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As a 24 year old corporate lawyer at Skadden, Arps in New York City in the mid 1990s, Marie Benedict was often the only woman in a room full of men an experience she has drawn on in her subsequent career as a writer of novels inspired by women whose achievements have been overlooked or underappreciated by history. The idea for "The Other Einstein" (2016), about Mileva Maric, the Serbian mathematician and physicist who was Albert Einstein's first wife, came to her while she was reading a children's biography of Einstein with one of her sons. The book dispensed with Maric in a couple of sentences. "I started thinking: Here's this woman who made this incredible ascent from the backwater of Eastern Europe, where it was actually illegal for girls to attend high school, to become one of the very first women at a university physics program in Europe," Benedict says. "Why had I never heard of this woman? She and Einstein had the same physics education, and they were married during his most prolific period 1905. I couldn't help but wonder what role she might have played in his theories." (Debate over Maric's contributions continues, with some scholars arguing that she may have collaborated with Einstein or even co authored some of his papers.) Benedict's new novel, based on the life of the Hollywood film star and legendary beauty Hedy Lamarr, puts the conceit of the lone woman in a man's world once again on center stage. "The Only Woman in the Room," which enters the hardcover fiction list at No. 11, homes in not on Lamarr the movie star but on Lamarr the inventor (with the composer George Antheil) of a "frequency hopping" radio communication technology that distantly prefigured wifi. "Every day most of the people in the world stare at an invention that she had a hand in, and that's the cellphone," Benedict says. "Once I knew that, I knew absolutely that I had to tell her particular story."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Books
There may be no better spot to consider how place names come and go than the Avenue of the Americas in the West 20s and 30s. Since the 19th century, parts of the area have been known as New York's Tenderloin, Tin Pan Alley and, most recently, the flower district, for all the roses and ranunculus plants sold there. But the neighborhood has gradually shed that name, too, with help from the real estate industry, naturally. Now, some blocks are branded NoMad, for North of Madison Square Park, and buildings like the Noma, a new 55 unit condominium from Alchemy Properties, seem to have embraced the trendy moniker, even if others aren't so easily won over. "NoMad is still new give it another 20 years," said Michael Nikolis, an owner of Bill's Flower Market, which has been in the same four story brick tenement style building, on Avenue of the Americas at West 28th Street, since it opened in 1936. But much has changed since the area's 1960s heyday, when there were about 100 flower and plant shops, said Mr. Nikolis, a fourth generation dealer. Today, there are fewer than two dozen floral businesses, Mr. Nikolis estimates, and they are often hemmed in by high rises. The 24 story Noma is being developed at 50 West 30th Street, on a corner lot that held mostly jewelry shops. But in a way, the 100 million development channels the area's history. Its 1,700 square foot landscaped terrace will be studded with large planters filled with flowers and trees. Accessible from a wood floored library, and adjacent to a fitness center, the terrace will also feature a dining table, a grill and benches. Though the neighborhood, near Herald Square, can still feel more commercial than homey, the terrace and other amenity areas are set back and also sit five stories above the street to help ensure quiet, said Kenneth S. Horn, Alchemy's president. "You will probably still hear some noise," Mr. Horn said, "but I think it will still be a nice little oasis." Otherwise, the building, which offers mostly one and two bedroom apartments, starting at 696 square feet, seems to embrace its location in Midtown, which is sometimes used as a catchall for the area. Taking advantage of an unusual angled lot line, the Noma promises that all units on the eastern side of the building will have direct views of the Empire State Building from their living rooms. That peculiar angle, which appears to be the remnant of a long ago boundary of a farm, said Daniel Kaplan, the project's architect, also means residents of those units won't have to stare into the windows of the massive Virgin Hotel that is under construction next door. In terms of its appearance, the gray brick Noma "is betwixt and between" the older garment buildings that populate the heart of NoMad, along Broadway, and the glassier high rises that have cropped up along the Avenue of the Americas north of 23rd Street since the 1990s, Mr. Kaplan said. "You really have two different corridors," he added. Mr. Kaplan, a senior partner at FXFowle Architects, said he took a best of both worlds approach, giving the building lots of windows, as in contemporary condominiums, but with extra segments, like those found in nearby factories. Apartments at the Noma are priced at about 2,200 per square foot, or starting at 1.4 million for a one bedroom. Sales began in March, and the building is scheduled to open by 2018. Prices are considerably less than the average of more than 3,000 per square foot for new condos in NoMad, said Holly Parker, an associate broker with Douglas Elliman Real Estate, who lived in the neighborhood for around nine years and who frequently works there. But the rate is in line with older apartments now being resold, like a two bedroom two bath Ms. Parker was listing at 225 Fifth Avenue, a limestone showroom to condo conversion that opened in 2007. Ms. Parker takes issue with the popular definition of NoMad that has it running from 25th Street to 30th Streets, and from the Avenue of the Americas to Lexington Avenue. She would put the western boundary at Broadway; beyond that, the vibe is "much grittier," she said.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Real Estate
Welcome to Best of Late Night, a rundown of the previous night's highlights that lets you sleep and lets us get paid to watch comedy. If you're interested in hearing from The Times regularly about great TV, sign up for our Watching newsletter and get recommendations straight to your inbox. President Trump and Michael R. Bloomberg traded insults on Twitter on Thursday, with the former calling the latter "Mini Mike" and "a 5'4" mass of dead energy who does not want to be on the debate stage with these professional politicians" (that is, other Democratic presidential candidates). Bloomberg responded by saying that mutual acquaintances in New York laughed at Trump behind his back, calling him "a carnival barking clown." "This is crazy. Two mega rich dudes dissing each other in the most personal way. It would be like if a rap battle was on CNBC." TREVOR NOAH "The sad part for me is that billionaire feuds used to be so much more dignified, you know? Yeah, back in the day, it wasn't on Twitter. They would be like, 'Mr. Trump, I have commissioned a devastating opera that disparages both you and your lineage.' It'd be like, 'Well, Master Bloomberg, at this very moment, a team of artisans is sculpting a middle finger from the world's finest Italian marble. In eight to nine months, you will be truly owned.'" TREVOR NOAH "Trump spent the morning attacking Mike Bloomberg on Twitter and called him 'a mass of dead energy.' When he heard that, Mike Pence was like, 'Hey, that's my nickname!'" JIMMY FALLON "But I will say this: If I was Mike Bloomberg and I had 61 billion which is what he has this is how I would get in Trump's head: I'd buy every ad on Fox News from now until November. I would ruin his precious Hannity time, his 'Fox and Friends' in the morning. Maybe instead of an election we should just put these two old billionaires on a jungle island with sharp sticks and force them to hunt each other, you know? Put it on pay per view, all proceeds go to the homeless." JIMMY KIMMEL "In response, Bloomberg tweeted at Trump and said, 'Behind your back people are laughing at you.' Trump called it fake news and spent the next hour trying to look behind his own back." JIMMY FALLON "Bloomberg has been rising in the polls, but there could be some hurdles for his campaign. In the past, he's been accused in several lawsuits of creating an uncomfortable workplace environment for women, but he won't release women who sued him from their nondisclosure agreements. Oh, good yet another New York billionaire with a questionable history with women." STEPHEN COLBERT "Trump's former chief of staff, John Kelly, is also speaking out. Last night in New Jersey, John Kelly defended the newly fired Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, who testified against the president and criticized the president's position on many subjects. Which is all well and good, but it's now a year since he left the White House. This is like a smoke detector that goes off after your house burns down." JIMMY KIMMEL "And then after those comments went public, Kelly was rewarded for his belated truth telling the way anyone who turns on Trump is rewarded with a nasty personal attack on Twitter. Trump tweeted: 'When I terminated John Kelly, which I couldn't do fast enough, he knew full well that he was way over his head. Being Chief of Staff just wasn't for him. He came in with a bang, went out with a whimper but like so many X's, he misses the action.' I'm sorry, do you mean the word 'exes'? It's not just spelled with the letter 'x.' When you say 'x,' people tend to think of the X Men, and what X Man would John Kelly be? The one who waits a month after Magneto destroys the city and then says, 'We should have done something'?" SETH MEYERS	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Television
BOB CACCHIONE took a bowl of jelly beans with him the first time he went to the White House to meet Ronald Reagan. But before he could deliver his gift, the president's director of protocol dumped out the jelly beans and left the room. She returned a few minutes later, the bowl now filled with the Jelly Belly brand jelly beans that were President Reagan's favorite. "They were the only jelly beans the president would eat," he said. Mr. Cacchione, then a senior executive at Cartier, was there to present gifts that President Reagan and his cabinet officials might give on official trips. But as a result of their three in person meetings, he became a collector of Reagan memorabilia, including the blazer buttons and cuff links Cartier made for him. "He was a horseback rider and I'm a horseback rider," said Mr. Cacchione, who founded the Intercollegiate Horse Show Association. "With Ronald Reagan, I got to talk horses a lot." Richard S. Berg, chief executive of the financial services advisory firm Performance Trust Capital Partners, has taken a different tack in collecting presidential memorabilia, focusing on unique objects or foundational documents. He bought one of the four pens Abraham Lincoln used to sign the Emancipation Proclamation. But he also bought the second Lincoln bedroom set, which is for guests at his home in Chicago. "Mary Todd Lincoln ordered two and canceled one," he said. "She caught a big backlash on the amount of money she spent redecorating the White House." Mr. Berg did not want to specify how much he paid for his Lincoln bed, whose provenance was confirmed by Bill Rau, a New Orleans antiques dealer who bought it from a family in western Illinois. He said only that it cost him 50,000 to 100,000, adding, "The only antiques in my house are in that bedroom." In some ways, the collection of presidential memorabilia is a subsection of collecting Americana or antiques. But given the finite supply of presidential material, the uniqueness attracts people with very specific interests. Some collectors like campaign buttons, programs and placards from conventions, or flags. Others focus on specific presidents. Collectors and dealers say political parties matter less for collectors than the piece or particular president. Experts say buying memorabilia with an eye toward potential value requires focus, caution and patience. Fakes are certainly a problem. But there is also a lot of historical but worthless material in the marketplace. Take presidential campaign buttons. Ted Hake, the owner of Hake's Americana and Collectibles in York, Pa., and an expert on buttons, said the first campaign buttons as we know them were for the 1896 campaign between William Jennings Bryan and William McKinley. "They cranked out thousands of designs for each candidate," Mr. Hake said. "The button was such a novelty that everyone jumped on the bandwagon. Buttons swept the country." But because of that supply, Mr. Hake said, a 120 year old button is worth about 10 today. Yet any button made for the 1920 presidential campaign that has both James M. Cox for president and Franklin Delano Roosevelt as vice president on it is valuable. He said one in good condition could be worth 25,000, with perfect examples worth as much as 150,000. For those wondering about Donald J. Trump or Hillary Clinton buttons, he said most would probably be worth little because buttons are not the marketing tools they once were and are not being produced in large quantities by the campaigns. "The ones that are worth something were made for an official purpose in a local area and produced in small quantities," he said "'Transportation Workers of Bergen County for Hillary' they might only make a couple hundred of those." Similarly, buttons from President Obama's Illinois State Senate races are rare and could be worth 200 to 300. "The most common mistake is trying to buy it all," he said, since buttons are small and easier to store than other types of memorabilia. "Sooner or later, the material is going to overwhelm you." And if it doesn't overwhelm you, it could just be an expense, not an investment. "You need to be a specialist in one area," said Jeff R. Bridgman, an expert on American flags. "Generalists make a lot more mistakes. Documents, buttons, ribbons, porcelain each has its own eccentricities." Morris W. Offit, the chairman of Offit Capital, a wealth management advisory firm in New York, said his initial interest in presidential collecting was set off when he tagged along with his wife to an antiques fair and saw American flags with the stars arrayed differently. (The star pattern wasn't set until an executive order from President William Howard Taft in 1912.) Mr. Offit now has over 40 flags displayed around his office, including some with different star patterns and some with the names, faces or slogans of candidates on them. "You become pretty picky over the years," he said. "I look for something that is different, has a little narrative associated with it or gives some insights into that period of time." He has Lincoln, Bell and Douglas flags. "A few years ago, a Breckinridge came on the market," he said. "The price was not within my capability." Mr. Offit didn't want to discuss what he had paid for his flags. But some flags fetch six figures. A United States flag with the presidential seal that flew over Franklin Roosevelt's home in Hyde Park, N.Y., sold for 98,000 two years ago. "It was given to William D. Simmons, a member of the White House staff, by Eleanor Roosevelt as a gift for such long service to Franklin Roosevelt," Mr. Gillis said. But how could a buyer be sure that a particular American flag really flew over Hyde Park? In this case, Mr. Gillis acquired the flag from descendants of Mr. Simmons. But he and other dealers stressed the importance of knowing where something came from. "Provenance is everything in this business," he said. The financial return on any of these artifacts is hard to say. M. S. Rau will give someone 5 percent over the purchase price per year for the first five years after an item is bought, and then 125 percent of the purchase price after that. Mr. Bridgman said he recently brokered a private sale of a flag from Lincoln's second presidential campaign with his image and slogans on it. The flag fetched over 500,000, he said. But campaign flags of William Henry Harrison or Zachary Taylor sell for as little as 5,000. "Lincoln is always the most expensive," Mr. Bridgman said. "He's so popular that he crosses categories of collectors." Buttons are a lot like stamps: Limited supply and little oddities increase the value. Rarer items may increase more in price but there are naturally fewer buyers for them. Mr. Berg said he paid 60,000 for his Emancipation Proclamation pen five years ago and thought that was a deal. "I thought it was more valuable, but other people didn't agree with me and I was able to buy it for what I did," he said. "I'd rather have unique and important, and important isn't always valuable." Some unique items will take longer to sell, like a land certificate signed by John Quincy Adams, for a tract in Zanesville, Ohio, on April 1, 1826. The price is 8,850. "Someone is going to buy this, but it's going to be someone from Ohio or someone in the real estate business," Mr. Gillis said of the piece, which he's had for over a year. But for others, no amount of money would be enough to sell. "These pieces are very important to me," Mr. Cacchione said of his Reagan memorabilia. "I not only helped create them but they became world renowned. I'm very proud to have this collection." That, more so than money, is the main driver for any collector.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Your Money
Think of it as "Lake Michigan Standard Time." Inspired by the Los Angeles themed omnibus event "Pacific Standard Time," the Windy City will be shining the spotlight on itself in 2018 with "Art Design Chicago," featuring some 25 exhibitions and hundreds of public programs. Initiated and largely funded by the Terra Foundation for American Art, "Art Design Chicago" is a joint effort of more than 40 organizations, and will look at the city's influence and achievements across disciplines since the late 19th century. "We felt there were too many undiscovered stories in Chicago art," said Elizabeth Glassman, the Terra Foundation's president and chief executive, who was to announce the initiative on Tuesday.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Art & Design
HALLOWEEN (1978) 7 p.m. on AMC. "This is an evil that makes no facial expression, doesn't have a voice, moves slowly but kills with a vengeance," Jamie Lee Curtis said in an interview with The New York Times last year, answering a question about why the creepy killer Michael Myers has remained a compelling figure for four decades. This is the original John Carpenter slasher movie that spawned a franchise. "Halloween" introduced both Curtis (it was her film debut) and her character, Laurie Strode, a teenage babysitter who is stalked by the masked psychopath Myers (Nick Castle). "This is a universal terror that you combine with a woman representing everyone," Curtis added, "and you have a recipe for people going to the movie over and over again." BRAM STOKER'S DRACULA (1992) 5:30 p.m. on BBC America. Francis Ford Coppola delivered a relatively faithful take on Bram Stoker's classic horror novel in this Gothic drama. Gary Oldman plays Dracula, under heavy makeup; the all star cast also includes Winona Ryder, Keanu Reeves and Anthony Hopkins. This, Vincent Canby wrote in his review for The Times, is a "wild dream of a movie, which looks as if it required a special pact with the Treasury Department to finance." HOCUS POCUS (1993) 8:50 p.m. on Freeform. Last week, Disney confirmed that a long rumored new "Hocus Pocus" movie is in development. It was a convenient time to generate renewed conversation about this cult classic and Halloween favorite, which stars Bette Midler, Sarah Jessica Parker and Kathy Najimy as sister witches, and is a good child friendly option for Thursday night.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Television
"Dear Reader" uses the text of classic literature as word puzzles that must be solved to advance through the game and the book. Games that involve a lot of text may not be for everyone, but two particular amusements with similar names "Dear Holmes" and "Dear Reader" might appeal to book lovers searching for entertaining ways to pass the time. And while both of these endeavors can get brains buzzing, the former uses a popular 19th century approach to content delivery, while the latter is firmly planted in the 21st century. DEAR HOLMES is an epistolary mystery experience set around Arthur Conan Doyle's immortal Sherlock Holmes character, now in the American public domain and available for new cases. You sign up for "Dear Holmes" online, but the rest of the game is purely analog in the form of paper letters, sent to you the Victorian way by post. The premise is simple: A series of missives addressed to the Great Detective arrive in your mailbox every week or so, asking for help with an emerging case. The sender could be a Conan Doyle regular like Inspector Lestrade or Tobias Gregson, or someone unfamiliar. The first dispatch sets up the scenario by outlining the known details of a crime or conundrum, with observations about suspects and events. "Dear Holmes" was created by Michael Sitver, a Sherlock fan. Sitver's company, Letterjoy (which mails re creations of historic letters from notables like Clara Barton and George S. Patton to subscribers), teamed up with MX Publishing (a business devoted to new Sherlock Holmes themed content) to start crafting the mysteries by mail in 2018. The Holmes letters, usually running several pages, arrive in your mailbox on thick, cream colored paper with matching envelopes. Depending on the fictional sender, the contents may be composed in a typeface that resembles the fluid scratching of a metal fountain pen nib or the worn serif font of a turn of the century typewriter. 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. For those who remember the glory days of personal correspondence by snail mail, the tactile sensation of opening and poring over a long letter may put your mind right into the unfolding story. It's not quite "Method reading," but it definitely sets the mood. More than a dozen "Dear Holmes" mysteries have been produced so far and, even if Dr. Watson's perspective is missing, they admirably echo Sir Arthur's style and tone. Subscriptions to "Dear Holmes" start at about 50 for three months of Sherlock's mail, and a new mystery starts each month. The timing of each new installment depends on the postal system, which adds an additional touch of authenticity and anticipation to the whole experience. It does offer the hope of something in the mailbox besides bills and junk mail. (While it may be a wobbly time for paper based deliveries because of coronavirus concerns, the United States Postal Service cites several health agencies that the Covid 19 virus cannot be spread by mail. Still, if you're worried, let the letters sit for a few days after delivery.) If instant gratification is more in order and you have an Apple device, consider the inventive DEAR READER, which bills itself as "a game of literary wordplay." Designed by Local No. 12, the nimble app presents you with page after page of animated puzzles to solve all crafted from the texts of classic novels and poems. When a passage of a selected book appears onscreen, you're challenged to swap words into the proper order, unscramble anagrams, rearrange phrases and perform other tasks so you can advance through the narrative. It's an interactive way to do an extremely close reading of the work. As you plow through the puzzles and reassemble the text, you end up consuming sections of the original book as well. When you successfully complete a challenge, you also earn "Ink," which is the "Dear Reader" in game currency. Your acquired Ink can be spent on hints if you're stuck on a particularly hard puzzle, or you can use it to acquire new books to play within the game. Chipper background music and other sound effects accompany the gameplay, but you can turn them off in the app's settings if it feels as though you're trying to read "Dubliners" at the bar in a Dave Buster's video arcade. While "Dear Reader" currently isn't available for Android phones or desktop computers, it can be played on many Apple devices, including an iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch or Apple TV. However, to play the game, you must subscribe to the Apple Arcade, the company's video game service that costs 5 a month. (A free one month trial is available if you want to dabble before deciding whether your credit card really needs another recurring charge.) At the moment, "Dear Reader" has more than 75 works you can play, which (like Sherlock Holmes) have all aged out of United States copyright. The game's titles rotate in and out of availability, so you have new books to decipher at different times. Along with the usual public domain fare like Jane Austen's "Pride and Prejudice," the "Dear Reader" game content also includes works one may not have muddled through as a teenager, like Claude McKay's poems in "Harlem Shadows" and Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain's feminist utopia fantasy, "Sultana's Dream." And for some avid players, that may be the biggest prize from both "Dear Holmes" and "Dear Reader": something new to explore.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Books
The Kremlin subjected McFaul and his embassy staff to harassment and vitriol that tore up the conventions of international diplomacy. Government mouthpieces in the press and on television assailed McFaul as "the color revolutions specialist sent by Obama to orchestrate regime change." A fake Twitter account purporting to belong to the ambassador tweeted out criticisms of the Russian elections; videos circulated on YouTube suggesting he was a pedophile; agents of the pro Kremlin youth organization Nashi repeatedly ambushed McFaul in the street with accusations and innuendo; even his children were obtrusively tailed by the Russian security services. McFaul did his best to swim against this tide of official hostility. He took to Twitter and Facebook in an attempt to communicate directly with the Russian people, an unorthodox approach that enjoyed, he claims, some success, but ruffled feathers in Moscow. He hosted receptions, concerts and lectures designed to champion not just American culture but also wider respect for democratic values. Against the unfolding crackdown on the protest movement, many opposition leaders declined even to meet McFaul for fear of being demonized as puppets of the United States State Department. "Our tweets and jazz concerts were no match," McFaul acknowledges, for Putin's "media empire." If the Reset had been interrupted by Putin's re election in 2012, Russia's invasion of Ukraine and annexation of Crimea in 2014 buried it "for good." McFaul believed that this flagrant breach of international norms was proof that his own lifelong endeavor to promote democracy in Russia and secure integration with the West had emphatically failed. His personal tragedy was capped by the fact that he is now persona non grata in Russia, the first American ambassador to have been banned from the country since George Kennan in 1952. Putin is clearly the villain in this story. McFaul concluded that the Russian president was "paranoid," a man of "fixed and flawed views" who "saw us as the enemy," and that so long as he ruled Russia, "strategic partnership was impossible." He makes his case with energy and conviction. Yet his relentless focus on Putin's individual role tends to obscure the broader evolution of attitudes toward the West within the Russian political establishment. There are, for instance, only passing references to the siloviki hard liners with a background in the security services who were all along uneasy about Medvedev's embrace of the Reset. In fact, Putin is far from alone in his hostility to what he sees as aggressive NATO expansionism and the threat of American missile defense programs. Neither is he alone in his belief that the United States orchestrated the overthrow of the Ukrainian government of Viktor F. Yanukovych in 2014. And what of wider public opinion? McFaul concedes that Putin's popularity "suggests a deep societal demand for this kind of autocratic leader, and this kind of antagonistic relationship with the United States and the West." But instead of developing this insight, McFaul leaves it hanging. Placing responsibility for the rapid deterioration in United States Russian relations squarely on the shoulders of the Russian president has its appeal. It holds out the promise that Kremlin policy toward the West might pivot once again when Putin finally retires or is pushed out. Maybe so, but the more pessimistic view is that Putin represents a now entrenched revanchist nationalism that sees the liberal international order as a mere smokescreen for the advancement of Western political agendas. Deep rooted antagonism toward the United States might well endure long after Putin has gone. As McFaul himself laments, "the hot peace, tragically but perhaps necessarily, seems here to stay."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Books
In 's 2011 debut novel "The Tiger's Wife," a young doctor untangles the peculiar circumstances of her grandfather's recent death. As a little girl, Natalia adored her grandfather, a respected doctor and professor, and tagged along on his regular visits to the zoo, which was formerly a sultan's fortress. There she would listen, rapt, as her grandfather spoke of a girl he once knew who was known as the "tiger's wife." At the time, Natalia thought this was a fairy tale. After all, her grandfather always carried a copy of Kipling's "Jungle Book" in his breast pocket. To his granddaughter, he was a fount of fantasy, her own private bard. In "The Tiger's Wife," Obreht weaves the old man's richly colored reminiscences like silk ribbons through the spare frame of Natalia's modern coming of age, a coming of age that coincides, as her grandfather's had, with a time of political upheaval. Filled with astonishing immediacy and presence, fleshed out with detail that seems firsthand, "The Tiger's Wife" is all the more remarkable for being the product not of observation but of imagination. For Obreht, the mind's witness is more than equal to the eye's. And her narrator, in retelling the experiences of her grandfather's generation, enfolds them into her own. As his vision joins hers, old and new memories collide in a vibrant collage that has no date, no dateline.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Books
HONG KONG Chinese authorities plan to question Apple about video streaming services available over its app store within the country, in their latest move to intensify pressure on the American technology giant over the content it provides in the vast and crucial market. A report on China's official Xinhua News Agency late Wednesday said that the authorities would summon Apple to urge it to "tighten up checks on software applications available in the Apple Store." The report did not say when the summoning would take place. The inquiry appears to focus on third party apps available on the company's app store in China. The report said the authorities had told three Chinese websites to tighten their oversight of online information, livestreaming services and online performance. Some broadcasters, it said, offered live content forbidden by Chinese law, including pornography.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Media
Each week, the Open Thread newsletter will offer a look from across The New York Times at the forces that shape the dress codes we share, with Vanessa Friedman as your personal shopper. The latest newsletter appears here. To receive it in your inbox, register here. Hello and happy (almost) Earth Day. It's going to be a big week for sustainable fashion, especially given that the fifth anniversary of the Rana Plaza factory collapse in Bangladesh is next Tuesday. We still have a lot of questions like, has fashion really cleaned up its act? Depends whom you talk to (and we are going to be talking to them, so get ready). But what is unquestionable is that all us shoppers are in for a lot of soul searching. That's good thing. It's also an incredibly far cry from the high fashion world of yesteryear, which has been brought back to life in a compulsively readable oral history, "Loulou Yves: The Untold Story of Loulou de La Falaise and the House of Saint Laurent" though that tome likewise has some lessons we might all take on board. The book, written by Christopher Petkanas, is full of juicy gossip about the super decadent fashion scene in the 1970s and '80s. His subject, for those who don't know, was Yves Saint Laurent's incredibly glamorous "muse." And in telling her story, Mr. Petkanas raises some pretty serious questions about that bizarre job title , which exists as far as I can tell in no other industry, and provides great perks but no professional security. So what does it really mean to be a designer's "muse"? Read the book and find out. It's great information in the guise of nonfiction escapism. Though, honestly, afterward you may think you couldn't make it up it you'd tried. But that's often true of this world. That's why there are so many fashion documentaries around. Meanwhile, another unsung fashion hero currently getting his due is Tom Palumbo, a photographer peer of Richard Avedon, whose shots of everyone from Mia Farrow and Gloria Vanderbilt to a young Miles Davis form the body of a new coffee table book, "Dreamer With a Thousand Thrills," which includes an intro by his widow, the journalist Patricia Bosworth (who wrote a great biography of Diane Arbus). And for some shorter recommended reading, dive into some of the stories below, including a look inside the first ever fashion week in Saudi Arabia; what Net a Porter's founder, Natalie Massenet, did after she left her company; and an analysis of how James Comey's style is pushing all our subconscious buttons. Before you go, a question from a reader: Q: I have noticed that every season there are not only emerging trends from ready to wear fashion shows, but similarities in motifs and fabric construction. Sometimes it looks as if fashion houses "read the same memo." I am in the interiors industry, and there we have the same situation, which is caused by the influence of fabric mills and production economies. Is this also true in fashion? Jennifer, Dallas A: Indeed it is. If you want to know, for example, why you are about to see all sorts of plaid and tartan in shops, or why next fall it's going to be all about silver mylar separates (I kid you not) the first place you should look is the fabric fairs. Specifically Pitti Immagine Filati in Florence, MilanoUnica in Milan, and Premiere Vision in Paris. Pretty much every designer or at least a member of a design team at a big brand attends them. And when they do, they all see the same things. And not just fabrics, but also trend presentations aimed at helping them sense what's in the wind (People will want to cocoon! They will be thinking about the space age!). Designers actually have to choose their fabrics, or start experimenting with them, a season before the season when they actually start creating. So if you do the math, that's at least a year before the clothes actually get sold. There are exceptions, of course Dries Van Noten often designs all of his own prints; companies like Zegna actually began as manufacturers, and still make fabrics for other brands but for many smaller brands especially, who don't have the corporate muscle or means to do this, it's the mills that set the tone. I know everyone says trends are about X movie or X museum show, and the cultural ethos is a part of it, but it's honestly a lot less highfalutin than all that.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Fashion & Style
WASHINGTON For the better part of three years, President Trump's trade war with China strained relations between the world's largest economies. Now, the trade pact the two countries signed in January appears to be the most durable part of the U.S. China relationship. Tensions between the United States and China are flaring over the coronavirus, which the Trump administration accuses China of failing to control, as well as accusations of espionage, intellectual property theft and human rights violations. American officials on Tuesday ordered the closure of China's consulate in Houston, saying that diplomats there had aided in economic espionage, prompting China to order the closure of the American consulate in Chengdu. Earlier in the week, the Trump administration added another 11 Chinese companies to a government list barring them from buying American technology and other products, citing human rights abuses against predominantly Muslim ethnic minorities in the Xinjiang region in China's far west. The two countries are also clashing over China's security crackdown in Hong Kong, its global 5G ambitions and its territorial claims in the South China Sea. But unlike previous moments of heightened tensions between the United States and China, Mr. Trump has not threatened to impose additional tariffs on Chinese goods or take other steps to punish companies that export their products to America. And neither side is threatening to rip up the initial trade deal they signed in January, which took years of painful negotiations to complete. Trade, long the most contentious part of the U.S. China relationship, has suddenly become an area of surprising stability. The reasons have more to do with politics than diplomacy. Both the Trump administration and Chinese leaders invested time and political capital in reaching their initial trade deal, which removed barriers for foreign firms doing business in China and strengthened the country's intellectual property protections. The deal also required China to purchase an additional 200 billion of American goods by the end of next year, including some agricultural goods like soybeans, pork and corn from farm states that are crucial to Mr. Trump's re election chances. As tensions between the two countries rise again, both sides appear to think they have more to lose from rupturing the agreement than they would gain. "Ironically, trade has become an area of cooperation or stability," said Michael Pillsbury, a China expert at the Hudson Institute who advises the Trump administration. "If the current momentum continues, I think the two countries are likely to end up in a Cold War and maybe even in a hot one," Mr. Jia said. The Chinese government is trying to keep trade matters separate from other frictions in the bilateral relationship, though that has proved more difficult as the two countries begin closing each other's consulates. "Comparatively speaking, trade I think is more stable and more quiet," said He Weiwen, a former Chinese commerce ministry official and now a senior fellow at the Center for China and Globalization, a nonprofit research group in Beijing. But he said there are reasons to be worried going forward. "I'm quite concerned about the trade relationship ahead, because we need a calm, stable political environment," said Mr. He, who is also an executive council member of the China Association of International Trade. Chinese officials and experts argue that recent difficulties in bilateral relations between Washington and Beijing are caused by the Trump administration and not by the Chinese government, which has tried to address different challenges in the relationship individually, rather than linking them together for leverage. "China has made all efforts to smooth the relationship with the U.S.," said Tu Xinquan, the dean of the China Institute for World Trade Organization Studies at the University of International Business and Economics in Beijing. "Though it is admitted that there are problems between the two countries, China has never planned an all out whole government strategy against the U.S.," he said. While the trade truce is holding for now, that could prove fleeting if Mr. Trump decides Beijing is not living up to its side of the deal. The agreement left tariffs in place on more than 360 billion of Chinese goods and ushered in a detente that forestalled further tariff increases by either side. But the president views tariffs as one of his most effective and reliable tools, a powerful cudgel to wield against foreign countries that doesn't require the approval of Congress. And China appears to be lagging far behind on the purchases of American products it pledged to make as part of the trade deal, partly as a result of the pandemic. Analysts have long viewed those targets as unrealistic. But Mr. Trump sees those purchases as crucial to narrowing the U.S. trade deficit and boosting the fortunes of farmers and businesses, and thus his re election prospects. "The president has repeatedly said if they don't make the purchases, I will terminate the deal," Mr. Pillsbury said. As China shakes off the coronavirus, its purchases of American products appear to be ticking up. Data from China's General Administration of Customs shows that the country's imports from the United States were up 15.1 percent in June from the same month last year, when calculated in China's currency, the renminbi, compared to a 5.2 percent increase in China's exports to the United States. Agricultural imports from the United States have been especially strong this summer, with two of the three largest Chinese purchases ever of American grain occurring this month. On Thursday, Mr. Trump pointed to record setting purchases of corn made by China. But, he added that "the trade deal means less to me now than it did when I made it."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Economy
The American Realness Festival is the kind of event that has descriptions of performances that say things like "Taking inspiration from ballet, psychoanalysis, queer theory and Marxism ... " (Jillian Pena's "Polly Pocket") or, "At a small town tap studio, four dancers prepare for a competition" (Tina Satter's "House of Dance"). You never know what you're going to get at American Realness, running through next Sunday, which Ben Pryor started five years ago. If you are curious about the latest in contemporary dance, then wander through the scheduling madness of American Realness, dipping in and out at will. There are established names like Miguel Gutierrez, Ishmael Houston Jones and Neal Medlyn; there are names less known to American audiences, like Marten Spangberg and Eszter Salamon; there are exhibitions (Sarah Maxfield, Ian Douglas, Mr. Medlyn and Fawn Krieger, Ann Liv Young); there are parties; there will be discoveries. (At the Abrons Arts Center and other New York City locations; americanrealness.com.)	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Dance
Bradley and Greta don't seem to have much in common. He's a white man with a nondescript office job, living in Brooklyn with his boyfriend Orion. She's a black woman trying to "climb a corporate ladder" while raising her little daughter Astrid. Bradley (James Kautz), who has visions of galaxies and the infinite universe, might have liked Astrid, whom Greta (Naomi Lorrain) named after a star. Except they will never meet: The girl is one of 47 victims of a mass shooter who erupted inside the Museum of Natural History's planetarium. A gunman who also ended up dead and happened to be Bradley's youngest brother. Bradley and Greta share the galaxy of "Entangled," an adventurous play by Charly Evon Simpson and Gabriel Jason Dean that culminates the Amoralists' ambitious four play anthology "Ricochet," which explored several lives affected by the same act of violence (a comic book added even more context). From this isolated podium they communicate through private social media messages delivered to us as soliloquies. Bradley establishes first contact after going through a list of family members of victims murdered by his brother, and the play takes the form of an epistolary tale. But "Love Letters" this ain't. His barrage of messages remain unanswered by Greta, who is trying to make sense of the tragedy, and hasn't got the time to comfort others. Mr. Dean and Ms. Simpson (who had an Off Broadway hit this season with "Behind the Sheet") created the play together via a Google document, sharing notes and developing scenes. She wrote Greta (first introduced in her play "Stained"), while he took on Bradley. Their distinct voices are what propel "Entangled" from a traditional tear jerker into a work of delicate rage. While Mr. Dean's writing is overly restrained Bradley comes off as a man with too many unfulfilled needs Ms. Simpson presents Greta as a figure of unbearable grief and rightful wrath. Kate Moore Heaney's unobtrusive direction allows us to observe, rather than react, as we wait for the two styles to collide. As Greta, Ms. Lorrain is made of flesh, tears and fire. She embodies a mother's specific sorrow, while also making space for the character to comment on the ways in which white people expect black women to rescue them from themselves. What also haunts about the performance, and "Entangled," is that we leave convinced we have met Astrid. Ms. Simpson's descriptions of her precociousness and compassion become an unforgettable tribute to a little girl we never see, but whose laughter we can almost hear.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Theater
Islanders goalie Robin Lehner heard his name chanted loudly at Nassau Coliseum in the closing minutes of Sunday's 3 0 win over the Anaheim Ducks, another sterling performance in a renaissance season for him and his team. He clapped in appreciation and smiled toward the sellout crowd. Ten months ago he had reached rock bottom. As he wrote in an essay for The Athletic in September, Lehner was drinking a case of beer a day and taking pills to sleep. He thought about suicide. Then in March he had a panic attack during a game with the Buffalo Sabres. Soon he entered the league's substance abuse recovery program and received a diagnosis of bipolar disorder with manic episodes. Now, he is 10 months sober and an integral part of the Islanders' stunning turnaround under their new coach, Barry Trotz. Lehner, 27, is 11 1 1 mark since mid December and entered Wednesday's games leading the league in goals against average (2.02) and save percentage (.931). Last year the Islanders allowed a league worst 293 goals. Behind their goalies Lehner and Thomas Greiss and Trotz's defense oriented game plan, the team has reversed course, winning 15 of its last 19 games heading into the All Star break this weekend. They are in first place in the Metropolitan Division, a position few pundits thought even remotely possible before the season. "We started off the year with a belief in a new coach and new system and I think everyone has bought in," said Lehner, who is 15 7 4 with three shutouts, already surpassing his victory total with the Sabres last season. "When you come to work with purpose every day and everyone buys in every day, it gets the focus going." Since last March Lehner has worked to resuscitate his personal life and on ice livelihood. Admitting he had never had a sober season during his hockey career, he focuses daily to control his addiction. "I'm an alcoholic and I have a few other things, but it's treatable," said Lehner, who was also found to have A.D.H.D. and post traumatic stress disorder. "I was in a very dark place. I didn't see much in the future at one point. Now I feel good. I'm coming along." Lehner, whose father was a goaltending teacher for the Rangers star Henrik Lundqvist in Sweden, played parts of five seasons with the Ottawa Senators before tending goal for the next three years in Buffalo. Islanders General Manager Lou Lamoriello signed Lehner to a one year contract in July and paired him with Greiss under Trotz and the goaltending gurus Mitch Korn and Piero Greco. "I knew about the ability and talent he had and things for whatever reason went in the wrong direction," Lamoriello said during training camp. "I just called I knew the agency that he is with and I said, 'why don't you come in and let's have a conversation.' It was something we felt very comfortable with." The Islanders have emerged as a surprising story line after the departure via free agency of their former superstar captain John Tavares to the Toronto Maple Leafs. Fans were furious over Tavares's exit and seemed resigned to a rebuilding season. But the team's defense has forged a fresh confidence under Trotz, allowing a league low 118 goals through 49 games. The offense has flourished with steady production from all corners. Eight Islanders have scored at least 11 goals, the first time since the 1984 85 season that the team has generated such a balanced attack at this juncture of the season. Lehner emphasized that success is a byproduct of the team's cohesiveness. Players and their families live in proximity of one another, the team's practice home in East Meadow, and Nassau Coliseum, where they are playing half their home games this season. Lehner said he detected a positive environment with his new squad even before moving to Long Island to train with his teammates over the summer. "I hadn't played with anyone on this team before, but as soon as I signed, I think the whole team sent me a text message," said Lehner, who has a young son and daughter with his wife, Donya. Cal Clutterbuck, an Islander since 2013, has marveled at Lehner's focus and dedication from the start of their relationship on the ice. "You know you can't go through something like that alone, and he's got a nice support system here," Clutterbuck said. "He's living his life the right way and getting rewarded for it." Trotz, who also heard his name chanted Sunday as the Islanders won for the fifth time in seven games back at their raucous former home, said Lehner's achievements in tandem with Greiss are a boon for the team's psyche. "He knows how important he is," said Trotz, who joined the Islanders after winning the Stanley Cup with the Washington Capitals last season. "He and Greisser have been exceptional. When you feel that you're part of the success and part of the reason you're having success, it's got to feel good." Amid the relentless swirl of the season, Lehner said he had not fully absorbed what his turnaround might mean for those encountering similar life battles. He is more focused on managing his crease and being a husband and father. "I still have a lot of emails and letters to go through," he said. "It's not about being an inspiration figure. It's about shining a light. If you have these problems, it's treatable. You need to get help. You need to find support. You can't do it alone. That's all the message there is." And Clutterbuck said Lehner's revival has inspired him and by extension, the entire team. "He's had a glimmer in his eye all season," Clutterbuck said. "We are rooting for his success, all pulling for Robin as a person. I couldn't be happier for him."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Sports
On the summit of Haleakala, a dormant volcano on the island of Maui in Hawaii, a telescope began clicking pictures of the night sky in 2010. Over the next four years, Pan Starrs, short for Panoramic Survey Telescope and Rapid Response System, photographed the entire sky, as seen from Hawaii, 12 times in five colors of visible and infrared light. In December, the astronomers who operate Pan Starrs released the first results from their survey. Their big data universe lists the positions, colors and brightness of three billion stars, galaxies and other objects. It amounts to two petabytes of data, roughly equivalent to a billion selfies, according to a statement from the University of Hawaii's Institute for Astronomy. All this information, the universe in a box, now resides in the Mikulski Archive for Space Telescopes (named for Barbara A. Mikulski, the retiring Maryland senator and space champion) at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore where any astronomer can get access to it. In 2017, the Pan Starrs team plans to produce a new catalog of how these things are moving and changing. This was an exercise in more than just curiosity. A big goal of the project, run by an international consortium led by the University of Hawaii, is to discover moving objects like asteroids so that we can visit them and perhaps steer them away before they visit us, as well as discover supernovas and other rare violent events while they are still exploding. Pan Starrs is the biggest digital mapping effort yet done, but it is not the last. The Large Synoptic Survey Telescope now being built in Chile by the National Science Foundation will eventually supersede it, surveying 37 billion galaxies and stars and producing 15 terabytes of data every night for 10 years once it is completed in 2022.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Science
