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A carving of a camel in sandstone rock in Al Jawf, a site of several camel reliefs in northwest Saudi Arabia. Some 2,000 years ago, perhaps, ancient artists in the Arabian desert climbed tall rock outcrops and carved life size camels into the stone. Now, archaeologists exploring a site in northwest Saudi Arabia have discovered about a dozen of the humped sculptures. Although camel art has been found in other parts of the Arabian Peninsula, the newly uncovered engravings at the so called "Camel Site" are stylistically unique. The findings, which were reported Tuesday, could help provide insight into the history and development of rock art on the Arabian Peninsula. "This is a major new discovery and in some ways a completely new type of rock art in Saudi Arabia," said Maria Guagnin, an archaeologist from the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History who was not involved in the study. "The naturalistic, almost three dimensional depictions are unlike anything else I've seen before and highlight the skills of their prehistoric engravers." Though much of the artwork is damaged from erosion or vandalism, the parts still visible suggest careful attention to detail. Sometimes the camels were carved alongside other beasts of burden, like donkeys. In one rock panel there is a camel lying on the ground with its head tilted toward a donkey that is on its feet. The two are nearly touching. "It raises its head to the head of the donkey, like Michelangelo in the Vatican it's the connection of two species," said Guillaume Charloux, an archaeologist at the French National Center for Scientific Research and lead author on the paper, which appeared in the journal Antiquity. "To me, it's a real piece of art." Dr. Charloux along with Hussain al Khalifah from the Saudi Commission for Tourism and Heritage, led a team to explore the site in Al Jawf. "When we arrived at the site, we were astonished," said Dr. Charloux. The team conducted three short visits in 2016 and 2017. They found 11 camels, two donkeys and one unknown horse like animal. Despite their detailed artwork, the ancient artists left very few inscriptions or pieces of writing behind unlike at many other rock art locations. That left the team with many unanswered questions, like who carved the sculptures? How did they carve them? And why camels? Dr. Charloux suspects the engravers were influenced by Nabatean art, which came from an ancient nomadic people in the area, as well as the Parthians from what is now Iran. The Camel Site, he said, may have served as a border that signaled the edge of the Nabatean territory. It also could have been a rest stop for caravans crossing the desert to trade, or a spot to worship. Dr. Charloux said based on its similarities to other works, it most likely dated to about 2,000 years ago. But the site is currently on private land that has been damaged by bulldozers, and it is difficult to scientifically date. Laila Nehme, an archaeologist also from the French National Center for Scientific Research but not involved in the paper, said the work was unique because it was carved in relief, but added that she wasn't ready to associate the work with the Nabateans or any other group in the region. Peter Magee, an archaeologist from Bryn Mawr College in Pennsylvania said the finding shows the ingenuity of those who lived in ancient Arabia. But he pointed out that without scientific dating, the findings were tentative. "An even earlier date for these amazing sculptures cannot be ruled out," Dr. Magee said. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Science |
Warming up with glogg at the Christmas market at Hojbro Plads in Copenhagen. The walled cities of Valletta and Mdina are your entry points to this Mediterranean archipelago, which many conquerors and countries have left their mark on. Visitors will likely be entranced with this cultural mash up, but come December, Malta's deep rooted Catholicism is on full display in the celebration of Christmas. Of special note is the stunning St. John's Co Cathedral, a soaring barrel vaulted space, built in the 1570s. The church hosts candlelit carol singing throughout the month of December. Malta, Where the West Was Born Prague has become one of the most visited cities in Europe for good reason: remarkable architecture, rich history and excellent drinking and eating options. During the winter, its churches, castles and other large distinctive buildings provide a dramatic backdrop to the city's attractive landscape. Its Christmas markets are considered among the best in Europe. This year's theme is "The History of Prague," so many gables on the market huts are decorated to represent historical figures like Franz Kafka. Five Places to Go in Prague Hong Kong's skyline at night is visually stunning all year long, but this December the city takes it to a higher level with an update to A Symphony of Lights, which has illuminated Victoria Harbor since 2004. A revamped version of the light show and a new recorded soundtrack performed by the Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra began on Dec. 1. As impressive as Hong Kong's skyline is, the city also remains one of the most passionately creative in Asia, a playground for artists and designers, chefs and entrepreneurs. Cribs are a big deal in Rome come Christmas time. In addition to the larger than life Nativity scene in St. Peter's Square, you can feast your eyes on the remarkably detailed 18th century Neapolitan carved wood crib at the Church of SS. Cosma and Damiano by the main entrance to the Roman Forum, and visit the annual "100 Presepi" exhibition at the Sale del Bramante, Piazza del Popolo (open through Jan. 7), to see a crib with parts made of everything from coral to chocolate. Quebec City has long drawn admirers to its historic district the famed ramparts, quaint cobblestone lanes and handsome stone houses. This area transforms into a scenic Christmas village each December. The 403 year old capital of Quebec revels in the outdoors at Christmastime, when stone buildings sparkle with lights. Consider a toboggan down the steep wooden tracks of the Dufferin Terrace Slides in front of the castle like Fairmont le Chateau Frontenac, cross country ski on the Plains of Abraham, or skate at the Place d'Youville rink. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Travel |
He Thought He Was Getting Football Physicals. He Was Being Abused. For more than 40 years, Chuck Christian did not call himself a victim because he did not think he was one. He was a muralist who had played tight end at Michigan. He grew up poor in Detroit but came to be a world traveler. He contracted prostate cancer and outlived his doctors' predictions. Then, in February, an old teammate called. Remember Dr. Robert E. Anderson? The team doctor at Michigan who performed painful, unexplained rectal exams? Someone reported him, the former teammate said, and it turns out that what he did to you, and to so many other players, was probably a crime. Christian soon learned that, like him, many other athletes had quietly left the campus without recognizing that Anderson's behavior demanded an investigation. These days, Christian grapples with questions about how long his cancer may have grown undetected because his experience with Anderson had instilled a lasting distrust of doctors. "Dr. Anderson left a stain behind," Christian, 60, said last month. "Now others will have to clean up his mess." Christian was the youngest of four boys, and his first field was Frederick Street, on a Detroit block near Mt. Elliott Cemetery. "If it snowed, we'd go out, shovel the snow, put on our gloves and still play," Christian said. He was probably four or five inches too short to earn a basketball scholarship, and when it came time to consider a pile of football offers, his mother wanted him to stay close to home. Ann Arbor was less than 50 miles away, and Coach Bo Schembechler was making Michigan into a Rose Bowl mainstay. Christian chose the Wolverines. Not long after he arrived on campus in 1977, Christian went to see Anderson, who earned his medical degree from the university in 1953. Anderson came to be regarded as "a pioneer in the field of sports medicine," as an alumni magazine said later, but at the time, he drew power from his status as a gateway to Michigan's gridiron: He oversaw annual physicals for football players. When Christian first went for his, he expected a physical as routine as those he had undergone in high school: a hernia check and some testing of his joints. Anderson did those, Christian said, but also inexplicably and inappropriately, medical experts said put on a glove and conducted a rectal exam. "It hurt like crazy, and I screamed like a baby," Christian said. "He said, 'Oh, you feel pressure?' I said, 'No, I feel pain.'" But he passed the physical. A teammate who had gone before him was waiting outside so they could return to practice together, and they confided in each other that they had felt "violated." (In a separate interview, the teammate, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss abusive treatment, described a similar exam and the conversation with Christian.) So each year, he braced for his physical. Each year, he said nothing. "I knew if I said, 'No, no, don't do that,' it could cause him to fail me with my physical," Christian said. "And I didn't want to fail my physical, because I really wanted to play football at Michigan." Wearing No. 85, he played in Michigan's first Rose Bowl victory since 1965. 'This is not supposed to be happening.' Christian remembers being the only art major who also wore a football letter jacket at Michigan, but he followed a fairly ordinary path as he finished college. He earned his degree, married his girlfriend and moved to Massachusetts to escape a wretched economy in Michigan. He worked at a bank for a while but felt trapped and out of place. He turned to a career in art and had three sons as the family settled into one of Boston's southern suburbs. He would see Anderson on television during games but did not dwell on their encounters because, he said, "you tuck it away somewhere you don't have to deal with it, don't have to think about it, don't have to talk about it." All the while, Christian generally avoided doctors and resisted the most intimate medical procedures. When he went to a doctor at age 45, the snap of a glove sent his mind scrambling to Anderson's office, and he refused a prostate exam. About seven years later, in 2012, Christian declined to see a urologist after a worrisome lab result. But in 2016, he began waking nearly a dozen times a night to use the bathroom. His wife and his primary care doctor, whose discussions with Christian over the years had been mostly about his blood pressure, insisted that he see a urologist and have a complete evaluation. The specialist checked Christian's prostate and found it hard and enlarged. Testing revealed that it was overwhelmed with cancer cells and that the disease had spread. A blood test showed Christian's prostate specific antigen level was more than 16 times higher than normal, and his Gleason score, a 10 point measure of prostate cancer's aggressiveness, was a 9. Christian had maybe three years to live, doctors told him just before his 57th birthday. Christian with his wife, LaDonna, who was a nursing student when the couple met in college. "We just sat there and looked at each other," his wife, LaDonna Christian, recalled. "We were just starting our lives, our kids just left, we just paid off the loans. This is not supposed to be happening." Anderson, who retired in 2003, was already dead. Not long after Chuck Christian's graduation, a defensive tackle from Louisiana named Warde Manuel enrolled at Michigan. More than three decades later, Manuel was his alma mater's athletic director, and in July 2018 he received a letter from a former wrestler. Anderson, the wrestler wrote, had in the early and mid 1970s "felt my penis, and testicles, and inserted his finger into my rectum too many times for it to be considered diagnostic." The wrestler described a reaction much like Christian's, a perspective that experts consider common among abuse victims: "He was the doctor, and it never occurred to me that he was enjoying what I was not." The letter eventually prompted a police investigation, and more people described troubling encounters with Anderson. One, who was 65 when he spoke to the authorities, said he had received more prostate exams as a student than as an adult. According to law enforcement documents obtained through a public records request, a former vice president of student life told investigators in November 2018 that he would "bet there are over 100 people" who could accuse Anderson of wrongdoing. The former vice president said he moved to fire Anderson decades ago after learning of what was happening in the exam rooms, but instead allowed the doctor to resign to speed the process. The investigator told the man that Anderson had never actually left the university, and the official was "visibly shaken," according to a detective's report. Michigan did not disclose its inquiry until this February. (The university said its announcement had been prompted by the end of a review by prosecutors, not by a forthcoming article in The Detroit News. The prosecutors said they could not file any charges because of Anderson's death and Michigan's statute of limitations.) One of Christian's former teammates soon called him about the revelations. Christian understood at last that the exams had been criminal, not merely uncomfortable. They were also, he realized, why he had such a powerful, nearly uncontrollable aversion to doctors. "If they had dealt with Anderson back then, he never would have violated me and all of my friends and all of the players that came after," Christian said. He often wonders whether more regular visits with doctors would have uncovered his cancer before it metastasized. Although doctors who were not involved in Christian's care said it is impossible to know when he developed the disease, Christian sobbed as he recently discussed his avoidance of crucial testing that might have detected the cancer sooner. "I regret it so much," he said. "I wish I had done it. But I didn't." A spokesman for Michigan, Rick Fitzgerald, said in an email that the university had "great admiration for Chuck Christian and other former U M athletes who are bravely stepping forward to share their stories." Lawyers have told some accusers, including Christian, not to speak to university officials or their hired investigators from WilmerHale, a law firm. Still, Fitzgerald said WilmerHale was reviewing more than 300 "unique complaints." Michael L. Wright, a lawyer for Christian, said he was working with about 140 former Michigan students who had accused Anderson of misconduct. Some former students who hired other lawyers have already pursued litigation against Michigan, which said in a court filing this month that it was "confronting through credible allegations the sad reality that some of its students suffered sexual abuse at the hands of one of its former employees." Although Wright's clients have not gone to court, in part because of the continuing inquiry, he said he would begin litigation if negotiations with Michigan deteriorated. Wright said he expected the university's investigation to show "an institutional cover up." Christian knows it is virtually certain that he not will see the outcome of the investigations and the lawsuits that could last for years. He elected to speak out, he said, to urge athletes who may have been abused, at Michigan or elsewhere, to report what had happened. And he has tried to come to terms with what happened to him. "I didn't forgive him for him," he said of Anderson. "I forgave him for me so I wouldn't have that poison on me, so I would be free to be Chuck, to be that loving guy who everybody knows. "I'm not going to allow him to kill me." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Sports |
Another wedding. The tight smiles of parents and stepparents. The awkward toasts and embarrassing dance floor moves. The squabbles and hookups. The open bar. You've probably been to a hundred like it, if not in real life then at least in romantic comedies. In this one, called "Palm Springs," we're not here to pay attention to the bride and groom their names are Tala and Abe, by the way, a fact you'll be reminded of from time to time but to observe two of the guests. One is the boyfriend of a bridesmaid. His name is Nyles, and he's played by Andy Samberg, which signifies that he's a funny guy. Although he is also, as someone observes, a "pretentious sad guy." That someone is Sarah (Cristin Milioti), another wedding movie archetype we might recognize. She's the bride's difficult sister, maybe not quite as toxic as Anne Hathaway's character in "Rachel Getting Married," but on that continuum. Early on, we see Sarah gripping an enormous glass of wine, and later she describes herself as someone who drinks too much and sleeps around. We suspect from their first encounter that Nyles might be someone she eventually sleeps with, but also that what happens between them will be about more than just sex. Sarah's feline wit complements his puppy dog silliness nicely, and it's clear that the relationship Nyles brought into the movie (with Misty, played by Meredith Hagner) is doomed in any case. You don't have to be a genre scientist to know where this will end up. But the long, crazy middle of this wildly funny, admirably inventive movie is where the surprises are lurking. I'm not generally a spoiler phobe, but I have to say I'm a little dismayed at the trailers and news stories that seem willing to give away the conceit so brazenly. Just to mention the name of the much loved comedy that this one is sure to remind you of is to risk divulging too much. I'm going to do that in the next paragraph, so consider yourself warned. Still here? It's OK: Sarah doesn't listen either when Nyles warns her not to walk into the mysterious cave with the strange glowing light. That's where something happens that drops her into the infinite time loop where Nyles has been trapped for a very long time. He has been reliving the same day for who knows how long, and now she's in the same pickle. No one in "Palm Springs" gives any indication of having seen "Groundhog Day," but the writer, Andy Siara, and the director, Max Barbakow, obviously have, and they assume you have too. The way this film plays with that one updating its themes and taking issue with some of its philosophical insights is one fun thing about it. Another is how accidentally apt "Palm Springs" feels, given the infinity loop that so many of us have been stuck in since shortly after the movie was snapped up at Sundance for a record price. The fact that every day for Nyles, and then for Sarah, is the same as the one before it is less a goofy premise than an unnerving reflection of the world as it is. On some days, like the rest of us, they find the will and ingenuity to improvise, to assert their ability to make themselves and their surroundings a little better. On other days they just let themselves get drunk, lazy or mean. They can't stand talking about their situation but they can't often talk about anything else. It's fascinating. It's tedious. It's awful. It's there. Whatever happens, their eyes pop open the next morning that same morning to the same reality. They are at once completely free and utterly stuck, and the freedom can't be separated from the stasis. This predicament feels quite a bit darker than it did when Bill Murray endured it back in 1993. For one thing, Samberg is a softer shelled crab, exposing the kind of tender nerves that Murray protected under a carapace of cynicism. His rubbery face registers a surprising amount of hurt. And Palm Springs turns out to be an angrier, more violent place than Punxsutawney. There's a guy named Roy (J.K. Simmons) with a mortal grudge against Nyles. Death, which Sarah dabbles in, isn't permanent it just resets the day a little sooner but pain, as Nyles repeatedly says, is real. And pain is a necessary ingredient in any successful comedy. The trick, which Barbakow and Siara seem to have mastered on their very first try, is to find the misery of the right kind and intensity, to imply tears that match the laughter. The jokes come in rude, fast waves, but the undertow is a heavy, lingering depression, a sense that it wouldn't really matter if life returned to normal because normal life was its own empty, repetitive nightmare to begin with. That, at least, is one of the possibilities Sarah and Nyles entertain on their sometimes madcap, sometimes melancholy adventures in the eternal present. One of them is reluctant to leave, while the other longs to escape, but the movie invites you to wonder whether there's a meaningful difference between resignation and rebellion. The starkest version of that question is whether it's possible to imagine a future worth wanting. I'd tell you the answer, but that would be a spoiler. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Movies |
For the Fox comedies "The Simpsons" and "Family Guy," two of the most prominent and longest running animated series on television, announcements Friday outlined major shifts in the use of white actors to play characters of color on those shows. Mike Henry, a "Family Guy" voice actor who is white, said in a tweet that he would no longer play the role of Cleveland Brown, a black character who has appeared on that series since its debut in 1999. "It's been an honor to play Cleveland on 'Family Guy' for 20 years," Henry wrote in his tweet. "I love this character, but persons of color should play characters of color. Therefore, I will be stepping down from the role." Separately, the producers of "The Simpsons" said that the show, which recently completed its 31st season, would make even broader changes. "Moving forward, 'The Simpsons' will no longer have white actors voice nonwhite characters," its producers said in a statement. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Television |
In history's long parade of pushy mothers and miserably obedient children, no episode beats Dr. Frank H. Netter's for a happy ending. Both parties got the last laugh. Netter was born to immigrant parents in New York in 1906. He was an artist from the time he could grab a pencil, doodling through high school, winning a scholarship to art school, and enunciating intentions of making his living as an illustrator. Then his mother stepped in, and with an iron hand, deflected him to medicine. Frank's siblings and cousins all had respectable careers, she informed him, and he would, too. To his credit, he lasted quite a while: through medical school, hospital training and almost an entire year as a qualified doctor. But he continued drawing the whole time, making sketches in his lecture notes to clarify abstruse medical concepts for himself, then doing the same for classmates and even professors. Then, fatefully, his work attracted the notice of advertising departments at pharmaceutical companies. In the midst of the Depression, he demanded and received 7,500 for a series of five drawings, many times what he might expect to earn from a full year of medical practice. He put down his scalpel for good. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Health |
Cindi Leive, the editor in chief of Glamour, says that a writer has about three seconds to grab a reader's attention, so let's blurt this out: After 16 years, she says, she's quitting her job. This departure, one she announced to her staff this morning, makes her the fourth editor of a major magazine to vacate the role in the space of a week. In order of announcement, they are Graydon Carter of Vanity Fair, Roberta Myers of Elle and Nancy Gibbs of Time. "As in all things magazine related, damn Graydon got there first," Ms. Leive said. She laughed and tucked her bare feet under her on the living room sofa in her Brooklyn townhouse. This was the day before she would inform Glamour's staff, and she was a little nervous about telling her team the news. "I'm sure I will be, in my grandmother's words, 'highly verklempt.' I'm a bit of a crier anyway," she said. She refers to her staff as her "Glam fam": "I just love love love the people I work with," she said. Her toenails were painted a bluish gray. They looked perfectly nice but still ready for a fresh pedicure. She will stay on at the magazine until the end of the year, but soon she'll have the time for primping. As every magazine editor knows, three is a trend. So what to make of four? Ms. Leive's departure from Glamour would matter in any circumstance. Coming now, it cements a sudden sense that there is an unprecedented change of the guard. Ms. Leive was among a now fairly thin rank of those who were magazine editors before magazines became brands. "To me, a brand was Kellogg's," she said of her early days. "But I have gotten comfortable with the term." Like any media executive worth her six figure Twitter following, Ms. Leive is proud to share today's measure of magazine success: 11 million monthly unique visitors to Glamour.com, 15 million followers across social media platforms, a robust "Women of the Year" award ceremony and events business, a video that has garnered 147 million views on Facebook. It's called "Your Period in 2 Minutes." "Perhaps you saw it?" she asked. Ms. Leive's stomach growled beneath her flouncy Tanya Taylor dress, with its cutout shoulders. She drank water. "I'm leaving the brand in great shape," she said. The least vague reason she would offer for her decision to quit now related to her mother, a biochemist who died when Ms. Leive was 19. "Not to get too emo, but my mom died when she was 49 and last year I turned 49," she said, and here, her voice got wobbly. "I felt like I have been given this gift of so much more life and I wanted to do something with it." She wouldn't comment on what her next gig will be other than to say what it won't be: "I'm not going to another big media job or to a similar position at another company." She gave the impression that she has plans. "I adore my kids, but I'm not leaving to spend more time with my kids," she said. Ms. Leive and her husband, Howard Bernstein, a film producer, have two children, Lucy, 14, and Ike, 12. They needed some reassurance that their mother leaving her job is a good idea. "When I told this to my son, his main concern was, 'Oh my God, are you not going to be verified on Instagram anymore?'" she said. She too was captivated by a certain idea of status when she was younger. While a college student, Ms. Leive was an intern at The Paris Review, working out of its old basement offices. She saw herself studying for a Ph.D. and getting a job that would be, as she put it, "Important with a capital I." After graduating from Swarthmore College when she was 21, she allowed herself a one year frivolity, a job at a fashion magazine. But then something unexpected happened. She found that she loved being an editorial assistant at Glamour, loved the mix of fashion and politics, civics and silliness. She stayed for 11 years. "The type of things they were writing and editing," she said of Glamour's more senior staff, "were the things me and my friends were talking about." She loved working for Ruth Whitney, Glamour's editor of 31 years. She even loved working for Bonnie Fuller, the less refined, more sex and celebrity focused replacement to Ms. Whitney. (She says the "three second" attention rule is a Bonnieism.) After working for Ms. Fuller for less than a year, she became the editor of Self, also published by Conde Nast. When Ms. Fuller was asked to resign in 2001, Ms. Leive returned to Glamour, as its editor in chief. Even though she had been at Glamour for years before, and also had two years as editor of Self under her belt, there was a steep learning curve. Early in her tenure, she promised a celebrity that she could have approval over her appearance on the cover. "It was someone I greatly admired," Ms. Leive said. Ms. Leive selected the photograph that she knew was the right one for the magazine's demographic and newsstand appeal. The actress hated it. Ms. Leive tried to persuade her that it was a flattering picture, but the actress wouldn't budge and Ms. Leive worried about making the celebrity unhappy. She didn't want Glamour to get a bad reputation with Hollywood publicists. But she was positive that she had selected the right photo. "At a certain point in the interaction, I had to let go of this desire to make this person like me and remind myself that my allegiance was with Glamour and with what I thought was the right cover," she said. "So I just went for it and said, 'I'm sorry but this is the cover we're going to run.'" Ms. Leive said the actress took it in stride and that she never again offered anyone cover approval. Figuring out how to leverage the internet wasn't easy, either. "I had what I thought was the most brilliant idea," she said of a notion that occurred to her around 2010. Glamour could use its famous "Dos and Don'ts" rubric to encourage readers to submit photographs of people wearing the good or the ugly. Visitors to the website would be encouraged to weigh in. There was a huge influx of traffic, Ms. Leive said, but not just that. "I actually opened Pandora's box for a troll convention to take place on Glamour.com," she said. She and her staff decided to hit delete. She also learned that not every story she thought was splashy would actually make a splash. For the July 2015 issue, Kim Kardashian West appeared on the cover of Glamour, addressing publicly her feelings about the gender transition of her family member Caitlyn Jenner. Ms. Leive and her staff planned a full press rollout. "Literally an hour before we were putting it out, Vanity Fair's Caitlyn Jenner cover comes out," Ms. Leive said. "So my scoop didn't look that great, and all of a sudden I was getting angry letters from people wanting to know why I was referring to Caitlyn Jenner as Bruce in the magazine." She laughed, sounding amused and still a little exasperated. There is much from her long tenure that makes Ms. Leive proud, she said. There is the "Women of the Year" awards, which have honored people including Malala Yousafzai and Gabby Giffords. Ms. Leive oversaw the launch of the Girl Project, which provides resources to support education for girls in more than 100 countries. She published an essay last summer by Barack Obama, called "This Is What a Feminist Looks Like." She also made Hillary Clinton the first presidential candidate to be endorsed by Glamour. Ms. Leive says Anna Wintour, Conde Nast's artistic director and Ms. Leive's boss, deserves much of the credit for that. When Ms. Leive broached the idea with her, she said that Ms. Wintour said, "If you think this is what is right for your audience and for women, then you should do it." All this is why Ms. Leive bristles at the suggestion that her decision to leave magazines, amid something that is approaching a brain drain of longtime magazine honchos, signals that glossies are losing their sheen. Not that she's complaining about being in the company of Ms. Myers, Ms. Gibbs and Mr. Carter. "That's a pretty nice outgoing class to be in, I'll take it," she said. "We can all hang out in the corner booth somewhere." Only if a former editor in chief can still snag the corner booth, she is reminded. "What if I can't get a corner booth anymore, good point!" she said, and cracked up. "We'll have to meet on my back deck, fending off the dog." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Fashion & Style |
On many websites, readers who scroll to the very end of an article are likely to encounter rows of small advertisements belonging to a weird subgenre of digital marketing known as chumbox ads. Named for the angler's practice of using bits of dead fish to lure other fish, these ads comprise arresting images and baffling text. They have one goal: to make readers click. And when they do, readers may find themselves on an unfamiliar website with an odd name, faced with a photo gallery of regrettable tattoos or a listicle on 22 celebrities with ugly spouses. Below a review of "Joker" on Slate the other day, there were dozens of chumbox ads. "Construction Gone Very Wrong, You Will Cry Laughing" blared one, from a site called Travelfuntu, under a photo of an empty swimming pool. "Lonely Lion Would Not Stop Crying, Until These Puppies Came Along" said another, from a page called Healevate. The image that went with those words showed a pair of dachshunds next to a big cat. Those with high standards for their online behavior would never admit clicking on this kind of thing. But enough people are curious enough about something like "The 50 Most Evil Looking Buildings on Earth," which was the text line for a recent ad on Business Insider, that the digital offerings that fall under "sponsored content," "suggested reading" or "around the web" have become a multibillion dollar business. This week, in a long expected coupling of clickbait giants, the two largest chumbox providers decided to merge. Taboola and Outbrain, both based in New York, have agreed to unite under the Taboola name, with Outbrain investors receiving shares equating to 30 percent of the combined company, plus 250 million in cash. Together, the companies said they bring in more than 2 billion annually in gross revenue. Outbrain and Taboola make money on each click, paid to them by the websites where readers land. They then give a portion of that revenue to the publishers hosting the ads. In addition to Slate and Business Insider, CNN uses these ads. So does Fox. 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. Taboola and Outbrain, both founded more than a decade ago, say their services reach more than 2.6 billion people a month through publishers like CNBC, USA Today, Huffington Post, The Washington Post, BBC, The Guardian and others. "This is clearly working, somehow," said Eric Hadley, the former marketing chief at Outbrain, who is now a marketing executive at iHeartMedia. "You may laugh at these ads, but people click on them." Adam Singolda, who runs Taboola and will take charge of the combined company, characterized the deal in a statement as a way to "create a more robust competitor to Facebook and Google" while "strengthening journalism." Outbrain describes itself as providing "high quality, reliable content from premium publishers and marketers." Both companies have advertising guidelines, some of which prohibit allusions to sexual activity, headlines written entirely in capital letters and before and after photos. But the ads that Taboola and Outbrain attach to news stories are unlikely to win awards. In 2015, the now defunct website The Awl compiled what it called "A Complete Taxonomy of Internet Chum," describing the different types that readers may encounter in their online travels. The categories included "Miracle Cure Thing," "Celeb Thing," "Oozing Food" and "Disgusting Invertebrates or Globular Masses Presented as Weird Food." Content ads have long been popular with many publishers: 82 percent of the top 50 news sites were using them, with the vast majority of ads provided by Outbrain or Taboola, according to a 2016 report from the nonprofit Change Advertising. But fewer than half of links connect to legitimate advertisers, with many routing readers instead to anonymously registered domains, data gobbling quizzes and landing pages for more ads. Digital news providers are fighting for revenue as Google and Facebook claim more than 60 percent of online advertising revenue. By 2021, 27 percent of internet users are expected to use ad blocking technology, up from 24.9 percent last year, according to the research firm eMarketer. But to some news publishers, already fending off fake news accusations and struggling to retain readers, chumbox ads have turned from annoying to toxic. The New Yorker stopped posting them in 2016. "The pursuit of revenue, especially in some of the darker days for journalism, meant that publishers would take the money from content recommendation services, and they might be reluctant to give it up now," said Brian Wieser, who analyzes media for GroupM. "But the downside is that these ads can potentially diminish the brand of the publisher, especially when they're run alongside serious journalism." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Media |
Ms. Marvel, who has been cast as Antony, plays the president elect on Showtime's "Homeland," and the solicitor general turned presidential candidate in Netflix's "House of Cards." Mr. Stoll, another "House of Cards" star, will play Marcus Brutus. Other cast members who have been announced so far include the Tony winning actress Nikki M. James as Portia and the Pulitzer Prize winning playwright Stephen Adly Guirgis, as Cinna the Poet. The Public also revealed the initial casting for "A Midsummer Night's Dream," much lighter Shakespeare fare, which runs July 11 through Aug. 13. So far the cast includes Annaleigh Ashford ("Sunday in the Park With George") as Helena and Danny Burstein ("Fiddler on the Roof") as Nick Bottom, the play's comedic relief. Lear deBessonet, a Public Theater stalwart, will direct. Shakespeare in the Park tickets, for the most part, are free and are distributed the day of the performance in person at the Delacorte Theater, or online through a digital lottery. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Theater |
In response to "13 Reasons Why," a 13 episode Netflix show about a high school student who commits suicide, teenage Twitter users are going at each other online, concerned moms are group texting and follower hungry Instagrammers and YouTubers are busy creating images and videos to get in on the trend before it's gone. Before her suicide, the "13 Reasons Why" protagonist, Hannah Baker (played by the 20 year old actress Katherine Langford), makes 13 cassette recordings to recount the agonies of her high school life. She then leaves the tapes behind, cataloging the misdeeds of those she finds guilty of ruining her life. "Welcome to your tape," Hannah says as she reveals her latest antagonist. That line has become an online catchphrase. It has also introduced teenagers like Daniel Sanchez, 17, to a relic of the analog age. Earlier this month, Mr. Sanchez was walking through a Walmart near his home in Hayward, Calif., when he spotted a display of cassette tapes, which gave him the sort of big idea he had been hoping for. For some high school students these days, it is not enough to ask someone to go to the prom. You must do it up big. You must make a "promposal." Mr. Sanchez is a fan of "13 Reasons Why," as is his girlfriend, Andrea Cerda, and when he saw those tapes, inspiration struck. He bought about 40 worth of cassettes and paid 24.88 for a tape recorder. "I had to," he said. "No one really has those things around the house." He sat down with the oldfangled equipment and recorded his fondest memories of his times with Ms. Cerda, who is also 17. To make the promposal hang together, Mr. Sanchez made a sign, "13 Reasons Why You Should Go To Prom w/ Me?" Ms. Cerda appreciated her boyfriend's gesture so much that she posted photographs of the cassette tapes and the placard on Twitter. "Best promposal ever! 13ReasonsWhy," she wrote. The post has been retweeted nearly 18,000 times. A third person chimed in: "A fake girl who is representing others! Girl these kids dont and wont understand till they mature." Ms. Cerda defended the gesture: "This promposal is not causing any harm, just shutup and get over it." The online response took her boyfriend by surprise. "I didn't anticipate this kind of a reaction," Mr. Sanchez said. "We didn't think of the show as about suicide. We thought of it as entertainment. Then I read an article about how the show didn't do a good job making that clear and that it glorified things. Now I'm thinking about things a little differently." The prom took place last weekend, and Ms. Cerda re upped the promposal tweet with a photo of the couple, in school dance attire, standing in front of a Mustang, the kind of car driven by one of the characters on the show. Ms. Cerda, a senior who plans to attend the University of California, Davis, in the fall, said she and her boyfriend were not diminishing the seriousness of depression and suicide. "It's entertainment," she said. "It's a trend. It's popular. No one really is going to die. It's a promposal." "Thirteen Reasons Why" is based on the young adult novel of the same title by Jay Asher. The actress Selena Gomez and her mother, Mandy Teefey, are among the executive producers. The show falls into the genre of entertainment aimed at adolescents that depicts a mix of partying, cliques, sex, sexual violence and self harm. But unlike its cultural precursors "ABC Afterschool Specials," "Beverly Hills, 90210," "Heathers" and "Cruel Intentions," the Netflix addition to the canon is, in many cases, watched by young people on phones or laptops without the awareness of their parents. Despite its weightiness, the show has inspired various jaunty memes. YouTubers have recorded "13 Reasons Why" parody videos. Merchandisers on Etsy are hawking mugs that read "Justice for Hannah" and tank tops printed with the image of a cassette tape, the new vinyl. Endless threads on teenagers' Facebook feeds delve into whether Hannah is to blame for her own misery. And it can be a challenge to scroll through social media and not come upon the new dis, "Welcome to your tape." For example, this post on Twitter: Ms. Urick, of Tampa, Fla., said she watched "13 Reasons Why" at the suggestion of her roommate, who heard it was a suspenseful mystery like the "S Town" podcast series, which they had loved. Although she made a slime video related to the Netflix series, she does not count herself a fan. "We were hate bingeing the show," Ms. Urick said. "I didn't care for it. I yelled at the TV." She was annoyed by details she found unrealistic ("Why do 10th graders have so many tattoos?") and the lack of context for the plight of its protagonist. "It was about misplaced blame," she said. "There was not much in it about the role of depression and mental illness." But to build a sizable Instagram following, Ms. Urick must attract adolescents. As she put it: "There are a huge number of slime accounts there, and the majority of people who seem interested in slime seem younger." She included in the caption to her "13 Reasons Why" related video a suicide prevention link: "If you or someone you know is in danger, please visit to find out more." Tips for Parents to Help Their Struggling Teens Are you concerned for your teen? If you worry that your teen might be experiencing depression or suicidal thoughts, there are a few things you can do to help. Dr. Christine Moutier, the chief medical officer of the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention, suggests these steps: Look for changes. Notice shifts in sleeping and eating habits in your teen, as well as any issues he or she might be having at school, such as slipping grades. Watch for angry outbursts, mood swings and a loss of interest in activities they used to love. Stay attuned to their social media posts as well. Keep the lines of communication open. If you notice something unusual, start a conversation. But your child might not want to talk. In that case, offer him or her help in finding a trusted person to share their struggles with instead. Seek out professional support. A child who expresses suicidal thoughts may benefit from a mental health evaluation and treatment. You can start by speaking with your child's pediatrician or a mental health professional. In an emergency: If you have immediate concern for your child's safety, do not leave him or her alone. Call a suicide prevention lifeline. Lock up any potentially lethal objects. Children who are actively trying to harm themselves should be taken to the closest emergency room. Resources If you're worried about someone in your life and don't know how to help, these resources can offer guidance:1. The National Suicide Prevention Lifeline: 1 800 273 8255 (TALK) 2. The Crisis Text Line: Text TALK to 741741 3. The American Foundation for Suicide Prevention One impassioned online detractor of the show is Joshua Christmas, an 18 year old high school junior in San Antonio. Given the issues at the heart of "13 Reasons Why," he found the response, including Mr. Sanchez's promposal, to be inappropriately lighthearted. "I doubt they had ill intentions," Mr. Christmas said of the promposaler, "but suicide is a really serious subject and it doesn't get talked about in a productive light and this doesn't help the conversation." He added that he himself hadn't watched the show or read the novel on which it is based, but he has read the character analyses and other discussions on his peers' Instagram and Twitter feeds. The show is also a big topic among parents. Robyn Seiferheld, 44, of Bloomfield Hills, Mich., said she first heard about it via a group text message sent by the mother of a girl who studies dance with Ms. Seiferheld's 13 year old daughter, Zoe. The mothers were grappling with whether "13 Reasons Why" was appropriate for their kids. "I had never heard of it, so I assumed Zoe hadn't seen it," Ms. Seiferheld said. "I asked her when she got home from school, and she said: 'Mom, I'm almost done with the whole series. All my friends watch it, too.' It just goes to show you how much they do behind our backs." Ms. Seiferheld watched it herself so that she could discuss it with her daughter. As an adult who still thinks about a cousin who killed herself when they were both young, Ms. Seiferheld considers the show "very well done," she said, though too graphic for the young people who are attracted to it. "Some of it, I'm worried, is glamorizing of suicide, but if Zoe is talking to me about it, it makes me feel better," said Ms. Seiferheld, who recounted that her daughter sobbed her eyes out after watching the sad and shocking final episode. Zoe said she was glad her mother saw the show. "I like talking about it with her," she said. "Mostly, we talk about the bullying and how some of the characters are really mean for not good reasons or no reason at all, and I don't understand why. My mom said you have to be careful what you say, because saying one thing you don't think is a big deal could have big impact on someone's life." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Style |
This 15 acre estate is in Lujan de Cuyo, a small town in the western part of the Mendoza province of Argentina, a wine producing region celebrated for its abundant malbec grapes. Anchored by a five bedroom house, the estate comes with landscaped gardens, fruit and nut trees, an olive grove, a small pine forest where edible mushrooms grow and enough malbec vines to produce about 300 bottles of wine annually. The 11,840 square foot house, built in 2000 by the current owner, has multiple balconies and a colonnaded terrace with views of the snowy peaks of the Andes Mountains. The property includes a 60 by 20 foot swimming pool, a lagoon used to irrigate the land, a gardening shed and a storage building for cars or machinery. A stable for eight horses includes "a place for the gaucho who takes care of the horses to stay," said Marco Scopinaro, the owner. Near the front of the estate, a newly renovated "adobe house with a cane roof, typical of local construction," is divided into a one bedroom caretaker's apartment and a two bedroom guesthouse, said Fernanda Canals, the president of ReMind Group, an affiliate of Christie's International Real Estate in Argentina, which has the listing. Past a large iron gate, a nearly mile long driveway leads through the vineyards, gardens and orchards to the home's stone stairway and double entry doors. The foyer, which has a porcelain tile floor, opens on the right to the "quincho," or barbecue room, with a beamed ceiling and pine floor. A large copper hooded fireplace with a rotisserie faces the dining table. Across the room, a stone fireplace complements the seating area. To the left of the entrance hall is a formal living room with a 26 foot gabled ceiling, a fireplace, Lapacho hardwood floors and four sets of French doors leading to a covered terrace. The room is dominated by a colorful mural painted by Sergio Roggerone, a local artist. The mural is among the items, including furniture, that are included in the sale, Mr. Scopinaro said. Down the hall, a den opens to porches on two sides and, on a third, to the kitchen, which has custom wood cabinets, marble countertops and a center island with a hooded range. Up a short flight of stairs, the master bedroom has a vaulted wood plank ceiling, a sitting area, east and west facing balconies and two walk in closets. The porcelain tiled master bath includes a double vanity with a marble counter and separate rooms for an antique cast iron bathtub, a shower, and a toilet and bidet. Four more en suite bedrooms are downstairs, each with garden access, mountain views and a tiled bathroom with a vanity, a cast iron tub, a toilet and a bidet. Two studios upstairs have large arched windows that open to east and west facing balconies. One has bookshelves and is currently used as an art studio; the other is being used as a children's playroom. A wine cellar, maid's quarters and a three car garage are on the lower level. Lujan de Cuyo sits at the eastern foot of the Andes Mountains, in the high altitude vineyards of the upper Mendoza valley. The area is known for its malbec, but produces other varieties of wine as well. Several wineries are within a five minute drive of the property, and the center of the city of Mendoza is about 25 minutes away. The mountainous area also offers hiking, horseback riding, boating and skiing. Governor Francisco Gabrielli International Airport, in Mendoza, is a 40 minute drive. Like the rest of the housing market in Argentina, Mendoza's real estate has been "strongly impacted" by the country's recent currency devaluation, Ms. Canals said. In August, Argentina's central bank raised its benchmark interest rate to 60 percent in an effort to stanch a sharp decline in the value of the peso. The devaluation may have helped Mendoza's regional wine export business, Ms. Canals said, but the benefits were "neutralized by the inflation that made costs go up." During a flurry of buyer activity in early November, she said, her office discounted prices by 10 to 20 percent. Viviana Reissis Etchegoin, sales manager of Ginevra Sotheby's International Realty, said that investors, typically the most common buyers in Mendoza, are now "reluctant to invest in Argentina," and many foreigners are selling their assets. "We have a lot of properties for sale, but not too many interested in buying." At Algodon Wine Estates, a wellness, golf, tennis and equestrian resort with coveted backyard vineyards, only six or seven houses have been finished in phase one of development, out of approximately 97 lots that range from half an acre to seven acres and start at 120,000. The most popular locations with foreign and luxury buyers are "without a doubt" private gated communities with "beautiful amenities," said Fanny Cruz, the owner of Fanny Cruz Real Estate, as well as 24/7 security. Ms. Etchegoin seconded that: "In Argentina," she said, "you have to think about security." But three bedroom, two bathroom houses in those communities "that last year were selling for 325,000" Ms. Cruz said, "today are at 250,000." Condominiums are plentiful and popular. "They are widely requested by an ascending socioeconomic class," she said, particularly buyers between 35 and 45 seeking round the clock private security and a "premium lifestyle." Units of about 1,200 to 1,300 square feet sell for 280,000 to 300,000, she said. In Mendoza, foreign buyers are mostly from Brazil and Chile, with some Americans in the mix, Ms. Etchegoin said. The Europeans and Americans who do buy in the area usually prefer "fincas" estates or rural properties, Ms. Canals said. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Real Estate |
TORONTO Kirk Muller, behind the Montreal Canadiens bench as interim head coach on Friday, was too emotional to check his phone between periods, although he had been expecting a text or two. He knew that the man he replaced, Coach Claude Julien, was watching from his home in Montreal, where he was recovering from the emergency heart surgery he underwent on Thursday afternoon in Toronto. But after the Canadiens put together their most inspired game of the postseason, routing the Philadelphia Flyers, 5 0, Muller finally checked his phone. He found that Julien was one of the first to send in his congratulations. "To Claude, I'm sure he's listening, this one was for you," Muller said after the game. On Wednesday night, after the Montreal Canadiens lost, 2 1, to the Philadelphia Flyers in Game 1 of their first round series of the N.H.L. playoffs, Julien began experiencing chest pains. Julien, 60, was taken by ambulance to the hospital, where doctors placed a stent in a coronary artery. He is expected to make a full recovery. Montreal's Tomas Tatar and Jesperi Kotkaniemi scored two goals each and Carey Price got the shutout in the Friday afternoon start. The Flyers never recovered after Montreal's first goal 1:02 into the first period. Down by 4 0 late in the second period, the Flyers lifted goaltender Carter Hart and replaced him with Brian Elliott. But the damage had been done. Flyers Coach Alain Vigneault is close friends with Julien. The two were teammates in the minors in Salt Lake City in the early 1980s and coached against each other in the Stanley Cup Finals in 2011 when Vigneault coached the Vancouver Canucks and Julien was behind the bench with the Boston Bruins. Vigneault said he had planned to reach out to Julien. How Montreal would respond to the scary turn of events was anyone's guess. Hopes in Montreal had run high after the Canadiens shocked the Pittsburgh Penguins in the play in round. By contrast, the team locked in on evening the series once they knew Julien's surgery was successful "We have a focused group," Muller said. "I think hearing the good news about Claude's health was a nice relief for everybody." Muller did not display any reluctance at his Friday morning briefing as he took the reins of one of Canada's most iconic franchises. Smiling throughout the 15 minute session, he said he had spoken to Julien Thursday night, mostly about hockey. He said Julien was "fired up" about the game. Although Muller has never been a head coach in Montreal, he knows the team well. He was a leader there as a player on the 1993 Stanley Cup winning team, Montreal's last. This is his second stint as an assistant coach in Montreal after serving as head coach for the Carolina Hurricanes from 2011 2014, where he posted a .500 record. "My job is to get this team to win," Muller said. "We've got to recognize which guys are going and which guys aren't." In the club's public statement about Julien's status, General Manager Marc Bergevin addressed the fact that Muller does not speak French, while Julien is fluent in both English and French. An unwritten rule with the Canadiens is that a head coach must speak French so he can communicate with the French news media and the population of Quebec, where French is the mother tongue of almost 80 percent of residents. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Sports |
Thomas recounts the major moments in an undeniably eventful life. He supported the black power movement in the '60s and '70s and voted for Ronald Reagan in 1980; his conservative turn, he says, was the inevitable reaction to liberal hypocrisy. Clips of Anita Hill testifying at Thomas's confirmation hearings in 1991 appear in the second half of the film, after the filmmakers have taken care not to disturb their admiring portrait of Thomas as a faithful Christian and doting family man. Hill's recollections of sexual harassment get predictably cast as part of a feminist smear campaign designed to destroy him. But the overriding tenor of this documentary is triumphant and upbeat. Thomas's journey is intermittently visualized by footage from inside a boat as it makes its way through marshy wetlands before arriving, just as the sun is setting, at a sturdy dock. If "Created Equal" is trying to promote the conservative cause, it does so gently, and blandly. The only moment of mild discomfort occurs when the filmmakers ask Thomas about the end of his first marriage. The otherwise voluble Thomas signals that he'll be having none of it, turning momentarily awkward and taciturn: "Yeah, it was, you know, you live with it." Created Equal: Clarence Thomas in His Own Words Rated PG 13 for the unavoidable segment on sexual harassment. Running time: 1 hour 56 minutes. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Movies |
CASTELFIDARDO, Italy Jet lagged but determined, Salomon Salcedo thought nothing of trekking to this small hilltop town in the Marches region on a muggy June afternoon to satisfy a lifelong desire: buy a made in Castelfidardo accordion. "They're the best," said Mr. Salcedo, 50, a policy officer in Chile for the United Nations' Food and Agriculture Organization, who began playing the accordion when he was a child. "You won't find them in stores; they have to be made to order," said Mr. Salcedo, who was combining the visit with a work trip to Rome. "And this is the place to come." For some people, the idea of traveling almost 7,500 miles for one purchase may seem extreme. For accordion makers in Castelfidardo, it is a common occurrence. Ask around and prepare to be regaled with stories of delegations of Frenchmen, Argentines and other aficionados traveling to this town just south of the Adriatic port of Ancona to buy a bit of Italian industrial excellence. Just after World War II, when entire accordion orchestras were fixtures in the festivities of Italian immigrants to the United States, Castelfidardo churned out its prize product by the tens of thousands. Now, years after the electric guitar became the instrument of choice in popular music people here still point to Elvis Presley and the Beatles as their economic nemeses and the production of basic models largely moved to Asia, Castelfidardo has continued to shift its focus to quality from quantity. That has allowed the town to sustain a key industry, though in a much diminished form. "For us, it's a pleasure and an enrichment to work and collaborate with artists and people who make music a big part of their lives." Pigini is the largest accordion maker in Castelfidardo, splitting production between instruments tailored to traditional music like polkas, waltzes or easy listening, and a classical repertoire, which grew considerably after Tchaikovsky introduced an accordion part in an 1883 suite a milestone, accordionists say. The company makes about 60 models, costing from 2,000 to 30,000 euros, or 3,000 to 43,000. Mr. Salcedo, incidentally, planned to buy a Pigini, he said later in an e mail. Pigini accordions count for a sizable chunk of Castelfidardo's production, which has been inexorably eroded by changing musical tastes and more recently by the global economic crisis. The story of how a 5,000 year old Chinese free reed instrument called the sheng metamorphosed into the modern day accordion passes through Vienna, where the first patent was presented in 1829, and winds through several European cities. But as far as Castelfidardo is concerned, the accordion is a homegrown success story pinned to the ingenuity of Paolo Soprani, who opened his shop in 1863. Several stories told here romanticize the origins of Mr. Soprani's inspiration including improbable references to accordion playing soldiers who fought at the Battle of Castelfidardo in 1860, one of the definitive skirmishes against papal troops that led to the unification of Italy. But Beniamino Bugiolacchi, director of the International Accordion Museum in Castelfidardo, dismisses such legends, saying that Mr. Soprani's major accomplishment was taking an artisanal activity and applying modern industrial strategies to increase the business. Production in Castelfidardo peaked in 1953, when nearly 200,000 accordions were made in dozens of factories that employed about 10,000 workers. Accordion makers in other Italian towns also did brisk business. Today, only about 27 companies remain, mostly small businesses employing about 300 people, a number that has been stable for the last five years, Mr. Bugiolacchi said. Rising production costs shifted the competitive edge to manufacturers first in Eastern Europe and more recently in South Korea and China. But the precision and skills necessary to make accordions which require the assembly of about 6,000 pieces, if not more were easily transferred to other industries. Over the last 30 years, Castelfidardo has excelled in other sectors, like mechanics and woodworking. "The accordion now accounts for around 15 percent of Castelfidardo's" output, said Paolo Picchio, president of Consorzio Music Marche Accordions, a consortium of manufacturers and promoters. "But the other 85 percent still has accordions to thank." Apart from the manufacturers, there are also specialized companies that supply parts like the sound making reeds or the folding bellows. "Castelfidardo is about high quality, and we're in the high end of this market niche," said Francesco Mengascini, whose company, which he runs with his father, makes about 800 accordions a year under the Beltuna brand. It could make more, he said, but the Mengascinis do not want to sacrifice quality, so they regularly turn down work. "We're not great commercial experts, but we prefer to focus on the brand and satisfy clients." The company exports about 95 percent of its production, he said, which translates into dozens of different models. Unlike many other instruments, accordions are not made to any standard, and those used in various countries typically have their own distinctive sounds, Mr. Mengascini said. There are, for example, piano accordions (with a keyboard) and button accordions, and different systems exist for both the left and the right hands. There are Russian, Tyrolean, Belgian, German, Italian and dozens of other variations on how buttonboards, keys and bass systems are mounted, and manufacturers in general grumble that a single system would be a relief. While China has become the world's top producer of mainstream accordions, many in Castelfidardo view Asian manufacturing, where much of the production is for internal consumption, as a boon. Someday, they reason, all those young Chinese accordionists will seek out top quality instruments. "We're not pessimistic about the future because some young Chinese players will become professionals, and once they're looking for more important instruments where will they come? To Castelfidardo," said Mr. Picchio, the consortium president who also is the artistic director of the annual international accordion festival here, which draws hundreds of performers and fans. One reason to be negative, other manufacturers counter, is that skilled labor is becoming more difficult to find as younger generations increasingly reject the years of training and technique required to make accordions. "They prefer to work in other sectors, computers being the main draw," said Vincenzo Canali, the museum's president and an accordion expert. Mr. Canali said that financial incentives to students might be the only way to draw people back to the trade. "In any case, work will always be available," he said. "If nothing else, it's a sure job." Ingenuity has helped to keep Castelfidardo's main industry afloat. Marco Tiranti, an accordion tuner and restorer, decided to start his own business, Euphonia, which produces about 20 accordions a year. He formed the company two years ago after patenting an innovation that creates "a warmer, sweeter sound." Mr. Tiranti acknowledged that the market for accordions was saturated, "and if you don't have something new, it isn't worth trying." Still, the global crisis is taking its toll and Mr. Tiranti said that the community's pulling together might be the best way to weather a difficult economy. Manufacturers, he said, could benefit from developing a coordinated approach to research and labor costs that could help invigorate the entire area. "Small may be beautiful," he said, "but in a global market synergy may be the only way to survive." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Global Business |
