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Even as the broader economy falters amid signs of a weakening recovery, the nation's agriculture sector is going strong, bolstered in part by a surge in exports, according to federal estimates of farm trade and income released on Tuesday. The estimates confirm what economists have been saying for months: agriculture, which was generally not hit as hard by the recession as many other segments of the economy, remains a small bright spot going forward. "We're just having a robust rebound in the agricultural sector and promises of more growth," Jason R. Henderson, vice president and economist at the Omaha branch of the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, said in a recent interview. The estimates show that American farmers will ship 107.5 billion in agricultural products abroad in the fiscal year that ends Sept. 30. That is the second highest amount ever, behind the record 115.3 billion in exports logged in 2008, when commodity prices soared as the global demand for agricultural products was helped by fast growing economies in the developing world. Next year, exports are expected to total 113 billion. In releasing the data, Tom Vilsack, the secretary of agriculture, said exports of grains and meats were leading the rebound. He called the new estimates "very encouraging." The export growth is propelled by higher prices for many products, including wheat, whose prices have skyrocketed as drought and punishing heat decimated crops in Russia, Ukraine and Kazakhstan. Exports to Asia have been particularly strong, and China is forecast to surpass Mexico next year to become the second largest foreign buyer of American farm products. Canada is the No. 1 export market. Wheat exports this year are estimated at 6 billion, about the same as last year, as much of this year's crop had already been sold when prices started to rise. But wheat exports for the fiscal year 2011 are expected to rise to 8 billion, because of higher prices and increased production. Prices for other grains have risen, too, encouraging farmers. "The better the demand, the higher the price, and it's going to put another 10, 15, possibly 20 cents in the price of a bushel of corn," said Bill Horan, a corn farmer in Iowa. Corn is about 4 a bushel, which is about 50 cents higher than last year. "It means my wife can go out and buy a new sofa, and I can put new tires on the pickup." Prices have also risen significantly for cotton, meat and dairy products. Cotton exports are expected to reach 6 billion next year, up from 4.8 billion this year and 3.5 billion last year, on the strength of a large crop here and tight worldwide supplies that have lifted prices. Other economic measures were also promising for the farm sector, which accounts for a small fraction of the overall economy but has a strong impact on the well being of many rural areas, and a ripple effect for suppliers and other related industries. Total net farm cash income for the current calendar year was estimated at 85 billion, a 23 percent increase from last year and well above the 10 year average of 72 billion. About 75 percent of farm production occurs on just 271,000 farms, or 12 percent of the total farms in the country. Those large commercial farms were forecast to average 220,000 in net cash income this year, a 22 percent rise from a year ago. When all farms are taken into account, average farm household income is expected to be 81,670 this year, a nearly 6 percent increase from last year. Household income for many who live on farms comes largely from off farm jobs and other sources, like investments. This year, on average, 11 percent of the household income for farm families was predicted to come from agriculture. Income from both farm and nonfarm sources is expected to rise this year, indicating an overall improvement in the rural economy, officials said. Joseph Glauber, the agriculture department's chief economist, said that a strong rebound in livestock and dairy prices had been a major factor in the farm recovery. Dairy producers were hurt badly in the recession by high costs and low prices, which have recently begun to recover. Cattle and hog producers also struggled with low prices, caused by overproduction. But cattle and hog producers have managed to cut the size of their herds, pushing prices back up at the same time that international demand recovers, Mr. Glauber said. "Exports are kind of driving our market," said Jason Anderson, who operates a cattle feedlot in Holbrook, Neb. "Demand is pretty good, and we've seen about a 5 to 7 price rally just this month," he said, referring to the price per hundredweight. Economists said that the farm sector overall was not hurt as badly in the recession because farmers generally had better access to credit. At the same time, farms over all were not highly leveraged, putting them in a better position to withstand the economic storm. "The farm economy in rural America has not suffered as severely as the industrial part of the economy and, because of the strong exports, the rural economy is recovering what it lost during the downturn," said Roy Bardole, a farmer in Rippey, Iowa, and chairman of the Soybean Export Council.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Economy
THE BUYER Aram Modrek and his girlfriend, Ada Rubin, on the roof deck of their new building in the East Village. In an East Village Studio, the Numbers Added Up On his arrival from California in 2011, to enroll in the M.D./Ph.D. program at New York University School of Medicine, Aram Modrek moved into student housing in Kips Bay. Soon, however, he discovered that he loved the feel, and the food, of the East Village. So Dr. Modrek, who is now 28 and researching cancer biology, moved there, renting a studio of around 450 square feet. Two and a half years ago, he met Ada Rubin, who works in the emergency department of N.Y.U. Langone Health, and was delivering a specimen to the lab next to his. They spoke in the elevator and later began dating. Ms. Rubin, a New York City native who is now 27, was renting a small, windowless room in Kips Bay. She eventually moved into his studio, which was big enough that they could easily mount their bicycles on the wall. "We never had a mouse problem again," Ms. Rubin said. (They chose the breed, which is hypoallergenic, she said, because Dr. Modrek is allergic.) In the spring, Dr. Modrek matched at N.Y.U. for a residency in radiation oncology, and knew he would remain in New York for at least five more years. "Until Aram brought it up, buying an apartment wouldn't have even entered my mind as a possibility," Ms. Rubin said. "He went through a million calculations and proved in the long run we would save a lot of money. My whole life, I grew up thinking I would be renting forever in the city. I approached the hunt with trepidation." With a budget of up to 400,000 for a co op, they checked out some places in Kips Bay, convenient to the hospitals on First Avenue in the 20s and 30s. Ms. Rubin liked a late 1950s building on East 33rd Street, where a ground floor studio had a separate kitchen and a view of a concrete wall. A building on East 33rd Street was an early candidate, but Dr. Modrek had his heart set on the East Village. Robert Wright for The New York Times The asking price was 400,000, with maintenance in the mid 700s, but Dr. Modrek wasn't keen on the neighborhood. "I had my heart set on the East Village, but it is hard to find a studio in that price range," he said. In Tudor City, a bit farther north and east, they saw a tiny, boxy studio with a Murphy bed. The price, below 300,000, was tempting. "I thought we would save a ton of money," Ms. Rubin said. "But Aram talked some sense into me. It would have been a struggle to live there." In the East Village, a one bedroom on East Second Street was listed for 399,000, with maintenance in the mid 500s. But it was facing the street, a siren corridor with a firehouse on the next block. That one was tough to turn down, Dr. Modrek said, but "the fire trucks come out sirens blasting," which was a deal breaker. On East Second Street, a street facing one bedroom was tough to turn down, but the noise factor was a deal breaker, given the firehouse on the next block. Robert Wright for The New York Times Then a listing around the corner from their rental appeared. The price was 399,000, with maintenance in the mid 700s. Dr. Modrek immediately contacted the agent, Max Moondoc, an associate broker at Compass. The studio, around 275 square feet, faced a rear courtyard with trees. It was far smaller than their rental studio, but ideal in every other way. One wall, painted with chalkboard paint, was filled with math equations, Ms. Rubin said, "and I think Aram fell in love." The couple found their new place in the East Village, just half a block from their former rental. Robert Wright for The New York Times The seller, it turned out, was a math professor who was upsizing. The improvements he had made, Mr. Moondoc said, included "a lean but efficient kitchen" and smart home technology. "You wave your hand and the kitchen light goes on," Ms. Rubin said. The other lights are controlled by their phones. "I think it's weird," she said. "Aram likes it. You can get very precise with the color of the light." Ms. Rubin, a triathlete, rises early for a run, swim or bike ride, and then either walks or rides a CitiBike to her office at Bellevue Hospital Center. She is also studying for a master's degree in health policy at N.Y.U. "In the morning, I usually get dressed in the dark or eat breakfast in the bathroom so as not to wake Aram, because he is a light sleeper," she said. "Sometimes I will get to work and realize that my socks don't match."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Real Estate
The area by the Brooklyn Navy Yard can seem forbidding. Hulking warehouses line Flushing Avenue, a wide and busy street that hugs the yard for 16 blocks, while the yard, a massive former military complex turned manufacturing center, is almost totally enclosed by tall fences and walls. "It's literally like working in a federal prison," said Chris Terrell, a wine importer who stores his bottles at the yard and must venture past its security checkpoints. But the vibe will be less harsh going forward, as major steps are being taken to reinvent the area, part of the Wallabout neighborhood. Meanwhile, the Brooklyn Navy Yard Development Corporation, the nonprofit entity that manages the city owned facility, is removing some of the walls that have isolated the Navy Yard from the community, while adding a supermarket, a food hall and a park that the public can use. "It's to send a message that we're not turning our backs on the community," said David Ehrenberg, the development corporation's president and chief executive. From the 1940s until 1966, the Naval brig locked up unruly drunken sailors, according to historic accounts. And from 1984 to 1994, over the objections of neighbors, the site served as a 1,300 bed prison, before finally being razed in 2005. Construction on Navy Green started in 2010 and is scheduled to be completed next year. When finished, it will include four multifamily high rises and 23 single family townhouses across a nearly full block site ringed by Vanderbilt, Flushing and Clermont Avenues. Pablo Enriquez for The New York Times The Dunn Development Corporation, L and M Development Partners and the Pratt Area Community Council played various roles in developing the project, which has market rate condominiums and townhouses and affordable condos and rentals. The final pieces of the project under construction include a condo tower and rows of townhouses. The townhouses, faced in brick, come with three or four bedrooms, along with two full and two half baths. The townhouses have open layouts on their ground floors; kitchens with Caesarstone counters, Bertazzoni ranges and Bosch dishwashers; and laundry rooms with sinks and side by side washers and dryers. As of late October, six of the 10 houses put up for sale in June were in contract, a project spokeswoman said. A three bedroom was listed last month at 1.995 million, or 689 a square foot. Most of the units at the 12 story, 99 unit condo tower, at 8 Vanderbilt, carry income restrictions: a maximum of 99,830 for a single buyer and 175,350 for a family of six, said Martin Dunn, Dunn Development's president. Prices for these apartments range from 230,000 to 440,000. In the third quarter, condos in an area that includes Wallabout and nearby Vinegar Hill, Fort Greene and Clinton Hill, traded at an average of 1,088 a square foot, according to Halstead sales data. The three other towers, at Nos. 7 and 45 Clermont and 40 Vanderbilt, were built over the last five years and are made up of affordable rentals. All buildings surround a signature amenity: a long private lawn running down the center of the block framed by cherry, oak and other trees. Though the complex does not have a doorman, the bike room was made extra large. Because the nearest subway stops, on the F and G lines, are long, bleak walks away, residents are expected to take advantage of Flushing Avenue's popular bike lane to ride to Manhattan. "There is always going to be somebody who's going to say it's too far from the train," Mr. Kliegerman said. "But I think this is part of the beauty of the area, that it's not so congested." The Sands Street gate, one of the entrances to the Navy Yard. Pablo Enriquez for The New York Times Across the way, the Navy Yard may seem a bit more crowded. The 300 acre facility, which wraps around Wallabout Bay, has 7,000 people employed in 330 companies, which are tucked into new and old structures amid rusting cranes, Belgian block lanes and cannons. This head count is a far cry from the 70,000 employed during World War II constructing ships like the U.S.S. Missouri, on whose deck Japanese officials would later surrender. When the base closed, in 1966, Brooklyn's economy quickly declined, historians say, despite efforts by the city to reinvigorate the yard. By the early 1980s, just 100 people worked there, said Mr. Ehrenberg, 39, who was raised in Brooklyn and remembers going to the yard to pick up a car that had been towed. A police tow pound is still there, off Navy Street; the yard also is home to a cement company and a dry dock, which was repairing Weddell Sea, a tugboat, on a recent afternoon. According to its stated mission, the yard tries to lease only to tenants that make things. Smaller, less industrial occupants are welcome, like Kings County Distillery, which makes whiskey in a Romanesque former Paymaster's Building. On Saturdays, it offers tastings, which, in the spirit of the more welcoming yard, are open to the public, though visitors must show I.D. at a gate. Similarly, Building 92, which opened in 2011, offers an informative museum and organizes tours. Next, the city is investing 143 million remodeling Building 77, an 18 story, concrete walled hulk across from Navy Green that once stored supplies like powdered milk. To add offices to the lower floors, workers are removing three million pounds of concrete and installing 393 windows, yard officials said. More important for those who live in the area, the bottom floor will be turned into the Yard Commons, a food hall resembling Philadelphia's Reading Terminal Market, Mr. Ehrenberg said. And after a wrought iron fence is removed, the public will be able to walk in from the sidewalk of Flushing Avenue; the food hall is scheduled to open in 2017. Another piece of the yard, at Flushing Avenue and Navy Street, will be carved out for a 74,000 square foot Wegmans supermarket, in an area known as Admiral's Row, which is lined with sagging 19th century houses overgrown with vines. Most of the decrepit houses will be razed, despite efforts to preserve them, and in the process graffiti marked walls barricading this corner will also come down. The project, expected to be completed in 2018, will also feature storefronts that could be filled with "quirky, weird mom and pop Brooklyn shops," and national chains, said Douglas C. Steiner, the chairman of Steiner NYC, the developer. His related business, Steiner Studios, a production facility, controls 30 acres at the yard and is poised to redevelop another 20 acres on the Williamsburg side that now include an overgrown and ghostly hospital complex, Mr. Steiner said. It will be made into offices for Steiner Studios. Nearby, on Williamsburg Street West, another piece of the yard will be liberated from its fences. The 1.7 acre Naval Cemetery Landscape, with wood walkways and wildflower meadows, is set to open next spring. There are other signs of change along Flushing Avenue. JJ's Navy Yard Cocktail Lounge, a longtime strip club at Washington Avenue that was shuttered in 2010, has been remade as an outpost of the Brooklyn Roasting Company, whose headquarters is inside the Navy Yard. Not everyone is rejoicing just yet. Some neighbors say grocery stores have been promised before, never to materialize. And a farmer's market run by Brooklyn Grange in the courtyard of Building 92 didn't last long. However, the grange, which grows kale and other vegetables on a rooftop farm inside the yard, does offer a community supported agriculture program, with pickups on site. Efforts at outreach are still appreciated, said Mary Andrews, president of the tenants association at Farragut Houses, one of three nearby public housing developments. In the last year, the Navy Yard has stepped up recruitment of local labor, said Ms. Andrews, who moved to the area in 1970. Once a month, yard officials come to Farragut with ads for jobs like lift operators and truck drivers. "It's a good thing to have in the community," she said.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Real Estate
ROME An installation and research project by the American video and performance artist Joan Jonas is to inaugurate a cross disciplinary center focusing on ocean conservation and the effects of climate change on the oceans on March 23 in the newly restored church of San Lorenzo in Venice's Castello neighborhood. The center, known as Ocean Space, will also showcase the digital archive of oceanic projects organized in the last seven years by TBA21 Academy, a department of Thyssen Bornemisza Art Contemporary (TBA21), the Viennese institution founded in 2002 by Francesca von Habsburg. "One of the main drivers of the TBA21 Academy is to break down boundaries between disciplines" so that artists work alongside scientists, researchers, lawyers and policymakers, "taking a holistic view" of the pressing environmental issues of today, its director, Markus Reymann, said in a telephone interview. "It's about using artistic sensibility and the process of creating contemporary art to shine a light on questions surrounding the ocean." Ocean Space will also host lectures, workshops and other events. Badly damaged in World War I, the church has been mostly closed for the last century, opening briefly for a 1984 performance of Luigi Nono's "Prometheus." TBA21 is financing the church's restoration.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Art & Design
ATHENS If ignominy were tax revenue, Greece might be a big step closer to ending its budget problems. Politicians, business executives and bankers are being raked through the headlines or incarcerated in a white collar crackdown as the Greek government goes after people suspected of tax dodging. Those under questioning include the former finance minister George Papaconstantinou, in a highly charged parliamentary investigation into his handling of a list of Greeks with foreign bank accounts. "Why do you think they are catching all these people?" Mr. Papaconstantinou said in a recent interview, in the suffer no fools manner that defined his two years as finance minister until the current government took power last June. "Because we changed the laws to allow the government to do this." But those changed laws, and the populist pursuit of supposed deadbeat fat cats, have yielded little in additional tax revenue. Tax evasion lies at the heart of the Greek financial collapse, which has resulted in international bailout loans exceeding 205 billion euros, or 266 billion, the size of Greece's depressed economy. In fact, Greece's international creditors have made revamping its notoriously lax tax system a primary condition for any additional bailout financing. But even after an overhaul of Greece's tax collection apparatus and a politically charged campaign to pursue delinquents government officials have collected only a tiny fraction of what is owed and potentially collectible. Rather than capture a lot of extra money, the crusade seems mainly to have captured prominent quarry. The net cast by newly empowered prosecutors has snared the former mayor of Salonika, the leader of the Greek national statistical agency and several former cabinet members. Lawyers and tax officials estimate that hundreds of people have been locked up in the last year, suspected of tax evasion. Under the new laws, someone who owes the government more than 10,000 euros in taxes can be arrested on the spot and given the choice between paying up or being put behind bars. While held, the suspect can wait as long as 18 months before the prosecutor decides on a formal charge. Despite those efforts, of the estimated 13 billion euros that government officials say is owed by Greece's 1,500 biggest tax debtors, only about 19 million euros has been collected in the last two and a half years. Among the few to benefit from the crackdown have been criminal defense lawyers specializing in tax law. Among them is Michalis A. Dimitrakopoulos, who represents many of the top political and business figures under government investigation or behind bars. His clients include the daughter and the former wife of Akis Tsohatzopoulos, a former defense minister and Pasok party official, all of whom are on trial on charges of money laundering and taking kickbacks. Mr. Dimitrakopoulos, who proudly shows visitors to his office a wall covered with framed clippings of his courtroom exploits, says business has never been better. But he also says he has clients with many billions of euros overseas who will never bring their money back to Greece as long as as he contends killers have better legal rights than tax offenders. By any measure, that is hyperbole. Legal specialists note, for example, that Mr. Papaconstantinou, the former finance minister, is awaiting the outcome of the parliamentary inquiry in his case from the comfort of his suburban Athens home. They say it is unlikely he will ever serve time. Mr. Papaconstantinou declined to discuss the allegations against him: that he doctored the so called Lagarde list, named for Christine Lagarde. Ms. Lagarde, now managing director of the International Monetary Fund, was the French finance minister in 2010 when she gave Mr. Papaconstantinou a computer disk containing the names of Greeks who had Swiss accounts with HSBC Bank. The file had been stolen by a French former employee of the bank and ended up in the hands of France's government. Kevin Spacey was ordered to pay 31 million to the 'House of Cards' studio after sexual harassment allegations. Netflix buys a visual effects company in a move to support its global ambitions. Mr. Papaconstantinou's accusers contend that he deleted the names of three of his relatives and did not pursue the matter while he was in government. He has vigorously disputed those accusations and has not been accused of any financial gains from the affair. If Greece's 1,500 biggest tax debtors paid, the government would easily wipe out its budget deficit for 2013. Analysts estimate that the taxes avoided by Greeks of all income levels total 55 billion euros, which would help Greece return to firmer financial footing. "I am afraid it will take several generations to change the mentality here that it is better to not pay your taxes," said George Samothrakis, an Athens based accountant who specialized in Greek tax law. "But because that mentality can't be changed right now, the government is doing whatever it can to increase collection. This is our last chance to get it right." To that end, the government has created a powerful and autonomous office, modeled on the American Internal Revenue Service, that audits and enforces all aspects of the tax system. One challenge to generating a large return from these efforts is the Greek recession, which economists predict will extend into next year. Not as much personal or corporate income is available to tax as there would be if the economy were vibrant. That is why Kostas Karagounis, a deputy justice minister, is exploring novel ways to keep tax offenders and other white collar criminals from further crowding Greek cells. Mr. Karagounis, who has seen his prison budget cut 50 percent, is proposing that some tax offenders be put under house arrest, or more controversially be allowed to pledge their property to the Greek government to avoid conviction. "We have to punish the people who made this mess," Mr. Karagounis. "But I want them to pay what they owe, more than I want to put them in jail." Sometimes the money chase can seem an overreach like the demand recently imposed on a retired banker in his late 60s that he personally pay a fine of 6.35 billion euros to the state, as a result of his company's failing in a financial scandal more than six years ago. At least he has so far avoided jail time, which is more than many of the accused can say. Greece's most notorious prison, Korydallos, which houses Albanian contract killers and members of the Greek terrorist group 17 November, among other hardened criminals, now also holds a growing number of fallen figures from the elite strata of Greek society.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Global Business
Tennis, for Anyone? In the Bronx, the Answer Is Yes One of the city's best new works of public architecture sounds like a perk for the country club set. And it is. Partly. Tucked into Crotona Park in the Bronx, the Cary Leeds Center for Tennis Learning is anchored by a modest two story concrete and steel clubhouse, all sleek surfaces and sharp angles, overlooking a competition worthy pair of exhibition courts. Devised by Gluck , the New York architecture firm, the clubhouse and courts are stylish in the way that somebody with disposable income would regard as money well spent. That's money well spent in another way, too: The center provides after school tutoring to homeless and other underserved young New Yorkers. In large measure, Cary Leeds was conceived for them as a spot that should feel the opposite of second rate or make do for children who often are expected to be satisfied with hand me downs. More than a decade in the making, it came about through a public private collaboration between the city and New York Junior Tennis Learning. Aside from the new clubhouse, the project includes 20 resurfaced tennis courts, replacing Crotona Park's old, decrepit ones, with half of the new courts enclosed during cold months by a bubble for indoor play. They're like the rest of New York's public courts, open to city residents. The city and New York Junior Tennis split the 26.5 million construction costs. The courts and clubhouse were finished in phases. A ceremony the other day celebrated the completion of the last phase: the two exhibition courts. They make the site a prime spot to stage tournaments. Excavated and terraced, the two courts are rimmed by seating for hundreds of spectators. The architects dug the courts below ground, as they did the lower story of the adjacent clubhouse, partly to preserve sightlines within the park and to take advantage of natural geothermal heating and cooling. On one end is a raised viewing bridge with a perch over the city, and on another end, a balcony. The whole site reveals itself as a lively complex of layers and platforms only after you have passed through the clubhouse onto the balcony, a sequence of compression and release by the architects to enhance the drama and make the center feel like its own precinct or enclave. That aptly suited New York Junior Tennis Learning. The Cary Leeds Center provides the organization with a flagship home. The other morning, I came across dozens of public school gym teachers from around town taking lessons so that they, in turn, could help students with their backhands before the children hit the books. Gleeful elementary school students played in the park, waiting for their chance with the fledgling instructors. Some 30,000 children live within walking distance of Crotona Park, 3,000 of them in homeless shelters. This stretch of the Bronx is one of the country's poorest congressional districts. New York Junior Tennis chose to settle here for a reason. Mr. Hartman told me, "The growing homeless population can more specifically become our focus here." Peter Gluck, the principal architect for the project, explained, "For our part, the goal was to make a place as luxurious as possible for kids who are not used to luxurious places." The 12,600 square foot clubhouse acknowledges neighbors' concerns that the building not overwhelm the park. It reads from outside as a low single story pavilion, clad in bluestone.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Art & Design
Alexandra Liv Gracey Brena and Andres Benjamin Naim are to be married Sept. 2 at the New London Historical Society in New London, N.H. Darius Bittle Dockery, a friend of the couple who became a Universal Life minister for the occasion, is to officiate. The couple, both 30, met at Tufts, from which they graduated. The bride works in Stamford, Conn., as an associate at McKinsey and Company, a global management consulting firm based in New York. She received an M.B.A. from the University of Pennsylvania. She is a daughter of Margaret E. Gracey Brena and Jose G. Brena of London. The bride's father is the head of distressed asset solutions at UniCredit, a bank in Milan. Her mother leads school groups on tours and in educational sessions at the Royal Academy of Art in London. The groom is the chief executive of the Group of 50, a global network of Latin American business leaders, and the Naim Media Group, a diversified media company focused on story development, content production, and IP origination based in Washington.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Fashion & Style
IN the hermetic bubble of a racetrack where economic reality has no pit pass the Lexus LFA makes perfect, glorious sense. As I rocket around New Jersey Motorsports Park, this supercar physically compels me to switch off skepticism, pay heed to the racing line and happily marinate in waves of sensory stimulation: the Formula One shriek of its 552 horsepower V 10, the tightrope balance and technical precision that makes even a Corvette ZR 1 feel like a Tinkertoy. Hurry, ask me while I'm still in the driver's seat: is the LFA worth 375,000? Sure, for the rare person who would prefer a supercar from Japan, not Europe. Ask the same question after I've skimmed the latest unemployment figures or calculated the relative fun of, say, a 135,000 Porsche 911 Turbo, and the answer is, what, are you nuts? Such contradictions make the LFA fodder for one of the year's most interesting auto debates. Judged purely as an adrenaline inducing performance tool, the Lexus tops a number of supercars I've driven not just the similiarly priced Lamborghini Murcielago, but also the 1.3 million Bugatti Veyron. As any car snob will remind you, Lexus is not Bugatti, or even Porsche. Created by Toyota just 20 years ago, Lexus can't bank on the car museum prestige or racing pedigree that makes millionaires' hearts go flutter. And with apologies to Lexus, I have yet to hear anyone describe the LFA as beautiful. Even Lexus hasn't spent much time strewing flowery adjectives over the styling, whose brute functionality recalls an Asian "Fast and Furious" movie car albeit one on a billionaire's budget. What the LFA can claim is racecar level thrills in a surprisingly comfortable, street friendly car, developed in a cost is no object program that lasted a decade. That, and exclusivity: the prototype I drove was the only LFA in the United States at the time. And, starting in December, just 500 copies will be built over two years, with 171 coming to America. Fifty of the 500 buyers will get a higher performing Nurburgring edition, whose 445,000 price includes driving lessons a good idea and a year's pass at the famous 12.9 mile German road course for which it's named. During the LFA's vexingly long gestation, Lexus showed a concept in Detroit back in 2005. Four years later, Toyota's incoming president, Akio Toyoda, proved he wasn't all about hybrids, racing an LFA prototype with three other drivers in the 24 Hours of Nurburgring. Not surprisingly, Toyota's bosses soon approved the car for a limited factory run. The production car is built around a carbon fiber tub; a 4.8 liter V 10 that blisters the tachometer as it zings to 9,000 r.p.m.; and a center of gravity just 18 inches above the pavement. Five years into the project, Lexus essentially started over. Realizing the car's planned aluminum structure wouldn't meet their performance targets, engineers substituted lighter carbon composite. Toyota which officials note was started in the 1920s as the Toyoda Automatic Loom Company had to create a unique loom to weave carbon fiber for the front roof pillars. In tandem with Yamaha engineers, Lexus tuned the engine and exhaust note as if it were a musical instrument, including a dashboard that admits only certain frequencies into the cabin. That might explain the television commercial that shows the LFA shattering not the asphalt but a champagne flute, with a crescendo of its soaring metallic tenor. Tellingly, that ad doesn't even mention the LFA by name. As with most "halo cars," Lexus isn't really selling the car, but the brand, said Paul Rohovsky, Lexus's manager for advanced business development. That halo car strategy might seem logical for a Ferrari or even a BMW, whose owners obsess over performance and seek bragging rights. But will the typically conservative Lexus buyer appreciate that the brand that produced his cocoonlike LS sedan also makes the LFA? Or might a Lexus or Toyota hybrid fan wonder why Lexus is indulging fantasies with a fuel thirsty supercar? "He rolled down his window and said, 'That's what I want, baby,'" Mr. Rohovsky said. "He looked like the happiest guy in the world." Inside the LFA, the halo effect includes a 3.6 second sprint from 0 to 60 miles per hour and a top speed of 202 m.p.h. Plenty of sports cars today, including the Corvette ZR 1, can claim similar numbers, and many cost a fraction of the LFA's price. Those calculations naturally lead skeptics to dismiss the Lexus as overpriced. But number crunchers often don't realize that statistics say little about what a car is like to drive or how it makes an owner feel. An initial 150 cars set aside for Americans had been spoken for by June, when Lexus allocated 21 more. For those who can't spell "recession," a few slots remain open. And Lexus has also eliminated a litmus test that ruffled the feathers of enthusists. Determined to bar speculators from flipping LFAs for a quick profit, Lexus had initially set up the deals to resemble a lease albeit one that required a customer to hand over 290,000 in cash up front, with a 93,000 option to own the LFA after 24 months. After that stipulation gave some prospects cold feet over issues including owner liquidity and possible entanglements in the event of a death or divorce Lexus relented, offering customers a choice of buying or financing the car. One catch: if an owner decides to sell within two years, Lexus keeps first option to buy back the LFA at fair market value, but not for more than the original sticker price. Lexus is also vetting buyers, seeking those who will drive their LFAs as a rolling advertisement rather than stash them away in collections. The day before my test drive, a handful of LFA prospects had been invited to the track here, including some who needed a test drive before answering the 375,000 question. Mr. Rohovsky said that at each of four such events held around the country, at least one prospect stepped from the car and said, "Where do I sign? I'm ready to go." So far American buyers are exclusively men, and on average are in their mid 50s. Many have owned a Lexus, and they tend to be entrepreneurial types, along with one sports star whose name Lexus would not divulge.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Automobiles
"Living abroad changed everything for me," Stephanie Baptist, a Brooklyn based cultural producer and editor, said. "It opened up an entirely new scope of possibility and the idea of having global conversations." Ms. Baptist, whose first love is photography, moved to London in 2009 after working as a photography agent in New York for nearly six years. She pursued a master's degree in arts administration and cultural policy at Goldsmiths, University of London, to expand her artistic knowledge and equip herself to work with artists in a more meaningful way. The move also inspired "an exploratory phase." While in London, Ms. Baptist dived into works by artists of color and familiarized herself with names beyond legends like Malik Sidibe. "I was interested in who else was out there, and I started to look up and see if there were any spaces dedicated to black artists," she said. Through her research, Ms. Baptist came across galleries whose rosters included the kinds of artists she found interesting. In 2011, she bought her first piece Hamidou Maiga's "Untitled (1973)." After graduating, Ms. Baptist spent three years as head of exhibitions and public programs at Tiwani Contemporary, a London gallery focused on artists from the African continent and diaspora. Since she returned to New York in 2014, she has worked on an array of projects, from editing art books to curating large scale installations. Last June, she converted her 500 square foot living room currently painted lime green into a gallery, where she welcomes established collectors and newer art lovers alike. The space, which Ms. Baptist christened Medium Tings, is open on Sundays and has allowed her to keep exploring the world of art. "I want to continue to facilitate conversations around emerging art practice specifically for artists of color, and to help individuals see themselves reflected," she said. These are edited excerpts from the conversation. What is the first piece you ever bought? Hamidou Maiga's "Untitled (1973)." I was drawn to the work because it is in the tradition of other Malian photographers. It was his first exhibition and he was in his 80s, and so for me, I saw the beauty in how you can really be dedicated to your craft for a really long time and be independent and entrepreneurial and then later find yourself on a global stage. I feel like it really speaks to its generation, and it's a different level of storytelling and narrative, especially when you are adding in these faux backdrops. There is this aspirational type of environment and living and also the idea of putting on your best clothing or even dressing up in costume to be photographed. When I was younger, my family would take me to Sears. That was the thing, to get a professional portrait, and there would be backdrops of a similar fashion so this idea of putting on a presentation in front of the camera is something that I was really attracted to. Has it always hung alone? Yes. I've tried to position that one in multiple places, but he is the eldest of all the artists, and you give privilege to your elders, so it gets to hang alone. Let's talk about the photograph that stunned me in the other room. So that is Jonathan Gardenhire. It's a beautiful piece, it is called "Untitled (Shomari)." Jonathan explores the idea of agency and who has the right to represent blackness. There was really something quite beautiful about that work; I just couldn't turn away from it. His expression is something that really got me because it's not how do I describe it there is just such an air of 'this is me' that is evoked and it's against this hue of pink; you never see black men against a hue of pink. Which is your favorite piece on this wall? On this wall I would say the Zina Saro Wiwa. As of late, I've been particularly drawn to the black male. I think there is something about the way black males are being portrayed in the images that I acquire that you don't see in public. I specifically acquire works that I feel like hold people from a place of pride, a place of reverence, a place of beauty. Even though this is speaking specifically to Ogoniland, around the Niger Delta, I think there is an incredible beauty to this stance, to being placed in such a lush environment.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Art & Design
A scene I often replay is from Mary Gaitskill's "Kiss and Tell," in which the narrator reminisces on "the rindy fat" of his date's "bunched ass." Based on the publisher's description, this was the register of perversity, brutal and frank, I was expecting from 's debut novel, "Demi Gods." The novel's sexual dynamics are certainly strange, but even at their most scatological, they're soft. I wasn't expecting so light a touch: like a kiss on the brow when you expected to be slapped. You'll obsess over this kiss for a fortnight. "Demi Gods" is a bildungsroman, spanning 1950 to 2001. Willa and her knockout sister (incongruously named Joan) grow up between Victoria, British Columbia, and Salt Spring Island. Their mother is a flirt, indulging naked lunches in her too loose kimono. Her new partner brings his two sons from San Diego to visit. Joan and the older son, Kenneth, pair off; they eventually marry and move to California, to live in a state of sunny ennui. Willa, who calls to mind scrappy heroines of young adult lore, finds herself in thrall to the other brother, Patrick. We follow her development through their increasingly tense interactions. When Patrick commands 9 year old Willa to soil herself, she complies, bragging, "I could pass all of his tests, even the naughty ones." Was Willa's sexuality shaped by this encounter? Too easy to say. Sex is more a state of mind than an act in this lush, subtle novel. The story follows Willa from the secret beaches of Salt Spring Island to the house party slash orgy her mother throws to the yacht where disaster (belatedly) strikes. This catastrophe is somewhat unnecessary, a digestible climax tacked onto the larger, looser, more intricate saga of what Patrick means to Willa and what they do to each other their shared, protracted violence.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Books
It was perhaps the most anticipated "Saturday Night Live" season premiere in almost 20 years the show's first live broadcast in more than six months, hosted by Chris Rock, and its first to be produced under the new guidelines of the coronavirus era. The last live episode of "S.N.L." had been broadcast on March 7; it was hosted by Daniel Craig and featured a few segments in which the show tried to find what humor it could in the looming pandemic. Then the show announced it was suspending its season altogether, only to come back with three episodes of remotely produced sketches, filmed mostly at the homes of its cast members. "S.N.L." tends to generate its biggest audiences in presidential election years, and the series's creator, Lorne Michaels, further stoked expectations by tapping Jim Carrey to play former Vice President Joe Biden, the Democratic nominee. But the show is also contending with a slew of new health and safety regulations, and as recently as a few days ago, Michaels wasn't entirely sure that he and his cast and crew could stick the landing: "We're going to be as surprised as everyone else when it actually goes on," he told The New York Times in an interview. And questions lingered before Saturday as to whether a live audience would attend. (It did, under visible restrictions.) That would have all been challenging enough. But then "S.N.L." had to start its season by recapping a week in which President Trump was hospitalized for treatment of Covid 19 and in which the first lady, Melania Trump, along with several Republican senators and high ranking Republican officials, tested positive for the coronavirus. Perhaps the closest comparable moment in "S.N.L." history was the season opener of Sept. 29, 2001, the show's first new broadcast after the 9/11 terrorist attacks. That episode began with a call for unity from Rudolph W. Giuliani, then the mayor of New York, who was flanked by police officers and firefighters as he told the audience, "Even as we grieve for our loved ones, it's up to us to face the future with renewed determination." Paul Simon played "The Boxer," and Michaels famously asked Giuliani, "Can we be funny?" Giuliani answered, "Why start now?" This time around, "S.N.L." simply opened with a sendup of Tuesday's chaotic debate between President Trump and Vice President Biden. Bennett began to explain the rules. "Each candidate will have 2 minutes, uninterrupted," he said, only to be immediately interrupted by Baldwin. "Boring!" Baldwin declared. He said to Bennett, "Tell that to my Adderall, Chris, now let's get this show on the road and off the rails." Asked if he had taken the test for coronavirus, Baldwin answered: "Absolutely. Scout's honor." Playing Biden for the first time, Carrey strode onto the stage in aviator glasses while making finger guns at the audience. He produced a tape measure, sized up the distance between himself and Baldwin, then picked up his lectern and moved it further away. Asked if he was ready to debate, Carrey answered: "Absolutely not. But I've got the beginning of 46 fantastic ideas I may or may not have access to. Now let's do this. I'm holding my bladder." Throughout the segment, Carrey (as Biden) tried to exercise some restraint: "Don't let your inner Whitey Bulger come out," he told himself. "Flash that smile they taught you in anger management." Bennett, meanwhile, emphasized Wallace's passivity. At one point he told Baldwin, "Mr. President, if you keep interrupting this debate, I'll do absolutely nothing about it." Maya Rudolph appeared briefly in her recurring role as Senator Kamala Harris, the Democratic vice presidential nominee. She told the two presidential candidates, "America needs a W.A.P.: woman as president. But for now, I'll settle for H.V.P.I.C.: hot vice president in charge." After Baldwin (as Trump) demurred on the topic of white supremacy, Carrey produced a remote control and paused Baldwin in midsentence. "Sorry, but I think we all needed a break," Carrey said. "Isn't that satisfying?" Speaking directly to the camera, Carrey added: "You can trust me. Because I believe in science and karma. Now, just imagine if science and karma could somehow team up to send us all a message about how dangerous this virus can be." He looked over his shoulder at Baldwin, then continued: "I'm not saying I want it to happen. Just imagine if it did." Before he, Baldwin and Rudolph ended the sketch, Carrey's Biden introduced his own campaign slogan: "Make America Actively Not on Fire Again." "I haven't had so much stuff up my nose since I shared a dressing room with Chris Farley," he said. Pointing out members of the "S.N.L." studio audience that he described as first responders, Rock said, "They're so good, we let people die tonight so they could see a good show." Assuming that Biden would be elected, Rock said that he should be America's last president ever and that a new system of government should be instituted after him. "What job do you have for four years, no matter what?" Rock asked. "If you hired a cook and he was making people vomit every day, do you sit there and go, 'Well, he's got a four year deal; we've just got to vomit for four more years'?" More sincerely, Rock concluded his monologue with a quotation from James Baldwin: "'Not everything that is faced can be changed,'" he said, "'but nothing can be changed until it is faced.'" During the song, Megan Thee Stallion, who was shot in the feet over the summer, paused in the middle of the stage. (She has said that she was shot by the musician Tory Lanez, who has denied responsibility.) The sounds of several gunshots were heard and the digital screens behind her were filled with simulated bullet holes. Malcolm X's voice was heard saying, "The most disrespected, unprotected, neglected person in America is the Black woman," as those same words appeared on the screens. "Who taught you to hate the texture of your hair, the color of your skin and the shape of your nose?" the recording, an edited version of a 1962 speech, continued. "Who taught you to hate yourself from the top of your head to the soles of your feet?" The next voice heard was that of the activist Tamika Mallory, from a recent speech in which she criticized Daniel Cameron, the attorney general of Kentucky, following the announcement in September that only one former officer would be charged with wanton endangerment after Breonna Taylor was killed in a police shooting in Louisville. The voice of Mallory said, "Daniel Cameron is no different than the sellout negroes that sold our people into slavery." Megan Thee Stallion spoke next, telling the audience: "We need to protect our Black women and love our Black women because at the end of the day, we need our Black women. We need to protect our Black men and stand up for our Black men because at the end of the day, we're tired of seeing hashtags of our Black men." In their return to the Weekend Update desk, the anchors Colin Jost and Michael Che continued to speculate aloud about whether it was permissible to make jokes about President Trump's hospitalization. Well, say what you will about 2020, but it's got moves. This news was a lot for us to process a day before we came back on the air after four months off. And it all happened so fast. I woke up yesterday and heard the president had mild symptoms. And then four hours later he was getting medevaced to a hospital in what looked like the last chopper out of Vietnam. I've got to say, it's a bad sign for America that when Trump said he tested positive for a virus, 60 percent of people were like, "Prove it." And it's been very weird to see all these people who clearly hate Trump come out and say, "We wish him well." I think a lot of them are just guilty that their first wish came true. After joking that Trump was supposed to host "S.N.L." next week, Che laughed and continued the riff: OK, serious voice. While in the hospital, the president isn't allowed to see any guests, but he is expected to be visited by three ghosts. Probably one from his past, one from his OK, look, this is weird. Because a lot of people on both sides are saying there's nothing funny about Trump being hospitalized with coronavirus. Even though he mocked the safety precautions for the coronavirus. And those people are obviously wrong. There's a lot funny about this maybe not from a moral standpoint. But mathematically, if you were constructing a joke, this is all the ingredients you need. The problem is, it's almost too funny. Like, it's so on the nose. It'd be like if I were making fun of people who wear belts and then my pants just immediately fell down. As the segment concluded, a camera found Kate McKinnon in the audience, dressed as Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, whom she often impersonated on "S.N.L." McKinnon put a hand to her heart and wordlessly bowed her head as the screen displayed an image of a robe with a familiar neck collar and a pair of glasses and the words "Rest in Power."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Television
