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The rapidly escalating trade conflict with China has upended the prevailing economic dynamic of falling unemployment and faster growth, leaving policymakers and investors scrambling to figure out the way forward. The threat of a trade war loomed over Jerome H. Powell's inaugural speech as Federal Reserve chairman on Friday in Chicago, even as he tried to focus attention on the fundamental strength of the American economy. Financial markets fell Friday morning after President Trump's latest salvo against China, then tumbled further after Mr. Powell indicated that the Fed saw no imminent need to adjust its outlook. The Standard Poor's 500 stock index ended the day down 2.2 percent, closing a turbulent week. And there was uncertainty in Washington, where lawmakers, lobbyists and even White House officials struggled to discern how much of Mr. Trump's move was policy and how much was bluster. The president acknowledged that the trade friction could take a toll. "I'm not saying there won't be a little pain," he said in a radio interview on Friday. "But we're going to have a much stronger country when we're finished." The concern over trade was evident at Mr. Powell's appearance before the Economic Club of Chicago. The Fed chief did not mention tariffs in his speech, but in a question and answer session afterward, they were the first topic raised. The Fed chief, who took his post in February, said it was "too early to say" what impact the dueling trade measures would have. "We don't know the extent to which the tariffs will actually come into effect and, if so, how big will that effect be and what will the timing of it be," Mr. Powell said. But he made it clear that the Fed would watch closely for any sign that the trade dispute was knocking the recovery off course. The trade tensions complicate what was already a tricky task for the Fed. Hundreds of billions of dollars in tax cuts and spending increases risk fueling inflation, as do wage pressures from a robust labor market. The government's monthly jobs report on Friday, while more subdued than in recent months, still pointed to a healthy employment picture. Yet policymakers are wary of acting too aggressively to slow the economy at a time when wage growth has been tepid. The Fed's response has been gradual interest rate increases. A trade war could act as a drag on economic growth, forcing the Fed to be even more cautious. But tariffs could also raise consumer prices by limiting cheap imports from China and other countries. That could increase the risk that the Fed will lift rates too quickly, choking off the recovery. Wage growth, weak for much of the recovery, ticked up in March, and Mr. Powell said he expected the gains to continue in the months ahead. And while workers would, without a doubt, like to see their pay rise more quickly, the gradual pace is comforting for some investors, who have been watching for any hints that the economy is overheating. In his speech, Mr. Powell said the Fed saw "other signs of economic strength," citing "steady income gains, rising household wealth and elevated consumer confidence," which he said would continue to support consumer spending. Other economists agreed, saying that the recently passed tax and spending measures give the economy added momentum. A full blown trade war might be enough to short circuit the recovery, they said, but isolated tariffs even large ones most likely are not. Certain categories are more vulnerable. Among the retaliatory moves announced by China are new tariffs on soybeans, which could hurt American farmers already struggling with low prices for their crops. The nation's factories, a sector that Mr. Trump has championed, have become a bright spot in the recovery a development Mr. Powell underlined on his Chicago visit by touring an incubator for industrial start ups. But Mr. Trump's tariffs could force manufacturers to pay more for materials, and China's countermeasures could hurt their overseas sales. Just the prospect of tariffs even before they begin to take a direct bite could hurt the economy if it makes corporate executives reluctant to invest. Becky Frankiewicz, president of ManpowerGroup, a staffing firm, said she was already hearing from clients that they are more hesitant to commit to major projects, at least until they see whether this week's skirmishes develop into an all out trade war. "We're not seeing the impact directly of tariffs yet, but we would say there's pretty broad conservatism as a result," she said. Mr. Powell said Fed policymakers, too, were conscious of concerns from corporate executives. "We did hear from a number of business leaders around the country that changes in trade policy had become a bit of a risk to the medium term outlook," Mr. Powell said in the question and answer session. Continued turmoil in financial markets could begin to hurt spending, especially among higher earners, who are more likely to own stocks. Ms. Zentner said surveys suggested that some high income consumers had already become more pessimistic as markets have become more volatile. "It's starting to affect those groups, whose spending is more tied to the stock market," Ms. Zentner said. "If they simply pause their spending or become more prudent in their spending because of market volatility, it drags down consumer spending in the aggregate." The effect of all this on the Fed's thinking won't be clear until the next policy meeting on May 1 and 2. Fed officials raised interest rates by a quarter of a percentage point at their most recent meeting, in March, to a range of 1.5 percent to 1.75 percent. Officials indicated that they considered the economy and labor market healthy, and that they expected to raise rates twice more this year and three times in 2019. Mr. Powell, like his predecessor, Janet L. Yellen, cast that gradual series of increases as a carefully planned strategy to ensure that the Fed will not need to raise rates abruptly in the event of a steep rise in inflation. But he also cautioned that policymakers could change course if necessary. "Our views about appropriate monetary policy in the months and years ahead will be informed by incoming economic data and the evolving outlook," Mr. Powell said. "If the outlook changes, so will monetary policy. Our overarching objective will remain the same: fostering a strong economy for all Americans one that provides plentiful jobs and low and stable inflation."
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Economy
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Welcome to Best of Late Night, a rundown of the previous night's highlights that lets you sleep and lets us get paid to watch comedy. We're all stuck at home at the moment, so here are the 50 best movies on Netflix right now. "How could this happen? He was being so careful!" Jimmy Kimmel joked of President Trump's frequently maskless lawyer, whom Trevor Noah called the virus's "least surprising victim yet." "Sadly, this Covid test is the only positive thing to come out of Rudy Giuliani in four years." JIMMY KIMMEL "When the news broke, the coronavirus was like, 'Damn it, I knew I should have worn a mask.'" JIMMY FALLON "Who would have thought? Especially after Giuliani had taken every precaution and thrown it out the window while screaming 'Election fraud!' in a crowded room with no mask." JAMES CORDEN "He's in the hospital now. He claims he's feeling good; he claims he's recovering quickly. He's feasting on the blood of newborn babies in the maternity ward." JIMMY KIMMEL "OK, for a man his age, it is a troubling diagnosis, but I have no doubt he'll get top notch medical care. Plus, you know Rudy will stay hydrated. He drinks so many fluids, they leak out his skull." STEPHEN COLBERT "So, for just a partial list of Rudy's achievements since the election: He's lost 48 lawsuits, he melted on camera, he farted in court, he got Covid, and he shut down a state legislature. The only thing more embarrassing would be if he married his own cousin. He what?!" STEPHEN COLBERT "We may look back and see that he gave his life to overturn the results of this election." JIMMY KIMMEL "And as much as you might have some schadenfreude about this thing, Rudy Giuliani testing positive for Covid 19 is a terrifying new development. Because you realize up until now we didn't even think that dead guys could get corona." TREVOR NOAH "Giuliani decided to get tested after experiencing symptoms for the last 20 years." SETH MEYERS "Apparently the doctor asked, 'When did you start feeling a little off?' and Rudy said, 'Right around 2009.'" JIMMY FALLON "It keeps getting worse for Rudy. After his test showed he had Covid, he challenged the results in court and lost." JIMMY FALLON "Rudy was like, 'How could this happen? All I did was travel around maskless and use whatever I found laying around to wipe my face.'" JIMMY FALLON "He's gone from America's Mayor to 'America's Sprayer.'" JIMMY KIMMEL "So yes, Rudy Giuliani has tested positive for the coronavirus, although he is suing to have that result overturned." TREVOR NOAH Jimmy Fallon and the actor Andrew Rannells parodied popular Broadway songs in "2020: The Musical."
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Television
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"I've been singing it for 40 or so years, as an apprentice and an aspiring master, and it is inexhaustible," Ian Bostridge writes. I first got to know the 20 songs of Franz Schubert's "Die Schone Mullerin" ("The Beautiful Miller Girl") as an impressionable teenager, some 40 years ago. It might seem at first sight and hearing to be very much a teenage story. Young man goes traveling for work, falls in love with girl, obsesses about her in that oh so teenage way; she remains heartlessly indifferent. Along comes a butch hunter to steal the maiden's heart, and the young man's fantasy dissolves into jealousy, anger and tears. He kills himself in the mill stream that led him to the girl in the first place. I was introduced to the cycle through a famous recording by the German baritone Dietrich Fischer Dieskau and the English pianist Gerald Moore. Classical in tone, restrained and beautifully sung and played, this is a version that any impressionable listener could fall in love with. What struck me most at the time was the endless dialogue between voice and piano, boy and brook, and Schubert's unerring ability to transform textually inspired motifs running water, heavy millstones, the strum of a guitar into evocative music. This is not singer and accompaniment; it is chamber music for voice and piano. The LP cover made a telling impact on my perception of the music. Corot's "Mill at Saint Nicolas les Arras" is a painting from the very end of the artist's career, in the 1870s; presumably painted "en plein air," it presents an image of idyllic rusticity which is surely also part of the appeal of Schubert's cycle, written in 1823. We imagine the miller boy gazing from behind Corot's screen of trees, longing to belong. There is undoubtedly a naive and untroubled way of approaching the cycle, whether as singer, pianist or listener akin to the naive and untroubled air with which our hero sets out on his hike. "Das Wandern ist des Mullers Lust," the text goes: "To wander is the miller's joy." The music is tuneful, often with a folksy air. Many, if not most, of the songs are strophic, with the same music repeated three, four or five times for different verses. The poems that Schubert set were originally written as part of a party game in which a group of well heeled friends in Berlin told the tale of Rose, the miller maid, in verse, from the point of view of different characters. The poetic cycle published in 1820 by one of these friends, coincidentally named Wilhelm Muller, stripped the story down to essentially four characters and points of view: the boy, the girl, the narrator and the mill stream itself. But while doing this, Muller retained something of the party game quality, so that even if the story ends tragically, with the boy's suicide, the text maintains a kind of distance. Muller's note below the work's title "to be read in the winter" introduces some darker ambiguity. The poems are to be read in the cold months because they embody exactly the sort of artless pastoral that is helpful to pass the time when people are locked down in winter. But they are more than a frolic, looking forward to spring; they form a psychological journey which, despite its playful origins and ironic role playing, is worthy to set beside this poet's brooding masterpiece, "Winterreise" ("Winter's Journey"), put to music by Schubert a few years later. Schubert removed every trace of irony from Muller's "Mullerin" original. He ditched some teasing framing poems in the voice of the poet, virtually erased the presence of the miller girl herself and focused on the psychological disintegration of the boy. The result can be read in many ways: a depiction of the failure to grow up and embrace adult sexuality; a study in masochism; a journey toward romantic oblivion. This boy never really notices that the girl doesn't notice him, and never really breaks out of his self obsessive bubble. So why should we be interested in this nebbish, as the musicologist Lawrence Kramer characterizes him? Because, just as with the outsider wanderer of "Winterreise," he, his narcissism and his obsession are part of all of us. Schubert's music deepens and ennobles him, and when, at the end of this hourlong odyssey, the mill stream itself sings the boy's threnody as lullaby, the cosmic gesture of the parting words and music "und der Himmel da oben, wie ist er so weit" ("and heaven above, how vast it is") doesn't seem overblown. Surely part of the weight of the cycle comes from the circumstances of its composition. Schubert had just been diagnosed with syphilis, and some of the songs were almost certainly composed in the hospital. The association between sexual desire however prettified in these pieces and death is part of the overarching metaphor of the cycle, and that association must have been more than clear to the composer as he wrote. To add to the ancient preoccupations of sex and death, class is also embedded in the "Mullerin" cycle. This theme would have had its own appeal to Schubert, painfully aware as he was of the precarious social position of the independent composer. The hero of the cycle has, in effect, fallen in love with the boss's daughter. His fantasy of cozy domesticity is pricked by a hunter, representative not just of bruising masculinity but also of social freedom and independence. Social relations complicate things in the cycle, but so does our sense as listeners that this is a world on the edge of dissolution. Muller and Schubert's mill like Corot's is machinery, both material and ideological, that will be cast out by the forward march of industrialization. As Marx very nearly said, "The water mill gives you society with the feudal lord; the steam mill, society with the industrial capitalist." The loss of the water mill as a center of communal food production was a historical trauma to which a near contemporary of Schubert's, William Blake, responded with visionary force, decrying the advance of the "dark satanic mills" steam driven ones like the Albion Flour Mills in London, which burned down to general rejoicing earlier in the decade of Schubert's birth. With all these historical and psychological phenomena to feed our interpretations as performers and listeners, it is no wonder that "Die Schone Mullerin" continues to exert a strange fascination. I've been singing it for 40 or so years, as an apprentice and an aspiring master, and it is inexhaustible. Exhausting, too, if I can let you in on a trade secret from the guild of lieder singers. Quite a bit shorter than its mammoth successor, "Winterreise" which has 24 songs and lasts 75 minutes, compared to 20 and an hour for "Mullerin" it is nevertheless quite something to maintain its relentless tessitura and preserve that sense of the art which conceals art. My first recording of the "Mullerin," released in 1996, launched my career as a song recitalist. It happened providentially. Another singer had dropped out of this particular volume of Graham Johnson's extraordinary complete edition of Schubert songs on Hyperion, and I stepped into the breach. The poems Schubert didn't set were read by my hero, the fabled Fischer Dieskau. It wasn't the easiest of sessions: As we recorded the final song, fireworks started going off next door and we had to piece it together in fragments. Graham played wonderfully, but we disagreed intensely about the tempo of the first song. His slower intuition was probably right it's how I sing it now but at the time, he yielded. I gave the piece a very naive reading which, returning to the whole business of record covers, was reflected in the photograph on the CD: myself as nerdy youngster, reading a book in a barn. Much of the rest of my career as a lieder singer has been an attempt to escape from that naivete and to reflect the deeper waters of pieces like the "Mullerin." That's been annoying for some people who prefer limpid beauty to psychological torment. In my latest recording, with the brilliant Italian pianist Saskia Giorgini, a veteran of the solo repertoire whose perspective on Schubert is inflected by her immersion in Liszt and Enescu, I hope to reach some sort of accommodation between the naive and the sentimental, the mellifluously straightforward and the anxiety ridden hall of mirrors. The journey to do justice to the miller's journey is an endless one. Ian Bostridge is the author of "Schubert's Winter Journey: Anatomy of an Obsession." His new recording of "Die Schone Mullerin" will be released on Friday on Pentatone.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Music
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There are only so many occasions on which a responsible adult can justify consuming alcohol and food nonstop for an entire week. Turning 40 is one of them. Such a fate befell my wife, Cary, last August, and so, in a celebratory mood, we set out on a five hour drive from our home in Seattle to the state's wine capital, Walla Walla in Washington's southeastern corner, which can aptly be described as Napa in bluejeans. Thirty years ago, only the denim part of that description would have applied. In the region, an agricultural powerhouse, it hadn't yet dawned on farmers to grow grapes. "Back in the '80s, downtown was dying truly falling apart," said Mike Spring, a former fire chief who owns a brewpub, Chief Springs Fire and Irons Brewpub, in nearby Dayton. "The wine industry has brought Walla Walla back to life." With the Blue Mountains in the distance, my wife and I pointed our Mercury toward the northeast along a curvy 20 mile stretch of Highway 12, past grain silos, a rural schoolhouse, seemingly endless golden hills of wheat and a famous local camel named Izzy. "The drive is like the Disney country drive," said the local restaurateur and mixologist Jim German. "You have these vistas into the mountains in between these rolling hills. It reminds me of the Sabine Hills outside of Rome." We soon arrived in Waitsburg, a Rockwellian town of some 1,200 citizens at the eastern edge of Walla Walla County. The area's wine boom Walla Walla is home to more than 130 wineries didn't make it this far, but Mr. German, a Seattle expat, did. In 2007 he and his wife, Clare Johnston, opened jimgermanbar, a now defunct hybrid art gallery cocktail lounge, in an old brick building they'd purchased on Waitsburg's sleepy Main Street. The establishment offered a dose of urban cool to a place described by Jim McGuinn, owner of the gloriously overstuffed Walla Walla record store Hot Poop, as "two weeks from everywhere, somewhere between Mayberry and 'Happy Days.' " Mr. German closed his bar last summer, lured by the opportunity to revamp and reopen a beloved Italian diner, the Pastime, in downtown Walla Walla (the new joint will be called passatempo, or pastime in Italian). But across the street from their old establishment, the spacious, down home Whoopemup Hollow Cafe chugs on, its golf ball shaped hush puppies and upscale Dixie aesthetic attracting loyalists from an hour in every direction. Run by Ross Stevenson, who moved to the area from Seattle with his husband and restaurant designer, Leroy Cunningham, the Whoopemup has enjoyed an unlikely decade long embrace from a mostly conservative local clientele. "I guess we're pretty lucky, considering we're in a town of 1,200 people," said Mr. Stevenson of his ability to stay afloat on the quaint commercial strip. Along with their business partners, Valerie Mudry, the pastry chef, and Bryant Bader, the chef, Mr. Stevenson and Mr. Cunningham will soon open a second Whoopemup in downtown Walla Walla. Living in Waitsburg, Mr. Stevenson said, "is definitely not for everyone." "These smaller towns are boom and bust, he added. " We've seen plenty of businesses come and go in Waitsburg since we've been here." Court Ruppenthal's brewery, Laht Neppur (his surname spelled backward), is one that's managed to stick it out. After graduating from the wine program at Walla Walla Community College, Mr. Ruppenthal intended to open a winery but figured out pretty quickly that there were enough of those around. The best 28 he ever spent, he said, was to commission a sign that read, "Caution: Brewery Ahead," which he credits with being the primary magnet for newfound clientele (the sign recently went missing). "Just a piece of plywood affixed to a telephone pole," he said of the sign. "It's a farm community; it's all like that." Mr. Ruppenthal's wife, Katie, is the face of Laht Neppur's operation, while Court is the mad scientist, whipping up wildly adventurous beers like a jalapeno infused peach IPA and strawberry cream ale. The brewpub itself adheres to the plywood on a pole aesthetic; ivory colored and unassuming, it could be mistaken for a package liquor store on the West Texas plains, with a gravelly, tin roof courtyard punctuating the shopworn vibe. We ordered pitchers and pizza that we expected to be of the Red Baron variety. Instead, what we got was a pulled pork, Walla Walla sweet onion and barbecue sauce pie that worked against all odds. Some 10 miles farther down Highway 12 is the Columbia County seat, Dayton (population, 2,500). With a main boulevard wide enough to host an Old West gunfight, the municipality's economic heart stopped in 2005 when the Green Giant cannery moved to Peru. For decades, the company's cartoonish Hulk meets Tarzan icon was carved into a hillside. It has faded considerably now, replaced by the cheese yielding goatherd of Monteillet Fromagerie, which produces small batch chevre and brebis with a Francophile's flair. Dayton, which this Memorial Day will host its annual Mule Mania competition to crown the region's most deft jackass jockeys, is about the last place you'd expect to locate four star French cuisine. But it's persevered unflinchingly since 1978, which is when Bruce and Heather Hiebert opened Patit Creek Restaurant at the edge of town. The Hieberts, as Ms. Hiebert recounts, met at a "chicken noodle soup and wine party" while attending Walla Walla Community College she for nursing, he for culinary arts. "The wines were just jug wines," she recalled. Walla Walla's days as a top wine producing region were a way off, but its agricultural aptitude could be found in the soup, as the chicken was freshly slaughtered on a fellow reveler's farm. The restaurant's decor dark wood paneling and photos of Old Hollywood stars has remained as frozen as its air conditioning. (Bring a sweater, even if it's 100 degrees outside.) The menu has, too, despite the Hieberts' occasional flirtations with progress. "Some dishes have never left the menu chicken Florentine, the mushroom caps; Bruce always makes tomato bisque on Wednesdays," said Ms. Hiebert, who's become an accomplished pastry chef. "We once tried to change our menu seasonally, but there were so many outraged customers that we decided to just keep the favorites on the menu and do specials. People like what Bruce does those big, goopy, French style sauces, which are completely out of date. You try something light and they go, 'Geez!' " Yet despite her regulars' stubborn palates and the commercial aftershocks of the cannery's closure, Ms. Hiebert is bullish on the region's evolution. "It's gone from cowboy to really nice places to eat and wineries and breweries," she said. "I still have old farmers saying they like it like it used to be, but they're forgetting how it was." People in their 40s have been known to express a similarly nostalgic affinity for their roaring 20s. Yet with our spirits high but hardly dry after a week in the wheat, my wife and I now know better. IF YOU GO For optimal local flavor, try the southside four step of Gifford Hirlinger (1450 Stateline Road, Walla Walla; giffordhirlinger.com),Balboa (4169 Peppers Bridge Road, Walla Walla; balboawinery.com),Beresan (4169 Peppers Bridge Road, Walla Walla; beresanwines.com) and Sleight of Hand (1959 JB George Road, Walla Walla; sofhcellars.com). Gifford Hirlinger occupies an ultramodern warehouse on the border of Washington and Oregon. It is laid back and family run, and the person pouring your wine is likely to have made it as well. Nearby, Balboa and Beresan serve up chewy reds from retrofitted barns in a shared parking lot, while across the street, Sleight of Hand with its Pearl Jam posters, vinyl albums that customers may play and Neil Patrick Harris gracing its bottles in magician's garb offers a unique tasting experience. If winter weather is not your thing,Spring Release Weekend, May 6 to 8 (wallawallawine.com/spring release weekend) is an optimal time to sample winemakers' freshest fare. Where to Drink Something Other Than Wine Laht Neppur (444 Preston Avenue, Waitsburg; lahtneppur.com) is a Highway 12 microbrewery with adventurous beers and pizza served on picnic tables. A large pizza and a pitcher of brew is about 40. House produced pizza and beer can also be found at Chief Springs Fire and Irons Brew Pub in Dayton (148 East Main; fireandironsbrewpub.com; about 30 for a large pizza and a couple of pints of beer), while Tuxedo Bar and Grill (105 South D Street; 509 849 2244) in tiny Prescott serves 99 cent margaritas every Wednesday. Ross Stevenson's hush puppies and southern cuisine are the stars at Whoopemup Hollow Cafe (120 Main Street; whoopemuphollowcafe.com; entrees 20 to 28, hush puppies 8), while Dayton's Patit Creek Restaurant (725 East Dayton Avenue, 509 382 2625; entrees 23 to 42) has been a destination for fans of classic French food since 1978. Walla Walla's elite Whitman College is named for the local pioneer Marcus Whitman, as is the stunning Marcus Whitman Hotel (6 West Rose Street; marcuswhitmanhotel1.tru m.com; rooms 114 to 224 per night), which, after falling into disrepair in the late 20th century, recaptured its historic opulence upon reopening in 2001. In neighboring Columbia County, the Weinhard Hotel (235 East Main Street; weinhard.com; 125 to 180 per night) brings Victorian charm to downtown Dayton, while Bluewood Ski Resort (bluewood.com) lures snow bunnies to the majestic hills nearby.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Travel
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HONG KONG China appears to have received help on Saturday from an unlikely source in its fight against tools that help users evade its Great Firewall of internet censorship: Apple. Software made by foreign companies to help users skirt the country's system of internet filters has vanished from Apple's app store on the mainland. One company, ExpressVPN, posted a letter it had received from Apple saying that its app had been taken down "because it includes content that is illegal in China." Another tweeted from its official account that its app had been removed. A search on Saturday showed that a number of the most popular foreign virtual private networks, also known as VPNs, which give users access to the unfiltered internet in China, were no longer accessible on the company's app store there. ExpressVPN wrote in its blog that the removal was "surprising and unfortunate." It added, "We're disappointed in this development, as it represents the most drastic measure the Chinese government has taken to block the use of VPNs to date, and we are troubled to see Apple aiding China's censorship efforts." Sunday Yokubaitis, president of Golden Frog, a company that makes privacy and security software including VyprVPN, said its software, too, had been taken down from the app store. "We gladly filed an amicus brief in support of Apple in their backdoor encryption battle with the F.B.I.," he said, "so we are extremely disappointed that Apple has bowed to pressure from China to remove VPN apps without citing any Chinese law or regulation that makes VPN illegal." He added, "We view access to internet in China as a human rights issue, and I would expect Apple to value human rights over profits." In a statement, Apple noted that the Chinese government announced this year that all developers offering VPNs needed to obtain a government license. "We have been required to remove some VPN apps in China that do not meet the new regulations," the company said. "These apps remain available in all other markets where they do business." This is not the first time that Apple has removed apps at the request of the Chinese government, but it is a new reminder of how deeply beholden the tech giant has become to Beijing at a moment when the leadership has been pushing to tighten its control over the internet. The removals signal a new push by China to control the internet. In the past, the Great Firewall has used technology to disrupt VPNs, and Beijing has shut down Chinese VPNs and even aimed a huge cyberattack at a well known foreign site hosting code that circumvented the filters. But they also mark the first time China has successfully used its influence with a major foreign tech platform, like Apple, to push back against the software makers. While internet crackdowns often peak every five years, ahead of a key Chinese Communist Party congress, this year's efforts cover fresh ground, a likely indication that stricter controls of things like VPNs will persist after the congress this autumn. Earlier this month, China also began a partial block of the Facebook owned messaging app WhatsApp. Greater China is Apple's largest market outside the United States. That has left the company more vulnerable than almost any other American technology firm to a Chinese campaign to wean itself off foreign technology and tighten control over foreign tech companies operating there. In response, Apple has made a number of moves to ensure that it stays on Beijing's good side. Last year, the company complied with what it said was a request from the Chinese authorities to remove from its China app store news apps created by The New York Times. This month, the company said it would open its first data center in China to comply with a new law that pushes foreign firms to store more of their data in China. Apple has operated its app store in China for many years with only the occasional run in with the government. The VPN crackdown and Beijing's move in December to target news sites indicate that China's internet regulators have taken a deeper interest, and are exerting more control, over what is available on Apple's China app store.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Technology
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Senility is a joy ride in the exultant, London born revival of Tom Stoppard's "Travesties," which opened on Tuesday night at the American Airlines Theater. This account of a clash of three cultural titans James Joyce, Vladimir Lenin and the Dadaist poet Tristan Tzara in Zurich during World War I is related decades later by an ancient witness (one Henry Carr, of the British Consulate). His recollection is, to put it kindly, capricious. Yet the mind of this old man (played with a gourmand's gusto by Tom Hollander) is filled with such bright bits of history, real and imagined, that whenever he tries to remember, his thoughts erupt like showers of confetti. My advice to anyone attending this show of rollicking intellect and silly stagecraft, which has been deliciously directed by Patrick Marber: Let it rain and soak it in. By evening's end, you'll be surprised by the iridescent clarity that has emerged from Mr. Stoppard's artfully chaotic assemblage of rampant speculation, literary texts, great man biography parodies, legal documents, political tracts and rude schoolboy japes. That clarity won't last, any more than a rainbow does. What abides is a giddy awareness of history as a tale told by unreliable narrators, as well as the oddly comforting impression that senescence has its own poetic license. As presented here, "Travesties" is a work to remember, or misremember, for years to come. This geriatric evocation of things past was the work of a fast rising playwright who was still on the fair side of 40. When "Travesties" opened in London in 1974, Mr. Stoppard was already the darling of theatergoing literati and irreverently bookish college students, thanks to the earlier success of "Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead" (his 1966 gloss on "Hamlet" from a sideways perspective) and "Jumpers" (an acrobatic riff on physics and philosophy from 1972). It was already clear that Mr. Stoppard was a dramatist of a singular intellectual stripe, with his academic antics and cascading epigrams, suggesting a genius prankster run amok in an Oxbridge library. But nothing prepared his audience for "Travesties," which made comic hay of the writings of three of the most eminent and complex minds of Western civilization. (Make that four, since the play also borrows copiously from Oscar Wilde's "The Importance of Being Earnest.") When the show transferred to Broadway in 1975, it won both the Tony and New York Drama Critics' Circle awards for best play. But theatergoers were walking out on it in exasperated droves and writing angry letters to The New York Times, which had happily endorsed the production. The current "Travesties" which originated at the Menier Chocolate Factory in 2016, before transferring to the West End is the product of several subsequent decades of Mr. Stoppard's revision and condensation. (If I tried to track those changes for you, I'd wind up as addled as poor Carr.) Because what makes "Travesties" so deeply engaging and hilarious and touching isn't its flashy erudition but its author's rapt fascination with the workings of the human mind and its enduring relationship with art. Mr. Stoppard possesses the enthusiasm of an eternal student, both arrogant about what he knows and humble about what he doesn't. This sensibility is filtered through the backward looking perspective of good old Carr (based on a real person), a thoroughly middle class British consul who claims to have been in Zurich at a magic moment when Joyce (Peter McDonald), Tzara (Seth Numrich) and Lenin (Dan Butler) were all in residence. Carr is in his dressing gown and his dotage when we first meet him, thinking up ways to transform this improbable slice of history into a book. Joyce who is working on his novel "Ulysses" and Lenin nearing the end of his exile from Russia can be found in the Zurich library, along with Lenin's wife, Nadya (Opal Alladin). Tzara, chief exponent of the art of poetic anarchy, is there, too, because he has a crush on Joyce's assistant, Gwendolen (Scarlett Strallen). Overseeing, and regularly shushing, the others is a librarian, one Cecily Cardew (Sara Topham). Gwendolen and Cecily are the names of the rivalrous heroines of Wilde's "Earnest." And much of the dialogue in "Travesties" takes its cues from that masterpiece of elegant absurdism. You see, Joyce is involved in a local production of "Earnest." He recruits Carr to appear in it as Algernon. The collaboration ends badly, because of an altercation over the cost of Carr's costumes. The elderly Carr doffs his bathrobe to become his younger self to participate in his encounters with the others, who also include his manservant, Bennett (Patrick Kerr), who harbors revolutionary sympathies. Many of the scenes are enacted in several variations, as history stops and starts and never exactly repeats itself. Our leading men face off in duels of words about the purpose and nature of art. Carr, a Gilbert and Sullivan fan, takes the conventional bourgeois view of it as a collection of worthy monuments. Lenin has no use for art, though his wife describes him as being unnervingly moved by a Beethoven sonata. Tzara, the Dadaist, is a desecrater of traditional art, and is seen cutting up a sonnet by Shakespeare into a bowler hat, the better to randomly reassemble its words. The hat belongs to Joyce, who later pulls a rabbit out of it. That bit of magic may give you a clue as to where the playwright's sympathies lie. Abstract considerations are rendered with an extravagantly theatrical zeal that never flags. The first rate design team includes Tim Hatley (costumes and a set that suggests a ransacked library of the mind) Neil Austin (lighting) and Adam Cork (sound and music). The cast couldn't be much better. Among the singular pleasures they provide: Mr. Numrich's physically ferocious Tzara acting out the Darwinian chain of evolution; Mr. McDonald's Joyce talking (and singing) in Irish limericks; Mr. Butler's straight faced modeling a blond wig as a disguise for Lenin's return to Russia; Ms. Alladin singing an ode to the motherland in Russian; and Ms. Strallen and Ms. Topham blissfully reinterpreting the tea party scene from "Earnest" to the tune of the vaudeville ditty "Mr. Gallagher and Mr. Shean." Then there is Mr. Hollander, who was so delectably vicious in AMC's "The Night Manager." Here, standing amid a scattered wreckage of books and loose papers, he is both an affecting emblem of bewilderment and a tower of preening vanity. And he leads us with seamless clarity not only through his character's segues between youth and old age but also through the decomposing labyrinth that is Carr's mind. "Take no notice," he says companionably, after describing the Lenin he remembers as a gnomic, anemic blond. It will, he reassures us, "all come out in the wash, that's the art of it." What emerges from the churning wash of "Travesties" is one of the sweetest, sauciest and strangest defenses of art ever to land on a stage.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Theater
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Sometime this summer, Auguste Rodin is probably coming to a city near you, as institutions worldwide honor the centenary of that French sculptor's death, at 77. The journey is mostly being undertaken by museums with deep pockets, administrative teams and huge parking lots in which to unload and safely transfer large bronzes. But down the not very wide Duke Street in Mayfair here, the modestly sized Bowman Sculpture gallery has just opened "Rodin: The Birth of Modern Sculpture" (through July 27), an exhibition of 32 works in bronze and terra cotta, as well as eight rarely seen drawings. "It's a tour de force," said Jerome Le Blay, who is preparing an online catalogue raisonne of Rodin's sculptures under the auspices of the Auguste Rodin Committee in Paris. "You can't put something like this together in a year. You need 10 or 15 years of work on Rodin to know where to buy, how to get the pieces. Even the biggest art dealers and many mainstream museums couldn't do this." Robert Bowman, 59, the founder of Bowman Sculpture, has had longer than 10 or 15 years. His passion for Rodin, he said, began when he was working as director of European works of art at Sotheby's in the 1980s. "It started with a piece called 'She Who Was Once the Helmet Maker's Beautiful Wife,'" he explained. "I realized how he sees beauty in nonconformity, even ugliness." The Bowman show includes eight rarely seen drawings, as well as works in bronze and terra cotta. Lauren Fleishman for The New York Times Mr. Bowman started to look for, and study, Rodin works wherever he could find them, and spent time at the Rodin Museum in Paris learning about its collection and the casting process. After opening his own gallery in 1993, it took him a few years, he said, before he had enough money for his first major acquisition, a "Thinker," in 1997. "We paid 150,000 for it, and I had to go to the bank for a loan," he recounted. "Recently I sold a similar one for 3.2 million." He has been buying Rodin ever since, becoming one of the world's pre eminent dealers of 19th century sculpture. "We try to buy anything good that comes on the market that we can afford," Mr. Bowman said. What is a "good" Rodin piece? The sculptor is one of France's most celebrated artists, and one of the few worldwide whose work ("The Kiss," "The Thinker") has an instant recognition factor, even for those largely uninterested in the fine arts. "They are images emblazoned in cultural consciousness," said August Uribe, a former deputy chairman of the Americas at Phillips auction house. "There is a finite number of those, and the world is willing to pay a price for that." In relative terms, however, Rodin's work is still far less expensive than that of his contemporaries, like Monet or Gauguin, or than that of more contemporary sculptors like Giacometti or Brancusi. (Mr. Bowman's top price in this exhibition, for a 1905 10 cast of "The Kiss," is 1.53 million.) That's because Rodin was both prolific and canny, allowing large numbers of his sculptures to be cast in different sizes, and granting licenses to foundries to produce editions. Identifying authentic pieces and their provenance is "a big jigsaw," Mr. Le Blay said. "During Rodin's life, he could produce as much as he could sell, and until 1968, there was no legislation in France to limit an edition to 12 pieces, as it is now," he explained. "Meditation," one of the works in the Bowman show. Lauren Fleishman for The New York Times Rodin also began to work with an assistant in the 1890s to create editions of his work in different sizes, much of it monumental in scale and inaccessible to private collectors. "He was adapting his work to the market, but it wasn't just a commercial thing," Mr. Le Blay said. "The size changes the way you see a sculpture, and Rodin was interested in that." The price depends on quality and rarity, "and whether they are lifetime casts or made posthumously," he added. Mr. Bowman said that it had taken him four years to assemble the pieces for his current show, which includes different sizes of the famous pieces. "You certainly have to have 'The Burghers of Calais,' his most famous public monument," he said, ticking off the essentials. "I wanted to show some early work before his commercial success, and also what happens later. If you look at the dance figures we have here, made toward the end of his life, the way the forms are squished, you can see the line forward to Matisse and even Giacometti." (There are no monumental sculptures in the exhibition, he said, because almost every lifetime cast is in a museum.) The eight drawings include a rare portrait of a Cambodian princess and an explicitly erotic "Sapphic Couple." "The drawings show Rodin experimenting with line and form in a way you see later in his sculpture," Mr. Bowman said. The insurance on these works runs into the millions and involves specifications about how works are displayed. (Anything below a certain size and weight must be shown in a Perspex acrylic box, so that it can't be stolen.) Any piece worth more than 50,000 must have its own passport. "If import duty is imposed post Brexit, you'll have a mass exodus of art dealers," Mr. Bowman said. (For the moment there is no duty within the European Union.) Even without duty to pay, there are other obstacles; he mentioned that he had been unable to include three Rodin works from Paris, because of the time it would take to get the export license that France requires for works that are considered part of its cultural heritage. Lovingly stroking a "Fugit Amor," Mr. Bowman said the headaches had been worth it. "Look at this," he said, gesturing to a small terra cotta head for Rodin's "The Age of Bronze," positioned alongside letters written by Rodin to his model for the work, Auguste Neyt. "Rodin did his own terra cotta models, so you know his hands have cast this. There are more expensive works here, but to get a piece like this is just thrilling."
