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WASHINGTON The economy slowed to a snail's pace in the first half of 2011, underscoring a growing risk that the recovery itself may hang in the balance with budget and debt decisions in Washington. The broadest measure of the economy, known as the gross domestic product, grew at an annual rate of less than 1 percent in the first half of 2011, the Commerce Department reported on Friday. The figures for the first quarter and the second quarter, 0.4 percent and 1.3 percent respectively, were well below what economists were expecting, and signified a sharp slowdown from the early months of the recovery. The government also revised data going all the way back to 2003 that showed the recession was deeper, and the recovery weaker, than initially believed. "There's nothing that you can look at here that is signaling some revival in growth in the second half of the year, and in fact we may see another catastrophically weak quarter next quarter if things go wrong next week," said Nigel Gault, chief United States economist at IHS Global Insight, referring to the debt ceiling talks. With so little growth, the economy can hardly withstand further shocks from home or abroad, and worrisome signals continue to emanate from heavily indebted European countries. If the domestic economy were to contract, any new recession would originate on President Obama's watch unlike the last one, which began a year before he was elected. If Congress leaves existing budget plans intact, some of the government's economic assistance, like the payroll tax cut, will phase out and thereby act as a drag on growth. And by many economists' thinking, whatever additional budget cuts Congress eventually agrees to (or does not) will weaken the economy even further. On the one hand, if legislators cannot come to an agreement to raise the debt ceiling by Tuesday, the United States may be unable to pay all its bills. Borrowing costs across the economy could then surge, because so many interest rates are pegged to how much it costs the federal government to borrow. The forecasting firm Macroeconomic Advisers has predicted that the resulting financial mayhem would most likely plunge the economy back into recession. On the other hand, if legislators do reach an agreement, it will probably include austerity measures that could chip away at the already fragile recovery. Spending cuts particularly if they take effect sooner rather than later, as some of the House's more conservative members want will weaken the economy, since so many industries and workers are directly or indirectly dependent on government activity. Macroeconomic Advisers has estimated that the plan of Senator Harry Reid, the Nevada Democrat who serves as majority leader, for example, could shave a half a percentage point off growth as its spending cuts peak. Citing the debt reductions that Congress undertook in 1937 and that ushered in the most severe phase of the Great Depression, some economists fear that imposing austerity measures too soon could likewise result in a recessionary relapse. Simply prolonging the debt negotiations could also damage prospects for growth in the third quarter, as businesses and families wait to make big purchases until the threat of a federal default subsides. "The business and consumer uncertainty over whether the government will be able to pay its bills is the biggest thing weighing around our neck right now," said Austan Goolsbee, the departing chairman of the President's Council of Economic Advisers. The economy is smaller today than it was before the Great Recession began in 2007, though the country's labor force and production capacity have grown. The outlook for digging out of that hole is getting weaker by the day, and analysts across Wall Street have already begun slashing their forecasts for output and job growth for the rest of this year. Usually, a sharp recession is followed by a sharp recovery, meaning the recovery growth rate is far faster than the long term average growth rate; last quarter, though, output grew at less than half of the average rate seen in the 60 years preceding the Great Recession. Particularly distressing to economists is that consumer spending which, alongside housing, usually leads the way in a recovery has been extraordinarily weak in recent quarters. Inflation adjusted consumer spending in the second quarter barely budged, increasing just 0.1 percent at an annual rate, the Commerce Department report showed. "People are spending more, but that spending is being absorbed in higher prices, not in buying more stuff," said John Ryding, chief economist at RDQ Economics. Even the brightest parts of the latest report were bittersweet. For example, motor vehicle output fell much less than was predicted after the natural disasters in Japan disrupted supply chains. But that means there will probably be a less buoyant bounce in coming months in autos, which economists were counting on to raise growth rates later this year. Some economists cautioned not to read too much into this figure, though, or any individual quarterly number from the last report. The Commerce Department will probably make substantial revisions to the latest numbers, just as it did on Friday for the data released over the previous decade. Among the more jarring revisions in its latest report was the downgrade for growth in the first quarter of this year, from the original estimate of a 1.9 percent annual growth rate to a rate of just 0.4 percent. "Sometimes it feels like I'm a physicist who's been flipped into a different universe trying to explain these revisions, rather than an economist tracking output growth," said Mr. Ryding. "The economy is clearly performing poorly, though we don't know quite how poorly because these individual quarterly revisions can sometimes be something of a joke." The slow growth rate is largely responsible for stubbornly high joblessness across the country. Businesses are sitting on a lot of cash, but are still reluctant to hire because there is so much uncertainty about the future of the economy and whether they will continue to have a steady flow of customers. As of June, 14 million Americans were actively looking for work, and the average duration of unemployment has been climbing to record highs month after month.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Economy
When kids on the gaming site Roblox were darkening the skin color of their avatars to support Black Lives Matter, 12 year old Garvey Mortley decided to speak up. She created a video explaining the offensive history of blackface, and offered viewers more appropriate ways they could show support. "Changing your skin tone to a darker skin color in Roblox or any game is essentially painting your face with shoe polish," she explained in the video. "It's like you're putting on blackface." A better way to show virtual support, she suggested, would be to dress the character in a Black Lives Matter T shirt. It was one child's small step against racism, based on lessons she had learned at home. Her mother, Amber Coleman Mortley, is the director of social engagement at iCivics, a nonprofit founded by Justice Sandra Day O'Connor to improve civics education using games and digital resources. Ms. Coleman Mortley has marched with her daughters and mother in the 2017 Women's March in Washington and created podcasts with her children during quarantine. Even a conversation about a favorite singer ("Cardi B is the greatest ever!") was an opportunity to talk about other greats, like the poet and civil rights activist Audre Lorde or Oprah. "People are overwhelmed and think, 'I can't tackle that. I'm one person,'" said Ms. Coleman Mortley, who writes about social justice on her blog, MomofAllCapes. "But there are spaces where we address racism in our lives even if you live in a homogeneous community, you can address and attack racism." We're all in the midst of a global civics lesson right now, and we don't have to be marching in the streets to take small steps toward changing ourselves and raising socially conscious, anti racist children, she said. Join your P.T.A., go to school board meetings, learn more about the curriculum. Demand accurate history lessons about race. Supplement your child's education with books and documentaries, and don't shy away from conversations about race. "When a child says 'that kid is Black or Asian,' I think a lot of white parents shush their child," said Ms. Coleman Mortley. "You don't want to shush your child. It creates a negative connotation in that child's mind, and they think, 'Wait, there's something wrong with brown skin.' Just say, 'Great. Let's meet this child. What else did you learn about them?'" Ibram X. Kendi, author of the best selling book "How to Be an Antiracist," has compiled a reading list he calls a "step ladder to anti racism." It's not enough to be "not racist," he says, because it's a claim "that signifies neutrality." "Those who are striving to be anti racist realize it's not an identity," said Dr. Kendi, who is the founding director of the Antiracist Research and Policy Center at American University. "It's something they're striving to be, to be sure in each moment they are expressing anti racist ideas and anti racist policies." Dr. Kendi recently published a children's book, "Antiracist Baby." The book, written in rhyme, offers nine steps, including seeing skin color, celebrating differences and growing up to be an antiracist. "Parents use books to teach about love or kindness or to potty train. Why not do the same for teaching our kids to be anti racist," Dr. Kendi said. He notes that people who are uncomfortable talking about race often come from homes where it wasn't a topic of conversation. "Our parents didn't want to talk to us about it in a controlled constructive environment," he said. "We didn't even learn to start having these conversations because we'd already been trained by our parents that this was something you don't talk about. There's a cycle." Conversations about race had a huge impact on Winona Guo, now an undergraduate at Harvard, and Priya Vulchi, who attends Princeton. They remember the subtle and not so subtle ways racism influenced their own views of themselves as children and made them feel inferior. Ms. Vulchi, who is Indian American, was told to bleach her skin. Ms. Guo remembers calling for a play date with a classmate who responded, "I don't play with Chinese girls." The first time they recall a conversation about race at their high school, in New Jersey, was in 10th grade history class, when a teacher initiated a talk about the death of Eric Garner in 2014. The conversation inspired them to take a gap year traveling to all 50 states to talk to people about race, which became a book, "Tell Me Who You Are: Sharing Our Stories of Race, Culture Identity." The duo also started a nonprofit called Choose, and the book, education guide and a workbook have been used by hundreds of educators around the country. "Schools are important because they enable us to reach every child, including white students mistakenly taught that race is irrelevant to their lives," said Ms. Guo. "Don't frame anti racist work as an extracurricular, but rather as an integral part of life no matter what career you choose," said Ms. Vulchi. "Art, coding, policy, statistics all of these can be harnessed for anti racist work on a daily basis." Parents can start conversations about race with books, documentaries or even movies like "Black Panther" or "Crazy Rich Asians," two box office hits that proved the power of diversity in movie making. "Bring it into your house and say to your kids, 'Let's talk about why that movie was different than every other movie we've seen," said Julie Lythcott Haims, whose books include "Real American," a memoir about her life as a black and biracial woman living in predominantly white spaces. "Don't ask leading questions. Let kids fill the space with their thoughts. They might not even mention race. Then tell them why it was different for you. After the movie is over, that's where you show up with your values." Parents who live in homogeneous communities can find ways to make their children's lives more diverse. "Who are your kids' doctors and dentists and pharmacists and music teachers and tutors?" said Traci Baxley, a coach and educator who offers courses through Instagram and her website, SocialJusticeParenting.com. "You can broaden how your children see black people," said Dr. Baxley, associate professor and coordinator of the multicultural education program at Florida Atlantic University. "I always hear moms tell me 'my whole area is white.' Then maybe drive an extra 20 minutes to get to a black dentist or drive a little further to go to a different grocery store. If you're serious about the practice, it may take a little extra effort." A common mistake some parents make is to say they don't "see color" and they want to raise their children to be "colorblind." "To say, 'I'm colorblind is to say 'I have the privilege of never having to worry about color,'" says Ms. Lythcott Haims, a former corporate lawyer and Stanford dean. "Those of us who wear skin of brown don't have that luxury. The right approach is to recognize that humans come in innumerable varieties of color and hair texture and eye shape and noses and lips and height and weight. There are differences aplenty. The key is to teach our children that differences aren't bad." Join me Wednesday, June 24, at 8 p.m. Eastern time for a conversation with Amber Coleman Mortley about how to raise a socially conscious, anti racist child. R.S.V.P. here.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Well
Stephen Colbert Catches Himself Putting All His Eggs in the Mueller Report Basket Welcome to Best of Late Night, a rundown of the previous night's highlights that lets you sleep and lets us get paid to watch comedy. If you're interested in hearing from The Times regularly about great TV, sign up for our Watching newsletter and get recommendations straight to your inbox. Stephen Colbert has been waiting for this moment since Robert Mueller took over as special counsel almost two years ago: Attorney General William P. Barr is expected to make Mueller's report public on Thursday. Colbert has been fixated on Mueller's investigation since 2017, and he's already been burned a few times particularly when Barr released a letter saying Mueller's report stated clearly that Trump had not conspired with Russia. On Wednesday, Colbert slyly poked fun at himself for all the hope (and airtime) he's invested in Mueller. "Now, the comedy duo of Barr and Rosenstein have scheduled a 9:30 a.m. press conference to release the report tomorrow, O.K.? Which will undoubtedly blow the lid off of Donald Trump's corruption. And until then, I will pass the time holds up a carton of eggs counting my chickens, which I will safely place in one basket dumps eggs into a basket ." STEPHEN COLBERT Jimmy Kimmel and Seth Meyers both pointed out that the report was likely to have considerable redactions, so there's no telling how revealing it will be. "The Mueller report is coming. Tomorrow we finally get to see the highly anticipated and heavily redacted release. How much of it will be hidden we do not know. Political analysts are going to try to read through these redactions like teenage boys trying to watch scrambled porn on cable in 1985." JIMMY KIMMEL "A redacted version of special counsel Robert Mueller's report is expected to be released tomorrow morning. Right now we don't know what's in it, but tomorrow ... won't be any different." SETH MEYERS, showing an image of an entirely redacted page Although Conan O'Brien joked that there are "over 800 Democratic candidates for president" in 2020, President Trump made it clear that the ones on his mind are the white, heterosexual, male ones over the age of 70. On Tuesday, Trump tweeted, "I believe it will be Crazy Bernie Sanders vs. Sleepy Joe Biden as the two finalists." Meanwhile, Jimmy Kimmel poked fun at Trump's nicknames for Biden and Sanders, saying they don't get his point across very clearly. "He was heckled by an anti gay protester. Yeah, Buttigieg handled it like a pro, and said, 'Settle down, Mr. Vice President.'" CONAN O'BRIEN, discussing a recent rally by the Democratic presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg "Carl's Jr. is testing out a CBD infused burger. So far it's working, 'cause customers eat the burger, walk outside, look up and say, 'Sweet! Carl's Jr.!' and then walk back inside." JIMMY FALLON "Easter is this Sunday. 'He is risen!' said the White House staff around 11 a.m." SETH MEYERS "A university professor in Japan is under investigation after he taught his science class how to make the drug ecstasy. To be fair, teaching your students how to make ecstasy seems like a great idea when you are on ecstasy." JAMES CORDEN Conan O'Brien visited Australia and tried to guess at the country's slang terms. He made a lot of blues (mistakes, that is).	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Television
When, back in 2000, the sitcom "Spin City" moved production to Los Angeles from New York, few could have been happier than Richard Kind, a born and bred Easterner who played a clueless press secretary on the long running series. He and his wife, Dana, bought a grand old house in majestic Hancock Park, complete with marble steps and a living room they never set foot in. Mr. Kind could have stayed forever; he had to settle for six years. First came the couple's daughter, Skyler, now 11, followed by the twins, Samantha and Max, now 8. "For kids, Los Angeles is just not great in my opinion," said Mr. Kind, 56, who grew up in Bucks County, Pa., and moved to New York after college to pursue acting jobs. Thus, in 2006, when he became a replacement for one of the leads in the Broadway musical "Dirty Rotten Scoundrels," the family packed up and headed back to New York, renting on 79th and Amsterdam for two years. "Then," Mr. Kind said, "we realized it was time to buy." And he knew exactly the kind of apartment he wanted. He'd had a tantalizing glimpse of it years earlier during a wardrobe fitting at the apartment of the costume designer Willa Kim. "I go in there and I look around," Mr. Kind recalled. "It wasn't huge, but it was good sized. The ceilings were high. I loved the layout. And I said: 'Willa, This is perfect. I love this place. If you ever decide to give it up, call me.' " There were no such calls, and in person importuning wasn't an option; Mr. Kind couldn't remember where she lived. But a man must move on.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Real Estate
When you buy a bottle of wine at La Vite Turchese in Barolo, a village surrounded by vineyard lined hills, the cashier often grabs a corkscrew and two glasses instead of wrapping it in a bag. In this wine shop, where metal shelves are stacked to the ceiling with mostly Italian wines, there are also unfussy tables and chairs and a couple of couches around a wood coffee table. I planned a visit to this wine shop, not just to browse and buy, but for lunch. La Vite Turchese is both a wine shop and a wine bar, a hybrid that is increasingly redefining how to drink wine in Piemonte. This prestigious wine region in northern Italy is well known for its lovely white tablecloth, sometimes stuffy Michelin rated restaurants with extensive wine cellars (at often eye watering prices). But what about when you just crave a special glass of wine and a snack, not a five course meal? In what feels like a generational shift, the wine drinking scene in Piemonte has taken a significant turn. Formal restaurants are no longer the only place to find a wide selection of notable local wines. Wine shops with a handful of tables informal places that locals frequent for lunch or a bite before a late dinner now have shelves that are packed with the region's best wines at retail prices, not the pronounced markup found in many restaurants. These informal hybrid shops felt fresh and exciting on a recent visit to the region in comparison to some of the well known restaurants. The hybrids tend to have a youthful vibe in their atmosphere, music and knowledgeable staff, which can assist in narrowing down the vast options. There are often bottles uncorked for sampling before purchase, perhaps alongside a board piled high with local cheese and prosciutto. "We wanted to try something different," said Stefano Moiso, owner of La Vite Turchese. "We wanted to have a big selection, but to mix bigger names with the lesser known." Mr. Moiso offers more than 230 wines by the glass, and glasses start at 6 euros, or about 7. He gives customized tastings, getting a sense of your preferences and then whizzing around the shop to select limited and rare wines (he also offers master classes, by appointment). La Vite Turchese opened in 2013 and sells wines that don't always leave Italian borders. "Some of the best wines are family made," Mr. Moiso said. "They have no website. These are winemakers with their feet planted in the soil." Alongside a plate of salami and goat cheese, he placed two glasses in front of me, with the wine labeled by name and vintage in erasable marker. As I snacked and sipped, I couldn't help but think that it's a strong business model to have wine for sale within arm's reach after such a pleasurable lunch. In 2014, Voglia di Vino opened as solely a wine shop in Alba, a cobblestone lined city that is a 20 minute drive from Barolo. But the town is full of good wine shops, and owners Luca Tirelli and Daniela Stocchetti wanted to set themselves apart. "What is the biggest problem with a wine shop?" Mr. Tirelli asked me over a glass of sparkling wine. "You can't taste everything you want to try." Voglia di Vino now serves more than 60 wines by the glass and the shelves are stocked with over 400 types of wine from 150 producers. "People come in for a drink, eat some salami and breadsticks, and take two bottles home," Mr. Tirelli said. Voglia di Vino carries wine ranging from 10 to 650 euros a bottle. Customers who want to buy off the shelf and open the bottle either inside the candlelit wine bar or at an outdoor table on the cobbled street pay a 10 euro corkage fee. This is a popular and more affordable option for winemakers and sophisticated drinkers looking to splurge on a bottle without paying the markup found at traditional restaurants. "It used to be if you want to drink something special, you must go to a high end restaurant," Mr. Tirelli said. "Now that has changed." The octogenarian winemaker Michele Chiarlo and his family are behind Palas Cerequio, a nine room hotel surrounded by vineyards outside the hilltop village of La Morra, about 20 minutes from Alba. It's also home to a wine cellar with a shop focused on single vineyard wines from several producers in Barolo. "When stocking the shelves, we looked at it from the perspective of the customer: You come to taste different things," Mr. Chiarlo said. The brick lined cave is like a library of single vineyard wines from Barolo, complete with back vintages and a range of producers from Gaja to Paolo Scavino to Damilano. To sample the range of flavors possible in a single vineyard, visitors might want to ask about a horizontal tasting. The shop doesn't have a traditional wine bar area for opening a bottle, but guests can raise a glass on the terrace overlooking the vineyards, poolside under the shade of an umbrella or even over a picnic in the very vineyard where the grapes were picked. "In the past, it wasn't traditional to order wine by the glass or to take an open bottle home from a restaurant," Mr. Chiarlo said. "But here in Piemonte, the culture around drinking wine is changing."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Travel
JACKSONVILLE, Ark. On a frigid morning here, Nancy Godinez was piling bread and other staples into her car outside a food pantry. She had lost her job as a custodian, her unemployment checks had run out, and her job search had proved fruitless. One thing she still had was health insurance, acquired three years ago after Arkansas' Republican controlled legislature agreed to expand Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act. The coverage, she said, has allowed her to get regular checkups and treatment for tendinitis in her foot. But unless she finds a new job, Ms. Godinez, 55, could be at risk of losing her insurance, too. Gov. Asa Hutchinson is among a number of Republican governors hoping to impose a work requirement on Medicaid recipients. They believe that extending Medicaid to millions of low income adults without disabilities under the health law gave them an incentive not to work. Since its creation as part of President Lyndon Johnson's Great Society agenda in the 1960s, Medicaid has grown to become a robust safety net program for poor Americans, providing health care for 74 million people. The new Republican ideas for the program, including work requirements and changes in how it is paid for, could make Medicaid much more limited, with a smaller impact on the federal budget but more obstacles to becoming and staying enrolled. The outline of a new replacement plan, presented to House members last week, shows just how far some Republican leaders hope to go in overhauling a program that has grown under the Affordable Care Act to insure one in five Americans, including more than half of the roughly 20 million people who have gained coverage under the health law. It would give each state a fixed amount of money for each Medicaid beneficiary, instead of paying a large share of whatever it costs to cover everyone who qualifies. And it would substantially reduce the amount that the federal government pays to help cover the Medicaid expansion in Arkansas and 30 other states, a change that would most likely result in many people losing coverage. In return, states would get far more freedom to structure their Medicaid programs as they wished. Now, even as divisions among Republicans in Congress slow efforts to repeal the Affordable Care Act, Mr. Hutchinson and other Republican governors are developing proposals to require many Medicaid recipients to have a job, participate in job training or perform community service. "It gives dignity; it gives responsibility," Mr. Hutchinson said in a recent interview at the State Capitol. "And if somebody wants to say, 'That's not for me,' if they're able bodied they ought to be kicked off the system." Work requirements have long been central to the Republican goal of instilling a sense of "personal responsibility" in people who benefit from government programs. But it was an Arkansas Democrat, Bill Clinton, whose embrace of work requirements for welfare recipients when he was governor became the basis for the 1996 federal welfare law enacted during his presidency. In fact, 59 percent of nondisabled adults on Medicaid do have jobs, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation. But advocates for the poor say low income people often face numerous roadblocks in finding work. Some have criminal records. Others lack a cellphone or reliable transportation, said Mandy Davis, a social worker at Jericho Way, a resource center for the homeless in Little Rock. "Middle class America believes in work because we do it ourselves," Ms. Davis said. "But we have resources, an education, transportation, a supportive family." Mr. Hutchinson and a few other governors, including those in Arizona, Indiana and Montana, have already sought work or job training requirements for those who received Medicaid under the expansion over the last few years but were rebuffed by the Obama administration. President Barack Obama would allow them only to refer Medicaid recipients to job training programs, with no requirement that they participate. One early indication of the Trump administration's stance will be whether it approves Kentucky's request to require able bodied Medicaid recipients to either work, enroll in school, get job training or volunteer 20 hours a week. Gov. Matt Bevin, a Republican, submitted the request last year. It was Mr. Hutchinson's Democratic predecessor, Mike Beebe, who got the state's Republican controlled legislature to expand Medicaid by using federal funds to buy private insurance for the poor. Mr. Hutchinson said in the interview that he wanted to continue the expansion here, but that if the federal government stopped paying most of the cost as the health law requires, "we'll just have to look at it again." He said he would either seek the Trump administration's permission to impose a work requirement or seek a block grant and, with it, leeway to create new rules to cover those who newly qualified for Medicaid under the health law. As a rough model, Mr. Hutchinson pointed to a work requirement for certain food stamp recipients a federal policy that was part of the landmark 1996 welfare overhaul that Arkansas reinstated last year. Under that rule, able bodied adults without dependents cannot receive food stamps for longer than three months unless they are working, volunteering or getting job training for 20 hours a week. States were allowed to suspend the requirement during the recession, but most have brought it back as unemployment has dropped. It generally applies to adults ages 18 to 49 unless they are pregnant, have dependent children or are medically certified as "unfit for employment." Since Arkansas reimposed the work requirement last year, its food stamp rolls have lost about 36,000 people, according to the State Department of Human Services. Mr. Hutchinson said the drop was partly explained because people had found jobs, but advocates for the poor said many appeared to have been cut off. For now, Arkansas is sending letters to Medicaid enrollees to let them know they are eligible for "free job search assistance," including career counseling and help writing resumes. The state is putting together a system to keep track of those who take advantage of the offer and whether they end up finding jobs. Many Medicaid recipients here already have low paying jobs, but roughly 40 percent report having no income, according to the state. But Leonardo Cuello, director of health policy for the National Health Law Program in Washington, said work requirements for Medicaid recipients would very likely be challenged in court. "Applying work requirements to health coverage gets it exactly backward," he said. "An individual needs to be healthy to work, and a work requirement may prevent them from getting the health care they need in order to be able to work." Christopher Caveney, 38, of Blytheville, recently found part time work as a security guard after a long recovery from surgery to remove a benign tumor in his spine. Mr. Caveney has Medicaid coverage but lost his food stamps last fall because he was not working the required 20 hours a week. "I went from being able to eat vegetables to eating Hamburger Helper every day," said Mr. Caveney, who earns 10 an hour. "I think most people want to work, but I also know a lot of people work when it's not necessarily in their health's best interest." Mr. Cuello also said it would be difficult for states to determine which of their Medicaid enrollees were truly capable of work. Someone may be legitimately disabled but not yet approved for disability benefits, for example. That is the case with Jimmy T. Brunson, 44, whose diabetes has caused painful neuropathy in his feet. Mr. Brunson, who was playing dominoes one recent morning at Jericho Way, a resource center for the homeless, said he sporadically found temporary jobs but had a hard time keeping them because of the pain in his feet. Mr. Brunson said he had qualified for Medicaid under the health law and was using it to get his diabetes medication. If a work requirement was imposed, "I'd probably be out," he said. "Even though sometimes I can get a job, you've got to understand sometimes I can't even walk." Daniel Foltz Morrison, a Medicaid recipient who makes a modest income singing at churches around Little Rock, said he worried that a work requirement would reduce the Medicaid rolls without connecting many people to jobs or training. "Are these work force centers going to be robustly funded and have the means to identify prospective employers and make matches happen?" asked Mr. Foltz Morrison, 29, who is also a graduate student at the University of Arkansas. "I worry that this is all for show." But even some of Arkansas' poorest residents are quick to say public benefits should be conditioned on work. "I'm glad we have it, but people should have to do something for it," said Ms. Godinez, who had stopped by the Fishnet Missions Food Pantry in Jacksonville, outside Little Rock. "This is America, right? You're supposed to work for what you get." Some who make a living helping the poor also said they were strongly against providing a public benefit to those who are physically able to work but do not.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Health
John le Carre (David Cornwell) in 2017. He "will be remembered as perhaps the most significant novelist of the second half of the 20th century in Britain," the novelist Ian McEwan said. LONDON John le Carre, whose exquisitely nuanced, intricately plotted Cold War thrillers elevated the spy novel to high art by presenting both Western and Soviet spies as morally compromised cogs in a rotten system full of treachery, betrayal and personal tragedy, died on Saturday in Cornwall, England. He was 89. The cause was pneumonia, his publisher, Penguin Random House, said on Sunday. Before Mr. le Carre published his best selling 1963 novel "The Spy Who Came in From the Cold," which Graham Greene called "the best spy story I have ever read," the fictional model for the modern British spy was Ian Fleming's James Bond suave, urbane, devoted to queen and country. With his impeccable talent for getting out of trouble while getting women into bed, Bond fed the myth of spying as a glamorous, exciting romp. Mr. Le Carre upended that notion with books that portrayed British intelligence operations as cesspools of ambiguity in which right and wrong are too close to call and in which it is rarely obvious whether the ends, even if the ends are clear, justify the means. Led by his greatest creation, the plump, ill dressed, unhappy, brilliant, relentless George Smiley, Mr. le Carre's spies are lonely, disillusioned men whose work is driven by budget troubles, bureaucratic power plays and the opaque machinations of politicians men who are as likely to be betrayed by colleagues and lovers as by the enemy. Smiley has a counterpart in the Russian master spy Karla, his opposite in ideology but equal in almost all else, an opponent he studies as intimately as a lover studies his beloved. The end of "Smiley's People," the last in a series known as the Karla Trilogy, brings them together in a stunning denouement that is as much about human frailty and the deep loss that comes with winning as it is about anything. "Thematically, le Carre's true subject is not spying," Timothy Garton Ash wrote in The New Yorker in 1999. "It is the endlessly deceptive maze of human relations: the betrayal that is a kind of love, the lie that is a sort of truth, good men serving bad causes and bad men serving good." Some critics took Mr. le Carre's message to be that the two systems, East and West, were moral equivalents, both equally bad. But he did not believe that. "There is a big difference in working for the West and working for a totalitarian state," he told an interviewer, referring to his own work as a spy in the 1950s and early '60s. Mr. le Carre refused to allow his books to be entered for literary prizes. But many critics considered his books literature of the first rank. Mr. le Carre's own youthful experience as a British agent, along with his thorough field research as a writer, gave his novels the stamp of authority. But he used reality as a starting off point to create an indelible fictional world. In his books, the Secret Intelligence Service, otherwise known as M.I.6., was the "Circus," agents were "joes," operations involving seduction were "honeytraps" and agents deeply embedded inside the enemy were "moles," a word he is credited with bringing into wide use if not inventing it. Such expressions were taken up by real British spies to describe their work, much as the Mafia absorbed the language of "The Godfather" into their mythology. "As much as in Tolkien, Wodehouse, Chandler or even Jane Austen, this closed world is a whole world," the critic Boyd Tonkin wrote in The Independent. "Via the British 'Circus' and its Soviet counterpart, Le Carre created a laboratory of human nature; a test track where the innate fractures of the heart and mind could be driven to destruction." In a career spanning more than a half century, Mr. le Carre wrote more than two dozen books and set them as far afield as Rwanda, Chechnya, Turkey, the Caribbean and Southeast Asia. He addressed topics as diverse as the power of pharmaceutical companies, the Arab Israeli conflict and after the Berlin Wall fell and his novels became more polemical, and he became more politicized American and British human rights excesses in countering terrorism. If he had political points to make, and he increasingly did, he still gift wrapped them with elegant, complicated plots and dead on descriptions; he could paint a whole character in a single sentence. He was a best seller many times over, and at least a half dozen of his novels including "A Perfect Spy" (1986), which Philip Roth pronounced "the best English novel since the war" can be considered classics. But he will always be best known for his Cold War novels, a perfect match of author and subject. John le Carre knew deception intimately because he was born into it. (For one thing, "John le Carre" was not his real name.) Born David John Moore Cornwell in Poole, Dorset, on Oct. 19, 1931, he had a ragged, destabilizing childhood dominated by his father, Ronald, an amoral, flamboyant, silver tongued con man who palled around with celebrities and crooks, left trails of unpaid bills wherever he went, and was forever on the verge of carrying out a huge scam or going to jail. (He was in and out of prison for fraud.) "Manipulative, powerful, charismatic, clever, untrustworthy,' Mr. Le Carre once described him. The family lurched between extremes. "When father was flush, the chauffeur driven Bentley would be parked outside," he said. "When things were a bit iffy, it was parked in the back garden, and when we were down and out, it disappeared altogether." Often, debts would be called in. "You have no idea how humiliating it was, as a boy, to suddenly have all your clothes, your toys, snatched by the bailiff," Mr. le Carre told an interviewer. The boys' mother, Olive (Glassey) Cornwell, walked out of the family house and into the arms of another man when David was 5. He has little memory of it his father intimated that she was ill, then that she had died and he did not see her again for 16 years. As crooked as he was, Ronnie Cornwell craved establishment respectability for his children, and David was sent to prep school and then to Sherborne, a boarding school, which he hated so much, he decamped for Switzerland at age 16 and enrolled at the University of Bern to study modern languages. There he was recruited by a British spy working undercover at the embassy, and so his life of spying began. Except for two years when he taught at Eton, England's premier secondary school, Mr. le Carre was a spy of some kind for 16 years, for both M.I.6. and its domestic counterpart, M.I.5. It was not until years later that he owned up to his earlier profession it was a relief, he said, not to have to lie about it any more and he was always vague on the details. But while a student at Oxford, where he went after Bern, Mr. le Carre kept an eye out for possible Soviet sympathizers in left wing groups. In 1960, he moved to Germany, posing as a British diplomat; his work included conducting interrogations, tapping phones, organizing break ins and running agents. Briefly, he led a triple life: diplomat, spy, novelist, writing his first book, "Call for the Dead" (1961), in longhand in red notebooks. The story of the unveiling of an East German spy operation, it was notable mostly for the introduction of Smiley and his faithless wife, Ann. (Ann was the name of Mr. le Carre's wife at the time, though when they divorced, in 1971, it seems to have been his infidelity that was a problem, not hers). Forbidden by his employers to write under his own name, the author fixed on "John le Carre." Over the years he gave various explanations for it, finally admitting that he could not remember which, if any, were true. "The Spy Who Came in From the Cold," the author's third novel, was published to instant acclaim and worldwide best sellerdom. It was a shock of a book. Its hero, Alec Leamas, is a worn out spy sent down a rabbit hole of deception, betrayal and personal tragedy in a mission that he thinks is one thing but that is really another. To readers used to tidy fantasy endings, the book's conclusion is like a blow to the head. "In its way, it marked a boundary between two eras: the era of God is in our side patriotism, of trust in government and in the morality of the West, and the era of paranoia, of conspiracy theory and suspicion of government, of moral drift," Stephen Schiff wrote in Vanity Fair. As many of Mr. le Carre's books would be, "The Spy Who Came in From the Cold" was made into a movie; Richard Burton starred as Leamas. The success of the novel and the fact that a British paper revealed its author's true identity allowed Mr. le Carre in 1964 to quit his undercover work to write full time. He produced book after book set against the Cold War backdrop, including "The Looking Glass War" (1965); "A Small Town in Germany" (1968); the Karla Trilogy, and "The Russia House" (1989). In addition to the Cold War books, his most celebrated novels include "The Little Drummer Girl" (1983), about an undercover operation by a passionate young actress turned spy; the book performs the seemingly impossible trick of evoking genuine sympathy for both the Israeli and Palestinian points of view. '"The Little Drummer Girl' is about spies," William F. Buckley Jr. wrote in The New York Times, "as 'Madame Bovary' is about adultery or "Crime and Punishment' about crime." "A Perfect Spy" (1986), Mr. le Carre's most autobiographical work, tells the story of Magnus Pym, a double agent with a con man father modeled after le Carre's own, and how the two deceive and are deceived by each other in an intricate skein of lies. Mr. Schiff called it "one of the most penetrating depictions in all literature of the links between love and betrayal." The author ultimately broke off contact with his father, who continued to hound him for money, styled himself "Ron le Carre" and once threatened to sue him. After Ronald died, Mr. le Carre paid for his funeral but did not go to it. The women in Mr. le Carre's early books were often caricatures the ingenue, the adulteress, the sexless crone and that was so, he once said, because "I grew up without them and they have always been strangers to me." But he made a conscious effort to address the lapse in later books. In "The Constant Gardener," a diplomat, seeking the truth about his murdered wife in Africa and filled with remorse about how little he understood her, resolves to redeem himself by continuing her work and finding a way inside her, almost, by trying to see the world as she had seen it. If Mr. le Carre painted his Cold War world in shades of gray, his post 9/11 books seemed increasingly black and white. They had the familiar le Carre flourishes: multidimensional chess games of plots; biting characterizations; the sense of weak and sometimes decent individuals caught up in situations they barely understood; in depth on location research that he compared to "a perfectly normal espionage operation it's just good reporting." But he became bitterly disillusioned with Britain and America after the 2003 invasion of Iraq and the war on terror. He was particularly angry at reports of Western torture, something that did not happen when he was a spy, he said. "It was a softer world, of course, mine the Cold War," he said in an interview in 2008. "I know about interrogation. I've done interrogations, and I can tell you this: by extracting information under torture you make a fool of yourself. You obtain information that isn't true, you receive names of people who are supposedly guilty and who aren't, and you land yourself with a wild goose chase and miss what is being handed to you on a plate, and that is the possibility of bonding with someone and engaging with them." The unadorned politics that characterized this later period and a newfound activism that included joining demonstrations and writing angry editorials alienated some readers. But only some. In 2011, a new movie adaptation of "Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy" the first in the Karla trilogy and the account of Smiley's painstaking unmasking of a Kim Philby esqe Soviet mole working at the Circus brought renewed interest in Mr. le Carre's work and sent backlist sales soaring. At 'the Top of His Game' at 88 "Le Carre is still writing at something close to the top of his game," Dwight Garner wrote in The New York Times Magazine, speaking of "A Delicate Truth" (2013), the author's 23rd novel, which he called "an elegant yet embittered indictment of extraordinary rendition, American right wing evangelical excess and the corporatization of warfare." His last novel, another spy thriller, titled "Agent Running in the Field," was published in October 2019, full of vintage moral outrage. In his review of the book, Allan Massie wrote of Mr. Le Carre in The Scotsman, "He remains angered by what should anger us all: duplicity, treachery, the arrogance and indifference of wealth and power, the readiness to use others as mere instruments." Wry, dryly funny, patrician, a great mimic, a seasoned anecdotalist, handsome into old age, his spoken sentences as beautifully constructed as his written ones, a lover of the crystalline prose and perfect plotting of P.G. Wodehouse, Mr. le Carre charmed the armies of interviewers who came to his cliff top house in Cornwall, where he liked to go for long walks. (He lived part time in Hampstead, London, but avoided the literary social scene.) Spies came to visit, too, treating him like a kind of oracle for their own profession. He said he would never accept a knighthood or other state honor, though there were offers. "I don't want to be Sir David, Lord David, King David," he said. "I don't want any of those things. I find it absolutely fatuous." His first marriage, to Ann Sharp, ended in divorce in 1971. He married Valerie Jane Eustace, a book editor, in 1972; she later served as keeper of the schedule and typist of the manuscripts and general provider of sound counsel for her husband. Their son, Nicholas, became a successful novelist, too, writing under the name Nick Harkaway. Both survive him, as do his three sons from his first marriage, Simon, Stephen and Timothy. In later years, Mr. le Carre delighted in his extended family and found a new domestic happiness. He displayed on the wall of his office a gift from his children, a poster playing on the famous motivational one in World War II Britain, reading, "Keep Calm and le Carre on."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Books
DEAR FRIEND, FROM MY LIFE I WRITE TO YOU IN YOUR LIFE By 208 pp. Random House. 27. "Why write autobiographically?" the Chinese American author asks in this new collection of essays, "Dear Friend, From My Life I Write to You in Your Life," the closest thing to an autobiography she has ever published. It is a question Li takes seriously and explores tirelessly, not least because she professes an unease with the assertion of the pronoun "I." It is a "melodramatic" word, Li writes. "The moment that I enters my narrative my confidence crumbles." This a remarkable statement in a volume that is essentially memoir. Such diffidence is difficult to detect in her fiction, where the first person has been deployed to devastating effect, albeit infrequently. But then the narrative "I" of a short story is perhaps best seen as a means of self effacement, and it's notable that Li's remarkable fiction two elegant novels and two story collections is all assiduously unautobiographical, from the forgotten granny living in China to the gay immigrant seeking asylum in the United States. Yet the particulars of Li's life are scarcely less interesting than those of her characters. Li was born in Beijing, four years before the end of Mao's fatally destructive Cultural Revolution. The daughter of a nuclear physicist and schoolteacher, she grew up with more access to literature, both foreign and Chinese, than most children of her generation. In 1996, after graduating from college and serving a year in the army, Li arrived in Iowa to study immunology, armed with "an anthropologist's fascination with America." It took one part time writing class for Li to change her professional course irrevocably, but the decision is threaded through with a troubled and deeply equivocal relationship with the self: "When I gave up science, I had a blind confidence that in writing I could will myself into a nonentity." Li's transformation into a writer and her striking success (she is the winner of a MacArthur "genius" grant, among other prestigious awards) is nothing short of astonishing. But most of the essays here tend to center on the personal unraveling that accompanied this metamorphosis: two hospitalizations following suicide attempts and time spent at a recovery program "for those whose lives have fallen apart."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Books
Martina Navratilova had seen and heard enough. The outspoken tennis great had long opposed the fact that Court, a fellow legend who has become known more for her homophobic comments than her sterling game, had been honored at the Australian Open with a show court stadium bearing her name. Then, as this year's two week tournament entered its final week, tennis officials feted Court once again. This time, they publicly honored her for one of her crowning achievements: the calendar Grand Slam she won 50 years ago, claiming all four majors in 1970. Against the backdrop of Court's celebration, an angry Navratilova made her views clearer. The following day, in the moments after she finished an exhibition doubles match at Melbourne Park, she took to the umpire's chair and addressed the crowd over a microphone. "I've been speaking out about an issue for a while now," said the former world No. 1 and three time Australian Open singles champion, "and John McEnroe is here to help." Suddenly there was McEnroe another ardent critic of Court. Together they held aloft a banner. "Evonne Goolagong Arena," it read, a nod to calls for Melbourne Park's second biggest stadium to be renamed after an uncontroversial and widely beloved Australian great of the women's game, the winner of three consecutive Australian Opens in the mid 1970s. The dust up was uncommon in today's era of professional tennis, where such outspokenness on contentious social and political issues rarely happens. Tennis Australia which runs the tournament and governs the game across the continent clamped down within hours. The organization issued a statement that called out its "high profile guests" for breaching protocol. "We embrace diversity," the statement added, "inclusion, and the right for people to have their view, as well as their right to express that view." That admonishment denouncing the protest while also making sure to highlight inclusion underscored the bind Australian Open organizers have found themselves in at this year's tournament, one that is becoming increasingly felt throughout the sports world by teams, leagues, hall of fames and especially fans. How do we treat heroes once they've become swaddled in controversy off the field of play? Nobody in tennis disputes Court's greatness as a player. Her 24 major singles titles remain the record for anyone, male or female. (Serena Williams is next, with 23.) Court's haul of 64 total majors singles, doubles, and mixed doubles combined is likely to stand for good. But the very mention of her name stirs deep controversy now. She has long cast homosexuality as a sin and complained of the accepting ways of women's tennis a sport that has been relatively hospitable to lesbians such as Navratilova and Court's prime rival, Billie Jean King. As Australia moved closer to granting marriage rights to all in 2017, her rhetoric sharpened. She described the push for acceptance of the L.G.B.T.Q. community as the work of the Devil. And she doubled down on her scorn for homosexuality within the sport. "Tennis is full of lesbians," she told a radio station in a 2017 interview. "Because even when I was playing there were only a couple there. But those couple that led there took young ones into parties and things." She continued: "What you get at the top is often what you'll get right through the sport." Despite her intolerant views, Australian tennis officials continue to embrace Court albeit with icy unease. They have resisted calls to strip her name from the arena. When Court campaigned to be honored at this year's tournament in the same way Rod Laver was last year for his 1969 Grand Slam, Tennis Australia went along. It also treaded carefully, making clear that it would merely "recognize, not celebrate" the former star, and took the unusual step of adding a disclaimer to its news release: "Tennis Australia does not agree with Court's personal views, which have demeaned and hurt many in our community over a number of years." Just as the organization worked to mute Navratilova and McEnroe both of whom, while not backing down, issued apologies for speaking out at the tournament it also found a way to keep Court under wraps. On Monday, 15 minutes before the feature match between Rafael Nadal and Nicholas Kyrgios, Court walked before the crowd settling in at the 15,000 seat Rod Laver Arena. The big screens briefly displayed a video highlighting her career with comments from King on their long rivalry. (King, who has a tennis center in New York named for her, has also called for Court's name to be removed from the arena.) Court then received a tall trophy. Fans applauded warmly but without zeal. Two or three of them held up rainbow flags, a symbol of gay pride. Tellingly, Court was not given a microphone to speak to the crowd. The presentation seemed aimed at satisfying all sides. "You cannot underestimate the damage she does in our community," Storr said. "And here at the Open you have the name of a homophobe on an arena. You give her a trophy on center court. That is celebrating her, whether they like to admit it or not," Storr said. He added, "You cannot separate the world champion tennis players from their personalities." Storr and D'Souza look at the issue through prisms reflecting the range of opinion in their community. But they agree on this: Their tournament probably wouldn't have taken place even five years ago. "This country is changing," said Storr. "Just the fact that we are here, and visible on the grounds of a Grand Slam, and not stuck away in the corners, it's a big deal. A really big deal. Tennis Australia deserves a lot of credit for that."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Sports
For decades, the headquarters of CBS News and the offices of "60 Minutes" have stood on opposite sides of a windswept block of Manhattan's West 57th Street. It was a symbolic divide as much as a physical one. And these days the gap between the two might as well be miles wide. The ouster on Wednesday of Jeff Fager, the 63 year old "60 Minutes" executive producer, after he threatened the career of a CBS reporter who was looking into harassment allegations against him has exacerbated tensions between the House of Cronkite and its most popular, most profitable show. Populated by eminences like Steve Kroft and Lesley Stahl, the weekly newsmagazine prides itself on a culture of exceptionalism with the ratings to back it up. No matter if CBS News is having a good or a bad year and there have been plenty of bad ones "60 Minutes" performs. "The people at '60 Minutes' were paid more, they had longer time to work on stories, they got incredible recognition in terms of ratings and prestige, so naturally the people in the trenches would sometimes be resentful of that," said Andrew Heyward, a former CBS News president. "It was like a hit TV show that happened to be at CBS News." The show keeps its footage on a separate server inaccessible to other CBS News employees. When the network wants to broadcast a newsworthy clip from "60 Minutes," producers must include the show's onscreen watermark as it if it were a rival station. Even the contrast in office space tells a tale. The CBS Broadcast Center is a 1950s era hulk, lamented by some employees for its windowless rooms. "60 Minutes" operates out of the sleek BMW Building, with panoramic views of the Hudson River. All of this has happened days after CBS's chief executive, Leslie Moonves, stepped down while facing allegations of sexual misconduct. The 51st season of "60 Minutes" premieres in a little over two weeks. And two law firms are still investigating the workplace culture at CBS, as well as at "60 Minutes." "Nobody is surprised by the solidarity that was shown by everyone on the floor yesterday," Bill Owens, the interim executive producer and Mr. Fager's longtime No. 2, wrote in a staffwide email on Thursday morning. "'60 Minutes' is a collection of superb journalists but we are also as close to a family as any group can be." In its half century on the air, however, "60 Minutes" has never been at home within the larger CBS News family. A 2017 book on the show's history written by Mr. Fager, after he stymied another author who was asking questions about the show's treatment of women noted that a feeling of independence permeated the place. "The rituals and obsessions of most every other television news organization, including our own CBS News organization, did not matter so much," Mr. Fager wrote. On Thursday, according to multiple people who work at the show, the mood inside the "60 Minutes" offices remained tense. Ford and Rivian no longer plan to work jointly on electric vehicles. Elizabeth Holmes took the stand in her trial. Follow along with our reporters. Ken Griffin, head of Citadel, bid highest for a copy of the Constitution. The animating concern was whether Mr. Rhodes, perceived by the show's staff as more of a technocrat than a reporter, planned to wrest control and finally fold the show into the news organization. Many "60 Minutes" veterans fear that such a move would amount to dismantling their institution. Mr. Rhodes so rarely visits the "60 Minutes" office that one staff member likened his appearance there on Wednesday, to discuss Mr. Fager's firing, to the sighting of a unicorn. Likewise, "60 Minutes" officials are infrequent attendees at Mr. Rhodes's editorial meetings for senior producers every Monday morning. So when he did show up, many staff members reacted in anger. Mr. Fager has been accused of touching women at company parties and allowing harassment to go unchecked inside "60 Minutes," allegations that he denies. But at an impromptu toast on Wednesday at an Upper West Side bar, Mr. Fager was hugged by teary eyed employees dismayed by his sudden departure. A few blocks away, their colleagues at "CBS Evening News" were preparing a damning segment about Mr. Fager, and the threat that he had leveled against a network reporter, Jericka Duncan. "Be careful," Mr. Fager wrote to Ms. Duncan, in a text message shown on Wednesday's newscast. "There are people who lost their jobs trying to harm me." Jeff Glor, the "CBS Evening News" anchor, who was once close to Mr. Fager, told Ms. Duncan on the air that everyone at the newscast "supports you 100 percent." Mr. Glor ad libbed his comment, according to a person familiar with the broadcast, which was taken as a sign of network unity in denouncing Mr. Fager's actions. Still, the rancor at "60 Minutes" toward Mr. Rhodes had subsided somewhat on Thursday after staff members learned the exact words that Mr. Fager had used in his threat. "These are terrible stories to read and yet, if you were hoping to make changes to our culture, there aren't many changes bigger than the ones underway," Mr. Rhodes wrote. "Change at the top of the whole company offers a fresh start for all of us." But few employees at "60 Minutes," where several correspondents are in their 60s and 70s, saw the note on Monday. According to the show's staff members, most of them do not use Slack.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Media