Christine Goerke as Brunnhilde in Michigan Opera Theater's "Twilight: Gods," an abbreviation of Wagner's "Gotterdammerung" presented as a drive though show in a parking garage. Think Outside the Opera House, and Inside the Parking Garage DETROIT It was around the time when Brunnhilde summoned her horse to ride into a funeral pyre, setting off a world cleansing fire and flood, that I found myself fighting back tears. Perhaps it was this performance of the climactic Immolation Scene from Wagner's "Gotterdammerung," sung with a frightening blend of ferocity and euphoria by the soprano Christine Goerke. Or perhaps it was the presentation: In Michigan Opera Theater's "Twilight: Gods" a drive through abbreviation of Wagner imaginatively directed by Yuval Sharon, and unfolding on the levels on a parking garage here Brunnhilde's steed was a Ford Mustang, in which she sped off into the apocalypse. Most likely I was just overwhelmed, seven months after the end of live music as we knew it, by an opera performance without compromises. Ever since the coronavirus pandemic closed theaters and concert halls in March, the performances I've seen, whether a livestream or something small outdoors, have seemed to come with a caveat: This is the best we can do, given the circumstances. "Twilight: Gods" the first project by Mr. Sharon as Michigan Opera Theater's new artistic director was obviously created with restrictions. "Twilight: Gods" also offers a way forward for performing arts institutions in the United States, which even on an optimistic timeline are facing closures until fall 2021. With a show inside the Detroit Opera House impossible, Mr. Sharon, known for his experimental Los Angeles company the Industry, made the enterprising move to conceive a production for the company's parking garage next door. Where else could something like this be possible? On the hunt for other venue adjacent programming, I went to Lincoln Center last weekend. It's a ghost town these days, but there is life just outside its theaters. On Sunday, New York City Ballet dancers laid down a Marley floor for a rooftop performance at the Empire Hotel, and the New York Philharmonic gave its final Bandwagon pickup truck, pop up concert of the fall. The day before, I had heard the violinist Jennifer Koh in solo recital under the trees that run along the north side of the Metropolitan Opera. Alone Together is a marvel for a time of crisis. Ms. Koh gathered 20 established composers to donate short new works for solo violin and recommend 20 emerging composers to be commissioned as well. The roster is more inclusive than anything in mainstream classical music. After the Bach, which was intensely felt but unpretentious, 18 pieces of Alone Together bled into one another as Ms. Koh played through them without pause. Some moments did stand out: the alternately smooth and serrated melodies of Inti Figgis Vizueta's "Quiet City"; the bouncing wonder of Angelica Negron's "Cooper and Emma"; the modest comfort of Cassie Wieland's "Shiner." Throughout, however, it was difficult to shake the feeling that this concert fell into the category of "the best we can do." But how much can Lincoln Center do? On my bike ride to the concert, I passed dozens of restaurants on Columbus Avenue that were at capacity outside for weekend brunch, their tables a fraction of the distance separating chairs at the concert. New York City eateries are open because they were initially crippled by pandemic restrictions then, through a nuanced risk assessment, were allowed to expand their offerings. Outdoor dining is here to stay through the winter, potentially saving tens of thousands of jobs. All this, while the New York Philharmonic has not been able to gather at anything approaching full complement on the Lincoln Center campus, even outdoors and without an audience. That the performing arts have not received the same kind of policy consideration as restaurants and other businesses will reverberate through Lincoln Center and beyond, for years to come. What Mr. Sharon has accomplished with "Twilight: Gods," though, sends a message that when institutions are hampered by circumstances outside their control a pandemic, a failure of leadership on both a local and national scale creativity is more essential than ever. His production weaves avant gardism into an institutional framework. Few of Mr. Sharon's presentations through the Industry have taken place in traditional spaces; "Invisible Cities" brought its audience to a train station, and "Hopscotch" unfolded in cars driving around Los Angeles. The company's most recent project, the colonialism parable "Sweet Land," played out in a complex of ephemeral architecture in a state park and, with some slight modifications, could be performed today. With "Twilight: Gods," he has moved a typically theater bound company into its parking garage for a drive through production that's something between a chamber opera and a haunted house. Decisions that are logistical keeping audience members in their cars; providing context through poetic narration by Marsha Music; reducing Wagnerian grandeur to a handful of players are also fitting. Detroit is one of the country's car manufacturing capitals (not for nothing does Brunnhilde ride a Ford), and Marsha Music is a local treasure. At one point, the score transforms Siegfried's Funeral March into a Motown esque celebration. That's as heavy handed as the production gets; otherwise, Mr. Sharon trusts his audience enough to resist grasping too directly at timeliness. The ending, in which flames and flood give way to a new world hopefully better than the last speaks for itself. Something will emerge from this moment of crisis for opera. I hope that, whatever it is, it looks like "Twilight: Gods."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Music
For more than a dozen years, Marion Reid, 77, had walked past the statue of Theodore Roosevelt on his way to work in information technology at the American Museum of Natural History, an employer that he said often failed to treat African Americans with dignity. He drove into Manhattan around noon on Sunday to photograph the statue before officials carried out plans to remove it from its place of pride at the museum's Central Park West entrance, only to find himself engulfed by about 150 protesters clamoring to preserve it. Among them were men in seersucker suits and women draped with pearls, people wearing MAGA hats and others waving Blue Lives Matter flags while chanting, "Save Teddy. Save our police. Save law and order." About a dozen police were in the vicinity. David Marcus, an organizer of the rally and a contributor to the conservative website The Federalist, addressed the crowd through a megaphone saying they were "brothers and sisters, and heirs to the most extraordinary experiment in freedom that the world has ever known. God bless Teddy Roosevelt." The museum announced last week that, with approval from the mayor and President Roosevelt's family, it would remove the 80 year old bronze statue. The museum's president, Ellen V. Futter, emphasized last week that the decision was not about Roosevelt but about the statue itself namely its "hierarchical composition." It features the president riding high on horseback, flanked by a Native American man and an African man, depicting them, Mayor Bill de Blasio said, "as subjugated and racially inferior." Speakers supporting the statue used the protest to rail against a broad range of issues including abortion and religion. One woman called for the removal of "the feminists and the homosexuals" from the City Council. A protester in her 70s who gave her name as Sharon, said, "I don't see the statue as racist, and that word is overused and dramatized today." She said the debate over the statue, "certainly has nothing to do with that police situation in Minneapolis where a man was murdered." She was referring to George Floyd, who died in police custody on May 25. "Over the last few weeks, our museum community has been profoundly moved by the ever widening movement for racial justice that has emerged after the killing of George Floyd," Ms. Futter, said in an interview with the Times. "We have watched as the attention of the world and the country has increasingly turned to statues as powerful and hurtful symbols of systemic racism." The decision came as a pleasant surprise for the hundreds of activists who have demanded the monument's removal through annual Columbus Day protests at the museum, which saw the statue splashed with red liquid in 2017. Most protesters in the crowd were not wearing masks despite the global surge in Covid 19 cases. Worries about the coronavirus pandemic had failed to dissuade Gavin Wax, 26, from planning the protest. "This is about much more than a statue," Mr. Wax, the president of the New York Young Republicans Club said. "You can't judge premodern people by postmodern standards of morality, because at that rate you won't have a history." Mr. Wax said, "We have to calm down and say that nobody sees racism in this statue. If you do, you have to look into yourself and not other people." For Mr. Reid of Westchester, the former museum employee, who is black, the problem is a simple one. "The statue is racist," he said. "What I see here are Trumpites who want a return to the status quo. They want 'Gone With the Wind,' the good old days when African Americans were kept in their place and racism was swept under the rug."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Art & Design
If you happened to see Werner Herzog's video installation "Hearsay of the Soul" in the 2012 Whitney Biennial, you have already caught sight of the startlingly experimental etched vistas of the 17th century Dutch master of the Golden Age, Hercules Segers. Greatly magnified details of his strangely barren, slightly unreal landscapes dominated Mr. Herzog's five channel video installation, which paid homage to Dutch artistry. In "The Mysterious Landscapes of Hercules Segers," a large, mesmerizing exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, we experience Segers's epic prints whole, at full force. Segers used printmaking as it had never been used before, primarily to improvise unique artworks. If Mr. Herzog is a fan of his wonderlands, so was Rembrandt, who was influenced by Segers's working methods and owned at least eight of his paintings, one printing plate and probably some prints. But much of Segers's work was subsequently lost and biographical information is scant. As a result, his audaciousness has yet to receive its due. This is the biggest Segers show staged anywhere, and the first held in the United States. It originated last fall at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, which has the world's largest holdings in Segers, and has been overseen at the Met by Nadine M. Orenstein, who leads its department of prints and drawings. The show represents nearly all 53 of Segers's known prints and contains more than half of his 182 surviving impressions, six of his 16 paintings and his two extant oil studies. Segers apparently had little use for printmaking's traditional goal of producing identical images, and only a passing interest in reality. Seemingly obsessed with mountains, he is thought never to have traveled beyond the Low Countries to actually see any. What he knew was gleaned from engravings of Alpine scenes based on designs by Pieter Bruegel the Elder, which may have freed, or required, him to imagine his lunar, almost surreal versions of the natural world. At their best and weirdest, they are full of impossibly similar pocked stones. Segers, born around 1589 in Haarlem, was apprenticed in 1612 to a leading landscape painter in Amsterdam. After living briefly in The Hague, where printmaking was thriving, he returned to Amsterdam, married well, bought a house and prospered. Around 1630, his finances collapsed and the house was sold. After working briefly as an art dealer in Utrecht, he died, broke, possibly alcoholic, in The Hague, sometime between 1633 and 1638. Segers's disregard for the boundaries between mediums makes him feel very contemporary. He printed in blue, green and blue green inks on paper washed with pink, blue, green or purple brown, and frequently brushed on more color. He gave one rocky valley dark thunderclouds and backed a tree with a pink and blue sunset. Sometimes the color turns parts of landscapes ghostly and vague or is applied so casually that the prints are considered unfinished. It is applied more deliberately in one of seven impressions of "Valley With a River and a Town With Four Towers," where orange rocks sit on blue ground. But no wonder Segers's contemporaries called his efforts "painted prints." The show moves chronologically through Segers's short, intense maturity, from 1618 to 1630. The works in the first gallery present the raw bones of his talent in small, delicate images of forests, farms and ruins: namely, his uncannily fine line and sensitivity to contrasting textures. Besides landscapes, he etched a stack of books that may be the first print of a still life made in Europe. He also depicted fairly accurately the buildings seen from a wood lined room in his house; it has the all inclusive magnetism of a great children's book illustration. The largest print here, "Mountain Valley With Dead Pine Trees" (1622 25), introduces full blown Segers. He confines most signs of civilization to the distance, usually limiting human life in the foreground to solitary travelers moving along stony roads. The second gallery accentuates Segers's refusal of repetition, especially in groups of impressions made from single plates whose extreme differences are mapped by helpfully clear labels. The shifts in color and clarity can amaze. In one version of "Ruins of the Abbey of Rijnsburg From the South: Large Version," painted additions in dark blues and reds all but obliterate the printed image. The seven versions of "Valley With a River and a Town With Four Towers" seem to track different times of day, starting with a version in black ink that has a stark high noon brightness. These groupings continue in the third gallery, where several of Segers's last prints are among his largest and most complex. Sometimes the results are surprisingly conventional, especially in "Mountain Valley With Fenced Fields," whose first version resembles a 19th century hand tinted engraving. But it's not Segers's fault that we see it that way. He printed the second version with blue ink and brushed on more blue, creating a lush nocturne that seems lighted by a full moon. This exhibition has aspects of a valuable tutorial in etching, especially if you attend to its labels. And despite the lost personal history. it introduces a palpably impassioned sensibility and transgressive rule breaker, and it does so with one of the dreamiest, most immersive presentations of the year.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Art & Design
When the third season of "Fargo" ended in 2017, the concept of "alternative facts" and "fake news" were clearing the way for what became the Trump presidency's challenge to reality. The themes the creator Noah Hawley explored in that season seemed oddly prescient, all the way down to Russians and disinformation, but he shrugged it off: "You can never predict the zeitgeist," he said at the time. "I just managed to land in it." Now he's managed to land in it again. During a pandemic induced, five month interruption in filming, Hawley's theme for Season 4 of "Fargo" which ended Sunday evening again collided with current events. This time, a story set in 1950 featured Chris Rock as the head of a Black crime family in Kansas City locked in a battle with Italians and both groups being demonized by white police and politicians. There are still plenty of Hawley's trademark Easter eggs ample references to the show's previous seasons and the canon of Joel and Ethan Coen, who wrote and directed the 1996 film that inspired the series. It's difficult not to draw parallels to this summer's social upheaval, but Hawley doesn't see these issues as anything new. "This show emerged into a country that was having an active and urgent conversation about race," said Hawley last week. "But it's also a conversation that we have been having for hundreds of years in this country, about this country. So I'm not sure that if this show premiered in 1986, or 1995, or 2007, that it would have been much different." How difficult was it to return after such a long break? It presented some challenges. It's helpful that we had nine hours that the cast could watch and everyone could understand, "oh, that's the show that we were making" which you don't usually have. The crew and the cast, if you're lucky, they might see the first hour while you're filming. So in many ways, they were much more informed than they've ever been. I know that Jason Schwartzman never shaved that mustache because he was so dedicated. After George Floyd was killed and protests started this summer, there were a lot of conversations in journalism and entertainment about representation: Who gets to tell whose story? As a white writer, were you at all concerned about how this season's story would land in that climate? Everyone has their own American story, their own American experience. My American experience starts on one side of my family with a grandmother who fled from Russia in 1895, as the Cossacks were coming. Everyone arrived here at a certain point, and in a different way. What I knew in exploring the immigration experience and the experience of Black Americans is that, to the degree that those are not my story, that I did want and need as many voices and as much understanding as possible to be able to tell those stories: in the writers' room and among directors and actors and, you know, as much diversity as possible an actual diversity of experience and opinion and perspective. Those conversations were so intense that I wondered if you felt like the story carried more weight? You used the word "conversation," and that's what I'm trying to have. And not everyone says the right thing in a conversation. But what was important to me, to the degree that this show has always been a show about America, was to continue to explore America from all points of view. On a very primal level, the reason that I write is to try to understand the world that I'm living in and to recreate the world in a fictional way, and then look at it and go, "Did I get this right?" That becomes the exploration and the risk, because there's a risk that you're getting it wrong. But we can't operate from a place of fear in terms of asking the hard questions. I had a lot of conversations throughout the process with a lot of people that I really respected, who I knew would call me out if I was not being authentic. If it was Chris Rock, writers, directors, or the other actors, if there had been a moment that didn't feel authentic or felt like it was romanticized, then we would have those conversations. We had an interesting conversation in the writers' room about Ethelrida E'myri Crutchfield . Some of the writers wanted, because she's a teenage girl, to have her struggle with some moral issues of her own; maybe her aunt offers her a drink, and she takes it because she's a teenager. There was a fear expressed that I was making her too honorable a character because she was Black. I said, "No, I'm making her that honorable a character because she is the character this year that represents that pure goodness that Marge Frances McDormand represented in the movie, or Patrick Wilson represented in Season 2, or Carrie Coon in Season 3: decency." The struggle that she is going through is a struggle against exterior forces, but she is very comfortable with who she is. She knows that the path that she's on, one mistake can throw her off it. So we had those conversations and, as in any good writers' room or any good process, it forces you to justify the choices that you make. As I said, we can't live in fear. Writers have to be willing to take those risks and put ourselves out there because the reward is too great. To be able to put yourself into somebody else's shoes, and to create that empathy in yourself and in others that is the definition of good writing, I think. This season is set in a time and place, postwar America, that was superficially quite optimistic: "We can do anything." But many of the characters are traumatized, which seems to say that America is actually a vicious place. I came upon this equation when I was writing Season 3, which is that irony without humor is just violence. Think about the stories of Kafka. But also think about the immigrant experience or the experience of Black people in America. We say it's the land of the free and the home of the brave, and yet those freedoms are not available to everyone equally. What is that if not ironic? But there's no humor to it. When you tell someone that they have to be an American to be accepted, but then when they become an American, you say they're not a real American it has the setup for a joke, but the joke is on you. It's not funny. That comedic setup to a tragic payoff feels very much to me like what many of Joel and Ethan's movies have that is unique, and something that I felt very much would translate from that fundamentally Jewish point of view to the experience of people of color and immigrants in this country. It was a pleasant surprise to see so many "Raising Arizona" references this season. As you're writing, do you create Coen mile markers for yourself as templates? It's like the Talmud, right? You go to the big book of questions: "How has this problem been asked and answered before?" I knew that in setting up this epic season with 21 main characters trying to look at the history of crime in America, that there was a lot of information I was going to have to deliver to the audience very quickly. So I tried to think, how had Joel and Ethan done that? My mind went to "Raising Arizona": The first 11 minutes of that movie is this amazing narrated montage that tells you everything you know about H.I. McDunnough Nicolas Cage , and Nathan Arizona and their quintuplets, and it brings you all the way up to the ladder on the roof of the car as they're driving off to go get them a baby. It's a comic masterpiece unto itself. So I settled on this history report format from Ethelrida, which allowed me both to tell the history of crime in Kansas City and also her history, and introduce all the important characters and ideas in about 24 minutes. Once I had "Raising Arizona" in mind, I thought it would be fun if we did a jailbreak with two women instead of John Goodman and William Forsythe, and rather than being H.I.'s buddies from prison, it's Ethelrida's aunt and her paramour. That led me into a story that drove those characters through the rest of the season. What about Mike Milligan Bokeem Woodbine made you want to close the season out with him? He remains a kind of active conundrum, as this iconoclastic character that didn't seem to belong anywhere. He's clearly a Black man in America in 1979. But you don't get the sense that he really fits into that culture. He clearly doesn't really fit into the white culture he's part of, or at least he's not respected there. And he also has this larger perspective on things. He's a very thoughtful and erudite speaker who played the game he went out and did what his boss told him; he won the war and he came home and he wanted his reward, and his reward was a tiny office with an electric typewriter. We left him in limbo, and when I thought about what to do this year, he was still there in that limbo. His story wasn't done. I didn't set out to tell the Mike Milligan origin story per se. It was an element of this larger story in the same way that Season 2 was the Molly Solverson Allison Tolman origin story. There was a young girl named Molly Solverson, and she was in a few scenes, but it was mostly the story of her father and her mother. It's the same here. I think you can get from Satchel, whose story we've seen in Season 4, to the Mike Milligan that we see in Season 2, but it's not the sum total of what the story was. Art Blakey's "Moanin'" features prominently in the last two seasons, in two different formats. What about that album resonates with you? Percussion has always been really attractive to me as a sonic element. When it came time in Season 1 to introduce Mr. Wrench and Mr. Numbers, I asked the composer Jeff Russo, I said: "I don't want music, I just want a beat. That's their signature." And it continued from there. In Season 2, we had a drum line, we brought in a marching band to record; Season 3, there was a lot of New Orleans style music that was very rhythmic. Jazz is such a rhythmic form of music, so in figuring out what to set this season's opening 24 minute montage to which in "Raising Arizona" is "Ode to Joy" for banjo and whistling I went to "Caravan" as a piece of music that you can hear for 24 minutes and not be tired of it. We can reinvent in different ways, and some of it is just percussion. With "Moanin'," in the third season I used a song version in the first hour. This season, when we knew we were doing the jazz club and they asked me what piece of music I wanted to use, it occurred to me to use that same thing but to do it from an instrumental point of view. Again, it's a kind of rhyme with the previous year, but there's something about that music it's kind of the perfect piece. Are you definitely done with "Fargo"? No, I don't think so. I've been saying I'm done for three years and I haven't been, so it feels obnoxious to say it again. The show has always been about the American experience, and there's still a lot to say about it. That said, I don't have a timeline and I don't even really have an idea. But I find myself compelled to come back to this style of storytelling: to tell a crime story, which is also a kind of character study and philosophical document exploration of our American experience. It's not something I feel like I ever would have been allowed to do without the Coen Brothers' model in the beginning, and now I can't think of why I would do it in any other format. The tone of voice is also unique: It's that Kafka setup to a tragic punchline, with a happy ending. That feels like a magic trick, if you can do it right. Do you have much interaction with the Coens about the series, or feedback from them? I do not. I have not spoken to them in a while. In the first two or three years I would make my way to New York and have a breakfast or a quick conversation from time to time. It's never creative. It's never about the show, other than they say, "You're still making that thing?" If they have something to volunteer, I'd love to hear it. But at the same time, their tacit neglect is I still get a warm feeling from it. Because they've allowed me to do this. This grand experiment in storytelling that has been so fulfilling and enriching for me.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Television
The marigold is a small sunburst of a flower that at first glance is little more than a pop of color. A closer look reveals the accordion delicacy of its miniature petals; how the edges of their orange and yellow surfaces are tinged with bits of maroon. Many flowers could be used to describe the copper haired Jodi Melnick, whose gossamer dancing, finely wrought, produces a flood of seemingly translucent images, but the marigold fits: Ms. Melnick may be small, but like the hearty blossom, she is resilient. Beginning Wednesday, she makes her Brooklyn Academy of Music debut with "Moment Marigold," a trio for her, Maggie Thom and EmmaGrace Skove Epes featuring music by Steven Reker of the band People Get Ready. In this evening length work, she laces new movement material with remnants from past dances. Ms. Melnick, whose canvas is her body, creates a landscape of ever changing forms. Her dances, in other words, are about dancing. (7:30 p.m. Wednesday through Saturday, Fishman Space in BAM Fisher, 321 Ashland Place, near Lafayette Avenue, Fort Greene; 718 636 4100, bam.org.)	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Dance
FRANKFURT, GERMANY (DECEMBER 3, 2015) (ECB ACCESS ALL // 10. (SOUNDBITE) (English) PRESIDENT OF THE EUROPEAN CENTRAL BANK, MARIO DRAGHI, SAYING: "We decided to reinvest the principle payments on the securities purchased under the asset purchase programme as they mature for as long as necessary. // 18. (SOUNDBITE) (English) PRESIDENT OF THE EUROPEAN CENTRAL BANK, MARIO DRAGHI, SAYING: "We are doing more because it works, not because it fails. We want to consolidate something that's been a success." // (SOUNDBITE) (English) MARIO DRAGHI, PRESIDENT, EUROPEAN CENTRAL BANK, SAYING: "As regards the key ECB rates, we decided to lower the interest rate on the deposit facility by 10 basis points to 0.30 per cent." // 14. (SOUNDBITE) (English) PRESIDENT OF THE EUROPEAN CENTRAL BANK, MARIO DRAGHI, SAYING: "Today's decisions also enforce the momentum of the euro area's economic recovery and strengthened its resilience against recent global economic shocks.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Economy
Bill Belichick is said to be the highest paid coach in professional sports, with a salary estimated by Forbes at more than 7.5 million a year. To many, the pay is justified, given his four Super Bowl wins for the New England Patriots. But back when he got started as an assistant coach for the Baltimore Colts, Belichick made a measly 25 a week just about the going rate. "Assistant coaches weren't even looked upon as full time employees," said Ray Didinger, a Pro Football Hall of Fame writer and a broadcaster for Comcast's SportsNet Philadelphia. "They worked in the season, and when the season was over, they went back home and were substitute teachers or assistant salesmen or beer distributors." Things are far different today. Take Kenny Payne. He is making 500,000 a year, including bonuses, as an assistant basketball coach at the University of Kentucky. That is about the same he made as a player in the high paying National Basketball Association in 1993, the last of his four seasons as a small forward for the Philadelphia 76ers, a year in which he averaged 6.5 points per game. But even Payne's salary is modest compared with what some major college football assistant coaches are paid. According to USA Today, which does an annual survey of collegiate assistant coach salaries, nine assistants at N.C.A.A. Division I football programs made more than 1 million last year, topped by Will Muschamp, the Auburn defensive coordinator, who made 1.6 million and has since taken the head coaching job at the University of South Carolina. Two assistants at Louisiana State University, Cam Cameron, offensive coordinator, and Kevin Steele, defensive coordinator, made 1.5 million and 1 million, respectively. (Steele has now taken Muschamp's job at Auburn.) The emergence of such princely salaries for non head coaches at the pro and collegiate levels coincides with the vast sums flowing to sports in recent years. The N.C.A.A. men's basketball tournament, for example, has taken in 740 million a year in TV revenue since 2011, up from 500 million a year from 2001 10, and the other major sports have seen similar rises. None Week 11 Takeaways: Here is what we learned this week. N.F.L. Tightens Covid Protocols: As cases rise and Thanksgiving approaches, the league is requiring masks inside team facilities and increasing testing. The Jets Lose Again: Falling to the Miami Dolphins, the Jets receiver Elijah Moore offered consolation. What Will the Giants Do With Daniel Jones? The team must evaluate the quarterback ahead of a contract decision. Playoff Simulator: Explore every team's path to the postseason, updated live. Gilbert M. Gaul, author of "Billion Dollar Ball: A Journey Through the Big Money Culture of College Football," links inflation in college football assistant coaches' salaries to Nick Saban's arrival as head coach at the University of Alabama in 2007, after coaching the National Football League's Miami Dolphins. Alabama last month won Saban his fourth national championship as head coach of the Crimson Tide. "He told Alabama, 'If you want me to come, you have to invest,'" said Mr. Gaul, who added that Alabama's football budget grew from 16 million in 2006 to its current 45 million. "A part of that was that he wanted to pay assistant coaches so they would come to Alabama," Mr. Gaul said. "He was used to a pro system, with intense, specialized assistant coaches." According to USA Today, Alabama paid its 10 assistant coaches the most allowed by the N.C.A.A. in Division I a total of 5.2 million last year. For his book, Mr. Gaul tried to compare men's football and basketball coaching salaries with women's collegiate sports budgets. "A good women's rowing program may cost 1.2 million total coaches, facilities, travel, whatever," Mr. Gaul said. So that entire program would cost less than a year's pay of any of seven assistant football coaches in the millionaires' club. Assistant coaches in sports like softball or even men's cross country might make 30,000 or 40,000 a year. The lucrative assistant coaching market helps explain why Steve Kauffman of Kauffman Sports Management Group in Malibu, Calif., who was Payne's agent as a player, has shifted his agency's specialization to coaches and front office personnel. But another factor in the agency's shift, and in coach salary inflation, is, ironically, the player salary cap in the N.B.A. N.B.A. teams must limit what they pay players, but there is no cap for everything else. Thus, teams can pay assistant coaches as much as they want, and have as many as they want. Mr. Kauffman pointed to the Charlotte Hornets, where his clients are the head coach, Steve Clifford, and three of the Hornets' six assistant coaches, including the Hall of Famer Patrick Ewing. In another era, the bench would not be the place for such a star, but with salaries averaging about 800,000 for top assistants, it's a good place to be. "It might seem like a lot to have six or seven assistants for a team of 12 guys, but players can expect personal attention these days," said Mr. Kauffman, noting that paying a six figure salary for an assistant to help protect a billion dollar investment which a sports team often is these days is not a lot. He said that last year the Hornets hired the former all star shooter Mark Price, now the coach at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, primarily to help Michael Kidd Gilchrist, a star who makes 13 million a year, reform his jump shot. "It has made the market for assistant coaches who have a reputation all the more lucrative." Even with the more than comfortable salaries now available to assistants, most still aspire to become head coaches, said Mr. Didinger, the writer and commentator. "There may be some who don't want the hassle of dealing with the media or the fans and just want to stay in the background," Mr. Didinger said. "Sometimes there is someone who loves being an offensive coordinator or a special teams coach, but in reality, most of the people who come to the N.F.L. want the opportunity to be the face of the franchise. "I can't imagine it is any different in college," he said, "even if they can make a salary unheard of only a generation ago."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Your Money
When I saw the name of the series coming up at Film at Lincoln Center "Relentless Invention: New Korean Cinema, 1996 2003" I thought that it would probably include the greatest unknown movie of the century so far. Sure enough, it does. All right, let's stipulate that saying a movie is the "greatest unknown" this or the "most underrated" that is a problematic enterprise. Unknown by whom? Underrated compared to what? So where do I get off singling out Lee Myung se's crime thriller "Nowhere to Hide," which opened in New York 19 years ago ? To begin with, there's a good circumstantial case. A hit at Sundance, the recipient of buoyant reviews (including one from Elvis Mitchell in The New York Times), "Nowhere to Hide" virtually disappeared after its opening. The screenings at Lincoln Center on Nov. 25 and 30 appear to be the film's first in New York since a single showing at the Korean Cultural Center in 2004. Lee's own fade was nearly as quick. After "Nowhere to Hide" he had an unproductive American sojourn, which led to a six year gap between pictures. His last feature only his eighth came out in 2007, when he was 50. Lee is not a director concerned with making an audience comfortable. His movies are not obscure or difficult, and they mostly avoid the grimness and violence associated with the new wave of South Korean cinema. But they disregard expectation. (To say that they defy it would falsely imply that Lee gave any thought to it at all.) Whether he's working in romantic comedy or horror or swordplay, Lee answers only to the visual and tonal ideas that interest him. "Nowhere to Hide" his only venture into the popular Korean genre of the gangster film may be both his most singular and most accessible movie. It slips back and forth from high octane chase to slow motion slapstick ballet to noirish, rain soaked romance, the way an old fashioned Hollywood musical changes up song styles. It's open about its influences, serving them up omakase style: the John Woo course, the Sam Peckinpah course, the Wong Kar wai palate cleanser. (The closing scene is a twofer, saluting both Carol Reed and Robert Altman.) It's a straightforward story about a cop's grinding pursuit of a murderous mobster, and it's simultaneously Lee's demonstration that he can do anything he wants at any moment and not lose his audience. Then, four minutes in, Lee changes everything. Depicting the killing that sets the plot in motion, he empties the screen, focusing on a Busan landmark, a steep urban staircase down which a lone schoolgirl hops. Rock music gives way to the plaintive Bee Gees ballad "Holiday" and the pace slows accordingly. Around the gray stairs is a wash of brilliant, almost painfully saturated color, dominated by a blanket of yellow autumn leaves. The percussive, pulpy violence of the opening is replaced by a close up of a single blade flashing down and a bright streak of blood across a face. In a fleeting visual coup, black suited gangsters appear on the stairs, clambering up from the bottom of the frame like two dimensional figures in a brush painting. And then boom, we're in yet another movie, though this time it's the one Lee more or less sticks with. Woo, who wears his cockiness like a uniform, walks into a noodle shop and throws some attitude at another customer. "Think this is a cops and robbers movie?" the weary proprietor asks at the very moment that "Nowhere to Hide" becomes a cops and robbers movie. The other customer, who happens to be the killer, disappears out the back of the shop. At this point, the plot kicks in, and Woo, Kim and their team of latter day Keystone Kops spend the balance of the film 72 ever more frustrating days, in movie time pursuing the gangster, Chang ( Ahn Sung ki ). Chases, interrogations, stakeouts and near misses bring them steadily, incrementally closer to the inevitable showdown. Lee's virtuosity never flags, and it also never gets wearying. Every idea seems to come along in the right place, at the right moment a nighttime fight that morphs into a shadow play, with the combatants' flat black images flowing across a white wall like Balinese puppets; a rolling, slow motion, freeze framed melee that anticipates a signature scene four years later in Park Chan wook's "Oldboy"; a dusty road trip ending in a barbershop standoff straight out of a western (either Hollywood or Hong Kong). If you can negotiate the shifting tones and rhythms, Lee's guerrilla like inventiveness will keep a nearly constant smile on your face. That "Nowhere to Hide" isn't quite like any other cop and gangster movie explains why you probably haven't seen it. Once you have, the genre will never feel quite the same.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Television
Demanding, difficult, uningratiating: Such is the public persona of the choreographer Sarah Michelson. You have to be aware of this reputation, carefully tended over years of performances, interviews and public statements, to feel the surprise of her new work "May 2018/ " at Performance Space New York. The Sarah Michelson in it is likable, endearing. Which is not to say that the show is for everyone. As ever, Ms. Michelson makes clear that a show with wide appeal would be for her a form of apostasy. This work, like the earlier ones to which it alludes, is clogged with her individual iconography and other cryptic features that seem intended for a select audience of insiders. But at least she seems to be having fun this time, cracking herself up. Much of what is endearing arises from the core subject matter: aging. "I'm old," she yells over and over in a raspy voice, demanding that we look at her hands, her legs. (She was born in 1964.) "I'm sad," she screams. "My sadness has a shape." The show is highly nostalgic. With it, Ms. Michelson returns, after an absence of 13 years, to the East Village theater where she served much of her apprenticeship as a dancer in the 1990s, and the site of several of her breakout triumphs as an uncompromising choreographer in the early 2000s. But that theater, PS122, is gone. It has been renovated and renamed. The tape, printed with the old PS122 logo, that Ms. Michelson has strewn around the new theater, including all over her high heeled boots and the garbage bags she wears as pants, turns "May 2018/ ," part of the neighborhood focused East Village Series, toward elegy. The shape of her sadness is a theater size hole. Ms. Michelson has turned the place into something of a shrine, a replica of a messy loft space complete with cases of Rolling Rock beer and blown up photos of figures from the PS122 past. Most audience members sit on cushions in the center, and because the performances occur before sunset, we can look out the open windows onto the neighborhood in daylight. Ms. Michelson gives shout outs to the street below, sometimes shouting "Ninth Street" right out the window. Between us and the neighborhood, though, is the rest of the hourlong show: the semi amusing nothing much of Ms. Michelson fooling with electronics as she sings little ditties about a dead bird, bosses around a few other performers wearing photos of cat faces on their heads and invites us to touch her anus. (On Saturday, someone obliged. Ms. Michelson said, "Thank you.") "Attempting to be radical" is what she says she's doing, while calling herself old and white and a nasty slur for a part of female anatomy. As she points out, being radical can be, etymologically, a return to roots. That's what "May 2018/ " seems to be about. "Personal" is also what she called it. For this reason, she did not want the show to be reviewed. She reiterated this point, to me, during the performance I attended, in a nonhostile manner, flashing me a charming smile. (She knows who I am and the publication I write for.) "I'm not responsible to the Lincoln Center crowd," she added, which would seem to be a non sequitur were it not in the character of an old fashioned downtown partisan. Ms. Michelson could have made the show private if she wanted but she chose to present it before a paying audience. I can respect her oft stated objection to spoilers by merely hinting that if you go, you shouldn't fail to look out the windows. But I'm afraid I've already given away a dirty little secret. The fearsome Ms. Michelson is relatable.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Dance
Down a set and a break to the unseeded Tsvetana Pironkova in the quarterfinals of the United States Open, Serena Williams was in danger of succumbing to a story line even better than her own. Pironkova is not only unseeded. She is unranked and was playing in her first tour event in more than three years. Not even Williams, a 38 year old master of the comeback, has taken it to that extreme. Pironkova, 32, is a tall Bulgarian veteran with an iconoclastic game who changes rhythm more often than "Bohemian Rhapsody." She gave birth to a son, Alexander, in April 2018 and was uncertain whether she wanted to return to the tour at all. She clearly made a sound career move, and on Wednesday was in range, if not quite on the brink, of her biggest victory before Williams came back to prevail, 4 6, 6 3, 6 2. "It just shows me how tough moms are," said Williams, who has a 3 year old daughter, Olympia. "Whenever you can give birth to a baby, honestly you can do anything. And I think we saw that with Tsvetana today." But only one working mother could win this match, and after Williams's strong finish, she will meet another in Thursday's semifinals, Victoria Azarenka. Williams and Azarenka met in consecutive U.S. Open finals, in 2012 and 2013. Williams prevailed both times in three sets and leads their series, 18 4. Williams and her coach, Patrick Mouratoglou, once viewed Azarenka, who was ranked No. 1 for most of 2012 and part of 2013, as Williams's biggest and most talented threat. Azarenka looked ready to climb back to the top when she beat Williams in the final of the BNP Paribas Open in Indian Wells, Calif., in 2016, and then won the Miami Open, completing the so called Sunshine Double. But Azarenka was soon pregnant and off the tour, and she frequently struggled when she returned in 2017 after getting involved in a long running custody dispute over her son, Leo, who is now 3. She and Williams, who are friendly, exchanged visits and notes in 2017, shortly after Williams became pregnant and then left the tour herself. "I do hope she is coming back, and we can have some more of our battles," Azarenka said in an interview that year. "Because she's one of the people I can't imagine the tour without." They have played each other only once since both returned to action, in a high velocity duel in the second round at Indian Wells last year that Williams won, 7 5, 6 3. Azarenka remains convinced that Williams reserves her best tennis for their matches, but Azarenka has looked closer to her peak at this U.S. Open than Williams has, and she swept past the 16th seeded Elise Mertens, 6 1, 6 0, on Wednesday night. "Can it get any better? For me, it can't," Azarenka said of the upcoming semifinal. "I'm so excited about it. An amazing opportunity to play against a champion, someone I respect a lot who is my friend." Williams still has a chance to chase her dreams to the end of this U.S. Open, a tournament where the end has been bitter since she won her sixth singles title here way back in 2014. The following year, she was tantalizingly close to a rare calendar year Grand Slam only to be ambushed in the semifinals by Roberta Vinci, an Italian outsider who, like Pironkova, relied on guile more than pure power. In 2018, Williams lost her cool with the chair umpire Carlos Ramos during a tumultuous defeat against Naomi Osaka in the final. Last year, Williams was again beaten in the final by a prodigiously talented newcomer, the Canadian teenager Bianca Andreescu. But to her considerable credit, Williams has continued to rebound from such deflating moments and to fight her way back to form and through major draws. This one has been rather kind so far, with no top 20 opponents: Quite a few of them were missing to begin with in this strange, pandemic interrupted season. But Williams has still had to struggle, needing three sets to defeat Sloane Stephens, Maria Sakkari and now Pironkova. Such tussles have become the rule. Since the tour restarted last month, eight of Williams's 10 singles matches have gone the full, three set distance. She is no longer as intimidating to the opposition or as unusual, with more women accustomed to big power tennis. But Williams is still here, just two rounds away from matching Margaret Court's elusive record of 24 major singles titles. "People always say you're not to do something at a certain age, but with technology and time, we can kind of make that age a little longer," she said. Williams is 0 4 in Slam finals since returning to the tour in early 2018, several months after childbirth. To get a fifth opportunity, she will need to get past Azarenka. Williams, with her formidable serve clicking and a big head to head edge, will be the favorite, but she has not played consistently well enough to be the favorite in the tournament. Osaka, who will face the American newcomer Jennifer Brady in the semifinals, deserves that label as long as her hamstring injury does not resurface. Williams's victory over Pironkova did not appear to be as draining as some of her previous matches this summer, but it came at a dangerous time. Williams has had a day off between each of her matches at this U.S. Open, but she will not get that luxury for the semifinals. Recovery will be critical. Her U.S. Open loss in 2016 came in a semifinal without a day of rest. At least Williams played the early match on Wednesday, starting slowly as Pironkova sliced forehands, punched flat backhands, hit perfectly disguised lob winners and hustled into the corners to extend rallies and sow seeds of doubt in her more accomplished opponent. "Definitely, I was feeling it a little in my legs," Williams said. "For whatever reason, an hour in, I get more energy." But Williams, even without the same range or aura she has had in previous years, remains a supreme competitor and unmatched server. She smacked 20 aces on Wednesday, but she also got gritty and countered Pironkova's unorthodox methods with some of her own. After getting bamboozled by Pironkova's hard to read serve, Williams was twice forced to return with her non dominant left hand, and twice won the point.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Sports
