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Ms. Wilken is the spokesperson for the City Waste Union in New Orleans. Credit...William Widmer for The New York Times The Black Sanitation Workers Who Are Saying, 'I Am a Man' "All labor has dignity," the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. told striking sanitation workers in Memphis more than 50 years ago. "One day," he said, "our society will come to respect the sanitation worker, if it is to survive. For the person who picks up our garbage, in the final analysis, is as significant as the physician. For if he doesn't do his job, diseases are rampant." I never paid much attention to what sanitation workers did until a small group of them went on strike in early May in my hometown, New Orleans. They are called "hoppers," because they spend all day hopping on and off the backs of trucks, rounding up garbage containers, and using their strength to dump them into the barrel that crushes the trash. My Uncle Jonathan is one of them, and he asked me to help him and his fellow Black workers organize their City Waste Union in the first weeks of the strike. Their fight, which has now gone on for more than two months, has shown me more clearly than ever before that Black people are still shackled to a cycle of generational poverty and mistreatment. They often carry signs that say, "I Am a Man," as they protest. It's the iconic sign Memphis sanitation workers first carried in 1968, in their bitter, 65 day strike, during which Dr. King was assassinated after coming to support them. I am only 25, but it's obvious to me that my uncle and his co workers are still waging the same civil rights battle 52 years later. In 1968, a living wage and safer working conditions were among the Memphis strikers' top demands the same things New Orleans strikers are asking for in 2020. The men in Memphis worked full time, but their pay was so low that they still qualified for food stamps. In New Orleans, before our strike, my uncle, for example, got paid 10.25 an hour, which isn't a living wage. "I get up every day and go to work," said Darnell Harris, 34, another hopper. "But I can't take care of my family off what they paid me. I am just tired of being stepped on. Me and all the guys, we're tired of it." In 1968, work safety fears set off the Memphis strike, after two workers were crushed to death in the barrel of their truck. Today in New Orleans, fears of Covid 19, which hit the city so early and so hard, prompted our strike. The men's longtime concern that their health and safety on the job are not taken seriously turned urgent. That's why the hoppers are asking for 150 a week in hazard pay, and assurances of a steadier supply of personal protective equipment. One difference between the two strikes is that the New Orleans sanitation workers today actually have less bargaining power than the 1968 Memphis strikers had. The 1,300 Black men who stood up against the mayor and the city of Memphis worked for the sanitation department and negotiated directly with city leaders. But in 2020, outsourcing of garbage pickup means a few private contracting companies manage many small groups of New Orleans sanitation workers. Only 14 Black men are on strike in New Orleans, but their experience echoes those of many more hoppers in the city. And support from the larger community has kept us going. A strike fund we set up on GoFundMe has raised almost 200,000. In addition, the National Labor Relations Board is investigating some of our complaints. But with the mix of private employers, one of which hired a public relations firm to help during the strike, it is nearly impossible for a large number of the workers doing the same jobs across the city to band together and negotiate their working conditions with any one company or with elected officials. That means Mayor LaToya Cantrell and the sanitation department are insulated, remaining one or two steps removed from dealing directly with the men on the front lines. In my uncle's case, the city contracts with Metro Service Group, a Black owned, New Orleans based company, for part of its residential sanitation pickup. Then, Metro subcontracts with an employment company called PeopleReady, a division of TrueBlue, based in Washington State, that oversees and pays my uncle and his co workers. So when we spoke out about how the men's pay was less than the 11.19 living wage that the city requires, the mayor pointed to Metro for answers. And Metro pointed to PeopleReady. After more than two months, no one from the mayor's office has spoken directly with the men. At one point, Metro subcontracted with another company to replace the strikers with prison inmates, who were paid even less than the men on strike got paid. But after that arrangement was made public, the subcontractor backed out. As I understood it, one of the original goals of contracting out the work years ago was to give more opportunity and power to Black and brown private contractors in a majority Black city. And a goal of the city's living wage ordinance was to protect the people those companies hired. I don't think anyone set out to take advantage of working class Black men; I just think it has turned into that. "Instead of actually helping everybody," said Kendrick Anderson, 27, a hopper, "they just went along with that system they already have going." In a city that makes millions of dollars off Mardi Gras, the New Orleans Jazz Heritage Festival and the Essence Festival, when you see City Council members swinging beads and Mayor Cantrell second lining, our guys are riding behind them, cleaning it all up. But these men feel invisible and uncared for. Don't my uncle, the other hoppers and their families deserve the dignity that Dr. King spoke of a half century ago? Isn't it about time to do right by these Black men, and meet their simple demands to be treated as significant in their own city? Daytrian Wilken is the spokesperson for the City Waste Union in New Orleans. This was written in collaboration with Emily Yellin, who produced the video series "1,300 Men: Memphis Strike '68" on The Root.com. The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We'd like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here's our email: letters nytimes.com. Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter ( NYTopinion) and Instagram.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Opinion
In Montpellier, cypresses grow as high as the bell tower of Eglise Ste. Therese. Whelks, caught that morning from the nearby Mediterranean Sea, are sold by the dozen with a side of aioli at the covered market Halles Castellane. The Musee Fabre, a national museum that houses works by the likes of Delacroix and Courbet in a grand 18th century chateau, manages to feel inviting, not intimidating. Even its visitors, sipping their espresso at the cafe Insense on the front lawn, look more like leisured houseguests than the sort of wearied tourists you see at the Louvre. None of this had I noticed, tasted or experienced before my trip to Montpellier last August, though it was my fifth in a decade, for Montpellier is also the home of my in laws. While my in laws are lovely, and I always look forward to their visits to New York, where we live, visiting them is not a terribly relaxing affair. Like a foreign dignitary, I am escorted to lunches and dinners arranged on my behalf, with sights pointed out to me en route. Never had I explored the city and learned my way around because my husband, Fabrice, always knew it. Montpellier, France's eighth largest city, is blessed with a Mediterranean sun and a beautiful, walkable historic center, a tourist destination in its own right, but because it is my husband's home city, a trip there never felt like a vacation to me. While our 8 month old daughter was depriving us of sleep last summer, I hatched a plan to reclaim our vacation: We'd stay four days in Montpellier, sightsee as much as we could between familial obligations, and spend one night away at a bed and breakfast, leaving the baby with my mother in law for some uninterrupted sleep. To execute this, I did something I hadn't done since I left Paris, where Fabrice and I met 10 years ago: I bought a Lonely Planet France. Everything I had known about Montpellier before then was from Fabrice, who, having left at 18, perceived the city with a mix of boyhood nostalgia and cocky teenage angst. On every trip we spent hours at the large independent bookstore Librairie Sauramps, next to where Fabrice went to high school. One time I watched him, after goofily flipping through comic books, as he sidled up to the manager, a smug former classmate of his, and mentioned, casually yet defiantly, that he now lived in New York City and waited for a reaction. This trip would be a chance to form my own relationship with Montpellier and its countryside. Thumbing through the guidebook, I felt a tingle of excitement I recognized from my bygone days of vacation planning. I was I could hardly believe it looking forward to visiting my in laws. Along the Mediterranean, less than an hour's drive from Montpellier, are beautiful port cities like Sete and Stes. Maries de la Mer. Surely they would have offered a welcome change from my usual encounter with the sea: Carnon, a seaside resort where Fabrice's grandmother lives, as exotic looking as the Jersey Shore. But for our night away from the city, I wanted to head inland and see the arid landscape I had only glimpsed from the highway to my father in law's in Carcassonne. After three days in Montpellier, the region's capital, we set out for the countryside, and within 20 minutes of driving along Route D986, I felt as if we were already in the deepest reaches of Languedoc Roussillon. Stone pines, their fragrance rushing in the car's window, suddenly gave way to gnarled shrubs, succulents and thickets of scraggly rosemary climbing over limestone outcroppings. It was a strange mix of verdure and inhospitality, this scrubland, and I asked what it was called. "La garrigue," my mother in law, Brigitte, answered from the back of the car, next to the baby. Let me explain how she and our daughter came to join us on our romantic getaway: Talking to his mother over the phone, Fabrice had floated the idea of going to a bed and breakfast, but before he got to the part in which she would be keeping the baby at home, Brigitte exclaimed how wonderful it would be for us all to get away. And who could begrudge her? As much as the baby was now the main attraction, the woman still wanted to see her son. We invited her along. "But the baby will be sleeping in my mother's room," Fabrice assured me. We climbed out of her car at the foot of Pic St. Loup, a 2,159 foot limestone mountain that from the highway looked like an arrow piercing the sky. Its base near the village of Cazevieille, off Route D113, though, had a gentle slope. As hikers began their ascent along a dirt path, we wandered among cork oaks, picking at their porous barks and plucking sprigs of thyme for Brigitte to take back to her kitchen. The sky was bright. Cicadas buzzed. Less than 20 miles from Montpellier, and already I felt far away. I'm not sure how we found Domaine de Morties, an organic winery at the foothills of Pic St. Loup, but it was the kind of unplanned, delightful discovery our previous trips to Montpellier never allowed. The beautiful old limestone farmhouse looked shut, so we waited in the car while Fabrice knocked at the door. It was a Monday, a day that they don't normally do tastings, he told us when he returned. But the proprietor, a woman named Pascale Mousties, was willing to make an exception. How nice, I thought, as I followed Mme. Mousties into the estate's cave to sample a flight of her wines for the usual price, free. Her demeanor, though, was a reminder of typical French hospitality: While they may accommodate you more readily than you'd guess, don't expect the kind of cheerfulness that Americans put on to hide the fact you are inconveniencing them. Mme. Mousties looked about as enthused as a teenager working the checkout at Rite Aid. Still, the wine was good. Our favorite was a minerally red of carignan grapes called La Mauvaise Herbe weed, as in the unwanted plant, not cannabis. We bought a bottle and thanked her. Back on D986, we headed north. The sky darkened and a light rain came. The landscape was quickly becoming lusher again I spotted oaks and we pulled to the side of the road in the village of St. Laurent le Minier, where the river Vis flows into a short but rapid waterfall. In better weather, people swim in the pool below the waterfall, Fabrice said, which I thought unlikely until two people with bathing suits strode past us. With the sun coming out, we took Route D110 to D113 to the Cirque de Navacelles, which Fabrice described as France's Grand Canyon. It wasn't quite; still, the Cirque is an eerie, awe inspiring sight. The meandering Vis River had cut a wide berth into the gorge's nearly 1,000 foot limestone plateau, making a startling contrast between the bright green valley, with the village of Navacelles at its center, and its jagged stone walls. Even better, the view could be had from a cafe, the Maison du Grand Site du Cirque de Navacelles. Following the winding Route D130 south to D25 onto D9, we headed to our bed and breakfast, or gite, Domaine de Salente in Gignac. The approach from Route A750 is not the most beautiful (the highway was conspicuous among the low lying vineyards), but once we arrived at the 18th century stone farmhouse and toured its cobalt blue pool and beautifully appointed, contemporary furnished guest rooms, I knew we'd made the right choice. After a quick swim and poolside aperitif, thanks to a free bottle of rose the elegant proprietor, Benedicte Tournay, brought us from her vineyard on the grounds, we left for dinner in St. Guilhem le Desert. The village, a stop on the pilgrim route to Santiago de Compostela, is home to a 12th century abbey, part of which I had already seen at the Cloisters in New York City ("A theft," my husband said). The sun was setting as we drove past the Pont du Diable over the Herault River, so by the time we arrived, the monastery was a crepuscular presence. I could barely make out the river below and the hillside into which the limestone buildings were supposedly dramatically built. While Fabrice and Brigitte settled into La Table d'Aurore, the restaurant attached to the charming country hotel Guilhaume d'Orange, I pushed the baby in a stroller in the cobblestone streets until she fell asleep. Under carnival lights in the hotel's garden, we had a leisurely and delicious dinner of lamb, roasted chicken and local trout, while the baby dozed peacefully. It was on our return to the gite that trouble started. The baby wailed all the way from the car to our room, so we dismissed the idea of bringing her crib up to Brigitte's room. By the time I lulled her back to sleep, it was nearly 1 a.m. Tomorrow was my turn to wake with her. If she could sleep until 7 a.m., I calculated, that would be six hours not so bad. She was up at 5:30 a.m. Our room opened onto the garden, so I sat in a canvas lounge chair and nursed her, my head buzzing from exhaustion. But then sun rays flashed over the vine covered hills, and in the foreground the copses of stone pines figured like dark clouds in the sky. What an ancient, magnificent sight it was. The baby was getting restless, so with her in my arms I walked around the garden. This is an olive tree, that's rosemary, this is lavender. I plucked a bud and rolled it between my fingers for her to smell. Looking to the horizon, now bright, I thought, "This place is beautiful." On our way back to Montpellier, I began to see its originality. It lay not in the center's 19th century architecture, stunning though it may be, particularly the Place de la Comedie and the ornate Italianate opera house there. Nor was it in its vibrant cafe culture, though seemingly every back alley is lined with dimly lighted cafes teeming with young people (among my favorites now are the pub Le Rebuffy, Au P'tit Quart d'Heure, and the Comptoir de L'Arc). What makes Montpellier remarkable is the way nature unexpectedly asserts itself amid all of the stone and concrete. Perhaps my memory is recalling this too neatly, but it seemed as if our short country visit was making me see, more vividly, the highway divider with a hedge of pink bay bushes. Or the parking lot with two statuesque cypresses at its entrance. Or the single olive tree at the center of a roundabout. Much more interesting than the city's plane tree lined plazas were people's gardens, overgrown with lemon trees, palm trees and grapevines. Better still was the Jardin des Plantes, one of the oldest botanical gardens in France and a magnificent trove of Mediterranean flora. The night before we returned to New York, while the baby slept and Fabrice did the wash, I sat on my grandmother in law's balcony admiring the Eglise St. Roch and, in the distance, the illuminated towers of Cathedrale St. Pierre, proud that I now knew their names. Then came a thought that had marked the end of my most memorable trips, but I had never had before in Montpellier. Looking out over the Spanish tiled houses, as I finished the last of the pastis, I thought, "I wish we had more time here."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Travel
Love. Honor. Loyalty. Family. "The Tax Collector" would have you believe it's about all these things, as if slapping nouns on the screen (partly in cursive, no less) will convince us there's a higher purpose to the bloodletting and viciousness that follow. But we've all seen "The Sopranos," and we won't get fooled again. Not that this generic gangland banger, written and directed by David Ayer, remotely deserves the comparison. Set in South Los Angeles, the madly illogical plot follows David (Bobby Soto) and his aptly named sidekick, Creeper (Shia LaBeouf). Their job is to collect payments from dozens of street gangs for a protection racket run by the mysterious Wizard, who is currently incarcerated. (Filmed only from behind, or in teasing sideways peeks, the actor playing him is clearly meant to be a secret until the finale, so I'm saying nothing.) Trouble kicks off when Conejo (Jose Conejo Martin) returns from a sojourn in Mexico and demands that David switch loyalties and work for him. A muscled monster who spends his time day trading and being doused in the blood of luckless young women, Conejo is a villain so cartoonish we expect a white cat to leap into his lap at any second. Instead, he has a feline female lieutenant (Cheyenne Rae Hernandez), who somehow succeeds in pulverizing foes while sporting an outfit that would seem to preclude the simple act of breathing.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Movies
He knew about devastating crashes in the sledding sports, particularly in his specialty, skeleton, and about the retired athletes who struggled with memory loss and an inability to perform simple activities, like reading. He wanted to pursue his Olympic dream though, even if doing so would risk damaging his brain. So he devised a new technique for hurtling down the icy track, thinking his innovation would keep him safer. But when Edelman made it to the 2018 Winter Olympics competing for Israel, his adopted second country officials there disallowed his new technique, saying it violated the sport's rules. He finished the event in 28th place out 30 competitors and then retired, having accomplished far more than anyone could have predicted when he entered the sport three and a half years earlier, crashing on his very first run. A Massachusetts Institute of Technology graduate, Edelman settled into pursuing a master's of business administration at Yale. Though he played ice hockey while growing up in suburban Boston and made the team at M.I.T., sports had never been his primary calling. He seemed ready to move on. Yet the lure of the Olympic Games can make people act in surprising ways. Parents subject their children to coaches who blur the line between discipline and abuse. Runners foolishly starve themselves to lose weight, believing lighter bodies will mean more speed. And athletes like Edelman sign up again for repeated brain rattling rides at 75 miles per hour, even when they have had headaches, blurred vision, dizziness, depression, exhaustion and other symptoms associated with traumatic brain injuries. And even as there is a growing awareness about a series of deaths from overdoses, suicides and lingering neurological problems that former athletes in sledding sports have experienced in recent years. Now Edelman, who has taken a break from business school, has decided to try another sledding sport, becoming a bobsled driver and aiming to reach the 2022 Winter Games in Beijing. "I know I am going to get hurt brain wise doing this," Edelman, 29, wrote in a recent text message. He also expects to spend more than 100,000 of his own money on the effort, which will mean draining his savings, borrowing what he can, seeking donors and trying to auction off his Olympic ring. "The mission is more important than my health or savings." The bobsled feels safer to him, he said, because he sits upright and can see where he is going. His family is still concerned. After an article about the dangers of sledding sports appeared in The New York Times this summer, Edelman texted his father, a cardiologist and a professor of biomedical engineering, asking him not to show the article to his mother. "Only 2 seasons. I'm out after 2022, no matter what," he wrote to his father. Making the Olympic Games generally requires years of practice, beginning at an early age. Bobsled and skeleton are the rare exceptions, and that is part of the appeal for Edelman. They are sports with perhaps 1,000 athletes combined globally (the exact number is difficult to quantify), with little recreational participation. Many of the sports' athletes had barely heard of bobsled or skeleton until they were adults. Then someone a coach, another athlete, a stranger in a gym suggested their strength and speed, honed for years in track and field, or football or rugby, might transfer well to these little known Olympic sports. Lolo Jones, the standout hurdler, competed in bobsled at the 2018 Winter Games and is trying for 2022. There are only 16 bobsled tracks in the world. Four are in Germany, and many of the others are in remote mountain towns, which helps make sledding sports among the most inaccessible in the world. Also, sleds are expensive, about 40,000 for a used model and 100,000 for a new one. And yet that inaccessibility is what ultimately makes elite level participation accessible. Because almost no one outside Germany grows up as a bobsledder, someone like Edelman can share a world class distinction with Michael Phelps being an Olympian. "There is a big expense and you have to get to a place where there is a track, so these aren't the easiest sports to get into, but almost anyone can try it," said David Greaves, who became an Israeli citizen two decades ago and leads Bobsled/Skeleton Israel, the national governing body, from his home in Canada. "It's doable if you have decent athletic ability and you are in some ways fearless, because very few people get on the sled a second time." Edelman was eligible for Israeli citizenship because he is Jewish, and he had fallen in love with the country during a high school trip there. In 2014, Edelman realized he had a shot at becoming an Olympian by representing Israel in a sledding sport. A Mediterranean country that is half desert, Israel had never had an athlete compete in Olympic bobsled, skeleton or luge (feet first sledding) and barely funds those sports. Learning technique from YouTube videos, Edelman took as many skeleton runs as he could to make up for lost time, sometimes hurtling down the track nine times in a single day. That volume of training is three times what most experienced athletes endure. Many of the sport's coaches and officials now acknowledge that excessive daily training runs increase the likelihood of brain injuries, even if crashes do not occur. In 2018, two years after becoming an Israeli citizen, Edelman qualified for the Olympics in South Korea, Israel's first Olympic competitor in skeleton. Edelman mitigated the risks of brain injury by using a longer face shield that allowed him to rest his head on the sled, limiting the chances that his head would bang off the ice as gravitational forces spiked around tight turns. He used the technique in several international races, but a last minute ruling by skeleton officials in South Korea prevented him from using it in the Olympics. He beat only athletes from Jamaica and Ghana. Then, late last year, his depression and other lingering effects of skeleton training abated, and he felt the pull of the Olympic rings again. He impressed an Australian coach during a trial bobsled run. The coach told Edelman if he trained hard and found some strong, fast teammates to push the sled, he could qualify for the next Winter Olympics. Edelman recruited three Israeli Arabs who play for the national rugby team to push the bobsled and tuck behind him for the 50 second runs down the ice. The men, Amir and Ward Fawarsy, who are cousins, and Moran Nijem, are students at the Wingate Institute for Physical Education and Sports in Netanya, a seaside city in Israel. Until this month, they had yet to ride in a bobsled or see a track in person. Much of what they knew about the sport before they met Edelman they learned by watching "Cool Runnings," the 1993 movie loosely based on Jamaica's bobsled team at the 1988 Winter Olympics. Nijem and the Fawarsy cousins joined Edelman in late December in South Korea, where Edelman has been working on his driving skills. Edelman plans to have more than 200 practice runs by the end of the season which would mean two to three runs a day three or four days a week through the winter. Greaves said Bobsled/Skeleton Israel had hired Aliyah Snyder, a neuropsychologist and former skeleton athlete to develop safety protocols. Snyder spent years recovering from brain injuries, she said in an interview last month. Qualification is hardly guaranteed for the Israeli team, especially with the coronavirus pandemic limiting travel and making it more difficult for sleds to achieve the necessary number of races and quality performances to make it to the Olympics. Nijem said he was not worried about the potential danger of getting into a sled with a novice driver still learning how not to flip a 200 pound sled on a treacherous curves. "If A.J. crashes, we still trust him," he said in an interview last month. "We are rugby players," Amir Fawarsy added. "We know all about concussions."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Sports
The Metropolitan Museum of Art's Costume Institute, lauded for the fabulousness of its exhibitions of Comme des Garcons, China and Alexander McQueen, finally has some healthy competition. After 70 years of neglect, the Museum of Modern Art has plunged headfirst into fashion, or something like it. "Items: Is Fashion Modern?" is an intense game of catch up and only the second exhibition in the Modern's history devoted to clothing design. Its predecessor "Are Clothes Modern?" was organized in 1944, by Bernard Rudofsky, a provocative architect and social historian who posited that most clothing was "anachronistic, irrational and harmful." It's big, occupying all of the sixth floor's galleries for temporary exhibitions, which hasn't happened since the de Kooning extravaganza of 2011. Brilliant use is made of video and slide shows. Around 30 prototypes, including 20 newly commissioned by the museum, add sparks of ingenuity and of course there is a gift shop fuller than usual of sartorial temptations. But all in all, "Items" has few of the showstopping moments of extreme craftsmanship, innovation or material lavishness that are a staple of the Met's productions. Including "items" like bluejeans, flip flops, tattoos and a burkini, it largely evades the air of expense, exclusivity and hauteur typical of these ventures. It's even a bit on the austere side, harkening back to the Modern's displays in the 1930s and '40s of the latest kitchenware and furniture shows that argued for modern design as an affordable way to improve modern life. It is, to its credit, an exercise in consciousness raising that plots the flow of stylistic conventions from subcultures and colonial countries into the Western mainstream and highlights dress as self expression and political protest most directly, with a projection of graphic T shirts. Faithful to the museum's way of telling the history of art as a linear, primarily Western phenomenon, "Items" also comes with its own canon albeit one that is more global and historically aware in scope. At its core, the show is a Who's Who of mostly postwar garments and accessories 111 items called "paragons of design'' in the press statement. They are listed across a large wall at the exhibition's entrance, and illustrated by the slide show opposite of "real" people wearing the chosen gear. In the galleries, examples of the anointed objects are presented, usually accompanied by variations that attest to their influence, and by the prototypes, which generally respond to, or extend, the classics. The clothing landscape is carefully culled and categorized, as perhaps only the Modern can do. A small section on luxury includes a beat up Hermes Birkin handbag, a Tiffany diamond and a Rolex watch, but this is undercut by less costly expressions of extravagance, including door knocker earrings and custom nail art. Generally, "Items" focuses on garments and accessories that people around the world wear every day for any number of complex reasons including climate, personal style, economics, religious faith or political stance. It presents the biker jacket, chinos, guayabera shirts and kaffiyeh head scarves, including a new prototype, by the Beirut based architect Salim Al Kadi, in bullet deflecting Kevlar. Also on the list: all manner of sportswear and outerwear tracksuits, parkas, puffers and fleece. It is so people oriented that it includes a prototype for a plus size mannequin (most are size 0). With a Chanel gown here; two saris there; espadrilles and two beautiful Chinese cheongsam dresses elsewhere, "Items" mediates between high and low, East and West, couture and common. But it stays fairly low, creating an air of familiarity that is then enriched by the labels and catalog, which pinpoint origins, regional variations and technological advances. The structure of the pencil skirt is considered. It usually had 20 components, making assembly laborious; Chen Zhi's Lycra angora prototype has only three and is wrinkle resistant. Or the history of the Kashmir shawl from the British Empire to the recent pashmina craze The salwar kameez, the combination of tunic and loosefitting pants from the Punjab, we learn, has "historically been unisex" and, through Muslim immigration, become a staple and influence the world over. At times the word "fashion" in the show's title almost smacks of false advertising: It might better have been called "Clothes Are Everyone" or "Crowdsourced Personal Style." The jaw dropping wows are likely to be heard just inside the door, with a phalanx of little black dresses from Chanel to Rick Owens. The other opening salvo is disappointing: a display of undergarments, including the Wonderbra, Spanx and the y front men's brief, although the pair of pantyhose for disabled women a prototype by Lucy Jones for Somarta is inspiring. And this display is followed by one of the show's best curatorial progressions, from 1950s maternity wear through the Snugli and fanny pack to a bulbous gingham ensemble from Comme des Garcon's idiosyncratic 1997 "Bump Collection, " In between, there's the prototype for Wei Hung Chen's Modular Dress 2.0, whose adjustable pleats accommodate both the expanding body during pregnancy and breast feeding. Things can become a bit small grain, which is to say that the show sometimes turns a trifle bland in its familiarity. But when taken garment by garment, it is full of wonderful rabbit holes of narrative and information. Videos demonstrate the donning of hijabs and saris, and the making of the Panama hat and the sevenfold necktie. And sometimes a garment and its moving image component form a spellbinding experience, as happens with the lacy, peekaboo Kinematics dress (black of course) by the design studio Nervous System. Made with Kinematics's 4 D printing system it is essentially an aggregate of fractal like holes each unique in size. But the real treat lies in understanding the dress's versatility: It is a kind of jumper that all kinds of women can use, wearing whatever they want, or nothing, beneath it. Sometimes the film outshines the garment. A marvelous little video by the designer Hana Tajima accompanies Issey Miyake's black turtleneck. Against a backdrop of midcentury avant garde music dance, Ms. Tajima compares the turtleneck as a malleable symbol of dissent for beatniks, Black Panthers, feminists, and men tired of shirts and ties with the hijab and the West's narrow, often phobic failure to understand it as an assertion of privacy and a refusal of "the consumption of beauty," among much else. Her film's argument is one of this invaluable show's many memorable moments . There are plenty of others to be gleaned here. Just make like the museum, and plunge in.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Art & Design
The monthly jobs figures are a best estimate given the available tools but subject to ambiguity, misinterpretation and error. The jobs report a monthly scorecard for the United States' labor market can ignite presidential tweets, flashing news alerts, and stock market jumps or tumbles. Its estimates of how many people are working (or not) are often interpreted as a key indicator of the economy's direction. Of course, no single report can encapsulate something as sprawling and enormous as the United States economy. But the jobs report which the Labor Department appropriately titles "The Employment Situation" is one of the better measures of the labor market and, by extension, the economy's health. It is also one of the broadest, focusing on working families and households. The report is based on two separate government surveys that are conducted every month. Like all statistical measurements, the figures can be both honest and imprecise a best estimate given the available tools but nonetheless subject to ambiguity, misinterpretation, error and anomalies that need to be ignored. It's important to keep in mind that every monthly jobs report provides only a temporary and incomplete snapshot of the economy. Here's your primer on the report, where the numbers come from and what they mean. Employed: Someone with a job. In general, anyone who reports working for pay even just an hour during the survey week is considered employed. Nearly 157 million people are counted as employed. Unemployed: Anyone without a job who actively looked for work (sending out resumes, responding to help wanted ads) during the previous four weeks, regardless of any government benefits received, is considered unemployed. Labor force: The combination of people working and those who are unemployed, available and actively looking for a job. In recent months, the size of the labor force has hovered around 163 million. Not in the labor force: People who are unemployed and not actively looking for work. This group includes people who don't want to be in the labor force, such as millions of college students, parents happy to stay home with their children and millions of retirees. It also includes people who want to work but are not job hunting, like a former steelworker who, after years of fruitless searching, has given up looking but would take a job if he could find one at an acceptable wage. Official unemployment rate: The share of the labor force that is unemployed. The monthly average over the past 12 months has been below 4 percent , a historically low figure. Labor force participation rate: The percentage of the population 16 years and older that is either working or actively seeking work. The figure is important because it represents how many more workers are available to produce additional goods and services. It also reflects the health of the economy. When people in their prime working years mid 20s through mid 50s are out of the labor force, it suggests that they don't see opportunities. This rate has still not returned to its prerecession levels. 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. Employment population ratio: The percentage of the population 16 years and older that is working. This figure is a useful measure because it takes into account both the labor force participation rate and unemployment, and is easily compared over time. How are the data collected ? The monthly employment report is derived from two separate government surveys that serve different purposes. The estimates in each report are revised twice more after their initial release. Collected by the Census Bureau since 1942, this survey enables the government to estimate the number of people who are employed and calculate the unemployment rate. It is based on the Current Population Survey, conducted each month among 60,000 households, or about 110,000 individuals from around the country. Here's a question that might be asked: Some people work part time because they cannot find full time work or because business is poor. Others work part time because of family obligations or other personal reasons. What is your main reason for working part time? This is based on data gathered each month from 146,000 private business and government agencies covering about 623,000 work sites. Called the Current Employment Statistics program, it is intended to measure changes in jobs created and lost over time. Conducted by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, it focuses solely on jobs, rather than on individuals. Thus, a single person working two jobs would be counted once by the household survey (one individual is employed) and twice by the payroll survey (two jobs exist). Which survey provides the better data? The survey of employers, started in a bare bones form more than a century ago, is considered a more reliable measure than the household survey, in part because the sample is much larger. But it does not pick up all the types of jobs (the self employed, unpaid family workers, domestic help and agricultural workers) or answer questions about workers' race, ethnicity, age and educational level. The household survey helps fill in those gaps. As a general rule, the monthly numbers are seasonally adjusted. That means the effects of predictable seasonal events like weather changes, major holidays and school schedules are removed (through a statistical technique) so that cyclical, underlying trends can be better observed.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Economy
UNIVERSAL CITY, Calif. "The Hunt" is back on. Only this time Universal Pictures has designed a radically different marketing campaign for the violent film, which is ostensibly about liberal elites who kill conservative "rednecks" for sport. Before "The Hunt" was shelved last year in the face of criticism, Universal had started to market the film as something it was not: a relatively straightforward horror flick. Now the studio is hoping that an unusual marketing tactic forthrightness will protect "The Hunt" from blowback before its release on March 13. A new trailer, released on Tuesday, does not try to boil down "The Hunt" to a single, salable genre, which is the way Hollywood usually approaches films. Instead it presents "The Hunt" as it is an absurdist satire that leaves no side of the political divide unscathed and is equal parts comedy, horror and thriller. "Not one frame was changed," Jason Blum, who produced the film with Damon Lindelof ("Lost," "Watchmen"), said in an interview. "This is exactly the same movie." "The Hunt," starring the Emmy nominated Betty Gilpin (Netflix's "Glow") and the two time Oscar winner Hilary Swank, was supposed to arrive in theaters in September. Trailers in July veiled the political aspect of the 15 million film and made it resemble an entry in the Universal's dystopian "Purge" horror series. Universal had not yet screened "The Hunt" for film reporters or critics. Then 31 people were killed in back to back shootings in Texas and Ohio. The Hollywood Reporter published an article saying Universal had pulled ads for "The Hunt" as a result. The article, based on a copy of the script, also disclosed that the movie revolved "around third rail political themes" notably elites stalking "deplorables." An outcry followed, with conservative pundits criticizing the film's premise as "sick" and "awful." Before long, President Trump alluded to "The Hunt" on Twitter, saying it was made by liberal Hollywood "to inflame and cause chaos." Caught in a maelstrom, Universal canceled the release, leading to accusations of censorship. Universal, a division of NBCUniversal, which is owned by Comcast, said on Tuesday that it would give the film a wide release in theaters. It also invited a handful of reporters to its campus in the San Fernando Valley to watch "The Hunt" in the Alfred Hitchcock Building and discuss it afterward with Mr. Blum and Mr. Lindelof. "We didn't want to just pretend that nothing had ever happened," Mr. Blum said. Mr. Lindelof, who wrote the screenplay with Nick Cuse, said "The Hunt" had been inspired by "Get Out," the blockbuster comedic mystery, social satire and horror film directed and written by Jordan Peele. (Mr. Blum was a producer.) It may be hard to believe, but Mr. Lindelof insisted that he had never expected "The Hunt" to prompt political blowback, certainly not on a presidential level. "It didn't strike me as third rail," Mr. Lindelof said of the film. He added of Mr. Trump: "I wish that he had seen it. The movie he was talking about was not the movie I feel that we made." 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. "The Hunt" begins (spoiler warning) with a close up shot of text messages on a phone. One reads, "Promise you won't judge me?" The conversation is about killing "deplorables" for sport. The discussion seems serious. Or is it in jest, albeit in very poor taste? The film, directed by Craig Zobel, whose credits include the well reviewed 2015 thriller "Z for Zachariah," then introduces the unlikable elites. One snootily rejects the caviar offered to him by an attendant on a private jet. He would prefer figs. There aren't any? Sigh. Champagne will have to suffice. A dozen strangers then wake up in a clearing in the woods. All are overt stereotypes. A woman from Wyoming rocks a spectacular mullet. One older man wears a beige fishing shirt and a military cap. The liberal elites then begin the slaughter. "For the record, climate change is real!" one shrieks before blowing up a victim. Then one of the people being hunted turns the tables, picking off the killers one by one until only the ringleader remains. Slaying the liberals is not terribly difficult: They are easily distracted bickering with one another over politically correct language, squealing in delight when the progressive filmmaker Ava DuVernay likes a social media post about their volunteer work in Haiti. By the end of the R rated film, the story has included a paramilitary unit in Croatia, a dark internet conspiracy theory, a killing by stiletto pump and a pig wearing a T shirt. "As anyone who has seen the movie can attest, it's all so over the top and absurd," Mr. Lindelof said. "It's possible that people will see this movie and say it's irresponsible or is a call to violence. But the morality of the movie" who is left standing at the end "has always felt very clean to us." As any Hollywood marketer will tell you, it is exceeding difficult to burnish a film once an unfavorable narrative has formed around it. So part of Universal's new marketing strategy involves embracing the ugliness. "The most talked about movie of the year is one that no one's actually seen," Universal's new poster says. "Decide for yourself." But the new trailer also marks "a big tonal shift," as Mr. Lindelof said. Rather than a horror movie with some social commentary, a la "The Purge," "The Hunt" is shown as a comedic social satire with some horror elements. In particular, the new trailer plays up the absurdity of the premise. "You wanted it to be real, so you decided it was," Ms. Swank's character says sternly. Which leads to a question: Why didn't Universal take this approach to begin with? Michael Moses, Universal's marketing chief, declined to discuss the studio's initial strategy or the shift revealed on Tuesday except to say in an email: "To simply restart the previous campaign felt like it ignores what transpired. We thought it appropriate to acknowledge the film's history and also the potential curiosity around it." The initial strategy probably boiled down to Movie Marketing 101. Satires are hard to explain to a mass audience. Horror films are easier.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Media
Credit...Heather Sten for The New York Times "Will you take a picture of my severed head?" Derren Brown asked, dropping to his knees and angling himself behind a couple of trick mirrors that vanished him from the neck down. It was a recent sunny Saturday, and Mr. Brown had been wandering through the Museum of Illusions, an Instagram friendly gallery housed in a former bank building in the West Village of Manhattan. His live show, "Derren Brown: Secret," thrilled and flummoxed New Yorkers Off Broadway, two years ago. (Here's our co chief theater critic: "enthrallingly baffling.") It promises to thrill and flummox more of them at Broadway's Cort Theater, where it opens Sept. 15 . A sensation in his native England , Mr. Brown, 48, practices "psychological illusionism." What is psychological illusionism? "I totally made that term up," he said. A mentalist , a magician, a hypnotist ( and a portraitist, photographer, best selling author and television pioneer, it's annoying), he has made a career of tricking people, sometimes millions of them at once. Would ordinary optical effects trick him? Pretty often. "Oh, that's very good," he said happily, as he watched a museum goer (O.K., me) clown in an Ames Room, which makes you appear to grow or shrink as you walk from one corner to another. A wall sculpture whose straight rod seemed to curve got to him, too. "It's nice to be really fooled," he said. Not every illusion duped him. A wall card beside a poster of dots warned that, for 5 percent of people, the dots wouldn't waver. He was among the elect. And a Stroop Effect, which messes with neural processing, didn't rattle him. Still, he made faces at himself in a true mirror and staggered around a tilted room. He kidded in front of some spirals. He sauntered into a color effect room, and his shadows bobbed behind him magenta, cyan, gold. He had arrived at the museum in a white shirt, a blue linen vest, summer weight trousers and a jaunty straw hat, clothes more casual than the tailored suits he favors onstage. His shaved head made him look like an unusually handsome turtle. Even though he had dark circles under his eyes and seemed to need the espresso drink he later ordered at a cafe down the street, his affect was energetic, playful. He enjoyed effects even when he knew or could figure out just how they worked. Like that wall sculpture. "Yes," he said as he stepped closer. "Wow." Mentalism or mind reading is a storied form of magic. Depending on your parameters, you can trace it back thousands of years or about 150, when the act popped up in Victorian music halls. From one decade to the next, mentalists have claimed powers derived from mystery cults, from spirits, from E.S.P., from quantum physics. Mr. Brown doesn't do that. His standard spiel for his stage shows promises "magic, suggestion, psychology, misdirection and showmanship to achieve the seemingly impossible." But figuring out which skills produce which effects is seemingly impossible, too. In "Secret," which he wrote with Andy Nyman and Andrew O'Connor, also the show's directors, Mr. Brown attributes some tricks to a split second analysis of nonverbal communication. Other of his shows swank his skills as a hypnotist. These powers are demonstrable and more or less real. But so is his sleight of hand. Here's how Mr. Nyman, a longtime collaborator, puts it: "What Derren does is to use every single one of the things he's brilliant at to deceive, to misdirect, to entertain, to sincerely and deeply throw you in at the deep end." Mentalism, like a lot of magic, can often appear hokey or, as Mr. O'Connor said, "very uncool." Mr. Brown mostly avoids this, which owes to his expertise, his charisma, his skillful improvisations and what Mr. Nyman calls an "extraordinary sideways way of thinking." Mr. Brown prefers risky versions of effects, which means that sequences can and do go wrong. (In an early show, when an audience volunteer had to choose between an empty box and a box that held 5,000 pounds, volunteers occasionally won the money.) And he tries, he said, to make sure that each show is "about something else other than, 'Hey, look at me!'" His live shows deploy illusion in service of a larger argument about perception or faith or belief. "It's not really about the tricks," Mr. O'Connor said. "He uses magic as a metaphor." In "Secret," which is, in many ways, a career best of, the metaphors explore the way we see the world and the way the world sees us. A study in perspective, it is a reminder, as Mr. Brown says in the show, "to be more open and alive to the complexity and subtlety of what's real." Then again, considering the first act cliffhanger and the jaw dropper finale, what's real is fairly fungible. How the world sees Mr. Brown depends on what part of the world you're in. His numerous BBC series have made him instantly recognizable in London, where he lives with his partner, their dogs and a lot of taxidermy . In New York, at the museum and at the cafe after, he could have been anyone. (Well, anyone with the confidence to pull off a linen vest.) He has broken into the American market only recently mostly through a few Netflix specials. But his collaborators had to talk him into a Broadway run. "It literally took a long time to get him to agree," Mr. O'Connor said. "He's not ambitious." At the museum, Mr. Brown closed the door on an infinity room, and a world of Derren Browns appeared, each apparently able to read your mind. Each of whom might not want to. Because here's a funny thing about Mr. Brown. At this point in his career, magic doesn't interest him particularly. He sees a lot of it as childish, as an excuse to show off. In his stage acts and especially in his television specials, he has been moving toward sequences and effects that transform the participants in some psychological way rather than merely fool them. A decade from now, he might even give that up, he said. In the meantime, he has "Secret" to unveil and a new television special to prepare and a new stage show to work on, "Showman," which tries to give as many audience members as possible a cathartic, life changing experience. It sounded like a lot for a one man magic act to achieve. "Well, that's a good starting point," he said. "Something that feels impossible."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Theater
EAST PROVIDENCE, R.I. Like the rest of Rhode Island, this city of 49,000 people has experienced its share of ups and downs in the last decade, including a budget deficit of 7.3 million in 2011, which prompted the state to step in to temporarily manage its finances. But one bright note in East Providence's recent history can be found along its 14 miles of waterfront. Once used mainly by industry and blighted by gas storage tanks and various debris, about 300 acres along the Providence and Seekonk rivers are in various stages of remediation, and several residential and commercial developments have either opened or are in the planning stages. "This is large in scope, it really is," said Jeanne M. Boyle, the planning director for East Providence. The city's Waterfront Special Development District includes more than 25 development parcels that extend north and south of the Washington Bridge, which straddles the Seekonk River. The city's plan for the district includes a mix of residential, commercial and light industrial uses, with public parks and waterfront access integrated into the design. To date, a handful of companies have either built facilities or expanded existing ones in a subdistrict that is not directly on the water. These include the Baer Supply Company, a wholesale supplier, which built a 100,000 square foot facility in 2009 on a seven acre site. Another is Aspen Aerogels, a Massachusetts based maker of insulation, which spent 30 million to retrofit an abandoned factory. Ms. Boyle estimates that these and other new businesses have added about 500 jobs to the city. But for the most part, these developments and others that are in the planning stages have taken place out of the public eye, and as the city strove to remake its waterfront, it didn't look like anything was happening. Then came Tockwotton on the Waterfront, a five story 53.2 million senior care facility that relocated from Providence in January 2013. Situated on 10.5 acres just over the Providence line, in plain view of passers by on Interstate 195, Tockwotton alerted people to the immense revitalization project that East Providence was undertaking, Ms. Boyle said. "I think that was a turning point," Ms. Boyle said. A nonprofit home that dates back to Providence's early years, Tockwotton accommodates approximately 150 residents in "households" of about 18. In these households, the residents have a private bedroom, bath and kitchen, but they share a common space, providing them with more companionship. To make the site accessible, the city built a 2.1 million parkway called Waterfront Drive, which it plans to extend for other developments. It also worked with the Providence and Worcester Railroad to remove old tracks from the property. Since Tockwotton moved to East Providence, the facility's executive director, Kevin McKay, said he had seen residents enjoy walks along a nearby bike path and other amenities that were not available to them at their former location. Tockwotton bought the vacant site in 2004 after reading that East Providence had formed a commission that year to oversee a newly created waterfront development district, Mr. McKay said. Established by state law, the commission vowed to make it easier for developers to invest in once contaminated properties by, among other things, helping them get the numerous permits they need to build on a remediated site. In addition, the commission's enabling legislation permits the city to offer tax increment financing, or TIF, for infrastructure development, demolition, land assembly and acquisition. With these incentives, projected increases in local tax revenue from new developments can be used for site and area improvements, which make a project more affordable for a developer. To date, two of these financing programs have been approved for developments in the sprawling waterfront district: A 17 million tax incentive for Village on the Waterfront, a 200 million mixed use development that is expected to rise on a former tank farm owned by Chevron, and a 10.5 million incentive for Kettle Point, an 80 million residential project planned for 40 acres owned by the BP Corporation. Both projects have been approved by the Waterfront Commission. "Without the TIF, this project wouldn't even be close to happening," said a Providence developer, Richard P. Baccari II, of Kettle Point. Kettle Point typifies the problems that once made development of East Providence's waterfront unthinkable. Used as a storage facility by Arco and Amoco, BP's predecessor, it was dotted with oil tanks, which gave the waterfront a distinctly industrial appearance. Although the tanks were removed in the 1980s, they left behind a considerable amount of contaminated soil, which made the site too costly for a developer to consider. East Providence knew it needed to provide an incentive, such as the special tax financing plans, to get that site developed, Mr. Baccari said. He called the expense of remediation "incredible." Perched 40 feet above the shoreline, Kettle Point will feature 407 residential units, as well as a four acre waterfront public park and a 45 car public parking lot next to the East Bay Bike Path, which the city asked the developer include in the design. Mr. Baccari said he hoped to break ground on the project this fall.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Real Estate
What Experts Said at The New York Times Education Conference Here are some excerpts from the conversations. "We're training kids to get As, to get the next high test score, to get into the next school, but we're not training them to be dreamers, to have some goal for their lives that will make them feel fulfilled." "No online tool is going to be a substitute for interacting with a quality school counselor." Working Group of Educators at the Higher Ed Leaders Forum: "A college degree is not a bag of sugar; it is an asset that you retain that makes a difference in your family's lives." "Students of color on college campuses are in something of an existential crisis because of what is going on outside with Ferguson, police videos, examples of racism. They're in a privileged space and sometimes don't know how to deal with this." "Something that the public doesn't get about online learning is that the cost doesn't go down unless you are hiring lower level professors." "People saying college isn't necessary, are just wrong."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Education
SAN FRANCISCO For the past week, Uber's board members have been embroiled in conversations over a thorny question: what to do about Benchmark, the venture capital firm that is one of the ride hailing company's largest shareholders. While Benchmark had long supported Uber's management, the investor had recently turned against the company's top echelons. In June, Benchmark helped oust Uber's co founder, Travis Kalanick, as chief executive. Last week, the firm escalated its actions against Mr. Kalanick by suing him for fraud and saying he should be removed from Uber's board. Then on Monday, Benchmark published an open letter to Uber employees intimating that the company had dark secrets that had not been revealed. Uber's board was blindsided by Benchmark's lawsuit, according to three people with knowledge of the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity. News of the suit led to a flurry of emails and phone calls between directors in recent days over what to do. Benchmark owns a 13 percent stake in Uber and also holds a board seat. For Benchmark, this puts the venture firm further out on a long limb. The firm, which has backed companies including eBay, Snap and Twitter, became one of Silicon Valley's most successful start up investors by keeping a low profile in its partnerships with entrepreneurs. Now with Uber, the firm is mired in a bitter and highly public fight while it is being isolated on the company's board. The battle has caused other Silicon Valley investors to take Benchmark to task. Shervin Pishevar, an early Uber backer who is leading a coalition of other investors, has asked Benchmark to sell its shares in the ride hailing company and leave its board. In a letter this week, Mr. Pishevar called Benchmark's lawsuit against Mr. Kalanick "irrational in the extreme" and its other actions "culpably wrongheaded." "I can't help but wonder how recent events will impact founders' views towards raising capital from Benchmark," Michael Boswell, a tech entrepreneur, wrote on Twitter. He called Benchmark's actions against Mr. Kalanick "ruthless." Anand Sanwal, chief executive of CB Insights, a research firm that tracks the venture capital industry, said that litigation between founders and venture capitalists had never been seen "at this scale or in as public a way." Representatives for Uber and Uber's board declined to comment. A spokeswoman for Benchmark declined to comment beyond a statement earlier this week on the litigation. "Resorting to litigation was an extremely difficult step for Benchmark," the statement said. "Failing to act now would mean endorsing behavior that is utterly unacceptable in any company." Travis Kalanick was ousted as Uber's chief executive in June. Evan Agostini/Invision, via Evan Agostini, via Invision, via Associated Press On Thursday, Mr. Kalanick filed his opposition to Benchmark's lawsuit in Delaware Chancery Court, saying in the filing that the case should be subject to arbitration and that there would be a pending motion to dismiss it. Mr. Kalanick argued that Benchmark's suit stemmed from a "public and personal attack" on him. He said that Benchmark "outwardly supported" him through May before executing a secret plan to oust him "at the most shameful of times," less than two weeks after the funeral of his mother, who had died in a boating accident. Benchmark could not "demonstrate a threat of imminent irreparable harm" to Uber if he stayed on the company's board, Mr. Kalanick said in the filing. Benchmark, which was founded in 1995, has developed a reputation for prescient start up investments. It rode the late 1990s dot com boom by backing companies like eBay and Palm. The company is also known for its network of influential tech executives, including Meg Whitman, the chief executive of Hewlett Packard Enterprise. But Benchmark has been involved in disputes with entrepreneurs, sometimes leading to legal trouble. In 2005, most of the founders of a start up called Epinions, which Benchmark had invested in, sued the firm and one of its partners, Bill Gurley, among others, accusing them of withholding information in an ownership deal. The suit was eventually settled. Silicon Valley's memory of such episodes was often short because of Benchmark's success. The firm, which invested 5 million in the e commerce company eBay, reaped a 50,000 percent return when it went public in 1998. Twitter, Zillow and New Relic were also lucrative investments. More recently, a 21 million investment that Benchmark made in Snap became worth more than 2 billion when the social media company went public in March. Benchmark invested in Uber in 2011, putting in an initial 12 million at a valuation of around 60 million. (That stake is now worth more than 8 billion.) Mr. Gurley, Benchmark's most prominent partner, also took a board seat at the company. He has since promoted Uber on his blog, Above the Crowd, and on social media. "'Uber is a great place to work w/ loyal employees!'" he wrote on Twitter last year in response to an article on the technology news site TechCrunch about the company's aggressive employee retention tactics. Mr. Gurley has warned start ups of irrational exuberance in recent years, saying that a combination of easy money, high valuations and reckless spending had created a "risk bubble" in the industry. The message may have been applicable to Uber, which had raised money at ever higher valuations, burned through billions of dollars and did not file to go public. Initially, Mr. Gurley and Mr. Kalanick appeared closely linked. But as Mr. Gurley privately cautioned Mr. Kalanick about overspending and overexpansion, their relationship frayed. The investor encouraged Mr. Kalanick to get Uber out of China, where it was spending billions, for example. Mr. Gurley also advised Uber to hire a chief financial officer and think seriously about going public, according to four people with knowledge of those talks. Thanks in part to such fretting, Mr. Kalanick would sometimes reference the character Chicken Little, who always claimed the sky was falling, when speaking of Mr. Gurley, according to a person who spoke on condition of anonymity to describe the conversations.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Technology
