticipated return from injury. The only thing that could slow Kansas City is the team's disinterest, but piling on against the Jets last week seemed to indicate that the Chiefs aren't taking games off anymore. Pick: Chiefs 10.5 The Raiders (4 3) escaped with a win on a chilly Sunday in Cleveland, grinding out the game on the ground with their first 200 yard rushing game of the season. A trip to Los Angeles to face the Chargers (2 5) should let Las Vegas return to its aerial attack. This could easily be a shootout, with Derek Carr and Justin Herbert putting up big numbers. Los Angeles has the ability to run up a huge lead, but the team's propensity for squandering such leads has officially become troubling, which is why the point spread is so narrow. Pick: Chargers 1.5 If you were to make a team out of Tennessee's offense and Chicago's defense, you'd have a Super Bowl contender. Instead you have a pair of flawed teams with records that may not reflect their quality. It is all relative, though. The defensive woes of the Titans (5 2) limit the team's ability to compete against top teams, but the offense of Chicago (5 3) is so bad that people are speculating about Coach Matt Nagy's job security. Pick: Titans 5.5 Is it time to be excited about the Broncos (3 4)? The defense has given up a fair amount of points this season, but the underlying statistics suggest the team is solid on that side of the ball. Meanwhile, the offense suddenly woke up in the fourth quarter of last week's come from behind win over the Chargers, giving a glimpse of what quarterback Drew Lock can do in ideal circumstances. It may also be considered ideal to go up against the secondary of the Falcons (2 6). Atlanta has allowed 311.4 yards a game through the air, and Football Outsiders ranks the team as the fourth worst pass defense in the N.F.L. There is a lingering feeling that the Falcons are dangerous at home, but the team is 0 4 at Mercedes Benz Stadium this season, and will most likely be without wide receiver Calvin Ridley until Week 11, giving them a decent chance of staying winless at home. Pick: Broncos 4 With quarterback Gardner Minshew sitting out with a thumb injury, the Jaguars (1 6) will turn to Jake Luton, a sixth rounder out of Oregon State, who will be the fifth rookie quarterback to start a game this season. Luton is enormous (6 foot 6, 224 pounds), was incredibly efficient on deep throws for the Beavers last season, and despite a penchant for airing it out, he threw just three interceptions. If anything, the knock on Luton was that he was boring, which will be quite a change from Minshew, who was everything but that. The Texans (1 6) beat Jacksonville easily in Week 5, and should be expected to win again. But Luton is enough of a wild card that it's worth being mildly skeptical of the large point spread. Pick: Jaguars 7 It has been a season of almost constant disappointment for the Vikings (2 5), but Dalvin Cook having one of the best individual games in franchise history in an upset of the Packers in Green Bay makes up for a lot. Now, Minnesota will look to capitalize on that momentum at home against the Lions (3 4), who aren't quite a pushover but probably aren't that much of a threat. Minnesota is nowhere near a wild card spot, but it clearly has no intention of packing it in. And while people may not love quarterback Kirk Cousins, there is no question that opposing teams need to respect the Vikings' offense. Pick: Vikings 4 These once proud franchises are a combined 0 9 when facing teams outside the N.F.C. East this season. Neither team is averaging even 20 points a game and both are giving up more than 23 a game. They might at least be entertaining against each other, but that wasn't the case a few weeks ago when the Giants (1 7) eked out their lone win of the season against the Footballers (2 5). Daniel Jones of the Giants is by far the most exciting player on either team, and he's fairly likely to have a highlight run or throw that will make you wonder if he has what it takes to be a star. Unfortunately for the Giants, he's also likely to commit one or more turnovers and play a large part in his team's failure. Pick: Footballers 3 Reduced to a collection of second and third string players because of injuries, the 49ers (4 5) didn't stand a chance against the Packers (6 2). Aaron Rodgers threw for 305 yards and four touchdowns, getting most of that production from Davante Adams (10 catches for 173 yards and a touchdown) and Marquez Valdes Scantling (two catches for 53 yards and two touchdowns). Green Bay won easily, 34 17. We picked Packers 5.5 based on the belief that Rodgers was eager to make up for Sunday's embarrassing loss to Minnesota and Green Bay more than doubled that spread. A quick primer for those who are not familiar with betting lines: Favorites are listed next to a negative number that represents how many points they must win by to cover the spread. Cardinals 4.5, for example, means that Arizona must beat Miami by at least 5 points for its backers to win their bet. Gamblers can also bet on the total score, or whether the teams' combined score in the game is over or under a preselected number of points.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Sports