To hear more audio stories from publishers like The New York Times, download Audm for iPhone or Android. After the 2016 election, I was deeply shaken not just by the outcome, but by the terrifying sense that I did not understand the nation as well as I'd thought I did. To blunt the shock, I went on a bender through American history. I dove into books about the Civil War, the Progressive era and, finally, Robert Caro's titanic biography of Lyndon B. Johnson, where I washed up on the shores of the turbulent 1960s. I discovered something amazing: After 1960, much of history as many Americans experienced it through popular culture on TV, on the radio and at the movies is preserved and easily accessible online. With a few clicks around YouTube, history leaps into the present, often in ways that deepen and complicate the narrative. For instance, Caro ably describes Johnson's stirring first presidential address to Congress. It was five days after the assassination of John F. Kennedy, and the new president pressed lawmakers to pass civil rights legislation in Kennedy's honor. "Everywhere you looked, people were crying," the journalist Hugh Sidey wrote. That was the speech that hooked me, and soon I found myself living a second life in the past. I'd spend my days as a journalist covering the raucous present; but on and off over the last few years, on nights and weekends and vacations, I'd jump into my digital DeLorean and take up residence in earlier times making my way, slowly, through the 1960s and then the '70s, accompanied by an unending library of historical documents and pop cultural artifacts I found online. It is a project I commend you to try. Go live for a bit in another, far off decade, and I promise it will give you fresh perspective on a present as nutty as ours. Doing so will take a bit of work. Although the internet contains uncountable historical treasures, its most used services tend to constrict our focus to the instantaneous ever present. Every moment on social media offers up a deluge of novelty; news is always breaking, memes always trending, hot takes never not taken. The Trump years, especially, have been marked by a barrage of events so overwhelming that each new day seems to scramble every day that preceded it. We are all Dory, Nemo's forgetful fish friend, so unsettled by the present that we forge I'm sorry, my pocket just buzzed, what was I saying? Sure, there are easier ways to understand Watergate. "Slow Burn," the Slate podcast that documented Nixon's downfall, may be a better use of your time than watching every minute of the investigation. But the magic of the internet is how it collapses time; you can listen to a documentary produced in 2017 about a break in in 1972, and then, if you want to fall in even further, you can watch testimony in the Senate's 1973 Watergate hearings as if it were just unfolding. There's unexpected value in consulting the originals. "One of the things I tried to get across was the extraordinarily high level of civic commitment that the public showed in following these things, because it was complicated and slow," Perlstein said of Watergate. After watching long stretches of Senate hearings in the background while I cooked or cleaned the kitchen, I understood what he meant. The Trump era has drawn numerous comparisons to the 1960s and early '70s. Both periods have had protests, riots, police brutality, political turmoil and corruption and endless war. And both have been consumed by unsettled questions over race, gender and equality. What has stood out to me is not the similarities in plot but the differences in presentation. Watching TV news from the past is jarring and refreshing. A lot of it is outmoded this is the news as seen through the eyes of old white men but there are aspects to coverage from the past that I felt myself pining for in the present. When broadcast news was tightly controlled by three TV networks, there was an antiquated formality to the spectacle. I marveled at the tone of the presidential news conferences from the time. The basic grammar of political media was different from what we see today: The questions were longer and more complex, the answers more detailed and nuanced. Even under a president as mendacious as Nixon, the political universe was still bounded by a shared sense of reality. Facts mattered, and documentary evidence had weight. If a politician said something today that contradicted what he (or, rarely, she) said yesterday, or there were recordings of a president disclosing something in private that undermined what he'd said in public, the inconsistencies were considered damning. Broadcast news, which the TV networks offered as public service, also had little room for cheap punditry and outrage in search of profits. As a result, the coverage was more serious than anything on the dial today no shouting talking heads, no montages of precisely edited sound bites, nothing engineered to drive you to share with your million friends. But because broadcast news was the only game in town, it was also more trustworthy, and more influential perhaps explaining why both Johnson's and Nixon's presidencies ultimately collapsed under the weight of their own distortions. In the fishbowl of 2020, where the news is fragmented and none of us can remember yesterday, we are not at all so lucky. Farhad wants to chat with readers on the phone. If you're interested in talking to a New York Times columnist about anything that's on your mind, please fill out this form. Farhad will select a few readers to call.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Opinion
Last week's episode of "Succession" was pretty grueling, with a furious Logan Roy literally forcing his family and closest business allies to grovel on the floor. For sausages. By contrast, this week's episode is ... delightful? Is that the right word to use for an hour of TV featuring a funeral, a suicide and an entire office building on lockdown because of an active shooter? Give some of the credit to the Oscar winning actress Holly Hunter, the star of the classic 1987 romantic comedy and media satire "Broadcast News" and thus a perfect fit for this show. Hunter joins the "Succession" family this week in the role of Rhea Jarrell, an emissary from Pierce Global Media, sent to the New York offices of Waystar Royco perhaps to laugh in Logan's face, or perhaps to see just how much he is actually willing to spend for Pierce. Rhea and Logan's big meeting is the main event in this week's "Succession." But it has a lot of competition. So far, this is the season's most eventful episode and often the funniest. For pure comedy, it's hard to beat Connor's appearance at the funeral for a longtime Waystar employee he calls "Moe." Almost as soon as he and his girlfriend Willa arrive at the ceremony, she makes the mistake of calling the deceased "Moe," prompting Connor to pull her aside and admit that this was just a nickname. His real name was Lester ... as in "mo lester." Was he actually a pederast? Connor says no, though he admits that Logan never let his kids get in the pool with "Old Mr. Fiddlesticks." ("You know, the guys of that generation, it was a different time," he says. "It wasn't a time before they invented laws, was it?" Willa replies.) While all this is going on, Roman is trying to impress his dad by suffering though management training at Brightstar Amusement Park. ("If I don't come back, send goons," he tells his driver. "They may sacrifice me to their gods.") He is starting back at the bottom or at least the Roy family version of the bottom, which for most aspiring moguls would be the chance of a lifetime. Going by the preposterous assumed name "Ron Rockstone," he quips: "I'm stripping back to basics. This is my White Album." But he has a hard time feigning enthusiasm for busywork assignments like designing new Brightstar rides. "What do the normos like?" he asks, not really caring about the answer. The episode hits a farcical high back at ATN, where Tom is asked to question the controversial anchor Mark Ravenhead, who reportedly attended a white nationalist conference in college and later got married at Hitler's "Eagle's Nest" stronghold. Tom initially shrugs this news off, saying, "Who wasn't a bit salty when they were 21?" He adds that Mark now "lives in Connecticut" and is "crazy about the Knicks" so he must be a "lovely guy." But he is taken aback when Ravenhead admits that he has read "Mein Kampf" multiple times. The anchor is fascinated by the tragedy of that era, which saw so many Germans and Russians and Poles killed. Tom can't help but notice which ethnic group Mark excluded from his tally. Tom doesn't get a chance to pursue this objection because his meeting ends abruptly. The title of this episode is "Safe Room," named for the locations the various Roys are whisked to when a gunshot is heard in the halls of ATN. Later, security determines an employee killed himself, citing "a culture of bullying." But they're initially worried that one of the anti Ravenhead protesters slipped past them. Tom grabs Greg and dashes to safety, pushing aside underlings and shouting, "Executives coming through!" Not long after they're secured in an apparently random office and not a real panic room Greg starts to freak out, questioning everything about his position with ATN and his fealty to Tom. Citing the shooter and the "Nazi stuff," he admits, "I just don't love it." Coming from Greg, that's a strong condemnation. The polite to a fault Tom responds in kind, telling his favorite lackey that, well, y'know, it's just not great how Greg is making him feel. Then he pelts Greg with water bottles. Throughout "Safe Room," the "Succession" characters face a series of, "Wait, what am I really doing here?" moments. For much of the episode, it looks as if Shiv's existential crisis is going to be the most meaningful. During the lockdown, she finds herself in the actual Waystar executive panic room with Logan, Kendall and Rhea Jarrell. Shiv seems to thinks she can relate to Rhea as a woman with a big picture perspective and certain unshakable convictions. She is appalled when Kendall pressures Rhea, raising the purchase price for Pierce every time their guest raises an objection. She pleads with her dad to intervene, believing that as the future boss she should have more say. Instead, Logan shushes her. Hunter plays these scenes masterfully, keeping Rhea's motivations and intentions unclear all the way up to the end of the episode. On the surface, the character seems to have class and principles. Throughout the day, she's blithely dismissive of Logan's legacy. She turns down lunch, because she says at PGM, "We only eat Pulitzer." She notes that in every aspect of the Roys' takeover talk, "Your most positive spin still sounds a bit rapey." But she doesn't walk out, even before the building is sealed off. As for Shiv, she corners Kendall after the meeting, thinking he's her competition for Waystar's top spot ... and that he's winning. He surprises her by asking for a hug, a gesture she initially interprets as a joke, until she realizes that he really does need her to embrace him like a sister. Kendall has by then spent much of this episode peering over ledges ... and on the same day a Waystar employee shot himself, no less. "If dad didn't need me right now," he tells Shiv, "I don't exactly know what I would be for." That's such an alarmingly sad and moving line, and a fine capper to a great episode. It's all the more heartbreaking because it is spoken by a man raised to believe that only the unexceptional have ordinary human feelings. The Rich Are Different From You and Me: None At what point does Logan's "hush hush" approach to Siobhan's ascension become insulting? When Shiv arrives at Waystar, she has nowhere to work. ("Whatever. I'll float," she says, trying to be cool.) And throughout an action packed day, her father keeps saying things like, "She's not here," whenever people notice her. Finally, she gripes to Gerri, "Dad's in a secret meeting and I'm in here with a coloring book." None These past couple of episodes have dug into Roman's curious sexuality. He is apparently creeped out by the very thought of sleeping with his girlfriend, to the extent that when she tries to have phone sex with him, he's disgusted by her detailed descriptions of arousal. Then the clumsy affection he showed toward Gerri last week during her maternal intervention with him at the Hungary retreat takes a weird turn when he audibly masturbates while she chastises him over the phone. And yet ... it's somehow kind of sweet?	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Television
The city owns some of the narrowest, most unusual lots in New York. Some of the land has been vacant for decades, even as affordable housing options have dwindled and luxury apartments have risen nearby, for at least one good reason: Nobody has wanted to build there. Whether it is the result of development leftovers or zoning quirks, building code challenges have often made these lots undesirable to private investors. Now the city is turning to architects, not developers, for help: On Monday, the Department of Housing Preservation and Development will announce a design competition for ideas on how to create affordable housing on 23 of these small, irregular lots. The department hopes the winning entries will help solve design problems at other lots where site challenges have curtailed building. But the question of just how affordable these homes will be when they are finished has some residents wary. The program, called Big Ideas for Small Lots NYC, will partner with the New York Chapter of the American Institute of Architects to select designs for lots as narrow as 13 feet wide, with areas as small as 1,008 square feet. The tiniest sites the city typically deals with are 25 feet wide by 100 feet deep, or 2,500 square feet the size of many townhouse lots. The properties, mostly wedged between residential buildings, are in all five boroughs. Entrants will be judged by a panel of nine jurors, including architects, urban planners and private developers. Submissions are due Mar. 24, and finalists will be selected in May. A second phase, in which contestants will propose budgeting and site plans, is slated for late 2019. "We have to have a strategy for every single lot, because the housing crisis is quite dire," said Maria Torres Springer, the department's commissioner. The city became the owner of thousands of properties beginning in the 1960s and '70s, many in the Bronx and Brooklyn, where properties were seized from delinquent landlords and urban blight was rampant. The department still owns about 885 lots, more than half in some stage of planning or development, Ms. Torres Springer said. Overall, city agencies own more than 1,015 acres of vacant land in the five boroughs, according to Living Lots NYC, a data tool created by the nonprofit organization 596 Acres. While the competition is relatively small scale, the department hopes it will have an outsize effect on neighborhoods. "It's really important to have continuity on the block," said Hayes Slade, a partner at Slade Architecture and the president of the American Institute of Architects' New York chapter, who is one of the jurors. A vacant lot in the middle of the block is "like missing teeth," she said, and the competition aims to fill those gaps. Entrants will be asked to focus on a property on West 136th Street in Harlem, a 17 foot wide, 1,665 square foot mid block lot that is overgrown with weeds and home to a number of feral cats. It was chosen because many of its challenges, including narrow frontage and limited sunlight, are present at other lots on the list, according to a spokesman for the project. The department may consider co living or micro unit arrangements, but it is mostly anticipating plans for two or three family homes for buyers selected through the affordable housing lottery, although income limits have not been established yet. Below market rate rentals are also being considered. Some in the community are apprehensive, as they have seen city subsidized developments, on larger lots, that they believe neglected the needs of longtime residents, said Paula Z. Segal, a senior staff attorney for the Community Development Project's Equitable Neighborhoods practice. About 10 blocks away from the small lot in Harlem, an almost 8,500 square foot property recently used as a community garden is expected to become a 36 unit, below market rate apartment building, with a restaurant and "tech incubator" space. Units will be reserved for tenants making 30 to 90 percent of the median area income; for a family of three, that ranges from 28,170 to 84,510 a year. But that is a poor match for local tenants, Ms. Segal said. The median household income in this part of Harlem is about 38,000, according to census analysis by the data site Social Explorer.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Real Estate
The death of the iconic Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg has shocked the political world, altered the contours of the upcoming election and induced an overwhelming dread among liberals who fear some basic rights could now be in jeopardy. Donald Trump and his Republican accomplices in the Senate may want to jam a nominee through the confirmation process, but it remains unclear whether the Senate will hold a vote before Election Day. If it did, it would represent a colossal act of hypocrisy since many of the same senators refused to even give Barack Obama's last nominee, Merrick Garland, a hearing, arguing that it was inappropriate to fill a seat on the court in an election year. But Republicans have the power to force a vote, and barring defections, they could exercise it. This is all about power for a group of people who feel their grip on power slipping away. They are trying to reshape the courts for a generation, if not longer, so that as their numerical advantage slips away, their power imbalance will have already been enshrined. As America becomes less religious and less white, more galvanized to fight climate change, more open to legalizing marijuana and more aware of systemic racism, the religious conservative spine of the Republican Party is desperate for a way to save a way of life that may soon be rendered a relic.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Opinion
WASHINGTON Janet L. Yellen, the Federal Reserve chairwoman, said on Friday that the Fed planned to raise interest rates more slowly than in past recoveries because of the unusually fragile condition of the American economy. Fed officials, who have held short term interest rates near zero for more than six years, have indicated that they plan to start raising the Fed's key gauge later this year. Ms. Yellen's remarks, delivered at a conference in San Francisco, offered more details about the Fed's plans than earlier statements, all part of an effort to prepare markets for the end of that prolonged era. And her message was that the return to normal conditions was likely to come slowly. There will be no repeat of the two year period beginning in June 2004 when the Fed raised rates by 0.25 percentage points at every meeting. "The average pace of tightening observed during previous recoveries could well provide a highly misleading guide to the actual course of monetary policy over the next few years," Ms. Yellen said. Ms. Yellen's speech was delivered hours after the Commerce Department reported, in its final revision, that the United States economy grew at a rate of 2.2 percent in the fourth quarter of 2014, down from a robust 5 percent pace during the summer months. Economists said that the economy probably slowed even further in the first quarter of this year, which ends on Tuesday. Despite the latest disappointing economic figures, Ms. Yellen emphasized that she saw the economy as improving, describing the current situation as a temporary slowdown during the winter months. She highlighted particular progress in labor markets, and said that she expected the economy to gain steam as consumer spending increased after a slow start to 2015. But Ms. Yellen offered a more cautious policy outlook than some of her colleagues. "With continued improvement in economic conditions," she said, "an increase in the target range for that rate may well be warranted later this year." By contrast, Dennis P. Lockhart, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta, said earlier this week it was "quite likely" the Fed would raise rates no later than September. John C. Williams, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, and Ms. Yellen's host on Friday, said "by midyear it will be the time to have a discussion." Fed officials have said they would closely monitor the course of the economy in determining when to raise interest rates and by how much. Raising rates tends to slow growth and restrain inflation, while keeping rates low helps encourage additional business activity and job hiring. Lately, even as the job market has displayed healthy signs of life the unemployment rate fell to 5.5 percent in February as employers hired 295,000 new workers other indicators have been anemic. If the economy advances more strongly than most Fed officials expect, suggesting that inflation will eventually gain momentum, the central bank is likely to raise rates more aggressively than if job gains and economic growth are disappointing. This week, the government said durable goods orders fell last month and retail sales were also weak, despite benefits to consumers from low energy prices. The nation's manufacturers have also been hurt by a stronger dollar and weak conditions in key markets like Europe and Brazil, which has curbed exports. The downshift in early 2015 has echoes of the economy's performance in the first quarter of 2014, when cold temperatures and snow were blamed for a 2.1 percent contraction in output. Next week, the economic picture may become a bit clearer. Data are due on Friday on job creation and unemployment in March. Figures for the trade balance, home sales, personal consumption and construction in February are set to come out earlier in the week. In her speech in San Francisco, Ms. Yellen provided new insight into the Fed's decision making process. She said the Fed would not wait for price inflation to increase before it moved to raise rates. She also played down the importance of wage inflation, an issue on which her views have evolved significantly. In speeches last year, Ms. Yellen highlighted the slow pace of wage inflation as evidence of slack in the labor market. But on Friday she described it as unreliable, saying that wages might be stagnating for a variety of reasons including globalization and the decline of unions. "The outlook for wages is highly uncertain even if price inflation does move back to 2 percent and labor market conditions continue to improve as projected," Ms. Yellen said. "This uncertainty limits the usefulness of wage trends as an indicator of the Fed's progress in achieving its inflation objective." Ms. Yellen said that the Fed intended to focus on job growth, judging that if unemployment continued to fall, prices and wages would begin to rise. David G. Blanchflower, an economist at Dartmouth College, described Ms. Yellen's conclusions as a "big mistake." Mr. Blanchflower argued in a paper last year that the pace of wage growth was the best measure of labor market health. He cautioned on Friday that other central banks, including the Swedish Riksbank, had to backtrack after raising rates too soon. Ms. Yellen said the timing of the first increase, which many experts say is likely to take place in September, was less important than the pace of later ones, which would determine borrowing costs in coming years. And she gave three reasons the pace was likely to be quite slow. First, despite the Fed's campaign to revive growth, the economy remains weak, implying that the central bank's help is still needed. "If underlying conditions had truly returned to normal, the economy should be booming," Ms. Yellen said. Second, Ms. Yellen said, moving too quickly carries greater risks than tardiness. The Fed's tools for reviving growth are already in use; if the economy swoons, it is not clear how much more the Fed can do. And the Fed sees little risk in waiting: Ms. Yellen said she still saw little threat from any overheating in financial markets.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Economy
At Europe's Illegal Parties, the Virus Is the Last Thing on Anyone's Mind Nightclubs around Europe are shut. But that doesn't mean the continent's party people are staying home. As coronavirus lockdowns are eased, illegal raves are growing in popularity. Outdoor events for hundreds in some cases, thousands organized via social media and messaging apps, are in full swing every weekend, causing headaches for police forces and lawmakers, and stirring public debate and news media panic. Tom Wingfield, a senior lecturer at the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine, said in an email that there were no medical studies about the coronavirus and outdoor parties, but that a likely lack of social distancing posed risks for transmission. Throw in alcohol or drugs, and those risks could be exacerbated, he said. Some countries have tried bringing nightclubs back. In Switzerland, most regions let venues reopen in June, provided they kept attendees' contact details. (After many partygoers gave false information, I.D. checks became mandatory in some areas.) Clubs in Barcelona, Spain, reopened at the end of June, but shut again a few weeks later as the virus surged in the city. In most countries, the idea of packed dance floors is too much to even consider right now. Many nightclub operators fear they will be the last businesses allowed to reopen. Until then, thousands are partying in secret, despite the risk and the backlash. Last weekend, Times reporters attended three events, in Berlin, in London and near Paris. Here's what we saw. Berlin: 'Partying is a huge part of the city's identity' It was midnight on Saturday, and a rave in a field on the northeastern outskirts of Berlin was just getting started. A D.J. in shorts stood near turntables connected to a generator, playing a warm blend of house music and techno. A tent selling beer had been set up nearby, and multicolored lights had been affixed to the trees. The crowd of about 200 people was getting bigger by the minute. Despite the sign instructing partygoers to maintain a distance of at least 1.5 meters, about five feet, the dance area was packed, and nobody was wearing a mask. Although the number of new coronavirus infections remains relatively low in Germany, they have begun to climb again in recent weeks, and parties such as this have become a point of contention in a broader debate about whether young people are threatening the country's much lauded success. The parties' persistence has infuriated some public health officials and politicians, and complicated attempts by the leaders of the city's club scene to push for officially sanctioned events. Some partygoers on Saturday argued that raves were a much needed way to blow off steam after a period of isolation, and pointed out that outdoor events posed less risk. Berlin's coronavirus regulations allow for gatherings in parks of up to 1,000 people, but only if social distancing measures are maintained and no alcohol is sold. Standing between the beer tent and the packed dance area, Paul Evina Ze, 32, an American caricaturist living in Berlin, said that "partying is a huge part of the city's identity, and you can't just expect people to wait two years." He added that he was unconcerned about the virus. "I feel like if I were going to get it, it wouldn't affect me." Evina Ze's girlfriend, Valta Klints, 25, said she believed the city should lead the way in allowing raves under controlled conditions. "Other people are looking to Berlin as an example," she said. A public backlash against ravers in the city began in May, when demonstrators gathered in boats on the city's major canal in support of workers affected by club closures: The protest turned into a waterborne party of about 3,000 people, and drifted in front of a hospital where Covid 19 patients were being treated. Another wave of criticism came in late July, after police broke up a rave with approximately 3,000 attendees in Hasenheide, a city park. The cover of this week's edition of Der Spiegel, the German newsmagazine, features a picture of the Hasenheide party, with the headline "Are we too reckless?" In an interview in the magazine, Karl Lauterbach, a federal lawmaker with the center left Social Democratic Party, said that people who attend the raves and ignore distancing rules "must be penalized with fines in the hundreds of euros." The Berlin police have stepped up their presence in parks, and in a radio interview with the public broadcaster RBB, a spokesman for the force said that officers would now intervene earlier, when parties were first forming. But, he added, "the police cannot replace people's common sense." (Berlin's police department did not reply to an email seeking comment for this article.) Leading figures in the club scene and some politicians are calling for a more proactive approach. The Club Commission, a trade body, has called on district authorities to make public spaces available to party organizers under conditions that ensure hygiene measures are maintained. Lutz Leichsenring, the commission's spokesman, said by phone that the Hasenheide party had "stigmatized the club scene," but that the persistence of the raves had also made it clear to politicians that using police to shut them down wasn't going to solve the problem. Uta Reichardt, 34, said at the party on Saturday that she supported the Club Commission's approach, adding that she had been disappointed when an outdoor rave she attended two weeks earlier had been shut down by the police. Reichardt, an academic at the University of Iceland who was visiting Berlin, said that allowing the events would be "a sign to a certain generation of people between 20 and 40 that their culture is valued." "At the moment," she said, as she moved toward the dancing crowd, "I feel like tolerance is needed from all sides." In normal times, the forested shore of the Etang de la Haute Maison, a pond about 12 miles east of Paris, is a coveted spot for fishermen on the lookout for carp or pike. But on Saturday night, a different crowd gathered in the woods by the water: around 400 young people, moving to techno music that boomed from loudspeakers as spotlights swept a dance floor. The popularity of "free parties," as the illegal events are known here, has been surging in recent months. "It's true, since the end of the lockdown, we've seen many more people attending the free parties," said Julien Faux, 26, a regular attendee of the events since before the pandemic. He was dancing behind the D.J. on Saturday night, as a skull and crossbones flag, hung between two trees, flapped above his head. The event, called The Piracy, had all the trappings of a legal party: A dedicated Facebook page advertised a lineup of D.J.s, and tickets were sold online. The difference was that the location was only released by email less than an hour before The Piracy began. It came with a warning to approach the site quietly and not to tell anyone else where it was. "It's all about the smooth conduct of the party," the email said. It added that partygoers should bring masks and respect social distancing measures. That turned out to be wishful thinking. "People need that freedom to party," said Sarah Stalter, 21, a college student from Switzerland, in France on vacation. Surrounding her were hundreds of unmasked people, some crammed onto the dance floor in a forest clearing while others sat to the side in groups, passing around bottles of alcohol and joints. "I don't give a damn," Stalter said, as she wiggled to the sound of heavy techno beats. "Of course this virus scares me, but I've got to enjoy my twenties." Faux, a firefighter who was involved in France's pandemic response, said he had witnessed firsthand the coronavirus's devastating effects, and that people "may be taking the risk of infection far too lightly." "The police just let it go until they change their mind," said Antoine Calvino, the co founder of SOCLE, a union of French rave organizers. "It's completely random, and we'd like not to be in this gray area anymore." Police recently launched a crackdown in the Bois de Vincennes, Paris's largest public park, where every weekend partygoers with flashlights could be seen wandering the dirt paths on the lookout for raves in the woods. The organizers of The Piracy had their sound system confiscated by the police at a previous party, according to an announcement they posted on Facebook in July. In an email exchange, a spokesman for the local police in the city of Champs sur Marne, where Saturday's party took place, said the force had not been notified of the event, and therefore hadn't intervened. "The police have other things to do than chasing young people listening to music in the open air in the woods," said Frederic Hocquard, a Paris deputy mayor responsible for tourism and night life. But Hocquard added that given the course the pandemic was taking a slow resurgence in France has seen an average of about 1,300 cases per day since the beginning of August it was likely to be months before nightclubs could reopen, meaning that open air parties were the only option. He added that Paris's City Council, in collaboration with SOCLE, was working on a legal framework for the events and a charter to ensure better health conditions. "It's not just a summer thing," Hocquard said. "A shift is taking place." Just after midnight last Friday, two young men stood on a street in the Tottenham district, surrounded by brick warehouses, looking lost. "Are you going to the rave?" one man with a posh accent asked a passer by. He couldn't work out where it was, he added: The map he'd been sent via WhatsApp was confusing. The details of the party they were looking for had been sent to a group on the messaging app a few hours before: To join, you had to submit a social media account, so organizers could check you out. Advance tickets were sold via PayPal. Some party organizers have tried to respond to public concern: "Covid 19 measure been taken," said a message in the WhatsApp group about Friday's event. "A station at the entry will be at your disposition with facial mask and hydro alcoholic gel," it added. These were not in evidence on arrival, and only a dozen or so attendees wore masks. For most, the coronavirus seemed far from their minds. Dancers were packed tightly in front of a D.J. In the middle of the improvised dance floor, a tall man stood with his eyes closed, moving his arms like a bird's wings, transported by the music. People chatted to each other for a moment, then hugged, instant friends. Occasionally a balloon drifted above the dance floor, filled with nitrous oxide, the party's drug of choice. One attendee, a 25 year old architect who asked not to be named in case he was thrown out of the WhatsApp group, said he'd been going to illegal raves for a couple of years. "Last year, it was smaller," he said. "Everybody just wants to get out now, I suppose." Pubs and restaurants in Britain had reopened, he added, but no one in authority was thinking about dance music culture. He would have thought twice about going to an indoor or boat party, he said, but outdoor ones seemed fine. As the night went on, more people arrived, even a man on crutches. Someone climbed a tree at one point, and the music stopped while a security guard ordered him down. That was the closest the event came to an incident until, around 4 a.m., three police officers turned up, shining flashlights across the crowd. They left as quickly as they arrived, but their presence was enough to send some home. About 20 minutes later, the police returned 20 officers this time and stood in the path to the clearing. One officer said they'd agreed with the D.J. that he could keep playing until 4:30 a.m.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Music
Two months after a wildfire burned through Paradise, Calif., in 2018, Kevin Phillips, then a manager for town's irrigation district, walked from one destroyed home to another. Burned out cars, the occasional chimney and the melted skeletons of washers and dryers were the only recognizable shapes. "You started to actually be shocked when you saw a standing structure," he said. Mr. Phillips, now Paradise's town manager, was following the team taking samples from intact water meters connected to homes that were now reduced to gray ash. He knew from the Tubbs Fire in 2017 that toxic chemicals were likely in the water distribution system: Rapid action would be needed to protect people returning to the community from the dangers of substances like benzene, which can cause nausea and vomiting in the short term, or even cancer over time. Wildfires, which turned skies a dim orange over cities from Seattle to Santa Cruz this year, are increasingly engulfing people's homes, continuing to rage in California, Oregon, Washington and Colorado in recent weeks. But even when homes don't burn, other dangers arise in the aftermath, and experts are focusing more attention on what happens to municipal water systems after a fire, when released toxic chemicals can get pulled into plumbing systems, and other damage can linger in pipes for years. "It's hard enough having the pandemic restrictions," said Angela Aurelia, a resident of Boulder Creek in Santa Cruz County, whose home was partially damaged in August. "And then you have a wildfire, and you lose access to your home and then we can't even go back home because the water isn't likely safe to use." Mr. Phillips and some others who work to ensure the water flowing into homes is safe say they are following guidelines that are not designed for this kind of disaster. After a fire, water in houses and in the underlying pipes "can become contaminated with an array of volatile organic compounds and semi volatile organic compounds" at levels that exceed the regulatory limits set by the state of California as well as the federal Environmental Protection Agency, said Amisha Shah, a water quality engineer at Purdue University. "It's very clear it needs to be addressed." Volatile organic compounds, such as benzene, naphthalene and methylene chloride, have a low boiling point and can be dispersed into the air easily. Semi volatiles, including chrysene and benzo(b)fluoranthene, have a higher boiling point but can be dispersed during, for example, a warm shower. Although not all of these compounds are harmful, some have been found to cause cancer in the long term. Dr. Shah was a co author of the study published in July by AWWA Water Science that summarized the lessons from the past few years. Analyzing sample data from the Tubbs Fire as well as the Camp Fire that destroyed Paradise, the researchers found some of those harmful chemicals caused by wildfires throughout the distribution system. Earlier concern had focused on ash runoff making its way into water sources, like reservoirs. The researchers' observations lined up with Mr. Phillips's experience in Paradise two years ago. "Over 50 percent of those service lines from burned structures had some detection of contamination," he said. But he noticed there was a randomness to it. Water in one house would be contaminated, while the neighboring system would be clear. The state's regulations appeared inadequate to deal with a post wildfire scenario, forcing Mr. Phillips and his team to effectively improvise their own standards. "We did go over and above what maybe the Water Board would've required us to do," he said. Had they not, he said, it might have taken years if not decades, to have clean drinking water again in the town. During the chaotic aftermath of a wildfire's destruction, members of water districts can feel overwhelmed and confused about the best course toward ruling a system safe to use again. While many local water districts and other water utilities test for volatiles, most are not looking for semi volatiles. In the case of the San Lorenzo Valley pipes, for instance, regulators have been told to test only for the 80 or so compounds in the E.P.A.'s volatile organic compounds screening, despite evidence that burning plastic pipes release some semi volatiles, too. Advice for residents has also been inconsistent. While the state recommends "do not use" orders when there is "an unknown contaminant," most utilities are being told to issue "do not drink, do not boil" orders to prevent ingestion. But scientists worry that even taking a shower or washing may not be safe if the water has high levels of the compounds. Some toxic chemicals can be inhaled when the water is aerosolized. Rick Rogers, the district manager at San Lorenzo Valley Water District, said it was "following the state regulation to the letter." They issued a "do not drink, do not boil" order but have not been told to issue a "do not use" order. The district's advisory issued on Aug. 29 told residents that they could shower, but should "limit shower time" and "ventilate the area well." It also recommended that "the safest option is to use alternative water for showers." In public meetings, residents expressed confusion over the orders. Subsequent tests have found benzene in the valley's water supply. Since 2014, the state of California put the responsibility for water safety in the hands of the State Water Resources Control Board. The regulations in place for local water utilities are designed for normal day to day activity. The board's recommended tests are aimed at finding routine contaminants. Because there is no rule book for a wildfire disaster, the regulations do not take into account all of the toxic substances that scientists are now recognizing as wildfire fallout. In some cases, the state board has recommended tests that only look for benzene, which they consider to be a major flag for other contaminants. "Benzene has been the leading indicator of contamination in every case where there have been combustion products that have gotten into the water system," said Stefan Cajina, of the board's division of drinking water. He added that testing for semi volatile contaminants could be useful, "but in our experience they're not likely to be there unless benzene is also present." Part of the problem is a lack of clear authority during a state of emergency, with the authority for water remaining spread out over various federal and state agencies. "There is no water specific mission in the national response framework," said Kevin Morley, manager of federal relations at the American Water Works Association. With so many departments overseeing water during an emergency, it becomes difficult to ascertain clear authority, direction and support. Other states are now looking to California's guidelines and regulations to inform how they tackle their wildfire water safety. An Oregon agency last month issued a guide for testing for volatile organic compounds that seems to replicate California's recommendations, copying some of the problems that scientists have warned about. As wildfires worsen and grow increasingly common, experts like Dr. Shah are calling for clear federal or state guidelines that local water utilities can follow. They recommend testing for a wide range of compounds, throughout entire water systems, and the need to issue "do not use" orders for residential water until results are available. Pre emptive measures, like installing one way valves at home water meters and shutting off water systems ahead of a fire's encroaching threat, could isolate contamination. San Lorenzo Valley Water District shut down part of its system, for example, which might have helped avoid some spread. Mr. Phillips said that as wildfire dangers persisted, states and towns needed to be more "prepared for the unknown. "You have to put the worst case scenario into a stress test and then build a response around that."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Science
Even during the most absorbing performances, it can be hard to quiet those corners of the mind that race out ahead of themselves, wondering, "When will this be over?" But watching the Bharatanatyam dancer Mythili Prakash on Saturday at Symphony Space, I had the luxurious experience of losing track of time, of forgetting about the future. What causes this rare phenomenon? Is it the dancer's immersion in her own present moment, so strong as to pull us in? In the transfixing solo "Jwala: Rising Flame" presented by the World Music Institute as part of Dancing the Gods, an annual festival of Indian classical dance Ms. Prakash invokes the image of fire and its behavior: how it moves, what it means, what it gives and takes from us. Her warmth and brightness as a performer suit the theme; those qualities surfaced as soon as the light came up on her slowly turning figure. Five musicians, including her brother, the vocalist Aditya Prakash, joined her onstage, and from the first moment, music and dance worked together in trance inducing harmony. "Jwala" unfolds in four parts, beginning with "Surya: Sun," a tribute to the Hindu sun god. A translation of Sanskrit verse in the program reads, "Radiant is He, who drives across the sky in his seven horse chariot, dispelling darkness." With her feet planted wide and knees bent, Ms. Prakash, wrapped in red and gold, chugged diagonally across the stage, striking the floor with her heels as her upper body assumed the proud poses of that chariot driver.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Dance
The fall broadcast network premieres wrap up with a pair of dramas featuring pop culture heroines with some years on them: Batwoman dates to 1956 and Nancy Drew to 1930. These thoroughly updated versions ("Batwoman" premieres Sunday, "Nancy Drew" Wednesday) continue a CW trend toward female protagonists about 80 percent of the dramas it's introduced the last two years have centered on women. But it's also lost "Crazy Ex Girlfriend" and "Jane the Virgin," so maybe the more significant trend is toward well known franchises. The tireless producer Greg Berlanti now has six series on CW drawn from DC comic books, and he may have finally hit the point of diminishing returns. (If that didn't already happen with "Legends of Tomorrow.") This show about Bruce Wayne's younger cousin, Kate Kane, who comes home to Gotham and dons the batsuit, has a generic quality sufficiently well executed, with touches of quiet wit, but tinny and lacking in personality or excitement overall. It's a superheroics delivery system, most notable for its efficiency. Something similar can be said of Ruby Rose, who plays Kate with intelligence, physical grace and a modest share of severe charisma, but not much expressiveness her excitement at discovering a cache of batweapons looks about the same as her surprise when she learns her former lover has married a man or her tearful anger during an argument with her father, Jacob ( Dougray Scott ). She's an action star in a show that doesn't emphasize action, giving more space, as is common on CW, to dysfunctional family soap opera. About that former lover: She's a woman, and Rose's Batwoman is being called the first openly lesbian leading character on a TV superhero show. (In the comics, Kate's sexual orientation was retconned in 2006.) In the first two episodes written by Caroline Dries, who, like Rose, is gay the subplot involving Kate and her ex, Sophie ( Meagan Tandy ), is more credible and engaging in its limited screen time than the larger dramas involving the sister Kate lost as a child and the daddy issues she has with Jacob. (Tandy also provides some needed warmth and humor, as do Nicole Kang as Kate's seemingly frivolous stepsister and Rachel Skarsten as the primary villain.)	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Television
I don't usually read with a pen in hand, but I circled, underlined and highlighted my way through LIGHTNING FLOWERS (Little, Brown Spark, 288 pp., 28), Katherine E. Standefer's sprawling memoir. If you've ever felt overwhelmed by a scary diagnosis, are tired of quarterbacking your own health care or simply need company while on hold with a doctor's office, this book will make you feel less alone. Pick it up and you will hear a human voice. Standefer's foray into the medical establishment started simply enough. In 2009, after months of ignoring breathlessness and a hammering sensation in her chest, she was told she had long QT syndrome, a hereditary cardiac condition that leads to an irregular heartbeat. She writes, "The inconsistency can go unnoticed a slight palpitation, maybe or it can cause the rhythm of the heart to spin out of control, unable to pump in the firm, organized manner that gets blood oxygenated and out to the limbs and organs. A heart that quivers instead of pumps fails to get oxygen to the brain." At the time, Standefer was a skiing instructor and climbing guide who lived with her sporty boyfriend in Jackson, Wyo. She'd let her health insurance lapse: "The only sick people I knew were old." One doctor prescribed beta blockers and offhandedly advised her to give up any physical activity more strenuous than "light tennis" or golf. Another recommended a defibrillator; he had treated Standefer's sister for the same disorder. When a nurse warned that the surgery could cost as much as 180,000, Standefer understood "that there was not going to be a way to salvage the life I'd been living." She was an official citizen of Hospital Land, which is equal parts purgatory and labyrinth, with glimpses of humanity along the way. "Lightning Flowers" walks readers through the painstaking steps Standefer took to get her defibrillator. She moved to Boulder, Colo., where she established residency in hopes of getting assistance from the Colorado Indigent Care Program. She found a job with decent health insurance. She located an affordable apartment where she could recuperate. She lined up friends and family who would assist. Of course, there were roadblocks and setbacks. Her recovery did not go smoothly; her boyfriend wasn't in it for the long haul. Standefer quickly developed a complicated relationship with the device nestled in a handmade pocket between her pectoral muscle and skin: "There is no natural place in the body for a titanium box."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Books
In 1975, Calvin Trillin wrote in The New Yorker magazine about "the half dozen cities in northern Hudson County that are, except for some arbitrary and invisible lines drawn every mile or so, one mass of blue collar sprawl running along the Hudson, just across from midtown Manhattan." North Bergen, N.J., sits at the top of that urban cluster, but times have changed. Today, Mr. Trillin's "sprawl" is better known as the New Jersey Gold Coast: the riverfront communities that extend from Bayonne north to the George Washington Bridge, sprouting expensive luxury buildings that eat the Manhattan views with a spoon. Lakshay Bhatia, 38, a technology consultant, discovered North Bergen eight years ago when he and his wife, Neetika, set off from their Englewood, N.J., rental on the Fourth of July to see the fireworks in Hoboken. The roads were blocked, and the couple found themselves on John F. Kennedy Boulevard East, known locally as Boulevard East, with startling views of the New York skyline. The Bhatias, who are from India, decided that Boulevard East was their future. They eventually paid 470,000 for a two family house three blocks away and live with their 3 year old daughter on the lower floor, renting the upstairs duplex. Commuting to Manhattan before the pandemic, Ms. Bhatia, 38, a textile designer, boarded the buses that streamed down Boulevard East each morning. Now the Bhatias work from home and de stress in their backyard, or in James J. Braddock Park, a 167 acre sward three blocks away with a 16 acre lake and 45 athletic facilities (tracks, courts, swings, et cetera). If you're priced out of Jersey City, Hoboken or Weehawken, you can still buy something in the township, Ms. Rosado said. Single family houses start in the low 300,000s. There are luxury options, too, like the Duchess, a three year old apartment complex near the Hudson with 320 units in a trio of interconnected 12 story towers. The amenities include a heated outdoor pool that was recently reopened, a fitness area and a dog park. Narcis Versteeg, 30, an Afghani born lactation nurse, and her husband, Erik Versteeg, 33, a Dutch born investment banker, moved to the Duchess in September. They chose it, Ms. Versteeg said, because the units are much bigger than their previous residence in Long Island City (before that, they lived in Amsterdam), "and there is more nature around." Their rental costs 4,500 a month for two bedrooms, two and a half bathrooms, two walk in closets and Manhattan views. Outdoor parking for the couple's new car is 125 a month, and the pet fee for their bernedoodle puppy, Ola, is 50 a month. Michael Pestronk, the Duchess's developer, said the building stakes out a middle ground between urban convenience and suburban expansiveness, and is close to 90 percent occupied. The website currently offers two free months' rent for new leases on select apartments. North Bergen is the northernmost municipality in Hudson County. Shaped like a letter "L" that has been turned upside down, it has a proportionally short section of riverfront, much of it taken up by the Hackensack Meridian Health Palisades medical complex. (It also shares a 1.5 acre waterfront park with neighboring Guttenberg.) The stem of the "L" is sandwiched between Guttenberg, West New York and Union City to the east, and the Meadowlands, Secaucus and Kearny to the west. Bergen County is north and Jersey City south. What North Bergen lacks in shoreline it makes up for in dramatic topography. Built on the Palisades clifftops, it has many east west streets with precarious slopes and single family houses tightly packed along the sides. North south arteries principally Tonnelle Avenue, John F. Kennedy Boulevard, Bergenline Avenue and River Road bind North Bergen to its neighbors and broadcast the region's ethnic character. Bergenline Avenue, the main commercial stretch, is dominated by businesses run by Mexicans, Puerto Ricans, Dominicans, Ecuadoreans, Salvadorans, Colombians, Peruvians, Hondurans, Cubans and their progeny. Recent reconfigurations have provided more room on the avenue for parking. But pizzerias, a vestige of the decades when North Bergen was largely Italian, give taquerias a run for their money here. Popular examples include Roma on John F. Kennedy Boulevard and Gandolfo on Bergenline. Neighborhoods are as diverse as the landscape. In addition to the high and low rise condos and apartment buildings near the waterfront, there is the Racetrack district, between Bergenline Avenue and John F. Kennedy Boulevard, named for a notorious 19th century gambling attraction that evolved into an amusement park. This area borders the west side of Braddock Park and takes in the high school, the public library and the vintage White Castle on Kennedy Boulevard. Woodcliff, on the south side of the park, between Boulevard East and Bergenline, is prized for its access to recreation and public transportation. Bergenwood lies between John F. Kennedy Boulevard and Tonnelle Avenue and has especially steep grades. New Jersey Transit buses to Port Authority run along several major north south corridors; travel time is 10 minutes to an hour, depending on traffic. Jitney commuter buses to Port Authority and the George Washington Bridge bus terminal operate along Bergenline Avenue. Hudson Bergen Light Rail provides service to Bayonne, Jersey City, Hoboken, Weehawken and Union City from its station on Tonnelle Avenue. Ferry service to Midtown Manhattan is available at the Edgewater Ferry Landing, at 989 River Road. In 1949, a 760 foot steel transmission tower was erected in the residential neighborhood of Woodcliff for WWOR TV, channel 9 at the time, It was one of the tallest man made structures in the world. Residents were not happy, particularly when it began to shed ice "that hurtled to the street for blocks in the area," according to The Jersey Journal. After a twin engine plane hit the tower in 1956, resulting in six deaths, it was dismantled. For weekly email updates on residential real estate news, sign up here. Follow us on Twitter: nytrealestate.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Real Estate
