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Schiff, one of the managers the House sent to handle the impeachment trial in the Senate, has been the rock star of the proceedings. (O.K., suggesting this is a rocking experience would be ... overstatement. But you get the idea.) On Wednesday, Schiff spoke for nearly two and a half hours, nonstop, to open the Democrats' case. Not a record, but really long, even for a politician. Donald Trump took up just a little over two hours at his impeachment day rally, when he had enough time to suggest that the late Congressman John Dingell went to hell and to call Schiff "not exactly the best looking guy we've ever seen." Schiff's mission was to take the Senate and better yet, the American public through Trump's impeachable behavior, step by step. It's certainly an action packed story, and the Democrats have the advantage of audiovisual aids. So much easier to keep the audience's interest when you've got the title character on tape, saying stuff like, "I have the right to do whatever I want as president." Schiff elevated the saga with a lot of American history. He mentioned the founding fathers 28 times in the first 15 minutes. On this front, it doesn't seem as if he's going to get much competition. Earlier, when Republicans had a chance to talk, the founders only came up a handful of times, once in a quote from Chuck Schumer. For much of our modern history Republicans have tended to be the ones continually quoting the founding fathers, usually in regard to the dangers of an over powerful federal government. Now the tables have turned. Clearly Mitch McConnell and his minions need to come up with some early American heroes who wouldn't have seen a problem with a president who tries to make secret deals with a foreign power in order to enhance his chances for re election. On Wednesday, Schiff concluded with references to George Washington crossing the Delaware, Thomas Paine, Washington's farewell address and Benjamin Franklin announcing our government would be "a republic, if you can keep it." Other Democrats then picked up the story, and they'll be doing it for quite a while. Senate Majority Leader McConnell was originally going to make everybody cram the 24 hour quota of speeches into two days, but the Democrats have now been given three days to make their case on a more reasonable schedule. The change was allegedly a result of complaints by a few moderate Republicans, notably Susan Collins of Maine, who wanted the process to look fair. Definitely an improvement. However, voters of Maine, I am trusting that when you decide whether to re elect Collins this fall, you are not going to be moved by the news that before voting to keep Donald Trump in office, she used her powers to make the speaking schedule better. Nobody has any real doubt about how this is going to end. McConnell is going to deliver his people and get Trump off the hook. "I'm not an impartial juror. This is a political process," he said recently. This was a few weeks before the start of the impeachment trial. Then suddenly Mitch transformed into a statesman, begging his colleagues to "put fairness, even handedness and historical precedent ahead of the partisan passions of the day." Much talk about the need to show "some fairness." Instantly the mind of every Democratic senator flashed back to the time McConnell refused to allow Barack Obama's nominee to the Supreme Court to even come up for a hearing. And the huge pile of other judicial nominations that he let pile up in a basement somewhere, so he'd be able to hand Donald Trump his biggest presidential achievement. Keeping Donald Trump in office is, of course, critical for McConnell, the man who gets to actually run much of the country as long as a distracted doofus is in the alleged driver's seat. Lately said doofus has been in Switzerland, tucked away at the World Economic Forum, a pleasant annual get together for people who like to talk about money in elevated terms. He's made the occasional burst into public expressing the wish that he could be right there at the trial, where he could "sit right in the front row and stare into their corrupt faces." Really, try to imagine Donald Trump sitting still for two and a half hours of anything. Let alone a recapitulation of all the disasters of his term in office. His handlers, in a perfect world, would have had him somewhere on a remote ice floe. "All I do is, I'm honest," he told reporters clamoring for an impeachment reaction. "I make great deals. I've made great deals for our country." How do you think the founding fathers would have felt about that? Just try to imagine if one of them got caught trying to trade taxpayer money for political dirt on an opponent. And George Washington calming a horrified colleague with, "Well yeah, Mr. Hamilton, but remember he makes great deals." The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We'd like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here's our email: letters nytimes.com. Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter ( NYTopinion) and Instagram. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Opinion |
One of the first new plays written in direct response to the Trump era will be staged in New York this spring, following a handful of productions around the country. "Building the Wall," by the Pulitzer and Tony winning playwright Robert Schenkkan ("All the Way"), will be given a commercial Off Broadway production at New World Stages, beginning previews May 12 and opening May 21. The play, now running at the Fountain Theater in Los Angeles and the Curious Theater in Denver, is set in 2019, and depicts a scholar interviewing a prison supervisor who is awaiting sentencing for his role in an imagined Trump administration effort to detain and deport immigrants following a terrorist attack. In The Los Angeles Times, the critic Charles McNulty wrote that "'Building the Wall' should be seen and shuddered over, if only to heighten our collective vigilance." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Theater |
An award winning poet and translator, Phillips reveals his love of tennis on every page. There is a generosity of spirit toward the reader as he explains the tournament calendar, how the A.T.P. ranking system works and how important seedings are in Grand Slam draws. He even includes a comprehensive glossary of tennis terms. A passionate player himself, Phillips views the game as something to share, an organizing principle in his life, as important to him as literature and writing. "Tennis is a game I inherited from my parents," he writes. During the European clay court season, he watches matches with his young daughters before they go off to school, teaching them about "time zones, geography and the changing surfaces of the tennis year." But a dark undercurrent runs through the book, as Phillips grapples with the dispiriting historical moment of January 2017: The Trump inauguration nears and the world feels disordered and frightening. In a brief section titled "The Idea of Order at the Australian Open" (a tip of the hat to Wallace Stevens), Phillips speaks directly to the reader, suggesting that tennis can help one maintain sanity in difficult times: "January 2017 was an event horizon we all crossed kicking and screaming. There was no way out but forward, into the uncertainty of an unfamiliar world. And at the center of it was the Australian Open. ... We watched tennis together in the middle of the night, you and I. Maybe you skipped Brisbane, Doha, Chennai, Auckland and Sydney, but I know you were up with me for Melbourne. ... You know the Australian Open wasn't going to either change or save the world, but you decided to take a peek anyway at any odd hour you could, because tennis can offer what Robert Frost said poetry provides: a momentary stay against confusion." Phillips's analysis of the Federer Nadal final in Melbourne is the highlight of the book, and this is appropriate since the match was the best of the year, easily eclipsing the anticlimactic, straight set drubbings of the other three Grand Slam finals. His description of the contrasting styles of Federer and Nadal is incisive, lucid and inspired. He zeroes in on the technical change in Federer's backhand (he hits the shot flatter, to hurt Nadal with a more penetrating ball), and describes the new swing perfectly: "You could see the difference on the shot off the racket, you could see the difference in his follow through; it was curter the high curlicue finish of the racket with a twist of the wrist was gone. ... He swung the backhand now more like someone opening a stuck door." The book moves to Indian Wells (which the author attends in person, instead of following his usual custom of watching matches on television), then on to Miami, and then across the Atlantic for the European clay court season. Surprisingly, Phillips writes very little on Nadal winning his 10th French Open title, but he does provide a fine portrait of the Belgian player David Goffin. He profiles a left handed Spaniard who is not named Rafael Nadal, the clay court specialist Albert Ramos Vinolas, who, Phillips says, "is one of those thoughtfully skilled throwback players whose game grows two dimensions on clay." That Phillips chooses to write in detail about Goffin and Ramos Vinolas is yet another gift to the tennis aficionado an infectious appreciation of the superb but unsung players on the Tour. Much of this material first appeared in The Paris Review, where Phillips writes on sports, particularly soccer and tennis. One such section, "The Ghost in the Dirt," delves into the history and origins of red clay courts, which Phillips traces to a posh hotel in Cannes in the late 19th century. This historical digression, though interesting and well researched, seems shoehorned into the book. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Books |
The debate over net neutrality and cable company concentration has been rattling Wall Street. This discomfort is evident in some unusual moves in the share prices of Comcast and Time Warner Cable, the two cable giants that announced in February that they intended to merge in a 45 billion all stock deal. While their adjusted prices should be converging if you assume the merger will eventually be completed without major problems the spread has actually widened strikingly since early September. Regulators in Washington and in some state and local governments are reviewing the merger. As regulatory issues crucial to cable companies and the Internet have heated up, the stock market has reacted with varying degrees of consternation. "The prices haven't really been moving in the way you'd expect in a merger," said Jeffrey Wlodarczak, C.E.O. of Pivotal Research, a market research firm. While he said he expected the deal to be completed eventually, "when you look at the numbers, there's obviously concern about what the F.C.C. and other regulators are going to do whether they're going to let the merger go through, or whether they'll tie a lot of conditions to it." Investor concerns focus mainly on the Internet side of cable operations. They include these questions: Will the Federal Communications Commission act to ensure an open Internet also known as net neutrality and competitive and reasonably priced choices for consumers, in ways that might impair cable company profitability? Will federal agencies block the merger outright, or impose conditions that might make it economically unattractive? And if the merger does not take place, auguring a tougher regulatory climate, are the two companies, particularly Time Warner Cable, appropriately priced? As always, the market is converting the collective intelligence of its participants into prices, and there is evidence that investors are worried. "No question, if you look at the prices, you see that the market is factoring in some problems," said Mike McCormack, an equity analyst at Jefferies. "Investors are worried that onerous conditions could be imposed on the deal." Understanding this requires a little number crunching. It works like this: Typically, after a merger is announced, the adjusted share prices of the two companies ought to move closer together. In this case, Comcast, the biggest cable company in the United States, agreed that when it ultimately acquires Time Warner Cable, the second biggest such company, each Time Warner Cable share would be converted into 2.875 Comcast shares. In other words, assuming the merger were a sure thing, we'd know what a Time Warner Cable share should be worth each day: 2.875 times the current price of a Comcast share. Until the deal closes there will be a gap, but it generally ought to be narrowing. I set up a spreadsheet to monitor whether the shares were moving in the right direction, and was startled to see that for the most part they were not: The values of the shares have generally been diverging. The spread, or the difference between the adjusted prices of the two companies' shares, was roughly 5 percent at the announcement date. In subsequent months, it gradually widened to 6 percent. On Sept. 4, by my calculations, the spread crossed 7 percent for the first time. Craig Moffett, senior analyst and a partner at MoffettNathanson Research, who has been closely following these developments, pointed out that Sept. 4 was when Tom Wheeler, the F.C.C. chairman, said in a speech that "there is simply no competitive choice for most Americans" who want high speed Internet in their homes. Daniel Rosenbaum for The New York Times "Stop and let that sink in," Mr. Wheeler said. He added that "three quarters of American homes have no competitive choice for the essential infrastructure for 21st century economics and democracy." Mr. Moffett said of those words: "That was a very strong speech for the chairman of the F.C.C. The market took notice." One core problem for Comcast and Time Warner Cable is that after a merger, the combined company would control more than 35 percent of the market for high speed wired Internet service, even after divesting itself of some customers. If, as Mr. Wheeler said, that market is not competitive now, a merger of the two biggest cable companies would not help matters. In October, the price spread widened further, to well above 10 percent at several points. In the last week or two, it has oscillated between 8 and 10.5 percent. Again, market action came after news that might have caused investors to do some recalculating of the future profitability of Comcast and Time Warner Cable, either as independent companies or as a merged entity. One market flurry occurred after remarks by President Obama at an Oct. 9 town hall meeting in Santa Monica, Calif., in which he said he was "unequivocally committed" to net neutrality and against "paid prioritization," or Internet fast lanes, in which some companies could pay cable companies for faster access to consumers. He called for tough rule making by the F.C.C. which could potentially limit the profitability of the cable companies. And late last month, people close to the F.C.C. said the commission was considering several options for net neutrality rule making. These include regulating Internet infrastructure companies more strictly as common carriers, like the old telephone companies under Title II of the Communications Act of 1934. Such regulation would be imposed over wholesale interconnections between information providers and broadband carriers like the cable companies. Under one possible plan, less stringent regulations would be imposed by the agency for Internet connections from cable companies to customers. Mr. Moffett is among those who believe this could be the path to a "grand bargain," which would include approval of the merger, with guarantees from Comcast that it would abide by strict, nondiscriminatory open Internet rules. "It could be possible," he said, "to preserve the economics of the deal and to come up with some satisfactory answer to net neutrality." But there is another possibility. It was raised by Tim Wu, the Columbia University law professor who coined the phrase "net neutrality" and made it part of his platform in his unsuccessful bid to become lieutenant governor of New York. Mr. Wu said the widening market spread "may be evidence that people in the know understand that the odds of the merger being blocked have increased." Once you scrutinize the "anticompetitive potential in it, and the anticompetitive nature of the broadband market," he said, it's understandable that "the mood has certainly shifted, and the markets are asking whether this merger will survive." Net neutrality and the merger are political issues. After last week's election, they could become a flash point in relations between a Republican Congress and the Democratic administration. Strong action by the F.C.C., the Federal Trade Commission or the Justice Department could result in Republican pushback aimed at limiting the F.C.C.'s authority. Where all of this is heading isn't clear, which means there's good reason for the market to be jumpy. "I think in the end, the deal will probably go through," said James C. Goss, an analyst at Barrington Research. If it does, he observed, Time Warner Cable shares are a bargain when compared with those of Comcast. The price spread amounts to a discount that would close when the deal is done. "You can make some good money with that trade," he said. "But clearly, the risks in making it have risen." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Your Money |
Broadway has made no secret of its displeasure with the Trump administration. There was the "Hamilton" incident, when the cast of the hit musical addressed Vice President elect Mike Pence from the stage. There are the jokes slipped into shows (a recent revival of "Miss Saigon" added a "Make America Great Again" gag). There are the implicit critiques ("1984") and the explicit (Michael Moore's "The Terms of My Surrender"). Now comes something different and more freighted. One of Broadway's most powerful theater owners and producers, Jordan Roth, kicked off a raunchily comedic web video series on Thursday with a first installment that refers to Mr. Trump as "a national disgrace" and manages to allude to his combover hair style and his imagined penis size while critiquing a focus on personal appearances ("let's take the focus off of looks and keep our insults humane"). Mr. Roth said the series, called "The Birds and the BS," is intended to address the cultural coarsening that has accompanied the Trump era, reminding adults of the courtesies they learned as children, but using pungent language to attract attention, both to the videos and the broader issue. "We need a kids' show for us, to remind ourselves of these basic human decencies in the complicated adult world that we now swim in, and if we can do that with a laugh and a catchy tune and a little bit of shock, then we might actually watch it, and then think about it," he said. Mr. Roth, whose company, Jujamcyn Theaters, owns five of the 41 Broadway theaters, has not been shy about his opposition to the Trump administration he is a longtime Democratic donor who co produced a Broadway fund raiser for Hillary Clinton's campaign. But his decision to create a web series with a first episode that jabs pointedly at the president is striking because of Mr. Roth's history with Mr. Trump. Mr. Roth's father, Steven, a prominent real estate magnate in New York City, has been politically and financially allied with Mr. Trump. The future president attended Jordan Roth's wedding in 2012 to Richie Jackson. In a 2015 interview, Mr. Trump cited the event when asked if he had ever attended a same sex wedding, and called Jordan Roth a "great guy." "Yes, he was at my wedding, but when it became clear what his politics were, and what his priorities were, and what his administration would do to things I hold dear that was the change," Jordan Roth said. The Roths have remained a close family even as Steven Roth, who jointly owns a skyscraper in New York and one in San Francisco with Mr. Trump, has counseled the president he was the member of an infrastructure advisory council before it disbanded last summer and Jordan Roth has criticized him. "We have different political opinions and beliefs, and we can talk about them, but they are not the basis of our relationship," Jordan Roth said. "I know for some people that may be difficult to understand, but he is my father and I am his son and that matters more. I love him." Steven Roth did not respond to an email seeking comment on his son's video. Daryl Roth Steven's wife and Jordan's mother is a prominent Broadway producer who has gravitated toward progressive plays that often call attention to challenges facing women and gay people. She attended the Trump inauguration with her husband and has avoided publicly taking sides on the administration. Ms. Roth, in an email, gave the video a positive review, calling it "hilarious, really clever and witty, and certainly timely." "I love it," she added. "It will definitely get people talking." A White House spokeswoman did not respond to a request for comment. Jordan Roth, who has had a longtime interest in performing and has dabbled in video production previously, conceived of this new series months ago, with the idea of developing "a kids' show for adults," modeled on "Mister Rogers' Neighborhood" and "Pee wee's Playhouse." "If we can take our frustration and confusion and dismay and fear and create with it, that's what we need to do," he said. The video, which includes off color language, features an animated character voiced by Billy Porter, an actor who won a Tony Award for his role in "Kinky Boots" (a show produced by Ms. Roth and housed in a theater owned by Jordan Roth). Mr. Porter's animated avatar, shown alongside a sketch of Mr. Trump, says "even though they say he has tiny hands, they're actually making fun of something else," as an arrow points to the Trump image's crotch. But the animated Billy Porter then says there are better ways to criticize the president. "We grown ups should know better than to make fun of people's appearances, even the people we hate," Mr. Porter says. "There are far, far better, things to debase, like his flabby punctuation, comb over obfuscation. It's his shameful bigotries that look so dumpy in his khakis." In an interview, Mr. Porter said he agreed to participate as an expression of his opposition. "It's about the resistance," he said. "James Baldwin says it's the artist's job to disturb the peace, and I take that very seriously. I'm not a community organizer, I'm not a politician, but with creative energy I can help change hearts and minds with my stuff." Mr. Porter has also made his own video, reinterpreting the Rodgers and Hammerstein standard "I'm Gonna Wash That Man Right Outta My Hair" as a form of opposition to the Trump administration. He said the tone of the videos is in keeping with the tone of the moment. "I thought it has to be as irreverent as he is," he said. "There's no pulling any punches any more. Yes, it's on the nose, but that's where we are, so let's vomit it all out there." Mr. Roth said he hopes to introduce a new video every other week, focused on current affairs and "how we talk to each other, behave toward each other, and care for each other, or not the big stuff." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Theater |
Though the theatrical collective the Mad Ones named itself after a line from "On the Road" "The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk" you could be forgiven for thinking what's mad is their method. In a series of productions since 2009, its five core members, joined by others for individual projects, have built scripts out of improvisations on situations notable for their banality. Perhaps you caught "Samuel and Alasdair," their enactment of the lives of two unremarkable Iowa brothers in the 1950s. Or "Miles for Mary," their meticulous reconstruction of a faculty meeting at an Ohio high school circa 1988. I loved "Miles for Mary" for the way it revealed the extremeness of the human condition even in its apparently least consequential moments. But I worried whether the Mad Ones had excelled itself into a corner. How could it ever top the transcendent tediousness of an assistant wrestling coach trying to follow Robert's Rules of Order? And yet its latest, "Mrs. Murray's Menagerie," which opened on Monday at the Greenwich House Theater, dips even deeper into the well of ordinariness. Though not quite as emotionally powerful as its predecessor, it is just as funny and, in some ways, more momentous. The setup certainly fits the Mad Ones profile, pursuing its goal to "examine and illuminate American nostalgia" within a highly structured yet nearly surreal format. At a Philadelphia community center in 1979, six parents of young children have been assembled to participate in a focus group. The tinted aviator glasses, hairstyles and Huk A Poo shirts pin down the fashion moment just as forcefully as their chatter pins down the sociological one. What they're chattering about couldn't be more ridiculous, though. A children's television show called "Mrs. Murray's Menagerie," starring the beloved Mrs. Murray and puppet pals including Candace, Gypsy, Teddy and Mister Face, is ending its many year run. A research firm called Blue Horizon has been hired to help the producers decide which of two spinoff options is better: "Candace's Cabinet" or "Teddy's Treehouse." You may quail at first, as the fantastically smooth Dale from Blue Horizon (Brad Heberlee) asks the panelists searching questions like "In a word or a phrase, how is Mrs. Murray unlike you?" and "By a show of hands, who in this room perceives Gypsy as naughty?" What's new onstage and off: Sign up for our Theater Update newsletter Wayne (Michael Dalto) works in tool and die. Gloria (Stephanie Wright Thompson) is a single mother who apparently cannot afford the limited edition Mrs. Murray merchandise that June (Carmen M. Herlihy) buys for her son. Ernest (Phillip James Brannon) and Cici (January LaVoy) appreciate the presence of nonwhite characters on the show; they are black. And Roger (Joe Curnutte) becomes strangely defensive when the others agree that Candace, his daughters' favorite, is "whiny." How such minutiae mount into a crisis is a mystery built into the company's method. Some of it has to do with the subtle, super sharp direction by Mad Ones member Lila Neugebauer. After the handsy Roger touches Cici and calls her "honey," you notice how Dale, sensing her discomfort, steps silently between them. And as the choice between "Candace's Cabinet" and "Teddy's Treehouse" accelerates into a referendum on privilege and diversity Candace being white and Teddy being black you notice how the comedy has become a lot more cutting. I say "you notice" because nothing is handed to you or signposted. The process of exposition is rigorous and ingenious, forcing you to become an active agent in the discovery of the play's themes. It's not even clear that the characters are aware of those themes, any more than people can make out the contours of the history they are part of. And yet the whole project depends on an understanding of how people expose cannot help exposing their truest selves in every gesture and utterance they make. Based on that, the Mad Ones contend that even a focus group about fictional characters can tell us a great deal about real ones, about us. This puts unusual pressure on the actors, who must be convincing as subjects in a verbatim faux documentary while also suggesting a bigger picture to which they are mostly blind. First among equals at this are Ms. LaVoy and Mr. Brannon, who seem to carry the incipient knowledge of social change in their exquisitely modulated parries and retreats. And also Mr. Curnutte as a man whose hereditary presumptions of power are being undermined by puppets. Supporting them beautifully in this Ars Nova production are those time capsule costumes (by Asta Bennie Hostetter) and the grungy, you've been there community room set (by You Shin Chen and Laura Jellinek). Even the theme songs for the two spinoffs (music by Justin Ellington, words by Mr. Dalto) are perfect; they sound just like real nostalgia. That's quite a trick, but pulling it off is central to the Mad Ones aesthetic. Plays like "Mrs. Murray's Menagerie" dramatize the idea that history isn't just what gets recorded in books. It's what's happening every moment, perhaps especially the trivial ones. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Theater |