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SAN FRANCISCO Creating a new Bitcoin requires electricity. A lot of it. In the virtual currency world this creation process is called "mining." There is no physical digging, since Bitcoins are purely digital. But the computer power needed to create each digital token consumes at least as much electricity as the average American household burns through in two years, according to figures from Morgan Stanley and Alex de Vries, an economist who tracks energy use in the industry. The total network of computers plugged into the Bitcoin network consumes as much energy each day as some medium size countries which country depends on whose estimates you believe. And the network supporting Ethereum, the second most valuable virtual currency, gobbles up another country's worth of electricity each day. The energy consumption of these systems has risen as the prices of virtual currencies have skyrocketed, leading to a vigorous debate among Bitcoin and Ethereum enthusiasts about burning so much electricity. The creator of Ethereum, Vitalik Buterin, is leading an experiment with a more energy efficient way to create tokens, in part because of his concern about the impact that the network's electricity use could have on global warming. "I would personally feel very unhappy if my main contribution to the world was adding Cyprus's worth of electricity consumption to global warming," Mr. Buterin said in an interview. But many virtual currency aficionados argue that the energy consumption is worth it for the grander cause of securing the Bitcoin and Ethereum networks and making a new kind of financial infrastructure, free from the meddling of banks or governments. "The electricity usage is really essential," said Peter Van Valkenburgh, the director of research at Coin Center, a group that advocates for virtual currency technology. "Because of the costs, we know the only people participating are serious, that they are economically invested. That creates the incentives for cooperation." This dispute has its foundations in the complex systems that produce tokens like Bitcoin; Ether, the currency on the Ethereum network; and many other new virtual currencies. All of the computers trying to mine tokens are in a computational race, trying to find a particular, somewhat random answer to a math algorithm. The algorithm is so complicated that the only way to find the desired answer is to make lots of different guesses. The more guesses a computer makes, the better its chances of winning. But each time the computers try new guesses, they use computational power and electricity. The lure of new Bitcoins encourages people to use lots of fast computers, and lots of electricity, to find the right answer and unlock the new Bitcoins that are distributed every 10 minutes or so. This process was defined by the original Bitcoin software, released in 2009. The goal was to distribute new coins to people on the Bitcoin network without a central institution handing out the money. Early on, it was possible to win the contest with just a laptop computer. But the rules of the network dictate that as more computers join in the race, the algorithm automatically adjusts to get harder, requiring anyone who wants to compete to use more computers and more electricity. These days, the 12.5 Bitcoins that are handed out every 10 minutes or so are worth about 145,000, so people have been willing to invest astronomical sums to participate in this race, which has in turn made the race harder. This explains why there are now enormous server farms around the world dedicated to mining Bitcoin. This process is central to Bitcoin's existence because in the process of mining, all the computers are also serving as accountants for the Bitcoin network. The algorithm the computers solve requires them to also keep track of all the new transactions coming onto the network. The mining race is meant to be hard so that no one can dominate the accounting and fudge the records. In the 2008 paper that first described Bitcoin, the mysterious creator of the virtual currency, Satoshi Nakamoto, wrote that the system was designed to thwart a "greedy attacker" who might want to alter the records and "defraud people by stealing back his payments." Because of the mining and accounting rules, the attacker "ought to find it more profitable to play by the rules." The rules have kept attackers at bay in the nine years since the network got going. Without this process, most computer scientists agree, Bitcoin would not work. But there is disagreement over the real value of Bitcoin and the network that supports it. For people who consider Bitcoin nothing more than a speculative bubble or a speculative bubble that has enabled online drug sales and ransom payments any new contribution toward global warming is probably not worth it. But Bitcoin aficionados counter that it has allowed for the creation of the first financial network with no government or company in charge. In countries like Zimbabwe and Argentina, Bitcoin has sometimes provided a more stable place to park money than the local currency. And in countries with more stable economies, Bitcoin has led to a flurry of new investments, jobs and start up companies. "Labeling Bitcoin mining as a 'waste' is a failure to look at the big picture," Marc Bevand, a miner and analyst, wrote on his blog. The jobs alone, he added, "are a direct, measurable and positive impact that Bitcoin already made on the economy." But even some people who are interested in all that innovation have worried about the enormous electrical use. Mr. de