Split (2)

train · 585k rows

text stringlengths 1 39.7k	original_task stringclasses 8 values	original_label stringclasses 35 values
PERTH, Australia Amelie Mauresmo won her two Grand Slam singles titles in 2006 and retired three years later. She had no idea that Roger Federer, the man who won Grand Slam singles titles on those same weekends as her in 2006, would still be on top of his sport more than a decade later. "I don't know how he does it," Mauresmo said. "What it puts on your body is huge. The training, the matches, the travel, the jet lag, anything." Mauresmo and Federer won the Australian Open and Wimbledon singles titles in 2006. Two years older than Federer, Mauresmo, 39, retired from the sport in 2009, at 30, and is at the Australian Open as coach of the French player Lucas Pouille. Federer is at the Australian Open as the two time defending champion. His bid for a 21st Grand Slam singles championship begins Monday in Melbourne. "Winning back to back Australian Opens like this, in my mid 30s, it's one of my favorite things I will look back on in my career," he said. "I didn't think it was going to happen, and I had such a great time here in Australia the last couple of years and always enjoyed playing here." Federer acknowledges his age readily, quipping at the Hopman Cup recently that his 20 year old opponent, Stefanos Tsitsipas, "could be my son." And he marvels at his own ability to run up the score in the record books 99 titles and counting at an age when many would count him out. But after an auspicious start to last season, when he won his first 17 matches, Federer seemed to trail off. After winning the title in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, in February and briefly reclaiming the No. 1 ranking, Federer went without another tournament championship until October. After skipping the clay court season for the second year in a row, he lost in the quarterfinals at Wimbledon after holding a match point against Kevin Anderson, and in the fourth round of the United States Open to John Millman. Federer played down the doomsday talk that accompanied his stagnation in the second half of the year. "I wasn't too disappointed," he said. "I was more surprised to hear that there was sort of concern, or people were saying, 'What a bad second half to the year.' " He said what he needed to do better this year "is really play well when it really comes down to the crunch." Federer said he trusted his own evaluations of his play as well as input from his coaches, Ivan Ljubicic and Severin Luthi. "I can analyze with my age, very well my own matches and my own feelings," he said. "I have two great coaches, two of the best in the game, who give me their fair assessment, and I have a fitness coach who tells me if I'm moving good or not. They're all open and honest towards me. I don't want any sugarcoating; I want it real, and straight. That's it. I know, always, where I'm at. "It's very clear in my team where I stand. And from that standpoint, I'm happy where I am right now. I'm in a great position." Mauresmo longs to learn more about what Federer does in his off seasons. "I hope one day he will explain to everyone everything," she said. "The little details, everything that he's put together to be able to play this well at his age, to move this well." Federer is not exactly clandestine about his routines. He prefers, for example, to do his off season movement drills on a tennis court, rather than indoors as many players do, to better simulate the footing and friction of match conditions. "I do a bit of weights, too," he said, grinning and gesturing toward his lithe frame. "I know we don't see it, but I do." Federer started his season auspiciously, winning all eight sets he played at the Hopman Cup last week, never dropping serve in any of the matches. But he considers the top ranked Djokovic the clear favorite at the Australian Open. Djokovic, a six time champion in Melbourne, has won the last two Grand Slam tournaments. "We know who the usual are," said Federer, who is seeded third, "and I'm part of that bunch." The longevity of that oligarchy, which also includes Rafael Nadal, has blocked several younger players from breaking through on tennis's biggest stages. No player currently younger than 30 has won even a set in a Grand Slam final. "We're all tired of you guys already, but what can we do?" fourth ranked Alexander Zverev, 21, said during the trophy ceremony of the Hopman Cup on Saturday, when he lost to Federer in singles and mixed doubles. "Especially you," he added, turning around and looking at Federer, who laughed. "I mean, you're 30 whatever! Why? Just, why? Let us have one."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Sports
It's not exactly a shock to see construction chaos in an apartment owned by two architects. After all, they tear things down and build new ones up for a living. But for the married architects Marion Weiss and Michael Manfredi, who have run their own firm for 26 years, the current state of the kitchen in their Brooklyn Heights apartment deeply midrenovation is an anomaly. "We're finally doing it after 20 years," Mr. Manfredi said. "We're like the cobbler's children. We never have time." Ms. Weiss brought out a tiny model of the kitchen. "I made my own maquette with Scotch tape and watercolor paper," she said. Their apartment is in a 1920s building designed with a mash up of exuberant styles, including Romanesque arches. The exterior is far from the sleek functionality served up by Weiss/Manfredi in projects like their 2012 visitors center at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden and their seven story building at Cornell Tech, the new sustainable campus on Roosevelt Island a collaboration between Cornell University and the Technion Israel Institute of Technology. Known as the Bridge, their building, which opens in September, is intended as a sharing space for university partnerships with corporations and has a 24,000 square foot solar canopy. Then again, "Mies lived in a very Beaux Arts building," Mr. Manfredi added, referring to the Modernist architect Mies van der Rohe. Inside the clean lined apartment, much more the couple's style, hangs what Mr. Manfredi called "stuff we've collected over the years," and several pieces have a distinct Italian flavor. (He grew up in Italy.) On one living room wall hangs an artist's proof of an untitled 2010 Tara Donovan print depicting swarms of tiny dots; two 2007 photographs of the grounds of a conference center that the architects designed on Long Island, one by Geoffrey James and the other by Thomas Roma; and a 19th century topographic map of Rome and environs. Ms. Weiss, 59, and Mr. Manfredi, 64, talked about their art at the end of a workday. These are edited excerpts from the conversation. Architects seem to like black and white form wins out. MICHAEL MANFREDI You can't go wrong. The irony is, we always have some hot color in our projects. MARION WEISS It's a reduction. A curatorial narrowing down of what you can see. Why blend old and new pieces? MANFREDI We don't want to live in a particular moment. We love Tara Donovan's work, the way she takes simple things, like dots, and transforms them into something ethereal. WEISS Super contemporary and super ancient, together. If you squint your eyes, her piece evokes the map in the grouping. Her topographic, cloudlike expression echoes it. The Capitoline view of Rome is sort of odd there's a big triangle of unused civic space next to this grand staircase. WEISS The shapes in this piece have been lingering in our mind the wedges taking two different directions, and the triangulation of perspective. It inspired our Olympic Sculpture Park in Seattle 2007 , where the highway passes under the center of the park. Do maps also dovetail with architecture? WEISS One thing that characterizes our work, that differentiates us from a lot of contemporary architecture which is often abstract and volumetric is the idea of the journey. The Bridge project is so intriguing in this way. The building is designed to foster productive collaborations through both programmed and informal spaces that are interconnected by stairs and lounges with river to river views. Your two photographs are landscapes but have a very different feel. WEISS Geoffrey James had a benevolent, Olmsted view of the grounds, and Thomas Roma saw something different he sees the menacing in the innocent. Same worlds, different eye. Are you being punny by having a photograph by someone named Roma over a view of Roma? WEISS Oh. We never thought of that, actually. That is so funny. But I like it, we'll take it.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Art & Design
A series of paintings by Hilma af Klint, collectively titled "The Ten Largest," are made yesterday fresh even though they were created in 1907. They are a highlight of the new Guggenheim exhibition, "Hilma af Klint: Paintings for the Future." Credit...George Etheredge for The New York Times A series of paintings by Hilma af Klint, collectively titled "The Ten Largest," are made yesterday fresh even though they were created in 1907. They are a highlight of the new Guggenheim exhibition, "Hilma af Klint: Paintings for the Future." If you like to hallucinate but disdain the requisite stimulants, spend some time in the Guggenheim Museum's staggering exhibition, "Hilma af Klint: Paintings for the Future." The museum's High Gallery the name has added resonance in this context displays the show's rapturous overture, a series of 10 paintings by af Klint (1862 1944), a little known Swedish painter, modernist pioneer and erstwhile spiritualist. Collectively titled "The Ten Largest," they may induce disorientation, not the least for the way they blow open art history. These game changing works envelop you in hues from dusty orange to pale pinks and lavenders, tumbling compositions of circles, spirals and pinwheels, and unfurling ribbonlike lines that sometimes form mysterious letters and words. The scale of the motifs and the paintings' sheer size (10 feet by nearly 9 feet) invite you to step in and float away to the music of the spheres. That they are rendered in tempera on paper, lighter than oil on canvas but still quite painterly, contributes to their levitating power. In their wit, ebullience, multiple references and palette, "The Ten Largest" seem utterly contemporary, made yesterday fresh. But prepare for label shock: they were created in 1907. The idea that a woman got there first, and with such style, is beyond thrilling. Yes, I know art is not a competition; every artist's "there" is a different place. Abstraction is a pre existing condition, found in all cultures. But still: af Klint's "there" seems so radical, so unlike anything else going on at the time. Her paintings definitively explode the notion of modernist abstraction as a male project. Despite several decades during which modernism's history has been expanded and diversified, there is something towering about the emergence of af Klint, which really began in earnest in the 1980s. (She knew she was ahead of her time, and stipulated that her work not be exhibited until 20 years after her death but it took even longer.) Her reappearance finally settles the question raised in Linda Nochlin's 1971 essay, "Why have there been no great women artists?" There have been, but their achievements reach us in circuitous ways because of the obstacles that plague artists generally, and women particularly. These reasons so complex and individual have to do with the nature of artistic ambition, the psychic and material needs that make fulfillment possible and the extent to which these needs are met by society. Some artists, in response, create their own citadels of rationales, systems and even delusions especially when exploring abstraction, which society had not yet accepted in art. As a female artist at the turn of the 20th century, af Klint received only some of the support she needed. Born into a prominent Swedish family her father was a naval officer and her grandfather was a nautical cartographer she was able to train at the Royal Academy in Stockholm, graduating with honors in 1887. These honors included the use of a studio in a building where, in 1894, there was an exhibition of Edvard Munch, whose use of thin paint may have been germane to her own. She supported herself by painting landscapes and portraits and also illustrated a volume on equine surgery. But the true center of af Klint's art emerged elsewhere, furthered by her scientific interests (Darwinism, subatomic particles) and by spiritual pursuits she shared with many artists around the turn of the 20th century, including Kandinsky and Mondrian. She had long studied occult and spiritualist writings, including Rosicrucianism and Buddhism, and in 1889 she joined the Swedish Lodge of the Theosophical Society. In 1896 she began meeting regularly with four other female artists to pursue occult practices. They called themselves The Five, prayed, made automatic drawings, kept notebooks and through seances attempted to communicate with other worlds. During trance like states, The Five eventually contacted spirit guides they called High Masters and even named them: Amaliel, Ananda, Clemens, Esther, Georg and Gregor. By 1904, the High Masters began calling for a temple filled with paintings to be created. When the other four members declined the commission, af Klint accepted and in November 1906 she began work on "The Paintings for the Temple." They would eventually number 193, ending in 1915 with the three work Altarpiece series, whose visionary geometries, embellished with gold leaf, are arranged in one of the museum's bays, chapel like. In 1908 she took a four year hiatus to care for her mother, who had suddenly gone blind. The Guggenheim show gives us an inkling of af Klint's parallel lives, following "The Ten Largest" bombshell with a small display of conventional but solid portraits, watercolors of plants and one landscape painting, primarily from the 1890s. Then it plunges as she did into her spiritually guided work, whose temple she envisioned as a spiral shaped building, similar to the Guggenheim's. In the superb catalog to the exhibition, Tracey Bashkoff, the museum's director of collections and the show's organizing curator, points out that af Klint conceived of this structure around 1930, just as Hilla Rebay, the female abstract painter who was a founder of the Guggenheim, began imagining its spiral. To be honest, I'm not any more interested in the particulars of af Klint's belief systems than I am in, say, the mysticism that Agnes Martin conveyed when talking about the delicate stripes and grids of her paintings, or the numerical systems and Mayan hieroglyphs that figured in Alfred Jensen's bright, crusty checkerboard abstractions. All great art has a spiritual component not just a formal one. It's not surprising to learn from a wall text that "The Ten Largest" depicts the human life cycle. The folkloric motifs themselves suggest fertilization and gestation, while the fading color and emptying fields of the later paintings in the series including "No. 9, Old Age" intimate a leave taking. As the work proceeds up the Guggenheim ramp, af Klint continues to surprise, if not always with the jaw dropping impact of the "Ten." In the 26 small paintings of "Primordial Chaos" of 1906 7, she uses blue and yellow (colors she anointed as female and male) and green, to wrest abstraction from a world of squirming spermatozoa, notational charts, decorative writing and a horseshoe crab that evokes a flying saucer, with three exhausts. As with her religious interests, af Klint was not a visual monotheist. There's a continual fluctuation in forms, references and degrees of abstraction. The richly mixed media "Tree of Knowledge" drawings from 1913 show an awareness of Art Nouveau, starting with a silhouette reminiscent of a toadstool or a perfume bottle. The "Swan" series culminates in paintings whose segmented targets on red or black anticipate the unequivocal abstraction of Kenneth Noland, the 1960s Color Fielder. Since 1986, in this country af Klint's art has been seen in only a few group shows and a solo show at MoMA PS1. But this landmark exhibition is the first comprehensive overview. Her century old paintings come to us relatively unencumbered by critical or historical baggage. Their spare planes of color and stylistic diversity tie them to the present, underscoring how many painters, especially women, are reinvigorating abstraction by making it flexible and worldly. However af Klint's achievement alters the past, it belongs to us. Its history begins now. Oct. 12 through Feb. 3 at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, Manhattan; 212 423 3500, guggenheim.org.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Art & Design
Ohad Naharin, who has led the Batsheva Dance Company in Tel Aviv since 1990 and has established the troupe as one of the world's great dance ensembles, will step down as its artistic director in September 2018, the company announced late last week. The position will be taken by Gili Navot, a former Batsheva dancer and rehearsal director, while Mr. Naharin will continue to hold the position of house choreographer. The decision is not unprecedented for dance directors who combine the heavy workload of creative and administrative duties. Jiri Kylian took the same step in 1999, when he stepped down as artistic director of Nederlands Dans Theater after running the company for 24 years, and in 2008 Alexei Ratmansky resigned as artistic director of the Bolshoi, taking up a choreographic position with American Ballet Theater the following year. In a letter to subscribers and donors, sent in Hebrew on Thursday and in English on Friday, Mr. Naharin wrote that he had been contemplating "for some years" how to keep a long term relationship with the company. Resigning as artistic director, he said, would allow him to dedicate himself to creating new work and refining the movement language known as Gaga, which he has developed with the Batsheva dancers and which is now taught worldwide. Mr. Naharin, whose distinctive style and theatrical aesthetic have established him as a major figure in the dance world, transformed the fortunes of Batsheva, which was founded in 1964 by Martha Graham and Batsheva de Rothschild. In his letter, he said that Ms. Navot, 36, had "outstanding leadership qualities necessary for management." He added, "I am certain that this step is an improvement which will enable us to contend successfully with our challenges, new as old."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Dance
PARIS Lamborghini unveiled its Asterion LPI 910 4 concept, the automaker's first plug in hybrid, here Wednesday at a sneak preview before the official press days of the 2014 Paris Motor Show. The 910 in its nomenclature refers to the total horsepower output from the combination of its 5.2 liter V10 engine and three electric motors. The number 4 alludes to the fact it is all wheel drive. The LPI is an Italian acronym signifying the rearward location of its engine. While the Asterion name, taken from Greek mythology, seems to deviate from the brand's custom of naming its cars after fighting bulls, Stephan Winkelmann, Lamborghini's chief executive, was quick to point out a legitimate connection. "Asterion is the proper name of the Minotaur, which itself was a hybrid character; half man, half bull," he said.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Automobiles
Melania Trump, at the State Dinner in Chanel, Gave Everyone Something to Chew On None In the end she played the part, donned the costume and gave everyone something to chew on. Melania Trump, who orchestrated the first state dinner of the Trump administration, a.k.a. the most fancy ceremonial evening since the inauguration, stood next to her husband and welcomed President Emmanuel Macron of France and his wife Brigitte while wearing a Chanel haute couture dress of black Chantilly lace, hand painted with silver, and embroidered with crystal and sequins. The State Dinner Had a Red Carpet, Too Lawrence Jackson for The New York Times Mrs. Trump's dress looked kind of like sparkling sleeveless body armor and reflected a desire to pay homage to the guests of honor and what may be a new "special relationship" (identified thusly by President Trump earlier in the day while brushing what he identified as dandruff off Mr. Macron's shoulders). Chanel is, after all, a brand that is almost synonymous with French fashion, and couture, a specific segment of the fashion industry that exists formally only in France. It was the first time Mrs. Trump had worn Chanel at a major public occasion since becoming first lady, and one of the rare times that a first lady's office has advertised the fact she was wearing couture. Her predecessor, Michelle Obama, often had dresses altered to her specifications and wore an Atelier Versace chain mail couture gown to her final state dinner with then Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi but couture is a sector unto itself, rooted in French history, unabashedly elite, and symbolic of what is known with pride as "savoir faire," or know how. It is also handmade to order, exists only as one offs, and comes complete with prices that can run into the six digits. Mrs. Trump, for example, seems to have taken what was originally a jumpsuit from the Chanel spring 2018 couture collection and had it remade as a dress. But in a world of Trumpian excess, where the first lady once wore a coat that cost 51,500, maybe such a willingness to spend should have been expected (besides, the dress can be donated to the national archive by the designer, which defrays the cost). Mrs. Trump has always been unapologetic about the price of her clothes, and this gown had a dual purpose. As Louise Linton, wife of the Treasury secretary, Steven Mnuchin, said when she and her husband made their entrance, she was excited for "everything French!" Read more about President Trump's first state dinner. There was something ironic about the fact she said that while wearing a silver beaded gown from Roberto Cavalli, an Italian brand designed by an Englishman, but it may not have occurred to her. In any case, Mrs. Trump's decision to wear Chanel was smart, given that her counterpart, Brigitte Macron, had her entire trip wardrobe from stilettos to handbags to the ivory gown she wore to the dinner, embroidered with a lattice of gold chains across the arms and shoulders made by Louis Vuitton. "It is a huge honor for me to see Brigitte Macron wearing my designs while on this trip," said Nicolas Ghesquiere, the artistic director of Louis Vuitton. "I love her style and fashion sensibility," which now represents her country. Vuitton is, of course, another ur French brand that happens to be owned by Bernard Arnault, chairman of LVMH Moet Hennessy Louis Vuitton. Mr. Arnault, said to be the richest man in France, and his wife, Helene, also were guests at the dinner and he was one of the first businessmen to visit Mr. Trump at Trump Tower after his election. Given that LVMH owns Dior and Givenchy, brands favored by Mrs. Arnault, it is probably a good thing Mrs. Trump avoided them, too. That left it to Ivanka Trump to represent American fashion, which she did in a pink tulle and swiss dot Rodarte confection. Otherwise the clothes were relatively low key. Jerry Hall showed up with Rupert Murdoch in bright sapphire blue; Nancy Kissinger, Karen Pence, and Sarah Huckabee Sanders in black lace. Christine Schwarzman, who will soon be standing atop the Metropolitan Museum of Art steps with her husband Stephen as one of the hosts of the Met Gala, wore white opera gloves. It was the first lady who stood out in her glinting metallic gown, just as she had earlier in the day, with a broad brimmed white hat that shadowed her face and matched her white suit with its military mien. And as she had on Day 1 of the French visit, in the black cape that she wore to Mount Vernon. Though each garment came from a different designer, together they created the impression of a woman who has found the glamour in self protection, and who is gradually tailoring the unwritten rules of her role to her own specifications. Creating her own recipe, as it were.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Fashion & Style
Tap on The Line pub was known as the Flower and Firkin during the 1960s. The time Jimi Hendrix spent in London was pivotal in his career's meteoric rise. As the story goes, one fateful night in the late 1960s, Jimi Hendrix, best known for changing the music world with his guitar playing, set free two ring necked parakeets on Carnaby Street and that's why thousands of the nonnative birds haunt London's parks to this day. "Absolute rubbish," Christian Lloyd, a musicologist at Queens University, said in an interview. "It's the kind of thing people want to be true, but it's just not true." Mr. Lloyd would know. His research, along with relics that Hendrix fans would drool over, like his broken Fender Stratocaster from a 1969 Royal Albert Hall performance, is on display at Handel Hendrix in London, a residence turned museum dedicated to the two musical giants who once lived there: Hendrix and the German composer George Frideric Handel. Parakeets may not be part of Hendrix's legacy in London, but he nevertheless left his mark. The several months he spent there, spread throughout the final five years of his life, were pivotal in his meteoric rise. It was also where the nomadic performer found the closest thing to "a real home," as he put it, and where his life was tragically cut short at the age of 27. Along with surviving landmarks from his time in the city, London also retains enough of what appealed to him personally to make for a proper Jimi Hendrix experience, 50 years since the musician last called it home. The concept of home was a complicated one for Johnny Allen Hendrix, born in Seattle in 1942. He was sent to live with his grandmother in Canada when he was 6 and his parents divorced two years later. His mother died of alcohol related injuries when he was 15. After a year in California with the United States Army at age 18, he found his true calling in 1962 as a touring musician. By the time he ended up New York in September 1966, performing in small cafes under the name "Jimmy James," he had developed a "fugitive kind of mentality," according to Mr. Lloyd. This is where Chas Chandler, who had recently quit the Animals and wanted to begin a new career as a manager, was blown away by what he saw and asked Hendrix if he'd come with him to London. On his first night in London, he met Kathy Etchingham, a former D.J. and a familiar face around the city's thriving rock scene, and thus began what would be the most significant romantic relationship of his life. They would eventually move into an apartment owned by Ringo Starr at 34 Montagu Square in December 1966. "During our first weeks together we did a little shopping and sightseeing and I introduced him to friends. Because we didn't have much money we went everywhere on the Underground," Ms. Etchingham wrote in her book "Through Gypsy Eyes." Hendrix had never been outside of North America before, and like any other first time visitor to London, he was drawn to attractions like Buckingham Palace and the Houses of Parliament. "It's a different kind of atmosphere here. People are more mild mannered. I like all the little streets and the boutiques. It's like a kind of fairyland," Hendrix would later say of London. His flamboyant style, from his fashion sense and his approach to rock and blues, was a perfect match for mid 1960s London, as "everyone is starting to experiment: in fashion, in art, in lifestyles," Mr. Lloyd said. He accentuated his look with accessories from Portobello Road, which today claims to be the world's largest antique market. "I arrived here with just the suit I stood up in. I'm going back with the best wardrobe of gear that Carnaby Street can offer," Hendrix said before his first stint in London ended. His scope of the city expanded dramatically after forming the Jimi Hendrix Experience in October 1966 with the bassist Noel Redding and the drummer Mitch Mitchell as relentless performing led to all corners of London. "He played Chislehurst Caves, which is literally a cave. God knows what the sound was like in there," Mr. Lloyd said. Other bands that performed here include the Rolling Stones, the Who and the Yardbirds. The caves in Kent, in Greater London, date back to the 13th century and have been used for various purposes, including the cultivation of mushrooms, a bomb shelter during World War II, and, for some reason, a music venue during the 1950s and 1960s. Today, you can take a guided tour for PS7, or about 9. The venues would get bigger following the U.K. release of the band's first album, "Are You Experienced?," in May 1967. It spent 33 weeks on the charts, reaching No. 2. The album's U.S. cover, now a staple of psychedelic rock era art, included a fish eyed lens photograph of the band, taken by Karl Ferris in Kew Gardens. The gardens, in southwest London, claim to have the largest botanical collections in the world, and were named a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2003. Another pub for Hendrix fans is The Ship on Wardour Street, close to where the Marquee Club once was. It remains a popular music business hangout. "He would walk in there and recognize it instantly," Mr. Lloyd said of Hendrix, had he showed up there today. By the time Hendrix returned to London in July 1968, he was a major star. Ms. Etchingham chose a flat for the couple at 23 Brook Street in exclusive Mayfair, where Hendrix would live for small bits of 1968 (in between touring), but mainly during first three months 1969. The apartment was next door to where the composer Handel had resided well over 200 years prior, at 25 Brook Street. An unlikely pairing of giants Today, both homes of the famed musicians are on display at Handel Hendrix in London. The Hendrix portion opened in February 2016, the centerpiece being a restored version of the couple's "bedsit," made to look as it did in 1969. While technically a bedroom, it was the apartment's main gathering place, where the couple partied with friends and Hendrix jammed with fellow musicians. He also hosted members of the media there for interviews. "He sat on the bed, holding forth and rolling joints," Mr. Lloyd said. "What rock star's bedroom would you get into these days? You wouldn't even get near the house." At first glance, the turquoise velvet curtains (originally purchased from John Lewis on nearby Oxford Street), red Persian rugs, Bohemian knickknacks and piles of vintage vinyl appear to be the actual artifacts, but almost all of the items in the room are replicas. Hendrix requested that most of his possessions be destroyed after the couple had separated for good later in 1969. Thanks to Ms. Etchingham's involvement and enough old photos to go by, replacement items were acquired through memorabilia auctions while others, like the pink and orange striped bedspread, were remade to match the originals. "She was able to recollect an incredible amount of colors and textures that the black and white photographs couldn't give us; gradually the room was restored back to its former glory," Claire Davies, the museum's deputy director, said in an interview. "She also had so many stories about Jimi's brief moment of domesticity with her in the flat that helped to shape our narrative." Elsewhere in the exhibit, visitors can sift through a re creation of Hendrix's record collection, mainly a mix of blues (Muddy Waters, Howlin' Wolf) and rock (the Beatles, Bob Dylan and Cream). He did much of his record shopping at One Stop Records, known for its selection of American imports, across the road from his flat on South Molton Street. It's no longer there, but Mr. Lloyd recommended Sounds of the Universe in Soho for a record shop that would fit Hendrix's tastes. Upscale Mayfair may have seemed like an odd area for a counterculture rock star to live, but it drew many industry types, located close to several clubs and studios. Venues that still exist include The Court (formerly Bag O'Nails) and The Scotch of St. James on Mason's Yard, where Hendrix and others of London's rock elite performed and socialized, including members of the Beatles and the Who. While The Court is for members only, the blue plaque commemorating Hendrix's first performance there outside the building can be viewed by anyone. When it came to food, Mr. Love, a restaurant located on the ground floor of the apartment building, was the go to, with steak and chips a recurring order. Hendrix was not particularly fond of traditional English food. "See, English food, it's difficult to explain. You get mashed potatoes with just about everything, and I ain't gonna say anything good about that," Hendrix told Melody Maker. While Mr. Love is long gone, Hendrix also went for burgers at Wimpy Burger, a chain that originated in the U.S. in 1934 but became somewhat of an institution in the United Kingdom (depending on your tastes). "It's like an English person's idea of what a burger is," Mr. Lloyd said of Wimpy, which still has a few London locations. "If people really want to get a sense of what London was like then in terms of food, that is probably the best place to go." Ultimately, Hendrix's time in Mayfair was short but significant. "When you think of how short his adult life was, it's actually a fairly significant chunk. It's also the part where it all starts going wrong for him in some ways," Mr. Lloyd said. Hendrix's career brought him back to the United States in March 1969. Ms. Etchingham joined him briefly, but Hendrix wouldn't commit to moving back to London, so the couple split in April. Shortly after, the Experience broke up as well, and while Hendrix continued performing, he never would put out another official studio album. His final major performance in England was in August 1970 at the Isle of Wight Festival, and on Sept. 18 he was found dead of an apparent drug overdose in Room 507 of London's Samarkand Hotel on Lansdowne Crescent. While something may have kept bringing him back to London, there's no telling if a roamer like Hendrix would have ever truly laid roots down, had he lived longer. "I'm scared of vegetating." Hendrix said. "I have to move on. I dig Britain, but I haven't really got a home anywhere. The Earth's my home." 52 PLACES AND MUCH, MUCH MORE 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.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Travel
Credit...Darren S. Higgins for The New York Times We launched into the Potomac River just beneath the Francis Scott Key Bridge, which links upscale Georgetown with the chrome and glass office park of Rosslyn, Va., and immediately faced the D.C. kayaker's quandary: Paddle downstream first , taking advantage of the current, to enjoy the majestic bottom up view of the Lincoln Memorial? Or push upstream against the current to quickly escape the urban grip, and then let the current propel us homeward after a day on the water? On this Sunday, we chose to challenge the current first, paddling upstream. You still feel and hear the city, but the fish were jumping as if on cue to a Gershwin Brothers' song, and great blue herons swooped in low on the hunt. As we passed Three Sisters, a trio of rock formations jutting above the surface, we could see evidence of heavy spring rains: Uprooted timber was twisted against the upriver Sister as if huge water fowl had made a nest of trunks and branches, instead of twigs. But the Park Service warning became reality as we approached the next upriver car crossing, at Chain Bridge, where it becomes easy to understand why this is the uppermost limit for recreational kayakers on this stretch of water. Visible up river from here is Little Falls of the Potomac, which the Park Service describes as a "narrow chute of extremely powerful currents." The Potomac narrows. The surface first looks beguilingly calm, but the current accelerates, and with strength. Dig in your paddle. Pull back hard on the stroke. Dig. Pull. Dig. Pull. Dig. Pull. Even strong kayakers are on an aquatic treadmill: You paddle, but you stay in the same place. Kayaking at that cusp of calm waters just below the dangerous currents of Little Falls is a reminder of why you are compelled to return to the river: There is a sense that you are simultaneously insignificant and universal. Halting safely just below the rapids at Little Falls, we did a quick back paddle turn, and rode the current downstream with ease. There is more fast water up the river. Pull your kayak out of the water and drive about 10 miles above Little Falls to find Great Falls National Park, a favorite of white water kayakers but these rapids are only for absolute experts. The Potomac drops 40 feet through jagged rocks and a thin gorge. It's hard to believe that this gorgeous, treacherous patch of extreme white water which includes Class IV rapids (and even Class V after the rains) is less than 20 miles from the White House. Farther upstream are, again, calmer waters and a favorite location to rent kayaks, Riverbend Park, operated by the Fairfax County, Va., government, and an easy drive beyond the District line. On the opposite shore, on the Maryland side of the river's bend, a bald eagle nest is visible high in the trees. Last summer, we were on the water early and saw one of these majestic birds of prey launch out of its nest and divebomb the water right by our kayaks, rising with a fish wriggling in its claws. That was the first time we had ever seen nature's violent but eternal cycle of hunter and prey so close. The memory will be enough forever. Keep going up upriver and there is a constellation of parks, docks and natural landings where a kayaker or canoer can put in. Several of the parks rent kayaks and canoes but there are unlimited options if you B.Y.O.B. (bring your own boat). In March 2017, as the first golf season opened after President Trump's inauguration, the Secret Service and Coast Guard closed off a portion of the Potomac where it runs alongside the Trump National Golf Club, just up river from Seneca Regional Park, whenever Mr. Trump was present. That presented a problem to an assortment of boaters including casual kayakers and canoers, Olympic aspirants, a riverine children's camp and even wounded military veterans who kayak that part of the Potomac for camaraderie and group counseling. Everyone appreciated the need for presidential security. But the president's golf outings are not announced in advance, so the unpredictable closures interrupted boat outings and, if paddlers were on the water before the security shutdown, it meant they could be cut off from access up and down the river for hours, unable to get home. A local paddlers' group, the Canoe Cruisers Association, assisted by Democracy Forward, an advocacy organization, filed suit against the Department of Homeland Security and the Coast Guard. The issue went unresolved until March of this year, when in advance of the suit being heard in court the Coast Guard issued new rules for security along the Potomac River adjacent to the president's golf club, which answered the paddlers' demands. The new rules shrink the length of the security zone, so a number of launch sites remain open, and they allow a 250 yard lane along the Maryland side of the river opposite the golf club. About a dozen boathouses and marinas rent a variety of platforms for those looking to be out on the water for an hour, or a day. Single kayaks are available for 16 an hour, as well as doubles, for 22, which are perfect for paddling with someone inexperienced, or if an adult has a young child along. Canoes are 25 per hour and are preferable if you are taking children or canines or coolers and want extra space, and stand up paddle boards, which rent for 22 per hour, are increasingly popular. Row boats and sailboats are available for rent at some locations, and a couple of boathouses cater to those who want to enjoy classic sculling. For those eager for more than just a casual paddling experience, try out the Potomac Whitewater Racing Center, the Washington Canoe Club and the Canoe Cruisers Association, whose websites list lessons and races and other events on the Potomac. And an area outfitter, the REI Co Op, organizes sunset kayak trips to review the national monuments at golden dusk. 52 PLACES AND MUCH, MUCH MORE Follow our 52 Places traveler, 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.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Travel
Recordings, real or rumored, have been a leitmotif of the Trump era. There was the "Access Hollywood" tape, in which Donald Trump confessed to his proclivity for serial sexual assault. The fabled "pee tape," the existence of which would have been pornographic proof of Russiagate, haunted the first few years of the Trump presidency. James Comey hoped there were recordings of what he described as Trump's mafia like efforts to suborn him. ("Lordy, I hope there are tapes.") Michael Cohen released a tape in which the president assented to a scheme to buy the silence of a former Playboy model he allegedly slept with. Omarosa Manigault Newman had a tape in which she and two other Black Trump staffers worried about the existence of another tape, which she claimed had caught Trump using the vilest of racial slurs. The actor Tom Arnold had a whole cable series about his search, ultimately fruitless, for incriminating Trump tapes. Trump recordings loom so large because they offer the prospect of breaking through Trump's alternative reality, of nailing down this most slippery and mendacious of presidents, of showing everyone who he really is. But even those that materialize are often quickly forgotten, as Trump's approval rating stays low but stubbornly stable and one scandal is eclipsed by another. Our politics suffers no shortage of incontrovertible proof of Trump's venality. What it lacks is accountability. It's possible, maybe even likely, that the famed journalist Bob Woodward's utterly damning tapes of Trump discussing the coronavirus will fall into this same nothing matters cycle. But decent people with public platforms should try to make sure that doesn't happen. It's not just that these tapes reveal the president lying about the pandemic that has ravaged America on his watch. What's shocking even after more than three and a half numbing years is the deliberate, willful nature of the lies. Unlike most Trump tapes, Woodward's actually tell us something new about the president, rather than just confirming what we think we already know. Because Trump is a prodigious consumer of propaganda, as well as a creator of it, it's not always clear how aware he is of spreading disinformation. People who've spent time with him often conclude that truth has no meaning for him. Woodward quoted Dan Coats, Trump's former director of national intelligence, saying: "To him, a lie is not a lie. It's just what he thinks. He doesn't know the difference between the truth and a lie." Trump creates for his supporters a carapace of malignant fantasy, but he often seems to live inside it with them. Yet in recordings Woodward has released of Trump talking about the coronavirus excerpts from interviews conducted for Woodward's new book, "Rage" the president doesn't sound ignorant or deluded. Rather, he sounds uncommonly lucid. On Feb. 7, Trump described the virus as airborne and "more deadly than even your strenuous flus," adding, "this is 5 percent versus 1 percent, or less than 1 percent." It's not clear whether Trump thought that Covid 19 had a 5 percent case fatality rate a number that seemed plausible in February but he clearly knew that compared with the flu, it was several times as likely to kill. And yet he told the country just the opposite. "The percentage for the flu is under 1 percent," Trump said on March 7. "But this could also be under 1 percent because many of the people that aren't that sick don't report." Despite knowing that the virus was airborne, he mocked mask wearing and held several large indoor rallies. He told Woodward in March that "plenty of young people" were getting sick, but over the summer would insist that 99 percent of cases were "totally harmless" and that children are "almost immune." We know now that this wasn't just Trump being buffoonish and engaging in magical thinking. It was conscious deception. Publicly, Trump kept insisting that the virus would disappear. Privately, he told Woodward: "I wanted to always play it down. I still like playing it down, because I don't want to create a panic." Of course, Trump usually loves creating panic about immigrants, about antifa, about low income people invading the suburbs. But there is one place he wants to maintain tranquillity in the financial markets. "Just stay calm, it will go away," he said on March 10. "We want to protect our shipping industry, our cruise industry, cruise ships, we want to protect our airline industry." He added, "A lot of good things are going to happen. The consumer is ready." And so Trump lied to the country about the calamity that would soon overtake it. His administration didn't ramp up a national testing or contact tracing program. He and his supporters pressured states to open up prematurely. A July Pew poll found that only 46 percent of Republicans and those who lean toward the Republican Party considered the coronavirus a major threat to public health, compared with 85 percent of Democrats and Democratic leaners. Trump could have made Republicans take the virus seriously. He chose not to. Not long after attending the president's June rally in Tulsa, Okla., the former Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain died of Covid 19. In August, whoever is maintaining Cain's Twitter account tweeted, "It looks like the virus is not as deadly as the mainstream media first made it out to be." It was Trump who made such a cultish commitment to denying the lethality of Covid 19 into a sign of loyalty. And all the time, he knew better. Trump supporters may not care that their president has knowingly endangered them, withholding potentially lifesaving information that he readily confided to an elite Washington journalist. But that doesn't change the importance of what Woodward has captured on tape. It's now clear that just because Trump is lying to us, that doesn't mean he's lying to himself. Trump's lies sabotaged efforts to contain the coronavirus, almost certainly leading to many more deaths than it would have caused under a minimally competent and non sociopathic leader. On Sept. 9, there were 1,176 coronavirus deaths in the United States. In Canada, there were two. When someone's actions lead to the death of another, we evaluate that person's intent and state of mind in order to assign the right measure of blame. When a president's actions lead to the deaths of thousands, we should do the same.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Opinion
Jack Sheldon was the vocalist on songs like "I'm Just a Bill" from the animated television series "Schoolhouse Rock!" But he was also a prominent jazz trumpeter. Jack Sheldon, an accomplished jazz trumpeter who also had a successful parallel career as an actor but whose most widely heard work may have been as a vocalist on the animated television series "Schoolhouse Rock!" died on Dec. 27. He was 88. His death was announced by his manager and partner, Dianne Jimenez. She did not say where he died or specify the cause. Jazz fans know Mr. Sheldon as a mainstay of the once thriving West Coast scene and as a sideman with Stan Kenton, Benny Goodman and other bandleaders, as well as the leader of his own ensembles. Lovers of obscure TV shows might remember him as the star of the sitcom "Run, Buddy, Run," the story of an innocent bystander who finds himself being pursued by gangsters, which lasted all of 13 episodes in the 1966 67 season. He was also for many years a member of the band led by Mort Lindsey on "The Merv Griffin Show," one of Johnny Carson's more durable late night competitors. In addition to being featured as a trumpet soloist, Mr. Sheldon honed his comic chops in goofy exchanges and vocal duets with Mr. Griffin. (His humor sometimes toyed with television's taste standards. Mr. Griffin once asked him if he had finished high school; he responded by rolling up a sleeve, pointing to his arm and saying, "I had the highest marks in my class.") Beryl Cyril Sheldon Jr. was born on Nov. 30, 1931, in Jacksonville, Fla., and was playing trumpet professionally by his early teens. He briefly attended the University of Southern California and Los Angeles City College and, after two years in the Air Force, where he played in a military band, settled in Los Angeles in 1952. He was soon working and recording regularly, with his own groups and with the saxophonists Art Pepper and Dexter Gordon, among many others. He toured Europe with Benny Goodman's band in 1959 and continued to work with Goodman on and off for more than 20 years. "There actually weren't so many of us at the time," Mr. Sheldon told JazzTimes magazine in 2011, recalling a West Coast contingent of young modernists that also included his friend and fellow trumpeter Chet Baker. "Now there are a million jazz guys out there, and they all play great. But what we were doing back then, back in the '50s that was different. We knew we were doing something special." Known for his warm, rich trumpet sound, Mr. Sheldon was also a busy studio musician, accompanying singers like Frank Sinatra and Peggy Lee and playing on the soundtrack of numerous movies. He was a favorite of soundtrack composers like Johnny Mandel who featured him on "The Shadow of Your Smile," from the 1965 movie "The Sandpiper" and Henry Mancini. "It's a haunting trumpet he plays," Merv Griffin told The Los Angeles Times in 2002. "Henry Mancini once told me, 'If I've got a couple making passionate love onscreen and I'm writing the score, it's Jack Sheldon's trumpet I want.'" Mr. Sheldon led an onscreen big band in the 1991 movie "For the Boys," starring Bette Midler and James Caan as performers entertaining the troops through several wars, and kept the band together afterward for nightclub engagements. He also led a small group, the California Cool Quartet. But he had more than trumpet playing in his portfolio. As a singer, he charmed audiences with an appealingly laconic, conversational style. His offbeat between songs patter inspired, he once said, by the nights he spent on bills with Lenny Bruce and Mort Sahl led to occasional work as a stand up comic and acting opportunities on TV comedy shows including "The Cara Williams Show" (1964 65), on which he played a jazz musician, and "Run, Buddy, Run," his first and only starring vehicle, as well as his long running role as Mr. Griffin's foil. When the jazz pianist, singer and songwriter Bob Dorough was hired in the 1970s to provide music for what became "Schoolhouse Rock!," Mr. Sheldon was one of the vocalists he used. He breezily sang about the use of words like "and" and "but" on "Conjunction Junction," written by Mr. Dorough, and about how a bill becomes law on "I'm Just a Bill," written by Dave Frishberg. Years later, he would sing parodies of those songs on episodes of "The Simpsons" and "Family Guy."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Music
Carol Serling, who helped extend the legacy of her husband, Rod Serling, the television writer best known for creating "The Twilight Zone," through publishing, academic and screen ventures, died on Jan. 9 at her home in Pacific Palisades, Calif. She was 90. Mr. Serling, who died in 1975 at age 50, made a mark in various television projects through the years. But Ms. Serling's work focused largely on "The Twilight Zone," the seminal horror, science fiction and fantasy anthology series that ran from 1959 to 1964. Mr. Serling wrote 92 of its episodes, many bearing the imprint of his socially conscious ideas. As the host, he invited viewers into "a dimension not only of sight and sound but of mind." She was the associate publisher and consulting editor of Rod Serling's The Twilight Zone, a monthly magazine, in the 1980s. She was a consultant to "Twilight Zone: The Movie" (1983), a segmented film adaptation whose four directors included Steven Spielberg. In one segment she had a cameo role as an airline passenger in a remake of "Nightmare at 20,000 Feet," the 1963 episode in which a terrified fellow passenger believes he has spied a gremlin cavorting on the wing outside his window. In 1994, Ms. Serling found two unproduced stories by her husband in a trunk at her home and sold them to CBS, which televised them as "Twilight Zone: Rod Serling's Lost Classics." In 2009 and 2010, she edited anthologies of stories inspired by the series.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Television
WASHINGTON The chair of the Federal Reserve, Jerome H. Powell, met with President Trump on Monday to discuss the economy, a first since Mr. Trump labeled the central bank chief and his colleagues "boneheads" and questioned whether Mr. Powell or President Xi Jinping of China was a bigger "enemy" of America. The meeting, which the Fed said Mr. Trump had requested, was the first between Mr. Powell and the president since February. In the intervening months, Mr. Trump has regularly taken to Twitter or television to criticize central bankers for keeping interest rates too high, often comparing United States monetary policy unfavorably to the negative rates that prevail in Europe. In September, Mr. Trump tweeted that "the USA should always be paying" the "lowest rate" and called Fed officials "boneheads." In August, he asked on Twitter, "who is our bigger enemy, Jay Powell or Chairman Xi?" On Monday, Mr. Trump tweeted that he had just finished "a very good cordial meeting" with Mr. Powell, and that "everything was discussed including interest rates, negative interest, low inflation, easing, Dollar strength," among other topics. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin also attended the meeting. The Fed said in a statement that Mr. Powell had not discussed the outlook for interest rates with the president, "except to stress that the path of policy will depend entirely on incoming information that bears on the outlook for the economy." It then reiterated the central bank's independence from the political process. While Federal Reserve Board officials are nominated by the White House and answer to Congress, they are granted independence in pursuing their goals of stable inflation and maximum employment a separation from politics that the institution guards closely. "Chair Powell said that he and his colleagues on the Federal Open Market Committee will set monetary policy, as required by law, to support maximum employment and stable prices," the Fed said. It added that it would "make those decisions based solely on careful, objective and nonpolitical analysis." The relationship between the central bank and the White House soured starting in 2018, when the Fed was steadily increasing interest rates. The Fed, under Mr. Powell, raised rates four times in 2018, prompting Mr. Trump to accuse the central bank of undermining American economic growth. The Fed has since cut interest rates three times this year, in an effort to insulate the economy against damage created by Mr. Trump's trade war with China and Europe and slowing global growth.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Economy
One mark of great television, which "Atlanta" manifested out of the box its first season in 2016, is that you have no idea where any episode will go until you get there. Donald Glover's comedy about life on the margins of the Atlanta hip hop scene could detour at any moment. It was a richly detailed story about relationships and money and black life that also gave us a black rapper named Justin Bieber, a full length faux cable news debate show (with fake commercials) and a scene of people being run over by an invisible car. In "Atlanta Robbin' Season," which begins Thursday on FX, the mystery begins with the title. Is this simply Season 2 of "Atlanta"? Is it an entirely new series? It is the same. And it is different. And that's a wonderful, surreal, hilarious thing. "Atlanta" has not become "CSI: Atlanta." It continues the story of Earn (Mr. Glover), the manager to his cousin Alfred (Brian Tyree Henry), who raps under the name Paper Boi. But first it drops us off with another set of characters, in a vignette about a peculiar crime not exactly comedy, not exactly crime drama, but a kind of absurdist hybrid. That introduces us to "robbin' season," a term defined by Alfred's deadpan stoner philosopher roommate, Darius (Lakeith Stanfield): the time just before Christmas, when presents need to be bought and "everybody's got to eat." But where does robbin' season stop and regular life begin? Especially for the struggling creatives in "Atlanta" (Alfred's hit single won him more fame than cash), it can be hard to tell. Each of the first three episodes either involves or mentions robbery, sometimes scary, sometimes ludicrous, as with the armed man who sticks up an old friend out of nowhere, apologizing profusely throughout it: "Hey, my fault, bro." But there are also scams and hustles and the everyday pickpocketing of dignity. When Earn goes out with Van (Zazie Beetz), his friend, his sometime lover and the mother of his child, the movie theater refuses to accept a 100 bill from him but takes one from the middle aged white man behind him in line. This focus puts a finer point on what was an intermittent theme in the first season: the larcenous nature of everyday life. Money in "Atlanta" is like an occult force, flowing through everything but accessible only through arcane arts and invocations. You can feel its presence in the loft like office of a streaming music company that Earn and Alfred visit. After a disappointing meeting the audio system glitches trying to play Alfred's music they wander around and see another artist inside a conference room, performing for rapt staffers. Success seems so close, but it's behind impenetrable, soundproof glass. The season also introduces Clark County (RJ Walker), a more successful rapper whose manager a white guy has connections to secure the rich advertising deals that elude Alfred. (Though he's laid back offstage, he's been typecast into a bad boy role by the industry; the only endorsement he's offered is for "cocaine white cheddar" snack chips.) When the characters in "Atlanta" do get money, it's like a silent alarm goes off somewhere; the entire world becomes focused on separating the newfound cash from its holder. A windfall attracts new temporary friends; nightclubs transform into hungry money extraction vortices. Along with its new title, "Atlanta Robbin' Season" has a different, more serial structure from the impressionistic first season. What's blessedly the same: the dry sense of humor, the luscious visual style established by the frequent director Hiro Murai and the writers' effortless fluency with social media's language and quirks. (A brilliant early bit involves the popularity of white girl acoustic covers of rap songs on YouTube.) The storytelling in "Atlanta" is dreamlike, which is another way of saying that it's unusually realistic. As in life, weird or comical developments don't announce themselves before they happen: They just start happening, and your consciousness has to catch up. The off balance feeling this creates is the buzz of watching "Atlanta." That buzz kicks in during the first episode, where Earn finds himself moderating a dispute at the house of his uncle Willy (a crackling guest spot by the comedian Katt Williams). Willy casually mentions that he has an alligator in the bathroom. You don't see an alligator, just a closed door. Is he kidding? Maybe. But now you are in a world where an alligator might be in the next room. This is what "Atlanta" is so good at: dropping you into scenes blind, trusting that getting oriented will be half the pleasure. The approach requires close attention, and the episodes reward a second watching. But they're hardly homework. Mr. Glover and his creative team (including his brother, Stephen) are in enough control of their material to produce meticulously crafted episodes that play like offhanded shaggy dog (or alligator) stories. "Robbin' Season" is so good, it's almost criminal.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Television