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Art & Design
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Erin Lorek works out of a shared three bedroom apartment in a Bedford Stuyvesant brownstone. Her roommates, other artists, have always been supportive, but her work involves moving large iron plates and welding which she has to do elsewhere. Erin Lorek is an artist whose practice involves casting sheets of glass using large iron plates, work that would ideally be done in a concrete floored, industrial warehouse with a freight elevator, rather than the living room of a shared, three bedroom apartment in a Bedford Stuyvesant brownstone. "Mine is not a very romantic situation the huge beautiful Brooklyn loft. It's never been that for me," said Ms. Lorek, 41, who works full time doing production lighting and pays 1,250 a month for her live/work arrangement. "I could never justify a 700 or 1,000 studio space. You can't get anything in this city for less; 500 will get you a tiny, shared windowless room." Ms. Lorek is fortunate that her roommates other artists who also work out of the apartment and her landlord have always been supportive of the setup, but working out of a shared apartment has its difficulties. She has to carry 50 pound iron plates up the stairs and she's limited mostly to prototyping there, though when her roommates are out she'll cut metal and bend steel, then take it to a friend's place to weld. Her studio storage is her sister's Westchester garage. Being an artist in New York City has always required a fair amount of negotiation, thrift and ingenuity the time when non blue chip artists lived and worked out of expansive SoHo and TriBeCa lofts is, of course, long gone. But for decades, artists continued to find affordable spaces in the industrial buildings of Williamsburg, Bushwick, Bed Stuy, Sunset Park, Gowanus, Long Island City and the South Bronx, hopscotching to the next cheap neighborhood as the rents increased. In recent years, however, the question of how to afford to live and work in New York is one that even many seasoned and financially successful artists have struggled to answer. Faced with rising residential and commercial rents, a dearth of inexpensive neighborhoods left to move to and a dwindling supply of affordable artist friendly industrial spaces, more and more of them are, like Ms. Lorek, working out of bedrooms, living rooms or rented studios split two or three ways in many cases changing their practices to accommodate the costs and constraints of living in the city. When Levi Jackman, a 33 year old photographer, first moved to the city six years ago, he worked out of his 1,650 a month NoLIta studio apartment. "It wasn't working well," he said, and after a series of steep rent increases, he moved into a one bedroom with his fiance on the Upper East Side and started doing more work as a commercial photography assistant so he could afford a separate 1,250 a month studio space in Mott Haven. Three years later, the studio's rent is up to 1,550 a month and Mr. Jackman is thinking about moving into a two bedroom in his building and working out of the extra room. "It used to be that people were repurposing industrial space. Now I think they're repurposing residential space," said Mr. Jackman. "The people who need significant studio space are moving far, far out; I have some friends who live and work in a studio out by the airport in Jamaica, Queens. Everyone else is just getting a two bedroom." Jenny Dubnau, one of the founders of the Artist Studio Affordability Project, a group that formed in 2013 in response to rent increases that forced many artists out of their studios in Sunset Park's Industry City, said that 2 a square foot per month for a studio is "considered great right now and that's at the upper edge of what most artists can afford." (A 300 square foot private studio that rents for 600 a month is rare, though not impossible, to find.) In the late 1980s and early 1990s, Ms. Dubnau said, 50 cents a square foot was common. By the late 1990s, she was paying a little over a dollar a square foot for a Greenpoint space that she eventually got priced out of; it's now the Kickstarter headquarters. Luxury condo conversions have been claiming industrial space for decades, but the more recent surge in demand for hip, warehouse style office space, in combination with the co working boom and maker space trend, has meant that artists are increasingly competing against deeper pocketed tenants for what unconverted spaces remain. Trudy Benson, a painter who moved her studio from a Clinton Hill warehouse to Brownsville last year, said that by the time she left Clinton Hill, there were just two other artists left on her floor of 10 studios. Which was not surprising, as she was paying over 1,600 a month for 375 square feet. "Everyone else was a designer or a business," said Ms. Benson. In Brownsville, she said, she and her husband, also a painter, paid about 1.80 a square foot a month for a 3,000 square foot commercial space they found on Craigslist, where she used about 700 square feet and subleased the rest to other artists. But while industrial leases usually run for 10 years or longer, the longest lease they could get was three years the landlord wanted to keep his options open and they have since started subleasing their own space and working from their Sunset Park apartment to save money while looking for a more permanent situation. Not only are leases in excess of three years now rare, but landlords often require 6 to 12 month security deposits for larger spaces, making it both difficult and unwise for artists to invest in building out studios, according to Esther Robinson, the co executive director of Art Built, a nonprofit that recently partnered with the city to convert 50,000 square feet of the Brooklyn Army Terminal to affordable artist studios. "We currently have a work space insecurity issue that is quite profound," said Ms. Robinson. "There is a very limited supply of these types of industrial buildings they're like redwoods. The floors are reinforced, they have industrial elevators that work, that are not dangerous to go down to the loading bay. These things we actually think of as the classic New York City loft are what artists need to make things and get them out to galleries." Rising rents also mean that artist enclaves are increasingly becoming a thing of the past. Christopher Totaro, a sculptor turned painter who lives in TriBeCa and also works as a real estate agent for Warburg Realty, said that he didn't see artists flocking to a specific neighborhood anymore. "I think cost has created dispersement and fragmentation," Mr. Totaro said. "I don't know where the new generation of artists is anchoring. I don't know if it's in the five boroughs." Between 2000 and 2015, the neighborhoods where the largest numbers of artists moved were Bushwick, Williamsburg, and Greenpoint, according to a 2017 analysis of census data by the Center for an Urban Future, a policy research institute. But those same neighborhoods also saw sharp residential and commercial rent increases during that same period, according to the real estate brokerage Citi Habitats. Since 2015, census data shows that the number of artists living in Bushwick has continued to increase, but at a far slower rate, said Eli Dvorkin, the editorial director at the center. South Crown Heights and Bed Stuy, meanwhile, have supplanted Williamsburg and Greenpoint as the neighborhoods with the next largest influxes. "Emerging artists find themselves chased from neighborhood to neighborhood," said Mr. Dvorkin, who was also one of the founders of the now defunct Bushwick performance venue Silent Barn. Lia Lowenthal, a 35 year old artist and designer, moved to Bed Stuy seven years ago. But as the rent on the two bedroom she shared with her husband climbed from 2,200 to nearly 2,700, and the 250 square foot Bushwick studio she split with another artist went from 1,200 a month to 1,600, (it was so small, she also had to pay 200 a month for a storage unit), she increasingly felt the need to cut costs. Fortunately, an artist friend who had taken a job out of state offered to rent them her two bedroom co op in Pelham Parkway, in the Bronx, at a low enough price that Ms. Lowenthal could also afford her own studio in the South Bronx. But when her studio lease is up in five years, Ms. Lowenthal isn't sure they'll stay in the city. She grew up on the Upper West Side, and while she loves living here and has found it enormously helpful as an artist, "as I get older I think maybe I don't know if I need to be at the center of things. There are benefits to not having to think about how you're going to make rent every month." In her book "Made in Brooklyn," Amanda Wasielewski, an artist and art history researcher at Stockholm University who did her doctoral research in New York, argues that the burden of paying for space pushes many New York artists in more entrepreneurial directions. Dr. Wasielewski, who rented a work space in Bushwick in 2015, said she was really surprised that so many people in her studio space were working on commercial projects for corporate clients. "I think it comes out of necessity for sure," said Dr. Wasielewski. Many artists take on either part of full time jobs in aligned commercial fields. Mr. Jackman, the photographer on the Upper East Side, said that in addition to taking more photo assisting gigs than he would like, he and many other New York artists he knows have found themselves developing more commercial practices that is, producing more of what they know will sell well and less of what they themselves find interesting and challenging. "It's changing the work we're making and in some ways making us less competitive," Mr. Jackman said. "I feel like Berlin is breeding more young artists than New York. They're going in a more conceptual direction and gaining attention." And though working from one's apartment may be the most straightforward way to reduce expenses, many artists said their work and their personal lives suffered when they did. Laur Duvall, a 26 year old who makes huge drawings from performance art pieces, had been bouncing between cheap sublets while renting an unheated Sunset Park garage as a studio for 500 a month. But when winter came and the owner of the garage started cutting the electricity when Mr. Duvall used power tools, a friend connected him with Janet Traynor, a Warburg real estate agent. Ms. Traynor mostly deals in co ops and condos, but looking through warehouse listings, she found a 800 square foot, undivided live/work space in an old industrial building on Atlantic Avenue in Crown Heights. It was more expensive than Mr. Duvall could afford, but Ms. Traynor managed to talk the landlord down to his 1,500 a month budget. "I walked into the space and was like: this is it," said Mr. Duvall, who moved in a little over a year ago. "There were high ceilings and cement floors and a space over the door that I divided up to store work. And the freight elevator is killer I have huge wood boards that I draw on that I don't have carry up the stairs. My work has changed completely." "The only thing I worry about is that they're going to raise the rent," he said. For weekly email updates on residential real estate news, sign up here. Follow us on Twitter: nytrealestate.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Real Estate
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Carbon Beach is a beguiling and exclusive crescent of sand along the Pacific Ocean in Malibu, famous infamous might be a better word for the long and mostly losing battle conducted by its wealthy homeowners to keep the public off this stunning mile of coastline. It is also known as Billionaire's Beach, a fitting reference to the Californians who have staked their claims there, a cast that has, over the years, included David Geffen, Larry Ellison, Jeffrey Katzenberg and Eli Broad. Still, you don't have to be a billionaire (or even a millionaire) to wake up in a room with floor to ceiling glass that makes you feel like you are sleeping atop the sands of Carbon Beach, to settle in for breakfast on a deck with views up and down the Pacific, to cast open the sliding doors and let the smells and sounds of the ocean wash over your room. But it is going to cost you. A lot. In 2017, the Nobu Ryokan Malibu, a homage to the serenity of a Japanese inn, opened on Carbon Beach, offering 16 rooms discreetly set in a maze of teak and glass, with two private walkways leading to the sand. It's part of a chain of Nobu hotels and restaurants, whose owners include Nobu Matsuhisa, the chef, and Robert De Niro, the actor. Mr. Ellison, the billionaire co founder of Oracle, whose home is just up the beach, is the principal owner of this West Coast Nobu venture. There are eight Nobu hotels across the world, but this is the only Ryokan. An ocean front room with a deck clocked in at 2,300 a night, not counting another 300 or so in taxes. During the off season. And there is a two night minimum, though the hotel was willing, at least on one occasion, to waive that. (The reservation was not in my name and the hotel did not know about my connection to The Times.) With a 4 p.m. check in and noon departure, that comes out, pretax, to 115 an hour. For that much money figure 5,200 for two nights, taxes included we probably could have jetted off to Japan and experienced a real ryokan, or, more practically, rented an entire house in Malibu for a few days. But instead we booked a hotel room. There are rooms that go for as little as 2,000 a night for a first floor garden room (don't expect to see the beach out your window). And if 2,300 a night isn't enough of a splurge, an ocean front suite with skylights goes for 3,500 a night. Was it worth it? Along with my spouse, Benjamin, I have, over the years, occasionally indulged in splurge hotels: the Post Ranch Inn in Big Sur, a Singita in South Africa. These can be enriching, even if your stomach drops when confronted with a tab that exceeds the cost of your first car. They can also make you wonder, when that credit card bill comes due, what on earth you were thinking. And this is a year when California in general, and this part of California in particular, has been battered by mudslides, fires, windstorms and torrential rains. The Woolsey Fire that ripped across Malibu late last year stopped a few miles short of the Nobu Ryokan. Drive a few miles north of the hotel on the Pacific Coast Highway and you'll soon encounter grim reminders of the destruction: the burned out shells of a cluster of homes on Point Dume normally, a beautiful place to stroll the bluffs, looking down on the sea lions and tidal pools and the wildflowers poking through what were hills of smoky embers. The hotel was forced to close during the worst of the fires; the Pacific Coast Highway was a stream of emergency vehicles and evacuees, and a thick and ominous bank of smoke rose above the horizon. And the wildfires weren't the end of it. A bank of cold, whipping rains followed, causing mudslides on the hillsides that had been stripped of greenery, closing down parts of the highway. The day we were originally supposed to check in, hotel management was exceedingly accommodating when we called to inquire about changing the reservation after waking up to torrential rains and a round of mudslide warnings. There is a reason billionaires chose to make their homes (or one of their homes) in this part of Malibu. It has some of the most seductive coastline in the country: the hills, swaying with bright green grass, which will be brown before long, slope gently to the ocean. The waves are dotted with surfers, lit up in the seductive golden light that is California. Much of Malibu is wild and undeveloped; you can cross four lanes and take off into the hills, hiking trails that give views up and down the coast. An early morning jog through the mist on the beach can be a bracingly solitary experience. All that, of course, is free. The lobby opens to an outdoor Japanese garden, lush with greenery and flowering trumpet vines, and a deck built from ipe wood overlooking the beach. It was empty when we were there; perhaps the guests preferred the wicker chairs set out on their private decks. During our time there, we did not run into another guest, though there was no shortage of housekeepers, groundskeepers and butlers. Off to one edge of the property, through a passageway that leads to a small, well equipped gym, a lap pool glistened invitingly in the daytime sun, it too overlooked the beach. But it was also, unfortunately, closed because of what we were informed was a permit issue involving the city of Malibu. Our room was up a flight of stairs, in a corner with a wraparound deck that faced the ocean to the west, and the Little Beach House and the Malibu hills to the south. A bowl of fresh fruit awaited us: pineapple, blackberries, raspberries, passion fruit and carved cantaloupe, as well as his and his pots of green tea. Rooms here are designated by name. Ours was the Suiheisen room, which is Japanese for horizon. (It is known among staff as the Rock Star Suite.) It was not particularly large, but it was dramatic, with the walls of windows and a television screen hidden in the ceiling that lowered at the push of a button. The bathroom, in a nod to the hotel's Japanese design influence, had a toilet seat that lifted automatically upon sensing motion in the bathroom; amusing at first, annoying before long. And there was a Japanese teak soaking tub set on the deck facing the ocean, complete with a bowl of aromatic Himalayan salts to sprinkle in before drawing the water. Thick towels were draped over the back. Sitting in the tub, steam rising in the air, glancing at the boats bobbing on the swells as the sunlight faded was so serene (detoxifying was, I believe, the word of the day) that we almost didn't want to leave for dinner. And there are few restaurants anywhere that match the dramatic setting and sheer verve of the Nobu Malibu, with its open air dining room set right over the ocean and under the stars. We closed the place, along with Jack Dorsey, of Twitter and Square, who was eating a few tables away. A ryokan in name only In a traditional Japanese Ryokan, guests sleep on futons set on tatami mats on the floor and share a common bathing area. They are known as fairly humble accommodations. Breakfast and dinner are often included. Humble is not the word that came to mind ocean side in Malibu. The rooms at the Nobu Ryokan are equipped with cashmere robes by Loro Piana and custom made yukatas, a kind of lightweight Japanese robe. Forget futons. These beds are done up in 800 thread count linens by Anichini. Though the room bar is well stocked and the snacks, most from Dean DeLuca, are included, alcohol is not. Breakfast was in keeping with the open your wallet spirit of the hotel: Tacos with scrambled eggs and avocado was a fine way to start the day on the deck but came to 22 for three bite size tacos. Coffee was another 12, but at least it was French press. (And it was punctual: ordered for 10 a.m., the knock on the door came at 9:59). By the time we had eaten, it was nearly noon and the clock and meter was running on our stay, as I was only too keenly aware. At this price tag, a night like ours can be as much a source of anxiety as an escape. What if it rains? What if I'm late arriving? What if I don't like my room? For this much money, dare I wander off for a stroll up the beach or should I stay on the deck and take another soak in the Japanese tub? Sometimes too much really is too much. Follow NY Times Travel on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook. Get weekly updates from our Travel Dispatch newsletter, with tips on traveling smarter, destination coverage and photos from all over the world.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Travel
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OAKLAND, Calif. Google said it would no longer allow any apps to circumvent its payment system within the Google Play store that provides the company a cut of in app purchases. Google said in a blog post on Monday that it was providing "clarity" on billing policies because there was confusion among some developers about what types of transactions require use of its app store's billing system. Google has had a policy of taking a 30 percent cut of payments made within apps offered by the Google Play store, but some developers including Netflix and Spotify have bypassed the requirement by prompting users for a credit card to pay them directly. Google said companies had until Sept. 30, 2021, to integrate its billing systems. The way the Google and Apple app stores collect fees has become an especially contentious issue in recent months after Epic Games, maker of the popular game Fortnite, sued Apple and Google, claiming they violated antitrust rules with the commissions they charge. On Monday, a federal judge in California's Northern District Court in Oakland heard testimony from Epic Games and Apple to determine whether Apple can continue to ban Fortnite, Epic's popular game, from its app store. The hearing, in which each side debated the size of the app distribution market and Apple's power over it, offered a preview of the antitrust case before it goes to trial sometime next year. In its lawsuit against Google, Epic Games said it tried to offer users the option of using its own billing system, which costs less than Google's version. Epic said Google rejected the app twice. When the game maker went ahead and did it anyway, Google removed Fortnite from its app store. An Epic Games spokeswoman declined to comment on Google's announcement. Netflix and Spotify did not respond immediately to requests for comment. Developers have bristled at the 30 percent cut demanded by Google and Apple, saying it is an inflated digital tax that hobbles their ability to compete. And because the two companies control almost all of the world's smartphones, many developers gripe that they have no option but to adhere to their policies and pay the commissions. Last week, a group of app developers said they had formed the nonprofit Coalition for App Fairness to push for changes in the app stores and "protect the app economy." The 13 initial members include Spotify, Basecamp, Epic and Match Group, which has apps like Tinder and Hinge. Sarah Maxwell, a spokeswoman for the Coalition for App Fairness, said in a statement that the group looked forward to "engaging with Google" to ensure that any changes fit with its principles and are "in the best interest of app developers." Google said the enforcement of its billing policies would apply to a small fraction of its app developers. It said only 3 percent of app developers on Google Play offered in app purchases and, within that group, only 3 percent were not using Google's billing system. Google is preparing for further scrutiny. The Justice Department and a coalition of state attorneys general are expected to bring antitrust lawsuits against the company for how it wields its dominance in web search and digital advertising technologies. Its app store policies are not expected to be covered in these suits. Google has argued that it allows other companies to operate app stores within its Android software. On Monday, the company said it would make changes in next year's version of Android to make it easier to use other app stores on its devices without compromising safety. In the post, Google used Epic as an example of an app developer benefiting from Android's third party app stores noting the availability of Fortnite on Epic and Samsung's app stores. But Epic, in its complaint, said Google held a monopoly over app distribution, because more than 90 percent of app downloads on Android devices come through the Google Play Store.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Technology
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Sylvia Hart Frejd's mission is to help students balance tech time and face time (not FaceTime), training their eyes on fellow humans instead of smart screens. As founder of the nation's first Center for Digital Wellness, housed in a Wi Fi proof room at Liberty University in Lynchburg, Va., Dr. Frejd promotes 24 hour digital fasts and counsels students on how to "thrive in real life, not just in their digital lives." First, overcome fear of a real conversation. "My advice is, you put down your phone first and make that face to face connection." To make her point, 20 students in Liberty's theater arts department staged a flash mob in the dining hall, holding their cellphones, frozen for three minutes, before shouting "Look up!" the name of Dr. Frejd's campaign, which includes posters and pop up tents around campus. A survey of 620 teenagers last year by Common Sense Media found that 78 percent checked their devices at least hourly, and 72 percent felt the need to immediately respond to text messages and other notifications.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Education
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Some years are so full of happy transformation that they seem conjured from a fortuneteller's hopeful reading. In 2014, the ballerina Isabella Boylston had one of those years. She danced her first Giselle, magnificently, with American Ballet Theater and was promoted to principal soon after. She got married. "He's not a dancer," Ms. Boylston said, flashing a smile. "He works in finance." And she performed as a guest artist at the Mariinsky Ballet and the Royal Danish Ballet. "You show up, and they're expecting you to be this prima ballerina," she said. "So you just have to fill the shoes." Ms. Boylston said that year boiled down to one thing: She learned to trust herself. "I'll speak out, and I didn't used to be like that at all," she said in an interview after a recent rehearsal. "I was trying so hard to do what people wanted me to do that I had to realize what they wanted was for me to shape the movement myself." Most dancers can't help revealing their true selves in the studio. Ms. Boylston, assertive, self deprecating and confident enough at 28 to recognize when something's not working, doesn't keep her opinions to herself. In preparation for Ballet Theater's spring season at the Metropolitan Opera House, which begins on Monday, she ran through Odile's variation in "Swan Lake" with Ballet Theater's artistic director, Kevin McKenzie. "I just wish I'd danced it better instead of doing the steps," she said of what she had just done. "It feels very blunt." A bit later, her self criticism took a darker turn. "I feel like that's the most averagely executed by me," she said. "It's such a nothing." Earlier that day, the teacher Irina Kolpakova, rehearsing Ms. Boylston in "Giselle," had insisted that she hold her body higher while in arabesque to capture the ballet's 19th century Romantic quality. "I know," Ms. Boylston said, with some resignation, "you don't want me to move." And Ms. Boylston lives to move, which can be difficult in a Romantic ballet like "Giselle," where freedom is found in restraint. This season is a busy one for Ms. Boylston, who reprises "Giselle," along with "Theme and Variations," "Les Sylphides," "La Bayadere" and "Swan Lake." She will also, on June 10, perform Aurora in Alexei Ratmansky's new production of "The Sleeping Beauty." But "Giselle," though she's only danced the part twice, is her most treasured role. "I really felt like I connected with her and became her," Ms. Boylston said of the heroine, a young peasant girl who dies of a broken heart after learning that Albrecht, the man she loves, is really a count engaged to a princess. "Everyone's experienced heartbreak," she said. "I could draw from my own experiences." "Of course, you don't want to just play yourself," she continued. "You have to try to find who Giselle is and bring you to her, not the other way around." At Ballet Theater, Ms. Boylston, known as Bella to her friends, is a rare sight among the roster of principal dancers. Not only is she an American in a company best known for its Russian imports, but she is both a dramatic ballerina and a dancer with the technical chops for Balanchine's "Theme and Variations." With the departures this season of Julie Kent, Paloma Herrera and Xiomara Reyes, a dancer like Ms. Boylston represents Ballet Theater's future. She has a way of locating the vulnerability of a character like Giselle, even though acting is still relatively new to her. Ms. Boylston's acting coach, Byam Stevens, explained that she "has an incredible sense of honesty, which is a huge gift." "If she doesn't believe it," he added, "she isn't going to do it." Her other asset is her spectacular ballet body: Hyperextended legs and arched feet give her limbs an otherworldly length. And there's that dazzling, elastic jump, which she didn't know she had before working on the pas de trois in "Swan Lake" years ago with the ballet mistress Georgina Parkinson. Ms. Boylston began dancing when she was 3 in Sun Valley, Idaho, where she was also a skater and skier. The first day she could walk, her parents sent her down the mountain. (They used a harness.) She spent her early years living in a trailer with her younger brother and her bohemian parents, who met on a ski lift. "My mom's from Sweden, and she was on a business trip and she met my dad, who was basically a full time drummer and ski bum," she said. "They fell in love." There was no television; she and her brother practically lived outdoors camping, hiking and skiing. But there was also dancing. When she was 7, her family moved to Colorado, where she continued training at Boulder Ballet and the Academy of Colorado Ballet. From there, she moved to Florida to study at the Harid Conservatory. After John Meehan spotted her at a summer intensive for Ballet Theater, she joined ABT Studio Company in 2005. Two years later, she became a member of Ballet Theater's corps de ballet and in 2011 was named a soloist. At that time, she knew what she needed most: onstage experience. That doesn't come easily at Ballet Theater. "It's hard when you get one 'Swan Lake' a year," she said. "I was watching New York City Ballet I love City Ballet and go all the time thinking, these girls must have done this ballet 100 times. What would it feel like to do 'Giselle' 100 times?"
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Dance
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A model in a print Batsheva dress appeared at a microphone on a balcony on West Broadway and solemnly declaimed. "I am doll parts," she said. "Bad skin. Doll heart." If you knew these words, you really knew them. This was the rallying cry of an angry slice of a generation: one that had blossomed into fury with Hole, who screamed along with its lead singer, Courtney Love, on records like "Live Through This" and at frenetic live shows. Model after model stepped to the mic and chanted snatches of Hole songs, alternately angry, bruised, fearsome and mocking. Beneath their wigs and braids, a few were recognizable: Christina Ricci, Veronica Webb, Annabelle Dexter Jones, Theodora Richards. Below, on a couch that was the space's only seating, sat Ms. Love herself, gazing upward, Instagramming. Batsheva Hay found fame designing what were popularly referred to as prairie dresses, modest little frocks in Laura Ashley fabrics. She has often played up the sweetness inherent in the premise, as she did last season, when she staged a fashion presentation as old diner, with model waitresses bearing French fries. Now her models were picking up the darker undercurrent and spitting Love isms "Hooker waitress, model actress / Oh, just go nameless" as a small battalion of sewing machines whirred below. Ms. Hay has cited Ms. Love and her "Kinderwhore aesthetic" as an inspiration before, part of a lineage that includes Cindy Sherman and other chroniclers of the restless feminine divine. Her look, she wrote in a note after the presentation, "was so of that time but she was also so ahead of her time." Ms. Hay's circle includes friends of Ms. Love's, like the psychoanalyst Jamieson Webster and the former Hole bassist Melissa Auf der Maur, who produced the music for the show and came up with the idea of having the models read the lyrics. Eventually, Ms. Hay and Ms. Love ended up direct messaging on Instagram. Despite her much publicized baby doll dresses, Ms. Love had her Laura Ashley moments, too. "That Laura Ashley green corduroy jumpsuit with yellow flowers?" she said. "I had that in the '90s. I wore it till the wheels fell off. I wore it traveling so people wouldn't know it was me. The persona was always ahead. Wearing a ripped dress, whatever. I actually flew with Sheryl Crow to Canada where she was doing Lilith, and I was doing a dark edge fest. I was dressed like a housewife, and she was wearing all leather and Fly Shades." Ms. Love had an inkling there would be some tribute to her at the show, but she hadn't anticipated the reading or the final performance of "Miss World" by Esther Rose McGregor, one of Ewan McGregor's daughters. She was wearing a veil and a wedding dress on which Ms. Hay had invited Ms. Love to scribble whatever she wanted in red Sharpie. The dress came back with words from Hole's "Good Sister/ Bad Sister": "Better watch your back, sister." In her earlier scribbling days, Ms. Love was sometimes seen with words like "slut" and "witch" written in lipstick on her forearms. "It really moved me," she said of the performance, though she said she hadn't known what to do with her hands during it. Being confronted with a specter of one's younger self is a surrealism most of us won't know. But the lyrics, Ms. Love said, held up. "Some of them I really, really love," she said. "Some of them are too out there and commercial, and everyone knows them. The important thing for me, then and now, is it has to look good on the page. I mean, you can love Led Zeppelin and not love their lyrics sort of thing, but I made a big effort in my career to have what's on the page mean something." Their sense of righteous female rage hasn't dated much, a reporter said, in rock or outside of it. "It certainly hasn't," Ms. Love said. On a trip to Scotland with her daughter, Frances Bean Cobain, she bought what she called "little niche rock magazines that are still out": Mojo, Q, Classic Rock.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Fashion & Style
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Ward Just, a journalist for whom the Vietnam War was both a personal trauma and a national tragedy, inspiring him to write novels about people whose lives are shaped by war, political intrigue, myopic diplomats and other forces beyond their control, died on Thursday at a hospital in Plymouth, Mass. He was 84. His daughter Julie Just said the cause was Lewy body dementia. Mr. Just was recognized not only as a prominent reporter on the Vietnam War, like David Halberstam, Neil Sheehan, Peter Arnett and others, but also as a novelist and short story writer of the first rank. His spare and graceful prose in a score of novels and numerous short stories was compared to Ernest Hemingway's, while his perceptions about American society reminded some critics of Henry James. "The milieu I knew as a reporter is the milieu I write about, the world of journalists, politicians, diplomats and soldiers," Mr. Just said in 1987. His novel "Echo House," about three generations of a family of Washington power brokers, was a finalist for a National Book Award in 1997. "An Unfinished Season," a novel about rabid anti communism, labor unrest and class differences in the United States in the 1950s, was a finalist for a Pulitzer Prize in 2005. Mr. Ward's novel "Echo House," about three generations in a family of Washington power brokers, was a finalist for a National Book Award in 1997. Clearly, the Vietnam War, which he covered for The Washington Post, was the formative experience of his life. "I find it so profoundly sad, such an appalling waste," he told The Chicago Tribune in 1982. "I keep trying to find something that will redeem it in some way, and I can't." On June 8, 1966, he was peppered with fragments from a North Vietnamese grenade as the American unit he was with came under attack in the Central Highlands of South Vietnam. Trembling and in shock, he was given morphine. "The medic tackled me and punched the needle into my arm and began to bandage my head and back," he recalled. "My hands and legs were still shaking, but I was all right." After a hospital stay, he went back to covering the war; he finally left South Vietnam in May 1967. But instead of returning to the United States, he took a leave of absence from The Post, staying in Ireland for several months to write his first book, "To What End? Report From Vietnam," published in 1968. "Very few civilians who were in Vietnam for more than a year could argue convincingly in support of the American presence," Mr. Just wrote, observing that the Americans were seen by many South Vietnamese not as liberators but as new colonizers, taking the place of the French. In a 2017 interview with The New York Times, Mr. Just said his opinion about "that confounding war" had not changed. He did not blame front line soldiers for what he saw as the misjudgments of generals and political leaders. A major and a captain in the unit involved in the 1966 clash in which he was wounded were "quite simply admired, as men and as soldiers," by their troops, he observed. "They were brave men, without being excessively reckless or self conscious about it." But Mr. Just could be unsparing in judging the top brass. In a Times review in 1976, he panned "A Soldier Reports," a memoir by Gen. William C. Westmoreland, the commander of United States forces in South Vietnam from 1964 to mid 1968. Mr. Just described the memoir, in which General Westmoreland placed much of the blame for the war's outcome on cynical and defeatist journalists, as "petulant" and self justifying, showing more concern about the war's effects on his army than on his country. In the 2017 interview with The Times, Mr. Just said General Westmoreland was wrong to think that the United States could ever have won a war of attrition. Perhaps, Mr. Just said, the United States might have "won" by waging total war against North Vietnam, using atomic weapons or carpet bombing until the North's cities were destroyed and the countryside left barren. "But what kind of 'victory' would that have been?" Ward Swift Just was born in Michigan City, Ind., on Sept. 5, 1935, to Franklin Ward Just and Elizabeth (Swift) Just. He grew up in Waukegan, Ill., and nearby Lake Forest. His father, like his grandfather, was the publisher of The Waukegan News Sun. (The newspaper remained in the family until 1983, when Ward Just and several relatives sold their stock.) He attended Trinity College in Hartford, Conn., found it a bad fit and left without a degree. He was then briefly a reporter at his family's newspaper. For about a year he worked in the Chicago bureau of Newsweek before being assigned to the magazine's Washington bureau, then headed by Benjamin C. Bradlee. Mr. Just arrived in Washington just before the inauguration of President John F. Kennedy in 1961 "a magical time" in the capital, as he recalled later. He worked briefly for Reporter magazine, then became a London correspondent for Newsweek. When Mr. Bradlee became managing editor of The Washington Post in 1965, he recruited Mr. Just. By Christmas of 1965, Mr. Just was on his way to Saigon. Besides the Vietnam War, Mr. Just covered the presidential race of 1968, reporting on the campaigns of Senator Eugene J. McCarthy of Minnesota, who unsuccessfully sought the Democratic nomination as an antiwar candidate, and Richard M. Nixon, the Republican nominee, who emerged triumphant. He also reported from Latin America and Europe. In the 2017 interview, Mr. Just said he had stayed in the newspaper business "for about a year too long." Those final months were spent writing editorials for The Washington Post. "I felt silly commenting on news instead of digging it out," he said. Mr. Just's first two marriages, to Jean Ramsay and Anne Burling, ended in divorce. In addition to his daughter Julie, from his first marriage, a former editor at The New York Times, he is survived by his wife, Sarah Catchpole, with whom he lived in Vineyard Haven, on Martha's Vineyard, Mass.; another daughter, Jennifer Just, also from his first marriage; a son, Ian, from his second marriage; and six grandchildren. Mr. Just's sister, Joy Steiner, died several years ago. Before moving to Martha's Vineyard, Mr. Just lived for a time in rural Vermont while establishing himself as a novelist. His first novel, "A Soldier of the Revolution," published in 1970, is set in an unnamed Latin American country in which a former monk is kidnapped by antigovernment guerrillas and finds that he believes in their cause. To judge from his own words, Mr. Just turned to fiction because, paradoxically, he was searching for some larger truth. Looking back at his reporting career in a 1973 profile in The Washington Post, he said, "Facts don't lead you very far, facts don't lead you to the truth, they just lead to more facts." Decades into his novel writing, Mr. Just was still toiling on manual typewriters (he had a collection of a dozen or so) because, he said, he didn't want to take time off from writing to master the computer.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Books
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As an infectious diseases specialist and former Centers for Disease Control and Prevention medical epidemiologist, I feel compelled to speak up in response to the recent change in C.D.C. guidelines on testing for coronavirus infection to exclude asymptomatic people. "If you see something, say something." The C.D.C. is highly respected, driven by science in the best interests of public health. That reputation is now being undermined. The Trump administration forced the C.D.C. to make these changes for two reasons: to minimize the utter failure of Mr. Trump's response to testing and to make the case counts go down artificially, making them look better than they really are. This action follows the Food and Drug Administration's emergency use authorization of convalescent plasma. How will people be able to trust these agencies in the future? Their directors should resign in protest rather than follow these politically motivated directives from the White House. Now we will never know the truth of the magnitude and trends of this epidemic. Just imagine what Mr. Trump will do with vaccine development and research. Shortly before the election he will force emergency use authorization of one or more vaccines before they are proven to be safe and effective (following the lead of his idol, Vladimir Putin).
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Opinion
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In 2008, chunks of space rock crashed in the deserts of Sudan. Diamonds discovered inside one of the recovered meteorites may have come from a destroyed planet that orbited our sun billions of years ago, scientists said on Tuesday. If confirmed, they say, it would be the first time anyone has recovered fragments from one of our solar system's so called "lost" planets. "We have in our hands a piece of a former planet that was spinning around the sun before the end of the formation of today's solar system," said Philippe Gillet, a planetary scientist at the Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne, Switzerland and an author of the paper that was published in Nature Communications. Dr. Gillet's colleague Farhang Nabiei made the discovery while taking high resolution images of a meteorite that had landed in the Nubian Desert in Sudan about a decade ago. The space rock is classified as ureilite, a type of rare meteorite that has embedded within it several different types of minerals. And inside this one, they found diamonds. The nano sized gems were much larger than any meteorite diamond that had been previously found, according to Dr. Gillet. Upon further inspection the team noticed that the diamonds were far from crystal clear. They were riddled with tiny imperfections, called inclusions, made of chromite, phosphate and iron nickel sulfides. "What for a jeweler is an imperfection becomes for me something that is very useful because it tells me about the history of the diamond," said Dr. Gillet. "It has a chemistry which has no equivalent in the solar system today, in terms of planets," he said. Our solar system was born of chaos. Some 4.5 billion years ago, prevailing theories hold that dozens of chunks of rock and dust, called protoplanets, circled our sun and collided with each other like cosmic billiard balls. Eventually, the collisions forged the rocky planets that we know today Mercury, Venus, Mars and, of course, Earth. Our moon is thought by some scientists to have formed from debris spewed by such an impact between Earth and a protoplanet called Theia. The inclusions in the meteorite's diamonds told of a similarly turbulent past. Because of the diamonds' size and chemistry, Dr. Gillet and his team concluded that the diamonds formed under intense pressure, of about 20 giga pascals, which is close to the pressure seen 400 miles below Earth's surface where the upper mantle transitions into the lower mantle. And because the chemistry of the inclusions did not match what is known on planets in today's solar system, they think the diamonds came from a protoplanet that existed between 4.54 and 4.57 billion years ago. That protoplanet most likely collided with another planet and expelled debris that ended up in the asteroid belt, where it wandered for billions of years before plunging to Earth. Adrian Brearley, an earth scientist at the University of New Mexico who was not involved in the study, said the findings were compelling. "The authors tie their electron microscope observations together with experimental studies to provide very sound arguments for a large planetary body for the ureilites," he said.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Science
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European economies shrank in the fourth quarter at their fastest rate since the depth of the financial crisis in 2009, new data showed on Thursday, with both strong and weak countries falling short of expectations and raising anxieties of a longer, deeper recession. Germany and France are now caught up in a slump that was already well under way in other big euro zone economies like Spain and Italy. The figures were a reminder of how hard it has become for many of the world's most economically developed countries to overcome their debt problems and return to growth. Even the United States, which had appeared to be rebounding, surprised economists late last month by reporting contraction for the fourth quarter. In the euro zone, economic output shrank 0.6 percent from October through December, compared with the previous quarter, according to official figures published on Thursday. That came after a decline of 0.1 percent in the third quarter. While economists had expected a decline in the fourth quarter, they did not expect it to be quite so big. The disappointing data called into question the timing of a recovery that was supposed to begin later this year. And the figures put pressure on government budgets that are already stretched because tax revenue automatically falls when companies and workers are earning less. Almost every one of the euro zone's 17 members suffered a drop in gross domestic product. In the three biggest euro economies, G.D.P. fell 0.6 percent in Germany, 0.3 percent in France and 0.9 percent in Italy. For France, especially, Thursday's data was a deep embarrassment to the government. The Socialist president, Francois Hollande, was elected last May after pledging to reduce the budget deficit this year to 3 percent of G.D.P., as required under euro zone rules. And his finance minister, Pierre Moscovici, had promised numerous times since then that the government would meet the 3 percent limit this year. But the lack of growth will make it all but impossible to meet that goal. The gloomy economic data could also influence the outcome of elections later this month in Italy, in which the country's international credibility is at stake. The prolonged slump provides ammunition to populist forces led by former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, perhaps giving his party enough seats in Parliament to block unpopular measures intended to improve the country's economic performance. The economic report by Eurostat, the European Union's statistics agency, was not bad enough to kill all hope that the euro zone was on the mend and that it could see weak growth later in the year. Industrial production for the bloc rose in December, and surveys have suggested that businesses and consumers were becoming more willing to spend because they were less afraid that the euro zone would break up under the stress of debt and banking crises. "I think the euro zone looks a lot more stable," said Marie Diron, an economist in London who advises the consulting firm Ernst Young. "There are surely companies in Germany and Finland which couldn't really take the investment and equipment decisions they wanted to," because of fears of a breakup. "Now that has disappeared." But Ms. Diron noted that unemployment remained high in many countries, creating political instability that was amplified by governments' need to cut spending. "That's really where the risk remains," she said. The deepest misery is still in Greece, even if fewer people are predicting that the country will have to leave the euro zone. Unemployment rose to a record 27 percent in November, the Greek Statistics Agency said on Thursday. Nearly two thirds of young people are jobless. Kevin Spacey was ordered to pay 31 million to the 'House of Cards' studio after sexual harassment allegations. Netflix buys a visual effects company in a move to support its global ambitions. The French economy has been suffering from a drop in industrial production, as large employers like the carmaker PSA Peugeot Citroen struggle to cope with plunging demand in their most important markets, including Spain, where growth last quarter fell 0.7 percent. This week, the French government auditors, the Cour des Comptes, announced that French growth would be significantly below the 0.8 percent previously estimated by the Hollande government, making it practically impossible to keep the deficit below the goal of 3 percent of G.D.P. despite significant tax increases. The Thursday figures, showing a contraction of 0.3 percent in the fourth quarter and no growth at all in 2012, were even worse than expected. The auditors recommended balancing the tax increases with more cuts in public spending, but the Hollande government has said that it wants to impose taxes up front and deal with more significant spending cuts in coming years. Some economists contend that France is taxing itself into a recession. Mr. Hollande, who has argued for measures to promote economic growth as unemployment rises, acknowledged failure, telling reporters earlier this week, "There is no point sticking to objectives if they are not going to be achieved." Mr. Moscovici said after a cabinet meeting on Wednesday that the government did not want "to add austerity on top of austerity, either for France or for Europe." Among all 27 members of the European Union, including countries like Britain and the Czech Republic that are not part of the euro currency union, economic output fell 0.5 percent. In Germany, the unexpectedly large decline in output was caused by lower exports and fewer purchases of equipment by companies. During the first nine months of last year, Germany continued to defy the recession in the euro zone as a whole, benefiting from sales to countries outside the euro zone, especially the United States and China. But the decline in the fourth quarter illustrated Germany's vulnerability to the fortunes of its neighbors. In coming weeks, economists will be watching for evidence that the German economy has already begun growing again, as many predict. If so, that could help pull the rest of Europe out of recession. "While we expect a stabilization in the first quarter and a weak recovery from the second quarter onwards," Peter Vanden Houte, an economist at ING Bank, said in a note to clients, "one has to acknowledge that a lot of things still can go wrong."
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Global Business
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Uber to Repay Millions to Drivers, Who Could Be Owed Far More Uber said Tuesday that it had made a mistake in the way it calculated its commissions, at a cost of tens of millions of dollars to its New York drivers, and the company vowed to correct the practice and make the drivers whole for the lost earnings. The ride hailing service said it had been taking its cut from a figure including state taxes, rather than a pretax fare. If a passenger handed over 20, and 2 of that represented taxes, Uber's commission was a percentage of the full 20, not of 18, as it should have been. Even at pocket change per ride, the cumulative difference was vast. "We are committed to paying every driver every penny they are owed plus interest as quickly as possible," Rachel Holt, the company's regional general manager for the United States and Canada, said in a statement. But Uber's handling of passenger payments raises questions about a larger legal issue, potentially far more substantial: not the pocket change difference in the commission but whether that entire 2 in taxes is improperly coming out of the drivers' wallets. Uber's contract with drivers appears to allow the company to deduct only its 25 percent commission, not taxes, from their fares. But a lawsuit filed by a drivers' advocacy group in New York last year said the company was making its drivers swallow the tax burden a practice the group said amounted to wage theft. Documents examined by The New York Times also point to such a practice, which could have cost drivers hundreds of millions of dollars. The questions arise as Uber is facing mounting pressure over what drivers say is declining take home pay, epitomized this year by a viral video of an argument between a driver and the company's chief executive, Travis Kalanick. Bhairavi Desai, executive director of the advocacy group, the New York Taxi Workers Alliance, said that "from the beginning, Uber built its business model on the assumption that 'we hate taxes,'" and that it had long "passed this tax on to drivers." In response to Uber's acknowledgment of error on Tuesday, the advocacy group said in a statement that "Uber hasn't just wrongly calculated its commission; it has been unlawfully taking the cost of sales tax and an injured worker surcharge right out of driver pay." Other jurisdictions, like Rhode Island and Massachusetts, also levy taxes or fees on ride hailing services, but it is not clear how Uber collects those taxes. In New York, the company must reckon with a state sales tax of nearly 9 percent per ride, as well as a 2.5 percent "black car fund" surcharge to cover workers' compensation and death benefits. Under New York state laws and tax regulations, the charges are supposed to be paid by passengers, meaning they are to be assessed on top of the fares. But trip receipts have long suggested that Uber deducts the amount from the drivers' portion instead. The receipts have typically depicted an overall fare amount, from which the company subtracted an "Uber fee" (essentially its commission), the sales tax and the black car surcharge. The drivers received what remained. The collection method dates to at least 2014, and possibly to 2012, when Uber began operating in New York, and has affected tens of thousands of drivers. Retail earnings and Black Friday: the week in business. Elizabeth Holmes will resume her testimony in her fraud trial. Uber has denied that it is deducting the levies from drivers' pay. "We calculate and have calculated sales tax and black car fund correctly," a company spokesman, Josh Gold, said in an emailed statement. In early May, when The Times initially asked about the deductions, an Uber official made available by the company said the sales tax and black car surcharge were incorporated into the passenger's overall fare and then subtracted from the drivers' take so that Uber could remit the money to the state. This, the official said, meant the passenger was actually paying the charges even though they appeared to be coming from the drivers. The official compared the practice to selling a slice of pizza for 1 with tax included, but acknowledged that it was confusing. The explanation appeared contrary to Uber's contract, which as of last week defined the fare as the base plus a rate for each mile and minute the definition makes no mention of a tax. The explanation also appears to be at odds with Uber's trip receipts. New York assesses sales tax only on rides that begin and end in the state, not rides beginning in New York and ending in other states. But Uber has calculated the fare for both types of rides the same way, suggesting that contrary to the pizza example there is no tax included in the fare the passenger pays. For example, a driver's receipt from Aug. 14, 2016, for a trip from Roslyn, N.Y., to Manhattan showed Uber charging a 7 base fare plus 65 cents per minute and 3.75 per mile the rate for Uber Black, the company's higher end service. A second receipt from Aug. 3, 2016, for an Uber Black trip from Manhattan to Old Greenwich, Conn., showed identical rates, even though no sales tax would have been assessed. Uber deducted 13.91 to cover sales tax from the driver in the Roslyn to Manhattan trip but deducted no sales tax from the driver in the Greenwich trip. (Both trips were subject to the black car surcharge, which applies regardless of destination.) The Uber official, in an interview on Tuesday, maintained that the tax was included in its fares and said the driver simply got a bonus on trips to Connecticut because the state assesses no tax on those trips. At least one of Uber's competitors in New York State, Lyft, appears to deduct the sales tax from drivers' earnings as well. A Lyft driver's receipt from July 24, 2016, depicts an overall fare of 16.34 and two deductions labeled "Ride Surcharge From Driver" that precisely equal the black car surcharge and the sales tax amounts. Lyft could be including the tax in the original fare it charges to passengers there appears to be less evidence to contradict this claim than there is with Uber. A Lyft spokesman declined to comment on the issue. The New York attorney general's office and a spokesman for Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo did not respond to requests for comment on whether the practices of ride hailing services on drivers' pay might violate state regulations. Richard Emery, a New York lawyer who litigated a case in 2009 involving an issue similar to the one raised by the Taxi Workers Alliance, said state authorities might be reluctant to pursue the case because the state does not appear to have been cheated out of tax revenue. But he said drivers could have a solid claim that Uber had misrepresented the way they were being compensated. If a judge ruled on behalf of drivers in the complaint filed by the alliance, drivers could be awarded up to double the amount of the wage deductions, if the drivers were deemed to be employees rather than independent contractors. The judge could also award damages to drivers if Uber violated its own contract, which would not depend on their employee status. Uber has dispatched more than 125 million rides in New York City since the beginning of 2015, according to data from the Taxi and Limousine Commission. If the average fare on those trips is at least 15, which appears to be the case, and Uber deducted the charges from drivers on each trip, the amount of the improper deductions would be more than 200 million. In New York, Uber is well versed in the ins and outs of the sales tax, having lobbied the State Legislature to roll it back. Last year, the company reached a deal in which the regional branch of a union, the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers, agreed to help the company persuade the Legislature to scale back the tax. In exchange, Uber agreed to devote any tax savings to increasing wages and benefits for drivers. "They have an army of lawyers actively lobbying in Albany for the repeal of this specific tax," the Taxi Workers Alliance said in a statement. "That would imply a pretty intimate knowledge of the obligations of this tax."
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Economy
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SHANGHAI DANCE THEATER at the David H. Koch Theater (Jan. 5 and 6 at 8 p.m., Jan. 7 at 1 p.m.). From the 19th century to the 1980s, the population of the crested ibis, a rose hued bird found throughout Asia, dwindled from tens of thousands to single digits. The plight of the "bird of good fortune," as it's called, is the subject of "Soaring Wings," a dance drama from Shanghai Dance Theater. The bird's fluid grace and quirky flickers are captured in modern choreography by Tong Ruirui, who also directed the production, to a score by Guo Sida drawing from classical Chinese music. The work makes a case for environmental protection and for renewing the bond between humans and nature. 212 496 0600, davidhkochtheater.com AMERICAN DANCE PLATFORM at the Joyce Theater (Jan. 9 14 at various times). This showcase of domestic dance arrives at the Joyce with four pairings of stylistically and geographically diverse troupes from around the country. On Jan. 9 and 14 (evening), the innovative choreographer Caleb Teicher also a stellar tap performer shares a program with the dynamic Los Angeles based contemporary dance company BODYTRAFFIC. On Jan. 10 and 14 (matinee), New York's Jessica Lang Dance splits the bill with Backhausdance from California's Orange County, both examples of polished virtuosity. On Jan. 11 and Jan. 13, the veteran modern dance company PHILADANCO!, hailing from Philadelphia, meets Halau O Kekuhi, hailing from Hawaii and noted for its explosive style of hula inspired by legends about the volcanoes. 212 242 0800, joyce.org
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Dance
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There's no theory of democracy that renders this acceptable, but then this wasn't about democracy. It was about power. There were two elections on Tuesday, one for the Democratic presidential primary and the other for the state Supreme Court. On the ballot for the latter was a conservative justice, Daniel Kelly, who, because of Democratic turnout for the presidential primary, might have lost his seat to a liberal challenger. This wouldn't have changed the overall ideological composition of the court, but it would have weakened the conservative majority's ability to uphold an extreme gerrymander in the State Legislature. That extreme gerrymander, drawn in 2011, is the reason Wisconsin Republicans hold nearly two thirds of the seats in the State Assembly despite winning less than half of the votes statewide. Having fought a fierce battle to make theirs a one party state first by dismantling institutions of the opposition with attacks on unions and the university system, then by changing the rules of the game to keep Democrats from winning power Wisconsin Republicans will do anything to protect their hold on the reins, especially when that power has national implications. Wisconsin is a tipping point state in the upcoming presidential election, and a party that controls the rules of the game is one that can put its thumb on the scale for its allies. What's true of Republicans in Wisconsin is true of Republicans nationwide. There is no part of the Republican Party not its president in the White House, not its leadership in Congress, not its conservative allies on the Supreme Court, not its interest groups or its affiliated media that has an interest in or commitment to a fair, equal and expansive democracy. Just look at the last decade. First, in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, the conservative, Republican appointed majority on the Supreme Court opened the door to unlimited campaign spending by corporations, interest groups and wealthy individuals. Then, in Shelby County v. Holder, it swept away the "preclearance" section of the Voting Rights Act, freeing states to adopt new restrictions on voting and ballot access, an invitation they promptly took up. And most recently, in Rucho v. Common Cause, the conservative majority all but gave its blessing to the extreme partisan gerrymandering seen in Wisconsin and other Republican led states by declaring the issue "nonjusticiable" by federal courts, meaning that they supposedly can't do anything about it. Republican lawmakers nationwide have taken every opportunity to restrict voting and entrench themselves against voters who might want an alternative. They've passed strict photo ID requirements, implemented mass voter purges, put new restrictions on registering voters, closed polling sites and ended extended voting periods. With few exceptions Utah introduced vote by mail in 2013 a state with a Republican executive and a Republican Legislature is a state that will restrict voting long before it tries to make it easier and more accessible.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Opinion
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A Three Acre Resort to Call Your Own This turnkey boutique resort is tucked into a corner of a three acre private island shaded by palms and mangroves near the southwestern coast of Belize, a quick boat trip from the mainland town of Dangriga. The island, named Yok Ha Belize Resort, has five waterfront cabanas, a restaurant, a bar, a dive shop and a separate staff residence. "There are a number of islands for sale in Belize, but few come with all the advantages this island offers," said Walter Zephirin, the managing director of 7th Heaven Properties, a luxury real estate company specializing in the Caribbean and Central America. Built in 2013, the resort's cabanas currently rent for 300 to 400 a night. Drinking water comes from the mainland and is stored in two water tanks. The property has a solar system and two generators. Mr. Zephirin said the resort's main draw is its location and its potential. "With its swaying palm trees, wooden cabanas, and endless views of the wide expanse of the sea, this is the dream tropical island," Mr. Zephirin said. Just eight miles from the mainland, it is private yet accessible, he added, and the nearby barrier reef creates "exceptional fishing grounds" in calmer waters. There is also ample space for expansion on the half mile long island. "Only one third of the island has been developed, so the new owner could let their imagination run wild on the remaining two thirds," he said. Dangriga, with about 10,000 residents, is a tourist base for visitors to the Belize Barrier Reef, the second largest in the world. Diving, snorkeling and fishing are popular in the region, along with hiking, zip lining and bird watching. From Dangriga, Philip S. W. Goldson International Airport is about two hours north. Mr. Zephirin said Belize's housing market has been booming for the last year or so, and has been minimally affected by the coronavirus pandemic. On the contrary, because the country has largely sidestepped the coronavirus with just 21 confirmed cases and two deaths as of June 16, according to the World Health Organization demand has "surged," he said, with people seeking "comparatively larger residences offering space and privacy." Over the past three or four years, interest has been fueled by more inbound flights and the country's popular residency program, which offers tax incentives and duty free import of personal items, allowing for a "smooth relocation," Mr. Zephirin said. Prices also tend to be lower than in "more established destinations" such as Costa Rica, he said, with prices for beachfront luxury homes ranging from around 450,000 for a condo to 3 million for a house. Macarena Rose, the broker of Keller Williams Belize, said home prices rose between 4 and 6 percent each year nationwide between 2018 and 2020. (Belize doesn't have a multiple listing system or centralized housing price database.) Her firm's data show that coastal and island condominiums now average about 300 a square foot, with inland residences averaging half that. Foreigners buying inland tend to want ample land for family compounds, while on the coast they're looking for turnkey condominiums they can vacation in and rent out, she said. Ms. Rose said the pandemic has led some eager sellers to lower prices, while others have taken their homes off the market. Transactions have fallen, but not halted entirely. She said she has sold properties to foreigners stuck in the country as they wait for its borders to reopen. "I would say the trend in the last month is that prices are dropping," she said, adding that some owners might be impacted by job losses or need access to funds, and "because it's a second property, it's more easy to let go of." Julian Leslie, a co owner of Century 21 BTAL (Belize), said his company has seen more demand for second homes during the pandemic, with email inquiries up about 30 percent in recent months. Closings for pending sales have continued as planned (though remotely), and new sales have slowed, with asking prices remaining flat, he said. In the northeast, near Mexico, the town of San Pedro, on the popular island of Ambergris Caye, draws foreign investors with its "stunning Caribbean blue sea vistas, white sand beaches and a holiday party vibrancy," said Amanda Syme, the owner and broker of Sunrise Realty, a San Pedro based realty. "We have not yet seen any discounting of properties that are listed on the market for sale and we are receiving offers and sales from foreigners," she said, adding that her company has had about a dozen "sight unseen" offers and sales during the pandemic. "I literally handled three offers yesterday." Prices in that region range from 100,000 for a one bedroom condo in a beach complex to around 3 million for a luxury beachfront villa with five or six bedrooms. Inland in the same northeast region, luxury homes cost around 400,000 to 800,000, with smaller, rustic cottages available for 150,000. Thanks to the foreign interest, Ambergris Caye has begun to attract new branded luxury developments from companies including Hilton and Marriott, said Robert Colon, the broker and owner of RE/MAX Island Real Estate, on Ambergris Caye. The average price in 2019 fell to 350,000 from about 400,000 in 2018, the result of more transactions, including for more affordable lots. "It has brought much attention to the country and has sparked an influx of investors that are looking to capitalize on the brand popularity," he said. Brokers agreed that most buyers of higher end vacation and retirement homes across the country are from the U.S. and Canada. Ms. Syme said buyers with her firm come from the U.S. and Canada. The rest are local buyers and a handful of Europeans from Britain, Spain and Germany. Foreigners can buy real estate in Belize without restrictions. Transactions are handled by a lawyer, and fees for those services are usually between 2 and 4 percent of the purchase price, said Ryan Wrobel, the managing partner of Wrobel Company, Attorneys at Law, a Belize City based law firm. Normally the seller pays the real estate commission, typically 6 to 8 percent of the purchase price, Mr. Wrobel said. Along with the legal fee, buyers who are not citizens of Belize or the Caricom nations pay an 8 percent stamp duty, which is calculated on the market value of the property or the sales price, whichever is higher. Belizean and Caricom citizens pay a 5 percent stamp duty. The first 10,000 are exempt from taxation for all buyers.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Real Estate
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When I was growing up, my father thought about ways to kill himself as regularly as I outgrew my shoes. There were pills to my penny loafers, carbon monoxide to my jelly sandals, razors to my Doc Martens. I was 4, 10 and 28 when he made his most damaging attempts. We found him: on the side of the road, on the side of the bed, in my grandmother's garage where he'd tried to make a tomb of the giant powder blue Oldsmobile we called Orca. When he was not trying to kill himself, I thought of myself as a superhero. I remember thinking as a child: He is alive today, and today, and today. I have loved him enough to keep him alive. It was a terrible burden to feel that I was responsible for keeping him alive. I tried to make myself quiet. If my sister and I laughed, it could make him angry, which would then make him sad. Did I want to laugh more than I wanted my father to stay alive? I learned not to ask for things, either, like money to get pizza with friends after school. If he didn't have the extra money, he'd feel guilty, which would make him depressed. Did I want a slice of pizza more than I wanted my father to stay alive? The reasoning was as reductive as it was delusional. I now understand that what kept him from succeeding in those attempts was equal parts happenstance and regret, and what kept him alive afterward was therapy and medication, as well as hospitalization when he needed more intense care. As it happened, after all of his efforts to end his life, my father died last July when he was hit by two cars as he walked with a friend on the side of a road in a thick, early morning fog. The police investigation confirmed it was an accident. When I woke up Friday to the news that Anthony Bourdain had ended his life on the heels of the news that Kate Spade had ended hers, I felt a tremendous sense of sadness, both because they were gone and because they had been in so much pain. But I cried for their loved ones and friends, who I imagined might be replaying their last interactions, trying to find the sign they had missed, the opportunity they should have taken, the point in the timeline at which they could have saved him. Could have rescued her. Twitter, Facebook and Instagram were exploding with grief and compassion. It is a beautiful thing to see how much love people are capable of. It is tremendously encouraging to hear the battle cries to destigmatize mental illness. To see strangers sharing their own phone numbers: Call me! Call me! If you are ever at that point, call me! But the messages urging people to reach out to help loved ones and strangers carry an unspoken and unintended flip side: That if a person succeeds in ending his life, the people around him might not have been paying enough attention, or trying hard enough. I worry about the effect these messages have on those who have lost someone to suicide, deepening their grief with an extra layer of guilt. "Rather than thinking, 'I wish I could've fixed this,' if we can use these moments as a wake up call to think, 'I want to be more present and aware and connected and empathetic in general,' that would be so much more productive," said Dr. Gregory Dillon, assistant professor of medicine and psychiatry at Weill Cornell Medical College. "And perhaps if all of us did that and if communication, understanding and empathy were generally better maybe fewer of these situations would come to a head." The news of the deaths of both Ms. Spade and Mr. Bourdain came in the same week that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported a 25 percent increase in suicide rates from 1999 to 2016, a year in which nearly 45,000 Americans ended their own lives. That suggests a lot of Americans may be devastated by the thought that they didn't do enough. But I could no more have saved my dad from the tons of metal that hurtled toward him when he was hit by those cars than I could save him from the pills he swallowed, the razor he wielded or the carbon monoxide he inhaled. That's not to say we shouldn't be present, be loving, be involved. That's not to say we shouldn't share advice, resources, empathy. We should try. With all our might. "It's cruel to blame ourselves and others for something that was ultimately out of our hands," said Lakeasha Sullivan, a psychologist in New York. "But we can carry some of this burden collectively. We can start by engaging in real conversations national conversations about the quiet voice in all of us that sometimes questions the meaning of life and allows hopelessness and despair to set in."