Although Netflix has a reputation as an escapist clearinghouse, the streaming service isn't averse to the occasional tough sit. The Austrian film "Joy" the title refers both to the main character's name and the precise opposite of the film's mood follows a Nigerian woman (Joy Anwulika Alphonsus) who is trafficked illegally to Austria, where she works as a prostitute and sends money home. The film opens with a girl participating in a ceremony with a Juju priest who, we later learn, is essentially ensnaring her making her think that disobedience in Europe will bring bad luck. In the first of several intelligently uninflected leaps in time or geography, the director, Sudabeh Mortezai, jumps from this scene in Nigeria to a title card and then to Austria. By now, Joy, who has undergone such a ritual, is an experienced streetwalker overseeing a newcomer, Precious (Precious Mariam Sanusi).	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Movies
Dan Evans Says He Threw Away His Tennis Career. He's Trying to Get It Back. DELRAY BEACH, Fla. Dan Evans finished a practice session last month, grabbed a racket by the strings and marched from the court toward the player locker room. It was the same path walked by Juan Martin del Potro the night before. For del Potro, a flash mob gathered as fans chanted "Ole, Ole, Ole, Delpo, Delpo," and implored the popular Argentine to autograph photos, tennis balls, hats, T shirts and even one man's bald head. When Evans walked the route, just hours before he was to take the court against Radu Albot in the final of the Delray Beach Open on Feb. 24, no one stopped him to chat or ask for his autograph. Not a single spectator recognized Evans, a 28 year old Briton. He was alone with his thoughts. But he was used to that. For more than a year, Evans spent most of his time alone after being barred from the ATP Tour for a positive drug test for cocaine. Evans said that while he used cocaine recreationally and out of competition, which is not prohibited in tennis, he tested positive during the Barcelona Open in April 2017 when he left some of the drug in a bag that contaminated other medication. The Delray Beach Open was only his fourth ATP Tour tournament since his return in April 2018. He lost the final to Albot in a third set tiebreaker despite holding three match points, but his ranking is up to No. 100 as he begins the qualifying tournament for the BNP Paribas Open in Indian Wells, Calif., on Tuesday. With no ability to play tournaments or train during the ban, Evans retreated to his home in Cheltenham on the outskirts of the picturesque Cotswolds, some 90 miles northwest of London. He was forbidden to even practice at any facilities affiliated with Britain's Lawn Tennis Association for 10 months. He filled his days quietly playing golf and watching television, though he refused to tune in to any tennis matches. He said he would not even follow tournament results in the newspaper. Some days, he said, it was too painful to leave the house. "It was a really tough time in my life," Evans said. "But there were a lot of other people around me who had a difficult year as well. I would be selfish to think that it didn't affect everyone else in my life. "Those feelings of anger and hurt at what you did to people don't go away easily," Evans added, referring to the pain and embarrassment he caused his family, his girlfriend and a bevy of coaches and supporters. This was not the first time he had been penalized. In 2006, Evans was pulled from the Wimbledon junior tournament by the L.T.A., the national governing body the sport, for unacceptable on court behavior. Two years later, he was suspended by the L.T.A. for four months after he was photographed during Wimbledon at a nightclub in the early morning hours. And in 2010, the L.T.A. stopped financially supporting him for underperformance and a poor attitude. Evans was unranked when he returned from this latest suspension in April 2018 and was forced to start at the lower levels of professional tennis. With no points to defend, and little compassion from his fellow competitors, Evans began entering Challengers, tennis's version of the minor leagues. He often had to play three matches just to get into the tournament's main draw. But in August he won a Challenger in Vancouver, British Columbia, and reached the final of another in France in February. At the ATP Tour level, he was given a wild card to play the event at Queen's Club in London in June and lost his first match. He tried to qualify for Wimbledon last year, reaching the second round. He qualified for the main draw of this year's Australian Open and lost to Roger Federer in the second round. His breakthrough at Delray Beach included wins over No. 9 John Isner and No. 35 Frances Tiafoe. "In retrospect, his journey has been incredibly quick for someone with no ranking," said David Felgate, Tim Henman's longtime coach, who began working with Evans just after his return. "Dan doesn't expect anything from anyone; he doesn't expect sympathy. He knows what he did to himself. But it does give him a different perspective and may prolong his career. When you realized you missed a year, you want to make up for it. You want this career to go on for a long time because you know what not playing felt like." At 5 foot 9, Evans lacks the serving power of tennis's taller players like del Potro, who is 6 6. But Evans is scrappy off the ground, particularly with his running forehand pass down the line. He also possesses an effective one handed slice backhand. And he loves to volley, just as his countryman Henman did. As far as he has come over the last year, he knows he has still got a long way to go. "Listen, that episode in my life of being banned, it's over," Evans said. "Everyone forgave me as soon as I held my hands up and accepted the blame. But it's not easy to be happy with yourself day in and day out when the fact is, I was No. 41 in the world and I threw it all away." He added: "But to say that I've grown, that would be justifying it. There's no sort of philosophical looking back on it. It was the worst thing ever. Now, I'm just back trying to win tennis matches."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Sports
Minnesota Wild forward Matt Dumba walked to center ice before an N.H.L. game this month and addressed the television audience, not about the game but the need for the sport to fight racism. "The world woke up to the existence of systematic racism and how deeply rooted it is," Dumba said during a speech before two other teams, the Chicago Blackhawks and the Edmonton Oilers, took to the ice. That he spoke with the N.H.L.'s endorsement and while holding a microphone bearing its logo made the gesture all the more significant for a sport still grappling with high profile racist incidents and the perception that people of color Dumba is half Filipino aren't welcome. More than two months after the killing of George Floyd and the protest movement it has engendered, the N.H.L. has begun a high profile effort to make anti racism part of its identity and, according to the N.H.L. executive Kim Davis, part of a strategy to appeal to a younger, more racially diverse audience. "It's a small shift, but a big shift," said Davis, the league's executive vice president for social impact, who added that she wants "people to understand that doing the right thing is also right for the business." That has meant scenes and gestures at games once thought unthinkable. When he finished speaking and "The Star Spangled Banner" began, Dumba knelt and bowed his head. He wore a hoodie that read, "Hockey Diversity Alliance," the name of a new initiative begun by players to combat racism in the sport. Chicago goaltender Malcolm Subban, who is Black, stood next to Dumba and laid a hand on his right shoulder. Edmonton forward Darnell Nurse, who is Black, did the same on Dumba's left as the anthem played and slogans like "End Racism" and " WeSkateForBLACKLIVES" appeared on enormous video screens above their heads. A handful of other players have demonstrated during anthems before postseason qualifying games. Vegas Golden Knights and Dallas Stars players knelt last Monday. Dumba raised a fist during the United States national anthem before the Wild played the Vancouver Canucks on Aug. 2. The hockey world has been roiled by acts of bigotry. In April, a group Zoom chat organized by the Rangers to introduce fans to the prospect K'Andre Miller was derailed by hackers hurling racist slurs at him. Three months earlier, the American Hockey League suspended Brandon Manning of the Bakersfield Condors for using racist insults against Bokondji Imama of the Ontario Reign. Late in 2019, the former N.H.L. player Akim Aliu went public with a series of racist incidents including a minor league staff member donning blackface to mock him, and a coach using a racial slur he believes helped short circuit his career. Aliu's first revelations came three weeks after the veteran Canadian hockey commentator Don Cherry was forced to leave his widely watched "Coach's Corner" segment on the Sportsnet hockey broadcast after an on air rant against immigrants. Aliu also went public less than two weeks after the Toronto Maple Leafs fired Mike Babcock as coach amid allegations that he fostered a toxic, bullying workplace. That timing, said Damon Kwame Mason, who produced and directed a documentary on race and hockey, pushed mainstream hockey media to report more about racism and helped set the stage for the N.H.L.'s anti racism steps this summer. In June, Aliu joined with six other current and former N.H.L. players to form the Hockey Diversity Alliance, which will focus on youth and community engagement to carry out its mission. In July, a range of professional athletes appeared in a public service announcement for the group calling for an end to racism in hockey and in society. "It says to me that we're moving forward," said Mason, director of "Soul on Ice," the 2016 documentary on pro hockey's Black history. "It's almost like the old guard was being told, 'Pack your bags.'" Davis acknowledged that the protest movement in the United States made the league's anti racism action more urgent. But she emphasized that she has been helping the league develop a comprehensive diversity and inclusion strategy since she was hired in November 2017. The N.H.L. remains the only major North American sports league not to volunteer for an audit by the Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sport, which publishes widely read reports on race, gender and hiring in sports and the sports media industry. Davis said the league would work with the institute to establish baseline diversity statistics, and then set hiring targets. In the meantime, Davis pointed to pregame demonstrations and the roughly 140 players who have posted on social media in support of the league's anti racism message as proo f that the sport's culture can change.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Sports
It was a Monday, their night off. Dinner seemed like a good idea, giving them a chance to catch up away from the office, as it were. They placed their orders: salmon (Ms. Finneran), chicken and white wine (Mr. Short) and monkfish and a hot toddy (Mr. Broderick). It has been a busy year for Mr. Short, 64. He had a co starring role in the Fox comedy series "Mulaney" and in the film "Inherent Vice." His memoir, "I Must Say: My Life as a Humble Comedy Legend," was published in November. The book chronicles his childhood in Hamilton, Ontario; the deaths of his parents and a brother by the time he was 20 (he's the youngest of five); his tempestuous two year relationship with Gilda Radner; his time on "SCTV" and "Saturday Night Live;" the loss of his wife of 30 plus years, Nancy Dolman, to ovarian cancer in 2010; and the nature of grief. The problem, he said, is that most people don't know how to behave around those who are grieving. Rather than risk an uncomfortable conversation, they avoid talking about the deceased altogether. "They act as if the person never existed," he said. "I wrote the book to bring Nancy back to life." On Broadway, he is bringing to life a former stage actor turned TV star wrestling with career angst. Mr. Short's character is the best frenemy of Mr. Broderick's, a playwright. "It's Only a Play" takes place during the play within a play's opening night party at the home of a neophyte producer (Ms. Finneran).	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Fashion & Style
LOS ANGELES The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences concluded on Tuesday that an allegation of sexual harassment against its president had no merit, in the first test of new guidelines that the powerful Hollywood industry group enacted after a wave of accusations of inappropriate behavior rocked the entertainment industry. In a statement released after its regularly scheduled board meeting, the academy said that an internal investigation into allegations levied against John Bailey, who was elected as president of the group in August, had determined that "no further action was merited." Mr. Bailey, a cinematographer with credits ranging from "Ordinary People" in 1980 to "How to Be a Latin Lover" last year, had no immediate comment. He had previously disputed the allegations. The investigation focused on a claim submitted on March 13 by a woman who said Mr. Bailey, 75, attempted to touch her inappropriately while riding in a van on a movie set roughly a decade ago. The academy has not released the woman's name.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Media
I'M driving along a residential street in this Boston suburb when a woman steps off the sidewalk and beckons for me to stop. "What is that car?" she asks. I tell her it's a McLaren, the new MP4 12C. She wants to know horsepower, top speed, the usual things you'd wonder if you saw a vehicle this sinister prowling through your neighborhood. As I'm about to pull away, she asks the price. I tell her that it starts around 230,000, but this car is 270,690. "Well, you look hot in it!" she declares. The conclusion: If driving a 270,000 car amounts to fishing for compliments, the MP4 12C makes mighty fine bait. To my mind, that encounter was a neat slap down to the criticism most often directed at McLaren's latest supercar that it doesn't look wild enough. Too much time in the wind tunnel, the argument goes, and not enough time in the styling studio. Sure, maybe within the walls of Jay Leno's garage an MP4 12C looks tame, not nearly so otherworldly as that turbine powered creation from the auto show circuit that's parked in the corner. But out in the real world, this thing stops traffic. Literally. That doesn't happen in an unremarkable car. And I didn't even open the dihedral doors, which arc out and up in a brazen expression of engineering chutzpah. If you're really feeling starved for attention, drive around a parking lot with the doors open, looking as if you're caught in the talons of some predatory robot bird from the future. Until the MP4 12C arrived, McLaren's last home brewed road car was the almighty F1, a 240 mile an hour masterpiece regarded by many as the apogee of performance cars. In 2003 9, the company produced the Mercedes Benz SLR McLaren supercar while it continued its run as one of the top teams in Formula One. Like the F1, the MP4 12C is designed around the premise that high performance depends on low weight. The MP4 12C's carbon fiber MonoCell, the backbone of the car, weighs 165 pounds. The battery is lithium ion. Instead of placing the radiators at the front of the car, they're mounted longitudinally along the car's flanks, saving pounds in plumbing and coolant. (Air entering the gaping side scoops is turned 90 degrees, directing it through the radiators, to make this work.) Together, these tricks add up to a car that weighs as little as 2,868 pounds if you indulge in the Jenny Craig options (McLaren Super Lightweight Forged Wheels: that'll be 5,140, please). Even in its normal trim, the dry weight comes in comfortably under 3,000 pounds. The MP4 12C is so rife with tech nerd fodder that I could easily get sidetracked explaining why McLaren's standard cast iron brakes are actually lighter than the optional carbon ceramic rotors, or how the transmission's exceptionally compact design improves aerodynamics by assisting air flow under the rear diffuser. But you probably want to know how it drives. I'll get to that, right after I explain the air brake. Under hard braking, the rear wing angles upright into a position that helps stabilize the back end of the car. Because McLaren didn't want to add a heavy motor dedicated to just that task, the engineers piggybacked on the hydraulic system of the transmission to power the wing up to a 60 degree angle. After that, air flowing over the car pulls the wing into its fully deployed position. McLaren says the whole process takes only 700 milliseconds, but honestly, it seems to happen much quicker. A friend following me in his car said that he flinched the first time I braked hard enough to activate the air brake. "It popped up so fast, I thought part of the car was flying off," he said. Oh, those brakes: secure loose objects before summoning their full force. I think my wallet, sitting on the passenger seat, tried to go spelunking in the ventilation system during one particularly aggressive test of deceleration. The car doesn't dive much under braking, nor does it roll perceptibly in corners, thanks to an ingenious system called ProActive Chassis Control that links the hydraulic suspension cylinders at each corner of the car. The result is some sort of suspension tuning black magic, combining a supple ride with track ready athleticism that can be ratcheted up using a dashboard selector. The default mode is "normal," but I'd say it's pretty abnormal for a car like this to ride like a Mercedes sedan. And by "car like this," I mean one that runs through the quarter mile in less than 11 seconds, finishing at more than 130 m.p.h. That's outrageously fast. The McLaren reminds me of one of those annoying people so good at everything that they can act blase about their talents: "I don't really like football, but when the Steelers drafted me I thought, 'O.K., if this doesn't work out, I can probably still snag that MacArthur genius grant.' " Because of the muffling effects of its twin turbochargers, the MP4 12C's mid mounted 3.8 liter V 8 isn't quite as loud as a naturally aspirated engine would be. It's still a riotous, ferocious little motor, and whatever the turbochargers' effect on the soundtrack, it's more than compensated by their influence on the power output. And here we find another example of McLaren's mania for details: this is the first automaker I've ever encountered that quotes horsepower to two decimal places. The MP4 12C engine does not actually make 592 horsepower: it makes 591.79 horsepower. Or rather, it did. McLaren is upgrading the 2013 models with a bit more power, a change that will be offered free to owners of the 2012 models. The '13 MP4 12C is rated at 616 horsepower or, in McLaren's painstakingly precise conversion from the European rating, 616.45 horsepower. Top speed rises to 207 m.p.h., from 205. All that motive force is routed through a 7 speed dual clutch transmission, which brings me, naturally, to Philip K. Dick. In his 1956 story, "The Minority Report" (and the 2002 film adaptation starring Tom Cruise), precogs were people with psychic abilities who could foresee future crimes. In the McLaren, Pre Cog is a system that lets the driver ready the next gear for immediate engagement by pulling part way on the shift paddle, tipping off the transmission whether to expect a shift up or down. The car sees a vision of the future; it didn't ask for this power, but uses if for the greater good. There's a school of thought that contends the MP4 12C's relentless overall excellence somehow diminishes the emotional experience of driving, that despite the staggering performance it is a soulless Stepford supercar.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Automobiles
MRS. FLETCHER 10:30 p.m. on HBO. This series is based on Tom Perrotta's novel "Mrs. Fletcher," which was published in 2017 and tackles themes of misogyny, sexuality and female empowerment. Like the book, the limited series follows Eve Fletcher, a divorced mom (Kathryn Hahn) in her mid 40s, and her son Brendan (Jackson White), an entitled jock starting his freshman year at college, as they embark on respective journeys of sexual enlightenment. While Brendan struggles to connect with his political minded peers and confronts conversations about consent, Eve indulges in her newfound freedom by going down an internet pornography rabbit hole. "'Mrs. Fletcher' is a very right now show," Margaret Lyons wrote in her review for The New York Times. "It's one of many short run half hour dramedies about a woman entering a new phase of her life who discovers new vectors of sexuality and self actualization while also being treated shabbily." KILLER SIBLINGS 8 p.m. on Oxygen. When Lyle and Erik Menendez were convicted of murdering their wealthy parents, they became perhaps the highest profile case of killer siblings. "It led many to wonder what dark family history or twisted psychology might have led two privileged, handsome and self assured youths to do away with their parents in the most savage way," Kenneth B. Noble wrote in his coverage of the trial for The New York Times. "And it raised a question of almost biblical dimensions: Can a child ever be justified in murdering a parent?" This new true crime series delves deeper into that phenomenon, focusing on other cases of murderous siblings, starting with the Gustafsons, three siblings who sought revenge against the star witness in their brother's murder trial.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Television
It was a blog about her old dollhouse that reunited Eden Cayen with Gerard Sambets. Ms. Cayen had restored her childhood dollhouse after it was unearthed in her mother's barn upstate. She had furnished it with vintage dollhouse furniture, posting photos of her miniature projects at eloisemoorehead.com. Mr. Sambets, who manages the model shop at an architectural firm, found the blog online while researching miniature environments. He saw the author's photo and recognized his girlfriend from a decade before. "It was a mind blowing thing," he said. "I shot her an e mail." The two, who had first met in high school in upstate New York, got back together a year ago. Ms. Cayen was living with roommates in Morningside Heights, in Upper Manhattan, while Mr. Sambets had a roommate in Clinton Hill, Brooklyn. The distance between them was daunting, so they decided to find a rental of their own. It had to be large enough for all of their building projects, but they didn't want to pay more than 2,400 a month. Ms. Cayen contacted several agents whom she had approached in the past when considering a move to a studio of her own. One, Moran Khousravi of Bond New York, got in touch and sent Ms. Cayen to her colleague Eryn Korby, who was familiar with Brooklyn. In Fort Greene, a beautiful one bedroom for 2,395 was centrally located near Atlantic Terminal. But it was too small to contain all of their stuff. "I come from this huge apartment, so I have all this furniture," Ms. Cayen said. "I was thinking, 'Yeah, people would totally live here and be cool with it,' and I just couldn't." It was too new and shiny inside for her, too. "Gee, did we want to live in a huge apartment in the middle of nowhere, or a tiny little apartment in the middle of everything?" she said. "I preferred to live farther out and have more space in our home." So they went to see a place inside a row of lovely prewar town houses in Crown Heights for 1,895. When they arrived, the landlord was out front, sweeping and watering. The railroad style interior, all 1,100 square feet, had been restored with wood trim, fretwork and other touches. The enormous carpeted bedroom opened into a living room and then a dining/office/work area. "We are always getting into projects," Mr. Sambets said; this apartment had enough space "to make a mess if we need to and not have it be in the living space or the bedroom." There was also a cedar closet, as well as "a bunch of other storage y closets and shelves," Ms. Cayen said. The bathtub was so big "you could float in it." She loved it immediately. "Eden is very artsy and creative," Ms. Korby said. "She didn't want a bland, vanilla apartment." They applied that day, but it was still early in their hunt. Mr. Sambets checked out a condo turned rental in Crown Heights, just a few blocks from the bar. But the price was on the high end, 2,250. Ms. Cayen wasn't available to see it, but Mr. Sambets knew she wouldn't like its modern style, or the immediate block, which was home to several automotive shops. A prewar building in Prospect Lefferts Gardens was also in a problematic neighborhood. It had a two bedroom being renovated, at just 2,000. But the unit faced a post office, and Ms. Cayen feared mail trucks would be idling and loading in the early hours. The brownstone on Eastern Parkway was the one for them. But their application was inexplicably in limbo, and the agent was elusive. At last, Ms. Korby was able to shepherd the process along, and the couple moved in midsummer, paying a broker fee of 15 percent of a year's rent, or around 3,400. They were alarmed, initially, by the rumble of the subway passing beneath. They first heard it when the place was empty, "and it sounded so loud, and we were, like, what did we just move into?" Mr. Sambets said. Being saddled with such an unexpected defect "has got to be the worst fear of moving." But the rumble isn't especially bothersome now, and they have adjusted. Ms. Cayen is making further "adjustments to my way of life, like my daily life," she said. To start with, she must leave for work 45 minutes earlier. Also, in her old neighborhood, "I could just run outside and get a thing of milk, and I miss that a lot," she said. "It is easier for me to just get stuff by my job, because it's all so familiar." Until she located a dry cleaner, she was hauling her dry cleaning to her work neighborhood, as well. And their building doesn't have a laundry room. "We are dealing with a laundromat, which is four or five blocks away, which is three or four blocks farther than I want to walk," Mr. Sambets said. They drop their laundry off, "because we don't have time to sit there and do it," Ms. Cayen said. Inside the apartment, they are having fun tinkering and decorating. They replaced the kitchen faucet and added a bedroom door. They are reupholstering chairs. Mr. Sambets has a whole closet stuffed with tools. "I come home and am like, wow," he said. "It is very much of a home."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Real Estate
The new restrictions do not apply to menthol, mint or tobacco flavors, which the F.D.A. wants to keep available for adults who are using e cigarettes to quit smoking combustible cigarettes. The F.D.A. will also track youth use of menthol and mint e cigarettes, Dr. Gottlieb said. If they become too popular, he added, the F.D.A. will reconsider the exemption. Such a move would be especially harmful to Juul Labs. The vaping giant, under F.D.A. pressure, has already moved sales of its flavored e cigarettes online, except for menthol, mint and tobacco, which it sells in stores. But some public health advocates say the moves are too late. "While this announcement sounds big and bold, it isn't really," said Micah Berman, an associate professor at The Ohio State University College of Public Health and Moritz College of Law. "The F.D.A.'s announcement exempts mint/menthol, which is the most popular flavor with kids and one that makes it easier to initiate use. And in any event, most kids are getting these products online or through older friends, not buying them in convenience stores." The proposal also calls for banning the sale of many flavored cigars. "The data also indicate that eliminating flavors from cigars would likely help prevent cigar initiation by young people," Dr. Gottlieb said. Under the new plan, cigar companies would have 30 days to remove the products from the market, and would have to apply for F.D.A. approval to go back on the shelves. In addition, all e cigarettes, cigars and related products not on the market by Feb. 15, 2007, must seek F.D.A. approval to sell them by August 2021. As part of their application, manufacturers must prove that their products are beneficial to public health. The agency's original deadline for these products to comply with new, tougher regulations was extended by Dr. Gottlieb from August 2018 to 2022. Wednesday's action chops one year off that extension. The plan issued on Wednesday is still a draft, and must undergo a 30 day comment period before it can be finalized. It's an unusual regulatory approach, neither a new rule, nor a voluntary guideline. Instead, the F.D.A. is telling e cigarette makers that if their products are sold in violation of this request, they can be taken off the market, and forced to apply for agency approval. The F.D.A. can do this under its discretionary enforcement authority. Dr. Gottlieb is scheduled to have stepped down by that time, and Dr. Norman E. (Ned) Sharpless, director of the National Cancer Institute, was named this week to replace him as acting commissioner.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Health
The script includes helpful stage direction, and it might have been nice if someone had said it out loud: "This is a theatrical seance. ... We will try and fail and try again and ask for a commitment to our fellow humans sharing our air." This at least is clarifying. Later, the cast and a few audience members enthusiastically rip foil from Jack's walls. (Layers and layers and layers of aluminum have silvered the space since it opened; it will all be gone by the end of the show's run.) And Ms. Khosh delivers a more straightforward monologue, a series of questions that asks everyone to imagine the consequences of his or her death: "Will they realize your passionate love of Bach got you in trouble? Will there be a transcendent beer made in your name?" There's a faux naive refrain: "Will there be hugs?" Since Jack opened in 2012, Mr. Burke has presented several plays there. Once, he stuck actors in a spiderweb above the audience; another time, he brought in a bunch of dogs. Like "Variations on the Main," these were theatrical experiments that never quite proved their hypotheses. But it was nice to know that New York still had spaces for the vanguard and bizarre. And so it is nice to be at "Variations on the Main," though it's cutesy and too abstract, and the leaf blowers, which send foil scraps and flower petals winging through the space, are a bit much. Even in its nonsensical moments, the play asks us to be, to breathe, to think about what it means to scarf down air, together, in a space that will soon be empty of everything but air.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Theater
Welcome to Best of Late Night, a rundown of the previous night's highlights that lets you sleep and lets us get paid to watch comedy. If you're interested in hearing from The Times regularly about great TV, sign up for our Watching newsletter and get recommendations straight to your inbox. Michael Avenatti, the lawyer famous for representing Stormy Daniels, has been indicted on 36 charges of fraud, perjury, embezzlement, failure to pay taxes and other financial crimes. The indictment, which was made public Thursday, states that Avenatti stole millions of dollars from five clients and used that money to buy his own private jet and fund a racing team. Seth Meyers got stuck on that last point. "How is this the first we're hearing of Michael Avenatti's racecar team? That's the dead giveaway that someone is bad news: The racecar track is where James Bond meets the villain for the first time as he's pulling off his helmet and his racing gloves." SETH MEYERS "Also, did you not see 'Goodfellas'? When you rip people off you gotta play it cool with the money. You're like the guy who buys a Ferrari and asks for the vanity plate, 'BNK RBBR.'" SETH MEYERS	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Television
"Greetings, folks," the email began, addressing a BCC ed list of recipients to which I was sure I had been added by mistake. I read it twice, three times, refreshed the page. Because it's not every day that you hear from Yvonne Rainer the choreographer, dancer, writer, filmmaker and game changing force in dance history with an invitation to dance in her work. Yet here she was, one morning in September, looking for 45 people to take part in a new film of her roughly five minute masterpiece from 1966, "Trio A." Each of us, she explained, would perform seven seconds of the choreography, which, though not so easy to do, has come to epitomize the anyone can do it aesthetic of early postmodern dance. In the same vein, but with a much different subject, he was planning to slow down "Trio A," a work defined by its anti virtuosity and refusal of the spectator. (Even when facing front, the dancer never looks directly at the audience.) Each seven second phrase, recorded at 1,000 frames per second, would stretch to about five minutes in the final work, an installation that opens at Danspace Project on Friday, June 23. The shoot would take place over four days in December at Baryshnikov Arts Center. I accepted the invitation right away, still half expecting to find out it wasn't intended for me. I danced for 20 years, nine on and off professionally, but had been on an indefinite hiatus for nearly three. I was taking dance class occasionally but had stopped performing altogether. I didn't quite consider myself a "former dancer" that felt too conclusive but I was on my way. Hence my delight at this message from Ms. Rainer. In 2015, while writing about her latest piece at 82, she's still making and performing in new work I learned parts of "Trio A" at a workshop taught by her and Emily Coates (a member of her company, the Raindears). I never imagined, though, that I would dance it in a context other than a class or my living room. Or that I would be part of a cast including Jodi Melnick, David Thomson, Richard Move and so many other performers I admire even for just seven seconds. Yet seven seconds of "Trio A" isn't nothing. Created at a time when Ms. Rainer, a founder of the renegade collective Judson Dance Theater, was throwing open definitions of who could be a dancer and what constituted dance, the piece is often described as "pedestrian." You don't have to be a trained dancer to learn it. But as much as it incorporates everyday movement running, skipping it's also loaded with detail and with awkward juxtapositions, like tapping one toe in a semicircle, from front to back, as the torso slouches and straightens. (Try it.) And while there's little continuity to the steps one doesn't flow naturally into the next, and no movement repeats they're meant to be danced with an even, uninterrupted energy. Ideally the dancer imbues each moment be it the part that looks like winding up for a pitch or the half somersault known informally as the turtle with the same amount of effort, or appears to. Balancing this relaxed evenness with precision is, to me, the work's greatest challenge and contradiction. "Trio A," originally "The Mind Is a Muscle, Part 1," was first danced by Ms. Rainer, Steve Paxton and David Gordon at Judson Memorial Church: the same choreography done concurrently by three people, each moving at his or her own pace. (While it was initially accompanied by the crash of wooden slats dropping from the church balcony, Ms. Rainer decided in 1968 to lose the soundtrack, and it's now danced in silence.) At an early rehearsal, she recalls in her book "Work 1961 73," Mr. Gordon was doing something that "looked strange." "I asked him what kind of imagery he was using," she writes. "He said 'I'm thinking of myself as a faun.' I said 'Try thinking of yourself as a barrel.'" I didn't receive that particular note on the set of "Slow Dancing/Trio A," though the more I think about it, the more on point it seems, encapsulating Ms. Rainer's rejection, at the time, of the mythic and spectacular in favor of the utilitarian and everyday. I did, however, receive other illuminating pointers from Pat Catterson Ms. Rainer's rehearsal assistant and a member of her company whose clarity in teaching assuaged my fear that I, in my lapsed dancer state, was underprepared. Ms. Catterson had sent notes to the cast in advance, reminders about the overall movement quality. For instance: "If you were picking up your backpack and carrying it across the room and putting it down, you would use just the energy it takes to do it. It is the same with this dance." I had hoped to practice my seven seconds at home, but Ms. Catterson didn't assign our phrases until we arrived at the shoot, perhaps hoping to deter us from overthinking or rehearsing incorrectly on our own. I was relieved to find out that mine was one I remembered, at least vaguely, from the 2015 workshop, so I wasn't starting from scratch. After warming up and choosing what to wear with the wardrobe supervisor (we were asked to bring our own "pedestrian street clothes"), I met with Ms. Catterson outside the studio where filming was underway. She walked me through my phrase, stressing that I should finish each "event" the coordinated sweeping back of a leg and both arms, or the flicking up of the palms while jumping forward onto one foot before starting the next. No slurring together of movements or, on the other hand, accenting anything too sharply. I wasn't the only one craving more time. "I wish I had a whole day to practice," said Ms. Whelan, the former New York City Ballet principal, who happened to be right before me in the lineup. (My section picked up where hers left off, putting me in the position of literally filling in for Wendy Whelan, a first for me, and probably a last.) With my part out of the way, I watched others do theirs: Patricia Hoffbauer, Patrick Gallagher and then, in an unexpected appearance, Ms. Rainer herself. With a few assists from Ms. Catterson, she danced "Trio A" from start to finish, grumbling through some parts and breezing through others. Ms. Rainer left dance making for filmmaking in the 1970s and, since returning in 2000, has been a regular presence onstage, in her own work and beyond. The rules that she rejected in the '60s persist in some spheres of the dance world, but she keeps giving us permission: to be who we are, to change, to leave and come back.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Dance
Suffering. The very word made doctors uncomfortable. Medical journals avoided it, instructing authors to say that patients " 'have' a disease or complications or side effects rather than 'suffer' or 'suffer from' them," said Dr. Thomas H. Lee, the chief medical officer of Press Ganey, a company that surveys hospital patients. But now, reducing patient suffering the kind caused not by disease but by medical care itself has become a medical goal. The effort is driven partly by competition and partly by a realization that suffering, whether from long waits, inadequate explanations or feeling lost in the shuffle, is a real and pressing issue. It is as important, says Dr. Kenneth Sands, the chief quality officer at Harvard's Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, as injuries, like medication errors or falls, or infections acquired in a hospital. The problem is how to measure it and what to do about it. Dr. Sands and his colleagues decided to start by asking their own patients what made them suffer. They found several categories. Communications for example, a doctor blurting out, "Oh, it looks like you have cancer." Or losing a valuable, like a wedding ring. Or loss of privacy a doctor discussing a patient's medical condition where an adjacent patient could hear. "These are harms," Dr. Sands said. "They elicit suffering. They can be long lasting, and they currently are largely unquantified, uncounted, unrecorded." One way to quantify these harms is to observe and note them, which is part of what Beth Israel Deaconess is doing. Another is to supplement efforts with patient surveys. Patient surveys, of course, have been around for decades. And since 2007, Medicare has required short surveys after discharge. But patient surveys were usually not used by hospitals to measure suffering. Now they are. And even when a survey question does not directly ask about suffering, sharp eyed administrators are seeing a suffering component. That is how Dr. Michael Bennick, the medical director for patient experience at Yale New Haven Hospital, solved a problem. He noticed a question on a Medicare survey asking, Is it quiet in your room at night? Maybe, Dr. Bennick thought, what is really being asked is: Can you get a good night's sleep without interruption? Is it really necessary to wake patients again and again to take blood pressure and pulse rates, to draw blood, to give medications? He issued instructions for his unit. No more routinely awakening patients for vital signs. And plan the timing of medications; outside intensive care units, three quarters of drugs can be given before patients go to sleep and again in the morning. Then there were the blood tests. "Doctors love blood tests," Dr. Bennick said, and want results first thing in the morning when they make rounds. That meant waking patients in the wee hours. "I told the resident doctors in training: 'If you are waking patients at 4 in the morning for a blood test, there obviously is a clinical need. So I want to be woken, too, so I can find out what it is.' " No one, he said, ever called him. Those middle of the night blood draws vanished. Without anything else being done about noise in the halls, the medical unit's score on that question rose from the 16th percentile to the 47th nationally in the Medicare survey. Now the entire hospital follows that plan. "And it did not cost a penny," Dr. Bennick said. "The only cost was thinking not from our perspective but from a patient's perspective." Dr. Lee says he joined Press Ganey he had been network president for Partners HealthCare System, a Harvard affiliated hospital system because one of its goals was to reduce suffering. At first, he said, he was a bit uncomfortable with the concept. "I wondered whether it was a tad sensational, a bit too emotional," he wrote in The New England Journal of Medicine. Then he realized reducing suffering was one of the most important challenges in health care. Press Ganey administers detailed surveys to discharged patients, asking things like how well the medical staff responded to them and their emotional needs, and how well the doctors and nurses informed and educated them. The company also encourages hospitals to let doctors know the results. Surveys can be misleading, though, cautions Dr. Scott Ramsey, a health care economist and cancer researcher at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle. Patients, worried about saying something bad about a hospital they depend on, may not reveal what they really experienced. Or they may look back and, not wanting to live a life of regrets, excuse a doctor who seemed not to listen. On the other hand, Dr. Ramsey said, the suffering issues are real, and if survey answers can get doctors and hospitals to change their ways, "that is great." Although half the nation's hospitals use Press Ganey surveys, it is not clear what many do with the data. But at some places, like the University of Utah, the survey and other efforts prompted significant change. One Utah doctor said he was stunned when his patients rated him in the first percentile nationally, about as low as a score can go. "I was thinking: That's just crazy. Something wasn't entered right," said the doctor, James Ashworth. Then he decided to take the criticisms to heart. The next quarter, he was rated in the upper 90s. The big difference was slowing down and listening to patients, answering their questions. Utah began its program a few years ago by showing its 1,200 doctors, nurses and other workers their scores. Next, said Dr. Vivian S. Lee, the hospital system's chief executive, they showed them how colleagues did. Then they posted individuals' scores and patient comments online. There was an immediate and noticeable change. When the university began, it was in about the 30th percentile nationally on the Press Ganey survey. Now, half its providers are in the 90th percentile and 26 percent are in the 99th percentile.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Health
On Instagram, in a post that was widely viewed and shared, Ms. Nyong'o rejected the magazine's use of the image. As I have made clear so often in the past with every fiber of my being, I embrace my natural heritage and despite having grown up thinking light skin and straight, silky hair were the standards of beauty, I now know that my dark skin and kinky, coily hair are beautiful too. Being featured on the cover of a magazine fulfills me as it is an opportunity to show other dark, kinky haired people, and particularly our children, that they are beautiful just the way they are. I am disappointed that graziauk invited me to be on their cover and then edited out and smoothed my hair to fit their notion of what beautiful hair looks like. Had I been consulted, I would have explained that I cannot support or condone the omission of what is my native heritage with the intention that they appreciate that there is still a very long way to go to combat the unconscious prejudice against black women's complexion, hair style and texture. Ms. Nyong'o affixed the hashtag dtmh, the acronym for the song "Don't Touch My Hair," by Solange Knowles. The London Evening Standard magazine apologized to Ms. Knowles last month for removing a significant portion of her hair from an image that appeared on the cover of its October edition. In September, the hip hop artist Nicki Minaj called out magazines for altering her hair while not doing the same to women of other races. "For years, fashion mags would change my hair for their covers but allow women of a diff race to wear the exact style on the cover," she said on Twitter. On Friday, Grazia magazine issued a statement apologizing to Ms. Nyong'o but deflecting blame for the image alteration. Grazia is committed to representing diversity throughout its pages and apologizes unreservedly to Lupita Nyong'o. Grazia magazine would like to make it clear that at no point did they make any editorial request to the photographer for Lupita Nyong'o's hair to be altered on this week's cover, nor did we alter it ourselves. But we apologize unreservedly for not upholding the highest of editorial standards in ensuring that we were aware of all alterations that had been made. Jess Blake, the communications director at Bauer Media UK, a media business to which Grazia belongs, declined to answer an emailed question about how the alteration occurred during the editing process. She said that the photographer was An Le. In a statement released on Sunday through a crisis management company, Mr. Le apologized, writing: I've had some time to reflect on my part in the incident involving Grazia and Ms. Nyong'o. I realize now what an incredibly monumental mistake I have made and I would like to take this time to apologize to Ms. Nyong'o and everyone else that I did offend. Though it was not my intention to hurt anyone, I can see now that altering the image of her hair was an unbelievably damaging and hurtful act. As an immigrant myself, it is my duty to be an advocate for the representation of diversity of beauty in this industry. I will demonstrate this in my work even more going forward. Mr. Le added that his "altering of her image was not born out of any hate but instead out of my own ignorance and insensitivity to the constant slighting of women of color throughout the different media platforms." Ms. Nyong'o was born in Mexico and grew up in Kenya. She graduated from the Yale School of Drama in 2012, and won an Academy Award for her role as Patsey, a tormented young slave in the 2013 movie "12 Years a Slave," her first feature film. In 2014, she became a face of the beauty brand Lancome. Her other credits include the more recent "Star Wars" films.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Style
'THE MYSTERIOUS LANDSCAPES OF HERCULES SEGERS' at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (through May 21). This is the largest exhibition yet devoted to Segers, an under known Dutch master whose printmaking innovations, talent for contrasting textures and predilection for rendering each sheet a unique artwork resulted in images that are tantamount to small paintings. They influenced Rembrandt, may qualify as some of the world's first Process Art, presage Surrealism and still look strange and radical. Segers loved mountains: It probably helped that he never actually saw one. (Roberta Smith) 212 535 7710, metmuseum.org 'GEORGIA O'KEEFFE: LIVING MODERN' at the Brooklyn Museum (through July 23). Given that most artists are to some extent dandies, it would be wrong to view this fascinating show through an exclusively feminist lens. It does, however, demonstrate the powerful, carefully cultivated aesthetic and inborn independence that connects the art, wardrobe, living spaces and public persona of America's first celebrity artist. In and around her art, she redefined gender and style. (Smith) 718 638 5000, brooklynmuseum.org 'TURNER'S MODERN AND ANCIENT PORTS: PASSAGES THROUGH TIME' at the Frick Collection (through May 14). In a luminous new show, the great 19th century maritime painter J. M. W. Turner explores Britain's waterfront gateways to Europe with the ravenous eye of a man long deprived of travel. (Along with his fellow Brits, Turner had endured nearly two decades of restrictions on visiting the Continent during the Napoleonic wars.) Surrounding the Frick's two grand Turner paintings of Dieppe, France, and Cologne, Germany, with loans from the Tate and other museums, the exhibition is an enchanting look at the port in reality a noisy, smelly, workaday environment, but in Turner's hands a magical place of exposure and possibility where cultures meet, time is elastic and golden light abounds. (Karen Rosenberg) 212 288 0700, frick.org. 'VISIONARIES: CREATING A MODERN GUGGENHEIM' at the Guggenheim Museum (through Sept. 6). Of New York City's major museum collections, the Guggenheim's is the hardest to see, because so little of it is usually on view. Blame Frank Lloyd Wright's design, that big, empty well of light and air with a little art up the sides. But now, as if answering a hunger maybe its own 170 pieces from the museum's holding, mostly paintings, with a few sculptures, fill the rotunda in what adds up to a classic greatest hits display. It could be a snooze, but isn't, because a lot of these hits by Kandinsky, Klee and Pollock, really are great, and some of the less familiar stuff is, too. (Cotter) 212 423 3500, guggenheim.org	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Art & Design
In her 2008 Modern Love essay "Take Me As I Am, Whoever I Am," Terri Cheney, then an entertainment lawyer, writes about her struggles with bipolar disorder, revealing how she hid her condition from boyfriends, colleagues and others who were close to her before ultimately going public. Now her story has been adapted for the small screen, in the new "Modern Love" television series on Amazon Prime Video. (You can watch a clip below, and stream the full episode here.) You can also read my interviews with the writers Ann Leary ("Rallying to Keep the Game Alive"), Deborah Copaken ("When Cupid Is a Prying Journalist") and Julie Margaret Hogben ("When the Doorman Is Your Main Man"), whose essays also inspired episodes. Daniel Jones: Your story is about how, for so long, you completely hid the fact that you were bipolar. Then you wrote about it for Modern Love, wrote a best selling book about it, and now it's an episode of the Modern Love series, revealing you to even more people all around the world. How scared were you in the first place about going public with this? Terri Cheney: I was terrified. Other than my doctors, very few people knew what was going on with me. I would just disappear from the world so nobody saw. And at work , I was productive and on top of my game. I was able to make up all the work that I had fallen behind on, and it had been the same with school. But I was continuously terrified that someone would find out and I would get fired or no one would ever love me. And what happened after the essay came out? It was astonishing. So many people contacted me. A lot by people who identified with me, but also people asking me to do speaking engagements. I also got a marriage proposal. Yeah, some guy who'd read the Modern Love column and thought I deserved love. By email or some other way? By email. It was one of my regrets that I didn't respond because I was so overwhelmed by emails at that point. I was getting hundreds and hundreds of them. It was such a wonderful and stressful time because I felt like everybody suddenly knew me and I started getting contacted by all sorts of people from my past, particularly people I had worked with who said, "You know, we always wondered about you, but we never really knew what it was." I think they were trying to be nice. Sign up for Love Letter, our weekly email. And catch up on all things Modern Love. Was it a relief to you when people would say, "We always wondered?" Or was that sort of retroactively disturbing? It was disturbing. I thought I had hid it better. I thought I was pretty neutral in my presentation. But, of course, I wasn't, and being bipolar wasn't as well known as it is today. This was back in 2008. Were they clued in by both ends of your behavior, your highs and your lows? I mean, was it that you were overly productive or manic but also you'd had a bad attendance record and would you just stay away when you were depressive? I think it was my disappearances that people wondered about. But I never lost a single job. I never got any kind of recrimination professionally, but I would just disappear. And people didn't work from home then as much as they do now. I ended up going part time to be a little more invisible and did even better part time than I did full time. That again was astonishing to me. When you would disappear, were you still working but didn't want people to see you? Or could you just not work? I couldn't do anything. I would be curled up in a fetal position in bed, unable to move. The worst part of my depression is what they call psychomotor retardation, where I simply cannot move. I can barely get up to go to the kitchen or the bathroom and I just lie there and can't answer the phone. Yeah. The messages would pile up. That was the worst part, not being able to answer all the messages. I became very creative with excuses, as you can imagine, because I've had this since I was a child. Back then I would disappear and I always had physical ailments that I came up with. My mother was a nurse and we always had medical books around the house. I was very creative with my symptoms. You would create the excuses for different ailments? I would read the Merck manual and come up with something that I was sick with. Your mother was in on that with you? My parents didn't know what to make of me because I was such a stellar student. I always got straight A's, and because I performed so well at school and I wasn't a bad kid, they just thought I was eccentric. Again, it was not talked about when I was growing up, but I certainly would hope that any parent now would realize it's not normal for your child to stay in bed for days at a time and not be able to move and cry. This episode will certainly make a lot of people more aware of it. The way Anne Hathaway portrays a lot of what you went through is so powerful. I had a terrific conversation with her about portraying depression and what it feels like and how everything slows down, and she seemed to really get it. I know that John Carney, who wrote and directed the episode, and Anne both wanted to be really careful about how this was portrayed. They were so sensitive to it and I was so happy after I talked to them because they seemed to want to know what it was like from the inside, not just the stereotype. I remember Anne asking about the depression, what it looked like, and I told her about movement being extremely slow. Like you were carrying a really heavy burden all the time and you couldn't move. With John, he mentioned wanting to do the manic episode like "La La Land," and I thought that was brilliant because that's the way it is. Everything's so bright. You are Mary Tyler Moore in her opening sequence. Bring us up to today, if you would, with your love life, your personal life. What's happening? It's been almost 12 years since you published the essay. Well, I stopped being a lawyer. My book, "Manic," became a New York Times best seller and an L.A. Times best seller and was translated into eight foreign languages. I wrote a second book a few years later, "The Dark Side of Innocence," about my childhood growing up bipolar. And I just finished my third book that will come out next fall. It's called "Tell Me Where It Hurts: A Manual to Modern Madness." People don't like to put labels on relationships these days. No, it's too complicated. The men that I've dated have almost all read "Manic." It's almost like a prerequisite. If you're going to get involved with me, here are the things you need to know. I was going to ask you because it seems like by writing about it you've got yourself off the hook of having to explain, of having to break that news. It's a relief. At first, it's a little weird because they know all about me and I know nothing about them on the first date, which makes for a very lopsided relationship early on. But anybody who knows I'm bipolar and wants to date me is going to be so far ahead of the game for me. It's been a great weeding out process. Yes. Many men have asked me about Jeff and whether Jeff is back in my life or not, and unfortunately, I never heard from him again. I had hoped when the Modern Love piece came out that he might contact me, but I never did hear from him. I still go to the same grocery store, sometimes hoping I'll see him, but I never have. At the end of the essay, you say it's five years since the Jeff experience and your moods have stabilized and that you had found a good medication plan. Yes, I have a terrific treatment team that manages my medication; they've been with me for about 15 years. But I still experience mood swings, not to the same extent with mania, but certainly with depression. It's not a disease that can be cured, but it can be managed. One of the most important things is being open and honest about it and getting support. I'm still scared of telling people I'm bipolar and I'm still amazed by the number of people who come back and say, "Well, so is my sister," or "I am too," or "My best friend is." I really think the stigma, although it still exists, is much, much less than it used to be. I hope that viewers will have the same experience that my readers have had that they're not alone. My new book is geared toward that, toward loved ones and friends and family who just don't know what to do about it. I'm hoping that the more it's demythologized, the better we're all going to be. I think the reach of this episode will go a long way. It's easy to sensationalize manic depression, but you want it to be truthful and that's really been important to me. In an interview, Anne Hathaway said she was relieved to be able to walk away, and it gave her so much empathy for people who have to live with illness every single day. That touched me.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Style