"In the long country cut with rain, somehow there was nowhere to begin." So reflects the nameless character, known only as "the Kid," as he wanders an apocalyptic America in Samuel R. Delany's science fiction novel "Dhalgren." A description of the book's physical setting as well as the Kid's fugue state, this sentence exemplifies what Delany has described as the task of fiction: achieving "resonance between an idea and a landscape." It also happens to describe the vertiginous task of writing about Delany. For there is, indeed, nowhere to begin with Delany. Born in Harlem in 1942, Delany published his first novel at the age of 19, inaugurating a broad, genre spanning career that now includes over 40 published works and several major literary awards. His writing combines space opera with neo slave narrative, memoir, sword and sorcery fantasy and an elegy for the sexual freedoms of pre Giuliani Times Square. Delany's prismatic output is among the most significant, immense and innovative in American letters. And because there is no way to summarize his work, about Delany we can never be experts. We can only be enthusiasts. We cannot hope to describe his oeuvre, only our encounter with his oeuvre, and how this encounter has transformed us. "It is not that I have no past. Rather, it fragments on the terrible and vivid ephemera of now." Maybe it was that the Kid's experience of loss resonated with my own. In 1992, when I was 21, my relationship with my family had been shattered by my queerness, and I had absconded to San Francisco for a girlfriend who dumped me upon arrival. In the aftermath, I found a job waiting tables on the overnight shift at Sparky's Diner on Church Street in the Castro, and I found Delany. Around 4:30 a.m., with the neon SPARKYS sign casting a pool of foggy pink onto the sidewalk when the ravers had finished their French fries and tumbled off into the wet blue pre dawn I would crouch in the kitchen, reading "Dhalgren," and later, the book that made me a Delany enthusiast for life, "Stars in My Pocket Like Grains of Sand." "Have you ever arrived on a world at dawn?" asks that novel's "industrial diplomat" and technology ambassador, Marq Dyeth. "You can see the world, this one orange and green with hydrocarbon soups, that one blue and white with oxidized hydrogen broths, another grit gray, still another dust brown, but all, whatever their dominant color, scythed away, as one circles, with night." 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. This rhapsody on dawn as seen from space is delivered by Marq shortly after he is forcibly separated from his lover Rat Korga, a former slave and the sole survivor of a war torn planet. At the hands of the General Intelligence an agency that functions like a combination of OKCupid and the C.I.A., with even more invasive reams of personal information on the universe's inhabitants Korga is calculated to be Marq's perfect erotic match and sent to him. They spend several glorious days together, but the G.I. deems their connection too dangerous, and Korga is deported. "Stars" manages to connect the ethereal appeal of orbit with Marq's yearning for Korga. "Desire isn't appeased by its object, only irritated into something more than desire that can join with the stars to inform the chaotic heavens with sense," he opines. "Fingers can't point to anything anymore. And without such indications oh, I still walk where I walked, look where I looked, but where I saw what once seemed wonderful, I see so little now I feel so little." Delany's books interweave science fiction with histories of race, sexuality and control. In so doing, he gives readers fiction that reflects and explores the social truths of our world. In fact, he traces the lineage of contemporary speculative fiction to Martin Delany 's "Blake; or the Huts of America," a 19th century novel about the escape from slavery and insurrectionary desires in Cuba and the Southern United States that is, as Samuel Delany argues in his seminal 1998 essay "Racism and Science Fiction," "about as close to an sf style alternate history novel as you can get." The lesson of "Stars" one as intimidating and exciting to me now as when I first read it is that desire, language and history are bound together, and that literature has the capacity to realize these connections, and, from them, to spin singular webs. In Delany's novels, desire and language are luminous silks, intensifying and refracting reality. His work thus becomes a paean to the experience of reading itself, which "Stars" makes palpable through ecstasies specific to sci fi. Before they are separated, Korga and Marq participate in a dragon hunt on the planet Vyalou. As they soar over a landscape "more mica than sand," they learn that when dragon hunting on Vyalou, one momentarily fuses consciousness with the creature in flight. "Fly! I flew," Marq thinks. "Chills detonated my spine, my gills erupted rings of excitation, and I arched away, borne through the beat of other urges, to drop through the world built in my mouth, while Rat, at my shoulder, rose." The emotional dynamism of Delany's sentences has been perhaps less acknowledged than his world building, or the sweep of his vision. But when asked to speak about writing as a practice, Delany himself often turns to the art of sentences, and of how to imbue words with such "ekphrastic force" that they summon the material presence of an imagined world. When Korga and Marq return to themselves they are awe struck, struggling to narrate the intensity of their own transformative experience. It is impossible not to hear in that a metatextual echo of the obsession of Delany's practice: that of creating the most immersive possible aesthetic experience for us, his readers and devoted enthusiasts. "I was a dragon," Korga wonders aloud. And then, struck with the impossibility of communicating the exquisiteness of having been a dragon in flight, Korga reaches for the most apt simile he can imagine. "I was a dragon? I was a dragon!" he cries. "It's like reading." Delany's four volume, very queer fantasy series repays the reader's attention. The world he builds begins with a slave uprising and tracks the self emancipated Gorgik the Liberator as he travels the countryside fomenting further rebellions. The third book, "Flight From Neveryon," contains the now canonical story "The Tale of Plagues and Carnivals," which tracks the outbreak of a plague closely paralleling the onset of the AIDS crisis in New York. The travels of an amnesiac drifter through a burnt out, alternate reality America. There may be no other novel of the 1970s, or since, that so profoundly captures the dire atmosphere of a nation in economic and political free fall, and the persistence of love and the survival of eros amid such total brutality. Two extended essays on the social space of Times Square as it has been transformed by waves of gentrification that routed the thriving gay male cultures congregating in its porn theaters. Taking inspiration from Pound's "Cantos," Delany poses the essays as "periploi": contemporary versions of classical and medieval descriptions of coastlines, used as aids to early navigators. The "temporal coastline" of the midcentury 42nd Street/8th Avenue zone comes to life in Delany's classic of queer history. Even if you aren't a writer, you will be fascinated by Delany's generous, indispensable collection of essays on the practice and theory of writing. He has pointed his erudition and imagination toward concrete advice on building sentences, using adjectives and structuring fictional works. The thoughtfulness of this effort makes clear how seriously Delany takes the reader's experience of his texts, and how devoted he has been to confecting dreamworlds for us. "The fiction writer," he says in a bit of advice that might describe his own oeuvre, "is trying to create a false memory with the force of history." Jordy Rosenberg is the author of the novel "Confessions of the Fox." The Enthusiast is an occasional column dedicated to the books we love to read and reread. Follow New York Times Books on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, sign up for our newsletter or our literary calendar. And listen to us on the Book Review podcast.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Books
Lawmakers said in a House hearing on Wednesday that Facebook's plan to enter the world of cryptocurrency and global finance could threaten sovereign currencies or even destabilize governments. A day after a similarly critical Senate hearing, it was the House Financial Services Committee's turn. David Marcus, a Facebook executive, faced over four hours of questions about Facebook's plans for a cryptocurrency called Libra. As was the case on Tuesday, Mr. Marcus was dogged by his company's controversial reputation as well as skepticism of the legal uses of cryptocurrencies. "This is the biggest thing this committee will deal with this decade," said Representative Brad Sherman, a Democrat from California. "This is a godsend to drug dealers and tax evaders." When Facebook announced Libra in June, it said it wanted to create a new global financial system. The initiative, if successful, could put digital wallets in the hands of the more than two billion people who use Messenger and WhatsApp, the messaging platforms owned by Facebook. The antagonism toward Facebook's Libra effort is part of a broader escalation of criticism of tech giants in Washington, which was on full display in a series of hearings on Tuesday. Even before Facebook announced its intentions to move into the financial system, the company had battled concerns that it had grown too powerful. "I think before you move on to Libra, you ought to clean up the messes of the past," Representative Madeleine Dean, a Democrat from Pennsylvania, said at the hearing. Libra also faces doubts from regulators around the world. On Wednesday, the chief economist of the International Monetary Fund, Gita Gopinath, told reporters that she was concerned that Libra could unfairly increase the influence of the dollar in the global economy while also making money laundering more easy, according to a Reuters report. While the Senate hearing about Libra on Tuesday focused on the widespread mistrust of Facebook, House committee members showed more interest in the many practical hurdles that are likely to confront Facebook if it wants to release Libra next year, as it has said it wants to do. "Facebook's plans raise serious privacy, trading and monetary policy concerns," said Representative Maxine Waters, the chairwoman of the committee and a Democrat from California. The system will "yield immense economic power that could destabilize government." Ms. Waters said she was working on new legislation that would make it illegal for big tech companies to get involved in the financial industry, which could stop Libra in its tracks. Mr. Marcus, the executive overseeing Calibra, the Facebook subsidiary working on the project, struck a conciliatory tone for a second day and said Facebook was listening to its critics. "I believe we are owning these mistakes and working to remedy them," he said. Republicans on the committee were more eager to talk about the benefits that might come from Libra, but they also expressed their concern about Facebook's plan. "Quite frankly, I don't care for Facebook," said Representative Barry Loudermilk, a Republican from Georgia. "But I do appreciate anyone who challenges the status quo." Several Republicans asked if Facebook could stop people from using Libra in the way that it has closed the accounts of controversial political figures like the conservative commentator Milo Yiannopoulos. "I don't know," Mr. Marcus said, emphasizing the basic uncertainties that still face the currency. Facebook has designed Libra so that it can be governed by dozens of big corporate partners, organized through a Swiss nonprofit. This is supposed to reduce Facebook's power over the currency, but it led to questions on Wednesday about how much power American regulators would have if governance of the system was not taking place in the United States. Facebook has said that Libra would be backed by several different traditional currencies, held in bank accounts. House committee members expressed concern that this could expose consumers to the risks of currency fluctuations, and might reduce the power of the dollar.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Technology
Most rooms at the Hotel Californian come with one king bed; my mother and I, visiting midweek in November, were able to reserve one of the few double queen rooms with a view. It wasn't the best those go to the suites that face the beach but our spacious third floor room had a veranda with armchairs from which to watch ducks on a greenish creek . The interior was lavishly decorated with oil rubbed bronze lamps and patterned tile the hotel imported more than one million pieces from Morocco but some accents, like the brass snakes above the bed, verged on garish. USB ports by the beds offered an easy way to charge devices; other in room gadgetry proved more difficult. The Nespresso coffee machine was maddeningly difficult to master, even though I use a similar model at home, and ejected every other espresso capsule without dispensing anything. Laser cut panels framed the shower, furthering the Moroccan theme, and while the shower stall was large enough, given the considerable floor space, the lack of a bathtub was curious. The double sinks and marble countertops left plenty of space for our toiletries. The best part of the bathroom: the plush, microfiber bathrobes by the Italian manufacturer La Bottega. Only one of the hotel's buildings has a lobby staffed 24/7 (ours was unmanned after dark; key cards unlocked the door to the street). Every room has a flat screen television, and the hotel provides complimentary Wi Fi, bottles of water and Nespresso capsules. A small gym on the ground floor of the Californian building has up to date machines and can be accessed anytime with a key card, and a pool, firepit and pool loungers line the fourth floor rooftop. There are also lounge areas in the ground floor, Turkish themed spa. Rendered in Moroccan blue, it offers an array of treatments. The executive chef Alexander La Motte, who previously worked at Thomas Keller's Napa Valley landmark, the French Laundry and his New York mainstay, Per Se, elevates beach adjacent dining throughout the property. The airy, market style cafe Goat Tree offers inspired breakfast entrees such as shakshuka, a Middle Eastern dish of baked eggs. For dinner, a finer dining restaurant, Blackbird, serves artfully plated riffs on Mediterranean fare, like figs with za'atar and burrata. The hotel's room service menu offers a more standard assortment of burgers, salads and sandwiches.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Travel
new video loaded: The Last Word: Hugh Hefner	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Media
This article is part of David Leonhardt's newsletter. You can sign up here to receive it each weekday. President Trump doesn't hide the fact that he rejects many of the constraints on presidential power that every other post Watergate president has accepted. Here's a partial list of Trump's flouting: He has defied congressional subpoenas; dismissed the findings of the C.I.A. and F.B.I.; refused to release his tax returns; invited foreign governments to interfere in American elections; continued to own his personal businesses; and forced out an attorney general for not protecting him. To Trump, power matters more than democratic traditions. (And here's a fuller list.) In the last two weeks as the virus has continued to dominate the nation's attention Trump has taken four new actions that fit the pattern: 1. Yesterday, he ousted Glenn Fine, a well respected inspector general who was supposed to oversee the 2 trillion spending in the recent coronavirus bill.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Opinion
In "Love and Monsters," an imaginative post apocalyptic coming of age film from the South African director Michael Matthews ("Five Fingers for Marseilles"), an asteroid doesn't destroy civilization, but humanity's attempt to stop it does. After humans launch rockets at an asteroid heading for Earth, chemicals from the exploding missiles shower the planet and turn insects into giant, terrifying mutants that kill 95 percent of the population and force survivors to live in underground bunkers. "Love and Monsters" picks up seven years after this harrowing event and follows Joel Dawson (Dylan O'Brien), who embarks on a perilous 85 mile journey to find his high school sweetheart, Aimee (Jessica Henwick), after they reconnect over the radio.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Movies
Listening to the alternate takes and behind the scenes recordings of any classic album will unravel some of its timelessness. But there's something especially startling about hearing what went into the making of "Time Out," the Dave Brubeck Quartet's masterpiece, and maybe the ultimate example of a live art form being carved down and mapped out into an impeccably finished product. Chances are this record lives somewhere in your memory, whether you can name it or not. "Take Five," the single that sent the LP to No. 2 on the Billboard chart in the early 1960s, is among the most iconic records in jazz. But from the sound of "Time Outtakes" a collection of previously unheard recordings from the "Time Out" studio sessions, released last week in commemoration of Brubeck's 100th birthday on the family's new label making the album was a sometimes fun, sometimes frustrating process, with the quartet feeling its way into a set of music that had not yet come to feel patented and perfected. "Time Out" would be the achievement that effectively quieted Brubeck's critics. They had called the pianist's music uptight, unswinging and mannered (it often was), and some listeners rightly bridled at the injustice of how swiftly he a white musician whose path ran through the conservatory and the college touring circuit, not the jazz clubs of New York had vaulted over other bandleaders and into a Columbia recording contract. Brubeck often told the story of how ashamed he had felt when, in 1954, he became the only jazz musician other than Louis Armstrong to appear on the cover of Time magazine. He was on tour at the time with Duke Ellington, who was clearly deserving of such an honor himself, and it was Ellington who first showed Brubeck the Time cover when it came out. As he built out his niche in jazz, Brubeck found purpose in a kind of globalism. Fascinated throughout his life by rhythmic complexity, his ears were piqued during a State Department good will tour in 1958, when he heard odd numbered folkloric rhythms in various parts of Asia. He committed himself to integrating them into his compositions, while also making sure to nest hummable melodies inside each tune. On "Time Out," he and the quartet manage to do all this while maintaining an effortless feeling that could easily be adopted by the listener; this was all the more impressive given that Brubeck was not always a graceful, mellifluous pianist. The last track of "Time Outtakes" collects studio banter from throughout the recording session, and we hear Brubeck getting a little frustrated as he strives to capture a perfect take of the autumnal ballad "Strange Meadowlark." It's striking and disarming to hear him throwing around snippets of that song's impeccable chord structure, sussing things out, playing one section here and a snatch of another there, while bantering with the producer Teo Macero. Elsewhere in that track, we hear Macero encouraging the quartet to loosen up, reminding them to think of the session as nothing but a rehearsal. "You're goddamn right it is," one band member jokes, playful but sharp. "And I'm not getting paid for it!" "Time Out" was recorded over three days spread across the summer of 1959. The eight tracks on "Time Outtakes" were all recorded on the first day, June 25, as the band was just breaking in the tunes. The album includes five alternate versions of pieces that made it onto "Time Out" and two tracks that did not (the show tune "I'm in a Dancing Mood" and the ad hoc "Watusi Jam"). Paul Desmond had written "Take Five" partly as a gesture to the quartet's drummer, Joe Morello, who wanted to show off his newfound confidence playing in 5/4 time. Listening to "Time Out," with Morello's broad rolling beat propelling the band and his concise, dramatic solo serving as the track's centerpiece, he is in the driver's seat. But on June 25, the band tried nearly two dozen times to get the song right, and still couldn't. It was scrapped until a session the following week, when Morello apparently nailed it in just two takes. The "Time Outtakes" version is from June, and Morello's part is far less developed; he taps out a sparse but somewhat obtrusive pattern on the ride cymbal, trying to perch on the end of beat one and the start of beat four. By July, he would figure out how do far more while sounding more efficient. Still, there is an unfolding quality on the "Outtakes" version, a sense of reaching for what's ahead, that doesn't pertain to the final recording, maybe because it doesn't have to. Morello's solo on the early "Take Five" unfolds in a growing series of drum rolls, flicks of the wrist that slyly alternate their frequency and then seem to pull Morello's arms across the whole kit. It is a far more cinematic and open display than what we get on the iconic "Time Out," though not as built for posterity.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Music
The three nurses in the Norwegian Jo Stromgren Kompani's "The Hospital" look bored to death. Now and then, they hear a helicopter fly over their outpost but no one lands. And so the nurses take turns disappearing behind one of the set's dirty walls. There's a whack and a howl and then a nurse returns bloodied: Finally, a patient! At the Abrons Arts Center, where "The Hospital" had its New York debut on Wednesday, the audience giggled at every gory return. The three women maul, sexually molest and spit at one another, yet the show's surface tone stays light, silly, even cute. While the underlying story, told mostly through movement, is sad and ultimately as sentimental as a soap opera, it's played for dark laughs, somewhat like an absurdist Nordic version of "M.A.S.H." Very few of the jokes, though, are verbal. When the nurses argue, they do so, amusingly, in gibberish based on Icelandic. It's a measure of the production's achievement and its limitations that their meaning is easy to follow. Their often predictable actions have recognizable motivations and little mystery. When they put music on the loudspeaker and awkwardly dance, it's less clear, moment to moment, why they're doing exactly what they're doing. What seems to matter then is that they're doing it together, like a recitation, a ritual against loneliness. "The Hospital" was made in 2005, and has toured in 22 countries. The original cast performed Wednesday, enlivening the show's familiar attitudes with robust characterizations. Guri Glans was comically tight as the blond boss, strutting like a sergeant, hands in her pockets, forcing the others into sex and hiding the pills for herself. Gunhild Aubert Opdal, initially the meekest, exploded wonderfully after chomping medication, doing a wobbly dance like a baby giraffe learning to walk. Ingri Enger Damon, the surly one, showed terrific gusto in her late impersonation of the crude male American soldier who loved the ladies and left them.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Dance
SEATTLE Microsoft on Wednesday said its sales in the current quarter would be lower than it had previously predicted because of coronavirus related disruptions in Chinese manufacturing. While its fast growing cloud computing business is not affected, the company said its personal computing business, which includes Windows installations and its Surface laptops and tablets, would record lower sales than it told investors to expect last month. "Although we see strong Windows demand in line with our expectations, the supply chain is returning to normal operations at a slower pace than anticipated," the company said in a statement. Roughly a week ago, Apple warned it was cutting sales projections because of the public health crisis from the coronavirus.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Technology
The first few primary debates of the presidential election season are in. We can see where the economic policy discussion is going. Republicans remain wedded to the fantasy that there is no problem tax cuts can't fix. Democrats offer a more varied policy tool kit, hoping to lean against widening inequality and give a leg up to struggling workers. But both parties, focusing most of their concern on the middle class, appear to be ignoring the Americans who need their attention most: the deeply, persistently poor. It is not a small number. Even after accounting for every government assistance program housing subsidies, food stamps, help with the electricity bill nearly 16 million Americans still fall below 50 percent of the poverty line, measured by the Census Bureau's revamped poverty measure that includes the effect of government support. That translates to roughly 8.60 per person per day for a family of four. That group is six million people larger than half a century ago. No other advanced nation tolerates this depth of deprivation. It amounts to one in 20 Americans a share that has refused to shrink despite five decades of economic growth. "This should become a major issue," the eminent Harvard sociologist William Julius Wilson told me. "Unfortunately nobody has organized for these poor people. There is not a mobilization of political resources among the poor." What's perhaps most surprising is how the apparatus of government assistance has turned its back on these people, not just failing to offer new strategies to help overcome the deepest deprivation but even removing critical programs that used to keep many of them afloat. How can this be possible, given that support for low income families has grown substantially since the 1980s? The answer is that even as the government increased its assistance to the poor, it became pickier about which poor it supported. "The distribution of that support has dramatically changed," Robert Moffitt, an expert on poverty and welfare programs from Johns Hopkins University, said in his presidential address to the Population Association of America last year. "That increase has gone to families deemed as deserving and not to those deemed as not deserving." Many of the poorest ended up on the wrong side. From 1983 to 2004, government benefits dropped by more than a third for 2.5 million single parent families with the absolute lowest levels of income. For single parents with private income just above the poverty line, by contrast, they increased 74 percent, and even faster for those who made just under two times the poverty level. The 1996 welfare overhaul, which ended the poor's entitlement to aid from the federal government while increasing benefits for those who worked, sharply realigned the distribution of help favoring the employed, those who are married and who have children, and leaving out the childless and those who had either no or very low earnings from work. Jakala Walker, 8, does dishes in a sink that empties into a bucket in Alligator, Miss. William Widmer for The New York Times All in all, in the early 1980s more than half of government transfers to low income families went to the very poorest. Thirty years later these families received less than one third of the government's help. This choice, as a society, to target most of our help only to those who can help themselves exhibits a blinkered understanding of what perpetuates the deep, intractable poverty that affects many communities. But it serves a purpose. By believing the poor are not exerting enough effort, we allow ourselves not to care. This permits politicians and voters to go normally about their business while 16 million Americans live on 8.60 or less a day. 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. Out of sight, out of mind. "We know startlingly little about life at the bottom of society," notes Matthew Desmond, a Harvard sociologist, in a new journal released on Tuesday by the Russell Sage Foundation one of the nation's pre eminent research institutions on social policy that explores severe deprivation in America. The American antipoverty strategy, so focused on choosing between good and bad guys, those worthy or unworthy of public assistance, is shaped by this ignorance. It exposes the inadequacy of viewing poverty as personal failure and the limitations of relying so heavily on providing low income working Americans with a tax break to encourage better behavior, get a job and just stop being poor. Deep poverty, according to the scholars who contributed to the journal, is an ecosystem, where bad individual decisions occur within broken environments, where the social glue has come unstuck. Cognitive abilities and character are important at the individual level, but they can't be cleanly separated from their environment. Indeed, deep poverty has no single, or most important cause not family, neighborhood, job or education. Plucking at one or the other, alone, won't do. "Deprivations come bundled, packaged, and may reinforce each other over time," said Robert J. Sampson, a Harvard sociologist who is the co author of an essay in the journal with his doctoral student Kristin L. Perkins. "The implication for policy is that one can't just think of extracting out individual causes for policy action." Witnessing the presidential campaign debates, I am not optimistic that deep poverty is going to become anybody's priority. If anything, the very poor seem to recede into the background. I could be wrong. Just a few days ago, Arthur C. Brooks, president of the right of center American Enterprise Institute told me "the time is ripe for a new conservative anti poverty agenda." He argued that such an agenda would be "rooted in core conservative principles like earned success through work and a sustainable safety net for the needy," and that it could "cut across the supposed schism within the movement." Professor Wilson, a progressive, argues there is space for a bipartisan effort against poverty, which could be built around the theme of helping people help themselves. "There are ways to talk about it," he said. One needs "a message that makes people aware that they are better off in a more inclusive society." The American Enterprise Institute and the left leaning Brookings Institution have even sponsored a group of scholars across the political spectrum to put together a comprehensive anti poverty plan that all of them could support. The document will be released in two weeks.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Economy
"In the presidential race, Joe Biden has won the state of Vermont, the safety state of Georgia is still too close to call, but Trump has nabbed Alabama. And you have to see that coming. I mean, Alabama loves football, which is Trump's exact body shape, so that wasn't really a surprise." TREVOR NOAH "Look, I don't know why you're so surprised about Florida. First off, I went to college in Florida that's what you don't remember. I can tell you about Florida. Ain't but two good things in Florida: South Beach and Disney World. The rest of Florida is just strange people in pickup trucks trying to sell you baby alligators." ROY WOOD JR., "The Daily Show" correspondent on Florida being called for Trump "It makes sense because Trump is like Trump is the ultimate Florida mascot, you know? He's got the tan, all his friends are in jail, somehow he has money." TREVOR NOAH "This is crazy! That means Trump hugged all those cactuses for nothing." TREVOR NOAH, on Biden taking the lead in Arizona "And Biden has also won California wow! Despite Donald Trump picking up that last minute endorsement from the wildfires. Unbelievable." TREVOR NOAH "Ohio has just been called for Donald Trump. It's gone from the Buckeye state to the ' expletive why?' state." STEPHEN COLBERT, on Ohio going to Trump "What do you expect? It's the same solid judgment that took a perfectly good bowl of chili and said, 'Know what this needs? Spaghetti.'" STEPHEN COLBERT "Well, you know the old joke about Ohio: What's round on both ends and expletive in the head? Ohio." STEPHEN COLBERT "Let's start in Maryland, where CBS projects that Joe Biden has defeated Donald Trump. ' imitating Trump But Maryland and I have so much in common. We're both known for giving people crabs.'" STEPHEN COLBERT "We are now able to project that Delaware has been won by Joe Biden. Well, I should hope so, it's his home state. That would be like Donald Trump losing New York. beat He what? That's gotta sting." STEPHEN COLBERT "Well, you know what they say: If you can make it here, you're not Donald Trump." STEPHEN COLBERT "And a little further west or north, I'm not sure, Indiana has just been called for Donald Trump. Well, of course it was either vote for him or take Mike Pence back. That's an easy call." STEPHEN COLBERT "And for any Oakies wondering how your pan is being handled, I can now confidently report that the state of Oklahoma is being called for Donald Trump. Well, you know how the song goes: singing 'Oklahoma where they don't care Trump killed Herman Cain." STEPHEN COLBERT "Biden won the hearts of Bostonians with his stirring message of telling a guy from New York to shut the hell up." STEPHEN COLBERT, on Biden taking Massachusetts "Of course in New Hampshire in 2020, 'Live Free or Die' isn't just a motto, it was the two choices on the ballot." STEPHEN COLBERT, on Biden's New Hampshire's win "Turns out the Constitution state prefers someone who has read the Constitution." STEPHEN COLBERT, on Biden taking Connecticut	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Television
LONDON It's really not funny, but Phoebe Waller Bridge can't help it. She is re enacting this YouTube video of a psychopath sitting dead eyed in her prison uniform and recounting how she killed a man. When Ms. Waller Bridge gets to the details the woman drove a nail through her victim's skull, strangled him and chopped his body to bits she laughs, and then she sighs: "Terrible!" Ms. Waller Bridge, a writer and star of strange and beguiling comedic works, is tucked into a red leather booth in the lobby bar of the Soho Theater, eating a browning banana and searching for little openings to laugh about just about anything. She describes something she once did as "hilarious," and then laughs at herself for thinking she is so funny. She tells me that she loves staring into the eyeballs of a live audience, but that on TV it's like she's acting for just one big shiny eyeball, and then she laughs because she's suddenly become hyper aware of my eyeballs. She talks like a one woman band, always pulling some strange new sound effect out of her body. She is 33 years old and just under 6 feet tall, and when she is paired on screen with men, she must deflate herself "PFFFST" to let them seem big. When she laughs, her voice opens into an off kilter melody, as if her throat has recently taken up the xylophone. If you ever have the opportunity to make her laugh it's not hard it will feel like she's thrown her head back and released a song just for you. Her one woman play, "Fleabag," hit the Edinburgh Festival Fringe with such force in 2013 that it left a smoldering Phoebe shaped crater in the comedy landscape. Almost instantly, she was enlisted to adapt "Fleabag" for TV, create and star in another sitcom, write a weirdly funny murder show, and ultimately ascend to the "Star Wars" universe, playing a mouthy droid programmed to deliver "Solo" some comic relief. The sneak attack has become Ms. Waller Bridge's creative signature. "Fleabag," which she will soon take to the Soho Playhouse in New York, is a sex comedy that is secretly a tragedy. The title character is a cafe owning singleton who is always arching a flirty eyebrow at the audience, but her charming mug is a mask a way to hide her grief and shame in the wake of her best friend's death. Ms. Waller Bridge created a modern heroine and deconstructed her at once. "Fleabag" is the kind of early career success that risks swallowing its creator whole. As soon as she made it, she wondered: "Was that it?" Then she charted her next move. When she picks up the character again, for the New York run, she says it will be for the last time. She now knows the role so well that it's just a matter of correctly shuffling the emotional cues: "Don't forget! Pain here! Funny there!" TWO STORIES UP, in the London theater's black box space, someone has hauled out the original "Fleabag" set, the scruffy little pink and beige carpeted platform from which Ms. Waller Bridge leapt to international fame. She will rehearse here for just a week with Ms. Jones before heading to New York. "Fleabag" is her and a bar stool, on which she spends most of the show. "There is a small moment of exertion where I stand up toward the end," she says, when Fleabag's pain finally emerges in a burst of emotional vomit. She heaves into a delicately cupped palm: "HEUGHHH." Before she brought "Fleabag" here, she staged the material that would later become "Crashing," a flat share sitcom that is secretly a meditation on repression. One level down is the theater's main stage, where she had her first real acting job the first one, anyway, where the audience was not gobbling meat pies playing a trader in 2009's "Roaring Trade." Every night the cast would march from stage to bar, where, years later, she'd meet with BBC executives about taking "Fleabag" to television. Around the corner is where she had a falafel with Luke Jennings, the author of the novellas she would adapt into "Killing Eve," a spy thriller that is secretly a screwball romance between an intelligence operative and a psychopathic assassin. Down the street is her alma mater, the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, the acting school that secretly taught her she should be a writer. Soon the actress and the director had teamed up to form a theater company, DryWrite, staging guerrilla theater nights that challenged writers to provoke audiences: make them fight or make them fall in love. One night, designed to incite a battle of the sexes, produced a raft of submissions that were so bleakly misogynistic that they finally moved Ms. Waller Bridge to write a script of her own. In it, she played a woman who somberly explains to her boyfriend that though she loves him very much, she must occasionally have sex with a man with a massive penis, and that every other woman feels the same. The crowd, she says, became a mob: "Everyone was like, WRREUUGHH!" Her early work is sprinkled with notes from her relationship with Ms. Jones. They would spend nights sharing a bottle of wine and playing a terrifyingly intimate game they called "truth songs," where Ms. Waller Bridge would pluck out a melody on her ukulele and every word they sang was required to be the absolute truth. Later Ms. Waller Bridge gave the game to Lulu, the character she played in "Crashing," and what is remarkable is how she takes a sweet memory and curdles it into something awful for the purposes of the story. Lulu, a kind of proto Fleabag, uses truth songs to wreak havoc among her housemates, and the ukulele she carts around like a personality isn't cute. It's infuriating. Though she conceived "Crashing" in her early 20s, it did not air until she was 30 years old, just months before "Fleabag" hit TV. By anyone else's standards, it was a remarkable television debut, but for her, backward motion is a kind of torture. She is always working to keep one step ahead of her audience. When she is out with Ms. Jones at movies or plays, she has this annoying habit of turning to her friend and whispering precisely what's about to happen next. Ms. Waller Bridge constructs her own stories to be "Phoebe proof," Ms. Jones says, which makes them "most people proof." Ms. Waller Bridge works instinctively, prying open new possibilities and savagely deleting existing plots and characters as she goes. She often consults Ms. Jones, who says that she is "such a perfectionist that it is terrifying." She regularly chucks out early drafts that blow Ms. Jones away. (Ms. Waller Bridge has said that she is somewhat less inclined to show her work to her boyfriend, the playwright and director Martin McDonagh). Her ad hoc process can be a challenge in television, where she has teams of writers working beneath her. Writers may tell her about a scene they wrote that they really loved, and she'll have to inform them: "Ooh, that person died, I'm really sorry. I killed that person." She views casting as the secret second half of the writing process, as if her words aren't inked until they come out of the actor's mouth. The final scene of the first season of "Killing Eve," in which the unlikely spy Eve stabs the master assassin Villanelle, was worked out in Ms. Waller Bridge's mother's kitchen. Sandra Oh, who plays Eve, seized a pencil and jumped on Ms. Waller Bridge, and they tussled until they lit upon the precise psychosexual energy of the act. "That's how the moment came," Ms. Oh says. "Not discussing it over wine." Though she is in demand as both a writer and an actress, Ms. Waller Bridge has no interest in making a star vehicle for herself. She initially considered staking out a role on "Killing Eve," but she wrote herself out of the story almost by accident. In the novellas, both Villanelle and Eve are in their late 20s, but she made Villanelle an early 20s angel faced psycho and Eve a 40 something woman with "a big bag and stress eyes," leaving a perfect gap for Ms. Waller Bridge herself, who was then "30 years old and not bendy at all." Another secretly brilliant move: disappearing into a writing project just as her face was hitting Hollywood billboards. WHEN MS. WALLER BRIDGE leaves the Soho theater, she will fold herself into a cab and go put the final touches on the second season of the television "Fleabag," a project that she passionately did not want to do. She had put all of this effort into building the perfect story arc for the first season, and now the BBC wanted her to twist it out of shape to make way for more content. "I was really proud of myself, having such artistic integrity," she says. But when the network asked her to reconsider, it planted a pesky idea in her brain. She began to think about the last thing that anyone would ever expect of Fleabag, and now the second season is about her finding faith. Ms. Waller Bridge swears she will not do another one. In her career, as in her plots, she is working to defy expectations. She sneaks out of all of the boxes that people want to trap her in: the comedy writer, the sex writer, the feminist writer. When "Fleabag" came out, critics were fixated on how sexually explicit it was, which is ironic because the sexual bravado is the character's disguise, her way of preventing anyone from really seeing her. As soon as the entertainment industry sinks its teeth into a smart young woman, it seems to want to extract her perspective and blast it into every possible market segment: the memoir slash manifesto, the newsletter, the body positive Instagram account. After "Fleabag," Ms. Waller Bridge got loads of those kinds of offers. Instead of asking, "What do you want to do next, as an artist?" they wanted to know: "Could you spin that into a book?" It's not enough for a woman to write a beloved television show, or three. "It's part of the job now," she says, "to be a brilliantly articulate spokesperson for feminism." But she's already poured her best insights into "Fleabag," and she doesn't see the point of cranking open the hood on her art and exposing all of its parts. One time she cited Bret Easton Ellis as an inspiration in an interview, and when it caused a ripple of feminist backlash how could she appreciate the work of a male chauvinist? she was bewildered, like: "Don't attack me for reading." Actually, she finds that misogyny invigorates her: "It makes me want to retaliate artistically," she says. Ms. Waller Bridge relishes writing moments where women get thwacked, cartoon rake style, by the contradictions of feminism. But secretly, she is not interested in focusing on the things that keep women down. Her characters aren't entrapped in feminist controversy or pulverized by the patriarchy. "They're just getting on with it," she says. "Funny, clever women running the show." She is aspirational in this way, always pitching women toward some strange, as yet unseen future. She just wants to show them living their lives as bats.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Theater
LONDON Royal Dutch Shell's chief executive, Peter Voser, plans to retire next year, after a decade in top management jobs in which he helped the company recover from an accounting scandal and become the world leader in liquefied natural gas and related businesses. Mr. Voser, 54, made the unexpected announcement as Shell reported first quarter profit that reflected only a modest gain from a year earlier but still exceeded analysts' expectations. "After such an exciting executive career I feel it is time for a change in my lifestyle and I am looking forward to have more time available for my family and private life," Mr. Voser said Thursday in a statement. One longtime associate said Mr. Voser had long privately expressed a wish to retire by age 55. Although Shell's chairman, Jorma Ollila, said the board would consider outside candidates to replace Mr. Voser, the company has a team of executives who might be contenders in what the industry assumed would be an orderly transition. With 87,000 employees across the globe, and second only to Exxon Mobil in terms of production by Western oil companies, Shell would not be an easy company to change, in any case. Mr. Voser, who began his business career at Shell in 1982, left in 2002 to become the chief financial officer of a struggling maker of industrial equipment, Asea Brown Boveri, in his native Switzerland, where he made his reputation by helping to lead a turnaround. He returned to Shell in the wake of a scandal on the misreporting of reserves that had led to the departure of both the chief executive, Philip Watts, and chief financial officer, Judy Boynton. Mr. Voser started as chief financial officer and was promoted to chief executive in 2009 upon the retirement of Jeroen van der Veer. One of the few blots on Mr. Voser's record would be Shell's high profile exploration effort in Alaska, which has been plagued by accidents and other problems. Those difficulties have led Shell to suspend drilling until at least 2014. Fellow executives and analysts say that Mr. Voser has pursued a strategy of ambitious projects meant to pay dividends for decades. In particular, he has built up the liquefied natural gas and related businesses to a point where they now account for close to 50 percent of Shell's exploration and production earnings. "I think Voser has done a good job for Shell," said Iain Pyle, an analyst at Bernstein Research in London. "The company is left with a strong portfolio of projects and some large, long term projects which should deliver strong stable cash flows for years to come." Shell showed evidence of its strength on Thursday when it reported net profit, adjusted for one time items, of 7.5 billion, up 3 percent from a year earlier. The performance substantially beat analysts' forecasts. Revenue, at 113 billion, declined 6 percent, but financial analysts pay little heed to revenue figures in the oil industry, given the volatility of prices and the ebbs and flows of production. One of the star performers was the new Pearl GTL plant in Qatar that turns gas into liquids, a technology that only a handful of companies have mastered. Pearl was extremely expensive, costing around 20 billion. But it now looks like a smart bet because its products, like diesel, are linked to high oil prices, giving Shell and its Qatari hosts a hedge against any drop in prices for natural gas. Kevin Spacey was ordered to pay 31 million to the 'House of Cards' studio after sexual harassment allegations. Netflix buys a visual effects company in a move to support its global ambitions. Pearl nearly reached full production at the end of last year, which added an extra 175,000 barrels per day in the quarter, Shell said. The plant has a capacity of 260,000 barrels a day. Shell is considering putting a similar plant on the U.S. Gulf Coast, the company's chief financial officer, Simon Henry, said Thursday. Mr. Voser has led an effort to build up Shell's gas portfolio, particularly liquefied natural gas, which is made by supercooling gas into liquid form so that it can be transported, usually on ships. Shell expects global demand for L.N.G. to double by 2025 to the equivalent of about 4.5 billion barrels of oil per year. The business unit called integrated gas, which includes L.N.G. as well as facilities like Pearl, brought in 2.5 billion this quarter. Shell has invested 40 billion in this business in recent years, much of it under Mr. Voser. Analysts say that the advantage of L.N.G., which has extremely high upfront costs, is that it produces steady returns with relatively low capital spending over decades. Shell says it is earning returns of about 25 percent on the capital invested in the integrated gas business. The risk for Shell is that a surge of exports of L.N.G. from the United States and Canada using inexpensive shale gas lowers gas prices in the rest of the world. Recently, North American gas prices have been in the range of 4 per million British thermal units. European prices spot prices, though, were around 10 per million B.T.U.s and Asian prices about 15. Contract prices, especially in Asia, where most of Shell's L.N.G. goes, are often higher and indexed to oil, which is currently much more expensive than gas. A European oil company chief executive, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter, said that Shell's gas emphasis put the company at risk of not only being hit by lower gas prices but also of losing any potential upside if oil prices were to rise.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Global Business
WASHINGTON Federal Reserve officials "have no choice" but to try to "contain future bubbles and credit binges" and limit their damage to the economy, the central bank's vice chairwoman said on Monday, detailing the Fed's newly broadened mandate to promote financial stability. In her first speech since she was sworn in Oct. 4 as the Fed's second highest ranking official, Janet L. Yellen acknowledged that expansionary monetary policy holding interest rates low to stimulate the economy, as the Fed has been doing for more than two years "could provide tinder for a buildup of leverage and excessive risk taking in the financial system." But Ms. Yellen did not say that such risks should deter the Fed from resuming purchases of government debt to prop up the flagging recovery, an action most Wall Street analysts expect the Fed to take as early as next month. She is associated with the camp of so called inflation doves at the Fed, who tend to emphasize the persistently high unemployment rate rather than the risks of setting off inflation. As a member of the Fed's board of governors from 1994 to 1997, Ms. Yellen served under Alan Greenspan in an era when the Fed did not emphasize tough regulation. Later, she was an adviser to President Bill Clinton and the president of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco. In her speech, to the annual meeting of the National Association for Business Economics, in Denver, Ms. Yellen discussed the interplay between monetary policy and "macroprudential supervision," which focuses on the safety of the financial system as a whole rather than the soundness of individual banks and institutions. Supervision and regulation must be the "first and main line of defense" against risks to the financial system, Ms. Yellen said, because monetary policy has other objectives and is "too blunt an instrument" to contain such risks. That position is in line with a central belief of Ben S. Bernanke, the Fed's chairman. Effective supervision should focus on the accumulation of high levels of risk and leverage, Ms. Yellen said, sources of vulnerability that are shared by multiple institutions, and the interconnectedness of the system. Banking supervision and regulation were a focus of the annual meeting last week of the International Monetary Fund. On Sunday, the Institute of International Finance, a global association of commercial and investment banks, said that many countries were piling on regulations too rapidly and giving too little time for new rules to take effect, and warned that bank lending and economic growth could be curtailed as a result. But the same day, the Group of Thirty, a private association of finance leaders, called for "urgent action" on macroprudential supervision. "As we have seen, a focus on individual institutions and markets, absent a systemic view, cannot ensure financial stability and resilience," said Roger W. Ferguson Jr., a former Fed vice chairman who led the working group that prepared the Group of Thirty's report. Ms. Yellen, who was a member of that working group, threw her support behind its findings on Monday. She argued against the idea, fashionable before the 2008 crisis, that business cycles had been tamed and that markets were self correcting. "That view lies in tatters today as we look at tens of millions of unemployed and the trillions of dollars of lost output and lost wealth around the world," she said. Regulators had been "lulled into complacency by a combination of a Panglossian worldview and benign experience," she said. Turbulent events like the Latin American debt crisis and the savings and loan disaster in the 1980s; the Asian financial crisis and the failure of the giant hedge fund Long Term Capital Management in the 1990s; and stock market declines in 1987 and 2000 1 appeared to be manageable at the time. "We appeared to have entered a new period of stability," Ms. Yellen said. "We even gave it a name: the Great Moderation. We were left with a mirage of a system that we thought was invulnerable to shock, a financial Maginot Line that we believed couldn't be breached. We now know that this sense of invincibility was mere hubris." She also spoke favorably of the Dodd Frank overhaul of Wall Street, which President Obama signed in July and which expanded the Fed's mandate, and of proposed global bank regulations, known as Basel III, that will gradually force banks to hold more and higher quality capital. And she said that regulators should compel financial institutions to have enough liquidity and not to rely too much on unstable, short term financing. Ms. Yellen said the new regulatory system should incorporate automatic safeguards and straightforward rules, and involve extensive international coordination. While recognizing that "overly strict supervision" posed dangers, she said that policy makers "had veered disastrously too far in the direction of laissez faire, with consequences we know too well." She concluded by saying: "Next time I hope we can say, 'We did see it coming, and we did something about it.'"	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Economy
Cat Marnell, once a young beauty editor at the now closed Lucky magazine, is known for her drug use and for writing about her drug use at first for xoJane, the online magazine headed by Jane Pratt, and when she flamed out there, at Vice, in a short lived column called "Amphetamine Logic." Her devoted and horrified readers thrilled to the descriptions of her benders on heroin, PCP, crack cocaine, regular cocaine, Adderall and alcohol, among a medley of other narcotics and stimulants delivered in a volley of capital letters and exclamation points, and larded with the names of beauty products, fashion brands and celebrities. Her arch prose style recalled the anomie of "The Andy Warhol Diaries," the deadpan exposition of "American Psycho" and the girl speak pioneered by the staff of Sassy, the teenage magazine edited by Ms. Pratt that was published from 1988 to 1996. Ms. Marnell turned the tropes of women's magazine writing upside down, with stories like "The Art of Crack tractiveness: How to Look and Feel Hot on No Sleep," which offered tips like "Brush your teeth!" along with a how to guide to real beauty products for fellow partyers who might, like Ms. Marnell, have spent the night in a warehouse, as she wrote, with a "bunch of U.K. dustheads for five straight hours." It was irresistible, and also appalling, and the internet tied itself up in knots debating Ms. Marnell's honesty, talent, authenticity and narcissism, along with the exploitative and enabling behavior of her many bosses. Naturally, she got a book deal and a half million dollar advance from Simon Schuster. That she was able to produce her addiction memoir, "How to Murder Your Life," out this week, is a startling feat, given her history of cycling through rehab and psych wards, and her continued prescription drug use. The book is as compelling and as problematic as her magazine writing: vivid, maddening, heartbreaking, very funny, chaotic and repetitive, as benders are. On a recent Tuesday, Ms. Marnell, now 34, welcomed me into her Chinatown apartment, a one bedroom overlooking the on ramp to the Manhattan Bridge. The place, which she rented a year and a half ago, was decorated with stacks of addiction memoirs; a sheepskin rug upon which was laid a strand of blue Christmas lights aglow; a gray wool sofa; a few framed Takashi Murakami prints; and a poster of Harry Styles of the pop boy band One Direction. Birdlike and delicate looking, Ms. Marnell wore bell bottom jeans, a pink tank top and a waist length wig in candy colors, one of a sizable collection she has amassed since her hair fell out a few years ago, she isn't quite sure why. She ordered three cups of coffee from a nearby deli, smoked a Marlboro Light very quickly, blowing the smoke out of the sliding glass windows that open to a fire escape, and then poured herself a glass of white wine. The following interview has been edited and condensed. I've just finished reading your book, which is harrowing, so I'm a little shaken. Dude, that was four years ago. I have everything now but hair, though I'm not in recovery and I'm not clean. People are like, "Is it so brave to tell everything?" I'm like, "No." For me, being brave would be being in a program and getting clean, instead of "I found a way to talk about my problems ad nauseam and somehow get paid for it." Not that I want to reduce what I've accomplished. I want to say good things. One idea about addiction is that it's a way to impose structure on a chaotic world. Ann Marlowe's memoir of her heroin addiction, "How to Stop Time: Heroin From A to Z," out in 2000, is a compelling example. And you still take Adderall and Ambien, right? Yes. That's really true. People think of addicts as being out of control, and they really are. But I'm also a control freak. I want to control everything with a pill, from my appetite to sleeping. Do you feel you've been exploited by the magazines you worked for? No. Addicts exploit people. I exploited every opportunity. I have my whole life. The thing about addiction, everyone is asking, Don't you think addiction books are tired? But I think addiction is as human an experience as anything, like heartbreak. It's like any relationship, a marriage, a divorce, it's a relationship and it's human. I wrote this book really for younger people, for the girl I used to be. Your father, a psychiatrist, prescribed you Ritalin when you were a teenager. It's so complicated. The thing is, the A.D.H.D. drugs did help. If you had seen my grades, failing school failing! and the only thing I had to do was take a pill? That shows the deficit. If my father had been a gun owner, he wouldn't have thought twice about having a gun in his office, and I wouldn't have touched it or done anything violent. But in the same way, as a doctor, he didn't think twice about having samples of Zoloft in his home office. And at 12 years old I did steal samples of antidepressants and bring them to school and take them in front of my friends because I wanted to be cool. I think I am hard wired for addiction. My father is a good man, and a good dad, and so ethical and I manipulated him for years. But this is the problem. Parents are putting their children on drugs, but they don't think of them as drugs. They think of them as medication. You were good at magazines, even when you were a little girl, making zines up in your bedroom. You write that you always wanted to be a beauty editor. Conde Nast editors were like movie stars to me. When I got to Lucky and saw them in the halls, I wanted to huff Anna Wintour. I would stare at Grace Coddington and her fruity red hair. I wanted to be like them so badly, and I did everything I could to fit in. I want my ashes sprinkled in the Conde Nast library. I have a whole collection of magazines in storage. Italian Vogues. Lucky was on the same floor as the international editions, and I got a lot there. I think about Diana Vreeland, she was so fabulous. Her "Why Don't Yous" were better than anything on the internet. I've been trying to start a list of my own. I just thought of one yesterday: Why don't you cultivate a wee garden of carnivorous plants so you can lord over them? So magazines were everything to me; it never felt like work. It's crazy that they are nothing now. I feel so embarrassed having this sleazy book sometimes. Did I just sell out everyone in my life including my parents? Let's talk about your internet reputation. If you Google "Cat Marnell," the predominant image is of you in a slip, with smeared lipstick and matted hair and words written in Sharpie on your forearms. Is this the result of a bender or was it your intention to go for a full on Courtney Love look? I've always homaged. Let's just say it was one night, and it was intentional. It interests me that women paint their face every day. So I was at an event, and I just smeared it. Yes. The reason it's used over and over is because I never showed up for that many things. I couldn't get out of bed. But as a beauty editor who had a drug addiction at the same time, when I got positive attention for that, things just started to meld. Also, I was smoking a lot of PCP. Over the years of writing the book, I couldn't be high every day. I couldn't be high. I had to take my drugs as prescribed. People still come around wanting to smoke PCP. People don't want you to change. But I would never go back. The one thing I regret is I had these black silk blackout curtains a friend who works at Helmut Lang gave me. They were thumbtacked over my windows; I didn't have light in my apartment for years. I would go to bed at 9 a.m. I wish I had saved the fabric and made it into a gown and worn it to my book party. That's a "Why Don't You?!" "Why don't you save your blackout curtains and sew them into a gown?" Your book is dedicated to "all the party girls." Can you elaborate? I always wanted to be a party girl. But party girls don't exist in recovery or rehab. I didn't know until I lost my career that I was an addict and not just a person with problems. Girls come up to me in the nightclubs now, and I see them trotting around in their miniskirts and their flea market rabbit coats and I love them. I was lucky enough to have such strong female mentors, surrogate mother figures like Jean Godfrey June Lucky's beauty director and one of Ms. Marnell's long suffering bosses in roles I forced on them. Now, I don't have a way to mentor young girls. I don't work in magazines or have a job. I can't coach them, but I can talk from an authentic place about what it's really like to go through this stuff. I'm a privileged person, I've never had to struggle, but I've been through it. I really think the only thing about being younger is that you look good. It's what they give you to compensate for the fact you're so unbelievably insecure. I love the girls on the comeup. I love these Instagram models who turn around and get things done. There's no right way to be a woman. That's why I feel so protective of the young party girls who are so smart but think it's all about being sexy and going home with the right guys. All I wanted when I was young was to be cool. Now that I'm cool, I just want to go to Europe. If I were 23, I would have fan ed out, I would have been obsessed with, quote unquote, Cat Marnell.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Style