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Well
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The Public Theater announced on Thursday that it will bring a new production of "Richard II" and a version of its 2017 musical adaptation of "As You Like It" to the Delacorte Theater in Central Park this summer for its free Shakespeare in the Park series. "There is no issue in the world that can't be helped by a little Shakespeare," the theater's artistic director, Oskar Eustis, said in a statement. "This summer, 'Richard II' explores the extraordinary danger and possibility of regime change and 'As You Like It' celebrates a Forest of Arden where all refugees are welcome." Saheem Ali, who helmed the recent Signature Theater revival of Anna Deavere Smith's "Fires in the Mirror," will direct "Richard II." The play was last staged at the Delacorte in 1987, when the founder of the theater program, Joseph Papp, directed Peter MacNicol in the title role. Having it return during an election year that began with an impeachment trial is a pointed choice: "Richard II" tells a story about political rebellion and abdication. The play will run May 19 through June 21. Casting has not yet been announced. In the second half of the season, the Public will present the reimagined 2017 adaptation of "As You Like It," which was a product of the theater's Public Works program. Directed by Laurie Woolery with original music by the composer Shaina Taub and choreography by Sonya Tayeh, the adaptation placed more than 200 amateur performers alongside professional actors. (Alexis Soloski called the result "thrilling" in her review for The New York Times.) The adaptation ran for only a handful of days that year. This summer, it returns with Taub, Darius de Haas and Joel Perez reprising lead roles and it will have a new set, among other changes. "As You Like It" will run July 14 through Aug. 8.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Theater
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Thirty two months ago, Al Jazeera America made its debut with ambitious plans (and a big budget) to become a leading voice in cable news. And though the network has garnered a number of prestigious awards, it never attracted a meaningful audience, often failing to draw 30,000 viewers in prime time. Over the last year, it has also had embarrassing setbacks. The network was sued by a number of former employees; its chief executive was let go after staff members complained of a "culture of fear"; and its general counsel was suspended (and subsequently let go) after it was discovered that he did not have a license to practice law. In January, the network announced that it was shutting down. On Tuesday, Al Jazeera America will air its final broadcast. Here is a look back at the network over the last three years: Convinced that there is room for a thoughtful, sober cable TV news channel in the United States, Al Jazeera buys Current TV for 500 million and announces the creation of Al Jazeera America, kicking off the most ambitious American television news venture since Rupert Murdoch and Roger Ailes started the Fox News Channel in 1996. Time Warner Cable drops Current TV upon Al Jazeera's acquisition. The Qatari owned station names a former ABC executive, Kate O'Brian, as president and Ehab Al Shihabi, a management consultant who worked at firms like Arthur Andersen and Deloitte, as interim chief. The station also hires hundreds of journalists, including some prominent names like Ali Velshi of CNN. The station goes live on Aug. 20 in about 48 million of the roughly 100 million American homes that subscribe to television.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Media
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As Ronald Reagan prepared to graduate from Eureka College in 1932, he told a group of fraternity brothers that if he didn't make 5,000 annually within five years, "I'll consider these years here wasted." It must have struck his peers as fanciful in the extreme since the Great Depression was ravaging the country's job market. But four years later the ambitious young man was earning 4,200 as a radio sportscaster. The following year, as a contract Hollywood actor, he earned 13,000. Soon his success in the movies got him up to 143,000 a year. From his earliest days Ronald Reagan was a dreamer, and his dreams always seemed to come true. Yet throughout his life people scoffed at him. While conceding his Adonis like countenance, mellifluous voice, quick tongue and sunny demeanor, they didn't see him as a man of mark. His ambitions seemed to outstrip his capacity. This poses a mystery. How did this man thrive in so many highly competitive life pursuits, in radio, the movies, television, union leadership and the highest levels of politics? Bob Spitz seeks to answer that question in 761 pages of text in "Reagan: An American Journey." About 250 pages cover the Reagan presidency. Spitz traces here the full arc of the man's life and career, telling the story of how he leveraged his strengths of personality and clearheadedness to compensate for his weaknesses. Those weaknesses included an intellectual superficiality and a passion for political declamation "magpie sermonizing," as Spitz calls it that often rendered him boring to others, particularly his first wife, the actress Jane Wyman. The screenwriter Irving Wallace considered him "a lovable scatterbrain ... a man who parrots things shallow and affable." Reagan, Spitz writes, "was not a man given to abstract thought." But he also possessed a photographic memory, a lush imagination, an uncanny instinct for the right moment, highly developed communication skills and a passion for stardom. In high school and college he tasted a tiny slice of that stardom as a lifeguard at the swimming hole near his hometown, Dixon, Ill. A local newspaper reported that "Dutch" Reagan, as he was known, made 71 rescues in the often swift currents of the Rock River. "He was everyone's hero," a schoolmate recalled. Spitz adds, demonstrating an occasional tendency toward extravagant prose, "Dutch was a magnet for gushing teenage beauties who mooned over his studly appeal." As a boy Reagan approached his school activities with zest student body president, yearbook art director, actor in school plays, drum major, football player. And always at his side was the beautiful Margaret Cleaver, nicknamed "Mugs" by her adoring boyfriend and a stellar personality in her own right. They were "the golden couple" in high school and later at college. But Reagan wasn't much of a scholar "just an average student," as a teacher described him. And he kept an emotional distance from everyone except Mugs. "He was popular and admired but had no close friends," Spitz writes. This may have been a reaction to the emotional toll of having an alcoholic father who, while lively and charming, couldn't hold a job and absented himself intermittently from the family in pursuit of drink and women. Reagan's mother, a tireless civic and church figure, endured the humiliation in the interest of family solidarity, and the son followed suit. He never rebelled against the errant father and in Hollywood, once he had enough money, brought his parents to Los Angeles, purchased a house for them and provided steady support. Under the old studio system Reagan attained both fame and wealth. But his career sputtered after World War II as Hollywood embraced darker, nuanced fare requiring greater acting depth than he could muster. He redirected considerable energy to his presidency of the Screen Actors Guild, in which position he demonstrated a capacity for handling delicate political challenges not least the high voltage matter of Communist influence in Hollywood. He joined the anti Communist side and even became an F.B.I. informant. But in testifying before the House Un American Activities Committee, he named no names and suggested that reports of Communist activity were mostly "hearsay." Spitz views this testimony as "a dodge." The former lifeguard was "artfully" treading water. A bigger problem was his fading movie career, which rendered his financial situation precarious. But he pivoted brilliantly to television, as host and occasional actor for CBS's "General Electric Theater." As spokesman for one of the world's most powerful corporations, he honed his skill as a polemicist on behalf of G.E.'s conservative philosophy. Though a fervent New Dealer during Franklin Roosevelt's presidency, he had been drifting to the right and now found his political lodestar. Almost immediately Reagan viewed the G.E. gig as a possible entry into politics, and by 1964 he had emerged as a leading Republican figure. That led to the now familiar political trajectory: elected as California governor in 1966 by nearly a million votes; re elected after a tumultuous first term by half a million votes; a credible 1976 run for the Republican presidential nomination; and the 1980 presidential triumph. Surprisingly, Spitz's story loses energy as it enters the Reagan presidency, portrayed here in sterile terms that fail to convey his full impact on America and the world. Missing, for example, is an appreciation of how Reagan's conversion to supply side economics, a dramatic human tale in itself, transformed the country's fiscal debate. There's no mention of the landmark 1986 tax legislation, a synthesis of two previous tax bills, that gave the country a top personal income tax rate of just 28 percent and cashiered the confiscatory tax policies of the previous two generations. Spitz glosses over the impact of these policies on economic performance, including an average annual G.D.P. growth rate of around 3 percent or 4 percent after Reagan got America through a recession induced by the Fed chairman Paul Volcker to subdue raging inflation. Nor does Spitz mention Reagan's overhaul of Social Security, which faced looming insolvency. Not only did he boldly grab hold of the so called third rail of American politics in order to save the venerated retirement system but he also demonstrated a deft touch in handling a delicate and risky negotiating challenge. Spitz devotes considerable attention to Reagan's diplomacy with the Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev and captures much of the drama and tension in their high stakes arms talks. But he makes little effort to draw a causal link between Reagan's pugnacious arms buildup a severe challenge to the Soviets' economic capacity and the subsequent Soviet collapse (though he does concede, in a summation passage, that Americans were "likely" to credit Reagan with "the eventual fall of communism in Eastern Europe"). Spitz seems to agree with many of Reagan's contemporary critics, who believed that the president's personal popularity was able to obscure a general distaste for his policies. This misses the significance of Reaganism while condescending to Reagan's supporters. Though Reagan's inexplicable actions in the Iran contra scandal certainly deserve opprobrium (as Spitz makes clear in his compelling rendition of the unseemly mess), his leadership excited widespread adulation precisely because of the outlook he represented. The same traits that propelled him to the presidency, so nicely captured by Spitz, propelled him also to a rare level of presidential success.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Books
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This article is from our archives. Like the Science Times page on Facebook ors ign up for the Science Times newsletter for our latest stories. Misconception: Migraines are psychological manifestations of women's inability to manage stress and emotions Actually: Neurologists are very clear that migraines are a real, debilitating medical condition related to temporary abnormal brain activity. The fact that they may be more common for some women during "that time of the month" has nothing to do with emotions. For centuries, doctors explained migraines as a woman's problem caused by emotional disturbances like hysteria, depression or stress. "Bizarrely, the recommended cure was marriage!" said Dr. Anne MacGregor, the lead author of the British Association for the Study of Headache's guidelines for diagnosing and managing migraines. While that prescription may be far behind us, the misconception that migraines are fueled by a woman's inability to cope persists. "It was considered psychological, or that I was a nervous overachiever, so I would never tell people that I have them," said Lorie Novak, an artist in her sixties who has suffered from migraines since she was 8. Read the latest reporting on the migraine treatment approved by the F.D.A. After reading Joan Didion's 1968 essay "In Bed," about the writer's struggle with migraines, Ms. Novak decided to tackle the representation of these debilitating headaches. Starting in 2009, Ms. Novak photographed herself every time she got a migraine. Among the 36 million people who experience migraines in the United States, the affliction is three to four times more common in women than in men. It's the reasons behind them that have a way of getting twisted. Dr. MacGregor, who is also a neuroscience professor at Barts and The London School of Medicine and Dentistry, said that hormonal changes related to the menstrual cycle do play a role in migraines for some women and that migraines have been found to be more common in some women during their periods. "Clearly this is not a relevant trigger for men!" she wrote in an email. But excess emotions are not that trigger. Rather, it is a shift in hormones starting "a chain of events which activate neurons in specific parts of brain and send out signals which other parts of the brain interpret as pain," she said. M.R.I. data backs this up. Hormones are just one piece of the puzzle, said Tobias Kurth, an epidemiologist at Harvard who has investigated the potential dangers of overlooked migraines in women. Lights, smells, alcohol, and certain foods are among the hundreds of environmental factors that can trigger migraines in people with genetic predispositions for them. At last count, variations of more than 40 genes were associated with migraines, according to David W. Dodick, the president of the International Headache Society. Research suggests that there's a genetic component to at least 50 percent of migraine cases. A better way to understand how various elements work together to produce symptoms, Dr. Dodick said, is to "picture yourself in front of the television, and the volume keeps going up and up and up until it becomes deafening and you're not even holding the remote." Networks in the brain that control the so called volume of all the sensory information entering it such as light, odors and pain become activated either spontaneously or by an environmental trigger. Because the brain is so interconnected, this rogue volume control also affects nausea , spatial equilibrium, thinking and vision, among other areas. "And that's why you see patients retreat to this dark room," Dr. Dodick said. "They're not depressed, they just can't handle the light." Importantly, it's not the light, per se, that causes the migraine; it only activates those networks. The same story goes for factors like stress, anxiety and depression, according to Dr. Dodick. Anyone who fails to note the difference between triggers and causes is fueling misconceptions about migraines, wrote Dr. William B. Young, a neurologist at the Jefferson Health Care Center in Philadelphia, in a blog post. "When you let someone (maybe yourself) get away with thinking of migraine as caused by a trigger," he wrote, "it either makes it your fault (you ate that cheese after all) or hopeless (you are screwed; you can't control the weather)."
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Health
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"Today's despicable act of racism and hatred leaves me incredibly saddened and serves as a painful reminder of how much further we have to go as a society and how persistent we must be in the fight against racism," the driver, Darrell Wallace Jr., who is known as Bubba, said in a statement on Sunday evening. In a statement on Monday morning, NASCAR said it had opened an investigation. "We are angry and outraged, and cannot state strongly enough how seriously we take this heinous act," the organization said on Twitter. Jay E. Town, the United States attorney for the Northern District of Alabama, said in a statement on Monday that his office would review the matter alongside the F.B.I. and the Civil Rights Division of the Justice Department to determine if any federal laws had been broken. "Regardless of whether federal charges can be brought, this type of action has no place in our society," he said. Courtney Weber, a spokesperson for Richard Petty Motorsports, Wallace's team, declined to provide additional details about the episode and referred to the driver's statement. The noose was found about two weeks after NASCAR announced it was banning the Confederate battle flag from its events and properties, spurred by the nationwide protests against racism and white supremacy after the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis while in police custody. In its announcement on June 10, NASCAR said that the flag's presence was "contrary to our commitment to providing a welcoming and inclusive environment for all fans, our competitors and our industry." Wallace had called for the flag's ban two days earlier. "To you, it might seem like heritage, but others see hate," Wallace said after NASCAR announced its new policy. "We need to come together and meet in the middle and say, 'You know what, if this bothers you, I don't mind taking it down.'" "No one should feel uncomfortable when they come to a NASCAR race," Wallace told Don Lemon of CNN. "So it starts with Confederate flags. Get them out of here. They have no place for them." That same week, Wallace and Richard Petty Motorsports revealed a new black paint scheme for his No. 43 Chevrolet, with the slogan " blacklivesmatter" over the rear wheels. On the hood, a black fist and a white fist clasp in a grip above the slogan "Compassion, Love, Understanding." The noose episode is another troubling moment for NASCAR, a motor sports giant that has tried to distance itself from a past in which it had cultivated ties with segregationists and harbored racists and their tropes. George C. Wallace, the segregationist Alabama governor, played a crucial role in the development of the Talladega speedway, which opened in 1969 and is along Interstate 20 between Atlanta and Birmingham, Ala. In the nearly 51 years since the inaugural competition at Talladega, the track has become known on the racing circuit as one of the most likely places to see a Confederate flag. And even though the city of Talladega, whose limits do not technically include the speedway, elected its first black mayor last year, East Alabama can still be rife with racism and its symbols. But in recent years, NASCAR, which has seen attendance and television ratings decline, has sought to step away from its history. In 2015, after a white supremacist killed nine black churchgoers in Charleston, S.C., officials at top tracks urged people not to fly the Confederate flag at competitions, and some of the sport's top drivers, like Dale Earnhardt Jr., spoke out about racism and their opposition to the battle flag.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Sports
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NASHVILLE In Mississippi, power was out for days. In Alabama, schools opened late because of torrential rains. In Tennessee, houses slid from their foundations and tumbled into the Tennessee River. In Kentucky, heavy rains triggered a rock slide that derailed a train carrying ethanol, and the spilled fuel set the Big Sandy River on fire. All across the South this year, flooding has been nothing less than Shakespearean, even biblical, the kind of weather that comes from a human challenge to the divine order. I don't actually believe the Almighty dispenses weather to punish bad behavior, but if I did, I'd have a good idea whose behavior might have triggered it. It rained here the day the Senate voted to acquit the president of the United States of wrongdoing even as many of them publicly admitted he had done wrong. It rained here the night the president pretended to be an environmentalist during the State of the Union address. It rained the morning he turned the lovely, bipartisan National Prayer Breakfast into a partisan rant and when, later that day, he continued ranting in a profanity laced news conference televised live from the East Room of the White House. It didn't rain the following day the day the president fired Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, a decorated Iraq war veteran on the National Security Council staff, for testifying in the House impeachment hearings but it snowed very briefly, and then the snow melted into the swamp that has become the entire South this abysmally rainy winter. By now it's clear that there can be no more talk of draining the swamp. The literal waters are rising, and the president of the United States is a figurative one man swamp of corruption. Paying attention to what is happening in Washington is a form of self torment so reality altering that it should be regulated as a Schedule IV drug. I pay attention because that's what responsible people do, but I sometimes wonder how much longer I can continue to follow the national news and not descend into a kind of despair that might as well be called madness. Already there are days when I'm one click away from becoming Lear on the heath, raging into the storm. There are days when it feels like the apocalypse is already here. Except it isn't, not really. Not yet. One day when the relentless rains let up for a bit, I went to the park an hour before sunset to walk on the muddy trails and take a break from the bad news. The woods were as lovely as they ever are after a rain: the creeks full of rushing water, the gray bark of the fallen trees slick with moss. Above the trail, the limbs of the living trees creaked in the rising wind, the kind of sound that makes your heart ache for reasons too far beyond words to explain. Though the forest understory is already beginning to green up, weeks too soon, the towhees scratching for insects stirring in what's left of last fall's leaves were not in any way sorry about the early arrival of spring. As darkness began to gather in earnest, I turned to head back the way I'd come. A few hundred yards on, my eyes caught on a tree I hadn't noticed when I was walking in the other direction. About seven feet up the trunk was a knothole, a place where a limb had long ago broken off and let water in to rot the wood. Perhaps a woodpecker had helped to deepen it, too, and given the water more purchase over time. The hole was small, a dark grotto in the thickly grooved bark of the stalwart oak, a hiding place that reached far into the mass of that old tree, and the failing light deepened its darkness. Who knows how many miniature woodland creatures have crept into its crevice over the years to nest, to shelter from the wind and rain, to hide from predators or to wait for prey. But a creature lurking inside it is not what singled this knothole out among the hundreds, even thousands, I had passed on the path as night came on. What caught my eye was a cluster of tiny seedlings colored the bright new green of springtime, so bright it seemed to glow in the gloaming. The tender plants were growing in the loam inside the knothole. Far above the ground, a hole made by decay in a living tree had become a cold frame, a natural greenhouse that lets in light and keeps out frost. Life in death in life. As Ash Wednesday approaches, I find myself thinking again and again of that ordinary miracle, that commonplace resurrection, that everlasting antidote to the temporary perfidy of a red faced man hollering out his hour on the national stage. For Lent this year, I would like to give up the news I would like to give up the president himself for Lent this year but life in a democracy does not afford such luxuries. Instead of giving up something for Lent, I'm planning to make a heartfelt offering. In times like these, it makes more sense to seek out daily causes for praise than daily reminders of lack. So here is my resolution: to find as many ordinary miracles as a waterlogged winter can put forth, as many resurrections as an eerily early springtime will allow. Tiny beautiful things are bursting forth in the darkest places, in the smallest nooks and deepest cracks of the hidden world, and I am going to keep looking every single day until I find one.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Opinion
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Few American industries are as invested in the decades long political battle over immigration as agriculture. Paying low wages for backbreaking work, growers large and small have historically relied on immigrants from south of the Rio Grande. These days, over one quarter of the farmhands in the United States are immigrants working here illegally. This is how the growers will respond to President Trump's threatened crackdown on immigration: They will lobby, asking Congress to provide some legal option to hang on to their foreign work force. They will switch to crops like tree nuts, which are less labor intensive to produce than perishable fruits and vegetables. They will look for technology to mechanize the harvest of strawberries and other crops. And they will rent land in Mexico. There is one thing they won't do. Even if the Trump administration were to deploy the 10,000 immigration agents it plans to hire across the nation's fields to detain and deport farmhands working illegally, farmers are very unlikely to raise wages and improve working conditions to attract American workers instead. "Foreign workers will always be harvesting our crops," Tom Nassif, who heads the Western Growers Association, told me. The only question for policymakers in Washington is whether "they want them to be harvesting in our economy or in another country." If they choose the latter, he warned, they might consider that each farmworker sustains two to three jobs outside the fields. Most of what we know about the effect of immigration on American born workers is based on studies of what happens when immigrants arrive. Almost 30 years ago, the economist David Card found that the Mariel boatlift of 1980, in which more than 100,000 Cubans fleeing the island landed in Florida, did little damage to either the employment or the wages of the Americans they competed with. A flurry of research since then has tried to find fault with that counterintuitive conclusion. Yet despite the claims from the Trump administration that immigrants have decimated the working class, Mr. Card's analysis has emerged pretty much unscathed: With few exceptions, economists agree that even less educated natives suffer little when immigrants arrive. What if the shock goes the other way, though? We know less about what happens when immigrant workers are kicked out. But a series of studies over the past year are also coming to something of a consensus: Expelling immigrants does not open opportunities for workers born in the United States, either. Rather, the shock leaves them worse off than when the immigrants were here. In a forthcoming study, Giovanni Peri and Annie Laurie Hines of the University of California, Davis, take advantage of an underappreciated fact of American immigration policy: President Barack Obama went on a deportation spree in his first term. The number of unauthorized immigrants detained far from the border on the job, at home, in public spaces more than tripled, to nearly 350,000 from 2007 to 2011, after which Mr. Obama changed tack to focus more narrowly on unauthorized immigrants with criminal records. Jeff Bezos gives 100 million to the Obama Foundation. Stocks rise after President Biden says Jerome Powell will stay atop the Fed. The researchers found that employment and wages in states like Arizona, where apprehensions by Immigration and Customs Enforcement surged, did no better than in states where apprehensions changed little, like Delaware, Pennsylvania and West Virginia. The results suggest that in regions where enforcement intensified the most, the wages of American born workers actually did worse. The argument of Professor Peri and Ms. Hines is intuitive. Raids and deportations are disruptive. They can scare away other workers leaving employers scrambling to maintain production. When immigration agents raided a mushroom farm in Pennsylvania this year, they scared away workers in nearby farms which had to cut their own production. These sorts of events can increase uncertainty among businesses and depress investment. "The uncertainty and the disruption of labor market activities caused by the surge in apprehensions is likely to have generated the departure of firms and the relocation of production," the researchers wrote. Think of California avocado farmers checking out plots in Michoacan. One could argue that growers will eventually get over the shock of immigration raids. Once the dust settles, they may have more jobs at better wages for American workers. But the evidence is not promising. Another study published last month by Professor Peri and two colleagues examined the effect of forced repatriation of Mexicans and Mexican Americans in 893 cities between 1929 and 1934. It was sold as an effort to reduce unemployment and give jobs to Americans who had been clobbered by the Great Depression. But unemployment rates for American born workers were actually higher in cities that repatriated more Mexicans a consequence that persisted until 1940. Another exclusion seems to be at hand. Immigration enforcement has become increasingly severe since Mr. Trump took office. The Department of Homeland Security is no longer focused on criminal immigrants, as it was at the end of the Obama administration, and is casting a wider net. Immigration and Customs Enforcement said its agents had made 43 percent more arrests of unauthorized immigrants than they did last year. From Jan. 22 through Sept. 2, there were 28,000 arrests of "noncriminal immigration violators" three times as many as during the same period in 2016. It's not only businesses that are brainstorming about how to navigate the changing immigration politics. The hotel employees' union, for instance, wants labor contracts to assert that employers will not allow ICE agents into workplaces without warrants. Hoteliers and the union are talking about jointly training supervisors about what to do when immigration authorities show up. From California to Florida, they are trying to figure out how to respond if, come January, Haitians lose the temporary protected status that allows them to work in the United States. In that case, "1.1 to 1.2 million people could become undocumented overnight," said Maria Elena Durazo, vice president for civil rights, diversity and immigration with Unite Here, the hospitality workers' union. The Trump administration will cast these efforts as a sign of success: immigrants cowering before an American administration finally willing to stand up for its own. But American workers might not want to hold their breath as they wait for the great new jobs to appear. Consider agriculture. There were 30,000 fewer workers in the industry this past spring than there were a year before, according to government statistics. Yet for all the complaints from farmers about labor shortages that forced them to pay more, the wages of field workers failed to keep up with inflation.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Economy
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The windows are now smashed, and that's a good thing, broken glass notwithstanding. At least that's the case at Warner Bros. This week, the entertainment giant finally shattered Hollywood's way of doing business, perhaps for all time. The company said its entire slate of movies for 2021 17 in all would drop onto its HBO Max streaming service on the same day they appear in theaters, abandoning the old system of "windowing" its cinematic releases. Even now, making theater owners think they still mattered was a necessary bone that WarnerMedia's chief, Jason Kilar, had to throw to those who had not yet grasped the depth of the digital revolution, which has only accelerated during the pandemic. But WarnerMedia has finally embraced the inevitable future, even if they're not saying it explicitly. The rest of the entertainment industry would do well to pay mind. Or at least keep up with Mr. Kilar, who is doing this to light a fire under the underperforming HBO Max. The streaming service has been too little, too confusing and too late, which is why subscribers have not been racing to sign up and pay 15 a month for it. HBO Max is limp with only 8.6 million activations, even though the traditional HBO cable service has 38 million subscribers. Thus, along with new originals like a "Gossip Girl" reboot, WarnerMedia needs to lard up HBO Max with its upcoming slate of possible blockbusters, like "Dune," "The Matrix 4" and Lin Manuel Miranda's "In the Heights." The studio had already sent out a clear signal last month that the ground was shifting when it said its "Wonder Woman 1984" would debut on both HBO Max and in theaters on Christmas Day. In Olden Times last week streaming services would have to wait 90 days while the movies played in theaters exclusively, a retrograde policy given how much the audience has changed in the last decade and, especially, in the last six months. Mr. Kilar is calculating correctly that even the impending rollout of Covid 19 vaccines will not be enough to boost movie theatergoing until at least next fall. But if I know him well and I have known him for many years, since before he was pioneering the Hulu service, where he was forever hamstrung by old rules of the entertainment industry he is also assuming that Warner's future lies primarily in making its streaming service the center of the action. And that means making the studio's reliance on big theatrical releases a thing of the past. This is not unlike the huge shift the software and hardware industries underwent long ago, moving on from splashy big analog debuts. Remember the Windows 95 extravaganza and when things actually were launched at the Consumer Electronics Show? Me neither. Now, new tech products come out every which way and in the manner that befits whatever they need to thrive. Much of what has befallen the movie theater business is about secular change related to technology. But the industry has done itself no favors by offering terrible customer service, ever higher prices and precious little in the way of innovation, even as home theater experiences have drastically improved. While several of Mr. Kilar's underlings tried not to answer the question of whether the Warner 2021 movie slate move was temporary or permanent one called it a "unique, one year plan," and the always shifty term "hybrid model" was tossed around it's just a feint to protect a lie that Hollywood has told itself for far too long. Which is that it can no longer avoid the wrenching changes to its business fueled by the rise of digital technologies and changing consumer practices. These have been clear to anyone who has watched the relentless and impressive march of Netflix. HBO Max, which debuted in May, is hardly a competitor to the persistently innovative Netflix, which has 200 million monthly subscribers on its global service, with 73 million in the United States. And throughout the pandemic, Netflix because it has been perfecting its original content machine for years has been churning out the hits, including "Tiger King," "The Queen's Gambit" and an even spicier fourth season of "The Crown." Netflix's level of excellence has demanded that others follow it. Warner is not the only one. There have been increasingly aggressive efforts to put streaming in the lead by the Walt Disney Company, which took the well timed plunge with its Disney service earlier this year. Disney just reported an impressive 73.7 million subscriber tally, helped by its creative "Mandalorian" franchise. And it is making its live action remake of "Mulan" available to subscribers after having experimented by charging 30 extra to watch it on the service. By making these dramatic shifts, Disney and Warner may be giving up hundreds of millions in box office revenue from theaters, of course, but it's pain that is necessary, even if it means complaints from those owners. And how, with the howling. Stocks of theater chains plummeted even further after the Warner news, which was apparently not signaled ahead of time to the chains, and after Warner and the theaters had tried to put a happy face on the initial "Wonder Woman 1984" news. "Clearly, WarnerMedia intends to sacrifice a considerable portion of the profitability of its movie studio division and that of its production partners and filmmakers to subsidize its HBO Max start up," AMC Entertainment's Adam Aron said in an email to The New York Times. "As for AMC, we will do all in our power to ensure that Warner does not do so at our expense. We have already commenced an immediate and urgent dialogue with the leadership of Warner on this subject." Talk all you want, Mr. Aron, because no one is actually listening and your company's stock is sinking, even if some people are profusely apologizing and sending you the 795 Christmas morning breakfast box from ROE Caviar. Eat up, because there's a lot less where that came from. The theater business is a very shaky prospect in the long term. Or just read between the lines of what Mr. Kilar told The Times: "I have a lot of confidence in the theatrical model, and I have a lot of confidence in the subscription model. In many ways, you could see a future where budgets and ambitions continue to grow because that which you make more convenient tends to be used more often." Let me decode that for those who don't yet get the narrative: You have to break a lot of windows to let in the air blowing in from the future.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Opinion
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Shortly after Rachel Sutton texted Meredith Mechanik and asked her on a third date, Ms. Mechanik texted back and said she no longer wanted a romantic relationship with Ms. Sutton, and hoped instead that they could remain friends. Ms. Sutton (left), who is now 29 and an assistant director of graduate admissions at the University of Tampa, was on her cellphone chatting with her mother when Ms. Mechanik's text dropped like a dagger, and she began to cry. "I just didn't see a breakup coming so soon," said Ms. Sutton, who met Ms. Mechanik on Tinder in June 2014. "After all, we had a lot of fun on those two dates." Indeed, Ms. Mechanik, now 30 and a student program coordinator at the University of South Florida St. Petersburg, seemed to be nothing but pleased after Ms. Sutton had taken her on a first date to a concert in Tampa, where they chatted over sandwiches. Their conversation was interrupted by canvassers from Equality Florida, one of whom asked Ms. Mechanik and Ms. Sutton,"Do you two support same sex marriage?" They signed the petition, and both said they managed to refrain from shouting, 'We're on a gay date!'"
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Fashion & Style
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They HUFF, they ROAR, they CLANK, they MOVE! Size, strength and speed, embodied! No wonder we are most fascinated by vehicles when we ourselves are at our youngest, smallest and least independent. No wonder, too, that there have been picture books about moving machines for about as long as either has been around. (See "Cousin Chatterbox's Railway Alphabet" from the 1840s for an early example: "U is the urchin, so simple and small, / who cannot make out how the train goes at all.") New arrivals in this long tradition drive, float and fly onto shelves each publishing season. A kicking of tires follows for some of the latest. As always, your mileage may vary. Kate Prendergast sets DOG ON A DIGGER (Candlewick, 32 pp. 16.99; ages 3 to 6) on an industrial lot, drawn without sentimentality; the eye wanders over pavement, warehouses, a concrete canal and a parked excavator with a clamshell bucket a digger. Nestled within is a small trailer camper, the cozy home of both a dog and that digger's operator. We follow them in this wordless, paneled story as they begin their day's work. Young readers won't fail to notice a small eye on the excavator's jaw like bucket, which gives it an apatosaurian air. If the digger doesn't quite have a will of its own, it does still seem to enjoy its work. Prendergast works in pencil, in soft shades of gray, and then adds two colors: yellow, for the digger itself and for the safety gear worn by both man and dog, and blue, for the dress worn by a young woman who runs a snack stand on this lot. She has a small dog of her own. There's something more than hamburgers and hot dogs between the two humans, to judge by how they look into each other's eyes but then the woman's dog goes missing. It's our title dog who spots the pup clinging to a branch over the canal, and who thinks of using the excavator's long boom to reach the pup, all communicated through the time honored techniques of judicious pointing, barking and pawing. The book ends with something like a family portrait in yellow and blue: man, woman, excavator and two dogs, rescuer and rescued. Well, it's a curious mix: a gloomy setting, an almost dinosaur digger, a dash of romance, a touch of peril and a quick thinking dog. Prendergast's figures can be a bit wonky, too; at times they squish and stretch to fit their frames. Still, there's a tenderness to the drawings, and one picks up Prendergast's affection for her characters and even for that setting, which in its grimness lends an unexpected sort of credibility to the story. Add Prendergast's convincing sense of how to keep the action moving from one panel to the next, and the young friends with whom I shared this book didn't stop to wonder if the elements added up; they wanted to know what would happen next, and they turned the pages to find out. SMALL WALT AND MO THE TOW (Paula Wiseman/Simon Schuster, 40 pp., 17.99; ages 4 to 8), from Elizabeth Verdick and Marc Rosenthal, is the follow up to (yes) "Small Walt," in which snowplow Walt, with driver Gus, earns a spot alongside the big plows, despite doubts about Walt's size. In this outing, Walt and Gus, making their rounds, see a car skid into a snow filled ditch. Can they help? Despite his can do spirit, Walt must now learn to deal with his limitations: "My plow is tough, / but it's not enough." The, from over the horizon, appears Mo the Tow, driven by "the lady in blue Sue." (Are women in blue a trend?) Mo and Sue are the pair with the hardware and skills to perform this rescue except it turns out they can't quite reach the stranded car; first they'll need some snow cleared. Are Walt and Gus up to it? No spoliers. Suffice to say all these characters have something useful they like to do and that they do well, and each has limits, too, making this a story about teamwork as well as pluck. Verdick and Rosenthal may not be clearing new ground with these lessons, but what they plow, they plow well. The characters are appealing, and the language is active and satisfying, with plenty of onomatopoeia. Good luck saying RUGGAROOOM BRUMMAHUM 10 times fast, but your audience will enjoy hearing you try. The flap copy tells us that "Small Walt" has been called "reminiscent of Virginia Burton's classics," and this book will be, too; the cover design practically dares you not to think of "Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel." Rosenthal's drawings feel like a contemporary take on Burton's spirit, though, rather than something derivative: Burton, after an espresso. The lines and colors are direct, cheerful and effective. They look like the work of someone in a good mood, and it put me in a good mood to look at them. J. M. Brum and Jan Bajtlik's OUR CAR (Neal Porter/Roaring Brook, 32 pp., 16.99; ages 2 to 6) introduces a father, a son and the little red car they love. The drawings are digital, done in bold colors and simple shapes. (I might have guessed pastel, had one image not been recolored and reused multiple times on the title page and opening spread.) Father, the driver, and son, the passenger, are presences more than characters, just enough there to help us project ourselves into the book. "Our Car" has little interest in the actual mechanics of automobiles, yet it cuts, joyfully, straight to the things that thrill about cars; the book is a distilled dose of speed and color. The troubles that come with cars are here, too. When its engine needs work, this car "screeches like a wild animal," and teeth, eyes and even plodding feet appear, mysterious and terrific. While their car is in the shop, father and son must resort to the bus. No apologies for public transportation are made! Straphangers scowl, armpits loom too close to heads, and what is that fellow in the back doing with his finger so close to his nose? Why are things we hope to avoid on a bus such fun to see in drawings of one? When the car is home again, father and son wash it with the affection you elsewhere see lavished on golden retrievers. Then the book takes a leap: "Today I get to drive." Dad is no longer at the wheel the boy is! And off he zooms! Alas, on the next page we see he was not really driving, but only on the living room furniture, pretending. Mom (heretofore unmentioned, and still unseen) is given the thankless role of asking him not to park on the rug. I've yet to be made happy by reaching the end of a story and finding one of these "it was all a dream" endings waiting. We decide to enter a sort of dream already when we enter the world of a book; it is not necessary to wake up twice at the end. Buy this book, and paste down that last page. Let the kid drive!
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Books
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To get through times like these, I recommend drinking alcohol and making use of libraries. (Just not at the same time and, for best results, not in that order.) Library holdings have helped reassure me that values associated with reason, intellect and art really do tend to survive dark ages of various kinds. A space devoted to quiet reflection on the written word is also just so much nicer than, say, an echo chamber of negative covfefe. It was therefore a pleasure to sit down among the stacks and read a new book about the history of this very subject: "The Library: A Catalogue of Wonders," by Stuart Kells. Kells, an Australian author who in the past has written chiefly about the book business, here broadens his scope considerably: He begins by asking readers to think of libraries as arrangements of knowledge, and includes in his discussion the "immaterial libraries" that have been preserved through oral tradition by indigenous peoples. He takes on not only the physical development of the book from the tablet and scroll to the codex and the structures that were designed to house those texts, but the behavior of the human beings who have tended to hang around them. Even nonhumans, such as bookworms (so called) and silverfish, that lurk around inside them are given consideration. As the subtitle of Kell's survey suggests, the structure imitates that of a catalog or collection, one that includes many pamphlet length treats. Open the book and you may learn that the original statutes of the Bodleian Library at Oxford required that the librarian be unmarried because "marriage is too full of domestical impeachements." Or you may learn why old books have that distinctive smell (the breakdown of chemical compounds in paper releases vanilla, almond and floral notes). Or how, when growing up, the novelist Jeanette Winterson hid her books from her Pentecostal evangelist parents. As Kells quotes her, "anyone with a single bed, standard size, and paperbacks, standard size, will discover that 77 can be accommodated per layer under the mattress."
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Books
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In January, as a frightening new virus filled hospital wards in Wuhan, China, Stephanie Giordano, a 25 year old researcher at the drugmaker Regeneron, in a suburb of New York City, began working on a treatment for the disease. By March, the deadly coronavirus had hit home. Fearing she would get infected on the train that took her to the lab every day, she moved from her apartment in East Harlem to an Airbnb five minutes from the company's headquarters in Tarrytown, in Westchester County. Then her mother, a nurse's assistant who cared for newborn babies at a Long Island hospital, was reassigned to a Covid 19 ward where she tended to older people struggling to breathe. No drug could help these patients or her, if she were to get sick, too. "I had somebody on the line that I really cared about," Ms. Giordano said recently. "And I wanted to see her make it through this." Ms. Giordano, the youngest member of the company's five person rapid response team for infectious diseases, helped develop what many consider one of the most promising new treatments for Covid 19, which has now infected more than 12 million people around the world, and killed more than 549,000. She worked in the lab until 10 many nights and through weekends, screening thousands of antibodies the weapons of the immune system that seek out and destroy viruses in search of the most powerful ones. The result was a cocktail of two antibodies that might not only treat the virus, but prevent it by giving the body the same natural defenses that people infected with it produce on their own. The Trump administration this week gave a major boost to Regeneron's treatment, awarding the company 450 million to manufacture and supply as many as 300,000 doses as treatments or 1.3 million doses to prevent infection. That's in addition to 160 million in federal money the company had already received to run clinical trials and ramp up manufacturing. After the treatment passed an initial safety study, Regeneron's broader trials to evaluate the product's efficacy got underway. If the trials are successful, company executives have said the treatment could be available by the end of the summer. The hope is that it could serve as a stopgap until a vaccine arrives by providing temporary protection to people at high risk of getting infected. Regeneron is making a significant gamble, ramping up manufacturing of the antibody cocktail before clinical trials have even proved that it works. The most lucrative drugs it makes for other diseases have been relocated to a factory in Ireland. Regeneron is one of several companies pursuing monoclonal antibody treatments. The drug giant Eli Lilly has also begun clinical trials, and others working on antibody treatments include partnerships of Amgen and Adaptive Biotechnologies and also Vir Biotechnology and GlaxoSmithKline. It's unclear which of these projects if any will succeed. Drug development is notoriously unpredictable: Just last week, Regeneron announced that an older monoclonal antibody drug, the rheumatoid arthritis treatment Kevzara, had failed to help patients critically ill with Covid 19. Still, scientists and investors alike are closely watching Regeneron, which developed a treatment for Ebola with this same technology. That treatment was tested during the most recent Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo, which began in 2018 and ended in June. Together with a new Ebola vaccine, the treatment was credited with reducing the deadliness of the outbreak. Regeneron's track record of developing a similar treatment for Ebola "doesn't mean they will have a better product, but it does make me relieved that they will not fumble," said Ronny Gal, an analyst for Bernstein, a Wall Street firm. And Regeneron has taken this all hands on deck approach to Covid 19 in one of the hardest hit areas of the country. In Westchester County, more than 35,000 people have been infected and more than 1,500 people have died. "They said they were going to build a hospital in five days," he recalled. "I said to myself, 'Holy cow, OK, this doesn't happen just for the fun of it.'" In early February, Regeneron expanded a collaboration with the federal government to begin working on the coronavirus treatment. It also started ramping up manufacturing of the antibodies. Usually, "you don't scale it up until you've got something that's proven," Dr. Schleifer said. "We knew that the ordinary course of business could not work here. We knew that we needed to get as much capacity as possible." Dr. Schleifer said the company decided to move its existing products to its plant in Ireland to ensure that the antibody treatment would be made in the United States and available to treat Americans. The pandemic has already led some countries, such as India, to limit exports of drugs that might treat Covid 19, and the United States has snapped up the global supply of another treatment, remdesivir. "There was scary stuff going on in the world about, you know, countries closing borders," he said. "We wanted to manufacture as much as we could as close to where the processes were being developed." The company started its work by collecting as many coronavirus antibodies as possible, both through infecting its magic mice, and from the donated blood of coronavirus survivors. Those antibodies were handed off to Ms. Giordano's team, which identified the ones that fought off the virus most powerfully. Ms. Giordano's role was to help develop a phony coronavirus to test against the company's antibody candidates one that, though not harmful, would stand in for the real thing. "It was like three years of work in I want to say maybe like a month and a half," she said. By the end of February, she was clocking 90 hours a week. In March, as the coronavirus arrived in Westchester, she moved to the Airbnb apartment in White Plains the owners gave her a significant discount when she explained what she was working on. As her mother began caring for Covid 19 patients, the two exchanged photos of each other in their protective gear. "You guys are hero's!!!!!!!" Ms. Giordano texted in April to her mother, who had sent photos of herself and her co workers in protective gowns, gloves, face shields and masks. "Love ur double glove technique." "We were truly petrified that we would have this cure that we knew we had to develop, but all of our scientists would get sick and we wouldn't be able to do it," Dr. Schleifer said. Like many other businesses, the company sent nonessential workers home including Dr. Schleifer, who did conference calls and television appearances from a bedroom in his home. They redirected some cars used by sales representatives to workers who would otherwise rely on public transportation. They staggered researchers' shifts so fewer people were in the labs at once. In late April, the company set up a drive through testing site in its parking lot, and now requires all employees to get tested at least once every two weeks. Ms. Giordano and her colleagues, working long hours, took turns grocery shopping at Whole Foods, taking orders for the group. She recalled getting home late one night, eating a bag of defrosted broccoli and carrots for dinner, then collapsing. In April, the scientists selected their lead candidates for the two antibody cocktail that would eventually enter clinical trials. Ms. Giordano turned 25. The group celebrated with a chocolate cake covered in sprinkles. She cut her own bangs. She downloaded the new album by the Strokes, and played it on tiny speakers next to her lab station. (Lana Del Rey was in heavier rotation earlier in the pandemic, she said, because "I needed something melodramatic and just kind of soothing in the background.") Ms. Giordano was listed as an author on two articles in the journal Science describing how Regeneron's researchers had selected the antibody cocktail, including their reasoning that, by using two antibodies, they could help prevent resistance to the treatment. Now, like everyone else, Ms. Giordano is waiting to see if the antibody treatment will succeed in clinical trials. While antibody treatments have shown promise in the past, "the real question is how well will they work for Covid?" said Angela Rasmussen, a virologist at Columbia University. "And that's something that's really hard to say, because we've only known about this virus for seven months." The clinical trials will test how well the antibodies work for three groups: people who are hospitalized, those who are mildly ill and those who have been exposed to someone with the virus. The product will be given as an infusion for people who are sick, and as a lower dose injection when it is used for prevention. The preliminary results are expected by late summer. The most intense phase of Ms. Giordano's work on the treatment is now over, and her work schedule has mainly returned to normal. She moved to a new apartment in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, and, as the outbreak ebbed in New York, her mother went back to caring for babies. She knows the treatment may not ultimately work. "It's so scary," she said. But she tries to focus on the science, not her fears. "We did our best, and we tried everything that we could to make something that works," she said. "And I think that's enough for now."