Members of the far right boogaloo movement at a demonstration against the coronavirus lockdown at the State House in Concord, N.H. People and groups associated with the movement will be barred from Facebook and Instagram. Facebook said on Tuesday that it took down a network of accounts, groups and pages connected to an antigovernment movement in the United States that encourages violence. People and groups associated with the decentralized movement, called boogaloo, will be banned from Facebook and Instagram, which Facebook also owns, the company said. Facebook said it had removed 220 Facebook accounts, 95 Instagram accounts, 28 pages and 106 groups as a result of the decision. It is also designating boogaloo as a dangerous organization on the social network, meaning it shares the same classification as terrorist activity, organized hate and large scale criminal organizations on Facebook. As a result, Facebook said it would ban people and organizations linked to boogaloo, and remove content that praises, supports and represents the movement. The boogaloo network promoted "violence against civilians, law enforcement, and government officials and institutions," the company wrote in a blog post. "Members of this network seek to recruit others within the broader boogaloo movement, sharing the same content online and adopting the same offline appearance as others in the movement to do so." The decision is the latest in a flurry of recent moves by tech companies to tighten the speech allowed on their popular services and more aggressively police extreme movements. The issue has become more pronounced in recent weeks after the death of George Floyd, a Black man in Minneapolis who was killed in police custody last month. The killing set off major protests across the country demanding changes to police departments and the treatment of Black people more broadly. On Monday, Reddit said it was banning roughly 2,000 communities from across the political spectrum that attacked people or regularly engaged in hate speech, including "r/The Donald," a community devoted to President Trump. YouTube said it barred six channels for violating its policies, including those of two prominent white supremacists, David Duke and Richard Spencer. Facebook's changes have so far largely focused on the boogaloo movement and white supremacy hate groups. In May, Facebook said it updated its policies to ban the use of "boogaloo" and related terms when used in posts that contain depictions of armed violence. The company said it had identified and removed over 800 posts tied to boogaloo over the past two months because they defied its Violence and Incitement policy, and that it did not recommend pages and groups referencing the movement to others on the social network. This month, the company said that it had removed two networks of accounts connected to white supremacy groups that encouraged real world violence. Followers of the boogaloo movement seek to exploit public unrest to incite a race war that will bring about a new government. Its adherents are usually staunch defenders of the Second Amendment, and some use Nazi iconography and its extremist symbols, according to organizations that track hate groups. "Boogaloo" is a pop culture reference derived from a 1984 movie called "Breakin' 2: Electric Boogaloo" that became a cult classic. Online, it has been connected to what some consider sarcastic and humorous memes, as well as with occasional physical violence and militaristic shows of force. In June, the Federal Bureau of Investigation arrested three men in Nevada who called themselves members of the boogaloo movement, accusing them of trying to incite violence at an anti police protest in Las Vegas. In May, police officers in Denver seized three assault rifles, magazines, several bulletproof vests and other military equipment from the car trunk of a self identified boogaloo follower who was headed to a Black Lives Matter protest and had previously live streamed his support for armed confrontations with the police. In addition to the boogaloo network, Facebook said it would also remove 400 public and private groups and more than a hundred pages that also violate its Dangerous Individuals and Organizations policy. Alex Stamos, director of the Stanford Internet Observatory and the former chief security officer at Facebook, said the company's dangerous organizations policy came out of the fight to kick the terrorist group ISIS off social media. Facebook said it would continue to identify and remove attempts by members of the boogaloo movement to return to the social network. Graham Brookie, director of the Atlantic Council's Digital Forensic Research Lab, which studies disinformation, applauded Facebook's crackdown on Tuesday. "The Dangerous Individuals policy at Facebook mirrors the language of law enforcement, and meets a high threshold of online harms that lead to direct action in the real world," Mr. Brookie said. "Limiting the online conversation that leads to that action is a good thing and a public safety issue." Emerson Brooking, a resident fellow at the Atlantic Council's Digital Forensic Research Lab, said that deciding which posts linked to the boogaloo movement could stay up and what should be taken down had always been "a content moderation nightmare" for social networks. "Many adherents can claim, truthfully, that they do not engage in violence or advocate for white nationalism," he said. "As a result, it has evaded content moderation policies for several months." With its announcement, he said, Facebook demonstrated an understanding of how harmful the boogaloo movement was.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Technology
LOS ANGELES If controversy sells, HBO may suddenly have a hit in Alex Gibney's new documentary about Scientology and renegades who left it behind. On Friday, the Church of Scientology took aim at the movie which its members and leaders have not yet seen with full page newspaper advertisements in The New York Times and elsewhere detailing what it says are journalistic lapses by Mr. Gibney. In a pointed reference to a much challenged magazine article about a campus rape at the University of Virginia, the ads ask whether the movie, called "Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief," is "a Rolling Stone/UVA Redux." The film is based on a book written by Lawrence Wright, who is a producer of the documentary. The critique guarantees a combustible debut for a movie that is scheduled to make its premiere at the Sundance Film Festival on Jan. 25, and will screen in a small number of theaters before reaching a wide audience on HBO, beginning on March 16. The church's forceful response risks calling attention to what might have seemed like old news. Scientology has already been closely investigated by Mr. Wright and others. A similar campaign in 2013 by SeaWorld against the documentary "Blackfish," about orcas in captivity, did nothing to dampen the film's popularity when it was broadcast later on CNN. But media flare ups around accusations of sexual misconduct by Woody Allen and Bill Cosby denied by both have also shown that past claims can ignite new problems. "Going Clear" arrives at Sundance as one of a cluster of volatile documentaries. While part happenstance, film agents say directors are leaning harder into controversy courting topics as a way to cut through the clutter of television and video on demand services, where a lot of these films now primarily play. Sundance bills "The Hunting Ground" as a "startling expose of rape crimes." Marc Silver's "3 1/2 Minutes" is a topical examination of racism in the American criminal justice system, while "Pervert Park" works to humanize pedophiles. "Among documentaries, we're seeing an increased shift toward topics that punch you in the gut," said John Cooper, the Sundance director. In its ad and in an interview with representatives, the church said Mr. Gibney had rejected its 12 requests for an opportunity to address accusations, while asking instead for interviews with the church leader, David Miscavige, and celebrity adherents that include Tom Cruise, John Travolta and others. In a statement, Mr. Gibney on Thursday said he had "requested interviews with various people including current church members and officials who could shed light on specific incidents discussed in the film." All of those asked, he added, "either declined, did not respond or set unreasonable conditions." Separately, HBO said in a statement that it was customary in making documentaries to request on camera interviews from those involved in relevant events. "This film identifies those that were approached," the statement added. Speaking on Tuesday, several church representatives said the refusal to disclose the film's assertions was unusual and unfair. "In my 40 years of experience, this has never happened," said Anthony Michael Glassman, a lawyer who has represented Scientology in media related cases. The church representatives said they were making no attempt to block the Sundance screening. But they said they were entitled to address claims in a movie that was built heavily around on camera interviews with Paul Haggis, Marty Rathbun, Michael Rinder, Jason Beghe and other former adherents who have painted a picture of declining membership and abusive practices within the church. Interviewed last week, Mr. Gibney said his film was still undergoing a legal review, and that a version shared by digital link at that point might change slightly. He said he was confident of the film's solidity, but acknowledged having received sharp queries from church representatives who "seem to be warning us, but warning us without knowing" what is in the movie. What happened on Day 2 of Elizabeth Holmes's testimony. Kevin Spacey was ordered to pay 31 million to the 'House of Cards' studio after sexual harassment allegations. Mr. Gibney said he had been working on the film for about two years. Scientology representatives said he first broached the subject of interviewing Mr. Miscavige and others last October. A prolific documentarian, Mr. Gibney won an Oscar in 2008 for "Taxi to the Dark Side," about the use of torture by the United States in the war on terror. He said he had frequently been asked to explore Scientology as a subject, but "actually wasn't that interested." He became intrigued with Mr. Wright's book, "Going Clear: Scientology, Hollywood and the Prison of Belief," which was published in January 2013. Most alluring, said Mr. Gibney, was the book's underlying theme, which, in Mr. Gibney's words, explores "how people become prisoners of faith in various ways." (Mr. Gibney describes himself as "very much a lapsed Catholic.") The film includes a small amount of dramatic reconstruction, some harking back to the early days of Scientology and its founder, L. Ron Hubbard. It also uses clips that were licensed, were in the public domain, or were within the bounds of fair use, Mr. Gibney said. Some wariness surrounds any prerelease discussion of the clips' precise content. Mr. Gibney and HBO have severely restricted access to the film, to reduce risk of an attempt to block its use of clips before the Sundance premiere. Like Mr. Wright's book, the documentary depends heavily on interviews with Scientology dropouts whose filmed accounts mostly track with earlier descriptions of claimed abuse, both physical and emotional, that were compiled by Mr. Wright. Their impact is enhanced by the power of film, however. "In the book, you have to take my word for it," said Mr. Wright, who will join the film's promotion at Sundance. "In the documentary, you get the chance to judge for yourself." Speaking by telephone last week, Mr. Rinder said he had participated as an interview subject and would join the Sundance contingent to prompt change within Scientology. "I hope this movie increases public pressure for the church to change its abusive practices," he said. Mr. Rinder mentioned specifically the practice of "disconnection," under which members of the church break contact with friends, family members or associates who are deemed to have become hostile toward Scientology.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Media
Krazy 8 gets his nickname and a few other things he didn't bargain for. That may prove as significant for Jimmy as for Nacho. You're playing Texas Hold 'Em poker with Lalo Salamanca and he raises you 200. You've got a strong hand. Three eights. Do you see Lalo's bet? Raise him another 200? Whoop whoop in anticipation of pay dirt? Or do you fold, as Domingo (Max Arciniega) does early in this week's episode? Given the air of menace that surrounds Lalo, this is arguably a very wise career move. It is also apparently the birth of Domingo's nickname, Krazy 8, bestowed upon him by Lalo, who thinks his petrified employee isn't petrified at all. He's merely loco. It's just one of many short cons played in "50% Off," an episode in which just about everyone, in true "Better Call Saul" style, is playing everyone else. The most productive con might be Jimmy's, who manages to buttonhole the assistant district attorney Suzanne Ericsen (Julie Pearl), by conspiring with a maintenance guy to disable the elevator between floors. The two lawyers wind up negotiating deals for Jimmy's clients, one after another, in 20 minutes. If you're taking on so many cases that you must resort to such tactics, you need to dial it down a bit. Which is another way of saying that Kim was right. The limited time offer of half off legal counsel was a bad idea. Jimmy concedes as much as he and Kim make an impromptu stop to look at a house for sale. And the episode demonstrates the downsides of priced to move legal advice in the opening scene, which follows two meth addled yahoos who celebrate Saul's introductory bargain rate by launching into a multiday bender. Let's leave aside the implausibility of this bacchanalia. (Seriously, would anyone think, "Let's go insane for a while because once the cops nab us, we won't spend huge sums on a lawyer"?) Those yahoos wind up at one of the apartments where the Salamancas peddle their meth, using a delivery system a drain pipe that proves catastrophically flawed. When it jams, the newly christened Krazy 8 climbs a ladder to perform some ad hoc home improvements, and that is where the cops find him when they arrive. The collaring of Krazy 8 offers Nacho an opening. He has already been treated to the scare of his life by Gus Fring, who sends Victor (Jeremiah Bitsui) into a restaurant where Nacho's father is eating with some friends. It briefly looks as though Nacho is about to witness the gangland slaying of his padre, when Gus shows up and twists the thumb screws a bit more: Win Lalo's trust, he tells Nacho. Figure out his plans. Share them. Or else. Nacho gets the chance to turn Lalo's head through an apparent suicide mission to retrieve the meth left in the stash house that was quickly abandoned once Krazy 8 was nabbed. Precisely how Nacho manages this feat of drug superhero dom is unclear, but Lalo watches from his car as the show unfolds, munching on a snack as if he were at the movies. When Nacho returns, sweating but alive, meth in hand, Lalo is suitably awed and in a trusting mood. So much so that Lalo delegates to Nacho the decision to send dealers back to the streets. And he shares a meal and a beer with his underling, quickly signaling that he has weighty matters on his mind. Will Krazy 8 flip? He won't, Nacho says, but offers to have him killed anyway. Nah, says Lalo. "I've got something much better for him." We don't yet know what that something else is. But soon after Jimmy emerges from his elevator tete a tete with Ms. Ericsen, Nacho pulls up in the passenger seat of a car and instructs the counselor to get in. A bit of back story. Nacho and Jimmy met in Season 1, and their relationship includes a very unpleasant detour to the desert. Jimmy had gotten crosswise with the volcanic Tuco Salamanca in one of the show's early and most disastrous short cons. Nacho worked for Tuco at the time and helped haul Jimmy to a forsaken patch of land outside of town. There, Jimmy frantically produced what might have been his finest closing statement, and saved his own life. Nacho and Jimmy subsequently had more amicable dealings, but that terrifying round trip to the desert would surely have been on Jimmy's mind as Nacho rolled up in that car. We're left to surmise that whatever "much better" plan Lalo has in mind, it is likely to involve Jimmy. Of course, it was inevitable that Jimmy would get tangled in Lalo's life, a development that was preordained, in a time bendy kind of way, courtesy of an early episode of "Breaking Bad." Walter White and Jesse Pinkman haul Jimmy to another part of New Mexico's ample desertscape and make a good show of threatening to kill him. (They, too, were worried about a recently arrested colleague.) Once Jimmy figures out that these two masked men were not sent by Lalo "Lalo didn't send you?" he screams he is vastly relieved. Then again, Lalo's "much better" plans for Krazy 8 could involve an idea that springs from his meeting with his uncle, Don Hector (Mark Margolis), in some kind of nursing facility. Now wheelchair bound and mute, Don Hector tries to help his nephew figure out how to handle Gus Fring, whose machinations mystify Lalo. Fring is protected by the money he makes for the cartel, Don Hector suggests, through a bit of tactical bell ringing. So expect Lalo to go on the offensive against Fring and his supply system. Finally, the episode's saddest scene belongs to Mike, who rages at his granddaughter after she asks one too many questions about her deceased father. Mike blames himself for his son's death, as longtime viewers know, and his guilt and self loathing have recently been re triggered by his murder of the homesick construction manager, Werner Ziegler, at the end of Season 4. It's excruciating to watch Mike lash out at the one person he seems to love unconditionally, and to whom he will try to give all of his ill gotten fortune in "Breaking Bad." But the outburst might also help explain a mystery. Throughout "Breaking Bad," Mike happily spent time with his granddaughter, but he interacted with his daughter in law in a way that strongly suggested that the two were estranged. Maybe they will reconcile. But if they don't, this is why or perhaps, it's the start of why.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Television
Shoshana Zuboff, author of "The Age of Surveillance Capitalism," says digital services like Google and Facebook claim private human behavior "as something to be bought and sold in the marketplace." Each week, technology reporters and columnists from The New York Times review the week's news, offering analysis and maybe a joke or two about the most important developments in the tech industry. Want this newsletter in your inbox? Sign up here. Greetings, I'm Natasha Singer, your resident privacy reporter. And I'm writing to you from wintry New York City as the government shutdown increases financial pressure on federal workers and the tech elites jet off to Davos, Switzerland, to hobnob at the World Economic Forum. For the last few years, the forum has been heralding the "Fourth Industrial Revolution." That's the idea that today's digital innovations are generating entire new industries in much the way electricity enabled the mass production of the Model T Ford in the early 20th century. But a provocative new book, "The Age of Surveillance Capitalism," by Shoshana Zuboff, a professor emerita at the Harvard Business School, offers a more sobering counternarrative. Published on Tuesday, the book argues that digital services developed by the likes of Google and Facebook should not be viewed as the latest iteration of industrialization. Instead, Dr. Zuboff writes, they represent a new and problematic market form that trades in predicting and influencing human behavior. "Surveillance capitalism has taken human experience, specifically private human experience, and unilaterally claimed it as something to be bought and sold in the marketplace," Dr. Zuboff told me during a visit to The Times's office. "This new kind of marketplace trades in behavioral futures. It's like a form of derivative. But it's about us." Yet most of us are not aware that platforms like Google and Facebook may track and analyze our every search, location, like, video, photo, post and punctuation mark the better to try to sway us, she said. In fact, a new study on Facebook from the Pew Research Center illustrates how opaque this behavior marketplace can be to consumers. The study, my colleague Sapna Maheswari writes, reported that about three fourths of Facebook users were unaware that the social network maintained lists of their personal interests, such as their political leanings, for advertisers. And about half of users who looked at their "ad preferences" the Facebook pages displaying these details said they were uncomfortable with the company's creating lists of categories about them. The technologies that power the behavior speculation market, of course, have spread far beyond online ads. They enable auto insurers to surveil drivers and offer discounts based on their driving performance. They allow workplace wellness programs to charge higher health insurance premiums to employees who decline to wear fitness trackers. They helped Kremlin linked groups mount political influence campaigns on Facebook (although, as my colleague John Herrman pointed out this past week, we have yet to learn how effective those campaigns were). The flash trading in human behavioral data was not inevitable. In her book, Dr. Zuboff describes how Google, in its early days, used the keywords that people typed in to improve its search engine even as it paid scant attention to the collateral data like users' keyword phrasing, click patterns and spellings that came with it. Pretty soon, however, Google began harvesting this surplus information, along with other details like users' web browsing activities, to infer their interests and target them with ads. The model was later adopted by Facebook. The companies' pivot from serving to surveilling their users pushed Google and Facebook to harvest more and more data, Dr. Zuboff writes. In doing so, the companies sometimes bypassed privacy settings or made it difficult for users to opt out of data sharing. "We saw these digital services were free, and we thought, you know, 'We're making a reasonable trade off with giving them valuable data,'" Dr. Zuboff told me. "But now that's reversed. They've decided that we're free, that they can take our experience for free and translate it into behavioral data. And so we are just the source of raw material." Of course, tech companies tend to bristle at the word "surveillance." They associate it with government spying on individuals not with their own snooping on users and trying to sway them at scale. "When organizations do surveillance, people don't have control over that," Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook's chief, said in April during a Senate hearing on Cambridge Analytica, the voter profiling company that improperly harvested the data of millions of Facebook users. "But on Facebook, everything that you share, you have control over." Surveillance, however, simply means observation or supervision, often with the intent of channeling the surveilled in a particular direction. As Dr. Zuboff's book points out, that is at the core of Facebook's panopticon of a business model. Microsoft pledged nearly 500 million in loans to help build affordable housing in the Seattle area. The money is "the most ambitious effort by a tech company to directly address the inequality that has spread" in its backyard, Karen Weise writes. Facebook is facing continued pressure to more aggressively counter the spread of divisive disinformation and user manipulation on its platform, Adam Satariano writes. The company said Thursday that it had identified two new Russian linked misinformation campaigns. "Up to 1,200 people expressed interest in attending one of the roughly 190 events organized by those behind the fake pages," the article notes. "Facebook couldn't say whether any of the events had taken place." Legislators must find a new way to regulate social media, Natasha Tusikov, a criminology professor, and Blayne Haggart, a political science professor, argue in The Conversation. One suggestion, they write: "It's time to consider noncommercial ownership of social media entities including nonprofit or some form of public ownership." And finally, how might countries grapple with a global labor market in which there are few protections for many digital workers? Read the opinion piece in the New Statesman by Mark Graham, a professor at the Oxford Internet Institute.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Technology
ARTHUR LEVITT JR., the former chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, acknowledged that he found "The Seven Deadly Sins" irresistible so much so that he plunked down 5,000 as an initial investment and has since put in more. Sallie Krawcheck, the former president of Bank of America's Global Wealth and Investment Management division, was a little less candid. She would say only that she was making some bets on something called "No Glass Ceilings." So exactly what are The Seven Deadly Sins and No Glass Ceilings? Computer games? Code names for undercover operations in spy films? Neither. Both are collections of company stocks available to investors through an online site known as Motif, whose goal is to make it easier for small investors to do what more sophisticated investors have been doing make investments based on themes or long term trends. This is known, appropriately, as "thematic investing." The concept has been around for nearly 20 years and has been used to avoid short term volatility. "I followed that very closely," Mr. Levitt said from his Florida home about his collection of stocks in "sinful" businesses. "There came a point when I said to my investment adviser in Milwaukee that I wanted to put a more meaningful amount of money into this." Mr. Levitt has since put money into motifs with more sober sounding themes: Rising Interest Rates, Bulletproof Balance Sheets, Energetic M.L.P.'s and Housing Recovery. (Rising Interest Rates and Bulletproof Balance Sheets have performed the best, both up about 30 percent over the last year. The Seven Deadly Sins posted a 24 percent gain over the same period.) Both Ms. Krawcheck and Mr. Levitt are on Motif's board. On Monday, the company plans to introduce a new platform meant to make it easier and cheaper for advisers to choose stocks based on themes for their clients. Thematic investing is popular among large investment firms, and inexpensive exchange traded funds also seek to invest in some of the broader themes. But Motif is trying to do for thematic investing what discount brokerage companies did for stock buying by making it available on a larger scale and for lower fees. The simplicity of the site, and sometimes silly names of the motifs, belie the difficulty of investing thematically. For one, it's expensive. Buying 30 stocks through a discount broker could cost as much as 300; Motif charges 9.95 to buy or create a collection with up to 30 stocks in it. It can also be hard for most investors to execute their chosen themes on their own. "The problem that many of us experience is we can think about investing thematically, but it's hard to do," Ms. Krawcheck said. "You might think about investing in the changes brought about by the health care law. Then you're left trying to figure out how to do it. And you end up buying a large cap mutual fund." Clay Enos, a commercial photographer in New York whose work has included the films "Watchmen" and "Man of Steel," says he collects investing ideas as he observes the world and uses Motif to act on them. "It is a world of ideas there," he said. "They're a validation of something you had in mind. I was watching a TED talk about robots and sure enough, there was a robot motif already built." One collection that Mr. Enos built and called "Tick Tock" because it could take a while to show returns included companies in solar, transportation logistics, biotech and apparel. "I try to balance a little bit of risk with a little bit of security," he said. "I'm using it more like a discount brokerage where I can buy all these stocks for 9." Arthur Levitt Jr., the former chairman of the S.E.C., has invested in a collection of stock called "The Seven Deadly Sins." Of the larger investment houses, AllianceBernstein has more than 4 billion invested in seven thematic portfolios, with names like NextGen Automation: The Rise of the Machines, and Web 3.0: Data Deluge. One of the advantages (or, possibly, disadvantages) of this type of investing is that it is not tied to a particular index or focused on one sector or region. "When you think about opportunities, opportunities don't care what country or sector you're in," said Dan Roarty, portfolio manager for global growth and thematic portfolios at AllianceBernstein. "With thematic investing, you're free to color outside of the lines. You can take advantage of the themes." At AllianceBernstein, the minimum investment is 2,500, higher than Motif's 250 but certainly not high by standards for nontraditional investments. The management fee is 1.2 to 1.5 percent. While investors can buy one of Motif's thematic strategies on their own with no advice or by following what is popular, since the site has a social media component Motif's adviser platform will allow advisers to manage client accounts like other software providers and charge investment fees accordingly. On a broader level, thematic investing can be a way to get away from the day to day noise of Wall Street. "These ideas are tied to real shifts in demography and have staying power," said Daniel Paduano, a managing director at Neuberger Berman who has been investing his clients' money thematically for over 15 years. Two of his big themes are global education and water both finding it to drink and keeping it from flooding cities. While thematic investing may sound interesting, it is by no means a surefire way to make money. A theme overlays the strategy, but someone is still picking stocks. Even if they are all related to the theme, they are not all going to perform well. The hope is that the trend is correct over the long term. "What goes wrong is the ability of the company you have identified to execute rightly and correctly and well," Mr. Paduano said. "That happens sometimes because you were dumb enough to buy the guys who can't shoot straight or because circumstances overwhelmed things and you made a mistake." Another risk is that in the short run, the returns may not look as good as with other methods, particularly after 2013, when simply owning the Standard Poor's 500 stock index for the year got investors a 30 percent return. Mr. Roarty, whose seven strategies own just 50 stocks, said the concentration could make the strategy fluctuate more widely than just owning an index. "The short term returns can be worse than traditional equity strategy," he said. But the idea is that over the next decade, investors who put money into themes focused on increasing the supply of drinkable water around the world or new energy technologies will see better returns than those who invest in active managers with strategies reliant on regions or sectors. Within Motif itself, there is a risk of being overly concentrated in a particular company, the way an investor would be after putting money into five mutual funds that all invested in Apple. Hardeep Walia, the chief executive and founder of Motif Investing, said the system allowed investors to see how much of an individual stock they owned and to sell it for 4.95. Mr. Enos, the photographer, said the risk of investing in a trend seemed more manageable than trying to figure out what was hot and for how long. He spoke from experience, having ridden the dot com bubble all the way up and then down. "I tasted multimillionaire," he said.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Your Money
The Walt Disney Company turned franchises like Marvel and "Star Wars" into the biggest media business in the world, and last fall it was putting the finishing touches on the image of a storied character: its chief executive, Bob Iger. In late September, Mr. Iger, 69, published "The Ride of a Lifetime," an engaging work of self hagiography. The handsome executive, who seriously considered running for president this year, spent the next month on the kind of media tour that Disney is known for: he reveled in the successful start of a streaming service that immediately rivaled Netflix, was hailed as "businessperson of the year" by Time and described as "Hollywood's nicest C.E.O." in an article in the The Times by Maureen Dowd. Even his friends wondered if the soft focus Instagram ads produced for his MasterClass on leadership were a bit much. It all went so well that Mr. Iger decided it was time to do something he had postponed four times since 2013: retire as C.E.O. In early December, Disney executives say, he told his board that he was ready to leave. Around that time, a handful of people in Wuhan, China, began developing mysterious coughs. At the end of January, a few days after Disney was forced to close its Shanghai theme park as the coronavirus spread, Mr. Iger and the board stuck with their plan, agreeing that he would step back to become executive chairman and that the low profile head of the parks and cruise business, Bob Chapek, would take over immediately as chief executive. They finalized the arrangement even as the stock market began to shudder. And on Feb. 25, they shocked Hollywood with the news that Mr. Iger's 15 year run had ended. The seemingly abrupt announcement prompted intense speculation about the reasons for Mr. Iger's exit. "Sex or health?" one media executive who knows him texted another that night. Two weeks later, a different question emerged: Had Mr. Iger, with his deep ties to China and legendary timing, seen the coronavirus about to devastate his global realm? Did he get out just in time? Mr. Iger, who has always carefully managed his image, told me in an email, there was no more than met the eye. "No surprises ... nothing hidden ... nothing different or odd to speculate about ....," he wrote, ellipses and all. In fact, people close to Mr. Iger and the company said in interviews that the real question wasn't whether he saw the crisis coming but whether his focus on burnishing his own legacy and assuring a smooth succession left him distracted as the threats to the business grew. No big media company is more dependent on its customers' social and physical proximity than Disney, with its theme parks and cruise lines. Few have been hit harder by the pandemic. And now, Mr. Iger has effectively returned to running the company. After a few weeks of letting Mr. Chapek take charge, Mr. Iger smoothly reasserted control, BlueJeans video call by BlueJeans video call. (Disney does not use Zoom for its meetings for security reasons.) The new, nominal chief executive is referred to, almost kindergarten style, as "Bob C," while Mr. Iger is still just "Bob." And his title is "executive chairman" emphasis on the first word. Mr. Iger is now intensely focused on remaking a company that will emerge, he believes, deeply changed by the crisis. The sketch he has drawn for associates offers a glimpse at the post pandemic future: It's a Disney with fewer employees, leading the new and uncertain business of how to gather people safely for entertainment. "It's a matter of great good fortune that he didn't just leave," said Richard Plepler, the former HBO chief. "This is a moment where people first and foremost are looking to an example of leadership that has proved itself over an extended period of time and Bob personifies that." 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. The story of the Walt Disney Company since Mr. Iger's predecessor, Michael Eisner, took it over in 1984 is one of astonishing growth that has become the model for the modern, global media business. The company turned its tatty icons like Mickey Mouse into cash cows. Mr. Iger has spent more than 40 years working for companies that are now part of Disney, and has earned his reputation through bold acquisitions. He bought Pixar, then Marvel, then Lucasfilm, for single digit billions, and quickly created many more billions in value with them. Mr. Iger had the greatest job on earth, ruling not just a company but a "nation state," as California's governor, Gavin Newsom, described Disney recently. But Disney's much imitated model was almost perfectly exposed to the pandemic. The shift from on screen entertainment into in person experiences helped Disney become the biggest media company in the world. But those businesses have been impossible to protect from the pandemic. The company's largest division brought in more than 26 billion in the year ending last June by extending its brands to cruise ships and theme parks. Those are all shuttered now. It has three new cruise ships under construction in Germany, their futures unclear. The jewel in its second largest division, television, is ESPN, which in a sports less world is now broadcasting athletes playing video games. The third group, studio, had expected to bring in most of its revenue from movie openings in theaters, which are now closed. There has been a glimmer of good news in the introduction of Disney . The company's troubled share price jumped about 7 percent in after hours trading last Wednesday on the news that the streaming service had attracted 50 million subscribers. But the project is still an investment, years away from generating revenue that could replace a big movie opening in theaters. And the service is desperate for new content at a time when television and film production has ground to a halt. This all means the company is losing as much as 30 million or more a day, the media industry analyst Hal Vogel estimated in an interview. The company borrowed 6 billion at the end of March, a sign both of its desperate plight and lenders' confidence that it could rebound. In an emergency like this, Mr. Iger said, he had no choice but to abandon his plan to pull back. "A crisis of this magnitude, and its impact on Disney, would necessarily result in my actively helping Bob Chapek and the company contend with it, particularly since I ran the company for 15 years!" he said in his email. That realization appears to have hit just after the company's March 11 annual shareholder gathering in Raleigh, N.C., which served as Mr. Chapek's debut and was staged as a carefully scripted handoff. "I've watched Bob Iger lead this company to amazing new heights, and I've learned an enormous amount from that experience. I feel incredibly fortunate to be able to work closely with him during this transition," Mr. Chapek said at the meeting. (A Disney spokeswoman declined to make Mr. Chapek available for an interview.) The men flew from there to Walt Disney World in Orlando, Fla., to meet executives worried about the effect of social distancing on their business; they announced the park's closing the next day. Then, they flew back to Los Angeles and on the way, said a person familiar with their conversation, they discussed the depth of the crisis. Mr. Iger made clear that he would remain closely involved. The next day, March 13, was their last in the office. In early April, Mr. Chapek sent a bleak internal email announcing a wave of furloughs. He pushed immediate cuts and freezes on everything from development budgets to contractors' pay. The company employed 223,000 as of last summer, and won't say how many workers are furloughed, but the numbers are huge. It includes more than 30,000 workers in the California resort business alone, according to the president of Workers United Local 50 that represents some of those workers, Chris Duarte. Another 43,000 workers in Florida will be furloughed, the company confirmed on Sunday. All the workers will keep their benefits, but their last paychecks come April 19. The mood at Disney is "dire," said a person who has done projects with the company. "They're covering the mirrors and ripping clothes." Mr. Iger, meanwhile, is trying to figure out what the company will look like after the crisis. One central challenge is to establish best practices for the company and the industry on how to bring people back to the parks and rides while avoiding the virus's spread using measures like taking visitors' temperatures. Mr. Iger also sees this as a moment, he has told associates, to look across the business and permanently change how it operates. He's told them that he anticipates ending expensive old school television practices like advertising upfronts and producing pilots for programs that may never air. Disney is also likely to reopen with less office space. He's also told two people that he anticipated the company having fewer employees. (Mr. Iger said in an email on Sunday evening that he had "no recollection of ever having said" that he expected a smaller work force. "Regardless, any decision about staff reductions will be made by my successor and not me," he added.) Mr. Iger's own narrative had been written to a neat conclusion. Now, his legacy will probably be defined in the unexpected sequel of one of the great American companies fighting for its life. And Disney's endlessly troublesome question of succession which had finally, for a couple of weeks, seemed settled may be open again. One person close to the company said Mr. Iger assured Mr. Chapek that the extraordinary circumstances would be taken into consideration in the board's evaluation of Mr. Chapek's performance. But in reality, two hard, unpredictable years will determine if he can hold the job. Two other executives who were passed over for Mr. Chapek Kevin Mayer and Peter Rice remain at the company. Nobody knows when Americans will go to the movies again, much less get on cruise ships. And nobody knows when or whether Mr. Iger will have another moment to leave on top.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Media
None Stephen Gostkowski prefers for the stakes to be high. The former kicker for the New England Patriots has had quite a first season in Tennessee. The 36 year old has already missed three field goals and two extra points through just two games, but when his team has truly needed him he's been electric. He closed Week 1 with a 25 yard game winner against Denver, and on Sunday he put the Titans ahead to stay with a 49 yarder in the final minutes against Jacksonville. Tennessee, apparently, just has to keep things close. None Justin Herbert was farther along than anyone thought. It seemed like an ideal situation in Los Angeles, as the Chargers had a quarterback for the present in Tyrod Taylor, and one for the future in Herbert. But Taylor was a last minute scratch on Sunday after he reported difficulty breathing, and Herbert, in his first N.F.L. game, very nearly beat Patrick Mahomes and the Kansas City Chiefs (pause for emphasis). Herbert was nothing short of fantastic against the defending Super Bowl champions, throwing for 311 yards and a touchdown, becoming just the third quarterback (Otto Graham and Cam Newton are the others) to have 300 passing yards and a rushing touchdown in their first N.F.L. appearance. None Preseason games might be important. Theories will abound for this week's huge rash of injuries to star players, and many will focus on the lack of preseason games. The hardest hit team has been the 49ers, who added quarterback Jimmy Garoppolo, running back Raheem Mostert and defensive end Nick Bosa to an injury report that already included George Kittle and Richard Sherman. But San Francisco was hardly alone. The Giants lost running back Saquon Barkley to a knee injury and Denver lost quarterback Drew Lock for several weeks with a shoulder injury. Last week, Allen became the first Bills quarterback to top 300 passing yards in a game since 2016. This week, he became the first one to top 400 in a game since 2002 and, according to the N.F.L., became just the fourth quarterback to have 700 or more passing yards, six or more touchdowns and no interceptions in his team's first two games of the season. Will he continue this trajectory and throw for 500 next week? You might not want to rule it out entirely, with the third year quarterback clearly gaining confidence. A rising tide lifts all boats, and Diggs seems like that kind of tide for Buffalo. With the former Vikings star giving the team a bona fide No. 1 receiver, the field has opened up dramatically for both John Brown and Cole Beasley, and Buffalo is off to a 2 0 start. Diggs led the team in receptions and yards for a second consecutive game, and scored on a 22 yard pass from Allen in the second quarter. But with the team needing some insurance points in the fourth quarter, Allen was able to air the ball out to a wide open Brown. That is going to be a problem for Bills opponents. Cowboys 40, Falcons 39 The story of the day will be Atlanta's brutal collapse, but we shouldn't lose sight of the fact that Dak Prescott threw for 450 yards while running in three touchdowns. The previous record for passing yards in a game with three rushing touchdowns was the 317 put up by Jack Kemp of the Buffalo Bills in 1963. Titans 33, Jaguars 30 Second guessing Jacksonville's personnel decisions is nearly a sport unto itself, but ditching Nick Foles in favor of Gardner Minshew as the team's starting quarterback appears to have been the right move: Foles couldn't beat out Mitchell Trubisky for the starting job in Chicago, and Minshew, showing all kinds of pluck and quite a bit of talent, has six touchdown passes through two games. Chiefs 23, Chargers 20 (overtime) It says something truly remarkable about Harrison Butker that his trotting onto the field to potentially win the game from 58 yards out seemed like a forgone conclusion and that the extreme confidence in the team's kicker didn't waver for a second, even when he was forced to kick a second time because of a last second timeout. Ravens 33, Texans 16 Losing to Baltimore is forgivable, but Houston's offense looks absolutely pedestrian without wide receiver DeAndre Hopkins, making the shocking off season trade sting even more than it did at the time. Packers 42, Lions 21 Detroit is off to a start that's far uglier than its 0 2 record can possibly suggest, as the team pulled ahead of Green Bay, 14 3, late in the first quarter, only to lose by 21 points a week after blowing a 17 point fourth quarter lead against Chicago. Colts 28, Vikings 11 It looked like Philip Rivers was getting ready for a second straight Very Long Sunday when he opened the game by throwing an interception in the red zone. But from that point forward, Rivers settled down, rookie running back Jonathan Taylor took over (101 yards and a touchdown) and the Indianapolis defense made up for last week's embarrassment against Jacksonville by snagging three interceptions and forcing a safety. Steelers 26, Broncos 21 That this game was so close is a testament to Denver's perseverance, as the team came in without running back Phillip Lindsay or linebacker Von Miller, and lost starting quarterback Drew Lock in the first quarter, only to find itself on the verge of a potential upset that fizzled with a fourth down sack with less than two minutes left in the fourth quarter. Bears 17, Giants 13 If Saquon Barkley is truly out for the season with what is feared to be a torn anterior cruciate ligament, the 0 2 Giants might as well settle in for a season of 14 or more losses and a chance at the No. 1 pick in next year's draft.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Sports
One was simply moving the house to a drier site. But that "would change the entire dynamic," said Ben Rosenberg, Silman's principal in charge of the project. Visitors should experience the house, he added, "in terms of its site and topographical relation to the river." The team also considered putting some kind of balloon device under the house, or constructing an inflatable barrier around it. But those devices would not necessarily defend the structure against rushing water or debris, Mr. Rosenberg said. "The option we landed on, which we are now in the process of designing, is to install a pit underneath the house in its present location, and place the house on a platform that is hydraulically lifted up and down" by machinery installed in the pit, Mr. Rosenberg said. "The flood happens under the house." Like the Science Times page on Facebook. Sign up for the Science Times newsletter. The house will have to be moved off site while the apparatus is built, but once it is back in place, "no one knows the difference," he said. The hydraulic mechanism would be hidden underground, except when it operates to lift the house above water. Mr. Rosenberg said work on the project design is nearing completion. "Nothing like this has ever been done before," he said, adding that the National Trust must give final approval for the work. But, he said, "the buy in is already there for the concept."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Science
An art critic and dance critic talk about two Kirstein shows and how his protean diversity left its mark on the arts, most productively on ballet. The relentlessly busy life, aesthetic proclivities and multimedia achievements of Lincoln Kirstein this country's most catalytic balletomane are in high relief right now in New York, thanks to two exhibitions, "Lincoln Kirstein's Modern," at the Museum of Modern Art, and "The Young and Evil" at David Zwirner in Chelsea. In the dance world, Kirstein (1907 1996) is something of a god if sometimes an angry, perverse one because of his instrumental role in founding, with George Balanchine, the School of the American Ballet in 1934 and, in 1948, New York City Ballet. For years he was the school's president and the ballet's general manager. Kirstein's deep involvement with the Museum of Modern Art in its first two decades is much less known. His role, as an ex officio curator, catalog writer, all around idea man and donor is prominent in the museum's "Lincoln Kirstein's Modern," which covers his main cultural accomplishments gallery by gallery, ballet included. The Modern's show, organized by Samantha Friedman and Jodi Hauptman, is symptomatic of the museum's growing interest in all things dance and performance related, which is sometimes interesting but sometimes reads as simply a fear of missing out. The Kirstein show, though, reveals that MoMA's interest in dance is nothing new; Kirstein was the main impetus behind that and the formation, in 1940, of the museum's Dance Archive, which was briefly promoted to being the Dance Theater Arts department. ROBERTA SMITH One thing that struck me is that the MoMA show reflects the museum's desire to use its collections more actively, bringing out stuff you never dreamed it had, making its holdings seem apparently bottomless. ALASTAIR MACAULAY Yes, Kirstein is an ideal figure for this multidisciplinary aspect of MoMA. Like Diaghilev, whose productions he saw in the 1920s and wrote about brilliantly, he had his finger in so many pies other than dance. He had protean diversity, Renaissance versatility, titanic energy and bipolar extremes. Himself a poet, novelist, editor, essayist, historian, he was also a patron of the arts who played a part in the lives and careers of artists as varied as Ezra Pound, Igor Stravinsky and Tennessee Williams. He was remarkably independent minded, yet he subordinated his life to the vision of one other artist in particular, the choreographer George Balanchine. SMITH I love your adjectives. He really was a polymath, precocious, driven, bipolar and to some extent bisexual. He had indefatigable energy, would go out several times a week and then go cruising afterward. He was sort of a wealthy Boston Brahmin his father was a co owner of Filene's department store except he was Jewish, and also what we would call a social justice warrior. In his sophomore year at Harvard he used family money to found (with Varian Fry) Hound Horn, a literary quarterly. As a junior, in 1928, he established the Harvard Society for Contemporary Art with Edward M.M. Warburg, later a MoMA trustee, and John Walker III, the first director of the National Gallery of Art in Washington. The Society showed Buckminster Fuller, Ben Shahn and Walker Evans and influenced the formation of MoMA. And of course he knew Alfred H. Barr Jr., who had taught at Wellesley just before becoming the museum's founding director. Kirstein's Rolodex must have been bursting by graduation. MACAULAY Counterbalancing all this, though, is the wild variability of his taste. This was a man who knocked Manet and Matisse while promoting Paul Cadmus. SMITH Exactly. Early on Kirstein realized he didn't like abstract art. He thought it was too subjective, without skills or standards. As time went on, he was increasingly dismayed by what the Modern was buying and exhibiting. His closeness with Paul Cadmus (whose sister, the tragic Fidelma, he would marry) may also have turned him against modern art (or the Modern's art) and toward what might kindly be called "the Classic" and which was often reactionary. Ballet he had been in love with since childhood. Its sense of tradition, craft and precision and the importance of the figure ultimately set his artistic ideals. MACAULAY Other than Balanchine whose genius is hard to capture on museum walls three visionaries strike me here as artists of magnitude: the sculptor Elie Nadelman, the visual artist (and stage designer) Pavel Tchelitchew and the photographer George Platt Lynes. On the evidence of this show, I don't quite rank the esteemed Walker Evans with them, but he's well represented here too; and all the photography here, by many hands, is rewarding. Tchelitchew, however, is an artist I need to see more of: Surrealism at its most imaginatively poetic pervades his work. Anyway, Tchelitchew and the rest of them were swept aside when the Abstract Expressionists came to the fore in the 1940s. The Modern bought Jackson Pollock's 1943 "She Wolf" in 1944. It must have resembled writing on the wall for Kirstein. MACAULAY I'm relieved modern painting didn't go Tchelitchew's neo Romantic way but I love his imagination. And his sense of light, space and metamorphosis transformed Balanchine's work. We now know that modern ballet went Balanchine's way; and to no other artist did Kirstein wholly defer in matters of taste and vision. But things often looked different at the time. Although Kirstein had brought Balanchine to America in 1933, he spent much of his time on Broadway and in Hollywood. Kirstein seems at one point to have despaired: "Balanchine, c'est un homme perdu." Yet he kept his ballet project going. One of the two screens here shows silent footage of choreography by American figures for Kirstein's troupe Ballet Caravan, notably Lew Christensen's "Filling Station." SMITH That and the excerpt from "Billy the Kid" nearly did me in. They were both Kirstein's ideas, consistent with his aim to recreate ballet as an American art and, for me, cringe worthy signs of his uneven taste. The costumes seemed fit for musical comedy and were usually better as renderings than garments. MACAULAY A second screen in the same room shows silent excerpts from a 1946 stage rehearsal of "The Four Temperaments," Balanchine's most singular masterpiece of radical modernism. They show Balanchine's first thoughts, including the amazing pumping heart image with which he originally ended the ballet. MACAULAY Yes, yes! It's weird to think of the many tensions there must have been between Kirstein and Balanchine who, instead of pursuing Kirstein's line in American realism, in the 1940s made a series of dazzling pure form masterpieces that transformed Western dance theater. The exhibition also shows us Kurt Seligman's mock medieval designs for "Temperaments," which are quaint at best. Kirstein wanted Diaghilev type fusions of the arts; it's hard to know what he can have made of Balanchine's increasing preference for no decor and minimal costumes. SMITH Interesting because he was certainly vocal about his dislike of the Modern's version of modernism. MACAULAY Thank you for drawing my attention to "The Young and Evil" at Zwirner. Many of the same names Tchelitchew, Lynes, Kirstein, Cadmus, Fidelma Cadmus, crop up again here; and my admiration for Tchelitchew is expanded further. Even at his most disturbing the several "skull beneath the skin" portraits he's a bold, arresting spirit. But whereas "Lincoln Kirstein's Modern" shows how passionately eclectic Kirstein was, "The Young and Evil" is about a narrow in crowd of artists, mostly gay. They all depicted one another; it feels cliquey. And of course they all depicted one another. They were all, to a person, incredibly good looking and their shared passion was the figure and the face. That big wall of portrait drawings and photographs at Zwirner there's a smaller, less effective one at MoMA is heavy with the air of mutual infatuation and alive with extraordinary rendering skill. Among the portraits of Kirstein is a drawing by Fidelma that is especially poignant for its psychic complexity. Tchelitchew looked the best I've ever seen, especially his portrait of Fidelma with a face that is an intricate mass of circuitry raw nerves. Also here is his uncharacteristically loosely painted, multi vignette portrait of Lynes, a wonderful period piece. As for Cadmus, I don't think I'll ever like him much. The standout in either show is his "Stone Blossom: A Conversation Piece" (1939 40), a group portrait of Monroe Wheeler, the longtime director of exhibitions at MoMA; the novelist Glenway Wescott ; and Lynes at Zwirner. We see them a menage a trois for a dozen years on the vast lawn of the country house that they shared in New Jersey. It's relatively subdued and composed around a fantastically large, ancient tree. MACAULAY There are a few better Paul Cadmus paintings elsewhere. (Start with his 1937 "Fidelma" in the Wilmington Delaware Art Museum.) They don't, however, stop my sharing your general dislike of his work. The MoMA exhibition reminded me how industriously Kirstein investigated the art world of South America in the 1940s. I'm sorry that the artists here don't greatly impress me. (At first, I assumed the 1937 "New Chicago Athletic Club" was another Cadmus. It's actually by the Argentine painter Antonio Berni.) Except the landscape (or skyscape) "Savanna" (1942) by Gonzalo Ariza. SMITH My reaction was close to opposite. There are some duds in that gallery but also some really credible paintings including some by possibly folk or self taught artists. For me, this gallery conveyed a strong sense of what Kirstein called his "live eye." MACAULAY Kirstein himself keeps cropping up in these two shows, as depicted by Cadmus, Cartier Bresson, Evans, Lucian Freud (1945, superb), Jay Leyda, Lynes and Tchelitchew. With his large, powerful head and shoulders his head is often lowered in these portraits Kirstein had a stern, bull like presence. (His head is often lowered here, too, with the strong suggestion of a frown.) You can forget many of the paintings he bought; you can't forget him. Through June 15 at the Museum of Modern Art; moma.org.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Art & Design
STOCKHOLM When the rapper ASAP Rocky played an arena show in Stockholm on Wednesday night, it was the first time he had been to Sweden since August, when he was convicted over his part in a street brawl a case that drew international attention when President Trump got involved. Given the fuss, few fans at the concert said they had expected the rapper to return. "If I was ASAP Rocky, I wouldn't have," Afrodite Kindtoft, 21, said with a laugh outside the golf ball shaped Ericsson Globe, before the show there. Added Emma Aqvilin, 29, "When I heard about the concert, I thought it was a joke." Most fans said it was a thank you for their support during the trial. But others thought there was another reason. "I think he kind of wants to spit the government in the face a little," Kindtoft said, adding that the rapper's return was a way of saying, "Hey, you don't scare me that easy." Rocky's last visit to Stockholm, in June, grabbed the world's attention almost by accident. The rapper had been sightseeing in the city when he and his entourage got into an altercation with a 19 year old man. Rocky later said he was acting in self defense when he threw the man to the ground and, along with members of his group, punched and kicked him. The rapper was detained pending an investigation, and not long afterward President Trump started treating Rocky's case as something akin to a hostage crisis. Mr. Trump sent his special envoy for hostage affairs to watch over the trial, and also harangued Sweden's prime minister, Stefan Lofven, on Twitter, saying that Sweden had "let our African American community down." Mr. Trump's focus on the case was also mentioned in the impeachment hearings last month when an official from the United States Embassy in Kyiv, Ukraine, testified that he had overheard a phone call in which Gordon Sondland, the American ambassador to the European Union, advised Mr. Trump to wait for Rocky to be sentenced, and then "play the racism card" and "give him a ticker tape when he comes home." During Rocky's detention, several high profile rappers voiced their support for the rapper by saying they would never play the country again. "No more Sweden for me, ever," Tyler, the Creator wrote in a tweet, with others including Schoolboy Q following his lead. "All this has rocketed his career back into the center," Ringskog Ferrada Noli said, adding that the case helped make Rocky a household name, known by grandparents as well as rap fans. He also noted that Rocky had carefully managed his return to make it clear that he was coming back as a winner "and not like a dog with their tail between their legs." At the start of December, the rapper asked Sweden's probation service for permission to play a show at a detention center (it turned down the request). He also promised to donate some of the arena concert's proceeds to a charity that works with migrants, having met several refugees while in detention. On Wednesday, after visiting a school in Stockholm's suburbs to talk with students from poor backgrounds, Rocky announced on Instagram that anyone who lived in the city's "slums" could turn up at the concert and get in for free. (He later changed the offer: Attendees needed tickets for security reasons, he said, but he priced them at 1 Swedish krona, equivalent to 11 cents.) The first 15 minutes of the raucous show took place with a cage onstage, meant to look like a prison. "Today I didn't bring everybody here together so we could talk about Swedish authorities and politics and American politics," he said at one point, making those present immediately think of Swedish and American politics. And halfway through, the rapper was dragged offstage in a mock arrest. Yet Rocky did not mention any elected officials during the concert, and appeared to steer clear of political lyrics, too. ("Praying for a J.F.K., all we got was K.K.K." he raps in a 2018 song.) Although the rapper had designed sweatshirts and pants for people in the country's detention centers, and at least one stall outside the arena was selling sweaters featuring a courtroom sketch from his trial, Rocky appeared happiest when far away from references to his case and simply lost in the moment of a normal over the top show. Toward the end, he played "Wild for the Night," a dance track made with the producer Skrillex, and walked around the stage with two flamethrowers. As he shot fire into the air and singed bits of paper that had been launched over the crowd, his beaming smile appeared on the arena's screens. The crowd kept shouting his name.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Music