According to the wine writer Mark Oldman, 47, drinking wine is only a part of its enjoyment. "In order to truly appreciate a good wine," he said, "you need to make a pilgrimage to its source." He should know: His job keeps him on the road for more than half the year, but his travel to wine producing destinations picked up even more while he was researching his new book "How to Drink Like a Billionaire," in which he offers advice on drinking wine with confidence and covers topics such as undiscovered wine regions and surprising wine and food combinations. Below are edited excerpts from an interview with Mr. Oldman. Q. What's your advice on how to best explore a wine producing destination? A. First of all, in advance of your vacation, sample as many wines as you can from the region you're visiting because your trip will be so much more meaningful if you do. And don't make the mistake of trying to visit too many wineries in a day two or three is plenty. Rushing is the opposite of what wine drinking is about, and you want to give yourself the opportunity to spend more time at a winery if there is a chance to; you may get immersed in a conversation with the owner or decide to have an impromptu picnic on the grounds. Also, if possible, avoid wineries on weekends when they're far more crowded.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Travel
This week, the Kardashian Jenner family announced that after 20 seasons, their namesake reality TV show, "Keeping Up With the Kardashians," would come to an end in 2021. When the program first aired in 2007, the leading family was known for its late patriarch, an attorney who represented O.J. Simpson; the Olympian who married in; and a daughter whose personal life was exposed in a pornographic video leak. But within years of the premiere on E!, the women of the family and their matriarch "momager" became, in their own right, some of the most famous and influential people in the world. For the show's loyal fans, its final season means the end of an era of entertainment and access to the stars' personal lives, which the show has documented in sometimes unsparing detail. Even for non watchers, the show's impact may be felt; after all, the influence of "K.U.W.T.K." on celebrity, beauty, entrepreneurship and status can be seen on magazine covers and social media, in shopping malls and e commerce, and on people's faces. Here are a few of the ways the show changed not only TV, but culture at large: In its early seasons, the self aware tackiness of "Keeping Up With the Kardashians" was evinced in the opening credits. The family, dressed in sequins and satin, stands against a cityscape backdrop. A goofy whistling tune plays as they pose for the camera and jockey for attention. These people, with their generously sized home and seemingly relaxed work schedules, are clearly well off. But they're also striving. Fast forward seven years, and Kim is on the cover of Vogue with her husband, Kanye West. A few more years, and Kylie, the youngest, is named a billionaire (a designation since amended, but still, she's loaded). All of them are owners of multi million dollar homes, followed by multiple millions of people on social media, and vastly rich in entrepreneurial ventures. It's easy to say it could have happened to any family; even now, the idea that the Kardashians are "famous for doing nothing" remains persistent. But it wasn't any family. And the numbers keep getting bigger. BONNIE WERTHEIM First there was the store (R.I.P. Dash). Then the beauty collections (Kylie Cosmetics taught the world about "lip kits"); a hit video game (Kim Kardashian: Hollywood); the clothing lines (Skims; Good American; Kendall Kylie, for the younger fans; and the Kardashian Kollection, for the thriftier ones, sold at Sears); the sci fi books (thank Kendall and Kylie for those); a prepaid credit card; and countless brand collaborations. It's not unusual for celebrities and influencers to create products that bear their names. What makes the Kardashians different is their promotion of said brands, which were woven into the show as well as the publicized interpersonal conflicts and life changes that made viewers feel close to the family. Looks like it paid off. Now the landscape has changed, mostly by their own doing. They don't need a TV show to hawk their wares like they may have when "K.U.W.T.K." debuted over a decade ago. The power is in their hands. When you can reach your followers directly on social media, control your public image and make millions? (Billions?) That's a sweet deal. LINDSEY UNDERWOOD Read more on the mogul ization of the Kardashian Jenner clan. It Set New, Unrealistic Standards of Beauty Have the Kardashian sisters gone under the knife? The family line, with a couple of exceptions, is no. They say that their ever changing bodies are sculpted and whittled and plumped through nonsurgical means: Instagram filters, dermal fillers, contour powder, squats. The claim is both ludicrous and shrewd. A triumph of the Kardashian marketing regime has been selling the appearance of extreme, even campy body modification as an accessible consumer experience, one sold through spa trips on "Keeping Up With the Kardashians," makeup chair selfies on Instagram, and branded products like Kylie's lip kits and Kim's shapewear. "Plastic surgery" has long been shorthand for the interplay between Hollywood wealth and glamour, but for the Kardashians creatures birthed by reality television and raised by the internet the idea of scalpel on skin feels too old school, too fleshy, too human for the brand. The Kardashians were the prototypes for the uncanny cyborg look that has since colonized social media. They exist less as fixed images than as a blur of constant technological upgrades. They refashioned femininity into a computer prompt: enhance, enhance, enhance. AMANDA HESS But if the extended Kardashian ecosystem has taught us nothing else, it's that we should also always look beneath a surface. Caitlyn and Kris Jenner each have six children. The Venn diagram of those 12 contains two, Kendall and Kylie who some believe are the most potent of the species. Of the extended family's skills that Kendall and Kylie and their kin have mastered wonderful portraiture of the self, a native sense for the exploitation of brand identity, the ability to dance with stars, an incredible gift for argument and persuasion Caitlyn may be the one who has studied the hardest. The announcement of her gender transition ate a significant amount of the news cycle of the middle of 2015, an otherwise uneventful year apparently. She began secretly meeting with Buzz Bissinger for a profile in Vanity Fair in February; she confided publicly in Diane Sawyer in April. The Annie Leibovitz portraits were released in June for the July cover of Vanity Fair. The reality show called "I Am Cait" premiered at the end of July to millions. It was a rollout of extreme finesse in which everyone went home delighted. ("All stories are part of some coordinated rollout," shrugged the former Vanity Fair editor Graydon Carter to this paper at the time.) Caitlyn brought all the extreme ferocious professionalism and resources of the family to bear, and for good personal reason. But she also did something for the rest of us. In setting the framing of the conversation, she may have changed hearts and minds among older and more conservative and more transphobic Americans. CHOIRE SICHA It Shaped Reality TV As We Know It At this point, we all know that the reality we see on reality TV is not real. But when "Keeping Up With The Kardashians" premiered in 2007, the lines were a little more opaque. It was around the time of "Laguna Beach," and "The Hills," shows famous for making viewers question whether it all was scripted. There were the youths on the "The Real World" who weren't going to be polite anymore and "The Real Housewives" wreaking havoc on Orange County. But then came the Kardashians sharing their worst moments (cheating, sex tapes, robberies) and their best (weddings, births, brands). Of course, we knew. We knew this was all a karefully kreated koncoction. You can't kontrol everything. Real parts of their lives started to reveal themselves through social media and the celebrity news media. Maybe it's better to keep up with them there. The question now for most of these shows and the stars they spawned is what they provide that we can't see for free in real time. Surely they will find a way. LINDSEY UNDERWOOD In a memorable early appearance, Kanye came to Kim's house to rearrange her wardrobe. Kim, explaining why she would let her boyfriend mutilate her closet, told the camera: "He's a fashion designer and he loves clothes, so I'm excited to collaborate with him to see what his take on fashion is." Kanye's design aspirations had been clear to his fans for some time. But for the show's massive audience, Kim's words meant something. They were actualizing. The following year, Kanye signed a deal with Adidas, which led to the creation of the Yeezy brand, a line of shoes and apparel worth billions. The show has helped Kanye promote himself not only as a designer, but as a visionary aesthete, as a husband, as a father and as a Christian. It has provided a counterpoint to those who have scorned his ambitions and a public relations platform in times of crisis. Since 2012, he has grown far more comfortable on camera, and significantly more involved behind the scenes of the show. And in 2019, he appeared in his first confessional. He was inspired to do so, he said, by the Pixar film "The Incredibles," which opens with seated interviews. "The wife got a big butt," he told the camera, explaining the similarities. "And I just see our life becoming more and more and more like 'The Incredibles' until we can finally fly." JONAH ENGEL BROMWICH When Kim Kardashian West announced, in 2019, that she was pursuing a law degree, critics were quick to dismiss her aspirations. She clapped back with a few self referential "Legally Blonde" jokes. It's true that her path was unusual: She didn't graduate from college and had no plans to enroll in law school. (California is one of four states where a degree is not required to take the bar exam; Kim will be eligible once she completes an apprenticeship.) Still, despite the unconventional means, her investment in criminal justice reform was demonstrably real. It Introduced the World to an Entire Universe of Supporting Characters If the Kardashians proved anything during their long run on television, it's that fame is an endless resource that can be harnessed by anyone who knows how to work a camera. Kim, for one, began her ascent to stardom in the early 2000s as Paris Hilton's friend and assistant. Their brigade of on screen best friends includes the "Foodgod" Jonathan Cheban; Malika Haqq, Khloe's longtime BFF; and Anastasia Karanikolaou (a.k.a. "Stassie"), who's often hanging around Kendall and Kylie. Other characters have spun less favorable attention. Jordyn Woods was known as Kylie's best friend until rumors surfaced about her and the basketball player Tristan Thompson, who was Khloe's boyfriend at the time.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Style
The tough guy chatter and feelings in "Triple Frontier" are somewhat more rarefied than in the usual grunting action flick. That's the idea, at any rate, in this slickly enjoyable, bankrupt take on a fail safe formula, one that celebrates an ethos even more enduring than patriotism: old fashioned American greed. And so, once again, rugged he men with sensational skills, character arcs and Michelangelo musculature set off on a mission deemed impossible. Tom Cruise's career suggests that these operations are entirely possible, as does every other movie about rakish charmers facing hopeless odds. Sometimes these prickly and smooth charmers are ex cons; on occasion they're soldiers ("The Dirty Dozen") or veterans (the original "Ocean's Eleven"). Their mission takes different forms but is generally goal oriented whether the objective is sabotage or a fat payout. The American vets in "Triple Frontier" come in the usual flavors, including a gruff top dog, faithful second in command, wild card and so on. All are easy on the eyes. The top dog delivers a St. Crispin's Day style throat catcher and as usual tells the recruits they're free to leave, no hard feelings. No one does. Then it's game on with guns and ammo, followed by squabbles, screw ups and a terrible sacrifice honorable, of course. The director J.C. Chandor sells used goods with verve. (His movies include the superior "All Is Lost.") "Triple Frontier" takes off with a banging overture loaded with the familiar sights and sounds of a phalanx of police vehicles breaching enemy lines, a helicopter swooping overhead. In a generic country that I'll call South Americaville, the police descend on a drug gang lair and bad guys and good point, shoot, fall, die amid a hailstorm of bullets that's topped by a cataclysmic explosion. After the smoke clears, the cool American number apparently running the show, Santiago (Oscar Isaac), turns his back on the police who summarily execute detainees, suggesting that he isn't the story's heavy.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Movies
Valerio Mezzanotti for The New York Times	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Style
Will Returning Players Be Out of Shape? Soccer May Need More Subs When sports do come back, leagues will be trying to pack in as many revenue generating games as possible. At the same time, many of the players coming out of quarantine may not exactly be in tiptop shape. That combination could prove troublesome. International soccer has proposed a solution: allowing five substitutions a game instead of three. FIFA, the governing body, is suggesting the plan, which would apply through all of next season and through the end of 2021 in international play. A sixth substitute would be allowed in games that go to extra time. The move follows a longtime trend in soccer, which did not allow substitutes at all until 1958. If your team's fullback broke his leg, he either had to suck it up and continue or the team had to play with 10 men. The 1970 World Cup was the first with substitutes, and three subs were not allowed until the 1998 World Cup. The strict rules led to storied performances such as Franz Beckenbauer playing on in the 1970 World Cup semifinal with his dislocated arm in a sling and Bert Trautmann playing most of the 1956 F.A. Cup final with a broken neck. Those are scenes that FIFA surely doesn't want coming out of this pandemic. Horse racing continues in at least some states, and some big races are running as scheduled. On Saturday, Oaklawn will hold the Arkansas Derby. And then it will hold it again. With limited opportunities for horses to race, it has been difficult to distinguish the very best runners from the merely good. That means there are dozens of horses whose owners still feel they have a Derby quality horse. To give as many horses a chance as possible, Oaklawn will run two Arkansas Derbys, with 11 horses in each field. Both races will have the full 500,000 purse, and both will offer full qualifying points for the Kentucky Derby, now scheduled for Sept. 5. Among those in the races are the Louisiana Derby winner, Wells Bayou; the Tampa Bay Derby winner, King Guillermo; and the Breeders' Cup Juvenile winner, Storm the Court. It's the first time the Arkansas Derby, which has been run since the 1930s, has been divided into two races. As has been the case since mid March, there will be no fans at Oaklawn, in Hot Springs, Ark., for the races. Professional Bull Riders held an event in Oklahoma over the weekend, making it one of the first sports to resume in the United States. The Unleash the Beast event was held without fans at the Lazy E Arena, a private ranch in Logan County, Okla. It was originally scheduled to be in Las Vegas. Everyone on site was required to wear face masks and to maintain social distancing. People were also instructed to interact only with people in their designated group, which averaged about six people. "We've had plenty of space to be safe and responsible as we get our P.B.R. family back to work," Sean Gleason, the chief executive of Professional Bull Riders, said in a video shared on his Twitter account. "Hopefully our process will pave the way for other sports." Formula One refuses to rip off the Band Aid. Almost every week, it cancels another race and inches back the date of its return. This week's cancellation is the French Grand Prix, scheduled for June 28. It becomes the 10th race of the season to be postponed or canceled. F1 now insists that it will be back in action the week after that, in Austria. On the brighter side, some leagues are revving up for a return. Teams in Italy's top soccer league are being allowed to start training on May 18. The announcement was important enough to be made by the prime minister, Giuseppe Conte. Australia and New Zealand have been praised for their success in containing the virus, and sports are benefiting. The National Rugby League is looking to return May 28, and is clearing hurdles one by one. Players from the one New Zealand based team in the league, the Warriors, have received permission to travel to Australia, the government said. And strict rules are being put in place, including requiring temperature checks, cleaning all equipment daily and barring players and staff from using public transportation or cabs. Fines have been promised for violators, of which there may be some, if recent history is a guide. Three N.R.L. players were fined 1,000 by the police in Australia on Monday after being pictured camping with a group of about a dozen people, in violation of social distancing rules. And the Navy Notre Dame football game in Dublin on Aug. 29 is still on, despite rules against gatherings of 5,000 or more in Ireland through the end of August. The ban does not apply to sports, Navy's athletic director, Chet Gladchuk, told The Capital Gazette.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Sports
Sun Yang, a three time Olympic champion and one of China's most celebrated athletes, had his eight year ban from swimming suddenly overturned Wednesday by Switzerland's federal court, which upheld a challenge questioning the neutrality of one of the panelists who had issued the penalty. The Swiss federal court's decision came after lawyers for Sun presented evidence that the chairman of the three member panel that issued Sun's ban in February had made racist comments about China on social media. The ruling was a rare encroachment on the body that issued the suspension the Court of Arbitration for Sport, which is based in Lausanne, Switzerland and it means that Sun, whose competitive career was effectively ended by the doping ban, is free to resume swimming at least until his case is heard by a different panel at the sports court. Sun, 29, a six time Olympic medalist and the first Chinese man to win a swimming gold medal at the Games, has waged a multiyear battle with the World Anti Doping Agency to preserve his eligibility for international competition. WADA brought a complaint against Sun to the court last year after swimming's international governing body declined to penalize him for refusing to cooperate with three antidoping officials who had traveled to his home in China to collect blood and urine samples. The court, after a hearing in November 2019 that was marred by translation issues, agreed with the antidoping agency's underlying claim that Sun had violated rules governing efforts to tamper with doping procedures. WADA now will have to argue its case against Sun all over again. The global antidoping body said in an emailed statement that it was aware of the Swiss federal court's decision to set aside Sun's ban. The judgment, WADA said, was based not on the merits of the case, but on concerns about the chairman of the three person CAS panel, the former Italian foreign minister Franco Frattini. Sun's lawyers had appealed to the Swiss federal court after gathering what they said were public comments by Frattini that included anti Chinese sentiments. News media reports earlier this year highlighted Twitter posts from Frattini's account expressing disdain over examples of animal cruelty in China. At least one post included a term that is considered an anti Chinese slur. The decision is likely to lead to yet more frustration inside the global antidoping movement, which last week saw a different CAS panel significantly reduce the penalties issued against Russia for running a yearslong, state backed doping scheme. Wednesday's ruling will also raise new questions about the Court of Arbitration for Sport's competence in handling high profile cases. Sun's 2019 hearing at the sports court, the first in more than a decade to be held in public, descended into confusion and acrimony amid major translation difficulties among Sun, his witnesses and the three member panel, all Europeans without Chinese language skills. It is unclear whether the new hearing will take place in public, but WADA said Wednesday night that it would retry the case. "WADA will take steps to present its case robustly again when the matter returns to the CAS panel, which will be chaired by a different president," the agency said. The eight year doping ban imposed in February was the first against a Chinese sports figure as influential as Sun, who is a national hero on a par with the country's former basketball star Yao Ming. The case is the biggest doping scandal involving China since more than 30 swimmers from the country were caught using banned substances in the 1990s, and 40 of its 300 athletes were withdrawn from the 2000 Sydney Olympics by the Chinese authorities. At the time, news reports suggested the athletes had returned suspicious blood test results. In 2014, Sun was suspended for three months by the Chinese authorities after he tested positive for a recently banned prescription drug, and he has long drawn suspicion from fellow swimmers. Several rivals verbally sparred with him at the world championships in July 2019 or refused to stand on the medals podium with him after races. Sun's fans reacted with fury at the news of his eight year suspension. Social media platforms were flooded with messages of support for the swimmer and anger at the decision, which many described as anti Chinese and designed to harm the country.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Sports
Hopes are high in Long Island City that Amazon's plan to open a new headquarters there will bring tens of thousands more residents to a Queens neighborhood that was once heavily industrial but now has a mix of rowhouses, shiny towers, and a slowly growing collection of residential staples like grocery stores and pharmacies. The first Amazon employees will arrive in January, but because the company will add them gradually, with a goal of 40,000 hires by 2034, Long Island City won't exactly balloon overnight. And of course, some employees will decide to find a home in another area anyway. Long Island City has been one of the busiest neighborhoods for new construction in New York, according to Localize.city, a building data site. In the first six months of 2018, about 3,000 apartments were completed, representing about a quarter of all the new units in the city, and another 3,300 apartments are expected to come to market there by 2020. But in the weeks since announcing its move one marked by contention over 1.525 billion in financial incentives from the state of New York Amazon has already had an impact on Long Island City's residential market, according to brokers, developers and residents. But a few weeks ago, interest in the unit exploded. Ms. Walton said she began receiving a flurry of emails from her doormen letting her know that brokers were visiting. Then, in mid November, an acceptable offer came in, which she wouldn't specify because a contract hadn't been signed yet, but made her "happy." If there is a wider pool of buyers in Long Island City, it's mostly investors many from overseas, who are looking to cash in down the road through sublets, said Eric Benaim, the chief executive officer of Modern Spaces, a local brokerage. Modern Spaces is already working with four Amazon employees, some of them from Seattle, home to the retail empire's current headquarters. During the November 11 weekend, a few days after reports that Amazon had chosen Long Island City as the site of one of two new headquarters following a 14 month nationwide review, open house traffic there spiked 400 percent at existing and new apartments, Mr. Benaim said. It was equally robust the next weekend. Other firms, like Halstead, saw a more modest, though still significant, increase of 250 percent. "It's a feeding frenzy, and I've never seen it like this," said Brian Dusseau, a Halstead agent who has worked in the neighborhood since 2002. And the surge reverses what had been his "roughest year." "A lot of people are focused on the Amazon workers that are coming," said Mr. Dusseau, who is currently working with one of them. "But the fact that Amazon is basing its headquarters here is like a security blanket. It's making people comfortable buying again." And developers are gearing up for the new demand. This month, Galerie, a 182 unit condo at 22 18 Jackson Avenue, will file required paperwork with the state to hike pricing, according to Brendan Aguayo, a managing director at Halstead Property Development Marketing, which is handling sales. Another hike is expected in December. About half of the units at the under construction building, which has mostly one and two bedrooms, have accepted offers, Mr. Aguayo added, with 33 deals in the past two weeks alone. Amazon employees account for two of those deals. Prices at Galerie start at 550,000. Likewise, Corte, an 85 unit condo on 44th Drive where sales have been underway since July, has raised prices by 10 percent post Amazon, and will raise them again, Mr. Benaim said. The Bond, a 42 unit project on 11th Street, has raised prices twice, and increases are also expected at the condo Craftsmen Townhomes, whose sales team accepted an offer from an Amazon buyer last week, according to Mr. Benaim. Tweaking prices in the midst of marketing a project is not that unusual, but it's rarer in the weeks before the winter holidays. It's also been uncommon as of late in Long Island City, brokers say, where the development market has been weak. Eager to embrace an Amazon wave, developers are also dusting off old plans. The Durst Organization, one of the city's largest developers, hopes to build on a huge site it has controlled for years, a Durst spokesman said. The site, at 44 02 Vernon Boulevard near Anable Basin, can accommodate 1 million square feet of apartments. Anable Basin, a low rise medley of docks and warehouses, is where Amazon intends to build a sprawling office complex that could total eight million square fee and possibly a helipad, according to state documents. "Amazon planting a flag is fabulous for the entire neighborhood," said Alan Suna, the chief executive of Silvercup Studios, the Long Island City movie facility that also develops apartment buildings, like the Harrison, a 120 unit condo on 44th Drive. Mr. Suna was among the local business leaders who worked on the Amazon pitch. Still, development has proceeded energetically, especially in two pockets on the banks of the East River in the Hunters Point section; and in Court Square, sandwiched between the Edward I. Koch Queensboro Bridge and the Long Island Railroad tracks. In Hunters Point, the thicket of gleaming towers by the river began to take shape in 1997 with the construction of the Citylights condop, and filled out in subsequent years with five contributions from the Elghanayan family, a major Long Island City builder. Among their high rises are Nos. 4720, 4545 and 4610 Center Boulevard, rentals that are operated by TF Cornerstone, a family subsidiary. The cluster of buildings, which looms over the famed waterside Pepsi Cola sign, offer ample amenities, but the area has just a handful of bars, restaurants and markets. With a pair of ferry docks, the enclave can feel closely tethered to the place it faces: Manhattan. Hunters Point is also awaiting the arrival of 5,000 new, mostly affordable apartments, courtesy of the mixed use project Hunters Point South. A popular park is open there today. TF Cornerstone will partner with Amazon to develop a portion of Amazon's office complex, which will sit on a large site where TF cornerstone had been planning offices, workshops, stores, a school and apartments under a 2017 deal with the city. Most of that construction, including the school, is on track, according to TF Cornerstone, though the housing is no more. Further inland at Court Square, a disparate blend of offices, apartments and municipal buildings nuzzles the bridge's ramps. In addition to whatever it builds in the Anable Basin, Amazon has leased 1 million square feet of the office building at One Court Square, the 1.4 million square foot, blue green spire formerly known as the Citigroup Building, where Amazon is expected to start moving employees early next year. Rockrose will likely raise rents, but first Amazon workers need to arrive, said Rockrose president Justin Elghanayan. "It will take a while before the effects filter in," he said. Mr. Elghanayan's projects are hardly alone. Densely packed into this area, which was rezoned in 2001, are more than a dozen other residential spires, mostly rentals. There are condos too, like Skyline Tower, an 802 unit, 778 foot giant on 23 15 44th Drive from developer Jiashu Xu that was a few floors out of the ground on a recent afternoon. Retail has been limited in Court Square, but a gourmet grocery, Foodcellar and Co., opened on Crescent Street in 2015. Xi'an Famous Foods, the trendy restaurant chain, will open on Jackson Avenue in a few months, as will City Chemist, a highly anticipated drugstore both in Rockrose buildings. While development has been clumped in two compact sections, it has begun to spread out. New buildings are slowly popping up north of the bridge, toward Astoria. That section is also home to Queensbridge Houses, the nation's largest public housing development. But in the middle of the neighborhood are a stream of rentals and some smaller scale condos like the red brick Decker, on 44th Drive, and a row of three townhouses on 47th Avenue, containing 18 apartments. While not as rich in historic buildings as other parts of New York, Long Island City does offer a single block historic district, along 45th Avenue, between 21st and 23rd Streets, which features neat rows of prewar townhouses. A two family there recently sold for more than 2 million. Shorter three level versions are nearby, on 23rd Street, in the shadows of the elevated 7 train tracks, and also on 11th Street. Restaurants dot Vernon Boulevard, too, like a local outpost of Corner Bistro, the West Village burger joint, and the modernistic Bellwether, which opened this year. Nearby, Murray Playground attracts families, and soccer squads. "It has completely changed," said Ms. Walton of the neighborhood, to which she moved in 1998. And Amazon will accelerate more growth. "The people will be there, so the businesses will follow. You just have to be patient."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Real Estate
The end of December usually brings a flurry of big releases and a blizzard of Oscar speculation. But with the Academy Awards postponed and many theaters shuttered or half empty, this movie year closes with a shiver of existential anxiety in Hollywood and beyond. In 2020, Netflix expanded its reach, and two of the surviving legacy studios Warner Bros. and Disney beefed up their streaming platforms, the latest sign of a shift in business strategy that is likely to outlast the pandemic. As 2021 approaches, our critics examine the film industry in crisis, and wonder what the future might hold. A.O. SCOTT Is this the end of moviegoing as we have known it? You and I are not in the business of making predictions, and since we are students of film history we know that the death of movies is old, fake news. Premature obituaries have been filed every decade or so, at least since the arrival of sound. The art form has been changing constantly, and so have the ways we consume it: "as we have known it" includes movie palaces, drive ins, grindhouses and multiplexes; and also network television Movies of the Week, VHS, Blu ray, and now streaming. Still, the situation right now feels different, perhaps more cataclysmic. I don't doubt that people will want to go back to movie theaters after the pandemic, as they will to restaurants, nightclubs, concert halls and bowling alleys. But a shift in the industry that was already underway before Covid 19 seems to have accelerated. We've sometimes used "the studios" as a slightly anachronistic synonym for Hollywood. Are we entering the age of "the platforms"? MANOHLA DARGIS Well, good morning, sunshine! I'm hesitant to offer any grand divinations, but we know that the movies or, rather, the American film industry is in a state of perpetual crisis. In the past, the industry has always found a way of circumventing the latest calamity, often by taking advantage of (or even absorbing) perceived threats, like with television. The threat posed by streaming is on another order of magnitude: i.e., the internet changed everything, including how people watch entertainment. The rest is history, and another couple of gazillion bucks for Jeff Bezos. We've talked a lot about how the pandemic has accelerated this latest shift, even if the larger change occurred with the advent of home video. Once people could choose what to watch when they wanted, the old days were over (again). Depending on who you talk to, the movies themselves or at least how the latest generation understood what "the movies" meant were over, too. Me, well, I am old enough to remember when Steven Soderbergh made movies that opened in theaters. They were events, and exciting. I couldn't wait to see them. Now, he drops a movie on HBO Max and I think, "Huh, I guess I should watch that one of these days." SCOTT I'm glad you mention Soderbergh, who has been a thoughtful observer of the industry even as he's worked in just about every corner of it. Over three decades he's made small and medium size indie movies, big studio franchises, premium cable series, self distributed passion projects, and now straight to streaming features. When some of his peers, notably Christopher Nolan, were raging against Warner Bros.'s decision to release its 2021 movies simultaneously on HBO Max and in theaters, Soderbergh was more sanguine, seeing a short term economic fix rather than a tectonic shift in the business. "The theatrical business is not going away," he told The Daily Beast. "There are too many companies that have invested too much money in the prospect of putting out a movie that blows up in theaters there's nothing like it." True enough. There is no better way to make a billion dollars or to earn back an investment of several hundred million than to release a global blockbuster in theaters. And Disney and Warners are likely to continue in that business, along with whatever other legacy studios are still around when the cinemas fill up again. But what about the small and midsize movies that depend on the theatrical system to find their audiences? They follow a path that starts at festivals like Sundance, Cannes and Toronto, where critical enthusiasm can spark early interest. Then they open in a few cities, building word of mouth through reviews and media coverage and eventually if everything breaks just right reaching a wider public and maybe winning some awards. "Parasite" followed that pattern, as did "Moonlight," and I don't know if those films would have had the same impact or success if they had depended on a digital release. DARGIS Neither would have had the same impact if they'd bypassed theaters. In the States, their theatrical distributors teased them beautifully: "Moonlight" opened in four theaters and "Parasite" in three, which created frenzy among certain filmgoers and allowed the movies to drip, drip, drip into the cultural consciousness all the way to Oscar night. This slow rollout is completely antithetical to the binge it now ecosystem of, say, Netflix, which, before you're done with one of its offerings, is algorithmically directing you to the next thing to watch. The life cycle of a movie on streaming is different from that of a show like "The Crown." When a new season hits, the P.R. machine starts all over again. It's as if the show had been reborn. There's a new round of media attention, more reviews and features. Nonfranchise movies fade faster and, at best, can look forward to being listed in a streaming guide with 49 other titles. The ecosystem for independent film has always been incredibly fragile; it's hard to make them and to release them in a Disney dominated world. Independent movies need to be coaxed into our collective mind. On Netflix, they just become another platform loss leader alongside David Fincher. SCOTT It can seem churlish to complain about Netflix and maybe hypocritical, given how much solace and diversion it has supplied during this anxious, homebound year. The company has acquired and produced an impressive variety of films, including some that might never have gotten a studio greenlight. Even with Fincher's clout and reputation, "Mank" would have been a tough pitch a story about a writer who drinks a lot and makes his deadline, and in black and white no less. But it found a home, alongside "Cuties," "The Queen's Gambit," "Hillbilly Elegy" and 800 indistinguishable Christmas "originals." Let the algorithm sort them out! Netflix is selling subscriptions, not tickets. The goal is to make a wide variety of stuff available that will entice as many people as possible to pay a monthly fee for access to all of it. HBO Max and Disney are competing on that terrain, but single movies playing in theaters or, for that matter, on video on demand platforms are at a severe disadvantage. An individual ticket costs about the same as a month of streaming, and that's before popcorn or parking. If theaters are going to survive, moviegoing has to be something more than off site Netflix, which is to say that the aesthetic and cultural differences between movies and television may need to be articulated anew. Going to the movies can't only be a negative decision, a choice not to stay home and stream. DARGIS But what does having a "home" on Netflix mean? It's like saying a movie found a home in a humongous video rental store, with comedy in this section, action here and porn behind the curtain but now with algorithms. As critics, we tend to focus on the movie as an object that's somehow untethered from viewing conditions. In the Before Times, we saw new movies in multiplexes with crowds and in smaller screening rooms with colleagues. We watched with defined start and finish times, we shushed talkers and we didn't hit pause. The pandemic has reinforced that watching anything at home changes your relationship to the object. I guess that's why I'm not really interested in the differences between film and television. There's a lot of bad TV and a lot of bad movies that look like bad TV. They're yak fests with big heads and emotions, predictable story arcs and no edges, and their future is safe, as are blockbusters. What's concerning are movies that can't be looked at while we check our texts: avant garde cinema, tough and long documentaries, serious dramas, foreign language films, anything that requires attention, patience, time. I'm worried about what isn't easy watching. SCOTT Like you, I'm less worried about the fate of blockbusters the big money always finds a way than about films that may be too quiet, too slow, too disturbing or too strange for home viewing. Including some of our 2020 favorites, like "City Hall," "Beanpole," "Collective" and "First Cow." Going to a theater can mean stepping outside your comfort zone, pushing against the boundaries of your own taste. Your television exists safely within those boundaries, and in the literal comfort zone of your living room. Challenging movies can slide too easily to the bottom of the queue, neglected like unread books on the night stand or jars of exotic mustard at the back of the fridge. DARGIS I mean, yes, blockbusters are important because they're critical to the remaining big studios. Some of my concern about the studios is nostalgia for the good (if bad) old days, but I also keep hoping that they'll abandon their current business model (ha!), which focuses on the same big blowouts rather than on product differentiation. It wasn't long ago that some of them were in the business of producing and distributing smaller movies, the kind that now head straight to HBO Max (and hello again, Mr. Soderbergh). But, yes, I imagine "Wonder Woman" will survive this year. But what of movies like Kelly Reichardt's "First Cow"? It opened in four theaters on March 6 to excellent reviews, just weeks before New York and Los Angeles shut down. It landed on VOD in July, earlier than it would have in pre pandemic times. This was welcome news for those already inclined to watch a contemplative movie about two men and a cow in the 1820s, in which one of the most dramatic scenes involves stealing milk. But for a movie like this to reach non cinephiles, it needs time to reach minds that are already distracted, virus or no.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Movies
The Merce Cunningham Trust announced Monday, on what would have been Cunningham's 99th birthday, a global centennial celebration of his legacy, beginning this fall. More than 60 presenting organizations and dance companies from around the world are expected to participate, and the Royal Ballet in London will be one of several to tackle Cunningham for the first time. The celebration will consist of performances, film screenings, discussions, education initiatives, new works by other artists in conversation with Cunningham's work, and new productions. At least two works will be performed for the first time in over 30 years. The films include several discovered in archives across the world since Cunningham's death in 2009 at age 90. Cunningham established the autonomy of dance by making choreography that was independent from music. He created works that, by being about dance itself, were variously hailed as radical, modernist, musical, theatrical and classical (and also as anti musical, anti theatrical and anti classical). Much of his work's essence lay in solos, created for himself and for others: indeed, in soloism. A highlight of the centennial will be a "Night of 100 Solos" to be performed on the evening of Cunningham's 100th birthday, April 16, 2019. One hundred dancers will perform anthologies (called Events) of solos from the 1950s to 2009 in New York (Brooklyn Academy of Music), Paris (the Opera Comique), London (the Barbican Center) and Los Angeles (Center for the Art of Performance at the University of California, Los Angeles).	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Dance
BILLION DOLLAR BRAND CLUB How Dollar Shave Club, Warby Parker and Other Disruptors Are Remaking What We Buy By Lawrence Ingrassia In the early 2010s, entrepreneurs started to realize something: If they didn't like their mattress, bra, hearing aids, contact lenses or just about any other consumer product, they could start their own company and make a lot of money selling a different, better or sometimes worse version. It wasn't even always that the original product was deficient. Maybe the experience of shopping for it was a nightmare or the retail price was unnecessarily high. Technology was creating new opportunities to shake up industries that for decades had seemed impenetrable. Entrepreneurs without deep pockets, for instance, could find reliable, inexpensive manufacturers to do small runs of new products that they could sell online, without the hassle and expense of setting up traditional brick and mortar shops. The disruption boom was on. Some of these companies are now household names, like Bonobos, Dollar Shave Club, Warby Parker and Casper. Some were bought by larger companies for millions even billions of dollars. In "Billion Dollar Brand Club," the veteran business journalist Lawrence Ingrassia (a former editor at The New York Times) ferrets out the most compelling, consequential stories and people behind the direct to consumer revolution. He weaves riveting tales of legacy brands caught resting on their laurels, the hungry newcomers who outsmarted them and a network of prescient investors working behind the scenes.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Books
The composer Thomas Ades, left, with the pianist Kirill Gerstein, who is releasing an album of Ades works. The music of Thomas Ades isn't easy not for listeners, and especially not for performers. His style, whether in a small solo or a work on the grand scale of his opera "The Exterminating Angel," is full of contradictions: looking more complex than it sounds, teasing the ear with elusively familiar melodic strands, evoking clutter with meticulous precision. Even for the pianist Kirill Gerstein, one of Mr. Ades's most capable interpreters, it exists precariously at the edge of possibility. "If you practice a lot," Mr. Gerstein said in a recent interview, "it's almost comfortable." That might be a tad too humble coming from Mr. Gerstein, who over the past decade has become a master of Mr. Ades's piano works and a muse. In one of the most productive and thrilling artistic partnerships of our time, they have not only toured together and revisited older pieces in virtuosic arrangements, but also produced a piano concerto that has been that rarity in contemporary classical music: a hit. The two albums offer a bird's eye view of what, in retrospect, feels simply like "a natural evolution," Mr. Ades said from his home in London in a recent video call with Mr. Gerstein, who was in Berlin. Even the concerto, they noted, came about not as a commissioned mandate but from a casual conversation. In 2012, Mr. Ades was in New York rehearsing "The Tempest" with the Metropolitan Opera while also preparing a performance of "In Seven Days," a work originally written for Nicolas Hodges, with Mr. Gerstein and the Boston Symphony. (The Myrios recording of the piece was made in 2018 at Tanglewood, that orchestra's summer home.) During a break, Mr. Gerstein asked Mr. Ades whether he'd consider writing something for him. "I knew I wouldn't be faced with a situation of explaining to someone what my language is," Mr. Ades recalled. "Very often someone can play perfectly from the text, but somehow still the music gets lost somewhere. I knew that wasn't going to happen." Although Mr. Ades has been confronted with artists who find his works, as he said, "totally weird," Mr. Gerstein described it, with deceptive simplicity, as "music just like any music." That doesn't mean it didn't require getting used to, particularly the way Mr. Ades shapes time. "The musical flow and rubato leave room for interpretation, but he precisely controls it," Mr. Gerstein said. "This sense of time that's not square is a general trend of great composers, but I think Tom has specific means to make the performer do what the music needs." Time, in Mr. Ades's scores, is noted in specific detail that can be daunting at first glance. The second mazurka even comes with two versions of the right hand line: one labeled "play this," and a simpler one above, "hear this." In "Concert Paraphrase on 'Powder Her Face,'" one standard, four beat measure is distorted by tuplets of varying lengths. Mr. Ades interjected: "If it were a given, it wouldn't be fun." That's especially the case in the "Powder Her Face" paraphrase, arranged for two pianos in 2015, which Mr. Gerstein and Mr. Ades toured together before recording on the new album. The piece's cohesion amid disarray and rollicking irony doesn't ever seem like a guarantee. Indeed, Mr. Gerstein recalled a rehearsal in which Mr. Ades said something like, "This is very interesting for me, what you misread." But they communicated fixes easily, with metaphors. Another piece recorded for the first time on the new album is a solo version of the Berceuse from "The Exterminating Angel" a late scene, of alluring yet slippery harmonies, in which two lovers steal away to a cabinet to kill themselves. It had a tempo change that Mr. Gerstein didn't quite understand. (The Berceuse begins at 4:50 in the video below.) A calando a direction to gradually diminish is stretched over several measures, then the words "molto piu" are written above a final measure before a section labeled "tempo giusto," with a metronome marking of "circa 46." Mr. Gerstein wanted to know how the transition should sound, and Mr. Ades told him: "It's like a choir in a church, and they know what they're singing so well, they're singing with their eyes closed. And when that happens, they're ever so slightly quicker." "You can have the 'tempo giusto' and the metronome marking," Mr. Gerstein said, "but I hear that and I know exactly what wind in the 'tempo giusto' you need." Over time, Mr. Gerstein has also internalized some of the ways Mr. Ades's work interacts with and builds on the past, evasively referential but never derivative particularly in the Chopinesque mazurkas. "Tom's writing has these DNA fragments of the great examples of the piano literature," he said, "and at the same time they're reconfigured and sometimes genetically engineered to do other things." This is true of the Concerto for Piano and Orchestra, which Mr. Ades conducted in its premiere with the Boston Symphony. It has the banal title and formal appearance of a piece that could have been written two centuries ago. Yet, as in much of this composer's work, familiarity repeatedly gives way to novelty above all in its harmonic language and rhythmic flow. Although the concerto was written with Mr. Gerstein's facility, a dazzling dexterity that thrives in both Rachmaninoff and jazz, in mind, Mr. Ades didn't give him the score until it was finished. While reading through it, Mr. Gerstein sent videos that came as a comfort to the composer. "I found it very moving to think of how lonely a road it must be," Mr. Gerstein said. "When you're writing, you are really with this thing alone. But when an interpreter joins the piece, this road is no longer traveled by one person." "He understood the piano writing so well," Mr. Ades recalled. "He said, 'Should we try this?,' and I think with all of them I ended up saying yes, after resisting in all the usual ways." But there was no budging on the concerto's difficulty, which not even Mr. Ades a skilled pianist who has performed his own works, including "In Seven Days" could manage from start to finish. One knotty passage, in which a canon slides out of sync, continued to give Mr. Gerstein trouble until, once again, an image from Mr. Ades helped, though this one was more motivational then metaphorical: Disney's Hercules as a baby twisting snakes into submission. The concerto has already become a well traveled success. Shortly after the premiere, it received a standing ovation at Carnegie Hall, and within a year it had been booked for 50 performances and counting a popularity practically unheard of in classical music. In an even more unusual move, the Boston Symphony recently announced that the concerto would return next February, again with Mr. Ades and Mr. Gerstein. They were scheduled to give the Los Angeles premiere at Walt Disney Concert Hall in April, but the concert was canceled because of the coronavirus pandemic. It would have been an opportunity not only to bring the piece to one of the cities Mr. Ades calls home, but also for the two friends to reunite. When they're together, they talk about music, naturally, but for only a short time. "To me it's a very dear friendship," Mr. Gerstein said, "a multithreaded friendship." Often, they share a good meal. "That's Kirill," Mr. Ades said. "He always knows where to go."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Music
Contemporary dance is an underfunded field, so it was not just big news but good news when the Harris Theater for Music and Dance in Chicago announced a choreographer in residence program last year with 600,000 attached. Spread across three years, with half of the money going to the choreographer directly and half to the companies producing the choreographer's new works, the sum was large enough that any choice of artist was bound to raise questions. Why that one? And would the investment prove artistically fruitful? So: Why was Brian Brooks the first recipient? Surely it has something to do with his recent collaborations with Wendy Whelan, the beloved ballerina who retired from New York City Ballet in 2014. Her stardom attracted a level of attention that Mr. Brooks was not otherwise likely to get. Her choice of him set him apart. So far, Ms. Whelan is not involved in the Harris Theater projects, but the first results have been performed. In January, his company, Brian Brooks Dance, presented a new work, "Prelude," in Chicago. In February, Miami City Ballet debuted his "One Line Drawn." And this week, "Prelude" has come to the Joyce Theater in New York.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Dance
Credit...Brian L. Frank for The New York Times OAKLAND, Calif. Every year, thousands of people addicted to opioids show up at hospital emergency rooms in withdrawal so agonizing it leaves them moaning and writhing on the floor. Usually, they're given medicines that help with vomiting or diarrhea and sent on their way, maybe with a few numbers to call about treatment. When Rhonda Hauswirth arrived at the Highland Hospital E.R. here, retching and shaking violently after a day and a half without heroin, something very different happened. She was offered a dose of buprenorphine on the spot. One of three medications approved in the United States to treat opioid addiction, it works by easing withdrawal symptoms and cravings. The tablet dissolved under her tongue while she slumped in a plastic chair, her long red hair obscuring her ashen face. Soon, the shakes stopped. "I could focus a little more. I could see straight," said Ms. Hauswirth, 40. "I'd never heard of anyone going to an emergency room to do that." Highland, a clattering big city hospital where security wands constantly beep as new patients get scanned for weapons, is among a small group of institutions that have started initiating opioid addiction treatment in the E.R. Their aim is to plug a gaping hole in a medical system that consistently fails to provide treatment on demand, or any evidence based treatment at all, even as more than two million Americans suffer from opioid addiction. According to the latest estimates, overdoses involving opioids killed nearly 50,000 people last year. "With a single E.R. visit we can provide 24 to 48 hours of withdrawal suppression, as well as suppression of cravings," said Dr. Andrew Herring, an emergency medicine specialist at Highland who runs the buprenorphine program. "It can be this revelatory moment for people even in the depth of crisis, in the middle of the night. It shows them there's a pathway back to feeling normal." It usually takes many more steps to get someone started on addiction medicine if they can find it at all, or have the wherewithal to try. Locating a doctor who prescribes buprenorphine and takes insurance can be impossible in large swaths of the country, and the wait for an initial appointment can stretch for weeks, during which people can easily relapse and overdose. Read about the national shortage of doctors who can prescribe buprenorphine. A 2015 study out of Yale New Haven Hospital found that addicted patients who were given buprenorphine in the emergency room were twice as likely to be in treatment a month later as those who were simply handed an informational pamphlet with phone numbers. After Dr. Herring read the Yale study, he persuaded the California Health Care Foundation to give a small grant to Highland and seven other hospitals in Northern California last year, in both urban and rural areas, to experiment with dispensing buprenorphine in their E.R.s. Now the state is spending nearly 700,000 more to expand the concept statewide as part of a broader, 78 million effort to set up a so called hub and spoke system meant to provide more access to buprenorphine and two other addiction medications, methadone and naltrexone. Under that system, an emergency room would serve as a portal, starting people on buprenorphine and referring them to a large scale addiction treatment clinic (the hub), to get adjusted to the medication, and to a primary care practice (the spoke) for ongoing care. Dr. Herring is serving as the principal investigator for the project, known as E.D. Bridge. The 78 million is most of California's share of an initial 1 billion in federal grants that Congress approved for states to spend on addiction treatment and prevention under the 21st Century Cures Act, enacted in 2016. "At first it seemed so alien and far fetched," Dr. Herring said, noting that doctors are often nervous about buprenorphine, which is more commonly known by the brand name Suboxone. They need training and a special license from the federal Drug Enforcement Administration to prescribe it for addiction (it's also used to treat pain), although E.R. doctors don't need the license to provide doses of the medication to patients in withdrawal. But lately, Dr. Gail D'Onofrio, the lead author of the Yale study, has been fielding calls every week from E.R. doctors interested in her hospital's model. Since the study was published, a few dozen hospital emergency departments, including in Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Brunswick, Me., Camden, N.J., and Syracuse, have also started offering buprenorphine. "I think we're at the stage now where emergency docs are saying, 'I've got to do something,' " Dr. D'Onofrio said. "They're beyond thinking they can just be a revolving door." She was talking fast about how she hadn't been able to sleep for days. She had just moved into a sober living house in Berkeley, about 20 minutes away, and withdrawal was kicking in. The manager of the house had sent her to Highland. "My heart was just pounding," the young woman, who asked to be identified only by her first name, Angelica, told Dr. Herring. "My stomach hurt from everything going straight through me. My body just won't turn off." Dr. Herring nodded. "It's called wired and tired," he said. A nurse brought her a buprenorphine tablet as they went over her history, and Dr. Herring told her to come to his addiction clinic in two days for a follow up visit and more medication. While the care provided in emergency rooms is particularly expensive, supporters of programs like E.D. Bridge say E.R.s are the best place for stabilizing any dangerously out of control condition, including addiction. She added that since E.R. visits like Angelica's are usually brief and uncomplicated, they aren't as expensive as many other types of E.R. care. Here in Oakland, a city of 416,000, opioid addiction cuts across lines of race and ethnicity. Highland has provided buprenorphine to roughly equal numbers of blacks and whites, with Latinos, Asians and other ethnic groups filling out the rest. Many of those patients are homeless and most are on Medicaid, the government health insurance program for the poor that, crucially for Dr. Herring's program, California expanded under the Affordable Care Act. Buprenorphine can cost more than 500 a month, putting it out of reach for many of the uninsured. Since February 2017, Highland's E.R. has offered buprenorphine to more than 375 emergency room patients. Two thirds of them accepted it, along with an initial appointment for ongoing treatment at the hospital's addiction clinic. Many were in withdrawal. Some had infections from injecting opioids. Others were seeking help for an unrelated medical problem, like a broken arm, but disclosed that they were addicted to heroin or opioid painkillers. Dozens have continued taking buprenorphine, a weak opioid that activates the same receptors in the brain that other opioids do, but doesn't cause a high if taken as prescribed. Even if they reject the idea of starting treatment, those who try buprenorphine in the E.R. may be more likely to do so in the future, Dr. Herring said. "You've given them a chance to test drive it," he said. "They'll still remember in a month, in a year." At Highland, patients who get an initial dose of buprenorphine also usually get a prescription for Suboxone, which comes in strips that dissolve in the mouth and is harder to abuse, to last until they can get to an addiction clinic that Dr. Herring runs on Thursdays. There, he assesses their progress and often adjusts their dose on a weekly or biweekly basis until they can find a more permanent provider. Dr. Herring has reached out aggressively to detox centers, where people often spend a few days withdrawing from heroin, and residential treatment programs. Although many such programs haven't allowed residents to be on buprenorphine or methadone, California has started requiring them to. Signs posted throughout the E.R.'s waiting area "Need Help With Pain Pills or Heroin? We want to help you get off opioids" have helped spread the word. That's how a man named Abai found his way to Dr. Herring; his sister had come to the E.R. with a respiratory infection, seen the signs and told him about the program. Abai, who is 35 and asked that his middle name be used to protect his privacy, had been released from federal prison six weeks earlier, and was trying hard not to return to heroin and other drugs that he had used incessantly before his 18 month sentence. He had been buying buprenorphine off the street, but now he had a job offer and wanted a more stable source of treatment. About an hour later, after Dr. Herring briefly met with him, a nurse called Abai's name and put a buprenorphine tablet under his tongue. He left after promising to come to Dr. Herring's clinic the next morning. An urban public teaching hospital like Highland, with lots of mission driven doctors and a commitment to serving the poor, can do this particularly in the Bay Area, where attitudes about addiction are among the most progressive in the country. But can every hospital? Given the choice, would they? "You do hit sort of a culture clash," said Arianna Sampson, a physician assistant at Marshall Medical Center in Placerville, Calif., about two hours northeast of Oakland in rural El Dorado County. Ms. Sampson worked with Dr. Herring to start an E.D. Bridge program there last year, and her emergency room has provided initial doses of buprenorphine to 41 patients since last August. But Ms. Sampson has had to work to overcome stigma about buprenorphine that it's just one opioid replacing another in the community, she said. The Placerville program refers patients to a local community health center that prescribes buprenorphine, where many have become regular patients. "So you live just by yourself, in your car?" he asked. "No friends or family with you?" "Do you have a phone number I can reach you at? You don't have a phone?" "O.K. ma'am, we're going to let the doctors treat your arm right now," he went on. "But we'd really like you to come back tomorrow. O.K.? It would be really good to try and reduce the amount of heroin you're doing and try to start on these meds. You're going to have to put yourself in a little bit of withdrawal." Jessica was preoccupied with her swollen arm, staring past Mr. Hailozian. After her abscess was drained, she left in a hurry, scuffing across the floor in pink slippers. That day was a long one for Dr. Herring, who met with Abai and Jessica in between a steady flow of emergencies, including a harrowing one involving a toddler who had stopped breathing. He worked until midnight. The next morning, he arrived at the hospital early and hustled to the basement office where he holds his weekly clinic for patients who started buprenorphine in the E.R. Angelica and Abai were already waiting, as were a young homeless couple carrying all their belongings. Ms. Hauswirth was there, too, with a friend from her detox center, Christa Blackwell. Ms. Hauswirth wasn't feeling well. She had never let herself experience withdrawal before, scrambling to find heroin or pills before it kicked in. Although she was now taking 16 milligrams of buprenorphine daily, a healthy dose, she was still feeling sick by the end of each day. "It's a war within my body," she told Dr. Herring. He added a nighttime dose of eight milligrams to her regimen; she had used very heavily for several years and needed more help than some. Ms. Blackwell, 42, was livelier, telling Dr. Herring that she was doing well on 16 milligrams of buprenorphine daily. But Dr. Herring had a warning for her: "People can feel like they're cured. So just keep taking it, like a vitamin." "You've torched everything, and the medication is letting it grow back, and it's going to be beautiful," he added. "But it's going to take some time."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Health