The following is a real story about the RealReal, a luxury consignment start up that now has a brick and mortar store in SoHo. A few months ago, a friend walked into an intimate gathering wearing a daisy print Celine skirt. One of our mutual friends said to her, "I saw that on the RealReal." Another said, "Oh, I'm so happy you were the one who got it." This is perhaps how billionaires chat after a Sotheby's auction, which is not the camaraderie and pride one would expect to hear about secondhand shopping. The huge success (the RealReal has raised 173 million since its founding) of various consignment sites feels opposed to the foundering retail business. There is Grailed, which focuses on street wear, and Heroine, a women's wear counterpart, along with Vestiaire Collective and 1stdibs. They have consumed the middle market, taking customers for whom actual luxury pricing is too real ... real. Shopping consignment is also a beautiful distraction. It is fashion Candy Crush; finding and scoring certain pieces can feel like a personal victory. Women I know who are familiar with the RealReal said they've started looking at it daily; the rest of the world is just too real ... real. All items on display in the store are simultaneously available to shop online. Sales associates can scan items for customers in person, temporarily removing them from the site while they're being considered on the floor. Even while shopping in the store, there is the same it could disappear at any moment feeling you get online. In the store which was designed by Courtney Applebaum, the interior designer for the Row (a label represented on almost every rack), you can wait on gorgeous textural couches while your pieces are appraised. There is a flower stall at the front where you can buy stems by Fox Fodder Farm, a coffee bar downstairs and weekly events and workshops, like Faux Fridays, which instruct attendees on how to spot fake Louis Vuitton, Chanel and designer sneakers. In the middle of the floor is a collaborator curated space, and this month the selection was chosen by Vanessa Traina and Allee Goldstein of the Line. Nearby, one can slide racks of clothing out from a large console of hidden cabinets. They swoosh out deliciously, packed with treasures. A friend described the sensation of unveiling these clothes as incredibly erotic. Upon entering, the first two things I checked out were the same price: a Frank Stella copper lithograph and a Balenciaga leather jacket with a shearling collar ( 2,500). A saleswoman approached and struck up a conversation that bopped its way to the question "So what do you do with your art history degree?" Lady Bird replies, "It's perfect." The two shift instantly to loving, fawning friends. It's delightful. My youthful experiences in thrift stores with my mother followed the opposite emotional structure. We would have some of our nicest conversations among the racks, until I found something I wanted; then the (low stakes) conflict would begin, almost always over the size of a garment I was holding. My mother would see a women's 3X or girls 14 tag and, probably exhausted because I was known to idle in the store's fluorescent lit dust for up to five hours a weekend, protest. "That's not your size," she would say. I would argue, "Size doesn't exist in this space!" And I still believe that to thrift or shop consignment, a little of this philosophy is required. A size 8 on one tag in the RealReal may be the same measurements as a size zero on another. At the store, clothes are arranged on Extra Small/Small racks and Medium/Large racks. But really, the size of the clothes depends on how you want them to fit, and it's a game of eyeing and trying. Unlike the website, clothes here are arranged only by size, not by type or color or designer (apart from one Gucci rack, where there was a leather bag for 2,850 with "REAL" painted in yellow above the logo). Size is abstract to me even in a store with a single brand, but a friend I was with said she didn't like her position in the space to be about her size. Fair enough. On the other hand, it's possible to encounter a lot of things you wouldn't click on on the site. Online, the pieces are photographed beautifully, masking (not in a deceptive way) wear in the fabric. When you can hold them, it's a different experience. A Chanel tweed blazer with a loose button is 1,295. There were little threads, fabric that's not worn out but was definitely sighing, and tiny snags on many items. Wool Proenza pants ( 225), a cotton Tome dress ( 295) and a suede Acne skirt ( 245) are all worth it if one longed for them on the runway. Many pieces seem to be under 300, or else above 1,200. I found a few exceptions, but when you see 1,395 consistently, a sudden 295 feels like a precious mistake to be grabbed immediately. In other consignment shops in the city, I let my mind wonder if the clothes belong to someone recently deceased. Here it's possible to mostly dissociate from their former lives and think only about the future. The RealReal has established a new assurance of luxury fashion resale value beyond the doldrums of eBay, but building a brand on reselling what's real leaves no room for user error. On Tuesday, CBS News reported on the filing of a complaint in California: A Michigan woman said she was sold a gemstone with a carat weight that was misrepresented on the site. The RealReal vehemently denies any wrongdoing. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Fashion & Style |
JAY Z AND BEYONCE at MetLife Stadium (Aug. 2 and 3, 7:30 p.m.). If this pair were relying on their collectively massive catalog to fuel a stadium show, that would be enough, but the Carter family does nothing by half measures. Snippets of the European leg of the On the Run II tour suggest that along with being a larger than life window on pop music's current royal family, the show has enough conceptual and technical heft to follow to Beyonce's internet breaking Coachella performance. The chance to see two of contemporary pop's most consistently genre defining artists at their peak is not to be missed. metlifestadium.com FEMI KUTI AND THE POSITIVE FORCE at Rumsey Playfield (July 29, 3 p.m.). Political commentary rarely sounds as sunny as it does when the 56 year old Mr. Kuti sings about it. He's been fighting the system through danceable, big band Afrobeat his entire life, continuing the legacy of his iconic father, Fela Kuti. But the younger Mr. Kuti's status as a mainstream celebrity in his native Nigeria he has been a judge on "Nigerian Idol" hasn't made his lyrics any less fiery. On his latest album, "One People One World," Kuti rails against military coups ("Dem Militarize Democracy") and insists that "one day the people will rise" ("The Way Our Lives Go") with hooks so catchy it's impossible not to sing along. 212 360 1399, summerstage.org THE LOX AND YOUNG M.A at Ford Amphitheater at Coney Island (July 29, 7 p.m.). The state of New York hip hop has long been a subject of much consternation. Despite the hand wringing over how the city is no longer at the center of the genre it nurtured, new rappers regularly emerge from the five boroughs and onto the charts: Young M.A, whose 2016 single "Ooouuu" reached No. 19 on Billboard's Hot 100, is just one recent example. At this free show, she'll be joined by the Lox, the Yonkers, N.Y., trio who first rose to fame in the 1990s and are now better known individually as Jadakiss, Styles P and Sheek Louch. 212 360 1399, summerstage.org MY BLOODY VALENTINE at the Hammerstein Ballroom (Aug. 1, 8 p.m.). Bring earplugs when you go to see these seminal, notoriously loud Irish rockers who are on tour for the first time in five years. The band's 1991 album, "Loveless," is firmly in rock's canon for its transporting use of distortion, which makes the quartet sound like they're using 10 guitars instead of two. But the group took until 2013 to produce the album's long awaited, critically acclaimed full length follow up, "MBV." They're promising more new music this year, but if history is any indication, it's probably wise to see My Bloody Valentine while you can. The show is sold out, but tickets are available through the resale market. 212 279 7740, mc34.com/upcoming/ PANORAMA MUSIC FESTIVAL at Randalls Island (July 27 29). Now in its third year, Panorama continues to book acts compelling enough to make it a must attend event even for those who might feel like they've outgrown the megafestival circuit. This year's headliners the Weeknd, Janet Jackson and the Killers are joined by an impressive slew of supporting acts, from mainstream favorites like Migos and Lil Wayne to artsy rockers like St. Vincent and Father John Misty to pioneering electronic artists like Floating Points and Jlin. panorama.nyc PUNCH BROTHERS at the Beacon Theater (July 28, 8 p.m.). This acoustic quintet has spent over a decade translating individual virtuosity the frontman Chris Thile is widely recognized as one of the world's best mandolin players into folk that has the intricacy and precision of chamber music. But the group is as capable of more straightforward barn burners as they are the kinds of haunting, sparse arrangements that have earned them renown in the classical music world. Their new album, "All Ashore," is an explicit reaction to contemporary American politics, but that focus didn't change their gentle aesthetic; the sound is as serene as ever. 212 465 6500, beacontheatre.com NATALIE WEINER ORRIN EVANS QUARTET at Smoke (July 27 29, 7, 9 and 10:30 p.m.). This irrepressible pianist's year has been dominated by the Bad Plus, the famous ensemble he joined in January and immediately rewired, giving it a cooler push of momentum and a savory, new harmonic makeup. In his own right he remains one of jazz's more sedulous bandleaders, and later this year, he'll release a new album with his Captain Black Big Band. This weekend at Smoke, Mr. Evans plays with a small combo featuring the esteemed bassist and National Endowment for the Arts Jazz Master Buster Williams, the tenor saxophonist Bill McHenry (Mr. Evans's longtime associate) and the young drummer Mark Whitfield Jr. 212 864 6662, smokejazz.com FRED HERSCH TRIO at the Village Vanguard (through July 29, 8:30 and 10:30 p.m.). Mr. Hersch is among the rarefied group of jazz musicians, mostly pianists, whose very identities are bound up with the Village Vanguard. The room puts listeners right up in front of the musicians and makes them feel even closer and Mr. Hersch's scrupulously tailored playing rewards intimate listening. He's released a handful of albums recorded live at the club, including most recently "Sunday Night at the Vanguard," from 2016, featuring the well oiled trio playing there this week, with John Hebert on bass and Eric McPherson on drums. 212 255 4037, villagevanguard.com DAVE LIEBMAN QUARTET at Zinc Bar (Aug. 2, 7:30 and 9 p.m.). A legacy figure, Mr. Liebman saw his career pick up in the 1970s, playing alongside Miles Davis and John McLaughlin, and it's been one of almost constant reinvention. To heady fusion and cool ballads Mr. Liebman brings a hollering, dry call intensity on the soprano saxophone in particular. He plays Zinc with the guitarist Vic Juris, the bassist Gene Perla and the drummer Willy Rodriguez. 212 477 9462, zincbar.com KASSA OVERALL, VIJAY IYER, RAVI COLTRANE AND EVAN FLORY BARNES at the Jazz Gallery (Aug. 2, 7:30 and 9:30 p.m.). These sets offer a rare opportunity to hear Mr. Iyer, a pianist of rippling momentum and a latter day musical thought leader, alongside the quicksilver saxophone of Mr. Coltrane. Both established themselves in the 1990s and today are among the most respected improvisers alive. But the two younger musicians on the bill Mr. Overall, a drummer, and Mr. Flory Barnes, a bassist, both hailing from Seattle are remarkable, articulate players with diverse resumes across jazz, hip hop and indie rock. Here they will take part in a mostly improvised performance, built around small melodic sketches. 646 494 3625, jazzgallery.nyc CATHERINE RUSSELL at Dizzy's Club Coca Cola (through July 29, 7:30 and 9:30 p.m.). Ms. Russell, a vocalist, sings classic jazz and other African American repertory with ardent precision. She performs from time to time as a featured guest with the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra and has backed up a wide array of pop stars, from Paul Simon to Cyndi Lauper. She appears at the center's jazz club in front of her own combo, featuring the guitarist Matt Munisteri, the pianist Mark Shane, the bassist Tal Ronen and the drummer Mark McLean. 212 258 9595, jazz.org/dizzys GIOVANNI RUSSONELLO | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Music |
RENENS, Switzerland Revolutionary is a word often used with abandon. A color combination on the runway. A new hairstyle. A different way of steaming fish. But a watchmaker who invents a movement, changing the way a watch has run for the past 300 plus years? Well, the word revolutionary just might be accurate. Dominique Renaud, formerly half of the renowned complications team Renaud et Papi, is back in business. After leaving watchmaking for more than a decade, he has returned to Switzerland and set up his own laboratory. And this year he introduced a watch movement. "It is a new escapement unlike anything that exists now," he explained as he sat in his office in an industrial park outside Lausanne, Switzerland. The balance system, he continued, vibrates rather than oscillates, all but eliminating friction and thereby increasing efficiency, precision and power reserve. "It is not some new material, but a new rethinking that might shock other watchmakers," Mr. Renaud said. Movements hadn't changed since 1789, said Luiggino Torrigiani, Mr. Renaud's business partner, adding, "Dominique is opening up new horizons." Mr. Renaud's sketches of the resonator mechanism he is working on for mechanical watches. Niels Ackermann for The New York Times The movement is showcased in a watch called the DR01 Twelve First: DR is Mr. Renaud's initials; 01, he said, "for the first watch I've created on my own"; and Twelve First because the watch is first in a 12 piece limited edition. It looks like a spaceship on the wrist, a clear cylinder exposing the movement. "We created a new heart for the watch, and we wanted to show it," Mr. Torrigiani said. The watches will be made only on commission, and each one will cost one million Swiss francs ( 1.01 million). He has sold one, which is being made for 2017 delivery, and he says he is closing three more sales. The price may seem high, but collectors "are buying a piece of watchmaking history," Mr. Torrigiani said. Also, each one will be customized, so it can come in porcelain or platinum or titanium or gold, in any color, and engraved, if the owner wishes. This isn't the first time Mr. Renaud, 57, has made a splash. When he was 27, he and Giulio Papi, a 21 year old colleague, left their jobs working on the bench at Audemars Piguet to establish a company to invent complications. "People said we were crazy," Mr. Renaud said. People were wrong. Mr. Papi said, "Technically speaking, Dominique is a seasoned troubleshooter, and while he is developing a mechanism he is thinking about a new one still better. Dominique knows how to use his hands, and he makes things with a high level of quality." Renaud et Papi's first big invention, for I.W.C., was the Grand Complication modular minute repeater modular because it could be added to existing watches. Business started rolling in. For Jaeger LeCoultre, they developed the Reverso's micro repetition minute; for A. Lange Sohne, the Fusee Tourbillon. Soon they were making complications for Franck Muller, Harry Winston, Parmigiani Fleurier, Richard Mille, Chanel, Hublot, Girard Perregaux and Ulysses Nardin, as well as creating for their former employer, Audemars Piguet, the smallest minute repeater caliber and the first Grande Sonnerie Carillon. In 1992, the men sold half of the business to Audemars Piguet but continued to run it. But after a few years, Mr. Renaud decided that he had had enough. "I needed to take a break," he said. "I wanted to see my two daughters grow up." So in 2000, he sold the rest of his interest in the business, now known as APRP, and moved to the south of France, outside Montpellier. He built a house, sold it and built another but, he said, "I was always thinking of watches." After 13 years away from watchmaking, Mr. Renaud was ready to return. Dominique Renaud SA is based in Renens, employs four workers and was established "as a lab for new ideas," Mr. Torrigiani said. "Every second day, Dominque comes in with a new idea." The watchmaker's rendering of the new DR01 Twelve First. "It is in my blood," Mr. Renaud noted. "I come from a long family of watchmakers in the Vallee de Joux." His grandfather was a watchmaker, and "I am a child of Vacheron Constantin," he said. "My parents met there." On a shelf in his office is a movement that his mother, born a LeCoultre, worked on in 1959. Over the years Mr. Renaud has mentored some of today's finest watchmakers: Peter Speake Marin, Andreas Strehler, Bart and Tim Gronefeld, and both Robert Greubel and Stephen Forsey, now the team of Greubel Forsey. He became particularly close to Mr. Greubel, who, when Mr. Renaud announced he was leaving Switzerland, promised the keys to his house when Mr. Renaud was ready to return. And he did hand them over, in a gesture documented in a personal video Mr. Renaud played for a visitor with visible pride and affection. "Dominique is one of the very last watchmaker/inventors out there," Mr. Greubel said in an email. "He combines all main watchmaking professions, such as constructor, micromechanic, designer, decoration, beveling and assembly, which is rare in watchmaking today." "Furthermore," he continued, "Dominique has the exceptional ability to imagine, and then invent, new ways in the field of watchmaking." And what was his mentor's most valuable lesson? "Not to set myself limits in my inventive reflections." Mr. Renaud has always been a risk taker. He has done a three month sail with two fellow watchmakers and spends his free time climbing the Jura mountains, which are outside his office window. And, he acknowledged, producing a line of million franc watches is a risk. "Just like with Renaud et Papi, people say it's not going to work," he said, "It's impossible." Gregory Gardinetti, the history expert at the Fondation de la Haute Horlogerie in Geneva, has a somewhat different approach. "The DR01 is a very innovative timekeeper," he said. "The real inventions are those that continue in time. The others are quickly forgotten. Only the future will tell us if we are dealing here with a development that will revolutionize the watch industry." It is, truly, a question of time. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Fashion & Style |
For the eight years that she was based in Chicago, Katie Kirby happily lived by herself. When she moved to Manhattan three years ago, there didn't seem to be any reason for a different domestic arrangement, and she contentedly signed on for a one bedroom on the Upper West Side. "I enjoyed the freedom and I'd been living alone so long, it just made sense to get my own place in New York," said Ms. Kirby, 41, the director of communications at a public relations firm. "And it was a great apartment." Even so, this past May, she moved to a two bedroom in North Williamsburg, Brooklyn, with a friend, Jennifer Keene, 40, who works in sports marketing and who had also been living alone. It's true that money played a role in the decision Ms. Kirby shelled out 2,850 a month on the Upper West Side and is now paying 2,200 but a minor role. "It meant I'd have extra money to do the things I moved here to do: see more shows, eat at more restaurants and to have a better quality of life," said Ms. Kirby, whose new apartment, a condo that she and Ms. Keene are renting from the owner, has a washer/dryer, a large kitchen and amenities like a doorman and a rooftop deck. "But the larger reason is that New York can be kind of a lonely place," she said. For the fresh out of college transplants eager to make New York home, living in shared quarters is a rite of passage. What with the monthly tariff for a studio as high as 2,777 in Manhattan and almost 2,600 in Brooklyn, according to the real estate appraiser Miller Samuel, the young and the nestless often must resign themselves to a term of communal habitation in a cozy one bedroom that becomes a two or three bedroom with the aid of a drywall partition. Peace and privacy are about as likely as a Viking stove, and many tenants count the days and dollars until they can sign a lease that's theirs, all theirs. Yet some whose W 2s easily qualify them for a place of their own the standard metric is a salary that is 40 to 50 times the monthly rent nonetheless want to share. They've found that the advantages of living solo guests are entirely of your choosing, the mess entirely of your making to be cleaned up (or not) when you're good and ready are outweighed by the benefits of living with others. Roommates provide a built in social network and act as resident sounding board, career counselor, dinner companion, love doctor and hedge against loneliness. And of course money can't be factored out of the equation. With two (or three) people wielding checkbooks, it means coming home to a bigger and better place than might otherwise be in the budget. According to an analysis by Susan Weber Stoger of the Queens College Department of Sociology, the number of 20 to 49 year olds who described themselves as the roommate of the head of a household, as working full time and earning at least 100,000 increased by 67 percent from 2000 to 2010 2012, the most recent period for which census figures are available, "When we talk to prospective clients, not everyone is desperate to live alone. I think they divide equally into the two camps," said Kathy Braddock, a managing director of William Raveis New York City. "They're finding they can get a lot better situation by combining their funds. Even if they have the money, it's nice to come home to 'Hi, how are you?' And if you see someone else's coffee cup in the sink you don't feel so lonely." Rory Bolger, a sales agent at Citi Habitats, has carved out a subspecialty in assembling such groups. "Increasingly, there's a culture of people wanting to have roommates even if they can afford not to," he said, adding that he had just placed a recent business school graduate who earned more than 250,000 a year. "I'm seeing this particularly with foreigners," he said. "Coming to New York for the first time, they're seeing it as an opportunity to broaden their experience." One example is Vesela Pehlivanova, a Bulgarian who for more than a year has shared a three bedroom terraced penthouse in Midtown West with two men she met through Craigslist. "To be honest I could have afforded to live on my own, but I just like the social element of living with people," said Ms. Pehlivanova, 28, the associate director for a social media company. "Before I moved here, I lived in London and I shared an apartment. That was why I came here with the idea of sharing." She said that she and her roommates wanted the same things, namely "to make the most of the city and to see new faces. And somehow we fit together very well, though I suppose that's not always the case. We share a lot. We discuss work. We discuss personal development." The roommates now know each other well enough that "after a day that didn't go as planned, we kind of see it on each other's faces," added Ms. Pehlivanova, whose share of the rent is 1,700 a month. "My roommates will say, 'Hey, what's wrong?' or 'Are you O.K.?' It's important for me to have someone ask those questions." Coco Videla, the executive creative director of the Village, a collective of freelancers in assorted fields, had been living on her own in Manhattan since 2003. But when she met Jorge Salazar through friends a few months ago, "It was roommates at first sight," she said. Ms. Videla, 39, decided last summer to trade her 3,200 a month studio apartment in the West Village for a larger studio ( 3,700 a month) in the same building, knowing that it could be converted to a two bedroom space. "When I saw the apartment I got it into my head that I had to take it, and then I met Jorge. We knew right away we were right for each other. We're both Latin. We both like to cook. It's marriage without the sex," added Ms. Videla, who likens her situation to the straight woman gay man domestic arrangement on the sitcom "Will and Grace." "One of the big benefits is that we both love to travel, and if you're living in New York and paying so much rent and you go somewhere for three weeks, you feel guilty because your apartment is empty," she said. "Now we don't feel guilty, because one of us is always here." Actually, lots of people are there friends, colleagues, clients part of the reason Ms. Videla describes her apartment as a think tank. "It's a much richer place to live than if I was there on my own. And Jorge loves it. Before, he barely had a social life because of work." And now there's space for even more visitors, because she and Mr. Salazar, 33, who works in the luxury goods business, just moved around the corner to a 5,400 a month duplex on Christopher Street. "The building we were in was going condo, and it was really a no brainer that we would be looking for something together," Ms. Videla said. Tessa Barron had her own apartment when she lived in San Francisco. What she didn't have was a good work life balance. With a salary she described as between 100,000 and 200,000, she could have had her own place when she moved to New York this past spring. But, eager to expand her social network, she chose to live in Park Slope, Brooklyn, with a high school buddy; in June they moved with another friend to a three bedroom apartment in nearby Bedford Stuyvesant. "For some people, it's their ultimate accomplishment to have a place of their own. It's the ultimate sense of adulthood," Ms. Barron said. "And sometimes I have to explain to people that no, I'm not in a one bedroom with a partition. Living with roommates was a decision to be very socially active and to emphasize that side of my life. When you live with people it's no effort. You have experiences organically." "I think we push each other a little," said Ms. Barron, 28. "I'll run work related things past them. If you're seeing a guy and you have questions about the relationship, a roommate can watch your interactions and make an observation. That's really valuable. And I'm still at an age that my parents worry. I think my living with others gives them peace of mind." Katie Kirby, right, and Jennifer Keene have teamed up in North Williamsburg. The desire for roommates sometimes boils down to personality type. "I'm an extreme extrovert, so being around people is very important to me," said Tami Reiss, who, despite this insight, planned on finding her own place when she moved here from Los Angeles a year and a half ago. "I was a 31 year old adult person who had enough money, so why not?" said Ms. Reiss, a product manager at a tech consulting firm. But because she wasn't seeing anything amazing in a one bedroom for what she was willing to pay ( 2,500 a month) in the neighborhood she wanted (Greenwich Village), she answered an ad on Craigslist placed by Nathan Small, 29, an executive recruiter at a public relations firm who wanted to share a two bedroom walk up with high ceilings near Washington Square. The two clicked. Ms. Reiss now pays less than 2,000 a month. "My roommate and I are totally buddies," she said. "We talk about the TV shows we watch, we talk about our significant others, about work stuff and the world at large." Ms. Reiss may actually have the best of both worlds: Because Mr. Small is often away, she frequently has the run of the place. "I was able to host a Thanksgiving for 12 and could have my parents stay here," she said. And last Passover, 14 people came. "I wouldn't have been able to do that if I had a place by myself, because it wouldn't have been big enough." For some, sharing space provides an on site tutorial in self awareness and self improvement. "When you live alone, there's no one around who you're checking yourself against and holding you accountable," Ms. Barron said. "When you live with other people you have to be considerate all the time. You're forced to be a better person." Perry Nickerson, one of Ms. Pehlivanova's two roommates, said that he can be a little confrontational, but also pretty sensitive. "I'm very Type A and was getting upset about the way the kitchen was left after someone used it. And it made me think that perhaps my behavior was also coming into play. It's something I'm working on now." Ms. Kirby and her roommate signed a year lease with an option for another year. "I think we're hopeful that we'll be in relationships and will be making other decisions," she said. "But for now, this arrangement doesn't seem like a step down, far from it." For her part, Ms. Videla happily envisions a future in a shared space. "I saw so many of my friends in their 40s living alone and becoming so maniacal and neurotic," she said. "I didn't want that for myself. I want to be the kind of person who could live with people in my 70s and be fine with it. "When I'm that age I want to live in the house of 'The Golden Girls,' " she said, referring to the old sitcom about a quartet of cohabiting senior citizens. "That's what I look forward to. Sharing an apartment with Jorge is definitely my first step there." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Real Estate |
LOS ANGELES It's a juicy headline: Charlie Sheen, whose struggles with drug abuse have eclipsed his acting career, will star in a movie about people trapped inside a World Trade Center elevator during the 9/11 terrorist attacks. The film, "Nine Eleven," would be Mr. Sheen's first project since announcing in November that he is H.I.V. positive. Variety on Monday reported the existence of the "action drama," which will also star Whoopi Goldberg. Entertainment Weekly, Vulture and The Hollywood Reporter quickly followed with their own pieces. Mr. Sheen is back! But closer scrutiny would seem to make "Nine Eleven" a lot less interesting. The movie's director, Martin Guigui, who co wrote the script, has made seven feature films, according to IMDb.com. But box office databases only list one, "Swing," a 2004 fantasy comedy about a nightclub frozen in time, as having any measurable ticket sales; it took in 2,509, according to Box Office Mojo. It is unclear whether some of his other films, including "The Bronx Bull," a boxing drama with Tom Sizemore, even made their way to DVD. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Media |