Vries, who keeps track of the use on the site Digiconomist, estimated that each Bitcoin transaction currently required 80,000 times more electricity to process than each Visa credit card transaction, for example. "Visa is more centralized," Mr. de Vries said. "If you really distrust the financial system, maybe that is unattractive. But is that difference really worth the additional energy cost? I think for most people that is probably not worth the case." The figures published by Mr. de Vries have been criticized by Mr. Bevand and other Bitcoin fans, who say they overstate the energy costs by a factor of about three. Many critics add that producing and securing physical money and gold also require lots of energy, in some cases as much as or more than Bitcoin uses. Mr. Van Valkenburgh, of the Coin Center, has argued that Bitcoin miners, who can do the work anywhere, have an incentive to situate themselves near cheap, often green energy sources, especially now that coal guzzling China appears to be exiting the mining business. Several mining companies have opened server farms near geothermal energy in Iceland and hydroelectric power in Washington State. But the concerns about electricity use have still hit home with many in the industry. The virtual currencies known as Ripple and Stellar, which were created after Bitcoin, were designed not to require electrically demanding mining. Perhaps the biggest change could come from the new mining process proposed by Mr. Buterin for Ethereum, a process that some smaller currencies are already using. Known as "proof of stake," it distributes new coins to people who are able to prove their ownership of existing coins their stake in the system. The current method, which relies so heavily on computational power, is called "proof of work." Under that method, the accounts and people who get new coins don't need existing tokens. They just need lots of computers to take part in the computational race. Energy concerns are not the only factor encouraging the move. Mr. Buterin also believes that the new method, which is likely to be rolled out over the next year, will allow for a less centralized network of computers overseeing the system. But it is far from clear that the method will be as secure as the one used by Bitcoin. Mr. Buterin has been fiercely attacked by Bitcoin advocates, who say his proposal will lose the qualities that make virtual currencies valuable. Mr. Van Valkenburgh said that for now, throwing lots of computing power into the mix and the electricity that it burns was the only proven solution to the problems Bitcoin solves. "At the moment, if you want robust security, you need proof of work," he said.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Technology
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Nina Kasman, an 18 year old college student selling "ok boomer" stickers, socks, shirts, leggings, posters, water bottles, notebooks and greeting cards, said that while older generations have always looked down on younger kids or talked about things "back in their day," she and other teens believe older people are actively hurting young people. "Everybody in Gen Z is affected by the choices of the boomers, that they made and are still making," she said. "Those choices are hurting us and our future. Everyone in my generation can relate to that experience and we're all really frustrated by it." "Gen Z is going to be the first generation to have a lower quality of life than the generation before them," said Joshua Citarella, 32, a researcher who studies online communities. Teenagers today find themselves, he said, with "three major crises all coming to a head at the Gen Z moment." "Essentials are more expensive than ever before, we pay 50 percent of our income to rent, no one has health insurance," said Mr. Citarella. "Previous generations have left Generation Z with the short end of the stick. You see this on both the left, right, up down and sideways." Mr. Citarella added: "The merch is proof of how much the sentiment resonates with people." Rising inequality, unaffordable college tuition, political polarization exacerbated by the internet, and the climate crisis all fuel anti boomer sentiment. And so Ms. Kasman and other teenagers selling merch say that monetizing the boomer backlash is their own little form of protest against a system they feel is rigged. "The reason we make the 'ok boomer' merch is because there's not a lot that I can personally do to reduce the price of college, for example, which was much cheaper for older generations who then made it more expensive," Ms. Kasman said. "There's not much I can personally do to restore the environment, which was harmed due to corporate greed of older generations. There's not much I can personally do to undo political corruption, or fix Congress so it's not mostly old white men boomers who don't represent the majority of generations." Ms. Kasman said she plans to use proceeds to pay for college. So do others. "I'll definitely use the money for my student loans, paying my rent. Stuff that will help me survive," said Everett Solares, 19, who is selling a slew of rainbow "ok boomer" products. "I hadn't seen any gay stuff for 'ok boomer,' so I just chose every product that I could find in case anyone wanted it," she said.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Style
