Split (2)

train · 585k rows

text stringlengths 1 39.7k	original_task stringclasses 8 values	original_label stringclasses 35 values
TOKYO When the Japanese government raised the tax on cigarettes on Oct. 1, it could have started a public health revolution in this land of heavy smokers. The tax increase should also have been a bonanza for Pfizer, the world's biggest pharmaceutical company, which makes the leading drug to help smokers break the habit. Instead, it became a missed opportunity. Despite ample notice of the change, Pfizer failed to produce enough of the drug, Chantix, which is sold as Champix in Japan. When tens of thousands of would be quitters rushed to their doctors for prescriptions, Pfizer was overwhelmed. Less than two weeks after the tax increase went into effect, the company was forced to suspend sales of the drug to new patients until it could ramp up production. Now, with the drug still difficult to get, Japanese health professionals and many of the nation's smokers are grumbling. And Pfizer has given up millions of dollars in potential Chantix sales, at least temporarily, at a time when overseas markets are growing in importance. In the United States, prescriptions for the drug plunged after the Food and Drug Administration warned doctors about psychiatric side effects. "After all that advertising, it turns out they don't have enough," said Hiroya Kumamaru, director of the KI Akihabara Clinic in Tokyo, who is turning away patients. His clinic has enough of the drug for only the 80 patients who began their treatment before the supply squeeze. "They should have predicted something like this," he said. A Pfizer spokesman in Tokyo, Kinji Iwase, said the company misjudged interest in the drug among Japanese smokers. "An extraordinary number of people decided to quit, and our reading of the situation was off," Mr. Iwase said. "We expected more demand, but not to this extent." Japan has long been a smokers' stronghold. Cheap cigarettes sold by a government controlled tobacco company and lax antismoking laws smokers have almost total freedom to light up at bars, restaurants and even schools and government offices have long encouraged the habit. About 130,000 people a year die of tobacco related illnesses in Japan, according to the World Health Organization. But a growing health consciousness, tighter regulations on tobacco advertising and increasingly strict smoking bans on public transport have contributed to a gradual decline in smoking. The smoking rate for men was 36.6 percent in 2010, 2.3 percentage points lower than a year earlier though far above the 24 percent smoking rate among men in the United States. The tax increase, prompted by health concerns as well as a need to raise revenue for Japan's government, was expected to spur an even more sharp and sustained flight from cigarettes. On Oct. 1, the price of a pack of 20 cigarettes jumped from 300 yen, or about 3.60, to over 400 yen, including 70 yen in taxes. Ahead of the increase, smokers rushed to stock up; tobacco sales surged 88 percent in September from a year earlier, but slumped 70 percent in October, according to the Tobacco Institute of Japan. Surveys suggest that many smokers here are looking to quit. In one November poll of 1,110 smokers by Rakuten Research, 13.9 percent of respondents said they had stopped smoking, while 15.5 percent said they planned to stop. While sales of nicotine patches and smoking alternatives have risen, Chantix seems to be the preference for smokers trying to stop. Introduced in the United States in 2006, Chantix, which works by blocking receptors in the brain and suppressing the positive feelings induced by cigarettes, was initially seen as a global blockbuster. But reports of possible side effects, including aggression and thoughts of suicide, prompted the F.D.A. in 2009 to require the drug to carry the agency's strongest warning on its packaging. That set off a sharp drop in sales in the United States. Since then, Pfizer has tried to emphasize the benefits of quitting smoking over the risks posed by Chantix, and has stressed that further studies are needed to determine whether the problems are caused by the drug itself or are symptoms of nicotine withdrawal. To make up for lost revenue at home, Pfizer has also looked increasingly to foreign markets. In the first nine months of 2010, while revenue from Chantix in America fell another 16.8 percent to 252 million, sales in the rest of the world grew 22.17 percent to 270 million. Clearing Japan's drug approval process in 2008, Pfizer successfully wooed Japanese doctors to prescribe the drug. Japan's national health insurance covered 70 percent of the 60,000 yen cost for a recommended 12 week prescription. To stoke public interest, Pfizer started a major ad campaign, starring the slick Hiroshi Tachi, Japan's answer to the chain smoking Don Draper of America's "Mad Men." Mr. Tachi declared that Chantix had helped him quit smoking, and posed in posters with a party horn between his fingers instead of his trademark cigarette. Soon, Japanese blogs raved about the new "almighty" drug that would help Japan kick its cigarette habit. (There has been little coverage here of Chantix's potential side effects.) By August, Pfizer was selling the drug to about 70,000 patients a month in Japan. But that did not prepare the company for the jump in demand related to the tax increase. In September, prescriptions more than doubled to 170,000, and they rose even more in October. On Oct. 12, Pfizer announced that it was stopping shipments of its "starter packs," and instructed clinics to stop accepting new patients. Reiko Ono, 33, who has smoked for over a decade, was one of the last to secure supplies of Champix at a Tokyo clinic. She has completed eight of the 12 weeks of recommended treatment, and has, until now, resisted the urge to light up. "It hasn't been as difficult as I thought," Ms. Ono said. But many of Ms. Ono's colleagues who sought the drug were told to wait, she said. "I'm lucky I moved quickly," she said.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Global Business
The reimagined production of "West Side Story" from the experimental Belgian director Ivo van Hove will open on Feb. 6 at the Broadway Theater, the producers announced on Wednesday. They also named the show's full cast, which includes 23 actors making their Broadway debuts. Isaac Powell, best known for playing the young love interest in the 2017 revival of "Once on This Island," will be Tony, a former leader of the Jets street gang. Shereen Pimentel, an undergraduate at the Juilliard School who made her Broadway debut in "The Lion King" at 9 years old, will be Maria. Portraying Bernardo, Maria's brother and leader of the Puerto Rican gang the Sharks, is Amar Ramasar, a principal dancer with New York City Ballet who had a prime role in the 2018 Broadway revival of "Carousel." Mr. Ramasar returned to the City Ballet stage in May after he was fired for sending sexually explicit photographs of a female colleague in the company. The dancers' union successfully challenged his termination.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Theater
There's no slump this summer when it comes to travel: Several indicators show that United States residents are traveling more than they did in summer 2016. At American Express Travel, a network primarily for leisure travelers, overall travel this summer is up 19 percent based on airfare bookings, compared with last summer, while international travel is up 26 percent based on airfare bookings. The travel network Virtuoso is seeing a 10 percent growth in travel this summer, compared with last summer, according to Mike McCown, the senior vice president for finance and analytics. Last summer, the network booked 5.57 billion in travel, he said, and this summer, that number is expected to be more than 6 billion. And Signature Travel Network has a 10 percent increase in sales of land vacations for this summer, compared with last summer, said Karryn Christopher, the senior vice president of sales and marketing. Outside of travel networks, individual travel companies are also reporting a rise. Indagare has 20 percent more bookings for travel from June through early September, compared with the same period last year, said Melissa Biggs Bradley, the founder and chief executive. And Josh Alexander, a travel adviser at the New York City based Protravel International, said that he has planned 130 private trips for clients traveling this summer; last summer, that number was around 100. Flight searches are another barometer suggesting increased interest in summer travel. Between March 1 to May 24, for example, the online travel site Cheapflights.com saw flight searches in the United States for both domestic and international travel grow more than 26 percent, compared with the same period last year. "Generally, air is booked 60 to 90 days before travel, so it's safe to say that people are traveling more this summer," said Emily Fisher, a spokeswoman for the company. Some experts say that more Americans are traveling this year than they did in 2016 because of pent up demand from the heated presidential election, when many people cut back on traveling. "Based on our data from the last 15 years, we've seen travel sales soften in election years and then rebound post inauguration," said Mr. McCown of Virtuoso. It's not surprising that consumers scale back their travel during election years, said Zachary Sears, a senior economist at Tourism Economics, part of the research firm Oxford Economics. "When a president is in the process of being elected, there's uncertainty about the future of the market so people cut down on discretionary expenses such as travel," he said. But Mr. Sears also said that this cutback is usually temporary, and once an election is over, consumers return to their usual spending patterns. On the flip side, some data indicates that inbound tourism to the United States is down: For example, the app Foursquare, which analyzes the locations of more than 50 million global users a month, found that international tourism to leisure locations in the United States decreased 11 percent between October 2016 and March 2017, compared with the same period the year before. More Americans may be traveling come summer, but where exactly are they going? Here, five popular vacation destinations for summer 2017. Indagare has a 30 percent increase in trip bookings to Croatia for travel this summer, compared with summer 2016, and Expedia.com has seen air ticket demand to the country double from last summer. Mr. Alexander of Protravel International said that he has planned several dozen private trips to Croatia for travel this summer the most he has ever done. The country has a multifaceted appeal as a vacation destination, he said. "The beaches are fantastic, the food is delicious, and there's culture and history," he said. In addition, Mr. Alexander said that many of his clients who are headed to Croatia in the coming months have told him that, at a time when terrorist attacks around the world seem to be increasingly commonplace, Croatia is perceived as being "safe." After several years of weak tourism because of the country's debt crisis, Greece is making a comeback as a summer getaway spot. Between March 1 and May 24, Cheapflights.com saw flight searches to Greece from the United States increase 50 percent, compared with the same period last year, and Indagare has a 30 percent increase in 2017 summer trip bookings to Greece, compared with last summer. Ms. Biggs Bradley said that Greece is an attractive vacation choice because it's family friendly and much more affordable than a number of other European countries. Andy Pesky, the senior vice president of leisure sales and marketing at Protravel International, which has 400 million a year in leisure sales, said that the country is one of the company's top three destinations in sales for travel this summer. Sales for trips to South Africa in 2017 are up 20 percent within the Signature Travel Network, compared with sales last year, and the country is among the top five best sellers within the Virtuoso network. Expedia.com has seen a 25 percent increase in air ticket demand to South Africa this summer, compared with last summer, and searches for flights to South Africa from the United States on Cheapflights.com increased 11 percent between March 1 and May 24, compared with the same period last year. Ms. Biggs Bradley said South Africa is an attraction for every kind of traveler. "The country has great game viewing, a strong wine scene, beautiful beaches and vibrant cities like Cape Town," she said. "Plus, you get value for your money on a trip there." It takes nearly a day to reach this South Asian island country from the United States, but that doesn't appear to be deterring travelers from planning summer vacations there. American Express Travel has seen a 117 percent growth in summer 2017 bookings to the Maldives, compared with last summer. And at Expedia.com, the demand for air tickets from the United States to the Maldives for travel this summer is up 30 percent from last summer, said Sarah Waffle, a company spokeswoman. Part of the draw may be the several hotels that have opened in the Maldives within the last 18 months, such as Soneva Jani and the St. Regis Maldives Vommuli Resort, but Claire Bennett, the executive vice president and general manager of American Express Travel, said that the growth is also because more Americans want to disconnect from everyday chaos and want to explore untouched places. "The Maldives is the essence of this experience," she said. It's a perennially popular vacation destination, and summer 2017 is no exception: Italy is the top seller for summer bookings within both Virtuoso and the Signature Travel Network. "First time travelers to Europe tend to choose Italy as the first country they visit, and seasoned European travelers go there again and again," said Ms. Christopher of Signature Travel Network. "The country has an enduring allure." Mr. Pesky said that Italy is Protravel International's best selling summer vacation destination. "We're going to do 25 million this year in sales to Italy, and that number increases every year," he said.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Travel
If Ingmar Bergman and Robert Bresson gave us priests who feared the absence of God, "Come Sunday" offers the opposite: the story of a real life evangelical bishop who began preaching that God was welcoming, and that even people who hadn't been "saved" would be spared from hell. That message might seem innocuous, but it challenged the beliefs of the congregants at his Tulsa megachurch, who regarded the position as heresy. Adapted, with the usual biopic dramatic liberties, from a "This American Life" episode that aired in 2005, Joshua Marston's film begins in 1998, with Carlton Pearson (a superb Chiwetel Ejiofor) preaching about his efforts to sway a lawyer who sat next to him on a plane. But the movie soon begins to show his doubts. He declines to write to the prison board to help an uncle (Danny Glover). He confesses to his mentor Oral Roberts (Martin Sheen), who calls him his "black son," that it seems foolish to spend time saving people he doesn't know as opposed to people he does. Where Mr. Marston ("Maria Full of Grace") locates most of the story's nuance and power is in charting Carlton's downfall, as congregants and friends begin to shun him for his views. (His wife, played by Condola Rashad, and a gay church musical director, an invented character played by Lakeith Stanfield, are notable exceptions.)	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Movies
The blandly creepy protagonist, Karel Kopfrkingl (played by the portly, moon faced Rudolf Hrusinsky , a frequent presence in Czech new wave films), is a petty bourgeois monster an unctuous mortician, abstinent yet authoritarian, who lords over his wife and children as well as the impressive crematory that he calls the "temple of death." Kopfrkingl rarely stops talking persistently explaining himself in soft, insinuating tones, and frequently referencing the teachings of Tibetan Buddhism. His worldview is altered, if not shaken, by a former comrade in arms, Walter Reinke , who arrives in Prague in advance of Hitler's army. Reinke, an Austrian with whom Kopfrkingl served during World War I, persuades him that, thanks to a supposed drop of German blood, Kopfrkingl is something more and better than Czech. Thus Kopfrkingl becomes co opted into the ideology of the Third Reich, incorporating Nazi theories about euthanasia and racial purity into his own philosophy. In its dark comedy, "The Cremator" has been compared to mid 1960s landmarks like Stanley Kubrick's "Dr. Strangelove" and Roman Polanski's "Repulsion." (It also evokes "The Loved One," Tony Richardson's 1965 satire of Hollywood burial practices.) But the movie has its own ominous mood. The foreboding is accentuated by Kopfrkingl's visit to a wax museum populated by living models, and the brutal boxing match to which Reinke insists on taking him. As he falls under Reinke's spell, it becomes apparent that Kopfrkingl, this fastidious apostle of cremation, is presiding over the death of Czechoslovakia and that he has also lost his mind. The movie's ending is a shocker if you haven't read the novel, and perhaps even if you have. (Herz, who survived World War II in a Nazi concentration camp, drops all understatement during the final 10 minutes.)	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Movies
FRANKFURT A main indicator of business sentiment in Europe unexpectedly fell deeper toward recession territory Thursday, compounding concerns about the global recovery after signs of slowing manufacturing in China. The gloomy data provided a reminder that, despite the aura of calm in Europe after months of debt crisis fever, the 17 European Union members that use the euro still have fundamental problems. Major stock indexes in Europe fell broadly Thursday, and the euro slipped against the dollar, after a survey of purchasing managers suggested that growth in the euro zone declined in the first three months of the year. That would be the region's second consecutive quarter of negative growth, which would meet the broad definition of a recession. Stocks were also down in the United States. Reinforcing the survey results, manufacturing orders in the euro zone fell 2.3 percent in January from December, according to a report Thursday by Eurostat, the European Union's statistics office. That was a slightly bigger drop than expected. The figures suggest that the euro zone is still struggling even after a flood of cash from the European Central Bank helped calm fears of a banking crisis and credit crunch. "The easing of the sovereign debt crisis has apparently failed to bring about a lasting improvement in business sentiment," Christoph Weil, an economist at Commerzbank, wrote in a note to clients. Reports next week should offer more clues about the direction of the European economy. On Monday, the Ifo Institute in Munich will release its monthly survey of business sentiment in Germany, seen as a reliable indicator of growth in the country, the euro zone's largest economy. On Wednesday, the central bank will release its monthly report on the euro zone's money supply, which economists will watch for signs of a recovery in bank lending. A report by the European Systemic Risk Board, which monitors Europe's financial system, warned that banks remained under pressure as they tried to reduce risky assets and find new sources of capital. "The main issue is how to ensure the provision of credit to the economy in the current environment," the board said. It includes representatives of the central bank, the European Commission and financial industry regulators. In China, weak external and domestic demand continued to weigh on the manufacturing sector in March, a survey released Thursday showed, raising expectations that the Chinese authorities would step up measures to revive economic momentum. China has become a major market for European products as varied as heavy machinery and luxury goods, so a slowdown there worsens problems in Europe. The preliminary reading in the China survey for March dropped to 48.1 from 49.6 in February. Readings below 50 signal contraction, and even though the reading provides only an early insight into this sector of the Chinese economy, the decline was disappointing. Today in On Tech: Imagine not living in Big Tech's world. Dollar Tree will raise prices to 1.25 by the end of April. The Australian dollar, which is acutely affected by signs of weakness in China, dropped against the United States dollar after the economic figures were released. Oil and gold prices also declined. In Europe, the purchasing managers' survey, compiled by Markit Economics, slipped to a three month low of 48.7 in March from 49.3 in February. In that survey, too, a reading below 50 indicates a contraction in economic activity. The Markit survey also pointed to a decline in German manufacturing. That is particularly worrisome, because German exports have helped to compensate for sluggishness in Southern Europe as countries like Italy and Spain cut government spending to reduce debt. "Any hope that the manufacturing cycle is turning rapidly in the euro area is dashed by today's numbers," Stella Wang, an analyst in London for Nomura, wrote in a note. But she said the figures were unlikely to prompt the European Central Bank to cut its benchmark interest rate from 1 percent, because inflation remained above the official target of about 2 percent. The Chinese and euro zone economies are closely linked because many German exports, including cars and heavy machinery, are sold there. China has become the largest market for Volkswagen and other German companies. "With new export orders sluggish and domestic demand still softening, China's slowdown has yet to finish," Xiaoping Ma and Qu Hongbin, economists who follow China for HSBC, wrote in a research note. Dariusz Kowalczyk, a strategist in Hong Kong for Credit Agricole, wrote in a research note about the purchasing managers' index, that "the drop is quite large, especially given that March tends to bring an improvement." Although the reading is likely to reinforce fears of a hard landing for the Chinese economy, Mr. Kowalczyk emphasized that the slowdown in manufacturing activity was expected to be temporary and that he continued to believe China would have a soft landing, with overall growth this year of 8 percent. The upside is that Beijing has a fair amount of firepower it can deploy to stimulate growth. May analysts say they expect the authorities to employ a range of these tools as the year progresses.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Global Business
When "The Lottery" was published in The New Yorker in 1948, it provoked more letters than any piece of fiction in the history of the magazine. In the decades since, Shirley Jackson's unnerving allegorical tale of ritualized small town cruelty has spooked and intrigued countless readers, including many who first encountered it in a high school English class. At the beginning of Josephine Decker's "Shirley," a young woman named Rose Nemser (Odessa Young), reading the story on a train, has a different reaction. Strangely aroused by the power of Jackson's writing, she drags her husband, Fred (Logan Lerman), into the lavatory for sex. The two of them, as it happens, are on their way to Bennington, Vt., where Jackson (Elisabeth Moss) lives with her husband, the literary critic and campus lech Stanley Edgar Hyman (Michael Stuhlbarg). It's supposed to be a temporary arrangement. Fred, a bland and ambitious young scholar, has been hired to assist Stanley with his classes. He and Rose, who is in the early stages of pregnancy, plan to stay just until they find their own place. But the young couple, like characters in a dark fairy tale, find themselves trapped in a spooky, ivy covered house full of menace and enchantment. The viewer, meanwhile, spins through a whirlwind of psychological horror and erotic implication. It's equal parts term paper and gothic nightmare. "Shirley," adapted by Sarah Gubbins from Susan Scarf Merrell's novel, will never be mistaken for a biopic. That is all to the good. Jackson, the subject of an excellent recent biography by Ruth Franklin, is much too interesting to succumb to the dull, sentimental moralizing of mainstream moviemaking. Instead, Decker and Moss approach Jackson as if she were a character in her own fiction, which is to say as an object of pity, terror, fascination and awe rather than straightforward sympathy. Shirley is a mystery and a monster, and "Shirley" is at once a sincere tribute and a sly hatchet job. Stanley, a prancing intellectual hobbit, is nasty to Fred and creepily nice to Rose, but his bullying and groping are a sideshow. The dominant force in the household and the movie is Shirley. As she works feverishly on her next novel, "Hangsaman," she casts an almost literal spell on Rose, bedeviling her waking hours with tantrums and haunting her dreams. "I'm a witch," Shirley proclaims, and it doesn't seem like metaphor or hyperbole. She guesses the secret of Rose's pregnancy by looking at her face. Rose, trembling between fear and lust, becomes Shirley's nursemaid and her muse, her secret sharer and her prey. Shirley imagines Rose and Rose imagines herself as the Bennington student whose disappearance figures in "Hangsaman." Decker and the cinematographer, Sturla Brandth Grovlen, blur the boundaries of realism, interweaving domestic drama and campus sex comedy with scenes of fantasy, so that by the end we are not sure whose hallucination, or what kind of experience, we are witnessing. At times the academic power games Shirley and Stanley play with Rose and Fred evoke Edward Albee's "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf." At other moments the volatile connection between Rose and Shirley recalls the fraught creative mentorship in "Madeline's Madeline," Decker's 2018 film about a teenager in thrall to the charismatic leader of a theater company. Like that movie, this one posits a link between creativity and mental disorder. Shirley is a demonic genius, and also the modern incarnation of a Victorian madwoman. Her brilliance is hard to separate from her instability, and her eccentricity is treated as something pathological. One notable liberty that "Shirley" takes with the biographical record is to make Jackson and Hyman childless. In real life, they raised four children, and some of Jackson's most popular and lucrative writing consisted of articles and stories about parenthood and everyday domesticity published in women's magazines. In removing this thread, and making the unliterary, uneducated Rose (who dropped out of college to marry Fred) an emblem of fertility, the filmmakers impose a stark separation of roles on Jackson that she herself defied. Rose, cooking and cleaning as her belly swells, stands in archetypal contrast to Shirley, a female Faust who has purchased her artistic power at enormous cost. They are both victims of a hypocritical, repressive, male dominated world, though the actual men in their lives are weak, preening mediocrities. That fact, and the libidinal current that runs between the women, are the most potent and convincing aspects of "Shirley." Moss, brazen and witty and seeming to push herself to the very edge of control, is a galvanizing presence, convincingly wild even as she's trapped in a hothouse of sometimes dubious ideas. Rated R. Sex and smoking. Running time: 1 hour 47 minutes. Stream on Hulu, watch on virtual cinemas or rent or buy on Amazon, iTunes, FandangoNOW and other streaming platforms and pay TV operators.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Movies
Exactly one month before most of the college football world once expected to start a new season, Wednesday showed just how difficult it will be to stage autumn sports during the coronavirus pandemic. The University of Connecticut canceled its football season. More college athletes around the country opted out from playing. Even the publication of the Big Ten football schedule on Wednesday came with the dispiriting qualifier that not one game might actually be played, and Maryland said it expected to begin its season without fans at Maryland Stadium. Then the National Collegiate Athletic Association's Divisions II and III canceled championships in fall sports. Louisville, which plays in Division I, said it had suspended athletic activities in field hockey, volleyball and men's and women's soccer after 29 players tested positive for the virus. And the College Football Playoff said it would delay the release of its all important final rankings until close to Christmas. Taken together, Wednesday's announcements again starkly demonstrated the newly persistent precariousness of college sports, an industry that has seen its plans and its revised plans upended throughout the pandemic. "It's fluid," Kevin Warren, the Big Ten commissioner, said in an interview on Wednesday. "It changes by the day. There's no guarantee that we're going to have sports in the fall." "We are," he added, "absolutely living in an uncertain time." UConn put an end to some of its uncertainty by becoming the first Football Bowl Subdivision school to abandon its football season fully. Although the decision came after a third of the university's expected games had been canceled because of the scheduling policies of assorted leagues, the school, an independent in football, said health concerns were too grave to proceed with a season in any form. The Ivy League, as well as many historically Black colleges and universities, reached similar conclusions earlier this summer. "The safety challenges created by Covid 19 place our football student athletes at an unacceptable level of risk," David Benedict, the athletic director at Connecticut, where the football team posted a 2 10 record last season, said in a statement. "The necessary measures needed to mitigate risk of football student athletes contracting the coronavirus are not conducive to delivering an optimal experience for our team." UConn officials said the team's football players drove the decision. In a statement released through the university, the players said they did so in part because "not enough is known about the potential long term effects of contracting" the virus. "We came to campus in the beginning of July knowing there would be challenges presented by the pandemic, but it is apparent to us now that these challenges are impossible to overcome," the players said. Although the team did not have any athletes who had recently tested positive for the virus or been in quarantine, Connecticut has gone through periods when it was down at least 10 men because of symptoms or possible exposure to infected people. UConn's athletic program has struggled financially, and the football team posted a deficit of more than 13 million last year. University officials insisted, though, that any financial effects of skipping the season had not been decisive. Speaking on a conference call with reporters on the day his team was supposed to begin practice, Randy Edsall, UConn's coach, said, "These young men's lives are more important than money." But billions of dollars are at stake across college sports this fall. Although the industry's top executives have pledged to prioritize health and safety, they have also found themselves weighing how to balance lucrative competitions with the virus's largely unchecked rampage across America. They are also increasingly facing alarmed athletes. Some players, emboldened by this year's wave of student activism across college sports, have voiced concerns about taking the field and threatened boycotts if certain demands are not met. But big time college football is a largely decentralized sport, with the N.C.A.A. having only limited authority, and responses to the pandemic are fragmented on everything from testing protocols to start dates. Some conferences, like the Southeastern, shrank schedules and pushed the first games of their football seasons deeper into September, a decision that some university officials said would allow them to assess the pandemic's course once more students returned to campuses. The Big Ten said on Wednesday that it would attempt to start its conference only slate on Sept. 3, when Ohio State is to play at Illinois. Under the conference's current plan, the regular season will end on Nov. 21, one week earlier than originally intended, and the league's championship game will be held, as long scheduled, on Dec. 5 in Indianapolis. Still, the jigsaw puzzle that is a conference football schedule is far more pliable than normal. The start of the Big Ten's season could be moved to three other weekends in September, and the title game could be played as late as Dec. 19. Indeed, the league pointedly noted in a statement that "issuing a schedule does not guarantee that competition will occur" and that it was prepared to cancel games. "While this seems like a step in the right direction to the return of collegiate athletics, I can't help but feel conflicted knowing that even in the best case scenario, our return to football will be nothing like the experience we all love," Barry Alvarez, the athletic director at Wisconsin, said in a letter to football season ticket holders on Wednesday, when he said it would "not be appropriate for thousands of fans to gather in Camp Randall on Saturdays this fall." The missive itself, a plea to donate to Wisconsin, was a reminder of the pandemic's growing financial toll. The athletic department, Alvarez said, was facing a revenue loss of at least 60 million, a figure that could rise as high as 100 million depending on how the football season evolved. Other universities expect to lose tens of millions of dollars. In the end, the repercussions could be most acutely felt in sports without large television contracts or games that draw more than 80,000 spectators.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Sports
Is it possible that the most modern, most startlingly avant garde novel to appear this year was originally published in 1881? This month sees the arrival of two new translations of "The Posthumous Memoirs of Bras Cubas," the Brazilian novelist Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis' masterpiece, a metafictional, metaphysical tale narrated by a man struck dead by pneumonia. Too grim? I neglected to mention that he's being carried into the afterlife on the back of a voluble and enormous hippopotamus. If we imagine the historical progress of the novel like the evolution of man from a crouching primate to upright homo sapiens Machado's book represents the moment when the novel learned to dance. The book draws from the omnivorous taste of its creator: Greek tragedy, Shakespeare and Schopenhauer, leavened by the picaresque tradition of Cervantes and Laurence Sterne. Its formal experimentation and playfulness are regarded as precursors to the novels of Nabokov, Calvino and the American postmodernists. The story follows the feckless, peerlessly lazy nobleman Bras Cubas as he reflects on his life from beyond the grave. What a record of failures! He never married, never fathered children. His career ambitions were foolhardy and thwarted. Even his mistresses inspired in him only lukewarm passion and vague pity. He is unremittingly pretentious, preening and superb company. We read not for plot, in the usual sense, but to be close to Bras Cubas, his disarming candor and deeply merited self disgust, and for the questions he prompts: What is a life, if defined outside of incident and achievement? What is a novel? "To love this book," Susan Sontag once wrote, "is to become a little less provincial about literature, about literature's possibilities." 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. Machado was born into poverty in 1839, the mixed race grandson of freed slaves. A ferocious autodidact, he began publishing poetry in his teens. He branched into writing theater criticism, newspaper columns, librettos and short stories. When he died in 1908, heralded as Brazil's greatest writer, he was nationally mourned. For all of his heavyweight champions in the English speaking world (including Sontag, Philip Roth, John Updike), his standing has been wobbly. It's said that each generation rediscovers Machado anew. These two new translations bring another opportunity to enshrine the singular talent and mischief of this writer, whose late novels are insurrections against the novel itself, against its tendencies toward banal realism and earnest piety. Machado's attacks tend to be sidelong. His favorite weapons are irony and charm although he doesn't shy from needling readers, especially critics, for their narrowness of taste and fondness for facile interpretation. (Duly noted.) He is a writer besotted with the license afforded by fiction. Why not narrate a chapter solely in dialogue stripped of everything but punctuation provided you can do it well? Why not render one section in ellipses or skip the climax altogether? Read Machado, and much contemporary fiction can suddenly appear painfully corseted and conservative. A new translation of Machado de Assis' "The Posthumous Memoirs of Bras Cubas" by Flora Thomson DeVeaux. The two new translations have their differences, but are remarkably complementary. Flora Thomson DeVeaux's edition is a gift to scholars. Her introductory essay and notes offer a rich guide to Machado's work and world and an important corrective. Machado has been described as reticent on race. In fact, Thomson DeVeaux reveals, his fiction is drenched in references to the slave trade. Modern readers, especially non Brazilians, just haven't known where to look. In this novel, these references are seeded into the geography. Take a scene in which Bras Cubas mentions passing through the Valongo neighborhood of Rio de Janeiro. Thomson DeVeaux writes that Machado's contemporaries would recognize the name instantly as the site of the city's old slave market once the largest in the Americas. This is the backdrop to our aristocrat's leisurely philosophical inquiry and self preoccupation; this is the subtlety of Machado's psychological shading. Margaret Jull Costa and Robin Patterson, who translated the monumental 2018 edition of Machado's "Collected Stories," offer little historical context, only sparse notes. Their book is unadorned, and often better for it, where the common reader is concerned. We encounter the novel not as a relic, encrusted with renown and analysis, much revered and much handled, but in all its freshness and truculent refusal of fiction's tropes. Jull Costa and Patterson also offer the superior translation. The language is honed and specific, effortless yet charged with feeling, where Thomson DeVeaux's version can feel mustier and blurry. Here is Thomson DeVeaux on Bras Cubas's evocation of his childhood: "What matters is a general view of the domestic sphere, which is hereby set out vulgar characters, a love of hubbub and ostentatious appearances, a weakness of will, the unchallenged reign of whims and fancies, and all the rest. From that earth and that manure was this flower born." The Jull Costa and Patterson version: "What matters is the general tone of my home life, and, as I have said, this consisted in a basic vulgarity of character, a love of glittering appearances, noise and disorder, a general weakness of will, the triumph of the capricious and so forth. It was from that soil and from that dung that this flower was born." How powerfully the narrator inhabits the second series of sentences. There is the immediate peevishness "as I have said," he reminds us, and we can hear the pinch in his voice (compare it with the odd, lawyerly "hereby set out" in Thomson DeVeaux). There is the atmosphere he experiences as an assault on his senses and person; you feel the harshness of the "glittering appearances," the shrill "noise and disorder," the oppressive "tone" of the home. All these elements are collapsed and muffled in Thomson DeVeaux's impersonal "hubbub" of "the domestic sphere." There is finally the bluntness of the last line, the "soil" and "dung" that Bras Cubas springs from (as opposed to the milder "earth" and "manure"), which reeks with his fear of contamination by his family, even as the sudden crudeness of his phrasing reveals just how deep his roots run. Not that he catches on. This is a book of refusals the hero's refusal to commit to anything or anyone, his refusal to satisfy conventional narrative expectations, all anchored by his underlying refusal to see himself clearly, even as he presents his life for our inspection. Willful blindness is a theme in Machado's work (the easily cuckolded husband is a repeating character). In the case of Bras Cubas, however, blindness is never presented as foolishness or a kind of innocence but as a method of cruelty particular to his caste, the white elite of Rio de Janeiro. In a chilling scene, he witnesses a man he had formerly enslaved and abused now whipping another black man in the square. "He was turning the tables," Bras Cubas marvels. "He had bought a slave and was paying him, with hefty interest, for all that he had received from me. See what a clever rascal he was!" I keep turning this scene in my mind like a Rubik's Cube, wondering at the author's attitude toward his character. Machado plays the scene lightly. He does not linger, and he remains conspicuously fond of Bras Cubas. But I feel Machado wondering, too, as he peers through the eyes of Bras Cubas. He has not created this man to condemn or reform him but to inhabit his consciousness, and he inhabits him so fully that we see the mechanics of ordinary barbarism, the condescension and reflexive self absolution. For a writer with a bottomless bag of tricks, his core achievement is, finally, more humble and infinitely more dazzling than any special effect. It's not exploring what the novel might be, but looking at people purely and pitilessly exactly as they are.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Books
MONTCLAIR, N.J. The first thing to know about David Rousseve's "Stardust" is that you never actually see its protagonist, a black gay urban teenager named Junior. The voice at the heart of this 80 minute dance theater piece, which had its regional premiere on Thursday in Montclair State University's Peak Performances series, speaks to us via text messages, projected on the back wall of the theater. "Dear person who b at this : Sup?" Junior writes by way of introduction, as the 10 distinctive dancers of Mr. Rousseve's company, from Los Angeles, Reality, sway through a gentle opening phrase. "I don't know u. But I text u my biggest secrets. Plz read, k?" Junior faces a lot of adversity, its severity only intensified by the tossed off medium of vowel less words and emoticons: the death of his grandfather, who is his closest and perhaps only friend; rape by his foster dad; getting beat up by the boy he likes; and most pervasively, wondering if he is worthy of being loved, by others and by God. ("Stardust" has a strong biblical undercurrent.) His life is not devoid of joy, which he finds in the music of Nat King Cole, in van Gogh's "Starry Night," in a digital hamster he acquires when his school therapist, Miss Thelma, prescribes a pet for his emotional well being. He wants to be able to fly like the pigeons, or "ghetto angels," in his neighborhood and to cry. By the end, for better or worse, he has managed to do both.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Dance
LONDON The shortlist for this year's Man Booker Prize, one of the world's most prestigious literary awards, includes for the first time a novel told in verse. The book, "The Long Take," by the poet Robin Robertson, mixes verse, prose and photographs to follow the story of a World War II veteran across the United States in the golden era of Hollywood. One of the judges, the feminist critic and writer Jacqueline Rose, described it as "a genre defying novel" that "offers a wholly unique literary voice and form." The judges said they realized that its inclusion on the shortlist was likely to set off a debate, but they said its style had not come up in their discussions. Val McDermid, a crime writer, praised its characters, language and the insight it gave into the world. "I'm not sure what else a novel is meant to do," she said. Kwame Anthony Appiah, the chairman of the judges, said the six book shortlist was most notable for the bleakness of its subjects, among them ecological destruction, prison life, institutional racism and slavery.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Books
It was a big deal for Melanie Kennedy, a former accountant from Bangor, Northern Ireland, to indulge in a massage at the spa at Culloden Estate and Spa, in Belfast, earlier this year. Ms. Kennedy has stage four incurable breast cancer, and getting spa treatments have been a challenge ever since she was diagnosed almost six years ago at the age of 35. The lymph nodes she had removed in her arm meant that an overly aggressive massage could lead to painful swelling called lymphedema, and on top this risk, she was self conscious about the scars from her mastectomy. But Ms. Kennedy had heard that Culloden had recently trained its therapists on giving treatments to guests with cancer and decided to try one out. "My cancer makes me nervous to go spas because I'm not sure that the therapists know what to do, but this time, I was in capable hands," she said. "It was the most relaxing experience I've had since being diagnosed." Culloden is one of several hundred properties around the world increasingly catering to clients with cancer. The biggest change is in hotel spas where therapists are getting training in the needs and restrictions of cancer afflicted guests when it comes to massages, facials and manicures. Dr. Susan Prockop, an oncologist at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, said that cancer patients need to be cautious with spa treatments because of issues like low blood circulation, or low red or white cell count. "This may mean soft tissue damage during a massage. Patients with lymphedema also need special massage," she said. In addition, Dr. Prockop said that some cancer therapies are sensitive to ingredients that may be in massage oil or facial products, making rashes and skin irritation more likely. Dietary modifications can be necessary, too. Some properties have also tasked nutritionists to work with their kitchen staff so that they can cater meals and diets to clients with specific needs. Common nutrition plans include low microbial diets, which lowers the risk of infection, while patients who have difficulty swallowing may need to stick to pureed food or liquids. "Training hotels on the potential requirements for clients with cancer is a good idea and long overdue," Dr. Prockop said. Catherine Bartolomei, an owner of Farmhouse Inn Spa, said that a nutritionist has worked with its kitchen staff on how to make accommodations for a variety of dietary restrictions, including those associated with cancer. "We have our share of guests with cancer and want them to be able to come here and eat well," she said. "It's something we are very sensitive to." The Peninsula Hotels, a collection of 10 luxury properties, is another example. Some of the culinary team at the hotels have been trained by a nutritionist on the various dietary needs guests with cancer may have. David Codney, executive chef at the Peninsula Beverly Hills, said that he enjoys coming up with creative dishes for these diners. "It's not just about giving them the food that they need," he said. "The dishes should taste and look good." For those who can only eat pureed or soft foods, for example, Mr. Codney may make a Parmesan onion soup finished with herbs or a tofu with a salsa verde of parsley, shallots and capers. "Our guests with cancer should feel normal, just like anyone else," he said. It may be this sense of normalcy that those with cancer appreciate most. Culloden decided to invest in the training for its spa staff last year, according to Eoin McGrath, a business development manager, because a growing number of guests with cancer were asking for spa treatments. "Our therapists were uncomfortable working on these guests because they didn't have proper knowledge on the best way to do so," he said. Mr. McGrath hired Julie Bach, founder of Wellness for Cancer, a nonprofit that educates spas on how to provide cancer wellness services, to train the hotel's spa therapists. Following an intensive four day workshop late last year, Culloden's spa added four cancer specific treatments including a facial and a back, face and scalp massage. According to Mr. McGrath, the spa gets around 20 bookings a month for these services. Wellness for Cancer has trained staff at more than 200 hotel spas since it introduced the training in 2012, according to Ms. Bach. The list includes small boutique properties such as Farmhouse Inn Spa in Sonoma, Calif., and large ones that are part of well known brands like the Four Seasons, at locations in Hong Kong and Surfside, Fla. Ms. Bach, whose parents both died of cancer, said that she launched the training because through her volunteer work with cancer patients, she realized many were being turned away from spas. "I wanted to find a way to make spa treatments accessible for them," she said. Ms. Bach developed her program in conjunction with oncologists, integrative medicine doctors and other wellness specialists. She has a team of 10 people, including herself, who travel to hotels to teach the workshops. The luxury skin care brand Natura Bisse is behind another program that's offered to aestheticians at the near 300 hotel spas that carry the company's products. The company's nonprofit arm, the Ricardo Fisas Foundation, has a three day workshop at its headquarters in Barcelona on giving facials for clients with cancer. "A big part of what's taught is that no one person is the same, so what's a skin issue with one person isn't necessarily the case with another," said Josanna Gaither, the brand's director of education. Learning how to talk to clients with cancer in a compassionate manner is also covered. Some aestheticians at the Shibui Spa, at the Greenwich Hotel in New York City, have received the training, and so have those from the new Santuario le Domaine spa at Abadia Retuerta LeDomaine, a countryside estate two hours north of Madrid. Beth Robinson, a computer analyst from Colorado Springs, Colo., has been getting facials at the spa, Strata, at Garden of the Gods Club Resort in her hometown for several years and was diagnosed with cancer of the bile duct last December. Coincidentally, her aesthetician and the spa's director, Rebecca Johnston, along with her staff of 30, got trained by Ms. Bach of Wellness for Cancer the following month. This meant that Ms. Robinson was able to continue her facials with some modifications. "When you have cancer, anything that you can do in your life that is normal to you is the best thing emotionally," she said. "For me, that's getting a facial with Rebecca."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Travel
Update: Dr. Brenda Fitzgerald resigned on Jan. 31, 2018, following questions about her investments in tobacco and other stock. When she was health commissioner of Georgia, the state with one of the highest rates of child obesity, Dr. Brenda Fitzgerald faced two enormous challenges: How to get children to slim down and how to pay for it. Her answer to the first was Power Up for 30, a program pushing schools to give children 30 minutes more exercise each day, part of a statewide initiative called Georgia Shape. The answer to the second was Coca Cola, the soft drink company and philanthropic powerhouse, which has paid for almost the entire Power Up program. Dr. Fitzgerald is now in the spotlight as the Trump administration's newly appointed director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, making her one of the nation's top public health officials. And she finds herself facing a backlash from public health advocates for having accepted 1 million to fight child obesity from a company experts say is a major cause of it. Her new position puts her at the helm of a federal agency that shook off its ties to the soda giant, in 2013, after concluding Coke's mission was at odds with its own. But Dr. Fitzgerald suggested in an email response to questions from The New York Times this past week that she would consider accepting Coke money for C.D.C. programs and would evaluate any proposal through the agency's standard review process. Georgia Shape was established by Gov. Nathan Deal in 2011, after the legislature called for a statewide school fitness program, and was run by Dr. Fitzgerald. In 2013, Dr. Fitzgerald started Power Up for 30 with a million dollar contribution from Coke. The money amounted to most of the program's 1.2 million budget over the past four years. Coke which, like the C.D.C., is based in Atlanta has also had two employees on Georgia Shape's advisory board, in various years. One was Rhona S. Applebaum, Coke's chief science and health officer. She left the company in 2016 after The Times reported that she had helped orchestrate a strategy of funding scientists who encouraged the public to focus on exercise and worry less about how calories contribute to obesity. Ben Sheidler, a Coke spokesman, said that someone from the Georgia Department of Public Health had solicited the grant for Power Up for 30 from Coke's foundation, but that he did not know who it was. The program emphasized Coke's longtime contention that exercise is the key to weight loss. A search of the program's website turned up no mention of the role of sugary drinks and sodas in weight gain. The company has spent millions on studies that support exercise over reducing soda consumption, and that, critics say, deflect attention from the role sugar sweetened beverages have played in the soaring rate of obesity and the spread of Type 2 diabetes among children. But numerous other studies, including research from the C.D.C., have come to the conclusion that sugar laden drinks are a major factor contributing to obesity. The C.D.C.'s website notes: "Frequently drinking sugar sweetened beverages is associated with weight gain/obesity, Type 2 diabetes, heart disease, kidney diseases, nonalcoholic liver disease, tooth decay and cavities, and gout, a type of arthritis." In a local television interview in May 2013, announcing a 3.8 million pledge from Coke, which would also be used to underwrite other exercise related health programs, Dr. Fitzgerald said Power Up for 30 would add exercise before, during and after school. Noting that Georgia had moved up slightly from its position as having the second most out of shape children in the nation, Dr. Fitzgerald said, "Thirty minutes of exercise will go a long way toward better health." Some details of the relationship between Dr. Fitzgerald and Coke were reported in earlier news accounts. After her new post was announced, U.S. Right to Know, a nonprofit research group that focuses on transparency in the food business, sent journalists links to the broadcast along with emails between Dr. Fitzgerald and Coke officials. Dr. Fitzgerald also said on the television show that Georgia Shape would push children to eat five servings of fruits and vegetables every day. "We're going to concentrate on what you should eat," she said, making no recommendation for what children should not eat. But the major focus was on increasing exercise, long a tenet of Coke's public relations efforts. In fact, an essay on the topic by Dr. Fitzgerald is posted on Coke's website. The title: "Solving Childhood Obesity Requires Movement." Dr. Fitzgerald, 71, is an obstetrician gynecologist and a Republican who has run for Congress twice, unsuccessfully. She has close ties to her fellow Georgia Republicans Tom Price, the secretary of health and human services, and Newt Gingrich, the former speaker of the House and an informal adviser to President Trump. She has won widespread praise in Georgia for her work to reduce infant mortality, encourage language development among babies, and nudge her state up in terms of student fitness. A series of emails, most from 2013, obtained under the Freedom of Information Act by U.S. Right to Know, illustrated a friendly relationship between Dr. Fitzgerald and Dr. Applebaum of Coke. When Dr. Applebaum was named president of the International Life Sciences Institute, the food industry's premier research center, Dr. Fitzgerald wrote back, "Yea team." In a statement responding to questions, Dr. Fitzgerald defended the program and the relationship. "We worked hard to ensure our program was robust and included all evidence based strategies for reducing obesity," she said in the written statement. "I think everyone can agree government can't and should not do everything alone." Paul Howard, health policy director at the Manhattan Institute, a conservative think tank, said federal budget constraints had made donations from corporations like Coke a valuable option. "One of the realities of the budget tightening environment we are all in is that there is not enough money to go around for all the programs we'd like to support," he said. "As long as there are no strings attached, it's helpful for cash strapped agencies to look for new sources of funding." But the growth of public private partnerships, as they have come to be called, in the health field has raised ethics alarms among those who believe many corporate gifts are designed to help donors as much as recipients, by enhancing their reputations or promoting their legislative agendas. In 2011, for example, the C.D.C. Foundation was harshly criticized for accepting 60,000 from a company that did research for the pesticide industry to underwrite a project designed to prove that two agricultural chemicals were safe. "Industry funding of obesity initiatives can undermine the mission and integrity of public health agencies," said Jonathan H. Marks, director of the bioethics program at Penn State University and an expert in food industry philanthropy. "It can also burnish the reputation of corporate sponsors, and increase brand loyalty for the very products that are contributing to the problems the agencies are trying to solve." Dr. Evelyn Johnson, who serves on Georgia Shape's advisory board, said Coke had no influence over the program. She praised Dr. Fitzgerald for her efficiency and her impact on child health in Georgia. "With the Shape program, she organized that like she was having a military operation," said Dr. Johnson, a past president of the Georgia chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics. "We do talk to kids about good nutrition.'' An average person would have to run about three miles to offset the calories in a single 20 ounce serving of soda, depending on weight and speed, said Marion Nestle, a nutrition professor at New York University and the author of "Soda Politics: Taking On Big Soda (and Winning)." "I'm greatly in favor of physical activity," Dr. Nestle said. "It's really important for health. But it doesn't do much about weight." Coke has had a difficult relationship with the C.D.C. The company donated more than 1.1 million to the agency from 2010 to 2012 via the C.D.C. Foundation, a separate nonprofit entity created by Congress in 1995 to augment the agency's budget for programs at home and abroad. The money was earmarked for several projects, some of which, like the Georgia program, were aimed at promoting exercise as a good solution to the nation's rise in obesity. "Coke has a very strong presence in Atlanta and has been a good corporate citizen for many years," said Dr. Thomas R. Frieden, who resigned as director of the C.D.C. at the end of the Obama administration, after eight years. But soon after Dr. Frieden took on the job, he started winding down Coke funded programs. "I don't think it's justifiable to have Coca Cola run an obesity campaign that had an exclusive focus on physical activity," Dr. Frieden said. "I basically canceled it and didn't renew it or have more grant agreements with them." In June 2016, during Dr. Frieden's tenure at the C.D.C., a top official, Barbara Bowman, director of the division for heart disease and stroke prevention, resigned after U.S. Right to Know revealed emails in which she appeared to advise Alex Malaspina, a Coke official, on dealing with the World Health Organization. Ursula Bauer, a C.D.C. official, wrote a memo to the staff saying that the two were old family friends, and noting that employees should be careful what they write in emails that may find their way to public view. Coke's donations to other federal agencies continued. The company's public records show it gave more than 1.75 million to the Foundation for the National Institutes of Health between 2010 and 2014, and nearly 2.7 million to the National Park Foundation between 2010 and 2016. Mr. Sheidler, of Coke, said the company was "not looking for any special treatment." He added, "Our preference is to work together on things, rather than fight over restrictions or taxes." But Dr. Frieden said that after he ended the Coke funded C.D.C. health initiative, he approached the soft drink company with other programs in need of funds. He met with Dr. Applebaum and Muhtar Kent, the chief executive of Coke, but was unable to persuade the company to donate, other than about 20,000 that he recalls was linked to fighting the Ebola virus. "Look, let's find some neutral space," he recalled saying. They talked about transportation safety and water programs, Dr. Frieden said, but "nothing ever came out of those ideas." Dr. Fitzgerald, asked if she'd accept donations again from Coke, replied in an email that it was possible, contingent on an assessment of potential conflicts of interest. "I will continue the review process in place at C.D.C.," Dr. Fitzgerald wrote, "and any offers of support would be considered through this process before moving forward."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Health