Any New York City renter knows that even the best rental can become a nightmare and if it doesn't, it could always be snatched away from you. Sarah Abramson Cusick was smitten the moment she laid eyes on the beaded Victorian screen door outside the garden apartment of a mammoth brownstone in Stuyvesant Heights, Brooklyn. "Before I even crossed the threshold, I was like, 'Yes, this is my home!'" she said. The apartment was immense and adorned with Victorian woodwork. The kitchen had custom made cabinets, a dishwasher and an original ice box with a built in pie safe. There was a separate butler's pantry with a copper sink, a big garden and even a washer and dryer. The rent was 1,600 a month. "I was immediately throwing myself at the landlord's feet," said Ms. Cusick, a manager on the security engineering team at Etsy. She came over for three interviews, vowing to attend block association meetings, gardening days and the annual block party. To seal the deal, she delivered a handmade chocolate cake. It was worth the effort. Living there was just as incredible as she had imagined it would be. She held garden parties and game nights. Everyone who visited gushed about the place. Her boyfriend, Theo Cusick, moved in, and they eventually married and had a daughter, now 2. The apartment seemed big enough to evolve with them, and they expected to stay for years. Then one day last fall, five years after she moved in, the landlord told them they would have to leave. He was selling the building. Finding the ideal rental apartment in New York City is not unlike falling in love. But it may be a good deal rarer, as the city is notoriously unkind to its renters. And much like those who fall in love, renters lucky enough to land a dream apartment often find it is hard to make it last. Landlords change, as do circumstances and people. Some renters move in swearing they will never leave, only to find that their occupancy is as tenuous as their lease term. Others discover that what they thought was a dream apartment is actually a nightmare: Roommate relations go south, neighbors turn hostile, raccoons come crashing through the ceiling. "It was phenomenal, until it wasn't," said Linda G. Maryanov, a Manhattan lawyer who vividly remembers leaving an apartment on West End Avenue and 85th Street more than 30 years ago because of a roommate's increasingly bizarre behavior. For Kelsea Beck, who moved to New York from New Orleans five years ago, it was the landlord's wife who drove her out of a townhouse in Crown Heights, Brooklyn. But then the landlord's wife started to make regular visits. Ms. Beck and her roommates would hear the couple fighting, and then the landlord's wife would turn up asking for a drink. Or she would try to sell them makeup, which seemed to be from her own collection, saying she was short on cash and wanted to buy a pack of cigarettes. "Over time, she became more and more comfortable asking us for bigger things," Ms. Beck said. "It went from 5 lipsticks to 'Can I have 20? I'll take it off the rent.'" The visits increased in frequency, and if Ms. Beck said she didn't have cash on hand, the landlady would ask to her to go to the ATM. If she knocked and no one answered, she'd let herself in; the door had no lock. "Sometimes I would pretend to be asleep," Ms. Beck said. The smaller three bedroom share she moved into last September is a step down in many ways: There is no natural light in the living room half of her plants died after she moved in and she has a noisy, street facing bedroom. But Ms. Beck is happier there. "It's so nice not to have to constantly be dodging my landlady's call or dreading that she's going to knock on the door," she said. If an apartment seems too good to be true, sometimes that's because it is. When Mirra Kardonne and her boyfriend were looking for a two bedroom in Astoria, Queens, to share with a friend a few years ago, most of what they saw was grim. Then their broker took them to a true two bedroom on the top floor of a house for 2,150 a month. "It had a front yard with a persimmon tree," Ms. Kardonne said. "We go upstairs, and it's enormous: There's a huge foyer, and the dappled light from the persimmon tree is coming in through the window onto the hardwood floors." It quickly became evident, however, that something was living in the ceiling a squirrel, Ms. Kardonne figured, as they were right next to Astoria Park. And although the landlord refused to investigate, they renewed their lease for a second year, over some objections from the roommate, who claimed the scrabbling and loud thumps kept her awake at night. A month later, after a week of torrential rain, Ms. Kardonne woke up one night to discover leaking water being sprayed around the room by her ceiling fan. A few nights later, it was her roommate's screams that awakened her: Two raccoons had crashed through the rain rotted bedroom ceiling. The raccoons "were so scared they totaled her room," Ms. Kardonne said. She called the landlord, who called the police. They caught the raccoons and advised the roommates to either get the roof repaired or move. When the landlord sent over a painter rather than a contractor to fix the damage, the choice seemed obvious. Ms. Kardonne, who moved to New York from Toronto, which she called "the raccoon capital of the planet," said she was "haunted by this feeling of 'they've found me in America.'" If there are few things as exhilarating as finding a dream apartment the social cachet; the sense of being favored by the gods; the conviction that this good fortune will surely spill over into other areas of life there is little that compares to the devastation of losing one. Christian Lopez, an architect, had been looking for an apartment on Craigslist for six months when he found a spacious two bedroom for 2,400 in Fort Greene, Brooklyn, close to the tennis courts where he likes to play. Mr. Lopez, now 27, had been living in New York for three years and was renting a small, dark room in a somewhat chaotic five bedroom in Clinton Hill, Brooklyn. Living with just one roommate in Fort Greene seemed as if it would be a step into a new stage of adulthood, but one that might be out of a reach until he found that apartment. "I would lie in my bedroom, which was huge, and look out the big windows," he said. "It was so bright, it was invigorating. Coming home to that apartment felt good. Maybe too good." Christian Lopez's dream apartment, a two bedroom on the top floor of a house in Fort Greene, Brooklyn, literally went up in smoke. Shortly after moving in, he awoke to screams and black smoke curling around his closed bedroom door. Stefano Ukmar for The New York Times Just before moving there in March, Mr. Lopez injured his knee playing soccer, and he had to have surgery during his first month in the apartment. A week after the surgery, he came home early from work to rest and drifted off after taking his pain medication. He woke up to screams and black smoke curling around his bedroom door. "I always thought that an apartment burning would look like a nightclub, gray and filled with smoke, but it was pitch black at 4 p.m.," he said. Everyone in the building made it out safely, but the house and almost all of their possessions were destroyed by what they would later learn was an electrical fire. "I felt like I deserved this dream apartment after a few crazy years in New York, but maybe people build up the dream apartment too much," said Mr. Lopez, who has since moved back to Clinton Hill. "I understand how important it is to people, how important it was to me, but maybe your apartment is just a place you go to after work." The problem with finding a place you love is that renting is by nature temporary, said Gary Malin, the president of real estate agency Citi Habitats. Some people might stay for many years, but the average is two or three. And the more impressive the deal, the more precarious it usually is. After all, part of what makes a dream apartment such a dream is that, for one reason or another, someone is charging a lot less than they could get for it. Sooner or later and often sooner that ends. For Courtney Luick, losing a dream apartment is just part of living in New York. When she moved back to the city from Los Angeles three and a half years ago, a friend offered her the second bedroom in his rent regulated place in TriBeCa for 1,500 a month. It was a huge apartment, on the 40th floor of a doorman building, with a private terrace and stunning views of the Hudson River. "You could just stare out at the water all day," said Ms. Luick, who recently moved out to live with her boyfriend, David Kallaway. "It was pretty incredible, but it wasn't really mine." Still, the apartment was so awe inspiring that their real estate agent at Warburg Realty, Rafael Feldman, tried to convince Ms. Luick and Mr. Kallaway to stay there together, before finding them a pleasant, if ordinary, one bedroom in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. "I guess if you have to leave," he said, "love is a good reason." Ms. Luick said she is a little in shock to wake up looking at a wall rather than a breathtaking view of the Hudson. "But I was excited to move in with David," she said. "I wanted to start a life with him, to have our own place together." Of course, with time and circumstance, anyone's definition of what constitutes a dream apartment can change, said Stephanie Diamond, the founder of Listings Project, a free weekly email of real estate and related listings. "The factors that make a dream apartment at 23 are not the same ones that make a dream apartment at 45," Ms. Diamond said. "The question is, What space helps your actual dream work? Dreams expand and grow." A few years ago, Crystal Fawn Williams and Tomasz Werner faced that question after their landlord discovered they had a dog and tried to force them out of their rent stabilized two bedroom in Williamsburg. They had had the dog for years and might have kept both him and the apartment under the city's pet law, which allows tenants to keep a pet if they have had it "openly and notoriously" for 90 days or more. But when they thought about it, they weren't sure they wanted to fight for their apartment. It was definitely a deal a little under 2,000 a month but it was also a little rundown. "I miss that apartment immensely," said Ms. Williams, who has since moved to Los Angeles with Mr. Werner. "But everything great is not supposed to last forever. There's this whole idea in New York that whatever you have is the best it will ever be. That's like not breaking up with your high school boyfriend." If there is one takeaway from having, and losing, a dream apartment, it might be to appreciate the apartment for what it is: magical, but fleeting. In 2010, Alex Robinson, now an editor at Thrillist, moved up from Florida into a loft in an old piano factory in Bushwick, Brooklyn, with three high school friends. It was large about 1,400 square feet and full of character. The rent was 2,000 a month. It eventually came to an end, of course. After four years, the building's owners gave residents their marching orders; a gut renovation was in the works. Many of the tenants tried to fight it, but Mr. Robinson and his roommates didn't have the money to hire a lawyer, and in the end, those who fought won only a little extra time. "It was such a special first apartment. There's no doubt in my mind that living in that space with my friends helped shape my relationship with the city," said Mr. Robinson, who now lives in a three bedroom Williamsburg share. "But I'm a big person when it comes to closure. I said goodbye to the building, it was heartfelt, and I moved on." For weekly email updates on residential real estate news, sign up here. Follow us on Twitter: nytrealestate. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Real Estate |
"I've gotten to like this room," President Trump said March 23 in the White House briefing room. If the walls had ears, they'd have been surprised to hear it. Until recently, the Trump administration had all but done away with formal press briefings, and the president preferred to talk to reporters amid the helpful din of a helicopter or in a Fox News studio. But the briefing room has one amenity that Donald Trump, suddenly without rallies and travel appearances amid a pandemic, cannot resist: a camera. Mr. Trump became a prime time star through TV, a political figure through TV and a president through TV. But he has not, as president, had what he had with NBC's "The Apprentice": a regular TV show in which he plays an executive in control. Now, the coronavirus briefings have given him a new, live and unfiltered daily platform before a captive national audience. True to his resume, he has conducted them as a kind of reality TV, or rather, create your own reality TV. In this reality often subject to later fact checking by the press or to backpedaling by staff help and needed equipment are always just around the corner. Accurate reports of his conflicts with governors over federal support are "fake news." And no one could have anticipated a pandemic like this, despite warnings, playbooks and public health infrastructure intended to do exactly that. The daily coronavirus briefings, increasingly timed to run live on cable and broadcast right around the evening news, are a journey. The president begins them by soberly reading statements. (On Thursday, he gave the roll call of the G20 leadership.) He can be expansive even, astonishingly, praising the media and he can be peevish. ("I want them to be appreciative," he said Friday of American governors.) And there's the concluding "Apprentice" boardroom style conflict in the Q. and A. session, in which friendly journalists are praised, and those who ask questions he doesn't want to answer are "terrible." After which Mr. Trump leaves the set and his public health officials climb into the producer's chair to edit his comments and their own often diverging guidance into a cohesive narrative. Mr. Trump's critics have said that his briefings are simply campaign rallies in another form. The two things do have elements in common: the litanies of grievances, the insulting of reporters and political rivals, the self aggrandizement and selective history. As at his rallies, Mr. Trump's digressions can defy both science and syntax, like his observation on how children tend to be less seriously affected "by this pandemic, by this disease, this whatever they want to call it, you can call it a germ, you can call it a flu, you can call it a virus, you know, you can call it many different names, I'm not sure anybody even knows what it is." (It is a virus.) The key difference is that Mr. Trump's campaign rallies are for the faithful. They speak to and galvanize his base, and lately have been broadcast only on Fox News. The briefings are something that Mr. Trump hasn't had since he declared Leeza Gibbons the winner of his final "Celebrity Apprentice" in 2015: a TV show aimed at a wide mass audience. Mr. Trump, numbers obsessed even in more ordinary times, went on Twitter to boast that his briefings on a deadly catastrophe had boffo ratings: There is no greater asset to a salesman or a politician than an audience that wants to believe. If you want to believe, here's what you can see: The president of the United States, at a podium, backed by a team of officials and experts, doing something or at least saying something, at length, which in the visual language of TV reads as the same thing. It is not only viewers at home who want to have faith. On March 17, when Mr. Trump struck a somber note after minimizing the virus for weeks, CNN's Dana Bash said that he was being "the kind of leader that people need, at least in tone." A week later, he was at a Fox "virtual town hall" saying, "We lose thousands and thousands of people a year to the flu we don't turn the country off," and announcing his urge to reopen the economy on Easter. (The host, Bill Hemmer, hosanna'ed that it would be "a great American resurrection.") And for Mr. Trump, the briefings allow him to turn his pandemic response from a serial narrative, in which he's held accountable for his cumulative action or inaction over time, into an episodic production, in which all that matters is what happened in the latest installment. Every episode, in this production, wipes the slate clean, like a sitcom restoring the status quo. All those comments about how the coronavirus is like the flu and about how the cases will soon go down to zero and about not wanting to receive infected cruise ship passengers because "I like the numbers being where they are"? That's last season. What matters, as the briefings frame it, is the next thing, the new rhetoric, the latest drama. "Will the president be there?" asked CNN's Wolf Blitzer, teasing the March 25 briefing. "Will Dr. Fauci be there?" There has been some counterprogramming, especially the live morning briefings by Governor Andrew Cuomo of New York, who has emerged as the default Democratic response. (The presumptive opposition nominee, Joseph Biden whose media strategy has seemed premised on the idea that people simply want a chance to turn off The Trump Show has struggled to break through the noise, being limited to the equivalent of FaceTime calls.) Mr. Cuomo's briefings are part tough talk, part pep talk. His tone is both more dire than the president's and more emotional a kind of virtual New York backslap next to Mr. Trump's outer borough pitchmanship. On Friday, he asked a National Guard group to imagine a day, a decade hence, when they will remember how hard they worked and how many people they still couldn't save, then concluded: "So I say, my friends, that we go out there today and we kick coronavirus's ass!" But it's the president who's able to seize prime time, abetted by networks who knowing that his briefings have made objectively false claims fall back on the easy answer that when the president speaks during an emergency, that is by definition news. (It's true: If the president is spreading misinformation, deliberately or otherwise, in a public health crisis, that is absolutely news. That doesn't mean that airing it live is a service.) Mr. Trump's career has always been based on the premise that appearance is everything. That may be proving effective for him now, as measured by his cable ratings and his rising poll numbers. But there are limits to this media strategy; you can't simply give a disease a mean nickname or dismiss it as if it were Don Lemon or Nancy Pelosi. You can go a long way, in TV and politics, producing a successful reality show. A virus, ultimately, produces its own reality. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Television |
A new chapter opened Thursday in the drama over the future of the 37 billion Redstone media empire, with CBS Corporation and Viacom announcing plans to explore a reunion, reigniting a plan that fizzled a little more than a year ago. In simultaneously released statements, CBS and Viacom which were part of the same company from 2000 to 2006 said that their boards had created special committees of independent directors to "evaluate a potential combination." Yet the companies cautioned that there could be "no assurance that this process will result in a transaction or on what terms any transaction may occur." In rekindling the possibility, though, both companies are acknowledging that they must get bigger to remain competitive in a media industry that now prioritizes scale. In the past year, The Walt Disney Company has agreed to buy most of 21st Century Fox in a deal that would form an entertainment colossus for the age of streaming. AT T is still pursuing an 85.4 billion acquisition of Time Warner. At the same time, traditional media companies are contending with technology companies like Apple and Facebook that have moved into the entertainment business. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Media |
The fight for control of Viacom is settled, but the drama over its future is far from over. Thomas E. Dooley will step down as interim chief executive of Viacom in November, the company announced on Wednesday, setting off a search for a permanent leader of the beleaguered entertainment conglomerate that includes the MTV, Comedy Central and Nickelodeon cable television networks and the Paramount Pictures film and television studio. Mr. Dooley, who started at Viacom in 1980 and was a longstanding partner to Viacom's recently ousted chief executive, Philippe P. Dauman, stands to receive 62.4 million upon his departure, according to Equilar, a compensation research firm. Mr. Dauman departed the company this month with a total severance package valued at about 72 million. Viacom's board announced a series of initiatives on Wednesday intended to "improve the company's financial flexibility" and to position the company for future growth. That includes cutting its dividend and initiating plans to gain access to debt markets to provide greater financial flexibility. Viacom also announced that it was no longer exploring the sale of a minority stake in Paramount, an issue that emerged as one of the central factors in the fight for control of the company. Mr. Dauman had advocated such a deal, while Sumner M. Redstone and his daughter, Shari Redstone, opposed it. The company said that the decision preserved other strategic options for the company. "While there is more work to do, the actions announced today are an important first step towards realizing the value of Viacom's exceptional assets and positioning the company for the future," Ms. Redstone said in a statement. The continued shake up at Viacom follows a turbulent four months for the company, one of the crown jewels in Mr. Redstone's 40 billion media empire. A fierce battle over his companies erupted in May, pitting Mr. Redstone, who is 93 and in poor health, and his daughter against his longtime confidants and Viacom directors. Through a private theater chain company, National Amusements, founded by his father, Mr. Redstone controls about 80 percent of the voting shares in Viacom and CBS. The two sides reached a settlement in August, leading to the dismissal of Mr. Dauman, the appointment of Mr. Dooley as interim chief and the remaking of Viacom's board. While Mr. Dooley initially wanted the top job, he realized he might not get it and was willing to step aside in the best interests of the company, according to a person with knowledge of his thinking. "As I am sure you can imagine, this was an extremely difficult decision," Mr. Dooley said on Wednesday in a memo to staff members. "I have called Viacom home for 36 years." There is no question that Viacom is in dire straits. The company has reported persistent declines in profits and revenue and its share price has plummeted more than 50 percent in the last two years. Its television networks have struggled to hold on to viewers and adapt to the digital age. Paramount Pictures has delivered disappointment after disappointment at the box office. On Wednesday, Viacom disclosed that its profit for the quarter ending Sept. 30 would fall well below Wall Street expectations yet again. The company said that its adjusted earnings per share for the quarter would be about 65 to 70 cents; analysts had expected about 98 cents. The company attributed its revised financial expectations, in part, to writing down a 115 million charge at Paramount related to the expected performance of a yet to be released film. Viacom did not disclose which film, but "Monster Trucks," an animated, live action hybrid about turbocharged vehicles inhabited by bloblike creatures, was envisioned and budgeted as an all ages fantasy. But the finished movie, directed by Chris Wedge, whose credits include "Ice Age," ended up much more narrow in appeal. Paramount now expects young children as the primary audience when it is released in mid January. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Media |
Wistful and punishing, "Private Peaceful" spends a word drenched, story sodden night with Tommo Peaceful, a 17 year old English soldier. The time is 1916, the place is Ypres, Belgium. And Tommo, convicted of cowardice in the face of the enemy, will be shot at dawn. This solo show, by Pemberley Productions at the TBG Mainstage Theater, is an adaptation of a young adult novel by Michael Morpurgo, a man best known in theater circles anyway for writing the book that became "War Horse," the ideal play to see if you've ever wondered if a puppet could make you cry. (Yes. Hatfuls.) Even "War Horse" isn't as grim as "Private Peaceful." At least the horse makes it out alive. Shane O'Regan coltish, sky eyed plays Tommo and about 20 other roles, too. All of the action is set in Tommo's prison as the boy counts down the hours on his watch, a gift from his beloved older brother, Charlie. As the time ticks relentlessly by, Tommo's mind makes a getaway, scurrying back to his rural school days spent with Charlie and their friend Molly, then to a few short years as a farm laborer, then to his weeks as an underage recruit and finally to the blasted waste of a barren battlefield. "No fields or trees, not a blade of grass simply a land of mud and craters." It's there, in a stinking, dirt filled trench, wounded and half buried, that Tommo undertakes an act of great bravery. A brutal sergeant calls it cowardice, and Tommo is sentenced to die. Mr. O'Regan directed by Simon Reade, who also adapted the novel for the stage attacks the various roles like he's engaged in a full body, full spirit workout. He's an all rounder, precise in his stance, specific in his gestures, flexible in his voice, slipping from one character to the next with preternatural ease. His Tommo is callow, with a flutelike voice, his Charlie gently arch and charming, the other men delineated with military efficiency. His women are arguably wobblier, but this is a war story. There aren't many women here. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Theater |
Looking for a way to cross the street without getting hit by anything from a truck to a skateboard? The aerial bridge is just the answer. The best in New York is certainly the triple height, copper clad proto Art Deco bridge across West 32nd Street near Broadway, marked for demolition in 1995 but since given a mysterious reprieve. The most famous aerial bridge in New York history, the late 19th century Bridge of Sighs, was not for pedestrian convenience it was for prisoners going from the courthouse to the Egyptian style Tombs prison on Centre Street. Sometimes bridges have been erected over streets sidewalk to sidewalk, like the elevated structure that went up in 1867 across Broadway and Fulton to permit people to cross without stepping in puddles, mud and worse. More familiar is the pedestrian skywalk between two related structures, such as that connecting the old Metropolitan Life buildings across East 24th Street from Madison to Park Avenue South. The two Saks Gimbels bridges built in the 1920s west of Broadway, at 33rd and 32nd Streets, were a particularly unusual pair, connecting three buildings. They came about in this way: Saks Company built a store, now the Herald Center, in 1902 between 33rd and 34th Street; and Gimbel Brothers built a full block emporium in 1910 from 32nd to 33rd Street, today the Manhattan Mall. In 1922, when Saks moved to its present store at Fifth Avenue and 50th Street, Gimbels took over the old building, operating it as Saks 34th Street. In 1924 the two stores were joined at the second floor level with a Beaux Arts style copper clad walkway. It was designed by Shreve, Lamb Blake, a precursor of Shreve, Lamb Harmon, soon to design the Empire State Building. Sometimes even a pedestrian bridge and this one was attractive if not remarkable sees a little excitement. In 1943, according to The Herald Tribune, the bridal salon at Saks 34th was disturbed by the unfamiliar cries of "Stop thief!" as a man poked a revolver through a cashier's grill, grabbed 5,000 and high tailed it through the children's dress department and over the bridge to Gimbels, where he disappeared into the crowd, evading his pursuers. How does Broadway rebound? Join us virtually as we visit the now bustling theaters to find out. Go inside rehearsal of the Tony Award winning "Hadestown," enjoy "Girl From the North Country" songs and more. That bridge was demolished in the 1960s, when E. J. Korvette took over Saks 34th Street. The second bridge was built in 1926, when Gimbels expanded south, taking over the 1912 Cuyler Building at 116 West 32nd Street, and engaged Shreve Lamb to connect offices in the Cuyler Building to the main store. The architects' design was a no holds barred exemplar of the pedestrian bridge, a triplex skywalk with broad windows and magnificent copper cladding. Although there is classical ornament, such as pilasters and coffers, the flat, machinelike character of the material suggests Art Deco, then barely emergent in the United States. In 1982 The New Yorker called the bridge "the Chartres of aerial tunnelry." The triplex skywalk with views looking west down 32nd Street from Sixth Avenue in August 2014. When they designed the bridges, Richmond H. Shreve and William F. Lamb were just emerging from their ad hoc partnership with Carrere Hastings; in the early 1920s the joint firms designed structures like the superclassical Standard Oil Building at 26 Broadway. The New York City Art Commission, now the Public Design Commission, had to review bridge designs even if they were over, not actually on, public land. About the aesthetics of the 1926 bridge it said little, but the commission did mention with disapproval that such bridges have a tendency to block light and air to the street. Nevertheless, it gave the nod to this one. Other skywalks have also been allowed to fly, despite far more severe inroads on light and air. In 1982 Hunter College, at Lexington Avenue and East 68th Street, built two skywalks across Lexington for the benefit of students, blocking the view down Lexington of the Chrysler and Citicorp buildings for many Upper East Siders. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Real Estate |