GAYATRI GANESH, director of development at the Christian Hospital, a rural hospital in Mungeli, India, says she hopes to get better at tapping into the international network of donors that could help sustain the hospital. Paolo Pagaduan, a project manager with the World Wildlife Fund in the Philippines, says he is trying to learn a new role at the organization. Both have signed up for courses at the new nonprofit group Philanthropy University, started by Amr Al Dabbagh, a Saudi businessman and philanthropist. Mr. Dabbagh donated several million dollars to see if a learning initiative could improve the lives of 100 million people by 2020. Through his family's Stars Foundation, he has worked with the Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley, to create "massive open online courses," also known as MOOCs, on how to be a better philanthropist and leader of a nonprofit group. The courses are taught by some top thinkers on philanthropy. These include Paul Brest, professor emeritus at Stanford Law School and the former president of the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, and Jessica Jackley, co founder of Kiva, a microlending platform, and the author of "Clay Water Brick: Finding Inspiration from Entrepreneurs Who Do the Most With the Least." "There's a desperate need for such an offering," Mr. Dabbagh said. "We're offering a world class curriculum with world class practitioners and professors, and we're offering it as a free collaborative platform with a vibrant community." Philanthropy University is certainly off to a fast start. In the first month since its website went live, 200,000 people from 138 countries signed up for more than 400,000 online classes. Mr. Dabbagh, whose fortune comes from a family owned conglomerate that began in the agricultural industry, started working on the idea only 18 months ago and formally announced it in December. Laura Tyson, director of the Institute for Business and Social Impact at the Haas School of Business and head of the Council of Economic Advisers in President Bill Clinton's White House, signed on to lead Philanthropy University's advisory committee. "I thought the technology was very compelling," she said. "I also knew a lot of the work that nonprofits have to do in scaling themselves and that there is a lot of duplication around the world. You don't have to duplicate, but you can cooperate." Here is how Philanthropy University hopes to achieve that cooperation. With its two partners, the Haas School and NovoEd, which operates the technology platform for the courses, Philanthropy University is offering seven courses, including "Essentials of Nonprofit Strategy" taught by Mr. Brest and "Global Social Entrepreneurship" from Ms. Jackley. One aim in the creation of the courses seemed simple enough that they not be boring. But this is something online learning has struggled with. "From Day 1, we asked, 'How do we make it more interesting? How do we keep people hooked?'" Mr. Dabbagh said. "They can be easily distracted." Each course is broken into short segments of about 11 minutes that stretch over seven weeks. Mr. Brest said he was excited about the new format, even though he was concerned about not being able to gauge the interest of his students online the way he could in his Stanford classroom. "I've tried to act on a passion for improving nonprofits," he said. "The leverage you get from improving how an organization works by how it operates is greater than how much money you give to it." His online students have the opportunity to watch the courses whenever and as often as they like over the week that the class is live. At the end of each week, the students will be given assignments, some done individually, others through small groups formed online. Then they move on to the next class in the course. Mr. Pagaduan, who works for the World Wildlife Fund, said he hoped to gain the skills to move up in the organization. But he said he also thought Mr. Brest's course could help him start a nonprofit group aimed at teaching local reporters more about environmental reporting. What made the course possible, though, was its flexibility, because his job working on projects involving water and watersheds took him to rural parts of his country for weeks at a time. He said he also liked that the courses were free and he hoped to take all seven. (Ms. Tyson said she was not being paid for her role, but teachers were paid. Mr. Dabbagh declined to say how much.) Ms. Ganesh said her small hospital in India serves patients within a 120 mile radius, and it includes a grade school and a nursing school. "We just graduated 19 nurses, which is a huge accomplishment," said Ms. Ganesh, who signed up for five of the seven courses. "But when I approach a corporate donor, they tell me Bill and Melinda Gates want me to be training millions. But we don't have the infrastructure to do that." She said most of the hospital's funding comes in small donations from church groups in the United States and from bequests. This year, though, the hospital received a grant from the United States Agency for International Development that bought a mobile clinic to serve patients in the field. As for success from a teacher's perspective, Ms. Jackley said she would be gratified if her course helped some students gain the confidence to start their own ventures the way she did with Kiva. "I'm excited about the power of this to do that far and wide," she said. "I don't have a number of students in mind, but I'd consider it a success if people do something they've dreamed of doing." Measuring whether Mr. Dabbagh's money and Philanthropy University as a whole are a success is more challenging. The goal, after all, was to make nonprofit leaders and social entrepreneurs better at running their organizations, which were often in challenging environments where success or failure would depend on multiple and competing factors. At first, Mr. Dabbagh said, he wanted to see whether anyone would sign up. The initial target was to get a few thousand students at the start. When 200,000 people enrolled in the first month, that confirmed Mr. Dabbagh's belief that there was a need. Beyond that, the initial measures involve increasing the completion rate of the MOOCs to around 20 percent from the single digit completion rates in the industry. They are relying on higher production values as well as the star power of the teachers.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Your Money
'The Half of It' Review: Being Yourself (and That Person, Too) None Every generation gets its own "Cyrano de Bergerac," from the Steve Martin comedy "Roxanne" to Netflix's "Sierra Burgess Is a Loser." But Alice Wu's new high school set film, "The Half of It" (also on Netflix), transcends the limitations that frequently serve as obstacles to ingenuity in young adult movies. By exploring issues of race and queerness with emotional complexity, it treats teenagers with the sophistication they deserve. Wu's Cyrano is the bookish Ellie Chu (Leah Lewis), navigating the casual racism of her small town while also managing the expectations of the peers who pay her to write their essays. Her way with words makes her the ideal choice to ghostwrite letters for the cute but daft football player Paul (Daniel Diemer) to the object of his affection, Aster (Alexxis Lemire). Having yearned for Aster from afar, Ellie jumps at the chance to perform literary drag. Wu's feature debut, "Saving Face" (2005), was one of the rare films to focus on the queer Asian American experience. Now, "The Half of It" reflects sharpened ideas and a honed directorial voice. While the question of "fitting in" has cliched implications in many teen movies, Wu digs deeper, considering the lonely cost of assimilation for a girl whose outsider status is layered. The husky voiced Lewis embodies, with palpable anguish, the stinging contradictions of emotional freedom and romantic fraudulence that abound when writing these notes. In letters (or over text), you can be anybody and yourself at once, and Wu suffuses the film with a painfully mature understanding of the ache of longing for the impossible. With tenderness, humor and beauty, "The Half of It" comprehends the chasm between wanting and being. Rated PG 13 for brief language, teen drinking and the delicate throb of unrequited love. Running time: 1 hour 44 minutes. Watch on Netflix.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Movies
SAN FRANCISCO Responding to complaints that not enough is being done to keep extremist content off social media platforms, Facebook said Thursday that it would begin using artificial intelligence to help remove inappropriate content. Artificial intelligence will largely be used in conjunction with human moderators who review content on a case by case basis. But developers hope its use will be expanded over time, said Monika Bickert, the head of global policy management at Facebook. One of the first applications for the technology is identifying content that clearly violates Facebook's terms of use, such as photos and videos of beheadings or other gruesome images, and stopping users from uploading them to the site. "Tragically, we have seen more terror attacks recently," Ms. Bickert said. "As we see more attacks, we see more people asking what social media companies are doing to keep this content offline."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Technology
"Obviously, you need a new rug," Liz said as she sat on my brand new one in the living room of the Upper West Side apartment my family and I had recently moved into. The rug is gray with stripes and an Aztec inspired pattern. It is uncushioned and made of an abrasive woolen fabric. A few weeks earlier, I had dragged it through Ikea and then lugged it up the stairs to the top floor of our second and third floor duplex. Liz sat upon that third floor, brand new, living room rug as she cited its scratchiness and too small for the space proportion. "Don't sit on it if it's so scratchy," I said. "I wouldn't, but you don't have any chairs," she said, with the sort of smirk that only a best friend could get away with. Liz knows I'm a big do it yourselfer, but this was more than she could imagine. "You laid those subway tiles yourself?" she said. Then she got closer to the wall behind the sink and countertop, which had been painted white when we moved in, and she touched the backsplash. It is not actually tile. I had covered the space with adhesive contact paper that looks like three dimensional subway tile. "This looks so fantastic," she said. Liz is Elizabeth Victory Anderson. We met when I was 16, and through the last 29 years we have maintained an adoration and annoyance for each other that are the hallmarks of a longtime best friendship. Despite our closeness, and certain parallels in our lives we have seen each other become wives and mothers, and have stood by each another during and after the death of a beloved parent our worlds are pretty different. So when she ragged on my rug, she did so with both love and authority. This was her first visit to my new rental. She oohed and aahed a lot and gave plenty of side eye, too. Though my husband, children and I had moved in a few months earlier after living in a house in a small town outside the city for seven years, we were still surrounded by boxes. I poured us each a glass of wine, and we talked about my desire to decorate my apartment on a limited budget. Because Liz and I had lived together after college, she knows my taste and my habits of saving newspapers and magazines, of working jigsaw puzzles and playing backgammon, of wanting my books and homemade arts and crafts around me. "I want to help," she said. We made a deal I would give Liz a budget that is slightly more than what my husband and I spend on one month's rent. This is a significant amount of money for me. But as I was disrupting the family with a move that would save me 15 hours a week commuting, I wanted the apartment to feel like a real home. When I asked Liz how much her services cost, she gave me an "if you have to ask, you can't afford it" answer and said she wanted to do this to test her creative skills at a different price and because she could not deal with knowing that her flighty best friend's kids, whom she adores, were still living out of cardboard boxes. I knew I was lucky to have Liz's help, but I got even luckier when her business partner, Julie Fowler, decided to take part. Julie is a onetime stylist for shelter magazines. She met Liz, who owned a company that sold high end shower curtains and bathroom accessories, more than 15 years ago. They decided to team up two years ago, creating Parker Barrow Interiors the middle names of Julie's son and Liz's daughter. They trolled Etsy, eBay, CB2 and Ikea. But my favorite was a website that sells secondhand furnishings called Previously Owned by a Gay Man. Turns out, you do not have to be a gay man to sell your stuff on the site, or to buy from it. But what a great name, and it was where Julie found turquoise throw pillows. They came up with flourishes that wowed me. In lieu of spending on bookshelves that might not fit in future apartments, Julie stacked books in the nonworking fireplaces in the living room and the kitchen. They put temporary wallpaper on the massive wall along the staircase because I did not have the amount of art we would need to decorate it. Julie and Liz picked a funky pattern that becomes, on its own, a piece of art that adds to the eclectic feel in the entryway and living room. Though my husband and I had set aside money for the design, I was worried about expenses. Liz and Julie had to push me a few times to go for investment pieces. There is now a midcentury ish console in our front hall and a custom media cabinet in the living room made of white oak with its interior shelves painted a dark yellow. It holds our turntable and record albums, and my husband, especially, loves it. The biggest problem was my limited time and attention span. There were dozens of texts about when things could get delivered (my husband and I both work full time, and our building has no doorman) and then many more emails to reschedule when furniture delivery guys realized that there were two long, narrow flights of stairs. But I pushed her limits over a faux Sputnik light fixture that she found on eBay that she wanted to hang in the center of our living room. I had given Julie and Liz my credit card information so they would not be out of pocket on items bought for me. But Liz asked me to handle this one transaction. I dillydallied and we lost out on the chandelier. (I was afraid to tell Liz.) She then found a different light fixture for 400 and took care of the purchase herself. From then on, I answered their queries in a respectful amount of time, with one of two boilerplate replies: "Is it in my budget?" and "I defer to you." Deferring to them meant that I did not need to understand their vision of how it would all come together, and it kept me from making it impossible for them to execute it. They hated it. They hated it even more than they hated the bar stools that had belonged to my mother that I had set along the kitchen counter. "It looks like the back seat of an old Chevrolet," Julie said. Maybe so, but I refused to let them get rid of it or to get new bar stools, seeing no reason to spend money to replace what I already had. On other seating issues, though, I heeded the advice of professionals. We now have a game table with four chairs, perfect for a backgammon and cards obsessed family. And we have a new rug, bought from Pier 1, that I managed to get up the stairs by myself. It felt soft under me as I sat on it the other day, while my husband and kids were slung all over the couch watching a movie. I looked around the room and I saw myself through the eyes of one of my oldest friends and, now, one of my newest. Thanks to them, my family was home.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Style
SAN FRANCISCO Apple, which had long deferred paying taxes on its foreign earnings and had become synonymous with hoarding money overseas, unveiled plans on Wednesday that would bring back the vast majority of the 252 billion in cash that it held abroad and said it would make a sizable investment in the United States. With the moves, Apple took advantage of the new tax code that President Trump signed into law last month. A provision allows for a one time repatriation of corporate cash held abroad at a lower tax rate than what would have been paid under the previous tax plan. Apple, which has 94 percent of its total cash of 269 billion outside the United States, said it would make a one time tax payment of 38 billion on the repatriated cash. For years, Apple had said it would not bring its foreign earnings back to the United States until the corporate tax code changed, because such a move would be too costly. Now Apple's bet to hold back on paying such taxes is reaping rewards under the Trump administration. In return, Mr. Trump and other Republicans can point to Apple as having come around because of their legislative action. The 38 billion tax payment from the Silicon Valley giant is set to be among the biggest payouts from the tax bill, and Apple said it would put some of the money it brought back toward 20,000 new jobs, a new domestic campus and other spending. Timothy D. Cook, Apple's chief executive, said in a statement, "We have a deep sense of responsibility to give back to our country and the people who help make our success possible." Apple estimated that its direct impact on the American economy would total more than 350 billion over the next five years, but how much that goes beyond what the company would have spent anyway is unclear. Apple's current pace of spending in the United States is 55 billion for 2018, so it was already on track to spend 275 billion over the next five years. After the 38 billion tax payment is subtracted, that leaves its new investment at roughly 37 billion over the next five years. A. M. Sacconaghi, a financial analyst for Sanford C. Bernstein, said Apple had consistently spent tens of billions of dollars on areas like staffing and capital expenditures in recent years. Bringing back the overseas cash, he said, does little to aid its expansion. But it makes the company appear to answer Mr. Trump's call for more jobs to be created in the United States. "This is Apple putting its best foot forward consistent with objectives of the administration," Mr. Sacconaghi said. Apple is one of several multinational giants that have kept a total of roughly 3 trillion in global profits off their domestic books to sidestep the previous 35 percent federal corporate tax rate. Under the new tax law, companies that make a one time repatriation of cash will be taxed at a rate of 15.5 percent on cash holdings and 8 percent on nonliquid assets. That is lower than the new 21 percent corporate rate. And under the new tax code, Apple would also have been taxed whether it brought the money back or not. By shifting the money under the new terms, Apple has saved 43 billion in taxes, more than any other American company, according to the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, a research group in Washington. Other tech giants are set to follow suit in the coming months. Companies like Microsoft, Alphabet and Cisco also shifted their profits into offshore shell companies, avoiding billions of dollars in taxes, and are now in a better position to bring the money back. Although Republican supporters of the tax law argued that the influx of international profits would create jobs and increase wages, many economists disagreed that a one time repatriation would have any substantial impact on real investment. Apple's announcement, couched as a major investment in the United States instead of a massive financial windfall, followed years of criticism that the company did not do enough for the American economy because it makes most of its products in China and parked its profits abroad. During the 2016 presidential campaign, Apple was a frequent target of Mr. Trump, who pledged that as president he would force the company to start making iPhones and Macs in the United States. While that hasn't happened and is unlikely to, Apple has since gone on a charm offensive to demonstrate its value to the American economy. The company has highlighted the number of jobs created by the so called app economy, an ecosystem of software and services that run on the iPhone and other Apple products. Last year, Apple also said it was creating a 1 billion fund to invest in advanced manufacturing in the United States. On Wednesday, Apple said it was increasing the size of that fund to 5 billion and noted that it was already backing projects from manufacturers in Kentucky and Texas. Apple, which is based in Cupertino, Calif., also took a page out of Amazon's public relations strategy on Wednesday by saying it will open a new domestic campus in a location where it currently has no operations. Amazon garnered good will throughout the country last year when it announced plans to open a second corporate headquarters outside its home base of Seattle. Apple currently has about 84,000 employees in the United States, so 20,000 new jobs would be a 24 percent increase. The company added that it would invest more than 30 billion in capital expenditures, or spending on parts and the equipment required to produce them, over the next five years in the United States. For a comparison, Apple spent 14.9 billion in capital expenditures in the last fiscal year, though it did not specify how much it spends in the United States alone. For Apple, repatriating the cash creates opportunities that could include acquisitions and higher dividends for shareholders. The company had previously chosen to borrow money to fund its stock buybacks and dividends, instead of bringing its cash back from abroad. Over the last five years, Apple has returned 233 billion in cash to shareholders through buybacks and dividends. Paying 38 billion in taxes now is unlikely to strain Apple's checkbook because the company had already earmarked 36.4 billion in anticipation that it would eventually have to pay taxes on its foreign earnings.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Technology
SHANGHAI The spacious duplex comes with crocodile skin bedposts, hand carved bronze doors inlaid with Swarovski crystals and a 45 million price tag. It is still on the market, but Charles Tong, the developer of Tomson Riviera, a luxury riverfront complex in the heart of the financial district here, says he is having no trouble finding takers for similarly priced units. "We're selling three to four apartments every month," said Mr. Tong, seated in a white Versace easy chair. "Now, people here want something more luxurious; they'd like a new lifestyle." Everyone agrees China is in the middle of a spectacular real estate boom. The question is whether it is in the middle of a rapidly growing real estate bubble. When other recent booms collapsed in the United States, for instance they depressed entire economies. In China's case, a bursting bubble could affect much of the world. China is the fastest growing large economy and, so far, a main engine pulling the world out of recession. Beijing is clearly concerned. Authorities have recently moved to rein in the easy credit that has helped finance China's hyperdevelopment, including making it more difficult for home buyers to take out a second mortgage. Tomson Riviera, a luxury apartment complex that features designs by Versace and bronze doors inlaid with Swarovski crystals. Ryan Pyle for The New York Times Last year, a record 560 billion of residential property was sold in China, an increase of 80 percent from the year before, according to government statistics that are widely considered reliable. And with prices soaring, developers are scrambling to build more mansions, villas and high rise apartments with names like Rich Gate, Park Avenue and Palais de Fortune. Signs of exuberance are everywhere. An investor in Shanghai recently bought 54 apartments in a single day; a villa sold for 30 million last year; and in December a consortium of developers paid more than 3.5 billion for a huge tract of land in Guangzhou, one of the highest prices paid for any property, anywhere. In the city of Tianjin, in north China, developers have created a 3 billion "floating city," a series of islands built on a natural reservoir, featuring villas, shopping malls, a water amusement park and what they say will be the world's largest indoor ski resort. "This is wild," said Andy Xie, a former Morgan Stanley economist who is now an independent analyst. "By all the traditional measures, like rental yield, this is a bubble." Speculators are snapping up properties on the expectation that prices will continue to rise, as prices have nearly every year for more than a decade. And powerful developers are working with local governments to transform old cities into urban dreamscapes. But Shanghai, China's wealthiest and most dazzling city, is the epicenter of the boom. Prices here have risen more than 150 percent since 2003, pushing the price of a typical 1,100 square foot apartment up to 200,000, according to real estate experts. (Shanghai residents typically earn less than 5,000 a year.) A buying frenzy has gripped the city, leading to billion dollar land auctions and long waiting lists. Ryan Pyle for The New York Times "The speed you buy a house here is faster than you buy vegetables," said Andy Xiang, an advertising executive who recently put down a large cash down payment to get the right to pay 1.3 million for an apartment in the city's exclusive Xintiandi area. Few residences, though, are as upscale as Tomson Riviera, which consists of four golden hued towers overlooking the Huangpu River, with a central garden mapped out in the shape of a dragon. The apartment complex's entrance has original artworks by Salvador Dali and well known Chinese artists. The apartments, a few of which have been decorated by Armani and Fendi, as well as Versace, lease for 7,000 to 17,000 a month to high level executives from companies like General Motors. Those who buy an apartment here tend to be extremely wealthy, like Liu Yiqian, an eccentric Shanghai entrepreneur whom Forbes magazine says is worth about 540 million. Mr. Liu, 47, got his start driving a taxicab in Shanghai but eventually made a fortune investing in the stock market. In an interview this week, he acknowledged owning hundreds of apartments in Shanghai (he said he could not remember exactly how many), including a 6,000 square foot apartment in Tomson Riviera, which he bought in 2008 for about 11.5 million. "I invest in properties," Mr. Liu said, noting that he also collects art, antiques and jade. "I think in Shanghai in five to seven years the real estate prices will be even higher." As they try to modulate the market, local and central governments here are walking a thin line. Land sales were a major source of government revenue, raising about 234 billion last year, an amount equal to over a third of the cost of China's half trillion dollar stimulus program. Ryan Pyle for The New York Times Whether the country is in the middle of a bubble has become the subject of a debate. Some economists, like Nicholas R. Lardy at the Peterson Institute for International Economics in Washington, say the housing boom is being propelled by a huge urbanization push that is creating premium priced houses. Other analysts say prices are being propped up by greedy developers and government policies that are making housing increasingly unaffordable for the masses migrating to big cities.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Global Business
The choreographer Wayne McGregor at a recent rehearsal for "AfteRite," his dance for American Ballet Theater, which is to have its premiere at the company's spring gala. LONDON "What if you tried to put your nose on the floor?" Wayne McGregor asked with a smile. Jeffrey Cirio, an American Ballet Theater principal, complied. He swerved out of an upper body undulation into a downward plunge, kicking a leg up behind him almost into a split as his face skimmed the floor. "Great, can you rotate that?" Mr. McGregor asked, and Mr. Cirio levered himself upright, spiraling his torso and falling into a crouch. Mr. McGregor, 48, creates hyperkinetic, often strange looking movement, distinguished by its extreme extensions, buckling torsos and improbably fast coordinations among parts of the body. On a freezing January day in New York City, he was exuding energy and good cheer as he worked with five American Ballet Theater dancers on his new "AfteRite," a version of "The Rite of Spring," which is to have its premiere at Ballet Theater's gala on Monday at the Metropolitan Opera House. But Mr. McGregor, who is British and has been the resident choreographer at the Royal Ballet since 2006, was not at that moment creating movement to the famed Stravinsky score. Instead, a low beat and a male voice singing in Arabic filled the downtown Manhattan rehearsal studio, punctuated by the choreographer's own rhythmic chants and commands. Mr. McGregor's compositional techniques are unusual. He often creates movement by asking the dancers to attempt ideas like putting your nose on the floor and seeing what kind of shapes and movement they create. He generates a large amount of physical material in this way, then culls ideas and sequences, often colliding different passages against one another in duos or larger groups. "It's hijacking your own work," he said in a few weeks ago, at his elegantly minimal London headquarters in the Olympic Park, on the eastern edge of the city, where he runs his troupe, Company Wayne McGregor. "It is physically very hard," said the ballerina Alessandra Ferri, who has worked with Mr. McGregor at the Royal Ballet and is performing in "AfteRite." "There is a quantity of movement that you have to memorize with your mind and your body: Memorize, next; memorize, next. But the speed, the departure from what you know, breaks patterns, your body and mind habits, and that frees creativity and brings something new out of you." Mr. McGregor said his new work for Ballet Theater would not follow the narrative suggested by the Stravinsky score, whose sections have titles like "Glorification of the Chosen One." "When you are dealing with a work like 'Rite,' it's a palimpsest," he said. "When I think about all the versions I've seen, and everything I've read about the Nijinsky Stravinsky 1913 creation, I realize there is a thick strata there in my consciousness." That, he said, was why he had named the piece "AfteRite." "It acknowledges the 'Rites' I've seen, but also alludes to a sort of retinal burn of recurrent themes and ideas, and to a speculative future." The sense of a futuristic setting will be partly evoked through film of the Atacama Desert in Chile, the driest and possibly the oldest desert on earth. (The film was made by his frequent collaborator, Ravi Deepres; Mr. McGregor is also using his other frequent collaborators, Lucy Carter, for lighting, and Vicki Mortimer for the scenery and costumes.) "It's an alien landscape," Mr. McGregor said, "and even in the original 'Rite,' there is a sense of otherness, a place we recognize and don't." Mr. McGregor's choreographic career, which began in the early 1990s, has been characterized almost from the start by an intense interest in new technologies, digital animation, human and artificial intelligence, and the way all of these can affect the human body. He has put performers in changing digital landscapes, given them prosthetic limbs, explored the effects of neurological disorder and recently created a work based on genome sequencing. Everything, to Mr. McGregor, is information that can drive movement. When he began to choreograph more frequently for ballet companies in the mid 2000s he treated ballet technique itself as a kind of technology a source of fascinating information about the way specifically trained bodies can function under varying conditions. (Pointe work, after all, offers a prosthetic foot of sorts.) "When I first saw his work, maybe a decade ago, I thought, this is the next thing," said Kevin McKenzie, the artistic director of Ballet Theater. "Here was a rule breaker, like Twyla Tharp or William Forsythe, and a jump into another level." In Europe, Mr. McGregor is regarded as a major dance voice and has received generally admiring reviews, but his work is performed far less frequently in the United States, and critics have often been dismissive. He said he was unaware at that time that Mr. McGregor had been scheduled to create a "Rite of Spring" for the Bolshoi Ballet, a project which fell through after its director, Sergei Fillin, was attacked with acid in January 2013. Mr. McGregor said that contrary to reports, he hadn't withdrawn out of a fear of personal danger, but because the complex set he needed to rehearse with had not been built. "There was a lot of flux after the acid attack on Sergei, and it just didn't seem like they could support a new piece right then," he said. The Ballet Theater work, he said, is different in concept and design from the one he had conceived for the Bolshoi. "I think you always make a work for the place you are going to or at least, I do," he said. "I wanted to try something different." Mr. McGregor has kept the cast small, with 15 dancers, two of whom are children. "I wanted to build a community onstage, different ages, races, bodies." He added that there was a mother figure, and "some kind of narrative thread, a sense of ritual and transformation." Is it about a woman dancing herself to death? he asked rhetorically. "I'm not sure that's where I want to go." Ms. Ferri said the work was "a real departure from the rhythmical atmosphere and group dances that we're accustomed to seeing in 'Rite of Spring.' I think he has taken it away from the past, and asks, what is it now, what does it do to people to sacrifice a human life?" Asked if he felt the weight of dance history in creating a "Rite of Spring," Mr. McGregor said: "The more I think about it, the more anxious I feel. I have to keep going back and thinking, what does this mean to me?" He contemplated that question. "There is something about the cyclical nature of this work that makes us look at humanity from a distance. You can't help but question your own snapshot of existence."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Dance
While Mr. Girling promoted the Energy East Pipeline primarily as a way to supply Canadian refineries, he said it would also allow oil sands producers to increase their export business. He said a new deep seaport at the pipeline's eastern terminus, Saint John, New Brunswick, and a port in Quebec City would allow tankers to carry diluted bitumen, the oil containing substance that is separated out of the oil sands, to the Eastern Seaboard of the United States, the Gulf Coast, Europe, India and Asia. A plan by Enbridge, another Canadian pipeline company, to build a pipeline from Alberta to a new tanker port in British Columbia for exports to Asia has met strong opposition from environmentalists and several native Canadian communities along its route. TransCanada's new plan involves converting 1,864 miles of a natural gas pipeline to carry oil, and the construction of 870 miles of new pipeline, mainly in Quebec and New Brunswick. It has long term contracts to carry about 900,000 barrels of oil a day along the route, Mr. Girling said. "They're in for a fight," John Bennett, the executive director of the Sierra Club of Canada, said shortly after the announcement. Mr. Bennett said he was particularly concerned about the possibility of oil spills in the Bay of Fundy in New Brunswick and about harm to whales in the area from tanker traffic. In a statement, Environmental Defence said the plan was "yet another misguided scheme that puts Canadians in harm's way for the benefit of the oil industry's bottom line."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Global Business
"It used to be, 'I want to get famous on YouTube or Vine, so I can have a career in traditional entertainment.' Now, this is a career." That's Greg Goodfried, the co head of digital talent at United Talent Agency. Addison Easterling, a 19 year old TikTok star with more than 30.6 million followers, had never shot an acting reel or auditioned for a big role. But after finding huge success on TikTok, which she joined just last summer, top talent agents in Los Angeles began to reach out. In December, she moved from Baton Rouge, La., to Los Angeles. In January, she signed with William Morris Endeavor, a major Hollywood talent agency. "When WME said they wanted to sign me, I couldn't wrap my head around it," she said. "Just the opportunity to talk with one of these big agencies is a big deal." "This all came out of something I did for fun," she said. "I was like, 'Is this a real thing?'" For those in entertainment, signing with an elite talent agency has long been a status symbol. But the fame landscape is shifting, and big agencies have realigned their businesses to focus on a new generation of talent: influencers. "The next wave of talent, all future waves of talent, aren't going to come from traditional places," said Jad Dayeh, co head of digital at WME. "The younger generation creates, self broadcasts and shares it with the world. They don't wait to get their audition shot and wait for someone to discover them." "It used to be, I want to get famous on YouTube or Vine, so I can have a career in traditional entertainment. Now, this is a career," said Greg Goodfried, co head of digital talent at United Talent Agency. Because they grew their audience organically, many Gen Z stars don't need agents to help them get gigs. But, as Parker Pannell, a 16 year old TikToker, put it: "It's a major flex to tell your friends you're with CAA, WME or UTA." Digital talent departments at many large agencies aren't new, but the money pouring into the space has exploded in recent years. The influencer marketing industry is set to top more than 15 billion by 2022, up from nearly 8 billion in 2019, according to a 2019 research report by Business Insider Intelligence using data from Mediakix. This, of course, could change with the economic crisis caused by the coronavirus pandemic. Still, those figures don't even capture many of the successful products and businesses influencers have launched, including makeup and clothing lines. It used to be that digital talent agents were ancillary to the business of big agencies, Mr. Dayeh said. But "in the last two years, digital has become the primary touchpoint for talent with the public." To that point, when Brent Weinstein of UTA launched the agency's digital arm in 2006, initially called UTA Online, he was scouring YouTube and other web platforms for obscure talent. Today, he is the UTA's chief innovation officer. Other big talent houses had digital media divisions in the early aughts, too. But at the time, most agencies were focused on bringing celebrities from traditional Hollywood onto then new platforms like Twitter, rather than building businesses around the ever growing number of internet native stars. "There wasn't a lot of money going around, it was really early days," said Alec Shankman, a comanaging partner at A3 Artists Agency, formerly known as Abrams. Now, the dozens of TikTokers the agency has signed, Mr. Shankman said, have "become a really important part of our business." That's partially because influencers are often successful at generating the thing agencies care most about: cash. "Frankly, we're in a very for profit business," said Andrew Graham, an agent in Creative Artists Agency's digital department. "So when brands started calling and saying, 'Hey, do you have an influencer for this campaign?' the agency's ears perked up." 'Pioneering It As We Go' To get deals for their clients, digital agents must remain current on technology shifts and the ever evolving ways to structure deals. These include merch drops that never see a retail store; business decisions vetted by Instagram followers; meet and greets via FaceTime; and an endless churn of new digital platforms. "It's the Wild West," said Alison Berman, co head of digital talent at UTA. "There are some templates in place for some of the deals we do, but our area of business certainly isn't templatized." Literary and film departments have "unions that are setting rates" and "there's certain deals broken up into certain payment schedules," she said. "They're plug and play, whereas ours are entrepreneurial and we're pioneering it as we go." Cosette Rinab, a 20 year old TikToker, said that seeing UTA sign a major TikTok star like Charli D'Amelio (who signed along with the rest of her family) gave her respect for the agency. (Other members of the Hype House, a TikTok star collective, have signed with WME and A3 Artists Agency.) "In my eyes, it gave UTA a little bit more relevance," Ms. Rinab said. "It gave me a feeling of, 'Oh, UTA is really keeping up with this.'"	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Style
WASHINGTON Federal Reserve officials emphasized the need for ongoing economic support in late July as the coronavirus pandemic dragged on, keeping millions of workers at home and threatening U.S. growth. "Uncertainty surrounding the economic outlook remained very elevated, with the path of the economy highly dependent on the course of the virus and the public sector's response to it," minutes from the central bank's July 28 29 meeting showed. The Fed's meeting came as virus cases staged a resurgence, one that has since leveled off, and before the July labor market report showed that job gains are slowing. It also took place just before government support programs lapsed, including enhanced unemployment benefits that were helping many households to stay afloat as business closures keep them out of work. The need for additional fiscal policy support in other words, money from Congress was a major point of discussion at the meeting, based on the minutes released Wednesday. Fed officials noted it was "uncertain" in the short term whether additional government help would come through, and they pointed out that monetary policy and "particularly fiscal policy" had important roles to play in supporting business activity. With some stimulus provisions "set to expire shortly against the backdrop of a still weak labor market, additional fiscal aid would likely be important for supporting vulnerable families, and thus the economy more broadly, in the period ahead," some participants said, according to the minutes. The path to reaching some sort of deal to provide another dose of fiscal support is unclear, even as millions of Americans remain out of work and some businesses continue to struggle. Senate Republicans began circulating the text of a narrow coronavirus relief package on Tuesday, but it is unlikely that Democrats will sign on. While President Trump has tried to unilaterally extend enhanced unemployment insurance, alongside other measures, his executive orders and memorandum will offer only partial relief that could take weeks to reach consumers. Economists increasingly expect America's millions of unemployed people to go without the 600 per week supplement they had been receiving for at least all of August. That could place more strain on less advantaged households. Minority workers and those with less education have been more likely to lose jobs, and Fed officials seemed concerned with how they will fare going forward. "With lower wage and service sector jobs disproportionately held by African Americans, Hispanics and women, these portions of the population were bearing a disproportionate share of the economic hardship caused by the pandemic," the minutes noted. "Participants noted that the fiscal support initiated in the spring through the CARES Act had been very important in granting some financial relief to millions of families." The so called CARES Act provided for an extra 600 in weekly unemployment benefits, student loan and mortgage relief, and small business loans, all of which have helped households and the companies they work for to make it through the pandemic. But the policies were designed as a short term solution, and many have either run out or will do so in coming months. The Fed has taken its own actions to support the economy, but its policies primarily enable growth by making it cheaper to borrow and spend they do not directly put money in consumers' and companies' pockets. That task falls to Congress. Since the late July Fed gathering, real time indicators of consumer spending have continued to muddle along without showing much further improvement, even retreating slightly by some metrics. The stock market, on the other hand, has continued to surge, with key indexes touching new highs. Central bank staff warned in July that financial vulnerabilities were "notable," and flagged asset prices. They specifically pointed to commercial real estate prices, which continued to increase even as vacancies ticked up. Covid's impact on the supply chain continues. The pandemic has disrupted nearly every aspect of the global supply chain and made all kinds of products harder to find. In turn, scarcity has caused the prices of many things to go higher as inflation remains stubbornly high. Almost anything manufactured is in short supply. That includes everything from toilet paper to new cars. The disruptions go back to the beginning of the pandemic, when factories in Asia and Europe were forced to shut down and shipping companies cut their schedules. First, demand for home goods spiked. Money that Americans once spent on experiences were redirected to things for their homes. The surge clogged the system for transporting goods to the factories that needed them and finished products piled up because of a shortage of shipping containers. Now, ports are struggling to keep up. In North America and Europe, where containers are arriving, the heavy influx of ships is overwhelming ports. With warehouses full, containers are piling up. The chaos in global shipping is likely to persist as a result of the massive traffic jam. No one really knows when the crisis will end. Shortages and delays are likely to affect this year's Christmas and holiday shopping season, but what happens after that is unclear. Jerome Powell, the Federal Reserve chair, said he expects supply chain problems to persist "likely well into next year." And some Fed officials suggested that they were worried about potential risks to financial stability should the coronavirus crisis drag on, the minutes showed. "Banks and other financial institutions could come under significant stress," some meeting participants noted, also pointing out that companies have borrowed large sums of money and the government is issuing huge amounts of debt, which could weigh on Treasury market functioning. "There was general agreement that these institutions, activities and markets should be monitored closely," the minutes said, and a "couple" of Fed officials pushed for extended restrictions on bank shareholder payouts, which include dividends, though another argued against such a move.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Economy
It had been six months since Nick Bayer and his wife had been on a date. But with freezing temperatures gripping Philadelphia and indoor restaurant service banned, dinner in a tent wasn't appealing. So instead of sitting outdoors at the Walnut Street Cafe, a local restaurant, they opted for an elegant meal served in a hotel room that had been converted into a private dining space. Their night out was the result of teamwork between the cafe and AKA City University hotel, part of a growing trend that is attempting to provide business for two industries hardest hit by the pandemic restaurants and hotels. (This joint effort is being called the Walnut Suite Cafe.) This isn't typical room service. The Bayers didn't sit on the edge of a bed eating tepid food from a cart deposited in the middle of the room. Instead, for 50, they got use of a suite for three hours to enjoy their 65 per person prix fixe meals (not including beverages) served by a waiter at a laid dining table. To minimize contact, the food and beverages are preordered and prepaid. The waiter not only served, but escorted the Bayers to the room on the 31st floor of the hotel, so he was the only person they had contact with all evening. "We were really excited, my wife and I dressed up," said Mr. Bayer, who wore a blazer with a pocket square to his dinner on a Wednesday evening with a Nor'easter rolling in. The logistics are challenging for the restaurant, since the waiters can't see the diners to sweep in if someone drops a fork or finds their steak overcooked. The service allows for add ons during the meal by scanning the QR code on the one use paper menu, which allowed Mr. Bayer to order a second martini. "So far we've been able to anticipate people's needs and accommodate everything in advance," said Branden McRill, the chief executive officer and founder of Fine Drawn Hospitality, which owns and operates the Walnut Street Cafe. But just in case, a card with the restaurant phone number is left on the dining table. Mr. McRill gives credit for the idea to the chef Aidan O'Neal of Le Crocodile brasserie and the Wythe Hotel in Brooklyn, which created Le Crocodile Upstairs by removing beds and installing custom made tables in 13 hotel rooms, where private parties of up to 10 could dine ( 100 per person for a three course dinner). The NoMad Manhattan hotel had a similar effort, the NoMad Feast, but both were suspended when stricter dining restrictions for restaurants went into effect in New York in mid December. The Bayers, who live just a few blocks from the AKA hotel, went home after dinner. But since the Walnut Suite Cafe launched shortly after Thanksgiving, about 20 percent of guests have opted to stay for the night, with their 50 hotel fee applied to the room charge of 250 for a one bedroom suite, or 550 for a two bedroom, Mr. McRill said. Of the 100 hotel rooms at the AKA, 15 suites have been designated for dining, limited to a maximum of four guests per party. For New Year's Eve, the Walnut Suite Cafe is offering an earlier three course sitting for 95 per person, (optional 45 wine pairing), or a later five course meal for 150 per person (optional 65 wine pairing), plus the 50 room fee. No suite is used more than once an evening to allow for proper cleaning. With New Year's Eve approaching, similar partnerships have cropped up across the country. Here, some of what's on offer: After restrictions in Boston limited outdoor dining to private property, the UNI restaurant moved all its service to nine semiprivate rooms created by taking over the suites on the first two floors of the Eliot Hotel. The beds were removed and one table was set up in the bedroom and another in the front room, with French doors separating the two. Up to six guests per group dine a la carte from the sushi and sashimi menu created by the James Beard Award winning chef Tony Messina, while the restaurant's music is piped in to create a familiar ambience. There is no additional fee for use of the room, but when a party wants the entire suite, there is a minimum 300 food and beverage charge per person. A special tasting menu is being created for New Year's Eve. Le Cavalier brasserie opened in the Green Room at the Hotel duPont in Wilmington, Del., during the pandemic. To help with social distancing, some of the hotel rooms are being used exclusively for private dining. Ordering for the family style meals is done in advance, with a 380 dinner for two featuring two appetizers, two entrees, two sides and one dessert. Each additional person is 150 up to the maximum of 10. Guests can opt to stay overnight, a choice made by about half the diners. A king bedroom for two with the dining special costs 500. A special New Year's Eve menu that includes a bottle of champagne begins at 450 for two guests for the evening, or 600 including a night in a classic king bedroom. In Denver, the Urban Farmer steakhouse has paired with the adjacent Oxford Hotel to offer what they are calling a "steakcation" in converted hotel rooms that have had the beds removed and replaced with dining tables for up to six people. For overnight guests, private use of one of the three dining chambers comes as part of a package that starts with rooms priced from 129, plus a 200 food and drink minimum. For those not planning to stay the night, the dining rooms are rented for 100 for four hours, in addition to the minimum food charge. The full Urban Farmer menu is available, and on New Year's Eve, specials will include options such as a charred octopus appetizer and a prime rib entree.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Travel
It's no secret that the classic American van is on its way out. Since the late 1960s, most full size van models have been trucklike vehicles with stubby noses, long bodies and relatively low profile front windshields. The General Motors G Series and Dodge Ram vans are already gone. The Ford E Series has been America's top selling van since the early '80s, but it's also about to virtually disappear, replaced with something new for the United States, but not for Europe: the Ford Transit. So why would Ford change a good thing? According to a presentation about the van that the automaker made in New Jersey last week, Ford is swapping a good thing for something much better. Compared with the E Series, Ford says the 2015 Transit offers a range of more fuel efficient engines and can be configured to have more cargo volume. Minyang Jiang, brand manager for Ford's commercial vans, said the higher cargo volume equated fewer trips, and therefore lower fuel consumption. Ford says the turbocharged 3.5 liter EcoBoost V6 powered van has an E.P.A. estimated fuel economy rating of 14 miles per gallon in the city and 19 on the highway, while the 6.8 liter V10 equipped E Series van is good only for 10 m.p.g. in the city and 13 on the highway. (According to the E.P.A. website, the 4.6 liter V8 powered E Series is rated at 13 m.p.g. in the city and 16 on the highway). The Transit van may look almost effete next to its burly, snub nosed American predecessor, but Ford offers two wheelbases, three roof heights and three different body lengths for the new van that could make practicality minded commercial customers forget about what looks "normal." The low roof vans are sleek by commercial van standards, and the long overhang, high roof Transits, although they look ungainly, have 487 cubic feet of cargo volume. Equipped with the optional dual rear wheel axle, the Transit is rated to carry up to 4,650 pounds of cargo. The base model costs 30,560. Ford gave a group of journalists a chance to drive the vans on a makeshift course at MetLife Stadium in New Jersey. Following the well worn tire tracks from the autocross events that are regularly held at the stadium, the vans responded well when flung around tight turns. They didn't lean too much, and the turning radius was short. All of the vans were loaded with a short stack of rubber mats to make the ride more realistic. For the unavoidable pitfalls that a tall vehicle presents, Ford has included safety features in the new Transit to help protect occupants from rollover crashes. The van includes several air bags, stability control and can be equipped with back up cameras and electronic nanny controls like lane change and drowsiness alerts. There are places in the dash to put coffee cups where they won't spill. There's a flat spot on top of the dash where a clipboard can be placed. There's even a little pocket in the door that's hidden when the door is closed. The interior walls inside the stripped down vans feature threaded attachment points for shelving and other equipment, which Ford says will prevent the potential rust problems from custom drilled attachment holes. The passenger oriented wagon models are offered with a variety of seating configurations, and Ford says that on the high roof version, passengers up to 6 feet 5 inches tall can stand comfortably in the back. On the medium roof version, a tall journalist at the event had only to bend his head down a little to stand inside. There are three engines available in the Transit: the standard 275 horsepower 3.7 liter V6, a 185 horsepower 3.2 liter diesel engine and the top of the line 310 horsepower turbocharged 3.5 liter EcoBoost V6. The 3.7 proved adequate power, although it, like the EcoBoost, buzzed a bit at higher engine speeds. That seems to be a normal trait in Ford's V6 engine. The 5 cylinder diesel engine is the latest version of the Puma engine Ford has been selling overseas for more than a decade. The engine provides smooth power and 350 pound feet of torque from 1,500 to 2,500 r.p.m., where a commercial vehicle needs it. The E Series will not be going away completely. Its gross vehicle weight rating is much higher than the Transit. The E 350 Super Duty with the V10 engine has a gross vehicle weight rating of 18,500 pounds and is rated to tow 10,000 pounds. So Ford says it will offer a cutaway version of the E Series just the old style van cab with a bare frame stretched out behind for box trucks, small buses and other applications that need to carry a lot of weight. According to Good Car Bad Car, an auto industry sales tracker, Ford had sold nearly 16,000 E Series vans during the first two months of 2014. It sold less than 7,000 of the smaller Transit Connect vans during that time, while G.M. sold about 12,000 of its cargo vans, Ram just over 2,000, Nissan about 2,000 and Mercedes Benz 2,700. It is likely that Transit vans will begin to appear soon at airports, loading docks and other places where commercial vehicles usually congregate.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Automobiles