In This 'Oklahoma!,' She Loves Her and He Loves Him ASHLAND, ORE. The idea came to Bill Rauch in the early 1990s: What if he directed a production of Rodgers and Hammerstein's "Oklahoma!" where the lovers were same sex couples? A gay man in a committed relationship at a time when marriage equality seemed like an impossible dream, he was sure that it would be revelatory. He was equally certain that he would never get the rights to stage the musical that way. For more than 20 years, he did not dare to ask. But on an August afternoon two summers ago at Oregon Shakespeare Festival, where he is the artistic director, Mr. Rauch watched a version of his vision unfold. Onstage, in costume behind music stands, actors gave a public reading of the show an "Oklahoma!" where Curly and Laurey, the central couple, were women, and the secondary romance was between two men, Will Parker and Ado Andy (changed from the original Ado Annie). In the audience, seated close to Mr. Rauch, was Ted Chapin, the vigilant longtime overseer of the Rodgers and Hammerstein catalog, who'd listened to Mr. Rauch's nervous pitch and given a cautious go ahead. As soon as the performance was over, Mr. Chapin began talking about what sounded like a future for the show. "I was like, 'Wait a minute. We're still allowed to do this?'" Mr. Rauch said, late one afternoon this July in his office at the festival. "And he said, 'Absolutely!'" Mr. Chapin is not, after all, averse to smart artistic gambles, and that's what Mr. Rauch's "Oklahoma!" now getting a full production has turned out to be. Since its April opening in Ashland, it has proved a sprightly hit, packing the 600 seat Angus Bowmer Theater, where it runs through Oct. 27. Across the country, other productions too are stretching Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II's groundbreaking musical in unaccustomed directions. Audiences are used to seeing that kind of directorial adventurousness with Shakespeare less so with classics young enough to be under copyright. (It's not unheard of, though: Bartlett Sher's current Broadway revival of Lerner and Loewe's "My Fair Lady" also takes a transformative liberty.) Timed for the 75th anniversary of the musical's Broadway opening, the Oregon "Oklahoma!" sticks as close as possible to the original, whose characters much of the audience already knows to root for. The bold reimagining is more than fine with Mr. Chapin, whose job is tending to such classics as "Carousel," "The King and I," "South Pacific" and "Cinderella." Rodgers and Hammerstein, he maintains, took risks with every one of their shows, from "Oklahoma!" in 1943 to "The Sound of Music" in 1959. "For anybody to think they have to be done in exactly the way they were originally done I mean, that's sort of Gilbert and Sullivan thinking," he said. "And Gilbert and Sullivan is kind of dead." As Curly says to Laurey in a line that Hammerstein lifted from Lynn Riggs's "Green Grow the Lilacs," the play on which "Oklahoma!" is based "Country a changin', got to change with it!" "And I think this is a kind of American idea," he said. "Something terrible happens, and we sing about it." At St. Ann's, Mr. Fish wants spectators to feel as close to the show as possible. Chili and cornbread will be part of the audience experience, banjo and mandolin part of the seven piece band. One tense scene will be played in the dark. He drew raves with an earlier iteration of the production, at Bard College in 2015 and if he seems an unlikely director for the material, well, yeah, he knows. "On a superficial level," he said, "it doesn't seem like the kind of work that I do." But he grew up hearing his parents' Rodgers and Hammerstein records, and one morning this summer at St. Ann's, where the set was under construction, Mr. Fish turned nearly giddy at the mention of the 1955 film version of "Oklahoma!," starring a wholesome Shirley Jones as Laurey, Gordon MacRae as Curly and Rod Steiger as his menacing rival, Jud Fry. For all his auteur cred, then, Mr. Fish is also a fan, and he views "Oklahoma!" as a means to explore the nature of community. "What defines a great work," he said, "is that it continues to be generous to people who are making new productions." Also in September, Chris Coleman, the new artistic director of the Denver Center for the Performing Arts Theater Company, will inaugurate his tenure with "Oklahoma!" It's set in an all black town like the ones that existed in the territory around the turn of the 20th century, a production concept he first employed at Portland Center Stage in Oregon in 2011. As with the tweaking of pronouns and other wording in Mr. Rauch's production, permission has been granted to adjust some text to match Mr. Coleman's cast: a reference to Laurey's "long yeller hair" becoming "long wavy hair," a mention of Will's "clear, blue eyes" changed to "clear, brown eyes." Both productions, in different ways, stake claims on the show for segments of the population that weren't visible in most earlier incarnations. That's fitting for a musical that was a game changer when it was new, raising the bar on a previously frothy art form. It brought substance to frivolity with a story steeped in the American West and a score full of nascent classics among them the playful "The Surrey With the Fringe on Top" and the lushly romantic "People Will Say We're in Love." Widely regarded as a masterpiece, it's also an enduringly strong draw, with about 500 productions licensed each year. In the theater, Mr. Chapin and the rest of the Rodgers and Hammerstein team have long had a reputation for being, as Mr. Coleman put it, "really, really picky, especially about their top earners," which very much include "Oklahoma!" To Mr. Chapin who says that he wants "approval over everything" but would rather not have to exercise it that's as it should be. But it's no longer the heirs who are calling the shots. The catalog hasn't been family owned since 2009, when it was sold to a Dutch company, which in turn sold it last year to Concord Music, an American company. Mr. Chapin has been a constant for 33 years, and whereas in the past he would consult the family on decisions, now he is the top ranking resident expert. And once a Rodgers and Hammerstein show has had a superlative production, like Trevor Nunn's "Oklahoma!" in 1998 ("It didn't work in New York, but it worked like gangbusters in London," Mr. Chapin said), he becomes more amenable to other directors' daring. There are limits to artistic freedom, though, and Mr. Fish exceeded them toward the end of his Bard production, when his treatment of a scene of fatal violence took Mr. Chapin by surprise. For St. Ann's, he has instructed Mr. Fish to find a different way. Then again, Mr. Chapin said yes to using the exuberant tune "Oh, What a Beautiful Mornin'" as an eerie motif in an Off Broadway play this summer: Antoinette Nwandu's "Pass Over." It was a potentially controversial framing, using the song to evoke a gingham clad myth of the white American past. On Broadway, meanwhile, the Young Jean Lee play "Straight White Men" busts out a parody of the title song from "Oklahoma!," also to make a point about race. (Ms. Lee, who is Korean American, has said that her high school drama teacher once told her that she couldn't have a role in the show because there were "no Asians in 'Oklahoma!'") When I mentioned it, Mr. Chapin said grimly that he'd heard about the number, but that the production hadn't asked to use the song. A spokeswoman for the show declined to comment, and Mr. Chapin planned to see a performance for himself. He sounded more curious than punitive, though, as he asked me, "Do you think that was effective in the play?" After Mr. Rauch mustered the courage, in autumn 2015, to tell Mr. Chapin about his vision for "Oklahoma!," his idea didn't get an immediate yes. "He basically said, 'If it was anybody but you, I'd kick you out of my office,'" Mr. Rauch said, and laughed. By then the two had known each other for years. Mr. Chapin had long since given Mr. Rauch the O.K. to use Rodgers and Hammerstein's "Cinderella" in his three show mash up, "Medea/Macbeth/Cinderella," which he has staged in Los Angeles, New Haven and Ashland. There, under his leadership, the Oregon Shakespeare Festival has nurtured socially conscious, historically minded work, including the plays "Sweat" and "All the Way," with a producing style that diligently encourages diversity. Mr. Chapin also knew something about Mr. Rauch's life: that he's been with his husband, the actor Christopher Liam Moore, since they were undergraduates at Harvard in the 1980s; that their younger child, now a teenager, is a transgender girl. "So clearly what I got from him was this is not a gimmick," Mr. Chapin said. "This is something that he wants to examine for a lot of intellectual reasons, but also there's kind of an emotional oomph to it." For Mr. Rauch, once he got the green light, directing the show felt like "coming out all over again." When, at the first preview this spring, a student from a religious academy "got up and ran out of the theater to throw up" at the sight of two men kissing onstage and "made it very clear to everybody that that's why he was leaving" Mr. Rauch feared that the whole run would be like that. Instead, he said, it's been affirming, with some school groups bringing rainbow flags, waving them every time a couple kisses. And Mr. Chapin, when he saw the show, was pleased. "I sat there thinking, 'This couldn't have happened five years ago. This couldn't have happened 10 years ago. This is a production for today,'" he said. Mr. Rauch, who will leave the Oregon Shakespeare Festival about a year from now to become the founding artistic director of the new Perelman Center in Lower Manhattan, would like his "Oklahoma!" to be a production for tomorrow, too a show with a life beyond Ashland. "I did say to Bill, 'There are places in this country would probably lynch you if you did this,'" Mr. Chapin said. "But you know what, maybe not." Which means that he is thinking about it.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Theater
This Porcelain Is Tougher Than It Looks Wallace Chan, the Hong Kong jeweler behind some of the world's most exclusive gems, sat in a sunny Manhattan hotel room a few weeks ago, talking about his latest creations. He displayed one, a large blue ring topped with a diamond and began whacking it aggressively against the wooden coffee table. Bang! Mr. Chan, 62, just smiled. Then he rapped it again. The ring was primarily made of porcelain, a ceramic normally used for rose strewn tea sets and figurines of pouting milkmaids, and such treatment should have reduced it to a handful of shards on the hotel room carpet. The material called for the time being, a little unimaginatively, Wallace Chan Porcelain is made of specially chosen ingredients that Mr. Chan treats like the equivalent of a state secret out of fear of industrial espionage (the jewelry world is, apparently, a paranoid place). But the ingredients are, he said, almost devoid of impurities. Pieces are fired in one of his two custom built German kilns, to about 1,650 degrees Celsius (3,000 degrees Fahrenheit), or about 200 degrees Celsius more than in the traditional process. The result is a dense, strong porcelain with an unusual shiny luster. "What he has accomplished is very unique," said Raquel Alonso Perez, the curator of the Mineralogical Geological Museum at Harvard, who saw Mr. Chan's porcelain during the jeweler's recent trip to several American cities to show it to friends and museums. "The fact that he can create something that has the look of porcelain and can be wearable, that's not going to break it's not just something you can look at, but something you can wear and it has that silky look that enhances the rest." Ms. Alonso Perez paused and then added, "I could not believe." To introduce the material, Mr. Chan and his artisans created four pieces of jewelry that mix it with precious stones and titanium, the metal that has been a signature feature of his work for the last decade. Along with the diamond studded blue ring, there are a pair of earrings bulbous balls of milky white porcelain surrounding nearly 60 carats of South Sea pearls and two more rings. One features a large hot pink spinel on top of swirls of blush color porcelain; the other, three bright blue sapphires that appear to float on a delicate porcelain pod. He did not bang them or try to crush them under his feet, but it's not hard to imagine the impact if he had. His discovery, after all, has the potential to change the industry. Not that that is why Mr. Chan pursued the project. Porcelain's ability to showcase intense color is, for Mr. Chan, part of its appeal. "Metal can't always be the colors that I want," he said. "That was one of the reasons why I decided to research porcelain, to get the colors that I want to use in jewelry." Mr. Chan's fascination with porcelain began during his childhood in Hong Kong. His family was extremely poor, and he and three siblings shared one plastic spoon for meals, while the adults had porcelain ones. "I wanted to touch them, so one day after dinner I got my hands on one," he said. "Unfortunately, because there was still some oil on the spoon, I couldn't really hold it properly and I broke it. That was a painful memory, but it really left such an impression in my mind." He began making jewelry as a teenager, initially training as a carver and opening his own workshop in 197 4. By the late 1980s, he had developed the Wallace Cut, a method of carving cameo like images into precious gemstones, a technique that brought him international acclaim. Often dissatisfied with the tools of his trade, he has developed numerous pieces of his own, like the customized dental drills that help him do precision work. His jewelry creations have included an 11,551 diamond necklace for the Asian jewelry giant Chow Tai Fook, said in 2015 to be the world's most expensive necklace, at 200 million. And he has a reputation, although never confirmed, for selling only to people he likes. (The names of some clients? Another secret.) "He's not your ordinary jeweler," said Robert Weldon, the director of the library at the Gemological Institute of America, which in 2011 organized the first American display of Mr. Chan's work at its museum in Carlsbad, Calif. "He's broken absolutely all of the rules, and he does it in the most creative and beautiful manner." Certainly this is true of the new porcelain, which Mr. Chan plans to present to the public this year most likely in November, venues to be announced once he has finished a few more pieces. He hasn't determined the prices for any of the porcelain jewelry yet. "If you are calculating your own creativity," Mr. Chan said, "then you can't create history."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Fashion & Style
For Seeing After Dark, Yes, but Also Meant to Be Seen LIGHTING is the stuff of drama, in cars as well as on stage. More and more, dramatic lighting seeps from under dashboards and seats or gives a glow to the door sills. The 2013 Cadillac XTS has illuminated exterior door handles. A glowing ring surrounds the recharging port of the Ford Focus Electric. Open the door of a new Ford Mustang or Range Rover Evoque at night and "puddle lamps" project the maker's logo on the ground, like the Bat Signal beamed onto clouds. Lighting is growing in its role as the new face of auto style and branding; manufacturers are shaping headlights to help establish a signature for their brands, much as grilles' shapes have in the past. The main headlamps and high beams, daytime running lights and turn signals have become increasingly complex parts of cars' faces. As new technologies arrive, designers say, lighting more and more plays the stylistic role once performed by chrome and glass. In presentations at auto shows and in online videos, the Mercedes Benz design chief, Gorden Wagener, described the headlight of the Concept Style Coupe, first shown in Beijing in 2012. "For us the light is always based on something human, the eye," he said. "The brow is the daytime light, and the lid moves up for the brights." Audi was a pioneer in bringing LEDs light emitting diodes, a more efficient and longer lasting replacement for conventional bulbs to automotive lighting and in using them as a styling element. Audi's lighting design, however, is unabashedly mechanical, rather than biological, in its style. "Our slogan is 'progress through technology,' " said Cesar Muntada, an Audi exterior designer who works on lighting, "so the key to all Audi design is giving the purest expression of that technology. "We want an Audi to be as recognizable at night as it is during the day," Mr. Muntada said in a telephone interview. "We always use the system that performs the best. We have taken something functional and made it an aesthetic." The company is constantly incorporating novel technology in its lighting, Mr. Muntada said. Audi first used LEDs in daytime running lights, arrayed in a simple bar of distinct lamps. Now, more sophisticated designs distinguish Audi models. In the latest generation of Audi headlights, low and high beam LEDs are separated, and the running light doubles as turn indicator. "If you look at a lot of cars on the road today, their headlights are getting bigger and bigger," Mr. Song said in a telephone interview. "There's a lot to cram in. "I didn't want that; I wanted the aesthetics of the slimmer headlamp," he said. "It's just a pure sculpture. We let the headlamps do the talking." Mr. Song also worked to differentiate between the style and the function of the lights. "We didn't want to meld the sculpture and the functional elements together," he said, "but to keep them separate." He compared the split of function and style to a watch: "If you look at a fine watch, all you see immediately is the art. You have to look inside or in back to see the mechanical elements." The operation of LEDs can affect the styling of the lamps. Mr. Song said that one lesson learned while developing the MKZ was that because LEDs generate less heat, they will not melt snow and ice on the front of the car in the same way. "There's no heat circulation," he said. "So we have a rear heat sink and had to install fans in back." Technologies of the future, he suggested, will change headlamps again. "Lasers are more efficient and get superbright, but take a bigger headlamp," Mr. Song said. BMW's round lamps are almost as distinctive a symbol of the brand as its so called kidney grille. But the lamps have been interpreted in different ways with succeeding technologies. Sebastian Morgenstern, an exterior detail designer at BMW, noted the evolution of the brand's characteristic double round headlights in a video the company posted online. The round format arrived in the 1960s, he said, but did not become strongly linked to BMW until the 1980s, when most other marques moved toward more square or oblong lamps. The round headlights are always surmounted by a lidlike structure, giving the face of the car an intent, even predatory, expression. "The critical thing is to cut the circles at the proper angle," Mr. Morgenstern said. In 2000 came coronalike lamps that advanced the dual circle theme. Now LEDs are used in the 6 Series, and the round lamps are replaced with angled, three dimensional versions of their shapes.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Automobiles
There's a new kind of light fixture elbowing its way into territory once dominated by the chandelier. You may have already spotted it, spreading out above dining tables and cascading down stairwells: the multi light pendant. Rather than dangling a single cluster of crystal or a circular armature of bulbs, these fixtures suspend light over a large area, with an arrangement that can be customized and sometimes resembles an art installation. "It's a nice way to replace the traditional chandelier, and gives the space a different point of view," said Jessica Wilpon Kamel, a partner at the New York based design firm Ronen Lev. Ms. Kamel frequently uses multi light pendants in her projects. But it's not always easy. As she cautioned, "There is an art to it."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Real Estate
DARK SKIES (2013) Stream on Netflix. Rent on Amazon, iTunes, and Vudu. Sometimes the dark side of suburban life in America is so well hidden and mysterious that it can only be represented in fantastical forms. The paranormal and the mundane mingle in this sci fi horror film by Scott Stewart. The Barrett family, led by Lacy (Keri Russell) and her husband Daniel (Josh Hamilton), seem happy but are struggling financially. He's lost his job, and she doesn't make enough as a real estate agent in the years after the 2008 financial crash to keep them afloat. Their troubles are compounded when they begin to experience, individually and as a group, inexplicable phenomena that may originate from extraterrestrial forces. COAST COUNTRY: RAILWAY WALKS Stream on Acorn TV. In this six episode documentary series, Julia Bradbury guides viewers across England, Scotland and Wales via the disused railways lines that crisscross Britain. These tracks tell the story of the country's industrialization and its effects on landscapes and lifestyles in the region. Their current state also speaks to the changes that Britain has undergone in its more recent history. Traveling on foot past crumbling engine houses and through ancient viaducts, Bradbury finds details that would be missed by even the most intrepid car bound explorers.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Television
CAROL BERNING'S career as a consumer psychologist was ahead of the curve for her generation. She received a doctorate 40 years ago when few women were in graduate school. Her sole employer for 34 years was Procter Gamble, where she focused on consumer research. Now, at 64, she is at the forefront once again. After retiring six years ago, she enrolled in three professional management consulting firms based in Cincinnati that were seeking experienced retirees like herself. Working about half as many hours, she said her earnings were roughly equivalent to her former salary, in the low six figures. Occasionally, while she commuted to an electronics client in Asia, her schedule was more hectic than when she worked full time. "I've had more frequent flier miles since I retired than I ever had at P. G.," she said. As baby boomers anticipate working longer and prefer a phased retirement, they are turning to the growing number of firms that specialize in placing older workers in part time or temporary positions in specific industries. Some of the jobs are done on site, while others can be done from home or another remote location. A 2013 retirement study that Merrill Lynch conducted with Age Wave, titled "Americans' Perspectives on New Retirement Realities and the Longevity Bonus," found nearly half of participants wanted to continue working in the fields in which their careers were built. Employment projections from the Bureau of Labor Statistics show that by 2022, positions in business and professional services will trail only health and social services in job growth. And findings by Kevin Cahill, a research economist at the Sloan Center on Aging and Work at Boston College, and his colleagues show that 60 percent of older Americans who have a career transition to a bridge job before retiring. "Older Americans want to maintain their work, to get hours, flexibility and choice," Dr. Cahill said. Dr. Berning chose YourEncore, which hires consultants in consumer goods, life sciences and food sciences; Cincinnati Consulting Consortium, which recruits marketing, information technology and sales consultants; and more recently, Leonora Polonsky and Associates, which hires marketing professionals as consultants. On an assignment, it is not uncommon for her to visit consumers at home, watch them prepare meals or talk about the way they want their homes to look. She might ask them about the items they buy and never use. "That's an interesting conversation for a manufacturer," she said. Other staffing firms are emerging. Work at Home Vintage Employees, or Wahve, based in Avon, Conn., courts employees in the insurance industry. Its website reads, "Phase into retirement working from home. Get the schedule and workload you want." Another company, Arise Virtual Solutions in Miramar, Fla., specializes in health care, tourism and telecommunications. It expects to increase the number of older workers to 35 percent of its network of 25,000 contractors, up from 25 percent now. Mike Harris, chief of Patina Solutions, based in Brookfield, Wis., looks for managers with at least 25 years' experience. He said its contractors were typically 50 to 60 years old., although the company did not consider them phasing into retirement. Jody Greenstone Miller, chief executive and co founder of the Business Talent Group, said that while its consultants were in the sweet spot of their careers, "many come to us to reconstruct a career for later stages of their professional lives." The inexperienced need not apply. The 9,000 consultants at YourEncore have an average of 25 years' experience and about 60 percent have advanced degrees. The company recruits in North America, the European Union and Asia. (Only 25 percent of the assignments are on site, while the rest can be done remotely). Locast, a nonprofit streaming service for local TV, is shutting down Capital One's chief executive was fined after being called a 'repeat offender.' Although some employees approaching the end of their careers might prefer to continue working for their existing companies while gradually reducing their hours and responsibilities, corporate America hasn't embraced phased retirement. According to a 2014 Society for Human Resource Management report on employee benefits, over all, about 11 percent offer some type of gradual exit. Corporations sometimes avoid formal phased retirement programs because of concerns about running afoul of tax and labor laws that govern regular employees, said Norman P. Stein, professor of law at Drexel University. "The employer can avoid these concerns by working with a temp company to hire a part time older worker," he added. In early November, employees in the federal government were able to begin applying for a phased retirement program. The program goes into effect this year. About 17 percent of employees of the executive branch of the government, over 325,000 workers, are eligible, according to the Government Accountability Office. Participants will be expected to work half time and mentor younger workers 20 percent of that time. Jeffrey Sumberg, a former human resources consultant at Deloitte Consulting, said, "It provides a glide path to retirement in a way workers can share their knowledge and experience before the person walks out the door." Whether the program will influence the private sector is an open question. Mr. Stein said, "It may send a signal to the private sector that phased retirement is good." But obstacles to phased retirement in the private sector and a trend toward pushing older employees out the door have helped fuel the temporary job industry. "There's been a rather drastic cut in overhead, and it created a void of senior level intellectual talent," said Richard Bruder, a former finance executive at Procter Gamble who enlisted former colleagues and founded Cincinnati Consulting Consortium 15 years ago. He sold the business in 2013. Typically, a temp company will provide proof of adequate liability insurance and workers' compensation as well as bill clients and pay consultants. Mr. Bruder said his rule of thumb for a daily rate was double the base pay of a full time salary. Other companies create their own pay scales, depending on the type of job. Arise Virtual Solutions says its rates vary from 9 to 30 an hour; Wahve says its hourly rate ranges from 16 to 25, although up to 50 an hour is offered for more complex responsibilities. Computer technology is also driving the trend. Judy G. Bush, 58, has a home office 30 miles west of Charlottesville, Va. Currently, she works for an insurance company, the Signature B B Companies, in Garden City, N.Y., through Wahve. A former account manager for automobile and home insurance, she said she felt it was "time for me to phase out of the hustle." She completed an online application, passed a phone interview and acquired a landline, a computer and dual monitors for a home office. Now, she said, she works as a personal lines assistant, making changes to car registrations or homeowners' policies. She has access to about 20 company websites and can add details for a new car purchase, or if a teenage driver is added to a policy, ensuring that an individual receives appropriate discounts for drivers education or being a good student, if applicable. She also adjusts deductibles for homeowners' insurance. Although she traded a salary of 50,000 a year for a back office job that pays 480 for a 30 hour week with no benefits, she said, "I love the convenience and still be able to keep my skills sharp." A previous hourlong commute is now measured in minutes.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Your Money
"We will be monitoring closely for solvency stresses among highly leveraged business borrowers, which could increase the longer the Covid pandemic persists," Lael Brainard, a Fed governor, said in a statement accompanying the release. She noted that the Fed's early interventions "have been effective in resolving liquidity stresses." The Fed's report is the most detailed glimpse yet at how the central bank understands the financial gyrations that took hold as coronavirus cases began surfacing in America. Among the areas the Fed flagged: Even the market for Treasury securities the deepest and most liquid in the world ceased to function normally as investors became attuned to the economic risk and cashed out their holdings. None "While the financial regulatory reforms adopted since 2008 have substantially increased the resilience of the financial sector, the financial system nonetheless amplified the shock, and financial sector vulnerabilities are likely to be significant in the near term," the report said. None In March, "funding markets proved less fragile than during the 2007 09 financial crisis. Nonetheless, significant strains emerged, and emergency Federal Reserve actions were required to stabilize short term funding markets." None In the Treasury market where the Fed has bought securities at a rapid pace since mid March to restore functioning the difference between selling prices and buyer asking prices has declined to more normal levels, but "some measures, such as market depth, have shown only modest signs of improvement." As investors pulled cash from money market mutual funds and the market for short term business debt looked shaky a more surprising weakness surfaced in the market for Treasury bonds, especially older ones. Speculation has been rampant that hedge funds contributed to the turmoil, and the Fed acknowledged that in its report. None Some hedge funds buy and sell securities frequently to make small amounts of money that add up over a large number of trades. They are forced to sell their holdings if markets become hard to trade in, which "can lead to a rapid unraveling of market liquidity under certain circumstances," the report said. None "The concentration of hedge fund leverage has increased markedly," it said, and funds "may have to sell large amounts of assets to meet margin calls or reduce portfolio risk during periods of market stress." The Fed jumped in to ease the strains, rolling out a series of emergency lending facilities. None "Effectively, the ability of creditworthy households, businesses, and state and local governments to borrow, even at elevated rates, was threatened," the Fed said. Together with the Treasury it "took a series of steps to support the flow of credit to households, businesses, and communities." Corporations went into the current crisis with huge debt loads, a vulnerability that threatens to continue. None "Economic activity is contracting sharply, and the associated reduction in earnings and increase in credit needed to bridge the downturn will expand the debt burden and default risk of a highly leveraged business sector," the report said. None "Widespread downgrades of bonds to speculative grade ratings could lead investors to accelerate the sale of downgraded bonds, possibly generating market dislocation and downward price pressures in a segment of the corporate bond market known to exhibit relatively low liquidity," it warned. None "Defaults on leveraged loans ticked up in February and March and are likely to continue to increase," it said of loans to already indebted companies Asset prices still have room to fall. The Fed noted that stock prices had "swung widely," and said other assets could be in for lower prices. None "Asset prices remain vulnerable to significant declines should the pandemic worsen, the economic fallout prove more adverse or financial system strains re emerge," the Fed warned. None "The severe disruptions in economic activity following the outbreak could reduce house prices by bringing down household incomes and restricting access to mortgage credit," the report said, though a decline in supply could limit that effect.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Economy
Growing up in foster homes, Norris Danta Ford, a fashion designer, cleverly used clothes to impress his future parents, dressing himself and his sister up in multiple outfits to show how stylish they were. Realizing the confidence that can come from clothes, Mr. Ford, 34, built a career as a stylist, working with celebrities including Prince and Matthew McConaughey, before realizing the creative potential in making his own garments. Now a men's wear pattern designer and online sewing teacher in Atlanta, he is at the forefront of a new and growing movement of men embracing home sewing. Sewists (the increasingly popular gender neutral term) have long worked to shake the old fashioned housewife imagery often associated with their hobby. Collective creative efforts ranging from the AIDS Memorial Quilt to knitting pussy hats have moved the home arts into the political and public sphere. And with DIYers able to show their stuff on platforms like Pinterest and Instagram, sewing and other handicrafts are surging in popularity. Quarantine has accelerated this trend, with what CNN reports is a significant rise in sewing machine sales (and not just to make face masks). In lieu of traditional crafting circles, makers are connecting on social media to build community and promote diversity and inclusiveness: vintagestylenotvintagevalues is a popular hashtag, with retro style sewists disavowing regressive gender politics and racism. Within these groups are an increasing number of men making clothes not only to break traditional gender stereotypes but also advocate for body acceptance, racial justice and more sustainable lifestyles. Mr. Ford, who has over 37,000 Instagram followers, started sewing after he began dating his wife, Mimi Goodwin (commonly known as Mimi G), a well known sewing blogger, creating eclectic garments in a retro streetwear meets business casual style. He quickly realized the limited offerings of men's sewing patterns: While women's patterns span vintage reproductions to the latest runway trends, men's patterns are largely limited to a narrow range of classic silhouettes and many, many pajamas. Working with the major pattern company Simplicity, Mr. Ford drafted and released his own patterns based on what he thought regular folks would want to wear. He and Ms. Goodwin also own SewItAcademy, an online sewing school. Still, he is often the only man in a craft store. "The sewing notions, the tools, a lot of it is pink and girlie," Mr. Ford said. "It's not a comforting environment for the average guy." So he started the hashtag dopemensew, and a Facebook group with around 200 members, to promote the accomplishments of male sewists. "With social media, if you see a guy sewing and you see a clean suit or nice shirt, a guy's first thought is, 'Oh man that's dope. Where can I buy that?'" he said, "And then they look and be like, 'Oh he made it.' Come on, you can make that." The Rise and Fall of Home Ec One regular user of the hashtag is Brad Schultz, 35, a first grade teacher in Gainesville, Fla., who has sewn his own colorful, trend driven clothes for over a decade. While he enjoys showing his students his creations, Mr. Schultz has no local friends who also sew. He remembered standing out at a sewing convention filled with women in Texas 10 years ago. More recently he has been able to meet fellow male sewists online. "It's the same feeling I get when I visit a bigger city, like, there's more out there," Mr. Schultz said. "I don't feel as confined because I know that Instagram opens those doors and it allows me to connect and share." Often adapting women's patterns to his measurements because they are generally more fashionable, Mr. Schultz said that he enjoys making clothes for the perfect fit that is difficult to find in commercial pieces. "On one hand, the ability to sew and create whatever style I want, in the size I need, gives a huge amount of freedom," he wrote in an email. "When I am making something I don't feel as confined or affected by styles 'meant' for one gender or the other." Independent pattern companies are increasingly making men's and unisex patterns. In April, Reese Cooper, a designer in Los Angeles, introduced a 98 kit to recreate his popular utilitarian style coat, which sold out quickly. Mr. Cooper has also offered patches and DIY tie dye T shirt kits. Going back to the Middle Ages, men and women in Europe were both part of sewing trades, particularly when it came to embroidering garments for royalty and clergy, according to Clare Hunter, a textile artist and author of "Threads of Life: A History of the World Through the Eye of a Needle." The Black Death pandemic wiped out much of their wealthy clientele, leaving the few jobs left to men who organized gender exclusive guilds. It was mostly men who benefited from the development of eastern travel routes and new trade in silk and other fine textiles. While men made luxurious garments for the court, women worked in more practical cottons and linens. With the advent of the sewing machine and industrialized clothing production in the 19th century, women, particularly immigrants, often took low paying factory jobs while male designers were at the helm of the first modern fashion houses. Sewing and needlework were increasingly taught to girls in schools, becoming central to the concept of homemaking, said Sarah Gordon, author of "Make it Yourself: Home Sewing, Gender, and Culture, 1890 1930." "The sewing training conveyed not only that this is a way to be a woman and a mother, but this is a way to be an American," Ms. Gordon said. By the 1920s, the rising availability of commercial garments decreased the demand for home sewing and consequently the value associated with it. And as more women entered the work force, they no longer needed nor had the time to learn these skills. Home economics, which included sewing and other domestic arts, was increasingly left out of school curriculum. Over time, the skill of the craft became marginalized as market driven fashion cycles intensified, with designs quickly going from runways to fashion retails within days. Joe Ando Hirsh, a sewist and actor in New York who is in his 20s, thinks this disconnection between the technical process and final garment has been further strengthened by the commercialization of fashion week, where the focus is largely on documenting the shows and celebrities and not what goes into making the collection. With TikTok, Mr. Ando Hirsh tries to give sewing modern clout. He was planning his senior fashion show at the Fashion Institute of Technology and organizing a summer internship when coronavirus hit. Mr. Ando Hirsh moved from Brooklyn to his parents' house on Long Island, setting up a studio in their garage. His girlfriend Niamh Adkins, a model, suggested he make a TikTok profile about sewing. On March 14, he shared the process of sewing a red jacket with heart details for her birthday. In the months since, he has gained over 800,000 followers, and also started posting tutorials on YouTube. "I'm happy that these videos are giving some kids permission to pursue what they want to do, "Mr. Ando Hirsh said, "because there's so many people who comment saying like, 'Man I always had thought about doing fashion but I went to med school instead and I really regret it.'" Currently inspired by mixing the cream colors of desert environments with the oversized, masculine style of 1970s Wall Street, Mr. Ando Hirsh takes custom orders and hopes to start his own business focusing on unisex fashion. He hopes to appeal to younger generations that are more fluid with their clothing choices and particularly men who are increasingly willing to take fashion risks, experimenting with color and more form fitting styles. "All of that is changing right now," he said, "I think aside from the pandemic, it's a really good and interesting time to be a designer because there's more people out there who are open to what you're doing." Brandon Hayden, 24, a sewist in Atlanta who runs Happily Dressed, a wellness brand, also has this mind set. Mr. Hayden has a fraternal twin and wanted to distinguish himself by wearing thrifted outfits that mixed more masculine and feminine styles. Sewing enables him to envision garments beyond the narrow fashion choices for men, and also take a stand against environmentally damaging fast fashion cycles. He thrifts most of his fabrics, often using curtains, tablecloths and other unexpected materials: Upholstery fabric with safari animals became a cropped jacket and a Carhartt denim coat was transformed into a chain bag. "Being a minority in America, it's hard to feel capable when popular opinion doesn't always portray people who look like you as capable," said Mr. Hayden, who is Black. "Being able to sell and create things for a fraction of the price that they cost opened my mind to how boxed in other people's opinions can be about who you can be, whether it's skin color, race or gender." In recent months, sewists and other creatives formed Black Makers Matter, a coalition intended to transform the sewing community. Members have met with top sewing brands to discuss lack of diversity and highlight Black creators on their social media pages, including Michael Gardner, 36, a sewist in Philadelphia who for the last six years has dedicated his free time to making clothes for his daughter Ava, sharing his creations on the website and Instagram account Daddy Dressed Me by Michael Gardner. Mr. Gardner said his own father was absent growing up, and that he was inspired by his sister to start sewing outfits for Ava when she was three, refashioning adult garments to fit her. Ava now helps select fabrics and style photo shoots. Mr. Gardner said sewing has become a way for them to bond, and builds her confidence, including after she experienced bullying at school. He said that other students didn't believe her when she said that her father made her clothes and did her hair. "For her it's kind of all she knows, so she thinks other dads are doing it too," he said. "But seeing her be proud about it, I just usually have a big smile on my face." Mr. Gardner recently sewed a blue sequined suit for Ava's 9th birthday and a full set of outfits for the family to wear for his engagement to his fiancee. Despite having sewn over 200 garments for Ava, he's just starting to make clothes for himself, and while he originally dedicated his social media to his relationship with Ava, he has increasingly included his perspective as a male sewist. He was recently named a brand ambassador for Janome, a sewing machine company. And through dopemensew, he has been connecting with beginner sewists, including one who bought a machine during quarantine and just made his first button down shirt. "His mom actually DMed me when she saw the post where I shared him," Mr. Gardner said, "and was like, 'That's my son. I'm so proud.'"	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Fashion & Style
This article is part of our continuing Fast Forward series, which examines technological, economic, social and cultural shifts that happen as businesses evolve. When Jimmy Blakley signed up to serve his country during the Vietnam War, his health and vision were pristine. But shortly after finishing his service in 1971, Mr. Blakley's vision began to sharply deteriorate. He said doctors discovered signs of Agent Orange, the toxic herbicide used during the war, in his blood, and told him it was likely the cause of his vision loss. Over the years he had surgery and eye injections, but became legally blind in 1999. He used magnifiers on top of glasses to read and needed to sit two feet away to watch his 65 inch TV. He was frustrated. Then Mr. Blakley, now 72 and living in College Station, Tex., learned about IrisVision, a device that uses a smartphone, virtual reality headset and algorithms to help people with poor vision see and read clearly. For Mr. Blakley, it was life changing. "I was amazed," he said. "I was seeing the bottom of the eye chart; it was like being 19 again." Among companies using technology to address vision problems, IrisVision is working to go a step further: Its device, in addition to improving sight, is expected to be able to diagnose conditions and test and even treat patients remotely within the next two years. "It's not aesthetically pleasing but it does something that really provides a useful function for people," said Jerome Wujek, program director and research resources officer at the National Eye Institute, part of the National Institutes of Health. "We are visual animals. If you lose your vision, you lose a big chunk of your life." He said devices that used artificial intelligence to test, diagnose and treat remotely were the future as they would allow ophthalmologists, optometrists and others to treat people in rural and underserved areas. The market for this technology could be huge. About 6.4 million Americans have low vision that cannot be corrected by glasses or contact lenses, according to a 2016 National Academy of Sciences report. Of those, 4.2 million are older than 40. And as the "silver tsunami" of aging baby boomers sweeps the nation, age related eye diseases and conditions, like macular degeneration, glaucoma and diabetic retinopathy, are expected to surge. The coronavirus outbreak has made it particularly challenging for the visually impaired. People with low vision rely heavily on touch and sound to identify objects and people, and this can be tough while following hand sanitizing and social distancing practices, and listening to people through masks, said Dr. L. Penny Rosenblum, director of research at the American Foundation for the Blind, who has congenital cataracts and glaucoma. Those with low vision can also find themselves even more isolated if they are unable to use Zoom and other technology to stay connected, Dr. Rosenblum added. Frank Werblin, co founder and chief scientist at IrisVision and a professor of neuroscience at the University of California, Berkeley, for more than 40 years, came up with the idea for IrisVision in 2014. While speaking at a Foundation Fighting Blindness conference, a board trustee, J. Lynn Dougan, approached him, offering to provide funding if Dr. Werblin could invent a wearable device that could help his vision impaired daughter. Dr. Werblin said he had been fascinated by the relationship between brain neurons, the retina and vision, and eagerly accepted the challenge. Along the way, Dr. Werblin brought in a tech savvy mobile app developer, Ammad Khan, as a partner. "Imagining a concept that would transform somebody's life was very compelling for me," Mr. Khan said. With 1.5 million from Mr. Dougan, a 1.5 million grant from the National Eye Institute, and about 4 million from angel investors and venture capitalists, the co founders got to work. They collaborated with experts from Stanford and Johns Hopkins universities, and partnered with Samsung, which provided the smartphone, the augmented, virtual and mixed reality technologies, and the mobile artificial intelligence platform. By 2017, the device was ready. IrisVision helps restore visual function to people with such conditions as macular degeneration, diabetic retinopathy, retinitis pigmentosa, Stargardt disease, glaucoma and optic atrophy but not cataracts. It can help someone with visual acuity as low as 20/1000. (Acuity measures sharpness: A 20/200 acuity, for example, means a person can make out an object at a distance of 20 feet that a normal vision person could see from 200 feet.) IrisVision helps the brain use parts of the eyes that still function properly. The smartphone's camera captures an image, and then the virtual reality, or V.R., headset and algorithms enhance the image by providing enough information to fill in the gaps and remap the scene to provide a complete picture. The company recently added voice control, video streaming, Alexa and other interactive features that give those with low vision easy access to news, weather updates, YouTube videos and TV shows viewed within the headset. The person can adjust the headset, by voice command or button, to zoom in or adjust the color, contrast or brightness. Still, the device has its shortcomings: It is large and clunky, and the user needs to be stationary not walking around to use it. In addition, at 2,950, it is expensive. And unless you are a veteran, health insurers do not cover the cost. IrisVision has seen an increase in sales during the pandemic, rising 50 percent in June from the same month a year ago, according to Mr. Khan. He said most of the devices were now being sold directly to consumers, as clinics where people often purchased them had shut down during the outbreak. IrisVision ships the devices to homes and then helps buyers set up the technology remotely. A number of other companies are also working to address issues with low vision, like NuEyes, eSight, Patriot Vision, OrCam, Vispero and Aira. Patriot's ViewPoint, Vispero's Compact 6 HD Wear, and NuEyes e2 all offer V.R. headsets similar to IrisVision's, although magnification, field of view and other features vary among models. Some devices, like e2 and Compact Wear, are less expensive but offer fewer features. They also vary in size and weight. NuEyes Pro, eSight, and Vispero's Jordy resemble oversized sunglasses or ski goggles and are designed for walking down the street, visiting museums or shopping, which IrisVision is not. "We're still in the very, very early days," said Kjell Carlsson, a senior analyst at Forrester Research. He said the size and price would need to come down before the devices became mainstream. The differences in devices mean that one may suit a person or a condition better than another. "The IrisVision was too pixilated and the image 'too big' for me," Dr. Rosenblum said, adding that her friend's 91 year old mother, who had macular degeneration, loved IrisVision. "One device doesn't fit all." IrisVision has the backing of Brook Byers, who invested in 2017 and has since pumped more than 3 million into the company. Mr. Byers, a senior partner and a co founder at Kleiner Perkins, a venture capital firm that invested early in Amazon, Google and Twitter, has retinal issues in one eye stemming from an accident when he was 11. "I tried it on in my office. I have a really, really bad eye, and wow, I could see with it," he said. "There was an aha moment." Mr. Byers said he was particularly excited about the company's next steps. IrisVision's updated model, expected later this year, will be able to test and diagnose eye conditions remotely. And, Mr. Khan said, the treatment component should be added within two years. "The great value of this device isn't that it simply restores vision," Dr. Werblin said. "But it brings people back to life."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Health
CHICAGO This city found itself engulfed on Monday by a sudden public school strike that left 350,000 children without classes, turned a spotlight on rising tensions nationally over teachers' circumstances, and placed both the powerful teachers' union and Mayor Rahm Emanuel in a risky, politically fraught standoff with no clear end in sight. Thousands of teachers dressed in red swarmed through downtown and marched outside of schools across the city in this, the nation's third largest school system, as families raced to find alternative child care an available relative, a city sponsored day care program, anything for classes they had learned were called off only hours before the week began. The strike, Chicago's first in 25 years and the first in a major city in a half dozen years, also revealed a rift between unions and Mr. Emanuel, a Democrat and former chief of staff to President Obama, raising the prospect that a lingering strike in the president's hometown might become an issue in a presidential election year when Democrats depend on the backing of labor. "You have a situation where the teachers feel totally and completely disrespected," said Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, the parent union of the striking teachers. In this case, she said she blamed Mayor Emanuel for an aggressive push to extend the length of the school day and for a promised raise that was later rescinded. "He created the seeds of a lot of frustration and mistrust," she said. For his part, Mr. Emanuel, facing the most serious crisis since he became mayor in 2011, deemed the work stoppage an avoidable "strike of choice," urged teachers to return to work, and seemed eager to dismiss all talk about political fallout for himself or for Mr. Obama, whose former aides founded a "super PAC" that Mr. Emanuel had, until he suspended his work with it on Monday, said he would assist until Election Day. "Don't worry about the test of my leadership," Mr. Emanuel said, in an appearance at one of scores of sites opened in a rush as part of a contingency plan to manage displaced students who had nowhere else to go. "Don't take it out on the kids of the city of Chicago if you have a problem with me." Republicans were quick to weigh in on the circumstances that had pitted a Democratic mayor against 26,000 unionized teachers. Mitt Romney, the Republican nominee for president, issued a statement expressing disappointment in the teachers here, adding, "Teachers' unions have too often made plain that their interests conflict with those of our children, and today we are seeing one of the clearest examples yet." And Pat Brady, the chairman of the Illinois Republican Party, had called on Mr. Emanuel to set aside political fund raising to focus on the schools crisis. For months, a conflict had been simmering here between the teachers and Mr. Emanuel, who has pledged to make the most comprehensive reform in the Chicago Public Schools in a decade. Still, the strike, announced around 10 p.m. on Sunday, took many by surprise. School officials said they had made significant concessions in the contract talks, including what would amount to a 16 percent increase for teachers over four years despite what is expected to be a 1 billion deficit in the system's operating budget next year. The officials said only two issues were still subjects of dispute how to evaluate teachers and whether teaching openings should automatically go to laid off teachers. School board officials said the average salary for teachers here is 76,000. But on Monday, union officials seemed to suggest that the dispute was larger, and included other issues related to benefits, how to calculate raises based on experience level, training days for teachers, and more. Outside the schools here, though, in the lines of marchers, the issues seemed ever broader. Many teachers said they were troubled by a new evaluation system and its reliance on student test scores. Teachers spoke of rising class sizes, much needed social workers, a dearth of air conditioned classrooms and slow to arrive reference books, and, again and again, a sense of disrespect. Teachers also clearly saw the strike as a protest not just of the union negotiations in Chicago but on data driven education reform nationwide, which many perceived as being pushed by corporate interests and relying too heavily on standardized tests to measure student progress. At Lane Tech College Prep, where many passing motorists honked their support for the teachers, Steve Parsons, a teacher, said he believed the city was ultimately aiming to privatize education through charter schools and computer programs that teach classes online. "We need to stay out as long as it takes to get a fair contract and protect our schools," he said. Around Chicago, parents said they were struggling to find places to send their children for some uncertain number of days or weeks or, as one worried parent offered unhappily, months. Some brought children to their workplaces, and others took days off. City officials opened 144 schools for half days of games, movies, puzzles, basketball and meals with nonunion workers, but some parents expressed concern about the safety or value of those options, and others seemed uncomfortable with the prospect of crossing picket lines to enter. "This was very bad timing," said Karen Miles, who said she had to cancel work meetings on Monday to juggle her daughters. "I plan my day around their school," she said, inside her daughters' school one of the contingency sites on the city's North Side, where one sign read, "Your kids deserve what Rahm's kids get," an allusion to the mayor's children's attendance at a private school. In recent years, school strikes in major cities have been relatively rare, last occurring in Detroit in 2006, and before that, in Philadelphia in 2000. New York City teachers last went on strike more than 35 years ago. By late Monday, thousands of teachers and supporters, including a sprinkling of firefighters and Teamsters, packed a rally downtown, wrapping around two blocks and, at points, completely blocking traffic. The mood was festive, marked by drums and loud shouts of "Hey, hey, ho, ho, Rahm Emanuel's got to go!" Kelly Farrell, a kindergarten teacher at Higgins Elementary on the city's South Side, said her class had so many pupils that she did not even have enough seats for them all. "They are 5 years old," she said. "They want their teacher's attention, and there is one of me and 43 of them."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Education
Six women have sued U.S.A. Swimming, saying the national governing body for the sport failed to protect them from coaches who were sexual predators when they were preteens and teenagers decades ago, according to multiple civil lawsuits filed in two California courts. The lawsuits, filed by women now in their 40s and 50s, claim that the organization enabled those coaches to sexually assault girls and young women for years. The women's former swimming clubs and swimming associations, as well as two of their former coaches, also were named as defendants in the lawsuits. "My sexual abuse was 100 percent preventable," said Debra Grodensky, 51, a plaintiff in one of the three cases filed in state courts in Orange County and Alameda County with the help of the attorneys Robert Allard and Mark J. Boskovich. She said she was abused in the 1980s by her former coach, Andrew King. He is serving a prison sentence of 40 years for child molestation. Grodensky and three other plaintiffs in her lawsuit sued U.S.A. Swimming under a recent California law that opened a three year window in which people can file sex abuse claims that had expired under the statute of limitations.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Sports
In recent years, companies like Verizon and AT T have made no secret of their ambitions to build online advertising businesses that can take on the behemoths of Silicon Valley. But those plans, and the billions of dollars that have been invested in them, are in peril after federal officials approved broad new privacy rules that will limit the extent to which companies can collect and use digital information about individuals. The Federal Communications Commission's ruling on Thursday that internet service providers must get permission to gather and share consumers' private data, including web browsing, app use and location, threw a wrench in the plans of several telecommunications and cable companies that need at least some of that information to pitch premium products to advertisers. It's an especially big deal for Verizon, which spent more than 4 billion on AOL last year and is prepared to spend billions more for its pending acquisition of Yahoo, and for AT T, which just made a blockbuster 85.4 billion bid for Time Warner. "The challenge for Verizon and AT T is that both companies have made big acquisitions that hinge largely on their ability to monetize advertising inventory more effectively, and the way they plan to do that is by targeting it better," said Craig Moffett, senior analyst at MoffettNathanson. "If their hands are tied by the new F.C.C. rules, then that's a very, very big deal." Currently, broadband providers can track users unless individuals specifically ask them to stop. The F.C.C. decision, set to take effect in about a year for major providers, has been hotly contested, in part because the rules apply only to internet service providers, or I.S.P.'s. They do not extend to online ad juggernauts like Google and Facebook web companies that the F.C.C. does not regulate which has spurred complaints of a double standard. Companies like Comcast, Verizon and AT T are only a small portion of the targeted ad industry, but are seen as having great potential because of their broad view of online habits. Tom Wheeler, the chairman of the F.C.C., has contended, however, that while consumers may choose not to go on Facebook or use Google, they need I.S.P.s to get access to the internet, a view in line with the agency's classification of broadband providers as utilitylike services. The rapid rise of new "smart" devices that use broadband services, like thermostats and refrigerators, encouraged the F.C.C. actions. "Who would have ever imagined that what you have in your refrigerator would be information available to AT T, Comcast or whoever your network provider is?" Mr. Wheeler said in a statement this week. Innovation in the advertising industry is currently centered on understanding consumer behavior across devices to better place, track and measure ads, said David Cohen, president of North America at Magna Global, a major ad buying firm. "Getting a single view of you or me as I go from PC to tablet to mobile to television that's a real hot area in the marketing space," Mr. Cohen said. "The ones who have the best visibility into that today are the big walled gardens, and that's primarily Google and Facebook." Verizon has been trying within the last six months to leverage some nonpersonally identifiable information for improved targeting across AOL's properties, which include MapQuest, The Huffington Post and TechCrunch, according to Mr. Cohen. What happened on Day 2 of Elizabeth Holmes's testimony. Kevin Spacey was ordered to pay 31 million to the 'House of Cards' studio after sexual harassment allegations. "On paper, what they're telling the ad community is they will be able to use Verizon data to inform our ability to buy across devices," Mr. Cohen said. "This will impede that." Still, he added, "It's certainly not a death knell for the advertising or marketing industry, as we have other ways around to get similar kinds of data." Verizon said it already sought permission from its broadband customers for certain data, like browsing and location history. "We believe that the standards the F.C.C. announced on Thursday are consistent with Verizon's longstanding privacy practices," said Karen Zacharia, Verizon's chief privacy officer. Critics of the ruling include broadband provider advocates, advertising trade groups and some web firms. Christopher Yoo, a professor of law at the University of Pennsylvania who spoke to the F.C.C. about the technical implications of the rules, said in an interview that he told the agency "the most expansive interpretation would cause the internet to break." Some fear that the rules will become a model for other parts of the internet, even though the chance of new privacy rules for web companies is slim. Still, it's enough of a concern that Google wrote a letter of support for broadband providers' access to consumer data this month. "Right now, it's limited to the I.S.P.s, but what it will do is open up the issue of whether the rest of the digital universe and mobile universe should remain on the current model," said Dick O'Brien, executive vice president of government relations at the American Association of Advertising Agencies, a trade group. The move could be challenged in court. Companies can sue to overturn the privacy regulation, though AT T, Comcast and Verizon said they were still reviewing the details of the rules and did not say whether they would pursue a legal challenge. "At the end of the day, consumers desire services that shift costs away from them and towards advertisers," AT T said in a statement. "Although the F.C.C.'s decision inhibits the ability of I.S.P.s (and I.S.P.s alone) to bring those services to consumers, we anticipated the F.C.C.'s decision and continue to expect that targeted advertising will be a growth area for us." The effect on consumers is not yet clear. Carriers could charge more for blocking data collection, though the F.C.C. said it would monitor "pay for privacy" offers. Mr. O'Brien warned that consumers could be bombarded with annoying "opt in" requests from I.S.P.s. Mr. Yoo said the complexity created within companies, where Yahoo may not be able to share certain information with Verizon, will stifle innovation. The decision has had the unusual effect of casting major telecommunications companies as victims in a world dominated by Silicon Valley firms. AT T and Verizon, for example, each make more than 100 billion in revenue a year, while Comcast's annual sales top 70 billion. "It's clear that online companies now have greater access to consumer data than ever before and that the success of their business models depends on their ability to use it," Ajit Pai, a Republican F.C.C. commissioner who opposed the ruling, wrote this year. "Ironically, selectively burdening I.S.P.s, their nascent competitors in online advertising, confers a windfall to those who are already winning."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Media