Gina Gibney gets terribly excited about the efficient use of space. That's not so remarkable, considering that she has been a choreographer in New York for nearly 25 years. The use of space is at the core of a choreographer's art; choreographers in New York struggle, now more than ever, to find space to work. But Ms. Gibney isn't just zealous about space for her own art making. She makes space available to others. Her saving of space rescues it for dance. Most recently and remarkably, she has saved 36,000 square feet at 280 Broadway, next to City Hall, in the two story building where Dance New Amsterdam moved in 2006 to escape rising rents in Greenwich Village but vacated after declaring bankruptcy a year ago. Ms. Gibney's organization, Gibney Dance, took over the lease in January. On Thursday, the complex, remodeled to squeeze in three performance spaces, multiple refurbished studios and much more, will have its grand reopening. While giving a recent tour, Ms. Gibney was voluble about every detail of the renovation. She pointed out how one part of the ground floor lobby, barely used by Dance New Amsterdam, was being transformed into a high tech performance lab and another part into a kitchen for catering revenue generating events. She noted how one small studio had been carved out of the office and how a large one could be converted into a theater. She was equally excited about using an odd shaped little zone by the elevators. She said all this amid the noise of construction on the ground floor, the sound of classes and rehearsals in the upstairs studios and the harmonizing of a group that had rented the main theater. The space was already in use, though much of what Ms. Gibney described was not yet finished. She resembled any choreographer showing a new piece in rehearsal, explaining how the lighting was going to look and where the missing dancer would go. But this choreographer's vision was already making an impact much larger than usual.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Dance
Smith's capacious imagination takes flight, literally, in this picture book starring the happy go lucky, slightly dim Smiley Bone from the iconic Bone graphic novel series. Smiley takes a walk in the woods, counting the birds he sees, and finds himself flying, too. There's a suspenseful turn, and a surprise ending when he wakes and realizes it was all a dream. If you plan to steer a child toward the Bone books later (and you should!), this is a terrific introduction to a world full of wonder and unexpected rewards. THE SANDCASTLE THAT LOLA BUILT By Megan Maynor. Illustrated by Kate Berube. The joys of a day at the beach along with those inevitable moments of frustration, too are packed into this story of a girl building a sandcastle. There's a "dude with a Frisbee" who at first steps right on it, then helps fix it. There's a little guy with a bulldozer and a girl from Minnesota who end up helping, too. There's the wave that wipes their masterpiece away, and then the sweet moment of realizing they've formed a spontaneous "we" and can start building again. Berube's delightful paint and collage illustrations capture an easy, playful beach mood, with a hint of mystery in the ocean and sky. 32 pp. Alfred A. Knopf. 17.99. (Ages 2 to 6) So much action and humor, so few words just one, in fact (see the title), written in capitals or lowercase, in speech bubbles, or streeeeetched out. Expressed in the cheerfully bonkers illustrations by Santat, a Caldecott medalist, "Dude!" tells the story of a platypus and a beaver who go surfing together and meet a shark. A friendly one, it turns out, who wants to catch some waves with them: "Dude...?" he offers when they meet. More than half the fun, of course, is in reading this book out loud. Be ready for even the youngest kids to "read" it, too. PIE IS FOR SHARING By Stephanie Parsley Ledyard. Illustrated by Jason Chin. A book about sharing doesn't sound like much fun, but this one takes all the sting out. Ledyard's spare text is a poetic ode to things that are easy to share (a ball, a climbing tree, a story, a hideout), with an acknowledgment of one that's hard (a best friend). Chin's sublime watercolor and gouache illustrations, a master class in visual storytelling, follow a group of family and friends on a daylong picnic near the beach. Once the sun starts setting it's clear this is the Fourth of July, adding even greater resonance a nation is, after all, above all a shared idea. "Rain" and "Snow" came first in this series of stories about a boy who's stuck at home with his grandpa in all kinds of weather. Now it's a scorching summer day, and as in the previous books, the delicately handled subtext is that it takes patience and imagination to navigate the generational divide and get through the long hours. The pair "gather their provisions" and go for a walk, which the boy pictures as crossing the desert. Then they stop at a pirate's cove, picnicking with a merry band of buccaneers. Usher's jaunty visual style is a mash up of two British greats, Quentin Blake and John Burningham. Enjoying summer in the city requires ingenuity, as this entertaining tale based on real life events shows. Three siblings glumly pass time in their hot Manhattan apartment until the broken fountain down the street gets cleaned up and a sign suddenly appears on it, inviting goldfish to take a vacation. A neighborhood hangout is born, as all the residents stop by to visit their fish. Espinosa's sunny illustrations are a visual party. The only downer, we learn in a note, is that once the fountain was fixed for good, the goldfish summer vacations ended. When a little girl named Rashin is on her way to the beach in Brooklyn for the first time, she remembers what it was like to go to the beach when her family lived in Iran, where the men's and women's sections were strictly separated (severe looking burka clad ladies patrol) and saffron ice cream was her favorite treat. With her colorful, exuberant folk art illustrations and upbeat, friendly tone, Rashin makes a daunting cross cultural leap seem as easy as a summer breeze. THE GRAND EXPEDITION Written and illustrated by Emma Adbage There are those (like me) who feel that "camping out" in the backyard is a high point of childhood adventure, and this adorable book from Sweden confirms it. Two small siblings inform their dad of their plans, and after gathering their supplies they pitch a tent and hunker down. No, they don't make it through the whole night out there, but does that even matter? With winsome mixed media illustrations that capture all the most telling details, and a fine tuned ear for the way kids think and talk, Adbage understands the fun that can be found in a child's everyday reality.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Books
How I Rolled on the Crescent: New York to New Orleans by Rail Everyone I told said the same thing: "Oh, my God! I've always wanted to do that!" The thing they had always wanted to do, apparently, was travel from New York to New Orleans by train. Or cross any considerable distance by rail distances typically flown over in the name of expedience. Old, young, man, woman, didn't matter. They had all long nursed, but never acted on, a wish to take the slow route. I write about liquor. Every July, in New Orleans, there is a booze convention. I'd gone every year, always by plane. Last summer, bored with the routine, I vowed to shake it up. I brought up the Amtrak website and discovered there was a line called the Crescent that followed the eastern corridor down to Washington, D.C., and then snaked through the South to New Orleans. It took 30 hours. I had a day to spare. All that remained was to O.K. the plan with my travel companion. "Oh, my God!" she said. "I've always wanted to do that!" (Or words to that effect.) I admit to being a romantic. I also admit to being a cynic. This means I am suspicious of my romantic tendencies. I've sentimentalized train travel all my life. Yet, after three decades of Amtrak trips, I still genuinely enjoyed it, so I concluded that my romanticism wasn't entirely self delusion. I had previously embarked on only one journey of the duration I was now contemplating. Shortly after college, I took the California Zephyr from Chicago to San Francisco, and the Empire Builder, across Montana and the Dakotas, back. I was 23 then and slept sitting up in my seat. That would not cut it this time. I was older and required comfort. A private room fit in with my train travel dreams, but I had always assumed such luxury prohibitively expensive. I was pleased, then, to find a fare of 280 one way. The fare included a "roomette," the smallest private compartment on offer. (I booked way ahead of time. By my departure date, that number had more than doubled.) We arrived at Penn Station with an hour to spare. There were no obvious signs of hell, except that we were put on the Silver Meteor, which goes to Miami. Normally, the Crescent makes the entire trip from NYC to NOLA, but construction at Penn Station allowed it no further north than D.C. A porter directed us to our car. We boarded and were immediately funneled into those narrow hallways that remind you of old movies. The room was as " ette" as advertised 3'6" by 6'8" but well organized, like one of those multipurpose pocket gadgets advertised on late night TV. There was a place to hang my garment bag in one corner. Opposite was a toilet; above that a sink that folded into the wall. There were towels and soap and a paper cup dispenser on top of the sink. A cavity in the wall so high you would easily miss it swallowed up the luggage. Between the two facing, and rather commodious, seats, there was a retractable table with a checkerboard pattern on it. Switches above each seat controlled three lights: ceiling, wall and reading. This was all fine by me. My height (6'1") notwithstanding, I have always felt most comfortable in snug spaces. One bedroom apartments relax me; McMansions give me the jitters. Once we pulled out of the station, it became apparent that we not only had one long window but a second upper window, slightly hidden by the upper berth. The roomette was flooded with light. A woman name Brenda came by and offered us bottled water. We tipped her, figuring we would need to rely on her in the future. Train travel presents certain immediate advantages over air travel. It forces you to relax, as you have time on your hands. Even in a roomette, you're afforded more space than on a plane. Furthermore, you can stock your quarters with items the airlines would never permit, including well stuffed suitcases; snacks (in case the onboard fare wasn't up to par a safe bet); and the makings of cocktail hour. We called Brenda for ice. Once 5 o'clock hit, out came a bottle of Pimm's, a half liter of ginger ale, a cucumber and a knife. Pimm's Cups were built and enjoyed, under the glow of the coming sunset. I read some Fitzgerald and smiled, thinking of all the suckers shoehorned into seats on United or American. The train was full, so meal seatings were staggered. We were called at 5:45. The dining car was bustling and had an appealing, quasi art deco feel to it. There was no selecting of tables. We were slipped into booths like files. "Side by side," instructed the waiter when we tried to sit opposite each other. "Side by side." The menu had a section titled "ACAT Inspired Special." ACAT stood for Amtrak Culinary Advisory Team. Only one such item, a "vegetarian Asian noodle bowl," was available. I opted for the "Field Sea Combo" instead, based on the waiter's recommendation. It was composed of steak, seared shrimp, baked potato and mixed vegetables. It came quickly and wasn't bad, though it wasn't good, either; about on par with what you might find at Ponderosa. At Washington's Union Station, we changed trains. The Crescent was right across the platform. Our new roomette looked exactly like the old one. We asked Pat, our new attendant, for more ice, and I poured out pre mixed martinis I had smuggled aboard in a flask. We sipped contentedly. "The only problem with this train is not enough martinis," my companion said. As darkness fell on northern Virginia, Pat set up the berths. The limited machinery that effected the change was too much for us. Pat, stout and short, did it in a second. She bid us a good night and added, "Let's see if we get through the Carolinas." Why wouldn't we?, I wondered. The bottom berth, amazingly, accommodated my long frame. Sleeping on the upper, said my companion, felt like getting an M.R.I. But we both slept well. My expectation that the train's motion would rock us to slumber had not been bunk (as it were). We woke in South Carolina. Red clay lined the tracks. The rising sun made the pine trees look burnt yellow. Mobile homes and country lanes drifted by. Washing up and shaving in the shower down the hall required agility. The lurching train threw my body from wall to wall. I felt vaguely like an Army recruit. In Atlanta, I detrained for the first time. Raised on the train stations of the northeast, I expected something as grand. But the station was a remarkably meager affair. There was a small waiting room with wooden benches and a few vending machines. An older Amtrak employee discoursed to some customers about past civil rights achievements of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters. At lunch, we were seated opposite a Birmingham family returning from a jaunt to New York. We ordered one of those ACAT culinary specials, a "Thai spiced pulled coconut pork slider." The Boston based chef Jamie Bissonette was the supposed author. The table quieted when the dish arrived. For a slider, it was as big as a burger. The gray meat inside resembled dog food. A few bites were all that were needed for us to plead for the Hebrew National hot dog my companion had spotted on the kids' menu. The frankfurter was split open, grilled and served with relish. It was delicious, easily the best thing we ate on the trip. Shortly after lunch, the train stopped outside of Birmingham. I had been napping off and on, so I didn't notice until an hour had passed. It was then that Pat communicated the cruel secret of the Crescent. Beyond the northeast corridor, Amtrak doesn't own the tracks it runs on. By law, Amtrak trains must be given priority. But, in practice, it doesn't always work out that way, resulting in regular delays. In this case, a freight had stalled. We sat still for three hours. ("Let's see if we get through the Carolinas," Pat had said.) The charm of train travel lies in constant motion, minute by minute adventure. When that motion ceases, the charm evaporates. Alabama was the longest state. There were two more delays, as we played less precious cargo to loads of grain, chemicals and coal. I no longer felt smarter than plane people. Around Tuscaloosa, we had dinner. The dining car didn't have the style of that on the Silver Meteor. Nothing on the Crescent did. However, the Field Sea Combo was strangely better, the steak juicier, the shrimp well grilled. Our waitress, Ashley, said they had a good chef on board. I found the idea of an Amtrak chef being good or bad, or even existent, highly suspect. But maybe there were differences from train to train.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Travel
Have extra time at home? Want to keep your brain busy with new things to think about? Consider doing a little remote learning of your own. After all, Benjamin Franklin famously set aside an hour or two each day to study, reflect and experiment so he could fill in the gaps in his own education, and he went on to several successful careers. Hundreds of major colleges and universities offer online courses that anyone with an internet connection can take. While you won't get academic credits for taking free classes, you expand your knowledge and can even show a little solidarity with your children as they head back to school themselves. Here's a guide to getting started. First, ask yourself what subject you want to study and how it might benefit you. Are you pondering a career shift? Looking to pick up new skills? Or do you just need a distraction in unsettled times? Make a note of your ultimate goal to help focus your search, as classes are available across a wide range of academic disciplines.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Technology
Matt Carino, a lighting design student, put up this display at his home in Montclair, N.J. "I wanted to send a simple, strong and positive message to the community," he said. During a global pandemic, all is certainly not calm. But things are a little bit brighter in some neighborhoods, thanks to a growing movement that has families stringing Christmas lights, blowing up holiday inflatables and building spirit lifting snowmen to help bring some much needed cheer during the coronavirus crisis. Like the popular hashtag CoronaKindness, the idea has taken off on social media and online neighborhood groups, with people sharing their displays alongside hashtags like LightsForLife, ChristmasInMarch and ChristmasLights. The brewing giant Anheuser Busch, which just announced that it will be producing hand sanitizer, got into the spirit by turning on an elaborate display at its St. Louis headquarters. "We've been inspired by Americans decorating their homes with holiday lights in the spirit of togetherness," the company said in a statement. "We are proud to join in and turn the holiday lights on every night at our house." Media companies are putting on their Santa hats, too: Over the weekend, the Hallmark Channel aired a "We Need a Little Christmas" movie marathon featuring some of its most popular holiday titles, and some radio stations in the Midwest are playing Christmas tunes. But decking the halls at home even as spring starts to bloom is a win win on many fronts, those who have dragged out the decorations said. It's a family friendly activity, using items that many people already have at home, and it works well with social distancing protocols, since people can admire displays from their car windows. And even those who are sheltering in place can see them on social media. The current trend echoes the origins of Christmas decorations, when ancient people decorated with evergreen branches during the dark days of winter, brightening their homes and reminding them that life would return in the springtime. "We can take what's in our house and in our yards and mix the joy of Christmas with the liveliness of spring, when everything is blooming," said Tanner Huber, a designer in Marietta, Ga., a suburb of Atlanta, who recently decorated her house with her husband and their three children. Then, of course, there's the feel good factor of brightening up someone else's mood in these dark times. In Clover, S.C., Elizabeth and Bill Nickles and their three children got busy decorating their house with lights and a passel of inflatables and lawn characters, including kid favorites like Minnie Mouse and the "Frozen" character Olaf. On the other side of the house, they decided to go with an Easter theme, complete with a barrage of bunny inflatables. Ms. Nickles said it's been a big hit with local families, who sometimes stop to snap photos. "It may seem like something small, but if everyone does something small, it can make a big impact on people's lives," she said. "Especially with kids who are going stir crazy in the house." In Natick, Mass., Summer Peeso's family has had their programmable LED lights shining for more than a month. In addition to spreading good will among neighbors including two emergency room doctors who live across the street Ms. Peeso says the lights offer a fun project for her 5 year old daughter during this difficult time. "She is very aware of the current situation, and it helps her to have that consistent distraction at night and something to depend on despite us not always having answers to her tough questions," Ms. Peeso wrote in an email. "She gets to create the patterns on an app so it's interactive for her and a fun family at home thing we can all do to spread good cheer and give people something pretty to look at, making it less doom and gloom." The light display at Summer Peeso's house in Natick, Mass., provides an activity for her 5 year old daughter. Matt Carino, a senior studying lighting design at Pace University in New York, took advantage of being back at home in Montclair, N.J., and put his skills to use constructing a lighted "Together Apart" display in cursive lettering in front of his family's house. Mr. Carino, known in the community for his annual Christmas display, Lights on Myrtle, used rope lights and other materials he already had on hand to make the sign, which stands amid a constellation of colorful blinking lights in the trees. "I wanted to send a simple, strong and positive message to the community," Mr. Carino said. "This pandemic is really hitting people hard, from having to work remotely, schools being canceled, and businesses being closed or limited." Spreading good cheer can be delightfully low tech, too. Consider the snowman complete with a face mask that longtime friends Harlie Cowan and James Barringer decided to build around midnight one night recently when snowflakes started to fall in Portage, Mich., a suburb of Kalamazoo, where they are quarantining together. They posted photos of their creation wearing a hat and scarf with the University of Michigan logo and illuminated by mesh lights on social media before finally going to bed. When they woke up the following day, their snowman was something of a local celebrity after a local morning news show shared their photo.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Well
At the heart of "Barn 8" is love, specifically the longing that comes from missing someone you love, and how that love can, if catalyzed, move the lover to do great things. Great things like hatch a plot to steal a million chickens. Unferth's gift as a short story writer is evidenced in this novel, her second: Within moments of being introduced to these characters, we know them intimately, care about them deeply. First, we meet 15 year old Janey Flores, traveling by bus from Brooklyn to Iowa to meet her father for the first time, a man her mother had long told her was nothing more than a sperm donor. "She should have figured out she hadn't come out of a vial. What woman gives up and goes baster at 18," she thinks. "In other words her mother ... had lied." Janey suspects the error of her decision the moment she steps off the bus, and her suspicions are confirmed when she meets her father, sees his dingy apartment and discovers that he's always known she was out there and never bothered to find her. Suddenly, she understands why her mother left, why she lied. Though "Janey and her father lived like strangers in that apartment," still she stays, mostly out of spite. The "old Janey," the one who went to school and lived with her beloved mother, Olivia, in their cozy brownstone, and the "new Janey," already "deadening" in this place where the wind is always "yammering over the fields," become two separate people, living "Sliding Doors" lives. This heartbreaking rift only deepens when an accident leaves Janey stuck in this new life forever. The narrative throughout often moves outside of linear time, zooming into alternate pasts and certain futures, and to great effect.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Books
GARDEN CITY, Ga. The business of marine transport here at the nation's fourth largest container port is a study in numbers. Thirty one oceangoing container vessels berth at the nearly 10,000 foot long Garden City terminal each week. More than 8,000 trucks arrive and depart from the terminal daily. Garden City handled 3.3 million 20 foot containers last year, over 10 percent more container cargo than in 2013, and a record. There are other numbers that are just as vital to this growing business, but not nearly so visible. Hidden behind the green curtain of Georgia pine forest that surrounds the terminal are 45.3 million square feet of logistics, storage and distribution centers, according to the Georgia Ports Authority, the terminal's owner and operator. "The link between the terminal and the distribution centers is essential to our operations," said Curtis J. Foltz, executive director of the Georgia Ports Authority. "Our competitiveness is based on efficiency and connectivity, making sure products don't sit around. The real estate developments are a partnership that makes expanding trade here possible." Owned, leased or managed by some of the most recognizable brands in the country Walmart, Ikea, Home Depot, Target and Pier 1 Imports the immense buildings are essential links in the flow of farm, construction and manufactured products streaming out of or into the country through the Savannah River port, one of the country's most modern maritime transport installations. Garden City's traffic, which includes everything from containers of frozen Georgia chicken parts heading to Asia and stuffed doggy beds coming in from China, is about evenly divided between exports and imports. The largest distribution center is the 2.5 million square foot facility owned by Schneider Logistics, a unit of the national trucking company. Walmart operates a two million square foot center in Statesboro, 55 miles west. Both are expansive enough to completely enclose two typical suburban shopping malls, or all the businesses in Savannah's historic downtown, which lies just downstream. Hundreds of miles away, construction of other distribution centers has been influenced by the port, according to the Georgia Department of Economic Development. Last year, Bed Bath Beyond opened a 50 million, 810,000 square foot distribution center in Jefferson, northeast of Atlanta and 230 miles away. Walmart is constructing a 102 million, 1.2 million square foot distribution facility in Union City, south of Atlanta and 250 miles from the Savannah port. Demand for new warehouse and distribution space is intensifying, said John F. Petrino, director of business development for the Georgia Ports Authority. Vacancy rates, which were as high as 18.6 percent in 2009, dropped to 5.4 percent last year, according to the port. That occurred even as 11 new or expanded distribution centers, enclosing more than three million square feet, opened last year in or near Garden City, the Ports Authority said, accounting for 1,950 new jobs. "The economy is recovering and you see that in the amount of freight moving through these buildings," Mr. Petrino said. Another significant factor behind the flurry of activity is the expansion of the Panama Canal, a 6 billion project to add a third set of much larger locks to enable bigger container ships to navigate the maritime shortcut across the isthmus. The canal expansion, which is scheduled to open for commercial traffic in 2016, is expected to double the volume of goods making the 50 mile crossing each year to 660 million metric tons, the Panama Canal Authority projects. Two thirds of that traffic would be dispatched or received by American ports along the Gulf of Mexico and Atlantic Coast. Anticipating the growth in canal traffic, the state of Georgia and its Ports Authority spent a decade and 758 million to improve highways, purchase new cranes, improve rail connections and reconstruct the terminal ramps and traffic patterns to compete. A dredging contract was signed this month as part of a 706 million state and federal project to expand the port and deepen the Savannah River. Such fiscal transactions, largely distanced from public attention, are characteristic of the operations at the logistics and distribution centers here. Unlike the container terminal, with its enormous ships coming and going, and its trucks and cranes operating with almost antic urgency, the immense distribution centers aren't visible at all. It takes a veteran guide like Mr. Petrino to navigate the building sites, which generally range from 50 to 100 acres, and are hidden by deep screens of mature pines. Encountering a million square foot facility, half a mile long and 400 yards wide, is like emerging from a dark locker room tunnel to confront towering tiers of stands in an N.F.L. stadium. Companies are leery about opening the interior of their buildings to public view, which Mr. Petrino attributed partly to the proprietary nature of some of the newer equipment used to move and ship products. Even the systems for storing freight and organizational warehousing techniques are tightly held, a reflection of slim profit margins and steep competition. Rodney Dickey, the president of OA Logistics and chief operating officer of JLA Home, noted these features of the business while walking through the company's 679,000 square foot distribution center. Electric and propane fueled forklifts whirred through the building, which is longer than a five stroke golf hole, has a 32 foot ceiling and smells like new cardboard. A portion of the building contains a printing shop for art sold by the import company. Another part is an area for Chinese made products that require final assembly and packaging. One hundred and ten people work in the 11 year old building, housed on 41 acres, which the company bought in 2009 for 28 million. A new distribution center costs 42 to 55 per square foot to build, plus the price of the land and infrastructure like utility installations, which is usually more than 100,000 an acre, Mr. Dickey said.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Real Estate
It is one of rock's most famously fraught relationships: Lou Reed and Andy Warhol, who managed Reed's groundbreaking 1960s band, the Velvet Underground, for a couple of years before an acrimonious split. Warhol's ideas on art, pop culture and hard work loomed over Reed for the rest of his career, though the two never worked together again. But a decades old cassette tape, uncovered in Warhol's archive, suggests a path untaken: a suite of songs by Reed based on snippets from his mentor's 1975 book, "The Philosophy of Andy Warhol: From A to B and Back Again," which may have been connected to loose plans the two made to collaborate on a stage musical. The tape, recorded in 1975, was found by Judith A. Peraino, a Cornell music professor, who said she stumbled across it two years ago at the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh while researching a book about Warhol in the '70s. As Peraino writes in The Journal of Musicology, Side 1 of the tape has live recordings that Reed put together from his 1975 tours , with songs from his albums "Sally Can't Dance" (1974) and "Coney Island Baby" (1976). But Side 2 labeled "Philosophy Songs (From A to B Back)" in scrawled black ink contains 12 songs, and a fragment of a 13th, that have never been released, and were largely unknown. When she listened to the tape, Peraino said in an interview, "My mind was being blown all over the place." The tape, featuring Reed singing alone with his guitar, documents Reed sketching out new songs, using phrases from Warhol's "Philosophy" book as raw material for lyrics. One song, for example, draws out variations on the phrase "so what" "one of my favorite things to say," Warhol wrote as a dismissive gesture. Warhol's takes on fame, sex and the business of art each get a song; drag queens get two. Other songs turn bitter. In one that presages "Songs for Drella," the album Reed released in 1990 with his former Velvet Underground bandmate John Cale, Reed turns Warhol's words against him, excoriating his former mentor for his apparent indifference toward the deaths of two figures from Warhol's circle, Candy Darling and Eric Emerson. Reed sings that Warhol should have died when he was shot in 1968 only to end the song with a spoken apology to Warhol, who died in 1987. "This tape is Lou Reed working out what he does best," Peraino said, "which is figuring out the character of his song, telling the stories, being as brutally honest as he is in many of his writings." The tape sheds new light on the relationship between Reed and Warhol at this time, but the songs' existence was barely known. The project is absent from most biographies of both men, and Peraino found just one published interview, from 1977, in which Reed mentioned it. Laurie Anderson, Reed's widow, who donated his archives to the New York Public Library in 2017, said in an interview that she was unaware of the songs. "He had talked about some things that he had made for Andy," Anderson said, "but they were always in the context of Andy telling him how lazy he was. You know, 'Lou, you're so laaazy.' "I think," she continued, "that may have had a little bit to do with the motivation of him saying, like, 'O.K., you can write a book; I'll write some songs about your book.'" The Reed archives contain a tape with short excerpts from a few of the "Philosophy" tracks dubbed over a copy of the Eagles' album "One of These Nights" but archivists did not know what they were. The purpose of the "Philosophy" tape is unclear. Victor Bockris, whose book "Transformer: The Complete Lou Reed Story" is one of the few to make any mention of the songs, said he believed it was an unsuccessful attempt by Reed to return to Warhol's good graces. "I'm pretty sure that Warhol would not have wanted to have any working association with Lou," Bockris said. Peraino's research suggests there may have been more to it. Tapes at the Warhol archive document a series of meetings in 1974 in which Warhol and Reed discussed turning Reed's recent album "Berlin" into a Broadway musical. That never happened, although in early 1975 Warhol was involved in a notorious Broadway flop, "Man on the Moon," featuring John Phillips from the Mamas and the Papas. At some point that same year, Peraino found, Warhol resumed discussions with Reed about working together, and gave him an inscribed copy of the printer's proofs for "The Philosophy of Andy Warhol." But by the time Reed recorded the songs, he may have soured on the very idea of collaborating another kink in the men's complicated relationship. "I think he was making fun of the idea, digging at Warhol," Peraino said. What will become of the tape? Copyright may be a serious hurdle to its being released in the near future. The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts controls Warhol's intellectual property in the archive, but the contents of the tape could also be claimed by the Reed estate or even his former record company, Peraino said. Michael Hermann, the director of licensing for the Warhol Foundation, said, "Without an understanding of what is included on the tape and who created the recording, we are unable to say at this point what, if anything, the foundation can do to make them more easily accessible." Access to the tape, which is still held at the Warhol Museum, is restricted to professional scholars. According to the rules of the museum and the foundation, no copies of it can be made, and Peraino said she was not allowed to quote directly from the lyrics. But as part of the histories of both Reed and Warhol, Peraino said, scholars and fans would benefit from hearing them.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Music
On the first week of his original late night talk show, David Letterman appeared on the streets of New York with a microphone in hand. "Much has been said about Alan Alda, the TV star, the film star, the writer, the humanitarian, the champion of minority causes," he said in the grave voice of a "60 Minutes" correspondent. "But it's surprising we don't know much about Alan Alda, the lover of Chinese food." Then he interviewed employees of Chinese restaurants about what Alda liked to eat. A wonderfully dry spoof of celebrity culture, Letterman followed it with similarly deadpan ones investigating the dry cleaning, shoes and auto repair of the stars. In the just released second season of "My Next Guest Needs No Introduction," Letterman, 72, is again asking about the mundane details of celebrity life, but this time, with total seriousness. When he sits down with Kanye West, he begins by inquiring about what he had for breakfast, his weight and what songs he sings to his children before bedtime. ("I freestyle," West answers.) Letterman tells Melinda Gates, "My mother in law wants to know what music you and your family listen to." Over the years, Letterman has evolved away from his acerbic, experimental roots, but on his Netflix show, which centers on long conversations with famous people, he can seem like a bizarro version of the talk show host who once revolutionized late night: a cheerful, earnest man, deferential to fame, a Letterman without irony. No late night talk show host ever displayed more antagonism toward show business. He didn't just mock the obsession with celebrities; he teased them to their face, displaying studious indifference to the projects they were promoting and a smirking skepticism to their hints of pretentiousness, self importance or eccentricity. When he said he had "an insatiable appetite about celebrities," he clearly meant the opposite. David Letterman once terrified stars (not to mention their publicists and managers) so much that the fear of being a guest was the subject of a short story by David Foster Wallace. Kanye West is exactly the kind of grandiose character whom Letterman would once have approached with rigorous Everyman sarcasm, and in their conversation, the rapper provided plenty of opportunity for eye rolls, like when he said he would know his work was done when there was world peace. Letterman never went for the deflating joke. Much of this season's conversations go by without laughs. Instead, with West, he asked for fashion advice and got a set of new clothes from West's house that he showed off to Kim Kardashian. When Letterman, the Indiana born broadcaster who was last fashion forward wearing sneakers with a suit, told West, "I heard you refer to Hermes as the pinnacle," I nearly did a spit take. There was some brief conflict when they moved onto the subjects of President Trump (West said he didn't vote, and Letterman balked) and MeToo, the latter discussion seeming highly edited. West said men in powerful positions were afraid to talk about this issue, and Letterman, who faced a sex scandal that nearly derailed his career, responded that the fear men felt couldn't compare to that of women. Then the conversation quickly shifted. Letterman's famously self critical streak seems mostly absent. In fact, he is in a surprisingly good mood, delighted by Tiffany Haddish, effusively praising her talent and even giving her a foot rub. In an episode with the British racecar driver Lewis Hamilton, who as Letterman himself acknowledges probably does need some introduction for many people, he rides go karts with a couple of kids. (Hamilton got his start racing karts, though this interlude still seems an odd detour.) In the previous season of "My Next Guest," Letterman made news by doing the first talk show interview with President Barack Obama after he left office. He also spoke to some guests with whom he had long, friendly on air relationships, like Howard Stern, Tina Fey and George Clooney. This new season is shorter (just five episodes) and the guests have less history with him. It's tempting to imagine a version of the show that is more like Marc Maron's podcast and digs deeply into tortured relationships from the past. (A reunion with Jay Leno or Sandra Bernhard could be fascinating.) But Letterman doesn't seem interested in looking back so much as discovering new things. He approaches these interviews with modesty, putting the spotlight on the guest, deferring to them, rarely challenging or probing too far. This strategy proves effective in the best episode, the conversation with Ellen DeGeneres, a fellow talk show legend. For the first time, she opens up about her abuse at the hands of her stepfather, and when she brings it up, Letterman approaches it with sensitivity, allowing her to lead the way into wrenching detail. Over the last decade of his late night show, David Letterman shifted the emphasis away from comedy bits and toward long conversations with guests, and it's understandable that he would grow out of some of his youthful snark. Talk shows are chummier, less powerful institutions today, and being less than friendly to guests risks backlash on social media. That's what happens to a Letterman like host played by Emma Thompson in the forthcoming movie "Late Night," a portrait of the world of talk show hosting that offers more possibility for hope than "Larry Sanders" or "The King of Comedy" ever did.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Television
Installation view of "Sterling Ruby: Ceramics" at the Museum of Arts and Design. His works exude signs of the artist's hands deep squeezes here, dragged fingers there and exteriors punched with thumbprints, like little waves. The Museum of Arts and Design and Sterling Ruby have worked out what might be called an equitable exchange of power. With the exhibition "Sterling Ruby: Ceramics," the museum raises its game while the artist tones his down a welcome step on both counts. Once named the American Craft Museum, the Museum of Arts and Design remains craft haunted, and not in a good way. It presents too much work that is pointlessly fussy, technique obsessed and uncreative no matter whether you parse it as art, design or craft. It needs to feature more artists who complicate, transcend or decimate these categories. At his best, Mr. Ruby accomplishes all of the above. It's gratifying to see the work of this Los Angeles artist in a relatively modest museum rather than more predictably at the Whitney or the Modern. He's cooling his jets after a meteoric if bumpy rise during which he cycled across several mediums and through several blue chip New York galleries in about seven years. Add on Mr. Ruby's many collaborations with the designer Raf Simons culminating in projects for Calvin Klein, where Mr. Simons is now creative director, and you've got someone with ambition and talent to burn. Meanwhile, back in the art world, he landed at Gagosian in 2014, which tried him out with shows in its Hong Kong and Paris galleries as if he were on probation before staging a large exhibition of paintings and ceramic sculptures last year in New York. While overcrowded, it was his best here in a while. It's also good to see Mr. Ruby showing only ceramics, his core medium, much as I like his spray paintings and his Schnabelesque textile works. He is simply at his most original and disruptive in ceramics, in terms of process, meaning and visual expectation. His efforts give you more to look at and think about than anything else he does. His often monumental and extravagantly glazed objects ricochet between extremes of beauty and ugliness. Some seem to have survived fires or vandalism; others suggest volcanoes about to erupt. They combine the scale of sculpture and chromatic richness of painting. But these works also drill into the history and processes of ceramics itself. They encompass loss, violence, the passage of time, the rise and fall of civilizations, the lavishness of ritual yet they're also funny, indulgent and outrageous. And they're life enhancing, elaborating as they do on the most natural and widespread of all mediums. There is no culture in history that has not produced great ceramics. The 21 works on view are from a somewhat larger show organized by and seen during the summer at the Des Moines Art Center in Iowa. They include the flat, plate like pieces which also conjure pizzas of Mr. Ruby's Ashtray series, and some wonderfully homely small pieces that are less interesting for being monochromatic. But the show is dominated by outsize examples from Mr. Ruby's Basin Theology series, which on first encounter resemble giant high sided ashtrays, filled with the detritus, seemingly, of heavy smokers: pipe like tubes protrude from most of them like cigarettes (or pestles to the basins/mortars or when vertical, like chimneys). These pipes are made by the artist using a small extruder, but being handled while newly formed, are usually less than perfect. Otherwise the pieces are built from slabs of clay and thoroughly exude signs of the artist's hands deep squeezes here, dragged fingers there and entire exteriors punched with thumbprints, like little waves. The name Basin Theology implies a sphere ruled by a god, or gods. This seems appropriate to ceramics, the alchemical art of earth transformed by fire. It is an art prone to accident, especially during kiln firings. The detritus in Mr. Ruby's basins turns out to be the products of such accidents; the chunks or scraps of broken or exploded pieces, however abject, are all cycled back into use; bricks fallen from the kiln are left where they land. All this adds up to a sense of destruction, of nature's cruelty but also of redemption, as well as a decidedly archaeological mien, like waste heaps that are always being picked through during excavations for the information they hold about past cultures. Even basins that seem to have survived the firing process intact have been repaired, indicated by mended cracks on all of them, or completely rebuilt, as with the dark brooding "Basin Theology/HATRA." Mr. Ruby comes from a long tradition of California ceramic artists that includes Peter Voulkos and Viola Frey, who both produced very large hand built works his were abstract, hers were figurative. Mr. Ruby's objects are both; they hint at the historical forms and functionality of ceramics but refuse to satisfy their requirements. Founded on a love of improvisation, they have roots in Abstract Expressionist painting, Process Art sculpture and Neo Expressionism. Mr. Ruby's constant improvising short circuits ceramics' chronological timeline: the formed and fired clay below, the applied and fired glaze, or glazes, above. His basins suggest a sense of multiple firings and glazings, a divine confusion no matter how hard you look. This sense of chaos is welcome in a medium that has so often been a model of measure and control. These works contain their own multitudes: gorgeous desolate landscapes, a sign of ecological end times. Through March 17 at the Museum of Arts and Design, 2 Columbus Circle, Manhattan; 212 299 7777, madmuseum.org.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Art & Design
The salesclerks wear head to toe logo tracksuits ( 2,300 for the jacket, 1,500 for the pants) at the new Gucci store on Wooster Street, a cultish cadre of caterers and nodders with the patience of saints gamely explaining the differences between the embroidered sneakers and showing couples in worn in flip flops 20 or 30 yowza wowza sunglass options. Here at the rowdiest, most alluring and zeitgeist specific new store to arrive in SoHo in years the tug of war over what it means to create, or purchase, a luxury item is at full power. Over the last few years, the idea of luxury has grown enough to include the stylish and unstylish, the well to do and the aspiring, the sincere and the ironic, the real and the fake. It is not an exclusive preserve. It is a reference point, an idea that's malleable. Credit Alessandro Michele, who took over design duties at Gucci in 2015 and quickly remade it as a fashion fun house, with understanding this intimately and profitably. All of this is luxury now. That Mr. Michele knows that makes him the most provocative and devious of major house designers. Unlike Demna Gvasalia, who is making luxury out of satire (or vice versa), Mr. Michele is the joke. He is in on it. He has all the cheat codes. As a result, Gucci has become a litmus test for your own tackiness. It reimagines Ed Hardy through the lens of Tom Ford. It employs the strategies of 1990s hip hop street wear and children's clothing. If you wear it, are you sincere? Ironic? Post ironic? Lil Uzi Vert? It may not get any more nouveau riche than this. If there is a shark jump moment for this era, it may be the recent photos of Slim Jxmmi of Rae Sremmurd wearing the 2,800 Gucci logo jumpsuit that looks, very simply, like baby pajamas. (All the photos were from the front, so I'm not sure if there was a rear flap.) I didn't see that piece at the SoHo store, but to be fair, the space is cavernous, not cluttered it wants you to hang out as much as shop. To touch the raised Gs on the circular sofas. To wonder if it's better to have an animal embroidered onto a denim jacket, or a sneaker, or a tote bag. To ponder a life made better with the purchase of a needlepoint cushion featuring the mopey mugs of Bosco and Orso, Mr. Michele's Boston terriers ( 1,650). There are seats everywhere. In the back, movie theater style rows face huge screens displaying branded content. Fancy some Champagne? When I went into the changing room, two flutes sat on the table, half empty. I understood. Trying on these clothes, considering a life shared with these clothes, requires some cranial massage. The colors and patterns are bright and erratic. They scream their arrival. Some were beautiful. I tried on a pair of tan drawstring pants with blue piping ( 980) that were the only pair in my size, but on hold for a well known hip hop generation executive. I admired the athletic socks with the embroidered wolf ( 120). The now signature Gucci slippers were everywhere maybe a raffia one ( 870) for outdoors and the leather and faux fur house shoe ( 790) for indoors? I have just listed all the demure clothing items in the store. Beyond that, it's a carnival. Fake Tevas ( 740). A blue polyester mesh jacket that reads "MAGNETISMO" ( 1,900). (Another 690 for the matching shorts.) A quite wonderful burgundy leather ankle boot with lizard trim and a wild dragon on the side ( 2,100). A hot pink leather drawstring backpack ( 1,980). A dragon embroidered sport coat that Nudie would love ( 4,200). (That last piece is one of the only tailored items in the store: Being rich is dressing down, not up.) For this intermittently beautiful chaos, there are endless marks. I've been to the store three times it was never empty, or slow. It was filled with young women who look like Bebe Rexha or Park Bom, young men who look like Jho Low or Lil Skies. Also, rich but chill European dads. On one trip there was a tattoo wrapped faux hardcore guy wearing a pink "Fashion Sucks" dad cap. He was totally right! I asked one of the clerks what was selling best, and he pointed to the Dapper Dan collection, which, for now, is exclusive to this location. (These pieces are different from the custom clothes available from his renewed atelier uptown.). They had radiance, a lesson in (relatively) tasteful ostentation, and a reminder that what Mr. Michele is doing to and with logos was already happening 30 years ago out of a Harlem storefront. In one photo from that time, Dapper Dan stands outside his store; in the window is painted "Coming Soon Dapper Dan's Ladies and Gentleman Boutique." At the Gucci store, amid the luxe leather jackets in late 1980s styles and the entry level T shirts that simply advertised the collaboration was a T shirt with these painted words faithfully rendered as they were on the actual window ( 550).	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Style
On the second floor of a classic cast iron building in SoHo, just above the madding crowd, there is an airy loft, all cool cream tones and Pierre Paulin chairs, oversize art books and Henri Cartier Bresson prints. And along one wall is a rail of discreet white and black and mariniere striped linen and silk, cotton and denim; culottes, shirtdresses, tunics and cashmeres. With price tags attached. That's because this isn't actually an apartment at all. It's an experiment, and that rail is Stage Three of a long term plan to do what has never really been done before in American fashion: create a conglomerate of brands all born, if not permanently housed, under one roof. The experiment is being conducted by Adam Pritzker, a positive thinking spritelike 31 year old scion of the billionaire Hyatt hotel family, and Vanessa Traina, the famously chic 31 year old daughter of the romance novelist Danielle Steel and stylist/consultant/BFF of designers like Joseph Altuzarra and Alexander Wang. It started in 2013, when Mr. Pritzker founded Assembled Brands. The next year, they introduced an e commerce site called the Line with a group of products "curated" by Ms. Traina, executive creative director. They opened a showroom in New York (the Apartment by the Line) and, after that, one in Los Angeles, with the products posed to look as if in a private house. Peppered among those products was a new brand, Protagonist, an accessible luxury collection marked by its elegant discretion and owned by Assembled Brands, as well as Tenfold, an Assembled Brands homewares collection that recently expanded into T shirts. Next week, they are introducing their third line, Khaite. Three being fashion's magic number: the one that represents critical mass, trend or otherwise. Khaite, designed by Catherine Holstein, late of Gap, is an advanced contemporary collection that looks kind of like a Scandinavian version of Tory Burch, with a quietly sybaritic windswept mood. Like Protagonist, now stocked in 40 other boutiques including Net a Porter, it will initially be sold only at the Line, and then wholesale to the wider market. It all sounds logical enough. Except it has never worked before. One of the perennial breast beating questions in fashion along with why drop crotch pants keep making a comeback even though everyone hates them is why no conglomerate has arisen to rival the French behemoths Moet Hennessey Louis Vuitton (owner of Vuitton, Givenchy, Celine, Pucci and Fendi, among others) and Kering (Gucci, Yves Saint Laurent, Bottega Veneta, Stella McCartney, etc.), or the Swiss watch and jewelry giant Richemont (Cartier, Van Cleef Arpels, Jaeger LeCoultre, Vacheron Constantin, and so on and a few clothing names like Chloe and Alaia). Labelux which was created in 2007 by the Reimann family, the German owners of JAB Holdings (which also owns Coty and a number of coffee brands) once owned Jimmy Choo, Bally, Belstaff, Zagliani, Solange Azagury Partridge and Derek Lam. But it has faltered, with the group selling the last two brands back to their founders, putting Zagliani on ice, and renaming the subsidiary JAB Luxury. There are other examples. In Italy, Only the Brave is currently making a stab at it (Maison Margiela, Marni, Viktor Rolf, Diesel), and Tod's owns Hogan, Roger Vivier and Fay (and Tod's owner, Diego Della Valle, owns Schiaparelli). But they have nothing like the scale of LVMH and Kering. Which may be why, when LVMH swooped in and bought up Bulgari in 2011 and Loro Piana in 2013, it caused agony and soul searching in Rome and Milan along the lines of, "Why can't we keep our own brands in our own hands?" This is also a question that comes up a lot in the United States, where name brands such as Marc Jacobs and Donna Karan are likewise owned by LVMH, and the only group even close to the European model is PVH, which owns Calvin Klein and Tommy Hilfiger (and a lot of more mass market names like Speedo and Izod). Andrew Rosen, who founded Theory and later acquired Helmut Lang, was once credited by Anna Wintour with building "an American equivalent" of LVMH. But his company is now owned by Fast Retailing, the Japanese based parent of Uniqlo, and while he has personal investments in Rag Bone, Proenza Schouler and Alice and Olivia, they are minority stakes. In 2000, to great fanfare, a group called Pegasus announced that it was going to be the American LVMH, and bought Miguel Adrover, Daryl K., Pamela Dennis, Judith Leiber and Angela Amiri, only to close or shed most of those lines by 2001, and rechristen itself the Leiber Group. All of which raises the question: What do Mr. Pritzker and Ms. Traina think they know that all of these other fashion insiders did not? Two reasons most often given for the lack of an American group are absence of available heritage brands on which to build, and timing. When LVMH and Kering, previously PPR, were formed (in 1987 and 1999, Kering at the time being called the Gucci Group, and owned by PPR), most European brands were relatively local, family run businesses with big names, ripe for the acquisition. Now fashion is a giant global concern, and the financial outlay required to build these kinds of groups is exponentially greater. Which is partly why Assembled Brands is doing none of the above. It is not interested in established brands but rather in making its own, an attitude that nods to the American mythology that mitigates against preservation in favor of creation; that values the idea of invention more than the idea of saving what was. Its back room synergies are not in capital intensive areas like real estate, with its fixed costs, but rather in technology, with its related access to consumer data and e commerce. And its ambitions begin at an entirely different place from the groups that went before. Unlike Francois Henri Pinault, the chief executive of Kering, who often talks about buying medium size companies (with revenue between 50 million and 100 million) and building them up, or LVMH, which spent 2.6 billion on Loro Piana, Mr. Pritzker dreams of expanding via a network of services for brands making around 1 million to 2 million a year in revenue.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Fashion & Style