Eddie Johnson, who fell from N.B.A. stardom into drug abuse and a life of crime that resulted in a life sentence for sexually assaulting a young girl, died on Oct. 25 in a state prison in Milton, Fla. He was 65. The Florida Department of Corrections reported his death, at the Santa Rosa Correctional Institution Annex, but did not give a cause. Johnson, who was nicknamed Fast Eddie for his explosive first step, was drafted out of Auburn University in 1977 by the Atlanta Hawks. He soon became one of the team's top players and started the 1980 and 1981 All Star Games. "He was built like a linebacker and was as fast as they come with the ball in his hands, putting it on the floor, attacking someone off the dribble," Mike Fratello, who coached the Hawks during some of Johnson's nine seasons with the team, said in a phone interview. "And he could defend because of his strength and his ability to move his feet."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Sports
The British director Peter Hall, who died on Monday, had an exceptionally long and eventful life in the theater, spanning more than six decades, more than a hundred productions and too many laurels to count. He oversaw two mighty institutional strongholds the Royal Shakespeare Company (which he founded) and the Royal National Theater and introduced works that would redefine the very nature of the drama. Here, a selection of some of Mr. Hall's most memorable productions, which only begins to suggest the breadth of his accomplishment. To the 24 year old Mr. Hall fell the task of introducing London audiences to what is widely regarded as the most important play of the 20th century. His production of Samuel Beckett's tale of two existentially challenged tramps, at the Arts Theater, may have left some scratching their heads in anger and exasperation. But the reputation making critic Kenneth Tynan wrote, "It forced me to re examine the rules which have hitherto governed the drama; and having done so, to pronounce them not elastic enough." As the founding director of the Royal Shakespeare Company (where he ruled from 1960 68), Mr. Hall engaged with far more than the classics of the canon. His world premiere for the company of Harold Pinter's creepy masterpiece of familial dysfunction generated as much debate as his "Godot" had. Walter Kerr, reviewing the Broadway production in The New York Times in 1967, wrote that Mr. Hall had directed the cast "to make sleepwalking and strangled speech constitute a theatrical effect in and for itself," adding "we are not engrossed by the eternal hesitation waltz, but seriously put off by it." (Among those onstage: Pinter's wife at the time, Vivien Merchant.) Peter Shaffer's haunted portrait of the rivalry between a musical genius (Mozart) and a genius manque (Salieri) allowed Mr. Hall, now the head of the Royal National Theater, to display his showman's instinct for large, well populated canvases, rococo flourishes and ripe acting that stopped just short of melodrama. He guided two sets of illustrious actors to benchmark performances in the leading adversarial roles: Paul Scofield (as Salieri) and Simon Callow (as Mozart) in London, and Ian McKellen (who won a Tony for his Salieri) and Tim Curry (a raging enfant terrible as young Wolfgang) on Broadway in 1980. From the early days of his career, Mr. Hall had shown a particular affinity for the works of Tennessee Williams (in productions of "Camino Real" and "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof" in the later 1950s). For the debut of his new independent commercial venture, the Peter Hall Company, he chose a florid drama that had never received much love from critics. But his "Orpheus," seen on Broadway in 1989, did much for the play, and its author's, reputation at a time when Williams was out of fashion. His leading lady, Vanessa Redgrave (struggling with an indeterminate accent), was brave, pathetic and finally transcendent in the role of Lady, the love starved Italian wife of a Southern bigot. Ms. Redgrave saw her performance as a study in the social persecution of Sicilian immigrants. For many of her fans, her Lady confirmed Mr. Hall's verdict on the actress after watching her in Ibsen's "The Lady From the Sea," of which he wrote in his diary: "You could see right through the skin to the emotions, the thoughts, the hopes, the fears underneath." As You Like It (2003) This was, surprisingly, Mr. Hall's first interpretation of one of the canon's most beloved comedies. Now in his mid 70s, he brought a touch of frost to Shakespeare's sylvan Forest of Arden, summoning the hard times atmosphere of the Great Depression. For the play's cross dressing heroine, Rosalind, he chose his daughter, Rebecca Hall, whom he had triumphantly introduced to the West End with his 2002 production of Shaw's "Mrs. Warren's Profession." His "As You Like It" proved to be the perfect firmament for his daughter's rising star. Reviewing the production when it came to the Brooklyn Academy of Music in 2005, the Times critic Ben Brantley wrote of the Halls' synchronicity, "There's a dialectic of youth and age at work here that brings a fresh dialogue of light and shadow to the play." Mr. Hall, he added, had infused a bright classic with "the measured, autumnal awareness of someone who has long experience of the reversals of fortune."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Theater
"The fraudsters appeared to do a very thorough job of both vetting the background of their fictitious identity, so knowing a lot about the individual they're representing themselves to be, and also a thorough job on vetting the work done by many of the defrauded victims," Mr. Hemmen said in an interview with The New York Times. "Please be advised this is an ongoing scam, and individuals who have plans to travel to Indonesia for a job opportunity in the entertainment industry should perform additional research and proceed with caution," the F.B.I. said in a news release on Monday. The agency has an online form for people who think they might have been a victim of this swindle as far back as 2013. Nicoletta Kotsianas, senior director of K2 Intelligence, an investigations firm with headquarters in New York, said in an interview Monday that her company believed that the fraudulent offers were being made by an individual. K2 has been looking into the case since 2017 on behalf of some industry executives who say they have been impersonated. As for the individuals being defrauded, if they are looking for work and have contact information available online, they can be easy for criminals to find, Ms. Kotsianas said. While the F.B.I. would not provide estimates of how many people had been duped or how much money they had lost, Ms. Kotsianas said K2 had spoken to about 100 victims . Some have lost around 3,000, which typically accounts for airline tickets and an Indonesian driver, she said. In other cases, the losses have extended to 150,000 for those who made multiple trips to Indonesia and believed they were deeply involved in projects that later proved to be nonexistent. On average, she added, the victims she knew about had lost 15,000 to 20,000.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Movies
Just as NYC Pride festivities got underway, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo had some timely news on Sunday: The artist Anthony Goicolea had been chosen to design the first official monument to lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people commissioned by the State of New York. On June 26, 2016, after the attack at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Fla., that left 49 people dead, Governor Cuomo formed the LGBT Memorial Commission to honor the fight for equal rights and remember victims of hate, intolerance and violence. A request for designs for the new memorial went out in October. It is to be built in Hudson River Park near the waterfront piers that have played a key role in the city's history as both a meeting place and a haven for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people. In Mr. Goicolea's design, the monument takes the form of nine boulders, some bisected with glass that acts as a prism and can emit a subtle rainbow. "From Stonewall to marriage equality, New York has always been a beacon for justice," Governor Cuomo said in a statement. "I am now proud to announce Anthony Goicolea's stunning design for this monument selected for the way it complements the landscape and communicates a timeless message of inclusion."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Art & Design
Soon after "Ophelia" opens , the title character is floating face up in a river. The image evokes John Everett Millais's 1850s painting that shows a supine Ophelia soon after she has drowned. Her pale palms are turned up, flowers spilling out of one hand. Her eyes are open, her lips prettily parted, as if she had received the gentlest of surprises. It's quite a vision of Eros and Thanatos in one beautiful necrophiliac package. "Ophelia" seeks to revamp the image of its title heroine (Daisy Ridley) as a tragic, largely passive casualty, one who is as much a victim of Shakespeare's era as of his peerless imagination. It's an interesting exercise and, for the most part, a passably diverting one. The movie sounds and looks good ( despite the suboptimal digital resolution), though it is also too pretty, with lush woods, attractive gowns, a stately castle and misty lakes. It also isn't remotely Shakespeare's "Hamlet," despite the characters, the Danish setting and the self conscious attempt to suggest his language. This is instead Ophelia as a 21st century heroine, who after a smudge faced childhood running wild in her king's castle and being excluded from studying with the boys grows into a woman with desires, ambitions and a pronounced rebellious streak. Yet like Shakespeare's version, this Ophelia has serious issues, including love trouble with the still brooding Hamlet (a good, underused George MacKay). Now, though, she has richer, more familial ties to Queen Gertrude (Naomi Watts) and an uneasy relationship with Gertrude's look alike (Watts), a witchy forest dweller who seems to have wandered in from "Macbeth." (The script by Semi Chellas is based on Lisa Klein's Y.A. novel.)	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Movies
The Federal Reserve indicated on Wednesday that it was done raising interest rates for the foreseeable future, after a run of incremental increases that began to affect the typical consumer's wallet. The decision will hold the central bank's benchmark for short term rates to a target between 2.25 and 2.5 percent, the level it reached in December after steadily climbing since the end of 2015. That is the target for the federal funds rate, the interest rate that banks and depository institutions charge one another for overnight loans. It influences how banks and other lenders price certain loans and savings vehicles. Whether you will cheer or chafe at the halt depends, broadly, on whether you're a saver or a spender. For savers and retirees, who were only just starting to find accounts that paid more than 2 percent, the end of rate increases means that's as good as it will get. But people trying to whittle down a pile of credit card debt, thinking about tapping their home equity line of credit or buying a car should welcome the fact that the cost of those loans won't keep rising. When the Fed raises rates, some banks may pay more interest on savings accounts, particularly when they want to lure consumers to park their money. But the big banks haven't been too generous lately, and you shouldn't expect much to change any time soon. Today, the average savings and money market deposit accounts pay a paltry 0.23 percent , according to BankRate.com. That's up from 0.10 percent in 2015, when the Fed starting raising rates. You also shouldn't rush to tie up your money in certificates of deposit, which tend to move in step with similarly dated Treasury securities. Two year C.D.s are paying just more than 1 percent on average, but you can find some paying 3 percent if you take the time to comparison shop, according to BankRate.com. You'll probably do better with an online savings account; many are already paying more than 2.25 percent and may rise further. "For the first time in more than a decade, you can earn more than the rate of inflation on your savings account, but only if you shop around," said Greg McBride, chief financial analyst at BankRate.com . The inflation rate, which measures how much prices have risen from a year ago, is now roughly 2 percent. If your money isn't earning at least that much, you're losing purchasing power. Citizens Access is offering 2.35 percent and CIBC Bank USA 2.39 percent, according to BankRate.com, while at least two other online banks are offering 2.4 percent. Bond investors often get nervous when interest rates rise, because bond prices tend to fall in response. Why? When rates increase, the price of existing (and lower yielding) bonds drops because investors can buy new bonds that offer higher interest rates. Now that interest rates have stabilized, at least for now, bond fund investors might be less distracted by rate related volatility but that doesn't mean bonds won't continue to react to broader economic conditions and news. It's best to focus on why bonds are in your portfolio to begin with to act as a buffer against stocks and to avoid fretting about short term moves. Many people think mortgage rates are tied to the Fed's short term rate, but there isn't a direct link. Most 30 year fixed rate mortgages are priced off the 10 year Treasury bond, which is influenced by a variety of factors, including the outlook for inflation and long term economic growth here and abroad. But some home loans are more directly connected to the Fed's short term rate, including home equity lines of credit and adjustable rate mortgages, or A.R.M.s. A typical home equity borrower has already seen rates rise to about 6.7 percent, according to BankRate.com, from roughly 4.5 percent three years ago. The combination of the recent increases and changes in the tax code that restricted the interest deduction "is a bit of a double pinch for some," said Keith Gumbinger of HSH.com, which tracks the mortgage market. The good news related to adjustable rate mortgages, which typically have a fixed rate for a number of years and then adjust annually, is that few people have them, Mr. Gumbinger said. But even though the Fed is done raising rates, borrowers who are already out of their fixed rate period can expect to pay more when rates reset , if they haven't already. Variable rates on credit cards are averaging around 17.7 percent , up from about 15.7 percent at the end of 2015, and the cumulative effect of past rate increases had begun to squeeze car buyers. Since the Fed started raising rates, the annual percentage rate on a car loan has increased more than a percentage point, to 6.2 percent in January from 4.6 percent three years earlier, according to Edmunds. And incentives like zero percent financing have all but dried up, Edmunds's experts said. Those paying off federal student loans won't be affected, because those loans carry a fixed rate. The rate for the next round of new loans will be set in July, based on the 10 year Treasury bond. But fixed and variable rates for private student loans are generally based on the Libor index, which tends to track the Fed funds rate pretty closely. So students in that market can take some relief in the halt.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Your Money
Allan J. Lichtman's important book emphasizes the founders' great blunder: They failed to enshrine a right to vote in the Constitution or the Bill of Rights. Instead, the Constitution handed control over elections to state and local governments. Local officials developed thousands of different electoral systems with no uniform standards or regulations and little oversight. Elections were organized and supervised by partisans brazenly angling for advantage. "The Embattled Vote in America" traces the consequences through American history. Reforms, when they came, often provoked a backlash. For example, in 1870 the 15th Amendment barred states from abridging the vote on account of race. A stronger version would have finally affirmed voting rights and prohibited restrictions like poll taxes or literacy tests. This version fell short in Congress because Northerners wanted to bar Irish voters and Westerners to ban Chinese Americans. Even the weaker version of the amendment helped incite a reign of terror in the South and its loopholes eventually enabled the restoration of white supremacy. Lichtman, a professor of history at American University, uses history to contextualize the fix we're in today. Each party gropes for advantage by fiddling with the franchise. In blue states Democrats simplify voting; in red states Republicans suppress it with a long inventory of machinations: purge the rolls, convolute registration procedures, disenfranchise felons and cut back polling times and places. Small wonder turnout is so low. In 2014, 140 million people did not vote (the elections had the lowest turnout since 1942); in 2016, just 25 percent of American adults voted Donald Trump into the Oval Office. What next? Lichtman ticks through the vital reforms. Abolish the Electoral College, automatically register voters, establish national election standards, draw less partisan voting districts, resist foreign interference and so on. Lichtman sounds dispirited about his own proposals. The odds on passing any are long and growing longer as the Supreme Court heads rightward. In fact, real democracy would probably require even stronger medicine. Limit the court's power to unilaterally strike down laws (as Abraham Lincoln suggested in his first Inaugural Address); break the iron grip of the two parties by introducing proportional representation for congressional elections (any state could try). Just beyond the scope of Lichtman's book hovers the great question of our time. Why has partisan conflict grown so fierce? One answer lurks implicit in the history. The parties have never combined racial and nativist tensions the way they do today. White men crowd into the Republican Party, immigrants and African Americans into the Democratic. Today's parties aggregate and amplify the old tribal antagonisms. Expect the declining white majority to do what endangered partisans have always done: block the ballot box.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Books
There was a time when it really meant something to be a Russian singer, or a French or Scandinavian one. But as the world has gotten or seemed to get smaller and flatter, national cultural traditions have lost some of their distinctiveness. At least that's the perception of many old time opera devotees, who would have been heartened to hear the recital the young Italian soprano Rosa Feola performed on Monday at the Park Avenue Armory. Ms. Feola, who has been championed by the conductor Riccardo Muti, presented herself as the exponent of a rich national heritage. Joined by the elegant pianist Iain Burnside, she gave splendid renditions of seldom heard Italian songs by Giuseppe Martucci, Respighi and Rossini. Even Liszt's "Tre Sonetti del Petrarca" to the texts of three sonnets by Petrarch seemed essentially Italian in this company, less like songs than like dramatic scenes, with urgent recitative and aria like episodes. Ms. Feola's artistry is grounded in the bel canto style that has been a hallmark of her country's vocalism for centuries. Her sound was warm and full without any sense of effort and, even throughout its range, with ornaments emerging as natural extensions of the line. These qualities, which distinguished her performance as Gilda in Verdi's "Rigoletto" when Ms. Feola made her Metropolitan Opera debut last spring, came through with wonderful immediacy in the intimate Board of Officers Room at the Armory.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Music
A new analysis of car insurance in four states found that drivers living in some minority neighborhoods were charged higher rates than similar drivers in mostly white areas, even when the average risk of a claim was similar. The report, by the nonprofits ProPublica and Consumer Reports, covers rates in California, Illinois, Missouri and Texas, the states that made data available. The report examined quoted insurance premiums, as well as average claims paid by insurers the first use of payout data to examine racial disparities in car insurance premiums, the researchers said. The analysis found that pricing disparities between neighborhoods that were mostly white and those inhabited mostly by minorities were wider than differences in risk could explain. In some cases, the report said, major insurers charged premiums that were on average 30 percent higher in minority ZIP codes than in comparable nonminority neighborhoods. "This overpricing," the report said, "may amount to a subtler form of redlining," a term that refers to denial of services to minority areas. The report, published Wednesday by Consumer Reports, said it was not entirely clear why insurers charged more in minority areas. It could represent a "vestige" of the days when racial discrimination by businesses was routine, researchers said, or it might be that proprietary algorithms used by individual insurers "inadvertently" penalized minority areas. However, "It raises the question of whether those rates are justified," said Julia Angwin, a senior reporter at ProPublica and one of the report's authors. The study looked at premium quotes for liability insurance, which covers bodily injury and property damage and is required in nearly all states. It also examined several years of data on average claims paid out in every ZIP code in the four states. ProPublica, an investigative news organization, said it submitted freedom of information requests to all 50 states and the District of Columbia, and just those four said they collected such data. The insurance industry and some state regulators criticized the report, saying it oversimplified the way companies set rates. Insurance companies "do not discriminate on the basis of race," James Lynch, chief actuary of the Insurance Information Institute, a trade group, told the researchers. In a call with reporters on Wednesday, Mr. Lynch said the institute had commissioned its own actuarial analysis of ProPublica's data and determined that the conclusions drawn from the study were "flawed." The institute did not make its analysis available because it was in draft form, he said, but expected to make it available when the report was completed. "This is a very, very serious charge being made on a very weak study," he said. Asked if the discrepancies could result from an unintended consequence of the formulas used to set rates, Mr. Lynch said, "There is no unfair discrimination, intentional or unintentional." Because individual insurers do not publicly release their losses on a ZIP code level, the analysis is based on aggregated losses by insurers. The California Department of Insurance dismissed that approach as "flawed," the report said, saying an individual insurer's losses in a given area may vary significantly from the industry average. ProPublica said that while a given company's losses could deviate from average losses experienced by insurers, it was "unlikely" that the differences would result in a consistent pattern of higher prices for minority neighborhoods. The report resonated with consumer advocates. "I'm not surprised" by the findings, said Robert Hunter, director of insurance at the Consumer Federation of America. The federation has conducted a series of studies raising questions about the fairness of using nondriving criteria, like education and occupation, in setting auto insurance rates. In 2015, the federation published a study finding that rates are much higher in minority ZIP codes. The federation's studies did not include insurer payout data, which is "good addition" to the analysis, Mr. Hunter said. Fairness in setting auto insurance rates is crucial, he said, because liability coverage is usually mandatory and because people rely on their cars to get to work. Since insurance is regulated primarily by states, he urged consumers to contact their state insurance regulators to ask them to examine the fairness of rate setting practices. Contacts by state are available at the National Association of Insurance Commissioners website. Here are some questions and answers about car insurance rates: How can I find more affordable rates on my car insurance? Individuals must aggressively comparison shop, experts say. Consumer Reports suggests using TheZebra.com, an online tool that offers estimates from a dozen or more insurers, depending on the state. Drivers should compare rates often, said Tobie Stanger, a senior editor at the magazine, because the supposed benefit of getting a discount by remaining with the same insurer for a long time is "mostly a myth." Typically, one or two insurers will offer lower rates in a given state. The magazine's website offers a list of which insurers to check first, by state.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Your Money
Even on a sunny afternoon at Snakes Lattes Annex, many Torontonians didn't mind acting like kids inside. A few months ago, an elderly man traded pawn moves with a school age girl. A cluster of millennials dug into the German style strategy classic Carcassonne. Up front, where board games are sold, an Ottawa entrepreneur held a stack of boxes under one arm as he consulted Steve Tassie, one of the cafe's game teaching gurus, on what to stock in his own board game cafe. In walkable Toronto, every major street seems to offer a space for playing old fashioned tabletop games, with drinks and snacks on the side. Several, like Castle Board Game Cafe near the University of Toronto, evoke dorm lounges with plain chairs and soft couches. Shareable plates are a constant across the game cafes, but the beverages of choice vary. Each serves up its own blend, whether tea, beer, wine or espresso. But walk into any and you'll hear the same conviviality: fast talk, laughter and rolling dice. The one thing you'll rarely see is someone's head buried in a glowing phone screen. There are so many of these game rooms in Toronto that the popular metro culture site BlogTO named its top 20 local board game cafes two years ago, and commenters have been noting new ones ever since. Toronto has become a model of how popular these games can become across a single city. At least a dozen dedicated board game cafes have popped up around the United States, including in Manhattan, Boston and Los Angeles. More than the Canadian winters fuel the cafes' ubiquity here, cafe owners agree. Certainly geek culture has grown more mainstream. The TV blockbuster "Game of Thrones" and its board game variations play a role. European strategy games like the Settlers of Catan have carved inroads into the North American market. And the irreverent Cards Against Humanity has become such a runaway hit that its stock at Snakes Lattes Annex takes up an entire sales wall. The cafe hosts monthly game developer nights so creators can test the next big things. "We've seen the evolution in Canada," said Aaron Zack, a Snakes Lattes partner. "It's not about labeling yourself as a geek. It's literally about having fun with your friends." Entrepreneurs in Thailand, South Africa, England, India and Mexico have called or visited Toronto to learn how these nondigital, fully analog, pay to play cafes operate. Many of the Canadian cafes charge several dollars a person (often for unlimited play time, as well as a food and drink minimum). They manage game inventories, thousands of pieces, and offer staff experts to teach the rules. Toronto's scene started rolling when the French born Ben Castanie, who was inspired in part by the Parisian toy libraries that lent playthings to families when he was a boy, opened Snakes Lattes Annex in 2010. He named it after a favorite Canadian game called Snakes Ladders, sold as Chutes and Ladders in the United States. "We just thought it would be cool to put board games on a shelf," Mr. Castanie said. Experimenting with logistics, he and two business partners, Mr. Zack and Aaron Slade, pared their selection to 1,000 games. They sorted the game menu into categories like Party, Strategy, Trivia and Classic Americana (think of Battleship and Mall Madness), and hung squares of pixelated art on the walls. Hiring "game gurus" to advise on rules, Mr. Castanie said, was most important, ensuring that players feel comfortable exploring unfamiliar games. With three hour wait lists on busy nights, the Snakes Lattes Annex has been a hit. Its cafe serves endless coffee and panini to the immigrants and college students who live in the immediate Koreatown area and the bordering Annex neighborhood, from which it gets its name. After a 2014 attempt at an intimate, date ready cafe called Snakes Lagers, the partners last September replaced the cafe with the much larger Snakes Lattes College, a lively and group friendly 7,500 square foot space in the nearby Little Italy neighborhood. It features 16 wines and craft beers on tap. At one of Toronto's more laid back board game spots, Bampot Bohemian House of Tea and Board Games, the air is suffused with peppery chai spices, and no alcohol is served. Hookahs and 150 loose leaf teas are available, along with vegetarian surprises like poutine soup. Mark Newell, a Scottish former burlesque dancer, opened the cafe in 2014. Once a family home, the earth toned space is full of pillowy nooks. Bampot hosts craft circles, philosophy discussions and sign language practice sessions alongside its menu of 170 games. "We have people who come for board games, for tea, for shisha," Mr. Newell said. "It's very diverse. That's the beauty of it."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Travel
The oldest of the three, Henrik, now 28, first won the European 1,500 meters title in 2012. Six years later, Jakob, who turns 19 this month, won the 1,500 and 5,000 meter races at the European championships and, in July, set a new national record in the 5,000 meters. In between, Filip, 26, won the European 1,500 meter title in 2016 and still holds the Norwegian record in that distance. (The brothers are the second, third and fifth eldest of seven siblings.) This outsize familial success attracted the attention of Leif Inge Tjelta, a professor of sports science at the University of Stavanger in Norway, who has long studied and worked with distance runners, including Grete Waitz, the nine time New York City Marathon winner from Norway. About seven years ago, Dr. Tjelta began attending and taking notes at the Ingebrigtsens' training sessions. He also spoke with the young men and their parents. Their father, Gjert, has coached his sons throughout their careers, although he never ran competitively. For the new study, which was published this month in the International Journal of Sports Science and Coaching, Dr. Tjelta set out to analyze what, in particular, about the Ingebrigtsens and their lives and training might be most consequential for their medal haul. Perhaps most obviously, he noted, the Ingebrigtsens trained with relatively light mileage when they were young. While some elite teenage runners aim to complete as many as 90 or more miles a week, the Ingebrigtsen boys ran about 45 to 50 miles a week before they turned 16 and, at the direction of their father slash coach, gradually increased that mileage over the course of the next few years, until they plateaued at about 95 to 100 miles a week when they turned 18. Little of this mileage involved intervals when the runners were young, Dr. Tjelta also points out. Before they turned 16, their training runs primarily were long and continuous. After that point, their father began threading in frequent interval sessions, most involving intense, minutes long speed bursts at about the pace at which the young men would run a 10,000 meter race. This pace is somewhat slower than that at which many elite runners complete most of their intervals, which might be closer to, for instance, their 3,000 or 1,500 meter time.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Well
As 8 a.m. approached on a spring Saturday, a crowd of 70 to 80 patiently waited outside the front door of a cafe in the hamlet of Breaux Bridge in the heart of Louisiana's Cajun country. Inside, Cedryl Ballou the Zydeco Trendsetters were finishing their sound check as bartenders filled cups with Bloody Mary and mimosa mixers. As the door opened, the distinctive sounds of accordion and washboard announced that another zydeco breakfast had begun in this town along Bayou Teche. The dance floor began to fill with the first accordion runs and was packed by the start of the second tune. Many of the dancers had begun lining up outside as early as 6:30 a.m. Eggs, zydeco and dancing are a year round Saturday morning tradition in Breaux Bridge, but on this particular morning in late April last year, the crowd also included a smattering of partyers from the Festival International de Louisiane in nearby Lafayette, including a group from the French speaking Caribbean island of Martinique. The breakfast crowd is a microcosm of Louisiana's culture, both Creole and Cajun, a culture heavily seasoned with zydeco music. And that is what the festival, which began in 1987, is about. Lafayette will welcome an estimated 300,000 revelers over five days, April 26 to 30, with the peak attendance on Friday and Saturday. The music will include zydeco along with its antecedents and influences from Africa, the Caribbean, Europe and Southeast Asia. So maybe the "let's dance" mind set is in the blood of Louisiana, a state with a long tradition of music and partying. The breakfast I witnessed was at the tiny Cafe des Amis, which closed late last year for renovations. So Buck Johnny's, a block or so away, quickly stepped up to host the breakfast every Saturday morning, year round. "It was important to Breaux Bridge that we keep the tradition going," said Coatney Raymond, the managing partner of Buck Johnny's. "We weren't doing breakfast before, so we had to develop a menu, and it's turned out to be really popular. Our specialty is Italian, so we have things like the Ti Na Na, a special pizza with boudin sausage, along with a crawfish etouffee grits dish." Efforts were also made to cool the dance floor by tinting the windows and adding large ceiling fans. "Zydeco is part of our culture, and we want to make sure everyone who comes in has a great time," she said. Dancing veterans favored cowboy boots their leather soles and heels suited for the two steps and waltzes of zydeco. What the revelers wore offered a glimpse into the variety of backgrounds and ages: boot cut jeans and colorful swirling skirts; fancy sequined tops; silver decorated belts; restrained pantsuits on the tourists; cowboy hats on men and women. And the shirts some western style, some polo style, a couple had Hawaiian prints, and there were T shirts with logos celebrating the Allman Brothers Band and the Doors, the Long Beach Yacht Club, the Museum of Modern Art and Northeastern University. Andy Miles, an oil worker who said he was "Cajun, Creole, Indian, Yankee, Italian and West Indian," was visiting for the third time. Recognizing several other regulars, he ordered a double bourbon before joining them on the dance floor. Matt and Dana Segraves of New Orleans brought their daughter, Louisa, to her first zydeco breakfast. Only 18 months old, she, too, soon joined the dancing. I had been tipped to the breakfast tradition a couple of days earlier by Scott Feehan, then president of the festival and now its executive director, while I accompanied him as he directed the crew in final preparations. He rode around downtown Lafayette in a golf cart, fielding phone calls and troubleshooting. Though the festival's full time staff is only four people, with two seasonal additions, as festival time approaches they are joined by more than 2,600 volunteers. Mr. Feehan, whose day job is centered on his shop Scott's Drum Center and the lessons he gives, is a native of the area, fluent in French and the music. While I was with him, he dealt with a concern over whether Scotch whisky had been ordered for the drink booths and with a panic about the estimated arrival time for the drums at the main stage all while providing an escort for the truck pulling an office trailer to its temporary home in a parking lot. The festival began, Mr. Feehan explained, as part of an effort to revitalize Lafayette's downtown. Like many midsize cities (population: 121,000), it was moribund by the mid 1970s. The plan was to work with other Francophone entities in Africa, Asia, the Caribbean and Europe. Sister city agreements were reached, business and trade agreements were made, and sponsors were found so that attendance at the festival would be free. And the music and dancing began. By 2011, the crowd estimate was up to 300,000. And downtown Lafayette was once again vibrant year round, with restaurants, clubs, art galleries and the kinds of retail businesses, such as shoe stores, that once defined city life. "In the festival's first 10 years, downtown was rebuilt," Mr. Feehan said. Official guests this year will represent 25 countries. Though a visitor might not be surprised to hear French as well as English, a keen ear could pick up accents that go beyond the native Cajun and Creole, possibly including dialects from Africa, Belgium, Cap d'Antibes, the Caribbean, Paris and Southeast Asia. Everything came together with American make do spirit, perhaps best exemplified by the frottoir, a Creole invention developed from the corrugated metal washboard, and the primary rhythm instrument in zydeco. Herman Fuselier, who writes about entertainment and hosts a Saturday afternoon radio show called "Zydeco Stomp" on the local NPR affiliate, KRVS, points out that the instrumentation strikes many as unusual. "It takes a lot of people by surprise an accordion used in music that sounds like blues, soul, rhythm and blues, even rap these days," he said. "But it's a big part of the music around here now." Mr. Fuselier grew up in nearby Opelousas in an environment rich with music from Sinatra to zydeco. "I was a teenager in the disco era of the late '70s," he said. "Only my close friends knew I listened to zydeco; it was something just for old folks. But even the young musicians are into it now." The New York writer and music producer Ted Fox agrees. "It's always been a hybrid music," he said, tracing his own introduction to Clifton Chenier, who died in 1987 and is credited with spreading the music beyond Louisiana and East Texas. Growing up in Brooklyn, Mr. Fox said, "I had been listening to rhythm and blues, but it sort of clicked when I first saw Clifton and how dynamic a performer he was." But it was a sausage that brought Mr. Fox to Chenier and zydeco. He was traveling around the country in 1983, he said, writing about food, when he visited the area to sample boudin, the local rice and pork specialty. The food connection makes sense zydeco itself is a corruption of the French term for snap beans: haricots. On one trip, Mr. Fox met the accordionist Stanley Dural Jr., known as Buckwheat. "He really opened my eyes to the music," Mr. Fox said. "We became great friends." One thing led to another and Mr. Fox became the manager for Mr. Dural, whose stage name was Buckwheat Zydeco. Mr. Dural died in September after a fight with cancer, at age 68. This year's festival lineup includes a tribute to him by his band, Il Sont Partis. Understandably, classic Louisiana cuisine is a major element of the festival vendors feature jambalaya and etouffee, boudin and beignets, catfish and crawfish. Gumbo, the stew made from rice, seafood, chicken, andouille sausage, tomato and okra, is representative of south Louisiana culture. And zydeco is its musical counterpart. As Mr. Fuselier pointed out, today's practitioners might incorporate many types of music into their playlists. Though the accordion is a European invention, Lafayette's Martin family supplies many of the button style instruments favored in zydeco and Cajun bands. Clarence Martin ("everybody calls me Junior") taught himself how to make them by "just taking one apart," he said. Now he and his brother Anthony produce about 200 a year. The Martin Accordions shop in north Lafayette is a popular stop for tour buses, with the family providing an hourlong show for tours that request them in advance. Featured is a history of the music, with examples expertly provided by Mr. Martin's 31 year old grandson, Joel, who first picked up the instrument when he was a toddler. For a frottoir, Lafayette visitors can call on Tee Don Landry, whose father, Willie Landry, made the first ones in 1946 with the pioneer washboard player Cleveland Chenier (Clifton's brother), who got the idea of taking corrugated steel and elongating it with shoulder straps, freeing both hands for playing. Now, as the head of Key of Z Rubboards, the younger Mr. Landry makes and sells thousands worldwide. Traditional groups like the Red Hot Louisiana Band led by Clifton Chenier's son, C. J., and Jeffery Broussard the Creole Cowboys, are on the festival lineup this year, along with diverse acts including the new wave Tom Tom Club and the Louisiana country music star Marc Broussard. Last year's festival began on a Wednesday night after a storm delay with an outdoor performance by Chubby Carrier, followed by Chris Ardoin. Both Mr. Carrier and Mr. Ardoin are descendants of zydeco accordion legends, and both mix up their sets, adding rhythm and blues and soul numbers to zydeco classics.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Travel
Antonella Carbonaro, a consultant to financial technology companies, saved up to buy her Birkin bag, a luxury tote made by Hermes that sells new for tens of thousands of dollars. Since getting her bag in 2018, Ms. Carbonaro has stored it in her closet, bringing it out only on special occasions. But when she heard that there was a marketplace to buy shares in other Birkins, including more exotic versions that can fetch six figures, she was in. It is not a lark. Ms. Carbonaro, 30, sees her shares in an exclusive bag as an alternative investment, no different than stakes in private equity funds that invest in a basket of companies. "This is a visual way to participate in different asset classes that aren't as accessible," Ms. Carbonaro said. "Investing in shares of Birkin bags, even though I have one, is getting more exposure." She bought 10 shares in a Bleu Lezard Birkin bag that was valued at 61,500 in an offering last year. Earlier this year, she bought 25 shares in a gray Himalaya Birkin. It was valued at 140,000 in an offering in May. Unlike owning a fractional share of a condominium, she will never be able to use her investment. Shares are traded until the owner of the marketplace sells the asset. Ms. Carbonaro's first Birkin investment is trading up 6 percent from the purchase price on Rally Rd., a platform that deals in fractional investments in collectible items. The other one is still in the lockup period and its shares cannot be traded yet. The market for investing in fractions of items otherwise seen as collectibles and largely reserved for the wealthiest people has seen an uptick in interest during the pandemic as people spend more time at home. "In the beginning, it was like equity markets: just safe, blue chip investments," said Rob Petrozzo, a founder and the chief product officer at Rally Rd. "Over the past few months, we've seen with people being inside, they've gotten access to more information and they have been exploring the app more fully." He said existing investors on the platform had doubled the number of items they owned shares in. Initial offerings have sold out five times faster than before the pandemic, as new investors on the platform began buying up shares more quickly. To accommodate growing interest, MyRacehorse, which sells shares in racehorses that are far smaller stakes than those sold by traditional racing syndicates, has partnered with a top stud farm, Spendthrift, to extend the length of the investments. Before, its model had been to sell the horse when it was done racing. Now, investors can participate in the breeding fees, which can be many times any racetrack winnings. The fractional movement is not limited to luxury items. Fidelity, the mutual fund giant, offers "stocks by the slice" where you can buy a portion of a share starting at 1. And many private equity funds, which have high minimum investments and long lockup periods, have created mutual fund versions of their funds. Eugene Olmstead, a retired internet technology executive, said he had 1 percent to 1.5 percent in 11 horses, all bought through his self directed individual retirement account. "You're not going to get a worthwhile return on your investment unless you have a certain percentage," said Mr. Olmstead, 58. "I've done my research, and I'm investing in ones that I think in the long run will give me a decent return." Of the 11 horses he has bought shares in, only two are old enough to race. He said both had average winnings of 12,000 a race. He has received some dividends from those races, but said the money was not substantial yet. There are many caveats. Trading through Rally Rd. and MyRacehorse are done through apps, which makes buying and selling easier and creates a community. But the apps turn investing into games, as has happened with the stock trading app Robinhood. That can distort the financial consequences of ill considered investments. Compounding the risk, an asset typically bought for personal enjoyment or bragging rights cannot be analyzed the same way that a private equity investment would be. "There could be return potential, but who knows?" said Jack Ablin, chief investment officer of Cresset Capital. "There's no liquidity and no control. When do you get your money back? You don't know. The other is the carrying costs could be high." In the case of the shares in the racehorses, expenses like training and boarding are shared just as profits are. "You own full equity in the horse," said Michael Behrens, founder of MyRacehorse. Another issue is that buying these assets in slices can mean a person is paying more than she or he might if the person could buy the whole asset, and that could dampen returns or make it hard to resell the asset. "You're buying an overvalued slice of the whole," said David Abate, senior wealth adviser with Strategic Wealth Partners. "If you decide you want to get out of this investment, you'd better understand how the secondary market works." The fees are disclosed but baked in. With MyRacehorse, 15 percent of the offering of a horse goes to the company upfront. But each horse is part of an entity that has been registered with the Securities and Exchange Commission. "This is high risk; I'd never tell people otherwise," Mr. Behrens said. "We're not trying to build a platform that says this is going to be a really good asset class. Many horses have been bought for 1 million and never made it to the racetrack." As with other alternative investments, buyers are restricted from the selling of these fractions until after the lockup period ends. But when the asset itself the bag or the horse is sold is determined by the platform, not the individual investors. "You lose the intimacy of what it's meant to be," Mr. Ablin said. "It's normally an asset you can touch, enjoy, ride in, ride on or drink." But many investors in shares seem unbothered by this. Ms. Carbonaro said not being able to touch or hold the bags she had invested in was not an issue for her. "If I had a Michael Jordan rookie card, I don't think I'd want to touch it," she said. John Cochran, who works in sales in Baltimore, has invested in shares of 76 different collectibles including a shirt Mr. Jordan wore in a basketball game, a Muhammad Ali fight contract, a portrait of Abraham Lincoln and a 2006 Ferrari f430 manual. He said he was happy receiving a photo and some information on the object and was unfazed that he could not hold or touch it. "I like the idea that, just like my stocks, it's all in an electronic portfolio," he said. "I don't have to have the resources to store these things."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Your Money
It was near sundown when Rashida Bumbray and Dance Diaspora Collective performed in Queensbridge Park in Long Island City on Saturday, but they made it feel like Sunday morning. The performers dressed in white, as if for a baptism, and as Ms. Bumbray sang African American spirituals in call and response with the dozen or so members of the collective, they worked up a glorious noise. The show, presented by SummerStage, was also a dance concert. Ms. Bumbray who has a big, powerful voice with a vibrato that at the top end of her range whirs like a hummingbird is a choreographer (as well as a noted art curator). In "Run Mary Run," she and her companions, a group of alumni from Oberlin College's Dance Diaspora, essentially did one dance: the ring shout. Developed during slavery in Baptist and Methodist sects that frowned upon dancing and drums, the ring shout is a sneaky way of retaining both in church, and of blending African spirituality with Christianity. It's a dance that pretends to be just walking: people perambulating in a wide circle with a sinking, drumlike tread. Every so often, somebody catches the spirit and takes a turn in the middle. Ms. Bumbray, going for authenticity and ritual, treated the dance plainly. There were slight variations among the cast members Ms. Bumbray, with her fists on her hips, bounced her shoulders sweetly and tap danced in bare feet but even in the hot center, goaded by Adenike Sharpley (a matriarch in dark glasses and the founder of Dance Diaspora), the participants moved like everyday people. And the carousel of bodies just kept revolving, slowing at the end of each song only to pick up speed again in the next.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Dance