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Health
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The undergraduate dean at Harvard will step down this summer, she and the university announced on Tuesday, months after she came under fire for her handling of a search of some junior faculty members' e mail accounts. Evelynn M. Hammonds, the first woman and the first African American to hold the position of dean of Harvard College, will leave that post on July 1 after five years, but she will remain on the faculty, the university said in a statement posted online. She will lead a new program on race and gender in science and medicine, topics that have been at the core of her scholarly work for decades. "I was never asked to step down," Dr. Hammonds said. "I have been in discussions to return to academia and my research for some time."
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Education
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Walk into Code: 146 on a Friday or Saturday night and you'll find it packed with Liberian locals and expats who go there to hear aspiring artists at the club's popular open mic night. "Everybody was there to have a good time," said the Nigerian born photographer Yagazie Emezi, who found herself returning to the club time and again during a 10 month trip to Liberia in the summer. "Regardless of what they were going through, people came to express the best versions of themselves, from their clothes to their performances. It didn't really matter how much money they had." Though she checked out a variety of venues during her visit, including a more upscale nightclub, the Capital Room, the casual atmosphere and the constant stream of fresh talent drew her to Code: 146 most weekend nights. Throughout the club, the bright green walls are decorated with the quotation "Keep Hipco Burning," a nod to the country's take on American rap, which is performed in Liberian pidgin English. The club's founder, Jonathan Koffa, known as Takun J, is one of Liberia's most prominent hipco artists and uses his music to advance social justice causes. Takun J was among the few club owners in his country who kept their doors open during the height of the Ebola crisis in 2014, which left more than 4,800 Liberians dead. Residents of West Point, the country's largest township, less than a 10 minute drive away, suffered the worst of the disease and were restricted under quarantine and an evening curfew. Instead of shutting his doors, Takun J installed a permanent hand washing station on the main floor, routinely cleaned the space with bleach and discouraged people from getting too close to each other. Ms. Emezi, 28, said that it was hard to imagine that less than four years ago the country was under such dire conditions. During the open mic performances, many of the artists made no mention of their county's past struggles, but instead focused their lyrics on making money and rising above their circumstances. Even their clothing, which appeared to be inspired by 1990s American hip hop fashion, had a lightness to it. Adrienne Tingba went to Code: 146 to discover new artists. After graduating from Temple University in Philadelphia, she returned home and now works as the executive assistant at the Liberia Coca Cola Bottling Company. When Ms. Emezi met her, she was wearing a black leather miniskirt with a sparkled camisole tucked in, with her hair in a braided cornrow style with loosely curled ends. Ms. Emezi also noticed references to the American flag on articles of clothing, including one attendee who wore an oversize leather jacket with a small flag patch adorning his sleeve. "The people of Liberia know their history and remember their past," Ms. Emezi said. "There is definitely a clear relationship between America and Liberia. Liberians take that influence and make it their own." Rockstar, a popular Liberian choreographer and dancer, layered patterns and textures for his look. "Liberians are just stylish," he told Ms. Emezi, right before another hipco artist took the stage. "We have a way of dressing to express ourselves." Unexpected details also caught Ms. Emezi's attention, including one male performer who was wearing a red T shirt with a watering flower pot, accented with a gold chain. She also noticed an older waitress at the club in brocade patterned pants that had Mickey Mouse's likeness printed just below her kneecaps. Some nights, Takun J, known for his shoulder length dreadlocks, took to the mic himself and performed a few of his hits. One of his most recent songs, "They Lie to Us," fuses a highly critical response to the Liberian government's handling of the Ebola crisis with upbeat melodies. The song's lyrics "you use us, and later on abuse us" are a commonly heard refrain in the streets in Monrovia. "This is the place that I started and wanted to raise Liberia up as a nation," he told Ms. Emezi one night after he performed. "I want to raise Liberia up through music."
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Style
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On Monday, the Seattle City Council responded to Citizens United, the infamous Supreme Court decision that has drowned our elections in a sea of largely unregulated cash for the past decade. Instead of trying to repeal or ignore the 2010 ruling (two wildly popular options that aren't actually legal), the council applied it to city elections on its own terms, passing a law that gives life to a theory I put forward in 2016. The theory, in a nutshell: Citizens United allowed corporations to spend freely in politics, calling them "associations of citizens"; their right to do so flows from the collective First Amendment rights of their individual shareholders. It logically follows, then, that restrictions on the rights of shareholders must also apply to the corporation. One of our most important campaign finance limits is that "foreign nationals" are barred from spending in any American election, city, state or federal. Since that's true for individual foreigners, it must also be true for the corporations owned in whole or in part by them. One cannot have a right collectively that one does not have individually. Seattle's law, similar to one passed in St. Petersburg, Fla., in 2017, requires corporations that seek to spend in city elections to certify that they are not "foreign influenced corporations," and are, thus, in compliance with both Citizens United and federal statutes. Seattle defined any corporation as "foreign influenced" when more than 1 percent of it is owned by an individual foreign entity, or more than 5 percent is owned in aggregate by two or more foreign entities. These are tight standards, but arguably, not as tight as the zero tolerance standard that a strict reading of federal law would suggest.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Opinion
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BASEL, Switzerland No one knows what it will look like. No one knows what it will cost. But the forthcoming and thus far nameless smartwatch announced by TAG Heuer, Google and Intel on Thursday became the watch to watch at the giant Baselworld watch fair. The smartwatch is the most dramatic counterstrike yet by Swiss watchmakers against the potentially seismic entry into the field by the Apple Watch, which goes on sale next month. The timing was also dramatic: on the second day of Baselworld, a convention where centuries old Swiss houses still unveil limited edition artworks for the wrist that can cost more than 200,000. After the announcement, however, Jean Claude Biver, chief executive of TAG Heuer, said that the smartwatch is in keeping with an industry built on intricate mechanical timepieces. (After all, the pedigreed Swiss watchmaker has always positioned itself as forward thinking; TAG stands for "Techniques d'Avant Garde.")
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Style
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Stephanie Winston Wolkoff was part of the Trumps' inner circle until she wasn't. Her memoir is a cautionary tale. Melania Trump was the sister Stephanie Winston Wolkoff never had "a really confident, perfectly coiffed, ultimate older sister," the former senior adviser to the first lady writes in "Melania and Me," her epic scream of a tell all, which comes out Tuesday. For 15 years, the women were "like Lucy and Ethel, or Snooki and JWoww," lingering over lunch in chic restaurants, attending each other's baby showers and surprise parties, and trading adoring emoji laden texts. In fact, the greatest reveal in "Melania and Me" may be the fact that Mrs. Trump's enthusiasm for emojis appears to rival her husband's for Twitter. With strings of happy and sad faces and hearts galore, she telegraphs a remarkable range of triumphs and disappointments and now readers will see how correspondence from first ladies has evolved since the days when Abigail Adams implored her husband to "remember the ladies." Even in its heyday, the Wolkoff Trump merger was rife with red flags: Mrs. Trump rarely appeared at Wolkoff's charity events, and persistently called the author's son by the wrong name ("Taylor" instead of "Tyler"). Regardless, from the early 2000s to February 2018, when Wolkoff was abruptly dismissed from her role in the East Wing, the former Vogue staffer remained loyal to Mrs. Trump. She was protective of the first lady, believed in the potential of the Be Best initiative (if not its name) and worked to the point where her body buckled under the stress of office politics. In the aftermath of her dismissal handled by email, in a message addressed jointly to Wolkoff and a similarly fated colleague she was, by her own admission, "a freaking basket case." "I was there at the beginning," Wolkoff writes. "I witnessed the transformation of Melania from gold plate to 24 karat gold. I believed she had the heart to match, that she was genuinely caring and loving and worth all of our attention. Throughout our early friendship, she lived up to what I saw in her. Watching her now, and seeing that only the gold shell remains, I have to wonder if that's all she ever was, and I was the sucker who bought the fake watch on the street corner." Here's a look at what readers will learn on Wolkoff's tour of what she calls "Mel La Lania Land." The first lady really doesn't care. Wolkoff quotes one of Mrs. Trump's oft repeated lines: "Pleasing anyone else is not my priority." And later, Wolkoff writes: "Ever the pragmatist, she reasoned that since she had no control over people's thoughts, why should she care what they believed." 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. At the height of the family separation crisis in 2018, Melania bemoaned the media's coverage of children being taken from their parents. In a phone call with Wolkoff, she allegedly said: "They're not with their parents, and it's sad. But the patrols told me the kids say, 'Wow, I get a bed? I will have a cabinet for my clothes?' It's more than they have in their own country, where they sleep on the floor." ("Melania and Me" contains lengthy quotes from phone conversations. Wolkoff doesn't address the question of whether she took notes, recorded the calls or pieced them together from memory.) Mrs. Trump launched Operation Block Ivanka to make sure the president's older daughter didn't steal the spotlight at the inauguration Wolkoff goes into great detail about Ivanka Trump's intense focus on guest lists, seating charts, messaging and motorcades. "Will there be a step and repeat?" Ivanka emailed. "Where will it be?" "Princess," as Ivanka's stepmother calls her, was eager to be included in a portrait of the new first family, usually shot in the Blue Room of the White House; Mrs. Trump rebuffed her. "Melania was not thrilled about Ivanka steering the schedule and would not allow it," Wolkoff writes. "Neither was she happy to hear that Ivanka insisted on walking in the Pennsylvania Avenue parade with her children." These machinations led to a concerted effort to keep the first daughter's "face out of that iconic 'special moment.'" Wolkoff and her team orchestrated seating and studied camera angles to make sure Ivanka's face would be hidden in pictures. (When the day arrived, Wolkoff learned that she and her family had been assigned to an area without chairs. They were eventually upgraded to V.I.P. seating.) The grimace that inspired FreeMelania? There's a story behind it. Mrs. Trump's much discussed miserable facial expression at the inauguration wasn't in reaction to her husband, according to Wolkoff: "Melania suddenly frowned and looked down and to her right because Barron had kicked her in the ankle by accident." Wolkoff suggested that she set the record straight to quell chatter about marital discord, but the first lady said, "I don't owe them an explanation." Mrs. Trump demanded renovations to the White House, but didn't always get her way. Wolkoff recalls Melania's response to her future bedroom: "I'm not moving to D.C. until the residence has been renovated and redecorated, starting with a new shower and toilet." Eventually she had her office painted Middleton Pink, but the ivory shade she selected for her bedroom was overruled by the president in favor of a darker tone. The president won't eat off a plate that has been touched by a friend. In the restaurant at Mar a Lago, the president had his eye on a big slice of chocolate cake. "I handed him an empty plate, my fingers on the bottom and my thumb on the top edge, a perfectly natural and normal way to hand someone a plate. He stared at my thumb as if it were on fire," Wolkoff writes. "He beamed at me as he took the plate and then, when he thought I wasn't looking, he put it down and got another." The first lady voices her opinions to her husband. Wolkoff cites two instances when Mrs. Trump broke ranks with the president: first, on the issue of bathrooms for transgender people. The first lady asked Mr. Trump why he inserted himself into the discussion, and Wolkoff quotes him as saying: "I didn't need to get involved. I could have let the Supreme Court deal with it. But it was very important to Mike," meaning the vice president. Later, she chides Mr. Trump for lifting the ban on the import of big game trophies from Africa a move he made in response to pressure from his sons. Wolkoff writes: "Melania was not sympathetic to 'the boys'' lobbying efforts for guns and hunting or the bizarre need to hang a dead animal head on the wall. That night, she did some lobbying of her own, and her plea to Donald actually worked." The next day, the president tweeted: "Put big game trophy decision on hold until such time as I review all conservation facts." Mrs. Trump enjoys "her game of hide and seek with the American public." In May 2018, Melania underwent surgery for a "benign kidney condition," then disappeared from public view for nearly a month. Wolkoff had been dismissed from the East Wing by then, but she describes a phone conversation during which Melania chuckled over the media's speculation on her whereabouts. "'Face lift? I'm too scared!' she said. 'Nervous breakdown? I'm like, seriously? They don't even know me.'" Wolkoff recalls Melania quoting a friend who told her, "You give people nervous breakdown, you don't have it your own!" Wolkoff writes: "Tell me about it, sister."
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Books
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DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. Denny Hamlin earned his second straight Daytona 500 victory on Monday, but the result was quickly overshadowed by concern for Ryan Newman after he was involved in a fiery wreck near the finish line. Newman was trying to hold off Hamlin and Ryan Blaney less than 100 yards from the finish when Blaney's car bumped his and sent him careening into the wall. Newman's car lifted into the air and flipped before crossing the finish line on its roof amid sparks and flames. His car sustained significant damage to its protective roll cage, but it appeared the structure had held up sufficiently to give Newman some protection. Hamlin bypassed the wreck to win his third Daytona 500 over all, but the severity of Newman's crash created a somber atmosphere after the race as fans and competitors offered support at the track and on social media. "It's hard to celebrate at a time like this," Hamlin said in a subdued ceremony in Victory Lane. The owner of Hamlin's team, Joe Gibbs, apologized to fans for their postrace celebration. "We did not know the severity of Ryan's injuries at that time," he said. Newman, a 42 year old driver from South Bend, Ind., appeared to be on the verge of his second Daytona 500 victory after having won in 2008. But on the final lap, Blaney's car caught Newman's rear bumper and caused him to lose control. "I liked the position I was in," Hamlin said of the beginning of the final lap. "But then Newman got a big push from Blaney and went sailing past me. I still thought I had a chance. I didn't think the race was over, and then I got a big run to the finish." Blaney said he was struggling to maintain control as he pushed Newman toward the finish line. But Newman's car spun to the right, slammed into the wall and then was smashed into by the trailing car of Corey LaJoie. "That is the worst case scenario," LaJoie said. "I had nowhere to go but into smoke." Blaney was momentarily in the lead, but Hamlin just managed to catch him at the line. "You always race to win," Hamlin said. "But you never want to see that." The race finished about 28 hours after it began on Sunday afternoon with a command to start engines from President Trump. A series of rainstorms caused a delay after several laps, and the rest of the race was eventually postponed until Monday. It was only the second time in the race's 62 year history that it had been delayed until the next day. Just 50 miles of the scheduled 500 miles were logged on Sunday. When the race was restarted at 4 p.m. on Monday, the 40 car field managed to run fairly cleanly for much of the race. But in the final 40 miles, a series of major wrecks took out half the competitors.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Sports
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President Trump is a ratings hit, and some journalists and public health experts say that could be a dangerous thing. Since reviving the daily White House briefing a practice abandoned last year by an administration that bristles at outside scrutiny Mr. Trump and his coronavirus updates have attracted an average audience of 8.5 million on cable news, roughly the viewership of the season finale of "The Bachelor." And the numbers are continuing to rise, driven by intense concern about the virus and the housebound status of millions of Americans who are practicing social distancing. On Monday, nearly 12.2 million people watched Mr. Trump's briefing on CNN, Fox News and MSNBC, according to Nielsen "Monday Night Football" numbers. Millions more are watching on ABC, CBS, NBC and online streaming sites. (Because of the way Nielsen ratings are measured, reliable numbers are available only for cable news.) And the audience is expanding even as Mr. Trump has repeatedly delivered information that doctors and public health officials have called ill informed, misleading or downright wrong. The president has suggested that the coronavirus is comparable to influenza, which is far less lethal, and has invoked the death toll of car accidents. He has also encouraged the use of medications that have yet to be proved effective against the virus; on Monday, a man in Arizona died after he and his wife consumed a form of chloroquine, a drug that Mr. Trump has promoted on the air. How to report on Mr. Trump's fabrications has long been a source of concern among journalists and press critics, dating to the blanket cable news coverage of his rallies in the 2016 presidential campaign. Even after Mr. Trump took office, journalists have debated the civic benefits of broadcasting the president's remarks to the nation with the need to supplement his statements with corrections and context. The emergence of the pandemic has raised the stakes for what had existed mostly as an insular discussion among media ethicists. Now, the president's critics say, lives are at risk. "I would stop putting those briefings on live TV not out of spite, but because it's misinformation," the MSNBC host Rachel Maddow declared to her viewers last week. The veteran anchor Ted Koppel said on Wednesday that television news executives had forgotten a crucial distinction of their profession. "Training a camera on a live event, and just letting it play out, is technology, not journalism; journalism requires editing and context," Mr. Koppel wrote in an email. "I recognize that presidential utterances occupy a unique category. Within that category, however, President Trump has created a special compartment all his own." 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 question, clearly, is whether his status as president of the United States obliges us to broadcast his every briefing live," Mr. Koppel continued. "No. No more so than you at The Times should be obliged to provide your readers with a daily, verbatim account." Network producers and correspondents say there is often some internal debate about whether to carry the president's appearances live and unfiltered. But given the intensity of the national crisis, many executives have concluded there is no justification for preventing Americans from hearing directly from the president and his health care administrators. And a significant portion of the country is looking to Mr. Trump for its facts. A CBS News poll on Tuesday said that 90 percent of Republicans trusted Mr. Trump for accurate information about the pandemic; 14 percent of Democrats said the same. Fox News has been a particularly popular venue for those who want to hear from the president. The network regularly accounts for roughly half the overall cable news audience for Mr. Trump's briefings. On Monday, Fox News alone attracted 6.2 million viewers for the president's briefing an astounding number for a 6 p.m. cable broadcast, more akin to the viewership for a popular prime time sitcom. This past weekend, Fox News recorded its highest weekend viewership since its 2003 coverage of the gulf war. Americans' trust in the news media is also split along partisan lines. The CBS News poll said 13 percent of Republicans trusted the news media for information about the virus, versus 72 percent of Democrats.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Media
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This fall, the leaves will change, the days will grow short and Fashion Week, that autumn perennial, will head downtown. WME IMG, the company that owns and produces Mercedes Benz Fashion Week in New York, is jettisoning Lincoln Center, its main (though not altogether beloved) site of the last four years, and searching for greener pastures farther south. Mercedes Benz, the event's title sponsor since 2007, will bow out following the fall 2015 shows at Lincoln Center in February. The event will be rechristened as simply New York Fashion Week. This week, WME IMG appointed Simon Collins, until this year the dean of the School of Fashion at Parsons the New School for Design, as a consultant to help steer the new event. "A crucial part of evolving our global fashion offering is partnering with the best and the brightest, and Simon Collins is that rare breed," Mark Shapiro, IMG's chief content officer, said. New York Fashion Week will, for the first time, unify the city's two major (but formerly at odds) show organizers under one umbrella: IMG, which produced the large scale shows at Lincoln Center, and the fledgling, emerging designer platform formerly known as Made Fashion Week, which has been headquartered at Milk Studios in the meatpacking district. WME IMG is in final negotiations to purchase Made from its three founders, Keith Baptista, Jenne Lombardo and Mazdack Rassi, a representative for IMG said. WME IMG approached the partners, who are to stay on as consultants and continue to operate the event. Made Fashion Week, founded in 2009 as MAC Milk (after the original sponsoring makeup company and the location, of which Mr. Rassi is a founder), hosted shows by Proenza Schouler, Altuzarra and Public School as it rose to prominence. In February, the Made roster will include labels like Jeremy Scott, Tim Coppens and Cushnie et Ochs. Made's major innovation was to offer designers free space, production and makeup costs that could otherwise rise into the five figures, a heavy lift for young labels. IMG also offset show costs with sponsorships, but charged for its spaces and show packages. How these models will coexist under the new Fashion Week umbrella is still to be fully determined, though it is understood that Made's fee structure, identity and even its name will continue under its new ownership. Citing continuing negotiations, the Made partners declined to comment. Still to be determined, too, is where the new sites will be. Both Made Fashion Week and Mercedes Benz Fashion Week have several, though each has a major hub: Milk Studios and Lincoln Center, respectively. Milk Studios will continue to host Made affiliated shows as part of the new New York Fashion Week. WME IMG recently agreed to vacate Lincoln Center after the February shows, following a lawsuit filed by New York City park and environmental activists to restore Damrosch Park, the site of the Lincoln Center Fashion Week tents, to community use. (The suit was settled in December.) Though the move threatens to shift Fashion Week's center of gravity downtown, many designers and labels opt to show independently of either WME IMG or Made, to follow their own inclinations. Each season, the borders of the Fashion Week diaspora inevitably expand, forcing a particularly querulous band of travelers to traverse SoHo, Chelsea, Midtown, the Upper East Side, the financial district and a revelation received last February with hand wringing and outcry Brooklyn. Though IMG WME is keeping mum on the location, other than to suggest its new home will be "downtown," it seems safe to say that last year's outcry won't be repeated. A tree may grow in Brooklyn, but it's probably too soon for its fashion week to blossom there.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Fashion & Style
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Eight compositions by Mr. Braxton, the multireedist known for his experimental techniques, will start the 2019 20 Portraits series, offering evening length immersive concerts that explore the work of a single composer, on Sept. 25. Don't miss an event: Subscribe to the Times Culture Calendar. Other Portraits will be devoted to the jazz pianist and 2013 MacArthur "genius" grant winner Vijay Iyer, including the premiere of "Song for Flint," part of Columbia's Year of Water; Annea Lockwood, whose focus on sonic details from nature will be reflected in her new work "Into the Vanishing Point"; and Dai Fujikura, including "Minina," inspired by the birth of his child. Bright Sheng, Caroline Shaw and Oscar Bettison will also have evenings devoted to their works.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Music
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Novella Nelson, a powerful and versatile actress whose long career included prominent roles in the hit Broadway musical "Purlie" in 1970 and the film "Antwone Fisher" more than 30 years later, died on Aug. 31 in Brooklyn. She was 78. Her daughter, Alesa Blanchard Nelson, said the cause was cancer. Over a half century, Ms. Nelson performed in classical and contemporary works in New York and at regional theaters around the country. She was a stage director, a consultant to the impresario Joseph Papp at the Public Theater and a cabaret singer before she began to appear on television and in movies. But her face and the authority that she brought to her myriad roles was usually more familiar than her name. "Her face," the New York Times drama critic Walter Kerr once wrote, "is not so much a countenance as a splendor of lines." That much is clear in a scene in "Antwone Fisher" (2002), in which Fisher (Derek Luke), a sailor with a troubled past, returns as an adult to confront Ms. Nelson's character, his abusive foster mother, over her despicable treatment of him as a child. Ms. Nelson's nimble face registers happiness at seeing him, which quickly turns to confusion, irritation and fury as he shows that he is no longer a victim. For all her achievements, Ms. Nelson never became famous. But, her daughter said, she was comfortable with her relative anonymity. "I can't pin me down, and that doesn't worry me," she told The Washington Post soon after the release of Paul Mazursky's "An Unmarried Woman" (1978), in which she had one of her earliest movie roles. "Everyone sees different parts of me. But like the character in the movie, I am a free spirit. She has a grip on things and so do I." She added, "Ask me in another five months who I am." Ms. Nelson's stage work suggested a desire never to be typecast. She played Vanity, one of seven "ungrateful abstractions," including Intellect and Sensuality, in "Horseman, Pass By," a musical based on William Butler Yeats's poetry; Lena in the South African playwright Athol Fugard's "Boesman and Lena," about a couple during the apartheid era; Clytemnestra, the queen of Greek legend, in Sophocles' "Electra," and Aunt Ester, an ancient mystic, in "Gem of the Ocean," the first in August Wilson's 10 play cycle set in Pittsburgh that dramatizes the African American experience in the 20th century. In her review of the Hartford Stage production of "Gem of the Ocean" in 2011, Sylviane Gold wrote in The Times that Ms. Nelson played Ester "with a magnificent combination of regal dignity and maternal tenderness." But she took a theater course, which transformed her; after she played Berenice, the housekeeper, in Carson McCullers's "The Member of the Wedding," she was overcome with excitement. "It was a feeling I never had before, and its only happened three or four other times since," she told The Hartford Courant in 2011. "When I came off the stage, someone had to hold me for a second because it was so extraordinary." Her trajectory had been permanently altered. She went on to play Madame Tango, the matron of a bordello, in an Off Broadway production of the Truman Capote Harold Arlen musical "House of Flowers," and was Pearl Bailey's understudy in the lead role of "Hello, Dolly!" on Broadway before she was cast in "Purlie," the musical version of Ossie Davis's play "Purlie Victorious." Ms. Nelson returned to Broadway in "Caesar and Cleopatra" (with Rex Harrison and Elizabeth Ashley) in 1977 and in "The Little Foxes" (with Elizabeth Taylor) in 1981. She was also in the National Actors Theater production of "The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui" (with Al Pacino) in 2002. And on television, among her many roles, she played Harriet Tubman in an early 1970s episode of "You Are There," the CBS News historical series. She began to sing partly to earn money between acting jobs, after the manager of a nightclub in Manhattan overheard her say that she could perform better than the singer onstage. "If you think you can do better, get up there and sing," she recalled the manager telling her. "And because I sang all my life in church, I did, and he hired me." She had an emotional and provocative style of singing blues, gospel and pop, and was equally at ease with the songs of Bessie Smith and Jacques Brel. Interviewed by The Times between sets at the Village Vanguard in 1968, she said: "I felt I could express my commitment to my blackness, to my recognition of who I am, much better as a singer than an actress. But I don't think of myself as a rebel. I preach love a coming together." She recorded only one album, called simply "Novella Nelson" and released in 1970, and eventually cut back on her singing to focus on her acting. Her daughter is her only survivor. Ms. Nelson's marriage to George Blanchard ended in divorce. Ms. Nelson poked fun at her public renown in a 2010 episode of the sitcom "30 Rock," in which she played herself. In the episode she was cast to play the mother of Tracy Jordan, Tracy Morgan's character, on a Mother's Day show, because his real mother could not be found. "Maybe you wanted someone more high profile, but I am what you've got," she told him. "So, Tracy, you'd better watch yourself or you may wind up with no mother at all." "Fine," he replied. "I'd rather be up on that stage all alone than to be with someone whose resume has 'black judge' on it nine times."
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Theater
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Jack Nicklaus, in blazer, and Jon Rahm eschewed the traditional handshake for fist bumps on Sunday at the Memorial Tournament. Nicklaus revealed that he and his wife, Barbara, tested positive for the coronavirus in March. DUBLIN, Ohio Sometimes a reputation is hard to shake. Just ask Jon Rahm, who for years was best known as a good golfer with a bad temper. But on Sunday evening, Rahm became renowned for being something else: the world's new No. 1 ranked golfer. Rahm's fits of pique on the PGA Tour were the stuff of legend when he turned pro four years ago after a decorated amateur career, with clubs kicked and thrown, a tee marker punched and a bunker rake irately flung over one shoulder. And that was the scene from just one round in 2017. Rahm apologized, although he never vowed to become stoic in the face of failure. The fury and disgust he sometimes felt was a necessary response, he said, even a catalyst that simply had to be channeled more productively and less publicly. He called reining in his impulses a process. The tantrums have been at a minimum lately, or reduced to brief moments of obvious exasperation, and in the past 18 months Rahm, 25, has climbed up the world rankings with 18 top 10 finishes. On Sunday, with a decisive, three shot victory at the Memorial Tournament, Rahm vaulted into the top ranked spot, supplanting Northern Ireland's Rory McIlroy. With his fourth PGA Tour victory, Rahm becomes the 24th player in history be to ranked No. 1 and just the second Spaniard, as he joins Seve Ballesteros, a boyhood hero of Rahm's who died in 2011. "Being a part of golf history with Seve, in any way, is unbelievable," Rahm, who shot a 75 on Sunday to finish nine under par for the tournament, said afterward. "It's a pretty unique feeling I'm going to enjoy for a while." Of his work to regulate his on the course outbursts, Rahm said, "I'm just trying to be like me." Rahm weathered a two stroke penalty on the 16th hole on Sunday for causing his ball to move slightly before a shot. After beginning the final round four shots ahead of Tony Finau and Ryan Palmer, Rahm had grown his lead to eight strokes. But bogies on the 10th and 14th holes, and a double bogey on the 11th hole, had whittled Rahm's lead over Palmer to three strokes. Then, Rahm flew his tee shot over the par 3 16th green and into deep rough 31 feet from the hole. Rahm opened his wedge behind the ball and deftly pitched it just onto the putting surface, where it rolled into the hole for an apparent birdie that increased his lead over Palmer to four strokes, an edge that climbed to five strokes one hole later. However, video replays of Rahm placing his wedge behind his ball in the deep grass before his chip shot seemed to show the ball moving slightly. PGA Tour officials later assessed a two stroke penalty, turning the birdie into a bogey. After his round, and before learning of the two stroke penalty, Rahm described his holed chip shot as "the best short game shot I've ever hit." After meeting with rules officials, Rahm said the video he viewed showed a slight oscillation of the ball in the grass. "It barely moves at all," said Rahm, who added that when he was standing over the ball he did not see it move. "But the rules of golf are clear. I accept the penalty. And it proves you have to fight to the end." Coming off the final green at the Muirfield Village Golf Club, Rahm was greeted by the tournament host Jack Nicklaus, who has made it a tradition to shake hands with the Memorial winner as soon as the competition has ended. Nicklaus and Rahm instead bumped fists, a gesture that carried more import than usual, because earlier on Sunday Nicklaus revealed in a television interview that he and his wife, Barbara, tested positive for the coronavirus in March. Nicklaus said that Barbara had been asymptomatic and that he had been ill briefly but recovered quickly. The Nicklauses are both 80 years old. Rahm, meanwhile, was being complimented by his peers for his golf skill and for finding a way to control the rage that had consumed him in the past. "Jon Rahm is a remarkable talent," said Phil Mickelson, who added that there was no weak part of Rahm's game. "And he knows himself. He knows that to relax sometimes he has to let some of his anger out. He can't hold that in." Mickelson added: "It allows him to be at his best. That's a big thing, too, identifying your own self. He's done a great job of that at a really young age." Palmer, who shot 74 on Sunday, finished second. No other golfer made a serious run at the lead on a day with difficult, United States Open like scoring conditions. Several days with temperatures in the 90s dried out the already challenging Muirfield Village greens, and swirling winds sent many approach shots into vexing greenside bunkers. Tiger Woods, playing in his first PGA Tour event since mid February, concluded his final round hours before the tournament leaders finished. Woods's chance of contending ended on Friday when his surgically repaired back was so stiff it significantly inhibited his swing and caused Woods to shoot 76. He rebounded with a round of 71 on Saturday, but slumped on Sunday with another 76 to finish six over par for the tournament. Throughout the event, Woods's putting was subpar, and Sunday, when he had 32 putts, was his worst day of the event. But with his back not restricting him in the final round, Woods nonetheless left Muirfield Village feeling encouraged by his performance after a five month PGA Tour layoff. "It was nice to get my feet wet and compete and play again," Woods said. "I need to work on my putting a bit and clean that up. But as far as my swing, it felt good. Over all for my first week back, it was a lot of positives." But golf fans should not expect to see Woods on tour again until the P.G.A. Championship takes place Aug. 6 to 9 at T.P.C. Harding Park in San Francisco. Asked if he thought he would play in a tournament before the first week of August, Woods smiled and suggested that he needed many more practice rounds but not necessarily competitive ones.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Sports
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Over the last decade, as activists started pushing colleges to accommodate transgender students, they first raised only basic issues, like recognizing a name change or deciding who could use which bathrooms. But the front lines have shifted fast, particularly at the nation's elite colleges, and a growing number are now offering students health insurance plans with coverage for gender reassignment surgery. No college or university offered such treatment just six years ago, but when Brown University said last week that its student health plan would be extended to cover sex change surgery beginning in August, advocates for transgender students said Brown would become the 36th college to do so. Twenty five additional colleges do not cover surgery, but their student plans do cover related hormone therapy, and 20 universities have plans that cover some or all sex change treatments for their employees, according to the Transgender Law and Policy Institute. Those lists include many of the top American universities Harvard, Stanford, Cornell, Penn, Emory, Northwestern, the University of California system, Yale, Princeton, M.I.T., Washington University and others. Colleges are not required to provide health coverage for their students, many of whom are still covered by their parents' plans, but they generally do. The idea still seems radical to plenty of people; last year, when Sandra Fluke, a law student, became famous for speaking in favor of an insurance mandate for contraceptive coverage, conservatives painted her as part of a fringe element because she also supported sex change coverage. But since 2008, the American Medical Association has advocated the same thing, for treatment of gender identity disorder. Other medical groups, like the American Psychiatric Association, have taken the same position. Several major insurers have taken the stance that the treatment, including surgery, can be considered medically necessary. The Internal Revenue Service considers the expenses tax deductible. The issue directly affects only a tiny number of students; no one knows how many. But universities recognize that their insurance plan sends a signal to the much larger number of students for whom the rights of transgender people have taken a place alongside gay rights as a cause that matters. "Students notice whether the issues that they care about, that make them feel like it's a more comfortable and welcoming place, are being discussed and addressed," said Ira Friedman, a doctor who is associate vice provost for student affairs at Stanford and director of the student health center there. Stanford began covering sex change surgery in 2010. Princeton says on its Web site that it has been named a "top 10 trans friendly university" and that "recently, we launched an online guide" for transgender students. The university's student policy covers hormone therapy but not surgery, but it is, along with Yale, one of several in that category that say they are considering adding surgical coverage. In this field, colleges and universities may be lagging behind the corporate world; the Human Rights Campaign, the nation's largest gay rights group, says that about one quarter of Fortune 500 companies have health plans that cover sex changes, and a larger number cover hormone therapy. "It is often more a knowledge and will gap than a mechanics and cost issue," said Deena Fidas, deputy director of the Human Rights Campaign's workplace project. "You have to start with Transgender 101, if you will, and demystify." Sex reassignment surgery encompasses a variety of procedures that alter the anatomy to create physical traits of the opposite gender, sometimes but not always including genital reassignment. Surgery is typically preceded by psychological counseling, and often by hormone treatments. The treatment can cost tens of thousands of dollars, but college administrators say the additional cost of covering the services is negligible because so few people seek medical treatment for gender reassignment, and fewer still have surgery. Campus activists say that the colleges that are covering sex change treatments now are those that, 5 to 10 years ago, were among the first to take smaller steps like allowing a student who was born biologically male but identifies as female to have a female roommate and use a women's restroom. For colleges that have not yet confronted such questions, "gender reassignment is a high bar," said Shane Windmeyer, executive director of Campus Pride, a national group that supports students who do not fall into the usual categories of sexual identity or orientation. "Trans issues are new to many campus communities," he said. "You ask a lot of administrators about it, even at places that are familiar with lesbian and gay and bisexual issues, and they look at you kind of blankly." In 2007, Campus Pride added sex reassignment coverage to its annual "inclusiveness index," which rates several hundred colleges and universities.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Education
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THE PIRANHAS The Boy Bosses of Naples By Roberto Saviano 368 pp. Farrar, Straus Giroux. 27. Now is a great time to be a gangster. Politicians throughout the West have asked law enforcement agencies to pursue an agenda headed by terrorism, with child abuse and human trafficking close behind. Faced with old school mob activities like drug and weapons smuggling, extortion and prostitution, the police will often shrug and say they deal with it in what time they have left. In contrast, the public's fascination with traditional organized crime has seldom been greater, as witnessed by a stream of TV dramas, from "The Wire" to "Narcos." Roberto Saviano is among the principal beneficiaries, and victims, of this paradox. His first book, "Gomorrah," sold millions of copies and brought him death threats from the Camorra, the mafia of Naples and its surrounding region, that have kept him in semi hiding under permanent police protection ever since. Saviano's second book, about cocaine, earned him accusations of plagiarism. So he was perhaps wise to turn to fiction in his third and latest book, "The Piranhas." But this is fiction rooted firmly in reality: that of the so called "baby gangs" of teenage, and even younger, thugs loosely connected to the Camorra who have terrorized parts of Naples in recent years. Saviano takes readers into a world of violent criminality streaked with puerility; of aspiring Al Capones with acne; of kids who use the video game Grand Theft Auto to train for a tanker truck heist and try out weapons they can barely control by shooting immigrants waiting at a bus stop. It is raw and shocking, revelatory stuff. And the author knows how to keep his narrative hurtling forward like the scooters his young hoodlums ride at life endangering speeds through the back streets of Naples.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Books
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The remarkable Clarence True, the West Side's most inventive architect, almost always worked the side streets, designing rows of houses by the half dozen; that's where the developers were. But he did leave a remarkable corner with his trademark ebullient Flemish tops, at West End Avenue and 90th Street. Will they ever recover from the butchering of the roof line in the 1950s? At the end of the 19th century, the West Side was in full rowhouse mode, with set after set going up for the prosperous class moving up from crowded Midtown to the peaceful West End, as it was called. Clarence True had been designing (and building) rowhouses since the early 1890s, when he introduced the no stoop rowhouse, at which the entry was on the street floor, eliminating the bother of climbing stairs to the front door. That idea caught on nicely, and soon most of the rowhouses on the Upper West Side were "American basement," as such a house was termed. True was big on picturesque roof lines, and these houses had plenty of roof, especially at the corner, which had a wonderfully outrageous peaked roof with projecting dormers and, on the 90th Street side, a fantastical stepped gable end in brick and stone. It is a tour de force or perhaps a folie de grandeur. Here True used another of his innovations. Instead of rowing up the houses on identical lots, making a line of equal size shoe boxes, he graduated the plot plans so that the corner house was nearly square; the flanking houses were only chubby but a little deeper; and finally, the outermost houses were fairly standard in shape. The idea was noble, but it never caught on; apparently we New Yorkers like living in identical shoe boxes. In 1899, before that sentiment was apparent, The Real Estate Record and Guide called True's plan "the best design that has ever left his boards." The earliest tenants were typical of those who moved to the Upper West Side: lawyers, bankers and other businessmen. But No. 307 West 90th was called home by an anomaly: an actor. That was Lew Fields, who with Joe Weber had performed as Weber and Fields, filled vaudeville houses and become rich. Also appearing on the 1910 census was his daughter, Dorothy, then 5. In the late 1920s she broke into songwriting as the lyricist for "I Can't Give You Anything But Love" (1928) and "On the Sunny Side of the Street" (1930). "The Way You Look Tonight," with music by Jerome Kern, won an Academy Award in 1936. By the time of the 1930 census the former private houses were becoming boardinghouses on West End Avenue two of the houses were home to half a dozen people in the performing arts, including a harpist. This was a sure sign that the neighborhood was on the skids. In 1931, the row, specifically 303 West 90th, earned its place in history. That was when 20 year old Francis "Two Gun" Crowley, on the lam after killing a Long Island policeman, was discovered in a two bedroom apartment in the rear. A tremendous gun battle ensued; the police had pistols, rifles, shotguns and machine guns and chopped a hole in the roof to send in tear gas. Two Gun was hiding there with his 16 year old sweetheart, Helen Walsh. Finally he ran out of ammunition and gave up, or pretended to: He hid two revolvers inside his pants, the barrels stuffed into his socks, the handles supported by his garters. Fortunately the police discovered them before he could do any more harm. The Herald Tribune reported that the apartment "resembled a sieve"; the police had used 700 bullets, but hit him only four times. Anticipating death, he wrote a note: "Under my coat is a weary heart, but a kind one a heart that would do nobody any harm. I had nothing else to do, that's why I went around and bumped off cops. It was a new sensation." Two Gun didn't die, but he got the chair. True's unusual row has seen some hard times, especially the corner house, 301 West 90th, which lost its spectacular top around 1950, rebuilt with absolutely bare brick in the 1950s. Some of the houses have been spiffed up; one is owned by an art collector with works ranging from Gino Severini to Jeff Koons. Others seem stuck in the gritty world of 1970s New York, including the corner house, which is divided into 10 units, with a dinged up front door, fluorescent light in the lobby and rusty metal casement windows. Is it possible to reconstruct True's original sloping roof at No. 301? Records at PropertyShark.com indicate the owner is the Abro Realty (or Management) company of Woodmere, N.Y., which declined to return a call and a fax. But, really, what was there to say? A return to the old roof line would essentially eliminate one or perhaps two apartments. It's only a faint possibility, but the Landmarks Preservation Commission would probably approve putting a reconstruction of True's gabled tower on top of the 1950s expansion, which would truly, truly be quite a sight.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Real Estate
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"Have you ever cringed so hard, you could feel your DNA strands unraveling?" Why yes, Will Arnett, many times especially watching "Memory Hole," your tedious survey of pop culture train wrecks on the new streaming platform Quibi. Quibi, which debuted with more than 40 series on Monday, offers content that is designed for phones and comes in pre sliced chunks of under 10 minutes each. (The name stands for Quick Bites.) Admittedly, I started my exploratory binge with one bad choice after another. Whether it was "Gayme Show!," "Singled Out" or Chrissy Teigen's downright painful "Chrissy's Court," everything on my initial watch list felt like one of those guys who, for whatever reason, overcompensate with giant cars, biceps or guns: pitched way too big, as if desperately trying to escape the phone's confines. But things improved once I navigated away from the reality shows and into the "movies in chapters," as Quibi calls its serialized features. And the documentaries included several worthwhile selections, as well. Here's a list of nine good shows from the debut lineup Quibi good, if not necessarily good good that you may want to sample during the platform's 90 day free trial. (After that it's 4.99 per month with ads, 7.99 without.) This documentary series looks at the support system behind musicians: The mixing engineer MixedByAli and the rapper YG explain their relationship, as do the light director Gabe Fraboni and DJ Martin Garrix among others. This won't be news to anybody following the music scene, but the show is good at describing in quick strokes how music stars' careers are made of distinct building blocks. To win 5,000, two cooks must recreate from scratch a dish that has been blown out of a cannon and into their faces. "Dishmantled" is as close as American TV gets to a Japanese game show: preposterous, messy and loud loud loud. Its host, Tituss Burgess, and a rotating cast of judges (including Jane Krakowski and Daniel Levy) look into who came closest to the original dish and crack semi wise. Numbing at first, the show does have a certain nutty charm once you get used to it. This documentary follows the first year of I Promise, the public school for at risk youth that LeBron James created in his hometown, Akron, Ohio, in 2018. The show could easily have devolved into celebrity back patting, but it is insightful and touching. In confronting systemic problems, it also provides a necessary counterbalance to Quibi's patronizing and at times infuriating "Thanks a Million," in which celebrities like Jennifer Lopez, Kevin Hart and Aaron Rodgers each donate 100,000 to initiate a series of benevolent acts. Liam Hemsworth's character in this series, Dodge, is in debt and terminally ill, and his wife is pregnant. Volunteering to raise money by becoming the target in a human hunt suddenly becomes a valid life choice. Yes, this is yet another variation on the enduring "human hunting" concept. Yes, the serialized movie squanders four installments to finally get Dodge on the run. And yes, Hemsworth's acting barely squeaks above bare minimum (though it's fun to watch Christoph Waltz run circles around him in their scenes together). But I kept coming back for more, so mission accomplished. The "RuPaul's Drag Race" winner Sasha Velour provides the soul behind "NightGowns" both the live revue of that name and this series tracking the backstage action. Velour ventures onto the fantastical side of drag, making imaginative use of projections and costumes, and she encourages the other participants, who include Sasha Colby, Vander Von Odd and the drag king K. James as they develop their performances. The series documents the often obscure inspiration behind the acts, like the 1920s drag aerialist Barbette, and the work required to pull them off. But beyond the art, the series also documents community building. This is among the most life affirming shows you could find on any platform. As soon as we meet the cocky, smarmy Jasiel Correia II in this documentary series, we start rooting for his demise. He's just that kind of guy. In 2015, Correia was elected mayor of Fall River, Mass., at the ripe age of 23. A few years later, he was indicted on charges of fraud and extortion. Executive produced by Mark Wahlberg, the show follows Correia's rise and fall like a slo mo car crash. It is both sobering and infuriating. Foodie travelogues are popular because they hit two aspirational sweet spots at once: eating and scenery. Here, the California chef Evan Funke, who looks like a soft spoken extra from "Sons of Anarchy," investigates obscure pasta shapes in various Italian villages. Each episode is dedicated to a different type, with Funke consulting local nonnas. The best part, besides watching pasta being made and then eaten, is how preposterously serious Funke is about it all: "Her pinkies are just on the outside, holding in the edges," he observes, or: "More pressure? It's a little awkward." You don't say. Nominally, the star attraction in this movie is Sophie Turner, who played Sansa on "Game of Thrones." But the real draw is the effortlessly charismatic Corey Hawkins, from the short lived "24: Legacy" spinoff. They are the only two who survive their plane's crash, and they must make their way back to civilization if they're lucky, without resorting to cannibalism. Underneath its glossy exterior, "Survive" is a cheap and efficient B movie, just the way we like 'em. This crime thriller could have felt like reheated leftovers, having been in the works for years. But it's not bad at all. Set in the summer of 1995 cue nostalgia for those happy post grunge days the show revolves around the killing of queen bee Chrissy (Kristine Froseth) and her English teacher slash completely inappropriate lover, Mr. Carpenter (Mark Duplass). At times, "Streetlights" strives for a "Blue Velvet" vibe about a small town's dark underbelly, but it completely lacks that film's perversity. Still, it's worth a look because of its ace ensemble, which also includes Queen Latifah, Tony Hale and Chosen Jacobs.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Television
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FRANKFURT WHETHER or not Apple's secretive car project ever leads to an actual automobile, the technology company has already had a profound effect on the vehicle business. The mere knowledge that Apple has a team of several hundred people working on car designs changed the conversation this week at the Frankfurt International Motor Show. Along with Google, Apple has focused the minds of auto executives on the challenge posed by new technologies that have the potential to disrupt traditional auto industry hierarchies. This year, "connectivity" has supplanted "horsepower" or "torque" as the prevailing buzzword in Frankfurt. The talk is of self driving cars, battery powered cars and information technology designed to link cars with data networks to make driving safer and more efficient. Even though neither Apple nor Google is close to mass producing a vehicle, nervousness about their intentions which remain cloaked in mystery is understandable. As cars increasingly become rolling software platforms, Apple and Google have depths of tech expertise that the carmakers would have trouble duplicating. And those Silicon Valley companies have financial resources that dwarf those of even behemoth companies like Daimler and Volkswagen. Google, which began working on self driving cars in 2009, is valued by the stock market at more than five times the worth of either of those carmakers. Apple is worth eight times as much. That gives them an advantage in a business that requires huge investment in research and development. The main risk for carmakers is probably not so much that an Apple car would destroy Mercedes Benz or BMW the way the iPhone gutted Nokia, the Finnish company that was once the world's largest maker of mobile phones. Rather, the risk is that Apple and Google would turn the carmakers into mere hardware makers and hog the profit. Carmakers say they are determined to resist that danger by maintaining control of the software that is proliferating inside vehicles. "What is important for us is that the brain of the car, the operating system, is not iOS or Android or someone else but it's our brain," Dieter Zetsche, the chief executive of Daimler, the maker of Mercedes vehicles, told reporters at the car show. IOS is Apple's operating system for mobile devices. "We do not plan to become the Foxconn of Apple," Mr. Zetsche said, referring to the Taiwanese owned company that manufactures iPhones in China. Even without competition from Apple and Google, the carmakers are under extreme pressure to change the way they build cars. Regulators in Europe and the United States are demanding that cars emit less carbon dioxide, a culprit in global warming. The only way the automakers can meet increasingly stringent emissions standards is by selling more hybrid vehicles, and eventually all electric cars. Both technologies require more software than gasoline or diesel engines. Technology that links cars to data networks, so called connectivity, also plays a role in reducing emissions and satisfying regulators. Systems that help drivers quickly find a parking space or avoid traffic jams, besides being convenient, help limit unnecessary driving and save fuel. But the new technologies are expensive, and car buyers are not necessarily willing to pay. Electric cars account for a sliver of the market so far. Those pressures have been building for several years, but they have intensified since word leaked out early this year that Apple was studying whether to build a car. "What has been an evolution is going to be a revolution," said Stephan Winkelmann, the chief executive of Lamborghini, the Italian maker of super sports cars that is part of the Volkswagen group. "Starting from sustainability, going over to digitalization, and ending up at autonomous driving these three big things are really something that is a game changer for the automotive industry," Mr. Winkelmann said in an interview. "Everybody has to tackle these challenges." Volkswagen, previously regarded as a laggard in vehicle electrification, said in Frankfurt this week that it would introduce 20 new plug in hybrid or all electric models by 2020, and it introduced a battery powered Porsche concept car. At the company's preshow extravaganza for the media Monday night at a repurposed basketball arena, there was nary a mention of internal combustion. Instead, Martin Winterkorn, the Volkswagen chief executive, spoke of cars that would park themselves and eventually run completely on autopilot. It is not only the European carmakers closely watching Apple and Google. Anthony Foxx, the United States transportation secretary, in Frankfurt for a meeting on Thursday with his counterparts from other G7 nations, said conventional automakers were trying to roll out technology as fast as they can, while some in Silicon Valley were aiming to leap straight to self driving cars. "There is an interesting dialogue between Detroit and Silicon Valley on this," Mr. Foxx said during a meeting with several reporters. "There is probably some tension there, but maybe that is good creative tension." One of the main guessing games at the auto show was whether Apple or Google would ever build a car. Both companies have met with German car companies as well as suppliers. Google executives have said the company will not become a carmaker. "Google is not a car manufacturer and does not intend to become one," Philipp Justus, a Google vice president in Europe, said. But it was not clear yet whether he meant that Google would license self driving technology to traditional carmakers, or use contract manufacturers to build a vehicle. A Google spokesman declined to elaborate. Apple's intentions are murkier. As is customary for Apple, the company has provided no information. But Timothy D. Cook, the Apple chief executive, reportedly visited a factory in Leipzig, Germany, last year where BMW manufactures the i3, an all electric sedan with a carbon fiber body. "We are not quite sure what Apple is prepared to do," Friedrich Eichiner, the chief financial officer of BMW, said during a meeting with a group of reporters in Frankfurt. He said he thought Apple was still trying to understand the implications of getting into the car business. "Financially they are very strong," Mr. Eichiner said. "They could do it." Luca de Meo, head of sales and marketing at Audi, another Volkswagen unit, said it would be out of character for Apple not to build its own vehicle, if it decides to get into the car business. "The Apple style is the ability to do software and hardware at the same time," Mr. de Meo said in an interview. The traditional carmakers' big advantage is that they have already mastered the formidable complexity of manufacturing vehicles that are reliable, comfortable and safe. But it is becoming more feasible for a newcomer to outsource vehicle manufacturing the same way that Apple outsources production of iPhones. And the outsourcer wouldn't necessarily be in China. One company already working with Google is ZF, a large German auto components supplier that in May completed an acquisition of TRW, a company based in Michigan that provides auto electronics such as airbag systems. TRW has been working on sensors and other hardware for self driving cars. Stefan Sommer, the chief executive of ZF, said the company would be able to produce a Google branded car along with two or three other partners supplying components that ZF can't, such as sheet metal body parts. "We would be a partner in that, for sure," Mr. Sommer said in an interview. But he said ZF could not work with Apple under the conditions it now imposes on suppliers. ZF sees itself as an innovator, not just a supplier. In Frankfurt, it displayed a car with electrically powered wheels that allow the car to turn 360 degrees almost on its own axis. ZF could not agree to demands by Apple for exclusive rights to such inventions, Mr. Sommer said. While Apple and Google pose a threat to traditional automakers, the mood in Frankfurt is not gloomy. Not long ago, analysts were predicting that the auto industry faced long term decline. Surveys showed that younger people were less interested than their parents in cars and driving. But if Apple and Google are interested in the car industry, auto executives reason, cars and driving must be cool again.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Automobiles