She thought she knew what she was about. The heroine of a sensational and successful novel, "Democracy," published anonymously in 1880, Madeleine Lee, who is young, rich and beautiful, moves from New York to Washington to pass a season in a house on Lafayette Square. "She wanted to see with her own eyes the action of primary forces; to touch with her own hand the massive machinery of society; to measure with her own mind the capacity of motive power," the novel's author writes of Mrs. Lee. "She was bent upon getting to the heart of the great American mystery of democracy and government." It was the grandest of missions: "What she wished to see, she thought, was the clash of interests, the interests of 40 millions of people and a whole continent, centering at Washington; guided, restrained, controlled, or unrestrained and uncontrollable, by men of ordinary mold; the tremendous forces of government, and the machinery of society, at work." And see them she did. The novel that tells her story is an entertaining tale of manners and an important meditation on democracy and its discontents a narrative about politics that resonates even now, nearly 140 years after its first appearance. It is a reflection on corruption within the political class, but, read carefully, it also reinforces an ancient view that those who are disgusted with republican government need to remember that the fault, as Cassius in Shakespeare's "Julius Caesar" remarked, lies not in the stars, but in ourselves. The enduring relevance of "Democracy" is a tribute to the gifts of Henry Brooks Adams, whose identity as the author was revealed by the publisher after Adams died in 1918. Few people in the midst of the post Civil War Gilded Age had a better feel for American democracy than Adams. Great grandson and grandson of presidents, historian, professor and journalist, Adams had left Boston in 1877 for Washington. "I gravitate to a capital as a primary law of nature," Adams wrote a friend. "This is the only place in America where society amuses me, or where life offers variety." 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. As he worked on his monumental histories of the early Republic, Adams took time to write "Democracy," a novel that one might have expected if Anthony Trollope and Ward Just had somehow managed to collaborate across time and space. Mrs. Lee, a widow and an idealist about public life, is a desirable catch. Two suitors are especially drawn to her: John Carrington, an aristocratic young Virginian, and the practical and ambitious Senator Silas Ratcliffe, a rising man from Illinois. The love story is told well enough, but the novel's strength derives from its observations about the possibilities and perils of power in a democratic government subject to corruption and moral compromise. "Are we forever to be at the mercy of thieves and ruffians?" Mrs. Lee asks Ratcliffe. "Is respectable government impossible in a democracy?" Senator Ratcliffe's answer is telling. "My reply is that no representative government can long be much better or much worse than the society it represents. Purify society and you purify the government." An uncomfortable truth, but a truth nonetheless. Democracies have long been understood as the sum of their parts. No less a student of politics than Niccolo Machiavelli believed that it was "impossible for a corrupted people to set up a good government, or for a tyranny to be introduced if they be virtuous," as Algernon Sidney, the 17th century English politician, put it. In the 19th century, Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote that "the form of government which prevails, is the expression of what cultivation exists in the population which permits it." And in the 20th century, Harry Truman argued the same point: "The country has to awaken every now and then to the fact that the people are responsible for the government they get. And when they elect a man to the presidency who doesn't take care of the job, they've got nobody to blame but themselves." Adams wished things were different. The corrupt politician is the putative villain of his book, the idealistic wayfarer his heroine. A cleareyed reading of the novel, however, suggests that his view of democracy has much in common with that of Machiavelli, Sidney, Emerson and Truman. After hearing conflicting opinions about the matters of the day, Mrs. Lee sighs and wonders: "Who, then, is right? How can we all be right? Half of our wise men declare that the world is going straight to perdition; the other half that it is fast becoming perfect. Both cannot be right." She has, she says, a single goal. "I must know," she muses, "whether America is right or wrong." Turning to a character named Nathan Gore, a man of letters and an occasional diplomat (rather like Henry Adams himself), Mrs. Lee asks, "Do you yourself think democracy the best government, and universal suffrage a success?" Gore answers reluctantly but revealingly. "I believe in democracy," he says. "I accept it. I will faithfully serve and defend it." "I grant it is an experiment," Gore continues, "but it is the only direction society can take that is worth its taking; the only conception of its duty large enough to satisfy its instincts; the only result that is worth an effort or a risk." Like many reformers, Mrs. Lee longs for a North Star. "Where did the public good enter at all into this maze of personal intrigue, this wilderness of stunted natures where no straight road was to be found, but only the tortuous and aimless tracks of beasts and things that crawl?" she wonders. "Where was she to look for a principle to guide, an ideal to set up and to point at?" No such principle or ideal, it becomes clear, will be found in Senator Ratcliffe. As he courts Mrs. Lee, Ratcliffe has to explain a pair of political transgressions. The first dated from the Civil War when, as governor of Illinois, he manipulated election returns to ensure the success of Lincoln's 1864 campaign. The second was his acceptance, as a senator, of a large payment for his vote on a bill he had previously opposed. As Ratcliffe told the story, the bribe went to supporting his party in the first post Civil War presidential election a race that, if lost, would have "meant that the government must pass into the bloodstained hands of rebels." Mrs. Lee would have none of it. She declines Ratcliffe's hand, saying: "I will not share the profits of vice; I am not willing to be made a receiver of stolen goods, or to be put in a position where I am perpetually obliged to maintain that immorality is a virtue!" So there it was. Adams's Madeleine Lee will strike some readers as a kind of American Dorothea Brooke, the protagonist of George Eliot's "Middlemarch." Inspired by St. Theresa of Avila, Dorothea sought "some illimitable satisfaction" in the provincial world of 19th century England; Mrs. Lee, too, is anxious to find unleavened goodness in the drawing rooms of Washington. Both are doomed to be disappointed, but Dorothea is the far more profound character, for she does realize that the perfect must not be the enemy of the good. "What do we live for," Dorothea asks, "if it is not to make life less difficult to each other?" Mrs. Lee has no such epiphany. She is not obtuse. ("Ah, Mr. Carrington," she says at one point, "this world will not run as we want. Do you suppose the time will ever come when every one will be good and happy and do just what they ought?") Yet she prefers to abandon an arena she finds morally suspect to remaining in the fight that Nathan Gore had described to her. Readers of Adams's "Democracy" are left in a curious conundrum as the novel closes. We are to approve of Mrs. Lee's rejection of Ratcliffe and of her retirement from Washington while understanding that Ratcliffe has what the historian Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. described as "the more powerful arguments." Schlesinger, himself a figure in the Adams tradition, added: "As a novel of political ideas, 'Democracy' is intermittently brilliant but ultimately unsatisfactory." The same, alas, can must, really be said of democracy itself.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Books
If the choreographer Raja Feather Kelly prays, it must be to Andy Warhol, the muse for a handful of works that Mr. Kelly has created for his company, the Feath3r Theory, since 2009. The latest is "Andy Warhol's Tropico," which takes inspiration from Lana Del Rey's 27 minute extended music video, "Tropico," a dramatic meditation on original sin and redemption in which Jesus, John Wayne, Marilyn Monroe and Elvis appear as saintlike figures while Ms. Del Rey morphs from Eve to Mary to a modern day stripper. Mr. Kelly's take will have a lighter touch, a flirty wink and a queer sensibility that dispenses with spiritual heaviness and treats pop culture as a kind of religion itself. (He has also created an accompanying graphic novel.) With deadpan wit and a 12 member ensemble embodying archetypes from movies, television and children's stories, Mr. Kelly's fusion of dance and theater shifts seamlessly from absurd to cheeky to the unexpectedly and piercingly sincere. (8 p.m., Thursday, June 2, through Saturday, St. Mark's Church, danspaceproject.org)	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Dance
Pablo Picasso on the French Riviera in 1940. He began a relationship with Marie Therese Walter in the 1920s, when she was a teenager. If you haven't watched "Nanette," Hannah Gadsby's fearless comedy special on Netflix, do that now. (We'll wait.) In it, Ms. Gadsby takes on the fragility of masculinity and at one point drills into Pablo Picasso, who, well into his 40s, had an affair with a teenage girl. Ms. Gadsby, who has a degree in art history, recounted how Picasso justified the relationship by claiming that he and the girl, Marie Therese Walter, were both in their prime. Seething, Ms. Gadsby said: "A 17 year old girl is never in her prime. Ever! I am in my prime." She is 40. That anecdote came to mind recently, in response to a new study about online dating published in the journal Science Advances. In it, researchers studied the "desirability" of male and female users, based on how many messages nearly 200,000 users, all of whom were seeking opposite sex partners, got over one month on a "popular, free online dating service" and if those sending the messages were desirable based on the same criteria. The researchers determined that while men's sexual desirability peaks at age 50, women's starts high at 18 and falls from there. In other words, not so far from the ages of Walter and Picasso. "The age gradient for women definitely surprised us both in terms of the fact that it steadily declined from the time women were 18 to the time they were 65, and also how steep it was," said Elizabeth Bruch, an associate professor of sociology at the University of Michigan and an author of the study. "The median 30 year old man spends as much time messaging teenage girls as he does women his own age," OkCupid wrote in a blog post at the time. Sign up here to get the Gender Letter, our newsletter that explores issues that affect women, delivered to your inbox! OkCupid also reported that as a man gets older, he searches for relatively younger and younger women, while his upper acceptable age limit hovers just above his own age. Michelle Drouin, a developmental psychologist who focuses on technology and relationships, was not surprised by the new study in part because they "align with evolutionary theories of mating" in which youth suggests fertility, she said. Dr. Drouin pointed out, though, that there are also theories that suggest that "men are just less interested in earning potential or power, and more interested in physical attractiveness." Speaking of earning potential, Dr. Bruch also found that a man's desirability increased the more education he attained. For women, that benefit ended with an undergraduate degree and postgraduate education, in fact, made them less desirable. Women now outnumber men in college and earn more degrees, Dr. Bruch said, adding: "Preferences coupled with the availability of partners may drive the patterns we see in our paper." Dr. Drouin said that educational dynamic might also be related to "beliefs that higher degrees among women translate into more work commitment and less relationship and family commitment." Dr. Drouin stressed that the preferences of people seeking mates online reflect aspiration, not necessarily what people want in real life. A key finding of the study was that most users sent messages to people who were more desirable than themselves. Twenty five percent more desirable, to be exact. This data represents "the reality of dating preferences" in other words, dating out of your league, Dr. Drouin said. That is often not the reality of dating. "These messages sent by online daters can be likened to slot machine play in Vegas," she said. "Little investment on the front end might pay out big on the back end so why not opt for a chance at the biggest win?" But then again, the internet can't read chemistry. "In the real world, the woman with a graduate degree who knows your favorite Kerouac passage, speaks a few languages or discovers new ways to cure disease might be undeniably attractive," she said. "Think of Amal Clooney."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Style
Never has the cheer of homegrown color been more essential. Here's how to get it even if you haven't started planting yet. My farmer florist neighbor Jennifer Elliott's 15 acre organic operation in the Hudson Valley is like a giant cutting garden from April to November. So it was to Ms. Elliott and another flower focused friend that I turned for a strategy in a year when having some version of what she has, at least in miniature the cheer of homegrown color seemed like just the thing. We need to grow food, yes, but also to make room out back for some food for the soul. Admittedly, many of us are off to a late start, with seed access delayed by unparalleled demand. That means some of those back of packet instructions which often call for starting seeds indoors, under lights, six weeks ahead and transplanting them as the weather settles might not be possible. But I'm adopting the plan that enables Ms. Elliott to produce a nonstop supply of blooms for her Tiny Hearts Farm, which in a normal year serves wholesale customers, subscribers to a weekly flower CSA and retail customers to her flower shop, plus weddings and other events she designs. Ms. Barlow breaks down the rough sowing timeline this way: Hardy annuals like cornflower, poppy, calendula, larkspur, love in a mist (Nigella damascena) and sweet alyssum should be direct sown outdoors before the last frost date. In her location, in Zone 6a, that means before early to mid May. (In warm winter areas like Zones 8 to 10, however, hardy annuals are sown in late fall; you can check your Plant Hardiness Zone here.) Those categorized as "half hardy annuals" including amaranth, basketflower (Centaurea americana), cleome, marigolds and cosmos are often started indoors under lights six weeks before setting out after frost, but they can be direct sown at the last frost date for summer flowers. Sunflowers, which Ms. Elliott direct sows every two weeks at her farm, fall into this category. A third grouping, the tender annuals morning glory, moonflower, zinnia, nasturtium and dahlia (from seed or tubers) are direct sown a week or two after the last frost for midsummer to frost blooms. Two vining morning glory relatives that delight hummingbirds are in this grouping: cardinal climber (Ipomoea x multifida) and Spanish flag (Ipomoea lobata). So are hyacinth bean (Dolichos lablab) and cup and saucer vine (Cobaea scandens). That means there is still time and now there are also resources. Some suppliers who paused home garden orders to make sure farmers were supplied, or were simply overwhelmed, are starting to ship again. And independent garden centers are generally open, at least for pick up orders. Gardeners may also find assistance in unexpected places, where Covid 19 shifted business plans. At farms like Tiny Hearts, for example, instead of planting all the tubers this year, the owners quickly pivoted and set up an online shop for mail orders of some of them. Besides pink and white, cosmos come in ruffled, double flowered forms like the Double Click series, including a bicolor violet and white, as well as orange and even pale yellow (like Xanthos or Apricot Lemonade). Zinnia range in scale from tall to front of the border flowers like Starbright Mix and White Star. "Those are my favorites, actually the Zinnia angustifolia," Ms. Barlow said. "Those are really more for garden edging, and really beautiful. They are also disease resistant, which makes them extra nice." Want maximum butterflies from your zinnia? Single flowered varieties are always a hit. At the other extreme are those bred to look like scabiosas, with a puffy center (like Zinderella Peach). Ms. Elliott said she is "obsessed with the Oklahoma series," especially the salmon and golden yellow colors of this tall type, and she and Ms. Barlow share a soft spot for a Zinnia haageana called Jazzy Mix, described in the Select Seeds catalog as "a kaleidoscope of color and pattern in yellow, cream, chestnut, and rosy red."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Real Estate
The Swiss Institute's new home a renovated bank on St. Marks Place has an open door policy. For anyone who thinks that the granular, old fashioned neighborhoods of Lower Manhattan the kind with ice cream parlors, stoops, barber shops, bars and tattoo joints are fast decamping to Brooklyn, head on over to one of the area's incandescent holdouts, the East Village, where the new walk in Swiss Institute has just opened on one of the city's liveliest streets, St. Marks Place. Perhaps you don't know that the Swiss Institute has been around since 1986, a nonprofit art world secret housed in various low profile Manhattan venues. Since 1994, it occupied locations in SoHo but became isolated as high end boutiques swamped the neighborhood and artists exited. The Swiss Institute wanted to relocate to a neighborhood where its forward thinking mission would resonate. Led by Simon Castets, the French born director and curator, the Institute found a high visibility corner and a built in audience in the thick of the pulsing, gritty, diverse East Village. "The ability to engage with such a vibrant, high traffic neighborhood is unprecedented for S.I.," says Mr. Castets. "There are many schools, cultural and community organizations in the neighborhood, as well as an incredible history of art making and experimentation." Sensitively restored on the outside and repurposed in spanking white on the inside by Selldorf Architects of New York, the cleaned up, handsome but not fancy, 7,500 square foot building fits right into the neighborhood.It wears the former bank building like camouflage. It's a reappropriated ready made. Squint and you can't tell that there's much difference between the Institute's funky, un precious inaugural show, and the 24 hour T shirts and everything else emporium across the street. On two floors of the Institute, plus the basement and rooftop, the show updates the idea of Marcel Duchamp's "Fountain" his signed, pedestalized urinal of 1917 using images of buildings or designed objects as ready mades. The young Swiss curators Niels Olsen and Fredi Fischli invited 60 artists and architects to interpret street signs, chairs, teakettles and architecture. At the entrance, you step through "Gate," a common airport security gate with graffiti slapped on its sides by Reena Spaulings (who is actually an anonymous, mash up New York persona, sort of an art world avatar). In this context, we notice another artifact of our culture that we take for granted. Three steps away, "Fire," a tall, free standing billboard depicting a fire truck, by the New York artist Lutz Bacher (a pseudonym), could be the image of the fire truck passing by just outside the window, siren wailing again something we no longer really see even if we hear it. Next to it, the British artist filmmakers Oliver Payne and Nick Relph appropriated Duchamp's first ready made, "Bicycle Wheel" (1913), using instead a high performance Aerospoke bicycle wheel. What's changed since Duchamp, of course, is that the displaced object is no longer just industrial, as artists including Robert Gober, Damien Hirst, Tracey Emin, Michael Landy and Gabriel Orozco have long shown. The deceptively simple works at the Swiss Institute owe a considerable debt to Mr. Gober, an American sculptor, who simultaneously recognized and rejected the industrial ready made using hanging sinks, playpens, beds and doors (before he moved, in the 1990s, into environments). Many of the ready mades here are domestic, like the old bathtub, complete with Rorschach rust stains, that the Los Angeles artist and poet Ser Serpas hangs up in the corner. There are familiar names. We find the famous, striped Aldo Rossi changing cabana (1980), plucked off Italian beaches and intended as a wardrobe. Petra Blaisse, the Dutch designer, hangs (and signs) a floor to ceiling Bubble Wrap curtain ("Don't Pinch!"), while her Dutch design colleague, the architect Rem Koolhaas, sent in slides of the Berlin Wall from an architecture school project ("Field Trip, 1971"): his long, typed, amusing narrative points out the apparent irony that this walled city was a prison of freedom, and East Berliners wanted in. The Chilean poet architect Smiljan Radic sent one of the very few flesh and blood objects, a Dada esque collage of a violin bow suspending part of a violin's belly on strands of its horsehair. The bow teeter totters delicately over two large industrial light bulbs planted in a crude wooden bowl. The curators have cast a wide net in local, international and underground communities to find artists, including street artists, known for rephrasing objects in distortional ways. The rows of logo T shirts on boxes lined up against the wall, by the London based artists Richard Sides and Gili Tal, are just like the T shirts you'll find outside, rewritten with an anarchic twist: "Vote Acid," reads one. Those shopping bags on the floor, sent by the German artist Maria Eichhorn, are filled with empty tea boxes, plastic water bottles, and chewing gum wrappers discarded by people installing the show, a kind of behind the scenes gallery diary. Many of the 65 exhibits are art referential pieces, art about art, and you start consulting the exhibition menu for clues to understanding them. But after a while, you get into the rhythm of trusting your eye and instincts. You notice that in "Maso Chair," the subversive Swiss architects Trix and Robert Haussmann replaced the gaskets on the metal frame of an Eames chair with flower studs used to support floral arrangements ouch! And isn't that contorted steel tube that the New York artist Wade Guyton twisted up into the air the remnant of the iconic 1920s Breuer chair? These ready mades are not beautiful, signature originals with a strong physical presence, but artworks that critique formal art. You have to get rid of that nasty notion that "I could have done this," or, rather, you gradually understand that you actually could do this, at home, tonight. Your perception shifts. Pleasantly and unexpectedly brainwashed, you walk back out to St. Marks Place and gaze at the T shirts and hats and hookah pipes and think about signing them. Somehow you hear the rumble of motorcycles with a new interest and curiosity: it's a John Cage cantata. Even the lively St. Marks Place feels more alive. Life is art and art, life. Dada rules.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Art & Design
Prekindergarten students at P.S. 212 in Jackson Heights, Queens, observe their "belly buddies" stuffed animals placed on their stomachs as they rise and fall with their breath. The lesson is part of the Kindness Curriculum. Thanks to a challenge from the Dalai Lama, a number of preschools are trying to teach something that has not always been considered an academic subject: kindness. "Can you look inside yourself and tell me what you're feeling?" Danielle Mahoney Kertes asked a class of prekindergarten students at P.S. 212 in Queens recently. "Happy," one girl offered. "Sick," said another. A boy in a blue T shirt gave a shy thumbs down. "That happens too," Ms. Mahoney Kertes, a literacy coach, reassured him. The exercise was part of the Kindness Curriculum, developed by the Center for Healthy Minds at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, in which preschoolers are introduced to a potpourri of sensory games, songs and stories that are designed to help them pay closer attention to their emotions. "Our world is kind of a scary place," Ms. Mahoney Kertes said. "We can't always control what is happening outside us. But what we're teaching them is that they can control how they respond." Since the curriculum was introduced in August, more than 15,000 educators, parents and others from around the world have signed up for it. P.S. 212, which is in a neighborhood in Jackson Heights that is home to many new immigrants, was one of the first public schools in New York City to introduce mindfulness based practices like yoga. The Kindness Curriculum, which incorporates mindfulness, was a natural fit. "A child can come in and say, 'My father was deported last night.' How do you deal with that?" said the school's principal, Carin Ellis. "We give them tools to cope with their hurt and pain." "When you're unkind to another, it's usually about ourselves and how we are feeling," she said. "If children can take a moment and just breathe, they can avoid acting out against others." There appear to be other benefits. Research led by the clinical psychologist Lisa Flook has shown that youngsters who received the kindness training become more altruistic in tests that measured their willingness to share with others. It also strengthened children's ability to focus and modestly boosted their academic performance. Some argue that emotional skills are better taught by parents than by teachers. But Dr. Flook points out that when kids come to the classroom anxious, angry or fearful, they are often too distracted to focus. "Children who have positive relationships with their peers and teachers do better in school," she said. They may also fare better later in life. One 2015 study that tracked kindergartners to young adulthood found that individuals with good prosocial skills behavior that is positive, helpful and friendly tended to be more successful as adults than those who did well in subjects like reading and math but lacked the ability to get along with others. The Kindness Curriculum is part of a growing global movement to teach emotional intelligence in schools. Advocates of this approach say it's shortsighted for teachers to focus narrowly on intellectual learning and ignore the cooperative emotional skills that enable learning and learners to flourish. Still, some question whether personality traits like kindness can be taught. Richard Davidson, the founder of the Center for Healthy Minds, believes that ancient Buddhist wisdom provides clues. He was inspired, he said, by a request from Tibet's spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, who asked him to take insights from contemplative practice out of their religious context and use them to develop strategies to help improve people's lives. Buddhist meditators observe their bodily sensations and feelings to create a sense of calm that is meant to foster compassion. Dr. Davidson said he used that concept as the basis for teaching children to watch how their bodies move and feel. In one practice, children observe their "belly buddy," a stuffed animal placed on their stomachs, as it rises and falls with their breath. Belly breathing has been adapted by the children's program "Sesame Street," which consulted with the University of Wisconsin team and made kindness the theme of its latest season. The program encourages children "to identify their feelings and to put a label to them," said Rosemarie Truglio, senior vice president of curriculum and content at Sesame Workshop, which produces "Sesame Street." "When you help a child do that, they feel validated it helps them to understand that feeling." Dr. Truglio observed that the more aware children are of their own emotions, the better they are able to empathize with the feelings of others and to respond to them in a helpful manner. Initially, many of the children they worked with didn't know what the word "kind" meant, she recalls. Parents and teachers were always telling them to be "nice." "We wanted to give them the word 'kind,'" she said, "but to define it not so much in words as through behaviors." On "Sesame Street," the characters model a variety of kind actions. For example, Big Bird's friends help him conquer his stage fright; Elmo patiently waits as Zoe learns to use his scooter. The program then cuts to its "kindness cam," which shows real children engaging in similar behaviors. Sesame Street's own research prompted its focus on kindness. In a national survey of 2,502 parents and teachers, over three quarters said that they often worried that "the world is an unkind place for children." Roughly the same percentage said that it was more important for children to learn kindness than to get good grades. Dr. Davidson said that the period between ages 4 and 7 is a critical developmental window when the brain is reorganizing and particularly open to learning new information (like foreign languages) as well as developing lifelong psychological habits. In order to have a lasting impact, he said, the emotional lessons taught to preschoolers need to be reinforced as the kids grow older. One program working on kindness with older students, the Los Angeles based "Kind Campaign," founded in 2009, organizes middle and high school assemblies that target the problem of bullying between young women. The girls are invited to write a "kind apology" and hand it to somebody who they have wronged. Another group, the Random Acts of Kindness Foundation, has developed lesson plans for all age groups through high school. Students are guided in classroom discussions and asked to come up with positive actions, like sitting with someone who is alone in the lunchroom and writing imaginative thank you letters to their future selves. "Kindness to oneself is a key," said Brooke Jones, the foundation's vice president. "When let's say you fail a test, do you say to yourself 'I'm stupid,' or do you say to yourself, 'I have more to learn?' We focus on the importance of kids believing in themselves." Ms. Mahoney Kertes points out, however, that, educators must practice what they preach for their lessons to be truly effective. "Teachers need to work on themselves. They need to become examples of the kindness that they are trying to teach."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Well
Crowded With the dollar performing strongly against the euro, record numbers of American travelers are expected to converge on many of Europe's most popular cultural attractions this summer. (The Wall Street Journal) Beginnings Have you ever thought about creating a travel start up business? If so, examining the realities of the work involved is essential. (Tnooz) Markets Although it may seem strange at first, the writer Brad Tuttle takes a look at how declining travel stocks can actually be a boon to travelers. (Money) Hair Watch out, Mickey Mouse. The "Man Buns of Disneyland" trend is quickly becoming a cultural sensation at the famed amusement park. (Jaunted)	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Travel
NAPLES, N.Y. Even without a psychology degree, Bella's natural talents made her an excellent therapist: She is calm and accommodating of a range of personalities, with the patience to listen to endless problems without so much as a judgmental moo. From a lush, secluded pasture on the Mountain Horse Farm, a 33 acre bed and breakfast in the Finger Lakes region of New York, 3 year old Bella and 2 year old Bonnie are the highlander angus crossbred cows that provide animal based therapy. Cow cuddling, as the practice is called, invites interaction with the farm animals via brushing, petting or heartfelt chats with the bovines. The experience is similar to equine therapy, with one game changing difference: Horses tend to stand, but cows spontaneously lie down in the grass while chewing their cud, allowing humans to get even more up close and personal by joining on the ground and offering a warm embrace. "Can you see how quiet she gets?" said Suzanne Vullers, 51, an accountant turned equine therapist who co owns the bed and breakfast with her husband, Rudi Vullers, also 51. "That's what we're looking for," she said. "For the person and the cow." Hailing from the rural town of Reuver, in the Netherlands, the pair came across "koe knuffelen," which means "cow hugging" in Dutch, on a return visit to their homeland two years ago. In parts of the Netherlands, cow cuddling is offered as part of half day visits , and is part of an larger movement to connect people with country life. In the major urban center of Rotterdam, a newly opened floating dairy farm in the city's oldest port invites city dwellers to visit the beasts. About a decade earlier, in 2007, Mr. and Ms. Vullers he a former supply chain manager, she a former accountant traded their corporate lives to set up their farming shop in Naples, N.Y. (Population: 2,500. Claim to fame: a grape festival that takes place in the fall, with a competition for grape pie.) The idea of cow cuddling opened the barn gates. In May of 2018, they purchased Bonnie and Bella, selecting them for their gentle personalities and lack of horns. "A lot of cows are not suited for it," Mr. Vullers said. "They can chase you out of the field." Each session is overseen by two human counterparts: an equine therapist, usually Ms. Vullers, who can read the animals's moods to ensure a safe, positive interaction with their new human friends, and a second handler, who keeps a watchful eye on the other animals in the field. Neither has a psychology degree, which is kind of the point: "Whatever they're going through, they don't have to talk about it," said Ms. Vullers. "It's not like therapy, right?" Like other forms of therapy, the hope is for visitors to foster trust, empathy and connection with the cows and their own emotions. And as with any other kind of therapy, there are no guarantees of successful outcomes: "They're not trained to lie down," said Ms. Vullers. On a recent Saturday, two pairs of people, an engaged couple from Silicon Valley and a mother daughter duo from upstate New York, had traveled from opposite sides of the country to cuddle some cows. "Drive five hours to hug a cow?" said Karen Hudson, 57, a construction company manager, who attended the afternoon session with her daughter, Jessica Ercoli, 27, a probation officer. For Ms. Hudson, it was a sort of wish fulfillment, a throwback to the fond memories of visiting her grandmother's farm. And perhaps a bit of fate, too. The email address she has used for over two decades includes the words "Missy," which happens to be the name of miniature horse on the farm, and "moo." Leading the two excited but tentative women onto the field, Ms. Vullers offered guidance on a successful approach before demonstrating the methods herself. "O posture, not X posture," she said. "Round the body" to appear less threatening. Walk up to the cow's shoulders rather than its haunches. "Clothing is important," said Mr. Vullers. "They might slobber on you." (Definite requirement: closed toe shoes.) For observers: "Stand sideways. It makes a world of difference to them," said Ms. Vullers. Advice for participants: "Respect them and their world and what they want to do and what they want to give you," she added. Number one advice for everyone: Remain calm. "The more relaxed you are, the better it will be for you and them," she said, because horses and cows alike sense emotions and respond in kind most of the time. "Don't rub your snot on me!" said Ms. Ercoli to Bella. In the morning session, Colin Clover, 50, a recruiting manager at Facebook, stumbled upon this extracurricular activity the way that many people discover niche wellness trends: the internet. He immediately recalled that his fiancee, Alexandria Rivas, 31, a receptionist, artist and longtime equestrian enthusiast, had fond memories of visiting the dairy farm next to the college she attended. Though he had once trained dolphins and sea lions, the idea of sidling up to a 900 pound heifer intimidated him somewhat. The nerves subsided when, he said, Ms. Vullers framed it in a way he understood. "Think of how you would interact with your dog," he recalled Ms. Vullers saying. In their separate sessions, the pairs had a chance not just to meet the cows, but the entire coterie of characters. In the barn and field: Jaxon, the 1,800 pound stallion, swatted flies away; Stetson, a gelding, named for the hat; Cricket and Noa, mares rescued from abusive conditions; Suzie Q and Missy, miniature horses with distinct personalities. "Missy is always the first to say hi," explained Ms. Vullers of her outgoing, plump bellied friend. For the final surprise of the day, the farmers invited the visitors to hand feed the cows oat based treats, which many participants described as their favorite activity. Even though, Ms. Hudson said, the cows' tongues "were like sandpaper!" Still, it was better than a different kind of surprise: "Sometimes cows drop things," Ms. Vullers said. Perhaps recognizing they were in polite company, the cows only dropped themselves. Lowering to the ground, they offered participants what they traveled across state and country to experience: a chance for a warm embrace.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Style
SEATTLE You relish the little things here in Seattle: Toilet paper is back on some shelves, the hoarders sated for the moment. Instead of making vodka, distilleries are rolling out hand sanitizer. The dreaded daily number of new coronavirus cases shows that while the curve is not yet flat, the rate has gone both down and up on different days this week, carrying our hopes on the bumpy ride. As for the tally of the dead: Instead of doubling every five days in Washington State, as it was just two weeks ago, now it doubles roughly every nine a horrific number still, but that movement is in the right direction. We are not necessarily your city's future, but a likely version of your future if you do the right thing. Washington State had the first known case of Covid 19 in the United States, on Jan. 19; the first reported death, more than a month after that; and the first full blown outbreak. We're well ahead of the rest of the nation in our cycle of denial, panic, action. Social distancing started early. Testing has been broad, though more help from the federal government is needed. A communal fight or flight instinct has moved into something more settled. Even as the president floats an idea that could sacrifice the elderly to keep Wall Street happy, we take care of our own. We will not throw Grandma from the train. "There really is no middle ground," said Bill Gates, whose foundation has put up 100 million to blunt the impact of the Covid 19 pandemic. "It's very tough to say to people, 'Hey, keep going to restaurants, go buy new houses, ignore that pile of bodies in the corner.' " About those bodies: it's the suddenness that gets to you. I remember talking to people who'd lived through the Dust Bowl, for a book whose title, "The Worst Hard Time," may not hold up. What they remembered was how swiftly death took a loved one. And now, a parent you thought might live another 10 years may not make it another 10 days. My neighborhood grocer, Steve Shulman, was giving wine tips and turning out fresh made sausage one day, and now he's gone dead at 67 from the coronavirus. I lost another friend, Peter Jackson, a writer, a fierce defender of the natural world, and son of former Senator Henry M. Jackson, to pancreatic cancer in the same time. Peter was 53. His loss is compounded by our inability to mourn him in a group setting. We need to touch, to hug, to come together, but with one third of humanity under lockdown, intimacy outside of our domestic unit is not an option. People say this is our World War II, our Great Depression, our London under the Nazi blitz. It's none of those, for this misery may be without an apt historical match. There's plenty of food. And more than 99 percent of the population is free of the virus, for now. But if just 1 percent were to die because we let our guard down, the United States would lose more than three million people. President Trump's talk of opening the United States for business by Easter is greeted in this precinct of sanity as the heartless bluster of a career con man. The public radio station in Seattle, KUOW, has stopped airing Trump's live briefings because the volume of misinformation he puts out cannot be corrected in real time. In the states that have been hardest hit New York, New Jersey, Washington, California we're lucky to have leaders trying to translate science into action. Last week, researchers in Seattle gave the first shot to a person in a test of an experimental coronavirus vaccine. And Gov. Jay Inslee has warned that a mandatory stay at home order halting all but essential business may be extended well past April 6. There is "some hopeful news," Inslee said Thursday, pointing to the slowing rate of new cases in Washington for several days this week. Still, he stressed, "We cannot let up on this virus." He has deployed the full tool kit for success: vigilance, massive testing, rapid response, forced isolation: "We've got to pound it and pound it till it's done." We could use some help from a certain billionaire who made his pile in our city, Jeff Bezos. His cranes are frozen in place in downtown Seattle, the empire on hold. His employees are at risk, some getting sick at his warehouses. And the world's richest man had the gall to ask the public to donate to a relief fund for his contract employees. After an uproar, the company changed the language on public donations. When everything is settled, Amazon's reach into everyday lives will be deeper and more institutionalized than ever. But if Bezos wants to be remembered as something other than a monopolist who took advantage of a pandemic, he could throw some billions in the right direction now. For the rest of us, the change has been startling. You realize that we're remarkably adaptable. You learn to cut hair. You tell people you love them, or risk forever holding your peace. You relish quarantinis at Zoom happy hours. You keep telling yourself that every tickle of the throat is not ... it. The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We'd like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here's our email: letters nytimes.com. Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter ( NYTopinion) and Instagram. Timothy Egan ( nytegan) is a contributing opinion writer who covers the environment, the American West and politics. He is a winner of the National Book Award and author, most recently, of "A Pilgrimage to Eternity."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Opinion
A hut sells maple taffy (maple syrup poured over fresh snow) in Le Domaine de la Foret Perdue, in Notre Dame du Mont Carmel, Quebec. Right, skaters on the extensive trail at Le Domaine de la Foret Perdue.Credit...David Giral for The New York Times A hut sells maple taffy (maple syrup poured over fresh snow) in Le Domaine de la Foret Perdue, in Notre Dame du Mont Carmel, Quebec. Right, skaters on the extensive trail at Le Domaine de la Foret Perdue. The wait for my rental car at Montreal Pierre Elliott Trudeau International Airport last February was slow, but the talk was breakaway fast. I joined the line with a National Hockey League scout for the New Jersey Devils on his way to a tournament to look at promising teenage skaters. "Skating is a way of life up here," the native Quebecois said, as my sturdy Nissan S.U.V. pulled up, poised to plow through the snowy roads of southern Quebec where I'd come simply to skate. Other than the Winter Olympics, ice skating doesn't get a lot of attention among winter sports. It's usually a "something for the kids" addition at a ski resort, or an activity built around a city landmark, like the rink at Rockefeller Center in New York City or the ice sheet at Millennium Park in Chicago. But as a winter lover who once traveled to Winnipeg to skate that city's sculpture dotted frozen river in below zero temperatures, I was intrigued by the icy fount of adventurous possibilities in Quebec, Canada's largest province, where it's possible to escape the oval confines of what we normally think of as ice rinks, and skate for long, sinuous stretches on frozen trails through forests and snowy landscapes. Three freezing months at relatively low elevations has spawned a distinct winter culture. "Winters are very long and cold in Quebec," said Robert McLeman, a professor of geography and environmental studies at Wilfrid Laurier University in Waterloo, Ontario. He and a fellow scientist Colin Robertson run RinkWatch, a citizen science project where nearly 1,500 participants have submitted climate data and its effect on their homemade skating rinks. It's hard to pin a number on skaters in Canada, but the government has found hockey participation is second only to golf in the country. The original four teams of the National Hockey League formed in 1917 were all Canadian, and the championship Stanley Cup is named for Frederick Arthur Stanley, Lord Stanley of Preston, the governor general of Canada from 1888 to 1893, who commissioned the trophy. More recently, at the 2018 Winter Olympics in South Korea, Canada won the team gold medal in figure skating. In Quebec, many parks and villages host skating areas that take a variety of forms, from ribbons plowed on rivers to forests that are flooded to create skating mazes. Having built my own front yard rink, I know these frozen skateways are not easily maintained. Forest paths involve cutting trails, building water barriers, flooding and freezing them, clearing fallen snow into sheet side banks and continually conditioning the ice as it slaloms between trees. Ice might be a natural state, but skating ice is a wonder of human dedication. Several of these ice innovations lie in Mauricie and Lanaudiere, two of the 17 administrative regions that make up Quebec province, roughly midway between Montreal and Quebec City. Together they bill themselves as "authentic Quebec," home to 16th century French settlements and rivers that were the original highways used by First Nations travelers and, later, French Canadian fur traders known as voyageurs. Logging and hydroelectric industries subsequently took advantage of the regions' natural resources, more recently reframed as tourist draws. On one of those islands, Ile St. Quentin, park managers seasonally flood a two kilometer, or about 1.25 mile, ice skating path. The frozen maze skirts the seaway, flowing with jagged cells of ice, and weaves into the hardwood forest behind it. Following the contours of the land, it had enough gradual downhills to convince several skaters to wear helmets. I laced my skates inside the park's generous field house, which supplied a children's corner with toys and books, and offered fat tire bike rentals for rides on another trail, shared by snowshoers, that runs for 3.2 kilometers (about two miles) around the periphery of the island. With just a few skaters sharing the ice on a sunny and windy weekday, I had the "sentier de patin," or ice path, largely to myself, allowing me to skate the route in all directions without fear of collisions. After an exploratory foray, slow and curious, I thrilled to make each iteration different, taking the first alley right away from the river and the second left toward it, circling a warming tent one way, then the other, and edging back on the inland route, taking occasional spurs in unanticipated directions in the exhilarating labyrinth that held me safe in its geometry. It seems odd to call skating ice slippery, but the smoother the surface, the faster the ice, which is why skaters love to chase virgin ice after Zamboni machines have sprayed a thin coat of quickly freezing water to groom it. Recently resurfaced and lightly traveled, this skating path was swift on the downhills, met by gentle inclines that slowed my momentum as I approached the slushy river. In two places, the roughly four foot wide paths led to adjacent rinks, one set up with boards and nets for hockey, the other for figure skating. There, in my zeal, I spun myself dizzy and fell hard on my elbow. Still, when a skater falls in the forest and no one sees it, the embarrassment evaporates like tears in a frigid gale. I picked myself up and returned to the tangle of the flooded forest. Though the ice trail was quiet, it didn't take long to find Mauricie's winter pilgrims. About 30 miles northeast of town, I checked into Le Baluchon Eco Resort behind a dozen exhilarated French snowmobilers who were sledding inn to inn. On the Riviere du Loup, or Wolf River, Le Baluchon offers 89 rooms in a mix of inns and chalets on 1,000 acres featuring about 25 miles of cross country ski and snowshoe trails, a tubing run and an ice rink with supplied equipment for broomball a hockey like game played with brooms and without skates. The sledders headed straight for the Nordic spa to steep in a series of hydrotherapy pools indoors and out. Later that evening, a full moon lit the riverside trail to the inn's restaurant acclaimed for its menu using local ingredients in dishes like walleye with Quebec seaweed butter and waterfalls stilled by ice. One winter, when Jean Pierre Binette and Madeleine Courchesne, beekeepers in rural Notre Dame du Mont Carmel, about an hour north of Trois Rivieres, had three children under the age of 9, they flooded a small section of woods on their property. Excited by the frozen forest playground, their children invited their friends, who invited their friends. In 1997, the seasonal diversion became a secondary business as Le Domaine de la Foret Perdue, or the Lost Forest, opened to the public, keeping a form of agritourism alive in winter (in summer, they offer a high ropes course). "We were the first skating path in Quebec and now we are training people who are opening trails around the province," Therese Deslauriers, the managing director of the Foret Perdue, said, as she worked the rustic entry house that doubles as a retail shop for honey products. Outside, beyond the skate rental tent, 15 kilometers more than nine miles of iceways wove through pine and hardwood forests dotted with farm pens occupied by goats, sheep, ducks, deer and more exotic animals, including an ostrich. Next to the alpaca enclosure, a repurposed phone booth dispensed handfuls of animal feed for a Canadian quarter. Farm animals and friendly, free ranging cats offered diversions for skaters of all ages, from school groups that pulled up in buses, to seriously speedy skaters who showed up when the gates opened at 10 a.m. to get in some laps before the lanes got clogged. Several Zambonis, which resurface the trail at least twice a day, kept the route smooth. Despite my good sense of direction, I found the paths including straightaways, curvy tree weaving sections and countless connecting passes wound so extensively that it was hard to keep track of where I'd been except for the landmarks provided by a few tree stumps carved into bear sculptures. It was this skater's dream come true, a maze so vast that each turn felt new: sprinters' drift walled alleys; pine dense spurs where teenagers fell laughingly into the snow; four way intersections where schoolkids, screaming with delight, pushed friends in ice sleds and parents pulled their toddlers on double bladed skates, taking breaks to feed the eager goats. Many skaters brought their lunches. For the less prepared, Foret Perdue offers a heated snack bar in a tent and a maple candy cabin in the woods. Inviting though it was, I skipped the snack bar, threw my skates in the car and drove roughly 40 miles east to another of the grand lodges that draw winter fans to Mauricie. Like a castle size version of a log cabin, Hotel Sacacomie sits high above frozen Sacacomie Lake, offering wintry panoramas from its pine hewn dining room with a roaring fire in the fieldstone fireplace the perfect place to warm up over local smoked trout and duck confit poutine. By then, too, three trucks were out resurfacing the path, one to brush away any remaining snow, another to spray water and a third to tamp down snow alleys at the edges used by dog walkers and posted with plastic bag dispensers. This skateway was different than the others no forests, mazes or isolation. Instead, it connected the city with a groomed route that skirted bluff top houses and kayaks piled in snow on the river banks. It dipped under bridges occasionally tagged with graffiti, lending an urban edge to the ice sheet. I skated hard for an hour, covering the entire route, and was not alone. Like runners in warmer cities, the earliest Joliette skaters came out to exercise in the light morning traffic. By the time I circled back to the park field house just after 10 a.m., a food shack next to the ice had opened, serving beignets and tea to the growing collection of families teaching their under 10s to skate by holding onto loaner sleds and sharing the wonder of skating on a seasonally stilled river. I intended to leave the river and head straight to the airport in Montreal, but couldn't resist another skating stop so close to it. Diverting 30 minutes north to Bois de Belle Riviere, I took a final one and a half mile spin on yet another frozen forest path. In this age of vanishing ice, I skated with a profound appreciation for the transformation of winter and the spirit of ice makers to delight those who love the season. Elaine Glusac is a frequent contributor to the Travel section.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Travel
Of course, we don't make films for continents or countries filmmakers create films for their personal dreams and obsessions. But despite that, it doesn't happen very often for an Asian or Korean film to get nominated for the Oscars. It's a very rare thing. The Korean press, they're all very excited. It's almost like a national celebration, and I think, in a way, it's inevitable to be surrounded with such festivity right now. Do you take pride in that achievement? I'm very happy I didn't create this film on my own. I'm very grateful to all the people who created this film with me and all the teams that were involved in the campaign process. Why do you think Korean cinema is having such a breakthrough moment right now? I think it just shows that "Parasite" isn't a film that came out of nowhere. Korean cinema has a very long history, and "Parasite" is a continuation of all the Korean films that came before. It's an extension of our history. It's not the first time a Korean film has gone through something like this. Park Chan wook's "The Handmaiden" won a BAFTA, and last year "Burning" directed by Lee Chang dong was a part of the shortlist for what was then the foreign language film Oscar . And there have been animated shorts from Korea nominated for Oscars. So all of these developments over all of these years matured to lead to "Parasite" today. "Parasite" is your seventh feature as a director. Did you have a sense when you were making it that it had the potential to make the impact that it has? From Cannes, to today in L.A., we've experienced a series of all of these unexpected events with the film. Especially with the box office, it's done incredibly well around the world. And that's something that we never expected. I created this film because of the controversial aspects of the story, and to take on these bold challenges, but I always worried how they would be received by the public and the wider world. And I'm really happy to see the audience embrace the challenges that "Parasite" took on. Critics have noted that the film engages viewers on multiple levels at once emotionally, physically and intellectually. What's the key to achieving that in one movie?	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Movies
Construction was set to begin this week on a giant telescope on the barren summit of Mauna Kea, a volcano on Hawaii's Big Island, considered the best observatory site in the Northern Hemisphere. The project, however, has long drawn the opposition of those who say it would desecrate the mountain's sacred ground. On Wednesday, that opposition had a new face: About 30 Hawaiian elders were arrested as they blocked a road leading to Mauna Kea's summit to halt the construction, organizers said. They described an emotional but peaceful scene as the elders, who were sitting under tents on the road, were escorted by police officers to nearby white vans while dozens of other protesters chanted and cried. Some had to be carried. "We have come to the point in time where enough is enough," Leilani Kaapuni, one of the elders, said in a phone interview. She said she was arrested for obstruction of a government road but later returned to the blockade. "This mountain is sacred," she said.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Science
The beauty industry's main creative forces, including hairstylists and makeup artists, have been dominated by queer people and people of color. That diverse interior is belied by a white, cisgender, straight exterior: one that the mainstream beauty industry produces. But now because of social media's influence, creators who were once in the background are quasi celebrities, at least among their tribe. This dynamic is essential to Beautycon, where excited crowds gathered to watch a demonstration by Cardi B's wig stylist Tokyo Stylez (and lined up afterward to snap a selfies with him). Panelists like Lizzo, Zendaya, Bozoma Saint John of Uber and Alok V Menon discussed all manner of beauty and how to use it to express one's individuality. "There's so many different kinds of beauty," Lizzo said. "I think we think that it's definable because they've put a price tag on it. But you take that price tag off you take that waist trainer off of beauty and it just explodes all over the place. Everyone in here is beautiful." Alok V Menon said: "When I do my makeup, I'm doing it to create a better world. I'm not just doing it to be superficially cute I mean there too, I'm always looking cute. But I'm doing it because I'm trying to create a world where people can go outside and not be afraid. I'm trying to create a world where people can go out outside and figure it out, experiment. Try something new. Try a new gender. Try a new hair color. Try a new sexuality." At the same time, the beauty industry at large despite its protestations in the form of body positive campaigns is still selling a standard most cannot achieve. Because big brands, influencers and fans all descend upon Beautycon, the industry's central tension is on full display there. Pastel highlighter is for everyone. If I had to pick the Beautycon look, it would be pastel highlighter, in either iridescence or full on glitter. For me, highlighter has always had a single purpose: to make my skin look like it naturally radiates warm light. Pastel highlighter's conspicuousness was a nonstarter. But Beautycon showed me that pastel's full presence is exactly the point it's celebratory, decorative, irreverent. Among the new, small brands I found at Beautycon, a common theme was "brand inception as solution." One day while on her way to a job interview, Oyinade Ademiluyi, a pharmacist from Maryland, discovered that she'd gotten foundation on her shirt. So she covered it with a blazer. Out of that experience came the Beat Bib, a black cover up designed to catch all makeup dust and crumbles before they hit your clothes. Panty Fresh, created by Neda Shilian, is a palm size go box of spare panties, a panty liner, wipe and bag. "This is a product I needed for myself," Ms. Shilian said. "You're out and about and something happens. But this you can always have in your bag. You'll forget it's there." Apparently Hillary Clinton and the Beautycon C.E.O., Moj Mahdara, have maintained a friendship since 2016 when Beautycon developed a Town Hall for Mrs. Clinton. (She also attended Ms. Mahdara's and her partner's baby shower late last year.) Mrs. Clinton arrived at the Beautycon backstage area amid the buzz that always descends right before a big celebrity enters a room. She posed for pictures with Ms. Mahdara and Lucy Hale, who had just given a talk about self love. I'm too short to get photos in crowds, so I just stood back and watched dozens of diverse beauty folks press in around Mrs. Clinton. She was gone as quickly as she had arrived.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Style