Let's get the 800 pound fruitcake out of the way: If you love "A Christmas Carol," this is the year to binge it, as companies across the United States are dreaming up innovative remote ways to present the show. A gender bending new musical, "Estella Scrooge," even updates Scrooge (Betsy Wolfe) as a Wall Street meanie with a taste for foreclosures. The show's nifty cast also includes Lauren Patten ("Jagged Little Pill"), Patrick Page, Clifton Duncan and Danny Burstein. But December is not just for remorseful capitalists and ghosts busting the space time continuum it's also for giving, with several opportunities to help your favorite companies or organizations. Among them is the Acting Company's holiday benefit on Dec. 17, hosted by Rainn Wilson and starring Kevin Kline, Harriet Harris and Jesse L. Martin. Below you will find a sample of the seasonal fare available at the click of a button. From Oxford, Creation Theater is presenting an ambitious looking production of this classic with the performance artist and singer Le Gateau Chocolat as comfortable at the Bayreuth Festival as he is doing children's shows popping up as the Good Witch. This is live, so viewers outside Britain need to take time differences into account. Dec. 19 Jan. 3; creationtheatre.co.uk. On the other hand, you may want to put the kids to bed before pressing "play" on Matthew Lombardo's bawdy off brand sequel, "Who's Holiday!" The Grinch is an unseen but key character in this solo show where Cindy Lou Who (the feisty Lesli Margherita) is an adult lounging about a kitschy trailer. Dec. 11 15; broadwaycares.org. The National Yiddish Theater Folksbiene is going international for this mix of live performances and video greetings from a globe spanning array of performers, including Mandy Patinkin and Barry Manilow. Adam B. Shapiro, who was in the cast of the company's hit Yiddish version of "Fiddler on the Roof," is the M.C. Dec. 8 12; nytf.org. This show has a neat twist: The participants who include Alan Cumming, Heather Headley, Ramin Karimloo, Karen Olivo and Conrad Ricamora will perform songs based on traditions from either their actual homes or the setting of their shows. Does it mean Andre De Shields will sing about hell, since he was in "Hadestown"? Dec. 15 19; broadwaycares.org. The only concept for the Broadway Inspirational Voices is the might of choral singing, and that's plenty. Just in case, the group has added power guest stars including Patti LuPone, Billy Porter and Leslie Odom Jr. to this holiday concert. Starting Dec. 13; bivoices.org. Based on Hans Christian Andersen's story about a persistent toy, Mary Zimmerman's production of "The Steadfast Tin Soldier," captured in 2019, is suitable for a wide range of audiences. Through Dec. 27; lookingglasstheatre.org. As for the youngest theatergoers, they should delight in the Little Angel Theater's "Mother Christmas," by Barb Jungr (known in New York for her sterling cabaret performances) and Samantha Lane. The pair, who teamed up last year for "The Pixie and the Pudding," are now exploring Mrs. Claus's tight backstage operation. Parents, just pray there's nothing as catchy as the previous show's infernal earworm: "There's no pudding/They haven't left us pudding/Where's our pudding?" Starting Dec. 4; youtube.com/thelittleatheatre. Look at the bright side: There may not be physical shows to dress up for, but at least we can watch pantomime in America! A British Christmas tradition, panto relies on broad humor, shameless slapstick and audience interaction (prepare to boo and holler at your screen). A good option for newbies and hard core fans alike might be "Jack and the Beanstalk," from the Belgrade Theater in Coventry. In addition to adapting the story, Iain Lauchlan takes on the dame role, which is traditionally a drag one. Through Dec. 31; belgrade.co.uk. Speaking of outlandish ladies, former "Ru Paul's Drag Race" contestants are everywhere this season. Some, led by Sasha Velour, are starring in "A Drag Queen Christmas 2020," which was filmed live this fall. Through Jan. 31; dragfans.com. Meanwhile, BenDeLaCreme and Jinkx Monsoon try to create a variety show in "The Jinkx DeLa Holiday Special." Available now; jinkxanddela.com. The making of a variety show a nearly extinct genre that perdures as comedy fodder is also the subject of David Cerda's "The Rip Nelson Holiday Quarantine Special," presented by the Chicago company Hell in a Handbag. Celebrity guests include Ella Fitzgerald, Charlton Heston and Lucille Ball (disclaimer: these might not be the actual stars). Dec. 4 Jan. 8; handbagproductions.org. The Irish Repertory Theater is putting on an abridged digital production of the 1989 musical, based on the 1944 film with Judy Garland. The cast is headed by Shereen Ahmed, who led the tour of Lincoln Center's "My Fair Lady," as Esther Smith; Max von Essen as boy next door John Truitt; and Irish Rep regular Melissa Errico as matriarch Anna Smith. Dec. 11 Jan. 2; irishrep.org. Klea Blackhurst, Jim Caruso and Billy Stritch head the virtual edition of "A Swinging Birdland Christmas," recorded at the famous club. They should watch their back, though, because the guest star Marilyn Maye may be 92, but she can still out swing pretty much anybody. Dec. 18 Jan. 19; birdlandjazz.com. Another power trio Broadway's original Cinderella (Laura Osnes), Belle (Susan Egan) and Jasmine (Courtney Reed) take over Feinstein's/54 Below as part of the New York boite's new series of virtual concerts. They should be nicely roasting some show tune chestnuts at their "Broadway Princess Holiday Party." Dec. 12 26; 54below.com. The Minnesota based ensemble Sounds of Blackness should stir up screens of any size with "The Night Before Christmas: In Concert," based on the poem "A Visit from St. Nicholas." Dec. 19 31; ordway.org.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Theater
The fur is flying again in fashion. Although Fendi has held dedicated fur runway shows with impunity for a few seasons now, suggesting the one time cause du jour may have faded from the front lines, this week Yoox Net a Porter, the internet fashion behemoth that owns Net a Porter, Mr Porter, the Outnet and Yoox.com, announced it was going fur free. Given that Yoox Net a Porter is widely seen as the pioneer and leader in the online high fashion space, that fur is generally seen as a high fashion staple, and that the group has 2.9 million customers in 180 countries, 29 million monthly unique visitors and 2016 net revenues of EUR1.9 billion, this is a pretty big deal. It is the most prominent retailer to take an anti fur stance yet. The group sites will not sell fur as defined by the Fur Free Alliance, an international coalition of animal protection organizations, where the list of banned skins "includes, but is not limited to, mink, coyote, sable, fox, muskrat, rabbit and raccoon dog." Additionally, employees have been asked not to wear fur to any public occasion where they are representing the sites. Like fashion shows, for example.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Fashion & Style
WASHINGTON Two months after announcing that he planned to ban the sale of most flavored e cigarettes, President Trump on Friday once again raised concerns about such restrictions during a lively, televised White House meeting that brought together top executives from the health community and the tobacco and vaping industries. "If you don't give it to them, it's going to come here illegally," Mr. Trump said of flavored products, referring to how a "prohibition" would only increase the use of black market products. "That's the one problem I can't seem to forget," he said. "You just have to look at the history of it. Now, instead of having a flavor that's at least safe, they're going to be having a flavor that's poison." But e cigarettes have been on the market for more than a decade, at least, and have grown increasingly popular, with little scientific evidence or oversight to prove they are safe. Meanwhile, teenage vaping has spiraled out of control, with more than one fourth of high school students who were surveyed reporting this year that they had used e cigarettes within the previous 30 days, prompting concerns that a new generation is becoming hooked on nicotine. The vaping round table on Friday afternoon brought together a diverse group of advocates and lobbyists on different sides of the issue, including Matthew L. Myers , president of the Campaign for Tobacco Free Kids and one of the most vocal vaping critics; K.C. Crosthwaite , the new chief executive of Juul Labs; Greg Conley , president of the American Vaping Association, a trade group; and Senator Mitt Romney, Republican of Utah, who has been pushing for a nationwide flavor ban. During the hourlong meeting, which was scheduled to be closed to the press but which Mr. Trump instead conducted in front of television cameras, the president tried to play the role of open minded moderator, asking, "So what would you do?" and appearing to take in all of the information with an open mind. "Tell me about lungs, come on," Mr. Trump said at one point. Throughout, he circled back to his main concern that counterfeit products from China and Mexico would replace those made by "legitimate companies" like Juul Labs, the San Francisco based company that is this nation's largest seller of e cigarettes. "Won't they just be made illegally?" Mr. Trump said. Later in the meeting, Mr. Trump asked: "How do you solve the fact that it's going to be shipped in from Mexico? It's a problem. You have the same problem with drugs, and everything else." Vaping advocates also appealed to Mr. Trump's ego, noting that his "instincts were correct" in September, when he first announced the proposed ban, but adding that the facts of the public health crisis had changed since then. The outbreak of lung illnesses now afflicting nearly 3,000 people and killing 47 has largely been attributed to THC based products, some of which contained the additive vitamin E acetate, not store bought nicotine products. Public health advocates, meanwhile, tried to make Mr. Trump understand the severity of the other public health crisis teen vaping telling him that he had the opportunity to "save a generation from addiction." In one heated exchange, Mr. Romney, who was seated to the right of Mr. Trump, noted that "most adults are not using flavors" and that those products were targeting and addicting youth vapers. "Putting out cotton candy flavor and unicorn poop flavor, this is kid product," Mr. Romney said. "We have to put the kids first." But vaping leaders shot back at him that "yes," adult users trying to find an alternative to traditional cigarettes also use flavored products. "Utah is a Mormon state, and half the kids in high school are vaping," Mr. Romney said. Mr. Trump did reiterate on Friday that his administration would support raising the age for sales of e cigarettes to 21, a move that would require congressional approval. Afterward, supporters of a flavor ban said they were hopeful that Mr. Trump had heard them, despite his overall skepticism that a ban would not be effective. "The president asked a lot of questions, and I don't think anybody could predict from his questions or his response what he will do," said Mr. Myers, of the Campaign for Tobacco Free Kids. But he noted that Mr. Trump did not offer a time frame for any decision. Top advisers to Mr. Trump had pushed him to organize the meeting, hoping to delay indefinitely any action on an issue they believe will have a negative effect on his 2020 re election campaign. In an interview on CNBC on Friday, Dr. Scott Gottlieb, the former commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration, said he thought the administration was legitimately concerned about the economic effects on the thousands of vape shops that have sprung up around the country and predicted that the businesses might get a carve out from any initiative aimed at restricting flavors. Mr. Trump and his advisers have mentioned the jobs created by the industry in earlier remarks. On a flight on Nov. 4, Mr. Trump was swayed by advisers who warned him of political repercussions to any sweeping restrictions, and he decided to cancel an announcement the administration had been expected to make the next day. Mr. Trump on Friday said he was considering having the group return to the White House for a second meeting, according to Harold Wimmer , chief executive of the American Lung Association.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Health
PHILADELPHIA In July, the star Spanish dancer Angel Corella a principal for many years with American Ballet Theater was appointed artistic director of Pennsylvania Ballet. On Oct. 16, the company began to perform under his direction, at its main home, the Philadelphia Academy of Music here, one of America's most beautiful opera houses; posters have been hanging in downtown Philadelphia with a picture of his face (lightly bearded) to advertise the opening program, "Press Play: The Directorial Debut of Angel Corella." I attended the Saturday matinee. The fare was pieces by Balanchine, Jerome Robbins, Alexei Ratmansky and Christopher Wheeldon. These are unexceptionable choices; to judge by their places in American repertory today, these are the two foremost 20th century choreographers and the two foremost 21st century choreographers. Still, at least one of the dances (Mr. Ratmansky's "Jeu de Cartes") had been chosen before Mr. Corella was appointed. We should wait to judge Mr. Corella's taste in choreography until the 2015 16 season. (We will probably discover his taste in dancers sooner. A few have left; others have arrived.) Pennsylvania Ballet was founded in 1963 (its first artistic director, Barbara Weisberger, was in Saturday's audience), and has one of the longest records for performing Balanchine outside New York. (It first danced "Allegro Brillante," this program's opener, in 1965.) There were some last minute cast changes on Saturday, and yet the ballet most affected by substitutions, Mr. Ratmansky's "Jeu de Cartes" (which joined the Pennsylvania repertory three years ago) was, with "Allegro," ebullient, with dancers seizing its many opportunities with enthusiasm and glee. Beatrice Jona Affron, the company's music director and conductor, produced especially fine orchestral playing; there were also excellent contributions from the pianist Martha Koeneman. The other two works both company premieres, most definitely Mr. Corella's choices were atmospheric pas de deux in the middle of the program: Mr. Wheeldon's "Liturgy" and Robbins's "Other Dances." Audiences love "Liturgy" (2003), here staged by Jason Fowler and Jock Soto, more than I do. I admire the timing with which Mr. Wheeldon establishes a firm rhythmic structure to heighten the impact of Arvo Part's score ("Fratres," for violin, strings and percussion), and I enjoy the choreography's shapes, movements and dynamics (this is one of several works in which Mr. Wheeldon has his dancers conjure "lyre" outlines with raised arms). But I find the whole expressively nebulous. Elizabeth Mateer and Lorin Mathis danced it with rapt elegance.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Dance
When did leggings make the leap from garment to cultural lightning rod? For what are essentially stretchy footless tights in a seemingly endless array of patterns and colors, they have been an unexpected source of controversy. The latest uproar came last week, when Maryann White, the mother of four sons, wrote a letter to the The Observer, the school newspaper for both the University of Notre Dame and the nearby women's college St. Mary's, asking female students to ignore fashion and stop wearing leggings. It was for their own as well as the greater good, she suggested, in part because leggings made it hard for men to control themselves. The you wear it/you're asking for it implication of the letter, not to mention the sheer idea of censoring clothing, set off the predictable firestorm of protest, both on campus and off. For two days students wore leggings in a show of group defiance, there was a leggingsdayND hashtag on Twitter, and assorted men and women posted pictures of themselves in solidarity with leggings wearers. By Friday The Observer had another piece, this one from the editors in response to the furor, saying: "Having received over 35 letters to The Observer, in addition to the countless verbal comments, tweets, memes and class discussions about Monday's letter, we have been astonished by the conversations the leggings piece has sparked." Meanwhile, those wider conversation continued over the weekend. This follows a 2017 United Airlines incident when two teenagers who were "pass travelers" (a category that includes relatives of airline employees) were prevented from flying because they were wearing leggings. Observers complained, social media got up in arms, and the makers of leggings had a field day; Puma, for example, jumped into the fray and burnished its image by offering a 20 percent discount on leggings to anyone presenting a United ticket. And that in turn punctuated the endless debate among parents and schools and students that can be summed up as "leggings are not pants/yes they are." In general this existential interrogation of the soul of a garment (because, really, that's what it is) centers on women, women's bodies and the general discomfort with seeing too much of them, or believing you are. That's certainly where Ms. White was going with her letter, and it's generally the political offense used by those who are on the pro leggings side: How dare you accuse me of dressing to seduce (an argument that has particular resonance in the era after MeToo). But leggings began their rise to wardrobe domination with the advent of comfort culture: the post casual Friday turn of the millennium move away from formality that picked up steam with the rise of fleece wearing hedge funders, the fall of Old Wall Street and the fetishization of Silicon Valley's hoodies and Teva clad geniuses, and became even more pronounced under the influence of the Wellness movement. Leggings also function differently for different age groups: for Gen Y, they tend to be lifestyle signifiers that have more to do with health and activity than, say, everyday workwear; for Gen Z ers, who largely reject uniformity and traditional labels, they are simply a basic, the equivalent of jeans. They are something you put on without thought. Which is to say, leggings are about a lot of things, and sex may be the least of them if sex plays any role at all. One thing that was striking about the Notre Dame protest was the rejection of what they saw as the traditional gender assumptions involved. Leggings are not the sole province of the siren female was the idea. In their editorial, The Observer's writers asked, "Why has the legging controversy generated a larger impact than other controversial topics? Students and community members have spent hours debating the merits and faults of a popular clothing choice. But where is the willingness to speak up about other issues with substantial policy implications, legally and on campus?" The truth is, it's possible leggings may be simply standing in for those other issues. One of the great gotchas of fashion is that what may appear superficial or unimportant (leggings!) is, in fact, representative of a more complicated, harder to express reality (identity). This is what gives clothes their power. As a result, what the leggings uproar may have exposed is not so much anyone's physique per se, but rather a cultural fault line that runs through generations. This historical pattern includes miniskirts and jeans, Mary Quant and James Dean, and garments that seemed egregious and inexplicable to what is generally referred to as the establishment but play a key and highly visual role in upending norms to make way for the next. Sure, it's possible that is overstating the matter. It's possible they are just stretchy footless tights that are easy to wear. But judging by Lululemon's recent results, which saw net revenue rise 21 percent in the third quarter of 2018, and the fact that part of Levi's much heralded IPO was attributed to the "stretch" now included in jeans to cater to the leggings market, this "popular clothing choice" (as The Observer labeled them) is not going away any time soon. All this suggests that the Notre Dame uproar may not be a fluke, but a harbinger.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Fashion & Style
Questions and Answers on the New Study Linking Cellphones and Cancer in Rats Do cellphones cause cancer? Most health authorities do not think so, but a new federal study could reignite the controversy over this issue. The preliminary study, released Friday, found that radiation from cellphones appears to have increased the risks that male rats developed tumors in their brains and hearts. But there are many caveats and some experts are debunking the study. Who conducted the study? Are they credible? The study is from the National Toxicology Program, an interagency group in the Department of Health and Human Services whose job it is to assess the possible risks of chemicals. Rats lived in special chambers where they were exposed to different levels of radiation of the type emitted by cellphones for nine hours a day, every day. The exposure started before they were born and continued until they were about 2 years old. About 2 to 3 percent of the male rats exposed to the radiation developed malignant gliomas, a brain cancer, compared with none in a control group that was not exposed to radiation. About 5 to 7 percent of the male rats exposed to the highest level of radiation developed schwannomas in their hearts, compared with none in the control group. Schwannomas are tumors that occur in cells that line the nerves. The authors concluded the brain and heart tumors were "likely caused'' by the radiation. Oddly enough, the incidence of tumors in females was minimal, barely different from the control group. It is not clear why the results would vary between the sexes, which is one reason some experts are questioning the findings. Even for males, the differences between particular groups of rats and the control group were not statistically significant. Another anomaly was that the rats exposed to the radiation lived longer on the whole than animals in the control group. And schwannomas can occur all over the body, not just the heart, but the study did not find increased rates in other organs. Also it was unusual that the control group had zero tumors. In previous studies at the National Toxicology Program, an average of 2 percent of rats in control groups developed gliomas. Had that happened in this study, there would have been virtually no difference between the exposed rats and the controls. "I am unable to accept the authors' conclusions," said one reviewer of the study, Dr. Michael S. Lauer, deputy director for extramural research at the National Institutes of Health. Dr. Lauer, whose comments were in an appendix to the report, said it was likely that the findings represented false positives. The amounts of radiation that rats were exposed to might be higher than what cellphone users typically experience, though toxicology studies often use higher doses to make sure to detect any effect that might exist. So we can just dismiss this study and go on using our phones? Not totally. As the authors of the report write: "Given the extremely large number of people who use wireless communication devices, even a very small increase in the incidence of disease resulting from exposure to the RFR generated by those devices would have broad implications for public health." RFR refers to radio frequency radiation. Dr. Otis Brawley, chief medical officer of the American Cancer Society, issued a statement on Friday that called this study "good science," and called for further research because the animal research used very high signal strengths. But he said, "The NTP report linking radiofrequency radiation (RFR) to two types of cancer marks a paradigm shift in our understanding of radiation and cancer risk." Dr. David O. Carpenter, director of the Institute for Health and Environment at the University at Albany, said he thought the study provided backing for the human epidemiological studies that suggested cellphone use was associated with an increased risk of gliomas and acoustic neuromas, a type of schwannoma. "I think this is real,'' he said, suggesting people used wired earpieces to talk on cellphones.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Health
BOCA RATON, Fla. Weeds, crabgrass and fallen palm fronds cover the wildly overgrown greens of what was once the Mizner Trail Golf Club, its decrepit state emblematic of the fate of hundreds of golf courses around the country, many of them derisively known as "rabbit patches" or "goat farms." A short drive away, however, perspiring construction workers in yellow vests swarmed on a recent afternoon over the emerging structure of a 150,000 square foot activities center, part of a 50 million renovation of the 44 year old Boca West Country Club, home to some 6,000 residents, where fairways are newly planted and houses sell for as much as 5 million. With the winter golf season beginning in Florida the nation's leader in golf courses with more than 1,000 the extremes of failure and success point to a nationwide upheaval in the sport. It was booming when players like Tiger Woods reigned, but has since been roiled by changing tastes and economics, an aging population of players, and the vagaries of the millennial generation's evolving pastimes. There are about four million fewer players in the United States than there were a decade ago, according to the National Golf Foundation. Almost 650 18 hole golf courses have closed since 2006, the group says. In 2013 alone, 158 golf courses closed and just 14 opened, the eighth consecutive year that closures outpaced openings. Between 130 and 160 courses are closing every 12 months, a trend that the foundation predicts will continue "for the next few years." Dozens of private and public golf courses here in South Florida, and hundreds around the country, are in transition. Some courses have sought bankruptcy protection, while others have slipped into foreclosure. Many are under construction, with single family homes and condominiums going up on land once dotted only with pin flags, sand traps and water hazards. Others have gone to seed as they await resolution of legal and zoning disputes. Many clubs have survived by lowering sign up fees and other costs, reducing the number of playable holes, and offering family friendly amenities and activities that go far beyond hitting a ball with a 9 iron. "Some courses are adapting, others are just not," said Paul H. Chipok, a lawyer in Orlando who specializes in land use and environmental issues. "It costs 100,000 a month to operate an 18 hole golf course mowing the grass, fertilizing, regular maintenance. And that's not including capital improvements. You need a lot of green fees to cover that." Lesley Deutch, a senior vice president in the Boca Raton office of John Burns Real Estate Consulting, said the "old model" of private golf clubs with high initiation fees and "very exclusive" memberships is in decline. "I don't think the industry is over," she said. "I think it's just changing." In South Florida, where buildable land is fast disappearing, developers see golf courses as wasted space. Vast swaths of land that were once pristine courses in the middle of residential communities are becoming highly exploitable territory prime opportunities for profits much greater than what fairways and putting greens can provide. As a result, the fallout of the downturn in the sport has been felt most keenly by residents of communities where the holes are no longer being played, primarily because the value of their homes often drops markedly once the course has closed. "There are big issues, and they're being fought and litigated," said Steven M. Ekovich, a broker based in Tampa, Fla., who represents sellers of golf courses. "Homeowners paid a 20 or 30 percent premium for a golf course lot, and suddenly a developer comes in and wants to build in front of them. There are big fights over that." A few miles south of here, in Tamarac, the owner of the Woodmont Country Club, Mark Schmidt, faced stern opposition from some of the club's homeowners to his plan for the course, which involved reducing the 36 holes to 18, putting up a four and a half acre commercial center, and building 152 single family homes in addition to the 1,900 houses already there. The plan was ultimately approved last year, but city officials have since balked at the owner's proposal to build a 120 room hotel on the site. "There's always resistance," said Mr. Schmidt, who bought the Woodmont property 10 years ago. "The cost of operating a golf course today is very difficult, so the land is being put to better use. As much as some people lost their views, others have gained better views. No point in allowing the land to remain fallow." Like other golf club owners who foresee an upside in expanding their offerings, Mr. Schmidt said he was building a new clubhouse and fitness center, as well as a new swimming pool. "Without these adjustments, golf would be in desperate trouble," he said of the industry in general. "This is an absolute necessity." To prevent similar headaches on another property in Tamarac, the 275 acre Colony West Golf Club, the city itself bought the course in a 2011 short sale for 3.3 million. "We wanted to control the real estate," Michael C. Cernech, the city manager, said of the championship course, which opened in 1971. Under a five year contract, management of the course was turned over in 2013 to the Virginia based firm Billy Casper Golf, which runs about 140 courses nationwide. Michelle F. Tanzer, a Boca Raton lawyer who represents resort developers and owners and sits on the board of the National Club Association, has helped country clubs adapt to what she said is growing demand for fitness facilities, resort style pools, water parks and improved dining choices in places where previously only golf was the norm. The golf industry, she said, is "doing much better than it's looked since 2009." The Boca West Country Club's heavy investment in its facilities, Ms. Tanzer said, "is a perfect example of adapting" to the changing economics of golf. "They're spending a fortune on making the place family friendly," she said. "It's a home run." At Boca West, where it costs new members 70,000 to sign up, Jay DiPietro, the club's 78 year old president and general manager, suggested that the troubles besetting some of his competitors could be blamed on poor management and on their focus on "the business of selling houses." But he operates on a different principle, he said. "We're in the people pleasing business," he said. "These people paid a lot to be here." In any case, Mr. DiPietro said, the golf industry was vastly over supplied with courses. "It was just waiting for a recession to knock the hell out of it," he said. "The recession separated the boys from the men." Oliver K. Hedge, who appraises golf course properties for the real estate brokerage firm Cushman Wakefield, said the golf industry had "made great strides" in shaking off underperforming courses in the last few years. The developer invested far more some 250 million in fixing up the four course Doral resort, after buying it out of bankruptcy for 145 million. On Oct. 23, during a presidential campaign appearance at the resort, now called Trump National Doral, the candidate boasted of his negotiating skills in whittling 25 million off the asking price of the property. "The key to the success of these ventures was the broader market timing," Mr. Hedge said, referring to the two Trump resorts. "I assume they saw the luxury golf market returning, which it has done." Mr. Ekovich, the golf course broker in Tampa, was slightly less positive in his estimation of the market's strength. "Revenues are up a little bit, and so are rounds," said Mr. Ekovich, who noted that during the years of the recession the price of some golf courses had "cratered" to about half their former value. "Things are moving in the right direction, but they are by no means meteoric rises."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Real Estate
"It's not glamorous taking out the recycling," Veronica Webb said, as she carried a basket of plastic bottles and cardboard down the hall of her Upper West Side apartment. It was a Saturday evening in late October, and Ms. Webb, 51, a supermodel and actress who was a runway star in the 1990s, had a houseful of teenagers over to celebrate her daughter Leila's 14th birthday. Leila's stepfather, Chris Del Gatto, 46, herded the chattering gaggle into the elevator while his wife disappeared behind a door and reappeared empty handed. The family was headed to Magnolia Bakery to pick up a birthday cake. For dinner, Leila wanted typical teenage fare: pizza, French fries and mozzarella sticks. Outings like these are material for Ms. Webb's new website, WebbOnTheFly.com, which she recently started and where she doles out advice on motherhood, beauty, fashion and wellness. She has reteamed with her former modeling agent at Muse Management, where she joined its influencer division. Among other things, she plans to give speeches. Ms. Webb was one of the first black models to be signed to a major beauty contract (Revlon), and next year she is teaching a course at New York University about branding in the fashion industry. At home, though, she empties the dishwasher as the family orders dinner. "I don't want pizza," Ms. Webb said. "I'll have French fries and red wine." "Why don't we get pieces so everyone gets what they want?" Leila said. "Let's get two pies," Mr. Del Gatto said. "That's too much," Ms. Webb said. "How about getting one pie? We are going to make mozzarella sticks." They finally agreed on two margherita pizzas and some slices for Leila. The teenagers sprawled on the couch, a tangle of arms and legs, and watched "Thor" while they waited for the pizza to arrive. Ms. Webb looked at Mr. Del Gatto. "Do we want to make fries?" she asked. "It's already 8." The couple had received an electric air fryer as a housewarming gift. It is the size of an industrial rice cooker, and neither had used it. Ms. Webb consulted Siri on her iPhone. Mr. Del Gatto looked at the instructions. Unlike a typical fryer, it uses only a small amount of oil. "It's supposed to be health conscious," said Mr. Del Gatto, who appraises and sells fine jewelry. Molly, Ms. Webb's 12 year old daughter, emerged from her upstairs bedroom, wearing a crimson cape. "Chris, did you blunt my sword yet?" she asked her stepfather. The plastic sword was part of the Little Red Riding Hood Halloween costume she bought online, but it was too sharp to play with. "No," he said. "I'm teaching you patience." She asked her mother to straighten her hair. "I'll do it in a minute, honey," Ms. Webb said. She was watching a video on her cellphone about how to make fried mozzarella sticks. Ms. Webb grew up in Detroit, the youngest of three daughters. "My mother was an amazing baker," she said. "She always made soups and stews." Ms. Webb's favorite dish to cook is couscous royale, a lamb stew served over couscous. "I'll call Azzedine, and he'll talk me through it," she said, referring to Azzedine Alaia, the fashion designer, whom she met in the late 1980s in Paris. "Azzedine is like my dad." She turned and saw Molly with a pint size glass. "It's five minutes before dinner and you are having a full glass of lemonade?" Ms. Webb said. "No!" She took the glass and poured most of the lemonade back into the bottle, leaving a healthy gulp for Molly.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Fashion & Style
With a single burst of tweets, President Trump can fire and hire a chief of staff, bar transgender soldiers from the military and undercut negotiations with foreign nations. It's "diplomacy by tweeting," said Russel Neiss, a software engineer for an educational technology nonprofit. In June, Mr. Neiss saw a tweet from Pat Cunnane, a former member of President Barack Obama's White House staff, in which Mr. Cunnane formatted one of Mr. Trump's Twitter posts to look like an official statement from the office of the White House press secretary. That inspired Mr. Neiss to give every tweet from the president the same treatment. A few hours later, while his three children were napping, Mr. Neiss spent 48 minutes in his St. Louis home writing about 50 lines of code for a Twitter bot he calls RealPressSecBot. The account scans anything tweeted by realDonaldTrump and automatically formats the tweets so that they look like official statements from the White House. "For me, I just want to give the president's tweets the honor they deserve," Mr. Neiss, 34, said. Within a few hours, the account had about 80,000 followers. It now has about 121,000. It has been "the definition of viral," Mr. Neiss said. "It spoke to people." He suggested that RealPressSecBot resonated because it visually intersected Mr. Trump's often bellicose words with the reality of the impact they can have. "As soon as you see them juxtaposed in such a way, you realize that strangeness," Mr. Neiss said. About 3,500 miles away in London, James O'Malley, a freelance journalist and currently the interim editor of Gizmodo UK, felt a similar call to action. His theory was that the best way to understand the workings of Mr. Trump's inner circle is to follow the Trump family's actions on Twitter. "It reminds me more of like a royal court from European history," Mr. O'Malley said. "It's about proximity to power and working out who's in and who's out with the king." A self proclaimed coding amateur, Mr. O'Malley, 30, spent a few weeks creating a Twitter bot called TrumpsAlert. It tracks the Twitter habits of Mr. Trump, his wife, his three eldest children and one of his advisers, Kellyanne Conway. Mr. Trump follows a carefully curated list of 45 Twitter accounts. And tracking how he interacts with members of that list can be important in understanding the president. On Sept. 22, for instance, Mr. Trump appeared to unfollow or block his former chief of staff, Reince Priebus. An hour and a half later, he appeared to follow Mr. Priebus again. And in August, TrumpsAlert said Donald Trump Jr., Eric Trump and Ivanka Trump had all unfollowed the actress Marlee Matlin after she condemned their father's response to the white supremacist demonstration in Charlottesville, Va. "When the president speaks, that's really important that changes the world," Mr. O'Malley said. "He can tank the stock market or start wars with his words. So having a greater understanding of what's going on inside the West Wing is surely a really useful thing." And, Mr. O'Malley said, studying the Twitter activity of the Trump children can help provide a peek into their thinking. "It's sort of fascinating to see Don Jr. and Eric's media diets," he said. "Don Jr. goes and he'll like tweets from all sorts of interesting people and organizations, and I think that shows you the sort of worldview and the world they exist in." The accuracy of TrumpsAlert, which has about 42,300 followers, can be dicey. If Twitter suspends an account or if someone blocks Mr. Trump, his wife, his children or Ms. Conway, the bot reads it as an unfollow. Mr. O'Malley explained in a series of tweets: "The way unfollow detection works is by downloading the current following list, and comparing it to the previously downloaded list. This means that if a followed account is suddenly missing from the new list, it is labeled unfollowed." But this hasn't stopped numerous political journalists from following the account. Mr. O'Malley is hopeful that one day something big will come out of his bot. "I guess the dream is that one day you'd see Donald Trump has unfollowed VladimirPutin or something," he said. "And we'd go: 'Aha! We've got him!'"	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Media
Pongo performing at the Music Box venue in Lisbon on Feb. 5, at a concert to celebrate her new record, "Uwa." LISBON At an intimate recent gig to celebrate the release of a new EP, the Angolan Portuguese pop star Pongo's karate style kicks punctured the air. She high kicks a lot. She can fire off dozens in a single song, followed by joyous twerks that send her sequined outfits sparkling. Pongo's songs are a punchy, self assured take on the musical style known as kuduro, blending frenetic African rhythms with blaring techno beats and rapping. And they are largely about overcoming the struggles she has endured as a young African woman trying to make it in Portugal's music scene. Pongo originally broke through in Portugal in 2008, when she was just 15, rapping on the track "Kalemba (Wegue Wegue)" with the dance music collective Buraka Som Sistema. The song has had more than 11 million views on YouTube. But then Pongo left the group and years of setbacks followed. She wasn't sure if she would get another shot. In an interview before the gig, Pongo, now 27, cited a famous church in Lisbon that took several centuries to complete, and with which she shares her real name, Engracia. (Her last name is Silva). "There is a saying," she said, laughing, "that when something is taking a long time, you say: 'It's like the Church of St. Engracia.' That's like my career." Her patience is now paying off. Pongo recently won the Music Moves Europe Talent Awards, a new prize for pop music in the European Union, which aims to celebrate "the European sound of today and tomorrow." Her profile is growing around the Continent, particularly in France, where she is about to go on a national tour, and in Britain, where she will appear at festivals this summer. Pongo's two most recent releases, including "Uwa," the EP that came out on Feb. 7, aim to do for kuduro what the Spanish pop star Rosalia has done for flamenco. Rosalia brought Spanish language songs to a wider audience and, likewise, Pongo eschews English and raps largely in Portuguese and in Kimbundu, a language spoken in Angola. Kuduro is an energetic trans Atlantic clash of genres including hip hop, house, zouk and soca and Pongo adds extra layers, blending them with current electronic styles and mixing in a contemporary pop flavor. Mario Lopes, a music journalist at Publico, a daily newspaper in Portugal, said in an email exchange that Pongo was "approaching kuduro as an omnivorous rhythm," which could explain why her music was connecting abroad. She was expanding the genre's "sonic palette," he added, by "incorporating other musical languages," like "electronic sounds, or some Latin flourishes." Pongo was eight when her family left Angola in the 1990s during a period of civil unrest there. In Portugal, her mother worked as a cleaner, her father in construction, and the family of five lived in a single room in a hostel for a year, she said. She shared a bed with her two sisters. When the family moved to a largely white area of northern Lisbon, they found integration difficult, Pongo said, adding that she experienced discrimination from her classmates in school. "It was difficult to have friends because they saw me as different, something strange," she said. At home, her strict father wouldn't allow Pongo and her sisters to have a social life, she said. Her life took an even darker turn when, at just 12, she threw herself out of a seventh story window. "It was a mixture of everything: the difficulty of integration, the lack of friends to talk to and the dictatorship imposed by my father," Pongo said. She escaped with only a broken leg, but the experience put her on a path toward music. To reach her physiotherapist across town, Pongo would get off at the train station in Queluz, a diverse neighborhood where many African immigrants lived. It was there that she saw the kuduro dance group Denon Squad performing on the street. When her injury healed, she began dancing with the group, then rapping. "It was through music that I realized that I wanted to live," she said. Her participation in Denon Squad led to her discovery by Buraka Som Sistema, and she performed with the group for two years. But things turned sour, and there was a dispute over royalties for "Wegue Wegue," Pongo said. "After 'Wegue's success, they were very hard on me," she said, adding, "I was so young that I couldn't really understand what happened." Joao Barbosa, a member of Buraka Som Sistema, said that Pongo had only ever been a guest vocalist, and that the group had decided to work with another singer, who was also a dancer. Pongo left and took menial jobs to support her sisters after her father walked out on the family, she said. Then, one day, she had an epiphany. "I was cleaning a house, and I heard 'Wegue Wegue' on the radio," she said. "At that moment, I felt it was time to fight" for her career.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Music
ROME One unseasonably warm recent October morning, a steady stream of Roman high school students clad in the uniform of teenagers around the world T shirts over leggings or jeans moseyed through the ground floor of the grand Palazzo della Civilta Italiana, the onetime monument to Mussolini's dreams and now the Fendi headquarters. They were there for an accelerated lesson in the newfangled employment potential of old fashioned craftsmanship. Moving from workstation to workstation, the teenagers watched as Fendi artisans painstakingly made leather bags, shoes, couture gowns, furs, furniture and watches. "If I made just one of those bags I'd be set for the year," one teenage boy with short cropped hair and trendy plucked eyebrows said. A youth crisis has been brewing in Italy for a while now. The unemployment rate for youth in Italy between 15 and 24 years old was just over 30 percent in August, according to the national statistics agency, Istat. Also in August, Eurostat, its European equivalent, noted that the portion of young people between 20 and 34 neither in education nor training (the so called NEETs) in 2017 was 29.5 percent in Italy (compared to 7.8 percent in Sweden). But it's not as though jobs don't exist. A report by Altagamma, the Italian luxury goods association, estimated that some 50,000 people working in the luxury goods industry in Italy are close to retirement and that it will be a struggle to find qualified personnel to fill those jobs. "Someone said to me, 'Everybody now in Italy, they all want to be a chef,'" because of the popularity of television programs like "MasterChef," said Serge Brunschwig, the chief executive of Fendi. That was frustrating until he realized: "O.K. We're not far from that." So while the rest of the visitors in the room might have seen the boy as a skate kid, Mr. Brunschwig looked at him and saw a potential future employee. Hence the initiative for Italian high schools hosted by Fendi as part of its Journees Particulieres, the event organized by LVMH Moet Hennessy Louis Vuitton (its parent company) to showcase the inner workings of its many brands, which took place last weekend in 76 sites on four continents. For Fendi, it wasn't just about letting people in, however: It was about convincing young people that they should think about job applications. And it's not entirely selfless. If Italy's luxury goods sector continues to prosper, there won't be enough highly skilled craftspeople to satisfy demand for their products. "It's a gap that is our responsibility to fill, and I feel it very strongly," Mr. Brunschwig said. "Sustainability of work is a first priority we all have." Craftspeople have become such a valued commodity that Mr. Brunschwig asked that none of the last names of those who were part of the Open Days program be used for fear that they would be poached by his competitors. "Voila: These are expert people, and I would prefer that they work for Fendi," said Mr. Brunschwig, who is French and came to Fendi in February from Dior Men's. Gaetana Gianotti, a teacher at the Livia Bottardi Technical Institute for Tourism, said her class was visiting Fendi as part of an alternate training program mandatory to all Italian high schools that aims to give students a taste of the workplace under many guises. The problem is that while the alternative training program has value as an educational tool, it can vary wildly in quality from Italian region to region, and doesn't come close to an apprenticeship. "I wanted to learn this craft because it's disappearing, unfortunately, and needs a generational turnover," said Caterina, who is looking forward to the day when she would be experienced enough to travel to fashion shows to see her creations on the runway. "Nothing is made by just one person. It's a team effort, passing through many hands." Next to her, another young artisan showed students how fur could be sewn together to create a multicolored intarsia effect. For the event, Fendi's fur atelier used discarded material from garments to create panels designed by eight Roman street artists in order to make the work seem more relevant to the young audience. Mr. Brunschwig said that if the work displayed captures the imagination of even a tiny percentage of the hundreds of student visitors to the Journees Particulieres, which lasts until Nov. 4 in Rome, then it will have been successful. "Maybe it will open for some a door that was not existing before," he said. Like Elisa Frascadore, 18, a tall, lanky, student from one of Rome's technical high schools. "I think I'd like to continue in this very beautiful dream," she said.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Fashion & Style
Luciana Achugar (through Dec. 19) Last year Ms. Achugar presented "Otro Teatro" at New York Live Arts, exploring what it would mean to "grow ourselves a new body." Since that ecstatic, anarchic ritual of a performance, she has continued the investigation of pleasure, desire and dance as an agent for change. The next and perhaps final phase is "An Epilogue for Otro Teatro: True Love," which takes over a studio at Gibney Dance's downtown location for three hours at a time. Thursdays through Saturdays at 7:30 p.m., Gibney Dance: Agnes Varis Performing Arts Center, 280 Broadway, near Chambers Street, Lower Manhattan, 646 837 6809, gibneydance.org. (Siobhan Burke) Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater (through Jan. 3) For a New York holiday tradition without the Sugar Plum Fairy, get thee to City Center for Ailey's monthlong winter season. After four years of shepherding the company into exciting artistic territory, the artistic director, Robert Battle, contributes a new work titled "Awakening" to the repertory. Also new this year are premieres from Rennie Harris, Ronald K. Brown and Kyle Abraham. A Paul Taylor work also joins the lineup, along with works by Talley Beatty, Hofesh Shechter and Christopher Wheeldon, among others. And, of course, "Revelations" will be on repeat. At various times, City Center, 131 West 55th Street, Manhattan, 212 581 1212, alvinailey.org. (Brian Schaefer) American Dance Machine for the 21st Century (Monday through Jan. 3) The original American Dance Machine ran from 1976 to 1987 with a mission to preserve, and pass on, great musical theater choreography. Rebooted in 2012 and returning to the Joyce for its second year, this iteration showcases more than a dozen classic Broadway dances grabbed from "A Chorus Line," "Pippin," "West Side Story" and more, reconstructed by veterans of the original shows and set on a fresh crop of current Broadway Gypsies. Monday at 7:30 p.m. (Dec. 21 only), Tuesdays at 7:30 p.m., Wednesdays at 3 p.m. and 7:30 p.m., Thursdays at 3 p.m., Saturdays at 2 p.m. and 8 p.m., Sundays at 2 p.m. and 7:30 p.m., Joyce Theater, 175 Eighth Avenue, at 19th Street, Chelsea, 212 242 0800, joyce.org. (Schaefer) Company XIV (through Jan. 17) If the traditional "Nutcracker" evokes the transition from childhood to adolescence, then Company XIV's "Nutcracker Rouge" might be the subsequent crossover into adulthood and the accompanying sexual awakening. The choreographer Austin McCormick combines a strong dose of burlesque, baroque and ballet with glittered pasties and G strings for a charmingly sensual and playful holiday romp. Tchaikovsky never sounded so scandalous. Tuesdays through Saturdays at 8 p.m., Sundays at 5 p.m., Minetta Lane Theater, 18 Minetta Lane, Greenwich Village, 800 745 3000, companyxiv.com. (Schaefer) Dancing Korea (Friday through Sunday) This showcase of artists and companies from Korea presents both traditional and contemporary dance of that country, selected and supported by a group of Korean cultural institutions. Each of the three programs offers a different configuration of artists, who include Goblin Party, Ju Bin Kim, Youn Puluem, Won Kim, Moonsuk Choi, Suksoon Jung, Moon Ei Lee and Eun Me Ahn. Friday and Saturday at 8 p.m., Sunday at 3 p.m., 92nd Street Y, 1395 Lexington Avenue, 212 415 5500, 92y.org. (Schaefer) East Village Dance Project (Through Sunday) The themes of escape and self discovery found just under the surface of "The Nutcracker" take fresh, poignant form in the East Village Dance Project's production of "The Shell Shocked Nut Project," which sets the action amid East Village landmarks and follows the journey of a war veteran. The cast of 50 is split between students and professionals, and Tchaikovsky's score shares airtime with Stevie Wonder, Duke Ellington and original music played live. Through Saturday at 8 p.m., Saturday and Sunday at 3 p.m., La MaMa, 66 East Fourth Street, East Village, 866 811 4111, lamama.org. (Schaefer) Gelsey Kirkland Ballet (through Dec. 20) It's worth seeing this company's "Nutcracker" not just for a well constructed production of the Christmas classic but also for a glimpse of the troupe's new Brooklyn home, at what used to be St. Ann's Warehouse. Founded in TriBeCa by Ms. Kirkland, a former American Ballet Theater principal, the company attracts promising young dancers from around the world, who will be joined by 70 students and alumni from the affiliated Gelsey Kirkland Academy of Classical Ballet. Thursdays and Fridays at 7:30 p.m., Saturdays at 2 and 7:30 p.m., Sundays at noon and 5 p.m., GK Arts Center, 29 Jay Street, near John Street, Dumbo, Brooklyn, 800 838 3006, gelseykirklandacademyofclassicalballet.org. (Burke) Maurice Hines 'Tappin' Thru Life' (Wednesday) The actor, choreographer and esteemed hoofer Maurice Hines has had an illustrious career spanning Broadway and Hollywood, with cameos from luminaries like Gypsy Rose Lee and Frank Sinatra. This bio revue recounts those adventures and pays tribute to his brother and showbiz partner, Gregory, who died in 2003. In a nod to that fraternal bond, Mr. Hines showcases the tapping Manzari Brothers, John and Leo, who gladly accept the torch. At 2 p.m., New World Stages, 340 West 50th Street, 212 239 6280, tappinthrulife.com. (Schaefer) Mark Morris Dance Group (Through Sunday) After a five year hiatus, Mark Morris's "The Hard Nut," a rollicking, cheeky take on "The Nutcracker," returns to Brooklyn. The narrative hews closely to E.T.A. Hoffmann's original story, but the show is a welcome departure from tradition and propriety. Mr. Morris plants his party in the suburbs of the 1970s and visits a world inspired by Charles Burns's noirish Pop Art. Mr. Morris's snowflakes blur gender lines while his characters crack open their inhibitions. It's wacky fun. Friday at 7:30 p.m., Saturday at 2 and 7:30 p.m., Sunday at 1 p.m., Howard Gilman Opera House, Brooklyn Academy of Music, 30 Lafayette Avenue, at Ashland Place, Fort Greene, 718 636 4100, bam.org. (Schaefer) New York City Ballet (through Jan. 3) Of the dozens of "Nutcracker" productions in town, none match the scale of City Ballet's "George Balanchine's The Nutcracker" or the giddy sense of childlike awe it inspires. Pantomime dominates the first half, but Act II culminates in a breathtaking pas de deux for the Sugar Plum Fairy and her Cavalier. After all, this is a duet for Balanchine and Tchaikovsky too, and it's magical. At various times, David H. Koch Theater, Lincoln Center, 212 496 0600, nycballet.org. (Schaefer) New York Theater Ballet (Sunday) Many generations recall cozying up to the television to watch "A Charlie Brown Christmas," a tradition that started in 1965 and offered a charming critique of the holiday's increasing commercialization. In this staged concert version of the classic Peanuts story, music is provided by the New York Pops; New York Theater Ballet provides the dance, choreographed by Liza Gennaro. At 3 p.m., Carnegie Hall, 881 Seventh Avenue, at 57th Street, 212 247 7800, carnegiehall.org. (Schaefer) Noche Flamenca (through Jan. 23) Traditional Spanish dance and ancient Greek theater are an unlikely but well suited pair in Noche Flamenca's sharp production "Antigona," based on Sophocles's famous tragedy. The dance lights a fire under the play while discovering in itself a knack for narrative drama. In the title role, the powerhouse Soledad Barrio is both fierce and fragile. The century old church where the performance takes place is filled with striking sets, darkly amorous music played by a live band and a ferocious Greek chorus of dancers. Mondays through Saturdays at 8 p.m., with an additional performance at 3 p.m. on Dec. 26 (no performances on Thursday and next Friday), West Park Presbyterian Church, 165 West 86th Street, Manhattan, 866 811 4111, nocheflamenca.com. (Schaefer) The Snow Maiden (Sunday) This colorful production geared toward children tells the tale of a poor girl whose good heart and deeds make her worthy of being transformed into the Snow Maiden by Grandfather Frost. Basically, it's "Nutcracker" holiday fun meets "Cinderella," in Russian. Traditional folk dances and songs (in Russian with English subtitles), along with bright costumes and fur lined hats, make for a merry afternoon. At 4 p.m., Brooklyn Center for the Performing Arts at Brooklyn College, Walt Whitman Theater, Campus Road and Hillel Place, Brooklyn, 718 951 4500, brooklyncenter.org. (Schaefer)	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Dance