Johnny Antonelli, the All Star left handed pitcher who helped propel the 1954 New York Giants to a World Series championship and remained one of the National League's leading pitchers during the Giants' early years in San Francisco, died on Friday at his home in Rochester, N.Y. He was 89. Scott Pitoniak, who collaborated with him on "Johnny Antonelli: A Baseball Memoir" (2012), said the cause was cancer. Coveted by many major league teams for his blazing fastball, Antonelli became one of baseball's first "bonus babies" in the summer of 1948 when, right out of high school in Rochester, he signed with the Boston Braves for 52,000 (the equivalent of about 566,000 today). Antonelli never spent a day in the minors, since players with large bonuses could be claimed by another team if farmed out. He was used sparingly by the Braves in his first three seasons with them, then spent two years in the Army and returned to post a 12 12 record when the team moved to Milwaukee in 1953. He emerged as a star after the Braves traded him to the Giants in February 1954. "It was the best break of my career," he once told The Democrat and Chronicle of Rochester. Antonelli relied on a fastball and curveball, but he also learned to throw off speed pitches in posting a 21 7 record for the pennant winning 1954 Giants. He led the National League in earned run average (2.30) and shutouts (6) and tied the Giants' relief pitcher Hoyt Wilhelm for best winning percentage (.750). "The Polo Grounds was a friendly ballpark for me," Antonelli was quoted as saying by Danny Peary in the oral history "We Played the Game" (1994). "I was able to keep batters from pulling the ball. I made them hit the ball straight away, and I had Willie Mays to track it down." The '54 World Series between the Giants and the Cleveland Indians is remembered mainly for Mays's spectacular over the shoulder catch and throw at the Polo Grounds with two men on base in Game 1, and for Dusty Rhodes's pinch hit home runs. Antonelli finished No. 3 in balloting for the National League's Most Valuable Player and was named by The Sporting News as the league's pitcher of the year. (The Cy Young Award had not yet been created.) He pitched all 16 innings in a 2 1 victory over Cincinnati at the Polo Grounds in May 1955, won 20 games in 1956 and was the starting pitcher when the Giants played their last game at the Polo Grounds before moving to San Francisco in 1958. Antonelli won 35 games over the Giants' first two years there, when they played in the hitter friendly Seals Stadium, a former Pacific Coast League park. But Giants fans reserved much of their adulation for players making their major league debut in San Francisco, mostly notably Juan Marichal, Orlando Cepeda, Willie McCovey and Felipe Alou. Antonelli became something of a villain in San Francisco because of an outburst after losing game against the Los Angeles Dodgers at Seals Stadium in July 1959, yielding two home runs on a windy day. "I get beat by two lousy fly balls," Sports Illustrated quoted Antonelli as saying in the clubhouse. "A pitcher should be paid double for working here. Worst ballpark in America. Every time you stand up there, you've got to beat the hitter and a 30 mile per hour wind." An editorial in The San Francisco Chronicle suggested that Giants management should send Antonelli to "some mythical park where the wind never blows, or else hang a pacifier in the clubhouse." When Antonelli started a game at home against the Cubs a week later, the fans booed him. He never got back in their good graces. Antonelli said long afterward that he had been misquoted as having insulted San Francisco itself. Antonelli told Danny Peary long afterward that a reporter who had questioned him after the game "was out for sensationalism and wrote vindictively that I said, 'You can stick San Francisco. ...'" "I never said anything bad about the city," he said, "just Seals Stadium." In 1960 the Giants began playing at Candlestick Park, which became notorious for winds in its own right. Antonelli had trouble winning as a starter that year, was shifted to the bullpen and posted a 6 7 record. He was still being booed over his 1959 remarks, and he was traded to Cleveland after the 1960 season. He had a combined 1 4 record with the Indians and Braves in 1961, then was sold to the Mets. But he retired at age 31 instead of joining them, wanting to devote more time to his family and business interests. He had a career record of 126 110 and was an All Star in 1954 and every year from 1956 to 1959. John August Antonelli was born on April 12, 1930, in Rochester, a son of Gus and Josephine (Messore) Antonelli. His father, an immigrant from Italy, laid track for the New York Central Railroad. Antonelli pitched in only four games for the Braves in their pennant winning 1948 season. When they were beaten by the Indians in the World Series, the players did not vote Antonelli a losing share while giving themselves 31 full losing shares of 4,570.73 apiece. The baseball commissioner, Happy Chandler, directed that Antonelli receive a one eighth share, amounting to 571.34. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Sports |
Anna Mouglalis, left, as President Amelie Dorendeu, and Kad Merad as the Machiavellian politician Philippe Rickwaert in the French television series "Baron Noir." PARIS "I am not afraid of being a progressive. I am not afraid of being a republican. I am not afraid of you," a 39 year old centrist presidential candidate told a far right rival on French television recently. But it wasn't Emmanuel Macron, the former banker, now 40, whose rapid rise and eventual victory in the 2017 election shook the French political world. It was Mr. Macron's fictional alter ego, Amelie Dorendeu, in the hit series "Baron Noir." As the gritty political drama ends its second season on the French TV network Canal this week, its similarities with recent political developments in France have many politicians and politics junkies marveling at its realism and the way it sheds light on the unexpected current state of French politics. "Baron Noir," which is available in the United States on the streaming service Walter Presents, depicts the shadier side of France's political life through the character of Philippe Rickwaert, a left wing former mayor and member of Parliament dogged by allegations of corruption. A garrulous, unscrupulous yet endearing leader, who honed his political skills in the northern city of Dunkirk, Rickwaert embodies the traditional world of French politics, based on mainstream parties of left and right. But since the show first aired, these certainties have been wilting in the face of new political forces and Mr. Macron's strategy of bridging old distinctions. "Like everybody else, we didn't see Macron coming," said Eric Benzekri, one of the show's two screenwriters. "What we saw is the political space which Macron had, and we gave our president, Amelie Dorendeu, the same space in the series." Mr. Benzekri said he drew some inspiration from his own political experience: Until 2008, he was involved with the Socialist Party, from which the show's main characters emerge. Played by Kad Merad, a French Algerian actor who was nominated for an International Emmy Award in 2017 for the role, Rickwaert is a kingmaker and the dark baron of the show's title, with the same Machiavellian methods as Frank Underwood in "House of Cards." Although isolated in the second season, Rickwaert remains influential as he tries to adapt to the new political deal. "Politics is like jazz," he tells Dorendeu. "When you hit a wrong note, you have to persist with it, and then it becomes a cult improvisation, which everyone will try to hit." From the caricatures of King Louis XVI and Guy de Maupassant's "Bel Ami," all the way to the satirical TV puppet show "Les Guignols de l'info", France has had a long tradition of skewering politicians in a wide range of arts. In 2016, the acclaimed graphic novel "The President" pictured the far right Marine Le Pen at the Elysee Palace; another, "Quai d'Orsay," depicted with humor the life of the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs. But previous attempts to depict French politics realistically on TV fell short. "We have been late on French television in representing tormented, ambivalent characters in politics," said Jean Baptiste Delafon, one of "Baron Noir's" screenwriters. "We either had filthy, nasty villains, or nice politicians with beautiful ideas." The appeal of "Baron Noir" lies in its well balanced mix of local and national politics, according to Marjolaine Boutet, an associate professor of contemporary history at the University of Picardie Jules Verne, who specializes in television, and who compared the show with two well known American political dramas. "It's not as idealistic as 'The West Wing,' and it's not as cynical as 'House of Cards,' " she said. "It's right in the middle." Although France's recent political history has featured corruption allegations against former prime ministers and even against the former presidents Nicolas Sarkozy and Jacques Chirac, the most recent presidential campaign brought an unpredictable twist, leading the fiction of "Baron Noir" to compete with real events. In January last year, the center right candidate Francois Fillon was accused of embezzling hundreds of thousands of euros of public funds to pay his wife and his children for jobs that did not really exist. Another news report revealed that he had received expensive suits from a friend, which prompted another inquiry. Mr. Fillon, who had been seen as a favorite in the early stages of the campaign, lost in the first round of the election. "What the Fillons' scandal and the 2017 presidential campaign showed is that the French have had enough of corruption," said Ms. Boutet, the historian. Although Transparency International's latest Corruption Perceptions Index ranked France 23rd out of 176, this is behind most Western European countries. In "Baron Noir," Philippe Rickwaert ends up in prison at the end of the first season, and the president has to resign because of the same scandal. "It shows that whatever you try to hide, there are consequences, because we live in a democracy that has rule of law," Mr. Benzekri said about the path he and Mr. Delafon gave the characters. Although corruption was one of the main themes of "Baron Noir's" first season, the screenwriters chose to avoid it in the latest one. "Whatever we would have imagined, it would have never been as crazy as Fillon and his suits," Mr. Benzekri said. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Television |
Traffic signals were not always utilitarian. Center, 42nd Street and Fifth Avenue today. Left, a bronze traffic signal tower designed by Joseph H. Freedlander at 42nd Street and Fifth Avenue, 1922. Right, the first generation, a box type traffic tower at Fifth Avenue and 57th Street, 1920. Tired of cars and bikes running red lights? How about no lights at all? That's the kind of traffic system New York had until 1920, when a series of tall bare bones towers went up down the middle of Fifth Avenue, flashing red and green lights to the growing onslaught of automobiles. Two years later they were replaced with formidably elegant bronze and granite towers, sumptuous contributions to the City Beautiful, but destroyed within a decade, victims of increasing traffic. The Library of Congress has a website of digitized photographs and early movies of New York, called American Memory. If you look at the half dozen movies set in New York it is clear that, except for a few policemen, traffic regulation amounted to "hey, watch out!" My book "Fifth Avenue, 1911, From Start to Finish" (Dover, 1994) covers most blocks from Washington Square to 93rd Street, and there is nary a traffic light nor a sign to be seen in any of the photographs, although policemen were clearly on duty at many intersections. But automobiles complicated the mix, and safety became an increasing concern. In 1913 The New York Times reported on the city's "Death Harvest" that's the actual headline from 1910 and 1912 for three different types of vehicles: the number killed by wagons and carriages, down in two years to 177 from 211; and streetcars, down to 134 from 148. But automobile fatalities nearly doubled, to 221 from 112. Ninety five percent of the dead, according to The Times, were pedestrians. (In 2013, 156 pedestrians were killed by automobiles.) Influential retailers on Fifth Avenue no doubt felt sympathy, but what hurt them at the cash register was traffic gridlock, and pressure grew to declog the avenue. It could take 40 minutes to go from 57th to 34th Street. There had been an experimental traffic light in 1917, but it was short lived. Thus it was in 1920 that the first permanent traffic lights in New York went up, the gift of Dr. John A. Harriss, a millionaire physician fascinated by street conditions. His design was a homely wooden shed on a latticework of steel, from which a police officer changed signals, allowing one to two minutes for each direction. Although the meanings we attach to red and green now seem like the natural order of things, in 1920 green meant Fifth Avenue traffic was to stop so crosstown traffic could proceed; white meant go. Most crosstown streets and Fifth Avenue were still two way. The doctor's signals were so well received that in 1922 the Fifth Avenue Association gave the city, at a cost of 126,000, a new set of signals, seven ornate bronze 23 foot high towers placed at intersections along Fifth from 14th to 57th Streets. Designed by Joseph H. Freedlander, they were the most elegant street furniture the city has ever had. It was a time when elevating public taste through civic beauty was considered a fit goal for government effort. In 1923 the magazine Architecture opined that "To understand the beautiful is to create a love for the beautiful, to widen the boundaries of human pride, enjoyment and accomplishment." Dr. Harriss's towers would have looked at home in a railway freight yard; Freedlander's towers were fitting adornments for the noblest of New York's public spaces, like the forecourt of the New York Public Library or the Plaza at 59th Street. For reasons unstated, the towers were not placed in the center of the intersections, but several feet north or south of the crosswalks crosstown drivers could barely see them. The new lights supposedly reduced that trip from 57th to 34th to 15 minutes. Soon, traffic lights were like laptops in classrooms: everyone was in favor of them. Most of the big avenues got traffic lights, of much simpler design, and mounted on corners. In 1927 the present system of red, yellow and green was generally recognized, but The Times said the yellow caution light had been abandoned in New York because it was a "temptation to motorists to rush through intersections." Cars continued to flood the streets and within a few years the police decided that Freedlander's sumptuous traffic towers were blocking the roadway. It took some convincing, but the Fifth Avenue Association came around to taking them down and in 1929 Freedlander was called back to design a new two light traffic signal, also bronze, to be placed on the corners. These were topped by statues of Mercury and lasted until 1964. A few of the Mercury statues have survived, but Freedlander's 1922 towers have completely vanished. In retrospect, the automobile appears as the opening wedge to a new kind of city. Pedestrians were zoned off the streets, to which they had formerly had unfettered access. The speed of automobiles, not horse drawn vehicles, became the metric. Street cars, held hostage to their fixed routes, were often stalled by traffic. The streets themselves became layered with regulation after regulation, covered with signs, lights, arrows and stanchions, none of which were ever as elegant as the 1922 Fifth Avenue traffic towers. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Real Estate |
ISHINOMAKI, Japan Its factory wiped out by the tsunami, a maker of vital parts for smartphones says it will move production overseas. Their boats washed away, fishermen in the town of Higashi Matsushima say they will start over, but on a smaller scale. And with electricity still scarce from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear crisis, a landmark building in Tokyo has dimmed its famous lights. Across Japan, there is a shared realization that the natural and nuclear disasters unleashed on March 11 have exposed the fragility of its postwar economic order and that a recovery will not be a return to the status quo. The disasters have dealt another blow to a manufacturing sector already hurt by cheaper rivals, hastening a "hollowing out" of Japanese industry long feared in this country. Japan's aging, shrinking population will also make an energetic bounce back more difficult. And Japan's economy relies heavily on precarious nuclear energy, for which alternatives will be more expensive. Rebuilding will require a national rethinking if Japan is to achieve an economic rebirth, rather than slip further into the stagnation that has plagued it for two decades, experts say. "We cannot have recovery for recovery's sake," said Hiroko Ota, a former economy minister and vice president at the National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies. "We must make this the starting point for a new economy." Japan is no stranger to rebuilding. Its economy largely shook off the effects of a disastrous quake that struck the city of Kobe in 1995, thanks to an all out recovery effort. But compared with the Kobe crisis, it is a weaker nation that now faces the task of reconstruction. The average age for the population has advanced since then by about six years to 44.6 years in 2009, which weighs on economic growth. The country is saddled with a public debt more than twice the size of its economy. And it has gone from being Asia's unrivaled economic powerhouse to a perennial underachiever. With at least 25,000 dead and trillions of yen in damage, and the stricken Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant still releasing radiation, the calamity has been overwhelming. "This is an unprecedented disaster," said Takayoshi Igarashi, a politics professor at Hosei University in Tokyo and a member of a council the government has asked to draft a long term reconstruction plan. "Japan is at a crossroads." So, it seems, is Japanese manufacturing. Take Meiko Electronics, which supplies circuit boards to some of the world's biggest makers of smartphones, including Apple. The tsunami ravaged Meiko's most sophisticated circuit board factory, here in Ishinomaki, mangling machines and sweeping a mountain of debris onto the factory floor. Meiko already makes 80 percent of its parts overseas. Now, with the damage to two of its five Japanese factories and the uncertainties of Japan's power supply it does not make sense to rebuild in the country, said Hidetaka Maruyama, a company spokesman. A new factory in Wuhan, China, completed in April, has already started producing many of the most sophisticated Meiko circuit boards once made in Japan. "Without a doubt, there will be a shift toward production overseas," Mr. Maruyama said. To be sure, government surveys show that many manufacturers have rebounded quickly in the quake's aftermath. Still, analysts warn that even a short hiatus in Japanese output, and electricity disruptions, is enough to give overseas competitors an edge. The disaster has also shown that even some of the country's biggest multinationals, like Toyota Motor, remain dangerously dependent on domestic suppliers a realization that could spur more corporations to move production offshore. "What are the new industries that will support Japan's future? That's the question Japan must ask as it rebuilds," said Ryutaro Kono, economist for Japan at BNP Paribas. The government has promised to soften the economic blow with a 4 trillion yen ( 49.7 billion) emergency budget. Japan will soon see its biggest jump in public works spending in years as it clears farmland, fixes roads and rebuilds schools and offices. But Japan must avoid the pitfalls of its troubled 1990s, when ill conceived public works left the nation dotted with little used dams and bridges, said Masayoshi Honma, a professor in economics at Tokyo University. Local industries are also ripe for reconsideration, Mr. Honma said. A plan floated by the government, for example, would consolidate more than 200 tiny fishing ports in northeast Japan into 11 hubs. In Higashi Matsushima, a coastal town in Miyagi Prefecture that was hit hard by the tsunami, fishermen are doing more than just rebuilding. They are trying to cope with their region's inexorable demographic slide to a place with fewer, and older, people. Of the 27 oyster farmers left in the town's Tomei district, three were killed in the tsunami, swept out to sea with their boats. Many others lost their homes, and the oyster beds they had cultivated for decades to make Miyagi oysters a coveted delicacy. The remaining farmers plan to band together. They will start over with a batch of 1,000 young seed oysters that "miraculously" survived the tsunami, said Gensuke Takahashi, age 64, who has been fishing these waters since he was 19. "We can't cope on our own anymore not now," he said, mending ropes beside a boat he now shares with other oyster farmers. An early morning sail this day was cut short by debris still floating in the bay: tires, a tiled roof. "We are starting again, but there will be fewer boats, fewer oysters," he said, "and fewer of us." Even in Tokyo, there has been a humbling realization that the conveniences people took for granted depend on an industrial system teetering on geologic fault lines, and an energy supply vulnerable to breakdown. At first sight, Tokyo, home to 13 million people, is largely back to normal after weeks of postquake uncertainty. The streets are filled with shoppers, radiation is down to background levels and the blackouts that threw the city into disarray have, for now, been called off. But electricity is still an iffy resource. Many of the city's neon lights remain dark, and escalators turned off. There has been a spike in bicycle sales among commuters, and in flat shoes among women, after disruptions to the city's usually clockwork public transport system. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Global Business |
Action films may get the heart racing, but they may expand your waistline, a new study suggests. Previous research has shown that people tend to eat more if they are watching television. But scientists from Cornell University wanted to know whether the type of programming made a difference. To find out, they gave snacks to 97 undergraduate students and split them into three groups. The first group watched a loud, frenetic clip from "The Island," a 2005 action movie directed by Michael Bay. The second watched part of a Charlie Rose interview program on PBS. The third group watched the same excerpt from "The Island" as the first group, but without sound. The first group consumed the most by far 65 percent more calories than the "Charlie Rose" group (354 calories versus 215) and 98 percent more food (7.3 ounces versus 3.7). The group that watched "The Island" on mute ate 46 percent more calories (315) and 36 percent more food (five ounces) than the Rose group. "We choose this particular movie for its pacing," said Aner Tal, a research associate at Cornell's Food and Brand Lab and the study's lead author. He added, "It could be that the camera cuts and sound set the tempo for the pace at which people eat." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Health |
Paul Ingrassia, an author and Pulitzer Prize winning reporter who placed readers in the boardrooms and executive suites of the nation's automotive industry and put many of its leaders under scrutiny, died on Monday in Naples, Fla. He was 69. His brother, Lawrence, a former deputy managing editor and business editor of The New York Times, said the cause was complications of cancer. Mr. Ingrassia was the Detroit bureau chief for The Wall Street Journal when he and his deputy, Joseph B. White, shared the 1993 Pulitzer for beat reporting for their coverage of the upheaval in the executive ranks of General Motors. Their coverage also earned them a Gerald Loeb Award, administered by the University of California, Los Angeles, for distinguished business and financial reporting. Mr. Ingrassia was the bureau chief in Detroit from 1985 to 1995 in a three decade career with The Journal, where he was also an editor and executive. He was later managing editor of Reuters. Mr. Ingrassia and Joseph B. White followed up their Pulitzer Prize winning coverage of the automotive industry with this book in 1995. Mr. Ingrassia and Mr. White followed up their prizewinning reporting with a well received book, "Comeback: The Fall and Rise of the American Automobile Industry" (1995). The authors "excel at reporting, and they succeed in creating a genuine sense that the reader is present as much of their drama unfolds," The New York Times Book Review said. Mr. Ingrassia also wrote "Crash Course: The American Automobile Industry's Road from Glory to Disaster" (2010), a narrative of the bankruptcies and government bailouts of Chrysler and General Motors in the 2000s. It inspired a documentary film, "Live Another Day" (2016). "The city's battered economy was reflected on the football field," Mr. Ingrassia wrote of Detroit in the book, "where the University of Michigan was enduring its first losing season in forty years, and the Detroit Lions were plummeting to pro football's first 0 16 season. During their 47 10 drubbing on Thanksgiving Day 2008, fans unfurled a banner reading bail out the lions. It was a gallows humor reference not only to the football team but also to the weakest teams in town General Motors, Ford, and Chrysler." Writing in The Journal around the time the book was published, Mr. Ingrassia asserted that in return for any direct government aid to G.M., "the board and the management should go." " Shareholders should lose their paltry remaining equity," he wrote. "And a government appointed receiver someone hard nosed and nonpolitical should have broad power to revamp GM with a viable business plan and return it to a private operation as soon as possible." He added: "Giving GM a blank check which the company and the United Auto Workers union badly want, and which Washington will be tempted to grant would be an enormous mistake." Mr. Ingrassia's latest book was "Engines of Change: A History of the American Dream in Fifteen Cars" (2012), which The Times described as "a highly informed but breezy narrative history of the vehicles that have shaped and reflected American culture." Paul Joseph Ingrassia was born on Aug 18, 1950, in Laurel, Miss., to Angelo and Regina (Iacono) Ingrassia. His father was a research chemist, his mother a homemaker. He earned a bachelor's degree in journalism from the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign and a master's at the University of Wisconsin Madison. He began his news career at the Lindsay Schaub Newspaper Group in Decatur, Ill. in 1973. Mr. Ingrassia worked for Dow Jones Co. from 1977 to 2007. From 1998 to 2006, he was president of Dow Jones Newswires, an arm of The Journal's parent company. He was vice president for news strategy at Dow Jones when he left the company in 2007, after it had been bought by Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation. Mr. Ingrassia was named deputy editor in chief of Thomson Reuters in 2011 and was managing editor of Reuters when he retired in 2016. Most recently he was editor at the Revs Institute, an automotive history research center in Naples. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Media |
Handel's "Messiah" plays no part in the Christmas memories of my childhood in Brussels. In our German Lutheran home, Bach provided the soundtrack. The jubilant opening to his Christmas Oratorio, with its excited trumpets and timpani, rang in the exchange of presents. It was as a high school exchange student in Pittsburgh that I first encountered Handel's oratorio, at a "Messiah" singalong where your voice type, rather than your ticket, determined where you sat in the hall. I fell in love with the work's endless variety of melody and mood, the earthshaking bass arias, the airy calm of the later soprano solos. The pungent beauty of the Tudor text was a revelation to me right at the time that English was becoming my chosen first language. When I returned home, I built Handel's oratorio into my holiday ritual, listening to my parents' Neville Marriner recording while wrapping presents or decorating the tree. I've since converted to Judaism, but the work's themes of yearning for peace, empathy and redemption continue to touch me. This year, I embarked on a "Messiah" marathon, taking in five performances over two weeks. While my professional ear tried to figure out which was the best, I was also curious to hear how the piece changes from one setting to the next and how this music, written in 1741, fits into the fabric of our time. See what our critics chose as the best classical music events of 2018. And listen to our favorite recordings of the year. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Music |
About a decade ago libraries across the world faced a dilemma. Their vital functions to supply books and access to information for the public were being replaced by Amazon, e books and public Wi Fi. To fight for their survival, said Loida Garcia Febo, president of the American Library Association, libraries tried to determine what other role they could play. "They invented these amazing new initiatives that are finally launching now," she said. It took them this long to raise money and build them. In the past few years dozens of new high profile libraries have opened close to home and across the world. And they certainly don't resemble the book depot vision of libraries from the past. To attract visitors from home and abroad, many libraries have advanc ed, even quirky amenities. They have rooftop gardens, public parks, verandas, play spaces, teen centers, movie theaters, gaming rooms, art galleries, restaurants and more. The new library in Aarhus, Denmark, has a massive gong that rings whenever a mother in a nearby hospital gives birth. Ms. Garcia Febo knows of multiple libraries o ffering free work space for growing numbers of entrepreneurs . These aren't just alternatives to coffee shops, spaces for people to pull out their laptops and work. The libraries have fancy meeting rooms for them to meet with potential clients, business librarians who can help them solve their financial challenges, and classes to teach them vital skills. At no cost, it's a much cheaper option than spending hundreds of dollars for a desk at WeWork. Libraries are supplying the public with other features t hey may not have at home. Twenty years ago that was books. Now it's expensive new technology like 3D printers, laser cutters and broadcasting studios for podcasts and movies. Visitors are going to libraries to try before they buy. Other people just want to play with something that may not ever be able to afford. Meeting diverse needs requires a sophisticated building, and many libraries are employing the world's best architects to create showstopping designs. The new buildings are transforming skylines, going viral on social media and attracting tourists from all over the world. For many of these libraries the books are overshadowed by other amenities. Here's a look at some of the world's newest and most creative libraries. The library's facade is made almost entirely of spruce, sourced from Finland. It has steel and glass structures mixed in, creating a soft, inviting look. The Helsinki government allocated 68 million euros to the project as well as a prime spot opposite the Finnish Parliament (the federal government provided 30 million more). A local firm, ALA Architects, won the commission over 543 other competitors. Only one third of the 185,000 square foot space is allocated to books (transported by specially designed robots); the rest is community space designed for meeting and doing. At the "book heaven" on the top floor, visitors sprawl out among potted trees and on specially commissioned wool carpets. An urban workshop on the second floor has sewing machines, scanners and printers as well as laser cutters and soldering stations, with spaces allocated to sewing, making badges, and even playing the drums. There is room for pop up markets and entrepreneurs can rent out work stations to meet with colleagues or clients. There are pop up information desks where organizations can inform visitors about their work. In March, Oodi welcomed its one millionth visitor. "We have tourists from all over the world visiting, but mainly from Europe mostly, China, Japan and America," said Anna Maria Soininvaara, the library's director. "Usually they want to experience the Maker Space and ask where all the books are because the shelves are always half empty because they're all on loan." Visitors will be able to see the old physics theater where James Joyce set a chapter of his "A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man" and the original print of "Ulysses," famously called copy number 1. The bedroom of poet Gerard Manley Hopkins is still intact and will be available for viewing. Private letters from Joyce have been pulled out of storage for display. The museum will also have a Joyce Research library and a reading room. There will be seats for working in the garden. "We are re landscaping what we think is the only publicly accessible historic house garden in Dublin," said Simon O'Connor, the museum's director. "We take that responsibility seriously." He's also excited about the museum's radio station that will broadcast 24 hours a day, seven days a week. "Academics, musicians, and writers passing through the cities can stop in," he said. "This is a living, breathing thing." The library goes from "fun" to "serious" as visitors ascend the spiral staircase. On lower floors there are two cafes, a teen center, a children's space and a 320 seat theater. The highest floor is the Great Reading Room, a more traditional library space surrounded by wooden planks. "There are no signs on the walls to ask for silence," said Ms. Thompson. "But the room is always in a state of hushed silence as people study and read within the wooden oasis." Calgary is one of many Canadian cities getting a new super library, as the locals call them. Ottawa is spending 192.9 million on a library scheduled to open in 2024 that will highlight views of the scenic Ottawa River and an exhibit space for the national archives of Canada. And in February 2020, Edmonton, Alberta, plans to debut its new Milner Library. Among its amenities will be a 65 inch multi touch table in the lobby for visitors to play games, participate in surveys and make digital art. Designed by the Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas, the Qatar National Library, which opened in April 2018, is all about symbolism , a physical representation of the country's reverence for learning. The entry way is full of stacks housing almost one million books, including 137,000 for children and 35,000 for teens. "The way they are built on an incline, it looks like they are coming out of the floor," said Dr. Sohair Wastawy, the library's executive director. "It elevates the books and the knowledge people are looking for." The 72 foot tall ceiling is made entirely of glass, drilling home the message that light is essential to learning. The Heritage Library, composed of 11 rooms full of objects significant to Qatar and the region, is sunk 20 feet into the ground; it looks like an excavation site. "The symbolism is that heritage is the root of the nation, the root of the land," Dr. Wastawy said. What the library has in looks it also has in programming . Every month the Qatar Philharmonic Orchestra performs for the public for free. This is only one of the 80 to 90 free events the library holds monthly. One of the most popular activities is a knitting group. Women come every Thursday and stay for four hours. There are labs for writing music, broadcast rooms with green screens, and play spaces for children of all ages. The Tianjin Binhai Library was built for practical purposes, to serve the Binhai New Area, which was formed in 2009 by the merger of three districts of Tianjin , a port city in northeastern China. It opened in October 2017 and has everything you would expect from a library: reading rooms, learning spaces, book storage and a large archive. But the majority of guests don't go there to utilize the services. They visit from all over the world to see the fantastical architecture created by the Dutch firm MVRDV and local architects from the Tianjin Urban Planning and Design Institute. "I think for the first week the library had around 10,000 visitors per day," said Winy Maas, a founding partner with MVRDV and the architect responsible for the library. "People were lining up in the street to enter!" The 363,000 square foot space is painted floor to ceiling in pure white. In the middle of the space is a spherical auditorium nicknamed "the eye." Around it are undulating floor to ceiling shelves that form waves. On the lower levels there are shelves with real books. On the upper levels the shelves contain aluminum plates with paintings of books on them, due in part to fire regulations.) Staircases are incorporated into the bookshelves: It's a popular place for selfies and Instagram posts. The space also has two rooftop decks offering views of the surrounding area. More traditional parts of the library are found to the side and below the attention grabbing lobby. The Central Library in Austin opened its doors on October 2017 with the Texas belief that bigger is always better. With six floors and 200,000 square feet of space, it is twice the size of the former Old Faulk Central Library and located less than half a mile away. The library sits next to Shoal Creek and Lady Bird Lake, areas of natural beauty. Many amenities take advantage of the location by focusing on the outdoors. Wrap around porches serve as reading rooms. The children's room has a reading porch adjacent to it and a giant chess set just outside. "The design gives you a sense of peace," said Ms. Garcia Febo , the library association president who recently visited the space. "It is very helpful for communities to have these spaces where they can feel peace." There is a seed library where users can check out seeds and plant them at home. The library even makes its own solar energy (30 percent of the building's energy is generated this way) and collects rainwater in a 373,000 gallon cistern. It is used in the restrooms and for landscape irrigation. One of the even quirkier features of the new library is a "technology petting zoo" on the fifth floor where visitors can play with new gadgets they don't yet (or might not ever) own. They can draw on tablets, test out Philips Hue smart Wifi lights , create their own model on a 3D printer, or record a song on a Spire Studio. This library is designed to see and be seen. The top of the building cantilevers, seen from downtown Oslo and the train station. Large, open entrances will be placed on the east, west, and south sides to welcome visitors from many directions. At night the library will change colors to reflect the events taking place that evening. Viewing areas inside the library will offer spectacular views of Oslo, the fjord, and the city's green, rolling hills. Inside the library, a room storing secret manuscripts won't be opened until 2114, part of The Future Library Project conceived by the artist Katie Paterson. Every year from 2014 to 2114 a popular writer is creating a unique manuscript written on local paper (a forest of 1,000 trees was planted for the project.) After the 100 year period they can finally be read publicly. More visitors will use the library's entertainment facilities, including a large movie theater and a gaming zone that allows patrons to battle one another in public. (It's one way to get teens in the door.) | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Travel |
The moments where Lorde veers from script are the most intriguing at her "Melodrama" arena tour. Success has a way of polishing out rough edges, of dulling eccentricities. It is hard work, and it requires a commitment to, and belief in, consistency. On an arena tour, it demands a certain sameness the version delivered each night should be uniform, whether in Helsinki or Omaha. Lorde does this of course. The show she brought to the Barclays Center on Wednesday night was structurally not much different from those on the rest of her "Melodrama" world tour. But it's the ways Lorde veers from script that are the most intriguing not wholesale disruptions so much as little ripples that draw attention to the planned out pageantry without diminishing its value. She performs with a heavy sprinkling of wonder that's ordinarily ground down by the time someone is popular enough to play a room of this size. She calls attention to the light absurdity of success of this scale while also inhabiting it confidently. And yet given her prior success her 2013 debut album, "Pure Heroine," went triple platinum, and "Royals" is one of the defining singles of the 2010s it was received quietly. "Melodrama" has not even been certified gold, and has spawned only one song that cracked the Top 20 of the Billboard Hot 100. Which is, perhaps, how it should be: Lorde is a mainstream avant gardist, more Kate Bush than Katy Perry. She paints largely with shades of gray, blue and purple she is in no way Technicolor. In truth, the songs on "Melodrama" might have spread further, or been embraced more widely, had a less complicated singer released them. But in pop, there is less correlation than ever before between size of audience and universality of approach. So if this concert felt like a magnified take on a black box theater performance, that would explain why. Lorde is a confident and joyful performer. She smiles and sighs as easily as she loses herself in reverie when the song demands it. Her dancing is all sharp angles and jerky movements, earnestly exuberant. But even though she radiates bliss during the most involved portions of her performance, the most striking moments were the most bare. Midshow, she sat down and prepared the crowd for the caustic "Writer in the Dark": "You have to be the vivid dreamer," she told them. She sang with gravity and conviction, and some sneering to boot. Just after that, she was joined onstage by Jack Antonoff, the producer songwriter who worked on much of "Melodrama" and who, she said, has made "a lot of beautiful music with a lot of beautiful women." He sat cross legged next to her, and she turned to face him while singing a cover of one such song, St. Vincent's "New York." Then, she asked him to stay onstage for the next song, and he headed back to a keyboard to play on "Liability," another elegantly scathed song from "Melodrama" Lorde sang with sweet melancholy. For a venue of this size, the show itself was small scaled and modestly budgeted barely any stage filigree, relatively simple lighting, no platforms hovering out over the crowd. The only real frill was a clear rectangular box that rose up and down, which served at points as dance space, changing room and bench. Throughout the night, Lorde was joined by dancers in various configurations, though rarely did it feel grand. The movement was loose and fluid, and especially when there was just one, like on "Tennis Court" and "Supercut," the effect was more that of a casual frolic with a friend than an orchestrated routine. These small moments were what mattered: the time one of her shoes slipped off, and so she kicked off the other, removed her socks, and threw them all into the crowd; or the stretch at the end of her encore when she ran down into the pit and began hugging individual fans. Shows this big often rely on grandeur and inaccessibility as a kind of cudgel, but for Lorde, dismantling those things to reveal the person within is the real weapon. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Music |
Cities are filled with buildings, people and concrete usually not seen as the ideal place for anything wild but nightlife. But then there are the bumblebees of London. They may be faring better than their relatives in the English countryside, suggests a study published Tuesday in Proceedings of the Royal Society B. "We're not saying from this that urban areas are the solution to bumblebee declines or that urban areas are the ideal habitat," said Ash Samuelson, a graduate student at Royal Holloway University of London in Britain and lead author of the study. "But given the choice of two unnatural situations, they're actually able to exploit that city environment, which is very different to what they evolved in." Like the Science Times page on Facebook. Sign up for the Science Times newsletter. Bumblebees are important pollinators for flowers and crops that benefit from their vibrating pollination style. But pesticides, disease and habitat loss are wiping out all types of bees, worldwide. Oddly, as sprawling cities and vast agricultural fields replace forests and meadows, people have noticed more bumblebees buzzing around cities. Ms. Samuelson wanted to know if these bees were simply traveling to cities when agricultural fields ran out of food or if they actually were surviving better there and having more babies. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Science |
The Pulitzer Prize in drama is ordinarily given to work that is performed onstage. But this year, because of the coronavirus pandemic, that will change. The board that administers the prizes said Thursday that theatrical work streamed online, as well as shows that were scheduled to be staged in person but were canceled, would be eligible for the honor. "The spread of the COVID virus has closed theaters but has in no way dampened the creativity of the nation's playwrights," the prize's co chairs, Stephen Engelberg of ProPublica and Aminda Marques Gonzalez of the Miami Herald, said in a joint statement. "In this year, of all years, we wanted to honor the work that is being done. The shows are going on, if the audience is remote." The prize, a highly prestigious recognition for an American dramatist, is granted each spring for "a distinguished play by an American author, preferably original in its source and dealing with American life." It has been granted most years since 1918; this year, the musical "A Strange Loop," by Michael R. Jackson, won the prize. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Theater |
"Would you care to look at me?" Happy to oblige, but then it would be hard not to. The statuesque performer Jomama Jones was wearing a sleeveless gold sequined number while she formulated that question, which was also a demand. "I give you all permission to take me in," she continued with the noblesse oblige of an entertainer fully aware of her glamour. Mind you, that outfit was just one of the five, all equally fabulous, she changed in and out of during her show, "Black Light," a Public Theater offering at Joe's Pub. Making her way among the tables, the singer gently teased the audience. To the gentleman who said he was from Mexico, she asked of his country, "Do they have the animal the cougar?" | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Music |
About 18 percent of women and 8 percent of men had experienced violence by an intimate partner in their lifetime, the Centers for Disease and Control and Prevention reported in 2015. Victims of Sexual Violence Often Stay in Touch With Their Abusers. Here's Why. Why would those who have been sexually assaulted by someone close to them stay in touch with their abuser? The question has come up in the weeks since it was revealed that the actress and director Asia Argento arranged to pay off the actor Jimmy Bennett last year, after he accused her of sexually assaulting him in 2013, when he was 17 and she was 37. They remained in contact, though not in a relationship, in the years leading up to and in the time after the alleged assault. Ms. Argento had known Mr. Bennett since he was a child, when they first worked together. Ms. Argento herself entered into a relationship with Harvey Weinstein after she says he sexually assaulted her, when she was 21 years old and he was in his 40s. Despite that encounter, which she said caused "horrible trauma," they were involved for years afterward, which included consensual sex. "The thing with being a victim is I felt responsible," she told The New Yorker last year. Both Ms. Argento and Mr. Bennett faced questions about the truth of their claims because they waited to disclose the abuse or because they continued the relationships. Sign up here to get the Gender Letter, our newsletter that explores issues that affect women, men, and society, delivered to your inbox. These questions are "very common," and there are many reasons that people stay, said Qudsia Raja, who is the policy director of the National Domestic Violence Hotline. "When you're in a relationship, you're invested," Ms. Raja said. "You end up justifying it." People often don't recognize or name assault, sometimes not till many years later, she said. Lisa Aronson Fontes, a researcher and the author of the 2015 book "Invisible Chains: Overcoming Coercive Control in Your Intimate Relationship," agreed: "Many victims do not interpret what is happening as sexual violence." Sometimes sexual violence in a relationship is just a component of a group of problems. Sexual abusers victimize their partners in other ways, too, Dr. Fontes said, including physically, psychologically or economically. The sexual abuse of a partner, by definition, she said, includes psychological abuse, because the abusers make their needs or desires superior. "All these forms of abuse create great fear in the victim and wear her down, making it harder for her to think clearly," Dr. Fontes said. And some people fear they won't be helped or believed. "Men are believed more in the legal system than women," Dr. Fontes said. Gender aside, when the abuser has more power or social standing, that can be used to invalidate the survivor's account. In 2015 the Centers for Disease and Control and Prevention reported that about 18 percent of women and 8 percent of men had experienced sexual violence by an intimate partner. The majority of people who contact the National Domestic Violence Hotline about abuse by a partner are between the ages of 16 and 24, Ms. Raja said. The National Domestic Violence Hotline has a section on its website called Setting Boundaries, filed under Healthy Relationships. It answers questions about consent and communication in intimate relationships. "Personal boundaries shouldn't feel like castle walls during a siege," the website says. 'I had so much self doubt' Caragh Poh, 30, of New York, said she struggled with feelings of shame, confusion and self doubt after she was drugged and raped by a man she was dating. She shared details of the relationship in a July essay for The Cut entitled "The Kinds of Monsters I Used to Date." "I knew I woke up twice in the middle of the night to him having sex with me, and that I was only awake for a moment each time," Ms. Poh told The New York Times last week. "I knew I felt off in the morning. I knew I found residue from a crushed pill on the counter. But I had so much self doubt." "I stayed because I really had trouble believing it happened," she said. Ms. Poh asked herself questions that drove the seed of doubt deeper: "What if I was just so tired and that's why I barely woke while he was on top of me? What if I felt off because I was dehydrated even though I only had two drinks?" "The feeling of 'What if I'm wrong?' made me panic more than 'What if I'm right?'" she said. "So I chose to believe that he didn't put anything in my drink. It was easier to believe him." Ms. Poh said she was fortunate because she was able to leave the relationship without fear of recourse, acknowledging that many do not have such a luxury. Those in the legal system may also ask these common questions of people trying to leave unsafe relationships. People have trouble "giving credence" to behavior that happens in private, Dr. Fontes said. "Abusers may be great at presenting a front as a kind person." Ms. Raja said the complexity of the issue is sometimes lost in a courtroom. She has seen petitions for protective orders rejected because the judge said that if the abuse was serious, the accuser would have spoken up earlier. But a person "who does not leave her sexually abusive partner because of fear may be accurately assessing the risks in her situation," Dr. Fontes said. "She needs to be given clearer access to resources to help her exit safely, and hold her abuser accountable." Dr. Fontes also stressed that putting the onus on the victim to extract themselves misses the point. "It is perhaps more important to ask why some men choose to sexually abuse their partners, again and again," she said. Ms. Poh said her silence after being assaulted was in part because she feared being discredited: "We see and hear women being doubted over and over again. I didn't want to have to defend my memories because they were weakened. If someone wanted to accuse me of lying, I had nothing I could use as proof. It wasn't like I was attacked on the street with bruises to show for it. It was just so much easier to ignore it." In retrospect, she said that she wished she had gone to the hospital and gotten a drug test the morning after the assault. If you or someone you know is being abused, support and help are available. Visit the National Domestic Violence Hotline website or call 1 800 799 7233. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Style |
Camping With John Waters and His Band of 'Filthy Freaks' Hello, muddah. Hello, faddah. Here I am at Camp John Waters. The kids are nice. Actually, they're grown ups, among them a vaudeville troupe from Montreal; a pair of bartenders from Key West, Fla.; burlesque dancers; nudists; and at least one pornographer. There are plastic pink flamingos outside the cabins, and the activities, alongside tennis and kayaking, include Scotch Cigars and a campfire screening of "Female Trouble." Before the bus comes to take us home, here's a recap: The inaugural Camp John Waters took place at Club Getaway, which lets adults relive their sleep away camping days. When this extra campy theme weekend was announced in April, tickets sold out in days, with a waiting list 600 deep. (A 2018 edition was just announced.) In came John Waters fanatics from as far away as Australia and Chile, towing beehive wigs and cat eye glasses. On the bus from New York, we'd been asked to sign a standard Club Getaway waiver forbidding "excessive, inappropriate or disruptive actions." It seemed like a lost cause. "The Pope of Trash." "The People's Pervert." To his fans, Mr. Waters is a countercultural demigod, a dirty class clown at 71. His gleefully transgressive films, including "Pink Flamingos" and "Serial Mom," created a topsy turvy world in which gross is glamorous, housewives are homicidal, and the noblest title one can achieve is Filthiest Person Alive. So it was only fitting that Camp John Waters had an upside down spirit. "I hated sports at camp, so at this camp I think we should reward every team that loses," Mr. Waters said, to raucous cheers. "This would be the camp where the fat people get picked first in dodge ball." More cheers. The campers, who paid up to 599, were a self selecting group of exhibitionists and oddballs for whom Mr. Waters's movies were a beacon of belonging. "We're here to meet a bunch of filthy freaks, and maybe make some new friends," said Jennifer Sisley, one of the Key West bartenders. "Everybody's got a common interest." Alastair McQueen, a 28 year old filmmaker, grew up in North Carolina and saw "Pink Flamingos" when he was 12. "My whole life was different after that," he said, sneaking a cigarette behind the buffet tent. "That's when I understood there were other weirdos like me." He was wearing cutoff jeans, a leopard print V neck and an eye patch ("I have pinkeye"), and had big plans for the Saturday meet and greet with Mr. Waters. "I'm going to paint a picture of him with my penis," he said proudly. "And I'm going to have him sign my penis." Mr. Waters, as it turned out, had been a camper himself. From ages 8 to 13, he attended Happy Hollow, in his hometown, Baltimore, then went to a boating camp as a teenager. "I learned so much as a young man from summer camp," he told the crowd. "I learned to smoke unfiltered cigarettes." Then he mentioned other, less PG rated activities. He had a crush on one of his counselors, but the other campers didn't beat him up for being gay, "because all the brutes thought I was crazy," he said in an interview the next day. "I wanted to be a bad teenager. I remember listening to rock 'n' roll secretly and smoking. Anything that was juvenile delinquent, that's what I wanted to be." By midmorning, the volleyball courts and climbing wall were empty, but Bloody Mary Bingo was overflowing with people and drinks. ("We're indoor kids," one camper said.) Among the players was Randy Harrison, best known as Justin Taylor from the Showtime series "Queer as Folk." He had come to Camp John Waters with his friend Jakey Hicks, a wig maker for Cirque du Soleil. "It sounded like the craziest thing I've ever heard of," he said. Nearby was Josh McCullough, who runs a Tumblr page called Trashy Travels, on which he documents locations from John Waters movies. The day before, he had made his 10th trip to Baltimore and finally found the house from "Serial Mom" where Kathleen Turner's character beats a woman to death with a leg of lamb. After a drag lunch, some campers gathered on the lawn for color war, while others joined the Baltimore Bar Hike, turning the archery range into a makeshift pub. At the arts and crafts table, projects included enemy bracelets and satanic Christmas ornaments. Outside her tent, Dominique Maciejka, who owns a vintage clothing store on Long Island, had set up a pop up shop for those who forgot to pack their polyester onesies. "We have lace masks, rainbow suspenders, bow ties, sunglasses," she said. "We have kaleidoscope crystal glasses, which are fun because they make you feel like you're on drugs, even if you're not." At 5 p.m., Mr. Waters held court at the central lodge for a three hour meet and greet. Stationed at a table below crisscrossed canoe paddles, he signed everything from books to plastic dog feces. As promised, Alastair McQueen brought a portrait of Mr. Waters painted with his genitalia, then asked for an autograph. "I can initial it," Mr. Waters said, borrowing a line from Truman Capote. Mr. Waters took pride in his outre fan base. "They're people who still like to cause trouble, but are happy," he said. "They don't even fit in their own minority, like gay people who don't get along with other gay people, or punks that are too weird for other punks." There were multiple Tracy Turnblads (the zaftig heroine of "Hairspray"), in headbands and roach print dresses. A few people came as Johnny Depp from "Cry Baby," with gelled hair and biker jackets. (It's the easiest thing for lesbians to pull off, one woman said.) One guy was dressed as an Odorama scratch and sniff card from "Polyester." The boathouse had been decorated as the 1960s dance off show from "Hairspray." As Mr. Waters looked on, contestants walked the stage and introduced themselves. ("Hi, I'm Jerry, and I'm the pervert from 'Desperate Living.'") Cat McCarthy, a burlesque dancer from Buffalo, came as Babs Johnson, Divine's trashy character from "Pink Flamingos." Onstage, she raised a toy puppy above her mouth and squeezed peanut butter from its bowels. She was the first runner up. The winner ("because she looked the most like her," Mr. Waters said) was Hannah Abelow, an artist and prop designer from Providence, R.I. She had come as Edith Massey's character from "Female Trouble," complete with feathered sleeves, blacked out teeth and a hook hand. Some campers stayed to dance, while others went out to the fire pit to toast marshmallows under the stars. Mr. Waters slipped out the back door and stood beneath the pines, elated. "It's like Jonestown, but with a happy ending," he said. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Style |
A great American president, a mythic Rastafarian musician, a white dog named Duncan and a demonic being with the date of the day after the recent presidential election carved into its chest in scarlet these are among the personages that combine and recombine throughout Jason Fox's cycle of 23 raw portrait paintings at Canada. This excellent show is called "Square Cave," which suggests that while we now live in rooms with corners, the Stone Age is not so far behind us, and could come again. As we move around the gallery, clockwise, Barack Obama and Bob Marley (complete with a giant spliff) merge and separate and the dog appears. A head brings to mind Picasso's "Les Demoiselles d'Avignon," next Velazquez is seen in "Las Meninas," at his easel. His canvas has nearly trompe l'oeil textures and tacks, in contrast to the quiet mayhem of Mr. Fox's paint handling in general. His shingled planes form a compressed Cubism with occasional eruptions of Expressionism. His preference for letting one strong color dominate red, green, brown or black ropes in modernism's monochromes. George Harrison makes appearances, especially in the outstanding "Ambassador to England or France" all brown with touches of rabid red and a canine visage. The skull like head and pink shoulders of a figure lying on a slab is titled "Soft Entry," and evokes both President John F. Kennedy in Dallas and the Dead Presidents, a band. The themes Mr. Fox is continually worrying about include recent American history and its violence; drugs and rock 'n' roll; painting's past, and his own artistic ambition; and the corrupting power of power. In one painting Mr. Obama is a wise man; in the next he's a suave red devil. We are reminded that 11/9 is 9/11 backward: A circle has closed but nothing has ceased. Yet these shifting presences and thoughts may all be one long drug induced dream: In the final canvas, Duncan, the artist's dog, is curled up asleep in his bed. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Art & Design |