PHILADELPHIA Applause and cheers broke out at the soon to open Museum of the American Revolution here on Friday when its centerpiece, a fragile, 10 foot tall elliptical tent, was finally erected. The linen marquee was the office and living quarters for George Washington during much of the Revolutionary War "the first Oval Office," noted R. Scott Stephenson, the vice president of collections, exhibitions and programming at the museum, which will open on April 19, two blocks from Independence Hall. Conservators, engineers and museum officials had spent years working toward this moment, the realization of a dream that began in 1909 when an Episcopal minister, hoping to build a museum, bought the tent from a daughter of Robert E. Lee. Washington, as commander of the Continental Army, not only slept there. Between June 1778 and 1783 he remained inside "its venerable folds" for hours at a time, as his adopted son, George Washington Parke Custis, wrote in "Recollections and Private Memoirs of George Washington," and he ordered that "he should on no account be disturbed, save on the arrival of an important express." In this tent, Washington weathered the Battle of Monmouth, plotted the Siege of Yorktown, conferred frequently with Alexander Hamilton and changed the course of history. At the 120 million museum, designed by Robert A. M. Stern Architects, the tent will occupy a climate and light controlled space behind shatter resistant glass. "Having any George Washington artifact is important and having one as tangible as this tent is quite extraordinary," said David N. Redden, a former vice chairman of Sotheby's, who in 2006 sold a Revolutionary War battle flag for 12.33 million, still a record price. He declined to value the tent, but added, "I can't think of any other Revolutionary War tents that survive." It's lucky this one did. Washington ordered it when his first field tent began rotting during the brutal winter of 1777 at Valley Forge. Designed just like the first with a scalloped valance, trimmed in scarlet, dropping from two peaks over the outer walls this one passed by inheritance from Custis to his daughter, Mary Anna, who married Lee long before he became commander of the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia. It was seized by federal troops in 1862 and eventually sent into storage at the Smithsonian Institution. There it resided until 1901, when, after petitions by the Lee family, President McKinley returned it. In 1909, to raise money for Confederate widows, Mary Custis Lee sold it for 5,000 to the Rev. W. Herbert Burk, founder of the Valley Forge Historical Society, whose collection was given to the new museum in 2003. Readying it for display was complex, even for Virginia Whelan, a textile specialist who has conserved a cotton shawl worn by Gandhi and the coat Franklin D. Roosevelt wore at Yalta, among other artifacts. A one square yard piece was missing entirely, probably cut up at some point for souvenirs. The linen bore about 550 jagged holes, ranging in size from a thumbnail to a couple of playing cards. And it had stains. "I wondered if someone spilled their grog, or is it sweat?" Ms. Whelan said. "Or did it come from candlelight?" Wearing a thimble but no gloves, Ms. Whelan layered fine, nearly invisible netting over and under each hole, then used polyester thread finer than human hair to stitch around the damage to prevent further fraying. For large tears and the missing piece, she worked with the faculty of Philadelphia University's textile design department to make high resolution images of the fabric, which were printed on polyester with a digital inkjet printer. The whole effort took 525 hours of handwork by Ms. Whelan and an assistant. Erecting the fragile tent, which measures 20 feet by 15 feet, was equally challenging. The 18th century system of poles and ropes would have put too much stress on it. Alex Stadel, a structural engineer from Keast Hood, devised the custom base, which looks like two unfurled umbrellas, standing upright and connected by a ridgepole, adding some upright poles on tracks for additional flexibility. To attach the walls to the tent top, the team avoided iron hooks and eyes that were used in the original design, and chose rare earth magnets that tether the fabric in place. Visitors can view the tent beginning on April 19, the 242nd anniversary of "the shot heard 'round the world" that set off the Revolution, when the museum opens in the heart of this historic city, just a short walk from Carpenters' Hall, meeting place of the first Continental Congress. There they may also walk through 16,000 square feet of permanent exhibition galleries that tell the war's story through immersive experiences, recreated historical moments as when Washington broke up a fight among soldiers and historical artifacts. Among the other treasures are a 13 star "Commander in Chief's Standard" that marked Washington's presence on the battlefield; the first newspaper printing of the Declaration of Independence; and guns, muskets, canteens and uniforms. Mr. Stephenson notes that this is not a war museum and that the story does not end with American independence. The museum takes pains to include the roles played by women; slaves such as Washington's valet, William Lee, who was freed in Washington's will; Native Americans; and, later, immigrants in the tale, a story that continues to this day. "We are still in the midst of this revolution," he said.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Art & Design
LG lured attendees into its giant booth with televisions that can be rolled up as if they were yoga mats. Wireless carriers and chip makers highlighted 5G, the next generation cellular network arriving this year in a small number of cities with data speeds so zippy that devices can download an entire movie in seconds. The most surprising news came when a host of tech companies announced they were working with Apple to bring some of the company's content and virtual assistant capabilities to their devices. Vizio, the TV maker, said its newer TVs would work with AirPlay, an Apple software feature for streaming video and audio content from an iPhone or Mac to a television screen. People will be able to speak to Siri on their iPhones to play content they had purchased from iTunes on the Vizio TVs. Samsung, Sony and LG announced similar partnerships with Apple. In the past, AirPlay and iTunes videos were mostly tied to Apple made hardware like the Apple TV set top box. Their expansion to third parties underlines Apple's ambition to expand the revenue it generates from its internet content and services. That's especially important now that sales of Apple's cash cow, the iPhone, are slowing. This month, the company reduced its revenue expectations for the first time in 16 years. The move is also notable because it illustrates an unusual willingness by Apple to open its technology to other companies, including competitors like Samsung. Front and center at CES was the battle between virtual assistants namely Amazon's Alexa and Google's Assistant. Google erected an enormous outdoor booth to show off the multitude of devices that now work with Assistant, including smart watches, speakers and displays. The company said a billion devices now work with its assistant, up from 400 million last year. Google wants to make the Assistant the focal point of a consumer's life: in the home, in the car and on mobile devices. "When I walk down the aisle at Home Depot, will all the devices I might buy work with the Assistant?" Nick Fox, a Google executive who oversees Assistant, said of items like smoke detectors and thermostats. "The answer is yes." Amazon also had a large presence at the show. It filled a large conference room at the Venetian hotel with dozens of products that work with Alexa, including an Audi car, a motorcycle helmet and a stereo system. The battle among virtual assistants is shaping up to be very different from past platform wars between tech companies because consumers will have more choices. Many of the smart gadgets at CES worked with multiple virtual assistants. Aaron Emigh, chief executive of Brilliant, which makes smart home products that work with Alexa, Google Assistant and Siri, said it was critical for virtual assistants to work together, not against one another, because the smart home was already too complex, with products like light switches, thermostats and cameras coming from different brands. Car manufacturers like Mercedes Benz and BMW showed off concepts of autonomous vehicles powered by artificial intelligence and 5G wireless connections. But consumers won't be able to buy self driving vehicles from a dealership anytime soon, in part because companies still need much more data on how people drive cars. Smarter cars with features like built in voice assistants to help people use maps, play music or get a sports update without taking their eyes off the road are available now, however. If the economy does cool off, sales of cutting edge gadgets will drop. Fast. But that didn't faze people here. None of the CES attendees I spoke to expressed concern. Matt Strauss, who oversees Comcast's Xfinity internet and cable service, was especially bullish about the year ahead. He said just about everything announced at CES required an internet connection, so that's the last thing that people would cut off. "It's become like oxygen," he said.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Technology
WASHINGTON President Trump said late on Tuesday that he would support Oracle's buying TikTok, the Chinese owned viral video app that his administration says must be sold in the next few weeks. In comments to reporters at an event in Arizona, Mr. Trump called Oracle a "great company" and said the firm, which specializes in enterprise software, could successfully run TikTok. "I think that Oracle would be certainly somebody that could handle it," he said. Mr. Trump declined to say whether he believed Oracle was a better option to take over the app than Microsoft, the software giant that has also talked with ByteDance, TikTok's Chinese owner, about buying the app. The Trump administration is trying to force the sale of TikTok over concerns that its ownership poses a national security threat. Officials have said Chinese apps could provide a way for Beijing to seize Americans' data, which TikTok and other Chinese firms deny.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Technology
Four months after it last topped the Billboard album chart, Lady Gaga and Bradley Cooper's soundtrack to "A Star Is Born" has returned to No. 1 for a fourth time, thanks to the Academy Awards and some deep discount pricing on Amazon. "A Star Is Born" was up for eight Oscars on Feb. 24, including best picture, and best actor and actress for Cooper and Lady Gaga. It took home one, best original song, for "Shallow" which Cooper and Lady Gaga performed on the show, sitting cheek to cheek at the piano. That publicity certainly helped the soundtrack reach No. 1. But so did an Amazon promotion offering downloads of the album at 3.99, which Lady Gaga made sure her 78 million Twitter followers knew about. (A further discount, to 2.99, was moot as far as the chart was concerned; according to Billboard's rules, only sales made at 3.49 or more count toward an album's chart position.) "A Star Is Born" ended last week with the equivalent of 128,000 sales in the United States up about 150 percent from the week before which included 76,000 copies sold as a full album and nearly 41 million streams, according to Nielsen.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Music
A roundup of motoring news from the web: Starting a five day visit to South Korea on Thursday, Pope Francis greeted people from a Kia Soul. The pope's choice of the compact Kia, as opposed to a limousine that was often preferred by his predecessors, for the visit emphasized his stated preference for smaller, more modest cars. (Bloomberg) Ford announced Wednesday that it would feature a new design for the sliding rear windows on its all new 2015 F 150 pickups. Unlike the conventional slider, which uses three pieces of glass within a multipiece frame, the seamless slider consists of two pieces of glass. Ford says the design, which was developed with Magna, a supplier, allows for a defroster to span the entire glass piece. (Ford) Dodge announced this week that it would offer the supercharged 707 horsepower 6.2 liter Hellcat V8 engine in the four door Charger SRT. Dodge says the new Charger SRT, which is a full size family sedan, has an N.H.R.A. certified quarter mile time of 11 seconds. (USA Today) David Kelley, a former United States attorney, has been appointed by the Justice Department to monitor safety for Toyota's operations in the United States. The position is new and is part of the settlement Toyota reached with the federal government to end a criminal investigation related to cases of accelerator pedals in Toyota vehicles getting stuck when the floor mats became jammed beneath them. (The Los Angeles Times)	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Automobiles
Ms. Vikas practiced interview skills on a Touro staff member. Ms. Vikas said others told her not to train in osteopathic medicine because of its "stigma." But she was inspired after shadowing two D.O. psychiatrists as a high school student. "Now," she said, "it is more and more acceptable." Dr. Goldberg chatted with Touro students from left, Ruchi Vikas, Cassandre Marseille, Gabrielle Rozenberg and Aldo Manresa. "I'd never heard of a D.O.," Ms. Marseille said. "I looked into it and was impressed and liked the approach. When it came time to apply I just applied to D.O. schools." Dr. Piotr B. Kozlowski, dean of research at Touro, center, during a laboratory class. Many students say they are drawn to the field for its more personal, hands on approach and its emphasis on community medicine and preventive care. Second year students worked on their emergency medicine skills with a teaching mannequin at Touro. In 1980, there were just 14 D.O. schools across the country and 4,940 students. Now there are 30 schools offering instruction to more than 23,000 students. Today, osteopathic schools turn out 28 percent of the nation's medical school graduates. While students in an osteopathic medical school study conventional medicine, they also spend roughly five hours a week being instructed in the century old techniques of osteopathic medicine, manipulating the spine, muscles and bones. Dr. Robert B. Goldberg, dean of the college, center, observed as Dr. Susan Milani demonstrated an examination technique on a student volunteer. Osteopathic schools stress physical diagnosis methods like palpation and percussion. An osteopathic doctor, Dr. Goldberg says, might more quickly notice that if a pregnant woman's posture is askew her fetus is imposing a burden on her skeleton. Touro College of Osteopathic Medicine, which taught its first class in 2007, is housed in a former department store, Blumstein's, opposite the Apollo Theater in Harlem. Many osteopathic schools have an added mission: to dispatch doctors to poorer neighborhoods and towns most in need of medical care. Touro College of Osteopathic Medicine, which taught its first class in 2007, is housed in a former department store, Blumstein's, opposite the Apollo Theater in Harlem. Many osteopathic schools have an added mission: to dispatch doctors to poorer neighborhoods and towns most in need of medical care. The old Blumstein's department store sits across 125th Street from the legendary Apollo Theater. It's something of a Harlem landmark, where "don't buy where you can't work" protests led to the hiring of African Americans as the first salesclerks in 1934 and where the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was stabbed by a mentally unstable woman during a book signing in 1958. Now a row of colorful clothing and jewelry stores lines the ground floor. But the rest of the building has been gutted and fitted with lecture halls, classrooms, laboratories and a library to house the Touro College of Osteopathic Medicine. Harlem is a fitting location for Touro's new medical school. Many osteopathic schools have an added mission: to dispatch doctors to poorer neighborhoods and towns most in need of medical care. "The island of Manhattan has lots of doctors, but not here in Harlem," said Dr. Robert B. Goldberg, dean of the college, which taught its first class in 2007. Inside, Touro seems indistinguishable from a conventional medical school what doctors of osteopathic medicine, or D.O.s, call allopathic, a term that some M.D.s aren't much fond of. A walk through the corridors finds students practicing skills on mannequins hard wired with faulty hearts. They dissect cadavers. They bend over lab tables, working with professors on their research. And, unlike their allopathic counterparts, they spend roughly five hours a week being instructed in the century old techniques of osteopathic medicine, manipulating the spine, muscles and bones in diagnosis and treatment. In one classroom, several students lay flat on examining tables while classmates, under the guidance of Dr. Mary Banihashem, worked over their necks. She reminded them to use the patient's eyes as a reference point in judging alignment as they assess neck motion, "We're looking for any tenderness" in neck muscles, she said. Gabrielle Rozenberg, in her second year at Touro, remembers the Ur moment that would lead her to this somewhat unconventional path in medicine. Growing up on Long Island, she suffered from chronic ear infections. Her doctor recommended surgery. But before committing to an invasive procedure, her parents took her to a D.O. a physician whose skills are comparable to those of an M.D. In several visits, he performed some twists and turns of her neck and head, and within days the infection cleared up. "The infection happened because of fluid in the ear," she explained, "and the manipulations opened up the ear canal." The infection didn't come back. Ms. Rozenberg began thinking about one day becoming a doctor of osteopathic medicine herself. Many are drawn to the field for this more personal, hands on approach and its emphasis on community medicine and preventive care. There are pragmatic reasons as well. Medical schools are failing to keep pace with the patient population, and competition for careers in medicine is growing fiercer. More students see osteopathy as a sensible alternative to conventional medical school, a way to get a medical education with M.C.A.T. scores that may not make the cut for traditional medical schools. According to the American Association of Colleges of Osteopathic Medicine, students entering osteopathic schools last year scored, on average, 27, compared to 31 for M.D. matriculants. Incoming M.D. students average a 3.69 grade point average, versus 3.5 for D.O. matriculants. Yet it should be noted: Getting into osteopathic school is still excruciatingly tough. Last fall, almost 16,500 students applied for some 6,400 spots. Touro this year received 6,000 applications for 270 first year seats for the Manhattan school and a new campus opening this summer in Middletown, N.Y. (The average M.C.A.T. score for students entering this fall was just a point below the M.D. average.) Whatever the reasons for choosing a D.O. over an M.D., osteopathic medicine has, for decades now and increasingly so, been accepted as authoritative training by the medical establishment, including the residency programs that lead to licensure. This year, more than three quarters of D.O. graduates successfully "matched" with a residency half for M.D. accredited programs and half for D.O. accredited programs. That distinction is about to end. In February, the accrediting agencies agreed to a single system for residencies and fellowships. Beginning next year and fully in place by 2020, D.O. residency standards will be aligned with those of the Accreditation Council of Graduate Medical Education, the nonprofit that accredits M.D. programs. The council will now accredit D.O. residencies, though osteopathic representatives will sit on review committees and its board. The announcement cited the need to provide accountability and a uniform path of preparation, and "to help mitigate the primary care physician shortage." About 60 percent of D.O. graduates go on to primary care fields like internal medicine, pediatrics and family medicine, compared with about 30 percent of M.D.s. The Association of American Medical Colleges, which represents the 141 accredited M.D. schools, predicts that the Affordable Care Act, providing for federally subsidized health insurance, will add 32 million Americans to the patient population, not to mention the coming eligibility of baby boomers for Medicare. As a result, the country is expected to face a shortage of 45,000 primary care doctors and 46,100 surgeons and specialists by 2020. Dr. Atul Grover, the association's chief public policy officer, credits the osteopathic boom to the need for additional sources of medical training. From 1983 to 2000, no new M.D. schools opened in the United States. But with the shortage looming, 15 new ones have come on board since 2006. Dr. Grover speculates that the new residency system could also lead to one accreditation for M.D. and D.O. schools. At the least, the new synergy lends an imprimatur to the osteopathic schools, which by and large lack marquee status. "It will allow graduates from two similar but different education systems to work side by side," said Dr. John E. Prescott, chief academic officer of the M.D. association. "It's a true step forward." Dr. Goldberg of Touro had this to say: "The merger will let individuals understand that there's more commonality and strength than there are differences." Osteopathic skills were first consolidated by a 19th century frontier physician, Andrew Taylor Still, who decried the overuse of arsenic, castor oil, opium and elixirs and believed that many diseases had their roots in a disturbed musculo skeletal system that could be treated hands on. He founded the first osteopathic school in 1892 in Kirksville, Mo. A.T. Still University. Critics have, from time to time, assailed the techniques as pseudoscience, though the medical establishment has come to accept the approach. And osteopathic schools offer the same academic subjects as traditional medical schools and the same two years of clinical rotations. But an image problem remains. A survey last year by the American Osteopathic Association found that 29 percent of adults were unaware that D.O.s are licensed to practice medicine, 33 percent didn't know they can prescribe medicine and 63 percent didn't know they can perform surgery. Acquaintances would tell Ruchi Vikas, a daughter of psychiatrists from India, not to train in osteopathic medicine because of its "stigma." They told her: "Don't go to a D.O. school, you don't want to be a second class citizen." But she did, inspired after shadowing two D.O. psychiatrists as a high school student. "Now," she added, underscoring what the statistics make clear, "it is more and more acceptable." Dr. Goldberg believes osteopaths have a strong case to make. Too many doctors, he said, rely on expensive medical tests like CT scans and M.R.I.s and fail to probe or even touch the patient's body. Osteopathic schools, on the other hand, stress physical diagnosis techniques like palpation or percussion gently tapping the abdominal area, say, to determine if the size and shape of the liver suggest inflammation. An osteopath might more quickly notice that if a pregnant woman's posture is askew her fetus is imposing a burden on her skeleton. The D.O. philosophy makes much of patient interaction. "I hate the term holistic, but we look at the patient as a whole from their biological, psychological, social, occupational and family background," said Dr. Goldberg, a physiatrist (rehabilitation specialist) by training. "We teach respect for technology and laboratory testing to aid in making a diagnosis, but count on the history and physical examination to confirm it. In that way, we're old fashioned." The Touro educational network began in 1971 as a 35 student nonprofit college in midtown Manhattan aimed at Orthodox Jewish students. It now has dozens of campuses across five countries, with 19,000 students of many faiths and ethnicities studying a variety of subjects. At the osteopathic school in Harlem, its Jewish affiliation is evident only in the ubiquitous mezuzot small boxes filled with sacred prayers on parchment pinned to door jambs and its observance of a traditional Jewish calendar. Touro also operates osteopathic campuses in Vallejo, Calif., and Henderson, Nev., and it took over New York Medical College, a conventional medical school, three years ago. Many osteopathic schools have been established in rural areas, in keeping with a mission to embed doctors in underserved areas. A 2010 report called "The Social Mission of Medical Education" noted the successful placement of schools in nontraditional locations, citing Pikeville, Ky., and Harlem. But it also found osteopathic schools behind allopathic schools in recruiting underrepresented minorities. For Harlem, Touro crafted a mission statement that emphasizes the need to increase minorities in the practice of medicine, and doctors in its community. It's too early to gauge how well it's faring, as the first graduates are still making their way through residencies. But while Touro has more than double the number of underrepresented minorities than a typical osteopathic school, only 9 percent are Hispanic and 7 percent black. Last fall, Jemima Akinsanya and fellow minority students were discussing how little they had known about their options for a career in medicine. "We thought it would be great if there were some student run organization that could reach out and tell other minority students about our experiences," said Ms. Akinsanya, who was born in Nigeria. With the goal of increasing minority enrollment at Touro, they formed Compass, which stands for Creating Osteopathic Minority Physicians Who Achieve Scholastic Success. Already, the group has held a meet and greet at the Apollo and attended college fairs. Ms. Akinsanya accompanied an admission representative to City College, where she says she was inundated with questions. "Osteopathic medicine is still up and coming," she said. "A lot of people don't know about D.O.s. Their physician might be one, but they don't know it." An osteopathic school like his, Dr. Goldberg said, looks for students with subtly distinctive virtues. They consider students' record in humanities subjects as well as "what they've done with their lives." Volunteering for a soup kitchen or medical clinic or excelling as a child of a low income single mother might make up for a lower M.C.A.T. score. "That somebody was able to perform well as an undergraduate given the need of family and survival told us about those grades and M.C.A.T. scores," Dr. Goldberg said. I met students who reflect the kind of student Touro seeks. Cassandre N. Marseille, a Haitian who moved to New York to study at Stony Brook University, said she Googled "how do you become a physician in the U.S." "I'd never heard of a D.O.," she said. "I looked into it and was impressed and liked the approach. When it came time to apply I just applied to D.O. schools." Ms. Marseille would like one day to practice medicine in Haiti but for the immediate future sees herself working in Harlem. "I still have to pay back debt and won't be able to do it on a Haitian physician's salary," she said. "This is 250,000 of taxpayer money I won't be able to pay back." Touro's current students worry about the debt they are accumulating (tuition and fees at conventional and osteopathic schools are roughly comparable; at Touro, the cost is 45,000 a year) as well as whether there will be a residency for them when they graduate (98 percent of this year's graduates have been matched). Aldo Manresa, a second year student and son of Cuban refugees who were part of the 1980 Mariel boatlift, attended Florida International University as a philosophy major but was drawn to medicine. He wants to be a primary care physician partly because of the shortage. But as with all the students I met, what appealed to him most was the idea of treating patients with his hands "instead of sending you for prescription medication."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Education
The resulting outpouring of religious enthusiasm, with its attendant civil unrest and threat to the existing order, would have been the last thing Pilate needed. He was uninterested in theological disputes among the Jews; his task was to keep his territory in check. As the Jewish historian Josephus wrote, it was "on these festive occasions that sedition is most apt to break out." The elements for chaos were all there. "Jesus teaches in the Temple courtyard; the excited pilgrim crowds collect there," Fredriksen writes. "In the intensity of their expectation that the kingdom was literally about to arrive? That Jesus was about to be revealed as messiah? That the restoration of Israel was at hand? they are restive, potentially incendiary." Thus, for reasons of governance, not theology or divinely ordained fate, Pilate (not the high priests, who had no such authority) sentenced Jesus to death. It was a signal crucifixion being the most public kind of execution, with the cross as a vivid warning to those able to see not to challenge Rome. On the Friday of Passover, Fredriksen writes, "the pilgrim throng would have streamed out of the city to the hill just outside, to the Place of the Skull, Golgotha. There they would have beheld the man, dying on a cross. ... As far as Pilate was concerned, that was the end of the matter." But of course it wasn't. As N. T. Wright, the prolific biblical scholar and a former Anglican bishop of Durham, England, relates in his 2003 book, "The Resurrection of the Son of God," the story in many ways really begins when Jesus' female disciples find the empty tomb on Sunday morning. According to the Gospel of Luke, the male disciples at first treated the women's report as "an idle tale," and "did not believe them"; the Gospel of John says of Jesus' followers, "for as yet they did not understand ... that he must rise from the dead." They dismissed the first report of the Resurrection because they'd been expecting a different new reality. They were still, in the painful hours after the Passion, crushed that their messiah, far from leading the forces of God to victory over the Romans, had instead been mocked and murdered. It was only in the shocked aftermath of the Crucifixion, of the empty tomb and of the post Resurrection appearances, that the first followers seem to have worked out what it all meant. As late as the writings of Paul, believers held that a "Parousia," or apocalyptic Second Coming, was imminent. In this view, Jesus, rather than ushering in the kingdom as one of their number the expectation before the Crucifixion would return to earth at any hour and set things to rights. This never happened, leaving the disciples and their heirs in the decades after Jesus to construct an enduring faith for a world that would not end. They then recalled or believed they recalled words of Jesus (along with miracles such as the raising from the dead of Lazarus, Jairus' daughter and the son of the widow of Nain) that seemed to foreshadow the Resurrection and its significance. For Wright, the Easter story is not only theologically but historically true. In part, the mystification of the disciples presumably the ones who would have spirited away the corpse if it were all a hoax is, from this perspective, the most compelling evidence of the accuracy of the events reported in the Gospels. So singular was the proposition that a particular person had been resurrected from the dead and that belief in him would lead to eternal salvation; it would hardly have been the early Christians' first choice of narratives to share. Why argue something so improbable, and so unexpected, unless they believed it had actually happened the way they told the story?	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Books
The N.H.L.'s owners and players union announced on Friday that they had officially approved a new labor agreement that will last through 2026 and, more immediately, will allow them to proceed with plans to complete the 2019 20 season. The deal was formally approved after separate votes by the owners and the league's players. The season will resume Aug. 1 with an expanded 24 team playoff at two hubs, in Edmonton and Toronto, and will end in Edmonton in early October. The draft is tentatively set to take place Oct. 9 and 10, and a full 2020 21 campaign will begin in December. The existing collective bargaining agreement was set to expire in 2022, but the new agreement overwrote the final two years of that deal and extended it at least four more seasons. The new deal addresses safety measures to ward off the coronavirus during the upcoming playoffs, opens the door for a return to participation in the next two Winter Olympics and addresses how the economic effects of the pandemic will be dispersed between players and owners. The final approval ended an unusually condensed negotiation process that began in earnest after the N.H.L. halted competition on March 12. The previous three labor negotiations had not gone so swimmingly: In 1994 95 the league lost nearly half a season to a labor dispute, as it did in 2012 13, and in 2004 5 it lost an entire season. "I don't think a normal C.B.A. situation goes this quickly, but both parties wanted it done and it got done," Carolina Hurricanes right wing Justin Williams, a 20 year veteran who sat out the first half of the season before returning in January, said during a conference call. The N.H.L. is set to enter the third of four phases in its return to play plan, with the 24 teams who qualified for the expanded playoffs beginning training in their home markets next week. Players have until Monday to decide if they want to opt out of the season, as several players have already done in M.L.B., M.L.S., the N.B.A. and W.N.B.A. Hours after the agreement was announced, Calgary defenseman Travis Hamonic announced he would opt out, becoming the first N.H.L. player to do so publicly. Hamonic cited the health of his daughter, who was hospitalized last year with a respiratory illness. Thirty five N.H.L. players tested positive from June 8 to July 6, with only about half of the returning players undergoing regular testing thus far. The league has said "isolated cases" would not interfere with play, but the agreement stipulates broadly that an outbreak could interrupt or cancel the rest of the season. Williams said he felt players were willing to make sacrifices such as living inside the contained environments in Edmonton and Toronto, isolated from social life and their families until the conference finals, when family visits will be permitted. The N.H.L. considered shortening the conference quarterfinals and semifinals so families could arrive sooner, but Mathieu Schneider, a special assistant with the union, said players largely rejected that idea. Commissioner Gary Bettman and Deputy Commissioner Bill Daly said that testing would be constant. Daly said there were no "hard and fast numbers" that would lead the league to alter or shut down play, but that it would rely on the advice of medical professionals and experts. Williams expressed concern earlier in the week about the possibility of a disruption in play and the virus's potential impact on competition. "What if there's an outbreak on the Carolina Hurricanes in Game 5 and seven of us or 10 of us can't play?" Williams said. "What happens to the team? Is it a forfeit? Do we wait a couple weeks?" Eastern Conference clubs will travel to Toronto, and Western Conference teams will head to Edmonton on July 26. (The Canadian government waived the mandatory 14 day quarantine period for players and staff crossing the border from the United States.) Edmonton, which had 203 confirmed coronavirus cases as of Friday, will host both conference finals series, as well as the Stanley Cup finals. The games will be played without fans, but the broadcasts of the games may include simulated noise and other adaptations. "We have some very special things planned. You'll just have to wait to see them," Bettman said. With the N.H.L. facing an enormous budget shortfall because of the pandemic, the agreement keeps the salary cap at its current level, 81.5 million, through next season. Ten percent of player salaries will be deferred, and 20 percent will be placed in escrow an increase of more than 50 percent from this season's escrow payments. Deferred salaries will be repaid over the course of the agreement. The salary cap and escrow figures are set to become less restrictive in ensuing seasons. "What we tried to do was structure something that everybody could live with over time, but it's important to understand that it's over time. If revenue is less, revenue is less," N.H.L.P.A. Executive Director Donald Fehr said, adding that the idea was to "get back to normal as soon as possible." The agreement also helps clear the way for N.H.L. players to return to the Olympics in 2022 and 2026. They had participated in five straight Olympics from 1998 to 2014, but the N.H.L. did not allow participation in the 2018 games, much to the chagrin of the players. The remaining hurdle is an agreement between the league and the International Olympic Committee. Williams acknowledged plenty of uncertainty in the league's near future, but was still able to look forward to a return to the ice. "Nobody knows how the game is going to come back next year when it does come back," he said. "Is it going to be half fans, is it going to be no fans, is it going to be full houses? So you don't know what the numbers are going to be like next year. All we know is that we're going to be playing hockey and there will be labor peace."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Sports
NO STOPPING US NOW The Adventures of Older Women in American History By Gail Collins I opened The New York Times the other day, and the phrase "Let's be trivial for a minute" caught my eye. It was the lede of an Op Ed column by Gail Collins that wasn't trivial at all. It was a characteristically analytical and sharp rumination on President Trump's obsession with crowd size, and it gave me a tickle. So imagine a book about "non young" women, written by Collins with her signature droll sensibility. "No Stopping Us Now" is a chronicle of the herky jerky nature of older women's journey to progress in the United States over the years. It's eye opening, brimming with new information and, as you'd expect from Collins, a lot of fun. If you're anywhere near my age, you've lived through a couple of those herks and jerks. The women's movement of the 1970s, for instance, won us new rights (in 1973 flight attendants won the right to turn 36!) and new powers, only to face a backlash during the Reagan years. The hard won victories were challenged; the Equal Rights Amendment didn't pass. Since then more women have been elected to Congress, though fewer than we expected, and more have risen to become C.E.O.s, but that number increases and slips back. Reading this book you realize that you can scratch history, any patch, and you'll find a pattern of women's heft and sway, wealth and authority rising and falling, depending on demographics, politics and the state of the economy. In the agrarian America of the 1700s women were respected as hard workers on the farms, but that changed with urban migration in the 1800s. Older women, for the most part, were confined to their homes, or, as Collins puts it, "elbowed out of American social life," relegated to the sidelines as spectators. In the middle of the century, only about 3 percent of the population was over 65. This meant that 35 was considered geriatric. 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. Among my favorite passages in "No Stopping Us Now" are descriptions of spinsters. A newspaper article in 1790 described them as a "putrid abomination to the deity." Another paper put it this way: "An old maid is one of the most cranky, ill natured, maggoty, peevish, conceited, disagreeable, hypocritical, fretful, noisy, gibing, canting, censorious, out of the way, never to be pleased, good for nothing creatures." Harrumph. Collins's excavation of the past has produced a vault of nuggets and gems. She found that in the 1880s it was widely presumed that sex ended at 45, and menopausal women were told to avoid dancing, reading novels and going to parties. Yet this was the same era in which Annie Oakley was wildly popular as the star of a Wild West show, at the getting up there age of 37. Things changed again for the better in the early 1900s when older women led the fight for suffrage and gained some economic strength as consumers and workers, earning their own money as secretaries and teachers. Newspaper stories extolled "the New Woman." But then the pendulum swung in the 1920s. It was the Jazz Age, the days of the flapper, when youth was glorified, the way it would be again in the 1960s. Skirts were short; middle age was seen as pathetic. Collins recounts how a Dr. Charles A. Stephens, a popular writer at the time, described getting old (turning 50?) as entering a period of "grossness, coarseness and ugliness." And Sigmund Freud declared that postmenopausal women were "vexatious and overbearing, petty and stingy," exhibiting "typically sadistic and anal erotic traits." Thank God he's fallen out of favor. Married women took a hit during Prohibition, because their husbands were out at speakeasies, cavorting with younger women. Things got even worse in the '30s with the Depression. Taking a job away from a man was close to criminal. "The new villain was the woman who worked for 'pin money'" extra cash they didn't need, Collins writes. Circumstances improved in the '40s as ladies flooded into the work force. "Of the six million women who went to work at a paying job during the war, more than 1.5 million were between 45 and 65," Collins reports. "Another quarter of a million were over 65." Grandmothers! School boards that had fired women because they got married now hired them back. In New Jersey's industrial plants, women up to the age of 79 were recruited for jobs. After the war, the men came home and women lost their jobs again. But by the 1950s employers were desperate to hire office workers, teachers and nurses. Young women were quitting to start families, so seniors (average age, 40 something) were sought after. But not that many women chose to work. During the Eisenhower presidency, unless they had to take a job for economic reasons, women became stay at home moms in the suburbs and many, like my own mother, were bored to tears. First ladies both influence and reflect their times. Eleanor Roosevelt had been a hard working activist in the '40s; Mamie Eisenhower, 56 when her husband was elected, was a fashion plate. According to Collins she once declared: "I hate old lady clothes. And I shall never wear them." She was something! She had her own bedroom in the White House that she decorated in pink flounces, and had breakfast in bed there every morning. She would sit there on the phone, talking to her mother, who, it turned out, had her own bedroom down the hall. Here's one of Collins's nuggets: When Ike had a heart attack, "Mamie stayed in a hospital room next to his, demanding little in the way of special treatment except for a pink toilet seat." The 1990s brought a brave new world notion: that women could actually be sexy in midlife. Or, to put it differently, the baby boomers were coming up on their 50s. Along with a history of women's shifting economic status, Collins provides a record of techniques used to cover up signs of aging. I picked up a few pointers. For example, in the Colonial era "women applied bacon to their faces to avoid wrinkles," which sounds a lot smarter than Botox: no needles. Gray hair was a perennial problem. Senior ladies wore false curls, wigs and "every other method of concealment women would concoct." Dolley Madison, ever a trendsetter, wore turbans. In our era, baby boomers, by virtue of their numbers, have controlled the definition of who is "old," dictating the mores, tastes and spending habits of the country for the last four decades. Old is no longer 35, or any year even close to that now that boomers have entered grandparent territory. If you're 70 plus, you could be speaker of the House (Nancy Pelosi), sit on the Supreme Court (Ruth Bader Ginsburg) or work for "60 Minutes." (Mike Wallace and Andy Rooney lasted into their 90s. Ahem.) If I have a complaint, it's that Collins does not comment on whether, with respect to our regard for aging women, we are doomed to fluctuations in perpetuity, or what should be done to reach a degree of cultural equanimity. Still, she has delivered a deeply researched, entertaining book about the ragged journey of this increasingly visible segment of America's population, bringing a reporter's eye to the facts and anecdotes, and never without humor.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Books
The dancer Kaitlyn Gilliland took tentative steps along the perimeter of a City Center studio, where four others sat in folding chairs facing outward on a recent Friday night. In the dance, Miro Magloire's "Quartet," Ms. Gilliland moved center stage, where she filled the confined space with abrupt body contortions, pausing to bend an elbow near her face. Swatting it with sudden force, she promptly collapsed onto the floor. Ms. Gilliland, 27, used to be that broken ballerina; now she's in the mood to explore. An incandescent member of New York City Ballet since 2006, she retired from the company three years ago after injuries two of which were major took their toll. "I physically couldn't dance," she said in a recent interview, "and I mentally couldn't handle the prospect of seeing another doctor and missing another season." This is the story of how Ms. Gilliland found her way back to dance. "I feel like I'm a kid again," she said, flashing a grin. Though not a member of a major company, Ms. Gilliland has redefined herself as an independent artist with control over what and how she dances. After performing with Mr. Magloire's New Chamber Ballet in November, she will appear at the Knockdown Center in Flushing, Queens, in "A Nutcracker: Part I," a dance theater reimagining of the holiday classic exploring the loss of innocence, starting on Dec. 12. In it, four versions of Clara are revealed at different stages of her life; Ms. Gilliland plays Clara at 27, questioning whether she wants to continue in dance. "It sounded a lot like my story line," she said. "I thought: I'm living this out, but can I play this? I am curious to find out. I also just like a good adventure." Later in the month, she makes her debut as the Sugar Plum Fairy in "Loyce Houlton's Nutcracker Fantasy" at Minnesota Dance Theater in Minneapolis. Ballet is in Ms. Gilliland's blood. The choreographer Loyce Houlton was her grandmother; Lise Houlton, who danced with American Ballet Theater and now leads the Minnesota company, is her mother. (Even so, it was her father, a lawyer, who encouraged her to begin dancing.) In January, Ms. Gilliland performs with Craig Salstein's Intermezzo Dance Company at the Miller Theater at Columbia University. And, as part of Danspace Project's Platform 2015, "Dancers, Buildings and People in the Streets," which begins in February, she will collaborate with the choreographer and dancer Will Rawls. "Kaitlyn is a perfect example of someone who has a good idea of what and where she wants to go as a dancer," Mr. Salstein said. "She wants to create her own pace. It doesn't happen so easily for everybody, but she's definitely creating her own avenue." All the while, Ms. Gilliland has a job that she treasures teaching children's classes at the City Ballet affiliated School of American Ballet and is a student at Columbia, where in two semesters she will graduate with a degree in psychology. Racing from one rehearsal to the next, Ms. Gilliland finds that her life isn't so different from what she experienced at her family's ballet school back in Minneapolis. "On Saturdays, we were always in the studio: point shoes on, point shoes off, always working with new movement and new choreographers," she said. "I remember taking Graham and Horton classes when I was young. The studio was always playtime, and that's what it feels like now." The transition didn't happen overnight. When Ms. Gilliland left City Ballet, she was tormented by the idea that despite her early promise her path to principal seemed like a foregone conclusion she had failed. "No one ever made me feel I had failed," she said. "So much of it was in my own head." Though she still had ties to the ballet world, Ms. Gilliland was intent on pursuing an academic path and became a pre med student at Columbia. "I had this attachment to a routine," she said. "I wanted something where I could check boxes and excel, hopefully. I think the glamour of it was exciting. It was a different kind of adrenaline rush." Gradually, she eased back into dance classes, finding, as many dancers do, that not being physically active made her body hurt more. Columbia Ballet Collaborative, the student run group featuring many former and current professional dancers, had much to do with her reawakening. Emery LeCrone, who has choreographed frequently for the group, worked with Ms. Gilliland. "It was a new experience for me in that I allowed us to be collaborators instead of expecting something from her as a choreographer," Ms. Gilliland said. "I was open to that, and that was from going to school and realizing that I didn't know everything and couldn't know everything, and that was great, because then I could learn." Saturday afternoons with Ms. LeCrone soon became the highlight of her week, but facing the truth about her relationship with dance took her by surprise during a meeting with her pre med adviser. He encouraged her, during her senior year, to do something for herself, since her life would soon be overtaken by her studies. "It was the first time that I realized I would have to give up something that I loved," she said. "I didn't realize that I had maybe fallen in love with it again until I was crying in his office." When it was pointed out to her that the word she couldn't seem to say was "dance," she laughed and cited an essay by Jonathan Franzen, from a commencement speech he gave at Kenyon College. "First, he talks about technology and how it's changing our relationships, but he also talks to the students about how he admitted to himself his love of nature, and how admitting that made it easier for him to embrace it and interact with it," Ms. Gilliland said. "I think I started to have a moment like that in the meeting with my adviser. I had to say a lot of: 'No, I don't want to do that. No, I don't want to do that.' And it all has led me to the same place, which is saying yes to a lot of things that I do want to do, and they all happen to be dance related. So there you go. I went to college, and I fell in love with dance again."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Dance
If she could travel back in time, before she was suspended from gymnastics after being accused of berating and mistreating her athletes, including an Olympic champion, Maggie Haney says she would change the way she coached. She wouldn't push some of her young gymnasts to redo a routine again and again after even the tiniest mistakes. To demand their focus, she wouldn't yell at them. Instead she would learn to let some imperfections slide. "I think my mistakes were that I cared too much, and wanted them to be a little too perfect every day, when maybe that's not possible," Haney, one of the most prominent coaches in the sport, said this month in an interview with The New York Times, the first time she has spoken publicly in nearly a year. "Maybe what used to be OK is not OK anymore, and maybe it shouldn't be. I think maybe the culture has shifted." Haney has not coached at her gym in central New Jersey or anywhere else since February, she said, when U.S.A. Gymnastics, the sport's national federation, temporarily suspended her before later barring her from coaching for eight years for what it called her "severe aggressive behavior" toward her athletes. She said she hasn't even coached her own daughter, who is 11. The athletes who have trained under Haney include Laurie Hernandez, who won a silver medal on the balance beam at the 2016 Olympics and helped the United States win the team gold medal. Hernandez's complaint to the federation was one of nearly a dozen that led to Haney's ban, which she is appealing to an arbitrator. It was considered the harshest penalty for emotional and verbal abuse in the sport's recent history. The suspension was also viewed as a warning that coaches could now face stiff penalties for the mental and nonsexual abuse that was long accepted in the sport before the Lawrence G. Nassar sexual abuse scandal shed light on the toxic culture in gymnastics. Nassar was the longtime United States national team doctor who in 2018 was sentenced to prison for molesting more than 200 girls and women under the guise of medical treatment. Haney said the accusations against her particularly those from Hernandez, whom she coached from age 6 had come out of nowhere, and she vehemently denied them. More than 30 gymnasts at MG Elite, Haney's gym in Morganville, N.J., and their families continue to support her and are awaiting her return to the sport, she said. Some have voiced their support for Haney in a YouTube video compiled by the public relations firm she hired to help restore her reputation. Haney, 42, said she was convinced that U.S.A. Gymnastics had used her as a scapegoat after its missteps in the Nassar case, in which the organization failed to protect its gymnasts from a sexual predator. The federation needed to do "something bold, something dramatic," she said, to prove to the public that it cares about its athletes. "I've dedicated my whole life to this," Haney said, her voice beginning to waver. "To be out of the gym has been really hard. I feel like it was unfairly taken away from me." Haney's accusers have not wavered. They say the ban is warranted, and some even wanted a permanent one. They claim that she bullied her gymnasts, publicly shamed them about their weight, encouraged eating disorders and forced them to train with injuries. Hernandez, who is now training in California for the Tokyo Olympics next summer, told The Times in April that Haney's treatment of her was "just so twisted that I thought it couldn't be real." She said the abuse included Haney calling her weak, lazy and messed up in the head and that the emotional abuse led to a continuing battle with depression. Riley McCusker, who has a good chance of making the United States team for the Tokyo Games, filed a lawsuit against Haney last month. Among the accusations in the complaint was that Haney had forced McCusker to train through injuries, including while she had a painful, potentially serious medical condition called rhabdomyolysis, which is a breakdown of muscle tissue that can happen from overexertion. In a separate lawsuit filed last month, another gymnast, Emily Liszewski, a sophomore at the University of Pittsburgh, accused Haney and an assistant coach of forcing her to perform an advanced skill on the uneven bars at the Arena Gym, a gym not far from MG Elite, and it led her to fall and hit her head. Liszewski was unconscious for three days, with multiple skull fractures, and had seizures because of the injury, the lawsuit said. The suit also claimed that Haney once picked Liszewski up from the floor by her hair after the gymnast had fallen. "These situations are not at all the way I recall them," Haney said, adding that Hernandez's mother and McCusker's mother were often in the gym sometimes on the training floor but never expressed displeasure over her demanding coaching style. (Neither mother responded to a request made through a representative to comment for this article.) Haney added: "I just think when money gets involved, people will say and do different things. I think a lot of this is about money." The arbitrator's ruling on Haney's appeal is expected in the coming days, said one of her lawyers, Steven Altman. He said he hoped that Haney's suspension would be rescinded because U.S.A. Gymnastics's hearing for the case had been biased and flawed, and "as a practical matter, a kangaroo court." Seven of Haney's accusers were not even coached by her, Altman said, and the gym offered a fun environment amid the intense training that is generally needed to master the sport's daring moves. "When they were doing gymnastics, it was serious," Altman said. "They worked on life threatening skills for hours a day." U.S.A. Gymnastics, in an emailed statement, said on Sunday that Haney's hearing was "both fair and impartial, and adhered to the requirements" of the organization's procedures, as well as the law that oversees Olympic sports in the United States. Haney conceded she could be intense in the gym. But she said that most of the time "everybody is smiling and laughing and music is playing." She carefully crafted the atmosphere at the gym, she said, knowing that parents had entrusted her with their children, at times from morning until evening. The program, Haney said, included closely monitored online learning, a certified teacher holding classes during the day and an emphasis on safety. As a young gymnast herself, training in an elite program for a while, Haney worked with harsh coaches who screamed at the girls, she recalled, and had them step onto a scale daily, then listed everyone's weight on a bulletin board in the gym. To make the girls lose weight, the coaches forced them to wear rubber suits or 20 pound belts and jog around the gym, she said. "It didn't faze me and didn't bother me, but that kid next to me, it could've really bothered and scared them," she said, adding that she never weighed her gymnasts or forced them to lose weight. "I think what I've learned over the last year is that so much of this comes down to perspective. Every person. Every athlete. Every coach. They have their own perspective of things." Some of the families whose children continue to train at MG Elite were drawn to her gym because of what they described as an exacting nature. Henry Rivera, an engineer at a software company, moved his 12 year old daughter to MG Elite last year so she could train with Haney. He said she had left her previous gym because her routines were getting sloppy and the coach there was pushing her to perform skills she didn't feel prepared to do. Rivera said he appreciated that Haney had made the gym a safe space for his daughter, yet never babied her. "If I wanted her to come home happy and smiling every day, I'd send her to clown school; I'm serious," Rivera said. "If my daughter has goals and her goal is to be an elite athlete, I need a coach to teach her the right things and safely, and to push them." Rivera said if Haney ever was abusive to his daughter, he would have noticed because he monitors what she is going through "emotionally, mentally and physically," considering it his job as a parent. "As parents, we need to be vigilant," he said. "And if you don't like it, get up and leave." In a telephone interview with her parents standing by, his daughter, Hezly, said Haney just wanted her gymnasts to be the best and was tough on them, "but not like to the point where it was horrible." She said that she was sad to see Haney go and that she missed her. "She never crossed the line,'' she said. Another parent at the gym, Charisse Dash, is a sports agent who recruits athletes from the Dominican Republic to play in Major League Baseball. Her 10 year old daughter has worked with Haney since she was 6. "You're not there to play, you're there to work," Dash said, describing that type of gymnastics as "a 9 to 5 job." She added: "Do I classify the rigor of the training as abuse? I think you really have to see it on a case by case basis." Dash said she and her husband ran "a very tight ship" at home with their five children, where screaming, not coddling, was common. So, to them, Haney's demanding style was a great fit. "I don't think it's fair to say that Maggie is an abuser, by all means," Dash said. "It depends on how much any child or any person can tolerate." Haney's U.S.A. Gymnastics hearing in February and March was held by telephone, and Haney listened to weeks of it while huddled in a closet so her two children would not interrupt her. About a half dozen parents testified in support of her, but not all of the parents who wanted to testify were given the chance to, she said. Even when Haney herself testified, she said, she felt that her side of the story didn't matter. She was sure the three person hearing panel had already made up its mind. Some of the gymnasts who accused her of abuse, she said, had been asked to leave the gym because they could not physically keep up. The part she remembers as the worst, though, was sitting through Hernandez's live testimony. Haney considered their relationship strong, so it was inconceivable to her that Hernandez felt mistreated. Hernandez often slept at Haney's house and was considered a part of the family, Haney said. Haney took Hernandez to the beach, to restaurants, to get her nails done, and gave her a tuition break at the gym. When she and Hernandez returned from the 2016 Olympics, Haney said, she helped organize a parade in her town, in Hernandez's honor. She said she encouraged her gymnasts to make smart choices, though McCusker's lawsuit said Haney promoted unhealthy eating and weight loss habits. Haney acknowledged that there had recently been a change in how some gymnasts expected to be treated by their coaches, especially since this summer, when hundreds of them worldwide began speaking out about the abuse they endured from tyrannical coaches. Many coaches, Haney said, now don't know when they might cross the line or upset an especially sensitive child or parent, so they "are just letting the girls do whatever because they don't want to get in trouble." The culture has shifted perhaps too far, she said, and she expects the sport, going forward, to be filled with underachievers. She said she thinks coaches will not push their athletes as hard. Haney blames parents for that. They have become too invested in their daughters' success, she said, and now are emboldened to lash out at anyone and potentially crush anyone who stands in their daughters' way. "I feel that somebody needs to stand up for coaches," Haney said. "If I don't stand up and fight for the truth, then other coaches aren't going to, either. I know if this can happen to me, I think it can happen to anyone."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Sports