Donald Judd's large, untitled installation piece in unfinished plywood at Gagosian Gallery is a plain spoken giant that, surprisingly, has quite a bit to say. In its complexity and openness, it seems like almost nothing else Judd (1928 1994) ever made, and it hasn't been seen in New York since 1981, when it debuted at the Castelli Gallery in SoHo a year after its completion. I remember being stupefied by it then. Reviewing it for the Village Voice, I called it a masterpiece almost in self defense. Seeing it again, before the coronavirus pandemic shut the gallery, I can say it's definitely a masterpiece, and also a pivot. It sums up both the wall and floor pieces from the first two decades of Judd's three dimensional work, while turning toward his more expansive later works. A prime example of these is the large multicolored piece that dominates the final gallery of "Judd," the superbly selected and installed retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art a show that I think would have pleased Judd, who was no friend of museums. The work at Gagosian is a big grid of 30 rectilinear volumes, each measuring 4 by 8 by 4 feet and arranged in three horizontal rows of 10; or, conversely, 10 vertical stacks of three. The whole thing is made of standard sheets of Douglas fir plywood 1 3/8 inches thick. Each unit is partitioned to some degree by an additional plane or by two parallel ones; all slant diagonally down and inward, but at different angles. Some connect to the back of the unit, others to the bottom, alternately suggesting slanted ceilings or eccentric garage doors. Stretching in total 80 feet across and 12 feet up the longest wall at Gagosian, the result is arguably the most communicative, extravagantly available work of Judd's career: a great flutter of planes, volumes and edges the cardinal components of Judd's language and shifts in light and shadow. The six images on the Gagosian site provide plenty to look at.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Art & Design
If you have lived in New York long enough, you have fantasized about what it would be like to leave it. Mr. Lipton's show suggests that trading one address for another doesn't mean that you leave your problems behind. You might even pick up a few new ones degreasing the turbines, say, or sorting out molecular diffusion. While the chorus of that first song is cheerful and twangy, the verses hint at darker matters: fights and doubts and encroaching depression, which Mr. Lipton, older and balder since his last show, calls "Space Sadness." The woman blooms in their galactic abode; the man withers. In 80 minutes, he explores whether to reconcile himself to life nearer the sun, yet farther from a decent bagel, or return alone to Earth. No one would mistake the teensy Joe's Pub stage for the vastness of the solar system. But Mr. Lipton and his band make nifty use of it, with the costume and set designer David Zinn's chubby rocket ship hovering as a visual anchor. Ms. Silverman favors a pace that's brisk yet unhurried, urging Mr. Lipton from one number to the next with the help of Ben Stanton's colorful lighting design, some hip swiveling dances and a couple of neat effects pedals. Mr. Lipton's coverall wearing persona, suave and geeky, is a lopsided take on the straight man. He toggles between firm assertion "In the old days, you could dance in a bar with your dog, that's an actual fact" and absurd musing, like "How do the space beavers feel about life in space?" (Actually, he should seriously consider a space beaver spinoff.) In numbers composed by the band that lean on jazz, soul, funk and pop, he turns his raspy tenor to clever rhymes and the occasional William Carlos Williams reference. Somewhere in there he gives some pretty good advice about love. Botulism, too. And yet "The Outer Space," for all its charm, could have gone irreparably wrong. Yes, Mr. Lipton looks dopily cute in those coveralls. Yes, his backing band Eben Levy, Ian M. Riggs, Vito Dieterle is artful and adept. Yes, he rhymes bingo with dingo. But do we really need another show in which a white guy vents his economic insecurity and foul mood? Turns out we do.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Theater
The day before the Rebecca Minkoff fashion show in September, the makeup artist Gato Zamora and the 17 year old YouTube blogger Amanda Steele sat side by side examining Mr. Zamora's work. He had transformed a model's fair with some redness complexion into glowing and even. The foundation was imperceptible. He applied a pinkish nude lipstick. Ms. Steele and Mr. Zamora leaned in, heads nearly touching. They agreed: A balm would be better. "Maybe she'll look more like a teenager," he said. Ms. Steele started her YouTube channel when she was 10. She has since amassed nearly three million subscribers and 2.7 million Instagram followers with a mix of engaging beauty tutorials and lifestyle updates. Her style is relaxed and genuine, and she is undeniably talented at connecting with an audience by doing her own makeup. "Maybelline asked if I'd be interested in working with them on some shows," she said. "It's exciting that they value my opinion." Mr. Zamora began his career in his early 20s, right around the time Ms. Steele was born. Maybelline thrust the two together to lead the makeup team for Rebecca Minkoff. The pairing was a first. Makeup at fashion shows is always a team sport, but never one with two head coaches. The Maybelline experiment comes at a time of tension in the makeup business. Some professionals who have followed a traditional path of assisting senior artists and building their portfolios over years, sometimes decades, are bristling at bloggers, YouTube stars and Instagram gurus who have unconventional and more visible roads to success. But this shake up in makeup goes beyond issues of taste and tenure. It's about an industry being forced by technology to mature, one that is experiencing the frustration, fear and introspection characteristic of a major transition. The first area of criticism is the prevalence of "Instagram makeup." The aesthetic is familiar: eyebrows constructed by powder, pencil and concealer; faces heavily contoured and highlighted. Social media makeup enthusiasts become facsimiles of one another all some version of Kim Kardashian West. Social media "absolutely perpetuates one aesthetic," said Kevin James Bennett, a longtime makeup artist and advocate for his professional peers. "It's like looking at a bunch of clones. They're Botoxed, filled and surgeried to look like Kim. I love how they all say, 'Just be you,' when they all look the same. And they have legions of fans who follow them like Stepford wives but who cannot afford to alter themselves the way these people do." Certainly there are talented self taught artists on social media. And trends change. Ms. Kardashian West has moved toward a more natural makeup look. Nonetheless, "Instagram face" is representative of a bigger creative threat: waning individuality. "It's so rare in fashion today that people are eccentric," said the makeup artist Nick Barose, whose social media feeds are a mix of posts showing his work on celebrity clients (Lupita Nyong'o, Alicia Vikander, Jane Fonda) and tongue in cheek commentary on the industry. His outspoken online persona works; it's helped him get big jobs. But, he added, "Social media can kill authenticity, especially the more followers you have." Nika Kislak, a professional makeup artist based in Moscow, is known for work that is both imaginative and elegant. She was the chief makeup artist for L'Oreal Paris, Russia for three years but came to international attention last spring when her work was reposted on Instagram by Pat McGrath, the doyenne of runway makeup artists. Her career marries old and new traditions. "Instagram provides the opportunity to make your dreams come true faster and make money faster," Ms. Kislak said. "I dreamt of this kind of freedom as a child. But as we know, freedom is not free." She was referring to the toll that social media can take on creativity. "It was much easier for me as a beginning makeup artist 14 years ago, without Instagram, because no one influenced my sense of beauty," she said. In September, an E! News story deepened the fissure between the old and new schools when it reported that in the new world of celebrity hair and makeup, success is measured in selfies. The article placed tangible value on behind the scenes snaps that makeup artists take with their clients, alleging that some artists are accepting social media posts from models and actresses (either with the artist or tagging the artist) as payment for their glam squad services. "You have these new Insta artists who are being picked up by publicists and agencies to work on their celebrities," Mr. Bennett said. "So now that other artist who would have charged a fee for that job, his agent isn't getting called. Some makeup artists have also lowered their rates to contend with the change in demand." Patrick Ta, an artist in Los Angeles with over 570,000 Instagram followers, has been doing makeup for three years and works with models and actresses, including Gigi Hadid, Olivia Munn and Joan Smalls. He was called out by other makeup artists in the E! News story as being a selfies for pay artist. "It's definitely not true," he said. "When I first moved to L.A., I would do makeup on my friends who were bigger on Instagram. If they wanted their makeup done, I would do it. That was my way of creating photos for my digital portfolio. What's the difference between that and an older artist doing test shoots for free for their portfolio?" Another area of complaint is the lack of transparency in paid social media posts. YouTube and Instagram influencers bloggers who are typically not professional artists may share paid posts with their audiences with little or no notice that the content is sponsored. "It has to be clear to the reasonable consumer that the content they're viewing is an advertisement," said Bonnie Patten, executive director of Truth in Advertising, a nonprofit consumer advocacy group. "It's not enough to hide that info in the fine print." In August, the organization filed a complaint with the Kardashian Jenners for social media ads that looked like testimonials. Beauty brands may soon look to a different type of influencer, one with a smaller, more dedicated following. "My team is paying attention to those people who have 10 to 100,000 followers," said Robert DeBaker, the chief executive of Becca Cosmetics. "I'm interested in this person who has a point of view, and that's probably not a point of view she's being paid to have." This year, the beauty video blogger Jaclyn Hill developed a wildly successful 11 piece Becca x Jaclyn Hill Champagne Collection with Becca Cosmetics. A shimmering powder highlighter sold a million units in one year for the niche brand, according to Mr. DeBaker, and became the best selling highlighter in the country. (A few weeks ago, Estee Lauder signed an agreement to acquire the company.) "How I see this rolling is that the brands that will be successful and the influencers who will be successful are those who keep the idea of authenticity," Mr. DeBaker said. "That will be defined by being very transparent." Explicit partnerships, like Maybelline's fashion week collaboration with Amanda Steele, may be the future. Backstage at the Rebecca Minkoff show, Ms. Steele was pressed by reporters. She discussed how the smoky shadow liner look is perfect for her YouTube audience. In its undone sexiness, the makeup embodied the young girl on the go. "I find it extremely normal that these worlds would be brought together," Mr. Zamora said of the collaboration. "Makeup has never been so famous as it is now, and it's because of these boys and girls, blogging in their houses. People love this, and the business has reacted." "Sometimes," he added, "we think that just because you are not famous with social media, you aren't succeeding. But this is just one tool. On social media you build your followers, but to build a career you must work."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Fashion & Style
A compilation of Brian Williams's television appearances shows how his accounts of a 2003 episode on military helicopters in Iraq gradually became more perilous. In the earliest days of the Iraq war, in March 2003, two convoys of helicopters left a base in Kuwait, flying toward Najaf and the front line. One convoy was hit by enemy fire, and the other was not, according to four people present that day. What happened to those helicopters has since become a matter of dispute. Brian Williams, the NBC News anchor, was embedded on one of those missions. In an initial report, broadcast in 2003, NBC's Tom Brokaw described "a close call in the skies over Iraq." Mr. Williams said, "The Chinook ahead of us was almost blown out of the sky." In the years since, Mr. Williams adapted the story to say that he was actually on a helicopter that crash landed after taking enemy fire. He apologized for the mistake on Wednesday, but since then, as the controversy over Mr. Williams escalated, conflicting accounts have emerged of what actually happened. On Friday, NBC News said it would begin an internal investigation that would review the Iraq episode and other reporting by Mr. Williams. The following account is based on interviews with four soldiers: Christopher Simeone and Allan Kelly, who say they flew Mr. Williams, and Jerry Pearman and Joe Summerlin, who were part of the mission that was shot down. (Mr. Pearman and Mr. Summerlin also gave an account at the time of the episode in 2003 to the military newspaper, Stars and Stripes.) Joe Summerlin was on the helicopter that was forced down. Steve Hebert for The New York Times Three Chinook helicopters of the 11th Aviation Task Force left the base first, the four men said. They were carrying heavy loads of Apache helicopter parts, slung beneath them. They were flying 50 to 100 feet above the desert at more than 100 knots. Mr. Summerlin was on Aircraft 099, the second helicopter in the group. Below him, he saw five or six Iraqi men leap out of a truck, wielding weapons. Bullets began flying. They sounded, Mr. Summerlin said, like hammers hitting the helicopter. Most of the bullets and a rocket propelled grenade, or R.P.G., hit the boxes of parts they were carrying. This almost certainly saved their lives, Mr. Summerlin and Mr. Pearman said, along with heroic piloting. Another R.P.G. also passed cleanly through the helicopter's tail rotor without destroying it. Mr. Williams had film of that hole in his 2003 story. One of the bullets that hit the helicopter struck its electrical panel. That and other damage caused the helicopter to rear up and down, its warning lights flashing. It landed and skidded to a halt near a desert airstrip, just feet from a sand berm that happened to have other American troops nearby. The other two aircraft in the convoy flew away to safety. Back at the air base, Mr. Simeone, part of a different division, was told that, in addition to carrying parts for a bridge to an area of desert known as Objective Rams on a separate mission, he would be carrying Mr. Williams, Gen. Wayne A. Downing and two or three of their staff members. Another pilot, Rich Krell, Mr. Simeone and Mr. Kelly said, flew the other helicopter in their group. Mr. Krell told CNN on Wednesday that his helicopter had been fired on, too. But on Thursday, he recanted his story and said he was "questioning his memories." Elizabeth Holmes Hones Her Defense in Day 2 of Testimony Kevin Spacey was ordered to pay 31 million to the 'House of Cards' studio after sexual harassment allegations. Mr. Simeone, along with Mr. Kelly and another pilot, said that they completed their mission safely but that a dust storm forced them to land. They saw Mr. Summerlin's helicopter, surrounded by other soldiers, and decided that would be a good place to set down. As Mr. Summerlin recalls it, Mr. Williams's helicopter landed at least 30 minutes or as much as an hour after their crash. Mr. Williams disembarked. He asked some questions, Mr. Summerlin recalls, took some video, and then left them without waiting to do an interview. Mr. Summerlin and Mr. Pearman said they thought Mr. Williams's initial 2003 report was disingenuous. He conflated his mission with theirs, they said, and implied but never said that their helicopters were close to his. Mr. Summerlin's wife, watching in Germany, did not see her husband in the NBC report, he said, and worried that perhaps her husband, who slept in the desert for days after the episode, was actually missing in action. "She was pretty upset," he said. In 2003, Mr. Pearman said, soldiers could not send instant messages to their families. Communication was much more sporadic. "So when you start stories that are really untrue, you start muddying the water," he said. "It's not only a large problem because of the stories themselves, it's hard for the families." Mr. Pearman said that in another apology that Mr. Williams published on Facebook, the news anchor still seemed to suggest that his helicopter had been close to the ones that came under fire, stating that he "was indeed on the Chinook behind the bird that took the R.P.G. in the tail housing." He was "still squirming around what actually happened," Mr. Pearman said. "It wasn't all that truthful." For Mr. Summerlin, the reporting by Mr. Williams remains hurtful. "For him to diminish what we felt, what for me was a big experience," Mr. Summerlin said, "is a slap in the face to all of the soldiers who were there."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Media
When President Trump calls Senator Kamala Harris a "monster," it is nothing less than naked racism and misogyny for which he owes her, along with every woman and every Black citizen in America, an immediate and sincere apology. As her pastor, I am both disturbed and alarmed at this outburst. It puts a lie not only to the president's pretense of Christianity, but also to any claim he makes about condemning white supremacists or the violent right wing extremists who support him. What is monstrous is that the man in the Oval Office dispensed long ago with even the pretense of civility in public discourse. He has trampled even the most extreme boundaries of robust political discourse, finally dropping his dog whistle to pick up a bullhorn he uses every day to incite those extremists. Vice President Mike Pence, by his failure to condemn the president, is complicit by his silence. We've seen the ugly, dangerous results. In Portland and elsewhere, heavily armed racists incite violence and even commit murder. We've learned of a plot by some of those armed extremists to kidnap Gov. Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan, whom the president has dismissed as "that woman from Michigan."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Opinion
That era's cultural geometry has been badly in need of study, and now it's getting some in a labor of love exhibition called "Inventing Downtown: Artist Run Galleries in New York City, 1952 1965," at the Grey Art Gallery at New York University. With nearly 230 objects, it's big and has its share of stars. But it's not a masterpiece display. It's something almost better: a view of typical rather than outstanding art, of familiar artists looking unfamiliar, and of strangers you're glad to meet. It looks the way history looks before the various MoMAs get their sanitizing hands on it: funky, diverse, down to earth, with things to teach us now. Not everyone was thrilled. Not all artists were. Some itched to have success as part of the trend but couldn't quite figure out how. Others were tired of abstraction; they wanted to paint people and nature, tell stories, or try out crazy new forms that merged art and theater. For still others, politics, and art's expression of it, was of primary concern. The only guaranteed way these artists could achieve their goals was by opening galleries of their own, and they did. The earliest of these 1950s artist run galleries were downtown, on or around 10th Street, east of Fourth Avenue, where rents were cheap. The Grey show, organized by Melissa Rachleff, a clinical associate professor at the New York University Steinhardt School of Art, features 14 such spaces, a few of which lasted for years, others for just a few months. As is true throughout the show, there are memorable discoveries here. One is a sculpture: a splendid wood figure carving by Mary Frank, suggesting the form of a dancer, which Ms. Frank was. The other find is Jean Follett, whose ghostly assemblage painting, "3 Black Bottles," is in a world of its own. Tanager's gestural painters would have fit right in at uptown galleries, and aspired to. But in the 1950s, Ms. Follett, who after early success left New York, was still looking for a receptive place to land. She found one in 1952 at Hansa Gallery. It was named for Hans Hofmann, a revered teacher who, although himself an abstract painter, encouraged his students to experiment in other styles and media. So did the gallery's young director, Richard Bellamy, who would later champion Pop and Minimalism. Their venturesome tastes may account for the variety of work in this section of the show, from Jane Wilson's vivid portrait painting of a fellow artist, Jane Freilicher, to a photograph of an early environment by Allan Kaprow, who paved the way for Conceptualism. The third co op, the Brata Gallery, brought some racial and ethnic diversity into the 10th Street picture. Ed Clark, fresh from Paris, was one of the very few African American artists exhibiting in New York. And he holds the banner of abstraction high here with a picture that's basically a giant swoosh of pink. (He has a solo show at Tilton Gallery on the Upper East Side through Feb. 18.) Brata also exhibited the Japanese born Nanae Momiyama two of her tiny ink paintings are here and mounted one of the most successful downtown shows of the day in the American solo debut of Yayoi Kusama, whose hypnotic and enveloping paintings caused a sensation. Reuben Gallery acted a bit like a co op it had a steady schedule of shows but its thinking was loose enough to accommodate Mr. Kaprow's audience participation happenings, and the street junk pageants of Red Grooms. In 1958 Mr. Grooms opened a space of his own, called City Gallery, in his West 24th Street studio. It lasted barely six months but presented a much talked about group drawing show. Ms. Rachleff has tracked down more than 20 of the original 45 works, among them a luminous Emily Mason pastel and two fantastical street scenes by Mimi Gross (who would later marry Mr. Grooms). The gifted painter Bob Thompson, dead from drugs at 29, showed here. So did the undersung Robert Beauchamp, and the poet and scholar of African art George Nelson Preston, who has a retrospective at Kenkeleba House in the East Village through Monday. That project ended when Mr. Grooms had to move, and he started another, the Delancey Street Museum, in a deserted boxing gym on the Lower East Side. There he realized some of his own most ambitious theater pieces, and also presented a solo by the painter Marcia Marcus, now obscure, who has a way ahead of its time self portrait at the Grey. Similarly, Judson Gallery, in a basement near Washington Square, is remembered chiefly for Claes Oldenburg's early, hair raising performances, but was just as important for introducing painters like Marcus Ratliff and the outstandingly interesting where can we see more of her? Martha Edelheit. It was those spaces, where downtown existed as a state of mind as much as a place, that held my attention longest. This was partly because some were new to me, but also because their thinking seemed vital in a way that Green Gallery's did not. March Gallery, on 10th Street, was an example. Run by Boris Lurie, a Holocaust survivor, with his fellow artist Sam Goodman and a poet, Stanley Fisher, it approached art not as an ornament but as an ethical argument, a response to racism and greed. Wordy and space hogging, their paintings seemed pitched to outshout and outbully consumer culture. Their populist approach inspired the artist Aldo Tambellini to locate his alternative space, the Center, in the East Village streets, where people would participate in, and contribute to, his art, whether they meant to or not. The same crowdsourced ideal led the artist Phyllis Yampolsky, in 1961, to establish the Hall of Issues, a space at Judson Church where anyone, from community activists to neighborhood kids, could post bulletin board style comments on matters that concerned them. The space, in place for two years, was a prototype for the "subway therapy" installation of thousands of handwritten sticky notes that covered a wall of the Union Square Station after the 2016 presidential election. And there's the Spiral Group, which originated just before the 1963 March on Washington, when several African American artists among them Emma Amos, Romare Bearden and Norman Lewis, as well as Hale Woodruff, who taught at New York University gathered in Greenwich Village to debate the question of whether and how to insert the politics of race into their work. Did doing so misuse art? Did it diminish politics? Was it self aggrandizing? Self isolating? Did it do any good? These questions are all pertinent to artists now, including those who may be considering adding their names to next week's art strike. The Spiral Group concluded that there was too much at stake for them not to take a stand as artists: Do it, and see what unfolds. So they changed their art and put together a political show. Their example still holds.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Art & Design
Shane Bieber still keeps a screenshot in his cellphone of a text message exchange he had earlier this year with Trevor Bauer, a former teammate in Cleveland whose locker was next to his. Although the Indians traded Bauer to the Cincinnati Reds midway through the 2019 season, the two starting pitchers still stay in frequent touch. And before the 2020 season began, they had similar betting odds to win the Cy Young Awards in their leagues. "That's not something I pay too much attention to," said Bieber, who is more reserved than the brash Bauer. "But he kind of does and he texted it to me, and it goes back to this friendly competition that we have with each other. All I replied back was like, 'Hey, why not go to 2 for 2?' And he said, 'Sounds like a deal.'" Their wish came true on Wednesday: Bieber was named the unanimous winner of the American League Cy Young Award for the truncated 2020 Major League Baseball season, while Bauer claimed the National League Cy Young Award. They are the first pitchers to earn the awards in the same year after being teammates in the prior season, according to the Elias Sports Bureau. "We talked a little bit throughout the year about how cool it would be to have ex teammates win the award together, and here we are," Bauer said on a conference call with reporters. Added Bieber: "It means the world." For Bieber, the award capped a rapid ascent to the top of his sport after not being considered good enough to earn a scholarship at the University of California, Santa Barbara in 2014. He instead earned a spot as a walk on. His fastball sat in the mid 80s. He had strong command, but didn't strike out many hitters. Six years later, Bieber was by far the best pitcher in baseball during the 60 game regular season. He either led or tied for the major league lead in many statistical categories, such as earned run average (1.63), wins (eight), strikeouts (122) and wins above replacement (3.3). Not far behind on many of those lists was Bauer. Now documenting his free agency on social media, Bauer went 5 4 with a 1.73 E.R.A. and 100 strikeouts and earned 27 of the 30 possible first place votes from the Baseball Writers' Association of America. He is the first Reds pitcher to win the award. 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. "For a franchise has been around for as long as the Reds have, with all the amazing talent that has gone through and all the great teams in Reds history, to not have a Cy Young Award winner in the past, it was high time that changed," Bauer said. The three other first place votes in the N.L. went to Yu Darvish of the Chicago Cubs, who finished second. Jacob deGrom, the Mets' ace who won the award in 2018 and 2019, finished third. Bieber, the A.L.'s first unanimous winner since Justin Verlander in 2011, bested Minnesota's Kenta Maeda and Toronto's Hyun jin Ryu, two former Los Angeles Dodgers in their first year with new teams. The victories by Bauer and Bieber, both right handers and first time winners, underscored the work of the smaller market Indians' envied pitching development factory. During the 2018 and 2019 seasons, Cleveland counted Bauer, Bieber and the two time A.L. Cy Young Award winner Corey Kluber plus standouts like Mike Clevinger and Carlos Carrasco among its starters. The Indians traded away Bauer, Clevinger and Kluber in a span of 13 months, and still reached the playoffs this year. Bieber, who eventually earned a scholarship and starred for his college team, was selected by Cleveland in the fourth round of the 2016 draft. Unlike Bauer, 29, who has thrown hard since high school, Bieber, 25, added velocity over time. In the Indians' farm system, Bieber tweaked his repertoire and blossomed. In 2020, he threw his mid 90s fastball only 38 percent of the time, one of the lowest rates in the major leagues among starting pitchers, because he expertly mixed it with sliders, cutters, curveballs and changeups. "His journey has been quite spectacular," Bauer said. Bieber's biggest blemish of the year: He allowed seven runs in his lone playoff start, a loss to the Yankees in the first round of this year's expanded postseason. The vote for the Cy Young Award, though, is taken before the playoffs. (The New York Times does not permit its reporters to vote for awards.) Following a trend across baseball over recent years, Bieber set a major league record last season by striking out 14.2 batters per nine innings. He did that, however, over only 77 1/3 innings. The previous record holder was Gerrit Cole, now with the Yankees, whose strikeout rate of 13.8 per nine innings was accomplished over 212 1/3 innings in 2019 with the Houston Astros. Continuing a steady upward trend, Bauer finished third in strikeout rate (a career high 12.3 per nine innings) in 2020 behind Bieber and deGrom. Bauer said he used to tease Bieber a lot for being the only member 2018 Indians' rotation who failed to notch 200 strikeouts.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Sports
"I'm dressed for a construction site, so pardon my casual presentation," David Barton said one recent Friday afternoon in Hell's Kitchen. But his appearance was classic Barton: ripped jeans, mesh hoodie that exposed his "George of the Jungle" pecs, camouflage robe, hair spiking every which way. As he spoke, the sinews of his neck occasionally twitched, making his squarish frame seem like a TNT box about to detonate. At 51, the man who built a sweaty, sexy gym empire stands as a 5 foot 5 testament to body worship as urban religion. So it's no surprise that his new gym, TMPL, has a name that evokes a pagan ritual crossed with an iPhone app. (His 21 year old son, Bailey, came up with the name Temple, but "I decided to lose the vowels to make it more modern," he said. ) Set to open March 23 on West 49th Street, the fitness center is his first since leaving his namesake company under a financial cloud. "I like that my name's not on the door," he said. But there wasn't much of a choice. When Mr. Barton left David Barton Gym in 2013, he forfeited the rights to his name after spending two decades making it synonymous with a gym as nightclub aesthetic. As beefy impresario, Mr. Barton was often said to be a better mascot than manager. In early 2011, saddled with more than 65 million in debt, the company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, even as three locations were being built. Both he and the company say the breakup was mutual. "I'd been there 20 years," Mr. Barton said. "It was time. I didn't enjoy being the corporate C.E.O." His resurgence, which comes, fittingly, on the heels of Rocky Balboa's, is as attuned to the moment as his Chelsea and Astor Place locations were to the downtown party scene they mirrored. The largely gay crowd that flocked to David Barton Gym has migrated to Hell's Kitchen. TMPL is also being billed as a "smart gym": high tech and customizable, like a self parking car (or a hookup app like Grindr). Publicity materials even borrow the jargon of Silicon Valley, touting Mr. Barton as a "disrupter and visionary within the gym industry." Capitalizing on the rise of celebrity trainers and personalized medicine, Mr. Barton worked with the clinical pharmacist and author James LaValle to develop a metabolic assessment for incoming gym members so that all will get individually tailored workout and nutritional plans. "Everything in our lives is getting smart except the gym," he said. "My phone knows when I'm hungry and it calls my mother." Mr. Barton, who studied nutrition and psychology at Cornell, is accustomed to combining brains and brawn. "For all his downtown high jinks, David is quite serious in many ways," said William Sofield of the design firm Studio Sofield, which worked on TMPL and several David Barton Gym sites. "David at heart is very much an intellectual bordering on almost a nerd. He could have easily been cast on 'The Big Bang Theory.'" TMPL occupies a beige and salmon brick building at One Worldwide Plaza that formerly housed a Bally Sports Club just the sort of fluorescent lit fitness chain that Mr. Barton made a career of disrupting. Amid the roar of electric saws, he led a brief tour of the 40,000 square foot space, describing the constructivist decor to come: concrete walls swathed in cashmere curtains, black mirror columns and Eileen Gray Bibendum chairs, all in muted and muddy tones, "like those colors that don't really have a name." He descended a staircase into a tall atrium, which will be glammed up with programmable lighting. "This is your first sort of money shot," he said. "A lot of gyms do lighting and it's like when you open up the refrigerator in the middle of the night." He pointed out a future cardio room, a squat rack room ("a lot of women now are squatting because of, like, social media") and a spinning room that will immerse patrons in an IMAX like virtual landscape. And then there are the sexier elements: an 82 foot saltwater pool and locker rooms that Mr. Barton promised would get "darker, with more dramatic lighting." But he played down his reputation for creating gyms that resemble nightclubs. "David Barton Gym was me at 27," he said, "and this is me at 51." Part of Mr. Barton's post 50 life is his return to semi singlehood. For years, he and Susanne Bartsch, the Swiss party hostess, represented one of New York's most outre power couples. With her outrageous wigs and his outrageous biceps, they were like a punked out Boris and Natasha. Known for her Dionysian blowouts at the Copacabana in the 1980s, Ms. Bartsch took time off to raise Bailey before resuming her role as a bedazzled queen of the night.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Fashion & Style
"The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant," the 1972 film by the German writer director Rainer Werner Fassbinder, runs for two hours. "Petra," a new performance piece by the American director choreographer Dean Moss, lasts only 75 minutes. To have preserved the film's melodramatic plot and much of its campy dialogue while shaving off 45 minutes is a kind of accomplishment. Yet in almost every other way, Mr. Moss's work which had its premiere on Tuesday at Performance Space New York (formerly Performance Space 122) as part of the 2018 Coil festival is a diminishment. "Petra," to be clear, isn't just a stage adaptation of the Fassbinder film. Like his onetime boss David Gordon, Mr. Moss makes theater from a choreographer's perspective, often mixing fiction with real life. But "Petra," closer to a play than to a conventional dance piece, does borrow a great deal from the Fassbinder movie. In both, the center of attention is Petra von Kant, an imperious diva who bosses around her mute assistant, Marlene. And in both, Petra falls in love with a younger woman, Karin, and falls apart when Karin leaves. Mr. Moss has made some changes. The setting now seems to be Africa, rather than Germany. Petra, instead of being a fashion designer, is a performance or video artist. The script has been altered, here and there, to update it or, most often, to allude to Mr. Moss. As in the film, the cast is small and all female. But here it is more diverse. The Rwandan actress Kaneza Schaal plays Petra, and Samita Sinha, a vocalist and composer of Indian descent, plays Karin. The three other performers each portray a character (Petra's daughter, Petra's friend, Petra's mother), but also take turns as the abused, passive Marlene, sometimes embodying her collectively. These three wear overalls labeled "staff," and the work's principal choreography consists in how they move the minimal set pieces: foam board cutouts, a plush, pink rug. The outfits flag a possible analogy: Is the sadomasochistic Petra Marlene relationship somehow akin to the one between a director and his cast? The idea is present, less obviously, in the Fassbinder film. Late in "Petra," the performer Paz Tanjuaquio brings it up explicitly. In previous scenes, cast members speak as "themselves," giving brief monologues about their love for their husbands or for dance, but Ms. Tanjuaquio resists telling her story. Would such a confession, she asks, be for her or for the audience or just for Mr. Moss to use? The Petra Moss parallel, however, lacks conviction, and the true crux is Mr. Moss's use of the Fassbinder film. Were "Petra" merely a stage adaptation, it would be a terribly flat one. Ms. Schaal's performance is single note and static, and no one else even tries to act. None of the film's sexual tension is preserved, none of the pathos beneath the histrionics that makes it at once hilarious and haunting. Perhaps Mr. Moss was after something else. In place of the film's stunning ending, he has Ms. Sinha (who also sings several times) lead members of the audience in a group recitation of bureaucratic suggestions for increasing audience diversity. The joke is arch and accurate, but like the rest of the piece's commentary on race, it's inert. As tiresome as it may be to list all the ways in which Mr. Moss's work falls short of its model, one more stands out as emblematic: In the film's breakdown scene, Petra smashes glass and stomps on a porcelain tea set, making an awful crunch. In Mr. Moss's version, she steps on foam board, and it squeaks.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Dance
Johannes Martin Kranzle (on floor) and Nina Stemme (with sword) in the New York Philharmonic's staging of Bartok's "Bluebeard's Castle." Though the Metropolitan Opera opened its season this week, Jaap van Zweden and the New York Philharmonic were not about to cede the field of music drama entirely to their Lincoln Center neighbor. On Thursday, for the second program of his second season as music director, Mr. van Zweden led the Philharmonic in semi staged performances of two shattering early 20th century works: Schoenberg's "Erwartung," and Bartok's "Bluebeard's Castle." Every aspect of the program was impressive, starting with the inspired idea to pair these pieces, and to play the seldom heard Schoenberg at all. Mr. van Zweden drew taut, lucid, richly expressive playing from the Philharmonic in both scores. The three singers, especially the blazing soprano Nina Stemme in the Bartok, gave arresting performances. The staging by the director Bengt Gomer demonstrated how to make maximally dramatic use of minimal space. The monodrama "Erwartung" ("Expectation"), which Schonberg wrote over 17 days of feverish work in 1909, has been called the first Freudian music drama. The text, written by Marie Pappenheim, a poet and doctor who was fascinated by Freud's studies, is the stream of consciousness words of a distraught woman, who, jilted by her lover, enters a forest in search of him. Or so it seems. In later years, Schoenberg wrote that his aim was "to represent in slow motion everything that occurs during a single second of maximum spiritual excitement" a single second stretched over half an hour of music. The score was Schoenberg's boldest push to date into atonality, though he never embraced that term. But the unmoored quality of the harmonic language grippingly matches the expressionist, fraught emotions of the drama, as this tormented, nameless woman, here performed by the formidable mezzo soprano Katarina Karneus, gives voice to her wandering thoughts. Before "Erwartung" began, the audience saw what looked like an autopsy taking place on a raised platform behind the orchestra: Three surgeons in white coats lifted a sheet to examine a body. Also present were three men in tuxedos. Behind them, a video showed what looked like the endless corridor of a hospital, with greenish walls, no place to sit, and scattered chrome medical equipment. This all certainly suggested the "silvery cedars" and confusing pathway that the lost woman describes in the text. She comes across what she fears is a body, though it turns out to be just a tree trunk. She thinks she sees a distant house, but doesn't move toward it. Finally, she stumbles upon something. Another tree trunk? No, it's "his" body, she sings. Is it? And how did he die? In this staging, the body on the table is revealed to be a dead deer. (Talk about a Freudian image.) The vocal part shifts constantly, along with the teeming orchestral music. Ms. Karneus, singing both with aching lyricism and silvery edged intensity, gave a riveting performance. Mr. van Zweden made every moment of Schoenberg's restless, multi stranded music sound, in an eerily shimmering way, beautiful. "Bluebeard's Castle" Bartok's only opera, composed over several years and first performed in 1918 is based on a Charles Perrault fairy tale. It tells the story of a brooding, secretive duke, Bluebeard, who brings his new wife, Judith, to his windowless, dank castle. There she sees a row of seven locked doors. Judith (who seems to have a savior complex) is convinced she can bring light to her husband's life and open up his home. With ill fated curiosity, she demands that he give her the keys to open the doors. In an opera house, "Bluebeard's Castle" is an invitation for a director to think big, as Mariusz Trelinski did in his 2015 Met production. Mr. Gomer used the constricted space at David Geffen Hall to create a simple, haunting staging. Behind the two singers, a video showed images of a murky tunnel, with industrial cables lining the endless walls. It allowed Ms. Stemme and the baritone Johannes Martin Kranzle to dominate the drama. Mr. van Zweden conveyed the charged emotions and volatility of Bartok's vibrantly orchestrated score while keeping textures transparent and never swamping the singers. Bluebeard is usually portrayed as stiff, depressed and dangerous. But with his mellow voice and wiry physique, Mr. Kranzle also had a slightly dashing quality. He even egged his young wife into a moment of dancing. You understood better why Judith was drawn to him. Ms. Stemme was stunning, singing with winsome beauty one moment, and flinty power the next. Here was a young wife convinced, foolishly, that her love could redeem a brooding, powerful man. The doors, suggested by seven silent women in light violet dresses, open to reveal a series of rooms: a torture chamber, an armory, a treasury with gold coins and jewels, a garden, the vista of the duke's domain, a sea of tears. But everything, even the flowers, is stained with blood, Judith keeps remarking. The final door reveals the truth: It is the room where Bluebeard keeps his three previous wives. Judith will now join them. Officials from the Philharmonic say they are close to finalizing plans for the renovation of Geffen Hall. The new space should be even more conducive to stagings like this one. The double bill continues through Saturday at David Geffen Hall, Lincoln Center; 212 875 5656, nyphil.org.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Music
At the beginning of "Scoob!," the latest Scooby Doo reboot, directed by Tony Cervone, Velma (voiced by Gina Rodriguez) announces that it's time for the gang "to take on bigger cases, scarier villains and creepier mysteries." It sounds less like an opportunity than a threat. Anyone who complained that the show's durable let's find out who you really are mystery formula showed signs of repetition now gets what passes in corporate boardrooms for an original take: a frantic overhaul teeming with robots that sound like R2 D2, as well as other pop culture shout outs maladroitly designed to bring Scooby up to date. (Does a Simon Cowell cameo count?) Warner Bros. even plugs a forthcoming sequel: For Halloween, Daphne wears a Wonder Woman costume.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Movies
'ARTISTIC LICENSE: SIX TAKES ON THE GUGGENHEIM COLLECTION' at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum (through Jan. 12). Displays that artists select from a museum's collection are almost inevitably interesting, revealing and valuable. After all, artists can be especially discerning regarding work not their own. Here, six artists Cai Guo Qiang, Paul Chan, Richard Prince, Julie Mehretu, Carrie Mae Weems and Jenny Holzer guided by specific themes, have chosen, which multiplies the impact accordingly. With one per ramp, each selection turns the museum inside out. The combination sustains multiple visits; the concept should be applied regularly. (Roberta Smith) 212 423 3840, guggenheim.org 'AUSCHWITZ. NOT LONG AGO. NOT FAR AWAY' at the Museum of Jewish Heritage (through Jan. 3). Killing as a communal business, made widely lucrative by the Third Reich, permeates this traveling exhibition about the largest German death camp, Auschwitz, whose yawning gatehouse, with its converging rail tracks, has become emblematic of the Holocaust. Well timed, during a worldwide surge of anti Semitism, the harrowing installation strives, successfully, for fresh relevance. The exhibition illuminates the topography of evil, the deliberate designing of a hell on earth by fanatical racists and compliant architects and provisioners, while also highlighting the strenuous struggle for survival in a place where, as Primo Levi learned, "there is no why." (Ralph Blumenthal) 646 437 4202, mjhnyc.org 'PIERRE CARDIN: FUTURE FASHION' at the Brooklyn Museum (through Jan. 5). He was never a great artist like Dior, Balenciaga or Saint Laurent, but Pierre Cardin still at work at 97 pioneered today's approach to the business of fashion: take a loss on haute couture, then make the real money through ready to wear and worldwide licensing deals. He excelled at bold, futuristic day wear: belted unisex jumpsuits, vinyl miniskirts, dresses accessorized with astronaut chic Plexiglas helmets. Other ensembles, especially the tacky evening gowns souped up with metal armature, are best ignored. All told, Cardin comes across as a relentless optimist about humanity's future, which has a certain retro charm. Remember the future? (Jason Farago) 718 638 5000, brooklynmuseum.org 'ELECTIVE INFINITIES: EDMUND DE WAAL' at the Frick Collection (through Nov. 17). How does a contemporary artist enter a scene as formidable as Henry Frick's Gilded Age mansion? For de Waal, the English ceramist and author of the acclaimed family memoir "The Hare With Amber Eyes," the answer is with modesty. Only as you follow de Waal's site specific installations in nine of the museum's galleries does his own restrained music begin to ring out. Below Ingres's dangerously seductive "Comtesse d'Haussonville," he installs little strips of solid gold leaning against two huddles of white porcelain; in the richly appointed West Gallery, two pairs of overlapping flat screen shaped glass boxes ("From Darkness to Darkness" and "Noontime and Dawntime") distill the experience of being overwhelmed by painted imagery into a lucid kind of serenity. (Will Heinrich) 212 288 0700, frick.org 'THE JIM HENSON EXHIBITION' at the Museum of the Moving Image (ongoing). The rainbow connection has been established in Astoria, Queens, where this museum has opened a new permanent wing devoted to the career of America's great puppeteer, who was born in Mississippi in 1936 and died, too young, in 1990. Henson began presenting the short TV program "Sam and Friends" before he was out of his teens; one of its characters, the soft faced Kermit, was fashioned from his mother's old coat and would not mature into a frog for more than a decade. The influence of early variety television, with its succession of skits and songs, runs through "Sesame Street" and "The Muppet Show," though Henson also spent the late 1960s crafting peace and love documentaries and prototyping a psychedelic nightclub. Young visitors will delight in seeing Big Bird, Elmo, Miss Piggy and the Swedish Chef; adults can dig deep into sketches and storyboards and rediscover some old friends. (Farago) 718 784 0077, movingimage.us 'ILLUSTRATING BATMAN: EIGHTY YEARS OF COMICS AND POP CULTURE' at the Society of Illustrators (through Oct. 12). Batman turned 80 in April, and now the character is being celebrated with this visual feast of covers and interior pages, teeming with vintage and modern original comic art that shows the hero's evolution. The exhibition includes "Bat Manga!: The Secret History of Batman in Japan," a display devoted to a Batman story originally printed in Japan, and "Batman Collected: Chip Kidd's Batman Obsession," featuring memorabilia belonging to the graphic designer Chip Kidd. (George Gene Gustines) 212 838 2560, societyillustrators.org 'ALICJA KWADE: PARAPIVOT' at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (through Oct. 27). This shrewd and scientifically inclined artist, born in Poland and based in Berlin, has delivered the best edition in five years of the Met's hit or miss rooftop sculpture commission. Two tall armatures of interlocking steel rectangles, the taller of them rising more than 18 feet, support heavy orbs of different colored marble; some of the balls perch precariously on the steel frames, while others, head scratchingly, are squinched between them. Walk around these astral abstractions and the frames seem to become quotation marks for the transformed skyline of Midtown; the marbles might be planets, each just as precarious as the one from which they've been quarried. (Farago) 212 535 7710, metmuseum.org 'SIMONE LEIGH: LOOPHOLE OF RETREAT' at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum (through Oct. 27). Leigh's sensuous, majestic sculptures of black female figures fuse the language of African village architecture and African American folk art, and sometimes racial stereotypes, like the "mammy" figurines produced and collected in earlier eras in America. Sculpture is only one part of the practice that earned Leigh the Hugo Boss Prize 2018, but it is the one that inspired this show of three large objects in a gallery off the rotunda. The title comes from the writings of Harriet Jacobs, an enslaved woman who spent seven years hiding in a crawl space to escape her master's advances. In the exhibition, the "loophole" becomes a kind of artistic conceit, too, in which Leigh moves deftly between mediums, styles and messages, addressing multiple audiences but always, as she has stated, black women. For Leigh, loopholes might include representations of women that link back to ancestors or empower women by drawing on the freedom available through art. In that sense, these sculptures are sentinels, and placeholders. (Martha Schwendener) 212 423 3840, guggenheim.org 'THE LIFE AND TIMES OF ALVIN BALTROP' at the Bronx Museum of the Arts (through Feb. 20). New York City is a gateway for new talent. It's also an archive of art careers past. Some come to light only after artists have departed, as is the case with Baltrop, an American photographer who was unknown to the mainstream art world when he died in 2004 at 55, and who now has a bright monument of a retrospective at this Bronx museum. That he was black, gay and working class accounts in part for his invisibility, but so does the subject matter he chose: a string of derelict Hudson River shipping piers that, in the 1970s and '80s, became a preserve for gay sex and communion. In assiduously recording both the architecture of the piers and the amorous action they housed, Baltrop created a monument to the city itself at the time when it was both falling apart and radiating liberationist energy. (Cotter) 718 681 6000, bronxmuseum.org Read about the events that our other critics have chosen for the week ahead. 