It was the afternoon of Jan. 31. I was preparing for a dinner party and adding final touches to my cheese platter when everything suddenly went dark. I woke up feeling baffled in a hospital bed. My husband filled me in: Apparently, I had suffered a massive seizure a few hours before our guests were to arrive at our Manhattan apartment. Our children's nanny found me and I was rushed to the hospital. That had been three days earlier. My husband and I were both mystified: I was 37 years old and had always been in excellent health. In due course, a surgeon dropped by and told me I had a glioma, a type of brain tumor. It was relatively huge but operable. I felt sick to my stomach. Two weeks later, I was getting wheeled to the operating theater. I wouldn't know the pathology until much later. I said my goodbyes to everyone most importantly to my children, Sofia, 6, and Nyle, 2 and prepared to die. But right before the surgery, in a very drugged state, I asked the surgeon to please get photos of me and my brother from my husband. I wanted the surgeon to see them. My brother had died two decades earlier from a different kind of brain tumor a glioblastoma. I was 15 at the time, and he was 18. He died within two years of being diagnosed. Those two years were the worst period of my life. Doctors in my home country of Pakistan refused to take him, saying his case was fatal. So, my parents gathered their savings and flew him to Britain, where he was able to get a biopsy (his tumor was in an inoperable location) and radiation. Afterward, we had to ask people for donations so he could get the gamma knife treatment in Singapore that my parents felt confident would save him. In the end, nothing worked, and he died, taking 18 years of memories with him. After my brother's death, I threw myself into my school work. It was partly to escape the depression that enveloped my house and partly to make something good of the rest of my life. I worked hard hard enough to land at an Ivy League school (with full financial aid). I graduated with a dual degree in engineering and economics and worked as an investment banker, an investment manager and finally director of economic research at a family investment office. In the middle of it all, I got married and had children. It was an immigrant's dream. Until it came crashing down. The period after my surgery is a blurry haze. I was grateful that I did not die, but I lost all my speech and most of my memories for a few days. I didn't remember where I lived or what was happening to me. Later, I couldn't remember how to use a credit card or where basic utensils in my home were. I would watch TV forgetting to turn on the volume trying desperately hard to make sense of what was happening. The pathology report arrived a few days later showing a low grade oligodendroglioma. I had been given a second chance! I had a highly treatable, even if not curable, tumor. Oligodendrogliomas account for only 4 percent of all primary brain tumors, and, in younger patients, have a survival rate of 90 percent over five years. In contrast, a glioblastoma, the kind my brother had, is the most common and aggressive tumor, accounting for just over half of all primary brain tumors, with a median survival rate of only 12 to 18 months. Despite the relief that came with the positive news, I'm still looking at a year's worth of treatment with both radiation and chemotherapy. The radiation will be likely to have an adverse long term impact on my cognitive skills. But if it's a choice between that or more years of life, the decision is easy, especially if you have young children. The irony is that for much of my adult life, since my brother died, I kept asking doctors to check my head for any signs of brain tumors, given my family history. Everyone told me the same thing: They are not hereditary. While I wondered if there could have been something environmental that my brother and I were exposed to, I was more worried about it being genetic. I grew up in a joint family system with both my parents, grandmother, uncles, aunts, and lots of young cousins none of whom have it (even though they were exposed to the same environment). Before my diagnosis, I once showed up at a doctor's office specifically asking her to do an M.R.I., but she refused and told me kindly that tumors don't run in families. Later, after my seizure, I confronted several neuro oncologists, asking if they would have screened me before my diagnosis. But they all told me that they would not screen patients for brain tumors unless they were symptomatic. Medical research is on their side. It shows there's only a 5 percent chance of brain tumors being hereditary. My brother was the first among our eight uncles and aunts and 19 cousins, and now I'm the second. On my insistence, the doctor ran a genetic test, checking for mutations to see if I'm predisposed to having a brain tumor. It came out negative, showing no correlation to my brother's disease. But the doctor admitted gaps in his understanding. He had treated a man with glioblastoma, for example, whose two children had it too, and the genetic report turned out negative. "Ask me in 10 years, and I might have a different answer," he said.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Well
Gossip Cop exists to debunk celebrity rumors. It claims to surveil "more than 200 websites, TV shows, newspapers and magazines" for inaccuracies. Since 2009, the site's unmistakably urgent headlines "Jennifer Aniston Did NOT 'Flee To Italy' Amid Brad Pitt Reunion Rumors, Despite Report"; "George Clooney, Amal 'Divorce' Claim Is Late And Wrong"; "Selena Gomez 'Shocked' Justin Bieber Married Hailey Baldwin Is Made Up Story" have been written to challenge even the most frivolous of tabloid stories. When Star reported, for example, that a New York City restaurant prevented the actor Emma Stone from consuming a homemade birthday cake on its premises, Gossip Cop located an unnamed "pal" to dispute the account. That editorial mission makes reading Gossip Cop a confusing experience. Plenty of people would be interested if Brad Pitt and Jennifer Aniston secretly reunited one of the many recurring rumors that Gossip Cop deflates but how much does the populace care about Radar's report on Jessica Simpson's monthly expenditure on Postmates deliveries? Or the veracity of Star's claim that Kanye West secretly wants to open a restaurant? For whom does it matter that these stories might be false? Gossip Cop relies heavily on celebrity publicists to knock down rumors about their famous clients, so it's tempting to dismiss the site as a public relations arm of the entertainment industry. But there is an emerging rigor to Gossip Cop's methodology, reflected in the latest iteration of the site and the actions of the website's founder, Michael E. Lewittes. On the surface, it appears that Gossip Cop has ambitions to become, or at least be treated like, a full blown fact checking service on par with PolitiFact and Snopes. This notion is disputed by Mr. Lewittes, a former Access Hollywood producer and tabloid columnist who launched the site with financial backing from Dan Abrams, a television journalist and founder of Abrams Media, the boutique online publisher of Mediaite and The Mary Sue. (Mr. Abrams is listed as co owner and co founder, but is not connected to the editorial content of the site; he currently serves as chief legal correspondent for ABC News.) Mr. Lewittes and Mr. Abrams attended high school together in the Bronx. Both grew up in families laden with lawyers. Mr. Abrams is the son of the First Amendment attorney Floyd Abrams and the older brother of Ronnie Abrams, a federal judge in the Southern District of New York. Ronnie Abrams is married to Greg Andres, a former federal prosecutor who now works for the office of Robert Mueller, the special counsel investigating Russia's efforts to interfere with the 2016 election. And Mr. Lewittes is the son of Joel Lewittes, a former federal judge, also in New York's Southern District, and his wife, Lee Kushnir Lewittes, is a booker for the Fox News morning show "Fox Friends." (According to an online newsletter published earlier this year, the Lewittes family attends Congregation Kehilath Jeshurun, the Upper East Side synagogue that, until early 2017, counted Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump as members.) In 2009, Mr. Lewittes and Mr. Abrams framed the site as a corrective to an out of control tabloid press. Not only would it be a "media watchdog," as Mr. Abrams put it, but a source of feel good news about celebrities. Beside videos of paparazzi behaving badly were sections called "Hollygood" and "Hollywood Heart," both devoted to documenting celebrity philanthropy. Mr. Lewittes, in particular, wanted to combat what he saw as a nihilistic streak in the Hollywood press. "We live in a time when many feel being first or outrageous is more important than being factual, and I want to change that," he told Mr. Abrams's media news site, Mediaite. "Not only are people filing false reports on their blogs every day, but so much of what is out there is just meanspirited for no reason at all." The site was also built as act of repentance. Mr. Lewittes describes himself not just as "creator, owner, founder and 'Top Cop'" of the site, but as "a reformed gossip columnist who knows the industry inside and out," and who worked previously at Access Hollywood, Us Weekly, The New York Daily News and The New York Post. He also did a stint at Star itself. The Gossip Cop masthead now lists only one other full time editor. Early on, the site drew skepticism for its methodology. Shortly after Gossip Cop's debut, an editor at New York magazine wrote: "Publicist denials are not only boring, they're meaningless. These are people who are paid to lie to protect their clients." In 2012, the Columbia Journalism Review questioned the wisdom of Gossip Cop using anonymous sources to challenge rumors by other anonymous sources. Or, as Craig Silverman, the founder of Regret the Error and expert on corrections in media, put it, "How can we know that Gossip Cop's 'source' is better than In Touch's 'Insiders'?" But for the past two years, Gossip Cop has participated in events held by the Poynter Institute's International Fact Checking Network (I.F.C.N.), whose signatories are required to undergo an extensive audit and adhere to a detailed code of principles. The company has updated its about page to reflect those principles. Mr. Lewittes has attended Global Fact, I.F.C.N.'s annual summit, for the past two years. Being a verified signatory of I.F.C.N. is not particularly valuable by itself. It is, however, a "minimum condition" for becoming a third party fact checker on Facebook's News Feed, a position that carries with it incredible power. Facebook, through these verified parties, says it deeply limits the spread of stories deemed false, and removes accounts that are flagged for violating policies. The quantity of false stories, these fact checkers said, is vast. Early on in this relationship with Facebook, fact checking entities noted that there is no way for them to keep up with the high quantity of false or misleading information that circulates on Facebook. There can also be questions, apparently, of just how factual a fact is. In September, The Weekly Standard, a conservative magazine and Facebook certified fact checker, rated as false an online essay about Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh's position on Roe v. Wade, possibly squelching that essay's Facebook readership. The nature of the fact check, which hinged on the literal and colloquial meanings of the word "said," and the liberal politics of ThinkProgress, where the disputed essay appeared, unleashed a furious debate about Facebook's role in refereeing, and suppressing, political commentary. Gossip Cop would not discuss its future with I.F.C.N., whose signatories undergo a stringent review, or with Facebook, which has certified just five fact checking outlets in the entire United States, including Snopes and Associated Press. Certainly the subject matter practice is different for a website that recently debunked rumors that Johnny Depp damaged his brain in a too hot sauna, that Courteney Cox is obsessed with tarot cards and that Norman Reedus of "The Walking Dead" has a bad attitude on set ("Gossip Cop can debunk the baseless claim. It's simply not true."). While giving verified independent outlets special license to fact check may help embattled platforms like Facebook and Google help to restore their image in the short term, in the long term, as the Weekly Standard episode suggests, the same arrangement has the potential to do more damage. In January 2016, Gossip Cop began deleting thousands of old posts in what seems to have been an effort to organize and clean up its archives. One of the removed articles, published in October 2011, concerns the now familiar allegation that Donald Trump and Stormy Daniels had an affair. The rumor had appeared on The Dirty, an Arizona based gossip website, and was later picked up by the celebrity magazine Life Style, which ran a 2 page spread under the headline, "Did Donald CHEAT?" (The question was not actually answered.) Two days later, Gossip Cop published a piece citing denials from both parties. An unnamed representative for Mr. Trump, identified hours later as Michael D. Cohen, described the rumor as "totally untrue and ridiculous." An unnamed attorney for Ms. Daniels, identified years later as Keith M. Davidson, accused The Dirty of concocting a fake scandal "to lure potential customers to their commercial filth.'" Gossip Cop's verdict: "The story is 100% false." "The only people 'cheated' here are the tabloid's readers," the story said. Gossip Cop's treatment of this particular story presents a broader journalistic quandary. Confronted with the question of whether Mr. Trump and Ms. Daniels had a secret affair, the site did what most outlets would do: Ask both parties for comment and publish their responses. But lawyers and publicists are not always forthcoming about their own clients. Nor are the clients themselves. Indeed, around the same time Ms. Daniels denied the affair to Gossip Cop, she told other outlets, including The Dirty and In Touch, the exact opposite. In the seven years since the rumor of this affair surfaced, journalists have gathered evidence of its likelihood. Federal investigators have indicted Mr. Trump's former attorney, Mr. Cohen, over payments to Ms. Daniels and another woman, Karen McDougal, saying they violated federal campaign finance laws. Special Counsel Robert Mueller, whose investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 election spawned the inquiry into Mr. Cohen's payments, has not turned in a final report but House Democrats, who take control of the lower chamber in January, plan to investigate the president's role in paying Ms. Daniels and Ms. McDougal for their silence. Ms. Daniels' defamation lawsuit against Mr. Trump, which could unearth even more detail, awaits judgment before the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. (Representatives for Mr. Cohen and Mr. Davidson did not return requests for comment. White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders referred questions to Rudy Giuliani and Jay Sekulow, both of whom advise President Trump. Neither responded.) And in the years since Gossip Cop first debunked the Trump Daniels affair, it has beefed up its daily editorial process. Several years ago, an item about, say, Jennifer Aniston allegedly boycotting the country of Japan, required a short blog post at most. Now, Gossip Cop regularly publishes lengthy and nuanced analyses of why exactly a rumor is unlikely, citing factors such as the lack of photographic evidence or eyewitness testimony, the publication's track record, and the rumor's overall plausibility. In early April, the website began appending a list of sources to every article, including the names of elusive Hollywood publicists. Gossip Cop will revisit some stories a year after publication and gauge whether or not they turned out to be true. The site acknowledges that celebrities and their handlers have a capacity to lie: "In an effort not to be 'spun,' we have, for lack of a better phrase, a 'social contract' with the stars, the reps and anyone else with whom we work," the site explains. "If you lie to Gossip Cop, we won't work with you again." Around the world, the spheres of politics and entertainment continue to overlap. The need for fact checking outlets with an understanding of tabloid and celebrity culture, which is now political culture, is only likely to grow. Facebook, as is its way, wouldn't go into detail about its process for certifying third party fact checkers. Controversially, the company enforces nondisclosure agreements with fact checking partners, leaving the facts about fact checking in a state of shadow. And Gossip Cop, for its part, would not speak of its plans for the future of fact checking. But there is a world in which Gossip Cop could help determine what celebrity gossip gets to even exist on the internet. The Trump Daniels affair is an uncomfortable reminder that in 2018, celebrity gossip can regularly be the real news. Almost every outlet that has covered the scandal has quoted or mentioned the story in The Dirty to establish the fact that the rumor predated Mr. Trump's presidential campaign. Seven long years ago, Gossip Cop deemed the underlying rumor as false. Maybe more disturbingly, it also was one of only two outlets that bothered to check it out at all.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Style
SOMETHING DIFFERENT At the Montage in Beverly Hills, 20 condos sit atop a luxury hotel. An eighth floor penthouse sold there early last year for 13.8 million, or 2,400 a square foot, a record for a condo in Los Angeles. FOUR years after making her very public decision to downsize from her 56,000 square foot Manor here to a penthouse condominium, Candy Spelling and her dog, Madison, are still waiting to move in. And Los Angeles, where the seriously wealthy overwhelmingly prefer living in extravagant estates, is still waiting, it seems, for high rise condo living to catch on. Sales have been slow at the Century, the 42 story tower designed by Robert A. M. Stern, where Ms. Spelling, the widow of the producer Aaron Spelling, agreed in 2008 to buy two duplexes and combine them into her latest trophy home. Delays in her closing until 2010 and her extensive construction project have held up her mansion in the sky, which she bid on before the two floors were built. Only about 30 percent of the 140 apartments at the Century have been sold, though "we have great momentum this year," said Mary Ann Osborn, a vice president for sales of the Related Companies, the building's developer. Sales are picking up this year at a few other developments built for the very rich. The Montage in Beverly Hills, which has 20 condo residences sitting atop a luxury hotel, has only six apartments remaining after sales started in November 2008. The 5,761 square foot penthouse on the eighth floor sold early last year for 13.8 million, or 2,400 a square foot, a record for a condo in Los Angeles, and the most recent closing was this month. While the idea of living in a condo in a sprawling city like Los Angeles is still tough to imagine for many who prefer more space, the area's growing congestion is slowly shifting tastes, said Paul Habibi, a lecturer in real estate at the Anderson Graduate School of Management at the University of California, Los Angeles. "Each of these communities Brentwood, Santa Monica is taking on its own all encompassing integrated feel, where you work, live and play all within these communities," Mr. Habibi said. But that transition is in its early stages, he said. "I don't think that a lot of Angelenos have bought into high rise living as being a substitute for owning your own lot and having your own home on that lot," Mr. Habibi said. "There are myriad places where you can get a lot of land and a lot of home on that land, and a lot of people still view that as the American dream and don't want to give that up." The corridor struggled a bit in the 1990s from a weaker economy. But the Californian, a luxury building that opened in 2005, sold out within a few weeks, a sign of pent up demand for homes along the corridor, where a new high end building had not been constructed in about a decade. The most expensive condos are still a bargain compared with places in Manhattan. Mr. Habibi estimates there are fewer than 1,000 individual condos in Los Angeles selling for north of 1,000 a square foot, clustered in only a half dozen developments, mostly in Century City and Beverly Hills, and along Ocean Avenue in Santa Monica. One downtown condo development, the Ritz Carlton Residences at LA Live, which started sales in 2007, has sold about 25 percent of its 224 apartments and is barely cracking the 1,000 a square foot level. Mr. Habibi and others in the industry are betting the high end condos that have already been built will be sold at healthy prices. They include the Carlyle Residences, by the developer of the Plaza condominiums in New York, and the Beverly West, which sold its first apartment for 5 million in late March, one month after opening for sales. Thirty four more residences are available, ranging from 1.5 million to 22.4 million. "A lot of that buyer pool," Mr. Habibi said, "are your foreign buyers and bicoastal people who are looking for a low maintenance alternative, a very nice place to live when they are in town." The real estate downturn seems to have slowed an expected wave of new high end condo buildings. A half dozen developments that have won city approval are waiting on the sidelines for the market to firm up, said Jeffrey Hyland, a co owner of the real estate company Hilton Hyland in Beverly Hills. At the Century, in Century City overlooking the Fox movie studios, most of the buyers are owners of Los Angeles estates looking to downsize for more hassle free living, Ms. Osborn said. Every owner so far has at least two other homes, she said. Some find it hard to give up their estates. The celebrity chef Nobu Matsuhisa owns an apartment at the Century that he bought furnished, but he still spends most of his time in his Beverly Hills home, Ms. Osborn said. Many prospective buyers from Los Angeles return 8 to 10 times before deciding to make an offer, Ms. Osborn added. On a recent tour of the Century, I was in the elevator with an elderly couple who live in a 25,000 square foot home in Bel Air. Ms. Osborn told me later that they were on their 12th visit to the building. "They are going to write an offer today," she said. "They were going to write one on Tuesday but were too tired and overwhelmed. Now they have got the picture and understand that it is very private and are not giving up a lot. They see that this is like living in a country club." The Century is Related's luxury entry in the Los Angeles market, and some of the amenities that made the company's Time Warner Center a premier Manhattan building are available here. There is a screening room with about 20 seats, bars and lounges, a fitness center designed by Equinox (which Related owns), a Pilates studio, outdoor kitchens for entertaining, a large back lawn where residents can walk their dogs, and closets just outside residents' doors where deliveries can be stored. The building's rounded design means that some bedroom walls are slightly curved, which brokers say has put off some prospective buyers who are confused about how to decorate. And pillars on some terraces block light. But not being along the busy Wilshire corridor makes it a more peaceful place to call home, brokers say. The building generated buzz two weeks ago by announcing that the West Coast chef David Myers would open a restaurant there late this year. Ms. Spelling was more decisive than the couple in the elevator in 2008, when she bought the top two floors of the Century based only on blueprints. Living in a condo, she said at the time, "is no different from a house, maybe even better."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Real Estate
In any case, it won't upstage the biggest star of the moment. I am talking about Beyonce, of course, whose "On the Run II" tour with her husband Jay Z has finally arrived in the United States for its final leg. I have been following her onstage outfits with some fascination since the whole shebang kicked off in early June. She doesn't really treat fashion like any other celebrity. It serves her, rather than the other way around. In the same way that Beyonce takes an omnivorous approach to, say, mythological goddesses, sampling broadly and absorbing it all into her own personal iconography, she ranges widely across the fashion landscape. Consider the list of designers she has worn on stage thus far, which includes the haute and famous as well as the small and street: Balmain, Givenchy, Roberto Cavalli, Gucci, LaQuan Smith, L.A. Roxx, Michael Schmidt Studios, Mugler, Ottolinger, Peter Dundas, Rami Kadi, Tom Ford, Valentino (straight from the couture runway pretty much right after the show) and Vex Clothing. This is the same approach she took in her visual album "Lemonade," when she wore an assortment of names, and it seems be a defining strategy when it comes to her image. It means that no single designer ever really gets to claim her and that she is an ambassador for no brand other than herself. Smart, right? Anyway, I am interested in seeing what she adds to the list next. Other things I am interested in seeing: More trailers for "A Star Is Born" with Lady Gaga, which premieres at the Venice Film Festival next month. It looks, against all odds, kind of great. Also the exhibition "Tongue Chic" at the Phillips auction house in New York, which features a variety of sneakers designed by artist like Damien Hirst, Jenny Holzer, and Takashi Murakami. If anyone needed proof that sneakers have attained the status of high art, this is it. (It runs until August 31.) And speaking of sneakers, spend some time with this gem of a piece from Jon Caramanica on his search for Balenciaga kicks; consider the meaning of the end of the Ivanka Trump fashion line; and simply enjoy this insider look at Gwyneth Paltrow and Goop. Have a good weekend. Every week on Open Thread, Vanessa will answer a reader's fashion related question, which you can send to her anytime via email or Twitter. Questions are edited and condensed. Q: I was sorting through a file when I came across a printed copy of clothing "pitfalls" by the image consultant Colette Michelle. Toward the bottom of the page I read this advice: "Don't dress like an old lady." Exactly what do old ladies dress like? The working world has gone to great achievements to supply career clothes that will communicate success or money or competence or professionalism, but the fashion world has not equally provided clothes for the retired person. Thus, the senior person is left on her/his own to figure out what clothes to buy and wear. This subtle but undiscussed prejudice exists. I demand my rights to adorn myself on an equal footing with an 18 year old. Elinor, Texas A: And I support your demand! Despite the fact that all of the 18 year olds I know (and I have one myself, and hence am exposed to many) seem to adorn themselves only in leggings, plaid shirts, cropped T shirts and very brief shorts, so I am not exactly convinced that's the equality anyone should be going for. Anyway, I might recast your question slightly to ask not what old ladies dress like, but rather what maturity looks like. And there we are lucky because this is a good time for those of us who no longer want to show our knees, thanks to the rise of modest fashion, which has engendered many more covered up, but still cool, styles. And because age itself is being celebrated widely: on Instagram my colleague Ruth La Ferla recently wrote a great story about this on Ari Seth Cohen's Advanced Style blog (and book, and film). And that means there are tons of great role models to choose from when looking for ideas for your own wardrobe. Because the truth is there is no single answer. Iris Apfel is probably the most celebrated nonagenarian, fashion wise, in part for her refusal to play by any style rules but her own. Personally, I am always filing away snapshots of the designer Carolina Herrera, 79, who always looks pristine, polished and unencumbered. Admittedly, she has an advantage over the rest of us, given that she founded her own fashion house, but still. You can extrapolate. Her uniform is a crisp white button down shirt with a below the knee skirt or pants.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Style
The economic waiting game may soon be over, as businesses signal that they are finally willing to resume widespread hiring. In all, the nation added 192,000 jobs in February, a big jump from the 63,000 added the previous month, the Labor Department reported on Friday. The job growth was the most in nearly a year, and the 12th consecutive month of gains by companies, which added 222,000 workers last month. It followed an unusually weak report in January, when major snowstorms across the country prompted offices and factories to close. Taken together, the first two months of the year produced growth at about the same pace as last fall. Economists say they are hopeful the pace will soon pick up further. "Economic recoveries can be like a snowball rolling down a hill, in that it takes time to get some momentum," said John Ryding, chief economist at RDQ Economics. "People hesitate until they feel that the recovery's durable enough, and then they have a tendency to jump in. Maybe we're finally getting to that jumping in moment." Threats to a more robust recovery remain, of course, including a surge in energy and food prices, with the possibility of disruptions in oil production in the Middle East continuing to weigh on the financial markets. State and local governments are also shedding jobs, which depressed the total for February, as they grapple with budget woes. But for now, the improvement is notable. The unemployment rate ticked down to 8.9 percent last month, falling below 9 percent for the first time in nearly two years. This rate, which comes from a survey separate from the payroll numbers and is based on the total number of Americans who want to work, has remained stubbornly high the last year. Altogether, 13.7 million people are still out of work and actively looking. Economists say the unemployment rate could rise temporarily in the next few months, as stronger job growth lures some discouraged workers to look for jobs again. Right now, just 64.2 percent of adults are actively involved in the work force, meaning they are either in a job or actively looking for one. That is the lowest participation rate in 25 years, an indication that many Americans are either staying home, going back to school, raising children or otherwise waiting for better conditions before applying for work. "It's a puzzle, a genuine puzzle why that number has been stuck," a senior economist at Credit Suisse, Jay Feldman, said. "I expect it to recover somewhat in the coming months as the labor market improves and more people become encouraged about their job prospects." Other recent economic reports like those on unemployment claims and manufacturing have pointed to stronger demand for workers. The Federal Reserve, in a survey of its 12 districts, noted on Wednesday that the labor market had improved modestly, but the Fed chairman, Ben S. Bernanke, told lawmakers that "until we see a sustained period of stronger job creation, we cannot consider the recovery to be truly established." The unemployment rate has fallen from a peak of 10.1 percent in this downturn. A broad measure of unemployment, which includes people working part time because they cannot find full time jobs and those so discouraged that they have given up searching, dipped to 15.9 percent in February, from 16.1 percent in January. Job gains appeared in nearly every industry last month. Among the biggest winners were the manufacturing, construction, and professional and business services industries. Construction payrolls bounced back from a very low level in January, when severe snowstorms hindered activity. "In some cases it's very hard to judge how big the underlying improvement there is in this data," said Nigel Gault, chief United States economist at IHS Global Insight. State and local governments, squeezed by revenue shortfalls and a reluctance to raise taxes, again laid off workers. Local governments have eliminated 377,000 jobs since September 2008, when their employment last peaked. "There's no work out here," said Julio Santiago, 33, a mechanic who repaired police cars and sanitation trucks for the city of Newark before he was let go last November. He and his wife, who has been job hunting for two years, have canceled their children's summer camp plans, cut out cable and Internet, borrowed from friends and even given away the family dog to make ends meet. "The only work they have is only temporary work, or one or two days a week, and I can't afford to do that," Mr. Santiago said. "Plus they told me they may cut my unemployment benefits if I take those jobs, even if they know I'm only getting to work a few hours a week." Federal payrolls were unchanged in February, but federal employees may also be at risk of significant layoffs if Republican leaders in Congress are successful with their proposed budget cuts. Economists at Goldman Sachs and elsewhere have warned that such budget cuts could ripple through the economy and lead to layoffs in the private sector. "I am optimistic we can get to a bipartisan budget agreement, whereby the government is on a path to staying within its means without derailing the recovery and slowing the job creation engine," said Austan Goolsbee, chairman of President Obama's Council of Economic Advisers. "What we cut, and how, matters." Rising prices for energy and food also remain a risk to job growth, economists say, as they leave less money for consumers and businesses to spend on other purchases that could potentially spur hiring. The contract for future delivery of light sweet crude oil rose to 104.42 a barrel on Friday, an increase of nearly 7 for the week, depressing the major stock indexes, which were down less than 1 percent on the day. Many economists forecast that job growth will pick up later this year to a rate of more than 200,000 a month. While that would be a welcome development compared with the modest growth in January and the bloodletting during the recession, it still is not fast enough to recover much of the ground lost. Since the downturn began in December 2007, the economy has shed 7.5 million jobs, or about 5.4 percent of its nonfarm payrolls. If the country adds 200,000 jobs every month, it would take more than three years to return to the employment level before the recession. And that does not take into account the fact that the working age population has continued to grow meaning that if the economy were healthy, it would have more jobs today than before the recession.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Economy
Ascap, the music licensing agency, has agreed to pay 1.75 million to settle an investigation by the Justice Department that found that some of the group's licensing deals had violated its longstanding regulatory rules. Ascap, whose full name is the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers, represents songwriters and music publishers and collects royalties from radio, television and other outlets. Under the terms of its 75 year old consent decree, which settled an antitrust investigation by the federal government, Ascap may represent those performing rights only nonexclusively, meaning that its publisher members can still negotiate with outside parties. But the Justice Department announced on Thursday that Ascap had violated that rule by entering into exclusive deals in "approximately 150 contracts" with composers and publishers, starting in 2008. In its settlement, Ascap did not admit wrongdoing but said it would not make any more exclusive deals. The settlement is subject to approval from the federal judge who oversees Ascap, Denise L. Cote of United States District Court in Manhattan.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Media
For hundreds of Fox News employees gathered in Cleveland for the Republican National Convention, the abrupt resignation of Roger Ailes came as a disorienting shock. Mr. Ailes, who dominated the network for two decades, is facing multiple allegations of sexual harassment by women who worked at Fox, including Gretchen Carlson, the former anchor who sued Mr. Ailes this month. On Thursday in Cleveland, hours before covering the convention's final night, several Fox anchors who were close to Mr. Ailes broke their silence about his departure and its impact on the network. The anchors mostly demurred when asked directly about the allegations against Mr. Ailes, whose ouster has been celebrated by critics who say he created a hostile environment for women. "Roger Ailes is the best boss I've had in almost a half a century in journalism. I admired him tremendously professionally, and loved him personally. He and Rupert came up with the idea of Fox in the beginning, and as sad as I am for Roger to go, I can't think of a better person to keep the vision of Fox News going than Rupert. ... I intend to stay at Fox and work for Rupert as hard and as loyally as I did for Roger. "There are people in tears. I shed mine a couple of days ago when the stories started to come out, that made this day seem like it was likely. I never knew a boss who transmitted a sense of mission, a team of common purpose, more than Roger did. And the thing that's different from any place I ever worked is, people feel a personal connection to Roger, and I think a lot of people feel a deep sense of personal loss." 'I Don't Think It's Going to Change Much' Bret Baier, chief political anchor, whose family is close to Mr. Ailes: "I think it's very sad, to be honest. It was tough, but we have a job to do. It's a big night tonight, we had a big night last night. We've all worked with and for Rupert for a long time, and so in one sense it will be a continuation. But in another sense, it feels bad. And it's a bad feeling. Roger was always great to me, and my family, I've always talked about that, and it's tough to see him go. "It's a mixture of dealing with the reality of this news and the sadness of it, and the import and the big job that we have tonight. ... We'll deal with how to work in this new atmosphere day to day. I don't think it's going to change much from my perspective, as what I do every day. I think a lot of what we do on the news side is bottom up, and it's always been that way. I'm betting that Rupert is going to continue that exact same process." Asked about the allegations against Mr. Ailes, Mr. Baier said: "I don't know all the stuff that's out there. I don't know what they're dealing with; I haven't seen or heard anything. I know the Roger I know." 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. Mr. Baier said that, like some other Fox anchors, his contract includes a clause stating that if Mr. Ailes leaves, he can, too. "I'm really happy at Fox, and as long as, you know, things are going like they're going, I think I couldn't be happier." Mike Huckabee, former governor of Arkansas, former host of Fox's "Huckabee," now a network contributor: "I love the guy. I mean he's been great. That's all I want to say. I love the guy, and he's been really, really good to me." "I'm absolutely heartbroken that all this happened. I love the guy, and I love working for him." Later, Mr. Hume returned to clarify his remarks: Asked if he would remain at Fox for the long haul, Mr. Hume replied: "At my age, there's no long haul left."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Media
Upasana Unni and Benjamin Rhys Davies were married July 17 in New York. Shunya Togashi, a staff member of the New York City clerk's office, officiated at the Manhattan Marriage Bureau. The bride, 27, is an associate in the Boston office of McKinsey Company, the management consultancy. She graduated magna cum laude and received an M.B.A. with high distinction from Harvard. The bride is a daughter of Maria Unni and Unni Krishnan of Elmont, N.Y. The bride's father is a lawyer in Jackson Heights, Queens. Her mother is a nurse anesthetist at NewYork Presbyterian/Queens hospital, in Flushing. Dr. Davies, 29, is a postdoctoral researcher in the chemistry and chemical biology department at Harvard, where he is separating mixtures of microbial cells. He graduated with a bachelor's degree in commerce and another in engineering, with first class honors, and received a doctoral degree in biomedical engineering from the University of Sydney. He is the son of Patricia O'Neill Davies and Phillip J. Davies of Maraetai, New Zealand. The groom's mother retired as a social studies teacher and activities director at the Jakarta International School in Indonesia. His father retired as a commercial property manager in Jakarta for the Mulia Group, a conglomerate of hotels, manufacturing and real estate development. The couple met in 2013 at a costume party of doctors in training in Sydney, Australia, where the bride was doing a turn as a McKinsey consultant before beginning graduate studies for an M.B.A. The groom, who was nearing the end of his doctoral program, was drawn to the party, he said, by the promise of free drinks, even if the company was somewhat predictable. "They all want to talk about how busy they are," he said, "so I got frustrated and asked if anyone wasn't a doctor." Ms. Unni, who was there with a colleague, was pressed to volunteer that she was not a doctor, even though she had gone to the party dressed as a nurse. The groom immediately made an effort to engage her. "I thought she was really interesting," he said. "She's really sharp and funny, and she was cute." But she wasn't impressed. He asked her where she'd gone to college, and she answered noncommittally. After talking for a bit he told her his family had moved to Indonesia when he was 3 years old, and she told him her family had moved to the United States when she was 3, too they went to the bar and ran into a woman whom Mr. Davies knew and a man whom Ms. Unni knew. When Mr. Davies excused himself for a minute, the woman gave Ms. Unni her endorsement of Mr. Davies, "Oh, he's a good one." That night, after closing down the doctors' party and being turned away from another bar because of Mr. Davies's costume a sailor's outfit with short shorts so brief he couldn't even squeeze his wallet and phone into a pocket they ended up in a pub that was willing to overlook his sartorial transgression. The couple shared their first kiss there. Mr. Davies did, however, turn his outfit to his advantage. He asked Ms. Unni near the end of the night if he could borrow her cellphone to call his own, so that he could catch up with the friend keeping it for him. He thus ensured that he would know how to reach her. To make doubly sure that he'd read things between them correctly, he later asked her if he might have her number. "You already have it," she remembers telling him. "She told me I was an idiot," he remembers. "I was asking because it's kind of creepy to surreptitiously get someone's number." He messaged her the next day, he said, and made a date for a few days later. They began seeing each other regularly, and were soon making plans for a transcontinental future, as he had an engagement in Ireland for his work that meant he would be gone for a time. "I told my mom about a month after we met, and I've never told her about anyone ever," Ms. Unni said. "If I was going to tell her, it was going to be a huge deal for my family. But I didn't want to keep him secret."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Fashion & Style
Where to Eat and Drink Tickets, one of the most sought after reservations in the restaurant world, is the new culinary success of Ferran Adria, who built a gastronomic revolution with his El Bulli. In a quirky space with circus and theater decor, Tickets serves a parade of exceptional dishes that defy description. Dessert is served in a separate room evoking Alice in Wonderland. Book only online two months in advance. Dinner for one (17 tapas plates, dessert tastings and a drink cost 124.85 euros. Avinguda Parallel 179. elbarriadria.com. Cerveceria Catalana draws a sophisticated morning to late night crowd to its wide selection of hot tapas, salads and sausages, excellent beer and wine. It has a bustling and entertaining atmosphere smack in the middle of the splendid L'Eixample neighborhood. Two tapas and a mug of beer, 12.50 euros. Carrer de Mallorca 236; phone 93 216 03 68. Carmela Restaurante specializes in Mediterranean cuisine with Andalusian traditions in a small dining room overlooking a popular corner of the old city. A dinner of bacalao (cod) mozarabe, a pionono dessert (bananas) and one glass of wine, 31.70 euros. Calle Colcha 13; restaurantecarmela.com. Bodegas Castaneda, popular with tourists and locals, the bustling Castaneda is the tapas bar to end all tapas bars. Longtime waiters call out orders, slide through the crowd, and manage to serve hundreds of people quickly and nicely. Go early and expect to wait for a table. No reservations accepted. A dinner of fabulous berenjenas rellenas (stuffed eggplant), a slice of quiche, and one beer, 7 euros. Calle Almineceros, off famous Calle Elvira. No phone. El Refectorium, enclosed in glass windows in a contemporary setting, is far from the familiar tapas bars of the casco antiguo. It's informal but serves an elegant dinner in a restful dining room. A terrific sirloin cooked perfectly to order and a glass of exquisite Ribera come to 30.80 euros. Postigo de los Abades 4; phone 952 60 23 89. El Piyayo, famous for its pescaitos fritos (fried fish), serves up typical tapas fare including manchego cheese to go with robust red wine. Dinner for one, 10 euros. Calle Granada 36; entreplatos.es. La Azotea, a popular neighborhood tapas bar, offers a welcoming ambience, artfully presented plates and excellent wines. Dinner for one with wine, around 10 euros. Azotea has four branches in Seville. My favorite is on Calle Zaragoza 5; phone 955 11 67 48.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Travel
Hometown: Born in Washington, D.C., and raised in Seattle. Now Lives: In a one bedroom apartment on the Upper West Side. Claim to Fame: Mr. Traore is a private chef and occasional model who is about to open his first pop up restaurant in Manhattan. In addition to stints at the restaurant in the NoMad Hotel and Eleven Madison Park, he has walked in fashion shows for Greg Lauren and Rochambeau, and appeared in advertising campaigns for Nike and Molton Brown since he started modeling several years ago. "I didn't plan on giving the cooking up at all, but I was very intrigued with the fashion world," Mr. Traore said, adding that he has followed clothing trends since he was a teenager. Big Break: An avid cook from a young age, he graduated from Le Cordon Bleu College of Culinary Arts in Portland, Ore., in 2011 and worked in several kitchens before ending up in New York City. One morning he Googled, "What is the best restaurant in New York City?" and, a few hours later, walked into the NoMad.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Style
Founded in 1669 by Louis XIV, and with a modern day budget of over 200 million euros, the Paris Opera is one of the oldest and most powerful music theater companies in the world. But it has struggled to find a successor to Stephane Lissner, its director since 2014. An extended search ended on Wednesday, when the company announced that Alexander Neef, the general director of the Canadian Opera Company in Toronto, would take on the position, starting in 2021. "It's a pretty emotional day, obviously," Mr. Neef, who was born in Germany, said in a telephone interview from Santa Fe, N.M., where he is also the artistic director of Santa Fe Opera. "It's a big honor and a big responsibility." Widely admired for his work in Toronto, Mr. Neef, 45, is no stranger to the Paris Opera, where he was casting director from 2004 to 2008, working under his mentor, Gerard Mortier. He also held positions alongside Mortier at the Salzburg Festival and the Ruhrtriennale, and during Mortier's brief time leading New York City Opera.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Music
Latest project: The African Talents Awards, which recognize young Africans in creative fields, recently named Zouzoukwa the best app of 2019. Mr. Grebet also uploaded new emojis based on Paquinou, an Easter festival celebrated in the Ivory Coast. "People reach out to tell me what they think I should design, or what they think is missing," he said. "Those interactions are some of the aspects I like best about what I do." Next thing: After mastering two dimensional avatars, he wants to start "sharing African culture" using augmented reality. He also hopes to start an e commerce site, he said, "so people could buy clothes, phone cases and other objects made from my work." Truth in Pixels: His oeuvre may be cartoonish, but he aims for verisimilitude. "I have to travel and discover other African countries," he said. "I have to immerse myself in their cultures in order to create emojis that truly represent them, instead of looking for pictures on the internet about meals I never tasted or places I never went to."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Style
No matter how much free time you have this weekend, we have TV recommendations for you. Come back every week for new suggestions on what to watch. This Weekend I Have ... 15 Minutes, and I'm Jazzy 'Cupcake Dino: General Services' When to watch: Now, on Netflix. The newly released second season of "Cupcake Dino" is as perky and warm as the first, and its cheery silliness is appropriate for most ages. On each episode, the brothers take on some kind of unusual gig throwing a slumber party, hosting a baby beauty pageant, humming an old woman to sleep and discover both the joy of a job well done and the frustrations of working for the man. The show is full of silly advice, like Dino's suggestion to "dance like no one's watching ... now watch like no one's dancing."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Television
Susanne Bartsch, the party promoter, reclines on one of her favorite things in her overstuffed apartment, a Chinese bed. IN the '70s and '80s, thousands of would be artists and as yet unknowns swept into New York City with fantasies of making it big. Susanne Bartsch, the Swiss party hostess who is now known for her outrageous get ups and association with the drag scene here, wasn't quite one of them. She first visited New York in 1977 to go to Studio 54, and wasn't all that enthralled. "New York was really run down," Ms. Bartsch said recently. She was sheathed in a see through Jean Paul Gaultier gown, and a makeup and hair crew were prepping her for the party she was hosting at Le Bain, a nightclub at the Standard Hotel in the meatpacking district. "I was wearing all this jewelry. It wasn't really gold, but it looked like gold, and I had to take it on and off. I went inside, I put it all on. I went outside, I took it all off. It was a nightmare. Because there were a lot of muggings. The streets had big holes in them. It was crazy." But then, in the early '80s, love changed her mind. The object of her affection was an artist named Patrick Hughes, and Ms. Bartsch followed him right to the Chelsea Hotel on West 23rd Street, where the romance soon went south. "He went back to London and I stayed," she said. "I came to New York for love and I fell in love with New York." In no small part, this is because of the home she has made for herself in an apartment at the Chelsea, long noted for being shabby cool and overrun with artists, writers and rockers. Ms. Bartsch loves the location. "This is very glam," she said. "It's very me." It suits what she calls the "Bartsch land" brand. "It's close to everything," she added. "You're uptown, downtown and everywhere quickly." And of course, she never has to give anybody her address, because in the world she inhabits everybody knows where the Chelsea is. For a while Ms. Bartsch lived there by herself, and then she didn't. In 1992, a drag queen named the Baroness took her to a new neighborhood gym, where Ms. Bartsch met its owner and her future husband, David Barton, a 5 foot 5 bodybuilder with pecs nearly as wide as a city block. Two years later, they brought a son, Bailey, home to the Chelsea and their rotating cast of cats and dogs. As for the wedding, a wild event at the Manhattan Center, Ms. Bartsch wore a Thierry Mugler flesh colored bodysuit, Mr. Barton a flesh tone G string. There were 43 bridesmaids of both the male and female variety. (A picture of the nuptials sits on the mantelpiece in the living room.) Ms. Bartsch's favorite things in the overstuffed apartment are two Chinese beds, one of which sits in the living room, the other in the bedroom down the hall. "The one in the bedroom I got at an auction house on 24th Street," she said. "Nobody had bought it because there were problems with the fit or something. So I got it for like 400. Which was a great buy. I love that it's like an apartment within the apartment." In recent years, Mr. Barton moved out and Bailey went to college at Brown, but the woman of the house has no plans to downsize. Not even a feud between the hotel's new management, which is renovating the building, and many of the residents (they've been in and out of court) has dampened her enthusiasm for the place. "It's exciting," Ms. Bartsch said. "I like that they're fixing it up, and it looks like they're keeping things according to what's appropriate. The owners like the place, they love the hotel, so I think they're going to do what they need to do to keep it within its character, which is good."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Real Estate
THE BUYERS Themis Haralabides and Tracy Chou with their daughter, Olivia, in their new home in Park Slope, Brooklyn. Shortly after they married five years ago, Themis Haralabides and Tracy Chou bought a one bedroom co op in Yorkville, on the Upper East Side. Their duplex, with a spiral staircase, occupied the top floors of a small walk up building. Over time, they transformed the rooftop deck, with its rotting wood, into an aerie, with planters, benches and lighting. After their daughter, Olivia, arrived nearly two years ago, staying in such a small apartment, with so many stairs, became impractical. So they listed the unit, which they had bought for 522,000, for 718,000. "Everyone was gushing over the outdoor space," said Ms. Chou, 36, who is from Taiwan and works in finance. She is also a partner in a small jewelry company, Amandina. They sold their apartment for 755,000 and, a year ago, began renting a two bedroom in Prospect Heights, Brooklyn, while searching for a more permanent place. They hoped to find a real wreck something to renovate in a good school district in or near Park Slope, where Mr. Haralabides had previously lived. They wanted a property they could make into a two family, which would give them rental income. "If something is in really bad shape, most buyers won't go for it, and that's where the opportunity for value is for us," said Mr. Haralabides, 41 and an architect. Mr. Haralabides, who is a native of Greece, owns Rebuild Workshop, a design build firm that specializes in brownstones. He viewed a renovation project with gusto. "If we put some money in and fix it, we will have a great house," he said. He and Ms. Chou had a budget, for everything, of about 2 million. They wanted a "diamond in the rough, and that's hard to find in brownstone Brooklyn these days," said their agent, Kirsten Syrett, who works as a team with Sarah Chamberlin. (They were at Halstead Property then, and are now at Compass.) Mr. Haralabides and Ms. Chou, finding little they could afford, decided to partner with their friends, another couple also searching for a Brooklyn home. One prospect was a charming but decrepit it lacked running water three family house on Sixth Avenue in Park Slope, an estate sale asking 2.3 million. The idea for both families to purchase something together was short lived; both wanted the top floor and the garden. "We were going to flip a coin," Ms. Chou said. "We saw obstacles brewing." Nobody wanted to risk their friendship if the deal soured. Mr. Haralabides and Ms. Chou's friends ended up buying a condominium in Clinton Hill. The Park Slope house too expensive to go it alone later sold for 2.2 million. It faced a 24 hour CVS Pharmacy. In their price range "they weren't going to get a beautiful tree lined block," Ms. Syrett said. The couple were less bothered by the traffic than with the unappealing view. The house was in terrible condition, which for them was a plus. "The termites had chewed through the plaster," Ms. Syrett said. "It was like lace. They were fearless," she said of the couple. Mr. Haralabides and Ms. Chou offered the asking price, but were outbid by a buyer offering 1.55 million. Weary of continuing their search, they briefly considered a just renovated Prospect Heights two family for 2.3 million, where they could move right in. This idea, too, was short lived. "We wanted to take advantage of our skills and our vision," Mr. Haralabides said. He also worried about the quality of construction in a house redone by somebody else. Besides, "if we bought something like that, I would miss all the fun," he said. An unappealing listing appeared on Eighth Avenue in Park Slope a modest three family rowhouse for 1.6 million. At one point, the stoop had been removed, and a front extension built, which had been home to a deli. The interior of the house was rundown and the backyard held an aviary. "It was really ugly," Ms. Chou said. "We knew our competition might be low because of how bad it was." They soon learned that a developer was interested, but the sellers preferred a family and were glad to disclose that the developer had bid 70,000 over the asking price. "I said, 'Let's not game this 70,000 doesn't make a difference,'" Ms. Chou said. "Themis was hyperventilating." The price considering the work needed was already uncomfortably high. They increased their bid to 1.67 million, matching the other offer. The house, in the Park Slope Historic District Extension, was just 16 feet wide. "We did quick sketches to see how many rooms we could fit inside," Mr. Haralabides said. "To put three bedrooms and two bathrooms, it is a little bit like a Swiss watch. Everything is small." They bought the house last spring, using all of their savings and borrowing from their retirement funds, and set to work. "Demolition is an understatement," Mr. Haralabides said. "We left brick and some of the joists." They chose two small bathrooms over one large one, and added noise insulation between rooms, ceilings and floors. "It costs very little, but developers don't do it," he said. "It is hard to fix once you move in."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Real Estate
PARIS UBS, the Swiss banking giant, said Tuesday that its business had turned around in 2010 as it posted its first annual profit since before the financial crisis. The bank reported a profit of 7.2 billion Swiss francs ( 7.5 billion) for the year in contrast to a 2009 loss of 2.7 billion francs. UBS last posted an annual profit in 2006. Over the ensuing three years, failed bets on the United States real estate market led it to combined net losses of more than 29 billion francs and a government rescue. UBS, based in Zurich and Basel, also announced a fourth quarter profit of 1.3 billion francs compared with a year earlier profit of 1.2 billion francs. That was slightly below the 1.35 billion francs analysts forecast in a Bloomberg News survey. The bank said the results were held back by a rise in the Swiss franc, which gained about 5 percent against the dollar and 7 percent against the euro in the last three months of the year, along with a 509 million franc charge against its own debt.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Global Business