As commander of the coalition forces in Iraq, Maj. Gen. Walter Piatt juggled ruthless pursuit of enemies and delicate diplomacy with tribal leaders, using a trove of modern weaponry and streams of tech generated data. But his best decisions, he said, relied on a tool as ancient as it is powerful. Maj. Gen. Piatt often began daily operations by breathing deliberately, slack jawed, staring steadily at a palm tree. Mindfulness the practice of using breathing techniques, similar to those in meditation, to gain focus and reduce distraction is inching into the military in the United States and those of a handful of other nations. For more stories about the experiences and costs of war, sign up for the weekly At War newsletter. This winter, Army infantry soldiers at Schofield Barracks in Hawaii began using mindfulness to improve shooting skills for instance, focusing on when to pull the trigger amid chaos to avoid unnecessary civilian harm. The British Royal Navy has given mindfulness training to officers, and military leaders are rolling it out in the Army and Royal Air Force for some officers and enlisted soldiers. The New Zealand Defence Force recently adopted the technique, and military forces of the Netherlands are considering the idea, too. This week, NATO plans to hold a two day symposium in Berlin to discuss the evidence behind the use of mindfulness in the military. A small but growing group of military officials support the techniques to heal trauma stressed veterans, make command decisions and help soldiers in chaotic battles. "I was asked recently if my soldiers call me General Moonbeam," said Maj. Gen. Piatt, who was director of operations for the Army and now commands its 10th Mountain Division. "There's a stereotype this makes you soft. No, it brings you on point." Like the Science Times page on Facebook. Sign up for the Science Times newsletter. The approach, he said, is based on the work of Amishi Jha, an associate professor of psychology at the University of Miami. She is the senior author of a paper published in December about the training's effectiveness among members of a special operations unit. The findings, which build on previous research showing improvements among soldiers and professional football players trained in mindfulness, are significant in part because members of the special forces are already selected for their ability to focus. The fact that even they saw improvement speaks to the power of the training, Dr. Jha said. "They're the best, and what they're trying to do is the hardest," she said. Dr. Jha has spoken to the United States Army War College and the British Parliament, and she has been a consultant to New Zealand's Defence Force and military officials in the Netherlands. "When the special forces do something," she said, "not only does the rest of the U.S. military pay attention, but the rest of the world's militaries pay attention." The science shows that techniques that focus and calm the mind allow people to perform better and make them less likely to overreact to incoming stimulation whether a flash of movement, sound or an onslaught of information on a device. The neuroscience of mindfulness involves, in part, strengthening a part of mental capacity known as "working memory" a short term, moment to moment catalog of tasks understood by scientists to effectively hold only a few pieces of information at one time. As working memory clouds through overload, decisions become jumbled and reactions more impulsive. Breathing induced focus lets people home in on the task at hand. But it does take practice. The recent study found that service members who train for four weeks experience significant improvement, but those who train for only two weeks do not. The mindfulness training comes as the military is exploring other options to intensify soldier focus, even the possibility of implanting computer chips into soldiers' brains. But those potential solutions are expensive and years off. Widespread adoption of mindfulness has challenges, including creating a staff of trainers, said Commander William MacNulty, a commissioned officer in the United States Public Health Service. He helped train a special forces unit in mindfulness (the precise military branch and location are confidential). The program entailed the soldiers spending about 15 minutes each day performing recorded, guided breathing exercises. Mr. MacNulty said that about a third of the soldiers readily embraced the idea, a third engaged with curiosity, and a third seemed skeptical. Mr. MacNulty likened the benefits of practicing mindfulness to those of, say, doing push ups. "You might not drop and do push ups when you're in a gunfight, but you have increased capacity," he said. That's true of mindfulness, he added: Mental focus "becomes a transferable skill." In the newsmagazine of the Royal New Zealand Air Force, the military explained the rationale behind adopting mindfulness. Referring to the national rugby team, the magazine said: "The All Blacks talk about 'red head/blue head' red head means being in a flustered state and blue head means being calm, centred and able to make clearheaded decisions." That has been the experience of Britain's chief evangelist for use of mindfulness in the military, Commander Tim Boughton. Mr. Boughton, decorated for service in many combat zones, discovered when he retired from active duty in 2008 that he'd grown withdrawn and angered by the horrors he'd seen: mangled civilian bodies fused together in combat zones; deaths of 48 compatriots in battle in Iraq, Afghanistan, the Falklands, Northern Ireland; "ethnic cleansing, hand to hand stuff." When he went to a psychiatrist in 2008, she broke down in tears after he described his experiences. Mr. Boughton discovered mindfulness after his own bout with PTSD, eventually becoming a trustee of the Oxford University Mindfulness Center. He now starts and ends his day with five minutes of breathing exercises. He uses the technique each time he is gripped by anxiety or panic. The traumas haven't disappeared, he said, but he isn't haunted by them daily. Now he can more calmly examine each terrible incident, address it and have some control over it rather than merely reacting. "The amount of brain power it frees by not being trapped in the past or the future is incredible," Mr. Boughton said. "The military is seeing the mass benefits of this." Mr. Boughton has thought about whether mindfulness is anathema to conflict. "The purists would say that mindfulness was never developed for war purpose," he said. What he means is that mindfulness is often associated with peacefulness. But, he added, the idea is to be as faithful to compassionate and humane ideals as possible given the realities of the job. Maj. Gen. Piatt underscored that point, describing one delicate diplomatic mission in Iraq that involved meeting with a local tribal leader. Before the session, he said, he meditated in front of a palm tree, and found himself extremely focused when the delicate conversation took place shortly thereafter. "I was not taking notes. I remember every word she was saying. I wasn't forming a response, just listening," he said. When the tribal leader finished, he said, "I talked back to her about every single point, had to concede on some. I remember the expression on her face: This is someone we can work with." In the end, he said, mindfulness allowed him to "reduce conflict by better understanding." "I'm not saying, be soft," he added. "I'm saying, understand how compassion and empathy can be used for real advantages."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Health
SEATTLE For many online shoppers, packages often linger for distressingly long hours outside their homes, where they can be stolen or soaked by rain. Now, if customers give it permission, Amazon's couriers will unlock the front doors and drop packages inside when no one is home. What could possibly go wrong? The head spins with the opportunities for mischief in letting a stranger into an empty home. There are risks for couriers too whether it's an attacking dog or an escaping cat. To allay these concerns, Amazon is asking customers to trust it buy a package of technology including an internet connected smart lock and an indoor security camera. Amazon isn't the only business that believes this is the future of internet shopping, as well as other services that require home access, like dog walking and house keeping. This summer, a start up that makes smart locks, Latch, struck a deal with Jet.com, an online shopping site owned by Walmart, to jointly pay for the installation of its locks on 1,000 apartment buildings in New York City to make deliveries easier. The arrangement offers some of the security of a doorman for people who live in buildings without them. E commerce companies have experimented with ways of making deliveries more secure for years. Amazon installs self service lockers in office buildings and outside supermarkets where customers can fetch their orders, and Daimler and other carmakers have tested the delivery of goods from Amazon and other retailers to customers' car trunks.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Technology
"Devil's Gate" is unusually energetic even by the current hyper standards of the horror genre. The directorial debut of Clay Staub, who wrote the screenplay with Peter Aperlo, opens with a hot rod speeding down a chalky looking road in the middle of nowhere, then sputtering to a halt. Out of the car hops an irritated hipster dirtbag, cussing up a storm. The only house nearby looks just like the one in the 1974 version of "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre" and suggests that its owners have received some sort of expansion loan. Wandering around the grounds after his cries for help have been ignored, he falls into a couple of booby traps that render his car troubles superfluous. This house is in a North Dakota town called Devil's Gate, and as the movie's title implies, the burg's name could be literal. Enter F.B.I. Special Agent Daria Francis (Amanda Schull, who has a strong kid sister of Abbie Cornish vibe). She is addressed as "ma'am," "sweetie" and "hon" in less than five minutes, after she turns down a friendly deputy's offer of a chicken fried steak because she's vegan. Culture clash established, the movie settles into shock and jolt mode, as Daria and the deputy (Shawn Ashmore) pay a visit to the creepy house's owner, Jackson Pritchard, played by the popular "This Is Us" star Milo Ventimiglia. His character here is not ingratiating. Jackson is a suspected kidnapper who, it turns out, is sitting on a great big satanic secret. It reveals itself in the gathering of supergray C.G.I. storm clouds, and, finally, a vortex into another realm. Is it extraterrestrial? Supernatural? This is one of those horror movies that want to have it every way possible. It's not good, but it could pass muster among midnight movie enthusiasts or curious stoners.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Movies
LONDON The Stoke Newington district was once a leafy village outside the city; now, it's the picturesque urban home of London's liberal elite, with organic bakeries, flower stores, candlelit restaurants and as of Tuesday a sculpture dedicated to the 18th century writer and feminist hero Mary Wollstonecraft. The work, by the British artist Maggi Hambling, stands in the middle of Newington Green, a grassy square flanked by historic buildings, including a 1708 church where Wollstonecraft used to hear radicals preach. A small, naked woman crowns a molten flank of silvered bronze, the gnarled base set on a cube of dark granite. The overall form is just larger than an average person, and sits well with the park: The silvery trunk echoes the shape of the mottled plane trees nearby, and the figure cuts into the sky like the Victorian chimney stacks beyond. Ms. Hambling's sculpture set off an immediate furor, as statues sometimes do. A headline in The Guardian began, "Why I hate the Mary Wollstonecraft statue," and went on to ask, in a more vulgar fashion than The New York Times can print, if a man would be honored by a statue with its penis out. (Nevermind the statue in Oxford, England, of Percy Bysshe Shelley husband to Wollstonecraft's daughter Mary with the Romantic poet's member very much on display, let alone the other examples going back to antiquity ...) Perhaps the problem is that the woman in Ms. Hambling's statue has such an idealized physique. As one Twitter user said: "I had no idea Mary had shredded abs." When she finally left, hurling curses, I could get close enough to read the inscription on the statue's base: "For Mary Wollstonecraft, 1759 1797." The preposition here is everything: This is not a likeness of, but a tribute to, Wollstonecraft, who has been a hero of the feminist movement since her name was first stitched onto British suffrage banners in the late 19th century. Another side of the base features a (lightly adapted) quotation from her most famous text, "A Vindication of the Rights of Woman," published in 1792: "I do not wish women to have power over men; but over themselves." What might this idea mean for a sculpture dedicated to Wollstonecraft's life and work? Monuments have traditionally been a male domain: not just because they have been almost exclusively organized by men to celebrate and commemorate their brothers and forefathers (although they have), but because the very notion of history as a text written by Great Men is patriarchal. Might the statue's unusual form be understood as a refusal to participate in monument making? And isn't this artwork about Wollstonecraft's life and philosophy, rather than her image? To answer such questions, you'd need to actually take a look at it. A decade long campaign, "Mary on the Green" raised 143,000 pounds, about 190,000, for the statue's creation. The organizers must have been preparing for a backlash when they commissioned Ms. Hambling, a chain smoking artist who seems to enjoy a public fight, for the job. Though primarily a painter, she has created public sculpture memorials to the composer Benjamin Britten in Aldeburgh, England, and the playwright Oscar Wilde in London. Both works stirred up debates, and both were even defaced. According to the organizers, this is the first public statue dedicated to Mary Wollstonecraft in the world. While many consider her the mother of modern feminism, the facts of her work or extraordinary life are not widely known. Raised in a poor family in London's East End, she escaped by becoming a lady's companion to a wealthy widow and, later, a governess. She set up a school with her sisters on Newington Green, which, with its radical church, became a haven for political dissenters. When she decided to become an author, she knew her chances of success were slim; she wrote to her sister Everina in 1787 to say she hoped to be "the first of a new genus." Her enthusiasm for revolutionary politics came under strain during the bloody Reign of Terror, not to mention her affair with the American adventurer Gilbert Imlay. This ended badly, with Wollstonecraft a single mother and a foreigner, alone in Paris, with all her friends facing imprisonment or execution. She returned to London in 1795, and then, hoping to win Imlay back, she went off on a journey through Scandinavia to track down a cargo of silver that had been stolen from him. She published her unanswered letters to Imlay as part of a memoir of her trip, and caught the attention of the philosopher William Godwin. After she became pregnant, they decided to marry, despite the objections to marriage he had just raised in the anarchist treatise "Enquiry Concerning Political Justice." On Aug. 30, 1797, she gave birth to her second daughter, Mary, who would go on to become the celebrated author Mary Shelley. Wollstonecraft died of septicemia 11 days after Mary was born. Godwin wrote to a friend: "I firmly believe there does not exist her equal in the world."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Art & Design
Anti vaccine demonstrators outside the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta in June. How Anti Vaccine Sentiment Took Hold in the United States The question is often whispered, the questioners sheepish. But increasingly, parents at the Central Park playground where Dr. Elizabeth A. Comen takes her young children have been asking her: "Do you vaccinate your kids?" Dr. Comen, an oncologist who has treated patients for cancers related to the human papillomavirus that a vaccine can now prevent, replies emphatically: Absolutely. She never imagined she would be getting such queries. Yet these playground exchanges are reflective of the national conversation at the end of the second decade of the 21st century a time of stunning scientific and medical advances but also a time when the United States may, next month, lose its World Health Organization designation as a country that has eliminated measles, because of outbreaks this year. The W.H.O. has listed vaccine hesitancy as one of the top threats to global health. As millions of families face back to school medical requirements and forms this month, the contentiousness surrounding vaccines is heating up again, with possibly even more fervor. Seven states reported rates for the M.M.R. vaccine that were far lower for kindergartners, including Kansas at 89.1 percent; New Hampshire, 92.4 percent; the District of Columbia, 81.3 percent. (The highest is West Virginia at 98.4 percent.) Almost all states have at least one anti vaccine group. At least four have registered political action committees, supporting candidates who favor less restrictive vaccine exemption policies. Public health experts say that patients and many doctors may not appreciate the severity of diseases that immunizations have thwarted, like polio, which can affect the spinal cord and brain because they probably have not seen cases. "Vaccines are a victim of their own success," said Dr. Offit, a co inventor of a vaccine for rotavirus, which can cause severe diarrhea in young children. "We have largely eliminated the memory of many diseases." The growth of vaccine doubt in America coincides with several competing forces and attitudes. Since the early 2000s, as the number of required childhood vaccines was increasing, a generation of parents was becoming hypervigilant about their children and, through social media, patting each other on the backs for doing so. In their view, parents who permitted vaccination were gullible toadies of status quo medicine. In 2011, Dana Fuqua, of Aurora, Colo., pregnant with her first child, felt that irresistible pull of groupthink parenting. She had just moved to the area, so she reached out to mothers' groups on Facebook. Colorado, with a kindergarten vaccination compliance rate of 88.7 percent, has a rambunctious vaccine resistant movement. Ms. Fuqua's new friends urged her to have a drug free birth, use cloth diapers and never to let a drop of formula pass her baby's lips. Vaccines, it followed, were anathema. The women intimidated her. They had advanced degrees; she had only a bachelor of science and a nursing background. "I didn't argue with them," Ms. Fuqua said. "I was so desperate for their support that I compromised by delaying the vaccine schedule, so I wouldn't get kicked out of the group." But when her second child was born prematurely, susceptible to illness, the group's approval was not as important as her baby's safety. Her position, she said, shifted from, "'I can't hang out with you if you had a vaccine because you could be shedding a virus'" a common, false belief among the vaccine resistant to, " 'If you haven't had a vaccine, I will not associate with you.'" She had both children fully vaccinated. There have been anti vaccination movements at least since 1796, when Edward Jenner invented the smallpox vaccine. But many experts say that the current one can be traced to 1982, when NBC aired a documentary, "DPT: Vaccine Roulette," that took up a controversy percolating in England: a purported tie between the vaccine for pertussis a potentially fatal disease that can cause lung problems and seizures in young children. Doctors sharply criticized the show as dangerously inaccurate. But fear spread. Anti vaccination groups formed. Many companies stopped making vaccines, which were considered loss leaders and not worth the corporate headache. Then, in 1998, Andrew Wakefield, a British gastroenterologist, published a Lancet study (since discredited and withdrawn), associating the M.M.R. vaccine with autism. Faced with risking autism or measles, some parents thought the answer was obvious. Most had never seen measles, mumps or rubella because vaccines had nearly eliminated them. But they believed they knew autism. And most people are notoriously poor at assessing risk, say experts in medical decision making. Many stumble on omission bias: "We would rather not do something and have something bad happen, than do something and have something bad happen," explained Alison M. Buttenheim, an associate professor of nursing and health policy at the University of Pennsylvania School of Nursing. People are flummoxed by numerical risk. "We pay more attention to numerators, such as '16 adverse events,' than we do to denominators, such as 'per million vaccine doses,' " Dr. Buttenheim said. A concept called "ambiguity aversion" is also involved, she added. "Parents would like to be told that vaccines are 100 percent safe," she said. "But that's not a standard we hold any medical treatment to." Relatively few people are absolutists about refusing all vaccines. "But if you're uncertain about a decision, you'll find those who confirm your bias and cement what you think," said Rupali J. Limaye, a social scientist who studies vaccine behaviors at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. The primary reason for healthy people to get the flu shot is to protect those with compromised immune systems, like infants and older adults, from getting sick. But altruism isn't a great motivator for parents, Dr. Buttenheim said. "They are much more concerned about protecting their own child at all costs," she said. Contrast that attitude with the collective good will of the 1950s, say medical sociologists, when American parents who had seen President Franklin Delano Roosevelt's wheelchair as a debilitating symbol of polio patriotically sought to vaccinate their children to help eradicate the disease worldwide. By 2014, studies showed that parental confidence in authorities like the C.D.C. and in pediatricians was dropping, especially around vaccines. Mistrust of Big Pharma was even more pronounced. By then, Donald Trump was offering support on Twitter for the discredited link between autism and vaccination. As president elect, he met with leaders of the anti vaccination movement, although as measles cases surged, he endorsed vaccination. As parenting became rife with orthodoxy, the Marcus Welby model of the paternalistic doctor retreated. Patients asserted autonomy, brandishing internet printouts at doctors. Shared decision making became the model of doctor patient engagement. In 2011, shortly after Emma Wagner had given birth in Savannah, Ga., a pediatrician on the ward examined the baby. "He asked me if I was interested in the hepatitis B vaccine," she said of an inoculation typically done at birth. He replied, "'That's fine, because your 2 day old daughter isn't a prostitute and isn't using I.V. drugs, so hep B isn't at the top of my worries.'" Ms. Wagner said she "swallowed the anti vax Kool Aid. I was motivated by fear. I thought, 'Until I know for certain that these are safe, I won't do it.' The pediatrician said, 'I will support your decision and in a few years we'll talk about exemptions for school.'" She has since become a staunch supporter of immunization. Libertarianism also courses through vaccine hesitation, with parents who assert that government should not be able to tell them what to put in their bodies a position often marketed as "the right to choose." "Having the government order them to do something reinforces conspiracy theories," said Daniel Salmon, director of the Institute for Vaccine Safety at Johns Hopkins. "And people perceive their risk to be higher when it's not voluntary." In reality, he said, one's risk of harm is greater while driving to an airport than it is being on the airplane itself. But driving is voluntary and gives the illusion of control. People fear flying because they cannot control the plane. By extension, many childhood vaccines are not voluntary, which rattles those who prefer to believe they can control their health. With so many different but deeply held convictions, public health experts struggle to design vaccine positive campaigns. In 2017, researchers applied the six values of "the moral foundations theory" to vaccine attitudes, surveying 1,007 American parents. The results were intriguing. Those most resistant to vaccines scored highest in two values: purity ("my body is a temple") and liberty ("I want to make my child's health care decisions"). A third, said Saad B. Omer, director of Yale's Global Health Institute and an author of the study, was also telling: deference to authority a score indicating whether one was likely to adhere to the advice of experts like a pediatrician or the C.D.C. Dr. Salmon's team at Johns Hopkins is working on an app to capture parents' vaccine attitudes and to tailor information to persuade them to vaccinate their children. Pediatricians are front line persuaders, he said, and they should be compensated for the time it takes to educate parents. Most experts note that physicians themselves, never mind parents, have no idea about the federal vaccine monitoring systems, which have been in place for more than 20 years. "We ask parents in the first two years of their child's life to protect them against 14 diseases, that most people don't see, using fluids they don't understand," Dr. Offit said. "It's time for us to stand back and explain ourselves better."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Health
The ongoing "Succession" world tour makes a stop this week at yet another lavish country estate, for two days of earnest haggling and phony congeniality. In "Tern Haven," the Roy clan treks from Manhattan to the ancestral home of Nan Pierce (Cherry Jones), the matriarch of a media empire respected as a force for truth and justice. The result? A classic "Succession" clash between two titanic know it alls. Logan Roy, notoriously, has little use for truth or justice. But he's so anxious to buy Pierce Global Media that he approaches Nan as a humble businessman, espousing admiration for PGM as "essential to the functioning of this grand republic." Connor listens to Logan wax eloquent and quietly asks, "Why can't this Dad be Dad?" The charade can't last. Logan has drawn up the corporate takeover equivalent of an elaborate heist, masterminding the theft of PGM. But he's asking his family members and associates to play roles for which none of them are suited. Overall, this week's "Succession" isn't as riotously funny as last week's. But as Naomi Pierce (Annabelle Dexter Jones) puts it, watching the Roys melt down is "the most deeply satisfying activity on the planet Earth." Roman botches his mission immediately. He starts making sarcastic comments as soon as he arrives, giggling so loudly that his dad snaps, "When you laugh, do it at the same volume as everyone else." There's something curiously disarming about how Roman can't help but be contemptuous. When Mark Pierce (Jeremy Shamos) quotes Thoreau, saying, "Maine may speak to Texas, but what if they have nothing to say to one another?," and another Pierce adds, "That should be engraved into the bezel of every iPhone in the world," Roman, inevitably, rolls his eyes, muttering, "Hear hear. The bezel." He can't even pretend to care. Kendall has more success, but only because Logan knows his to exploit his weaknesses. The two of them put a big show, greeting each other with a bear hug, and talking about his volunteer work and his "recovery." This ruse is aimed at Naomi, whose own drug and alcohol problems led to an embarrassing car accident, covered relentlessly and cruelly by Roy newspapers. Before long, Kendall and Naomi are sneaking off to snort and swill, convincing themselves they have the situation under control. ("There are levels," they reassure each other.) Somewhere amid their bender Kendall wins over the die hard Roy hater, suggesting she take the buyout and free herself from her own family's expectations. Poor Tom, meanwhile, is once again is asked to do the exact opposite of what he'd prefer. Tom has no firm political convictions and legitimately feels at home among pretentious rich folks. But because Logan must insist he doesn't control his provocative, ultra right wing news channel ATN, Tom has to play the "ogre" which he does with a forced smile and nervous digressions, including a spontaneous ode to "king of edible leaves, His Majesty, the spinach." All of those subplots provide comic relief. But when "Succession" fans talk about this episode years from now and they likely will they'll probably remember it as the one where Siobhan can't stop sabotaging herself. It's an open question whether Logan has ever actually intended to turn Waystar Royco over to his daughter, or whether his initial offer to her was just another way of exerting control. He's certainly noncommittal about her future even early in this episode, when she privately nudges him with a playful reminder that the company will be "my baby soon" and he offers up a barely audible, "Hmm." But whatever momentum Shiv had dissipates after she freezes up in front the Pierces. Given the simple task of impressing Nan with her progressive politics and feminist bona fides, Shiv proceeds to make one mistake after another. She teases Mark for getting a second Ph.D., making the Roman like joke, "Once you're done, you won't have to waste the 12 seconds it takes to look something up on Wikipedia." Mere minutes later, she looks weak in front of Kendall when she praises PGM's values while he defends ATN. Then comes the ultimate slip up: At dinner, Nan bluntly asks who's next in line at Waystar after Logan steps down, and Shiv takes a chance and just announces she's the one. The look on everyone's faces in the immediate aftermath of this gaffe is chilling. Siobhan looks like her father caught her sneaking into the house three hours late from curfew. Despite this blunder or perhaps because of it the next morning the Pierces approve the takeover, provided they keep editorial control and Siobhan is officially announced as Logan's successor. If Shiv felt bad the night before, she feels even worse when her dad icily says, "That's not really how I do things," walking away from the bargaining table. To make matters worse: His tactic works. The Pierces drop Shiv from their demands. Ultimately, this episode presents an unflattering picture of both families. The Pierces position themselves as the honest ones, but they're also trying too hard to impress the Roys. They boast about their family cocktail ("the Break Bumper"), taken from a recipe found in the wallet of Teddy Roosevelt's valet. They rather showily invite their Latina housekeeper to put down her serving tray and join them. They even bless their dinner by quoting Shakespeare. "I'm afraid we've gone so Unitarian out here that we've given up on poor Jesus," Nan laughs. In short: Their whole Kennedy/Hepburn style "eccentric New England intelligentsia" routine is everything the upstart Logan Roy hates. By the end of the weekend, he's oozing disdain as Nan insists her news cameras helped take down the Berlin Wall. Even in victory, he has no such illusions about what he's accomplished. This isn't the story of two politically opposed families coming together. It's more about billionaires enriching billionaires. When cousin Greg drops by to congratulate him, Logan can barely muster up any joy as he says, "Yeah. Money wins." The Rich Are Different From You and Me None Connor's assignment is to entertain Maxim Pierce (Mark Linn Baker), who works for the Brookings Institution: an organization so clearly unknown to the novice political candidate Connor that he can only summon up the word "elite" to describe it. Later though, the two men bond over a bottle of Port and Connor offers Maxim a job in his hypothetical administration's State Department. (Again: Money wins.) None Marcia Roy becomes an unexpected thorn in Logan's side all weekend, even going so far as to complain that her husband's wine cellar "is all New World." That dig is especially vicious, because if there's one thing her husband hates, it's being thought of as someone who can't hang in with the sophisticates. None Roman feels so emasculated by his father's belittling that he briefly considers having sex with his girlfriend Tabitha. The notion passes when she uses the phrase "make love," which makes him bury his face in a pillow. Later, he slinks off to Gerri's room so she can turn him back on by telling him how disgusting he is. None Tom tries to be agreeable toward whatever's asked of him, but he does have his own opinions and biases. When a distraught Shiv asks him if the Pierces have put any booze in the guest rooms, he says no, and sneers, "It's just Emily Dickinson and low thread count sheets."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Television
Late night television has been dominated by the foibles of President Trump for the last four years, but 2020 was perhaps the most daunting of all. Leading up to the November election, hosts tried to expand their focus to other candidates, but when it came to staying topical, Trump continued to dominate the news, especially once the coronavirus forced the country to more actively consider its leadership (or lack thereof) during the crisis. As the world shut down, late night hosts offered not just levity during a troublesome and anxious time, but also a (mostly) comic counterbalance to the administration's outpouring of misinformation. Then, as a wave of Black Lives Matter protests this summer drew more attention to the persistent and urgent matter of racial injustice in America, late night shows became a forum for difficult but necessary conversations and, in some cases, apologies. Trevor Noah's D.N.C. recap included a musing on Biden as he accepted the party's official nomination, calling him "the Cheerios of presidential candidates": "He's not the most exciting option, but deep down, you know he's good for you." By November, most Americans agreed, though Trump's contesting the election results and refusal to concede has turned late night's pithiness into pity, as what Jimmy Kimmel has coined "Squattergate" continues. In its wake, Trump's personal lawyer, Rudolph W. Giuliani, has been a late night regular, providing more content than Trump himself during the president's last weeks in office. "So, for just a partial list of Rudy's achievements since the election: He's lost 48 lawsuits, he melted on camera," Colbert said. "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?!" The U.S. rise of the pandemic in March quickly resulted in hosts getting out of the studio and setting up production from their own homes. Samantha Bee took "Full Frontal" into her New York backyard, while Seth Meyers toggled between his own attic and that of his in laws, making full running bits out of set items like an old copy of "The Thorn Birds" and a talking painting of a sea captain. Colbert took an early at home show into his bathtub, later involving his dog, his wife, and his children in a living room setup that saw him trading his typical suit for more leisurely attire, much like Trevor Noah wearing nightly hoodies on "The Daily Social Distancing Show." Jimmy Fallon's "Tonight Show" was also a family affair, with the host's wife and children participating in bits to fill in for the fun and games he usually reserves for celebrity guests. The hosts also went without haircuts or their typical glam, much like the rest of the country. Eventually, some hosts returned to their studios, still with no audiences except for crew members taking Covid precautions though Conan O'Brien took up at Largo in Los Angeles, performing nightly to cardboard cutouts. That might be the last audience O'Brien has, though, as the comic announced he's leaving his TBS show for an HBO Max variety series in the new year. The coronavirus itself was a regular part of late night programming beginning in late February, when Trump put Vice President Mike Pence in charge of the White House's response. "Pence actually has an interesting plan to fight the coronavirus," Fallon noted. "He's going to send the virus to a conversion camp where it can pray itself into the common cold." Trump's regular coronavirus news conferences were just as confusing as many of his tweets Twitter started flagging the most egregious ones in May but that didn't stop the ratings obsessed president from gloating about how many people watched them. Meyers joked that the only reason anyone tuned in was because they were hoping for accurate information. "Also, we're only trapped inside watching because you kept ignoring the crisis and pretending it would go away until it was too late we're forced to stay inside and watch you because you screwed up," Meyers said. "More people than ever are playing Scrabble right now, but it sure as hell isn't because Scrabble is fun." But as the year went on, there would be more opportunities for the last night shows to indulge in a bit of presidential schadenfreude. In June, only 6,200 people showed up for a Trump campaign rally in Tulsa, Okla. "Six thousand two hundred people isn't a rally," Fallon said. "It's a graduation at a small liberal arts college." Then in October, Trump contracted Covid 19 himself, as did a number of his family members and staffers. Colbert jokingly referred to the White House as "The Infest Wing." Corden opted for musical mockery, marking Trump's recovery and insistence he could be immune to the virus with a parody performance of Paul McCartney's "Maybe I'm Amazed" called "Maybe I'm Immune." The May killing of George Floyd by the police in Minneapolis, coming two months after Breonna Taylor was shot and killed by Louisville police officers, set off a summer of protests and focused nationwide attention on racial inequality and police brutality. The Black late night hosts Desus and Mero ended episodes with calls to arrest the police who killed Taylor, and Trevor Noah spoke candidly in a viral video as well as on air. For Kimmel and Fallon, this reckoning included apologizing for having participated in past blackface bits on "The Man Show" and "Saturday Night Live," respectively. Kimmel, who took the summer off to spend with his family, apologized in a statement, while Fallon directly addressed the situation with his audience on air. "I'm not a racist. I don't feel this way," Fallon said. "I realized that I can't not say I'm horrified and I'm sorry and I'm embarrassed. I realized that the silence is the biggest crime that white guys like me and the rest of us are doing, staying silent. We need to say something. We need to keep saying something."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Television
Did your Hogwarts letter get lost in the mail? If so, this fall, the New York Historical Society will offer muggles a chance to immerse themselves in the wizarding world of Harry Potter. The museum, which is presenting the exhibition "Harry Potter: A History of Magic," is offering a series of workshops, book clubs, meetups, talks, classes and other events to accompany the exhibition. These events are part of a yearlong celebration of the 20th anniversary of the publication in the United States of "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone." Jim Dale, whose memorable voice can be heard on all seven Harry Potter audiobooks, will give a talk on Jan. 9 about his experience developing voices for the more than 200 characters in the books. And the artists Mary GrandPre and Brian Selznick will discuss their approaches to illustrating the books. Other talks will examine the series' effect on popular culture, the process for translating the books from British English into American English and the history of children's literature. An event called "Growing Up With Harry Potter," on Jan. 7, will give fans who grew up with the books a chance to talk about their personal experience and relationship with the world of Harry Potter, while Halloween activities will take place on Oct. 30, with magical crafting.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Art & Design
Now in Sight: Success Against an Infection That Blinds GETA, Nepal Fifteen years ago, Shiva Lal Rana walked 20 miles to Geta Eye Hospital to ask doctors to pluck out all his eyelashes. Trachoma, a bacterial infection, had swollen and inverted his eyelids. With every blink, his lashes raked his corneas. "The scratching hurt my eyes so much I could barely go out in the sun to plow," he said. "I was always rubbing them." Worse, he feared the fate that others with the infection had suffered. The tiny scratches could accumulate and ultimately blind him. Instead, doctors performed what was then a new operation: They sliced open his eyelids, rolled them back and sutured them with the lashes facing outward again. And they gave him antibiotics to clear up the infection. "My vision is much better now," said Mr. Rana, a tiny, lively man who guessed he was about 65. "I can recognize people. I can work." His personal triumph parallels his nation's. In May, the World Health Organization declared that Nepal had eliminated trachoma as a public health problem, making it the sixth country to do so. In June, Ghana became the seventh. Those successes, experts say, show the wisdom of advocating and enforcing basic public health practices, rather than waiting for a miracle cure or a new vaccine. They are also a testament to the unheralded but steady generosity of Americans. Much of the progress was made through donations by an American drug company, American foundations and American taxpayers. Trachoma is the world's leading infectious cause of blindness. (Cataracts blind more people but are not infectious.) About 190 million people in 41 countries are at risk, the W.H.O. estimates. About 1.2 million people are already completely blind because of it, and about twice that many have lost some eyesight. About 7 million have eyelids that are torquing inward and need the 20 minute operation Mr. Rana had, and about 21 million have infected lids that can still be cured without surgery. A global campaign to wipe out trachoma was launched 20 years ago. Since then, Cambodia, Laos, Mexico, Morocco and Oman have officially eliminated the infection as a public health problem, along with Ghana and Nepal. In addition, China, Gambia, Iran, Iraq and Myanmar claim to have succeeded but have not sought W.H.O. certification. Most wealthy nations eliminated the disease earlier, but trachoma was a worldwide scourge until well into the last century. "Elimination as a public health problem" is different from complete eradication of the bacteria, which experts see as impossible. The phrase means that less than 5 percent of a country's children have any symptoms, and fewer than 1 in 1,000 adults have vision loss from scarred eyeballs. Nepal still gets new cases of trachoma each year from next door India; many Nepalis go back and forth as seasonal laborers. The bacterium, Chlamydia trachomatis, can be transmitted from person to person by, for example, sharing a towel. But in rural areas, it is more commonly transmitted by flies that crawl over children's faces to eat the discharge from runny eyes and noses, and then flit back to human feces to lay their eggs. Victims are first infected as toddlers, but permanent eye damage takes decades and usually sets in after age 30. To break that chain, the W.H.O. recommends a four pronged strategy: surgery for advanced cases; annual antibiotic doses for everyone in hard hit areas; teaching mothers to wash their children's faces frequently; and use of pit latrines, which reduce fly populations. Although the campaign against trachoma has some British and Australian support, much of it is paid for and run by Americans. Looking at a chart of countries hard hit by the infection, Paul Emerson, director of the International Trachoma Initiative in Atlanta, rattled off about a dozen nations in Africa that were nearing success. They easily outnumbered the few he said "still had issues" or "were hard nuts to crack." Despite the Trump administration's hostility to foreign aid, Dr. Emerson said he was not hearing of any threats to cut American funding of the initiative. "I don't know if it's because we're so small that we're overlooked, because we're not controversial, or because we're doing such a good job," he said. "I'd like to think it's the latter." In any case, he said, "The U.S. government portion is quite small potatoes. We really operate on a shoestring." The W.H.O.'s trachoma strategy was initially developed from research supported by a New York based charity, the Edna McConnell Clark Foundation, created by the heirs to the Avon cosmetics fortune. In 1998, the foundation joined Pfizer, the drug company, to start the International Trachoma Initiative. Pfizer's oral antibiotic Zithromax was much easier and faster to use than the messy tetracycline ointment previously prescribed to treat trachoma. In 2006, the George W. Bush administration budgeted 15 million for the United States Agency for International Development to attack several neglected tropical diseases, trachoma included. Since then, about 85 million has been spent on trachoma, a U.S.A.I.D. representative said. That led to a major study published in April showing that giving antibiotics prophylactically to infants in very poor countries could work like a vaccine, preventing up to 25 percent of early deaths. The W.H.O. is considering whether to recommend routinely giving antibiotics to newborns in poor countries. The Bush administration's interest in neglected diseases, Dr. Emerson explained, was driven by the Global Health Council, an advocacy group with ties to the pharma industry. Companies like Merck and Pfizer were willing to donate billions of dollars' worth of medicine to the fights against neglected diseases, as long as they could take tax deductions and be assured that the campaigns would last long enough to justify the cost of building new factories. It was a major commitment. The 700 million doses that Pfizer has donated to treat trachoma since 2002 are more than the company has sold during that time, a spokeswoman said. The company recently agreed to keep donating the antibiotic until at least 2025. Part of the U.S.A.I.D. money pays for surgery, but most goes to the dull but crucial task of assembling epidemiological data. Trachoma cases are spread over vast areas but unlike Ebola, for example never trigger the explosive outbreaks that cause panic and provoke big donations. In Kaluwapur, a farming village a few miles north of Geta, Bilando Rana, 63, who is not related to Mr. Rana, had her eyelids re inverted five years ago at one of the "eye camps" the hospital set up in a local schoolhouse. "For about three months, I couldn't work in the fields or cook food for the children because of the pain," she said. "I knew it was something our healer couldn't fix." Instead of fighting traditional healers, Mr. Raman said, the program has offered them training in recognizing the signs of trachoma in the hopes that they will refer people to the camps or clinics. Nepalis have even accepted outhouses, a significant accomplishment because rural people often have difficulty breaking their most personal habits. Twenty years ago, Mr. Raman said, he worked for a charity that built 50 houses, all with latrines, for flood victims. A year later, he said, 47 of the latrines were being used to store firewood or shelter goats. Ms. Rana said her family dug an outhouse eight years ago after local officials encouraged everyone in her village to do so. Encouragement includes both carrots and sticks, Mr. Raman said. Local leaders can earn fancy certificates declaring their villages "open defecation free." But they may also be threatened with the loss of services like road repair if latrines are not built.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Health
Since 2007, when the ambitious young choreographer Andrea Miller founded her company, Gallim Dance, her work has often seemed desperate to grow up fast. The telltale signs were heavy borrowings from established choreographers and a general sense of struggling to appear mature. So it comes as a relief and possibly even a sign of maturation that her new piece, "Whale," begins with young dancers behaving like young dancers. In front of a semicircle of folding chairs that could have been arranged for a school dance at the gym, the eight cast members bounce around as if on sugar highs, hurling themselves through the air, knocking one another over and singing about love. It's kind of fun. The fun doesn't last, alas, but what follows in the overlong work (90 minutes, including intermission) is significantly less affected and false than usual. Love is the theme, or rather intemperate desire and need. The audacious dancers hug at ramming speed. A woman humps a man's legs the way a dog might. He looks unsure how to respond. Among theatrical devices that call to mind pieces by other choreographers is a sequence of groping set to a club beat, suggesting group sex. (The score is by Jordan Chiolis, who plays it on laptop and drums with Robert Natale.) Ms. Miller's usual recipe of Ohad Naharin eccentricity appears to have been spiced with some Stephen Petronio eroticism. There are strobe lights. (The uncharacteristically unsubtle lighting is by Nicole Pearce.) There is nudity, though the naked man (Paul Vickers) is less sexual than infantile, nuzzling himself into pre existing embraces as a baby might with its parents.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Dance
Andy Samberg's cop comedy "Brooklyn Nine Nine" makes its sixth season premiere on NBC, and the first season of "Lodge 49" is available to stream on Hulu. BROOKLYN NINE NINE 9 p.m. on NBC. After Andy Samberg's police comedy was canned from Fox in May, NBC announced that it had picked up the show for its sixth season. The NBC premiere follows Samberg's Jake Peralta and Melissa Fumero's Amy Santiago on their honeymoon, while Captain Holt finds out whether he'll become the new N.Y.P.D. commissioner. TRUTH AND LIES: MONICA AND BILL 9 p.m. on ABC. It's been nearly 20 years since Congress attempted to impeach President Bill Clinton for charges that stemmed from the Monica Lewinsky scandal, but the bombshell political saga continues to reverberate across pop culture. Last year, it became the subject of the second season of Slate's "Slow Burn" podcast, and the events were also considered for an installment of Ryan Murphy's "American Crime Story" series. (The creator reconsidered.) On Thursday night, however, a two hour special on ABC takes a closer look at the scandal, including hours of phone calls Linda Tripp secretly recorded between herself and Lewinsky, who was then a White House intern. The special also features surveillance material and recordings gathered by the special counsel, and excerpts from Barbara Walters's 1999 interview with Lewinsky. The "Truth and Lies" series has delved into true crimes like the Menendez brothers murders and the Jonestown massacre.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Television
An optimistic outlook may be good for your health. In 2004 and again in 2008, researchers used a well validated questionnaire to rate 70,021 women on their optimism. The women were asked to indicate their degree of agreement with six statements (for example, "In uncertain times, I usually expect the best."). Researchers also collected information on educational and socioeconomic status, smoking, alcohol consumption, cancer, hypertension and other diseases and behavioral characteristics. The women's average age was 70 at the start of the project. The study, in the American Journal of Epidemiology, found significant associations between increasing levels of optimism and decreasing risks of death from cancer, heart disease, stroke, respiratory disease and infections. The associations were particularly strong for cardiovascular disease. Those in the quarter with the highest optimism scores had a nearly 40 percent lower risk for heart disease and stroke than those in the lowest quarter, even after controlling for other health factors. The associations with cancer were also significant, but weaker.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Well