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OAKLAND, Calif. When California shut down its economy in March, it became a model for painful but aggressive action to counter the new coronavirus. The implicit trade off was that a lot of upfront pain would help slow the spread, allowing the state to reopen sooner and more triumphantly than places that failed to act as decisively. But the virus had other plans, and now the state's economy is in retrenchment mode again. For the nation, this means that an important center of its output a magnet of summer tourism and home to the technology and entertainment industries along with the world's busiest port operation is unlikely to regain momentum soon when growth is needed most. Sign up for California Today, our newsletter from the Golden State. For the state, it means a progressive agenda predicated on the continuation of good times will be hampered as governments move from expansion to cuts. Voters had mostly been open to paying for expanding services and priorities like affordable housing, but they seem to be turning wary of new taxes. Indeed. Unemployment, which was 3.9 percent in February, the lowest on record, shot up to 16.3 percent by May, compared with 13.3 percent nationwide. Container traffic at the Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach is down about a third from a year ago, while many beaches and attractions like Disneyland were closed on July Fourth and are delaying their reopening plans. Most dispiriting is the sense that even after politicians made tough calls that Californians largely supported, the economy seems no better off. Andrew Snow was supposed to be ramping up by now. Mr. Snow, who owns the Golden Squirrel, a restaurant and bar in Oakland's Rockridge neighborhood, cut his staff of 28 people to two after the pandemic hit. But thanks to takeout orders, a new line of business selling groceries and the resumption of outdoor service, he recently brought two back, and was set to bump that figure to six or eight by the July Fourth weekend. A few weeks ago, those plans seemed sound. Back then, on the sunny Friday afternoon when outdoor dining in Alameda County was allowed to resume, the Golden Squirrel's patio tables, about eight feet apart, were full of patrons enjoying their first trip out for a drink since shelter in place orders took effect. That weekend the surrounding College Avenue retail strip was busy with masked, distanced, Purell doused dining that to many felt borderline decadent after months of being cooped up. Now business is slowing again, as California is averaging about 8,000 new cases a day, about triple the level a month ago. Mr. Snow's plans to bring back workers over the holiday weekend didn't come to pass, and he has put further hiring on hold. "People are scared," he said in an interview. "The math for having more people doesn't work out anymore." Exactly how and how quickly the state should have reopened, and who is to blame for the backslide, are unlikely to ever be resolved. What the result means for the economy is more time in the dark, more need among the poorest citizens and more drain on the taxes required to support them. The U.C.L.A. Anderson Forecast, which has been prognosticating California's economic trajectory since 1952, expects that the state and national economies won't fully recover until "well past 2022." In the state as in the nation, the worst declines will be in the leisure and hospitality industries, while higher wage areas like technology will be better off, a dynamic that will make financial inequality worse. Ford and Rivian no longer plan to work jointly on electric vehicles. Elizabeth Holmes took the stand in her trial. Follow along with our reporters. Ken Griffin, head of Citadel, bid highest for a copy of the Constitution. Even if the country avoids a second wave of infections in the fall, and a vaccine is made and distributed relatively quickly, that won't keep many businesses from failing. Others will shift from investing in new equipment and employees to paying debt and shoring reserves. State and local budgets could take years to recover their pre coronavirus levels of spending, even with federal help. "The impacts will disproportionately affect lower income Californians, while the more rapid growth will be happening in technology and construction, which are higher income," said Jerry Nickelsburg, director of the U.C.L.A. Anderson Forecast. The longer the pandemic's disruption, the more likely it is that some jobs will never come back. For instance, a number of restaurants had already switched to counter service, even for fairly high end meals, to avoid the need for servers who have a hard time affording housing in big cities. Now virtually every restaurant in California is operating around counter service or delivery, and some may not change back. Mr. Snow, for example, envisions a restaurant where people order at the bar, eat far from other patrons, then leave with a bag of groceries. The Golden Squirrel would have fewer employees, compensating for a less full restaurant with expanded takeout orders. "Some of the changes will make us a better business in the future," Mr. Snow said. "The challenge is getting to that future." The economic outlook is filled with caveats. Typically a forecast is based on past patterns and trends from similar recessions, but in this case there is no clear precedent. That means the outcome could be much more positive than some fear. "Will there be