'NATURE: COOPER HEWITT MUSEUM DESIGN TRIENNIAL' at the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum (through Jan. 20). Plastics transformed the material world after World War II. Today, they pollute our oceans. A better future will be made with ... algae. Or bacteria. That's the dominant theme of this sweeping exhibition. On display here at the Smithsonian's temple to the culture of design are objects you might once have expected only at a science museum: Proteins found in silkworms are repurposed as surgical screws and optical lenses. Electronically active bacteria power a light fixture. The triennial displays some 60 projects and products from around the world that define a reconciliation of biosphere and technosphere, as Koert van Mensvoort, a Dutch artist and philosopher, puts it in the show's excellent catalog. "Nature" provides us with a post consumption future, in which the urgency of restoring ecological function trumps the allure of the latest gadget. (James S. Russell) 212 849 2950, cooperhewitt.org 'NOBODY PROMISED YOU TOMORROW: 50 YEARS AFTER STONEWALL' at the Brooklyn Museum (through Dec. 8). In this large group show, 28 young queer and transgender artists, most born after 1980, carry the buzz of Stonewall resistance into the present. Historical heroes, including Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera, are honored (in a film by Sasha Wortzel and Tourmaline). Friends in life, Johnson and Rivera are tutelary spirits of an exhibition in which a trans presence, long marginalized by mainstream gay politics, is pronounced in the work of Juliana Huxtable, Hugo Gyrl, Amaryllis DeJesus Moleski and Elle Perez (whose work also appeared in this year's Whitney Biennial). (Holland Cotter) 718 638 5000, brooklynmuseum.org 'OCEAN WONDERS: SHARKS!' at the New York Aquarium (ongoing). For years, the aquarium's 14 acre campus hunkered behind a wall, turning its back to the beach. When aquarium officials last year finally got around to completing the long promised building that houses this shark exhibition, maybe the biggest move, architecturally speaking, was breaking through that wall. The overall effect makes the aquarium more of a visible, welcoming presence along the boardwalk. Inside, "Ocean Wonders" features 115 species sharing 784,000 gallons of water. It stresses timely eco consciousness, introducing visitors to shark habitats, explaining how critical sharks are to the ocean's food chains and ecologies, debunking myths about the danger sharks pose to people while documenting the threats people pose to sharks via overfishing and pollution. The narrow, snaking layout suggests an underwater landscape carved by water. Past the exit, an outdoor ramp inclines visitors toward the roof of the building, where the Atlantic Ocean suddenly spreads out below. You can see Luna Park in one direction, Brighton Beach in the other. The architectural point becomes clear: Sharks aren't just movie stars and aquarium attractions. They're also our neighbors as much a part of Coney Island as the roller coasters and summer dreams. (Michael Kimmelman) 718 265 3474, nyaquarium.com 'PUNK LUST: RAW PROVOCATION 1971 1985' at the Museum of Sex (through Nov. 30). This show begins with imagery from the Velvet Underground: The 1963 paperback of that title, an exploration of what was then called deviant sexual behavior and gave the band its name, is one of the first objects on display. Working through photos, album art and fliers by artists like Iggy Pop, the New York Dolls, Patti Smith and, yes, the Sex Pistols, the exhibition demonstrates how punk offered a space for sexual expression outside the mainstream. In the story told by "Punk Lust," much of it laid out in placards by the writer and musician Vivien Goldman, one of the show's curators, graphic sexual imagery is a tool for shock that frightens away the straight world and offers comfort to those who remain inside. While some of the power dynamic is typical underage groupies cavorting with rock stars images from female, queer and nonbinary artists like Jayne County and the Slits make a strong case for sex as an essential source of punk liberation. (Mark Richardson) 212 689 6337, museumofsex.com 'STONEWALL 50 AT THE NEW YORK HISTORICAL SOCIETY' (through Dec. 1). For its commemoration of the anniversary of the Stonewall rebellion, the society continues with two micro shows: "By the Force of Our Presence: Highlights From the Lesbian Herstory Archives" documents the founding in 1974 by Joan Nestle, Deborah Edel, Sahli Cavallero, Pamela Olin and Julia Stanley of a compendious and still growing register of lesbian culture. And "Say It Loud, Out and Proud: Fifty Years of Pride" turns a solo spotlight on charismatic individuals: Storme DeLarverie (1920 2014), Mother Flawless Sabrina/Jack Doroshow (1939 2017), Keith Haring (1958 90) and Rollerena Fairy Godmother. (Cotter) 212 873 3400, nyhistory.org 'T. REX: THE ULTIMATE PREDATOR' at the American Museum of Natural History (through Aug. 9). Everyone's favorite 18,000 pound prehistoric killer gets the star treatment in this eye opening exhibition, which presents the latest scientific research on T. rex and also introduces many other tyrannosaurs, some discovered only this century in China and Mongolia. T. rex evolved mainly during the Cretaceous period to have keen eyes, spindly arms and massive conical teeth, which packed a punch that has never been matched by any other creature; the dinosaur could even swallow whole bones, as affirmed here by a kid friendly display of fossilized excrement. The show mixes 66 million year old teeth with the latest 3 D prints of dino bones, and also presents new models of T. rex as a baby, a juvenile and a full grown annihilator. Turns out this most savage beast was covered with believe it! a soft coat of beige or white feathers. (Farago) 212 769 5100, amnh.org 'VIOLET HOLDINGS: LGBTQ HIGHLIGHTS FROM THE N.Y.U. SPECIAL COLLECTIONS' at Bobst Library (through Dec. 31). With the Stonewall Inn now a National Historic Landmark (and a bar again; it was a bagel shop in the 1980s), nearby New York University has produced a homegrown archival exhibition at Bobst Library, across the park from Grey Art Gallery. Organized by Hugh Ryan, it takes the local history of queer identity back to the 19th century with documents on Elizabeth Robins (1862 1952), an American actor, suffragist and friend of Virginia Woolf, and forward with ephemera related to the musician and drag king Johnny Science (1955 2007) and the African American D.J. Larry Levan (1954 92), who, in the 1980s, presided, godlike, at a gay disco called the Paradise Garage, which was a short walk from the campus. (Cotter) 212 998 2500, library.nyu.edu 'BRAZILIAN MODERN: THE LIVING ART OF ROBERTO BURLE MARX' at the New York Botanical Garden (through Sept. 29). The garden's largest ever botanical exhibition pays tribute to Brazil's most renowned landscape architect with lush palm trees and vivid plants, along with a display of paintings and tapestries. In the late 1960s and early '70s, Marx (1909 94) planted bright bands of monochrome plants along Rio's Copacabana Beach and the fresh ministries of Brasilia, then the new capital. For this show, the garden and its greenhouses synthesize his achievements into a free form paean rich with Brazilian species, some of which he discovered himself. (Alcantarea burle marxii, one of many thick fronded bromeliads here, has leaves as tall as a 10 year old.) Check the weather, make sure it's sunny, then spend all day breathing in this exuberant gust of tropical modernism. (Farago) 718 817 8700, nybg.org 'CULTURE AND THE PEOPLE: EL MUSEO DEL BARRIO, 1969 2019' at El Museo del Barrio (through Sept. 29). This golden anniversary survey of wonderful art from the collection of a treasured East Harlem based institution sounds a political note from the start, with works by figures who were crucial to the museum's earliest years, like the street photographer Hiram Maristany and the great printmaker Rafael Tufino. Throughout the show, whether in abstract paintings or sculptural installations, art and activism blend. And there's joy: A 2006 collage called "Barrio Boogie Movement" by Rodriguez Calero generates the elation of the sidewalk it depicts, and Freddy Rodriguez's homage to the Dominican catcher Tony Pena a gold leaf baseball nestled in a mink lined glove is a rush of pure fan love. (Cotter) 212 831 7272, elmuseo.org 'CYCLING IN THE CITY: A 200 YEAR HISTORY' at the Museum of the City of New York (through Oct. 6). The complex past, present and future roles of the bicycle as a vehicle for both social progress and strife are explored in this exhibition. With more than 150 objects including 14 bicycles and vintage cycling apparel it traces the transformation of cycling's significance from a form of democratized transportation, which gave women and immigrants a sense of freedom, to a political football that continues to pit the city's more than 800,000 cyclists against their detractors today. (Julianne McShane) 212 534 1672, mcny.org 'LEONARDO DA VINCI'S "SAINT JEROME"' at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (through Oct. 6). The 500th anniversary of da Vinci's death in 1519 will bring big doings to Paris this fall with a one stop only career survey at the Louvre. New York gets a shot of buzz in advance with the appearance at the Met of a single great painting: "Saint Jerome Praying in the Wilderness." On loan from the Vatican Museums, it's one of the most rawly expressive images in the da Vinci canon. And it's a mystery. We don't know exactly when it was painted, or for whom, or why. Like much of this artist's work, it's unfinished. Incompleteness is part of its power. And powerful this picture is, a spiritual meltdown unfolding right before your eyes. You won't want to miss it. (Cotter) 212 535 7710, metmuseum.org 'DRAWING THE CURTAIN: MAURICE SENDAK'S DESIGNS FOR OPERA AND BALLET' at the Morgan Library Museum (through Oct. 6). Drawn from Sendak's bequest to the Morgan of his theatrical drawings, this succinct yet bountiful exhibition offers an overview of a dense, underappreciated period in this artist's career, undertaken with his most celebrated books well in the past and his life in uneasy transition. "Fifty," Sendak said, "is a good time to either change careers or have a nervous breakdown." The new midlife career he took on in the late 1970s was that of a designer for music theater. His rare ability to convey the light in darkness and the darkness in light brought him to opera. It's the focus of this show, which is aimed at adults but likely delightful for children, too. Five of his productions emerge before our eyes from rough sketches to storyboards, polished designs and a bit of video footage in those unmistakably Sendakian colors, watery and vivid at once. (Zachary Woolfe) 212 685 0008, themorgan.org 'LIFE: SIX WOMEN PHOTOGRAPHERS' at the New York Historical Society (through Oct. 6). In the three decade plus golden age of Life magazine, only six of its full time photographers were women. On the face of it, this exhibition at the historical society is half an excuse to air some gorgeous, previously unpublished silver prints, half a broad hint about how much talent we've lost to discrimination over the years. But cheery photo essays, produced by professional women, about other women hesitating to join the work force make a subtler point: that the actual mechanics of discrimination tend to be more complicated than they appear from a distance. (Heinrich) 212 873 3400, nyhistory.org 'MARTA MINUJIN: MENESUNDA RELOADED' at New Museum (through Sept. 29). One of the best shows of the summer returns to a legendary moment of midcentury avant gardism with the vividness of time travel. It replicates with convincing accuracy a funky D.I.Y. multichamber labyrinth created in Buenos Aires in 1965 by the young Argentine artist Marta Minujin, assisted by the artist Ruben Santanonin. The work's title, "La Menesunda," is, appropriately, slang for "a confusing situation," and the immersive combination of happening, performance and installation manifested in cheap, colorful materials makes it so. (Smith) 212 219 1222, newmuseum.org 'PHENOMENAL NATURE: MRINALINI MUKHERJEE' at the Met Breuer (through Sept. 29). You almost forget that art has the power to startle to make you wonder "How on earth did someone even think to do this, never mind do it?" until you see a show like this survey of sculptures by Mukherjee (1949 2015), an Indian artist. Roughly half are figurelike forms made from hemp ropes worked in a knotted macrame technique of finger aching ingenuity and titled with generic names of pre Hindu nature spirits and fertility deities. Smaller, ceramic pieces, flame shaped and midnight black, suggest Buddhas. Late cast bronze sculptures look both botanical and bestial. The result isn't folk art or design or fiber art or religious art or feminist art. It's modern art of deep originality. And it's an astonishment. (Cotter) 212 731 1675, metmuseum.org 'PLAY IT LOUD: INSTRUMENTS OF ROCK ROLL' at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (through Oct. 1). Presented in collaboration with the Rock Roll Hall of Fame, this exhibition offers a vision of history in which the rock music that flowered in the 1960s and '70s sits firmly at the center. The format of the rock band provides the structure of the show, with one room given over to the rhythm section and another showcasing "Guitar Gods." Yet another room has a display highlighting the guitar's destruction, with pieces of instruments trashed by Kurt Cobain and Pete Townshend. To the extent that it shifts focus toward the tools of the rock trade, the show is illuminating. Of particular interest is the room set aside for "Creating a Sound," which focuses on the sonic possibility of electronics. The lighting in "Play It Loud" is dim, perhaps reflecting rock music as the sound of the night. Each individual instrument shines like a beacon, as if it's catching the glint of an onstage spotlight. It makes the space between audience member and musician seem vast, but that doesn't diminish the wonder of browsing the tools once used by pop royalty. (Richardson) 212 535 7710, metmuseum.org	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Art & Design
Hoping to fight a growing plague of robocalls, a dozen phone companies including the country's biggest mobile and broadband providers agreed on Thursday to adopt new call blocking technology and other measures to help regulators track down swindlers. As part of a pact with 51 attorneys general from across the country, the companies said they would install technology intended to stamp out the calls before they reached consumers, who have long railed about the flood of robocalls that reached 4.7 billion in July, according to YouMail, a call blocking service. "Robocalls are a scourge at best, annoying, at worst, scamming people out of their hard earned money," said Josh Stein, North Carolina's attorney general, a co leader of the coalition with the attorneys general from New Hampshire and Indiana. "By signing on to these principles, industry leaders are taking new steps to keep your phone from ringing with an unwanted call." The new agreement which covers Verizon, AT T, T Mobile, Sprint, Comcast and other providers builds on work many are already doing to roll out technical standards that would help ensure that callers are using legitimate phone numbers. Currently, scammers often display bogus numbers sometimes spoofing local or official numbers, like the Social Security Administration to tempt targets into picking up the call.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Technology
Theme parks in Orlando like Disney's Magic Kingdom Park and Epcot, Universal Orlando and SeaWorld Orlando are being more vigilant following the shooting in the city early Sunday morning at Pulse nightclub that left 49 people dead. In an email, a spokeswoman for Disney, Jacquee Wahler, wrote, "Unfortunately, we've all been living in a world of uncertainty, and during this time we have increased our security measures across our properties, adding such visible safeguards as magnetometers metal detectors , additional canine units, and law enforcement officers on site, as well as less visible systems that employ state of the art security technologies." Few of the representatives for the other parks were willing to comment on any specific security measures being implemented following the catastrophe over the weekend, but a handful did say that they were being more vigilant. In an email, a SeaWorld spokeswoman, Suzanne Pelisson Beasley, said: "The safety of our ambassadors, guests and animals has always been our top priority. Our security teams work closely with law enforcement and we have enhanced security measures at all our parks."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Travel
Marijuana and Vaping Are More Popular Than Cigarettes Among Teenagers Cigarette smoking has dropped so sharply among American teenagers that vaping and marijuana use are now more common, according to a national survey of adolescent drug use released Thursday. The report, sponsored by the federal government's National Institute on Drug Abuse and administered by the University of Michigan, found that 22.9 percent of high school seniors said they had used marijuana within the previous 30 days and 16.6 percent had used a vaping device. Only 9.7 percent had smoked cigarettes. The survey of 43,703 eighth , 10th and 12th grade students in public and private schools nationwide raised concerns about the popularity of vaping devices, available in countless styles to appeal to different social groups. But it was otherwise optimistic. It found that teenagers' consumption of most substances including alcohol, tobacco, prescription opioids and stimulants has either fallen or held steady at last year's levels, the lowest rates in 20 years. By contrast, rates of marijuana use have remained largely consistent, with occasional small shifts, in recent years. (Studies show, however, that marijuana rates have risen among young adults in the last decade.) "We're impressed by the improvement in substance use by all teenagers," said Dr. Wilson Compton, deputy director of the institute. Still, Dr. Compton continued, "we don't yet know about the health problems in vaping." Vaping devices, which typically vaporize substances into an inhalant, are perceived by some experts as a healthier alternative to traditional cigarettes because they do not include carcinogens that come with burning tobacco. But Dr. Compton said, "The concern is that it may represent a new route for exposure to nicotine and marijuana." The devices are typically sold with nicotine. But when 12th graders were asked what they believed was in the mist they had vaped most recently, 51.8 percent said "just flavoring." When asked about use in the past month, one in 20 12th graders said they had used marijuana in vaping devices and one in 10 said nicotine. Cassie Poncelow, a school counselor at Poudre High School in Fort Collins, Colo., has noticed an upsurge in vaping across all social groups. "We're seeing a ton of it," she said. The devices are readily accessible and easy to conceal, she added. "Kids are taking hits on their vape pens in the hallways and nobody notices," Ms. Poncelow said, noting that some devices resemble flash drives, which students plug into laptops to recharge. But educators and public health officials praised the drop in tobacco use. Dr. Compton noted that in 1996, 10.4 percent of eighth graders reported smoking cigarettes daily. By 2017, that figure fell to 0.6 percent. In 1997, daily smoking among 12th graders peaked at 24.6 percent. By 2017, only 4.2 percent smoked cigarettes daily. Thomas J. Glynn, a former director of cancer science at the American Cancer Society and an adjunct lecturer at Stanford University School of Medicine, hailed the continuing tobacco decline as "an astounding accomplishment in public health." "But," he added, "it doesn't mean we close the door and go home now." While noting that the data on vaping devices as a gateway to cigarettes is inconclusive, he added, "I think we have to have alarms out." Dr. Compton attributed the tobacco decline to many factors, including strong public health antismoking campaigns, higher cigarette prices and peer pressure not to smoke. Students in all grade levels reported that they viewed cigarettes and alcohol as distasteful and a serious health risk. Similar explanations have been given for dropping rates of alcohol use, especially binge drinking. Students have become more self conscious about the possibility of their drunken images being posted on social media, experts say, which can tarnish reputations and college eligibility. But marijuana? Not so much. In the report, only 14.1 percent of 12th graders said they saw a "great risk" from smoking marijuana occasionally. In 1991, 40.6 percent of seniors held that view. In 2017, nearly 24 percent of students in all three grades said they had used marijuana over the past year, a rate that has stayed relatively stable in recent years. Allison Kilcoyne, who directs a health center at a high school in a Boston suburb, has seen firsthand the evidence of the survey's marijuana findings. Persuading students about marijuana's risk is tricky, said Ms. Kilcoyne, a family nurse practitioner, especially in a state that permits medical marijuana. "They perceive there are no negative effects," Ms. Kilcoyne said. "I talk about the impact on their developing brain and the risk of learning to smoke marijuana as a coping mechanism. We have other interventions, I say. But the problem is that for them, it works. They're feeling immediate relief of whatever symptoms they have. They're medicating themselves." Yet while marijuana use among high school seniors has not declined, it has also not increased in recent years. Given that fewer students hold marijuana in disregard, researchers are perplexed but relieved that use of marijuana has not kept pace with attitudes toward it. "Drug use tends to go hand in hand with perceptions of risk and approval," said Ty S. Schepis, an associate professor of psychology at Texas State University who studies adolescent and young adult drug use. But approving of marijuana may not necessarily translate in such a manner, he said. "I've had friends who like to go sky diving. I would never go sky diving. There are certain activities that we may quietly condone or tacitly approve, even though the majority still may not want to engage in it."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Health
From left, Christina Sahaida, Billy Smith (behind Ms. Sahaida), Dallas McMurray, Mica Bernas and Aaron Loux in "The Trout," which had its premiere on Thursday at Lincoln Center's Rose Theater as part of the Mostly Mozart Festival. It's never enough to say that a choreographer is musical. No dance is the exact equivalent of its music. Consciously or unconsciously, choreographers have things to say, worldviews to express. Sometimes a piece of music takes them where they haven't been before, but they already bring their own values to it. Witness Mark Morris, whose latest premiere, "The Trout," opened on Thursday at Lincoln Center's Rose Theater as part of the Mostly Mozart Festival. Like Mr. Morris's other two pieces on the program, it's musical; and yet all three differ from their scores while having plenty in common with other Morris creations. There are other points to make about "The Trout" but, alas, not many: Mr. Morris has some things to say about his music, often analytically; then he goes on saying them. The Mark Morris Dance Group and its leader have long been returning artists to Mostly Mozart; the score for Schubert's famous "Trout" Piano Quintet in A Major, D. 667 is beautifully played here. The dance, like its music, is a charming exercise in pastoral, in which the people with few troubles of their own are absorbed by the landscape around them. Maile Okamura dresses the five women in individually colored, sleeved knee length dresses, and the six men in simpler, sleeveless gray outfits. Though I love those colors, they differentiate and give an advantage to the "Trout" women more than the choreography does; individual men here register at least as memorably as any woman, but not in their attire. Nick Kolin's lighting changes the stage world as the work progresses: side lighting suggests the glow of dawn, an all green view suggests a verdant landscape, and the final blue (with only faint hints of cirrus clouds) evokes idyllic summer. Mr. Morris opens the first movement with a sustained passage of naturalistically pedestrian, though precisely choreographed, movement: walking, standing, kneeling people at peace with themselves and one another in a variety of quiet moods. This proves to be a pencil sketch of the colored painting that follows after Mr. Morris adds dancing: It introduces much that "The Trout" then further develops. He makes a pronounced use of peripheral stage space, with dancers often entering from one wing only to depart soon into the adjacent one without crossing the stage thus suggesting that we're simply watching a segment of a far larger world that's populated much the same way. Often Mr. Morris introduces a dance motif (sometimes a single lift or gesture, sometimes an extended phrase) with one dancer, then multiplies it. This mirrors Schubert's musical structure; and there are several moments when Mr. Morris's choice of movement has a wonderful oddity, as when Noah Vinson starts the third Scherzo movement with a tricky but naive sequence of footwork and jumps. Though the sequence is a lot more contrived than the music, its point this helpless, unpolished little outburst of impulsive high spirits when alone in nature is pleasing. Several other motifs have a deliberately pastoral character: a turn of the head and eyes to admire the view, a moment of standing still receptiveness with one leg folded over another. The wonderful simplicity of the Morris dancers' stage manners tends to be more lovable than the schematic material they've been given. Mr. Morris makes sure that we register his motifs they often come like punch lines, more staccato and end stopped than the musical figures they illustrate after which his reiterations are more than we need. One effortful lift, in which a woman is held aloft by her pelvis while her head and limbs aim downward, soon looks like a gimmick. One small gesture, a gentle turn of the wrist so that the palm of the hand held at waist height turns upward, answers an iambic figure in the music. It looks marvelously natural and human; and then it returns, returns, returns. And so Mr. Morris's musicality, not for the first time in his long career, becomes an awkward form of musical analysis. Really, that little flourish of the wrist is a more specifically acting gesture than Schubert's little iamb; and all those repetitions, by way of pinning recognizably human behavior to musical structure, have the effect of making the music feel far more expressively limited than it actually is. Schubert's quintet takes its name from its fourth movement, a set of variations on the melody he had created for his largely blissful song "The Trout" ("Die Forelle"); Mr. Morris makes one variation considerably stormier (in human rather than climatic terms) than its music. Even here, however, he seems to have much less to say than Schubert. The evening's program began with "Love Song Waltzes" (1989, Brahms) and "I Don't Want to Love" (1996, Monteverdi). Again, the musical performances were first rate. Jennifer Zetlan, Luthien Brackett, Thomas Cooley and Thomas Meglioranza sing the Brahms waltzes handsomely; and the eight musicians for the Monteverdi, led by the always admirable Colin Fowler (here at the harpsichord), were impressive. The soprano Jolle Greenleaf, with remarkable lack of vibrato, conveyed the emotion in the deeply poignant "Lamento della ninfa" ("A Nymph's Lament"). Both these works depict loves, heartbreaks and societies. For many, "I Don't Want to Love" is one of Mr. Morris's masterpieces, so I'm sorry that I find it much more emphatically artful than its music. But I watch both, as I do "The Trout," with rapture when it comes to the Morris dancers; they make "Love Song Waltzes," an enthralling work, look better than ever. It's uncanny how little Morris style has changed over the decades, and how subtly, disarmingly, truthful it remains. The tension between the moving simplicity of these dancers and their choreography's emphatically clever sophistication is among the most fascinating performer creator relationships in the performing arts today.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Dance
Once upon a time, women's wear was rife with transparency. With miniskirts and spaghetti strap dresses and tank tops. With fashions intended to show some skin and combat the heat. Not anymore. Now we have hems that sweep the floor, sleeves that dangle so far down they are practically in the dust and necklines that rise to the chin. Cardi B winning Paris Fashion Week in a head to toe matching bodysuit, coat and skirt, not an inch of skin exposed. There is no longer any doubt that what used to be called "modest" dressing clothes sensitive to religious requirements more than fashion has become a part of mainstream trend. But what does that mean for women whose modest clothes are about more than just style? Nadia Krayem , an Australian photographer, has worked with Think Fashion, the group behind Modest Fashion Week, and photographed the "hijabi ballerina" Stephanie Kurlow . She said that while she believes the mainstreaming of modest fashion has "made modest dressing easier," she has concerns over its evolution. "It has been appropriated," Ms. Krayem said. And in this, perhaps, shorn of its original context and message. Today modest dressing means "different things to different groups," said Batsheva Hay, a lawyer turned designer now known for her prairie style dresses. When she began to observe Shabbat with her Orthodox Jewish husband, she said she could only find appropriate dresses she liked on a "vintage" trawl until she made them herself using old Laura Ashley fabrics. To her, it's "the spirit of the clothes" that's important. Marwa Biltagi , a modest fashion blogger who works under the name Mademoiselle Meme, said that for her, modest dressing refers to "the adamant choice to show less skin, wear looser clothing and have the freedom to dress in a more conservative manner." As for Dina Torkia, an influencer known as Dina Tokio, who rose to fame as one of a number of Muslim women who openly proclaimed they "loved fashion," it's about choice. She said that "modest fashion is open to interpretation from whoever chooses to define their dress sense with the term." That may have something to do with growing awareness around the modest fashion sector and the rise of that consumer group as a shopping power; the need for "armor" in a world that feels increasingly scary and unpredictable; or the cultural shifts that followed the MeToo movement, as many women rejected the male gaze. Whatever the reason, what was once a religious uniform has been largely transformed into a style that's vulnerable to the fluctuations of a capricious industry, which has implications for the public understanding of observant dress. This blurring of boundaries and intention has been perhaps most obvious when it comes to the head scarf: an easy identifier for notions of modesty, a clear and visible religious symbol for many, a recent lightning rod for the debate over individual freedom in the secular state and, on occasion, a fashion accessory. It's hard, for example, to spot the difference between the head scarf (or hat) worn consistently for religious reasons by the Muslim model Halima Aden , and the head wraps and coverings worn on magazine covers by Nicki Minaj (Elle) and Kaia Gerber (British Vogue) for styling purposes not to mention on every model on the Marc Jacobs runway in 2017. Perhaps that is why Sharmeen Choudhury, a primary schoolteacher in London, says she no longer believes that everything marketed as modest qualifies for the designation. "I don't consider extremely tight clothing to be modest, even if it covers every inch of the body," she said. Her "boundaries," she added, are driven by her Islamic faith. The modest fashion designer Yasmin Safri of the label Arabian Nites emphasized the importance of "historical definitions" for her brand; she focuses on Islamic descriptions of modesty, taking "cultural silhouettes" and giving them a "contemporary twist." "It's never been about just putting long sleeves on a top and calling it modest fashion," she said. Indeed, Ms. Torkia, the influencer, no longer frequently adopts a head scarf or markets herself specifically through the lens of modesty. These days, she said, "modest" is "simply a term used to describe an alternative style."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Style
During the late 1980s, as the AIDS epidemic became worse and worse, with no end in sight, the composer John Corigliano did not shy away from responding to something so immense and horrific. When the Chicago Symphony Orchestra offered him a commission, he wrote a raw, seething symphony of rage and remembrance for friends who had died. Read about what inspired this symphony. From its first performance, in 1990, Mr. Corigliano's Symphony No. 1 brought catharsis and comfort to many listeners, and acclaim to its composer. It also stirred pushback from some critics who found the music too blatant: How many episodes of pummeling percussion, gnashing chords, screeching brass and sorrowfully wafting string melodies can one piece contain? I used to share those reservations. But I hadn't heard the work in a long while before Thursday, when Jaap van Zweden led the New York Philharmonic in a formidable performance at David Geffen Hall, part of the orchestra's season ending "Music of Conscience" series. Hear music nearly lost to the AIDS crisis. Maybe some distance the Philharmonic hadn't performed it since 1992 helped put the sincerity and intensity of the music, as well as Mr. Corigliano's impressive technical skills, in perspective. I was engrossed.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Music
Dancers performing in "Gravite" ("Gravity") by Angelin Preljocaj at the Theatre National Populaire in Villeurbanne, France, as part of the Lyon Dance Biennial. LYON, France Shows succeed one another with dizzying rapidity at festivals. One moment you're watching five dancers gesture wildly in outlandish outfits, the next a calmly ordered, tastefully garbed ensemble is circling to Ravel's "Bolero." And then you're in a museum, watching a man in evening dress, with a stocking over his face, sway slowly with an identically dressed mannequin, before hurtling in a taxi to an out of town spot where two women sob for an hour in a parable about nationalism. At least that's how it feels in retrospect, after a three day stint last week at the Lyon Dance Biennial, Europe's largest dance festival, and one of its most important in terms of scope and presentation of new works. This edition, the 18th, began on Sept. 11 and runs through the 30th. It includes 42 shows, as well as talks, public performances and films in theaters, museums, churches and public spaces all over the city and the surrounding region, attracting some 100,000 audience members to theaters and many more to the free public events, according to the festival. But festivals are more than numbers; they are living, evolving entities with their own atmospheres. Dominique Hervieu, who succeeded the founding director of the festival, Guy Darmet, in 2012, described this edition in press materials as "European, technological, popular, experimental." It's certainly popular. Ms. Hervieu, from the start of her tenure, has emphasized the importance of involving the public and presenting free performances. The defile the huge street parade that traditionally opens the festival was called "A March for Peace" this year and was its largest yet, with 4,500 performers and 250,000 spectators singing John Lennon's "Imagine" at the end. Open air performances have drawn thousands, and long lines have formed on Wednesdays and Saturdays during the Biennial for free dance classes in a central shopping mall. It's certainly technologically focused, and in that sense experimental. There are several digital projects, but the standouts are two innovative virtual reality works, commissioned from the choreographers Yoann Bourgeois and Gilles Jobin, which have been wildly popular, with long waiting lists for tickets. European? A bit. There was certainly a three day "European Platform" showing works by nine emerging choreographers from Belgium, France, Poland, Portugal, Romania and Spain, intended mostly for the 375 programmers from 35 countries who had come to Lyon to shop for shows. Dance festivals, like other arts festivals, are professional markets, too. But despite that nod to the rest of Europe, of the 12 premieres on this year's program, nine are by French choreographers and one is by Josef Nadj, who has lived in France since 1980, resulting in a more insular feel than previous festivals. The mood of many of these was somber, and several offered overtly sociopolitical themes. I missed Maguy Marin's "Ligne de Crete" ("Ridge Line"), which focused on consumerism, but caught Rachid Ouramdane's "Franchir la Nuit" ("Breaking Through the Night"), a work for five dancers and 30 children and adolescents, some of whom are refugees in France. Mr. Ouramdane, who is French of Algerian parentage, has been an important voice in contemporary dance for the last decade, creating works that reflect on torture, war and genocide. In "Franchir la Nuit," he takes on children's experience of migration, a tough subject that he treats with delicacy and a surprising amount of caution. The production, at the glossy, Jean Nouvel designed Lyon Opera house, is beautiful, mixing huge, high definition projected images and performers walking, running, rolling and jumping in the ankle deep water that keeps washing tiny wavelets across the stage. Music, mostly a plaintive piano score played live by Deborah Lennie Bisson, is overlaid with lyrics from David Bowie's "Heroes" and children's voices: Like the movement onstage, it is gentle and allusive. There are some powerful moments in "Franchir la Nuit": a sequence in which a man frantically rolls bodies back into the water as they relentlessly surge to the edges; another in which the apparently lifeless bodies of children are carried slowly in a sepulchral light. But Mr. Ouramdane mostly steers clear of the potential shock value and emotion of his subject, which remains secondary to the aesthetic pleasures the water, the moody lighting and video effects of the work. The brilliance with which Mr. Ouramdane can evoke psychic states through movement feels absent here, at least on a first viewing. Also overtly political was "Mothers of Steel," a duo created and performed by Madalina Dan and Agata Siniarska in the "European Platform" series. The two women sob hysterically and theatrically (heaving chests, gasping for breath) while showing patriotic videos (sporting victories, presidential speeches, marches and anthems) about their countries, Romania and Poland. Later, still crying, they pin up and move around sheets of paper bearing words like "Empire," "Colonialism" and "Slavery," and they tell bad jokes. ("Do you know why Jesus couldn't be born in our country? Because they couldn't find three wise men and one virgin.") On the other end of the spectrum were Angelin Preljocaj's "Gravite" and Mourad Merzouki's "Vertikal," both pure dance works that demanded extreme technical precision and virtuosity of different kinds. Mr. Preljocaj is a major and prolific choreographer who is often ambitiously experimental, but in "Gravite," he produces an accomplished and attractive ensemble piece that does little to extend his previous work. Set to a mishmash of music, including Bach, Iannis Xenakis, Philip Glass and Ravel, the dance is balletic enough to be performed by any classical troupe, and Mr. Preljocaj's 13 dancers (including the visibly pregnant Clara Freschel) are superbly rigorous in its execution. It's odd, though, these days, to see a contemporary dance work in which exclusively heterosexual duets are the norm; it gives "Gravite" a strangely old fashioned feeling. That's not the case for Mr. Merzouki's "Vertikal," a brilliantly inventive deployment of hip hop technique removed from its usual contexts. Through the use of harnesses and ropes, the 10 dancers float above the ground, extend horizontally from sliding walls, and offer breathtaking athleticism in a dancer's dream of gravity free space. There was plenty more, too: Mr. Nadj's compellingly odd performance piece, "Mnemosyne," at the Musee des Beaux Arts; an unfortunately incoherent take on jumpstyle, a dance form born in the 1990s, by the French collective (LA) Horde; a performance piece and films by Jerome Bel; a the Japanese choreographer Saburo Teshigawara and his collaborator Rihoko Sato in an Isadora Duncan esque interpretive dance outing in front of the National Orchestra of Lyon playing Berlioz's "Symphonie Fantastique." Why would Mr. Teshigawara want to do that? There was no time to reflect; another show was about to begin.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Dance
The charges of censorship will almost certainly play a central role in Wednesday's hearing. Republicans like Senator Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee and Senator Ted Cruz of Texas are likely to criticize the chief executives about how their platforms have moderated content posted by conservative politicians or right wing media outlets. Conservatives have seized on individual instances of content moderation to claim that there is a systemic bias against them on the platforms. In some cases, the companies have said that the content violated their policies; in other instances they have said that the moderation was a mistake. Recently, Republicans pointed to the decision by Twitter and Facebook to restrict the sharing of stories about Hunter Biden, the son of Joseph R. Biden Jr., the Democratic nominee for president. Twitter initially said that the story violated its policy against the sharing of hacked information, but later reversed itself. Facebook has said it is restricting the story's reach while it waits for a third party fact checker to evaluate the claims.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Technology
Hank Steinbrenner in August 2010, on his first return to Yankee Stadium since the death of his father, George, in July. It was late October 2007, and it was a very bad day for the Yankees. Their best player, Alex Rodriguez, had just opted out of his contract, and their fierce rival, the Boston Red Sox, had just won the World Series. Hank Steinbrenner decided to channel his father, George, who had never missed a chance to grab a headline. He called a reporter and challenged Rodriguez. "Does he want to go into the Hall of Fame as a Yankee," Hank barked, "or a Toledo Mud Hen?" With health problems then forcing George Steinbrenner to recede from the public eye he died in 2010 at 80 it seemed that Hank was stepping forward as a new boss just as feisty and bombastic as the original. A year later, though, it was Hank's younger brother, Hal, who was named the Yankees' managing general partner. Hal, and not Hank, would have final authority over the decisions of the most storied and lucrative franchise in professional sports. Yet Hank Steinbrenner, who died on Tuesday at his home in Clearwater, Fla., at age 63, remained a general partner and co chairperson of the Yankees, and shared in the responsibility of overseeing and directing the team's on and off field strategies. The eldest of the four Steinbrenner children, he had been in poor health in recent years. His death was confirmed in a statement by the Yankees. No specific cause was given. Hank was just 15 in early 1973 when his father bought the Yankees. He briefly worked in the team's front office in the mid 1980s as an apprentice of sorts to the team's general managers. But he found his passion in breeding, raising and racing horses at the family's 730 acre farm in Florida, and was a longtime member of the board of the Ocala Breeders' Sales Company. More recently, Mr. Steinbrenner became deeply involved in auto racing with his son, George Michael Steinbrenner IV. His team, Harding Steinbrenner Racing, competed on the IndyCar circuit last year with George, then 22, as the youngest team owner in IndyCar history. Mr. Steinbrenner also served on the board of the YES Network, which televises Yankees games, and sponsored a youth travel baseball program, "Hank's Yanks," that has sent dozens of players to college or professional baseball. "He could trust young people and open himself up to them," said Ray Negron, a former Yankees bat boy who founded the program. "He took so much pride in the fact that more and more of his kids were going to college." Mr. Negron said that Mr. Steinbrenner had fully accepted his status in the Yankees' hierarchy and had not felt marginalized when Hal, who is 11 years younger, became the boss. "He never, ever mentioned it," Mr. Negron said. "He was always extremely proud of his Yankee heritage and extremely proud of his brother and what his brother was doing with the team." If Mr. Steinbrenner had wanted a prominent position, he could have had one. When George Steinbrenner was suspended from Major League Baseball in 1990 for paying 40,000 for damaging information on his slugger Dave Winfield he wanted Hank to run the team as its general partner. Hank was 33, happy working at the farm and coaching high school soccer, and he turned his father down. "I agonized about it for two weeks," he told The New York Times Magazine in 2008. "But I knew the ban was never going to last. The Yankees were a dictatorship. No matter who took the title, my dad was still going to be the boss." "Why Hal and not his older brother, Hank?" wrote Bill Madden in "Steinbrenner: The Last Lion of Baseball" (2010). "All agreed that Hal was the one with the business acumen and that Hank, despite his frequent public comments on the Yankees' baseball dealings, had no interest in spending the necessary time in New York" working with team officials there on the complex issues of a new stadium, a television network and more. Even without the lead role, though, Hank Steinbrenner's status as a general partner and his tendency to be more outspoken than his brother gave him a platform he relished. The Yankees won the 2009 World Series but failed to repeat as champions the next year, when the San Francisco Giants took the crown. At spring training in 2011, the Yankees' one year absence from the Series seemed to rankle Mr. Steinbrenner. "I think, maybe, they celebrated too much last year," he told reporters. "Some of the players, too busy building mansions and doing other things and not concentrating on winning. I have no problem saying that." It was a not so subtle jab at the team captain, Derek Jeter, who had just moved into a sprawling new home in Tampa, Fla., and it echoed a similar barb that George Steinbrenner had leveled at Jeter about a decade earlier. The team has not won a championship since. Also like his father, Hank Steinbrenner criticized Major League Baseball's revenue sharing plan, which took money from richer teams like the Yankees and gave it to poorer rivals. In addition to his brother, Mr. Steinbrenner, who was divorced, is survived by his daughters, Jacqueline and Julia; his sons, George Michael IV and John; his sisters, Jennifer and Jessica; and a granddaughter, the Yankees said. His mother, Joan Steinbrenner, a former vice chairwoman of the team, died in 2018 at 83. Mr. Steinbrenner was much less visible in later years, but Randy Levine, the team president, said he had remained active behind the scenes, even in the team's negotiations last December with pitcher Gerrit Cole, who signed a nine year, 324 million contract. To Mr. Levine, Mr. Steinbrenner took it as part of his familial duty to challenge the team's top baseball officials from Gene Michael to Brian Cashman and fight for his position. "When the time came," Mr. Levine said, "he had the George Steinbrenner fight in him, and he could hold his own." Like his father, Hank Steinbrenner relished no rivalry more than the one with the Red Sox. In The Times Magazine interview, he scoffed at the concept of Red Sox Nation, calling it an affront to the brand his family had elevated. "Go anywhere in America and you won't see Red Sox hats and jackets, you'll see Yankee hats and jackets," he said. "This is a Yankee country."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Sports
Stagehands from IATSE Local 33 set up the red carpet for the 91st Academy Awards. The union represents 150,000 crew members in North America. Oscars 2019: A Timeline of All the Crazy Things That Happened Along the Way The 91st annual Academy Awards are Sunday night, the culmination of one of the strangest Oscar seasons in recent memory, in which the Academy's attempts to deliver a shorter and more ratings friendly broadcast has resulted in a baffling series of ill advised decisions, meek reversals and avoidable controversies. The morning after the 90th Academy Awards, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and ABC (the ceremony's regular network) are hit with "the doomsday ratings scenario": the show's 26.5 million viewers were the lowest ever recorded in the show's history, a nearly 20 percent drop from the previous year. Academy and ABC/Disney execs meet shortly thereafter to discuss changes that might halt the ratings free fall. The Academy announces its proposed changes: a three hour cap for the 2019 telecast (the 2018 show clocked in at nearly four), the presentation of "select categories" during commercial breaks and the addition of a category for "outstanding achievement in popular film." The later proposal draws the most immediate and negative response, prompting criticisms of "pandering" to the wider audience with a "stupid, insulting and pathetically desperate" attempt at a "tainted" award. The academy's 54 member board votes to table the new award, at least for this year's ceremony, recognizing "the need for further discussion with our members," according to a statement from Dawn Hudson, the academy's chief executive. The Academy announces that the comedian Kevin Hart will host the 2019 ceremony. "I am blown away simply because this has been a goal on my list for a long time," Hart writes on Instagram. Hart appears on the daytime talk show of the two time Oscar host Ellen DeGeneres, who offers up a lengthy defense of the comedian, and claims that members of the Academy would still like him to host. But in a "Variety" interview posted the same day, Hart insists the door is closed: "Would I ever do it? No, it's done. It's done." (In a strange postscript, Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson later claims he was the Academy's "first choice to host this year," but was unable to take the job because of his commitment to filming "Jumanji 2" with Kevin Hart.) The 2019 Oscars will not have a host, for the first time since the disastrous 1989 ceremony, a.k.a. the "Rob Lowe Sings with Snow White" show. Variety reports that only two of the five Best Original Song nominees "Shallow" from "A Star is Born" and "All the Stars" from "Black Panther" will be performed during the ceremony, leaving the other three nominees to be "acknowledged only during the announcement of the song nominees." The Academy walks back the decision, announcing the performances of two more nominated songs, with the final number added the following day. By then, an entirely new controversy has bubbled up: Deadline reports that the previous year's four acting honorees Frances McDormand, Gary Oldman, Allison Janney and Sam Rockwell have not been contacted to hand out this year's acting prizes (per Oscar tradition), with The Hollywood Reporter subsequently confirming that Rockwell and Janney's reps were told by the Academy that the actors would not be presenting. In a (later deleted) Instagram post, Janney writes, "It's looking like they are not going to honor the tradition this year. It breaks my heart." The Academy announces via Twitter that the four actors in question will, in fact, "be presenters at this year's show." After five controversy free days, the Academy leaps into its biggest fracas yet with the long delayed announcement of the four categories deemed unworthy of live broadcast: cinematography, film editing, live action short and makeup and hairstyling. Criticism is swift and virulent, with twitter condemnations, angry interviews and open letters abounding.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Movies
Splish, splash: Jonathan Groff has agreed to sing the songs of Bobby Darin for five performances to kick off a revamped Lyrics Lyricists series at the 92nd Street Y. The series, a staple for musical theater aficionados since it was established in 1970, has a new and well known (in the theater industry) leader: Theodore S. Chapin, the president and chief creative officer of Rodgers and Hammerstein. Mr. Chapin, seeking to start his tenure as the Lyrics Lyricists producer with a bit of excitement, recruited Mr. Groff to kick off the series, which explores the American songbook, in January. Mr. Groff, a two time Tony nominee (for "Hamilton" and "Spring Awakening") who has been working on TV ("Glee," "Looking" and "Mindhunter"), will perform songs associated with Darin, a popular singer, actor and activist who died in 1973 at the age of 37. The series will continue with a look at the lyricists who wrote for the music of Leonard Bernstein, and then with Lynn Ahrens, who wrote the lyrics for "Anastasia," now on Broadway, and "Once on This Island," which is to be revived this fall; Irving Berlin, whose songs were used as the basis for last season's "Holiday Inn"; and Frank Loesser, who wrote the lyrics for "Guys and Dolls" and "How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Theater
That fleeting thing called life isn't always fair. Vacation time goes unused, in laws can be a pain, fun cars often cost a fortune. But, a Ferrari isn't needed for a good romp on the road. The Fiat 124 Spider is back and even Italian. Well... kind of. (ON CAMERA) The worlds worst kept secret? The 124 Spider is largely based on this car (DING!) Mazda's MX 5 Miata, even built in the same Japanese plant. Hardly a bad thing. There are differences, obviously the sheet metal. With a nod to nostalgia, designers used classic cues from original model that stopped coming to our shores over three decades ago. Blame modern safety regulations for the chunkier look. The wind and the sun can be yours for as little as 26 grand ( 25,990), this upmarket Lusso model goes for 30 ( 29,990). The 124 is some five inches longer and 100 pounds heaver than MX 5. All this is identical to the Mazda's, with added insulation here and a laminated windshield to keep the din down. A reminder of the Fiat Chrysler hook up too. (SOUND UP OF HEADER OPENING) (ON CAMERA) It's crazy simply to drop and just as easy to raise. Even for a guy with rotator cuff problems. The Spider gets a heart transplant. Shipped from Italy, this 1.4 liter turbo four cylinder engine (SOUND UP) provides the back wheels with 160 horsepower and 184 lb. ft. of torque (SOUND UP) and less character than it's Japanese cousin. The six speed manual comes from the previous generation Miata, still terrific. I'm driving the six speed autobox. You must move up to the Abarth model to get paddle shifters. (ON CAMERA) The turbo takes just a second to build power (SOUND UP) but in the middle of the rev range there's a nice meaty power band. Rowing a manual gearbox would give a driver, at least the illusion of directly keeping the engine in its sweet spot. I feel less engaged with the shifts done for me. (ON CAMERA) Let's get something straight, I'm not the kind of guy that insists that you must get a manual transmission in a car like this. The automatic here works pretty well, it's always in the right gear. But I've got to admit, I really miss the manual. The chassis structure comes from Mazda but the Fiat has unique springs, dampers, and anti roll bars for a smidge more compliance but less body roll. Retuned steering too. (ON CAMERA) Everyone's going to compare the handling of this car to the Miata, you kind of have to. The Fiat is still fun and frisky in the corners but a little but more comfortable, a little less caffeinated. (ON CAMERA) This is fun in the corners, you can actually feel the tail kick out a little bit. Buyers will simply have to test drive both to see which dynamic they prefer. The extra sound insulation and milder exhaust note adds to a smoother vibe for the Italian. The Abarth model offers more growl. (ON CAMERA) Okay, I'm doing 50 miles an hour. As you can tell from my Dennis the Menace hair, wind management is pretty good. Fuel economy? The E.P.A. average for both 124 and MX 5 using premium fuel is 30 miles per gallon except for the Fiat's automatic that drops to 29 m.p.g. Shouldn't be a deal breaker. The cabin looks awfully familiar, with an instrument panel that's nearly identical to you know what with some nicer materials here and there. That means the user interface can be operated from here and... here. The wheel doesn't telescope either. Seats have Mazda's comfy frame system that's similar to an Aeron office chair, there's heated leather here. The side panels? That's the big difference here. (ON CAMERA) In case you're wondering, no, the Italians didn't make the trunk any bigger. There's an additional third of a cubic foot of cargo room in the Fiat. A suitcase this size (SOUND UP) and a small overnight bag will fit. Great for a weekend. Taken a step further, it's great for a new outlook on life, the perfect way to unwind, perhaps when the in laws stress you out. For those wondering about choosing between 124 Spider and MX 5 Miata, well, there is no "better" here, just two similar but different ways to get the wind in your hair and sun on your shoulders. Glad to see the world has another affordable roadster choice.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Automobiles
OXON HILL, Md. A year ago, attendees at the Conservative Political Action Conference, the annual jamboree of the political right, were greeted by Big Tech with open arms and open bars. Google sponsored a lavish hospitality suite, courting conservatives with an outdoor fireplace, hors d'oeuvres and flowing cocktails. Bright young representatives from Facebook hosted a "help desk," handing out cookies frosted with emoji icons and offering free demonstrations of its virtual reality product, Oculus. That was then. At last week's gathering here in a suburb of Washington, Silicon Valley's only obvious presence was on the lips of exercised right wing critics who whipped up the crowd by denouncing the American tech industry as an authoritarian hegemony intent on censoring their cause. "Facebook, Google and Twitter are pushing a left wing social agenda while marshaling their marketing power to shut conservative voices out of the marketplace," said Senator Josh Hawley, a Missouri Republican, during a featured session with the ominous title "Blocked: This Panel Has Been Removed for Conservative Content." Mr. Hawley, who investigated Google for antitrust violations while serving as attorney general of Missouri, earned cheers when he said that tech companies "should not be able to tell us to sit down and shut up." Later, James O'Keefe, the provocateur behind Project Veritas, the guerrilla group that tries to undermine news outlets like CNN and The Washington Post, urged tech employees to secretly videotape their workplaces to reveal conservative bias. "We will equip you with a camera," Mr. O'Keefe told his audience. "If they're lying, cheating, scamming, we're going to find them, make them famous internet celebrities, expose them for all the world to see." If suspicion of Big Tech was once a minor concern of right wing agitators a subcategory of that saw, criticizing the media this year's gathering suggested that attacks on Silicon Valley are now squarely in the conservative mainstream. President Trump last year accused Google and other companies of stifling right wing news outlets. On Capitol Hill, Republicans grilled executives like Jack Dorsey of Twitter about ideological bias. Here at CPAC, Mr. O'Keefe, whose appearance was relegated to a cramped conference room last year, was welcomed to the main stage by raucous applause. On a panel about artificial intelligence, Jeremy Achin, chief executive of DataRobot, felt obliged to reassure his audience, "I'm not here from one of those tech companies that hates America." When Sebastian Gorka, the former Trump White House aide, recorded an interview with Breitbart News just outside the conference ballroom, he said that China was the "one existential threat to the United States." Ford and Rivian no longer plan to work jointly on electric vehicles. Elizabeth Holmes took the stand in her trial. Follow along with our reporters. Ken Griffin, head of Citadel, bid highest for a copy of the Constitution. Google, a leading conference sponsor in 2018 when its logo was plastered on banners alongside groups like the National Rifle Association and the Heritage Foundation did not participate this year. Facebook's "help desk" was also nowhere to be found. Representatives from both companies were not keen to explain their reasoning. "The list of events that Facebook sponsors or participates in evolves from year to year," a Facebook spokesman, Andy Stone, wrote in an email. A spokeswoman for Google declined to comment. That left conservative activists to fill in the blanks. "Good riddance," said Raheem Kassam, a former London editor of Breitbart News, who was asked about Silicon Valley's absence shortly before hosting a nightclub party that was among the conference's most sought after tickets. (Nigel Farage, the pro Brexit leader, made an appearance.) "They don't want to be welcome here," Mr. Kassam said of Facebook and Google. "Each of them has shown over the last couple of years that they are just not willing to play fair with the political right." Days earlier, Mr. Kassam set off a furor in the right wing media when his Facebook page, which has tens of thousands of followers, was deleted without warning. The move seemed to confirm conservative fears of "de platforming," the claim denied by leaders of social media that tech companies seek to suppress right wing content. Facebook quickly restored the page, calling its removal an "error," but not before the likes of Donald Trump Jr. had seized on the incident. "I'm sure this was an 'accident' like I've been hearing from the social media masters," the president's son wrote on Twitter, in a message retweeted more than 7,500 times. "Funny that the accidents only happen one way." Tech companies, including Google and Facebook, argue that they sponsor organizations of all political stripes, and their public relations teams say the policies and algorithms that patrol their platforms are intended to be ideologically unbiased. Mr. Kassam said he believed tech firms had shifted to quieter strategies to woo the right wing. "A lot of conservatives that I talk to say that, privately, they get approached by people from social media companies to try to build bridges, mend fences, whatever you want to call it," he said. "They don't want to put on a big show anymore." Greeting well wishers on his way into the conference, David Bossie, the right wing activist and former campaign aide to President Trump, said conservatives remained "very skeptical" of tech companies' motivations. So would he rather the companies shy away from CPAC, or brave the critics and try to change a few minds? Mr. Bossie sounded ambivalent. "I'd rather have them treat us better year round," he said, "instead of being here for a conference."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Media