How 'One Day at a Time' Came Back From the Brink PASADENA, Calif. To say the cast of "One Day at a Time" was knocked sideways when Netflix canceled the show in March 2019 is an understatement. Like the rest of the cast, Stephen Tobolowsky, who plays Dr. Leslie Berkowitz on the comedy, heard the news not long before it became public (and began trending on Twitter). He was about to film a scene of the ABC sitcom "The Goldbergs," and he was so sure "One Day at a Time" was about to get a fourth season that he cheerfully answered the phone when the showrunners, Gloria Calderon Kellett and Mike Royce, called him. "I picked it up and Gloria said, 'Our little show they pulled the plug.'" Then there was a knock on the door: "'Stephen, we're ready for you.'" Tobolowsky struggled to make the transition from receiving that gut punch to being funny on camera. "I was like, 'I'm traumatized, and I'm going to need a lot of professional help just to get through this moment,'" he recalled. Justina Machado, who plays the nurse, Army veteran and mother Penelope Alvarez on the comedy, said that when her friends heard the news, they were "so mad. They were emotional." Part of the anger, Machado said, was over what that news represented. As the journalist Vanessa Erazo noted in a Times Op Ed shortly after "One Day" was canceled, Hispanic people made up an estimated 18 percent of the population, but Hispanic roles constituted just 7.2 percent of all roles in scripted streaming series and even less on broadcast and cable. "It's the stories that we're telling and how they're seeing themselves represented on the screen" that made this more than just another cancellation, Machado said in an interview with cast members during the Television Critics Association press tour, in January. The show had become something "beyond a job." Todd Grinnell, who plays the show's affable landlord, Schneider, noted the irony of being canceled by Netflix, "the place that usually saves the show that the network has cast aside." But Rita Moreno wasn't having it. "Yes, we were!" she said, sounding much like the indomitable matriarch she plays on the show. The social media outcry at the time was intense, as was the response from TV critics, who wrote dozens of pieces about the show's cancellation and why it deserved to be rescued. But the most important reaction was the one that came from Sony Pictures Television, which produces the series. The day the showrunners found out Netflix didn't want a fourth season, Royce said, Sony executives "called us and they're like, 'We're getting this show on somewhere.'" That somewhere ended up being Pop TV, the cable channel owned by ViacomCBS that is best known for the quirky Canadian comedy "Schitt's Creek." On Tuesday, "One Day at a Time" debuts at its new home just over a year after Netflix cut it loose. The fourth season picks up as the family answers questions from a census worker played by Ray Romano (and takes a slight dig at Netflix, as well). The fact that "One Day at a Time" was canceled at all still seems surprising given its devoted audience and versatile premise. The cancellation, after 39 episodes, was crushing because "we just got started, really," said Royce, who had been an executive producer on "Everybody Loves Raymond," among other shows. If a family comedy is successful, the audience wants to "live in that world and hang out with that family," Royce said. "But we only got to hang out for a little while." Netflix, which declined to comment for this article, indicated at the time that whatever the audience's devotion, its size was just too small. In a Twitter statement about the cancellation, Netflix, which does not release detailed viewing data for its programs, simply said that "not enough people watched to justify another season." (Moreno said that statement had led her to wonder: "What are the numbers that would please you? We aren't privy to that.") But where Netflix saw an underperforming show, David Nevins, the chief creative officer of CBS and chief executive of Showtime Networks, saw opportunity. He had gained oversight over Pop TV just days before the cancellation was announced. "I think Netflix clearly has a model where they feel they're getting value out of shows in the first couple of seasons and they don't have that much incentive to go the long haul," he said. That may be the right decision in many cases, he added, but "the programmer in me thought it had untapped potential." For all the show's admirable qualities, its survival is also a product of a confluence of industry circumstances. In March 2019, Pop TV was in the market for a high profile acquisition to replace "Schitt's Creek." (The network announced late that month that the show's sixth season would be its last.) And like Nevins, Brad Schwartz, the president of Pop, was already a fan of "One Day at a Time." It also helped that Sony was more motivated than many studios to keep its programs alive. Increasingly, TV studios belong to companies that also operate networks or streaming platforms, and those studios can usually rely upon their corporate parents or siblings to acquire and renew much of their output. Sony has become a rarity: a television studio without those kinds of corporate familial connections. "I worked at ABC and ABC Studios for years, and there, you knew if a project went away, there'd always be another project that came along," Frost said. "Whereas for us, every one of these shows, they're our children." Perhaps it's more appropriate to refer to "One Day at a Time" as an adult, given that the property is 45 years old. The first version told the story of a white family in Indianapolis headed by a single mother, one of a string of iconic Norman Lear produced comedies including "All in the Family" and "Good Times" that debuted in the 1970s. The new incarnation, which counts Lear as an executive producer, revolves around the tight knit Cuban American Alvarez clan in Los Angeles. Despite the changes, "One Day at a Time" hews to the traditions of the best multicamera comedies: It is shot on a soundstage, the soundtrack includes laughter from a live audience, and the writers and cast expertly blend deft jokes and sincere sentiment. All things considered, the comedy is "radical within a very safe and comfortable form," Nevins said. When news of the cancellation came out, he said his "first thought was, this could be an attractive subscription driver for CBS All Access." That would have been a full circle moment, given that the original "One Day at a Time" aired on CBS. But the show's Netflix contract precluded a move to another streaming platform. Though Sony explored other options, it didn't take long for Pop to emerge as a potential home. Pop had garnered plenty of buzz for "Schitt's Creek," which premiered in 2015 and built a loyal audience, particularly after seasons began arriving on Netflix two years later. "We needed a nice, big, shiny new thing for when 'Schitt's Creek' ended," Schwartz said. And like "Schitt's Creek," the Alvarez family's story serves as "a counterbalance to all the negativity and divisiveness and the political climate," Schwartz added. "It just seemed to be an antidote to everything going on in the world, while also being hysterically funny and incredibly moving." Calderon Kellett and Royce said they hadn't necessarily set out to make a topical show, but certain subjects were bound to come up, given that the sitcom employs multiple L.G.B.T.Q. writers, that the writing staff has more women than men and that the majority of its writers including Calderon Kellett, who is Cuban American are people of color. "My brother called me and was like, 'I was just on a beach and somebody told me to go back to Mexico,'" Calderon Kellett said. "That happened." Royce added: "We have all these talented people coming from all these different backgrounds. People tell their stories and our stories come out of that." The plot of the Season 4 premiere, for example, arose partly from a desire to address the fears that some Hispanic people have about the 2020 census. It also solved a practical problem: It relays information about each character to viewers who might not have watched before Pop acquired the show. In other words, it's a textbook episode of "One Day at a Time": a warm and clever marriage of meaningful subjects and expert sitcom craft. Devoted fans can take comfort in the fact that, aside from the addition of ad breaks another throwback to the original version the show is still the show. As Schwartz said his first email to Calderon Kellett and Royce after the Pop deal was official: "'Keep doing what you're doing. We're making this show because we love it.'"	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Television
Maybe it's time for another hostless Tony Awards. Sunday night's broadcast of Broadway's annual celebration of itself had trouble figuring out what to do with Kevin Spacey, the evening's host, making use of him in ways that ranged from torturous (the opening number) to tolerable (he does pretty good Johnny Carson and Bill Clinton impressions). It fared far better when it was about the work being honored and the people who did it. The show, on CBS, opened, as it always seems to, with a not particularly amusing musical collage, this one feeling especially ill advised because it was full of references to new musicals that most people in the television audience had not seen. Why did Mr. Spacey begin with a cast on his arm? Hope you were watching with someone who'd seen "Dear Evan Hansen" and could explain the joke. The Tonys have always had the dilemma of figuring out which audience to go after. Sunday's opening number was clearly aimed at the theater insiders in Radio City Music Hall, not at the uninitiated TV viewer. Besides being unfunny, that also made it unwelcoming, which is not the way you want to start off a three hour show. Maybe the opening number should have been at the end of the broadcast, by which point viewers would have known at least some of the references from having seen songs from the nominated musicals performed during the evening. That, of course, would have required a type of out of the box thinking that the Tonys and, really, all of its cousins in other genres have never had in abundance. With the show fronted by Mr. Spacey, who is not quite from the song and dance mold of recent hosts like Hugh Jackman and Neil Patrick Harris, there was an opportunity to do something different. This show started with a clean slate: No juggernaut eating all the attention like "Hamilton" last year, and of course no awful current event hanging over the proceedings. (Last year's broadcast, hosted by James Corden, hit the air only hours after the mass shooting in Orlando, Fla.) But instead of innovating, the show at the start saddled Mr. Spacey with a tedious batch of jokes about his insecurity at being host. Things improved later when he retreated to the safety of his impressions, and a late bit in which he was repeatedly interrupted by people plugging their shows was pretty funny. But it's worth considering whether the role of host has become a liability for this type of show. The Tonys have gone with no fixed host a few times in the past; a producer with real creativity could make something out of that approach. When the show did try something adventurous (or at least adventurous by the standards of awards shows), it was successful. Having the musical number from "Come From Away," a show set in Newfoundland, be introduced by the Canadian born hockey player Ron Duguay (who played for the New York Rangers, among other teams) was a delightful touch. And the strongest recurring element of the evening was having some of the theater world's most invisible stars, the playwrights, give pocket descriptions of their nominated works. The show, and the winners in their acceptance speeches, kept politics out of things or relatively vague for the first 2 hours and 40 minutes. Then Stephen Colbert came out to present the award for best musical revival, and well, let's just say that President Trump did not go unmentioned. This show could have easily been overtaken by political sniping, but that would have distracted from the work. And the best of that work made up for a lot of the show's weaknesses. Musical numbers from "Bandstand," "Dear Evan Hansen" and "Come From Away" really energized the broadcast at points when it was beginning to flag. Those musical interludes and the vignettes from the playwrights made clear that the strength of Broadway is always what's happening on the stage, not the tacky sideshows. Those still watching as the show slogged past 11 p.m. Eastern, though, did witness some redemption for Mr. Spacey. He came out as his "House of Cards" character, President Underwood, and lingered just long enough to toss a devastating improvised put down in the direction of Bette Midler, who moments earlier had rambled on way, way too long in an acceptance speech. "I want to get the hell out of here before Bette Midler thanks anyone else," he said.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Theater
Santiago Barberi Gonzalez, the president and creative director of Nancy Gonzalez, a Colombian accessories firm and one of the largest purveyors of crocodile handbags in the world, died on March 24 in New York. He was 40. His mother, Nancy Gonzalez, confirmed his death but did not give the cause. Mr. Barberi Gonzalez, a colorful, charismatic and diminutive figure known to friends as Santi, was considered the creative visionary and the growth engine behind the company, which he founded with his mother in 1998 while he was a student at the Savannah College of Art and Design in Georgia. "When we started in the U.S. in 1998, people were asking why our label reads 'Nancy Gonzalez: Colombia New York,' because Colombia will never be able to compete with the fashion capitals like Paris or Milan," Mr. Barberi Gonzalez told The New York Times in 2014. "But we proved them wrong." Today, Nancy Gonzalez handbags are sold at more than 120 stores around the world, including Saks Fifth Avenue, Neiman Marcus, Harrods and Lane Crawford. The label, which was named Brand of the Year by the Accessories Council in 2007 and won its Innovation Award in 2015, is seen as a leader of a lively group of Colombian luxury brands, among them Esteban Cortazar and Johanna Ortiz. Writing on Instagram, Carmen Busquets, the Venezuelan investor known for holding stakes in fashion businesses like Moda Operandi, FarFetch and Net a Porter, called Mr. Barberi Gonzalez "funny, fiercely intelligent (his obvious high IQ would blow you away) larger than life, passionate about design, and the heart of the Nancy Gonzalez brand." Mr. Barberi Gonzalez, an avid art collector who split his time between Paris and New York, oversaw his label's international sales, its store design and advertising campaigns. His mother ran the design studio for handbags. Besides her, he is survived by his sister, Cristina. The Nancy Gonzalez brand, admired by the likes of Mary Kate and Ashley Olsen, Sarah Jessica Parker and Sofia Vergara, has found a following thanks to its use of precious skins and a vibrant color palette, along with an aesthetic rooted in the natural beauty and rich culture of Colombia. Its totes and clutches, made of lime green crocodile, lavender python, orange ostrich and other brilliantly dyed exotic skins, were also favorites of the South American superrich, who could afford the handbags' eye watering price tags. As a businessman and employer Mr. Barberi Gonzalez sought to foster social change in Colombia. He was diligent about training and employing local women so that "they could have careers, not just jobs," he said last year as part of a panel at a Times luxury conference at Versailles in France. Before he died, Mr. Barberi Gonzalez had set new and ambitious goals for his family empire. Last June, he unveiled 25 shoe styles made from exotic skins, with plans to expand the footwear offerings this fall. He had also unexpectedly inspired the addition of a Santiago Gonzalez collection for men. After store executives noticed him carrying a few one of a kind pieces he had designed for himself, they asked if they could place orders.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Fashion & Style
Miranda Priestly is getting ready to sing. The pop star Elton John and the playwright Paul Rudnick have signed on to write a musical adaptation of "The Devil Wears Prada," the producer Kevin McCollum said Thursday. The collaboration is a significant step for the project, which Mr. McCollum has been working on for two years. Mr. John has extensive Broadway experience, including as the composer for "The Lion King," and he won a Tony Award in 2000 for writing the score for "Aida." Mr. Rudnick has won praise as a comedic playwright ("The Most Fabulous Story Ever Told"), screenwriter and essayist. The musical will be adapted from the 2003 novel by Lauren Weisberger and the 2006 film, from 20th Century Fox, that starred Meryl Streep and Anne Hathaway. The story is about the hellish tenure of a young woman working as the personal assistant to Ms. Priestly, the imperious editor of a fashion magazine.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Theater
Before "Southern Promises" begins, the actors gather on the Flea Theater stage to deliver preliminary remarks, mostly underlining that the show's cast is made up of people of color. This is integral to Niegel Smith's revival of Thomas Bradshaw's 2008 drama because it is set on a plantation in 1848 Virginia. Masters of both sexes graphically rape slaves of both sexes. Brutal violence abounds, both suggested and shown. The N word is thrown about with casual abandon. (The text includes excerpts from real slave narratives.) Throughout the evening, you may find yourself circling back to some of those introductory words, especially the ones from actors who said they were of mixed heritage. "I'm just as much slave owner as I am slave," one of them, Adam Coy, says. "Every character in this show is me. Every one of these characters are my ancestors." This complicates a story that, on the face of it, is relatively straightforward for all its horror. The married Isaiah and Elizabeth (Darby Davis and Brittany Zaken) own another couple, Benjamin and Charlotte (Shakur Tolliver and Yvonne Jessica Pruitt). Despite Isaiah informing both his wife and Benjamin that he wants all his slaves freed after his death, Elizabeth reneges on the pledge. Encouraged by her brother, John (Marcus Jones), the young widow eventually marries Isaiah's brother, David (Jahsiah Rivera) all the while forcing Benjamin to sexually service her.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Theater
It was the accessory that stole the evening. Not the discreet strand of pearls and matching earrings worn by Senator Kamala Harris or the glowing Reagan red tie of Vice President Mike Pence, but rather the fly that landed on Mr. Pence's pure white helmet of hair midway through the vice presidential debate on Wednesday night, and appeared to hang out for a while: a black spot amid the snowy expanse of his coif that was impossible to ignore. And it kind of undermined his ability to answer the great unspoken question that hung over the event: Does this person look like someone who could be president? Would he or she be convincing in that role? After all, as Susan Page, the USA Today journalist who was the moderator, pointed out, both Ms. Harris and Mr. Pence would serve as No. 2 to the oldest president in history, no matter which candidate wins. There is a real possibility someone ends up in a very different job. As much as anything in the public arena that is a debate, with the electorate (or a chunk of it anyway) judging little pictures on a screen, maybe tuning into the words, maybe rolling their eyes and tuning out, the candidates' job was to model what that might look like. No matter how much people complain about paying attention to such apparently superficial choices, they inform how we understand what we hear. There's a reason the best one liners end up on T shirts and sweatshirts literally overnight. So the fly didn't help. The TV watcher in chief, with his penchant for "central casting" his administration, could not have been pleased at the mockery it engendered on his favorite social media platform. The fly was the black spot in the ointment of Mr. Pence's image, which has always seemed to belong to a Lego set, or a Build a Bear experience (build a politician!). From dark suit to pristine white shirt and favored red ties to snowy hair that appears practically painted on, it's as if he came straight out of a mold. Ms. Harris, by contrast, is something else: a pioneer, the first woman of color to be nominated for national official by a major political party. She's the next stage of history. And when the California senator took the debate stage, she dressed for it. She went fully dark dark pantsuit, dark shell beneath even as she smiled and shook her head as if in amazement at the absurdity of what she was hearing from the other side. In this, she was fully in line with her own recent appearances she has made something of a practice of wearing dark colors, opting for deep navy for the first debate of the Democratic presidential candidates, and dark burgundy for her speech at the Democratic National Convention but not the Hillary Clinton Elizabeth Warren Nancy Pelosi continuum of fruit bowl colored jackets and pantsuits. Not the style that has become the accepted outfit for a woman in politics, treading the line as it does between classic male uniform and cliched female shades. Not even the recent vogue for suffragist white. Ms. Harris opted for a different narrative, one that signals a new generation and a new start and calls to mind ninjas, Navy SEALs and funerals. That has its own risks, but it also has a certain authenticity. She has always had to be a fighter. Why not acknowledge it? In any case, the look doesn't exactly feed into the description of her as an extreme liberal, a label that Mr. Pence and the Trump campaign keep trying to pin on Ms. Harris, and a cartoon all its own. The candidate didn't come close to playing that part. Her pearls spoke to tradition: both her own (she has been wearing them since her Howard University graduation photo in 1986) and that of the White House and its first ladies. Barbara Bush famously wore pearls. So did Jackie Kennedy. So did Michelle Obama. On her feet, she wore sharp pumps, not the Converse or Timberlands she has sported on the campaign trail, and that have gone viral. She observed propriety, and the occasion. Her suit was buttoned up and sedate, with a little American flag pin on the lapel (just like Mr. Pence's). The general effect was not of soft power, but of somber power. She looked serious and no frills and in control. She looked like her own person. By Thursday morning her reply to Mr. Pence's mansplaining interruptions "I'm speaking" had already made it onto merch. No flies on her.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Style
It was the black outfit in Episode 1 that made me sit up in surprise. That is to say, the black outfit that the first lady Claire Underwood wears to the funeral of the civilian beheaded by American Islamic extremists in the opening salvo of "House of Cards," Season 5, the streaming drama that dropped last week. The single breasted black Dolce Gabbana neat collared jacket atop the black Dolce Gabbana dress that together looked eerily like a certain black Dolce Gabbana coat recently worn during an official trip abroad by another first lady. Then it was the buttons on the majority of Claire's clothing throughout the series marching up her garments with an almost military precision. The pussy bow blouse. The long white inaugural gown. The epaulets on a burgundy trench coat. The pencil skirts. The belts. The sharp shoulders. The high necks. The stilettos. Halfway through my binge watching, I was scratching my head and thinking: Does the current first lady of the United States take her dressing cues from the first lady of Netflix programming? It's not a giant leap of imagination to think the answer may be yes. Consider not only the clear similarity in their chosen silhouettes, but also the designer names: Michael Kors, Ralph Lauren, Dolce, Derek Lam. Consider that President Trump himself seems so much a product of his own television experience and obsession (though, sadly, Frank Underwood, whose Boss and Armani suits are always perfectly tailored, shirts custom made and ties tied just so, does not seem to have had much impact). Indeed, the echoes are "quite remarkable," said Johanna Argan, who has been the costume designer for "House of Cards" since Season 2. And it makes a certain sense. Someone looking for a crash course in protective power dressing could do worse than to look to the Underwoods. After all, Ms. Argan and Kemal Harris, the stylist/designer who became responsible for Claire's wardrobe in Season 3 (after working with the actress Robin Wright on her red carpet appearances), have made something of a study out of the art of political dress and the communications embedded therein. Not simply because they are helping to shape characters on TV, but because "it's what politicians do in real life," Ms. Argan said. "They all have someone helping them who says this is what you should wear if you need to look more humble, or this is what you should wear if you need to look more authoritative," she continued, citing a close friend who had worked in the Clinton administration and on Hillary Clinton's campaign as proof. The point: Each piece the Underwoods wear is worn for a reason and has a subtext. It is not an accident, for example, that Claire wears the same style of Cartier watch Jackie Kennedy wore. This has never been more calculated than in Season 5. (Spoiler alert: Though I waited a whole week to write this, out of respect for those whose jobs may necessitate a few nights in a row of watching as opposed to one all day binge, there may be some plot reveals in the next few paragraphs.) The Underwoods are fighting for their political lives against the Washington establishment, and Claire, in particular, is fighting for power. And dresses for it. Of the 60 or so looks worn by Claire each season, about a third come straight from the runway, a third are sourced from department stores such as Barneys and Bergdorf, and a third are designed from scratch by Ms. Harris and made by LaVonne Richards, a tailor in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, where Ms. Harris lives. "She's my secret weapon," Ms. Harris said, adding that even when a piece is bought from a store or a designer, it is often customized. A gray tweed Michael Kors jacket, for example, had the buttons changed, the body slimmed and the sleeves shortened; a Burberry dress also had the buttons changed, a slit closed and the sleeves again shortened, the change in arm length meant to allude to the action of "rolling up your sleeves" without sacrificing any tailoring rigor. Tailoring being the key sartorial signature of Frank and Claire Underwood. "It conveys power and control," said Ms. Argan, who also noted it is a style trick anyone can use. "You don't need to have a garment made for you, but you can buy it and have it tailored for you." (Indeed, Ms. Harris has had a mannequin made of Ms. Wright, and all Claire's clothes are tailored precisely to her measurements.) "The thing about Claire," Ms. Harris said, "is she has always used her wardrobe to manipulate everyone around her, to disarm them or seduce them." Or, in this case, arm herself and fight for her position. The military references and colors (olive green, burgundy, navy, black), so rife in her wardrobe, were chosen or added specifically to suggest going into battle. Whether you pick up on the association immediately, your subconscious may. As it may the fact that in Season 5, Claire has swapped her Ralph Lauren Tiffin bag (a soft top handle bag with a padlock) for a more structured Burberry Alchester, a rounded doctor shape, the better to imply, Ms. Harris said, "Claire saves the day." Or at least that's what said protagonist would like those around her to think. Notably, though Claire occasionally trades her pencil skirts for pants, she never wears a classic Hillary Clinton trouser suit, one in which the jacket and trousers match. When she reaches the pinnacle of power (make of that what you will), she wears a dress. Twice. "It's time, really," Ms. Harris said. At least on TV. Ms. Harris equivocated a bit when asked her opinion of the real world parallels, at least in terms of wardrobe, between Mrs. Trump and Mrs. Underwood. "There can always be comparisons made," she said. But when it comes to the actual first lady, she added: "I think it will take her a bit of time to find her stride and decide what makes her distinct. There are certain basic guidelines we all share: avoid prints, avoid fabrics that wrinkle. You can tell, she's learning from that handbook." It's who wrote it that is the question.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Fashion & Style
Over the years the name and likeness of the Mexican artist Frida Kahlo, a fierce feminist and ardent communist, have been associated with a number of unlikely products. Yes, Mattel, which manufactures Barbie, included a Kahlo doll in an inaugural series meant to coincide with International Women's Day. She is part of the line of "Inspiring Women" dolls that includes the aviator Amelia Earhart and the NASA mathematician Katherine Johnson, whose life was featured in the movie "Hidden Figures." Kahlo, whom Mattel described as "a celebrated artist, activist and symbol of strength" and who died at the age of 47 in 1954, was known for self portraits and other works that the Surrealist leader Andre Breton described as "a ribbon around a bomb." She may not have approved of being cast as a variety of Barbie, the best selling doll whose image Mattel has updated so as to address criticism that in body type and lifestyle it had perpetuated damaging stereotypes about women.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Art & Design
Simon Schuster's sale by its owner, ViacomCBS, comes in a wave of consolidation that has swept the book business in the last decade. Rupert Murdoch's News Corp is making a play for Simon Schuster, the venerable home to best selling authors like Stephen King and Hillary Clinton that raised a ruckus this year after releasing a string of hit titles critical of President Trump. The powerhouse publisher was put up for sale by its owner, ViacomCBS, in March, and the company has since fielded more than half a dozen inquiries, according to three people familiar with the process who declined to be named because the matter remains confidential. In addition to News Corp, which already owns HarperCollins, a leading bidder is Penguin Random House, according to the people. Penguin Random House, the largest book publisher in the United States, is owned by the German media giant Bertelsmann. The French firm Vivendi, a minority owner of Hachette through the publisher Lagardere, has also made a bid. At least one of the offers has topped 1.7 billion, far above the minimum ViacomCBS had set, according to two of the people. Several financial firms, after lobbing offers below that range, are no longer in the running. Final bids are due before Thanksgiving, and ViacomCBS could announce a winner some time after that. A deal may not materialize. ViacomCBS, the newly merged conglomerate led by Shari Redstone, declined to comment. News Corp and Vivendi also had no comment. Bertelsmann would not address Simon Schuster in particular, but a spokesman said, "We have stated in the past that Penguin Random House wants to grow organically and through M A." The Financial Times earlier reported on Bertelsmann's interest; Publisher's Weekly was the first to report on HarperCollins's. Simon Schuster, one of the five largest book publishers in the country, has a deep bench of name brand writers, including the children's author Judy Blume, the novelist Annie Proulx and the journalist and historian Walter Isaacson. It also has several perennial best sellers, including "Catch 22," by Joseph Heller; "Gone With the Wind," by Margaret Mitchell; and "How to Win Friends and Influence People," by Dale Carnegie. Publishing has become a winner takes all business, a circumstance brought on by Amazon's aggressive pricing, and now a publisher needs size to survive. Tent pole titles can better offset losses from weaker books. A bigger inventory can generate more data on the habits and interests of book buyers. Those dynamics underpin the wave of consolidation that has swept the business in the last decade. Penguin and Random House merged, Hachette Book Group acquired Perseus Books, and News Corp bought the romance publisher Harlequin. More recently, Simon Schuster has become known for a raft of best selling tomes about the Trump administration, including "Rage," a brutal assessment of Mr. Trump's failures by the journalist Bob Woodward, and "Too Much and Never Enough," a tell all by his niece, Mary L. Trump. It also published "The Room Where It Happened," an account of President Trump's foreign policy escapades by John Bolton, his former national security adviser, and "Hoax," an examination of the president's relationship with Fox News, by the CNN media reporter Brian Stelter. Mr. Murdoch's HarperCollins division has also taken a bite out of the Trump presidency, publishing "The Case for Impeachment," by the historian Allan J. Lichtman, and "Trumpocalypse," by the journalist David Frum. It also released "The Man Who Sold America," a scathing critique of his time in office by the MSNBC host Joy Ann Reid. Mr. Trump, despite losing his campaign for a second presidential term, received more than 72 million votes and could field several big dollar offers for a book. A deeper pocketed Simon Schuster could make a more competitive bid for a Trump book, according to two of the people. The company has proved durable, even during the recent downturn. Simon Schuster's revenue rose 8 percent to 649 million this year through September. Profit before tax during the same period rose 6 percent, to 115 million. Should a major publisher win the auction, Simon Schuster is likely to undergo staff cuts. Departments such as human resources and finance are often slimmed down after a big merger. It is not clear how a deal might affect high level positions at the company. Jonathan Karp, who was named Simon Schuster's chief executive this year after the sudden death of Carolyn Reidy, could be relegated to a lower role or be forced out. Not long after he took over, Mr. Karp named Dana Canedy, a former journalist and administrator of the Pulitzer Prizes, as publisher of its namesake imprint, putting a Black woman in charge of one of the biggest publishing houses. Any merger agreement would also have to undergo regulatory scrutiny. A combination with either Penguin Random House or HarperCollins, the two largest book publishers in the country, could raise questions in Washington. Penguin Random House's sales exceeded 4 billion last year. Annual sales at HarperCollins, which reports its fiscal year at the end of June, were about 1.7 billion.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Media
Linda Pizzuti Henry on Wednesday became the chief executive officer of Boston Globe Media Partners, the parent company of The Boston Globe, Boston.com and STAT News. Along with her husband, John W. Henry, Ms. Henry is an owner of Boston Globe Media Partners, the Boston Red Sox and the Liverpool Football Club. "I feel really lucky to be able to work every day at a place that I love, doing work that I know is critically important and impactful to a community I care deeply about," Ms. Henry, the first woman to lead The Globe in its 148 year history, said in a statement. Mr. Henry, 71, bought The Boston Globe from The New York Times Company as part of a 70 million deal for New England Media Group in 2013. Since then, Ms. Henry has been managing director of Boston Globe Media Partners. Ms. Henry, 42, is taking the top job at a time of rising tensions between The Globe's management and its union, the Boston Newspaper Guild, which have been in negotiations over a new contract since the last one expired at the end of 2018.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Media
Some of us knew from the beginning that Donald Trump wasn't up to the job of being president, that he wouldn't be able to deal with a crisis that wasn't of his own making. Still, the magnitude of America's coronavirus failure has shocked even the cynics. At this point Florida alone has an average daily death toll roughly equal to that of the whole European Union, which has 20 times its population. How did this happen? One key element in our deadly debacle has been extreme shortsightedness: At every stage of the crisis Trump and his allies refused to acknowledge or get ahead of disasters everyone paying attention clearly saw coming. Blithe denials that Covid 19 posed a threat gave way to blithe denials that rapid reopening would lead to a new surge in infections; now that the surge is upon us, Republican governors are responding sluggishly and grudgingly, while the White House is doing nothing at all. And now another disaster this time economic rather than epidemiological is just days away. To understand the cliff we're about to plunge over, you need to know that while America's overall handling of Covid 19 was catastrophically bad, one piece the economic response was actually better than many of us expected. The CARES Act, largely devised by Democrats but enacted by a bipartisan majority late in March, had flaws in both design and implementation, yet it did a lot both to alleviate hardship and to limit the economic fallout from the pandemic. In particular, the act provided vastly increased aid to workers idled by lockdowns imposed to curb the spread of the coronavirus. U.S. unemployment insurance is normally a weak protection against adversity: Many workers aren't covered, and even those who are usually receive only a small fraction of their previous wages. But the CARES Act both expanded coverage, for example to gig workers, and sharply increased benefits, adding 600 to every recipient's weekly check. These enhanced benefits did double duty. They meant that there was far less misery than one might otherwise have expected from a crisis that temporarily eliminated 22 million jobs; by some measures poverty actually declined. They also helped sustain those parts of the economy that weren't locked down. Without those emergency benefits, laid off workers would have been forced to slash spending across the board. This would have generated a whole second round of job loss and economic contraction, as well as creating a huge wave of missed rental payments and evictions. So enhanced unemployment benefits have been a crucial lifeline to tens of millions of Americans. Unfortunately, all of those beneficiaries are now just a few days from being thrown overboard. For that 600 weekly supplement which accounts for most of the expansion of benefits applies only to benefit weeks that end "on or before July 31." July 31 is a Friday. State unemployment benefit weeks typically end on Saturday or Sunday. So the supplement will end, in most places, on July 25 or 26, and millions of workers will see their incomes plunge 60 percent or more just a few days from now. Two months have gone by since the House passed a relief measure that would, among other things, extend enhanced benefits through the rest of the year. But neither Senate Republicans nor the White House has shown any sense of urgency about the looming crisis. Why? Part of the answer is that Trump and his officials are, as always, far behind the coronavirus curve. They're still talking about a rapid, V shape recovery that will bring us quickly back to full employment, making special aid to the unemployed unnecessary; they're apparently oblivious to what everyone else sees an economy that is stumbling again as the coronavirus surges back. Delusions about the state of the economic recovery, in turn, allow conservatives to indulge in one of their favorite zombie ideas that helping the unemployed in a depressed economy hurts job creation, by discouraging people from taking jobs. Worrying about employment incentives in the midst of a pandemic is even crazier than worrying about those incentives in the aftermath of a financial crisis, but it seems to be at the core of White House thinking (or maybe that's "thinking") about economic policy right now. One last thing: My sense is that Republicans have a delusional view of their own bargaining position. They don't seem to realize that they, not the Democrats, will be blamed if millions are plunged into penury because relief is delayed; to the extent that they're willing to act at all, they still imagine that they can extract concessions like a blanket exemption of businesses from pandemic liability. Maybe the prospect of catastrophe will concentrate Republican minds, but it seems more likely that we're heading for weeks if not months of extreme financial distress for millions of Americans, distress that will hobble the economy as a whole. This disaster didn't need to happen; but you can say the same thing about most of what has gone wrong in this country lately. 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
Matt Smith and Claire Foy collapse decades of love and angst into 90 minutes of stage time in the socially distanced performance of "Lungs," streamed live from the Old Vic theater in London via Zoom. The woman and man who make up the entire cast of Duncan Macmillan's "Lungs," which is streaming in a beautifully acted (and socially distanced) live production from London's Old Vic Theater, are people who seldom think before they talk. Feelings big, sloppy, mixed, unedited, self incriminating feelings slosh out of them like the contents of overfilled, foaming beer mugs on a wobbly tray. This nameless couple, longtime romantic partners who probably shouldn't be yet have to be together, are portrayed by Claire Foy and Matt Smith. As I watched them break and reassemble each other's hearts with such seemingly spontaneous fervor, I thought what a relief it must be for them after all that bottled up time together in Buckingham Palace. Foy and Smith are best known these days for playing another, less demonstrative set of partners who have definite, very recognizable names: Queen Elizabeth II and her consort, Prince Philip, whom they embodied exquisitely in the first two seasons of "The Crown," the popular Netflix series about life among the Windsors. For that royal pair, emotions were something to be kept in check or manifested most discreetly. Nonetheless, these performers were skilled enough to let us sense the discomfort, doubt and resentment beneath the surface of their stoical characters. I am happy to report that Foy and Smith are equally adept at delivering such ambivalence, common to nearly all long and intimate relationships, at high volume and in equally high gear. Occupying a dark and empty stage that feels as vast as an endless night, they transmit this complexity with a delicacy and clarity well suited both to probing close ups and to long shots that suggest what the view might be like from the Old Vic balcony. Of course, there is no one sitting in the balcony as Foy and Smith collapse decades of love and angst into 90 minutes of stage time. Like most theaters in England, the 202 year old Old Vic has been dark since the pandemic lockdown began in March. This production of "Lungs," staged by the Old Vic's artistic director, Matthew Warchus, is the maiden offering of the Old Vic: In Camera series of live performances, which try to approximate the feelings of being in that theater, in the audience, in the present tense. This means that the show is preceded by the murmuring sound associated with packed houses before curtain time, a noise contradicted by the image of an achingly empty expanse of seats. And since new income is essential to the survival of the Old Vic, theatergoers are asked to pay West End ticket prices to watch, from 20 to 65 pounds. (That's approximately 25 to 80.) The show streams through July 4, though most performances which are booked to reflect the theater's normal capacity are sold out. For the record, I paid for my ticket, and I won't be expensing it, and yes, I believe it was good value. This is partly for nostalgic reasons. I love the Old Vic the birthplace of the last show I saw on Broadway, "Girl From the North Country" and dearly hope it survives this crisis. And I was to have seen this production of "Lungs," which had been staged at the Old Vic last fall, at the Brooklyn Academy of Music this spring. But as reconceived by Warchus and his accomplished technical team, "Lungs" also turns out to be a natural for the Zoom format and the restrictions of the pandemic age. This might not be immediately apparent. Macmillan's script, which premiered in 2011 at the Studio Theater in Washington, D.C., feels almost annoyingly slight and conventional when it begins. A couple, shopping at Ikea, have begun what one identifies as an argument and the other as a conversation about whether they should have a baby. However it's defined, it is a discussion I have been asked to listen to too many times in sitcoms, movies and novels. What's more, this particular pair is very white, very good looking and comfortably middle class, with arty slash intellectual accents. (He's a musician, she's a doctoral candidate.) Is this convulsive chapter in world history really the time for a drawn out dialogue by such a pair on the existential and moral implications of childbirth? Yet Macmillan ("People, Places Things") is a probing sentimentalist with a gift for lending cosmic context and psychological texture to ostensibly slick banalities. He, and the characters in "Lungs," know that we might find them easy to dismiss. "We're good people, right?" they keep asking each other anxiously. Maybe not; they're aware of classist and even racist tendencies that sporadically seep into their conversation. Besides, what is good? What's evil? (She points out that most people believe that they are good, even Hitler and Simon Cowell.) They are both products of an age of paralyzing self consciousness, in which every life choice must be examined through a microscope. They can't turn on a water tap without worrying about its effects on an environmentally beleaguered world. As for the impact of having a baby, that's staggering, and she has even done the math to calculate the carbon footprint it would leave. As you may have gathered, she is the more loquacious and analytical. He is confused, annoyed and enraptured by her. There's no denying that there's a warming chemistry in their differences. They are a good fit. Except that they're never allowed to fit together entirely, not even when they're making love. Macmillan's script is written as a series of fragments in time (spoiler: a relationship's lifetime), without traditional segues. It's human existence as a mix tape of moments on fast forward. While their closeness is palpable, complete and total connection is impossible. "I feel like you're standing behind a wall, just this sheet of glass, and I can't reach you," he says. It's a fear that's echoed in the ever shifting but unbridgeable physical distance between them, which we see in the long shots. When they pass each other onstage, it's as if they were two planets, skirting perigee, on different trajectories. In Zoom close up, in which they're confined to separate frames, they seem especially alone because Foy's and Smith's faces are such legible maps to the contrasting ways their characters think. Though they talk a lot her, especially it's their silence that keeps resonating, with the desire to know, to truly know another person. Many of us have never been more aware of that longing, with its insistent pain and hope, than during these months of pandemic. That there's a touch of divinity in this noble, futile aspiration is confirmed by the play's final image. See it and weep.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Theater
LOS ANGELES It was supposed to be a rare quarter of weakness for Disney, with analysts fretting about higher programming costs at ESPN and a comedown from last year's "Frozen" fueled highs. Reflecting the vastness of its entertainment empire, the Walt Disney Company on Tuesday reported a 10 percent increase in profit, beating analyst expectations by a wide margin. The expected declines in movie and cable network income were offset by substantial quarterly growth in theme parks, a cruise line, television production, the ABC television network, consumer products and digital media. "Disney does have the virtue of being the most diversified Big Media company," Doug Creutz, an analyst at Cowen Company, wrote in a research note on Tuesday. Disney reported net income for its second fiscal quarter of 2.11 billion, or 1.23 a share, an increase from 1.92 billion, or 1.08 a share, in the same period a year earlier. Analysts had expected 1.10 a share in the most recent quarter.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Media
VASILY GROSSMAN AND THE SOVIET CENTURY By Alexandra Popoff On Feb. 14, 1961, Vasily Grossman's novel "Life and Fate" was arrested. K.G.B. agents confiscated several copies of the manuscript in Grossman's Moscow apartment, as well as others in his friends' apartments and the editorial offices of two journals. Grossman himself, a famous war correspondent and author of other celebrated novels, was not arrested. But "Life and Fate" was not published in the Soviet Union until 1988 , 24 years after Grossman died at the age of 58, and even then only in an abridged version. Presenting a vast panorama of World War II centered on the story of several individual heroes, "Life and Fate" has been compared to Tolstoy's "War and Peace." It is not a literary masterpiece; Boris Pasternak regarded only "60 pages" in Grossman's earlier 600 page novel, "For the Right Cause" (which foreshadowed the first part of "Life and Fate"), as "genuine." The Russian poet Polina Barskova, who has written about Grossman, reports that Anna Akhmatova apparently did not bother to read "For the Right Cause." But "Life and Fate" was a political bombshell. It was the first Soviet work to equate Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, the two totalitarian regimes that confronted each other as enemies in the war. The pairing of late Stalinist anti Semitism with Hitler's extermination of the Jews was devastating. Mikhail Suslov, the Kremlin's gray cardinal in charge of ideology, told Grossman: "Your book contains direct parallels between us and Hitlerism. ... Your book speaks positively about religion, God, Catholicism. Your book defends Trotsky. Your book is filled with doubts about the legitimacy of our Soviet system. ... Your book is incomparably more dangerous to us than 'Doctor Zhivago.'" The official Soviet Writers Union informed Grossman that his novel might someday be considered publishable, but "perhaps not for 250 years." The story of "Life and Fate," as told in "Vasily Grossman and the Soviet Century" by Alexandra Popoff, a former Soviet journalist, is gripping. Equally revealing is the rest of Grossman's biography: He was a celebrated Soviet writer who turned against the Soviet regime but tried to express his doubts within the limits it allowed. He was neither an apologist nor a dissident; like so many Soviet intellectuals, he led an often tormented "double" life. Grossman trained to be a chemical engineer, but found his calling as a writer in the 1930s, reporting how workers were faring during the first two Five Year Plans. Almost immediately he had to cope with censors who banned several of his short stories, but Maxim Gorky, the famous writer who briefly became a key arbiter of taste in the early '30s, took a liking to Grossman and his work. Grossman managed to avoid arrest during Stalin's purges, even after his wife, Olga, was seized in 1938 but then released. By the end of the '30s he had fewer illusions about Stalinism and, as a result, was writing "for the desk drawer." Meanwhile, however, his novel "Stepan Kolchugin" appeared in installments in 1939 40 and was wildly popular. By the end of a decade marred by collectivization and terror, Grossman, remembered a close friend, seemed a happy man: "He had literary success ... interesting and intelligent friends, and a beautiful wife." The war further elevated Grossman's reputation. Reporting from the front for three years, including the blood bath at Stalingrad, he conveyed the horrors of war as well as the incredible resilience of Russian soldiers and civilians. His 1942 novel, "The People Immortal," depicting a people's war rather than one whose main hero was Stalin, inspired the troops and was republished several times. But his wartime notebooks, containing material he would later use in novels like "Life and Fate," portrayed chaos, incompetence and devastating defeats for which Stalin's draconian, reckless leadership was largely responsible. In the fall of 1941 Grossman wrote to Olga, "I've become a different person." A year later he wrote from Stalingrad, "I've never felt so deeply as I do now." In the midst of war, he jousted with editors of the military newspaper Red Star, who wanted to reshape his reporting from the front. Yet fame and fortune continued to tempt him. When the 1942 Stalin Prize went to Ilya Ehrenburg's novel "The Fall of Paris," rather than to "The People Immortal," Grossman confessed he was "very upset and offended," especially since Stalin himself was said to have vetoed Grossman's candidacy. When Grossman's dear friend Semyon Lipkin later warned him there was "no hope" that "Life and Fate" would be published, Grossman insisted on submitting it anyway to a hard line Communist editor, no less. As told by Popoff, the stories behind Grossman's stories, particularly of censors' efforts to alter and limit them, are fascinating. Censors wanted to delete a scene of a Soviet battery commander dying in a pool of black blood (too gruesome, they said; also, the commander was Jewish) from an article about the Battle of Kursk, the war's biggest tank battle. Grossman's editor, who managed to save the description, was soon fired. Grossman's "Ukraine Without Jews," depicting what was left after Nazi extermination, was suppressed entirely. "The Hell of Treblinka," about the death factory Grossman entered just after it was liberated, made it into print unchanged. But "The Complete Black Book of Russian Jewry" was banned. It was prepared by Grossman and Ehrenburg along with members of the Jewish Anti Fascist Committee, who were mobilized in 1942 to support the Soviet war effort but were charged and executed after the war as "spies." Grossman succeeded in getting much, but far from all, of "For the Right Cause" into print; he had to revise it 10 times and obey instructions such as: "Take out Malenkov"; "Take out Stalindorf" (residents of a Jewish agricultural colony eliminated by Stalin); stress "the Party, not only the people." The novel's final installment was published in October 1952, a mere five months before Stalin's death. But in January 1953, Grossman signed an open letter demanding extreme punishment for Jewish physicians accused of trying to murder Kremlin leaders in the so called "Doctors' Plot." Although the open letter wasn't published, Grossman never forgave himself. Popoff describes Grossman in his last years as "impoverished, dejected, lonely." But the dying writer managed to finish one more novel, "Everything Flows," which he had begun drafting in 1955. It included a devastating portrait of Stalin's collectivization campaign that led to the death of millions of peasants in the 1930s, tracking some who returned from the labor camps after Stalin's death. The book's main message is "there is no end in the world for the sake of which it is permissible to sacrifice human freedom." Putin's Russia, too, has found reasons to sacrifice human freedom. Grossman's books are available, but not widely, in a regime that legitimizes itself by glorifying the Russian past and especially the Soviet Union's victory in World War II. Popoff's book has its flaws: Its writing can be labored and she too often assumes that characters in Grossman's novels and stories can be considered stand ins for him. But her emphasis on what she calls "the connection between totalitarian regimes and political ignorance" not only applies to Soviet Russia but constitutes a warning for the United States. Popoff quotes Hannah Arendt: "If everybody always lies to you, the consequence is not that you believe the lies, but rather that nobody believes anything any longer. ... And a people that no longer can believe anything cannot make up its mind. It is deprived not only of its capacity to act but also of its capacity to think and to judge. And with such a people, you can do what you please."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Books
Courtney Barnett's deadpan vocal delivery was never much of a mask. Behind her modest tone and her obvious Australian accent, there was always a lyricist who saw both pathos and absurdity in her detailed, self deprecating narratives of everyday life, and a guitarist and bandleader who summoned wordless emotional crosscurrents. Last year, Ms. Barnett collaborated on "Lotta Sea Lice," an album with a similarly unvarnished songwriter, Kurt Vile. It was full of songs as dialogues, teasing out each other's quirks and uncertainties, and in a reworking of a track by Ms. Barnett called "Outta the Woodwork," Mr. Vile sang, "It must be tiring trying so hard/To look like you're not really trying at all." Perhaps Ms. Barnett took it as an admonition. She has sharply altered her tactics to live up to the title of her second solo studio album, "Tell Me How You Really Feel." In her new songs, she sets aside her sly character studies and minutely observed details for direct declarations and confrontations. They're underlined by music that expands on all of her guitar band idioms: growing punkier, more psychedelic, dronier and noisier as the songs demand. Ms. Barnett, 30, is stubbornly grounded in hand played, not overly processed rock that traces a throughline from 1960s folk rock and garage rock to 1970s punk to 1980s indie rock to 1990s grunge. It's retro but still vital, a style that has lately been rekindled largely through bands led by women. Courtney Barnett's second solo studio album is "Tell Me How You Really Feel." Ms. Barnett's new songs sound like conversations she's having with herself, her intimates and, in one song (the Pretenders tinged "Nameless, Faceless"), the anonymous internet trolls who "Sit alone at home in the darkness/With all the pent up rage that you harness." As guitars surge in its chorus she wonders, not idly, if verbal abuse could become actual assault, paraphrasing Margaret Atwood: "Men are scared that women will laugh at them," she sings. "Women are scared that men will kill them." "Tell Me How You Really Feel" is in many ways, an anthology of contention: lovers' quarrels, negotiations with associates and friends, and arguments that are as much with herself as with others. "I get most self defensive when I know I'm wrong," she admits in a raw voiced, feedback laced stomp called "I'm Not Your Mother, I'm Not Your Bitch"; the title sounds defiant, but in the song it's followed by an unexpected attribution, "I hear you mutter under your breath." Even in conflict, Ms. Barnett stays levelheaded; she can't help seeing multiple sides of every situation. In "Need a Little Time," she tries to sort out a tense relationship with apologies, interventions and eventually withdrawal: "I need a little time out/From me, me, me, me and you." Amid the fuzz toned tunefulness of "Charity," she tries to cope with someone's mood swings by offering sympathy ("You don't have to pretend you're not scared/everyone else is just as terrified as you"), placation and cheerleading ("Everything's amazing!"), even as she starts feeling "so subservient I make myself sick." And in "Walkin' on Eggshells," which harks back to the Neil Young of "Harvest," she realizes "I don't wanna hurt your feelings/So I say nothing." But then she urges, "Say what you mean to say." All those ambivalences govern the music, too. Ms. Barnett sticks to the indie rock basics of guitars, bass and drums, with a keyboard now and then, and it's all the palette she needs. She plays raucous, untamed lead guitar in "Charity" and "Help Your Self"; in "City Looks Pretty," a song about post tour letdown, she and the guitarist Dan Luscombe stack up frantic, droning strummed guitars that telegraph both nervous energy and homebound stasis. The album ends with "Sunday Roast," a tentative offer of reconciliation after all the friction of the previous songs: "Keep on keepin' on, y'know you're not alone/And I know all your stories but I'll listen to them again." Reverb envelops a steady state drumbeat and a circular guitar picking pattern; there are ripples of tension but the outcome is soothing. The song that opens the album, "Hopefulessness," signals all its ambitions but insists on its sense of proportion. It revolves around an repeated, unhurried, rising and falling guitar line, and its lyrics hold a lesson: "Your vulnerability, stronger than it seems." It's mostly a drone with a crescendo, patiently but inexorably building "getting louder now," Ms. Barnett sings truthfully. Near the end a sound appears, high and scratchy and insistent, raising the tension as the guitar feeds back. At the end the sound persists, alone and, it turns out, mundane: It's a teakettle at a boil.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Music