Glenn Close as Roy Cohn and S. Epatha Merkerson as Belize in a scene from the upcoming virtual performance of excerpts from "Angels in America." Glenn Close's cheeks are bruised, her eyes half closed; a clear oxygen tube snakes out of her nostrils under a mop of disheveled gray hair. The lamp on her night stand casts a long shadow across her face as she lies in bed at her home in Montana, too weak to move. In August, the Tony Award winning actress served as her own wig master, makeup artist and camera operator (with the help of her niece Seonaid Campbell, a filmmaker) as she transformed into Roy Cohn, the closeted gay lawyer, to shoot a scene from "Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes." A starry cast that also includes Laura Linney, Patti LuPone, S. Epatha Merkerson and Jeremy O. Harris will present a free hourlong virtual benefit performance of seven scenes from "Angels in America," Tony Kushner's two part 1993 play about the AIDS epidemic, on Oct. 8. The show, which can be streamed live at 8:30 p.m. on the Broadway.com YouTube channel, will be a benefit for the Foundation for AIDS Research (amfAR) Fund to Fight Covid 19. Though the 15 actors filmed themselves in separate locations, in a feat of technical wizardry, their likenesses have been collaged together to make it look as though they are in the same room. "It lives between a theater piece and a film," the performance's director, Ellie Heyman, said. "I've never worked on anything like it." The casting often departs from tradition, and changes from scene to scene. The drug addicted housewife Harper Pitt is typically played by a woman in her early 30s, but in this production, the 89 year old actress Lois Smith tackles the role. And Brian Tyree Henry, a Black man, is one of three performers stepping into a part usually filled by a white actor: Prior Walter, a 30 year old gay man who contracts AIDS. (The other two will be Paul Dano and Andrew Rannells.) The play, which debuted on Broadway in 1993 to glowing reviews, tells the story of two young couples, one gay and one heterosexual, whose lives intersect and unravel amid the AIDS crisis. In a review of the 2018 Broadway revival, the New York Times critic Ben Brantley called the Tony Award and Pulitzer Prize winning epic "arguably the most important play of the second half of the 20th century." While the initial fear that surrounded the AIDS epidemic has dissipated given that a diagnosis is no longer a death sentence, Kushner said he found new relevance in the work in light of the coronavirus pandemic. "The world is being clobbered by a thing that reminded me of the 'gay cancer' I first read about when I was 25," he said in an interview this week. The actors filmed themselves on iPhones in locations from Bozeman, Mont. (Close) to London (Harris). Close borrowed an IV pole, oxygen tube and hospital gown, then used tin foil and a 15 watt light bulb from her refrigerator to ensure a shadow was in the right place for the hospital room scene. "We made this with duct tape and cardboard," Heyman, the director, said. "And a lot of love." Perhaps most impressive is the composite angel in a scene from "Perestroika," the second play. Four actresses LuPone, Linda Emond, Nikki James and Daphne Rubin Vega recorded themselves individually, with strict guidelines: Their hair had to be pulled back "really tight," Heyman said. They wore black tops and no makeup. "They had to look totally raw and bare," Heyman said. Their faces were then laid seamlessly on top of one another. "When Linda looks down and blinks, Patti's face comes in, and her eyelids come up," Heyman said. The process took Kevan Loney, the production's composite editor, an average of 50 hours per week for six weeks. "It was truly a labor of love for everyone involved," Heyman said. "The Great Work Begins: Scenes from 'Angels in America'" will be followed by a live conversation between Kushner; Heyman; Kevin Robert Frost, the chief executive of the Foundation for AIDS Research; and several of the actors, which will be accessible to viewers who donate 100 or more. They will discuss the play, as well as activism and Covid 19 research.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Theater
CHICAGO Musicals depend on extremes. Without big emotion, there's no call for big expression. And without big expression, how do we get big belting and confetti? But the question for me has always been: At what point does the urge to overwhelm an audience swamp the sea walls of storytelling? As it happens, two musicals I saw during a recent visit here five months into the "Year of Chicago Theater" offered opposite answers to that question, from opposite moments in their development. At Writers Theater, a post Broadway "Next to Normal" turns the volume way down on a show with screamy DNA. And, at the Chicago Shakespeare Theater, a new, presumably pre Broadway musical called "Six" blows out the amps with its pop historical hysteria. "Six" seems destined to occupy a top spot in the confetti canon . Framed as a live singing competition among the six wives of Henry VIII you could call it "The Tudor Voice" it revels in the ritualistic suspense and hype of such events. But instead of asking judges to reward the contestants' vocal pyrotechnics, "Six" instructs the audience to choose as the winner the wife whose story is most pathetic. "The Queen who was dealt the worst hand / Shall be the one to lead the band," one lyric goes. Each of the six then offers a precis of her story and sings a number that slyly pins her character to a pop genre. Catherine of Aragon (Adrianna Hicks) gets a defiant Beyonce esque anthem ("No Way"); Anne Boleyn (Andrea Macasaet), a hip hop earworm ("Don't Lose Ur Head"); Jane Seymour (Abby Mueller), an emo ballad called "Heart of Stone"; and Katherine Howard (Samantha Pauly), an Ariana Grande style shot of bubble gum sass called "All You Wanna Do" with an Ariana Grande ponytail to top it off. Toby Marlow and Lucy Moss, who started writing the musical while students at Cambridge University in 2017, mine plenty of humor from the anachronistic pairings and the catty contemporary byplay. Aragon identifies Howard as "the least relevant Katherine." A hilarious "Sprockets" like house music spoof called "Haus of Holbein" shows how Anna of Cleves (Brittney Mack) supposedly came to Henry's attention thanks to the master's painting. It's a tidy concept, but tidy concepts are often undermined by a lack of theatrical stamina. Not so here. Directed by Ms. Moss and Jamie Armitage, "Six" delivers pure entertainment throughout its headlong 80 minutes. The wickedly smart lyrics are well set on tunes that are both catchy and meaty; the cast of terrific singers sells them unstintingly, straight to the joyful finale. And the production values especially Tim Deiling's arena rock lighting befit a splashy North American premiere with Broadway backing . (After Chicago, it travels to Cambridge, Mass., Edmonton, Alberta and who knows where else.) It also helps that the show's success at Edinburgh Festival Fringe last year, and now in London, has spawned the kind of fan base (they listen to the English cast recording on Spotify) that ensures both an audience and an adulatory mood. But "Six" is up to something more complicated than a real pop competition would be. It uses the familiar elements of the forms expressively, and in ways that creep up on you with surprises. I won't spoil those surprises here, but when Catherine Parr (Anna Uzele) finally steps into the spotlight, "Six" pulls the rug out from under itself by giving voice to the story's full darkness. Naturally, it also suggests a way out of that darkness in a rush of sisterhood, then ends on a high point punctuated with confetti. "Six" might seem an odd fit for Chicago Shakes, as the theater is often called; "Hamlet" is playing in its other auditorium. But the company's handsome Navy Pier complex is already somewhat incongruous amid the tourist attractions (Bubba Gump Shrimp Co., the Centennial Ferris wheel) sticking out into Lake Michigan. Heading to leafy, staid, suburban Glencoe to see "Next to Normal" at Writers Theater at first seemed just as incongruous. The musical, which opened on Broadway in 2009, is not a show I ever regarded as quiet. In fact, I felt that it suffered from a case of what I called emphasitis: "the enervating result of a synesthetic assault on the audience's attention by talented people overdoing everything." That problem seemed inseparable from the story, about a woman whose mental illness is reaching a crisis point for herself and her family. Though we are told that Diana Goodman is a bipolar depressive with delusional episodes, we are mostly affected by her mania, notably during a frenzied episode in which she makes what looks like a month's worth of sandwiches by arranging the ingredients all over her kitchen floor. Alice Ripley deservedly won a Tony Award for her heartbreaking performance as Diana, and the show itself music by Tom Kitt, book and lyrics by Brian Yorkey won the Pulitzer Prize. At the time, these seemed to me to be awards for ingenuity rather than achievement: for taking on such a serious, difficult subject and wringing popular entertainment from it. (The show ran on Broadway for two years.) The Writers Theater production, directed by David Cromer, completely alters the show's balance. Reimagined for a 251 seat theater with a thrust stage, and built for a local audience instead of a national one, it feels more intimate and also more accurate. The boundary between Diana's sanity and insanity is not a bright line she stalks across, but a no man's land she wanders through, sometimes emerging on one side, sometimes the other. And though Diana, played by the Chicago actress Keely Vasquez, is still the harrowing center of the show, the story spreads out more evenly to encompass its effects on her husband (David Schlumpf) and daughter (Kyrie Courter). That this happens with no loss of musical value the full original orchestration is used, and Ms. Vasquez sounds a lot like a less amplified Ms. Ripley is a tribute to the delicacy a nonprofit theater allows. It's also a tribute to Mr. Cromer, a native of nearby Skokie known for his quiet touch. (His gorgeous Broadway production of "The Band's Visit" may have been the lowest key Best Musical in Tonys history.) If tempering "Next to Normal" dampens some of its laughs small audiences are harder to tickle the loss is worth it for the deeper impression you get in return. Like " Six " at the other end of the dial, it may have found its true volume. Through Aug. 4 at the Yard at Chicago Shakespeare Theater, Chicago; 312 595 5600, chicagoshakes.com. Running time: 1 hour 20 minutes.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Theater
The border between the United States and Mexico is in the news every day, in ongoing debates about immigration and spending on security initiatives. But what is it like to visit destinations along the border? To find out, writers for Travel spent time in five pairings of places: Brownsville, Tex., and Matamoros, Mexico; El Paso and Ciudad Juarez;Big Bend National Park and Boquillas; San Diego and Tijuana; and Nogales, Ariz., and Nogales across the border in Mexico. "Please don't write another story about drugs," Sigrid Maitrejean, a volunteer guide at the Pimeria Alta Museum inside the old city hall in Nogales, Ariz., beseeched me in a playful tone. It was not the only time during my three day visit to the region that people would make a similar plea: enough of the endless media stories and political rhetoric about the supposedly dangerous United States Mexico border, which only serve to keep visitors away. Residents of this town of 20,000 souls wanted me to see the Nogales they see: a place steeped in layers of rich history and culture, which maintains a uniquely special relationship with its namesake and sister city across the border, Nogales, Sonora. And indeed, in the two Nogaleses or Ambos Nogales, as locals refer to them I found the most quintessential of all the border cities. The descendant of families that were already living in the Texas border region when the international boundary was drawn up in 1848, I grew up almost in two countries, spending Sundays across the border immersed in the Mexican universe of my abuelitos and tias and primos. We didn't talk about it like we were visiting another country we went to el otro lado, the other side. I liked that my sisters and I could choose what we loved about each of our two upbringings, and creatively mix languages and systems of meaning. There are 16 sets of sister cities that line the 1,950 mile United States Mexico border, and as a journalist who has focused on the region, I've experienced all but two of them. While I'd been in Nogales before to report on immigration and the border wall, what I learned on this visit is that calling Ambos Nogales "one town in two countries" may be a slight exaggeration, but it's a very apt metaphor. And this is what makes it a fascinating place to visit. The land was not part of the original territory gained by the Americans at the end of the Mexican War, but the United States government acquired it in 1853, through the Gadsden Purchase, to build the southern transcontinental railway line. Foreseeing the boon in international commerce that intersecting railroads could bring, two Russian brothers named Jacob and Isaac Isaacson set up a trading post in 1880, which was renamed Nogales by the U.S. Postal Service soon thereafter. To support the new trade, a community emerged on the Mexican side of the line that people also referred to as Nogales. Unlike the Texas border, however, where the boundary is defined by the Rio Grande, Arizona's is a land border, and in Nogales, the border was an unobstructed street called International, half of which technically lay in one country, half in another. Around it, a seemingly singular town spread north and south. But managing an international division, it turned out, wasn't simple. The first fence on the United States Mexico border went up here after the Mexican government called for it. The United States government had grown wary after the Mexican Revolution began in 1910, and relations had tensed as each side accused the other of banditry and incursions. The United States set up a military camp in Nogales, Ariz., and General John J. Pershing was dispatched to chase after the Mexican revolutionary leader Pancho Villa. The Sonora governor put up an 11 wire fence, which got torn down four months later. In 1918, after the two cities went to war for a day because an American guard shot a Mexican citizen at the border crossing, authorities on both sides agreed to construct a permanent chain link fence between them. But as life resumed, the fence became a technicality, not a reflection of how people related across the line. During Prohibition, Mexicans built saloons that straddled the border, so that patrons could drink so long as they were on the correct side of the building. Ms. Maitrejean remembers how this tight knit existence endured as she was growing up. In the 1950s, a Mexican shop on International Street would put up a huge blackboard to transmit the World Series as nogalenses watched the games excitedly from the United States side. On Cinco de Mayo, city leaders would build a platform over the fence and crowned a binational queen as a joint parade marched across the border. Eventually, migration from other parts of Mexico grew through the area, and stricter United States enforcement followed. "The border crossing was getting more difficult," said Ms. Maitrejean, "and, of course, once they put up our horrible Vietnam landing mat fence in the '90s, that was really the end." Made of 10 foot panels of corrugated steel that the United States Army had used to land helicopters in the Vietnam War, that was the fence that locals most resented, for it blocked the view they had always had to the other side. Then in 2011, the federal government replaced it with a rust colored steel bollard fence, encased in cement footing with four inch slats between the bars. Now, the two Nogaleses could see each other again, somewhat. Soon, families that didn't have the right paperwork to cross started coming to either side on weekends to catch up with each other across the bollards. Today, Jessy Zamorano, the owner and operator of Baja Arizona Tours, is struck by how her clients, many of whom are from the northeast or Midwest, react when she takes them to the fence. "Women are very much more sympathetic," she said. "They will look at it, and some find it quite shocking and obtuse. But many of the men say, 'build it higher.'" When they spot some of the families reaching between steel bars to hug each other, or holding up a newborn baby for their relatives on the other side to meet, she said, "women will frequently cry." Driving south the 60 miles from Tucson, where the closest commercial airport is, the highway rises thousands of feet as the desert scrublands of the lower Sonoran desert give way to hilly terrain ringed by the Santa Rita, San Cayetano and Tumacacori mountains. Almost everything is bilingual and international. Twice, I assumed that individuals with fair skin and Anglo last names were white, only to learn they had at least one Mexican parent. I met Mexicans who had dual citizenship and owned homes on both sides of the border, and white residents who spoke excellent Spanish. The Paul Bond Boots shop that has made the traditional custom boots of classic Western films is staffed by Mexican craftsmen. "I sit here every day and I marvel at it. I totally do," said Nils Urman, the executive director of the Nogales Community Development Corporation. A native of Germany, he married into a local family in the late 1970s. "I think it's the most fascinating thing I've seen in my life, and I've been here 38 years." And there's more diversity in the city than American and Mexican, he said. "This community's got French, it's got Irish in it, it's got Greek in it, and they're on both sides of the border." One painting, which makes a haunting image at night when the streetlights reflect the wall's bars onto the street below it, simply shows the boyish face of a teenage boy. It memorializes Jose Antonio Elena Rodriguez, a 16 year old who authorities say in 2012 was throwing rocks to distract Border Patrol agents as two males tried to drop back down to the Mexican side of fence after smuggling bundles of marijuana. One of the agents shot through the fence and killed the young man on Mexican land. The border and its themes naturally infuse some of the artistic production of Nogales, Sonora, because of the way it shapes the artists' daily lives, said Elena Vega, a local poet and photographer who also experiments through painting, dance, music and spoken word. "In the art world, it's always like that some people live over there and come play here, or else we go and present our work over there," she said. "So, it's a coming and going. Maybe my work has that essence, but it's not that I'm looking for it. It happens, it emerges from the work." While Mexico, like the United States, sometimes looks down upon its border cities, Ms. Vega said it is creative precisely because it's a fluid, heavily traversed zone. "I think it's the border environment. There's more openness, it's more diverse." Even as downtown Nogales, Sonora, also struggles to remain vibrant with fewer Americans crossing over, the rest of the city is thriving, seemingly growing by the day and producing not just art, but a new gastronomic culture, said Alex La Pierre, the program director for the Border Community Alliance. The alliance, which works with organizations in both countries to increase social investment and improve Americans' understanding of the border, offers tours for Americans who prefer to visit with a guide. One of the tours introduces them to nonprofits including a migrant shelter. Another takes them to a craft brewery and to Calle Hermosillo, a long street that is home to many new restaurants and bars. "Sonora, in addition to having the best beef in all of Mexico," Mr. La Pierre said, "also has some of the best seafood in Mexico, because they're adjacent to the Gulf of California, which Jacques Cousteau called 'the aquarium of the world.' What I tell our guests is that Sonora really has the best of surf and turf." On a warm Saturday in early January, as I walked the downtown zone, averting my eyes to avoid the many vendors who will immediately try to pull you into their curio shops, I felt the energy change immediately. Mexican border cities are always a little busier and more alive than their American counterparts. Cars backed out of parking spots from every direction, and people moved briskly along the sidewalks. Amid endless pharmacies and dental offices catering to mostly gone Americans, local life pulsed and thrived. As I turned a corner and made my way toward Calle Internacional, the street that once singularly marked the border, to view the wall art, I glimpsed a young woman on the American side of the fence who was reaching through it as she lovingly stroked the head of a teenage boy squatting on the other side. And I remembered Jessy Zamorano's comment about tourists reacting when they witness these displays of humanity. It seems something fantastic happens when you draw a line on the ground: People almost instinctively reach out across it toward each other. And that's a hard thing to appreciate from anywhere else but the border.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Travel
Nicolas Miailhe, a co founder of the Future Society, asking a question during a gathering of global policymakers last week at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. How Do You Govern Machines That Can Learn? Policymakers Are Trying to Figure That Out CAMBRIDGE, Mass. Hal Abelson, a renowned computer scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, was working the classroom, coffee cup in hand, pacing back and forth. The subject was artificial intelligence, and his students last week were mainly senior policymakers from countries in the 36 nation Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. Mr. Abelson began with a brisk history of machine learning, starting in the 1950s. Next came a description of how the technology works, a hands on project using computer vision models and then case studies. The goal was to give the policymakers from countries like France, Japan and Sweden a sense of the technology's strengths and weaknesses, emphasizing the crucial role of human choices. "These machines do what they do because they are trained," Mr. Abelson said. The class was part of a three day gathering at M.I.T., including expert panels, debate and discussion, as the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development seeks to agree on recommendations for artificial intelligence policy by this summer. But where are policymakers supposed to even start? Artificial intelligence seems to be everywhere, much hyped, much feared yet little understood. Some proclaim A.I. will be an elixir of prosperity, while others warn it will be a job killer, even an existential threat to humanity. The organization's declarations, when they come, will not carry the force of law. But its recommendations have a track record of setting standards in many countries, including guidelines, going back to 1980, that called on nations to enact legislation to protect privacy and defined personal data as any information that can be used to identify an individual. The recommendations carry weight because the organization's mission is to foster responsible economic development, balancing innovation and social protections. Rules are needed to make the world safe for A.I. and let A.I. flourish. Regulation is coming. That's a good thing. Rules of competition and behavior are the foundation of healthy, growing markets. That was the consensus of the policymakers at M.I.T. But they also agreed that artificial intelligence raises some fresh policy challenges. Today's machine learning systems are so complex, digesting so much data, that explaining how they make decisions may be impossible. So do you just test for results? Do you put self driving cars through a driver's test? If an A.I. system predicts breast cancer better than humans on average, do you just go with the machine? Probably. "It's very clear you have to use it," said Regina Barzilay, an M.I.T. computer scientist and a breast cancer survivor. But handing off a growing array of decisions is uncomfortable terrain. Practical rules that reassure the public are the only path toward A.I. adoption. Everyone, not just the superpowers, wants to shape A.I. policy. New regulation is often equated with slower growth. But the policymakers at the event said they did not want to stop the A.I. train. Instead, they said, they want their countries fully on board. Nations that have explicit A.I. strategies, like France and Canada, consider the technology an engine of growth, and seek to educate and recruit the next generation of researchers. "Machine learning is the next truly disruptive technology," said Elissa Strome, who oversees A.I. strategy at the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research, a government funded organization. "There are huge opportunities for machine learning in fields like energy, environment, transportation and health care." International cooperation, the attendees said, would help ensure that policymaking was not simply left by default to the A.I. superpowers: the United States, which is a member of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, and China, which is not. "We think there can be a new model for the development of artificial intelligence that differs from China or California," said Bertrand Pailhes, the national coordinator for France's A.I. strategy. In the view of Mr. Pailhes and others, China is a government controlled surveillance state. In the American model, coming from Silicon Valley in California, a handful of internet companies become big winners and society is treated as a data generating resource to be strip mined. "The era of moving fast and breaking everything is coming to a close," said R. David Edelman, an adviser in the Obama administration and the director of the project on technology, policy and national security at M.I.T. One specific policy issue dominated all others: the collection, handling and use of data. Fast computers and clever algorithms are important, but the recent explosion of digital data from the web, smartphones, sensors, genomics and elsewhere is the oxygen of modern A.I. "Access to data is going to be the most important thing" for advancing science, said Antonio Torralba, director of the M.I.T. Quest for Intelligence project. So much data is held privately that without rules on privacy and liability, data will not be shared and advances in fields like health care will by stymied. Artificial intelligence can magnify the danger of data driven injustice. Public interest advocates point to the troubling missteps with the technology software, for example, that fails to recognize the faces of black women or crime prediction programs used in courtrooms that discriminate against African Americans. In such cases, data is the problem. The results were biased because the data that went into them was biased skewed toward white males for facial recognition and the comparatively high percentage of African Americans in the prison population. "Are we just going to make the current racist system more effective, or are we going to get rid of embedded bias?" asked Carol Rose, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts. These are issues of both technology design and policy. "Who is being mistreated? Who is being left out?" Mr. Abelson asked the class. "As you think about regulation, that is what you should be thinking about."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Technology
OAKLAND, Calif. Just as government officials step up their antitrust scrutiny of the American tech giants, Google had a surprising announcement on Thursday: It is buying another company. Google said it planned to buy the data analytics company Looker for 2.6 billion in a bid to catch up to rivals in the business of cloud computing. The transaction, which is subject to government approval, will be an immediate test for regulators. "A few years ago, this deal would have been waved through without much scrutiny," said Paul Gallant, a tech analyst with Cowen who focuses on regulatory issues. "We're in a different world today, and there might well be some buyer's remorse from regulators on prior tech deals like this." A primary argument against the tech giants' power is their history of gaining size by acquiring other companies, and some politicians have suggested breaking up corporations like Google and Facebook.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Technology
The ABC family sitcom "black ish" has not been shy about plunging into difficult and controversial issues, like the 2016 election, racial slurs and police brutality. But a recent politically charged episode was pulled after a dispute between the network and Kenya Barris, the show's creator. "Given our creative differences, neither ABC nor I were happy with the direction of the episode and mutually agreed not to air it," Mr. Barris said in a statement. The episode, titled "Please, Baby, Please," was slated to air on Feb. 27 but was replaced by a rerun. According to Variety, the episode centers on Dre (Anthony Anderson) telling an improvised bedtime story to his infant son that touches on social and political issues in the United States, including a debate over the right of athletes to kneel during the national anthem. "One of the things that has always made 'black ish' so special is how it deftly examines delicate social issues in a way that simultaneously entertains and educates," a network representative said in a statement to Variety. "However, on this episode there were creative differences we were unable to resolve." ABC did not immediately respond to a request for comment.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Television
Side by Side and No Finish Line in Sight for Alexi Pappas During a rap concert on the Dartmouth campus in October 2009, Alexi Pappas, dressed in a full body leotard and sitting in the front row, was called on stage to dance. Ms. Pappas, then a sophomore on the school's cross country team and a member of the Dog Day Players, an on campus improvisational theater group, accepted the invitation. As Ms. Pappas began to dance and the decibel level began to rise, Jeremy Teicher, a senior and aspiring filmmaker who was on stage covering the event as a photographer, trained his lens on Ms. Pappas. "I couldn't look away," he said. "I was just thrown by her beauty." Mr. Teicher soon began asking around about the girl whose image he could not get out of his mind. As it turned out, Mr. Teicher had met Ms. Pappas the previous semester at a campus party. "We even danced together that night, but he doesn't remember," Ms. Pappas said, laughing. "By the time we met on stage, I already knew who he was, and had been drawn to him in a passer by kind of way, but he didn't know I existed." The existence of Ms. Pappas, now 28 and an Olympic athlete, actress, writer and filmmaker, is well known by sports and theater fans as well as a legion of young girls who want to be a professional distance runner like her. She has more than 34,000 Instagram followers and nearly as many on Twitter. A Greek American dual citizen who competed for Greece in the 2016 Rio Olympic Games, Ms. Pappas set a Greek national record of 31 minutes, 36 seconds in the 10,000 meter race. She is training now to represent Greece in the marathon for the 2020 Games. Daisy Jones, who had been a classmate of Mr. Teicher since their freshman year, noticed a significant change in the way he acted around Ms. Pappas early in their relationship. "The way he prioritized her, the way he talked about her, it was obvious very early on that he was extremely serious about her," Ms. Jones said. "They are two people who are very much in love, two people who always put each other first." A month after his alone time request, Ms. Pappas was stunned yet again by Mr. Teicher, this time on a quiet Sunday morning as they waited on a breakfast line in a diner at Dartmouth. "What are you going to order?" Mr. Teicher asked. "And will you go to the formal with me?" Ms. Pappas was so taken by surprise, she could only utter the words, "Egg and tomato on a bagel and yes." "So we went to the formal together that year," she said, "and we became an official couple." So official in fact, that they would carve their initials on a tree on campus and go on to forge a partnership, with Mr. Teicher editing Ms. Pappas's screenplays and poetry, and she editing his film scripts. "We began collaborating just for fun," said Mr. Teicher, now 29 and an award winning film director, writer, and producer whose credits include the feature films "Tracktown" and "Tall as the Baobab Tree," and the short film series "Olympic Dreams" and "Speed Goggles." It wasn't long, however, before their collaboration became much more intense. "We began inspiring each other and pushing each other like teammates," Ms. Pappas said. "We made each other believe in ourselves, and as a team, we began to believe that we could achieve any goal we set together. "I had been writing poetry at the time, and though I loved doing it, it was still six hours a day of writing, all alone," she said. "But when I started working with Jeremy, it was suddenly invigorating." She went on, albeit begrudgingly, to the University of Oregon, turning down full academic scholarships to pursue various master's degrees in writing from Columbia, Southern California and the University of California, Irvine, to run on full athletic scholarship at the top cross country program in the nation. "I gave up on a poetry degree to go to Oregon because it was the best school in the country for running," she said with a sigh, failing to mention that she helped lead Oregon's cross country team to the 2012 N.C.A.A. women's title, the same year that Mr. Teicher's "Tall as the Baobab Tree," which he wrote with Ms. Pappas, made its world premier. "Jeremy and my professors were fully supportive of that decision, as was my family, she said, referring mainly to her father, John Pappas of Alameda, Calif., who works as an energy policy principal at the Pacific Gas and Electric Company in San Francisco, as well as her stepmother, Kristina Pappas and older brother, Louis Pappas. (Her mother, Roberta Pappas, died in 1995, when Ms. Pappas was 4.) "Nevertheless," said Ms. Pappas, who earned a master's degree in interdisciplinary studies at Oregon, "I remember feeling sick about turning down those three offers." "They were difficult decisions for both of us as we each turned down a sure thing for an unsure thing," Mr. Teicher said, "but we were just following our dreams." In the summer of 2013, Mr. Teicher left his Manhattan apartment to live with Ms. Pappas in Eugene, Ore., where she was finishing up a master's degree, and beginning to train for the 2016 Olympics with the Oregon Track Club Elite. That year, Mr. Teicher was named by Filmmaker Magazine one of the "25 New Faces of Independent Film" in 2013. Three years later, Ms. Pappas's and Mr. Teicher's dreams began coming to fruition. She was then a Nike Pro competing in the 2016 Olympic Games in Rio, where she ran with a trademark bun in her hair that seemed to propel her around the track and helped transform her into a darling of the games. "I think one of the main reasons so many girls look up to me is due to the trajectory of my athletic career," Ms. Pappas said. "I went from being the worst runner on my college team to being an Olympian, and they know that it took a lot of hard work to get there." Earlier this year, Ms. Pappas and Mr. Teicher created the film series "Olympic Dreams" where Ms. Pappas stars alongside Nick Kroll as part of the International Olympic Committee's new Artist In Residence Program. Ms. Pappas is currently writing a book of essays for Random House called "Bravey" her young fans call themselves Bravies that will be published sometime before the 2020 Olympic Games in Tokyo. Mr. Teicher is contributing his editing skills. "The collaboration lives on," Ms. Pappas said. They were married June 3 at the Madison Hotel in Morristown, N.J. Max Cooper, a Universal Life minister and friend of the couple, led a Jewish ceremony before 130 family members and friends. The bride walked down the aisle with her father, to "Memories of You" by Louis Armstrong, performed by the band the Creswell Club. Shortly after at the reception, also at the Madison Hotel, the bride's father, John Pappas, was saying much the same. "They are two very creative people who always seem to be on the same wavelength and always seem to bring out the best in each other. They make perfect partners." "After all these years, we're still side by side," she said. "And it's going to stay that way forever, just like our initials on that tree at Dartmouth."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Fashion & Style
JOEL Raphaelson's most famous contribution to pop culture was hardly his favorite piece of copywriting. "A little too clunky," he said. "The truth is I wasn't especially proud of it." He is proud now, though, at age 87. And after a career in advertising that spanned more than 40 years, that the pithy phrase he suggested in a May 1964 memo "Nationwide is on your side" still stands out in an increasingly fragmented and chaotic marketing landscape. Today, few companies can boast that they have remained loyal to their messaging from a campaign born in the 1960s. But the words became so emblematic of Nationwide's ethos that Mr. Raphaelson's typewritten memo once hung in the lobby of its headquarters. The words themselves are hardly even necessary anymore; Peyton Manning needs only to hum Nationwide's infectious jingle for commercial viewers to recognize it. Nationwide brought things back full circle last month, when it named Mr. Raphaelson's former employer, Ogilvy Mather Worldwide, its lead creative agency, replacing McKinney after seven years. Ogilvy, part of WPP, lost the account in 1993, and then in 2013 was added to a roster of agencies involved in the account. Now, it will again handle Nationwide's account on its own. This presents Adam Tucker, president of Ogilvy Mather Advertising New York, with a relatively unique challenge: Can a brand's messaging stay relevant even when it is tied directly to a tag line that is older than many of its customers? In truth, Mr. Tucker said in an interview from his office on Manhattan's West Side, the success of Nationwide's more recent campaigns, in particular those with Mr. Manning, has helped the 52 year old "on your side" message reach newer audiences. "In the case of Nationwide, I think it's been a competitive business advantage to stay true to the line," Mr. Tucker said. He compared it with another of Ogilvy's clients, IBM, which has had to change its tag line several times to keep up with trends in the technology space. "We went from e business to Smarter Planet to Outthink, the new line today," Mr. Tucker said of IBM. "It depends a lot on the category and the business and what makes sense for the brand." Terrance Williams, Nationwide's chief marketing officer, says the company annually assesses the influence of the motto but feels it still connects with customers. "We try to ensure that we're resonating, creating content that's relevant, that cuts through, but maintains the truism of who we are as an organization," Mr. Williams said. "'On your side,' in our view, is really the best way we can convey why we are unique." It is not always a given that a longstanding slogan should be grandfathered into every new campaign. In 2012, the car rental company Avis dumped its famous tag line, "We try harder," after 50 years for a new direction: focusing on corporate, rather than leisure, clients. Netflix buys a visual effects company in a move to support its global ambitions. 15 minimum wage for federal contractors will take effect Jan. 30. Striking that balance between loyalty to tradition and the desire for something new is not always easy. Wheaties, for instance, has been known as the "breakfast of champions" since 1933, and as such, it has featured star athletes including Lou Gehrig and Michael Jordan on the front of its cereal boxes. But today, part of the slogan's success, according to Dave Oehler, marketing manager for Wheaties, derives from its versatility allowing Wheaties to appeal to a range of fans, even those who follow mixed martial arts or motocross. "This idea of celebrating champions but being able to redefine how we think about champions is what's great about it," Mr. Oehler said. "It still has the flexibility to allow us to evolve." Maxwell House has used the slogan "Good to the last drop" in all of its messaging since 1917, when the phrase was supposedly uttered by Theodore Roosevelt after a cup of the coffee. "It's a huge part of the brand's DNA," Matt Plumb, director of marketing for Maxwell House, said of the slogan. "But we still need to make sure it communicates our brand's point of view, our benefits and that those continue to resonate with consumers." Most brands today are much quicker to give up on a slogan if it does not gain immediate traction. Dave Taylor, president of Taylor Brand Group, a consulting firm, said the segmentation of the media marketplace has forced some companies to create splintered messages rather than unifying behind a single slogan. Social media has also made marketing managers more sensitive to criticism than in the past. "It can take a lot of courage, I think, for a brand to say, 'Hey, I think this is a good slogan, and we're going to help people understand what we mean by it,'" Mr. Taylor said. Mr. Taylor also notes that it might not be a coincidence that another long lasting active slogan belongs to Allstate, Nationwide's competitor, which has used the phrase "You're in good hands" since 1950. "The insurance business itself doesn't change a lot," Mr. Taylor said. "The concept of the product isn't new it's about security, feeling comfortable with what you got." Mr. Raphaelson typically refuses to accept much praise for "Nationwide is on your side," which he said he discovered while flipping through old insurance records from a competitor, State Farm. He could not say for sure why the phrase has resonated, but he thinks that it has had a big effect on Nationwide. "They internalized it as a kind of stance for the attitude that they wanted their agents to take," Mr. Raphaelson said. "That it should govern their relations with their customers." Mr. Tucker said the endurance of "on your side" should also be partly attributed to the jingle, which has become catchy enough that the agency could replace the words with silly phrases like "chicken parm, you taste so good," such as in Mr. Manning's recent ads.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Media
Nathan Bajar for The New York Times The writer, restaurateur and former lawyer Eddie Huang is probably best known for his 2013 memoir, "Fresh Off the Boat," not to mention his trashing of the ABC sitcom based on the book. So it makes sense that Mr. Huang, the host of Viceland's "Huang's World," which returns for its second season on June 28, has a brash, unapologetic wardrobe. Mr. Huang's 24 karat ring was made by Justin the Jeweler on Canal Street. Nathan Bajar for The New York Times Raised in Orlando, Fla., and the Washington, D.C., area, Mr. Huang splits his time these days between Brooklyn and Los Angeles. He usually wears sweats while working on his novel or screenplay, but away from the desk, he doesn't shy away from fur, vintage Versace and gold. Pants Most of the time I wear these velour Adidas sweatpants. I particularly wear this dark purple one a lot. The pants are really comfortable, and in a weird way, because they're dark, they kind of go with everything. I've been wearing them since last fall. Then they got very popular. Kim Kardashian wore the same ones after she got robbed in Paris. Mr. Huang is the host of "Huang's World" on Viceland. Nathan Bajar for The New York Times Jacket I got this white fur jacket from Proper Gang, which might be rabbit fur. I bought it from Opening Ceremony. It's not the heaviest jacket, so you can even wear it for warmer weather. I wore it to a Knicks game with a T shirt and some gold accessories. Shoes If we're talking sneakers, a lot of us were Nike heads for a while. Then I really feel like there's been a switch over to Adidas. I did do a shoe collaboration with Adidas, but putting that aside, it's really because of the Boost sole. It's the most comfortable sole in the game right now. Accessory I have a 24k ring that says "Rice" that I had made by my boy Justin the Jeweler. He's on Canal Street, right next to Citibank. Shirt I got a couple vintage Versace silk shirts recently. They're old, with Egyptian gods and things on them. They're pretty cool. I got them from Brian Procell, who's this big vintage dealer on Delancey Street. I've known him for about 10 years. I wear a lot of vintage, but less now than, say, about three years ago. So many kids now wear the vintage hip hop concert tees. That vintage concert tee look is just annoying at this point. I think it's something people in New York know how to do. Then you come to L.A. and someone like Justin Bieber wears it with a fedora and I'm like, "I hate my closet now."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Fashion & Style
Two stars of the screen, Keri Russell and Adam Driver, are heading to Broadway. The pair has been cast in a revival of Lanford Wilson's "Burn This," which will open in March. Both actors are primarily known for their work in television and movies. Ms. Russell has been nominated for three Emmys for her work on "The Americans," while Mr. Driver is celebrated for "Girls" and the current "Star Wars" trilogy. (And both of them are set to appear in the upcoming "Star Wars: Episode IX.") But they have experience on the stage as well: Mr. Driver appeared on Broadway in "Mrs. Warren's Profession" and "Man and Boy," while Ms. Russell acted in Neil LaBute's "Fat Pig" in 2004. They will star as Anna and Pale in Mr. Wilson's play, which opened on Broadway in 1987 with Joan Allen and John Malkovich in the roles. The work explores the aftermath of the death of a young gay dancer, as his roommates reassess their lives and Anna and Pale hurtle into a stormy relationship. In a 2002 revival, the roles of Anna and Pale were taken on by Catherine Keener and Edward Norton. Michael Mayer ("Hedwig and the Angry Inch," "Spring Awakening") will direct the revival. The production was slated to arrive on Broadway in 2017 with Jake Gyllenhaal in the role of Pale, but was postponed because of scheduling conflicts.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Theater
As a freelance writer living in Toronto, Ms. Thompson also counts herself as a cultural critic with a focus on hip hop, and with her insights, she has built an audience via her personal website and social media feeds. So when she posted a tweet one evening late last month about Ms. Minaj's recent musical direction, Ms. Thompson hoped only to spark a conversation among the rap obsessives with whom she regularly communes. "You know how dope it would be if Nicki put out mature content?" Ms. Thompson wrote to her then 14,000 or so followers. "No silly" stuff, she added with an expletive. "Just reflecting on past relationships, being a boss, hardships, etc. She's touching 40 soon, a new direction is needed." What happened next was one part dystopian sci fi, and one part an everyday occurrence in pop culture circles online: The Nicki Minaj stans or superfans attacked. Then, galvanizing them further, Ms. Minaj chimed in, too. In the week since publicizing the acidic messages she received directly from Ms. Minaj, whose next album, "Queen," is scheduled for release in August, Ms. Thompson said she has received thousands of vicious, derogatory missives across Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, email and even her personal cellphone, calling her every variation of stupid and ugly, or worse. Some of the anonymous horde included pictures Ms. Thompson once posted on Instagram of her 4 year old daughter, while others told her to kill herself. Ms. Thompson also lost her internship at an entertainment blog in the chaotic days that followed, and she is now considering seeing a therapist. "I wouldn't wish this on my worst enemy," Ms. Thompson said through tears in an interview, calling herself "physically drained" and "mentally depleted." Never miss a pop music story: Sign up for our weekly newsletter, Louder. Such are the risks of the new media playing field, which may look level from afar, but still tilts toward the powerful. As social media has knocked down barriers between stars and their faithful (or their critics), direct communication among the uber famous and practically anonymous has become the norm. But while mutual praise can cause both sides to feel warm and tingly, more charged interactions can leave those who have earned a star's ire, like Ms. Thompson, reeling as eager followers take up the celebrity's cause. "Her fans mimic her behavior," Ms. Thompson said of Ms. Minaj, who responded to her critique after some of the rapper's 21 million followers brought the initial tweet to the attention of their queen. Ms. Minaj has been particularly present online lately, rallying her troops in the run up to her new album, as early songs from the project have failed to stick commercially. (Of her two songs as a lead artist currently on the Billboard Hot 100, none is higher than No. 81.) Ms. Minaj and her team declined to comment for this article. In response to Ms. Thompson, Ms. Minaj started obliquely, posting a list on Twitter of her own songs that she considered mature. But in a tweet the next day, Ms. Thompson revealed two direct messages from Ms. Minaj much of it in unprintable language in which the rapper called her "ugly" and implored, "Just say u jealous I'm rich, famous intelligent, pretty and go!" (Ms. Minaj also took issue with Ms. Thompson's characterization of her age; "I'm 34," Ms. Minaj wrote, before correcting herself in the next message: "My bad I'm 35.") It was far from an isolated incident. The practice of the celebrity "clap back" has earned its own recurring spotlight from influential gossip purveyors like the Shade Room, and stars are often praised for batting down some of the thousands of cruel, unfounded comments they receive every day. Still, some megaphones are louder than others. Last week, Chance the Rapper went off on a Twitter user with fewer than 600 followers who questioned how the rapper had proposed to his girlfriend. "I'm 1 person, and it shouldn't matter to him," the user, Its RianM, wrote after publicizing Chance's vexed response. Ms. Thompson, a freelance writer living in Toronto, said her battle with Ms. Minaj and her fans online has left her "physically drained" and "mentally depleted." Ms. Minaj's response to Ms. Thompson only served to rile up the Barbz, as the rapper calls her stans. (A "stan," as in Eminem's 2000 hit, is internet parlance for the most rabid, loyal kind of fan, devotees who often congregate in large groups online, tracking their chosen stars and their detractors as if they've taken a blood oath, or tallying industry stats and cutting down rivals like the most die hard Boston Red Sox obsessive.) In line with Lady Gaga's Little Monsters or Beyonce's BeyHive, which earned its own "Saturday Night Live" skit, Ms. Minaj's Barbz are a particularly active force, banding together to, say, send the rapper's singles up the iTunes chart. But when challenged, they can also strike with brute force. Since April, she had written remotely as an unpaid intern for KarenCivil.com, the eponymous blog of the hip hop media personality Karen Civil, who also advises artists on social media and brand strategy. Ms. Minaj is a client of Ms. Civil's a fact Ms. Thompson said she did not know when she wrote her initial tweet. But as Ms. Thompson's assessment picked up steam online that night, its signal boosted by outraged Nicki Minaj fans, she was told by KarenCivil.com staff in an internal group chat to delete the tweet. Around the same time, Ms. Thompson realized that she had been messaged privately by Ms. Minaj. "If I just posted the DM I got," Ms. Thompson tweeted cryptically, "I will lose A LOT. I want a career in writing and who will hire me after this? But this DM is DISGUSTING." Ms. Civil said in an interview that she and her staff believed Ms. Thompson's tweets were referring to their internal chat to her, and did not know at the time that Ms. Minaj had sent Ms. Thompson a direct message. Hours later, Ms. Thompson received an email from the site's chief operating officer, Christian Emiliano, informing her that her internship position had been terminated. Mr. Emiliano wrote that Ms. Thompson had been asked to be "respectful to any of the clients" with whom the site's leadership "are working with or are building a relationship." The email also stated that Ms. Thompson had violated a nondisclosure agreement "by talking about an in house and contained incident." (Ms. Thompson denies violating her N.D.A.) Ms. Civil said Ms. Minaj did not order Ms. Thompson's firing. Ms. Civil added that she contacted Ms. Thompson to smooth things over, and condemned the "cyberbullying" that resulted. "It's a very sad situation when fans take it upon themselves to say these things," she said.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Music
Charles R. Bentley, who in the 1950s led a team of scientists that measured the West Antarctic Ice Sheet for the first time, and who later explained the mechanics of the fast moving ice streams that drain the sheet, died on Aug. 19 at his home in Oakland, Calif. He was 87. The cause was complications of Parkinson's disease, his daughter, Molly Bentley, said. Professor Bentley was a doctoral candidate in geophysics at Columbia University when one of his teachers stepped out of his office and asked, "Would anybody like to go to the Antarctic?" Plans were shaping up for the International Geophysical Year, an 18 month initiative to study the earth, scheduled to begin in July 1957, and volunteers were needed for the United States Antarctic Expedition. Professor Bentley raised his hand. "I thought that sounded like a pretty good deal," he said in a 2008 oral history interview for the American Institute of Physics. He and his team found that the West Antarctic Ice Sheet, thought to be a thin layer covering high mountains, was two miles thick at some points and extended as far below sea level as the highest mountains rose above the surface. In their travels they discovered a trench the size of Mexico. Now known as the Bentley Subglacial Trench, it is the deepest spot on Earth not covered by ocean. Professor Bentley made more than 15 trips to the Antarctic, the last in 2009, mapping the structure and physical properties of the ice sheet and probing the continent beneath it. In 1986, he and several colleagues reported in a cover article in Nature magazine that the glaciers known as ice streams do not rest on rock but rather move rapidly over water saturated till. By explaining the mechanics of ice stream movement, he opened the way for research into the instability of the ice sheet and its potential for collapse, a subject of increasing concern as evidence on global warming accumulated. "Charlie Bentley was the absolute polar scientist, going where nobody else had gone and measuring what nobody else had measured," Richard Alley, a former student of Professor Bentley's and now a geoscientist at Penn State University, wrote in an email. "Concern about rapid sea level rise from ice sheet collapse grew out of his early discoveries, and many of the tools to answer the big questions come from his research since then." Charles Raymond Bentley was born on Dec. 23, 1929, in Rochester. His father, also named Charles but known as Raymond, was a successful lawyer. His mother, the former Janet Everest, was the granddaughter of a founder of Vacuum Oil, which later merged with Standard Oil. She was unconventional: Before marrying, she had already adopted two children on her own. After graduating from Phillips Academy in Andover, Mass., Professor Bentley earned a physics degree from Yale University in 1950. He planned to study law but changed his mind after spending a summer on a research ship in the Atlantic led by the oceanographer Maurice Ewing of Columbia University. He enrolled in Columbia to study geophysics and, after spending two summers on the Greenland ice sheet, where he developed a seismic method of measuring ice depth, defended his dissertation at the end of 1956. The degree was not awarded until 1959 because he had forgotten to pay a 50 dissertation fee before setting off for Antarctica. Professor Bentley joined the department of geology and geophysics (now the department of geosciences) at the University of Wisconsin in 1961. On retiring in 2000, he became the head of Ice Drilling Design and Operations, a program at the university's Space Science and Engineering Center that designs and deploys drills for collecting ice samples. Professor Bentley inspecting the barrel of an ice drill at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, where he headed the Ice Drilling Design and Operations program. Professor Bentley's scientific exploits combined the derring do of the great polar explorers with the painstaking work of measurement and calibration. On his first expedition, he and his team discovered a mountain range as high as the Rockies running parallel to the Weddell Sea. They were the first to visit and partly survey the Sentinel Range, one of whose peaks was named after him. To measure the ice sheet's depth, he set off explosions that sent sound waves to the bottom of the ice sheet. Geophones on the surface picked up the waves on their return and provided a depth reading. It would be many decades before such discoveries captured the imagination of the general public. "There was no particular effort to reach the public at all," he told The Antarctic Sun, a newsletter published by the United States Antarctic Program, in 2007. "Furthermore, we didn't really understand back 50 years ago the connections between the polar regions and the rest of the world. They seemed isolated and remote, and of interest as part of the earth; but it took quite a while to learn how closely related they are to the rest of the world." In addition to his daughter, Professor Bentley is survived by a son, Alex; a grandson; and two step grandsons. Professor Bentley served as the chairman of the Polar Research Board of the National Academy of Sciences from 1981 to 1985. His work was honored by the Soviet Academy of Sciences with the Bellingshausen Lazarev Medal in 1971, and in 1990 the International Glaciological Society gave him its highest honor, the Seligman Crystal.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Science
WASHINGTON Lael Brainard, the country's top financial diplomat, is leaving her post at the end of the week, a Treasury official said. Some have speculated that the White House might choose her for a position on the Federal Reserve's board of governors. Ms. Brainard has served since the beginning of the Obama administration as the under secretary for international affairs, playing a major role in negotiations over China's economic rebalancing and Europe's sovereign debt crisis. Often, Ms. Brainard acted as a shuttle diplomat, attending scores of meetings with foreign finance ministers and central bankers. That experience might prove valuable at the Fed. Concerns globally persist that the tapering of the current asset buying program might lead to rising interest rates and the bursting of so called Bernanke bubbles abroad. Ms. Brainard is also well acquainted with the White House's nominee for Fed chairwoman, Janet L. Yellen. The two have worked together in the last few years, as the Treasury and the Fed tackled the fallout from the deepest downturn since the Great Depression.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Economy