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What would America be like today if President Trump had acted decisively in January to tackle the coronavirus, as soon as he was briefed on the danger? One opportunity for decisive action came Jan. 28, when his national security adviser, Robert C. O'Brien, told Trump that the coronavirus "will be the biggest national security threat you face in your presidency." Trump absorbed the warning, telling Bob Woodward days later how deadly and contagious the virus could be, according to Woodward's new book, "Rage." Yet the president then misled the public by downplaying the virus, comparing it to the flu and saying that it would "go away." He resisted masks, sidelined experts, held large rallies, denounced lockdowns and failed to get tests and protective equipment ready and here we are, with Americans constituting 4 percent of the world's population and 22 percent of Covid 19 deaths. Suppose Trump in January or even in February had warned the public of the dangers, had ensured that accurate tests were widely distributed (Sierra Leone had tests available before the United States) and had built up a robust system of contact tracing (Congo has better contact tracing than the United States). Suppose he had ramped up production of masks and empowered the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to lead the pandemic response, instead of marginalizing its experts. Suppose he had tried as relentlessly to battle the virus as he has to build his wall? If testing and contact tracing had been done right, then we would have known where hot spots were and large scale lockdowns and layoffs might have been unnecessary. The United States would still have made mistakes. We focused too much on ventilators and not enough on other things that might have been more useful, like face masks, blood thinners and high flow nasal cannulas. Because of mask shortages, health messaging about their importance was bungled. Governors and mayors dithered, and nursing homes weren't adequately protected. But many of our peer countries did better than we did not because they got everything right but because they got some things right and then learned from mistakes. Because of Covid 19, Trump called himself a wartime president, but he didn't heed his generals and never ordered ammunition. In World War II, a Ford plant was configured to turn out one new B 24 bomber every hour, yet today we display none of that urgency even though Americans are dying from the virus at a faster pace than they fell in World War II. It wasn't as if the United States was unready. A 324 page study in October 2019 found that America was the best prepared country in the world for a pandemic but it didn't imagine that the United States would fumble testing, data collection, contact tracing, communications and just about every other facet of managing a novel virus. "The administration made every single mistake you could possibly make," Larry Brilliant, an epidemiologist who early in his career helped eradicate smallpox, told me. "We could have beaten it back," Brilliant said. "We could have prevented the horror story we have now." Jeffrey Shaman, a public health expert at Columbia University, calculated that if each county in the United States had acted just two weeks earlier to order lockdowns or other control measures, then more than 90 percent of Covid 19 deaths could have been avoided through early May. Shaman told me that his team didn't model even earlier interventions, in January or February, but that he believes it would have been plausible for the United States to enjoy the Covid 19 mortality rate of South Korea. That would mean almost a 99 percent reduction in mortality. Linsey Marr, an expert on disease transmission at Virginia Tech, isn't sure that we could have achieved South Korean or (somewhat higher) Japanese levels of mortality, because both of those countries have more of a tradition of mask wearing. But she does believe that we could have perhaps achieved German levels (meaning an 80 percent reduction in deaths). "We would have saved a lot of lives," she said. "Kids would be going back to school." Natalie Dean, an expert in infectious diseases at the University of Florida, said she is troubled by a public fatigue, a desensitization to a death toll that has continued to pile up recently at the rate of about 1,000 a day. Trump still hasn't embraced the basic step public health officials sought more than a century ago during the 1918 pandemic of encouraging mask wearing. Instead, he seems to have surrendered to the virus at least until a vaccine is available while encouraging delusions among his supporters. "There's no Covid," an unmasked man attending a Trump rally the other day told CNN. "It's a fake pandemic." When a pandemic response has become so politicized, when leadership is so absent, when health messaging is so muddled, when science is so marginalized, it's easier to understand how the best prepared country in the world for a pandemic could have lost 190,000 citizens to the virus. 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.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Opinion
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The Food and Drug Administration on Thursday approved a new test for coronavirus antibodies, the first for use in the United States. Currently available tests are designed to find fragments of viral genes indicating an ongoing infection. Doctors swab the nose and throat, and amplify any genetic material from the virus found there. The new test, by contrast, looks for protective antibodies in a finger prick of blood. It tells doctors whether a patient has ever been exposed to the virus and now may have some immunity. That is important for several reasons. People with immunity might be able to venture safely from their homes and help shore up the work force. It may be particularly important for doctors and nurses to know whether they have antibodies.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Health
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SAN FRANCISCO Faced with unknown costs related to two huge data breaches, Yahoo and Verizon Communications announced Tuesday that they had agreed to shave 350 million from the price that Verizon would pay to buy Yahoo's core internet businesses. The two companies said they would also share liabilities related to the breaches, which occurred in 2013 and 2014 but were only disclosed last year after the deal was announced. The revised agreement, now valued at 4.48 billion, paves the way for the deal to proceed to a shareholder vote as early as April, although securities regulators are still assessing how Yahoo disclosed information about the breaches to investors. Yahoo, which is winding down its own investigation of the breaches, will share more details about the incidents and their impact in the next few weeks when it makes required regulatory filings. Yahoo reiterated on Tuesday that it still expected the deal, originally struck last July, to close by the end of June. The outlines of the new agreement were reported last week.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Technology
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Because it's so consistently cold, Antarctica is challenging to study, and it's been difficult to predict patterns of biodiversity. But Dr. Bokhorst and his colleagues managed to find a direct connection between areas of biodiversity filled with lichens, mosses, microscopic animals and small creatures and the nitrogen left behind when penguins and elephant seals defecate. The larger the penguin colony, the further its footprint spread, the study showed. The team looked at nitrogen because its various isotopes made it relatively easy to trace it from the sea to mosses and lichen that grow on land, and to the animals that feed on them. The penguins and elephant seals were the conduits ferrying that nitrogen from water to land, the study showed. "We know that nutrient content of your food has a big impact on abundance and diversity of consumers, but for whatever reasons, no one's looked at that in such a cold place as the Antarctic," Dr. Bokhorst said. The continent, he said, is the "ideal experimental lab," for studying how nutrients relate to an ecosystem's biodiversity because its food web is relatively simple. In a more habitable place, there are so many interacting factors that it's often difficult to figure out what's driving what whether predation or more nutrients are leading to changes, for instance, Dr. Bokhorst said. In the new study, it was not hard to trace the path of the nitrogen from penguin and elephant seal to lichen and moss and then to mites and worms. Dr. Bokhorst is now studying invasive species in the Arctic and Antarctic, mostly spread, he said, by the boots of tourists hoping to catch a glimpse of penguins. Waste from penguin colonies then nourishes those invasive species, which consist mostly of grasses. "These animals could be like invasion engineers," allowing the grasses to spread further, Dr. Bokhorst said.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Science
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Many American companies saw their exemptions from President Trump's China tariffs expire at midnight on Thursday. WASHINGTON American companies will have to pay higher taxes on some of the products they import from China, as the tariff exclusions that had shielded many businesses from President Trump's trade war expired at midnight on Thursday. Mr. Trump began placing tariffs on more than 360 billion of Chinese goods in 2018, prompting thousands of companies to ask the administration for temporary waivers excluding them from the levies. Companies that met certain requirements were given a pass on paying the taxes, which range from 7.5 percent to 25 percent. Those included firms that import electric motors, microscopes, salad spinners, thermostats, breast pumps, ball bearings, fork lifts and other products. But the bulk of those exclusions, which could amount to billions in revenue for businesses based in the United States, were set to automatically expire at midnight on Thursday. After that, many companies have to again pay a tax to the government to import a variety of goods from China, including textiles, industrial components and other assorted products. The lack of clarity from the Trump administration about whether it would extend the exclusions left many companies in limbo. The United States had announced some extensions on Dec. 23, the trade representative said that it would extend exclusions until March 31 for a small category of medical care products, including hand sanitizer, masks and medical devices, to help with the battle against the coronavirus pandemic. But Ben Bidwell, the director of U.S. customs at the freight forwarder C.H. Robinson, who has been helping clients apply for exclusions, said that "the large majority" of those that had been granted would expire at the end of the year, leaving importers with either an additional 7.5 percent or 25 percent tariff, depending on their product. The United States trade representative had been "rather silent about any type of extension," Mr. Bidwell said. Lawmakers lobbied the administration to extend the waivers. On Dec. 11, more than 70 members of Congress, including Representative Jackie Walorski, a Republican from Indiana, and Ron Kind, a Democrat from Wisconsin, sent a letter urging Robert E. Lighthizer, the United States trade representative, to extend all of the active exclusions to help businesses that have been hurt by the pandemic. "Our economy remains in a fragile state due to the ongoing Covid 19 pandemic," the letter states. "Extending these exclusions will provide needed certainty for employers and help save jobs." Mr. Trump has wielded tariffs to protect some American industries from foreign competition and encourage others to move their supply chains from China. The tariffs have partly accomplished those goals, though most companies have moved operations to other low cost countries like Vietnam or Mexico, rather than the United States. 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. But most economists say those gains have come at a high price, and hurt the American manufacturing sector over all by greatly increasing the cost of imported components and making U.S. manufacturers less competitive with other companies abroad. Some companies say the exclusions process has been particularly unfair. While large companies have invested huge sums in hiring Washington law firms to lobby the administration and apply for exemptions, some small companies say they have lacked the resources to apply for and win exclusions. "Allowing these exclusions to expire especially because the facts supporting their original determination remain unchanged shows how arbitrary and capricious this process has been," said Stephen Lamar, the chief executive of the American Apparel Footwear Association, which represents makers of shoes and clothing. "These companies could ill afford a tax on their imported inputs and U.S. workers when they originally applied for these exclusions and they certainly can't afford one now," he added. Two other long running programs that have exempted imported products from tariffs also expired on Thursday. The Miscellaneous Tariff Bill, which temporarily suspends tariffs on some imported goods, including inputs used by American manufacturers, and the Generalized System of Preferences, which provides thousands of products from developing countries duty free access to the U.S. market, expired at the end of the year. There has been little momentum in Congress to resurrect the programs, as popular opinion has gradually turned against initiatives that offer foreign companies cheaper access to the American market as a way to promote freer trade.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Economy
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A DOZEN or so new victims file into Joseph Peiffer's law offices each month. There was the 51 year old woman who worked at BellSouth, he recounted, who was told to invest her retirement money into nontradable real estate securities. He has also worked with retirees who were advised to put their I.R.A. savings into pricey variable annuities or other illiquid investments, when other options would have been far more appropriate. "It is really on the broker to do the right thing, because the typical investor doesn't know enough to know if the broker and his firm have the investor's interest at heart," said Mr. Peiffer, a consumer lawyer in New Orleans who represents investors with cases against banks and brokerage firms. Many brokers already do the right thing for their customers. But Mr. Peiffer said a new rule by the Labor Department that had been in development for five years would go a long way to help protect average investors from those who don't. The proposal would require more financial professionals, including brokers, to put their customers' interests ahead of their own when they are providing advice on how to invest in tax advantaged retirement accounts, such as individual retirement accounts and 401(k) type plans. "It should prevent the worst abuses that I have seen and, even if that means less cases, that'd be great as far as I'm concerned," he said. "I've seen too many proud 65 year old men break down in my office because they have to move in with their children." Under current standards, brokers only have to recommend suitable investments, a requirement that permits them, for example, to recommend a more expensive fund that pays a higher commission even when an identically performing, cheaper fund would have been the better choice. But many in the brokerage and insurance industries, where conflicts of interest are often embedded in the way they do business, are upset over the plan. Some stakeholders are trying to slow the rule making process, while others are trying to stop it with legislation. The latest round of criticism was on display last week, when industry members testified before congressional subcommittees, and last month, during a four day public hearing held by the Labor Department. "The people who are rattling the sabers the loudest tend to get the most attention," Thomas E. Perez, the secretary of labor, said in an interview. "But we have heard more frequently from industry stakeholders who understand and agree this is the wave of the future an enforceable best interest commitment." Mr. Perez vowed to introduce the rule, most likely in the first half of next year. People with retirement accounts, however, probably won't see its full benefits until many months later because it will be slowly phased in. Here's how the rule could change things: Financial professionals working with retirement accounts would need to act in their customers' best interest, and they would not be allowed to accept compensation or payments that create a conflict unless they qualify for an exemption that ensures the customer is protected. Brokers will still be allowed to charge commissions and engage in a practice known as revenue sharing, where, for instance, a mutual fund company may share a slice of its revenue with the brokerage firm selling the fund. Companies that pay more may get a spot on the firm's list of recommended funds. But to accept that kind of compensation, brokers and others will be required to enter a contract with clients stating that they are putting the customer's interests ahead of their own. They must also disclose any conflicts, try to mitigate them and maintain a website detailing how they are paid. They must also charge "reasonable" compensation and detail investors' total costs in dollars. "The rule's biggest strength is that it fundamentally changes the way that retirement advisers will view their relationships with clients," said Arthur Laby, a professor at Rutgers School of Law."It sends a strong message that any behavior short of a fiduciary standard of conduct is unacceptable." The contract should provide individuals with more protections and better enable them to hold brokers accountable. Most of these disputes would be resolved in arbitration, not the courts, because nearly all investment firms require investors to settle issues that way. That said, customers cannot be required to sign away their rights to a class action suit. The concept isn't entirely new. Investment advisers, who generally register with the S.E.C. or a state securities regulator, already are required to put their client's interests first. They won't be required to use the contract in most instances, because many charge transparent fees for their advice and their compensation is not tied to the recommendation of any products. But even these advisers will have heighted obligations when handling retirement money. Brokerage and insurance industry players have many issues with the so called best interest contract, including when it should be presented when meeting with prospective customers. Secretary Perez and his team members say they are taking those comments under consideration. Juli McNeely, president of the National Association of Insurance and Financial Advisors, whose members include insurance agents and brokers, runs a financial services firm in Spencer, Wis., where the average customer has about 71,000. She said she believed that the proposal was well intentioned, but that the rules appeared overly burdensome. "The cost of compliance and liability we are facing would outweigh the revenue we get from small accounts," she said. But consumer advocates, academics and others challenge the broad brush criticisms the industry continues to throw up, many of them laid out in the more than 2,700 comment letters filed on the issue. The Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association and several other trade groups, for instance, have complained that the rule is simply "unworkable." More regulations will unleash more litigation, the groups say. "You have this public message from the industry, 'Oh, we are all for a best interest standard,'" said Barbara Roper, director of investor protection at the Consumer Federation of America. "But then when you read what it is they are advocating, they are proposing changes that go to the heart of the very rule." Receiving conflicted advice can cost investors tens of thousands of dollars, if not more, over the course of their careers and retirement. It shaves about 1 percentage point a year from investors' returns, or about 17 billion in total, according to Labor Department calculations. Many Republicans in Congress have vowed to block the Labor Department, but the proposal is strongly supported by President Obama, who has promised to veto any stand alone legislation that would try to kill the rule. That hasn't stopped Representative Ann Wagner from trying. Ms. Wagner, a Republican from Missouri, where many brokerage firms opposing the rule are based, recently revived a bill passed by the House in 2013, which would require the Securities and Exchange Commission to pass a rule first. The commission hasn't decided whether it will do that. "In my view, the argument to delay, in some cases, is based on a hope that the S.E.C. will not act, or will adopt a rule that will weaken the applicable fiduciary standard," Professor Laby said in his testimony before the Labor Department last month. Alternatively, a rider could be attached to a spending bill that states the Labor Department is not permitted to spend any part of its budget on the rule. That could be more difficult for the president to veto, advocates say, if the possibility of a government shutdown were looming. "That is a threat we are watching very closely," said Marilyn Mohrman Gillis, managing director of public policy for the Certified Financial Planner Board of Standards. But a more likely course of action may be a lawsuit, which means it could be left to the courts to decide. "We know the opposition has already signaled they plan to file a lawsuit prohibiting the implementation of the rule on legal grounds, specifically the authority of the Department of Labor," Ms. Mohrman Gillis added. For retirees like Deborah DePasquale, 64, the rules can't come fast enough. After working with a broker for four years, she discovered that she and her spouse, Mary Guhin, were being charged what they said were exorbitant commissions, among other abusive practices. "If average people like me were savvy enough to understand everything financial, we wouldn't need to depend on brokers," Ms. DePasquale said. "I should be able to trust them to act in my best interest and not against me."
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Your Money
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SEOUL The head of the CJ Group, a large conglomerate in South Korea, was arrested on charges of embezzlement and tax evasion as the country's Parliament on Tuesday enacted a series of laws aimed at protecting smaller businesses from the corporations that have dominated the economy for decades. Lee Jay hyun, the CJ Group chairman, was locked up shortly before midnight Monday, accused of stashing hundreds of millions of dollars under other people's names, dodging 70 billion won ( 61 million) in taxes and misappropriating 100 billion won in company money. Mr. Lee, 53, a grandson of Lee Byung chull, the founder of the Samsung empire, was the first tycoon to be arrested on corruption charges since President Park Geun hye took office in February amid mounting public calls for "economic democratization." In her inaugural speech, Ms. Park took note of public sentiment, vowing to deal sternly with tycoons involved in white collar crimes and the conglomerates' expansion at the cost of smaller businesses. Although all the rival parties agreed during the presidential campaign last December to enact several bills that would act as checks on the conglomerates' power, the writing of the legislation has proved contentious. South Korea's economic growth has depended heavily on exports and expansion led by a small group of family owned conglomerates like CJ, Hyundai and Samsung. The conglomerates, known as chaebol, have vigorously lobbied the National Assembly in recent months, insisting that overly strict restrictions would hurt their competitiveness and profitability and damage the South Korean economy in general, an argument supported by many lawmakers affiliated with Ms. Park's conservative governing party. Ms. Park recently said that any reform bills should not hurt the chaebols' potential for leading economic growth as the economy slowed, and the political opposition accused her of retreating from her campaign promises. After months of bickering, the competing parties agreed on several pieces of legislation Tuesday. Under one new law, subsidiaries of a chaebol partly owned by its chairman's family would have a harder time monopolizing supply orders from the rest of the business empire. Amid widespread discontent over the widening gap between rich and poor, South Koreans have fumed at the way the tycoons helped their children inherit easy fortunes. Companies sold shares to the chairmen's children at unrealistically low prices or showered lucrative business orders on affiliates owned by the chairmen or their families without conducting competitive bidding. But even before that bill was put to a vote, critics said political bargaining had turned it into a "paper tiger" with too many loopholes and exceptions. "This is cheating the people in the name of economic democratization," Solidarity for Economic Reform, a civic watchdog on chaebol, said in a news release. Another law passed on Tuesday protects the rights of small business owners who operate convenience stores under a franchise agreement with chaebols. A third law reduced the maximum percentage of a bank a chaebol is allowed to own to 4 percent, from 9 percent. By trying to curb the power of chaebols, Ms. Park is struggling with her father's legacy. Her father, Park Chung hee, who ruled South Korea from 1961 to 1979 as it moved from a desperately poor country toward becoming an economic power, nurtured a handful of family controlled businesses with easy credit, subsidies, tax benefits and protection from foreign competitors. Those companies, including Samsung and Hyundai, have grown into globally recognized conglomerates that have been credited with leading South Korea's economic growth, exporting goods as diverse as computer chips, cellphones, cars and ships. Open or closed on Thanksgiving? Here are stores' plans for Thursday and Friday. The high cost of gas is forcing families to cut back on activities and essentials. Clearview AI does well in another round of facial recognition accuracy tests. But at home, the corporate empires are also seen as predators, as their dominance in increasingly diverse swaths of the economy has come at the expense of smaller businesses. For example, some run rapidly expanding nationwide chains of hypermarkets, supermarkets and 24 hour convenience stores that have squeezed out traditional markets and mom and pop stores. The corporate behemoths have also faced repeated accusations of bribery, poor corporate governance and shady business deals, often to help the families of their chairmen accumulate wealth. Many chaebol chairmen have been convicted of white collar crimes, but few have spent more than a few months behind bars, as their sentences were quickly suspended by judges. Mr. Lee was the second major tycoon to be arrested since the election. In January, Chey Tae won, the head of SK, one of the largest South Korean conglomerates and owner of the largest mobile carrier and the biggest oil refiner in the country, was arrested and sentenced to four years in prison for embezzlement. Prosecutors said Mr. Lee was a case in point for chaebol excess. On Tuesday, they summoned him from his cell for questioning. They were reportedly investigating the details of what they suspected was secret hoarding of funds and whether he used that money to manipulate stock prices of CJ subsidiaries. Prosecutors said they had found hundreds of millions of dollars Mr. Lee kept in bank accounts opened under the names of acquaintances and were investigating whether the money was cash he had inherited from his father and had hidden from the tax authorities or embezzled from his companies, the South Korean media reported, citing prosecution sources. "I am sorry for causing trouble for the people," Mr. Lee said Monday night, shortly before he was taken to jail.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Global Business
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When flamenco comes to large theaters, it sometimes gets carried away, with splashy theatrical concepts masking the essence of music and dance. "Generations of Gypsy Flamenco," an event at Town Hall, promises the opposite: flamenco for its own sake, danced by three revered practitioners whose roots in the form run deep. Concha Vargas, Pepe Torres and the up and coming Gema Moneo, all from the southern Spanish region of Andalusia, belong to different branches of flamenco's intricate family tree. Their distinctive styles collide in an evening driven more by improvisation than by choreographed routines. Ms. Vargas brings the blustery passion, Mr. Torres the rapid fire footwork, Ms. Moneo the effortless elegance, though they all possess some of each. A strong musical cohort joins them: the guitarists El Perla and Jose Galvez; the percussionist Luis de la Tota; and the singers Jose Valencia and Luis Moneo, with a special guest vocalist, Esperanza Fernandez. (8 p.m., Friday, thetownhall.org.)
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Dance
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The scientists and public health officials who are leading the federal government's response to the coronavirus pandemic on Tuesday painted a sobering picture of a country ill prepared to reopen and contain the spread of the virus in the coming months. At a Senate hearing, the officials cautioned that a vaccine would almost certainly not come in time to protect students for the return to school in the fall, that a recently authorized treatment was not a game changing advance and that states must rebuild their depleted public health systems by hiring enough people before they could effectively track the spread of the virus and contain it. The nation's top infectious disease expert, Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, warned that if parts of the country reopen too quickly, "there is a real risk that you will trigger an outbreak that you may not be able to control, which, in fact, paradoxically, will set you back." Dr. Fauci said that approach would lead not only to "some suffering and death that could be avoided but could even set you back on the road to try to get economic recovery, because it would almost turn the clock back rather than going forward." The discourse at the hearing, before the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, contrasted with the victorious tone that President Trump has taken in news conferences, when he has frequently exaggerated the adequacy of the country's testing and has emphasized the imminent need for the country to reopen. Instead, Republican and Democratic senators alike spent hours seeking detailed information from the four experts, who, in addition to Dr. Fauci, included the heads of both the Food and Drug Administration and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the top federal official overseeing testing. The topics included whether children should be included in clinical trials for vaccines, how often nursing homes should be tested, the availability of dental care and the consequences of keeping children out of school for too long. He said the C.D.C. had retrained 500 people nationwide to help build up the contact tracing capacity that states would need to prepare for the fall and winter. He also made several comments that reflected his dissatisfaction with the nation's fragmented public health network, and his agency's outdated system of tracking and analyzing critical data from the states. "There's an archaic system, a nonintegrated public health system," Dr. Redfield said. "This nation needs modern, highly capable data analytics." Adm. Brett P. Giroir, the assistant secretary of health who is overseeing the government's testing response, testified that the administration was planning to send 12.9 million testing swabs to states over the next four weeks, and that by September the country would have the ability to conduct 40 to 50 million tests per month. He also pointed to new technologies, such as a recently approved antigen test, that could further increase the capacity. The volume of testing in the United States has been steadily increasing, with nearly 400,000 new tests processed on Monday, a daily record, according to the Covid Tracking Project. But that is still not at the level that many public health experts say will be needed to safely reopen society. Some experts have said that millions of people per day must be tested in order to quickly identify hot spots and get the virus under control. That would be far more than the number Admiral Giroir was promising. Shipping millions of swabs to states does not guarantee that they will immediately begin to scale up testing. In recent weeks, the availability of supplies has eased and many testing sites are no longer experiencing shortages, but other bottlenecks have limited the number of tests that can be done, including a lack of workers to take samples from patients and a dearth of protective equipment to keep the workers safe. On Monday, a coalition of public health organizations sent a letter to Congress asking for at least 7.6 billion to increase the contact tracing work force in the United States. The organizations say they need at least 100,000 additional contact tracers, 10,000 supervisors and 1,600 epidemiologists to rapidly build contact tracing capacity in response to the coronavirus pandemic. During the hearing, Dr. Redfield said a national surveillance system for the virus was being developed with a special focus on nursing homes where a third of the nation's deaths from the coronavirus have taken place. Facilities would have to report all infections in both residents and staff members to public health authorities, and notify residents' family members of cases, he said, but he was uncertain about the timing of carrying out such guidelines. The closing of schools and universities has represented one of the biggest upheavals in the outbreak. It is not clear what role children and young people play in the spread of the coronavirus, yet, at the same time, keeping schools closed prevents their parents from returning to work, a major impediment to economic recovery. Virginia's new lieutenant governor elect says she won't force vaccines. "If we keep kids out of school for another year, what's going to happen is the poor and underprivileged kids who don't have a parent that's able to teach them at home will not get to learn for a full year," said Senator Rand Paul, Republican of Kentucky, who also noted that children and young people were dying at a far lower rate than older people. Dr. Fauci pushed back, however, saying that the virus's effect on children was still not well understood. "We really better be very careful, particularly when it comes to children, because the more and more we learn, we're seeing things about what this virus can do that we didn't see from the studies in China or in Europe," he said. He pointed to recent cases of children who tested positive for the virus and developed a serious inflammatory syndrome similar to a rare condition known as Kawasaki disease. Dr. Fauci and others said the answer might be that schools would reopen differently throughout the country, depending on the state of the local outbreak. "It is not going to be universally homogeneous," he said. Other questions were raised about how students would be tested once schools reopened, especially at colleges and universities. Admiral Giroir, the assistant secretary of health, said college students could be tested using rapid tests that are expected to be more widely available in the fall. "It's certainly possible to test all of the students," he said, adding that there could be a surveillance plan to test students at different times to identify the virus if it started to spread. He also pointed to experimental technologies, such as testing wastewater for the coronavirus, to see if the virus was circulating in the population. Scientists hope to know by late fall or early winter whether they have at least one possible effective vaccine, Dr. Fauci told the senators. Several experimental vaccines are already being tested in humans, including one that Dr. Fauci said his institute was heavily involved in, made by the company Moderna. But, Dr. Fauci cautioned, "even at the top speed we're going, we don't see a vaccine playing in the ability of individuals to get to school this term." Although Dr. Fauci said he was "cautiously optimistic" that an effective vaccine would be developed, he warned there was no guarantee that it would happen. "You can have everything you think that's in place, and you don't induce the kind of immune response that turns out to be protective and durably protective," he said. Another concern is "disease enhancement," the possibility that a vaccine may induce an immune response that will make the illness worse instead of protecting people from the virus. "We want to make sure that doesn't happen," Dr. Fauci said, adding, "I still feel cautiously optimistic that we will have a candidate that will give some degree of efficacy, hopefully a percentage enough that will induce the kind of herd immunity that would give protection to the population as a whole." Dr. Stephen Hahn, commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration, said his agency would evaluate about 10 vaccine candidates in early studies, and then select four or five to progress into larger studies in humans. He said the F.D.A. would also make sure that there were enough vials, needles, syringes and other products needed to administer a vaccine. "We've been leaning in on the supply chain to ensure that when a vaccine is ready to go, we will have the necessary supplies to actually administer it and operationalize the vaccination," Dr. Hahn said. Asked by Senator Patty Murray, Democrat of Washington, what steps had been taken to make sure clinical trials for treatments and vaccines account for racial and ethnic disparities, Dr. Fauci replied that the clinical trials were designed with sites chosen to include both minority populations and populations at high risk. Senator Bernie Sanders, independent of Vermont, pressed the officials to guarantee that if a vaccine becomes available, it will be available free to everyone, regardless of insurance status or ability to pay. Dr. Hahn said he shared that concern, but when Mr. Sanders asked if that meant he would make sure everyone had access, Dr. Hahn replied, "Sir, the payment of vaccines is not a responsibility of the F.D.A., but I'm glad to take this back to the task force." Mr. Sanders then addressed the admiral, asking him: "Mr. Giroir, do you think we should make that vaccine, when hopefully it is created, available to all regardless of income? Or do you think that poor people, working people, should be last in line for the vaccine?" Admiral Giroir agreed that everyone should be able to get a vaccine, but added that he did not control whether that was the case. "I will certainly advocate that everyone is able to receive the vaccine regardless of income or any other circumstance," he said. Mr. Paul, who is also a physician, cited several studies suggesting that recovered coronavirus patients have some form of immunity, and said that the findings were not being reported by the news media. In fact, the findings have been covered widely by The New York Times and other news outlets. Governments worldwide have seized on the findings to suggest that widespread use of antibody testing may be the key to reopening economies. The few antibody surveys available suggest that fewer than 5 percent of Americans have been exposed to the virus and may have antibodies, except in places like New York City and the Bay Area in California. That means that a vast majority of Americans are still vulnerable to the virus. The World Health Organization recently reminded government officials that scientists still did not know how strong immunity might be in recovered patients, or how long it could last. Mr. Paul cited Sweden, which has generally allowed businesses to stay open, as a model for coping with the pandemic. But the jury is still out: The coronavirus death rate in Sweden is actually higher than that in the United States.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Health
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'THE HIP HOP NUTCRACKER' at the New Jersey Performing Arts Center (Dec. 17, 3 p.m.). Like a Shakespeare play, the ubiquitous "Nutcracker" has spawned countless versions that relocate the tale to different eras, absorbing various musical and aesthetic styles. In "The Hip Hop Nutcracker," the kingdom of the sweets is a nightclub in New York, circa 1984, where the protagonist, Maria Clara, witnesses the meet cute of her parents. The concept allows for a broad sampling of hip hop dance from its birth to contemporary times, performed by a stellar cast of accomplished dancers and directed by Jennifer Weber, founder of the theatrical hip hop troupe Decadancetheatre. (2:00 including intermission) 888 466 5722, njpac.org LESLIE CUYJET AND LELA AISHA JONES at Gibney Dance: Agnes Varis Performing Arts Center (Dec. 16 17, 8 p.m.). In Gibney Dance's Double Plus series, an established choreographer selects two intriguing, like minded artists for a split bill program. For this round, the choreographer Cynthia Oliver presents Leslie Cuyjet and Lela Aisha Jones. In "Alike," Ms. Cuyjet considers her personal history by "tracing memories held within the body." In "Plight Release the Diasporic Body: Jesus Egun," the Philadelphia based Ms. Jones, whose artistic practice is informed by her social activism, pulls from theology, house dance and Yoruba traditions to meditate on spirituality from multiple angles. (1:00) 646 837 6809, gibneydance.org
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Dance
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When did dance audiences last see and hear a composer perform his own works with the revelatory mastery shown by Thomas Ades? Because the quadruple bill of his works "Thomas Ades: Concentric Paths Movements in Music" came over the weekend to New York City Center, the mind flew to Stravinsky. It was at that same theater that Stravinsky conducted the historic world premiere of his "Orpheus" (1948) and other ballets of his. Mr. Ades's music abounds in challenging constructions that make it (as Stravinsky's can still be) hard on the unaccustomed ear. In Ades's music, different parts of the orchestra often play in drastically dissimilar phrases and speeds. His performing, however, has a communicative force that immediately renders his scores exciting, fascinating, persuasive, sensuous. The Ades program an exceptional venture visited New York as part of the White Light Festival, from the Sadler's Wells theater in London, where it was performed in 2014. Each of four Ades scores was accompanied by a dance by a different choreographer. The title "Concentric Paths" is the subtitle of Mr. Ades's 2005 Violin Concerto, which here is the score for Wayne McGregor's "Outlier" (2010), originally made for New York City Ballet. (That company's women danced it on point. Here it was danced by the McGregor company Random Dance, whose women don't; the difference, however, is unimportant.) Even though I admired the violin concerto in those earlier City Ballet performances, Mr. Ades's effect on Friday he conducted the Orchestra of St. Luke's, with Thomas Gould playing solo violin beautifully was transformative: more romantic, more modernist, more intense. That opened the program. It was followed by Karole Armitage's "Life Story" (1999) (set to Mr. Ades's cabaret style cantata of that name, which employs a 1955 poem by Tennessee Williams); Alexander Whitley's "The Grit in the Oyster" (using Mr. Ades's 2001 piano quintet); and finally, Crystal Pite's "Polaris" (taking its name from Mr. Ades's 2010 music). Both "The Grit in the Oyster" and "Polaris," new in 2014, were Sadler's Wells commissions; on Friday, Ms. Armitage, Mr. Whitley and Ms. Pite joined the dancers onstage after their respective works. The program was a superb tribute to Mr. Ades's importance as a composer. Surely these four scores prove that far better than his opera "The Tempest" (2004), which is crippled by Meredith Oakes's foolish libretto. Yet do they suit dance? My answer is a tentative yes. They call, however, for choreographic musicality of a complexity far beyond anything shown in these four dances. The audience gave ovations to "Polaris" and Ms. Pite; anyone can see why. Beginning with a long sequence performed without music, this Canadian choreographer used massed forces (over 60 dancers, dressed in uniform black) and geometric formations that suggested now spiders, now constellations. We saw both running and interrupted running, with rushes suddenly stopping in place; we saw sculptural group formations that changed sequentially, as if it were movement passing along rows of dominoes. In some groupings the many performers presented their faces emphatically one way or another an Expressionistic effect as if trying to read a sign in the sky or asking the audience a question. Another recurrent image was that of the arms aiming downward and vibrating, like quivering pincers. This was strong if limited stuff. (The wave device was dreadfully overdone.) But, as the silent start led you to guess, it was seldom well coordinated with Mr. Ades's music. This is intensely sensuous music. Its tranquil opening, for piano and harps, is ravishing in ways wholly at odds with Ms. Pite's tense patterns. Later, with a brilliant obsessiveness that sometimes recalled Beethoven, it developed urgent two note patterns (as had the piano quintet earlier in the evening). The more you listened, the less you saw reflected in the choreography. Still, the Pite dance was, relatively, the evening's choreographic highlight. In "Life Story," Anna Dennis (soprano) and Mr. Ades (piano) completely upstaged Ms. Armitage's dull mock Balanchine pas de deux, which was danced none too impressively by Ruka Hatua Saar and Emily Wagner. The dramatic suspense of Ms. Dennis's diction (calmly delivered over a very wide vocal span) and the alert drama of Mr. Ades's playing became the sole events. "The Grit in the Oyster," Mr. Whitley's politely tepid dance trio, was no match for the marvelous difficulty of Mr. Ades's writing in which piano and strings are often on vividly different wavelengths, and in which the four string instruments alone maintain a wonderful density of interplay beyond anything in these dances. If only Mr. McGregor were gifted at the choreographer's central task of sustaining movement for dancers, "Outlier" would be an impressive piece of dance theater. The various color schemes along the backdrop (by Mr. McGregor and Lucy Carter), lighting schemes (by Ms. Carter) and the general format of who dances when with whom are smartly picturesque (though seldom with any serious connection to the music's dynamics or texture). A long quartet for one woman and three men changed its internal structure again and again. This would have been impressive if only the dance consisted of much more than showy gimmickry. The use of hyperextension and head isolations soon palled. The Random dancers, poor substitutes for the City Ballet originals, seemed to be compensating with exaggeratedly Balanchine type mannerisms (in particular, over flourished hands). Some of Mr. Ades's writing features a multiplicity of action that recalls some of the more intricate ensembles of Merce Cunningham. I doubt that even the most sophisticated and musical of today's choreographers could equal it but I'd certainly like to see them try. Music like this might shake the witty Mark Morris, for example, out of his penchant for excessive neatness. There is a theatricality in Mr. Ades's music that calls for stage action. In this program, that theatricality was only to be seen in the movements of the composer and his fellow musicians.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Dance
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Injuries have some N.B.A. playoff teams' key players like Houston's Russell Westbrook, center cheering from the sidelines instead of playing in games. Want more basketball in your inbox? Sign up for Marc Stein's weekly N.B.A. newsletter here. LAKE BUENA VISTA, Fla. Joel Embiid of the Philadelphia 76ers was in one of his playful and provocative moods when we crossed paths for the first time at the N.B.A. bubble. As he walked to the team bus after a narrow Sixers win over the San Antonio Spurs, Embiid responded to a question about the legitimacy of winning a championship in such unusual circumstances no fans, no travel and 22 teams at a single site with a typical Embiid line. "If we win it, it might be the toughest based on the conditions, and we intend to do our best to do so," Embiid said. "If we don't win it, then to me this would be a glorified summer league." That was Aug. 3. Two days later, Ben Simmons abruptly limped off the floor in a game against Washington with a partial dislocation of his left kneecap. Simmons underwent surgery the following week, and the vibe around the 76ers has since declined to downright dour. Losing Simmons weakened the Sixers significantly before a first round playoff matchup with Boston in which the Celtics jumped out to a 2 0 lead and Philadelphia is hardly suffering alone. Injuries at the N.B.A. bubble, if not all as severe as what happened to Embiid's fellow All Star, have been frequent enough to put a wider damper on the playoffs. There have been at least five season ending injuries during the restart at Walt Disney World over the past six weeks, in addition to the likely end of Simmons's season: Portland's Zach Collins (ankle), Orlando's Jonathan Isaac (knee), Sacramento's Marvin Bagley (foot) and the Memphis duo of Jaren Jackson Jr. (knee) and Justise Winslow (hip). That unfortunate club will grow if Domantas Sabonis, the Indiana Pacers' All Star forward, is unable to return from a case of plantar fasciitis in his left foot. Then on Thursday, Portland's Damian Lillard dislocated the index finger on his left (non shooting) hand by swiping at the ball from behind the Los Angeles Lakers' Anthony Davis, though Lillard vowed to tape up the finger and play in Saturday night's Game 3. The episode added the freakish sort of contact injury inevitable in countless sports to the slew of soft tissue injuries many teams feared as they embarked on the resumption of the 2019 20 season. Toronto's first round series with the Nets, in fact, is the only of eight first round series in which neither team has lost a key player who got hurt in the bubble. Russell Westbrook, Houston's All Star guard, is out indefinitely with a worrisome quadriceps strain in his right leg. The swarming Rockets have taken a 2 0 series lead over Oklahoma City without him, but that is perhaps partly because the Thunder's Chris Paul has been playing with an injured thumb that required a tape job in Thursday's Game 2. Despite finishing the season with a better record than Miami, Indiana quickly fell into a 2 0 series hole against the Heat without Sabonis, who left the team less than three weeks into the Pacers' Disney stay. The Los Angeles Clippers dropped to 11 11 this season without Patrick Beverley in the lineup when Beverley (calf strain) was scratched from the Clippers' Game 2 loss to the Dallas Mavericks on Wednesday. The Denver Nuggets have badly missed the swingman Gary Harris (hip muscle strain) against the Utah Jazz, who were short handed when they arrived in Florida minus Bojan Bogdanovic (wrist surgery in May) and have since lost the key reserve Ed Davis (knee) indefinitely. Even if Lillard makes good on his vow to play in Game 3, Portland announced Friday that there will be no comeback for Collins, who needs season ending surgery on his left ankle. CJ McCollum also continues to play through a lower back fracture he sustained in the Blazers' first game of the restart in late July. Nor can Boston feel as comfortable about its long term prospects as a series lead over the Simmons less 76ers would normally suggest because Gordon Hayward severely sprained his right ankle in Game 1. Hayward is expected to be sidelined for at least one month. "None of these guys have ever, since they were kids, gone that long without playing," Orlando Coach Steve Clifford said of the March to July break because of the pandemic. "You knew it was going to happen pulls and strains and this and that. We did a Zoom meeting as soon as we got here, when everybody was still in quarantine, and that was a big part of it, telling our players that you've got to be talking to the performance staff if you're feeling sore." Injuries like Lillard's and Hayward's are indeed sometimes random, bad luck events that just as easily could have taken place had the playoffs gone on as scheduled this season without the intervention of the coronavirus. Yet there is also a cumulative fatigue factor that all elite athletes face. Playing games every other day, after such a long layoff, can make that matter more. "Especially now in the playoffs," Clifford said, "when the intensity is so amped up." Dr. Harlan Selesnick, the Heat's team physician since the inception of the franchise in 1988 89, said in a recent interview on WRLN radio in Miami that "no one knows how much" this season's dramatic stop/start has increased injury risk. "But it's certainly a concern," Dr. Selesnick said. Jeff Stotts of the Sports Medicine Analytics Research Team, which consults sports franchises on injury analysis and performance, said "the spike in injuries hasn't been as pronounced" as he initially feared, but he added that the bubble variables were "always going to present issues" for teams.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Sports
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Stocks on Wall Street rose on Tuesday as investors focused on corporate earnings and the economy, moving on from the negative credit rating outlook given to the United States the previous day. Stocks changed course after the three main equity indexes fell by more than 1 percent on Monday, when the ratings agency Standard Poor's revised its outlook on the nation's Triple AAA rating the highest level to negative from stable. The Dow Jones industrial average closed up 65.16 points, or 0.53 percent, at 12,266.75. The S. P. 500 stock index was up 7.48 points, or 0.57 percent, at 1,312.62 and the Nasdaq gained 9.59 points, or 0.35 percent, at 2,744.97. On Monday the three indexes posted their largest one day drop in more than a month after the S. P. announcement. "The market has moved on from that," said Quincy Krosby, a market strategist for Prudential Financial. "But the debt ceiling issue is not going to be forgotten." Bond prices were steady on Tuesday. The Treasury's benchmark 10 year note rose 3/32, to 102 5/32, and the yield slipped to 3.36 percent from 3.37 percent late Monday. Anthony G. Valeri, a senior vice president and market strategist for LPL Financial, said the behavior of the bond market suggested that the market does not see the default risk changing for United States Treasuries. That was the view put forward by the Treasury secretary, Timothy F. Geithner, who tried in TV appearances to reassure investors that the Democrats and Republicans would reach a deal on the nation's deficit, a concern at the heart of the S. P.'s reasoning for lowering its outlook. "He is out there defending," said Ms. Krosby, referring to Mr. Geithner's appearances. But, she added: "Ultimately the markets will be the official arbiter of U.S. credit." Added Mr. Valeri: "I think he is trying to do potential damage control in Treasuries. Not that he needed to. The bond market saw right through the S. P. move." "I think the market has moved on, and we have also got the Easter and Passover holidays this week," he said. The bank reporting season was in full swing. Goldman Sachs reported first quarter net income of 2.74 billion, down 22 percent from the period a year earlier, after taking a one time charge to pay back the investor Warren E. Buffett. The profit, 1.56 a share, beat analysts' expectations of 82 cents a share, according to Thomson Reuters, but its shares fell 1.92, to 151.86. Bank of America declined 0.64 percent to 12.34; Morgan Stanley was down 1.69 percent to 26.10 and JPMorgan Chase was up 1.57 percent to 44.65. Financials as a whole rose 0.36 percent. A Commerce Department housing market report said home construction rose 7.2 percent in March to a seasonally adjusted 549,000 units a year. Permits rose 11.2 percent, it said, helping shares of materials companies rise nearly 2 percent. Alcoa rose nearly 2 percent to 16.44 and United States Steel was up 4.46 percent to 52.74. Johnson Johnson rose more than 3 percent to 62.69. In its first quarter results, the company raised its earnings forecast for 2011 to 4.90 to 5.00 a share. "The market is focusing on going back to the earnings season and it is punishing companies that have not done well," said Ms. Krosby. "But you had better news on the housing front and the market is rewarding the housing related stocks," said Ms. Krosby. "If you look at the entire tone of the market, it is short on top line revenue growth, and the financials are a barometer of the U.S. economy. For their earnings not to come in as well, particularly when it comes to loan growth, is a thorn in the side of this recovery."