As quarantine stretches into summer, Netflix will bid farewell to two Scarlett Johansson fronted sci fi efforts, a pre "Star Wars" team up by Oscar Isaac and Domhnall Gleeson, two indies starring Brie Larson and three marvelous dramatic comedies from female filmmakers of note. And those are just a few of the titles we recommend watching before they slip away at the end of July. (Dates indicate the final day a title is available.) When this marital drama from Derek Cianfrance hit theaters in 2010, its production was already the stuff of legend: Its stars, Ryan Gosling and Michelle Williams, attached to the project for nearly a decade, first shot the scenes in which their characters meet and falling in love, then spent a month living together before shooting the later scenes of marital dysfunction. It sounds like a gimmick, but the extended acting exercise pays off handsomely; the offhand naturalism and lived in discord of those scenes is striking and occasionally heartbreaking, while Cianfrance's intermingling of the rough times with their earlier courtship creates a devastating portrait of love won and lost. Scarlett Johansson forges one of her trickiest performances simultaneously enigmatic, haunted, and sensitive as an alien life form trawling Scotland for unsuspecting male victims in this mind melting science fiction drama from the British director Jonathan Glazer. It sounds like an art house riff on soft core sci fi sleaze like "Species," but Glazer is interested in more than sex; he creates a disturbing mixture of cinema verite and body horror, using nonactors and hidden cameras to capture Johansson's interactions and seductions, to unsettling effect. It is, to be sure, not a mass entertainment. But those who can tune to its peculiar wavelength will find it enthralling. In 2013, Tom Hardy took on an acting challenge even tougher than playing Bane or Venom: He stepped into the driver's seat of a mobile, one man movie. He plays a construction foreman making a 90 minute drive from his home in Birmingham to a hospital in London, where a colleague with whom he had a one night stand is giving birth to his child; the writer and director Steven Knight plays out that drive in real time as the character uses his car phone to make a series of telephone calls in which his carefully balanced life unravels. What could have been a dull, stagy gimmick is instead a thrillingly intimate character drama, elevated by Hardy's finest (and most subtle) screen work to date. The staid conventions of the high school movie reckless romance, nonstop partying, cheerful hedonism are rendered with atypical sensitivity in James Ponsoldt's 2013 adaptation of the young adult novel by Tim Tharp. Miles Teller is (deceptively) charming in the leading role as a popular senior whose good time demeanor hides a troubling case of alcoholism. Shailene Woodley is delightful as the brainy and beautiful classmate whom he first sees as a rebound relationship before realizing the emotional damage he's capable of inflicting. Comparisons abound to "Say Anything," and that's understandable; both films share an open heart and a keen ear for the rhythms of teen speak. But "The Spectacular Now" goes deeper and darker, examining the impulses of these difficult characters while allowing for the possibility of light at the end of their journey. Brie Larson (who co stars in "The Spectacular Now") won the Oscar for best actress for her astonishing work in this adaptation by Lenny Abrahamson of the Emma Donoghue novel. She stars as Joy, who lives in captivity with her 5 year old son a child conceived with her there after she was kidnapped as a teen. Abrahamson sensitively details their daily routines and rituals as Joy quietly and patiently plans an escape. Those scenes are harrowing (and heartbreaking), but "Room" doesn't settle for easy answers. The film's second half asks hard questions about trauma and recovery, allowing Larson and her co star Jacob Tremblay to add additional layers to their complex, bravura performances. This indie hit from Gillian Robespierre stars Jenny Slate as a Brooklyn stand up comedian whose one night stand with a nice guy (Jake Lacy) results in an unplanned pregnancy. She chooses to terminate it not the typical narrative arc of a light dramatic comedy and on one level, "Obvious Child" plays as film criticism, questioning the assumptions and motives of earlier comedies like "Juno" and "Knocked Up." But on another level, it is delightful entertainment, boosted by Slate's considerable charisma, by her sprung chemistry with Lacy and by Robespierre's wry, insightful screenplay, which allows its messy protagonist the kind of complicated agency too rarely granted to women onscreen. When the director Lynn Shelton died unexpectedly in May, much was written about her humanistic, empathetic style; she treated all of her characters with warmth and respect, no matter how poor their decisions might have been. Those qualities are on full display in this dramatic comedy from 2014 featuring Keira Knightley as a young woman on the verge of responsible adulthood who takes a quick detour into arrested development. Chloe Grace Moretz is the teenage girl who becomes her unlikely, short term B.F.F., and Sam Rockwell is the single dad who, in an unfortunate entanglement, falls for Knightley. The writer and director J.C. Chandor sought to replicate the style and feel of Sidney Lumet's New York movies even down to casting Oscar Isaac, a latter day Pacino, in the leading role with this 2014 crime drama. Isaac stars as the owner of a heating oil company battling truck hijackers, Teamsters, a particularly curious assistant district attorney (David Oyelowo) and a wife with Lady Macbeth inclinations (Jessica Chastain). Chandor gets the look of early 80s Gotham right, but this isn't just "Joker" style cosplay. "A Most Violent Year" reaches for the moral ambiguity of the films it is aping, using its period settings and costumes as support, rather than substitution, for the complex characters within them. Quentin Tarantino kicked off his cycle of grindhouse influenced alternate histories with this 2008 war adventure. Set at the end of World War II, the film's Oscar winning screenplay, written by Tarantino, juggles several stories of escapees, renegades and war criminals, culminating in an ambitious attempt to assassinate Adolf Hitler. The opportunities for disaster or, at the very least, insensitivity with this material are multifold, but Tarantino does not step wrong. He gets a big assist from Christoph Waltz, also an Oscar winner for his unforgettable performance as a gleefully villainous SS colonel. Four years before "Captain Marvel," the writing and directing team of Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck collaborated on this (to put it mildly) smaller scale effort, a "California Split" style indie drama about the sticky friendship between two inveterate gamblers. Ryan Reynolds and Ben Mendelsohn are the odd couple leads, and they're well matched; keying off each other's (respectively) high energy and low key naturalism, they meet somewhere in the middle. The story, of bad streaks offset by the promise of an eventual big win, is nothing new. The draw here is the atmosphere Boden and Fleck create and the ease with which Reynolds and Mendelsohn luxuriate in it, creating characters that shouldn't draw your sympathy but do. Oscar Isaac again, this time donning a bushy beard and tech bro glasses. Part affable, part menacing, he plays a Silicon Valley millionaire who invites an office contest winner (Domhnall Gleeson) to his isolated home to share with him some astonishingly realistic robot technology in particular, a fascinating female model named Ava (Alicia Vikander). Written and directed by Alex Garland ("Annihilation," "Devs"), this is a throwback to an earlier era of science fiction, propelled by thoughtful examinations of morality and identity. Cut from a similar low fi sci fi cloth, this 2013 Spike Jonze film, which won an Oscar for best original screenplay, imagines a future in which a smartphone's Siri style personal assistant system proves so supportive, helpful and (yes) seductive that one could just ... fall in love with it. That's the conundrum faced by Theodore Twombly (Joaquin Phoenix), an introverted greeting card writer who rebounds from a painful divorce by intensifying his relationship with the "Samantha" operating system (voiced by Scarlett Johansson). A lesser filmmaker might twist the premise into a broad, dopey comedy. But Jonze goes further, exploring how Theodore's depression and social dysfunction made the inexplicable connection seem not only safe but logical. This 2018 Pixar sequel from Brad Bird one of the last Disney titles making the exodus to Disney Plus was a long time in coming. The 2004 original, concerning the trials and tribulations of a family of superheroes, was both a genuinely inventive animated feature and an early entry in the comic book movie cycle. Bird meets the challenge of following it up in a period of superhero ubiquity by focusing more on the familial dynamic and by introducing a memorable pair of villains, entertainingly voiced by Bob Odenkirk and Catherine Keener. It may not equal the original (few animated films have), but it's crisply entertaining. Nadine Franklin (Hailee Steinfeld) is a fairly typical teen cynical, bitter, intelligent and smart mouthed while also plagued with self doubt, awkwardness and self destructiveness. The first time director Kelly Fremon Craig ells the story of how Nadine hits bottom (the high school version of it, anyway) and struggles mightily to bounce back with the help of a teacher with the patience of a saint (Woody Harrelson), and a best friend who has made things ... complicated (Haley Lu Richardson). Steinfeld plays Nadine to the hilt, crafting a portrait of teenage ennui and social anxiety that's as recognizable as it is uproarious. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Movies |
As you would expect for an episode of "Saturday Night Live" hosted by Bill Hader, the former "S.N.L." cast member, this one had everything: new installments of long running sketches like "The Californians"; cameos from Fred Armisen and John Goodman; and an appearance by Hader's eccentric night life correspondent, Stefon, who helpfully explained what Farrah chauns are. (Those are leprechauns that look like Farrah Fawcett, obviously.) This week's broadcast (which featured the musical guest Arcade Fire) didn't have a lot of topical sketches, but the opening skit addressed what has felt like round the clock firings in the Trump administration. Playing the CNN host Anderson Cooper, the cast member Alex Moffat asked Attorney General Jeff Sessions, as played by Kate McKinnon, to explain the sudden dismissal on Friday of the F.B.I. deputy director Andrew G. McCabe. She added: "Look, I'm always down to clown but this was sneaky, even for me. I'm just a simple man who wanted to make things bad for immigrants. And now, here I am, taking away the pension of a Christian white. It ain't right." Moffat next turned to Rex W. Tillerson, the departing secretary of state, played by Goodman, who tried to remain sanguine about his firing. "It just wasn't a good fit," Goodman said. "But these things happen." Asked if he had been fired by a tweet, Goodman denied it. "John Kelly called me personally," Goodman explained. "He said, 'Where are you?' I said, 'Sir, that's private.' He said, 'Oh, good, are you on the toilet? Because I got some news.'" Growing more agitated, Goodman said: "It's just crazy how one day you're the C.E.O. of Exxon, a 50 billion company. And the next day, you get fired by a man who used to sell steaks in the mail." So saying, the drinking glass Goodman had been gripping tensely exploded in his bare hand. For further analysis, Moffat brought out Armisen, who played the "Fire and Fury" author Michael Wolff, and Hader, who played the short lived White House communications director Anthony Scaramucci "the fidget spinner of the Trump White House," as he described himself. (Hader explained, "I made a big splash, then one day everybody was like, 'Whoa, what the hell was that about?'") Asked who would take over from McCabe, Armisen replied: "Well, my sources tell me the job is down to two candidates. Milwaukee Sheriff David Clarke or the president's favorite TV detective, Monk." In their opening remarks, the "Weekend Update" anchors Colin Jost and Michael Che also joked about the continuing exodus at the White House. "This week, the national unemployment rate held steady at 4 percent," Jost began as a line graph displayed beside him, "while the White House unemployment rate rose to all of them." Suddenly, the line graph changed into a who's who image of departed White House staffers. The crazy thing is, I'm starting to feel sorry for all these people Trump is firing, even though I thought they were terrible at their jobs. I mean, six months ago, could you have imagined thinking, "Hang in there, Jeff Sessions"? The latest victim was former F.B.I. deputy director Andrew McCabe, who was fired two days before he was set to retire on his 50th birthday so he couldn't collect his full pension. Damn, man, that's cold. Even the Joker's like, "You don't treat people like that." I love that Trump is being extra mean to the F.B.I. guy who's definitely about to testify against him. It's like walking in and announcing to a whole restaurant that you're not tipping anyone before they make your food. Che continued on this theme, saying: President Trump fired Secretary of State Tillerson and replaced him with C.I.A. director Mike Pompeo. Tillerson will return to his previous job as the eagle from the Muppets. Insiders are saying that more major staff shake ups could be coming to the White House. Trump is firing people like he's trying to get us under the salary cap or something. It's a little too late. It's like when those Domino's commercials say, "At Domino's, we're making some changes," and you're like, "Yeah, but you're still Domino's." Adding to her "S.N.L." repertoire, McKinnon played Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, in damage control mode after a poorly received interview on the CBS newsmagazine "60 Minutes" in which DeVos said, among other things, that the decision to arm teachers should be left to states. Asked by Jost why she had fared so badly in the interview, McKinnon replied: "Well, I think the problem is that the words that were coming out of my mouth were bad. And that is because they came from my brain." Analyzing the merits of public schools and charter schools, McKinnon said: "I don't like to think of things in terms of school. It should be up to the states. In Wyoming, for example, which has many potential grizzlies, there should be a school for bears. And in Louisiana, crocodile crossing guards. And in North Carolina, stop being trans, and that's what's best for them." As for the school shooting issue, she added, "We are working hard to ensure that all schools are safe learning environments for guns." Playing a fictional Toronto film producer named Thomas Logan, described as "the Canadian Harvey Weinstein," Hader confessed in a mock interview to misdeeds that were not nearly as offensive as those committed by his American counterpart. "I'm here to say it's all true," Hader said. "I definitely abused my power." He added: "I had this assistant and I was real inappropriate, saying stuff like, 'You look nice today' or 'What kind of sunglasses are those?' You know, really pestering her. So she got ticked and well, I just went ahead and resigned." "As soon as I realized, I said I was sorry," Hader said. "I go to H.R. and I say, 'Sorry, I gotta say, but I really put my boot in it this time.' And the H.R. lady says, 'No, I'm sorry, I should have seen this coming.' So I resign and then she resigns." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Television |
The resignation of the top executive at Billboard magazine was announced on Wednesday, amid an investigation into how the publication handled coverage of harassment allegations in the music industry. Valence Media, the magazine's parent company, said in a statement that John Amato had resigned as the chief executive of its Hollywood Reporter Billboard Media Group. In May, The Daily Beast reported claims that Mr. Amato had suppressed articles in Billboard that were critical of Charlie Walk, a prominent record executive and longtime friend who had been accused of sexual misconduct by multiple women and was subsequently fired by his label, the Republic Group. Mr. Walk denied the allegations against him at the time they were made. Days after that article was published, Valence announced an investigation, which is continuing. In a memo circulated to employees and obtained by The New York Times, Asif Satchu and Modi Wiczyk, Valence's co chief executives, gave no explanation for Mr. Amato's resignation. They added only that a new leadership plan would be announced "in the near future." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Media |
Rockefeller University, seeking to enlarge its campus, has proposed building a deck over the Franklin D. Roosevelt Drive from East 64th to East 68th Street. The project will darken yet another leg of what was once a sunny waterside stretch of twists and turns. Nor does it bode well for one of the sights of the drive, the great fortresslike retaining wall, a leftover from the days when there really was an East River shore, not just a highway. By the beginning of the 20th century, the riverfront along the Upper East Side was still at a remove from the rest of the city, a mix of declining summer houses and gritty industries. In 1901, John D. Rockefeller decided to establish a medical research institute; in 1903 he bought the rustic Schermerhorn estate, from 64th to 67th Street along the East River. The land dropped down to the water's edge in a rocky scramble. The first institute building opened in 1906 at the foot of 66th Street, followed in 1910 by other structures. Exact sequencing of the ponderous retaining walls along the drive is difficult to determine, but the one from 64th to 65th Street was not there in 1911, when The New York Times reported that John D. Rockefeller Jr., had been summoned to court because a 30 foot cliff had collapsed onto Exterior Street. Rockefeller agreed to remedy the situation with a wall that remains as the southernmost section, the one with fabulously craggy stonework and giant iron doorways. The stones in the walls are set in a random pattern, and those used for the rocky arches over the windows, called voussoirs, are made up of several skinny sections, which somehow gives them a threatening air, suggesting witch's fingers. The wall may have been designed by York Sawyer, known for banks as well as several hospitals, or by Shepley, Rutan Coolidge; both firms were working for Rockefeller University at that time. York Sawyer was known for massive stonework, and the Shepley firm was the successor to Henry Hobson Richardson, who made a specialty of craggy rock faced facades. This may be wishful thinking: perhaps the rocky arches are from the hand of an anonymous engineer. The retaining walls gave Exterior Street a secluded atmosphere, and in 1929 The New York Times profiled "one of the city's least known thoroughfares," with "Sleepy Exterior Street at Last Comes to Life" as the headline. "Here, within easy hailing distance, pass the boats bound upstream. Churning tugs with romantic names scuttle past, followed by black, mysterious looking craft. A rowboat maneuvered by a boy and two girls noses along the edge of the stream." It was a loafer's paradise: "Gay salutes ring out across the water between sailor and landlubber; men sit and whittle and small boys fish for driftwood in the water; mothers bring their young babies, and while the infants slumber peacefully in low slung perambulators the women crochet or read, eat candy and gossip." Presumably everyone woke up in 1933 when 25 year old Elizabeth Baganz, who was learning to drive, also brushed up on her swimming. The Times reported that an unidentified woman who was passing by in her limousine, driven by a chauffeur in livery, jumped into the river to rescue Miss Baganz. Afterward, the heroine refused to give her name and was handed back into her car, which drove away. What is often called the East River Drive was completed along the riverfront in 1942. Far from sleepy, it was a roller coaster of dark and light, ups and downs, twists and turns. In their book "New York 1930," Robert A. M. Stern, Gregory Gilmartin and Thomas Mellins described it as "One of the world's most thrilling stretches of multilevel highway." The moderne styling of the drive collided serendipitously with the hulking retaining walls. In 1973 Gov. Nelson Rockefeller oversaw the transfer of air rights over the drive from 62nd to 71st Street to the institute's successor, Rockefeller University, and New York Hospital, to the north. The university has already expanded half a block over the drive at 64th Street under the 1973 agreement, and its current proposal for the section immediately north will throw the rest of the drive into shadow. And the wall? The project is still in the planning stages, but Tom O'Connor, a spokesman for the university, says the construction may not affect the retaining walls, although this seems unlikely. To accommodate structural systems and basement mechanical spaces, the University's first extension neatly decapitates the imposing wall built by John D. Rockefeller in 1911. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Real Estate |
Still thinking about that ending? Or Brad Pitt's moccasins? Quentin Tarantino's latest film has generated a lot of ink and controversy. Here's what's worth your time. What to Read About 'Once Upon a Time ... in Hollywood' Quentin Tarantino crammed so much stuff into his polarizing meta movie "Once Upon a Time ... in Hollywood" that nearly a month after its release, fans and critics are still trying to unpack it. How much of the film is historically accurate? How much is revisionist? Is the film a work of genius, an exercise in nostalgia porn or just a problematic mess? (And where does it rate with regard to Tarantino's well documented history of foot worship?) So much to explore! Here's the best of what to read online, with an eye on the controversies, the context and the critical response. 'Brad Pitt and Leonardo DiCaprio Talk Tarantino, Stardom and What Might Have Been' The New York Times "You know when you have an altercation in public or you put your foot in your mouth, and you're driving home and you think of that witty thing that you wished you would have said?" Brad Pitt said to our critic Manohla Dargis. "His dialogue is that witty thing." 'Quentin Tarantino, Brad Pitt and Leonardo DiCaprio Take You Inside "Once Upon a Time ... in Hollywood"' Esquire "The last performance Burt Reynolds gave was when he came down and did a rehearsal day for that sequence, and then the script reading," Tarantino told Michael Hainey." "I found out from three different people that the last thing he did just before he died was run lines with his assistant. Then he went to the bathroom, and that's when he had his heart attack." 'The Playboy Mansion, Quentin Tarantino's Kitchen, and More Behind the Scenes Secrets From the Stars of "Once Upon a Time ... in Hollywood"' Entertainment Weekly "I went to see 'True Romance' and then I thought, 'You know, I wrote this thing, maybe they'll let me in for free.' Not because I was stressing the money, just actually, 'I'm in the movie!'" Tarantino, as told to Clark Collis. 'The Stuntwoman Who Made the Stuntman of "Once Upon a Time ... in Hollywood"' The Ringer "We as stunt people know that some of the most beat up looking women and men in their 50s were probably some of the baddest asses, even if they're maybe moving a little slower." Zoe Bell, the film's stunt coordinator. Quentin Tarantino's Goddess of Go Go The New York Times "Ms. Basil said she still dances every day, and you can catch a glimpse of her form during the opening credits of Mr. Tarantino's movie," writes Debra Levine about Toni Basil, the choreographer of "Once Upon a Time." "Clad in her signature fedora, she and the actress Margot Robbie do the twist on a Pan Am flight carrying the director Roman Polanski and his wife, Sharon Tate, to Los Angeles." 'Tarantino's Secrets, Brad's Pits And Leo's Flames: Tales From "Once Upon A Time ... in Hollywood"' HuffPost "In the initial script, however, no one interrupted the fight. Cliff emerged a more clear cut winner, which made Bruce the loser. That didn't sit well with the film's co stunt coordinator, Robert Alonzo, or Pitt, who were keenly aware of Lee's cultural renown." '15 "Once Upon a Time ... in Hollywood" Filming Locations You Can Still Visit in Los Angeles' TripSavvy "With false facades, meticulously made set dressings, detailed costumes, and rebuilt locations lost to time, the director and his team successfully recreated L.A. in 1969, a year and place personally important to him." 'Margaret Qualley Explains How She Overcame Her Fear of Quentin Tarantino's Foot Fetish' Indiewire "Qualley wasn't so sure about putting her toes in the spotlight. 'I genuinely was like, "Quentin, this is a bad idea. I don't have good feet." I was in point shoes for far too long to have toes that can be shown to the world.'" 'Young "Once Upon a Time in Hollywood" Star Shares Act of Kindness From Luke Perry' Hollywood Reporter "One moment in the film called for DiCaprio's Rick Dalton to throw her character off of his lap, and the older actor was concerned for the actress Julia Butters' well being. Recalls Butters: 'He was so very nice that he said, "I'm going to ask you every time if you're O.K., because I would never forgive myself if I hurt my princess."'" '"Once Upon a Time ... in Hollywood" Review: We Lost It at the Movies' The New York Times "There will be viewers who object to the movie's literal and metaphorical hippie punching on political grounds. There will be others who embrace it as a thumb in the eye of current sensitivities, and others who insist the movie has no politics at all. To which I can only say: It's a western, for Pete's sake." 'Quentin Tarantino's "Once Upon a Time ... in Hollywood" Debuts at Cannes' The New York Times "In some ways, Polanski reads like a tragic variation on Tarantino, a kind of horrific doppelganger, which is one reason, I think, that this movie feels more personal than some of his recent endeavors. He loves this world so much, and that adoration suffuses every exchange, cinematic allusion and narrative turn." "A New York Times reporter questioned why Robbie wasn't given more dialogue in the movie during a press conference on Wednesday. Tarantino, who Variety reported appeared to be visibly upset by the question, replied: 'I reject your hypothesis.'" 'Bruce Lee's Daughter Saddened by "Mockery" in "Once Upon a Time ... in Hollywood"' The Wrap "I understand they want to make the Brad Pitt character this super bad ass who could beat up Bruce Lee. But they didn't need to treat him in the way that white Hollywood did when he was alive." 'Kareem Abdul Jabbar: Bruce Lee Was My Friend, and Tarantino's Movie Disrespects Him' The Hollywood Reporter "Of course, Tarantino has the artistic right to portray Bruce any way he wants. But to do so in such a sloppy and somewhat racist way is a failure both as an artist and as a human being." 'How Sharon Tate's Death and the Manson Killings Gripped Los Angeles' The New York Times "Americans have long had an insatiable appetite for gruesome crime stories. But this inexplicable act left many in Hollywood panicked that they could be next." 'Sharon Tate and "Once Upon a Time ... in Hollywood": What Actually Happened?' The New York Times "Tate hardly had time to sink into her career before she was murdered at age 26. In the absence of a wide body of work, the gruesome circumstances of her death and the terror among Hollywood's elite that her killers might target them next have enveloped Tate's legacy for decades." 'Message in a Shampoo Bottle' The New York Times "Jay Sebring, the No. 1 haircutter to the stars, the guy who came out of beauty school and invented a whole new way of cutting men's hair. Who went into a white coated profession dressed in hip hugger jeans and chambray shirts. Who studied martial arts with Bruce Lee and raced sports cars with Paul Newman." 'The Story of the Abandoned Movie Ranch Where the Manson Family Launched Helter Skelter' Curbed "In return for a place to live, the family, especially Manson's girls, would help take care of the sprawling property and Spahn's needs. Lynette 'Squeaky' Fromme was assigned to be Spahn's 'eyes' and de facto wife." 'The Stuntman Who Inspired Brad Pitt's "Once Upon a Time ... in Hollywood" Character Is More Badass In Real Life' Esquire "Booth's inspiration, the stuntman Hal Needham who died at 82 in October 2013 was even more remarkable: A cross between the MacGyver and the Dos Equis guy, inventing stunt rigs and shattering bones by day, and beefing with John Wayne by night." 'The Ellipsis in the Title of Tarantino's New Film Is Explained ... Sort Of' The New York Times "For a film rife with carefully thought out callbacks to beloved titles in movie history (there's even an extended sequence from 'The Great Escape'), it seems like a surprising oversight. As it turns out, it's not an oversight at all." 'The Manson Murders: What to Read, Watch and Listen To' The New York Times "For 50 years, that story has offered up a seemingly irresistible mix of star power, sex, gore and sociology, spawning countless films, books and other ephemera. Many, like the sensationalistic 1973 documentary 'Manson' or the 1971 fictionalization 'Sweet Savior,' are mere exploitation (and are harder to track down these days), but most of the essentials are available to stream or download." 'Have You Seen "Once Upon a Time ... in Hollywood"? Here's What to Read' The New York Times "Here's what to read if you want to learn more about Manson and his crimes." 'A Pop Culture Glossary for "Once Upon a Time ... in Hollywood"' The New York Times "Here's a glossary to sort out the real references from the fake ones." "According to Mary Ramos, Quentin Tarantino's longtime music supervisor, the process for selecting songs for one of his films starts in a record store which happens to be in his Hollywood home." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Movies |
Education trends come and go: Mandatory pledges of allegiance, the new math, forcing left handed children to write with the right hand. And then there is the classroom chair. In New York City public schools, a top chair of choice since the mid 1990s has been the Model 114, also known as the "super stacker," 15 pounds of steel, sawdust and resin that comes in 22 colors and has a basic, unyielding design little changed from its wooden forebears. "They don't die," said Ali Salehi, the senior vice president for engineering and operations for Columbia Manufacturing, a 135 year old company in Westfield, Mass., that makes the super stacker. "They just don't die." The staying power of the super stacker, a version of which can be found in schools all over the United States, is a symbol of continuity in a world of constant change. Children who attend the same schools their parents attended are likely to, at some point, plunk down in the very same kinds of seats, if not the very same seats. But in some quarters, the chair and others like it are seen as stubborn holdovers from before the age of ergonomics, when American schools' main job was to turn out upright citizens, and rote learning was the student's lot. "The chair, in short, originated in the industrial ordering of education," said David W. Orr, an environmental studies professor at Oberlin College who frequently writes about design. "It is maintained by profit seeking school suppliers and unimaginative administrators who see no other possible arrangement of the body, or bodies, or any possible downside to the lower back from six hours of enforced sitting." Wes Bradley, the principal of Thomas Nelson High School in Bardstown, Ky., said he doubted many school districts had "ever had a discussion about chairs." Never in the six years he taught in a Bronx high school, Mr. Bradley said, had he seen chairs like the 1,000 new ones he put into his school's 40 classrooms in August each chair a vessel of student sovereignty. In Albuquerque, as Michael P. Stanton set out to furnish the nex Gen Academy High School that was opening in 2010, he sought seats to match its progressive philosophy, which relies on common areas and "learning studios" with no doors, instead of classrooms. The new chairs, Dr. Stanton, the principal, said, "are popular." They come in two styles, both with wheels. One model has holes like a Wiffle ball. The other is fully cushioned. "I chose them due to their flexibility, in the seat itself, so the students could 'wiggle' or move easily without leaving their seat," Melissa A. Grant, the Albuquerque Public Schools' interior designer, said in an e mail. Anecdotally, administrators who have used newer, more flexible or free moving chairs say that children find their new seats more comfortable and that they seem more engaged. Few studies have been conducted on whether chairs affect student performance, though a four year study of 400 students conducted by a German nonprofit devoted to "posture and mobilization support" said children were able to concentrate for longer periods if they were given more mobile seats, combined with lesson plans that involved moving around. But unleashing students is a disputable concept, particularly in complicated learning environments. After all, schools have traditionally been synonymous with a hushed subservience reflected in the Industrial Age's glib commands: "Do not slouch"; "Respect your elders"; "Speak when spoken to" notions that some educators still find worthwhile today. "They did not have solid plastic a hundred years ago, but the concept is the same," Bob Keller, the chairman of Nickerson Corporation, said of the Columbia chairs. Nickerson is the main distributor of chairs for the New York City public schools, including Columbia's super stacker. "They are not made for comfort. They are made for students to sit up and for students to be working. They are what we call a straight backed chair." As with most issues the city confronts, cost is paramount. The chairs at Thomas Nelson High School, made by Hon, cost roughly 120 apiece, though Mr. Bradley said the school got discounts of 50 percent to 60 percent based on state contracts; and the Albuquerque chairs, manufactured by Izzy, cost 115 per chair on an order of 400. The super stacker model costs New York's Education Department 45 to 70, depending on the size of the order, Mr. Keller said. The schools chancellor, Dennis M. Walcott, said the city embraced innovation, and he emphasized that it was "always open" to cost efficient opportunities to buy chairs fitting students' needs. "If there is an ability to balance those two, we are always interested in seeing what is out there," he said, noting that many of these kinds of decisions were handled at individual schools. But the chair the city has gone to time and again, Mr. Keller said, is the super stacker, which Columbia's Web site says was designed "to optimize student comfort and maximize stackability." Its legs, forged into shiny tubes, consist of low carbon steel imported from two factories: one in southern Canada and the other in Massachusetts. Steel gliders and support rods are robotically welded to the frame. The seat and back are separate pieces, each made of sawdust and resins that are compression molded under high temperatures and usually coated with a trademarked paint called "speck fleck," Mr. Salehi of Columbia said. Tamper proof screws come from a plant in Agawam, Mass., and are "exclusive for New York City," Mr. Salehi said. Besides the super stacker, Mr. Salehi said, the city buys a "variety of sizes and styles" of chairs to fit the needs of students in different grades. Mr. Keller said the Education Department had bought smaller chairs, made of wood, for its youngest pupils. The department said it had also begun buying chairs from another company, Academia, in the last four years. But education officials are pleased with the super stackers, Mr. Keller said, because the chairs are "very strong" and easy to clean. He said the school system which has an enrollment of about one million probably had "four million of them" in circulation. "They last 5o or 60 years and they are probably replacing 50,000 a year," Mr. Keller said. Still, Galen Cranz, a researcher and professor at the University of California, Berkeley, and author of the 1998 book "The Chair: Rethinking Culture, Body and Design," said she wished child movement were accorded more consideration in the standard designs. Professor Cranz said schools in Denmark, where she has lectured, very often used chairs that were tall, with seats that could tilt forward or have front parts that slope forward. Those kinds of seats, she said, put children in a position "halfway between sitting and standing." "There is a fairly long history of physicians being worried about what the chair is doing to little bodies," Professor Cranz said. The school chair, she said, "has been replicated unconsciously, and if we bring even the tiniest bit of consciousness to it, we recognize it as problematic and it needs to be rethought." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Education |
The tagged photo section on the Instagram page for Parade, an underwear start up founded in fall 2019, shows a surfeit of images of young women modeling brightly colored briefs and bikinis. Many of them pose in studio apartments, stretched out on velvet couches and propped up on dressers. Some press against vinyl shower curtains, donning the neon underwear in mirror selfies. All of them look effortless. It's not unusual these days for a brand to take over social media like this seemingly overnight and all at once, in nonprofessional photos posted by nonprofessional models. But these campaigns nearly always leave viewers wondering: Where did this start? For Mariah Williams, 21, it was a direct message from Parade's Instagram account, offering her free samples. When the products arrived, she took the day off from her job as a barbershop receptionist to curate a photo shoot to show off her new burnt orange underwear; in the photo she posted, a bamboo planter sits next to her bottom half, and her face is just out of the frame. "Taking these pictures really made me feel good about myself and my body. Especially with seasonal depression, I was in a mood," she said. Ms. Williams, who has only 2,000 followers on Instagram, is one of more than 6,000 women and nonbinary Instagrammers who received messages from Parade offering free gifts, ideally in exchange for social posts. In addition to mailing samples, the company also sent along digital mood boards and a Google Drive of creative direction, in the hopes that the recipients would use it as inspiration for their own posts. The gift boxes yielded hundreds of posts across social media and drove interest in Parade's products. The pandemic has been devastating for the fashion industry. But not for underwear. Those sales have had a steady uptick since the beginning of the pandemic; according to Allied Market Research, the lingerie industry is estimated to be worth 325 billion by 2025. Parade was founded in 2019, just months before the U.S. economy shut down in March, by Cami Tellez and Jack Defuria, two friends in their early 20s. As most fashion companies struggled to keep afloat, Parade sold over 700,000 pairs of underwear and brought in 10 million in revenue, according to a company representative. Ms. Tellez, the start up's C.E.O., attributes that success to the strength of the brand's image. "Parade has been able to create a groundswell, a cultural zeitgeist. I think that we're changing the way a whole generation of women see themselves, and I think that's why we've been so successful," she said. Parade estimates that 1 in 8 customers posts a picture of themselves in the underwear. Parade is one of many brands that have eschewed paid influencer campaigns in favor of sending products to people who have smaller and more dedicated followings, and often aren't influencers at all. "They're just reaching out to normal people who have followers they actually know in real life," Ms. Williams said. "Working with micro influencers is part of our DNA," Ms. Tellez said. "Unlike brands of underwear past, we don't think you need to have hundreds of thousands of followers or be a supermodel to share your underwear story." Gifting programs, which offer free product in exchange for posts, have also become more common. But the tactic has sparked discussions about unpaid labor. "As a small influencer, especially as a Black and brown influencer, we often get used and not paid," Ms. Williams said. She has since reached out to Parade about receiving commission in exchange for promoting a discount code. Rhea Woods, the head of influencer strategy at Praytell Agency, encourages brands to offer compensation to influencers, no matter how small their following. "It is very standard to pay those folks several hundred dollars," she said. "That shocks brands. But at the same time, we're asking for rights to their name, image and likeness," Ms. Woods said. Because of its far reach, Parade's campaign took on a second life, sparking an online conversation about who received sponsorships. One Twitter user posted: "Is it just me or does Parade Underwear feel like a Pyramid Scheme?" Another tweeted: "Why didn't Parade send me underwear am I ugly or something" "I think those tweets if anything, speak to how wide ranging our brand has become," Ms. Tellez said. Dana Donnelly, a 25 year old comedian and writer with 128,500 followers, posted an image of her Parade underwear in September, but after a few months she saw the brand target smaller and smaller accounts, and she became more skeptical. She questioned if the entire Parade marketing campaign foundation was founded on stoking feelings of exclusion. "I can't tell what their objective is besides making the girls they're sending it to feel cool and the girls they're not sending it to feel uncool," she said. "It's almost like high school mean girl marketing." Yamini Nambimadom, 22, who received a sponsorship, described it as "guerrilla marketing campaign, where you watch your friends promote something and you would want to try it." Ms. Nambimadom does not consider herself an influencer and had never been approached by a brand before but was intrigued by Parade's campaign. "There's a social psychology of wanting to be a part of something," she said. (Ms. Nambimadom has cheekily added "Recipient of Parade Underwear" to her Twitter bio.) When asked about how people were selected to be included in the campaign, Ms. Tellez said: "There are hundreds of psychographics" (i.e. many factors she would not name). In early December, Parade released a collaboration with Juicy Couture; the accompanying campaign featured women donning underwear with "JUICY" written across the rear in rhinestones. "I think that most women in America have some sort of emotional connection to Juicy because it was one of the very first self expression brands," Ms. Tellez said. (For what it's worth, the company made its name on 150 tracksuits.) | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Style |
A development in Princeton, N.J., was intended to entice wealthy buyers with the promise of luxury living in a vibrant downtown setting. Yet since 2012, only a handful of units have sold. By most calculations, the 100 unit complex of rentals, condominiums and townhouses should be a model for new urban development. With units adjacent to Palmer Square, the elegant homes are a short walk from dozens of shops and restaurants and the vaunted gates of Princeton University. But only seven of the 48 homes have sold, including a 3,200 square foot townhouse that went for 1.855 million. The rentals leased quickly and several more will be released onto the market this month, including two duplexes listed for 8,600 a month. The development was intended to tap into a desire among some Americans to trade in the car dependent suburbs for more accessible urban centers. In a recent study by the National Association of Realtors, more than half of respondents preferred a neighborhood with a mix of stores, other businesses and housing. About three fourths said a neighborhood was more important than the size of a home. Generally, the lifestyle appeals to two distinct groups: young professionals without children and retiring baby boomers. "People are buying more than just a house," said Christopher B. Leinberger, a professor and director of the Center for Real Estate and Urban Analysis at George Washington University. "They're buying a neighborhood." Americans are willing to pay more to live within walking distance from town, according to research by Mr. Leinberger. But while living in downtown Princeton would give a buyer access to an excellent public school system and a pleasant neighborhood with wine and cheese shops, there is no direct train to New York City, a deterrent for commuters. Instead, riders must take a shuttle ride to the nearby Princeton Junction train station. Homes in the Princeton development, called the Residences at Palmer Square, are priced at a premium, with 4,130 square foot, three bedroom condos listed as high as 3.4 million. "It's priced pretty high for Princeton," said Harveen Bhatla, co founder of the Bhatla Usab Real Estate Group at Keller Williams Princeton Realty. "They were unfortunate in their timing; they were building high end luxury homes when the market was going down." In the last year, the Princeton housing market has begun to recover, with inventory tightening and prices rising. As of November 2013, the average selling price for a single family home was 1.698 million and the average selling price for a condo was 743,500, according to data provided by Bhatla Usab. Nearly all of the properties that sold for 1 million or more were large homes with four or more bedrooms. Part of the residential complex sits atop a parking garage. Internal plazas provide benches, landscaping and walkways open to the public. But rather than face the bustle of downtown, the condos face inward, looking onto a setting that seems more like a serene private community than a new addition to a central square. The development has struggled with setbacks for decades. In 1989, a developer built several housing units and parking spaces, but the development stalled and remained a half built eyesore for years. After Palmer Square Management acquired the property in 1992, the company spent years negotiating an affordable housing agreement with the town. The final agreement called for 10 affordable rental units. By the time construction on the new residences finally began in 2009, the housing market was in the grips of the worst downturn of a generation. "We knew that sales were going to be a little bit lagging as the country recovered from the recession," said David Newton, vice president of Palmer Square Management, which also operates the retail and office space in Palmer Square. While the residential component struggles to draw buyers, the retail center is nearly 96 percent occupied with a mix of local shops and national chains including Kate Spade New York, Brooks Brothers and the Bent Spoon, an ice cream shop. At the center of the square sits the Nassau Inn, a landmark Princeton hotel. On a brisk winter morning, Palmer Square was bustling with shoppers and the hotel lobby was full of guests, many seated in red leather lounge chairs near a roaring fire. Palmer Square has long been a symbol of the potential and the problems of urban renewal. The zinc magnate Edgar Palmer began building the square during the Great Depression. Other sections were added over the years. To make way for his idyllic vision of a new downtown, he uprooted an African American neighborhood. Later, in the 1950s, another African American community was displaced to create a new street grid on the site that is now the Residences at Palmer Square. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Real Estate |
On a Friday evening in May, Nick Offerman walked into the Carlyle Hotel on the Upper East Side, wearing a red flannel shirt, red New Balance sneakers and heavy duty work jeans. His bushy beard was the length of Wolfman Jack's, with two graying patches. "How many of you have seen 'Nancy and Beth' before?" said Mr. Offerman, 47, as he bounded onto the tiny stage, before a well heeled audience dressed in suits, ties and pearls. He was there to introduce a two woman music and comedy act featuring his wife, Megan Mullally, and her stage partner, Stephanie Hunt. "Those of you who are initiates are in for quite a treat." Mr. Offerman is used to playing a supporting part. After a decade toiling as a character actor in dozens of films and TV shows, he became famous for playing Ron Swanson, the gruff but lovable city bureaucrat on "Parks Recreation." That role lasted seven seasons, and Mr. Offerman was part of an ensemble cast that included Amy Poehler, Aziz Ansari and Chris Pratt. Mr. Offerman is quite pleased with the effort and is in awe of his co star and onscreen daughter, Kiersey Clemons. "She has one of those crazy talents that is ready to explode," he said. "She makes the hair on your arm rise when you hear her sing. She's no slouch in the acting department, either." For his wife's tour, however, he is back to being in the shadows, appearing only briefly in the beginning and middle of the show as a glorified roadie. Before doing so, on this night, he made what he considered a wardrobe change. Standing near the back of the room, he pulled off his flannel shirt and put on a "Nancy and Beth" T shirt and a silly American flag wool hat with long braids. About 30 minutes into the show, which included a cover of Tammy Wynette's "No Charge," Ms. Mullally asked for someone to help identify members of the band. "I know their names," Mr. Offerman said, returning to the spotlight. "It's me, your husband." "Hello," she said. "It's nice to see you." "Nice to see you," Mr. Offerman said. "I feel very affectionate about you." "I'm sorry if that was too far," he said. "It's a little soon," Ms. Mullally said. "It's only been 18 years. Let's not rush anything." "I'm minding my manners," he said. Mr. Offerman has never been shy about expressing his love for Ms. Mullally. The two met in 2000, as actors in the play "The Berlin Circle," at the Evidence Room in Los Angeles. She was already famous, playing Karen Walker on "Will Grace." They married in 2003. Long ago the two made a rule that they would never be apart for more than two weeks. At the Carlyle, Mr. Offerman chose to introduce the band members to this "swanky New York crowd" by comparing them to famous songs about New York City. He began with Datri Bean, the keyboardist, whom he described as "O Superman" by Laurie Anderson because "she always seems to have her benevolent fingers in the existential pudding." He saved the last introduction for his wife, quoting from "Coney Island Baby" by Tom Waits: "Every night she comes to take me out to dreamland. When I'm with her, I'm the richest man in the town." It brought a collective "Awww" from the audience. That's not the only love that Mr. Offerman is eager to share. His passion for woodworking is well documented. He once gave "Ask This Old House" a tour of his workshop in Los Angeles, which is filled with vintage power tools and exotic lumber. For the moment, he had work to do. After the show ended, Ms. Mullally and Ms. Hunt exited through the back of the Carlyle. Mr. Offerman helped the crew clean up and escorted V.I.P.s to a private reception upstairs. As roadies go, he earns his keep. "I apologize for being so boring," Mr. Offerman said. "I have to realize this fact every day, when I look into the mirror." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Style |
In the spring of 1971, Richard Nixon found himself in a situation not unlike President Trump's. His approval rating was falling in Mr. Nixon's case, to a first term low just as an energetic social movement was hitting the streets. Like Mr. Trump, Mr. Nixon was tempted to use military force to counter those dissenters. And like the current president, Mr. Nixon and his aides found a way around the Pentagon's resistance. The occasion was the most audacious plan yet by the six year old movement against the Vietnam War. A group called the Mayday Tribe organized a traffic blockade of Washington under the slogan "If the government won't stop the war, we'll stop the government." As the Mayday action unfolded on May 3, twin engine Chinook helicopters roared down by the Washington Monument, disgorging troops from the 82nd Airborne Division, who trotted off to the Capitol and other hot spots. In all, the administration summoned 10,000 soldiers and Marines, turning "the center of the nation's capital into an armed camp with thousands of troops lining the bridges and principal streets, helicopters whirring overhead and helmeted police charging crowds of civilians with nightsticks and tear gas," according to a New York Times report. More than 12,000 people were swept up over three days, the largest mass arrest in U.S. history. John Dean, the Nixon aide who flipped on his boss in the Watergate scandal, wrote recently in The Times: "Never once did I hear anyone in the Nixon White House or Justice Department suggest using United States military forces, or any federal officers outside the military, to quell civil unrest or disorder. Nor have I found any evidence of such activity after the fact, when digging through the historical record." Mr. Dean and I were there on Mayday (he was inside the White House; I was on the streets). He has suggested that the troops were called by city officials, not Mr. Nixon, and in any case weren't used offensively to quell the blockade. I also dug through the historical record, for a new book on those events, and came to quite a different conclusion. What I found in White House tapes, in minutes of planning meetings and in the papers of Mr. Nixon's aides, including those of his chief of staff, H.R. Haldeman, and his chief domestic adviser, John Ehrlichman, left no doubt that a half century ago, a president under siege resorted to military force and mass arrests for political gain. The Mayday protest was the finale of an extraordinary season of dissent. After Mr. Nixon expanded the Vietnam War into Laos, hundreds of thousands of protesters arrived in Washington for a variety of events. Among them were Vietnam veterans, "flower children," self styled revolutionaries and pacifists. Veterans hurled medals onto the Capitol's steps. Quakers held pray ins. A mass march, almost surely the biggest the city had seen, stretched along the National Mall. Then, on the first weekend in May, more than 40,000 people gathered by the Potomac River for the Mayday action. The antiwar movement had already helped turn public opinion against Mr. Nixon's conduct of the war. He was determined to deny activists a victory that could cause further political damage. He blasted them in private with rants like "Little bastards are draft dodgers, country haters or don't cares."(If Mr. Nixon had access to Twitter, his tweets would have been eerily similar to Mr. Trump's.) He instructed aides to ensure the blockade would fail and, as one put it, didn't care if it took 100,000 troops, and if they came up short, "someone will be in big trouble." Mr. Nixon's men convened a war council with representatives of the police, the military and the National Guard. Presiding was the deputy attorney general, Richard Kleindienst. Washington didn't yet have home rule, so the police chief, Jerry V. Wilson, answered to the White House. Mr. Kleindienst and Mr. Ehrlichman batted away objections from Chief Wilson and Army Lt. Gen. Hugh Exton, who questioned Mr. Kleindienst's demand for 10,000 regular troops, given that thousands of police and guardsmen were already available. They suggested such force might do more to inflame the situation than calm it. Separately, Pentagon officials told Mr. Kleindienst that his plan "to combat dissent," as they characterized it, might not comport with the rules. They reminded him of the 1878 Posse Comitatus Act, which generally bans active duty troops from law enforcement. Mr. Kleindienst overrode their concerns with an opinion from the Justice Department's legal counsel, William Rehnquist, who had been his protege in their home state, Arizona. Mr. Rehnquist said the act didn't apply; the president had "inherent constitutional authority" to use troops "to protect the functioning of the government." (Mr. Rehnquist would be named to the Supreme Court by Mr. Nixon later that year and elevated to chief justice under President Ronald Reagan.) Mr. Kleindienst faced another obstacle. David Packard, the deputy secretary of defense, pointed out the procedures a president should follow, under the Insurrection Act, in calling forth the military: a formal order that demonstrators disperse and, if they don't, an executive order to send in troops. Mr. Nixon's predecessor, Lyndon Johnson, had done this during the riots in Washington in 1968 after the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. The White House, however, wanted to keep its involvement under wraps. According to Mr. Haldeman's diary, Mr. Nixon let Mr. Packard know he wanted troops sent without any public presidential action. The White House spread the fake news that city officials had requested the military help. In contrast, Mr. Trump has been open about his desire to send troops to "dominate" streets in cities with Black Lives Matter protests. After Defense Secretary Mark Esper and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Mark Milley, stood in the way of using active duty military, the president dispatched forces from agencies including Customs and Border Protection. In June, those agents cleared peaceful demonstrators from Lafayette Square outside the White House for the president's now famous photo op in front of a church. In Portland, Ore., they used tear gas and other riot tools to disperse largely peaceful protesters outside the federal courthouse. During the 1971 Mayday action, as 12,000 people tried to snarl rush hour traffic with nonviolent civil disobedience, a majority of the regular troops fended off protesters at bridges and federal buildings, or guarded large groups of detained protesters. Most soldiers didn't confront demonstrators directly, but their presence and hardware bolstered the authoritarian tactics and escalated tensions. A police dragnet swept up 7,000 people that Monday, including many young people just walking on the streets wearing hippie style clothing, and took in more than 5,000 other demonstrators over the next two days. My research confirmed that Mr. Nixon gave the order to make the mass arrests. He made it clear later to a group of conservative members of Congress: "The point is, I had the responsibility," he told them. "I approved this plan." As criticism mounted that the dragnet was unconstitutional (courts ultimately agreed, awarding detainees millions in damages), Mr. Nixon's involvement was suspected. The White House denied it. Aides instructed the police chief, Mr. Wilson, to take the heat. "I wish to emphasize the fact that I made all tactical decisions relating to the recent disorders," he said in a public statement. "I took these steps because I felt they were necessary to protect the safety of law abiding citizens and to maintain order in the city." The tapes show Mr. Nixon's men were delighted. "Wilson went to the mat today," Mr. Ehrlichman confirmed to Mr. Nixon. "Good for him!" the president said. Mr. Ehrlichman added, "We programmed him to do this this morning, and he did better than you could possibly have programmed." He went on: "He has never let us down yet." No military leader expressed second thoughts in the weeks after Mayday. But in June, after General Milley accompanied Mr. Trump to Lafayette Square wearing combat fatigues as protesters were dispersed by federal agents and police, he said he regretted taking part. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Opinion |
Credit...Kirby Lee/USA Today Sports, via Reuters ATLANTA Mozart was composing music at 5. Sergey Karjakin became a chess grandmaster at 12. Blaise Pascal invented the mechanical calculator as a teenager. And Sean McVay led the Los Angeles Rams to the Super Bowl at 33. One of those four does not really qualify as a prodigy. But that has not stopped virtually everyone in the football world from throwing the word around in the last few weeks in reference to McVay, a second year head coach who has become the toast of the N.F.L. in the lead up to Super Bowl LIII. As with most things Super Bowl related, McVay as prodigy is a narrative born of something true and then expanded to an uncomfortable degree. The rush to replicate McVay's success began in earnest in January, when a league of teams that have often relied on retread coaches and established hierarchies suddenly was in need of its next boy genius. The Green Bay Packers created a McVay coaching tree, of sorts, by hiring his former offensive coordinator, Matt LaFleur, who is 39, to be their head coach. The Cleveland Browns hired Freddie Kitchens, a 44 year old offensive guru, to lead their staff. And in an extreme example of McVay mania, the Arizona Cardinals' website, in its official announcement about the hiring of the 39 year old Kliff Kingsbury as the team's new head coach, noted that Kingsbury was friends with McVay. That the two had never coached together seemed not to matter, though after some blowback, the team amended the announcement to remove the part about their friendship while still noting that McVay is a young "offensive genius who has become the blueprint of many of the new coaching hires around the N.F.L." and had recently offered Kingsbury a chance to join the Rams as an offensive consultant. "It's certainly humbling and flattering," McVay said of the hiring trend, "but I think more than anything it's a reflection of the success the Rams have had." In the end, teams may discover that replicating McVay will be difficult. Young, offensive minded coaches are "the vogue thing right now," said Brian Billick, the former Baltimore Ravens coach. "Some will be successful, and some won't. Eighty percent will probably fail." Very few coaches have engineered the kind of turnaround that the Rams have made in two seasons under McVay, who, despite having coached in the N.F.L. since 2008, is younger than one of his players, and two of the Patriots. McVay, who has already become a master of coaching catchphrases and cliches, has regularly tried to expand the spotlight to the other coaches around him. He frequently uses the phrase "we, not me" to describe his team's approach. "One of the things that's so important is surrounding yourself with great people," he said, "specifically in those other areas where they have leadership roles." None Week 11 Takeaways: Here is what we learned this week. N.F.L. Tightens Covid Protocols: As cases rise and Thanksgiving approaches, the league is requiring masks inside team facilities and increasing testing. The Jets Lose Again: Falling to the Miami Dolphins, the Jets' receiver Elijah Moore offered consolation. The Long Path to the Super Bowl: With 18 weeks in the regular season and fewer teams earning byes in the playoffs, the Super Bowl is still a long way off. Playoff Simulator: Explore every team's path to the postseason, updated live. His call for inclusiveness extends to coaches of all ages. His first hire for the Rams was Wade Phillips, a 71 year old defensive coordinator who had been coaching in the N.F.L. for 10 years when McVay was born. Phillips said he was somewhat familiar with McVay, then the offensive coordinator of the Washington Redskins, before his hiring, but that it was a call from Phillips's son, Wes, who had replaced McVay as Washington's tight ends coach, that set the whole thing in motion. Wes Phillips asked his father if he would be interested in joining a McVay staff should the opportunity arise. "I said, 'You know he's 30 years old; you think he's going to get one?'" Wade Phillips said on Thursday. "He said, 'Dad, if he interviews for one, he's going to get it.'" He added that the first call from McVay was straightforward: "He said, 'Would you interested in going with me if I got a job?' and I said, 'Yeah, sure.'" But even with the Phillips hiring serving as a nod to his elders, McVay seems content to play up his own youthfulness. Short and fit by N.F.L. coaching standards and naturally baby faced, he spikes his hair up with product and trims his beard into a perfect 5 o'clock shadow. He talks glowingly about watching Tom Brady win the 2002 Super Bowl when McVay was 16 and revels in getting congratulatory text messages from Patriots Coach Bill Belichick, who is twice his age. And in what served as the perfect visual for the N.F.L.'s only millennial head coach, a video circulated recently in which Ted Rath, a Rams assistant, repeatedly pulled McVay out of the way of officials on the sideline, with the whole thing set to music. McVay is hardly the only coach to have a spotter charged with making sure he is out of the way, but the coach's seeming obliviousness to Rath's maneuvers created a scene that, depending on your age, reflected either a lack of situational awareness or a remarkable ability to focus. The Prodigies Who Came Before Him When McVay signed on to become head coach of the Rams, he was 30 years 11 months old, which made him the youngest person in that role in the N.F.L. since 1938, when Art Lewis, at 27, was hired by the Cleveland Rams (a team that would eventually move to Los Angeles, then to St. Louis, and then back to Los Angeles). Before McVay, the youngest N.F.L. head coach of the modern era was Lane Kiffin, who was hired by the Oakland Raiders at 31 years 8 months old (and then fired 20 months later), and the youngest head coach to lead his team to a Super Bowl was Mike Tomlin of the Pittsburgh Steelers, who was 36. For an idea of how unusual it is for coaches to reach the league's pinnacle that early, the previous seven Super Bowls have been won by coaches who were 50 and older. Billick is one of the few people who can relate to McVay's experience of being the N.F.L.'s hot new thing. Hired to coach the Ravens in 1999, after coordinating a Minnesota Vikings offense that averaged an eye popping 34.8 points a game, Billick turned the hype into results by winning a Super Bowl in his second season, a feat McVay could match on Sunday. Billick called McVay a brilliant coach, praising his ability to change up looks at the line of scrimmage. But he could not quite stop himself from diluting the praise by pointing out that there is relatively little difference between the offense McVay runs and the one employed by Belichick and New England's offensive coordinator, Josh McDaniels. McDaniels also took a turn as the N.F.L.'s coveted young coach. Ten years ago, he left the Patriots at 32 to become the Denver Broncos' head coach, a job he lost 12 games into his second season. The similarities between him and McVay led to an amusing scene on Monday involving a reporter and McDaniels. "Everyone continues to talk about Sean McVay and his young mind, and they seem to have forgotten about you," the reporter said before asking, "What kind of advice do you have for him?" McDaniels, who is still just 42, clearly had anticipated questions about McVay, even ones as harshly worded as that. He jumped right in with praise. "We are confident in his vision to make this team a consistent winner," Kroenke said, "and we will all continue to work together to achieve our ultimate goal bringing a Rams Super Bowl championship home to Los Angeles." Come Sunday, McVay will either be the youngest head coach to win a Super Bowl or the youngest head coach to lose one. But regardless of whether you want to call him a prodigy, an offensive guru, or simply a coach, McVay will have to watch his back. In a copycat league, some other team can always go younger. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Sports |