NEW ORLEANS Louisiana State, which opened the college football season as an underdog in its own division, won the national championship on Monday night behind a vigorous offense, outlasting Clemson, last year's title winner. With its 42 25 victory in the Superdome, L.S.U. claimed its first title since the 2007 season and quieted skeptics within its own fan base and beyond who questioned whether the Tigers had truly re emerged as a national power. But now L.S.U. has finished its campaign at 15 0, having conquered Alabama, Auburn, Florida and Texas. It defeated Georgia for the Southeastern Conference championship in early December and then disassembled Oklahoma in one of the semifinal games that set Monday's matchup in New Orleans. In the title matchup, the team rallied from a 10 point second quarter deficit to defeat Clemson, which had won 29 consecutive games and was seeking its third national championship in four seasons. Burrow also had a platoon of stars around him. Clyde Edwards Helaire, a tailback from Baton Rouge, entered Monday's game with more than 1,300 yards to his name this season, his first as a starter. The standout wide receivers, Ja'Marr Chase and Justin Jefferson, each logged more than 1,400 yards, and the offensive line emerged as a strength after starting the season confronting questions over how well it could control the line of scrimmage. And Ed Orgeron, the Louisiana native in his third full year at the helm of L.S.U. football, went from a man seen as overmatched and perhaps unprepared, even among the team's fans, to being the university's third consecutive head coach to win a national title. It was the fourth football championship in L.S.U. history, joining those won by the 2007 team (coached by Les Miles); the 2003 version (coached by Nick Saban); and the 1958 Tigers, who were coached by Paul Dietzel and finished the season with a win over Clemson in New Orleans. If we are not at a crisis point for Clemson, we're close. Trailing 42 25 with the game in the fourth quarter, it looked for a moment as if Clemson had managed a touchdown, with Tee Higgins moving beyond a defender and tapping his way into the end zone. But an official threw a flag for offensive pass interference, having noticed Higgins all but hugging one of the other team's Tigers, and the scoreboard remained the same. Just about 10 minutes to go at the Superdome. Burrow strikes again with his fifth touchdown. With a 24 yard pass to Terrace Marshall Jr., Mr. Heisman Joe Burrow has his fifth touchdown of the game. Burrow has thrown for 442 yards with nearly a quarter left. Just before the end of the third quarter, Clemson got a crucial lifeline while trailing by 10: L.S.U. missed a 45 yard field goal, the ball going wide right. With less than two minutes to play in the third quarter, Clemson dodged having even more of a mountain to climb. But it's still a hill of decent size. L.S.U. takes advantage of a Clemson penalty and scores again. So L.S.U. sputtered through its first two possessions of the second half. Clemson scored and added a cherry of a 2 point conversion. The once daunting margin collapsed to 3 points. L.S.U. looked to be wheezing through another drive an incomplete pass, a penalty, a run that didn't gain much when Burrow launched a 43 yard pass to, almost predictably at this point, Ja'Marr Chase. It took just a bit longer for L.S.U. to score, in part because of the targeting related ejection of James Skalski of Clemson. But Burrow connected with Thaddeus Moss again for a 4 yard touchdown that was upheld after a video review. The score was Burrow's 59th touchdown pass of the season, setting an Football Bowl Subdivision record for a single season. L.S.U.'s advantage is back to two scores, at 35 25 in New Orleans. Could this game really hit 80 total points scored? Sports books think so. One of the maxims of sports betting is that gamblers love points. The casinos played that up for this game, setting a sky high total of nearly 70 points for the combined score between Clemson and L.S.U. But guess what? Sports books set it even higher for the second half. William Hill US now says the expected total for the game is 80 points. Even if the game slows down with a leader running the clock, it's not hard to fathom the game getting there. At 28 25, the teams needed only four more touchdowns to break that ceiling. As for the favorite? That's still L.S.U., but by 11 as of halftime. The strategy of Clemson's defensive coordinator is worth watching. Perhaps you have noticed Brent Venables, Clemson's defensive coordinator: He's the coach who always seems to have to be pulled by his pants back toward the sideline. He makes for good memes, but his style is crucial to how Clemson plays defense: by giving offenses little time to contemplate what they'll face after the snap. And at some moments tonight, Clemson has given L.S.U. plenty of problems, especially early in both halves. "They kind of get lined up, and he gets the call in so late, and it just seems like they're in the right call so many times," said Dave Clawson, Wake Forest's coach, who predicted that one of the title game's most compelling matchups would be the Clemson defensive perimeter against the offensive perimeter for L.S.U. Derek Mason, the Vanderbilt coach who has known Joe Burrow for so many years that he calls him Joey, said he thought Clemson's defensive timing was a lifeline for the Atlantic Coast Conference champion. "If Clemson can give static looks and launch from those different platforms and be able to make Joey hold the ball just a little bit," he said, "Clemson's pass rushers may have an opportunity with the speed and the athleticism." Clemson's style did not go unnoticed during L.S.U.'s preparations for the championship game. "It doesn't worry me at all, but it's also something to think about," said Clyde Edwards Helaire, a tailback. "This will pretty much be the first time that we've faced a team that throws in a call so late, and being able to not let them get the call, I think, is going to be something big." But Venables deflected the idea that his approach was especially sophisticated. Instead, he said, it was all about trying to even the balance of power when an opponent has the ball. "They're trying to get in the best looks on offense and trying to prevent negative plays, and we're trying to not make it easy on the opponents by opening up our playbook for them," he said. "We're trying to do just what the offense does. I don't know why we get so much attention for it." In a halftime interview, Ed Orgeron, L.S.U.'s coach, suggested his team had solved the Clemson riddle: "We figured out what they were going to do; now we're moving the football." Maybe Orgeron spoke too soon. After the intermission, Clemson promptly stopped two L.S.U. drives. Clemson gets a stop, then scores to tighten the game. Clemson has 45 sacks on the season, and none was bigger than one that stopped Joe Burrow's first possession of the second half. Clemson then got a 15 yard penalty on the punt and an opportunity to reset. But there is no doubt that this game is between the two best teams in the nation. Clemson's defense is better than it has received credit for (because of its soft schedule). There is a reason the Tigers from South Carolina won the title last season. Joe Burrow throws a 52 yard touchdown to tie the game for L.S.U. The Joe Burrow magic did not stay behind in Baton Rouge. Here's the scene that led the Superdome to erupt: Second and 2. L.S.U. on its own 48. Then Burrow and Ja'Marr Chase, one of the signal caller's favorite wide receivers, linked up for 52 yards after a quick strike along the sideline. Tie game in New Orleans. Wonder what Bourbon Street is like now. Clemson strikes first to take a 7 0 lead. Just when it seemed like we might be settling into a defensive struggle, Clemson put its first points on the board. They came courtesy of Trevor Lawrence, the sophomore quarterback who sprinted into the end zone not long after he completed a 19 yard pass to Justyn Ross, a wide receiver who had been frustrated with his play during the Fiesta Bowl last month. Lawrence certainly showed his athleticism and speed during the drive, but L.S.U., it seemed, could not stop stubbing its toes via penalty flags: an illegal block gave Clemson a 15 yard gift. A personal foul didn't help matters for L.S.U. Let's consider some of its resources: None Joe Burrow. You've probably heard of the L.S.U. quarterback. If you haven't, he won the Heisman Trophy and has thrown 55 touchdown passes including seven during the first half of a semifinal game against No. 4 Oklahoma. He is widely expected to be the first pick of this year's N.F.L. draft. None If Burrow's accuracy is as pinpoint as usual, expect to hear the names Justin Jefferson and Ja'Marr Chase. Although 20 L.S.U. players have logged receiving yards this season, Jefferson and Chase have 2,993 of them more than half the team's total. None Clyde Edwards Helaire is a running back who did not see much action in the semifinal game because of injury, but he has run for more than 1,300 yards this season. His yards per carry statistic is similarly elite: He gains an average of 6.6 yards, putting him in the top 20 in the country. And all of that with an offensive line that started the season facing plenty of skepticism. Clemson's first drive started ugly, abruptly improved and then eroded. The A.C.C. champion opened with a trick play that turned into a loss. But then, as L.S.U. jumped offside, quarterback Trevor Lawrence connected with Justyn Ross for a 35 yard gain. Two more completions one for 19 yards, another for 3 followed. But on third down, L.S.U. pressured Lawrence, sacking him for a loss of 10 yards. Mired on the L.S.U. 40, Clemson had no real choice but to punt. So both teams can have some reasons for confidence and fear after a single Clemson possession. President Trump and First Lady Melania Trump took the field for the national anthem. Trump appeared on the field at the Superdome for the singing of the national anthem, the second time in his presidency he made a stop at college football's title game. It's also the second time this season he has gone to an L.S.U. game. Joined by his wife before a crowd that roared with his entrance minutes before kickoff, the president stood on the 40 yard line, right hand over his heart, after a reverberating cheer: "U.S.A.! U.S.A.!" Bill Hancock, the executive director of the College Football Playoff, said he learned of the president's plans to attend Monday's game roughly a week in advance and that White House officials did not specifically say why Trump wanted to come. "Maybe, like so millions of others, the president just loves college football," Hancock said. "It will be an honor to have him here." Mr. Trump is familiar with both Clemson and L.S.U. beyond games: He has welcomed Clemson to the White House twice to mark national championship victories, and he recently called Ed Orgeron, the L.S.U. coach, to congratulate him on his team's semifinal victory over Oklahoma. "He was very pleasant to talk to, very complimentary of our football team, our coaching staff, complimentary of the way the state of Louisiana has rallied around us, and was complimentary to the way we played all year and wished us good luck in the game," Orgeron said last month. "They told me the president's office called, and I thought it was the president of the university," Orgeron said. No, he was told, the White House was on the line. "I said, 'O.K., here we go,'" Orgeron said. Blinder reported from New Orleans; Drape reported from New York.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Sports
Los Angeles is on track to become the largest city in the United States to ban the sale of fur clothing and accessories. On Tuesday, the City Council voted unanimously for the ban, directing the Los Angeles City Attorney to formulate a policy that would render fur sales illegal. The council expects that the city attorney will return with the requisite language in about a month. The ban will take effect two years from the day it is signed into law. Council member Bob Blumenfield, who introduced the motion, said: "This is L.A. taking a stand and saying we will no longer be complicit in the inhumane and vile fur trade that's been going on for years." The average temperature in Los Angeles hovers around 75 degrees Fahrenheit, so fur is ... maybe not as necessary as in, say, Alaska. But the City Council members hope that their vote could see a ripple effect.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Style
For 25 years, Linda Wells, 58, served as the editor of Allure, the Conde Nast magazine about beauty trends that she had helped found. There, Ms. Wells a former reporter for The New York Times lab tested and guinea pigged beauty products, placed celebrities like Julia Roberts and Jennifer Aniston on her covers, and diligently chronicled the shift from high stakes plastic surgery to quick fix injectables. In November 2015, with Conde Nast confronting the challenges posed to print publications by the rise of digital media, Ms. Wells was abruptly replaced by Michelle Lee, then a largely unknown former editor of Nylon. Now, after a year spent writing for New York magazine and producing beauty packages for Conde Nast's arch competitor, Hearst, Ms. Wells is headed back to full time employment as the chief creative officer of Revlon. The position brings her to a prominent public company that, like many beauty behemoths, has struggled to keep up as younger rivals attract consumers with savvy online marketing. Revlon has had five chief executives in just over a decade. Almay, a company it owns, is not performing well. Revlon no longer sells in China. And one of Ms. Wells's big tasks will be figuring out how to reposition the brand on social media, which was a challenge in her Allure job. But few would count out a respected industry veteran with a near encyclopedic knowledge of the beauty world. Here, Ms. Wells speaks about her firing, her last year and what she will be doing in the new job. Q. In a recent profile of the makeup artist Pat McGrath for New York magazine you wrote: "Makeup has always been fashion's poor cousin. ... Makeup is self absorption; fashion is self expression." Yet here you are going to the mother ship. A. Exactly. And I'm a believer. What I love about beauty is that it's private and public, and so the part of a woman that's looking at herself in the mirror and experiencing the happiness and fears and all the turmoil that you confront in the world, that to me is the heart and soul and what makes beauty exciting. Will you be designing lines and picking colors? Or will this be more about marketing and advertising and being a spokeswoman for the brand? Well, I haven't started so I can define that better as I go along, but my understanding is that I'm going to watch what the creative directors of each brand are doing. Some of that could be advertising, packaging, product development, digital. So I think it will be a bit of both. You're a friend of Ron Perelman, the chairman and C.E.O. of MacAndrews Forbes, Revlon's majority shareholder. Is that how you were approached to do this? I've known him for a long time and the funny thing is, I wrote the first story in The New York Times in the business section after he purchased Revlon. That was my first encounter with him. But I had a lot of conversations with Fabian Garcia, Revlon's C.E.O., about this. Revlon has had some ups and downs the last few years. NYX Cosmetics, an 18 year old company based out of Los Angeles, has 10 times as many followers on Instagram as Revlon. Revlon brought in a new C.E.O. this year. It has announced a restructuring. What, broadly, do you think needs to shift? Well, I think it's in a great place. They're already making a shift, between the acquisition of Elizabeth Arden and the reorganization of the company itself. So I think they're primed to really change. Legacy brands have a certain nostalgic value, but you can't subsist on nostalgia alone. You left Conde Nast after 25 years of editing Allure, where you earned a reputation for bringing a healthy skepticism to the industry you were championing. You once told a writer that you weren't going to run a piece she was writing on a self tanner until she tried it on herself. I imagine there was stuff you tried and might not recommend. Including this serum that was made from the foreskin of a poor, poor baby. Maybe the product was great, but it was bright red, and that was a whole experience I couldn't cope with. Then it made my skin break out in welts. It was like the foreskin of this tiny child was making its revenge. You were open about having tried injectables. I remember, I first got Botox in Paris during fashion week. I was having lunch with a Saudi billionaire and she said: "I'm going to the doctor. Come with me." Botox was not approved in the U.S. at this time. I knew I shouldn't do it, but I went anyway. I wanted to experience it. I was 34. So I have a healthy skepticism, but then I also think I should know what I'm talking about. Later, Botox became a kind of Rorschach test on vanity. Why do you think it was? There was nothing else like it. I guess there was collagen and there was silicone, but they were so sketchy at that time. There was no other injectable used for anti aging. And the fact that Botox is a toxin, the fact that it was a poison and the fact that it paralyzed your muscles, all made it sound like a bad B horror movie. And Botox is kind of a gateway drug. It opens you up to all the other injections and all the other lasers. But I'm a believer. I think it's safe. And there were positive aspects, too. People became less ashamed about trying to look younger. It's been used well and not used well. There's nothing inherently wrong with wanting to look younger.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Fashion & Style
When Brian Gleason heard this week that his old employer, Sun Newspapers of Charlotte Harbor, Fla., had won its first Pulitzer Prize, he was elated. Then he asked his former editor, Jim Gouvellis, what the award was for. "He said, 'The prisoner death editorials,'" Mr. Gleason recalled. "I said: 'Jim, I wrote some of those.'" It turned out that Mr. Gleason, who left the paper in August, had written three of the eight unsigned pieces recognized by the Pulitzer committee as the finest newspaper editorial writing of last year. The problem: Nobody on the current staff remembered. "It was not hard for me to remember," Mr. Gleason, now the communications manager for the local county, said in an interview.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Media
Mark Zuckerberg, the Facebook chief executive, said in an interview published Wednesday that he would not automatically remove denials that the Holocaust took place from the site, a remark that caused an uproar online. Mr. Zuckerberg's comments were made during an interview with the tech journalist Kara Swisher that was published on the site Recode. (Read the full transcript here.) Hours later, Mr. Zuckerberg tried to clarify his comments in an email to Recode. In the interview, Mr. Zuckerberg had been discussing what content Facebook would remove from the site, and noted that in countries like Myanmar and Sri Lanka, the dissemination of hate speech can have immediate and dire consequences. Moments earlier, he had also defended his company's decision to allow content from the conspiracy site Infowars to be distributed on Facebook. Facebook plans to remove misinformation that could lead to physical harm. "The principles that we have on what we remove from the service are: If it's going to result in real harm, real physical harm, or if you're attacking individuals, then that content shouldn't be on the platform," he said.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Technology
American military researchers have identified the first patient in the United States to be infected with bacteria that are resistant to an antibiotic that was the last resort against drug resistant germs. The patient is well now, but the case raises the specter of superbugs that could cause untreatable infections, because the bacteria can easily transmit their resistance to other germs that are already resistant to additional antibiotics. The resistance can spread because it arises from loose genetic material that bacteria typically share with one another. "Think of a puzzle," said Dr. Beth Bell, of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. "You need lots of different pieces to get a result that is resistant to everything. This is the last piece of that puzzle, unfortunately, in the United States. We have that genetic element that would allow for bacteria that are resistant to every antibiotic." The bacteria are resistant to a drug called colistin, an old antibiotic that in the United States is held in reserve to treat especially dangerous infections that are resistant to a class of drugs called carbapenems. If carbapenem resistant bacteria, called CRE, also pick up resistance to colistin, they will be unstoppable. "This is huge," said Dr. Lance Price, a researcher at George Washington University. "We are one step away from CRE strains that cannot be treated with antibiotics. We now have all the pieces in place for it to be untreatable." The gene for resistance to colistin was first found in China, where the drug is used in pig and poultry farming. Researchers reported its discovery there in November. It has also been found in the intestine of one pig in the United States. CRE is still relatively rare, causing just 600 deaths a year, but by 2013, researchers had identified it in health care facilities in 44 states. Dr. Thomas R. Frieden, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, often calls it the "nightmare superbug" because it is resistant to all but one antibiotic colistin. He added: "The medicine cabinet is empty for some patients." The colistin resistance in the United States came to light when a 49 year old woman, who Dr. Bell said was "connected to the military," was treated for a urinary infection at a military clinic in Pennsylvania. Because her urine culture had unusual results, the sample was sent to the Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, which identified the drug resistance. The bacteria, though resistant to colistin and some other antibiotics, were not resistant to carbapenems. Doctors there published a report on the case in a medical journal. Patrick McGann, a scientist at the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research and lead author of the paper, said researchers had only started analyzing samples a few weeks ago. They tested samples from six patients, and one of them was the woman's. Dr. Bell said researchers did not know how the patient contracted the resistant bacteria. The microbes have been found in people in Asia and Europe, but the patient had not traveled during the past five months. It is possible that she contracted the bacteria from food, or from contact with someone else who was infected, Dr. Bell said. Public health workers will interview the woman and will probably test her family members and other close contacts for the bacteria, Dr. Bell said. Infectious disease doctors have long warned that overuse of antibiotics in people and in animals put human health at risk by reducing the power of the drugs, some of modern medicine's most prized jewels. About two million Americans fall ill from antibiotic resistant bacteria every year and at least 23,000 die from those infections. The Obama administration has elevated the issue, laying out a strategy for how to bring the problem under control. The CRE germs usually strike people receiving medical care in hospitals or nursing homes, including patients on breathing machines or dependent on catheters. Healthy people are rarely, if ever, affected. But the bugs attack broadly, and the infections they cause are not limited to people with severely compromised immune systems. CRE was believed to be the cause of infections from improperly cleaned medical scopes that led to the death of two people at Ronald Reagan U.C.L.A. Medical Center in California last year. The Department of Defense, in a blog post about the discovery of the gene in the United States, said it gave "a new clue into the antibiotic resistance landscape." But the gene is rare: The blog pointed out that federal health researchers had searched for the gene in 44,000 samples of salmonella and 9,000 samples of E. coli/shigella, taken from people and retail meat, and did not find it.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Health
In one sense, Duford is an outlier. About eight of 10 white evangelicals voted for Donald Trump in 2016, and polling suggests that the great majority will vote for him again in 2020. But Duford is part of a broader movement among some evangelical leaders to distance their faith from Trump, which in turn means interpreting "pro life" in a broader way. In a sign that some evangelical voters are in play this year, the Biden campaign is advertising heavily on Christian radio stations. "Mr. President, the days of using our faith for your benefit are over," declares a video from a Christian group called Not Our Faith. "We know you need the support of Christians like us to win this election. But you can't have it. Not our vote. Not our faith." The Rev. John Huffman, who once was President Richard Nixon's pastor, said he has voted Republican all his life but has now joined a group called Pro Life Evangelicals for Biden. He said he prays for Trump but sees him as "an immoral, amoral sociopathic liar who functions from a core of insecure malignant narcissism." Huffman and others say they are speaking up partly because they fear that Christianity is tarnished and losing ground in the United States because of the strong support Trump receives from many evangelical leaders. (One of them is Duford's uncle, Franklin Graham, who has claimed that Billy Graham voted for Trump in 2016.) Duford told me her message to the public is, "I'm sorry you have witnessed the same greed and hypocrisy in the church that you see in the world, but this is not what Jesus is about." There's nothing inherently conservative about evangelical Christianity, for Black evangelicals mostly vote Democratic and there is a long tradition of liberal evangelicals from Martin Luther King Jr. to Jimmy Carter to the writer Jim Wallis. But in recent decades, white evangelicals have mostly voted Republican, and Duford and others engaged in the new outreach acknowledge that many find it somewhere between scary and unthinkable to break that tradition.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Opinion
It can be tempting to say and some critics have that Ronald K. Brown creates the same piece over and over. There are undoubtedly common elements, both structural and thematic, running through his work: a fluent, hybrid language of African based and modern dance; a preference for patchwork musical playlists; an allegiance to the realm of the spiritual. Each of his dances, in one way or another, is an expression of praise. On Tuesday at the Joyce Theater, where Mr. Brown's company, Evidence, presented the first of its season's two programs, I kept expecting the word "formulaic" to apply, as similar moves and moods cropped up in one work after the next. Yet somehow that assessment never felt right. To arrive at a formula is to stop asking questions, and Mr. Brown, no matter how often he returns to the same idea, seems always to be searching, as do the dancers he brings along for each soulful ride. The title of "The Subtle One," a world premiere, derives from one of the many names for Allah, whom Mr. Brown has described as "the one who whispers things into existence." There is indeed a whispering, almost placid quality to this work, which, like much of Mr. Brown's oeuvre, strikes a reverent but not pious chord. To Jason Moran's ambling jazz piano, the eight dancers, all absorbed at first in their own worlds, coalesce into something more like a tribe. Their gauzy white costumes, by Keiko Voltaire, add extra breath to their movement, as they coast through balletic attitude turns or pummel the air with loose fists thrown down over stamping feet. Crossing the stage in a side stepping procession, eyes fixed straight ahead on the audience, they extend and retract palms, an offering that carries them out of sight. The company looks remarkably refined this season, and so did its guests, David Gaulein Stef and Asha Thomas, who delivered the New York premiere of "Ghazals," a collaboration between Ms. Thomas and Mr. Brown. "Lately I can't seem to find myself," Ms. Thomas declares in a spoken word confession at the front of the stage, as Mr. Gaulein Stef comes into view behind her. Eventually they find each other, their violent side by side shuddering taking a playful turn with the help of two billowing white sheets. But the work as a whole, like a series of sketches, seems not yet to have found itself.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Dance
Termites are often dismissed as nothing but home destroying pests, less charismatic than bees, ants or even spiders. In fact, termites have been doing incredible things since the time of dinosaurs, maintaining complex societies with divisions of labor, farming fungus and building cathedrals that circulate air the way human lungs do. Now, add "overthrowing the patriarchy" to that list. In a study published this week in BMC Biology, scientists reported the first discovery of all female termite societies. Among more than 4,200 termites collected from coastal sites in southern Japan, the researchers did not find a single male. Toshihisa Yashiro, a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Sydney and lead author of the paper, said in an email that he was utterly surprised by the discovery: "I got a headache, because we believed that having both males and females is the rule in termite societies."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Science
This article is part of David Leonhardt's newsletter. You can sign up here to receive it each weekday. I wrote recently about some of the companies that have been mistreating their employees and customers during the pandemic, and I want to tell you today about another case study. It comes from the cruise industry. If you've ever been on a cruise, you've probably heard the captain and crew claim that their top priority is the safety of their passengers. It's a staple of the announcements that go over a ship's loudspeakers. But the recent actions of several major cruise lines aren't consistent with those claims: The companies put a higher priority on continuing to operate their ships and make money than on protecting their passengers and employees. I'm going to focus on a single ship in today's newsletter: the Eclipse, which is operated by Celebrity Cruises, part of the Royal Caribbean Cruise company. But the pattern extends to some other ships and companies, as well. To read more on the subject, check out recent coverage in The Times, The Guardian and The Miami Herald.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Opinion
This week marked 10 years since the Supreme Court's landmark Citizens United v. FEC decision, which opened a floodgate for wealthy donors and corporate money's flow into politics. And with the exception of a few anniversary articles, like this one, it largely went unnoticed. That's because the world Citizens United created unlimited money in politics and legally unchallenged corporate personhood is now simply the toxic civic air we breathe. "Independent" expenditures from super PACs unfettered committees often only marginally independent from campaigns and "dark money" from nonprofits with unknown backers comprised roughly 40 percent of total spending on federal campaigns in 2016. And although a small but high profile cadre of congressional candidates, and presidential candidates like Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, rely on online small dollar fund raising, experts expect moneyed interests and megadonors to shatter spending records in the 2020 cycle. The unceasing, norm destroying political chaos of the Trump era has eclipsed the fact that the environment Citizens United unleashed could be the status quo for a lifetime, courtesy of the generational lock on the courts Donald Trump handed conservatives. It's a feat that has earned the president the fealty of the professional right. And it has forced reformists on the left who briefly had hopes for a liberal majority on the Supreme Court, before Mr. Trump's election to come up with alternative plans for nationwide democratic change. "Opportunity definitely died on election night 2016 for federal court reform," said Scott Greytak, a lawyer who worked at Free Speech for People, a boutique litigation firm that, until then, was leading the charge against Citizens United. Now, he said, "All the energy and attention has been pushed down to the state and local level. And importantly, it's no longer money in politics only." "During the Obama administration, people out in the country used to look to us in D.C.," Mr. Greytak added. "Now they're like, forget about it." Over the past three years, previously siloed reform organizations have been decentralizing, widening their network of collaborators. Heavyweights like Eric Holder, the former attorney general, have joined with lesser known state representatives, everyday people and even university math wonks, to tackle gerrymandering. Rising stars like Stacey Abrams have helped refocus efforts on increasing voting access, registration and turnout. White collar professionals on the coasts with roots in the interior of the country are sharing resources and working directly with organizers in their hometowns, through groups like Heartland Rising, to flip previously abandoned districts. Ritzy gatherings of the liberal intelligentsia have telegraphed a new openness as well, by inviting grass roots groups to co host events. Take, for one, the Ford Foundation's Realizing Democracy conference this past fall in Manhattan, a professed "learning series" where longtime political figures and representatives from the Open Society Foundations shared the spotlight with swing state activists and City Council representatives. Dorian Warren, the head of the nonprofit Community Change, was among the lead panelists; Chris Hughes, a founder of Facebook, and other big name guests mostly listened on. Even as a national election begins, talk of "gearing hyperlocal solutions," strengthening regional labor unions and re establishing the states as "laboratories of democracy" abounds. But this passion in the democracy reform space is still paired with a nagging dread over how much work there is to do. Despite the "blue wave" of the 2018 midterms, the Republican Party still holds 61 percent of state legislative chambers. Their struggle is compounded by the tilted playing field created by Citizens United, especially at the state and local levels: A study looking back at the 2010s conducted by Anna Harvey, a professor of politics at New York University, published this fall in the journal Public Choice, concluded that Citizens United "led not only to greater likelihoods of election for Republican state legislative candidates but also to larger within district increases in their conservatism." And until the last couple of years, "it just hasn't been the case that progressives have built up organizations that are federated," said Alex Hertel Fernandez, a Columbia professor and author of the book "State Capture: How Conservative Activists, Big Businesses and Wealthy Donors Reshaped the American States and the Nation." He argues that, even now, rather than "pool resources across states" as conservative networks do, liberals in rich blue states tend to send money to single issue nationally led organizations, like Planned Parenthood or the American Civil Liberties Union. One solution being pushed by some activists is to create a system of public campaign financing parallel to the widened stream of private funds. Seattle has recently adopted a "democracy voucher" program, which distributes funds to voters who can then donate to the candidates of their choice. (Seattle has also recently restricted corporate involvement in local politics through foreign interference laws.) And New York State will match six to one donations by people who give less than 250. If broadened to the federal level, public financing might free candidates from the disproportionate influence of affluent and corporate donors, while allowing much of the money currently geared toward electioneering to be rededicated to movement building. Once candidates are in office, such a program would spare politicians (and their constituents) the indignity of their spending as much as 70 percent of their time asking donors for money, as members of Congress currently do. Those dynamics have a concrete effect: A now infamous 2014 study that analyzed American politics across three decades found that "average citizens and mass based interest groups have little or no independent influence" on public policy. Though partisanship dominates national discourse, polls show that large majorities remain united in the belief that corruption is the most important issue facing the country. Armed with this knowledge, House Democrats passed a sprawling democracy bill last year that would provide a six to one federal match for any donation of 200 or less. These people powered matching funds could supercharge the democratizing influence on politics that small online donations have already demonstrated in limited doses. Whether campaign finance reform will be atop the agenda, in the event of another blue wave this fall, remains to be seen. In their best case 2021 scenario, Democrats will only have gained a slim majority in the Senate. Yet, Bill Dauster, a former deputy chief of staff to Harry Reid, is among a crop of Democrats who think "budget reconciliation," a maneuver Republicans used in 2017 to pass tax cuts, could also be used to pass public financing with a simple majority.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Opinion
Dakshina (her daughter, whom I saw perform for the first time on Saturday) is even more marvelously satisfying in the curved and straight shapes of Bharata Natyam. Her chief solo showed Shiva and his consort Parvati conjoined as Ardhanariswara male and female, destruction and creation. As she stands on wide parted legs and sways her torso violently from side to side, we can't miss an image of destructive power. Sunday evening's performance, also at the Skirball Center at New York University (both programs were presented by the World Music Institute), was of the dissimilar genre of Kathak, which specializes in rapidly rhythmic footwork (suddenly ending bang! on the beat) and long series of single turns on the spot. Parul Shah and Prashant Shah (no relation) joined forces in an opening duet, to recorded music; then each danced to live accompaniment by different five musician teams, Parul with the four other women of her company. In Parul Shah's group dance, "All That Is In Between," you could sense a lively experimental mind, here moving away from there joining forces with the music. The start and end, featuring percussive hand gestures striking the chest with no musical accompaniment, stays in memory. In between, a complex female dance polyphony develops. This is a good company, stylish and vivid; you can feel how its innovations (no ankle bells) are part of an engagement with the changing nature of Indian society. Prashant Shah's solo, "Parampara Ek Pravaah," was an enthralling display of Kathak virtuosity; his interplay with his musicians truly playful involved rhythmic patterns of astonishing intricacy. What amazed me was the grace of Mr. Shah's arms and upper body. (Only his facial expressions, especially the use of eyes and smiles, are sometimes forced.) Despite his top speed footwork and its stop on a dime conclusions, his arms moved in waves, rivulets, soft flourishes, always demonstrating calm and ease within brilliance. His rhythms (and those of his tabla percussionist, Ramesh Bapodara) were a superbly exciting demonstration of Kathak complexity: one cluster of strong and weak beats is topped by the next at two or three times the speed, and then by a third with sudden death pauses within the rush. Only one of the weekend's three performances disappointed. This was "Veiled Moon," presented on Sunday afternoon by Thresh Dance Company at the Metropolitan Museum after William Dalrymple's engaging lecture about aspects of Hyderabad's history. The dance seemed to evoke the life and works of the exceptional 18th century Muslim courtesan Mah Laqa Bai Chanda; and costuming suggested that period and a general atmosphere of feminine languor, if not creativity. But everything was vague, slow with none of the flow of meanings or forms that makes so much of Indian dance so rewarding.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Dance
From the Mall to the Docks, Signs of Rebound PORTLAND, Ore. The docks are humming again at this sprawling Pacific port, with clouds of golden dust billowing off the piles of grain spilling into the bellies of giant tankers. "Things are looking up," said Dan Broadie, a longshoreman. No longer killing time at the union hall while waiting for work, instead he is guiding a mechanized spout pouring 44,000 tons of wheat into the Arion SB, bound for the Philippines. At malls from New Jersey to California, shoppers are snapping up electronics and furniture, as fears of joblessness yield to exuberance over rising stock prices. Tractor trailers and railroad cars haul swelling quantities of goods through transportation corridors, generating paychecks for truckers and repair crews. On the factory floor, production is expanding, a point underscored by government data released Friday showing a hefty increase in March for orders of long lasting manufactured items. In apartment towers and on cul de sacs, sales of new homes surged in March, climbing by 27 percent, amplifying hopes that a wrenching real estate disaster may finally be releasing its grip on the national economy. After the worst downturn since the Great Depression, signs of recovery are mounting albeit tinged with ambiguity. Despite worries that American consumers might hunker down for years spooked by debt, lost savings and unemployment thriftiness has given way to the outlines of a new shopping spree: households are replacing cars, upgrading home furnishings and amassing gadgets. Many economists estimate that consumer spending which makes up some 70 percent of American economic activity swelled by 4 percent during the first three months of the year, more than the double the pace once anticipated. Some have nudged upward their estimates for economic growth to more than 3 percent this year. "Consumers are showing extraordinary resilience," said Bernard Baumohl, chief global economist at the Economic Outlook Group. "There's a lot of pent up demand out there that is now being unleashed. The whole supply chain system is now being revitalized." While few dispute signs of recovery across much of the economy, significant debate remains on how robust and sustained it will be. The lingering effects of the financial crisis have some economists envisioning a long stretch of sluggish growth. But recent months have delivered a stream of news bolstering the notion of a more vigorous recovery. Technology companies have racked up substantial sales. After a decade of painful decline, manufacturing is tentatively adding jobs. Retail sales increased by 9.1 percent in March at established stores compared with a year earlier, according to Thomson Reuters, marking the seventh consecutive month of growth. Exports swelled in the first two months of the year by nearly 15 percent compared with a year earlier, according to the Commerce Department. Still, much of the improvement appears the result of the nearly 800 billion government stimulus program. As that package is largely exhausted late this year, further expansion may hinge on whether consumers keep spending. That probably depends on the job market, which remains weak. "The recovery is under way, and it's better than expected, but it hasn't become self sustaining because the job market hasn't developed yet," said Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody's Economy.com. "I don't think we're there yet." In a sign of the anxieties still gnawing at households, the University of Michigan Consumer Sentiment Index this month plunged to a preliminary level of 69.5 compared with 73.6 in March. Still, even that number represented a substantial gain over the record low of 55.3 reached in November 2008. And many economists dismiss such surveys as indicative of what people think, as opposed to what they do. What they are doing increasingly is shopping. "I'm certainly interested in spending now that the stock market seems so relaxed," said Dan Schrenk, an information technology consultant, as he stood outside a Best Buy store in the Portland suburb of Beaverton. Last year, Mr. Schrenk's income declined as local companies put off servicing computer systems. He and his wife cut back on dinners out and purchases. But in recent weeks, Mr. Schrenk's stock portfolio has expanded. He has picked up five new clients. "I'm feeling very optimistic," he said. "People are just far more interested in spending money." So, there he was, shopping for an iPad. On the other side of the country, at the Garden State Plaza mall in Paramus, N.J., Marie Bauer, who sells clothing for a living, was feeling similarly emboldened. "I'm working more now," she said. "I bought myself a watch." As John D. Morris, a retail analyst with BMO Capital Markets, wandered past stores like Gap and J. Crew on his weekly "mall check," he spotted large numbers of women 25 to 45 years of age prime earning years. "The mainstay of the mall is back," he said. "That's your signal that we're in a more meaningful recovery with staying power." A year ago, Columbia Sportswear, the Portland based apparel brand, was turning away some retail customers whose finances seemed worrisome. Now, Columbia has one of its largest order backlogs. In Portland, Ore., Kevin Weldon prepared soda ash for export. Exports rose in the first two months of the year by nearly 15 percent compared with a year earlier. Leah Nash for The New York Times "People saw that the world didn't come to an end," said Timothy P. Boyle, Columbia's president and chief executive. "Maybe they just said, 'Hey, I can at least spend a little bit of money.' " Spending power has been enhanced by a monumental reduction in household debt, which has shrunk by about 600 billion since the fall of 2008, according to Equifax credit data analyzed by Economy.com. That amounts to about 6,300 a household. "Household deleveraging is clearing the decks for better consumer spending going forward," said Mr. Zandi. Still, some economists note that many consumers are reaching into savings to finance spending, suggesting consumption could run out of fuel. "Look at employment and income," said Brian Bethune, chief United States financial economist at the economic analysis firm, IHS Global Insight. "It's glacial. If we don't get strong growth in employment and income, we're really just building this up as a house of cards." The American savings rate climbed during the recession but has recently fallen. Among households in the top fifth of American incomes those earning 98,000 a year and up the savings rate dropped to 2 percent of income in the first half of 2007 and then spiked above 14 percent by the middle of 2008, according to an analysis of Federal Reserve data by Economy.com. By the end of last year, the savings rate of this group had slipped back to 3.5 percent. Since the end of World War II, the first year after a recession tends to feature growth at roughly twice the pace of the decline during the downturn, implying a current pace exceeding 7 percent. Yet even optimistic economists assume the economy is growing at perhaps half that rate. "I keep calling it a half speed recovery, not the full speed ahead recovery that we typically get after deep, prolonged recessions," said Stuart Hoffman, chief economist at PNC Financial Services Group in Pittsburgh. But at a Porsche dealership in downtown Los Angeles, the sales manager, Victor Ghassemi, has seen sales rise by about 5 percent in recent weeks, a trend he attributes to rising stock portfolios. "People get tired of holding on to their money, or just sitting at home and not doing anything," he said. "People love to shop. And you take that privilege away from somebody, it lasts about a year. Eventually, people want to come back. They want to buy new merchandise, a new product, to make them feel really good about themselves." Silicon Valley is already cashing in on the return of Wall Street, as trading houses fold profits into new high speed computer systems aimed at securing a competitive edge. Global trade holds promise. At the Port of Portland a major shipping point for commodities harvested as far east as the Great Plains the tonnage of goods swelled by 42 percent during the first three months of the year compared with a year earlier. Minerals like soda ash an important industrial ingredient to make glass and detergent increased by 93 percent. Activity here and at ports along the Pacific coast is generating business through related industries. Rail freight traffic was up nearly 8 percent in March from a year earlier, according to the Association of American Railroads. That has bolstered revenue for Greenbrier, a Portland based maker of rail cars that was hard hit during the recession. At Diversified Services Inc., a truck repair business in Mira Loma, Calif., general manager Dave Pilarcik is contemplating hiring, as customers put their fleets back on the road. "For the first time in a long time," he said, "I've seen a little bit more movement."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Economy
STERLING, Colo. The cast was strip searched before boarding the bus to their show. The leading man was shackled so tightly that he performed with abrasions on his wrists. And the moment the men finished their bows and the house lights came up, they had to slip out of costume and back into green prison uniforms. So goes life on the road for a production of "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest," put on by 30 medium security inmates of the Sterling Correctional Facility , out on Colorado's remote eastern plains. While prison plays have been around for decades, the challenge of this show was audaciously new: It went on tour . "People are looking for new ways to engage the system and to transform it from the inside out," Ms. Jason said. "Is it possible? That's one of the questions that keeps me up at night." Advocates for prison arts who now include many current and former inmates say that learning to paint or performing a monologue can imbue humanity and purpose into the bleakness of life behind bars. Some studies have suggested that prison arts may reduce disciplinary actions inside prison, though it is unclear whether they and other rehabilitation programs reduce recidivism. "You see the cities and the lights," said Terry Mosley Jr., 39, who has been incarcerated since he was 18 for killing an 18 year old in a fight outside a grocery store. "You don't get to see those horizon lines. It's just walls around you." The shackling system that pinned their arms to their chests for the ride was called a "black box." The men said they had not realized that was the same name for a simple theater space. As the men put together the set , each screw and bolt used to build it the common room of a mental institution had to be cataloged and tracked. The set panels painted with signs saying, "Don't sit or stand," and "This is a therapeutic community" could have fit the play's setting of a mental ward six decades ago, or an American prison in 2019. "To build something like this in prison you have no idea of what it means, " said Vern Moter, 51, who is serving 24 years for fraud and was part of the stage crew. The men worked with limited supplies to create their props. Rolled up paper became cigarettes. A box of Little Debbie cakes was painted into a Marlboro carton. The plastic screw top of instant coffee became an ashtray. Before the show in Denver, while the men paced the stage to get into character and checked out the acoustics, their run throughs were interrupted by corrections officers doing their regular head count of prisoners. "We're in new territory," said Ashley Hamilton, who directed the play and runs the Prison Arts Initiative. (She and two actresses from the University of Denver played the show's female characters, including the villainous Nurse Ratched.) Ms. Hamilton said she was astonished that the state's Department of Corrections, which houses about 20,000 inmates , allowed her to direct a play that offers such a clear condemnation of institutionalization. In the last scene, Chief Bromden, one of the patients, smashes through the grates on a window and escapes to freedom. For Dean Williams, the executive director of the Department of Corrections, bringing artists and audience members into prison was part of a strategy to make life inside prison as similar as possible to life outside. It is called normalization, an idea inspired by Scandinavian countries where inmates cook their own food, interact with people from the outside and have a less adversarial relationship with corrections officers. "There's a few of us leading these systems who realize that something's wrong," Mr. Williams said. "We've made prison a place of starkness, idleness, a place without purpose. Then we're confused where people get out and they don't make it. I think that is on us." It is a delicate subject in Colorado. In 2013, a corrections director, widely praised for his dedication to reforms here, was assassinated by a paroled prisoner with ties to a white supremacist prison gang. As the cast and crew prepared for "Cuckoo's Nest," a few said that corrections officers asked the men why anyone convicted of violent crimes should have a spotlight and applause. Several of the inmates said the play allowed them to feel human again. They marveled at being allowed to shake hands with the state officials, lawyers and arts advocates who attended the show. The men said that delving into the "Cuckoo's Nest" characters many of them broken and traumatized had forced them to look inside themselves as well. "This whole thing is some weird dream," said Christopher Shetskie , who is serving a life sentence without parole for murder ing two women in 1995 and 1996 , according to newspaper accounts at the time. He played a doctor in the play. Amy Mund, who was tied to a bed in her home by Mr. Shetskie before he killed her sister Karen, did not believe he should have the privilege of performing with the troupe. "He brutally murdered two young vibrant ladies in the prime of their lives," Ms. Mund said in an email. "I question why he is allowed to participate in plays and travel outside the confines of the prison. As a victim of a violent crime, that does not sound like justice to me." Her father, Harold Mund, said of Mr. Shetskie: "I wish him no severe problems, but I also don't think I want to see him ever in public life." Mr. Shetskie said he knew he could not undo his crimes. "What I have done is tear that person out of the ground, roots and all," he said. "Maybe through something like this, there's a chance for them to forgive us."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Theater
I live in Portland, Ore. I am 68 years old, a retired psychologist, a mildly left of center boomer. I want to report that Portland is not at all convulsed by a "violent mob" of anarchists, as the acting homeland security secretary, Chad F. Wolf, claims, or anything close. A small number of protesters, generally far fewer than 100, gather each evening to protest peacefully. A few wrongheaded individuals paint graffiti or throw rocks, and that is certainly not OK. But two blocks away, in any direction, things are completely normal. In fact, I had not watched the news for a few days, and I thought the protests had stopped. There is absolutely no justification for the intrusion of federal troops to engage in tactics like kidnapping people off the streets in unmarked cars, as was done under the Pinochet dictatorship in Chile. This is clearly a case of President Trump wanting to create drama for his right wing base, ginning up a state of anarchy that does not exist, so he can look tough to his base, and so he can try to scare people into thinking there is some kind of threat to America posed by people who disagree with him and his party. In your coverage of the federal response to the protests in Portland, we learn that the paramilitary forces being used against protesters were from Homeland Security and not trained or equipped for the job they were sent to do. This may partly explain why protesters were placed in unmarked vans by unidentified individuals.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Opinion
Gay political canvassers can soften the opinions of voters opposed to same sex marriage by having a brief face to face discussion about the issue, researchers reported Thursday. The findings could have implications for activists and issues across the political spectrum, experts said. Psychologists have long suspected that direct interaction, like working together, can reduce mutual hostility and prejudice between differing groups, whether blacks and whites or Christians and Muslims. But there is little evidence that the thaw in attitudes is a lasting one. The study, published Thursday by the journal Science, suggests that a 20 minute conversation about a controversial and personal issue in this case a gay person talking to voters about same sex marriage can induce a change in attitude that not only lasts, but may also help shift the views of others living in the same household. In other words, the change may be contagious. Researchers have published similar findings previously, but nothing quite as rigorous has highlighted the importance of the messenger, as well as the message. "I am very impressed with this paper," said Todd Rogers, an assistant professor of public policy at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government and a founding director of the Analyst Institute, a voter research group that helps Democratic candidates. Mr. Rogers, who was not involved in the research, said: "There's a whole infrastructure across the political spectrum devoted to changing people's attitude and beliefs on important topics, and this has obvious implications. You want a messenger for whom the issue is of personal relevance."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Health
People throughout the sports world, from athletes to arena staff members, tell The New York Times how their lives have changed during the coronavirus pandemic. Regan Smith was peaking at just the right time for the 2020 Summer Olympics. She had a breakout season last year, winning gold in the 200 meter backstroke and the 400 meter medley relay at the world championships. She also broke the world records in the 100 and the 200 meter backstroke. Now, with the Tokyo Games postponed until summer 2021, she is just trying to finish high school. Smith, who lives in Lakeville, Minn., has been finishing her senior year virtually and trying to find new hobbies to fill her free time. In the fall, she is committed to going to Stanford, where she will train with Greg Meehan, the head coach of the United States Olympic women's swim team. Smith returned to the pool on May 18 after a two month absence, but her time in the water has been limited because just one swimmer per lane is allowed. Before that, she described her routine during the coronavirus shutdown. This interview has been condensed and lightly edited for clarity. Q: How have you been staying in shape? Smith: Without pool space, I've just been trying to work with what I have at my house. I've been running a lot. We have a great treadmill, so I've been doing that some. If it's nice enough outside it's been rough here; we've had some snow then I'll run outside. My strength coach has been really great. She's been sending me some awesome workouts I can do remotely. What was a normal day like for you, before the coronavirus interrupted your schedule? Monday, Wednesday, Friday, I get to wake up at 8 a.m., then I go to class from 9 to 11 a.m. I just have two classes at school, math and English. Then I come home at 11 and I do my online classes until it's time to leave for dry land training at 1:30. I have practice in the pool from 3 to 5:30. After that I come home, have dinner, do extra homework and chill until it's time to go to bed. Tuesdays and Thursdays are basically the same thing, except I have an extra practice in the pool in the morning, so my day starts at 4:50. Saturdays we just had one practice from 7 to 10 a.m. I just miss being with my club team. The way that high school swimming in Minnesota works, the girls' season is during the fall and the boys' is during the winter, so we would have all been back together, boys and girls, in the spring. Our whole group hasn't really been together in so long now. We had high school season, so half the team was gone. I was really looking forward to having my last spring season with my whole team and all my best friends. Spring season was the most fun for me. Every Friday during spring season a whole bunch of us would go out and get fast food and hang out together. I miss that a lot. Are you disappointed about not getting to have your prom, graduation and other special senior events? It's actually been completely fine. Which may sound odd, but with my lifestyle and swimming I've grown accustomed to missing out on school related functions. I think I'm really lucky that my personality type has allowed me to accept that and understand that this is the life I chose. I know I'm not missing out. I don't feel sad if I can't go to a football game or I can't go to a dance or something. In my mind, it's not like I can't go, I'm choosing not to. I'm choosing something that makes me happier and that I have more fun with. With respect to prom, my boyfriend is actually in college, so he could have come back and taken me there, but I would have preferred to go out to dinner or do something fun on our own. It's funny about graduation. Before Olympic trials had gotten canceled, my swim team had planned on doing a small training trip to Fort Myers, Fla., and they were going to leave a few days before my graduation. So, I would have missed that anyway. Which sounds sad, but in my mind this is what I chose and this is what I want to do. I would way rather be in Florida training. This is for me and the life I want. You are committed to start swimming at Stanford this fall, after the original dates for the Olympics. When the Games were postponed, did you consider deferring college for a year so you wouldn't have to change coaches in the lead up to Tokyo? Yes I did, actually. It was something I really had to think long and hard about. It's a big decision. It's a big change. I'm lucky I have the opportunity to go to an incredible school. I know that the Stanford coach, Greg Meehan, will work really well with my coach, Mike Parratto, and they collaborate really well. I know it will be a hard adjustment, but I think I'm ready. For me mentally, I think moving on and heading off to school and getting a change of scenery and pace will be really great.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Sports