Paul Taylor, the modern dance visionary who died on Wednesday, had been carefully laying the groundwork for how his company would proceed without him. Four years ago, Mr. Taylor broadened the mission of the company to include works created by outside choreographers, saying he hoped that would help guarantee performances for decades to come. Then, in May, it was announced that Michael Novak, a 35 year old dancer in the Taylor company, would become the artistic director designate of the Paul Taylor Dance Foundation. The idea was that Mr. Novak would listen, watch and take notes until Mr. Taylor decided that he was ready to retire. Now, following Mr. Taylor's death from renal failure at 88, Mr. Novak is preparing perhaps sooner than he expected to take the reins of an organization that includes two dance companies, an archive and a school. He will also have a significant role in preserving and interpreting the legacy of one of the most important American choreographers of the 20th century. Mr. Taylor was a towering figure whose career as a choreographer began in the 1950s, rooted in experimentalism. He went on to become known for striking musicality, accessibility, an often eccentric sense of humor and a refined, at times highly technical use of everyday movement. Over the decades, he created many works now regarded as modern classics. Read about the choice of Michael Novak to lead the company. Mr. Novak said in a telephone interview that he intended to be a responsible steward of Mr. Taylor's work while bringing it to a younger audience, and acknowledged some of the challenges he expected to face. "How do we take something that is a historical legacy," he said, "how do we make it relevant and exciting and contextualize it for audiences now without diminishing the integrity of the history of the work?" The steps Mr. Taylor took over the past few years stand in contrast with how other prominent modern choreographers prepared for what would come after their deaths. Each grappled with a central question: How can works invented by a master choreographer and interpreted by a dedicated company survive their creator? Merce Cunningham, for one, took a radical approach, stating a month before his death in 2009 that his company would dissolve after a final, two year tour. He had also prepared detailed records of his dances so they could be licensed and produced by other companies. Something of a cautionary tale emerged from the events that followed Martha Graham's death in 1991. Court battles over the ownership of her works lasted about a decade before a federal judge ruled that they belonged to the Martha Graham Dance Company rather than to Graham's designated heir. Mr. Taylor, who was a dancer in Graham's company in the 1950s and early '60s, was taken aback by the confusion and vitriol that followed her death, said John Tomlinson, the executive director of the Paul Taylor Dance Foundation. After the Graham litigation began, Mr. Taylor selected works he wanted to copyright in his name and the Taylor board formed an intellectual property committee to determine ownership and legacy. Mr. Tomlinson said that the foundation is the main beneficiary of Mr. Taylor's estate. Under the terms of Mr. Taylor's will, the 147 dances he created are to become the property of the foundation, Mr. Tomlinson said, along with real estate and other assets, including works by artists like Jasper Johns and Alex Katz. In many ways, Mr. Tomlinson said, the Taylor organization will proceed as usual, but some changes are possible. For instance, he said, Taylor dancers and other employees have traditionally worked without contracts. Now, Mr. Tomlinson said, the foundation may consider giving those people, including the 18 dancers in the Paul Taylor Dance Company and the six in the company known as Taylor 2, formal employment agreements. Both companies are expected to remain largely intact, Mr. Tomlinson added. But even with that continuity, it remains to be seen how the company that bears Mr. Taylor's his name will fare without the benefit of his presence and instruction. "Once the master is gone things obviously change," said Edward Villella, the New York City Ballet star who went on to become the founding artistic director of the Miami City Ballet. "A certain amount of trepidation is involved." Over the past couple of months, Mr. Novak said, he sought to soak up as much as he could from Mr. Taylor, making a series of early morning visits to his apartment on the Lower East Side to present and discuss his ideas for the 2019 and '20 seasons. In the future, he said, he plans to turn to other foundation veterans for assistance and guidance, including Bettie De Jong, the longtime rehearsal director and a former lead dancer; the associate rehearsal director, Michael Trusnovec, who just celebrated his 20th season as a dancer in the company; and the assistant to the artistic director, Andy LeBeau. He will also be able to draw upon the Taylor organization's Repertory Preservation Project. Mr. Tomlinson said Mr. Taylor began that effort in the early 1990s, using videotape and Labanotation, a method for recording dance movements on paper, to create an exacting record of how works were performed. Since then, close to 100 dances have been videotaped, Mr. Tomlinson said, and many dozens described on paper. Mr. Novak will also be able to call upon past company members with experience in performing particular dances to help inform current members of the company. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Dance |
The call to arms came in the form of a memo. Marjorie Pritchard, the deputy managing editor of The Boston Globe, reached out to editorial boards at other newspapers last week. "We propose to publish an editorial on August 16 on the dangers of the administration's assault on the press and ask others to commit to publishing their own editorials on the same date," the memo said. As of Tuesday, more than 200 newspapers, including The New York Times, had signed on. The Globe's effort to rally editorial writers across the country came in reaction to the president's stepped up attacks on the media. At a recent rally in Pennsylvania, Mr. Trump pointed to the group of journalists covering the event, saying they "only make up stories" and called them "fake, fake disgusting news." On Twitter, he has revived an old phrase "the enemy of the people" to describe "much of the media" and "the Fake News Media." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Media |
It happened by accident, really. After a rocket launch aborted mid flight, grounding two astronauts who were supposed to go to the International Space Station, NASA had to shift its schedule. Without thinking much of it, the agency announced that Christina Koch and Anne McClain two women would do the spacewalk instead. "First All Woman Spacewalk," celebratory headlines declared, just in time for Women's History Month, only to turn critical when it was announced that, actually, the spacewalk would not happen as planned, because NASA didn't have enough spacesuits to fit the two female astronauts. (Both needed a size medium.) "Make another suit," Hillary Clinton tweeted. NASA did prepare another suit, and Ms. Koch and Jessica Meir made history on Friday when they ventured outside the International Space Station for a seven hour mission. It was not the first female spacewalk ever, as President Trump suggested in a congratulatory call with the women as they paused from their work on the station's surface (Ms. Meir, after a four to five second delay, corrected his mistake). But it was the first all women spacewalk in more than five decades of spacewalking. Jessica Bennett, The Times' gender editor, and Mary Robinette Kowal, author of the "Lady Astronaut" book series, discussed the walk's significance along with spacesuit construction, menstruation in space and the ways in which the accomplishments of women astronauts don't exactly pervade the public consciousness. Read more about the spacewalk here. Jessica Bennett: So these women are replacing a power controller. And then Ms. Koch will remain in orbit for a number of months, so that researchers can observe the effects of long term spaceflight on a woman's body. It's fascinating to think that we just don't know enough about the effects of spaceflight on a woman's body. Mary Robinette Kowal: It's not surprising, given how few women have been in space. Of the more than 560 people who have been in space around the world, only 65 have been women. There are some things that we've learned from the ground, such as the fact that men and women have different sweat patterns. Men sweat more than comparably fit women, and the areas where they sweat the most occur in different parts of the body. On a spacewalk, the astronauts have to wear a cooling and ventilation garment to maintain their body temperature at a safe level, but it was designed for male bodies. JB: So basically like how office temperatures are set at the temperature for men's bodies. I'm shivering in my cubicle as I type this. MRK: Exactly. The fictional "ideal man" is used to set chair heights, temperatures and even ladder rungs. But there are other questions, about things like vision, that can only be tested in space. Male astronauts go through a vision change over extended periods in microgravity. They get nearsighted, essentially. Women haven't experienced the same change. We don't know why. JB: Speaking of bodily differences, I will never forget reading about how, as Sally Ride prepared to become the first American woman in space, in 1983, she was asked by male NASA engineers how many tampons she might need for a week. "Is 100 the right number?" they asked her. "No, that would not be the right number," she told them. Can we agree that is a lot of tampons? Apparently they strung them together like sausages, tying their strings so they wouldn't float away. MRK: Can you imagine the bandolier of tampons floating around the cabin? They ended up cutting the number back to 50. To be fair, the engineers probably did some intelligent math by looking at tables of absorbency and average flow. However, if there had been any women on the team, they might have known to just ask her and then double that for redundancy. JB: The agency also designed a makeup kit for Sally Ride, right? MRK: Yup. Because of course a woman would need makeup in space! Sally Ride, in fact, did not want it. "It was about the last thing in the world that I wanted to be spending my time in training on," she said in a 2002 interview. JB: What happens when you try to put makeup on in space? MRK: You can't include powder, because it would float and become an eye irritant. So, you've got mascara, eyeliner, blush, eye shadow, eye makeup remover and lip gloss. JB: God forbid you go into space without lip gloss. MRK: While Ride had no interest, Rhea Seddon was aware of how the media treated women without makeup. "If there would be pictures taken of me from space, I didn't want to fade into the background," she said. This time NASA asked the women astronauts to help them develop the kit. JB: This is so fascinating, because this wasn't just considered fluff these were serious conversations happening at the time about whether women could and should be allowed in space. As I understand it, there's a report from the 1960s that raised concerns about putting "a temperamental psychophysiologic human" (read: a hormonal woman) together with a "complicated machine" (the spacecraft). The authors of that same report also feared that microgravity might increase the incidence of "retrograde menstruation" i.e., blood might flow the other way. MRK: Yes. We know this because of a series of experiments conducted by Dr. W. Randolph Lovelace II with women who called themselves the "First Lady Astronaut Trainees." The Air Force started the program, then worried that people might think they were actually going to send a woman into space. So they passed it off to Dr. Lovelace's clinic. He ran a group of women pilots through the same tests he gave the male Mercury astronauts. Among other things, he found that they handled stress testing significantly better than men. JB: This happened in 1960, and yet there is a famous 1962 NASA letter written to a young girl who was interested in becoming an astronaut, in which the agency explains that they have "no present plans to employ women on spaceflights" because of the training and "physical characteristics" required. MRK: Well, by that point, they realized that they wouldn't need receptionists and secretaries in space. Seriously. That was one of the reasons for the support of the initial testing. JB: How much better did those women actually handle the stress? MRK: Let's compare John Glenn, the first American to orbit the Earth, with Jerrie Cobb, the first of the First Lady Astronaut Trainees. Glenn's stress testing consisted of sitting in a dark room for three hours. There was a desk with some paper. He wrote poetry. Cobb and the other women went into a sensory deprivation tank. It was thought that six hours in the tank would induce hallucinations. Cobb was in there for 9 hours and 40 minutes when it was finally ended by the staff. But she didn't write any poetry so ... you know. One of the women in the FLATs was a mother of eight, and I always imagine her feeling like this was a vacation. As a side note: For years, the Air Force thought women could not fly jets, because their ability to tolerate the high gravity forces of acceleration seemed to be lower. It turns out the G suits were built for male bodies and didn't make contact in the right places for women. When they got suits that fit, miraculously, they performed as well. MRK: Certainly this generation of suit, but it's important for people to understand how outdated these spacesuits are. The suits we're talking about were designed in the late 1970s based on Apollo technology. Rhea Seddon, one of the first six astronauts, worked with NASA to create suits that would work for women. So they designed extra small, small, medium, large, and extra large suits. The extra smalls were never built. The smalls and extra larges were cut for budget reasons. Men complained about not being able to fit, so NASA brought the extra larges back. They never brought back the smalls. These suits are modular, so you can swap out parts, but it's a time consuming process, never designed to be done in zero gravity. So when they decided to restaff the last spacewalk and postpone the all female walk? That was absolutely the right choice. JB: So do we think NASA might consider hiring a female spacesuit designer? MRK: In fact, they have. The lead spacesuit engineers at NASA for the Artemis suits, which we'll take to the moon, are Amy Ross and Kristine Davis. It's a truly beautiful piece of engineering, with a back entry, which not only makes donning it easier but also means that the geometry of the shoulders allows for a wider range of motion. One other thing I want to mention is that this spacewalk won't truly be an all woman team. The robotic arm will have to be driven by one of the men on the station. The spacewalk on Oct. 10 was the first time that women outnumbered the men. The coordinator on the ground was Stephanie Wilson, also an astronaut. Jessica Meir operated the robotic arm, and Christina Koch spacewalked with Andrew Morgan. He was the only man involved in the spacewalk. NASA is working on having gender equity in the program. Currently they have 38 active astronauts and 12 of them are women. But it's an international station. The other countries have only three active women astronauts. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Science |
Your disturbing findings remind us that federal Civil Service employees face a Faustian bargain. They can preserve their careers or risk their jobs by working openly on one of the great challenges facing humanity: climate change. Global warming is already damaging communities in every state, whether the Trump administration wants to stick its head in the sand or not. Americans are bearing the brunt of these impacts. Thankfully, our founders framed the Constitution with an eye toward checks and balances among coequal branches of government. If there were ever a time when those checks were needed, it's now. To that end, the Senate's Clean Economy Act of 2020 can tip the scales back in favor of logical thinking. The bill calls for a national goal of net zero carbon emissions by 2050, and it would place the might of the federal government behind those goals. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Opinion |
That's an adage in the news business that most journalists try to live by, even in a time that rewards self promotion. And it's a rule that Megyn Kelly flouted again and again. While this tendency was not much of a factor in her previous job, as a prime time anchor at Fox News, it created complications during her 18 month stint at NBC. The network canceled her show, "Megyn Kelly Today," days after she suggested on air that dressing up in blackface for Halloween was appropriate for white people. Ms. Kelly's comments, and the uproar that followed, felt familiar to many fans and critics. NBC and Megyn Kelly part ways with the full 69 million from her contract. Those who become stars at major broadcast networks have a rare talent for being interesting and innocuous at the same time. Ms. Kelly, a former corporate lawyer who made her name as a sometimes confrontational interviewer, struggled to walk that line. Here is a look at the times Ms. Kelly became the story. Weighing In on Santa and Jesus On her Fox News show, "The Kelly File," Ms. Kelly took issue with an essay in Slate arguing that the popular image of Santa Claus as a white man was due for a makeover. "For all of you kids watching at home, Santa just is white," Ms. Kelly said. Later in the discussion, she added, "Jesus was a white man, too." In the panel discussion that followed, she did not acknowledge research that traces St. Nicholas to a fourth century bishop in what is now Turkey and scholarship that has long debated what Jesus actually looked like. Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert, who hosted shows on Comedy Central at the time, led the rhetorical charge against Ms. Kelly's remarks. "You do know Jesus wasn't born in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, right?" Mr. Stewart said. Ms. Kelly's feud with Donald J. Trump which broadened her appeal beyond her Fox News base began in Cleveland during the first Republican presidential debate in August 2015. Before a prime time audience, Ms. Kelly questioned the candidate about his history of denigrating women as pigs, dogs and "slobs." After the event, Mr. Trump added Ms. Kelly to his list of Twitter targets, saying she "really bombed" as a moderator. He also told an interviewer that, during the debate, Ms. Kelly had "blood coming out of her wherever" a comment widely interpreted as a reference to menstruation. Mr. Trump refused to participate in a later debate that Ms. Kelly moderated in Iowa. The attention raised her profile but also made her the target of death threats, she later wrote in her memoir. Fox News stood by its host, issuing a statement that Mr. Trump had an "extreme, sick obsession" with her. After months of Mr. Trump calling Ms. Kelly "crazy," "overrated" and "sick," Roger E. Ailes, then the chairman of Fox News, tried to broker a truce between his star and the candidate at Trump Tower. Weeks later, Ms. Kelly sat down to interview the presumptive Republican presidential nominee. But the tough questions went missing. Critics described the tone of the interview part of a Fox News prime time special that aired in May 2016 as "crushed velvet" and "neither groundbreaking nor especially informative." After the interview, Mr. Trump posted a supportive message on Twitter: "Well done Megyn and they all lived happily ever after!" The third guest for "Sunday Night With Megyn Kelly" was Alex Jones, the conspiracy theorist who founded Infowars. Before the episode aired, families of children and teachers killed in the 2012 shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn. which Mr. Jones has called a hoax pleaded with NBC not to give him publicity, especially in a segment scheduled for Father's Day. Before the interview, critics accused Ms. Kelly of being too cozy with Mr. Jones, especially after Infowars published audio of her cajoling and flattering him to do the interview by saying she did not want to portray him "as some boogeyman." Mr. Jones also released a photo from the day of the interview that showed him and Ms. Kelly in a car. In the picture, she was smiling and wearing sunglasses. Parents of children killed in the Sandy Hook shooting asked NBC to spike the interview, and a Connecticut affiliate announced that it would not air the program. Ms. Kelly was also disinvited from a Sandy Hook charity event and accused by some viewers of infecting NBC with Fox News style conservatism. Face to face with Mr. Jones, Ms. Kelly challenged him repeatedly and described his claims as "reckless accusation, followed by equivocations and excuses." But by then the public relations battle had been lost. With her Sunday night troubles behind her, it was time for the unveiling of Ms. Kelly as the host of "Megyn Kelly Today." Her challenge? Prove to audiences and the NBC executives who had given her a three year, 69 million contract that she could make herself at home in the bubbly environs of morning television. Her first guests were the creators and cast of the rebooted NBC sitcom "Will Grace." Debra Messing, a star of the show, seemed enthusiastic about promoting the return of the groundbreaking comedy which broke taboos about the portrayal of gay characters in mainstream entertainment in the late 1990s. During the segment Ms. Kelly called out to a "Will Grace" superfan who happened to be in the audience, inviting him to the stage of Studio 6A. The audience applauded as the beaming man received hugs from the sitcom's stars. And then came Ms. Kelly's question: "Is it true that you became a lawyer, and you became gay, because of Will?" The suggestion that sexual orientation is a choice prompted many of Ms. Messing's fans to criticize her participation on Ms. Kelly's program, and the actress said on Instagram that her appearance with the show had been a mistake. "Regret going on," Ms. Messing wrote. " Dismayed by her comments ." And despite a big promotional push, the show's first week drew lackluster ratings. When Ms. Kelly was in law school, she found herself gaining weight. Eager to slim down, she asked her stepfather to shame her whenever she went into the kitchen. "And it works," she said with a thumbs up gesture during a segment about a mother who posted photos of the svelte physique she was able to maintain while raising three young children . "What's your excuse?" the mother added in a caption. Ms. Kelly went all in on the shaming regimen during her interview of the mother. "You should parlay the shaming thing into a professional business," the host said. "Because some of us want to be shamed!" The comments did not go over well, with Meghan McCain noting on Twitter that fat shaming has "real life ramifications." "I still cringe when I hear a person attacked for his or her weight," Ms. Kelly said on her show the next day. "Please know I would never encourage that toward any person. I've been thinking a lot about why I once encouraged it toward myself." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Media |
Everything is shut: no schools, no shops, no bars and restaurants, no meetings. Just "Stay at home." It's painful for me and all Italians. CREMA, Italy An open society in lockdown: It's almost an oxymoron, a mind game. Until it happens, and life suddenly changes. It's happening to me and all Italians. Beginning in the north, where I live, and now in the whole country. Everything is shut: no schools, no meetings, no parties, no movies, no plays, no sporting events. No bars and no restaurants. No shops open, except food stores and pharmacies. Across the country, as of Thursday, 15,113 people have contracted the virus (about half are in hospital); 1,016 have died and 1,258 have recovered. The Italian government's mantra is three words: "Restate a casa" Stay at home. What happens to daily life in a small, old town near Milan during an epidemic? Crema is pretty, wealthy and proud, a quintessential Italian community where everyone knows each other. It has been described in books and became a backdrop for the film "Call Me by Your Name." Outside my window, I can see the whole of the main square, Piazza del Duomo. As I write, it's 10 a.m. and the square is empty a bizarre silence. Normally, the square teems with students, shoppers, farmers, friends heading to cafes for their morning cappuccino. Beneath my window, pensioners usually gather to catch the early sun. Today the sun bounces off the bricks of the cathedral, undisturbed except for a lonely cyclist pedaling through the Torrazzo gate a woman, apparently, though it's hard to say behind the face mask. Even the church bells sound different in the empty quiet. When people have appeared, they've given one another a wide berth. So un Italian. Normally, people charge into each other and greet with affection, shaking hands, kissing and embracing. Italy is a touchy feely society. We tend to trust our senses and intuition more than grand ideas (those are Germany's trademark). For us, life is food, wine, music, arts, design, landscape; the smell of the countryside; the warmth of one's family, and the embrace of friends. Those involve our mouths, our noses, our ears, our eyes, our hands. Fear of Covid 19 forces us to repudiate those senses. It's painful. Crema is less than 15 miles away from the original lockdown areas of Codogno and Castiglione d'Adda, and our hospital has been swamped by Covid 19 patients. I know several people who work there doctors, nurses, staff. They're exhausted, but don't give up. Lombardy's public health service is the best in Italy, and Italy's is widely considered the best in Europe. Still, it's hard. As of Wednesday, there were 91 Covid 19 cases in Crema, and 263 in the wider area around it known as Cremasco. On Tuesday, three young people started a fund raising campaign to support our hospital; in one day they collected 80,000 euros (close to 90,000). "But what do you do with the money if protective equipment for doctors and nurses is not available?" an acquaintance who works at the hospital texted to me. You might assume that our inboxes would be bursting with emails, now that people are at home with time on their hands. Not so. Most emails announce the cancellation of events and the interruption of services. Even the deluge of WhatsApp messages, which flooded smartphones with news and jokes at the beginning of the epidemic, has dried up. Facebook posts, by contrast, haven't. People put up little manifestoes to tell the outside world what's on their minds, like messages in a digital bottle. Irene Soave, a colleague at Corriere della Sera and a fellow author, wrote: "The least panic stricken are the people like me, who tend to panic. My so called 'calm friends' call me ten times a day to ask: 'Are you worried?' But their voices sound an octave too high." After lunch at home with my wife, Ortensia: Large groups are to be avoided we go for a walk with our dog, Mirta. We're allowed to do that. Detailed instructions from the government include a list of FAQs, and walks in the countryside are permitted "as long as it is not in a group, and keeping a distance of one meter from each other." Other common questions? "Can I go to work?" (Answer: yes, but you have to prove that's where you're going.) "Can I go and see my friends in another town?" (Answer: no.) "Can I go away on vacation?" (Answer: forget about it.) So off we walk, in the lukewarm sun, among flat fields and shallow ditches, with the snow covered mountains around Bergamo in the background. The sky is lacquered blue. Mirta a black Labrador is blissfully oblivious of the epidemic, enthusiastic about the smell of the coming Italian spring. Along the tracks, normally used by local farmers, we meet a few joggers. Most wave hello. No one stops. Our son Antonio, 27, runs a restaurant not far from here on a little lake created by spring water from the Serio River. He employs six people, about his age. They tried to keep going, but earlier this month new rules forced restaurants even those in the countryside, like Antonio's to shut at 6 p.m. Although ingredients could be bought and were being delivered, it didn't make sense to open just for lunch. People can't travel or meet up, and those who do so don't enjoy themselves. Some employers in Italy's huge tourist industry have sent their staff on vacation or unpaid leave. Antonio decided to pay his staff's salaries even while the restaurant lies shut. But how long can he afford that? We return home, along semi deserted streets. I switch on the television. Serie A, Italy's main soccer league, is suspended. No matches. Watching reruns of last night's N.B.A. basketball or last weekend's Premier League soccer, played to packed stadiums, seems weird. I walk back to my office to finish writing my column for Corriere della Sera. I'm going there tomorrow. Milan is 30 miles away. I will have to carry my press card and fill in a form declaring that my travel is for work, in case the police stop me. Life at the paper, I'm told, has changed. Those who can work from home are invited to do so; desk staff are down to the bare minimum. Most companies are doing the same (in Italy we use the expression "smartworking," implying that going into an office is not that smart). But information is vital, as the government keeps saying. So we keep going, one way or another, and that's not bad. We feel like firefighters in a fire at least we have something to do. Late afternoon, I leave my study in Crema and head back home. The light has changed, the square is still empty. I walk along by the Duomo, a jewel of Romanesque Gothic architecture. It was burned to the ground by a vindictive German emperor in the 12th century, after a long siege; the "Cremaschi" the people of Crema built a new one. I try the side door: It's open. Inside, it's dark. In a side chapel, there is a wooden crucifix carved in the 13th century, to which people in town prayed for help during the plague of 1630 1631, described in Alessandro Manzoni's "The Betrothed," and again in 1747. Today, a woman is sitting in the front. She hears me but doesn't turn her head. I leave the church. Suddenly, there's loud music outside. Noise at last! But we all know what it is. The resident lunatic who spends his days cycling back and forth along the main streets, with a huge boombox mounted on the back of his bike. A few months ago, someone stole a previous boombox, and people in Crema raised money to buy him a new, louder one. He loves old hits, apparently. Today it's "Ti Amo," by Umberto Tozzi. It's absurd, but nicely so. Life goes on in Italy, after all. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Opinion |