LONDON Talking about the weather is a British national pastime. For Alasdhair Willis, the creative director of Hunter and the husband of the fashion designer Stella McCartney, inclement weather is a work related subject of discussion. "I never took much of an interest before this job, but given how synonymous this brand is with rain, I've become something of a weather expert," Mr. Willis said, looking through his office window at gray skies. Since 2013, Mr. Willis, 46, has been tasked with transforming Hunter the 160 year old Scottish wet weather brand long known for its staple Wellington boot into a 21st century fashion powerhouse. Worn by everyone from Queen Elizabeth II to Kate Moss, the brand has a broad appeal. Last month, Hunter Boot announced that its sales had risen by 19 percent in 2015, with new styles in footwear, outerwear and accessories performing well. North America has also become its largest market. Wearing comfy slacks, 3D knitted prototype sneakers from Adidas "There are only two pairs of these in the world," he said and a black jersey with a hummingbird emblazoned across the back from his wife's coming men's wear line, Mr. Willis, a polished, soft spoken Yorkshireman, may be one of the best dressed men in London. On his watch, Hunter is rolling out what it calls its Core Concept: an all season array of wet weather gear, like rubberized fisherman coats, vinyl windbreakers and Wellington boots in a kaleidoscopic range of colors. While at pains to stress that he is not a fashion designer, Mr. Willis said he works closely with the Hunter in house studio. "Core has long been part of the plan," he said. "We know when the skies open, we come to mind, and this is a celebration of that. For us, bad weather is a big business advantage." The introduction comes less than a year after Hunter announced that it was giving up its catwalk show slot on the London Fashion Week schedule. While not always a favorite of the critics, the company's playful shows made for irresistible social media fodder. From now on, it will market itself at music festivals around the world, courting potential younger customers where they spend their leisure time. Mr. Willis, a former fine art student at the Slade School of Fine Art and onetime publishing director of Wallpaper magazine, knows his stuff when it comes to marketing, having worked as a branding consultant for names like David Beckham and Christie's (and continues to work for Adidas, among others). "Just for the record, though, I didn't stop doing fashion shows for good I may well do one again," he said of the decision to center Hunter's promotional activities on the global festival circuit. "This brand needs to stay very fluid in how it communicates. And festivals feel like a more relevant way of having the right conversation with the people buying our product." Hunter's new chief executive, Vincent Wauters, who arrived at the brand in April, is on board with the plan. "Alasdhair laid out an ambitious vision for the brand a few years ago, which has been instrumental in driving the growth of the business," he wrote via email. "Since I joined, it has been very exciting to partner with him and realize its potential." Mr. Willis has four children with Ms. McCartney, whom he met at a business breakfast at Brown's Hotel in Mayfair in 2001, leaving him with not much time to himself these days. "I used to love playing sport on the weekends," he said. "Now I spend most of my time driving around, negotiating the logistical challenges of getting four highly active children to their four very different activities at any given time. Mountain climbing, football, horse riding you name it, they do it. We don't have a bookworm among them." Although he is a member of the Stella McCartney board, he said that he and his wife limit shoptalk at home. "Really, we just try to be proud and supportive of one another," Mr. Willis said. "Like any other couple."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Fashion & Style
President Trump's illness from a coronavirus infection last month was the most significant health crisis for a sitting president in nearly 40 years. Yet little remains known about how the virus arrived at the White House and how it spread. The administration did not take basic steps to track the outbreak, limiting contact tracing, keeping cases a secret and cutting out the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The origin of the infections, a spokesman said, was "unknowable." But one standard public health technique may still shed some light: tracking the cluster's genetic fingerprints. To better understand the outbreak, The New York Times worked with prominent geneticists to determine the genetic sequence of viruses that infected two Times journalists believed to have been exposed to the coronavirus as part of their work covering the White House. The study reveals, for the first time, the genetic sequence of the virus that may have infected Mr. Trump and dozens of others, researchers said. That genome is a crucial clue that may allow researchers to identify where the outbreak originated and whether it went on to infect others across the country. The White House has not disclosed any effort to conduct similar genetic testing, but the study's results show that it is still possible, even weeks after positive tests. Additional sequencing could help establish the path of the virus through the White House, the role of a possible super spreading event for Judge Amy Coney Barrett and the origin of an outbreak among the staff of Vice President Mike Pence in the last week or so. The journalists, Michael D. Shear and Al Drago, both had significant, separate exposure to White House officials in late September, several days before they developed symptoms. They did not spend any time near each other in the weeks before their positive tests. Mr. Shear traveled with Mr. Trump and other staff on Air Force One on Sept. 26, when Mr. Trump approached within five or six feet without a mask. Mr. Drago covered the Judge Barrett event that day and a news conference the next day near officials who were not wearing masks and later tested positive. Both journalists wore masks. The viral genomes of the two journalists shared the same distinct pattern of mutations, the research found. Along with their exposure history, the findings suggest that they were infected as part of the broader White House outbreak, said Trevor Bedford, a geneticist at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center and the University of Washington who led the research team. "These mutations that are possessed by these viruses are quite rare in the United States," Dr. Bedford said. "I am highly convinced that these viruses come from the same outbreak or cluster based on their genomes." The study, which has been posted online but not yet peer reviewed or published in a science journal, followed academic protocols that require genetic samples to be anonymous. Mr. Shear and Mr. Drago chose to disclose their identities for this article. Viruses constantly mutate, picking up tiny, accidental alterations to their genetic material as they reproduce. Few mutations alter how a virus functions. But by comparing patterns of mutations across many genetic sequences, scientists can construct family trees of a virus, illuminating how it spreads. The genomes believed by these researchers to be connected to the White House outbreak do not identify a recent geographic source, in part because they are unusual. The ancestors of those viruses spread to the United States from Europe and were circulating widely across the country in April and May, but the trail goes cold after that, according to Dr. Bedford. Geneticists said the genomes are a key piece of the puzzle that may spur future research to determine where the White House outbreak originated and where it may go next. Scientists collect and publish tens of thousands of new sequences of the coronavirus every month, and additional testing may fill in the picture. The results show that even weeks after it was identified, the White House outbreak would be better understood by sequencing samples of more people who were infected. Swabs used in positive tests are often kept in labs for months after an initial infection, and genetic material for the coronavirus is stable if stored appropriately. The C.D.C. routinely relies on genetic testing to help understand Covid 19 outbreaks elsewhere across the country. In a study released on Thursday, the C.D.C. cited genetic sequencing and intensive contact tracing that documented an super spreading event at a high school retreat in Wisconsin. But the Trump administration is not known to have conducted its own genetic analysis of people infected in the outbreak. The White House declined to respond to questions on genetic sequencing of Mr. Trump and the cluster of aides and officials who tested positive or became ill. There is still a remote possibility, Dr. Bedford said, that a previously unseen version of the virus had been circulating undetected in Washington or Northern Virginia and infected both journalists independently from the White House cluster. More testing of the outbreak could eliminate that possibility entirely, he said. Scientists not involved in the research who reviewed the results agreed with the conclusion that the two samples sharing rare mutations strongly suggested they are part of the same outbreak. "These genomes are probably going to be identical or nearly identical to the genome that infected the president," said Michael Worobey, head of the department of ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of Arizona. Dr. Worobey disputed the White House's characterization that the source of the outbreak could not be known. "A lot of things are unknowable if you make no effort to know anything about them, and this falls into this category," Dr. Worobey said. "All of these things actually can be known if you make the effort and you have the transparency that scientists are desperately trying to promote as we sequence hundreds of thousands of these genomes around the world."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Science
The South Zone of Rio is home to the tony neighborhoods of Ipanema and Copacabana, which also have the best beaches: stretches of pristine sand bordering gentle waves. Pick up a bathing suit at Blue Man, a decades old Brazilian brand of swimwear that produces eye catching bikinis, one pieces and briefs in colorful parrot and pineapple patterns (prices start around 150 reais). Swing by Osklen, another well known Brazilian brand, which sells elegant T shirts in linen and silk. They recently developed a line of clothing printed with images from the work of the pioneering Brazilian artist Tarsila do Amaral (an exhibition of her work was at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City last year). At Monica Ponde, just around the corner, pick up brushed silver necklaces with geometric flair (Ms. Monde, the designer, studied architecture), and grab a petit noir coffee from the adjacent cafe: the beans are collected from the droppings of the jacu, a native bird that ingests only the very ripest beans, and the resulting coffee is rich and full bodied. Make a final stop at Toca do Vinicius, a shop for music lovers, where all the vintage records and newly released CDs are bossa nova and samba. Pavao Azul (blue peacock) is an excellent spot to kick off an evening. Packed with an after work crowd vying for seats or standing around small tables, this place is famous for its pataniscas: fried balls with chunks of cod and slivers of onion, and served with extra cold beer. If you're feeling brave, try the vodka coconut mix poured out of a Smirnoff bottle it's made in house and is equal parts delicious and potent. Then stroll north to Galeto Sat's, a casual spot with just a dozen tables and, behind the bar, rows of spring chickens roasting on giant skewers over the flames. Start with a basket of the famous garlic bread, buttery and liberally doused with garlic bits, add a plate of juicy, bite sized chicken hearts, then round off the meal with the roast chicken. Dinner for two, around 120 reais. Bip bip is coming up on 60 years in spite of the fact that it's the kind of local bar that seems to be actively discouraging new customers. The only seats are occupied by the musicians and regulars, and the beer a selection of mediocre Brazilian brands and cans of Heineken is in a refrigerator in the back from which you have to help yourself. The music, though, is worth twice as much hassle: Expect to find a group of eight or so playing and singing samba and bossa nova with passion. That passion is shared by the onlookers, who dance, sing along (quietly) and snap their fingers in applause. The longtime owner, known to all as Alfredinho, passed away a few weeks ago, but the music plays on. The Santiago Calatrava designed Museum of Tomorrow (admission, 20 reais) opened with great fanfare in 2015. Inside, the exhibits are mostly virtual hundreds of towering screens, some with interactive games, and an IMAX style film but the content itself focuses more on the nature of community, sustainability and disaster forecasting than on futuristic imaginings. The exterior and the grounds of the museum are, perhaps, even more impressive. Stroll around the water features, admire the audacious architecture (it's been compared to everything from a spaceship to a crocodile), and then head to the Museu de Arte do Rio (admission 20 reais) across the plaza. This dynamic museum has a frequently changing collection of work by mostly Brazilian artists. Make sure to visit the roof, from which you can see, across the way, a portrait blasted in stone on the side of a neighboring building by the Portuguese artist Alexandre Farto, known as Vhils. Afro Brazilian history and the slave trade in particular is an integral yet understudied part of the country's heritage. Spend a few hours exploring its legacy, starting with lunch at Angu do Gomes. This restaurant first opened in 1955, serving angu, a hearty polenta and meat stew with African roots (lunch for two, around 150 reais). From here, walk to Valongo Wharf, a Unesco Heritage Site, which was the arrival point for almost a million slaves, most from West and Central Africa. The wharf itself had been covered over and was only rediscovered amid preparations for the 2016 Olympics. Not far from here is Praca XV. There's not much to be seen now in this huge space except a boat ticketing office and some skateboarders, but it was once the site of massive slave auctions. The Instituto de Pesquisa e Memoria Pretos Novos (open 11 a.m. to 2 p.m., free admission), is a small but sobering museum about the slave trade built atop a cemetery you can still see bones exposed in the ground. Rather than join the crowds lining up to board the cable cars to the top of Pao de Acucar, head to the mountain's base instead. The Claudio Coutinho trail is bordered with steep slopes and trees populated with families of capuchin monkeys on one side, and waves crashing against enormous rocks on the other. After you've broken a sweat, stroll in the other direction around the peninsula (or take a short taxi ride) to Bar Urca, a longtime neighborhood landmark dishing out crispy pastries stuffed with meat, bobo de camarao (a creamy shrimp dish), icy beers and fried balls of bacalao (snacks and beer for two, around 130 reais). Take your goodies and join the locals perching on the sea wall across the street, with the water susurrating beneath you and small boats floating nearby. The Leblon neighborhood, home to some of the city's best bars and restaurants, is getting trendier by the day. Stop in at Mixxing for a pre dinner drink; the cozy bar usually has both a D.J. and a handful of loyal customers who deeply appreciate that the drinks many invented by the bartenders and incorporating ingredients like a ginger foam with the texture of heavy cream are some of the cleverest cocktails in town. Dinner is at Oro, which got its second Michelin star in 2018. Felipe Bronze, the chef, has created tasting menus of modern Brazilian dishes that recently included granulated tapioca with shrimp and chayote, gnocchi formed from cured egg yolk, and a starter of sweet potato bread with smoked catupiry butter. Dinner for two, 670 reais. Stick around Botafogo for the night, strolling from bar to bar. Start with a sidewalk table at WineHouse, a small spot with many local wines on the menu, including a few by the glass (try some Brazilian sparkling wine, which is having a moment). Then head to CoLAB, a hip spot that's part bar, part cafe and part venue. Expect craft A.P.A.s and wheat beers on draft, live music, and a youthful, talkative crowd at the communal tables. Nearby, Comuna has sandwiches, drinks and chilled out electronic music perfect for whiling away the wee hours. Each Sunday at 10 a.m., the 17th century Mosteiro de Sao Bento (free) welcomes a full house for its mass, which includes impressive Gregorian chanting. Inside, the spectacular church is filled with gold; a series of arches leads to an elevated platform where the monks sing and preach in turn. You can follow along with the Portuguese using the free pamphlet which lays out the program. It's strange that even in a city with such a racially diverse population, all the statues in the church have light skinned faces. Spread out along the side of the Paris Park every Sunday morning, the Feira da Gloria is one of the city's best, most colorful food markets. Pick up a late breakfast or early lunch of tapioca pancakes stuffed with melted ham and cheese, a box of sliced pineapple, sugar cane juice or sushi, and stroll down the line of stalls whose owners loudly advertise their colorful arrays of fresh greens, fruit, spices and flowers. At one end there's pet fish and a secondhand market of old clothes, and live music (that may include a band of highly skilled drummers) is common. Copacabana might be so famous as to be almost a cliche, but it's still one of the best city beaches in the world. Quiosques, or kiosks, dole out draft beer, caipirinhas and bags of Globos (crunchy rings made from manioc starch) right on the sand, groups of men in tiny swimsuits play hands free volleyball, vendors sell sarongs emblazoned with the Brazilian flag, and everyone's there to have a good time. A 10 minute walk south is Arpoador Beach , where you'll often see surfers floating on the water like sea gulls waiting to catch the perfect wave. If you're here around sunset, join the groups climbing the rocks at the eastern end of the beach for the best views. There are plenty of Airbnb options in Rio; a one bedroom is often available for less than 50 a night (depending on the season). Botafogo and Flamengo are central neighborhoods positioned between the southern beaches and the cultural offerings of the northern section of the city. The clean, spare Praia Ipanema (doubles start around 490 reais, including breakfast) is as close as Rio hotels get to the beach, which is just across the road. All rooms have balconies and superior rooms have ocean views. The hotel has a beach stand with free chairs and towels. Halfway between the port area and the South Zone, the funky, Philippe Starck designed Yoo2 (doubles start at 270 reais, including breakfast) has a prime location for city exploration. The small rooftop pool has great views of the Christ the Redeemer statue in one direction and Botafogo beach in the other.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Travel
The Raiders Left Oakland. The 49ers Want to Take It. None SANTA CLARA, Calif. The timing couldn't have been any better. After years of turmoil and losing, the San Francisco 49ers, who face the Green Bay Packers in the N.F.C. Championship game on Sunday, are one victory from returning to Super Bowl. There is no better way to drive demand for tickets, jerseys and support from a business community with cash to burn. And one more thing the 49ers' bonanza is happening as their longtime rivals, the Raiders, abandon the Bay Area for Las Vegas, leaving the 49ers to reign as the lone West Coast team between Seattle and Los Angeles and in prime position to annex the East Bay, which has for years been enemy territory clad in black and silver. Making inroads into Raider nation won't be easy. Raiders fans are among the most fiercely loyal in the N.F.L., and adopting the rival next door as their home team is not in their D.N.A. There were not many Brooklyn Dodgers fans who started rooting for the Yankees in 1958 either. Some fans will follow the team in Las Vegas, even flying there to see them play. Other Raiders fans may stop watching the N.F.L. entirely. "You're either a Raiders fan or Niners fan, but you're never both," said Wayne Deboe, the president of the Oakland Raiders Booster Club and a fan since the team's inception in 1960. Still, the 49ers ascendancy is likely to draw some fans who just want to watch a winner. The Bay Area is filled with transplants seeking Silicon Valley riches and maybe a local team to root for. Younger fans, even those whose parents have a proclivity for silver and black, may latch onto the rising Niners, who are delicately trying to jump on a golden opportunity. "You're either a Raiders fan or Niners fan, but you're never both." "We would never try to convert Raiders fans," said Alex Chang, the chief marketing officer of the 49ers, before outlining what seemed like a pretty good plan to do just that. "It's a multigenerational play here for people who are transplants or kids who are growing up here now and won't have the Raiders." There will be an expansion of 49er charities in the East Bay. The franchise will invite more East Bay school children to its science and technology programs and expand its free flag football programs. The efforts are not necessarily designed to sell tickets, but represent a kind of soft sell to bring residents in the entire Easy Bay closer to a team more associated with the city of San Francisco and the peninsula stretching down to San Jose. Last year, about 60,000 school children from the region visited Levi's Stadium. The 49ers also funded free flag football leagues for 3,000 boys and girls that were hosted by the Boys Girls Club, Police Athletic League and city recreational programs there. Children who play in these leagues all receive a Niners reversible jersey. The team will also run one time football clinics, often with 49ers, in the East Bay. The team intends to triple that number next season by working with those organizations in the East Bay. "We want kids to be 49ers fans, but it's not like we want someone not to be a Raiders fan," said Hannah Gordon, the team's chief administrative officer. Sports leagues have tried in the past to create boundaries so that neighboring teams do not encroach on each other's markets. In the N.F.L., a team's territory was a 75 mile radius from its home city. Because San Francisco and Oakland are just 10 miles apart, the 49ers and Raiders have informally stayed out of their each other's cities no billboards, for instance. But the growth of social media has made lines on a map obsolete, and now the Raiders are gone altogether. Winning the hearts of abandoned fans is not easy. The Mets were created in 1962 five years after the Brooklyn Dodgers and New York Giants moved to California. The Chargers, who abandoned San Diego three seasons ago, are struggling to gain traction in Los Angeles. The Kansas City Chiefs have moved eastward across Missouri to St. Louis, which lost the Rams in 2016. Mark Donovan, the Chiefs president, said the team acknowledged that Rams fans may still be angry about the decision to move, but he said ticket sales and sponsorships from that part of the state are on the rise. There is a lot more Chiefs programming on local radio affiliates, too. The Chiefs' success they play in their second consecutive A.F.C. title game on Sunday has also won over skeptical Rams fans. Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes and tight end Travis Kelce drew a big round of applause when they attended a Blues playoff game last year. "I don't think the rivalry between the teams was so bad that people wouldn't root for the Chiefs," said Randy Karraker, a talk show host on 101 ESPN in St. Louis. That may not be the case in the Bay Area, where the Raiders and 49ers have different identities dating back decades the 49ers have long been the team of the elite, while the Raiders were the team of the working class. Still, success changes the calculus. Sales of 49ers merchandise have been the strongest in the East Bay from San Leandro to Oakland to Fremont this season, up 250 percent compared with last year, according to Fanatics, the largest online seller of licensed merchandise. "The Bay Area is very provincial," said Andy Dolich, who worked as a business executive for the Oakland A's, Golden State Warriors, and, from 2007 to 2010, the 49ers. "But this Niners team has been able to jump the county barriers."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Sports
Less than two weeks after drawing criticism for giving Blake Snell, the reigning American League Cy Young Award winner, a mere 15,500 raise, the Tampa Bay Rays on Thursday announced they were giving their ace quite a bit more, after all. Confirming reports earlier in the day, the club announced it had agreed to terms with the left handed Snell on a five year, 50 million contract that runs through the 2023 season, which would have been Snell's first year of free agency. The deal could pay an additional 2 million in incentives, the club said. According to the Rays, it is the largest contract ever given to a pitcher before he has reached arbitration, topping the 42 million in total value Gio Gonzalez got from the Washington Nationals in 2012, and it could top the 10 million average annual value in the contract that the Yankees gave Luis Severino earlier this off season. "Since being drafted in 2011, Blake's talent and hard work have enabled him to establish himself as one of the most dominant pitchers in the game," Stuart Sternberg, the Rays' principal owner, said in a statement. "We're looking forward to seeing him take the mound for the Rays for years to come."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Sports
The Wendel house at the northwest corner of Fifth Avenue and 39th Street, around 1905. The most well known developer in New York today may be a man with national aspirations and a propensity to talk off the top of his extravagantly coifed head, but a century ago, the headlines were commanded by a real estate family with an aversion to publicity and the trappings of wealth. In the early 20th century, the Wendels were perhaps the most powerful landlords in New York City, a dynasty with more than 150 properties in Manhattan worth over 1 billion in today's dollars. The Wendels were the delight of the local papers, for, rich as they were, the family six sisters and a brother, all unmarried lived together in a shuttered mansion without electricity on the northwest corner of Fifth Avenue and 39th Street, and dressed in grim Victorian garb that had gone out of style half a century earlier. Tour buses regularly pulled up in front of "the House of Mystery." This account is based on articles in contemporary newspapers and magazines. Many periodicals indulged in at least a little bit of surmise, for the Wendels believed that "publicity was as demeaning as luxury," according to The New York Times. But unlike their personal lives, their investment strategy was an open book: Never mortgage a property; never sell anything; never pay for repairs; and never forget that Broadway moves uptown at a rate of 10 blocks a decade. Their rules for success worked: When the last Wendel, Ella, died in 1931, the family's portfolio stretched from the Bowery to Fifth Avenue, and from Wall Street to the Upper West Side, according to her front page obituary in The Times. In their heyday, the Wendels paid more real estate taxes in New York than anyone, surname Rockefeller included. John D. Rockefeller's Standard Oil Building at 26 Broadway, which still stands sentry in all its limestone glory at the tip of Manhattan, was built partially on leased Wendel land. The massive UPS trucking depot on Greenwich Street in SoHo was once Wendel property. The Wendels owned the land under the Time Life Building at 1271 Avenue of the Americas, as well as the ground beneath the office skyscraper at 1211 Avenue of the Americas. The land under another skyscraper, 1407 Broadway, as well as nearly the entire two blocks surrounding it, belonged to the Wendels. So did the land where the luxury condominium at 386 Columbus Avenue now looks across at the Museum of Natural History. In the early part of the 20th century, New York City was rapidly growing, but the Wendel belief in never parting with a parcel often stood in the way of progress. Among the civic headaches they caused: When the city needed a Wendel property on Dey Street to build the Hudson Terminal station, now demolished, the family declined to sell it. They fought the seizure in court, spending close to 20,000 about 500,000 in today's dollars on legal fees for a property that was assessed at 75,000, or about 1.89 million in today's dollars. The Wendels lost the case and were awarded 75,000. They refused to cash the check. It was much the same when the city wanted to build a new Hall of Records at 31 Chambers Street, the Beaux Arts style building now known as the Surrogate's Courthouse. The Wendels dug in their heels, and it took a special act of the state legislature to get the deal done, according to a 1912 article in McClure's Magazine. Real estate has long been a magnet for colorful characters, and there are several contemporary counterparts to the Wendels. The reclusive and litigious developer Sheldon Solow, for example, has been party to hundreds of lawsuits, while the closemouthed heirs of Sol Goldman's estate rarely sell any of their vast holdings. There are also some noted non Wendels, such as Donald Trump, who has never avoided the public eye and plasters his name across properties he owns, and through licensing agreements, even some he doesn't. The Wendels' disinclination to deal helped dictate the pace of development for decades in New York City. Untroubled by financial necessity, the family would sometimes allow buildings to sit vacant for decades if they couldn't find the sort of tenant they wanted. They refused to rent to saloons, restaurants or theaters, and once held up a lease until they could verify the tenants' first aid kits wouldn't include more than a pint of whiskey. In other instances, the Wendels were generous, even softhearted landlords. They kept a valuable SoHo lot vacant so children from neighboring tenements could play on it. They deeply discounted the rents of tenants they liked. That was the case at 1407 Broadway, now an office tower, but once the home of the Wright Lumber Company. Taking up the entire block along Broadway between West 38th and West 39th Street, the lumberyard had moved there in 1864, when it was surrounded by open fields. But even as garment factories, theaters and skyscrapers moved in, the Wendels continued to lease to the lumberyard, raising its rent just once in 67 years, according to The New York Herald Tribune of March 22, 1931. The family, who lived just two blocks east, apparently did not wish to uproot Wright Lumber, because it was the only place in the neighborhood to get firewood and because their servants went there to cash their paychecks. "Had it not been for these Wendel blocks," McClure's Magazine opined in 1912, "upper Broadway would be an entirely different thoroughfare." Mr. Wendel's grandfather was the first John G. Wendel, a German fur trader who arrived in New York in 1798. He befriended another fur trader, John Jacob Astor, and the two men began buying up New York real estate. A year later, the first Mr. Wendel married Mr. Astor's half sister. John Daniel Wendel, their son, continued accumulating property. His son was John G. Wendel II. One sister eventually revolted against her brother's edict but not until 1903, when she was 61, too late to produce potentially troublesome heirs. Rebecca Wendel, tall, with gray hair worn tightly back, married a friend of the vicar of Trinity Church, The New York Times reported. It was said that thereafter, her brother discouraged his other sisters from attending church. Rebecca and her husband moved into a turreted brick and limestone townhouse on Central Park West and 85th Street. The house, since converted into apartments, still stands, selling for 17.5 million in 2013. The rest of the Wendels continued to live together behind the dusty shuttered windows and bolted front door of their four story mansion on Fifth Avenue. Under flickering gaslights, the unmarried siblings bathed in old fashioned zinc tubs, slept in their childhood bedrooms and dined on meals prepared on the kitchen's antiquated coal stove. Ella Wendel was the last of the Wendels, living alone in the huge house, her only companions a handful of elderly servants and Tobey, a poodle. Reportedly shy, Ella rarely left the house, except for the evenings when she would steal outside after the surrounding skyscrapers had emptied of office workers and their prying eyes. Slipping out a side door, she would take Tobey there were, in fact, several Tobeys, since every time one died, she would replace it with another for a walk in the yard. Her brother was said to have turned down 1 million for her personal dog park. When Ella died in 1931 at 78, the Wendel fortune was to be divided among several charities. But before the estate could be dispersed, an astounding 2,303 people came forward purporting to be relatives. Cousins appeared from as far away as Czechoslovakia, and, according to The New York Herald Tribune of March 23, 1932, entire villages in Germany, "most of whose inhabitants bear the name of Wendel" came out of the woodwork to file claims. In one elaborate ruse, a Scottish house painter said he was the son of Mr. Wendel, producing a will that Mr. Wendel had supposedly scribbled on the back page of a book that bequeathed him the entire Wendel fortune. That claim not unique, for several "children" came forward was also thrown out and the painter was imprisoned for fraud. In the end, all but a handful were proven bogus and the Wendels' vast estate was dismantled, with the bulk of the proceeds going to charity. The last parcel, on Union Square where the fashionable Coffee Shop now stands, was sold in 1950. It's hard for a dynasty to continue without heirs, and many of today's real estate families are working hard to insure they avoid the Wendels' fate. "I'm pretty sure that's not going to happen to the Durst family, we do a very good job at reproducing," said Mr. Durst, who noted there are 24 members of the fourth generation of Dursts. "The typical odds are that family businesses don't get past the third generation, and so far, we've beaten those odds," said William C. Rudin, the chief executive of the Rudin Management Company. The Rudins are into the fourth generation of their real estate dynasty, Mr. Rudin's two children are active in the company with children of their own. "We celebrated 100 years in 2005, and I think I have the team lined up to hopefully carry it forward for another 100 years."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Real Estate
A FAMILY limited partnership was once a rather esoteric way for wealthy families to centralize the management of real estate and various pots of money. But this is not a normal tax year. The arcane device has suddenly become popular because of the scheduled expiration of the 5.12 million gift tax exemption at the end of this year. For years, the exemption for gifts to heirs had been 1 million, and it's not clear what will happen to the tax break, just one of many tax and spending measures expiring at the end of 2012. But wealth advisers cautioned that the rush to set up a partnership in order to use the tax break could lead families to do something that is not right for them. For some families, a partnership is attractive. It is a way to combine money to reach the higher investment requirements that hedge fund and private equity managers require. But its most alluring feature may be the ability to discount the value of the assets put into the partnerships because the shares distributed from it are less liquid since only another family member can buy them. A discount of 25 percent generally does not attract scrutiny from the Internal Revenue Service, and that could allow someone to increase a 5.12 million gift exemption to 7 million. Since the partnerships are not overly expensive to administer, several advisers said they have seen people starting them with as little as 2 million. But affluent families on the lower end of that range also risk running afoul of the I.R.S. by being too aggressive in what they put into a partnership and how much they discount it. As families look for ways to get the most out of this year's gift tax break, many of the advisers I spoke with said they were worried that less sophisticated families would be misled into thinking that they could put everything they had into a family limited partnership and never worry about taxes. Jason Cain, a director in the family wealth group at Credit Suisse Private Bank, said less affluent families usually those with 10 million or less had misused these partnerships. "The I.R.S. has been very selective in litigating only the most egregious scenarios," he said. "They have gone after 6 million families that put all of their assets into a family partnership and then treated it as their checking account." G. David Hamar Jr., co chairman of the family office services group at Silvercrest Asset Management, said he, too, had seen people misusing these partnerships by doing things like putting their primary residence into one and continuing to live there rent free. But he said the hurdle for any family was having a legitimate business purpose for setting up one of these partnerships. Many of the cases that the I.R.S. has questioned have partnerships set up to avoid estate taxes, Mr. Hamar said. "Highly liquid assets have been transferred in, and then the gifting is done on the deathbed, and they send out the discounted assets." Still, in a year when the gift tax break will be on many people's minds, many affluent families are going to find themselves talking about family limited partnerships. The partnerships can work if approached correctly. Browne Rice, a Texas businessman, said his extended family had reaped tremendous financial benefits from a family limited partnership that his father created in 1992. The family formed it by pulling together assets that had been placed in various trusts created when the family sold 1,750 acres of land outside Houston in 1984. Mr. Rice, who is the general partner of the partnership, said his family considered the investment vehicle immensely successful. From May 1992 to May 2011, he said, it paid out distributions worth 166 percent of what was originally put into it and still had 82 percent of the principal left. "There have been a lot of advantages for us," Mr. Rice said. "The main advantage was we could all contribute assets to the partnership, and those assets were valued at about a 40 percent discount because everyone became a minority partner in the partnership." He added that after the partnership was formed, his parents continued to move their assets into it so there was little left in their estate when they died in 2005. Yet the Rice partnership did not exist solely for tax purposes. It had a series of business interests that included mineral rights, real estate and royalties from oil and gas. It also made direct investments in small companies, including a hotel in Belize that Mr. Rice started. Drew Kanaly, chief executive of Kanaly Trust, a Houston wealth advisory company, said that while the financial aspect was important in partnerships, handling issues unrelated to business was crucial to their success, since the shareholders were family members. "Be careful of these tax driven decisions," he said. "They can drive you into irrevocable decisions that you later on regret." Drew Kanaly's father, Deane, who worked with Mr. Rice's father, left the family trust company to him and his two brothers. One, Jeff, is the vice chairman of the firm and another brother, Steve, worked there from the 1970s until his death two years ago. Now, the family is working to ensure that the next generation is prepared to keep running it. "Getting to the third generation is really tough," Drew Kanaly said. "You can put the structure in place, but you have to make sure that everyone's orientations and expectations are set for it. There is no guarantee that you'll have leadership from the third generation." Mr. Rice said he and his siblings rarely struggled over the investment decisions they made as a family, but he knows they were fortunate. At 67, though, he said there were challenges ahead. One sister has no children, and he and his other sister and brother have seven among them. His wife is also not the mother of his two girls. "It's easy to keep it equal among the four siblings," he said. "Beyond that, it gets much more complicated." Jeff Kanaly said that his own family had relied on advisers to help them realize that business decisions often had to trump family interests. "We had issues that kept coming up," he said. "We had a consultant who told us, 'We're going to take those issues and put them in a special place, and we're going to call it the swamp.' Going there only creates frustration, and it doesn't solve what we're trying to solve."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Your Money
GREEN BAY, Wis. The hospitals here are nearing capacity with coronavirus patients. The Bishop of the Catholic Diocese has told his flock that they can stay home and did not have to attend Sunday Mass. Gov. Tony Evers was even more direct about the grip the pandemic has on his state. He implored his citizens to stay at home. "We're losing people," Evers, a Democrat, said over the weekend. "The death rate is increasing. This is a time to double down as a state; we cannot afford to allow this to rage out of control." Inside Lambeau Field on Monday night, however, the N.F.L. show went on: The Packers beat the Atlanta Falcons, 30 16, before no fans. The N.F.L. is a made for television spectacle these days: three hours of packaged razzmatazz broadcast from mostly empty stadiums. Inside, Lambeau is a messy sound stage. Barricades and trash cans are stacked akimbo on its concourses. A skeleton crew of security personnel directs no one. 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. Instead of the piped in fan noise you hear on your couch that helps with the illusion that the N.F.L. has returned to normal, Tom Petty sounds tinny in the empty stadium and the touchdown fireworks explode violently enough to make you think Lambeau has been wired for demolition. From the field, the ambient sound is not all that different from a junior varsity game on a Thursday afternoon. The collisions are louder and the cross chatter more animated. In fact, Rodgers said that he and Atlanta quarterback Matt Ryan shared a laugh about the eerie intimacy of the empty stadium. "You can hear everything on the sidelines," Rodgers said. "You can hear the conversation of the other team during timeouts. It's been a big change for all of us." The silence was uncharacteristically deafening outside Lambeau Field as well, and for a very good reason. Titletown, the entertainment district across from the stadium, was empty, leaves blowing through its promenades. Next door, Kroll's West was nearly empty, surely a game day mirage at the local tavern and institution whose autograph wall of Packer greats summons the dulcet tones of N.F.L. Films's John Facenda. On Monday, Wisconsin ranked third in the United States, behind North and South Dakota, in a New York Times analysis of highest weekly case counts per capita. Oshkosh, Green Bay and Appleton were among the top five metro areas in the nation with the highest daily case counts when adjusting for population, according to the analysis. Seven Wisconsin metro areas, in fact, made the top 20 of that list. Wisconsin has had 134,359 cases and 1,381 deaths, according to state health officials. Over the past week, it has added an average of 2,396 cases per day, 11 percent higher than the previous week. And 14 people are dying a day from the virus, which is 151 percent higher than the previous week. The test positivity rate of 20 over the past week is higher than the week before. None of that is lost on Green Bay Coach Matt LaFleur. "Unfortunately, Covid is running rampant in our community," he said. "All it takes is one guy to infect everyone else. Be responsible, wear a mask and social distance. There's a level of responsibility with that to protect one another and just be very cautious and mindful about what you're doing out there." The N.F.L. understands its season could be on borrowed time. Last week, nine players and nine staff members of the Tennessee Titans tested positive for the virus, the league's first full fledged outbreak of the season. The Titans' game against the Pittsburgh Steelers was postponed and, on Monday, Green Bay shared the national television spotlight with Kansas City and New England, whose game was rescheduled to Monday night from Sunday after players on both teams, including Patriots quarterback Cam Newton, tested positive for the virus. Whether or not the Packers, or any team, should be playing while an unchecked virus persistently gnaws its way through the population is the question. Bishop David Ricken may have told the Packers' Catholic faithful to stay home on Sundays, but N.F.L. Commissioner Roger Goodell does not plan to sideline the league's players over health concerns. Instead, with billions of dollars on the line, the league promised to increase fines for players who are reckless in their off hours, and to punish teams that violate its safety protocols. The penalties could include the loss of draft choices or even the forfeit of a game, Goodell wrote in a memo sent to the league's teams on Monday.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Sports
Most people or, at any rate, most readers of The New York Times remember Donald Trump's response to the white nationalist riot in Charlottesville, Va., as a particularly low point in a presidency full of them. After a rambling, aggrieved news conference in which he defended some of those marching with neo Nazis as "very fine people," Trump's already dismal approval rating hovered below 38 percent. Staffers voiced shame and disgust to journalists (anonymously, of course). Senator Susan Collins was "concerned." What's been forgotten in the almost three years that followed is what came next. For his first post Charlottesville rally, Trump chose not a blood red exurb, but Phoenix, a blue city with a large Hispanic population whose Democratic mayor implored the president to stay away. Onstage, Trump hinted at his plans to pardon Joe Arpaio, the former Maricopa County sheriff who'd been convicted of contempt of court after defying a judge's order to cease detaining people simply on suspicion that they were undocumented. Outside, protesters massed, and violence erupted as riot police confronted them. "Some screamed. Some poured milk on their face," reported The Arizona Republic. "Skin, slicked in sweat, burned from the chemicals in the pepper balls and pepper spray." As The Washington Post reported at the time, Trump's inflammatory event was part of a pattern: "When he finds himself under attack or slipping in popularity, he often holds a rally in a place like this: a diverse blue city that's home to liberal protesters but surrounded by red suburbs and rural towns filled with Trump supporters who will turn out in droves." His first rally after Democrats launched an impeachment inquiry was in the Minneapolis district held by Representative Ilhan Omar, whom Trump has repeatedly demonized. It's important to keep Trump's instinct for escalation in mind when considering his decision to hold his first post shutdown rally in Tulsa, Okla., next Friday which is Juneteenth, the holiday that celebrates the end of American slavery. Tulsa was the site, 99 years ago, of a white rampage in the thriving commercial district known as Black Wall Street; with as many as 300 people killed, it was one of the worst incidents of racist violence in American history. "The president's speech there on Juneteenth is a message to every black American: more of the same," tweeted Representative Val Demings, a Florida Democrat reported to be on Joe Biden's vice presidential shortlist. As soon as the rally was announced, people started asking a question that Trump often forces: Was the president being stupid or evil? After all, it's highly unlikely that Trump, who reportedly didn't know what happened at Pearl Harbor when he visited in 2017, is familiar with the Tulsa massacre. But there are people around Trump who are sophisticated enough to understand the message the rally is sending, including Stephen Miller, one of the president's closest aides and an out and out white nationalist. (Surely someone in the White House saw "Watchmen," HBO's recent adaptation of the superhero noir, which began with the Tulsa killings.) And his administration is certainly aware of what Juneteenth means. The White House press secretary, Kayleigh McEnany, called it a "meaningful day" to the president, saying he "wants to share some of the progress that's been made as we look forward and more that needs to be done." Bafflingly, some observers seem to be taking McEnany at her word, even if they doubt the president can pull off a conciliatory performance. Writing for CNN, Chris Cillizza speculated that the intended audience for the Tulsa rally could be suburban white women disgusted by Trump's response to the killing of George Floyd and the resulting protests. Politico Playbook said, of this political moment: "Donald John Trump is torn. Torn between the impulse to speak and cater to his base, and the demands of governing a multiracial country in the throes of unprecedented turmoil and upheaval." Somehow, even at this late date, there are professional commentators who have not grasped the full malignancy of this president. There's simply no reason to believe that Trump is going to Tulsa to try to ease intercommunal hostility, rather than exacerbate it. "It feels like a presidential act of trolling," Omar Wasow, an assistant professor of politics at Princeton, told me. Wasow has recently received a lot of media attention for his work showing how violent protest in the 1960s contributed to Richard Nixon's 1968 victory. So far, this year's civil unrest isn't strengthening Trump's position in a similar way, partly because of Trump's own evident role in it. Trump is more George Wallace than Nixon, said Wasow: "He's somebody who can credibly appeal to a niche, but for much of the country he is a source of chaos, not the solution to it." But Trump doesn't appear to see it that way, nor do many of those around him. On Wednesday, ABC News reported on Trump campaign infighting, saying that "a growing chorus of Republican advisers outside and inside the White House" believe that Trump's son in law, Jared Kushner, "is alienating the president's voter base because he is too moderate a force." It's hard to believe these people don't know what they're doing with Trump's Tulsa appearance. In 2017, The Post described how rallies in blue cities "allow Trump to highlight the deep division in the country and force voters to pick a side." Tulsa has a Republican mayor, but a similar strategy seems to be at work with the Juneteenth event. Trump isn't torn. He wants to tear up the country.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Opinion
Fashion perfumes originated in Belle Epoque Paris, and for generations, it was their intoxicating scent that proved to be their most effective selling tool. A cloud of tuberose hanging in the air, for example, might prompt a woman to head out in search of Robert Piguet's Fracas. From 1960 when Marilyn Monroe revealed to a journalist that "all she wore to bed was Chanel No. 5" celebrity endorsements of a fragrance began to influence consumers powerfully, and continue to do so today. But for a fashion perfume to be a true success story, its introduction must be accompanied by a slick film debuting on YouTube. Examples abound, from "My Mutant Brain," a musical comedy that Spike Jonze directed to promote the August 2016 debut of Kenzo World, to "The One That I Want," a 2014 romantic drama by Baz Luhrmann for Chanel No. 5. Such productions may be just three minutes long, but Hollywood talent is involved, with an average yearlong shooting schedule on par with a major motion picture, and budgets generally match those of independent features. Brands are more than willing to invest the time and money. "Perfume videos launched online definitely lead to online sales," said Alexandre Choueiri, the president of international designer collections at L'Oreal USA. One of the brands he oversees, YSL Black Opium, had a surge in sales after a short film by Harmony Korine went live on YSLBeauty.com and Sephora.com in February 2015. "The 30 milliliter was the No. 1 seller at Sephora in the first week of the launch," he said. While filmmaking for the internet is a new endeavor for the perfume industry, fragrance films have been made for decades. In 1979, Jacques Helleu, Chanel's artistic director, invented the medium by enlisting an up and coming Ridley Scott to direct "The Swimming Pool," a television commercial for Chanel No. 5. "This was before Mr. Scott reached world fame with 'Blade Runner,' proving how much Helleu had an unmistakable flair for emerging talents," said Thomas du Pre de Saint Maur, head of global creative resources for Chanel Fragrance and Beauty. Chanel later replaced Mr. Scott with the art director Jean Paul Goude, whose flamboyant, big budget perfume ads went against the grain of traditional romantic advertising and became a pop culture phenomena. In 1986, Giorgio Armani enlisted Martin Scorsese to direct a short, arty love story gone awry to promote his citrusy Armani Pour Homme, and Calvin Klein and Yves Saint Laurent would later work with David Lynch. Yet the auteur advertising, which dominated consumer brands and intrigued the most inventive fashion names, remained an uncommon approach for fragrance brands. Today, the insatiable demand for content from consumers has prompted brands to look beyond the traditional realm of fashion photographers to Hollywood, as well as to the independent film world, for directors admired by their target market: millennial customers. Mr. Choueiri also attributes the surge in production to big data, the computer assisted analysis of consumer behavior that helps companies refine their offerings to specific audiences. "Launching the traditional 30 to 45 second TV spot is still very important for big brands," Mr. Choueiri said. "But the market now in Europe and the U.S. is asking for more personalized stories." So brands will often release several variations of their films to entice different customers. And not all films have to be big budget productions to be successful. Short, inexpensive films and moving images made by brands from Comme des Garcons to Maison Margiela also have proved appealing. Debuting in late August shortly before the start of New York Fashion Week and the Toronto International Film Festival it became one of the most talked about perfume campaigns in recent memory. Its success was partly due to its star, Margaret Qualley, and her unexpected burst of dance (ballet, yoga poses and even break dancing) through the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion in Los Angeles. Mr. Jonze enlisted several of his frequent collaborators, including Hoyte Van Hoytema as director of photography (he also worked on the James Bond film "Spectre" and Christopher Nolan's "Interstellar"); the production designer K.K. Barrett ("Lost In Translation"); the film editor Eric Zumbrunnen; and Heidi Bivens, who designed the costumes for Mr. Korine's crime thriller "Spring Breakers." As for the standout choreography, it was the work of Ryan Heffington, who works with Sia and Arcade Fire. Expect a sequel. What is a typical Comme des Garcons Parfums project? Pharrell Williams collaborated with the house in 2014, pumping sales of the woody unisex scent Girl by introducing it as he released a studio album with the same title. Susan Irvine, a fragrance writer and novelist, credits the Prada Candy series for initiating the spirit of nonconformist transgression that has influenced campaigns like Kenzo World. "Lea Seydoux's Candy is only interested in stuffing her face with popcorn in one film and cream cakes in another, even though she is being courted by two men throughout the series," Ms. Irvine said. "Fragrance has always been a safe and very easy way for a women to get a shot of this style of transgressive behavior. It is about buying into the idea of danger and glamour that you can safely partake in but without having to do any of the bad stuff. That is very seductive." The 2012 film for Very Irresistible Electric Rose is the fragrance industry's closest thing to a music video the bottle doesn't even make an appearance. "Just how a music video animates a song, a fragrance video can bring the vibe of a scent to life and tell its story," Ms. Dougherty said. The Egoiste spot featured 47 Chanel clad models stepping onto the balconies of a white stucco building and shouting, "Egoiste!" (The facade, erected in Rio de Janeiro for the shoot, evoked the InterContinental Carlton Cannes Hotel, that landmark of the French Riviera. Though surreal in its imagery, Mr. Goude said reality prompted the story line. "I noticed every time someone mentioned the word 'egoist,' women immediately said, 'It's so true. Men are all the same!' So that's why you have all these wounded woman on the balcony," he told Vogue. "Because women all over the world agree that men are a bunch of bastards." At the time, Egoiste's anti romantic theme was a novel idea and became a potent alternative to the fairy tale story lines customarily used to sell fragrances. Mr. Goude has gone on to direct other Chanel fragrance ads he also did the introductory commercial for Prada Candy and has been a consultant for Kenzo but his blockbuster approach to perfume films remains the touchstone for those made by Chanel since then, from the likes of Mr. Luhrmann, Mr. Scorsese and Luc Besson.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Fashion & Style
The death rate from cervical cancer in the United States is considerably higher than previously estimated and the disparity in death rates between black women and white women is significantly wider, according to a study published Monday in the journal Cancer. The rate at which black American women are dying from the disease is comparable to that of women in many poor developing nations, researchers reported. What makes the findings especially disturbing, said experts not involved in the research, is that when screening guidelines and follow up monitoring are pursued, cervical cancer is largely preventable. "This shows that our disparities are even worse than we feared," said Dr. Kathleen M. Schmeler, an associate professor of gynecologic oncology at the University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center. "We have screenings that are great, but many women in America are not getting them. And now I have even more concerns going forward, with the" expected "repeal of the Affordable Care Act, which covers screening, and the closing of family planning clinics, which do much of that screening." The racial disparity had been noted in earlier studies, but it had been thought to have narrowed because cervical cancer death rates for black women were declining. But this study said that the gap was far greater than believed. In the new analysis, the mortality rate for black women was 10.1 per 100,000. For white women, it is 4.7 per 100,000. Previous studies had put those figures at 5.7 and 3.2. The new rates do not reflect a rise in the number of deaths, which recent estimates put at more than 4,000 a year in the United States. Instead, the figures come from a re examination of existing numbers, in an adjusted context. Typically, death rates for cervical cancer are calculated by assessing the number of women who die from a disease against the general population at risk for it. But these epidemiologists, who looked at health data from 2000 to 2012, also excluded women who had had hysterectomies from that larger population. A hysterectomy almost always removes the cervix, and thus the possibility that a woman will develop cervical cancer. "We don't include men in our calculation because they are not at risk for cervical cancer and by the same measure, we shouldn't include women who don't have a cervix," said Anne F. Rositch, the lead author and an assistant professor of epidemiology at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. "If we want to look at how well our programs are doing, we have to look at the women we're targeting." Although the study did not explore reasons for the racial disparity, some doctors said it could reflect unequal access to screening, ability to pursue early warning test results, and insurance coverage. A recent study in the journal Gynecologic Oncology that looked at 15,194 patients with advanced cervical cancer found that more than half did not receive treatment considered to be standard of care, and that those patients were more likely to be black and poor. According to the analysis published Monday, the hysterectomy corrected mortality rates put black American women on par with women living in some underdeveloped countries in Latin America, Asia and Africa, particularly in sub Saharan Africa. Certainly removing women who had hysterectomies from the data pool had a significant effect. About 20 percent of women in the United States have a hysterectomy, often for problems unrelated to cancer, like excessive bleeding and fibroids, with prevalence higher among black women than white. In years to come, mortality and incidence rates should decline as more women receive HPV vaccines, which prevents many cervical cancers. In recent years, with recognition of the slow progression of the disease, the success of the vaccine and more sophisticated screening tests, guidelines for cervical cancer assessments have shifted. Depending on circumstances, some women need to be screened only every five years. The guidelines suggest that screening end at age 65 for women who have had two or three consecutive negative results in the previous decade. The current study says that the greatest mortality rates hit black women 85 and older. But experts said the new findings did not necessarily point to the need to revisit the upper end of the guidelines. Cervical cancer progresses so slowly, with so many early warning stages, experts said, that it is highly unlikely that a 65 year old woman who had met guidelines' requirements would subsequently develop the disease. But given the rigor of the guidelines and screenings, Dr. Rositch said, why do American women not only still get cervical cancer but die from it? And with such pronounced racial and age divides? Dr. Otis W. Brawley, the chief medical officer for the American Cancer Society, said that the new study pointed to inequity of access and good treatment. "When we look at the difference between black and white, and rich and poor, we find the same disparity," he said. "The quality of assessment and follow up treatment can be different. The question becomes: how do we get adequate preventive care to all people?" Although this study looked at the divide between black and white women, Dr. Schmeler said that it implicitly raised alarms for other poor women of color. Along border towns in Texas, with an overwhelmingly poor, Hispanic population, she said that rates of incidence and death from cervical cancer were considerably higher than national figures. Studies such as this latest one consider death rates from a broad epidemiological perspective; statistically, its grimmest news is about older black women. But on the ground, Dr. M. Margaret Kemeny, the director of the Queens Cancer Center of Queens Hospital, a public institution in New York, said she had treated many younger women of color with a diagnosis of cervical cancer. Although the disease is preventable and, if detected early, treatable, Dr. Kemeny's patients have often never had Pap smears. She recently had to perform total pelvic exenterations on two women, each with recurring cervical cancer, one Chinese, the other Hispanic. She removed the cervix, vagina, rectum and bladder, inserting two ostomy bags, which are worn outside the body to collect urine and stool. "One was 39," Dr. Kemeny said, "and the other was 25."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Health