some damage? Sure," said Christopher Thornberg, founding partner of Beacon Economics, a consulting firm. "But there's no reason to think people won't go back to normal spending once the virus has subsided, at which point we will come out of this like a rocket ship because of all the pent up demand and massive savings that is being built up." Historically, California has been hit hard by national recessions, with the aerospace downturn of the early 1990s, the 2000 dot com bubble and the Great Recession affecting the state and its finances much harder than the rest of the country. This time, California's economic plunge has been more or less in line with the nation, with resilience in tech and other professional jobs helping to balance out the steep losses in areas like trade and tourism. And while the state and its cities are already facing budget troubles, the austere Governor Brown pushed through several forward looking fiscal measures including a constitutional amendment for a state rainy day fund and Governor Newsom added to the fund last year. "California is one of the states that more or less learned the lessons of the Great Recession so is in better shape than many other states," said Lucy Dadayan, a researcher at the Urban Institute who studies state and local budgets. Even the most optimistic outcome, however, seems almost certain to hamper many of Governor Newsom's most ambitious plans. Before the pandemic, the November elections were being positioned as a moment to raise taxes further and expand government services. Several cities, including San Francisco, have tax measures lined up for the ballot (they can still be removed), while state voters face an epic battle over the future of Proposition 13, the 1978 law that capped property taxes statewide. Proposition 15, which has qualified for the November ballot, would repeal the local tax cap for commercial properties like office buildings, generating an estimated 12 billion a year for schools. A few months ago, these measures were talked about as ways to help pay for expanding things like education and affordable housing by taxing businesses and wealthier taxpayers. Now they are likely to be reframed, at least in part, as a backstop to battered state finances. There is data to suggest that the state's relentless housing and homeless problems, combined with fears about the long term impact of coronavirus, have made voters wary of new taxes. In the March primary, several state and local bond measures were rejected, and exit polls showed voters had "tax fatigue," according to the Public Policy Institute of California. While Californians are concerned about declining state revenues, 60 percent oppose tax increases to fund the governor's most recent budget, according to a recent survey by the Public Policy Institute. "Taxes are a tough sell in this environment," said Mark Baldassare, the institute's chief executive.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Economy
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"It's one thing to decide to be isolated," said the artist Liza Lou, who in the best of times longs for uninterrupted solitude in her Los Angeles studio, as so many artists do. "It's another to be told that you must be," she added. "Something we crave can quickly become onerous." Looking to create beauty and build community in the time of social distancing, Ms. Lou is inviting other artists along with the general public to join her in a communal art project called "Apartogether." She introduced the concept on her Instagram page last week, cuing people to begin gathering old clothes and materials around the house from which to piece together a quilt or what she's calling a "comfort blanket." (Ms. Lou showed herself hugging her own baby blanket.) Ms. Lou is rolling out more details of "Apartogether" on Instagram, using the handle liza lou studio. She will post regular prompts and live videos over the coming weeks. Ms. Lou is encouraging people to share their progress by tagging it apartogether art so that it can be seen and archived on the website apartogether.com. She hopes that groups will gather on Zoom to talk and work on their projects in real time. "Eventually, when we all come out of our caves, I want to to hang the blankets like banners," said Ms. Lou. "The works of art will become a record of our days and time and a kind of monument to this extraordinary moment." Her gallery, Lehmann Maupin, with locations in New York, Hong Kong and Seoul, is committed to making the results accessible digitally and exploring ways to exhibit the blankets together, according to Rachel Lehmann, the gallery co founder. Ms. Lou's work, which sells there typically in the range of 100,000 to 500,000, has in recent years been acquired by institutions, including the Albright Knox in Buffalo, the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art in Kansas City, Mo., and the Cleveland Museum of Art. "It's clear to me why she's the first artist on our roster to jump into a community project because she has been doing it successfully in South Africa for 15 years now," Ms. Lehmann said, referring to the collective the artist founded in the province of KwaZulu Natal. There, she works with several dozen women from townships on large scale beaded installations, including one called "Continuous Mile," a coiled cylinder of rope measuring a mile in length and sewn with more than 4.5 million black