Michael Kors: Coming Soon to a Broadway Theater Near You On a recent Tuesday evening, the line outside "Ain't Too Proud," the Broadway musical about the R B supergroup the Temptations, snaked around the block. Many ticket holders fretted over whether they would be admitted before it started, but not Michael Kors. He stood in line patiently with his husband, Lance Le Pere, playing I Spy a Celebrity. Jessica Lange was up ahead, making her way inside. A woman in a red coat stepped out of a car; Mr. Kors identified her as "Liza Minnelli's best friend." "Her husband was like the disco dentist," he said. "Everyone at Studio 54 went to him." Mr. Kors, 59, who built a multi billion dollar business off his beige off the shoulder sweaters, baby blue skirts and "Project Runway" witticisms, had on his usual outfit: a black trench coat, black sweater, vintage gold Ray Ban sunglasses and a pair of Levi's, which he wore with New Balance sneakers. "I feel like we're cramming for a test as June gets closer," said Mr. Kors, who, with Mr. Le Pere gave 1.5 million to the Roundabout Theater for its development fund and in 2016 had the V.I.P. room there named in their honor. "It's like, 'How many can we do in a week?'" This season, they have been to "True West," "The Ferryman," "Kiss Me Kate," "The Boys in the Band," "King Kong," "Oklahoma," "The Cher Show" and "Lifespan of a Fact," which they saw with Anna Wintour, their good friend and fellow theater lover. "We're like the fashion people waving the flag," Mr. Kors said. "She and I used to be perplexed why more people in fashion don't go, but I think it's because they don't want to turn their phones off. And they don't want to be here on a scheduled time." Ms. Wintour said: "Michael and Lance are the ideal theater companions. They are knowledgeable, witty and always excited to be there! And they believe in eating quickly before curtain." Mr. Kors and Mr. Le Pere even hop on planes to catch plays that haven't made it to Broadway. Two years ago, they went to London for the National Theater's adaptation of the movie "Network." Soon after, Mr. Kors texted Rufus Norris, the theater's artistic director, offering to help bring it to Broadway; Mr. Kors and Mr. Le Pere ended up becoming investors and producers. Now, they're on the lookout for another show to back, perhaps a musical. At "Ain't Too Proud," Mr. Kors and Mr. Le Pere made their way to their seats in the eighth row. The lights went down and Mr. Le Pere took Mr. Kors's hand in his. The touristy crowd cheered big Temptations numbers like "My Girl" and "Shout," but Mr. Kors was more moved by edgier songs like "Get Ready" and "Papa Was a Rolling Stone." When "Ain't Too Proud" ended an hour later, Mr. Kors rushed backstage to shower the cast in superlatives ("You guys killed it") and take pictures with them. Afterward, around 10 p.m., he and Mr. Le Pere went to the restaurant Joe Allen for a bite. Everyone there knew them. As frequent patrons, they have their own table near the bar. The order is always the same: a Caesar salad and hamburger, which they split. "This is our happy place," Mr. Le Pere said. Mr. Kors was still elated that two of the cast members told him that they wore his clothes. In 2015, Ms. Wintour spearheaded an effort to glam up the Tony Awards. Some designers had to be strong armed into lending performers free gowns, but not Mr. Kors. "It may not be Jennifer Lopez at the Golden Globes, but I'm excited Patti LuPone wears Michael Kors," he said. And, the boundaries separating television, film and theater no longer exist, he added. Cynthia Erivo, he pointed out, parlayed her performance in the Broadway musical "The Color Purple" into a starring role in the box office hit "Widows." Billy Porter, the Tony winning actor, is a breakout star on the F/X show "Pose." The conversation turned to another F/X series, "Fosse/Verdon," about Bob Fosse and his wife Gwen Verdon. The show has gotten mixed reviews, but Mr. Le Pere and Mr. Kors are huge fans. The minute it came up, the two seemed to be pantomiming each other. So what if they saw recent Broadway productions of "Mary Poppins" and "Hello Dolly" four times each? Or made sure to catch the Roundabout Theater's production of "Cabaret" three times: first with Michelle Williams playing Sally Bowles, then with Emma Stone in the role and finally with Ms. Stone's replacement, Sienna Miller. To prove the point, Mr. Kors listed other things he and Mr. Le Pere have done recently, including trips to Las Vegas (to catch Cher at Caesar's Palace) and MetLife Stadium (to see Beyonce, despite torrential downpours). "We would have stayed til 2 a.m. if we had to," Mr. Kors said. As Mr. Kors sees it, "getting out and having your eyes and your ears and your senses open to something other than your own fashion world" is essential to the creative process. "How do you possibly design things for human beings if you're not part of the human world?" he said. He is aware that most fashion people take fashion incredibly seriously. That mostly annoys him. "Have fun," he said.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Fashion & Style
Exercise vs. Standing? You Probably Need to Do Both None Katherine Taylor for The New York Times Exercise alone is probably not enough for us to achieve and maintain good health. We must also try to sit less, according to a fascinating new study of the separate physiological effects that exercise and light, almost incidental activities, such as standing up, can have on our bodies. By now, we all know that regular exercise is good for us. The United States national exercise guidelines, which are based on a wealth of scientific evidence, recommend at least 150 minutes of moderate exercise each week in order to lengthen our life spans and reduce our risks of a variety of diseases. In practice, this recommendation translates into 30 minutes almost daily of exercise that should be brisk enough to raise our heart rates and make us gasp a bit for breath. But exercising 30 minutes a day leaves us plenty of time for other activities, the primary one of which (apart from sleeping) tends to be sitting. A typical office worker can easily log more than 10 or 11 hours a day in a chair, according to studies of how we spend our time. These long stretches of sitting have been associated with a variety of health concerns, including increased risks for diabetes, obesity and poor cholesterol profiles. But whether a single session of exercise most days can reduce or cancel out those risks or whether we also need to find ways to sit less has remained scientifically uncertain. So for the new study, which was published this month in Scientific Reports, researchers at Maastricht University in the Netherlands decided to ask several groups of men and women to upend their lives temporarily for science. Some of the 61 adults whom the scientists recruited were normal weight and generally healthy; others were overweight; and still others both overweight and diabetic. None exercised regularly. The scientists invited these men and women to the university performance lab and tested them for various markers of cardiac and metabolic health, including insulin resistance and cholesterol levels. Then the researchers had each volunteer complete three distinct, four day sessions of living calculatedly exaggerated lifestyles. During one, the men and women sat for 14 hours a day, their chair time interrupted only by bathroom breaks. During another of the four day sessions, they substituted one hour of their sitting time with exercise, pedaling a stationary bicycle at a moderate pace for an hour. The other 13 hours, they were back in a chair. Finally, for the third of the sessions, they sat for about eight hours a day but spent the other five or six hours of their waking time standing or strolling about at a casual, meandering pace. The calories that they burned during these activities, whether cycling or standing and light walking, were about the same. After each four day block, the scientists repeated the health tests from the start and then compared them. The results diverged in illuminating ways after each session. After four days of sitting nonstop, the men and women showed greater insulin resistance and undesirable changes in their cholesterol levels. They also had blood markers showing detrimental changes to their endothelial cells, which line our blood vessels, including our arteries; when those cells are unhealthy, the risk of cardiac disease rises. In effect, four days of uninterrupted sitting seemed to be undermining the volunteers' metabolic and heart health, including among those who had no symptoms of metabolic problems at the start. But after four days that included moderate bicycling, the volunteers displayed enhanced endothelial cell health, compared to when they had sat nonstop. Their insulin sensitivity and cholesterol profiles were unchanged, though. On the other hand, insulin and cholesterol levels both were better after four days of standing or strolling for at least five hours a day, the scientists found. But the volunteers' endothelial cell health had not budged. The light activity seemed not to have affected that marker of heart health. Over all, the results suggest that exercise and standing up have distinct effects on the body, says Bernard Duvivier, a postdoctoral researcher at Maastricht University, who led the new study. Moderate exercise seems to hone endothelial and cardiac health, he says, probably in large part by increasing the flow of blood through blood vessels. Standing up, on the other hand, may have a more pronounced and positive impact on metabolism, he says, perhaps by increasing the number of muscular contractions that occur throughout the day. Busy muscles burn blood sugar for fuel, which helps to keep insulin levels steady, and release chemicals that can reduce bad cholesterol. Of course, this study was small and quite short term, with each session lasting only four days. Over a longer period of time, the biological impacts of both moderate exercise and less sitting would likely become broader and more encompassing. But even so, the findings are compelling, Dr. Duvivier says, especially for those of us who often are deskbound. "People should understand," he says, "that only moderate exercise is not enough and it's also necessary to reduce prolonged sitting."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Well
The second installment of the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Company's "Analogy" trilogy will have its New York premiere in October as part of the coming season at New York Live Arts, the organization announced Friday. "Analogy/Lance: Pretty aka The Escape Artist," which runs Oct. 25 through Nov. 6, will be a work of dance theater that continues the style of oral history told with movement that the troupe began with "Analogy/Dora: Tramontane," which had its debut at Peak Performances last year. The two dances will be performed together at the Joyce Theater this fall. The trilogy is inspired by the W. G. Sebald novel "The Emigrants." Part 1 told the story of Dora, a 95 year old who was a nurse during World War II. "Lance," a preview of which will be shown this weekend at Dancers' Workshop in Wyoming, tells the story of drug use and the sex trade in the 1980s. The season opens with "Pandaemonium" (Sept. 28 through Oct. 1), an interdisciplinary work that reflects the aim of New York Live Arts in recent seasons to add diversity to its performance mediums. Created by the dancer and choreographer Nichole Canuso, as well as Geoff Sobelle and Lars Jan from the world of theater, the work combines dance, theater, film and rock music performance.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Dance
The scene at Otter Box , a Sunday night party at the Flat in Williamsburg. I'm a two time bridge and tunnel person. Having regularly fled my native Brooklyn because it wasn't fun enough, I'm now insinuating my way back in there because my adopted borough isn't fun enough. My first bridge and tunnel phase happened in the 1970s, after I graduated from Columbia College and shacked up with my parents in the humble home in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, I'd grown up in. But having tasted Manhattan glamour for four years, I wasn't exactly going to stay in Brooklyn. Drawn to Manhattan's limitless entertainment options, I'd ride the subway at night and go to disco hot spots like Studio 54, the home of fizzy, celebrity filled evenings of twinkle toed euphoria. Sometimes I even got in, though I was never considered A list. I was bridge and tunnel the lowest of the low and everyone knew it, from the second I crawled out of the subway, to the moment I ran back there to try to get home by 5 a.m. For decades after that, bridge and tunnel people were considered a necessary evil. While we were deemed tasteless outcasts who brought down a crowd because we refused to find lodging in the only borough that counted, B T, as it is often abbreviated, actually paid for admission and drinks. Well, now, a perverse twist of fate has returned me to that awful status. In a reversal I never saw coming, Brooklyn is now the place to go for bohemia, performance art and off center clubbing, all of those disciplines seeming to move over the bridge, where the setting is more affordable. Savvier Manhattanites have been swarming there for years, and as I frantically leave the East Side to join them, I hopelessly find that I'm bridge and tunnel all over again! In a weird "Planet of the Apes" plot turn, the hairier primates are suddenly in charge, and I'm begging them for guest list action. Apparently I couldn't be a B T, even if I wanted to. Last summer, I did make it to Bushwig, a two day drag festival in Bushwick, Brooklyn, held at the arts center Secret Project Robot. But it wasn't easy, and once I arrived, I didn't generate much excitement from the locals. I guess I am bridge and tunnel, after all. Things were so much smoother when the original drag festival Wigstock took place in downtown Manhattan. I could ride my bike there, and get the crowd's attention. But that's when I was considered a scene maker, not a traveling trashionista hitching a ride to a diet soda and a dream. I've tried other ways of getting out there. In January, I heard about Otter Box, a new Sunday night party at the Flat in Williamsburg, so a friend and I feverishly ordered a car service. But the first car came an hour early, and didn't return. A different car service did get us there and back, but the whole thing was such an ordeal that it took the sparkle out of the proceedings. Uber is a more reliable way to go, so one time, I got a friend to take a bunch of us to Verboten, a large Brooklyn dance club of the type that's become rare in Manhattan. It was fab, and I was comforted to see other Manhattanites there.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Style
Albert Innaurato, a playwright who enjoyed spectacular success for a time in the late 1970s, including having a play run on Broadway for more than four years, has died in Philadelphia. He was 70. His cousin Stephen Paesani said Mr. Innaurato was found dead in his bed on Tuesday, and had probably been dead for two days. The cause was not clear, Mr. Paesani said, but Mr. Innaurato had had heart problems recently. Mr. Innaurato's biggest hit, written while he was still in his 20s, was "Gemini," a comic drama about a Harvard student who returns to his blue collar Philadelphia neighborhood for his 21st birthday and has to confront, among other things, his sexual orientation. It opened on May 21, 1977, at the Little Theater on Broadway and ran for 1,819 performances. A few months before that, another of his plays, "The Transfiguration of Benno Blimpie," had an acclaimed Off Broadway run at the Astor Place Theater. Linda Hart as the comically coarse Bunny Weinberger in the 1999 New York production of "Gemini." "They wrote comedy with all barrels blazing, especially Albert," Ms. Weaver said in a telephone interview on Wednesday. Mr. Innaurato was as fond of opera as he was of theater, both writing about it and directing it. Most recently he had been reviewing opera for the online magazine Parterre Box. A writer visiting his apartment in Greenwich Village for a profile for The New York Times in 1977 at the peak of Mr. Innaurato's theatrical career found it almost unfurnished but full of records, most of them operatic ones. "The character in 'Gemini' who's always playing Maria Callas records I think that was really autobiographical," Mr. Paesani said. Albert Francis Innaurato Jr. was born on June 2, 1947, in Philadelphia. His father, Albert, was a linotype operator; his mother, Mary, was a nurse. Mr. Paesani remembered that the family had a piano, which Albert began learning to play at 5. He attended Temple University in Philadelphia and the California Institute of the Arts before being accepted into the Yale School of Drama in the early 1970s. There, he and Mr. Durang, who was in the same class, quickly found common ground: Both had attended Roman Catholic schools. "As we were reading some of our work in class, it came up quite quickly that I was writing plays that often had nuns in them, and so was he," Mr. Durang said in a telephone interview. "But mine were very Irish nuns, and his were angry Italian nuns who beat people up." Mr. Durang had made an experimental film of sorts inspired by "The Brothers Karamazov," the Dostoyevsky novel. What resulted was "The Idiots Karamazov," a sort of musical fracturing of Dostoyevsky that begins with an 80 year old woman in a wheelchair who has muddled memories of translating Russian works. In its very first staging, in 1973, Mr. Innaurato played that part. When the play had subsequent stagings at the drama school and then, in 1974, at Yale Repertory Theater, a young actress in the class behind the two authors', Ms. Streep, took the role. "Albert and I were so unsavvy at this point that it never crossed our mind to see what the scenic designer was doing," Mr. Durang recalled. For one thing, the set did not have a door big enough for the wheelchair to fit through. For another, the stage was inclined, leaving Ms. Streep in danger of rolling away if the chair's brake should get bumped into the "off" position. For Mr. Innaurato, it was a relatively short trip from those early efforts to the big time. In May 1976, "Benno Blimpie," about a man who eats himself to death, was staged in New York by the Direct Theater, and that December Playwrights Horizons presented "Gemini," with a cast that included Ms. Weaver. "Mr. Innaurato's instrument is not a needle, but a cleaver," Mel Gussow wrote in reviewing that production of "Gemini" for The Times. "There is savagery in his humor that is, in a strange way, refreshing at the same time that it is terrifying." "Gemini" received two other productions, at the PAF Playhouse on Long Island and at the Circle Repertory Theater, before being mounted on Broadway. It is still one of the longest running straight plays in Broadway history. It was also an early example of a mainstream work with a gay plot: The protagonist is being pursued romantically by a character named Judith but is more interested in her brother. "Gemini" was revived in New York in 1999, at the Second Stage Theater, and it was made into a movie, "Happy Birthday, Gemini," in 1980. In 2004 Mr. Innaurato collaborated with Charles Gilbert on "Gemini the Musical," which had its premiere at the Prince Music Theater in Philadelphia. Mr. Innaurato's later plays included "Passione," which went from Playwrights Horizons to a Broadway run that lasted only 16 performances in 1980, and "Coming of Age in Soho," which received a lukewarm review from Frank Rich in The Times when it was staged at the Public Theater in 1985. Mr. Rich called it "an honest rite of passage from which Mr. Innaurato can honorably move on."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Theater
THE most basic purpose of having a life insurance policy is to provide some assistance for loved ones when you die. Wealthier people sometimes use life insurance for estate planning, while most people expect the policies on which they have paid premiums for decades to help their heirs get by or at the least cover funeral expenses. Yet hundreds of millions of dollars in life insurance goes unclaimed each year for one simple reason: the beneficiaries do not know the money exists. Even in this wired age, if the insurance company cannot locate the beneficiary or for that matter, even learn that the policyholder has died that money will go unclaimed. The money does not stay with the insurer indefinitely. It is eventually transferred to state unclaimed property divisions. And the states then post the information on Web sites or in local newspapers. But that process can take years, and in the meantime, first the insurers and then the states profit from money owed to the beneficiaries. New York has received 400,287,736 in unclaimed life insurance property since 2000 and paid out 64,772,228, said Vanessa Lockel, a spokeswoman for the Office of the State Comptroller. And that is just one part of the 10.5 billion the state has received in unclaimed property since 1943. Only about 20 percent of the property is claimed in any year. Florida has about 9.9 million unclaimed accounts including securities and other property, in addition to insurance worth more than 1 billion. Of that, some 355 million is related to unclaimed insurance, said Alexis Lambert, a spokeswoman for the Florida Department of Financial Services. The reality, though, is that most of those insurance policies will never be claimed and the money will end up being used by the states. New York has had an account from one person worth 1.7 million since 2004. So how bad is the problem of unclaimed life insurance policies, and what can you do if you think you're the beneficiary of one? THE PROBLEM It is difficult to accurately estimate the extent of unclaimed life insurance policies. Joseph M. Belth, professor emeritus of insurance at Indiana University and editor of the Insurance Forum, tried to calculate the amount that insurance companies send to states from unclaimed policies. He asked the 20 largest insurance providers how much they remitted in 2009, and he asked the 20 largest states how much they had received. He received few answers and even fewer complete ones. "I got the feeling that all of this is unaudited," Mr. Belth said. "The states can't afford to do the audits. Whether the companies have good recordkeeping I honestly don't know, but I strongly doubt it." He extrapolated from the data collected that about 351 million in unclaimed life insurance was transferred to states in 2009, and insurance companies had total unclaimed policy liabilities of 1.3 billion. Yet he said he believed those estimates were low. Individual insurance companies contacted for this column generally did not want to discuss the subject. But the life insurance trade industry association said insurers did their best to track down beneficiaries. "Life insurers make every effort to locate beneficiaries of life insurance policies," said Whit Cornman, a spokesman for the American Council of Life Insurers, a trade group. "Many companies have units dedicated to dealing with unclaimed proceeds." Depending on the state, insurance companies have two to seven years from the date a policy is deemed inactive to transfer the money. As for the states that receive the unclaimed money, they say it is always available to be claimed but will be used for other purposes until then. "We put an ad in the paper for people to check our Web site," said Anthony Forchino, assistant director at the Arizona Department of Revenue. "It goes into a general fund each year until it's claimed. We hope that we have enough left out each year to pay the claims." But the reality is that both insurers and states benefit for years from the unclaimed money. LOST AND FOUND Insurance is regulated by the states, meaning there is no central place to turn to in locating policies. "The short answer is there does not appear to be a definitive source for identifying how many life insurance policies lay unclaimed by their beneficiaries in the United States," said Michael Barry, a spokesman for the Insurance Information Institute. Several services that track insurance policies are aimed at people who want a place to put their information. For a one time fee of 115 to 145, the site acts as a repository for insurance information and periodically monitors whether members are alive. When it determines they are not, it notifies their beneficiaries. "The big misconception is there is some government number you can call and say, 'I'm here to collect my spouses' assets,' " said Tej Shah, a co founder of the company. "That doesn't exist." Another source is MIB Group, an insurance industry organization that maintains a database of 170 million records going back 14 years. Its limitation, though, is that the records are for applications for individual policies not for policies that were actually written. The other alternative is so called tracers people who scour public records for lost property and will provide information on accounts for a percentage of the assets you end up recovering. So much energy is spent on finding unclaimed policies because some insurance does not go away even if you stop making premium payments. Many types of policies build up equity over the years, and that equity can pay the premiums if you don't. In the end, the death benefit may be reduced by the premium payments, but there is still a benefit. "It's a huge problem because people don't keep good records, and policies build up cash values," Mr. Belth said. "It's concerned me over the years, but I have no way to know how widespread this is." LUCK AND FRUSTRATION Even the stories of people finding policies are not all that heartening. They show that the policies could just as easily have gone undiscovered. When his mother died eight years ago, Angelo Karamitos, 48, a general manager for a vending company in Racine, Wis., said he was surprised by what he found rummaging through her papers. "We had to scramble through boxes and files to find what she had," he said. The two things that surprised him most, he said, were a safe deposit box and a life insurance policy he did not know existed. He said once he found the insurance policy, redeeming it was easy. But not all such discoveries end so happily. When a prominent doctor and property developer in the Washington area died in 1999, one of his sons had the task of cleaning up his estate. "We shared a post office box for business," said the son, a doctor and a lawyer in Chevy Chase, Md., who asked for anonymity to protect his mother. "It was a couple of years before I realized I was getting these things from John Hancock. Then, there were these premium notices. I realized there was an insurance policy out there." It turned out his father had taken out a life insurance policy with his girlfriend as the beneficiary. The son was the secondary beneficiary. "I tried to track her down," he said. "She didn't believe me, so the policy still sits there until this day." Although John Hancock received proof of the father's death, it did not have a current address for the girlfriend. And now, a life insurance policy for 12,500 remains unclaimed.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Your Money
There's protest behind the prettiness of "Omoiyari," the fourth studio album by the songwriter Kaoru Ishibashi, who records as Kishi Bashi. He is the American son of Japanese immigrants, and current political turmoil over immigration got him thinking about a 20th century episode of American xenophobia: the internment of more than 110,000 people with as little as 1/16 Japanese ancestry from the West Coast during World War II, and beyond, from 1942 to as late as 1946. They were incarcerated in isolated camps, often in desolate places; two thirds of them were American born citizens. In the 1980s, the United States apologized for a "fundamental injustice" and paid reparations to survivors and heirs of those interned. Bashi is not one of them; his parents arrived after the war. But while making the album, Bashi visited some of the internment sites, recording and filming there. The Japanese word "Omoiyari" translates loosely as compassion based on empathy. The album's songs glance at politics, but they concentrate on individual stories and relationships, seeking the individual humanity within the facts.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Music
How to watch: The Tennis Channel, 7 9 p.m. Eastern; ESPN, 9 p.m.; streaming on ESPN and ESPN3, 9 p.m. Rafael Nadal, the world No. 1, won his first Grand Slam tournament at the French Open in 2005. Fifteen years later, he has continued to improve his game and learn. After a loss to Novak Djokovic in the ATP Cup this month, Nadal adjusted his game by playing more aggressively, using short, angled balls to pull his opponents into wider positions. On his way to the quarterfinals, he has dropped only one set. In his last two matches, he hit 35 more winners than unforced errors against Pablo Carreno Busta and 37 more against Nick Kyrgios. His quarterfinal opponent, Dominic Thiem, is often compared to Nadal. Thiem, the fifth seed, is a clay court specialist but lost to Nadal in the final of the French Open in 2018 and 2019. Thiem's return of service, court movement and groundstrokes are all modeled on Nadal's game, and in any other generation he would have been the most dominant player through the clay court season. While some have described him as the heir to Nadal's throne, it will be exceptionally difficult for him to overcome Nadal while he's in scintillating form, especially on the slower hardcourts of Melbourne Park. Simona Halep, the fourth seed, has won two Grand Slam tournaments, at Roland Garros and Wimbledon, since her appearance in the Australian Open final in 2018. Halep may be the most consistent performer on tour, using her excellent return of serve and defensive shots to negate her opponents' strengths. She glided through the field on her way to the quarterfinals without dropping a set. In her round of 16 match against Elise Mertens, the 16th seed, she won almost half of her returning points, forcing Mertens to play more aggressively, which led to 38 unforced errors. It's a strategy that could work quite well against Halep's quarterfinal opponent, Anett Kontaveit. Kontaveit looked inconsistent in her first week in Melbourne. Although she steamrollered sixth seeded Belinda Bencic in the third round in only 49 minutes, she has needed three sets to push past a pair of unseeded players. While her serve is usually her best weapon, she will be less likely to get free points off it against Halep, and will need to remain composed facing an opponent who knows how to make her hit an extra two or three balls to finish off what would otherwise be an easy point.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Sports
SAN FRANCISCO Facing accusations that Uber executives turned a blind eye to sexual harassment and other corporate misbehavior, the ride hailing service's board moved on Sunday to shake up the company's leadership, ahead of the release this week of an investigation's findings on its troubled culture. Uber directors were weighing a three month leave of absence for Travis Kalanick, the chief executive who built the start up into a nearly 70 billion entity, according to three people with knowledge of the board's agenda. In addition, a representative for Uber's board said the directors "unanimously voted" to adopt all of the recommendations made in a report by the former attorney general Eric H. Holder Jr., who was retained to investigate the company's culture. One of the recommendations included the departure of a top lieutenant to Mr. Kalanick, Emil Michael, said the people with knowledge of the board's agenda, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the discussions were confidential. The moves would scale back the involvement of Mr. Kalanick and strip him of an ally, a turnabout for a chief executive who had been hailed as an innovator and a role model. The changes would also further destabilize the leadership at Uber, which has upended the transportation industry worldwide, at a time when rivals are trying to capitalize on the company's woes. Mr. Kalanick, 40, proposed the idea of taking time off after a boating accident last month that killed his mother and sent his father to the hospital. Given those circumstances, Mr. Kalanick, who has worked nonstop since Uber's founding in 2009, had told people he might need a break. Still, if he were to take leave, it could be perceived as a repudiation of the aggressiveness that he has brought to Uber. Any reduction of his involvement in Uber even if temporary would be significant, given that he molded the ride hailing service in his own brash image. Mr. Kalanick has faced particular scrutiny in recent months as Uber has worked to overcome scandals, including employees detailing sexual harassment and systematic attempts to evade law enforcement personnel in some cities. The discussions by the nine member board preceded a report from Mr. Holder's investigation, scheduled to be released on Tuesday. In recent months, Uber has fired more than 20 employees for infractions including sexual harassment and discrimination. "This starts at the very top," said Micah Alpern, a principal at A. T. Kearney, a top management and consulting firm. "They need to start from scratch to create a new culture entirely." Uber declined to comment on the company discussions, which were held at the Los Angeles offices of Covington Burling, the law firm where Mr. Holder works. Mr. Kalanick, through a spokesman, declined to comment. News of the discussions was previously reported by Reuters. Uber's current crisis stems from claims in February from a former engineer, Susan Fowler, that she had been routinely sexually harassed when she worked at the company and that the human resources department had done little to help her. An outpouring of other cases followed, and Uber retained at least two law firms including Covington Burling to look into the matters. Uber has since faced other problems, including an intellectual property dispute over self driving car technology with Waymo, the self driving car business that operates under Google's parent company. Uber also is dealing with a Justice Department investigation into tools that it used to evade law enforcement personnel in cities where the authorities were trying to shut down its ride hailing service. Many executives have left the company in recent months. Even so, Mr. Kalanick's position has for months seemed secure, especially because of how the company is structured. Uber's board follows a "founder friendly" governance structure, made popular in Silicon Valley by Google and Facebook. Seven of Uber's nine board members hold so called super voting shares, allowing them to have a stronger say in the board room. Four director seats are empty. Because Mr. Kalanick and a few allies hold a majority of those shares, his position has been safe and would most likely remain so, even if he took a leave. Some Uber board members have expressed support for Mr. Kalanick. Garrett Camp and Ryan Graves, who have been with Uber since its early days, have long believed that Mr. Kalanick's leadership was necessary to buck an aggressive incumbent taxi industry. Arianna Huffington, the founder of the Huffington Post who is also an Uber board member, has publicly attested to Mr. Kalanick's willingness to change. J. William Gurley and David Bonderman, two venture capitalists and independent board members who also hold super voting shares, were worried about the company's management, the people with knowledge of the matter said. Outside investors were also nervous about the string of scandals and have called board members directly about their concerns. Mr. Kalanick's executive allies were in a trickier position. One of the recommendations in Mr. Holder's report was that Mr. Michael, Uber's senior vice president of business and a close confidant of Mr. Kalanick's, be asked to leave the company, according to the three people. The firm's recommendations also include other sweeping changes at the company. Mr. Michael has not resigned, nor has he been asked to do so, according to a person familiar with the matter, but he was evaluating his options. This year, Uber's general counsel and some board members recommended that Mr. Michael take leave from his position at the company until the results of the Holder report were delivered, according to three people familiar with the matter. Mr. Michael, who has been at the center of three controversies at Uber, refused to step down, and Mr. Kalanick did not force him to do so. Mr. Michael did not respond to a request for comment. Employees and close watchers of the company worry that even the most damning conclusions of the Holder investigation could be ignored. "Any response without complete buy in from the top is a complete waste of time," said Stephen Hirschfeld, a partner at the labor law firm Hirschfeld Kraemer who regularly investigates corporate harassment issues. "It can have an even worse impact on company morale if people already know it's a total joke."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Technology
Bastian Obermayer, left, and Frederik Obermaier, two of the journalists at Suddeutsche Zeitung, who began investigating the Panama Papers more than a year ago. PARIS The leak of millions of private financial documents linking scores of the world's rich and powerful to a secretive Panamanian law firm peddling in shell companies and offshore bank accounts began more than a year ago with a cryptic message to a German newspaper from an anonymous whistle blower. "Hello, this is John Doe," the source wrote to the Suddeutsche Zeitung, a Munich based newspaper that had worked on several investigations into tax evasion and money laundering scandals. "Interested in data?" "We're very interested," replied Bastian Obermayer, a veteran of several investigations into financial scandals. In the months that followed, the confidential source fed Suddeutsche's reporters a steady stream of emails, scanned letters, photographs and client data ripped from the servers of Mossack Fonseca, a Panama City law firm that has been dogged for decades by investigations into its suspected connections to money laundering. It was a trove that ultimately added up to 11.5 million individual files equivalent to 2.6 terabytes of data. The German reporters worked for more than two months verifying that the documents were genuine and trying to unravel the complex web of secret transactions. "It became an addiction," Mr. Obermayer's colleague, Frederik Obermaier, wrote in an emailed response to questions. "We often messaged each other at crazy times, like 2 a.m. or 4 a.m. about the newest findings." But the sheer volume of data contained in the initial batch soon overwhelmed the German newspaper's five person investigations team. The paper turned for help to the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists in Washington, D.C., which has coordinated several previous global projects on financial data leaks. Within weeks, the ICIJ had assembled an army of about 400 journalists from more than 100 news organizations in 80 countries, including The Guardian and BBC in Britain, the French daily Le Monde, the Sonntagszeitung in Switzerland, and L'Espresso, an Italian weekly newsmagazine. Many of the same journalists had collaborated with the center before on investigations into tax havens including the "Swiss Leaks" project in 2015 and the "Lux Leaks" series in 2014. The ICIJ did not approach to The New York Times to participate. "This is an important subject, which we have written about ourselves, and continue to follow," said Matt Purdy, a deputy executive editor at The Times. The leaked documents provide even more information, he added, and the work is to be applauded. The media partners dissected the mountain of data that the Suddeutsche's journalists received in several batches, each of which were forwarded to a secure ICIJ server. The project was code named Prometheus, after the Titan from Greek mythology who stole the secret of fire from the gods. Luke Harding of The Guardian, a former Moscow correspondent and a veteran of several international collaborations, including WikiLeaks in 2010 and the Edward Snowden leaks in 2013, said the constant stream of new material meant that reporters were regularly relying on each other to help them keep track of new details. Unlike past projects, where the leaked data were provided as a "discreet, one off leaks" of hundreds or at most thousands of documents, "this was in real time," said Mr. Harding, whose team focused on transactions involving individuals with ties to President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia. "We were constantly getting new data." With such a large number of people trolling through the same database, the partners needed to agree early on with a common strategy for collaboration and for parsing out the research, as well as a joint promise to hold off on publishing until everyone was ready. The partners held a series of secret meetings, some of which involved more than 100 people. The first took place at a rented room of the National Press Club in Washington in June, followed by others in Munich, London and Lillehammer, Norway. "The danger was always that if something happened in the world and the reporters in that country would get terribly excited and want to publish right away," Gerard Ryle, the director of ICIJ, said. Netflix buys a visual effects company in a move to support its global ambitions. 15 minimum wage for federal contractors will take effect Jan. 30. About a dozen staffers at ICIJ, plus freelancers, devoted themselves entirely to the project, building the tools used by its partners while also preparing a dozen or so of its own stories on the leak. Mr. Ryle and his deputy, Marina Walker Guevara, were in near constant communication with what had become a sprawling team. "This was not a story where the documents were the whole story," Mr. Ryle said. "You had to work for it, you had to go outside of the documents. You could see a window, but you had go out and look." The ICIJ made a number of powerful research tools available to the consortium that the group had developed for previous leak investigations. Those included a secure, Facebook type forum where reporters could post the fruits of their research, as well as database search program called "Blacklight" that allowed the teams to hunt for specific names, countries or sources. While the original documents were written in 25 different languages, most of the communication on the forum took place in English, with reporters actively sharing interesting tidbits with the relevant specialized teams. Each news organization took their own precautions, restricting access to the secure computers that were used to connect to the ICIJ's servers and ensuring that these were not accessible through their newsrooms' regular networks. Once specific names were found in the database, reporters dug deeper for any clues that might connect those individuals with a shell company, a bank account, or an ever widening cast of characters. Working in concert with a team of reporters out of The Guardian's safe room, Mr. Harding uncovered a web of more than 100 complex international transactions that revolved around an offshore firm linked to a musician named Sergei Roldugin, who is one of Mr. Putin's closest friends. "We knew there was a link to Putin's buddy," Mr. Harding said. "We knew money was being sent offshore from Russian state banks and being recycled back into Russia" through the offshore company. Late last year, he said, the teams ultimately managed to establish a connection between that firm and another that owned an upscale ski resort near St. Petersburg that is a favorite of Mr. Putin. Further reporting eventually revealed that the same resort was the venue for the secret 2013 wedding of Mr. Putin's daughter Yekaterina news of which only surfaced last year. "In the Panama Papers, there was no Swiss bank account" that could provide a clear money trail, Mr. Harding said. "But in Russia, where your daughter gets married says a lot about what places you hold dear." Other news organizations used the Mossack Fonseca documents to expose the offshore accounts of political figures in countries like France, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, as well as several international film stars and sports luminaries.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Media
When Krista Venero, an author who writes under the pen name K.L. Montgomery, bought ads on Facebook for a romance novel she published last year, she thought her marketing fell well within the bounds of the social network's policies. The ad showed an image of a woman photographed from behind with a portion of her upper back exposed. It didn't seem particularly racy, certainly no more than an ad for Olay body wash, showing a woman's bare back and legs, that Ms. Venero had recently seen. Facebook rejected her ad, however, and when she disputed the decision, a representative told her that it implied nudity and that the company did not allow ads "with a sexual undertone." Ms. Venero now tends to make her ads "extremely conservative, she said. "They usually just have a man and woman's face on them," she added. "I do have one that has a man's chest, and I've never had any problems with it. But a woman's shoulder we have a problem." Ms. Venero is not the only one to complain that Facebook is inconsistent when deciding which images are sexually suggestive, particularly pictures of women. The company has flagged a photo of a woman in a T shirt reading in dim lighting, for example, while allowing a provocative image of a man's bare stomach for an ad from a Facebook group dedicated to "steamy romance novels" called Beyond 50 Shades. That image, in which the man had his thumb on the inside of his pants, was incorrectly approved, a Facebook spokes woman recently said. After The New York Times sent Facebook this image, the company said it should not have been approved. It violates Facebook's policy against "images focused on individual body parts, such as abs, buttocks or chest, even if not explicitly sexual in nature." April Ray, who helps run a book blog, Reading After Dark, was alarmed late last year when a photo of her was flagged as adult content. Ms. Ray was using the picture, which showed her reading in a dark room in a black T shirt, as part of a promotion for the blog's Facebook page. "It definitely stung a little because it was my profile picture and I've had it for three years now, and it's just my face I'm wearing a regular T shirt that I think I got at the Gap," Ms. Ray said. She said it had taken several days for her appeal to reach a person at Facebook. The photo was then approved, but it was too late for a contest her blog was running. Facebook's ad practices have long been scrutinized, even more so after 13 Russians were indicted in February on charges that they tried to disrupt the 2016 presidential election by, among other things, distributing divisive ads through the social network. But the disputes raised by Ms. Venero and Ms. Ray are indicative of questions raised by smaller advertisers, who rely on Facebook to market their work but often have to navigate the appeals process themselves. Facebook prohibits adult content in ads, including "depictions of people in explicit or suggestive positions" and "activities that are overly suggestive or sexually provocative." The rules also extend to "implied nudity," "excessive visible skin" and images that are too focused on individual body parts "even if not explicitly sexual in nature." On Facebook's website, all of the examples showed women. "Facebook's policies have the effect of sexualizing women's bodies in a way that is not necessary and very unhealthy for society," said Jillian York, the director for international freedom of expression at the Electronic Frontier Foundation , which advocates digital privacy protections. She added that while the company allowed topless men, it took a strict approach to nudity of a female torso. Joel Jones, Facebook's vice president of global marketing solutions operations, said that the company tended to be "conservative" when monitoring ads that people might find offensive but that its enforcement of adult content did not distinguish between men and women. Human reviewers are trained with examples that feature both men and women, Mr. Jones said, and he noted that more women appeared in ads almost twice as often as men in a sampling during the previous 30 days. 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. For advertisers, debating what constitutes "adult content" with those human reviewers can be frustrating. Goodbye Bread, an edgy online retailer for young women, said it had a heated debate with Facebook in December over the image of young woman modeling a leopard print mesh shirt. Facebook said the picture was too suggestive. When Goodbye Bread challenged the decision, and a company representative replied that the issue was the policy against ads "that show a lot of skin." "The shirt is considerably transparent in the fact that the breast would be visible had it not been blurred," the representative said, adding that as a result, the nudity was "implied." When presented with the email exchange by The New York Times, a Facebook spokes woman said that the image did not violate its policies on adult content and that the company had sent "incorrect messaging" to Goodbye Bread. The post, the spokesperson said, actually violated a separate policy involving profanity because of another image in the same ad. George Stamelos, a co founder of Goodbye Bread, said fashion brands regularly dealt with mixed messages from Facebook on skin and suggestiveness in ads but could often successfully appeal to human moderators. He also said Facebook's policies were unfairly applied to women. "I get bombarded with stupid ads for swimwear and stuff like that every guy is topless with a six pack, and they don't have a problem with that," Mr. Stamelos said. "During the summer, we couldn't advertise our swimwear collection on Facebook because we kept getting rejected for excessive skin." It's sticky territory for a company of Facebook's size, particularly when there is intense scrutiny on gender inequality. It also raises questions about who, at a company where just 35 percent of the employees are women, is deciding what's suggestive. Facebook declined to give rough estimates of how many people work on reviewing and approving ads or say where they are. In October, the company announced it was hiring 1,000 additional people to review ads in the wake of congressional hearings that examined the role Facebook played in helping spread disinformation during the 2016 election, including the impact of Russian political ads purchased on Facebook. Mr. Jones of Facebook said the company set higher standards for ads than for regular posts from users because ads were "proactively pushed out to people." He said Facebook was "focused on improving our review protocols and automated systems." Facebook, which counts more than two billion users worldwide, has frequently been accused of taking a conservative, and at times haphazard, approach to what types of nudity it finds acceptable. In 2008, women began noticing that their photos of breast feeding were being removed from personal posts as well as from private groups where women shared advice and tips on how to nurse their babies. Critics of Facebook have since argued that its policies against showing female nipples harm health initiatives that encourage breast feeding. In 2016, the company was criticized for censoring a Pulitzer Prize winning photograph of a young girl running naked after a napalm attack during the Vietnam War. Facebook rescinded its decision, saying, "In this case, we recognize the history and global importance of this image."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Media
The first Panamanian I met promptly handed me a baby. It was a logical move, from her perspective. She was the lone person working a bamboo walled roadside stand halfway between Tocumen International Airport and the sunbaked Azuero Peninsula. I had parked our rental car, told my parents to wait, and run in to order a cantaloupe milkshake. And, of course, you can't cut melon, scoop ice and operate a blender while holding a little girl. But for a visitor just off a five hour nonstop from New York, it was a bewilderingly tender moment. "Me permite?" she asked with utter nonchalance, then handed me the 4month old with scrunched up lips and golden stud earrings. "Her name is Hannah," she continued in the choppy Caribbean style Spanish of the country. "Like Hannah Montana." Hannah was perfectly calm, as if she had been handed to scruffy, gray bearded foreigners a thousand times before. A few minutes later, I handed her back, along with 2.50 for the shake (Panama operates on U.S. dollars) and headed back to the car, where my parents were waiting. I showed them the selfie I had taken, hoping to pass some of the warm welcome on to them. It seemed an appropriately familial moment. In a sense, my parents have been watching their own son depend on the kindness of strangers to care for him for over five years as the Frugal Traveler columnist. This would be the fifth and final time I took Peter and Judy Kugel along (as Feb. 7 will mark my final column). It was an auspicious start to our trip. My parents essentially taught me to travel, and we believe that being handed a baby, getting a rental car stuck in the mud (Nicaragua), swimming with a local family (Croatia), happening upon a midsummer feast (Norway) or dining out in the immigrant filled suburbs (Vancouver) are the kind of experiences that matter more than museums and sightseeing cruises. And they almost always cost less. That's one of the reasons we were heading to Azuero in the first place. A Panamanian friend of a friend had called it "one of my favorite places" and "very traditional of the Panamanian culture." When I found very little online except for talk of surf breaks (age inappropriate) and annual festivals (not coinciding with our dates), I decided it would be a perfect low key first experience in what was a new country for all of us. An added bonus: It's the driest part of the country, which we'd be visiting during the rainy season. Panama itself is convenient to get to. There are direct flights from a dozen U.S. cities, plus Puerto Rico, on Copa Airlines; my parents flew in from Boston and I came from New York. A search this week found flights from February for as low as 500 from New York and 560 from Boston. My ticket was more expensive, the first leg of a longer trip. (Wait for that Feb. 7 column for more.) The Azuero, a squarish 3,000 square miles of land that juts out into the Pacific from the southern coast, about four hours from Panama City, is perhaps best known for a town called Pedasi. An allegedly adorable spot with a colonial center, I read it was becoming popular among American retirees, and saw there is even a place called the Bakery, whose sign boasts "artisanal bread"; its muffins and pepperoni pizza get strong reviews on TripAdvisor. Instead, we checked into Hostel Kimmell, a bed and breakfast in the lazy little town of Santo Domingo. It is run by Martha Kimmell, who as a child came from Panama City to spend summers in what had been her great grandmother's house. Ms. Kimmell speaks near perfect English (with an outsized affection for the phrase "I'm not going to lie to you") and is an aggressively good host short on charm but spirited and well meaning. She told us how she is leading an effort to develop tourism in her corner of Azuero, training local guides and developing activities on a still rough rural tourism loop. I had bypassed online booking sites and contacted Martha directly, booking a "family room" for 89 a night, less than the online price. My parents said would prefer their own room, but I've long found that if you book cramped quarters in the off season, the hosts will often upgrade you. "I hope you don't mind, I've put in you in two rooms," Martha told us. Mind getting a 145 value for 89? Not at all. The rooms bordered a covered outdoor area replete with hammocks perfect for reading and watching the neighbors stroll by under their umbrellas (used to ward off the sun, not the rain that was pelting other regions of the country). My parents are generally up for anything they can still do at ages 77 and 85. (My mother could probably do back flips if she tried; my father is slower, but shows remarkable taste for adventure nine years into a diagnosis of Parkinson's disease.) So we accepted Martha's generous offer to take us on a local tour into the inland hills, through agricultural villages with picturesque names like Loma Bonita (Pretty Hill) and Bajo Corral (Low Corral). It ended on a hilltop that overlooked cornfields and had a sweeping view down to the sea. Or so we expected. "I didn't realize it would get dark so soon," said Martha. We settled on a visit to a tiny general store, Kiosco Los Sobrinos, where the owner showed us a traditional embroidered dress she was making and sold me a glass bottle of Canada Dry ginger ale for 35 cents. By now, Martha's guides are offering tours in English and Spanish for 25 an hour while we were there, she was still winging them, for free. On a morning hike the next day, my father asked what bird was making a repeated call in the distance. "I have no idea," she said, noting that she was trying to convince the government to fund a wildlife inventory. We laughed. That was after she took us to "help" milk her boyfriend Carlos's cows. Even though it was barely after dawn, he and another worker had already filled several 35 liter metal tanks with frothy milk; they allow each calf to nurse from its mother as they milk her, which we found adorable. They assigned me to one of the tamer cows (named Muneca, or doll) and watched as I extracted a tiny fraction of a liter. My parents contented themselves taking photos of their son's incompetence; I learned that my dad had milked cows one summer in upstate New York, circa 1940, and we all learned how the business worked in Azuero: Farmers leave the full tanks by the side of the road, and companies send trucks around to take the milk. Carlos used to sell his milk to Quesos Lourdes, a local company which made the fresh yogurt we would later have at breakfast, but now sold to Nestle. That kind of detail that a multinational corporation like Nestle gets its milk from cows like Carlos's is enough to fascinate me, so I was happy to hear my father enjoyed it as well. "It's a kind of tourism I haven't done in a long time," he said. He was referring to a day spent seeing nothing but the normal life of the region. And we continued it that night, when we went for the second time to a place called Dolce y Saladito, a casual, untouristed, nominally Italian place in the neighboring (and much bigger) town of Las Tablas. We stuck mostly to the local fare, especially the expertly fried green plantains, fresh 2 juices (like frosty pineapple and very fresh strawberry) and generously portioned 5 plates of Creole style fried rice studded with carrots and celery and chicken or pork. (Panamanian cuisine is a mix of Caribbean this meal's apparent influence and Central American influences.) It was becoming evident that the main attraction of the peninsula is its small town ordinariness, a change from our more complex urban ordinariness back home. To be clear, there are some legitimate tourist attractions in Azuero. We took a boat ( 70 for up to six people) to Isla Iguana, an island wildlife reserve populated by two kinds of lizards but most notable for its empty (on nonholiday weekdays, at least) and near perfect beach, covered with skittering hermit crabs. We visited a dusty museum in Las Tablas (admission, 1) dedicated to its native son Belisario Porras, a three time president of Panama in the early 20th century, and were tickled to meet one of his great grandsons, who coincidentally was there removing a portrait of the president lent to the museum by his brother. And we ended up getting a small taste of the peninsula's festivals by visiting the Casa Museo Manuel F. Zarate, a tiny, airy house museum in the little town of Guarare. The town of 4,500 is known for its annual September festival celebrating the mejorana, a traditional Panamanian stringed instrument. Entrance was free, as was a Spanish speaking guide: We learned about the festival and its founder, Mr. Zarate, and viewed examples of the intricate embroidered polleras, dresses produced locally and used in the festival. Our guide, Pancho, also told us of a curious local ordinance: During the month of the festival, non Panamanian music is prohibited within town limits. "If you hear someone playing foreign music, you can call the police and they will come stop it," he said. My favorite activity, though, was simply to wander out of Martha's home and around Santo Domingo. By day, the town was largely empty, even in the old fashioned central plaza. But at night people appeared on their porches, bought supplies at Dona Gilma's minimart, turned up 1990s merengue in their homes or tossed baseballs in the street. (Panama is a baseball country, boasting several major leaguers, including Randall Delgado of the Arizona Diamondbacks, a native of Las Tablas.) We had all noticed an adorably pink house on one corner, surrounded by flowering bushes surrounding it, and I made a mental note to come back and take a picture it the next day. My plans were foiled the next morning by a naked 2 year old climbing on the porch furniture, rendering photography creepily inappropriate. We did leave a day and a half to explore Panama City at the end staying at a 135 a night Airbnb apartment in Casco Viejo, the old colonial center that had declined and decayed and is currently being restored, with predictable gallery cafe boutique hotel heavy results. My parents love Frank Gehry, so we went to his lone Latin American work, the Biodiversity Museum (admission, 22) under a riotously jagged, multicolored roof that resembles a partially melted Lego castle. And, of course, we had to go to the Canal and watch a boat go through the Miraflores Locks ( 15). It's a whole to do described by a wisecracking bilingual P.A. announcer. With the water draining astonishingly fast from one of the massive locks in under 10 minutes, he said: "The fish don't know whether they're coming or going, they might as well go along for the ride!"	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Travel