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Global Business
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The New York Times provided live updates about the launch. When Scott J. Kelly goes up to the International Space Station he and two Russian astronauts are scheduled to launch on Friday he will not come back down again for a year. That year is to be the longest space mission a NASA astronaut has ever undertaken. This trip Mr. Kelly's fourth to space will also push him to the top in cumulative time in space among NASA's astronauts. When he lands in March 2016, he will have spent more than 500 days of his life floating in orbit, including a 159 day trip to the space station that ended in 2011. With his trip this time twice as long, "my expectation is that it'll be more challenging and, as a result, more rewarding," Mr. Kelly, 51, said in a recent interview. Like all travelers to the space station since the retirement of NASA's space shuttles in 2011, Mr. Kelly and the two Russians, Mikhail Kornienko and Gennady Padalka, will be launching on a Russian Soyuz rocket from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. Liftoff is scheduled for 3:42 p.m. Friday Eastern time, which is 1:42 a.m. Saturday in Baikonur. The Soyuz capsule will dock at the space station about six hours later.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Science
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The last time Saturn and Jupiter, the largest planets in our solar system, orbited as closely as they will on Dec. 21 and were visible in the sky, the year was 1226. Almost 800 years later, on Monday, these titanic orbs will once again appear in the heavens just one tenth of a degree apart about the thickness of a dime held at arm's length, according to NASA. So how can you see it tonight? "Go any place where you can see the sunset and a half hour after it you will see Jupiter and Saturn 30 degrees up in the sky," said Henry Throop, an astronomer at NASA who has been watching the impending planetary convergence from his yard. (The planets have been inching closer every day.) "Jupiter will be brighter than Saturn because it's closer to us." Astrophiles of all stripes are excited, to say the least. Astronomers and other sky watchers could witness a once in a lifetime event. Astrologers are heralding it as a time of rebirth. (The conjunction falls on the winter solstice.) And holiday aficionados are calling this bright conjunction, happening so close to Christmas Day, the "Christmas star." Basically, it's going to be cool. Or as Renu Malhotra, a professor of planetary sciences at the University of Arizona, put it to The Times: "It's a very romantic event to see these planets approaching each other." In medieval times, presumably, very few earthlings witnessing what might have looked like a near collision of celestial entities would have understood what was happening, in a technical sense. But it is almost guaranteed people were fascinated by it then too, said Jo Marchant, a science journalist and author of "The Human Cosmos: Civilization and the Stars." "Humans have had a really intimate relationship with the cosmos ever since the dawn of our species," Ms. Marchant said. "We forget now living in polluted cities, but it would have been the most fantastic thing in the night sky." And while, today, humans have telescopes, satellite systems and all manner of stargazing apps to keep them up to date on space and the visible solar system, we have not lost our intrinsic curiosity about the night sky, Ms. Marchant said. "That feeling that we belong in the cosmos, that we belong in the universe and that we can find personal meaning with what is happening in the sky," she said. "I think that something that we still have now." Some form of conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn happens about every 20 years. But "this one is particularly neat because they are getting very close in the sky," said Dr. Throop. "They are not physically touching in space," he said, adding, for those who need to be reassured that 2020 will not deliver another crushing blow: "Jupiter won't crash into Saturn." Chani Nicholas, an astrologer who lives in Los Angeles, sees the moment more mystically. "This is the end of an era and the beginning of a new one," she said. "The winter solstice is a really great time to set an intention because symbolically you're setting intention with the sun returning," she said. "With the conjunction there is a sense of gravity that comes with that moment." Of Jupiter and Saturn, Ms. Nicholas said: "To have these two be so beautifully placed to be so bright and enchanting in the night sky feels very cosmically poetic." She added: "After this year of restriction and confinement and devastation, there is this feeling of there is some kind of renewal."
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Style
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NEW ORLEANS In 1973, the UpStairs Lounge, a bar in the French Quarter here, went up in flames one hot summer night. Thirty one men and one woman died in what was then the largest mass killing of gay people in American history. (The Pulse nightclub shooting in Orlando, Fla., which killed 49 people, took that grim title in 2016.) Long considered arson, the case remains unsolved; the prime suspect, who was never charged, committed suicide a year after the fire. As time passed, little attention was paid to the victims. Now an exhibition by the artist Skylar Fein is shedding light on this macabre and overlooked episode. It is part of a new show at the New Orleans Museum of Art, "Changing Course: Reflections on New Orleans Histories," a collection of seven projects that, through September, puts the city's marginalized communities at the forefront of this institution. In its two story atrium, below the permanent collection's European classical paintings, are L. Kasimu Harris's photographs of young black students. And in connecting rooms there is a video footage of funeral processions, which references the Vietnamese diaspora in southern Louisiana, and Mr. Fein's carnage filled images and ribald tributes to gay life in the early 1970s. A renewed interest in the UpStairs Lounge tragedy has been in the air. Over the past few years, two books, two documentaries and even a musical came out about the fire. Last month the Historic New Orleans Collection held a panel discussion on the incident, which some of the fire's survivors attended. In 2013, the city's then mayor, Mitch Landrieu, declared a day of mourning for the victims. (As a point of contrast: His father, Moon Landrieu, the mayor at the time of the blaze, did not cancel his vacation.) And this year, on the attack's 45th anniversary, a memorial service was held for the victims. It was there that New Orleans's new mayor, LaToya Cantrell, announced the creation of an L.G.B.T. task force for the city. The UpStairs Lounge was, by most accounts, a seedy dive, and the show's power derives from its ability to place the viewer inside that world. Through a glowing red doorway, visitors enter a room with tacky red wallpaper that recalls the bar's original; snapshots of victims and black and white prints of grisly newspaper photographs line the walls. Then viewers turn a corner into what Mr. Fein calls "a fantasia of gay culture" images of a chest baring Burt Reynolds and the swimmer Mark Spitz that appeared in the original club are there, as wood cutouts, as are other bawdy pictures from the time. Sexy '70s tunes play from a speaker above. In his new book on the tragedy, "Tinderbox," the author Robert Fieseler calls the UpStairs Lounge a secret getaway for "an underclass of closeted gays who feared defining themselves as a minority group." The bar was a hookup spot, and the backgrounds of its patrons were diverse doctors, lawyers, longshoremen, hustlers, husbands, fathers. It was also a kind of gay community center: a gay Christian group met in the back room for prayer, and theatrical performers often took to the stage at night. As Mr. Fieseler notes, 70 percent of Americans in 1973 thought adult homosexual relations were "always wrong," according to a survey by the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago; and the L.G.B.T. activism that grew out of the 1969 Stonewall riots in New York had barely registered in New Orleans at the time. The fire department reported finding a can of lighter fluid at the base of the stairs. The bell for the bar was reportedly rung repeatedly; when the bartender asked a regular patron to open the door and see who was there, flames engulfed the club's interior. Fire trucks arrived within minutes, but it was too late. Several bodies were never identified, a fact that some people attribute to families being unable to accept the secret lives that the fire had laid bare. At the time, the governor of Louisiana did not immediately comment on the tragedy, nor did the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of New Orleans. The 32 deaths were front page news of The Times Picayune for only two days. Unlike the rallying cry for labor rights after the Triangle Shirtwaist fire or for civil rights after the Birmingham church bombing, Mr. Fieseler points out that "the UpStairs Lounge fire had not been a turning point for homosexual rights in America." It was quickly and largely forgotten. Mr. Fein, 50, who calls himself an accidental artist, wanted to change that. He moved to New Orleans in 2005 and enrolled in college, pre med. A few months later, Hurricane Katrina upended his plans. He needed furniture and, realizing the streets were littered with wood from the flood's flotsam, he started building wooden signs with imagery screen printed on top. Blending woodworking and historical retelling, he went deep into the history of the UpStairs Lounge fire, putting together an art show for Prospect. 1, the contemporary art biennial in New Orleans that opened in 2008. That show featured some of the same wood panel images he uses in the exhibition at the New Orleans Museum of Art, which comes, Mr. Fein noted, at a time much changed by the 2015 Supreme Court decision that legalized same sex marriage. (That ruling, though, didn't convince him to change his relationship with his partner of 14 years. "Not a fan of the institution of marriage," he said, "but a fan of political progress.") Mr. Fein originally hoped that his exhibition at the museum would feature a long, narrow hallway five feet wide to recall the narrow stairway to the UpStairs Lounge and trigger in the visitor a claustrophobic feeling. The museum's curators encouraged a compromise of a 10 foot wide hallway. And he was disappointed that they didn't allow the campy '70s music to be louder. "They said then people would barely be able to hear each other speak, they'd feel uncomfortable," he whispered on the opening night last month as patrons strolled by, "And I said, yeah, that's the point!" The winding exhibition ends in a small room, where a table is stacked with books like Mr. Fieseler's on New Orleans's overlooked communities. Curators named it a "conversation space," something that Katie Pfohl, the museum's curator of modern and contemporary art, said this show called for: "These artists portray some of the histories of the city that haven't been largely discussed." On their way out of the museum, visitors pass by a large empty pedestal a reminder that New Orleans recently, and controversially, removed many of its Confederate monuments in a moment of reckoning with its past. "I think especially for some people in marginalized communities here, our heads are spinning with the pace of change in the past few years," Mr. Fein said. "The museum, laudably, is trying to fill in some gaps in the history books. It may take some time. It's a good start."
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Art & Design
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On Aug. 17, a banner floated in the blue sky above Ocean Grove, N.J., with a call to arms: "JOIN THE BATTLE BEAT THE BUG." A large picture showed an insect with crimson and Dalmatian spotted wings outspread. The spotted lanternfly, the Northeast's pest a la mode, was back. A week earlier, officials from New Jersey's Department of Agriculture placed eight counties under quarantine, asking anyone traveling through Warren, Hunterdon, Mercer, Burlington, Camden, Gloucester, Salem or Somerset to thoroughly check their vehicles for any sign of the hitchhiking bugs. "If you are able to eliminate the Spotted Lanternfly, please do so," the department asks on its website. New Jersey has been tracking and treating the inch long pest since it appeared in the summer of 2018, but this year's population has spread into the state's western counties along the Delaware River, according to the agriculture department. The spotted lanternfly is a known menace elsewhere in the Northeast. Native to parts of Asia, it was first observed in 2014 in Berks County, Pa. Since then, the lanternfly has spread in fluttering hordes to Maryland, Delaware and New Jersey, drawn to the region's ample population of the tree of heaven, an invasive tree from China and the lanternfly's primary food. Pennsylvania currently bears the brunt of the infestation, with 26 of 67 counties under quarantine. A subreddit channel on Philadelphia swarms with lanternfly adjacent posts, from creative killing strategies to a cinematic montage of lanternflies getting blasted by a salt gun to the tune of Carl Orff's choral ode to "O Fortuna," a medieval poem about the inescapable nature of fate. "I used to sit out on my deck and watch bees fly by," said Matthew Helmus, an ecologist at Temple University in Philadelphia. "Now I sit out and I just see lanternfly, lanternfly, lanternfly, lanternfly, lanternfly." Lanternflies, which are not flies but insects called planthoppers, have a chameleonic life cycle. They hatch in the spring as wingless, glossy black nymphs with white spots, and pass through several stippled phases before maturing in midsummer. The adults are certainly hard to miss. They are clunky fliers, reliant on gusts of wind to coast from tree to tree, according to Julie Urban, an evolutionary biologist at Penn State. Fortunately, the insects pose no threat to humans. If a lanternfly lands on you and it likely will you may feel a slight poke. But this is from the bug's tarsal claws, not its mouth, Dr. Urban said. Lanternflies do pose a serious threat to American crops, particularly vineyards. The insects sip on sap from ornamental fruit trees and grape vines, a refined palate that could cost the state at least 324 million per year and eliminate 2,800 jobs, according to a study published by Penn State economists in 2019, which also included a worst case scenario of 554 million lost per year. Scientists and officials in several East Coast states are battling the bugs on multiple fronts. In Pennsylvania, the Spotted Lanternfly Program includes representatives from Penn State, the state's Department of Agriculture, and the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service. The program takes a multipronged approach, with various teams focused on management techniques, the lanternfly's reproductive biology and potential biological control agents. Dr. Urban, a member of the task force, is studying the lanternfly's internal bacteria, which live in specialized organs within the bug and help it digest plant sap. The spotted lanternfly has three bacterial organs, two known from other planthoppers and one that is new to science, and which Dr. Urban discovered after dissecting hundreds of the bugs. "It's bright yellow and lays across the belly," Dr. Urban said. If she can figure out how to block the lanternfly from transferring this bacteria to its eggs, she could stamp out the population without posing a threat to any other insects. Last year, the Trump Administration dismantled the Invasive Species Advisory Committee and halved the funding for the National Invasive Species Council, whose budget some researchers already viewed as "grossly insufficient," according to an op ed published in Science this February. "That's the funding that goes to state government agencies that do the actual control and treatments to knock down lanternfly populations," Dr. Urban said. "That's the worst place to cut funding." As scientists struggle to curb the lanternfly's natural dispersal across the East Coast, the greatest threat is tied to lanternflies that hitchhike on long distance shipments out of the Northeast, such as train cars and trucks, Dr. Helmus said. "If it gets to Napa, it could do some real damage," he added. For the rest of America, the battle starts in the backyard. Dr. Chengyuan Wu, a neurosurgeon in Philadelphia, set up his first circle traps this year on trees in his lawn. So far, he has caught two. "It seems like an uphill battle," Dr. Wu said. He added that his wife, Lisa, has a "personal vendetta" against the insects and hopes to get rid of all that she can. "People are getting really passionate about squishing lanternflies," Dr. Helmus said. "But I suppose it's something they have some control over these days."
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Science
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Back in the 1920s, Nebraska's capital had a marketing slogan: "Lincoln A City Worthy of a Noble Name." Today, that motto seems to hold up perhaps more than ever, especially in the creative meets collegiate downtown in this tidy metropolis of 280,364 residents, which is home to the University of Nebraska and a growing immigrant population (now nearly nine percent of city dwellers ). The increasingly buzzy downtown is luring visitors with recently opened shops and watering holes. And, be sure not to miss the 1932 Art Deco capitol building, with its mosaics by muralist Hildreth Meiere and 14th floor views of the Great Plains. This Philip Johnson designed jewel box of a building was built of travertine marble with gold leaf ceiling details in Italy, then meticulously reconstructed at the University of Nebraska in 1963. Among the museum's more than 12,000 art holdings: Edward Hopper's "Room in New York" and Georgia O'Keeffe's effervescent "New York, Night" which captured her view of Lexington Avenue from her residence in the Shelton Hotel in 1929.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Travel
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Alas, David Hackl's film doesn't give its gifted star much to do, despite a wealth of natural challenges and even one nifty car stunt early on. The movie is filled with ice and freezing water and cliffs and (of course) wolves, but they're used in mostly unimaginative ways less as organic obstacles and more as plot contrivances and filler. Hackl and the writer Nika Agiashvili provide minimal dramatic context; we learn little about our protagonist, and even less about the exact reasons of the kidnapping. Such spareness might have worked marvelously had the film demonstrated any style, immediacy, or invention. But with facile plotting you could fashion a pretty deadly drinking game out of all the scenes in which someone gets knocked out, or is conveniently left for dead and humdrum action, the lack of depth or dimension becomes fatal.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Movies
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Poaching destabilizes nations, disrupts ecosystems and threatens biodiversity. A recent study suggests still another consequence: Some types of poaching may also accelerate climate change. Forest elephants the smaller, endangered relatives of African savanna elephants promote the growth of large trees that excel at storing carbon, according to research published in the journal Nature Geoscience. Should forest elephants disappear, scientists estimated, Central Africa's rain forest will lose about three billion tons of carbon the equivalent of France's total CO2 emissions for 27 years. "This new paper points to something that we in Central Africa have suspected for a long time, but now this group has thrown some serious science at the issue," said Fiona Maisels, a conservation scientist at the Wildlife Conservation Society and at the University of Stirling in Scotland. "With the loss of forest elephants," she added, "loss of carbon stocks can be added to the list of ecosystem services that are no longer provided by these animals." Over recent years, researchers have gained a more detailed understanding of the links between animals and climate. Wild grazers, for instance, can reduce the intensity and frequency of fires that emit greenhouse gases. Methane emissions from livestock significantly contribute to global warming. Scientists have also known for decades that large herbivores such as elephants play important short term roles in ecosystems by promoting biodiversity, recycling nutrients and dispersing seeds. Fabio Berzaghi, an ecologist at the Laboratory of Climate and Environmental Sciences in France and the lead author of the new study, suspected that elephants might also play a profound long term role in shaping Africa's rain forest, second in size only to the Amazon's. The loss of these and other large herbivores likely contributed to the Amazon's higher density of smaller trees, with a lower overall amount of vegetation compared with Africa's rain forest. Like the Science Times page on Facebook. Sign up for the Science Times newsletter. "We were thinking elephants may play a role in the differences between these two continents' forests," Dr. Berzaghi said. "We also really wanted to know what the long term consequences of losing this species would be." Dr. Berzaghi and his colleagues selected two field sites. One lies in the Democratic Republic of Congo, from which elephants disappeared 30 years ago because of poaching; the other is the Republic of Congo , where elephants lived at high numbers until recently. Both sites were relatively pristine and differed only in the presence or absence of elephants. The researchers measured the trunk size of all the trees in the study areas and noted the species, giving them an idea of the short term effects of elephant loss. To determine the long term effects, they created a computer model that simulated the basic functions of the African rain forest, including tree growth and death, competition, photosynthesis and reproduction. The model allowed them to include or exclude elephants. Forest elephants almost exclusively stomp down trees with a diameter of 12 inches or less, and they prefer to eat fast growing softwood trees. By clearing the understory of vegetation, the researchers found, elephants not only alter plant composition but also affect light penetration and water availability. This results in an ecosystem that favors large, slow growing hardwood trees. Such species store significantly more carbon than the equivalent volume of smaller softwood trees. "As a tree, there's a trade off you can't have it all," Dr. Berzaghi said. "You either invest in growing fast, or in building a lot of structure with carbon to be more resistant." Extrapolating their findings to the whole of Africa's rain forest, Dr. Berzaghi and his colleagues found that the disappearance of elephants would result in a 7 percent loss of vegetation the equivalent of 3 billion tons of carbon storage. Put another way, elephants provide a carbon storage service valued at 43 billion. "This is the first study I have seen attributing large, multi megaton changes in carbon to a particular species," said Rosie Fisher, a scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo., who was not involved in the research. "It really opens a new frontier in how we think about interactions between large animals and carbon storage." Save for a few surviving populations, forest elephants are functionally extinct in almost all of their former 850,000 square mile habitat. The species declined by 62 percent from 2002 to 2011, Dr. Maisels and her colleagues found, and poaching has largely continued unchecked since then. According to Iain Douglas Hamilton, the founder of Save the Elephants, a conservation organization based in Kenya, the killing has most recently spread to Gabon, which holds half of the world's remaining forest elephants and was previously protected from poaching by its relative isolation.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Science
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Max Lewkowicz's documentary keeps reminding us of the multiple sources of inspiration for this quintessentially Jewish musical , from the paintings of Marc Chagall to the politics of the day. In early rehearsals , to help his cast understand what being Jewish in turn of the century Russia was like, the director and choreographer Jerome Robbins had them re enact scenarios that black people endured in the Jim Crow South. Robbins emerges as the most riveting figure, a cruel and demanding perfectionist, who, in the words of one commenter, "bludgeoned" the show into shape. Lewkowicz recruits a terrific cast of talking heads that include famous fans (Stephen Sondheim, Lin Manuel Miranda) and artists who have worked on the show, like its producer, Hal Prince, who died in July. "Fiddler" is at once timeless and a product of its time, but the extent to which it departed from its original source material , the Yiddish stories of Sholem Aleichem, goes mostly unexamined. The same goes for any serious grappling with criticism of the show or its film adaptation, but I never minded. Some shows deserve reverential treatment. And the love letter is, to use a word so associated with this show it influences the way many say it, tradition.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Movies
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A windswept corner of the industrial northwest coast of Staten Island is infamous as a dumping ground for toxic waste, a home to Mafia related crime and perhaps even more notoriously, the location for an ill fated attempt to build New York City's first Nascar racetrack. Known as Bloomfield, at its center is a vast, 440 acre former oil tank farm where frequent spills caused untold damage to the fragile freshwater wetlands that surround it. Fenced off from the public, the GATX petroleum storage facility has lain fallow for years, its abandoned dock and warehouses now rusted hulks from the brackish water that flooded the site after Hurricane Sandy. But in the last 10 weeks, the rumbling of trucks has been heard behind the razor wire. Staten Island Marine Development, the new owner of the former GATX site and its neighboring vacant parcels, is moving forward with plans to develop it. Though still years from completion, the project will be a marine port and a logistics center, with warehouses to store goods. At 675 acres, it is believed to be the largest vacant private parcel in New York City. And while the company is betting it will turn a large profit, the community is hoping that after years of inaction, the development will create much needed jobs. In 2004, the International Speedway Corporation, the public arm of Nascar, paid 100 million for the GATX site and an additional 10 million for a neighboring property to create the parcel. The plan was to build an 82,500 seat motor speedway to take advantage of the untapped, lucrative New York market. But the Nascar plan required lengthy city approval processes, and almost immediately, generated political infighting and community opposition that torpedoed the bid. International Speedway, which had acquired the properties without any contingencies, began searching for an exit strategy. "They came to us and asked us to develop a Plan B for the site," said Stanley Danzig, an executive director at the brokerage firm Cushman Wakefield. In 2007, Mr. Danzig helped broker a 100 million sale of the land to ProLogis, the developer of industrial real estate. But ProLogis soon balked. Talks with the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey also went nowhere. Then, in early 2010, Staten Island Marine Development, an affiliate of Addison, Tex. based KB Marine Holdings, emerged as a buyer. The 80 million deal fell through a handful of times, the result of having to secure funding during a recession and negotiating complex development agreements with the state. The deal now requires Staten Island Marine Development to preserve 245 acres of wetlands as it develops 330 acres, including roughly 135 acres for the marine terminal along the Arthur Kill on the western edge of the property where cranes will unload shipping containers. Warehouses to hold the goods are to be placed in the eastern section. "I'm thrilled there could be real synergy between our sites," said Jim Devine, the chief executive of Global Container Terminals, which runs the New York Container Terminal next to the site. It hopes to piggyback on the new logistics center, because goods in containers now unloaded from ships at its terminal must be trucked, typically to New Jersey, for unpacking and storage. If the goods could be stored at the adjacent site, it would create considerable savings and help spur more business for Mr. Devine's company. Railroad lines also snake through the Bloomfield site, which may allow shipping of goods from the logistics center to other points via rail rather than trucks. "This is the only site in New York City that has rail, shipping access and a highway at its disposal," said the Staten Island borough president, James Molinaro. While the Nascar plan drew intense criticism, mainly over concerns of increased traffic, Mr. Molinaro said the new development had not produced a noticeable reaction. "I have heard nothing from anyone about the plan; there is nothing to complain about," Mr. Molinaro said. The new owner has tried to operate a bit under the radar, given that the previous controversy spurred considerable unrest. Community opposition to the Nascar proposal, for example, was so strong that police shut down the first and only public hearing on it for rowdiness. To build a Nascar track required a zoning change and the approval of the New York City Council. The current owner, though it had to forge agreements with agencies like the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation, is not changing the zoning and so can avoid a lengthy public review. The developer has yet to meet with the local community board, and Mr. Devine said that while he had heard a meeting was planned, he had not met his neighbor. The deal is a particular boon to KB Holdings. Another of its affiliates, UTEX Environmental Services, an environmental remediation firm, has an exclusive, 30 year deal with the Port Authority to process all of the material that the agency dredges from New York Harbor as a regular part of its maintenance. As the number of places where the dredge can be stored diminishes, the new development will need a massive amount of fill which can include dredge to help contain the environmental damage at the GATX site. Through a process known as capping, fill is used to cover the brownfields; it will also be applied to raise the site above the flood plain. All told, the site needs upward of six million cubic yards of dredge, experts said.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Real Estate
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What were the caveats? Pamela Anderson, Matt Damon and Ben Affleck were all members of the "elite in entertainment" but still also happened to use BlackBerrys. Unanswered questions: Star Jones, who was "camped out in her usual seat in celebrity row, courtside at a New York Knicks game in Madison Square Garden," received "a message from Derek Jeter, asking for the game's score." Did Mr. Jeter not have internet access in 2001? (Only about 40 percent of United States households did.) How badly did he need to know that Knicks score? How well did this situation age? Celebrities and regular people alike eventually decided that thumb typing personal messages to each other on electronic devices had no future, so they abandoned the practice entirely. (Kidding!) Where can I get a two way Motorola pager now? On Amazon, of course. Used, they start at 59.99.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Style
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Quinnen Williams, a defensive lineman for the Jets who was the third player chosen in last year's N.F.L. draft, was arrested on a weapons possession charge on Thursday night while trying to board a flight at La Guardia Airport, the authorities said. He was taken into custody around 9:15 p.m. at the Delta Air Lines check in counter after he was found to have a Glock 19 pistol, according to the Port Authority police. The gun was discovered in Williams's checked baggage, the authorities said, and it was unloaded. The authorities said that Williams, 22, had a permit for the weapon in Alabama, where he was a standout player for the University of Alabama, but he did not have one for New York. The matter has been referred to the Queens district attorney's office. Williams's destination from LaGuardia was not immediately clear. Alex Spiro, a lawyer for Williams, said his client "respects and follows the law."
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Sports
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Comic book publishers are facing a growing crisis: Flagging interest from readers and competition from digital entertainment are dragging down sales. Hoping to reverse the trend, publishers are creating their own digital platforms to directly connect with readers and encourage more engagement from fans. The goal is to reach readers who may not live near a comic book shop but want to keep up with the Avengers and the Justice League. Experts say the direct to consumer model also helps compete with streaming services like Netflix and Amazon's Prime Video. "They all look at Netflix and say, 'Why do I need an intermediary?'" said Milton Griepp, the chief executive of ICv2, an online magazine that covers the industry. "That's where this battle is being fought." One of the biggest direct to consumer efforts is DC Universe, a platform from DC Entertainment and Warner Bros. Digital Networks that will offer streaming content, including original and classic TV series. DC Universe is "a huge opportunity" that offers "ultimate creative control," said Jim Lee, a co publisher of DC Entertainment. "It allows you to look at wider adaptations of the source material." Taking advantage of that freedom, DC is planning six new series, starting with "Titans," a dark tale about a band of young heroes. Also in the works are the horror themed "Swamp Thing" and two animated shows, one featuring the character Harley Quinn, a fan favorite. Several movies and TV series from the Warner Bros. library will be added to the lineup, including the four "Superman" movies starring Christopher Reeve, "Wonder Woman" with Lynda Carter and Christopher Nolan's "The Dark Knight." "Within the app, there will be all different kinds of content aimed at all ages of fans," Mr. Lee said. DC announced the details on Thursday at Comic Con International, the annual comic book convention in San Diego. Membership will be 8 a month, roughly in line with other stand alone streaming services, and also includes access to digital comic books and exclusive merchandise. The initiative comes at a challenging time for the comic book industry. The market declined 6.5 percent in 2017, according to estimates by ICv2 and Comichron, an industry analysis site. Total sales of comics and graphic novels in the United States and Canada were 1.015 billion in 2017, down 70 million from 2016. Faced with sluggish sales, comic book publishers can use the direct to consumer efforts to create a stronger relationship with their readers, Mr. Griepp said. 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. "They present their brands and their content directly to these fans and expand their brand footprint," he said. Mr. Griepp said DC had tested the waters with DC Super Hero Girls, a franchise that included streaming animated shorts and an array of licensed merchandise like books, clothing and toys. He sees a similar move from Marvel Entertainment with Marvel Rising, a new property about the next generation of Marvel heroes including animated shorts, a TV movie and comic books. The Walt Disney Company, which owns Marvel Entertainment, said last year that it would create a streaming platform that would include Marvel movies like "The Avengers" and "Guardians of the Galaxy." Mr. Griepp said that could mean Marvel ends up with a platform of streaming content of smaller properties. Marvel declined to comment on its plans. Smaller comic book publishers are testing their own direct to consumer platforms. Image Comics, the publisher of popular titles like The Walking Dead and Saga, started a direct to consumer platform in 2015 to sell comic book subscriptions and apparel. "While there are many incredible brick and mortar stores, unfortunately not everyone is lucky enough to have one in their area," Corey Hart, director of sales at Image Comics, said in a statement. "Image Direct was built in order to reach those exact readers." This month, Dark Horse Comics announced its service, Dark Horse Direct, which will focus on high end products like statues. That access is important, Mr. Griepp said, because some comic book shops will not carry expensive merchandise. "The strategy is just to make sure there is no unfilled demand in a rural area or small town," he said. Ms. Lomax said Dark Horse did not have immediate plans to add comic books or streaming content. But the company does have production deals for several of its properties, including Dark Matter, Hellboy and Tarzan. One of its titles, the Umbrella Academy, is being adapted into a series for Netflix in 2019. Comic book publishers are quick to point out that their initiatives are intended to augment retail sales, not cannibalize them. In fact, DC recently announced a deal to reprint comic books and sell them in more than 3,000 Walmart stores nationwide. Dan DiDio, the other co publisher of DC Entertainment, said that if the program is successful, he hoped to broaden it to include other retailers. "We want to find a way to put these in the hands of folks who don't have a chance to read them other ways," he said.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Media
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BOLSHOI BALLET IN CINEMA (Jan. 22) Nothing beats the experience of watching ballet live, but then again, not everyone can make it to Moscow for live performances by the Bolshoi Ballet. This series offers a convenient alternative, bringing live HD broadcasts of the Bolshoi's productions to movie theaters across the United States and Canada. Next up is "The Sleeping Beauty," choreographed by Yuri Grigorovich after Marius Petipa's 1890 original, and starring the young prodigy Olga Smirnova as Princess Aurora, with Semyon Chudin as her prince. The hundreds of participating theaters include four in New York City, where the broadcast begins at 12:55 p.m. fathomevents.com COMPLEXIONS CONTEMPORARY BALLET at the Joyce Theater (Jan. 24 through Feb. 5). The choreographer Dwight Rhoden pays his respects to David Bowie in a new ballet to Bowie hits, "Star Dust," as part of this troupe's Joyce season. It's just the first part of what will eventually be an evening length Bowie tribute. Mr. Rhoden, the company's co director (with Desmond Richardson), also offers the world premiere of "Gutter Glitter," beginning his new Collage Series, which, as its title suggests, will play with the juxtaposition of disparate elements. The troupe's emphatic, leggy style will also be on display in his 2015 "Ballad Unto ...," set to Bach. 212 242 0800, joyce.org FRIDAYS AT NOON at the 92nd Street Y (Jan. 20). The organizers of this series didn't anticipate, when they planned to present "Isadora Duncan in the 21st Century: Capturing the Art and Spirit of the Dancer's Legacy," that the program would coincide to the minute with the inauguration of Donald J. Trump. The event offers some inadvertent but relevant counterprogramming, celebrating Duncan's trailblazing work as an artist and feminist. The writer Andrea Mantell Seidel will discuss her new book on Duncan, and the troupes of Lori Belilove, Jeanne Bresciani, Catherine Gallant, Beth Jucovy and Adrienne Ramm will perform. (The event is sold out, but visitors will be admitted from a standby list as space permits.) 212 415 5500, 92y.org
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Dance
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Re "Pass the Onion: It's OK for Men in Power to Shed a Tear" (news article, May 4): I was struck by Donald Trump's simplistic and unsympathetic view that crying by men is a sign of "weakness." In contrast, a recent biography, "Churchill: Walking With Destiny," by Andrew Roberts, catalogs dozens of times both before and during World War II when Churchill cried unabashedly, including in the House of Commons. On one occasion during the Blitz, Churchill visited an East End air shelter where 40 people had been killed the previous night. According to Gen. Hastings Ismay, an eyewitness, Churchill broke down, deeply moved by the people saying things like: "Good old Winnie. We thought you'd come and see us." Then General Ismay says, "I heard an old woman say: 'You see, he really cares. He's crying.'"
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Opinion
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And the answer was ... Alexander McQueen for British brand of the year, and British Vogue for special recognition (for achieving the ripe old age of 100). Vetements, the rebellious French streetwear label, won international urban luxury brand, while its co founder Demna Gvasalia was named international ready to wear designer for his second job, artistic director of Balenciaga. Gucci picked up two trophies: A gold tuxedo clad designer Alessandro Michele (with the actor Jared Leto in tow) won best international accessories designer, and the chief executive, Marco Bizzarri, took best international business leader. Ralph Lauren showed a 10 minute film, complete with family tributes and rousing orchestral scores, upon winning the outstanding achievement award. And then there was Gigi Hadid who, wearing a powder blue Atelier Versace jumpsuit and accessorizing with her mother, Yolanda Foster, sobbed into the microphone upon beating both her sister Bella Hadid and friend Kendall Jenner to international model of the year. "I am of a generation immersed in social media, and am so blessed to be a part of that," she said, her chest heaving with emotion. But, she said, several people in the industry including the designer Bruce Oldfield; the American Vogue editor in chief, Anna Wintour; and Mr. Testino "looked beyond what the rest of the world could see and I am so grateful to you. Thank you for letting me be part of your family." So far, so standard awards speak. But there were moments that suggested we were not actually in Hollywood or New York, after all. Marilyn Manson arrived, presenting the award to Vetements, and upended an envelope of salt on the stage, pretending that it was cocaine (it was not entirely clear why he did that). Craig Green, winner of the prize for best British men's wear designer, almost completely disrobed Lady Gaga after she gave him his award by accidentally stomping on her Brandon Maxwell maxi gown on his way to the podium. And Jack Whitehall, the British comedian and host for the evening, attempted to entertain the crowd with gags around the Mannequin Challenge, the latest charity drive sweeping the internet. The problem was, he picked the wrong target. "If you need any tips on how to do it then just check out Anna Wintour. That frozen faced lady has been perfecting it long before it was even a thing," he said, as Ms. Wintour sat meters away. No one in the audience moved a muscle. Still, the overall atmosphere was one of celebration and optimism, despite ominous whispers about the world's fragile political and economic state that could be heard between the applause.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Fashion & Style
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Wang begins the book on relative terra firma: In an essay titled "Diagnosis," she lays out the basics of not only her own diagnosis, schizoaffective disorder, but also the other flavors of schizophrenia. She quotes liberally from the fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (D.S.M. 5). She covers the history of psychosis from the ancient Egyptians, who attributed it to a poisoned heart and uterus, to Eugen Bleuler, the early 20th century Swiss psychiatrist who coined the term "schizophrenia." She runs through the nature and nurture of schizophrenia and theories about the possible evolutionary utility of the disease (ranging from schizophrenia being an unfortunate stowaway on genes for communication and creativity to schizophrenics as "ad hoc 'cult leaders' whose bizarre ideas split off chunks of the human population"). However, in a pattern she'll repeat in subsequent essays, almost as soon as Wang has established a shared reality between herself and the reader schizophrenia exists and here are its parameters she begins to undermine that reality. She points out the dehumanizing aspect of her D.S.M. 5 diagnosis "it shrink wraps the bloody circumstance with objectivity until the words are colorless" and describes the D.S.M. as "like the Judeo Christian Bible, one that warps and mutates as quickly as our culture does." She raises the idea that "my experiences with psychosis are a spiritual gift rather than a psychiatric anomaly." And she makes clear the mind altering power of the diagnosis itself: "Giving someone a diagnosis of schizophrenia will impact how they see themselves. It will change how they interact with friends and family. The diagnosis will affect how they are seen by the medical community, the legal system, the Transportation Safety Administration and so on." The first half of "The Collected Schizophrenias" spirals around the human rights of mentally ill people. Wang considers the ethics of involuntary treatment (having experienced it, including being put into restraints, she's against it). She highlights the irony and pathos of her strenuous efforts to seem more "high functioning" than other people with schizophrenia by keeping her signature red lipstick crisp, wearing designer clothing, flashing her wedding band and exalted alma maters (she attended both Yale and Stanford: "'I went to Yale' is shorthand for I have schizoaffective disorder, but I'm not worthless"), and, hilariously, when involuntarily hospitalized in Louisiana, trouncing "the other patients in a mandatory group therapy word game, not allowing anyone else to score a point." In the wryly titled essay "Yale Will Not Save You," she argues that universities are not doing enough to accommodate mentally ill students (and delivers perhaps the most evocative description ever of a swampy New Haven late summer as "hot and damp like the inside of a feverish mouth"). Wang's essay on her and her husband's decision not to have children ("The Choice of Children") is the saddest and most successful in the book. Wang is able to show off her novelist's eye for detail, character and dialogue in her description of her time spent working at a camp for children with bipolar disorder. And her prismatic approach to ethical questions serves her especially well here: Would Wang be heartbroken if her child were "like her"? Is being like Wang so very bad? Would Wang's child hate her? Or might Wang, mindful of her illness, be an exceptionally good parent? In later essays, Wang examines various types of delusions, from the banality of children's imaginary games to the immersive experience of an IMAX film, and lays bread crumbs from these familiar landmarks most of us have experienced to the most exotic forms of psychosis she has suffered (Wang once became convinced that she was dead and living in an eternal hell in a rare syndrome called Cotard's delusion). Her descriptions of what it's like to descend into psychosis are viscerally enlightening: "The more I consider the world, the more I realize that it's supposed to have a cohesion that no longer exists, or that it is swiftly losing either because it is pulling itself apart, because it has never been cohesive, because my mind is no longer able to hold the pieces together, or, most likely, some jumbled combination of the above." She continues that it "feels like breaking through a thin barrier to another world that sways and bucks and won't throw me back through again, no matter how many pills I swallow or how much I struggle to return."