The Ars Nova production of "Oratorio for Living Things" at Greenwich House Theater in New York. The production was suspended after just two previews. In the hours after Broadway shut down for 30 days to slow the spread of the coronavirus, Off Broadway closures followed in a wave show upon show postponed or suspended or prematurely ended. Ars Nova was one of those companies, going dark the same night that Broadway did, and for the same length of time. On March 12, after just two previews, it paused production of the music theater piece on its Greenwich Village stage, Heather Christian's "Oratorio for Living Things," and halted all activity at its headquarters in Hell's Kitchen, an incubator for emerging artists and their work. Then, on March 23, Ars Nova which has been a launching pad for artists including Lin Manuel Miranda, Annie Baker and Billy Eichner took what its managing director, Renee Blinkwolt, called a "calculated leap of faith." While much of Off Broadway has adopted a wait and see posture toward productions slated for late spring, or postponed them without announcing new dates, Ars Nova took the concrete step of canceling the remainder of its season, which was to have ended June 30. In doing so, it promised to pay in full each person who had been scheduled to work during that time: staffers, artists, independent contractors. The opening night photographer for "Oratorio," or an usher for an April 10 performance? On the list. It adds up to an estimated 223 people, for a total of about 685,000 such a hefty price tag for a company with a 3.7 million budget that Blinkwolt chuckled wryly when she spoke it aloud. "Pardon the laugh," she said by phone from her home in Astoria, Queens. "I take it very seriously. It's just a big number to make a commitment to right now." But a commitment it is, and it comes at a time when some major regional companies including California Shakespeare Theater, which nixed its entire 2020 season; Oregon Shakespeare Festival, which will be dark through Sept. 6; and Arena Stage in Washington, D.C., which canceled the rest of its season have announced layoffs or furloughs with their closures. Broadway, under an emergency agreement, will pay its unionized workers for only two and a half weeks of its shutdown, most of that at the minimum rate. This may be a good place to mention that Ars Nova did not seek an article about the course it has chosen. On the contrary, Blinkwolt and Jason Eagan, the company's artistic director, worried that discussing it publicly could look like they were shaming colleagues amid an industry rattling pandemic. They know that other arts leaders are agonizing, too, about how best to take care of their people and safeguard their institutions. "It's not meant to be virtue signaling," Eagan said from his home in Bushwick, Brooklyn, "but we are putting money in artists' pockets. That is something we are doing because we are in the fortunate position of being able to do it." As Blinkwolt framed it, that ability has nothing to do with an angel donor there isn't one, she said but rather serendipity. Thanks to a capital campaign it embarked on in 2018, Ars Nova started the current fiscal year with an unusually large cushion of working capital six months' worth. An as yet unreleased report by the Howard Gilman Foundation, using data from 200 New York City performing arts groups that it funds, says that just over one month of working capital is the median for its grantee organizations of all sizes. Also in Ars Nova's favor is the odd duck timing of its annual gala benefit, which it holds in the fall, an evening that tends more toward sexy than staid. With Tina Fey, Audra McDonald, Josh Groban and Freestyle Love Supreme all in attendance, this season's unusually starry incarnation netted 714,000, or nearly 20 percent of the company's annual budget. That percentage is "pretty typical" for theaters, Blinkwolt said. But spring is more traditional for galas, and the threat of the coronavirus has many theaters scrambling to reschedule or reconfigure events that bring in a sizable chunk of their income. A third factor is that Ars Nova keeps its ticket prices low so that its shows are accessible to young audiences. With box office sales making up only 7 percent of its budget, losing that income "is obviously a hit," Blinkwolt said, but a less painful one than it might be otherwise. So, when the pandemic's disruption began to look like it would last longer than 30 days, the company decided to do what their means enabled them to do. Like nonprofit theaters with their paper thin margins, Blinkwolt said, the people they employ "probably don't have three to six months of their living expenses in their savings account, and so aren't built to weather this kind of storm." She and Eagan hope that Ars Nova's supporters will have the company's back, to replenish the funds they are tapping into now. "I mean, you calculate the risk," Eagan said, "and then you do what you can but you do everything you can. The right decision for us is leading through our values, following our hearts. It sounds cheesy, but it's the whole reason we exist." And now that they have cleared away the energy sucking distraction of what he called "incremental crisis management" changing plans in response to each development in pandemic news they have a few months to plan for the longer term, figuring out ways to bounce back quickly when the all clear sounds. Maybe then "Oratorio" will return in some form, even if Eagan can't yet say how. "It feels even more important to me now that people get to see it," he said. "We're going to start exploring all the possibilities for how to do that somehow, somewhere, sometime." In the meanwhile, Eagan is happy to have Ars Nova host what it can online like an Instagram concert last Friday in which Andrew R. Butler performed songs from his musical "Rags Parkland Sings the Songs of the Future." "But I'm finding myself mostly thinking about resilience," Eagan said. "And how do we come out the other side of this." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Theater |
U.S. Open Could Go On, With a 2 Tournament Bubble in New York In an unusual attempt to save two of the top events in American tennis during the coronavirus pandemic, the United States Tennis Association has proposed staging a doubleheader in New York by moving a tournament that leads into the United States Open at the U.S.T.A. Billie Jean King National Tennis Center. The move, under consideration by the men's and women's tours, could allow foreign players to remain in one place for the duration of their stay in the United States, and establish a safer bubble for competitors similar to proposals by the N.B.A. and other sporting leagues. The proposal would move the Western Southern Open, a combined men's and women's event near Cincinnati, to New York but keep its general window on the calendar, leading into the U.S. Open at the same venue. The Western Southern Open is currently scheduled for Aug. 17 to 23 while the main draw of the U.S. Open is slated for Aug. 31 to Sept. 13. It is far from certain that either tournament can be played this year, but the maneuver is designed to help draw the needed support of government and public health officials as they manage the outbreak, travel and the economy. It is also unclear, especially given quarantine guidelines, whether enough players would be prepared to travel to New York, one of the disease's epicenters. Many players have gone without income as both the men's and women's tours have been shut down since mid March and scores of tournaments have been postponed or canceled. Leaders of the men's and women's tours received the U.S.T.A. proposal this week, according to officials at the U.S.T.A. and the men's and women's tours, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not yet authorized to speak publicly about the potential move. The tours would need to formally approve the moving of the Western Southern Open from its home in Mason, Ohio. The U.S.T.A. owns the men's event staged there while Octagon, a sports and entertainment agency, owns the women's event. The tour officials said that there could still be insurmountable obstacles for the plan, including quarantine rules that could require some athletes to self isolate after arriving in the United States and again in Europe after returning. But those requirements could be changed for athletes. "I appreciate that everyone is going outside the box to think of solutions in these circumstances," said Bethanie Mattek Sands, an American once ranked No. 1 in women's doubles, who has been on the WTA player council. "We don't really have anything in the rule books for this situation. Putting two big tournaments in the same place is definitely on the right track because it definitely makes it a bit easier to control some things." If the tournaments can be held, there would most likely be no spectators on site a major shift for the U.S. Open, a Grand Slam tournament that attracted more than 850,000 fans last year over three weeks. Even without fans or most stadium workers, rigorous testing would still be required at the tennis center to monitor and protect players, support staff and officials. Stacey Allaster, the U.S.T.A.'s chief executive for professional tennis, said coronavirus testing would be required for athletes and members of their teams before they traveled to New York, perhaps on charter flights from different continents organized by the U.S.T.A. "We will insist on a pretravel health questionnaire that they meet with local physicians and local doctors, and Covid 19 tests will be required for everyone," she said. "They will have to have been symptom free for a certain period of time before travel and have had no known contact with anyone with Covid 19." Once on site, there would be daily temperature checks and health questionnaires, as well as frequent follow up testing for the virus. U.S. Open leaders have pushed unsuccessfully in the past for in match coaching to be allowed in the main draw an issue that flared in 2018 when Serena Williams had a heated confrontation with a chair umpire for receiving coaching from the stands. They might finally get approval from both tours and their fellow Grand Slam tournaments in this special situation to add entertainment value for television audiences. Wheelchair tennis is unlikely but has not been ruled out. The junior and legends events would be eliminated. There would be no ball kids, but adult ball persons would still be used to facilitate play; they would be required to wear gloves but not be allowed to handle player towels. With players having been out of official competition since March, there has been discussion of changing the format of men's singles matches at the U.S. Open from best of five sets to best of three sets to reduce players' injury risk. But Allaster said that was not part of the U.S.T.A.'s current plan. Both Arthur Ashe Stadium, the tournament's main show court with nearly 24,000 seats, and the 14,000 seat Louis Armstrong Stadium would still be used even without fans. Both are fully wired for television and have retractable roofs that would allow for play to continue in case of rain. With empty stands, ESPN, the tournament's broadcaster, would need to innovate to create a compelling atmosphere, but the network has pushed hard for the Open to happen if it can be held safely. "Out of crisis comes creativity. I'm not privy to any inside information, but I would imagine that there will be all sorts of new bells and whistles with no crowd," said Patrick McEnroe, the former player and longtime ESPN analyst. "What about moving cameras? Or miking the players? If ever there were a time to try it, now would be it." The Bundesliga, the German soccer league that resumed last month without spectators on site, has used artificial crowd noise in its broadcasts to combat the emptiness. ESPN could do the same at the Open. "Cheering can be piped in," Allaster said. "We are learning from other sports as they go through this journey." The size of tennis entourages has ballooned since the 1990s, when it was considered unusual that Pete Sampras traveled with a personal trainer, Todd Snyder. The WTA already has indicated that if its circuit resumes this year, players will be asked to come to tournaments with just one person. The U.S. Open would also reduce traveling parties. "An athlete coming with four, five, six, seven people is obviously not going to be possible," Allaster said. That could make for some tough choices for players who thrive on routine and ample support. "They will panic, I tell you," said Sven Groeneveld, who previously coached Maria Sharapova and is now working with Taro Daniel. "Because all of the sudden, they will have to make a decision on should I take my agent or physiotherapist or coach?" Donna Vekic, a Croat ranked 24th in women's singles who was a U.S. Open quarterfinalist last year, said that she would be "OK to play without fans" but that "really the worst thing is if we can only come with one team member." She added, "I just don't see how that is going to be possible and how the top players are going to accept that." With fewer people accompanying them, players could spread out to avoid the close contact that is standard during Week 1 in the Open locker room and training room. Allaster said each seeded player could be offered one of Arthur Ashe Stadium's unused hospitality suites. To avoid crowding, players will need to book times for locker room or practice court access, Allaster said. Outdoor cafes, usually reserved for spectators, could be converted into recreational areas for players. "We see them chilling out and having a coffee and having some jazz musicians there," Allaster said. To protect their health, players could be restricted to an official hotel, probably outside Manhattan, where they would have access to treatment, training and testing, and be transported directly to the tennis center in Queens. "Traditionally, we have not been involved in housing for the U.S. Open," Allaster said. "We need an effective centralized housing system in place." Despite speculation among players and their agents, Allaster said the U.S.T.A. had not seriously considered reducing the size of the men's and women's singles draws from 128 competitors. Qualifying tournaments are likely to be scrapped and doubles competitions to be included with reduced draws of 24 teams, but no final decisions have been made. A majority of players on both the men's and women's tours come from Europe. A directive from the U.S. government last month granted permission for foreign professional athletes, including tennis players, to travel to the United States for competition even if general travel bans exist. It remains unclear whether a quarantine period would be required after arrival. But it is unlikely that all of the stars would make the journey, even for the U.S. Open. Roger Federer, a five time U.S. Open singles champion who will turn 39 in August and has four children, is a possible no show and has expressed his lack of enthusiasm for playing without spectators. Others may be much more eager. "I really think if we can pull this off in New York after all that has happened, it will totally be a big inspiration," Mattek Sands said. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Sports |
Favorite Room: After looking for land in the area for 20 years, Mr. de Lisle and his partner, Ralph Dennis, who live mostly in Mill Valley, Calif., bought a kit house on six acres. The living room of their weekend retreat is, like the rest of the house, designed for laid back living. "No electricity, no cell reception," Mr. de Lisle said. "We liked the humble nature of everything here." No electricity or Wi Fi are you tweaking out? It takes a bit to decompress. It's usually a half day exhale. We put in solar. But the house is not connected to the grid. It was built by a survivalist. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Style |
The Ebola crisis has prompted a leading medical ethicist to raise an uncomfortable end of life question that doctors may have to address sooner than they would like: Should a medical team try to resuscitate an Ebola patient whose heart stops beating? The ethicist, Dr. Joseph J. Fins, says that the answer should be no that the risks of cardiopulmonary resuscitation efforts are too great for health care workers and even for some Ebola patients whose heartbeat is restored. And he is urging a national debate on the question now before doctors and nurses have to make a hasty decision when an emergency code for CPR is sounded. "Every clinician in the United States would like this issue to be discussed, and we need guidance on it," Dr. Fins, an internal medicine specialist who is director of medical ethics at NewYork Presbyterian/Weill Cornell hospital in Manhattan, said in an interview. He urged hospitals and government officials to develop firm guidance on the care of Ebola patients in accordance with state laws. He has posted an extensive analysis of the subject on the website of the Hastings Center, the nonprofit bioethics organization in Hastings, N.Y. Health professionals are expected to try to revive patients in cardiac arrest when possible, unless a "do not resuscitate" order arrived at after discussion with patients and families is in their medical records. Dr. Fins said society must consider whether a blanket D.N.R. is justified for all Ebola patients, and, if so, at what stages of their illness. The issue is a new one for American hospitals and has yet to be formally debated in medical journals, scientific meetings and medical school classes. Although the magnitude of the crisis is far greater in West Africa, the ethics question has the potential to come up in the United States, where two nurses who cared for Thomas Eric Duncan before his death at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital in Dallas have become infected. Other ethicists say Dr. Fins's concerns are well taken. Laurence McCullough, a clinical ethicist at Baylor College of Medicine, called the statement "very well reasoned" and said it "reminds us that there are justified limits on the risk to health and life that health care professionals are expected to take in the care of patients." "Self sacrifice by health care professionals that results in no offsetting clinical benefits for the patient," he continued, "is not required by the professional virtue of self sacrifice." Arthur Caplan, a professor of medical ethics at New York University, said he agreed with Dr. Fins's views when it came to Ebola patients "in extremis." But he said he was concerned that health workers might apply the argument even to people who show no signs of Ebola but might have come in contact with an Ebola patient. Nevertheless, he said, responders should still wear protective gear in dealing with these contacts. "Even those with incipient symptoms but not yet ravaged by Ebola have a claim" to be resuscitated, Dr. Caplan said. CPR can cause rib fractures and internal bleeding. Such complications could be more serious among those Ebola patients who experience uncontrolled bleeding. Compressing the chest during CPR could produce even more internal bleeding and cause damage to vital organs. Some Ebola patients might even bleed to death. Members of a resuscitation team would have to arrive at the bedside and consume precious minutes to carefully put on protective gear before starting CPR. Rushing the process could lead to breaches in protection measures and create a safety risk to the team members and ultimately to all their contacts in a hospital or outside. If society expected that health workers would rush in for Ebola patients as they do for standard cardiac arrest codes, "no one would volunteer to provide care," Dr. Fins wrote. Also, time delays from donning equipment could lead to oxygen deprivation in patients who do not already have breathing tubes in place; that can cause brain damage. To provide timely resuscitation, hospitals would need staff workers suited in protective gear around the clock. Further, hospitals would have to rotate at least two teams because of the limited amount of time an individual can safely wear protective gear. Resuscitation efforts can be chaotic even under everyday conditions, because the nearest responders must form a team on the spot. For an Ebola patient, the situation could be all the more chaotic if members of the team stopped to debate performing CPR at the bedside. Hospitals should develop policies that reflect their views on resuscitation before an Ebola patient arrives, Dr. Fins said, adding that "confronting this problem in the heat of a cardiac arrest is not the right time to be thinking about it." From a patient's viewpoint, Dr. Fins said, resuscitation may be futile because of the lack of specific anti Ebola therapies and "all the more so for patients in extremis." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Health |
But just because the connection to the site is secure, it does not mean the site itself is safe so avoid giving personal information to websites you are not familiar with, even if it shows a secure connection. A Certificate Authority can sell certificates to all kinds of sites, including ones that may be quietly slipping malicious software onto your computer when you visit. (In past years, fraudsters have even set up fake S. S. L. certificates and have tried to break the encryption, so the technology itself is a target.) Sites can also purchase security certificates with different levels of validation from trusted authorities. These levels include the basic Domain Validation for standard encryption and verification, and go up to Extended Validation, which has the highest level of security because the site goes through a more thorough level of vetting before the certificate is issued. In theory, a sinister site wanting to appear secure could quickly get a simple Domain Validation certificate and set up shop. So while a S.S.L. connection indicates your communications with a website are encrypted even on public networks, you can increase your safety level for all your browsing by using virtual private network software to encrypt all your internet traffic on open Wi Fi networks if you are not able to use your own secured home network for financial matters and other sensitive business. The Federal Trade Commission's site has a general guide for using public wireless networks, as well as a guide for keeping your own home wireless network secure. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Technology |
For a human, a breeze ruffled garden is a peaceful scene: Dandelion seeds float, leaves rustle and flowers bob their heads. But if you're a bee, it's a minefield. For a small creature with delicate wings, airborne seeds, shifting leaves and lurching flowers are basically projectiles, trap doors and Godzilla tipped skyscrapers. It's a situation honeybees and other pollinators deal with daily as they gather nectar and pollen. But although researchers have looked into how bees navigate on blustery days, or through tight spaces, "no one has really pieced together how they move through moving obstacles in wind," said Nicholas Burnett, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of California, Davis. In a study published this month in the Journal of Experimental Biology, Dr. Burnett and colleagues addressed this gap and found that when the going is tough, honeybees appear to high tail it and hope for the best. For the study, the researchers built a bee obstacle course. They spaced four rods an inch and a half apart on an oscillating platform that could move them back and forth, like swaying stems. They then put the whole setup inside a flight tunnel, with a fan on either end. Honeybee volunteers were recruited from around campus. The researchers had them fly through the course one at a time, in various conditions in still air, against a headwind, and propelled by a tailwind, and with either stationary or moving obstacles and filmed their efforts with a high speed video camera. The bees were then sent home again, unfortunately without prizes. When they went to the tape, the researchers found that the bees' flight strategy changed depending on the conditions they faced. When confronted with moving rods in still air, they flew more slowly than when they encountered stationary obstacles. "You might interpret that as them being more cautious, because there's this unexpected thing happening in front of them," Dr. Burnett said. (In nature, quivering vegetation on a still day might indicate the presence of a predator, or a lawn mower.) But when the wind kicked up in either direction the honeybees would "actually speed up how fast they're flying" by about 50 percent when the rods were moving compared with when they were still, he said. When faced with complex airspace, the bees seemed to act "cautious in still air and courageous in wind," he said. The study underscores that animals, including honeybees, are actually complex decision makers "not one trick ponies," said Glenna Clifton, an assistant professor at the University of Portland who studies insect locomotion and was not involved in the study. In addition to wind, "there are numerous other factors that likely also play a role" in their flight choices, including light level, time of day and food abundance. As for what accounts for these differing strategies, Dr. Burnett hypothesizes that it might be the same force that makes us run through rainstorms: the need to "get through the obstacles as fast as possible," he said. This idea was underscored by further analysis, which focused on how successful bees managed to avoid collisions. In still air, slowing down was helpful. But in wind, speed didn't matter, and a wipeout free transit was determined by how well the bees aimed themselves as they flew through the rods. That honeybees are using a "grin and sprint through it strategy" is an intriguing hypothesis, Dr. Clifton said, adding that she would like to see further study focused on whether there was a moment when the bees decided to accelerate. It also reminded her of human competitors on obstacle course reality TV shows. "If you watch those shows, there are interesting moments when someone who is being cautious and deliberate figuratively throws their arms up, hopes for the best, and just goes for it," she said. Sometimes that's the most effective strategy. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Science |
This obituary is part of a series about people who have died in the coronavirus pandemic. Read about others here. Bucky Pizzarelli, who after many years as a respected but relatively anonymous session guitarist became a mainstay of the New York jazz scene in the 1970s, died on Wednesday in Saddle River, N.J. He was 94. The guitarist and singer John Pizzarelli, his son and frequent musical associate, said the cause was the coronavirus. A master of the subtle art of rhythm guitar as well as a gifted soloist, Mr. Pizzarelli was sought after for recording sessions in the 1950s and '60s and can be heard on hundreds of records in various genres, although he was often uncredited. He also toured with Benny Goodman and was a longtime member of the "Tonight Show" orchestra. But he was little known to all but the most knowledgeable jazz fans until he was in his 40s. When Johnny Carson moved "The Tonight Show" to California from New York in 1972, Mr. Pizzarelli stayed behind. He explained at the time that he did not want to uproot his four school age children from their New Jersey home. Freed of the responsibilities of a regular job, he began performing more frequently in New York nightclubs. Among those clubs was a Midtown Manhattan spot appropriately named the Guitar, where he had already attracted attention in a duo with his fellow guitarist George Barnes in 1970. Reviewing one of their first performances, John S. Wilson of The New York Times wrote: "This is a brilliant and unique team. Mr. Barnes and Mr. Pizzarelli can be dazzling and they can be sensuously brooding. They sparkle with excitement, leap with joy or relax with a warm romantic glow." After Mr. Pizzarelli and Mr. Barnes parted ways in 1972, Mr. Pizzarelli began performing and recording in high profile settings: unaccompanied, as the leader of small groups, and as a sideman with leading jazz musicians like the saxophonists Zoot Sims and Bud Freeman and the violinists Stephane Grappelli and Joe Venuti. In 1980 he began performing with a new duo partner: his son John, 20 years old at the time, who went on to become a jazz star in his own right. "That's where he got his baptism of fire," Mr. Pizzarelli told an interviewer in 1997. "With me giving him dirty looks when he played a wrong chord." Mr. Pizzarelli's sons survive him, as do his wife, Ruth (Litchult) Pizzarelli; two daughters, Anne Hymes and Mary Pizzarelli; and four grandchildren. Mr. Pizzarelli was among the few guitarists to play an instrument with seven strings rather than the customary six. (His son was another; George van Eps is believed to have been the first.) The extra string, tuned to a low A, enabled him to provide his own bass line, an important advantage when he played unaccompanied or in a duo setting. John Paul Pizzarelli was born on Jan. 9, 1926, in Paterson, N.J., where his parents, John and Amelia (DiDomenico) Pizzarelli, owned a grocery store. Two uncles, Pete and Bobby Domenick, played guitar and banjo professionally, and his uncle Bobby taught him some musical rudiments. His unlikely nickname was bestowed on him by his father, who as a teenager had decided to explore the Wild West he knew only from movies and spent some time as a ranch hand in Odessa, Texas. He returned to New Jersey with a lot of memories and a lingering love for the West that would lead him to nickname his young son Buckskin. Shortened to Bucky, the name stuck. Mr. Pizzarelli began his professional career in his teens, touring with the singer Vaughn Monroe, best known for his hit "Racing With the Moon." After serving two years in the Army, he rejoined the Monroe band in 1946 and remained until it broke up in 1953. He also became a staff musician at NBC, where, starting in 1964, he was a member of the "Tonight Show" ensemble, led at the time by Skitch Henderson and later by Doc Severinsen. (He also worked for a while in the band the drummer Bobby Rosengarden led for Johnny Carson's ABC competitor Dick Cavett.) Mr. Pizzarelli began his long association with Benny Goodman in 1966, which lasted until Mr. Goodman's death in 1986. He worked frequently in New York with small groups led by Mr. Goodman and took part in four European tours with him in the 1970s. Mr. Pizzarelli continued to perform into his 90s, even after a stroke and pneumonia led to hospitalizations in 2015 and 2016 and left him debilitated. "I don't remember any of it," he said. "I never knew it until it was over." Friends and family members wondered if he would ever play again. But he recovered, and by the end of 2016 he was back in action. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Music |
Spotify has already won over the music industry, and listeners worldwide, with an online streaming service that makes millions of songs instantly available. Now, it is ready to test its business model on Wall Street. On Wednesday, the company filed a prospectus to sell shares on the New York Stock Exchange, an indication of the imminent arrival of one of the most anticipated technology stocks in years. It was also a signal of the maturation of the streaming market that has already begun to revive the long struggling music industry. Instead of a traditional initial public offering, Spotify will, as expected, pursue a direct listing of its shares, an unusual process in which no new stock is issued and therefore no money is raised. However, existing investors and insiders can trade their shares on the open market. But because Spotify is eschewing Wall Street banks to manage the raising of new capital, the listing could face a rockier reception in the markets. Those banks typically spend weeks assessing investor demand for a company's shares and try to match the amount that hits the market to ensure the shares are supported. According to the prospectus, investors trading Spotify's shares in private transactions have valued the company as highly as 23 billion. Spotify's shares will be traded under the ticker symbol SPOT, but there is no indication of when that will begin. The company, showing no shortage of ambition, said that its mission was "to unlock the potential of human creativity by giving a million creative artists the opportunity to live off their art and billions of fans the opportunity to enjoy and be inspired by these creators." For the music industry, Spotify and the streaming model it has championed has been a powerful engine. After more than a decade of decline, the global music market began to turn around in about 2015, just as streaming began to take hold. In the United States, for example, streaming now accounts for about two thirds of recorded music revenues, according to the Recording Industry Association of America, and streaming platforms like Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube and SoundCloud have become the new outlets where stars develop and hits are minted. Even so, many artists remain skeptical of the streaming economy, which heavily rewards mainstream hits but has drawn complaints from other songwriters and musicians, particularly those outside the sphere of pop, who feel they are not being adequately compensated for their work. Spotify's prospectus is the most detailed disclosure the company has given about its business. According to the filing, Spotify, which began its streaming service in Sweden in 2008 and came to the United States three years later, had nearly 5 billion in revenue in 2017, up 38.6 percent from the year before. In 2016, it had grown by 52 percent. 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. By the end of 2017, Spotify, whose full name is Spotify Technology, had 159 million active users, including 71 million who pay for subscriptions; the rest, using the "freemium" model that has become Spotify's marketing hallmark, get free access to music but are subjected to advertisements. As quickly as Spotify has grown, though, so have its losses. Last year, it had a net loss of 1.5 billion, up from about 650 million the year before. Its largest expense, by far, is the cost of licenses from record companies and music publishers. The prospectus also highlights Spotify's successes, and its value to the music industry. Through the end of last year, the company had paid more than 10 billion in music royalties since its inception, and its "churn" a measure of how many paying users cancel each month has been steadily declining, to 5.5 percent in 2017 from 7.7 percent in 2015. The largest stakes are owned by its two founders: Daniel Ek, the chief executive and the company's public face, and Martin Lorentzon, who holds no executive position. In addition to their shares, they also have "beneficiary certificates" granting them extra voting rights. In total, Mr. Ek has 37.3 percent voting power over the company, and Mr. Lorentzon 43.1 percent, according to the prospectus. The major record labels also own minority stakes in the company, as a result of licensing deals struck over the years. Sony has the largest, with 5.7 percent; the others were not disclosed. Spotify's major competitor is Apple, whose co founder Steve Jobs had long disdained music subscriptions. Apple finally entered the streaming subscription business in 2015 with Apple Music, and recently said that it had 36 million paying users. But according to a recent report in The Wall Street Journal, Apple Music has been outpacing Spotify in its growth in paid subscribers in the United States. The market for public offerings has been robust so far this year. Through late February, 30 companies listed their shares publicly on markets in the United States, raising 11.4 billion from investors. That was the strongest annual start for the market since 2000, according to data from Thomson Reuters. At least some of the highly valued, privately held technology companies, known as unicorns, could move quickly to capitalize on the opportunity and sell shares publicly. Last week, for instance, the online file storage company Dropbox, valued by the private markets at about 10 billion, filed paperwork to raise up to 500 million in an initial public offering. But to convert that paper wealth into actual cash at top dollar, early stage investors, company founders and employees with stock options need receptive public markets to buy their shares. If the public investors do not think the companies are worth as much as the small number of deep pocketed investors who dominate the private markets, it could mean the large amounts of paper wealth could be vaporized once the company's shares start trading. That's effectively what happened last year, when some prominent public offerings fizzled once the shares were trading publicly. Shares of Snap, the start up behind the popular Snapchat app, surged when it went public last March, but it has since had difficulty staying above its offering price of 17 a share. And the meal delivery start up Blue Apron, which went public at 10 a share last June, is now trading at less than 3 a share. Given that it involves a direct listing, Spotify's debut on the public markets has the potential to be even more volatile. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Media |
Benjamin Cordero, a high school student from western New York, has a thing for pop divas, but especially Lady Gaga. Previously a casual fan of whatever was on the radio, Cordero was converted when the singer performed during the Super Bowl halftime show in 2017, and in the bountiful time since which included "A Star Is Born" his devotion has only grown. Earlier this year, as Lady Gaga prepared to release her latest album, "Chromatica," Cordero joined Twitter, the current hub of pop superfandom, where he dedicated his account to all things Gaga. He tweeted thousands of times during the pandemic, often in dense lingo and inside jokes, along with hundreds of his fellow travelers, known as Little Monsters internet friends whom he calls his "mutuals." But these days, in these circles, joy and community are rarely enough. There are also battles to be waged and scores to be settled with rival groups or critics. And for Cordero, that meant trolling Ariana Grande fans. In October, with "Chromatica" having registered as a modest hit, Grande's own new album, "Positions," leaked online before its official release. Cordero, who liked Grande well enough but found her new music to be lacking, shared a link to the unreleased songs, much to the consternation of Grande fans, who worried that the bootlegged versions would damage the singer's commercial prospects. Taking on the role of volunteer internet detectives, Grande fans proceeded to spend days playing Whac a Mole by flagging links to the unauthorized album as they proliferated across the internet. But Cordero, bored and sensing their agita, decided to bait them even further by tweeting falsely that he'd subsequently been fined 150,000 by Grande's label for his role in spreading the leak. "is there any way I can get out of this," he wrote. "I'm so scared." He even shared a picture of himself crying. "They were rejoicing," Cordero recalled giddily of the Grande fans he'd fooled, who spread the word far and wide that the leaker a Gaga lover, no less was being punished. "Sorry but I feel no sympathy," one Grande supporter wrote on Reddit. "Charge him, put him in jail. you can't leak an album by the world's biggest pop star and expect no consequences." This was pop fandom in 2020: competitive, arcane, sales obsessed, sometimes pointless, chaotic, adversarial, amusing and a little frightening all happening almost entirely online. While music has long been intertwined with internet communities and the rise of social networks, a growing faction of the most vocal and dedicated pop enthusiasts have embraced the term "stan" taken from the 20 year old Eminem song about a superfan turned homicidal stalker and are redefining what it means to love an artist. On what is known as Stan Twitter and its offshoots on Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, Tumblr and various message boards these devotees compare No. 1s and streaming statistics like sports fans do batting averages, championship wins and shooting percentages. They pledge allegiance to their favorites like the most rabid political partisans or religious followers. They organize to win awards show polls, boost sales and raise money like grass roots activists. And they band together to pester or harass, and even dox those who may dare to slight the stars they have chosen to align themselves with. "These people don't even know who we are, but we spend countless days and months defending them from some stranger on the internet," said Cordero, who later revealed his Grande prank, gaining nothing but the ability to revel in the backlash. Here are more fascinating tales you can't help but read all the way to the end. None Getting Personal With Iman. The supermodel talks about life after David Bowie, their Catskills refuge and the perfume inspired by their love. A Resilient Team for a Broken Nation. With the Taliban in control, what, and whom, is Afghanistan's national soccer team playing for? The Fight of This Old Boxer's Life Was With His Own Family. A battle among Marvin Stein's family over his fortune broke out, and he suddenly found himself powerless to fight for himself. "When someone says something about Lady Gaga that's negative, a little bit of yourself inside is hurt," he explained of his own loyalty. "You see yourself in your favorite artists you associate with them, whether it's just the music or it's their personality. So when someone insults your favorite artist, you take that as a personal insult, and then you find yourself spending hours trying to convince someone in China that 'Born This Way' was her best album." "It's definitely a playing field to us," Cordero said. "We throw them in the ring, they battle it out, we cheer them on." "It was more about the community within connecting with other fans of the same artist and wasn't as competitive," Baym said. "In some ways it was competitive, but it was more, 'How many times have you seen them live?'" In the early 2000s, Myspace in many ways marked a turning point, presaging an era of social media in which fans could connect directly with artists in a way they hadn't before, causing some people to become more hostile, abusive or entitled, Baym said. At the same time, "American Idol" pitted fandoms against one another in the form of a popular vote, and what were once more insular conversations among enthusiasts began oozing outward. Matthew James, 22, who started the nostalgic blog Pop Culture Died in 2009 when he was 15, recalled when music forums like ATRL or LiveJournal communities like Oh No They Didn't! were a temporary escape. "You would log in after your day at school or work, and you had that small window of time on the internet," he said. "Even 10 years ago, it was still confined to these corners you could really distance yourself very easily. Now that is not possible since everything has been moved from separate websites to these centralized social media platforms." "With iPhones and everything, we've seen that small window of time you could be a fan turn into 24/7," James added. "People never log off." Paul Booth, a professor of media studies at DePaul University, researches how people use popular culture for emotional support and pleasure. In an interview, he noted that in the last decade, "It's gone from a general understanding that there are people out there that call themselves fans, but we don't really know who they are or what they do to, 'I'm a fan, you're a fan, everyone's a fan.' It's absolutely become everyday discussion." "Before, those people existed, but they were meeting in the basement yelling at each other," he said. "Now they're meeting on Twitter and yelling at each other, and everyone can see it." While early stereotypes about fanatics focused on possessed, shrieking teeny boppers or stalkers and killers, from Mark David Chapman to "Misery" and Yolanda Saldivar, fans were taken more seriously as a subculture in the late 1990s and 2000s, when they were seen as creators themselves, spawning zines, fan fiction and YouTube montages. But with the rise of internet first congregations like Beyonce's BeyHive, Justin Bieber's Beliebers and Nicki Minaj's Barbz in the 2010s, an evangelical fervor became a prerequisite and the word "stan," used as both a noun and a verb, continued to gain prominence and even positive connotations. As the politicization of the internet ratcheted up after Gamergate in 2014, fan groups increasingly adopted the tactics of troll armies from 4chan and Reddit, working in large anonymous groups often behind celebrity avatars that broadcast fealty to bend online conversation to their will. And unlike admirers of "Star Wars" or Marvel properties, which are more sprawling narrative fandoms, music fans like supporters of Bernie Sanders or President Trump are often investing in a single individual, making things even more personal. "It all boils down to emotions, which is something we don't take seriously enough in our culture," Booth said. "When people are passionate about something to the point that they're identifying with it, and it becomes part of who they are whether it's a political party, a political person or celebrity they're going to fight." They're also going to buy. As artists have come to recognize their direct influence over swaths of their online public sometimes siccing them on detractors, or at least failing to call them off they have also come to rely on their constant consumption, especially in the streaming era. "You might have a local" stan slang for a casual fan "buy a record," said Cordero, the Lady Gaga loyalist. "But a person on Stan Twitter probably bought that record 10 times, streamed a song on three separate playlists and racked up hundreds and hundreds of plays." He added: "It's basically promotion, free labor we're practically chained against the wall with our phones." (Lady Gaga recently advertised "Chromatica" branded cookies as an "Oreo Stan Club.") In addition to fueling a merchandise boom, these pop fans have taken it upon themselves to learn the rules governing the Billboard charts and the streaming platforms that provide their data, hoping to maximize commercial impact for bragging rights. "Shall we tighten up our muscles and get ready for a long march?" asks the "Ultimate ARMY Streaming Guide" posted to one fan site for BTS, whose faithful call themselves Army. Tips include to avoid bulk buying ("there is usually a purchase limit or it will count as one purchase only"); to compile playlists instead of looping tracks ("it will appear as a bot"); and to not put the songs on mute ("Don't worry, you can plug in earphones if you're planning to stream the whole day!"). The guide was written by a BTS fan named Avi, who is 26 and lives in Jakarta, Indonesia. She went "down the rabbit hole" after seeing the boy band perform at the American Music Awards in 2017, she said, and found community in the fandom. In addition to gathering online, Avi and her fellow BTS fans like to get together in person to celebrate the members' birthdays from afar, buying them a cake, posing for pictures and making charitable donations in their name. "I've never seen anyone insincere when it comes to BTS," Avi said in an interview. "No one is forcing us to do anything. It feels like we're promoting BTS, but we are also promoting our own voices, our own struggles, our own hope for a better world." By running up the group's numbers, landing them atop various charts and trending topic lists, the fans hope to inspire curiosity in others to check out BTS and take in the group's messages of self love. "I think of it as my own voice," Avi said. "What I do for BTS, it's not for them. I'm doing it with them." But some see these relationships between fans and idols as parasocial ones largely one sided interactions with mass media figures that masquerade as friendship and worry about the long term mental health effects of such devotion. Haaniyah Angus, a writer and former teenage stan who has written about her experiences in the subculture, noted that standom was "very heavily dependent on capitalism and buying" in a way that convinced consumers, on behalf of "really rich people," that "their win is your win." "For me and a lot of people I knew, a lot of it stemmed from us being very lonely, very depressed and anxious being like, 'I'm going to forget what I'm going through at the moment and I'm going to focus on this celebrity,'" she said. This dynamic often served to stamp out dissent within the ranks, which was once seen as a crucial component of fandom. "I don't think that toxic fandom is synonymous with stan culture," said Booth, the fan studies researcher. "But I think one of the dangers of stan culture that is, the danger of a group of fans who are so passionate about something that they'll shut down negative comments is that it can often shut down much needed conversations where our media and celebrities let us down." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Music |
"Las Meninas," by Diego Velazquez, in Gallery 12 in the Prado Museum in Madrid.Credit...Emilio Parra Doiztua for The New York Times It's often said that we don't appreciate what we have until it's gone. In the early 19th century, Spain's royal family had time to ruminate on that axiom when they lost not only their throne to Napoleon's brother, Joseph Bonaparte, but also hundreds of priceless paintings and other treasures, which had been stripped from Spanish palaces, monasteries and churches, and carted off to Paris by the French army. With Napoleon's defeat in 1814, both the throne and the artworks were returned to the restored Spanish monarch, Ferdinand VII, who had used his time off as ruler to hatch a plan for safeguarding his collection for future generations. Spurred by his culturally enlightened second wife, Maria Isabel de Braganza, Ferdinand created the Royal Museum of Paintings in Madrid in 1819. Beginning with about 300 masterpieces from the so called Golden Age of Spanish painting in the 16th and 17th centuries, the museum grew to include art from across Europe. Today, vastly expanded and known as the Prado, the museum is one of the world's great repositories of Western art. To honor its bicentennial, the museum has organized a yearlong celebration, starting last November with three days of "puertas abiertas" (free admission) that drew nearly 30,000 people. There are special exhibitions in the museum galleries, in parks and plazas around Madrid, and in museums across Spain. The Prado is even recreating the painting and furniture arrangement of "their Majesties' retiring room," complete with Ferdinand's personal toilet. But for me, the Prado experience is personal. I moved to Spain from New York City in 2002, and the Prado was absolutely part of the reason I chose to live in Madrid over Barcelona or Seville. My first assignment as a journalist was a story on the Prado's expansion, designed by Rafael Moneo, though I would have to wait five years to write it as legal battles and construction delays pushed the opening to 2007. Later, I followed Gabriele Finaldi, currently the director of London's National Gallery, but then deputy director of the Prado, on the whirlwind 45 minute highlights tour he often gave to visiting heads of state. And whether they want it or not, visiting family and friends are subjected to my own highlights tour of the Prado. But this year, amid the hoopla surrounding the anniversary, I found myself wondering if, after 17 years and more than 200 visits to the museum, was I like the pre Napoleon Ferdinand VII so accustomed to the highlights that I took everything else for granted? I decided to celebrate the bicentennial by renewing my knowledge of the entire museum every gallery, vestibule and passageway in which art is displayed. There is no one designated route to follow through the Prado and the numerical order given to the galleries doesn't help much as Gallery 1 connects to Galleries 4, 24 and 42, but not to Gallery 2, so visitors can expect to occasionally double back to move on. I began my tour in Gallery 75 on the ground level in the 19th century galleries. In the art world, there is not much love for Spanish 19th century painting after the great Francisco de Goya, who died in 1828. But the galleries handily illustrate the period of the museum's founding, starting with a regal portrait by Goya of a distrustful looking King Ferdinand VII. Known as "el Rey Felon" (the Felon King), he was something of a retrograde despot who, as crown prince, conspired against his father, and as king, abolished Spain's first constitution. If the Prado was his great gift to Spain, then perhaps Goya's great gift to posterity was the ability to convey Ferdinand's devious character in a portrait that the king himself would approve. Though she died a year before the museum opened, Ferdinand's wife and pro museum influencer, Maria Isabel de Braganza, is here as well, sculpted in marble in the style of a Roman empress by Jose Alvarez Cubero. And there's a marvelously large 1787 wooden architectural model of the Prado itself that looks like an elaborate royal toy. Neighboring galleries display pastoral landscapes, portraits of bourgeois matrons, and melodramatic history paintings that may not appeal to everyone, but certainly reveal the exquisitely descriptive manner of 19th century Spanish painting. On my visit, a group of high school students sat on the floor in front of Goya's "The Second of May, 1808," discussing the swirling street battle depicted, while others tried to decipher his enigmatic "black paintings": images of witchcraft and raw human brutality painted in the turbulent aftermath of the Napoleonic wars. Heading back toward the center of the museum, the tour takes on more chronological coherence, starting with the Italian Renaissance. With wealth pouring in from the American colonies from the 16th century onward, Spain's rulers had deep pockets for buying art. The first Hapsburg emperor, Charles V, and his son Philip II had the taste to match their resources, and acquired the best of the best. Exploring Gallery 49 and 56B is like stepping into a textbook of Italian Renaissance and Mannerist art with no fewer than seven glorious Raphaels, as well as works by Mantegna, Fra Angelico, Botticelli, Correggio, Andrea del Sarto, Bronzino and Parmigianino. There's even an anonymous version of the "Mona Lisa," likely painted by one of Leonardo da Vinci's pupils, in the same room at the same time as the Louvre's most famous painting. With so many beloved masterpieces, it's easy to just ricochet from painting to painting. Under Charles V, the Flanders region also became linked to the Spanish crown as cities like Bruges, Ghent and Antwerp were important financial centers and the heart of a thriving art market. It was 1 p.m., my iPhone had already clocked 7,600 steps and I still had two floors to go. At this point, I would typically have headed to the main level where the art shifts gear to the dramatic Baroque of which Spanish masters were among the standard bearers. On this day, however, I had promised to first reacquaint myself with the Renaissance in Spain at the building's far northern end. Recent Prado exhibitions have successfully "resurrected" some 15th and 16th century Spanish artists, including Luis de Morales and Bartolome Bermejo. New to me was the artist Juan de Juanes, whose six exquisite panels created for the altar of Valencia's Church of St. Stephen are now given pride of place in recently reinstalled galleries. Considered the finest painter in Valencia of the 16th century, his "Portrait of a Knight of the Order of Santiago" reveals how subtly and skillfully he blended Italian concepts of courtly portraiture with sumptuous surface detail. One flight up from the Spanish Renaissance galleries is Gallery 1, displaying a single work: Leone Leoni's imposing 1551 bronze sculpture, "Emperor Charles V and the Fury." The emperor's exquisitely made suit of armor comes off to reveal a heroic nude beneath. Leoni was a favorite of the Hapsburgs, and sculptures of other family members (though none that bare it all) are displayed in the cloister gallery of the Jeronimos wing. From Gallery 1, the masterpieces come fast and furious. Galleries 40 to 44 reveal, in sometimes overwhelming abundance, the sensuality and lush colors of Giovanni Bellini, Lorenzo Lotto, Veronese and other masters of the Venetian School of painting. The Prado has more paintings by Titian, the godfather of Venetian painting, than any other museum most of them emblematic works like "The Andrians," "Venus and Adonis" and "Virgin Dolorosa," which influenced generations of artists. The Flemish painter Peter Paul Rubens came to Madrid in the 17th century as both a diplomat and an artist, frequently copying works in the royal collection by Titian and others. He also painted works of his own for the Spanish kings. Many of them line the 367 foot long central gallery that forms the spine of the Prado and creates a visual nexus, revealing the links between the great masters of Spanish painting El Greco, Ribera, Zurbaran, Maino, Velazquez and Murillo and their Italian and Flemish forebears. Strolling the gallery, one feels the tug of creativity across a golden century. But halfway through it I felt pangs of hunger. It was 3 p.m. and I needed a break, a bite and someone to collect my kids from school. I ran to the museum's cafe, though on another day I would have headed to one of several worthwhile restaurants nearby, such as Cafe Murillo, a local joint that is popular with both stylish madrilenos and Michelle Obama (who's been twice), or Trattoria Sant'Arcangelo, a cozy Italian spot that often serves as the cantina for senior Prado staff. In warm weather the museum has a lovely outdoor cafe with yummy sandwiches and yummier sangria that might have kept me from going back inside to finish my mission. When I did venture back in, I was lucid enough to focus on my quest for surprises. Several presented themselves in the form of a gallery with more than a dozen paintings by the French painters Nicolas Poussin and Claude Lorrain that I never knew existed here. Ditto for another gallery of paintings by Anthony Van Dyck that I had somehow walked past for 17 years. "Velazquez alone is worth the whole trip," wrote the French painter Edouard Manet of his Prado visit in 1865. Velazquez, he noted, is the "painters' painter," so little wonder that the likes of John Singer Sargent, Pablo Picasso and Francis Bacon would make similar pilgrimages to study the works displayed in Galleries 7 through 18. Artists of the Spanish "golden age" in the 17th century seemed to delight in manipulating paint on the canvas to create dazzlingly realistic effects, such as the light shimmering on silk gowns in Velazquez's "Las Meninas," or the churning clouds in the apricot and lavender skies of El Greco. Spanish 'naturalism' painting objects and people as they actually appear can have a deeper emotional impact, as seen in the candor and humanity of Velazquez's portraits of buffoons or the austerity of Zurbaran's nearly all black and white paintings, like "Agnus Dei," which conveys the solemnity of Catholic Spain. These galleries are the heart of my own Prado highlights tour, and even with my legs begging for rest, I spent more than an hour there. By the dawn of the 18th century, Spain had a new ruling dynasty, the Bourbons, but the pace of royal collecting and commissioning remained apace. The Prado's large collection of Goya's portraits including one of King Charles IV and his family that features his already devious looking son Fernando remind me that the artist's canny ability to reveal a subject's hapless or sinister character speaks across the centuries. Before heading to the third floor to delight in the frolic of Goya's tapestry cartoons, I got a whiff of fresh coffee and, sensing I'd cut myself calorically short with that wee omelet for lunch, I followed my nose into the tiny new Cafe Jonicos and cookie shop tucked behind the central gallery. Sipping and chewing in surprising proximity to Rubens's "Three Graces," I mused on how much had changed since I had arrived in Madrid, when the Prado was among the most old school of the world's big name museums, with surprisingly limited weekend and holiday hours, endless lines and a lackluster shop and cafe. Today, it's a model of accessibility, open a minimum of nine hours a day (two of them with free admission), online ticket sales, hands on exhibitions for the vision impaired, a guide for the L.G.B.T. community, free online courses available to anyone, and now a coffee and cookie bar. More impressive still is what's grown up around it not just in my time, but in the 200 years since it was founded. Once on the edge of the city, the Prado, which means 'meadow,' is now the heart of one of the world's most vibrant and diverse art districts with the Reina Sofia Museum, the Thyssen Bornemisza Museum, the Royal Botanical Garden, National Museum of Decorative Arts and the CaixaForum Madrid art space, not to mention the extraordinary Naval Museum, literally steps away. And at least 100 galleries, design and antiques shops line the surrounding streets. While no one needs to spend seven hours in one building, it would be easy to spend several days indulging in art appreciation in the neighborhood. After nearly 12,000 steps (about six miles), my final stop was a new, almost vault like gallery tucked under the eaves in the North Tower, showcasing one final surprise: a collection of nearly 150 exquisite hardstone and rock crystal goblets, platters and other objects adorned with gold and silver and known as the Dauphin's Treasure. Maybe I was delirious at this point, but these stunning and delicate objects displayed next to the extraordinary padded leather cases that perfectly mimic the shape of the objects they carry and are also centuries old provide a fitting metaphor for the Prado itself: artistic perfection inside and out. Andrew Ferren, a Madrid based freelance writer, is a frequent contributor to the Travel section. 52 PLACES AND MUCH, MUCH MORE We have a new 52 Places traveler! Follow Sebastian Modak on Instagram as he travels the world, and discover more Travel coverage by following us on Twitter and Facebook. And sign up for our Travel Dispatch newsletter: Each week you'll receive tips on traveling smarter, stories on hot destinations and access to photos from all over the world. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Travel |