A good pair of walking shoes is a must on vacations where sightseeing by foot is on the agenda, and travelers today have their pick of footwear that's both comfortable and stylish. The lightweight oxford shoes Cole Haan has for both men and women as part of its ZeroGrand line, for example, are easy on the feet because their cushioning absorbs the impact that happens when the heel and the ball of the foot hit the ground with each step. They're available in different colors and constructed of either leather or ultrasoft suede. 138 to 328. Creative Recreation, a brand of fashionable and functional shoes, has the Cesario Lo Woven collection for men, made of woven polyester. Available in black, navy, red/white or black/gray, they weigh seven ounces and have impact absorbing cushioning. 75. The athletics brand New Balance has a category of Lifestyle sneakers for both genders that wear like a regular sneaker but are meant for walking, not working out; several of the 100 or so styles are available in trendy colors such as deep red, patterns like herringbone and materials such as leather and suede. 75 to 400.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Travel
In Korean, "Hello" (ahnyoung hasehyo) literally translates to "Are you at peace?" This question greeting is delivered as a statement, of course, but a certain poignancy can't be ignored especially if one considers the violent history of the Korean Peninsula. This slice of land, with China and Japan on either side and Russia in the far north, has suffered invasions, wars, colonialism, occupation and military dictatorships. And South Korea itself, known (without irony) as the Land of the Morning Calm, has as its upstairs neighbor a spoiled tyrant with trapezoidal hair who boasts too often of his small cache of nuclear weapons. Much Korean blood has been shed, and sometimes the bloodletting has been inflicted by the peninsula's own people. In early 1980, after the assassination of the authoritarian South Korean president Park Chung hee (father to current president Park Geun hye, now under impeachment), the nation which had been living under limited martial law seemed destined for change. The economy was declining. Demonstrations were on the rise. Students, professors, artists and laborers ordinary unarmed citizens protested and demanded a fair and free election and the lifting of martial law. Park's protege Gen. Chun Doo hwan saw an opportunity to maneuver himself into the Blue House. Chun seized power and, using the North Korea card, declared full martial law throughout the nation. He shut down universities, banned political activity and arrested student leaders as well as political rivals. Order was established in most of the country, but not in Gwangju. In Gwangju, a city located some 160 miles south of Seoul, troops brutally and indiscriminately assaulted not only protesters but bystanders too. Gwangju, however, fought back. Arming themselves any way they could, Gwangju residents forced out the military, and for five days in May the city practiced self governance. Mothers cooked meals for the community, taxi drivers shuttled pro democracy rebels wherever they needed to go. Some residents stood in long lines to donate blood, and some, as young as middle schoolers, helped care for and identify the bodies. This is where 's novel "Human Acts" begins. Dong ho, a 15 year old boy in search of the corpse of his best friend, ends up volunteering at the municipal gymnasium, where some of the corpses are being stored. Han is smart to focus not on the gruesomeness of Dong ho's work which would be redundant, melodramatic and expected but on its mundanity: "There was nothing technically difficult about the tasks you'd been assigned. Seun ju and Eun sook had already done most of the heavy work, which involved covering plywood or Styrofoam boards with plastic, then lifting the corpses on top of these boards. They also washed the necks and faces with a cloth, ran a comb through the matted hair to tidy it a bit, then wrapped the bodies in plastic in an effort to combat the smell. In the meantime, you made a note in your ledger of gender, approximate age, what clothes they were wearing and what brand of shoes, and assigned each corpse a number. You then wrote the same number on a scrap of paper, pinned it to the corpse's chest, and covered them up to the neck with one of the white cloths."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Books
Last year, Patches the dachshund earned the nickname Little Unicorn after she developed a large tumor that jutted out of her forehead. Now, with the tumor gone, her Pennsylvania family calls her Titanium Top. Those terms of endearment for the 9 year old dog trace the narrative of how Patches became a case study in 3 D medical printing, a developing frontier in the field of reconstruction surgery in animals. In March, American and Canadian veterinarians removed a tumor from Patches's head that was so large they had to carve out as much as 70 percent of her skull. "The plate fit," said Dr. Michelle Oblak, a veterinary surgical oncologist with the University of Guelph's Ontario Veterinary College, who worked on Patches during the operation at Cornell University College of Veterinary Medicine in Ithaca, N.Y. "It was quite jagged, so we had to follow the contour of the tumor." Although the technology has existed since the 1980s, 3 D printers have been used in clinical applications only in recent years, mostly in veterinary teaching hospitals, according to a 2014 article in The Journal of the American Veterinary Medical Association. The technology is used to make 3 D models from two dimensional CT scans before operations on animals like horses and dogs, enabling surgeons to plot their approach before the first incision is even made. "We use it for surgical planning," said Dr. Frank Verstraete, a surgeon at the University of California, Davis, whose team has done dozens of lower jaw reconstructions. "It saves us time in the actual operating room." 3 D printing has also been used to make implants that replace damaged mandibles and leg bones, such as one placed in a young German shepherd with a limb deformity at Cornell in 2009. But it has not entered mainstream use in surgery in small veterinary clinics. The costs associated with 3 D printed custom implants in surgery for disfigured or injured animals can be prohibitive. But some animals will not survive without such an implant. That was the case with Patches, according to the team that worked on her. Patches started to develop a small bump on her head several years ago, said Danielle Dymeck, a corrections officer in Pennsylvania who has raised the dog since she was 2 months old. The bump did not seem to bother Patches when she chased cows or frolicked with Ms. Dymeck's grandchildren. But it grew quickly, alarming the family. Their local veterinarian referred them to Cornell University, where Dr. Galina Hayes, an assistant professor, took on a leading role in the treatment in February. Patches's tumor soon became so large it "ran out of room on the top of her head," Ms. Dymeck said. It started to invade the eye cavity and press inward onto the brain, Dr. Oblak said. "It was like a big orange on her forehead," she said. Like the Science Times page on Facebook. Sign up for the Science Times newsletter. The tumor was so widespread that the veterinarians could see they needed to carve out more than half of the skull bone. But then they had to decide how to cover the vast gap. A common plate made of titanium mesh would leave too much of Patches's brain vulnerable to being compressed if it were hit by something. "And that would be the end of Patches," Dr. Hayes said. While there are off the shelf implants, custom made 3 D implants are particularly good for dogs, Dr. Oblak said, because their skulls vary in shape, from the flat snouts of boxers to the long ones of greyhounds. So the veterinarians settled on a custom 3 D printed titanium implant. On March 22, Patches went into the operating room. The team used a high speed drill to cut around the tumor so it could be removed without damaging the brain. "We popped the plate on," Dr. Oblak said. "It was amazing. It fit like a glove." The operation took about four hours. Ms. Dymeck said that she paid the medical costs but that the implant was provided by Adeiss, a Canadian company. The procedure was highlighted in an article by The Canadian Press on Sunday. Ms. Dymeck said Patches had an unrelated back injury and recently had seizures, but the family does not know if the seizures are related to the skull surgery. "She is doing really well," she said. Dr. Verstraete, who said the Cornell operation was an "interesting development," said his team uses commercially available implants in work that has involved mostly jaw reconstruction.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Science
Fall for Dance, New York City Center's beloved annual festival, celebrates its 15th anniversary in October with six world premieres and appearances by ballet stars including Sara Mearns, Justin Peck and Herman Cornejo. "When we launched the first Fall for Dance, I could not have imagined it would still be a thriving institution 15 seasons later," Arlene Shuler, City Center's president and chief executive, said in a statement. Tickets cost just 15 and typically sell out quickly. (They go on sale at 11 a.m. on Sept. 9.) The festival has five programs, running from Oct. 1 through 13, and the premieres begin with the first one: an evening with a new work by Caleb Teicher, and performances by Boston Ballet, Compagnie Herve Koubi and Sara Mearns. Ms. Mearns, a principal at New York City Ballet, will reprise "Dances of Isadora," a tribute to the modern dance pioneer Isadora Duncan. Up next is a program of two premieres, one by Gemma Bond and the other by Justin Peck performed by Mr. Peck and the former Miami City Ballet star Patricia Delgado and set to music by the National. Paul Taylor Dance Company will also appear, as well as Pam Tanowitz Dance, performing from Ms. Tanowitz's "New Work for Goldberg Variations," a collaboration with the pianist Simone Dinnerstein.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Dance
The church, the actual building that houses black bodies and souls, stands at the center of black life and culture. It is a fact hiding in plain sight that one of the first cooperative economic ventures former slaves undertook was the purchase and maintenance of churches. Without the cooperation of the church, many black colleges, universities and political organizations would not exist. To this day, American black Christians attend church at a higher rate than any other ethnic group. It is not then surprising that when terrorists wanted to strike fear in the hearts of black believers, they burn and attack our churches. Despite the trauma, the church has remained a source of hope. The marches and sit ins of the civil rights movement were often preceded by mass worship services. But what happens when the church is a part of the danger? With the novel coronavirus spreading rapidly, this is not simply a question for individual church members. The pandemic forces the church as an institution to consider its role during a time of crisis. Many religious communities are suspending their typical operations. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints has stopped services worldwide. The Catholic Church in Rome shuttered its doors temporarily. Much of Washington State has done the same. What should we think about this? Are Christians abandoning their responsibility to the sick and suffering? Some Christians may be tempted to look back on their history of remaining physically present during times of distress. Starting around 250 A.D., A.D., a plague that at its height was said to kill 5,000 people a day ravaged the Roman empire. The Christians stood out in their service to the infirm. Because they believed that God was sovereign over death, they were willing to minister to the sick even at the cost of their lives. This witness won many to the Christian cause. Should we follow their example and gather to celebrate in word and ritual, in the sermon as well as the bread and the wine? Doctors and nurses of faith can indeed draw upon this story today to inspire them to tend to those sickened by the pandemic. What about the rest of us? This remains certain in the ever shifting narrative of Covid 19: the most effective ways of stopping the spread of the virus is by social distancing (avoiding large gatherings) and good personal hygiene (washing our hands). The data suggests that what the world needs now is not our physical presence, but our absence. This does not seem like the stuff of legend. What did the church do in the year of our Lord 2020 when sickness swept our land? We met in smaller groups, washed our hands and prayed. Unglamorous as this is, it may be the shape of faithfulness in our time. There is a lesson here for a diminished church. It is not that the church should go away forever, but that heroic virtue comes in small actions as much as in large ones. We live in an age of self assertion, where everyone is yelling, "Pay attention to me because I am the only one who can help." But part of the Christian message is that God comes to us in ways that defy our expectations. The all powerful empties himself of power to become a child. Jesus as king does not conquer his enemies through violence, he converts them to his cause by meeting violence with sacrificial love. The church's absence, its literal emptying, can function as a symbol of its trust in God's ability to meet us regardless of the location. The church remains the church whether gathered or scattered. It might also indirectly remind us of the gift of gathering that we too often take for granted. Recently, I came home from a trip out of state and my son ran to the door to greet me shouting, "Daddy, daddy!" He jumped into my arms and gave me a hug with all the strength his 5 year old body could muster. The absence had made the return home that much sweeter. It reminded me that my life was not out there speaking to crowds and trying to impress strangers. My life was at home among friends and family. I do not know when I will be able to take the bread and wine without hesitancy with the members of my church, but when I do I hope that I match my son's joy. My daughter came to my office nearly in tears today because the piano concert that she had been preparing for the entire year had been canceled. To comfort her, I told her that her small sacrifice and many others like it might save the lives of people she will never meet. Through our diligence we could provide elderly couples with more years to enjoy together. It could mean more Christmases and Thanksgivings in which children get to know their grandparents and hear stories of what their parents were like when they were young. Our adjustments now will allow younger people with chronic illness a chance for a full life. If we believe that all life is sacred, from conception to death, the entirety of our lives even the last years is of tremendous value. Regardless of our beliefs, the one experience common to all humanity is that we die. In that we share a kinship. But Christians can, through their actions and faith, lodge their protest against this great enemy, not as a shaking of one's fist at the wind, but as testimony to the greater hope of the eventual defeat of death itself. The thing we must always struggle to discern is the proper shape of that testimony. When I was younger, I had an aunt stay with us for a few days who was afflicted with H.I.V. I was only a child and the information was hazy and jumbled in my developing mind. I do remember vividly sitting at our dinner table eating fries with a little too much ketchup. She came and sat next to me and asked if she could have some. I was afraid. What if she had a cut on her lip and bled into the fries and I wouldn't be able to tell? Could it be spread through saliva? I was terrified, but I loved my aunt more than I feared her disease. So we ate fries together and I swallowed my terror. That hasty communion is my lasting memory of her. During the AIDS epidemic, many churches showed their solidarity by sharing the bread and the wine with the infected to show that there was nothing to fear. Today, it may be that we show our solidarity by not sharing. The Gospel of John recounts Jesus' words to his disciples in the upper room before his death. During this final discourse, he tells them that it is better that he goes away so that the comforter (the Holy Spirit) would come. The point is that the loss of his physical presence through his death, resurrection and ascension would lead to an even deeper communion with God. It is possible that, strangely enough, the absence of the church will be a great testimony to the presence of God in our care for our neighbors. Esau McCaulley ( esaumccaulley) is an assistant professor of New Testament at Wheaton College and a priest in the Anglican Church in North America, where he serves as the director of the Next Generation Leadership Initiative. 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
Dr. Huchuan Xia and his partner, Erik Lorenz, put their makeshift nuptials into another gear. Dr. Xia, who is known as Cedric, and Mr. Lorenz were married May 10 in a Quaker self uniting ceremony in Philadelphia. The couple cycled a total of three hours across nine miles to seven outdoor locations around their adopted city that were both photogenic and personally meaningful to them. At each of these locations or stations, as they called it the freewheeling couple were joined by one or two friends to celebrate in keeping with rules to avoid large crowds during the coronavirus pandemic. "By deconstructing a traditional wedding, we performed one wedding ritual at each station, drawn from either the German or Chinese traditions," said Dr. Xia, 29, a trainee in psychiatry at the University of Pennsylvania, where he received a Ph.D. in neuroscience. He graduated from Washington University in St. Louis. Dr. Xia was born in Sichuan, China, and raised in Shanghai; Mr. Lorenz, born and raised in Berlin. At their first station, in Clark Park in West Philadelphia, Dr. Xia and Mr. Lorenz, 32, enjoyed their first dance, to a violin version of Elvis Presley's "Can't Help Falling in Love," provided by a friend from Dr. Xia's Ph.D. program. "It was a beautiful moment," said Mr. Lorenz, the host and founder of Weltwach Podcast, and Unfolding Maps. He graduated from Fontys University of Applied Sciences in the Netherlands and received a master's degree in business and management from University of Plymouth in Britain. They were soon back on their rented, Indego city bikes, the baskets in the front and rear of each decorated with tulips, lilies and chrysanthemum. As they headed to the second station on the University of Pennsylvania campus, the "Just Married" cans tied to the backs of each bike began making a ruckus to the delight of passers by.h At the third station, the Promenade, near the Fairmount Water Works with a splendid view of the Boathouse Row, the couple sawed a small log into halves together, symbolizing marriage as teamwork. They made their way to the fourth station, at the top of what Mr. Lorenz called "the Rocky steps," made famous in the first "Rocky" film, starring Sylvester Stallone. Mr. Lorenz, a huge fan of the movies growing up in Berlin, chose that station as the place to exchange vows with Dr. Xia. "We had family and friends watching our wedding via Zoom," Mr. Lorenz said. "We learned that when we pushed our bikes to the top of the steps, and raised our arms in triumph like Rocky did in the movie, that many viewers, who likely interpreted that as the two of us celebrating our perseverance through Covid 19, started crying." The fifth station was the Love Park, situated under the big love sculpture of the City of Brotherly Love. There, the couple had to bite a dangling apple together, a popular wedding game in China. The sixth station was at Independence Hall, where three pairs of friends lined up, at least six feet apart, and showered the newlyweds with rice.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Fashion & Style
How do we know that Mark Zuckerberg, chief executive of Facebook and man currently under scrutiny, really does feel contrite and humbled by his company's failure to protect users' personal data, as he said during his testimony before Congress on Tuesday? Well, he donned, if not a penitent's robes, then what seems like his equivalent: a suit and tie. It began on Monday, when Mr. Zuckerberg made the rounds of congressional leaders in a dark suit, white shirt and ink blue tie. On Tuesday, when he took his seat on the committee room floor, the suit was navy, and the tie was Facebook blue. It was somber. It was on brand. And for someone who has made a professional and personal signature out of the plain gray tee and jeans who has posted pictures of the row of gray T shirts and hoodies hanging in his closet on his Facebook page; whose success has made those gray tees and hoodies into shorthand for a new generation of disrupters, as aspirational an outfit as a Savile Row suit once was it was as much a visual statement of renunciation and respect as any verbal apology. Cosmetic, perhaps. Superficial, sure. Presumably once he is back on the West Coast he'll go right back to hoodies and tees. But it was strategic and optically effective nonetheless. It said to suspicious, establishment lawmakers: I am in your house, I will accept your rules. It said, O.K., maybe we in Silicon Valley really don't know best. It said: I acknowledge the responsibility I bear and take this seriously. It acceded to the general interpretation that this was a growing up moment, because in the iconography of clothing, the suit is the costume of the grown up, while the T shirt is the costume of the teenager, the off duty, the breaker of rules. It took away one of the signifiers of difference between the old guard and the new, and replaced it with an olive branch of similarity. (Mr. Zuckerberg's suit and tie almost matched the suit and tie worn by John Thune, Republican of South Dakota, the chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee.) And it closed off an avenue of attack; the day before Mr. Zuckerberg's testimony, Larry Kudlow, President Trump's new chief economic adviser, had said to reporters who asked about regulating Facebook: "Is he going to wear a suit and tie and clean white shirt? That's my biggest question. Is he going to behave like an adult, as a major corporate leader, or give me this phony baloney what is it? hoodies and dungarees?" Mr. Zuckerberg "knew people would be on the lookout" for the answer, said Joseph Rosenfeld, a personal style adviser who specializes in the tech world in Silicon Valley and New York, and whose clients work at companies such as Apple, Intuit and Google. This was not, of course the first time Mr. Zuckerberg has worn a suit. It's just that it is seemingly possible to count on two hands the times he has done so: always on public occasions and (not counting his wedding) always when heads of state or other dignitaries are involved. He wore a suit, for example, to address the G8 summit in France in 2011; to the state dinner for Chinese President Xi Jinping in 2015; to interview Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi at Facebook the same year; and to testify in a Dallas courtroom during the Oculus intellectual property trial in 2017. Still, it is such a rarity that former President Barack Obama made a joke out of it in a 2011 Facebook Town Hall, referring to an earlier meeting and calling himself "the guy who got Mark to wear a jacket and tie." And though we know the utterly plain gray cotton T shirts and hoodies Mr. Zuckerberg favors are not nearly as simple as they seem they come from Brunello Cucinelli, an Italian brand that specializes in what might be called utopian casual, and begin at about 295 (for the tee) it's a mystery where he gets his suits. Much was written about his wife's wedding dress after their wedding, but there was little about his dark suit. A Facebook spokeswoman declined to comment on his choice of suit for Congress. Mr. Rosenfeld said he had no idea of the maker or whether Mr. Zuckerberg was getting outside advice. A quick survey of my colleagues who work in Silicon Valley elicited only puzzlement. But over the years Mr. Zuckerberg's suits have gotten skinnier, the ties narrower, the aesthetic less uncomfortable kid in Dad's borrowed suit. That makes sense. Mr. Zuckerberg understands the role of image in communication. Facebook is, after all, a platform built largely on pictures. As Peter Thiel, the venture capitalist and Silicon Valley billionaire, wrote in his 2014 book, "Zero to One": "It's a cliche that tech workers don't care about what they wear." He went on: "Everybody from slackers to yuppies carefully 'curates' their outward appearance." Certainly Mr. Zuckerberg has publicly acknowledged, a few times, the very conscious way he uses clothes. Just because he is known for wearing the same thing every day doesn't mean he doesn't think about fashion or how what he wears gets interpreted. In fact, it is exactly the opposite. His Facebook timeline of "Life Events" includes the milestone "Wore a tie for a year" in 2009, along with "became a vegetarian" (in 2011) and "Married Priscilla Chan" (2012). "I wanted to signal to everyone at Facebook that this was a serious year for us," he wrote in an post about the tie wearing. "My tie was the symbol of how serious and important a year this was, and I wore it every day to show this."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Fashion & Style
Volkswagen has been languishing in the United States. While its Audi luxury division has done well, the VW brand itself has been losing sales traction. Despite loudly proclaimed high ambitions in 2009 VW announced its intention to triple its United States sales and large investments in American production facilities, sales fell 13 percent in the first six months of this year, according to Automotive News, compared with the first half of 2013. And that decline came as most mainstream brands were growing. Nissan was up 13 percent. Chevrolet, despite all those recalls, gained 1 percent. And Subaru, once a marginal also ran, jumped 16 percent, selling 238,008 vehicles to VW's 179,144. Some of VW's lackluster sales can be attributed to poor reliability ratings in surveys by Consumer Reports and others. Some is due to the company's inability to develop products with lasting appeal in this market. Either way, the wind is out of VW's sails, and its sales. So here is the Jetta GLI, the most sporting, most expensive version of VW's best selling car in America. My test car was practically blinding in Tornado Red paint, riding on a set of luscious 18 inch alloy wheels a bold machine in a compact sector where most sedans are dressed in gentle gray, somnambulant silver or passive pewter. The GLI is a car built to add excitement to the line. The wheels are part of an Edition 30 package that celebrates the 30th anniversary of the GLI. (The Jetta itself has been around since 1979.) It looks suitably Germanic, and VW likes to boast that it was engineered in Germany, but the Jettas sold in the United States are assembled at VW's huge plant in Puebla, Mexico. The Edition 30 treatment includes a red line across the grille, a trunk lid spoiler, some contrasting upholstery stitching, a few bits of carbon fiber trim and the critically important Edition 30 badging. So if you love red lines on your grille, buy an Edition 30 right now; it's unlikely that there will be an Edition 31 next year. The formula for the GLI has always been straightforward. Since the Jetta has essentially been a Golf with a trunk, and the Golf GTI is a Golf with more power and better handling, it is easy to apply the distinctive GTI parts to the Jetta. The current Jetta, which was thoroughly redesigned for the 2011 model year, isn't as closely related to the Golf as previous models had been, but the two cars are still close. The test car was a Jetta GLI Edition 30 With Navigation (yes, that's the proper name) with a 30,595 sticker price including an oppressive 820 delivery charge and no options. The GLI shares its turbocharged, direct injected 4 cylinder engine, which makes 210 horsepower, with the GTI. The same 2 liter engine can be found in the Audi A3 quattro and the A4, producing 220 horsepower in a slightly different state of tune. And for no apparent reason, opting for the navigation system also brings along "Bi Xenon" headlights with LED daytime running lights and halogen fog lights that come on to throw additional lumens into turns. I refuse to pass along rumors that Bi Xenons will soon invade the Earth and enslave us all. In contrast, the basic Jetta S, powered by a naturally aspirated 115 horsepower 2 liter engine, starts at 17,715. One step up is the 19,715 SE powered by a turbocharged 170 horsepower 1.8 liter 4 cylinder. So the GLI Edition 30 flies high over lesser Jettas. But there's still a lot of 18,000 Jetta S in this 30,000 GLI. The interior decoration isn't just austere, it's severe. The dashboard shapes are simple, the controls are straightforward and what decoration exists is easy to overlook. There's nothing about the controls that's illogical or frustrating, but there's nothing memorable either. Then there are the door panels, which are hard and unyielding. Softer textures there would make the whole cockpit feel richer and more comfortable. Beyond that, the navigation screen is a puny five inches and the menus one has to scroll through to get anything done are obscure. I never did get my iPhone 5S to synch with the GLI's Bluetooth system. The "leatherette" front seats aren't as supportive as they should be, and for no apparent reason are not the same ones used in the GTI. But things impove when the start button low on the center console is pressed, the engine whirs to life and settles into a deceptively anonymous idle. Deceptive simply because this engine is flat wonderful. Flat, like its torque curve. While the 210 horsepower rating seems modest the Ford Focus ST's 2 liter turbo engine is rated at 252 horsepower the 207 pound feet of peak torque is available way down at 1,700 r.p.m. and then keeps on pulling. There are moments when snicking through the light shifting 6 speed manual transmission seems almost superfluous. The low end torque production is so easygoing that it doesn't matter that the engine's redline the upper limits of safe operation is only 6,100 rpm. If the stick shift is too much work, a dual clutch 6 speed automated transmission is also available for another 1,100. Car and Driver magazine tested a manual transmission 2013 Jetta GLI when the engine was rated at 200 horsepower and achieved a 0 to 60 time of 6.4 seconds. The current car doesn't feel any quicker than that. No surprise that the engine in the new GLI behaves identically to that in the last 2013 GTI that I drove (I haven't sampled the new 2015 GTI.) The chassis, on the other hand, doesn't. While all 2011 Jettas used an inexpensive twist beam axle in back, in 2013 VW wisely upgraded the GLI to the all independent multilink system used in the GTI. All 2014 Jettas now use the multilink system. But despite the improved tail end, the Jetta GLI lacks the Golf GTI's fingertip sensitivity and eagerness to dive into corners. Some of that is due to the 104.4 inch wheelbase, which is almost three inches longer than the last generation GTI, and more of it is likely due to the 16.3 inches of additional overall length. The two cars use electrically assisted rack and pinion steering with the same ratio, and ride on the similar 225/40R18 all season performance tires, but the Jetta feels heavier. There's still fun to be had with the GLI, but it's not as engaging as its little brother. More irritating is a lack of sophistication in the ride quality. There's plenty of room in the Jetta's rear seat, but passengers back there take a beating on bumpy pavement. The harsh ride isn't as noticeable from the front seats, but my wife and children complained loudly about their discomfort. In the back at least, where that big 15.5 cubic foot trunk lives, VW has more stiffly sprung the Jetta GLI than the hatchback GTI. Many of the revisions made to create the Jetta GLI Edition 30 forecast revisions that VW will make to the whole Jetta line for 2015. But they're revisions and not a redesign. What the Jetta GLI lacks is eagerness, a passion that would outshine its conservative design. After all, Tornado Red paint only takes you so far. The GLI is neither a GTI with a trunk, nor a budget alternative to the high style Audi A3. It needs to be at least as compelling as one of those if VW is going to tack into the wind and fill its sails.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Automobiles
The Best Books of 2020: View our full list. The most audacious thing about Barack Obama's new memoir, "A Promised Land," is the beaming portrait on its cover: There he is, the 44th president, looking so serenely confident that it's as if the book weren't arriving on the heels of a bitter election, amid a cratering economy and a raging pandemic. The ebullient image also stands at odds with the narrative inside 700 pages that are as deliberative, measured and methodical as the author himself. Obama says that he initially planned to write a 500 page memoir and be done in a year; what he ended up with instead is a hefty volume (now the first of an anticipated two) that stops in May 2011, shortly after his roasting of Donald Trump at the White House Correspondents' Dinner on April 30 and the killing of Osama bin Laden the day after. Obama's extraordinary first book, "Dreams From My Father," was published in 1995, a year before he was elected to the Illinois senate, and traced his family history alongside his own coming of age. "A Promised Land" is necessarily less intimate and more political, offering close up views of the major issues that Obama faced during his first term, including the economic stimulus, health care, immigration, the environment and the forever war in Afghanistan. Presumably left for the future volume are, among other fraught subjects: the 2016 election, his abdication of his own "red line" in Syria, the entrenchment of the surveillance state and a discussion of drone strikes. This isn't to say that "A Promised Land" reads like a dodge; if anything, its length testifies to what seems to be a consistently held faith on the part of the former president that if he just describes his thinking in sufficient detail, and clearly lays out the constellation of obstacles and constraints he faced, any reasonable American would have to understand why he governed as he did. This book was one of our most anticipated titles of November. See the full list. Nearly every president since Theodore Roosevelt has written a memoir that covers his years in office; this one contains some inevitable moments of reputation burnishing and legacy shaping, though the narrative hews so closely to Obama's own discursive habits of thought that any victories he depicts feel both hard won and tenuous. An adverb he likes to use is "still" placed at the beginning of a sentence, to qualify and counter whatever he said just before. Another favorite is "maybe," as he reflects on alternatives to what happened, offering frank confessions of his own uncertainties and doubts. At a time of grandiose mythologizing, he marshals his considerable storytelling skills to demythologize himself. He addresses the book to the "next generation," to young people who seek to "remake the world," but the story he tells is less about unbridled possibility and more about the forces that inhibit it. He periodically reminds us how he inherited a state of emergency. As one of his friends said after Obama's historic win in 2008, when the economy was getting devoured by the Great Recession: "Two hundred and thirty two years and they wait until the country's falling apart before they turn it over to the brother!" 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. Once in office, Obama sought the help of experienced insiders instead of "fresh talent," deciding that the dire circumstances "demanded it." Obama says he had ambitious ideas for structural change, but that his team insisted that any attempts to mete out some "Old Testament justice" to the banks whose avarice and recklessness had pushed the financial system to the brink would send skittish markets into a full blown panic. But quelling markets did little to quell anger and fear something that conservatives, Obama noticed, were quick to seize on and use to their advantage, while the president deemed it perilous to tap into such incendiary emotions. (This seemed to be an ingrained sensibility: David Maraniss's 2012 biography of Obama has one of his mentors recalling with a touch of exasperation how even when they were doing community organizing in Chicago, Obama was "reluctant to do confrontation, to push the other side because it might blow up.") What could have been politically beneficial to him, Obama takes pains to spell out, would have risked degrading the institutions that needed to be repaired, not demolished. There's a dynamic that Obama describes again and again in "A Promised Land": establishment Republicans shrewdly finding ways to appropriate and exploit the feelings of helplessness and resentment that their own deregulatory policies had helped to bring about in the first place. "If all this seems obvious to me now, it wasn't at the time," Obama writes. "My team and I were too busy." He recalls a Republican senator telling him, "I hate to say it, but the worse people feel right now, the better it is for us." (This senator may have hated to say it, but he loved to see it.) The result was a drubbing in the 2010 midterms, when Democrats lost an astounding 63 seats in the House. About the substance of those first two years in office, Obama expresses few regrets. "We had saved the economy," he writes. "We had stabilized the global financial system and yanked the U.S. auto industry from the brink of collapse." The Affordable Care Act made health care available to another 20 million Americans. The midterms "didn't prove that our agenda had been wrong. It just proved that whether for lack of talent, cunning, charm or good fortune I'd failed to rally the nation, as F.D.R. had once done, behind what I knew to be right." The tone that Obama strikes in lines like these is almost mournful. He shows how a certain kind of blunt candor seemed all but unavailable to him as the first Black president. After he offered the mildest rebuke of the police officer who arrested the scholar Henry Louis Gates Jr. on his own front porch, saying that the officer acted "stupidly," his support among white voters plunged. In public, Obama was unfailingly conciliatory, telling reporters he "could have calibrated my original comments more carefully," even as he began to realize that the issue of Black people and the police was a reminder "that the basis of our nation's social order had never been simply about consent; that it was also about centuries of state sponsored violence by whites against Black and brown people." As much as he knew this, he couldn't say it. His almost zealous commitment to moderation rankled some progressives, who had assumed that his soaring campaign rhetoric meant he was a visionary bent on overturning the status quo. Whenever he felt stuck, he fell back on empathy and "process." They sound like incommensurate traits one is inventive and literary, the other is bland and technocratic. But for Obama who in this book demonstrates an almost compulsive tendency to imagine himself into the lives of others (whether it's Hillary Clinton, John McCain, or, in one passage, a Somali pirate) a sound process "was born of necessity." Decisions that were made after taking into account a variety of perspectives reassured him that he wasn't blinkered by his own. "A Promised Land" isn't entirely about the presidency. The first 200 pages move (comparatively) briskly through Obama's early years to his life in Chicago, when his burgeoning political career put a strain on his marriage to Michelle, who had curtailed some of her own ambitions so that one of them would be present for the couple's daughters. Of course, becoming president didn't yield anything that resembled a work life balance, though it did mean that rather than commute between Chicago and Springfield, Ill., or between Chicago and Washington, he could usually be home for dinner by 6:30 before returning to the Oval Office. He would receive his President's Daily Brief (or as Michelle called it, "The Death, Destruction and Horrible Things Book") at the breakfast table. He happened to be at home in April 2010 when he first got word that an explosion had torn through the Deepwater Horizon, a drilling rig off the Louisiana coast, belching fire and smoke and gushing oil the worst oil spill in the country's history. An underwater video feed showed "the oil pulsing in thick columns from the surrounding wreckage," Obama writes, "like emanations from hell." The novelty and enormity of the disaster shook him. (The technology for ultradeep underwater drilling made the Exxon Valdez look like a Tinkertoy by comparison.) Until then, Obama had maintained a "fundamental confidence" that he "could always come up with a solution through sound process and smart choices." But those "plumes of oil rushing out of a cracked earth and into the sea's ghostly depths" seemed of another order, unassimilable to his generally imperturbable worldview. Even after the hole was plugged and the cleanup was proceeding apace, something awful had been unleashed, with the true extent of the poisoning not yet known. A hundred pages later, Obama remembers how Republicans seemed to get increasingly petulant at the prospect of working with his administration. "It was as if my very presence in the White House had triggered a deep seated panic," he writes, "a sense that the natural order had been disrupted." Trump had been peddling a birtherist conspiracy theory that some conservatives seemed eager to accept. Obama doesn't force the metaphor, but the events described in "A Promised Land" suggest that something very old and toxic in American politics had been unleashed too. It was as if the Republican Party, having sidled up to the jagged shores of white grievance, was starting to founder on them. As he writes of the Deepwater disaster: "Where the rest of the oil ended up, what gruesome toll it took on wildlife, how much oil would eventually settle back onto the ocean floor, and what long term effect that might have on the entire Gulf ecosystem it would be years before we'd have the full picture."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Books
Will This Guy Shut Off the Lights in the Sanders Campaign? Twenty eight years ago, Jeff Weaver was a lowly campaign aide driving an obscure left wing congressional candidate around Vermont in a Yugo. Now, Mr. Weaver is well known enough from his stinging appearances in the press and on television to be slammed by Cher. In April, the singer called JeffWeaver "scum" on Twitter and, with the help of emojis, more scatological epithets. Cher is a devoted Hillary Clinton supporter. Mr. Weaver, 50, is Senator Bernie Sanders's campaign manager and his closest aide and consigliere. As the Democratic race for president winds down, some party strategists have complained that Mr. Weaver is the Vermont senator's enabler in chief, a true believer who could encourage his boss to keep fighting on after the June 14 primary in Washington, D.C., even though Mrs. Clinton has mathematically locked up the nomination. Others think Mr. Weaver may be the one person who can coax Mr. Sanders into a conciliatory stance. He hasn't revealed much yet to reassure either camp. "Sure, there will be a roll call eventually," he said in a phone interview on Friday, referring to the Democratic convention. "My plan until then is to help the senator do whatever he wants to do to further the political revolution." For the moment, at least, Mr. Weaver holds the political world in suspense: Is he going to broker a peace agreement or will he be the last man standing on the Bernie barricades? It's a delicate moment in the Sanders campaign. Like the time's up music that shoos Oscar winners off the stage at the Academy Awards show, the cascade of Clinton endorsements this last week President Obama, Senator Elizabeth Warren, Vice President Joe Biden are drowning out Mr. Sanders's un acceptance speech. On television, Clinton supporters continue to gingerly humor the senator, insisting he should take his time. Mr. Weaver, who is bald, bearded and wears glasses, looks like many other Washington political operatives who roundelay on cable news shows. Since the Sanders campaign started, he has become adept at talk show sparring, but he isn't typical. Instead he is a rather glaring reminder of what has made the Sanders campaign so different and unpredictable. Mr. Weaver had left politics and was running a comic book and gaming store in Falls Church, Va., when Mr. Sanders tapped him for the job; he had never managed a presidential campaign before. (The recorded message on his personal cellphone still takes messages for Victory Comics.) He was an unlikely choice, but possibly the best one for the willful and demanding self described democratic socialist who, after meeting with President Obama on Thursday, assured supporters at a rally in Washington, D.C., that "we are still standing." Mr. Sanders relies on longtime loyalists to work round the clock. Mr. Weaver calls himself Mr. Sanders's lieutenant. (He didn't say Robin, though when pressed he said his favorite superhero is Batman.) "I've worked for Bernie since I was 20 years old, so I am still inspired by what he has to say, but you know I've been with him so long," Mr. Weaver said in a deserted hotel cafeteria on June 7, the day of the California primary. "I think one of the reasons why he asked me is that he knows I know how he thinks," Mr. Weaver said. "I'm here to do what Bernie wants to get done. By and large I understand what that is before he ... " Mr. Weaver paused and changed tack. "Without having to ask him about it." Those who have worked with him on Capitol Hill say he is more influential than he lets on. "He is the one staff person who is both loyal to Bernie Sanders and clearly not intimidated by him in the least," said Luke Albee, a former chief of staff to the Democratic Senators Patrick Leahy of Vermont and Mark Warner of Virginia. Mr. Albee met Mr. Weaver in the 1980s, when Mr. Weaver was a Boston University student lobbying Senator Leahy on behalf of Soviet Jewry. "He didn't look like a typical student," Mr. Albee said. "He was smart, a fast speaker and he looked 40." (Mr. Weaver later left B.U. after being suspended for, among other things, student protests against apartheid.) Mr. Albee said he didn't know in which direction Mr. Weaver would prod Mr. Sanders, if any. "If I were to guess, I would think he wants to come up with a plan to land the plane smoothly," Mr. Albee said. "At least I hope so." Carol Davis, the treasurer for Mr. Sanders's first senate campaign, said she was astounded when Mr. Weaver was appointed campaign manager, but later decided it made sense. "With Bernie and Jeff, it's sometimes hard to tell where one ends and the other begins," she said. And perhaps accordingly, Mr. Weaver has been cast as the heavy in news reports that the dwindling Sanders campaign is riven between die hards and professional consultants who prefer to get back on the good side of the Democratic establishment. Mr. Weaver disagreed. "The senator, he drives this train," Mr. Weaver said. "It's not a staff driven or consultant driven campaign." Mr. Weaver has made enemies on Capitol Hill and inside the Democratic National Committee, but he appears to get along quite well with his opposite number in the Clinton campaign, Robby Mook. In fact, Mr. Mook and Mr. Weaver seem to have the kind of back channel entente and camaraderie that the Soviet foreign minister Eduard Shevardnadze and Secretary of State Jim Baker shared during the Cold War. "I get along with Jeff extraordinarily well," Mr. Mook said, noting that he speaks to Mr. Weaver by phone often. "He is obviously a tough opponent who did a masterful job, but I consider him a good and close colleague." Tad Devine, Mr. Sanders's chief strategist, is described by some political analysts as the insider most eager to make peace with the Clinton forces. Mr. Devine said he thinks of Mr. Weaver as a friend and ally, not a rival. "Jeff looks tough and aggressive on television," Mr. Devine said. "He's smart and he's not afraid to stay stuff. But off camera, he's steady, really smart and good company. We laugh a lot." It was not so jolly inside the Sanders war room on Hollywood Boulevard in Los Angeles on the night of the California primary. The two top aides sat near each other as the returns began coming in, not so much together as in parallel play. Mr. Devine watched CNN on a laptop and made droll comments about the commentators. Mr. Weaver was crouched over a different computer with the campaign's pollster Ben Tulchin, staring at early returns. When asked what other politicians he could work for, Mr. Weaver gave the name of Paul Wellstone, the progressive Minnesota senator who died in a plane crash in 2002. The other name that came to mind was the California representative Barbara Lee, the only member of Congress to vote in 2001 against the authorization of use of force after the Sept. 11 attacks. Post convention, Mr. Weaver could certainly pursue a career as a left of center political commentator. He could also, he joked, make weight loss infomercials, since he has lost 30 pounds during the campaign. He seems to be tickled by his sudden fame, and chuckled about a recent encounter on the MSNBC program "Hardball" with Chris Matthews. When Mr. Matthews scolded Mr. Weaver for not having yet released Mr. Sanders's tax returns, Mr. Weaver pointed out that Mr. Matthews's wife, Kathleen, didn't release their tax returns when she ran for a Congressional seat last year. (Ms. Matthews lost the primary.) Mr. Matthews, clearly taken aback, suggested the analogy was unfair. "This is 'Hardball,' Chris," Mr. Weaver replied evenly. Mr. Weaver, too, has campaigned for office. In 1990, he ran as an independent against the incumbent mayor of St. Albans. His concession words back then could turn out to be prophetic: "People haven't seen the last of Jeff Weaver."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Fashion & Style