Bright areas indicate gamma rays coming from the direction of the galaxy about 100,000 light years away. A small, newly discovered galaxy orbiting the Milky Way is emitting a surprising amount of electromagnetic radiation in the form of gamma rays, astronomers reported Tuesday. The finding may be the latest in a long string of cosmic false alarms, they said, or it might be that the mysterious dark matter that permeates the universe is finally showing its face. If confirmed, the results could mean that most of the matter of the universe is in the form of as yet unidentified elementary particles, 20 to 100 times as heavy as a proton, that have been drifting and clumping like fog in space ever since the Big Bang. But while the gamma ray signal is "tantalizing," in the words of Alex Geringer Sameth of Carnegie Mellon University and colleagues from Brown and Cambridge Universities, "it would be premature to conclude it has a dark matter origin." Their analysis appears in a paper submitted to the journal Physical Review Letters. The group used data from NASA's Fermi Large Area Telescope, which orbits the Earth, to search for gamma rays from a loose looking accumulation of stars known as Reticulum 2, in the southern constellation of the same name. It is one of a rare breed known as dwarf galaxies, which can have fewer than a hundred stars and are only a billionth as luminous and a millionth as massive as the Milky Way. Because dwarf galaxies have so little atomic matter, astronomers see them as happy hunting grounds for dark matter. That mysterious stuff has led scientists on a merry chase ever since Fritz Zwicky in the 1930s and Vera Rubin and her colleagues in the 1970s discerned that galaxies move under the gravitational influence of massive clouds of invisible matter. Cosmologists now agree that dark matter is 80 percent of the matter in the universe and that it is not the ordinary atomic matter that planets and people are made of, nor anything else predicted by the Standard Model that rules particle physics today. Lately physicists have speculated that it consists of exotic particles left over from the Big Bang known colloquially as Wimps for weakly interacting massive particles. So far particle accelerators like CERN's Large Hadron Collider have been unable to make them, although looking for them will be a major priority when that machine starts running again this spring. Meanwhile, there is the sky. In the centers of galaxies, where dark matter is densest, the Wimp particles would collide and annihilate one another in a telltale flash of gamma rays, the thinking goes. Some support for this notion has come from the Fermi telescope's observations of excess gamma rays, the most energetic form of electromagnetic radiation, coming from the center of the Milky Way. But astronomers cannot rule out the possibility that pulsars, black holes and other astrophysical phenomena are creating the gamma rays in our own galaxy. Still, dwarf galaxies typically appear to have nothing going on in them at all. "They are very quiet systems, just containing some old stars and a lot of dark matter," Dr. Geringer Sameth said in an email. "If you see any excess gamma rays coming from them, something intriguing is going on." Neal Weiner, a dark matter theorist at New York University, agreed, saying, "If you see gamma rays in a dwarf galaxy, it would be a good way to make a case that you are seeing dark matter." Lately astronomers have been discovering these dwarfs in droves, thanks to new tools like the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. Reticulum 2 is one of several such clumpings of stars recently discovered in data compiled by another effort, the Dark Energy Survey. The Reticulum galaxy is one of the closest dwarfs to our own galaxy, about 100,000 light years away. So far it is the only one in which gamma rays have been observed. And that observation is not unanimous. A group from Cambridge University found the galaxy in the Dark Energy Survey data and shared the information with Dr. Geringer Sameth's group, which searched the Fermi Large Area Telescope data and saw evidence for gamma rays from the galaxy. Another team, led by Alex Drlica Wagner of the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in Illinois and the Dark Energy Survey as well as the Fermi telescope collaboration, independently found the galaxy and looked for gamma rays, but did not see them. So goes life in what they call the dark sector. "This is the question to get to the bottom of, from our perspective," Dr. Geringer Sameth said. "What is causing the two analyses to reach different conclusions?" Dr. Weiner said it was far too soon to make any assumptions. "We don't know what dark matter looks like," he said. "We will need patience. But the payoff is going to be huge."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Science
Joel Pavelski, 27, isn't the first person who has lied to his boss to scam some time off work. But inventing a friend's funeral, when in fact he was building a treehouse then blogging and tweeting about it to be sure everyone at the office noticed? That feels new. Such was a recent management challenge at Mic, a five year old website in New York that is vying to become a leading news source created by and for millennials. Recent headlines include "Don't Ban Muslims, Ban Hoverboards" and "When Men Draw Vaginas." "There's 80 million millennials; we focus on the 40 that went to college," said Chris Altchek, Mic's 28 year old chief executive. But he is still working out how to manage many of the traits associated with his fellow millennials: a sense of entitlement, a tendency to overshare on social media, and frankness verging on insubordination. Mic's staff of 106 looks a lot like its target demographic: trim 20 somethings, with beards on the men and cute outfits on the women, who end every sentence with an exclamation point and use the word "literally" a lot. Their crowded newsroom on Hudson Street has an aggressively playful vibe, like a middle school fraternity house. Some ride hoverboards into the kitchen for the free snacks. Others wield Nerf dart guns or use a megaphone for ad hoc announcements. Dino, a white Maltese terrier owned by the lead designer, snuffles between desks. Mr. Altchek is proud of the freewheeling office culture. "It helps us to have everyone speak out and best ideas rise to the top," he said. "What that can feel like or sound like is rudeness. But I'd rather have a lot of people speaking their minds than a very controlled environment." But running an office made up exclusively of millennials, it turns out, is not without its snags. His philosophy was tested when Mr. Pavelski, Mic's director of programming, requested a week off, ostensibly to attend a wake back home in Wisconsin. "I went to talk to Joel and said, 'So sorry about your loss, take as much time as you need,'" Mr. Altchek said. "I was sort of taken aback," Mr. Altchek said. "It's not acceptable to be lied to." In a disciplinary meeting the next day, Mr. Pavelski's supervisor acknowledged that he had been working grueling hours, so he was given another chance. Still, Mr. Altchek wanted to send a message. "Our feedback to him was, 'This is not a three strike policy, it's a two strike policy,'" he said. Mr. Pavelski is still on his first strike. But even in an office that is tolerant of youthful boundary pushing, some millennial behavior can cross the line. Mr. Altchek recalled a companywide meeting last September that coincided with the religious holidays Yom Kippur and Eid al Adha. An Anglo Pakistani employee asked why management had announced a flexible time off policy for the Jewish holiday, but not for its Muslim counterpart. "So I told her, 'Great point, being inclusive and respectful of all religious affiliations is incredibly important to Mic,'" Mr. Altchek said. Afterward, in front of a smaller group, he was approached by a younger, entry level employee who said that there were two words missing from his reply. "I was a bit confused and said, 'O.K., what were those?'" he recalled. "And she said: 'I'm sorry. I didn't hear an apology.'" Mr. Altchek did not think such a comment belonged in a workplace, especially his. "I was a little taken aback by the tone, but I told her I would address it and make sure the person who asked the question wasn't offended by the answer," he said. "You have to control your temper. It was in front of a bunch of people, which was probably better, because I was forced to be calm." That employee is no longer with the company. (Mr. Altchek said she was let go for "performance related issues.") A sense of entitlement is not the only stereotype attached to millennials in the workplace. "Entitled, lazy, narcissistic and addicted to social media," according to CNBC. "They Don't Need Trophies but They Want Reinforcement," Forbes wrote. "Many millennials want to make the world a better place, and the future of work lies in inspiring them," Fast Company proclaimed. Older managers confused by why millennials like to Snapchat with co workers, or don't want to pay their dues with grunt work, had better get used to it. Last year, millennials edged out Generation X (35 to 50 years old in 2015) as the largest share of the labor force, according to the Pew Research Center. What's more, millennials have also surpassed baby boomers. Joan Kuhl, 36, who founded Why Millennials Matter, a consulting firm that advises employers like Goldman Sachs on hiring and retaining recent college graduates, said that what is needed is more familiarity. "We tend to publicize these outrageous acts of defiance, versus emphasizing the majority that I run into and work with, who are very mission focused and value based," she said. Ms. Kuhl educates her clients on the quirks of millennials, and why a 21 year old sees nothing wrong with oversharing. Millennials are pushed to create a "strong personal brand" to land a job, Ms. Kuhl said, so asking them to tone it down once they are employed sends "a lot of mixed messages." Still, even Ms. Kuhl has been taken aback by some of the millennials in her office. She remembered an intern who ate a tuna fish sandwich during a 10 a.m. meeting with very senior colleagues. When mildly rebuked afterward, the intern replied, "Well, you said to be myself, and I was hungry." So imagine a workplace where all are in their 20s. Mr. Altchek founded Mic in 2011 (then operating as PolicyMic) with Jake Horowitz, now 28, his former classmate from the Horace Mann School in New York. Today, Mr. Horowitz reports from the field (such as the Syrian migrant crisis from the beaches of Greece, and interviewing President Obama in the White House), while Mr. Altchek runs the business out of a 15,000 square foot converted warehouse in the Hudson Square neighborhood. Millennial news has significant competition for eyeballs. According to the data provider comScore, Mic had about 19 million unique visitors in January, compared with 79.7 million for BuzzFeed, with five other competitors falling in between. (A Mic spokeswoman pointed out that rivals like Vice Media operate multiple branded sites that roll into their comScore number, whereas Mic relies on just one site.) At Mic, she was able to dabble in different jobs and negotiate grandiose titles like "executive social editor." Often, she prefers the theater of tweeting back and forth with the editor she sits next to rather than speaking face to face. "If you can be young at heart, I think it makes your personal, and not only your work life, better," added Ms. Plank, who left for Vox last month after two and a half years at Mic. Mic apparently isn't a good fit for everyone. Madhulika Sikka, who left NPR last year to join Mic as executive editor, announced earlier this week that she was leaving the website, saying on Twitter that she was "ready to take on something new." Perhaps because of this very culture of workplace as reality show, Mr. Pavelski, the prevaricating treehouse builder, remains notably unchastened. "Maybe this is because I'm young, but, like, I don't think that there is a lot about my personal life that I wouldn't want to incorporate into what I'm doing professionally," he said. "The reason I wrote that essay in the first place was about catharsis, and I wanted to walk through my thought process and figure out what was going on with me." The logic of that may be more apparent to his age group. "The one thing I don't want people to mistake is that we're serious about this," he added. "And that we're taking over. That is all."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Fashion & Style
Even if the authorization of Moderna and Pfizer's vaccines comes quickly, only a tiny fraction of Americans will be vaccinated by the end of December. Vaccines won't enter large scale distribution until spring 2021. But with exploding cases across the country right now, we have to take immediate measures. The only way to drive down infection rates for now will be to avoid large indoor gatherings, wear masks, practice physical distancing and use other public health measures.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Health
Months before their wedding at the Four Seasons Hotel Philadelphia, Rachel Silver and Garrett Barten of Miami Beach had planned out exactly how their ring bearer would be styled. "We had decided early on that my husband was going to wear a white dinner jacket to the wedding, and I thought it would be really cute if they matched," said Ms. Silver, 32, an elementary school art teacher. At the 200 person black tie affair, on May 26, 2013, the couple's nephew, Ethan Katz, then 3 years old, wore an ivory dinner jacket ( 72.95), an ivory tuxedo shirt ( 21.95) and a black herringbone bow tie ( 9.95) from LittleTuxedos, all gifted by the bride. His tuxedo dress pants ( 8.49) from eBay and Converse Chuck Taylor All Star Easy Slip on shoes from Zappos ( 33) were paid for by his mother. The total expenditure: 146.34, not including shipping. Another attire obstacle occurred when the flower girl's dress alteration went awry. Ethan's sister, Hayden Katz, then 5, was supposed to wear an off white, satin A line dress with thin straps, mimicking the bride. "We wanted something similar to my dress for hers," Ms. Silver said. "The flower girl and the ring bearer were going to be walking down the aisle, and all eyes were going to be on them. To have them potentially not fit the aesthetics of the wedding gave me anxiety." Instead, the flower girl ended up wearing a US Angels slate colored empire dress with a beaded skirt ( 37.87), matching the bridesmaids. Hayden's second dress, Kenneth Cole sandals ( 48.95) and pearl necklace ( 35) were purchased days before the wedding on Amazon, by her mother. The total: 121.82, not including shipping. Most couples desire a cohesive look among the members of their bridal parties. Many brides, like Ms. Silver, attempt coordinating outfits with their flower girls. As a result, brands are capitalizing on flower girl dresses inspired by bridal gowns. "We were getting requests for matching flower girl dresses, and a lot of our brides don't have a ton of options to getting that cute matchy matchy look," said Hayley Paige, the head designer and creative director of Hayley Paige, a wedding dress brand. In response, Ms. Paige's Manhattan based company, with a flagship store in Los Angeles, started La Petite by Hayley Paige in October 2017. "We plucked out certain best sellers and iconic pieces from the Hayley Paige collection, and essentially created mini mes," she said. The collection, available in 100 stores worldwide, has the same fabrication and applique detailing as bridal gowns, but in girls' sizes, with a lower price point. Flower girl dresses cost 200 to 300, instead of 3,000 to 7,500, which is the price of a bridal gown by the same designer. Similar to brides and grooms, flower girls and ring bearers should be fitted for their formal wear. But, because children are growing, measurements require less lead time before the wedding. "I do have some customers who will purchase their dress 10 months before their event date, and then I'll require them to send updated measurements at least six weeks prior to their requested delivery date," said Amanda Folz, the owner and head designer of Alora Safari, a custom and couture dress brand based in Georgetown, Ky. Alora Safari garments require six to eight weeks to create and are shipped at least one week before the event. Ms. Folz, who started her business in 2013, sells 300 dresses annually, a third of which are custom made. Garments cost 300 to 2,250, with many customers ordering from California, New York, and Texas. About 75 percent of her designs are bought for weddings. The average Alora Safari dress costs 385. Often, when there's more than one petal tosser walking down the aisle, identical dresses are purchased. "An interesting trend is three or more flower girls, which was surprising to me," Ms. Folz said. "A lot of bridal parties will order dresses for multiple flower girls. The most I've done is seven girls in one wedding." With seven children's dresses (or even one), who handles the bill? "If a couple is being really specific about style, and brand, and price point, they need to consider the possibility that it won't be a fit for everyone. They should offer to help or take care of purchasing those items," said Lindsay Landman, the president and creative director of Lindsay Landman Events, which plans six to 10 weddings each year, mostly in New York. During her 17 year career, Ms. Landman, who is based in Manhattan, has dealt with flower girl and ring bearer attire related chaos, including boys' perpetually untucked shirts, flower crowns that are too heavy for little girls' heads, and children refusing to walk down the aisle because their garments are uncomfortable. But it's not always the children who cause conflict. At a 2014 wedding at Capitale, an events space in Lower Manhattan, a bride compromised for her flower girl or rather, the flower girl's mother. "We had a situation where the bride had suggested a dress that was sort of like a spaghetti strap: a really thin strap, low in the front, low in the back, appropriate for a child, but still, for a child, uncovered," Ms. Landman said. The mom was not having it. She wanted her to wear a less mature style." After "months of drama," she said, the women agreed the flower girl would wear a little shrug jacket over the dress. "Kids have so many options now," Ms. Landman said, adding that children should feel happy and be in sync with the theme. "I think it's really cute to have a ring bearer in a tux, but it doesn't always make sense for the overall aesthetic of the wedding."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Fashion & Style
Many couples opt for a destination wedding, but some are going a step further: They're having weddings with all the local customs and fanfare. A growing number of hotels around the world now provide cultural weddings and vow renewals, like a Hindu ceremony in India, a shaman led Mayan celebration in Mexico or a traditional Maasai wedding in Tanzania. Although they're typically not legally binding, the ceremonies have become a big hit with adventure seeking couples. "We've seen a substantial pickup in the last two years," said John E. Reed, the manager of Amankora Bhutan Paro, a resort in Bhutan's Paro Valley that offers Buddhist ceremonies in a nearby ancient temple. Last year the facility hosted around 20 Buddhist weddings and vow renewals, a record number. "Before it was a once in a while event," Mr. Reed said. Damari Rubio, 35, and Ian Lane, 32, of Houston had a shaman led ceremony in January at Chable Resort Spa in Mexico's Yucatan region. The resort held nearly a dozen shaman weddings last year and has another two dozen booked for this year, according to Nicolas Dominguez, the chief executive of Hamak Hotels, which operates the property. Ms. Rubio, a glove designer, and Mr. Lane, who works in construction, said they wanted to exchange vows in a nontraditional way. "We had been to Mexico before and were fascinated with the Mayan culture," Mr. Lane said, "so it wasn't even a discussion about whether we should do this. It was more like, 'How soon can we do this?'" In the couple's ceremony, which both described as "surreal," four shaman men played sacred ceremonial instruments, including a conch, and a shaman priest chanted blessings in Mayan. "We're not religious but we're spiritual, and the ceremony embodied that," Ms. Rubio said. Cultural weddings are likely to resonate with couples who don't have a strong affinity to any religion, said Lauren Kay, the deputy editor of The Knot. "They're a way for couples to create their own customs and not fit into a box," she said. Jack Ezon, the founder of Embark, a New York travel company specializing in destination weddings, said he planned more than a dozen cultural ceremonies last year, including one for 200 people in Marrakesh, Morocco, where the bride gave a traditional Moroccan henna party before the wedding and all the women received elaborate henna patterns painted on their hands and feet. He has another half dozen in the works for this year. "Along with the growing interest that travelers have in living like a local, there's a movement to get married like one," Mr. Ezon said. "The ceremony may not be legally recognized back home, but it makes for a unique, tellable story that epitomizes an exotic locale." Wedding planners, too, say that more of their clients are requesting cultural wedding ceremonies. Colin Cowie, who runs Colin Cowie Lifestyle, an event design and production company with offices in New York and Los Angeles, planned around 10 such events last year. The highlight was a 110 person wedding last November at Sabi Sands Game Reserve, in South Africa, where a sangoma (or healer) married the bride and groom. "It wasn't the textbook destination wedding where you basically change the date and the place," he said. "It was a ritual that reflected a sense of place." As was the case with Mr. Lane and Ms. Rubio, couples will often choose a locale because they have an affinity to the culture or destination. Tristan Lee, who works at Apple, and Blair Healy, a graduate student in child psychology, got married in January in a solo ceremony at Beyond Ngorongoro Crater Lodge, in Tanzania. A Maasai, William Ole Seki, who is regarded as a spiritual counselor and leader in his community, conducted the vows for the San Jose, Calif., couple, both 30. "We both love Africa and heard about how the lodge offered these weddings," Mr. Lee said. "We have been to tons of weddings together, and they all seemed the same. The idea of this stood out." On the day of the ceremony, a group of 20 Maasai dressed in traditional shukas, or brightly colored wrapped cloths, and carrying fire lit wooden sticks led Mr. Lee and Ms. Healy from their hotel room down a rose petal covered walkway while singing Maasai wedding songs. The procession stopped at a spot on the side of a hill overlooking the Ngorongoro Crater where Mr. Ole Seki was waiting with a jug filled with water, honey and milk, all of which the Maasai consider to be essential to life. "He married us in the Maasai language and blessed us by having us drink from the jug," Mr. Lee said. "The experience was genuine and emotional." More singing followed, and afterward, in a nod to American tradition, the couple cut a small cake. They had a court marriage in December, but Mr. Lee said that he can't remember the date. "To us, our Africa ceremony will always be our real wedding day," he said. Having a shaman wedding at this 19th century hacienda spread over 750 acres in the Mayan forest is a daylong affair. In the morning, brides have a 15 minute ceremony in a temazcal, or sweat lodge, that's heated to 110 degrees, where a shaman chants in Mayan and asks the gods to get rid of any disturbances they may have. An hour before the wedding, five Mayan women help dress the bride in a terno, a white dress embroidered with colorful flowers, and style her hair. Grooms wear a white linen shirt called a guayabera. The Mayans walk the couple to the property's cenote (or sinkhole), where the shaman marries them in a ceremony that includes music courtesy of four shaman musicians. The ritual incorporates yams, pumpkin seeds and other elements that are symbolic of unifying couples. This oceanfront resort's in house shaman, Jose Colli, leads Mayan Kamnicte wedding ceremonies on the beach, which begin with couples exchanging daisy flower bracelets as two Mayan musicians play drums and blow from a conch shell. Mr. Colli, who comes from a long line of Yucatan shamans from the village of X pichil, addresses the four cardinal points of the universe, asks permission to bless the couple and seals the union by strewing flower petals across the waves. Brides wear ternos, and grooms, guayaberas, or lightweight open neck shirts. Amankora's Buddhist weddings occur at Kyichu Lhakang, one of the most sacred temples in Bhutan. It was built in the seventh or eighth century as one of 108 temples across the Himalayas to pin down an evil ogress and has a spectacular view overlooking Mount Jomolhri and a valley dotted with pine forests. A Buddhist monk leads the ceremonies, which begin with couples exchanging white scarves or khaddars at the temple's entrance they're meant to bring good fortune and happiness. As the monk chants the wedding vows, he sprinkles couples with holy water to cleanse their minds and bodies and then asks them to light a series of butter lamps to dispel any darkness from their lives. A procession of more than a dozen local villagers donning colorful Bhutanese attire escort wedding parties out of the temple and back to the resort.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Fashion & Style
It was an ignominious end to interstellar dreams. The enormous Arecibo radio telescope in Puerto Rico collapsed unexpectedly Tuesday morning, the National Science Foundation said, like a helpless spent giant in a splash of metal and wire. Officials said a 900 ton platform of girders and radio receivers suspended from mountaintop towers crashed into a 1,000 foot dish nestled in a valley below. The collapse came two weeks after the National Science Foundation said the telescope, a destination for astronomers perched in the mountains of Puerto Rico, was in danger of falling and would have to be demolished. "It's such an undignified end," said Catherine Neish, an assistant professor of earth sciences at Western University in London, Ontario. "That's what's so sad about it." The platform collapsed at 7:55 a.m. local time, the foundation said. The cause of the collapse was not immediately clear, but "initial findings indicate that the top section of all three of the 305 meter telescope's support towers broke off," according to the foundation. As the platform fell, the telescope's support cables also dropped, it said. "We are saddened by this situation but thankful that no one was hurt," Sethuraman Panchanathan, the foundation's director, said in a statement. "Our focus is now on assessing the damage, finding ways to restore operations at other parts of the observatory, and working to continue supporting the scientific community, and the people of Puerto Rico." The foundation announced on Nov. 19 that the telescope had to be torn down after an auxiliary cable slipped out of its socket and left a 100 foot gash in the dish below. The observatory is managed by the University of Central Florida. "The decision comes after N.S.F. evaluated multiple assessments by independent engineering companies that found the telescope structure is in danger of a catastrophic failure and its cables may no longer be capable of carrying the loads they were designed to support," the foundation said last month. On Nov. 24, it said engineers had observed more breaks in the wires of the remaining cables attached to one of the towers that held the platform. The telescope became ingrained in popular culture and was featured in movies like "Contact" and the James Bond film "Goldeneye." But to scientists it was the most powerful radar on the planet, capable of mapping asteroids and planets from a distance and teasing out the secrets of the ionosphere, a sheath of energetic particles in the upper atmosphere. Lately it had been monitoring the ticktock beeps of pulsars around the galaxy, looking for the signs of interference from gravitational waves. The observatory has also served as the vanguard of the search for alien civilizations, and astronomers used it to track killer asteroids. For nearly six decades, the observatory was a renowned resource for radio astronomy and planetary research, and it held enormous cultural significance for Puerto Ricans. Many said they were inspired by the observatory to pursue careers in science and technology. The telescope beamed signals to and from space, an ability that made it possible to collect undiscovered details about planets in the solar system, Dr. Neish said. One of its early feats, in 1967, was the discovery that the planet Mercury rotates in 59 days, not 88 as astronomers had originally thought. "It was an incredible piece of technology," Dr. Neish said. But after years of hurricane damage and financial duress, questions arose about the observatory's future. Puerto Rico residents and astronomers had called on the foundation to repair the telescope rather than demolish it. Before the collapse, nearly 60,000 people signed a petition urging federal agencies to find a way to stabilize the structure. But Thornton Tomasetti, an engineering firm hired by the University of Central Florida to assess the telescope, said the likelihood of another cable failing was too high to justify repair work. "Although it saddens us to make this recommendation, we believe the structure should be demolished in a controlled way as soon as pragmatically possible," the firm said in a letter to the university and the foundation. The foundation said it had authorized the university to continue paying members of the observatory's staff. Many were working to repair other parts of the facility, including a nearly 40 foot telescope used for radio astronomy research.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Science
The occasionally brunette younger sister of the always blonde Jessica Simpson has led a quiet, private life in Los Angeles for the last decade. So if you forgot about her stints in MTV reality television ("Newlyweds," "The Ashlee Simpson Show"), or the three pop rock albums that followed those shows ("Autobiography," "I Am Me" and "Bittersweet World"), or her marriage to Pete Wentz (now you remember), consider it forgiven. After the birth of her first child, in 2008, Ms. Simpson retreated from fame to focus on motherhood. Now, at 33, she says she is ready to "jump back in the pool." This fall, she will release a new album, launch a clothing line and star in a reality show for E! all at the same time. The synergistic approach worked for her before: "The Ashlee Simpson Show," which cast her as the rebellious, dark horse sister of a pop princess, helped her first album go triple platinum in 2004. Today, the reality TV pool is a vast ocean, populated by innumerable attractive people with entertaining family dynamics. The Kardashian sisters picked up right where the Simpsons left off when they launched their reality show on E! in 2008 and have since created a billion dollar brand. When Ms. Simpson's new show premieres in September, it will air in the time slot following "Keeping Up With the Kardashians." (Again, synergy.) As of this moment, the sisters from Calabasas are the biggest names in reality. But Ms. Simpson has a new family dynamic that she hopes will be entertaining enough to differentiate her from the pack. In 2014, she married Evan Ross, the youngest son of Diana Ross and the late Norwegian businessman Arne Naess, Jr. (Like many of his siblings, Mr. Ross uses his mother's last name.) This unlikely union, between a former teen reality star from Waco, Tex., and the son of a pop legend, who grew up palling around with Michael Jackson in his mother's Greenwich, Conn., home, will be the focus of the series, titled "Ashlee Evan." Mr. Ross, who sings and acts in the Fox series "Star," will also share top billing on Ms. Simpson's new album. The couple has recorded a series of soulful duets inspired, they say, by those performed by Ms. Ross and Marvin Gaye in the 1970s and they will release a new track with each episode of the show. (The clothing line is similarly a joint effort: It is named after the couple's 2 year old daughter, Jagger Snow, and features gender neutral pieces reflective of the couple's tendency to share clothes.) The family's decision to pursue reality TV was born of a desire to broadcast their happiness, Ms. Simpson said on a recent Friday afternoon in a recording studio in Hollywood, sitting on a deep leather couch next to her husband. Diana Ross not only hosted but officiated the couple's ceremony and later, performed at the reception. "It was amazing," Mr. Ross said. "I kept telling people before the wedding, 'I think Mom's gonna perform.' She had never said she would, so she was like, 'You better stop telling people I'm performing at your wedding!' And then right after the wedding, we're at the party, and all of the sudden I could hear Mom's voice coming over, and she sang 'Endless Love.'" It was "magical," said Ms. Simpson, who also goes by Ashlee Simpson Ross. "I love her so much." Mr. Ross and Ms. Simpson grew up across the country from each other, where both dreamed of becoming famous someday. Ms. Simpson got her start playing a teenage babysitter on the Christian family drama "7th Heaven" before breaking out as a personality on "Newlyweds." "The Ashlee Simpson Show" followed shortly thereafter, when Ms. Simpson was 19 years old. Mr. Ross, who is now 29, said he caught the bug even earlier. "I think I was always singing and dancing for somebody," he said, in a light, melodic voice. "I can't imagine you not!" Ms. Simpson said, laughing and clasping his hand. Naturally, the two met through friends at a club in Hollywood. Mr. Ross said he was is good friends with one of Ms. Simpson's ex boyfriends, the spiky haired singer songwriter Ryan Cabrera, who featured heavily on "The Ashlee Simpson Show." Mr. Ross and Ms. Simpson started dating officially in 2013, two years after Ms. Simpson split from her first husband, Pete Wentz, of the band Fall Out Boy. (Ms. Simpson and Mr. Wentz share a 9 year old son, Bronx Mowgli.) Ms. Simpson, in turn, was very familiar with Mr. Ross's family. She recalled feeling nervous before meeting Diana Ross for the first time in 2013, after a concert Ms. Ross performed at the Hollywood Bowl. "I tried to wear something really cute," she said. The initial meeting went well, and Ms. Simpson got her future mother in law's approval. "She loves Ashlee so much," Mr. Ross said. "They're somewhat a lot alike in ways." In fact, Mr. Ross said, his mom "was just at the studio last week" offering counsel on the couple's album. "She's so involved in our life and music and with our kids. As much as she's still working like crazy, she's so excited about all the stuff we're doing and the music." And she has brought Ms. Simpson into the family fold. Ms. Simpson's father managed her early career, but she now shares a publicist with her husband and Ms. Ross. Tracee Ellis Ross is similarly supportive. "I talk to Tracee almost every day just about everything," said Mr. Ross. The "Blackish" star helps the couple decide when "to say no to stuff," he explained. "Tracee's wise," Ms. Simpson concurred. Ms. Ross said in an email that she thinks the couple's reality show "is a beautiful and perfect celebration of their love of each other and I am so thrilled that it showcases their music, because I think their music is incredible. I am also very excited that Ashlee is singing again! She has such a beautiful voice." So: Will Diana Ross be appearing on reality TV? What about Tracee? Mr. Ross would not say for sure. The show is currently being edited, and, he joked, some people "might not make the cut." "My mom and dad are definitely on it," Ms. Simpson said cheerfully. Ms. Simpson's parents were heavily involved in her first show, which premiered on MTV on June 16, 2004. Her father was an executive producer, and her mother, Tina Simpson, made frequent appearances to teach her daughter the important lessons of adulthood, like how to use a mop. The show aired in the time slot directly following "Newlyweds," and each sister regularly appeared on the other's program. Though "The Ashlee Simpson Show" was launched as a follow up to the successful "Newlyweds," it mostly served to establish Ashlee as a distinct character from Jessica, who at the time was famous for proclaiming to be a virgin before her wedding day and for her lovably ditsy struggle to embrace domestic life. ("Is this chicken what I have, or is this fish?" she famously remarked on "Newlyweds," in reference to a can of Chicken of the Sea tuna.) During the first season of her show, Ashlee dyed her hair dark brown, made out with boys (including Mr. Cabrera, who happened to be a client of Mr. Simpson's, too) and scrawled pop punk songs about "living in the shadow" of her sister in her notebook. During a recording studio scene in which she "wrote" a song about growing up with Jessica, she described the concept to her older, schlubby male producer: "I've been wanting to write a song about being in the shadow, and I always felt like I was sort of like stuck in the shadow, but I think it'd be cool if it was like, coming out of the shadow, don't you think?" "Right," said the producer, strumming an acoustic guitar and staring into the middle distance. The program was both a successful vehicle for Ms. Simpson many of her songs featured on the show, "Shadow" included, made their way to the Billboard Hot 100 and a brilliant display of the silliness involved in star making. In another scene, Ms. Simpson went to visit Geffen Records' then president Jordan Schur along with her ever present dad, Joe. Discouraged by the slow progress of making her album, Ashlee, wearing a bright aqua tank top, slunk into an oversized arm chair in Schur's office. Mr. Schur reminded her of his vision for her music in baldly comical record executive speak . "I feel you're one part pop, one part rock, and then you're one part Ashlee," he said. "I mean, there's something very unique about you." On the first episode of the second season of "The Ashlee Simpson Show," however, the Simpsons reclaimed the narrative, before that was even really a term of art. MTV aired footage of Ms. Simpson preparing for the ill fated performance. She admitted to lip syncing and revealed that she nearly lost her voice the morning of the show after a bout of acid reflux. She consulted with a doctor on the set of "S.N.L." who advised her not to sing live in order to avoid further damage to her vocal cords. Addressing the incident on the show was a canny move, in terms of publicity. It created a second wave of coverage of the event, but this time it was more positive and engendered sympathy for the teenage acid reflux sufferer. (The Kardashians now use this playbook to deal with scandals on their shows.) "Looking back now, I just want to go hug that poor girl in those moments," Ms. Simpson said, sighing and reminiscing about the humiliation. "Like, 'Aw, little Ashlee.'" This time, Ms. Simpson will have even more control of her narrative: She and Mr. Ross are executive producers on "Ashlee Evan." "We wanted the show to look a certain way and have certain feels," Ms. Simpson said. Sometimes, when reality TV stars become producers, their shows get boring. What public figure would choose to air their worst moments to an audience? But Ms. Simpson assured me "Ashlee Evan" will have plenty of drama. "The thing about us is, we are passionate, so we do argue," Mr. Ross said. As an example, he said, sometimes he wants to stay late at the studio to work on music, and Ms. Simpson wants to go home to the kids. "We do go through things," Ms. Simpson added. "I think for me, as a mom, getting back into music, and getting back to working and like, balancing that is a real juggle for me." Onscreen drama makes for good TV, but it can be the kiss of death for romance. Does it worry the couple that some marriages Ms. Simpson's sister's included last only as long as the show does? (Jessica filed for divorce from Mr. Lachey a few months after the final episode of "Newlyweds" aired.) "Everybody's like, are you worried about your relationship? And the whole thing like that," Mr. Ross said. "But I'm like, if something that bad happens in your relationship because you guys are working together doing a show, then you probably weren't supposed to be together. It might have helped you guys figure out that you guys weren't working!" Ms. Simpson said her sister was "very encouraging" when she told her about the new show. "She was like, 'Go show the world your sweet self.'" In an email, Jessica expressed wholehearted support for the new venture. "Ashlee is an incredibly smart woman," she said. "She is a wonderful wife and mother. She and Evan bring out the best in each other, they are all heart!" Like "The Ashlee Simpson Show," "Ashlee Evan" will serve as marketing for the real product: music. "Each episode, it's really true to us, and at the end of every episode we're releasing a single," Mr. Ross explained. "It's a cool, unique kind of way of doing something." He expressed excitement about bringing their musical vision to a wider audience. (Though Mr. Ross grew up, as he says, "in the public eye," he is not as well known as his wife.) The duets Ms. Simpson and Mr. Ross have been working on bear little resemblance to the kind of punk influenced pop Ms. Simpson released in the mid 2000s, however. In the studio, they played me three of them, all soulful, '70s inspired numbers about falling in love. ("I Do," which their publicist said he envisions being played at weddings, goes like this: "You're asking me if I love you/ I do, I do, I do, I do, I do.") The theme of the album, Ms. Simpson said giddily, is "conversations of love." "She came up with that idea," Mr. Ross said. He looked to his mom as an influence when they were writing songs, as well as to her friends "Michael" (that would be Jackson) and Luther Vandross. The Ross family connections also led Mr. Ross and Ms. Simpson to an unexpected collaborator on their album: Verdine White, the Grammy winning bass player from Earth, Wind and Fire. Mr. White hopped in the studio one day to sit in on a recording session, and he liked the music so much, the couple said, that he asked to play on the entire record. "He is the best," said Ms. Simpson, reverently. "And he comes with presents!" Mr. Ross added. "We get to the studio and he had like, candles with our names on it that he had got at Barneys. He's like the sweetest dude of all time." Ms. Simpson said that she is excited about taking a new musical direction. "Growing up I always loved soul and R B and India Arie and Lauryn Hill and all that, and I think like you'll feel vibes of that," she said. But she still sounds like Ashlee. "I feel like my tone of my voice, you definitely know it's me," she giggled. Throughout our conversation, both Mr. Ross and Ms. Simpson expressed that the timing for all of this the album, the show, the clothing line is right. They couldn't say why, exactly, but they believe it. Despite how long she's enjoyed a relatively private life, Ms. Simpson said she isn't nervous about courting public attention again. "All that time" she has been off the air "has been great and precious for me, because I've really grown up and I'm a different woman," she said. "I'm grown up now. And I have good love." Mr. Ross and Ms. Simpson said they did not have particular sales numbers in mind for the album or a ratings goal for the show. "I mean, everybody wants things to do well, but I think the good part about this is like, it's all love," Mr. Ross said. "What's the worst thing that could happen?" "You just gotta hope for the best," Mr. Ross said. "Man, if they totally don't like it, you're like, damn, I must be boring."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Style
Vicky Shick's "Pathetique, Miniatures in Detail," which Vicky Shick Dance offers as part of the Harkness Dance Festival, is composed of vignettes showing oddities of behavior. These scenes flicker to a score by Elise Kermani that combines wisps of Beethoven's "Pathetique" Sonata with layers of other sounds, and the costumes, designed by Barbara Kilpatrick, rustle and rattle. Most Harkness Festival productions begin with the choreographer analyzing a work in a stripped down presentation, after which it is danced in its fully theatrical version. But Ms. Shick will begin with what she calls a "playful exaggeration" of "Pathetique," in which she adds to or rearranges elements of its choreography, costumes and music. After these details have accumulated, she will show the piece in what she considers its finished form. (8 p.m. Friday and Saturday, 3 p.m. next Sunday, 92nd Street Y; 92y.org.)	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Dance
LOS ANGELES This week represents the official start of Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA, some 70 museum exhibitions, from San Diego to Santa Barbara, that explore Latin American and Latino art. With galleries getting into the act, too, visitors to the shows are likely to encounter tons of new work. And two new words: Latinx and Chicanx. At the very moment that "Latino" and "Chicano" art are poised to make a big splash, some curators are pushing to replace those masculine words with new genderless terms they find more inclusive: "Latinx" for anyone in North America with roots from Latin America male, female or gender nonconforming and "Chicanx" for anyone of Mexican descent. Never mind that the neologisms have not made it into the Merriam Webster or Oxford English Dictionary, or that the Getty Foundation, which financed Pacific Standard Time to the tune of about 16 million, is sticking with "Latino." Several P.S.T. curators are dropping these new terms in panels and papers. Their publicists are using them in email blasts. Art magazines like Artnews, Flash Art and Frieze are following suit, while latinx is gaining currency on Twitter and Instagram among political activists, student associations and various bloggers. (A recent tweet from the writers' group Latino Caucus criticized when "a journal touts support for POC" people of color "yet no Latinx people on staff or in their publication.") "We're seeing the terms become a lot more common, especially with young people," Joan Weinstein, deputy director of the Getty Foundation, acknowledged. "But we really wanted to reach a wide audience with a wide range of ages, so we thought we needed language recognized by everyone." Among those adopting the new language is Bill Kelley Jr., the lead curator of a P.S.T. exhibition at the Otis College of Art and Design featuring artist activists. He said the word Latinx has a "political charge." "The word is a proposal to change the machismo in the culture and the language," he said. For her part, Macarena Gomez Barris used Chicanx repeatedly in her catalog essay on the photographer Laura Aguilar, a key artist in a West Hollywood exhibition about the area's pre AIDS "queer" art scene. "Her gender does not fall within 'Chicano' and the people she studies with her camera are butches and femmes and gender nonconforming," said Ms. Gomez Barris, the head of social sciences and cultural studies at Pratt Institute in New York. She calls the "x" of Latinx and Chicanx (pronounced Latinex and Chicanex) a "queering" of the gendering of nouns and adjectives natural to the Spanish language, which also turns Latinas into Latinos the moment one man enters the group. "The x marks a kind of political resistance and provocation," she said. Ms. Gomez Barris pressed for using the word Chicanx in the show's title. But she lost that battle: it is called "Axis Mundo: Queer Networks in Chicano L.A." C. Ondine Chavoya, a Williams College professor and a curator of "Axis Mundo," said that for the title "we wanted to go with the more familiar, recognizable term that could help with online searching." Scholars say that Latinx, the broader and more popular of the new terms, began to appear as early as 2004 in LGBTQ communities online but did not really take off until two or three years ago. This year Google Scholar shows about a thousand academic articles using the term, twice the number from 2016. An Ohio State University professor, Frederick Luis Aldama, changed the name of his high school outreach program, LASER, to the Latinx Space for Enrichment and Research (He titled his new book "Latinx Superheroes in Mainstream Comics.") Mr. Aldama said he's taking the lead of his students: "They feel so empowered by this term, it's hard not to follow them." But as the popularity of the words grows, so does the debate over their value. Some critics reject Latinx and Chicanx for being foreign to the Spanish language, off putting to the public or simply unnecessary. The prominent Chicano artist Lalo Alcaraz, the creator of the comic strip La Cucaracha (who is not in any P.S.T. show), says he is not a fan of the construction. "As a writer, I feel like these words are so clumsy and artificial. The 'x' looks like a mathematical annotation. I feel like language should be more organic," he said. Mr. Alcaraz explained that he uses the words Latino, Latina, "la raza" or "brown people" "I mix it up." Chon Noriega, head of the Chicano Studies Research Center at the University of California, Los Angeles, and a curator of the P.S.T. show "Home So Different, So Appealing," has also resisted using the new language. "My sense is that it's a maneuver within a stable category," he said. "We can change the name, whether it's Mexican American, Chicana/o or Chicanx but the category itself is not really changing. 4 Other Names to Know in Latin American Art Paving the way. Frida Kahlo is internationally renowned for the emotional intensity of her work. But she is not the only woman from Latin America to leave her mark in the art world. Here are four more to know: 1. Luchita Hurtado. For years, Hurtado worked in the shadow of her husbands and more famous peers. Her paintings, which emphasize the interconnectedness of all living things, didn't get recognition from the art world until late in her life. 2. Belkis Ayon. A Cuban printmaker, Ayon was a master in the art of collagraphy. She worked almost exclusively in black, white and gray. She used her art, focused on a secret religious fraternity, to explore the themes of humanity and spirituality. 3. Ana Mendieta. Mendieta's art was sometimes violent, often unapologetically feminist and usually raw. She incorporated natural materials like blood, dirt, water and fire, and displayed her work through photography, film and live performances. 4. Remedios Varo. Though she was born in Spain, Varo's work is indelibly linked to Mexico, where she immigrated during World War II. Her style is reminiscent of Renaissance art in its exquisite precision, but her dreamlike paintings were otherworldly in tone. For Mr. Noriega, the pressing question is whether curators' interest in the word or for that matter, in art of the Latin diaspora will last much longer than Pacific Standard Time. "Suddenly I see museums that never thought about having a Chicano art exhibition use the term 'Chicanx.' "In five years, if they haven't had any Chicano shows," he added, "we'd know it was just an accommodation." Few cultural events can match the scope of Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA, which involves 75 nonprofit cultural venues and another 75 commercial art galleries across Southern California. Here are a few other telling figures.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Art & Design
The unconscious man in his 90s was brought to an emergency room where Dr. Douglas White was a critical care physician. The staff couldn't find any relatives to make medical decisions on his behalf. "He had outlived all his family," recalled Dr. White, who now directs an ethics program at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center. "We were unable to locate any friends. We even sent the police to knock on his neighbors' doors." Nobody could find an advance directive, either. In the end, the hospital's ethics committee had to help guide the medical team to decisions about continuing life support. Experts describe patients like this one as "unbefriended." But you can also be unbefriended, even if you do have friends and family, if you are incapacitated and haven't appointed someone you trust as a health care proxy. You'd hardly call Elizabeth Evans incapable of decision making at this point or friendless. A longtime volunteer, she likes reading and gardening and can manage the five minute drive to the supermarket. Nearly 89 and using a walker, she still lives in her ranch house in Pittsburgh. Slowly, she is recovering from the death of her husband, Jerome, last year. That trauma left Mrs. Evans with clear convictions about her own end of life decisions. "After watching my husband on life support, with everything they do to you, I wouldn't ask for that," she said. "It was horrible. I'd like to peacefully close my eyes." But if Mrs. Evans cannot voice her wishes during a health crisis, who will speak for her? The couple had no children. Her brother, who lives an hour away, is 97; her younger sister lives in Virginia. Of her close knit group of four local friends, two have died. "I'm not the kind of person who worries about something before it happens," Mrs. Evans said. So although her doctor has given her an advance directive form to fill out, she hasn't yet. Nor has she talked to her sister or her friends about her wishes. During a telephone interview, she mused about asking her lawyer or trusted physicians to serve as surrogates. But in Pennsylvania, as in many states, the law bars your health care provider from that role. If Mrs. Evans were to become disoriented in an emergency room, social workers might be left scrambling to find her relatives. A hospital staff considers someone unbefriended if family members aren't available to make decisions. Lots of people already fall into this troubling category. Sixteen percent of intensive care unit patients in one West Coast hospital were unbefriended, according to a 2007 study for which Dr. White was a co author. Another of his studies reported that of I.C.U. patients who died, 5.5 percent were unbefriended or some ethicists find this a more precise, less stigmatizing term unrepresented. The numbers are likely to increase as so much of the population ages, in part because dementia rates rise with age. "We saw a growing pattern: More and more patients who lacked decision making capacity, had no available surrogates and had not completed an advance directive," said Martin Smith, director of clinical ethics at the Cleveland Clinic. The kinds of unrepresented elders might change, too. In the past, many were marginalized homeless, addicted, mentally ill, estranged. Baby boomers, with higher rates of childlessness and divorce, have smaller and more mobile families, and longer life spans. "They could live a largely mainstream life, but outlive everyone around them," Dr. White said. Hospitals, public agencies, researchers and legislators have been grappling with this issue, though not quickly enough, and are coming up with a variety of fixes. States are broadening their default surrogate consent laws, for example. In most states, statutes specify which relatives can consent to medical procedures, or decline them, for a patient who hasn't appointed a decision maker: spouses first, usually followed by siblings and adult children. Twenty four states and the District of Columbia have added "close friend" to that list, according to the American Bar Association Commission on Law and Aging; some states also include aunts and uncles, nieces and nephews, and adult grandchildren. A member of the clergy can serve in that role in Texas. The wider the net, the reasoning goes, the greater the likelihood of finding someone authorized to make decisions. Legalized same sex marriages also mean fewer unrepresented gay and lesbian older adults. Still, hospital and nursing home staffs are often left wondering which treatments unrepresented patients would consent to, and may overtreat or undertreat them as a result. So more institutions are developing policies for such cases. (In emergencies, physicians have "implied consent" and don't require a surrogate's participation.) Without guidelines, "health care providers just make the decisions themselves," said Thaddeus Pope, director of the Health Law Institute at the Hamline University School of Law in Minnesota. "The problem is, we know that doctors have all sorts of biases, everything from race to socioeconomic factors to their own treatment preferences." They might also feel economic pressures, he added. The Cleveland Clinic has adopted protocols that provide more oversight as the medical decisions for an unbefriended patient grow more serious. For a procedure that ordinarily requires informed consent a transfusion or surgery, for example the attending physician, a second staff physician and a staff ethicist must all agree that it's in the patient's best interest. The same applies for decisions about do not resuscitate orders. Judgments about withdrawing life sustaining treatment require two staff physicians' agreement and a subcommittee of the hospital ethics committee to review the decision. Since the policy took effect in 2009, Dr. Smith said, the ethics department has consulted on more than 100 cases involving unbefriended patients. In most states, a court can appoint a public guardian for an unrepresented patient, but the process takes weeks and these programs are hampered by inadequate budgets. They are widely considered unsuitable for timely health care decisions. In Indianapolis, therefore, the Center for At Risk Elders, a nonprofit legal advocacy group, trains volunteers social workers, lawyers, retired nurses, medical and law students to serve as guardians who make health care decisions for the unbefriended. The volunteers sometimes follow patients for years. Since 2013, the group has taken on 186 cases, but "the demand for our services is outpacing our ability to recruit and train them," said the center's director, Ken Bennett. Let's acknowledge that of all the fates an unrepresented person fears, what happens in an I.C.U. may matter far less than the years leading up to that point. In a society so reliant on family caregivers, who will supply the everyday help that most older adults eventually need if they have no relatives? That question, readers tell me, keeps them awake at night. But where health care is concerned, people can recognize that they are headed toward unbefriended status if they lack a close family member to represent them (or a family member they want to represent them). They can take preventive steps, enlisting friends or more distant relations as surrogates. If they can afford it, they can turn to lawyers, geriatric care managers or professional guardians. A few innovators have experimented with care committees composed of trusted associates and professionals. They can explain their beliefs and wishes to these surrogates, paid or unpaid, and document their preferences in very detailed advance directives. "They provide clues to what the patient really values, some guidance to what circumstances they think are worse than death," Dr. White said. That, Elizabeth Evans decided in the course of our conversation, represents her best bet: writing a directive and having frank conversations with her sister, and perhaps her lawyer. "You think nothing's going to happen to you, and then you realize it can," she said. "I should have done it yesterday."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Health