From left: Michael Dwyer/Associated Press; Hilary Swift for The New York Times; Jakob Dall for The New York Times From left: Michael Dwyer/Associated Press; Hilary Swift for The New York Times; Jakob Dall for The New York Times Credit... From left: Michael Dwyer/Associated Press; Hilary Swift for The New York Times; Jakob Dall for The New York Times Has there ever been a year at Lincoln Center more filled with tumult and change than 2018? Scandals rocked some of its biggest institutions; around the fountain there was a twilight of the gods feeling. The Metropolitan Opera fired the conductor James Levine, who had shaped the company since the 1970s, after it concluded that he had engaged in sexual misconduct. Next door, Peter Martins, who had led New York City Ballet since the 1980s, retired amid an investigation into his behavior. (Both men have denied wrongdoing.) See what our critics chose as the best classical events of 2018. And listen to our favorite recordings of the year. The sped up regime change at the Met and City Ballet came as the New York Philharmonic and the Juilliard School also had changings of the guard, if more deliberately planned ones. And it was not just Lincoln Center's independent constituent organizations that faced turmoil: Governance woes continued to plague the center itself, which manages the campus. Debora L. Spar left as its president after just a year, Lincoln Center's second leader in a row forced out early. So, as 2019 dawns, many of Lincoln Center's biggest institutions will be substantially different than they were at the start of 2018. Here is a look back. James Levine is fired by the Met Mr. Levine helped define the Met, the biggest performing arts organization in the nation, for more than four decades. He conducted a staggering 2,577 performances there; shaped what was performed and how; and became the company's public face through decades of telecasts. The Met moved him into an emeritus position in 2016 after he battled years of health problems but still expected him to conduct often. The following year, The New York Times reported that several men had come forward to accuse Mr. Levine of sexually abusing them when they were teenagers or students of his. The Met suspended Mr. Levine, then fired him in March, saying that an investigation the company commissioned had "uncovered credible evidence that Mr. Levine engaged in sexually abusive and harassing conduct toward vulnerable artists in the early stages of their careers, over whom Mr. Levine had authority." Mr. Levine, who denied any wrongdoing, sued the Met for breach of contract and defamation; the Met then countersued him, arguing that he had violated his duties and harmed the institution. The cases are pending in New York State Supreme Court. After a 34 year run leading Juilliard, with its prestigious music, dance and drama programs, Joseph W. Polisi retired in June. He built Juilliard's first dormitory; added new programs in jazz studies and historical performance practice; and proved adept at fund raising. He offered a warning of sorts in his final commencement address. "Rather than being a subject of pious platitudes, the arts must be viewed as an essential part of our existence which can be easily neutralized by an uncaring populace or an insensitive political leadership," he said. "That is why you, our graduates, must be effective advocates for the arts in the time ahead." Each summer since 1996, the Lincoln Center Festival has taken over the campus with visiting theater troupes, dance companies, orchestras, opera companies and performance artists. Until this year. The festival, which was run by the complex, was discontinued to save money and to consolidate artistic leadership under Jane Moss, who has energized Lincoln Center's other summer festival, Mostly Mozart, with more ambitious programming. The plan calls for beefing up the offerings of Mostly Mozart and the annual fall White Light Festival to make up for the loss of the summer festival. But how successful that will be given the center's recent deficit problems and its lack of a permanent president remains to be seen. Read our chief classical music critic's take on a summer without Lincoln Center Festival. As it adjusted to life after Peter Martins, City Ballet was jolted with another scandal: Three male principal dancers were forced out after they were accused in a lawsuit of sharing, through text messages, sexually explicit photos of women. It began when one of the men, Chase Finlay, was accused of sending to friends explicit pictures and videos of a young woman he had been dating to friends, without her consent, and asking others to send back their own explicit photos. He resigned. Two other dancers accused of sharing explicit photos, Zachary Catazaro and Amar Ramasar, were then fired. Read about the start of the Nezet Seguin era at the Met. When Mr. Van Zweden, an exacting Dutch conductor, was named the next music director of the Philharmonic, some critics questioned whether he would be as committed to new music as his predecessor, Alan Gilbert. It had not been a centerpiece of his previous job, as music director of the Dallas Symphony Orchestra, which made him the best paid conductor in America, paying him a record 5.1 million in 2013. His answer? He opened each of his first three Philharmonic programs this fall with the premiere of a commissioned work: Ashley Fure's "Filament," Conrad Tao's "Everything Must Go" and Louis Andriessen's "Agamemnon." Mr. Tommasini praised the decision to open the van Zweden era with the experimental Fure piece as "a strong statement of artistic purpose." Juilliard reached into the arts world for its new president: Mr. Woetzel, a former City Ballet star who was credited with injecting new life into the Vail Dance Festival as its artistic director, and who has taught as a visiting lecturer at Harvard Law School. "Each of us has the chance to seize this moment, and to create a powerful artistic voice," he said in his first convocation speech. "And to take that artistic voice and share it. We seek to foster a growing community of these voices. Your voices. Our voices together. A community that is open, and pluralistic, and recognizes that if it isn't, then it is lessened. A community that furthers civil discourse, and knows that arts and culture are an antidote to division." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Music |
SAN FRANCISCO Larry Page and Sergey Brin, the Stanford graduate students who founded Google over two decades ago, are stepping down from executive roles at Google's parent company, Alphabet, they announced on Tuesday. The move is an end of an era for Google. Mr. Page and Mr. Brin have personified the company since its founding and have been two of the technology industry's most influential figures, on a par with the founders of Apple and Microsoft, Steve Jobs and Bill Gates. Their early work on the Google search engine helped corral an unruly cloud of information on the World Wide Web. And their ideas about how to run an internet company like offering generous employee perks like free shuttle buses to the office and making rank and file employees feel as though they have a stake in the company became a standard for Silicon Valley. Mr. Page and Mr. Brin took lesser roles in day to day operations in 2015 when they turned Google into Alphabet, a holding company that includes the self driving car company Waymo under its umbrella. Since then, they have spent more time overseeing a variety of so called other bets, like life extension technology, while Mr. Pichai ran Google and its enormous search and advertising business. The business has continued to grow and Alphabet is among the most valuable companies in the world, but the internet giant is entering one of the most turbulent periods in its history, with antitrust scrutiny, employee walkouts and growing public skepticism of its power. Mr. Page and Mr. Brin, who are both 46, will remain directors on Alphabet's board and the company's two largest individual shareholders. They retain a majority of the company's voting shares, which will give them effective control over the board and ensure they maintain a say over the company's future. "Today, in 2019, if the company was a person, it would be a young adult of 21 and it would be time to leave the roost," the founders wrote in a public letter on Tuesday. "While it has been a tremendous privilege to be deeply involved in the day to day management of the company for so long, we believe it's time to assume the role of proud parents offering advice and love, but not daily nagging!" The move confirms the ascendancy of Mr. Pichai, who is 47, as one of tech's most powerful people. While he has run the core Google business for four years, he has still reported to Mr. Page, Alphabet's chief executive, and Mr. Brin, its president. Now he is the sole executive in charge of a company that has giant businesses in search, advertising, maps, smartphone software and online video, as well as a variety of fledgling bets in far off areas like drone deliveries and internet beaming balloons. In recent years, Mr. Page and Mr. Brin seemed to have lost interest in running the company they founded. The reorganization into a holding company was in part intended to address that. While Mr. Pichai took the reins of the often messy business of Google, Mr. Page and Mr. Brin would focus on what were effectively science projects. Mr. Brin moved his desk for a time to X, the so called moonshot lab where engineers worked on projects that were likely to fail but had big potential if they didn't. Mr. Page was rarely a presence on Google's campus and was working on long shot technology problems and personal side projects like his flying car start up, Kitty Hawk. They have largely disappeared from public view, at least as company representatives. Mr. Page did not speak on Alphabet's quarterly earnings calls, appear for congressional testimony like other tech executives over the last year, or sit for interviews with journalists. One of Mr. Brin's few on the record comments to journalists in recent years came at San Francisco International Airport when he was protesting President Trump's immigration policy. He told reporters he was there as a private citizen. While Mr. Page and Mr. Brin had been a regular presence at weekly all staff meetings in Google's early years, they had all but stopped appearing over the last year. One of Mr. Page's last appearances at the company meeting was last year when he apologized to employees for his handling of the departure of Andy Rubin, a former senior executive who received a 90 million payout after the company deemed sexual harassment claims against him credible. In June, Mr. Page surprised investors and employees when he did not attend Alphabet's shareholder meeting. In recent years, the freewheeling work culture promoted by Mr. Page and Mr. Brin has run into trouble. Employees have staged public protests over the company's handling of sexual harassment claims against executives, its treatment of contract workers and its work with the Defense Department, federal border agencies and the Chinese government. The soft spoken Mr. Pichai has been reluctant to confront the protests head on, but he has quietly cracked down on employee unrest. Google has halted the weekly company meetings and placed restrictions on what employees can discuss on message boards. "Some had seriously hoped Sergey and Larry would step in and fix Google," Google Walkout for Real Change, the organizer behind last year's employee walkout, wrote on Twitter. "Instead of righting the sinking ship, they jumped ship." Though working at Google is becoming more like working at other giant companies, Mr. Page and Mr. Brin's interests and styles like focusing on passion projects and math jokes have become part of Silicon Valley iconography. While other tech titans like Mr. Jobs and Mr. Gates were known for their sometimes brash and mercurial leadership styles, Mr. Page and Mr. Brin were low key and cerebral. But not always. Mr. Brin sky dived for a company event that introduced one of the company's most disappointing products, the Google Glass wearable device. He often was spotted riding an elliptical bike to work. That idiosyncratic style, that "Googliness," became something company managers were told to look for in applicants. Mr. Page is the son of academics from Michigan, while Mr. Brin's family emigrated to Maryland from the Soviet Union when he was a child and he considers himself a refugee. They met at Stanford, where in 1996 they came up with the invention that spawned Google. Mr. Page was the visionary while Mr. Brin, a math prodigy, led the engineering. "Sergey would say, 'Is that the best way to solve that problem?' Larry always said, 'Is that the right problem to solve?'" said Michael Jones, a co founder of Google Earth who worked at the company for 11 years, often closely with the pair. "They're different, and together they make up a whole person." At Google, they set a mission statement: "Organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful." That led to projects that digitized millions of books, digitally mapped the world's streets, and created artificial intelligence that can instantly transcribe speech or drive cars. They have also been accused of trampling the privacy of users and abusing their dominance while competing with smaller companies. Still, they have been among the most forward thinking executives in American industry, said Sebastian Thrun, the former head of Google's self driving car project who now runs Mr. Page's flying car start up. Mr. Page and Mr. Brin will retain broad control over the company through their roughly 51 percent share of voting power. That stems from a stock structure in which one class of stock comes with far more voting power than the others. They hold about 84 percent of those higher vote shares. With such voting power, Mr. Page and Mr. Brin can still effectively eject Mr. Pichai, who owns none of those shares. "If you really boil it down, it's not that different from: Dad puts you in charge, but Dad still owns the company," said Mr. Jones, the former Google executive. Mr. Page and Mr. Brin are among the few tech company founders who have walked away from daily roles at the company they created and that made them billionaires. Mr. Gates did something similar when he handed the chief executive role at Microsoft to Steve Ballmer in 2000, during his company's long antitrust fight with the Justice Department. While Google is now gearing up for its own antitrust fight, with investigations into its power in Congress, the Justice Department and nearly every state, there are notable differences with Microsoft. When Mr. Ballmer took over as chief executive there in 2000, the company had just been found to have repeatedly violated the nation's antitrust laws in a landmark case brought by the Justice Department. Mr. Pichai is still unsure what he faces from regulators and lawmakers. The scrutiny includes Google's dominant market share in internet search and how it competes with smaller rivals in the digital ad business. "For Google, it is still to be determined just what it is facing on the antitrust front," said David Readerman, a longtime technology analyst and portfolio manager at Endurance Capital Partners. "But that is a clear and present risk." In their letter on Tuesday, Mr. Page and Mr. Brin said they would remain committed to the company "for the long term, and will remain actively involved as board members, shareholders and co founders. In addition, we plan to continue talking with Sundar regularly, especially on topics we're passionate about!" Whatever they decide to do, they will have no trouble funding it. Mr. Page is worth about 58.9 billion and Mr. Brin is worth about 56.8 billion, the sixth and seventh richest people in the world, according to Forbes. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Technology |
Scruton knows that conservatism is a reaction against the Enlightenment confidence in improving the world through the use of reason, but he is at pains to distinguish the thinkers he admires from mere reactionaries. His philosophers don't want to return to the past, he insists. Yet he provides no clue as to how they decide which traditions are worth preserving. Burke may have protested against the cruelties of slavery and imperial domination, but there have been plenty of conservatives who defended these practices. Scruton's account of the conservative defense of freedom includes not a word about colonialism or racism. To paraphrase what he says of the American conservative Russell Kirk, Scruton just picks the conservative flowers that appeal to him. But how to hold together an intellectual bouquet that combines the simple blooms of village life and the hothouse hybrids of unfettered economic development? Often a common enemy provides unity, and antagonism toward the modern bureaucratic state has worked well for conservatives. Government officials have long been seen as riding roughshod over local custom as well as getting in the way of industrious entrepreneurs. Throughout the 20th century, moreover, anti Communism unified conservatives, and they often labeled as Communist anyone who disagreed with their selective defense of freedom. Scruton can no longer find worthy Communist adversaries, so at the end of the book he turns against Muslims, hoping for a "rediscovery of ourselves" by stoking fear and loathing against those who he says do not share "our" religious or political inheritance. He knows how this will sound to many of his readers, so he warns them against thinking he's just being racist. But one doesn't have to be politically correct or to participate in what Scruton calls the "culture of repudiation" to find it unfortunate that a philosopher should stoop so low. The "great tradition" Scruton describes can attract study and respect without stimulating nasty chauvinism. His "well meaning liberal" readers will find Scruton's deft handling of a variety of conservative thinkers enlightening (if I may use that word), but they will be appalled at the grand old tradition of scapegoating he employs to rally the troops. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Books |
The reclusive Italian author Elena Ferrante will join The Guardian as a weekly columnist, the newspaper announced Thursday. Writing for the London based paper's Weekend magazine, Ms. Ferrante will "share her thoughts on a wide range of topics, including childhood, aging, gender and, in her debut article, first love," according to a news release. Her first column will appear on Saturday. Ms. Ferrante is well known as the author of the so called Neapolitan Novels, four best selling books that trace the lifelong friendship of two women from Naples. But even as she has risen to international fame, she fiercely guards her privacy and writes under a pseudonym. Though Ms. Ferrante has had a long literary career, the arrangement is her first newspaper column. In a statement, she said she was "attracted to the possibility of testing myself," calling the job "a bold, anxious exercise in writing." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Books |
Read our NFL Week 12 picks against the spread. Aaron Rodgers and the Packers take on one of the N.F.L.'s most stifling secondaries. Tennessee and Baltimore face off in a battle of struggling contenders. Kansas City looks for revenge against Las Vegas, and Pittsburgh tries to get to 10 0 for the first time in franchise history. There is a lot to like about this week's schedule. Here is a look at N.F.L. Week 11, with all picks made against the spread. And while you wait for the action, get lost in the possibilities of the next seven weeks with The Upshot's playoff simulator. Only two teams have averaged more points a game than the Packers, who are enjoying a magical season from their quarterback. Aaron Rodgers has thrown for 26 touchdowns against just three interceptions, leading to an N.F.L. leading passer rating of 116.4. Strength against strength is always an intriguing matchup, and this game certainly qualifies. The path to victory for Green Bay is fairly straightforward: Give Rodgers some time in the pocket and let him find wide receivers Davante Adams and Marquez Valdes Scantling for a few home run throws. For Indianapolis, the key to keeping those wide receivers quiet is putting Rodgers on his back early and often. It would be inaccurate to say the Colts' offense and Packers' defense are irrelevant in this game, and a few breaks for either of those units could go a long way to deciding the game. But the headliners are clear, and you won't want to miss any of Green Bay's passing downs, no matter how things go. Pick: Colts 2 In the closing scene of "Fight Club," as a series of buildings tumble to the ground, the narrator looks at Marla and rather optimistically says, "You met me at a very strange time in my life." That's the general feeling as the Titans (6 3) visit the Ravens (6 3), with both teams hoping to brush off some recent failure and get back to being top contenders. Baltimore has lost two of its three games since its bye week and the team's juggernaut of an offense has been held to 24 or fewer points in each game. Tennessee has lost three of four, with quarterback Ryan Tannehill having seen the most pronounced downturn of his tenure with the Titans. None Week 11 Predictions: Here are our picks against the spread. N.F.L. Tightens Covid Protocols: As cases rise and Thanksgiving approaches, the league is requiring masks inside team facilities and increasing testing. The Packers' Defense Is Their M.V.P.: Green Bay's oft overlooked defense has kept the team from falling out of the Super Bowl chase. The Long Path to the Super Bowl: With 18 weeks in the regular season and fewer teams earning byes in the playoffs, the Super Bowl is still a long way off. Playoff Simulator: Explore every team's path to the postseason, updated live. What does that mean going forward? Potentially nothing. Baltimore still has a ton of talent on both sides of the ball and there is little reason to believe that Tennessee's offense can't return to a level of productivity that makes its mediocre defense largely irrelevant. But this week's game will come down to which team can best emerge from its funk. That could easily go either way, but with the Ravens playing at home, they are the safer bet. Pick: Ravens 6.5 The last time these teams met, the Raiders (6 3) shocked the Chiefs (8 1) by beating them, 40 32, in Kansas City. It was a classic case of a top rated team looking past a scrappy challenger, and Las Vegas made its division rival pay dearly for that indifference. The odds that Patrick Mahomes and his fellow defending Super Bowl champions make the same mistake again are slim. "Any time you lose to anyone, the next time you play them you want to win the football game," Mahomes told reporters this week. "We'll be ready to go, I promise you that." The Raiders are coming off the most complete win of their season last week against the Broncos, and in an ideal circumstance might have been a real challenger for Kansas City in this one. But with the bulk of Las Vegas' defense being forced to sit out the week of practice because of Covid 19 close contact protocols, slowing down the Chiefs seems like an impossible task. Pick: Chiefs 7 Pittsburgh Coach Mike Tomlin described this as a "trap game" and said he has a "ridiculous level of respect" for Jacksonville. So should anyone expect this to be a good game? No. The Steelers (9 0) are dominating on both sides of the ball, while the Jaguars (1 8) have an inept defense and a rookie quarterback in Jake Luton who was not even expected to play this season. So why make this one of the best games of the week? Because Pittsburgh stands a good chance of becoming the N.F.L.'s first 10 0 team since 2015. Only 26 teams have begun a season with 10 straight wins. Six went undefeated for the regular season. Five finished with just one loss, nine with two losses and five with three losses. The worst a 10 0 team has ever finished was the 2015 Patriots, who went 12 4. Pick: Steelers 10 Five straight wins for the Dolphins (6 3) has Miami in line for a playoff spot, and the team seems to get more impressive on a weekly basis. Last week's win over the Chargers was unexpectedly powered by the rookie running back Salvon Ahmed and Miami could be even stronger this week if Matt Breida is able to return from a hamstring injury. The Broncos (3 6), after a brief flirtation with relevance, have dropped three of their past four games while allowing an average of 36 points a game in that stretch. Visiting Denver is never easy, but Miami's surge should continue. Pick: Dolphins 3 This is one of the hardest games of the week to peg. The Patriots (4 5) are coming off a shockingly convincing win over Baltimore that has upended the general view that the team is a disaster. Was that a one off? Is that game, combined with a fairly close win over the Jets the week before, enough to say New England is hot? Even a blowout win in this game wouldn't truly answer that question as the Texans (2 7) have beat only lowly Jacksonville. Deshaun Watson is so good that it's impossible to rule out a dominant performance in which he drags his teammates kicking and screaming to victory. But that is slightly less likely than Cam Newton and the Patriots grinding out a fairly close win on the road. Pick: Patriots 2 Andy Dalton has cleared the N.F.L.'s concussion protocol and been taken off the Covid 19 reserve list, and his punishment for that good fortune will be having to start for the Cowboys (2 7). There remains a lingering belief that Dalton, who was at one point a borderline star for Cincinnati, could take advantage of his team's riches at wide receiver and lead Dallas back to something near mediocrity. And there are few defenses more willing to make a quarterback look good than the unit for the Vikings (4 5). Minnesota is the better team here regardless, is playing at home and could actually get better by emphasizing wide receivers Adam Thielen and Justin Jefferson more. If this game were in Dallas you might expect it to be close, but in Minnesota the Vikings should romp. Pick: Vikings 7 The thought of seeing Hill under center for every snap seems far fetched, but indications are that Winston will not be a part of the game plan. And while both players have pluses and minuses, the Saints may want to just focus on running the ball with Alvin Kamara. This would likely have been a blowout if Drew Brees were healthy, but expectations should be downgraded some for what will undoubtedly be a more conservative approach. Pick: Saints 4.5 Carson Wentz has never been the same since a knee injury ended his 2017 season early. He wasn't bad over the last two seasons, but any mention of his name and the M.V.P. award became a distant memory. This year he has taken a very long step in the wrong direction and by virtually every measure has been objectively bad. It wouldn't be fair to blame everything on Wentz, as injuries and ineptitude have been a total team effort. But Philadelphia's grip on the N.F.L.'s worst division is loosening, and if the Eagles are caught by the Giants, that would be fairly embarrassing. The Browns (6 3) would do well to just run the ball all day with Nick Chubb and Kareem Hunt and let their defense take advantage of a few mistakes. Keep the score low and tack on another victory, just as Cleveland did last week against Houston. Pick: Browns 3.5 Panthers quarterback Teddy Bridgewater injured a ligament in his knee during last week's loss to Tampa Bay, but currently it appears as if he will be able to start for the Panthers (3 7). That's welcome news for a team that had been building some momentum heading into last week, and looked great until the game went sideways in the second half. Matthew Stafford is also expected to start for the Lions (4 5) despite having injured the thumb on his throwing hand. The uncertainty with both quarterbacks makes this a tossup, with the advantage going to whichever team can keep their guy on the field longest. Pick: Panthers 1.5 | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Sports |
All summer, Cardi B's hit "I Like It" which went to No. 1 the week of July 4 has been introducing a generation of listeners to a Latin classic more than 50 years old: Pete Rodriguez's "I Like It Like That" from 1967, which Cardi B liberally samples and reinterprets. Now "I Like It Like That," a standard of the pre salsa style known as boogaloo, is a centerpiece of one of the largest Latin focused music deals in years. This week, the catalog of Fania Records, the New York salsa label that defined the genre in the 1960s and '70s with stars like Celia Cruz, Willie Colon, Hector Lavoe and Johnny Pacheco, was purchased by Concord Music, an independent label and publisher that has become a mini conglomerate by pursuing rock, jazz, children's music and other genres that rarely graze the Top 10 but have vast, devoted audiences. "This is consistent with our strategy of not focusing on current pop hits," Scott Pascucci, Concord's chief executive, said in an interview. "We are very happy when we have songs that cross over to the pop chart, but we focus on genres where we find that the majors are not particularly focused." Fania, sometimes called the Motown of Latin music, was started in 1964 by Mr. Pacheco and Jerry Masucci, a lawyer. In the early days, Mr. Pacheco, who is now 83, sold records out of the trunk of his Mercedes 180. But before long, Fania became a powerhouse and the primary label for the evolving sound of salsa, a distinctively New York mix of Cuban and Puerto Rican dance styles, sometimes mingled with funk. A 1973 concert at Yankee Stadium, featuring a collection of stars from the label and released as a live album two years later, crystallized the label's prestige. But by the 1980s, Fania was dormant. A slow recovery began to take shape in 2009 when the label's assets were bought by a private equity fund, Signal Equity Partners, which set up an operating company, Codigo, and went about trying to get Fania's music available on digital services, and promoting it to producers and D.J.s. "We've really done most of what we set out to do," Timothy P. Bradley, Signal's managing director, said when asked why Signal had decided to sell. 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. Latin music is particularly popular on streaming services, which has helped recent Spanish language songs like "Despacito" become global hits. According to Nielsen, 82 percent of all consumption of Latin music is through streaming services more than any other genre, including hip hop and dance music, which are both at 79 percent. For many owners of music catalogs, the success of streaming has lifted valuations and lured new investors, creating a frothy market for deals. Among other transactions this year, Bob Marley's publishing rights traded for 50 million. For Concord, Fania is the latest in a string of recent deals. Last year it paid more than 500 million for the Imagem Music Group, which included the music publishing catalogs of Rodgers and Hammerstein and hits by Phil Collins, Mark Ronson and Daft Punk. Over the last year, Concord has spent 150 million acquiring more catalogs, and by next year the company expects to have 400 million in revenue, Mr. Pascucci said. That puts the company well below the level of corporate giants like Universal Music which had nearly 7 billion in revenue last year but above most indies. Steve Salm, Concord's chief business development officer, said the company's size sometimes gives it an advantage in deals. (Mr. Bradley confirmed that Concord's bid was not the highest, but gave no further details about the sale.) "To the artists, songwriters and rights holders looking to find a home for their legacies," he said, "we aren't the big guy and we aren't the little guy." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Media |
TWO years before Carol Lovil's life savings disappeared in R. Allen Stanford's Ponzi scheme, she lost her husband, John, to cancer. While grieving, she asked her financial adviser at the Stanford Financial Group in Houston what she should do. Two things still haunt her, Mrs. Lovil said in an interview this month. She said she asked if the money she had in certificates of deposit issued by Stanford International Bank was guaranteed. It was, she said he told her. She said she also asked whether she should pay off the mortgage on the lake home in the Texas hill country that she and her husband bought in 1999. He advised against that, she said. When she turned on the television news on Feb. 17, 2009, and saw the offices of the Stanford Financial Group being raided, Mrs. Lovil said she did not worry. Her money was insured, she thought. But as it became clear that the 7 billion firm, which had been based in Antigua, was running a Ponzi scheme, she began calling and sending e mails to her adviser to find out how to get her money back. At first, she was told everything was fine and not to worry. But within a week the responses stopped. "I was lied to about the safety of this investment," she wrote in one e mail to the company. In another, she wrote, "I haven't worked in 12 years, and in my small community jobs for someone my age are scarce." Everything she had, except for a small checking account, was invested with Stanford. Three years later Mrs. Lovil, a fit woman of 69, has seen none of the money that was in Stanford's fraudulent C.D.'s. She said she would be in worse shape had she not listened to her lawyer, Randall A. Pulman of Pulman, Cappuccio, Pullen Benson in San Antonio, who told her to sell her house and get a job. "That was the best advice I ever got," she said. And it helped put her on a path that has led to a life very different from the one she had before. All Ponzi schemes look obvious in hindsight, and that gnaws at the people who lose money: how could they have missed the warning signs that everyone else points out afterward? Kenneth S. Springer, a former F.B.I. agent and founder of Corporate Resolutions, which investigates money managers, said there were no easy tips for avoiding fraud artists. "The lesson is you don't follow the herd," he said. "You've got to do your own due diligence, and you can't fall in love with the returns." He said one thing to look for is litigation, and Stanford had a history of arbitration cases where investors sued claiming fraud. While Mr. Stanford was convicted in early March on 13 of 14 counts of fraud and is likely to face life in prison, that is little comfort to the nearly 30,000 people he defrauded. In three years, they have received only the money that was invested in legitimate securities and held at other securities firms. For Mrs. Lovil that has been about 100,000. Whether she will ever see any of the nearly 500,000 she lost in Stanford C.D.'s is unclear. The Securities Investor Protection Corporation, a federally mandated backstop against losses in the securities markets, said in 2009 that it would not cover claims from Stanford C.D.'s because the corporation's protection applies to assets that vanish from an account, not to those that have simply lost value, as in this case. Coverage by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation does not apply either because Stanford International Bank was based outside the United States. In the last three years, the court appointed receiver has yet to pay any claims from the property it has seized. In fact, there still is not a claims process in the United States. Meanwhile, Mr. Stanford's conviction is meager consolation to Mrs. Lovil. "I lost a lot more than money," she said at Bella Sera, an Italian restaurant in Marble Falls, about 20 minutes from her home. "I lost trust. I don't trust anyone now." She added, "I blame my broker Mark Tidwell more than I do Allen Stanford." D. Mark Tidwell had been the couple's broker at Merrill Lynch, and in 2004 when he moved to the Stanford Financial Group in Houston, he took the Lovils with him. Fairly quickly he began selling the bulk of the Lovils' securities most of it in retirement accounts from Mr. Lovil's career at Nestle and buying Stanford C.D.'s. These C.D.'s carried interest rates that were usually double the prevailing rates and paid brokers commissions of up to one percentage point of the interest, Mr. Pulman said. Mr. Tidwell, who left Stanford two months before the Ponzi scheme became public, now runs Zenith Wealth Management in Houston, with a partner from Stanford. He said he warned Mrs. Lovil to move her money away from the firm, but she did not heed his advice. (He would not address the issue of Mrs. Lovil's mortgage.) Mrs. Lovil said Mr. Tidwell had called her after he left the company, but never told her that anything was wrong. "Even if I made a mistake in overconcentrating, she had plenty of opportunity and time to get out," Mr. Tidwell said when asked why he put nearly three quarters of the Lovils' money in one asset, the Stanford C.D.'s He blamed the management of Mrs. Lovil's account after he left. "As difficult as it was to lose my husband," Mrs. Lovil said, "at least you knew what the outcome should be." Losing her life savings "was more difficult," she said. "It was more shocking." Three years later, she said, she was making progress. In September 2009, she got a job at the Llano County Library, where she is an assistant manager. "I saw an advertisement on the way home from church and thought maybe I should stop in," said Mrs. Lovil, who worked as an English teacher in Houston more than a decade earlier. "I was the last applicant to apply. It has been the most wonderful experience." But having a job has meant this stage of her life is not what she had expected. "You can't play golf or go to Bible study during the day," she said. "However, I live five minutes from work, and I look forward to going to work every day. It's fulfilling." As for her house, she tried to keep it and said she could have done so had she paid off her mortgage. But after going over her finances with her local banker, she realized she could not afford to keep the house nor could she qualify for any mortgage refinancing program. So she put it up for sale. A few days after she got the library job, , she received an offer on the house that turned out to be a gift in disguise. Her real estate agent called to tell her that a local rancher had bought her house as an investment. The agent had told him her story, and he offered to lease it back to her for as long as she wanted to live there. "I was frantic at first because I hadn't been a renter since my early 20s," she said. But now she has changed her tune. "It's taken a lot of the stress out of my life," she said. Her savings are about 800 a month even though her rent is close to her old mortgage payment, because she does not have to cover property taxes. Mr. Pulman, her lawyer, said he hoped Mr. Stanford's conviction would help allow plaintiffs' motions pending in federal court to proceed. But that alone will not be enough for Mrs. Lovil to get her money back. "Stanford's guilty, but the problem is he doesn't have any money," Mr. Pulman said. "It's the guys around him we need to go after, the ones who had knowledge of this." He said that would be difficult as long as the case was in federal court, where the bar to establish liability is higher. As for Mrs. Lovil, she says she tries not to think about when or even if she will recover her money. "I thought I was financially secure," she said. "I took trips to Europe. You can't travel like you dreamed about when you're working." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Your Money |
Sidney D. Drell, a physicist who served for nearly half a century as a top adviser to the United States government on military technology and arms control, died on Wednesday at his home in Palo Alto, Calif. He was 90. His death was confirmed by his daughter Persis Drell. Dr. Drell combined groundbreaking work in particle physics he was deputy director of the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center, now the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, for nearly 30 years with a career in Washington as a technical adviser and defense intellectual. In 2000, he was given the Enrico Fermi Award for his life's work, and in 2013, President Obama presented him with the National Medal of Science for his contributions to physics and his service to the government. Beginning in 1960, as the Cold War heated up, Dr. Drell served on a succession of advisory groups that helped advance the technology of nuclear detection and shape the policy of nuclear deterrence. As a founding member of the Jason defense advisory group, a panel of defense scientists, he helped develop the McNamara Line, a barrier that was intended to halt the infiltration of soldiers and weapons into South Vietnam from the north through a system that combined electronic surveillance with mines and troop concentrations at strategic points. Dr. Drell was a strong proponent of nuclear deterrence during the Cold War. "I believed that given the Soviet empire, its stated goals and existence, we had to deter them," he said in an interview for "The Partnership: Five Cold Warriors and Their Quest to Ban the Bomb" (2012), a book by Philip Taubman, a former reporter and editor for The New York Times. "We had to be clear," he added. "These are not weapons we want to use, but they have to know that should they monkey around with us, they had to expect we're going to use them against them, and at a degree that's unacceptable to them." At the same time, he was a leading advocate of arms control and a critic of major projects such as the MX missile and the Strategic Defense Initiative, the Reagan administration program also known as Star Wars. Dr. Drell was recruited as a consultant for the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency soon after its creation in 1961 and served as a director of the Center for International Security and Arms Control (now the Center for International Security and Cooperation) at Stanford University in the 1980s. In 2006, he and George P. Shultz, the secretary of state under Ronald Reagan, founded a program at the Hoover Institution to propose practical steps to rid the world of nuclear weapons. "In dealing with terrorists or rogue governments, nuclear deterrence doesn't mean anything the value has gone," he told the website In Menlo in 2012. "Yet the danger of the material getting into evil hands has gone up. So what are existing nuclear arms deterring now? In this era, I argue that nuclear weapons are irrelevant as a deterrence." Sidney David Drell was born on Sept. 13, 1926, in Atlantic City, to Jewish immigrants from the Russian empire. His father, Tully, was a pharmacist. His mother, the former Rose White, was a teacher. He was admitted to Princeton at 16 and earned a degree in physics in 1946. At the University of Illinois, he obtained a master's degree in physics in 1947 and a doctorate in 1949. After teaching at Stanford for two years, he joined the physics department at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He left in 1956 to work under Wolfgang K. H. Panofsky at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center. As an academic, Dr. Drell specialized in quantum electrodynamics, which describes the interactions between light and matter, and quantum chromodynamics, which explores subatomic particles like quarks and gluons. He and Tung Mow Yan, a research associate at the accelerator center, formulated a key concept in particle physics when they explained what happens when a quark in one particle collides with an antiquark in a second particle, an annihilating confrontation that yields an electron and a positron. The sequence of events became known as the Drell Yan process. Dr. Drell was the author of "Electromagnetic Structure of Nucleons" (1961) and, with the theoretical physicist James D. Bjorken, wrote the textbooks "Relativistic Quantum Mechanics" (1964) and "Relativistic Quantum Fields" (1965). As the head of the theory group at the accelerator center, which gathered leading scientists to discuss nuclear science, he found himself in demand as a technical adviser on defense and security. In 1960, Dr. Drell was invited to join an advisory group led by Charles H. Townes, the father of the laser. His task was to see whether orbiting infrared sensors could detect a Soviet intercontinental missile launch by picking up a heat reading from the missile's exhaust plume. Additionally, he had to determine whether the Soviet Union could nullify the sensors by exploding a nuclear device in the atmosphere before the main launch. After he and his team judged such an explosion impractical, the Defense Department went ahead with plans to develop the Missile Defense Alarm System. He later served on the Land Panel, which developed a new system for taking high resolution, wide range photographs from spy satellites. During the Vietnam War, Dr. Drell's service on the President's Science Advisory Committee under Lyndon B. Johnson and Richard M. Nixon, and his role as a shadow adviser to Henry A. Kissinger, damaged his academic reputation as opinion turned against American policy. Increasingly, he found himself fending off attacks in public forums. "Call it entrapment, commitment or whatever, but I have remained actively involved in technical national security work for the United States," he told Mr. Taubman. After the war, he emerged as a leading thinker on arms control and disarmament, which he addressed in numerous books and papers, including "Facing the Threat of Nuclear Weapons" (1983), "The Reagan Strategic Defense Initiative: A Technical, Political and Arms Control Assessment" (1985), "In the Shadow of the Bomb: Physics and Arms Control" (1993) and "The Gravest Danger: Nuclear Weapons" (2003). In addition to his daughter Persis, who directed Stanford's accelerator laboratory for five years, he is survived by his wife of 64 years, the former Harriet Stainback; another daughter, Joanna Drell; a son, Daniel, and three grandchildren. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Science |
Coronavirus exposes the utter hypocrisy of Republicans like Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida and Gov. Brian Kemp of Georgia on the question of individual rights. They believe that women have no individual rights to decide for themselves whether to get an abortion, yet they oppose orders requiring individuals to wear masks because they believe that people have individual rights not to wear masks even if doing so means that thousands of additional deaths will occur as a result. It's a very curious view of individual rights and "family values" by these Republicans, by our president and by other Republicans who stand by them even as Florida, Georgia and other red states report record coronavirus cases and deaths! My 1 year old grandson claims that making him wear a diaper is a serious infringement of his freedom. "It's absolutely not acceptable in a free world," he said, quoting a protester of a mask ordinance in Idaho and echoing the views of the governor of Oklahoma and others. How can I refuse him? Unlike the mask resisters, at least he won't be exposing us to a deadly virus. You would not take legal advice from a doctor, you would not take medical advice from a lawyer, so why would you take coronavirus advice from a politician? | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Opinion |
FRANKFURT A wide grin beneath his bushy mustache, Dieter Zetsche, the chief executive of Daimler, did as car executives often do at auto shows, cruising onto the stage in the company's newest model. But at the Frankfurt motor show last week, Mr. Zetsche added a surprise: he sprang from the back of a Mercedes S Class that had no one in the driver's seat. Cars that drive themselves have been a science fiction dream for decades, but at the Frankfurt show, there was a palpable sense that the technology was moving quickly from laboratories and test vehicles to dealer showrooms. If the visionaries have their way, the autonomous autos could greatly reduce the number of accidents and give makers especially in Europe something they badly need: a new reason for people to buy cars. While robot taxis and the like are still probably more than a decade away, auto executives said, cars that handle most of the driving with minimal human intervention could be available by the end of this decade. "In 2020, all the problems and challenges we are seeing today in allowing an autonomous driving car will be solved," Carlos Ghosn, the chief executive of the Renault Nissan alliance, told reporters at the auto show. The latest version of the Mercedes S Class, which goes on sale in the United States next month starting at slightly more than 92,000, is able to brake and accelerate by itself on the highway or in stop and go traffic. And it can steer itself on a straight or lightly curved road. For safety and legal reasons, the driver still needs to keep a hand on the wheel, and to be ready to cope with more complicated situations. Luxury carmakers like BMW and Audi are working on their own autonomous systems, which are moving ever closer to vehicles that can do almost all the driving themselves. While buyers of expensive vehicles will get the technology first, suppliers and midmarket automakers are pushing hard to bring self driving features to the masses, making them as affordable and ubiquitous as cruise control and anti lock brakes. "We don't want to create functions that are only available in superpremium autos," said Christian Senger, head of research for automotive systems at the German auto components maker Continental, which supplies radar sensors and stereo cameras used by the S Class. "These people don't need electronic chauffeurs," Mr. Senger said of luxury car buyers. "They already have humans." Autonomous driving was one technology trend in Frankfurt that almost all the carmakers seemed to be excited about. Even Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany, who visited Thursday, hailed what she said was the convergence of digital innovation with traditional German strengths in manufacturing, calling it a "fabulous opportunity." While big technological hurdles remain, the potential rewards of self driving cars are enormous, both for society and the car industry. Such vehicles would allow drivers to be productive at times when they are otherwise stuck in traffic. They could drastically improve safety. A self driving car could theoretically allow its owner to continue texting or uploading photos to Facebook. "There is less error in systems than in humans," said Mr. Ghosn of Renault Nissan. "Computers do not drink or sleep." Carmakers also hope that self driving technology could help arrest an alarming slide in auto sales among younger people. An increasing proportion of young people in developed countries are not bothering to get drivers' licenses, preferring to spend their money on smartphones. The trend bodes ill for the car industry's long term health. Mr. Ghosn speculated that governments could even lower the legal age for drivers. His reasoning seems to be that autonomous technology could help compensate for teenage immaturity. Thomas Weber, head of research and development at Daimler, said he was not worried that young people would lose interest in cars. But he agreed that autonomous driving technology would be a crucial selling point in the future. Environmental concerns and changing tastes mean that V 12 engines and all leather interiors are not as desirable as they used to be. The technology in the new S Class, which Mercedes plans to offer in other models like the E Class range and some sport utility vehicles, may already be helping the company regain ground it lost in recent years to BMW and Audi. "To catch up and then to overtake, we need something where we are better than the others," Mr. Weber said in an interview at the Mercedes stand in Frankfurt, which occupied an entire building. Mercedes designed the S Class software in house rather than buying it from a supplier, Mr. Weber said, and that will make the technology harder for competitors to match. "I am sure they cannot catch up fast," he said. When it came to the other big technological theme of the show, electric vehicles, the industry was polarized. Companies that are bullish on the prospects for electric cars, including BMW and Renault, have introduced vehicles designed from the beginning to run on battery power and look markedly different from conventional cars. Other companies, like Daimler, Ford and Volkswagen, are being more cautious, offering battery powered versions of existing vehicles. That strategy reduces the upfront investment, because the companies can manufacture the vehicles on the same assembly lines as gasoline or diesel cars. But some in the industry contend that such conversions will inevitably be inferior, with too much weight and too little battery life, and give electric cars a bad name. "You have to conceive the car to be electric to maximize the range," said Jerome Stoll, head of sales at Renault, which offers two vehicles that run solely on battery power. The only people not terribly excited about self driving technology were the makers of sports cars like Lamborghini and Ferrari. "They are not made to drive from A to B," Stephan Winkelmann, the chief executive of Lamborghini said in an interview. "They are dream cars." As for the further out future, cars that can drive themselves with no help from humans already exist in prototype form. But engineers have still not invented software that can do things like recognize hand signals from another driver. The driverless S Class that delivered Mr. Zetsche of Daimler onto the stage in Frankfurt Monday evening equipped with a video camera that broadcast his amused expression onto a big screen was a research vehicle with more technology than the production versions arriving at American dealerships next month. Mr. Weber, the Daimler research chief, said that further advances in autonomous vehicles would require more mobile computer power than is available now, as well as more detailed mapping information and better and cheaper sensors. The quest is pushing car companies closer to technology companies. In Frankfurt, Continental, which may be best known for tires but is also a major supplier of automotive electronics, announced a partnership with I.B.M. to develop technology that would allow cars to communicate with one another over a network. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Automobiles |
Nice, good, attractive, pleasant, fine: Those words come to mind when watching the work of Lydia Johnson, whose company returned to the Ailey Citigroup Theater on Thursday. Ms. Johnson makes unadorned, soundly structured, musically adept ballets for a lovely, unpretentious group of dancers. She seems to know exactly what she's doing; nothing is out of her control. In the four works she presented, including one premiere, what felt exciting at first her sensitivity to music, in particular grew less so throughout the evening. We saw what Ms. Johnson was good at, then saw it again and again. "Night of the Flying Horses," from 2013, best illustrated her sharply attuned ear, capturing both the vigor and solemnity of musical selections by the Argentine composer Osvaldo Golijov. In her orchestrations for four women and three men, finely etched details brightened an old school formality. And her dancers seemed acutely aware of where and how to allocate their energy: just how limply to fall into a partner's embrace; just how much force to throw behind the swing of a leg. "What Counts," from last year, also showed a keen curiosity about rhythm, responding to the jarring shifts of meter in a score by the jazz trio the Bad Plus. Blake Hennessy York and Sarah Pon, in the work's core duet, matched the firmness of plunging piano chords and crashing cymbals, again with a kind of bold efficiency. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Dance |
Richard Linklater's 1991 breakthrough film, "Slacker," starts with the director himself, riding a cab at dawn into Austin, Texas. He babbles about various dreams he's had. He talks about a dream he had last night. A dream where nothing much happened. He says he should have stayed at the bus station. He finishes his cab ride. The film continues on from him to one character after another. Along the way we learn about the human heart, and U.F.O.s, and paranoia. Someone tries to sell Madonna's Pap smear. We witness murder and art. We see time being wasted. We see attempts to connect fail. We see other people battle to stay isolated. By the time we reach the last of the movie's 97 minutes, we've taken a core sample of one city's fringe, underground, aboveground, covert and overt soul. It was an amazing experience for me the first time I saw it at San Francisco's Red Vic theater in 1992. And it's paid dividends the six or seven times I've watched it since. New details emerge in the background. Monologues I thought were profound in my early 20s seem silly in my 50s. Dialogue I thought was filler in my 20s now seems profound. I can't wait to watch it in my 60s. Melissa Maerz's "Alright, Alright, Alright: The Oral History of Richard Linklater's 'Dazed and Confused'" had the same effect on me when I read it. This is a spoken, as told to memoir of (mostly) everyone who was involved in the making of Linklater's 1993 follow up to "Slacker." A loose, hormonal slice of '70s Texas teenage life that's become a modern coming of age classic. Telling the story of its creation sounds like a simple proposition, yes? It even begins in "linear" fashion. The first chapter and most of the second are about the cast's memories of the film its effects on their careers, how its traces linger in their lives today, all these decades later. But near the end of Chapter 2 ("Old People in Your Face, Expletive With Who You Are"), we start looping back to Linklater's time growing up poor in Texas. His life experiences things that happened to him, to his friends, and tales he overheard about legendary local figures that may or may not have been true influenced the story and character choices years later for "Dazed and Confused." Some of that influence hit too close to home for some actual residents of Huntsville, Linklater's hometown. In another chapter, "Amazed and Confused," we hear about a hilarious and half baked defamation lawsuit brought on by the real life inspirations for Slater, Wooderson and "Pink" Floyd. "It felt like Rick must've been in the woods, and instead of partying with us, he was taking notes," says the real, rueful Slater. 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. And suddenly in Chapter 3 ("The Hardest Working Slackers in Austin") we get a mini oral biography of the making of "Slacker." The larcenous creativity that went into making a movie with meager resources is delightfully and succinctly recounted. "I had seen my sister Trish get married, and then she got divorced a couple of years later," says Linklater. "So there I was, in my late 20s, telling my parents, 'You know those thousands of dollars you paid for Trish's wedding? Well, you could just give me that money for "Slacker." Think of it as the marriage I'm never going to have.' That was my pitch, and it worked." The seemingly formless and improvised "Slacker" (Don Stroud, an actor on "Slacker" and stand in on "Dazed," asserts: "You didn't really audition. You just talked") hit a nerve at the dawn of the '90s. It's a movie about the internet before there was an internet. It's a movie about the hidden fracturing going on in an American society that was fooling itself about how it had finally cohered. And, most of all, it was about being young and directionless of the joy and terror of that time in everyone's life. Linklater remembers meeting with Jim Jacks, who would go on to be one of the producers of "Dazed": "We had just had lunch when Jim introduced me to Tom Pollock, the head of Universal. We walked over to his table, and he was like, 'Oh yeah, "Slacker." That made some money, right?' I don't think he'd seen it, but he recognized the title from looking at Variety. "And I was like, 'Yeah, it was a success! I'm Mr. Money. When you think of me, think of positive box office money!'" But Pollock seeing "Slacker" was a different story. Linklater says: "Unfortunately, Tom Pollock saw 'Slacker' at one point, and he was like, 'What the expletive ?' He thought 'Slacker' was this weird, arty film. "Jim told Tom, 'How do you know "Slacker" isn't Rick's "THX 1138"?' That was George Lucas's weird art film that didn't make any money, and he made 'American Graffiti' after that." Nice for a fellow movie nerd to have another movie nerd's back. Universal agrees, the cast assembles in Austin, and we hurtle into "Part II: The Shoot" as if we're in Wooderson's 1970 Chevy Chevelle: "4:11 Positrac outback, 750 double pumper, Edelbrock intake, bored over 30, 11 to 1 pop up pistons, turbojet 390 horsepower." Maerz, a former staff writer at Entertainment Weekly and The Los Angeles Times, spoke with almost 150 people to assemble the narrative. There are hookups and rivalries, oceans of alcohol and forests of weed consumed, cliques and alliances and everyone has their own side of the story. And everyone, of course, insists they're telling the truth. It makes for lively, sometimes cringe y reading (the chapter about Shawn Andrews should be printed as a pamphlet and handed out to young actors with too much hubris). It's gossipy and funny and sometimes wistful and sad, but it's page turning. Yes, you find out precisely where "Alright, alright, alright" comes from. And in true, Linklater esque meandering fashion, you find out about odd Texas traditions like moon towers, "freshmanizing" and the parking spots to avoid at the Sonic. I haven't even touched on the postproduction battles about test screenings, marketing and music rights (to this day Linklater dreads meeting Robert Plant in person after some, uh, choice words in The Austin Chronicle about Zeppelin refusing the use of one of their songs). There was also the usual finger pointing when the film flopped and the glory grabbing when "Dazed" reached cult status a decade later. That's all in Parts III and IV: "The Comedown" and "The Legacy." For a film lover like me, "Alright, Alright, Alright" is an endless feast of facts and revelations. I'm gonna guess that for the casual filmgoer (and even someone who's never seen "Dazed and Confused") it will be fascinating just for the thrill of reading older people looking back with joy, bewilderment and sometimes anger at a time when they were not only young, but when their youth blazed. And the fire was caught on film. For better or worse, forever. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Books |
Q. How do I get apps to give me notifications when I'm using Windows 10 on a desktop computer? A. As with mobile operating systems, Microsoft's Windows 10 can display app alerts on your screen, even when you do not have those programs open. You may not want to hear from every app on your computer that can send notifications, but you can control what you see both while you are working and while your PC's lock screen is on. To do so, go to the Start screen and open the Settings app. As a shortcut, you can press the Windows and I keys on the keyboard to open the Settings box, or tell the Cortana assistant to do it for you. Once you are in the Settings box, select System. On the left side of the System screen, choose Notifications Actions. Here, you flip the switches for apps and services you want to show notifications. (Some programs may have their own notification settings, like web browsers sending you updates from selected sites.) | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Technology |