Should older people in good health start taking aspirin to prevent heart attacks, strokes, dementia and cancer? No, according to a study of more than 19,000 people, including whites 70 and older, and blacks and Hispanics 65 and older. They took low dose aspirin 100 milligrams or a placebo every day for a median of 4.7 years. Aspirin did not help them and may have done harm. Taking it did not lower their risks of cardiovascular disease, dementia or disability. And it increased the risk of significant bleeding in the digestive tract, brain or other sites that required transfusions or admission to the hospital. The results were published on Sunday in three articles in The New England Journal of Medicine. One disturbing result puzzled the researchers because it had not occurred in previous studies: a slightly greater death rate among those who took aspirin, mostly because of an increase in cancer deaths not new cancer cases, but death from the disease. That finding needs more study before any conclusions can be drawn, the authors cautioned. Scientists do not know what to make of it, particularly because earlier studies had suggested that aspirin could lower the risk of colorectal cancer. The researchers had expected that aspirin would help prevent heart attacks and strokes in the study participants, so the results came as a surprise "the ugly facts which slay a beautiful theory," the leader of the study, Dr. John McNeil, of the department of epidemiology and preventive medicine at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia, said in a telephone interview. Like the Science Times page on Facebook. Sign up for the Science Times newsletter. The news may also come as a shock to millions of people who have been dutifully swallowing their daily pills like a magic potion to ward off all manner of ills. Although there is good evidence that aspirin can help people who have already had heart attacks or strokes, or who have a high risk that they will occur, the drug's value is actually not so clear for people with less risk, especially older ones. The new report is the latest in a recent spate of clinical trials that have been trying to determine who really should take aspirin. One study published in August found no benefit in low risk patients. Another found that aspirin could prevent cardiovascular events in people with diabetes, but that the benefits were outweighed by the risk of major bleeding. A third study found that dose matters, and that heavier people might require more aspirin to prevent heart attacks, strokes and cancer. The newest findings apply only to people just like those in the study: in the same age ranges, and with no history of dementia, physical disability, heart attacks or strokes. (Blacks and Hispanics were included in the study at a younger age than whites because they have higher risks than do whites for dementia and cardiovascular disease.) In addition, most did not take aspirin regularly before entering the study. The message for the public is that healthy older people should not begin taking aspirin. "If you don't need it, don't start it," Dr. McNeil said. But those who have already been using it regularly should not quit based on these findings, he said, recommending that they talk to their doctors first. Dr. McNeil also emphasized that the new findings do not apply to people who have already had heart attacks or strokes, which usually involve blood clots. Those patients need aspirin, because it inhibits clotting. The study, named Aspree, is important because it addresses the unanswered question of whether healthy older people should take aspirin, said Dr. Dr. Evan Hadley, director of the division of geriatrics and gerontology at the National Institute on Aging, which helped pay for the research. The National Cancer Institute, Monash University and the Australian government also paid. Bayer provided aspirin and placebos, but had no other role. "For healthy older people, there's still a good reason to talk to their doctors about what these findings mean for them individually," Dr. Hadley said. "This is the average for a large group. A doctor can help sort out how it applies individually. It's especially important for people already taking aspirin who are over 70. The study didn't include many people who had been taking it, and doesn't address the question of continuing versus stopping." The most widely used guidelines for using aspirin to prevent disease came out in 2016 from experts at the United States Preventive Services Task Force. They recommend the drug to prevent cardiovascular disease and colorectal cancer in many people aged 50 to 59 who have more than a 10 percent risk of having a heart attack or stroke during the next 10 years. (That risk, based on age, blood pressure, cholesterol and others factors, can be estimated with an online calculator from the American Heart Association and the American College of Cardiology.) For people 60 to 69 with the same risk level, the guidelines say it should be an individual decision whether to take aspirin. But for people 70 and over, the guidelines say there's not enough evidence to make any recommendation. Aspree was designed to fill the information gap for older people. Rather than looking only at individual ailments, the study also tried to evaluate aspirin's effect on "disability free survival," meaning whether it could help older people prolong the time in which they remain healthy and independent. "Preventive medicine is focusing on older people, how to keep them out of nursing homes, alive and healthy," Dr. McNeil said. "Why would an elderly person be taking a drug if it doesn't keep them alive and healthy any longer? A lot of the previous studies have looked at aspirin and heart disease. But a lot of drugs do good things and bad things. Just looking at one doesn't seem to be enough." The study enrolled 16,703 people from Australia, and 2,411 from the United States, starting in 2010. They were assigned at random to take low dose aspirin (100 milligrams a day) or a placebo. That is slightly more than the widely sold dose that most people take, 81 milligrams. With a median follow up of 4.7 years, the two groups had no significant difference in their rates of dementia, physical disability or cardiovascular problems. But those on aspirin were more likely to have serious bleeding it occurred in 3.8 percent, as opposed to 2.7 percent in the placebo group. The death rates also differed: 5.9 percent in the aspirin group, and 5.2 percent in those taking placebos. Much of the difference was the results of a higher rate of cancer deaths. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Health |
American Ballet Theater (through July 2) Alexei Ratmansky, the company's artist in residence, pays homage to the great composer Dmitri Shostakovich with a trio of one act ballets set to his music (Friday, Saturday evening and Monday). Another triple bill of Mr. Ratmansky's work, to music by Bernstein, Scarlatti and Stravinsky, is on display at Saturday's matinee. Beginning Tuesday, the company presents Frederick Ashton's cheerful, farm fresh "La Fille Mal Gardee," complete with clogs, maypoles and dancing hens. Mondays through Fridays at 7:30 p.m., Saturdays at 8 p.m., with additional performances at 2 p.m. on Wednesdays and Saturdays; Metropolitan Opera House, Lincoln Center, 212 362 6000, abt.org. (Brian Schaefer) BC Beat (Monday) Broadway meets dance showcase meets casual club night. Established and aspiring choreographers working along the theatrical dance spectrum converge on Cielo's dance floor to test out ideas in front of a rowdy, supportive crowd. Participants at this iteration of the semiannual event include the Broadway veteran team Mary Ann Lamb and Lisa Gajda; Reed Luplau, a ubiquitous dancer on screen and stage; and the event's founder, Jennifer Jancuska. Doors open at 7 p.m., Cielo, 18 Little West 12th Street, West Village, bcbeat.net; 21 . (Schaefer) BJM Les Ballets Jazz de Montreal (Tuesday through May 29) The "jazz" of this Canadian company's name no longer refers to a dance style. Rather, it's a descriptor of what the members aim to do to ballet: spruce it up for modern times. For this engagement, they offer three examples of what they mean: "Rouge," by Rodrigo Pederneiras, conveys group tension and cohesion; "Mono Lisa" is an industrial duet by Itzik Galili; and "Kosmos," by Andonis Foniadakis, channels the "frenetic pace of everyday urban life." Tuesday and Wednesday at 7:30 p.m., Thursday and Friday at 8 p.m., Saturday at 2 p.m. and 8 p.m., Sunday at 2 p.m., Joyce Theater, 175 Eighth Avenue, Manhattan, 212 242 0800, joyce.org. (Schaefer) Justin Cabrillos / Lauren Bakst and Yuri Masnyj (Thursday through May 28) The title of the new collaborative work by Lauren Bakst and Yuri Masnyj, "Re: Nude in a Landscape," suggests both a painting and an email subject line. That combination of aesthetic observation and pragmatic description characterizes this duo's interest in examining the body in performance. They share the evening with Justin Cabrillos, a Brooklyn based choreographer whose solo, "Holdings," makes use of two beige carpets to explore emotional, physical and spiritual extremes. At 8 p.m., Danspace Project, St. Mark's Church, 131 East 10th Street, East Village, 866 811 4111, danspaceproject.org. (Schaefer) Cuba Festival (through Sunday) The historic thawing of relations between the United States and Cuba has inspired hope for increased cultural exchange, and the Joyce has done its part with a 12 day Cuban dance festival that wraps up this weekend with four more performances by Irene Rodriguez Compania. This Havana based troupe combines Spanish flamenco with contemporary dance and Cuban rhythms for infectious performances that honor both tradition and modernity. Friday at 8 p.m.; Saturday at 2 and 8 p.m.; Sunday at 2 p.m.; Joyce Theater, 175 Eighth Avenue, Manhattan, 212 242 0800, joyce.org. (Schaefer) Gelsey Kirkland Ballet (through Sunday) If another one of Tevye's daughters had a shtetl wedding, it might look like "The Wedding Procession" (subtitled "The Jewish Wedding"), a 1944 work by the Russian choreographer Leonid Yakobson, set to a Shostakovich score, which receives three rare performances by this young and impressive company founded by the ballerina Gelsey Kirkland. Also on the program, titled "Mischief, Mischief and More Mischief," is the decadent "Walpurgis Night" and "Harlequinade," a comedic romp starring sly commedia dell'arte characters. Friday and Saturday at 7:30 p.m., Sunday at 2 p.m., GK ArtsCenter, 29 Jay Street, at John Street, Brooklyn, 212 600 0047, gkartscenter.org. (Schaefer) Beth Gill (through May 28) Beth Gill's previous work took inspiration from the desert, charting the light, sounds and shapes of that barren yet vivid landscape. In her new work, "Catacomb," Ms. Gill continues to shrewdly investigate place, but this time her expedition occurs in a surreal, dreamlike space where the unpredictable topography is that of the psyche. Ms. Gill populates her interior world with the performers Maggie Cloud, Jennifer Lafferty, Heather Lang, Stuart Singer and Marilyn Maywald Yahel. At 8 p.m. (no performances Sunday and Monday), Chocolate Factory, 5 49 49th Avenue, Queens, 718 482 7069, chocolatefactorytheater.org. (Schaefer) Italian Dance Connection (Wednesday through May 28) This annual festival, which calls itself Idaco for short and is now in its second year, features a mixed bag of styles and disciplines with more than 20 contemporary dance companies, filmmakers and artists participating. Each evening features dance performances from a handful of rotating companies, paired with a selection of films. This year's theme is "Id entities," which explores one's sense of self whether in terms of race, gender, class or other factors as a source of both pride and confusion. Wednesday through May 27 at 7:30 p.m., May 28 at 5:30 and 7:30 p.m., Sheen Center, 18 Bleecker Street, East Village, sheencenter.org. (Schaefer) Keiko Fujii Dance Company (Friday through Sunday) The Japanese choreographer Keiko Fujii has been making dance in her native Osaka for over three decades, blending modern and jazz with traditional Japanese influences. In the work "Tamashii no Hibiki (Soul Vibrations)," Ms. Fujii's company, joined by several local dancers, seek inner peace while accompanied by the accomplished Taiko drummers Kenny Endo (Friday and Saturday) and Kaoru Watanabe (Sunday). Friday and Saturday at 8 p.m.; Sunday at 3 p.m., 92nd Street Y, 1395 Lexington Avenue, 212 415 5500, 92y.org. (Brian Schaefer) La MaMa Moves! Dance Festival (through May 29) This eclectic East Village festival continues with duets by Jeremy Nelson and Luis Lara Malvacias on Friday. Saturday brings an evening of dance shared by Nico Brown, depicting his Midwest upbringing through minimalism; Poorna Swami, using classical Indian dance to explore "lust and lament"; and Caleb Teicher, paying tribute to the jazz great Chet Baker through Lindy hop, jazz dance and soft shoe tap dancing (also on Sunday). Starting Thursday, Bruno Isakovic's four dancers strip down to reveal body and soul in his work "Disclosures." At various times, La MaMa, 74A East Fourth Street, Manhattan, 212 475 7710, lamama.org. (Schaefer) Juliette Mapp (through Saturday) Since dance is essentially bodies moving through space, it requires a lot of space to practice and perform. And in New York City, space is expensive. In "Luxury Rentals," Ms. Mapp grapples with this dilemma and its impact on the art form while meditating on the life of the dancer its challenges, rewards and the powerful sense of community that dancers share. Ms. Mapp performs alongside Levi Gonzalez, Jimena Paz and Kayvon Pourazar. At 8 p.m., Danspace Project, St. Mark's Church, 131 East 10th Street, Manhattan, 866 811 4111, danspaceproject.org. (Schaefer) New York City Ballet (through May 29) City Ballet's spring season continues with "21st Century Choreographers II," on Friday night and Saturday afternoon, with a lineup featuring Justin Peck's "Belles Lettres" and Alexei Ratmansky's "Concerto DSCH" along with new works by Christopher Wheeldon ("American Rhapsody") and Nicolas Blanc ("Mothership"). The "Classic NYCB II" program, on Saturday evening and Sunday afternoon, includes three Balanchine works ("Serenade," "Duo Concertant," and "Western Symphony") and one by City Ballet's director, Peter Martins ("Hallelujah Junction"). Balanchine's joyful and seasonally appropriate "A Midsummer Night's Dream," set to Mendelssohn's bewitching score, arrives on Tuesday. A full schedule is online. Tuesdays through Thursdays at 7:30 p.m.; Fridays at 8 p.m.; Saturdays at 2 and 8 p.m.; Sundays at 3 p.m., David H. Koch Theater, Lincoln Center, 212 496 0600, nycballet.com. (Schaefer) Jennifer Harrison Newman (through Saturday) "The Geneva Project," an immersive multimedia dance installation, is named after Geneva Varner Clark, Ms. Newman's great aunt. Inspired by photographs of Clark and her family on a Depression era South Carolina farm that Ms. Newman found in the Library of Congress, the dancer and choreographer turns the intimate Jack space into a "tangled southern wilderness" as she grapples with racial and economic marginalization as well as the ghosts of the past. At 8 p.m., Jack, 505 1/2 Waverly Avenue, Brooklyn, jackny.org. (Schaefer) Ariel Rivka Dance (through Saturday) The choreographer Ariel Rivka gathers fellow New York dance makers in a shared evening of performances. The program features three of Ms. Rivka's new works, danced by various configurations of her eight member troupe to live, original music. These are joined by two works, created by Pascal Rioult and performed by his company, that reinterpret familiar scores by Ravel. Heidi Latsky contributes what she calls "timestamps" that address endurance, persistence and survival, and Elisa King performs a solo to jazz saxophone. Friday at 7:30 p.m., Saturday at 2 and 7:30 p.m., New York Live Arts, 219 West 19th Street, Manhattan, 212 924 0077, newyorklivearts.org. (Schaefer) | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Dance |
I was watching Jane Fonda in the new Netflix show "Grace and Frankie," in which she plays a woman who has just been dumped by her husband, and I was amazed to see Jane, who is 77, with the universally dreaded Inner Upper Arm Wiggle Waggle. You know what that is, even if you're not old enough to have it. The flesh of the inner upper arm hangs slack from the bone, as if it's given up hope. If an inner upper arm could talk, it would say: "Oh, why bother? No one is ever going to give me work/take me to bed/ask my opinion of PBS's 'Wolf Hall' versus Broadway's." Fitness trainers will tell you that arm lifts with light weights can prevent wiggle waggle. But if that were true, would Jane Fonda have it? This is hard body Jane, the woman who, back in the '80s, produced the best selling workout videos. When she was 72, she made two more, though they included things like exercises for arthritic hands (and wore a leotard that covered her arms). Five years later, Jane not only bares her upper arms, she pokes the flesh so that it shakes like Jell O. This is a move women do only to torture themselves in department store dressing rooms when trying on sleeveless dresses, or alone in front of their bedroom mirrors. It's a kind of negative self affirmation: Who could ever love me with this? Jane was doing it on TV. I wanted to leap off the couch and scream, "Give that woman an Emmy now!" Excuse me, I have an email question from a reader: Couldn't Jane's slack arm flesh, which in its most extreme form has been called "bat wings" or "chicken wings," been a prosthesis? Theoretically, yes. But the jiggling flesh of the upper inner arm has historically been considered so horrifying that the special effects people decided years ago never to make it. Reels of intestines spilling out of the bodies of the walking dead? Love it! Slimy newborn alien leaping out of an astronaut's chest? Brilliant! That hanging flesh you see on older men and women? That's repulsive. Oh, yeah: this frankly embracing our aging bodies thing that I've been seeing on TV. You can't actually call it a tender embrace; it's more like the pro wrestler Bad News Barrett slamming you with his bull hammer elbow. But at least this stuff is being acknowledged. Like in that recent "Inside Amy Schumer" sketch in which Julia Louis Dreyfus, Tina Fey and Patricia Arquette are celebrating Julia's last day as cinematic sex object. The skit plays off Hollywood's obsession with youth. It ends with Tina saying she has to go home to wax her beard. I was stunned. I am 67, although most days I can easily pass for 66 and 10 months, and about a year ago, I spotted a single coarse hair on my chin. It appeared overnight, as if one of those cinematic prosthetic makers had sneaked into my room and glued it on. A few weeks later, I noticed soft peach fuzz all over my chin. I come out of the spill it all Woodstock generation, but this was too ghastly to confide to anyone. When I spotted a manicure and waxing salon at an out of the way upstate mall, I had what I thought was an original idea: getting my chin waxed. I honestly thought I was the first person to come up with this. When I took the cosmetologist aside and asked how much such a procedure might cost, she pointed to the price list on the wall: "Chin wax, 8." I was amazed: So I am not alone on Hair Chin Island? True, the hair chin stuff and Inner Upper Arm Wiggle Waggle are being played for laughs on screen, but I can remember when "yogurt" was a laugh word on TV. There may soon be a day when sagging arm flesh is considered hot. Maybe Helen Mirren has something to contribute here. She wore a sleeve past her elbow at the Met Gala, which is promising. Oh, sorry, now I've got a question from my friend Sybil: Why don't they have Spanx for arms? Surprise it turns out they do. There's a product called Sleevey Magic, a tight long sleeve undershirt, available in white or black, that appears from the video to work like sausage casing. I've also seen this sort of packaging used on precooked polenta, if that's an image you prefer. You have Sleevey Magic on top and Spanx on the bottom, and when some buff widower takes you in his arms at his niece's wedding, he thinks he's with a retired Olympian. Then he gets you naked in his hotel bed, and you spread out like pancake batter. But here is the secret: Once they have you in the sack, men do not care. Especially the old guys, who are pretty jiggly themselves. They cannot believe their good luck. In their 11th hour, the universe has served up ice cream. It's women who make themselves nuts worrying about these things. The old guys are thinking, "Oh, yeah, jiggle it for me, baby!" And now that we have that settled, it is time for me to hold my hand high, braving my own less than solid under armitage, and wave goodbye. I am ending "Misinformed" as a regular column, though I hope to pop back now and then. It is almost summer, I have a sports car that is old but sweet, and a full tank. The metaphoric road beckons. See you out there. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Style |
In her hour of need, Angelina Jolie Pitt turned to the hard charging Los Angeles divorce lawyer known to TMZ readers and viewers as "the disso queen," the word "disso" being short for dissolution of marriage. "I guess you could say I am unorthodox," said Laura Wasser, who, in addition to movie stars like Ms. Jolie Pitt and Johnny Depp, counsels an eclectic mix of athletes, musicians and reality show stars, including a Kardashian or three. Perhaps the earliest inkling that she had a knack for negotiating on behalf of another was when she was 9 years old and marched into her parents' living room, yellow legal pad and pencil in hand, and demanded that they give her younger brother an allowance. She got her brother money, said her father, Dennis Wasser, himself a well known divorce lawyer who has counseled celebrity clients. "And she took a percentage of it, too," Mr. Wasser added. Like her father before her, Ms. Wasser, a weekend surfer with a weekday penchant for sky high stilettos, has become one of Hollywood's most sought after advisers. In recent days, she has been pulling out all the stops on behalf of Ms. Jolie Pitt, who on Monday filed for divorce from Brad Pitt, demanding sole physical custody of their six children. Ms. Wasser's name appears above that of her famous petitioner on the papers filed with Superior Court of California in Los Angeles County. The legal grounds given for the divorce are irreconcilable differences. Ms. Wasser, 48, represented Mr. Depp in his messy split from the actress Amber Heard. (Ms. Heard is giving her settlement to charity.) She has also counseled the actress Jennifer Garner, who last year separated from Ben Affleck amid rumors that he had grown too close with the nanny. Those cases follow a number of instances in which Ms. Wasser worked on behalf of high profile women, including the singer Gwen Stefani, who split last year from the musician Gavin Rossdale, and Maria Shriver, who left the actor and former governor Arnold Schwarzenegger in 2011 after he admitted to an affair with a housekeeper with whom, it turned out, he secretly had a son. For Ms. Wasser, the appetite for celebrity gossip has compounded the challenge of managing clients who value personal privacy but, at the same time, seek to influence interested onlookers. "You won't see her talking about her clients, because she will lose those clients," said Jonathan Wolfe, part of the legal team that represented Katie Holmes in her divorce from Tom Cruise. Ms. Wasser said she seeks to move "quickly and quietly," preferring to settle her cases out of the spotlight. Handling the sensitive matters that inevitably surface in such cases out of the news media glare satisfies her image conscious clients, she said, while also pleasing their managers, lawyers and talent agents, all of whom prefer that their clients not be so hamstrung by legal proceedings and online gossip that they have trouble reporting to a film set. "Representatives value when their clients are working," Ms. Wasser said. "That's how they make their living, by getting their percentage." A longtime student of celebrity culture, Ms. Wasser was raised in Los Angeles and graduated from Beverly Hills High School in 1986. Others there at the time included Pauly Shore, David Schwimmer and the "Orange Is the New Black" creator Jenji Kohan. "She partied with the hot kids in high school," her father said. In 1994, she earned her law degree from Loyola Law School, and she put her J.D. to use as a disability rights lawyer before joining her father's firm, Wasser, Cooperman Mandles. At the time, Ms. Wasser was newly divorced and vowed never to remarry. She has two sons by different fathers. "Instead, there was this superattractive girl," he said. "She said, 'I'm Dennis Wasser's daughter.'" Mr. Grazer brushed her off at first. But as he got to know her, he found that "she was cool, smart and user friendly," he said. ("User friendly" is Hollywood code for no drama.) In 2006, when Mr. Grazer was on the verge of a divorce from his third wife, the novelist Gigi Levangie Grazer, he turned to Ms. Wasser. By then, she had made a name for herself. In 2001, along with the famed lawyer Johnnie Cochran Jr., she represented the singer Stevie Wonder after his former girlfriend claimed he gave her herpes. The case went to mediation. Two years later, Ms. Jolie Pitt hired her when she sought a divorce from Billy Bob Thornton. Ms. Wasser said she met Ms. Jolie Pitt through David Weber, a business partner of Ms. Jolie Pitt's entertainment lawyer, Robert Offer. Mr. Weber is also a former beau of Ms. Wasser's and the father of one of her sons. "Those guys are family," Ms. Wasser said, referring to Mr. Weber and Mr. Offer. "They don't want to deal with that icky, messy stuff. That's because they are with their clients for life. For me, it's six to 12 months." Mr. Offer is the lawyer who gave the press statement on Tuesday that set off an explosion of social media commentary and online traffic. "This decision was made for the health of the family," Mr. Offer said. "She will not be commenting and asks that the family be given its privacy at this time." The language was formal but barbed, with its suggestion that the "health of the family" was somehow imperiled. After her initial foray with Ms. Jolie Pitt at the time of her split from Mr. Thornton, Ms. Wasser went on to help Britney Spears through the end of her marriage to the backup dancer Kevin Federline; Robyn Moore at the time of her divorce from Mel Gibson; Ryan Reynolds, when his marriage to Scarlett Johansson was coming to an end; and Kim Kardashian, who was through with the basketball player Kris Humphries. Along the way, Ms. Wasser earned a reputation for hammering out settlements without going to trial. She said that she counsels celebrities to "go on lockdown" when their cases are drawing news media attention. "She is very direct," said Sayre Victoria Ziskin, a friend and an interior designer who decorated Ms. Wasser's home and office. "She's not wishy washy. She knows what she wants and she goes for it." Ms. Wasser spends most weekends in Malibu with her two sons. She is on the advisory board for the Harriett Buhai Center for Family Law, which supports victims of domestic violence. And she cops to being a clotheshorse, having been photographed most recently in Porter magazine in a salmon Oscar de la Renta dress and Christian Louboutin heels, her brunette tresses cascading over her shoulders. She charges 850 an hour for her services and insisted that she eschews the role of therapist or after hours drinking companion for her famous clients. "I cost too much," she said. "I don't believe they want to hang out with me. I have my own friends." She said that she had not seen Ms. Jolie Pitt for years until they reconnected last week. Still, she commands a certain loyalty. Of Mr. Grazer, she said, "I'm a good girlfriend to him." In 2012, Mr. Wonder interviewed Ms. Wasser for Interview magazine, asking about her work, including how to handle the tabloid media. "I've definitely had cases where one side or the other is completely playing to the media and not really focusing on the matter at hand," she told him. Ms. Jolie Pitt is known for carefully crafting a public image. She and Mr. Pitt have successfully brokered the sale of personal photographs to publications like People and Time, with the proceeds going to charity. Ms. Jolie Pitt has also asked that magazines not refer to the couple as "Brangelina." That is why some observers paused when the gossip website TMZ, founded by the lawyer Harvey Levin, broke the divorce story Tuesday morning in a report that included Mr. Offer's statement. "What she is trying to do is frame the narrative," the lawyer Gloria Allred said of Ms. Jolie Pitt and her representatives. "When there is a vacuum of information, there is a lot of speculation." The tabloid press began churning out minute to minute stories, quoting unnamed sources claiming to know why the marriage fell apart. While saying that she prefers to do her job away from the spotlight, Ms. Wasser is certainly not media shy. She has been profiled in Vanity Fair, Vogue, Elle and Bloomberg Businessweek. During an interview Thursday, she pitched a new app she is developing for people who want a do it yourself divorce. Ms. Wasser is friendly with the gossip kingpin Mr. Levin, saying she met him when they spoke at a conference during which she argued that divorce documents should be sealed. (Mr. Levin did not agree.) The two have been photographed at numerous events, including at a party for Ms. Wasser's 2013 book, "It Doesn't Have to Be That Way: How to Divorce Without Destroying Your Family or Bankrupting Yourself." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Fashion & Style |