Maggie Norris, a fashion designer, likes to throw a good party. But after a while it's hard to find a venue interesting enough to attract her coterie of well heeled, socially busy friends. So a few years back, she rented out the Russian Consulate in New York for a Russian themed bash. The consulate, a former Vanderbilt mansion, was a hit, she said. This fall, she gained entree to the New York Yacht Club, the exclusive club that held the America's Cup sailing trophy for much of the 20th century. Beyond the unique locations, these venues served up a different experience for her guests: access to places they wouldn't normally be able to go. "I like to create really special events, but they have to be so special that they don't happen every year," Ms. Norris said. That's probably a good thing, since events like these a fixture of the spring social scene are anything but easy to pull off. They take a long time to organize, involve complex logistics and cost more than a traditional party. Yet when the host succeeds, the parties leave memories far more lasting than the most expensive dinner. The first step is planning, which is how any good party starts. All planners say they can pull together an event in a few months, but most prefer to have nine months to a year. Ms. Norris said it took her a year to organize the event at the New York Yacht Club, and it happened only because she knew a member. Planning too far in advance will not necessarily make the event grander, experts say. "There's a sweet spot," said Matthew David Hopkins, president and creative director of Matthew David Celebrations. "If they come to us two years before their event, we know we're going to design it five times before we have to commit to something. A couple of months is a little short." The venue is as much a star as the host. And like any diva, the venue's rules can delay, change or even derail an event. Many are institutions where the staff, club members or paying public are likely to be inconvenienced by the event. "When you're at any type of cultural landmark, anything where there is a curatorial responsibility, you have got to be so careful," said Bronson van Wyck, a New York City party planner. "Almost everything that you want to do there will require an extra step or two to protect and preserve the place where you are." At the New York Public Library's flagship building in Manhattan, for example, the loading docks lead directly into rooms of historic significance, putting the people working the party on watch from the moment they arrive. With a space like that, Mr. van Wyck said, setting up the party is a lot easier and potentially less expensive if it is planned for a day when the institution is not open to the public. Otherwise the planner might have to wait until closing time and rush to set up. (Though with the New York Public Library, which is closed only on major holidays, that may not be possible.) In some instances, the venue can be a great help. Jacques Halbert, a French artist and a former New York restaurant owner, said he gave a party in October at Le Carroi, a museum in the Loire Valley in France that would have been hard to stage without the museum's help. The theme was the 100th anniversary of the Dada art movement. "On every chair, I wanted to attach a fishing pole, so every guest would have a hat hanging over his head," Mr. Halbert said. "I had 250 guests. I needed 250 hats and 250 fishing poles." The museum connected him with a group of gardeners who had bamboo poles that could be used as fishing poles. "They also knew someone who worked at a hat factory, and we got the hats for 50 cents each," he said, adding, "If I'd been alone, I'd have been incompetent." The museum also helped with more mundane tasks, like supplying the chairs (to which to attach the poles) and the trucks to bring in all the supplies. Then there is the issue of electricity. Simon Powles, a founder and the chief executive of Starr Catering Group which has supplied food for events at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts and the National Museum of American History in Washington said that for a 75th birthday party at the New York Botanical Garden in the Bronx, he brought in a generator powerful enough to run the whole party. "We have no control over mother nature, but we do have control over the event being flawless," Mr. Powles said. "You peel the onion back until you've looked at every possible thing." Given this level of planning, these events cost a lot more than a similar event at a more traditional space, like a hotel ballroom. For the food alone, Mr. Powles said, it might cost 150 per person at a hotel, but around 225 per person at a cultural institution, since those venues often lack industrial kitchens and all the meals must be brought in. "It's definitely a steep increase in what you'd see in a hotel or a restaurant," he said. "But you're getting something very custom or private." At that price, though, Mr. Powles said clients should do a tasting as close to the real thing as possible. "We show them every dish we're going to serve," he said. "If it's a special event, we have our staff in that uniform. We get their input and do detailed notes. When they get to the event, they know exactly what they're going to get." The cost of renting the venue can range from 5,000 for a room to 100,000 or more a night to have a museum to yourself. Some venues include more for that fee, like lighting and sound equipment, while with others, the clients have to bring everything themselves, including a kitchen to cook in. One of these parties could easily cost 100,000, but planners say costs can stretch to 1 million or more. Ms. Norris said that the New York Yacht Club donated what she paid to charity. As for her event at the Russian Consulate, she would say only that she got a good price, and that it was worth it given the atmosphere. "I thought it was kind of interesting all these Russian guys were smoking cigars in the stairwell," she said. Mr. Hopkins, the planner, said he provided line item estimates for clients so they can decide what they really want included. For a wedding, he recently designed a wall with pictures of the bride and groom on it. When dinner was over, the wall rotated to reveal acrylic shelves on which desserts appeared to float. For that one piece, he needed people to build the wall and the shelves, light the wall properly, make the desserts and then individually place each dessert on a shelf. "Every piece of this becomes expensive, because there are often multiple vendors who become involved in any one thing," Mr. Hopkins said. Charges that may look negligible can add up, Mr. van Wyck noted. "You don't want to be hit after the fact with a cleanup fee, or a fee for taking all the books off the floor and storing them in a secure facility and they are going to be handled by art handlers who get paid 100 an hour," he said. But as the MasterCard ad reminds us there are some things money can't buy. "It's one thing to walk through the Temple of Dendur in the daytime," Mr. van Wyck said, referring to an exhibition in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. "It's another thing to sit and have dinner by candlelight inside the Temple of Dendur."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Your Money
A new musical chronicling the royal relationship of Lady Diana Spencer and what happens when marrying a prince doesn't exactly live up to the fairy tale hype will arrive on Broadway in March. Performances of "Diana" will begin at the Longacre Theater on March 2, 2020, with an opening date set for March 31. The show ran earlier this year at La Jolla Playhouse in San Diego, which has had some success with other long running Broadway transfers like "Come From Away" and "Memphis." ("Escape to Margaritaville" was not so lucky.) Some members of the creative teams for those productions are also behind "Diana." The director of "Diana," Christopher Ashley, won a Tony Award for his direction of "Come From Away," and the "Memphis" writers Joe DiPietro and David Bryan also penned the book, music and lyrics for this production.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Theater
When a bird preens its feathers, it uses a little of nature's own pomade: an oil made by glands just above the tail. This oil helps clean and protect the bird's plumage, but also contains a delicate bouquet of scents. To other birds potential mates or would be rivals these smells carry many messages, not unlike the birdsongs and fancy feathers that are more obvious to human observers. These scents may signal that a bird would be dangerous to encounter or might be ready to mate, or any number of other cues. However, new research using dark eyed juncos, a common North American bird, suggests that these odoriferous messages may not be entirely of the bird's own making. In a study published last month in the Journal of Experimental Biology, biologists reported that microbes living peacefully on the birds' oil glands may play an important role in making the scent molecules involved. That implies that the birds' microbiomes may influence both the smell and the behavior it provokes in other birds. Birds' scented messages are the focus of the research of Danielle Whittaker, managing director of the Beacon Center for the Study of Evolution in Action at Michigan State University and an author of the paper. Some years ago, after she gave a talk, Kevin Theis, a colleague who studied scent producing bacteria living on hyenas and who is a co author of the new paper, asked her whether she had ever looked at the birds' microbes.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Science
A talented story writer can range an immense landscape as Chekhov did in Russia zeroing in on precise situations of intense isolation and, story by story, drawing what seems to be a map of national character. The bigger the country, the more necessary the short story form. In her excellent first collection, "Homesick for Another World," , the daughter of a Croatian mother and an Iranian father, moves from the West Coast to East Coast (with a brief stop in China) and homes in on characters in states of weirdly dynamic paralysis, trapped between the pains of the past bad childhoods, bad relationships, bad marriages and dreams of the future. If there's a thematic thread weaving through this collection, it's the complicated relationship between entrapment in the physical body her characters are often probing, picking and searching with their fingertips, as if seeking beauty and potential grace and entrapment in social landscapes. The collection opens with "Bettering Myself," a portrait of Miss Mooney, a 30 year old divorced high school teacher at a Ukrainian Catholic school in the East Village, as she passes the days with her students and her college age boyfriend, who lingers outside the story most of the time as a symbol of pure millennial angst. Her students' lives are a mess, but her own life is even more of a disaster, and together they share snarky dialogue and mirrored despair. Nothing much seems to happen, as Miss Mooney describes her life drinking too much and snorting cocaine, going out with her girlfriend, a pseudo transgressive clubgoer: "Most evenings she bid me adieu on the arm of some no face corporate type to show him 'the time of his life' back at his condo in Murray Hill or wherever those people lived." But "Bettering Myself" isn't fueled by plot, or by the threadbare concept of epiphany or a sense of some kind of "closure" (that poor, abused word). Instead, its pleasures derive from how it offers what Ezra Pound called "news that stays news" a sensation of looking into a life and catching a glimpse of not only a particular character but also a particular emotional and social milieu. As Miss Mooney heads to church for what you assume is going to be some pivotal, symbolic moment, she stops at a McDonald's for a Diet Coke and then decides which size she wants. "This felt like a great occasion," she tells us. "I can't explain it. I felt immediately endowed with great power. I plunked my straw in and sucked. It was good. It was the best thing I'd ever tasted." When she finally gets to the church, it's locked, so she heads to McSorley's tavern, where the story ends with a faint resolution. It's a risky move, but it works. We're left with the quiet yet complex pathos of this woman as she sits at the bar, eating a bowl of pickled onions, and that's enough. Trying to describe a short story in a few lines is like trying to describe a bird in flight, or the elegance of a perfectly executed pirouette. Doing so can reduce something elegant and mysterious to a set of awkward instructions that betray the thing itself. A good story is a high wire act that uses angle of vision, voice and plot to produce a work that somehow, against all odds, radiates meaning at all levels in the sentences, the structure and in the absences. Each story in a collection has an aesthetic burden it has created for itself, and it must carry that burden properly. A few of Moshfegh's stories don't quite manage to do it; they stagger under their own weight. In "No Place for Good People," the narrator, a widower, works in a home for adults with developmental disabilities. In a voice that seems to be channeling Raymond Carver, he leads us through his experiences with the patients and then laments the bitter years he spent with his wife. We feel his isolation, but we don't feel the deeper mystery of why what happens to him should matter to us, to our sense of being human. In "A Better Place," Moshfegh edges into the fantastical mode, creating the character of a young girl with a prophetic voice that strains verisimilitude. Too many questions lingered: How does this world work? Is the narrator simply making it all up as she goes along?	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Books
They are two former professional athletes whose prospects started out quite differently. Bart Scott went undrafted coming out of Southern Illinois University but ended up playing 11 seasons in the National Football League, and made it to the Pro Bowl in 2006. Antoine Walker, who led the University of Kentucky to a National Collegiate Athletic Association basketball championship in 1996, was a first round draft pick and won a National Basketball Association championship in 2006 with the Miami Heat. When it came to money, the two men ended up differently as well. Mr. Scott's last contract with the New York Jets was worth 48 million. He managed his money well and is now a commentator for CBS Sports. Mr. Walker made 108 million during his career, then lost the majority of it. He filed for bankruptcy protection in 2010, just two years after retiring from the N.B.A. The two are now working as consultants to a financial education program for college athletes that was developed by Morgan Stanley's global sports and entertainment group. Mr. Walker says he sees his work in the program as a way to make something good out of losing all his money. "I try to be open and transparent," he said in an interview. "I tell them how I lost my money. I tell them the things that I did and did not do. It's the only way to be." The lessons, though aimed at college athletes, are universal for all college students. While the program gives financial advice to the few who may turn professional and reap millions of dollars, its focus is more on the many athletes who will have to adapt to life outside a big time college sports program where everything isn't paid for. Chevy Graham, a senior who plays cornerback for the University of Kansas football team and attended one of the sessions, said Mr. Walker's story stuck with him. "It was given to his family, the people around him, bad business ventures, cars," Mr. Graham said. "It was shocking to see that amount of funds being wasted and distributed in that manner." The financial options for that small subset of college athletes who may turn pro are certainly different from those of their peers. Kenton Adeyemi, who was a defensive lineman at the University of Connecticut, has tried out with two N.F.L. teams, playing four preseason games with the Cleveland Browns. "They did this one skit where your mom called and asked to borrow 5,000. What are you going to say?" Mr. Adeyemi said of the financial education program. "The kids who aren't in the revenue sports like a rower were thinking what is in this for me? But they're showing various levels of income and how your money should be managed." He was eventually cut from the Browns. And if he doesn't get called up this fall, he will need to use his economics and political science degree to look for a far less lucrative job, just like other graduates from the class of 2016. Either way, he said, the seminar at the University of Connecticut where more than 90 percent of its 700 student athletes participated helped him feel better prepared. "As an undrafted guy, I didn't have this, but you have first round draft picks who have millions of dollars in their pockets," Mr. Adeyemi said. The program is grounded in what it calls the seven financial pitfalls for athletes. "It's not what is a stock or bond," said Drew Hawkins, the head of the global sports and entertainment group at Morgan Stanley. "It starts at segments below that. Some of the initial information is around the basics put a budget together, how to save, what's good credit and bad credit, making smart decisions with their dollars and resources." To that end, the program dwells on budgeting or as it puts it to the students: Don't spend everything you earn and then some. "I remember Bart Scott saying, 'You don't think LeBron James has a budget?'" said Reese Randall, a running back on the University of Kansas football team. Mr. Randall, who has no scholarship and expects his football career to end at Kansas, said Mr. Scott's exercises on budgeting resonated the most with his teammates. "He had us go through a stack of cards on what you'd invest money in," he said. "An emergency fund was the first thing you'd think about, real estate was the last. You had to sit down when you had them in the wrong order. Of the 100 people, only four had them all right." Mr. Scott said his own experience in the N.F.L. taught him how to budget before he signed his free agent contract. "I was one of those league minimum guys," he said. "I made 225,000, 275,000, 300,000 then 600,000. There are going to be guys who can do a lot more than you can because they make more money. Leave the competition on the field and live within your means." That advice could apply to any college graduate. Of course, athletes with scholarships have an advantage over many other students who have to take on debt to pay for school. Athletes are going to start their careers without that burden. One reason that universities are supporting these programs is the changes instituted by the N.C.A.A. Starting last year, the N.C.A.A. said that colleges could pay athletes the true cost of attendance, which added transportation and personal expenses to their scholarships. That money was paid directly to student athletes, leaving it up to them to manage it. At Kansas, that amounts to 3,650 a year. At Connecticut, it ranges from 2,800 to 3,300. "Part of that legislation was the suggestion that education around that be provided to student athletes," said Ellen Tripp, associate athletic director in charge of academic support and student development at UConn. These athletes, like students whose parents pay all of their expenses, haven't had to pay rent, buy food or worry about all the necessary costs of living on their own. "Since 98 percent of the student athletes are not going to go on to be professional athletes, you could argue that all college students need the same training and conversations that we provide to this body," Mr. Hawkins, of Morgan Stanley, said. Allison Schaaf, a senior on the rowing team at Kansas, said that what stuck with her was the conversation on purchases that people need versus those they want. "They had a stack of fake money, and they gave you options to buy a car a sedan or a big S.U.V.," she said. "Whatever one you picked, you had to give a chunk of your money away. It really hit home. Some people wanted to live lavishly, but they didn't know how much it would cost them." Steven Israel, who played 10 seasons in the N.F.L. and is now a financial adviser at Merrill Lynch's private banking and investment group, has conducted mentoring programs for college students. He said that when he was an economics major at the University of Pittsburgh in 1992, he calculated what kind of salary he could expect right out of school. "At best, it looked like I was going to be making high 40s at an entry level job, and I said that's good," Mr. Israel said. "Then, I said what if I take care of my business on the football field and I'm drafted between slots 17 and 50? That looked completely different." He was drafted 30th and received a 500,000 signing bonus. "That's a lot of money, but after taxes and living in California, it went down," he said. "Right away, I started putting money away." Perhaps the biggest piece of advice that the former players offer is not overtly financial but practical: The idea that the sport that has occupied so much of their life will probably come to an end when they leave college, as does college itself. "I tell them the first thing I did when I retired was I got therapy," Mr. Scott said. "Every day of my life since I was 8 years old, I had football. Then one day it's gone. There is no senior circuit for football players." And the same can be said for students this fall preparing for life after college.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Your Money
BEIJING As Huawei's finance chief and daughter of its founder, Meng Wanzhou has been a polished, professional face for a huge technology firm that long was opaque to the outside world. Ms. Meng, the eldest daughter of Ren Zhengfei, the leader of the telecom equipment maker, has appeared before reporters to announce the company's financial results. She has spoken at company events in New York; Cancun, Mexico; and beyond. She helped inaugurate centers in Britain, a key market for the Chinese giant's expansion into the Western world. She also sat on the board of a Huawei partner company in Hong Kong called Skycom Tech that Canadian authorities now say did business in Iran. And through that position and her job at Huawei, Ms. Meng may have personally been involved in tricking financial institutions into making transactions that violated United States sanctions against Iran, they said. That has thrust Ms. Meng, 46, into the center of what promises to be a complex diplomatic tussle between the United States and China. She was arrested Dec. 1 in Vancouver, Canada, while changing flights, at the request of the American government, which is seeking to extradite her. The action escalated what had already been a roller coaster year of economic conflict between the two powers, ahead of tricky negotiations to end a brutal trade war. Huawei has said that it is not aware of any wrongdoing by Ms. Meng, and China's Foreign Ministry has called for her immediate release. But on Friday, in a bail hearing in British Columbia's Supreme Court, Canadian authorities said Ms. Meng was accused of fraud. They said she had "direct involvement" with Huawei's representations to banks, telling at least one financial executive that Huawei and Skycom were operating in Iran in strict compliance with United States sanctions when that was not the case. Larry Kudlow, director of the White House's National Economic Council, said on CNBC on Friday that the United States had repeatedly warned Huawei about violating sanctions on Iran. "We have these sanctions on Iran, it runs against our policy, why shouldn't we enforce that?" he said. Reuters reported several years ago that Skycom, one of Huawei's partners in that country, had tried to sell Hewlett Packard equipment to an Iranian telecom carrier in 2010. The sale, which Huawei said was never completed, would have violated Washington's ban on exporting computer products to Iran. Huawei said at the time that its Iranian business was entirely lawful, and that it required its local partners to heed the same laws and regulations. According to Hong Kong corporate filings, Ms. Meng was a member of Skycom's board from February 2008 to April 2009. In a May 2007 filing, Skycom reported that all of the company's shares had been transferred that year to a Hong Kong company called Hua Ying Management. In August 2007, Hua Ying reported to the Hong Kong authorities that its company secretary was Ms. Meng. Ms. Meng, who started at Huawei as a secretary 25 years ago, is not its most prominent executive. But as chief financial officer, she has played a part in the company's efforts over the past five years to become more transparent about its operations. After United States lawmakers labeled Huawei and another Chinese manufacturer, ZTE, as security threats, Huawei saw openness as a way to help dispel the swirl of suspicions surrounding it. Some of the distrust has had to do with Ms. Meng's powerful and secretive father. Mr. Ren, 74, was a member of the Chinese military's engineering corps for nearly a decade before starting Huawei in 1987. His military service has informed American officials' concerns that Huawei has links to the Chinese government or the Communist Party something the company has strenuously denied. "She's very presentable," Duncan Clark, the chairman of the advisory firm BDA China, who once did consulting work for Huawei, said of Ms. Meng. That is a stark contrast with her father, Mr. Clark added. "He is, for me at least, refreshingly unpolished and direct." For many people in China, Huawei represents how far their nation has come since it began climbing out of the economic ravages left by Chairman Mao and how far it can continue to go. Over the past three decades, Huawei has transformed from a small maker of telephone switches into the world's largest supplier of telecommunications equipment, as well as the No. 2 smartphone maker, behind Samsung. The company has worked to build a consumer brand associated with quality and innovation. The name "Huawei" means "China's Achievement." But after winning over cellular providers across the developing world with its cost effective networking gear, the company faced a tougher task convincing large carriers in the wealthier nations of Europe and North America. Ms. Meng became part of an attempt to address such issues in January 2013, when she was brought before reporters in Beijing to discuss Huawei's business outlook. The company, which is privately held, had published some financial details before. But it had never held a news conference of this kind. "We will honor our commitment to transparency and openness," Ms. Meng said then. This commitment has failed to persuade the United States government that Huawei's products are safe to use, but the company has become a supplier to many of Europe's telecom providers. This year, Ms. Meng was made Huawei's deputy chairwoman in addition to finance chief, leading some to wonder whether she might succeed her father at the top someday. But hers was not an heiress's upbringing. Ms. Meng, who also uses the names Sabrina and Cathy, was born in 1972 in the western city of Chengdu, to Mr. Ren's first wife, Meng Jun. The family moved to Shenzhen, in China's south, during the turbulent economic reforms of the 1980s. Shenzhen eventually became a hub of China's mighty manufacturing base and home to Huawei's global headquarters. Back then, it was a backwater. As Ms. Meng later recalled in a Huawei employee newspaper, the walls of the family's house let in all the neighbors' chatter. The roof leaked. When it rained which it did constantly in southern China everything got wet. After college, Ms. Meng hoped to attend graduate school in the United States. A university gave her an offer, she recalled in a 2016 speech. But her visa was rejected because an American consular interviewer decided that her English was too poor.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Technology
Alice Hemmer's favorite part of Jack Kerouac's novel "On the Road" doesn't involve the drug addled cross country road trips, encounters with prostitutes in Mexico or wild parties in Manhattan. Alice, who is 5 and lives in a Chicago suburb, likes the part when Sal Paradise eats ice cream and apple pie whenever he feels hungry. She hasn't actually read Kerouac's 320 page, amphetamine fueled, stream of consciousness classic. (Alice is a precocious reader, but not that precocious.) Instead, her father read her a heavily abridged and sanitized illustrated version of "On the Road" designed for six to 12 year old children. "She didn't love it," said her father, Kurt Hemmer, an English professor at Harper College and scholar of the Beat Generation, who noted that even some college students failed to appreciate the novel's subtle spiritual message. "To really grasp it, you need to be a bit more mature." "On the Road," with its recurring references to sex, drugs and domestic violence, might not seem like an ideal bedtime story for a child. But that's precisely the point of KinderGuides, a new series of books that aims to make challenging adult literary classics accessible to very young readers. Along with "On the Road," KinderGuides recently published picture book versions of Ernest Hemingway's "The Old Man and the Sea" and Truman Capote's melancholy novella "Breakfast at Tiffany's." (It skipped over the awkward question of whether Holly Golightly is a prostitute.) In one of its most ambitious and bizarre efforts, it released a cheerful take on Arthur C. Clarke's opaque, mind bending science fiction novel, "2001: A Space Odyssey," an allegory about the evolution of human consciousness that many adult readers find impenetrable. With their bright illustrations and breezy language "Sal is ready for an adventure!" pretty much typifies the tone of "On the Road" the books almost seem like parodies, or the perfect gag gift for the hipster parent who has everything. But the creators of the series, the graphic designer Melissa Medina and her partner, the writer Fredrik Colting, insist they aren't joking. They're already working on the next four titles in the series versions of Paulo Coelho's best selling novel "The Alchemist," Jane Austen's "Pride and Prejudice," J. D. Salinger's "The Catcher in the Rye" and Harper Lee's "To Kill a Mockingbird" (minus the rape charges, Ku Klux Klan rallies and racial slurs). "The goal of all of this is to get them really psyched about these books now, so that they'll want to read the originals later," Ms. Medina said. Though the premise of their project may strike some as absurd does a first grader really need to be introduced to Kerouac or Capote? kiddie lit has become a surprisingly lucrative and crowded niche. Anxious parents who played Mozart for their babies in utero and showed them Baby Einstein educational videos have snapped up children's books that promise to turn their offspring into tiny literature lovers. BabyLit, an imprint that publishes board books for babies based on "Anna Karenina," "Wuthering Heights," "Don Quixote" and other classics, has sold more than 1.5 million copies of its 24 titles. Next fall, the company will introduce a series of picture books based on classic novels geared toward older children, which will include more of the plot, starting with "Moby Dick" and "Pride and Prejudice." "It's a more educational approach than just Spot the dog," said Suzanne Gibbs Taylor, the creator of the BabyLit series. Another popular series, Cozy Classics, which was created by the twin brothers Jack and Holman Wang, reduces great works of literature to 12 word stories, illustrated with photos of handmade felt figurines. (Their rendition of Tolstoy's "War and Peace" can be rattled off in a single breath: "Soldier Friends Run Dance Goodbye Hug Horse Boom! Hurt Sleep Snow Love.") Their titles, which include "Jane Eyre," "Emma" and "Adventures of Huckleberry Finn," are designed for babies and toddlers, but include some arch visual jokes directed at the parents, like a felt figurine of Miss Havisham flailing about in flames in "Great Expectations." Even with the adorable fuzzy figures, the books can be overwhelming. "My daughter started crying hysterically 3 pages into it," one reader wrote of her 18 month old in an Amazon review of "Moby Dick." Another reviewer questioned whether a toddler is ready for "Jane Eyre," and called the Cozy Classics version "weird, dark and not the most appropriate for kids who are reading board books." What happened on Day 2 of Elizabeth Holmes's testimony. Kevin Spacey was ordered to pay 31 million to the 'House of Cards' studio after sexual harassment allegations. Holman Wang said he and his brother wanted to preserve the sometimes grim and complex tone of the originals, rather than conforming to the "fluffy bunny aesthetic" of most contemporary picture books. "It's not about saying, 'My 2 year old has read 'Pride and Prejudice,'" he said. "We try not to cheaply capitalize on these brand name stories by sanitizing them and losing the themes." Some educators are skeptical of efforts to spoon feed complex literary works to small children, especially when there's such a rich body of classic children's literature. "It's ludicrous to take great works that are clearly for adults and reduce them for children," said Monica Edinger, a fourth grade teacher at the Dalton School in Manhattan, who dismissed KinderGuides as a disingenuous attempt to exploit parents' insecurities. Still, some parents counter that children can absorb the bigger themes, like the idea of resilience in "The Old Man and the Sea" or adventurousness in "On the Road." Brent Almond, a graphic designer and parenting blogger who lives in Maryland, said his 7 year old son, Jon, had responded enthusiastically to some of the books. "A lot of these books are melancholy or outright depressing, but it's been cool to see how he reacts to them," Mr. Almond said. Jon likes the book based on "2001" the best, because "it's in space and it's kind of creepy," Mr. Almond said. (Jon didn't seem especially bothered by one of the more chilling scenes, when the ship's computer, Hal, turns on the astronauts and sends one of them out of the spaceship to his death, Mr. Almond said. ) Ms. Medina and Mr. Colting got the idea for KinderGuides about a year ago, when they were visiting her family in Kansas. Mr. Colting was reading "The Old Man and the Sea," and Ms. Medina's 6 year old niece asked him what it was about. He realized the story was easy to summarize, and saw a market opportunity. Mr. Colting, a native of Sweden, already had a background in publishing, albeit a somewhat checkered one. In 2009, he was sued by the Salinger estate for publishing an unauthorized sequel to "The Catcher in the Rye." He settled the lawsuit and withdrew copies from North America. Despite that earlier legal entanglement, Mr. Colting had no qualms about repurposing famous novels as picture books, including "The Catcher in the Rye." He argues that because they function as study guides as well as entertainment, the KinderGuides books don't infringe on copyrighted works. Some copyright experts dispute that logic.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Media
An awards season dominated by MeToo ended with the Oscars on Sunday. The New York Times's co chief film critics, Manohla Dargis and A.O. Scott, and the critic at large Wesley Morris discussed the telecast and what it said about Hollywood and our moment. MANOHLA DARGIS It is axiomatic that the Academy Awards make for seriously lousy television, but I would like to accentuate the positive (for now). It was very moving to see some of the women who presented on Sunday night, starting with Salma Hayek, Ashley Judd and Annabella Sciorra, whose accusations against Harvey Weinstein have rocked the industry. Similarly moving was Frances McDormand's acceptance speech for best actress, which quickly turned into a call to action. She not only asked all the female nominees in the room to stand with her "Meryl, if you do it everybody else will, come on" but she also asked the industry to do the same with two words: "inclusion rider." These riders are a way that the industry can immediately start diversifying. As the researcher Dr. Stacy Smith has suggested, stars can contractually require diversity both onscreen and in jobs like art director, set builder and sound technician, areas where women and minority populations tend to be radically underrepresented. It's strange and obvious that Mr. Weinstein has for all the profound damage he has done helped galvanize the campaign against industry sexism. That said, I'm glad that the Oscars didn't become the Harveys, because it would have been depressing and wrong if Mr. Weinstein and the ghost of his career had haunted the ceremonies even more than they did. A.O. SCOTT "The most striking thing, here in the room, about watching the female nominees stand? There were so few of them." That was a Twitter observation from our colleague Jodi Kantor, whose reporting with Megan Twohey did so much to make these Oscars Harvey free, and to set off the earthquake that provided Sunday night with awkward as well as inspiring moments. The inclusion montage, for example, struck a moving and hopeful note, but it also wrote a check that Hollywood, and the academy, have yet to cash. The presenters on the telecast were far more diverse far more representative of the multifarious energies of popular culture than the winners. This is not to blame the winners or shame the awards, which have always represented the lagging edge of cultural change. They perform an annual ritual charming and infuriating, lavish and tedious devoted to conjuring up a fantasy of continuity and consensus. But in such a polarized time, consensus is all but unimaginable, and it's tricky to celebrate the glorious history of movies when parts of the ugly underbelly of that history have been so recently exposed. WESLEY MORRIS Hey you two. I'm also relieved that this didn't become the Harvey show even though in many ways it was. But I am really struck by what I think is a huge development happening in our movie culture right now. We tend, in times like these (politically, socially, morally tense ones), to look to the culture to address them. Even the most benign films in the 1970s seemed in some way to be a response to or to have absorbed their moment. So we can see allegories from Watergate and the Vietnam War in both work about those subjects and in work that ostensibly has nothing to do with them. The '70s were just a decade, but they were also an atmosphere, and that atmosphere was present in a lot of the culture this country produced. And for a minute, I actually believed that what we were looking for in the last two years were direct responses to the Trump administration. But what if I've been looking for the wrong thing? What if the crux of the moment really since 2008 is a matter of selfhood and representation and political correctives? This isn't shocking. But it is worth noting. DARGIS I've started to think that the academy members are trying to correct their own industry's flaws by voting for movies that don't fit the old ideas about best picture. Some of these recent wins surely reflect the increased diversity of the membership, but some of this may also be an earnest self conscious corrective. As to the underbelly that Tony mentioned we caught a flash of it every so often. We saw it most directly when Ms. Sciorra her voice at times faltering addressed the room while she helped present what was termed new (activist, change minded) voices. "Hi, it's nice to see you all again, it's been a while." She was warmly greeted someone yelled, "Love you!" and the applause sounded sincere, at least on my TV. At the same time, how many in that very same room, even some who were applauding, have been complicit in all the ugliness that continues to be exhumed? And I don't mean only those who did business with Mr. Weinstein while knowing or at least guessing the truth about him. I mean everyone else in that room who has never hired a woman to do anything except look beautiful or prop up the male hero, everyone who never casts Asians or Latinos or African Americans except as tokens even while (occasionally) publicly fawning over their famous black best friends? I'm very hopeful about some of the righteous activism that has emerged in the wake of the allegations against Mr. Weinstein, and it was a relief not to see him last night. But of course he's just part of the industry's larger, systemic problems. And, as we've discussed before (repeatedly!), the Oscars are not the movie industry. They are simply its public dolled up face. Because I am pretty sure that the biggest night in Hollywood happens during Disney's annual shareholders' meeting. That's where the action is, where the money is, where the power is. SCOTT Those shareholders will be basking in the afterglow of and cashing dividend checks fattened by "Star Wars: The Last Jedi," "Coco" and "Black Panther," and possibly also "A Wrinkle in Time." Those movies show diversity taking hold at the tentpole level, which is the strongest evidence that it's a matter of economic calculation as well as social consciousness. And why shouldn't it be? White men have held a near monopoly on movie storytelling for the last 90 years, and as Kumail Nanjiani suggested on Sunday night, there's nothing threatening about everyone else getting a turn. But there's never progress without backlash, so we can expect a certain amount of grumbling about Hollywood liberals and social justice warriors, and about how a white man just can't catch a break anymore. And nothing is easier than pointing out the hypocrisy of the entertainment industry. Except maybe remarking on how long and boring the Oscar broadcast is. A lot of good movies were recognized, though, including a bunch that might have seemed too small, too genre or too niche in past years. I wish "Lady Bird" had gotten something, that "Get Out" had gotten more and that "The Florida Project" had been more of a presence. Still, I'm not mad that "The Shape of Water" won, and kind of astonished that it almost looks like the safe, mainstream choice for best picture. MORRIS Yes, Tony, it feels meaningful that the best picture winner wasn't about World War II or journalism (during the Vietnam War!) but about a woman whose soul mate and lover is an amphibian and that it was made by a Mexican man. I don't think "The Shape of Water" is a great movie. But I do like it. And I don't know how it won, but somehow it did. And, after "Moonlight" last year (ultimately, a love story between two black men), that feels like a rejection and an embrace. DARGIS Oh, I wish many things, including that another movie had won best picture and other performers had carted off the best supporting statuettes. Guillermo del Toro seems like a nice man. And both Sam Rockwell and Allison Janney are exceptionally fine actors. I'm looking forward to whatever all three do next. (I'll just pretend Mr. Rockwell won for "Moon" and Ms. Janney won for anything but "I, Tonya.") Honestly, other than the sight of all those great women last night, I am most pleased that "Three Billboards" didn't win best picture or anything else, really. The love for it is baffling, though it does suggest that with the lack of love for "The Florida Project" class is the industry's biggest blind spot. I look forward to tweeting next year that Raoul Peck's "The Young Karl Marx" was robbed.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Movies
T.W.A. Hotel: You May Want to Stay at Kennedy Airport. By Choice. Seriously. Is it possible that Kennedy Airport is going to be fashionable again? Given that J.F.K. is often voted among the worst airports in the United States; given the fraught state of many airlines today, what with Boeing's safety concerns and the Wow Air bankruptcy; and given the general malaise around air travel as an experience to be endured, preferably with the help of some Ambien, rather than enjoyed, it's hard to imagine. And yet designers are casting their eyes, not skyward necessarily, but to a long abandoned terminal in the heart of Kennedy Airport, the transformation of which could (maybe, possibly, if they have anything to do with it) change the image of the much derided port of entry. The terminal in question is the old T.W.A. Flight Center, designed by the Finnish architect Eero Saarinen in 1962 to sit like a bewinged white U.F.O. amid the tarmac. Closed since 2001, it was a ghostly relic of space age architecture. In 2016, the Port Authority granted the developer MCR/Morse the rights to restore it to period glory. In May it will reopen as a 512 room hotel replete with the kind of time traveling touches, including Knoll furniture, a sunken lounge bar and rotary phones in every room, that generally serve as Pavlovian bells for the style minded. No wonder Louis Vuitton announced that it would hold its resort show which has in the past taken place at the I.M. Pei designed Miho Museum in Kyoto, Japan, and the Oscar Niemeyer designed Niteroi Contemporary Art Museum in Niteroi, Brazil in the hotel on May 8. The following week, when the hotel officially opens, guests will find themselves met by "greeters" in T.W.A. uniforms of yesteryear by designers like Valentino, Ralph Lauren and Oleg Cassini (just in case anyone needs reminding that once upon a time even the most haute designers saw the aisle as a potential catwalk). After they make it past the greeters, guests will find themselves amid various employees in uniforms created by Stan Herman, the longest serving president of the Council of Fashion Designers of America (from 1991 to 2006), whose 90th birthday party was recently hosted by Donna Karan. As far as seals of approval go, this is like having the godfather give you his blessing if the godfather was a grizzled and unassuming man who helped shape the New York fashion world. "They approached me around 2015, 2016," Mr. Herman said of how he got involved with the project. As he spoke, he was sitting at a Saarinen tulip table in the T.W.A. lounge on the 86th floor of One World Trade Center, a space set up by MCR/Morse to show off the project . From the floor to ceiling windows, you could see the white blob far in the distance that was the hotel. "They were all excited because they wanted the operation to look very '60s, and they'd found someone who was there," he said. Or almost there. Aside from being known as the "father of fashion week," Mr. Herman may also be the most famous ready to wear designer to trade the runway for the uniform world. He said he made his first uniform for T.W.A. in 1974, which was one year after he started making uniforms for Avis. He has also worked with, among others, FedEx (where he is still creative consultant), McDonald's, the Loews hotel chain, Amtrak, Eastern Airlines, US Airways and JetBlue, with whom he is still involved. He has dressed hundreds of thousands of people. "I'm a people's designer," Mr. Herman said. "I've always been a people's designer. And for that it doesn't get better than uniforms, as far as I'm concerned." "The airline uniform that was the most memorable was Pan Am," he said. "The Pan Am blue was perfect branding. They stuck to the same color for years and years and years. T.W.A. had a completely different attitude. It was amazing what they let designers do. Once they told me the colors, they let me go any direction I wanted." The first direction he went, in 1974, was sort of YSL meets Danskin: a bright red safari jacket and matching skirt, a blue ribbed tee and shirt, and a denim halter shirtdress over a ribbed tee and wide khaki pants. For the hotel, though, it's very "Mad Men." "We decided everything should be plaid," Mr. Herman said. "Plaid vest, plaid jacket, plaid pants for the guys; a cropped jacket with big Jackie O buttons and a box pleat skirt for the women." The back of house outfits are also on theme: red and blue bowling shirt for men and tunic like camp shirts for women. "It looks jaunty," Mr. Herman said. It also fits with the time warp that is the hotel's aesthetic. As Tyler Brule, the editor of Monocle and something of an air travel obsessive, said, air travel has become so deglamorized that whenever anybody tries to frame it in a positive light, they are forced to look back. But while the results have an old fashioned eye candy appeal, they don't necessarily do much to move things forward. Mr. Herman points out, however, that, like the 1950s Western Electric phones in the rooms, which have been retrofitted with a pulse to tone converter, the clothes have been modernized, thanks to stretch technology and the fact that they come in sizes 0 to 22. "It's going to set a new precedent," he said. "It's going to be fun." So is a collection of T.W.A. merch, inspired in part by the uniforms, the logo and the aesthetic, and created under the auspices of another fashion world stalwart: Somsack Sikhounmuong , the designer of Alex Mill and a former designer for J. Crew and Madewell. The goods will include cashmere sweatshirts and sneakers with the logo on the side that, said Tyler Morse, the chief executive of MCR/Morse, "you can't get anywhere else." After the Stan Smith, the T.W.A.? It's a moonshot, of sorts.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Fashion & Style
Richard Liu, the founder of JD.com. In Minnesota, the Hennepin County attorney's office said that it did not find enough evidence to pursue a sexual assualt case against Mr. Liu. Richard Liu, the Chinese billionaire accused of rape nearly four months ago by a young Chinese student at the University of Minnesota, will not be charged with sexual assault, prosecutors in Minneapolis said on Friday. The county attorney's office said it did not find enough evidence to pursue a case against Mr. Liu, a 45 year old internet tycoon who was arrested in the early morning of Sept. 1 but released within hours and allowed to return to China. The decision could bring Mr. Liu, who founded and leads JD.com, back to a more visible role at his e commerce behemoth. JD.com's stock has slumped since the accusations were revealed, and Mr. Liu, whose Chinese name is Liu Qiangdong, has skipped several public engagements. "As is the case in too many sexual assault incidents, it was a complicated situation," Mike Freeman, the Hennepin County attorney, said in a statement. "It is also similar to other sexual assault cases with the suspect maintaining the sex was consensual." In a statement on Chinese social media, Mr. Liu said that he had been unable "to address the situation or defend myself" to "avoid interfering with the independent investigation." JD.com said in a statement that it was pleased with the decision. Jill Brisbois, Mr. Liu's lawyer, reiterated in a statement her "strong belief from the very beginning that my client is innocent," adding that "Mr. Liu's reputation has been damaged like anyone falsely accused of a crime" because of "misinformation and speculation that has been widely circulated." Wil Florin, a lawyer for the woman, said he was considering bringing a civil case, adding that prosecutors had made their decision having never met or spoken with his client. Chuck Laszewski, a spokesman for the county attorney's office, declined to comment on Mr. Florin's claim. Mr. Liu was arrested this year while taking courses at the University of Minnesota. On the night of Aug. 30, he and a group of fellow students in the academic program dined at a Japanese restaurant in Minneapolis. The occasion, involving some two dozen guests, was jovial. More than 30 bottles of wine had been brought in from a nearby liquor store. Also present that evening was a 21 year old woman, a Chinese student who was volunteering for the doctoral program. As she later told police, she had been invited to the dinner by another Chinese executive in the program, who asked her to sit next to Mr. Liu. She told police that she got into a car with Mr. Liu after the dinner, and he began to touch her without her consent. She asked to be taken back to her apartment, where he forced himself upon her, despite her pleas, she told police. But Ms. Brisbois, in an email, said the woman was being "flirtatious" in the car and agreed to the contact with Mr. Liu. Ms. Brisbois said that the woman invited Mr. Liu into her apartment building and that "what happened in the room was entirely consensual." "The woman was an active and willing participant and at no time did she indicate in any way that she did not consent," Ms. Brisbois said. The following day, the woman sent text messages to friends saying that Mr. Liu had raped her. Police were called to the apartment by a friend and fellow student, according to the county attorney's office. Ms. Brisbois said she spoke with the woman after Mr. Liu's release, at the woman's request. Over several phone calls and texts, the woman "made repeated demands for money, and threatened to make her allegations public and to sue Richard if her demands were not met," Ms. Brisbois said. Mr. Florin, the woman's lawyer, said that a lawyer for Mr. Liu initiated contact with the woman about a settlement. Mr. Florin added that many of Ms. Brisbois' descriptions of events are "directly contradicted by eyewitness testimony." The Minneapolis Police Department's sex crimes unit conducted a "thorough investigation" into the case, the county attorney's office said, followed by a "meticulous review" by four sexual assault prosecutors, a group of three men and one woman. They determined that "there were profound evidentiary problems which would have made it highly unlikely that any criminal charge could be proven beyond a reasonable doubt." Investigators reviewed surveillance video, text messages and witness statements. Among the evidence was footage from a body camera worn by an officer that recorded conversations between Mr. Liu and the woman at her apartment after police arrived. The county attorney's office declined to provide more detail, saying prosecutors "do not want to re victimize the young woman." In his statement on social media, Mr. Liu apologized to his wife, Zhang Zetian, and said he felt "deep regret and remorse." "I will continue to try in every possible way to repair the impact on my family and to fulfill my responsibility as a husband," he said. In China, the incident exploded on social media. People scrutinized Minnesota police documents, speculated about whether Mr. Liu had been set up and pondered the glimpse they had gotten into the lives of the country's ultrawealthy business elites. JD.com is a proud emblem of China's rising consumer class, and a major partner to global brands, like Adidas and Samsung, that use the platform. Walmart, Google and the Chinese internet conglomerate Tencent are all JD.com shareholders. And Mr. Liu is a celebrity tycoon whose rise from humble means to internet riches is the subject of many admiring books and television programs. The company's shares have lost around 60 percent of their value since early this year as it grappled with the accusations against Mr. Liu and slowing economic growth in China.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Technology