beads. "Working with beads is a connection to an ancient struggle, a struggle I did not know," she said in a talk several years ago at the Corning Museum of Glass in upstate New York. "Since being in Africa I have met women who can weave faster than other people can walk. Weaving is a way of getting somewhere. It puts food on the table, has agency on the marketplace. If you can weave, maybe you can survive." Ms. Lou, who had never been interested in craft and hated sewing, found her medium after dropping out of the recently closed San Francisco Art Institute in 1989. Moving back home briefly to Encinitas, Calif., in San Diego County, she was inspired in her mother's kitchen to build a full scale model of an American kitchen. She used a dazzling palette of sparkly beads to cover every inch of every surface, down to the individual papier mache cornflakes in a bowl. What she thought would take a few months turned into five years of hand applying one bead at a time with tweezers and glue. Now in the collection of the Whitney Museum of American Art, "Kitchen" (1991 96) is part of the exhibition "Making Knowing: Craft in Art, 1950 2019," through January 2021. "The way 'Kitchen' is made is so intrinsic to the meaning of 'Kitchen', how it amplifies this idea of undervalued and hidden labor," said Elisabeth Sherman, an assistant curator at the Whitney and co organizer of the show, with Jennie Goldstein. Ms. Lou especially wants to encourage those who don't consider themselves creative to participate. "People are more handy than they think," she said, adding that she plans to keep her instructions loose and simple. Go clean out your closets. Carve out a little corner to work. Cut old clothes into pieces and see what happens when you sew them together. If you prefer to use glue or staples or paint, no problem. "I'm not interested in perfectionism," she said, approaching this project as she would an artist residency, where she would offer prompts and give feedback. For young or emerging artists who haven't had much exposure, participating in "Apartogether" is an opportunity to get their work shown in a gallery. Even for well established artists with their own busy studio lives, the project has its appeal. The Los Angeles based artist Elliott Hundley, who works in collage, was immediately on board. "One is always thinking about the outside world when you're in that studio by yourself," he said. Mr. Hundley imagines his comfort blanket "will just be another little spot in the room that I visit every day." Shinique Smith is another L.A. artist who works with fabric and old clothes, though rarely collaboratively. "But I like the sound of this because I can participate from my usual solitude and still be in conversations with other people, sharing similar intentions and our own lens of the world," she said. In her studio practice working with women in South Africa, Ms. Lou has seen the profound effects of focusing on something small. "The women would be dealing with something chaotic, and yet there was so much comfort in just knowing you could sit with needle and thread and make something beautiful," she said. "That action becomes a form of resistance against what goes on around us."
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Art & Design
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19 East 62nd Street (between Madison and Fifth Avenues) A 10 to 15 year lease is available for a 1,400 square foot retail space, with 18 foot ceilings, in this five story neo Federal style mixed use townhouse in the Lenox Hill section of the Upper East Side Historic District. The 1872 building was originally designed in the neo Greco style by the D. J. Jardine architecture firm. Robert Clergerie, a French shoe designer, had a shop there until moving to 901 Madison Avenue last year, and Hermes, the French luxury goods store, is next door.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Real Estate
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The Willem de Kooning painting "Woman Ochre," which was stolen in 1985 and will go on display on Sunday before being restored. LOS ANGELES The great mystery of who stole the Willem de Kooning painting "Woman Ochre" by cutting the canvas out of its frame at the University of Arizona Museum of Art in 1985 has still not been solved. But the issue of where the painting has been and why it's been out of public view since its 2017 discovery by a New Mexico antiques dealer, has become clearer. It turns out that the work, said to be worth at least 100 million, has been in museum storage for months, awaiting approval from the F.B.I. to send it for restoration. "The F.B.I. has kept this an open case," Olivia Miller, the Arizona museum's curator of exhibitions, explained. "The painting has been at the museum but it was still considered evidence, so it wasn't allowed to leave until this past November." Now, the museum, in Tucson, is staging a coming out of storage cocktail party on Sunday, with the first public viewing of the painting since 1985, before sending it to the Getty Center in Los Angeles in April for conservation. The Getty plans to exhibit the painting during the summer of 2020, after treatment, before returning it to the Arizona institution. The challenge is bringing the 1955 canvas an example from de Kooning's celebrated but also contested "Woman" series, known for their grotesque, even savage renderings of the female nude