BECKET, Mass. The Doubtful Guest, the title character of a 1957 illustrated book by Edward Gorey, is a peculiar creature, with a flat head, a knitted scarf and wings that suggest a penguin's flippers. It shows up at an Edwardian manor house and stays for 17 years (by the book's end) with no indication that it might ever leave. Trey McIntyre Project is also something of an odd bird, or at least a rare one: a nationally popular and justly acclaimed dance company based in Boise, Idaho; a troupe with crisp ballet technique whose dancers look natural moving to pop music, contemporary without being slick. But the company, less than 10 years old, is far from overstaying its welcome. Its performances here at Jacob's Pillow this week are to be its last. Mr. McIntyre is moving on to other projects. Opening night on Wednesday began with "The Vinegar Works: Four Dances of Moral Instruction," a suite drawing on Gorey's tales. Costumes by Bruce Bui and puppets and props by Dan Luce and Michael Curry faithfully recreated the macabre look of Gorey's illustrations. There was Death as a nanny on stilts and rollers, a giant black bird to carry away a buglike baby (with smaller versions of both for a nice sight gag as they flew away), even cameos by the Doubtful Guest, a puppet with a creepily glowing eye. As the voice of Alan Cumming recited "The Gashlycrumb Tinies," a brightly rhymed and alphabetical listing of children meeting their ends, the exceptionally lucid dancer Brett Perry executed an engrossing mixture of classical steps (with an electrifying speed and clarity that is a company trait) and gestures that alluded, mostly obliquely, to the grim words. Later sections, set to Shostakovich's Piano Trio No. 2 (played live by Trio Solaris), had no textual assistance. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Dance |
WHAT: A five bedroom house with four and a half baths with a one room guesthouse SETTING: Manchester is a town of about 4,180 residents at the foot of Equinox Mountain, in the Green Mountain National Forest at the southwestern corner of Vermont. Adjoining the town, there's a 914 acre nature preserve with walking and hiking trails, and major ski resorts are within 20 miles. Day to day shopping can be done in town, which is home to public and private schools, including the Burr and Burton Academy and the Maple Street School. The Southern Vermont Arts Center, a nonprofit that hosts exhibitions, performances and classes, is a few miles away, as is an outlet mall. Manchester is about 175 miles from Boston and a little over 200 from New York City. INSIDE: The house was built in 1850 and renovated between 2004 and 2008 by the current owners. The maple floors and fireplaces are original throughout, as are exterior details like the gabled mansard roof with red slate tile. On the main level, there's a marble foyer with a fireplace; a breakfast room; a dining room; a kitchen; and a living room. The kitchen was renovated in 2008. The dining room has coffered ceilings. The living room opens to the garden. The main house's bedrooms are split between the second and third levels. The master, on the second level, is part of a suite with a his and her bathroom. In addition to its three bedrooms, the third floor has a den. What used to be a two car garage has been converted into a one bedroom guesthouse with a loft. OUTDOOR SPACE: The house is on slightly over two acres. Behind it is a formal garden with slate walkways and a pergola. In front, there's a covered porch. There's also a deck off the living room. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Real Estate |
Well, we gasped the gay bars off their hinges last week when BenDeLaCreme, after an unprecedented fifth win, eliminated herself, voluntarily withdrawing from a competition she was dominating. This rattled a season that's been by turns plodding, maddening and enjoyable, if never quite thrilling, and knocked last night's subsequent episode into the mud where it spun its wheels. In the workroom, the remaining queens debated BenDeLaCreme's flight over fight: Was it the strain of competition and the weekly drama harvest? Or was it a more calculated move by a fan favorite to avoid a fall from grace? Either way, it cleared a wider path to the crown. "This is like your pretty friend not going to prom," Trixie admitted giddily in a confessional. Parting would be sweeter sorrow if BenDeLaCreme hadn't saddled us with Morgan McMichaels once again on her way out. "I feel like the luckiest bitch in the fold," Morgan announced, severe eyed in a blonde wig, looking like the cousin you didn't invite to the rehearsal dinner, but who saw it happening on Instagram and drove over anyway. Last week's runner up BeBe Zahara Benet, apparently seeing BenDeLaCreme's departure as the falling spotlight from "The Truman Show," shirked custom as well and refused to reveal who she would have eliminated, emphasizing the need for peace. The others short circuited. "That's Cersei Lannister, I see now," Shangela said in a confessional, continuing, you know, to draw her favorite parallel. RuPaul who apologized this week after remarks she made in the Guardian about barring trans and female contestants from "Drag Race" caused a rightful uproar entered the workroom to restore order. On her arm? Someone we're happier to see, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi. "You're an inspiration," Pelosi told the queens, urging them (and the Snapchatters at home) to vote. "I know you have to go," RuPaul told her yes, please: North Korea; Russia; elephant trophies and off she went. This episode, the queens had to play celebrated dramatic characters, but in a raunchy comedy parody called "My Best Squirrelfriend's Dragsmaids Wedding Trip." Morgan got to assign the roles, which she did without a hint of scheming. Trixie wound up being quite funny the best, even as Sharon Frockovich, a role she didn't initially want. Scene partners often overshadowed her in her season, but not here; she harnessed a, dare I say it, Katya esque brio and nailed it. Kennedy, as struggling musical theater actress La La, high kicked and sang aimlessly, and BeBe, as the Queen, was beguilingly odd, per usual. "I wonder why I'm being given the Queen," BeBe asked earnestly in a confessional, while wrapped in 40 fabrics. "BeBe's character is just BeBe doing BeBe," Shangela complained in a confessional. (Playing a sassy composite of "The Help" and "Hidden Figures" characters, Shangela didn't really have room to talk; she basically just put on glasses and didn't talk about "Game of Thrones.") As the deranged Beige Swan, Morgan danced in quietly. "This is your big entrance," Ross Matthews, the sketch's director, said. "Let's try again." Morgan entered again, this time hissing. "Are you loving the hissing?" Matthews asked. "We're going for funny." "They only actually hiss," replied Morgan, the Daniel Day Lewis of drag. It was a misfire, for sure, in an episode themed heavily around self perception, or lack thereof. Trixie, who's not social and hates hugs, said she wants to be less standoffish; Kennedy, who'd copped to coming off as a grump in Season 7, lamented not being a fan favorite; and BeBe was shocked and delighted to hear that people thought she was elitist. "But I am very goofy," she protested. (Goofy people often have to self identify, for clarity.) On the "Red for Filth" runway, the queens watched their parody. BeBe, with exquisite swirls of red gems around her eyes, was chastised for being too demure as the Queen. Kennedy's beaded gown dazzled but her La La performance flopped "A little more Jodie Foster in 'Nell' than Emma Stone," the guest judge Chris Colfer quipped while Morgan, who in the final take decided to be a quacking Beige Swan, got compliments on her nympho tartan look, but that was about it. All three ranked in the bottom. The top two: Shangela, in red spikes that my goodness inflated as she walked, and Trixie, witty sexy in red hot pants with a stack of books and an apple on her head. "You are making yourself do things that wouldn't be in your comfort zone," Michelle Visage told Trixie. "You taking these risks is paying off." (I don't know that an acting challenge is necessarily out of her comfort zone, but sure and she did wear a brown wig!) Backstage, Trixie compared BeBe's decorated face to Ornacia, Season 6 contestant Vivacious' infamous headpiece. BeBe looked at her blankly and asked, "Who's Ornacia?" "She's fully never seen 'Drag Race,'" Trixie deadpanned to the camera as the group hooted. "BeBe won 'Drag Race' and stopped watching it." "Girl, get ready," Kennedy said, adding that the fans would "me me" this moment to death. The bottom three made their cases for staying BeBe's track record, Kennedy's drive, and Morgan's too brief stint. "This is her second chance," Shangela said in a confessional, of Morgan. "And look, I know about second chances." (God, she's good at this.) Shangela and Trixie lip synced to RuPaul's "Freaky Money," and even an assured Trixie, fun in a neon green wig and pink bodysuit, was no match for Shangela, who showed up to win. And win she did ripping off a housedress to reveal a bulging, bikinied fat suit, Shangela went full clown, grinding and death dropping as the judges shrieked with laughter. "It's not over 'til the fat lady twerks," RuPaul said. " It's not something I want to do, but it's part of what the gig is," Shangela said, and eliminated Morgan, who took it in stride. "Love you guys," she said as she left. It felt anti climactic for the penultimate episode a zero sum, or a deficit, if you missed BenDeLaCreme's ingenuity, which I did. Also I wondered what Aja might've done with Morgan's second chance. Ah, well. Next week, an All Star will be crowned. Will it be Shangela or Trixie? Or maybe Kennedy, or goofy BeBe? Will Maxine Waters swing by, carried in by the Pod Save America guys? | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Television |
Tom Brady, the only N.F.L. quarterback to win six Super Bowls, is headed to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. After telling the New England Patriots, the only club he has played for in his 20 year career, that he would not return to the team this week, Brady posted to Instagram a picture of his signing a new contract with Tampa Bay. "I'm starting a new football journey and thankful for the buccaneers for giving me an opportunity to do what I love to do," Brady wrote. Brady will be paid a guaranteed annual salary of 25 million for two years, with 4.5 million in incentives each year, according to a person with knowledge of the quarterback's plans who spoke on condition of anonymity and was not authorized to speak publicly. Brady, who restructured his contract several times to help the Patriots stay below the salary cap, has not previously earned more than 23 million in a single season. "I've known Tom since we drafted him in New England 20 years ago and through this process it became very clear that his desire to be a champion burns as strong today as it ever has," said Jason Licht, Tampa Bay's general manager. Licht was a scout for the Patriots when the team drafted Brady in 2000. None Week 11 Predictions: Here are our picks against the spread. N.F.L. Tightens Covid Protocols: As cases rise and Thanksgiving approaches, the league is requiring masks inside team facilities and increasing testing. The Packers' Defense Is Their M.V.P.: Green Bay's oft overlooked defense has kept the team from falling out of the Super Bowl chase. The Long Path to the Super Bowl: With 18 weeks in the regular season and fewer teams earning byes in the playoffs, the Super Bowl is still a long way off. Playoff Simulator: Explore every team's path to the postseason, updated live. The deal is by far the most momentous of an already busy off season in which several teams, including the Chargers, Colts and Panthers, have sought new quarterbacks. But with six rings and no desire to slow down, Brady is easily the biggest acquisition in the Tampa Bay franchise's 44 year history. Brady, who turns 43 in August, will be out to show that he can lead a team not overseen by Bill Belichick, his only head coach in the pros. In a league with a salary cap that limits how much each teams can spend on its entire roster, Brady has several times avoided the free agency market and took less money to remain in New England before entering free agency this season. For months, Brady was asked whether he would finish his career with the Patriots, an outcome that looked less and less likely as the 2019 season went on. Brady said several times last year that he wanted to return to New England, but Belichick would not give a firm commitment. Several teams were thought to be seeking Brady, including the Los Angeles Chargers, who need to replace Philip Rivers, their longtime quarterback. Rivers has reportedly agreed to a one year deal with the Indianapolis Colts. The Buccaneers joined the hunt for Brady after appearing to have lost patience with quarterback Jameis Winston, who is an unrestricted free agent. Their head coach, Bruce Arians, is considered an offensive mastermind, having led high powered offenses in Pittsburgh and Arizona. He was also Peyton Manning's quarterback coach in Indianpolis. Last season, Arians's first with Tampa Bay, the Buccaneers had the third best offense in the N.F.L., averaging nearly 400 yards a game. Wide receiver Chris Godwin averaged 95 receiving yards per game, the second most in the league. Successful second acts are hard, though. Only a handful of marquee quarterbacks have left their longtime teams and won Super Bowl titles elsewhere. Joe Montana led the Kansas City Chiefs to the A.F.C. championship game in the 1994 playoffs after winning four Super Bowls in 14 seasons with the San Francisco 49ers. Brett Favre took the Minnesota Vikings to the N.F.C. championship game 10 years ago after winning one Super Bowl trophy in 16 seasons with the Green Bay Packers. Peyton Manning won one Super Bowl in 13 years with the Indianapolis Colts, then a second title in his fourth and final year with the Denver Broncos. Regardless of how Brady performs in a new uniform, his legacy is established. In addition to the six championships, nine Super Bowl appearances and 17 division titles, Brady has thrown for 74,571 yards and 541 touchdowns, trailing only Drew Brees of the New Orleans Saints in both categories. Attention will be heaped on Tampa Bay, which will host the Super Bowl next February. The team has had only one winning season in the past decade, and has not qualified for the postseason since 2007. The Buccaneers have not won a playoff game since the 2002 season, when the team claimed its only Super Bowl championship. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Sports |
In "Metropolis: A History of the City, Humankind's Greatest Invention," the historian Ben Wilson takes us on an exhilarating tour of more than two dozen cities and thousands of years, examining that invention's good and bad effects. The bad effects ("harsh, merciless environments," for instance) are produced not so much by roads and buildings but by what's invisible. The city, as Wilson sees it, is less of a warehouse of architecture and more of an organism that shapes the creatures living inside. "I am more interested in the connective tissue that binds the organism together," he writes, "not just its outward appearance or vital organs." Climate change has recently helped us rethink the 7,000 year old ruins of Uruk, the fabled Sumerian city, and the planning of other ancient urban centers "as a way of aligning human activities with the underlying order and energies of the universe," Wilson writes. In this regard, the cities that spread across the Indus Valley in today's Pakistan were watery Edens: They had no temples or palaces but granaries, assembly halls and systems for sewage and water that may instead have been the sacred centers of the communities' lives. Hell was Babylon, or what it stood for the "original Sin City," rife with the unsavory aspects of urbanity decried since at least 2000 B.C. A line from the Hebrew Bible might easily have appeared in a recent political ad: "Woe to the city of blood, full of lies, full of plunder, never without victims!" Ditto the 18th century writing of Jean Jacques Rousseau describing the city as "depraved by sloth, inactivity, the love of pleasure." Pleasure, or more exactly sex, has always been a complicated element of any city's P.R., alternately repelling (see William Hogarth's 1731 painting series "A Harlot's Progress") and attracting (the sensuous lure of Uruk in "The Epic of Gilgamesh"). Anonymity facilitates expression, if dangerously, as noted in Hart Crane's "The Bridge," where the remnant of a subway tryst is "a burnt match skating in a urinal." A constant in the history of cities is that only men are permitted to act as if they are always at the Roman baths. Wilson's chapters on the so called classical civilizations Athens, Alexandria and Rome theorize on each polis's creative production. Dinocrates of Rhodes imposed a grid of streets on the anarchy of the Greek public space, making Alexandria encyclopedic; irregular Athens, by contrast, was "spontaneous and experimental." When Romans conquered the world, they brought their built environment with them, like a subdivision to the wilderness. Bathing, Wilson argues, made the barbarous clean, Roman and urban. The author links Baghdad's messier, more organic development with a dynamism that generated some of the ideas it took Europe centuries to comprehend. Synthesizing Baghdad's collections of Greek, Babylonian, Persian, Indian and Chinese scholarship, Muhammad ibn Musa al Khwarizmi laid the foundations for mathematical equations that would eventually send humans to the moon and land Jeff Bezos' packages on your stoop (or thereabouts). Want to keep up with the latest and greatest in books? This is a good place to start. None Learn what you should be reading this fall: Our collection of reviews on books coming out this season includes biographies, novels, memoirs and more. See what's new in October: Among this month's new titles are novels by Jonathan Franzen, a history of Black cinema and a biography by Katie Couric. Nominate a book: The New York Times Book Review has just turned 125. That got us wondering: What is the best book that was published during that time? Listen to our podcast: Featuring conversations with leading figures in the literary world, from Colson Whitehead to Leila Slimani, the Book Review Podcast helps you delve deeper into your favorite books. At the dawn of the 12th century, with Christian and pagan tribes fighting in the ruins of the Roman Empire, the eastern European frontier was like a disinvested 21st century neighborhood when the chain stores finally pull out. Out of this bleak landscape rose Lubeck, chartered by Henry the Lion as the first of what would be hundreds of war profiteering fortress cities that grew rich furnishing arms and supplies during Drang nach Osten, the Muslim purging drive to the east. What became the Hanseatic League was in fact a cartel that relied on economic power and military might to make deals that the rest of Europe couldn't refuse. Lisbon carried Lubeck's model to Africa and Asia, its slave trade like high octane fuel and its fierce gunships maintaining what Wilson calls an oceanwide "protection racket." "It is unheard of," one Muslim ruler said, "that anyone should be forbidden to sail the seas." Into the 1600s, Amsterdam made a kind of meta trade of urbanization, with the government connecting corporations, banks and merchants to create the world's first securities market and its attendant financial devices. Forwards and futures, hedges and margin buying were inventions Amsterdamers classified as windhandel, or trading in the wind, as opposed to trading something tangible. The civic ethos was less about monuments and civic plazas and more about greater wealth kept private. Wilson ends his tour in Lagos. Here is the metropolis of the future, in which cities have transformed from agoras into regions, gulping land and resources at an unfathomable rate. Inequality spreads, meanwhile, like a vast algal bloom. "Metropolis" is a bold undertaking that makes for gripping reading, though, like most histories of cities, it puts Amerindians off to the side. Tenochtitlan, bigger than Paris in the 1500s, features mostly as a site of Spanish conquest. The racial geography at the heart of the European colonial enterprise is likewise underplayed. Crucial to Lisbon's conquest of land and bodies were the papal bulls that granted Portugal the right to, in 1455, take slaves and then, in 1493, to "discover" land lay claim, in other words, to territory inhabited by non Christians. (Chief Justice John Marshall would cite this legal precedent in the 1820s and '30s, when the United States was clearing away Native Americans, as would Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg more recently, in denying the Oneidas sovereignty over reservation land.) Missing too from "Metropolis" is the history of 18th century England's financial engineering, the so called deficit financing (pioneered by Robert Walpole, then fine tuned by Alexander Hamilton) that is the crucial segue between British colonial conquests and U.S. empire building though Wilson notes the ways the American war machine took domestic city planning into the nuclear age. The ranch houses promoted in postwar suburban development "lily white and segregated by class" were part of a plan to spread out urban populations and thus "win" a nuclear war. Like the one level home itself, venetian blinds, tested on blasted out Paiute and Shoshone Bannock land, were considered an attractive and effective defense against radiation. Wilson's swift prose makes its point in a chapter titled "Annihilation," which compares Hitler's destruction of Warsaw to the American bombing of Tokyo. In landscapes of horrific violence, the most damaged communities find creative ways to survive. It is a sad but brilliant way to underscore how much community means to our unspeakably violent species and how traumatic actions can be countered by self organized group responses. Tokyo experienced a kind of leaderless communal repair that brings to mind this summer's Black Lives Matter protests, in which tens of millions of people marched to highlight and heal their cities' ripped out connective tissue. The future of cities as Wilson sees it is bleak: marshes filled in with money laundering skyscrapers; robot filled logistics centers supplying megacities with more cheaply produced goods; care workers with longer, more expensive commutes. The hope is that we start thinking of the city less as a technical invention and more in terms of that connective tissue, the intertwining of lives, experiences and bodies. We are already part of that tissue, whether we know it or not. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Books |
When Dave Hoverman, 38, a business strategy consultant in Berkeley, Calif., goes to Costco on the weekends, he ditches his Audi Q7 and instead loads his four children into a Cetma cargo bike with a trailer hitched to the rear. "We do all sorts of errands on the bike," Mr. Hoverman said. "We try not to get in the car all weekend." Mr. Hoverman is among a growing contingent of eco minded and health conscious urban parents who are leaving their car keys at home and relying on high capacity cargo bikes for family transportation. Cargo bikes initially catered to the "hard core D.I.Y. crowd people who wanted to carry around really large objects like surfboards or big speakers or kayaks," said Evan Lovett Harris, the marketing director for Xtracycle, a company in Oakland, Calif., that introduced its first family oriented cargo model, the EdgeRunner, in 2012. Cargo bikes, he said, now account for the largest proportion of the company's sales. "When we first started selling these bikes 15 years ago, we were the total freako weirdos," said Ross Evans, the company's founder. "Back then, a basket on your handlebars was considered fringe." These days, cargo bikes are no longer a novelty: They are cropping up not just in the expected West Coast enclaves like Seattle, Portland and the Bay Area, but in cities like New Haven, Tucson and Dallas. "It used to be that if I saw somebody in Boston on a cargo bike, I probably knew them and probably helped them buy their bicycle," said Nathan Vierling Claassen, who has ridden a cargo bike since 2008. "Now that's no longer the case." Cargo bikes are also popular in Washington. Jon Renaut, 37, a software engineer at the Department of Homeland Security, said that he is one of more than a dozen parents at his children's elementary school who commute to school and work by cargo bike. "There have been only two days this whole school year when it was really, really snowy out that we left the bike at home," Mr. Renaut said. What helps keep his 4 and 6 year old daughters warm, he said, is to have them face backward while riding. The popularity of cargo bikes has given rise to more variety. Cargo bikes come in two main types: longtails, which look like a regular bike with a large rack extended over the rear wheel, and the Dutch style bakfiets, which has a cargo box mounted in front of the handlebars. While longtails are considerably cheaper (a Yuba Mundo starts at 1,300), bakfiets (which start at about 3,000) can generally hold more. "The thing I love about cargo bikes these days is that there is such an amazing selection," said Shane MacRhodes, 43, who manages a school transportation program in Eugene, Ore. "People are finding bikes that really fit their lifestyle. Some people like the sturdiness of a Yuba Mundo, and some people like the sporty zippy ones. It's almost like the S.U.V. versus the sports wagon." Cargo bikes are making inroads into New York, too. It is not unusual to see them parked outside Whole Foods in Gowanus, Brooklyn, or Union Market in Cobble Hill, Brooklyn. Joe Nocella, who owns 718 Cyclery, a bicycle shop in Gowanus, joined the bandwagon last year and expanded his cargo bike selection. "Our shop was up 21 percent over the year before," he said, "and a good chunk of that was from our focus on cargo bikes." "It's such a great transaction because here's this family that's ditching the car and transforming itself, and you get to be a part of that," he said. "I love when the kids come in and jump all over the bikes." (When parents show up without children, he lets them test ride bikes with sandbags.) Manuel Toscano, 42, a design consultant who lives in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, commutes to his son's preschool in Chinatown and his job in TriBeCa on a Bullitt bicycle. "Every time we tried to take the kid into the subway, it was an ordeal," he said. "People don't move or let you sit when you have a kid." "We finally decided we'd had enough," he said. "The only sustainable way to have kids here is not to get in the subway." Biking in New York has its share of challenges. "New York is not an easy place to have a family, and it's not an easy place to have a cargo bike," Mr. Toscano said. The bike path approach to the Manhattan Bridge, he said, is not for the faint of calf muscle, and the bridge's narrow entrances are difficult to navigate. "The other challenge is where to put my bike," he said. "I garage mine, and they charge me the same as any other bicycle: 38 a month plus tax, even though it's longer than a Smart car." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Style |