Credit...Susan Wright for The New York Times Even without a book or a guide, even after two millenniums of crumbling, the image of the seven branched candelabrum the Jewish menorah is unmistakable on the inner wall of the Arch of Titus in the Roman Forum. Stand at the base of the single passage arch and look up, and the scene in bas relief ripples to life with almost cartoon clarity: Straining porters, trudging along what is plainly the route of a Roman triumph, bear aloft the golden menorah and other sacred loot plundered from the Temple in Jerusalem in 70 A.D. The opposite side of the arch depicts the victory lap of the chief plunderer, Emperor Titus who, as an ambitious young general, crushed the Jews' revolt, leveled their Temple and brought enough booty and slaves back to Rome to finance an epic construction program that included the Colosseum. Turncoat? Asylum seeker? Pragmatic visionary? Historians have long debated Josephus's motives and character. What's indisputable is that most of what is known about the violent encounter between Rome and Judea during this period comes out of his work. What's astonishing is that, with a sharp eye and a bit of research, you can still walk in Josephus's footsteps in contemporary Rome. Where but in the Eternal City is it possible to map a 2,000 year old eyewitness account onto an intact urban fabric? The silvery morning light was soothing on my jet lagged retinas, but traffic was already roaring along Via di San Gregorio as I waited by the gate of the Palatine Hill for Mirco Modolo, the archeologist archivist who had agreed to take me on a walking tour of Flavian Rome. Today this artery is a rather featureless channel running between the Colosseum and the Circus Maximus but Mirco, whose youth and reserve belie a tenacious erudition, reminded me that we were standing on the likely processional route chiseled into the marble of the Arch of Titus and inked even more indelibly on the pages of Josephus's book "The Jewish War." "At the break of dawn," Josephus writes, "Vespasian and Titus issued forth, crowned with laurel and clad in the traditional purple robes, and proceeded to the Octavian walks the Portico d'Ottavia, now a soaring ruin at the edge of the Jewish ghetto ." From the Portico d'Ottavia to the top of the Capitoline Hill, where all proper Roman triumphal processions culminated, is and was a 10 minute stroll. But it is clear from Josephus's account that the imperial entourage took the long way around, circling counterclockwise around the outer precipices of the Palatine before entering the Forum on the side now dominated by the Colosseum. I tried to mentally erase the T shirts and selfie sticks and resurrect the fallen columns. Vespasian and Titus, riding chariots, would have been two dabs of purple surging up the ramparts of the Capitoline through a sea of white togas. In their train, thousands of Jewish slaves shuffled with bowed heads while the heaps of plundered gold and silver bobbed above them, winking in the sun. "Last of all the spoils," writes Josephus, "was carried a copy of the Jewish Law" the Torah. Josephus reveals exactly where these spoils ended up. Vespasian had a new temple the Templum Pacis (Temple of Peace) built adjacent to the Forum where "he laid up the vessels of gold from the temple of the Jews, on which he prided himself; but their Law and the purple hangings of the sanctuary he ordered to be deposited and kept in the palace." The palace, in ancient Rome, meant the Palatine (the word palace derives from the hill's name) and so, as the autumn sunlight brightened from silver to gold, I mounted the imperial summit. After the buzzing, marble strewn congestion of the Forum, the Palatine is like a country stroll. The huge squares of weedy grass and clumps of umbrella pines outlined in brick stubs could almost be farm fields but, in fact, most of the stubs are remains of a colossal royal residence, the Domus Flavia, inaugurated by Vespasian and completed by his wicked, wildly ambitious second son, Domitian. Josephus, whose life spanned all three Flavian emperors, would have come to the Domus Flavia to pay homage to his patrons and perhaps murmur a prayer before the sacred scroll they had cached here. I lingered on the Palatine for half an hour, trying to conjure the nerve center of an empire from its ruins. Somewhere buried under the dandelions and broken shards stood an inlaid niche or marble alcove where the stolen Torah was caged like a captive king. Josephus' footsteps lie closer to the surface in the Templum Pacis. I'd never heard of this monument, though I must have passed its ruins a score of times on the wide glaring Via dei Fori Imperiali (Street of the Imperial Fora) that Mussolini carved out as his own triumphal route between the Colosseum and Piazza Venezia. On my second morning in Rome, Josephus's text in hand, I stood by the railing near the Forum ticket booth and peered down at the ongoing excavations of the temple's sanctuary, arcades, fountains and gardens. Josephus notes that the Templum Pacis, built "very speedily in a style surpassing all human conception," housed not only the spoils of Jerusalem, but "ancient masterpieces of painting and sculpture ... objects for the sight of which men had once wandered over the whole world." These masterpieces have long since vanished, but a wall of the temple still stands at the entrance of the sixth century Basilica of Saints Cosmas and Damiano, now a Franciscan convent. One of the resident brothers, who humbly insisted on anonymity, showed me around. "The Templum Pacis was not only a shrine but a kind of cultural center," he said. "We're standing on the site of the temple's library where the Forma Urbis an immense marble map of the city was displayed." He pointed out a rusty bent spike that once fixed marble veneer to the rough hewed stone. "Go ahead and touch it's been here since the first century A.D." I was itching to get down to the crypt, which covers part of the footprint of the Templum Pacis, but first we ducked into the basilica and took a moment to savor its principal artistic treasure: a shimmering 6th century apse mosaic of Christ surfing roseate clouds flanked by saints. Perhaps I've read too many thrillers, but as I gazed up at this solemnly joyous creation, I imagined a plumb line dropping from the tiles of Christ's outstretched hand and coming to rest, magically, on the exact spot where the menorah had been stashed fanciful, but not impossible. The sacred loot has disappeared without a trace, but a shelf of thrillers could be spun from the theories, myths, sightings and urban legends about where it supposedly ended up: hidden in a cave, glittering on the altar of the Basilica of St. John Lateran, carted off to Constantinople, tossed in the Tiber, and, most recently, squirreled away in a sub subbasement of the Vatican. Alessandro Viscogliosi, a professor of the history of architecture at the University of Rome whom I met toward the end of my stay, has a more plausible though mundane explanation: When the Templum Pacis burned in 191 A.D., the gold and silver vessels melted and were subsequently salvaged and recast, probably as coins. "No one really knows what happened to the stuff," said Steven Fine, a professor of Jewish history at Yeshiva University in New York and the director of the Arch of Titus Project. "There's a common desire to establish continuity through things and certainly the visual environment of Rome fosters this." Copies of Josephus's books likely burned in the fire as well, but the texts survived, thanks in large part to Christian scholars who embraced him for his early, impartial (but much disputed) mentions of the historical Jesus the so called Testimonium Flavianum in "Jewish Antiquities." His fellow Jews, on the other hand, have until recently written Josephus off as a traitor and a Roman sycophant. Still, 1,917 years after his death around 100 A.D., Josephus remains one the most famous Jews of Rome best selling author, confidante of emperors, member of a religious community that was already well established when he arrived in 71 A.D. and is still going strong today with families tracing their lineage "da Cesare," from the time of Caesar. I reflected on Josephus's life and legacy as I made a final trek to the Palatine at the end of my stay. The southwest edge of the hill commands an unforgettable view over the Circus Maximus to the skyline beyond, and in the luminous October haze I picked out the distinctive squared off metallic dome of the Tempio Maggiore the main Jewish synagogue and beyond it, the majestic drum of St. Peter's. Roman, Jewish, Christian: Josephus's footsteps lead us through the time and place where these three spheres aligned most exuberantly, most surprisingly.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Travel
To Sue Founder of Daily Stormer, a Neo Nazi Site, First He Must Be Found For the past five months, a group of litigants has been trying to hold Andrew Anglin, the founder of the neo Nazi website The Daily Stormer, to account for some of his actions. It has not been easy. A team of four people hired by the nonprofit Southern Poverty Law Center to serve Mr. Anglin with notice of a lawsuit accusing him of leading a "troll army" have failed. They scoured parts of Ohio, where Mr. Anglin is from, and talked to his brother; they went to his father's counseling office; they drove around his sister's church. When they saw someone was home at an apartment affiliated with him, they staked it out. "He knows people are trying to serve him," said Teresa Ploesser, who works for Encore Process Service, which the Southern Poverty Law Center hired to find Mr. Anglin. "He knows what he's doing. To avoid service, you've got to be a step ahead." Mr. Anglin, 32, who created The Daily Stormer in 2013, has been a key figure in stoking the resurgent white nationalist movement. His website, billed as "The World's Most Genocidal Republican Website," is a major platform for neo Nazi news and commentary. He has used the site to champion a modern holocaust that would create an American white ethno state and to target individuals whom he sees as enemies. During the white supremacist protests in Charlottesville, Va., this month, Mr. Anglin live blogged the proceedings. Since April, the Southern Poverty Law Center, a legal advocacy and civil rights group, has tried to track down Mr. Anglin for a lawsuit claiming that he used his website to inflict emotional distress on Tanya Gersh, a Jewish real estate agent in Montana. The fruitless search for him exemplifies the challenges that online harassment cases sometimes encounter. The lawsuit is one of several against Mr. Anglin. On Tuesday, two women who say they were injured in the Charlottesville neo Nazi protest sued him and other organizers. A day later, the SiriusXM radio host Dean Obeidallah sued Mr. Anglin for calling him the "mastermind" behind a deadly bombing. Mr. Anglin is considered a "prestige figure" in the white nationalist movement and is most likely hiding among his community, said Keegan Hankes, an analyst at the Southern Poverty Law Center. Mr. Anglin's lawyer, Marc Randazza, said that the editor should be easy to find and that no one had looked hard enough. Mr. Anglin has written on The Daily Stormer that he is in Nigeria. Asked in an email about Ms. Gersh's lawsuit, Mr. Anglin wrote: "I'm a serious person and I only deal with serious reporters," adding an anti Semitic epithet to describe The New York Times. Mr. Anglin is facing troubles other than the lawsuits. GoDaddy and Google kicked The Daily Stormer off their platforms last week for violating their terms of service. The site re emerged on Tor, a browser for anonymous web surfing, and within a day found a new home on a Russian server before again being booted. The website appeared to be offline late Friday, days after it was expelled from CloudFlare, a service that provides protection from online attacks. Ms. Gersh's lawsuit stems from events last spring in Whitefish, Mont. There, Ms. Gersh, a real estate agent, encouraged Sherry Spencer, to disavow her son, Richard Spencer, a white supremacist, and donate to human rights causes. As tensions in the community grew, Ms. Gersh offered to sell a building in town owned by Ms. Spencer. Mr. Anglin told his followers that Ms. Gersh was extorting Ms. Spencer and encouraged them to write anti Semitic messages to Ms. Gersh. She and her son, who was 12, soon received thousands of phone calls and emails, including a message encouraging her son to crawl into an oven. In April, Ms. Gersh and the Southern Poverty Law Center sued The Daily Stormer, accusing it of orchestrating a "troll storm." The case could set a precedent on how online harassment is treated under the law. But the suit has stalled. The four person team at Encore Process Service in Columbus, Ohio, visited seven addresses to find Mr. Anglin and returned some 15 times. To Jeffrey A. Cremeans, who runs Encore Process Service and has served notice of lawsuits for 25 years, Mr. Anglin became a case that still haunts him. Afterward, the Southern Poverty Law Center began the byzantine process of trying to move the lawsuit forward without Mr. Anglin. The court clerk sent papers to his known addresses through certified mail; those were returned undeliverable. Then the papers were sent through regular mail; they were also returned undeliverable. If Mr. Anglin cannot be served notice in person, the last step is to put a public notice for six consecutive weeks in a local newspaper. Ms. Gersh's lawyer at the Southern Poverty Law Center, David Dinielli, expects to do so this month. "The circumstances in which these steps are normally taken is someone owed 7,000 on their credit card bill," Mr. Dinielli said. "This is not what happens in nationally prominent civil rights litigation." When Mr. Randazza, Mr. Anglin's lawyer and a First Amendment advocate, was asked whether his client was avoiding being served, he said: "Would you say that touchdowns are avoiding being scored in a shutout football game? Or would you say that the offense is not scoring them?"	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Technology
Scientists are now contemplating the fabrication of a human genome, meaning they would use chemicals to manufacture all the DNA contained in human chromosomes. The prospect is spurring both intrigue and concern in the life sciences community because it might be possible, such as through cloning, to use a synthetic genome to create human beings without biological parents. While the project is still in the idea phase, and also involves efforts to improve DNA synthesis in general, it was discussed at a closed door meeting on Tuesday at Harvard Medical School in Boston. The nearly 150 attendees were told not to contact the news media or to post on Twitter during the meeting. Organizers said the project could have a big scientific payoff and would be a follow up to the original Human Genome Project, which was aimed at reading the sequence of the three billion chemical letters in the DNA blueprint of human life. The new project, by contrast, would involve not reading, but rather writing the human genome synthesizing all three billion units from chemicals. But such an attempt would raise numerous ethical issues. Could scientists create humans with certain kinds of traits, perhaps people born and bred to be soldiers? Or might it be possible to make copies of specific people? "Would it be O.K., for example, to sequence and then synthesize Einstein's genome?" Drew Endy, a bioengineer at Stanford, and Laurie Zoloth, a bioethicist at Northwestern University, wrote in an essay criticizing the proposed project. "If so how many Einstein genomes should be made and installed in cells, and who would get to make them?" Dr. Endy, though invited, said he deliberately did not attend the meeting at Harvard because it was not being opened to enough people and was not giving enough thought to the ethical implications of the work. George Church, a professor of genetics at Harvard Medical School and an organizer of the proposed project, said there had been a misunderstanding. The project was not aimed at creating people, just cells, and would not be restricted to human genomes, he said. Rather it would aim to improve the ability to synthesize DNA in general, which could be applied to various animals, plants and microbes. "They're painting a picture which I don't think represents the project," Dr. Church said in an interview. He said the meeting was closed to the news media, and people were asked not to tweet because the project organizers, in an attempt to be transparent, had submitted a paper to a scientific journal. They were therefore not supposed to discuss the idea publicly before publication. He and other organizers said ethical aspects have been amply discussed since the beginning. The project was initially called HGP2: The Human Genome Synthesis Project, with HGP referring to the Human Genome Project. An invitation to the meeting at Harvard said that the primary goal "would be to synthesize a complete human genome in a cell line within a period of 10 years." But by the time the meeting was held, the name had been changed to "HGP Write: Testing Large Synthetic Genomes in Cells." The project does not yet have funding, Dr. Church said, though various companies and foundations would be invited to contribute, and some have indicated interest. The federal government will also be asked. A spokeswoman for the National Institutes of Health declined to comment, saying the project was in too early a stage. Besides Dr. Church, the organizers include Jef Boeke, director of the institute for systems genetics at NYU Langone Medical Center, and Andrew Hessel, a self described futurist who works at the Bay Area software company Autodesk and who first proposed such a project in 2012. Scientists and companies can now change the DNA in cells, for example, by adding foreign genes or changing the letters in the existing genes. This technique is routinely used to make drugs, such as insulin for diabetes, inside genetically modified cells, as well as to make genetically modified crops. And scientists are now debating the ethics of new technology that might allow genetic changes to be made in embryos. But synthesizing a gene, or an entire genome, would provide the opportunity to make even more extensive changes in DNA. For instance, companies are now using organisms like yeast to make complex chemicals, like flavorings and fragrances. That requires adding not just one gene to the yeast, like to make insulin, but numerous genes in order to create an entire chemical production process within the cell. With that much tinkering needed, it can be easier to synthesize the DNA from scratch. Right now, synthesizing DNA is difficult and error prone. Existing techniques can reliably make strands that are only about 200 base pairs long, with the base pairs being the chemical units in DNA. A single gene can be hundreds or thousands of base pairs long. To synthesize one of those, multiple 200 unit segments have to be spliced together. But the cost and capabilities are rapidly improving. Dr. Endy of Stanford, who is a co founder of a DNA synthesis company called Gen9, said the cost of synthesizing genes has plummeted from 4 per base pair in 2003 to 3 cents now. But even at that rate, the cost for three billion letters would be 90 million. He said if costs continued to decline at the same pace, that figure could reach 100,000 in 20 years. J. Craig Venter, the genetic scientist, synthesized a bacterial genome consisting of about a million base pairs. The synthetic genome was inserted into a cell and took control of that cell. While his first synthetic genome was mainly a copy of an existing genome, Dr. Venter and colleagues this year synthesized a more original bacterial genome, about 500,000 base pairs long. Dr. Boeke is leading an international consortium that is synthesizing the genome of yeast, which consists of about 12 million base pairs. The scientists are making changes, such as deleting stretches of DNA that do not have any function, in an attempt to make a more streamlined and stable genome. But the human genome is more than 200 times as large as that of yeast and it is not clear if such a synthesis would be feasible.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Science
To say that "Midway," a new cinematic re creation of the decisive 1942 air and sea battle from Roland Emmerich, the director of "Independence Day," soars to the heights of his best work is to say it sputters along at sea level. It is rousing and respectful in its best moments and faintly ridiculous in others. The film belongs to a particular lineage of World War II picture ("Tora! Tora! Tora!" and the 1976 "Midway") that unlike, say, Christopher Nolan's "Dunkirk" prioritizes scope over individual drama. To cram all the complexities of geography and who was where when into less than two and a half hours, "Midway" resorts to having its characters converse in exposition, sacrificing one form of verisimilitude for another. "We get 80 percent of our oil from your country," the Japanese admiral Isoroku Yamamoto (Etsushi Toyokawa) informs Edwin Layton (Patrick Wilson), an American naval intelligence officer, when they meet in a prologue set in 1937. The audience needs that clunkily relayed context for Pearl Harbor, the first combat spectacle that Emmerich stages.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Movies
Barr said the Justice Department had not found voter fraud on a scale that could change election results. "Fraud on a scale also known as the president's annual physical," Colbert joked Tuesday. 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. We're all stuck at home at the moment, so here are the 50 best movies on Netflix right now. On Tuesday, Attorney General William P. Barr shot down President Trump's assertion of widespread voter fraud, acknowledging that the Justice Department had uncovered no wrongdoing "on a scale that could have effected a different outcome in the election." "Fraud on a scale also known as the president's annual physical," Stephen Colbert joked on "The Late Show." "It's so weird that they didn't find evidence of the very thing they never backed up with any evidence." JAMES CORDEN "Oh, man. If Bill Barr had a neck, Trump would totally be wringing it right now." JIMMY KIMMEL "William Barr has been one of Trump's most obnoxiously loyal allies throughout emphasis on 'lies' in allies. This would be like if Thelma turned on Louise." JIMMY KIMMEL "That is cold. Sending the president of the United States to voice mail like he's spam? Which he is, but still." TREVOR NOAH, on Gov. Doug Ducey ignoring Trump's call as he was certifying Arizona's election on Monday "The president called him while he was signing, and the government sent him straight to voice mail. That is a guy who's picked up that phone once too often: 'Yes, Mr. President, you told me. Massive dumps. Right. Listen, I gotta go. Arizona is going through a tunnel. Chhhhhhh." STEPHEN COLBERT "You know 'Fox Friends' were watching this like, 'Oh, that's a good trick we can just not answer the phone. We've gotta try that.'" TREVOR NOAH "I believe the young people call that 'ghosting.'" JIMMY KIMMEL "You know what makes this move especially gangster is that he knew Trump was watching him on live TV. We've all had the moment where we think somebody's ignoring our call or our text, but to actually see it to see him look at his phone, see your name and then put it away? Ooh, that had to hurt." TREVOR NOAH "You've gotta admit it's a savage move savage move from anyone who still uses custom ring tones." JAMES CORDEN Rosie Perez talked about her experience contracting the coronavirus while shooting her new film, "The Flight Attendant," in Bangkok.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Television
Susan Eisenhower, a granddaughter who had once been a fierce critic of the Gehry design, was among the speakers. The controversy had centered on certain aspects of the design, including the size and scope of the structure's large scale metal tapestries. But family members lifted their objection last year, giving the project final impetus. The tapestries remain they had already been reduced from three sides to one but will include a more international scene, a representation of the D Day landing sites in Normandy, France, as they appear today, instead of the hills of Kansas. The idea was to put more emphasis on the international aspects of Eisenhower's life. The memorial, however, also includes a focus elsewhere on Kansas, Eisenhower's home state, particularly Abilene, where he grew up. The National Capital Planning Commission and the United States Commission of Fine Arts both approved the last modifications to the design earlier this fall. The majority of the memorial's cost is to come from federal funding, though the commission is also raising private funds. Some critics of the memorial, such as the National Civic Art Society, remain opposed to the design, which they have characterized as ugly and grandiose. But in a statement, Mr. Gehry said, "This project has been an enormous honor for me both professionally and personally." He said Eisenhower's leadership was inspiring. "He led the country with strength, but also with great humanity and humility," he said. "I hope that these values are captured in the memorial."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Art & Design
Oh, the Dakota this, the Dakota that. Sometimes it's as if the Dakota were the only apartment building in New York! To riff on "The House of Seven Gables" by Nathaniel Hawthorne: "Shall we never, never get rid of this Past? It lies upon the Present like a giant's dead body!" As it happens, the builder of the Dakota, Edward Clark, had even more ambitious plans for the neighborhood. He built a Dakota scale project right across the street. Clark bought the land for the Dakota in 1877, and by the early 1880s had acquired large plots in the West 70s and 80s. In 1879, before the Dakota, he built a row on 73rd extending to Amsterdam from Columbus, although only Nos. 101 and 103 still stand. He is now known for another row started in 1882, on 73rd between Columbus and Central Park West: from No. 15A to No. 19, and from No. 41 to No. 65 (an apartment house interrupted the group in the 1920s). Clark was building not just house by house, but also with a comprehensive vision for the neighborhood; the boilers of the Dakota heated the 73rd Street houses, and the Dakota's dynamo provided electric light. And this row was only one of others projected at the time, including 27 houses on the other side of 73rd. The Real Estate Record and Guide normally took a harsh tone with West Side houses. But an unidentified writer examined the row on 73rd, and found the red brick and olive cast of the Dorchester stone agreeable, observing that "the detail is generally more fortunate than that of the Dakota, which sometimes errs on the side of minuteness." It was, the critic said, "thoughtful, thorough and scholarly architecture." Both the Dakota and the two rows of 73rd Street houses were designed by Henry Janeway Hardenbergh, the row house projects at such a large scale that they were not far from apartment houses in scope. These were for fairly prosperous people, like Annie Maxwell, who in 1893 noticed silver and other precious items missing from her house at 55 West 73rd. Detectives staked out the place and witnessed the cook, Julia Moon, repeatedly going to the ash barrels under the stoop. They excavated and found silk, scent bottles, a silver tureen, chocolate and four dozen pieces of toilet soap. She confessed; dining out can sometimes be more economical than keeping a cook. Although the building impulse faltered with the Clark family in the 1890s, it returned in 1902 when Frederick Ambrose Clark, grandson of Edward Clark, built a row of houses on the south side of 74th, backing up to the 73rd Street row. But more than half of his grandfather's land purchases lay fallow, like the blockfront on which the Langham apartments now stand, on Central Park West, between 73rd and 74th. This was the golden age of the West Side, when the houses were fresh and the new apartment houses luxurious. But things changed with the decline of the single family dwelling, as the people who could afford private houses migrated to the East Side, and the houses were chopped up, with unhappy results for interior details. However efficient, the smaller units attracted a different crowd. In 1936 the police used the password "O.K., this is solid" at the door to the basement of 57 West 73rd Street and were admitted. They promptly arrested Patrick Devereaux, 23, who was in possession of 100 marijuana cigarettes, which he was selling at nine for a dollar. Perhaps Mr. Devereaux was a guest of the state in 1940, when the census taker found not a single dwelling in the row occupied by a single family. By then the occupants included the Argentine born Luis Cazeneuve, a cartoon illustrator who did the art for titles like "The Banshee" and "Nagana, Queen of Evil" for Fantastic Comics in 1941. He was one of 25 lodgers crammed into 63 West 73rd Street. That was not the record; it was held by 15A West 73rd, which somehow accommodated 29 lodgers, among them William J. Boyer, recorded in the 1940 census as "marionette show manipulator." In 1971, Robert Goldner, an architect, and Poppy Wolff, an interior designer, bought 55 West 73rd Street. They stripped away the marble foyer, the ballroom size drawing rooms with mahogany wainscoting and all the other details of Clark's effort, to make a "big, bold statement" of their own, as House Beautiful put it. Indeed, the whole 73rd Street row has been afflicted with a severe case of exposed brick itis, and few of the houses appear to have original interiors. That is no doubt part of the reason the block has resisted the Invasion of the Investment Bankers, well to do buyers who restore their houses to a fare thee well. Unlike most other nearby blocks, this row is not much different from what you'd have found on the West Side in the 1970s. Another reason is suggested by Joseph Brusco, whose family has long invested in West Side real estate, including several of these houses. The street seems quite wide and airy, but he notes that's because it is a service street for buildings on West 72nd, with open spaces for trash and garage purposes, instead of the other row Edward Clark envisioned. If Clark had had his way, it would now be an entirely different block.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Real Estate
When Harbour Air's de Havilland Beaver seaplane first lumbered into the skies in 1956, Elvis's "Heartbreak Hotel" topped the charts, President Dwight D. Eisenhower was in the White House, and flying icons like the Boeing 747 hadn't yet been invented. Sixty three years of bush flying, commuter travel and made for Instagram sightseeing later, the aircraft received a trailblazing retrofit. Harbour Air, a Vancouver based seaplane operator, earlier this month swapped the six seater's gas guzzling, exhaust emitting engine for a modern, battery powered electric one. The move gives the vintage plane a new and sustainable lease on life. Greg McDougall, Harbour Air's founder and chief executive, is the driving force behind the project, one that would make the Wright brothers proud and possibly Elon Musk, too. "I was an early adopter of the Tesla car and so impressed by their innovation," Mr. McDougall said. "When I got the car five years ago, I wondered if we could transfer similar electric engine technology to our planes. Someone was going to do it someday, so it may as well be us." The regional airline with 40 seaplanes operates half hour flights carrying up to 19 passengers between Vancouver, Seattle and communities in coastal British Columbia. The short flights make it well suited for a battery powered engine, said Roei Ganzarski, the chief executive of magniX, the electric propulsion designer and manufacturer that developed the engine. The aircraft will be able to fly for 30 minutes with a 30 minute reserve on a one hour charge. They will plug in and charge at the Vancouver Harbour Flight Centre dock, and pull from BC Hydro, the provincial energy utility's hydroelectric power grid, itself a renewable source of energy. Mr. McDougall flew the 10 minute test flight himself earlier this month, a first step required by regulators. Regulatory review in the United States and Canada will take two to three years, at which point Harbour Air can install the engines and begin accepting paying passengers on all electric aircraft. "On the environmental plus side, there is zero carbon burn. In the long run, the operating economics will allow us to make more flights more affordable for a larger audience," Mr. McDougall said. "Consider travel between Seattle and Pullman, Wash., the home of Washington State University," Mr. Ganzarski said. "It's a five hour drive to see my daughter, but an expensive 450 commercial flight. An electric plane is so much cheaper to operate and the result is lower fares maybe 100 return." He said there are thousands of cities in the United States where it is inconvenient to drive between them but too costly to fly. "If you can find an aerodynamically efficient aircraft like the Beaver seaplane that Harbour Air flies, or, say, a lightweight composite aircraft, there is a business case for this mission profile," said Dr. Pat Anderson, an aerospace engineering professor at Embry Riddle Aeronautical University and an expert on electric propulsion. Local officials in British Columbia are paying attention. Erin Hemmens, a city councilor from Nanaimo, a city of 90,000 on Vancouver Island, flies the 20 minute Harbour Air flight to Vancouver for conferences. It beats a three hour transit by ferry, she said. "Our city wants to advance climate friendly policies in an expeditious way, so we celebrated their achievement," Ms. Hemmens said. Will larger commercial aircraft convert to electric? Not any time soon, Dr. Anderson said. "The Beaver does not need a lot of energy because it flies slow. To go fast, you need a whole lot of energy," he said. "The solutions are a lot further down the line and a tough problem for the current state of the art." Nevertheless, Dr. Anderson said the first flight and collaboration between Harbour Air and magniX should be applauded. "The most exciting thing about this flight for me personally is that it signals a change in how we look at aviation, and how my kids will travel in the future," Mr. Ganzarski said. 52 PLACES AND MUCH, MUCH MORE Follow our 52 Places traveler, Sebastian Modak, on Instagram as he travels the world, and discover more Travel coverage by following us on Twitter and Facebook. And sign up for our Travel Dispatch newsletter: Each week you'll receive tips on traveling smarter, stories on hot destinations and access to photos from all over the world.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Travel
Kevin Harvick, in a must win situation, beat Jeff Gordon to the finish Sunday at Phoenix International Raceway, in the penultimate Nascar Sprint Cup event of the season. The victory earned Harvick one of four berths in the season finale next weekend in Homestead, Fla. Gordon came close to qualifying with a second place finish in the race, but Ryan Newman muscled another driver out of the way on the last turn to claim the fourth championship spot by a single point. Gordon said he realized he could have shoved Harvick aside to win the race and gain a place in the championship contest, but said, "I don't wreck people to win." Denny Hamlin, who overcame an early flat tire in Sunday's race, and Joey Logano, who regained track position after being set back by a pit road speeding penalty, gained enough points to claim the other two playoff berths. None of the four contenders has previously won a Sprint Cup title. Besides Gordon, the other drivers eliminated from championship title contention were the third place finisher Matt Kenseth, Brad Keselowski, who finished fourth, and Carl Edwards, who came in 15th.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Automobiles
In the late '80s, Ferrari engineers never shy about taking risks installed small paddles flanking the steering wheels on Enzo's Formula One racecars. The idea was to allow the driver to shift gears in a fraction of a second without letting go of the wheel. The invention, known formally as the "semiautomatic gearbox" and informally as paddle shifters, revolutionized the world of motorsports. And now they are moving from the fast track into the car pool lanes whether drivers know what they are or not. "While not every customer uses paddle shifters, they do offer a level of control and an experience that some enthusiasts strongly appreciate," said Mark Dahncke, a spokesman for Audi of America. The embellishments, made of plastic or metal, are now attached to the steering wheels or columns of more than 200 vehicles this year, compared with fewer than 70 in 2007, according to data from Edmunds.com, an automotive research firm. From Acura to Volvo, the paddles are standard equipment in most cases, or they can be added as an option. Some Mini Coopers have paddles, and they do show up in every automatic equipped Audi and Mercedes Benz sold in the United States. For many carmakers, especially those that offer vehicles with sporting pretensions, paddle shifters are sort of the automotive equivalent of keeping up with the Joneses. But their usefulness during a commute is questionable. Nick Richards, the product development communications manager for General Motors, said the data was clear: "Our research shows that customers with paddles use them rarely, with more than 62 percent saying they use them less than twice a year. When customers do use them, 55 percent say that it is for sporty driving situations." Cheryl Griffiths falls into the category of drivers who wonder what the fuss is about. As she shopped for a new Subaru Crosstrek S.U.V. at Star Subaru in Bayside, Queens, she was surprised to learn that the truck had paddle shifters. "A what?" she said. "I have no idea what those things are. I just drive the car." On the other hand, there is Fred Roberts. Mr. Roberts, 71, might have considered a car with a manual transmission he has owned Porsches with those but his wife does not drive a stick. He chose instead a 74,000 plus 2017 Mercedes AMG E43 with a prodigious 396 horsepower and a nine speed automatic transmission. He also made sure it had paddles. "I find the paddles very functional if you know how to use them," he said. "I find you can get the ultimate speed out of the car using them. The shifting is very fast." By toggling out of the Drive position on the automatic and into manual mode, Mr. Roberts can hold to a higher engine r.p.m. before shifting to a higher gear with the paddle, "but you have to be aware of how to use them, or you'll blow up the car." A real estate broker from Manhasset, Mr. Roberts said the only time he does not use paddles is when his wife is in the car. "She likes to hold hands," he said. In usual operation, the paddles are each marked with " " sign or a " "sign: Flicking the plus paddle (usually the paddle on the right) toward the driver nudges the gears up in sequence; the minus paddle lowers the gears, also sequentially. The flick sends a signal to the vehicle's onboard computer to shift the gear. In a more advanced type of transmission, called the dual clutch or twin clutch, the new gear can be swapped as quickly as 100 milliseconds, a speed that can make all the difference in races that are sometimes decided by a second or less. With manual transmissions rapidly evaporating from the automotive landscape in the United States, some carmarketers say they see paddle shifters as a compromise. Yet, to some old school enthusiasts, who grew up driving manual cars with three pedals and a stick, the paddles are not much more than gimmicks. They see them as marketing ploys that give only the appearance of sportiness to a plain vanilla sedan or a high riding truck. "The engagement and by that, I mean my engagement is not the same as with a manual," said Daniel Pund, the deputy editor of Car and Driver magazine. The manual experience, he noted, "beyond that it takes coordination and more limbs to accomplish, is that when you're done with your input, you're immediately in the next gear. When you're done with your input with a paddle shifter in a conventional automatic, you're still waiting for the shift to happen." Carmakers install them, Mr. Pund said, "because they want to make sure you know it's a sporty car. Even if it's not." On that point, the two parties agreed. The gadgets "provide a premium image and a higher perception of a sporty vehicle," said Ronnie Nomoto, the product planning manager for the Toyota Camry. Although there is additional cost to install paddle shifters, he said Toyota would continue to offer them because "our latest vehicle features study/focus groups of Camry owners survey showed nearly 35 percent have or want paddle shifters." It is not likely that the devices will be the focus of any radical changes, though, said Jessica Caldwell, an analyst with Edmunds. "Car companies have so many other things to focus on these days," she said. Most commuters may find paddles a novelty and will be comfortable letting the automatic transmission do all the work. "We like it easy in this country," she said.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Automobiles
When your closet is bursting with winters coats or you're living in a small space without any closet at all a few extra hooks can help relieve the pressure. That's where a coat tree can prove invaluable. "In a tighter space, it's about making space," said Dan Mazzarini, the principal of BHDM Design, an interior design firm in New York. "We use them in urban spaces to create makeshift mudrooms." To maximize storage space, Mr. Mazzarini often looks for coat trees with multiple places to stow things. "A lot of them now aren't just for coats," he said. "They have tiers on them, so they can hold your bag and shoes. Those we've found to be really useful." Many of the new coat trees also add a sculptural element to a room, so you might want one even if you're not in desperate need of extra storage.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Real Estate
WASHINGTON The Federal Reserve, concerned about the slow recovery, announced a second, large purchase of Treasury bonds on Wednesday, an effort to spur economic growth by lowering long term interest rates. While the Fed has been signaling that it would act to bolster the economy, the announcement was the first major policy move since the midterm elections, which gave Republicans control of the House and heightened the potential for gridlock on fiscal policy including tax cuts and spending to encourage job creation and growth. The Fed said it would buy an additional 600 billion in long term Treasury securities by the end of June 2011, somewhat more than the 300 billion to 500 billion that many in the markets had expected. The central bank said it would also continue its program, announced in August, of reinvesting proceeds from its mortgage related holdings to buy Treasury debt. The Fed now expects to reinvest 250 billion to 300 billion under that program by the end of June, making the total asset purchases in the range of 850 billion to 900 billion. That would just about double the 800 billion or so in Treasury debt currently on the Fed's balance sheet. In justifying its decision, the Fed noted that unemployment was high and inflation low, and judged that the recovery "has been disappointingly slow." The Federal Open Market Committee, which ended a two day meeting on Wednesday, also left open the possibility of additional purchases. "The committee will regularly review the pace of its securities purchases and the overall size of the asset purchase program in light of incoming information and will adjust the program as needed to best foster maximum employment and price stability," the committee said. As expected, the Fed left the benchmark short term interest rate the federal funds rate, at which banks lend to one another overnight at nearly zero, where it has been since December 2008. The committee's vote was 9 to 1. Thomas M. Hoenig, the president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, dissented, as he has at every meeting this year. Mr. Hoenig "was concerned that this continued high level of monetary accommodation increased the risks of future financial imbalances and, over time, would cause an increase in long term inflation expectations that could destabilize the economy," the Fed said in a statement. In a statement after the F.O.M.C. announcement, the New York Federal Reserve, which handles the bond purchases, said the purchases will include bonds ranging for less than 2 year to 30 years, with "an average duration of between 5 and 6 years." "The distribution of purchases could change if market conditions warrant," the New York Fed said in a statement, "but such changes would be designed to not significantly alter the average duration of the assets purchased." Economists disagree about how much the new round of debt purchases a reprise of an initial, 1.7 trillion round that ended in March will have on spurring consumer and corporate demand. Lower long term interest rates in theory should ripple through the markets, affecting other rates, like those of 30 year, fixed rate mortgages. That could encourage homeowners to refinance into cheaper mortgages, though it would not help the millions of Americans facing foreclosure. But there are several significant risks. The new actions are likely to further drive down the value of the dollar, which as fallen about 7.5 percent since June against the currencies of major trading partners. That could exacerbate the trade and exchange rate tensions that have threatened to unravel cooperation among the world's biggest economies. Moreover, the Fed is exposing itself to the risk that the assets it has purchased, like the 1 trillion in mortgage related securities on its balance sheets, could shrivel in value as interest rates rise. That could reduce the amount of money the central banks turns over to the Treasury each year, and expose the Fed which has been attacked for failing to prevent the 2008 financial crisis to further criticism. And then there is a risk that the Fed's action could be neutralized by a new Congress that has vowed to contract government spending, a core argument that led to the overwhelming Republican victory on Tuesday. Mr. Obama, at a news conference on Wednesday, talked of compromise with the new Republican majority in the House. But he also cited China's new high speed trains and its advances in supercomputing to make the case that there are some areas where the United States needs to make investments, and insisted that the country would not shy away from those. "They are making investments, because they know those investments will pay off in the long term," he said of the Chinese, seeming to suggest that the United States needs to do the same. At the same moment, he reiterated that he would support continuing the Bush era tax cuts only for families earning less than 250,000 a year. "It is very important we're not taking money out of the system from people who are most likely to spend that money," Mr. Obama said at the news conference. But he hinted at flexibility, saying he expected to sit down with the new Republican leadership to see "where we can move forward first of all in ways that can do no harm." Asked if he was willing to negotiate, he said, "Absolutely." Laurence H. Meyer, a former Fed governor who closely monitors the central bank, said the prospect of sustained fiscal gridlock had already pushed Mr. Bernanke to move. "Bernanke has said that fiscal stimulus, accommodated by the Fed, is the single most powerful action the government can take for lowering the unemployment rate ,when short term rates are already at zero," Mr. Meyer said. "He has nearly pleaded with Congress for fiscal stimulus, but he can't count on it. So he has to act as if that's not going to happen. "	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Economy
BOSTON SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA at Tanglewood in Lenox, Mass. (Aug. 24 25, 8 p.m.; Aug. 26, 2:30 p.m.). A big weekend in the Berkshires opens on Friday with Mahler's Symphony No. 3, featuring Susan Graham as the vocalist and Andris Nelsons on the podium. On Saturday, there's the Boston Symphony's main centennial celebration of Leonard Bernstein, involving five conductors, an array of soloists and players from six other ensembles. The annual performance of Beethoven's Symphony No. 9 follows on Sunday, led by Christoph Eschenbach. If all that's not enough, note too that the unrelated but up and coming Berkshire Opera Festival's "Rigoletto" opens on Saturday up the road in Pittsfield, with plenty of time to make it to the Bernstein festivities later that evening. 888 266 1200, bso.org DAVID GREILSAMMER at National Sawdust (Aug. 25, 7 p.m.). This pianist has made a habit of interspersing a particular piece of music with pieces by other composers, perhaps most effectively in recitals of Scarlatti and Cage. Here he reprises a program heard last year at the Crypt Sessions, refracting Janacek's "On an Overgrown Path" through works by Mozart, Froberger, Rebel, C. P. E. Bach and Ofer Pelz. 646 799 8455, nationalsawdust.org	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Music
One year ago, two Australian hackers found themselves on an eight hour flight to Singapore to attend a live hacking competition sponsored by Dropbox. At 30,000 feet, with nothing but a slow internet connection, they decided to get a head start by hacking Zoom, a videoconferencing service that they knew was used by many Dropbox employees. The hackers soon uncovered a major security vulnerability in Zoom's software that could have allowed attackers to covertly control certain users' Mac computers. It was precisely the type of bug that security engineers at Dropbox had come to dread from Zoom, according to three former Dropbox engineers. Now Zoom's videoconferencing service has become the preferred communications platform for hundreds of millions of people sheltering at home, and reports of its privacy and security troubles have proliferated. Zoom's defenders, including big name Silicon Valley venture capitalists, say the onslaught of criticism is unfair. They argue that Zoom, originally designed for businesses, could not have anticipated a pandemic that would send legions of consumers flocking to its service in the span of a few weeks and using it for purposes like elementary school classes and family celebrations for which it was never intended. "I don't think a lot of these things were predictable," said Alex Stamos, a former chief security officer at Facebook who recently signed on as a security adviser to Zoom. "It's like everyone decided to drive their cars on water." The former Dropbox engineers, however, say Zoom's current woes can be traced back two years or more, and they argue that the company's failure to overhaul its security practices back then put its business clients at risk. Dropbox grew so concerned that vulnerabilities in the videoconferencing system might compromise its own corporate security that the file hosting giant took on the unusual step of policing Zoom's security practices itself, according to the former engineers, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to publicly discuss their work. As part of a novel security assessment program for its vendors and partners, Dropbox in 2018 began privately offering rewards to top hackers to find holes in Zoom's software code and that of a few other companies. The former Dropbox engineers said they were stunned by the volume and severity of the security flaws that hackers discovered in Zoom's code and troubled by Zoom's slowness in fixing them. After Dropbox presented the hackers' findings from the Singapore event to Zoom Video Communications, the California company behind the videoconferencing service, it took more than three months for Zoom to fix the bug, the former engineers said. Zoom patched the vulnerability only after another hacker publicized a different security flaw with the same root cause. Zoom's sudden popularity nearly 600,000 people downloaded the app on a single day last month has opened it to increased scrutiny by researchers and journalists and forced the company to grapple with a rash of security incidents. Three weeks ago, the F.B.I. warned that it had received multiple reports of trolls hijacking public school classes on Zoom to display pornography and make threats malicious attacks known as "Zoombombing." Last week, Vice's Motherboard blog reported that security bug brokers were selling access for 500,000 to critical Zoom security flaws that could allow remote access into users' computers. Separately, hackers put up more than half a million Zoom users' passwords and user names for sale on the so called dark web. On April 1, Eric S. Yuan, Zoom's chief executive, said the company would devote all of its engineering resources for the next 90 days to shoring up security and privacy. Last week, the company announced a revamped reward program for hackers who find security flaws in its code. Mr. Stamos said Zoom was also working on design changes to reduce the potential risks of security flaws and abuses like Zoombombing. In a statement, Zoom said it appreciated "the researchers and industry partners who have helped and continue to help us identify issues as we continuously seek to strengthen our platform." It added that the company was "proactively working to better identify, address and fix issues." In a statement, Dropbox said it was "grateful to Zoom for being the first to participate" in its vendor bug bounty program. It added that Dropbox itself used the videoconferencing service for internal meetings and that Zoom had become "a critical tool in keeping our teams connected." Before Zoom's initial public offering in 2019, Dropbox made a 5 million investment in the company. Separately, Bryan Schreier, a Dropbox director, is a partner at Sequoia Capital, which made a 100 million investment in Zoom before the initial offering. Even critics acknowledge that Zoom remains the most user friendly videoconferencing service on the market and has become a crucial communications tool during the pandemic. Security researchers also praised Zoom for improving its response times quickly patching recent bugs and removing features that presented privacy risks to consumers. Zoom is hardly the first tech company whose sudden surge in popularity exposed its problems. Microsoft, Twitter, Google, Facebook and Uber have all settled federal charges related to consumer security or privacy. What is different about Zoom is the unusual role that another tech company Dropbox played in pushing the videoconferencing service to address its security weaknesses. Details on Dropbox's role have not been publicly reported before. Many companies, including Zoom, have "bug bounty programs" in which they pay hackers to turn over flaws in the company's own software code. But Dropbox, which has integrated its file sharing services with Zoom, did something novel. Starting in 2018, Dropbox privately offered to pay top hackers it regularly worked with to find problems with Zoom's software. It even had its own security engineers confirm the bugs and look for related problems before passing them on to Zoom, according to the former Dropbox engineers. Hackers have reported several dozen problems with Zoom to Dropbox, the former employees said. These included moderate problems, like the ability for attackers to take over users' actions on the Zoom web app, and more serious security flaws like the ability for attackers to run malicious code on computers using Zoom software. Dropbox also put in its own controls to ensure that its integration with Zoom did not present risks to Dropbox users. Zoom's reputation for security weaknesses began to spread within Dropbox, the former engineers said. As part of an annual companywide hacking competition in 2018, Dropbox engineers created a knockoff of Zoom they called it "Vroom" and challenged employees to hack it. The Dropbox employees successfully obtained Vroom meeting codes, which would have allowed them to crash hypothetical Vroom meetings. The idea of the exercise, former Dropbox employees said, was to teach Dropbox engineers to avoid making some of the security mistakes that Zoom had made. Some former employees said Dropbox had also prompted Zoom to introduce additional security measures, including a virtual waiting room feature that now allows meeting organizers to vet participants before letting them into a videoconference. "I have no doubt that Zoom was better able to address the current 'zoombombing' craze thanks to Dropbox's early" involvement, Chris Evans, a former head of security at Dropbox, wrote in an email to a reporter. Dropbox employees weren't the only ones finding problems. In late 2018, David Wells, a senior research engineer at Tenable, a security vulnerability assessment company, uncovered a serious flaw in Zoom that would have allowed an attacker to remotely disrupt a meeting without even being on the call. Among other things, Mr. Wells reported that an attacker could take over a Zoom user's screen controls, enter keystrokes and covertly install malware on their computer. Mr. Wells also found the vulnerability allowed him to post messages in Zoom chats under other people's names and kick people off meetings. Mr. Wells, who reported his findings directly to Zoom, said Zoom had quickly patched the flaws.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Technology