"Yet it was our lives that were at stake, and we had been taught even as children that God himself created them and set us humans above all his other creatures," Alfred Doblin has one German veteran of World War I tell another in his novel about postwar Berlin, "A People Betrayed." "And here we were flinging them aside, our lives, as though they were dead logs, as though we had never learned anything." The Americans who struggled mightily to prevent their own entry into this, the most senseless of wars, must have thought much the same thing about their compatriots. They must also have wondered how it was that they did not prevail. After all, they seemed to have everything going for them, as Michael Kazin makes clear in his fine, sorrowful history, "War Against War." Unlike most of Europe, which had sleepwalked into the conflict, Americans had almost three years to watch and absorb just how horrible and futile 20th century warfare could be. Never had politics made stranger, or more numerous, bedfellows than the movement to keep us out of World War I. Working actively against American intervention were the country's growing Socialist Party, which had 1,200 members in elected office; key figures in Congress, including the great progressive Republicans George Norris and Robert La Follette, and the populist Democratic House majority leader (and white supremacist) Claude Kitchin; powerful industrialists like Andrew Carnegie and Henry Ford; revered social reformers such as Jane Addams and the liberal rabbi Stephen Wise; the peace loving secretary of state, William Jennings Bryan; the publishing magnate William Randolph Hearst; Helen Keller, civil rights groups, labor unions, the women's movement, Irish and German American groups, countless clergymen and assorted independent radicals. Even, for a time, the president of the United States himself, Woodrow Wilson. "Not until the movement to end the Vietnam War half a century later would there be as large, as influential and as tactically adroit a campaign against U.S. intervention in another land," Kazin notes. 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. And yet we did go to war, and in just a year and a half over 116,000 young Americans about twice the number of Americans killed over 20 years in Vietnam would throw their own lives like so many more dead logs into the terrible fire. Kazin's work is an instructive one, an important book in chronicling a too often neglected chapter in our history. Most of all, it is a timely reminder of how easily the will of the majority can be thwarted in even the mightiest of democracies. Kazin contends that the antiwar forces were ultimately unable to overcome two main obstacles. One was simply outside events, primarily Germany's determination to use unrestricted submarine warfare against any ships trying to supply the Allied Powers. The other was that many of the groups and individuals leading the opposition to the war were distracted or restrained by their loyalties to other goals and institutions. They had to decide, for instance, whether their dedication to winning women's right to vote, or the right of labor to organize or the electoral prospects of Wilson's new, progressive Democratic Party outweighed their need to keep the country out of war. A longtime historian of the American left, Kazin establishes early on where his own sympathies lie: "I wish the United States had stayed out of the Great War." The failure to do so created "the establishment of a political order most Americans now take for granted, even if some protest it: a state equipped to fight numerous wars abroad while keeping a close watch on the potentially subversive activities of its citizens at home." America's intervention, Kazin argues, "foreclosed the possibility of a negotiated peace," and led to the "punitive peace" of the Versailles Treaty, and pretty much everything that came afterward, including the Nazis, World War II, the Holocaust, even the Iraq war. No matter how familiar one is with the era, it is still shocking to read the breathtaking swiftness with which the country flipped into reaction once war was declared. A national vigilante group, the American Protective League, encouraged by the authorities, took to stopping men on the street to check for "slackers." The Espionage and Sedition Acts of 1917 18, passed by a suddenly belligerent Congress, were the most outrageously unconstitutional violations of our civil liberties since the 1798 Alien and Sedition Acts. The Supreme Court supinely upheld this legislation, and the Wilson administration ruthlessly exploited it, censoring the mails, shutting down publications and sentencing the likes of Eugene V. Debs, the gentle 63 year old Socialist leader, to jail for 10 years for making a speech indirectly questioning the draft. The waves of reaction rolled on after the Armistice. Strikes were brutally crushed and labor unions all but annihilated. Black churches and neighborhoods were burned to the ground, and hundreds, maybe thousands of African Americans murdered in white on black pogroms. Civil liberties continued to be curtailed, elected Socialist leaders were thrown out of office and radicals like Emma Goldman were deported. While our entry into the war proved every bit the disaster for the liberal left that Kazin claims, it is less clear that it was avoidable or that it can be blamed for everything bad that has happened since. Before we even entered the war, Germany was caught sending the notorious Zimmermann Telegram to Mexico, urging it to invade the United States. From nearly the start of World War I, German spies and saboteurs in the United States caused numerous explosions, and set off the huge 1916 detonation of the "Black Tom" munitions depot in New Jersey, which killed seven people, blew out windows of St. Patrick's Cathedral, caused nearly a half billion dollars' worth of damage in current dollars and raked the Statue of Liberty with shrapnel. Germany's rationale for such actions was the same as that for its policy of unrestricted submarine warfare. American supplies went almost exclusively to the Allies. Even if Americans had wanted to sell food and weaponry to Germany they would not have been able to thanks to the British naval blockade, which was slowly starving the German people. Thus, Germany protested, it had to use its U boats to try to starve England as well. Many in the American peace movement accepted this argument and wanted to cut off trade to the Allies. Yet does a nation at war have the right to demand that another, neutral nation end most of its foreign commerce? Wouldn't any nation consider murderous deeds of sabotage to be acts of war? America by 1914 had much deeper ties to Britain and France than to the German Empire. This may have been unfair, as the Germans maintained, but World War I was not a tennis match. Germany needed only to move toward peace to escape such unfairness. For that matter, Kazin seems to sympathize with the antiwar movement's adamant opposition to the "preparedness" campaign being urged on the nation by more hawkish voices, like that of the almost hysterically bellicose Teddy Roosevelt calls for the nation to start raising a true modern army and expanding its navy. With reason, peace advocates saw this as just the way Europe fell into war. Yet might not a larger American Navy have been able to escort ships to Europe in the teeth of the U boat menace and thus keep American boys out of the trenches? Might the threat of bringing another well prepared army into the fight have made the Kaiser and his general staff think again about provoking the United States? It is, in the end, difficult to believe that the United States could really have stayed as pure and unentangled in foreign affairs as Kazin would have preferred. Not that we didn't try. Revulsion over the war and the reactionary backlash it loosed caused America to turn its face away from the world once more, leading to the failure to join the League of Nations and to the widespread isolationism that left the country woefully unprepared for World War II. Kazin would trace our existing national security state back to the decision we made to enter the Great War in 1917, but in fact that prototype was almost entirely dismantled. It was the ways of the world, alas, that forced us to rebuild it.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Books
Much like Elsa 1.0, the Brooklyn bar is bright and airy, with a distinctly lighter touch. "I wanted it to feel very feminine," Ms. Burian said. "So many cocktail places are so masculine and intimidating. I wanted it to feel like a place where women could come and drink and feel comfortable and welcome." While they've kept some pieces from the old bar (the white frame wall mirrors and the Singer sewing machine beer tap), new marble and brass tables and curved banquettes give it a more modern feel. Yes, the ladies represent, but there are plenty of gentlemen, too. The unwritten dress code is casual (jeans, T shirts and cutoff shorts), and the crowd tends to be in their 30s, whooping it up in small but loud groups. The bright lighting and high volume make the bar more conducive to socializing than flirting. It sounded like indie rock, though the beat was barely discernible on a recent Saturday night.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Fashion & Style
WASHINGTON House lawmakers who spent the last 16 months investigating the practices of the world's largest technology companies said on Tuesday that Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Google had exercised and abused their monopoly power and called for the most sweeping changes to antitrust laws in half a century. In a 449 page report that was presented by the House Judiciary Committee's Democratic leadership, lawmakers said the four companies had turned from "scrappy" start ups into "the kinds of monopolies we last saw in the era of oil barons and railroad tycoons." The lawmakers said the companies had abused their dominant positions, setting and often dictating prices and rules for commerce, search, advertising, social networking and publishing. "Our investigation leaves no doubt that there is a clear and compelling need for Congress and the antitrust enforcement agencies to take action that restores competition, improves innovation and safeguards our democracy," Jerrold Nadler, Democrat of New York and chairman of the judiciary committee, and David Cicilline, Democrat of Rhode Island and chairman of the antitrust subcommittee, said in a joint statement. The House report is the most significant government effort to check the world's largest tech companies since the government sued Microsoft for antitrust violations in the 1990s. It offers lawmakers a deeply researched road map for turning criticism of Silicon Valley's influence into concrete actions. The report is also expected to kick off other actions against the tech giants. The Justice Department has been working to file an antitrust complaint against Google, followed by separate suits against the search giant from state attorneys general. Antitrust investigations of Amazon, Apple and Facebook are also underway at the Justice Department, the Federal Trade Commission and four dozen state attorneys general. Democrats proposed legal changes that could substantially restructure Facebook, Google, Amazon and Apple. They said Congress should consider making it illegal for the tech giants to provide preferential treatment to their own products, as Google does in search results. They suggested breaking up the companies in "structural separations" and forbidding them from operating in similar businesses to those they were already dominant in. They also recommended adding to antitrust laws, including clearer rules that could block the tech giants' attempts to buy other companies. Some Republicans agreed with proposals to bolster funding for antitrust enforcement agencies, but balked at calls for Congress to intervene in restructuring the companies and their business models. Others have refused to endorse any of the Democrats' findings. Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio, the top Republican on the committee, said that the report was "partisan" and that the committee had not tackled conservatives' anecdotal allegations that the online platforms were biased against their views. In a letter to Mr. Nadler, Mr. Jordan said that ignoring the topic "ultimately discredits the draft report's findings." Rep. Ken Buck, a Republican of Colorado, joined three other Republican lawmakers in releasing a separate report in recent days titled "The Third Way" outlining their mixed reception of the Democrats' proposals. "I agree with about 330 pages of the majority's report," Mr. Buck said. But he said he could not agree with recommendations to embolden consumer lawsuits and the breakup of companies, calling them "the nuclear option." The House Judiciary Committee began its investigation into the four tech giants in June 2019, interviewing hundreds of rivals and business clients of the platforms. In July, the tech chief executives Jeff Bezos of Amazon, Tim Cook of Apple, Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook and Sundar Pichai of Google testified in a hearing to defend their companies. The four companies, which have a combined market value of more than 5 trillion, largely operate in different digital businesses. But the report revealed monopoly abuses across them. Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Google had roles as "gatekeepers" in common and controlled prices and the distribution of goods and services, the report said. That made third party businesses like app developers on Apple's App Store and sellers on Amazon's marketplace beholden to the companies' demands, the report said. The word monopoly appeared in the report nearly 120 times. "With no restrictions of tech companies to own and compete on their own platforms, which are the only options for so many small businesses, it takes away any real sense of competition," said Rep. Pramila Jayapal, a Democrat of Washington, who has been a vocal critic of Amazon. Even without full bipartisan support, the report sets important groundwork, said Gene Kimmelman, a former senior antitrust official at the Justice Department. He said the breakup of AT T in the 1980s was supported by policies set forth by Congress. Tuesday's report, he said, was "the foundation for legislation and regulation that enables antitrust cases against Google, Facebook and others to actually break markets open to more competition." Google disputed the findings and said its free service had been a boon to consumers. "Google's free products like Search, Maps and Gmail help millions of Americans," the company said in a statement, "and we've invested billions of dollars in research and development to build and improve them. We compete fairly in a fast moving and highly competitive industry." Amazon said the committee's recommendations could end up harming small businesses and consumers. "The flawed thinking would have the primary effect of forcing millions of independent retailers out of online stores, thereby depriving these small businesses of one of the fastest and most profitable ways available to reach customers," Amazon said in a blog post. "Far from enhancing competition, these uninformed notions would instead reduce it." Apple "vehemently disagrees with the conclusions in this staff report," the company said in a statement. "The App Store has enabled new markets, new services and new products that were unimaginable a dozen years ago, and developers have been primary beneficiaries of this ecosystem," the company said. Facebook disagreed that its mergers with Instagram and WhatsApp were anticompetitive. "We compete with a wide variety of services with millions, even billions, of people using them," the company said in a statement. "Acquisitions are part of every industry, and just one way we innovate new technologies to deliver more value to people." The report devoted most attention to Google and Amazon, then Apple and Facebook, based on the number of pages devoted to them. Google holds a monopoly in search and search advertising, the report said. The company used anti competitive tactics, such as adding information without permission from third party providers like Yelp, to improve the quality of features within its search results, lawmakers added. Amazon's market power was spread across several industries, the report found. The committee focused on the company's conduct in online commerce, where it sells products that compete with independent merchants who use its platform. The report said Amazon promoted its own smart home products ahead of those of other makers, and also dealt unfairly with open source software developers in its cloud computing business. In total, about 2.3 million third party sellers do business on the Amazon marketplace worldwide, the report said, and 37 percent of them relied on the site as their sole source of income essentially making them hostage to Amazon's shifting tactics. The lawmakers also concluded that Apple had a monopoly on the apps marketplace for iPhones and iPads, forcing all developers to go through it to reach users of those devices. That setup has enabled Apple to take a 30 percent cut of many apps' sales. That fee, the subcommittee found, has led to higher prices for consumers. Facebook's monopoly power over social networking was also "firmly entrenched," the report said. The company had taken steps, like acquiring new competitors or copying their features, to maintain that power, the lawmakers found. In particular, they said, after Facebook acquired the photo sharing site Instagram in 2012, the social network's executives had gone to great lengths to stop the service from overtaking its main product. "It was collusion, but within an internal monopoly," a former high level Instagram employee told the committee during its investigation. "If you own two social media utilities, they should not be allowed to shore each other up. It's unclear to me why this should not be illegal." Reporting was contributed by Daisuke Wakabayashi, Mike Isaac, Jack Nicas and Steve Lohr.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Technology
Lots of buzz concerning the impact of higher interest rates in the United States. A major trading partner creating shock waves in the global economy. Stock market volatility spreading around the world. Sound familiar? It certainly does to Federal Reserve policy makers, who hesitated this week about lifting their key interest rate lever from close to zero because of worries about the ripple effects of a shaky Chinese economy and uneasy global financial markets. What they remember is a situation that played out more than 20 years ago, in 1994 and early 1995. The country in question then was Mexico, as rising rates in the United States put pressure on an emerging market economy already suffering from a weakening currency and too much debt. "There is no doubt that policy makers in emerging markets have been trembling in their boots at the prospect of a Fed rate hike," said Kenneth S. Rogoff, a professor at Harvard and former chief economist of the International Monetary Fund. In fact, Fed policy makers mainly cited global economic conditions not domestic ones when they decided not to raise rates at their meeting on Thursday. That was the right call, said Lawrence H. Summers, who served as Treasury secretary during the Clinton administration and more recently was director of the National Economic Council in President Obama's first term. "People often underestimate the risks, especially when you have a lot of volatility, and things can go wrong that you can't foresee," he said. "Given what's happening in China, Brazil and other emerging markets, there's still reason for being cautious if there are no signs of substantial inflationary pressures anywhere." But if international conditions then are anything like they are now, and inflation still doesn't pose much of a threat, Mr. Summers said, "it will be just as significant an error to move in December as it would have been to move in September." To some observers, the delay by the Fed will help give emerging markets more time to prepare and also recover from China induced volatility. But Frederic S. Mishkin, a Fed board member from 2006 to 2008, said it could actually complicate the situation. "This exacerbates the risks and makes the communication even more difficult going forward," said Mr. Mishkin, now a professor at Columbia Business School. "When will global conditions be strong enough to raise rates? This will create even more confusion." Elsewhere in the world, it is no so much the initial increase itself, which is expected to be limited to a modest quarter of a percentage point, that worries experts as the prospect of further aftershocks as the Fed shifts from an easy money stance to a gradually tightening posture. Mr. Rogoff, who wrote the 2009 book "This Time Is Different: Eight Centuries of Financial Folly" (Princeton University Press), with Carmen Reinhart, said it was "remarkable how focused the world is on the Fed, and there's no question emerging markets are very vulnerable right now." These strains are evident in measures like the spread between what emerging market countries have to pay to borrow vs. what it costs the United States, as well as the rapid depreciation of some emerging market currencies. At the beginning of the year, yields on Brazilian debt were about 2 percentage points more than American bonds. That spread has since doubled, to nearly four full percentage points. Over the same period, the value of Brazil's real has fallen by nearly a third against the dollar. That doesn't necessarily mean that Brazil and other emerging markets are heading for disaster. Many potentially vulnerable economies are better prepared this time around than they were two decades ago, officials say. A senior Treasury Department official, for example, said on Friday that many developing nations had taken steps over the last few years to prepare for the inevitable moment when the Fed starts to raise rates. The official, made available by Treasury on condition of anonymity, said that at the recent G 20 meetings, there was more concern about the impact of China's struggles than about actions in the United States. Mexico and Brazil, like most countries, have forgone attempting to fix their exchange rates in favor of more flexible arrangements that prevent them from having to deplete their hard currency reserves in a futile effort to preserve the dollar peg. Still, while exchange rates may be less of a worry, there is an additional factor putting pressure on emerging market economies these days: crashing commodity prices. Because commodities are their main export, Brazil, Indonesia and Russia, along with the big oil producers of the Middle East, are feeling the pain from lower prices for crude oil, iron ore and other raw materials. "If you did a regression analysis of emerging market debt crises, the two key variables are commodity prices and global interest rates," Mr. Rogoff said. But other analysts warn that such concerns are overblown and that further delays by the Fed in starting to "normalize" interest rates carry their own risks as well. That's been plenty of advance notice, they say, that should have given emerging markets time to prepare for the new environment. That's the view, for example, of Glenn Hubbard, who served as chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers under President George W. Bush and is now dean of Columbia's business school. Using the classic metaphor to describe the Fed's role in preventing an economy from getting too exuberant, Mr. Hubbard said, "People will realize the punch bowl is being taken away, but it's not like they are running out of the room with it. They can still get drinks as it's being taken away." When Fed policy makers do eventually decide to move, they should emphasize that it is not the beginning of a relentless new tightening phase, said Robert E. Rubin, President Bill Clinton's Treasury secretary from 1995 99. At the time of the initial rate increase, he said, Fed officials should make clear that future increases will only come if the data suggests the economy continues to strengthen and that higher interest rates and a tighter monetary policy are required to head off the clear risk of inflation. "You need to defuse inferences about monetary conditions in the future," said Mr. Rubin, whose first major challenge after being sworn in was tackling the Tequila Crisis. "If they did that, I think it might actually reduce uncertainty and might not have the consequences that people worry about it in terms of a rate hike."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Economy
In the early 1980s, instructors had become celebrities by virtue of their ability to bark exhortations that could be heard over the chorus of "It's Raining Men." Lee Martin, shown here in her West 72nd Street studio, was one of Manhattan's most sought after drill sergeants. May 17, 1984. Do you remember Face o Metrics? How about FloMotion ? Or kitchen calisthenics? Me neither. But The Times recorded these and many, many other modern fitness fads, an exhausting and often poignant chronicle of pain, gain and some very peculiar practices. Taken as a whole, the paper's coverage of the last half century of exercise recalls the old joke, Samuel Johnson by way of Oscar Wilde , about second marriages: a triumph of hope over experience. In the mid 60s companies like Shell Oil offered their female employees a program of self improvement: five weeks' worth of exercise, posture, etiquette and fashion entitled Personality Workshop Inc. It was so successful with "the girls," as they were called otherwise known as secretaries that their male managers signed up as well, to learn how to count calories, breathe properly by blowing up balloons and fling towels about to stay trim. In 1966, Face o Metrics were taught at Alexander's department stores. (It was an era when department stores were still gathering places, vibrant agoras for more than just shopping.) These facial workouts were invented by one Jessica Krane, the "prophet of the basic woo and the ostrich," as the paper described her. The basic woo, the article went on to say, is the shape your mouth makes "as if one were uttering a very intense woo" go on, try it and its practice, with variations, promised to erase lines around the mouth. The ostrich, designed to banish double chins and jowls, required leaning your head back as far as possible. Another exercise was to obscure your age, if you were a woman older than 25. The article portrayed Ms. Krane's own face as being wrinkle free, though it pointed out, rather nastily, that she did look as if she were over 25. In 1969, The Times declared that exercise studios, particularly those run by a certain Russian emigre , had become as modish as restaurants. Women who were attuned to aspirational signifiers like the right hairdresser or, as the article said, "that little jewel of a manicurist" these included a copywriter from Cosmopolitan, a filmmaker's assistant and the wife of a television personality were drawn to places like Alex Walter on West 57th Street, where they might hang from rings like circus performers or real gymnasts. Follow us on Instagram for more discoveries from the Times photo archives. More populist was an establishment that cannily operated across the street from Macy's, where fashion collided with reality on a daily basis. The trauma of the dressing room mirror greatly benefited the Health Spa, as it was blandly named, which saw as many as 400 clients a day. "Hot pants, especially, have gotten us a lot of clients," its proprietor said. "Physical health is important to women," Ms. Chesler said. "And they don't get the same opportunities that men do to exercise their bodies." Speaking of hot pants, The Times reviewed a curious piece of apparel in 1971, an inflatable "reducing" garment named for the popular short shorts. Shrinkage, not fitness, seemed to be the goal; the contraption was tested by a 32 year old woman and a 16 year old girl, both of whom were identified as overweight in a jaw dropping expression of rigid beauty standards that would surely have inflamed Ms. Chesler. Neither tester lost inches, but their legs were sore from the routine , which was grueling by any standards. Also, the Hot Pants leaked, making them potentially more toxic than their messaging. One can only imagine what poisonous cocktail was in the garment's "thermal packs," which contained "a chemically impregnated sponge that produces heat." In 1973, two years before it went out of business forever, Arnold Constable, a carriage trade establishment on 40th Street and Fifth Avenue, offered working women lunchtime exercise classes. (Open since 1825, it was once the city's oldest specialty store, and a favorite of Eleanor Roosevelt's.) One teacher performed her version of yoga and calisthenics in the windows, hoping to lure passers by into her classes. The female reporter who had written so trenchantly about aspirational exercise also covered the Arnold Constable window act, in an article that included this unsisterly sentence: "Women shoppers, including one 200 pounder, looked on in envy." When the movie "Flashdance" landed in 1983, with a sweaty flourish of leg warmers and scissored up sweatshirts, its " calisthenic pornography ," as Janet Maslin put it in her review, was more than just the filmmaker Adrian Lyne's fantasy. To remind: Jennifer Beals (and her uncredited body double, a French dancer named Marine Jahan) played a welder who also worked as an exotic dancer, and dated her older boss. Young women had already begun to sport leg warmers as a fashion statement, though not, as their forebears did, to signal an allegiance to the ballet barre, but to prove membership in a new tribe of aerobics fanatics. Led by instructors who had become celebrities by virtue of their ability to bark exhortations that could be heard over the chorus of "It's Raining Men," they imagined that contorting to Pat Benatar would be a transformative experience. Still, by 1985, the Centers for Disease Control reported that only 7.5 percent of the population had engaged in aerobic activity at least three times a week . "I believe we're becoming less active," a prescient epidemiologist said in 1990. "We're an information society. It keeps us at our desks."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Style
Mart Crowley's landmark play, "The Boys in the Band," was first staged in 1968, in an Off Broadway production that ran for 1,001 performances, and in 1970 was turned into a movie directed by William Friedkin. But it has taken 50 years for it to make its Broadway debut in a starry production directed by Joe Mantello and featuring, among others, Jim Parsons, Matt Bomer, Zachary Quinto and Andrew Rannells. Based on a random sampling of recent theatergoers, the revival (which concludes its largely sold out run on Aug. 11) seems to be attracting a predominantly male audience, some of whom look like they could vividly remember that original production or the film that followed it. But there are also pockets of younger audience members, ones who are decades removed from the closeted, tortured era portrayed on stage. Two of those recent theatergoers were Zachary Woolfe, 33, the classical music editor of The New York Times, and Matthew Schneier, 34, a reporter and critic for The Times's Styles section, both of whom saw the play for the first time in late July. As gay men whose formative theatergoing experiences have ranged from "Hedwig and the Angry Inch" to "Fun Home" to the recent Tony winning revival of "Angels in America," how did they react to the first mainstream production to feature a full complement of gay characters, who, in Mr. Crowley's hands, share one confession filled, not very happy birthday party? Mr. Schneier and Mr. Woolfe were joined in conversation by Wesley Morris, 42, a Times critic at large, who had seen the film as a teenager while working at an art house cinema in Philadelphia during a boom in gay independent filmmaking. "It definitely struck me as sad before it ever struck me as gay," he reported. Stuart Emmrich, 63, a Times editor who knew the film and had seen an earlier revival of the play, moderated the talk. An edited version follows. STUART EMMRICH So, Matthew and Zack, this is the first time either of you have seen "Boys in the Band" in any form Broadway, Off Broadway, regional theater or even the film. Given its subject matter, did you not have any curiosity about it over the years and think, "Oh, I should see this?" MATTHEW SCHNEIER I've seen plenty of gay theater, and many gay movies, too, but for whatever reason, "Boys" didn't often enter the conversation, other than as a historical milestone. Recently, I texted a group of gay friends, all of them roughly my age, to see whether I had been alone in my ignorance, but none of them had seen it, either. (There's the generation gap: The "Boys" boys would've had to use the telephone.) In preparing for this conversation, I've realized that I have never really sought out gay themed theater or film or TV, which may be because of my own issues or shame. I was interested in aversion, not identification and certainly not celebration. Maybe that's because when I was growing up, gayness, for me at least, was fundamentally mixed up with AIDS. I wasn't, certainly not in my teens, really able to extricate my sense of homosexuality from the specter of the epidemic. It loomed large even while I was watching "Boys," which was written more than a decade before the first diagnoses: Right at the beginning, when an offstage character is described as having canceled an appointment because of "a virus or something," I heard these chords of doom. SCHNEIER It was almost a shock to see a play that predates the AIDS epidemic, that didn't have to grapple with it. (When characters tease one another about lingering in bathhouses, I thought, "Uh oh, I know where this is going.") I wonder if in some ways the need to respond to the AIDS crisis helped to mobilize and alchemize some of the loathing that "Boys" reveals and, in a weird way, revels in, toward more productive ends. You may not be able to eradicate it entirely, but you can turn its firepower toward more deserving targets: A terrible disease and a Reagan era world murderously slow on the uptake. WESLEY MORRIS The completist part of me was curious to see "Boys in the Band" in the context of the gay cultural artifacts that have come back. We're currently drowning in the return of the return of the gay past: this show; a mostly galvanic "Angels in America"; last year's electric "Falsettos" revival; "Pose" on FX, which is set in the ball scene of the late 1980s; "Torch Song Trilogy"; the return of "Buddies," Arthur J. Bressan Jr.'s talky, mostly forgotten AIDS friendship dramedy from 1985; and whatever this revivified "Will Grace" is supposed to be. There's also the aggravating nostalgia of "Love, Simon," a limp romantic comedy only nominally set in the 21st century. These are very different works, but lumped together, I do wonder whether we're interrogating the past or luxuriating in it, hiding from the present or reframing it. Zachary Quinto's daring decision to play the part of Harold in "Boys" as Nosferatu makes sense. He's the birthday boy. He's also powerfully undead. WOOLFE I think Matthew's right in saying the play revels in self loathing. The extravagance and explicitness of the self hatred on display bring it ever closer to self love. In a way, the play is a utopian fantasy of a wholly gay little world (with the insertion of one terrified, maybe probably closeted straight man as the exception that proves the rule) at the final moment before that world was finally, necessarily, violently merged with the mainstream. I wasn't left feeling like it was all that bitter; in a lot of ways, and perhaps this is looking back on the pre AIDS era, it felt wishful and kind of sweet. And poignant: You can't help but consider which of these characters will be dead in 20 years. SCHNEIER I disagree here. I think the characters love their own eloquence they cast their sparring explicitly as a battle of wits but I think the toxicity of it is very real, and I felt for them while wanting to get out of their purgatorial apartment as fast as I could. The play does offer the consolation that these wounded souls have each other, and they pair off in ways romantic, platonic that I think we're meant to understand sustain them. Even viperous best friends Michael and Harold: "Call you tomorrow," Harold says as he exits, and we know he will. But it feels like a punishment as much as a balm. With friends like these ... WOOLFE Again, I kept thinking that all the play's much vaunted toxicity ended up feeling like so much sound and fury, signifying nothing. It kept feeling like, well, love. All the niggling and drunken potshots and catty banter aren't what keep the characters apart; they're what keep them together! Harold's "Call you tomorrow" is my favorite line. That's a family. MORRIS Watching them in 2018 is like a night with a live version of Grindr right down to the racism that gets heaped on Bernard, who's black and who, given the upheaval in the country and presumably in his own world, must be wondering why he's still at this party. Lots of nonwhite men have been Bernard, constantly forcing ourselves to look on the bright side of having found our other people. EMMRICH I had seen the movie, probably when I was in my late 20s, at a revival house in Manhattan in the 1980s. Thus, I was only about a decade or so removed from the characters in the film, and yet they seemed a curious cultural artifact to me a glimpse into the distant past. (I had the same reaction when I saw the 1996 Off Broadway production.) Nothing about their experiences, or the relationships between them, resonated with me or the other gay men I knew. SCHNEIER I do think there's a magnetic attraction as well as repulsion that binds these characters they have to know each other as well as they do to hit as hard, and as precisely, as they do. They're all in the trenches of gayness together, in a world that's clearly hostile to them. I think, actually, that the cuts made to shorten the play removed a fair amount of what establishes the characters' long history and intimacy with one another, and one of the things the play loses when it's condensed into one act is the sense of time passing, even over the course of an evening; it feels stiller than it might. WOOLFE Yes, after taking in this antiseptic vision at the Booth Theater, it was bracing to watch William Friedkin's film, which vibrates with the heat and sweat and hustle and bustle of New York in the late '60s. The camera gets right up in everyone's glistening face, like something out of cinema verite. The apartment looks like a real apartment. The friends seem like real friends. MORRIS Between this and "Cruising," from 1980, which has always felt misunderstood to me, Friedkin really did have a perverse sympathy for gay life. SCHNEIER I admired some of the performances in the Broadway production, maybe more than Zack did especially Zachary Quinto, who played Harold as a kind of extraterrestrial mash up of Lou Reed and Tennessee Williams, and Michael Benjamin Washington, who gave a real dignity to the mocked and maligned Bernard. I struggle with the characters themselves, who I think are more stock types (the Neurotic Jew, the Queen) than entirely real. I do think that the things they wrestle with are things we're still wrestling with, albeit in different form. They're trying to figure out how their relationships should work. They're scared of growing up and growing old. They're dying to tell you what they just discovered about their tsoris at their shrinks. Honestly, I've had all of those conversations, too. I've just never made cracked crab. EMMRICH Did it matter to you that the play was cast entirely with "out" actors, which the producers Ryan Murphy and David Stone have said was an imperative and which certainly was not an option back in 1968? WOOLFE I didn't care; I'm firmly against the necessity of casting gay men in gay roles. SCHNEIER I'm all for gay actors getting roles, but I think it sets you down a dangerous path if you start insisting on gay men for gay roles. I worry that it opens the door to removing them from contention for straight ones, which are about 95 percent of all roles anyway. SCHNEIER I don't think it would've scared me straight, to put it mildly. But it's not exactly a coming out party, either. WOOLFE I like to think that, had I seen it in 1968, the camaraderie that's represented onstage despite, and because of, all the battling would have come through to me, and been a comfort and inspiration. I might well have found the apartment, and all the grown up emotions, glamorous! EMMRICH Was there a play you saw in your youth, or early adulthood, that you remember having a deep significance for you, because of a gay character or a gay plotline? For me, that play was Harvey Fierstein's "Torch Song Trilogy," which I first saw Off Broadway in 1981. There were moments of conflict and even cruelty in that play I remember feeling like I had been slapped in the face when Arnold's mother tells him she wished he had never been born but those relationships felt more real to me, the emotions more honestly earned. SCHNEIER I was radicalized by seeing the original "Hedwig" on Jane Street when I was about 14 (and several times thereafter). That was a major touchstone for me, though the particular erotics of it weren't especially relevant to my own life. (The ample borrowings from glam rock were.) I saw "Rent" around the same time, maybe a little before again, not so much a mirror of my own experience as a work in which I saw so called "alternative" lifestyles accommodated and celebrated. MORRIS I second "Rent." But I've never seen it. I had the soundtrack. And I remember not being able to wait to get to wherever these people were. I wound up in Boston instead. WOOLFE "Rent" for me, too though the world of East Village drag queens and performance artists might as well have been in outer space compared to the Upper East Side lifestyle I was then aspiring to. EMMRICH It's taken 50 years for "Boys in the Band" to make its debut on Broadway. Do you think it will ever make it back again? Should it? SCHNEIER It seems to be playing to full houses, judging from the night we saw it, so sure, I think it will probably come back again. Should it? I wouldn't want to be the one to say it shouldn't. I don't know that I'd race to see it again it basically gave me a hangover. That said, Zack and I have been talking about it since we saw it. So ... call you tomorrow?	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Theater
PARIS He has built everything from space rockets to airport terminals, a reproduction of the Eiffel Tower and even a supermarket as backdrops for his runway shows. So really, it should come as no surprise that for the 2018 Chanel Cruise collection Karl Lagerfeld pushed the boat out. Literally. A 330 foot long steel welded ocean liner stood beneath the vast glass dome of the Grand Palais on Thursday night, steam puffing from two scarlet funnels as scores of portholes twinkled with bright lights and inky black waves seemed to lap at the hull, all reminiscent of a chic Mediterranean port at midnight. Named "La Pausa" after the villa in the South of France once owned by Gabrielle "Coco" Chanel, the cruise ship set had taken two months to build. And the show was the next leg of a Chanel voyage that began in December at the Metiers d'Art show in Hamburg, Germany, which also was inspired by the high seas specifically the merchant mariners from that city, which Mr. Lagerfeld once called home. "I've seen a few incredible film sets in my time but nothing like this," Margot Robbie said. "I'm genuinely speechless." The actress, who had been named a brand ambassador in March, was bedecked in multicolored sparkles for her first Chanel catwalk show, and was sandwiched between Kristen Stewart and Lily Rose Depp on the front row. But Ms. Robbie hadn't seen the clothes yet. Oh buoy. The 90 looks sported by models of the moment like Adut Akech, Stella Maxwell and the Hadid sisters, who strutted alongside the liner on the quay, began with a reworked series of nautical Chanel signatures. Slouchy black and white sailor stripe pajama pants or knee length pleated skirts were teamed with double C logo roll neck cashmere sweaters; boxy boucle skirt suits had a Sixties silhouette and sea spray palette; and almost every look arrived with a kitschy handbag, including white quilted box bags, rope fisherman totes and round evening clutches shaped like life preservers. Next came a sweet fleet of striped candy colored dresses and separates (most with a tide line of exposed midriff), swiftly followed by some splash proof Eighties inspired plastic shifts and bomber jackets in red, white and blue. Then there were some less convincing shredded denim pedal pushers and zippered tweed tracksuits that frankly deserved to be thrown overboard. Things got back on course at the end, via black and blue dresses with billowing geometric ship and shark prints, and a dazzling all white sequined sleeveless closing number with aquamarine waves lapping at the hemline. Captain Karl duly took to the deck to take his bow (alongside Chanel's longtime fashion studio director, Virginie Viard a change from his godson Hudson Kroenig, and an interesting one) before a fog horn tooted victoriously, the gangplanks were lowered and guests were welcomed on board for a blow out party complete with an ice cream stand, oyster bar and even faux hot tub. Think a booze cruise for billionaires, or those who aspire to be ones, with live entertainment that went on long into the night. If all this showboating sounds ridiculous it was, kind of. Nevertheless, Cruise shows as an industry business strategy are becoming an evermore serious matter. Falling between the traditional fall and spring show seasons, the Cruise season and its late summer counterpart, Pre Fall, now account for 60 to 80 percent of designer clothing sales for luxury brands. No wonder most houses continue to plow serious money into extravaganzas to showcase their latest resort collections. But after several years of opting for exotic destinations, many of the big league brands have, like Chanel, decided to stay closer to home. Later this month Christian Dior will show in Chantilly, a short trip outside Paris; Louis Vuitton in St. Paul de Vence, in the South of France, and even Gucci has got in on the Gallic act, choosing to set its runway show in Arles. All aboard.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Fashion & Style
The beloved British humorist the creator of Wooster and Jeeves was arrested by the Germans in 1940 and spent the remainder of the war in custody. Here's how his story unspooled in The Times. The episode has almost been forgotten, yet during World War II, P.G. Wodehouse's captivity remained front page news in both the United States and Britain. (Since then, of course, people have criticized The Times for its wartime coverage, particularly its decision to focus on stories like this instead of more serious ones. It's an issue that has been addressed in books, films, articles and the paper's own Op Ed pages.) Wodehouse's story may be a footnote in the history of 20th century literature, but it's still fascinating to revisit. The first hint of trouble came in late May, when Wodehouse's stepdaughter reported that her parents seemed to be stranded at their villa in Le Touquet, France, "cut off from England by the German advance." Years later, in "Wodehouse: A Life," Robert McCrum wrote that the author had "clung to the disastrous belief that the courageous thing to do was sit tight, have faith in the British Army and resist panic." Returning to Britain would also have meant quarantining his dog, "which he could not bear to do." The Wodehouses were giving a cocktail party when "a French gendarme knocked and announced that the Germans were coming," The Times reported. "Mr. Wodehouse and his friends did not take the warning seriously, however, and continued their party." When German troops arrived at the house a short time later and took the writer into custody, he told his wife, "Maybe this will give me the material to write a serious book for once." Wodehouse joked that the early to bed schedule "was giving me health I never achieved in private life." Of his diet at the camp, he said he had become "a great admirer of the German potato." 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. After a year, Wodehouse was released from the internment camp, granted "full freedom within Germany" and placed in a Berlin hotel. "These talks proved to be pure Wodehouse," Charles McGrath wrote in the paper's 2004 review of Wodehouse: A Life, "upbeat, lighthearted and making fun of the whole internment experience." Wodehouse's first broadcast did not go over well in Britain, prompting the House of Commons to consider prosecuting "Britons broadcasting under enemy auspices" under the Treachery Act, which carried a death sentence. Ethel Wodehouse, stung by British criticism that her husband had "sold his country for a soft bed in a Berlin luxury hotel," defended him. "Plummie," as she called him, "was released not because he had asked for it but because he is an old man over 60 and a civilian." After the liberation of Paris in August 1944, Wodehouse ended up in the French capital. He told a British reporter he had made a "terrible mistake" with the broadcasts and never meant any harm. He explained, "While I was in camp I had received 50 letters or more from readers in the United States and I thought I would like to answer them more or less in a broadcast about how I got along in camp." Wodehouse said he had "wanted to tell some of the amusing side of life in an internment camp." When the reporter pressed him, asking what was so humorous about his experience, Wodehouse "said he could think of no particularly amusing incidents offhand, but that his talks were intended to present the lighter side of camp life, 'for instance, washing one's own clothes.'"	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Books
Credit...Neal Boenzi/The New York Times Decades before Instagram or packwalk, Jim Buck was trouping through the streets of New York with multiple leashes and multiple dogs in tow. In 1964, Gay Talese profiled Buck, pictured above, in The New York Times. "145 Pounder Walks 500 Pounds of Dogs," ran the headline. That doesn't sound exceptional now, but Buck was apparently the first professional dog walker. In the story , Talese noted that Buck was 32, married with two children and two big dogs of his own . He was making a decent income in the low six figures, in today's dollars in electronic sales. But, Talese explained, Buck was bored. He loved animals and the outdoors, so, with "a little advertising and a little salesmanship," he began a dog walking business and not only earned a living but also became a fixture of the Upper East Side. As Talese reported it, Buck always drew a crowd. "Hook up a sled!" cried one doorman. "Opening race at Aqueduct!" was one policeman's quip. When Buck died in 2013, his Times obituary said he " is widely described as the first person to professionalize dog walking in New York City and, by extension, in the United States. ... He walked in sun; he walked in rain. In wintertime, his charges might be clad in small sweaters bearing the logos of the European resorts where their masters skied." When we began the process of digitizing the six million photos in the Times archive, it quickly became apparent that in photographing New York City over the course of the 20th century, this paper photographed a lot of the city's dogs. One thing that stood out: while the people, the fashion and the cars changed, the dogs stayed very much the same. We also noticed that dog pictures popped up everywhere, from the style pages to the weather reports, from Metro to Sports. In much the same way that dogs of Instagram say a hundred delightful things without actually saying a word, these images speak to "urban love stories: how and why people fetch, sit and roll over for their pets," as N.R. Kleinfield put it. Hess: I've never had a dog. I would love to have a dog. Right now the most important dog in my life is this dog that has no idea that it's so important to me. Her name is Luna and she's this big, white dog, with brown spots and alert ears and she's blind. She just ambles around my neighborhood and whenever I see her, it gives me a lot of joy. Her owners are a little skeptical of me. Luna's not mine, but she's the most important dog to me right now. Sheila Bridges: On Monday, I put down my Australian shepherd, Wheeler. I'm a little emotional today, but I thought this would be kind of therapeutic. Maira Kalman: I was terrified of dogs and thought they would rip your head off if you turned your back on them, a legacy from my mother. When my late husband Tibor became ill, we somehow decided that it was good for the kids to have a dog. Pete quickly became my constant companion. He never left my side. He made everybody happy, but really made my life much better. Sara, my mother, who was the legacy of being terrified of dogs, ended up loving him and knitting him sweaters, and making him schnitzel and blintzes that we weren't allowed to touch. Bridges: One of the hardest decisions you sometimes have to make as a pet owner is whether or not it's time to let go of the life you share with your beloved pet. I believe that the loss is particularly amplified for those of us who do not have children. My animals dogs, cats, horses have always been my family on a spiritual level that I sometimes have difficulty explaining. Kalman: Pete died in a dog hospital. It was really the end after so many months of trying to keep him alive. Finally, we understood that it was not possible. They were so wonderful. They put us in a room with soft lighting and said, "Take your time." I was with my son , Alex, and my boyfriend, Rick. When we said goodbye to him, you choose what you want to happen afterward. I said ashes would be great. I think it was New Year's Day and it was snowing. It was so beautiful. We were talking about James Joyce and "The Dead," and how it ends with such a beautiful, soft, gentle snow falling on the land. It was a beautiful, big, thick snow. Then we went and we had grilled cheese sandwiches somewhere. She holds up a pink vintage looking tin, which holds the ashes of her beloved dog. This is Pete, the only dog I've ever had and probably will ever have, unless I share it with some other family member. He lives on very intensely, so here he is. DesRoche: You can't leave your dog in the yard in New York, you have to interact with your dog in New York. Hess: Dogs mediate so many social interactions in New York, where often you meet someone, the first thing you see, you're focused on their dog instead of them. Bridges: I don't think I ever knew the name of the people walking their dogs, or that they even existed. They were only a vehicle for getting to know their dog and exclaiming how wonderful every dog was. It was more important to focus on the dog than on the person. DesRoche: No one recognizes me without an animal. Literally no one. Newman: The photo above is from the William Secord Gallery. I get an email from them every week. They send a Dog Painting of the Week. And you get one of these ridiculously over the top, 19th century dog paintings with an explanation of who the dog was and who the artist was. They're amazing paintings. Wender: What's the difference between painting dogs and photographing dogs? Kalman: I think they're basically the same. There are a number of photographs here that I would love to do paintings of, especially this one. It just seems like a perfect set to me. I think this is my favorite photo of all of them, with the dog sitting on the sofa, just a self contained, beautiful world of fancy furniture, fancy dogs in fancy frames. I find it really funny, and just really enchanting. I take millions of photographs during the week of many dogs. The other day in the park I photographed a dog that was wearing a sweater with a hat and a pompom. I thought, "My day is made." Then I could do a painting of that, and be equally happy. Bridges: Whenever magazines shoot interiors, they love to have you to put your dog or your cat, but particularly your dog, into the shot. I always trained my dogs that they were never allowed on furniture, but this dog looks like he's used to being up there. I like interior photographs with dogs in them because there's just something that makes the home feel like it's lived in; it creates life.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Sports
Jose Altuve and the Astros are down and almost out. Every baseball player fears the affliction, the sudden mental block that prevents them from making a routine throw. It goes by a funny name the yips but it is invisible and terrifying. You would not wish it on your worst enemy, even if he is Jose Altuve, the best player for the notorious 2017 Houston Astros. "I don't wish cancer on people who wrong me in some form or fashion," Brandon McCarthy, a former Los Angeles Dodgers pitcher, wrote on Twitter late Tuesday night. "This is baseball cancer." Altuve, a second baseman, made two throwing errors in Game 2 on Monday, the first with two outs in the first inning. Manuel Margot followed with a three run homer, and the Rays won by one run. In Game 3 on Tuesday, with the Astros leading by 1 0 in the sixth inning, Altuve tried to start a double play but bounced his throw to second, well in front of shortstop Carlos Correa. Instead of having two outs and the bases empty, the Rays had no outs and two runners on. They went on to score five runs in the inning. On Twitter, McCarthy called the condition "suffocating," and responded to followers who insisted he could not really feel badly for a member of the 2017 Astros. "In this scenario, I absolutely do," he wrote. "0 20 with 10 K's and a sweep? Wouldn't care. But this is a whole other thing, and I refuse to find joy in it." The Astros are 4 for 24 with runners in scoring position in this series, and none of those hits have brought in runs. They have scored only five runs in three games two on solo homers by Altuve and have stranded 31 runners in all. "Boy, that's a big number," Manager Dusty Baker said. "The way I look at it, we're due. We're due big time to push some runners across." Altuve will be part of that effort for Game 4, said Baker, who vowed to keep him at second base, where he handled 194 chances in the regular season without a single throwing error. "Oh, for sure," Baker said. "Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's without a doubt. That doesn't help us, and it would certainly kill him." Altuve, who has won a Gold Glove, a Most Valuable Player Award and three batting titles, had the worst offensive numbers of his career this season: a .219 average and a .629 on base plus slugging percentage. But he has played for the Astros for 10 seasons longer than any teammate and the Astros gave him 163.5 million in a seven year contract that runs through 2024. They are not about to abandon him. "It's tough to see this happening to such a great player and such a great guy," said Baker, who conceded he did not know if Altuve had the yips. "It's just, I don't know what it's called you can go into a defensive slump the same way you go into an offensive slump, and the physical turns mental. We've certainly got to get past this." On the field after the error, Correa told Altuve to keep his head up, promising that the Astros would win and reminding Altuve there was plenty of game left. Altuve nodded in response, but said nothing. After the game, Correa blamed himself for the play. "I feel like I make that pick nine out of 10, and I didn't," he said. "I was not able to pick my teammate up on that one. When I look back on the replay, I wish I could have that play back because I know I can make that play and I can make that pick. I know the error goes to him, but I blame myself for that one." Correa called Altuve a future Hall of Famer, and with more than 1,600 hits at age 30, Altuve is on track. There is no way to tell if the throwing problems will linger into Game 4, let alone into next season and beyond. One All Star second baseman, Steve Sax, conquered the yips. Another, Chuck Knoblauch, never did. "Nobody feels worse than Jose, because he takes it very serious and takes it to heart," Baker said. "He's one of ours. We've all been through this before; not in this spotlight like this. It hurts us all to see him hurting. We'll give him all the support that he needs." Altuve got no sympathy from the home plate umpire, Jeff Nelson, when he tried to check his swing with two runners on in the bottom of the ninth. Altuve represented the tying run with one out, but he was tempted by two strike slider and tried to hold up. Nelson, who did not seek help from the umpire at first base, called Altuve out, and soon the game was over.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Sports