For Laverne Cox, Life Is a Blur, and So Is New York Laverne Cox was on the 102nd floor of One World Trade Center, gazing north through the floor to ceiling windows. Manhattan's skyscrapers glinted in the midday sunlight. "I've been missing New York so much," she said, reaching out as if to embrace the city. "I'm scared of heights, but oh, my God, to get back and to get to see this. It's like ummmm mmhhh!" She waved to the spire of the Empire State Building, saying that it's near her current apartment, a rent stabilized place she moved into while still a struggling actress. "I ain't going nowhere," she vowed in true New Yorker style. This striking Emmy nominated transgender actress and activist, best known for her role as Sophia, a transgender inmate on "Orange Is the New Black" on Netflix, was back in the city for a quickie visit in late August. Ms. Cox, dressed in a slinky black Marciano dress and 6 feet 3 inches in her four inch Louboutins, was unsure of her flight time, though she knew a car was coming at 4:30 p.m. to deliver her to the airport. "Girl, that's my life now," she said. "All I know is where I have to be next." Her life has been a busy blur since her success on "Orange" in 2013, and she's still on the show. There was that cover of Time magazine in 2014, there is "Doubt," and she will be rocking fishnet stockings and a spangled red corset as Dr. Frank N Furter in a new version of "The Rocky Horror Picture Show," the 1975 cult movie musical, to be broadcast on Fox on Oct. 20. Friendly and funny, Ms. Cox, raised in Mobile, Ala., answers any and all questions well, almost all. "Age and weight we don't do," she said, explaining that being black and transgender puts enough hurdles in her career path. She believes revealing her age would only add another. "I'm living this life that is the life I've dreamed of my whole life and that most people don't get to live," Ms. Cox said. "Now this is very recent and, God willing, I'll be able to keep it going." From 102 stories up, Ms. Cox spotted the Statue of Liberty. She filmed it on her phone while reciting from the poem "The New Colossus" by Emma Lazarus in a dramatic tone, "Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free." She'd be posting that on Snapchat, she said, adding, "I'm such a dork." The restaurant's Southern fried chicken had her salivating, but instead she ordered deviled eggs ("That's mostly protein"), hush puppies, a shrimp sandwich and an unsweetened iced tea. "When I was under 21, I could eat whatever I wanted and not gain a pound," she said. "After transitioning, when I stopped producing testosterone, I just filled out, and I kept filling." Over lunch, she whipped through topics. Yes, she'll be voting for Hillary Clinton in the election and considers much of Donald J. Trump's rhetoric racist. "It's not a dog whistle; it's a bark," she said. "And I think Republicans are trying to use trans as a wedge issue, the same way they used gay marriage in the last election." Yes, her post "Orange" celebrity has improved her love life. "The trans thing fame mitigates that for a lot of the men," she said. "It makes them more willing and open to dating me than they might have been before." (She currently has a steady beau.) The waitress brought a dessert menu, but Ms. Cox waved it away. Not without some reluctance, it seemed. "If you could eat as much ice cream as you want and not get fat, and not get high cholesterol and diabetes, I would never have sex again," she said. "I would just curl up every night with a pint of Ben Jerry's Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough ice cream, and I would be good." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Fashion & Style |
At right, Kelly Griffin as Lee and, on video, members of the Kuji Men's Chorus at the Marion Correctional Institution in Ohio in a scene from Heartbeat Opera's modern dress "Fidelio." Few opera choruses are as moving as the one a group of prisoners sings in Act I of Beethoven's "Fidelio." Released temporarily from their cells, the inmates almost whisper a hymnlike paean to liberty: "Oh, what a joy to breathe freely again in the open air." The transformation from oppression to freedom is at the core of "Fidelio," which the small, adventurous company Heartbeat Opera is presenting through May 13 at the Baruch Performing Arts Center in Manhattan. There, the recently recorded voices of choirs from Midwestern correctional facilities will join together in Beethoven's soaring Prisoners' Chorus. To bring the work to life in the era of Black Lives Matter, Heartbeat's co artistic director, Ethan Heard, and its co music director, Daniel Schlosberg, are setting their production within today's American criminal justice system, which disproportionately incarcerates people of color. With "Fidelio" and a concurrent MeToo inflected "Don Giovanni," Heartbeat is continuing in the vein of its staging last year of "Madama Butterfly," which tackled issues of yellowface, Orientalism and cliches of geisha culture. That Puccini opera, Mr. Heard said in a recent interview, "felt timely and plugged into a contemporary conversation, and I wanted to find another opera that we could do something like that with." He was struck anew by "Fidelio," which Beethoven composed in the wake of the French Revolution. The opera dramatizes a wife's efforts to rescue her wrongfully incarcerated husband by disguising herself as a man and infiltrating his prison. "It felt like, 'O.K., this is right for 2018,' " he said. In Heartbeat's adaptation, the heroine is Leah (Leonore, in the original), whose husband, Stan (Florestan), a naturalized citizen and Black Lives Matter activist, has been arrested at a protest and unjustly imprisoned. Some of the opera's smaller roles have been excised, and Mr. Schlosberg has arranged Beethoven's score for two pianos, two cellos, two horns and percussion a chamber ensemble intended to emphasize musically the opera's story of heroism amid darkness. The musicologist Naomi Andre, in her coming book "Black Opera: History, Power, Engagement," describes how operas in America and South Africa both countries with problematic racial histories are being used to "tell an alternative story of racial experience in counterpoint to the dominant culture." The power of opera, Ms. Andre writes, "lies in what they offered to their original audiences as well as what they can still offer us today." There is historical precedent for Heartbeat's changes to "Fidelio" and its exploration of the opera's political relevance. Beethoven, a staunch supporter of the ideals of liberty, equality and fraternity, was drawn to Jean Nicolas Bouilly's Revolution era play "Leonore, ou l'Amour Conjugal." But Beethoven's librettist, Joseph Sonnleithner, had to sidestep Austrian government censorship by setting the opera in 16th century Spain and stressing the theme of "wifely virtue" rather than civil rights. Dissatisfied with the unsuccessful premiere in 1805, which coincided with Napoleon's occupation of Vienna, Beethoven revised "Fidelio" the following year, condensing three acts to two. When he and poet Georg Friedrich Treitschke revamped it again in 1814 to coincide with the Congress of Vienna, where European leaders were mapping out the post Napoleonic geopolitical landscape, Beethoven added a new choral ending that threw greater symbolic weight onto the newly liberated prisoners. "The fact that the opera went through so much revision gave us license to say, 'You know, the music is not fixed,' " Mr. Schlosberg said. "It's not perfect just because it's a couple hundred years old. So it's great to struggle with it." While 19th century audiences viewed "Fidelio" as a fundamentally domestic tale, 20th century conductors and directors, beginning with Gustav Mahler and Alfred Roller in 1904, began to present the opera as a weighty political allegory. Mahler judiciously trimmed first act music he deemed inconsequential and inserted Beethoven's dramatic "Leonore" Overture No. 3 into the second act, while Roller's stylized, partially abstracted scenery lent the story a timeless universality. Many post World War II productions became explicitly political, more timely than timeless. In a rebuke of Nazi oppression, "Fidelio" became the opera of choice to reopen Germany and Austria's opera houses. And in a divided Germany during the Cold War, directors on either side of the Iron Curtain transposed "Fidelio" onto settings ranging from Soviet gulags and South American juntas to German concentration camps. Directors took particular liberties with the opera's libretto. Rejecting Beethoven's spoken dialogue as well as the sung recitatives that had become a standard alternative, Wieland Wagner opted for a narrator in his 1954 production in Stuttgart, Germany. Other directors substituted the dialogue with 20th century political verse. Heartbeat's production also replaces the spoken text. Mr. Heard worked with the playwright Marcus Scott to transform the German dialogue into contemporary American speech. (In one scene, Leah pleads with the prison administrator to briefly end a lockdown: "They're people, Marcy. People who made mistakes. Some people whose only mistake was being poor." She also hints at race as a factor.) "We had the opportunity to bring a black playwright into the room," Mr. Heard said, "which the project needed." A graduate school classmate of Mr. Schlosberg had organized a choir at a prison in Minnesota, and she put the collaborators in contact with other choruses in Ohio, Iowa and Kansas. In March the team rehearsed in person with the Oakdale Community Choir, Kuji Men's Chorus, Ubuntu Men's Chorus and East Hill Singers. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Music |
A four mile stretch of New Jersey's Oak Tree Road is known as a destination for Indian restaurants, groceries and sweets shops. But amid the 70 odd Indian restaurants in the area, there are a handful specializing in the hard to find fusion of Indian and Chinese food native to the Indian city Kolkata (formerly Calcutta) and, to a lesser extent, Mumbai. Though not widely celebrated in America, Indo Chinese food is familiar to in the know locals and venturesome food travelers like myself. Having been an expat in Mumbai, I'm always looking for food that transports me back to the three years I spent there, and was intrigued when a friend told me about the inordinate amount of Indo Chinese food in the neighboring suburban towns of Edison and Iselin, N.J., a vibrant Little India renowned for having excellent Indo Chinese food, a cuisine that is proof that Indians can make any culture's food uniquely their own. The Indo Chinese food in Edison and Iselin is quick and decadent: made to share, intrinsically spicy and as suitable for takeout as it is for eating in. On Oak Tree Road, which is home to more than 200 Indian owned businesses, including sari shops and jewelers, I ate at a half dozen places. They are more than the sum of their parts, best experienced as part of an Indo Chinese food crawl, which can be as much a feat of gastronomic endurance as a culinary field trip. I made my trip with Abhishek Honawar, a co founder of the ardently healthy Inday, a New York City restaurant at odds with the often heavy and oily Indian restaurants found in the Oak Tree Road area. Mr. Honawar is an expert in Indian food but, unlike me, not a man prone to gluttony. On the 45 minute drive from New York, Mr. Honawar explained to me that Indians consider most other cuisines bland, so they've created their own "amped up" version of Chinese food with added chile and garlic and prepared in thick gravies that give the dishes the consistency of Indian curries. "Indo Chinese is a relatively new cuisine, but now everyone in Bombay is familiar with these flavors," said Mr. Honowar, a Mumbai native, referring to his hometown's former name. We thought it fitting to start our crawl with the most popular Indo Chinese dish, Manchurian chicken, which we found at Calcutta Chinese Food, a restaurant tucked in one of Oak Tree Road's countless strip malls. It is the kind of Chinese takeout joint where you order at the counter by pointing at photos of food on the wall. Posters of the Taj Mahal hung in the tiny dining space, next to red banners featuring the Cantonese symbol for wealth. Chinese customers mixed with Indians. Manchurian chicken employs Chinese techniques, but its red gravy, heavy on ginger, chilies and garlic, has the consistency of an Indian curry. A vegetarian version is made with cauliflower. Calcutta Chinese Food's proprietress, who would only identify herself as Mrs. Liu, said that dishes like Hakka lo mein noodles, curry chicken and a Chinese take on vegetable pakoras (a common Indian fried vegetable fritter) are similar to what Chinese people from Kolkata eat in their homes. Mrs. Liu said her grandparents, who spoke the Hakka dialect, emigrated in the 1920s from Canton to Kolkata, the only Indian city with a sizable Chinese population. It would be an oversimplification to say that Indian Chinese food is solely an export of Kolkata, however. Camellia Panjabi, the author of "50 Great Curries of India," claims to have instigated what continues to be India's most successful food fad when she opened Golden Dragon in Mumbai in the early 1970s, the country's first Sichuan restaurant. I found the most distinctive and delicious Indo Chinese dish to be Chinese idli at Dimple's Bombay Talk, a casual restaurant in Iselin at the other end of Oak Tree Road, about three miles away, with a show kitchen and a mostly Indian clientele. Idli is a common South Indian breakfast dish made of discs of fermented rice batter, steamed and served with a piquant soup called sambar (it is also, as Mr. Honawar preferred, gluten free). This Chinese version was fashioned into cubes and prepared in a similar fashion to Manchurian chicken, only spicier, since hot green chilies were featured prominently. After a digestive pause for buying Indian groceries at the incomparable and huge Patel Brothers Food Market in Iselin, we ordered garlic chicken, a vegetable stir fry and vegetable noodles with a spicy bright red Sichuan sauce from the Indo Chinese menu at Moghul Express in Edison, which also has full north and south Indian menus and a display case crammed with dozens of varieties of multicolored, super sugary Indian sweets. The spaghetti like noodles were the standout, reminding me of the peppery roadside preparation I'd sometimes eat in Mumbai. Much of this feast ended up in takeout containers because, before heading back to the city, I wanted to try an Indo Chinese pizza, which I found at Papa Pancho, next door to Moghul Express. Papa Pancho had all sorts of Indian and Italian combinations, but I ordered a "Schezwan Paneer Chilly" pie, topped with bricks of Indian cottage cheese, red onions, bell peppers and Sichuan sauce. I was ready to dismiss this seemingly random concoction, but have to admit it was quite good the crust was legit and the Indo Chinese spices balanced nicely with the mozzarella and paneer cheeses. I ate two slices and tossed the remainder in the car with the rest of my leftovers, which, like much Chinese takeout, was arguably better a day later. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Travel |
Mr. Fries is the author, most recently, of " In the Province of the Gods ." My first visit to the Aktion T4 killing site at Brandenburg an der Havel was in autumn. My destination, where 9,000 disabled people were murdered as part of the Nazi "euthanasia" program, is embedded in the activities of the town trams and buses, stores, a bank, a cafe. The buildings that were once the old prison were mostly destroyed during the war. If not for dark gray letters painted on one side of the light gray building GEDENKSTATTE, on one side, and its English translation, MEMORIAL, on another the site could easily be passed unnoticed. From a distance, it looks prefab, temporary, perhaps an ad hoc extension to an overcrowded school or municipal department. Though it was October, I was thinking of winter. At the Nuremberg "Doctors' Trial" in 1947, Viktor Brack the economist, SS officer and head of the office of the Chancellery of the Fuhrer who was in charge of Aktion T4 testified that the first of the mass murders of disabled people happened "in snow covered Brandenburg on a winter's day in December 1939 or January 1940." The exact date of this "test killing" has not yet been determined. No documents from the "test killing" have been preserved. According to information at the memorial, "Who the murdered patients were and where they came from is unknown." What is known comes primarily from postwar testimony of those involved, or thought to be involved, in what took place that day. Unlike the Holocaust, there are no T4 survivors. We know about T4 and its aftermath mainly through medical records and from the perpetrators. Aktion T4 does not have its Elie Wiesel or Primo Levi. That is the main reason I write about what happened to disabled people during the Third Reich. I want to be what Susanne C. Knittel and other scholars call a "vicarious witness." Ms. Knittel describes this not as "an act of speaking for and thus appropriating the memory and story of someone else but rather an attempt to bridge the silence through narrative means." This is my way of bridging the silence, of keeping alive something that is too often forgotten. I'm not surprised that some of the perpetrators' testimony is contradictory. In his diary, Dr. Irmfried Eberl, the medical director at Brandenburg, mentions Jan. 18, 1940, as the date of the "test killing." However, Dr. Horst Schumann, whom we know to have been present at the event, was on that day at Grafeneck, where he would oversee mass killings, the first of which occurred on Jan. 18. Another T4 employee said the murder of patients in Grafeneck started "about 14 days" after the "test killing" in Brandenburg. It seems Eberl mixed up the dates of the two killings. After he was arrested in 1959, Werner Heyde, a psychiatrist and the medical director of the T4 program, placed the "test killing" at the "beginning of January 1940." Heyde confessed only to being an observer. The German Meteorological Office records the first major snowfall of the 1939 40 winter in Brandenburg on New Year's Eve, 1939; December had been relatively dry. Brack, in his testimony, was very clear about the snow on the ground at Brandenburg for the "test killing." By deduction, it seems that the first Brandenburg mass murder took place during the first days of January 1940. Though the exact date is somewhat speculative, the words of those responsible for the murder of 70,000 disabled people in Aktion T4, and the 230,000 killed after the program's official end, clearly speak to the main cause for what happened: the disvaluing of disabled lives. Eugenics, which was rampant before and during the Reich, provided the rationale for the killings, stigmatizing those with disabilities as not human. Dr. Albert Widmann, a chemist, forensic scientist and head of the chemical department of the central offices of the Reich Detective Forces, testified that he was asked to procure poison in large quantities. At a meeting with an unidentified representative of the Chancellery of the Fuhrer, Widmann asked, "What for? To kill people?" "No," was the reply. "Animals in the form of humans." It was the police chemist Dr. August Becker who prepared the carbon monoxide gas for what he called the "euthanasia experiment." Testifying in the 1960s, Becker also echoed eugenic depictions of the disabled. He recalled looking through the gas chamber peephole and observing "the behavior of the delinquents," as the gas filled up the chamber and the victims' lungs. Becker's depiction likens disabled people to the immoral and illegal. Becker described, in detail, the gas chamber as "a room similar to a shower room, lined with tiles about three by five meter s , and three meters high in size." According to Becker, between 18 and 20 patients were led by nurses into this "shower room." These men had to "undress in an anteroom, so they were totally naked." Becker pointed to Widmann as the one who "operated the gas installation." But Widmann always denied taking part. When interrogated in 1947, Richard von Hegener, deputy head of the killing of disabled children, named "the chemist in charge, Dr. Becker" as the one "who let the CO gas into the room." Von Hegener said there were 30 patients "dressed only in institutional clothing," who "were led in and they calmly took a seat on the benches in the room without any resistance." Heyde stated there were "10, at most 15 the figure was more than 10 mentally ill patients." He said, "I don't really know who let the gas in." According to Brack, there were "four such patients," all men, whom he described, in another eugenic nod, as "incurable." When asked about their ages or from which institutions they came he replied, "I really don't have any memory of that any more." The more I learn, the more I understand the connection between Aktion T4 and what happened later to Jews and others deemed "undesirable." The Brandenburg "test killing" demonstrated that gassing was a "suitable" means for mass murder. And as the text at the memorial emphasizes, "it also gave the future 'killing doctors' the chance to familiarize with the method." After recommending carbon monoxide for the mass murder of the disabled, Widmann developed the gas wagons that were used for the subsequent mass murder of Jews on the war's eastern front. Becker helped design these mobile killing units, including those used by the notorious Einsatzgruppen in the Nazi occupied areas of the Soviet Union. Eberl later worked at the Chelmno and Treblinka extermination camps during Operation Reinhard, the "Final Solution." Of those whose testimonies are highlighted at the Brandenburg memorial, Brack, in 1948, was the only one executed. Von Hegener was arrested in 1949 and sentenced to life imprisonment but was released early. Becker had a stroke in 1959 and was deemed unfit to stand trial. Heyde was arrested in 1959 and committed suicide before his trial. In both 1962 and 1967 Widmann was convicted to serve several years in prison but was released upon payment of a fine. Outside the memorial building, there is no cemetery. Across a parking lot lies a large plot of gray gravel, interrupted only by the reddish brown brick foundations of what was the prison barn, which housed the gas chamber. There are circles of piled leaves among the gravel as if these random forms were gathered in a subliminal ritual of mourning. Kenny Fries is the author, most recently, of "In the Province of the Gods" and is currently writing a book about disability and the Holocaust. Disability is a series of essays, art and opinion by and about people living with disabilities. Now in print: "About Us: Essays From The New York Times Disability Series," edited by Peter Catapano and Rosemarie Garland Thomson, published by Liveright. The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We'd like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here's our email: letters nytimes.com. Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter ( NYTopinion) and Instagram. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Opinion |
Hummingbirds live a life of extremes. The flitting creatures famously have the fastest metabolisms among vertebrates, and to fuel their zippy lifestyle, they sometimes drink their own body weight in nectar each day. But the hummingbirds of the Andes in South America take that extreme lifestyle a step further. Not only must they work even harder to hover at altitude, but during chilly nights, they save energy by going into exceptionally deep torpor, a physiological state similar to hibernation in which their body temperature falls by as much as 50 degrees Fahrenheit. Then, as dawn approaches, they start to shiver, sending their temperatures rocketing back up to 96 degrees. It's an intense process, says Andrew McKechnie, a professor of zoology at the University of Pretoria in South Africa. "You've got a bird perching on a branch, whose body temp might be 20 degrees Celsius," or 68 Fahrenheit, he said. "And it's cranking out the same amount of heat as when it is hovering in front of a flower." Now, Dr. McKechnie and colleagues reported on Wednesday in Biology Letters that the body temperatures of Andean hummingbirds in torpor and the amount of time they spend in this suspended animation vary among species, with one particular set of species, particularly numerous in the Andes, tending to get colder and go longer than others. They also report one of the lowest body temperatures ever seen in hummingbirds: just under 38 degrees Fahrenheit. On a trip to the Andes about five years ago, Blair Wolf, a professor of biology at the University of New Mexico and an author of the new paper, and his colleagues captured 26 of the little birds for overnight observation. They measured the hummingbirds' body temperatures as they roosted for the night and found that almost all of them entered torpor, showing a steep decline in temperature partway through the night. They also kept track of the birds' weights, because hummingbirds, like many other birds, lose weight between dusk and dawn, as they burn through the calories they have consumed during the day. The researchers were curious whether the birds were adjusting their temperatures to be close to the ambient air temperature. They also wondered whether the torpor of different species six were represented would look different, and whether longer, deeper torpor was connected with losing less weight. Indeed, they found that birds that used torpor only briefly could lose as much as 15 percent of their body weight. Birds who took a longer break, on the order of 12 hours, lost only 2 percent. Birds that reached lower temperatures lost a smaller percentage, too. Some species, like the sparkling violetear, descended to a set temperature (in this case, roughly 46 degrees Fahrenheit) regardless of the ambient temperature. Others, like the black metaltail, seemed to be tracking the air and got very cold. One metaltail hovered around 38 degrees Fahrenheit, scoring the lowest recorded temperature of any hummingbird, to the researchers' knowledge. In fact, the metaltail, the black breasted hillstar and the bronze tailed comet, which are related species, all entered colder, longer bouts of torpor than the others. This could help explain why this group is more common at high altitudes they have worked out ways to minimize the stress of living in an extreme environment. These birds were held in captivity overnight, but Dr. McKechnie says he thinks that in a natural setting, there is more to learn about how hummingbirds save energy. There are stories of hummingbirds in the Andes that will enter a cave during cold spells and not emerge for several days, a pattern that, if confirmed, would suggest that the birds are capable of hibernation, he notes. Similar to torpor, hibernation saves an organism energy, but it goes on longer than a single night. "For me, the next step beyond this study would be to get a clear idea of where they roost," Dr. McKechnie said. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Science |
The CBS News program "60 Minutes" was moving forward with plans to show an interview it conducted last week with the pornographic film actress who says she had an affair with Donald J. Trump as her lawyer and a lawyer for the president traded public jabs through the weekend over her right to speak. The porn star, Stephanie Clifford, spoke with the "60 Minutes" contributor Anderson Cooper late last week. She did so despite an arbitrator's ruling reaffirming an agreement she reached with Mr. Trump in October 2016 to remain silent about their alleged relationship which she said started in 2006 and lasted several months in exchange for 130,000. The "60 Minutes" interview raised the prospect that Mr. Trump's personal attorney and fixer, Michael D. Cohen, would seek an injunction stopping CBS from airing the segment, which does not yet have a scheduled broadcast date. But as of Sunday night CBS had not received any legal threat. Mr. Cohen did not immediately respond to questions on Sunday. In an interview on Sunday, Mr. Avenatti indicated that the publicity blitz was not likely to let up any time soon, ensuring that the story Mr. Cohen paid to go away some 17 months ago would continue to churn. "Our aim and our messaging is very simple: We're going to shoot straight, we're going to provide evidence and facts, and we are going to consistently advocate for the American people being able to make their own decisions as to who's telling the truth and who's lying to them," Mr. Avenatti said. "She wants a forum to tell her version of events and let the chips fall where they may." The campaign was not without its risks, legal and otherwise. Mr. Avenatti said he was assigning 24 hour security to Ms. Clifford after a car tailed her after a dance performance at a Florida strip club this weekend. He first hinted that there was a "60 Minutes" interview himself on Thursday, when he posted a tweet featuring a photograph of him, Ms. Clifford and Mr. Cooper without comment. After Mr. Avenatti's comments, Mr. Cohen broke his relative silence about the case by telling ABC News that he drew on his own home equity line of credit to secure the 130,000 for Ms. Clifford. And The Washington Post quoted him over the weekend as saying, "Mr. Avenatti's actions and behavior has been both reckless and imprudent as it opens Ms. Clifford to substantial monetary liability, which I intend to pursue." Mr. Avenatti answered with a Twitter message on Saturday taunting Mr. Cohen by asking on whose behalf he would pursue the financial penalty, given the absence of Mr. Trump's signature on the October contract. This time, Mr. Cohen did not respond. But Mr. Cohen's most important next moves may be his response to Ms. Clifford's suit, as well as any action he may take to try to block "60 Minutes," which could create a major First Amendment standoff. CBS had no comment on Sunday. A person familiar with the network's preparations said that "60 Minutes" had not received notice of a legal action in relation to the interview with Ms. Clifford. Producers at "60 Minutes" are preparing the segment, a process that often includes a legal review and fact checking. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Media |