back to near original condition. Ulrich Birkmaier, the Getty Museum's senior paintings conservator, and Tom Learner, the Getty Conservation Institute's head of science, have teamed up for the project. They expect the process to take at least a year. "Unfortunately, the painting suffered considerable damage as a result of the theft," Mr. Birkmaier said. "In 1985 when the painting was cut out of its frame actually a very clean cut the thief ripped it off the lining, which caused a lot of horizontal cracks." He believes the cracking was exacerbated by another action the thief allegedly took: rolling up the canvas tight enough to tuck it under a coat. Mr. Birkmaier described paint "lifting off" from the cracked areas, which will need to be secured, and noted that the original canvas border wrapped around the stretcher was left behind during the theft. "The treatment will most likely involve a relining of the canvas during which it can be reunited" with its border, he said. "Once the painting is consolidated, cleaned and restretched, there will be endless debates with my team and Arizona about retouching," Mr. Learner said, adding, "My instinct is that we are going to err toward maintaining the existing condition because that's where conservation is at the moment." The Getty team also plans to analyze the artist's choice of materials. In her book on de Kooning, Susan Lake, a conservator, showed that starting in the 1940s he worked with glossy house paints as well as artists' oils. It appears he might have used both in "Woman Ochre." The Getty Museum exhibition will feature the painting and the restoration process. In 2012, the Getty struck a similar agreement with the University of Iowa for Jackson Pollock's 1943 painting "Mural." Ms. Miller, the Arizona curator, said the Getty beat out other teams because of its "cutting edge science" and commitment to educating the public. "We were looking at the work they did in collaboration with University of Iowa on the Jackson Pollock painting, which produced this incredible research, as a model," she noted. Ms. Miller vividly remembers receiving the phone call in August 2017 from David Van Auker, an antiques store owner in Silver City, N.M. He had bought "Woman Ochre" from the estate of Jerry and Rita Alter, not recognizing it as a de Kooning, let alone as stolen property, until he put it on display and some customers took immediate interest. "He was super calm," Ms. Miller said. "He introduced himself and said: I bought some items from an estate and I have your stolen de Kooning." She did not disclose the insurance value for the painting today, and it's hard to say how much its damage would dampen a price or its dramatic back story would aid it. An earlier "Woman" painting brought 137.5 million in a private sale. As for the unveiling on Sunday, Ms. Miller was reluctant to reveal details: "The painting will not be left alone, that's for sure. We're hiring extra security."
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Art & Design
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Even in the gutter, though, Zac Nicholson's images give off a magical sheen: This isn't the grubby, gunk filled London we typically envisage as Dickensian, teeming with urchins and top hatted toffs. Accenting the fairy tale aspect of our hero's rise, Iannucci keeps the social realism on simmer and Patel's enthusiasm and optimism on a rolling boil. Dickens characters can sometimes strain to detach from the page, but Iannucci's playfulness a bit of slapstick here, a silent movie homage there helps realize a child's point of view or a disturbing memory. These give the film a breezy visual vigor that pushes it through the rare narrative doldrums. And then there's the cast, a multiethnic treat whose diversity is neither text nor subtext, but a reminder that the alabaster complexions of many a costume drama should not be mistaken for historical accuracy. Potent turns from Jairaj Varsani, as a young David; Rosalind Eleazar, as the unflappably loyal Agnes Wickfield; Benedict Wong as her cheerfully hammered father; and Nikki Amuka Bird as the hilariously class conscious mother of David's boarding school friend, Steerforth (a perfectly languorous Aneurin Barnard), have a leveling effect that both modernizes and equalizes David's world. With its witty scene transitions and bolting pace, "Copperfield" (Iannucci's third feature, after "In the Loop" in 2009 and "The Death of Stalin" in 2018) can be so distracting that its more subtle performances go underappreciated. No one can ignore Tilda Swinton's deliciously eccentric, donkey phobic Betsey Trotwood, but Hugh Laurie's sweetly addled distress as her cousin, Mr. Dick, his head rattling with the words of a long beheaded monarch, requires a kind of modest genius to pull off. Similarly, Ben Whishaw's quietly slinking Uriah Heep, squinting from beneath pudding bowl bangs, is a creepy joy. "Are you worried humbleness is an infectious disease?," he asks, when David instinctively recoils. Performances like these ground the film's fancies in the very real stakes of pennilessness and abandonment; but "Copperfield" is, most of all, the story of a writer, and Iannucci stamps that theme on almost every scene. Whether using characters to poke sneakily at Dickens's narrative weaknesses, or having David show Mr. Dick how to metaphorically publish his bothersome thoughts, Iannucci insists that putting words on paper is an act of self determination. For David, furiously scribbling his collected memories, the choices he was never permitted to make in life can now be made on the page. The Personal History of David Copperfield Rated PG for terrified donkeys and a terrifying stepfather. Running time: 1 hour 59 minutes. Opening in select theaters. Please consult the guidelines outlined by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention before watching movies inside theaters.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Movies