The Senate on Thursday confirmed Eugene Scalia, a longtime lawyer representing corporations, to be labor secretary. Mr. Scalia was chosen by President Trump in July, days after Mr. Trump's first labor secretary, R. Alexander Acosta, announced that he would resign. He is a son of the Supreme Court justice Antonin Scalia, who died in 2016. The nomination was approved on a 53 to 44 vote along party lines. Senator Lamar Alexander of Tennessee, chairman of the committee that presided over Mr. Scalia's confirmation, summed up the Republican viewpoint. "Eugene Scalia is well qualified to lead the Department of Labor with a steady hand at a time when workers' wages are up and unemployment is near record lows," he said in a statement. But Democrats and labor groups questioned whether Mr. Scalia's background was consistent with the interests of American workers. "Mr. Scalia's nomination is a slap to the face of labor because Mr. Scalia's life's work has been utterly opposed to the mission of the agency to which he's nominated," Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the Democratic leader, said Thursday on the Senate floor. Mr. Scalia, 56, has spent much of his career at Gibson, Dunn Crutcher, a prominent corporate law firm, where perhaps his best known client was SeaWorld. He helped represent the company after a killer whale attacked and killed a trainer in 2010 and the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration determined that SeaWorld should have taken additional steps to protect its workers. Mr. Scalia and his team argued unsuccessfully in federal appeals court that the company had sufficient training and safety measures and that it was up to its trainers to manage the remaining risks they faced on the job. Mr. Scalia also took a leading role opposing a Clinton administration regulation known as the "ergonomics rule," which was intended to protect workers against repetitive stress injuries. He dismissed the basis for the rule as "unreliable science" and contended that labor unions had promoted it in order to "force companies to give more rest periods, slow the pace of work and then hire more workers (read: dues paying members)." Democrats blocked Mr. Scalia's nomination to serve as the Labor Department's top lawyer in 2001 largely as a result of his efforts to oppose the rule. George W. Bush eventually installed him at the department through a recess appointment, but he served for only about a year before returning to private practice. Mr. Scalia also represented Walmart in a fight against a Maryland law that would have required it to spend more on health care and Boeing in a case involving a union that accused it of violating labor law. 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. He helped represent a coalition of financial services industry groups that sued to block an Obama administration rule requiring brokers to act in their clients' best interest when advising them on retirement accounts. During his Senate confirmation hearing this month, Mr. Scalia acknowledged his long track record representing corporations but argued that he was working diligently on behalf of his clients rather than to advance his own views. He said he was capable of working just as hard on behalf of American workers, citing the issue of ergonomics, on which he said he worked closely with the Labor Department's career staff during his tenure there. "The lawyer who had the lead on the issue of ergonomics wrote a letter, joined a letter from former career officials supporting my nomination," Mr. Scalia said. In the letter, 13 former Labor Department officials wrote that Mr. Scalia "was very supportive of enforcement litigation to vindicate the rights of workers." Democrats also questioned Mr. Scalia at his confirmation hearing over his views on gay rights, citing a college newspaper column in which he wrote that parenting by a lesbian couple should not be treated "as equally acceptable or desirable as the traditional family life." Mr. Scalia implied that his views on the subject had changed in the nearly 35 years since he wrote the column. "I would not write those words today, in part because I now have friends and colleagues to whom they would cause pain," he said. The vacancy at the Labor Department arose after Mr. Acosta faced new questions about his role a decade ago as a federal prosecutor in Florida specifically, a plea deal reached with the financier Jeffrey Epstein in a sex crimes case. The White House and employer groups had at times grown impatient with the pace at which Mr. Acosta advanced largely pro business changes to regulations. But many of the department's leading initiatives were either completed or close to being finalized before Mr. Scalia's confirmation. That includes a modest expansion in the ranks of those eligible for overtime pay after a federal judge struck down the more ambitious expansion the Obama administration had planned. The department has also put forward a rule making it harder to hold companies liable for employment law violations committed by their contractors or franchisees. Businesses had been eager to see these measures completed so that a congressional review period would end before elections that could produce a Democratic Congress and president. Mr. Scalia will help complete some of the department's remaining regulatory initiatives. But his top priority as labor secretary may be to defend newly finalized rules against likely legal challenges from worker groups.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Economy
Every crisis opens a course to the unknown. In an eye blink, the impossible becomes possible. History in a sprint can mean a dark, lasting turn for the worse, or a new day of enlightened public policy. Be still, my heart, but I see the latter. Some of the greatest advances in American history liberation of slaves, Social Security, robust clean air and water mandates were birthed by disaster. For now, the coronavirus pandemic is an epic of sorrow, and has many mortal months still to run. But in the midst of our suffering, our grief for loved ones lost, our loneliness in social isolation, we have a chance to re engineer our world. Here's a look at what may follow as the pandemic starts to settle: Health Care. Universal medical coverage, whether expanding Obamacare with a public option or some form of Medicare for all, is going to happen. It's had majority support for some time. The pandemic has just sped up the timetable. One poll found that 41 percent of adults are now more likely than they were before the pandemic to support a government run care system covering all Americans. When even the most dreadful Republicans but I repeat myself say that virus testing and treatment should be free, the door has opened to the obvious next step. Since the outbreak, one in four Republicans have suddenly come around to some version of what most nations already have. Now, try running for office on a platform of taking away people's health care. Or tolerating the condition that leaves nearly 28 million Americans with no health care at all. Yep, that's the current Republican policy, led by President Trump's attempt to gut Obamacare through the courts. Good luck with that in November. Work. Paid family leave. Working at home. Universal sick leave. Subsidized day care. A livable minimum wage. Until about an hour ago, all of the above were considered progressive pipe dreams. But just as World War II brought millions of women into factories, millions of people may settle into another workplace following the world war on coronavirus their homes. Up to half the jobs in the United States could be done, at least partially, from home, by one estimate. Currently, fewer than 4 percent of jobs allow this. The benefits of telecommuting in terms of personal time, on the environment, on the psyche and on production could be enormous. To those who can't work at home, for one bright and shining moment we all appreciate grocery clerks, truck drivers, nurses, home health care workers and others as heroes. But we've never treated them that way with the range of benefits available to those who wear a different collar. Let Trump defend the broken status quo, while Joe Biden goes bold, defining what a people centered economy would look like. Food. With seven in 10 adults overweight or obese, the poor health and nutrition of most Americans is a horrid and accepted fact. But with the disproportionate number of Covid 19 deaths attributed to diet related conditions, we are seeing, more rapidly, just how much this societal problem can kill. This doesn't mean we should turn to fat shaming. But it does mean that, while looking at obesity as a public health problem as deadly as smoking, we can make some big structural changes in the food system. For starters, there should be universal free school meals. Kids who take advantage of this are more likely to eat fruits and vegetables. But under the present system, many poor students feel so stigmatized that they go hungry instead. For adults, the paradox of living in a nation where 40 million people face food insecurity while 40 percent of our food is wasted, makes no sense. One quick solution is to allow all 42 million Americans who receive food stamps to shop online and get their groceries delivered like everyone else. One lasting solution is to standardize date labeling, so that food that may not be perfect quality is still safe to eat and can be used by food banks. And it's time to recognize the vital value of people who harvest our fruits and vegetables. Up to half of farmworkers are undocumented, and the Trump administration has been harassing and demeaning them. But lo: The Department of Homeland Security has just classified farmworkers as "essential critical infrastructure workers." Let's make that permanent through the big immigration fix that awaits a new president. Climate. One byproduct of so many people working at home is clean air. With the global economy in a coma, emissions could fall by the largest amount since World War II. But this could have little impact on the trajectory of climate change if we don't make larger structural changes. China is already firing up its coal powered factories. We have only a few years to save ourselves from ourselves. Our trashed and overheated world is a slower pandemic. The good news is that, even with the crash in oil prices, renewable energy use is on an upward course. Coal is yesterday, no matter how much Trump tries to promote it and China drags its heels. More than anything, the pandemic has shown how quickly things can change if they must. Carpe diem. 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
Young voters want Bernie Sanders to be the Democratic nominee for president. But they don't seem to want to turn out for him, or at least not in the numbers he needs to win. The youngest voters in Michigan, those 18 to 29 years old, gave the vast majority of their votes to Sanders. But at 16 percent of the electorate, according to exit polling, they were overwhelmed by the oldest voters, who were 20 percent of the electorate and gave most of their votes to Joe Biden. The next youngest voters (age 30 to 44) also backed Sanders, 52 percent to 42 percent. But they were swamped, in turn, by the next oldest voters (age 45 to 64) who backed Biden 62 percent to 26 percent. The numbers were even more lopsided in Missouri, where 14 percent of voters were under 30 versus 31 percent over 65. Sanders won the youngest voters with 70 percent of their vote. But that was no match for Biden's 81 percent victory among retirement age Democrats. In state after state, the youngest voters have been staying home even as overall turnout skyrocketed. Youth voting was down 18 percent in New Hampshire, 9 percent in North Carolina and 20 percent in Texas. Obviously, this absence of young people has hindered Sanders's campaign for the Democratic nomination, but it has also undermined his theory of electability and change, which depends on mobilizing huge numbers of people young people in particular to execute a "political revolution." The first thing to say is that this relates to the larger question of perennially low youth turnout. In any given election year, the youngest adults always vote at lower rates than their older counterparts. That was true in 1972, the first national election after the 26th Amendment lowered the voting age to 18, and it was true for the 2018 midterms, when the youth share of the vote was 13 percent even as youth turnout more than doubled. 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." The traditional answer is apathy that young voters just aren't interested in politics or the political process, that they're tuned out and disengaged. That's why campaigns that want them focus so intently on energy and enthusiasm, why Sanders believed he could capture their concerns speak to their hopes and needs and in doing so bring them to the polls. But what if apathy isn't the problem? "It's not that young people are disengaged, it's not that they don't care about the issues at hand; it's just that they really struggle to follow through," said John Holbein, an assistant professor of public policy and education at the University of Virginia and a co author, with D. Sunshine Hillygus, of "Making Young Voters: Converting Civic Attitudes into Civic Action." Holbein and Hillygus find that young voters aren't apathetic about politics and political life. Just the opposite. "By multiple metrics, most young people are politically interested and motivated," they write. "And, despite the increased rancor in American politics, some measures find young people to be even more interested in politics in recent years than in the past." The issue isn't interest, it's structure. It is difficult to get anyone to do anything for the first time, and that's especially true for voting, which isn't an easy process in the United States. Worse, many states are making it harder, with specific efforts to keep young people, and students in particular, away from the polls. Last spring, for example, the Republican controlled Texas Legislature outlawed any polling location that wasn't open for the state's 12 day early voting period, a move that forced a number of colleges and universities to close temporary voting sites on their campuses. Republicans in Florida, likewise, effectively banned early voting at state universities with a law requiring "sufficient non permitted parking" at all early voting sites. That's an easy to meet requirement for rural and suburban locations, but it's difficult for sites on densely constructed college campuses. Even states that don't target students and young people for voter suppression still require prospective voters to register if they want to cast a ballot. And that, Holbein said, is a real problem. "When you take away an arbitrary obstacle like voter registration, youth turnout goes up quite a bit." If you take a broader view of obstacles to the vote if you look beyond administrative burdens like registration and voter identification there's the simple fact that being young is difficult. "Young people are coming into their own," Holbein said. "They are leaving home, they are learning to be adults, and in that experience of managing their lives, voting is one of the things that falls by the wayside." Without experience and familiarity, young people lack the confidence to vote, to say nothing of other forms of political participation like canvassing or working the polls. They don't think they know enough and don't feel the kind of efficacy that drives older voters to the polls at high rates. The solution, Holbein and Hillygus argue, is comprehensive civics education that provides "knowledge and experience grounded in awareness of the factors that shape voter participation." Young people, in other words, need to learn how to be citizens. And the extent to which we don't teach those skills greatly depresses youth participation in politics. Liberalizing voting laws and improving civics education are long term projects. In the meantime, there are things a campaign like Sanders's can do to improve youth turnout and bring those supporters to the polls. In addition to stoking interest, a campaign like Sanders's can educate young voters about the process not just by telling them to register, but also by walking them through the process itself and doing the work a civics curriculum should have already done. Voting is a habit; once people start, they tend not to stop. It may be too late for Bernie Sanders, but future youth centered candidates might want to begin their campaigns with dedicated, practical outreach to people who want to participate but need a little help with the follow through. It's possible that there is an upper limit to youth turnout, that at a certain point the youngest Americans just aren't going to vote at the same rates as their parents and grandparents. But we haven't come anywhere near it. For progressives in particular, there is a lot to gain in investing as much as possible into turning interested young people into dedicated participants. The effort put into making young voters today won't pay off just in 2020; it could pay off the next time progressives are fighting for control of the Democratic Party. 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
After the births of my babies in the '70s, the umbilical cord connecting them to me was cut and trashed. But these days the blood inside can be preserved in a bank. It contains stem cells with the potential to save the lives of patients with leukemia, lymphoma or sickle cell disease. Stem cell treatments have been in the news lately because some companies are accused of selling unproven treatments that may actually harm patients. Earlier this month, the New York attorney general filed suit against one such company, claiming it knowingly performed rogue procedures on patients with a wide range of medical conditions. But there are legitimate lifesaving uses of cord blood that should not be tainted by these sham companies. Liars and thieves must not be allowed to detract from meticulous scientific research that has made umbilical cord blood mystic in its regenerative powers. A reader who is pregnant and whose first child had undergone successful leukemia treatments asked me about cord blood banking recently. Her obstetrician had suggested she bank her new baby's cord blood as an insurance policy in case her first child suffered a recurrence. Cord blood transplants can be used to reconstitute a patient's immune system. Blood from a sibling stands a good chance of being a suitable match for a transplant. Two impediments may influence parents against the risk free practice of banking cord blood. First, some obstetricians believe that a brief wait before the clamping of an umbilical cord can enhance a child's well being, but delayed clamping compromises the volume and quality of collected cord blood cells. The second potential inhibition, the cost of banking, depends on whether the bank is public or private. The act of donating cord blood to a public bank, not for the use of the baby or family that contributed the cells, is free and provides a genuine service to other Americans. Private banking for the baby or the baby's family has an upfront cost as well as yearly maintenance charges; however, expectant parents who have children with a cancer history can often find financial assistance. Banked cord blood cells have been used in over 40,000 transplants worldwide to treat genetic disorders, malignant and not. I was surprised to discover that the researcher who played a pivotal role in originating cord blood transplants works at the cancer center that keeps me alive. He is Dr. Hal Broxmeyer, a distinguished professor at the Indiana University School of Medicine. I asked him about the benefits of cord blood transplants, as well as when he and his collaborators discovered the idea and where research was headed. Are cord blood transplants superior to other types of transplants? All have pros and cons, Dr. Broxmeyer explained. Cord blood is easier to collect than bone marrow, generates less life threatening graft versus host disease, and can be used with "less stringent HLA matching." However, mobilized peripheral blood (collected from the bloodstream) engrafts faster than bone marrow, which engrafts faster than cord blood. Many investigators now study ways "to accelerate the engraftment of cord blood cells," as he does. Which parents should consider banking? Dr. Broxmeyer believes that families have to come to this decision with the help of informed physicians. "I personally would have stored my two sons' cord blood, had they not been born before we started the field," he said. "We did have my granddaughter's cord blood stored." How did Dr. Broxmeyer, a biologist, help start the field? His lab, serving as the first proof of principle cord blood bank for distant obstetric units, began studying the capacity of hematopoietic (blood) stem and progenitor cells to cure disease in the early '80s. Dr. Broxmeyer's team generated enough data to convince the medical community that a cord blood transplant might work. Dr. Eliane Gluckman, at the Hospital Saint Louis in Paris, agreed to do the procedures with cells from Dr. Broxmeyer's lab and to follow his suggestions in doing so. In October 1988, Dr. Broxmeyer's lab sent five ounces of blood overseas for a transplant needed by 5 year old Matthew Farrow, who had Fanconi anemia: his bone marrow could not create enough healthy blood cells. The five ounces came from the umbilical cord of Matthew's baby sister. Three weeks after the transplant, Matthew's blood counts returned to normal and, Dr. Broxmeyer adds with understandable pride, "he is still alive and well." It was the first cord blood transplant. Preserved cord blood units were next hand delivered to hospitals in Baltimore, Cincinnati, Minneapolis for sibling cord blood transplants. The first cord blood transplant for a young child with leukemia occurred because a grandmother read a one page article in a magazine that mentioned Dr. Broxmeyer's work; she persuaded the doctors at Johns Hopkins to use cord blood from his lab. By the early 1990s, he was convinced that "cord blood transplants had a real place in treatment and health care." In his discussions of ongoing laboratory and clinical efforts to improve cord blood procedures, Dr. Broxmeyer argues that cord blood is particularly important for patients from diverse racial and ethnic backgrounds who can encounter difficulties finding a compatible donor. Research is underway to determine if cord blood may help deal with birth asphyxia, cerebral palsy, stroke and autism, but he is "waiting for definitive clinical proof for these other uses." Work like Dr. Broxmeyer's advances progress in health care that benefits us all. He himself is a cancer patient. My first oncologist, Dr. Daniela Matei, heard him speaking through a tracheotomy, after surgery for thyroid cancer. He had wanted to share one of his discoveries with his colleagues before it was published, she explained, and then she added, "his genuine love of science was so moving." A cancer recurrence has only deepened his commitment to better understanding normal and malignant cell processes. "If anything," he tells me, "I have been more focused and worked harder since the diagnosis." Stirred by his achievement, I take a loony pride in the coincidence that Dr. Broxmeyer attended Brooklyn College in the same years I attended City College. Public institutions of higher education: Where would we be without them? Or without all those assiduous grandmas who forward health care articles to mailboxes around the globe? Susan Gubar, who has been dealing with ovarian cancer since 2008, is distinguished emerita professor of English at Indiana University. Her latest book is "Late Life Love."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Well
feels a particular sense of satisfaction when an Instagram post a "gender repeal" cake that reads "I'm a they," for instance leads to a purge of followers. "Whenever I post anything queer, there's a big drop," the 39 year old home cook said in a phone interview in May. "It used to bother me, but now I really appreciate it when I lose a bunch of followers at once. I call it 'weeding the IG garden.' It's lovely to know just the right ones are sticking around." Mx. Crawford won 100,000 on "MasterChef Canada" in 2019, after which they moved, with their partner, Logan Aube, a software engineer, from a 400 square foot windowless Toronto apartment to Mx. Crawford's hometown: a village in Hants County, Nova Scotia, population 916. There the couple bought a 7,000 square foot 1866 farmhouse, and the rural fixer upper fantasy that ensued has been thoroughly documented on Instagram. "For a long time it was taken for granted that in order to exist freely as a queer person you had to go to a city," Mx. Crawford said. Instead, they found freedom in a rural region: "The closeness of the community means that people are really interested in understanding you. Everyone relies on each other. We all need each other. Especially now." The farmhouse doesn't have an oven yet, so the couple cooks with an induction burner and a toaster oven. "Most of my food is just me trying to make special stuff out of whatever is in the pantry," Mx. Crawford said. That often means subverting supermarket treats like Pop Tarts using rye flour and beets, or making "arancheezies," a traditional Italian rice ball rolled in crushed Cheezies, a cheese puff popular in Canada, then fried. These days, Mx. Crawford wakes up at around 6 a.m., makes coffee and then chooses which color of neon eye shadow to wear. They often spend the day in Garfield print pajamas and a side ponytail, pumping iron out in the barn or tearing up linoleum and demolishing cupboards in the kitchen. In Nova Scotia, social distancing is made easier by the wide open spaces; still, Mx. Crawford only goes to the supermarket about twice a month. The rest of the time they get food delivered from Wolfville Farmer's Market, a local farmers' community. "Before this even started we were connected to this powerful local food distribution model that was built by the farmers," Mx. Crawford said. Supermarket trips are for essentials like Cheezies, pepperoni and gelatin ("for all the jelly molds I've been making," they said). Mx. Crawford's Instagram output has increased during quarantine, leading to a book deal with House of Anansi Press for a memoir to be published in the fall of 2021 and a weekly column for Daily Xtra, an L.G.B.T.Q. magazine in Canada, called "My Queer Kitchen." In a recent piece, Mx. Crawford wrote about the importance of comfort. "Comfort is political: Who has the most access to it, how we create it for ourselves, how we create it for others." Mx. Crawford is deliberate about their word choices, identifying as "gender creative" over other non cis labels: "Gender felt like something weird that never quite fit, like I had to study everyone to learn how to do it right," they said. "People can call themselves whatever they like. I'm not someone who knew what they were their whole life. I still barely know." Mx. Crawford, a recovering alcoholic who has been sober since 2018, said that overcoming addiction is about more than just not drinking; it's about getting in touch with their true self. That has included reconnecting to old hobbies like crochet and wrestling, and finding new interests and passions. Last Mother's Day, Mx. Crawford's maternal aunt, Bernie Bryden, died. Well before Instagram, Mx. Crawford's aunt kept pictures of her favorite culinary creations in a photo album. "She would develop the photos, scan them and email them to me." It was during a visit home last spring, to see Aunt Bernie during her final days, that Mx. Crawford realized it was time to make a move and have more fun in the kitchen. Their most widely reproduced recipe is an irreverent take on the classic pate en croute, using donair meat, a popular Halifax street food created in the 1970s as a homage to the gyro. Much of Mx. Crawford's content comes from a nostalgic place. Moon Mist ice cream, a popular flavor combination found on Canada's east coast, is an unlikely swirl of grape, banana and bubble gum, the colors reminiscent of a My Little Pony mane. Mx. Crawford makes a home style version of the ice cream, but also reimagines it in cake form, as a terrazzo tile inspired jelly mold creation and as a mural in one of the farmhouse bedrooms. Simon Thibault, a cookbook author and James Beard judge, is a fan. "Delicious things can be made out of the most pedestrian ingredients," Mr. Thibault said. "I think that's where Crawford is brilliant." Mr. Thibault, 43, lives in Halifax today but grew up in Church Point, Nova Scotia. "I came out in '93 in a village of 300 people," he said. "Having someone like Jennifer choosing to have a rural existence in a place like this is a step in the right direction toward giving queer people a sense that they belong and can have that rural experience."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Style
One by one, beginning Wednesday night and all through Thursday, the pillars of the American athletic landscape toppled, unceremoniously, to the ground, marking one of the most astonishing nights and days in United States sports history. Professional basketball disappeared first, then the college game followed; hockey melted away; baseball went on indefinite hiatus; and soccer took leave, as well. Before Thursday, Americans could have held some hope that the country's traditional sports leagues would, in the coming weeks, supply moments of needed respite and emotional escape from the weighty concerns of the coronavirus pandemic. The disruptions and postponements and cancellations, which had started last week at a drip drop pace, a game here and there, swelled on Thursday into large, devastating waves that seemed poised to cause far reaching competitive and financial repercussions for nearly everyone associated with these games and this business for years. The N.H.L. paused play in the final stretch of its regular season, vowing to resume "as soon as it is appropriate and prudent" to crown a champion for the 2019 2020 season. Major League Baseball canceled its spring training schedule midswing and delayed its opening day, scheduled for the end of March, by at least two weeks. The leagues were following in the wake of the N.B.A., which had put its own season on hold late Wednesday night. Two of its players have tested positive for the virus. It was almost unreal to see the sports leagues buckle under the pressure of an unseen, outside force. These institutions are more often seen throwing around their considerable financial might and cultural capital, and are frequently viewed as secure in their near religious place in American society. And for a time, it even seemed they might resist the coronavirus, too: various half measures like locker rooms closed to the news media, arenas closed to fans, games transferred to neutral sites in areas less affected by the virus were pursued in recent days as solutions to keep athletes safe and sports afloat through the pandemic. But little by little, over the course of the week, the decision to play on seemed to be clawed from their hands. The pressure came from all over. A solemn address on Wednesday night from the Oval Office by President Trump, who had previously played down the severity of the coronavirus, seemed to settle, once and for all, the severity of the moment, as if the roiling of the world's financial markets hadn't already. And once one of the professional leagues decided to shut down operations, it appeared inevitable that others would follow like tumbling dominoes. "There is an enormous concern in the sports world not to be left out there to be criticized," Vincent said. "One thing about a herd is if it all merges together, there's some safety in it. That's why it exists." Such swift, dramatic actions produced a series of sometimes bizarre vignettes around the country's sports arenas, and even some overseas. The Baltimore Orioles were aboard their team bus, headed to Fort Myers, Fla., for a spring training baseball game against the Minnesota Twins when it was halted and turned around. In Joensuu, Finland, members of the United States biathlon team preparing for a tournament there this weekend were awakened in their hotel rooms by staff members at 3 a.m. just after Mr. Trump announced a travel ban from Europe and told to gather their belongings. Less than three hours later, they were on a series of flights arranged by the team's leadership to Helsinki, then Munich, then to the United States to bring them home. "They packed their bags quick," said Max Cobb, president of the biathlon federation, who made the decision to recall the athletes. "We didn't ask them. There wasn't time. We felt like if we were going to get these guys out today we needed to make the decision and go for it. And we did. "This is something way bigger than sport," Cobb said. That notion that sports should take a back seat to graver concerns at a time like this was commonly espoused on Thursday. But it remained to be seen what effect the disappearance of sports from American stadiums and television sets would have on the nation.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Sports
As Nancy Goldner remarks in her invaluable companion "Balanchine Variations": "Although she skims the ground, the Sleepwalker doesn't waft about aimlessly. There is a specificity to her travels, yet we don't know if she is moving toward or away from something, someone. At one point she rotates in sharp right angles, as if tracing the four walls of a room. The inner anxiety we sense in her Is she a captive? Am I getting too imaginative? Maybe. The point is that the tension between the Sleepwalker's outer impassivity and inner agitation is thrilling." Is she the Baron's wife, kept out of sight because she is no longer in her right mind? (Sleepwalking and lunacy have long been linked, as Arlene Croce observed in a 1987 New Yorker essay.) Is she like the first Mrs. Rochester in "Jane Eyre"? No answers are known. What happens between her and the Poet is among the strangest scenes in drama. He's fascinated by her, drawn to her, amazed by the unseeing gaze of her open eyes; but at first he behaves simply as if he's found some kind of toy that he can propel and reshape. He pushes her this way, he directs her that way. As their scene develops, moments occur when she seems to sense him, even to address him and make connection to him. As she first does so, the music changes (2:41 on the YouTube clip above) to "Qui la voce," the plaintive melody from Elvira's second mad scene in Bellini's "I Puritani." Yet it's precisely now that she begins to elude him. And as she does so, Rieti's music (from 3:32 onward) astoundingly overlays that first melody with another, from Elvira' first mad scene ("Vieni al tempio"). Bellini's mad scenes are ones of pathos, but also ones in which a confined spirit seeks release and amplitude. He tries to embrace her; she steps under or around his arms, leaving him grasping thin air. And it's this elusiveness that transforms him; he's obsessed by her in a way he wasn't with the Coquette.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Dance
's Fifth Avenue Penthouse Goes on the Market for 50 Million is selling her longtime family home on the Upper East Side, an airy triplex with lush landscaped gardens, complete with composter and shed, and sweeping vistas of the Central Park reservoir and Midtown skyline. Ms. Midler, an award winning entertainer, and her husband, Martin von Haselberg, a performance artist, bought the penthouse at 1125 Fifth Avenue and 94th Street in 1996. The venerable prewar co op proved a perfect fit: It's near the school their daughter, Sophie von Haselberg, attended, has a full time doorman to assure privacy, and is a short drive from the theater district and Carnegie Hall. But at around 7,000 square feet and that's not even counting the additional 3,000 square feet of outdoor space the apartment is too big for the empty nester couple, and so they're placing it back on the market. The asking price is 50 million, according to the listing broker, John Burger of Brown Harris Stevens, with 25,515 in monthly maintenance. "It's time for another family to enjoy it," Ms. Midler said in an email, adding that she and Mr. von Haselberg "consider ourselves die hard New Yorkers" and plan to downsize into another Manhattan home. The penthouse, a combination of two units, occupies the top three floors of the brick and limestone building, all of which are connected via curved stairways with brass balusters. (Elevator service is available on the 15th and 16th floors, but not the top floor of the triplex. After the units were purchased, the interior was remodeled over two years into a comfortable loft like space by the architect Frederick Fisher and Partners and the exterior was landscaped by Sawyer Berson. "The ceilings were lower," Ms. Midler said of the previous layout, "the corridors narrower, and many of the rooms were much smaller." Today, she said, "it's like a country house in the city." The apartment contains four main bedrooms and six and a half baths, along with a home gym that could be converted into a fifth bedroom. There are also three wood burning fireplaces. The main entrance is on the 16th floor. A spacious central gallery, with a powder room and small office, leads to a greenhouse with a seating area. On the west side is a 24 by 25 foot living room anchored by a wood burning fireplace with surrounding ceramic tiles handmade by the artist Kim Dickey. Off the living room, a wraparound terrace with limestone pavers alternating with turf provides direct reservoir and park views, as well as a place for lounging, eating, and one of Ms. Midler's favorite pastimes, bird watching. "Our street is the highway to the East River for all sorts of water birds," she said. "The red tail hawk often comes to visit." Ms. Midler added a birdbath and birdhouses along the terrace. She also had purple ribbons taped on some of the apartment windows as a safety measure for wayward birds. On the main floor's east side is the dining area and kitchen, which also opens to the terrace and offers cityscape views and an herb garden something Mr. von Haselberg, who enjoys cooking, has used for his dishes. The kitchen is equipped with stainless steel appliances, including an enormous stove hood, marble countertops and an abundance of custom cabinets and storage. The en suite bedrooms, a family room and a windowed laundry room are on the 15th floor. The sprawling master suite has a large dressing room with a fireplace; numerous closets; a small beauty parlor; two steam rooms; and the home gym. One of the two master baths features a Japanese hinoki wood soaking tub. The top floor contains a 21 by 18 foot library/music room with another fireplace and a full bath. Built in shelves houses a sizable collection of vinyl record albums. And then, of course, there's the rooftop garden. Ms. Midler, who won a Tony Award two years ago for her performance in "Hello Dolly!," has a special affinity for green spaces. In 1995, she founded the nonprofit New York Restoration Project, which is dedicated to reclaiming and restoring city parks. Her garden terrace is lined with terra cotta tile and features potted pine trees and tomato and lavender plants, as well as an assortment of flowers, including roses and hydrangea.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Real Estate
The Murdoch family, in the throes of reshaping its media empire, is bringing on a lieutenant with experience in chaotic environments: President Trump's former communications director, Hope Hicks. Starting next year, Ms. Hicks, one of the most recognizable alumni of Mr. Trump's White House, will become the chief communications officer of Fox, the new entity to be spun out of the Walt Disney Company's acquisition of most of 21st Century Fox. She plans to move to Los Angeles in connection with her new job. A native of Greenwich, Conn., she had been living in Manhattan since leaving the White House this year. Ms. Hicks, 29, was an obscure public relations aide with zero political experience when Mr. Trump plucked her from his family business in 2015 to serve as press secretary for his nascent presidential bid. What followed was a remarkable ascent, as Ms. Hicks weathered staff shake ups and a knives out office environment to become the closest aide to the most powerful man in the world. Her new role also signals the ambitions of Lachlan Murdoch, the elder son of the mogul Rupert Murdoch, as he prepares to lead the next version of his family's empire. The reconstituted Fox corporation includes Fox Business, Fox Sports and a national broadcast network. But its central asset is Fox News, the highly profitable cable network with close ties to the Trump administration. The channel's prime time stars are relentless boosters of Mr. Trump, and its former co president, Bill Shine, became Mr. Trump's deputy chief of staff for communications in July. The addition of Ms. Hicks to Lachlan Murdoch's core management team offers him another boost in replicating his father's influence at the upper echelons of government. In the West Wing, Ms. Hicks was seen by many journalists and network executives as a key point of contact, able to channel the thinking of her tempestuous boss and single handedly wrangle time for interviews with Mr. Trump in the Oval Office. In addition to her A list contacts in the news media, Ms. Hicks has a track record of working well with heirs to dynastic families a desirable trait for the Murdoch clan, whose financial and personal lives play out in the public eye. Ms. Hicks, who declined to comment for this article, advised Ivanka Trump on her fashion and real estate businesses before joining Mr. Trump's campaign. At the White House, she was one of the few aides who could anticipate, and sometimes temper, Mr. Trump's mercurial moods. 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. For the Fox empire, it is a moment of transition. In a 71.3 billion deal expected to be completed next year, the Walt Disney Company is set to acquire the bulk of the Murdochs' entertainment and media assets, substantially altering the Hollywood landscape. For Rupert Murdoch and his children, the deal represents a significant downsizing, and a shift in focus to news and sports. In dealing with the press, the Murdochs have long relied on the guidance of Julie Henderson, the chief communications officer of 21st Century Fox. Ms. Henderson is expected to step down from her role with the Murdochs after the Disney sale is completed. Her deputy in New York, Nathaniel Brown, is also opting not to continue with the new company. Fox announced Ms. Hicks's appointment alongside a new role for Danny O'Brien, a former senior aide to Joseph R. Biden Jr., the former vice president, and Senator Robert Menendez of New Jersey, who will lead the company's Washington based government relations team. "Together they will define and project Fox's voice to our relevant communities," Viet Dinh, Fox's chief legal and policy officer, wrote in a statement. A former model and college lacrosse star, Ms. Hicks cut her teeth in public relations at Hiltzik Strategies, the high powered New York communications firm. She worked there with Joshua Raffel, who also ended up in the Trump administration and recently landed his own post White House job, handling communications for the e cigarette giant Juul. Ms. Hicks's White House tenure was not without controversy. Her role in a statement by Donald Trump Jr., about a 2016 meeting with Russian operatives at Trump Tower, attracted attention from federal investigators, and she testified for eight hours before the House Intelligence Committee shortly before leaving the West Wing.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Media
, 51, is the chairman of Massey Knakal Realty Services, a commercial real estate brokerage firm in New York. He started the company in 1988 with Paul Massey, the chief executive. Q. Were you always interested in real estate? A. My real estate career actually started when I was in college. It was during my freshman year I was a freshman at Wharton in 1981 and wanted to be the next Gordon Gekko and take over Wall Street. I grew up in northern New Jersey and drove around on spring break dropping my resume off at every commercial and investment bank around. I came out of a Paine Webber office and across the hall I saw Coldwell Banker. I thought Coldwell Banker was a bank and I went in and dropped my resume off. They called me later that day to set up an interview. So I go to the library to look up this "bank," and when I see that it's a real estate company I almost don't go on the interview. But they were the only ones hiring college kids for the summer. I took the job, loved it from the first day. Q. What did you do there? A. It was on the commercial side, and I was in their databank program, where I was driving around Morris County, N.J., writing down information about commercial buildings. I went back my next two summers. My second summer, I ran the summer research program, and then my third summer, I was an assistant to a senior broker. Q. Then you became a broker. A. When I got out of school, I accepted a position in Manhattan with CB Richard Ellis and met Paul Massey my first day. CB had 60 brokers leasing office space and four who were selling buildings. Three of the four buildings people had 20 years of experience, and then there was Paul, who was right out of school. So the boss says "Hang out with Massey." Day 2 on the job we realized the others weren't going to acknowledge we were alive, so let's team up together. That was almost 29 years ago. In '86, '87, '88 we were the top sales people in the office and were actually made the directors of the sale division, so we became the bosses of those guys who didn't want to talk to us when we started. Q. How do you divide up responsibilities at Massey Knakal? A. When we started, we both did everything together, including painting the first couple of offices and moving furniture. Over the years we kind of gravitated toward what we each like and believe that we do well. Paul runs the business. I'm involved in a very macro way in the management of the firm. Q. You are the owner but you're also competing with your employees as a broker. A. Not really. Mainly because of the platform that we have. First we only represent sellers. Second, we only work on exclusive listings and thirdly, we have a unique geographic orientation toward the business where we have one broker working in each neighborhood and they have certain protections in each of those areas, similar to the way franchises work. My territory is Hudson Yards and a small piece of Midtown. Q. Do you do much leasing? A. The firm, up until January 2011, only did property sales. Then we started a retail store leasing division and a mortgage brokerage division. But we're still primarily a property sales company. A. Last year we did 2.6 billion in sales and we're on pace to do about the same this year and in terms of the number of properties sold. I think we sold over 400 buildings last year and we're on pace to surpass that this year. In 2007, at the peak of the market, there was about 62 billion of sales activity; that dropped to 6.2 billion in 2009. Last year it was up to 41 billion. So it's been making a nice, steady comeback. Q. What's been your biggest deal this year? A. We've done a couple that were in the 60 to 70 million range, and we have something that we're working on now that will be over 100 million. Most of what we do as a firm is in that 2 million to 50 million range. Ninety percent of the transactions in New York City are under 50 million; 87 percent are under 20 million. A. The sale of a portfolio of multifamily buildings for Harry Macklowe. It was 187 million transaction that closed in April '03.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Real Estate
Karlie Kloss, the St. Louisan supermodel and girl coding evangelist, and Joshua Kushner, the venture capitalist and younger brother of Jared Kushner, are to be wed. The two announced their engagement this afternoon with a pair of Instagram posts. "I love you more than I have words to express. Josh, you're my best friend and soulmate. I can't wait for forever together. Yes a million times over," Ms. Kloss, 25, wrote, punctuating the caption with a ring emoji. "Fiance," Mr. Kushner, 33, wrote more succinctly, with a heart. (He later edited the post to "Fiancee," the feminine form of the word.) They are, in many ways, the vision of a millennial Camelot: good looking, digitally savvy, adored by celebrities and normals alike. (A full complement of Victoria's Secret Angels, fashion photographers, editors and the socially ubiquitous have rushed in to offer their good tidings on Instagram: "A lifetime of love and gluten free thin crust pizza," wrote the professional man about town Derek Blasberg.)	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Style
BOLLYWOOD BOULEVARD: A JOURNEY THROUGH HINDI CINEMA at Damrosch Park (Aug. 3, 7:30 p.m.). Lights, camera and best of all live action: Hindi cinema takes over the Damrosch Park band shell in this special presentation by Lincoln Center Out of Doors in which music and dance show the evolution of the Bollywood musical. The program includes a performance featuring choreography inspired by Bollywood films against projections of colorful animations. To prepare for the show, take in a panel discussion: The festival, in association with the India Center Foundation, will host "India's Identities Through Bollywood Cinema" at 7 p.m. on Tuesday at the Elinor Bunin Munroe Film Center Amphitheater. 212 721 6500, lincolncenter.org/out of doors HEIDI LATSKY at Hearst Plaza (July 29, 6 p.m.). Lincoln Center Out of Doors is the backdrop for the latest iteration of Ms. Latsky's "On Display," a performance installation in which figures dressed in white gather around Henry Moore's "Reclining Figure." In this evolving piece of living sculpture, first performed in 2015 in conjunction with the 25th anniversary of the Americans With Disabilities Act, Ms. Latsky, who has created work with people with disabilities since 2006, explores inclusion and ideas around body image. Aptly, her human sculpture court will be made up of a range of diverse performers; Ms. Latsky, as she states on her website, aims to "demonstrate inclusion through art." 212 721 6500, lincolncenter.org/out of doors PAUL TAYLOR DANCE COMPANY at Damrosch Park (July 28, 7:30 p.m.). The extraordinary Taylor dancers return to grace Lincoln Center Out of Doors with performances of two classic dances: "Airs," a 1978 beauty set to Handel; and "Company B," a 1991 showcase of wartime events that manages to be both dark and, in moments, delightful. Appropriately given the subject matter the dark side wins. The original was set to recordings by the Andrews Sisters, but this special rendition features music performed by the New York trio Duchess. That vocal group opens the evening with a special guest, the South African jazz singer Vuyo Sotashe. 212 721 6500, lincolncenter.org/out of doors	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Dance
Immanuel Wallerstein, a sociologist who shook up the field with his ideas about Western domination of the modern world and the very nature of sociological inquiry , died on Aug. 31 at his home in Branford, Conn. He was 88 . His daughter Katharine Wallerstein said the cause was an infection. Dr. Wallerstein had written several books on Africa, where he had traveled extensively, when he published "The Modern World System I: Capitalist Agriculture and the Origins of the European World Economy in the Sixteenth Century," the first of four landmark volumes, in 1974. That work took a broader sociological approach than was common at the time, one that instead of looking at a country or society or ethnic group favored a global view that encompassed history and economic evolution. "Wallerstein's book aims to achieve nothing less than a coherent understanding of the making of the modern world," the sociologist Gertrud Lenzer wrote in a review in The New York Times, "and the unique development within it of capitalism." "It is," she added, "one of the few significant historical analyses to arise out of sociology in recent years." Dr. Wallerstein came to his expanded view of the field as a result of his time abroad. "I credit my African studies with opening my eyes both to the burning political issues of the contemporary world and to the scholarly issues of how to analyze the history of the modern world system ," he wrote in a career summary on his website. "It was Africa that was responsible for undoing the more stultifying parts of my educational heritage." Dr. Wallerstein published "The Modern World System I," the first of four landmark volumes, in 1974. It was, one reviewer wrote, "one of the few significant historical analyses to arise out of sociology in recent years." A 2011 book of essays by various scholars on the impact of his work, "Immanuel Wallerstein and the Problem of the World," extrapolated on the influence of Africa on his thinking. "The misery and violence he saw there, which did not seem to be disappearing with the end of colonial rule, were not determined wholly or even preponderantly by local actors or realities on the ground," the book's introduction said, adding , "The pertinent lines of causality stretched out of sight across the globe." The picture Dr. Wallerstein saw was not complimentary to the West, or to capitalism. "I had the gut feeling in the 1950s," he wrote in "The Essential Wallerstein" (2000), "that the most important thing that was happening in the 20th century world was the struggle to overcome the control by the Western world of the rest of the world." World systems analysis, as he called his approach, occupied only a modest part of his wide ranging scholarship, which also included numerous other books, among them "Unthinking Social Science" (1991), "After Liberalism" (1995), "The Decline of American Power" (2003), "The Uncertainties of Knowledge" (2004) and "The End of the World as We Know It: Social Science for the 21st Century" ( 1999 ). He was also fully engaged with the times, writing on current events throughout his career and sometimes being directly involved in them. In 1968, as a professor at Columbia University, he was part of a faculty committee that sought to mediate the student uprising there. In 2014 he delivered a lecture to more than 1,000 students in Iran, where his writings have been widely read because of his criticism of capitalism and his view that the United States is on a downward trajectory. An activist thread ran through his career and his writings. "I have argued that world systems analysis is not a theory but a protest against neglected issues and deceptive epistemologies," he wrote . "It is an intellectual task," he continued, "that is and has to be a political task as well, because I insist the search for the true and the search for the good is but a single quest." Immanuel Maurice Wallerstein was born on Sept. 28, 1930, in Manhattan and grew up in the Bronx. His father, Lazar, was trained as a rabbi and became a physician; his mother, Sara (G u nsberg) Wallerstein, was an artist. He wrote two books on the continent in the 1960s, "Africa: The Politics of Independence" and "Africa: The Politics of Unity." "I shifted my area of empirical concern from my own society to Africa in the hope either that I would discover various theories confirmed by what I found there or that a look at distant climes would sharpen my perception by directing my attention to issues I would otherwise have missed," he wrote in "The Modern World System I." "I expected the former to happen. But it was the latter that came to pass." His time in Africa, where colonialism was still in force, showed him the limits of much sociological scholarship. "It was a false perspective to take a unit like a 'tribe' and seek to analyze its operations," he wrote, "without reference to the fact that, in a colonial situation, the governing institutions of a 'tribe,' far from being 'sovereign,' were closely circumscribed by the laws (and customs) of a larger entity of which they were an indissociable part, the colony." The student uprising at Columbia in 1968, as well as other events in that tumultuous year, resulted in a 1969 book, "University in Turmoil: The Politics of Change." In 1971 he moved to McGill University in Montreal, and in 1976 he became distinguished professor of sociology at the State University of New York at Binghamton. He had been a senior research fellow at Yale University since 2000. For years he elaborated on these and other ideas in a series of commentaries on his website, written on the first and 15th of each month. On July 1 he announced that his posting that day was the 500th and that it would be the last. He concluded it by pondering the future, and whether and how the global change he predicted would come to pass. "The world might go down further by paths," he wrote. "Or it may not. I have indicated in the past that I thought the crucial struggle was a class struggle, using class in a very broadly defined sense. What those who will be alive in the future can do is to struggle with themselves so this change may be a real one. "I still think that," he continued, "and therefore I think there is a 50 50 chance that we'll make it to transformatory change, but only 50 50."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Books