Democracy, as a certain other news outlet has famously observed, dies in darkness. But if you just want to beat it up and humiliate it for an hour, simply stick it in a box. Or two boxes, to be more precise. The devices that CNN deployed Thursday night, in a prime time live drawing for the July 30 and 31 Democratic debates, turned a momentous and fraught election into a farcical combo of the N.B.A. draft and a Lotto drawing. The drawing took place in three rounds, separated by generous commercial breaks, and were analyzed before, after and during by Anderson Cooper and a seven person panel. Brianna Keilar, Victor Blackwell and Ana Cabrera got the job of shuffling clunky placards with candidate names and debate night dates, as if they were running the world's wonkiest three card monte game. They drew cards. They read cards. They drew. They read. The production crammed 60 seconds' worth of news into 60 minutes. Is it any surprise that CNN, the home of saturation coverage and interminable countdown clocks, would try to wring more airtime out of the debates? The first pair, hosted by NBC News in June, smashed ratings records for the Democratic primaries. They were the hit of the summer, the biggest thing on TV since Daenerys Targaryen went negative on King's Landing. Now CNN would get "Game of Podiums," albeit only for two nights. But ... what if there was a third? So CNN spun one out of thin, hot air. It concocted what the historian Daniel Boorstin , writing in "The Image," termed a "pseudo event" though in the quaint 1960s, Boorstin was writing about publicity firms passing off stunts to news outlets, not news outlets passing off stunts to us. So CNN's panel spent several excited segments speculating about a drawing that the network controlled and could have completed before the first ad break. "This is the luck of the draw, literally," Gloria Borger informed us. John King broke out his magic screen to highlight potential matchups by scrawling the word "Vs." Wolf Blitzer added whatever quotient of this is big news because Wolf Blitzer is here that his presence implies. It was a rare chance to see a network generate punditry and render it useless in real time. When the drawing was two thirds done, CNN's political director, David Chalian, declared, "Tuesday night is going to be moderate night!" Then, left leaning Senators Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren were added to the lineup, and suddenly it wasn't. This wasn't covering the news. This was manufacturing the news, while commenting on the dexterity and suspense with which CNN was creating it. It was political journalism as Penn Teller act. The network did have a rationalization for the special: "transparency." As Cooper explained, the best way to show suspicious voters there was no funny stuff going on was to shoot the whole process live, complete with overhead skycams. Maybe so; it didn't require an hour in prime time, though. (And times being what they are, you still needed only do a quick search on "CNN" and "rigged" to find debate draw truthers.) There's nothing wrong with a 24 hour news network devoting some of those endless hours to providing forums to a political audience hungry for them. CNN usefully held a string of early town halls, which gave candidates famous and obscure alike a valuable chance to make connections and explain themselves in depth. This, on the other hand, was an empty tease, a meta event that exploited viewers' antsiness for an election months before anyone will cast a vote. There must be events. Things have to happen, or seem to happen. You could say the whole stunt was harmless and silly and we'll all forget about it tomorrow. But that's exactly the problem. The election isn't meaningless. It isn't a harmless laugh. Those mammoth debate ratings are high for a reason, and it isn't the dazzling special effects. To the extent, as Chalian pointed out, that Democrats are paying closer attention to this primary than they had in 2008 and 2016, it's because of a feeling of crisis and civil chaos, a sense that toxic forces are roiling and reshaping America's character. One night before, on live TV, a rally crowd enthused by the president chanted that one of his political critics should be kicked out of the country.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Television
PARIS It's a swift ride by elevator from Galeries Lafayette's perfume section to the grand department store's 10th floor luxury farm with its signature scent of sage, rosemary and compost. The rooftop garden, lush with climbing plants, tomatoes, marigolds and strawberries, is part of a plan to transform city farming into a deluxe shopping attraction for customers yearning for an exclusive green refuge and perhaps a taste of beer brewed from the store's homegrown hops. For now, only select customers can experience this haute farm on the Right Bank with weekly reserved tours. Eventually, Galeries Lafayette intends to expand to other roof sections to host larger events and fashion shows among leafy, vertical walls of plants with a panoramic view of the Eiffel Tower and the city's opera house. This concept of organic retail farming is cropping up in other major cities in a proposed Melbourne shopping development in Australia and Dizengoff Center, a Tel Aviv mall. In France, the trend is accelerating with support from the city government, which started a 2016 campaign, Parisculteurs, with the goal of covering city rooftops and walls with almost 250 acres of vegetation by 2020.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Style
Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin with his wife, Louise Linton, and new dollar bills bearing his signature on Wednesday. Last month, Mr. Mnuchin said, "Obviously, the estate tax, I will concede, disproportionately helps rich people." Supporters and critics of the Republican tax bills argue over their effect on middle class Americans, but there is one group that everyone agrees would come out ahead: the millionaires and billionaires who have to reckon with the estate tax. As Steven Mnuchin, President Trump's Treasury secretary, bluntly declared last month, "Obviously, the estate tax, I will concede, disproportionately helps rich people." As it is now, the estate tax affects a small set of wealthy Americans, applying only when someone leaves assets worth more than 5.49 million to heirs. Together, parents can leave 11 million to their children without paying a penny in estate taxes. Last year, for example, more than 2.6 million people died in the United States. Of the estates filed with the Internal Revenue Service, 5,219 or 0.2 percent of the total were large enough to qualify for the tax. The kind of households that could potentially owe money, however, include Mr. Trump's, Mr. Mnuchin's, and those of several cabinet members and advisers, including Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, Secretary of State Rex W. Tillerson, Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao, Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue, Housing Secretary Ben Carson and Gary Cohn, chief of the National Economic Council. Mr. Trump has stated, incorrectly, that the tax is crushing "millions of small businesses and the American farmer." In reality, only about 80 small businesses and farms would fall under the estate tax tent this year, according to the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center. The Republicans' repeated success in whittling away at the number of people subject to the tax is both a marvel of marketing with its relabeling as a "death tax" and a testament to the outsize influence of wealthy donors on policy. The modern version has been around for more than 90 years. One of its primary advocates was not a soapbox socialist but a Republican. Theodore Roosevelt, the first 20th century president to endorse a tax on luxe inheritances, was the son of a wealthy socialite and an industrial baron. He warned that passing vast fortunes from one generation to the next not only undermines the recipients but "is of great and genuine detriment to the community at large." Over the past couple of decades, Republican efforts to shield more prosperous Americans from the estate tax have been increasingly successful. In 2001, estates worth more than 675,000 (nearly 1 million in today's dollars) could be taxed at a top rate of 55 percent. Now, the top tax rate is 40 percent of the amount exceeding 5.49 million. The effective average rate turns out to be much lower, less than 17 percent, according to the Tax Policy Center because of that multimillion dollar exemption up front. Opponents of the tax have put a lot of money into fighting it over the years, without encountering much pushback, Mr. Graetz said, even from sectors that could be hurt by the change, like charitable organizations (since tax deductible contributions are rendered less beneficial to rich donors) and insurance companies (whose policies become less essential to provide heirs with immediate liquidity or cash).	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Economy
A copy of the first edition of Newton's 'Principia,' owned in the 18th century by a French mathematician. It had a reputation for unreadability. As its author walked by, a student at the University of Cambridge in England was said to have remarked: "There goes the man that writt a book that neither he nor anybody else understands." Its hundreds of equations, diagrams and obscure references didn't help, nor that it was written in Latin, the scholarly language of the day. Isaac Newton's "Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica," or Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy, published in London in 1687, nonetheless went on to become a scientific colossus. It unlocked the universe with its discovery of gravity and laws of planetary motion, and laid out a method of inquiry that became the gold standard. It was known as simply the Principia, the Principles. Now, historians have discovered that the first, limited edition of the seemingly incomprehensible book in fact achieved a surprisingly wide distribution throughout the educated world. An earlier census of the book, published in 1953, identified 189 copies worldwide. But a new survey by two scholars has found nearly 200 more 386 copies in all, including ones far beyond England in Budapest; Oslo; Prague; Zagreb, Croatia; the Vatican; and Gdansk, Poland. Mordechai Feingold and Andrej Svorencik, writing in the current issue of Annals of Science, a quarterly journal, said the unexpected total suggests the book had "a much larger print run than commonly assumed" as well as "a wider, and competent, readership." Dr. Feingold is a professor of the history of science and the humanities at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena and Dr. Svorencik, his former student, is now a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Mannheim in Germany. The two scholars, by analyzing ownership marks and notes scribbled in some of the books, as well as related letters and documents, found evidence contradicting the common idea that the first edition interested only a select group of expert mathematicians. They said the finding also implies that current historians have underplayed the early impact of Newton's ideas. It necessitates, they write, "a major refinement of our understanding of the contribution of Newtonianism to Enlightenment science." How do the scholars know where the volumes were during the Enlightenment? Couldn't the books have subsequently found their way centuries later to such places as Gdansk or Zagreb? The answer, they said, was finding clues in the books themselves, as well as library records that helped establish their provenance and later movements. Their paper in the Annals of Science, nearly 100 pages long, sketches out the known travels for each of the 386 books over the ages. In a Caltech report on the discovery, Dr. Svorencik said the hunt had its origin in a paper he wrote for Dr. Feingold. The student received a master's degree from Caltech in 2008. Dr. Svorencik grew up in Slovakia and wrote in his Caltech paper about the Principia's distribution in Central Europe in particular, the Hapsburg Empire. His main question was whether first editions could be traced to his native country. "The census done in the 1950s did not list any copies from Slovakia, the Czech Republic, Poland or Hungary," he recalled. "This is understandable as the census was done after the Iron Curtain descended, which made tracing copies very difficult." To Dr. Svorencik's surprise, he found many copies. Dr. Feingold then suggested they turn his project into a systematic search for first editions. Over a dozen years, their endeavor turned up some 200 previously unidentified copies in 27 countries, including 35 in Central Europe. The scholars also found lost books. A bookseller in Italy was discovered to possess a copy stolen from a library in Germany half a century earlier. In an interview, Dr. Svorencik said a big surprise came early in the hunt during his sweep through Germany. "The previous census reported only three German copies, but I found nearly 20," he said. The finding pointed to "substantial gaps in the existing record." The hardest part of the search, he added, was gaining access to privately owned copies, as well as obtaining financial support that let the scholars travel to libraries and places where they could personally examine the first editions and extract vital information. Even so, Dr. Svorencik said, the long hunt gave him the opportunity to personally inspect a number of the extremely rare books. "Each copy that I have examined is unique," he reported. "Copies differ in their binding, condition, size, annotations, printing differences and even scent." The scholars hope that their search, which they call preliminary, will produce new clues about other copies tucked away in libraries, as well as with book dealers and private owners. "We decided to publish our census as a means to reinvigorate the project," Dr. Svorencik said in the interview. The goal now, he added, is to "alert librarians and private owners to the census in hope to receive information regarding other unknown copies." First editions of the Principia, the scholars say, today sell for between 300,000 and 3,000,000 on the black market and at auction houses such as Christie's and Sotheby's. They estimate that the book's first edition consisted of some 600 and possibly as many as 750 copies hundreds more than the 250 or so that historians had previously assumed. "We are still searching for copies," Dr. Feingold said in an email. He called the hunt "exciting and laborious" and, like Dr. Svorencik, said he hoped news of their discovery would help generate new information about extant copies of the scientific masterpiece.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Science
Written and directed by Sara Zatz and Kirya Traber in collaboration with the performers, the show takes the form of a staged reading, with each cast member seated at a music stand holding a script. They tell their own stories and help to tell one another's, their narratives interweaving. Some of the performers have stage experience, but they are playing themselves, and all are unvarnished enough that their charm comes from their everydayness. Syl (Andrea) Egerton, an 18 year old from Queens by way of Europe, mentions being uncertain how to answer when a video game asked him, in middle school: "Are you a boy or are you a girl?" Mohammad Murtaza, also 18, also from Queens, recalls how he hid his depression from his Pakistani immigrant parents, fearing their reaction. De Andra Pryce, a Brooklyn 18 year old, speaks of reconciling her law enforcement ambitions with her blackness. Others tell stories of parental neglect and determined self reliance, of artistic awakening and unexpected love. Occasionally, one asks another, "What would you say to your younger self?" It's a good question, but also one that skates right up to the line where eat your spinach theater begins. This expertly constructed show manages never to cross that divide. Presented by the New Victory Theater at the Duke on 42nd Street, "Generation NYZ" is part of the "Undesirable Elements" series that Mr. Chong has been making since 1992. His excellent 2015 show "Beyond Sacred: Voices of Muslim Identity," which harnessed the stories of young New Yorkers to erode anti Muslim bigotry, also came out of that series.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Theater
This was supposed to be a good sports weekend. A great sports weekend. One of the best of the year. College basketball conference championship games and the revealing of the men's N.C.A.A. tournament bracket the unofficial start of March Madness. The final rounds of golf's fifth major. A boxing title fight. The home debut of Inter Miami, David Beckham's M.L.S. team. N.B.A. and N.H.L. games with playoff implications. A full Premier League slate. Instead, with the near worldwide cancellation of games because of the coronavirus, the present and immediate future are sports free. Which is especially troublesome for the few dozen sports only cable channels. On Friday, the day after a parade of sports leagues announced suspensions or cancellations of their seasons, no sports programs were among the 50 most watched on cable, according to ShowBuzzDaily. The week before, sports programs made up 10 of the top 50, and seven of the top 15. ESPN has nine domestic cable channels, plus a streaming service, so it has over 200 hours of programming each day built specifically around a live sports calendar that no longer exists. "Our programming team is hard at work to fill the holes on our networks, and we will provide updates when finalized," an ESPN communications executive wrote in an email announcing Saturday's significant program changes. ESPN has been sending out new schedules a day ahead of time. That seems about as far out as it is possible to plan for a reality that changes each day, each minute. With little time to plan alternative programming or even to update some channel guides most sports networks are opting for older versions of their originally scheduled programming, borrowing the strategy endemic to ESPN Classic. CBS ran the Big Ten men's basketball conference championship games from 2018 and 2019 this weekend. NBCSN showed a Premier League match from earlier this season. Fox played the movie "Whiskey Tango Foxtrot" instead of an M.L.S. match. Fox Sports has canceled all of its studio shows through next week. "SportsCenter" has gained prominence in ESPN's lineup. Sports documentaries, like those from ESPN's "30 for 30" series, are in heavy rotation. They are not live sports, but at least they aren't rerun sports. The strength of live sports on television is in the very name: They are live. They are appointment viewing. They cannot be missed. 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. In a DVR and streaming world, sports are practically the only thing that needs to be viewed on a specific channel at a specific time. If a network has enough live sports media rights, cable companies are all but forced to carry it and to pay a hefty monthly fee for the privilege of offering the games to their customers and advertisers have to pay large sums of money to reach the vast audience of sports fans. Live sports are the star of the show, and the surrounding programming is just window dressing. Regional sports networks, which show the vast majority of N.B.A., M.L.B. and N.H.L. games in the United States, take this to the extreme. Most barely bother to offer compelling daytime programming. The networks know they are indispensable because of the three hours each night they show your favorite team's game why run up costs during the other 21 hours of the day? Even at ESPN, FS1, NBCSN and other networks that try with varying degrees of success to persuade viewers to watch programming that isn't live action, people generally understand the reality. "The majority of the costs, the majority of the ratings, and the majority of the revenue is always going to be from the games," Brian Windhorst, an ESPN analyst who appears on a number of the company's shows, told me two years ago. "If we could put games on 24/7, there wouldn't even be us." Then came the sobering kicker. "We're just filling times between the games," he said. So what happens when the sports are all filler and reruns? The second a game ends, its value drops precipitously. As programming, live sports aren't the brand new car that loses 10 percent of its value the second it is driven off the lot. Live sports are the brand new car that gets totaled by a speeding semi truck the second it is driven off the lot. In other words, nobody wants to watch sports when they already know the outcome. Scripted programming, on the other hand, is still watchable and therefore valuable years or even decades later. Streaming services pay around 85 million annually to show the sitcom "Friends" and 100 million annually to show "The Office." "Friends" went off the air 16 years ago, and "The Office" ended in 2013. People will watch these shows years later, and then rewatch them and rewatch them. What makes sports so enthralling the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat, to steal a phrase from ABC's "Wide World of Sports" is the same thing that makes sports channels so useless right now. "Sports is really good in the moment," Reed Hastings, the chief executive of Netflix, said a few years ago. "So you want to watch the game, but the afterlife of a given show is quite small." Almost alone among sports leagues, Ultimate Fighting Championship opted not to cancel its competition this weekend in Brazil, but to instead hold fights without fans in attendance. Dana White, the U.F.C. president, said he went forward after consulting with the White House. Whether or not this was just risky, or highly irresponsible, remains to be seen. But for the sports fan, it was manna from heaven: Something live. The fighters dispensed with hamming up their entrances. The ring announcer bellowed their names into a cavernous nothingness. Grunts and punches were clearly audible. Yet when Charles Oliveira guillotined Kevin Lee to end the main event, I felt the familiar thrill of experiencing the unexpected for the only time all weekend. ESPN's "Bottom Line," that comforting scroll of data, transactional news and the churning of the sports world all around me, had changed. There was news about a few college basketball players who were entering the transfer portal, and of Rick Pitino's hiring by Iona. But mostly the scroll was an inescapable reminder of the enormous challenge in the weeks and months ahead for the world: Rudy Gobert donating 500,000 to coronavirus relief. Donovan Mitchell in isolation, feeling fine. Trevor Bauer speaking about virus stoppage. Teams assisting arena workers during the hiatus. Japan's prime minister: Olympics on as planned. Unidentified Seattle player has coronavirus. Baseball, Pro Football Halls of Fame close.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Sports
The Screen Actors Guild Awards took place at the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles. See what celebrities like Michelle Williams, Emma Stone, Viola Davis, Rami Malek and more wore.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Fashion & Style
Our Milky Way galaxy is strewn with billions of planets, alien worlds still unseen by human eyes at least for now. Only three decades ago we didn't know if there were planets beyond our own solar system. In 1995, astronomers discovered that a star in the constellation Pegasus was wobbling back and forth, tugged by the gravity of an unseen planet, an exoplanet, a hot and hellish world unfit for life as we know it. The wobble method of planet hunting relies on sensitive spectroscopes. As an orbiting planet tugs on its star, the starlight we see shifts from blue to red and back again. The Kepler space telescope was launched in 2009. It found thousands of exoplanets by staring at a small patch of the Milky Way. Kepler didn't look for wobbles. It looked for small dips in starlight, when a planet crosses in front of its star. Kepler found systems of planets, groups of worlds swirling around their star, lonely planets encased in ice, other worlds scorched by fire, newborn planets shrouded in dust, waterworlds, and planets swept by global storms, planets dancing in orbit with two stars, or even three, and even planets from other galaxies that were swallowed up by the Milky Way. In recent years, astronomers have taken the first direct images of exoplanets, blurry pixels of alien landscapes. We've discovered a free floating planet not bound to any star. And we've seen signs of planets being born, infant worlds scoring dark rings in the dust around their stars. Now a new planet hunter will join the search. On April 16, 2018, the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite, or TESS, will lift off from Cape Canaveral. TESS will spend two years scrutinizing the entire sky, watching nearby stars for minute dips in brightness caused by a nearby alien world. TESS' four cameras cover a swath of the sky 96 degrees tall. TESS will divide the sky into sections like the slices of an orange and stare at each section for 27 days, then move on to the next. After two years we will have covered the whole sky. TESS will fly an unusual orbit, swooping as far out as the moon every two weeks before falling back close to Earth and dumping a torrent of data to eager astronomers. TESS is a target hunter. The planets it finds can be studied by the next generation of telescopes on Earth and in space. With luck TESS will discover worlds suitable for lakes and oceans, with rich atmospheres and chemical signals we can detect. Their gases could tell us whether these planets are habitable or inhabited by the likes of us. The Milky Way holds more planets than stars and a diversity that we still haven't begun to plumb In the search for life and meaning in the cosmos, our own world is still the gold standard.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Science
Credit...Diwang Valdez for The New York Times ALPHARETTA, Ga. For the last four years, 21 Savage has been one of the stalwarts of Atlanta rap, a rising star who has collaborated with Drake and Cardi B, among many others, and become one of the signature voices in the city. His December album "I Am I Was" spent two weeks at the top of the Billboard chart, and his collaboration with Post Malone, "Rockstar," was nominated for two Grammys. With that success has come more visibility. In late January, he performed his single "A Lot" on "The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon," adding a new verse in which he rapped about children being separated from their parents at the border. He remained in ICE custody at the Irwin County Detention Center in South Georgia until Feb. 13, when he was released on 100,000 bond. The next day, he was in a hotel room in a suburb north of Atlanta, surrounded by several members of his legal team. Dressed in somber all black, he spoke at length about his childhood, his time in detention, the Grammy Awards ceremony he missed and how growing up without legal status shaped the person he became. These are edited excerpts from the conversation. Do you remember first arriving here when you were young? Yeah, everything was like, bigger. I come from the poor side of London. My grandma house is real skinny. So when we first moved here, we was living in the hood still, but it was, like, way bigger. The toilet size, the bathroom size, it was just different. But I fell in love with it. It's all I know. Did you have a British accent? Yeah, I had a accent, 'cause my first day of school they was making fun of me so I beat somebody up, and they was calling me "taekwondo kid." My mama whupped me, she made me stay in the house. So I know I had a accent, but I been here 20 years I don't know what happened to it. Do you remember when you became aware that your status wasn't settled? Probably like the age when you start to get your driver's license. I couldn't never take driver's ed, I couldn't never go get a job. About that age. Was it something you wanted to get taken care of? It felt impossible. It got to the point where I just learned to live without it. 'Cause I still ain't got it, I'm 26, and I'm rich. So, just learned to live without it. Like a lot of other immigrants. We struggled but we couldn't get food stamps, we couldn't get government assistance. I learned how to live without. You know in school, when you get to a certain age, your clothes make you popular? I learned how to be popular without that. People respected me just for me. Do you think the situation taught you to carry yourself a certain way? It made me who I am. I wouldn't write it no other way if I had the choice. If they said, "Hey, you could start your life over and make yourself a citizen," I wouldn't have never did it. I still want to go through this right here 'cause it made me who I am, it made me strong. Were you aware that there was a possibility that at some point you might not be able to stay in the country? Yeah, for sure. It's like my worst nightmare. That's why it's always been trying to get corrected. Even if you got money, it ain't easy. It ain't no favoritism, and I respect it, I honestly respect it. It would be kind of messed up if they treated rich immigrants better than poor immigrants, I think. How draining was it being in detention, especially with the uncertainty of how long it was going to last? It really wasn't jail, it was the possibility of me not being able to live in this country no more that I've been living in my whole life. All that just going through your head, like, "Damn, I love my house, I ain't gonna be able to go in my house no more? I ain't gonna be able to go to my favorite restaurant that I been going to for 20 years straight?" That's the most important thing. If you tell me, "I'll give you 20 million to go stay somewhere you ain't never stayed," I'd rather be broke. I'll sit in jail to fight to live where I've been living my whole life. I'm sure you were spending a lot of time in your head. I could have made myself go crazy. I think they really try to break you. It's like we gonna put you in jail and we gonna make you fight your case the slowest you can fight it so that you just want to go home. Nobody want to sit in jail, especially if they don't have the money to fight it and they ain't been to court in three months. What do you think has happened in your life that gave you a different perspective? It was what was at stake. It's like, I got three kids, my mama, everything that I know is here in Atlanta. I'm not leaving Atlanta without a fight. We gon' fight all the way till the last day even if that mean I sit in jail for 10 years. Were you upset about missing the Grammys? Nah, I was stressed about getting out. The Grammys is the Grammys, but when you in jail, the Grammys is nothing. I got to watch it. By that time they had put a TV in my room. Was the original plan that you'd be part of the Post Malone performance? Yeah I was supposed to perform. He wore the 21 Savage shirt, so I felt like I was there. I don't care what nobody say everybody in that building who's connected to this culture, I was on their mind in some type of way. That's all that mattered. They didn't have to say it 'cause everybody knew it. It was in the air. All the people that was there, they said the words in other places and that matter just as much. All the big artists was vocal about the situation, so I was appreciative. Even the memes. They didn't stress you out? Some of them was funny I ain't gonna lie. I was appreciative of that. I coulda been another person who just, "He locked up? Damn," and nobody said nothing. Some people, I see why they was mad. It ain't about the meme, it's about the bigger picture. But I done been through way worse things in my life than somebody putting me on a meme. I been shot what is a meme? A meme is nothing. That's something on the internet that I can do like this turns over phone and never see again. I look at bullet scars every day, so it's like, a meme, bro? Do you feel a responsibility to speak up about your circumstances? Yeah, I feel a responsibility. My situation is important 'cause I represent poor black Americans and I represent poor immigrant Americans. You gotta think about all the millions of people that ain't 21 Savage that's in 21 Savage shoes. Do you feel an urge to put some of this experience into music? Not right now, 'cause I feel like me putting it into music got me in this situation, kind of.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Music
At the Salk Institute in La Jolla, Calif., scientists are trying to get time to run backward. Biological time, that is. In the first attempt to reverse aging by reprogramming the genome, they have rejuvenated the organs of mice and lengthened their life spans by 30 percent. The technique, which requires genetic engineering, cannot be applied directly to people, but the achievement points toward better understanding of human aging and the possibility of rejuvenating human tissues by other means. The Salk team's discovery, reported in the Thursday issue of the journal Cell, is "novel and exciting," said Jan Vijg, an expert on aging at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York. Leonard Guarente, who studies the biology of aging at M.I.T., said, "This is huge," citing the novelty of the finding and the opportunity it creates to slow down, if not reverse, aging. "It's a pretty remarkable finding, and if it holds up it could be quite important in the history of aging research," Dr. Guarente said. The finding is based on the heterodox idea that aging is not irreversible and that an animal's biological clock can in principle be wound back to a more youthful state. The aging process is clocklike in the sense that a steady accumulation of changes eventually degrades the efficiency of the body's cells. In one of the deepest mysteries of biology, the clock's hands are always set back to zero at conception: However old the parents and their reproductive cells, a fertilized egg is free of all marks of age. Ten years ago, the Japanese biologist Shinya Yamanaka amazed researchers by identifying four critical genes that reset the clock of the fertilized egg. The four genes are so powerful that they will reprogram even the genome of skin or intestinal cells back to the embryonic state. Dr. Yamanaka's method is now routinely used to change adult tissue cells into cells very similar to the embryonic stem cells produced in the first few divisions of a fertilized egg. Scientists next began to wonder if the four Yamanaka genes could be applied not just to cells in glassware but to a whole animal. The results were disastrous. As two groups of researchers reported in 2013 and 2014, the animals all died, some because their adult tissue cells had lost their identity and others from cancer. Embryonic cells are primed for rapid growth, which easily becomes uncontrolled. But at the Salk Institute, Juan Carlos Izpisua Belmonte had been contemplating a different approach. He has long been interested in regeneration, the phenomenon in which certain animals, like lizards and fish, can regenerate lost tails or limbs. The cells near the lost appendage revert to a stage midway between an embryonic cell, which is open to all fates, and an adult cell, which is committed to being a particular type of cell, before rebuilding the missing limb. This partial reprogramming suggested to him that reprogramming is a stepwise process, and that a small dose of the Yamanaka factors might rejuvenate cells without the total reprogramming that converts cells to the embryonic state. With Alejandro Ocampo and other Salk researchers, Dr. Izpisua Belmonte has spent five years devising ways to deliver a nonlethal dose of Yamanaka factors to mice. The solution his team developed was to genetically engineer mice with extra copies of the four Yamanaka genes, and to have the genes activated only when the mice received a certain drug in their drinking water, applied just two days a week. The Salk team worked first with mice that age prematurely, so as to get quick results. "What we saw is that the animal has fewer signs of aging, healthier organs, and at the end of the experiment we could see they had lived 30 percent longer than control mice," Dr. Izpisua Belmonte said. Juan Carlos Izpisua Belmonte of the Salk Institute in La Jolla, Calif., has long been interested in regeneration, the phenomenon in which certain animals, like lizards and fish, can regenerate lost tails or limbs. The team also saw improved organ health in normal mice but, because the mice are still living, could not yet say if longevity was extended. Dr. Izpisua Belmonte believes these beneficial effects have been obtained by resetting the clock of the aging process. The clock is created by the epigenome, the system of proteins that clads the cell's DNA and controls which genes are active and which are suppressed. When an egg develops into a whole animal, the epigenome plays a critical role by letting a heart cell, say, activate just the genes specific to its role but switching off all the genes used by other types of cells. This process lets the embryo's cells differentiate into all the various types of cells required by the adult body. The epigenome is also involved throughout life in maintaining each cell and letting it switch genes on and off as required for its housekeeping duties. The epigenome itself is controlled by agents that add or subtract chemical groups, known as marks, to its proteins. Only in the last few years have biologists come to realize that the state of the epigenome may be a major cause of aging. If the epigenome is damaged, perhaps by accumulating too many marks, the cell's efficiency is degraded. Dr. Izpisua Belmonte sees the epigenome as being like a manuscript that is continually edited. "At the end of life there are many marks and it is difficult for the cell to read them," he said. What the Yamanaka genes are doing in his mice, he believes, is eliminating the extra marks, thus reverting the cell to a more youthful state. The Salk biologists "do indeed provide what I believe to be the first evidence that partial reprogramming of the genome ameliorated symptoms of tissue degeneration and improved regenerative capacity," Dr. Vijg said. But he cautioned the fast aging mice used in the study might not be fully representative of ordinary aging. Dr. Guarente said it was more likely that the Yamanaka genes were not erasing the epigenomic marks directly, but rather were activating the genes which are responsible for the immense health and vitality of embryonic cells. This gene activation is a natural function of the Yamanaka factors. It is these embryonic pro health genes that are rejuvenating the tissues in the mice, Dr. Guarente suggested, and causing changes in the epigenome through their activity. Thomas A. Rando, an expert on stem cells and aging at Stanford, said that it should be possible in theory to uncouple the differentiation program and the aging process, and that "if that's what's happening, this is the first demonstration of that." Dr. Izpisua Belmonte said he was testing drugs to see if he could achieve the same rejuvenation as with the Yamanaka factors. The use of chemicals "will be more translatable to human therapies and clinical applications," he said.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Science
Q. Ever since I upgraded the software, my iPhone freaks out whenever I'm in a cab because it thinks I'm driving. I'm tired of tapping the "I'm not driving" button how do I tell the phone I don't drive? A. The recent iOS 11 software update includes a new safety component of the "Do Not Disturb" feature for silencing notifications one that blocks most calls and alerts to the phone while you are driving. If enabled, the new safeguards kick in automatically when the iPhone makes a Bluetooth connection to the car's dashboard or its motion sensors pick up movement and acceleration similar to that of riding in an automobile. The iPhone can also mistake the forward motion of a train or a bus for riding in a car. And as you have discovered, taxi passengers may also notice their phones are temporarily disabled unless the Do Not Disturb control is switched off.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Technology
Beauty sleep is for the weak. Fashion week starts earlier than usual today, with Loewe kicking off the day at Maison Unesco in the Seventh Arrondissement at 9:30 a.m. Jonathan Anderson has made the place his Loewe home away from home, and the concrete back garden where he has shown his last two collections is lovely (assuming the rain abates). Early arrival is advised, all ye lucky ticketed: Security is strict. From there, it's off to Chalayan, from arch conceptualist Hussein Chalayan, then Issey Miyake for the Japanese house's staunch loyalists. In the afternoon, expect crowds to mass at Dior. Raf Simons has left the building, putting the house in the care of two head designers, Lucie Meier and Serge Ruffieux, while the search for his successor goes on, and this will be their first ready to wear collection since his departure. (They showed a couture collection in January.) Big name creative director or not, it's still museum worthy, the house would like to remind you. It's still being shown at the Louvre, after all. Day shades into evening at Undercover, always a Paris highlight for bonkers theatrics. Digest those over a quick drink before Ungaro at 7:30 and Yohji Yamamoto, deathless master of the black shroud, at 8:30 p.m.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Fashion & Style
The archetype of the Olympian is evolving, as evidenced by the potential arrival of a new sort of athletic competitor at the Summer Games: B boys and B girls. As part of an effort to appeal to younger fans, the organizing committee for the 2024 Games in Paris announced on Thursday that it would recommend break dancing yes, the street dance form with moves like flares, headspins and windmills as a new sport to be added to its program. The proposal which also includes a recommendation that skateboarding, surfing and climbing, which will be introduced next year at the Tokyo Games, remain on the program will be formally presented to the International Olympic Committee executive board at the end of March. The I.O.C. is not expected to confirm the events program for the 2024 Games until December 2020. Break dancing was enthusiastically received when it made its debut at the Youth Olympic Games last summer in Buenos Aires. The eventual medalists there hailed from Russia, France, Japan, South Korea, Canada, Italy, Austria, Vietnam and Argentina a vivid sign perhaps of how extensively the activity has spread since its beginnings decades ago in New York City.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Sports
The actor Russell Harvard sat in an armchair, draped in a blue robe and looking surly. It was late August in a rehearsal room at Playwrights Horizons on 42nd Street, and he was in the middle of an emotionally charged hospital scene. In Craig Lucas's "I Was Most Alive With You," Mr. Harvard ("Tribes," "Fargo") plays a gay, deaf recovering alcoholic named Knox and so does the actor Harold Foxx, who stood on a raised platform behind him. As Mr. Harvard delivered Knox's lines in English downstage, Mr. Foxx performed them in American Sign Language upstage. They are just two of the 14 actors in the enormously complex Off Broadway premiere of this ambitious bilingual play, a multigenerational drama that aims to be equally accessible to deaf and hearing audience members at every moment of every performance. There is one featured cast member and one shadow cast member for each of the seven characters. The shadow cast performs entirely in A.S.L.; the featured cast, in a mix of English and sign. And the artists themselves? The director, Tyne Rafaeli, said the ratio is about 50 50, deaf and hearing and that's how the rehearsal felt, with its layers of conversations occurring in English and A.S.L. When Ms. Rafaeli had something to say to the group, she hopped up on a chair so that everyone including three A.S.L. interpreters deployed through the room would have a clear view as she spoke, mainly in English. When Lisa Emery, who plays Knox's mother, grew frustrated about her A.S.L. ability, the director of artistic sign language, Sabrina Dennison, offered encouragement through an interpreter, Candace Broecker Penn. And when Mr. Lucas used a colorful English vulgarity to describe a chaotic moment in the play, Ms. Penn rendered it instantly, vividly. A few days after that rehearsal, Ms. Rafaeli, Mr. Lucas and Ms. Emery spoke separately by phone about the production, now in previews for a Sept. 24 opening. Ms. Dennison, who recently joined the shadow cast, Mr. Foxx and Mr. Harvard, who has some hearing but whose first language is A.S.L., spoke by email. These are edited excepts. TYNE RAFAELI We had to set some ground rules very quickly, because obviously any rehearsal room dealing with bilingual communication is going to be complicated, but when one of those languages is a visual language and not a sonic language, it becomes even more imperative. A very fundamental rule, which seems crazily simplistic but has proved to be enormously helpful, is that there aren't any phones allowed in the room. Because we have already two worlds. We can't have a third one. RUSSELL HARVARD I come from a deaf family, and so when bits of information are being exchanged within the family, I get it immediately. I've become so accustomed to that, it becomes harder for me to adapt when side conversations are spoken or exchanged among other actors who don't sign. But patience is a virtue, so I try to put my frustration aside, because I love my job. I have worked with an all deaf cast and crew previously for a film and that was a golden token. LISA EMERY When you're rehearsing and you get an idea and you start talking about it, you realize half the people in the room are completely shut out of what you're saying. So now we have to raise our hands, deaf and hearing, and be recognized, and then there's a big flurry of hands so that everybody knows that one person is talking. It's horrible if somebody's signing and trying to express themselves and then I start talking. Just sort of rude and oblivious. CRAIG LUCAS We did several workshops of the play at Playwrights so that the actors could start learning their American Sign Language. It's labor intensive. RAFAELI It was very new to me. Just the fact that it's a gestural, embodied language that takes connection between hands and facial gestures, it is inherently theatrical and inherently poetic. HAROLD FOXX When there are two languages in a play, and it's the first time for some actors, the work in the rehearsal room can be complex. For us deaf actors, some of us have worked together before, so we know what it takes to come together with hearing actors and make it work. We don't expect hearing actors to be fluent in A.S.L. LUCAS This is not a representation of the English language. This is another language with different diction and different sentence structures and syntax. It's a very complex language actually, and very hard to learn. I'm the slowest learner in the room when it comes to A.S.L. EMERY There are certain things that just elude me completely. The sign for Knox, my son's name, is a K and an X, and I have to practice it every day, like on the bus. I have to just keep doing it, because I stumble on it. I only have really the one speech, but it's taken me weeks and weeks to get it down. It's really fun to talk with your hands. And as frustrating as the day is long the two things, mixed. HARVARD It's always a pleasure to see actors learning A.S.L. for the role. It's harder when actors have to simultaneously speak and sign the lines. I applaud them because it's a talent. In real life, you don't speak Spanish and English at the same time. SABRINA DENNISON The shadow actors will all be signing fully in American Sign Language, while the characters in the play will sign as their characters would (some fluently, some haltingly, some signing and speaking). The set will be bi level so that both are happening simultaneously. EMERY To be an actor and know that there is somebody who is signing behind you who is playing the same character as you there has to be an awareness of "can she see me so that she can sign what I'm saying?" HARVARD They're above us on the upper stage, which makes it quite challenging because some shadow actors who are completely deaf have to stay in sync with the actors on the lower level. FOXX My job is to shadow Knox. Since Russell Harvard is already fluent in A.S.L., I don't need to sign at all until he speaks in English. That's when I start signing for the character. We have to rely on body language, timing or lip read. It takes a lot of practice.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Theater
Don McDonagh, a fervent supporter of experimental choreographers as a dance critic for The New York Times and the author of critical biographies of George Balanchine and Martha Graham, died on Dec. 10 in Manhattan. He was 87. Min Zhu, his executor and friend, said the cause was cancer. Contributing reviews and articles prolifically to The Times from 1967 to 1978, Mr. McDonagh was one of the first critics to support the dancemaker Twyla Tharp when she began showing her provocative early conceptual work in the mid 1960s. (She was known to drop raw eggs on the floor during a performance.) "He was a fair, intelligent supporter," Ms. Tharp recalled in a phone interview, adding, "This was extremely generous to me as a young person." Mr. McDonagh's biography "George Balanchine," published in 1983, offered a detailed, analytical study of individual ballets by the New York City Ballet's founding choreographer while providing illuminating insights to those new to his work.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Dance