If Alvin Schwartz 's popular "Scary Stories" children's books condensed folklore into an accessible anthology form, "Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark," an agreeable bit of fan service, performs a similar gateway function for movies. Whether it's the scene setting blast of Donovan ("Zodiac"), the low height Steadicam work ("The Shining"), the red suffused hallways (David Lynch) or "Night of the Living Dead" playing at a drive in, the movie takes from the best. The nostalgia is presumably the signature of Guillermo del Toro, who produced it. Like "The Shape of Water," which he directed (Andre Ovredal did that job here), "Scary Stories" spikes its tributes with social commentary. The movie is set in 1968, more than a decade before the first book was published. The ghosts of Vietnam haunt the periphery, and Nixon's election coincides with a gangly goblin's arrival. Schwartz's tales have been woven into a cohesive narrative (and there are nods to others that haven't been filmed) with a simple device. The main characters an aspiring writer, Stella (Zoe Colletti); her sidekicks (Gabriel Rush and Austin Zajur); and a newcomer to their small town (Michael Garza) snatch a book from a haunted house. The tome once belonged to a pariah kept prisoner by her family.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Movies
SECRETARY (2002) Stream on Hulu. Rent on Amazon, Google Play, iTunes, Vudu and YouTube. Viewers will have to decide how well the sexual politics of this unconventional romantic comedy have aged since the turn of the millennium. Maggie Gyllenhaal plays Lee, a troubled young woman who finds work as a secretary to a temperamental attorney, E. Edward Grey (James Spader). His demanding personality and her obedient one gel and their dynamic quickly becomes sexual. In his review for The New York Times, Stephen Holden called the film "a small groundbreaking comedy" and said that its characterization of Lee isn't derisive. "Lee may be shown crawling around the floor with an envelope in her teeth, but the movie still insists on seeing her as a plucky heroine plotting her own sexual emancipation." OCEANS (2010) Stream on Netflix. Rent on Amazon, Google Play, iTunes, Vudu and YouTube. This documentary by Jacques Perrin and Jacques Cluzaud explores the Earth's largest bodies of water, which cover around 70 percent of the planet's surface and contain roughly 97 percent of its liquid H2O. The film, narrated in English by Pierce Brosnan, approaches its gargantuan subject in several ways, showcasing its role as a home to many different ecosystems that each support a variety of plant and animal species. It also takes a wider look at the relationship between our oceans and the larger global environment as well as the ways in which humans interact with this major feature of their world.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Television
The artist known as Swoon has used a variety of mediums to create whimsical worlds and captivating portraits throughout her work, both for the street and the museum. But her latest large scale installation, which is on view at the Javits Center in Manhattan, centers on one method the artist is well acquainted with: printmaking. The mixed media installation was commissioned as part of this year's Fine Art Print Fair, which is presented by the International Fine Print Dealers Association and brings together galleries and publishers from all over the world. Through Sunday, Oct. 27, visitors can view the site specific installation, which unfolds across a 24 foot wide wall at the convention center, and nods to both traditional and modern printmaking techniques. " It's like a celebration of printmaking in general," the artist, born Caledonia Curry, said of the piece in a phone interview. "I tried to bring together all the various forms and various ways that I've used the print medium over the years," including paper cutouts, pattern repetition, etching and block printing. Etchings of the artist's family and friends adorn the left side of the wall, evoking an Old World feel , while the right side incorporates vivid, large scale block prints that Swoon says "feel unmistakably modern." It also includes interactive elements, like jewelry boxes people can open, and a set of doors that sat on one of the rafts Swoon built and sailed on years ago to the Venice Biennale.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Art & Design
A range of activities that allow female travelers to connect are being offered free of charge at hotels in celebration of International Women's Day, on March 8. At hotels both American and international, fees are being waived for female guests to participate in activities like clay pigeon shooting, golf lessons, snorkeling and cocktail mixing classes. At the Barnsley Resort in Georgia, 60 miles northwest of Atlanta, female guests can choose between a free 90 minute small group clay pigeon shooting clinic (normally 75 per person) or a one hour golf lesson at the Fazio Course with a focus on putting and driving (a 50 value per person). A complimentary sunset sail excursion is available at El Mangroove, a boutique hotel in Costa Rica. The three hour sail (normally 99 per person) will include snorkeling off Panama Beach and sunset views plus complimentary wine and snacks. In room hammocks provide a cozy place to keep the relaxation going after the sail. Women interested in learning to make the perfect margarita can sign up for a free two hour class (normally 80) at the Marriott Cancun Resort. This outdoor afternoon class will include a cocktail mixing lesson with a hands on component for making your own margarita.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Travel
At a key moment in the season finale of "Billions" although neither character involved knows just how key until it's too late Rebecca Cantu and Wendy Rhoades take a day trip to a recreational construction site. Yes, there are recreational construction sites. A small chain of them, actually. That chain, and this episode, is called "Extreme Sandbox." The concept is simple: Give people the keys to actual heavy machinery and let them dig holes and smash cars on a closed course to their hearts' content. If the concept sounds familiar, perhaps you watched it secure funding for expansion on an episode of the entrepreneurship reality competition series "Shark Tank." One of the sharks who backed the idea was the real life billionaire Mark Cuban. Sure enough, he makes a cameo appearance here, playing himself, to greet the fictional billionaire Rebecca when she arrives on site. "Something about the directness of the metaphor," Rebecca says to Wendy as they prepare to mount up and dig in, "is going to feel absurd for a minute. I need you to fight that off and own the fact that you're moving the expletive earth." She concludes, "Because that's what you are, and what you do in the actual world." And in the meantime, marvel at the rest of this masterly episode, which takes place outside the Extreme Sandbox's confines. When the schemes that Bobby and Chuck laid in place to destroy their enemies come to fruition, there are no safety precautions. For the people they destroy while inflicting considerable damage on themselves in the process the wreckage they leave behind is very, very real. Of the two erstwhile allies, Chuck makes a more satisfyingly cathartic go of things. As some viewers might have suspected, "the idiot who stands to lose the most" in his and his father's real estate scheme was Chuck's former protege turned arch enemy, Bryan Connerty, and his Texan overlord, Attorney General Jock Jeffcoat. The Rhoadeses knew that the two federal attorneys' zeal to destroy Chuck would leave them wide open for retaliation. More important, from a poetic justice perspective, they knew using that zeal against Bryan and Jock would be the juiciest way to get it done. So from a very early stage, Chuck and Charles discussed bribing officials all the way up to Treasury Secretary Todd Krakow, part of a sting operation designed to catch Connerty and Jeffcoat breaking the law in pursuit of the Rhoadeses' wholly imaginary lawbreaking. Ignoring the warnings of his underling Kate Sacker, whom Chuck brought on board to help deliver the coup de grace, Bryan gets busted listening to a sealed tape recording in which Chuck and Charles hilariously make fun of him with the absolute certainty that he's listening in. He's in the process of clumsily resealing the tape that predicted his demise when the arrest is made. Surveillance photos of his break in at Charles's house seal the deal. As for Jeffcoat's threats to destroy Chuck once and for all ... well, you might say or he, himself, certainly might say that he's all hat and no cattle. With the help of a bugged lapel pin Kate placed on Bryan's suit jacket, Rhoades has Jock on tape ordering Bryan to break the law. Ol' Jock is in deep manure this time. The only flaw in Chuck's plan is that he took his eyes off what should be the real prize: his wife Wendy's career. Although she voluntarily confessed to abusing patient confidentiality, she's still hoping to keep her medical license, but Chuck is too busy with his vendetta to properly help. Not so Bobby. Axe takes time out from his busy schedule of making money and ruining lives to donate millions to a charity supported by head of the medical board, helping to earn Wendy a reprieve. When she finds out the identity of her benefactor, Wendy decamps from her marital home, perhaps permanently, and crashes in the guest room at Bobby's bachelor pad. There's a moment, a minute even, where we (and Bobby?) believe she may want to share his bed instead, but that tantalizing and likely disastrous prospect is put off for now. Don't think that Bobby's slacking in the revenge department for a second, though. The moment Rebecca and Wendy head off to the Extreme Sandbox, he makes his move. Through a back room deal with the investor Sandy Benzinger whose bluster about preserving an American institution is revealed to be just that he arranges to shutter the Saler's department store chain Rebecca dreamed of owning since she was a child, effective immediately. The company is stripped for parts. Its employees are given pennies on the dollar for their years of loyal service. Its debt is off loaded to the appliance company owned by Taylor Mason. His rival is ruined. He and Sandy and even Rebecca get even richer. And his and Rebecca's relationship is ruined, but who cares? Not Bobby. The moment Rebecca struck a deal with Taylor over that appliance company, he tells her, he knew that he could either strike back at her now or let it fester for years. If he ripped off the scab, as he puts it, and found there's nothing healthy underneath, so be it. All that remains is kicking Taylor Mason Capital when it's down, and that's where Chuck comes in. At Bobby's direction, Chuck uses Axe's former employee Rudy as a cat's paw while revealing that the guy has a pretty solid operatic tenor voice in a sting operation intended to snare Taylor on insider trading. Taylor, who smells a rat and just wants to make a relatively honest living (or killing), passes on the deal. That's not supposed to stop Chuck from taking Taylor in on trumped up charges regardless, offering a humiliating deal to go back to work at Axe Cap in exchange for freedom from prosecution. But with his marriage a shambles, Chuck has once again fixed his eye on his true enemy, the man he blames for all his problems: Axe. Taylor and the brain trust of Mase Cap will go back to Bobby's shop, all right, but as Chuck's inside agents. It's nothing Bobby wouldn't do to Chuck if the opportunity presented itself, and that's what Taylor is counting on. At some point the two men will turn on each other. All Taylor has to do to come out on top is wait it out and walk away calmly when the inevitable explosion occurs. But the grimmest thing about "Billions" in general, and about this episode in particular, is not the personal damage these characters do to the people they know and work with and even love. It's the utterly impersonal destruction they visit on people, thousands of them, whom they don't know at all. Sure, Bobby broke Rebecca's heart. But she can cry herself to sleep on a billion dollar bed as a result. The 50,000 employees of the store Axe annihilated along with his relationship? They'll take what they can get. "What they can get" is whatever Bobby, Sandy and the rest of these sociopaths, with their childlike nicknames and salt of the earth affectations, deign to give them. To such men, the lives of the working class are worth less than a rounding error. That they have working class roots themselves appears only to harden their resolve not to care anymore. They got out; what's everyone else's excuse? The notion that their own cruelty might be what's keeping their former peers down, and that their predecessors in the game helped create the very conditions they felt it necessary to escape, never occurs to them. It's not a lesson they have any incentive to learn. They're earth movers. The world is their extreme sandbox, and they have the place to themselves. Perhaps that's why so many real life billionaires are willing to appear on a show that makes them look like monsters. They can afford to.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Television
Credit...Cayce Clifford for The New York Times It takes Carlos Rojas two and a half to three hours to drive from his home in Stockton, Calif., to a job spreading plaster on houses going up in Campbell, on the southern rim of Silicon Valley. The trip is worth it, though. The 30 year old immigrant from the Mexican state of Oaxaca says he makes roughly 25 an hour, depending on the job. That's more than twice as much as Stockton's farmworkers typically make in the fields. And his boss pays for gas. "A lot of people returned to Mexico after the housing bust, and then came the deportations," he said. "People got scarce. Now that the work came back they are short of people." Nationwide, the average wage of nonsupervisory workers in residential construction hit 25.34 an hour in January. That's over 6 percent more than a year earlier, close to the steepest annual increase since the government started keeping track almost 30 years ago. Pay is taking off even among those in less skilled construction trades. The gains are part of a broader trend. The tightest labor market in more than half a century is finally lifting the wages of the least skilled workers on the bottom rung of the labor force, bucking years of stagnation. But to hear builders tell it, the rising cost of their crews reflects a demographic reality that could hamstring industries besides their own: Their labor force is shrinking. President Trump's threat to close the Mexican border, a move that would cause damage to both economies, only adds to the pressure. Immigration often illegal has long acted as a supply line for low skilled workers. Even before Mr. Trump ratcheted up border enforcement, economic growth in Mexico and the aging of the country's population were reducing the flow of Mexican workers into the United States. The number of undocumented immigrants in America declined to 10.7 million at the end of 2017 from a peak of over 12 million at the height of the housing bubble in 2008, according to the Center for Migration Studies. Sign up for Crossing the Border, a limited run newsletter about life where the United States and Mexico meet. The problem for builders is that the recovery in home building has outpaced the growth of the construction labor force. Housing starts have picked up to a pace of 1.2 million a month, more than twice as many as at their trough in April 2009. The number of nonsupervisory workers in residential construction, by contrast, has increased by only 40 percent since hitting bottom in 2011, to about 530,000. Were it not for immigrants, the labor crunch would be even more intense. In 2016, immigrants accounted for one in four construction workers, according to a study by Natalia Siniavskaia of the home builders' association, up from about one in five in 2004. In some of the least skilled jobs like plastering, roofing and hanging drywall, for which workers rarely have more than a high school education the share of immigrants hovers around half. The need for labor has set off a scramble for bodies that is spilling across industries and driving up wages. "A lot of our landscape companies are upset because their guys are coming into construction because they can earn more," said Alan Hoffmann, who builds energy efficient homes in Dallas. For all the fears of robots taking over jobs, some economists are worrying about the broader economic fallout from a lack of low skilled workers. And businesses across the economy are complaining that without immigration they will be left without a work force. "It is good for wages to go up, but if labor is at a point where employers can't hire, it is reducing growth," said Pia Orrenius, an economist with the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas. "There's also considerable wage pressure in small towns and cities that are depopulating, but that is a sign of distress, not of rising productivity." The labor crunch is likely to persist for some time. The Pew Research Center projects very little growth in the working age population over the next two decades. If the United States were to cut off the flow of new immigrants, Pew noted, its working population would shrink to 166 million in 2035 from 173 million in 2015. Immigration has been padding the labor force for years. Over the last two decades, immigrants and their children accounted for more than half the growth of the population of 25 to 64 year olds, according to Pew's analysis. Over the next 20 years, they will have to plug the hole left by the retirement of the baby boom generation. But the share of immigrants over 25 with less than a bachelor's degree the most likely to seek a job hanging drywall or spreading plaster has steadily shrunk, to 70 percent in 2016 from 76 percent in 2000, according to the Pew Research Center. Although the Trump administration has tried to shift immigration policy to limit the entry of less educated immigrants and draw more workers with advanced degrees, businesses are still hungry for immigrants with lesser skills. Covid's impact on the supply chain continues. The pandemic has disrupted nearly every aspect of the global supply chain and made all kinds of products harder to find. In turn, scarcity has caused the prices of many things to go higher as inflation remains stubbornly high. Almost anything manufactured is in short supply. That includes everything from toilet paper to new cars. The disruptions go back to the beginning of the pandemic, when factories in Asia and Europe were forced to shut down and shipping companies cut their schedules. First, demand for home goods spiked. Money that Americans once spent on experiences were redirected to things for their homes. The surge clogged the system for transporting goods to the factories that needed them and finished products piled up because of a shortage of shipping containers. Now, ports are struggling to keep up. In North America and Europe, where containers are arriving, the heavy influx of ships is overwhelming ports. With warehouses full, containers are piling up. The chaos in global shipping is likely to persist as a result of the massive traffic jam. No one really knows when the crisis will end. Shortages and delays are likely to affect this year's Christmas and holiday shopping season, but what happens after that is unclear. Jerome Powell, the Federal Reserve chair, said he expects supply chain problems to persist "likely well into next year." Immigrants make up almost a third of workers in the hotel and lodging industry and over a fifth of workers in the food service industry, according to the Brookings Institution. There are over a million immigrant workers in the direct care industry home health aides and personal care aides tending to the sick and the frail. That amounts to about one fourth of the total, said Robert Espinoza of PHI, a nonprofit group that does research and advocacy for direct care workers. Few of these workers studied past high school. Many didn't get their diploma. Barring immigration, such workers would be hard to find. There are fewer working age Americans who studied no further than high school than there were 20 years ago, according to an analysis of census data by Ms. Orrenius and Madeline Zavodny of the University of North Florida. Businesses scrambling for low skilled workers provide a glimpse into the kind of strains a future of low immigration might bring. Consider agriculture, where seven in 10 workers were born in Mexico, and only one in four was born in the United States. Last year, the United States issued nearly 200,000 H 2A visas for agricultural workers, three times as many as in 2012, as farmers tried to make up for the decline in the undocumented work force. Growers complain about the bureaucracy and costs associated with the visa program and worry that a government hostile toward immigrant work might decide to curtail it. But builders know the H 2B visa won't solve their problems. Many of the high school students who would replenish the pipeline of carpenters, plumbers and electricians are undocumented immigrants. "Half of the kids in the high school carpentry programs are DACA kids," said Mr. Hoffmann, the Dallas builder, referring to a program that allows unauthorized minors to stay in the United States. "They are not documented, so we can't work with them." Could the United States cope without low skilled workers from abroad? The Conference Board projects that the working age population with a high school certificate or less will continue to decline. But the economy will continue to create low skill jobs: Nearly 600,000 in food preparation and service alone will be added between 2016 and 2026. And nearly 800,000 in direct care. For all the ingenuity in Silicon Valley, there is little evidence so far that those jobs can be fully automated. Even Mr. Trump, who has insistently demanded funding for a wall along the southwestern border to keep undocumented immigrants out, appears to have softened his stance on immigrant labor, pointing out that "we need more workers."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Economy
Derek Henry Flood wasn't looking for work in March of 2018, when he sent a direct message to a New York Times reporter he admired, Rukmini Callimachi, to congratulate her on the announcement of her big new podcast about the terror group known as the Islamic State. By that time, major American news outlets had mostly stopped hiring freelancers like Mr. Flood in Syria, scared off by a wave of kidnappings and murders. But when Mr. Flood mentioned that he was in the northern city of Manbij, Ms. Callimachi wrote back urgently, and quickly hired him for a curious assignment. She sent him to the local market to ask about a Canadian Islamic State fighter called Abu Huzayfah. The assignment, Mr. Flood recalled thinking, was both hopeless and quite strange in its specificity, since the extremist group had been forced out of Manbij two years earlier. But he was getting 250 a day, and so he gamely roamed the bazaar, reporting on all he saw and heard. Ms. Callimachi was singularly focused. "She only wanted things that very narrowly supported this kid in Canada's wild stories," he told me in a phone interview. Mr. Flood didn't know it at the time, but he was part of a frantic effort at The New York Times to salvage the high profile project the paper had just announced. Days earlier, producers had sent draft scripts of the series, called Caliphate, to the international editor, Michael Slackman, for his input. But Mr. Slackman instead called the podcast team into the office of another top Times editor, Matt Purdy, a deputy managing editor who often signs off on investigative projects. The editors warned that the whole story seemed to depend on the credibility of a single character, the Canadian, whose vivid stories of executing men while warm blood "sprayed everywhere" were as lurid as they were uncorroborated. (This scene and others were described to me in interviews with more than two dozen people at The Times, many of whom spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitive internal politics.) The Times was looking for one thing: evidence that the Canadian's story was true. In Manbij, Mr. Flood wandered the marketplace until a gold merchant warned him that his questions were attracting dangerous attention, prompting him to quickly board a bus out of town. Across the Middle East, other Times reporters were also asked to find confirmation of the source's ties to ISIS, and communicated in WhatsApp channels with names like "Brilliant Seekers" and "New emir search." But instead of finding Abu Huzayfah's emir, they found that ISIS defectors had never heard of him. In New York, Malachy Browne, a senior producer of visual investigations at The Times, managed to confirm that an image from Abu Huzayfah's phone had been taken in Syria but not that he had traveled there. Still more Times reporters in Washington tried to find confirmation. And one of them, Eric Schmitt, pulled a thread that appeared to save the project: "What two different officials in the U.S. government at different agencies have told me is that this individual, this Canadian, was a member of ISIS," he says on the podcast. "They believe that he joined ISIS in Syria." But Mr. Schmitt and his colleagues, Times journalists told me, never determined why those government officials viewed him as part of ISIS, or if indeed they had any evidence of his ISIS connections other than the professed terrorist's own social media pronouncements. That assumption appeared to blow up a couple of weeks ago, on Sept. 25, when the Canadian police announced that they had arrested the man who called himself Abu Huzayfah, whose real name is Shehroze Chaudhry, under the country's hoax law. The details of the Canadian investigation aren't yet public. But the recriminations were swift among those who worked with Ms. Callimachi at The Times in the Middle East. "Maybe the solution is to change the podcast name to hoax?" tweeted Margaret Coker, who left as The Times's Iraq bureau chief in 2018 after a bitter dispute with Ms. Callimachi and now runs an investigative journalism start up in Georgia. The Times has assigned a top editor, Dean Murphy, who heads the investigations reporting group, to review the reporting and editing process behind Caliphate and some of Ms. Callimachi's other stories, and has also assigned an investigative correspondent with deep experience in national security reporting, Mark Mazzetti, to determine whether Mr. Chaudhry ever set foot in Syria and other questions opened by the arrest in Canada. Rukmini Callimachi is, in many ways, the new model of a New York Times reporter. Andrew Testa for The New York Times The crisis now surrounding the podcast is as much about The Times as it is about Ms. Callimachi. She is, in many ways, the new model of a New York Times reporter. She combines the old school bravado of the parachuting, big foot reporter of the past, with a more modern savvy for surfing Twitter's narrative waves and spotting the sorts of stories that will explode on the internet. She embraced audio as it became a key new business for the paper, and linked her identity and her own story of fleeing Romania as a child to her work. And she told the story of ISIS through the eyes of its members. Ms. Callimachi's approach and her stories won her the support of some of the most powerful figures at The Times: early on, from Joe Kahn, who was foreign editor when Ms. Callimachi arrived and is now managing editor and viewed internally as the likely successor to the executive editor, Dean Baquet; and later, an assistant managing editor, Sam Dolnick, who oversees the paper's successful audio team and is a member of the family that controls The Times. She was seen as a star a standing that helped her survive a series of questions raised over the last six years by colleagues in the Middle East, including the bureau chiefs in Beirut, Anne Barnard, and Iraq, Ms. Coker, as well as the Syrian journalist who interpreted for her on a particularly contentious story about American hostages in 2014, Karam Shoumali. And it helped her weather criticism of specific stories from Arabic speaking academics and other journalists. Many of those arguments have been re examined in recent days in The Daily Beast, The Washington Post, and The New Republic. C.J. Chivers, an experienced war correspondent, clashed particularly bitterly with Mr. Kahn over Ms. Callimachi's work, objecting to her approach to reporting on Western hostages taken by Islamic militants. Mr. Chivers warned editors of what he saw as her sensationalism and inaccuracy, and told Mr. Slackman, three Times people said, that turning a blind eye to problems with her work would "burn this place down." Ms. Callimachi's approach to storytelling aligned with a more profound shift underway at The Times. The paper is in the midst of an evolution from the stodgy paper of record into a juicy collection of great narratives, on the web and streaming services. And Ms. Callimachi's success has been due, in part, to her ability to turn distant conflicts in Africa and the Middle East into irresistibly accessible stories. She was hired in 2014 from The Associated Press after she obtained internal Al Qaeda documents in Mali and shaped them into a darkly funny account of a penny pinching terrorist bureaucracy. But the terror beat lends itself particularly well to the seductions of narrative journalism. Reporters looking for a terrifying yarn will find terrorist sources eager to help terrify. And journalists often find themselves relying on murderous and untrustworthy sources in situations where the facts are ambiguous. If you get something wrong, you probably won't get a call from the ISIS press office seeking a correction. "If you scrutinized anyone's record on reporting at Syria, everyone made grave, grave errors," said Theo Padnos, a freelance journalist held hostage for two years and now working on a book, who said that The Times's coverage of his cellmate's escape alerted his captors to his complicity in it. "Rukmini is on the hot seat at the moment, but the sins were so general." Terrorism coverage can also play easily into popular American hostility toward Muslims. Ms. Callimachi at times depicted terrorist supersoldiers, rather than the alienated and dangerous young men common in many cultures. That hype shows up in details like The Times's description of the Charlie Hebdo shooters acting with "military precision." By contrast, The Washington Post's story suggested that the killers were, in fact, untrained, and noted a video showing them "cross each other's paths as they advance up the street a type of movement that professional military personnel are trained to avoid." On Twitter, where she has nearly 400,000 followers, Ms. Callimachi speculated on possible ISIS involvement in high profile attacks, including the 2017 Las Vegas shooting, which has not been attributed to the group. At one moment in the Caliphate podcast, Ms. Callimachi hears the doorbell ring at home and panics that ISIS has come for her, an effective dramatic flourish but not something American suburbanites had any reason to fear. Ms. Callimachi told me in an email that she'd received warnings from the F.B.I. of credible threats against her, and that in any event, that moment in the podcast "is not about ISIS or its presence in the suburbs, but about how deeply they had seeped into my mind." Her work had impact at the highest levels. A former Trump aide, Sebastian Gorka, a leading voice for the White House's early anti Muslim immigration policies, quoted Ms. Callimachi's work to reporters to predict a wave of ISIS attacks in the United States. Two Canadian national security experts wrote in Slate that the podcast "profoundly influenced the policy debate" and pushed Canada to leave the wives and children of ISIS fighters in Kurdish refugee camps. The haziness of the terrorism beat also raises the question of why The Times chose to pull this particular tale out of the chaotic canvas of Syria's collapse. "The narrative her work perpetuates sensationalizes violence committed by Arabs or Muslims by focusing almost exclusively on even pathologizing their culture and religion," said Alia Malek, the director of international reporting at the Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at CUNY and the author of a book about Syria. That narrative, she said, often ignores individuals' motives and a geopolitical context that includes decades of American policy. "That might make for much more uncomfortable listening, but definitely more worthwhile." Ms. Callimachi told me that she has been focused on "just how ordinary ISIS members are" and that her work "has always made a hard distinction between the faith practiced by over a billion people and the ideology of extremism." Mr. Baquet declined to comment on the specifics of Ms. Callimachi's reporting or the internal complaints about it, but he defended the sweep of her work on ISIS. "I don't think there's any question that ISIS was a major important player in terrorism," he said, "and if you look at all of The Times's reporting over many years, I think it's a mix of reporting that helps you understand what gives rise to this." (Mr. Baquet and Mr. Kahn, I should note here, are my boss's boss's boss and my boss's boss, respectively, and my writing about The Times while on its payroll brings with it all sorts of potential conflicts of interest and is generally a bit of a nightmare.) Uncovering the truth. Over several months, The New York Times pieced together the details of a 2019 airstrike in Baghuz, Syria, one of the largest civilian casualty incidents of the war against the Islamic State. Here are the key findings from the investigation: The U.S. military carried out the attack. Task Force 9, the secretive special operations unit in charge of ground operations in Syria, called in the attack. The strike began when an F 15E attack jet hit Baghuz with a 500 pound bomb. Five minutes later, the F 15E dropped two 2,000 pound bombs. The death toll was downplayed. The U.S. Central Command recently acknowledged that 80 people, including civilians, were killed in the airstrike. Though the death toll was almost immediately apparent to military officials, regulations for investigating the potential crime were not followed. Reports were delayed, sanitized and classified. The Defense Department's independent inspector general began an inquiry, but the report containing its findings was stalled and stripped of any mention of the strike. American led coalition forces bulldozed the blast site. Civilian observers who came to the area of the strike the next day described finding piles of dead women and children. In the days following the bombing, coalition forces overran the site, which was quickly bulldozed. While some of her colleagues in the Middle East and Washington found Ms. Callimachi's approach to ISIS coverage overzealous, others admired her relentless work ethic. The article, which led the front page on Dec. 28, describes a Syrian captive of ISIS, who was going by the name of Louai Abo Aljoud, who "made eye contact with the American hostages being held by the Islamic State militant group" at a prison at an abandoned potato chip factory in Aleppo and tried to report them to an indifferent American government. "I thought that I had truly important information that could be used to save these people," Ms. Callimachi quoted him as saying. "But I was deeply disappointed." The story is told with verve and confidence. As a reader, you feel as if you were there. But elements of the story were shaky: By the time, in Mr. Abo Aljoud's telling, that he was trying to alert the U.S. government that he had seen the hostages, the Islamic State no longer controlled the area the prison was said to be in. Mr. Abo Aljoud had told The Wall Street Journal the same story, and The Journal passed on it because journalists there didn't believe him, two of those involved told me. And the Syrian journalist who assisted Ms. Callimachi on the story and interpreted the interview, Mr. Shoumali, told me that he "warned" her not to trust Mr. Abo Aljoud "before, during and after" the interview, in vain. (Ms. Callimachi said that she didn't recall the warnings before publication, and noted that they don't appear in correspondence between her and Mr. Shoumali before publication.) Mr. Shoumali said he came away from the experience alarmed by her methods. "I worked for so many reporters, and we were seeking facts. With Rukmini, it felt like the story was pre reported in her head and she was looking for someone to tell her what she already believed, what she thought would be a great story," said Mr. Shoumali, who was a reporter for The Times from 2012 to 2019 and had a freelance byline this August. He spoke to me by phone from Berlin, where he is now working on a project for a think tank. Eight days after the story was published, Mr. Shoumali wrote to Ms. Callimachi and other Times reporters, in an email exchange I obtained, saying that "Syrian contacts are raising more and more questions about the credibility of one of our sources" and that Mr. Abo Aljoud had changed details of the story in a conversation the two men had after the story was published. Ms. Callimachi emailed back that details of the prison scene were "confirmed independently by European hostages held in the same location or else by the State Department" a response that seems puzzling, given that the story presented Mr. Abo Aljoud's observations as his eyewitness account. The Times was worried enough about that 2014 story to send a different reporter, Tim Arango, back to southern Turkey soon after it was published to re interview Mr. Abo Aljoud, who gamely repeated his story to him and Mr. Shoumali. I tried again in early October. Like Ms. Callimachi, I don't speak Arabic and hired another Syrian journalist to ask Mr. Abo Aljoud my questions. In that interview, he told a version of the story that appeared in The Times, but with elements that muddied the clean narrative. He said he had only seen one hostage, not the three The Times suggests. And he said he didn't realize until after his release that he'd seen any of them contrary to the impression left by The Times article. Ms. Callimachi said in an email that she wished that the story had been clearer about the "limitations" of reporting on terrorists. "Looking back, I wish I had added more attribution so that readers could know the steps I took to corroborate details of his account," she said. Mr. Kahn, the International editor at the time, continues to stand by the story. "Questions that were raised about a source in a story Rukmini wrote about American hostages in Syria were thoroughly examined at the time by reporters and editors on the International desk and by The Times's public editor, and the results of those reviews were published," he said in an email. "I am not aware of new information that casts doubt on the way it was handled." Those questions aside, the article arguably had an impact in Washington, pushing the United States government to reconsider its ban on paying ransom. But the piece itself now rests under an uncomfortable cloud of doubt. It remains on The Times website, with no acknowledgment of the questions surrounding the opening anecdote. The only correction says that the story, when first published, did not make clear that Mr. Abo Aljoud had used a pseudonym. Last month, that same cloud of doubt descended on Caliphate. And Ms. Callimachi now faces intense criticism from inside The Times and out for her style of reporting, for the cinematic narratives in her writing and for The Times's place in larger arguments about portrayals of terrorism.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Media
Read more on the Supreme Court's decision on President Trump and DACA. In each of these cases, the stay was meant to preserve the status quo only while appeals worked their way through the courts. But the Supreme Court never ruled on the merits of the second iteration of the travel ban, and it hasn't yet had (and may never have) a chance to rule on the merits in any of these other cases. Instead, emergency relief from the court has become a de facto vindication of these programs allowing them to continue to operate perhaps for the entire Trump presidency even though lower courts have held them invalid and despite no final determination by the justices that those lower courts were wrong. There is widespread debate over the cause of this uptick. The president's defenders are quick to put the blame on lower courts, which have issued an unusually high number of "nationwide injunctions" against Trump administration policies and in which, according to data compiled by the Institute for Policy Integrity at the N.Y.U. School of Law, the Trump administration has fared far more poorly than any of its predecessors. But many of the rulings from which the government is seeking emergency relief are in cases involving purely local relief and in courts that are not viewed as being on an extreme of the ideological spectrum. Yes, Mr. Trump is losing more often in lower courts, but that may say as much about his policies as it does about the judges. Instead, part of the explanation may be that the justices have moved the goal posts subtly shifting the standard that governs when lower court rulings should be put on hold pending appeal. Older opinions from the court stressed the need in such cases to balance the government's chance of winning its appeal against the public interest accounting for the harm that could be caused by allowing the challenged policy to go into effect in the interim. But now a majority of justices appear to believe that the only relevant criterion is whether the government is likely to prevail, no matter the impact on the public in the interim. And even when the government fails to obtain emergency relief, the message sent to the lower courts is usually that it should win. For instance, in a short, unsigned order from late May, the justices turned away a request from the Justice Department to freeze an Ohio federal judge's order that had required the transfer of hundreds of inmates at a federal prison where there has been a coronavirus outbreak. As the order tersely explained, the application was denied "without prejudice" to seeking such relief again, because the ruling the government sought to challenge had been superseded by a subsequent ruling that has not yet been appealed. Despite this defect, and despite a significant chance that blocking the lower court ruling would cause irreparable harm to the prisoners, Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito and Neil Gorsuch still noted that they would have sided with the government even at this stage. Some may see this development more as a feature than as a bug. But even those who cheer the results ought to be more circumspect. There are good reasons government applications for stays and grants of such applications have historically been a rarity. Among other things, they require the justices to drop everything (including the rest of their docket) and consider what are often deeply fraught factual and legal questions under significant time pressure, without the benefit of oral argument or amicus briefs, and on a scant (and underdeveloped) factual record. At the very least, if the justices mean to change the rules for when government litigants should be allowed to obtain emergency relief, they should say so. Otherwise, the court's behavior in these cases gives at least the appearance of undue procedural favoritism toward the government as a litigant a "disparity in treatment," as Justice Sonia Sotomayor warned in February, that "erodes the fair and balanced decision making process that this Court must strive to protect." Especially when that disparity seems to repeatedly favor conservative policies over progressive ones, it gives at least the appearance that the court is bending over backward to accommodate a particular political agenda a message that, now more than ever, all of the justices should be ill inclined to send. Stephen I. Vladeck ( steve vladeck) is a professor at the University of Texas School of Law. The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We'd like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here's our email: letters nytimes.com. Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter ( NYTopinion) and Instagram.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Opinion
THE HAGUE The pioneering French Impressionist Claude Monet spent the final decades of his life obsessed with his gardens in Giverny, France, painting hundreds of images of water lilies and Japanese footbridges there. In 1918, he announced to the French state that he would donate some of those images for a major installation that he called his "Grandes Decorations," consisting of many continuous panels of water lily paintings, and, above them, a series of canvases showing garlands of wisteria, as a decorative crown. The idea was to create, in his words, "the illusion of an endless whole." He wanted to have a museum in Paris dedicated to this final masterpiece, but the French state decided to show them in the Orangerie, a building in the Tuileries gardens which, at the time, was a multipurpose hall for everything from art exhibitions to dog shows. The wisteria paintings couldn't fit in this new space, and were left behind in Monet's studio with hundreds of other paintings he made in preparation for the "Grandes Decorations." It would be decades before these late works would be recognized as perhaps his most important contribution to art history. Now, they are Monet's most prized paintings. Only eight of the wisteria paintings are known to exist, and the Gemeentemuseum in The Hague owns one of them. Recently, the museum took the painting off the wall for the first time since it bought it in 1961, to prepare it for a Monet exhibition planned for the fall. Ruth Hoppe, the modern art conservator for the museum, noticed that the painting had been retouched to cover up tiny holes in it. On closer inspection, she found that there were shards of glass wedged into the canvas. Ms. Hoppe decided to do a more extensive investigation. She X rayed the work, and discovered something extraordinary: Underneath the "Wisteria" was another painting of water lilies. "There are not many stories about finding water lilies behind another painting by Monet," she said. "That could mean that this painting was kind of an experiment. Otherwise, you would begin with a clean slate." Ms. Hoppe said she had a theory that the painting underneath the wisteria might be the final water lily Monet painted. "There is no obvious reason why he would reuse a canvas," Ms. Hoppe said in an interview at the Gemeentemuseum, pointing out that Monet was wealthy at the end of his life, and had hundreds of yards of blank canvas in his studio that he could have used. "The most logical reason for me was that he wanted to try something new, and he wasn't sure yet where it would end," she added. "To my eye, this is a bridge between the water lilies and the wisteria." Marianne Mathieu, the head curator at the Musee Marmottan Monet in Paris, which owns one of the largest collections of Monet's works, said she agreed that the painting underneath was a water lily work, but wasn't so sure that it would have been the final one. "Who knows?" Ms. Mathieu said in a telephone interview. Monet may have realized that he could use the green background of the old painting as part of the new wisteria painting, saving himself some time, she said. It's impossible to know the exact sequence of events that led to Monet using the canvas again, Ms. Mathieu added, because, "No one saw them but a few friends." "He didn't sign them or date them, he didn't sell them, but for a few exceptions," she said. Monet worked up until his death in 1926 at age 86. When the "Grandes Decorations" were finally presented to the French state in 1927, the reception was poor. Some critics attributed his blue green blurs of color and light to the painter's failing eyesight. Under the direction of Alfred J. Barr, MoMA bought a series of water lilies in 1955 the first American institution to do so and the triptych in 1958. After that the rest of Monet's late paintings sold very quickly. Now many modern art museums own at least one. The wisteria works remain lesser cousins, so having a water lily contained within the Gemeentemuseum's painting may change the perception of the work in at least one way, Ms. Hoppe said. "From an art historical sense," she said, "it makes them more valuable."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Art & Design
The world cheered on Monday with the news that the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, known more widely as Prince Harry and Meghan Markle, welcomed a son. We know how daunting the field of books for new parents can be, so our editors weighed in on the books that helped them most. (Hint: lots and lots of sleep training aids.) The topics parents are talking about. Sign up now to get NYT Parenting in your inbox every week. 'The No Cry Sleep Solution: Gentle Ways to Help Your Baby Sleep Through the Night,' by Elizabeth Pantley This book quite literally saved my sanity when my first child would not sleep more than four hours at a stretch, and would cry so hard it seemed as though she was having seizures if she was left alone when she awakened. Yes, it requires openness to the idea of co sleeping, or at least a willingness to lie down with your baby while she falls asleep. But at some point it hit me: I really like falling asleep next to another person why wouldn't a tiny new baby like that, too? Pantley's not at all a co sleeping absolutist, though. Her approach has a built in flexibility that helps you tune in to your child's individual nature and needs, which are always changing, anyway. Maria Russo, children's books editor 'Happiest Baby on the Block,' by Harvey Karp I assumed this book must be the bible of a zombie cult, so many dead eyed parents shoved it at me in those first bewildering weeks. Karp's great insight is that babies are not quite ready for the world and you need to recreate the conditions of the womb for them. This involves a series of shushing and shaking and wrapping them in perfect origami swaddles, all at the same time. It's possible though to get too swept up by Karp's confidence about his method. I remember very late nights turning to the book like a secret instruction manual for my baby. Hoping that if I just did this one maneuver I believe it was called the "windshield wiper" she would finally stop screaming. All to my wife's laughter. And my daughter's continued screaming. Gal Beckerman, senior staff editor, the Book Review 'Your Baby and Child: From Birth to Age Five,' by Penelope Leach This book is outdated in many ways, but every new parent should still dip into it. The core of wisdom in here is astounding Leach's deep scientific knowledge of child development is paired with an uncommon amount of heart and sympathy for the state of being a child. She also makes you examine your own ways with a clearer eye. I've never forgotten an anecdote involving a mom chatting with a friend while her 3 year old threw a tantrum because the mom wouldn't get up to open the sandbox. Instead of discussing how to instill more discipline, or methods of stopping a kid from acting out when she doesn't get what she wants, Leach questions why the mom wouldn't simply open the darn sandbox. Maria Russo, children's books editor	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Books