LONDON The news that Jonathan Anderson a.k.a. J. W. Anderson would live stream his fall men's show exclusively on Grindr, the gay social networking app, has been the whispered, and then not so whispered, talk of the first days of men's fashion week here. "Now there's a show that would've looked good on Grindr," one showgoer cracked to another about a collection that featured men in cutout trousers and one very visible pair of thong underwear. On Sunday, just after 10 a.m., Mr. Anderson's collection hit the runway and the Internet. Those unsuspecting souls surfing Grindr for lust or companionship were offered the chance to see his show unfold: its polka dot furs and knitted trousers, appliqued snails and boxing boot shoes. Whether it was what the virtually gathered crowd came to the app for or not, Grindr personnel were sanguine. "You know as well as I do, there are the fashion gays," Landis Smithers, the company's vice president for marketing, said in an interview last week. "They love them a show and an exclusive." Not everyone was as eager. In the immediate aftermath of the announcement, rumors circulated that model agencies were leery of sending their charges, many of them underage, to participate in the show. (To be live streamed via Grindr is not the same as to use Grindr, though the company's terms of service restrict use to those who are at least 18, and in some places, 21.)	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Fashion & Style
Last fall, Jessica Ferri, a freelance writer in Brooklyn, posted a photo to Instagram of her morning tableau: a plate of scrambled eggs and bacon, a mug of coffee and a paperback novel she was reading, "Other Men's Daughters" by Richard Stern. Earlier this year, she posted another artfully arranged scene: pen and spiral bound notebook, frothy mug and "The Collected Essays of Elizabeth Hardwick." Ms. Ferri's reading choices have something in common besides being posed next to breakfast foods: They are New York Review Books Classics. An offshoot of the literary magazine The New York Review of Books, the NYRB Classics imprint specializes in reissuing volumes that have fallen out of print or been otherwise neglected, such as J. R. Ackerley's "My Dog Tulip," a strange 1956 memoir about being a dog owner, and "The Door," an English translation of a 1987 novel by the Hungarian author Magda Szabo. Indie bookstores all over the country devote entire shelves to displaying the handsome paperbacks. TV shows and films including "The Gilmore Girls" and "A Bigger Splash" have used them as props. And social media is full of praise, including from the actress Kat Dennings, who tweeted, "I love you, nyrbclassics," along with a photo of one of the nearly 500 books in the series, "In the Cafe of Lost Youth" by the French Nobel Prize winner Patrick Modiano. "The NYRB books are really gorgeous and well done," Ms. Ferri said. "They're begging to be photographed, basically." Every title has a colorful spine and back cover, and a matching color blocked text box, or cartouche, on the center front. The cover image is often a moody painting or photograph. The distinctive yet uniform design makes the series instantly recognizable, not unlike the old Penguin Classics with their orange and black covers. "Simplicity is what I was thinking about," said Katy Homans, the graphic designer who created the NYRB Classic look. "And also, I love color." She is forgiving of those who may not have slogged through the prose before hitting "share." "It's a pretty heady group of books," Ms. Homans said. "If people are interested because they have a red spine, that's great." Stephanie Valdez, an owner of the Community Bookstore in the Park Slope neighborhood of Brooklyn which, groups its large selection of NYRB Classics prominently near the register likened the NYRB imprint to a cool record label (think Blue Note jazz LPs with their graphic blue dot, or Sub Pop). "People who know about the series are excited to see so many in one place, or if they've never heard of them, they're drawn to them," Ms. Valdez said. Like a band T shirt, the NYRB books signify something about the owner. Francois Rene de Chateaubriand's "Memoirs from Beyond the Grave," or "The Dud Avocado" by Elaine Dundy, which is one of Greta Gerwig's 10 favorite books, are unlikely to be sold in a big chain store. To read the NYRB reissues of such titles suggests an awareness that some things are under the mainstream radar, and worth seeking out. Edwin Frank, who founded the Classics imprint in 1999, and continues to edit the series along with a colleague, Sara Kramer, said fostering a sense of discovery was a central goal. "We don't do books that are widely published elsewhere and available at cheap prices," Mr. Frank said. It's no surprise that some of the greatest fans of the series are people in the publishing industry and writers like Ms. Ferri, or else voracious readers like Hayanna Kim. A so called bookstagrammer, who posts her latest reads to social media, Ms. Kim has discovered Eve Babitz and other lesser known writers through the series, but has learned her favorites aren't for everyone. "When I recommend books like Renata Adler, some people don't get it," she said. "But that's the point."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Style
The movie thrives on the juxtaposition of timeless and modern imagery the burning car on the shore, a real crow perched on a cellphone tower, and more. The frames are often suffused with monochromatic light, washing the characters in red or purple. And while overhead drone shots are becoming a too easy convention in contemporary film, their use here is refreshingly different, capturing almost surrealistically colorful landscapes. The family conflict story line brings to mind Charles Burnett's "To Sleep With Anger." The director loves the faces of his actors as much as the documentarian Khalik Allah ("Black Mother") loves the faces of his subjects. And the movie's bold colors sometimes recall those of the African visionary Djibril Diop Mambety ("Touki Bouki"). But these are more affinities than echoes. Bazawule has a cinematic voice of his own, one with a very direct relation to musical rhythm. The way he will establish a view with one shot and then cut into a tighter view of the same shot has the poise of a great dance move. The movie's rare but crucial instances of violence have a heart skipping impact achieved through a perfect meshing of staging and editing. The cutting is complemented by the music, which has flavors of Afrobeat and hip hop but also more conventional cinema scoring. "The Burial of Kojo" is a near virtuoso work, a feast of emotion, nuance and beauty, and a startling feature directing debut.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Movies
PHILADELPHIA "Can I get one with whiz, no onion?" a hungry young man called into the window of Pat's King of Steaks. The counterman deftly flipped a sizzling skein of thinly sliced steak onto a roll and then applied a lacquer of Cheez Whiz to create a classic Philly cheesesteak. Taking it all in with a digital recorder and high end binaural microphones one day in February was the composer Tod Machover, who writes symphonies about cities around the world and brings some of their most characteristic sounds into the concert hall. Mr. Machover was nearly finished with his latest work, "Philadelphia Voices," which the Philadelphia Orchestra and the conductor Yannick Nezet Seguin will perform at Carnegie Hall on Tuesday, but he was not quite satisfied with an earlier attempt to capture the sizzle of a cheesesteak. So he went back for a second helping. This time the steak really sang. Then, after a brief sound gathering detour in the heart of Philadelphia the beating Giant Heart exhibition that young museumgoers walk through at the Franklin Institute he raced through traffic to get back to the Kimmel Center, the home of the Philadelphia Orchestra, which commissioned the work. He was due to present his score to Mr. Nezet Seguin for the first time. "I got a really good recording today, finally, of Pat's cheesesteak," the composer told the maestro. "I put my head near enough to sear my hair!" It was a big day for Mr. Nezet Seguin: The Metropolitan Opera had just announced that morning that he would become its music director next season, two years early a post he will hold in tandem with his job in Philadelphia. But he was all business, going over the "Philadelphia Voices" score and the logistics of how to perform it, asking who would join the orchestra to play Mr. Machover's digital recordings on the keyboard. "It's not rocket science, but you need to be on the money," Mr. Nezet Seguin said. Mr. Machover stands at the intersection of composition and computation he has been a professor of music and media at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Media Lab since it was founded in 1985 and was the first director of musical research at the contemporary music center founded for Pierre Boulez in Paris. To help organize his library of Philadelphia sounds, he used software developed at M.I.T. called Constellation, which can analyze hundreds of sound files by volume, frequency and shape, then visually display them. "Philadelphia Voices" is the latest in a series of Machover symphonies inspired by cities. His Detroit piece, "Symphony in D," featured the sound of a Henry Ford engine. His work about Lucerne, Switzerland, "A Symphony for Lucerne," evoked the city's interconnecting water systems, from the nearby Alps to Lake Lucerne to the Reuss River to the fountains that dot the old town. For Philadelphia he was trying something new: a big choral work with texts written by young poets about democracy, Philadelphia's innovations, its struggles, the gerrymandering that dilutes the political power of black residents, the city's block party traditions and its sometimes arcane parking rituals. It was to be sung by more than 200 people from several choirs with ties to the city and its surroundings: the Westminster Symphonic Choir, the Keystone State Boychoir and Pennsylvania Girlchoir, and the Sister Cities Girlchoir. Mr. Machover was initially unsure about the cheesesteak. "In each of these cities, I've tried to stay away from the kind of obvious: the bagpipe in Edinburgh or the didgeridoo in Australia," he said. "But if you find those things with the right angle it's really important. So when I went home and actually listened to the cheesesteak recordings, I realized how very beautiful they were." He decided to give the sandwich a solo, accompanied by percussion. "We need to fine tune a few moments," Mr. Nezet Seguin told the small invited audience. "The first moment, actually, is about the cheesesteak." Mr. Machover looked on from the seats, surrounded by graduate students from the M.I.T. Media Lab who helped bring the piece to life. His edited recording began to play, and a few musicians from the orchestra slowly added textures that mimicked the sounds of Pat's with metallic percussion instruments evoking clanking spatulas and a rainstick suggesting the sizzling steak. Finally, it was time for the premiere on Thursday. The audience listened attentively as the local choirs evoked more than two centuries of their city's history and struggles. Midway through the piece, the performers grew quiet. A set of 40 loudspeakers brought in for the piece played the final moment of the Philadelphia Eagles' Super Bowl victory in February. A few members of the audience cheered. Then the listeners grew silent as a mysterious new sound began to unfurl. As it grew clearer, there were murmurs of recognition and then a few chuckles. The cheesesteak was a hit.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Music
Read our updates and analysis from the Golden Globes ceremony. Sandra Oh was onstage a lot on Sunday. Not only was she one of the hosts, she also won her second Golden Globe this time for best actress in a television drama as the star of the BBC series, "Killing Eve." Her first win was in 2006: best supporting actress for her role as Dr. Yang on the television series "Grey's Anatomy." Other stars have won Globes even as they served as host, most recently Amy Poehler for best actress for "Parks and Recreation" in 2014. On Sunday Oh's acceptance speech was one of the most spirited of the night, in keeping with her approach to her hosting duties: an endearing combination of earnestness and jubilation. When she took the stage, the camera cut to the audience, where her father was giving her a standing ovation, to which Oh yelled, "Oh, Daddy!"	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Movies
Two teams of scientists have succeeded in dating the opening of the gateway to America, only to disagree over whether the Clovis people one of the first groups from Siberia to reach the Americas ever used the gateway to gain access to the New World. About 23,000 years ago, in a period of intense cold that preceded the end of the last ice age, glaciers from west and east merged to cut off Alaska from North America. With so much of the world's water locked up in ice, sea levels were much lower and a now lost continent, Beringia, stretched across what is now the Bering Strait to join Siberia to Alaska. But people who had trekked across Beringia to Alaska could go no further because of the ring of glaciers that blocked their way south. Ten thousand years later, the glaciers started to retreat and an ice free corridor, roughly 900 miles long, opened between Alaska and the Americas. In the middle of the corridor lay a body of water, 6,000 square miles in area, fed by the melting glaciers and known as Glacial Lake Peace. Not until the lake had drained away, and plants and animals had recolonized the corridor, would early peoples have been able to support themselves as they traversed the corridor between the glaciers. Using new methods for analyzing ancient DNA, the two teams of scientists have each developed ingenious ways to calculate the date at which the corridor first became fit for human travel. A group led by Peter D. Heintzman and Beth Shapiro of the University of California, Santa Cruz, regards bison as the ideal proxy for assessing human travel through the corridor, given that bison were a major prey of early hunters. When the glaciers merged 23,000 years ago, the bison populations in Alaska and North America were separated and started to evolve minor variations in their mitochondrial DNA, a genetic element that survives well in ancient bones. Dr. Shapiro's team collected ancient bison bones from up and down the corridor, analyzed their mitochondrial DNA and looked for Alaskan bison that had traveled south through the corridor and American bison that had traveled north. The corridor was "fully open" for bison traffic about 13,000 years ago, Dr. Shapiro and colleagues reported on June 6 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, and human populations could have traversed it at the same early date. "Our chronology supports a habitable and traversable corridor by at least 13,000" years ago, "just before the first appearance of Clovis technology in interior North America," they write. The Clovis culture was long thought to belong to the first people to reach the Americas. But archaeologists have now detected human presence in the Americas as early as 14,700 years ago. Since the corridor was closed at that time, presumably those first immigrants took a coastal route and arrived by boat. But the Clovis people could have arrived later through the corridor. Also, Dr. Shapiro's team notes, people already in North America could have used the corridor to travel north. A second team of researchers agrees with Dr. Shapiro on the general chronology of the corridor but puts its earliest possible opening some 500 years later, enough to tilt the scales against any significant use of it by the Clovis people. A team led by Mikkel W. Pedersen and Eske Willerslev of the University of Copenhagen has examined ancient DNA and pollen from sediments of lakes thought to be the remnants of Glacial Lake Peace. DNA sequences from so many species have now been decoded that the snippets of ancient DNA can be identified by looking for matches in DNA databanks. The researchers infer that as the lake shrank, grasses and sedges started growing around it, followed by sagebrush, buttercups, birch and willow. About 12,500 years ago, DNA from bison, voles and jack rabbits appears in the lake sediments, Dr. Willerslev's team reports in Wednesday's issue of Nature. They say that 12,500 years ago is the first date at which the corridor would have been able to supply bison for human travelers. The corridor therefore "opened too late to have served as an entry route for the ancestors of Clovis," who were present in North America by 13,400 years ago, the Willerslev team states. It prefers a date 400 years earlier for the Clovis culture than that of the Shapiro team. The two teams, though agreeing on the general date for the opening of the corridor, have each found reason to suppose the other is wrong on the issue of its use by the Clovis people. Dr. Willerslev argues that the Alaskan and American bison lineages analyzed by the Shapiro team could have become distinct before, not during, the merger of the glaciers 23,000 years ago. "If bison could move north and south through the interior ice free corridor, why should they not also have been able to do so before the ice caps completely blocked the way?" he said. If so, the presence of northern bison in the south or vice versa cannot be used to date the opening of the corridor. A member of the Shapiro team, John W. Ives of the University of Alberta, said its dating of the split in bison lineages was more plausible. He also questioned whether the present day lakes sampled by Dr. Willerslev were true remnants of Lake Peace. They could have formed many hundreds of years after Lake Peace disappeared, in which case they would omit the earliest sediment layers and evidence of an earlier opening of the corridor, Dr. Ives said. A recent genetic survey of Native Americans concluded that their ancestors had arrived in the Americas as part of a single migration but that this group had split in two by around 13,000 years ago. The Shapiro and Willerslev teams agree that this migration must have arrived by some route other than the corridor, presumably along the coast. It remains to be seen what role, if any, the corridor played in the population split that occurred around the time of its opening.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Science
Jeff Luhnow, the former general manager of the Houston Astros, is free to work again in Major League Baseball. His one year suspension punishment for the team's sign stealing scandal expired at the end of the World Series, as did suspensions for the former Astros manager A.J. Hinch and the former bench coach Alex Cora. But while Hinch and Cora have already returned as managers Hinch for the Detroit Tigers, Cora for the Boston Red Sox Luhnow has remained in exile. Now he has sued the Astros in Harris County (Texas) District Court, seeking the 22 million remaining on his contract when the owner Jim Crane fired him in January. The suit claims that a "flawed report that had been negotiated with Crane" by Commissioner Rob Manfred was an invalid basis for his firing. "The Astros' termination of Luhnow is an attempt like the Commissioner before them to make Luhnow the scapegoat for the organization while the players and video room staff who devised and executed the schemes went unpunished," the suit said. "Even more egregiously, most of the culprits in the sign stealing scheme remained employed by the club. The Astros concocted grounds to fire Luhnow 'for Cause' in order to save more than 22 million in guaranteed salary." The Astros and Major League Baseball had no comment on the lawsuit as of Monday afternoon, and Luhnow referred questions to his lawyer, John Potter, of Quinn Emanuel Urquhart Sullivan LLC in San Francisco. None Everyone Loves Ohtani: The Angels' two way star was a unanimous pick for A.L. M.V.P. and his superfans redefine devotion. Phillie Phavorite: Bryce Harper truly committed to Philadelphia and now he's back on top of baseball, winning the N.L. M.V.P. Cy Young Winners: Milwaukee's Corbin Burnes and Toronto's Robbie Ray had hit rock bottom before they worked their way up to stardom. Baseball Is Stuck in Neutral: The potential of a lockout has a star studded group of free agents waiting for the dust to settle. Free Agency Tracker: Get the latest updates on signings, contract extensions and trades. "He believes that he's entitled to the payments under the contract, but even more important than that, he wants to clear his good name," Potter said. "He had an unimpeachable, impeccable record for decades and he was widely respected for his integrity. What transpired, unfairly in our view, tarnished his integrity. More than anything else, he wants to set the record straight so people can really understand what happened with respect to the sign stealing." The Astros hired Luhnow in December 2011, attracted by his adherence to data and his willingness to challenge conventional methods of finding talent, as he had done as the scouting director for the St. Louis Cardinals. The Astros were the worst team in the majors then, and Luhnow kept them that way for two more seasons, loading up on prospects who would soon help transform the team. By 2015, they had made the playoffs, and in 2017 they won their first World Series, outlasting the Los Angeles Dodgers while winning eight of their nine home games in the postseason. They returned to the World Series in 2019 but lost to the Washington Nationals, who won all four games played in Houston. Last November with on the record confirmation from the former Astros pitcher Mike Fiers The Athletic reported that the Astros had stolen signals throughout 2017 by reading the catcher's signs off a television monitor and banging a trash can to alert batters of the next pitch. The activity continued even after M.L.B. had warned all teams against electronic spying. Manfred granted immunity to players who were on the team at the time in exchange for cooperation with his investigation, and while he fined Crane 5 million and docked the Astros four draft picks, he was roundly criticized for neither punishing the players nor stripping the Astros of their title. The lawsuit claims that Manfred "let the ringleader keep his position in exchange for providing information that would implicate Luhnow," and goes on to identify Tom Koch Weser, who is listed as the team's director of advance information, as the mastermind. Manfred, the suit said, ignored more than 22,000 text and chat messages from Koch Weser "Tellingly, none of these messages sent or received by Koch Weser included Luhnow or suggested that he had any awareness of the activity," the suit states, adding that Koch Weser "even texted his colleagues 'don't tell Jeff'" and emphasized that Luhnow was never aware of or involved in the scheme. Luhnow did, however, have knowledge of a system called Codebreaker that used an algorithm to decode sign sequences and was mentioned in a PowerPoint presentation in 2016. But the suit said this effort was only undertaken after games were completed, not in real time, and that Manfred acknowledged it was not a rules violation. As for an August 2017 email the league used to implicate Luhnow, the suit said that while it refers to "dark arts," it does not mention electronic in game sign stealing. The suit contends Koch Weser was the only witness to implicate Luhnow, and that Koch Weser "lied repeatedly" to save his job. The suit said that Luhnow gave proper warnings to staffers about following the rules on electronic equipment, and that it was unrealistic to expect him to be aware of the activities of everyone on his staff.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Sports
Max Ferra, a founder and the first artistic director of the Intar Hispanic American Arts Center, an innovative Off Broadway theater company that nurtures and produces the works of Latino playwrights in English, died on Feb. 4 in Miami. He was 79. His life partner, Winston Gonzalez, said the cause was pneumonia. Mr. Ferra, who left Cuba in 1958, had a sixth grade education and little theatrical experience when he and seven colleagues started Intar, or International Arts Relations, in the mid 1960s. For about a decade, they produced plays in Spanish. But Mr. Ferra then had a change of heart that reflected shifts in American culture and demographics. "I realized there were a bunch of young Latino playwrights coming of age who were writing plays in English that had a Hispanic essence," he told The New York Times in 2004, "but there was no arena for them." The playwrights who have had their works produced at Intar include the Nobel laureate Mario Vargas Llosa, Manuel Puig, Jose Rivera, Luis Santeiro, Migdalia Cruz, Caridad Svich, Carmelita Tropicana, Eduardo Machado and Nilo Cruz, whose play "Anna in the Tropics" won the 2003 Pulitzer Prize for drama. For many years, Intar has also had a laboratory to develop playwriting skills. "We have created the Latino playwright in this country," Mr. Ferra declared in 2004. "They exist, they have a voice." Mr. Machado, whose play "The Cook" was produced in 2003 at Intar, and who succeeded Mr. Ferra as artistic director of the theater in 2004, said in an interview that Mr. Ferra provided the welcoming atmosphere Latino playwrights did not always receive at other theaters, where "you have to explain yourself." And, he added, Mr. Ferra's recognition of the need for Latino writers to express themselves in English was a critical decision. "We would have been disenfranchised if we hadn't started writing in English," Mr. Machado said. "If not, we would have been on the fringe forever. Many of us didn't want to write in Spanish. I wanted to write in English. I am an American." Mr. Ferra directed about 80 plays at Intar and tried to imbue actors with his passion. "He wasn't gentle or imperious," said Michael John Garces, a Cuban American writer, director and actor who worked at Intar after graduating from the University of Miami. "But he could be hard on actors. He would push actors to commit fully. He was bored with small choices, so he would push you hard but get out of your way if he saw that you were committed." His parents and his sister, Teresa Lopez, eventually emigrated to America. His sister and Mr. Gonzalez survive him. Mr. Ferra worked in a recording studio in Midtown Manhattan and then for an airline before he and his colleagues founded Agrupacion de Arte Latinoamericano, or Association of Latin American Arts, which turned into Intar. "We realize we wanted more than a 9 to 5 existence here in the United States of America," he told The Times as he looked back at Intar on its 20th anniversary. "We wanted to create something on our own." Mr. Ferra's desire to showcase new works led him to ask the Broadway choreographer Graciela Daniele, "What would you like to do?" In an interview, she said: "Nobody had ever asked me that. It was like opening a huge window to a world I never knew of before." The result was "Tango Apasionado," a 1987 musical adaptation of stories by the Argentine master Jorge Luis Borges that she directed, choreographed and helped adapt. The show was presented by Intar but staged at the Westbeth Theater Center in Lower Manhattan. "How could I forget this man?" Ms. Daniele said. "His passion, his energy, he was like Don Quixote fighting windmills. He would just keep on going if he believed in something and if it helped Latino artists."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Theater
Our weekday morning digest that includes consumer news, deals, tips and anything else that travelers may want to know. While most theme parks aim for higher, faster and scarier, England's newly revived Dreamland, opening today, champions older, slower and, it hopes, hipper amusements. A 19th century landmark of seaside Margate in East Kent, Dreamland, closed since 2006, has been given an PS18 million remodel that includes the restoration of 17 vintage rides and attractions. The oldest, a carousel called Gallopers and a giant slide called Helterskelter, date back to the 1920s. Retro rides from the 1930s to the 1990s, including a double decker merry go round, spinning teacups and the twirling Wave Swinger swing ride, have all been updated to modern safety standards. Period pastimes include Punch and Judy puppet shows, arcade games, lawn croquet and a roller disco. Classic midway games will award teddy bears and toys as well as more unexpected prizes, including local produce. Considered the oldest surviving amusement park in Britain, Hall by the Sea was originally established in the early 1860s and renamed Dreamland in 1920. This is the first phase of the restoration of the 14 acre park, where the wooden roller coaster Scenic Railway will reopen later this year. The original Hall by the Sea, to reopen in 2016, will house a 1,600 capacity concert hall. For those Grateful Dead fans who have perhaps aged out of sleeping in their vans, Cruzin, a boat rental company, proposes its fleet as pop up digs for the faithful who will flock to Chicago, July 3 to 5, for three reunion concerts. The boat sharing service has set up a Grateful Dead concert page featuring a range of powerboats and sailboats available for overnight renters in Lake Michigan harbors. Most sleep four to six people and have onboard bathrooms, and run between 350 and 1,500 per night with a three night minimum over those dates. Some are docked within walking distance of Soldier Field, the concert venue and site of the last show played by the band with the lead guitarist Jerry Garcia in July 1995. Making life a little nicer aloft, KLM has introduced a gift giving service to surprise fliers at 30,000 feet. On flights of 90 minutes or more, KLM will deliver gifts to passengers ordered via the Wannagives website. Those who wish to give a gift can select Champagne (12 euros), chocolates (19 euros), a meal (12 euros) or more fashionable products including a tote bag (139 euros) and a watch (299 euros). Once they select a gift for a Father's Day flier, for example, or a newly wedded passenger, gift givers must designate the recipient by logging into Facebook or LinkedIn or by supplying an email address, and provide some flight details. Buyers can also write a personal message to be delivered in flight with the gift. Orders must be placed at least three days before departure. In northern New Mexico, Hotel Santa Fe, Hacienda Spa calls itself the first United States hotel powered by solar energy delivered by smart grid technology. Though the solar panels are not on the property of the 163 room hotel in the state capital, solar power harvested elsewhere in the state is channeled on demand to provide a green energy source. Highlighting the technology, which debuted in December, Hotel Santa Fe has started a campaign called "Running on Sunshine" aimed at appealing to eco conscious travelers by publicizing its clean energy system and offering solar powered cellphone chargers in the business center. Through June 30, rooms start at 199 a night and include a choice of a 25 restaurant gift certificate or a 25 gas card.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Travel
Welcome to "The Month in Live Jazz," a column highlighting three standout performances from the past month on stages across New York City. It had been a while since Wynton Marsalis the famously provocative trumpeter and Jazz at Lincoln Center patriarch had stirred controversy on the level that he did in May. In an interview with The Washington Post, he declared that profanity in hip hop is "more damaging" to the black community than the Confederate statues that have come down across the country. The interview was part of the publicity push for "The Ever Fonky Lowdown," a full length opera that his Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra debuted a couple of weeks later. It turns out the statements weren't just campaign bluster. "The Ever Fonky Lowdown" largely took up the same concerns: what Mr. Marsalis openly calls the "pathology" of those who, to him, seem to celebrate their own poverty. Performed by the full orchestra, along with three singers, three dancers and the actor Wendell Pierce, who read most of the lines in the lengthy libretto, the suite offered occasional moments of musical verve, as on the funky, simmering theme song, the three female vocalists harmonizing in a high, chirping refrain ("It's the ever fonky lowdown"), and the Caribbean flavored, swaggering "It May Sound Like the Drums of War." Mr. Pierce's character, called Mr. Game, is a carnival barking composite of Upton Sinclair and Orson Welles villainy, explaining how capitalists hoodwink the less fortunate. But as the libretto's historical narrative inched toward the present day, his caustic critiques fell with an increasingly relentless thud on the urban poor ("I love the ghetto and the old plantation, 'cause the good ol' time attracting, character detracting stories and the acting is for me"). Later, in an almost unbelievable moment, Doug Wamble, a white guitarist, drawled a taunting ditty called "I Wants My Ice Cream." (This piece was picking up on Mr. Game's earlier argument that those who feast on hip hop culture are refusing to do the hard work of eating their cultural "vegetables.") Seeing all this presented to a largely white, conspicuously wealthy crowd, it was hard not to feel uncomfortable. How many Mr. Games were there, quietly nodding in assent? As part of "On Whiteness," the poet Claudia Rankine's five week, multidisciplinary interrogation at the Kitchen, Vijay Iyer was invited to assemble a four night series of performances addressing racial identity and seeking angles of attack against white supremacy. On Day 4, back to back concerts from the vocalist Imani Uzuri (with Kassa Overall accompanying her on drums) and the poet Mike Ladd (helming a seven person ensemble) addressed the topic with subtlety and vision. Ms. Uzuri began her performance offstage, singing into a microphone in wordless, a cappella peals and shaking a tambourine. She walked through the audience and onto the stage in a slow, rhythmic step. Mr. Overall began to play behind her, first in a low rumble, then in a billowing circle of polyrhythms. As she sang clipped and stuttering renditions of old spirituals ("Wade in the Water," "Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child," "It's Me, O Lord"), she sometimes dropped to her knees or repeated short phrases, as if her body had given all it could. You felt the volume of the histories that had been lain upon her, simply by virtue of her birth. Before and after her performance, a sound installation played of poets and artists discussing race, while a player piano ran through a preprogrammed set of Mr. Iyer's improvisations. If you wondered why Ms. Uzuri and Mr. Ladd, two African American artists, were headlining at an event interrogating whiteness, one gnomic line in this installation, spoken by the cinematographer Bradford Young, said it: "White folk don't need to carry the baggage of white supremacy, because some black folk are going to carry it for them." Soon after that, Mr. Ladd took the stage with his band: the poets HPrizm and Ursula Rucker, Ms. Uzuri, Mr. Iyer, Mr. Overall and the electric guitarist Marvin Sewell. Their performance was titled "Blood Black and Blue," and it drew upon Mr. Ladd's conversations with black police officers. Toward the end, Mr. Ladd rolled tape of a female officer who said she sometimes feels like a modern day overseer, keeping her peers penned in and closely watched. "Blood Black and Blue" refused to point fingers or lay easy blame, instead exposing the heartbreak that often comes with carrying someone else's baggage. The trumpeter Peter Evans and the pianist Cory Smythe, two of the most aggressively dazzling players in improvised music, recently released a short album inspired by another virtuoso American duo. Titled "Weatherbird," it begins with the famous tune of that name recorded 90 years ago by the trumpeter Louis Armstrong and the pianist Earl Hines. On the album, Mr. Evans and Mr. Smythe play a relatively faithful rendition of the classic tune's stippled, rag like melody, then disassemble and erupt it over the course of five subsequent tracks. At the Jazz Gallery, they hardly addressed that source material, instead swerving quickly into the open terrain of free improvisation. Mr. Evans began with a blast of notes, sustained and slow, alternating between muting the trumpet and cupping the microphone with its bell as he played. As Mr. Smythe played light but somber chords, sometimes using the soft pedal and adding a small complement of electronics, Mr. Evans played in gunshot gusts and stout melodies assertive and bold, but vaguely absconded. He was matching Armstrong's famous power, but not the gregariousness of his projection.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Music
Mark Evans, left, and the New York City Ballet star Sara Mearns in the musical "I Married an Angel" at New York City Center. As I watched "I Married an Angel," the wan Encores! offering that opened on Wednesday night at New York City Center, my mind kept flashing to debates about Confederate monuments. What do we do with the troublesome products of our cultural past? Encores! is in the business of monuments. The series' implicit argument is that old musicals, even with faulty books or politics, may offer meaningful pleasures. Failing that, they may offer history lessons. And it's true, I was glad for both reasons to see "I Married an Angel," a dance heavy 1938 Rodgers and Hart fantasia unlikely to be revived on its own merits. Not only does it provide an opportunity to watch the New York City Ballet star Sara Mearns perform the choreography of her husband, Joshua Bergasse, and to hear a Richard Rodgers score suavely reincarnated, but it also makes you think about the role musical theater has often played in maintaining odious social norms even while advancing purely artistic ones. Still, I'm not sure those excuses suffice anymore. If the problem were just a few lines, it might be swept away or ignored. But even after a thorough feminist scouring by the playwrights Sarah Saltzberg and Sandy Rustin, "I Married an Angel" is solid state groan worthy. You can't scour away Lorenz Hart's lyrics. The premise remains untouched: that women are either too bad or too good, and that only the love of a man can help them find a happy medium. Or at least that's what I took from the story of a Hungarian banker, Willy Palaffi (Mark Evans), who would rather stay single than consort with the schemers and sinners he meets in Budapest society. "If you ever hear that I'm married," he says, "you can be sure that an angel flew down from heaven to become my wife." But when that actually happens, in the form of Ms. Mearns, she proves so incapable of guile that she offends all of Willy's friends and, at the end of the first act, causes a ruinous run on his bank. In the second act, she undergoes a re education. Her sister seraphim teach her that a woman without love is like an "angel without wings." And in the song "A Twinkle in Your Eye," Willy's sister, Peggy (Nikki M. James), delivers the crucial feminine lesson: "It's not what you do, it's what you promise." You can faintly feel the risque frisson a line like that may have aroused in the audience at the Shubert Theater in 1938. But mostly you wince, as you also do when an old man remembers how lovely Peggy was when they started dating: "You were 18 I hope." (She was 15.) That's when I started thinking not only about Confederate monuments, but also about Woody Allen and Michael Jackson. What's new onstage and off: Sign up for our Theater Update newsletter If such contemporary intrusions ought to be irrelevant, I can only say that a stronger production might have made them so. But Mr. Bergasse, who directed as well as choreographed, has not been able to provide sufficient coherence and distraction. Ms. Mearns, when she dances, is fantastic and modern. Her Angel is no sylph, but an athlete and a seeker. When she rises on point and shudders around the stage to demonstrate the excitement of her encounter with humanness, she is at once lovely and gauche, counteracting the bubble headedeness of the character as written. A conversation with Mr. Bergasse and Ms. Mearns about "I Married an Angel." Perhaps that complexity is in the DNA of the dances, originally choreographed by George Balanchine for his fiancee Vera Zorina. Though no record of their work remains except for some silent footage, you can sense the scale of the 1938 "I Married an Angel" from the size of the cast (51 performers), the rave reviews ("an imaginative improvisation") and the hole in the storytelling that spectacle must have filled. Balanchine had a snowstorm onstage. But Mr. Bergasse, who choreographed the eloquent 2014 revival of "On The Town," has neither the troops for spectacle (Encores! has a cast of 29) nor the directing chops to keep the evening from separating like mayonnaise. For each impressive musical number, including Phillip Attmore and Hayley Podschun in some rousing tap specialties, there are two dull ones. The book scenes are too busily staged as if they, too, were choreographed and the spoken performances are generally subpar. Not so the music, directed by Rob Fisher and played by a luxurious 29 piece orchestra to make the best possible case for this strange heaven meets honky tonk melange of a Rodgers score. "Spring Is Here," "I'll Tell the Man in the Street," the title song and a rhythm number called "How to Win Friends and Influence People" (the Dale Carnegie book was then new) get a lovely buzz from the original Hans Spialek orchestrations, rediscovered and restored for this production. Naturally, the harpist (Susan Jolles) plays a central role. Even the best songs, though, lack verbal lift. Hart's lyrics (and his rhymed spoken couplets for Angel and her sisters) are neither very glittery nor very frisky today. Dusty punch lines include the set designer Jo Mielziner (rhymes with "keener") and the operetta composer Rudolf Friml (rhymes with "Gott im Himmel"). The emphasis on tricks gets tiring. Indeed, though I may be projecting back in time, I felt I could hear Rodgers beginning to move away from Hart in his songwriting ambition. Though five more years, which included "Pal Joey," would ensue before Hammerstein and "Oklahoma!" came along, the music for "Angel" like Angel herself in her desire to be human wants something the lyrics can't provide. Perhaps it's unfair that I, too, want something this material can't provide. As a product of its time, "I Married an Angel" certainly merits scholarly study and maybe even staging, albeit a better one than this. But a problem with mounting disagreeable works on such glamorous and expensive pedestals is that they use up all the pedestals. There are plenty of worthy shows to be restored, even if not the work of such prominent artists. Where will they stand?	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Theater
Edward E. David Jr., a researcher who sought to make science more relevant and accessible to presidents and to the public, died on Feb. 13 at his home in Bedminster, N.J. He was 92. His death was confirmed by his wife, Ann. For 28 months, as director of the federal Office of Science and Technology under President Richard M. Nixon, Dr. David successfully lobbied for the first budget increases for grants for nongovernment applied research and development in more than a decade. He also helped draft the administration's proposals for pollution control and alternative energy that followed passage of the Clean Air Act in 1970. He struck partnership agreements with foreign governments and private industry, reorganized the federal scientific bureaucracy, and encouraged Nixon to deliver the first presidential message on science and technology. But elevating research to a higher government priority was problematic, as was getting the president to listen. An article in The Saturday Review of Science concluded in 1972 that "Mr. David is politically chaste and Mr. Nixon is scientifically illiterate." After Nixon diluted Dr. David's authority by appointing a separate technology adviser, and just three weeks before the president abolished the science and technology office altogether, Dr. David quit in frustration early in 1973. The president said the office's advisory and other functions could largely be assumed by the National Science Foundation, a congressionally chartered agency. During his tenure and afterward, when he served on professional and official panels (including some appointed by other presidents), Dr. David warned of the challenges that computers posed to personal privacy, advocated a federal communications network linking local emergency services to provide disaster warnings, expressed alarm at a national learning gap in mathematics, and supported ethical standards for research. While he pressed utility companies to impose pollution controls and explore alternative fuels, in 1972 he questioned the cost benefit value of stringent auto emission rules and airbags. He favored development of a supersonic transport plane and criticized NASA for relying too heavily on space shuttles as launching vehicles instead of expendable rockets. By the new century, with nongovernment sources spending more on research, he suggested that the president's science office, which was revived in 1976, become a "window on the private sector" rather than a more aggressive guiding force. He also vigorously challenged the prevailing view on climate change. He and 15 other scientists were listed as authors of an article in The Wall Street Journal in 2012 that said "there is no compelling scientific argument for drastic action to 'decarbonize' the world's economy" and that "aggressive greenhouse gas control policies are not justified economically." Unlike the presidential science advisers who preceded him, Dr. David was an industrial scientist. Before serving in government, he was executive director of the communications systems division of Bell Telephone Laboratories, where he worked from 1950 until his presidential appointment in 1970. He left government for Gould Inc., a technology company, and was president of the Exxon Research and Engineering Company from 1977 to 1986. He was also the United States representative to the NATO Science Committee, a president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the founder of a consulting company. Edward Emil David Jr. was born on Jan. 25, 1925, in Wilmington, N.C., to Edward Emil David and the former Beatrice Liebman. In addition to his wife, the former Ann Hirshberg, he is survived by their daughter, Nancy David Dillon. Mr. David served in the Navy at the end of World War II and earned a bachelor of science degree in electrical engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology in 1945. He received a master's degree and a doctorate from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he specialized in microwaves and noise theory.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Science
There was a plan, which provoked protests. The Landmarks Commission, with unusual readiness, swooped in. The new plan is better. The tale argues for the whole messy, infuriating way New York occasionally stumbles toward progress. Tuesday night, in a Manhattan high school library, before a subcommittee of Community Board 5 and a small audience, the architects and developers of what used to be called the AT T building freshly minted as an official city landmark presented their revised proposal to turn a historic, now vacant skyscraper into a Class A 21st century office tower. This time the idea no longer involves stripping away the base of the building's pink granite facade, the proposal that incited the Landmarks Commission earlier in the year. This time, less is more. And credit to those who stood up for saving an architectural lightning rod. A year ago, you may recall, the architecture firm Snohetta unveiled its initial plan to reincarnate the 37 story, 647 foot high building with the Chippendale crown on Madison Avenue, between 55th and 56th Streets, which Philip Johnson completed in 1984 with his partner, John Burgee, for AT T. Conceived to convey permanence, the signature building opened in the midst of the telephone company's breakup. Sony took the place over by the early 1990s. Lately, it had fallen vacant, a relic of an age when giant businesses commissioned whole skyscrapers for themselves. The development team, led by the Olayan Group, which acquired the site in 2016 for 1.4 billion, hired Snohetta to do the makeover. Snohetta's big move in the first go around, visually speaking, was swapping out the lower portion of the building's masonry facade for a diaphanous curtain wall. With its Apple store vibe, the fluted glass scrim exposed the building's supporting steel structure and allowed light into a grand but gloomy second floor sky lobby. It was a gambit that brought to mind Snohetta's popular expansion of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Designed in the mid 1990s by Mario Botta, the museum's masonry exterior always conveyed something of the air of a mausoleum, closing the building off from what was still a blighted part of the city. There, as well, Snohetta's task was to update a divisive but potent project and civic symbol from the Postmodern era. The glass interrupted the tower's pulled taffy proportions, and spoiled what was even more distinctive than the broken pediment: the supersized Italianate portico, facing Madison Avenue, with its semicircular arches and big, quasi ecclesiastical rose window. Years ago, Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown famously described functional structures dressed up with signs or ornaments as "decorated sheds." AT T was one of Johnson's decorated sheds, its brawny granite skin wrapped around a basically conventional steel frame. Snohetta's glass wall, in effect, dressed the shed in drag. Picture LeBron James in uniform. Now picture LeBron James in uniform but wearing ballet slippers and an ankle length, see through plastic apron. The architects' proposal, to its credit, also eradicated the clumsy 1990s era ground floor renovations by Gwathmey Siegel, which had made everything worse. Those renovations enclosed Johnson and Burgee's open air loggias with retail spaces. They made the pedestrian plaza in the back even drearier. Snohetta imagined a tree filled public garden going back there, stripping away the hulking four story annex that long served as a de facto indoctrination center for Sony customers, adding a grassy berm and leafy nooks with plenty of seating. But it was the change to the facade that roused picketers along Madison Avenue to tote "Hands Off My Johnson" signs and appeal to the Landmarks Commission. Protesters were doubly enraged after Olayan went ahead and demolished the lobby anyway, to add new elevators. That was an underhanded move. Even so, the anger of the protests came as a surprise to some of those for whom the armoire shaped tower had long been an object of, if not disdain, ambivalence. As the critic Justin Davidson put it, Johnson's design for AT T "deliberately made it hard to distinguish between true grandeur and mock grandiloquence." The building was at once a one liner and one of a kind. Detractors talked about the broken pediment on the city skyline as if it were the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man from "Ghostbusters," another mid 80s confectionary menace. But suddenly, young architects and preservationists, in particular, saw its defacement not as a strategy for resuscitating a dead building but as yet another assault on an increasingly vulnerable and admirable era in 20th century architecture. That revisionism extended to the work of Brutalists like Paul Rudolph, whose concrete behemoths, publicly reviled, had also come to be seen afresh by a generation of designers and design lovers. I have always loved Rudolph's works, despite their practical problems. I never loved the AT T building, although it became part of the mental furniture of the skyline and then, incrementally, began to stand out by contrast with so many new glass towers. It had also become a fixture in classes about late 20th century architecture, a textbook example of Post Modernism, parable of the star architect, catnip on Instagram. And its chutzpah provided a timely antidote to the polite, public spirited, retro modernism that is now architecture's default mode. Love it or hate it, 550 Madison was the opposite of polite. None Testing the Limits: Only three of New York's 25 tallest residential buildings have completed safety tasks required by the city. The Downside to Life in a Supertall: 432 Park faces some significant design problems, and other luxury high rises may share its fate. Luxury Developers' Loophole: Soaring towers are able to push high into the sky because of a loophole in the city's labyrinthine zoning laws. An Evolving Skyline: The high rise building boom has transformed the city's skyline in recent years. Its impact will echo for years to come. Hidden Feats: Our critic looks at some supertall N.Y.C. buildings and how the ingenuity of engineers helped build landmarks. So it was good news when officials designated the exterior of the tower a city landmark in July. Preservation shouldn't be a popularity contest, after all. At the same time, buildings need to remain viable for the sake of their owners, occupants and neighborhood. The trick is balancing the two. On Tuesday evening, Nick Anderson, project manager from Snohetta, presented the firm's new strategy to the community board members. It leaves Madison Avenue's facade along with the north and south sides of the building completely intact in total, 94 percent of the exterior, Mr. Anderson said, won't be touched. What will go are Gwathmey Siegel's ugly tinted bay windows, with their obtrusive, heavy mullions. They're going to be replaced with clear glazing, discreetly recessed to give visual prominence to the building's columns and the vertical voids between them.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Art & Design