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Books
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As coronavirus has swept the globe, placing cities and countries on lockdowns, canceling the spring sports calendar and jeopardizing every major event scheduled for 2020, Thomas Bach, the president of the International Olympic Committee, has not wavered in his determination to hold the Summer Games in Tokyo. The opening ceremony is scheduled for July 24, with some 11,000 athletes and even more fans, volunteers, journalists, diplomats and others descending on Tokyo. Yet complaints about moving ahead have been rising from athletes and other people connected to the Olympics, especially in the countries hardest hit by the disease. "We are affected by this crisis like everyone else and we are concerned like everybody else," he said. "We are not living in a bubble or on another planet. We are in the middle of our societies." Here are excerpts from the interview: Is there a date when you have to decide whether the Olympic Games will happen? What makes this crisis so unique and so difficult to overcome is the uncertainty. Nobody today can tell you what the developments are tomorrow, what they are in one month, not to mention in more than four months. Therefore it would not be responsible in any way to set a date or take a decision right now, which would be based on the speculation about the future developments. But if you listen to the scientists and the epidemiologists they actually have a clear idea of what is going to be happening in a month given the trajectory of the disease and the pattern of infection. I'm surprised you are saying nobody knows what is going to happen when actually there is a large community of people who would say we know exactly what is going to happen. There are many different prognoses. Some are telling you it will everywhere follow the same curve. Others are saying this will take much longer. The third ones are saying there will be different waves and we will have to live with it for a long time. This is why we rely on our task force, including the World Health Organization, who are telling us it is too early to take a decision, and we are at the same time monitoring closely what is happening. Do you have a group that is gaming out what it would look like and what would be needed to move the Games to the fall, the summer of 2021 or the summer of 2022 or any other time frame that has been discussed? This would mean we are speculating about developments. We don't know what the situation will be. Of course we are considering different scenarios, but we are contrary to many other sports organizations or professional leagues in that we are four and a half months away from the Games. They are even more optimistic than we are, because most of them have postponed their events until April or the end of May. We are talking about the end of July. Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said he was interested in holding a "perfect Games" and that he had gotten a commitment from the other Group of 7 leaders to do that but he did not specify a time frame. Does that give you the freedom to pursue an alternative date? The Japanese government was asked this question after (Abe made the comment) and the answer was that postponement was not mentioned in the meeting of the G7. For us, it would not be responsible now and it would be premature to start speculation or make a decision at a time when we do not have any recommendation from the task force. Have you told the task force to give you a recommendation by a certain date? No. They are the experts. They have to know based on their scientific experience and their worldwide overview when they have enough information to give us their advice based on scientific evidence. What do you say to people who say you seem out of step with everything that is going on? All the biggest sports events have been delayed? They have canceled or postponed games for next Saturday or two weeks after. Some of them have postponed events to make room for other events to take place. The European championships in soccer was supposed to take place in June and start in Italy. They have postponed this for a year, and it was welcomed by the professional leagues in Europe because this gives them an opportunity for them to finish their seasons. You could do the same. You are counting on the world's best tennis players, and some members of those soccer clubs. The N.B.A. wants to finish its season this summer, and many players that would play basketball in the Olympic tournament would not be available. Why wouldn't you follow that lead and clear out the schedule? This is totally different. We do not have Olympic Games now, so we do not need to clear our schedule. When will it not be too soon to decide, or when, if you don't decide to postpone, would you risk cancellation? I will not speculate, but we owe it to all the athletes, and we owe it to all the half of the world that watches the Olympics to say we are not putting the cancellation of the Games on the agenda. So there will be an Olympics at some point in Japan? The Olympics are a huge financial enterprise, but at their roots they are a peace movement aimed at bringing people together and attempting to repair the world. Are you concerned that by forcing so many people to continue to plan for this event rather than focusing on other needs, the I.O.C. may be doing harm? There are three things. We have established this clear principle, that we are acting responsibly. It is first and foremost about protecting the health of everyone involved and to support the containment of the virus. Second, the decision of the I.O.C. will not be determined by any financial interest. Thanks to our risk management policies that have been in place for four years and our insurance, the I.O.C. in any case will be able to continue operations and continue to accomplish our mission. The 206 national Olympic committees and the international sports federations expressed that the world in this extremely difficult and concerning situation needs a symbol of hope. So for us, while not knowing how long this tunnel will be, we would like the Olympic flame to be a light at the end of the tunnel, and to send the message of peace, what we always do, but in this very difficult circumstances a message of hope and community of humankind. Financially, what is the cost of a delay of one year or two years? We have our risk management policies in place and our insurance and this will make it possible for us to continue our operations and organize future Olympic Games. Many of the broadcast payments don't arrive until just before the opening of the Games. Does the I.O.C. or Tokyo need this money by July to avoid significant financial repercussions and to continue to meet its ongoing expenses? The I.O.C. has no cash flow problem. What about the Tokyo organizing committee? I have no indication for this, but as far as I am informed the answer is also no. You were an Olympic athlete. How would you have felt if I had locked you in a room from March through May of 1976 (when Bach competed as a fencer for West Germany) and told you that you could not train? I can sympathize with these athletes because of my experience. I had a similar situation before the Games in Moscow in 1980, when there was also a lot of uncertainty. Would the Games take place in Moscow? Could we go? Would we be allowed to go, under which circumstances? For an athlete, the worst thing for preparation is the uncertainty that distracts from training and preparations. I told the 220 athletes in the phone call Wednesday that we cannot pretend we have answers to all your questions. We are in the same situation as you and the rest of the world. Do you feel comfortable putting on an Olympics that might be an unlevel playing field because you are going to have athletes from certain countries who are unable to train? We advised the athletes to get in touch with their (national Olympic committees) and national authorities to have firsthand information about what is possible for their training, while respecting their restrictions. We have seen in some countries there are opportunities. We also have seen athletes are very creative to bridge this gap for training at home and other training methods. It is a unique exceptional situation, which requires exceptional solutions.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Sports
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"The Gospel of Eureka" is only 75 minutes long, yet feels much longer. That's partly because this cheery documentary about the uneasy alignment of L.G.B.T. life and avid Christianity in the town of Eureka Springs, Ark. refuses to grapple with its glaring contradictions. Mostly, though, it's because of the inordinate amount of screen time surrendered to a tiresome Passion play extravaganza. Watching people watch a stage is just lazy filmmaking, no matter how many donkeys, doves and bleating goats enliven the spectacle. Cutting repeatedly between the play and a rowdy drag show at a thriving gay bar, the directors Michael Palmieri and Donal Mosher underscore the parallels in the pageantry. The exuberant drag artists applying their war paint share common showbiz purpose with the actor playing Jesus, smearing himself with fake blood ("It's edible!") and proudly displaying the prop room's selection of whips. Like his queer counterparts across town, his lip syncing is flawless.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Movies
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Back in the early aughts, Ed Banger Records was the leading exporter of glitchy French electronic dance music and a Parisian cool kid scene that orgiastically blended night life, fashion and art. Founded by the D.J. and musician Pedro Winter, the label helped turn acts like Justice, Uffie, Sebastian and Mr. Oizo into international figures. Since his days as a teenage party promoter and, later, as Daft Punk's manager, Mr. Winter has cut an unmistakable, lanky and shaggy haired silhouette on the Parisian cultural landscape. He has released 12 inch singles, compilations and remixes under the alias Busy P, and D.J.ed at spaces as varied as Berghain, the behemoth club in Berlin, and Lot Radio, a dinky lounge in Brooklyn. This month, Ed Banger put out "Ed Rec 100," a compilation that commemorates the label's 100th release and includes new tracks from every artist under its roof. After installing a promotional pinball machine in the storefront window of Colette, Mr. Winter spoke by telephone about the changes in the Parisian party scene, managing Daft Punk and the recent French election. You released "Genie" in February, your first single in five years. Why did you end your hiatus? My main job is to work for my artists and work behind them. At the same time, I like to go into the studio and make music using my sampler and rhythm machine. It's true that I've mostly been making club music, repetitive electronic stuff. But for this one, I wanted to be a bit more ambitious. Mayer Hawthorne was in Paris for his European tour and I played him a song I was working on. He went back to Los Angeles, wrote a love song and killed it. The dance scene in the United States has moved away from underground music. Has the same happened in Paris? In France, we resist pretty well to what we call the E.D.M. But the whole electronic music industry has been moved by that market. In Europe, electronic music has to be an alternative or a subculture. It has to be avant garde or pushing the boundaries, rather than becoming a big pop market. Would you say Ed Banger's music has changed over the last decade? I would never regret anything we released back then, but today is another day. We were the label of the year in 2007, 2008, 2009, but trends are a cycle. The label is 14 years old now. It's like a teenage human, where it's a bit like an adult now. You managed Daft Punk in your early 20s. How does it feel to see them thriving so many years later? That's amazing. I feel blessed to have worked close to them for 12 years. I owe them all of my life. They are geniuses. But also, on a personal level, it was important to prove to myself that I could create something myself. Have you ever accidentally revealed their identities? No, no, no. But it's funny, especially in Paris, when people would see me at a concert or a party, they would understand Daft Punk was around because they recognized me. Beyond the music, Ed Banger and "French Touch" have always been associated with a larger sense of Parisian style. I think the link with the fashion and art world is that we have a common sense of aesthetic and love of image. The Justice boys did the music for Dior Homme; Sebastian is doing most of the music for Yves Saint Laurent. And me, I've been D.J.ing for Jeremy Scott for the last 10 years. I'm really respectful to the expression of contemporary art and fashion. Especially nowadays, we are living in a crazy world and art can make people think. With the recent French election, was there any urgency to address political issues? We often get the question: "Are you political or not?" We never really speak loudly, but, in a way, I think we are reflecting our political position by doing what we are doing. D.J. Mehdi, who I was working with for more than 10 years, passed away in 2011. He was a suburb guy coming from the hip hop side. We built Ed Banger together. We were sharing our passion for music. We didn't need a flag to say we are for unity and mixing people together. Has the night life scene in Paris changed over the 25 years of your involvement? It has completely changed! Me, I grew up in the gay scene of Paris, when I was 20 years old. This is where the best music, the best people and the most fun party was. When I started my own parties in 1995, it was all about bringing the young skateboarders from Paris who couldn't get in, mixing them with the gay crowd and the fashion world. Now you have the gay crowd on one side, the techno heads on the other, the hip hop heads on other. I'm sad. The best cocktail was when we mixed all the genres together.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Style
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MUNICH Perhaps it's the onset of winter, the shorter days and the longer evenings, but right now, watching theater at home, online, doesn't seem quite as dreary or tiresome as it did during the spring lockdown. Back in March, theaters scrambled to put up as much of their recorded archives as they could, resulting in a staggering volume of nightly streams that was nearly unmanageable. With Germany's second lockdown, which began in early November and was recently extended through the end of the year, theaters are trying to keep their current seasons going with a mix of premieres and recent recordings at a time when they can't welcome audiences inside their auditoriums. All this shows that theaters here have learned something from the experience of the past eight, mostly performance free months. While stages remained dark, some theaters made contingency plans for future lockdowns. It's difficult to generate excitement about a premiere that no one can attend, but the Deutsches Theater in Berlin managed to create buzz around Sebastian Hartmann's staging of Thomas Mann's "The Magic Mountain" in mid November. (Performances with an audience are planned for early next year.) Mann's protagonist, Hans Castorp, plans to stay a few weeks at a Swiss sanitarium and ends up as a patient there for seven years. In bringing the novel to the stage, Hartmann, a critic's darling whose productions often seem more like installations or performance art than conventional theater, explored the knotty nexus of time, space and reality with a grotesque intensity. To all appearances, Hartmann's point of departure is one of the novel's most famous chapters, "Snow," a hyperreal interlude in which Castorp falls asleep during a blizzard and has vivid and unsettling dreams. For much of the production, the eight actors trudged across the stage in clumpy white bodysuits that made them look like deformed Michelin Men, often accompanied by projected video game like animation (Tilo Baumgartel) and ominous music (Samuel Wiese). In the video stream, shot with multiple cameras from various positions both onstage and off, these elements often blended and blurred: This, plus occasional technical glitches, made it quite difficult to get a sense of what the production might look like onstage. The stagecraft, cinematography and editing combined to produce a disconcerting effect, like spending two hours in a snowstorm. With no discernible plot, the strange goings on and shrill monologues quickly grew tedious. Aside from several gin and tonics, what kept me going was the highly active live chat that accompanied the YouTube broadcast. And I wasn't alone: "This chat is the best! I can hardly tear myself away and concentrate on the play," one user wrote. "I'm all for tearing things down, but why is this billed as 'The Magic Mountain' when nothing remains of the original," another user wrote. "It needs a different title." But perhaps the most perceptive comment of the evening was this one: "This is just one of a thousand ways to do theater. The good news is that none of us paid big bucks for this and we can decide to leave at any time." Aside from this, I was surprised by how poorly the excitement of live theater came across in the stream. All the elements that combined to make this a slick online viewing experience the camerawork and editing effects sapped it of its raw, immediate power. The place to turn to for that live wire energy was the Munchner Kammerspiele, which had just started an ambitious new season before the second lockdown hit. Warner, whose heritage is Jamaican, Singaporean and Indian (his parents were British soldiers stationed in the Lower Rhein region, which is where he was born) narrates and sings about a society built on the pillars of free market capitalism, systemic racism and police brutality. Yet despite these heavy themes, the result is never preachy. Instead, Warner deftly mixes critical theory with pop culture in a performance that is a playful and witty protest. Warner's spoken word and sung lyrics come off as a streetwise take on academic jargon. "Class relations have succumbed to mere identity markers." He raps and croons over funky beats: "Postcolonial theory and critical whiteness discourse have become the lingua franca of our movement." The performance, originally programmed for last season at the Kammerspiele, is set to travel to Basel, Switzerland at a later date. But sometimes taking a show online can seem like the only way to rescue it, during a lockdown with no end date in sight. Unless, like the Maxim Gorki Theater in Berlin, you've planned ahead. Even before the fall lockdown was announced, the theater had already made arrangements to upload recordings of several new productions, to widen their audience while numbers in the auditorium were restricted. Of the four plays now available to rent for a small fee on Gorki Stream though the end of the year, the most of the moment title is "Death Positive States of Emergency," directed by Yael Ronen. (Like the Gorki's stage productions, all the streams have English subtitles). Ronen, the Gorki's in house director, develops her monologue based plays in tandem with her casts. In "Death Positive," six actors demonstrate a range of reactions to the pandemic. Niels Bormann serves as our M.C. Dressed in an improvised medical coverall that looks like a child's Halloween costume, he pedantically enumerates the restrictions that theaters in Germany must adhere to, onstage and off. He strikes an uneasy tone between worry and outright mockery, as when he goes after his co stars with exaggerated vigilance for not wearing masks, or failing to observe social distancing. At the opposite end of the spectrum, Lea Draeger embodies the conspiratorially paranoid style of some coronavirus skeptics. "I'm not denying the situation. I'm just not ready to accept that things are as bad or as good as they tell us they are," she says. Then she urges the audience to hole themselves up in the mountains with survival gear and a diary, "so you can become famous after your death, like Anne Frank." The Israeli actress Orit Nahmias manages to touch an emotional core that her co stars skirt. Ronen gives her two very different set pieces, including a wrenching monologue about her death obsessed father that closes the production. It was Nahmias's earlier scene, however, that resonated with me more strongly: the monologue of an actress who has been forcibly separated from her public. "I've missed you," she tells the audience in a sweet and witty address. Like a jilted lover craving tenderness and rapprochement, she apologizes to the audience for having been selfish: She realizes how much she needs us; she's ready to consider our needs. With humor and a dash of sap, Nahmias connects with her audience in person and virtual with warmth and generosity. It's just the sort of openhearted gesture we need as we contemplate the prospect of a winter without live theater.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Theater
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Life Insurance Buyer's Guide: What Type, How Much and Who Will Benefit You've probably seen the life insurance commercials in which small children, all wide eyed and adorable, ask questions like, "Hey, Dad, what's life insurance?" While these campaigns are supposed to put a small lump in your throat, most people don't think about life insurance until they absolutely have to. That usually happens when their financial well being becomes increasingly intertwined with someone else's, which can come with getting married, buying a home or, the big one, bringing a child into the world. Those happy events don't make the task of buying life insurance any more pleasant just more urgent. "It is one of those things that people put off," said Emilie R. Goldman, a financial planner in San Mateo, Calif. "Most people I talk to are pretty surprised about the amounts they need and often think because they have coverage at work, it's enough." That's hardly ever the case. So consider this a back to basics guide that will help sort out what you need as quickly and efficiently as possible. Buying insurance has a lot in common with ripping off a Band Aid: You just need to do it and then get on with the business of living. Below are answers to some of the most common questions that are likely to arise: What type do I need? Most people are best served by a plain vanilla term insurance policy. At least that's what many financial planners who are paid a fee for their advice will recommend. As the name suggests, these policies pay a set amount if the policy owner dies within the boundaries of the term, typically somewhere between 10 years and 30 years. Term insurance is simple, the policy features generally don't vary greatly across providers (other than the cost), and it's cheap compared with other types of insurance. A healthy 30 year old woman might pay 38 a month for a 1 million policy with a 20 year term (men pay 10 more), according to PolicyGenius, an online insurance brokerage. A 45 year old woman might pay about 48 a month for a 500,000 policy with a 20 year term ( 60 for men). Smokers can expect to pay two to three times as much. But don't be surprised if you find yourself sitting across the table from an insurance agent who tries to push a permanent insurance policy, like whole life or universal life insurance. Those policies generate higher commissions, so there's that temptation for the agent. And even if the agent truly believes in the merits of permanent insurance, which can accumulate a cash value, it is far more expensive, often costing several thousand dollars a year. Permanent life insurance can, however, be the right choice for people who will always have a need for life insurance. They might include the parents of a child with special needs or a wealthy family who will owe estate taxes. How much to buy? The rule of thumb tossed around most often is to buy coverage worth 10 times the policyholder's salary. But each family's needs will vary depending on what amount of income the family is seeking to replace and what other items family members may want, or need, to pay for. Would you want to take time off from work if a spouse died? Pay off the mortgage (or just receive enough to continue making payments)? Pay for a portion or all of college? Are there any debts that would need to be repaid? Matt Becker, a financial planner in Florida whose practice focuses on younger families, said working parents should buy enough insurance to replace their income for five to 20 years, depending on how old their children are and whether a spouse or partner could support the children on one income. "For a stay at home parent, you should consider the cost of hiring someone else to perform all of your daily duties," added Mr. Becker, who created a life insurance guide and a work sheet to calculate how much insurance you'll need. The costs can add up, particularly when considering child care, buying and preparing meals, chauffeuring children around and the overall job of keeping a household running. One policy or more? Families' needs will probably change over time, so some individuals may consider buying policies with different expiration dates: maybe a 1 million policy with a 20 year term that gets the children through college and another 500,000 policy with a 30 year term that gets you to retirement. That's a strategy suggested by Mark Maurer, president of Low Load Insurance Services, which provides insurance to other fee only advisers. "You're layering it for different milestones," he added. But since it's usually cheaper to buy term insurance in bulk, he said it wasn't always cost effective to buy policies in increments of less than 500,000. Buy the policy as soon as the need arises, or even earlier. Pregnant women, particularly late in their pregnancies, may pay more because of their weight and naturally elevated cholesterol levels. Whom to name as beneficiary? The easiest alternative for a happily married couple is to name one another as the beneficiary. But if both parents die and a minor child is named as a contingent beneficiary, or if a single parent names a child as a beneficiary, matters can get complicated. Surrogate courts will probably get involved. The simplest and most inexpensive way to avoid this situation is to have the policyholder's will create a testamentary trust after the holder's death. The trust is named as the beneficiary, providing instructions for a named trustee, said Steven A. Loeb, a lawyer with Fein, Such, Kahn Shepard, in Parsippany, N.J. But that's not the only option. An individual can also create a revocable living trust, which essentially serves as a will but has the added benefit of avoiding probate, the sometimes lengthy court directed process to settle a will. Unlike a will, the trust remains private and doesn't become a public record, as long as it's properly funded. Then there's the bulletproof option. Parents can name an irrevocable life insurance trust as the owner and beneficiary of the policy. Not only does that protect the money from creditors (helpful for doctors subject to malpractice suits), it also removes the proceeds from the estate for tax purposes. Life insurance proceeds aren't subject to income taxes, but the amount is included in the deceased's estate, said Brett J. Barthelmeh, an estate planning attorney with Squillace Associates in Boston. That isn't a problem for most people, now that the federal estate tax exemption is 5.45 million (double that for married couples). And while there are states with far lower exemptions for state estate taxes New Jersey is a mere 675,000 and Massachusetts is 1 million many families don't set up trusts to avoid those taxes. Why? Assets left to a spouse are not subject to estate taxes. And the surviving spouse is likely to spend a big chunk of the insurance money anyway. But state estate taxes could become an issue, at least in certain states, if both parents died with substantial policies. Where to buy it? It pays to shop around to see which insurer offers the best price for specific circumstances. And instead of working with a broker exclusively affiliated with a single insurer, work with an independent agent who has access to the top term insurance providers. That's important because some insurers may provide better pricing for people who are overweight, while others may be more competitive for policyholders, say, in their 40s and 50s. Financial planners should also have solid recommendations. Then there's the online route. AccuQuote is an independent brokerage that has been selling life insurance online since the Internet was in its infancy. PolicyGenius is a newer entrant with easy to use calculators that help determine how much you need, factoring in estimates like the cost of fully funding college.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Your Money
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IF all goes well, we'll never hear much about Rupert and Wendi Murdoch's divorce. The News Corporation chief executive and his wife will reach a settlement out of court for his third and her second divorce. If talks break down and the divorce goes to trial, however, we could be in for a round of sensational stories. Over the years, I've tried to avoid writing about big money divorces like this. I've just been a bit prudish about something that is at best sad and at worst tragic. I always think of the children. But there is certainly plenty of practical advice to be gleaned from such an emotional issue, which is why lawyers and financial planners should tune in to the salacious gossip. What little is known or can be logically assumed about the Murdoch divorce provides lessons for people with far less money. There are at least four areas in the Murdoch divorce that other affluent people need to consider if they find themselves served with divorce papers. AGREEMENTS In the Murdoch case, there is reportedly a prenuptial agreement and two postnuptial agreements that modify the original contract. Ilan Hirschfeld, national leader of the marital dissolution practice group at Marcum, an accounting firm, said postnuptial agreements generally solidify the prenuptial agreement and make the separation of assets cleaner. But if there is only a prenuptial agreement and it is very old, he would use forensic accounting to challenge it. "If I'm representing the Mrs. and she's not happy because her husband is making 10 times what he was making in the beginning, I'll go back and say, 'Did you disclose all the assets?' or 'Was she properly represented?' " he said. David Aronson, a founding partner of Aronson, Mayefsky Sloan, took the opposite position. He said people who entered into prenuptial agreements lightly or without proper counsel could be sorely disappointed. "Prenuptial agreements are routinely enforced in New York, even if they appear to be bad deals," he said, adding that the few recent cases in which they were overturned were "still exceptions to the rule." One type of prenuptial agreement that could draw more scrutiny, Mr. Aronson said, is one drawn up to protect the earnings of the higher earning spouse when both people were younger. "That's a very bad deal for the spouse who is never going to earn a lot of money," he said. ASSETS Dividing assets between spouses is rarely as simple as deciding to split it 50 50 or even 60 40. A lot depends on what kinds of assets are involved. Appraisers and lawyers draw a distinction between passive and active assets. A passive asset would be a house or a stock portfolio, but not all of them can be parceled out. Jason M. Katz, a private wealth adviser at UBS Wealth Management, said a municipal bond portfolio could be tricky to divide without slighting one spouse because bonds have different maturities and credit quality. More difficult are investments in hedge funds and private equity. He said couples would have to wait until the next withdrawal period to get their money from a hedge fund, but with private equity they did not have the same option and could be in it for years, depending on how long the fund holds on to its investments. A way around this could involve one spouse trading away rights to it for something else, like a beach house. A business, on the other hand, is an active investment, and the percentage a spouse is entitled to depends on how much he or she contributed to the business. In the case of anyone who enters a marriage with an existing business, as Mr. Murdoch did with News Corporation, the calculation of what percentage of the business Mrs. Murdoch could be owed starts on the day they were married and ends with the value of the company on the day they filed for divorce. This is tricky: She traveled with Mr. Murdoch on business, particularly to her native China, and famously smacked a guy trying to throw a pie in his face. But what could she or any one person contribute to the success of a global company like News Corporation? The calculation changes if the business was started while the couple was married. Mr. Hirchfeld said that a spouse of a business owner who stayed home and raised the children is generally awarded somewhere between 30 to 35 percent of the business. "If the wife says 'We started the business together,' you have to look at how active the role is," he said. "I've had divorces where they can't live together anymore but agree to run the business together. The courts don't like that it's a time bomb waiting to happen." CHILDREN The care of any young children should, of course, be the primary concern of the divorcing parents. To help with the financial part, many states have set up criteria that put a value on each child. In New York, the standard cost of care for one child is 17 percent of the combined income, 25 percent for two and 29 percent for three. But this calculation is capped at 136,000 plus a discretionary amount above that. Mr. Aronson, who has been involved in prominent child support negotiations, said that basic payment did not include school, medical bills, child care or extracurricular activities, which can be as much or more than the child support. "A lot of people think it's harder to represent rich people," he said. "In many respects, it's easier. When there is enough money going around it's easier to divide up the surplus. Otherwise you're dividing up assets that are crucial to people's day to day lives." Yet he said no matter how lavishly the children lived before a divorce, there were limits to what they might expect afterward. "The courts will not, in the guise of child support, create a standard of living for the mother of the child or the ex wife, whichever she might be, simply to enable the child to fly in private planes or have second homes," Mr. Aronson said, "even though that might have been the standard of living the child might have enjoyed had the marriage remained intact." With children who have siblings from previous marriages, Mr. Hirschfeld said the negotiations could become trickier. Not only does the spouse with less want to make sure the children are provided for, but also that they receive the same treatment as children from previous or future marriages. He suggested trusts for each child's care. A frequent request in a divorce is that the better off spouse draw up a will leaving everything to the children from the current marriage, but that's not an effective solution. A new will could be written the day the divorce is final. FEES For all but the wealthiest people, fees paid to lawyers, accountants, appraisers and other advisers can reduce what the spouse with less is fighting for. Jeffrey R. Cohen, a divorce lawyer at Cohen Goldstein, estimated that a cooperative divorce could cost 15 percent of the cost of one that dragged on or went to trial. When it comes to agreeing on what people believe is their rightful share, he recalled telling clients: "If you're 10 percent away, I know you're going to settle your interest. If you're 15 percent, there's a chance. But if you're 50 or 75 percent away, you're going to war." An alternative some practitioners advise is "collaborative divorce." (This is not to be confused with arbitration or mediation.) It is meant to minimize the costs having one appraiser instead of his, hers and a neutral third appraiser, for example. It also focuses on getting to a quick, fair resolution. "Spouses are assisted in coming up with their goals," said Tracy B. Stewart, a certified public accountant in College Station, Tex., who works on collaborate divorces. "Then they agree on the value of all the property. Then we generate options for each piece of property and brainstorm how best to divide these things so they both end up with a secure financial future." It requires the couple to be ready to move on, even if they don't like each other any more. One of her more challenging but ultimately successful cases was working with a couple where the husband was addicted to alcohol, cocaine and sex. ("You think that wife wasn't mad?" she said.) Where this or any type of negotiation fails is often over small things that have an outsize significance in a marriage. "I have seen people fight over things that didn't need to be fought over and it cost them a lot of money," Ms. Stewart said. "If you're going to fight over the souvenirs you got in Europe 30 years ago and your attorneys have to listen to it ka ching, ka ching, ka ching." Mr. Cohen said he told a story to clients who were headed for a long, expensive, contested divorce about the wife of a well known billionaire who decided to take his offer and move on. "She says, 'Either I take the offer or he's going to keep me in court for the next seven years,' " he recalled. "She says, 'This is enough money for me. I can take care of my children and live a good life. I don't care how much he has.' " Asked how often other spouses heard the story and did the same, he said, "I'd say she was the only one."
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Your Money
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After weeks of uncertainty amid the coronavirus pandemic, the International Olympic Committee and local organizers of the 2020 Summer Olympics in Tokyo announced on Tuesday that the Games would be postponed. It was a big deal. The Summer Games make up the world's largest sporting event, a multibillion dollar endeavor that every four years brings together thousands of athletes from hundreds of countries in dozens of sports, hundreds of thousands of fans and boatloads of money from big international brands. Here's what happened and what could happen next: The Games were postponed until 2021. No specific date was decided, but it's unusual to shift a date for the Olympics. They have been canceled only for world wars in 1916, 1940 and 1944, and never postponed. But haven't all big sporting events been postponed or canceled? The vast majority in the spring, yes. But even as all the major sports leagues and events in the world basketball, soccer, golf, you name it ground to a halt over the past few weeks in the face of the coronavirus pandemic, the organizers of the 2020 Tokyo Games had declined to make a decision on their own event, signaling instead that they'd wait to see how everything played out. Many people found that stance unsatisfactory, to say the least. Several called it out as tone deaf and, more important, unsafe. Over the past week, a wave of voices calling for a delay including prominent national Olympic committees, global sports federations and individual athletes grew too big to ignore, and on Tuesday night in Japan, the organizers announced that the Games would be delayed by up to a year. None Week 11 Predictions: Here are our picks against the spread. N.F.L. Tightens Covid Protocols: As cases rise and Thanksgiving approaches, the league is requiring masks inside team facilities and increasing testing. The Packers' Defense Is Their M.V.P.: Green Bay's oft overlooked defense has kept the team from falling out of the Super Bowl chase. The Long Path to the Super Bowl: With 18 weeks in the regular season and fewer teams earning byes in the playoffs, the Super Bowl is still a long way off. Playoff Simulator: Explore every team's path to the postseason, updated live. When were the Olympics supposed to take place? The opening ceremony of the Games was scheduled for July 24, in Tokyo's national stadium. And when will the Games be held now? We don't know yet. All the organizers have said is that the Games would be held sometime after 2020 and no later than the summer of 2021. What time frame makes the most sense? Plopping the existing schedule for the 2020 Olympics onto the very same dates in 2021 seems like the simplest thing to do. But it would create scheduling conflicts with some other major international sporting events, like the world championships for track and field and swimming. Holding the Games earlier say, in the spring of 2021 could work, but they might then overlap with the schedules of some domestic sports leagues, like the N.B.A. and all the big ones in European soccer. A springtime Olympics would also leave very little time for all the various athlete qualification events around the world that need to take place before the Olympics. So some tough decisions still need to be made. So Tokyo 2020 will now be known as Tokyo 2021? Um, no. They're asking us to keep calling it Tokyo 2020. It may not really make sense, but it'll let them avoid redoing a bunch of stuff related to the branding and marketing of the event. (People will presumably call it what they want.) If the Olympics are every four years, what about the Winter Games? Both the Summer and Winter Olympic Games are held every four years. Since 1994, though, the two events have been staggered, so that there are an Olympics every two years. The next two Summer Games after Tokyo, for example, are scheduled to take place in Paris in 2024 and Los Angeles in 2028. The next Winter Games will be in Beijing in 2022 and Milan in 2026. What will the athletes do now? A lot of them are asking that very question. Thousands of athletes around the world were planning, or hoping, to compete at the Games this year. Most of them will have to keep training a task more complicated in a pandemic and just aim now to reach their peak of performance sometime in 2021 instead of late this summer. But the postponement will complicate things for a lot of them. Not all Olympians, for instance, are rich and famous. Many of them have other jobs, go to school or have life plans that they have put on hold to pursue their athletic careers. They have to decide whether it's worth their time to wait another year for the event to take place. What about people who have tickets for the Olympics? They're working on that. Tickets had been in high demand, in Japan and around the world, and more than five million of them had been sold. Another round of sales was set to begin in May, but that has been delayed for now. Toshiro Muto, the chief executive of the organizing committee in Tokyo, noted that the organizers would "make sure not to inconvenience people as much as possible." But, he admitted, they weren't yet sure how it would all play out.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Sports
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WHEN a 37 acre tract in Montauk landed on the market at 18 million two weeks ago, it may have lent the term "sky high real estate" another layer of meaning. The land in question is the home of the local airport, a privately held property with a 3,200 foot runway, a taxiway, six hangars, and a small terminal with two restrooms and two showers. Paul Brennan, the Prudential Douglas Elliman broker who has the listing, says the property is zoned residential and could be divided into six single family lots. Or a deep pocketed buyer could snatch up the entire airport and have a personal landing strip steps from the beach, along with views of Block Island Sound. Alas, he'd have to ditch the Gulfstream IV for a single or twin engine Cessna. "It's not a huge runway," Mr. Brennan said of the airport, which doesn't have a control tower and is mostly used by residents and aviation enthusiasts. "You are not going to land big jets." Nor is there enough room for a "fly in, fly out community," with personal hangars as well as garages connected to each residence. The eight shareholders who own the airport "made a decision that they would like to sell it either as an airport or a residential subdivision," he said. The act of selling alone has built in obstacles. For one thing, buyers looking to convert the property to residential use would have a wait on their hands. According to Arlene Salac, a spokeswoman for the Federal Aviation Administration, any airport that takes federal funding "agrees to grant assurances" and "keep it as an airport for the public's use" for 10 years beyond the date of the last grant issued. In this case, that would be 2019 as the airport has received more than 1 million in grants, in increments, since 2002. (The grants were used for upgrades like taxiway edge lights, an automated weather observing system and a runway guidance system.) Also, the F.A.A. must approve the sale.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Real Estate
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Full reviews of recent dance performances: nytimes.com/dance. A searchable guide to these and other performances is at nytimes.com/events. A.O. Movement Collective (through Saturday) For the past three years, Sarah A. O. Rosner has created a kind of gay feminist sci fi utopia with the help of more than 60 collaborators. Together they have produced a graphic novel, a concept album, a fashion show and more. This week adds another dimension (the 10th) to their universe. In "Etle and the Anders," a cast of 10 conjures a future based on Ms. Rosner's "Infinite Theory of the Plural History of Everything," which she recites. Don't expect to be passive observers. Friday at 7:30 at 10 p.m., Saturday at 7:30 p.m., Loft 172, 172 Classon Avenue, between Park and Myrtle Avenues, Clinton Hill, Brooklyn, 347 915 4790, etle.info. (Brian Schaefer) 'A Ballerina's Tale' (in conversation Monday, in theaters Wednesday) In the past year, Misty Copeland has graced the cover of Time magazine, became a popular face of the athletic brand Under Armour and, most significantly, became the first African American woman to be named a principal dancer at American Ballet Theater. The new documentary, "A Ballerina's Tale," recounts her remarkable journey. On Monday, Ms. Copeland and the film's director, Nelson George, chat with Gayle King at the 92nd Street Y after a screening; on Wednesday, the film hits select theaters and video on demand. At 7:30 p.m., 1395 Lexington Avenue, 212 415 5500, 92y.org. (Schaefer) Monica Bill Barnes (Wednesdays through Dec. 16) Karaoke night meets office party in "Happy Hour," the latest concoction from Ms. Barnes and Anna Bass, best known these days as the dancers alongside the radio personality Ira Glass in the touring revue "Three Acts, Two Dancers, One Radio Host." Their new weekly gig, in a Lower Manhattan dance studio, features the cheeky duo playing two guys playing their everyday selves, as Ms. Barnes continues her love affair with awkwardness, failure and physical comedy. The audience gets drinks, prizes and the chance to sing. At 6:30 p.m., Studio G, Gibney Dance: Agnes Varis Performing Arts Center, 280 Broadway, near Chambers Street, 646 837 6809, monicabillbarnes.com. (Siobhan Burke) Bolshoi Ballet (Sunday) This company's performance of the Romantic classic "Giselle" will be broadcast live from Moscow to more than 500 theaters, including several in Manhattan. The performance features the prima ballerina Svetlana Zakharova in the title role of the peasant girl deceived by the nobleman in disguise, Albrecht, danced here by Sergei Polunin (also known for his recent rendition of "Take Me to Church," which went viral on YouTube). Ms. Zakharova's tragic elegance and Mr. Polunin' propulsive power will be all the more potent in close up. At 12:55 p.m., more information and participating theaters are at bolshoiballetincinema.com. (Schaefer) H.T. Chen and Dancers (Thursday through Oct. 18) The wife and husband team of Dian Dong and H.T. Chen spent three years researching and interviewing Chinese immigrants and their descendants for "South of Gold Mountain." Performed by a multigenerational cast, the work sheds light on the racism and discrimination faced by 19th and early 20th century Chinese immigrants who settled in the American South, and celebrates their contribution to building the country's infrastructure. Thursday, Friday and Saturday at 7:30 p.m., Sunday at 3 p.m., New York Live Arts, 219 West 19th Street, Chelsea, 212 924 0077, newyorklivearts.org. (Schaefer) Company XIV (through Nov. 15) This flirtatious company, which combines ballet and contemporary dance with elements of baroque and burlesque, specializes in sexy, spicy, opulent interpretations of fairy tale classics. This fall, the director and choreographer Austin McCormick introduces his take on "Cinderella," which comes with a dash of opera and vaudeville. Because of titillating costumes and scenarios, and free flowing libations, performances are for adults only. Tuesdays through Saturdays at 8 p.m., Sundays at 5 p.m., Minetta Lane Theater, 18 Minetta Lane, Greenwich Village, 800 745 3000, companyxiv.com. (Schaefer) Sean Curran Company and Ustatshakirt Plus (through Saturday) As part of the cultural exchange program DanceMotion USA, led by the United States Department of State and the Brooklyn Academy of Music, Mr. Curran and his New York based modern dance company recently toured Central Asia. While in Kyrgyzstan, they met the traditional Kyrgyz music ensemble Ustatshakirt Plus. "Dream'd in a Dream," which has its premiere at BAM's Harvey Theater, is a collaboration between that group (playing live) and nine dancers, inspired by Kyrgyz culture and the Walt Whitman poem of the title. At 7:30 p.m., Harvey Theater, BAM, 651 Fulton Street, Fort Greene, 718 636 4100, bam.org. (Burke) Dance Heginbotham (Saturday and Sunday) After 14 years as a dancer with the Mark Morris Dance Group, John Heginbotham founded his own company in 2011 and quickly collected fans for his wit, refreshing physical strangeness and canny musical collaborations. The company's Joyce debut, performed to live music, includes "Angels' Share," originally set on the Atlanta Ballet, the solo "Diamond" and "Easy Win," in which Mr. Heginbotham and the jazz pianist Ethan Iverson honor and skewer the rituals of ballet class. Saturday at 8 p.m., Sunday at 2 and 7:30 p.m., Joyce Theater, 175 Eighth Avenue, at 19th Street, Chelsea, 212 242 0800, joyce.org. (Schaefer) Moriah Evans (Thursday through Oct. 17) In the previous iteration of her "Social Dance" project, Moriah Evans cleverly utilized a black and white checkered floor as a grid to dictate the structure of her work. She describes the sequel, "Social Dance 9 12: Encounter," performed this weekend at Danspace, as its "obverse mirror." In this version, she zeros in on the act of looking as a fundamental component both of social dance and the relationship between audience and performer. At 8 p.m., St. Mark's Church, 131 East 10th Street, East Village, 866 811 4111, danspaceproject.org. (Schaefer) Fall for Dance (through Sunday) This popular, packed to the gills festival concludes this weekend, but not before introducing a new program. The remaining performance of Program 4 (Friday) features Stephen Petronio's "Locomotor," San Francisco Ballet, the classical Indian elegance of Nrityagram and the tap artists of Dorrance Dance. Program 5 (Saturday and Sunday) welcomes the ballet superstar Tiler Peck with an unlikely partner the actor and clown Bill Irwin; the Boston Ballet with a Bellini inspired work by Leonid Yakobson; a United States premiere by the young Flamenco dancer and choreographer Jesus Carmona; and a New York premiere by the enigmatic Israeli troupe L E V. Friday and Saturday 8 p.m., Sunday at 7 p.m., City Center, 131 West 55th Street, Manhattan, 212 581 1212, nycitycenter.org. (Schaefer) General Mischief Dance Theater (Sunday) The modus operandi of General Mischief Dance Theater is dance as play the company's shows have been fondly compared to children's birthday parties. The title of its new work, "Up and Away," refers to a large mobile, designed by the actor and sculptor Kevin Reese, which the company's performers assemble and launch by the dance's end. At 1 and 6 p.m., JCC in Manhattan, Sonnenfeldt Family Auditorium, 334 Amsterdam Avenue, at 76th Street, 212 714 4694, generalmischief.com. (Schaefer) Jose Limon Dance Company (Tuesday through Oct. 25) Jose Limon is a pillar of American modern dance, though perhaps the most unassuming of them. The work of the Mexican born choreographer is celebrated for its proud nobility, palpable spirituality and high drama. Marking its 70th anniversary, the company that bears his name presents 15 works spanning three decades, from 1942 until Limon's death in 1972. The works will be performed by companies and academies from around the United States, as well as South America, Europe and Asia. Tuesday and Wednesday at 7:30 p.m., Thursday and Friday at 8 p.m., Saturday at 2 and 8 p.m., Sunday at 2 and 7:30 p.m., Joyce Theater, 175 Eighth Avenue, at 19th Street, Chelsea, 212 242 0800, joyce.org. (Schaefer) New York City Ballet (through Oct. 18) Already this season, City Ballet has given the world five new ballets by five men, all with something to admire. They receive another encore on Friday, then the rest of the week is a Balanchine love fest, featuring a collection of his famous "Black and White" ballets (Saturday matinee and evening), a taste of his Romantic side in "Tschaikovsky Suite No. 3" and "Liebeslieder Walzer" (Sunday) and a nod to commedia dell'arte in "Harlequinade," which is paired with Jerome Robbins's streetwise rumble, "N.Y. Export: Opus Jazz." Friday at 8 p.m., Saturday at 2 and 8 p.m., Sunday at 3 p.m., Tuesday through Thursday at 7:30 p.m., David H. Koch Theater, Lincoln Center, 212 496 0600, nycballet.com. (Schaefer) Ponydance (through Saturday) This boisterous Irish dance theater troupe returns to New York as part of Travelogues, a series assembled by Laurie Uprichard, who brings the best of what she's seen in her curatorial travels to Abrons Arts Center. The characters of "Anybody Waitin'?" find themselves at loose ends; as the news release puts it, "Leonie is waiting for Paula, Paula is waiting for a man and Bryan is waiting to be included." Together they wrest humor from prolonged anticipation. Friday at 7:30 p.m., Saturday at 6 and 9 p.m., 466 Grand Street, at Pitt Street, Lower East Side, 866 811 4111, abronsartscenter.org. (Burke) Silas Riener (Wednesday through next Friday, and through Oct. 28) The solo is a special strand of dance DNA, and Silas Riener, a celebrated former member of the Merce Cunningham Dance Company, knows how to command a big space. His new solo performance, though, takes pace in more intimate environs, offering a welcome opportunity to observe his calm intensity and physical precision up close. The show, called "Blue Name," is a compilation of short works made over the course of a year and a half. At 8 p.m., Chocolate Factory Theater, 5 49 49th Avenue, Long Island City, 718 482 7069, chocolatefactorytheater.org. (Schaefer) 'Swango: The Theatrical Dance Experience' (Thursday through Oct. 17) This production is a revival of an Off Broadway show from 2005 in which the playwright Rupert Holmes, the tango choreographer Mariela Franganillo and the swing dance champion Robert Royston collaborated on a story of star crossed lovers who represent their respective dance styles a meet cute between swing and tango. At 7:30 p.m., Schimmel Center for the Arts, Pace University, 3 Spruce Street, Lower Manhattan, 866 811 4111, schimmel.pace.edu. (Schaefer) 'Where Sculpture and Dance Meet: Minimalism from 1961 to 1979' (through Oct. 31) This exhibition at Loretta Howard Gallery examines the interchange of ideas among choreographers and sculptors in the 1960s and '70s. Sculptures by Ronald Bladen, Donald Judd, Robert Morris, Andy Warhol and Sol LeWitt share the space with videos of performances by Trisha Brown, Lucinda Childs, Merce Cunningham, Simone Forti and Yvonne Rainer. Tuesdays through Fridays from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. and Saturdays from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m., 525 531 West 26th Street, Chelsea, 212 695 0164, lorettahoward.com. (Burke)
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Dance
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Q. Can I have a conversation with Google Assistant, or will there be an update in the future that will let me have one? A. Google Assistant, the company's voice based helper software that is similar to Amazon's Alexa, Apple's Siri and Microsoft's Cortana software, can already hold basic two way conversations based on spoken or typed questions and commands. However, more intricate interaction with all these virtual assistant apps is coming as companies expand their research into the scientific areas of artificial intelligence, machine learning and natural language processing. (For those with privacy concerns, keep in mind that most virtual assistant software is designed to collect personal data.) The Google Assistant software is available as an app for Android and iOS devices, built into Google Home and other speakers, Android based wearables, cars, televisions, smart home appliances and other gear. If you are not sure how to talk to the program, the Google Assistant site has a lengthy list of the questions, commands and topics that you can use with the software, complete with suggestions on how to phrase your requests. You can, for example, tell Google Assistant to remember where you parked your car and then ask the software to remind you of the location later. For those with Google Home speakers, the company recently released a series of Routines, which run through a set of regular daily tasks like adjusting the thermostat and lights before reporting the traffic and weather as you wake up.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Technology
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Lalo Alcaraz, the creator of the comic strip "La Cucaracha," paid tribute to Lee Salem in cartoon form. As president of Andrews McMeel Syndication, Mr. Salem oversaw that strip and numerous others. The package of rough scribbles that Cathy Guisewite sent to the Universal Press Syndicate in 1976 did not look at all like the accomplished comic strips that Lee Salem usually edited. "I could not draw at all," Ms. Guisewite recalled. "What I sent Lee wasn't organized into a strip; it was just raw emotion on the page. These were drawings meant for my mother's eyes only: the humiliating, worst moments of one young career woman's life." But Mr. Salem recognized a strong new voice in Ms. Guisewite's embryonic work. Rather than tell her to spend more time developing her idea s, he quickly sent her a contract to create "Cathy" an anxiety ridden ("Ack! "), body conscious woman whose vulnerability would strike a nerve with readers pleased to follow her, frame by frame. "He sent me a note with the contract saying he was confident I could draw," Ms. Guisewite said in a phone interview. Mr. Salem died on Sept. 2 at his home in Leawood , Kan. He was 73. His wife, Anita (Parker) Salem, said the cause was a stroke. Mr. Salem understood what made comic strips tick, prized lively writing and gave his cartoonists substantial leeway. "We believe in the creative process, and we believe that the cartoonists, once they have developed a relationship with their readers, have a right to try certain things," he said in an interview for the website Mr. Media in 2007. Mr. Salem also positioned himself as what Mr. Trudeau called a "human firewall" when readers or newspaper executives were angered by episodes of "Doonesbury." In 1985, Mr. Salem chose not to distribute six installments of "Doonesbury" that satirized the anti abortion film "The Silent Scream." That story arc was "so controversial that it might kill the strip altogether," Mr. Salem told The New York Times. A month later, Mr. Trudeau mocked Frank Sinatra's alleged ties to organized crime and had him, in one strip, threatening a casino blackjack dealer if she shuffled the cards before dealing. Through his lawyer, Mickey Rudin, Sinatra demanded a retraction. "Lee called me up and said in that calm, steady voice of his, 'Rudin says you got a lot of the facts wrong,'" Mr. Trudeau said in a eulogy delivered at Mr. Salem 's memorial service. "And I replied: 'Of course I got a lot of the facts wrong. I made them up.'" So, Mr. Trudeau added, "Lee directed the syndicate's counsel to send a one sentence reply stating the obvious: that the strip was covered by the First Amendment. Rudin stood down." Lee Salem was born on July 21, 1946, in Orlando, Fla., and grew up in Boston and Portsmouth, N.H. His parents were Rosemary ( Segars ) Salem, a waitress, bartender and factory worker, and Louis Salem . Mr. Salem received a bachelor's degree in English from Park College in Parkville, Mo., and taught high school English for a year. He then earned his master's in English at the University of Missouri, Kansas City. While attending graduate school, he worked in the claims department of a health insurance company. One of his college teachers, who was freelancing at the Universal Press Syndicate (now called Andrews McMeel Syndication), recommended him for a job at the syndicate as an assistant editor in 1974. In 1981, he was promoted to vice president and editorial director. "He took over for my father, and the editorial side never missed a beat," Hugh Andrews, the chairman of Andrews McMeel Universal , said by phone. (Mr. Andrews's father, Jim, founded the syndicate with John McMeel in 1970.) "Lee was at his core very smart, caring and compassionate, and as loyal to his creators as he could be." One of those creators was Mr. Watterson, who in 1985 brought Universal a comic strip about a little boy named Calvin whose stuffed toy tiger, Hobbes, comes to life, but only in Calvin' s mind. "It was so breathtakingly simple, fresh and professional that I had to set it aside with the thought, 'This can't be as good as I think it is,'" Mr. Salem recalled in an interview for the website GoComics in 2015. He circulated samples of "Calvin and Hobbes" around the office and at home, where his son, Matt, told him, "This is the 'Doonesbury' for kids." Mr. Watterson said that Mr. Salem could read through a month's worth of "Calvin and Hobbes" strips and not even giggle. "He could have been reading obituaries for all the delight he radiated," Mr. Watterson told The Washington Post in 2012. Mr. Salem said he had been taught by Jim Andrews that it was a sign of weakness to laugh at a cartoonist's work in front of the cartoonist. "He would talk to me about what worked and didn't work, but once it started, he was this solid rock wall behind me, and he was that for all of us," she said. And he never tossed out the original package she sent him.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Media
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On election night in Beverly Hills, Jason Blum, the hot shot horror movie producer, was accepting an award at the Israel Film Festival. The polls in a string of midterm contests were closing, and Mr. Blum, a vocal critic of President Trump, was talking about how much was at stake. "The past two years have been hard for all of us who cherish the freedoms we enjoy as citizens of this country," Mr. Blum said. That's when the crowd of mostly Jewish producers and power brokers started to chant, "We like Trump!" An Israeli man stepped onto the stage to try to pull Mr. Blum away from the microphone as the crowd at the Saban Theater Steve Tisch Cinema Center cheered. "As you can see from this auditorium, it's the end of civil discourse," Mr. Blum said, as security rushed the stage to help him. "Thanks to our president, anti Semitism is on the rise." Rabbis and Jewish leaders have raged on Twitter and in op eds, in sermons and over shabbat dinners, over how to reconcile the paradox of Jared Kushner, the descendant of Holocaust survivors, and Ivanka Trump, who converted to Judaism to marry Mr. Kushner. To some Jews, the couple serves as a bulwark pushing the Trump administration toward pro Israel policies, most notably the decision to move the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. To many others, they are the wolves in sheep's clothing, allowing Mr. Trump to brush aside criticism that his words have fueled the uptick in violent attacks against Jews. "For Jews who are deeply opposed to Donald Trump and truly believe he is an anti Semite, it's deeply problematic that he's got a Jewish son in law and daughter. How can that be?" said Dr. Jonathan D. Sarna, a professor of American Jewish history at Brandeis University. Make sense of the people, issues and ideas shaping American politics with our newsletter. Mr. Kushner and Ms. Trump serve as senior advisers in the White House. At a time when Judaism is under assault the F.B.I. said this week that anti Semitic attacks have increased in each of the last three years they are unabashedly Orthodox, observing shabbat each week, walking to an Orthodox Chabad shul near their Kalorama home in Washington, D.C., dropping their children off at Jewish day school and hanging mezuzas on the doors of their West Wing offices. After the Pittsburgh attack, Mr. Kushner played a key role in Mr. Trump (eventually) decrying "the scourge of anti Semitism." And Mr. Kushner helped arrange the president's visit to the Squirrel Hill synagogue, including inviting Ron Dermer, the Israeli ambassador to the United States to accompany them. There, in Pittsburgh, thousands marched to protest what one organizer described as the insult of the Mr. Trump's visit. The White House has referenced Mr. Kushner and Ms. Trump's religion to dismiss accusations that Mr. Trump's rhetoric has emboldened anti Semites. "The president is the grandfather of several Jewish grandchildren," the White House press secretary, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, told reporters. Using the couple in this way has unnerved many Jews who oppose the president and say Mr. Kushner and Ms. Trump violated the sacred, if sometimes unspoken, communal code that mandates Jews take care of each other during times of struggle. "I'm more offended by Jared than I am by President Trump," said Eric Reimer, a lawyer in New York who was on Mr. Kushner's trivia team at The Frisch School, a modern Orthodox yeshiva in New Jersey that they both attended. "We, as Jews, are forced to grapple with the fact that Jared and his wife are Jewish, but Jared is participating in acts of Chillul Hashem," said Mr. Reimer, using the Hebrew term for when a Jew behaves immorally while in the presence of others. For Mr. Reimer, who hasn't spoken to Mr. Kushner since high school, one of those incidents was the administration's Muslim ban, which prompted members of the Frisch community to sign an open letter to Mr. Kushner imploring him "to exercise the influence and access you have to annals of power to ensure others don't suffer the same fate as millions of our co religionists." Leah Pisar, president of the Aladdin Project, a Paris based group that works to counter Holocaust denial, and whose late father, Samuel Pisar, escaped Auschwitz and advised John F. Kennedy, said she found it "inconceivable that Jared could stay affiliated with the administration after Pittsburgh" and called Mr. Kushner the president's "fig leaf." Those kinds of accusations are anathema to other Jews, particularly a subset of Orthodox Jews who accused liberal Jews of politicizing the Pittsburgh attack and who say that any policies that would weaken Israel are the ultimate act of anti Semitism. To that end, even as liberal New York Jews suggest the couple would be snubbed when they eventually return to the city, many in the Orthodox community would likely embrace them. "They certainly won't be banned, but I don't think most synagogues would give them an aliyah," said Ethan Tucker, a rabbi and president of the Hadar yeshiva in New York, referring to the relatively limited honor of being called to make a blessing before and after the reading of the Torah. (Mr. Tucker is also the stepson of Joe Lieberman, the first Jewish candidate to run on a major party ticket in the U.S.) "I don't think people generally honor people they feel were accomplices to politics and policies they abhor," Mr. Tucker said. Haskel Lookstein, who serves as rabbi emeritus of the Congregation Kehilath Jeshurun, the modern Orthodox synagogue on the Upper East Side that Mr. Kushner and Ms. Trump attended, wrote in an open letter to Mr. Trump that he was "deeply troubled" by the president saying "You also had people that were very fine people, on both sides," in response to the white nationalist riots in Charlottesville, Va. When reached last week to comment about the president's daughter and son in law days after the Pittsburgh attack, Mr. Lookstein said simply, "I love them and that's one of the reasons I don't talk about them." Talk to enough Jews about Mr. Kushner and Ms. Trump, and you begin to realize that the couple has become a sort of Rorschach test, with defenders and detractors seeing what they want to see as it relates to larger rifts about Jewish identity. "It's not about Jared and Ivanka," said Matthew Brooks, the executive director of the Republican Jewish Coalition. "People look at them through the prism of their own worldviews." As Jews retreat from membership to reform synagogues, historically made up of political liberals who were at the forefront of the fight for Civil Rights and other progressive issues, Chabad Lubavitch, the Orthodox Hasidic group with which Mr. Kushner is affiliated, has become a rapidly growing Jewish movement. The growth of Chabad correlates with fierce divisions about the Israeli Palestinian conflict and a small but growing contingent of American Jews who prioritize Israel above any other political or social issue. Mr. Kushner, in particular, has become a sort of proxy for these larger schisms about faith and Israel, according to Jewish experts. "There is a great deal of anxiety around the coming of the Orthodox," said Dr. Sarna, the Brandeis professor. "Jared in every way his Orthodoxy, his Chabad ties, his views on Israel symbolizes those changes." Mr. Kushner is the scion of wealthy real estate developers and his family has donated millions of dollars to the Jewish community, including through a foundation that gives to settlements in the West Bank. Mr. Kushner influenced the Trump administration's decision to move the U.S. Embassy, to withdraw from the Iran nuclear deal, and to shutter a Palestine Liberation Organization office in Washington. "You'd be hard pressed to find a better supporter of Israel than Donald Trump and Jared plays a role in that," said Ari Fleischer, a former White House press secretary under President George W. Bush. Mr. Kushner is currently working on a Middle East peace plan expected to be rolled out in the coming months. Haim Saban, an entertainment magnate and pro Israel Democrat, is optimistic about Mr. Kushner's efforts. He said in an interview from his hotel in Israel that although he disagrees with some of Mr. Trump's policies, "Jared and by extension the president understand the importance of the relationship between the U.S. and Israel on multiple levels security, intelligence, but most of all, shared values." In September, Mr. Kushner and his top advisers, Jason D. Greenblatt and Avi Berkowitz, hosted a private dinner at the Pierre Hotel on the Upper East Side. Over a kosher meal, Mr. Kushner, aware of concerns within the Jewish community that Israel policy had become an overly partisan issue, fielded the advice of a range of Jewish leaders, including hedge fund billionaire and Republican donor Paul Singer and Mr. Saban, to craft his Middle East peace plan. "He called and said 'I'll bring 10 Republicans and you bring 10 Democrats,'" Mr. Saban said. The undertaking will only bring more kvetching about Mr. Kushner. Indeed, some of Mr. Trump's most ardent Jewish supporters have already expressed their displeasure at any deal that would require Israel to give up land. "I'm not happy with Jared promoting a peace deal that's sending a message that we're ready to ignore the horrors of the Palestinian regime," said Morton A. Klein, the president of the Zionist Organization of America and a friend of Republican megadonor Sheldon G. Adelson. "But ..." Mr. Klein added, as if self aware of how other Jews will view his position, "I am a fanatical, pro Israel Zionist."