One maddening stylistic choice the filmmakers stick to is balletic dramatizations, by the British choreographer Russell Maliphant, of scenes from Nureyev's life a hokey dance riff on a hokey documentary staple. His pregnant mother dances in snowy ruins; his Russian friends dance on and around a table, and so on. In a pivotal sequence about his defection to the West, at Orly airport in Paris in 1961, we hear a passage in voice over from his journal, read by the actress Sian Phillips. Nureyev recounts being put in a room at Orly and, as French rules demanded, left alone for five minutes to make a life altering decision. The room has two doors. One leads to a corridor that will take him to a plane to Moscow. The other leads to the French authorities and a new world. Nureyev's sure sense of drama in telling his story isn't matched by the Morrises. While the voice narrates, they show us a Maliphant dancer on a platform, set in the woods, with doors on two sides. Not for the first time, you're deprived of what you want to see: Nureyev, especially in motion (there's some rare archival footage of his dancing), but not only. Still photographs would suffice, and there are a few gorgeous ones here by Richard Avedon, who is quoted as saying that during the photo shoot Nureyev seemed engaged in a "narcissistic orgy of some kind. An orgy of one." Would that "Nureyev" the movie gave a better account of that orgy.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Movies
One day after a practice in early September, Isaiah Waller and his football teammates at Atlanta's Booker T. Washington High School were told by their coach, Derrick Avery, to join a video conference call. When they logged on later that night, up popped the faces of three Atlanta Falcons players Ricardo Allen, Alex Mack and Steven Means. Stunned to see players from their hometown N.F.L. team, the 30 or so teenagers were even more surprised by what they were there to tell them: Nothing about the x's and o's of the game, but to work at the polls on Election Day. So on Tuesday, Waller and about 10 of his teammates, as well as players from high schools in the coastal city of Savannah and Gwinnett County outside Atlanta, will be spending all day at Georgia polling centers as election workers, a small victory for the Falcons who have redoubled their community activism efforts amid a summer and fall of social unrest. "It's something I never really paid attention to because I didn't have a vote, but now that I'm getting older, I'm starting to get more involved," said Waller, 17, who will work Tuesday in Fulton County, which is home to Atlanta and, with over 1 million people, is the state's most populous county. "Seeing the players on TV, I idolize them, and one day I want to be like them. It shows that they care about issues that we care about." The N.F.L. has historically shied away from allowing politically related messaging to appear alongside its branding, even as some team owners have overtly supported candidates and causes on their own. Before 2020, it would have been unthinkable for an N.F.L. team to wade into politics by stenciling a message like "End Racism" onto the end zone. But in a year when some of its best known players have pushed the league to support a more progressive stance regarding social justice initiatives and player activism for racial equality, the league has allowed for more direct messaging supporting voter turnout, a major departure from past election years. More than a dozen franchises will close their stadiums and facilities to football activities and allow them to be used as election centers or polling stations, joining 23 N.B.A. teams. But few teams have been as aggressive in their community outreach as the Falcons, whose social justice committee made voting participation a priority as it searched for a response to racial upheaval in America this year, a journey The New York Times is following this season. Allen, Mack, Means and other players on the 12 member social justice committee have spoken to half a dozen high school football teams this fall on calls with about 20 players at a time. After the players got the students motivated to help, Falcons team officials helped connect the high schoolers with local officials to set up their volunteer work for Election Day. Joshua Peterson, 16, is one of two players to register to work at the polls from the Groves High School football team in Savannah. He and his teammates participate in other volunteer programs, like delivering donated mattresses to families in need. But working at the polls is a bigger responsibility, Peterson said. "It's important for us to give back to the community, and ownership of your life and destiny." Youth participation would help to offset the droves of older poll workers who are sitting out this election season because of the pandemic. The N.F.L.'s coronavirus protocols heightened after outbreaks around the league have severely limited players from traveling beyond their homes and the team facility. So while the Falcons players have spent months emphasizing their message to the students on virtual conference calls, they won't be able to show up in person to support the teenagers who participate. Persuading even a few young people to take action has added some significance to a Falcons season that has largely gone the wrong way on the field. Atlanta has a 2 6 record and sits in last place in its division. The team fired its head coach, Dan Quinn, and its general manager, Thomas Dimitroff, in mid October. Before the season started, players on the team's three year old social justice committee searched for more impactful methods of grass roots activism after team wide conference calls and meetings with local leaders following George Floyd's killing at the hands of Minneapolis police in May. The committee decided that one area where it could make a bigger impact on voter engagement was speaking directly with high school football players, whom they figured would share a connection over being athletes. Their calls, which usually lasted about 45 minutes and took place after practices, started with Falcons players riffing on what they know of the legislative process, then taking questions from the students, who asked about activism as well as football concerns, like how the players cope with so much losing. On one such call, Allen, who is Black, recounted being pulled over by the police and being afraid that he was being racially profiled for driving an expensive car. If the students want to change policing methods, Allen said, they should get involved in their communities. King Walker, a linebacker at Washington High School, said he was surprised that Falcons players were confronted by the same issues he faced. Walker said his mother often reminds him to drive carefully to avoid being stopped by police and not to wear a hoodie when he jogs in his neighborhood not far from the Falcons' home stadium. Many of the Falcons players have gone beyond the conference calls with local students to promote voter participation, in both subtle and more explicit ways. During pregame warm ups players wear T shirts with "Vote" written across their chests in block letters. Some have used their own social media accounts to send get out the vote messages or to support the team's Rise Up Vote initiative. A G.O.P. pathway in Virginia. The win by Glenn Youngkin, who campaigned heavily in the governor's race on education and who evaded the shadow of Donald Trump, could serve as a blueprint for Republicans in the midterms. A rightward shift emerges. Mr. Youngkin outperformed Mr. Trump's 2020 results across Virginia, while a surprisingly strong showing in the New Jersey governor's race by the G.O.P. candidate unsettled Democrats. Democratic panic is rising. Less than a year after taking power in Washington, the party faces a grim immediate future as it struggles to energize voters and continues to lose messaging wars to Republicans. A new direction in N.Y.C. Eric Adams will be the second Black mayor in the city's history. The win for the former police captain sets in motion a more center left Democratic leadership. Mixed results for Democrats in cities. Voters in Minneapolis rejected an amendment to replace the Police Department while progressives scored a victory in Boston's mayoral race. But their connection to the high school football players may have a more lasting impact, according to Nse Ufot, chief executive of the New Georgia Project, a nonpartisan group that helps register Georgians, particularly in communities of color. She said celebrities can persuade people to participate if they echo messages already being sent by trusted friends, family members or coaches. "Micro influencers are more powerful than the super famous people," she said. But "as a part of the larger push to promote voting, they are super effective in reinforcing messages." The football players from Washington High School who work at the polls this year may become more engaged in future years, she said. Like his teammates, Sir Amos was not involved in politics before the call with the Falcons. But he said that working on Election Day may be the most valuable lesson he has ever learned from football. "Right now, I'm not into politics, but as I get older I know it will be," he said. Their talk "gave me insight on where I want to be in my life, and if they can do it, then I can, too."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Sports
When I tugged open the door to R J Lounge and Supper Club, a midcentury inspired restaurant, I expected plumes of cigarette smoke to waft into the air. It's a nonsmoking place, but looks like a set from my imagined sequel, "Goodfellas Take the Middle West" red and gold flock wallpaper, burgundy Naugahyde booths, a neon sign out front that washes its somewhat seedy location (up an alley next to a tire dealership) in a warm fluorescent glow. Jonathon Stranger and Russ Johnson, the owners and chefs, made a name for themselves in 2010 when they founded Ludivine, a restaurant that celebrated ingredients like roasted bone marrow and sea urchin. At their new venture, which opened in September, nostalgia is the main course. "At R J, we just want it to feel good," Mr. Stranger said. For inspiration, the chefs combed through antique menus at the New York Public Library and ransacked their family recipe boxes. The result is edible Americana and with apologies to Betty Crocker , it's great. The chicken with buttermilk and dill dumplings is Mr. Stranger's grandmother's recipe, spiced with Aleppo pepper. The Spreads Plate comes with pimento cheese, cream cheese coated in Jezebel sauce, and a ham salad made exactly the same way as one once sold at Crescent Market, a beloved local grocer before "the Midwest got Walmart ized," as Mr. Stranger put it. With beef stroganoff, fried catfish, and pork and beans rounding out the Hot Plates, most menu options are a far cry from healthful. But an occasional meal here is probably, as the old joke goes in this state, O.K.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Travel
Edgy only in the sense that it is very, very square, Matt Williams's "Actually, We're " at the Cherry Lane Theater stakes out a quartet of millennials as they navigate fertility, fidelity and a nauseating smoothie: pea protein, chia seeds, hemp seeds, kale, active charcoal, alfalfa sprouts, local bee pollen and bone broth. I belong to an organic food co op, and still I gagged. A queasy comedy of adultery, the play begins as two 30ish couples Rachel (Mairin Lee) and Nick (Ben Rappaport), Frank (Gabriel Sloyer) and Molly (Keren Lugo) meet for kombucha and crudites. The chitchat turns to babies, to religion, to the environment. There are jokes about women buying shoes and Buddhists self immolating and a long tirade about how no one should ever bring a child into a world flooring it toward catastrophe. Turns out Rachel is pregnant. Whoops. And the baby might not be Nick's. Whoops again. In seven should be brisk scenes, punctuated by projections and titles, the characters fall out of love and into quips. This is my first ride along with Mr. Williams's work. For all I know he's a mensch and a half, but I would hesitate to call him a playwright. Under John Pasquin's ba dum dum direction, this is a show, supertitles aside, that longs to be a sitcom. (Turns out Mr. Williams has had a long and distinguished career in sitcoms. So, yeah.) Its dialogue and form don't seem built for live theater, and maybe its jokes "Every time I go to a bris, I imagine the end result looks like a calamari ring" would ring truer with a laugh track. Maybe not: "L.G.B.T. Q.R.S.T.U.V.W.!"	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Theater
The story of modernism's debt to non Western, folk and tribal art is complex and only getting more so. A new wrinkle in the narrative is the work of the singular Brazilian artist Celso Renato (1919 1992), seen in its beguiling seven piece United States debut at Mendes Wood DM. He was a practicing lawyer and self taught artist who spent most of his life in Belo Horizonte in the Brazilian state of Minas Gerais. Renato began painting in the 1960s and by the 1980s was working with a spare geometric vocabulary applied freehand to found pieces of wood and lumber, which he tended to use unaltered. The combination made him an odd man out with the Neo Concretists. Like them he rejected the clean rational forms of the Concretists, but he retained the earlier group's attachment to the art object His efforts communicate and reward empathic attention. A piece of lumber shaped like a narrow irregular house about two feet tall is cracked all the way through at the center, giving it a crevicelike door. Renato simply painted a series of bars and blocks in red, black or white around its edges, giving it a kind of frame and turning it into a votive object of a female goddess. The same blocks and bars appear on a portion of an old tree trunk. They form a narrow stack at the center of the trunk's round side, like an abstract homage to the tree it was once part of. A work closer to a conventional painting is a square section of an old crate fence that Renato painted black with a white triangle cutting in from the top, slightly off center. But even here he applies the paint so it seems to interact with rather than disguise the irregularities of the surface. Renato worked with an almost reverential consideration of what he was painting on, creating his own fusion of art, nature and the haphazardness of everyday life and adding something of his own to the history of postwar Latin American modernism. Newer works include model buildings from Alan Michelson's "Prophetstown" series, one of which is covered in facsimiles of newspapers from the 19th century with articles and dialogues pertaining to the fate of indigenous people. "Culture Capture" (2017) by Adam Khalil, Zack Khalil and Jackson Polys is a terrific video that turns a visit to an ethnographic museum into a delirious walk through the history of colonialism. The booklet accompanying "Unholding" enlarges the project with essays that look at how postmodernism, multiculturalism and other '80s movements only scratched the surface of what it means to function as an indigenous artist in the New York art world. One short sentence near the front of the booklet suggests just how much is at stake: "Artists Space acknowledges its location on indigenous land." A simple statement, but one with huge historical and tragic implications. Jose Leonilson's (1957 1993) work is cryptic, coded and often hard to read even if you understand Portuguese. Like a personal poetry project, the paintings, drawings and embroidery works of this Brazilian artist, who died from AIDS related causes in 1993, are filled with meandering lines of text and small images: trompe l'oeil scars, foliage, pictograms. Surprisingly, "Empty Man" at the Americas Society is the first solo exhibition in the United States to showcase his work, and it is a great introduction. Mr. Leonilson's early pieces fit in very much with a 1980s return to the figure in the work of the famed "three C's" of Italian painting: Francesco Clemente, Enzo Cucchi and Sandro Chia. Like those artists, Mr. Leonilson painted curious figures in bright flat fields of color, adding bits of language, in keeping with a postmodern era in which semiotics and other theories were central elements in art. Travel and wandering were a constant theme too, as Mr. Leonilson exhibited his work in Europe and toured Amsterdam, Paris and Madrid. The later works here are what make Mr. Leonilson stand out as an artist. In his sewing with thread or copper wire on crepe, velvet, cotton or voile, stitching takes the place of brush strokes and the works become stand ins for objects in everyday life: satchels, handkerchiefs and embroidery samplers. With the artist aware of his illness and confronting his fate, the small fabric works become a catalog of personal objects perhaps memorials for oneself. "Empty Man," from 1991, is a simple work with red and black thread on a neutral ground. "Empty Man Lone Ready" it reads in one corner a spare, enigmatic phrase that nonetheless gets its meaning across. Two years later, Mr. Leonilson would die.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Art & Design
Clockwise from top left: Charles Sykes/Invision, via Associated Press; Krista Schlueter for The New York Times; Yuchen Liao/Getty Images and Rebecca Smeyne for The New York Times Clockwise from top left: Charles Sykes/Invision, via Associated Press; Krista Schlueter for The New York Times; Yuchen Liao/Getty Images and Rebecca Smeyne for The New York Times Credit... Clockwise from top left: Charles Sykes/Invision, via Associated Press; Krista Schlueter for The New York Times; Yuchen Liao/Getty Images and Rebecca Smeyne for The New York Times It is often said that when President Trump eventually leaves office, reporters will be in a state of confusion, so accustomed are we to a constant stream of tweets and announcements that send us scurrying to report or fact check or tear tufts of hair out multiple times in an hour. Faced with a normal news flow, we will all be like Neo in "The Matrix," turning his head ever so slowly to avoid a flying bullet, thinking "Wow, what's taking it so long?" Know what I mean? Well, that's what it's going to be like in fashion this season. We have gotten so used to the ever faster cycles of creative director change at brands in the four big fashion capitals New York, London, Milan and Paris so used to "She is in! and He is out!" and "They are changing cities!" that a return to the status quo seems like a return to a sort of stasis. And the fall women's (and some men's) shows, which begin on Friday and roll from country to country until early March, will be a relatively calm season, one marked (especially in New York) more by what isn't there than what is. But just because nothing extreme is happening this season, does not mean nothing is happening at all: Don't mistake subtlety for insignificance. Indeed, this may be good practice in slow thinking for us all. Here are the three big trends to watch, when you aren't distracted by watching the news. The much ballyhooed announcement last season by Tom Ford, chairman of the Council of Fashion Designers of America, that he was tightening the show schedule seems to have had a knock on effect on brands. A number have dropped off the calendar entirely, either because they are switching seasons, swapping cities or have decided they will simply sit this one out. Kerby Jean Raymond of Pyer Moss started the trend last year, when he ditched a February show in favor of consolidating budgets and ideas and doing a big production in September. (And it was a big production.) He is doing it again this season, as is Tomo Koizumi, the designer who made waves with his over the top ruffled confections; as is Batsheva Hay, the designer whose covered up performance art/shows have involved psychoanalysts meditating on the meaning of her clothes; as is Ralph Lauren, who after building Ralph's Club last fall and inviting Janelle Monae to play, has apparently decided you either go big or hang out at home and he's hanging out at home. Telfar Clemens took his show/traveling band of creative brothers to the Pitti Uomo trade fair in Florence in January; Jeremy Scott just announced that he is moving to Paris in July; Tommy Hilfiger is taking his traveling TommyNow circus to London; and Tom Ford (yes, that same guy who is supposed to be the figurehead of the industry) is having his show in the middle of New York Fashion Week in ... Los Angeles. Because, you know, Oscars. If ever there was a clearer message to his constituency that, these days, it's every brand for itself, I don't know what it is. Steven Kolb, the chief executive of the CFDA, pointed out that there are still 70 shows taking place over five days, which is true, and they include such New York stalwarts as Marc Jacobs, Michael Kors and Oscar de la Renta. Plus, Rodarte is back! But the brands that are not showing are the brands that are redefining American fashion most conspicuously. So what exactly does this say? Maybe that it really is time to let the old ways die. 2. The Embrace of an Ecosystem It may be a quiet season, comparably, but there are still a few debuts to look forward to, one of which has potentially wider implications. In Paris, Felipe Oliveira Baptista is stepping out for the first time as creative director of Kenzo, and at Celine, Hedi Slimane is having his first dual gender show. (At Gucci, meanwhile, Alessandro Michele is separating the sexes again.) In Milan, Christelle Kocher of Koche will be the guest designer of Pucci. She will be doing her interpretation of the house for onetime only. According to Pucci, instead of committing to a single creative director, it is going to ask different names to put their stamp on the house each season, kind of what Moncler does with its Genius line. And since we're on the subject of Genius: Its Next Big Collaborator will be Jonathan Anderson a.k.a. the designer of Loewe. It's going to be fun to see what he does with technical outerwear. Rimowa is joining too, for luggage. This multi creative approach wouldn't work for every brand, but for a house that is more known for product a puffer! a print! than aesthetic innovation, it's potentially a win win for us all. Sustainability. Upcycling. It was the biggest news out of last season there was even competition to see who could claim to be the first carbon neutral show and it will probably be only more omnipresent this time around. To wit, the opening day of fashion month will coincide with a panel discussion in New York called "Responsibility in Fashion: How Can We Do Better Together?" In Milan, the Camera della Moda, which organizes Italian Fashion Week, is avoiding all plastics, printing all documents on recycled paper, and working with the city to promote ... bike riding! (Among other things, though when it comes to the bike initiative, it hasn't yet addressed the stiletto issue.) After years of side talk around the issue for fear of being accused of green washing, fashion now wants to put it on every table, and every runway. Expect more use of dead stock and remnants, more activism (either wearable or behind the scenes) and more fabrics made from ... fruit! Or other organic materials like pineapple and bamboo. Soon we will be able to eat our closets. Along with diversity of race, but also body, age and physical disability (though the latter often gets overlooked) it is the most important shift going on in the industry. Other questions to consider: Will the coronavirus impact everyone flying from city to city? Will the fact that Brexit has finally happened affect London Fashion Week? Will there be yet more strikes in France? We're on the edge of our seats.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Fashion & Style
The chef Nobu Matsuhisa and the actor Robert De Niro have been partners since opening Nobu restaurant in New York in 1994. The name of the Japanese chef, whose signature cooking style borrows from his experiences working in Lima, Peru, and other coastal locales, is now affixed to more than 30 Nobu restaurants on five continents. In 2013, the partnership opened its first Nobu Hotel in Las Vegas and now runs five, including the new 16 room Nobu Ryokan Malibu in California. Its first European property, Nobu Hotel Shoreditch, opened in London's East End this month, with 150 rooms and a Nobu restaurant where, unlike at the stand alone restaurants, diners can get breakfast. Mr. Matsuhisa, who popularized sashimi with jalapeno, is similarly creative with the morning meal, including dishes like cured salmon on a "bagel" of crispy rice. The following are edited excerpts from a conversation with the partners. Why London, and why Shoreditch specifically? Nobu Matsuhisa: London is a big market for hotels. They know good food. We opened our first restaurant there 20 years ago, and we now have two successful restaurants. A lot has changed in London in the food market. Especially Shoreditch, which has a lot of young people and a hip scene. Robert De Niro: It's an up and coming location, like the meatpacking district in New York. You both travel a lot. What's your favorite thing about hotels?	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Travel
Now a defector, who has left behind his wife, Olga, and a young daughter, he is almost immediately paraded out for a news conference. In perfect English born in Chicago, he is already an American citizen Rene vehemently proclaims, "I had already said goodbye to Cuba years ago." Describing conditions there, he seethes, "Everything is short ... even the sugar is from Russia." Back home, Olga, played with quiet strength by Penelope Cruz, works in a monstrous looking tannery and for a while refuses to answer Rene's letters. Rene allies himself with an anti Castro activist group and flies out to rescue Cuban refugees trying to get to the United States on rafts. A little later, Juan Pablo Roque (Wagner Moura, the Brazilian star of the "Elite Squad" films, who can shift from boyish to sinister in the space of a single frame) dons snorkeling gear and swims from Caimanera to Guantanamo Bay, where he defects. The military men there welcome him with a meal from McDonald's. More overtly macho than Rene, Juan Pablo, once in Miami, woos and weds a charming innocent, Ana Margarita (Ana de Armas, superb), and starts sporting a Rolex, which he ought not be able to afford. Who are these guys, really? About an hour in, the movie travels back four years to Cuba and introduces a character played by Gael Garcia Bernal, who, in conversation with government officials, says he's spent six months "studying my role." From this point on, it's best not to reveal too much, because the surprises here are more than story points they deepen the film's fundamental questions. Behind all of it is a historical fact that's not often discussed in the United States: that during Fidel Castro's regime, the Cubans still loyal to him saw the privations of daily life not as material issues in and of themselves, but rather as part of a continuing struggle. The revolution was not accomplished, it was ongoing.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Movies
Near the end of "Catch Her if You Can," Maria Kochetkova's new show at the Joyce Theater, the Russian born ballerina addresses why she left San Francisco Ballet last year to go freelance. It was, "to do things I believe in and always wanted to do," she declares. Or rather, she types, since this final number of the program is mostly a conversation between her and the impish French choreographer Jerome Bel, conducted via Facebook Messenger and projected on a screen. The conversation seems to be a record of discussions that led to the piece, called "Masha Machine" after Ms. Kochetkova's nickname. She shares some videos of past performances (we see these, too), and when Mr. Bel, in his brusque, flippant way, asks her to imagine her future, her answers are mainly about her present discontent. When he goads her further, she says she's confused. That's the impression conveyed by the program as a whole: an accomplished artist at loose ends. This production is of a common type. A star ballet dancer, tired of having roles chosen for her by some company director, chooses them herself, and thus gives us a self portrait of her true sensibility, her taste. Often, the results betray a parochially rebellious, anything but tutus lack of discrimination.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Dance
The timing on this story is perfect, especially given the news surrounding the awful treatment of Haitians/Dominicans of Haitian descent and the draconian new immigration law in D.R. If you're paying attention, there is a clear connection. This is about more than just hair. By and large, Dominicans work hard to reject every aspect of their African heritage, a regal heritage that links them directly to the Haitians. Disdain for thick, tightly coiled or curly natural hair is merely an extension of the larger social forces at work here: Black/dark brown skin is viewed as somehow tainted and even hideous, whereas cafe con leche complexions or lighter are viewed as pure and therefore more desirable. White colonizers have long since left these shores, but isn't it remarkable how their influence never seems to wane? Carolina Contreras is my hero! She is starting an important dialogue, which could lead to a little truth and reconciliation. As a Dominican woman, I believe we ladies choose how we prefer to wear our hair. Dominican women from all ancestries are beautiful, no matter how they choose to wear their hair, and anyone who is trying to make this about colonization has hate in their heart. Relaxing/straightening hair is like hair dying it, which many cultures enjoy doing. So I guess if a white woman with pin straight hair gets a perm to make her hair curly, then it's self hate. If she cuts her hair short in a boy cut style, that must be self hate too. I'm a white woman with fine, limp hair, and I've always thought natural hair is beautiful, so I've spent my life envious of the gorgeous curls on African Americans or the thick, sleek locks of Asians (and many natural styles and textures in between). I also think people should wear their hair however they want, so I'm not judging women (or men) who choose to alter their natural textures, but if it stems from any motivation other than personal choice such as social status or the pressure of cultural conformity that makes me sad. Hence I've found myself smitten by this article and by this salon. This is beautifully written. I myself am not Dominican, but I am Mexican Chinese and have very thick, curly hair. It's great to see more and more women embracing the curls and teaching the younger generations that beauty is far more than what they see on TV. What this salon is doing is commendable, it may not seem like a big deal to most people, but from a young age we are taught that how we look is not necessarily beautiful, or AS beautiful as the models or celebrities we see, because of our hair. Thank you for this article. Curls are beautiful!!	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Travel
Amelie Mauresmo, a former world No. 1, became Lucas Pouille's coach after his ranking dropped from No. 10 to No. 32 last year. MELBOURNE, Australia Lucas Pouille, the brightest young star in men's tennis in France, was flickering. Pouille, 24, reached a career high ranking of No. 10 in March, but did not win more than two matches consecutively after that, finishing the year with a 14 17 run. Playing without inspiration or belief, he slipped to No. 32 by the end of the season. "I lost confidence, and then I was not enjoying so much being on court, being on tour," he said. "I didn't really want to play tennis." He had to find a solution, he said. "I had to find my joy of being on court." Pouille split with Emmanuel Planque, his coach of six years, in November. Pouille, who had yearned to take a break from the tour but decided to finish the season so he could play in the Davis Cup final, was on his own for eight days. When he did pick up a racket, it was only to play minitennis with friends. But on the Monday after the Davis Cup final, which France lost to Croatia, he met with his team's captain in waiting, Amelie Mauresmo. Pouille had another offer: Coach him instead. "When we were talking to each other, it was this couple hours of talking that really had me thinking," Mauresmo said. "He had me thinking that he's ambitious, that he wants to do everything in order to be as good as possible. He kind of convinced me with what he was saying, that he was ready to do all the efforts and the hard work that are going with being at the top, with digging deep to be at your best." Stepping away from the Davis Cup position before she even started was not an easy decision for Mauresmo, especially considering the excitement over her appointment as the country's first female captain. But it was made easier, she said, by the radical changes coming to the competition this season, which will reduce the final rounds to a World Cup style format played at one site, with three matches of best of three sets in each pairing, instead of five matches in a best of five format. "I think the captain's role will be really reduced," Mauresmo, 39, said. "What was interesting for me was all the weeks of preparations, the three days of competition, the best of five, building a team throughout a year, and the home and away. For me, I grew up watching that. I grew up having the emotions that go with it." "So I have no doubt that it will be a good show, a good competition for the crowd, and they will probably put on a big show or whatever. But as a captain, I didn't feel that the role was that important." Pouille said he was encouraged by the belief Mauresmo showed in him when she left such a high profile opportunity behind. "That's what I wanted to have with me: someone who believes in me, and who believes we can go very far together," Pouille said. "I'm very happy that she's part of it now, and we can work together, we can have the best results possible." Pouille is the only man in the ATP Tour's top 100 currently coached by a woman outside his immediate family, but he said Mauresmo's gender was not a consideration in his decision to hire her. "For me, it doesn't matter if it's a man, woman, grandfather, grandmother I don't care," he said. "As long as they know what they're talking about. In women's sports or men's sports, in the end you're dealing with the same stuff on the court. Pouille's choice of Mauresmo was the second high profile hiring of a female coach in men's tennis this decade. The first was in 2014, when Andy Murray also hired Mauresmo. Pouille's decision generated far less second guessing than Murray's, which was met with skepticism from both the news media and fellow players. "The pressure with Andy was tremendous, and the criticism that went with it was huge," Mauresmo said. "I knew I had a lot to prove, and I knew that every match he would play would be about the job I'd done, or not done, or could do better. That was making it pretty difficult, but pretty challenging as well, and I worked really, really hard." Pouille said many of the queries that came with his choice were more inane than negative. "A lot of people have asked me: 'Is it different that she's a woman? What do you do can she come in the locker room?'" he said. "But what is important is what's happening on court, what's happening to get ready for the match, and what happens after the match. I don't care who is in the locker room." Pouille said that, for now, he appreciated the lack of wasted time in his practice sessions with Mauresmo, and also her drive and willingness to join him in his various fitness and running drills. "You can see on the court that she's a champion," he said. "The way she is on the court, the way she's committed to it, it's just remarkable." Pouille is one of five active Frenchmen who can claim to have made the top 10, joining Richard Gasquet, Gilles Simon, Gael Monfils and Jo Wilfried Tsonga. Together, they have reached only one Grand Slam final in the past decade: when Tsonga finished as the runner up at the 2008 Australian Open. Mauresmo says she probably has particular credibility in French tennis as a two time Grand Slam singles champion and a former No. 1 player, accomplishments that outshine those of all the country's other players male or female in her lifetime. But she is uncertain whether most men would be ready to hire a woman with less than hall of fame credentials. "Probably not yet," she said. "Maybe not, but it will come. Maybe not in the next two, three, five years, but it will come." Patience also was required as Pouille started his 2019 season. He opened the year by losing all three matches he played at the Hopman Cup, as well as another at the ATP tournament in Sydney. But on Tuesday at the Australian Open, he won his opening match convincingly, 6 1, 7 5, 6 4, over Mikhail Kukushkin. Though he was relieved by the win, Pouille said his confidence in his choice of coach had never wavered. "I know it's going to take time, coming from a year where it has been quite difficult for me," he said. "But I decided to work with Amelie because I trust her."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Sports
Kenny Rogers performing with the rock band Phish at the Bonnaroo Music and Arts Festival in Manchester, Tenn., in 2012. "One of the strengths of my eclectic musical history," he once said, "is that I never felt hamstrung by one form." Kenny Rogers, a prolific singer who played a major role in expanding the audience for country music in the 1970s and '80s, died on Friday at his home in Sandy Springs, Ga. He was 81. His death was announced by his publicist, Keith Hagan. Mr. Hagan did not specify the cause but said Mr. Rogers had been in hospice care. Mr. Rogers retired from performing for health reasons in 2018. Singing in a husky voice that exuded sincerity and warmth, Mr. Rogers sold well over 100 million records in a career that spanned seven decades. He had 21 No. 1 country hits, including two "Lady," written and produced by Lionel Richie, and "Islands in the Stream," composed by the Bee Gees and performed with Dolly Parton that reached No. 1 on the pop chart as well. By the time he stopped performing, Mr. Rogers had placed more than 50 singles in the country Top 40, of which 20 also appeared in the pop Top 40. Long before the ascendancy of Garth Brooks and Shania Twain in the 1990s, he was among the first country artists to sell out arenas. Mr. Rogers's popularity stemmed partly from his genial persona and rugged good looks, but also from his ability to inhabit his material, which, he often said, was of two main types: love songs like "You Decorated My Life" and narrative ballads like "The Gambler" and "Lucille." "All the songs I record fall into one of two categories, as a rule," he said in a 2012 interview with NPR. "One is ballads that say what every man would like to say and every woman would like to hear. The other is story songs that have social significance. "'Reuben James' was about a black man who raised a white child," he continued, referring to a 1969 song that was a Top 40 hit for his group Kenny Rogers and the First Edition. "'Coward of the County' was about a rape. 'Ruby, Don't Take Your Love to Town' was about a guy who came home from war." "Ruby" in particular revealed Mr. Rogers's command as an interpreter of narrative ballads. Written by Mel Tillis, the song is about a veteran, left impotent and in a wheelchair after being wounded in war, who must endure the agony of watching his wife leave the house every night to meet other men. Duo recordings were a prominent part of Mr. Rogers's repertoire, accounting for more than a dozen country hits, including eight No. 1 records. Several of them, including "Don't Fall in Love With a Dreamer," a 1980 duet with the pop singer Kim Carnes, and "We've Got Tonight," a remake of a Bob Seger hit performed with the Scottish singer Sheena Easton, were pop successes as well. Mr. Rogers was particularly fond of singing the harmony part on vocal collaborations. In a 2013 episode of the television program "The Big Interview With Dan Rather," he explained that harmonies had fascinated him ever since he first heard his older sister Geraldine singing them in church. "I'd never heard harmony before, and I said, 'What are you singing?'" he recalled. "She said, 'Well, that's called harmony, where you don't sing the melody, but you sing something that sounds good with the melody.' And I thought, 'Oh, I'd like to do that.'" Mr. Rogers also recorded with R B artists like James Ingram and Gladys Knight. Both the rapper Wyclef Jean and the neo soul singer Anthony Hamilton have used passages from his music in their work. Mr. Rogers came by his wide ranging musical sensibilities naturally. After graduating from high school, he played upright bass in the Bobby Doyle Three, a well regarded jazz trio. He became a member of the folk ensemble the New Christy Minstrels in the mid '60s. He later experimented with pop psychedelia on the First Edition's 1967 single "Just Dropped In (To See What Condition My Condition Was In)," a Top 10 pop hit written by Mickey Newbury, with whom Mr. Rogers attended high school. Most of Mr. Rogers's material was written by others. Two notable exceptions were "Sweet Music Man," a Top 10 country single in 1977 written solely by Mr. Rogers, and "Love or Something Like It," a No. 1 country hit the next year, which he wrote with his longtime keyboardist, Steve Glassmeyer. Mr. Rogers had an acting career, most notably a starring role in a series of TV movies based on his signature song, "The Gambler." He also starred in the 1982 feature film "Six Pack." More a fan favorite than a critics' darling, Mr. Rogers was something of a late bloomer in country music; his career as a solo artist did not gain traction until after his breakthrough single, "Lucille," was released by United Artists in 1977. He was 38 at the time. "The executives at United Artists Records thought I was too old, creeping up on 40, and too pop to have much success in country," Mr. Rogers wrote of his recording career before "Lucille," a cheating song complicated by the narrator's conscience haunted change of heart, in his 2012 memoir, "Luck or Something Like It." "Lucille" became his first No. 1 country hit and reached the pop Top 10 as well. "Once we made the story song a viable art form for me, the songs just poured in," he added, alluding to subsequent hits like "Coward of the County" and "The Gambler." "Every songwriter with a story song sent it to me." Kenneth Donald Rogers was born on Aug. 21, 1938, in Houston. The fourth of eight children, he grew up in San Felipe Courts, a public housing development in the city's Fourth Ward. His father, Edward Floyd Rogers, was a carpenter and amateur musician who struggled with alcohol. His mother, Lucille (Hester) Rogers, had only a third grade education but held the family together, making ends meet by cleaning offices and working in a hospital. Music was a refuge early on. "My dad wasn't in the business, but he played fiddle," Mr. Rogers recalled in a 2014 interview with Rolling Stone. "All of his brothers and sisters played some instrument, so we used to get in the cab of a pickup truck and ride up to Apple Springs, Texas, where all my aunts and uncles would get on the front porch and play music. "I used to sing in the church choir and at school," he continued, "but my interest actually started when I was 12 years old and went to see Ray Charles in concert. "It was like an epiphany. People laughed at everything Ray said, they clapped for everything he sang. I thought, 'Boy, who wouldn't want to do that?' I didn't even know I could sing at the time. I just loved the honesty of his music." Mr. Rogers received many accolades during his career, among them three Grammy Awards and recognition for lifetime achievement from the Country Music Association. In 2013 he was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame. Mr. Rogers was married five times. He is survived by his wife of 22 years, Wanda Miller, and the couple's twin sons, Justin and Jordan, as well as a daughter, Carole Billingsley, from his marriage to Janice Gordon, and two other sons, Kenny Jr. (from his marriage to Margo Anderson) and Christopher (from his marriage to Marianne Gordon). He is also survived by two brothers, Roy and Randy; a sister, Sandy Rogers; and a number of grandchildren. Eclecticism in music is sometimes attributed to a lack of originality or focus. But for Mr. Rogers, drawing on an array of styles and collaborating with a wide range of artists worked in his favor. "One of the strengths of my eclectic musical history," he wrote in his memoir, "perhaps dating all the way back to that day as a child when I heard gospel music pouring out of the little church in Houston, is that I never felt hamstrung by one form, even if I had been successful with it. "During the First Edition days, for instance, I was perfectly comfortable going from a drug culture song, 'Just Dropped In,' to a country tinged story song like 'Ruby.' Having been exposed to and well versed in all kinds of music before Nashville, I saw no reason to limit the range of songs I could do after getting there."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Music
Music, we all know, can bring people together. To stimulate a conversation between a music critic and a guest in this case, the Russian chess grandmaster Garry Kasparov about listening and life, there was one ground rule: Each participant suggests a single piece for the other to listen to ahead of the chat. Born in Baku, Azerbaijan, Mr. Kasparov comes from a musical family: His paternal grandfather and uncle were composers, his grandmother was a pianist and his father studied the violin before becoming an engineer. A former World Chess Champion, Mr. Kasparov is now a political activist, a prominent critic of President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia and the chairman of the Renew Democracy Initiative. He spoke by phone from his home in Croatia, where he has spent the pandemic with his wife, Daria, and their two children. These are edited excerpts from the conversation. The "Goldbergs" are not just one piece! It's like an encyclopedia of music. I like that. There is that sense of trying out a problem according to different possibilities. I picked Bach for you, with all his fugues, because I think of chess as having similar qualities. The elegance of algorithms and the beauty that comes out of processes that actually obey very strict rules. For me it was a new experience. I don't listen to much music before Mozart. It was quite a discovery to understand that Bach introduced many future themes. From the chess or computer world, I would use the term founding father. I am amazed by people who are ahead of their time. Listening to the "Goldbergs" I was struck by what I see as parallels with the way pieces move in chess. Even in the opening Aria, there is this very methodical movement in the left hand, while the right hand has much more freedom. I'm not sure. I see the Aria as something godly, heavenly but then it goes back to earth. It's this combination. What do you make of the fugues in strict counterpoint? These lines that interlock in a way that is both a beautiful mechanism and has this creative freedom to it. Well, it's about variety. I read the legend that Bach wrote it for his patron to fight insomnia. But it doesn't strike me as something that helps people go to sleep. The first 10 variations, he's basically demonstrating his power as a composer. But then he shifts to something that is more interesting. In many of the variations we can hear the herald of new music. I have one favorite: Variation 25. It's Chopin. It's the first Ballade. And I love Chopin. What is it that attracts you to that? I hear a lot of melancholy in that variation. It's not sadness. It's a kind of realism. The world is as it is, and we have to accept it. It makes me feel comfortable. I also like Variation 13. It draws you into this water of music. And for energy and style I would pick number 16. In Variations 14 and 29, Bach is a virtuoso a la Liszt. I get the sense that the connections I made to chess don't feel true to you at all. Did you find anything that you could relate to the game? It's more how the music relates to me, Garry Kasparov, the person. I left the professional game years ago. Sure, the "Goldbergs" are an encyclopedia. It's a demonstration of what could be done. It was prescient. I was also curious to ask you about artificial intelligence, and to what extent beauty can come out of a closed system with its own rules. Can a machine make moves that are elegant or is the human spark required? There are efforts that try to teach machines to write music, even in the style of Bach. A machine can learn rules, whether it's chess or music. Offered a variety of options, it can eventually come up with something. But creativity has a human quality: It accepts the notion of failure. The way machines approach a problem is always about the bottom line: "This move is good because it offers the best return." But creative beauty is not to go against the rules, but beyond the known pattern. You're setting up a nice transition to the Beethoven symphony you picked. So much of that is about changing received patterns and disrupting expectations. He has accents in the wrong place that take you off guard and build drama. A machine would never see the advantage of breaking those rules. In a closed space a machine will beat humans. But when we are talking about art, the lines are blurry. We enjoy the journey into the unknown. In Beethoven's period, music was structured around the development of a theme. It encounters an opposing theme and out of that a story unfolds. I was curious if you could connect that to a chess game. In the sense that the opening determines a lot, but that it's in the encounter with your opponent that the game develops. Sorry to disappoint you again. I view this from a different angle. They wrote the music because they heard it in their heads. It's pure genius. They can make very complicated constructions. But it's flow. It's intuition. That's also my playing style. That's the only time I can make a parallel to my playing. I know when a move is right. With Beethoven I see it as heroic. But it's different from Wagner. That's mythology. It comes from another world. With Beethoven it's human. At a granular level the "Eroica" has this energetic play with the idea of disruption creating crises and then rushing forward again. Are there parallels you can draw to your political activism, with how to effect change? Now you hit the right button. It's more about my political engagement. You have to pretend to be heroic. But our fight is not for some mythological object or carving our name in the history books; it's about other humans and improving the world we live in. And that's a shift. The "Eroica" is very rich with this shift. I appreciate you being honest and rejecting my high flung theories about counterpoint and chess. It shows that what one person reads into music is not necessarily what's there at all. It was fun to try out these ideas with you. Thank you for forcing me to listen to the "Goldberg" Variations. Now I have a greater appreciation of Bach. I was very surprised by how modern it feels. It might have something to do with transparency. Because in Bach's keyboard music the structure is visible, the same way in really good modern architecture form just follows function. I could use another analogy. These days I'm doing a lot of Lego with my five year old. You have a plan and then you have the Legos. And you can always see the structure.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Music
It's a truism that America has been gripped by tribalism, polarization and rage. But what if it were possible to have a civil conversation with an unlike minded stranger? To find common ground and even persuade that person to think differently? In early December in Doylestown, Pa., a group of canvassers trained by a liberal grass roots organization tried to do just that. Thirty of them set out with trepidation from the student center at Delaware Valley University to knock on doors in Bucks County a swing district that Hillary Clinton won by only 2,700 votes in 2016. (Mr. Trump won Pennsylvania by just 44,300 votes.) Each canvasser had a list of several dozen registered but infrequent voters to approach and encourage to vote Democratic. Their technique is known as deep canvassing. It stresses active listening and empathetic dialogue, rather than facts and arguments. A leading advocate for it is Changing the Conversation Together, a shoestring operation in Brooklyn. In early November, the organization held a two and a half hour training workshop for 20 volunteers. It was led by its director, Adam Barbanel Fried. A bearded 43 year old who worked for years as a community organizer using the principles of Saul Alinsky, Mr. Barbanel Fried began by describing the group's success in the 2018 congressional race in New York's 11th District. Made up of Staten Island and a slice of Brooklyn, it was the only New York City district to back Mr. Trump in 2016. The organization recruited and trained nearly 300 canvassers to work in Staten Island in support of the Democratic candidate, Max Rose. They had more than 1,900 conversations Mr. Rose won the district as a whole and took Staten Island by 1,800 votes. A postelection survey by the organization found that 65 percent of those who were canvassed reported voting Democratic, compared to 45 percent in the same neighborhoods who were not canvassed. Mark Penn and Andrew Stein write that "only a broader course correction to the center will give Democrats a fighting chance in 2022" and beyond. Tory Gavito and Adam Jentleson write that the Virgina loss should "shock Democrats into confronting the powerful role that racially coded attacks play in American politics." Ezra Klein speaks to David Shor, who discusses his fear that Democrats face electoral catastrophe unless they shift their messaging. Ross Douthat writes that the outcome of the Virginia gubernatorial race shows Democrats need a "new way to talk about progressive ideology and education." One of the few studies of the efficacy of deep canvassing appeared in Science magazine in 2016. The authors studied 56 canvassers who went door to door in South Florida targeting prejudice against transgender individuals. They found that a single 10 minute conversation that encouraged seeing the perspective of others "substantially reduced transphobic," with the effects lasting at least three months. Now Changing the Conversation Together is trying to use this approach at the national level. But it aspires to more than putting a Democrat in the White House. "We want to form a national corps of deep canvassers that embraces compassion and inclusion," Mr. Barbanel Fried said. "There's a whole world of voters in the middle longing for connection." Storytelling is the key to achieving that connection, he said. Each volunteer is expected to tell voters a story about a person he or she loves and listen to the voter tell a similar story. In a role playing exercise, Mr. Barbanel Fried talked about his 93 year old father, who read history books to him when he was young. "He really taught me that history doesn't just happen and isn't just a random series of dates you have to memorize, but that they're a series of choices that people make," he said. "This year, when I vote, I'm thinking about my father." After the volunteers divided into subgroups to practice their own stories, each was given a two page script. Canvassers were to begin by asking voters what they would say to President Trump if given the opportunity. Then, after acknowledging that they usually vote Democratic, they were to ask voters to rate their likely voting preference on a scale of zero (for unwaveringly Republican) to 10 (steadfastly Democratic). Then came the personal story. "Try to use the word LOVE," the script advised. After the voter told his or her own story, the canvasser was to note how the voter's values seemed to conflict with those of the president, who, they would say, "appeals to the worst human tendencies." At the end, the canvasser was to ask the voter to again rate her or his preference on the zero to 10 scale. Some volunteers said they thought that talking about love was corny or too personal. Mr. Barbanel Fried insisted that it was critical to connecting. There is a group of Trump loyalists whose votes can't be affected, he said, "but there are people whose values we share, and we're trying to show them that there's a cognitive dissonance in their lives" between their love of people and their support for Mr. Trump. "We need to lead with love, not hate." He ended by encouraging people to sign up for the December canvass in Bucks County. Each of the 30 people, including some local residents, who did show up was given a list of people from across the political spectrum with spotty voting histories. I accompanied Cindi Sternfeld, a 58 year old psychotherapist living in nearby Lambertville, N.J. She told me that she had been canvassing since she was 18 and had found deep canvassing more effective than the traditional kind. "I like canvassing that advances the discussion," she said. "Being angry is not the answer because it pushes people away." At her designated neighborhood, she found stately three and four bedroom homes on spacious lots. After a string of unopened doors, Ms. Sternfeld spotted one of her target voters standing in his driveway, preparing to put up Christmas lights with his daughter. Tall and lanky, with closely cropped hair, James genially returned our greeting. "I'm usually Republican, but I go by the candidate," he said. In the last presidential election he wanted change, and Mr. Trump seemed more likely to deliver it. He said he had a Trump sign in his garage. A neighbor had a sign saying, "Hate Has No Home Here." James asked his neighbor if she hated Mr. Trump, and she said yes. "Then why do you have that sign?" he asked. Because of such encounters, James said, he would rate himself a two or three on the zero to 10 scale. Ms. Sternfeld then told a story about her father a special education teacher who worked with older high school students with cognitive disabilities and who spoke to them as the grown men they were. Years later, when she became an educator, she said, she learned that people with cognitive disabilities are not often shown such respect. "My dad is gone," she said, but his values of respect and dignity "still motivate me." "My dad's gone, too," James said. "And I was brought up the same way. I have a 45 year old cousin with Down syndrome. I get fired up when people use the 'R' word." Ms. Sternfeld referred to their shared values, and James said that he could see "right off the bat" that he could talk with her. After about 20 minutes, in which James described several friendships damaged by his support for Mr. Trump, Ms. Sternfeld asked James to rate himself again. "I'd say I'm a 5 now. I'm not adverse to voting Democratic. I could go either way." He said he appreciated our having taken the time to talk. "You didn't push me in one direction," he said. "It was a conversation." Overall, in two hours of canvassing, Ms. Sternfeld had meaningful conversations with five people, including a 26 year old woman terrified of Vice President Mike Pence's views on women's issues, a 37 year old man so disgusted by President Trump that he asked for more information about how to get involved in canvassing, and a vehemently pro Trump contractor who derided his laborers as greedy and ungrateful. For Ms. Sternfeld, however, James stood out. "He's my favorite person ever," she said. Back at the center, Mr. Barbanel Fried urged the group to spread the word about the next Bucks County canvass on Jan. 26. More than 90 people showed up, and they knocked on more than 700 doors. Voters were not the only ones changed by the experience. One canvasser said that when she saw a pickup truck outside one house, she assumed its residents were Republicans. "They invited me in," she said. "The man looked like the ultimate Trump supporter, but he was a Never Trumper." The lesson, she said, was not to judge so quickly. Can such a labor intensive effort be brought up to scale? Currently, Mr. Barbanel Fried is Changing the Conversation Together's sole full time staff member, a reflection of the difficulties he has had raising money. "We're outside mainstream Democratic thinking," he lamented.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Opinion