In 1996, Suzan Lori Parks collaborated with two dynamic and singularly distinctive directors on different projects, neither of which was a critical hit. She wrote Spike Lee's "Girl 6," his first film that he didn't write the screenplay for, and "Venus," a play directed by the downtown avant garde auteur Richard Foreman about Sarah Baartman, the 19th century star of English freak shows billed as Hottentot Venus. In both cases, critics described the marriage of these considerable talents as strained (although "Venus" did win two Obie Awards, including one for writing). Two decades later, Ms. Parks, a Pulitzer Prize winner and one of the most acclaimed playwrights in America, is bringing "Venus" back, in a Signature Theater revival that will follow the performer from her home in South Africa to fame in Europe that ends in tragedy. The Obie winner Lear deBessonet directs. The play begins previews on Tuesday, April 25, and stars Zainab Jah from "Eclipsed." (212 244 7529; signaturetheatre.org.)	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Theater
Three months after a terrorist attack in Afghanistan left Jeremy Haynes a paraplegic, he met with a psychologist from the Department of Veterans Affairs. "He asked me what I wanted to do with my life," said Mr. Haynes, a retired Army major. "I said I wanted to go back to school. He said, 'Let's be realistic. You're not going to be operating mentally like you did before.'" On Aug. 5, 2014, a gunman had sprayed bullets from an assault rifle into a military delegation visiting an Afghan military academy. Maj. Gen. Harold J. Greene was killed; Mr. Haynes was struck with four bullets and was among nine Americans injured. Today, he is studying for his doctorate in business administration at Walden University, which specializes in online education. "I knew I didn't want to go back to school in the traditional sense," said Mr. Haynes, who uses a wheelchair. "I didn't want to be a distraction in the classroom. I didn't want people to have to hold the door open for me, or worry about parking." He had prior experience with distance learning. Although Mr. Haynes, a native of Albany, Ga. who now lives in Fort Belvoir, Va., had pursued his bachelor's degree in a traditional classroom based program at Fort Valley State University in Georgia he had later earned his master's in business administration online from Florida Institute of Technology in 2013, while in the Army. He also earned a certification in program management while deployed as a member of the 82nd Airborne Division. "I could log on any time, in the middle of Iraq," he said. For the convenience, the flexibility and now because, "it puts a veil over my disability," Mr. Haynes says he prefers taking classes through the screen of his laptop. Of course, the idea of adults taking classes remotely is not new. "When I started, they called them 'correspondence courses,'" said George Haber, an adjunct professor at Vaughn College of Aeronautics and Technology in Queens. "And that's what it really was. Students would send in their work handwritten, you would write them back." In the 1990s, he recalls, the first forms of online classes emerged, although the systems were still slow. Today, such popular online platforms such as Blackboard or Moodle allow for much improved discourse. "In the true online class there's a lot of interactivity," said Mr. Haber, who teaches classes in technical writing and communications. Now, according to an annual survey by the Babson Survey Research Group and the Online Learning Consortium, more than 6.3 million students took at least one distance education course in the Fall 2016 semester (the most recent academic year for which data is available). That's 31.6 percent of all higher education enrollments, according to the study, and about half of them were taking all of their classes online. Many of these students are traditional age. But for adult students (generally defined as those 25 and over, working full time jobs or with parenting responsibilities) online education is a particularly attractive option. Citing several studies, Louis Soares, chief learning and innovation officer for the American Council on Education, says that about a third of all adult students roughly 13 million are pursuing advanced degrees online. "I think it has given adult students more opportunities," Mr. Soares said. "If done correctly, online education can create a robust learning experience." Research has shown that students can learn as well online as they can in a face to face classroom, according to Jovita Ross Gordon, a professor at Texas State University. With the departure of the U.S. military on Aug. 30, Afghanistan quickly fell back under control of the Taliban. Across the country, there is widespread anxiety about the future. None Vanishing Rights: The Taliban's decision to restrict women's freedom may be a political choice as much as it is a matter of ideology. Far From Home: Some Afghans who were abroad when the country collapsed are desperate to return, but have no clear route home. Can Afghan Art Survive? The Taliban have not banned art outright. But many artists have fled, fearing for their work and their lives. A Growing Threat: A local affiliate of the Islamic State group is upending security and putting the Taliban government in a precarious position. "In terms of pros and cons, it offers great convenience and access for populations who might not otherwise have it," said Professor Ross Gordon, an expert on adult education. "But a certain degree of self direction is required. And it can be isolating for some folks." The vast majority of colleges and universities in the United States offer at least some online classes, but there are still those who question its legitimacy and also the quality of for profit colleges whose curriculum is offered solely online. Walden University, where Mr. Haynes is earning his doctoral degree, is one such institution. He said that he researched the school through the V.A. and other sources, and heard positive reports from a friend who was also pursuing his doctorate in business administration at Walden, which Mr. Haynes learned was accredited by the Accreditation Council for Business Schools. "You have to take it seriously," she said. "Some people think online classes are easier. I think it's actually more work. Because you might have to spend more time with the content." Time is a commodity that Mr. Haynes, like many adult learners, has little of. He and his wife Sgt. Chelsea Aiko Haynes of the Army have six children, ranging in age from 1 to 17. He is also active with the Semper Fi Fund, a nonprofit organization that provides financial assistance for catastrophically injured servicemen and women. But most days, after the children are off to school and his wife is at her job at the Pentagon, he sits down in the living room with his MacBook Air and gets ready to learn. "I open the blinds to get some natural sunlight in," he said. "The TV's off, the phone's on vibrate. And I commit myself fully to my studies." Here are some tips for success in online education for adult learners, from Jeremy Haynes and Manda Gibson, two students who have flourished in this learning environment, and from George Haber, an adjunct professor at Vaughn College in Queens, and a veteran of over 25 years of teaching online.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Education
That's just one way of advising playgoers to be on their guard at "Girls Boys," the solo play from the Tony Award winning writer Dennis Kelly ("Matilda") that finds the performer Carey Mulligan in cheerfully chatty mode for the first stretch, at least. The production, which runs through March 17, brings Ms. Mulligan, an Oscar nominated actress, back to the Royal Court Theater for the third time. Ms. Mulligan's unnamed character is dryly funny on any number of topics, from the vagaries of fate ("I got Southampton," she says with regard to picking a travel destination at random) to airport etiquette and a job interview that she recollects in painstaking, bitterly comic detail, throwing in a fart joke for emphasis. It's easy to imagine knocking back a beer or two with her and emerging chums for life. Listen carefully to her words, however, and you may notice an underlying aggression. At that interview, for instance, Ms. Mulligan speaks of her potential employer "sizing me up, like a psychopath weighing up which ear to cut off first." So it's not a complete surprise when events take a shivery twist. (There are also hints in the director Lyndsey Turner's ultraslick production, and in the thanks proffered by Mr. Kelly in the published text to Euripides, among others.) For much of the time, Ms. Mulligan stands before us, like a chicly coifed if barefoot comedian eager to corral an expectant audience. Those scenes are interlaced with domestic encounters with two children, who remain unseen but nevertheless seem to demand every reserve of energy that this quick witted, expletive prone woman can muster. The vignettes draw upon Ms. Mulligan's unheralded gifts as a mime artist suddenly, she must play an entire family and come with a visual commentary: At various moments, the set from Es Devlin crackles into brightly vivid life, only to revert in an instant to the neutered, anesthetizing look that pervades throughout. (Ms. Devlin and Ms. Turner, the director, are frequent, and invaluable, collaborators.) Visual contrast is missing from this landscape. Something else is missing, as well, though to elaborate would result in an unforgivable spoiler. What can be said is that the Ms. Mulligan we see at the close of the uninterrupted 90 minutes has an altogether different aspect from the freewheeling raconteur seen at the start. Rather like the American playwright Neil LaBute, who has traversed comparable terrain in such plays as "Bash: Latter Day Plays," Mr. Kelly addresses humankind's capacity for violence at every turn. Not even the children are exempt. So far so good, if so depressing, though hardly more so than the world at large. But not content to leave well enough alone, Mr. Kelly dresses up his narrative in ways that detract from its power, like some overzealous puppeteer. More than once, there is the sort of rhetorical question "Does that make sense?" that in the theater tends to make me queasy, lest an overeager audience member reply. And I'm not sure we need the reminder that this grievous tale represents only one side of the story. Since when did the theater become a courtroom requiring equal time for all? If the play overreaches for effect, there's no trace of the sensational in Ms. Mulligan's performance, which is accompanied by a playfulness and quick wittedness that bypass the gathering thesis mongering of the final passages. (You can't help but feel that Mr. Kelly devised his play in order to corroborate a grim statistic that's mentioned near the end.) "Girls Boys" may work from the outside in, but it's blessed with an actress whose integrity anchors a play that, without her, might well seem a sleekly oiled con. The moral inquiry on view involves a mother who has facilitated breast implants for her 8 year old daughter amid a hypersexualized culture that, in the language of the play, "wants you to want." Moving on to embrace the dark web, the depredations of Facebook and a society in which the phone has "become a human right," Ms. Dolan proves as exacting an authorial commentator as she is a compelling stage presence. Forever leaning into the audience so as to gain our confidence, her Tessa becomes our guide in a world that gives genuine cause for alarm. I would be remiss not to commend (and how!) a third splendid actress this one a visitor to the London stage. Marylouise Burke has long been a New York theater stalwart, and she has now crossed the Atlantic as the lone American performer in the National Theater premiere of Annie Baker's ravishing and mysterious "John." (The production in the Dorfman auditorium finishes March 3.) Playing the landlady of a Pennsylvania boardinghouse filled to bursting with tchotchkes if only there were tours of Chloe Lamford's set! Ms. Burke presides with abiding sweetness over both the (quarrelsome) couple who have come to stay and the play itself: Her character, Mertis, pulls open the floor length curtains at the start, welcoming us into some gently otherworldly realm. The bows at the end are staged as if in an opera house, and snippets from Offenbach's "The Tales of Hoffmann" prove crucial to the climactic scene. Amid an impeccable four person ensemble, Ms. Burke is a league apart not just for a fluty voice possessing cadences all its own, but also for her caress of Ms. Baker's signature flourishes. As directed by James Macdonald, the production is nowhere more moving than in Ms. Burke's enumeration of the various collective nouns for birds that include "an exaltation of larks." By the end of the play's riveting three and a half hours (with two intermissions), it is we who are among the exalted, having been in the presence of a performer who is an absolute one off, on either side of the Atlantic.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Theater
If you live in Minneapolis, there's a 95 percent chance you live within a 10 minute walk to a park. That bragging right, plus a few others, make Minneapolis's parks system the best of the 100 biggest cities in the country, beating out its next door neighbor, St. Paul, for the top spot. Minneapolis earned this distinction by scoring 86.5 out of 100 on the fifth annual ParkScore, a ranking of urban parks systems published by the Trust for Public Land, a nonprofit organization that works to protect natural land and create parks, often by working with cities to create new parks or improve existing ones. The score rates cities, not including their larger metropolitan areas, based on several criteria: the percentage of residents who live roughly a half mile or closer to a park, acreage and median size of the parks, and per capita spending on parks, among other factors. According to Adrian Benepe, the fund's director of city park development and the former New York City parks commissioner under Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, more than 80 percent of Americans live in cities or in their urban shadows, and having access to parks directly affects a city's quality of life.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Science
Ralph Morse, Life Photographer of Big Events, Is Dead at 97 Ralph Morse's inventively captured images peppered the glossy pages of Life and Time magazines during a 50 year career as a photojournalist. Some photographers are known for a single image; Mr. Morse's classics could fill entire albums. "If Life could afford only one photographer," said George P. Hunt, who was the magazine's managing editor in the 1960s, "it would have to be Ralph Morse." Mr. Morse is seen here in 1940, riding a bicycle with a camera around his neck and a basket full of flashbulbs. None Ralph Morse's inventively captured images peppered the glossy pages of Life and Time magazines during a 50 year career as a photojournalist. Some photographers are known for a single image; Mr. Morse's classics could fill entire albums. "If Life could afford only one photographer," said George P. Hunt, who was the magazine's managing editor in the 1960s, "it would have to be Ralph Morse." Mr. Morse is seen here in 1940, riding a bicycle with a camera around his neck and a basket full of flashbulbs. None At 24, Mr. Morse became Life's youngest war photographer. He landed in the third wave with the Marines at Guadalcanal, clung to a life preserver for six hours after the Navy cruiser he was traveling on was torpedoed, and snared this grisly image of a severed Japanese soldier's head propped up on a tank, as either a warning or a war trophy. "It's a great picture to show people who want to go to war what war is like," he said. None Badly wounded by mortar fire in Lorraine, France, with the 35th Division in November, 1944, the American G.I. George Lott grimaces in pain while doctors apply a plaster body cast at a U.S. Army hospital in England. None Mr. Morse was behind the camera for the D Day landings and when German delegates surrendered unconditionally to Britain, Russia and the United States in Reims, France, on May 7, 1945. None Mr. Morse's spooky 1954 photo of an Air Force pilot being measured for a flight helmet became the inspiration for the psychedelic "Spaceman" poster promoting the Avalon Ballroom, the countercultural San Francisco music venue, in the 1960s. None Audrey Hepburn snuggled with the Oscar she won for her performance in the movie "Roman Holiday" at the Academy Awards ceremony in 1954. None Mr. Morse bribed his way into Albert Einstein's messy office at Princeton on the day Einstein died, in 1955. None Mr. Morse photographed the earliest American missions into space, shadowing the Mercury 7 team so doggedly that John Glenn called him the "eighth astronaut." He captured Alan Shepard, America's first man in space, as he prepared for the Mercury Freedom 7 flight in May 1961. None After working for Time, Mr. Morse retired in 1988, but he was enlisted 10 years later when John Glenn, at the age of 77, returned to space. The photograph that Mr. Glenn is holding was taken by Mr. Morse and ran on the cover of Life magazine in 1962. None Mr. Morse looking over some of his Cape Canaveral launch photos at his home in Delray Beach, Florida, in 2007. After he retired, he recalled, he sold all of his cameras. "If I had a camera,'' he said in 1994, "everybody and his brother would say: 'Gee, would you take my wedding? Would you take my kid getting married? Would you do this for the condo?' I don't own a camera, so I can't do it." Everybody can point to some lucky break that advanced his career. For Ralph Morse, it was a serendipitous visit to Jones Beach with friends the weekend after he had been hired as a darkroom assistant for a photo sales agency. His impromptu shots of a father bouncing his child in the air so captivated his boss that Mr. Morse was promoted to full time photographer. Unlike Zelig or Forrest Gump, Mr. Morse rarely posed himself. But for nearly 50 years as a photojournalist, his vivid, inventively captured images of major world events peppered the glossy pages of Life and Time magazines. He was behind the camera for the D Day landings, the German surrender the next year, Babe Ruth's farewell at Yankee Stadium and the groundwork on the earliest American missions into space. He shadowed the Mercury 7 team so doggedly that John Glenn called him the "eighth astronaut." Some photographers are famous for a single image. Mr. Morse's classics could fill entire albums: a soldier's skull on a destroyed Japanese tank in World War II, an injured United States Army medic being fitted for a plaster cast in France, Audrey Hepburn snuggling with her Oscar for "Roman Holiday," Jackie Robinson stealing home, Albert Einstein's messy office at Princeton on the day he died, in 1955. (Mr. Morse bribed his way into the professor's lair with a fifth of Scotch.) "If Life could afford only one photographer," George P. Hunt, who was the magazine's managing editor in the 1960s, once said, "it would have to be Ralph Morse." Mr. Morse died at 97 on Dec. 7 at his home in Delray Beach, Fla., his longtime companion, Barbara Ohlstein, said. His death was not widely reported at the time. Ralph Theodore Morse was born in the Bronx on Oct. 23, 1917, and grew up there. He worked on the student newspaper at DeWitt Clinton High School. Borrowing a camera from his aunt, he photographed his friends and charged them 15 cents apiece for prints. After enrolling in photography courses at City College of New York, he pounded the pavement looking for jobs for photographers, going door to door, alphabetically, armed with a Manhattan business telephone directory. He was hired by the Paul Parker Studio. Six months later, he left for Harper's Bazaar, but he quit the magazine after three days because, he said later, he found fashion shoots vapid. He was soon hired by Pix, an agency that handled celebrated Life magazine photographers, including Robert Capa, whose brother, Cornell, a fellow darkroom assistant, had lent Mr. Morse a 35 millimeter Contax camera for the Jones Beach shoot. Another Life standout, Alfred Eisenstaedt, encouraged the magazine to give Mr. Morse his first assignment when he was just 19: photographing the playwright Thornton Wilder appearing as the stage manager in his play "Our Town." At 24, Mr. Morse became Life's youngest war photographer. He landed in the third wave with the Marines at Guadalcanal, clung to a life preserver for six hours after the Navy cruiser he was traveling on was torpedoed, and snared the grisly image of a severed Japanese soldier's head propped up on a tank, as either a warning or a war trophy. "It's a great picture to show people who want to go to war what war is like," he said. He applied his ingenuity not only to the content of his pictures but also to how he made them. As the first civilian to fly on a Strategic Air Command B 47 "globe trotter" mission in the mid 1950s, he shot blind from a catwalk in the frigid fuselage, his cameras aimed at the crew and activated by remote control. To catch Jackie Robinson heading home, he trained a foot controlled camera on the third base line, leaving his hands free to shoot with a second camera. His spooky photo of an Air Force pilot being measured for a flight helmet became the inspiration for the psychedelic "Spaceman" poster promoting the Avalon Ballroom, the counterculture San Francisco music venue, in the 1960s. Mr. Morse was Life's senior staff photographer when the magazine ceased publication as a weekly in 1972. He recalled checking with the magazine's lab after shooting a chromatic montage of the Apollo 17 astronauts' equipment for a moon mission. "They said, 'Oh, the color is fine, but there's no magazine to put it in,' " he told John Loengard, the author of "Life Photographers: What They Saw" (Bullfinch Press, 1998). After working for Time, he retired in 1988, but he was enlisted 10 years later when John Glenn, at the age of 77, returned to space. When he finally retired, he recalled, he sold all of his cameras. "If I had a camera," he said in 1994, "everybody and his brother would say: 'Gee, would you take my wedding? Would you take my kid getting married? Would you do this for the condo?' I don't own a camera, so I can't do it."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Media
Just about every area of personal finance has been affected by the coronavirus pandemic. That economic shock reaches all the way to some of the most aspirational purchases on the planet: art, cars, watches and wine. The mechanism to buy and sell many of these objects frothy, in person auctions, with attendees dressed smartly and cocktails readily available has been rendered untenable since March because of social distancing measures meant to stop the spread of the virus. But the desire remains, with sellers looking to shed valuable items to shore up their own balance sheets, and buyers who have reserves looking to collect on the cheap. To meet that demand, the rarefied world of the auction house has been forced online. The electricity you feel in a room, as the bidding heats up and prices soar, is gone. But auction houses are working to make sure selling their high ticket objects doesn't devolve into an eBay frenzy, where wealthy buyers are sitting around in their pajamas stalking deals on their laptops. To counteract that down market feel, auction houses have become creative. Sotheby's, for one, built a platform for its online only auctions that prevents people from entering a bid just as the time is about to expire, a strategy known as sniping. "If someone snipes at the last minute, the sale extends for another five minutes," said Richard Lopez, head of online sales and a senior watch specialist at Sotheby's. On Friday, Christie's live streamed a "global 20th century art sale" across four cities: Hong Kong, Paris, London and New York. Auctions tend to be seasonal, and many are smaller now that they are online. Several annual California car auctions next month in Pebble Beach and Monterrey are planning to present half the number of cars online that they did in in person auctions last year. But because sellers may need cash, there may also be more deals for people with money to invest in these illiquid assets. Bidding and buying will require greater due diligence ahead of the auction, because items will be difficult to see, feel and assess. Sotheby's contemporary art sale, held online at the end of June, was the first big test of virtual auctions. In person viewing was limited by New York's reopening guidelines. Some major pieces of art still sold for top dollar. A Francis Bacon triptych sold for nearly 85 million, above its estimate. A Jean Michel Basquiat drawing went for 15 million, which was 3 million more than the high estimate. But some of the other featured paintings, including one by Roy Lichtenstein and another by Clyfford Still, fetched prices in the middle of their ranges. "We've been lucky at Sotheby's because with our online platform, we've been able to switch over with the same level of trust," Mr. Lopez said. (When asked what was lost online, he responded without hesitation: "The fun.") Still, the push to move auctions online has its risks. Stories abound of buyers being duped by high end galleries. "Acquiring real estate, a business there would be a lot of due diligence," Mr. Sleeman said. "But oftentimes when a collector is considering making a purchase of an equally expensive painting, they don't do the same due diligence." On the positive side, moving big purchases online could drive greater advance research, Mr. Sleeman said. Some art fairs are requiring dealers to publish their prices online, he said, adding a level of transparency that wasn't there, or at least not as easily accessible, before the pandemic. Part of the thrill of buying a collectible car is strolling among scores of polished, perfect automobiles. Once they leave the auction grounds, most of these cars will be parked in climate controlled garages, shielded from the sun dappled fields where they are shown, driven and coveted. Next month would normally send some of the world's most expensive cars to the Monterrey Peninsula for the annual Pebble Beach Concours d'Elegance, where rare automobiles are parked for a day on the 18th fairway at Pebble Beach Golf Links. That's not happening this year. Both Gooding Company and Bonhams, two auction houses with large automotive departments, will present about half the cars they would have in a live auction, and rely on video and limited in person viewing to drum up interest. Both houses are upbeat about the online demand. "People are getting in touch with things that make them happy and that they love," said David Gooding, president of his namesake company. "If they're passionate about cars, they're tapping into that passion. We're seeing demand and interest as strong as ever." There is far less ambivalence now than ahead of a typical live auction. Sellers really want to sell their cars, and buyers are focused on getting the car they want. A few cars are priced in excess of 2 million, but many are in the 50,000 to 100,000 range, he said. To assure the cars' condition, the auction house is maintaining them in a Los Angeles warehouse. "It's critical for us to know what we're selling and representing," Mr. Gooding said. Bonhams is similarly storing its cars, splitting them between Los Angeles and Bedford, N.Y., where specialists can arrange virtual or in person viewings before the August sale. Some of the highest priced cars may be the easiest to sell at an online auction, said Jakob Greisen, head of Bonhams' U.S. motoring department. The sale's signature car is a 1934 Alfa Romeo 8C 2300 Cabriolet by Figoni, estimated to sell for as much as 7.5 million. "Few people are going to walk in and say, 'I'll have that 90 year old car I've never heard about,'" Mr. Greisen said. "It's for a really sophisticated buyer who has had more time to think about their hobby and their passion." Where he thinks sales could struggle is in what he termed the impulse buy range around 250,000 because people will not be walking around and getting excited by a car that they realize they can afford. Fine wine can sit in a bottle for decades and, potentially, get better. But the primary mechanism for selling first growth wine from Bordeaux, France the most reliably collectible region in the wine world is to sell wine futures a few months after the wine is put into a barrel. Futures, the prices for wine that won't arrive in buyers' cellars for several years, have traditionally been set by working with wine brokers through a marketplace called the Place du Bordeaux. This year, the process of tasting young wines to divine which ones will age well was disrupted because no one could travel to Bordeaux to sample the 2019 vintage. To sell the wine, which is considered a top vintage, Bordeaux producers are discounting it heavily, said Tom Gearing, chief executive and a co founder of Cult Wines, which manages about 165 million of investment grade wine. "With the uncertain economy, people are in the position to ask, 'Do I really want to shell out money for a wine I won't have physically for two years?'" he said. To encourage buyers, producers, even among the top five Bordeaux houses like Rothschild and Margaux, have discounted this vintage as much as 25 percent from the 2018 vintage (which is considered not as good). As with all of these passion investments, fine wine is a deal only if you are among the lucky few who have weathered the economic crisis with disposable income and confidence in the future.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Your Money
Ed Miller and Mary Nguyen are Silicon Valley software developers by day, but moonlight at solving an unusually fuzzy problem. A few years ago the pair became mesmerized, like many of us, by an Alaskan webcam broadcasting brown bears from Katmai National Park. They also happened to be seeking a project to hone their machine learning expertise. "We thought, machine learning is really great at identifying people, what could it do for bears?" Mr. Miller said. Could artificial intelligence used for face recognition be harnessed to discern one bear face from another? At Knight Inlet in British Columbia, Canada, Melanie Clapham was pondering the same question. Dr. Clapham, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Victoria working with Chris Darimont of the Raincoast Conservation Foundation, was keen to explore face recognition technology as an aid to her grizzly bear studies. But her expertise was bear biology, not A.I. Fortuitously, the four found a match on Wildlabs.net, an online broker of collaborations between technologists and conservationists. Combining their skill sets, Mr. Miller and Ms. Nguyen volunteered spare time over several years for this passion project that would eventually bear fruit, reporting the results of their experiment last week in the journal Ecology and Evolution. The project they produced, BearID, could help conservationists monitor the health of bear populations in various parts of the world, and perhaps aid work with other animals, too. They got started by looking for other animals that had gotten the deep learning treatment. "In typical engineering fashion, we're always looking for a shortcut," Mr. Miller said. They discovered "dog hipsterizer," a program that found the faces, eyes and noses of dogs in photos and placed rimmed glasses and mustaches on them. "That was where we started," Ms. Nguyen said. Although trained on dogs, dog hipsterizer worked reasonably well on the similarly shaped faces of bears, giving them a programming head start. Nevertheless, Ms. Nguyen said, the work's initial stages were tedious. Creating a training data set for the deep learning program involved examining over 4,000 photos with bears in them and then manually highlighting each bear's eyes, nose and ears by drawing boxes around them so the program could learn to find these features. From 4,675 fully labeled bear faces on DSLR photographs, taken from research and bear viewing sites at Brooks River, Ala., and Knight Inlet, they randomly split images into training and testing data sets. Once trained from 3,740 bear faces, deep learning went to work "unsupervised," Dr. Clapham said, to see how well it could spot differences between known bears from 935 photographs. First, the deep learning algorithm finds the bear face using distinctive landmarks like eyes, nose tip, ears and forehead top. Then the app rotates the face to extract, encode and classify facial features. The system identified bears at an accuracy rate of 84 percent, correctly distinguishing between known bears such as Lucky, Toffee, Flora and Steve. But how does it actually tell those bears apart? Before the era of deep learning, "we tried to imagine how humans perceive faces and how we distinguish individuals," said Alexander Loos, a research engineer at the Fraunhofer Institute for Digital Media Technology, in Germany, who was not involved in the study but has collaborated with Dr. Clapham in the past. Programmers would manually input face descriptors into a computer. But with deep learning, programmers input the images into a neural network that figures out how best to identify individuals. "The network itself extracts the features," Dr. Loos said, which is a huge advantage. He also cautioned that, "It's basically a black box. You don't know what it's doing," and that if the data set being examined is unintentionally biased, certain errors can emerge. For instance, if some bears are photographed more often in light than in dark conditions, the lighting difference can cause misclassification of the bears. (Data bias can be a problem in human facial recognition by A.I., with misidentifications known to be more likely for people of color). Whatever BearID is really doing, Dr. Clapham, who recognizes many Knight Inlet bears by sight, was surprised and encouraged by where the program fell short. "What we'd love is that one day we have somewhere where people can upload camera trap images and the system tells you not only what species you've seen, but also what individual you've seen," and maybe its sex and age as well, she said.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Science
After allegations of sexual harassment against the opera star Placido Domingo surfaced last summer, American arts organizations responded by canceling his appearances. European institutions, though, stuck with him. So it was notable when Spain's National Institute of Performing Arts and Music said on Wednesday that it was canceling Mr. Domingo's upcoming performances at the Teatro de la Zarzuela in Madrid. The cancellation was announced a day after the union representing American opera performers, the American Guild of Musical Artists, released the results of an investigation finding that Mr. Domingo had "engaged in inappropriate activity, ranging from flirtation to sexual advances, in and outside of the workplace." Mr. Domingo responded by saying that he accepted "full responsibility," and that he was "truly sorry for the hurt" he had caused women. His statement was cited by the National Institute of Performing Arts and Music, which is part of the Ministry of Culture and Sport, when it announced its decision to cancel his performances this May in the zarzuela "Luisa Fernanda" a move the institute said it was making "in solidarity with the women affected." Nancy Seltzer, a spokeswoman for Mr. Domingo, said in a statement: "We are very disappointed to learn of Zarzuela's decision to cancel the scheduled performance, but understand and respect it. Placido Domingo hopes that he gets the opportunity to sing there again." It was a remarkable turn of events, especially coming in Spain, where Mr. Domingo was born and where his public support has perhaps been strongest. The May performances were meant to celebrate the 50th anniversary of his Madrid debut; Mr. Domingo has long worked to raise the profile of zarzuela, the Spanish genre of musical theater. Jose Manuel Rodriguez Uribes, the Spanish culture minister, told reporters on Wednesday that "until now the situation was different; there was a presumption of innocence." "But from the moment that he says that what happened did happen, involving serious acts that affect many women," he said, "we have decided that we could not maintain his presence and we informed him." While some other European companies said they expected to proceed with Mr. Domingo's upcoming performances, a few said they were weighing his future. The Teatro Real, Madrid's major opera house, is planning a special meeting of its executive committee to discuss Mr. Domingo's upcoming performances, Graca Prata Ramos, a spokeswoman for the company, said in an email. And the Salzburg Festival in Austria, where Mr. Domingo first returned to the stage after the allegations against him surfaced, said that it would seek further information before deciding if he would return this summer. Another woman came forward on Tuesday to accuse Mr. Domingo of misconduct. The woman, the soprano Luz del Alba Rubio, who is from Uruguay, told The Associated Press that about 20 years ago, Mr. Domingo heard her sing and asked her to come to Washington National Opera, where he was then artistic director. Ms. Rubio was cast in several roles, she told The A.P., but after resisting Mr. Domingo's kisses during a nighttime coaching session at his apartment, parts that he had promised her did not materialize, and she was never again hired by the company. In the United States, the union that conducted the investigation was criticized by a lawyer representing two of the women who accused Mr. Domingo of misconduct and harassment. The union had tried to negotiate a 500,000 payment from Mr. Domingo which it said would be used to cover the costs of its investigation and pay for anti harassment efforts but the deal fell apart after details of its investigation, which the union had promised to keep secret, were leaked. Debra Katz, the lawyer, denounced the arrangement as a "secret deal" and called on the union to release the full results of its investigation. "You cannot have accountability without transparency," she said. The union released a statement Tuesday night calling the payment a "fine," which it described as "to our knowledge the largest to be imposed on a union member," and said that it was not in "exchange for A.G.M.A.'s silence or to make any 'secret deal.'" "Regardless of the fine imposed, A.G.M.A. was never planning to publicly release the specific details of its internal investigation, as the union had assured witnesses of confidentiality," the statement said. "Any suggestion that the union was being paid to withhold information is patently false."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Music
Cloud Computing Is Not the Energy Hog That Had Been Feared None The computer engine rooms that power the digital economy have become surprisingly energy efficient. A new study of data centers globally found that while their computing output jumped sixfold from 2010 to 2018, their energy consumption rose only 6 percent. The scientists' findings suggest concerns that the rise of mammoth data centers would generate a surge in electricity demand and pollution have been greatly overstated. The major force behind the improving efficiency is the shift to cloud computing. In the cloud model, businesses and individuals consume computing over the internet as services, from raw calculation and data storage to search and social networks. The largest cloud data centers, sometimes the size of football fields, are owned and operated by big tech companies like Google, Microsoft, Amazon and Facebook. Each of these sprawling digital factories, housing hundreds of thousands of computers, rack upon rack, is an energy hungry behemoth. Some have been built near the Arctic for natural cooling and others beside huge hydroelectric plants in the Pacific Northwest. Still, they are the standard setters in terms of the amount of electricity needed for a computing task. "The public thinks these massive data centers are energy bad guys," said Eric Masanet, the lead author of the study. "But those data centers are the most efficient in the world." The study findings were published on Thursday in an article in the journal Science. It was a collaboration of five scientists at Northwestern University, the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and an independent research firm. The project was funded by the Department of Energy and by a grant from a Northwestern alumnus who is an environmental philanthropist. The new research is a stark contrast to often cited predictions that energy consumption in the world's data centers is on a runaway path, perhaps set to triple or more over the next decade. Those worrying projections, the study authors say, are simplistic extrapolations and what if scenarios that focus mainly on the rising demand for data center computing. By contrast, the new research is a bottom up analysis that compiles information on data center processors, storage, software, networking and cooling from a range of sources to estimate actual electricity use. Enormous efficiency improvements, they conclude, have allowed computing output to increase sharply while power consumption has been essentially flat. "We're hopeful that this research will reset people's intuitions about data centers and energy use," said Jonathan Koomey, a former scientist at the Berkeley lab who is an independent researcher. Over the years, data center electricity consumption has been a story of economic incentives and technology advances combining to tackle a problem. From 2000 to 2005, energy use in computer centers doubled. In 2007, the Environmental Protection Agency forecast another doubling of power consumed by data centers from 2005 to 2010. In 2011, at the request of The New York Times, Mr. Koomey made an assessment of how much data center electricity consumption actually did increase between 2005 and 2010. He estimated the global increase at 56 percent, far less than previously expected. The recession after the 2008 financial crisis played a role, but so did gains in efficiency. The new study, with added data, lowered that 2005 to 2010 estimate further. But the big improvements have come in recent years. Since 2010, the study authors write in Science, "the data center landscape has changed dramatically." The tectonic shift has been to the cloud. In 2010, the researchers estimated that 79 percent of data center computing was done in smaller traditional computer centers, largely owned and run by non tech companies. By 2018, 89 percent of data center computing took place in larger, utility style cloud data centers. The big cloud data centers use tailored chips, high density storage, so called virtual machine software, ultrafast networking and customized airflow systems all to increase computing firepower with the least electricity. "The big tech companies eke out every bit of efficiency for every dollar they spend," said Mr. Masanet, who left Northwestern last month to join the faculty of the University of California, Santa Barbara. Google is at the forefront. Its data centers on average generate seven times more computing power than they did just five years ago, using no more electricity, according to Urs Holzle, a senior vice president who oversees Google's data center technology. In 2018, data centers consumed about 1 percent of the world's electricity output. That is the energy consumption equivalent of 17 million American households, a sizable amount of energy use but barely growing. The trend of efficiency gains largely offsetting rising demand should hold for three or four years, the researchers conclude. But beyond a few years, they say, the outlook is uncertain. In the Science article, they recommend steps including more investment in energy saving research and improved measurement and information sharing by data center operators worldwide. The next few years, they write, will be "a critical transition phase to ensure a low carbon and energy efficient future."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Technology
The year is 2031. Cities are concrete jungles crossed by flying buses that can twist in space and populated by avatars in oversize puffers and shredded jeans that resemble antique draperies over windows to interior worlds. They gesture toward posters promoting a secret rave in a watery wood that leads to a red rock desert where a woman in silver armor pulls a sword from a stone. The on ramp to it all: a cavernous boutique. Shopping as the gateway to the dystopian future? Welcome to : the collection video game. The latest entrant in the what could shows be next sweepstakes following Jonathan Anderson's show in a box D.I.Y. exercise, Proenza Schouler's show in a book print collectible and Gucci's mini series Balenciaga's video game, titled Afterworld: the Age of Tomorrow, is not, actually, the first video game created to showcase a collection. That would be Collina Land, from Collina Strada, which bowed last month as part of Guccifest, the brand sponsored short film festival featuring work from 15 independent brands. It also probably won't be the last since fashion has been flirting with the gaming world for awhile now. Burberry aired its most recent show on the livestreaming platform Twitch, and Dior Men is doing the same with its pre fall collection later this week. Louis Vuitton designed custom skins and a trophy case for the battle arena game League of Legends. And truth is, Afterworld isn't even that much of a game: The interactivity involves simply "walking" through the five levels of the environment, following a predetermined path, a task someone who has never played Fortnite or even Animal Crossing can complete without too much stress. Stopping, perhaps, along the way to take a closer gander at the clothes worn by the various scanned in models, the only real free choice on offer. The news release that accompanied the experience called it "a hero's journey," though there are no challenges to overcome, no doors to decide upon, no enemies to battle. You can't really lose. Well, maybe it's true that just getting through the day right now is enough. Besides, what Afterworld does offer is a next step: a detailed immersive environment, even more comprehensive than the environments that the designer Demna Gvasalia has been increasingly effective at creating with his in person shows, the better to frame the clothes he is making and illuminate their effect. One of the big head scratchers when viewing a collection is always: Where did that idea come from? In this case, Afterworld paints a pretty clear picture of the answer. Ten years in the future, this is where Mr. Gvasalia thinks we could be. Yikes. The last physical show Mr. Gvasalia held was set in a cavernous warehouse, the air scented with gaseous lime, the walls lined with stadium seating, the runway a watery river under a LED ceiling roiled with storm clouds and flames. Afterworld, which was preceded by a virtual runway parade viewed through VR glasses, is an imaginative iteration of the same idea, built for the socially distanced present. And by taking the clothes off the runway and actually putting them on a street, albeit a surreal one, it also shows how good they might look in the world. A fairly comprehensive representation of the Balenciaga vocabulary Mr. Gvasalia has been building since he got to the house, the collection is built on over the knee articulated armorial boots and sharp edged pumps in silver and gold for both men and women. It includes his couture puffers, the shoulders dropped down and molded out or raised high a la Poiret to swaddle the throat, back turtled out like protective coverings, some patched with NASA logos. The notorious shirt that wears a shirt is back; also jeans that wear khaki shorts. There are fake fur yeti coats and tartan blanket capes, shredded silver glam gowns and crinkled silk sack dresses, oversize suiting and oversize sweats. Nods to PlayStation 5 and the word "free." The armor you might need, in other words, to fight your way through whatever happens next, all of it weaponized with a certain scavenged beauty and spiked with a subversive giggle.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Style
A Tres Santos construction site, part of a project that is planned to include two "villages" one on the beach and the other a mile inland at the edge of Todos Santos. The night was quiet except for the sounds of the waves brushing the shore and the wet slap of the Pacific sierra as the fishermen, working by the light of a battery powered lantern, pulled them two at a time from their boat and slung them into crates to be carted away to customers around the southern Baja Peninsula. This same scene had unfolded every night for generations: The boats would push off empty in the evening and return before dawn full of whatever was running. "I started working on the sea on the fifth of June, 1952, at the age of 12, with my friends, the fishermen," said Luis Nunez Cadena, who at 75 is a wise elder of the Todos Santos fishing community. "We are noble people." But that way of life, he said, is under threat. He gestured north along the shoreline toward a construction site silhouetted against the night sky: a two story 32 room boutique hotel. "I welcome development, but it must be sustainable," Mr. Nunez said. "That hotel? I look at it with hate." The hotel is one of the first manifestations of an ambitious resort project that includes plans for more than 1,000 "artisanal homes," some costing more than 1 million, as well as shops, restaurants and a private beach club. But the project, called Tres Santos, has angered some members of this quiet, laid back community, foremost Mr. Nunez's group, the Punta Lobos Fishing Cooperative, one of two fishing associations in Todos Santos. The cooperative's members say that the developers have been insensitive to the town and have damaged the natural ecosystem and encroached on a stretch of beach the fishermen have used for generations to park their vehicles, store their boats and handle their catch. The group's campaign has included two extended round the clock blockades of a road leading to the construction site, one of which lasted three months. They have also lobbied politicians and gained the sympathy of a significant share of the town's growing expatriate population. "This town is not owned by crooked politicians, sleazy developers or Cabo silver merchants," he told the crowd. "These people can't run your lives." The developers, however, say they have received all their regulatory permits and have done nothing illegal. They say they have been an open minded and collaborative partner with the town and have received the backing of many residents and much of the town's tourism industry, not to mention the other fishing cooperative. "We've showed good will," Beatriz Ledesma, development sub director of the project, said in an interview in Todos Santos. The conflict has generated lawsuits, fueled a nonstop rumor mill, poisoned lifelong relationships and divided families. John Moreno, a local lawyer representing the protesting fisherman, said he had received death threats for his involvement. The conflict is, in some ways, a reflection of Todos Santos's increasing complexity. Until recently, the town which sits between La Paz, the political and industrial capital of the state of Baja California Sur, and Cabo San Lucas, the state's tourism capital kept a very low profile. For much of the 18th century it was the site of a Jesuit mission, and during the 19th century it became a center of sugar cane cultivation and sugar production. But beginning in the 1980s, after Highway 19 from La Paz to Cabo San Lucas was paved, Todos Santos started drawing an increasing number of visitors from elsewhere in Mexico and abroad. Among them are surfers, artists, yogis, retirees and the sort of scruffy Americans who look as if they took a wrong turn on their way home from an Allman Brothers concert, ended up on the Baja Peninsula and decided to stay. "The foreigners have fallen in love with the setting we've built here," said Rosario Salvatierra Cadena, a member of the Punta Lobos Fishing Cooperative, who has spent his entire life in Todos Santos, working as a fisherman for 39 of his 59 years. Still, despite its increasing popularity, Todos Santos, with a population fluctuating by the season between around 6,500 and about 9,000, has remained somewhat sleepy, and has been spared so far, at least the party culture and overdevelopment that have come to characterize Cabo San Lucas to the south. "You can go to sleep with five pesos in your pocket and you can wake up with 10. That's how calm it is here," said Miguel Angel Torres Villalobos, a native of Todos Santos and owner of Miguel's Restaurant, a mainstay. "You can sleep wherever and nobody will bother you." The Tres Santos project, however, is development on a scale that the town has never seen. The project is the work of MIRA, a real estate investment firm based in Mexico City that is half owned by the Black Creek Group, a Denver based real estate company. MIRA bought up a 1,100 acre crescent of land that stretches from the foothills of the Sierra la Laguna northeast of the town of Todos Santos to the shoreline, and work began in May 2014, though the formal public announcement did not come until the following December. In a news release that month, MIRA described Tres Santos as "a new mindful living community" and a "Silicon Valley of Well Being." The news release said the project would feature two "villages" one on the beach and the other about a mile inland, on the eastern fringe of the town and would include the boutique hotel, beachfront homes, a small campus of Colorado State University, a farm to table restaurant, a private beach club "and other unique experiences." "Todos Santos is a magical place and we are excited to contribute to its charm through the creation of Tres Santos," Jimmy Mulvihill, chairman of MIRA and founding partner of the Black Creek Group, said in the news release. The company received government permission to build nearly 4,500 residences on the land and created a master plan for about 2,000. But in recent interviews in Todos Santos, company officials spoke of less ambitious goals, including 620 houses and condominiums on the shoreline and another 500 residences inland. The company's sales office, in an artfully renovated brick building in the center of Todos Santos, projects a culture of youthful vibrancy and healthfulness. Mountain bikes are suspended from the wall, seemingly as decorative elements. A quiver of surfboards is propped up in a corner. Rolled up yoga mats are stored to one side. A video showing surfers and cyclists in action plays on a loop. "This is where grounded and sustainable living is possible," a promotional pamphlet offered. "This is life, at its essence." The university campus, a small cluster of buildings, has already opened on the edge of town. Several model homes have been built nearby, fronting on a large organic vegetable garden, and a restaurant is under construction. The beachfront hotel's official opening is scheduled for January. But the schedule for much of the rest of the project remains uncertain and will depend on sales, Shannon Gillespie, a Tres Santos sales executive, said. "Where it goes from there is anybody's guess," he said, as he looked over drawings for the development in what he called the company's "pitch room." "Who knows if it will ever get built." The biggest base of local opposition has come from the Punta Lobos Fishing Cooperative. The town's other fishing association, which uses the same stretch of beach, has not challenged the project. "It's a good thing for the community," said that group's president, Jose Agustin Orozco Cota. "We don't understand what the others are fighting for, what they're looking for." Punta Lobos's main contention is that the development has encroached on their traditional work area. But their opposition has also grown to include a number of concerns including the project's impact past and future on the natural ecosystem and the effects of a new sea wall on beach erosion. And they contend that certain aspects of the beachfront construction violate the town's urban development plan. Among their greatest worries, shared by many townspeople, is the project's stress on the water supply, a vulnerability of the region. For their part, Tres Santos officials, in interviews, sounded both frustrated and puzzled by the opposition. They say they've made a series of concessions to the fishermen to resolve the dispute, agreeing to build them a parking area and a new work space on the beach and relinquishing concession rights in the area where the fishing cooperatives have traditionally worked. The developers say it has never been their intention to drive the fishermen out of business. Just the opposite. "People in the hotel are going to love it," Ernie Glesner, project director of Tres Santos, said. As for the water concerns, the developers say they will fulfill their promise, made at the outset of the project, to build a desalination plant for all their potable water needs, that way sparing the municipal water supply additional burden. As the various sides in the dispute jockey for position, townspeople point out that other developers are reportedly drafting plans for other resorts in the area. These sorts of debates won't end with Tres Santos, they suspect, but are only just beginning.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Travel