Would You Like to Hang Out Here? None Adam Amengual for The New York Times Private social clubs would seem to be a perfect match for Los Angeles, where the best parties usually happen behind closed doors. But until recently, the main game in town was the Jonathan Club, which was founded in 1895 and barely registered among the young, dewier set. Everything changed in 2010, when Soho House opened in West Hollywood and became a see and be seen hangout for Hollywood deal makers. Now, a surge of members only clubs (many from London) are opening across L.A., appealing to enclaves as diverse as the city itself. Here are six of the buzziest. Adam Amengual for The New York Times Jeff Klein, a bicoastal hotelier with a gilded Rolodex, opened this ultraexclusive club in January, after a "soft launch" in December. The Bungalows made a social splash in February with an Oscar preparty hosted by CAA, the Hollywood powerhouse agency, with Melissa McCarthy and Ava DuVernay on hand. Secret Handshake: Good luck, mere mortals. This V.I.P. oasis doesn't even offer an online application. "A member would need to nominate you for consideration," said the person who answered the phone. Annual Dues: 4,200, plus 1,800 initiation fee (for members under 35, it's 1,800 with a 500 initiation fee) Bump Into: Armie Hammer, Tracee Ellis Ross and John Mayer, as well as industry heavies like Ted Sarandos, the chief content officer of Netflix, and Steven Spielberg. Unique Perks: Formerly a men only, clothing optional hotel, this chic hideaway has nine suites, a plunge pool and several elegant dining rooms and bars. Ejection Button: Mr. Klein said that a tantrum could get a member blackballed. The "no pictures ever" policy is for real; a concierge places a sticker over the lens on camera phones. Slated to open this month, the latest outpost of Soho House will occupy a former plumbing supply warehouse and will be the first to hit the flourishing Arts District of downtown Los Angeles. Secret Handshake: Those denied entry to the West Hollywood mother ship might nab a slot here. This branch is seeking members from the city's east side, including Los Feliz, Silver Lake, Echo Park and downtown. Annual Dues: 2,160, plus a 550 initiation fee ( 1,080, plus 350 initiation, for those under 27) Bump Into: Regulars at the West Hollywood hub like Amy Adams, Jenni Konner, Jesse Tyler Ferguson, Shonda Rhimes and Ron Burkle could make their way down to see the new digs. Unique Perks: A rooftop pool, three restaurants, six bars, a bi level gym with outdoor space (yoga at sunrise!) and 48 guests rooms make this the first full service Soho House in Los Angeles. (The West Hollywood outpost, along with a newer one in Malibu, do not have rooms or a gym.) Ejection Button: Photos are forbidden, though plenty of violators can be found on Instagram. Cellphone callers are banished to special outdoor zones. Originally founded in London by Paul Allen (the co founder of Microsoft) and Dave Stewart (of the Eurythmics), the h Club opened an outpost this February, at the famous corner of Hollywood and Vine. Secret Handshake: Applications are accepted online, and personal referrals seem to guarantee a slot. (Full disclosure: That's how I got in.) Annual Dues: 2,200, plus a 400 initiation fee ( 1,250, plus 250 for those under 30) Bump Into: Though Jon Hamm belongs, don't expect celebrities in every corner. The club strives to be a haven for creative types like Ahmet Zappa, a multimedia producer and the son of Frank Zappa; Aline Brosh McKenna, a screenwriter and producer; Dean Devlin, also a screenwriter and producer; and Kenya Barris, the creator of "Black ish." Unique Perks: There are co working spaces, plus a gym, pool, Japanese tearoom, recording studio, screening room and 35 guest rooms. A large rooftop offers a restaurant helmed by celebrity chef Kris Morningstar and postcard views of the Capitol Records building and the Hollywood sign. Ejection Button: Photos, even discreet selfies, are a no no. "I got in trouble for taking a picture in the pool last week," said Chris McGowan, the president of arts and entertainment at Vulcan, which owns the h. Club. "That's a rule you can't break." This "matriarchal oasis" is named after Jane Addams, a pioneering 20th century social worker from Chicago, and opened in April with a splashy party that lured Charlize Theron and Kelis. Secret Handshake: Founded as a women's space, this co working clubhouse accepts applications from all genders. Introductory tours can be booked online. Annual Dues: Membership starts at 250 a month; 5,000 for "Power Jane" status, which includes use of a private office. Bump Into: The female entertainment executive quotient is high. Founding investors includes Tig Notaro, a stand up comic; Brooklyn Decker, an actress; J.J. Philbin, a TV producer and writer; and Naomi Scott, a producer. Unique Perks: The clubhouse offers a quaint Larchmont Village feel, with five outdoor spaces, on site child care ( 20 an hour) and fitness classes with the celebrity trainer Amy Rosoff Davis. Other amenities include a hair salon, Botox touch ups, physical exams and car washes. Ejection Button: While this club is geared toward working mothers, children are not allowed as plus ones. "The Jane Club is a sacred space for women to work and to be," said June Diane Raphael, an actress and a co founder of the club. WeWork meets the Wing at the AllBright, a women's club on Melrose Place. Started by Anna Jones (the former chief executive of Hearst Magazines U.K.) and Debbie Wosskow (an entrepreneur), the first AllBright opened in London last year, and appeals to female business owners, executives and creative types. Secret Handshake: Apply online and await word. Men are permitted to visit and socialize. Annual Dues: from 2,100, plus a 300 initiation fee ( 1,100 for those under 29) Bump Into: Founding members include Olivia Wilde, Ruth Wilson, Meg Whitman and Adele Lim, who co wrote the screenplay for "Crazy Rich Asians." Unique Perks: Set on leafy Melrose Place, the three story clubhouse has a restaurant, offices, meeting rooms, a gym, a beauty salon, a screening room and a rooftop lounge. Ejection Button: Outside food or drink is prohibited. The club also encourages members to stash laptops at 5:30 p.m. and start networking. But "if you want to turn up to our club, do a workout, have a blow dry, have avocado and toast for breakfast, and then go, that's absolutely fine too," Ms. Wosskow said. This London import has even more pedigree. Founded in 1863 by Charles Dickens, Auguste Rodin and other artists, the Arts Club plans to open a sleek, nine story playground on Sunset Boulevard backed by Gwyneth Paltrow. Secret Handshake: Not slated to open until 2021, so outreach has not begun. But expect Ms. Paltrow to open her Rolodex. Bump Into: Rita Ora, Ronnie Wood, Robbie Williams and Peter Blake, the British pop artist, are all members of the London club. Unique Perks: Expected to break ground in 2020, the club will offer restaurants, bars, a rooftop pool, an art gallery, a spa, screening rooms, offices and 15 guest rooms. Ejection Button: Alice Chadwyck Healey, the club's executive director, said that disrespect toward a fellow member or staffer calls for immediate removal. Also, laptops snap shut after 7 p.m.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Style
It's August; an attempt at a fall culture season beckons, somehow, but a sense of great fragmentation persists. On Instagram I see artists and culture workers in Europe behaving more or less normally for the season that is to say, on vacation. Elsewhere, new horrors have taken over as in Beirut, where in the wake of a cataclysmic warehouse explosion, artists are sifting through the rubble of devastated gathering spaces and galleries. And then there's the United States, where symptoms of collapse are all over the culture, and maybe also, hopefully, some signs that we can build a society with more mutual care once we emerge. It's hard to avoid doomscrolling. Yet amid the algorithm's torrential spew, beauty still insists on breaking out in images and insights that honor our communities as we all try to push through, and ones that remind us of other places and possibilities. The Los Angeles photographer Kwasi Boyd Bouldin interprets his city through the broad streetscapes and utilitarian low rise architecture in which the working class and immigrant people who keep the place functioning proceed through the day. It's a local's look, keen to the poetry of auto body shops and money transfer agencies, to signs that hang askew and beat up vehicles and always the sharp, unyielding sunlight. Before the coronavirus crisis, Mr. Boyd Bouldin was not photographing people directly as much as seeking their traces, like an archaeologist, in his stark cityscapes. But on the second account he has put up this year, thepublicwork, you'll see people his kind of Angelenos, those just getting by as they navigate their ordinary chores in this terrain. These "snapshots from the lost world," as he calls them in one brief essay, are reminders of community. "Our casual interactions with one another were a reflection of the human condition in its purest form," he writes. "It's one of the most valuable aspects of daily life taken from us by this pandemic." Some 40 artists in multiple mediums make up the Art Collective at Community Access, an organization in New York that provides housing and support services for people living with mental health conditions. Some are highly trained working artists with decades of material; others have found in the studio a fresh, vital outlet. The work can be stunning, like a recent collage by Zeus Hope incorporating vintage newspaper with a jazz solo's serrated energy, or the paintings of John Smith themed on the New York City subway. The pandemic has meant restrictions on studio work for a group that, in the last year, has been increasingly visible with exhibitions, both physical and online; fortunately, its Instagram feed continues to share not only the art (and links to an online gallery for pieces that are for sale) but also glimpses of this dynamic crew's productive life and rich individual stories. When Zarina Muhammad and Gabrielle de la Puente started The White Pube, their caustic but dead serious criticism platform, they were students at Central Saint Martins, the art school in London, who had come face to face with the art world's political and institutional biases. Five years later, the duo, based in Liverpool and London, have grown a big following without sacrificing their rollicking, text messagey style, nor their rigor and curiosity. This is accountability work, often lambasting major British museums and celebrity artists, but fundamentally constructive, with care for community arts organizations and underrepresented voices. The pair, and occasional co conspirators, have a rich archive of criticism on their website, but their Instagram feed is a great point of contact. Britain is their main arena, but their perspective travels nicely. Based in Casablanca, Morocco, the bimonthly Diptyk is a rare bird in today's media landscape: a high quality art magazine from the global South that has managed to go the distance since it began in 2009. The perspective is both Moroccan and cosmopolitan, covering artists and events across Africa and the Mediterranean basin. What I appreciate about regional publications like this one is the way they reorient my perspective, shifting the center away from the usual hubs of global art and finance. Diptyk is published in French, and you won't find it on American newsstands, but its Instagram feed is a rich resource for art discovery, elegantly selected with lots of links to explore. The Zeitz MOCAA, in Cape Town, opened in 2017 in a spectacular converted granary, with the aim to become Africa's top contemporary art venue. After wobbly beginnings, a leadership overhaul brought in the star Cameroonian curator Koyo Kouoh to run the place, and with her, sharper programming and fresh energy. The coronavirus has hit South Africa hard, shutting museums indefinitely, but Zeitz MOCAA has been busy online, offering digital panels, children's activities and even dance parties. And Ms. Kouoh and her team are keeping the intellectual flame burning with an excellent series of Instagram Live interviews with fellow curators from across Africa as well as with artists like Wangechi Mutu, archived on the museum's YouTube channel.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Art & Design
TALLINN, Estonia Uber used to dominate ride hailing in Poland and Kenya. Over the past two years, that started to change. In Poland, a small competitor opened a rival service and began winning customers with cheaper fares and attracting drivers by charging lower commissions. In Kenya, that same upstart grabbed business by offering motorbike rides and letting passengers pay using a popular mobile payments provider. In both countries, Uber responded by spending more money on new incentives to entice customers and drivers. The rival that put Uber on the defensive is called Bolt. Based in Estonia, it was founded six years ago by a 19 year old college dropout, Markus Villig. Since then, the company has turned into an unexpected success story by becoming Uber's most formidable challenger in Europe and Africa. "Transportation is a completely different space," Mr. Villig, now 25, said in an interview at Bolt's offices inside a former furniture warehouse in Estonia's capital. "You will have these regional champions." He added that Uber did not make Eastern Europe and Africa a priority because "they have bigger battles elsewhere." Bolt is an example of a troublesome trend for Uber, the world's largest ride hailing company, which is set to go public next month at a valuation of as much as 100 billion. Everywhere Uber turns, a conveyor belt of new antagonists keeps emerging around the globe. In India, Uber is battling a service called Ola. In Brazil, it is dueling Didi Chuxing, a Chinese company that bought the local ride hailing operator 99 last year. (Uber owns a stake in Didi.) And newfangled transportation companies, such as electric scooter providers, have popped up. The multifront battle means that Uber, which is already spending billions of dollars to compete in 700 cities around the world, cannot afford to relax and cut back on costs as its opponents chip away at its growth. The company, which lost about 1.8 billion and spent about 14.3 billion last year, is set to continue losing money for the foreseeable future. That may be compounded as Uber's rivals become more aggressive. Bolt is now planning to confront Uber in one of its most lucrative cities: London. The smaller firm is reapplying for a taxi license to operate in the British capital after regulators there rebuffed it in 2017. A prolonged battle in London, which is Uber's biggest market in Europe and one of the few places it has been profitable, could be financially bruising. "The problem that Uber or any other incumbent faces is that the barriers to entry are very small," said Bob Hancke, an associate professor of political economy at the London School of Economics. Mr. Hancke said that ride hailing customers were fickle and that companies were largely battling over recruiting passengers and drivers. "Can they out recruit Uber and can they charge a lower price? That's the big question," he said. Uber declined to comment. The company has retreated from some highly competitive markets, including China, Southeast Asia and Russia. In the Middle East, it recently bought Careem, the biggest competitor, for 3.1 billion. But Uber has also argued that ride hailing is a battle of attrition and that it can outlast rivals. "Our scale and platform provide us with important advantages," it said in its public offering prospectus this month. If Bolt appears as if it came out of nowhere, that is partly because the company and its founder were under the radar for years. Mr. Villig grew up on a sparsely populated island called Saaremaa in the Baltic Sea and moved to the capital, Tallinn, when he was 7. By age 10, he said, he knew he wanted a career in technology. In high school, he built websites for local businesses. Mr. Villig drew inspiration from the success of Skype, the internet calling service now owned by Microsoft, whose original engineering team was in Estonia. One member of that team was Mr. Villig's older brother, Martin, who now works at Bolt. In 2013, Mr. Villig started Bolt, initially named Taxify, after dropping out of college and mustering the courage to ask his parents to let him use the few thousand euros that had been saved for his tuition. He had been frustrated by Estonia's taxi service and didn't expect Uber to become available anytime soon in a country that some Americans cannot find on a map. (Estonia is west of Russia, south of Finland.) Raising money from his parents turned out to be easier than persuading venture capitalists to invest in Taxify. A few local investors, including alumni from Skype, ultimately backed the new firm. But Mr. Villig was rejected by dozens of others who figured Uber would squash him. "It was just a taxi app in Tallinn; you couldn't see it was going to be big," said Rain Rannu, an investor in Estonia who was one of the first to put money into Bolt. As for Mr. Villig, Mr. Rannu said, "he was just out of high school." Bolt focused on working with taxi companies before switching to a business more like Uber's: offering rides through a smartphone app and using unlicensed drivers. The company homed in on markets in Eastern Europe, the Baltics and Africa where Mr. Villig felt Uber wasn't making a big effort. The company struggled until business in Africa began to grow. The continent now makes up about half of Bolt's business. Today, Bolt operates in more than 100 cities and 30 countries. It opened in Sweden, Croatia and Finland in the past six months, and will soon be available in Russia. More than 25 million passengers have used Bolt to take a ride since it was rolled out. Mr. Villig said raising money for Bolt had been difficult: He pulled together less than 5 million over the company's first five years, while Uber has raised more than 24 billion. Then last year, investors including the carmaker Daimler and China's Didi put 175 million into Bolt. It is now working on a new round of funding. Bolt's long term success is far from assured. Like Uber and Lyft, it loses money. For every 10 it makes in fares, Bolt loses about 1 because of the cost of expanding to new markets and offering incentives to riders and drivers, Mr. Villig said. But that is less than Uber and Lyft, he added. He said Bolt was on a pace to have more than 1 billion in total bookings this year and could break even if it slowed down its expansion plans. He hopes to take the company public in three to five years. Bolt also is more frugal than Uber, Mr. Villig said. The company spends about half as much on an engineer who works in its offices in Estonia and Romania than it would in California, he calculated. The company also saves money by forgoing a large research department. Instead, it posts Facebook ads for drivers to help it decide which cities to open in. Bolt focuses on areas that get big responses. The company keeps most support operations centralized in Estonia and hires just three to five employees in each country it operates. And Mr. Villig said he had no interest in spending on autonomous vehicles. Even so, Bolt faces challenges. Uber has vanquished many rivals and will add as much as 10 billion to its coffers from its initial public offering. Bolt also has many of the same labor and regulatory challenges that Uber has grappled with over the past decade. In Africa, payment fraud has been a consistent problem. Yet Mr. Villig said that even if Bolt disappeared, new rivals to Uber would emerge. Uber's "becoming more dominant is not going to happen," he said. "There isn't any geography in the world where they will have a monopoly."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Technology
As in his powerful operas, Janacek is fixated in this cycle on setting the words to music that reflects the contours, sounds and rhythms of the Czech language. Still, for all their naturalism, the vocal lines also achieve agitated, plaintive lyricism. The piano sometimes steps back to provide bare harmonic support. Mostly, though, the instrument engages the vocal lines, shifting from moments of folkloric melody to passages of disorienting sonorities, or to stretches that become obsessed with a strange repeated riff. Mr. Polenzani brought baffled tenderness to the opening songs, in which Jan is distressed by his longing. But he sang with piercing intensity and terror during the cycle's tumultuous episodes, when Jan becomes unhinged. The mezzo soprano Jennifer Johnson Cano, fresh from her performance on Friday as Meg Page in Verdi's "Falstaff" at the Metropolitan Opera, brought rich sound and coolly seductive allure to the songs in which Zefka appears. Kathleen O'Mara, Marie Engle and Megan Esther Grey, performing from an upper balcony near the stage, sang the music of the mysterious chorus. Mr. Drake played commandingly, including a piano solo depicting the consummation of this impulsive love fitful music of hurtling chords and steely harmonies. To offer a quite different take on Romany life, Ms. Cano also performed Brahms's appealing "Zigeunerlieder," evocations of what was widely thought to be "Gypsy" music though all Brahms knew of the style were the fluffy approximations played at the time in Viennese cafes. In the first half, Mr. Polenzani offered sensitive, deeply focused performances of six Schubert songs, followed by a nuanced yet forthright account of Beethoven's song cycle "An die Ferne Geliebte." While none of the music was written more recently than a hundred years ago, this program felt like a subtle model of artistic adventurousness.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Music
New York is home to more than 7,600 bodies of fresh water. It also borders two of the Great Lakes, the Long Island Sound and the Atlantic Ocean. In a nod to the role that water has played in the state, six museums around New York will host "Water/Ways," a traveling Smithsonian exhibition that explores water's effects on migration and settlement, and the relationship between water and politics, economics and culture. "As we celebrate the bicentennial of the Erie Canal, the 'Water/Ways' exhibition will enable host sites to tell the story of how their communities helped New York become the Empire State," Erika Sanger, the executive director of the Museum Association of New York, said in a statement about the show, adding that water also connects New York "to other states, and our oceanfront communities connect us to our nation and peoples around the globe." The exhibition will tour the Erie Canal Museum in Syracuse; the Aurora Masonic Center in Aurora; the Buffalo Niagara Heritage Village; the Chapman Museum in Glens Falls; the Hudson River Maritime Museum in Kingston; and the East Hampton Historical Society, from June 2019 to April 2020, as part of the Smithsonian's Museum on Main Street. The six institutions will also organize related exhibitions and host public events and educational programs.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Art & Design
Health workers at the Mpondwe Health Screening Facility, on Uganda's border with the Democratic Republic of Congo. The outbreak that began in Congo has defied expectations. For the Third Time, W.H.O. Declines to Declare the Ebola Outbreak an Emergency For the third time, the World Health Organization declined on Friday to declare the Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo a public health emergency, though the outbreak spread this week into neighboring Uganda and ranks as the second deadliest in history. An expert panel advising the W.H.O. advised against it because the risk of the disease spreading beyond the region remained low and declaring an emergency could have backfired. Other countries might have reacted by stopping flights to the region, closing borders or restricting travel, steps that could have damaged Congo's economy. Dr. Preben Aavitsland, a Norwegian public health expert who served as the acting chairman of the emergency committee advising the W.H.O., said there was "not much to be gained but potentially a lot to lose." At the same time, the committee of 10 infectious disease experts said in a statement that it was "deeply disappointed" that donor nations have not given as much money as the W.H.O. and affected nations need to battle the outbreak. But some global health experts have argued in recent months that the W.H.O. should declare an emergency to bring the world's attention to the Ebola crisis. Dr. Jeremy Farrar, director of the Wellcome Trust, a health foundation based in London, said on Friday that such a declaration would have strengthened efforts to control the outbreak. "It would have raised the levels of international political support and enhanced diplomatic, public health, security and logistic efforts," he said. Dr. Tedros Adhanom Gebreyesus, the W.H.O. director general, accepted the committee's recommendation, saying that, even if the outbreak did not meet the criteria for an emergency declaration, "for the affected families this is very much an emergency." The W.H.O. has requested 98 million for its response and has received only 44 million. In an interview before the announcement, Dr. Tedros said it had recently received commitments from Britain, the United States and Germany. "We've never seen an outbreak like this," he said. "It happened in a chronic war zone and overlapped with an election that politicized the whole situation. Militia attacks kept interrupting the operations, and when that happens, the virus gets a free ride." With more than 2,100 infected and 1,400 dead, the outbreak centered in eastern Congo is surpassed only by the 2013 16 West Africa outbreak in which more than 28,000 were infected and 11,000 died. Supplies of the Ebola vaccine are running low, Dr. Tedros said, but Merck agreed Thursday to reopen its plant and make more. To stretch supplies until those arrive, doses are being split and a new Johnson Johnson vaccine will be rolled out soon, he said. According to the Ugandan and Congolese health ministries, W.H.O. officials and Associated Press reports quoting border officers, the boy was a grandson of a pastor in Congo who fell ill in May. The pastor's daughter, married to a Ugandan man, went home to care for her father, bringing her two sons, ages 5 and 3. The pastor died on May 27, and on June 10, a dozen members of the family started to return to Uganda. The children looked sick, and when they were stopped at a border post, their temperatures were taken. They were put in isolation and told to wait while transportation to an Ebola treatment center was arranged. Instead, six members of the family slipped away and crossed on an unguarded footpath to the shallow Lubiriha River, which forms the border but is easily forded . Only after the pastor's burial, attended by more than 80 people, was it confirmed that he had died of Ebola. Congolese authorities are trying to find everyone who attended. Ebola spreads in bodily fluids, including blood and diarrhea, and dead bodies can teem with live virus. Congolese health authorities alerted their Ugandan counterparts, but the 5 year old was already at a hospital in Uganda , about 15 miles from the border. Since then, both boys and the grandmother have died. Experts do not expect the Ugandan outbreak to spiral out of control. Uganda has a strong central government and a cash starved but organized health care system. It has endured and beaten three previous Ebola outbreaks, in 2000, 2007 and 2012. Also, with outside help, Uganda has been intensively preparing for Ebola to invade from Congo. "We'd been expecting it," Dr. Tedros said. "It was when, not if." About 4,700 health workers and others who might come into contact with the infected have been immunized. Unicef has held over 14,000 meetings at schools, churches, mosques, markets, taxi stands, bus stops and even funerals to discuss Ebola prevention and the need to seek care as soon as symptoms appear. In eastern Congo, by contrast, the outbreak careered out of control because the area is so lethally unpredictable. Distrust of the national government there is intense and dozens of local militias and self proclaimed rebel armies range over it. Health workers have been stopped at informal roadblocks where bandits demand money. In recent months, experts have been alarmed by an acceleration in infections, though more than 130,000 people have been vaccinated. While it took about eight months to reach the first 1,000 cases, it has taken only a few more to surpass 2,000. Officials believe many deaths are taking place in villages where families refuse to bring sick relatives in for testing. Only a little over half of new cases in Congo are in people with known connections to previous cases, an indication that contact tracing, considered essential to beating an outbreak, has fallen apart. The fatality rate among known cases is about 66 percent, but the number of unknown cases makes the real number impossible to calculate.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Health
INDIANAPOLIS The Colts' uncharacteristically wretched season the perennial N.F.L. playoff contenders finished 2 14 has dimmed some of the luster of the first Super Bowl to be played here, on Feb. 5. But residents can take some consolation from a mini building boom in anticipation of the big game, with its 150,000 expected visitors and worldwide television audience. The centerpiece is a 1,000 room J. W. Marriott hotel, a 34 story swoosh of Colts blue glass that will serve as media headquarters. And the city will spend a total of 187 million on infrastructure like bridges, sidewalks, streets and parks. For fans there is Tailgate Town, a winter playground with a turf field, interactive games and an 80 foot high zip line. It will connect to the Indiana Convention Center, where the league will have the 800,000 square foot N.F.L. Experience fan festival. Finally, due east, some 12 million is being spent on improving Georgia Street, a three block long pedestrian promenade where fans can enjoy food and live entertainment, linking the convention center with the Bankers Life Fieldhouse arena. But away from the spotlights, the biggest beneficiary has been the Near Eastside, a 44 square block area a mile east of downtown. With high rates of crime and poverty and a foreclosure rate that led the nation in 2004, the neighborhood had trouble even attracting a grocery store to serve its 40,000 residents. Fortune smiled on the area when Mark Miles, the board chairman of the Super Bowl Host Committee, decided the neighborhood would become part of the 2008 bid, after Indianapolis lost out the previous year to Dallas. The Near Eastside neighborhood had produced a quality of life plan in 2007, the result of more than two years' committee work under the guidance of James Taylor, the executive director of the John H. Boner Community Center on East 10th Street, the heart of the Near Eastside. One of the things participants said was needed was a community center. None Week 11 Takeaways: Here is what we learned this week. N.F.L. Tightens Covid Protocols: As cases rise and Thanksgiving approaches, the league is requiring masks inside team facilities and increasing testing. Giants' Loss Leads to Finger Pointing: Coach Joe Judge challenged the team and its coaches after being routed by the Buccaneers on Monday night. What Will the Giants Do With Daniel Jones? The team must evaluate the quarterback ahead of a contract decision. Playoff Simulator: Explore every team's path to the postseason, updated live. The need dovetailed neatly with the city's Super Bowl bid. Since 1993, the league has given 1 million to the Super Bowl host city to build a community center that it calls a Youth Education Town, with the stipulation that the grant be matched, said Alexia Gallagher, the director of the N.F.L. charities and youth football fund. The neighborhood's high school, Arsenal Technical, had already been chosen as the site where the city would build a practice facility and turf field for the National Football Conference's Super Bowl team, a project expected ultimately to benefit the high school's athletic program. (Ultimately the University of Indianapolis agreed to install the turf field there; it will later be installed at Arsenal Tech.) The Super Bowl bid included a proposal for what became the Chase Near Eastside Legacy Center, on the grounds of Arsenal Tech. At more than 27,000 square feet, the center will have fitness operations, a media studio, a mobile computer lab, an educational greenhouse and garden, an instructional kitchen and an art studio. Financing for the Chase Legacy Center came from several sources, including 5.5 million from the Lilly Endowment, 1 million from United Way of Central Indiana, 250,000 from the Lumina Foundation and 200,000 for the turf field from the N.F.L, in addition to 1 million seed money. Chase bank came forward with another 1 million to leverage 4 million in New Market Tax Credits. Chase, the largest bank in Indiana with the tallest building in downtown Indianapolis, has invested 12.1 million in the Near Eastside, said Dennis L. Bassett, the bank's state chairman. Beyond the community center, plans to revitalize the Near Eastside include rehabilitating housing, improving the streetscape and diversifying the retail mix. Just east of Arsenal Tech are the boulevards and grand homes of Woodruff Place, one of Indianapolis's earliest suburbs, built in the mid 1800s and once separated from downtown by cornfields. "You go one street over" from Woodruff Place, said Mr. Taylor, a social worker who has led the urban renewal efforts for 14 years, "and probably 80 percent of the residents are at the poverty line or near the poverty line." He said the average price for houses on the Near Eastside acquired for redevelopment was 11,000. The Boner Center is on the north side of St. Clair Place, an area to the east of Woodruff Place. By the time the national anthem is sung to start the Super Bowl, Mr. Taylor expects 250 homes in that area to have been renovated, reconstructed or improved. The St. Clair Senior Apartments, next to the Boner Center, have been constructed and already opened with 33 one and two bedroom apartments, as well as 3,000 square feet of retail space on the ground floor. Two condominiums were included in the rehabilitation of the existing Jefferson Apartments at East 10th and Jefferson Streets to help pay for the renovation of 18 rentals that are "homeownership incubators," Mr. Taylor said. The East 10th Street corridor, once mostly mom and pop stores, now has a 4,000 square foot food co op, among other new businesses, and new sidewalks, storm sewers and street lights. All these programs are part of a pot that started in 2008 with 38 million in local, state and federal money that has grown to 150 million and counting, said Mr. Taylor, coming from myriad financing sources. "If I gave you the spreadsheet, it would probably make your head a little bit dizzy," Mr. Taylor said.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Real Estate
This timber framed, five bedroom home is in Canmore, a valley town in the Canadian Rockies near the southeast boundary of Banff National Park, in Alberta province. Built in 2004 on a third of an acre, the 4,802 square foot house is inside Silvertip Resort, a master planned golf community situated along the lower benches of Mount Lady Macdonald. Prospective buyers needn't be golfers, said Christopher Vincent, a senior vice president of sales with Sotheby's International Canada, which has the listing. "One of the nice things about it is our golf season is so short that the course creates a lot of privacy the rest of the year," he said. "Wildlife comes wandering through, and you can go and walk the cart paths." The room is lined with glass doors and windows, one side of which opens onto a spacious stone patio with a gas fireplace overlooking Canmore and the mountains to the west. The master suite, on the ground floor, has a stone fireplace and access to the patio. The bathroom has a walk in shower with a bench seat and a double vanity with tabletop basin sinks. There are three bedrooms upstairs, one of which is directly above the master bedroom in the house's tower, with a vaulted ceiling and fireplace. The two bedrooms at the opposite end of the hall share a bath with a large soaking tub. The fifth bedroom is on the lower level, along with a full bath, a 1,300 bottle wine cellar and a media room with a retractable movie screen over the fireplace. The attached two car garage has storage for skis and bicycles, as well as a pantry. The town of Canmore, with about 14,000 year round residents, caters to the throngs of tourists who come to the Rockies to hike, climb, ski, kayak, fly fish and bicycle. "We've got close to 100 restaurants, big grocery stores and boutique food shops, lots of wine shops," Mr. Vincent said. "It's definitely not your typical small town." Banff National Park, Canada's oldest national park, is about five miles from Silvertip and covers 1.6 million acres. The many attractions include abundant wildlife, glacier fed lakes, skiing on Mount Norquay, fishing on the Bow River and a 16.6 mile paved biking path between the town of Banff and Canmore. The nearest international airport is in Calgary, Alberta's largest city, about 65 miles east. Private planes may land at the airport in Springbank, just outside the western border of Calgary. Canmore just completed a record breaking year for home sales, said Brad Hawker, the broker and owner of local firm Royal LePage Rocky Mountain Realty. The 562 total sales in 2019 represented a 13.7 percent increase over 2018, he said. The median sale price also rose, ending 2019 at 607,740 Canadian ( 465,000), a 5.6 percent increase over 2018, Mr. Hawker said, noting that the climbing sales are a reflection of steady demand from second home buyers and active retirees, as well as a healthy local market. "The local segment of the housing market is driven by tourism, and that has been strong, so the local economy is strong," he said. Market conditions are dramatically different in Calgary, where 1.2 million residents make up Canada's third most populous municipality. The city's economy is heavily reliant on the oil and gas industry, so when the price of oil crashed globally in 2014, heavy layoffs and lost revenues sent the housing market into a tailspin, said Ann Marie Lurie, the chief economist for the Calgary Real Estate Board (CREB). Unemployment is currently around 7 percent. "We've seen about an 11 percent price adjustment since 2014," Ms. Lurie said of the city's falling home values. "The worst hit by far were the apartment and condo products, where the adjustment was more like 17 percent." In 2019, the median price for a home in Calgary was 410,000 Canadian ( 314,000), a 2.4 percent drop from 420,000 Canadian ( 322,000) in 2018, according to CREB. The median price for an apartment fell by about 4 percent year over year, from 252,500 to 242,000 Canadian ( 193,000 to 185,000), as did the median price of a detached house, from 484,000 to 465,000 Canadian ( 370,000 to 356,000). While buyers from Calgary represent a significant portion of the Canmore market, the city's economic decline hasn't had much impact on sales in Canmore, except at the highest end, Mr. Vincent said. "When oil crashed, it looked like our market would tank, but the opposite happened," he said. "A lot of folks took early retirement, left the city and came here." Canmore townhouses and condos, which are popular with second home buyers, start at around 600,000 Canadian ( 460,000) for a three bedroom without a garage, and 700,000 Canadian ( 535,000) with a garage, Mr. Hawker said. The town of Banff, located inside the national park with a population of about 7,800, is virtually closed to second home buyers because home purchases are restricted to people who work there, Mr. Hawker said. Buyers must either own their own business or work for an existing business. Most buyers tend to come from the Calgary, Edmonton or Toronto areas, but among foreign buyers, the largest group by far are Americans, Mr. Vincent said. "We used to have a lot of folks out of Texas a lot of them in the oil and gas industry had been posted in Calgary," he said. "Now we're seeing a lot more people from the Eastern Seaboard and California, mainly because we offer good value relative to Vail or another U.S. resort market." Mr. Hawker said foreign buyers also come from the United Kingdom, Australia and, to a lesser degree, Asia.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Real Estate
The International Space Station, docked with the space shuttle Endeavor, roughly 220 miles above the Earth, in 2011.Credit...NASA/ESA The International Space Station, docked with the space shuttle Endeavor, roughly 220 miles above the Earth, in 2011. For the International Space Station, Leroy Chiao was, in a sense, there before the beginning. In October 2000, he was one of seven astronauts on the space shuttle Discovery, which brought pieces of the nascent space station to orbit. Construction had begun a couple of years earlier. But no one was living there yet. Much of the work on Dr. Chiao's flight was done outside the space station, during spacewalks. But the astronauts also got to go inside briefly. It was a runt of a space station then. The habitable portion consisted of just three modules, not the 16 orbiting today. But it was ready for people to move in. Research conducted on the space station has yet to discover a cure for cancer or osteoporosis. And it has not generated a technological breakthrough that would transform life on Earth. But it has given NASA and other space agencies the knowledge and experience of how to build complex machinery in space, and insight into how microgravity affects the human body. "The whole thing is an experiment of, Can humans live in space for long periods of time, operate in this challenging environment, and do it safely, do it successfully?" said Scott Kelly, one of the space station's most prominent residents, who spent nearly a year in orbit, beginning in March 2015. "If that's one of your main objectives of the program, I think it has been a great success." An orbiting space station has long been seen as a steppingstone to the rest of the solar system. In the afterglow of the Apollo 11 moon landing in 1969, a task force led by Vice President Spiro T. Agnew recommended ambitious follow up space goals like a reusable space shuttle and a space station with the aim of sending astronauts to Mars as soon as the 1980s. President Richard Nixon, trying to rein in the federal budget, gave NASA the go ahead only for the shuttle. The upper stage of one of the Saturn 5 rockets from one canceled moon mission was turned into Skylab, a space station for three NASA missions in 1973 and 1974. But it had crashed back to Earth by the time the space shuttles began flying in 1981. The first module, Zarya, built by Russia but financed by NASA, launched in November 1998. A couple of weeks later, the space shuttle Endeavour brought up Unity, the first American built piece, which connects the Russian and NASA led segments. A Russian module, Zvezda, launched in July 2000. Those were the ones that were there when Mr. Shepherd, Mr. Krikalev and Mr. Gidzenko set up home. "Through the whole flight, there wasn't really a typical day," Mr. Shepherd said. The 20 year streak of humans in space did not begin grandly. "The initial two or three weeks was fairly cramped, because the station had to be kind of opened up gradually," said Mr. Shepherd, a former member of the Navy SEALs who served as the commander of the first crew. "We could not turn everything on and go everywhere in the station initially." They set up systems such as scrubbers to keep carbon dioxide levels from building up, stowed cargo, attached components brought up by space shuttles, fixed things that broke and even ran a few experiments. It was another decade before construction on the International Space Station was considered complete, with a lull of more than two years when the space shuttles were grounded after the loss of Columbia in 2003. "All the terrible catastrophes for the shuttle meant that all of us, Americans and Russians, we had a long period of just maintaining the station," said Pavel Vinogradov, a Russian astronaut who reached the station in 2006 when it was operating with a skeleton crew of two in what he called "survival mode." But when the shuttles were cleared to fly again, progress on construction resumed. "I would tell you, looking back on it, it went way, way better than we could have ever hoped," said Michael T. Suffredini, who served as NASA's space station program manager for a decade, from 2005 to 2015. Imagine building large pieces of machinery that have to interlock precisely but not having any chance to check that they do indeed fit before they are launched to orbit. The modules of the space station, each about the size of a school bus and built in factories thousands of miles apart, came together seamlessly. "That's an amazing feat," Mr. Suffredini said. "This is by far the largest, most complicated spacecraft ever flown." By her third trip, which began four years ago, the size of the crew had expanded to six, and Dr. Whitson, a biochemist by training, was finally able to spend much of her time as a scientist. "I've done everything from soybeans to superconductor crystals, but on this last mission, I got to do a lot of stem cell and cancer studies and bone studies," Dr. Whitson said. "The quality and quantity of science that we were doing has really been enhanced." The station is to remain in orbit until at least 2024, and Mr. Suffredini is now looking to apply what has been learned to commercial space stations. He is president and chief executive of Axiom Space, a Houston company that NASA selected in January to build a commercial module to add to the International Space Station. When the current space station is retired, the Axiom module would become the core of an Axiom space station. "Our whole company is founded on that premise that we can do it a lot less expensively," Mr. Suffredini said. Nanoracks, Mr. Manber's company, is also developing a concept for a commercial outpost that would operate robotically most of the time and thus more cheaply. It would also enable experiments and manufacturing in space that would be too dangerous if there were people around. Astronauts could periodically visit. Mr. Suffredini said the current trajectory of life in orbit followed the path of previous exploration of new territories. "In any government exploration in the history of mankind, you send out a few people that are government funded to go do a relatively risky thing, just to see what's there," he said. If there's anything of value, the pioneers follow and eventually the settlers. "In order to establish low Earth orbit," Mr. Suffredini said, "we need to get to the pioneering stage, which is what we're really doing."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Science
It's no surprise that a blogger with 180,000 followers would be drawn to a watch by its social media profile. "When Hublot took over a whole hotel in Brazil for the FIFA World Cup in 2014 and turned it into a Hublot hotel and had fun activities every day, I followed it on social media and thought it was brilliant," Zeynab El Helw recalled. "And Hublot was the first brand I know of to have a regional social media profile with original images, using Arabic. I really liked that." There's another reason the 30 year old favors Hublot: The brand has what she calls "street style chic." She bought its Big Bang Steel Diamonds watch because "it has a rubber strap, which makes it casual, but it's combined with elegant diamonds on the bezel." That high/low mix is the story of her life. She grew up in London, was trained in piano and flute, graduated from Central St. Martins and then earned a master's degree in marketing and a second master's in international business management. She moved to Dubai, where she still lives, and worked until May for Dior, directing its marketing for the Middle East, Africa and Turkey. All pretty classic.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Fashion & Style
Credit...Joe Sohm/Visions of America/UIG, via Getty Images Actually, Gen X Did Sell Out, Invent All Things Millennial, and Cause Everything Else That's Great and Awful What is an X? An empty set, a place holder, a nothing that fills a void until an actual something comes along. For the members of Generation X, born between 1965 and 1980, that was never us. "They have few heroes, no anthems, no style to call their own," wrote Time magazine in a 1990 cover story called "20 something" that marked our debut, as a class, on the national stage. "They crave entertainment, but their attention span is as short as one zap of a TV dial. They hate yuppies, hippies and druggies. They postpone marriage because they dread divorce. They sneer at Range Rovers, Rolexes and red suspenders." Leave aside the fact that struggling 20 somethings of any era tend to sneer at luxury goods. At that point, the oldest members of Generation X were 25. No one really knew what we were. But someone apparently knew what we weren't: dreamers, revolutionaries, world changers, like the baby boomers before us. To the extent that we were defined, we were defined in the negative the first generation in American history to be written off before it had a chance to begin. Now it's been a quarter century since the cliches ossified. Here is another negative to chew on: What if everything we decided about Generation X turned out to be wrong? This generation is even smaller than it might appear There is one thing people do get right about America's Generation X: There aren't that many of us roughly 65 million, according to recent data from the Census Bureau. Sandwiched between the change the world boomers (around 75 million) and the we won't wait for change millennials (approximately 83 million), we were doomed to suffer a shared case of middle child syndrome, an eight figure strong army of Jan Bradys. And our generation may be smaller than that. Only 41 percent of the people born during those years even consider themselves part of Generation X, according to one MetLife study. Most people I know who ever copped to X ness were born in the later '60s or early '70s, a window of maybe eight years. (My wife was born in 1979 and has no idea who Fonzie is. Case closed.) Read more about the tech, music, style, books, rules, films and pills that scream Gen X. Our generation also showed a disturbing tendency to lose its leading lights due to untimely death. Boomers never got over losing Jimi, Janis, and Jim during a ten month span of 1970 and 1971, but consider the Generation X icons who were snuffed out at an early age: Tupac Shakur, Jeff Buckley, Brandon Lee, Elliott Smith, Biggie Smalls, River Phoenix, Shannon Hoon, Aaliyah and a certain beloved flannel clad rocker from Aberdeen, Wash., who has gotten enough ink in Generation X articles. So it's easy to decide that Gen X is culturally irrelevant if you're comfortable with the dangerous prospect of making sweeping conclusions about the identity, values and culture of millions of individuals from every imaginable background. Did the working class class trans kid living in Tulsa, Okla., the Marine recruit from the South Bronx, the heiress in Rhode Island, and the surfing phenom in Huntington Beach, Calif., all groove on "Mystery Science Theater 3000" in 1992? Would it matter if they did? But to cede irrelevance, even after 25 years of reflection, would be to let the winners the boomers, or maybe the millennials write our history for us. Like bell bottoms, aviator shades and Birkenstocks, we have been wearing the cliches imposed by other generations since Zima was cool (Zima was never cool). And now, as our AARP cards begin to arrive in the mail, maybe, just maybe, it's time to turn those cliches on our heads one by one? We were never slackers There it is, the Big Bang, the Generation X cliche from which all others were born. But where did "slacker" come from? The answer, in one sense, is obvious: from the 1991 film of the same name by Richard Linklater (also a boomer). "Slacker" featured a bunch of 20 something nonactors wandering around Austin, Tex., before a 16 millimeter film camera muttering daffy inanities like "we've been on Mars since 1962" until the film's 23,000 budget ran out. Martian colonies, apparently, were what you talked about when you were young, the economy was lousy and you could still freely traverse Austin without running aground on banh mi food trucks and emigres from Brooklyn. "Slacker" was, by all counts, a seminal film, although I don't remember any of my Gen X friends getting through more than 30 minutes of it. We preferred "Dazed and Confused," Mr. Linklater's celluloid Slurpee from 1993, because that was about high school students in 1976 yes, boomers! and for years we bought the lie that older people's culture mattered more than our own, just because there were more of them. Rootless cosmopolitans, we were told to look to the past for significance, so we did to the Sinatra Rat Pack ("Swingers," 1996), to Kennedy era Madison Avenue ("Mad Men," created by Matthew Weiner, b. 1965), to the male blow dryer era ("That '70s Show"). What we did not find significant was the "slacker" label. "The slacker tag never really applied to me, or anyone I knew," said Sarah Vowell (b. 1969), an author and contributor to "This American Life" who spent her 20s juggling graduate studies with a teaching gig at an art school and multiple deadlines per week as a freelance journalist. "Even though my friends and I all looked like extras from 'Reality Bites,'" she said, "our Puritan work ethic was probably more 1690s than 1990s." Central to the slacker myth was coming of age during the early '90s recession, which, according to '90s surveys of our generation, apparently doomed us to failure for life. And yes, the recession was real. People lost jobs (including George Herbert Walker Bush, in the 1992 Presidential election). People looked for jobs and did not find them. But the recession that supposedly served as cement shoes for a generation was, in historical terms, relatively short and mild. It lasted just eight months, with unemployment bottoming out at 7.8 percent, compared to the 1980s recession that lasted 16 months with a peak unemployment rate of 10.8 percent, and the Great Recession starting in 2007, which lasted 18 months with unemployment around 10 percent. But by the time the '90s recession ended, in March of 1991, the oldest Gen Xers were barely 26. The youngest were in middle school. And the post recession economy that followed was closer to the Roaring '20s than the Depression '30s, marked by the longest running economic expansion in the nation's history. Gen X had it good. With low inflation, rising productivity due in part to technological advances and a booming stock market, the National Debt Clock near Times Square actually started to run backward by 2000, as flush times allowed the country to pay down its debt. Whether or not we still hated "yuppies," as Time magazine once asserted, the professional classes of Generation X were beginning to earn, and that only continued, despite the giant dislocations of the dot com bust (2000) and the Great Recession. By the middle of this decade, in fact, Generation X already had more spending power than either boomers or millennials, according to a survey by Shullman, a market research company that focuses on the luxury sector, with 29 percent of the estimated net worth and 31 percent of the income, though we comprise just a quarter of the American adult population. The generation also seems to have gotten over its aversion to Rolexes and Range Rovers (although not, it seems, red suspenders). As of 2012, we were also spending 18 percent more on luxury goods than our yuppie boomer forebears, according to one American Express survey. We did not get there by slacking. We just have our own way of enjoying life. "As for our notorious hustle to debt ratio, it speaks to a generational lifestyle ambition that often exceeds our career ambition," Jason Tesauro (b. 1971), the food writer behind the Modern Gentleman series of advice books, wrote in an email. "I've published, accomplished, saved, succeeded, but 0.0 family elders would add my name to our ancestral canon of iconic workaholics," he continued. "I'm 47 and I can sum up my financial goals in a simple mantra: 'Older wine, newer shoes.' I call it Pellegrino rich. I just want enough affluence so that when I'm asked, 'Still or sparkling?' I don't have to check my balances first." While not exactly the '90s Mountain Dew ad vision of shreddin' youth, Mr. Ryan's Generation X ness became a presumptive selling point to youngish voters, even as Mr. Romney evoked their mom's divorce lawyer. As I wrote in 2012 in The Times, Mr. Ryan "favors grunge music, Coen brothers movies and craft brews. He sprinkles the word 'awesome' into daily speech." As a teenager, he even worked an actual "McJob," at an actual McDonald's. The Gen X notables I talked to then, however, seemed underwhelmed. "I wonder if the Germs ever felt this way about having Belinda Carlisle as their first drummer," Johnny Knoxville said, in the most Generation X terms imaginable. America's "jackass" need not have worried. Congressman Ryan did not get the job. Six years later, we still have not even sniffed the White House, which may be another reason we suffer a generational sense of athazagoraphobia, an abnormal fear of being forgotten or left out, as Jeff Gordinier pointed out in his 2008 book, "X Saves the World." Lots of people seem to believe that Barack Obama was the first Generation X president. The confusion is understandable. As a teenager, the 44th president spent afternoons smoking pot in a van with a crew called the Choom Gang, which is a very Generation X thing to do. But Mr. Obama was born in 1961 and therefore is not Generation X by most definitions. Some demographers like to argue that the generation began in 1960. To put it in scientific terms, this is hogwash. Most people born in 1960 graduated from high school in 1978. The white suburban high school students I remember in 1978 wore feathered hair, thought Camaros were cool, and considered "Lucky Man," by Emerson Lake and Palmer, to be the height of synth pop. Case closed. It was hardly one big gorgeous mosaic (it never is). In our formative years, we saw racial attacks in Howard Beach, Queens, and Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, become national news, as well as the rise of neo Nazi skinheads and gay conversion camps. Gay marriage was politically unthinkable, and even some progressive boomer parents had a hard time when their children came out. Even so, some progressive Xers saw an old order crumbling, sometimes just with a visit to the record store. "When I think of the meat of the '80s, I think of the gender bending of the early Depeche Mode, the early Cure, Erasure, Culture Club, even Wham," said Alli Royce Soble (b. 1973), a photographer and painter who now identifies as nonbinary, recalled the abundant sense of permission growing up in the Atlanta suburbs. "Being young and coming out, music was my connection to a community." In the wake of Anita Hill's testimony during the Clarence Thomas hearings, a generation of Generation X women rallied to the call by the third wave feminist Rebecca Walker (b. 1969): "Do not vote for them unless they work for us. Do not have sex with them, do not break bread with them, do not nurture them if they don't prioritize our freedom to control our bodies and our lives." It was one step toward MeToo. There were others. Some were small, but not insignificant. The hard won proto woke triumphs of that era look a little more complicated now. The Beastie Boys, when they weren't fighting for the rights of rich kids from New York private schools to party, were celebrated for ending the rocker tendencies of white suburban youth and opening the door for them to discover Public Enemy and Queen Latifah. Leaving aside the 2019 questions of cultural appropriation, even the Beasties have to admit that a lot of their beer swilling party boy fans were "probably not that far off from Brett Kavanaugh," as Michael Diamond (b. 1965), or Mike D, told Vice in a video published last year. It's a messy question. No matter. We're used to them. We were born into Vietnam and Watergate and at a time when, ladies and gentlemen, the Bronx was burning. We came of age in a decade ravaged by AIDS and crack. Ideologues find that sort of stuff crushing. Survivors, on the other hand, survive. Maybe this is why, in a country cleaved between blue and red, we tend to shade purple, opting for pragmatism over ideology. On several hot button issues immigration, same sex marriage, government spending we tend to split the difference between the more conservative boomers and the more liberal millennials, according to Pew. We are the original "socially liberal, economically conservative" generation, David Rosen, a consultant who focuses on the psychology of politics, recently wrote in Politico Magazine we were happy to believe that the problems are bad, but their causes are very, very good, as the joke goes. This scrappy, if self defeating, independent streak, he suggested, was a consequence of our under parenting. "If you wanted lunch and Mom and Dad weren't around, all the moral values in the world wouldn't add up to a grilled cheese sandwich," Mr. Rosen wrote. You could take all of that as a negative once again, here we are in the wrong place at the wrong time, right the middle displaying centrist tendencies in a political climate that celebrates the extremes.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Style