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For a Star of 'Prodigal Son,' a Place to Watch the World Go By Every morning for 18 years, Bellamy Young woke up in the City of Angels and thought longingly and nostalgically of waking up in the city that never sleeps. Ms. Young is the sort who counts her blessings and determinedly aims for a high tally. So of course she's grateful for the work that anchored her to Los Angeles, notably her seven season gig as the ambitious first lady turned president Mellie Grant on the hit ABC series "Scandal." Grateful, too, for her very nice house in a canyon, her piano, her trees, her garden. Nonetheless, Ms. Young wanted to be a part of it, New York, New York, where she lived for several years after college in an assortment of apartments, and where, in 1997, she appeared on Broadway in the Tony nominated musical "The Life." "When I first moved here, I had what was called a bedroom but was really a closet," Ms. Young said. "I lived in one apartment on 99th Street with utter strangers. My mother still doesn't know about that. But it was New York, so you're walking up six flights to a studio apartment and you think you're fabulous because it has an exposed brick wall." Earlier this year, Ms. Young, 49, was cast as the elegant, gin embracing mother of the title character on the Fox crime drama "Prodigal Son." It was a good part, but that wasn't the best part: The series would be shot in New York. Super time: "I've owned a house for so long, honey, if the gutters are falling down, I get the ladder out and climb up and fix them. But it's nice to take a break from that. It feels so luxurious now, because in this building if there's a problem, there's someone to call." Ms. Young promptly did a long, deep dive on StreetEasy and deputized some close friends to attend open houses on her behalf in preparation for the July relocation. "I had a very specific dream of what going back to New York would look like and feel like," she said. At the top of her wish list were big windows, "because I've looked at trees for 18 years and I wanted to look at urban life." A washer and dryer in the apartment was also a priority because, Ms. Young said, "I'm too old to go downstairs to the basement to do laundry." She got the cityscape and the spin cycle in a one bedroom rental with floor to ceiling windows on the 19th floor of a high rise in the theater district. An added dividend was the balcony, or as Ms. Young characterizes it, the front porch on which sits a compact glider. "I've got a porch and a rocker like a good Southern girl," said Ms. Young, who is from Asheville, N.C. "All I do is watch Manhattan and her citizens and her drama and the sunset," she said. "I watch it the way some people watch a fish tank. It's all really my giant screen TV. I watch and I happy cry." The style of the home she has in Los Angeles tilts toward the luxe and dramatic: large shapes, bold colors, velvets and metallics. "It's very Hollywood glamour," Ms. Young said. "You can't deny the draw." But in New York, she wanted a totally different look, welcoming the chance to live a double life of sorts, this one simple and minimalist tulip table, Lucite chairs, two tiered rectangular glass coffee table with a neutral palette and living room walls that are all but bare. The sole exception is a neon "love" sign. "All my art is in L.A., and I was trying to figure out what I could put here," Ms. Young said, indicating a space above the sofa. "I searched the Getty archive to see what they had. Then I thought about commissioning a fancy neon piece, but I didn't want to commit to that. So I just Amazon ed a little 'love.' And it was delivered right to me." "I so enjoy the streamlined design here," she added. "It's such a delight to curate an existence, to have a premeditated take on what is necessary and what gives you joy." There is, for example, joy in the Yamaha keyboard that Ms. Young bought with her boyfriend, Pedro Segundo, a percussionist "we play it and sing, and that makes this a home" and the vase of white lilies that she refreshes every 10 days. "I got a guy on Ninth Avenue," Ms. Young said. "I give him 20, and he gives me some beautiful lilies. That's my major indulgence. They're so architectural and dramatic and fragrant." She limited what she brought from Los Angeles to a short stack of books, a few photos and some stones, including a heart shaped piece of rose quartz given to her by Mr. Segundo. "When life is confusing or stressful, I can touch a stone and remind myself of happier times," Ms. Young said. She is now on a first name basis with Ikea (supplier of the sofa, the dresser, the bed) and CB2 (the metal chairs on the deck), often blearily pointing and clicking in the wee small hours to outfit the space.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Real Estate
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