OLGA HOWARD has had a varied career. She worked for Pacific Bell, the California telephone company; reviewed credit card applications for Citigroup; and most recently, taught special education students in Arizona. Now 71, Ms. Howard spends about 25 to 30 hours a week working from her home outside Phoenix as a customer service representative for a financial and tax software company. As an independent contractor with Arise Virtual Solutions, a company that provides at home telephone operators for companies like Carnival Cruise Lines and AAA, she can set her own hours. "If I want to go outside and sit in my backyard and smell the roses, I can do that," Ms. Howard said. "I don't have to worry about rushing back. It's perfect." The Bureau of Labor Statistics said 24 percent of workers in the United States did some or all of their work from home in 2010, the latest year for which data is available. How many of those are older workers is not known, but with more people working into their 60s, at home work has an obvious appeal to those less mobile or able to do physically demanding work. Ms. Howard is paid 9 an hour, with a bonus if she makes a sale. While the pay is not much more than minimum wage, she is not complaining. She makes lunch at home and doesn't have to spend money on gas or waste time sitting in traffic to get to work. What she earns as a service representative is the extra income she needs in retirement to supplement Social Security and pensions from previous jobs that cover her basic living expenses. Her savings, she said, suffered when she made some bad real estate investments. Setting her own hours, she said, also allows her the flexibility to spend time with her two grandchildren and to volunteer at a nearby women's prison. "If I feel that I need more money, I work a little longer," Ms. Howard said. "If I just need to catch up on some bills, I might work less or more. It depends on what my situation is." For some people working from home, the goals of their job may be more modest. Peter Dey, 71, was a dairy farmer until he was 40, when his family's farm in upstate New York closed. For the next decade or so, he drove a dairy truck, a taxi and then a freight truck as a member of the Teamsters union. In 1996, he said, he fell off a truck and broke his leg. He has been collecting disability payments ever since. About three years ago, he began working as a service representative through Arise, first for a major telephone company and now for an electronic security firm. He provides support to sales representatives, and the pay is a below the amount that would mean a reduction in his Social Security disability benefits. "It's very interesting to me," Mr. Dey said. Before working with either company, Mr. Dey said, he trained for several months to learn about the company and his job. This was at his own expense. "Some people gripe that they charge you for the training, but you can't go into these things cold turkey and expect to succeed," he said. "They have a script for you to follow and teach you how to capitalize on every opportunity." To get work referrals through Arise, people must spend several months learning about the company they will be servicing through online coursework and then pay 10 to 250 to Arise to become certified. Jared Fletcher, chief marketing officer at Arise, compared the company's training requirements to those of real estate agents, who have to pay to get a license to sell real estate for an agency. "It's up to you what client you want to get trained on," he said. "With some clients, there's a huge upside. Those have an incentive, and people can make up to 30 an hour." While older people would seem ideal for this job, he said, people over 70 make up only 2.5 percent of its work force. (Those over 60 account for 6 percent.) Most of the company's agents are work from home mothers 35 to 42. One reason may be the cost of setting up as independent contractors. In addition to paying for the training, Ms. Howard and Mr. Dey set up limited liability corporations that cost them about 1,500 in their states. They also had to buy computers and telephones. At 9 to 10 an hour, it will take a while to earn back their upfront investments, but as independent business operators they can at least deduct those expenses from their income taxes. Not every older person working from home does it solely for the money; plenty use second and third careers to find new meaning in their lives. "When I talk to people in their 70s and 80s, they're going to work for their daily bread, but they're also going for their daily identity," said Marc Freedman, founder and chief executive of Encore, a nonprofit organization that promotes second careers with social purposes. "There are more and more people who are continuing to work because it's an imperative for them. It's about making virtue out of necessity." Things weren't quite so urgent for Don Turbutton, who is on his third career at 77. After college, he worked for 20 years in hospital and college food service. Then he went to graduate school to study health care administration. He worked 20 years in hospital and hospice administration in Seattle. Shortly after his long term partner died in 1995 of complications related to AIDS, he retired. "I had been on the front lines of the AIDS epidemic since 1981," he said. "I simply couldn't do it any longer." He saved well and lived modestly, so he thought he would be fine. But when the technology stock bubble burst in 2000, he lost a good portion of his retirement savings. By then, he was studying Buddhism and did not want to take a job just for money. When he heard of a program seeking Buddhist chaplains, he applied and moved to Portland. In his new role, he would be called out at all hours to be with people who were dying. But he developed cataracts a few years ago, which limited his ability to drive at night. While he has had to cut back on his chaplaincy work, he has been able to expand into grief counseling. This works because counseling sessions are at set times and run only eight weeks. He is also able to prepare for sessions by working at home. He can take public transportation to the sessions. Last year, he said, he earned about 4,200 from his counseling. "This is some of the most important work I've done in my life," he said. "I was able to continue my own grieving process as well as to assist others who are going through theirs. Older gay men who have lost partners and come to a grief group have more complicated grief than straight people because they've lived through the AIDS era when they lost all of their support network." There are plenty of other ways to work at least some of the time from home in your 70s and 80s. One of those is by simply moving at least some of the office work into the home, which is what Peg Michelman, 81, has done. In 1984, after running the local office for Representative Ogden Reid of New York for his six terms and then starting a public relations firm, she joined Circle Advisers, a registered investment adviser in New York, where she continues to work as a financial planner. She works at least two days a week from her home in Armonk, N.Y. "Technology has helped a lot," she said. "It was an opportunity, and I figured you might as well take advantage of it." She said she did not need the money but loved the stimulation and the feeling that her years of business and life experience had value to clients. Yet she understood that at some point her skills might fade and her partners would nudge her to retire. "I offer them the opportunity to throw me out each year," she said. "They haven't taken me up on it." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Your Money |
"All it was is there was an extra zero that got typed in," said Abigail Bowen, the elections clerk in Shiawassee County in Michigan, just northwest of Detroit. "It was caught quickly," she added. "That's why we have these checks and balances." When Ms. Bowen and her team sent the county's unofficial vote counts to Michigan officials early Wednesday, they accidentally reported Mr. Biden's tally as 153,710, when it should have been 15,371, she said. About 20 minutes later, she said a state elections official called her to ask if the number was a typo; Shiawassee County doesn't even have that many residents. Ms. Bowen said she corrected the figure and the number was updated. "All of these numbers are unofficial, so even if it wouldn't have been caught last night, it absolutely would have been caught before we would have submitted our official results," she said. A team of two Republican and two Democratic canvassers review all of the county's poll books, ballot summaries and tabulator tapes to confirm the results before they are finalized, she said. "As far as Shiawassee County, I feel the election went very well," she said. Yet on social media, the county represented a stark example of voter fraud. Posts that highlighted the apparent sudden boost in Mr. Biden's count in Michigan were shared more than 100,000 times, and conservative websites posted stories with headlines like: "Very Odd: Michigan Found Over 100,000 Ballots and Every Single One Has Joe Biden's Name on It." Matt Mackowiak, a Texas Republican consultant, posted the screenshots of the election map on Twitter and watched them quickly go viral, eventually shared by the president himself. Twitter eventually labeled Mr. Mackowiak's post as disputed or misleading, and the company stopped people from sharing it as easily. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Technology |
Brittany Prock of Merit, Tex., had a longstanding dream of becoming a detective. To pursue her ambition, she enrolled in the criminal justice program of Everest University Online, operated by Corinthian Colleges, one of the nation's largest for profit education companies. "The rep I talked to told me how great it would be, how they'd help me find a job when I graduated, and how their grads were highly sought after," she said. But when she graduated in 2010, Ms. Prock said, the only career help she got was a listing of jobs from sites like Craigslist and one call about a job with a janitorial service. Now 36, she owes 83,542 in federal and private debt, and is no closer to a criminal justice job. So she has gone on strike refusing to pay back her loans. About 150 former students have joined the debt strike. More than 1,000 others are formally asking the Education Department to wipe out their debt, arguing that the school used false graduation and placement statistics to entice them into taking out burdensome debt. And many of the 16,000 students whose schools were closed last week are also likely to apply for loan discharges. Their effort could cost the department and ultimately taxpayers millions of dollars, raising questions about the department's double role as both lender and collector of federal student loans. Founded in 1995, Corinthian bought more than a dozen struggling vocational colleges, and by 2010 enrolled more than 110,000 students online and at 100 Everest, Heald and WyoTech campuses nationwide. But it has long come under fire from federal and state regulators, with a host of investigations and lawsuits charging falsified placement rates, deceptive marketing and predatory recruiting targeting the most vulnerable low income students. The Education Department forced it to sell most of its campuses last year, and on April 26 its last campuses closed, leaving 16,000 students, most of them in California, in the lurch. Also last month, the department fined Corinthian 30 million for 947 misrepresentations of placement rates, findings that Corinthian disputed. In dealing with higher education institutions, the Education Department has several different and some say, conflicting roles to fill. The department itself provides the money for federal student loans, and collects payments from students. It also decides when colleges do not meet the basic eligibility standards to receive federal student funds, which provide almost all the revenue of for profit colleges like Corinthian. "At this point the department is primarily a debt collector, but it's supposed to protect students from predatory colleges while simultaneously making money as a mass issuer of loans," said Luke Herrine, a member of the Debt Collective, a volunteer group that organized students like Ms. Prock in their debt strike. "So the department first makes the loans that lets students go to these fraudulent for profit colleges," he continued, "and then when the students can't pay back the loans, the department goes after them." Ted Mitchell, under secretary of education, said in a recent interview that he saw no conflict in the department's role. "We actually think the convergence of these responsibilities allows us to focus on student welfare," he said. But as the Corinthian saga illustrates, it can be hard to sort out which interests the department considers paramount. Last year, department officials suspended Corinthian's flow of federal student aid after the company failed to produce required records. This brought on an acute cash crisis. If Corinthian had closed its doors, the department might have had to pay an estimated 1.2 billion to wipe out the debt of the 72,000 enrolled students. So instead the department brokered the sale of most of the campuses to ECMC, a loan servicing company that had never run an educational institution, and in the process sidestepped the problem of federal loan forgiveness. As part of the sale, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau negotiated 480 million of forgiveness for students' private loans. Their federal loans, which can be discharged only by the Department of Education, stayed intact. The California campuses stayed open because the state attorney general, Kamala Harris, who has a pending lawsuit against the company, refused to give the buyer a waiver from Corinthian's liability. Those last campuses were closed, though, on April 26. Mr. Mitchell, who arranged the sale, said that it avoided disruption of student lives, that ECMC had been an attractive buyer and that the department was pleased with its performance so far. In recent years, for profit colleges like Corinthian produce a disproportionate share almost half of students who default on their loans. Student loan debt now stands at 1.2 trillion, more than double the level of a decade ago. Forty million Americans have outstanding student loans, up from 29 million in 2008. The growth of this debt has many economists and public officials worrying that a whole generation of young Americans will be stalled, unable to buy houses or cars or get an education that leads to a good job. "There was urgency before, but now there is even more, that the Education Department step in to help the thousands of former Corinthian students starting their lives with boatloads of debt," said Maura Healey, the attorney general of Massachusetts, who has a pending lawsuit against Corinthian. Ms. Healey and eight other state attorneys general, as well as a group of Democratic senators and a coalition of labor, consumer and education groups, are pushing the department for broad debt relief. "Given the extensive evidence of widespread fraud at Corinthian Colleges, we believe all current and former students deserve federal loan discharges," the coalition said Friday in a letter to Education Secretary Arne Duncan. The letter also urged the department to stop telling students from the 30 newly closed campuses that they could transfer to other for profit colleges that are also under investigation. The students seeking debt relief fall into different categories. The 16,000 students whose schools closed last week have a right to loan forgiveness as long as they do not transfer their credits to another institution. The legal status of claims by the debt strikers and other former students who say they were defrauded is murkier, but they may have their debt wiped out if they can show that the company violated state law, and injured them. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Education |
All is sweetness in the church courtyard off West 11th Street where the prologue to "Novenas for a Lost Hospital" takes place. A woman sings a pretty song; another plays the flute; several people with bright smiles and diaphanous garments dance. When a pitcher and bowl are passed around, and the audience of 60 is encouraged to wash hands, it's a pleasure but a mystery: Are we about to engage in a new age Christian ritual or a medical procedure? It turns out to be a bit of both. "Novenas for a Lost Hospital," a play that takes place at three Greenwich Village sites, is a prayer service but also an autopsy for St. Vincent's Hospital, which served the area, in one form or another, from 1849 to 2010. From the courtyard you can see what it became subsequently: a high end condo development called The Greenwich Lane or as one actor puts it, pointing toward the east, "that tall building with the ugly windows." Not that St. Vincent's was ever much of a looker. As the play, by Cusi Cram, takes pains to point out, it was a hospital that began in poverty, served in poverty and ended in poverty as well. All that makes "Novenas," a Rattlestick Theater production that opened on Thursday night, righteous and informative. It has the qualities of both a tract and a tour, and not just because it takes us from that courtyard at St. John's in the Village Episcopal church to the Rattlestick's home around the corner and then to the New York City AIDS Memorial nearby. There is something peripatetic about it emotionally as well as structurally; adjust your shoes and your expectations accordingly. As with any tour, this one highlights some stops more than others. Ms. Cram, who until recently lived in the neighborhood, focuses most on two periods in the hospital's life: Its founding in the shadow of a cholera epidemic and its modern crisis as the epicenter of AIDS in New York in the 1980s. A pair of nurses works the wards in both eras: one idealistic (Natalia Woolams Torres), one practical (Kelly McAndrew), both faultlessly compassionate. Their scenes are loosely tied together, and the play is given its wobbly framework, by two spectral eminences who also serve as narrators: the American saint Elizabeth Seton (Kathleen Chalfant) and the almost saint Pierre Toussaint (Alvin Keith). Seton's connections to the story are clear: In 1809, she founded the order whose nuns later established the hospital. Toussaint's relevance is a bit fuzzier: A Haitian emigre and society hairdresser in pre Civil War New York, he was a benefactor of the parish. But if he had anything to do with the hospital itself, that isn't made clear. Logic is not the point of "Novenas" nor naturalism its mode. Still, in making a convenience of semi random figures, I think it sweeps too much sloppiness under the rug of surrealism. Too much implausibility as well: It is full of historical information delivered as if it were natural dialogue. "Did you know that America's first saint was a woman?" says one character. "Technically, you need to say 'American born'," begins another. Worse, real life issues (such as the conflict between the hospital's Catholic principles and its medical priorities) and real life characters (such as the prominent AIDS doctor Ramon A. Torres) are name checked but left undeveloped. Having a composite character called Lazarus say, "FYI: this place wasn't exactly welcoming at the beginning," is an awfully weak way of expressing how AIDS patients were treated in the epidemic's first years. It's certainly not meant to be dismissive; there is just too much history here to dramatize. Even the more developed scenes fictional, though drawn from general fact quickly deflate with the dubiousness of forced archetypes. That's bound to happen when, for instance, two AIDS patients (Justin Genna and Ken Barnett) must stand in for all of them. What Ms. Cram seems to intend is a theatrical experience built on themes and large social issues rather than on interpersonal conflicts that express them. She is especially interested in the role of women in establishing hospitals and in the role of prejudice (against the Irish, against gays) in testing the limits of care. In that sense, "Novenas" is more like a historical pageant than a play: an attempt, as Seton says, to "re member" the hospital. If you come to it in that spirit, "Novenas" has plenty to offer, and whenever the production, directed by Rattlestick's artistic director Daniella Topol, accepts its unvarnished informational qualities, it feels satisfying. A typical nice touch is that the Rattlestick space, when the audience arrives, is set up as a kind of historical museum, with exhibits of St. Vincent's long history arrayed on hospital screens. (The set design is by Carolyn Mraz.) Another edifying element is, as always, Ms. Chalfant. Her innate gravitas is such that even the cutesy motions Ms. Cram sometimes puts Seton through (Toussaint styles her hair; she enjoys trying out a contemporary vulgarity) do not diminish our faith in her authority. Of course, Ms. Chalfant has been around this sort of material before. When a play has saints talking to AIDS patients via hallucinations, you can't help but think of "Angels in America," and when a play features brave and literate dying, you can't help but think of "Wit." That's unfortunate, because no play of this nature can survive the comparisons. "Novenas" often feels like it's trying to find the quickest way to connect its points, instead of the richest way. That can be enough, especially in its transitions and excursions. On the evening I saw "Novenas," when the cast and audience paraded several blocks from the theater for the epilogue at the AIDS Memorial across the street from the former St. Vincent's emergency room some curious bystanders joined the merry music making. To the extent the play had been looking to "re member" a community of care in the Village, it at last succeeded. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Theater |
Fictional parents who dialed that number on a Monday, Wednesday or Friday, just before dinner, would reach the Baby Sitters Club, a gaggle of reliable tween babysitters at competitive rates. As the member Jessi says, in "The Baby Sitters Club 48: Jessi's Wish," the club is "the best idea ever." The readers who bought more than 180 million copies of the Baby Sitters Club books, super specials ("Aloha, Baby Sitters!") and mystery spinoffs ("Claudia and the Recipe for Danger") agreed. The original series, which ran until 2000, recounted the adventures of four Connecticut eighth graders (and then five and then seven and then more) who form a child care collective entrepreneurs in training bras. The books appeared monthly, alternating first person narrators. Now, when most of its early readers have children of their own and would cheerfully kill for safe and competent child care, the club has returned, in 10 half hour episodes. Netflix will release them all on July 3. She and the showrunner Rachel Shukert tasked themselves with creating a show that stayed true to the books, so as not to disappoint original fans, and modernized them, too, so as not to confuse new ones. (Mommy, what's a VCR?) There's still a landline or "an olden times phone," as Kristy Thomas (Sophie Grace), the bossy one, explains in the first episode. It even has a cord. "It's iconic," Claudia Kishi (Momona Tamada), the artsy one, says. When I spoke to Shukert in early April, she began with a question: "Did you read the books growing up?" (A few. Tween me was mostly reading Agatha Christie and getting wrong ideas about Belgians.) Shukert did. She and Aniello both described a reading practice that sounded a lot like addiction bingeing multiple books over a day or two, haunting bookstores and libraries in search of new product. "I was like a super fan," Aniello said. "My main personality trait as a child was being obsessed with the Baby Sitters Club. I'm absolutely a Kristy with a Stacey rising." (That would be Stacey McGill, the sophisticated one.) When her agent asked her to brainstorm properties she wanted to adapt, she immediately thought of the books. She and Shukert discussed a series shortly after Shukert had given birth to a son. Despite the postpartum haze ("Like, the longest blackout of my life," Shukert said), Shukert found that she remembered everything about the books plots, sentences, outfits. "They were seminal for me," she said, "just in terms of being a girl who was ambitious and wanted to do something in the world." I had asked Martin why the books appealed so widely and intensely. The girls themselves appealed, she said, as did their friendship. "And also the fact that the girls were independent," Martin said. "They were problem solvers. They were entrepreneurs. They had this business that they were running basically without adult help." Gently and unshowily, the books presented progressive values, from the can do feminism of the club members to the structures of their home lives, which included single parents, divorced parents and blended families. There was racial diversity Claudia is Japanese American, Jessi, who appears later in the series, is black and an effort to include children who were differently abled and those who experienced childhood illnesses. Within the familiar structure the introduction, the description of the club, the swift deployment of conflict and resolution Martin made room for conversations around sickness, divorce and death. So the process of bringing the club to 2020 wasn't so much about correcting retrograde attitudes as it was about lightly updating the world. The tone is still chewily wholesome this is an oatmeal raisin cookie of a show and the set (a Vancouver suburb subbing in for the fictional Stoneybrook, Conn.) looks like it has been put through an Instagram filter designed by Norman Rockwell. If the Netflix show gestures toward an idealized past, it also acknowledges the confusions of the present. (Well, not the immediate present. It's all pre Covid 19.) In the first episode, Alicia Silverstone, playing Kristy's mom, Liz, clicks haplessly through babysitting apps. "When I was a kid my mother would just call some girl in the neighborhood on the landline and she would answer because that was part of the social contract," she fumes. Shukert adapted that mild tirade from her own unhappy experiences chasing down sitters. "If you told me that there was this landline number that I could call at a set time, three days a week, and if I did that, I would automatically get this nice girl to come and watch my kid for two hours so that I could like run errands or get a haircut, I would be like, 'Amazing!'" she said. Casting Silverstone "the ideal girl from when I was growing up," Shukert said shows that child care troubles can happen to even the blondest and the most glamorous of us. While retaining the themes of the original series friendship, family, school and boys, pretty much in that order Shukert and Aniello worked to expand the world and its characters. Dawn Schafer, the environmentally conscious one, a canonically blond and blue eyed California girl, is now a Latina character, played by Xochitl Gomez. Her divorced father lives with another man. "We weren't thinking, 'Oh, we want to represent every experience out there," Aniello said. "We were just trying to go a little bit more relevant." Martin, who consulted on the series and vetted scripts, wouldn't mind if the new show represented everyone. "I wanted any kid who was reading the books or seeing the series now to be able to see himself or herself reflected in the characters," she said. The younger cast members certainly did. In mid April I sat down, via Google Hangouts, with five of them: Tamada; Grace; Gomez; Shay Rudolph, who plays Stacey; and Malia Baker, who plays Mary Anne Spier, the serious one. They were all terrifically poised except when a dog or a mother interrupted and unfailingly polite. The months on set had bonded them. "We will support each other through everything and we're basically family at this point," Grace said, with big Kristy energy. Some had read the books before the series began, some hadn't. All of them identified with the characters, usually more than one. "I'm 100 percent a Claudia," Tamada said. "But also a mix of Stacey and Dawn." The actresses described the club members as role models. But these are role models who are flawed and fallible. They lie, squabble, hoard candy, blow their braided tops. Then with the help of their friends and the tuning of their own moral compasses, they learn from their mistakes, which makes them both aspirational and relatable. "Kids today can watch it and be like, 'Wow, I go through things really similar to that,'" Rudolph said. Baker agreed: "It's not about an apocalypse or something there's not zombies walking around." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Television |
The client was a well connected Chicago physician named Edith Farnsworth. She paid a steep price. She had intended to spend 8,000 to 10,000 (somewhere in the neighborhood of 110,000 in today's dollars) to have the house built. After that proved unrealistic and Mies called 40,000 "cheap," the bill topped 70,000 (more than 680,000 now) and Mies sued for his fee. Farnsworth countersued, alleging, among other things, design problems. She came to call the house "my Mies conception." "Mies stake" might be more like it. But first came the coup de foudre. Introduced to the taciturn Mies at a dinner party in 1945, Farnsworth said she was looking to build a weekend house. She asked Mies if "some young man in your office" could design something for her. Hearing Mies say he would tackle the job himself (after he had uttered almost nothing during the meal) was, for Farnsworth, as powerful as "a storm, a flood or other act of God." Beam says that 1946 and 1947 were the wunderjahren of their relationship: Mies's longtime girlfriend Lora Marx had called a time out to join Alcoholics Anonymous and "Edith assumed the role of favorite in Mies's life." By the time Mies took the stand at the trial, in 1952, things had clearly cooled. He testified that he had told her at the dinner party that he didn't usually bother with small houses, but that "if it could be fine and interesting," then he would do it. What he meant by "interesting" was, of course, left unsaid. They picnicked at the site and put stakes in the ground while living in what Beam calls "a world of unusual intellectual and spiritual intensity." That didn't last. Mies went back to Lora Marx (and also took up with another client). By 1948, according to Beam, Farnsworth was "not a girlfriend, mistress or lover" anymore. But she was a client, and after Mies and his underlings turned ideas and sketches into an actual structure she could spend time in, she found it troublesome. She and Mies tangled over curtains and screens. A closet? Not in that house. Mies told her, according to the British peer who bought it from her in the 1960s: "It's a weekend house. You only need one dress. Hang it on a hook on the back of the bathroom door." (Eventually Mies relented and designed a closet.) Farnsworth sweltered in the summertime because Mies gave her only one door and the smallest of openable windows, and no air conditioning. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Books |
First Lady Kicks Off Covid 19 Vaccination Campaign for Children Europe Faces 'Real Threat' of Virus Resurgence, W.H.O. Official Says Covid Vaccine for Children Brings a 'Day of Relief,' Biden Says W.H.O. Announces New Team to Study Covid 19 Origins | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Health |
ON a recent Sunday morning, at the Carroll Gardens Greenmarket in Brooklyn, the pickle guy from Divine Brine in Suffolk County was cutting up some samples, and the bird man from Dipaola Turkeys, out of New Jersey, was grilling bite size pieces of turkey burger. More than a few fathers with infants strapped to their chests had wandered over from Carroll Park, just across the street, while groups of friends in knee skimming skirts bought peonies and baby bok choy from the stalls that start at the corner of Smith Street. After a while, a pair of musicians set up on an empty patch of sidewalk between the fishmonger and the mushroom stand. One sat on a crate and played a steel guitar. The other stood, plucking at a weathered old upright bass. A few onlookers stopped and tapped their toes. The guitar player, sweating in the sun, nudged his cash box and said to no one in particular, "We are trying to eat here." Meanwhile, life on Smith Street was purring along like a Volvo in a low gear. Young professionals in Asics running shoes stopped in for cappuccinos at Smith Canteen (No. 343), the daytime offshoot of the popular nearby restaurant Seersucker (No. 329). A 30 something couple debated which provisions to get for company at Shelsky's Smoked Fish (No. 251). A tattooed artist from Paris who was flopping at her friend's one bedroom rental inserted her key in the front door, her arms full of cherry blossoms. Smith runs parallel to the busier and better established Court Street, but with its low slung tenement buildings, frequent street lamps and mix of musty and glistening storefronts, it's the backbone of Carroll Gardens. The side streets lined with Italianate brownstones, elaborate gardens and majestic old trees are its limbs. As you head north from Second Place to Degraw (the boundary with Cobble Hill), Smith feels like a small town street that leads lazily to the city, not very far away. In fact, you can see the towers of Downtown Brooklyn rising up at the far end. Carroll Gardens is the quiet Brooklyn neighborhood that lies between Red Hook and Gowanus. Established in the late 1800s, the area used to be considered South Brooklyn, but that was before the borough got carved up into minidistricts, each with its own character and bragging rights. A sign hanging in the small historic district on President Street, a few steps off Smith, sums up the milieu: "Its brownstone facades, coherent in style, with lavish gardens between the houses and the street, create a charming period enclave." Those gardens, which vary in style from wild English (with rose bushes billowing out from iron fences) to hyper landscaped (expertly arranged ground cover, smooth stones, a sudden foxglove in perfect bloom) to ramshackle, burst with color in springtime and are festooned to ridiculous heights at holidays. They give Carroll Gardens its name, are a point of pride for the neighborhood, and are there for all to ogle. You might happen upon a stoop sale as you amble along, or see an old timer resting on a bench by a small plaster Virgin Mary, a memento of the many Italian immigrants who settled here. In this charming enclave, he might say hello. When Ingrid Abramovitch, the editor at large of Elle Decor and author of "Restoring a House in the City," was living in the East Village many years ago, she was invited to a baby shower in Carroll Gardens. "The minute I came out of the subway," she said, "I fell in love with how lush and green it was." Once she'd married and had her first child, her path was clear: Carroll Gardens. "I ended up moving into the fantasy and writing a book about brownstones," she said with a laugh. Eleven years later, even after an old coin laundry and a beloved grocery have closed on Smith Street, a Rite Aid has moved in and real estate prices have gone up, she said, "it's still the neighborhood I fell in love with." At the corner of Smith and Second Place, a former parking lot, lies an emblem of change. It's the sleekly renovated entrance to the F and G trains, still gleaming since reopening last summer, with a manicured plaza out front marked by cool steel planters of ornamental grasses. And, oh, there's a brand new Momofuku Milk Bar (No. 360 Smith Street), where the espresso milkshake and the Cubano croissant are two of the latest additions to the booming menu options along the stretch. Longtime residents could not have imagined this turn of events a starkly modern milk bar across from the community garden that huddles up against the old brick substation. But they seem to have taken it in stride. "It's that warmth of the neighborhood," said Nicole Galluccio, a Corcoran broker who has lived here since 1997. "There's a different sense of community. It's a lovely little melting pot. And you don't have to pay Brooklyn Heights prices. We even have people who choose it over Brooklyn Heights" Last week, a town house at 328 President Street, just west of Smith, with four bedrooms, three and a half baths and a garden in front, was on the market for 2.65 million. A two story building at 299 Smith, with two units and a commercial space on the ground floor, was in contract; it had been listed at 1.6 million. A two bedroom two bath rental apartment above Momofuku Milk Bar was available for 4,750 a month. Residents supply the greenmarket with a loyal clientele. "They are very food conscious and quality oriented," said Josh Morgenthau, who owns Fishkill Farms in East Fishkill, N.Y., (with his father, the former Manhattan district attorney, Robert M. Morgenthau) and sets up a stand every Sunday. "They're interested in the farm and sustainability, not the price. It's a fabulous neighborhood, low key and beautiful, in the city, but without the rat race." On a recent Sunday the arugula went really fast, and he sold almost 150 dozen pale brown and blue eggs. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Real Estate |
CONSHOHOCKEN, Pa. At this sprawling steel mill on the outskirts of Philadelphia, the workers have one number in mind. Not how many tons of steel roll off the line, or how many hours they work, but where they fall on the plant's seniority list. In September, ArcelorMittal, which owns the mill, announced that it would lay off 150 of the plant's 207 workers next year. While the cuts will start with the most junior employees, they will go so deep that even workers with decades of experience will be cast out. "I told my son, 'Christmas is going to be kind of scarce, because Mommy's going to lose her job soon,'" said Kimberly Allen, a steelworker and single parent who has worked at the plant for more than 22 years. On the seniority list, she's 72nd. Foreign steel makers have rushed to get their product into the United States before tariffs start. According to the American Iron and Steel Institute, which tracks shipments, steel imports were 19.4 percent higher in the first 10 months of 2017 than in the same period last year. That surge of imports has hurt American steel makers, which were already struggling against a glut of cheap Chinese steel. When ArcelorMittal announced the layoffs in Conshohocken, it blamed those imports, as well as low demand for steel for bridges and military equipment. In 2008, before the financial crisis struck, the plant ran around the clock. Now, the mill coughs to life just five days a week, for eight hours at a time. The machines shovel 10 ton steel slabs into a furnace, where they are heated to 2,000 degrees, then funnel them through giant rollers and cooling jets of water, like a massive, fiery carwash. The plant's specialty is ultrastrong, military grade steel something that Eric Smith, a former Army paratrooper who has worked at the plant for over 30 years, prides himself on. Mr. Smith ranks 16th on the plant's seniority list, and he expects to survive the coming round of layoffs. He grew up just down the street. The weathered houses of his old neighborhood on that dim day were fringed with icicle lights, evergreen bows and flags paying homage to Santa and the Philadelphia Eagles. As a boy, he would long to work at the factory as he passed it. These days, he said, he gets a sinking feeling as he goes through the turnstile and enters the plant. "You just got to keep on pushing forward. It is sad that Christmastime is coming around," he said. "You don't want to splurge for your kids like you want to, because the plant may be closing." While he didn't support Mr. Trump, Mr. Smith said he hoped that the president would follow through on his plans. "It's still kind of early," he said. 15 minimum wage for federal contractors will take effect Jan. 30. Jeff Bezos gives 100 million to the Obama Foundation. Reforming trade was one of the president's signature campaign promises, and in his first months in office, Mr. Trump issued dozens of executive actions. One pulled the United States out of the Trans Pacific Partnership, a 12 country trade pact. Others ordered investigations into imports or renegotiations of trade pacts. Uncertainty about how these measures will reshape trade rules is now weighing on many industries. Companies are waiting to invest, or finding additional suppliers outside the United States, executives in agriculture, automobiles, solar energy and information technology have said. In April, the president ordered parallel investigations into imports of steel and aluminum under the little used Section 232 of a 1962 trade law, which permits sweeping restrictions to protect national security. And in early June, Mr. Trump told a crowd in Cincinnati, "Wait till you see what I'm going to do for steel and your steel companies," vowing that he would "stop the dumping" of products at superlow prices by other nations. "We'll be seeing that very soon. The steel folks are going to be very happy," he said. But the announcement never came. That appears to be caused partly by internal divisions within the White House. Some officials, like Mr. Ross a former steel executive who was on ArcelorMittal's board until he was confirmed in February wanted to push ahead with tariffs. But others, including economic and national security advisers, worried about repercussions, trade advisers say. The tariffs had plenty of opponents. Automakers, food processors and companies in other industries that use steel and aluminum in their products complained that tariffs would drive up costs and make them less competitive, ultimately sacrificing more American jobs than they would save. Steel exporters, like the European Union, threatened retaliation. Prominent economists highlighted the risk of a trade war. "I think the White House is immobilized, because they have such a cacophony of voices," said Senator Sherrod Brown, a Democrat from Ohio who describes himself as an ally of the president on trade. "This administration doesn't seem to know what it thinks about trade." The administration will face a series of deadlines on the steel measure next year. The Commerce Department must present the results of its investigation to the president by Jan. 15. The president will then have 90 days to decide what to do. Kameen Thompson, the union president at the Conshohocken plant, said many workers had voted for Mr. Trump because of his support for steel. "You want to vote for what you believe is going to help you keep a job," Mr. Thompson said. Ms. Allen, whose father worked at the Conshohocken plant before her, was not a Trump supporter. "He told them what they wanted to hear so they would vote for him, and now they're seeing what president he is," she said. But other workers who supported the president are keeping the faith. Chuck Hauer, who has worked at the plant for 22 years and ranks around 80 on the seniority list meaning he is likely to be laid off said he had voted Republican because he believed that Mr. Trump was "for the people." He said he still believed that the tariffs would happen, though perhaps not soon enough to save him. "He's just delaying it," Mr. Hauer said of the president. "And I think the delay is hurting us more than he knows." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Economy |
SEATTLE In January, Teresa Fuentes's employer told her she could work no more than 30 hours a week preparing burgers and passing out food at the drive through for about 9.50 an hour. It was just the latest blow to her already fragile household finances. Ms. Fuentes, 47, had missed work to take care of an eye infection for which she could not afford the prescription drops. She is struggling to take care of her two children, reliant on a local food bank, working two jobs and behind on her bills. "It's very stressful for me," Ms. Fuentes said. "Things are just so tight." For Ms. Fuentes and thousands of other workers like her, some relief may be on the way. The Seattle City Council is intensely debating a plan to raise the minimum wage to 15 an hour from 9.32 forging ahead on its plan to tackle income inequality as efforts in the nation's capital have languished. Local policy makers "can't just wait for Washington," said David Rolf, the president of the local Service Employees International Union chapter. But economists from across the political spectrum warn that the policy choices available to local governments might, at best, do little more than soften the blow from rising inequality. "Cities just don't have the tax and trade policy and tools to rein back inequality in a significant way," said Alan Berube, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C. "They can't really redistribute income in the way the federal government can, so they are reaching for the levers they have." Nonetheless, the movement at the local level goes well beyond Seattle. In New York, Mayor Bill de Blasio, who campaigned on a platform of fighting inequality, has won support for expanding preschool education but has run into obstacles at the state level to tax the rich more to pay for programs aimed at the poor. "The accumulation of 30 years of rising income inequality is finally having its impact," said Mayor Ed Murray. Stuart Isett for The New York Times Cities including Atlanta, Boston, San Francisco and Los Angeles are also considering proposals to tackle inequality, such as bolstering programs for public education, transportation, affordable housing and wages. This patchwork effort comes as the fortunes of the haves have diverged even more from those of the have nots across the country. The top 1 percent of households has captured about 95 percent of the income gains eked out during the tepid recovery from the Great Recession. And inequality has increased in 94 of the country's 100 biggest metropolitan areas since 1990, growing especially wide in the last few years. In Seattle, as in many cities with a vibrant technology sector or a thriving financial industry, the increase in income inequality has been particularly sharp. 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. In 1990, the average household in the top 10 percent of the income distribution in the Seattle area made about eight times as much as the average household in the bottom 10 percent earned. Now, it earns about 11 times as much. The earnings of the very richest households have diverged sharply from those in the middle, too. Seattle's politicians who generally range from left to far left said the result had been a less inclusive and less fair city. "There's been a forced exodus of low wage workers," said Kshama Sawant, the City Council member who is leading the push for the 15 minimum wage. "Life is very hard for a large majority of people, and there's a burning anger about these things." Local politicians across the country have echoed that thought, and pushed for local governments to start where the federal government has stopped. "President Obama is our greatest partner," said Mayor Betsy Hodges of Minneapolis after attending the State of the Union address in January. "He knows that given the gridlock in Congress, cities are where we can make progress on the goal of reducing inequality." In Seattle, the fiercely contested 15 minimum wage is seen as only a first strike against income inequality in the city. "These trends won't change and inequality will grow," said Mr. Murray, the Seattle mayor, "unless democratic institutions come in and correct them." But local officials and economists said that the federal government would be better at alleviating some of the effects of income inequality than state or local governments, given its capacity to touch inequality's root causes, like globalization and technological change. "Most localities are very restricted in the kinds of stuff they can do," said Edward Glaeser, an economist at Harvard, noting that cities generally have little or no control over the tax code and large benefit programs like Social Security, Medicaid and Medicare. It is those policies that have the biggest effect on inequality by far, he said. But while aggressive city policies will not accomplish what aggressive national policies would, they might at least have a muted effect, officials say. Mary Jean Ryan, a former policy chief for the city of Seattle who now leads a local education nonprofit, agreed that local governments had an important role to play. "The pace of change is too slow given the forces we're confronting," she said. "We have to accelerate the progressive policy adoption if we're going to help more of our community share in prosperity." Joe Fugere, owner of Seattle's Tutta Bella restaurants and a member of the city's Income Inequality Advisory Committee Subcommittee, talks at one of the group's public sessions. Stuart Isett for The New York Times The most powerful policies for cities are most likely to be aimed at encouraging the middle class to remain there rather than moving to the suburbs, Mr. Glaeser said, by supporting more affordable housing, improving schools and expanding public transportation. "The places that have high inequality almost by definition have a small middle class," Mr. Berube of Brookings said. "There's this crater in the middle; they're trying to keep their cities affordable and livable for the middle class." For Seattle, the proposal to lift the minimum income to 15 an hour is supported by more than half of city residents, but is facing stringent opposition by local businesses, some of which favor a more modest increase. City officials have promised a quick vote on the measure. "When you jump to 15, you change the game substantially," said Richard Davis of the Washington Research Council, a local think tank. "Automation becomes a more attractive substitution than when you're making a more incremental increase." Businesses might move beyond the city limit, and inequality might even jump. But politicians like Ms. Sawant contend that local policies to raise wages and preserve a middle class are necessary to counteract the broad trend. "Are families going to be able to work here?" she said. "That's the question." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Economy |
When Manish Undavia took delivery of the 2016 Audi A7 sedan list price, about 71,000 it came with technology rarely found in automobiles, even five years ago: collision avoidance systems, sensors to keep the car from drifting and, perhaps most baffling to Mr. Undavia, a head up display. Richard Cardenas, a salesman at Biener Audi on Long Island, turned on the car and showed Mr. Undavia how it worked. From the driver's seat, the car's speed "0 mph" appeared about six feet beyond the dashboard, floating in space, visible only to Mr. Undavia. It's the latest application of a technology that has been long established in other industries. Airplane pilots, for example, use it to land. Video gamers swear by it to target aliens. Now, the head up display, once mostly confined to performance cars like the Chevrolet Corvette, is migrating more broadly to the automobile world, mainly in premium priced vehicles, and finding a consumer audience that is only vaguely aware that such a feature exists. To automakers, the technology makes for safer driving because the driver does not need to look down for information. The illuminated graphics, which may be white or colored, are transparent, so that the driver actually looks through them onto the road ahead. But to skeptics, head up displays are yet another informational distraction for the already data overloaded driver. No federal standards govern the use of head up displays, and that concerns some safety advocates. "It's like the Wild West out there in terms of what's being put into cars, and we're expressing caution because there are no standards," said Deborah Hersman, president of the independent National Safety Council near Chicago and a former chairwoman of the National Transportation Safety Board. "If a head up display can warn of a collision or a grade crossing ahead and a train coming, that may actually help," she said. "But if it puts up an iPod playlist or sends a restaurant reservation, that may distract from the task of driving." At the nonprofit Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, a spokesman, Russ Rader, acknowledged that the systems could offer useful information, but said that they had the potential to be a distraction as well. "We just don't know to what extent it could be a distraction," he said, adding that the group had yet to study the systems. "But if they proliferate widely, the organization could analyze whether they make a difference in crash risk." Despite the legal limbo, the displays are already available in many cars, including those made by Lexus, BMW, Cadillac, Mercedes and Audi, among others. The equipment lives under the dashboard, and the feature arrives either as an option, costing 500 to 1,000, or comes bundled as standard equipment. The technology can be disabled by the driver, usually with a button on the steering wheel or the center console. Manufacturers say they are comfortable with the systems and that customer feedback has been positive, if limited. "Driver distraction is a huge concern for us, and we really believe that H.U.D. is a great way to keep people looking in the right direction," said Gary Robinson, manager of product planning for Honda's Acura division. He said Honda was planning to add the displays to a broader range of models in the future. Audi, part of the Volkswagen Group, plans to offer the displays in its coming A4 sedan and A5 coupe and the new Q7 S.U.V. "From our perspective, the whole reason for head up displays is to help with driver distraction," said Barry Hoch, general manager of product planning for Audi of America. "You reduce the tilting of the head by 20 degrees, which is what's required to look at an instrument cluster. And you don't need to refocus back onto the road." Extensive research into the displays and their effects in the real world is being conducted by the Germany based Continental AG, which manufacturers tires and automotive electronics. The company, which supplies head up display components for automakers including BMW, Renault and Mercedes, said it was already developing the next generation of display systems. Those systems, called "augmented reality" displays, add a layer of information, making the displays more dynamic. For example, the display sees a vehicle ahead and places a halo light beneath it, which changes colors as the car comes closer to it. These new systems are expected to arrive in some models in 2017, a Continental spokeswoman said. Suppliers like Continental are well aware of the risk of information overload. Guido Meier Arendt, principal technical expert for Continental, added: "It's like the salt in the soup. It's a must have, but you have to be careful how much you use." Even as automakers begin to include the systems, they are not actively marketing head up displays as a safety feature. But Bart Herring, general manager of product management for Mercedes Benz USA, said that advances like the augmented reality display could have significant safety merits. "For our lane departure warning system, you now get a vibration in the steering wheel and a message in the instrument cluster," he said. With the new systems, he said, "that message is actually laid out onto the road as red arrows, giving you guidance to move over." Some drivers see the head up display as the answer to a question that no one's asking. According to a J.D. Power study released in August, 33 percent of more than 4,000 new car owners recently surveyed said they "never use" the displays in their vehicles. Respondents said that they didn't find the technology useful and that the feature "came as part of a package on my current vehicle and I did not want it." At Biener Audi, Mr. Cardenas said that customers rarely inquired about head up display availability, "although some are familiar with it." Is the lack of a display ever a deal breaker? "Uh, no," he said, smiling. "If it would be, then those people aren't buying cars anyway." Jennifer Wahnschaff, a Continental vice president, however, is confident that consumers will embrace the idea over time "as more manufacturers bring it to market, in all ranges of vehicles." "Drivers will expect they'll be able to get the information they need, without looking down," she said. Mr. Undavia, a cardiologist who lives in Manhattan, has been using the system in his commutes between home and work on Long Island. "I've been using the display daily, for the speedometer and navigation, and it doesn't come across as an interference; it's fairly unobtrusive," he said. "It's a nice little perk. But I still look down at the odometer." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Automobiles |
LOS ANGELES Hollywood loves a comeback story. And right now, there is perhaps none better than Rich Ross and Discovery. Concerned that its shows lacked diversity, thwarted by streaming services like Netflix and embarrassed by ratings stunts (watch a man get eaten alive by an anaconda), Discovery Communications in 2014 installed new management at its flagship network. Out: Eileen O'Neill, a Discovery lifer. In: Mr. Ross, a former Disney executive with something to prove. The debonair Mr. Ross, 54, is perhaps the last person one might expect to find associated with "Alaskan Bush People," one of Discovery's hits. But running the channel offered a new start. Disney had ousted him as movie chairman in 2012. A subsequent job at Shine America, a television production company, ended with a corporate restructuring. In the span of a year at Discovery, Mr. Ross has delivered noticeable results. The casts of Discovery shows like "Gold Rush" and "Men Women Wild" are more diverse. The quality of documentary films has improved under a new lieutenant who hews closer to historical facts. Promising new series are arriving, in particular "Killing Fields," a true crime serial that is set to debut on Tuesday. And ratings are up. The channel delivered a 12 percent year on year gain in total viewers, according to Nielsen data, along with a 3 percent increase in adults 18 to 49, a bracket that advertisers often pay a premium to reach. For the first time in its 34 year history, Discovery just ended a year as the No. 1 nonsports cable network among men age 25 to 54, a target demographic. Discovery's strength comes as other cable networks have faltered. Viewership plummeted in 2015 for stalwarts like History, A E, USA, MTV and Comedy Central. Reasons include poor programming choices, the loss of popular stars, competition from streaming services and a glut of similarly themed reality shows. "People told me when I took this job, 'You came to the party, and the punch bowl is empty,' " Mr. Ross said in an interview at his Los Angeles office last month. "Not true. We can get ratings by doing things the right way, by inspiring people, by influencing people, by activating people." He added, after pausing to straighten the lace on one of his high top leather sneakers, "It's about not confusing what the audience wants with your taste." Mr. Ross offered "Moonshiners," an Appalachian docudrama that he inherited, as an example. "People here looked at me and said, 'Well, that's not a show for you. It's not aspirational,' " he recalled. "And I said, 'In what universe are you living? Craft alcohol is changing people's lives, changing the way people think about organic versus corporate.' " One of the first new shows created under Mr. Ross, it follows a colorful detective, Rodie Sanchez, who comes out of retirement to try to solve a 1997 murder case possibly tied to a serial killer that has never stopped haunting him. With its artistic pacing and lush, foreboding images of Louisiana topography, "Killing Fields" resembles the celebrated first season of HBO's "True Detective," except that the Discovery version is true. The stylized show has a strong pedigree, especially for Discovery. Its executive producers are Tom Fontana, whose credits include "Homicide: Life on the Street" and HBO's "Oz," and Barry Levinson, the Oscar winning director of "Rain Man," neither of whom had worked in unscripted television before. "I came into this with a bit of a snobby attitude reality TV? and I have been completely won over," Mr. Fontana said. "It's a character piece. The murder is obviously important, but what's really compelling to me are the men and women we meet along the way." Mr. Levinson added, "When you think of reality television, this feels like a step forward, something that has not been done over and over already." 15 minimum wage for federal contractors will take effect Jan. 30. Jeff Bezos gives 100 million to the Obama Foundation. The so called true crime genre is hot. Recent successes include "The Jinx" on HBO, "Making a Murderer" on Netflix and the "Serial" podcast. But "Killing Fields" represents a risk nonetheless. Crime has not been part of Discovery's programming mix for years. "Killing Fields" is also an attempt to attract more female viewers; crime shows tend to draw large numbers of women. Mr. Ross has other efforts on the way. He is making a move toward scripted shows; an early project a drama about the history of the motorcycle maker Harley Davidson will start to film in March. Mr. Ross is also focusing on what he calls brand defining event documentaries that can cut through the clutter, like the environmental activism film "Racing Extinction," which became a ratings success last month. "The challenge now, for Discovery and other cable networks, is to broaden their audience without alienating core viewers," said Andy Donchin, chief domestic investment officer for Amplifi, a division of Dentsu Aegis Network, an ad agency that counts General Motors and Home Depot as clients. "That has to be done very carefully." Like other cable channels notably ESPN Discovery is losing subscribers in the United States. Analysts estimate that Discovery has lost roughly four million subscribers since 2011. Consumers, less willing to pay for expensive cable packages that include channels they do not watch, are cutting off service or not signing up in the first place. To grow, Discovery must work harder to maintain its stronghold on its core audience of men while becoming more inviting to other audiences, notably women. Mr. Ross has considerable television experience, helping to build Nickelodeon in the late 1980s and running Disney Channels Worldwide during its "High School Musical" fueled 2000s. It was when he was promoted in 2009 to run Walt Disney Studios that he encountered difficulties, gaining a reputation for imperiousness as he carried out a fast paced overhaul and overseeing bombs like "John Carter." But those days now seem firmly behind him. "He's working on the weekends, he's working late at night, and he's driven," David Zaslav, the chief executive of Discovery Communications, said of Mr. Ross last month at a UBS global media and communications conference. Mr. Zaslav, who recently gave Mr. Ross control of two additional networks, Animal Planet and Science Channel, added that Discovery had been steered back toward quality. "He wrote off a lot of content that was off brand," Mr. Zaslav said. (Ms. O'Neill, who left behind numerous hits, including the Alaskan fishing series "Deadliest Catch," declined to comment about the turn Discovery took late in her tenure.) Not on Mr. Ross's agenda are programming stunts. "I don't believe you'll be seeing a person eaten by a snake during my time," he dryly told a gathering of television critics last year. "Eaten Alive," which ran in 2014, was seen as tarnishing the Discovery brand. (To make matters worse, the anaconda only half finished the task, prompting an outcry of its own.) | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Media |