SpaceX launched a "pre flown" rocket into space on Thursday. If the company can repeat it, this method could slash the price of space travel in the future. SpaceX launched a commercial satellite into space on Thursday with the boost of a partly used rocket, a feat that may open an era of cheaper space travel. A Falcon 9 rocket from SpaceX formally Space Exploration Technologies Corporation, based in Hawthorne, Calif. lifted off from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida to deposit the payload, a telecommunications satellite that will service Latin America, in the proper orbit. What was noteworthy was that the first stage, or booster, of the rocket had already flown once before. It could conceivably launch again, since it returned in one piece, landing on a floating platform in the Atlantic. "It did this mission perfectly," Mr. Musk said during a SpaceX broadcast of the launch. "It dropped off the second stage, came back and landed on the drone ship. Right in the bulls eye." "It means you can fly and refly an orbital class booster, which is the most expensive part of the rocket," Mr. Musk said. Until now, almost all rockets have been single use. Once the fuel is spent, a rocket stage plummets to Earth, a quick demise to a complex machine that cost tens of millions of dollars to build. Mr. Musk has likened that to scrapping a 747 jet after one flight. The booster for Thursday's flight had been part of the rocket that carried cargo supplies to the International Space Station for NASA last April. As the rocket's second stage and cargo capsule continued to orbit, the booster steered itself back and set down on the floating platform, which is playfully named "Of Course I Still Love You." After the platform returned to port in Jacksonville, Fla., the booster was refurbished, tested and deemed ready for another flight. SES, the company that owns and operates the satellite launched Thursday, was the first commercial customer for a Falcon 9 in 2013, and it signed up for the first flight with a recycled booster at a discount from the usual 62 million launch price. Neither SES nor SpaceX has publicly said how large the discount was. Mr. Musk has suggested that rocket launches could eventually be much cheaper because the cost of rocket propellants is less than 1 percent of the full price for a launch. So if a rocket could simply be refueled like a jetliner for another flight, the cost of space travel could drop to a fraction of what it is now. How that might play out in practice is still unclear. The same reasoning led NASA to develop space shuttles in the 1970s, but the savings never materialized because of the extensive refurbishment of the orbiters needed between flights. "We were pushing a lot of technology," said Daniel Dumbacher, a former NASA official who is now a professor at Purdue University. SpaceX, however, has a better chance. The Falcon 9 was designed from the start to be reusable. Its engines, for example, do not offer cutting edge performance but that means they are simpler and more robust, and thus easier, faster and cheaper to get ready for the next flight. "They've taken the right first steps," Mr. Dumbacher said. "This is where you just have to get out and do it." Reusable rockets may soon become commonplace. Blue Origin, a rocket company started by Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon, is putting similar emphasis on rockets that can be flown many times, not just once. United Launch Alliance, a joint venture of Boeing and Lockheed Martin, is also looking to incorporate reusability in its next rocket, Vulcan. But instead of landing the entire first stage, the plan is for the engine compartment the most valuable part to eject and descend via parachute, to be plucked out of the air by a helicopter. In the near term, reusable rockets could lower the cost of launching satellites and thus make space affordable to more companies for more uses. Currently, most satellites are used for telecommunications or for observations of the Earth. For his Mars dreams, Mr. Musk envisions a gargantuan spaceship he calls the Interplanetary Transport System that would someday transport humans. That would be far too expensive to be thrown away, so SpaceX needs to solve the reusability problem. Perhaps an even greater challenge is finding a way to finance the development of such a large rocket. Today, most of SpaceX's revenue comes from launching satellites for commercial companies and from NASA contracts to take cargo and, soon, astronauts to the International Space Station.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Science
For years, investigating the American media's influence on discourse has required studying the conversations we have at homes, in the public square and in office corridors, to try to understand what prompted them. But a paper published Thursday in the journal Science offers a new, albeit unorthodox, method: The authors brought the media in on the experiment, persuading more than 30 outlets to agree to time publication of some stories so researchers could track how the pieces affected discussion online. What they found is that even a handful of stories by mostly small publications can boost Twitter traffic on topics such as race or climate by 63 percent over the course of a week, relative to a typical day's traffic on that subject. "Journalists, even at small papers, appear to have quite a substantial power to affect the national conversation about politics and policy," said Gary King, the paper's lead author and the director of the Institute for Quantitative Social Science at Harvard University. To study the media's influence, the researchers persuaded news outlets to publish related stories on one of 11 broad policy topics during randomly assigned weeks. They then studied the Twitter conversation on that topic in the days that followed, compared to the week before or after. Dr. King and his colleagues, Benjamin Schneer, of Florida State University, and Ariel White, of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, spent almost five years on the study, with the first three years dedicated to observing, learning from and building trust with journalists. Key to getting them on board, he said, was limiting his team's involvement to a part of the process that is often arbitrary: the timing of publication. "In some sense, you're flipping the coin already," he said, noting that for many non breaking stories, publication timing is subject to the whims of editors or the news cycle. At all times, the publications retained the right to bow out of the experiment, shelve the stories or publish them when they wanted. The study is not without its critics. Creative as it may be, the paper overstates its conclusion, said Kathleen Hall Jamieson, who studies political communication and is the director of the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania. "Is this methodologically ingenious? Yes. Do we know whether or not the findings are substantively important? Not based on the disclosed information," she said. Twitter is just one social media platform and social media itself is only one venue in which the national conversation takes place. Tweets also hardly amount to discussion, Ms. Jamieson said. Many people simply share links on Twitter, offering, at best, a few lines of commentary. Without seeing the content of the articles or the tweets, it's difficult to judge the study's findings, she said. (While the authors provided the names of the outlets that participated in the experiment, they withheld the articles involved to protect the reputations of the publications.) To those who participated, though, the experiment offered a chance to better understand their influence, a crucial issue for media organizations. 15 minimum wage for federal contractors will take effect Jan. 30. Jeff Bezos gives 100 million to the Obama Foundation. "When we had the opportunity to actually measure impact in a new way, we were really, really excited. This is core to our mission," said Jo Ellen Green Kaiser, executive director of the Media Consortium, a network of independent news outlets whose members accounted for the majority of those involved in the study. While most of the outlets the researchers worked with were small, independent publications, such as Truthout or In These Times, the study included some more well known outlets, too, including The Nation, The Progressive, Ms. Magazine and Yes! Magazine, according to the authors. In all, 33 outlets participated in the final experiment, though more than a dozen more participated in earlier trial runs, which were designed differently. The authors did not say which publications participated in which part of the study. The researchers were principally involved at only two points in the publication process: the beginning and the end. Each experiment began with them choosing from one of 11 broad policy areas, such as food, immigration, reproductive rights or jobs, which had been identified as already being of interest to the news organizations. The researchers then asked a handful of outlets to volunteer to collaborate, in groups of two to five, on stories of their own choosing related to the topic. For example, the authors said, with technology as a topic, the group might decide to write pieces about how Uber drivers feel about driverless cars. The researchers then chose a two week window in which to study discussion online, asking the outlets to publish the stories during either week, chosen at random. They would then compare the discussion on Twitter related to that topic in the week in which the pieces ran to the week in which they did not. The stories, typically published on Tuesday, could come in any form, be they straight news, investigations, interviews, opinion pieces, videos or podcasts. The outlets treated them no differently and the researchers said that, as far as they were aware, their involvement went unnoticed by readers. Awareness of the study varied at each outlet, but editors and reporters were often informed. "We really had to get whole editorial teams on board, and then often the reporters knew, too," Ms. Kaiser said. In the end, the authors conducted 35 experiments for the study over a year and a half beginning in October 2014. The authors tried to anticipate some criticisms, too. Many tweets are created by bots, they acknowledged, but they found that bot traffic was consistent each week, making it essentially background noise. The researchers also avoided weeks when known world events, say a planned presidential speech on immigration, might have influenced the results.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Media
LONDON The title alone would seem to capture how many people here are thinking about this apprehensive chapter in history, as the long goodbye known as Brexit grinds into laborious gear. "Endgame," perhaps Samuel Beckett's greatest study of living in the shadow of mortality, has been given a starry revival at the Old Vic Theater, with Daniel Radcliffe and Alan Cumming finding the comic fireworks in cruel, old age codependency. But the laughter these actors elicit in Richard Jones's upbeat downer of a production part of a double bill with Beckett's seldom performed "Rough for Theater II" is of the hard, startled variety that comes when dire truths are acknowledged. As a dying old woman in a garbage bin (pricelessly portrayed by Jane Horrocks) puts it, "Nothing is funnier than unhappiness." That's shortly after Nell, as she is called, tries to kiss her husband, Nagg (Karl Johnson), who is confined to an adjacent bin, and finds that neither of them has the strength or muscle control to make physical contact. At the Valentine's Day performance I saw, the Old Vic was packed with couples in public display of affection mode, perhaps anticipating their shared future. Because by that point, it was clear that nothing this woman said to the child was going to be honest or accurate. The succeeding scenes would demonstrate that truth in the angry, teeming world of "Far Away" had become not just relative, but also ultimately unobtainable. What was left in its absence was unending, murderous collision, with no one being sure of who stood for what anymore or who was on whose side. None of the plays I saw on my February trip to London which was sandwiched between two catastrophic, flood bringing storms were what you might call cheerful, or even vaguely hopeful. The two big openings during my week there were Tom Stoppard's "Leopoldstadt," a rueful history play about anti Semitism in 20th century Vienna, and Tony Kushner's sprawling adaptation of "The Visit," Friedrich Durrenmatt's grim fable of human greed as a loaded weapon. But for pure, unsettling immediacy, it was hard to top those more concise, more abstract decades old masterworks from Beckett and Churchill. "Endgame," first staged in London in 1957, has long been a staple of university lit classes. And it will always seem relevant as long as human beings grow old and die. Still, the view of any work of art changes according to our distance from what it portrays. A college student may intellectually savor Beckett's vision of the corrosive effects of time in its depiction of a tyrannical, blind and disabled man, Hamm (played by a deliciously splenetic Cumming) and his resentful manservant, Clov (Radcliffe). It takes someone a few decades older, though, to fully appreciate the play's merciless evocation of a life with a front row view of its own end. Similarly, watching "Endgame" in this incarnation, I found a creepy new pertinence in its depiction of a blighted, blasted world beyond the single, decrepit room in which Hamm, Clov, Nagg and Nell live (barely) in virtual captivity. When Hamm says, "Nature has forgotten us," and Clov answers, "There's no more nature," it doesn't register, as it once did, as a pathetic projection by the ailing and aging on everything that surrounds them. It's tomorrow's weather report. Clov is able to make this brutal assessment because, unlike Hamm, he still has his eyesight, though it's failing fast. He is regularly bid to peer through a telescope out the window (where what he sees is described as "zero, zero and zero"). The windows are very, very high, which means that Clov has to use a ladder to reach them. This in turn allows Radcliffe to make the most of the very difficult business of climbing a rickety ladder. Movement of any kind is a fraught proposition for Clov, and in a highly disciplined physical performance, Radcliffe turns every act of locomotion into a Sisyphean dance. Walking, for example, isn't a matter of putting one foot in front of the other, but of twisting the legs into an inefficient, crablike shuffle. This process is exceedingly painful to watch. It also embodies why this production is not, finally, depressing. The energy that's expended in Clov's every movement and, for that matter, in Hamm's vicious tirades testifies to the fact that where there's life, there's, well, life. No matter how futile the struggle to live may turn out to be, Beckett always revels in the very fact of that struggle. For him, theater with its heightened emphasis on words and gestures becomes the ideal temple for such celebration. Jones's production, designed by Stewart Laing (set and costumes) and Adam Silverman (lighting), emphasizes the theatrical, and particularly the vaudevillian, elements of "Endgame." So do Cumming and Radcliffe, who appear to be having the time of their lives in acting out their characters' endless misery. They bring a similar, if lighter, charge to the curtain raising "Rough for Theater II," in which they portray two celestial (or infernal) assessors, taking inventory of the existence of a man about to commit suicide. As designed by Lizzie Clachan and performed by a cast that includes Aisling Loftus, Simon Manyonda and Jessica Hynes (a comic virtuoso in the TV series "W1A") Turner's interpretation is brighter than Daldry's was. And audiences now seem more willing to laugh at the absurdity of its depiction of an age in which every species of creature is engaged in bewildering, internecine warfare. (Sample line: "The cats have come out on the side of French." And: "It's not as if they're the Canadians, the Venezuelans or the mosquitoes.") I left the Donmar murmuring, "Well, that wasn't as disturbing as I remembered it." But the more I thought about the production, the more my memories of it rattled me. If "Far Away" provokes more laughter than it did before, it's because the cockeyed, mutable, desperately divided world it summons seems even closer to reality than it did before. Laugh, if you must, as you watch the grotesqueries of "Far Away." There'll be nightmares to follow when you go to bed. Even if trust is nonexistent these days, you really can trust me on this one.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Theater
Ever since the advent of the iPhone and iPad, some people have been using their laptops a lot less. It made me wonder if I need one at all. So I asked Kimber Streams, who tests laptops at The Wirecutter, a product reviews website owned by The New York Times, for some advice. For people who basically use their laptop to browse the web and send email, is there a cheap option? Definitely. For those people, I recommend a Chromebook. It's a laptop in the traditional sense, but it runs Chrome OS, a lighter operating system by Google that's basically just a web browser. And you can get a great one for around 400. A Windows laptop that's just as good costs at least 500, and they tend to be bigger and heavier, with worse battery life. With a Chromebook, can I use all the Google apps and store documents and spreadsheets on Google Drive?	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Technology
Because my apartment is too small to store the recommended pandemic preparedness supplies without turning the space into an obstacle course, the packages of water, peanut butter, canned soup, granola bars, pasta, tomato sauce, Theraflu, DayQuil, and Purell now protrude from under my girlfriend's dining room table (which is also the kitchen table and living room table) in her slightly bigger place, where I spend half of my weeknights anyway. To combat the spread of Covid 19, several New York City schools have shut down and the Metropolitan Transportation Authority has pledged to use hospital grade disinfectant to sanitize the agency's entire fleet of subway cars and buses every three days until the virus is contained. Over the weekend, as the number of confirmed patients in New York State crept past 100, Gov. Andrew Cuomo declared a state of emergency. Already, about 2,200 people in the city are under quarantine. It's statistically unlikely that I'll be affected, yet I also know that if I'm in the wrong place at just the wrong time, and fail to keep my hands off my face, I could be. In case things go sideways and you have to "shelter in place" for days on end, many experts have suggested stocking a roughly 30 day supply of prescriptions, food and household items. But that advice seems made for people with both the square footage and disposable income required for a Costco sized stockpile. We have neither the generous space of a brownstone nor the big, homey pantries of a suburban home. There isn't really space in either of our places for whatever the math is on a monthlong supply of life's bare necessities. Even so, we managed to get the basics, thanks to Amazon orders made just before Prime Now hit its shortages supplemented by a few trips on foot to the bodega, whose shelves of canned goods and disinfectants were emptied from its otherwise stocked aisles the other night. Sometimes, I pass the stacked cubes and feel readied. In other moments they feel a bit ominous: boxes you hope to never have to open. And we're the incredibly lucky ones in a position to easily afford the extra items while 44 percent of American workers are being paid median annual wages of 18,000. Because of exorbitant living costs and overcrowding, around 40 percent of adult New Yorkers live with roommates. If and when things get worse, how will the high percentage of them living paycheck to paycheck split not just rent and living space but also the costs and contents of a 30 day stock of supplies? Self quarantine, under those circumstances, sounds like chaos waiting to happen, and that doesn't even include the city's many families cooped up in small spaces who are just as vulnerable. People employed in industries that don't allow work from home may have to put themselves at risk and work anyway to avoid losing wages or even their jobs. Meanwhile, thinking of what I'd do if I contracted the virus, I briefly had the late capitalist daydream that at least if I caught a severe case, I could write some essay about having the virus whilst covering it, then beat death and get a book deal that could help me, some blessed day, buy a house here before middle age. I teased myself about it later; what a selfish, silly thing to think about such an increasingly serious threat. It's just one way this outbreak has inspired nonstop emotional recalibrating. Are we worrying too much or not enough? While a 10 out of 10 level of alarm has been rightly discouraged by responsible reporting, establishing what amount of fear is an appropriate sum can feel tricky. Most of us are unsure whether we should be at a three or an eight. At least among my friends and colleagues, so far it doesn't seem like many New Yorkers are perturbed enough to spring into the survivalist mode of those responsible for the empty shelves of Costco and Trader Joe's. "What you talking about bro I'm in a bodysuit right now," my friend Ben joked when I asked if he too had filled his apartment with granola bars and cold medicine. "Nah, I've got hand sanitizer I'm using to no end tho." Aside from the growing dark humor about worst case scenarios that has replaced some small talk, regular life continues apace: Bars, cafes and restaurants still bustling, most people walking around and working sans masks or panic. For now, we're anything but cooped up. (The prospect of quarantine induced cabin fever just as the weather is yawning its way into spring feels like an insult from the gods.) But there are punctures in normalcy as school days, events and meetings are canceled. The delays in producing and distributing diagnostic tests mean that even experts don't know how widespread the virus actually is, and what will change in the coming weeks. The snarky way to end a paragraph like this would be to ask, "What could go wrong?" But the truth is nobody the scientists scrambling for a vaccine, the people at high risk or without health care coverage and the New Yorkers scrambling to gather nonperishable food while wondering whether they're overreacting can really know for sure. So for now we'll sit in our little apartments, with our big stacks of boxes that are kind of in the way, washing our hands and wringing them too hoping that, in the end, it's not that big of a deal.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Opinion
Peering into a webcam, her face intermittently frozen over an iffy Skype connection in Medellin, Colombia, Lizz Quain was explaining not long ago why she uprooted her 9 year old twins almost a year and a half ago to travel the world. Ms. Quain, who is in her 40s, owned a children's play cafe and preschool near Seattle before she renounced her American middle class existence in August 2016, fed up with what she described as a stifling, consumerist culture. Once Donald J. Trump was elected president, she made a common liberal refrain "If Trump wins, I'm leaving the country" reality, deciding not to return home with her daughters, Aubrey and Gabriella. After traveling through Asia and Europe, she is now figuring out how to start a business selling products through Amazon to finance the life of an itinerant by choice single mother. The Quains are not the only family that has of late dispensed with the trappings of the American dream (house, school, career) and gone nomad. Hopping from one vacation rental to the next or piling into R.V.s, they have sold or rented out their homes and unloaded most of their possessions, financing their travels with savings or work done remotely. They chronicle their adventures on YouTube channels, Instagram and blogs including NomadTogether, Unsettle Down and Terra Trekkers. They gather at annual conventions like the Project World School Family Summit in Guanajuato, Mexico, with sessions like "No, I'm not on vacation" and "Worldschoolers, your child can go to university!" Unplugging and Yet Not Just like late 1960s hippies, right? But living an untethered life has gotten easier now that many people need only a laptop and a fast internet connection to earn a living. Websites like Nomadlist help people decide where on Earth to go. The rise of Airbnb makes it easy to rent space in most corners of the globe with a swipe of your iPhone. Roving parents can find global play dates and moral support on Facebook groups like Worldschoolers, which has about 40,000 members. Lainie Liberti, an administrator of the group, said it's not just the tense political climate in the United States motivating people to leave. "People are not seeing a future," she said. "People are starting to focus on living now and focusing on their children. They are re evaluating what is important to them." Ms. Quain, who worked as much as 100 hours a week running her own company, worried about the values she was imparting to her daughters. "I don't want them to grow up to be worker bees," she said. "I want them to grow up to be freethinking entrepreneurs." Like many of the new expats, she is home schooling ("worldschooling" is the more popular term). Her daughters are learning Spanish at a Medellin day camp and spend their spare time playing Minecraft and Roblox, video games they sometimes play online with other traveling children. She hopes eventually they'll start their own YouTube channel, if someone will teach them. "Once I get my business up and running," she said, "I'll hire people to teach them how to do things." Ms. Quain expects to spend about 1,700 a month on housing, day camp, activities and a nanny in Medellin. Paul Kortman, who, with his wife, Becky Kortman, wrote "Family Freedom: A Guide to Becoming a Location Independent Family," estimates that a family could travel indefinitely on 60,000 a year, a salary he says could be earned with a little ingenuity. "All you need to do is have a laptop and be an intelligent person," Mr. Kortman said. "You don't need a specific skill set." It does help, though. Matthew Gillespie, 31, works remotely full time as a web designer, allowing him; his wife, Chelsea Gillespie, 30; and their 2 year old daughter, Kailen, to travel indefinitely through Europe, blogging about it at Unsettledown. They left San Diego last May, finding it too expensive. Burdened by high rent, along with car and student loan payments, they did not see a future where they could buy a home in the area and still pay down their debts. "Our family was telling us to settle down," Mr. Gillespie said from Prague last winter. "We just didn't see the value in that." Last spring, he and his wife sold their car, their furniture and most of their possessions for about 10,000. So far, traveling has been cheaper. In Croatia, for example, their expenses fell by 60 percent, allowing them to pay down their student loans faster. "If we can make it work, then we're going to keep going as long as we can," Mr. Gillespie said. Mr. and Ms. Gillespie travel with High Sierra backpacks. Kailen has her own pack, too: a tiny one shaped like a bumblebee. They pared down their belongings to the bare essentials, although Ms. Gillespie did carry an orange Bebe skirt and Zara top around Italy all summer because she thought it would make for a great photograph in Florence (she got her shot and unloaded the outfit). "It was totally impractical," she said. Jessica and William Swenson are financing an 11 month around the world trip with their three small children through a mix of savings, inheritance, a severance package and the income from renting out their four bedroom house with a pool in Livermore, Calif. Last October, the Swensons set off for China, alerting local media outlets about their adventure. Mrs. Swenson, 34, a photographer, has an Instagram account and a YouTube channel called LetsAdventureSomeMore to document the whirlwind journey, and, perhaps, monetize it. The family is traveling light, carrying only backpacks even the children, Ezra, 8, Theo, 6, and Vesper, 5, have them with a few changes of clothes. Mr. Swenson, 36, an accountant, bald with a full beard, wears a kilt. "He's Scottish and loves the un bifurcated life," Mrs. Swenson said, speaking over FaceTime from an Airbnb in Bali, Indonesia. The family was waiting out a volcanic eruption, hoping their flight to Australia would not be canceled because of ash.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Style
"I tell you a funny thing about dying," a cook named Murgatroyd says, waggling a bloody hand. He is propped up on a gurney, red seeping copiously from his abdomen, yet the squad of soldiers pays him no mind. "Listen, will yer," he exhorts them. "It's a dead man talking!" Murgatroyd (Jonathan Tindle) is not dead yet, but give him time. In Howard Barker's "Pity in History," the only sure things are death, destruction and a mordant sense of humor. A 1985 BBC teleplay getting its professional stage debut, thanks to Potomac Theater Project, this 17th century British civil war tale is a little like "Mother Courage and Her Children," if Mother Courage were a beefy mason named Gaukroger (Steven Dykes) who enjoys a nice pickle with his lunch. "Good battle, gentlemen," he says cheerily, chatting up the military in the hope of making sales. "I understand the casualties were suitably high?" Perhaps some monuments to the valorous dead are in order. Gaukroger is the artist as ordinary man in this modern dress production, directed by Richard Romagnoli and running in repertory with Tom Stoppard's "Arcadia," at Atlantic Stage 2. Amid the brutality that tromps through "Pity in History," the mason is both a creator of beauty and a survivor. He knows that what is smashed to bits in battle will need replacing afterward.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Theater
HO CHI MINH CITY, Vietnam Hammer and sickle flags are flying here as Ho Chi Minh City, the seemingly irrepressible bastion of Vietnamese capitalism, dutifully marks the start on Tuesday of the Communist Party's National Congress, an event held every five years to chart the course of a country that has witnessed an economic miracle in recent decades. But this time, things are different. In a region where governments are swollen with foreign currency reserves and inflation remains relatively tame, Vietnam is an island of economic instability. The country's economy is still growing at 7 percent a year, but double digit price increases for food and other essentials are punishing the working class and contributed to a top credit rating agency's recent decision to downgrade the country's sovereign debt. Vietnam's currency is consistently falling below official exchange rates, creating a thriving black market for gold and dollars. And one of the country's largest state owned companies is all but insolvent, brought down by debts that are the equivalent of more than 4 percent of the country's total output. "We are on the edge; there's not a lot of room for mistakes," said Le Anh Tuan, head of research at Dragon Capital, an investment company here. "The Vietnam story will depend much on how much the government understands the root of the problem and can fix it." The problems, say many businesspeople and economists, are rooted in Vietnam's continued heavy reliance on state run companies despite the country's opening to more private enterprise, which has expanded rapidly and profitably. For years the government considered the vanguard of the economy to be its vast network of state run companies, large conglomerates that the Communist Party could use to steer the country toward prosperity. The reach of the state owned companies, even after several waves of privatizations, remains impressive. It would be easy for a consumer here to spend an entire day doing business with the government: paying a cellphone bill, depositing a check at the bank, shopping at a local supermarket, filling a car with gas and lunching at a fancy hotel. But the seemingly intractable problems at Vinashin, the deeply indebted state company, have highlighted the shortcomings of relying so heavily on government owned enterprises. From its core mission of building ships, Vinashin expanded into about 450 businesses that it failed to make profitable and was ill suited to manage, including spas, motorcycle assembly and real estate. On the brink of bankruptcy with 4.5 billion in debts, the company is now effectively being bailed out by the government: it has been exempted from paying taxes this year and will be given interest free loans, according to Vietnamese press reports. As a measure of their inefficiency, Vietnam's state owned companies use 40 percent of the capital invested in the country but produce only 25 percent of the gross domestic product. Economists say the opaque way that the government has handled the Vinashin meltdown and the lack of consistency among the top economic officials have eroded confidence in the currency and the market in general. The stock market has been among the worst performing in Asia for the past three years. Economists and businesspeople here are watching the Communist Party meeting to see whether state run companies will be coddled or be forced to adhere to sink or swim discipline. "Until now we haven't seen many cases of the government letting them die," said Nguyen Thi Mai Thanh, the general director of the Ree Corporation, a large engineering firm that specializes in air conditioning. "Sometimes you have to make an example." Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung, who is seeking support for another term at the party meeting, has been quoted in the Vietnamese press as saying that the reform of state owned enterprises is a "key criterion for a market economy." But analysts say attempts at reform may be complicated by the involvement of government officials and their relatives in the businesses. Investors say they are also watching to see if the government carries out long discussed plans to reduce a paternalistic web of regulations and restrictions. Fred Burke, the managing director of the Vietnam offices of Baker McKenzie, an international law firm, offers this example: driving a truck displaying an advertisement through Ho Chi Minh City requires 17 separate government approvals. Companies that want to call a news conference or make an announcement need to get permission from the government. Last year, in what companies see as a misguided attempt to control inflation, the government passed regulations requiring companies to submit the prices of all their ingredients in some consumer products. Mr. Burke, who is part of a government advisory panel on cutting red tape, says there has been "backsliding on reform" in recent years and describes the management of Vietnam's currency as "dysfunctional." But he sees signs that the government is trying to reduce paperwork. He also sees higher end manufacturers' coming to invest in the country. "Our business has never been better in terms of quality inbound investment," Mr. Burke said. Indeed, the economy has grown an average of 7 percent a year over the past five years and has grown at a similarly fast clip since the 1980s. That growth has helped deliver unprecedented increases in material well being: workers earning minimum wage now have motorcycles, television sets, rice cookers and cellphones. But inflation, which is running at about 12 percent, has become a major preoccupation, especially among the poor. "How could people be happy?" asked Pham Thi Ngoc, a fruit seller on the outskirts of Ho Chi Minh City. "Money is losing its value." Those worries have extended well beyond the country's shores. Moody's, the credit rating agency, downgraded Vietnam's sovereign debt last month because of what it described as "shortcomings in economic policies," including an inability to tackle inflation. As a result of the downgrade, borrowing has become more expensive. PetroVietnam, the state owned oil producer, announced last Wednesday that it would postpone a planned 1 billion bond sale because of "unfavorable" market conditions. Vietnamese companies are reluctant to borrow from banks at lending rates that can go as high as 18 percent. "What can a small company do?" asked Nguyen Lam Vien, a former employee at a state owned farm who is now chairman of Vinamit, a food processing company that exports dried fruit and other products. "The financial picture in Vietnam is bad, and the government is only responding with painkillers." Still, many foreign investors say they are betting that Vietnam's legendary work ethic and a history of overcoming adversity will help it get past its latest setbacks. "There's no way you can understand Vietnam unless you can see the frenetic activity and the happiness that's here," said Peter Ryder, the chief executive of Indochina Capital, an investment company. "It's one of the reasons the government gets away with its incompetence. After 100 years of war and starvation, people never thought life would be this good."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Global Business
A major trial of high dose blood thinners in critically ill hospitalized Covid 19 patients is being temporarily halted because there appears to be no benefit to the treatment and there may be some harm, the trial's leaders announced Tuesday. The independent monitoring board that called for the trial to be paused did not announce what possible harms it had found. High doses of anticoagulants are known to cause uncontrollable bleeding in places including the inside of the skull, which can be very dangerous. The trial's leaders are urgently trying to spread word that the trial has been paused, as some hospitals are still aggressively putting their intensive care patients on high doses of anticoagulants in the belief that the benefits outweigh the risks, whereas the opposite may be true. "We need to widely advertise this pause in the trial because of the potential for harm," said Dr. Matthew D. Neal, a surgeon and intensive care specialist at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center who is leading one of many teams in the trial. The teams in the trial, which has enrolled about 3,000 patients in several countries, will examine the data closely to see if enrollment in the branch of the trial focusing on critically ill hospitalized patients can begin again. Covid 19 is widely known to cause clusters of small blood clots that can block capillaries and cause damage in the lungs, the kidneys, the heart, the brain or other organs and even in the fingers and toes. Low doses of blood thinners are routinely given to hospitalized Covid 19 patients as soon as they are admitted, Dr. Neal said. The branch of the trial that is administering high doses of blood thinners to patients who are only moderately ill will continue. Moderately ill patients generally include those who are receiving oxygen but are not in intensive care, nor on ventilators or in danger of failure of other organs, such as the kidneys. In October, an observational study in The Journal of the American College of Cardiology found that hospitalized Covid 19 patients who were given blood thinners did much better than those who got none. In that study, there was little difference in outcomes or negative side effects between those who received low or high doses. In part because of that study, many doctors assumed that, if some amount of anticoagulant was good for most patients, then the sickest patients should receive the biggest doses, said Dr. Jeffrey S. Berger, director of the Center for the Prevention of Cardiovascular Disease at the New York University Medical School and another principal investigator in the paused trial. "Hopefully, this will be humbling," Dr. Berger said of the new evidence that large doses might be harmful. "It helps us realize that we do not have all the answers." Anticoagulants are known to cause bleeding under the skin and into the gastrointestinal tract, and wounds that do not heal when the skin is pierced. Bleeding inside the skull is rare but can cause permanent brain damage or death, Dr. Berger noted. Dr. Neal said he had treated Covid victims "with problems from both ends of the spectrum: patients with blood clots and patients with bleeding." One of the goals of the trial, Dr. Neal said, was to figure out which patients were most likely to benefit from anticoagulants. Patients often are tested for D Dimer, a breakdown product of blood clots, and for C reactive protein, a marker of inflammation, which can accompany clotting. It would be useful to know, Dr. Neal said, whether those tests could accurately predict which patients would be helped most by high doses of anticoagulants.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Health
Joshua Bright for The New York Times While the article raises appropriate concerns about the need to increase efforts to vaccinate people against seasonal flu, it doesn't mention several factors that could act to reduce the severity of this year's flu season. The marked reduction in air travel should reduce the introduction and spread of the infection, particularly from the Southern to the Northern Hemisphere. Additionally, although it's far from perfect, compared to past flu seasons many more people are now wearing masks, washing and sanitizing their hands, avoiding contact with potentially high touch surfaces and markedly decreasing close person to person interactions that act to transmit the flu virus. All of these factors can, optimistically, act to mitigate the severity of this year's flu, as we prepare to enter the season of the "twindemic." Wading into this conversation is hard for a white writer. Recently, artistic directors in diverse cities like Philadelphia and New York have resigned or been asked to leave to make room for leaders of color. Police departments across the country are swapping white chiefs of police for Black chiefs. Publishing companies and news organizations are having internal investigations to justify removal of old leaders for new ones. Corporate America is slowly doing a needed face lift to change the complexion of boards and C suites. Questions surrounding the Covid 19 vaccine and its rollout. If Covid 19 isn't going away, how do we live with it? Katherine Eban writes that a clear eyed view is required to organize long term against an endemic virus. Why should we vaccinate kids against Covid 19? The president of the American Academy of Pediatrics explains how vaccinating kids will protect them (and everyone else). Jessica Grose spoke with experts to find out what an off ramp to masking in schools might look like. Who are the unvaccinated? Zeynep Tufekci writes that many preconceptions about unvaccinated people may be wrong, and that could be a good thing. I support Black Lives Matter and all movements to make all levels of society more inclusive. I am not, however, convinced that having leaders "step aside" will be as productive as having leaders "step up" to the challenge of building inclusive organizations. Simply relegating white leaders to the sidelines of discussion does little beyond providing cover for lack of change. It is likely to produce a backlash rather than a partnership. In a few years we will be questioning the absence of institutional memory in organizations that might have benefited from keeping a few of the old guard around, even in different positions. Diversity is not something you create overnight, nor does it thrive simply because you put a new face at the top. It requires long, hard thinking and planning, and that is the work that needs to happen faster and more effectively. Tara Sonenshine Washington The writer is a former under secretary of state for public diplomacy and public affairs. Re "The Senior Facility Dilemma: Are Visitors Allowed?," by Paula Span (The New Old Age, Science Times, Aug. 18): I read with interest your article about the effects of isolation on elders in nursing facilities during the pandemic. I view my mother's recent death at age 96 as collateral damage from Covid 19. The lack of visitors during her facility's shutdown hastened her cognitive decline and her will to live after a fall. The facility where she lived was excellent and the staff was caring and dedicated, but that wasn't sufficient to compensate for lack of in person family support. Perhaps we should rethink the trade off between maximum protection of our elderly from a potentially deadly virus versus providing for their emotional needs at a stage in life when they are most vulnerable. 'Ugly Acts of Subjugation' by the Police But it's when officers can't get immediate compliance that you see their true mettle. Officers who commit ugly acts of subjugation to obtain deference to their authority reveal to youth that questioning authority often leads to use of force or assertion of police power or both. Officer White may have acted like a mentor to young boys in Gainesville, Fla. But it appears that he and many of his colleagues were trained to assume deference and rely upon arrest, handcuffs, threats and violence to get it. That means there's always the chance they will revert to that training in any given situation, exactly as Officer White did in the second video, and no amount of basketball playing will improve that. Lisa Thurau Cambridge, Mass. The writer is the founder and executive director of Strategies for Youth.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Opinion
Sure, astrophysicists have big telescopes, and oceanographers use underwater robots, but some researchers get to cook venison, lots of it, in the name of science. Last month in the journal Scientific Reports, a team of archaeologists and organic chemists described how they had spent a year cooking a variety of meals in clay pots and then investigating the organic residues left behind. No one got a hearty meal out of this lab work, but the researchers found that some residues traced just the last round of ingredients, while others reflected the long term cooking history of each pot. By documenting the results of these experiments, the team hopes to help scientists reconstruct ancient culinary practices. Although preparing and consuming food are integral parts of the human experience, culinary traditions often get lost in the archaeological record, said Jillian A. Swift, an archaeologist at the Bishop Museum in Honolulu and one of the co authors. "We end up with these very simplified ideas of what people were eating just because it's so hard to access that dimension." One way of getting at food preferences and practices over time is to look at what's left behind after a meal. As they are used, cooking vessels naturally build up organic residues such as charred bits, thin coatings known as patinas, and absorbed fats. The sponges and dishwashers we use today tend to eradicate these leftovers, but they are often found in and on cooking implements unearthed at archaeological sites.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Science
I am a sucker for fall. I am also a sucker for dusk. So I am a double sucker for WOODLAND DREAMS (Chronicle, 32 pp., 17.99; ages 3 to 5), which takes place on a very late afternoon in very late autumn. (Eyelids getting heavy yet?) As evening draws nigh, an unnamed little girl and her big black dog amble through a cozy looking forest where they spy sundry creatures heading off to their respective dens, nests, burrows and hollows. A gorgeous ode to curling up for the night, this is the second book from the author Karen Jameson, a rising bedtime specialist who previously wrote "Moon Babies" and whose next book will be titled "Farm Lullaby." Here, each critter is given a sweet nickname and called to bed with a doubled couplet. A fawn, for example: Can verse be toothsome? I love Jameson's savory consonants and peppered exhortations, which beg to be read aloud. Her story, such as it is, ends with a light, dusting snowfall and the heroine tucked into her own warm bed. Fans of the illustrator Marc Boutavant who know him from the Dumpster Dog series (written by Colas Gutman) will find him working here in a gentler, less antic mode: His sunset to twilight palette is rich with oranges, ochres, browns, forest greens and deepening blue grays; his compositions suggest girl, dog and fauna are all part of a larger, interwoven whole. Just lovely and the final spread, depicting the girl's drawings of the animals she's seen, is a perfect grace note. TIME FOR BED'S STORY (Kids Can Press, 32 pp., 17.99; ages 3 to 7) is a stroke of conceptual genius. I bet everyone who writes for children wishes they'd thought of it. I know I do. It has the snappy, subversive logic of a Jerry Seinfeld stand up routine: Kids are always complaining about going to bed, like going to bed is the worst thing ever, but no one ever stops to think how that makes the beds feel. The writer illustrator Monica Arnaldo's narrator is a messy, anthropomorphized bed with a grumpy face on its beat up, bestickered headboard. Bed speaks of itself in the third person as if it were the Incredible Hulk: "Bed knows you do not like bedtime. ... And Bed gets it. But look. ... YOU are not so great, either. First the kicking. Did you know you kick in your sleep? Because you do, and it is a lot." Bed harbors a long litany of complaints: bouncing, strange teeth stuck under pillows, bad breath, drooling, all those dinosaur and rainbow stickers. Readers will feel for Bed. Alas, Bed's pleas for better behavior, for maybe just a little consideration for once, go unheeded by "you," who, in Arnaldo's cartoony yet winsome illustrations, looks to be a self absorbed 5 or 6 year old. Nevertheless, a detente of sorts is achieved: Bed does not just lie down and sacrifice, sacrifice, sacrifice like that famous masochist, the Giving Tree. "The grass was too prickly, and the earth was too hard. The trees were too noisy, but the desert was too quiet." No wonder the exhausted hero of ARLO THE LION WHO COULDN'T SLEEP (Peach Tree Press, 32 pp., 17.99; ages 2 to 6) remains stubbornly wide awake. He is rendered by the writer illustrator Catherine Rayner in a liquid, blobby, swirly style, barely held together by strong black outlines, which to my eye underscores just how desperate he is to slip the bonds of consciousness. Unlike you or me in these circumstances, Arlo is saved from a wee hours' scroll through his Twitter feed by a passing owl, who sings this instructional lullaby: "Think about the places where you'd like to be, the things that you'd do there and what you might see." Arlo pictures himself "bounding up mountains, wading in rivers and climbing enormous trees." Then he imagines "he might need a rest. ... And before he knew it ..." Zzzzzzzz. Rayner matches this with a pretty wash of a painting that shows the lion bleeding into a landscape that itself seems to be bleeding into air an illustration that looks the way the drift and untethering of falling asleep feels. The next morning, Arlo wakes "happy, fresh and full of energy." Enviable! There's a bit more story, not particularly gripping; then again, if it were, it might defeat its purpose. The Slumberland at Last Book Ever wonder what happens after "Goodnight noises everywhere," after the little bunny in striped pajamas dozes off and the quiet old lady whispering hush tiptoes down the hall and turns on "Grey's Anatomy"? What kind of dreams are being conjured in the red orange bed in the great green room? IN THE HALF ROOM (Candlewick, 32 pp., 16.99; ages 4 to 8) isn't a sequel to "Goodnight Moon," and it's not about dreams, per se, but it's suffused with a playful dream logic that likely would have tickled Margaret Wise Brown and Clement Hurd, not to mention Lewis Carroll and Rene Magritte. The writer illustrator Carson Ellis won a 2017 Caldecott Honor for her story told in gibberish, "Du Iz Tak?" and this new one shares its predecessor's trust in children's willingness to be simultaneously puzzled and delighted, to let a story come to them. Like "Goodnight Moon," "In the Half Room" is more an incantation than a story, as well as, in part, a catalog of what's in a room. But in this room, there are only halves: Sitting on the half chair is half a red haired girl, reading half of "A Tale of Two Cities." A half visitor, announced by half a knock at half a door, proves to be her literal other half. Made unexpectedly whole, she runs outside to dance in the light of a half moon in a textless illustration that exudes joy a dream within a dream. Does it "mean" anything? Who cares: That's a question for morning. Bruce Handy is the author of "Wild Things: The Joy of Reading Children's Literature as an Adult."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Books
SEATTLE Amazon held off stiffer competition for online shoppers during the holiday season, once again increasing its sales. But the company said on Thursday that growth slowed from its usual breakneck pace and it came at a cost, with the company spending far more on shipping to win customers. While strong, the latest quarterly results suggested that Amazon's retail business not only faces more competition, it is also maturing. The company reported that its revenue from retail sales and services grew 17 percent to almost 65 billion globally, while its shipping costs rose 23 percent, to 9 billion, compared with the same quarter a year ago. Over all, the company produced a profit of 3 billion in the quarter, up more than 60 percent from the same period a year earlier. Competition for shoppers over the holidays was intense and expensive, as other big retailers stepped up their promotions. Target offered free two day shipping, no matter how small an order, and Walmart and others tried to maximize use of their physical stores, an advantage they have over Amazon. On Christmas Eve, Best Buy customers could order products online from store inventory as late as 5 p.m. and pick them up just an hour later. Amazon pushed back with expanded free shipping to all customers until about a week before Christmas, and made more products eligible for free one day shipping for Prime members. But revenue from online shopping slowed, in part because now most of Amazon's retail sales come from third party merchants selling on its marketplace rather than from Amazon's own inventory. Amazon gets only a slice of this revenue. In addition, the growth of Prime membership, which costs 119 a year, is approaching a plateau. About 56 percent of American households will be Prime members this year, up only slightly from 53 percent in 2018, Morgan Stanley estimated. Prime members spend far more on the site, making them crucial to increasing sales. Another risk awaits the company: India. The country, which Amazon has made its most important emerging market, imposed new regulations that prohibit foreign e commerce companies from owning a stake in sellers that offer items on their sites. That has limited the selection available on Amazon by almost a third virtually overnight. Brian Olsavsky, Amazon's finance chief, cited "uncertainty" in India as a reason Amazon predicted lower revenue for the next quarter than analysts had expected. Even as sales growth has slowed, though, Amazon has increased profit margins. The third party merchant business, for example, is generally more profitable than when Amazon sells products it buys directly because the costs are lower. It has also tried to squeeze costs from its operations. Mr. Olsavsky pointed to how the number of employees grew 38 percent in 2017, excluding acquisitions, but just 14 percent in 2018. There were similar trends in the construction of data centers and warehouses. "We had a banking, if you will, of some large expansions in the prior two years," Mr. Olsavsky said on a call with analysts. "The theme has been Amazon shifting from a product seller to a fee collector," said Simeon Siegel, an analyst at Instinet. The shift from growth to profit is common as companies mature, he said: "We are going through growing pains." Shares in the company fell nearly 5 percent in after hours trading, after the quarterly results were released. Amazon's two great profit engines are not in the core business of selling and fulfilling items, however they are in cloud computing and advertising. Amazon Web Services, the leading provider of cloud computing, grew 45 percent, with 7.4 billion in sales and almost 2.2 billion in operating income. After several years of dominating the market, which it essentially helped create, Amazon now faces robust competition, including from Microsoft. At its annual cloud conference in November, Amazon announced a number of new products, including AWS Outposts, which lets companies use a single set of tools to manage data across cloud and local servers, an area known as "hybrid cloud" where Microsoft has had success. Mr. Olsavsky said the company had been hiring aggressively to bring in more engineers and sales staff for the cloud offerings, saying "AWS maintained a very strong growth rate and continued to deliver for customers."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Technology
LOS ANGELES Disney on Thursday reported an 82 percent decline in quarterly operating income, the result of steep losses at its coronavirus devastated theme park division and the postponement of major movie releases. But Wall Street had already decided that Disney's overall results for the quarter, the fourth in the company's fiscal year, would be "apropos of nothing," as Todd Juenger, an analyst at Sanford C. Bernstein, wrote in a Nov. 2 research report. Investors are confident that Disney's theme park empire will come roaring back when a vaccine is deployed and all they really care about, at least for the moment, is streaming, streaming, streaming. To that end, Disney said its flagship streaming service, Disney , had 73.7 million subscribers as of Oct. 3, surpassing the low end of its initial five year goal after only 11 months. Disney also owns Hulu (36.6 million subscribers, up 27 percent from a year earlier) and an ESPN branded streaming service (10.3 million, triple the number from a year earlier). Disney will soon introduce Star, an overseas version of Hulu stocked with programming from Disney properties like ABC, FX, Freeform, Searchlight and 20th Century Studios, which Rupert Murdoch sold to the company last year. Streaming is not yet a profitable business for Disney far from it. Losses in the company's direct to consumer division totaled 580 million in the quarter (which was less than analysts had feared), bringing losses for the fiscal year to 2.8 billion. Streaming related losses are expected to peak in 2022, as rollout costs decline and content expenses normalize, with Disney profitability expected by 2024, according to analysts. Disney faces an increasingly competitive streaming environment. HBO Max, CBS All Access (soon to be renamed Paramount ), Peacock and Apple TV are determined to make inroads. Netflix and Amazon continue to pour billions of dollars a year into original programming. Disney also must contend with an expiring promotion. Starting this week, Verizon customers who signed up for Disney through a one year free offer have to start paying ( 7 a month) or cancel. To keep subscribers and sign up new ones, Disney needs more original content, analysts say. The problem: Some shows and films have been delayed because of a pandemic related production halt. "Soul," a Pixar film, will bypass theaters in most of the world and premiere on Disney on Dec. 25. Disney said on Thursday that "WandaVision," the first of eight Marvel series headed for the service, will debut on Jan. 15. "It's very clear to us that new content adds subscribers," Bob Chapek, Disney's chief executive, said on an earnings related conference call. He said he was "very pleased" with its recent "premiere access" experiment with "Mulan," which was offered on Disney for a premium price of 30 in September. He indicated that more Disney movies would be distributed that way, something sure to send shivers through movie theater chains. "We saw enough very positive results to know that we have something here in terms of the premiere access strategy," Mr. Chapek said. Mr. Chapek, who took over as Disney's chief executive in February, recently restructured the company to push streaming closer to Disney's heart. The new setup involves splitting Disney's television operation into two divisions one focused on content creation (with a "primary focus" on content for streaming) and the other on distribution (with full oversight of profits and losses). How it will work is still unclear, at least to those outside the company, but the reasoning is obvious: The traditional TV business is sputtering. Newly cost conscious consumers are canceling their cable and satellite service in larger numbers, putting pressure on ad sales and subscriber fees. A lot of people have switched to a la carte streaming options; Disney has made Disney Channel irrelevant for many families, for instance. Mr. Chapek maintained that his reorganization was going well. "Despite the disruption in everyone's roles, we have 100 percent buy in," he said. Disney Media Networks, a division that includes ESPN and ABC, was helped by the pandemic, at least from a fiscal standpoint, as production shutdowns and a shift of college football games to later quarters lightened costs at ABC. Ad sales benefited from an extra week in the quarter, a quirk of Disney's fiscal reporting structure. The division had operating profit of about 1.86 billion, a 5 percent increase from a year earlier. It was another brutal period for Disney's theme park and consumer products division, where operating profit plunged 2.5 billion, resulting in a loss of 1.1 billion. Walt Disney World in Florida reopened in July with limited capacity, but other major properties, including Disney Cruise Line, remain closed because of the coronavirus. Mr. Chapek said that Disney World, which had reopened at 25 percent capacity, recently lifted restrictions to 35 percent "while still adhering to the guidelines that are stipulated by the C.D.C. for six foot social distancing." Reservations for Thanksgiving week are "almost at capacity," Christine M. McCarthy, Disney's chief financial officer, said on the conference call. Disney's theme parks have long been watched as a bellwether for the broader economy. It is unclear whether the masses now contending with pay cuts and job losses will be able to afford Disney vacations when the gates fully reopen. It took two years for Disney's parks division to fully recover from the last recession. Mr. Chapek said reservations for late next year and "all of 2022" are "extremely strong." Over all, Disney had a net loss in the quarter of 710 million, compared with a profit of 777 million a year earlier. Ms. McCarthy said the coronavirus cost the company 3.1 billion in operating income (and 7.4 billion since March). Revenue totaled 14.7 billion, a 23 percent decline. Mr. Chapek emphasized that Disney was carefully managing its balance sheet. To that end, Disney will not pay a dividend for the second half of its fiscal year. (It previously suspended the first one.) Disney is also in the process of laying off 28,000 workers at its parks and consumer products division. ESPN has also announced layoffs.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Media

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