If you happen to hang out at Broadway watering holes like Joe Allen's, you've probably overheard conversations much like those that babble through "Evening at the Talk House," Wallace Shawn's anxious excavation of moral cowardice in a fascist age, which opened on Thursday night at the Pershing Square Signature Center. Reminiscences of stage hits and flops past; competitive exchanges of double edged compliments; delighted descriptions of bad behavior and bad acting such are the staples of the talk in "Talk House," a New Group production directed by Scott Elliott. So is that basic question that usually arises when old colleagues assemble: Whatever happened to ... ? The answers, in this case, tend to be dire. They involve poisonings and hangings and brutal beatings, often administered by those nearest and dearest to their victims, which are described here with the same queasy casualness as the rest of the gossip. This, you see, is simply the way of the world as these characters know it, and apparently has been for perhaps a decade. It seems that people including show people can get used to anything. You might think this portrayal would have even more impact than it did two decades ago. The United States of 2017, in case you hadn't noticed, is in a highly apprehensive mood, with the "N" word "Nazi" being invoked with alarmed abandon. Yet while it provides plenty of bitter food for thought, "Talk House" never achieves the dramatic power of "The Designated Mourner." That's partly a matter of form. "Mourner" was written as a series of monologues, in which the title character exposes, by self flagellating degrees, his own craven passivity and complicity in a corrupt world. By the end, you felt you had crawled right under his skin, and it wasn't anywhere you wanted to admit to having been. "Talk House" is a group portrait, which allows its audiences to sustain a greater distance and to discern more clearly the play's polemical machinery. The grim, all implicating ironies feel easier and less personal to us. This despite a staging by Mr. Elliott (with a comfy, clubby set by Derek McLane) that suggests that we, too, are members of this club. On arriving, theatergoers are offered mysteriously colored drinks and sugary snacks, proffered on silver platters by servers whom you've seen probably seen before, and not waiting tables. One of them is Jill Eikenberry (remember "L.A. Law"?) and the other is Annapurna Sriram, who was so piquant in the New Group production of Jesse Eisenberg's "The Spoils." The schmoozers who mingle among the audience include Mr. Shawn (sporting facial bruises, pajamas and a tweed jacket), Mr. Broderick, John Epperson (best known as the creator of the chanteuse Lypsinka), Larry Pine, Claudia Shear and Michael Tucker. They encourage us to keep talking right until the lights go down. Except the lights never do go down entirely. We remain exposed and, it is implied, a part of the creepy conversation. Mr. Broderick is our guide to the time, place and people of "Talk House," though his slippery character would probably prefer that we not attribute any such responsibility to him. That's Robert, a writer whose fantasy historical drama "Midnight in a Clearing With Moon and Stars" opened exactly 10 years earlier. Hence the reunion in its participants' former boite of choice, the no longer fashionable Talk House. "Midnight" seems to have been the last play by Robert, who now writes a television comedy starring the dashing Tom (the dashing Mr. Pine). It also seems to have been one of the last plays to have been performed, period. Theater is now an all but vanished art, which leaves many of its former practitioners in need of a job. I won't go into detail about what those forms of employment turn out to be. Suffice it to say that unspeakable crimes against humanity (against "people who would like to harm us") are described as if they were temporary telemarketing gigs. Those who have managed to stay in what's left of showbiz Robert, Tom and Bill (Mr. Tucker), a producer profess to know little of such activities. Should we believe them? As Robert muses in his opening monologue, "To 'know someone well' I mean, that's a phrase from another time." That's a resonant thought for a dystopian tomorrow. (Or a dystopian yesterday: I found myself thinking of show business in the McCarthy era.) And Mr. Shawn, a writer of acerbic eloquence, comes up with other descriptions that have the antiseptic chill of iced vodka. Here's Robert on the mood swings of his country's capricious (and evidently all powerful) leader: "How do these personal traits translate into nationwide happiness or unhappiness, or do they?" The insiderly conflation of theater world superficiality and the depths of institutionalized evil can feel forced and gimmicky, though. And the ensemble hasn't yet fallen into the natural common groove that might mitigate that impression. Of the supporting players, Ms. Shear (of "Dirty Blonde") stands out as a fraying embodiment of the defensive desperation to which much of her world has been reduced. Ms. Sriram, on the other hand, seems a bit too fresh to credibly deliver the climactic confessions of her damaged character. Mr. Shawn is as good a resentful, hapless victim as he was a resentful, hapless victimizer in "The Designated Mourner." And Mr. Broderick, whose default acting mode of sly timidity has seldom been better used, is first rate. His soft spoken, side glancing, tentatively smiling Robert is a natural born survivor. Of course, in the world of "Talk House," that's a dubious honor.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Theater
Greg Asbed has spent much of his life fighting horrific labor abuses, including slavery. An organizer and human rights strategist, he co founded the Coalition of Immokalee Workers, a group that pioneered a system for overcoming brutal conditions in American agriculture. Last week, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation awarded Mr. Asbed one of 24 annual fellowships, known colloquially as a "genius grant," to support his work in this area. Mr. Asbed's group, based in Immokalee, Fla., the state's tomato capital, has reached agreements with Walmart, McDonald's and a dozen other major buyers of farm products to take part in its Fair Food Program. The companies pay a small premium for each unit of crop they purchase, sometimes referred to in shorthand as a "penny per pound," and the growers agree to abide by a code of conduct on issues like worker safety and pay, which the premium funds. In 2014, Susan L. Marquis, dean of the Pardee RAND Graduate School in Santa Monica, Calif., said that "when I first visited Immokalee, I heard appalling stories of abuse and modern slavery." She added: "But now the tomato fields in Immokalee are probably the best working environment in American agriculture. In the past three years, they've gone from being the worst to the best." In a telephone interview, Mr. Asbed, 54, said he planned to plow the entire 625,000 grant back into C.I.W. and emphasized that the group's achievements came through the efforts of thousands of people. Below is an edited and condensed version of our discussion. He talked about the roots of his life's work, his approach to gains for migrant workers and the road ahead. What was your path to this work? I'm a first generation Armenian American. My grandmother moved to Syria from Turkey, but not of her own volition. There was the Armenian genocide; she lost her whole family except for one sister. She managed to survive the genocide by being bought and sold twice by the age of 13 once to the Kurds, then by the Kurds to an Armenian family, which was my grandfather's family. I have always felt a certain responsibility, as a bearer of DNA that was forged in the crucible of genocide, to the idea of universal human rights. I went to Haiti after school and worked for three years with a peasant movement that was trying to build democracy. There was a remarkable effort by peasant organizations in the countryside, by unions in the cities, to mobilize a population that had never voted in a real election. I got to be a part of that process. I learned Creole and came back to the States. Then a couple years later, my wife was working with farmworkers in Pennsylvania, and she got involved with some Haitian workers who were facing some pretty horrible conditions. They needed a translator, so I got involved. That was the first time I'd actually learned about what happened just beneath the surface of our food system. And it was pretty eye opening. How did you end up in Florida? There was an opening in Immokalee at the legal services office. We worked in the community down here from 1991 on. What do you find? How quickly does the picture start to fill in for you? About as soon as you get to town. It was a very harsh, dog eat dog kind of world. You would regularly see people getting beaten in the parking lot on payday, by the crew leader or the crew leader's henchmen, because they complained about not getting paid. Nobody would come to their defense. Was it clear that some people were essentially slaves, being forced to work against their will? We were doing simple outreach up in labor camps in South Carolina, and we came across people who said: "Can you help us get our pay? We didn't get our final paycheck at the last place we were working." That happens a lot. So we said, "Sure, where were you working, and why didn't you get that paycheck?" Jeff Bezos gives 100 million to the Obama Foundation. Stocks rise after President Biden says Jerome Powell will stay atop the Fed. "We had to take off a night because the police came" because the crew leader had shot another worker who was telling workers in the camp that they didn't have to work against their will, that they were free to work wherever they wanted. So this wage complaint, as you started to pull at the thread, became massive hundreds of people, up and down the East Coast working in forced labor and in unimaginable conditions. That was the extreme slavery, modern day forced labor but generational grinding poverty, and pretty unconscionable labor abuse, was the norm. When did you start figuring out how you're really going to root this out systemically? We gradually realized that the power that set the parameters for farmworker poverty and the inhumane working conditions in the field didn't reside here in Immokalee. It wasn't something that we could confront face to face. It was actually at the top of the food system. There were these massive fast food chains and supermarket chains that had an unprecedented level of market power over their suppliers. So they could demand lower and lower prices. So we realized if we were actually ever going to have the ability to improve workers' lives in a meaningful way, we were going to have to take the conditions that we saw and confront those corporations with those conditions. Can you tell me about the Taco Bell campaign, which was the seminal campaign that showed you it was possible to do this? Taco Bell's target market was 18 to 24 year olds. And 18 to 24 year olds are people who still believe in justice, still believe change is possible. Students organized what was called the "Boot the Bell" campaign. At some campuses, Taco Bells were either removed or blocked from starting business, and I think that helped create a lot of pressure. Eventually, to its credit, Taco Bell was the first to step up and say, "There are problems in agriculture, and we're going to work with the coalition to fix them." So they signed to pay the premium and to only buy from growers who comply with the code. That was in 2005. It took four years. The Florida growers umbrella group the Florida Tomato Growers Exchange was opposed to it initially. How did it come around? Yes, they were dead set against it. There were actually a couple of farms that agreed to sell to Taco Bell, to pass on the "penny per pound." But then that was brought to a halt when the F.T.G.E. said that any of its members who participated in the Fair Food Program would be hit with remarkably large fines. Growers stopped participating, and there was essentially a boycott for years. But what we did during that time was continue on two fronts. One was continuing to get more and more companies to sign Fair Food agreements, even if the program was halted. That included McDonald's, Burger King, Subway. On a parallel track, we continued our antislavery work. More and more cases were taken to court, working with federal authorities, and more and more crew leaders were put behind bars. The names of a couple of farms where those workers were came out on the court record. And given that we had all these other companies that had signed agreements already, it was sort of a dual incentive that was facing the growers. One was there were all these buyers who had agreed they would only buy from growers who complied with the Fair Food Program. The other was that buyers were starting not to buy from growers that were implicated with an abuse. What's at the top of your priority list now? Frankly, if we could stop campaigning today and dedicate all our resources to building the program out, extending its protections to tens of thousands more workers, we would prefer that infinitely to having to campaign to get companies to join. Unfortunately, we're forced to continue campaigning. Some have shifted purchases to places where sexual violence against women is endemic. I ask people to think of themselves at a farm stand with beautiful fruits and vegetables. When I ask people what they would do if they looked over the cashier's shoulder and saw a woman being sexually assaulted in the crew leader's truck, invariably, every single one says: "I would never buy that fruit. I would do what I can to stop what's happening." Yet somehow when human beings come together to work as a corporation, the collective tolerance for outrageous abuse increases exponentially. That is what I can't understand.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Economy
Because of the relentless pandemic, many people are staying home for Thanksgiving this year. No technology can ever fully replace an in person holiday gathering. But it is possible to recreate some family traditions online or even learn new skills like roasting turkey. Here are some ideas to digitize the Thanksgiving experience. After nine months of life in coronavirus times, most families have probably figured out a group videoconference option. If not, services like Google Meet in Gmail and Zoom, which start with an email invitation link and run in a browser, may be easier for the less technically inclined. (While free Zoom accounts typically have a 40 minute limit for group calls, the company recently announced it was lifting the time restriction globally from midnight Eastern time on Nov. 26 through 6 a.m. on Nov. 27.) Apps are plentiful, like Google Duo, which works for group calls on web browsers and Android devices, as well as iPhones and iPads. For families firmly lodged in the Apple ecosystem, the Group feature of the FaceTime app for mobile devices and Mac computers also brings everyone together on the same screen. The Rooms feature of Facebook Messenger is another option for group video. Many supermarkets have online ordering with delivery or curbside pickup for all your meal ingredients. If a whole bird is too much for your household's dinner, Butterball, Jennie O and other suppliers offer smaller turkey breasts and boneless roasts and step by step videos that show first timers how to prepare them. YouTube is also full of videos for creating regional variations, like smoked or Cajun style turkey. The Jennie O site hosts its own videos and other aids for first time turkey chefs cooking its products. If you're longing to mash yams and craft other favorite dishes while chatting with relatives, do a kitchen group call. Scan and share those treasured recipes via text or email ahead of time or present them onscreen as everyone prepares his or her own version remotely (with the revamped Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade on mute in the background). A mobile scanning app like TurboScan makes it easy to capture and share old holiday recipes with other family members who are preparing the meal in their own homes. Can't cook? Consult your phone's maps app for restaurants offering a meal for contactless delivery. Nationwide, Boston Market takes Thanksgiving meal orders online until 11:59 p.m. on Monday. Dining in a group video chat brings the family around the virtual table, but it may not be for everyone. Restarting the webcam for the pie and gossip dessert course is another approach or waiting for the after dinner chatter. Holiday gatherings are often a time for photos and stories. If your video chat platform has a screen sharing feature, a slide show of digitized old pictures is one way to gather everyone. (Holding up those album pages to the camera is a low tech workaround.) If you've scanned and uploaded old photos to an online album, you can share the images in a presention or online slideshow with other family members logged into the video call. Activities that specifically engage all members of the family can also create new memories via livestream, like cajoling the 10 year old to play her piano recital piece, or getting Grandpa to talk about life before the polio vaccine. If everyone is reminiscing, take the opportunity to interview relatives for a family history project or share other genealogical material you've found online to keep the conversation going. While the serious family gamers have already fired up their consoles after dessert, those who prefer more old fashioned entertainment like card games can find them online. Trickster Cards, for example, offers free hearts, euchre, bridge and other classics for multiple players on computer or mobile device. The Houseparty platform also hosts games, including Uno and Word Racers. If a card game is a customary post meal activity, look for a site, like Trickster Cards, that lets you invite family to play online. If a group movie is tradition, consider a "watch party" app or browser extension to sync up the video and add a chat function for everyone viewing together. (Most of these work on a computer browser and require participants to have accounts with the streaming service hosting the video.) The Teleparty extension for Chrome and Opera works with many videos on Netflix, Disney , HBO Max and Hulu. The Disney service has its own GroupWatch feature, and Amazon Prime has Watch Party.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Technology
A rapid coronavirus test used by the White House to screen its staff could miss infections up to 48 percent of the time, according to a study by researchers at N.Y.U. Langone Health. The study, which has not yet been peer reviewed, evaluated the accuracy of the test, Abbott ID Now, a machine about the size of a toaster oven that can yield results in five to 13 minutes. The product, which was given emergency authorization by the Food and Drug Administration in late March, has been enthusiastically promoted by President Trump it was even used as a prop during at least one news conference. Mr. Trump has said the tests are "highly accurate." A White House spokesman did not immediately respond for comment. There are 18,000 ID Now testing units in the United States, and the company says it has shipped 1.8 million of the kits required for the machine to test for the virus. The so called point of care test is designed to be in doctor's offices and clinics, and it is being used in drive through testing sites around the country. In a statement, the company defended its product, saying, "ID Now is an important tool that delivers information where it's needed most." Abbott said that its reported rate of false negatives or missed infections was 0.02 percent and that the N.Y.U. study's results were "not consistent with other studies of the test." "It's unclear if the samples were tested correctly in this study," the company said. "In communications with the users of the test, it is performing as expected." Virginia's new lieutenant governor elect says she won't force vaccines. The authors of the N.Y.U. study said they evaluated the Abbott test because they were considering using it to test emergency department patients who were suspected of having the virus. The test can use two kinds of swabs: a long, nasopharyngeal swab that is inserted deep into the nose, where it meets the throat; and a shorter nasal swab that can take samples from the nose or throat. A swab is then taken to the testing unit for processing, where it is swirled in liquid, which is then analyzed in the machine. In April, other hospitals and researchers found that if swabs were stored in a liquid solution before being inserted into the machine, the sample could become diluted, producing negative results for those who were infected. Abbott later revised its instructions to recommend placing a dry swab directly into the machine after the sample was collected. The N.Y.U. researchers tested how the machine fared when the dry swabs were used. They took two samples each from 101 emergency department patients at N.Y.U. Langone Tisch Hospital who were suspected of having Covid 19. One sample used the longer nasopharyngeal swab and was stored in liquid. The second sample used dry nasal swabs. Each specimen was tested on both the Abbott ID Now and another machine, the Cepheid GeneXpert, which takes 45 minutes to yield a result and which has been validated by N.Y.U. as acceptably accurate. The researchers found that the Cepheid machine identified 31 of the 101 patients as positive for the virus. But even when the dry nasal swabs were used, the Abbott ID Now identified only 16 people as positive. In other words, 15 patients had the virus, but the Abbott ID Now test said they were negative. Using the dry nasal swab yielded less accurate results than when the researchers used a nasopharyngeal swab that had been stored in liquid. When those types of nasopharyngeal swabs were used, the Abbott missed infections one third of the time, the researchers said. The White House did not respond to questions about which types of swabs it uses. The N.Y.U. researchers said that because the Abbott ID Now machine missed so many infections including in patients who had to be admitted to the hospital the technology is "unacceptable in our clinical setting." The researchers said their study was limited by the small sample size, as well as the one to two hours it took to transport the samples. Although that was within the manufacturer's recommendation of two hours, the researchers noted that the test was intended to be used where the patients were, not in a laboratory. Like the Science Times page on Facebook. Sign up for the Science Times newsletter.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Health
Roberto Frankenberg for The New York Times PARIS Gucci's much touted inclusivity is not limited to community: It extends to products, too. There is little, it seems, that the brand and its creative director, Alessandro Michele, do not see as potential parts of their magic magpie mash up vision, from sneakers to china and, as of this past week, haute jewelry, that top end intersection of rare gems and elevated workmanship. They can go low, they can go high, they can go everywhere. The brand has already moved into the neighborhood. During the couture, the twice yearly gathering of the wealthy to view the finest and most expensive clothing creative minds can make, Gucci opened a boutique on the Place Vendome, the 17th century square in central Paris known as the center of the high jewelry universe. And it presented a collection called Hortus Deliciarum , or Garden of Delights, more than 200 pieces designed by Mr. Michele, in the same flamboyant and somewhat gender fluid style that has become his runway trademark. Most of the necklaces and bracelets are statement size no fragile chains or ethereal compositions for Mr. Michele and use the lion, tiger and snake motifs rampant in the house's costume and fine jewelry collections. But it is the rings that dominate: Chunky hunks of yellow, white or rose gold, some twisted into snake shapes with glittering gem eyes, others forming rather expensive finger splints and a few with relatively simple settings for enormous stones (there is one almost 35 carat pink tourmaline that can't be much smaller than a quarter ). Why would Gucci even want a relationship with high jewelry? The Kering owned fashion house has a sales goal of 10 billion euros or 11.3 billion, for this year and recorded sales of EUR2.3 billion in the first quarter, up 20 percent year on year. And it repeatedly has credited much of its growth to millennials attracted by Mr. Michele's exuberant fashion and in particular his accessories. The pieces in the collection are billed as ranging from EUR50,000 to EUR800,000 (the high jewelry category usually starts at about EUR100,000). So experience loving, material goods shunning millennials don't immediately come to mind as eager buyers of Mr. Michele's version of what their grandmothers called cocktail rings. (Though the tiaras, which Gucci labels hair accessories might appeal for New Year's parties.) But as Bain Co.'s worldwide luxury study in late 2018 pointed out, millennials and the Generation Z that followed (so everyone born between about 1980 and 2012) accounted for 47 percent of the luxury consumers in 2018 and for 33 percent of luxury purchases, including virtually all of the market's growth. Jewelry was one of the two top luxury growth categories the other was shoes with sales rising 7 percent last year in both markets . Gucci has been edging toward high jewelry for some time. In late 2017 it presented what it called a "medium high" version of its midrange fine jewelry collection, saying that a move upward was probable in its next offering. At the time, Maurizio Pisanu, then the house's director of jewelry merchandising, said: "The new generation is going to want a more modern jeweler." Other brands, however, beg to differ, and have offered arguments for their own continuing relevance in the past week. Van Cleef Arpels, for example, was inspired by "Romeo and Juliet" "It's been a beautiful story for a few centuries now," said Nicolas Bos, the company's chief executive and the ballet retelling being created by Benjamin Millepied, one of the house's longtime collaborators. Jewelry in the approximately 100 piece collection drew on Renaissance architecture, such as the diamond set brooch that recreated Juliet's balcony in Verona laden with ivy in emeralds, tsavorite garnets and diamonds. Yet several had a modern twist, including the Flora between the finger ring with an eight carat cushion cut sapphire and three stylized emerald set flowers that echoed the paillette motif introduced by the house in the 1930s.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Fashion & Style
In the world of scientific research, they are pernicious impostors. So called predatory journals, online publications with official sounding names, publish virtually anything, even gibberish, that an academic researcher submits for a fee. Critics have long maintained that these journals are eroding scientific credibility and wasting grant money. But academics must publish research to further their careers, and the number of questionable outlets has exploded. Now the Federal Trade Commission has stepped in, announcing on Wednesday that it has won a 50 million court judgment against Omics International of Hyderabad, India, and its owner, Srinubabu Gedela. Omics publishes hundreds of journals in such areas as medicine, chemistry and engineering. It also organizes conferences. The F.T.C. claimed that Omics violated the agency's prohibition on deceptive business practices. Like the Science Times page on Facebook. Sign up for the Science Times newsletter. In addition to the judgment, a federal judge in Nevada where Omics has mail drops ordered the company to cease its deceptive business practices, including failing to disclose fees, misleading authors about the legitimacy of its journals and marketing conferences with star speakers who never agreed to participate. It's quite surprising for us that court has passed an order against defendants in this case without calling for a trial which is unjustifiable and violation of natural justice. Mr. Vattikoti said the publisher would appeal. Gregory Ashe, a senior staff attorney at the F.T.C., noted that the court had granted summary judgment because "there are no material facts in dispute that warrant a trial." Critics of the journals hailed the decision. "It's great news," said Jeffrey Beall, a former scholarly communications librarian at the University of Colorado Denver who has studied questionable scientific journals. "There are hundreds of predatory publishers, but Omics is the evil empire." Predatory publishers pepper academics with pleas to submit papers or speak at conferences. When they receive papers, the journals often accept and publish them immediately, with a perfunctory review or none at all. In return, the journals demand fees they had not previously disclosed that can be as high as several thousand dollars, the F.T.C. said. When authors ask to withdraw their papers, they often are refused. And some academics who are described as editors on the journals' websites in fact are not editors, and are not even aware that their names are being used. These practices stand in sharp contrast to those of legitimate scientific journals, where editors send papers to experts for review, a process that can take weeks or months, and often ask for extensive revisions. Those that charge authors clearly publish their fees. And no editors are listed without their knowledge. Legitimate journals also are indexed listed in places like PubMed, run by the National Library of Medicine giving them a stamp of approval. Predatory journals claim to be indexed but are not, the F.T.C. said. Over the years, academics have tracked predatory publishers with a blacklist, first published by Mr. Beall and now published anonymously. In one sting operation, a fictitious researcher with fake credentials applied to be editor at a list of journals. She was accepted enthusiastically by many predatory journals, and spurned by legitimate ones. Academics often get daily solicitations from these journals. On Wednesday, James DuBois, director of the Center for Clinical Research Ethics at Washington University in St. Louis, forwarded to The Times an email he had just received. "It is learnt that you have published a paper titled 'The Role of Culture and Acculturation in Researchers' Perceptions of Rules in Science' in SCIENCE AND ENGINEERING ETHICS and we are impressed by the subject," the email said. "So we wish to invite you to contribute other precious papers of related topics to the journal." He and others doubt the solicitations will stop the publishers usually are in other countries, and the business can be lucrative. It was the huge amount of money rolling into Omics that led the F.T.C. to request a 50 million judgment. That is the amount that Omics netted from its customers between Aug. 25, 2011, and July 31, 2017, the agency said. "The court agreed with us that their deceptive practices are so widespread that this represents full consumer redress, and the court did not dial it back," Mr. Ashe said. Whether the F.T.C. can ever collect is another question. "We will be as aggressive as we can to track down assets in the U.S.," Mr. Ashe said. The agency has begun contacting Omics' American banks, he added. If Omics does not change its practices, the F.T.C. will move to have the journals taken offline, and will contact hotels or other venues where the company holds conferences. "We will tell them, 'You are helping this company violate a court order,'" Mr. Ashe said. Some researchers doubted that the verdict would stem the flood of questionable journals.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Science
BEIJING The new strain of avian influenza that has infected more than 100 people in China in the last two months has, for the first time, been reported outside mainland China. Officials in Taiwan reported one case in a 53 year old Taiwanese citizen who traveled regularly to the Chinese city of Suzhou for work, where he probably contracted the virus. He fell ill on April 12, three days after returning to Taiwan. Tests revealed on Wednesday that he was infected with the H7N9 bird flu virus. As of Tuesday, Chinese officials had reported 108 cases and 22 deaths from the new flu. The case has set off alarms in Taiwan, where the Central Epidemic Command Center says that it has "continued to strengthen surveillance and fever screening of travelers arriving from China." The patient in Taiwan, described as severely ill, is being treated in a special isolation room, and 139 people who had contact with him including 110 health workers are being watched for symptoms. So far, there is no evidence that any have contracted the disease, which has not been found to spread from person to person. Officials elsewhere in the region are increasingly jittery about the spread of the virus from China. On Wednesday, Japan said it was racing to make changes that would essentially allow local governments to consign bird flu patients or suspected patients to hospitals, and order them to stay away from their workplaces. The Japanese government took similar precautions during epidemics of the H5N1 and severe acute respiratory syndrome, or SARS, viruses in the last decade. Hong Kong, scarred by an outbreak of SARS in 2003 that started with an infected visitor from mainland China and that killed 299 Hong Kong residents, has also been making preparations. Concerns have focused on the annual influx of vacationers from all over mainland China next week during the annual May Day holiday. But with nearly three dozen flights arriving on a typical day from Shanghai during the rest of the year, the possibility of the disease spreading has been a worry for health policy makers. The Hong Kong government has put on standby several hundred hospital beds specially designed after SARS for the isolation and treatment of highly infectious respiratory diseases. A system of infrared scanners operating at the territory's borders ever since the SARS outbreak checks arrivals for fever, and nurses take aside anyone who seems sick for further questioning and sometimes testing. In a news conference Wednesday in Beijing, a World Health Organization official described this type of bird flu as "unusually dangerous." The virus is "definitely one of the most lethal influenza viruses we've seen," said Dr. Keiji Fukuda, an assistant director general at the World Health Organization. "The potential development of human to human spread cannot be ruled out," the health organization said in a statement. In the United States, scientists at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have received samples of the virus from China and have shared them with five other laboratories to study the virus and work on a vaccine. Health officials in the United States have not advised against travel to China. Scientists think people catch the virus from poultry, not from other humans. But if it could spread among people, a deadly pandemic could result. Researchers say it is worrisome that the new virus may be better than other types of bird flu at jumping from birds to humans. The H5N1 bird flu virus, which emerged about a decade ago, has killed 371 people, nearly 60 percent of the 622 known to be infected since 2003, according to the World Health Organization. Because of its apparently high death rate, that virus touched off global fears of a lethal pandemic and led to the slaughter of millions of birds. But it could not be stamped out. The patient in Taiwan said he had not been exposed to birds or eaten undercooked poultry or eggs. Cases like his have puzzled scientists and led some to suspect that an animal other than birds is harboring the virus and spreading it to humans. But so far no other animals have been found to be infected.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Health
Is everyone in Washington writing a tell all? It sure seems like it. Though it's not surprising to see so many books about President Trump on the best seller list, it is surprising that, barely two years into his term, so many of them are written by people who were once key players in his administration. Some are effusive: In "The Briefing," Trump's perpetually beleaguered former press secretary, Sean Spicer, called his boss "a unicorn riding a unicorn over a rainbow," and Anthony Scaramucci, who was briefly the White House communications director, wrote in "Trump: The Blue Collar President" that for a "guy working in finance, who wanted to rise through the economic classes and reach for the Gold Ring, Mr. Trump was the Great Gatsby." Others are less flattering: The former F.B.I. director James Comey described the president as "unethical, and untethered to truth and institutional values" in "A Higher Loyalty," and the onetime White House aide Omarosa Manigault Newman dubbed him "Twitter Fingers" in "Unhinged." Two more such books have just landed. "Team of Vipers: My 500 Extraordinary Days in the Trump White House," a scathing West Wing expose by a former communications aide, Cliff Sims, debuts at No. 4, and "Let Me Finish," a largely laudatory memoir by one of the president's former advisers, , enters the list at No. 5. (The Times called it "a superficial and ungainly book that tries to cover so many bases at once ... that reading it is like watching an octopus try to play the bagpipes.") Read our review of 's "Let Me Finish." Want more? Next up is "The Threat: How the F.B.I. Protects America in the Age of Terror and Trump," due later this month from the ex deputy F.B.I. director Andrew McCabe. In March, Preet Bharara who was a federal prosecutor for the Southern District of New York will publish "Doing Justice: A Prosecutor's Thoughts on Crime, Punishment, and the Rule of Law." And the former national security adviser H.R. McMaster is also writing a memoir, "Battlegrounds," which comes out in 2020.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Books
And it is set in a realm where sentiment trumps (sorry!) political difference. Souza states that he wasn't crazy about Reagan's policies but was won over by his authentic affability. One section goes into detail about the thoroughness of Obama's decision making process and his willingness to hear out different points of view, but draws no conclusions about the decisions that process yielded. One of the movie's central points is also Souza's: that the current presidency is a dumpster fire. With a backward glance so ardent it seems full of longing, "The Way I See It" offers, if nothing else, a more pleasant view. The Way I See It Rated PG 13 for no discernible reason, maybe language. Running time: 1 hour 40 minutes. In select theaters. Please consult the guidelines outlined by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention before watching movies inside theaters.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Movies
Where Did Fish First Evolve? The Answer May Be Shallow Some had armor and spikes. Many lacked jaws. They evolved in the shallow coasts around supercontinents and they were some of our earliest ancestors with spines. None An artist's impression of pituriaspids, among early types of fish, which are first thought to have evolved around 480 million years ago. More than 400 million years ago, ancient oceans were teeming with many fish that might seem alien in today's seas. Back then some wore plates of bony armor and lacked jaws, like the arandaspids, which looked like a clam with a tail. The heterostracans sometimes resembled underwater armadillos with spikes. There were also galeaspids, some of which sported swordlike helmets, and the osteostracans, which had horseshoe shaped heads. Not all jawless fish were heavily armored. The thelodonts, for example, had torpedo shaped bodies and bony scales that looked like shark skin. Some anaspids had scales and a leaf shaped body. And then came the first jawed fishes like armored placoderms, some of which used their tanklike exterior and razor sharp teeth to dominate the water world. Scientists have long wondered where in the sea these extinct fish groups and their living relatives first evolved. Was it the open ocean? Perhaps on coral reefs? Or maybe in the depths of the abyss? Figuring out the answer has been difficult. While there's an abundance of fish fossils from about 420 million years ago, the ancient fossil record gets scarce farther back at about 480 million years ago, when fish are believed to have first appeared. Now, a new study suggests that fish first swam in the shallows around the coasts of supercontinents before they diversified and conquered the world's waters. The findings, which were published Thursday in the journal Science, also provide insight into the origins of the vertebrates that became the forebears of our ancestors who first ventured onto land. Like the Science Times page on Facebook. Sign up for the Science Times newsletter. To better understand the ancient evolutionary history of fish, the researchers trawled through the scientific literature and created a database with more than 2,700 fossil records of jawed and jawless fish from every continent that stretched from 480 million to 360 million years ago. The database allowed the team to determine where in the ocean the ancient fish groups lived and evolved. "All of the groups kept originating in the shallow water over the whole 100 million year period, which was completely unexpected," said Lauren Sallan, a paleontologist at the University of Pennsylvania and lead author of the study. "This is an unexpected diversity hot spot that persists for a long time." The finding changes what scientists previously assumed about where the earliest fish evolved, said Michael Coates, a vertebrate paleontologist at the University of Chicago, who was not involved in the study. "Previously we thought the early reef systems would be the cradle of diversification," said Dr. Coates. "But no, it seems that these early armored forms were in much nearer shore environments. That explains why our early record is so cryptic." The team is not exactly sure why fish evolved near the coast in clear, shallow lagoons and intertidal zones that were typically no deeper than about 100 feet. They think it may have to do with the waves, sea level changes, runoffs, rainfalls and other environmental factors of shallow water habitats. "We've come to the suspicion that there's something going on with water chemistry and potentially with oxygen levels in these active and dynamic environments," said Ivan Sansom, a paleobiologist from the University of Birmingham, in England and an author on the paper. The team also found that as the fish evolved in the shallow water, the more flexible swimmers, like the thelodonts, eventually left and invaded deeper areas like coral reefs and the deep sea. There, they may have encountered mollusks, trilobites and fearsome sea scorpions. Over time, many of the hunkering, armored fish evolved into bottom dwellers and might have stayed in the waters near shore and moved to freshwater rivers and lakes. Today, evolution has left us with two main fish groups. Bony fish like salmon, marlin and some 28,000 other species make up the osteichthyes. And the chondrichthyes are cartilaginous fish like sharks, rays and skates. But a couple oddball jawless fish still lurk in the seas, like goopy hagfish and the bloodsucking lampreys. They may not be armored, but they're a reminder of the evolutionary footsteps and missteps that eventually led to all vertebrates, underwater and up here on dry land.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Science
"Tesla's Death Ray" investigates an ominous 20th century invention. And "They Shall Not Perish" focuses on the humanitarian efforts after the Armenian Genocide. TESLA'S DEATH RAY: A MURDER DECLASSIFIED 10 p.m. on Discovery. No, Elon Musk hasn't started a new venture this Discovery series is about Nikola Tesla, the 20th century inventor with enduring outcast credibility. The primary concern here is with a weapon that Tesla said he had invented and that, according to a 1934 article in The New York Times, he asserted could "cause armies of millions to drop dead in their tracks." In this series, the military analyst Jack Murphy and the Tesla historian Cameron Prince look into the shrouded in mystery death ray. They question whether the invention could have played a role in Tesla's mysterious death. Along the way, they work with a team of engineers who, in a somewhat concerning move, attempt to reconstruct the weapon. I AM JAZZ 10 p.m. on TLC. This reality series stars Jazz Jennings, an outspoken YouTube personality and transgender teenager. The series' fourth season continues her story, as she navigates high school life and prepares for gender confirmation surgery.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Television
Doctors Said Immunotherapy Would Not Cure Her Cancer. They Were Wrong. No one expected the four young women to live much longer. They had an extremely rare, aggressive and fatal form of ovarian cancer. There was no standard treatment. The women, strangers to one another living in different countries, asked their doctors to try new immunotherapy drugs that had revolutionized treatment of cancer. At first, they were told the drugs were out of the question they would not work against ovarian cancer. Now it looks as if the doctors were wrong. The women managed to get immunotherapy, and their cancers went into remission. They returned to work; their lives returned to normalcy. The tale has befuddled scientists, who are struggling to understand why the drugs worked when they should not have. If researchers can figure out what happened here, they may open the door to new treatments for a wide variety of other cancers thought not to respond to immunotherapy. "What we are seeing here is that we have not yet learned the whole story of what it takes for tumors to be recognized by the immune system," said Dr. Jedd Wolchok, chief of the melanoma and immunotherapeutics service at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York. "We need to study the people who have a biology that goes against the conventional generalizations." Four women hardly constitutes a clinical trial. Still, "it is the exceptions that give you the best insights," said Dr. Drew Pardoll, who directs the Bloomberg Kimmel Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy at Johns Hopkins Medicine in Baltimore. The cancer that struck the young women was hypercalcemic small cell ovarian cancer, which typically occurs in a woman's teens or 20s. It is so rare that most oncologists never see a single patient with it. But Dr. Douglas Levine, director of gynecologic oncology at New York University Langone Medical Center, specialized in this disease. A few years ago, he discovered that the cancer was driven by a single gene mutation. The finding was of little use to patients there was no drug on the horizon that could help. Women with this form of ovarian cancer were sharing news and tips online in a closed Yahoo group. Dr. Levine asked to become part of the group and began joining the discussions. There he discovered patients who had persuaded doctors to give them an immunotherapy drug, even though there was no reason to think it would work. The women reported that their tumors shrank immediately. The idea behind immunotherapy is to dismantle a molecular shield that some tumors use to avoid an attack by the body's white blood cells. The immune system sees these tumors as foreign they are fueled by hundreds of genetic mutations, which drive their growth and are recognized by the body. But when white blood cells swarm in to attack the cancer cells, they bounce back, rebuffed. Immunotherapy drugs pierce that protective shield, allowing the immune system to recognize and demolish tumor cells. But the new drugs do not work against many common cancers. Those cancers are supported by fewer genetic mutations, and experts believe that the tumor cells just do not look threatening enough to the body to spur a response. So the immune system leaves them alone. Lung cancer, a genetic type of colorectal cancer and melanoma have huge numbers of mutations, and immunotherapy drugs often are successful in treating them. Cancers of the prostate, pancreas, breast, ovaries and most other tumors carry few mutations. "These are the cancers that rarely respond," Dr. Pardoll said. The idea that the drugs might work against something like hypercalcemic ovarian cancer, which is fueled by just one genetic mutation, just made no sense. But there were a few oddball exceptions. An unusual skin cancer called Merkel cell carcinoma responded to immunotherapy, scientists found. It is caused by a virus, and researchers suggested the infection itself draws the attention of the immune system. Mesothelioma also responded, perhaps because the asbestos that caused it also inflames the immune system. And some kidney cancers responded to immunotherapy treatment; no one knows why. And then came a handful of women with a rare ovarian cancer. Oriana Sousa, 28, a psychologist in Marinha Grande, Portugal, was one of them. She found out she had cancer in December 2011. She knew something was wrong for several months she had been feeling tired, constipated and endlessly thirsty. She began vomiting and had abdominal cramps. But her doctors told her she was fine and not to worry. Finally, her aunt, a nurse, suggested she see a different doctor, who performed a CT scan of her abdomen. It revealed a huge mass. The doctor operated to find out what it was. Two days later, he gave her the bad news: Cancer, and a really terrible form of it. For the next four years, Ms. Sousa's doctors tried to control the cancer, giving her rounds of chemotherapy, radiotherapy and surgery. But every time, new tumors emerged. "I suffered a lot, and I felt I had no life," she said. Things are different now. In 2015, she finally persuaded a doctor to give her an immunotherapy drug, nivolumab. Immediately, her tumors shrank and continued shrinking as she continued with the drug so much that her doctors now say she has no evidence of disease. Life has returned to normal. "Generally after work, I go to the gym and do classes and work out," she said. "People who don't know what I have been through, they can't imagine I am an oncology patient." What saved her? Dr. Eliezer M. Van Allen, a cancer researcher at Dana Farber Cancer Institute, has come across one clue. He found that a gene mutated in kidney cancer was sort of a master regulator of other genes, controlling which were turned on and when. But the regulated genes were normal and did not produce proteins that the immune system might recognize as abnormal. Nonetheless, patients responding to immunotherapy were the ones with the master gene mutation. "We saw this result and weren't sure what to make of it," he said. Dr. Levine and his colleagues found the same phenomenon in patients with hypercalcemic ovarian cancers. One explanation, he and Dr. Van Allen said, is that the immune system may recognize that cells in which genes are erratically turning on and off are dangerous and should be destroyed. One thing is clear, though: When pathologists examine these tumors, they find white blood cells in them as if the immune system were trying to attack. And that finding has led both Dr. Pardoll and Dr. Padmanee Sharma of M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston to plan new clinical trials. They know that immunotherapy fails most patients, even those with cancers that are most likely to respond. So they have set out to create a test to determine who might respond to immunotherapy and then treat those patients regardless of their cancer type. Dr. Sharma's study, funded by the Parker Institute, is getting ready to enroll patients. The researchers will look at pathology slides of patients' tumors to see if white blood cells are worming their way into the cancers. If so, the patients will get an immunotherapy drug to help activate their white blood cells to attack the tumor. If there are few white blood cells in the tumor tissue, patients will get a combination of two immunotherapy drugs to help move more white blood cells into the tumor and help them attack. "The trial is written for all comers," Dr. Sharma said. "If we have learned anything, it is that it is not the tumor type we are treating it is the immune system." At Johns Hopkins, Dr. Pardoll and his colleagues are planning a similar trial. They will be looking for tumors it does not matter what type that have a protein, PD L1, on the surface that repels the immune system. Any patient whose tumor fits that description will get an immunotherapy drug. It's a shot in the dark. But sometimes such a shot finds the mark, as Ms. Sousa will tell you. "Incredible things happen, and against all the odds," she said.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Health
The Italian leather goods company Furla is offering customers the chance to personalize the look of its classic Metropolis top handle shoulder bag ( 298) with interchangeable flaps, including solid calfskin ( 78); glitter, mirrored metallics and studs ( 98); and printed pony ( 148), thanks to snap closures on the back. At 645 Fifth Avenue Moda Operandi is carrying the first line of handbags from the Spanish ready to wear house Delpozo. It includes a classic camel doctor bag ( 2,200) and a pink, green and camel clutch ( 1,650). At 315 Hudson Street. The Everything but Water shop has a winter white capsule collection that includes a sporty Flagpole Swim two piece ( 175 for the top, 175 for the bottom) and a Marysia lace front maillot ( 338). At 373 Bleecker Street. And Totokaelo has some lovely new bits like a Comme des Garcons sheer georgette coat ( 1,171). At 54 Crosby Street.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Fashion & Style

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