Of the newborn prince, James Corden said, "The boy is now fifth in line to the British throne right behind Harry Styles." Welcome to Best of Late Night, a rundown of the previous night's highlights that lets you sleep and lets us get paid to watch comedy. If you're interested in hearing from The Times regularly about great TV, sign up for our Watching newsletter and get recommendations straight to your inbox. James Corden welcomed Britain's new prince with a few good natured jokes on Monday's "Late Late Show." Then he expressed hope that Prince William and Catherine, the duchess of Cambridge who haven't announced the baby's name yet might go with one particularly familiar British name: James. "The boy is now fifth in line to the British throne right behind Harry Styles. But ahead of me, which is annoying." JAMES CORDEN "This is Kate's third child in just five years. When she heard that, Meghan Markle was like, 'Heh, we're not all expected to do that, are we?'" JAMES CORDEN Conan O'Brien expressed gratitude that there was something dominating the news cycle unrelated to President Trump. "Today was the first time in a long time that the breaking news was not about President Trump which is weird, because usually the hashtag 'royalbaby' is about Donald Trump." CONAN O'BRIEN "Duchess of Cambridge Kate Middleton gave birth to a baby boy today. He was born eight pounds which works out to 11.15." SETH MEYERS Stephen Colbert highlighted a New York Times report suggesting that Michael Cohen, Trump's personal lawyer, who once said he would "take a bullet" for the president, might be less inclined to help him now that his own fate is at risk. "Yeah, I don't think he'll take a bullet. At this point my money is on Russian poisoning." STEPHEN COLBERT Seth Meyers reported on the administration's current position on the Russia investigation. "White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said today that President Trump has no intention of firing special counsel Robert Mueller. Instead, Trump's plan is to be so guilty of so many things that Mueller just works himself to death." SETH MEYERS "President Trump did not attend the funeral. The White House said they didn't want him to be a distraction. Only Donald Trump could make people say, 'I'm glad he's not at this funeral, he'd ruin the mood.'" JAMES CORDEN "There's a nationwide outbreak of E. coli in romaine lettuce. In fact, it's so serious that President Trump put out a statement saying that just to be safe he hasn't eaten lettuce for the past 50 years." TREVOR NOAH "President Trump tweeted that he may pardon someone because Sylvester Stallone asked him to. Yeah, the pardon's for the guy who wrote 'Rocky V.' He was sentenced to death." CONAN O'BRIEN In addition to his typical "Late Late Show" in the wee hours, Corden broadcast a prime time special on Monday night. It included an installment of Carpool Karaoke with the pop diva Christina Aguilera. Corden discovered that when he tries to imitate Aguilera's vocal style, he just ends up sounding like a muppet. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Television |
For the final installment of this season's DoublePlus, a series produced by Gibney Dance at the space's Agnes Varis Performing Arts Center, Bebe Miller shined a spotlight on the work of Maree ReMalia and Abby Zbikowski. The program, seen on Wednesday, gives experienced choreographers the chance to present new talent. Ms. Miller, a professor at Ohio State University, met both while they were M.F.A. students there. She wrote in a program note: "Their work has deep playfulness and danger, both to varying degrees." In the end, both choreographers could have used a little less playfulness it's a slippery slope between being frisky and infantile and a lot more danger. Each seems to approach choreography from a visceral place of feeling, yet the resulting physical exertion isn't always enough. Ms. ReMalia, born in South Korea, raised in Ohio and now living in Washington, is drawn to whimsy. Inspired by Ohad Naharin's Gaga movement language, which she also teaches, the choreographer places the dancers Taylor Knight and Anna Thompson in an environment of conflicting emotions in "Now Is Now." An explosion heralds the start of the work, in which colorful plastic ponchos are heaped on the stage. Instantly, the performers dash madly across the floor. Just as abruptly, they stop; standing in place, they clench their hands into fists and jab upward as if consumed by nervous tics. It's a jittery piece: The dancers gather the ponchos and wear them, erupt in screaming fits and run in circles around the stage. Toward the end, in the dance's most engrossing moment, Ms. Thompson sings. But Ms. ReMalia's myriad layered moments amount to little, and the elements, taken together, are more insipid than bounteously askew. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Dance |
THE TALE OF GENJI: A Japanese Classic Illuminated, by John T. Carpenter and Melissa McCormick, with Monika Bincsik and Kyoko Kinoshita. (Yale University/Metropolitan Museum of Art, 65.) The world's oldest novel, as interpreted through centuries of Japanese art. PHOTOGRAPHS, by Eudora Welty. (University Press of Mississippi/Jackson, 50.) Thirty years after its publication, this defining monograph of the writer's photography has been revivified, thanks to digital scans of Welty's work. A new foreword by Natasha Trethewey joins Reynolds Price's original. LIVE OAK, WITH MOSS, by Walt Whitman. Illustrated by Brian Selznick. (Abrams ComicArts, 29.99.) Selznick, known for his children's books, has dedicated his first adult project to a visual representation of Whitman's secret gay poems, published to coincide with the poet's 200th birthday. FIRST ON THE MOON: The Apollo 11 50th Anniversary Experience, by Rod Pyle. (Sterling, 29.95.) A science writer commemorates America's storied journey to the moon, with restored photographs taken by the astronauts themselves (and a foreword by Buzz Aldrin). | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Books |
Since then, she's completed six triathlons, a half marathon, and too many 10 milers, 10Ks and 5Ks to count. She's lost 50 pounds. This fall, at 64, she'll face her biggest challenge yet: the New York City Marathon. I'm running with her, and we want to prepare by doing some races together, which is why we lined up together at the start line of the 5K on Thursday. After an initial surge of people running by themselves, with dogs or with strollers, my mother settled into a pace, and I pulled up next to her. I talked about everything and anything: What color should our shirts be for the marathon? Should we just do our names or have my brother design a logo? What did she want to have with burgers tonight? "Do you want me to shut up?" I asked as we finished the first mile. My mom trained through this past winter while I was sidelined with a stress fracture. Her longest run so far this year has been 11 miles. My longest since I returned was four. Still, I'm faster than she is, and as she slowed her pace uphill, I walked. "Jennifer," she huffed. "You have got to stop apologizing." The temperature was in the 80s at the beginning of the race, and was getting worse. We ran from shady spot to shady spot, and hit every sprinkler spectators had set up along the way. With a half mile to go, I looked over at my mom. She was doing fine. I turned to look over my shoulder: no police car marking the end of the pack that I could see. In 2013, she ran and I walked this 5K in 45 minutes, 40 seconds. This year, we did it in 40 minutes, 57 seconds. She finished second in her age group. The New York City Marathon is on Nov. 3. Once a month, I'll update you on how we're doing. For the most part, we're training separately I plan to do a few trail races this summer, and my mom is focusing solely on this but we'll be doing a few long runs together, including the New York Road Runners' New York City Marathon Training Series 18 Miler in September. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Well |
Baselworld, Where the Watch Is Still the Greatest Gadget Scrubbed of his cat whisker greasepaint, Eric Singer, the drummer for Kiss, sounded as intrigued as an entomologist spotting a rainbow stag beetle in a jungle in New Guinea. He peered over his gradient sunglasses at what he mistook for a Blancpain diver's watch poking from the sleeve of a reporter who had joined him in a roped off V.I.P. lounge at the Hublot booth at the Baselworld watch fair earlier this month. He corrected himself after a closer look: "Oh no, it's a Sub" a Rolex Submariner. The drummer, whose collection has some 200 fine watches, pursed his lips, thought for a moment, then nodded in approval. "That's cool. It's a classic. Never goes out of style. Been copied by everybody." In any other setting, it might seem forward, perhaps even rude, to pass judgment on the make, provenance or price of a stranger's wristwatch. At Baselworld, the giant watch fair held in this Swiss city about an hour's train ride from Zurich, it is simply how you say hello. For one week in March, this glittering watch and jewelry show (which ran March 19 to 26), attracts 150,000 industry insiders, collectors and fans, emerging from the digital mists of the 21st century like Brigadoon. It is a village unto itself with its own language, values and celebrities. And a curious village it is. In an iPhone toting era, where millions go out in public every day flaunting naked wrists, this is one corner of the globe where the wristwatch that centuries old feat of micro engineering once considered as obsolete as the rotary phone is the only personal productivity device, status symbol and idea on earth that seems to matter. That certainly seemed to be the case for Mr. Singer, whose passions were stoked in childhood by his father's rectangular Jaeger LeCoultre triple calendar moonphase. Clad in black, with a giant Gothic silver cross around his neck, the 58 year old heir to Peter Criss's drum stool may not look like a garden variety watch geek. But he had something in common with the armies of middle aged watch professionals roaming the vast exhibition halls in tailored suits: Technically, he was here on business (a private gig for Hublot). But he was really here for love. And, as you may have heard, a certain maker of laptops in Cupertino, Calif., has decided to enter the business, posing the biggest potential disruption since the advent of quartz in the 1970s and '80s. But Baselworld hums to its own rhythms. Nothing, not even Apple, the mostly highly valued company on earth, was going to spoil this party. "This is the Oscars: high octane, money," said Robert Johnston, the style director for British GQ, which gave a lavish party at the neo Gothic Elisabethenkirche at the center of town. "I remember the first time I came to Basel, you're not prepared for the power of the brands, the money they spend. They have stands in the exhibition hall which are grander than most of the stores on Madison Avenue." The Graff Diamonds booth in the main hall was just one glittering example. Its entrance flanked by Heidi Klum look alikes in evening gowns, the vaulting space made a perfect stage for, say, a member of the House of Saud, to inspect the new Diamond MasterGraff Structural Tourbillon Skeleton model, price available on request. The floors were inlaid with Verde Assoluto marble, the walls paneled with rich American walnut. A giant Bohemia crystal chandelier, fashioned from handblown gold , copper and bronze color glass, dangled from a 23 foot ceiling, above a bar where a white jacketed server offered free Delaire Graff Sunrise Brut champagne. That air of megalomania echoed throughout the vast Hall 1, which is more than four football fields in length, with three hangar like stories filled with lavish booths for seemingly every watch brand in existence. Rolex was there. So was the Timex Group. Imagine a corner Tourneau store blown up to the size of the Superdome. The atmosphere in the hall (not to mention the heavily male demographic) recalled a Saints playoff game, too. Giant LED marquees pulsed and flickered. Leggy models in skimpy metallic dresses beamed frozen smiles near the turnstiles, as a black coated drum corps marched past, pounding out deafening cadences. Needless to say, if you make timepieces, it was the place to be. Boundary pushing independents that represent the couture of the wristwatch world were there. (The avant garde MB F HM6 Space Pirate, with its five bubblelike domes and bathyscaphe inflected design, looks ready to explore the Mariana Trench; it retails for more than 200,000.) So, too, were celebrities looking for a little brand extension. Arnold Schwarzenegger, a noted watch aficionado, stared down a phalanx of selfie seeking fans to show off his new line of Terminator macho watches which, at 52 mm in width, could double as dinner plates. Will.i.am, of Black Eyed Peas fame, made an appearance in a black ska hat to show off a prototype of his new smartband with Gucci, which he christened the "dopest" entrance into the sizzling smartwatch category. And the horological exuberance did not end at sunset. On Thursday night of Baselworld, the hundreds of guests who turned out for Breitling's Basel Bangkok party were greeted by a platoon of Teutonic drag queens as tall as N.B.A. power forwards, who led them into double decker buses that deposited them at a hulking factory space on the banks of the Rhine that had been converted for this night into Patpong district as reimagined by Steve Wynn. Models in gilded miniskirts roved through the crowd, swaying their arms like narcotized dervishes in something approximating "dance," past Disney esque recreations of galvanized steel sidewalk stands, where vendors dished out crispy aromatic duck, dumplings and ice cold Singha beers. High overhead on an iron catwalk, dancers obeying the actual laws of choreography Bob Fossed their way through production numbers worthy of the Academy Awards. In the upstairs lounge, meanwhile, a model wearing not much more than a lotus in her hair performed a ritualized "massage" on an even more scantily clad model lying face down on a table on a platform with gold columns and a tent roof, meant to look like a not exactly therapeutic massage parlor "Like an establishing shot for 'Blade Runner,' " one attendee wrote approvingly on Instagram. One might say that this was a lot of Las Vegas glitz for a trade show devoted to timepieces, particularly one where the real substance of the daytime activities consisted of private silk glove viewings by buyers, collectors and journalists behind closed doors. These were the runway shows of Baselworld, except that most were as hushed and uptight as a high stakes poker game. In a sense, the real business gets done after hours, at settings like the parquet floored bar at the opulent Grand Hotel Les Trois Rois, a 19th century gem near the center of town. That's where relationships are cemented, deals are done. After a private Patek Philippe dinner on Friday, the assembled power brokers retreated to the bar, which by 11 p.m. resembled a Basel equivalent of Studio 54. No, the Governator was nowhere in sight, nor Will.i.am. But they were not missed. Celebrity means something different at Baselworld. A "star" in this setting is more like Stephen Forsey, a founder of the ultra high end watchmaker Greubel Forsey, who was seated at a corner table overlooking the Rhine, chatting with Benjamin Clymer, the editor of the influential New York based watch site Hodinkee. Actually, the star of the evening was poking out of Mr. Forsey's shirt sleeve: a masterpiece of his own creation called the Quadruple Tourbillon Secret, in red gold, which took almost a year of man hours to make. A tourbillon, for the uninitiated, is a tiny rotating mechanical cage that helps a watch fight the effects of gravity. A virtuoso feat of micro engineering, a tourbillon is a prized "complication" (watch speak for mechanical function). "My taste in watches stopped maturing in 1972," joked Jack Forster, the dandyish 52 year old United States editor of Revolution, a quarterly magazine for collectors, as David Guetta's "Dangerous" pounded overheard. "You could go broke making watches for guys with tastes like mine, and many companies have." Looking retro chic in a tailored blue blazer, pocket square and black vintage Pumas, he began an impromptu manifesto that might as well have been chiseled in marble above the entrance to Hall 1. "Guys like machines," he said, then elaborated: "We like machines because we can relate to them kinesthetically. There's something about force being transmitted through gears that we can relate to on a physical level. With watches, we feel that there is something in some inexplicable way alive about them, in a way that electronics are not." And that's the problem with any battery powered time keeper, be it quartz watch or smartwatch: "The minute you put it on your wrist," Mr. Forster said, "it starts to die." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Style |
DeKALB, Ill. All it took was two hours. In that time, David Bogenberger, one of 19 pledges seeking entry into the Pi Kappa Alpha fraternity here at Northern Illinois University, drank enough to put him nearly four times over the legal alcohol limit. Mr. Bogenberger, a 19 year old freshman, died in his sleep that night. Now the authorities in this rural Illinois college town are holding the fraternity members that orchestrated the November initiation event accountable, issuing arrest warrants this week for 22 students charged with felony and misdemeanor hazing counts. "This wasn't just a spontaneous party, it wasn't something that kind of happened through the course of the night," said Lt. Jason Leverton of the DeKalb police. "It was very much preplanned, it was predetermined that the goal here was to get the pledges extremely intoxicated." By Wednesday afternoon, at least 14 of the accused students all ages 19 to 23 had turned themselves in to authorities and were released on bond. The first court hearings will be held on Jan 8. The arrests amount to one of the largest numbers of people to be criminally charged in a single college hazing episode, reflecting recent efforts by the police and prosecutors around the country to enforce anti hazing laws more aggressively. But some experts said the message was unlikely to make a lasting change in college drinking culture. "Things tend to go back to normal because the institutional memories at universities change every four years," said Douglas E. Fierberg, a Washington lawyer who specializes in hazing death cases. "The new freshmen know nothing about what happened four years earlier." According to the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, more than 1,800 students ages 18 to 24 die each year from alcohol related events. A toxicology report showed Mr. Bogenberger's blood alcohol content had reached 0.35 percent, causing intoxication induced heart complications that led to his death, officials said. Culpability in alcohol related hazing is not always an easy case to prove. In June, three former students at Cornell University were acquitted of similar charges after being accused of making a student consume excessive amounts of alcohol in a fraternity ritual. On that night, starting around 8 p.m., Mr. Bogenberger and other pledges roamed the three story brick fraternity house, moving from bedroom to bedroom, where upperclassmen quizzed them about fraternal history. They were told to drink plastic cups of vodka and other liquor, some two thirds full, after each answer, officials said. According to the DeKalb police, pledges reported that by 10 p.m. they had consumed around 20 drinks each, with some saying they had gotten sick or had passed out afterward. Mr. Bogenberger did not wake up the next morning. Mr. Bogenberger's death rocked the campus, located 70 miles west of Chicago. Hundreds of students gathered for a memorial service and for a candlelight vigil outside the fraternity. Some fraternities canceled their social events for the rest of the semester. Shortly afterward, the Pi Kappa Alpha sign was removed from its building on the edge of "Greek Row." The university has since announced temporary sanctions on the fraternity, removing its student organization status. Thirty one of its students also face disciplinary action that could include expulsion. On Monday, local authorities filed felony hazing charges against five fraternity leaders, citing their involvement in planning the drinking event. The charges carry a sentence of one to three years in prison and a 25,000 fine. Seventeen other fraternity members, who supposedly participated in the event, were charged with hazing misdemeanors and could face up to one year in jail and up to a 10,000 fine. Efforts to reach some of the students, who are on winter break, and a spokesman for the fraternity's national office went unanswered. Peter R. Coladarci, a lawyer for the Bogenbergers, said the family had not yet decided whether to pursue any civil claims. "We have no desire for revenge," a statement released by the Bogenberger family said. "Rather, we hope some significant change will come from David's death." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Education |
SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. Last Thursday morning in the desert town of Scottsdale, Ariz., a tiny robotic car turned onto a neighborhood street and pulled up to a home with a Spanish tiled roof and synthetic grass in the front yard. Not even half the size of a Volkswagen Beetle, the toylike vehicle had no driver and no passengers. Instead, it held six bags of groceries from the Fry's Food Store down the road. One observer oohed and aahed over how cute the car seemed. Designed by a start up called Nuro, the vehicle was making a test run as part of a partnership with Fry's on an autonomous delivery service. Starting this week, Nuro said, two of these small, electric cars will chug along local streets at no faster than 25 miles an hour to deliver groceries to nearby homes. If it all looked a bit ridiculous, that's because self driving is still a technology in search of a purpose. With driverless passenger services from the likes of Waymo, Uber and General Motors slow to become realities, the autonomous industry is casting about for practical uses and hitting upon experiments like food deliveries from cars that make a golf cart seem spacious. Other start ups are now moving self driving technology off roads altogether and onto sidewalks, avoiding the risks of traffic. (There are regulatory hurdles here, too.) Postmates, a San Francisco delivery start up, announced plans last week to offer a service that features a robotic shopping cart that runs along sidewalks and has digital eyes that blink every now and again. Still other companies are targeting long haul trucking, in which driverless vehicles carry cases of beer and other goods, but not passengers. "After maybe biting off more than they could chew, people are concentrating on one particular part of the problem they might be able to actually make money from," said Tarin Ziyaee, who worked on autonomous technologies at Apple and who recently left Voyage, a company that is bringing self driving cars to retirement communities. As a whole, autonomous vehicles are still three to four years from the point where they can make regular trips with no safety drivers, said Don Burnette, chief executive and founder of the driverless trucking company Kodiak Robotics. Autonomous passenger services, he added, are more like seven to 10 years away. "The more people work on urban self driving, the more they realize what a long road it is," he said. Mr. Ferguson said there was an opportunity to automate all the trips that Americans make to local stores for goods and services like buying groceries and picking up laundry citing statistics that these errands account for a significant portion of all car journeys. "If we can reduce the cost of these deliveries and get them to you faster than you could make the trip yourself," he said, "there would be no reason for you to get in the car." While that endgame is nowhere close to reality, Mr. Ferguson said it was closer than autonomous passenger services. That's because Nuro does not have to worry about the comfort and safety of anyone in the vehicle. And by making the delivery automobiles much smaller than a regular car, it can also increase the margin of error on the roads. "There is a qualitative difference when you don't have to worry about passengers," he said. The trouble is that when testing this technology, Nuro cannot put someone in the mini vehicle who can take over in case of emergency. So the start up began by tests in full size cars. It is now confident enough in its technology to put its tiny vehicles on public roads. Mr. Ferguson, who often refers to Nuro's mini cars as rolling toasters, acknowledged that the idea can seem "weird." But, he said, he ultimately sees them as a safer way of getting autonomous technology rolling. Last Thursday, the Nuro cars looked even odder on second glance because they were being trailed by regular size vehicles. A dark Toyota Prius with a small wireless antenna perched on its rooftop was following just behind the self driving robots. This was what the company calls a shadow car, which ferries technicians who can remotely take control of the robotic vehicle if anything goes wrong. Nuro declined to discuss its financial arrangement with Fry's. It said that a delivery today using its mini autonomous vehicles costs 6. Once it removes most of the human labor from deliveries, Mr. Ferguson said, the company can reduce the cost further and eventually serve people that cannot afford deliveries today. Even so, it was unclear how much demand there would be for the service. Joe Schott, 60, who saw the tiny Nuro car pass his bicycle on a recent afternoon, said it was ideal for his sister, who is disabled. "It's hard for her to get groceries in and out of her car," he said. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Technology |
About 3,000 years ago, people on the eastern edge of Asia began sailing east, crossing thousands of miles of ocean to reach uninhabited islands. Their descendants, some 2,000 years later, invented the double hulled canoe to travel even farther east, reaching places like Hawaii and Rapa Nui. Archaeologists and anthropologists have long debated: Just how far did the Polynesians' canoes take them? Did they make it all the way to the Americas? The results of a new study suggest that they did. Today, people on Rapa Nui, also known as Easter Island, and four other Polynesian islands carry small amounts of DNA inherited from people who lived in Colombia about 800 years ago. One explanation: Polynesians came to South America, and then took South Americans onto their boats to voyage back out to sea. "This is the most convincing evidence I've seen," said Lars Fehren Schmitz, an anthropological geneticist at the University of California, Santa Cruz, who was not involved in the study. The new study emerged from a decade long project to create a map of the genetic diversity in modern Latin Americans. After Asians crossed the Bering Land Bridge 16,000 years ago, they spread across the Americas, reaching the southern tip of South America by 14,000 years ago. Since then, the populations of Latin America have gained unique genetic mutations, which have gotten mixed as they interbred. When European colonists brought enslaved Africans to the region, the genetic landscape of Latin America changed yet again. Andres Moreno Estrada, a geneticist, and his wife, Karla Sandoval, an anthropologist, have worked with Indigenous populations in Latin America to understand their genetic make up. Because most genetic studies are based on people of European ancestry, variants that could be medically important to other populations are often overlooked. Last year, for example, Dr. Estrada, Dr. Sandoval and their colleagues published a study on asthma. They discovered mutations in a gene that put certain groups of Latin Americans at greater risk of developing the disease. In 2013, Dr. Estrada and Dr. Sandoval started collaborating with Chilean scientists to study Rapa Nui. The island, which lies more than 2,100 miles west of Chile, was annexed by the country in 1888. Dr. Estrada and Dr. Sandoval traveled to Rapa Nui and met with residents to describe their project. Eighty islanders eventually joined the research, curious to learn about their ancestry. "They were interested to know if they really belonged to the Polynesian islands," said Dr. Sandoval, who now works with Dr. Estrada at the National Laboratory of Genomics for Biodiversity in Irapuato, Mexico. In an earlier study on Rapa Nui, led by Anna Sapfo Malaspinas of the University of Lausanne, researchers analyzed DNA from 27 islanders. They found evidence that the participants had a mixture of Polynesian and Native American ancestry. Some of their Native American DNA appeared to have been inherited from recent immigrants from Chile. But other pieces were different, suggesting they originated from Native Americans many generations earlier. To test that finding, Dr. Estrada, Dr. Sandoval and their colleagues compared the DNA of 809 people from Rapa Nui and other Polynesian islands, as well as in countries along the Pacific coast from Mexico to Chile. The researchers found that most of the people on Rapa Nui had some recent Chilean forebears. From them, they inherited both Native American and European DNA. But six people had no European ancestry at all. Their Native American ancestry had a different source: the Zenu population of Colombia. The scientists then found some of the same pieces of DNA in people on four other islands in eastern Polynesia. "When I first saw that, I thought there was something going wrong and we needed to fix what we were doing," said Alexander Ioannidis, a postdoctoral researcher at Stanford University and a co author of the study. "So then we dove in deeper. It took awhile to really realize that this was real." The researchers were then able to estimate how long ago these Native American ancestors lived by measuring the size of the DNA fragments. Stretches of shared DNA get smaller with each passing generation. The researchers found that all of the Zenu like stretches of DNA in the Polynesians were roughly the same size. They estimated that they came from Zenu relatives who lived about eight centuries ago. "It's quite amazing that they can come up with this evidence for contact between these populations," Dr. Malaspinas said. Lisa Matisoo Smith, a biological anthropologist at the University of Otago in New Zealand who was not involved in the new study, cautioned that the history of Polynesia is so complex that the new results might not reflect it accurately. Dr. Matisoo Smith said the study would have been stronger had the researchers compared the Polynesians with other populations, such as people in mainland China. That would help rule out the possibility that what looks like Native American ancestry in Polynesia is actually just DNA inherited from the common ancestors of the two groups in Asia. If the research holds up to further scrutiny, many experts said the best explanation would be that Polynesians came to South America and then took South Americans onto their boats to voyage back out to sea. Dr. Malaspinas said that since Polynesians had already traveled so far across the Pacific, there was no reason to think they couldn't go to South America. "This last step would have been easy for them," she said. Patrick Kirch, a University of Hawaii archaeologist, said that this scenario fit with other lines of evidence, including the food that Polynesians eat. One important staple across Polynesia is the sweet potato, which originated in South America. Dr. Kirch and his colleagues have found remains of sweet potatoes centuries before Europeans arrived in the Pacific. But the authors of the new paper emphasize another possibility: South Americans traveled on their own to a Polynesian island, where Polynesians sailing from the east encountered them. Ancient DNA from South America might help, too. Dr. Fehren Schmitz has looked for Polynesian DNA in the ancient human remains in the Andes he has studied. "But I've never seen any trace," he said. It's possible, Dr. Fehren Schmitz said, that other places in South America would be better to look for lost Polynesians. It's conceivable, for example, that some Polynesians who reached South America may have opted to live on the islands just off the coast. One such place is Mocha Island, just off the coast of Chile. In 2010, Dr. Matisoo Smith and Jose Miguel Ramirez of the University of Valparaiso published a study on skulls that were unearthed on the island. The skulls, she said, "looked very Polynesian in shape and form." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Science |
It became clear in mid March that my birthday plans for the end of the month had to be canceled. After a quick self pity session my focus shifted from what I'd be losing (happy hour with my friends at my favorite dim sum spot, a haircut with my favorite stylist, a massage) to what I could control about the day. After all, my birthday may have been marred by the coronavirus shutdown, but with the great pain being experienced by the world, now also felt like a great time to celebrate life. In order to feel a sense of normalcy, two things were most important to me: baking my own birthday cake and arranging a video call with my family. I instructed relatives to supply their own cakes so we could all blow out candles together over Zoom. I even took a picture of our family chat! Whether you're the one blowing out candles, or you're the one trying to make your house feel festive for someone else's birthday, here's how to give the day meaning when we're all limiting contact. Accept your feelings about the situation. "Peace comes when we realize what our circumstances are and can then ask, 'Given this time, what feels best to me?'" said Shasta Nelson, a friendship expert and the author of "Frientimacy: How to Deepen Friendships for Lifelong Health and Happiness." "There is no wrong answer." If you want to book virtual happy hours, go for it. If you want to do a more scaled down celebration, that's fine, too. Do what feels best for you. Be mindful of the way you speak about the situation. Instead of grumbling about how you have to be stuck at home, reframe the thought: You're choosing to stay home and be healthy, said Mary Foston English, a licensed marriage and family therapist. While you're at it, also nix the phrase "have to," as it "encourages us to feel helpless and hopeless and limits our options to think more openly and feel better," she added. Organize a virtual party if you feel like it. For her birthday on March 31, Sarah Solomon made the best of the circumstances as she was sheltering in place. Ms. Solomon, the author of "Guac Is Extra but So Am I: The Reluctant Adult's Handbook," invited about 20 friends via text message to her virtual birthday party, a group video chat hosted on Zoom. She made sure that everyone on the list was already acquainted so that "it wouldn't be even more awkward than a video conferencing party already is." To make your virtual party fun for everyone in attendance, consider asking guests to prepare something to do or eat as a group. For her party, Ms. Solomon encouraged participants to dress up in black tie optional clothing. "Drinking dirty martinis alone in a ball gown isn't totally out of the norm for me," she said, "but it was nice to make it a group effort." Pick something simple: wine and cheese, pizza, cupcakes or champagne. Just make sure whatever you come up with will be fairly easy to secure with advance notice, or, better yet, is already in everyone's home. It's also important to give the party some structure. Consider giving prompts to guests so the conversation will flow. For example, ask them to recount a happy or silly memory of you. Perhaps guests can share a positive intention they have for the year. Decide on an end time for the party in advance so people don't have to awkwardly log off. When it comes to gifts, be upfront. When relatives asked what I wanted for my birthday, I encouraged them to email me gift cards for my favorite beauty brands and local restaurants. Letting people know what kinds of gifts I'd appreciate gave my inner circle direction and flexibility. You can also direct people to contribute to a charity of your choice or forgo gifts altogether. Go easy on yourself if your emotions are all over the place. It's a scary, uncertain time. It's understandable if you feel overwhelmed. "Treat yourself kindly by focusing on what you are grateful for, trying to keep your mind in the present moment, or even simply taking a break from your self judgment, for example," said Dr. Jena Lee, a child and adult psychiatrist and a clinical instructor at the David Geffen School of Medicine at the University of California, Los Angeles. If you're in a lingering funk or experiencing excessive sadness or disappointment about your birthday, consult a mental health professional. "Prioritizing mental and relational wellness is crucial right now," said Melody Li, a licensed marriage and family therapist and the founder of Inclusive Therapists, a social justice oriented therapist community. "If you've been considering starting therapy, now can be a good time to start and receive support." Let them know their strong feelings are justified. Dr. Lee suggests saying: "This is so frustrating that you can't celebrate your birthday despite all of your planning. This celebration is so important to you and your friends. That would be pretty hard for me, too." Once we've mirrored their disappointment, then we can see if they want help brainstorming other options, Ms. Nelson said. Give the other people permission to choose how to celebrate. "One of the best gifts we can give to those in our lives is permission to do whatever feels best to them this year without guilt," Ms. Nelson said. "They don't have to do more than they have energy to do, and neither do they have to downplay it just because others are grieving." Give yourself plenty of time to book services and have packages shipped. Ms. Solomon was delighted when a dear friend gave her a fancy bottle of champagne through Drizly, an online liquor store. "I promised her that we'd pop and drink it together after New York City is in the clear," she said. My husband sent me personalized video messages from my favorite reality show celebrities through Cameo. It definitely lifted my spirits! If you're celebrating a child's birthday during this lockdown, don't be afraid to get a little silly. "Have a dance party at home, create a treasure hunt or a baking show that can be shared by video to family," Dr. Lee said. Whatever you choose to do, as long as you approach the day with a positive attitude, it will help children make lasting memories. Sometimes the best gift is sending a heartfelt message of appreciation to someone you love. Expressing that you care can be an unforgettable gift, Dr. Lee said. Ms. Nelson said we should think about something we can do to make our friends feel seen and loved. That could mean organizing a group effort online or reaching out to connect one to one. Just be authentic to what feels right for your relationship. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Well |
Don't see one of your favorites? Share it in the comments section. Whenever TV watchers talk about what they've been "bingeing," they often focus on television dramas and action adventure series, which have stories that unfold across multiple episodes. But sitcoms can be just as fun to binge. Whether they feature romantic subplots that take several seasons to develop, or they just deliver hilarious jokes at a steady clip, a good TV comedy can be as addicting as an edge of the seat thriller. For anyone who's stuck at home right now and in need of something funny and diverting to stream, what follows is a list of sitcoms that are especially easy to consume in bulk, organized by the number of episodes each has. Some of these series can be watched in their entirety in a day or two. Others might take months. But all of them are good company. Stream it on Hulu or Starz; buy it on Amazon, Google Play, iTunes, Vudu or YouTube. An all star comic ensemble including Adam Scott, Lizzy Caplan, Ken Marino, Jane Lynch and Martin Starr populated this little seen Starz comedy from before many of them moved on to bigger things. Although "Party Down" runs only 20 episodes, its punchy look at the secret showbiz dreams of Los Angeles cater waiters is a delight from start to finish. The episodic format follows the servers at different swanky events each week, which proves to be a solid sitcom gimmick, putting a funny cast of characters into conflict with a wide range of Hollywood phonies. (Read the New York Times review.) Stream it on HBO Now; buy it on Amazon, Google Play, iTunes, Vudu or YouTube. By the time "Veep" ended, the real word political news had eclipsed this darkly comic take on modern American governance, making its inside look at Washington infighting seem like less a wicked satire than a cautionary tale. No matter how brutal "Veep" can be to watch today, the show remains explosively funny, featuring creatively vulgar dialogue that borders on the poetic. Julia Louis Dreyfus's performance as the foul mouthed, opportunistic Vice President Selina Meyer is one of the most powerful pieces of comic TV acting of the last decade: at once vulnerable, angry and sardonic. (Read the New York Times review.) Stream it on Hulu or Netflix; buy it on Amazon, Google Play, iTunes, Vudu or YouTube. When the crooked California real estate magnate George Bluth (Jeffrey Tambor) gets thrown in jail, he asks his beleaguered son Michael (Jason Bateman) to control the excesses of their spoiled family. That's the basic premise of "Arrested Development," which doesn't even begin to describe the complexity of one of this era's most original sitcoms: a show packed with so many sight gags, puns and double entendres that sometimes jokes which are set up in one episode don't land until several episodes later. Through the first three seasons in particular, "Arrested Development" gets funnier as its dense story of privilege and presumption gets more tangled. (Read the New York Times review.) Stream it on Amazon Prime, Hulu or Netflix; buy it on Google Play, iTunes, Vudu or YouTube. At once one of the most realistic and optimistic TV shows about American civic life, this mockumentary about small town bureaucrats stars Amy Poehler as Leslie Knope, a woman who endures the shortsighted criticism of her community and the cynicism of her colleagues to make a positive impact on Pawnee, Ind. With its eclectic cast of characters including Nick Offerman as Leslie's arch conservative boss, Aziz Ansari as her social media obsessed sidekick, Adam Scott as her nerdy romantic partner, and Chris Pratt and Aubrey Plaza as the impulsive young lovers "Parks and Recreation" combines heartfelt relationship stories with funny observations about red tape and surly citizens. (Read the New York Times review.) Stream it on CBS or Hulu; buy it on Amazon Prime, Google Play, iTunes, Vudu or YouTube. Allison Janney and Anna Faris are one of TV's best comedy teams, playing a formerly estranged mother and daughter who've moved in together after both spent years struggling with drugs and alcohol. After seven years on the air, the "Mom" writers keep finding new ways to generate jokes and pathos from these ladies' codependent relationships and lingering regrets. A big part of what makes the show work is that it's so frank about the struggles of recovering addicts. Even the smallest victories are precious because these characters and "Mom" fans know successes are temporary. (Read the New York Times review.) Stream it on CBS, Hulu or Netflix; buy it on Amazon, Google Play, iTunes, or YouTube. A snappy sitcom set in a Boston barroom helped popularize TV's "will they or won't they" rom com formula with its central relationship: between the playboy ex jock Sam Malone (Ted Danson) and the snobby intellectual waitress Diane Chambers (Shelley Long). The roller coaster romance provided an emotional foundation for all the winning barbs and banter among the pub's chummy regulars. By the time Long left at the end of Season 5, the rest of the ensemble was so perfectly calibrated that the series didn't need a love story anymore: Viewers felt just as at home with these characters as the characters did at Cheers. (Read the New York Times review.) | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Television |
Consumers are more confident. Stocks are up 5 percent since the start of the year. And from the president on down, there's talk of a Trump bump. The only problem: The boom is apparent everywhere except in the economic data. It's not that the economy is stalling far from it. But with the first quarter ending Friday, growth in the first three months of the Trump administration is looking much the way it did under President Barack Obama. In fact, experts see the gross domestic product in the quarter coming in at only about 1 percent, on an annualized basis less than half the pace in the second half of 2016, and a far cry from President Trump's own 4 percent target. "There is a temporal disconnect," said Ellen Zentner, chief United States economist at Morgan Stanley. "There has been an incredible rise in sentiment, but the proof is in the pudding later." The pattern continued this week, when the Conference Board reported on Tuesday that its index of consumer confidence in March rose to its highest since December 2000. More hard data is expected Friday, when the Commerce Department releases new figures on personal income and spending in February. Wall Street, which surged in the months after Mr. Trump's unexpected victory on hopes of tax cuts and deregulation, is coming to grips with the fact that at least in the short term, the outlook remains restrained. The Dow Jones industrial average has dropped on nine out of the last 10 trading days, the longest stretch of losses since 2011, albeit for a total decline of only 1.4 percent. One quarter is only a snapshot, and official government data on the gross domestic product for the period will not be out for another month. What is more, the American economy is expected to pick up some speed later in the year, especially if the White House and Congress can agree on a package of promised tax cuts and new infrastructure spending. The Federal Reserve raised interest rates this month and signaled two more rate increases later this year, indicating that the central bank is also in the faster growth around the corner camp. Still, for all of 2017, the economy is expected to expand by roughly 2 percent, the rate of the recovery under Mr. Obama. The identical figures illustrate how much easier it is for a president to lift economic spirits, as opposed to actual growth rates. If tax reform and other legislation in Washington suffer the same fate as the bid to roll back Mr. Obama's health care overhaul did last week, Ms. Zentner said, the Trump bump "could be built like a house of cards that comes crumbling down." Part of the problem is that despite Mr. Trump's Oval Office sessions with chief executives and the return of what the economist John Maynard Keynes termed "animal spirits," corporate America is not investing heavily, at least so far, in new plants and equipment. Retail earnings and Black Friday: the week in business. Elizabeth Holmes will resume her testimony in her fraud trial. At the same time, demand in many industries is growing only modestly, while a few sectors like retail chains are having to make painful adaptations to a rapidly evolving consumer landscape. Retail stores are top customers for Valdese Weavers, a century old maker of high end fabrics nestled in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina, but Michael Shelton isn't complaining. "Business is better for us than it should be, because growth has been relatively flat for many of our customers," said Mr. Shelton, Valdese's chief executive. "We've been able to find a few pockets of new business, so growth is in the low single digits. It's nothing robust but at least we're up for the year and we're happy about that." "I don't think politics or the election has affected our outlook," Mr. Shelton said. "While many of our customers have seen a Trump bump in terms of their stock price, the industry hasn't seen an effect on retail traffic." One additional factor holding back economic growth nationally and in Burke County, N.C., where Valdese is based is the proportion of Americans now in the labor force. As a result, only 56 percent of Burke County's working age adults are in the labor force, well below the already anemic national average of 63 percent. At the same time, only 17.2 percent of the county's residents have a bachelor's degree, half the national average, which holds back income growth. There is still a chance that first quarter growth could surprise the doubters. Although the widely followed GDPNow model of the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta calls for a 1 percent expansion rate in the first quarter, the New York Fed's Nowcasting Report is looking at 3 percent growth. "The difference is larger than usual and is being driven by the fact that the New York Fed incorporates soft data into its tracking," said Ms. Zentner of Morgan Stanley. The government's estimate of gross domestic product is based on specific data points for economic factors like monthly retail sales, inventories, trade and other hard data, which also count more heavily in the Atlanta Fed's model. Whoever is right, most longer term forecasts estimate growth for all of this year and 2018 to be in a range of 2 to 2.5 percent again, largely in line with the pattern of the last eight years. "Sentiment has gotten stronger but business investment hasn't accelerated," said Michael Gapen, chief economist at Barclays. "To get it to translate to hard data, you'd need new policies like tax cuts, tax reform, and a major increase in infrastructure spending." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Economy |
They sound like an old school SoHo artist's dream: large unfinished lofts with double height ceilings, oversize windows and access to a private garden. The duplex units come with industrial chic accents like exposed cement and hardwood floors, and their layouts are ideal for living on one floor while creating a work studio below. But they are not in SoHo. They are not even in New York City, or, for that matter, the United States. These lofts are underway in Shenyang, a large industrial city of about 8 million in northeast China, not far from the North Korean border. Rather than touting a proximity to the Bleecker Street subway, the apartments are being built atop a 12 line bus depot, and instead of bohemian artists, their residents will likely be Internet savvy Chinese millennials. They are being designed by a California architectural firm. In China, generations are defined by the decades in which they were born, and those born in the 1980s are among the first to struggle to find jobs and follow the strict path that was prescribed for them. "This generation started to question if they really wanted to get married, or buy a house or work in an office," said Mary Bergstrom, the founder of the Bergstrom Group, a consulting firm based in Shanghai and San Francisco. "Those born in the 1990s have taken that a step further, with a lot of freelancers or entrepreneurs with start ups. In China, the word Soho also means a small home office, so it is clear that the developers are tapping into this." The project's 390 "SoHo lofts" are just one component of a mammoth mixed use development that is underway in the city. And as in many places in China, the scale is vast. The project is called Diamond Hill, and at nearly 2.5 million square feet, it approaches the size of 3 World Trade Center. In addition to the lofts, there are 1,400 more traditional apartments; a four story shopping mall; a massive underground transportation hub with a bus depot, four tram lines and pedestrian connections to an existing subway system; and nearly half a million square feet of commercial offices. And it isn't just the project size that is enormous. Shenyang, an ancient city with more than 2,000 years of history that was the birthplace of the Qing dynasty in the 17th century, has the same population as New York City. Yet despite its size, Shenyang is considered a second or even third tier city, an industrial and transportation center that is about an hour's flight from Pyongyang and two hours from Beijing. "What would be an enormous project in the States barely raises an eyebrow in China," said Joel H. Rothstein, a partner in the real estate group at the law firm Paul Hastings, who splits his time between Los Angeles and Beijing. "You walk through these real estate fairs and everywhere you look, there are models of enormous condominium tower after enormous condominium tower for sale." With so much competition, developers must work to differentiate themselves. This is especially true now, as recent economic data points to a slowing of China's residential market and the overall economy. In the first three quarters of this year, housing sales in China fell 10.8 percent to 661 billion, according to the National Bureau of Statistics of China. China's gross domestic product increased 7.3 percent in the third quarter, the slowest pace since the financial crisis in 2009, and last month, the country cut its interest rate for the first time since 2012. In smaller cities like Shenyang, this slowdown has been particularly acute. "Cities that have been hurt the most by the cooling of the residential market are these second , third and fourth tier cities where there has been a lot of overdevelopment," Mr. Rothstein said. In light of the increased competition for residential housing, appealing to young Chinese buyers may be a useful strategy. "Young Chinese, those born post 1990, are becoming much more individualistic," said Eric Fish, a freelance journalist who covers China and whose book "China's Millennials: The Want Generation" will be published by Rowman Littlefield next summer. "Shows like 'Friends' are hugely popular, so they have seen apartments like Rachel and Monica's, so I can see these kind of lofts as being immensely appealing." China Merchants Bank, one of the country's largest banks, is the developer of Diamond Hill, and the Hollywood. based architecture firm 5 design was hired to design it. It is hard to pinpoint just how similar these lofts will be to the original prototype in Lower Manhattan. "I haven't been to New York, but I have been to Soho in London," Yuhao Li, a project director at China Merchants who is in charge of the project, said recently. While the London neighborhood has nothing to do with the Shenyang lofts or the New York neighborhood, Mr. Li noted that China Merchants has conducted extensive research on what would appeal to buyers. By several measures, the live/work lofts will be a strong selling point. "The younger generation in China are becoming more entrepreneurial and they want something that is more modern, that is nontraditional," Mr. Li said. According to the bank's research, the target buyers will be entrepreneurs in their late 30s and early 40s who will live there and house their businesses there. They could also be investors who will buy the units and then rent them out to people in their 20s and 30s. Diamond Hill, which is scheduled for completion in the first half of 2017, had several design complexities aside from its sheer size. Perhaps most challenging was a Shenyang building code that stipulated condos must receive a minimum of two hours of sunshine on the shortest day of the year, and across from Diamond Hill are several condominium towers whose light must be protected. Protecting daylight can be a tall order in this northern city, where winter lasts from November until April, with temperatures that can reach minus 20 degrees Fahrenheit. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Real Estate |
Black and white photos of Italian noodle makers and vintage menus from Hong Kong dim sum parlors decorate the Honey Paw, billed as a "nondenominational" noodle joint and the latest relatably cool restaurant from one of Portland's most winning chef restaurateur teams, Andrew Taylor and Mike Wiley. Along with their managing partner Arlin Smith, they had already colonized a stretch of Middle Street, near the Old Port, with the critical favorites Hugo's and Eventide Oyster Co. When the Honey Paw opened next door in April 2015, it quickly delivered on the expectation of success Eater named it the state's restaurant of the year. The original premise, of a global noodle centric spot, has given way to a focus on Asian flavors, but with culinary techniques borrowed from across the world. The chef de cuisine, Thomas Pisha Duffly, is of Chinese and Irish descent, with roots in Indonesia and Massachusetts. All of that is reflected in the changing menu at the Honey Paw, where shrimp toast, a dim sum standard, has morphed into a lobster and scallop mousse tartine. "That was one of the first dishes that we conceptualized for the space," Mr. Pisha Duffly said. "It kind of epitomizes the way we think of cuisine." On the night I visited, it was sprinkled with bits of seaweed and fresh radish for an out of this world Asian New England French mash up. The nose to tail approach means a regular entree of cumin lamb moo shu is served with lamb breast one night and hearts another. "It's like a make your own taco," our server said. Yes, and piled on masa pancakes, with salsa verde and buttermilk cheese, it could rival David Chang's Momofuku pork buns in addictiveness. Ditto the crisp fried spoonbread with uni butter umami heaven. The handmade noodles, which come in many sizes, include a fermented rice variety, and the Thai style coconut chicken curry had a broth so rich it was almost textured. The lighting is soft and the service unstuffy. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Travel |
The Chiefs' Patrick Mahomes (15) dissected the Colts' defense, throwing for 278 yards. Kansas City had lost its last six home playoff games, but it took firm control of Saturday's game from the start. KANSAS CITY, Mo. The stories passed down about the Kansas City Chiefs' playoff malfunctions might sound apocryphal, as if embellished over a game of telephone, but they're not. Really. The fans who jammed Arrowhead Stadium on Saturday can recite detail after grisly detail. So can those who roamed Kansas City's sideline: Many of them added to the misery last year, two years ago, three years ago, five. One player changed the calculus. His ascension terminated an era of despair. His quarterbacking brilliance inoculated the fan base. In his grand playoff unveiling, Patrick Lavon Mahomes II purged a quarter century of Arrowhead futility. After every first down, every score, every defensive stop, fans in the upper deck flung snowballs in glee. They kept coming, much like the top seeded Chiefs, who blitzed their postseason nemesis, the Indianapolis Colts, 31 13, and advanced to host the A.F.C. Championship next Sunday against the Los Angeles Chargers or the New England Patriots. The conference champion receives a trophy named for Lamar Hunt, the founder and original owner of the Chiefs, who have played for the award just once since 1970 (when they won their only Super Bowl title). That was in 1994, the last time, incidentally, that Kansas City won a home playoff game. At the beginning of every season, Hunt's son Clark, a team co owner, tells players how important it is to win that trophy. "We've now put ourselves in a position to do it," Hunt said. "I'm probably going to think about it a lot this week." None Week 11 Takeaways: Here is what we learned this week. N.F.L. Tightens Covid Protocols: As cases rise and Thanksgiving approaches, the league is requiring masks inside team facilities and increasing testing. The Jets Lose Again: Falling to the Miami Dolphins, the Jets' receiver Elijah Moore offered consolation. The Long Path to the Super Bowl: With 18 weeks in the regular season and fewer teams earning byes in the playoffs, the Super Bowl is still a long way off. Playoff Simulator: Explore every team's path to the postseason, updated live. As he stood in the Chiefs' locker room Saturday night, Hunt thought a lot, too, about Mahomes, who in his first season as a full time starter became the only quarterback other than Peyton Manning to throw for 50 touchdowns and 5,000 yards in a regular season. Three other quarterbacks made their playoff debuts last week, and all three lost. Mahomes completed 27 of 41 passes for 278 yards without committing a turnover and guided scoring drives on four of Kansas City's five first half possessions. When Darrel Williams plowed into the end zone for the final touchdown, with 2 minutes 26 seconds left, Mahomes peeled away from the crowd and windmilled his fist, aware in that moment of what he what all of the Chiefs had accomplished. And so now, after 47 years, this sentence can be written: The Chiefs, finally, have more playoff victories at Arrowhead than the Colts. It's O.K. to read that again, a third time even. "They don't know about old luck, or Andrew Luck or bad luck against the Colts," punter Dustin Colquitt, the team's longest tenured player, said of Mahomes and first year Chiefs like Sammy Watkins (six catches, 62 yards) or Damien Williams (25 rushes, 129 yards). "So why not us?" The Chiefs had lost their last six home playoff games, and 10 of 11 over all, often in unspeakable fashion. Once, they did not allow a touchdown. Last year, they blew an 18 point halftime advantage. The worst defeat and that distinction, mind you, is debatable came five years ago, when they led by 28 points in the third quarter and, yes, lost. All of Kansas City's anguish connected with Indianapolis four straight playoff losses since 1996 preceded Mahomes, who seems impervious to it all. "I think we all almost expect it every week now," Hunt said of Mahomes's command. "I mentioned earlier in the year that the first couple of games we thought: 'O.K., is this an outlier? Is this something that's going to last?' But he literally has done it every week." The Chiefs scored on their first possession. And their second. And their third. And, after a brief break, their fifth. The points accumulated like the snow that blanketed the region overnight and deep into Saturday. The slicker the surface, the wackier the conditions, the more comfortable Mahomes, all of 23, seems. About 45 minutes before kickoff, he did not run out of the tunnel so much as he strutted, skipping toward the 35 yard line, where he began warming up, his passes accurate, his footing true. In the game, Mahomes extended plays, sidestepped rushes, flipped passes across his body connecting with Travis Kelce (seven catches, 108 yards), Tyreek Hill (eight catches, 72 yards), with Damien Williams (five catches, 25 yards). It perplexed the Colts, who could not cover, tackle or feel remotely positive about anything until 5:56 before halftime, when Najee Goode blocked a punt that Zach Pascal recovered in the end zone for a touchdown. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Sports |