See the full list of winners from the Golden Globes ceremony. The Golden Globes on Sunday featured a number of upsets and rousing thank yous as well as flubbed intros and snoozy speeches. Here are the highlights and lowlights as we saw them: After the Golden Globes hosts Sandra Oh and Andy Samberg delivered a largely safe opening, going out of their way to praise the work of Hollywood, Oh hit a surprisingly emotional note about representation in the film and television industry and gains in diversity onscreen and off. She was referring to several films this awards season that feature people of color, and her hosting gig was itself a barrier breaker: she was the first Asian woman to front a major American awards show. Oh told the crowd that she had signed on as host because "I wanted to be here to look out into this audience and witness this moment of change." She acknowledged that the progress could be temporary, saying, "I'm not fooling myself. Next year could be different." But, she concluded, "right now, this moment is real." As if to prove her point, the Globes rewarded a notably diverse group of actors, directors and stories. Sopan Deb Everyone expected the Golden Globe for best actress in a drama to go to Lady Gaga for "A Star Is Born" including Glenn Close apparently. When Close's name was read instead, the look of total surprise on her face provided one of the night's most memorable moments. She went on to deliver a heartfelt personal speech, connecting the struggle of her movie character a thwarted writer who lives in the shadow of her Nobel winning husband with her own mother, who, Close said, had a tendency to sublimate herself to Close's father. Between her speech and Olivia Colman's equally gangbusters acceptance for best actress in a comedy (for "The Favourite"), the super stacked best actress race at the Oscars just got even more interesting. Kyle Buchanan Second Most Shocking Win (Especially to 'A Star Is Born' Fans) Going into Sunday's ceremony, it seemed like "A Star Is Born" had a strong chance to take three top Globes. When Lady Gaga lost to Close, it was a shock but it didn't seem like an omen. And when "Bohemian Rhapsody's" Rami Malek beat out "A Star Is Born's" Bradley Cooper for best actor in a drama, that seemed understandable. After all, Malek's performance as Freddie Mercury had been widely praised. But when "Bohemian Rhapsody" was named best drama, "A Star Is Born" fans were not pleased. On social media there were digs at "Bohemian Rhapsody's" credited director, Bryan Singer, who was replaced on the film and wasn't thanked onstage Sunday. Perhaps one Twitter user put it best: "Is this the real life? Is this just fantasy? How did best picture go to Bohemian Rhapsody? Open your eyes, look up to the skies and see Gaga deserved more than 1 win and 2 nominees." Stephanie Goodman Read our critic on "Bohemian Rhapsody" vs. "A Star Is Born." Sandra Oh noted that she saw change, but it was mostly back to business on the fashion front. To be sure, there were some suggestive trends. Julia Roberts wore the pants. Suffragist white was the biggest color of the night though more provocative were the bondage straps that wound round the exposed waists of Rosamund Pike and Thandie Newton as if to suggest all stars are at the mercy of the red carpet rules. Yet as they chafe against the demands of the carpet, they still seem unwilling to fight it. That may be why the fun with fashion approach was left largely to the men, who seemed increasingly disinclined to play by the old rules. Instead there was color (Idris Elba, Spike Lee), print (Darren Criss's florals), drama (Billy Porter's bejeweled cape lined in bright pink silk), gender fluidity (Cody Fern), and just plain old weirdness (Timothee Chalamet's Louis Vuitton "embroidered bib"). Vanessa Friedman Read more about the fashion at the Golden Globes. See more photos from the red carpet. "The Americans," which ended its six season run last year, had been a critical darling since its debut, but it never seemed to get much award show love a shame, and a dumb shame at that. This was its last chance and thus a real relief when it won for best drama. Oddly, that award was handed out early in the telecast and without any buildup, so it seemed abrupt and hurried, but a win's a win. Margaret Lyons Read about the finale of "The Americans." Not only was Oh a host, she was also a winner. She picked up a well deserved award for her work on "Killing Eve," and she seemed overjoyed and still nowhere near as happy as her elated father, who leapt to his feet, clapping and beaming. It was completely charming, of course, but also a much needed jolt of authentic happiness. Happy dads for all. Margaret Lyons Read about hosts winning awards at the Globes. Television has always felt like an afterthought at the Golden Globes. The Hollywood Foreign Press Association didn't start giving out prizes for TV until 19 years into the awards' existence. So it seems apt that it took more than half a century to get around to inventing a lifetime achievement award for TV. And yet it also seems right that the award be named after its first winner, Carol Burnett, who took the stage and ruminated on her good fortune to have been able to make a weekly variety show with a lot of moving parts. Burnett was poignant and touched. But she was also funny, bluish in fact. And her humor had a kind of vestigial power. She knew she represented a kind of rear guard entertainment that is disappearing from television, despite there being more television than ever, and has vacated the movies. On "The Carol Burnett Show," Burnett was a zillion different people and yet somehow always herself this vivid, voluble weirdo technician. Two of the night's big movie nominees "Vice" and "Green Book" were made by the writers and directors of "Dumb and Dumber," "Shallow Hal," "Anchorman" and "Talladega Nights." They'd gotten serious of late or at least less funny. Farce has given way to greeting card and jeremiad. Burnett, too, went dark for a spell in movies. But seeing her accept her own achievement award was a reminder that it's not just TV that's an afterthought but maybe laughter, too. Wesley Morris In one of the more offbeat gags of the night, Oh and Samberg had a special treat for the audience: flu shots! They were possibly going for the same kind of weirdness that Armie Hammer achieved with his hot dog cannon bit at the Oscars last year. Or it may have been just good public service. I mean, celebrities are busy. Techs in lab coats spread through the Beverly Hilton audience offering the shots, although they weren't wearing gloves. Unsanitary! And based on the freely imbibing history of Globes participants, these probably weren't the only shots some audience members took. Capping it off was Samberg's directive to the anti vaxxers in the crowd: "Just put a napkin over your head and we'll skip you." Mekado Murphy	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Movies
In the age of "Hamilton" and "Aladdin," when shows can gross 2 million a week, gay bars are reflecting the boom with brassy Broadway nights. At three weekly bar nights around town, gay people sing along to theater tunes, cheer Broadway drop ins and watch drag queens do musical numbers. The combo may not be new (Splash, a now closed club in Chelsea, hosted Musical Mondays for over two decades), but it's certainly growing. "Broadway and the gay community have always belonged together," said Clay Smith, who performs under the drag name Delighted Tobehere. Until recently, when Delighted got a lot of out of town bookings, Mr. Smith hosted Razzle Dazzle Wednesdays at Pieces, a gay bar on Christopher Street. The crowd of "theater queens" came to see Delighted belt Broadway standards, while the video screen showed films like "Fame."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Style
They are the most recognizable faces at any major fashion show. They fill out a prime block of the front row, one kept sacrosanct, awaiting their arrival. (They are unfailingly, unfashionably, on time.) They are the top editors of Vogue, which remains, to its competitors' chagrin, the most powerful magazine in fashion. They have been in their roles, in some cases, for longer than their assistants have been alive. At last, those roles have begun to shift. Anna Wintour, the editor of Vogue, announced to her staff today that two of Vogue's longest serving lieutenants Tonne Goodman, the magazine's fashion director, and Phyllis Posnick, its executive fashion editor will be leaving their staff positions and becoming contributing editors. As well, Lisa Love, the magazine's Los Angeles director and a major wrangler for the celebrity jammed Met Gala, a 28 year veteran of the magazine, will shift to working with CNX, Conde Nast's in house creative agency. Word of their departure was first published in Business of Fashion on July 13. Virginia Smith, another longtime Vogue hand, will assume Ms. Goodman's duties as fashion director. "I'm very happy that Virginia Smith's promotion to fashion director recognizes her many years of hard work and dedication, and just as thrilled that Tonne Goodman and Phyllis Posnick, two of our longstanding and outstanding image makers will continue to work their magic in Vogue," Ms. Wintour told The Times in a statement. Everyone knows Ms. Wintour, as recognizable as Santa Claus, whose trademark look that thickly fringed bob and those windshield sunglasses is so long established that it could more or less attend shows in her place. But any publicist with hopes of career longevity must know, too, Ms. Goodman, with her regular uniform of turtlenecks and white jeans, sensibly loafered; Ms. Posnick, dark haired, never flashily dressed but never without jewelry; and Grace Coddington, the magazine's creative director at large, who herself moved from a staff position to a freelance one in 2016. Conde Nast, which owns Vogue as well as magazines like The New Yorker, Vanity Fair and GQ, is consolidating staff with fashion and beauty "hubs" that work across several magazines and moving expensive, salaried staff members to freelance positions. Conde Nast expected 100 million dollars less in revenue in 2017 than it enjoyed in 2016. Historically the company was known for free spending and the lavish, chauffeured lifestyles it allowed its top editors providing clothing budgets and securing mortgages. Even the imperious Vogue has seen its budgets cut and its fortunes shift. "One of the things that I quickly became aware of when I left Conde Nast," said Tom Florio, the former publisher of Vogue who departed the company in 2010 and who is now the chief executive of the company that owns Paper, "is the pay scale at Conde Nast was easily double or three times what the market is." (One former Conde Nast top executive, who was granted anonymity because he was not allowed to speak for the compan y, said he expected that Ms. Goodman and Ms. Posnick's total compensation combined would be about a million dollar expense.) Ms. Wintour, the editor of Vogue and the artistic director of Conde Nast, has sat atop her masthead for 30 years this June. Sub editors have come and gone. But the handful of top editors who work on the magazine's fashion features who put starlets in gowns and on surfboards for the all important covers, who decide which trends get spreads and which are deemed "not Vogue," who minister to the temperamental greats of fashion photography have been in place for years. Ms. Coddington joined the magazine in 1988, one of Ms. Wintour's first hires. Ms. Posnick predated Ms. Wintour by a year. The most recent arrival of this group is Ms. Goodman, who came in 2000. "I think congratulations is in order," Ms. Goodman said in an interview. "That's the way I feel. But bittersweet is also the way I feel. It's both. Vogue is so much a part of my DNA." Ms. Goodman made clear that she expected very little to change: Like Ms. Posnick, she will continue shooting for the magazine and attend fashion shows with Vogue. "It was just time," Ms. Posnick said over cappuccino at her home. "It really was. Tonne and I were the only two fashion editors in the world who couldn't do other work." (Their new freelance positions will allow them to pursue outside work.) She acknowledged that "it probably works well for Vogue, too." Ms. Goodman handles the bulk of the celebrity covers, as well as many of its fashion shoots, and in so doing, has quietly set the fashion tone of the magazine. Ms. Posnick focuses on the evocative, often surreal images that accompany the magazine's beauty coverage, as well as some of its portraits. She is especially well known for her long collaborations with some of the greats of fashion photography, like Helmut Newton and Irving Penn, who for the last years of his working life would not collaborate with any Vogue editor but her. The walls and floors of her apartment are lined with photographs by them. (The Demarcheliers and Steven Kleins, she said, are at her home in Connecticut.) A look at the magazine's September issues, its largest of the year, paints the picture: The issue has been slowly, but steadily, decreasing in size, dropping from its record breaking 2012 issues, with 916 pages, to 856 pages in 2014 to 774 last year. The September 2018 issue is due on newsstands Aug. 14. "As print shrinks, they need to rethink where they're going to invest their money and what the brand's going to mean to a new generation of people," Mr. Florio said. "These people have had extraordinary careers. But it's like a great film editor. If everybody's doing things digitally, do you need a great film editor?" Ms. Posnick said Vogue had neither pressured her nor asked her to contribute to its digital products, which she acknowledged was not her strength. "I wish I could," she said, and that she hoped to explore them going forward. She freely acknowledged the landscape had changed over the years. Working with Irving Penn, she said, might take six weeks from initial meeting to the shoot. "If you rushed him, he'd say, 'Let's not do it,'" she said. "Those days are over." "Everybody can see every magazine changing these days," Ms. Goodman said. "Vogue is not unique in this happening." Of particularly keen interest is the ongoing murmuring that Ms. Wintour may step down from Vogue or from Conde Nast entirely.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Style
A singer's natural home is on the stage. But the vocalist and composer Alicia Hall Moran's newest piece lives on the rink. Ms. Hall Moran's undefinable "Breaking Ice: The Battle of the Carmens" finds its inspiration in figure skating history, and the work will have its premiere in the midst of public skating sessions at Bryant Park on Jan. 11 and Riverbank State Park on Jan. 14, as part of the Prototype festival of new music theater. "The Battle of the Carmens" referenced in the title wasn't just an opera lover's fever dream. It was a bit of media hyperbole that described the showdown between skating rivals, both of whom performed to music from Bizet's classic opera, at the 1988 Winter Olympics in Calgary, Canada. Katarina Witt, from East Germany, fully inhabited the role of the cigarette girl femme fatale through her dramatic choreography, while the American Debi Thomas, then a pre med student at Stanford University, strove for technical excellence with a gymnast's clean lines and economy of style. "Debi Thomas not only looked like me, she really looked like me," Ms. Hall Moran said in a recent interview. "We could have been sisters. And my parents went to Stanford. I never thought that skating was going to take me to Lillehammer" the Norwegian town that hosted the 1994 Winter Games "but she made the sport something into which I could realistically and holistically pour my identity." Although Ms. Hall Moran's athletic career never advanced beyond a spot on a local synchronized skating team, she will take to the blades herself for "Breaking Ice," accompanied by tango skaters from Ice Theater of New York. The performance at Bryant Park is free of charge, while the one at Riverbank costs only the rink's admission fee ( 5 for adults, 3 for children). Anyone who wants to join the action on the ice needs to bring or rent skates and ideally should be capable of navigating the frozen terrain. "Vocalists like to talk about grounded singing," Ms. Hall Moran said with a grin. "Trying to activate the space between the bottom of your feet and that cold surface is a bit like levitating." A backing track, at the mercy of each rink's dubious acoustics, will structure the piece: The mash up of Carmen's "Habanera" with Stevie Wonder's "Signed, Sealed, Delivered (I'm Yours)" on Ms. Hall Moran's recently released album, "Here Today," offers a taste of what the music might sound like. But she has also left ample room for improvisation with the taiko drummer Kaoru Watanabe and the saxophonist Maria Grand, who will be stationed in hockey penalty boxes nearby, as well as through the physical interaction with the swirl of bodies watching and surrounding her. This kind of imaginative recontextualization of classical singing has long propelled Ms. Hall Moran. She is a trained mezzo soprano who never tries to sound like anything else, despite the diverse artistic company she keeps. She has participated in a number of residencies, including one with her husband, the jazz pianist and composer Jason Moran, as part of the 2012 Whitney Biennial; toured with the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company; made her Broadway debut as Bess in "Porgy and Bess"; and partnered with jazz musicians like the guitarist Brandon Ross and Mr. Moran. In her work, as in that of the visual artist Kara Walker, historical genres like spirituals and Motown (and even the racialized figure of Bizet's Carmen herself) take on new, charged meanings in juxtaposition with contemporary forms. During a practice session two weeks ago with Moira North, the artistic director of Ice Theater of New York, Ms. Hall Moran indeed evoked Debi Thomas. In a flowing cardigan, ribbons of hair tied back at the base of her neck, she appeared longer limbed than her old hero, though. While a compact body holds advantages for most skating hopefuls, Ms. Hall Moran's height was actually an asset when she was the only black member of the Shadows, one of the three synchronized skating teams at Terry Conners Rink in Stamford, Conn., where she grew up in an affluent family. (Her best friend was the daughter of the black mezzo soprano star Shirley Verrett.) Skating fell into the background as Ms. Hall Moran joined a busy choir at her public high school that performed internationally, attended Barnard College and then started her music career. But now, in her new piece, she is returning to the ice, seeking to broaden our perspective on a sport thought to be populated solely by rich white princesses. (She believes Ms. Thomas, wanting to resist embodying stereotypes of overly sensual black women, failed to win Olympic gold because she didn't give people the boldly carnal Carmen they were expecting.) And at a time when the film "I, Tonya" has rekindled interest in Tonya Harding, depicted as a redneck who failed to find acceptance despite her prodigious talents, "Breaking Ice" has the potential to demonstrate ice skating's genuine inclusiveness. "The elite world of competitive figure skating is a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of the people who are fearless enough to even try the sport," Ms. Hall Moran said. "If you are to truly address what skating is, the evidence shows us that it's millions of people of color and from the working class. Just go to any public session: Everyone is on the ice."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Music
CONCORD, Mass. It can be hard to go back to a book you once adored. You do not feel like the same person, and it does not feel like the same book. But "Little Women," an indelibly formative reading experience for so many of us, exists almost in a category of its own. And the book's 150th anniversary this year presents an irresistible opportunity to revisit it. Across the country groups are holding "Little Women" themed exhibits, conferences and lectures. Penguin Classics recently published a fetching new annotated edition, with a foreword by the singer/writer Patti Smith, one of the book's vast army of admirers. A new film is in the works, directed by Greta Gerwig and starring Emma Watson, Meryl Streep, Timothee Chalamet, Saoirse Ronan and Laura Dern, right on the heels of a BBC mini series last year. Not that the book has gone un filmed before. Actresses who have depicted the book's heroine, Jo March, in various cinematic iterations through the decades include Katharine Hepburn, June Allyson and Winona Ryder. In the audience was Mika Shingai, a 32 year old receptionist, who was introduced to "Little Women" as a child when her mother read it aloud to her. The book spoke to Ms. Shingai's sense of adventure and fueled her youthful inclination, she said, "not to be too much of a girly girl." There was Cathlin Davis, 44, a professor of education in California, who said that Alcott's work had made her feel less alone at a delicate time in her childhood, teaching her that the way she felt as an "outsider on the edge" was not just fine, but actively desirable. Time has not attenuated her enthusiasm. "My claim to fame is that I have 100 plus copies of 'Little Women,'" she said. "Little Women" was that unusual thing, a classic that is also an instant hit. It was wildly popular from the moment it was published, in two parts, starting in 1868. (The second part, in which the loose ends left by the March sisters' unmarried states are neatly tied up, was written in response to the success of the first. It came out the following year and has proved dismaying to readers who prefer Jo's unmarried independence.) 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. The book was also revolutionary, in its way. "At the time, 'Little Women' was the most real book about women that had ever been written," said Anne Boyd Rioux, a professor at the University of New Orleans and the author of the just published "Meg, Jo, Beth and Amy: The Story of Little Women and Why it Still Matters." Having delivered a popular talk at Orchard House, Ms. Rioux was expanding on her themes over breakfast at a local inn. "These are real people, flawed characters that are not meant to be moral exemplars, but people that readers can identify with," she said. The book, especially in its creation of Jo independent, unconventional, irreverent, impatient, devoted to her writing and proud of her ability to earn money at it has been an inspiration and a model. Jo has always appealed to tomboys, rebels and freethinkers, her passion for creativity providing aspiring writers with a glimpse of how to operate in the world. Most readers reserve their softest spot for Jo. "I, personally, am Jo March," Barbara Kingsolver once wrote. Nora Ephron and her sister Delia both said the same thing ("technically" Delia said, if it really came down to it, she was more Jo ish than Nora.) The best friends in Elena Ferrante's Neapolitan Quartet, set in 1950s Naples, are obsessed with "Little Women." Erica Jong; Stephenie Meyer, author of the "Twilight" series; Anne Lamott; Susan Cheever; J.K. Rowling; Enid Blyton; Carson McCullers; Maxine Hong Kingston; Amy Bloom; Sara Paretsky, Anna Quindlen all have spoken of the book's influence on their lives and writing. "'Little Women' offered the first glimpse of a life defined by talent and inclination, not simply marriage," Ms. Quindlen wrote. Gloria Steinem said it was a place of comfort and encouragement during a scattered childhood. "Amy, Beth, Meg and Jo who was probably why I became a writer were my family and friends," she said. The appreciation is not universal. Camille Paglia has described the book as "a kind of horror story," seeing its sentencing of Jo to marriage as an unhappy capitulation to social convention. Nor is the British novelist Hilary Mantel a fan. "How I despised her, with her preposterous literary pretensions!" she wrote. As for me, I read the book over and over when I was young, so often that the characters came to seem like participants in my own life. A couple of scenes seared themselves into the section of my brain where I store the highlights of my personal reading history. The first is when gentle Beth, the third March sister, finally dies after her long nebulous wasting illness, her demise so beautiful and peaceful and merciful that the family "smiled through their tears, and thanked God that Beth was well at last." That has always annoyed me, for reasons that have to do with my harsh and pitiless nature. And the second, of course, is the moment the book stops being an astute, forward thinking, drolly affectionate portrait of four 19th century New England sisters and becomes a tragic tale of thwarted love: when Laurie, the rich, humorous, handsome, loyal, passionate, fun loving boy next door (did I mention rich?) proposes to Jo, and Jo for some perverse and baffling motive turns him down. It takes place somewhere in the middle of the story, and it feels as if someone grabbed all the delicious treats off the table, leaving you with stale bread and tepid water. The first time I read it, I burst into tears and continued straight to the finale, pausing (to cry harder) only when Jo ends up with weird old Professor Bhaer, who is neither handsome nor rich, and not half such good fun. So there was some trauma to get through in even picking it up again. But rereading the book turned out to be mostly a delight and a surprise. "Little Women" was far funnier, its dialogue and observations far subtler, its sense of amusement far more developed, than I remembered. Now that I am older I have a deeper appreciation for Alcott's plotting, pacing and writing. The book also has a new poignancy in light of what we know about its author's own ambivalence about her status as a woman. Many friends and acquaintances wrote later of "how much she acted like and wanted to be a boy," Ms. Rioux writes much, of course, like Jo herself. Jo's straightforward wish to live like a boy, behave like a boy and speak like a boy also feels different in 2018, given our better understanding of gender identity. And it makes her eventual marriage to Professor Bhaer seem more than ever to be an ending dictated by the literary marketplace and societal norms rather than by Alcott's own predilections. Alcott herself remained unmarried. She was fierce on the topic. "I'd rather be a free spinster and paddle my own canoe," she wrote.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Books
As our social lives have moved onto social media sites like Facebook over the past decade, there's been a lot of hand wringing over what all that screen time might be doing to our health. But according to a new paper, time spent on social media could be associated with a longer life. The paper, published in the journal PNAS on Monday, asserts that the health effects of active online social lives largely mirror the benefits of busy offline social lives. "We find that people with more friends online are less likely to die than their disconnected counterparts," the paper says. "This evidence contradicts assertions that social media have had a net negative impact on health." The study's methods are detailed at length in the paper, and it was approved by three university and state review boards. But skeptics will note that Facebook itself was closely involved with the paper. William Hobbs, 29, a postdoctoral fellow at Northeastern University, worked at Facebook as a research intern in 2013. Another of the paper's authors, Moira Burke, worked on it in her capacity as a research scientist at Facebook. Mr. Hobbs, who conducted the research while he was a doctoral student at the University of California, San Diego, said Facebook had not interfered with the results of the paper. "We had some things in writing that they couldn't interfere with the publication of the research no matter what the result was," he said. He noted, though, that some at the company had been "pretty confident that we were going to find this result." A news release sent by a spokeswoman at the University of California, San Diego, drives the point home. "The research confirms what scientists have known for a long time about the offline world: People who have stronger social networks live longer," the release said. The study was based on 12 million social media profiles made available to the researchers by Facebook, as well as records from the California Department of Health. It found that "moderate use" of Facebook was associated with the lowest mortality rate, and that receiving friend requests correlated with reduced mortality, but that sending friend requests did not. Mr. Hobbs and the paper's other authors matched records from California's Department of Public Health with those of California Facebook users, preserving privacy by aggregating the data before analyzing it, the release said. All of the subjects of the study were born from 1945 to 1989. The paper found that people with large or even average social networks lived longer than people who had very small social networks. It was "a finding consistent with classic studies of offline relationships and longevity," the release said. The paper itself acknowledges the study's "many limitations," saying that Facebook is unique among social media websites and that its data might not be more broadly applicable. It also points out that its findings represent a correlative relationship as opposed to a causal one: There is no evidence in the paper that using Facebook has any direct effect on a person's health. James Fowler, a professor of public health and political science at the University of California, San Diego, and another of the paper's authors, said he had been surprised that requesting the friendship of others was not found to be associated with a longer life span. "I had hoped we would find that reaching out to others was associated with better health," he said. The new result, Mr. Fowler explained, suggested that researchers who had previously found that people with more friends were healthier might have misunderstood the relationship between sociability and health. It may be, he said, that "the reason why people with more friends are healthier is because healthier people have more friends," which would suggest that "it may be harder than we thought it was to use social networks to make people healthier." Nathan Jurgenson, a sociologist and a researcher for Snapchat, said in an email that the paper provided much evidence against the idea that connections made online exist separately from the "real world," as if the internet did not exist within the broader universe. But he pointed out that the study itself, even in providing evidence to support the idea that the internet is not different from "real life," used language that reinforced the binary view. "All of the conceptual and linguistic back flips being done here in trying to explain that the virtual world interacts with the real world could be circumvented by instead taking for granted that digital connection is new and different but that it's also part of this one social reality," Mr.Jurgenson wrote. Sociological research into Facebook's effect on health and happiness has not always been as positive. A study published in the journal PLOS One three years ago found that over a two week period, the more its subjects used Facebook within in a certain timespan, the worse they rated their own happiness within that timespan. "On the surface, Facebook provides an invaluable resource for fulfilling the basic human need for social connection," that paper said. "Rather than enhancing well being, however, these findings suggest that Facebook may undermine it." Mr. Fowler said that he had been hounding Facebook to help participate in a health study like the one detailed in the paper since 2010, and that he had hoped its findings would directly inform the evolution of the platform, which he had envisioned as potential boon to public health. He said his focus when he conceived of the study had been simple: "How can you design this platform to not only make people happier but to make them healthier?" Mr. Hobbs said he welcomed the scrutiny of those who would note the paper's close associations with Facebook, saying that the paper constituted a first step. "At this point, we're not making any recommendations on how people should use social media," Mr. Hobbs said. "It's good to have a long track record of finding these relationships again and again before we start giving recommendations."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Science
Here is the dirty little secret about lap dogs, said Denise Zwerling, a stay at home mother on the Upper East Side: "They really try to dominate your lap." When you're in a room with 10 or 20 of them, "It's a challenge trying to keep them all happy." That doesn't stop Ms. Zwerling from trying. Biscuits Bath, a chain of doggy day care centers in Manhattan, runs a "Buddy program" for volunteers who want to run with the poodles, but can't have one full time. Since Ms. Zwerling's building doesn't allow dogs, she and her son have found B B to be a neat compromise. There is nothing casual about becoming a Buddy. You fill out an application, which includes a request for three references; go in for an interview; and, if you make the cut, plunk down 25. You get a Buddy T shirt ("The Most Fun Your Dog Can Have Without You") and a pass to come and play with dogs whenever you want at any of the company's 13 locations in Manhattan. So far there are about 500 Buddies, with 15 to 20 new applications a month.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Style
"Billions" is a show that seems to appreciate pro wrestling, as seen in the fandom of its dudebro character Mafee and the recent cameo by Becky Lynch. So I hope it's not too indulgent to quote one of the great heel wrestlers, Ted DiBiase, better known as the Million Dollar Man, as a kind of epigraph for this episode: "Everybody's got a price." I know, I know: That's kind of the point of the whole show, right? It's a drama about the corrupting influence of money and power. But it felt more poignant in this week's episode than it has in quite some time, perhaps because the institutions being assailed by the show's money talks characters family, art, education, the environment feel sacrosanct. Not in Bobby Axelrod's world, though, that's for sure. Axe spends the episode questing after three things. First, he wants to become a bank. He's informed by the government officials Todd Krakow and Hard Bob (played by the actors Danny Strong and Chelcie Ross in deliciously sleazy cameos) that there is no way for him to get past the regulatory agencies that want to keep men with criminal histories like his away from banking; his mistake was committing his misdeeds before becoming a bank, while the megabanks that caused the 2008 crash and got away largely scot free did it the other way around. But there's still hope that he could secure a state charter, particularly since he knows his way around the New York power structure so well. Next up: art, specifically the abstract paintings of Nico Tanner (Frank Grillo). Axe is set on buying three canvasses when he discovers he's been beaten to the punch by his new rival, Mike Prince. He tries to commission new pieces, but Tanner tells him he doesn't paint for money. "'I don't paint for money' means 'nobody's paid me enough yet,'" Axe tells his right hand man, Wags, "so if you can't buy the art, buy the artist." He winds up purchasing Tanner a new studio in addition to commissioning eight paintings for an undisclosed amount of money. Hey, the Medicis paid Michelangelo to paint the Sistine Chapel, didn't they? What's the difference? Finally, Axe has to get his son, Gordie (Jack Gore), out of hot water at the elite prep school he attends, after the young Axelrod's cryptocurrency mining operation (one of those again?) causes a power outage for the entire town. Here's where things get really nasty. After discovering that the headmaster (J.C. MacKenzie) is using Syrian refugee scholarship students as his own personal labor pool, Axe blackmails him into allowing Gordie to stay enrolled, all right in front of his son. He then demands an opportunity to address the student body, delivering a fire and brimstone sermon in favor of capitalism, the system that harnesses our desire to "be greedy, be hungry, subjugate and conquer, because that's who we are, that's what we are" better than any other. Weirdly, Bobby's attack helicopter parenting inspires Mike Wagner to reconnect with his (many, many, largely estranged) children well, weirdly for normal people anyway; this is Wags we're talking about. This campaign meets with mixed success. Oh sure, he tracks them down, with the help of Axe Cap's fixer for hire, Hall (Terry Kinney). But Wags bumbles his way through a call with one of his daughters ("You ever try talking to a 14 year old girl on FaceTime?" he asks Axe; "I hope that was one of your kids," replies the bossman) and inviting his eldest son, George, to the Axe Cap office, whereupon the younger Wagner attempts to tell his father the Good News about Jesus. Best of luck with that, sonny boy. Taylor Mason finds religion of a different sort in this episode. Thanks to a cutting edge computer program that analyzes human speech for hidden meanings and messages, Mason deduces that a university president wants to divest from fossil fuels, but is digging in his heels against divestment simply because he doesn't want to give student activists the time of day. Taylor, who can make money off divestment, nearly gets him to pull the trigger, but he is overruled by the chairman of the board of trustees, a no nonsense Navy admiral who decries "candy ass" college students. Fortunately, Mase Cap has a no nonsense naval officer all its own: Sarah (Samantha Mathis), Taylor's steeliest operative. She convinces the admiral to divest lickety split but she also presents Taylor with the idea of filling the fossil fuel vacuum with the firm's own investments. To Taylor, this defeats the entire purpose of getting the college to divest. Axe has no such qualms and cuts a deal with a pair of petrobarons right away; Sarah, disgusted by her boss's softness, quits in protest. Greed, hunger, subjugation, conquest: They're the capitalist way, and Taylor just let down the side. Many of these conflicts play out in miniature on the Chuck Rhoades side of the show. A bit adrift now that his divorce from Wendy is moving forward, Chuck wants to return to his alma mater, Yale Law, to teach. The only problem is that his father, a fellow Son of Eli, is years and years in arrears on his pledged donations to the institution. Rhoades pere agrees to pony up, but only if Chuck arranges a formal introduction between his kids and Charles Sr.'s new wife and baby. Chuck pulls it off with help from Wendy in exchange for dropping his financial restraining order against her but he keeps in the dark about the quid pro quo with Yale, allowing her to believe his "it's all about family" baloney. Perhaps that's the biggest difference between Bobby and Chuck. Rhoades does his skulduggery in secret and under cover; Bobby proudly puts his on display for Gordie and his classmates to take in as a learning experience. If he's right about capitalism's being a matter of subjugation and conquest at heart, these are valuable life lessons indeed. Everybody's got a price, and some people don't mind who sees them paying it. None This episode's references to the "Godfather" series are many and mostly obvious, with Axe at one point alluding to the famous horse's head scene as a picture of the headmaster's fate. But there were stealthy "Sopranos" hat tips as well, from Bobby's reference to the second film in the series simply as "Two" "Sopranos" characters did the same to the "Good News" gag, which echoed one of the show's funniest bits. None As it's been known to do in the past, the show matched its music cues to Bobby's wardrobe: Axe sports a Rainbow t shirt while the Ronnie James Dio fronted band's "Long Live Rock 'n' Roll" blasts in the background. None "What a show of parentage," says Wags as he watches Bobby explain to Gordie that he'll have to ruin the headmaster. "I have so much to learn from you both about communication between a father and a son." I love Wags, but at the same time, it's not hard to see why his kids want so little to do with him.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Television
Friends, I bring you delights! Glittery, silly, rambunctious delights. Five new humorous children's books offer young readers a plethora of pleasure, plus pants for potatoes. Though very different from one another, four of the five feature classic children's book imagery in one form or another. The fifth features, as I said, potato pants. In KING ALICE (Feiwel and Friends, 32 pp., 17.99; ages 4 to 8), Matthew Cordell, who won the 2017 Caldecott Medal for "Wolf in the Snow," captures the joy (for kids) and frequent exasperation (for parents) of the dreary, slushy indoor snow day. On a blustery day off from school, young Alice is determined to fill her hours with adventure, enlisting her willing, but bedraggled, dad into the fun. After declaring herself king ("You mean queen," suggests her father. "No! King!" says Alice), Her Highness sets out to cram every ounce of fun from their indoor family time, capturing all of it in a book within a book recounting her adventures. Not even a timeout for the crime of accidental unicorn bopping deters from the fun with Dad. Cordell's art is lively and especially funny when presented from the king's crayons. Children may enjoy the fact that even a Caldecott Medal winner is not above a little gastrointestinal humor (this child certainly did). Alice's mother and baby brother are also along for the ride. Parents will laugh in recognition at the household chaos busy young minds can create during stretches of unexpected indoor time. David Ezra Stein's INTERRUPTING CHICKEN AND THE ELEPHANT OF SURPRISE (Candlewick, 48 pp., 16.99; ages 4 to 8) reunites readers with their inquisitive feathered friend from the Caldecott Honor book "Interrupting Chicken." This time, Chicken returns from school excited to read with her father. Why? Because her teacher, Mrs. Gizzard, has told her that every good story has an "elephant of surprise." Her father thinks that perhaps Chicken means something else, but, as we learned in "King Alice," fathers are easily confused. (It wasn't "Queen" Alice, nor is it the "element of surprise.") Chicken knows precisely what she's looking for she's on an elephant hunt, and she finds one in every story she reads. Did you know, for example, that Rapunzel features a bubbly blue elephant with exquisite blond braids? Now you do. Stein's art is rich, textured and varied. Like "King Alice," this book features stories within stories. All with elephants. Lots and lots of elephants, each of them, as advertised, surprising. Those who love their artwork textured will adore JUST ADD GLITTER (Beach Lane, 32 pp., 17.99; ages 4 to 8), a collaboration between the author Angela DiTerlizzi and the illustrator Samantha Cotterill. On a rainy day, the mail carrier leaves a box on a little girl's stoop. And just in time. She and her cat are feeling "bored and ignored." What better way to "put some shine upon your crown" than an unexpected package of glitter? Within moments, the girl is spreading sparkles everywhere: on her paper crown, paper dinosaurs and stars, and all over the bedroom rug. If your walls are "looking for glitz," or just a few more "flashy bits," glitter is just the thing for you. The cat, though, seems hip to a problem with which parents are all too familiar: Glitter gets everywhere. Pretty soon they're chin deep in the stuff. After some judicious (and from experience I would say overly optimistic) sweeping, the glitter is gone, with the little girl and cat discovering that you don't need a special delivery to find a little sparkle. With its fun rhymes and blinged out pages, "Just Add Glitter" will appeal to those young crafts enthusiasts who have never met a surface that couldn't use a little extra razzle dazzle. A young knight guards against frightful creatures in Jon Agee's THE WALL IN THE MIDDLE OF THE BOOK (Dial, 40 pp., 17.99; ages 4 to 8), which uses the clever conceit of the book's "gutter" that space between each set of two pages as a boundary between all that is safe on one side, and all that is scary on the other. Our knight explains to his readers that the brick wall we see there keeps him safe from a scary menagerie of animals. Tigers and rhinos and gorillas oh my! Yet, the true menace on the other side of the book is a bearded ogre who would undoubtedly "eat me up" if he ever caught our young hero. Thank goodness for the high wall protecting him. But something seems to be happening on his "safe" side ... something that may require the knight to rethink everything he thought he knew about barriers and who resides on the other side. Agee is the creator of many acclaimed books including "Milo's Hat Trick" and "It's Only Stanley," and this deceptively simple story offers a genuine lesson in the value of all creatures, great and small. Whatever they may look like, oftentimes our biggest fears come from the uncertainty of not being able to see across a boundary. And sometimes, the greatest dangers are right in front of our own two eyes. Finally, I promised potato pants, and that is exactly what you're going to get. Laurie Keller's whimsical POTATO PANTS! (Holt/Christy Ottaviano, 32 pp., 16.99; ages 4 to 8) tells the tale of the one day the only day in which Lance Vance's Fancy Pants Store is selling potato pants. A horde of naked potatoes rushes to the store by "spud bus" and "tuber Uber" to grab those tuber trousers because "once they're gone, they're gone!" Unfortunately for our hero, a big, purple eggplant has trespassed into the store, the same eggplant who rudely shoved our hero out of the way the previous day. Now, potato is worried that the eggplant will see him again and he will once again suffer at the hands of that bullying aubergine. Meanwhile, all the good potato pants are flying off the racks. How will our potato pal get his pants? As in "The Wall in the Middle of the Book," Keller presents a worst case scenario and gradually dispels the fear. Might he have mistaken the eggplant's intentions? There's plenty of silly illustrations and attractive potato pants to keep chuckling readers turning pages to the end.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Books
The pianist Aaron Diehl will be featured in the Los Angeles Philharmonic's mini festival this weekend celebrating the Harlem Renaissance. At the Juilliard School, the pianist Aaron Diehl studied both classical and jazz traditions. And in the years since, he's chosen to follow each of those paths and sometimes both, simultaneously. Mr. Diehl has played with Cecile McLorin Salvant and Wynton Marsalis. His own recordings as a bandleader have revealed him to be not only a stylish improviser, but also a composer worth watching. In recent years, he has revived the practice of interpreting Gershwin's concert music through an improvisatory filter. His imaginative yet idiomatic turn in the Concerto in F with the New York Philharmonic at their opening night gala in 2016 contained the hardest swinging note I've ever heard inside David Geffen Hall. (It was an interpolated low D that Mr. Diehl tossed off with casually elegant force toward the end of the first movement.) This weekend, Mr. Diehl plays "Rhapsody in Blue" (on Saturday) and the less familiar "Second Rhapsody" (on Sunday) with the Los Angeles Philharmonic as part of the brief but potent series "William Grant Still and the Harlem Renaissance." "The challenge is creating this balance between the improvisation and the written score," Mr. Diehl said of his approach to "Rhapsody in Blue." Gershwin, in a way, is the exception this weekend: The rest of the Philharmonic's programming puts the spotlight on black composers. William Grant Still's symphonies serve as anchors of the programs, the First on Saturday and the Fourth on Sunday. "I've always found him to be a great craftsman," said Mr. Wilkins, who will be conducting the Los Angeles concerts. "You hear his upbringing in his music; you hear his culture in his music. But it's not on the sleeve." "It's quite tonal," he added, "but it's not without chromaticism. And some of the time, because he's sort of hinting at a blues lick or a jazz gesture, we find notes that are bent or twisted. Or a jazz harmony all of a sudden." (Two other pieces by Mr. Hailstork will be performed by the Harlem Chamber Players on Feb. 28 at the New York Public Library's Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture.) Mr. Wilkins said that he and the Philharmonic wanted to acknowledge Still's earlier and better known First Symphony subtitled "The Afro American Symphony" but also push audiences toward less familiar parts of the composer's body of work. "He's unapologetic about being a black person," said Mr. Wilkins. "In the last movement of the First Symphony, he begins with this plaintive song in the entire orchestra, that eventually finds its way to the cello section only which I think is the instrument which sounds most like the human voice. There is this 'Lord have mercy' kind of sound in that music. And then, of course, the allegro takes over. It's 'we have no choice but to go forward.' That's what that music does." In the Fourth Symphony, Mr. Wilkins identifies "that same longing, that same aspirational sound world. But this symphony ends not allegro, but profoundly it's like a pronouncement at the end. It's grand, and the gestures are large and bold. And not lickety split fast. It is its own kind of affirmation: 'Yes, this is who I am.'" Asked what else they could imagine programming, were the Philharmonic's short festival to be longer, Mr. Wilkins named William Dawson's "Negro Folk Symphony" and "more Hailstork." Mr. Diehl said he would be eager to tease out unexpected connections between different centuries: "I would have Scarlatti on, maybe, the top half of the set. And then end with, like, Roscoe Mitchell. I just feel like good music is good music. Duke Ellington always said that."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Music
Equal parts trade fair, arts festival and synergistic marketing opportunity, New York's Asia Week, March 15 24, involves auctions at Bonhams, Christie's, Doyle and Sotheby's; scores of appointment only private dealers opening their doors to the public; and tied in museum shows as far afield as Newark, Princeton, N.J., and Stony Brook, N.Y. The Metropolitan Museum alone has seven related shows (one of which Jason Farago of The New York Times recently reviewed). The week's overall vibe is more collectible than critical, but that's not a disparagement the city is briefly full of rare and unusual objects you might never get to see again. The extremely partial list that follows contains two of the most important exhibitions and a handful of interesting gallery shows to pique your interest but do yourself a favor and pick up a map. The exhibition "A Giant Leap: The Transformation of Hasegawa Tohaku" focuses on the life and legacy of Tohaku (1539 1610), one of 16th century Japan's artistic and technical innovators. The quality of the color in his "Pine Trees," a pair of large painted screens that comprise one of the best known and most beloved works in Japanese art history, varies from shocking black to watery, almost imperceptible gray. You can never forget that you're looking at ink, but at the same time the spontaneity and delicate precision of the shapes means you can't quite identify a brush stroke even in the darkest, most scribbly tip of a branch poking out of the mist. "Pine Trees" itself doesn't travel outside Tokyo the Japan Society instead borrowed the Tokyo National Museum's own high quality replica. But the rest of the works in what is incredibly Hasegawa's first ever exhibition in the United States are once in a lifetime loans that will rotate halfway through the show's run because they can't be shown for more than 26 days in a row. "Eight Views of Xiao and Xiang," the painter's white and black on gold treatment of a traditional Chinese landscape subject, is anchored in one corner by craggy, snow covered hills that look like ocean breakers and in the other by a tiny village in a grove of gnarled trees. Between them clouds of white play deceptively intricate games with streaks of unpainted gilding. Here, a fisherman pushing a skiff turns the gold into a lake's surface and the white into a mist hanging heavily above it; there, a temple's projecting roof makes the gold read simply as a shadowed furrow in an unbroken cloud cover. Through April 8 (first rotation); April 12 to May 6 (second rotation), 333 East 47th Street; 212 715 1258; japansociety.org. "Unknown Tibet: The Tucci Expeditions and Buddhist Painting" is on view here through May 20. When the scholar and Himalayan adventurer Giuseppe Tucci was exploring the Tibetan plateau between the World Wars, traditional culture was already disappearing quickly. More than 60 years after China's invasion, it evokes a strange mix of feelings to file past enormous prints of the anthropological documentation by the five photographers he brought along: It's both painful and reassuring to think how easily physical artifacts can outlast the cultures that make them. Tucci also collected prints, maps, manuscripts, and hundreds of religious paintings. A gorgeous red and black Long Life deity floats against a background of a thousand odd tiny doppelgangers, most of them in a grid, but a few of which float across his knee and under his arm. Fourteen 17th century paintings of arhats are vividly realized and still brightly colored, impressive syntheses of individual detail and intense formal stylization. Their mossy green backgrounds double as realistic mountainscapes and hallucinogenic cloudscapes. Once you've settled back to earth, pop upstairs to "In Focus: An Assembly of Gods," through March 25, an entertaining early 19th century colored ink painting that captures the Chinese tendency to religious syncretism in one hyperbolic pantheon of divinities from Shakyamuni Buddha and the Jade Emperor down to the five animal headed Commissioners of Pestilence. 725 Park Avenue; 212 288 6400; asiasociety.org. Several angular pots by Wada Morihiro (1944 2008), one of the three major 20th century Japanese ceramic artists to which her current show is dedicated, are on compact but extraordinary display at Joan B. Mirviss, incised with complex patterns and painted in a striking combination of black, white and red slip accented with green glaze. 39 East 78th Street, suite 401; 212 799 4021; mirviss.com. The highlight of the mirror themed show of woodblock prints at Scholten Japanese Art is a group of elegant women primping by Ito Shinsui, one of several Taisho era artists to revive the use of glittering powdered mica as a pigment. 145 West 58th Street, suite 6D; 212 585 0474; scholten japanese art.com. Flat jade discs called bi were a staple of Chinese ritual art for most of its history, but the two notched triskelions in the ancient jade show at J.J. Lally Co. Oriental Art, both nearly five millenia old, are much more unusual. 41 East 57th Street, 212 371 3380; jjlally.com. If you missed the spectacular show of Japanese bamboo at the Met, TAI Bamboo Art, visiting from Santa Fe at Jason Jacques, has a brief recap which includes two quietly unforgettable baskets one with a sharply angled skirt, the other with an extra long handle by Hayakawa Shokosai V. 29 East 73rd Street, 212 535 7500; jasonjacques.com. The winsome group of celadons, or vessels with a green, iron based glaze, assembled by the ceramics dealer Eric Zetterquist, includes a gorgeous, gourd shaped 11th century Korean vase. Ask to see the back, where a modern Japanese owner filled in some unfortunate cracks with lacquer and powdered gold (kintsugi). 3 East 66th Street, 1B; 212 751 0650; zetterquist.com. A show of abstract ink drawings by the contemporary Taiwanese calligrapher Huang I Ming at M. Sutherland Fine Arts vividly demonstrates at large scale the unlimited textural and tonal possibilities of black ink on white paper. 7 East 74th Street, 3 fl.; 212 249 0428; msutherland.com.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Art & Design