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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VALENCA, Brazil The white bearded, dreadlocked master and his bushy haired student face off in an open sided compound set amid cacao trees and coffee bushes. The two are in constant motion, swinging back and forth in what is called the ginga the fundamental movement of the Brazilian combat game capoeira. At times, the way they feint and kick, and roll under and over and around each other, looks like choreographed dance. But then one side does something the other is not expecting, and it becomes clear that this is a game of strategy, not a planned dance. Mestre Cobra Mansa's ginga transforms into the movement of a staggering drunk, then a marionette whose puppeteer has suddenly let the string go slack. Then he's in a handstand. From there, a leg strikes out like a lightning bolt, stopping just short of hitting his opponent's face. The circle of men and women surrounding the combatants are engaged in a hypnotic call and response song about an encounter with a dangerous snake. It's intoned to the beat of Afro Brazilian drums and the twang of single stringed gourd instruments called berimbaus. "Valha me deus, Senhor Sao Bento," the circle intones in Portuguese, beseeching Saint Benedict for protection. The participants Brazilians mostly, but also Uruguayans, Russians, Ethiopians and Puerto Ricans have come to the 80 acre property of Mestre Cobra Mansa (or, Master Tame Snake) on the outskirts of Valenca, a small coastal city in Bahia, for a three day retreat called Permangolinha. Its name (and its purpose) are a mash up of the sustainable farming system known as permaculture and Capoeira Angola, the capoeira style that Mestre Cobra Mansa, 58, teaches. The event also attracts masters friendly with Mestre Cobra Mansa, including Mestre Lua Santana, from the interior of the state; and Mestra Gege, a rare female master who also teaches in Valenca. To him, it's a way of bringing mostly urban capoeira practitioners he grew up in the poor outskirts of Rio de Janeiro back to the land, from which much of capoeira tradition emerged. The two practices are complementary. "In permaculture," he said, "you interact with and care for the land. The culture of capoeira is to interact with and care for human beings. Permaculture doesn't have the spiritual side capoeira supplies that." Capoeira developed out of the combat games that came to Brazil with African slaves. Couching their practice as dance, the slaves trained in capoeira as a form of resistance and self defense. Even after Brazil abolished slavery in 1888, capoeira was viewed suspiciously by authorities and its practitioners often harassed or imprisoned. The creation of Capoeira Regional in the 1930s, a more formalized practice that imitated aspects of Eastern martial arts, complete with ranks and competitions, is usually credited for bringing it out of the shadows. Capoeira Angola follows a more originalist bent, focusing on cultural and spiritual aspects but not without an element of show. "I don't want simply to hit someone," Mestre Cobra Mansa said. "It's a balance between beauty and efficiency." So is it a dance, a fight or a sport? "If a guy uses a 'stingray's tail' move and kills someone, are you going to write about in the arts section?" Mestre Cobra Mansa said. "No, but it's art!" Participants at Permangolinha, most of whom have practiced capoeira for years, are quick to note that its impact goes far beyond the physical game. "It's everything," said Elena Kilina, a 30 year old Russian living in Sao Paulo. "It's music, it's instruments, it's another language, it's a lifestyle, it's a philosophy. Capoeira for me is an inevitable part of life." Ricardo Rene Diaz Ortiz, a 23 year old on a Fulbright teaching fellowship in Brazil, calls capoeira "a tool for self decolonization" the likes of which he had never come across in his native Puerto Rico. "To me capoeira becomes a way of connecting with an ancestry that was robbed from us." "It's tied to our African roots," said Florentine Santos Machado, a 19 year old from Valenca who started practicing capoeira when her family lived in her mother's native Germany. "It goes well beyond being a sport, because it doesn't just involve the body. That's where we get the idea of capoeira being something bigger. You see the importance of being connected to it." Permangolinha's two dozen or so participants the number ebbs and flows throughout the weekend stay in simple bunk rooms or camp on the property. The main building has no restrooms; a large outhouse has water free compost toilets and cold showers. Volunteers help cook hearty vegan meals mostly from what grows on the property, like butter collards for salad, and cupuacu, a sourish, oblong cacao relative, for juice. There are workshops on things like berimbau making and maintaining an agro forest. Adalicio Manuel de Jesus, whose family has farmed the area for three generations, showed a group how he grafts branches of high yield cacao trees to strong rooted, pest resistant ones, raising productivity without using pesticides. As rain pattered on the roof during a Saturday session, Mestre Cobra Mansa called for volunteers. "How many of you know the length of your leg?" he asked. Herlen Ramos Santos, a 39 year old capoeirista stepped out. Mestre Cobra Mansa had him ginga in front of a chair, instructing him to kick out when thought he was exactly one leg's length away. When he did, the middle of his calf came down on the top of the chair. His leg was considerably longer than he thought. Mr. Ramos Santos will bring that lesson home to Ilheus, a colonial city down coast, where he teaches free capoeira lessons. "As you evolve, you have the obligation to teach others as well," he said. "It's fundamental in capoeira that you don't keep everything you learn to yourself." At the Friday night roda, students saw Mestre Cobra Mansa provoked. He was matched against his former student, Mestra Gege (Maria Eugencia Poggi e Araujuo), 45. The circle oohed as she landed a two legged flying kick on him. He came at her furiously, and she hopped out of the roda, essentially conceding. "Would you have stayed?" she asked later. "Capoeira is about the postures we take toward life," said Diaz Ortiz, the Fulbright fellow. "It's about how we're going to interact with the world. And that goes into permaculture or being vegetarian or what kind of job you have. How did you take the lessons you learned in the roda from the mestres, and use that to define your relationship to this society."
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Dance
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The major networks are unveiling their offerings for the coming television season to advertising buyers in Manhattan this week, at a series of events known as the upfront presentations. Money, prestige and cultural import are at stake. Two New York Times reporters who specialize in media John Koblin and Sapna Maheshwari assess what they saw during the NBC presentation at Radio City Music Hall on Monday, the first from the four major broadcast networks. JOHN Right before NBC's upfront began, we got a reminder of what a strange affair these presentations are these days: CBS filed a lawsuit against Shari Redstone and is officially at war with its corporate owner, Viacom. So while NBC greeted us with musical performances (Jennifer Lopez, fronting a team of dancers, sang "Dinero" at Radio City), stand up routines (thank you, Seth Meyers) and lots of glitz and pageantry, the CBS lawsuit was a sobering reminder what a precarious position media companies are in. But, hey, let's party! SAPNA I felt a wave of deja vu because I was just at Radio City a week and a half ago for another big media company pitch to advertisers except that one was from YouTube. While J. Lo performed briefly today, the YouTube executives hired Ariana Grande, OK Go and Camila Cabello. The new media crowd also invited their thousands of attendees to a huge party right afterward on NBC's turf by the rink outside 30 Rock. Alas, that was not the case today. JOHN NBC used to throw a lavish upfront party, when times were better! This time we were subjected to a two hour presentation meant to stir up good will toward the many brands that fall under the NBCUniversal banner, which, once again, did not work for me. What is the through line from the talk show host Andy Cohen giving a shout out to "Bravoholics" he did do this to WWE wrestling and "Squawk Box?" I'm still dizzy. SAPNA Bravo will be dishing out more of the things that make it Bravo: "Project Runway" will return to the network, which will apparently also roll out five new real estate and design series, including "Sweet Home," which takes place in Oklahoma City, and "Flipping Exes," about a former couple that flips houses together. As one of my friends put it: "Interesting, Bravo taking on HGTV. Soon I will only need Bravo for mindless hung over chatter." JOHN For a second straight year, there was no Jimmy Fallon, who was a big part of NBC's presentations in 2015 and 2016, when his ratings were soaring. It's apparently best to have him lie low, now that he's in second place to Stephen Colbert. But Seth Meyers was so good. SAPNA Seth really brought the zingers. After pointing out John Legend's success in "Jesus Christ Superstar," he remarked: "You know a network has some range when they have a black Jesus and Megyn Kelly." And he zeroed in on the network's troubled morning show when he mentioned NBC's "No. 1 drama," which he described as full of heartbreaking reveals, unexpected twists and "the departure of a once beloved character." Gasps and laughter followed when he said he was talking about "This Is ... the Today Show," rather than "This Is Us." Talk about addressing the company's high profile MeToo moment with Matt Lauer head on. JOHN NBC News did take center stage again this year, with Lester Holt rattling off a list of stats and superlatives about how great everything is at the network's news division! He did not mention Matt Lauer or Tom Brokaw. Nor did he congratulate Ronan Farrow, formerly a correspondent at MSNBC, on his new book deal or his Pulitzer Prize. He did find a moment, however, to give a shout out to Ms. Kelly, even though her hour of "Today" has struggled in the ratings. And Ms. Kelly herself took the stage in a third consecutive upfront appearance for her. She was part of the Fox presentation in 2016 and she had her first NBC public appearance last year. Mr. Lauer introduced her in a way that seems prophetic now: "We're a family at NBC News. Sometimes, it feels a little dysfunctional." 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. SAPNA Speaking of Fox, there was an appearance by Andy Samberg following the news that NBC had picked up "Brooklyn Nine Nine" after Fox gave it the boot. JOHN Followed by another former Fox star, Simon Cowell, talking up "America's Got Talent." Seth Meyers has a good line about this, when he said NBC was like Fox's "deadbeat friend" who asks, "Hey, uh, are you going to finish that? Can I have it?" SAPNA It was so deeply uncomfortable, for me, to see Simon being ... nice. And pandering to the advertisers. It freaked me out to see him so off brand from what I knew growing up! SAPNA YouTube was in Ms. Yaccarino's cross hairs last year. This year the target was squarely on Facebook. A video presentation took footage from Mark Zuckerberg's appearance before Congress, with snippets of Ms. Yaccarino dropped in, showing that she would have held up much better during the grilling. Playing up the virtues of old fashioned television viewing, Ms. Yaccarino dropped the line, "No family has gathered around a News Feed before, have they?" And this came after a CNBC sizzle reel included a clip of Sheryl Sandberg talking about Facebook's breach of trust with its users. Advertisers may have been skeptical, though, when Ms. Yaccarino went on to talk about protecting consumer data. One big issue for TV networks is that they don't exactly have the data that advertisers are craving these days especially compared with the Silicon Valley companies that keep gobbling up ad dollars. JOHN If NBC's upfront was overshadowed by the news of the CBS lawsuit, we're now off to the Fox upfront, which will be overshadowed by ... another merger. We'll have another chat after our trip to Beacon Theater and the Trump Rink after party.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Media
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As Tom Price, the secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, headed to a meeting at the West Virginia State Capitol in Charleston on Tuesday, a reporter from the Public News Service trailed after him in a hallway. The reporter, Dan Heyman, wanted to ask about the health care legislation the House passed last week to replace the Affordable Care Act. With his Android smartphone in hand to use as an audio recorder, Mr. Heyman said in an interview on Wednesday, he reached over some of the staff and security members surrounding Mr. Price. According to an audio recording Mr. Heyman provided, he asked whether domestic violence was going to be a pre existing condition under the new legislation. "Do you think that's right, or not?" he called out. He asked twice more and when there was no response, Mr. Heyman said: "You refuse to answer? Tell me no comment." Kellyanne Conway, counselor to President Trump, was with Mr. Price, and at one point in the recording, a man's voice is heard saying: "Do not get close to her. Back up." After persisting in his questions for nearly a minute, Mr. Heyman was pulled to the side by officers of the West Virginia Division of Protective Services, also known as the Capitol Police, handcuffed and charged with a misdemeanor count of willful disruption of governmental processes. He spent eight hours in a local jail before the news service posted a 5,000 bail for his release. The arrest stirred suspicions that officers were trying to thwart his effort to ask questions, though a criminal complaint said he "tried aggressively to breach the security of the Secret Service" and was "causing a disturbance by yelling questions." His lawyer, J. Timothy DiPiero, said at a news conference on Tuesday night that this was a "highly unusual case," adding, "I've never had a client get arrested for talking too loud or anything similar to that." And in a statement, the American Civil Liberties Union of West Virginia called Mr. Heyman's arrest "a blatant attempt to chill an independent, free press." "The charges against him are outrageous, and they must be dropped immediately," it said. As for whether the security officials were deliberately trying to block him, Mr. Heyman said on Wednesday that he did not think so but added that their actions fit a broader pattern of antipathy toward the press.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Media
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MOTORCYCLE racing is not for the faint of heart or for the fragile of collarbone. The highly tuned and hand built motorcycles at the top level of competition, called MotoGP, have engines that make more than 200 horsepower. Top speed for these machines, which weigh only about 340 pounds, is over 210 m.p.h. This combination has the potential for serious injury to MotoGP riders. But advances in safety, from improved track design to better riding gear, have kept MotoGP racing remarkably free of fatalities. There have been injuries, of course; the current MotoGP world champion, Valentino Rossi, recently broke his lower leg in a crash while practicing for his home grand prix at Mugello, Italy, ending his hopes for adding another championship this year. It would not have helped prevent Rossi's leg injury, but now, air bag technology is finally coming to motorcycle racing. Dainese and Alpinestars, racing gear manufacturers based in Italy, have been testing their inflatable suits with professional riders, including Rossi before his crash, and will soon sell these suits to the public. Dainese says it will be offering production D Air racing suits by the end of the year, and Alpinestars is shooting for June 2011.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Automobiles
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Summer's Not Over Yet! 8 Ways to Extend Your Vacation By most academic calendars, summer is over after Labor Day. But fall doesn't officially begin until late September and continued warm weather in many destinations means you can effectively extend your summer vacations throughout the month, with the bonus of fewer tourists and often, lower prices. So, whether you're an empty nester, a millennial foodie or a seeker of hot spots without the crowds, here are eight ways to stretch your summer beyond Labor Day. Maine holds onto its summer for several weeks into September when many resorts and camps popular with multigenerational clans remain open. Throughout the month, vacationing children tend to be 5 years old or younger, neither ready for school nor structured programming at these retreats, which tend to scale back activities. "You can still explore sea life and tidal pools, but after Labor Day it's more families bonding with the kids, rather than the kids going off to camp," said Bob Smith , the owner of Sebasco Harbor Resort, which is marking its 90th season on Maine's Midcoast, about an hour's drive from Portland. "It's a time to explore with the parents." Sebasco packs picnic baskets for beach outings nearby where families can splash in water one to two feet deep up to 100 feet from shore (rooms from 179, with meal plans 50 for an adult; children under 12 whose parents are on the meal plan eat free). The resort stocks child size fishing gear and golf clubs to play the free three hole practice course. The recreation center has vintage candlepin bowling played with balls small enough for little hands to grip. The start of the college academic year signals empty nesting season, the upside of which is parents reclaiming a share of personal time. Indulge this by ferrying around Canada's Gulf Islands, clustered between the British Columbia mainland and Vancouver Island. Salt Spring Island is the largest of the southern Gulf Islands, which also include Galiano, home to restaurants like Pilgrimme, and secluded Saturna, where travelers can watch for orca whales from land. "In addition to being a transition time from family to adult vacations, September is harvest month," said Jeremy Milsom, the owner of the seven room Salt Spring Inn on Salt Spring Island (rooms from 189 Canadian dollars, or about 142). "We have tons of culinary delights grown and made here." Popular with celebrities, politicians and many others, Martha's Vineyard, roughly seven miles south of Cape Cod, quiets down somewhat after Labor Day. Weekends are still booming, especially with weddings, which testify to the fine weather of September, though bargain midweek rates and a roster of events aim to entice visitors. "For those who are in the know, September is most frequently cited as the best month to enjoy Martha's Vineyard," said Chris Bird, the general manager of the Harbor View Hotel, which offers the third night free for midweek bookings through Oct. 31 (rooms from 389). "It's truly still summer without the crowds and high humidity." From Sept. 3 to 8, the Martha's Vineyard International Film Festival will screen dozens of films, most of them foreign, under the theme "Other Places, Other People" (general admission 15; festival pass 250). On Sept. 21, the Martha's Vineyard Craft Beer Festival aims to tap 50 breweries in Waban Park in Oak Bluffs. More than 3,000 anglers generally show up for the annual Martha's Vineyard Striped Bass Bluefish Derby, Sept. 15 to Oct. 19. For millennials (and foodies of any age): Asheville, N.C. Easy access to the Blue Ridge Mountains, combined with a creative community that has energized everything from craft beer to kayak design, has made Asheville a darling destination of millennials, foodies and adventurers alike. It's also affordable; Airbnb lists apartments from 60 and entire cabins from 75. Staying at the new Foundry Hotel is more expensive (rooms from 289), but the reinvented 19th century steel foundry is a design attraction for non guests too, home to a market stocking Asheville made goods and Benne on Eagle restaurant from the chef John Fleer, serving what it calls "Appalachian soul food." "This business helped create the city skyline that you see today," Larry Crosby, the hotel's historian and director of guest services, said. It is also helping revive the Block neighborhood, a former hub of African American commerce, and the site of a walking tour during Chow Chow, a new culinary festival running Sept. 12 to 15 devoted to southern Appalachian culture, including foraged dinners and food truck feasts (ticket prices vary; some events free). Work it off in local style aboard a Bellyak, a kayak derivation in which paddlers lie on their bellies and use their hands, clad in webbed gloves, to paddle. Adam Masters designed the Bellyak to be closer to nature, and his company offers half day tours on the Tuckasegee River ( 95) or delivers vessels to paddlers downtown to float the French Broad River ( 35), both expected to be warm throughout the month. The British accented Atlantic island of Bermuda, just over two hours by air from New York City, has long been a favorite of family travelers, honeymooners and cruise passengers. In recent years, it has nurtured an adventurous streak that makes it appealing for those who love being outdoors. "As Bermudians, we've grown up testing ourselves against physical challenges our island lends itself so well to cliff climbing, abseiling, ocean kayaking, scuba, trails running and triathlon," wrote Rosemary Jones, author of the Bermuda guide for Avalon Travel's Moon Handbook series and a spokeswoman for the Bermuda Tourism Authority, in an email. In 2017, the island, which generally prohibits visitors from renting cars, began allowing some electric vehicle rentals, making it easier to get around for those who don't want to ride scooters (Current Vehicles offers the Renault Twizy for about 100 a day). Use one to get to Clarence Cove in Admiralty House Park to rock climb a sea cliff free solo style (without ropes, trusting the water to break your fall). Run, hike or walk some of the 18 mile Bermuda Railway Trail National Park, which passes a series of British forts. While the weather is still fair in September , which is also hurricane season, deals spike. The Fairmont Southampton, for example, offers an all inclusive stay at 299 a person for lodging, meals and snacks. The Rosedon Hotel has rates from 276 in September, about half its August rates. Like nearby Capri without the spotlight, Ischia in the Gulf of Naples continues to enjoy summerlike temperatures in September, ideal for hitting the beaches that edge the volcanic island. "A short boat ride from Naples, Ischia is a small slice of Italian 'dolce vita' that still remains rather under the radar," wrote Joan Roca, the chief executive and founder of Essentialist, a membership based travel planning company, in an email. "There is an authenticity to Ischia that is hard to find these days, and there is a sense that life carries on throughout the year with or without tourists." The island's thermal springs, such as the popular Poseidon Thermal Gardens, have been patronized by travelers since the Roman era. Matteo Della Grazia, who owns the tour company Discover Your Italy, which offers a six day tour of Naples and Ischia (from 3,225 euros, or about 3,590), recommends the Sorgeto Beach hot springs, which mix with the ocean to create "hot, warm or cold water just like in the best spas, but these are free and available year round," he said. Inland, the so called Green Island is also known for the terraced vineyards that form the winemaking heart of the island below Monte Epomeo. Mesa Verde National Park protects nearly 5,000 archaeological sites related to the Ancestral Pueblo people, who left behind cliff dwellings and other structures in the canyons of southwest Colorado between 600 and 1,300 years ago (admission, 25 per vehicle). After the high season summer crowds have left, the ruins of elaborate housing warrens tucked under sandstone overhangs remain more peaceful. "In September, you still have the warmth of summer, leafed out green deciduous trees and highs in the low 80s or high 70s," said Kelly Kirkpatrick, the director of tourism for Mesa Verde Country, the area tourism board. "The crowds have died down but all the services are still open." While travelers can tour most of the park throughout the year, three of its big cliff dwelling sites are only accessible via ranger guided tours, which stop running between Sept. 22 and mid October (tickets 5). For a more in depth tour, sign up for the four hour 700 Years Tour offered by the park's concessionaire Aramark ( 75). It also runs the Far View Lodge in the park, which features a dining room with panoramic views and guest room balconies for dark sky stargazing (rooms from about 150).
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Travel
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Even the air aches with mystery in Richard Maxwell's "Samara," a sense of life as a teasing and unresolvable riddle. The sounds that saturate this hypnotic fable of a play, which opened on Sunday in a Soho Rep production, suggest the music that fills your mind when you've been encased in silence for too long the sort of noises your imagination might conjure if you were lost for days in a desert. Such a landscape is the setting for this uncanny tale of nomads adrift, directed by Sarah Benson and featuring an exquisitely subliminal score by the country rock eminence Steve Earle. And as is usual in recent works by Mr. Maxwell, one of the great original voices of experimental theater of the past several decades, "Samara" seems to be situated at the corner of the everyday and eternity, where the earth meets the sky and mortality is a force of gravity. "Old land, wild land," is how a character called the Manan (Becca Blackwell) describes the view. "I can still see pagan and enchanted time, back to Arab time. Uncontrollable desires, relieved and saved, held by, barely contained by God, and magic never quite quelled." Now imagine those lines, if you can, being uttered by Clint Eastwood the early career edition, who appeared as the laconic Man With No Name in Sergio Leone movies of the 1960s. For though its title evokes the Middle East (and the John O'Hara novel "Appointment in Samarra," about one man's road to death), this "Samara" frequently brings to mind movies of the brutal Old West, where life was cheap and horizons endless. Mr. Maxwell crossed similar terrain in 2007 in his deadpan riff on the horse opera, "Ode to the Man Who Kneels." But "Samara" is a fuller and richer work, reflecting welcome new directions that its author has been pursuing of late. Having become a downtown theater darling of the 1990s with poker faced melodramas of willfully plodding dialogue, Mr. Maxwell has extended his artistic reach in his middle years. Recent works like "Neutral Hero" (which reimagines the Odyssey in Mr. Maxwell's native Northwest) and "The Evening" (which begins with a description of the death of his father) have felt surprisingly personal, fully crossing the bridge between the playwright and his subjects. He has also demonstrated a new willingness to stretch beyond the affectless line readings and self consciously makeshift settings that were his early signature. "Samara" is unusual for a Maxwell production in that it is not directed by its author. And Ms. Benson, the inventive artistic director of Soho Rep, has coaxed her very affecting, very funny cast into almost naturalistic performances, while still celebrating Mr. Maxwell's love of the artifice of theater. The Mezzanine space of the A.R.T./New York Theaters has been converted into a monochromatic stretch of prairie and forest by the set designer Louisa Thompson. Mind you, the single color isn't a shade of sand or wood; it's the matte black of the milk crate like containers from which Ms. Thompson has fashioned not only the playing area but also the in the round (or square, to be precise) seating at stage level. Yet we truly believe that when a young Messenger (the 14 year old Jasper Newell) sets out on a fatal journey what he sees before him is "endless plain. Beyond that, valley and river. Beyond that, vast hills." That description comes straight from the script's stage directions, which are read aloud in a raspy voice by Mr. Earle, who observes and annotates the action from behind a music stand. That isn't the only way in which Mr. Earle helps frame the plot. He has also devised the music, both earthy and ethereal, that is performed by two musicians, crouched in corners in sepulchral lighting (beautifully rendered by Matt Frey). Ivan Goff plays the uilleann pipes and Anna Wray a range of strident percussion instruments, and the haunting noises they conjure are both lyrical and suspenseful. Those adjectives also describe the words spoken here, which mix poetic philosophical musings with the more terse, confrontational speech of wary strangers feeling their way through unknown territory. As one character memorably (and accurately) says to another, "You have a cagey way of conversing." The plot is shaped by journeys taken by people hoping to claim or pay off debts, or propelled by a need either to leave or to return home. None of these motives are mutually exclusive. The first of these itinerant figures is the Messenger, who embarks on his trek after killing his Supervisor (Roy Faudree) at an outpost. His destination is a remote inn run by the Drunk (Paul Lazar) and the Manan, an ambiguously linked couple who live in a forsaken inn. They, too, leave the security of their provisional home to go a wandering and meet a small familial tribe, made up of an oracular old woman (the sublime Vinie Burrows) and her feral sons (Modesto Flako Jimenez and Matthew Korahais). Their encounters, which are as often violent as they are haphazard, evoke a heady host of classic American storytellers. The bleak, mythic vistas of the dramatist Sam Shepard and the novelist Cormac McCarthy come to mind, as well as films by Peckinpah and Ford.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Theater
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The chief justice of the Supreme Court infuriated conservatives once again Monday by siding with his four more liberal colleagues to strike down a Louisiana law that would have sharply restricted the availability of abortion there by requiring providers of the procedure to have admitting privileges at nearby hospitals. For abortion foes and no doubt President Trump, the defeat is infuriating. But it's their own fault. The case, June Medical Services v. Russo, was the wrong one to bring to the Supreme Court. In their impatience to restrict the procedure, abortion opponents miscalculated by asking the court to uphold a law virtually identical to one in Texas that the court had rejected four years ago. And for Chief Justice John Roberts, that was too much. But that's not to say the cause is lost for abortion opponents. They need to play the long game. The smartest path for them is to fight for incremental abortion restrictions, like laws approved in red states in the past several weeks outlawing abortion because of the fetus's race, sex or disability. The movement should focus on later abortions, seeking bans on terminations after 20 weeks, and most common second trimester procedure, dilation and evacuation. Why? Because there is no reason to think that Chief Justice Roberts believes the Constitution protects a right to choose. He suggested in his opinion on Monday that the court's most recent strengthening of the standard that states may not impose an "undue burden" on a women's ability to obtain an abortion was a mistake. To him, it doesn't matter if abortion restrictions serve no useful purpose, because nothing in the court's abortion jurisprudence "suggested that a weighing of costs and benefits of an abortion regulation was a job for the courts." Moreover, he wrote, the court's 2016 decision to strike down the Texas law was "wrongly decided," But respect for precedent matters to the chief justice, and if the anti abortion movement wants him to help unravel abortion rights, as his four conservative colleagues seem game to do, it will have to give him a way to do it while upholding the court's institutional legitimacy. This clearly wasn't the case for that. One might have thought otherwise. The chief justice was among those who voted in the minority to uphold the Texas law, and in his opinion on Monday, he said he continued to believe he was right and the majority was wrong. But Chief Justice Roberts also cares deeply about the reputation of the court. When the Trump administration did a sloppy job on a citizenship question for the census or in rescinding DACA, he declined to play along, even if he provided the president with a road map to do a better job next time. The message he sent on Monday was similar: The rules of the reputation game apply to abortion too. As the chief justice put it: "The legal doctrine of stare decisis requires us, absent special circumstances, to treat like cases alike. The Louisiana law imposes a burden on access to abortion just as severe as that imposed by the Texas law, for the same reasons. Therefore Louisiana's law cannot stand under our precedents." If the anti abortion movement wants the chief justice to help unravel abortion rights, it will have to give the court a way to do it that won't look as if precedent is being ignored. But in the age of Trump, conservative commentators and lawmakers expect big results, quickly, and are not afraid to say so or to give up the claims of neutrality that made the conservative legal movement so successful. In his 2018 confirmation hearings, for example, Brett Kavanaugh told the Senate Judiciary Committee that a good judge "must be an umpire a neutral and impartial arbiter who favors no litigant or policy." That's not what some conservatives are saying anymore. What do conservatives want instead? Some, like the Harvard Law professor Adrian Vermeule, propose new theories of constitutional interpretation. Professor Vermeule's alternative, "common good constitutionalism," proposes that "strong rule in the interest of attaining the common good is entirely legitimate" and embraces "a candid willingness to 'legislate morality,'" including in cases of abortion, sexual liberties, free speech and contraception. Others, like Senator Josh Hawley, a Republican of Missouri, who clerked for Chief Justice Roberts and called the decision a "disaster," want a new vetting process that would provide more assurance that Republican nominees adhere to the results that the anti abortion movement demands. At the very least, that would mean laws criminalizing all or most abortions and judicial nominees who would not hide their support for that outcome. From a political standpoint, these proposals have obvious drawbacks. They ignore what most Americans seem to believe a majority want to keep abortion legal and they reject the idea of popular will as a basis for governing, at least on questions of morality. And in strategic terms, these proposals don't seem likely to play well with a Supreme Court committed to the appearance of neutrality and respect for precedent. Losses in the Supreme Court are nothing new. So why are abortion opponents so angry? President Trump has sold conservatives on the idea that the politically impossible can be easily realized and that the path to power comes from rallying the base. While lurching from crisis to crisis, Mr. Trump has maintained stable (if low) poll numbers, all while proposing a raft of socially conservative policies. He doesn't seem to care what the American majority thinks. Some abortion opponents share Mr. Trump's reckless attitude and expect the Supreme Court to rubber stamp absolute abortion bans immediately. That was never likely. But this Supreme Court still seems quite willing (and even likely) to get rid of abortion rights if approached in the right way. The question is whether abortion foes are up to the task. What will ensure the survival of abortion rights? The chief justice made that clear today: the impatience of conservatives themselves. Mary Ziegler, a professor at the College of Law at Florida State University, is the author of "Abortion and the Law in America: Roe v. Wade to the Present." The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We'd like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here's our email: letters nytimes.com. Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter ( NYTopinion) and Instagram.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Opinion
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A roundup of motoring news from around the web: In the 1950s, the Chevrolet Thriftmaster pickup was just what it sounds like, a reasonably priced light duty truck. At the SEMA show this week in Las Vegas, Icon creator of a number of custom appointed classic trucks released a redone version of the postwar truck that comes with all new steel paneling, a 315 horsepower V8, a 6 speed manual transmission and a price tag between 235,000 and 250,000. (The Los Angeles Times) Renault Nissan and Mitsubishi announced Monday that they would expand a partnership focused on building tiny "kei cars," as well as introduce two Mitsubishi built Renault based sedans. One of the Mitsubishi badged Renault cars would be built in South Korea and sold in North America. (Bloomberg) Harley Davidson has announced a new smaller motorcycle aimed at younger and urban riders. The Street 500 and Street 750 motorcycles feature a new line of engines, and Harley said in a news release that the bikes would be marketed globally. (Harley Davidson) Hertz Global Holdings said it would double its sales of retired rental vehicles by the end of 2015. The car rental company typically makes from 1,100 to 1,500 in profit on each of the used rental cars it sells to retail customers. (Automotive News, subscription required)
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Automobiles
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It can be easy to forget that, two years ago, the White House press briefing took place nearly every day. The president refrained from insulting reporters on live television. And correspondents did not lose their access for showing insufficient "respect." That's the thing about traditions they tend to be sacrosanct until they aren't. The rituals of reporting on the White House, and the place of journalism in American life, continued to shift in 2018 under President Trump. On Twitter, he used the term "Fake News" 174 times, nearly once every two days. Presidents usually hold a holiday reception for the Washington press corps (even Mr. Trump acquiesced to one in 2017); this year's edition was canceled. Presidents usually avoid criticizing American journalists on foreign soil; visiting Britain, Mr. Trump called NBC News "dishonest" and refused to take a question from Jim Acosta of CNN. ("Music to the ears of dictators and authoritarian leaders," said an official at the Committee to Protect Journalists.) Mr. Trump is reinventing relations between the president and the press. Next year may reveal if the changes are a blip, or permanent. When Sarah Huckabee Sanders approached her lectern on Dec. 18, it was the press secretary's first appearance in the White House briefing room in three weeks. About 15 minutes later, she left the stage as reporters shouted questions. The White House briefing has been criticized as a rote, futile exercise where journalists showboat for cameras and press aides dissemble. Supporters call it a symbol of transparency in government and a chance to force officials to defend their actions for the record. Either way, the ritual is vanishing. Ms. Sanders has cut back on her lectern time. Now weeks can go by hectic, news saturated weeks without reporters having a chance to ask questions. Mark Knoller, a CBS News reporter and the unofficial statistician of the White House press corps, counted 54 formal briefings in 2018, plus a few gaggles on Air Force One. In 2017, the number was roughly 100. For a politician who calls the news media "the enemy of the people," the president seems to relish interacting with it. Mr. Trump granted more than 70 interviews this year, to news outlets ranging from ABC News to "Bernie Sid in the Morning" on WABC AM, a local drive time radio show. That tally does not include his impromptu remarks at photo ops and Marine One departures, which on occasion stretched for nearly an hour. He gave 30 interviews in October and November alone, not counting a pair of formal news conferences before and after the midterm elections. At the first of the two, Mr. Trump referred to a Kurdish journalist as "Mr. Kurd" and questioned the character of George Washington, musing, "Didn't he have a couple things in his past?" 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 president's preferred venue, however, remained Fox News, whose prime time and morning shows amounted to a Trump cheering section beamed into millions of homes. The cable network secured 18 interviews with the president this year; Fox Business had three more. Journalists there have grumbled about the blurred line between the administration and some of the network's star commentators. On the eve of the midterm elections, Sean Hannity rallied onstage with Mr. Trump in Missouri, high fived the White House deputy chief of staff, Bill Shine himself a former Fox News co president and jeered reporters in the auditorium as "fake news." In 2010, Mr. Hannity was chastised by Fox News executives, including Mr. Shine, for scheduling an appearance at a Tea Party fund raiser. Mr. Hannity also failed to tell viewers that he and Mr. Trump shared a lawyer, Michael D. Cohen. And this summer, the host campaigned in Florida for a candidate for governor, Ron DeSantis, a frequent guest. Mr. DeSantis's campaign manager, Brad Herold, boasted that Mr. Hannity would rally the crowd. "I'm concerned, with Hannity and DeSantis at the same event, that Fox News may have to cancel its prime time programming tonight," Mr. Herold joked in an interview in July. Questioned about the president's treatment of female reporters, Ms. Sanders said Mr. Trump treated them no differently from their male colleagues. (He has called Mr. Acosta "a rude, terrible person.") Another reporter, Kaitlan Collins of CNN, was barred from a Rose Garden event after aides deemed her questions "inappropriate." The president also threatened to strip networks of their broadcast licenses and make it easier for journalists to be sued for libel. Complaining on Twitter about CNN, he floated "the possibility of the United States starting our own Worldwide Network to show the World the way we really are" state TV. Tensions reached a head last month when the administration revoked Mr. Acosta's credentials, citing a bogus accusation about "placing his hands" on a White House intern. CNN sued, and his pass was restored. But the episode underscored how few of the privileges afforded to White House reporters, which can be crucial for their work, are formally protected. Threats to the press this year went beyond words. In January, a Michigan man was arrested after allegedly threatening to kill CNN employees in Atlanta. In October, a Trump supporter was charged with mailing pipe bombs to lawmakers and CNN's New York newsroom, which was evacuated. Jamal Khashoggi, a Washington Post columnist, was murdered by Saudi agents in Turkey. In Maryland, five newspaper employees were killed in a shooting. The motivation was not believed to be political, but the attack led news organizations to tighten security measures. Press freedom groups have called this year among the most dangerous for journalists in recent memory. After the comedian Michelle Wolf delivered a searing set at this year's White House Correspondents' Association dinner, leaving the black tie Washington crowd shaking their heads, Mr. Trump tweeted: "Put Dinner to rest, or start over!"
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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