SAN FRANCISCO One of Frances Stroh's earliest lessons about wealth involved a game she played as a 6 year old with her father: how to not be kidnapped. Ms. Stroh would stand outside the family's six bedroom Spanish Mediterranean home in the manicured Detroit suburb of Grosse Pointe in 1973 as her father, Eric Stroh, pretended to be a stranger as he drove by in his silver Chrysler, waving a chocolate bar as temptation and beckoning her to the car. As instructed, Frances would run away in tears. Her father explained that as an heiress to the largest private beer company in America, kidnapping was a concern, especially because, "They'll ask for a ransom that we can't possibly afford to pay," Ms. Stroh recalled him saying. "There were very mixed messages" about money, she said in an interview. Her father's words about their finances were indeed prescient. The Stroh family wealth, at its height in the 1980s, was estimated by Forbes to be about 9 billion in today's dollars. Now, that money is almost completely gone. And Ms. Stroh has taken the rare step, in the secretive world of America's wealthiest, of going public with her family's downward spiral in a remarkably intimate book, "Beer Money: A Memoir of Privilege and Loss." In revealing detail, she documents a trifecta of misfortunes, some of them self inflicted: the unraveling of her immediate family, shaken by alcohol and drug abuse; the collapse of her family's brewing empire; and the fall of Detroit, hometown of Stroh's beer. The book has struck a nerve in certain circles, and Ms. Stroh says she has received an outpouring of support and commiseration. Frances Stroh as a child, photographed in 1972 by her father Eric Stroh. "I heard from all kinds of people about lost fortunes, lost businesses, often coupled with substance abuse issues within the families," she said. "My story resonated with their own experience because of this lingering sort of sense of something that's unresolved when a family business is lost." Headlines tend to focus on billionaires who fall from grace after committing crimes, like the Ponzi schemer Bernard L. Madoff, or the former WorldCom chief executive Bernard J. Ebbers. But the more time honored and reliable way to lose a fortune, however, often comes down to just one word: family. An abundance of heirs mixed with patriarchal lines of succession that fail to produce talented leaders can be disastrous. The Strohs' saga is a textbook example. Bernhard Stroh immigrated to Detroit from Germany in 1850, selling his popular beer door to door. A brewery followed and grew regionally, especially thriving after World War II. By the 1980s, it was America's third largest beer company. Then the fourth generation of family managers decided the best way to expand was through expensive acquisitions and going national, buying the Schlitz, Schaefer and Old Milwaukee brands, among others. But debt from those deals kept the company from making competitive moves. Stroh's missed the timely pivot to light beers, and sales plummeted. Other bad investments followed, including ventures in which the family had less expertise, like biotech and Detroit real estate as the city faced severe decline. Hundreds of millions more were lost. All through the company's boom and bust, the number of heirs grew, many relying on annual dividends of up to hundreds of thousands of dollars to fund sometimes lavish lifestyles. Ms. Stroh's father spent millions on antiques and collectibles, like rare cameras and guitars. (Later the family would discover many of these were fakes or worth far less than what he paid.) As the brewery's profits dried up, the dividends to the heirs continued, but the money was siphoned from principal, further hastening the company's decline. By 1999 the company was sold off in pieces, and the proceeds of those sales were soon depleted or poorly invested by the company's board, until little remained. Though some families have managed to keep thriving descendants of the newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst still own media properties worth billions and the Mars candy company, founded in 1911, remains family owned with estimated annual revenues of more than 35 billion the same type of scenario that befell the Strohs has consumed other family fortunes. "Dynasties are suddenly hard to pull off," said Michael McGerr, professor in the history department at Indiana University in Bloomington, who is writing a book on the Vanderbilt family, which also lost much of its wealth. "It's because you have to be really lucky within your own family." Heirs are not automatically qualified, competent or visionary leaders, Dr. McGerr said, and when power is passed solely from fathers to sons, those who might better manage an empire like women family members or outsiders are excluded. While Ms. Stroh was being taught how to avoid being kidnapped, the men in her generation were being groomed to lead the company. "It would have been discouraged if a girl in the family had shown some ambition for a role like that," she said. Today, Ms. Stroh is a successful businesswoman. Now 50, she lives in San Francisco, and took a relatively modest inheritance of about 200,000 in stocks from her mother and made savvy investments in tech companies and real estate. As a small time developer and landlord, she is able to live independently in one of the nation's most expensive cities. She is doing well enough that she is investing back in Detroit, but in a way that will pay a different type of dividend. She donated half of the advance and 10 percent of the book sale proceeds from "Beer Money" to 826michigan, a nonprofit organization that tutors school age children in writing. "One of my goals with the book was to use it as a way to re engage with Detroit in a meaningful way," Ms. Stroh said. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Your Money |
Senoia, Ga., a picturesque town about 35 miles southwest of Atlanta, has become famous as the home of "The Walking Dead." Its downtown and neighborhoods have starred on the zombie thriller and local businesses have embraced the connection.Credit...Robert Rausch for The New York Times As Seen on TV: A Road Trip Tracks the Shows of the South Senoia, Ga., a picturesque town about 35 miles southwest of Atlanta, has become famous as the home of "The Walking Dead." Its downtown and neighborhoods have starred on the zombie thriller and local businesses have embraced the connection. It's not the sort of remark one normally hopes to hear on vacation. But on a dazzling spring morning in Senoia, Ga., it spurred a chorus of "oohs" as the assembled aimed cellphones at the site of the demise. It was an understandable response: The frisson that came from seeing, in real life, the same building where poor Andrea met her maker in the Season 3 finale of "The Walking Dead," was delightful. But so was the tidy historic downtown, the toasty but not yet oppressive Southern sun and the pervasive scent of honeysuckle, which apparently actually happens in Georgia towns. I came for "The Walking Dead" tour but stayed for the ambience. For a few hours anyway, because there were more places to see where fictional people got killed, cursed, discovered, drunk, fed and further enmeshed in a Gothic murder mystery. Along the way I ate well, drank better and zoned out on rocky top foothills and in kudzu canyons, letting my mind wander as hundreds of miles rolled beneath the wheels of my overpriced rental car. Which is to say, I undertook a mythic getaway (an American road trip ...) for a slightly corny reason (...based on TV locations). And it was great. Nobody needs an excuse for a road trip, though it helps to have hooks for the thread of your adventure. Friends or family, or sites you've always wanted to visit: national parks, Civil War battlefields, Waffle Houses. (No judgment.) It doesn't matter what it is, really; all you need is a framework. I write about and thus watch a metric ton of television. So that was mine. I chose the South because, well, so has TV. Producers seeking ever more evocative backdrops and fat tax credits have turned the region into a popular shooting spot. Atlanta, in particular, has become a hub, the home base of both numerous series ("Atlanta," "Stranger Things") and box office blockbusters, like the "Hunger Games" and "Avengers" films. So that seemed like a good place to start an As Seen on TV trek that would take me to Nashville, site of, er, "Nashville," and then New Orleans, whose indelible atmosphere has enlivened shows like "American Horror Story," "Treme" and "True Detective." The broader point, of course, is that the cultural and aesthetic charms that look good onscreen also make these cities excellent spots to visit, and using TV as your travel agent turns out to be a decent way to see things that give an area its character. The same things that beguile location scouts looking for a sense of place can be a great way to get a sense of a place. But no place has embraced its TV guests like Senoia (pronounced suh NOY) as "The Walking Dead," the hit zombie drama based in a nearby production facility. The town, about 35 miles southwest of Atlanta, has starred on the show, serving as Woodbury, the stronghold ruled by the maniacal governor, and built an economy upon its undead back. Multiple companies offer "Walking Dead" experiences, ranging from tours to zombie wedding packages. Amid the boutiques on Main Street are the Waking Dead cafe and the Woodbury Shoppe, selling "Walking Dead" merchandise and featuring memorabilia like a motorcycle ridden by Daryl Dixon, the show's renegade with a heart of gold and guns of steel. Down the block, Norman Reedus, who plays Daryl, and Greg Nicoterro, an executive producer, have opened Nic and Norman's, a stylish American grill where "Dead" heads can enjoy "Norman's Pick," a bison burger with beetroot and a fried egg. (The menu recommends it wrapped in lettuce instead of a bun. Actors.) I'd planned to visit various sites at my own pace but if there was a place to fan out, this was it. So I grabbed a Zombie Dark drip from Senoia Coffee Cafe and strolled with my fellow "walker stalkers" as our guide, Alex Adams, pointed out sites. Then we headed across the railroad tracks to Alexandria, the colony led by the show's hero, Rick Grimes. Staplehouse in the Old Fourth Ward has been a tough ticket since Bon Appetit named it the best new restaurant in America last year. But early birds can get seats at the bar if they're lucky, and I was. As glib foodies Instagrammed, I hunkered down over crab with kohlrabi and an exquisite chicken liver tart, then stumbled on toward two great bars with peculiar entrances: a parking garage (Ticonderoga Club) and a London style call box (Red Phone Booth). But I didn't stay out late, because the next day I was heading to vampire country. Roughly 30 miles east of Atlanta, Covington is a small town with a robust filming history, hosting productions that include "Friday the 13th," "Cannonball Run" and "Remember the Titans." On TV the town has served as the Hazzard County seat ("The Dukes of Hazzard"), Sparta, Ga. ("Heat of the Night") and Mystic Falls, Va. ("The Vampire Diaries"). "The Vampire Diaries," which ended this year, brings Georgia more film and TV tourists than any other title, according to the state's film office (apparently it's big in China). In Covington fans can take location tours or eat at the Mystic Grill, a Southern restaurant that brings to life the cafe from the show. I haven't seen much "Vampire Diaries" so can't attest to the grill's verisimilitude. But as a child of the '80s, I logged lots of time watching the now deeply problematic General Lee defy gravity on "The Dukes of Hazzard," which shot its first few episodes in Covington before moving to California. As I approached Chattanooga, the rolling Georgia terrain gave way to dramatic vistas of the Appalachian foothills before the highway bent west toward Nashville. In recent years, the country music capital has also become your cool friends' favorite city, thanks to New South cuisine and a fertile cultural scene. On this trip I was there for the Bluebird. Since opening in 1982 in a strip mall, the 90 seat Bluebird Cafe has become a favorite spot for the city's songwriters to play for locals and friends. Then Rayna Jaymes and Juliette Barnes started singing there on "Nashville." "Now we have hundreds of people, many who just want to have their picture taken in front of the venue," said Erika Wollam Nichols, the general manager. "Or they get desperate about trying to get inside, to the point of trying to break the door down, waving 20 bills at me." "It gets kind of insane," she added. The crowd is now largely tourists inspired by the venue's regular appearances on "Nashville," where the fictional country stars extol the venue's intimacy. (The show is shot on a replica Bluebird set.) The parking lot was thrumming when I got there 30 minutes before showtime, the line for reservation holders like me dwarfed by the serpentine one full of hopefuls angling for a walk up seat. Inside, a cocoon envelops the space as the night's acts take their turns. Taylor Swift and Garth Brooks are among the superstars who were discovered at the Bluebird. The night I was there a young Englishman with a rich, resonant voice named Joe Martin seemed primed for bigger things. As mawkish as this sounds: The Bluebird is about songs, not stardom their power to crystallize ephemeral emotions and reach places inside you that don't see them coming. And the warm aura of the place makes it hard to do anything other than open yourself to them. "It's the quintessential listening room," Monte King, a veteran Bluebird performer, told me before showtime. Later he reduced me to tears with "I Will Always Be Your Dad," his song about a son who had left home for the Marine Corp. "Most people leave changed and that's the best part," Ms. Wollam Nichols said. My only other Nashville agenda item was hot chicken, though locals tended to smirk at my request for recommendations. The fiery, cayenne laden style of yardbird, born in the city, is a foodie obsession. It may be trendy but I still wanted it. Prince's, said to be the dish's birthplace, wasn't open the next day, so I hit Hattie B's, an acclaimed newish entry. Pro tip: Order online and get it to go. But however smug I felt bypassing the line, the tenders cut me down to size. I got the extra hot Shut the Cluck Up flavor a silly name for some serious chicken that had my head leaking multiple fluids and my mouth burning in delicious agony. Nashville had made me cry twice in as many days, which felt like enough. So I pointed the car toward New Orleans. The Natchez Trace Parkway is one of the great drives in America, a 444 mile strip of two lane blacktop, stretching from Nashville to Natchez, Miss., that follows a route established by Native Americans trailing buffalo and later used by traders, settlers and soldiers. On a weekday with few other cars in sight, it felt like the primordial artery that it is, taking on a mystical feel as I drove through an upholstered landscape of deep shag kudzu and dense trees. It also has a 50 miles per hour speed limit, so at Tupelo, Miss., I opted for the more pragmatic highway to New Orleans. I arrived late at my hotel, the Pontchartrain in the Garden District, a mash up of old school elegance and kitsch vintage room keys, velvet and chandeliers, an oil painting of Lil Wayne with a terrific rooftop bar. I went up for a nightcap but the panoramic views and southern breezes breathed the city's vitality into me, and soon it didn't feel so late. An Uber ride later and I was on Frenchman Street in the Marigny, catching the end of the Jazz Vipers' Monday night gig at the Spotted Cat. The Gypsy jazz stalwarts are among the many local musicians who appeared in "Treme," the HBO drama that, with its colorful strivers putting their lives and the city back together after Katrina, functioned as a love letter to New Orleans. Later I'd explore other spots it showcased, including Bacchanal, a wine shop and restaurant with one of the prettiest patios anywhere, and the legendary jazz dive Vaughan's, both in the Bywater. I plowed through a football size barbecued shrimp po' boy at Liuzza's By the Track, the last meal of John Goodman's doomed professor Creighton Bernette. (You could do worse.) At the bar I found Mr. Ruffins himself, an auspicious development he was a good person to ask about something that had been on my mind. Travel can be fraught with questions about appreciation versus appropriation heedless tourists can treat cultures as instruments for their own enrichment, and risk trampling them in the process. It seemed to me that if you approach places with humility, respect and an open heart, it didn't matter how you discovered them. But I saw how facile it could seem, checking off a list of things you saw on TV. I posed some version of this to Mr. Ruffins, who acknowledged that many people who come to his bar do so because they saw it or him on "Treme," rather than because they are devoted jazz fans. "But we turn them into jazz fans once they hear the band play," he said. "We can convert people real fast." If he's untroubled by it, who am I to wring my hands? The show was about to start so I took a chair in front of the stage. Mr. Ruffins sat down, too, and the band kicked in. As I watched him blow a bright solo in his version of "Sunny Side of the Street," I stopped worrying about authenticity, or anything else. After five days, 1,200 miles and God knows how many nuclear calories, my back was sore, my heart was homesick and my guts sizzled in misery. But in a nice inversion of TV's old brain rotting reputation, my head felt pleasantly empty. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Travel |
Sally Morgan Lehman and her husband, Jay Lehman, and their three young children were clearly outgrowing their two bedroom Chelsea apartment. "When you have three kids in an 800 square foot apartment, it's a lot of screaming in a box," she said. Like so many other families desperate for space, they drew a 30 mile circle around the city and spent the next few months checking out the suburbs. They hoped to find someplace artsy and progressive, where city people went to raise families. Perhaps they would still be able to walk to get a bite to eat or hop a train to the city, in a ride preferably no longer than 45 minutes. With those requirements, they found themselves exploring the nearby suburbs to which many reluctant city dwellers have traveled a well trodden path: Maplewood and Montclair, in New Jersey; and the Rivertowns in Westchester, including Dobbs Ferry, Hastings on Hudson, Tarrytown, Irvington and Ardsley (although the latter is not technically on the river). Residents in these places often proudly refer to them as "Park Slope with backyards," or even as a "sixth borough," and they brag that nearly everyone on their block came from somewhere in the city within the last few years. They're not exaggerating. Still, as Ms. Morgan Lehman, 44, and Mr. Lehman, 47, came to find out, as similar as these suburbs are, they are also infinitely different. Each has its own personality, commute, topography and downtown, and what is a good fit for one group of city transplants may not work for another. Which is why choosing the right suburb comes down to figuring out your priorities. Would you rather live near a walkable downtown, or is proximity to nature more important? Is diversity number one, or is it more important to live in a small town with like minded people? The Rivertowns alone have five distinct sensibilities: Hastings on Hudson is the artsiest; Dobbs Ferry, the most diverse; Irvington, the toniest; Tarrytown, the most charming; and Ardsley, the most landlocked. And while friends led Ms. Morgan Lehman to believe that she and her husband would fall in love with one particular Rivertown, they didn't like that many of its lots twisted up inclines or that their budget didn't go very far there. "If we were going to leave the city, we wanted to get something bigger than a small three bedroom with no yard," she said. The couple next looked at Maplewood, N.J., a leafy enclave with beautiful rows of Victorians stretching uphill from the Norman Rockwell like main street. But while they loved it, she said, "it was a small town for us." Then a parent from their children's public school, P.S. 11, told them she was moving to Montclair, so Ms. Morgan Lehman and her husband decided to visit. All it took was one look around the walkable, bustling downtown packed with restaurants and a glimpse of the large, flat backyards, and they knew they had found home. Ms. Morgan Lehman appreciated the large school system, as she had worried that her children might feel stifled by the smaller pool of children in a small town, and she marveled at how sophisticated Montclair was: It had an art museum! A university! A film festival! In 2016, she and Mr. Lehman, who own the Morgan Lehman Gallery on West 24th Street, bought their dream house, a 1920s five bedroom center hall colonial with original crown moldings. "Every morning when I walk down the stairs, I pinch myself," Ms. Morgan Lehman said. "Montclair is more of a small city than a suburb, and that's perfect for us." But what drives one person into a certain hot suburban real estate market, where inventory can be low in the Rivertowns, excruciatingly so can drive another person out. Jane Lawrence, a painter and art teacher at Manhattan International High School who spent most of her thirties in Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn, didn't consider Montclair when she was looking to buy a house. She grew up in nearby Montville, and to her, Montclair was too big and spread out: It would require a car to get to the various shopping districts, and Ms. Lawrence doesn't drive. As soon as she saw the Rivertowns, she was taken with the expansive views of the Hudson and quickly set her sights on Tarrytown, which has a lively Main Street lined with restaurants, stores, the Tarrytown Music Hall and a coffee shop that roasts its own beans. She bought a "quirky" three bedroom yellow colonial that is technically in Sleepy Hollow, but as it is on the border, she can walk to Tarrytown's train station, library, shops and the grocery store. She and her husband like to spend weekends at the waterfront park, her daughter cooling off at the spray park on warmer days. "The river has become a big part of my life," said Ms. Lawrence, 38. "The beauty of it, how it looks in different seasons, when I see the sun setting over it on the ride home." It does seem that when comparing Maplewood, Montclair and the Rivertowns, buyers who choose one of the latter do so for the connection to the outdoors. Which is not to say that people in New Jersey don't have access to great parks. Residents of Montclair can easily travel to Eagle Rock Reservation, with its 408 acres of rolling hills, and Brookdale Park, with its labyrinth of trails, both designed by the Frederick Law Olmsted, who designed Central Park with Calvert Vaux. Those in Maplewood can get lost at the South Mountain Reservation, a 2,110 acre park minutes from the township's main street. Still, the Rivertowns' topography has a rugged quality, with some houses built into the landscape and streets turning tight corners or heading up steep inclines. Some of the yards have rocky outcroppings, while others come with views of the Hudson. Train rides hug the river, and sometimes nature exploration is right outside your front door. Sometimes they walk with their close friends, the family across the street, with whom they started a progressive potluck dinner, where neighbors take turns holding monthly get togethers of as many as 25 people to raise money for liberal causes. "I couldn't think of a better group of people to fall in with up here," Mr. Hershberg said. Even with all the Rivertowns' charms, however, some prospective buyers have questioned their vibrancy. Alison Bernstein, founder of Suburban Jungle Realty, a company that helps those leaving New York find the right suburb, said there is a name brand associated with the Rivertowns, and nearly every couple leaving the city takes a look there. But some are surprised by how tiny the villages are, and how quiet their streets. They see a handful of restaurants in Irvington or Dobbs Ferry, spy a few mom and pop shops and wonder aloud if the place is too simple for their urbane tastes. "They'll look at us and say, 'This is it?'" Ms. Bernstein said. That isn't a problem in Montclair, where there are big name retailers like Anthropologie, Lululemon, the Gap and Whole Foods. There is also an indie movie theater, as well as numerous coffeehouses and more than one well stocked independent bookstore. And makeup guru and local resident Bobbi Brown is opening a 32 room boutique hotel, The George Inn, there this month. Paul Molakides, who opened Boro6, a wine bar and restaurant in Hastings in Hudson, a year ago, admits that small town life isn't for everyone, but he hardly misses having a retail chain store nearby. Mr. Molakides, a protege of Danny Meyer who trained at Eleven Madison Park, said he can't go to the grocery store without bumping into a patron, a neighbor or a friend. But for Mr. Molakides and his wife, Jennifer, there is no better place for them, their two children or their restaurant. From the large picture windows across from the village's hardware store, he can wave to friends strolling by on Warburton Avenue. "We all came up here with the same mentality: You can take us out of the city, but you can't take the city out of us," he said. It is these new residents with their vision and fresh energy, say local residents that is beginning to change the look and feel of the Rivertowns. Dobbs Ferry is getting its first lifestyle boutique, At Land, where kombucha will be on tap alongside 300 wool sweaters. And while there is no movie theater in any of the villages, a new development in Dobbs Ferry along the Saw Mill Parkway, called Rivertowns Square, is catering to an upscale clientele with an iPic cinema, where "farm to glass" cocktails are served, and an 18,000 square foot Brooklyn Market that is set to open this year. Small town life has its perks, residents say. Sonya Terjanian, an advertising copywriter and novelist who is working to designate a historic district in Dobbs Ferry, and her husband, Pierre, a curator of arms and armor at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, said they will often get a text from another parent saying their sixth grader is headed to the diner or to a friend's house. Here, parents can give their children more freedom to roam because someone always has an eye on them. "I appreciate that," Ms. Terjanian said. But for buyers looking for something between small town life and a large urban suburban township like Montclair, there is a happy medium: SOMA, an area named for Maplewood and neighboring South Orange, which suffers only in that it is perhaps a bit too charming. The thriving row of local businesses along Maplewood Avenue includes a well stocked bookstore, Words, a well curated home store, Perch Home, and a movie theater where the name over the marquee Maplewood is spelled out in art deco letters. The biggest controversy: allowing a Starbucks in town. For some people leaving Manhattan, he said, moving to a New York suburb is easier to digest than trading their city identity for a Jersey one: "As amazing as it is here, some people just can't do it." Mary Kate Burke, 41, who moved to a Tudor in Maplewood with her 15 month old daughter, Maya, and her husband, Shardul Kothari, 46, six months ago, said she worked through her stereotypes of Jersey quickly. "We found this progressive little pocket where it was diverse and family oriented," she said. They had been living in Washington Heights, and while the Rivertowns were only a few stops north, they seemed too posh for her family's tastes. Plus, her husband was working in Hoboken. "That commute just didn't make sense," she said. She appreciates the diversity of her new hometown, where it is common to spot rainbow flags hanging from residents' front porches or to see two fathers pushing a stroller to town. "Nothing about Maplewood," she said, "is cookie cutter." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Real Estate |
What are some of the most important things about right wing media that people don't understand? Almost all right wing support in the United States comes from a view that Christians are under attack by secular liberals. This point is so important and so little understood. Logic doesn't matter. Fact checking doesn't matter. What matters is if I can use this information to show that liberals are evil. Many of them are not interested in reporting the world as it is, but rather to shape the world like they want it to be. A recent poll suggests about 70 percent of Republicans now believe the election was rigged. Can that be blamed on right leaning media when President Trump is spreading misinformation about the results? They go along with whatever he says. Before Trump won in 2016, conservative media was actually, finally, starting to develop a marginal sense of independence. But once he became the president all of that just fell apart. Now you can't have a conservative outlet unless you worship Donald Trump. Your business will be destroyed. You can't have a career in conservative media if you are against Donald Trump, with only a few exceptions. Would this be possible without Facebook and social media platforms? Facebook is the primary protector and enabler of the far right in the United States, without question. The company has sheltered and promoted this content for years. Mark Zuckerberg even now says that Steve Bannon calling for beheadings is not justification to ban him. Zuckerberg was also fine with tolerating Holocaust denial until he was called out for it. Do you see a way out of this, or will the problem get worse? The first step is to get people to improve their information diet. If you're eating nothing but candy or toxic food you are going to get sick. If you can improve your news diet to include things that you like but also other things that might be challenging to you then you are going to have a much better understanding of life. In the information age, the people who control the information control the age. That is something that the right wing media apparatus has figured out. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Technology |
Why were you drawn to Minimalist artists? It was very physical and gutsy, and they were taking huge risks when they first began. You don't have an image to help you interpret anything. And the radicality of that really hit me right from the beginning. Coming from France I had little idea who these artists were there wasn't a strong contemporary art scene when I was growing up. And then I became totally hooked. Minimalist sculpture looks great in white cube galleries. But how is living with it? I always thought that it looked like New York rigid, sometimes imposing, very muscular. But I have to say that living with it in a place like this city actually calms me. How do you put works together? It's easier for me than it is for a museum. I don't have a story to tell. I just put together things I want to see together. I'm mostly drawn to three dimensional works, but we also have some paintings such as Glenn Ligon's "Stranger 39," above and as you can see, none of them are specially lighted. I don't want that kind of drama I want them to look like things that are lived with. Have you had the chance to spend time with any of the artists you admire? A few. I met Louise Bourgeois once and I loved it. But the meeting was very tough, I must say. She refused to speak French at all! The grouping of a Carl Andre wood piece, "The Way East West (Uncarved Blocks)" from 1975, with three totemic looking Bourgeois bronzes from the 1940s and '50s situated in the glow of a 1976 Dan Flavin light work in your entry hall isn't something you'd be likely to see in a museum. What led to that? | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Art & Design |
In 1995, Debbie Martin was flipping through The Village Voice looking for apartments when an ad for a sublet in Chelsea caught her eye. The sublet was really cheap about 500 a month. When she called to inquire, the musician who lived there warned her that it was really small a single room occupancy, or S.R.O., in fact, with no kitchen and a shared bathroom down the hall. It was also, he added, in the Chelsea Hotel. "He said, 'I don't know if you know it,'" Ms. Martin recalled. "And I said, 'Yeah, I know it.'" When she told her husband, Ed Hamilton, he was over the moon. "We had always wanted to live at the Chelsea Hotel!" Mr. Hamilton said. One of his favorite writers, Thomas Wolfe, had lived there, among other famous residents. "It seemed like a really cool place. And it was, then." The room they moved into was barely 100 square feet, and they had to sneak around so the hotel's then manager, Stanley Bard, wouldn't find out they were subletting (though he did soon enough). They also had to leave every few months when the musician came back to maintain his tenancy. "We were so happy to get in this place," said Mr. Hamilton. "Everyone was an artist or a writer or a musician of some sort. When we moved in, we lived next to a punk rocker, an old blues guy and a violinist. There was an unspoken rule that you could just wander into whatever party you wanted to. It was a very accepting place." A year and a half later, Mr. Bard offered them an upgrade to a 220 square foot room on the eighth floor, also an S.R.O. They have lived there ever since their stabilized rent now runs 1,100 a month. The room, which has high ceilings, two large wood framed windows and tatty wall to wall carpeting, is densely packed with books and papers and clothes. Mr. Hamilton sold his philosophy collection hundreds of volumes when he moved to New York, but they both admit to a weakness for book buying. "I really regret having to sell my philosophy books," said Mr. Hamilton. He did, however, get to keep his foosball table, though he gave up competitive foosball some years ago. "Sometimes I'm like, 'Maybe we could sell the foosball table?'" Ms. Martin said. "But you can see his blood pressure go up." Their room is now one of only two S.R.O.s left in the building, which has been undergoing interior demolition for the past decade, following Mr. Bard's 2007 ouster by the hotel's board of directors. Since then, the Chelsea has traded hands a number of times, shifting between various partnerships there's been talk of a boutique hotel, luxury condos and some combination of the two. Only some 50 rent regulated rooms remain in the building there were about 150 rentals and 100 hotel rooms in 2007. Many tenants have taken up temporary residence elsewhere as construction drags on, frustrated by the plastic sheeting they must pass to get to their apartments and the omnipresent dust that seeps in from cracks in the walls. It's noisy during the day and eerily quiet at night when workers go home. "It feels like a tomb," said Mr. Hamilton, who, along with Ms. Martin, has chronicled the saga of the Chelsea's latest chapter on their blog "Living with Legends." Mr. Hamilton, who credits the Chelsea Hotel with inspiring his fiction, has also written a book about the hotel's history, "Legends of the Chelsea Hotel." His recent book of short stories, "The Chintz Age," deals with artists and hyper gentrification. Much as they miss their neighbors, there is one silver lining to the current state of affairs: Mr. Hamilton and Ms. Martin have the bathroom they once shared with four other rooms all to themselves. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Real Estate |
In the weeks after Stephen K. Bannon's ouster from the Trump White House last August, his flagship organization Breitbart News verged, at times, on a Bannon vanity project. Ads on the website promoted fidget spinners emblazoned with Mr. Bannon's likeness ( 7.95 each) and a 212 page hagiography "Bannon: Always the Rebel," by Keith Koffler. Breitbart writers were dispatched to Alabama to boost the Senate bid of Mr. Bannon's preferred candidate, Roy S. Moore. But as Mr. Moore's loss last month suggested, Mr. Bannon's influence only stretches so far a lesson that he is now confronting in humbling terms, as his leadership of Breitbart, arguably the most influential right wing website, is suddenly in doubt. Mr. Bannon's belief that his own cult of personality could satisfy Breitbart readers has run into the fallout from his brazen criticisms of President Trump, published by Michael Wolff in the book "Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House." Once seen as a champion of Trumpism, Mr. Bannon has been reduced to "Sloppy Steve," as Mr. Trump phrased it, with the White House urging Breitbart to consider removing Mr. Bannon. The quoted remarks have roiled not just members of his pro Trump Breitbart audience, but also a major patron, the heiress Rebekah Mercer, who controls a minority stake in the site, where Mr. Bannon serves as executive chairman. The question now: Does Mr. Bannon need Breitbart News more than Breitbart News needs Mr. Bannon? "People who go to Breitbart don't go there everyday because they give a damn about Steve Bannon," said Kurt Bardella, a former Breitbart spokesman. "We could be looking at a new world order here in terms of who will occupy the space of Donald Trump's preferred conservative platform." Mr. Bannon appears to be trying to stay at Breitbart. His penance began on Sunday, with a public statement in which he attempted to distance himself from his portrayal in Mr. Wolff's book. For one thing, he claimed, his description of a 2016 meeting between Russians and Donald J. Trump Jr. as "treasonous" was intended to criticize Mr. Trump's former campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, not the president's son. Media figures more famous than Mr. Bannon have learned the hard way that audiences tend to remain loyal to institutions, rather than individuals. For Mr. Bannon, the possibility of losing control of Breitbart the vehicle that propelled him into the national spotlight, and eventually the highest echelons of power could present a significant test to his potency as a leader of a political and cultural movement. Among the most unsettling developments for the Bannon camp was losing the support of Ms. Mercer, a hard line conservative donor, who said on Thursday that her family had ceased communicating with Mr. Bannon and denounced his statements in the Wolff book. "I have a minority interest in Breitbart News and I remain committed in my support for them," Ms. Mercer said in a statement. 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. Perhaps luckily for Mr. Bannon, Ms. Mercer cannot unilaterally dismiss him from his company. Mr. Bannon's fate was probably in the hands of Breitbart's other owners the family of Andrew Breitbart, the founder, who died in 2012, and its chief executive, Larry Solov, the former Breitbart News general counsel and childhood friend of its founder. Representatives of Mr. Bannon and Breitbart News did not respond to inquiries over the weekend about Mr. Bannon's future at the site. Under Mr. Bannon, who assumed stewardship after Mr. Breitbart's death, Breitbart News moved from a scorched earth fringe site known mostly for publishing incendiary articles that were deemed sexist, racist and xenophobic to an unlikely voice for disaffected conservatives and a rallying place for passionate supporters of Mr. Trump. Its readers remain faithful to the president, a fact that Mr. Bannon seemed to acknowledge in his statement on Sunday. Stephen Bannon, President Trump's former chief strategist, was ousted from his post as executive chairman at Breitbart News, the right wing website he used as a mouthpiece. Steve Bannon is out at Breitbart News, the right wing website that served as a megaphone for President Trump's former chief strategist. His ouster was put in motion after these remarks by Bannon came to light. "'He's not going to make it,' Bannon reportedly said. 'He's lost his stuff.' "Treasonous and unpatriotic." Those comments sparked the president's wrath ... "In a blistering statement the president said ... and gave Bannon the nickname 'Sloppy Steve.' The former Breitbart chairman, who once boasted about overthrowing the Republican establishment in a blazing revolution, also lost key conservative allies, a sign that his revolution may not be televised. The family of hedge fund billionaire Robert Mercer played a major role in funding Bannon's platform, but not anymore. In a statement, Rebekah Mercer said, After the book published, Bannon issued this statement But that didn't patch up the discord with the Mercer family. Rebekah Mercer controls a minority stake in Breitbart and a majority stake in Bannon's future. She ultimately forced him out of Breitbart. Between Trump and Bannon, the split has been more swift. Bannon was one of Trump's most trusted aides until August ,when he left the White House. That was just days after white supremacists marched on Charlottesville. "I think there's blame on both sides." Critics accused him of channeling Bannon in that response. While in the White House, reports say Bannon had a profound influence on policy bringing in other far right nationalist figures to help shape laws. And after he was out of the White House, Bannon continued to enjoy the president's support. "And I can understand where Steve Bannon is coming from. So I can understand fully how Steve Bannon feels." After leaving the White House, Bannon helped Roy Moore's controversial campaign for Senate. After Moore lost the election, critics including the president blamed Bannon. Still, he was steadfast on his campaign for a populist conservative revolution. Now, his feud with Trump and departure from Breitbart may bring that to an end. Stephen Bannon, President Trump's former chief strategist, was ousted from his post as executive chairman at Breitbart News, the right wing website he used as a mouthpiece. Lexey Swall for The New York Times Mr. Bannon's aggressive style and creative agitprop were clear factors in Breitbart's recent success. On Facebook, its reach now rivals news organizations like Yahoo and The Washington Post. The site hired correspondents in Europe and the Middle East, and poached reporters from establishment news organizations like The Wall Street Journal. In Washington, Mr. Bannon kept a residence at the so called Breitbart Embassy, a Capitol Hill townhouse controlled by the site, where he courted candidates and threw V.I.P. filled soirees. A recent book party for Laura Ingraham, the Fox News host, attracted prominent journalists and White House officials. But as Mr. Bannon nurtured his real world aspirations, Breitbart's audience waned from the heights of last year's presidential race. In November, the site received 13.7 million unique visitors in the United States, according to data from comScore, down about 20 percent from last January. It also lost advertisers who did not want their brands to appear alongside Breitbart articles. The site struggled for acceptance in other ways, too. Despite employing a full time reporter in the White House, Breitbart's application for Congressional press credentials was denied. Its hunt for a larger headquarters in Washington was stymied by some commercial landlords who were uncomfortable about housing the business. Mr. Bannon, a tenacious and shrewd operator, may yet cling to his Breitbart chairmanship, and Mr. Trump is known to re embrace associates even after public defenestrations. The campaign manager whom he fired in 2016, Corey Lewandowski, remains a close adviser. On Sunday afternoon, a blaring, all capital letters headline on Breitbart.com announced to readers that, reports notwithstanding, its leader was sticking with their cause. "Steve Bannon Issues Statement," the headline read. "My Support Is 'Unwavering' for Trump and His Agenda." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Media |
The opening sequence of the third season of "Westworld" naturally recalls the opening sequence of the first, when the wholesome rancher's daughter Dolores Abernathy (Evan Rachel Wood) was still stuck in her loop, greeting beautiful days that typically ended in rape and murder. Now she remembers everything, including the 1 percenters who made her part of their bachelor weekends, and she's finally in their world, leading an android vendetta that turns these people's own technology against them. She can not only breach their security systems but also cue up a killer track from their Spotify playlists. The original idea of "Westworld" was that the hosts were more human than humans too complex to be understood simply as machines, yet completely vulnerable to man's worst instincts. Last season muddied that line of thinking, especially as Dolores was concerned. It was not clear how different hosts might respond to liberation, which offers the possibilities and moral responsibilities of being fully human, but it had the curious effect of making Dolores more remote and one dimensional. The quest for revenge had flattened her out as a character and made her unrecognizable even to Teddy (James Marsden), who took his own life after she engineered the sweetness out of him. Among the many virtues of "Parce Domine," the first episode of the new season, are distinct signs that Dolores may rediscover her earlier self. In the opening, she is still the righteous angel of vengeance, taking down a Delos mega investor (Thomas Kretschmann) who didn't limit his violence against women to the park alone. She has read his "unauthorized autobiography" in the Forge, so she knows everything he's done, and she swiftly commandeers his high tech security system, which turns his fortress into a prison. ("You want to be the dominant species, but you've built your whole world with things more like me.") | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Television |
When it comes to new development, buyers who are choosing to stay in New York and have the means to stay are choosing Brooklyn and Queens. Five months after Covid 19 crippled the city's real estate market, sales across the city are down, but the boroughs beyond Manhattan are faring better, in some rare cases even exceeding pre pandemic expectations. While the New York exodus, to the suburbs and beyond, has so far been overstated, many of those who have left were affluent residents with second homes and had played a disproportionate role in supporting the overpriced Manhattan condo market, which was already slumping before Covid 19. Citywide, more than 60 percent of new condos remain unsold and much of that supply had accumulated before the virus arrived, according to Kael Goodman, the chief executive of Marketproof, a real estate analytics company. Now the market is leaning once again on first time and move up buyers, many of whom are working from home, thinking less about their commute time and more about savings. New York has not been a welcoming market for young buyers, indeed some would be buyers have been pushed out because of rising costs and job loss, while others may have moved elsewhere to wait out the pandemic. In the process, these sales could reshuffle the priorities of new development for years to come: more outdoor space, fewer bells and whistles, and above all, smaller price tags. The shift could also be a blow to the ultraluxury skyscraper, as more buyers show a preference for smaller "boutique" buildings and less reliance on cramped elevators. No market was immune from the slowdown. From the start of New York's stay at home order on March 22 through the end of August, there were 488 reported contracts signed for new condos citywide, a 40 percent drop from the same period last year, according to Marketproof. The demand in these neighborhoods also challenges the notion that buyers are rejecting big cities in the wake of Covid 19, said Jonathan J. Miller, the president of Miller Samuel Real Estate Appraisers Consultants. "This is all about wealth and mobility, not density," Mr. Miller said, noting that nearly every large urban market he tracks nationwide, with the exception of Manhattan, has improved. Perhaps one reason for the disparity, he said, is the astronomical rise in prices in Manhattan over the last decade that targeted a shrinking pool of well off buyers. Their departure meant more opportunities for first time buyers, who often compete with cash flush investors looking to buy multiple units to rent or flip. The share of all cash buyers of co ops and condos in Manhattan last quarter fell to just under 41 percent the lowest rate since 2014, after hovering around half of all buyers for years, Mr. Miller said. In search of relatively lower prices, new development buyers looked to Long Island City in western Queens. From June 22, when in person showings restarted, through August 23, condo signings were down 21 percent, to 77 from 98 in the same period last year, according to data compiled by Patrick W. Smith, an agent with the Corcoran Group. But the largest share of those sales, 62 percent, went into contract for less than 1 million, compared to just 40 percent in the same period a year ago. It's a major shift from early last year, when speculators snatched up top dollar units in anticipation of an Amazon campus that local residents rejected. There were five deals signed for more than 2 million from late June to late August last year; this year there were none. "The people buying today intend to use it for their primary residence," he said. Demand has varied. At Skyline Tower, a condo skyscraper in Long Island City with over 800 units, where the bulk of units remain unsold, there were just 8 reported contracts from late March to late August, compared to 193 in the same period last year. Eric Benaim, the chief executive of Modern Spaces, which is leading sales there, said there were 13 contracts signed in that period. A slowdown is to be expected a year after initial sales, but the tower also has some of the most ambitious prices in the area, such as a 678 square foot one bedroom that was asking nearly 1.2 million, or more than 1,760 a square foot. "It's such nonsense," said Gary Barnett, the chairman and founder of Extell Development, which owns the tallest residential building in New York, Central Park Tower, as well as several other skyscrapers. He said tall buildings with ample elevators and common area can be much less crowded than boutique buildings with less shared space. Price has been the thornier issue in Manhattan. "We just can't get those prices anymore," he said, noting that discounts in the ultraluxury condo market can range anywhere from 5 percent to 30 percent. "It beats the hell out of our margins," he said of the current market, noting that his firm is losing money on more than one project. None Testing the Limits: Only three of New York's 25 tallest residential buildings have completed safety tasks required by the city. The Downside to Life in a Supertall: 432 Park faces some significant design problems, and other luxury high rises may share its fate. Luxury Developers' Loophole: Soaring towers are able to push high into the sky because of a loophole in the city's labyrinthine zoning laws. An Evolving Skyline: The high rise building boom has transformed the city's skyline in recent years. Its impact will echo for years to come. Hidden Feats: Our critic looks at some supertall N.Y.C. buildings and how the ingenuity of engineers helped build landmarks. There have been some exceptions. The J.D. Carlisle Development's Madison House, the tallest tower in NoMad, where prices for its 199 units ranged from 1.4 million to 13.73 million, has had 38 contracts signed since July, according to Marketproof, though some of those units may have been bought before Covid. In Harlem, the condo at 300 West 122nd Street postponed an April launch and spent time retooling the design, such as scrapping two units to create a work from home space for residents. The developer, Happy Living Development, decided to start sales in July, ahead of a planned September rollout, because of strong interest from prospective buyers, said Rachel Medalie, a principal at the firm and an agent with Douglas Elliman. "We had 700 registrations," for a 170 unit building, she said. "In normal times that was a great number, in these times it was outstanding." Studios start at under 500,000 and the priciest unit is a 3.4 million four bedroom. Fewer than 20 apartments have private outdoor space, but they have been very popular, she said. The sales team is awaiting signatures on 20 contracts, she said, all at asking price, and many buyers are coming from Midtown or downtown Manhattan, in search of more affordable new development. It is nevertheless jarring to consider 1,350 a square foot, the blended average in the building, to be a bargain, especially when the median price was 587 a square foot a decade ago in Harlem, before a recent wave of new development, according to StreetEasy. For Anu Raga Mahalingashetty and her partner, Patrick O'Donnell, both 36, a six month search led them to 88 Lexington, a new eight unit walk up in Bedford Stuyvesant, where prices ranged from 769,000 to 1.175 million. They browsed nearly 400 apartments online, nearly all of them in new buildings, in search of solid construction, outdoor space and reasonable carrying costs. Ms. Mahalingashetty, who works for a global health firm, and Mr. O'Donnell, an engineer, bought a two bedroom apartment in the building in April, when the city was still grappling with climbing infection rates. "I think the city will bounce back," Ms. Mahalingashetty said, even though, in the short term, so much of what they love about New York has changed. "Half of our friends have moved out of the city and they were all Manhattan dwellers," she said. The ones in Brooklyn and Queens stayed. For weekly email updates on residential real estate news, sign up here. Follow us on Twitter: nytrealestate. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Real Estate |
When Jasmine Collins, a hairstylist in the Atlanta area, turns her clients around to face themselves in the mirror, it's often the first time they have seen their own hair styled in years, maybe decades. Rep. Ayanna Pressley opens ups about living with alopecia and hair loss. Ms. Collins has a niche clientele of women with hair loss that is caused primarily by traction alopecia: hair loss from the tension exerted by styles like braids, extensions (with the hair braided underneath) and wigs. Ms. Collins is convinced that increased wig and weave wear since the early 2000s has caused widespread hair loss among black women. "Remember 20 years ago, when people were wearing their own hair with relaxers?" she said. "People had heads full of hair." "I am not anti weave," she said. "I'm just trying to spread the word about an issue." The topic is fraught for black women. Wigs and weaves give them styling versatility, and, when done well, can protect their own hair. But critics are quick to accuse extension wearers of submitting to the pressures of a Eurocentric society and its beauty standards. Another assault has a misogynistic slant namely that wearers are trying to deceive men with hair that is not their own. Last year, Whoopi Goldberg added puzzling commentary when she conflated black women wearing straight blond extensions with cultural appropriation. Amid the cacophony, change is brewing. As women let go of wigs and weaves, stylists like Ms. Collins have perfected hairstyles to hide hair loss, and doctors are helping women through the process of growing back their own hair. "A lot of people think they'll be in weaves for the rest of their life," Ms. Collins said. So, What Causes Traction Alopecia? Traction alopecia is caused by inflammation of the follicle when the hair is being pulled too tight for too long. "It's probably the most common form of hair loss we see in the black community," said Crystal Aguh, an assistant professor of dermatology at Johns Hopkins University Hospital in Baltimore and an editor of the textbook "Fundamentals of Ethnic Hair: The Dermatologist's Perspective." Hair that is naturally curly is also fragile. Because of bends in the hair, sebum from the scalp, a natural protectant, can't travel down the length of the shaft. The bends themselves also make curly hair prone to breakage. Hair loss happens in phases. Pain and little bumps around the follicle, called traction folliculitis, are the first signs that a style is too tight. Subsequent thinning, traction alopecia, can still be reversed. After that, when the follicle is put under repeated tension, it scars over and hair stops growing permanently. This is called scarring alopecia. Braids, wigs and extensions can be worn safely and are not the direct cause of hair loss. But when they put too much tension on the hair or are worn constantly, the follicles inflame and hair breaks. Women may notice hair loss but feel trapped in a cycle of wearing extensions to cover it. "Patients come into my office, and they don't even want the nurses to see their hair," said Michelle Henry, a dermatologist in Manhattan who specializes in hair loss treatments. "These styles braids, weaves are so a part of our culture that people think their hair loss is hereditary." Can You Really Camouflage Balding Spots? Ms. Collins started posting striking before and after photos on her Instagram account two years ago. When word got out, she was styling about 120 clients a week. ("I was running myself into the ground," she said.) She has a lighter client load now that she has passed on her technique to the nine stylists at her salon, Razor Chic in Lithonia, Ga. Education is part of her broader mission. "A lot of stylists don't know how to camouflage someone's hair," Ms. Collins said. "That's another reason I'm always teaching classes." She teaches in person and online styling seminars, streamed through her website, razorchic.com. Ms. Collins attributes her work to an expertise in hairstyling fundamentals. Camouflaging hair loss comes down to giving each client the right haircut and color, then working with her face shape to conceal balding along the edges or at the crown (or both) with whatever hair is remaining. Her chemical straightening strategy depends on hair texture and length. If someone has medium to long hair, she won't put a full relaxer in it, "because I want the fullness and volume," she said. "The only time I'll do a bone straight relaxer is if I have to go very short." New clients spend around 500 for services and any maintenance products Ms. Collins recommends. "I'm able to give a person a nice look so they can walk around confident enough to rock their own hair," she said. How Do You Begin to Grow Back Your Own Hair? Dr. Henry balances empathy with an urgent message about the condition. "The conversation I have with my patients is you can stop wearing these styles now and save your hair, or you can continue and end up with permanent hair loss," she said. Because traction alopecia is caused by inflammation, Dr. Henry injects the scalp with steroids. "I also make a compound with minoxidil that helps growth, a steroid and a little bit of tretinoin to help it all penetrate," she said. Platelet rich plasma therapy, in which growth factors from the patient's own blood are injected into the scalp, can stimulate hair growth, too. Dr. Aguh doesn't ask her patients to go cold turkey on a hairstyle because such a regimen is too difficult to stick to. Instead, she requests smaller, consistent changes. Relaxed hair is more likely to break when it's braided, so she asks patients who are wearing extensions and also use relaxers to space out chemical treatments, for at least 12 weeks, and eventually go natural. "But if you're really noticing a lot of thinning, you have to get a style that doesn't include your broken hair at all," she said. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Style |
John Cale didn't spend very long in the Velvet Underground. Four years after he co founded the band in 1964, Lou Reed unceremoniously kicked him out. "It was undisciplined art," he said while surveying "The Velvet Underground Experience," an exhibition about the famously influential rock group that opened on Wednesday at 718 Broadway. "It was very energetic and frivolous and enjoyable." The two story, 12,000 square foot exhibition is finally arriving in the band's hometown, mere blocks from the group's original Lower East Side rehearsal space, after transferring from Paris, where it was seen by 65,000 visitors, according to organizers. Like the band, it's unruly, with blaring concert footage competing for attention with pornographic videos and kaleidoscopic posters. Black and white footage flashes across dozens of screens; solemn voice overs are nearly drowned out by throbbing live concert audio amid towering visual homages to filmmakers, painters and classical composers. Cale is the only surviving member of the group's original lineup (the drummer Maureen Tucker joined eight months later). Over the weekend, he walked through the still unfinished exhibition, stopping in front of displays that triggered recollections of the whirlwind era: "There are a flood of memories." While much of the show focuses on New York, it begins with the troubled childhoods of its founding members Reed, who grew up in Long Island, and Cale, who spent his early years in Wales. In the gallery, Cale laughed and winced at an image of a slicked hair teenage version of himself playing piano in a jazz band. He said he experienced a musical breakthrough when the BBC lost his sheet music right before he was about to be filmed playing a piano composition: "I was terrified," he said. "But what happened is the scary side of it really made things happen. It felt really good." Black and white photos by the Village Voice photographer Fred McDarrah cover one wall, capturing the fury of Vietnam War protests and the daring experimentalism of avant garde creative spaces like La MaMa and the Filmmakers' Cinematheque. It was within this fertile creative space that Cale and Reed met and started playing music together, developing sonically dissonant and lyrically raw songs like "Heroin" and "I'm Waiting for the Man." ("He was in kind of a fragile state," Cale said of the teenage Reed.) Cale marveled at the frenetic scenes, taking an extra beat to examine a photo of Marlon Brando and James Baldwin shaking hands. "The portraits on the wall are portraits of a kind of a cultural revolution, where all these people that weren't artists were saying that were now artists and there's nothing you could say about it," Cale said. "Everybody had an 8 millimeter or 16 millimeter camera: They would shoot one night and show it the next night up on a bed sheet." A flag reading "Cafe Bizarre" in ghostly letters hangs overhead in a corner of the exhibition a replica of the one that flew over the dingy Greenwich Village tourist trap, one of the band's first performance spaces. Cale remembered it fondly: "It was a really good floor for blasting music." But the audience there was less enthusiastic. Photos show a visibly nervous crowd watching Cale, Reed, the drummer Maureen Tucker and the guitarist Sterling Morrison scowling in all black. Cale said that people walked out and the owner threatened to fire the band if it played the morbid "Black Angel's Death Song" one more time. Of course, it did. "A little bit louder, maybe," Cale said of the encore performance. "We were very obstinate." Despite the negative reception, the band caught the attention of Andy Warhol, who became their manager and injected the group and its menacing aesthetic into his confrontational multimedia events. "We spoke to something that was visceral and internal, which was heroin and drugs and people hurting themselves," Cale said. "Andy, when he saw this, realized that Cafe Bizarre was the wrong place." In 1965, Warhol added the German singer and model Nico to the group and took them on the road for a series of freewheeling performances titled "The Exploding Plastic Inevitable." Cale laughed upon seeing a photo of Nico driving the band in a banged up Winnebago. "She was pretty good no tickets," he said of the chanteuse's driving. Their destination was a "pop wedding" in Michigan in which the Velvet Underground wailed away and Warhol gave away the bride. "It was chaos," Cale said. "Warhol was sitting at the edge of the stage handing out slices of chocolate cake. Jimmy Page got onstage holding a violin bow." After Cale left the band, he embarked on a fruitful solo career of songwriting and production; he is currently recording an album slated for release in 2019. He says the New York of today feels like a shadow of the one that drove the Velvet Underground's music. "It's a little alien; it's like I'm looking at a replica," he said. "I didn't mind the grime so much in the '60s. It was really fodder. It pushed us in one direction to really get something done." A brightly colored wall downstairs at the exhibition pays tribute to many of the Velvet Underground's New York inheritors including Blondie, LCD Soundsystem and the Strokes but Cale is more interested in talking about a Southern subculture that reminds him of his past. "Some of these guys out of Atlanta, you can't really quite understand their lyrics, but it really doesn't matter," he said of the titanic rap scene that has birthed some of the genre's biggest stars, from Young Thug to Migos. "If I can use out of tune stuff, they don't need words to make sense. There's definitely a lineage." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Music |
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