It turned out to be too difficult for states to just calculate, OK, what was your wage, we're just going to give that to you. So instead, the lawmakers just figured out the average gap for the average worker between what they would have gotten at their job and what they would have gotten in unemployment. That turns out to be about 600. So if you are, for example, a bartender and you earn about 15 an hour on average, which is a little more than 30,000 a year, you're going to end up getting more money out of your new enhanced unemployment check than you would have just regularly at your job. If you are, say, someone who works at a small manufacturer who is laid off because there's no demand now for your products, and you were earning a median salary in the country a little more than 60,000 a year then you are going to get about the same back in your enhanced unemployment check. And if you're like a manager of an office or a store that's had to close and lays everyone off and you earned, you know, 100,000 a year, you're not going to be getting really anything close to your full salary back, but you still are going to be getting back more than you would have under the unemployment system. The idea is, this does help you get by. It's just not going to fully fund the lifestyle you had before. It may be a little crazy sounding, but the money is probably not the issue for the next couple of months. The issue is how many people can actually get benefits when they need them. The system is just not built to handle this amount of demand for new benefits. It's like funneling all of the traffic of New York onto a country road and trying to figure out how to get every car through. So some states, we've already seen, are having to tell people to sign up for benefits on different days of the week based on the first letter of their last name. What we're going to see, I think, going forward is a lot more of that. We know it's a reason why some people who maybe would have signed up for benefits in the third week of March actually ended up signing up in the fourth week. And it's a reason the first week in April is probably going to have even higher numbers of new unemployed than the last week in March. So new records, for a while maybe. And all of that adds up to tens of millions of people out of work, which will absolutely strain budgets state budgets, federal budgets. But the issue is going to be how long do lawmakers have the time and the patience and the money, in particular from the federal government, to keep funding that while we wait for the suppression measures here to work and the virus to go away. That is the great risk here, is that we lose our nerve and lose the strategy and it's all for naught. I think we're going to know the crisis is over when a critical mass of Americans feel safe going back to work, going out to eat, going back shopping. Every economist I talk to says this is a public health decision first and the economics will follow. Not just because we value human life so highly, which we do, but because if you don't have the confidence that if you leave the house you're not very likely to get a deadly illness, you're not going to keep going through the basic commerce that you did before. So once the infection rate drops or, I mean, quite possibly not until we actually have a workable vaccine, then we will start to see the real ramp up back to the economic activity we had before this pandemic hit. But the experts that I talked to say is that we were wrong to think about this as a trade off between human health and the economy. That they go hand in hand. That the more we are able to suppress the spread of the virus by suppressing the economy, the stronger the economy will emerge in the end. If we don't stick with this strategy, if we break out of it too early, if desperate people, the most vulnerable workers who need to eat, are forced to go back out and try to do their jobs to earn that living and they start infecting people again and infections and death rates spike some more, that's actually going to hurt the economy more than anything. Because it will undermine all of the confidence that people have left in the system for protecting them. So it's really this very delicate, probably very slow process of building that confidence, figuring out exactly who has the virus and where it's spreading and how it's moving through the population. And then we can start really, brick by brick, rebuilding this economy that was just shattered to pieces in the last few weeks.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Economy
Natalie Hemby is best known as a songwriter for Miranda Lambert, Maren Morris and others, and has been a key creative engine in female country in recent years. On her new album, "Puxico" her first after a decade behind the scenes, with songs drawn from a documentary she made about her grandfather's hometown, Puxico, Mo. she shows that she's got some of Ms. Crow's approach in her bones. As a lyricist, Ms. Hemby focuses on brush stroke details. On the modest gem "Worn," she peels off a greatest hits of patina: "The Bible that your daddy saved/And carried it to his grave." On "Cairo, IL," she eulogizes a town stuck in time: "Nothing's in a hurry except/The water in between the rising banks/Oh, nothing moves but nothing stays." (She's done similar work for Ms. Lambert, but just as often focuses on the wry and comic.) When Ms. Hemby sings, she doesn't push hard her voice is measured, a little sweet and snug. "Lovers on Display" manages both romance and reassurance, and "I'll Remember How You Loved Me" simmers with a quiet anger that doesn't disrupt the song's core awe: The most inviting, easily flowing song on "Puxico" is "This Town Still Talks About You," focusing on the echo a towering figure leaves in a tiny place. Given that Ms. Hemby has been a songwriter for so long, it's tempting to hear this song in other performers' voices. If it had been released a dozen or so years ago, maybe it would have been a wistful flirtation by Sara Evans. Five years ago, it would have been a melancholic lament by Miranda Lambert. But maybe now, as it is dreamy, genteel, warm it can just be Ms. Hemby's.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Music
The minor league players and staff for the Yankees some 175 people in all were quarantined for two weeks after a 17 year old pitcher tested positive for the coronavirus. Thursday was supposed to be Major League Baseball's opening day. Two weeks later, on April 9, Minor League Baseball was supposed to hold its own. Instead, the coronavirus pandemic forced baseball to cancel spring training and postpone the start of the season indefinitely, sending most players major and minor leaguers home for the time being. On March 15, the Florida Department of Health informed the franchise that one of its minor league players, a 17 year old pitcher, had tested positive for the novel coronavirus. Later that day, Yankees General Manager Brian Cashman shared that news with the team and explained what it meant: All minor league players and some staff about 175 people in all had been recommended to isolate themselves through March 25. They would have to stay inside, monitor for symptoms and report any that came up, venture out as little as possible and practice social distancing of at least 6 feet. "It was a shock for a lot of us," said Nick Ernst, 23, who pitched for the Class A Staten Island Yankees last season. "We didn't know what that entailed." So instead of Thursday being the beginning of a new major league season, it is instead the end of a two week isolation period for dozens of teenagers and young adults whose physical fitness is their livelihood. They kept busy with activities ranging from playing video games (MLB The Show was the most popular) to filming home workout videos (which included racing against ducks and chickens) to binge watching movies (one player was watching all 23 Marvel Cinematic Universe superhero films in order) to learning to play the ukulele. Many of the Yankees minor leaguers have been spread across three extended stay hotels in Tampa. Some, including infielder Max Burt, Agnos and Ernst, secured their own houses or apartments. But all are wrestling with similar challenges: worry, attempts to still work, uncertainty about the future, and the balance between adjusting to being cooped up and cherishing safety. None Everyone Loves Ohtani: The Angels' two way star was a unanimous pick for A.L. M.V.P. and his superfans redefine devotion. Phillie Phavorite: Bryce Harper truly committed to Philadelphia and now he's back on top of baseball, winning the N.L. M.V.P. Cy Young Winners: Milwaukee's Corbin Burnes and Toronto's Robbie Ray had hit rock bottom before they worked their way up to stardom. Baseball Is Stuck in Neutral: The potential of a lockout has a star studded group of free agents waiting for the dust to settle. Free Agency Tracker: Get the latest updates on signings, contract extensions and trades. "It's definitely tough just sitting at home and not doing anything," Agnos said. "But at the end of the day, we understand the severity of this disease. So now it's our goal to try to stop the spread of it." To pass the time, Burt and his roommates challenged Agnos and his roommates to make the best home workout videos. In one, Agnos and his fellow Yankees minor leaguer Josh Smith do push ups and push a pickup truck. In later videos, Smith fields grounders while hopping through tires, and Burt works on his second base feeds by knocking over water bottles. The Yankees sent their minor leaguers recommended workout routines through an app. The drills relied mostly on each player's own body weight squats, lunges, jumps in the absence of workout equipment. "You really don't realize how much stuff you can do without a weight," Agnos said. To feed the players, the Yankees hired a local catering company to prepare three meals a day for each minor league player. With the help of Yankees officials, meals were handed out at the hotels, and players staying elsewhere drove once a day to the Yankees' minor league facility to pick up their meals from attendees wearing gloves. Players said the Yankees' quarantine was based on an honor system. If they ventured out beyond their spring training homes and the food pickups, such as the grocery store, they said, they did so only once every several days and maintained healthy distances from others. To help the players understand the coronavirus, the Yankees also held a handful of conference calls with health experts, in English and Spanish, and set up an email address for players to send in questions. "They're doing a good job socially, too, by not spreading it," Agnos said. "It would have been much easier financially to just tell us to go home." Early last week, with the quarantine well underway, a second Yankees minor leaguer tested positive for the coronavirus. For several Yankees minor leaguers, that further drove home the point of their quarantine and the importance of monitoring their health. Every morning and night, Ernst said he checked his temperature; before leaving his home in Ohio for spring training, his fiancee insisted he take a thermometer, just in case. "She's been on top of me to make sure I'm doing everything I need to do to stay healthy," he said. Ernst was thrilled for the ending of the quarantine on Thursday. But for many minor league players, so much uncertainty lies ahead. With their season on hold until, at the earliest, mid May, they still face plenty of questions. Should the Yankees' minor leaguers return home, especially if that home is in a coronavirus hot spot? Should they hit and throw or rest? What about the apartments they had already rented through the end of spring training? Could they be asymptomatic carriers of the coronavirus and put family members, such as grandparents, back home at risk? "I really don't know what to expect," Agnos said. "I'm kind of nervous. You don't want to come home and not have any symptoms, and then have it and pass it along." Some players have no choice but to stay put. The second Yankees minor leaguer who tested positive after the quarantine began will remain isolated a bit longer. And because of insecurity or travel restrictions in their home countries, Yankees minor leaguers from Venezuela and the Dominican Republic are expected to remain in Tampa. For minor leaguers across the sport, money is always a factor. They generally earn anywhere from 1,000 to 15,000 a season. M.L.B. said last week that it would discuss how to compensate players after April 9, the original start date for the minor league season. In the meantime, some Yankees minor leaguers may need to return home to work side gigs. "The thing is we've just been used to this lifestyle, so it's nothing new," said Burt, 23, who signed for 5,000 after the Yankees picked him in the 28th round of the 2018 draft. He added: "You grind and don't live great and don't have the best living conditions until you hopefully end up making the big leagues and everything gets better." Burt was unsure on Friday if he would return home to Boston or link up with other minor leaguers in Florida to continue working out. Ernst, a 15th round pick in 2018, hoped to remain in Tampa. Aside from one trip to the grocery store, he said he saved everything the Yankees gave him. But if money became a problem, he could lean on his fiancee, a teacher, or resume his off season job working at a supply company in Ohio. "That's going to be the main question when we get done with this quarantine: Do we go home or do we stay here and throw?" he said. "We're trying to get a scope of when the season is going to start. It's a guessing game."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Sports
In recent years, the fall television season had been the last bastion of the broadcast networks. Then came Covid 19. With production barely restarting, the network comedies and dramas that usually fill the fall season are mostly absent this year, replaced by reality competitions, true crime anthologies and recycled shows making their "broadcast premieres." Meanwhile, cable channels and streaming services, more flexible in their scheduling and more accustomed to dealing with international producers, still have new product to put on the shelves. So this fall season roundup of 20 notable shows (in chronological order) looks, for the first time, like our winter and summer TV roundups dominated by cable and streaming series. Time will tell whether this is a one year blip or if the networks will feel the lingering complications of the pandemic. But even with the networks on the sideline, there are as many intriguing shows as ever on the fall schedule, perhaps more than usual. All dates are subject to change. Well timed and, based on its first few episodes, legitimately funny, which would set it apart from some other comedies lauded for their wokeness. Lamorne Morris of "New Girl" plays a Black cartoonist in San Francisco (based on Keith Knight, a creator of the series) who's poised for his big break when an encounter with the police inconveniently awakens his consciousness of race. His new awareness is helped along by inanimate objects that hector him about his lack of mindfulness, from a Native American spoon to an angry marker voiced by J.B. Smoove. (Sept. 9) Samuel L. Jackson follows his DNA to Gabon, home of his African ancestors and a major embarkation point for the Middle Passage. This six episode series employs the bright tone and fragmented structure of docureality TV to examine the history of the Atlantic slave trade: Jackson travels to beautiful West African landscapes with horrifying pasts, while off the coast of Florida a team of divers looks for ships that went down with slaves chained in their holds. (Sept. 14) 'We Are Who We Are' Like his film "Call Me By Your Name," Luca Guadagnino's first TV project depicts the dizzying effects of Italy on visiting Americans, in this case an angry, lonely New York teenager (Jack Dylan Grazer) and his mothers, the new commander of an American garrison (Chloe Sevigny) and an Army doctor (Alice Braga). Rather than a gorgeous Lombardy villa, the setting is an Army base in the Veneto and its drab surroundings, but the vibe is equally indolent and sunstruck. (Sept. 14) Toby Jones, the sad sack's sad sack, plays a British tour bus driver whose gloomy but predictable life is disrupted by the discovery of a stowaway on his cross Channel coach. Jones created and wrote the series with the experimental playwright Tim Crouch, and it's as if his character from the wonderful "Detectorists" had been dropped into a darker, artier sitcom. (Sept. 15) It's a prequel to the Milos Forman film "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest," but in the hands of Ryan Murphy Productions, the presiding spirits are Sirk, Hitchcock and "What Ever Happened to Baby Jane." Sarah Paulson, in the Nurse Ratched role that won Louise Fletcher an Oscar, arrives for work at a Northern California mental hospital that's a cross between Charles Foster Kane's Xanadu and Stanley Kubrick's Overlook Hotel. This could turn out to be a campfest like Murphy's recent "Hollywood," but the cast is phenomenal: Paulson, Amanda Plummer, Judy Davis, Corey Stoll, Cynthia Nixon, Finn Wittrock, Sophie Okonedo, Sharon Stone and a spiffy fleet of 1940s sedans. (Sept. 18) The 50 year old case of Jeffrey R. MacDonald, the ex Green Beret imprisoned for life for killing his wife and daughters, is opened once again. And as has happened before, the investigator is a big part of the story: The series is based on the 2012 book of the same title by the documentarian Errol Morris, in which he argued for MacDonald's innocence. Directed by Marc Smerling, a producer on "Capturing the Friedmans" and "The Jinx," the five episodes feature Morris as an avuncular host and are as much an hommage to his filmmaking style as they are a detailed explication of the case. (Sept. 25) Freeform got its filmed during the pandemic comedy, "Love in the Time of Corona," on the air first. Maybe the extra time will benefit this series about video chatting friends from Martin Gero, the creator of the NBC drama "Blindspot," and Brendan Gall. (Oct. 1) This your tech will kill you thriller from the writer and producer Manny Coto ("24: Legacy"), in which an artificial intelligence takes extreme measures to preserve itself, looks like another "Silence of the Lambs" descendant: old crazy guy is teamed with young skeptical woman. But it gains some credibility from the casting of John Slattery ("Mad Men") as the shaky Silicon Valley billionaire trying to outwit his own creation with the help of an initially wary F.B.I. agent (Fernanda Andrade). Fox got "Next" into its fall schedule by pushing it back from the spring. (Oct. 6) The setting is uncommon, but the docureality format is strong. So one of the first things we learn in this eight episode series is that the deaf and hard of hearing students at Gallaudet University are as obsessed with sex as any other college age human beings and that they can express that obsession more vividly and entertainingly than your average reality stars. (Oct. 9) Aaron Pedersen returns as the Indigenous Australian detective Jay Swan in Season 2 of this atmospheric Outback noir. Cast additions include the actor and writer Jada Alberts ("Cleverman"), as the local cop uneasily paired with the tetchy Swan, and Sofia Helin in her first TV role since Saga Noren in "The Bridge," as a visiting archaeologist who gets involved in a murder case. (Oct. 12) A new batch of episodes arrives in Netflix's reboot of the venerable true crime series, which is more stylish and restrained that it has any need to be. Cases include the murder of the presidential adviser Jack Wheeler, whose body was found in a Delaware landfill in 2010, and the death of a woman in an Oslo hotel room in 1995 who remains unidentified to this day. (Oct. 19) Nathan Fielder, whose "Nathan for You" was an alt comedy trailblazer, is an executive producer of this series that's written and directed by the lo fi documentary filmmaker John Wilson. Consisting of run and gun footage and interview snippets overlaid with Wilson's wry commentary, it transfers the omniscient awkwardness of "Joe Pera Talks With You" from the Upper Peninsula of Michigan to the sidewalks, storefronts and messy apartments of New York. (Oct. 23) David E. Kelley and Nicole Kidman team up again, following "Big Little Lies" with another glossy thriller for HBO. Kidman plays a high priced therapist in an apparently perfect Manhattan marriage with a winsomely grumpy oncologist (Hugh Grant); when she befriends the mother of a scholarship student at their son's school, strange and tragic events ensue. Kelley wrote the six episode mini series, based on Jean Hanff Korelitz's novel "You Should Have Known," and Susanne Bier directed. (Oct. 25)	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Television
People move to New York for a million reasons: Some come for the cultural and culinary offerings, some for the job opportunities and some for sheer love of the hustle and bustle. Kristin and Lou Divers came to the city to change diapers, clean spit up and lull a crying baby to sleep. The Divers arrived in January, shortly before their granddaughter, Ruth Ainslie Divers, was born. The couple, who have a house in Pittsburgh, rented a one bedroom apartment at 250 Ashland Place, in Fort Greene, Brooklyn, a short walk from the Clinton Hill co op where their son and daughter in law live, so they could be on hand to help with the couple's first child. "When we used to visit, we spent a lot of time here going to museums and looking at art, but with the grandkid now, I think we'll mostly be with the kid," said Mr. Divers, who runs a company that distributes industrial abrasive products. "We're at an interesting stage of life," Ms. Divers said. "We're both 58. I have much more control over when and how I work. He has less, but he can work here and use it as a home base." And now that they no longer have to divide their time between Pittsburgh and Indianapolis, where they used to keep an apartment, they are free to divide it between Pittsburgh and New York. But with two daughters and three grandchildren in Pittsburgh and a fourth on the way they didn't want to leave altogether. They started looking for a one bedroom in Brooklyn last November, without strong preferences besides wanting a gas range rather than electric one because they like to cook. But after touring a few new developments, they quickly decided that it would be a shame to miss out on one of the few advantages of New York City housing stock: the ability to live up high. "We were like, 'We're in New York, why go with a place that's only three or four stories tall?'" Mr. Divers said. "What's better than looking out the window? We don't even need to turn on the TV." After canceling appointments at lower rise rentals, the Divers were looking at a nearby building when they noticed The Ashland. They saw an apartment that afternoon and were pleasantly surprised to discover that it was owned and managed by the Gotham Organization. Years earlier, they had rented a Gotham apartment in Midtown West for their youngest daughter, who moved to the city to dance with Alvin Ailey after she graduated from high school. "We'd had three or four years before with no complaints," Ms. Divers said. They signed a lease for a 30th floor apartment on a corner, with floor to ceiling windows on two sides, paying about 3,850 a month, with access to amenities, after figuring in a rental concession. While furnishing the place was easy, in theory they transplanted the contents of their one bedroom rental in Indianapolis they found that not all of their furniture was scaled to a New York size apartment. "We had to figure out how to fit a 12 foot couch in. We were going around with a tape measure to look at different apartments," Mr. Divers said. "I was like, 'I'm not getting a new couch.'" They did manage to shoehorn the sofa in, but then they had to figure out where they would eat, given that dining rooms are not standard issue in many New York one bedrooms. Eventually they settled on a corner of the living room that had room for a high, round table and two tall chairs. Sometimes they wish they had rented a two bedroom, but only so they could see their guests: their daughters' families, who use the apartment frequently whenever the couple is not in residence. "So many people in our family would love to come and stay with us, but they can only stay when we're not here," Mr. Divers said. Apart from that, sharing a smaller space has presented no issues. "We like each other!" Ms. Divers said. "The main reason we started renting in Indy was because I got so tired of being in a hotel without her," Mr. Divers said. The same philosophy inspired their move to New York. "Having a physical presence in people's lives makes a big difference it adds so much," Ms. Divers said. "I think there's a patience and appreciation we can have for people when we're near them." "It's really hard to keep the family thing going," Mr. Divers added. "People go to college, grow up, move to new cities. Technologies Skype and all are nice, but it's not the same." Mr. Divers mused on how much his granddaughter had changed in the first six weeks of her life, a change he was able to witness up close by going over to take care of her, as he did on a recent afternoon so his daughter in law could take the dog to the vet. "When I went over, I put the baby in the front backpack thing and walked up and down the hall to keep her asleep," Mr. Divers said. "I like helping our kids. How would you do that without being there?"	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Real Estate
The actor Brent Carver in rehearsal for a stage version of "Lord of the Rings," in which he played the wizard Gandalf, in Toronto in 2005. Brent Carver, a sensitive, soft spoken yet nakedly emotional Canadian actor and singer who won a Tony Award for his starring role in the 1993 musical "Kiss of the Spider Woman," died on Tuesday at his home in Cranbrook, British Columbia. He was 68. The death was announced by his family. No cause was given. In his review of "Kiss of the Spider Woman" for The New York Times Frank Rich praised Mr. Carver's portrayal of Molina, a gay window dresser who escapes the psychological horrors of a Latin American prison through movie musical fantasies (performed by Chita Rivera), and "arrives at his own heroic definition of masculinity." Mr. Carver, Mr. Rich wrote, was "riveting." J. Kelly Nestruck, chief theater critic for The Globe and Mail, the Canadian newspaper, called Mr. Carver "an utterly compelling, otherworldly performer." The Washington Post called his Molina a role he also played in London and Toronto a "star making performance." "Kiss of the Spider Woman," a Kander and Ebb musical with a book by Terrence McNally, based on the Oscar winning 1985 movie and directed by Harold Prince, may have been Mr. Carver's Broadway debut, but he already had an impressive theater career in Canada. He spent nine seasons at the Stratford Theater Festival in Ontario; there and elsewhere in Canada, his roles were legion. From the 1980s onward, he played tragic heroes like Hamlet and Cyrano; tough guys like Pontius Pilate ("Jesus Christ Superstar") and the Pirate King ("The Pirates of Penzance"); sorcerers and spirits like Merlin ("Camelot"), Gandalf ("Lord of the Rings") and Ariel ("The Tempest"); a 16th century actor who plays women's roles, in "Elizabeth Rex"; and even a hard working milkman, as Tevye in "Fiddler on the Roof." Mr. Carver never identified with the concept of actors losing themselves in a role; for him, it was just the opposite. "If all things are equal, you are allowed to be more of yourself onstage than off it," he told The Times in 1993. "You allow that those emotions you wouldn't or couldn't get in touch with in ordinary life." Brent Christopher Carver was born on Nov. 17, 1951, in Cranbrook, a small city near the Rocky Mountains southwest of Calgary. He was one of eight children of Kenneth Carver, who drove a lumber truck, and Lois (Wills) Carver, who sometimes worked as a waitress or a clerk. As a little boy, Brent often sang with his father, who played guitar. Brent's stage debut was as the lead in a fifth grade production of "Dick Whittington and His Cat." He studied drama at the University of British Columbia for three years. When he left school in 1972, he made his stage debut as a swing cast member at the Vancouver Arts Club Theater in "Jacques Brel Is Alive and Well and Living in Paris." When he made his Stratford debut, in 1980, it was as Edmund Tyrone, the tubercular son in "Long Day's Journey Into Night." Mr. Carver's relatively few movies included "Shadow Dancing" (1988), a thriller starring Christopher Plummer; "Millennium" (1989), a science fiction drama with Kris Kristofferson; and "The Event" (2003), about assisted suicide among New Yorkers with AIDS, with Olympia Dukakis and Parker Posey. His television roles included Ichabod Crane in a 1999 production of "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow," Leonardo da Vinci in "Leonardo: A Dream of Flight" (2002) and the title role in the short lived Canadian series "Leo and Me" (1977 78). His co star was an unknown teenage actor, Michael J. Fox. He also received glowing notices for his solo cabaret show. Mr. Carver returned to Broadway three times: in "King Lear" (2004) as Edgar, in "Romeo and Juliet" (2013) as Friar Lawrence, but most notably in "Parade" (1998), as Leo Frank, the doomed factory manager wrongly convicted in 1913 of an adolescent girl's murder. That performance brought him his second Tony nomination and a Drama Desk Award for best actor in a musical. But his most treasured prize may have been his Governor General's Performing Arts Award for lifetime achievement in theater in 2014. After the ceremony, he was asked what advice he would give to young performers. He talked a bit about the fear of taking on a new project and advised them to say, "I need to do this, and grace will take over." After a six year break from Stratford for decades, he lived much of the year in Niagara on the Lake, Ontario he returned in 2017. His final festival roles were Feste the clown in "Twelfth Night" when Kevin Tierney of The Montreal Gazette reviewed the play, he referred to Mr. Carver as a "national treasure" and Rowley the servant in "The School for Scandal."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Theater
LONDON At the Roundhouse, a legendary music venue that has played host to everyone from David Bowie and Jimi Hendrix to the Rolling Stones and The Doors, a very different kind of show took place Tuesday night: a bombastic rock circus of a fashion extravaganza hosted by Tommy Hilfiger that brought London Fashion Week to a close. Having staged its last two see now, buy now blowouts in New York and Los Angeles, the TommyNow world tour moved across the Atlantic for its third season: It was Mr. Hilfiger's first show in the British capital in 20 years. "When it comes to fashion and music, London really is the epicenter," a grinning Mr. Hilfiger said backstage before the show. "It has been that way ever since my first visit back in the 1970s, when I became in awe of the cool British rock 'n roll lifestyle." The bespectacled designer, wearing a black leather jacket, reminisced about his shopping trips down King's Road, once a haunt of the likes of Led Zeppelin, The Who and The Beatles (and now the stomping ground of choice for hedge funders and oligarchs). "As soon as the theme for this season had been decided and I was determined there would be a fusion of rock, sport and street there was no other place I really wanted to go," Mr. Hilfiger said. "It has always been my dream to hold a real rock fashion spectacle."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Fashion & Style
In a lot of ways, the 5K I ran on Saturday was like any other race: The tall, skinny guys zipped out front, fast. Spectators rang cowbells. I heard the "Rocky" theme twice along the course. Except the spectators were naked. And I was, too. That's because the race was the Bouncing Buns Clothing Optional 5K, held at the Sunny Rest Resort, a nudist resort in Palmerton, Pa. "Not enough of us do things outside the box anymore, particularly as we get older," said Ron Horn, race director and co owner of Pretzel City Sports, which put on the race. I've run a handful of Pretzel City's clothed (or as naked runners call them, "textile") races, but the nude events never appealed to me, not when there were a zillion other races to run. But this year, it caught my attention in part because almost all other races have been canceled because of the coronavirus. In this pandemic season of covering our faces in public, why not uncover everything else? What a fun way to experience some freedom in a time of pressing fear, grief, restrictions and disappointments. But I hesitated. I've been to "toptional" pools in Las Vegas, so nudity wasn't that much of an obstacle. But running naked? It seemed so uncomfortable. And yet: I kept getting the emails about this race, in a year flooded with bad news that had come very close to home. In March, four members of my family were sick with Covid 19. In June, my brother was in the hospital for weeks after a driver struck him while he was on a bike ride. When a friend who lives in upstate New York said she was 90 percent willing to commit to making the trip to participate in this race, I thought maybe I should go, if for nothing else than to see her. "What else do you have to do?" she asked. Sunny Rest was founded as a nudist resort in 1945 and, except for the lack of clothing, looks like a lot of other campgrounds, with mobile homes, cabins, tents and RVs. There's a pool, spa, volleyball and tennis courts, hot tub, and hiking and biking trails. Most people go about their daily activities wearing nothing but shoes or sandals, maybe a hat. It's private property, so laws against public nudity are not an issue. Pretzel City has been putting on races there for 13 years. The events are meant to be fun, but the race organizers recognize that there is something of a taboo around nudity, so it anonymizes race results when posting them online, listing participants only by first name, last initial and home state. Knowing the privacy concerns, Pretzel City's race director announced before the race that a photographer and I would be covering the event, and that we would include only those runners who consented to being photographed and interviewed. Several runners were eager to talk to me, including Bruce Freeburger, 69, who drove from Detroit to run this race. He operates the website naked5k.com. Its slogan: "I did wear shoes!" "It's not 'Girls Gone Wild,'" he said of naked runs. He believes that those who run nude tend to be "unselfish, and more sportsmanlike." As soon as I pulled into Sunny Rest (after showing my ID and having the license plate of my car recorded by security), I saw a man in a wide brimmed sun hat and no pants walking toward the pool. By the time I parked near the race start, I felt prim. Some runners were clothed, but most were in some state of undress. A woman breastfed her child while she checked in. A man waited to run in just sneakers and a Viking helmet he hung his mask from one of the horns when he wasn't near other people. I saw my friend, already stripped down. She fit right in. I gave her an elbow bump and took off my shorts. It didn't feel weird, at all. To prepare for the experience, I'd tried running completely naked on the treadmill in my basement, and determined that going braless was impractical for me. So I took the Donald Duck approach and wore a hat and sports bra but no bottoms. When I checked in, I was handed a race bib and a T shirt, but then a staffer naked except for mask and gloves wrote my race number with a marker on my leg. Where was I going to pin a bib anyway? I lined up near the start, a body in a sea of 115 bodies, ages 9 through 78, all standing six feet apart. The energy felt zippier here than at a normal race almost giddy. While most of the runners were from Pennsylvania, only a handful were also members of the Sunny Rest Resort. That meant almost everyone had traveled to this place from places as far away as Ohio, Delaware and West Virginia for the opportunity to do something unusual. Runners were required to wear masks to pick up their packets, and asked to wear them when near other people. Pretzel City also moved the start and finish area away from the more crowded part of the resort toward the camping sites, so we had more space to spread out. Over a bullhorn, Horn asked us to put our arms straight out by our sides and said, "If you are touching someone you are not sleeping with, you are standing too close." After the initial newness of being aware of my butt bouncing around, everything felt pretty much the same as in a clothed race. We started at 10:15 a.m., and I'm usually done running by 8 a.m. in the summer, so it was hot. I was grateful for my hat, and the sunblock and anti chafing balm I'd applied all over my body. By the first mile, I was coated in sweat. "I don't have a shirt to wipe off my face!" another runner shouted. The more experienced naked runners had thought to carry little towels. Part of the course was an out and back, so I saw the leaders coming back as I went out. With a full view of their entire, naked forms in motion, I felt appreciation, in the same way I'd look at a nice painting. I didn't worry about anyone else appreciating my body from the naked ladies cheering from their trailer's outdoor bar to the gentleman doing naked squats on his deck. The race didn't feel sexualized at all, and I didn't worry about which parts of my body were not perfectly flat and smooth, about what parts of my body shook with every step. I was just another body in motion. I was feeling what many runners had told me before the start of the race that this was freeing. Richard Whalen, 43, of Folcroft, Pa., said that for him it's also a celebration of who he is now. He's a recovering alcoholic who took up running after he stopped being too hung over to run in the morning. "There's a sense of freedom here to show off your beautiful body." That's also why Jim and Susan Fiordeliso of Yardley, Pa., came too. Last year, Mr. Fiordeliso, 53, had heart surgery, after which they vowed to take better care of their bodies. That included moving to a plant based diet, as well as lots of walking and running. They've lost 210 pounds between them. It was their first time at a nude race, and they treated it as a celebration of their new lives. "I loved it and I would do it again," he said. And then there's just the fun of it. "I'm not a nudist type. I'm not an exhibitionist type," said Michael Lyons, 35, of Douglassville, Pa., who has done both naked road races and bike rides. "I'm just a goofball who likes to do fun things." I finished in 30 minutes, 26 seconds, good enough for fifth place in my category. My award: a medal that I wore at around my neck with nothing but my sandals, bandanna and a fresh coating of sun block. Jen A. Miller, the author of "Running: A Love Story," writes The Times's weekly running newsletter.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Well
You don't have to decorate with pumpkins and turkeys just because it's Thanksgiving. Robin Standefer, of Roman and Williams, suggested using plants and fruit instead: "We always consider what's magical and what brings delight." Tired of holiday cliches? Here's how to create a table setting that will surprise and delight your guests. A festive table setting is about more than just providing some decor for your holiday dinner. It can set the mood for a party, spark conversations among guests and give you an excuse to dust off your grandmother's silver and china. But how do you pull everything together in a creative way that doesn't feel cliched? For advice, we turned to interior designers, florists and event planners known for creating striking tablescapes. "The foundation of your holiday table is the textile you choose for your runner or tablecloth and napkins," said Liz Curtis, the founder of Table Teaspoon, a San Francisco rental service that offers preplanned table settings starting at 24 a person. Go with a neutral color and pattern, rather than a holiday theme, to create "an elegant, elevated feel for your guests," Ms. Curtis said. "Matouk scalloped linens and Aerin Lauder's line for Williams Sonoma are my go to for tablecloths and napkins." "The holidays are a time to celebrate family, so the most meaningful decorations weave together the personal and the festive," said Bronson van Wyck, who owns a design and event production company, Van Wyck Van Wyck, with his mother, Mary Lynn van Wyck. At Christmas dinner for family and friends in Manhattan, Mr. van Wyck, who is of Scottish and Dutch descent, uses tartan patterned napkins and blue and white china. "Not an obvious combination," he said. "But even patterns that don't seem to fit the occasion work if they're mixed and matched with confidence and whimsy." To add another personal touch, Mr. van Wyck said, "I will sometimes embroider the initials of my guests onto napkins, which I then use as place cards" that guests can take home. "Guests love to see themselves," he said, "whether it's their photo tagged on social media, their reflection in a mirror or even just their own name beautifully written on an elegant place card. In an age of personalization, think about how you can take this to the next level." "In a season where many of us spend most of our time keeping warm indoors, there is something so special about using pieces from the earth, by adding a garland of greenery or winter fruits down the center of the table," said Maggie Burns, the owner of Maggie Richmond Design, in Manhattan. "Pomegranates and figs add the perfect punch of holiday red to a place setting, and nothing smells more beautiful than sprigs of evergreen scattered throughout the house." Maggie Burns, the owner of Maggie Richmond Design, likes to run a garland of greenery and winter fruits down the center of the table. Mr. van Wyck, who grew up in Arkansas, likes to hang a magnolia wreath. "It's a traditional symbol of hospitality in the South," he said. "And the leaves look just as great dried as they do freshly cut, so it's not a once and done purchase." He added: "The combination of deep green and brown and gold is a perfect palette for holiday decorating. You get a lot of bang for your buck, because they work for Thanksgiving as well as Christmas." Robin Standefer, who owns the design firm Roman and Williams with her husband, Stephen Alesch, suggested decorating with plants, flowers, fruit and herbs. "I've never used a formula when setting a table, and I definitely don't want it to feel so perfect that you're afraid to mess it up," said Ken Fulk, an event designer in San Francisco known for his exuberant style. "It should be loosely arranged for balance, but not perfectly symmetrical." Glassware and silver should be arranged in the order they're used, starting from the outside and working your way in, he said. "But we give ourselves some flexibility with glasses when there are more than five pairings. In those cases, we're often mixing vintage glassware with crystal, and it looks so much prettier to arrange by style, size or color." Ms. Standefer and Mr. Alesch have a similar philosophy: "Stephen and I take classic placement of utensils and tabletop tools seriously, but we don't let these restrictions limit the needs of our table," she said. "The standard of outside in can be revisited depending on the density of the table and amount of guests. So we might put the utensils above the plate if the place settings are close together or if we are using flora on the plate." "Nothing speaks louder in a setting of celebration than the clinking of water or wine glasses," Ms. Standefer said, noting that the right glassware can influence the mood at the table. So which stemware to choose? "There really are no absolutes in finding the right pieces for your home, as long as they are functional and beautiful, of the earth and hold narrative," she said. "A robust glassware collection can be high and low glass you admire that you've found at a flea market or a set you invest in from the collection of an expert artisan whose work you follow." The important thing, she added, is that it's not so precious you're afraid to use it. Caroline Bailly, the owner of L'Atelier Rouge, a Manhattan floral design and event company, likes to use purple eggplants, kale and bunches of root vegetables like radishes and beets to add texture, color and interest to her floral arrangements. "I am always inspired by the farmers' markets," she said. For one harvest themed arrangement, she and her creative director, Takaya Sato, turned a bushel of carrots upside down, so the green trimmings flowed over the edge of a bowl and the points stood up like a wonky bouquet. Ms. Bailly recommended playing with color blocks and asymmetry, even when you're working with more traditional bouquets. "You get a more powerful effect by working with colors in groupings, rather than mixing the shades," she said. And combining flower stems of different lengths allows certain elements to stand out, adding depth to the arrangement. "The flowers are so beautiful on their own," she said. "You don't want to them to be packed together." "The easiest, least expensive way to add drama to the dinner table is to light some candles," Mr. van Wyck said. "Everything and everyone looks amazing by firelight. For the most flattering light, aim for a mix of tapers and votives scattered the length of the table." And don't skimp on them. "You can never have too many," he said. "For a warm, inviting glow, at least triple what you think you'll need." For weekly email updates on residential real estate news, sign up here. Follow us on Twitter: nytrealestate.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Real Estate
Less than two months ago, Boston Globe reporters and editors were delivering thousands of copies of their own newspaper, mollifying subscribers who were upset by sporadic delivery service. But on Monday their jobs seemed so much more glamorous, as the newsroom celebrated the Academy Award triumph of "Spotlight," the film based on the paper's Pulitzer Prize winning series exposing the Catholic Church's cover up of priest abuse. "Everybody's walking a little bit taller" in the newsroom, Brian McGrory, the paper's editor, said in a phone interview, describing the mood as "universally great.'' "It's a much welcomed boost." At the same, he added, "the important part of this for us is the huge amount of positive publicity shed on the kind of pick and shovel investigative work that The Globe and everybody else in news media needs to be doing." The buoyant mood over the best picture award for "Spotlight'' Sunday night extended beyond the paper's Boston offices, said Walter Robinson, the editor known as Robby and played by Michael Keaton in the film. Mr. Robinson said he received messages from colleagues in the business saying their newsrooms "erupted in applause" over the award. Twitter also lit up with rallying cries in favor of journalism writ large, including exhortations to subscribe "to the print edition of your local newspaper," "buy an app" or donate to an investigative reporting nonprofit organization. Mr. Robinson, who led The Globe's investigative team, said in a phone interview that the award was a "needed shot in the arm for journalism," and a reminder to the public on "good reporting and the difference it can make in people's lives particularly the lives of people who have no one else to speak for them but us." The boost comes as financial pressures in the digital age have forced many newspapers to reduce their staffs and cut back on resources, and when public attacks on journalism are an increasingly common ingredient of presidential campaign stump speeches. The Globe has not been exempt from these pressures, eliminating its foreign bureaus and all national bureaus except Washington, said Sacha Pfeiffer, a member of the team who is played by Rachel McAdams. In the face of these pressures, maintaining subscriber loyalty takes on even more importance. So when The Globe changed delivery services early this year, leading to problems in getting papers to people's doors, staff members quickly volunteered to add delivery routes to their normal duties. "It's such a rough time for the print industry that it's the best possible time for a movie that celebrates journalism," Ms. Pfeiffer said, also speaking by phone. Netflix buys a visual effects company in a move to support its global ambitions. 15 minimum wage for federal contractors will take effect Jan. 30. Still, staff members at The Globe and other media outlets wondered if the celebration would translate to action, meaning more paid print and digital subscribers and, in the case of nonprofit organizations, more donations. "In the end it's a business discussion," said William Gray, media relations specialist at the Center for Public Integrity, a Washington based nonprofit organization focused on investigative reporting. Mr. Gray noted that the center's chief executive, Peter Bale, met recently with one of the screenwriters of "Spotlight," Josh Singer, to talk about providing financial support to his organization's work. They also discussed telling more stories from the world of journalism. ProPublica, a New York based nonprofit organization, sent out a fund raising email Monday with the subject line, "A day to celebrate investigative journalism." Ms. Pfeiffer said she hoped the film would help encourage a new wave of aspiring journalists to join the ranks. She said she had been speaking for several months at journalism schools and other locations with her "Spotlight" colleagues about the team's work. Young people all over the country have said that because of the film, they want to become journalists, she said. "But I wonder, will jobs be there?" Mr. McGrory called Hollywood success "one of the most visible platforms you can get in this country," but questioned whether journalism would realize any financial benefit from it. "We don't know how to monetize this award to fund more investigative reporting, or whether it can be," he said.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Media
A local investor has bought this four story mixed use 1920 building with vacant retail space on the ground level and the second level occupied. It has two vacant three bedroom apartments. The 5,837 square foot building, in an area of downtown construction, is next to a 300,000 square foot building to be completed next year. 60 West Eighth Street (between Avenue of the Americas and MacDougal Street) See's Candies, based in San Francisco, is to open its first New York shop toward the end of the summer in a 625 square foot retail space, with a 325 square foot basement, in this five story walk up, which was built around 1900, in the Greenwich Village Historic District.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Real Estate

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