This spring, city officials announced they would encourage private developers to build on land inside public housing complexes, potentially making luxury apartments their neighbors. The city's move was intended to raise billions of dollars to fix up the often rundown complexes, and to expand the city's below market rate housing stock by requiring that 50 percent of such infill construction be set aside as affordable. But the economics of any new buildings will likely depend on also drawing market rate tenants to places they once might have shunned. In many ways, the city is just playing catch up. More than a half dozen developers have already planted their stakes near public housing in places including Red Hook in Brooklyn, the Lower East Side of Manhattan and Mott Haven in the South Bronx. In the hopes of securing cheaper land in a city where lots at any price are growing scarce, they are ignoring taboos against living near public housing and venturing into areas once considered unprepossessing and even dangerous. "They were isolated in the past, and a lot of that had to do with the perception of crime," said Keith Rubenstein, the managing principal of Somerset Partners, a development firm. "That perception became more pronounced because there was so little interaction with these developments." That is "an outdated way of thinking," said Mr. Rubenstein, who is planning a pair of market rate developments by public housing developments in Mott Haven, a neighborhood where more than 14,000 people call public housing home. Public housing is certainly not crime free. Certain complexes have slightly higher crime rates than their neighborhoods as a whole, police data shows. But crime rates are hovering near historic lows everywhere in the city, including at public housing developments, a trend that developers say is helping fuel their newfound interest. "People who are living in lower income housing are not necessarily people who are committing crimes," said Charles R. Bendit, the co chief executive of Taconic Investment Partners, a development firm. "And whatever stigma was attached to that is no longer valid. There's an income difference, and that's it." Some developers say that negative perceptions of public housing have much to do with where it was put in the first place, on the outskirts of neighborhoods and in industrial areas. But even rough and tumble blocks are not so off limits anymore. The Adele, a 12 story building with studios and one and two bedroom apartments, filled up quickly, leasing all 135 units in just three months last summer, Mr. Kahen said. Market rate studios in the building start at 2,400 a month. The building also has units with affordable rents. Next month, Sanba Partners is expected to start construction of 22 townhouses along King and Sullivan Streets, near Richards Street in Red Hook, Brooklyn, where factories and warehouses are plentiful. A half block away are the Red Hook Houses, Brooklyn's largest public housing development, with more than 6,200 residents Alessandro Zampedri, a managing partner at Sanba, said the townhouses, with contemporary facades of steel or terra cotta, and with landscaped backyards, will fill in lots that had been empty and desolate for years. "I think it's like everything in life, when you put something nicer in, that keeps within the context of what's there, I think it raises everyone's pride," he said. The townhouses, as yet unpriced, hit the market this fall. Developers say the amenities their buildings will bring to these newly targeted areas, such as stores, shoreline paths and improved streets, will benefit the neighborhoods as a whole. Retail will be a major part of the larger of the two developments that Mr. Rubenstein of Somerset and his partner, the Chetrit Group, are planning in Mott Haven. The five tower complex along the Harlem River will be two blocks from the 3,800 resident Mitchel Houses. The Adele, a mostly market rate rental completed in 2014 on the Lower East Side, is a neighbor of the Lillian Wald Houses, right, a public housing development. Over all, the project, whose name will likely include "piano district" as a tribute to past manufacturing, will encompass 1,600 apartments, most rentals, and is to break ground early next year, he added. Mr. Rubenstein also plans to convert a former industrial building on nearby Third Avenue into a six unit market rate rental. That site faces Patterson Houses, a 15 building public housing development. But if new shops come in selling groceries, coffee and clothes that are too pricey for the lower income residents of these areas, the upsides will be few, critics say. The average gross income of people living in public developments is about 23,000, according to the New York City Housing Authority, or Nycha. "These will be luxury apartments. Imagine how that changes the economy of a community," said Victor J. Papa, the president and director of the Two Bridges Neighborhood Council, an affordable housing landlord on the Lower East Side and a social services advocate. He fears shops that now serve residents may be replaced by merchants catering to the affluent. Mr. Papa, 70, who grew up in a tenement in the area, was referring to One Manhattan Square, which the Extell Development Company, the luxury apartment builder, is constructing at 250 South Street, by the Manhattan Bridge. Bustling with construction equipment on a recent afternoon, the site is bordered to the north by the 1960s Rutgers Houses, five 20 story buildings with about 1,600 residents; on the eastern side is a high rise Mr. Papa said is populated largely by formerly homeless families. One Manhattan Square, a working name, will feature two towers, one of which will stretch to 79 stories and contain condos, according to a plan filed with the city this month. Extell, which is perhaps best known for One57, the skyscraper that has broken sales records in Midtown, declined to comment. What has particularly upset residents is that to build One Manhattan Square, Extell bulldozed a Pathmark grocery store, at which time Pathmark's pharmacy also closed. The Adele may be at the forefront of a trend: private developers planting stakes near public housing complexes. Though Gary Barnett, Extell's president, said last year in a presentation to the community that the 45,000 square feet of retail space at One Manhattan Square will include a grocery and a pharmacy to replace what was lost, neighbors are skeptical, Mr. Papa said. There is also a sense of bewilderment that written off areas may soon be hyped as cool. "This kind of development would have been unthinkable," decades ago, Mr. Papa said. The area "wouldn't have been good enough." Whether wealthy buyers will decide to move to buildings cheek by jowl with public housing developments remains to be seen. But rubbing elbows with the locals is not necessarily in the cards, said Jonathan J. Miller, the president of Miller Samuel, an appraisal firm. The kinds of upscale towers that are going up in once blighted areas can function as gated communities in the sky, he said, giving residents plenty to do without having to set foot outside. In any case, Mr. Miller added, most condo buyers don't really care about location; height is what they pay for. Pricewise, "there is less disparity between the least expensive and most expensive neighborhoods," he said, adding that "the primary marketing vehicle is views." But Mr. Miller added that Extell, which paid 104 million for the One Manhattan Square site in 2013, might be able to offer its condos at discounts relative to Midtown properties, perhaps in the 2,500 a square foot range, which could fill a major gap in the luxury market. Perhaps no public development will feel the brunt of new market rate bedfellows as much as the Astoria Houses in the Hallets Point section of Queens. Occupying more than 32 acres, with 3,180 residents in 22 buildings, Astoria Houses sprawls across about half of Hallets Point, a nub of land in the East River facing the Upper East Side. Warehouses and fence ringed parking lots for trucks seem to take up much of the rest of the sleepy area. Durst isn't being shy about cozying up to its neighbor. Not only will the bulk of its towers sit across First Street from the Astoria Houses, but the developer also plans to build on land along the southern side of 27th Avenue that currently belongs to Astoria Houses and contains parking lots. Two affordable only towers will go there, Durst said. Under the terms of the deal, the company would also build a supermarket, repair a waterfront promenade and make other neighborhood improvements. The other project, Astoria Cove, is to rise along what is now a wooded riverbank near Ninth Street, about a block from the Astoria Houses. There, in direct view of the Robert F. Kennedy Bridge, the Alma Realty Corporation says it will build a 2.2 million square foot mixed use development with 1,700 units, of which 27 percent will be affordable, higher than the 20 percent customarily required. It, too, has promised a supermarket. Mayor Bill de Blasio, who has made creating more affordable housing a centerpiece of his administration, received the larger amount of affordable housing in exchange for a zoning change. Alma principals were not available for comment. While outsiders for years may have been afraid of public housing, fear can cut both ways. The prospect of the two Durst developments does not sit well with some longtime residents, said Claudia Coger, the president of the Astoria Houses Tenants Organization. Ms. Coger, a retired train dispatcher, said that some worry about increased traffic and escalating costs, which is why she is pushing to make the Durst supermarket a community owned cooperative. "There are mixed emotions. This has been a blighted area for decades," said Ms. Coger, who has lived since 1955 in the same three bedroom apartment, for which she pays 1,590 a month. Public housing rent is typically set at 30 percent of income. Occasionally, there are tensions between the two groups. Caledonia residents have complained about Fulton Houses residents not picking up after their dogs and about loud music emanating from cars. On the other hand, Mr. Zollinger said he has heard Caledonia residents yell insults at Fulton Houses residents, including a memorable one from a Caledonia visitor: "Why don't your parents go get a real job?" " 'Wow,' " he recalls thinking, "did you really just say that to a kid?" But Miguel Acevedo, 55, who is president of the Fulton Houses Residents Association, and who has lived there on and off since he was born, said it's been mostly harmonious. "We have the same lifestyle they have," he said. "The only difference is their incomes are a lot higher." And Caledonia residents regularly cut through Fulton's property without seeming fearful, he added. While many cities are razing public housing complexes, New York is trying to preserve its stock, a formidable task. According to Nycha, it has an operating deficit of 98 million, and its buildings, 270 of which are 30 years old or more, require a staggering 16 billion in deferred maintenance. Selling or leasing land inside public housing complexes for half market rate, half affordable buildings is a major part of the mayor's plan. Up to four sites suitable for infill building by private developers will be identified by August, a spokeswoman for Nycha said. Developers will likely submit bids for them next year. Louis Brown has lived on both sides of the housing fence. Mr. Brown, 56, grew up in the Chelsea Elliott Houses, on West 26th Street, and today lives in a one bedroom at the Caledonia. For Mr. Brown, a retired youth counselor, it all comes down to the moments when he is deejaying in a courtyard at the Fulton Houses. On those days, residents from up and down the block, including from the Caledonia, come over and start dancing to his tunes. "I look around and I think, Wow. I feel like we've come a long way."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Real Estate
MANCHESTER, England Akram Khan's eagerly awaited new "Giselle" for English National Ballet was a courageous, expensive gamble for the company's director, Tamara Rojo. It was also a creative leap and a risk for Mr. Khan, who had never created a full length work for a ballet company, and whose distinctive fusion of contemporary dance and Indian kathak did not seem especially suited to a classical ensemble. To add to the high stakes, Mr. Khan decided to commission a score rather than use the ballet's traditional music by Adolphe Adam, then parted ways with his composer, Ben Frost, a month before the premiere, replacing him with Vincenzo Lamagna. After the premiere of "Giselle," which opened at the Palace Theater here on Tuesday, everyone must have exhaled with relief. The ballet is a beautiful and intelligent remaking of the beloved 1841 classic, and probably and improbably the best work Mr. Khan has created. It has an imaginative and compelling physicality, an atmospheric set (a huge rotating wall) and costumes by Tim Yip, and painterly lighting by Mark Henderson. Mr. Lamagna's score draws heavily, with acknowledgment, on the Adam music, providing fascinating adaptations of its rhythms and melodies into a percussive, folk inspired accompaniment and also deploying electronic buzz, hum and voices. And in Alina Cojocaru, who danced the title role at the premiere, Mr. Khan has found an interpreter who so fully inhabits the choreography that it seems to breathe through her body. An important caveat: This "Giselle" stumbles in its narrative flow. In the original ballet, a young peasant girl, Giselle, is seduced by an aristocrat, Count Albrecht, who is pretending to be a humble countryman. When Hilarion, a young peasant in love with Giselle, reveals the deception, the shock causes her to go mad and die, joining the ranks of the wilis the unhappy spirits of young girls who have been jilted and who take their revenge by killing any man who crosses their paths.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Dance
Roger Federer, who is into the semifinals at the BNP Paribas Open, has won nine straight matches and 15 sets in a row. At Indian Wells, It'll Be Federer vs. Nadal for the 39th Time. Maybe. INDIAN WELLS, Calif. After another day of big serves and topspin forehands in the desert sunshine, just about everyone appeared to get what they wanted: a 39th match between Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal. The question is, will it actually happen? Federer, despite being the elder at 37, looks readier to rumble. Between Dubai and Indian Wells, he has won nine straight matches and 15 straight sets and artfully and uneventfully dispatched the unseeded Hubert Hurkacz, 6 4, 6 4, in Friday's first quarterfinal of the BNP Paribas Open. But Nadal had to dig much deeper to wriggle free of the firm grip and aggressive game of Karen Khachanov, the brawny young Russian who pushed him hard in the third round of last year's United States Open. This time, Nadal prevailed, 7 6 (2), 7 6 (2), but only after Khachanov stretched him repeatedly with huge serves and whipping forehands and only after Nadal needed on court treatment and tape for pain in his long troublesome right knee. And there lies the problem with planning your day or, depending on the time zone, your night around watching No. 39. Nadal remains one of the greatest, in the moment competitors in any sport, but his recent record in hardcourt tournaments is a downbeat litany of withdrawals, retirements and anticlimaxes. It remains an open question if he will feel hearty enough to play Saturday afternoon's semifinal. He does not have a day off to recover. He also has the rest of the 2019 season to consider, including his sacrosanct season within a season on clay that is scheduled to start next month in Monte Carlo. "Of course my goal and my idea is to be ready for tomorrow," Nadal said after pursing his lips and shaking his head. But he also knows from long experience with patellar tendinitis that being ready is no sure thing. "I cannot guarantee how I will feel when I wake up tomorrow," he said. "But the desire to play a match like this against Federer is always very special, and it's even more special if we're both at a high level and at 100 percent. Hopefully it will be that way, above all for me but also for the fans on site and for fans in general. I hope I will be able to play aggressively. I need to be ready to react very quickly and to have everything in place to be able to succeed. If not, it will be very difficult." Nadal and Federer first played in Miami in 2004, but they have not met since October 2017, when Federer beat Nadal in the final of the Shanghai Masters. Federer went 5 0 against Nadal in 2017, a resurgent season for both men, after upgrading his ability to attack with his single handed backhand. That run of success has narrowed the big edge that Nadal once held in their rivalry; he now leads by 23 15. "I don't think those five matches matter that much, to be honest," Federer said of the 2017 victories. "A lot of time has gone by, unfortunately maybe for the rivalry for us, or for me. It's always better to keep on maybe playing against him." Federer started this season by failing to retain his title at the Australian Open but has responded by going on a roll. After winning his 100th career title in Dubai, Federer is now two victories from his 101st. To get there, he may first have to deal with the man who has been his friendly rival for 15 years and who remains a friend: The two had coffee at Federer's rented home last week to discuss the state of the tennis world. "Different styles, different ways to understand the sport," Nadal said. "And at the same time, two players with a good relationship after all the things that we went through in our careers, competing for the most important things." In his first match against Hurkacz, a rangy and powerful 22 year old from Poland, Federer looked loose from the start as he tested the full range of his skill set. There was the usual: wickedly sliced backhands, blocked returns and first serve forehand combination punches. There was also the unusual: chip and charge tactics, serve and volley on second serve and no look flicked backhand overheads. But it will be hard to be quite so relaxed and experimental against Nadal, whose ability (when healthy) to extend rallies and take command of them with his left handed, topspin forehand is an entirely different, though much more familiar, challenge. The two did not play any of the same regular ATP Tour events in 2018, and they did not face off in the three Grand Slam tournaments that they both played: the Australian Open, Wimbledon and the United States Open. Federer was asked if, after all these years, the matchup with Nadal still gave him more of a thrill than facing an unknown rising player. "I think a combination," he said. "If it was only Rafa, I wouldn't enjoy that as well. I think having the mix is the magic really for me. Playing against young guys to eventually get to Rafa, that's exciting." It was quite an achievement for Nadal to get to Federer through the 22 year old Khachanov. He was visibly hampered by his knee trouble, which first required treatment on court with Khachanov leading by 2 1 in the second set. Visibly slower and unable to push off as powerfully with his legs to serve, he still found a way to grind and win. "It's a special victory considering the way I was feeling," Nadal said. Playing with pain has unfortunately become close to the rule on hardcourts for Nadal, who has long complained and warned about the physical toll of hardcourt play.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Sports
"Katniss Everdeen's name always booms through me like a firework," says Dhonielle Clayton, author of "The Belles," and chief operating officer of We Need Diverse Books, a nonprofit organization. "A bright reminder of what is required to change the world: defiance, irreverence and a stubborn determination. I needed to read girls like her; girls who weren't so nice; girls so angry that their rage could topple anything in their path; girls that could face the dark; girls who could never be contained." Indeed Collins's vision for a heroine was uncannily prescient, as is so much else in the series. Katniss's story is set in Panem, ruled by the Capitol, which uses propaganda to turn the populace against each other and hang onto power. Class divisions are rife, and the economically disadvantaged are forced to become participants in their own oppression. Rebels are quickly silenced. The Capitol's cunning media encourages an obsession with perfection that permeates every aspect of society. To survive all this, Katniss adapts. Her enemies do not expect her to. Again, they underestimate her. Leigh Bardugo, author of the forthcoming "King of Scars," recalled the scene in "The Hunger Games" where Katniss gets a makeover. "Collins spoke to aspiration and commodification all at once, and the larger way Katniss is forced to transform in order to survive. She has to become a girlfriend, a proto wife, and then a prospective mother to garner the sympathy and interest of the crowd. She has to belong to a certain kind of narrative to be seen as valuable at all and that's something young women and girls soak up every day from the media and on their Instagram feeds." Katniss uses her commodification against the Capitol. She fakes a romance to survive. She pretends docility to win over crowds. But doing so has its costs. In "Catching Fire," a dress Katniss wears transforms into a symbol of rebellion. In response, the Capitol brutally murders the dress's creator. The scene sends a message that applies as much to Katniss's world as to our own: Challenging power hungry governments can be deadly. But that message also emphasizes one of the trilogy's primary strengths: The story is ugly, because life is ugly. Heroes are not always heroic. The good guys do not always win, and when they do, they are haunted. Collins's acknowledgment of the lasting impact of war on Katniss's psyche is heartbreaking and powerful. This young woman who had been so ill used by her country, a woman who stood up and fought anyway, would never be fully healed. That is a hard truth, and it made me wonder: If Katniss knew what she would endure, would she still have fought? To me, the answer is an unequivocal yes. Her courage is sewn into her very bones. When the violence of the world knocks at her door, she must fight. Because of that, her character, one who will forever burn bright in the pantheon of beloved children's book heroes, also serves as a timely reminder to all who care to heed it: Teenage girls are powerful and courageous and capable of great rage. And they should never, ever be underestimated.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Books
TOKYO Michael C. Woodford had been an audacious challenger to the staid ways of corporate Japan: a British chief executive, fired after exposing extensive fraud at Olympus one of Japan's vaunted blue chip companies who took his evidence public and started a proxy fight to win back his job. But Mr. Woodford ended that bid on Friday, saying he had been unable to garner the support of Olympus's Japanese institutional investors and creditors. "Despite one of the biggest scandals in history, the Japanese institutional shareholders have not spoken one single word of criticism, in complete and utter contrast with overseas shareholders, who were demanding accountability," Mr. Woodford said Friday. "I'm taking the plane and saying goodbye to Japan as a businessman." For the Japanese business world, it could prove a damaging conclusion to a scandal that had come to be seen as a test of just how far the country would go to police white collar crime at Olympus, a maker of cameras and medical endoscopes. A perceived reluctance on the part of financial regulators to pursue the scandal, as well as the tacit endorsement of the Olympus board by friendly bankers and Japanese institutional shareholders, has reinforced views among foreign investors that entrenched executives in Japan are still able to thwart any attempts at change. The company's shares have also avoided for now, at least a delisting from the Tokyo Stock Exchange, a move that would have decimated shareholder value. Mr. Woodford said he had instructed his lawyers to prepare to sue Olympus for unfair dismissal. The Olympus board has said that Mr. Woodford was let go because it did not like his aggressive Western management style. "I got fired and lost my job for doing the right thing, and they're still there," Mr. Woodford said. He said the strain that his long struggle was putting on his family back in England, especially his wife, was also a big consideration in his decision to abandon the fight. Olympus's stock market value has dropped by half since Mr. Woodford was fired in mid October. Its shareholders' equity has also been exposed as dangerously low, at just 42.9 billion yen ( 556 million) at the end of September, casting a shadow over the company's long term viability. Many foreign investors have said the current management was tainted and should leave, for the sake of robust corporate governance. A fund manager in the United States, Southeastern Asset Management, which holds about 5 percent of Olympus's shares and has been an outspoken critic of the company, previously warned that any attempts by the incumbent board to protect its own interests "would deal a severe blow to the reputation of Japan's capital markets and corporate governance." Representatives of the fund manager were not immediately available for comment. Top Olympus executives acknowledged in November that the company had indeed conducted an effort spanning decades to cover up 1.7 billion in investment losses in a global scheme that has led to investigations by the authorities in Japan, the United States and Britain. Investigators are looking into what they say is a scheme that began in the 1990s to hide losses by selling bad assets to funds and other entities and later settling those losses through payments masked as acquisition fees. Three executives implicated by an independent panel have left Olympus over the scandal, but the rest of the board, led by the current chief executive, Shuichi Takayama a former board member who took the helm of the company in November has been scrambling to retain control. Olympus has refused to reinstate Mr. Woodford or to offer him an apology. Instead, Olympus is said to be looking to raise capital from domestic investors, which would dilute the influence of overseas shareholders and make fundamental changes less likely. Last month, the Nikkei business daily reported that Olympus might issue about 100 billion yen in new preferred shares, and that Japanese companies like Fujifilm and Sony might be possible investors. Those two companies, however, have denied that any such investment was in the works. Olympus's biggest lenders, including the Sumitomo Mitsui Financial Group, which also holds an equity stake in the company, have backed the board. Mr. Woodford said the bank had refused to meet with him. Sumitomo Mitsui has refused to comment.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Global Business
Nobel Prize in Chemistry Goes to a Woman for the Fifth Time in History This story is from October 2018 Since 1901, when the Nobel Prize in Chemistry was first awarded, 177 people have captured the honor. On Wednesday, Frances H. Arnold became only the fifth woman to be awarded the prize. Dr. Arnold, 62, an American professor of chemical engineering, bioengineering and biochemistry at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, earned the award for her work with the directed evolution of enzymes. She shared this year's chemistry Nobel worth close to 1 million with George P. Smith, 77, and Gregory P. Winter, 67. Dr. Arnold received half of the prize, and Dr. Smith and Dr. Winter split the other half. Dr. Arnold won for her work conducting the directed evolution of enzymes, proteins that catalyze chemical reactions. She first pioneered the bioengineering method, which works similar to the way dog breeders mate specific dogs to bring out desired traits, in the early 1990s, and has refined it since then. Her enzymes have been used to make biofuels, medicines and laundry detergent, among other things. In many processes, they have taken the place of toxic chemicals. On Tuesday, a woman was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics for the third time ever. Dr. Smith was honored for developing a method, known as phage display, in which a virus that infects bacteria can be used to evolve new proteins. Dr. Winter won for evolving antibodies through phage display to combat autoimmune diseases and in some cases, cure metastatic cancer. "I think of what I do as copying nature's design process," Dr. Arnold said in an interview with NobelPrize.org. "All this tremendous beauty and complexity of the biological world all comes about to this one simple beautiful design algorithm." In the 1980s, Dr. Arnold tried to rebuild enzymes, but because they are very complex molecules built from different amino acids that can be infinitely combined, she found it difficult to remodel the enzymes' genes in order to give them new properties. "I realized that the way most people were going about protein engineering was doomed failure," Dr. Arnold said. "To me it is obvious that this is the way it should be done." She tried to change an enzyme called subtilisin. She wanted it to accelerate change in an organic solvent, so she created random mutations in the enzyme's genetic code and introduced the mutated genes to bacteria that then created different types of subtilisin. Dr. Arnold selected the type of subtilisin that performed the best. Once she found the best variant of subtilisin, she continued to mutate it until she had the very best version. With this directed evolution, she could show the power behind allowing chance and directed selection instead of depending on human logic and understanding of how genes and enzymes are supposed to work. This was the initial step toward the revolution in enzyme mutation. When she began her new approach, "some people looked down their noses at it," Dr. Arnold told the National Science and Technology Medals Foundation. "They might say 'It's not science' or that 'Gentlemen don't do random mutagenesis.' But I'm not a scientist, and I'm not a gentleman, so it didn't bother me at all. I laughed all the way to the bank, because it works." Now, Dr. Arnold said, these are some of the questions she would like to answer: "How do you evolve innovation? How do you get a whole new chemical activity that you don't know already existed? How can I evolve a whole new species of enzymes?"	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Science
In September, Jennifer Hunt of Brown County, Ind., was awarded a bachelor's degree from Thomas Edison State College in New Jersey without ever taking a Thomas Edison course. She was one of about 300 of last year's 3,200 graduates who managed to patch together their degree requirements with a mix of credits from other institutions, standardized exams, online courses, workplace or military training programs and portfolio assessments. Years ago, fresh out of high school, Ms. Hunt had finished enough advanced work to enter the University of Texas at Austin with sophomore standing. But after a year, homesick, she returned to Virginia. Then she married and eventually moved to Indiana. She had 10 children, whom she home schools, and worked in her husband's business. About a year ago, at 39, she resolved to complete a degree. In a kind of a higher education sprint, she took a number of college equivalency exams, earning 54 credits in 14 weeks. "I tried to do an exam a week at the University of Indianapolis test center," where the exams could be proctored, she said. "Each test cost about 80." Ms. Hunt estimated that her degree in business administration, plus a simultaneous associate degree in applied science, had cost her 5,300, including books and fees. There are almost as many routes to a Thomas Edison degree as there are students. In a way, that is the whole point of the college, a fully accredited, largely online public institution in Trenton founded in 1972 to provide a flexible way for adults to further their education. "We don't care how or where the student learned, whether it was from spending three years in a monastery," said George A. Pruitt, the college's president, "as long as that learning is documented by some reliable assessment technique." "Learning takes place continuously throughout our lives," he said. "If you're a success in the insurance industry, and you're in the million dollar round table, what difference does it make if you learned your skills at Prudential or at Wharton?" At a time when student debt has passed 1 trillion, such institutions seem to have, at the very least, impeccable timing. Thomas Edison, New Jersey's second largest public college, and two like minded institutions Charter Oak State College in Connecticut and the private, nonprofit Excelsior College in New York are all growing. Thomas Edison's graduating class last fall was a third bigger than the class five years earlier. And the idea of measuring students' competency, not classroom hours, has become the cornerstone of newer institutions like Western Governors University in Utah. At Thomas Edison and the other such colleges, almost all students are over 21, many are in the military, and few have taken a direct path to higher education. Pilar Mercedes Foy, 31, a Thomas Edison graduate whose parents did not go to college, said after she got an entry level job at PSEG, the New Jersey energy company, she realized that she would need a degree to advance. She earned the bulk of her credits through heavily subsidized evening classes offered at work, supplemented by classes at Union County College and 12 credits from the CLEP Spanish exam. For her, earning a degree without taking on a penny of student debt was enough of a milestone that she invited her husband, parents, siblings, in laws and nieces to the September graduation ceremony. Thirty years ago, when Dr. Pruitt became president, the Thomas Edison approach was controversial. Some academics, in particular, were skeptical, he said, almost believing that "if we didn't teach it to you, you couldn't have learned it." Results have quieted most naysayers, Dr. Pruitt said. For example, Thomas Edison graduates had the highest pass rate on the exam for certified public accountants in New Jersey, in the latest national accounting boards report. Still, the approach raises real questions about the meaning of a college degree. "If I'm giving you a degree, I'm vouching for you, testifying to your competence," said Clifford Adelman, a senior associate at the Institute for Higher Education Policy in Washington. "With these nomad students in higher education, whose students are they? There are questions of ownership and ethical responsibility." Most Thomas Edison students arrive with some credits, at times earned many years earlier. Others get credits by submitting a portfolio of their work or passing standardized exams like the College Level Examination Program, administered by the College Board. Many complete online college courses from Thomas Edison or "open courseware" sources like the Saylor Foundation. Many bring transcripts from the American Council on Education's credit recommendation program, certifying their nontraditional programs. Mr. Brooks believes he did the same homework, wrote the same papers and took the same tests as on campus students at other colleges, without meeting a single professor. To get his degree, he had to prove mastery of economics in a two hour telephone conversation with a professor at Pace University. "It was like a field exam," said Mr. Brooks, now 48. "He asked about Adam Smith, John Keynes, supply and demand, macro and micro everything an economics major at any university would be expected to know." David Esterson, 45, of Whittier, Calif., started taking college classes while in high school, attended the University of Washington for a year, was a photographer in Los Angeles, then started a music business. About three years ago, when his nephews began talking about college, Mr. Esterson decided he should complete his degree. He took online courses at the University of Minnesota and the University of Phoenix before trying a couple of California community colleges and an acupuncture school. He finally earned a bachelor's degree in liberal studies from Thomas Edison in September. "It sounded like a scam, but the fact that it was a state school, and accredited, made it more real," Mr. Esterson said. And it has been real, he said: "Nobody I contacted about graduate programs seemed to look down on the Edison degree, and I got into every grad school I applied to." Now enrolled in two graduate programs an online master's in leadership at Northeastern and a dual degree executive M.B.A. program from Cornell University and Queen's University in Canada Mr. Esterson is a booster for his alma mater. "I've never been there, but I did buy a sweatshirt," he said.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Education
ATLANTA The grandest annual exhibition in college sports the N.C.A.A. men's and women's Division I basketball tournaments will be played without spectators in the arenas as the United States grapples with the spread of the coronavirus. The move was announced on Wednesday as the number of cases in the U.S. surpassed 1,150 and as government officials offered increasingly dire warnings against mass gatherings. The decision was intended to allow the games to go on, satisfying fans who plan to watch on television and upholding the network broadcast contracts that provide most of the N.C.A.A.'s revenue. "It was us looking at this and saying we have a responsibility first and foremost to our students and to the coaches and staffs and to the public at large that is the promoting of the public health as we can," Mark Emmert, the N.C.A.A. president, said in an interview on Wednesday. "We're trying to find the right balance between our responsibilities in public health and providing young men and women the opportunity to play in the tournament of their life." The N.C.A.A. said some relatives of participants would be allowed to attend the national tournament games, which are to start next week. Emmert announced his decision hours after Ohio's governor, Mike DeWine, said the state would bar spectators from indoor sporting events. DeWine's decision was a crucial influence on the N.C.A.A., because some of next week's men's tournament games are to be held in Dayton and Cleveland. The federal government's top expert on infectious diseases, Anthony Fauci, also warned on Wednesday against public gatherings for sports. But even before then, college sports executives had endured mounting pressure from public health officials and university leaders. Emmert said that he expected the N.C.A.A. to lose tens of millions of dollars in ticket sales revenue and that while the games would probably remain in the scheduled cities, they might be moved to smaller venues. The men's tournament will still be televised by CBS and AT T's WarnerMedia, with the Final Four and national championship games shown on TBS. ESPN will carry the women's tournament. In a joint statement, CBS and Turner Sports, a division of WarnerMedia, said they supported the association's decision and would "continue with our plans to fully produce and cover the entire event." ESPN said it was "in the process of determining what adjustments are needed" to its coverage. Executives at CBS and WarnerMedia said ahead of the decision about spectators that such a move would have little effect on their plans. "Obviously, it would be a different atmosphere, and we wouldn't be focusing as we usually do, on the excitement of the fans," Sean McManus, the chairman of CBS Sports, said on Tuesday on a conference call. "But the overall production of the basketball game is still going to be produced as it would be if there were fans in the stands." Jeff Zucker, the chairman of WarnerMedia News and Sports, suggested that the restrictions at the arenas, and on the general public as it copes with the outbreak, could increase interest in broadcasts from the tournament. Until Wednesday evening, the N.C.A.A. had largely insisted that the tournaments would proceed as planned. Its public stance began to soften on Tuesday, after the Ivy League canceled its basketball tournaments and the Big West and Mid American Conferences closed the doors of theirs to the public. Colleges and universities were also effectively closing their campuses, leaving the N.C.A.A. to grapple with the thorny question of whether it would ask students to play before fans when attending classes had been deemed too risky. College sports officials, who were sometimes meeting hourly and consulting with doctors, had a menu of options: playing the games as usual but with plenty of hand sanitizer available; consolidating sites; holding competitions without fans present; and cancellation. "It's a judgment call at the end of the day," Vivek H. Murthy, a former U.S. surgeon general who is a member of the N.C.A.A.'s top governing body, said in an interview on Saturday. "There is no tried and true protocol here for how to handle this kind of outbreak." On Wednesday, Emmert said N.C.A.A. officials were still crafting an array of contingency plans for the tournaments, including what would happen if a player contracted the illness. He would not rule out further changes to the tournaments but said he was "very confident that we're at the right place." The N.C.A.A.'s decision did not apply to conference tournaments, which some of the nation's leading leagues had already begun playing, with fans in attendance. But within hours of the N.C.A.A. announcement, conferences including the Atlantic Coast, the Big Ten, the Southeastern, the Big 12 and the Pac 12 quickly followed suit, announcing they would curtail spectator access to their basketball tournaments. At Madison Square Garden in New York, things started out with business as usual for the Big East on Wednesday night as the men's conference tournament began. But before the second game was over, the league announced that it, too, would tightly restrict attendance, allowing only essential personnel and certain family members to come to the arena for the remaining three days of the competition. And so the sport had braced for a tournament season unlike any other. Greg McDermott, the Creighton men's coach, has an idea of what to expect because he once worked at Nebraska's Wayne State, a Division II program that regularly played in front of sparse audiences. "My understanding is there's still going to be a little family there, so there'll be a few people clapping hands every once in a while, but without a question it's going to be an interesting experience," he said. "We'll sell it to our guys like, 'Hey, it's never happened in our history, and I hope it never happens again in our history, so it's going to be something that you're going to be able to look back on that you were part of something that was really, really unique.'" Alan Blinder reported from Atlanta, and Kevin Draper and Ben Shpigel from New York. Billy Witz contributed reporting from Las Vegas, and Adam Zagoria from New York.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Sports
At a recent informal performance hosted by New York Theater Ballet at St. Mark's Church, 40 or so people crammed into a studio on the second floor. Children sat cross legged. Two company members danced an Agnes de Mille pas de deux. The production manager, also a puppeteer, did a melancholy number with a wooden board as a prop. A 10 year old girl from the school performed a dance she had choreographed, based on a haiku she had composed. "Studio paintings," she recited, "show my dreams, capture my life. In the bright dance blaze." The feeling was convivial, like a show held in someone's living room. It was hard to believe that this gathering might never have taken place. Just a year ago, New York Theater Ballet was facing an uncertain future. The company of 12 had been turned out of the dusty old wood paneled studio in Murray Hill that had been its home for 30 years. The building, a parish house, had been sold by its owner, the Baptist church next door. Diana Byer, the company's founder and artistic director, embarked on a frantic search. But everything was too expensive, too small, too far flung. Then the company's luck turned, partly because of another's misfortune. The Incubator Arts Project, an experimental theater group, announced it was closing and leaving its space on the second floor of St. Mark's, a progressive Episcopal church in the East Village. In July, New York Theater Ballet signed its new lease. On Wednesday, the ensemble will begin its inaugural run at New York Live Arts, a theater in Chelsea known more for its experimental dance programming than for ballet. As Live Art's artistic director, the choreographer Bill T. Jones, said recently by phone: "We've been asking ourselves, why, in the downtown world, is there no classical ballet? You've got to go right up close to it and get to know it, not as a general idea but as something living and breathing." It's a brave new world for this hard working troupe: a new home, new audiences, an updated repertory. For much of its life, its bread and butter has consisted of intimate works by mid 20th century choreographers like de Mille, Antony Tudor and the whimsical experimentalist James Waring, as well as ballets for children. Most of these works are seen as too obscure, too old fashioned and too intimate in scale for the big companies. Even Tudor's "Lilac Garden" and "Dark Elegies," widely considered masterworks, are seldom programmed. Ms. Byer, who studied with Tudor in the 1960s, is determined to keep them alive. "They make the piece live from within," Alastair Macaulay wrote in The New York Times, reviewing a performance of "Dark Elegies" in 2013. For almost 30 years, the company has performed short seasons at Florence Gould Hall, an unprepossessing space tucked under the French Institute Alliance Francaise on East 59th Street, where the troupe continues to perform children's ballets. The dancers also go on yearly bus and truck tours that take them to destinations like Rutland, Vt. (population 17,292), and Hanceville, Ala. (population 3,205). They'll drive for five or six hours and then put on a show, often in a school auditorium. The Theater Ballet dancers have grit; there's nothing precious about them. They don't all look like the intimidatingly long limbed athletes one thinks of when one hears the word "ballet." They're hardworking, well trained, musically sensitive dancers of various physiques and backgrounds. Ms. Byer's teaching style is based on classes she took with Margaret Craske, a British teacher who emphasized subtle shifts of weight, compound steps and a supple use of the head and shoulders, not big effects. The company's style tends to be contained and unadorned. Even so, there are standouts: Steven Melendez, who started at the school when he was 7, is an exceptionally fine dancer with a noble bearing and a heroic quality. Nayomi Van Brunt, a recent recruit and a former apprentice at Atlanta Ballet, is bright and athletic, with a sparkling jump. "They dance Tudor with an extraordinary simplicity," the British choreographer Richard Alston said in a recent phone interview from London, "and a very strong sense of the oddness that makes Tudor's language as powerful as it is." When Mr. Alston created "A Rugged Flourish," in 2011, it was a major accomplishment for the company: his first American work. That collaboration was the beginning of a kind of renaissance for Theater Ballet, with a greater emphasis on new, more adventurous work. That renewed energy is reflected in its program at New York Live Arts, which is to include two premieres. One of those is Pam Tanowitz's "Double Andante." Ms. Tanowitz, a kind of molecular scientist of dance, places steps from the classical lexicon under a microscope, toying with symmetry, asymmetry, continuity and partnering conventions. In part because she wanted to feature Michael Scales, the company's pianist, she has set the dance to the second movement of Beethoven's Sonata in D major (No. 15). For a new quartet by Nicolo Fonte, a veteran of Nacho Duato's Compania Nacional de Danza, "There, and Back Again," Ms. Byer commissioned a score for piano and violin from Kevin Keller, an American composer. The piece, danced off pointe, is based on "Hansel and Gretel."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Dance
So, how'd those White Walkers get their start? HBO viewers may soon find out. The premium cable channel announced on Friday that it would make a pilot for one of the five "Game of Thrones" prequels it has in development. The pilot will take place "thousands of years before the events of 'Game of Thrones,'" the network said in a statement. It did not say when the pilot might air. "The series chronicles the world's descent from the golden Age of Heroes into its darkest hour," HBO added. "And only one thing is for sure: From the horrifying secrets of Westeros's history to the true origin of the White Walkers, the mysteries of the East to the Starks of legend ... it's not the story we think we know." George R. R. Martin, the author of the "Game of Thrones" books, wrote the story for the pilot, along with Jane Goldman. Ms. Goldman, the co writer of the "Kingsman" movies, as well as the 2011 movie "X Men: First Class," wrote the teleplay and will serve as the showrunner for the pilot.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Media
Like many people over the past year or so, Michelle Ellsworth has often felt disoriented, as if the world had been turned upside down. But she is probably the only person who responded to that feeling by putting herself in a wooden wheel so that she can be rotated 360 degrees around the axis of her nose. "By replicating the sensation, I can try to understand it," she said last week, in a Skype interview from her home in Boulder, Colo. A professor in the theater and dance department at the University of Colorado there, she is quick to say that she is "a dancer, for sure." Yet her eccentric and marvelously original art defies easy categorization. One of her works, "Tifprabap.org," is both a performance piece and a website for a new religion. For another, "Pythagodress," she created a huge pentagonal costume of fabric and pipes that was part confessional booth, part giant uterus. "A dance" is how she labels her latest work, which is to be performed Jan. 9 11 at the Invisible Dog Art Center in Brooklyn as part of American Realness, the annual genre blurring festival of avant garde performance. That there is no dancing, per se, in this dance isn't out of the ordinary for American Realness, but ambivalence about performance is emphasized to an unusual degree in her work's title: "The Rehearsal Artist." "My father's sister was an extraordinary pianist," Ms. Ellsworth explained. "She would practice and practice but she never wanted to perform. And her husband said: 'You're not a performance artist. You're a rehearsal artist.'" But there is much more going on in "The Rehearsal Artist" than its title might suggest. The piece is mostly in the form of a social science experiment. A human subject is strapped inside the wooden wheel, with his or her head encased in a box. At first audience members can see only the inside of the box, as Ms. Ellsworth inserts her arms into it and sets up experiments arranging dollhouse furniture, say, or a bag of crickets before her assistants slowly crank the wheel, exposing the contents of the box, face and all, to the effects of gravity and rotation, like clothes in a dryer. The precise "choreography of labor" required to make this happen is part of why Ms. Ellsworth calls it a dance. Later, viewers witness similar experiments from the rear, and the change in perspective leads to realizations and surprises, even shocks. Many more elements are likely to provoke laughter: the odd objects (veggie hot dogs, Peeps) Ms. Ellsworth puts into the box, and the absurd things she says and requests with unassuming politeness. "I think I'm always making sad work," Ms. Ellsworth, 50, said in an email after we talked. But the persona of her performance pieces is definitely comic. As if trying to outrun high anxiety, her clipped speech rushes and doubles back, reeling and sliding around in the verbal equivalent of pratfalls. The continual sense of control failing is farcical, and endearing. The humor is so disarming that she can slip heavy themes (surveillance, death) past a viewer's defenses. In our Skype interview, Ms. Ellsworth behaved in character, which might be how she behaves all the time. In the middle of one story or another, she swerved to correct her own grammar or ("Oh no!") to take back something she had said minutes before or to stop herself from saying something she maybe shouldn't say, replacing that thought with the interjection "yep." All the flashes of doubt that most people feel but keep inside: these she vocalized involuntarily, it seemed laughing at herself. She laughed, for instance, at her origins as a dancer. She grew up in Palo Alto, Calif., one of four children in "a very, very Mormon family." Her father was an inventor, a major influence on her work, with its many contraptions and D.I.Y. inventiveness. At 7 or so, she saw "The Carol Burnett Show" and became enamored not with Ms. Burnett, but with the campy Ernest Flatt Dancers. "That's what I want to do with my life," she told her mother. Her mother made her study ballet, which she did seriously, until an injury at 15 caused her to consider other career options. She traveled in Asia, studied Korean, and got married at 20. She and her then husband moved to New York, where she got back into dance. In an improvisation class in 1989, the instructor asked her to dance and speak at the same time. "I felt like I was able to communicate for the first time in my life," she said. "I wasn't literate enough in verbal language or dance, but when I was able to combine them, I was almost able to say something." Soon she began making work: dancing and talking and using a slide projector. Her pieces are unusually thorough. If she tells her audience that she's starting a religion, she needs a full hymnal even if she's going to sing only one hymn. "I can't lie," she said. "I'm not an actor." The result is a huge imbalance between how much work she makes and how much she shows. About 10 years ago, her son, then 13, started making websites to offload the extra stuff. Now she uses the websites as improvisational scores for her live performances: hours upon hours of potential material for a 50 minute show. "Why would you want to watch me saying something I already said?" she said. "Because what I'm saying isn't that interesting, but me trying to say something might be." For "The Rehearsal Artist," Ms. Ellsworth considered taking herself out of the work altogether. But she found that she needed to be inside the box and wheel to judge her ideas. "When I put the sand and crickets in, it felt right, I knew the feeling, whereas when I filled it up with popcorn, it did not make my ovaries vibrate," she said. That reliance on her body as a source of information is one reason she considers herself a dancer. Recently, a student visited a rehearsal in which Ms. Ellsworth was planning to put herself inside the box with Rice Krispies. "And she started asking me questions, like, 'Why are you doing this?,' and I had no idea," Ms. Ellsworth said. "But when I came out of the box, I said, 'Now I can tell you.'" It's a new year, so why not try something new? The five performance festivals opening this month in New York will help adventurous theatergoers do just that. These showcases tend to highlight the experimental and the offbeat. Some firsts this year will also be lasts. On Jan. 10, the Coil festival will inaugurate the renovated home of Performance Space 122 in the East Village, but this will be the festival's final installment. It will be replaced by year round programming.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Dance
Since the revelation in June 2017 that Luke Heimlich had pleaded guilty for sexually molesting his 6 year old niece when he was 15, he has gone from a top college pitcher to an entirely shunned one. All 30 major league teams have passed on drafting or signing Heimlich; the Kansas City Royals considered it last year but backed off when even the mere idea drew backlash. But a team in the Liga Mexicana de Beisbol decided that Heimlich, now 23, merited an opportunity after serving his punishment and signed the left hander, who has been throwing as hard as 94 miles per hour recently. During preseason training on Wednesday, , he threw a bullpen session in his new uniform. It is unclear whether Heimlich, who has said that his criminal record has been expunged, will be able to stick with his new team, the Tecolotes de los Dos Laredos. His signing has drawn criticism from the victim's family and a prominent activist, and the Tecolotes might become the second team whose deal with Heimlich has been nixed by their league. "He's not registered in the league," Javier Salinas, the president of the Mexican league, said in Spanish in a phone interview from Japan, where a contingent of Mexican players were taking part in exhibition games. "We have to analyze his case. It's very difficult to see him registered in the Mexican League." If he is blocked by the league office, it would not be the first time. In August, the Lamigo Monkeys in Taiwan reached a deal with Heimlich. But after a wave of criticism, the Chinese Professional Baseball League declared that Heimlich could not play there because of his criminal history and the effect on the league's image. Salinas said that the Mexican league, which is affiliated with Minor League Baseball and is considered Class AAA, had previously rejected players with checkered backgrounds involving problems like doping and gambling. "The player has to have irreproachable conduct and be a good representative of the team and the league," he said. "Like any league, we have to verify that all of our entrants have good conduct. We are an example to a lot of boys and girls. And we have to protect the image of the league." Jose Antonio Mansur, the owner of the Tecolotes, said it was a common practice for the league to have final say on a player's contract. But he added that the league had taken the unusual step of asking Heimlich to sign a letter vowing good behavior, which he did on Wednesday. "I'm not a judge," Mansur said in Spanish in a phone interview from Laredo, Tex. "I'm just a businessman, and I'll give him an opportunity. If he was guilty, he's already been judged. I'm just looking from here on forward. He has this opportunity, just like any citizen who has made a mistake. Who hasn't tripped up in life and has to get back up?" Mansur said that a rejection of Heimlich's contract would be discriminatory. Salinas said the league would make a decision "in the coming days." Last May, in an interview with The New York Times, Heimlich denied that he had committed the crime he admitted to, saying he had pleaded guilty to quickly dispense with the case and for the sake of the family. The girl's mother, whose name is being withheld to protect the identity of the victim, has maintained that her daughter's account is truthful. As part of a plea deal, reached when Heimlich was 16, one of two charges was dropped, and he was placed on two years' probation, took court ordered classes, wrote a letter apologizing to his niece and was forced to register for five years as a Level 1 sex offender, a designation the State of Washington uses for someone considered of low risk to the community and unlikely to become a repeat offender. His juvenile records are sealed. Heimlich's case became public in 2017 when, while playing for Oregon State, he failed to update his whereabouts for a state registry of sex offenders, which led to a police citation. He pitched the next year at Oregon State. The victim's mother was unaware of Heimlich's new job until asked for comment. "My view on the subject has not changed nor will it: I don't believe he deserves a spot on any professional team," she wrote in a text message. Brenda Tracy, one of Oregon's most prominent victims' rights activists, who frequently speaks about sexual abuse in sports and on college campuses, called Heimlich's signing "really problematic." "This softens him," she said. "Because someone is giving him a so called second chance, it is paving the way for a team in Major League Baseball to sign him. They will say, 'Mexico signed him, so we are not the only ones, we were not the first ones to do this,' and that is wrong. It is ignoring the victim, and it is wrong." She added, "As I've said before, second chances do not have to include playing sports, especially pro sports, because in our society, we put these athletes up on a pedestal." The Tecolotes, who have an unusual arrangement with home stadiums on both sides of the border, got in touch with Heimlich's agent in January through an intermediary. Talks became more serious last month before an agreement was reached. Mansur said the Tecolotes' front office and coaching staff had watched video of Heimlich from college and of a tryout in front of scouts. In vetting Heimlich, Mansur said the team had spoken with Heimlich's representatives but not with Heimlich directly, though he said he planned to meet with him later Thursday in camp. Mansur said he had consulted with his team's lawyers and with his family, which runs the team. He did not speak with the victim or her family, he said, because they had already spoken to investigators and Heimlich had already served his penalty. Mansur said that he was aware that the Tecolotes were opening themselves up to criticism with the signing but that he believed Heimlich should not be punished for life. "For the fans, I ask that we all analyze ourselves," he said. "This is really a kid who wants to and has decided to move ahead with his life. And like he says, to be an example and to be a good kid. I think he merits our support." The league, however, may not feel the same way.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Sports

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