When the Brazilian billionaire Eike Batista appeared on the Charlie Rose show in 2010, he and his country were on a roll. Brazil's economy, driven by a worldwide commodity boom, grew a blistering 7.5 percent that year. And Mr. Batista's prodigious holdings spanning oil, mining, shipping and real estate were soaring in value. In the interview, Mr. Batista was asked how rich he would become over the next decade. "A hundred billion dollars," he said, an amount that would most likely have made him the wealthiest person in the world. Today, with the Brazilian stock market and the value of its currency falling as mass demonstrations hobble the country, Mr. Batista's billions are evaporating. From a peak of 34.5 billion in March 2012, his wealth has dropped to an estimated 4.8 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. His lenders are growing anxious, and there are concerns that he might have to reorganize and possibly lose control of his dwindling empire. The rise and fall of the charismatic industrialist mirrors Brazil's sudden reversal of fortune. After years of economic expansion, the South American nation has begun to sputter. Inflation has become a major concern. Brazil's stock market index has declined about 23 percent this year, the most of any large country. This month, Standard Poor's cut its outlook on Brazil's credit rating to negative, citing slowing growth and weakening finances. And then there are the street protests spreading across Brazil, stunning the country's political and business establishment. With outbursts of violence, the protests, initially caused by an increase in bus fares, have grown into a broad questioning of the government's priorities. The protests shook an array of cities over the weekend, with somewhat less intensity than in previous days, and organizers promised a new round of demonstrations in the days ahead. Mr. Batista's conglomerate, as an emblem of the nation's industrial mettle, ranked among the government priorities now being questioned, receiving more than 4 billion in loans and investments from the national development bank. While protesters have not focused much ire on Brazil's economic elite, there has been a building resentment toward the fact that governing structures subject to corruption in Brazil remained largely the same throughout the long economic boom, as authorities channeled huge resources of the state to projects controlled by tycoons. The protesters have directed much of their anger toward political leaders, some of whom are close to Mr. Batista, like the governor of Rio de Janeiro, Sergio Cabral, to whom Mr. Batista occasionally lent his private jet and who found demonstrators camped in front his home. "Eike Batista assembled an empire thanks to colossal financing from the Brazilian government," said Carlos Lessa, an economist and former president of Brazil's national development bank. "But his explosion of wealth and prominence on the global stage came with risks, as the government itself and investors are discovering now." Mr. Batista built his fortune by selling investors on the potential of Brazil, forming companies that would benefit from the country's rich oil fields, vast mining resources and fast growing middle class. But over the last year, investors in Mr. Batista's six publicly traded businesses none of which are profitable have unloaded their shares amid disappointing projections, missed deadlines and a heavy debt load. "He bundled wind and sold it," said Miriam Leitao, an economic historian and columnist for O Globo, a leading Brazilian newspaper. "The euphoria fooled a lot of people." Now Mr. Batista is shedding assets and raising cash. In April, he dumped a large stake in his electric power company. He has put a private jet, a 26 million Embraer Legacy 600, up for sale. He is seeking a partner for Rio de Janeiro's landmark Hotel Gloria that he bought in 2008, a project that was supposed to be ready for the 2014 soccer World Cup but is mired in delays. On Sunday, the newspaper Folha de Sao Paulo reported that Mr. Batista's offshore construction company, OSX, had defaulted on a payment of more than 200 million to Acciona, a Spanish construction company. A spokeswoman for Mr. Batista disputed the report, contending that OSX has been in negotiations with Acciona over "obligations." Open or closed on Thanksgiving? Here are stores' plans for Thursday and Friday. The high cost of gas is forcing families to cut back on activities and essentials. Clearview AI does well in another round of facial recognition accuracy tests. In a statement, Mr. Batista rejected speculation that his business empire could be heading toward a collapse. Referring to his recent sale of stock in his own flagship oil company, OGX, Mr. Batista called the move a "minimal timely adjustment" related to the "reduction of the cost of debt among creditors." While the move eroded confidence by investors, he emphasized that he had no plans to do so again. There was a time when Mr. Batista personified Brazil's emergence as a world economic force. The son of a former president of the Brazilian mining giant Vale, Mr. Batista was born to privilege. He earned his first millions buying gold from remote mines in the Amazon and then acquiring gold mines in Brazil and Canada. Since the middle of last decade, Mr. Batista, through his EBX Group holding company, has formed six listed businesses: OGX (oil) and OSX (offshore equipment and services to energy companies), as well as MMX (mining), LLX (logistics), CCX (coal) and MPX (power). The X in each company name is meant to symbolize the multiplication of wealth. Mr. Batista, 56, lives large and relishes the spotlight. He is a onetime champion speedboat racer, and his former wife was a Playboy cover girl. In Jardim Botanico, an upscale district of Rio, he opened a lavish Chinese restaurant, called Mr. Lam, where he entertained business visitors from the Far East. For a time, he parked his Mercedes Benz SLR McLaren, which sells for about 450,000, in his living room. He had a memoir published in 2011 with the title "The X Factor: The Path of Brazil's Greatest Entrepreneur." That book now looks in need of an afterword. Consider the ups and downs of OGX, the oil company and once one of Mr. Batista's biggest holdings. In 2008, OGX raised 4.1 billion in the Brazilian stock market in what was then the country's largest ever I.P.O. But last June, after OGX missed its production forecasts by a wide margin, its shares tanked, and have fallen about 90 percent. On Friday, three of its five independent board members, including a former Brazil finance minister and a former Supreme Court justice, were reported to have resigned. Skepticism is building beyond the ranks of his own corporate boards. "For both him and Brazil it's time to talk less and deliver more," Exame, the nation's top business magazine, recently said in an overview of the woes at his companies. There is also the decline last week in the stock of CCX, his coal business. Shares dropped 37 percent on Thursday to a record low after Mr. Batista canceled plans to take the business private. Mr. Batista said in a statement that the tumult in Brazil's stock market "doesn't represent an ideal environment to sustain the current terms" of the deal. If Mr. Batista's holdings continue to diminish in value, analysts say that his lenders, which include some of Brazil's biggest banks, could push him into a restructuring that could cost him control of his companies. The crisis at his empire is unfolding as Brazil is grappling with a decline in prices for some of the commodities the country exports, and ambitious infrastructure projects across the country face delays. While growth slowed to less than 1 percent in 2012, Brazil's economy is not in crisis. Economists still expect the economy to grow about 2.5 percent this year, even as market turbulence shakes Brazil and other developing countries. The sudden emergence of protests in more a hundred cities is putting greater pressure on authorities to lift the economy from its slowdown. Aside from his business woes, Mr. Batista has also come under scrutiny because of his family. In March 2012, his son, Thor Batista, was driving his father's McLaren when he struck a bicyclist and killed him instantly. This month, a Brazilian jury convicted Mr. Batista, 21, of vehicular manslaughter. He avoided prison, but was banned from driving for two years and fined about 500,000. His lawyers said they would appeal. Mr. Batista has maintained a brave face through the losses, reminding investors that his companies still have billions of dollars of available cash. He has also taken to social media to fight back, telling his 1.3 million Twitter followers that anyone who bet against him would be "caught with their pants down." Jack Deino, a fund manager at Invesco, appears willing to take that risk. After acquiring a big position in the bonds of the oil concern OGX, he sold his entire stake a year ago after the company announced the major production shortfall. "Batista built his businesses with a whole lot of salesmanship and hype," Mr. Deino said. "I feel like I've been burned and won't be touching any more of his ventures."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Global Business
In a recent interview with the radio personality Zach Sang, Ariana Grande described the moment she and one of her writing collaborators first listened to part of the instrumental track that would become "34 35," the second song on her new album, "Positions." "We heard the strings that sounded so Disney and orchestral and full and pure," she said. "And I was just like, Yo, what is the dirtiest possible, most opposing lyric that we could write to this?" They came up with an airy hook centered around that titular math problem, which adds up to a lascivious wink. (Nice.) Like the best songs on her previous album, "Thank U, Next," "34 35" shares a light, inside jokey intimacy with its listener; it's full of Grande's conspiratorial giggles and whispered secrets. But it also contains a few new flourishes: theatrical, plucked strings that do not evoke grandeur so much as the creep of mischievous cartoon characters; unapologetically and sometimes humorously libidinous lyrics; and occasional slips of vulnerability that reveal the giddiness and anxiety of new love. As the follow up to the record that subtly reframed Grande's persona and release strategy, "Positions" has some big Gucci tennis shoes to fill. The implicit argument of "Thank U Next" a less polished and more quickly made album that Grande put out less than six months after her more carefully orchestrated 2018 LP, "Sweetener" was that the meticulously planned, reflexively world toured Big Pop Album had become too slow and impersonal a delivery system for a digital era pop star to express herself with any semblance of authenticity or timeliness. This was particularly true for Grande, now 27, who endured two life changing events in the months after "Sweetener" came out: the death of her ex boyfriend Mac Miller, and the dissolution of her engagement to the comedian Pete Davidson. "My dream has always been to be obviously not a rapper, but, like, to put out music in the way that a rapper does," Grande explained in a December 2018 interview, while she was working on the album. It was a winningly reformist approach if not an outright revolutionary one: to turn the pop record into something more like a mixtape than a multiplatform corporate product launch all the better to swiftly deliver songs that could seem like status updates. With its text speak song titles and air of relative idiosyncrasy, "Positions" continues in that direction. But it also gestures toward Grande's earlier, more traditional past. Its R B leanings (like the twinkling, '90s nostalgic closer, "POV," or the understated "West Side," which samples Aaliyah's "One in a Million") imagine a more mature update of Grande's 2013 debut, "Yours Truly." "Off the Table," a slinky, searching duet with the Weeknd, even name checks their collaboration from Grande's pop 2014 breakout "My Everything": "I can love you harder than I did before." While "Thank U Next" emphasized hip hop cadences, "Positions" largely finds Grande exploring her full vocal range, from those whistle notes to the low croon she employs on "Safety Net," a moody ballad in which she trades verses with Ty Dolla Sign. Both the Weeknd and Ty Dolla Sign collaborations, though, feel more like demure throwbacks, and show that Grande hasn't quite figured out how to update her approach to balladry with the same fresh, personable energy that enlivens her more upbeat tunes. She fares better with a house beat (as on the weightless highlight "Motive," which features production by Murda Beatz, or the disco inflected "Love Language"), which allows her to capitalize on one of her breathy voice's greatest strengths: its uncanny ability to make a song feel like it's hovering just a few inches off the ground. The sumptuous manifestation anthem "Just Like Magic" makes this Good Witch energy explicit. "Middle finger to my thumb and then I snap it," she sings a clever lyric in the way it thwarts expectation by moving from saucy to sweet. "Positions" isn't quite the reinvention that "Thank U Next" was, but it continues Grande's effort to make the mainstream pop album a looser, weirder and more conversational space. Some of the credit for that atmosphere should also go to Victoria Monet and Tayla Parx, two of Grande's closest friends, who have been writing with her since "Yours Truly." On Grande's most distinct songs, their bestie chemistry is palpable. Many pop stars attempt to take their sound to the next level by making increasingly grand and bombastic big tent statements. Grande has succeeded largely by doing just the opposite: turning her music into an atmosphere as intimate as her bedroom, a place where she's sometimes entertaining a lover but just as often cracking goofy jokes with her closest friends.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Music
One of your mentors is the street dancer Storyboard P. How did you meet? I actually went to middle school with him. It's funny, because I saw him on the show, but I didn't realize he was the person I was going to school with until we had a talent show in our school. I saw him gliding. I was like: "You have to teach me. Please." He thought I was playing around. I was so serious. I didn't get to learn from him then, but we reconnected in high school, and he started hearing about me. I was battling local people. They would talk about me. He's the first person that I allegedly imitated. Were you intending to do that? Or was it natural? I think it was natural because I was inspired. There were a lot of other dancers that inspired me to move the way that I moved. People used to call me Lady Professor. Once he caught wind of that, he didn't want me to imitate him, but to understand exactly what he was doing. So he took me under his wing. What is it like to be a woman in such a male dominated world? It was really hard at first. When I first surfaced in the flex culture, I believe there were only three other females. So you were the fourth? Yeah. It was a really big thing because I didn't dance like the other girls. I was smooth, but I was still very aggressive. They didn't understand my style. And I have a very unorthodox look. Short hair. I wear baggy jeans and tight tops. They assumed so many things of me, so that was also a challenge. Then, there's the people wanting to get to know you better. Laughs. As far as the dancing goes, it was just a matter of proving that I could be as tough. At the Armory, there are only three girls in the show, so we have to shine in a certain way that's not the way the guys do. We get respected for that just because we are the only three.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Dance
Pop quiz: The New York City Ballet principal Robert Fairchild is dancing to the sounds of Gershwin, in choreography by Christopher Wheeldon. The title of the work contains the word "American." Where are we? "An American in Paris"? That's Mr. Wheeldon's Tony Award winning musical, which has starred Mr. Fairchild in the storied Gene Kelly role since it opened on Broadway last March. The scene was a New York City Ballet rehearsal room, where Mr. Fairchild was absorbing a correction from Kathleen Tracey, the rehearsal director for "American Rhapsody," Mr. Wheeldon's new ballet set to Gershwin's "Rhapsody in Blue." The dance will have its premiere at the New York City Ballet's gala performance on Wednesday, alongside "Mothership," a new piece by Nicolas Blanc, and Alexei Ratmansky's 2008 "Concerto DSCH." Mr. Fairchild listened intently to Ms. Tracey explain that he should use his arms in a more complex way while swirling across the room. "I don't know whether that is going to happen," Mr. Fairchild said. "Because I can't, not because I don't want to!" Until this March, when Mr. Fairchild left "An American in Paris" and his role as the G.I. Jerry Mulligan, to rejoin City Ballet full time, he was performing on Broadway up to eight times a week. The role earned him a Tony nomination (the musical received 12 and won in four categories) and several other awards for outstanding actor in a musical. And he became accustomed to being stopped in the street for his autograph and greeted at the stage doors by gaggles of screaming fans. While "American Rhapsody" repeats the winning Gershwin Wheeldon Fairchild combination (and its City Ballet performances will be conducted by Rob Fisher, the music director of "An American in Paris"), it was not conceived as a way to capitalize on the Broadway success, said Peter Martins, the company's ballet master in chief. It was Mr. Wheeldon who had suggested "Rhapsody in Blue," he said when asked if City Ballet had thought this could be a way to attract audiences who might not otherwise attend the ballet. "I didn't think about that at all," Mr. Martins said, "although that would be nice." In a telephone conversation from Stockholm, Mr. Wheeldon, who was City Ballet's resident choreographer from 2001 to 2008, said: "I was really just having a love affair with Gershwin's music. I don't think I was ready to let go." It's not entirely unknown for ballet makers to cross over to Broadway: George Balanchine and Jerome Robbins are the most illustrious examples. (In his biography of Balanchine, Bernard Taper notes that it was Balanchine who asked for the Playbill credit to read "choreography by," rather than "dances by.") Still, Mr. Wheeldon pointed out, the fortunes of choreography had been variable on Broadway. "Of course there was a wonderful era of dance," he said, "but it sort of went away when the megamusicals, like 'Les Miserables,' 'Miss Saigon' and 'Phantom of the Opera' came in. Twyla Tharp was the only trailblazer in between. But now shows like 'American in Paris' and 'On the Town' have shown there is a real appetite for serious dance." He added: "It would be lovely to think that audiences of 'American in Paris' have come away with their eyes open a little bit about ballet. They would be flabbergasted if they spent a couple of nights at City Ballet." Christopher Wheeldon, center, working with Unity Phelan and Amar Ramasar on "American Rhapsody" for New York City Ballet. Asked why he had chosen such a well known piece as "Rhapsody in Blue," Mr. Wheeldon said that he was drawn to its grandness of scale and unconventional structure. "The themes don't really resolve, they just keep on coming, which makes choreographic structure quite challenging." The ballet, which he described as a pure response to the music, has two principal couples (Mr. Fairchild and his wife, the principal dancer Tiler Peck, and Amar Ramasar and Unity Phelan) and a corps de ballet of 16. "It is quite classical, although there are a few jazz inflected movements," he said. "It's hard actually, quite virtuosic, and particularly demanding on Robbie." Mr. Fairchild, who has appeared sporadically at City Ballet over the last year, said he was finding the full time return to ballet physically difficult. "There is nothing like being faced with yourself in the studio to remind you, let's get real," Mr. Fairchild said good humoredly after the rehearsal. On Broadway, he said, he was performing the same dance steps every day, as well as acting and singing. "You are at peak fitness to deliver in a particular way, but that is not the same way as being a dancer in a ballet company doing so many different ballets, all with different vocabularies and styles. At the moment, I have much less stamina for what we do here." He continued to do a ballet barre the first part of the daily class that is an essential element of a dancer's life every day while performing in "American in Paris," as well as some other physical conditioning. But, Mr. Fairchild acknowledged, he had not maintained the full training routine that he would have at City Ballet. "I discovered that it was much harder to sing when I did a full ballet class, with all the turning and jumping," he explained. "Your muscles do a certain thing for ballet. There has to be a certain tension and readiness in the body to spring, to jump, to turn. But singing needs the opposite, room and relaxation in the upper body so that the lungs can expand and a vibration can happen." Working to regain his stamina and full technique for City Ballet had been "tough but interesting," he said. "How can I have two completely different techniques of body awareness and bleed the lines a little?" Mr. Wheeldon said he felt Mr. Fairchild had grown as an artist through his Broadway experience. "He walks into the studio every day and there is much more of a sense of a leading man," he said. "He is in command; the other dancers look up to him." Asked whether he was conscious of choreographing for a ballet audience rather than a Broadway audience, Mr. Wheeldon said it was a question of practicalities rather than expectations. "You are serving a story, having to think singing, acting and a lot of scene changes. And you have to work out what can be reproduced night after night for months or years on end, how far you can physically push the dancers." There was more freedom in working purely with movement, he added, but also more fear. "That blank canvas can feel very blank and very large," he said.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Dance
The sprawling dance floor at 3 Dollar Bill, which opened in the East Williamsburg section of Brooklyn last year. It was 2 a.m. at a onetime brewery in Brooklyn, and Shangela, a multiseason star from "RuPaul's Drag Race," swirled and strutted in a glittery red gown, lip syncing to "Toy," the bubbly Eurovision winner by Netta. As she executed a flawless death drop, a deafening roar rose from the crowd of 400, a mix of gender nonconforming Brooklyn club kids and muscular men in tank tops, leather harnesses and tight jeans, who recorded her every move with their phones. Similar scenes unfold every weekend at 3 Dollar Bill, a massive space in East Williamsburg that bills itself as the largest L.G.B.T. owned and operated nightclub in New York City. It opened last year and first made a splash with a popular party called Sutherland, and has since expanded to include events hosted by night life veterans like Susanne Bartsch, comedy nights and even a flea market. It may surprise clubgoers to learn that the person behind all this debauchery is a petite middle aged former bartender from Ireland, who can often be found wielding a broom or a paintbrush at the club. To her, 3 Dollar Bill is more than just another gay bar. "I don't have kids, so I want this place to be my legacy," said Brenda Breathnach, 54, on a recent Saturday night in her spotless basement office at the club. "I can see it being a fabulous queer place." Her unlikely journey from Irish immigrant to night life impresario began in 1994, when she left Dingle, a small port town in Ireland, to work with her brother at a pub in the Bronx called An Beal Bocht Cafe. She stayed there for a decade but yearned for a place of her own. In 2004, she took over an Irish sports bar nearby and renamed it Dr. Gilbert's, after an Irish song. It was not a great fit. "I was gay and I was sober, and I just wasn't liked," Ms. Breathnach said. "I took over, but they never took to me." One day in 2011, while scanning Craigslist, she saw a for sale posting for a Manhattan bar. It was for the Phoenix, a divey gay bar on East 13th Street in the East Village. "The Phoenix was dead," she said. "I went in there on a Friday evening, and there were two customers." She bought the bar, and after giving it a pub style makeover and a fresh coat of paint, brought it back to life. And, unlike in the Bronx, her new customers embraced her. Everyone, she said "the old people and the young people" was grateful. They "were always telling me they were very thankful to have that space," Ms. Breathnach said. The experience left her wanting more, so she began to search for a bigger place. Working with two business partners from An Beal Bocht Cafe, she came across the former Otto Huber Brewery on Meserole Street, about a block away from the Montrose L subway station. Dating from the 1860s, the complex of enormous red brick buildings had brewed a variety of lagers until it shuttered in the 1950s. Though her partners thought the space was too big and needed a daunting amount of work to get it up to code, her enthusiasm won them over and they signed a 25 year lease. After a two year gut renovation, a new sound system and lighting, the club opened last June. The 10,000 square foot space features a raw concert hall with 50 foot ceilings, disco lights and a triangular stage. The first party, Sutherland, took off immediately and generated a lot of buzz, both positive and negative, for its strict policies of no phones and no photos. (Patrons had to check their phones or seal them in special pouches.) "It's a great, magical digital detox," Tad Haes, one of the founders, said in an article in Out magazine. With seven nights a week to fill, Ms. Breathnach began looking to diversify her lineup in the fall. Around that time, Frankie Sharp, 38, a promoter who hosted the popular Westgay party in the West Village, visited the club and was impressed. "It reminded me of an illegal warehouse space that was legal," Mr. Sharp said. "It could be for theater, a cabaret, immersive theater, a live band, a place you record podcasts."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Style
Opened in September 2017, the Nobis Hotel Copenhagen is a stylish 77 room property in a landmark neoclassical building from 1903 that formerly housed the Royal Danish Conservatory of Music. Handsomely renovated interiors were designed by the in demand Swedish firm Wingardhs, known for mixing materials concrete, marble, oak, leather with furnishings both midcentury and modern. The result is a visually stunning mash up of styles, from the concrete reception desk in the polished marble lobby to the grand central staircase with ornate moldings and a glittering cascade of pendant lamps. This is also the first international property from Sweden's Nobis Hospitality Group, which has earned acclaim for its buzzy boutique hotels in and around Stockholm. Next to the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek art museum and a block away from Tivoli Gardens, the hotel is less than 10 minutes on foot from Copenhagen's Central Station. After check in, a receptionist escorted me to my Superior room, the cheapest category, and provided detailed instructions on how to control the lights and temperature. Located on the ground floor, a half flight up from street level, the airy room had chevron oak floors, greenish gray walls, a custom desk and wardrobe along one wall, and a steel four poster bed with crisp white sheets and a firm king size Dux mattress. A large arched window with a deep niche faced a busy road noisy at night but an inviting perch for people watching. In typical Scandinavian style, the restrained decor incorporated a few eye catching accents, including a modern, mobile like ceiling lamp and a lounge chair designed in 1950 by Hans Wegner. What the bathroom lacked in space, it made up for in drama. Tiled floor to ceiling in beautiful dark gray Bardiglio marble, the compact room had a large round heated mirror that remained fog free even when steam billowed from the adjacent, glass enclosed shower stall (there was no bathtub). Generously sized bath products from the cult Swedish perfume house Byredo in the rich Bal d'Afrique scent were arrayed on a polished countertop. One hiccup: the unfortunate placement of a heated towel rack behind the toilet resulted in a scalded shoulder. A sauna and a small fitness room were located in the basement, the latter with weights and a few cardio machines (during my rainy stay, the single treadmill was in perpetual use). There's also a fleet of cherry red bikes guests can rent (for a fee) to properly explore this cycling centric city. Valet and limousine services can be arranged. Wi Fi is fast and free. From the lobby, the elegant central staircase descends to Restaurant Niels, located in a somewhat hidden glass walled annex with navy floors, blush pink banquettes and amber pendant lamps. Though service was uneven, the restaurant offered an excellent breakfast buffet (from 295 kroner; included in my rate), including hearty loaves of Danish rye, poached eggs with tender greens, halved avocados drizzled with spice mix, and thick curls of cured salmon. In the evening, menus focus on seasonal Nordic products Norwegian scallops, Danish lobster, hay cheese while cocktails and a bar menu are served in a nearby bar nook. A limited menu is available for room service. A good looking splurge suited to the design connoisseur who values a comfortable, central location and can overlook the occasional choice to favor form over function.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Travel
Ford F 150 pickups with clunking driveshafts and Toyotas with noisy brakes are among the mechanical maladies covered in the latest technical service bulletins. The bulletins, compiled by alldatapro.com, offer automakers' insights into some recurring problems with various models. The bulletins, known as T.S.B.'s, are not recalls; they are information provided by manufacturers to dealers' service departments and mechanics. Unless noted, the carmakers do not offer payment assistance for these repairs beyond normal warranty coverage. Alldata.com sells a more comprehensive version of the bulletins to consumers. Here are recent examples: BMW Owners of some 2012 3 Series models may want to have their coolant expansion tank checked. In T.S.B. 170113 issued on March 1, BMW said a poor contact at the electrical connector for the coolant level sensor might lead to inaccurate readings. Replacing the tank and connector should prevent false alarms. CHEVROLET Owners of 2012 Sonics can check on a service campaign that involves their vehicles' stabilizer bar link. In T.S.B. 12172 issued on Jan. 28, General Motors said the stabilizer bars might have lower ball joint boots that were subject to dirt and water intrusion. Replacing the stabilizer bar link quiets the din. FORD Driveshafts may need to be replaced in some Ford F 150 trucks. In T.S.B. 13 3 13 issued on March 26, Ford said that in some 2009 12 models, the rubber bonded joint in the driveshaft center support bearing might show signs of separation, leading to a clunk or vibration. If separation has occurred, the driveshaft assembly needs to be replaced. Also, finding the right seating position in some Ford Escapes could be a challenge. In T.S.B. 13 2 19 issued on Feb. 28, Ford said some 2009 12 models might have rust on the track assembly for the power seat, which makes moving the seat difficult. Removing the seat, cleaning off the rust and painting the track will make for smoother moves. KIA Some 2012 Optima Hybrids may be in need of a new purge control solenoid valve, a component of the emissions control system. In T.S.B. SA142, issued on March 1, Kia said that the wrong part might have been installed. Owners may be alerted to the problem by the check engine light. Installing the proper part will cure the problem, Kia said. LEXUS Some models will receive an extended warranty on internal engine parts according to T.S.B. CSP ZLA issued on April 15. Lexus said intermittent misfires and increased oil consumption in some 2006 10 IS 250 and IS 250C models and 2006 GS 300s might be tied to problems inside the engine. The bulletin is a follow up to a 2011 T.S.B. that extended the warranty on pistons, piston rings, valve springs and related components to six years or 72,000 miles. TOYOTA Uneven rear brake pad wear may plague some Toyotas, causing grinding or scraping noises when slowing down. In T.S.B. SB0048 13 issued on March 25, Toyota said the problem in certain 2009 13 Corolla and Matrix models was most likely caused by problems with the rear disc brake pads.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Automobiles
MINNEAPOLIS Philip Dawkins asked them to tell him about their childhoods. He has never seen so many grown ups cry. Sitting across from him in cafes around the Midwest, meeting this stranger who was writing a play set in their hometown, they poured out stories of the time in the 1980s when their little community Austin, Minn., about 100 miles south of the Twin Cities made the national news for a bitter dispute that dragged on and on. The strike at the local Hormel factory, where Spam is made, was so heated even in the dead of winter that the Minnesota National Guard was called in, so dramatic that the director Barbara Kopple made an Academy Award winning documentary about it. In the history of late 20th century American labor, which saw the waning of union power, it is a much chronicled chapter. Peopled with fictional characters, and given a chronology that isn't precisely the way things actually unfolded, it's meant to capture feeling more than fact. Informed by the recollections of Dawkins's interview subjects, it's about what it was like for children from families on all sides of that strike with parents who walked the picket line, parents who crossed it, parents who worked in management. If it seems an odd subject for a show aimed at ages 9 and up, Dawkins is familiar with such skepticism; he put a line in the play about it. To him, though, "Spamtown" is fundamentally not so different from "Dr. Seuss's The Sneetches The Musical," which he and the composer David Mallamud wrote for Children's Theater Company three years ago. The theme that time was discrimination. Many of Dawkins's plays like "Charm," a comic drama set in an etiquette class for transgender students, which Davis directed Off Broadway in 2017 are written for adults. But when he chooses a topic for children, there is one constant. "I always try to find a story that centers on fairness," he said. "Even before we understand right and wrong, we understand justice. A young person will intuitively feel if something is not fair." Midmorning on a Sunday, as a snowstorm swirled outside, Davis was upstairs in the airy rehearsal hall, flipping through pages of costume and scenic designs vividly '80s outfits, many cribbed from old Austin High School yearbooks, and coolly contemporary light up houses made of hard, clear, corrugated plastic, wheel mounted to roll through the industrial set. A Brooklyn based director best known for the hit Off Broadway production of Jaclyn Backhaus's "Men on Boats," Davis is going less for realism than evocation in conjuring an Austin of the imagination. "I'm trying," he said, "to hit square in the middle of melancholy both regret and fond memories." Peppered with humor, "Spamtown" centers on five young characters: the teenagers Amy and Travis, whose Romeo and Juliet romance defies class lines; Scott and Jude, middle school cousins and best friends, whose factory worker parents are torn apart by the strike; and Carol, the littlest of them, whose white collar mother and father try hard to shield her from the chaos and enmity. Stuck to the rehearsal room wall were clues to their world: research images of the Hormel factory, which inspired the set; shots of the National Guardsmen, wearing boots like the ones that figure ominously in Davis's production; a newspaper photo of a worker's garage, the word SCAB burned into it, menacingly. In another vintage picture, a woman wears a sweatshirt emblazoned with an emphatic yet well mannered protest message, "CRAM YOUR SPAM PLEASE." Davis pronounced it, affectionately, "the most Minnesota thing ever." The action of the play begins before the 1985 strike, in what feels like an ordinary American town, where the children's biggest concerns are saving up for space camp and making the tennis team. Once the battle lines are drawn, though, they're are caught in the middle of their parents' dispute, which gets uglier the longer it goes unresolved. When Davis, 37, went to Austin with a delegation from the theater to talk with the mayor and some teachers there, one question came up repeatedly. "People kept asking me, 'What side is the play on?'" Davis said. "The play is on the side of the community of Austin." "Spamtown" doesn't demonize on the matter of labor versus management, or the strikers who went back to work when their parent union told them to versus the strikers who went wildcat. But while the play has great empathy for each of the parents, it is fair to say that it is on the side of all the kids. Peter C. Brosius, the artistic director of Children's Theater Company since 1997, was working at the Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles back when the Austin strike made headlines. An avid follower of news and politics, and an admirer of Kopple's 1990 documentary, he remembers it as a big deal. A few years ago, looking for a post "Sneetches" project to do with Dawkins, he thought of it again. A piece of Minnesota history, it seemed a good fit with what he considers part of his theater's mission helping children to "find a moral rudder and an ethical path through these really complicated moments in their lives." Even contemporary coverage of the strike sometimes noted its effect on the town's youth. A 1987 New York Times article about its aftermath mentions instances of vandalism and anonymous threats. Then comes this chilling line: "Children, frightened and confused, have been told not to pick up the telephone at home." Brosius whose theater has embraced sociopolitical subject matter in plays like "The Lost Boys of Sudan" and last season's "I Come From Arizona," about the daughter of undocumented parents wondered about the short and long term consequences of the strike on that generation of Austin's children. "An event like this has a long tail," he said, "and it affects those kids for their lives. How do you wrestle with that? Does it make you stronger? Does it break you down?" In tandem with that curiosity is a desire to help children hone critical thinking skills. That way, said Miriam Weisfeld, the theater's director of artistic development, they can look at "a collision of different ideas" and make their own judgments. To her, "Spamtown" is "absolutely a play about economic justice and unions on a literal level. It also functions very well as an allegory for what it's like to grow up in a hyperpartisan society." Dawkins, who stands a little over 6 foot, three inches, is so tall that toddlers, upon meeting him, routinely raise their arms so he can lift them high. But when he writes plays for kids, he spreads out on the floor, below doorknob height. "The world is different when you're down there," he said, "when you have to constantly reach up for help." A former child actor now nearing 40, he grew up in Arizona and was in three performers' unions by the age of 12 or so. Labor history has long been a fascination of his. But as he researched "Spamtown," he had both encouragement and pushback from locals. "There are a lot of people in Austin," he said, "who are very upset that an outsider is writing this play, or that it's being written at all. They're saying, 'You can't possibly imagine what it was like.' With due respect, they're wrong. I can only imagine what it was like." In doing that, he had help from almost 30 people who told him, sometimes with great emotion, about their experiences of growing up in Austin then. A couple of them lent him their old yearbooks; one offered her high school cheerleading uniform, in case there was a cheerleader in the play. "Every single one of the people I interviewed," Dawkins said, "has the script, and has had drafts of it since late summer." Some have given feedback. Others plan to see the play without reading it first. Some don't want to read or see it, though they did want to talk. But while "Spamtown" is set in a particular historical moment, its author emphasized that it is not intended as a work of history. "For me," Dawkins said, "it is a play about what it's like to be a young person when all of the adults are polarized, and every adult in your world is angry at other adults, and there is no room for compromise or gray area."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Theater
Often my discovery of new music new, that is, to me comes when I read about upcoming concert programs. Orpheus Chamber Orchestra visits the 92nd Street Y on Tuesday with the harpsichordist Mahan Esfahani and some delightful corners of the repertory for me to explore. For one thing, I hadn't known that the Australian composer Brett Dean had done, early in his career, an arrangement of Strauss's "Till Eulenspiegel" for nonet. It's a delight, gracefully performed here: The week began with the happy news that the Chicago Symphony Orchestra's nearly seven week strike was over, after a session brokered in the office of Rahm Emanuel, Chicago's mayor. The upshot? The musicians have given up their prized defined benefit pensions in favor of something akin to 401(k) retirement accounts. In return, they've been given meaty raises. The Berlin Philharmonic's coming first season under its new chief conductor, Kirill Petrenko, was announced, and it's a palpable step back in ambition and interest from recent years with Simon Rattle. (To read its calendar, there's little to distinguish this orchestra from other major European ensembles.) His work with these exceptionally talented musicians, who receive coveted fellowships lasting up to three years, has already had a lasting impact on classical music: Many alumni now play with major professional orchestras and ensembles. That the current roster is inspired by Mr. Thomas was evident on Wednesday at Carnegie Hall, when he led the first of two New World programs to conclude his Perspectives series this season. The concert opened with the New York premiere of Julia Wolfe's "Fountain of Youth," all rumbling percussion, spiraling riffs and eerily cresting sustained sonorities, swirling in a musical melange with hints of indie rock and Minimalism. Then the pianist Yuja Wang, also concluding her Perspectives series at Carnegie, was a fearless soloist in Prokofiev's seldom heard Piano Concerto No. 5. Completed in 1932, this compact, five movement piece shows Prokofiev in his neo Classical vein, though doing everything possible to disrupt the music's neo Classical niceties. A stretch will start out sounding like some jovial toccata, then break into fractured phrases, brutal rhythms and gnashing harmonies. The program ended with a freshly imaginative performance of Berlioz's "Symphonie Fantastique." Mr. Thomas and his players conveyed the voluptuous colors and wildness of the music, but also, and more unusually, its refinement and delicacy, as in this excerpt from the waltzing second movement. (The video begins with the smoldering conclusion of the Prokofiev concerto, and the entire concert is available for viewing on medici.tv for three months.) ANTHONY TOMMASINI	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Music
It was designed to fight misinformation, but a relatively new fact checking feature on YouTube sputtered on Monday as it displayed information about the Sept. 11 attacks alongside live streams of the fire that ravaged Notre Dame cathedral. The mistake, attributed to a misguided algorithm, underscored the difficulties the sprawling video platform faces as it responds to criticism that it has allowed harmful, hateful and false content to flourish virtually unimpeded. On Monday, news organizations were quick to share live footage on YouTube of the fire as it ripped through Notre Dame, deeply scarring one of the most recognizable landmarks in Paris. But some of those feeds were presented atop a gray box that, to some viewer confusion, presented information from the Encyclopaedia Britannica about the 2001 terrorist attacks. The company did not say why the algorithm paired the live streams with information about the terrorist attacks. A cause for the Notre Dame fire has not been identified, though investigators are treating it as an accident. The panels, which pull information from Encyclopaedia Britannica and Wikipedia, were announced last summer as part of a broader effort to root out misinformation. At the time, YouTube said they would appear "alongside videos on a small number of well established historical and scientific topics that have often been subject to misinformation, like the moon landing and the Oklahoma City Bombing." For years, YouTube, Google, Facebook, Twitter and other tech giants have faced criticism that they have looked the other way as misinformation and hateful speech coursed through their platforms. The companies have taken steps to address the problem, though lawmakers, columnists and others have criticized them for not moving fast enough. In January, YouTube said it would work to stop recommending videos based on conspiracy theories or unfounded claims. "We'll begin reducing recommendations of borderline content and content that could misinform users in harmful ways such as videos promoting a phony miracle cure for a serious illness, claiming the earth is flat, or making blatantly false claims about historic events like 9/11," it said. This month, the House Judiciary Committee held a hearing on the proliferation of hate speech online, to which it had invited public policy officials from Facebook and Google, YouTube's parent company. The hearing was streamed live from the committee's YouTube channel, but the company soon disabled the ability to comment on the feed, citing hateful speech.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Technology
Chrysler said Wednesday that it was recalling about 566,000 trucks and sport utility vehicles worldwide in two actions. The larger of the two recalls covers 381,876 trucks equipped with Cummins 6.7 liter diesel engines. Chrysler said its engineers discovered during an internal investigation that a terminal cover near the engine's fuel heater might become corroded, causing the heater's case to overheat and leaks to develop. Although the automaker noted there was a possibility that the unit could catch fire, it said it was unaware of any fires. Vehicles affected by the recall include 2010 14 Ram 2500 and 3500 pickups and 2010 14 Ram 4500 and 5500 chassis cab trucks. Chrysler says 314,704 of the recalled vehicles are in the United States. The other recall covers 184,186 Dodge Durango and Jeep Grand Cherokee sport utility vehicles from the 2014 model year for a problem with the electronic stability control system. Chrysler said its engineers found that a circuit board debris cover had the potential to disable the stability system. The automaker said it was unaware of any accidents or injuries related to the defect and that it would upgrade the .stability system software to correct the problem.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Automobiles
For centuries, Franciscan monks have led pilgrims along the Via Dolorosa, or "path of sorrows," that Christ is believed to have walked to his crucifixion. This devotional practice, mirrored in churches worldwide in the Lenten Stations of the Cross, encourages reflection and penitence. And for centuries, composers from Palestrina to Arvo Part have trod this path musically, through settings of the Passion narratives, Christ's final words and the anonymous 13th century poem "Stabat mater dolorosa," which meditates on the suffering of Mary, the mother of Jesus, as she stands at the cross. James MacMillan has undertaken this musical pilgrimage several times: a pair of Passions (St. John and St. Luke); multiple Masses; a richly expressive "Seven Last Words from the Cross" and the Stations of the Cross based piano trio "Fourteen Little Pictures." But his "Stabat Mater," written in 2015 and having its American premiere on Thursday at Lincoln Center's White Light Festival, offered him something new. "I'm quite interested in finding new ways of retreading or telling the same story over and over again in different ways," Mr. MacMillan, 60, said in a recent interview. "The 'Stabat Mater' allows a different flavor, a different perspective. To see the Passion story through Mary's eyes, as it were, even before Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, was fascinating." That perspective is one of pathos sustained through 20 stanzas of Latin verse. Mr. MacMillan divides the text into four large movements, each exploring a different shade of grief. The first movement asks, "What person would not weep seeing the Mother of Christ in such agony?" at first gently with a mournful, melismatic soprano solo then aggressively, with collective shouting. Such contrasts arise throughout: archaic choral polyphony and modernist whisperings, keening string clusters and plaintive drones. The music, for chamber choir and string ensemble, "is visceral in its energy," said Harry Christophers, who will conduct the Lincoln Center performance by The Sixteen and the Britten Sinfonia. Mr. MacMillan has since become a prolific choral composer. He was first commissioned by The Sixteen in 2002, for a setting of "O bone Jesu"; this led to a productive artistic relationship. In 2009, Mr. MacMillan created a lush, expansive "Miserere" (which will open the Lincoln Center program) for them; they later helped to launch the Cumnock Tryst music festival in his hometown. This year, The Sixteen performed in the premiere of Mr. MacMillan's Fifth Symphony. The idea for a new "Stabat Mater," however, came from the philanthropist John Studzinski, whose Genesis Foundation has championed both Mr. MacMillan and The Sixteen. The poem has a robust musical history settings include 16th century liturgical a cappella ones by Palestrina and Lassus, and large scale Romantic concert works by Dvorak, Liszt and Verdi but it was relatively overlooked by composers in the 20th century. After commissioning a series of shorter "Stabat Mater" pieces in 2014 from Alissa Firsova, Tonu Korvits and Matthew Martin (playfully called the "mini martyrs" by Mr. Studzinski and Mr. Christophers), the Genesis Foundation ordered a full scale work from Mr. MacMillan. The Sixteen and the Britten Sinfonia premiered his "Stabat Mater" in 2016 in London; two years later, they performed it in the Vatican's Sistine Chapel, which is rarely used for concerts. For Mr. MacMillan, the "Stabat Mater" holds personal relevance: Shortly after he completed it in 2015, his 6 year old granddaughter, Sara, died. But he also finds in it a broader resonance. The death of Alan Kurdi, the 3 year old Syrian refugee who drowned that same year while crossing the Mediterranean Sea, Mr. MacMillan said, "gave me a wider context to consider the 'Stabat Mater' as really quite a modern statement." And, Mr. Christophers said, "you can be of any faith or no faith to get inside this poem and really realize that actually what James is writing is something very much for the 21st century." Although Mr. MacMillan's faith gives his work a Catholic hue, he sees himself as part of a widespread search among composers for the sacred in contemporary music. Wolfgang Rihm, Sofia Gubaidulina and Osvaldo Golijov are just some of the composers who have written a Passion since 2000; others, like Tan Dun and Philip Glass, have reimagined the Passion genre to include Buddha and Ramakrishna. "You imagine the Passion text as being of antiquity and in a sense not of modernity," Mr. MacMillan said. "But Penderecki's 'St. Luke Passion' in the late 1960s showed that even using some of the most forthright modern musical language, there was real scope to re enter this traditional world, the greatest story ever told, as it were, and to tell it anew with a new language. And ever since there's a number of very different kinds of composers retreading these steps." Mr. MacMillan plans to return to the Passion story, to set the words of St. Matthew and St. Mark. But for the moment he's working on something more joyful: a Christmas oratorio.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Music
Rooms recently started at 384 a night. Prices spike during thoroughbred racing season in the second half of the summer, as they do all over town. The 28 million makeover of the showpiece hotel in downtown Saratoga Springs, N.Y., the Adelphi, took five years and was a source of much curiosity in the celebrated spa and gambling refuge. The Victorian era hotel had been showing its age and was closed for much of its renovation before reopening last October. For fans of the old Adelphi, which had an Agatha Christie novel vibe and a lush and mysterious interior courtyard, both are gone. But the new version has many winning points, starting with its well restored, column lined exterior facade and second floor porch. The hotel extends over much of a block and has respected the heritage of the building while making it appear new again. From the street, it's a perfect fit for Saratoga. As good as it gets in downtown Saratoga, with its long porch overlooking Broadway, the city's main street. Numerous bars and restaurants are a quick walk away, and both the city's venerable thoroughbred racetrack and its much newer casino technically a "racino" that allows slot machines but not table games with dealers are a short drive.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Travel
NAIROBI, Kenya For the novelist Maaza Mengiste, the coronavirus lockdowns and stay at home measures that have taken hold around the world have brought back the sense of exile she felt when she and her family fled Ethiopia in the 1970s. So it was a welcome reprieve when she was asked to participate in and help curate a virtual literary festival focused on connection specifically, between writers of African origin and readers throughout the continent and globe. "I jumped at the chance," she said in a phone interview from Zurich. "Doing this online breaks a lot of boundaries that felt insurmountable." Afrolit Sans Frontieres, a series of hourlong readings and question and answer sessions held entirely on Facebook and Instagram, kicked off on March 23 and returned for a second edition in April. A third is scheduled to begin on May 25, to coincide with Africa Day, and a fourth is already in the works. In the face of the pandemic, with countless numbers of book fairs, tours and other literary events canceled or postponed, Afrolit stands out as a gathering where readers for some sessions, hundreds have logged in can hear from authors and talk to them about sometimes difficult or taboo subjects. Writers have included Abubakar Adam Ibrahim of Nigeria, Hemley Boum of Cameroon, Bisi Adjapon of Ghana and Mohale Mashigo of South Africa. In the festival's first edition, novelists read sex scenes from their books, explored the place of intimacy in African cultures and discussed love amid war and displacement. During the second edition, writers reflected on what they wish they were asked, both about themselves and their work. The Eritrean Ethiopian novelist Sulaiman Addonia spoke about having an epiphany during a late evening walk and running home to jot down the title of his most recent novel, "Silence Is My Mother Tongue." The Egyptian writer Mona Eltahawy spoke about maintaining bravery and courage in the face of attacks, while the Ugandan novelist Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi talked about the different mind sets she gets into when writing a short story versus a novel. Mengiste, the author of "Beneath the Lion's Gaze" and "The Shadow King," sees Afrolit as both a homecoming and an example of what African literary festivals could be. "What it has affirmed and reconfirmed for me, in a really wonderful way," she said, "is what happens when African writers speak to an audience that doesn't require them to explain ethnographic or sociological questions before they get to talk about creativity." The writers, she said, didn't have to explain their backgrounds or the colonial histories of their home countries before talking about their work. Rather, the conversations went straight to the topics at hand. "It was wonderful to have that experience," Mengiste said, "and I have never had that in any other festival that I have been a part of." Wanner also wanted to transcend language barriers by involving authors not only from Anglophone countries but also from French, Portuguese and Arabic speaking parts of Africa. The readings and question and answer sessions may happen in any language, or more than one language. Even the festival's name, which combines English and French words, reflects that multilingual approach. The Angolan writer Ondjaki (the pen name of Ndalu de Almeida) said the virtual festival allowed him to connect with writers "in a very beautiful, accessible way," he said whom he might never have met except in European or American literary circles. As a writer in Portuguese a language officially spoken in just six out of Africa's 55 countries Ondjaki said many Portuguese speakers don't get a chance to access books from other writers in the continent unless they are translated. Afrolit also pushed him, he said, to start reading writers like Chike Frankie Edozien of Nigeria and Remy Ngamije of Namibia. For Troy Onyango, a Kenyan writer who moderated some of the Afrolit sessions, the pandemic has meant meditating on the present by trying to understand the past. Part of that includes reading novels like Tsitsi Dangarembga's "Nervous Conditions," which explores class, race and gender in pre independence Rhodesia, now Zimbabwe. It also has meant listening to more experienced writers about the insights to be gained from fiction and nonfiction. "I don't think before Covid 19 we would have imagined a literary festival in our living rooms," Onyango said, "and just being able to access whichever writer and being able to ask them questions from the serious ones to the mundane ones." Last week, Wanner announced that Afrolit's third edition will run under the title "Future. Present. Past." The fourth, she said, will have the theme of "Long Story Short" and will exclusively feature poets and short story writers. Afrolit is free, and Wanner isn't making money from it. She hopes to get funding so that she's able to pay the writers, especially the younger ones who might be working without the safety net of unemployment benefits or health insurance, she said. But if no funding comes through, she said, that doesn't mean she will stop. "This is something that we love and it's important that people get to realize there is all this African literature," she said. "Africa is writing. Africa is thriving."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Books