Steve Martin first got to know Carl Reiner while making "The Jerk." They would go on to have lunch together nearly every day for five or six years. I've known only two perfect people in my life. One is that son of a bitch Martin Short; the other is Carl Reiner. I met Carl in 1979 when I asked him to direct my first film, "The Jerk." Carl was the go to comedy director of the day, having made hits like "Oh, God!" as well as respected art fare like "Where's Poppa?" Carl said yes, and I was thrilled. Exhausted by my previous 10 years on the road and a bit personally lost, I would now get to hole up face to face with Carl Reiner while we worked on a movie script. Rather than hibernating in my barely furnished condominium the road had left my personal life bereft I would hang out at his home on Rodeo Drive, where the sofas and pillows held indented impressions representing years of family and friends. I was a novice film actor writer wannabe, and I got lessons right away. Minutes after I arrived, he opened the script and said, "Here's the first thing I do." He started going through page by page making occasional marks. I said, "What are you doing?" He said, "I'm changing all the nights to days." Carl was saving cast and crew the pain of unnecessary night shoots, where your body clock is severely whiplashed, as though you've taken a quick weekend round trip to China. My goal as a co writer of the script was a joke on every page; Carl's was too, but all through the process he stressed and bolstered the tangential romance that was in the early drafts until it was in the forefront. Carl's most valuable contribution to the movie was its emotional center, and I suspect it was those heart tugs that made the film a success. "The Jerk" was filmed during the gas crisis, so Carl would pick me up for work every day in his Honda Civic. That seemed reasonable, so I bought a Honda Civic. Carl had seltzer water in blue bottles delivered weekly by the last remaining seltzer water delivery service in Beverly Hills. That seemed reasonable, too, so I had seltzer water delivered to my WASP y bachelor household. Carl's influence on me was just beginning. On the first day's drive to the set, he confided, "Whenever I start a film, I hear the child's voice in my head singing, 'We're makin' a movie, we're makin' a movie!'" I was already excited, but I was glad to see this old pro so gleeful at starting yet another project. On these drives we began conducting little thought experiments to see if we could improve the day's work. Once, we got so giddy over a scene we had to pull over. Here was the scene: My character, Navin Johnson, was hitchhiking from a small farm in Missouri to the big city. A car pulls over to give me a lift. The driver shouts to me, "St. Louis?" Puzzled, I say, "No, Navin Johnson." The joke didn't play as well as we expected I finally admit 41 years later but it did give us an afternoon of uncontrolled hysterics. At the end of the film, I got another practical tidbit. He invited me to a "color temperature" screening, a mysterious affair where the movie is shown to the director and cinematographer to determine if the color is accurate. We watched without sound and at double speed to make the process easier. At the end of the screening, Carl said to the cinematographer, Victor Kemper: "Great. Now lighten it up two points." I surreptitiously whispered, "Why?" He said, "Lighter is funnier." During my five or six creative years with Carl, we had lunch together almost every day. We ate at Ma Maison, a restaurant where a young Wolfgang Puck created innovative dishes that Carl and I marveled over. Those lunches at Ma Maison were fascinating. The names Sid (Caesar) and Dick (Van Dyke) came out of his mouth regularly, accompanied by stories, reminiscences and, to break it up, his current political outrages, which he would dissect with rabbinical clarity. The stories were so vivid I can recall them from memory. One lunch, he described a foreign spy sketch he did with Sid: "I approached Sid on a railway station. I told him all he had to do was deliver a briefcase to the next stop. I said, 'When you get off the train, you will see an exceptionally beautiful blond woman with long luxurious legs. That woman will be me.'" Another time, he told me this story about the maddest he ever got: "I wanted to hire Dean Jones for an episode of 'Dick Van Dyke.'" (Dean, a born again Christian, was booked to do some intermittent religious duties exactly when Carl needed him.) "But Dean wanted to do the show, so I worked out a schedule where I would shoot two different shows shuffled together over two weeks. I could shoot Dean on Monday on Script 1, then on Tuesday shoot part of Script 2, then get Dean back on Thursday to shoot for two days, and then repeat the process the next week. I was moving actors around, moving shooting days around and moving locations around. When I called Dean to tell him the plan, he said, relieved, 'I knew the Lord would find a way.'" I've heard several people say Carl was like a father to them. But, to me, Carl was not fatherly. He was exemplar. Five years and four films later, I was a different person because of a subtle osmosis of traits from Carl to me. Carl's manner on the set taught me how to behave on the set. His interaction with people gave me a template of how to be better, nicer, how to lead with kindness. His directorial results were the same as the nastier directors I ran into later in my career. He taught me about modesty, too. I called him late one evening to discuss the next day's shooting. I asked, "Am I interrupting you?" He said, "No, I'm just lying here going through a litany of my failures." When I perform comedy, I can still hear echoes of my influences coming through. Jack Benny, certainly, Mike Nichols and Elaine May, Lenny Bruce, Steve Allen, Carl Reiner, too. But it is not Carl's comedic advice I cherish. Rather, it was how he affected my everyday life, the part that has nothing to do with movies or acting. Sometimes I deal with people in meetings, social dinners and plain old conversation with a buoyancy foreign to me and realize, "Oh, that's the way Carl would have done it." So Carl, I raise my glass of seltzer and flip through the Rolodex of words that apply to you: talent, energy, wisdom, humor. But, for me, one of your qualities stands out that is not often cited in the legacies of the famous: decency. All along, it was your decency that infused and invigorated your incredible gifts. Thank you, goodbye, and a salute, Carl Reiner.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Movies
Denver residents waiting in line to little avail to receive unemployment benefits in 1982, a period of time that was marked by high inflation in the American economy. Shocks, Recession and 9/11: When the Fed Intervenes The Federal Reserve has been in the business of raising or cutting interest rates to better steer the changing dynamic of the American economy. Below are pivotal moments of rate changes in the last 40 years. In October 1979, Mr. Volcker held a late Saturday night news conference to announce a bold new package of measures to tame runaway inflation that was in part a result of oil price increases. The new policy raised the Fed's benchmark rate by 4 percentage points, to 15.5 percent, in a month. By late 1980, rates reached a record high of 20 percent. Raising rates is often seen as a direct way to control inflation. Think of it as two sides of a seesaw: As one side goes up, it pushes the other down. Higher rates make it more expensive to borrow, slowing down an overcharged economy and restraining prices. By using that tool in such powerful fashion, Mr. Volcker risked sending the economy into recession, which happened twice during his tenure (in 1980 and 1981 2). Among other things, his campaign brought about a spike in unemployment. And with interest rates so high, both political parties attacked the Volcker led fight on inflation. But by 1983, inflation had fallen below 4 percent, barely three years after a stretch in which it averaged 14.6 percent. Today, Mr. Volcker's actions are seen as setting the table for the long economic expansions of the 1980s and '90s. As a result of the Fed's intervention, both unemployment and inflation were tamed. Just a few weeks into Mr. Greenspan's tenure in 1987, the Fed lowered rates after the stock market crashed, and he encouraged banks to continue lending. But the 1990s were later marked by the longest peacetime expansion in the nation's history. Mr. Greenspan resisted pressure to raise interest rates as unemployment declined. He argued that increased productivity, including the fruits of the internet revolution, had increased the pace of sustainable growth. After having presided over what was known as the Great Moderation nearly two decades of strong growth, modest inflation and low unemployment, with just a few bumps along the way Mr. Greenspan was credited with acting quickly after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and the ensuing recession.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Economy
Everything fell into place for Caroline Baumann on her wedding day. She wore an elegant silveresque dress she'd ordered from a Brooklyn designer. She exchanged her vows at a lush Hamptons preserve inside one of her favorite sculptures, a dome designed by R. Buckminster Fuller. She put photos of the day on Instagram. That joyous event may have cost Ms. Baumann her job. Ms. Baumann was forced to resign as director of the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum in Manhattan last week following an investigation by the Smithsonian's inspector general into potential problems regarding the procurement of the dress and the wedding space. Her resignation was made public on Feb. 7, without explanation of the reason. Two people with knowledge of the Smithsonian's decision making, but who declined to be identified because the organization was not publicly commenting on the matter, said that the investigation had turned up evidence of an appearance of a conflict of interest. The ousting of Ms. Baumann has angered members of the Cooper Hewitt board, which is separate from the Smithsonian leadership. Several board members said they were considering resigning because they disagreed with the decision and were not consulted in advance. A number of the board members have donated substantial sums to the museum in recent years, and their departure could affect its finances. "I know the circumstances of the investigation that led to Caroline's dismissal and I must say I am appalled that this was its conclusion," Judy Francis Zankel, a prominent philanthropist who serves as the secretary of the board, wrote in an email to Lonnie G. Bunch III, the Smithsonian's secretary and top official. "I have been working with her long enough to know without a doubt that she has been unfairly accused and unjustly judged." Even board members who acknowledged Ms. Baumann may have violated policy said they believed the punishment was too harsh. It was unclear whether there were additional reasons for Ms. Baumann's forced resignation, and a Smithsonian spokeswoman, Linda St. Thomas, declined to discuss specifics. "We're transparent about a lot of things," she said, "but not personnel." Ms. Baumann, 53, declined to be interviewed. She had been with the museum since 2001, having previously worked at the Museum of Modern Art, and was named director in 2013. Several trustees said Ms. Baumann had been transformational for the Cooper Hewitt, overseeing its 91 million renovation, raising the museum's profile and attracting donations. The investigation into her conduct was triggered by an unidentified staff member's complaint, and focused on her September 2018 wedding to John Stewart Malcolmson, a branding and graphic design consultant. (The wedding was featured in the regular "Mini Vows" section of The New York Times.) One issue was the dress Ms. Baumann commissioned from a young Brooklyn designer, Samantha Sleeper. Ms. Sleeper said in an interview with The New York Times that she provided the inspector general with emails showing that she had charged and Ms. Baumann had paid 750 for a cocktail dress. But since the designer's website says that "custom gowns begin at 3,000," that price discrepancy raised eyebrows at the inspector general's office, which sent agents to speak with Ms. Sleeper. According to Ms. Sleeper, the agents suggested that Ms. Baumann had offered to use her stature as the head of Cooper Hewitt to wrangle a discount, perhaps by offering to promote Ms. Sleeper's work. Ms. Sleeper said she responded that she had given Ms. Baumann an appropriate price, since the dress was a sleeveless sheath and not a wedding gown. She said that she told the agents that she was not seeking publicity, as she had already been featured in major magazines. "It was a super simple silhouette with no freelancers working on it besides me," Ms. Sleeper told the The Times. "I did not give her a discount nor did she ask for a discount. She asked the price of the dress, I sent her an email and she paid me that amount." It is not clear what the inspector general concluded about the dress, but another focus of its investigation was the location of the wedding, the LongHouse Reserve in East Hampton. The reserve, a 16 acre property with carefully tended gardens and outdoor sculptures, is run by a nonprofit founded by Jack Lenor Larsen, a prominent textile designer who lives on the property and is a friend of Ms. Baumann. (In 2015, the Cooper Hewitt awarded Mr. Larsen one of its annual national design awards.) Mr. Larsen welcomed Ms. Baumann's use of the property for the ceremony (the reception was held on Shelter Island) and did not charge her. According to the people familiar with the Smithsonian's decision, it took issue with the fact that Ms. Baumann allowed Mr. Larsen's nonprofit to hold its board meetings at no cost in a conference room at the Cooper Hewitt. "How can it be inappropriate for a nonprofit to use a conference room for a board meeting?" said Matko Tomicic, the executive director of LongHouse. But the Smithsonian was apparently concerned about the appearance that favors had been exchanged and believed that Ms. Baumann should have reported the free use of the reserve as a gift. The Smithsonian is not a federal agency, but it was created by Congress and is partly funded by the government. In accordance with its charter, its board of regents comprises three members each from the House and Senate, the vice president, the chief justice and members of the public. In many ways, it behaves like an appendage of the government, and has a conflict of interest policy that mimics those of many public agencies: "Employees must not engage in private or personal activities that might conflict, or appear to conflict, with Smithsonian interests, such as using Smithsonian employment for private gain" or "giving preferential treatment to any person or company for any reason." Like many federal departments, it also has an independent inspector general. But Ms. Sleeper said that she was troubled by the behavior of the agents who interviewed her. A few weeks later, she sent an email to the inspector general's office saying that the agents sounded biased against Ms. Baumann and predisposed to find fault.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Art & Design
The University of Virginia fraternity at the center of a retracted article by Rolling Stone magazine that detailed a purported gang rape by its members said on Monday that it planned "to pursue all available legal action against the magazine." The fraternity, Phi Kappa Psi, issued a statement after the release of a damning report that the magazine commissioned from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, which described how Rolling Stone's journalistic process failed at every step before the article's publication last November. Despite the public criticism of the article, and its retraction, legal experts said the path to a successful defamation lawsuit by the fraternity was not straightforward. The report, which was released Sunday night, "demonstrates the reckless nature in which Rolling Stone researched and failed to verify facts in its article that erroneously accused Phi Kappa Psi of crimes its members did not commit," Stephen Scipione, the president of the Virginia chapter, said in the statement. The fraternity has retained a lawyer, but has not yet taken any formal action, a spokesman said. The fraternity would have to allow a public examination of its social activities, said Charles D. Tobin, who heads the national media practice for the law firm Holland Knight, which might include potentially embarrassing details from parties it has held. It would also be required to show that the claims made in the article were "of and concerning it" as an entity. And if the fraternity was deemed legally to be a public entity instead of a private one, as legal experts said was likely, Mr. Tobin said it would have to "establish actual malice not that Rolling Stone committed bad journalism but that it knowingly committed a falsehood." Mr. Tobin said, "It would be colossally difficult for them to make a successful claim." Rolling Stone declined to comment on any potential legal action against the magazine. After the report and article's retraction, Rolling Stone was criticized by the University of Virginia and by the governor and the attorney general of the state. On social media, some railed against the decision to allow the article's author, Sabrina Rubin Erdely; its editor, Sean Woods; and Rolling Stone's managing editor, Will Dana, to keep their jobs. (Ms. Erdely is working on another article for the magazine, according to a person with knowledge of the assignment, who spoke on the condition of anonymity.) Others questioned statements that Jann Wenner, the magazine's publisher and one of its co founders, made to The New York Times that the failings of the article represented an isolated incident, and that part of the fault lay with its source, a woman identified only as Jackie. On Monday, at a news conference to discuss the report, two of its authors, Steve Coll, the Columbia journalism school's dean, and Sheila Coronel, the dean of academic affairs, noted that Rolling Stone had itself commissioned the report, in part as an attempt to allow others to learn from its mistakes. But they also rejected the notion that Jackie was to blame for the article's issues. The magazine's reporting was at fault, they said, and they stood by their recommendations for more robust newsroom practices. "This failure was not the subject's or the source's fault," Mr. Coll said. "It was the product of failed methodology." Ms. Erdely broke down when describing to them the moment she realized that Jackie might not be reliable, they said. They declined to comment on whether any of those involved with the article should have lost their jobs. "We pointed out systemic and institutional problems," Ms. Coronel said. "We leave it up to Rolling Stone to decide how best to deal with these problems." The article, titled "A Rape on Campus," was based on Jackie's account of being raped by seven men at a fraternity event, and the resistance she met when trying to get justice for herself. It initially stoked a national debate on sexual assaults on campus, but was quickly called into question by The Washington Post and the fraternity itself. Last month, the police in Charlottesville, Va., said they had "exhausted all investigative leads" and found "no substantive basis" to support the article's description of the assault. The Columbia report, written by Ms. Coronel and Mr. Coll, with Derek Kravitz, a postgraduate research scholar, criticized the process behind the article. The magazine did not engage in "basic, even routine journalistic practice," it said, specifying that it had not corroborated Jackie's account with the friends quoted in the article using pseudonyms; had not adequately sought to identify the man who Jackie said led those who raped her, also identified by a pseudonym; and had not given the fraternity adequate information to respond before publication. At the news conference, Mr. Coll said that he and Ms. Coronel were concerned that the failings of the article, and the fallout from it, including their report, might discourage others from reporting on the vital issue of campus sexual assault. "It would be a really unfortunate outcome if journalists backed away from doing this kind of reporting as a result of this highly visible failure," he said. "Because this is important work, and it's hard work."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Media
Drug injecting addicts who took a daily antiretroviral pill were half as likely to become infected with H.I.V. as those who did not, a major new study has found, providing the final piece of evidence that such treatments can prevent AIDS in every group at risk. Earlier clinical trials showed that the therapy can sharply reduce the risk of H.I.V. transmission from mother to child, and in gay and bisexual men and heterosexuals. "This provides the totality of the evidence that the drugs used to treat the infection are also very effective at preventing it," said Dr. Salim S. Abdool Karim, a prominent South African AIDS researcher who wrote a commentary in The Lancet, which published the new study on Wednesday. The accumulating evidence from clinical trials means antiretroviral drugs are increasingly seen as another in the arsenal of weapons to prevent AIDS, along with condoms, abstinence and fidelity; early antiretroviral treatment; male circumcision in Africa; microbicide gels; and other options. The formal results of the study, which involved 2,400 drug users in Thailand, showed that taking tenofovir pills a therapy known as pre exposure prophylaxis, or PrEP reduced infections by 49 percent. Addicts who took the pills regularly, based on measures of tenofovir in their blood, did much better: They were 74 percent less likely to become infected. "This is an exciting day," said Dr. Jonathan Mermin, director of H.I.V. prevention for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta. "This culminates a decade of PrEP research." Prophylaxis usually involves taking a daily pill of tenofovir or tenofovir plus another drug, but can also include antiretroviral laced vaginal gels used before sex and the use of various antiretroviral drugs by infected mothers just before they give birth. The potential impact of the treatment for drug addicts is greatest in Eastern Europe and Central Asia, where they account for up to 80 percent of infections. Many countries in those regions, for religious and political reasons, outlaw proven tactics like handing out clean needles or offering methadone or other needle free opioid substitutes. About 10 percent of the new infections in the world and about 8 percent of those in the United States are thought to result from needle sharing. The new five year study was run by Thai researchers with C.D.C. support through 17 Bangkok drug treatment clinics. Addicts are notoriously unreliable about keeping clinic appointments and have been known to sell even lifesaving drugs, so the participants were offered modest payments to take their daily pills under the eyes of a nurse. They got 8.75 for each month they stayed in the trial, plus 8.75 for each week they showed up all seven days, plus 1.90 each day they appeared. Those who came in only monthly were paid to keep drug use diaries. "We should be under no illusions that these were real world settings," said Mitchell Warren, executive director for AVAC, an organization that lobbies for AIDS prevention. On paper, 87 percent of all drugs were scheduled to be taken daily under observation, but some patients were much more consistent than others; women and addicts older than 40 did better. Now that it is clear that the medications work, Mr. Warren said, new studies must work out how best to motivate unpredictable drug users to take them. Dr. Julio Montaner, a University of British Columbia AIDS researcher who works with a large addict population in Vancouver, said the news that the therapy worked among drug users was "all very good and dandy and a new piece to the puzzle." But he said he worried that it would compete for limited government health budgets with tactics that he were already proven: clean needles, methadone and test and treat, which involves hunting aggressively for all who are infected in a city and putting them on antiretroviral treatment immediately, which makes them 96 percent less likely to infect anyone else. But Dr. Mermin of the C.D.C. said: "I think we've moved beyond competition between prevention and treatment. Even this is not for everybody." The United States is setting up studies, he said, to see which anti H.I.V. tactics work best in different neighborhoods and different risk groups. The new study may affect individual doctors' decisions. For example, a doctor with an uninfected patient known to inject drugs might choose to put that patient on daily tenofovir, just as some doctors do with uninfected but promiscuous gay male patients, or uninfected patients with infected regular sex partners. Exactly how the tenofovir protected the participants cannot be known, Dr. Karim pointed out, because many addicts both share needles and sell their bodies to get money for drugs, so they engage in two risky behaviors. Given how fast AIDS shot through various risk groups when it first appeared in the 1980s, researchers have long assumed that injecting blood and sharing needles was the riskiest behavior, followed by anal sex, then vaginal sex but there is little data to prove that. For that reason, some researchers thought it unlikely that pre exposure prophylaxis would protect drug addicts, and they were pleasantly surprised it worked fairly well. Exactly how well it works in any risk group depends on how study results are analyzed, but it seems to be roughly as protective for drug users as it is for gay men, and about as protective as circumcision is for heterosexual men in Africa. According to the C.D.C., when study results are adjusted to include only participants who took their pills most of the time, the protective effects are 92 percent for gay men, nearly 90 percent for couples in which only one partner is infected, 84 percent for heterosexual men and women, and about 70 percent for drug injectors. Two trials done in heterosexual women, known as Fem PrEP and Voice, were stopped early because women receiving drugs and those given placebos were getting infected at similar rates. Later analysis of the results showed that many of the women had not been taking their drugs. Some said they did not believe they were at risk, and others said that if they had bottles of antiretroviral medicines in their homes, their families and potential lovers would assume they were infected and shun them. But single heterosexual women in another trial, conducted in Botswana and known as TDF2, were protected.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Health
Jim Jarmusch at Cannes, which he first attended in 1984 with "Stranger Than Paradise." At the time, "we didn't even know why we were here." CANNES, France The apocalypse arrived early at the Cannes Film Festival. In "The Dead Don't Die," the latest from Jim Jarmusch and this year's opening selection, catastrophe takes the form of zombies, who rise from their graves to destroy the living. It's the end of the world as we know it, which Jarmusch reminds us, is entirely our fault. "Polar fracking" has thrown Earth off its axis and now Iggy Pop is gnawing on innards that (this being a Jarmusch joint) he washes down with coffee. The 72nd festival has a similarly admirable energy and staying power. Despite a decline in moviegoing in Europe and the global embrace of streaming, Cannes remains a proud monument to the theatrical experience. It's holding firm even if this year's edition seems slightly less jammed than in the past, which may have something to do with the intense security. Heavily armed police and soldiers patrol the area around the festival's headquarters, a reminder of security measures instituted after a series of terrorist attacks. But on Tuesday, opening night, as Michael Jackson blared on loudspeakers (Cannes can be very tin eared in its choices), all eyes and innumerable cameras were on the red carpet, where Jarmusch's stars Bill Murray, Tilda Swinton, Adam Driver, Selena Gomez paraded under a gray sky. Inside, they and the rest of the audience endured a ceremony that threatened to drag on as long as the Oscars. The host inanely prattled; a singer warbled; movie clips were screened; and the main jury, headed by the Mexican director Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu, took a bow. The next day, Jarmusch sat down to talk about "The Dead Don't Die" and his Cannes experience. He first visited here in 1984 with "Stranger Than Paradise," which helped jump start the contemporary American indie movie scene. "Man, we didn't even know why we were here, it was really strange," he said with a laugh. "We were putting up fliers ourselves on the Croisette. We rented a house up there with seven of us sleeping on the floor, taking turns shaving in the kitchen. It was like, 'Hey, we're from the Lower East Side, man, this is cool we're in France.'" Wearing his signature sunglasses, his once silver hair now mostly white, Jarmusch, 66, was relaxed, open, earnest and effusive. The premiere of "The Dead Don't Die" was the first time he had properly seen the movie and asked if he enjoyed it, he said why, yes, he had: "I thought it was funny and dark, ridiculous and a little bit beautiful." That's a good take on the movie, which keeps laughing even as the dead overtake the living in the town of Centerville, named after the hicksville in Frank Zappa's film "200 Motels." As usual with Jarmusch, his new one is stuffed with pop cultural allusions, including a generous nod at "Star Wars" that delighted the audience. For all its quips and quotes, "The Dead Don't Die" is also an outright horror movie, one suffused with a melancholy that a journalist at the news conference deemed fatalistic. That wasn't his intention, Jarmusch said. He seemed somewhat perplexed and even irritated by those who have read the movie as a comment on the Trump presidency, presumably because a local bigot (Steve Buscemi) wears a red cap stamped with the words "Make America White Again." For Jarmusch, this take misses the point. "Excuse my language," he said, "but I don't give a" he dropped an expletive "about Trump," whom he called a "tangerine clown" and "reality TV frontman." For Jarmusch, Trump is also a distraction from the far greater concern: "the sixth mass extinction on the planet." Yet while the rise of the zombies suggests a tipping point, the undead in his film aren't necessarily emissaries of irreversible doom. Some characters make it out, including three teenagers and Hermit Bob, a woodsman prophet played by Tom Waits in a long ragged beard and halo of unruly hair. "Sometimes I think, well, God, I should be either an activist," Jarmusch said, or "digging a trench in the middle of Pennsylvania to ward off the rising water that's going to flood everything, you know. But what am I doing? I'm making a ridiculous zombie movie with my friends." Making art is clearly an optimistic act, however tinged with despair, but he also draws encouragement from environmental groups like the Sunrise Movement. "I see these young people who say, O.K., we have 11 years to reverse the possibility of a 1.5 degree increase, which is the beginning of real devastation," Jarmusch said. "So, what are we going to do?" A different call to action is sounded in the excellent freakout "Bacurau," another apocalyptic vision in the main competition. Written and directed by Kleber Mendonca Filho and Juliano Dornelles, the movie takes place in an isolated Brazilian village where one crisis leads to another and culminates in a gory fight for survival. (Mendonca Filho directed "Aquarius" and "Neighboring Sounds," for which Dornelles served as the production designer.) Taking place sometime in the near future, it opens after the local matriarch has died and right before the town begins disappearing from maps, a dire harbinger of another type of erasure. Wittily set at the intersection of the art house and the grindhouse as personified by Sonia Braga and Udo Kier, its biggest names "Bacurau" imagines a Brazil of tomorrow in which politicians sell out the people to the most murderous buyer, leaving locals to fend for themselves with some help, as in "Seven Samurai." With sweeping camera moves and a sun blasted palette, the movie easily seduces and then it shocks. In time, the palette is splattered by blood red, the elliptical narrative gets down and dirty, and "Bacurau" becomes a heart thumping political allegory that tips its hat to masters like John Carpenter. "Bacurau" woke up the festival, which often gets off to a sleepy start. This year was no exception, even with spasms of violence. A riff on the Victor Hugo novel, "Les Miserables" takes place in a present day Parisian suburb that like the town in "Bacurau" evokes the old American West or rather the old Hollywood western. This busy movie follows three undercover officers on a very bad day through a neighborhood controlled by rival factions, including drug dealers and members of the Muslim Brotherhood. The director, Ladj Ly, has a strong sense of place and some terrific young actors, but he also leans on narrative cliches. Far From the Frontier The American writer director Annie Silverstein retains a firmer hold on her material in "Bull." Set in a small Texas town, it follows two neighbors, the 14 year old Kris (Amber Havard) and the middle aged Abe (a vivid, charismatic Rob Morgan), after she breaks into his house. A former rodeo bull rider, Abe now works on the ground as a bull fighter, helping to protect thrown riders from the hard charging animals. Rather too easily and optimistically, Abe becomes an inspiration and then somewhat of a reluctant surrogate parent for Kris, who's living with her grandmother and sister while her mother serves time. Like "Lean on Pete" and "The Rider" (at Cannes in 2017), "Bull" belongs to a group of recent movies that feel directly rather than metaphorically in dialogue with the Hollywood western and, by extension, the worldview it often advanced. Here, cowboys don't roam the frontier herding cattle and protecting wagon trains. Instead, they risk their lives entertaining crowds, suffering injuries and popping Oxycodone to ease the pain. Silverstein stacks the deck awfully high race relations, class tensions and the American opioid crisis all figure into the story but her empathy and ability to settle into the silences between people buoy both the movie and you.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Movies
American children up to the age of 18 should have free access. In France, I bought yearly passes for myself to all museums. My daughters could get in free because they were French citizens. Kids need more than videos! MO FRANCE I have a feeling that many of the people complaining willingly spend hundreds of dollars for a ticket to a Broadway show and/or then visit MoMA and other museums that are charging 25 with no complaints. And a 25 ticket that includes admittance to the Met's three museums is a huge bargain. LOLA Although I agree, in theory, with almost every argument against mandatory admission fees for out of town visitors, budget constraints are real. This policy tries to "hurt the fewest" of many alternatives. The Met is a world treasure and should be kept open and accessible to all. Charging out of town visitors a modest fee so that it remains operational is fair. AMYF The Met is a city museum with a national focus. It is fair to say that the taxpayers of New York already shoulder a large part of the costs for the Met and deserve a better break. I have maintained an out of town membership for more than a decade, and, when in town, I visit as much as I want. Prorated, it is not a bad deal. Cut these guys a break. They have to make the books balance. ARVEY What About a Flat Rate or Other Fees? The Met is fabulous, and 25 is reasonable considering what you see. But 25 is high for many people, especially families. I wonder if the Met ever considered different pricing, such as a flat rate of 10 for everyone or surge pricing? By appearing to lower the price, the Met could actually make a lot more money. PADRAIG LEWIS Living in Hoboken, I can get to the Met just as fast as those in some of the boroughs. That said, I do want to continue to have the Met in existence and be better than the institution it currently is, so I support the need for a mandatory admission. I just wish it was applied to all visitors and perhaps at a lesser cost. CJFILM The Cleveland Museum of Art one of the best in the country does not charge admission, but it does charge for special exhibits. I think that is a better option for the Met I would have gladly paid extra to see the current Michelangelo exhibit. KAREN	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Art & Design
As Museums Get on TikTok, the Uffizi Is an Unlikely Class Clown LONDON Last month, the Uffizi Gallery in Florence long a bastion of tradition posted a video to its TikTok account featuring Botticelli's "Spring." The painting depicts Venus and other mythological figures, and has been gawked at by tourists and studied by academics for centuries. On TikTok, users were treated to a new perspective on this masterpiece of the Italian Renaissance: Set to Todrick Hall's expletive filled club track "Nails, Hair, Hips, Heels," each time a body part is mentioned "thin waist, thick thighs" the video jumps to a corresponding part of the painting. "Purse full, big bills," Hall sings, and the TikTok zooms in on the flowers held by Flora, the goddess of spring. As the song ramps up, the video is edited so the 15th century figures dance along in time. The irreverent clip is one of several on the Uffizi's TikTok account poking fun at its collection of masterpieces, as the museum tries to transform its image from a dusty home of Renaissance art to a place Italy's teenagers want to explore. There are now 11 museums on TikTok, according to the booming social media platform, where (mostly young) people make and share short videos. Amsterdam's Rijksmuseum joined in April, and the Prado Museum in Madrid joined earlier this month (the Metropolitan Museum of Art used the platform last year for a couple of projects, but its account is now dormant). The Uffizi is an especially unlikely member of this select group, given that until a couple of years ago, it acted like the internet didn't exist. The museum only got its own website in 2015 (ticket scalpers used to take advantage of its absence by running their own "official" websites) and it didn't set up a Facebook page until March when the museum closed because of the coronavirus, as part of an effort to reach people stuck at home during Italy's lockdown. "We were pretty much in the stone age," said Eike Schmidt, the museum's director, in a telephone interview, saying the Uffizi had gone from being a laggard to at the "avant garde" of museum social media in a few months. He decided to give TikTok a try, he said, because the platform reaches younger users than Twitter, Facebook or even Instagram. He asked Ms. Forgione, an administrative assistant, to lead a team producing material for the account after learning she loved funny social media posts, he said. Ms. Forgione said the hardest thing about running the account was getting the right tone for TikTok's young audience. "I'm 35," she said, "and the others in the team are older." She has run ideas past two cousins, who are 20 and 22, she said (they have also helped at times with Photoshop). Colleagues have also consulted their teenage children about clips, she added. The Uffizi's approach to TikTok filled with manic humor and often featuring songs that are trending in Italy is not typical of museums on the platform. Since January, the Carnegie Museum of Natural History in Pittsburgh has been posting a stream of gentle, educational videos to its account, often featuring employees stuck at home in lockdown. Recent posts have included a museum educator showing a bunny nest in her yard and a scientist explaining what biodiversity means with the help of her pet cat. Sloan MacRae, the museum's marketing director, said in a telephone interview that the museum had never considered wacky clips or dance videos. "That's just not us," he said. But its "slightly goofy" educational approach has helped it gain 160,000 followers, he said, with many commenting that they want to visit the museum once it reopens. In June, the museum received a grant from TikTok under the Creative Learning Fund, he added. "It can be accused of being lowbrow," Mr. MacRae said of TikTok, "but we do intellectual and we do gravity all the time and we thought if this worked out, it could be a gateway drug to learning." Ms. Forgione said she would continue making her more irreverent TikTok posts. Last Friday, her team posted a new video, which used two paintings from the museum's collection to present a guide to "bad ways to flirt." It quickly racked up 2,500 likes.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Art & Design
When Vogue, a former employer of the esteemed writer Joan Didion, announced on Tuesday that she was starring in Celine's latest ad campaign, with a photograph featuring her in black shirt, oversize gold pendant and dark sunglasses, the fashion Internet quivered in a way it hasn't at least since Kim Kardashian stripped nude for Paper magazine two months ago. Was Ms. Didion aware of the sensation she caused? "I don't have any clue," said the 80 year old author of well thumbed classics such as "The White Album," "Slouching Towards Bethlehem" and "The Year of Magical Thinking," reached by telephone on Wednesday at her Upper East Side residence (where the photo, by Juergen Teller, was taken). "I have no idea." Whose idea was this? "They got in touch with me," Ms. Didion said, as crisp as one of Phoebe Philo's cotton tunics. Prodded, she added that she is a fan of the brand, which has a store on Madison Avenue near her apartment, and that "I am fortunate enough to own a few" of their things, though she declined to specify which.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Fashion & Style
The Antarctic's second largest colony of emperor penguins collapsed in 2016, with more than 10,000 chicks lost, and the population has not recovered, according to a new study. Many of the adults relocated nearby, satellite imagery shows, but the fact that emperor penguins are vulnerable in what had been considered the safest part of their range raises serious long term concerns, said Phil Trathan, the paper's co author and head of conservation biology with the British Antarctic Survey in Cambridge, England. "That means that these places aren't as safe as we thought previously," Dr. Trathan said. The colony at Halley Bay has all but disappeared, the research team at the British Antarctic Survey said in a statement. Emperor penguins the world's largest breed and molt on sea ice, chunks of frozen seawater. Awkward on land, they cannot climb icy cliffs and so are vulnerable to warming weather and high winds whipping across the ice. Under the influence of the strongest El Nino in 60 years, September 2015 was a particularly stormy month in the area of Halley Bay in Antarctica, with heavy winds and record low sea ice.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Science
Lewis Hamilton, 31, the current Formula One champion, has won more grand prix races than any other British driver in the history of the sport. Raised in Stevenage, England, and now based in Monaco, he is defending his title this season, which kicked off March 20. Mr. Hamilton, a phenom who first got behind the wheel at age 8, is a frequent presence at fashion shows, and sports a look much like his racing style: sleek and occasionally flashy. 1 Shirt I don't mind dress shirts if I have a real posh event to dress up for, but generally, if I can be more casual, I'll choose to do that. I love some stuff I have from Oliver Spencer. It's a British brand and I've met him through the shows I recently joined London Collections: Men as an ambassador. His style is just fantastic. It's very clean. 2 Jeans In Formula One, you have all these big brands involved, so there are very strict guidelines. You have to kind of wear what you're told to wear. It's kind of hard to still be yourself in it. That's why it's great to be able to come out and be able to show a little bit of your character and what you like and what your personality is when you're not racing. Such as, I wear jeans a lot. One of my favorites is Saint Laurent, especially the ripped version. It's slim fit, but not too tight that you can't move. Black is always safe, but generally I like the denim look with a faded kind of wash.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Fashion & Style
Most of the time, I have no idea what Mohammed is saying when I hear him on the phone with his family in Morocco. But I feel a sense of comfort in his elevated tone and unfamiliar words often laced with laughter and strung together to form an Arabic conversation that my daughter and I try hard to imitate but our one dimensional American palettes can't seem to duplicate. A part of me, of course, feels isolated from being lost in translation, but mostly, the closeness Mohammed has with his family reminds me a lot of our own connection. From the first time I met Mohammed Ben Bouchta, who we call Mo, it was our chemistry that trumped all wondering of what we were and what we would be. Those darn relationship labels. We each had a failed "I do." And since our decade old divorces, we both had a handful of halfhearted attempts at love. I was also a single parent and quite content with the life my then 7 year old daughter and I had built. Our vows are unspoken but written in the undertones of our daily exchange. If your coffee isn't strong enough today, I'll pack the kids' lunches. If your mind is heavier than your heart, get yourself to yoga. We don't speak these words, but I suppose we've developed our own love language, a spiritual connection that tells the other, "I see you." And then there are days when we talk about the next phase of our life. When our children , a 2 year old son we had together and my 10 year old daughter from my previous marriage, are grown. We playfully argue about where we will retire. Sometimes I think the Spain tourism board is paying Mo to advertise. He feels the same when I talk about Hawaii. We verbalize our shared dream of running Airbnbs in places we cherish as our joint silver career. We'll always come back to Maine in the nooks and crannies of our favorite times of year: Early summer, for example, is when our relationship found its hum. If you've never ever read Shonda Rhimes's "Year of Yes," she talks about this "hum" that presents itself when she sits down to write "Grey's Anatomy" or "Scandal" or whatever magic she's creating. It's like Michael Jordan in the final minutes of a nail biter. Ms. Rhimes, like Mr. Jordan, gets in this zone and there's no disturbing her creative force. I wish my writing days went like that. But I do believe it is the hum she speaks of that steadies our partnership, even if our day to day shuffle of work and parenting snags the last ounce of romance we were trying to save for those weary moments together after tucking in the children. This is the part that I should tell you, Mo is not by the book romantic. Up until meeting him, I was all tied up in what romance should look like, given my longstanding fling with the Hallmark Channel. But in time, my swooning was not because of love notes, surprise appearances or charming one liners. It was Mo's encouragement of my hot and cold freelance life. His shared excitement for my solo travel plans. Our parenting and household responsibilities are balanced, not because we have to hash it out, but we just know when it's our turn to be front and center. We sense the burnout before it happens. I can count on him. He can count on me. Support is the new romance. This is the part where I should tell you Mo and I are not married and have no plans to marry. Spiritually, emotionally and in all ways but legally, we are there. In moments where I'm lacking confidence, I ask myself if this is enough. On those rare days, I know that the insecurity is coming from within. After all, I remember being married once and still, asked if it was enough. Sign up for Love Letter and always get the latest in Modern Love, weddings, and relationships in the news by email. Weddings have a place of beauty in my soul. They make me joyfully cry, but I don't recall being that little girl who imagined her big day. My dreams evolved from owning a bakery (elementary school), playing in the WNBA (middle school), being the next Stuart Scott of sports journalism (high school). That's not to say I wasn't boy crazy along the way. I certainly wanted a forever, I just didn't think about the dress I'd wear once or the shape of a diamond that would pop against my fair, Irish skin. No one was surprised when I married my now ex husband at a Reno, Nev., chapel. While on vacation a couple years ago, I met other travelers who were sharing how they met their spouse. One couple talked about their head over heels infatuation that led quickly to marriage. Another woman said she and her second husband didn't marry until much later in life. And I broke my news of being a divorced woman in a forever relationship with no desire for a wedding. One man said, "Well marriage does come with tax breaks and you save money on health insurance." Of course, no one outright asks about our financial "agreement" if something were to happen to either of us. But I do know that a sense of security needs to come from a deeper place, one not rooted in dollar signs. In terms of big picture concerns, it's not our separate assets that knots my stomach, but the thought of being unable to communicate with Mo's family if I don't learn Arabic. I should tell you, we have the same issues arise as any couple. I leave cupboard doors open; he leaves one teaspoon of ice cream in the container and returns it to the freezer. He gets obsessive about a single idea, while I have so many brainstorms that my focus trails. We are both self employed (Mo started a powerwashing business earlier this year) and sometimes, after being under the same roof for long periods of time, day after day, we lack the personal space every person needs for growth.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Fashion & Style
We've seen the movie before, when employees of Enron and Lehman Brothers lost large sums of money in their 401(k) plans because of investments in company stock. And now, coming to a theater (and, inevitably, a courtroom) near you, is a sequel, surely not the last, this time featuring RadioShack. The company filed for bankruptcy protection last month, after years of lackluster interest from customers who once flocked to the stores for their doodads and gizmos. The company's stock trades over the counter for spare change, after a slow motion disintegration over the last five years. In September, when the stock was still worth a small handful of quarters, the company stopped allowing employees to invest in it through their retirement plan, but employees filed suit, claiming that the company should have shielded them from the damage sooner. The Department of Labor has begun its own inquiry as well. So the lawyers and the bankers are now the protagonists, as they have been in all of these movies. But an obvious question lingers: Why do so many companies and employees keep signing up to be a part of all this drama? Employer stock in 401(k) plans is less common than it used to be, but it's still in plenty of them. According to Aon Hewitt's 2013 survey data, 39 percent of employers offer their stock as an investment option. Among those companies, 12 percent go much further, requiring that the employer match of workers' contributions from their paychecks be in company stock. Most let employees swap it for something else right away, but inertia often keeps them from doing so. The Plan Sponsor Council of America, using a different data set, lays out the results of such policies: When employees have the option (or are required because of a match) to invest in company stock through a 401(k) plan, a fair number do. On average, about 18.1 percent of assests are invested that way, while the median is 13 percent. At least the number of companies where more than half of the 401(k) plan assets are in company stock has fallen over time; in 2004 it was 13 percent, but in 2013 it was just 2.2 percent. Why do companies allow and encourage such investments? There were once plenty of good theories. If employees owned a lot of stock, they might vote their shares with management if hostile forces were trying to take the company over. And encouraging employees to have skin in the game is good, as it gives them incentive to work hard and rewards them for greater effort. The data related to these theories can be counterintuitive, though. In 2013, David Blanchett, the head of retirement research for Morningstar Investment Management, found that companies with higher allocations of employer stock in their 401(k) plans tend to underperform their peers in the year after that overweighting exists. His theory: Employees increase their allocation to the stock after the stock performs well, just in time for it to reverse course. There are many negatives to allowing employees to invest in their own company in their retirement plans. Let's start with the stipulation, which shouldn't be necessary but clearly is anyway, that these are retirement plans. Some employers offer stock grants or bonuses as a form of extra compensation, and that's fine. Others let employees gamble on their employer's shares through an employee stock purchase plan that is separate from a 401(k), occasionally offering a small discount on the purchase. There, workers use discretionary money of their own if they so choose, and hey, if you want to turn your office into a trading floor, so be it. But we're talking about people's golden years here and trying not to tarnish them with enormous losses. When an employer offers up its stock (let alone matches contributions with it) as an option, it's effectively an endorsement, an implicit statement from the employer that this investment is a reasonably good idea. Otherwise, why would it be on the 401(k) menu? Once it's there, employees who think they know more about their employer than they do about the mutual funds on the menu (a perfectly reasonable supposition) will be tempted to overweight their 401(k) contributions toward the employer stock fund. All of this, however, is incredibly risky. When you're getting your income from an employer and your livelihood literally depends on that company it makes little sense to make a big bet on the company stock with money that you'll need if you ever want to stop working when you're old and gray someday. Employees do this anyway, however, and they do not seem to get themselves out of the investments even when the warning signs are already all around them. A paper by the academics Ying Duan, Edith S. Hotchkiss and Yawen Jiao studied 729 troubled publicly traded companies over 20 years and found that the amounts of money that employees had in company stock remained relatively stable during periods of trouble, as did their new contributions. This is true even as the stock prices decline and the number of investors betting against the stock in the public markets through short sales increases. This is what seems to have happened at RadioShack, where the average number of shares that employees held through the 401(k) plan increased in recent years even as the company's share price fell steadily. The lawsuit will determine whether the company should have stopped its employees from making what turns out to have been a foolish bet. The message of this and other movies like it is clear for employees: Don't do this. If your employer matches your 401(k) contribution in company stock, set a calendar alert to remind yourself to sell it a few times each year and then reinvest it. If your employer restricts your ability to sell it right away and makes you keep it for a few years, complain loudly to human resources; most companies don't do that anymore. Even if an employer stock fund is one choice among many in your 401(k) plan, ask yourself this: Given the employment risk you already face by getting your income from a single source, do you really want to bet even part of your retirement money on that company? How much do you really know about its prospects, its competitors and forces way beyond your control? And how much are you willfully blind to? If you're one of the many people who weighs in on the investment menu for your company's retirement plan, think hard about simply getting rid of the company stock plan altogether, or at least capping the size of the bet that delusional employees can make on the company stock. Might the stock price take a hit once word gets out? Perhaps, but you can couple the change with a strongly worded news release that you're doing this only to force workers to diversify their retirement investments and that your employee stock purchase plan and stock grants for executive compensation purposes continue unabated. The chief executive could even buy a bunch more stock in the open market that very day. The bottom line is this, or it should be at least: If you were a financial planner and your clients had a chunk of retirement account money in the stock of their employer, you'd tell them to cut it out, without hesitation. It's not even a close call. Given that, your colleagues shouldn't be betting their retirement money on your employer either.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Your Money
Steven Pinker, a cognitive psychologist at Harvard, has been known to take provocative positions. He has argued that women are intrinsically different from men, that we are more driven by our genes than academics like to acknowledge, and that society is getting less violent over time despite the mass shootings and other atrocities we hear about daily. The thesis of his latest book, "Enlightenment Now," is that life on Earth is improving. By every major measure of human well being, from personal safety to longevity to economic security to happiness, people everywhere are far better off today than they were before the start of the Enlightenment in the 17th century. I sat down with Dr. Pinker to talk about how science has made life better, and what humanity needs to do to keep the good times rolling. This is an edited and condensed version of our conversation. What first gave you the idea that the world was getting better? I stumbled across data showing that violence had declined over the course of history. The homicide rate in England was 50 times higher in the 14th century than it is today. Like any other news reader, I just assumed that there was as much mayhem as ever. It's only when you plot it over time, taking into account all the people who don't get murdered or raped, that you can see the trends. And these trends extend to other aspects of life? It's not just in violence that one sees progress, but in poverty, in illiteracy, in access to small luxuries like beer or televisions. The percentage of the world getting an education, in gender parity in education girls are going to school all over the world. Even in Afghanistan and Pakistan, the world's most retrograde countries, the rate of female education has increased. It was an epiphany from seeing graphs of human improvement that changed my view of the overall course of history: that progress is a demonstrable fact. It's not a matter of seeing the glass as half full. It's not a matter of being an optimist. It's a fact that very few people know about. What's behind all this good news? The most overarching explanation would be that the Enlightenment worked. The idea that if we we being humanity set ourselves the goal of improving well being, if we try to figure out how the world works using reason and science, every once in a while we can succeed. You have argued that there is such a thing as human nature. Do you think we can transcend it? Part of human nature allows us to control the other part of our human nature. Even though humans tend to be unreasonable, it can't be the case that we're incapable of reason otherwise, you'd never be able to make the argument that we're being unreasonable. Even if we tend to backslide to irrationality, that doesn't mean we should indulge that when we are deliberating how to run a society. It sounds as if there's a political dimension to what you're arguing. Are you running for office anytime soon? No! I was surprised by how much interest there's been from centrist politicians, who are desperate for a coherent narrative to defend centrist liberalism, cosmopolitanism, open society, from the threats both by populists and by the hard left. I think there is a hunger for a coherent worldview that isn't just the status quo, the un Trumpism. We can do better than that. We ought to use reason and science to enhance human well being. Do you think science played a role in these positive developments? Yes. Advances in longevity and health life expectancy on Earth has grown from about 30 to more than 70, in rich countries to more than 80. Health and prosperity, and sustenance the fact that famines are far rarer than they used to be. Malnutrition is much lower, infectious disease. More generally, I see science as part of the Enlightenment namely reason applied to human betterment. Yet we also know that science has caused misery. There's a lot of blame to go around. The value of science is not the value of a bunch of people who call themselves scientists. It's the concept. It's also the value of science that tells us when there's been a failure of reasoning, that identifies the biases and distortions and also points the way to overcome them. Like the Science Times page on Facebook. Sign up for the Science Times newsletter. So, we need institutions like government to keep us acting rationally? None of us is anywhere close to perfect. Scientists themselves are not terribly, not completely rational. We can set up institutions that result in greater rationality than any of us is capable of individually, like peer review, like free speech, like a free press, like empirical testing norms and institutions that make us collectively more rational than any of us is individually. Do you think science can continue to address humanity's problems? If we're going to solve the problem of avoiding catastrophic climate change, it's going to come through technology. If you can bend the curve with advances in science, and people can just do what is cheapest and most convenient and that spares the planet that's our most feasible pathway to avoiding catastrophe. I do think that science and technology are going to be absolutely essential to meeting those challenges. Why do you think people continue to hold on to demonstrably unscientific beliefs? It looks like the biggest reason is not because they don't know the science, but because of their political ideology. The reason that people deny human made climate change is not that they're ignorant of climate science, but because they're on the political right. Conversely, people who accept human made climate change don't necessarily understand what's causing it. There are scientists who believe that Al Gore's making of "An Inconvenient Truth" is the worst thing that ever happened to climate change awareness, because he branded it as a left wing issue, and then the right rejected it out of hand.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Science

Subsets and Splits

No community queries yet

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