Credit...Alessandro Rota for The New York Times BERGAMO, Italy Giorgio Gori still smiles at the memory of that night. He was sitting with his son high in the stands, watching the unimaginable unfold. The party seemed to bubble up beneath them, gathering force until it consumed them, too. "Four goals? Against Valencia? At San Siro?" he said. He phrased them as questions, as if he just needed to check what he had seen was real. It was hard to believe it was happening at the time. It is even harder to believe it happened now. That day was, possibly, the proudest in the modest history of Atalanta. A great tide had made the short journey from Bergamo, the prosperous, pretty city where the soccer team is based, to Milan for the first leg of their Champions League, round of 16 tie against Valencia. Atalanta had never breathed such rarefied air. It had, in truth, scarcely even contemplated it. The whole town, it seemed, had been transplanted for the night. Alessandro Pezzotta, a fan who organizes buses for away games, had arranged 10 coaches. They were all full, 600 people in all. That was just a fraction of the exodus. "There were 120 coaches in all, I think," he said. "The traffic just never seemed to stop coming." As Bergamo's mayor, Gori and his son had been invited to watch the game in the directors box. Typically, the atmosphere among the executives is a little more restrained than it is in the stands, but that night was different. The next day, the mayor was in his office in the center of Bergamo when news started to emerge that a patient in an emergency room in Codogno, a town southeast of Milan and about an hour's drive away, had tested positive for the coronavirus. The next day, a second case was confirmed in Alzano Lombardo, only a few minutes outside Bergamo. In those long, harrowing days in late February, the coronavirus crisis seemed to bubble around the people of Bergamo, gathering force until it consumed them, too. The city shut down, the silence filled with sirens. The hospitals were overwhelmed. The local newspaper filled with the names of the dead. The army was called in to remove the bodies. Quickly, memories of that night in San Siro seemed to drift and fade, as if it had happened in another world. "It was the last day of total ignorance," Gori said. He had stopped smiling. "It was the last day when we did not worry." As the pandemic ravaged Italy in general, and the province of Bergamo in particular Gori, the mayor, sadly noted that his city had become known as the "capital of Covid" the greatest victory in Atalanta's history, what had seemed at the time to be a night of joy and wonder, took on a far darker connotation. Massimo Galli, a virologist at the Sacco Hospital in Milan, had suggested that gathering 40,000 fans together in such proximity had been an "important vector for contagion." Fabiano Di Marco, the chief pneumologist at the Pope John XXIII hospital in Bergamo, where he and his colleagues fought to save as many of the virus's victims as they could, described it as a "biological bomb." In Bergamo, though, nobody held the team or soccer as a whole responsible for the unfolding tragedy. Of course, Gori said, it is common sense to assume that "it was certainly an episode that contributed to the acceleration of it: all those people in the same place, whether it was at the stadium or gathering at home or watching it in bars." But, he said, nobody could have been expected to have known. "As far as we were concerned, the virus was something that was happening in China," he said. "It was not what happened that night. That game was the 19th. The first confirmed case was the 20th. The virus was already here." "In the last few years, it has started to see itself as a European city," he said, pointing to the development of Bergamo's airport and its university. "But identity is more important when you have that international outlook. The colors of the team are a source of security in a global world: You can be a citizen of the world, but you are a fan of Atalanta." It is something the club has sought to emphasize, embarking on a scheme in 2018 to send a blue and black jersey to the parents of every newborn in the province, encouraging them to raise their children as Atalanta fans, rather than allowing them to be tempted by the glamour and ambition of A.C. Milan or Internazionale. The pandemic did not weaken that bond; it strengthened it. Atalanta became the framework through which the city responded to the crisis. It was the organized fan networks from the club's ultras to groups like Chei de la Coriera, the travel association that Pezzotta runs that sent out the word to gather at Bergamo's trade center, the Fiera, to help the military build a field hospital. It was fans who had started leaving shuttered houses in a locked down city at 6 a.m., after a call had gone out through WhatsApp groups and Facebook pages and messages to friends of friends, to anyone who might have the experience, the expertise or even just the enthusiasm to help. It was fans who raised 60,000 euros in donations (more than 70,000) for the Pope John XXIII hospital the money they would have spent attending the return match in Spain against Valencia, the game that was one of the first in Europe to be held behind closed doors because of the coronavirus and the ultras who commissioned an artist to produce a jersey thanking the medical staff members for their dedication. "It was an important donation, but so too is the love that they have shown," said Maria Beatrice Stasi, the director general of the Pope John XXIII hospital. "It shows the passion and affection not just for the team, but for Bergamo. In a very difficult moment for the city, we have felt that affection. They showed a lot of solidarity." In the searing August heat, Bergamo is tentatively opening again. Handfuls of tourists, barely a fraction of the numbers that might have been here in another time, wander the cobbled streets of the city's upper town. Shops have strict limits on the number of customers allowed to enter. On the creaking funicular railway that connects to the elegant modern city clustered at the foot of the hill, capacity has been cut from 50 to 10. On the evening passeggiata, almost everyone out for a stroll wears a mask. Italian flags still flutter from windows and balconies. So, too, does the heart motif that caught on at the height of the pandemic, complete with the last three letters of the city's name capitalized, a play on the word love: BergAMO. Many, though, have chosen a different way to express support: a flag with a field striped in Atalanta's Black and Blue, and the words "Grazie, Ragazzi." Thank you, boys. Atalanta, like much of the rest of European soccer, returned to the field in June when the pandemic had abated sufficiently to make a return to play feasible. Many of its most ardent fans were against the resumption. In March, Claudio Galimberti, who is known as il Bocia and is the leader of the club's ultras, wrote to Atalanta's president urging him not to consent to completing the season. For others, though, the return was welcome. "Lots of people wanted it shut down, but those two hours during a game, when we had been inside for months, were a relief," Pezzotta, the fan who organized the bus trips, said. To Fabio Gennari, a journalist who has covered the team for years, the return of Serie A felt like "a push back toward normality." All of it was accomplished in its signature style: adventurous and attacking and relentless. Gasperini, the manager, does not like to see his players pass the ball sideways, even if it is the sensible option. He wants them to go forward, constantly, to score goals, to entertain. It works. Atalanta, constructed on a relative pittance, its ranks filled with players deemed either afterthoughts or underachievers, finished the league season in third place. "There is football before Gasperini and football after Gasperini," Gennari said. He has spent lockdown writing a book with his colleague Andrea Riscassi on Gasperini's revolution: Its title is "The Atalanta Fairy Tale: Between Dreams and Reality." He cannot rule out that its conclusion may yet involve winning the Champions League. That its first opponent in the pared down tournament in Lisbon is Paris St. Germain, possibly the world's richest club, is no reason to be daunted. "They have incredible mental strength, this team," Gennari said. "They can win. But they have already won, by being there." That is how it feels to the city, too. "The suffering of the people mourning for their families cannot be relieved," said Stasi, the hospital director. "Sport cannot overcome that grief. But for the city as a whole, a city that has suffered a lot, it offers hope." To Gori, the mayor, the link is even more direct. Atalanta has always been a symbol for the city. In the last few months, it has served as a flag to rally around. Now, though, it can work as a metaphor for Bergamo, a reminder that it is possible to come back, to overcome the odds, to emerge stronger from a time of struggle. "The city can find a reason for optimism in the story of Atalanta," he said. "It can be a sign of the rebirth of the city. "It is not possible to forget what has happened. It is too close, too painful. Too many families have lost a parent or a brother or a sister. These victims are not statistics: They are each personal stories to a family. But we need to think of what comes after, too. Everyone knows where Bergamo is, for this tragedy. We need to build positive associations. Bergamo can be known for Covid. But it can also be known for Atalanta."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Sports
A roundup of motoring news from the web: Honda and the advertising agency Wieden and Kennedy have produced a new ad for the sporty Civic R. The interactive video, "The Other Side," was released on YouTube last week and features the option to toggle between two narratives as the video is playing by pressing and holding down the R key on the keyboard. (Buzzfeed) Production of the new F 150 pickup truck began Monday at the Ford plant in Dearborn, Mich. Ford had to retool its Dearborn plant to build the mostly aluminum body truck and said it was doing the same at its factory in Claycomo, Mo., in order to begin building the trucks there, too, in early 2015. (The Dallas Morning News) General Motors said Tuesday that it would lay off about 160 of its nearly 1,470 workers at its plant in Orion Township, Mich. The plant builds the Chevrolet Sonic and Buick Verano. Bill Grotz, a spokesman for G.M., said that the layoffs would play out over 2015 and were being done "to adjust plant capacity to better align with market demand." (The Detroit News) Hyundai and Kia, the affiliated South Korean automakers, said this week that they would buy back millions of shares in an effort to "stabilize share prices and improve shareholder value." Hyundai said it would buy 2.2 million common shares and 652,019 preferred shares, and Kia said it would buy 4.05 million common shares. (Bloomberg)	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Automobiles
A roundup of motoring news from the web: To celebrate its return to the 24 Hours of Le Mans endurance race this weekend, Porsche is offering 80 special edition 911 Carrera S models in the classic blue and red striped Martini livery. The Martini Racing Edition 911s will come in black or white, and will be powered by a 400 horsepower 3.8 liter flat 6 that can produce a 4.1 second zero to 62 mile per hour time. (Top Gear) Fiat Chrysler Automobiles announced Tuesday that it would reintroduce the Alfa Romeo brand in North America at 83 Fiat dealerships and three Maserati dealerships across the United States and Canada. The dealerships will sell the Alfa Romeo 4C sports car, the first new Alfa Romeo to be offered in the North American market since 1996. (Reuters) According to a report from Bloomberg, Maserati will increase production of the Quattroporte and Ghibli sedans by 20 percent. Sergio Marchionne, chief executive of Fiat, Maserati's parent company, said this year that Fiat would shift its focus to upscale cars like the 66,900 Ghibli and the 102,500 Quattroporte. (Bloomberg) Hyundai delivered its first vehicle powered by a hydrogen fuel cell a Tucson crossover Tuesday in Tustin, Calif. Hyundai says the Tucson is currently the world's only mass produced fuel cell vehicle. The automaker is offering them at a 499 per month lease rate, along with an unlimited supply of free hydrogen fuel. (Hyundai)	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Automobiles
Follow our live analysis of the Biden inauguration. As schools reopen and cold weather heightens the likelihood of a spike in coronavirus cases, nurses and doctors fear that shortages of the respirator masks, surgical gowns and disposable gloves needed to shield them from infection will return with a vengeance. President Trump has sweeping powers to compel companies to produce protective gear and to guarantee that the federal government will pay them for it and as his election campaign intensifies, he has been boasting about aggressively using them. But in fact, most of his administration's use of that authority, granted under the Cold War Defense Production Act, has had nothing to do with the pandemic. A White House report released last month claimed that Mr. Trump has wielded the act nearly 80 times to alleviate shortages of masks and other medical supplies. "My administration has harnessed the full power of the Defense Production Act to achieve the greatest industrial mobilization since World War II," Mr. Trump said at a briefing to announce the report's release. His daughter, Ivanka, said in her speech at the Republican National Convention that her father had "rapidly mobilized the full force of government and the private sector." Yet all but six of the examples cited in the report were either executive orders unrelated to the production of medical equipment or Defense Department expenditures that do not address the nation's supply shortages. U.S. government agencies routinely use the Defense Production Act. It is used thousands of times a year for things like purchasing critical military equipment and speeding up infrastructure repairs following hurricanes. But during the early months of the pandemic, the White House suggested that wielding that authority would have amounted to left wing overreach. Mr. Trump's newfound embrace of the law comes as Joseph R. Biden, the Democratic nominee, has attacked the president's failure to use it. "Why in God's name didn't he move quicker on the Defense Production Act to provide P.P.E., the protective equipment for doctors and first responders?" Mr. Biden asked recently in an interview with CNN. An analysis by the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service described the administration's use of the act as "sporadic and relatively narrow," noting that most of the 1 billion that Congress allocated under the Cares Act for purchases of medical equipment and protective gear under the Defense Production Act was shifted to the Defense Department, which spent most of the money 688 million on semiconductors, shipbuilding and space surveillance. Dr. Nicole Lurie, a Biden campaign adviser who was the assistant secretary for preparedness and response at the Health and Human Services Department during the Obama administration, said: "No one is going to remember how much he slammed the D.P.A. in the past so the administration can create this illusion that they are using it. But the truth is that the White House is still failing to centrally manage the supply chain." Peter Navarro, the White House trade adviser who is the policy coordinator for the Defense Production Act, defended the administration's decision to shift 688 million in Cares Act money to military contractors, saying the companies had been financially weakened by virus related disruptions and were essential to the nation's industrial defense base. In an interview, he said the administration preferred to wield the law as a cudgel to encourage companies to act voluntarily in the national interest, though in one notable instance in April he used the act to prevent 3M from exporting respirator masks it had produced. The Justice Department has also used the law at least three times to prosecute individuals accused of hoarding or overcharging for essential medical goods. "The most important lesson of the Trump administration using the D.P.A. is that of talking softly and carrying a big D.P.A. stick," he said. "If I am trying to solve a problem with company X or company Y and they get a call from me as the Defense Production Act policy coordinator, the response is usually 'how can we help serve.'" Get Us PPE, a nonprofit group that connects health providers to available medical gear, said that 77 percent of the clinics, long term care facilities and rural hospitals requesting goods in August reported that they had run out of at least one essential item, up from 65 percent in June. In a report released earlier this month, the American Nurses Association found that one in three of the 20,000 members who responded to a survey in August said that they were short or completely out of the N95 masks that can filter out most virus particles. More than two thirds said their employers required them to reuse their masks, a 6 percent increase since May, and more than 60 percent said they felt unsafe wearing masks designed for single use. Ernest Grant, the association's president, said the lack of domestic supplies had left nurses at the mercy of foreign made masks that are sometimes poorly made or outright counterfeit and flawed. "We've been urging the administration since mid March to use the D.P.A. to ensure that everyone has adequate supplies so our nurses don't have to worry that each time they put on a mask they are putting themselves, their patients and their families at risk of infection," he said. In late March, as coronavirus cases exploded and after weeks of criticism over federal inaction, the president reluctantly invoked the act but said he would only use it in a "worst case scenario." In the following days, he claimed to have used the law to spur General Motors to make ventilators company officials say they were working on the deal a week before Mr. Trump claimed credit. He also falsely suggested the law allowed federal authorities to nationalize industries. "Call a person over in Venezuela, ask them how did nationalization of their businesses work out? Not too well," he said. Mr. Trump's disparagement of the law as disruptive to businesses a view embraced by the United States Chamber of Commerce contrasts with its frequent use. The Defense Department, on average, uses the law 300,000 times a year to ensure contractors prioritize government orders, and FEMA has employed it more than a thousand times for relief efforts following hurricanes and other national disasters, according to a report by the Department of Homeland Security. "It's not rocket science. All it does is put the government at the head of the line before the private sector," said Larry Hall, who recently retired as the director of the Defense Production Act program division at FEMA. "We're at war, and the enemy is called Covid. The question is do we have the guts that our grandfathers had to mobilize the economy of the United States against this enemy." The law gives the federal government the power to combat hoarding and price gouging and the ability to allocate vital goods in the national interest. It also includes a provision that protects industries from antitrust litigation when they cooperate with one another during a national emergency. Critics say use of the provision allowing the government to take over the allocation of scarce medical supplies would have helped ameliorate the chaotic free for all during last spring that pitted governors, hospitals and municipal health departments against one another in competition for N95 respirator masks, hand sanitizer and disposable gloves. Eight months into the pandemic, policy experts and industry officials said the federal government's ability to orchestrate the allocation of vital goods is no longer as urgent. But they say employing its authority to give companies financial resources to produce more goods would ease shortages of protective gear, testing supplies and the syringes and glass vials needed for a potential vaccine. Such incentives would also help reduce American reliance on China, they said. Scott Paul, president of the Alliance for American Manufacturing, an industry group that seeks to increase domestic production, said that many executives would welcome the financial incentives that are part of the Defense Production Act, a provision known as Title III.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Health
Protests over Sam Durant's sculpture "Scaffold," installed in the Minneapolis Sculpture Garden of the Walker Art Center, have drawn immediate parallels to the controversy this year over Dana Schutz's painting "Open Casket" in the Whitney Biennial. Both works, made by artists who are white, recall historical acts of racial violence and have been viewed by many as painful and insensitive to communities that have suffered directly from those injustices. Central to both cases are issues of cultural appropriation and artistic freedom. Should white artists, no matter how well intentioned, represent harrowing stories that are not their own to tell? Conversely, should any subject matter be off limits to artists because of their race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation or other life experiences? Mr. Durant's wood and steel scaffold, made in 2012 and previously exhibited without incident in Europe at venues including Documenta 13, is a composite of the gallows used in seven United States government sanctioned hangings from 1859 to 2006. Those include the 1862 execution of 38 Dakota men in Mankato, Minn., ordered by President Abraham Lincoln the largest mass execution in the nation's history. Ms. Schutz's 2016 painting is based on a photograph of the beaten body of Emmett Till, a 14 year old African American murdered after speaking to a white woman in 1955. Till's mother requested an open coffin at his funeral so that the world could witness what had been done to her son. On March 17 and 18, a small group of protesters blocked Ms. Schutz's painting from view at the Whitney gallery, objecting to a white artist's using and potentially profiting from an image of violence against a black person. An open letter on Facebook by the artist Hannah Black, and signed by other artists, curators and critics, called for the painting to be removed and destroyed. In the debate that quickly went viral, a counterwave of voices denounced the censorship and destruction of artworks. The reaction from African American artists was not monolithic. Kara Walker noted that "the history of painting is full of graphic violence and narratives that don't necessarily belong to the artists own life," but may inspire "deeper inquiries and better art. It can only do this when it is seen." Mr. Durant, in a statement on Saturday, wrote that he made "Scaffold" to speak out about "the racial dimension of the criminal justice system in the United States, ranging from lynchings to mass incarceration to capital punishment." He intended the work "as a learning space for people like me, white people who have not suffered the effects of a white supremacist society and who may not consciously know that it exists." But, he added, "your protests have shown me that I made a grave miscalculation in how my work can be received by those in a particular community." In an interview in March with artnet, Ms. Schutz said that she made the painting last summer, after a series of shootings of black men by the police, in part out of empathy for Emmett Till's mother. "I could never, ever know her experience, but I know what it is to love your child," she said. "It's a problematic painting, and I knew that getting into it. I do think that it is better to try to engage something extremely uncomfortable, maybe impossible, and fail, than to not respond at all." The contexts of the two pieces, with Mr. Durant's sculpture displayed outdoors in a public park and Ms. Schutz's painting indoors in a temporary exhibition, have different parameters and may have had an impact on how each institution reacted. The Walker's executive director, Olga Viso, expressing deep regret at the "anger and sadness" that "Scaffold" had brought to local Native Americans, quickly agreed with Mr. Durant to remove the gallows structure from the sculpture garden a space where children often play. On Wednesday, Dakota elders led a private mediation with leaders from the Walker, the Minneapolis Park and Recreation Board, and Mr. Durant. The artist transferred the intellectual property rights of his work to the Dakota Oyate. The entire sculpture will be dismantled in the Minneapolis Sculpture Garden in a four day process beginning Friday. The wood will then be taken to the Fort Snelling area, a site that is sacred to the Dakota people, where they will ceremonially burn the wood at a date yet to be determined. At the Whitney, Ms. Schutz's painting remains on view through the run of the Biennial, ending June 11. The Biennial has long served as a barometer of the most controversial issues of the day. "Artists have to be free to pick their subject matter; otherwise, we end up in a role of being a censor," said Adam Weinberg, the director. "Christopher Lew and Mia Locks, as the Biennial curators, selected Dana's work as part of the broader themes of the exhibition dealing with race, inclusion and violence." The controversy has prompted the museum to initiate an open forum on Saturdays called "Ethics of Looking," with the next session on Saturday. "It addresses who is allowed to speak for whom and what is appropriate," Mr. Weinberg said. "It's complicated."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Art & Design
"Hamilton," the hit musical that has struggled to combat profiteering by scalpers, is trying a new tack with its next block of Broadway tickets: a technology from Ticketmaster that scrutinizes the purchase histories of potential ticket buyers in an effort to eliminate bots and high volume resellers. The show is the third on Broadway to embrace the technology, Verified Fan, following "Harry Potter and the Cursed Child," which opens on Broadway next spring, and "Springsteen on Broadway," Bruce Springsteen's one man show, which opens on Broadway this fall. "Hamilton" implemented the technology on Tuesday morning, giving potential buyers until 6 p.m. Friday to seek verification from Ticketmaster to qualify for an early opportunity to purchase seats at performances between March 6 and Aug. 19, 2018. Once verified, fans will be allowed to buy tickets starting on Monday; the general public can buy a day later, beginning next Tuesday. "This is a new effort to put tickets into the hands of theatergoers at regular prices," said Jeffrey Seller, the lead producer of "Hamilton." "We'll always be fighting the resellers because their incentive to keep trying is so powerful. Are we making progress? Yes. But is it foolproof? Not at all."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Theater
Ace Hotel, the Portland, Ore. based brand known for its eclectic properties, is opening a location in New Orleans on March 14 and is now accepting reservations. The 234 room property is in a 1928 Art Deco building in the city's warehouse district and has an Art Deco and Dadaist inspired aesthetic, courtesy of Roman and Williams, the New York based interior design firm. The James Beard Award nominated chefs Andy Ticer and Michael Hudman are in charge of a yet unnamed restaurant where American Southern cuisine is the highlight; the property will also have a branch of Stumptown Coffee Roasters. From 189 a night. The Hunt, the popular series of pocket size travel books, recently released an edition for Boston. The guide is divided by neighborhoods, like Back Bay, Beacon Hill and Seaport. As with other Hunt books, the content is tightly focused on eating, shopping and activities a mix of offbeat gems and hip newcomers. 12. The existing Hunt guides are available in two boxed sets: one of Austin, Tex., New Orleans, New York and San Francisco; and the other of Hong Kong, London, New York and Paris. 59. AT ONE ONLY RESORTS, THE LOOK OF LAIRD HAMILTON Laird Hamilton, the surfer, is teaming up with One Only Resorts to sell Laird Apparel. A collection of board and fitness shorts, hybrid surf and polo shirts, fitness and studio pants, graphic tees and hoodie jackets will be available this month at One Only Palmilla in Los Cabos, Mexico, and at other locations, including the Bahamas, Mauritius and Maldives, throughout the year. Prices from 30.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Travel
How do New York Times journalists use technology in their jobs and in their personal lives? Talya Minsberg, a social strategy editor for The Times who is in Pyeongchang, South Korea, to cover the Winter Olympics, discussed the tech she's using. As a social strategy editor for The Times, what tech do you use on the job the most? The short answer isn't an exciting one: It's my iPhone. An iPhone 7 at that. Part of the job of a social editor is thinking about how readers find news where they already are on social channels like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Snapchat. So I try to consume news like we know many of our readers do, from their phones. When I'm in charge of what goes out on our social channels, I use a MacBook and one extra monitor, nothing too fancy. The key is having a handful of listening tools at the ready. That means I'm one of those people who have an obnoxious amount of tabs up at once. Crowdtangle, a social media analytics tool, Chartbeat, Tweetdeck, Facebook ... I could go on. I also listen to a good amount of music that can help me zone in on my work. So I'm a frequent user of Spotify and live performances I have favorited on YouTube. How much social media do you consume for work, what forms of it do you consume the most, and how do you handle the deluge? As most social media editors can attest, the job demands consuming a lot of media in all forms. Day to day, Twitter takes up most of my time and energy. I also dedicate a good amount of my attention to Facebook, Reddit and Instagram at the office. I'm very much still working on how I handle the deluge. Some days it feels like I'm always taking in information, from the moment I wake up and start listening to NPR. Creating methods to narrow down the "need to know" helps me cut out some of the noise. That could be a zooming in on sources pertinent to a story I'm working on or top news. Either way, creating lists and advanced searches on Twitter is invaluable. I also follow specific subreddits, track trending terms, and use Google Alerts. That being said, I've found it's helpful for my mental well being to take one day a week off from social media. For me, that's Saturday. It feels like a weekly cleanse and sometimes it's truly a challenge, which makes me realize just how much I really need to push myself to do it. For one day a week, I try to use my phone as one thing and one thing only: a way to text and call family and friends. Radical, isn't it? You're at the Winter Olympics as part of a team to cover the event. What tech preparations did you need to make to be ready for coverage? My first priority was ensuring I have a secure backup for everything. If something happens to my phone or computer, I wanted to make sure that wouldn't completely derail my work. I use a password manager, have two step verification on everything that allows it, and keep lots of stuff in the cloud. I've also kicked my listening tools usage into high gear. That means a wealth of new lists, alerts and threads I'm watching that are Olympics and sport specific. Do you have to keep any tech gear warm in the chilly temperatures in Pyeongchang, and how do you plan to do so? Yes! As many have experienced, phones can die quickly in the cold. Since temperatures have been hovering between zero and 30 degrees Fahrenheit, I thought about creative ways to keep my gear warm and charged. I ordered dozens and dozens of hand warmers that I plan on also using as phone warmers. The backup plan to that backup plan is having more than one phone on me, and more than one external charger on me. That being said, none of my gear will do me any good if I'm an ice cube. So I thought about keeping myself warm too. SmartWool socks are my Olympic fashion staple. What is our social media strategy set to be at the Winter Olympics? I'll tell you about the tool I'm most excited about a new messaging system with one of our sports editors, Sam Manchester. Sam will be sending messages from the Olympics to readers within The New York Times app. There are a handful of exciting things you'll see on the messaging app. But perhaps most exciting is the fact that you will actually be able to talk to Sam, who is a real life human and not a bot! He's going to be your man on the ground who will take you behind the scenes of the Games in all their excitement and quirkiness. Outside of work, what tech product are you in love with using in your daily life right now? MoviePass, which provides a subscription plan so members get movie tickets at a cheaper price. I wasn't a big moviegoer and this has completely transformed my habits overnight. What could be better about it? The most frustrating feature is that you have to be within 100 yards of a theater to reserve tickets. I wish you could reserve tickets in advance without being there. I don't see a reason against it, especially if there was a penalty for not showing up at the movie after reserving tickets to dissuade no shows, a la ClassPass. What do you do to get away from social media? I get moving. I've been an avid runner since I was a little kid, and there's nothing that makes me happier than a good long run. I'm hoping to get in some runs in the very early mornings in Pyeongchang, SmartWool included.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Technology
"La Clemenza di Tito," Mozart's least loved opera, returned to the Metropolitan Opera on Saturday evening to an auditorium yawning with empty seats. The cast wasn't to blame. With the fiercely empathetic mezzo soprano Joyce DiDonato as Sesto, a trouser role she has made her own, this revival made a strong case for the work's rehabilitation on musical grounds. But by recycling the airless Rococo dress staging by Jean Pierre Ponnelle from 1984, the Met perpetuates the prejudice against the work as dramatically irrelevant. His take is so short on ideas that it might be more honest to let the singers wear their own clothes and call it a concert production. Mozart wrote "Clemenza" on commission in 1791 for the coronation of Leopold II as king of Bohemia. In the opera, a Roman emperor forgives his friend, who had been compelled by love to conspire against him. The 1734 libretto, by Pietro Metastasio, already felt sclerotic by Mozart's theatrical standards; he tweaked it to create ensemble numbers amid the sequence of dry recitatives and pomp and firework arias that made up a traditional opera seria.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Music
WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. Museums that seemed on the brink of reopening in New York are staying shut after Gov. Andrew Cuomo modified the state's reopening plan last week. In California, arts institutions that had briefly reopened have had to padlock their doors once again. As the coronavirus epidemic continues to intensify across the country, museums have had to recalibrate their plans for renewed engagement. Remember when you thought your "first" museum visit would feel like a payoff as the pandemic abated? Here in the Berkshires, after four months when the only museums I saw were on my phone screen, I went to two: the Clark Art Institute in Williamstown, and the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art in neighboring North Adams. Both now require advance booking, as well as masks. Both limit admissions to a fraction of total capacity, though you shouldn't have trouble finding a slot; with all of the region's cultural festivals canceled Tanglewood, Jacob's Pillow, the Williamstown Theater Festival the museums have regrouped for local audiences and the hardy art lovers ready to travel here. (Massachusetts requires visitors from out of state to self quarantine for 14 days, though those from New York, New Jersey and the other New England states are exempt from the directive.) I expected what would surprise me most were the new sanitary rules: how circulation is regulated, how guards handle their new responsibilities, what happens in the cafes and the bathrooms. But the rules weren't that obtrusive if you can handle a supermarket aisle in these bad new days, you can handle an enfilade of galleries. The greater surprise was the impact of the art itself, which in some rooms felt like a salve for miserable times, and in others like trivialities from a vanished world. Not that breathing room was hard to come by: Mass MoCA's 250,000 square feet of converted factory buildings offer ample acreage for hygienic art appreciation, and I was often the only person in a gallery. The more than 100 wall drawings by Sol LeWitt, whose colors and lines ripple across three stories of an old mill, were all mine on a Saturday afternoon, as were the galleries devoted to Jenny Holzer, whose viperous axioms "PROTECT ME FROM WHAT I WANT," "MONEY CREATES TASTE," all the classics appear on wheatpasted posters or curved LED signs. Mass MoCA has also opened two new exhibitions, just a little delayed by the Covid closure. One is a large showcase by Blane De St. Croix, an ecologically minded artist from New York. Tumbledown stacks of painted wood and resin, or a huge sheet of punctured, deliquescent Styrofoam, suggest melting permafrost and worn rock formations; cast sheets of crumpled paper map changing Arctic surfaces. His work has a worthy green heart, though I'm far more interested in art that dramatizes the experience of living through climate change (as suggested through some documentary footage shot in Utqiagvik, Alaska, the northernmost city in the U.S.) than the mere fact of its occurrence. A group exhibition, "Kissing Through a Curtain," features 10 artists working around the topic of translation, though the theme is so broadly defined words into new languages, images into new contexts, people into new nations that it collapses into itself. Its strongest participant is the Brooklyn based artist and writer Kameelah Janan Rasheed, whose room filling collages recut Black poetry, philosophy and archival matter into compelling environments of new meaning. But far too many artists here "translate" as literally as the Duolingo app: Justin Favela remakes academic Mexican landscape painting, but this time with the tissue paper of pinatas; Jessica Vaughn remakes the minimalist grid, but this time with Chicago subway seats. Just west in Williamstown, the Clark has had to make some significant recalculations to its exhibition program. Two shows have been delayed for a year. A summer show of site specific outdoor sculpture, meant to be encountered across the institute's bucolic 140 acre estate, is now being installed on a rolling basis. Right now just one work is ready: Analia Saban's charming "Teaching a Cow How to Draw," a wooden fence running across the pasture, whose diagonal split rails recall lessons in an introductory art course: one point perspective, the Rule of Thirds, the golden ratio. The fence is a drawing in space for both human visitors and the Clark's resident bovines, who've already taken a liking to it. (Sculptures by Nairy Baghramian, Haegue Yang and others will be installed later this summer.) Further interspecies collaborations can be found in a pavilion at the top of the hill, where the Berlin artist Lin May Saeed's darkly humorous exhibition "Arrival of the Animals" features sculptures, drawings, bas reliefs and metalwork that probe the ethics and emotions of human animal relationships. There are motifs both familiar (St. Jerome and the lion) and unforeseen (a camel hanging out in front of the Doha skyline), but one polystyrene effigy, completed before the pandemic, has an unexpected new resonance: say hello to the pangolin, the long snouted, scaly mammal suspected of being the host of the novel coronavirus. A zoonosis like Covid 19, Ms. Saeed's art suggests, is just the most virulent manifestation of a boggling net of interdependence between us and the animals we love, sell, eat, draw. Still, it's the historical collection of the Clark, which generously kept its grounds open to the Williamstown public throughout the lockdown, that feels most meaningful to return to. (Each gallery has a maximum capacity posted at its entrance; on the Sunday I went, I never had to wait to enter one.) There's a Constable wheat field painted in 1816 whose bounty belies that year's calamitously cold summer, when failing crop yields provoked health and economic crises not unlike our own. There's an impossibly tender late still life by Manet, each rose petal so fugitive and modern that I felt my breath catching beneath my sweaty surgical mask. There's my favorite Bonnard, an 1891 picture that compresses two women playing with a dog into a riotous clash of polka dots, gingham and sunflowers. And a presentation of newly donated drawings, from the collection of Herbert and Carol Diamond, includes lovers by Ingres and saints by Delacroix that are models of rigorous perception. Is it frivolous to say that the 19th century French paintings and drawings at the Clark offer as much or more today than the installations and videos at Mass MoCA? I don't think so. If one of the hallmarks of the Covid crisis has been its acceleration of changes already in progress, then in the art world we've seen how quite a few practitioners who trumpeted their relevance are not as relevant as they claimed. What have we needed these past four months? What have we not missed after all? In Mass MoCA's translation show, a pamphlet tells us that the artists "address timely, urgent questions," even as new wall texts anxiously apologize that the show came together before the coronavirus outbreak and the murder of George Floyd. Might we now accept that contemporary art even when it turns its gaze to race and nation, disease and climate is not as "urgent" as a breaking news report? Might the truly urgent enterprise, in a time of plague and protest, be not posing questions over and over, but helping to forge a public capable of answering them?	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Art & Design
It is the start of a school year unlike any other. Many schools, especially in large urban districts, are fully remote. In New York, school opening was announced and then delayed. Some schools have opened and then grappled with quarantine. Others started closed and are now opening. As this has been happening, I've been talking and writing a lot about school opening and the best ways for parents and educators to gauge the risks involved. My central message has been that we need to focus on the denominators. Much of the reporting on schools has focused on cases of Covid 19. There are several dashboards, including in The Times, which do an excellent job of collecting the available information on coronavirus cases in schools. That information is limited, but it has grown over time. What these reports lack, though, is a sense of the size of the pool. Knowing that there are five cases associated with a school may be useful information, but it is difficult to interpret that information without knowing whether those cases occurred in a school of 15 students or a school of 1,500. One way to think about it: If there are five cases in a school of 15, then if your child interacts with other children randomly, there is a 35 percent chance that they interact with someone who has Covid 19. If there are 5 cases in a school of 1,500, there is a 0.33 percent chance. That's the denominator. Denominators are part of the larger context, but they are not the only piece. We also need to understand what schools are doing. Are they undertaking mitigation? Masking? Distancing? Are they open at all? Some reported cases come from districts which are operating fully remotely, or districts in which the cases occurred before school was open. In both of those situations, the cases have nothing to do with schools, they just happen to be among school affiliated people. Without linking the cases to their context, it is very difficult to understand what the numbers mean. Several weeks ago, I teamed up with a group to try to fix this data problem. This group included a technology company, Qualtrics, that collects and analyzes baseline and follow up data, and a group of educators, from superintendents' and principals' associations, who had access to schools. The project is largely volunteer, although we have a small amount of foundation funding. (Our team is not monetizing the data, and identifying information on districts or schools will not be made public.) Our goal was to start not with case counts of Covid 19 but with schools. We wanted to ask schools how they were opening (or not), what mitigation strategies they were using, and to describe their enrollment and staffing levels. And then we wanted to ask them about Covid 19 cases. But only once we had the context. The highly decentralized, fragmented American school system makes this kind of data collection difficult, and it may explain why a coordinated Covid 19 response in schools has been so hard. Reporting requirements vary from district to district and from state to state. Even in states with detailed coronavirus school case dashboards, such as Tennessee, the group that creates the dashboard, usually a state Covid 19 response team, often does not have good access to underlying enrollment data. Private schools have little or no reporting requirements for coronavirus, but in many locations they are the only ones to open. These private schools are an opportunity to learn about what might happen when public schools open in these areas, but only if we have data. This fragmentation means there is no centralized location to look for the context we need. But it also provides opportunities: Since there is so much individual decision making, there is enormous variation across the country in school reopening plans. This variation provides an opportunity to learn about the effectiveness of different reopening strategies. But, again, only if we have the data. We are starting to get the data in, and it's available in a public dashboard, here. Our Qualtrics team is analyzing it, but it can also be analyzed directly, by anyone. We have data from about 400,000 children in more than 700 schools across 48 states, while the total K 12 population in the United States is about 56 million. So we have a way to go. About 123,000 of those children are in person on an average day, along with 47,000 staff members. And we have information on Covid 19 cases, at least in the first weeks of school. So far, the numbers are small. In our data, as of Sunday, confirmed case rates in students are 0.073 percent and, in staff, 0.14 percent. That means, in a school of 1,350 students you'd expect one case every two weeks and, in a staff of 100, one case about every 14 weeks. These numbers are about three times as high if we include suspected cases. The top line numbers are usually what people ask about first, but by starting with the context we can look at all sorts of additional information. For example: In some school districts, staff are working in person and students are not in person. Staff suspected and confirmed case rates in these schools look similar to schools that have students in person (although all are low), which suggests that staff may be spreading the coronavirus to each other, or these cases may be the result of general community spread. Another simple finding: Private schools in our data have lower infection rates, which seems to reflect, at least in part, their demographics and the fact that they do more mitigation. Data with more context can also reveal the relative frequency of coronavirus prevention policies (masks are the most common, while routine staff testing is very uncommon) and give information on the use of different learning models.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Opinion
WANT to spend more quality time with your doctor? Maybe you should try joining a group. Paradoxical as that may sound, it works remarkably well for Bill Swain, 69, who began going to shared medical appointments several years ago after his doctor suggested the idea. Now he attends quarterly sessions for eight to 15 people that usually last 90 minutes. A digital white board lists group members' vital signs, such as blood pressure and weight. Mr. Swain, who doesn't like falling behind his peers, especially likes the accountability and the extra medical attention. "Yearly physicals can mean sliding too far back," said Mr. Swain, who is retired and lives in Ellensburg, Wash. "I had a lump on my neck a few months ago. It turned out to be nothing, but I might have put it off until my physical. This way, I have the physician's ear four times per year." Shared medical appointments are still relatively rare, but they are slipping into a system rife with 15 minute doctor visits, nearly doubling in popularity in the last 10 years, according to the American Academy of Family Physicians. And they are being seen as one weapon for fighting fast rising diseases like diabetes, which threaten to overburden the health care system. Several studies show that group visits are particularly effective at keeping chronic illnesses in check. Typically, recent lab results are discussed and patients can schedule individual time with doctors if they need it. Nurses are also on hand to refill prescriptions or take vital signs. Some experts see shared medical appointments as one antidote to the increasingly rushed typical medical visit, which doesn't provide enough time to discuss chronic illnesses or overall wellness care. An aging population will intensify the need for new solutions in coming years, experts say. The idea of structured group visits is generally considered the brainchild not of a physician but of Edward Noffsinger, now a semiretired California psychologist. Though he had a life threatening illness, Dr. Noffsinger said, he had difficulty getting an appointment to see his doctor, and even when he did, visits were too rushed. "I wanted to give people more time with their doctors," he said. "And then there's the opportunity to share with other patients. People feel responsible to others, but not their doctor." These days, the medical treadmill keeps going faster and faster, he said. "The problem is getting worse, not better," he said. "But when you're sick, you want good care and support." Byron Haney, a family physician and Mr. Swain's doctor, sees group visits as a powerful prescription. Patients are able to take over more of their own care, while he acts as a facilitator. "It's so outside the box," Dr. Haney said. But the results, he added, are startling, such as greater patient satisfaction and sustained weight loss. "People leave knowing that recovery is possible and that they're not alone," Dr. Haney said. He sees shared appointments as a powerful community medicine tool to more effectively meet future needs. Dr. Haney also uses shared medical appointments to help prevent diabetes, one of the country's fastest growing diseases. "I've never had a prediabetic convert to diabetic in a group setting," he said. Shared medical appointments are being used elsewhere, too. Joslin Diabetes Center, based in Boston, offers the Weight Achievement and Intensive Treatment program, a 12 week program and group intervention for diabetics that helps control weight and manage the disease. "People in groups do much better than individually," Dr. Hamdy said. "They find wonderful friendships and motivate each other." Mike Herlihy, a 69 year old diabetic, turned to the Joslin program several years ago after having trouble losing weight on his own. "The program completely changed everything," he said. By the end of 2010, he had lost 70 pounds, and he has managed to keep most of the weight off. Changing his lifestyle was the hardest part, Mr. Herlihy said. But the Joslin program, and the team there, helped him. "Behavior change is the toughest thing to do," he said. "But this is a holistic approach." Mr. Herlihy says he continues to exercise one hour a day, regularly checks his sugar levels and even carries a scale to weigh in when he travels. "I learned discipline, like eating slower or having only half a sandwich," he said. "I feel pretty good, and that's reinforcing, too." Nevertheless, shared medical appointments are not a panacea. The group visits don't work for everyone, said Edward Shahady, a family physician and medical director of the Diabetes Master Clinician Program at the Florida Academy of Family Physicians Foundation in Jacksonville, Fla. Some patients find that it's not their style, said Dr. Shahady, who has been offering shared medical appointments since 2003. And Dr. Carole Lieberman, a psychiatrist in Beverly Hills, Calif., bristles at the whole idea of shared medical appointments.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Your Money
Q. Is Apple also slowing down older iPads? If so, will it replace batteries at a reduced rate? A. In response to accusations that it intentionally hindered older products, Apple's public explanation and apology says that only certain iPhone models were affected by the software updates designed to prevent the battery from conking out unexpectedly. In fact, Apple's mea culpa states, "This power management feature is specific to iPhone and does not apply to any other Apple products." The "power management" tool was first introduced in early 2017 with iOS 10.2.1 for iPhones. Longer times for apps to start up, lowered audio volume and screen brightness, a disabled camera flash and jerkier frame rates are signs of the performance reduction in action. Apple said only the iPhone 6, iPhone 6 Plus, iPhone 6s, iPhone 6s Plus, and iPhone SE models were included at first, but it added the iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus with the iOS 11.2 update in December.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Technology
The 2018 Winter Olympics, Pyeongchang 2018, will take place from Feb. 9 to 25 in Gangwon Province, a resort region clustered in the Taebak Mountains northeast of Seoul. The games will be spread across three main venues: Pyeongchang, where the official Olympic Village and Olympic Stadium are; Jeongseon, where Alpine skiing will take place; and Gangneung, where ice skating will take place. Pyeongchang and Olympic satellite cities will have free shuttle buses to Olympic game venues and also to each satellite city. For more information on schedules, visit the official Pyeongchang 2018 website, or download the official mobile app, available for Apple iPhones or Google Android devices. Also note that Verizon Wireless customers in South Korea can have their international fees waived for the month of February by signing up for its reward program. International flights arrive at Seoul's Incheon International Airport. From the United States, Korean Air has flights to Incheon from more than a half dozen cities, including New York, Washington D.C., San Francisco and Dallas. Asiana Airlines also has flights to Incheon from five United States cities including New York, Chicago and Seattle. Visitors have numerous hotel options in and around Pyeongchang. The local Olympic organizing committee has contracted special rates at 35 hotels in the area, for a total of more than 5,300 rooms. According to the committee's accommodation newsletter, nightly rates average 265 for hotels in Pyeongchang and 90 in satellite cities. Beyond those hotels, the region has plenty of other resorts. In Pyeongchang, for example, the 214 room Holiday Inn Resort Alpensia Pyeongchang has nightly rates starting at 450 over the Olympic period, while the 419 room Holiday Inn Hotel Suites Alpensia Pyeongchang has rates starting at 408. Rooms at either property can be reserved by calling 1 888 465 4329, or visiting the websites for each hotel. Another option in Pyeongchang is the 238 room InterContinental Alpensia Pyeongchang Resort; nightly rates during the Olympics start at 450. Reserve by calling 1 888 424 6835 , or by visiting the hotel website. Tickets went on sale for South Korean residents last February, but roughly 80 percent of the 750,000 tickets allocated to South Koreans were still available at the end of October. Of the 320,000 tickets set aside for international fans, 57 percent had been sold. As of Jan. 15, 67.6 percent of all available tickets have sold, according to Pyeongchang 2018 organizers. Skiing events appear to be the most sought after. Roughly 80 percent of the total tickets for Alpine skiing and cross country skiing were sold as of late December, the most of any sport. Currently, individual tickets for various medal round Alpine skiing events can be had for 150 to 200 per ticket through CoSport. Figure skating is always a premiere attraction, and this year short track speedskating will also be in the spotlight. "South Korea is especially good at short track speedskating, so expect that to be a hard one to get," Victor Mather, a sports editor for The Times who will be on location for the Winter Games, said. Tickets for short track speedskating are now sold out on CoSport. You should also consider lower profile events that are fun to watch in person. Mr. Mather said the biathlon was surprisingly enjoyable during the 2014 Sochi Games, but you may want to steer clear of bobsled events. "Watching the sled streak by is kind of cool, maybe once or twice," Mr. Mather said. "But it lasts only a fraction of a second. Standing in the cold for a very brief glimpse of speeding metal isn't that great of a time." Beyond individual tickets, CoSport had been selling package deals that combined events or included hotel accommodations and other perks, but most have sold out, according to the website. Athletes will compete in four new events this year: Big Air snowboarding, Mass Start speed skating, Mixed Doubles curling and an Alpine skiing team competition. Big Air is the latest addition to the increasingly popular snowboarding category, which added the Slopestyle event in 2014. As of mid January, tickets were still available through CoSport for the women's Big Air final on Feb. 23 for 211 each. Showcasing South Korea's rich culture during the Olympics is a top priority for locals, according to Choi Moon soon, the governor of Gangwon province and the co president of the Pyeongchang Organizing Committee. Visitors can get a taste by heading to the Cultural Olympiad, held in the Pyeongchang Olympic Plaza. The events will feature two pavilions, one highlighting modern Korean culture, the other focusing on more traditional elements. Both pavilions will have plenty of art on display and feature live performances in a variety of art forms, including music and dance. Also, from Feb. 2 to Feb. 24, Gangwon Province's tourism board is hosting a cultural festival at the Gangneung Art Center in Gangneung si, a city about 45 minutes from Pyeongchang. The festival will showcase Korean music and dance in two to four performances a day. Korean singers and musicians will take part in performances that highlight international music and dance styles, including ballet, jazz, opera, pop music and modern dance. All shows are free to attend. Rani Cheema, a South Korea travel specialist at Tzell Travel Group, says Gangwon province is an undiscovered destination worth traveling to whether you're headed to the Olympics or not. "It's a paradise for active travelers," she said. "In winter, there's good skiing, snowboarding and trout fishing, and summer is prime for hiking and mountain climbing." During the Olympics, she said, visitors can expect temperatures to drop below zero and advised bringing enough warm clothing. "It will be unbelievably cold in February," she said. Skiers can hit the slopes at three popular resorts in Gangwon province: Yongpyong Ski Resort, Alpensia Ski Resort and Elysian Gangchon. For culture, Ms. Cheema suggested visiting her favorite Buddhist temples in the area: Naksansa, Woljeongsa and Sinheungsa. "Buddhist temples are a sight to see all year round, but during the winter, especially if the snow is falling, you'll feel like you traveled back in time," she said. Depending on where you stay, your hotel concierge can help plan additional excursions in the area.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Travel

Subsets and Splits

No community queries yet

The top public SQL queries from the community will appear here once available.