ANCHORAGE Gain a few hundred pounds and lie around in bed for months, and you are likely to develop a host of ailments, from diabetes and heart failure to muscle loss, osteoporosis and bedsores. Unless, that is, you happen to be a bear. Scientists have puzzled for decades over the evolutionary tweaks that have allowed bears and other hibernating animals to lie still through the winter, forgoing food and water, yet emerge with their health intact come spring. Researchers believed that if they could better understand how the animals did it, they might apply the insights to humans, developing new drugs or medical treatments, for example, or ways for astronauts to survive long spaceflights in a hibernationlike state. But progress has been slow, the bear den holding its secrets tightly. And in December, the field suffered a further setback, when a highly publicized hibernation study was retracted after one of the authors was found to have manipulated the data. Yet the advent of technologies like gene sequencing and sophisticated imaging techniques over the last few decades has given investigators hope that they will eventually be able to harness aspects of the bear's exceptional physiology for human use. Last month, in a session on hibernation and human health at the 24th International Conference on Bear Research and Management here, scientists presented more than a dozen studies, including research on bears' cardiovascular system, muscle chemistry, kidney functioning, fat storage and metabolism. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Science |
A survey of New Yorkers last week found that one in five city residents carried antibodies to the new coronavirus and in that, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo saw good news. If so many had been infected and survived, he reasoned, the virus may be far less deadly than previously thought. But many scientists took a darker view, seeing instead a vast pool of people who are still very vulnerable to infection. Like the leaders of many states, Mr. Cuomo has been hoping that the results of large scale antibody testing may guide decisions about when and how to reopen the economy and reintegrate society. Few scientists ever imagined that these tests would become an instrument of public policy and many are uncomfortable with the idea. Antibody tests, which show who has been infected, are often inaccurate, recent research suggests, and it is not clear whether a positive result actually signals immunity to the coronavirus. On Friday, the World Health Organization warned against relying on these tests for policy decisions. While countries such as Italy have even floated the idea of "immunity passports" for people who test positive, W.H.O. officials noted that it is not known to what extent people carrying antibodies are immune to the virus. But widespread testing has started nonetheless, and important decisions are likely to flow from the results. The National Institutes of Health, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and virtually every university with an epidemiology department has begun antibody surveys in communities across the United States. "It seems like all of a sudden, everybody just decided that antibody tests are going to give them some grand answer," said Dr. Michael Osterholm, an infectious diseases expert at the University of Minnesota. The goal of most of these projects is to get a handle on the size and nature of the epidemic here, rather than to guide decisions about reopening the economy. But now scientists are racing to fine tune the tests and to learn more about what having antibodies actually means, both for the patient and for the community. The results in New York State offer an early glimpse of the promise and pitfalls of widespread antibody testing. Public health officials tested 3,000 residents at grocery stores and big box retailers throughout the state. In New York City, about 21 percent of participants were found to carry coronavirus antibodies. The rate was about 17 percent on Long Island, nearly 12 percent in Westchester County and Rockland County, and less than 4 percent in the rest of the state. New York's survey was reasonably well designed and the results largely credible, experts said. But unlike Mr. Cuomo, few saw happy news in the numbers. "I just don't see any way to put a silver lining on any of these results," said Carl Bergstrom, an infectious diseases expert at the University of Washington in Seattle. "I think that the efforts to spin it that way are irresponsible." Virginia's new lieutenant governor elect says she won't force vaccines. If one in five residents in hard hit New York City has been exposed to the virus, he and others said, then four in five are still vulnerable and that underscores how far we are from the pandemic's end. New York's results suggested a death rate of between 0.5 and 1 percent, figures some conservative commentators have argued are too low to justify statewide lockdowns. Public health experts like Dr. Bergstrom took the opposite view. "If the mortality rate is 1 percent, we're looking at 2 million deaths, which is unprecedented in our nation's history and unimaginable," he said. "Anyone talking about the death rate as 'only 1 percent and so we should not worry about it' has an extraordinarily callous view." The New York survey confirms what experts have long believed: that because of the lack of tests, the state has undercounted the true number of infections by about a factor of 10. Reopening society with such a huge vulnerable population, and without careful consideration, could be disastrous, allowing the virus to sweep through the country, Dr. Bergstrom and others said. Like the Science Times page on Facebook. Sign up for the Science Times newsletter. Another lesson from the survey: New York is far from attaining "herd immunity" a proportion of the community immune to the virus that is so large that the pathogen cannot maintain a toehold. For that to happen, experts have estimated that 60 to 70 percent of the population would need to be immune. Even then, the coronavirus would continue to spread, just at a slower rate. "Honestly, from an ethical vantage point, herd immunity in the absence of a vaccine is not something we should be aiming to achieve," said Maimuna Majumder, a computational epidemiologist at Harvard Medical School. To get there, "that's a lot of sick people and a lot of deaths," she added. While these results should not be used to make public health decisions, they can be useful for estimating the size and nature of the epidemic, said Bill Hanage, an epidemiologist at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. Antibody surveys can also identify high risk groups, Dr. Dean of the University of Florida pointed out: "I think that's very important for policy, understanding who are these groups that we need to focus on and work to protect." The shortcomings of antibody testing were on vivid display in two other recent surveys, one in Santa Clara County and the other in Los Angeles County. Both drew sharp criticism from scientists, who said the tests had a rate of false positives too high to be used in places the virus has left largely untouched and therefore may have few true positives. Scientists have also repeatedly cautioned that the presence of antibodies does not signify protection from the virus. Some preliminary evidence suggests, for example, that people who are asymptomatic might not produce enough antibodies to prevent a second infection. To be sure about what quantity of antibodies are needed in the blood, researchers need further tests, both to measure the exact amount which the majority of rapid tests available do not provide as well as more detailed analyses of the antibodies' strength. The answers will take weeks to months. "We're kind of heavily leaning on these tests when they're not perfect," said Saskia Popescu, an epidemiologist at George Mason University in Fairfax, Va. "And we still have a lot of people susceptible, so it's a dangerous thing to heavily rely on them right now." Dr. Osterholm said an antibody survey, because it provides "historical data" on who was infected, is like a smoke alarm that gives out a report once a month. "It doesn't work very well if you have a fire right now," he said. Diagnostic tests for the virus offer a better snapshot of the current picture, he added, and states should focus on acquiring accurate diagnostic tests that can provide timely data on the rise or fall in the number of infections. "That should be the data we use to judge opening or not opening" the economy, Dr. Osterholm said. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Health |
Tomas Maier, the longtime creative director of Bottega Veneta, the Kering owned fashion and accessories label, is leaving the company, Kering announced on Wednesday. Mr. Maier, who also designs under his own name, joined Bottega Veneta in 2001, and helped it gain better footing. (The company was founded in Vicenza, in Italy's Veneto region, in 1966, as a leather goods brand.) Mr. Maier, spare in both ornamentation and explanation, pared back the fashionable excesses of Bottega Veneta's preceding iteration. In the age of the "It" bag, which flourished in the 1990s as a status symbol, Mr. Maier designed bags, like the best selling Cabat, that whispered their provenance rather than shouted it with labels. As the brand's motto put it, Bottega Veneta is for "When your own initials are enough." Connoisseurs recognized its woven "intrecciato" leather; anyone else may easily be mystified. "It's largely due to Tomas's high level creative demands that Bottega Veneta became the house it is today," Francois Henri Pinault, the chairman and chief executive officer of Kering, said in a statement. "He put it back on the luxury scene and made it an undisputed reference. With his creative vision, he magnificently showcased the expertise of the house's artisans. I am deeply grateful to him and I personally thank him for the work he accomplished, and for the exceptional success he helped to achieve." Kering acquired Bottega Veneta in 2001, when Kering was known as Gucci Group. Mr. Maier was appointed that same year. Mr. Maier oversaw everything, including the design of the products, the architecture of the stores and the brand's image "anything," as he told The New Yorker for a 2011 profile, "that involves creative." He enjoyed significant success. In 2012, Bottega Veneta exceeded 1 billion in revenues for the first time. Revenues since have fluctuated, and Bottega Veneta was edged out of the second place slot in Kering's luxury portfolio by the re energized Saint Laurent. In 2017, Bottega Veneta reported more than 1.17 billion euros in revenue (about 1.38 billion at current exchange rates), putting it third in revenue among Kering's luxury portfolio, which also includes Balenciaga and Alexander McQueen. Even in a time of constant designer departures and arrivals, Mr. Maier had retained his place at Bottega Veneta. In an age of three year contracts, he has been with the label for 17 years. His departure comes at a moment of restless churn. At Lanvin and Nina Ricci, in house design studios are at the helm, between creative directors; Clare Waight Keller is newly installed at Givenchy and Natacha Ramsay Levi at Chloe; Riccardo Tisci has yet to show his first collection for Burberry and Hedi Slimane his for Celine. Bottega Veneta itself has been working to increase visibility this year. In February, it opened its largest store in the world, on Madison Avenue in Manhattan, and celebrated by bringing its runway show from Milan to New York Fashion Week. Mr. Maier's departure is effective immediately. Kering declined to comment on the reasons for his departure other than referring to Mr. Pinault's statement, and said that a successor would be named "in due course." Kering, which had invested in Mr. Maier's own brand the two entered into what they called a "joint venture to develop" Tomas Maier in 2013 also declined to comment on whether Mr. Maier's departure from Bottega Veneta would affect this partnership. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Fashion & Style |
Five months into internet exile, playgoers have a lot of questions. Two of the biggest for me are: Is what we're seeing online really theater? And why so many monologues? The second, at least, is easy to answer. One person plays are cheaper, easier, quicker and safer to produce. No one breathes on anyone. The costumes can be scrounged. Monologues also avoid the "why is she staring past his elbow?" problem that's endemic to productions in which actors have to pretend to maintain eye contact when they're really miles or continents apart. But the monologue question and the existential one are actually bound together, as a new slew of one person mini dramas from the Weston Playhouse in Vermont demonstrates. Presented on YouTube under the omnibus heading "One Room," this collection of 14 original works, most of them five to eight minutes long, makes a case for the solo direct address form as the irreducible essence of theater, an essence that even a pandemic (or iPhone) can't denature. The pandemic is thematically central to the 14 offerings, which you can view singly or in a 95 minute compilation that debuted on Friday evening. The theater's prompt to the playwrights "What makes a home? What stories might be hiding in its ordinary rooms?" naturally suggests content in which characters are stuck considering their lives while socially distanced. Death, illness and ghosts are common denominators here, as is longing for the lost world and its pleasures. At their best, the monologues use our singular moment to intensify feelings about eternal matters. In the evening's standout, a play by Noelle Vinas called "Zoom Intervention," a mother undergoing chemotherapy talks online to her son, a drug addict she can no longer allow into her home. (The emotional danger he has always brought with him is also now a literal one.) Simple as the setup is, the Off Broadway treasure Liza Colon Zayas gives it the full complexity of drama: Her wrenching, radiant performance imbues the mother with so much love that it nearly (but not quite) swamps her anger. Great performances are crucial in monologues, especially short ones, because there's no compensation to be sought in the rest of the cast and because the material is always more or less a sketch. (That said, Vinas's play, directed by Estefania Fadul, is beautifully structured and as long as it needs to be.) Like Alan Bennett's "Talking Heads" and the pandemic series "Viral Monologues," the "One Room" pieces are especially welcome as opportunities to experience terrific actors, whether newcomers or veterans, displaying new sides of themselves. Among those unfamiliar to me, I especially enjoyed Jakeem Dante Powell, whose emotions shift like the colors of a mood ring in "Rita," by Josh Wilder. The story of a young Black man sequestering in his apartment, it is, in part, a portrait of boredom, in which "I tried something new today" is a refrain that changes its meaning with each repetition. (Reginald L. Douglas is the deft director.) But it is also, by suggestion, about political engagement, and brings to that subject an allusive grace lacking in some other treatments of the theme. The better known actors include Daphne Rubin Vega, delivering a knockout performance in Dael Orlandersmith's "before the witching hour / pandemic blues." A series of memories of city life recalled as the clock lumbers from 3 p.m. to 6 p.m. before a night of curfew, the play has a hermetic, poetic quality that could have been difficult to vivify. But under the direction of Jade King Carroll, Rubin Vega brings an intense specificity to each memory the names of streets, the expressions on faces so that even when you don't have a matching experience, you know exactly what she's feeling. What she's feeling is loss; so is Josh Hamilton's character in Andy Bragen's "Memories of New York," which bears the subtitle "and other things that are gone." Beautifully directed by Knud Adams, with Hamilton in a rowboat in a gray shirt against a gray sky, it's really just an expertly delivered list of pandemic deprivations that eventually become indistinguishable from life's: street fairs, Times Square, youth. What Alfre Woodard's character, a former kindergarten teacher, has lost in "A Room of Nobody Else's" is not so evident, but this being a play by Will Eno, the enigma is key to the dramatic construction. Along with David Cale's "The Actor," this is one of the "One Room" plays that seems to offer a trick answer to the theater's prompting questions. In "The Actor," featuring Marin Ireland and directed by Lee Sunday Evans, the happy ending that isolation allows for a couple stuck in a bubble together feels skillfully wrought but shallow. Isolation provides a more literal happy ending for Dana Delany's is she demented or is she just lonely character in "The Visitations" by Jen Silverman: a suavely comic ghost story in which the socko punchline (perfectly pulled off by the director Mike Donahue) doesn't seem like an evasion but a payoff. That's not so easy to do; several other monologues in "One Room" fizzle on their way toward attempts at catharsis, perhaps the result of working too hard in too little space. Monologues shouldn't be agendas. And yet in its own way, Eno's play, directed by Kenny Leon, delivers one. Marvelously austere in its epigrammatic ambivalence, it kicks off the compilation and lingers over the 13 plays that follow. As if addressing this new kind of theater we're seeing as well as this new kind of life we're living, Woodard, sublime, looks right at the camera and says prayerfully: "We need people to help us do the things we need to do alone." One Room Available through July 2021 on YouTube. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Theater |
ESTORIL, Portugal There was not much sign of Portugal's debt crisis as a fleet of shiny gray BMW sedans set out one by one from an elegant seaside hotel near here Thursday morning. As the cars sped through whitewashed coastal villages, the sun broke through low clouds and gray green Atlantic swells rolled lazily to shore. The drivers could press a button that put the new BMW 5 Series cars into "sport plus" mode, stiffening the suspension, to better attack the narrow, winding road. What downturn? Bayerische Motoren Werke managers are in fact hoping that the relatively balmy February weather east of Lisbon was a better reflection of the state of the global economy than the deficit and political crisis afflicting the country. The redesigned 5 Series, which BMW showed to journalists Thursday, is the beginning of a major model effort that BMW hopes will enable it to reclaim its position as the best selling premium automaker in Europe a spot it lost to a resurgent Audi last year. BMW's portfolio for 2010 includes a redesign of the midsize X3 sport utility vehicle, a four wheel drive version of the compact Mini, a new Ghost sedan from Rolls Royce (also a BMW brand), and fresh takes on existing models like a new convertible version of the 3 Series. "The new models will give us a tailwind as we accelerate out of the crisis," BMW's chief financial officer, Friedrich Eichiner, said, chatting with a group of journalists at a dinner Wednesday. BMW managers, who traveled here from the company's headquarters in Munich, are proud that they saw the downturn coming in early 2008. They dialed back costs and production, allowing the company to come through the crisis relatively undamaged. Now they hope the timing of the new models is equally good, catching an upswing just as it begins. The Rolls Royce Ghost plant in Goodwood, England. The new Ghost is aimed at rich buyers rather than very rich buyers. Despite a 10.4 percent plunge in sales, BMW will post a pretax profit for 2009, Mr. Eichiner said. He also said its car division would return to profit for the fourth quarter after a loss of 76 million euros, or 107 million, in the third quarter. For 2008, BMW reported a net profit of 384 million euros ( 524 million) on sales of 44.3 billion euros ( 60.4 billion). Still, Mr. Eichiner remains cautious about the year ahead. He frets, for example, about the danger of a commercial real estate crisis in the United States, which could deal a fresh blow to banks in BMW's largest market. At a time of consolidation across the industry, some analysts have also questioned whether BMW, with sales of a little more than one million vehicles a year, will be able to remain competitive in the long term. "There are risks in the air," Mr. Eichiner said. The 5 Series, which has not gone through a complete redesign since 2003, is critical to BMW's goal of achieving an 8 percent profit on car sales. The sporty but comfortable sedan, a beloved company car for European business executives, is BMW's second best selling model line by units, after the smaller and significantly less expensive 3 Series. BMW does not disclose earnings by model line, but it is a safe bet that the 5 Series carries a healthy profit margin. "The 5 Series is one of the two backbones of the portfolio," along with the 3 Series, said Christoph Sturmer, an auto analyst at IHS Global Insight in Frankfurt. The 5 Series, which goes on sale in Europe on March 20 and the United States on June 19, is coming to market at a more auspicious time than the comparable Mercedes E Class, which rival Daimler, based in Stuttgart, released last year. "BMW is lucky because they hit the right side of the recession," Mr. Sturmer said. Mr. Eichiner conceded that this year's product offensive was the result of production decisions set years ago, rather than any strategic brilliance. "Five years ago who saw the crisis?" he asked. "It's luck." But he also said that not having many new models last year was a problem, as BMW struggled to entice buyers during the downturn. "Last year I would have been happy to have a new 5," he said with a smile, adding, "I'm happy I have a 5 now that the crisis is over." The new BMW 5 Series sedan, one of several vehicles BMW changed for 2010. Of course, the success of the 5 Series depends on whether buyers like it. The starting price in Germany will be 39,950 euros ( 54,490), and nearly all the cars sold in the United States are likely to be priced above 50,000. The car's exterior design is reminiscent of BMW's top of the line 7 Series, but with accents like slightly angled taillights that give the car a slightly racier look. Inside, the 5 Series is stuffed with technology previously reserved for the 7 Series, like optional pivoting rear wheels, controlled by software, that allow a shorter turning radius or crisp lane changes at high speed. Other options include a navigation display that projects directions, driving speed and other data on the windshield. BMW said it cut production costs for the 5 Series, which will be made in Dingolfing, Germany, by 15 percent by borrowing parts from the 7 Series, like aluminum axles. The only drawback, Mr. Sturmer, the analyst points out, is that the cars look similar and could drain sales from the costlier 7 Series model. "A little bit more differentiation might have done them good," he said. The 5 Series is BMW's most crucial new product this year, but the company will also be placing hopes on other vehicles. The four wheel drive Mini sounds incongruous but looks surprisingly convincing based on prototypes that the company has allowed journalists to see. At the high end, the new Ghost from Rolls Royce will be sold for less than existing models of the superluxury unit, as BMW tries to attract buyers merely rich as opposed to very rich. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Global Business |
The tennis great Serena Williams recently had a baby (a girl named Olympia), took up running and is putting in hours of training time to get fully back on the pro tennis circuit. In short, she has a lot on her plate. But Ms. Williams, 36, who travels between Palm Beach Gardens, Fla., and San Francisco, also carves out time for her beauty regimen, which is a mix of natural leaning products and ones chosen to produce results. See what she's using, below. I'm a big time beauty fan definitely, all my life. I remember when I was younger, I had so much that I had whole cabinets just stuffed with beauty. But I'm incredibly organized. I'm a Type A personality. In the morning, it depends on how I'm feeling. I might use a face wash it's a gel wash called Dual Action AHA Cleanser Mask from the European MZ Skin Luxury Skin line. It's my secret, and it's amazing. I also use the MZ face cream. The packaging is pink with a gold cap it's so pretty. I think packaging matters. I was in Harrods when I saw the line. I tried the cream first and fell in love. I'm getting better at doing face masks, too. I got some that are gold, also from MZ Skin. I think the masks work, but I don't use them enough. Or maybe instead of cleanser, I'll use a big jar of organic, unrefined coconut oil. I use that as a wash, wipe it off with hot water, and then I'm done. I don't do anything after that except for SPF. I don't walk out of the house without SPF on, and neither does Olympia. For me, I use Neutrogena. That seems to be what every dermatologist recommends. For her, she uses natural shea butter, which is a natural SPF. That's what some doctors told me, and I read up on it. For babies, you don't want to give them the toxins. The truth is, we don't really need it either. I use of lot of natural things. I make oils myself I just mix things which is a new phase I'm on. I usually mix a jojoba oil and a coconut oil, and I might put that on my face. I add an essential oil if it's for my hair or body. I generally don't use an essential oil for my face. Other than that, I like things that really work. That's the one thing underlining my career too: results. I like the results from the Vine Vera line. I have the vitamin C serum, the Resveratrol peel and the Resveratrol serum. At night I make sure to take off my makeup with coconut oil, rinse my face with warm water and a towel, and then apply these products. Also, I saw results with Embrace Scar Therapy. I had a C section with Olympia, and I actually ended up getting cut twice. It was because I had a hematoma, and they had to go back in my wound and recut the route. I was like, "Oh my God, I'm going to have the worst scar," which is crazy that was on my mind, but that's natural. That's what women think. It's our bodies. It's invasive to scar up our bodies. But my friend knew about this dressing called Embrace, and it treats the scar. This was before I became an ambassador for them. I was skeptical. I think a lot of women are. But when I put it on, I could literally feel the tension releasing from the scar. I never wear much makeup. But lately I've been wearing a little more. A good friend of mine told me, "A little goes a long way," so I've been putting in a little time. In less than five minutes, I have a full face. I do a little concealer. If I want it to last all day, I use Kat Von D. If I'm going for a lighter look, I use the Nars Radiant Creamy. Then I use a little powder to set it. I use a lot of MAC powder because they have really good powder for my skin color. But if I'm just setting, then I use a translucent one. Then it's L'Oreal Voluminous mascara always the waterproof. My brows, I sometimes just let them go, but I also have the Anastasia brow pencil, which is the best. But the other day, I didn't have my brow pencil with me, and I just used my mascara on my brows. If it gets too dark, I'll put a little concealer on there. If I'm on the court, then I'll go au naturel, but I do wear waterproof eyeliner sometimes, and that's it. I just found one that works for me called Skylar. I'm an investor in a lot of companies, and this company reached out to someone on my team. I love natural scents because I have been allergic to perfume and haven't worn it for years. I absolutely loved these, so now I'm an investor in the brand as well. I love to make my hair oils. And I always use a co wash, and I always use very natural stuff for African American hair. Right now, I have tons of curls, and Miss Jessie's is great. I also use the As I Am line all the time love it. Dye: Right now I usually do the tips or try to make something fun out of it. I do like my natural color, but I like to play. I have a lady in Miami, Angie, who's been doing my hair for 10 years. I love hot stone massages. In Florida, it's also really popular to do foot massages. You sit down, and they just do your feet. It's so great. I have to worry about diet and fitness all the time. It's my job to be fit. I have to have a good diet. I have to work out. Now, since the baby and only since the baby, I try to do cardio three or four times a week where I just go on a run. I actually never ran before, but I wanted to drop weight fast. It worked for me. Because I wanted to lean out, I also wanted to eat a lot healthier so I went vegan for 44 days. That worked out really well. Then I tried it again. But now, I'm vega tarian. I'm going to Europe soon. I love cheese, but I only like the cheese in Europe. So I call myself a vega tarian so I can have that amazing cheese. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Style |
How did you arrive at the concept for "Sustain"? I knew this had to be a significant statement, for myself. It's on such a prominent program, and it's a lengthy piece. It was an opportunity to think about big issues of the symphony orchestra and its place in society and its future. So, really, it was also thinking about questions of what this art form means in our world and what might it mean in the future. I started by asking lots of big questions: How are our minds now different from the minds of the people a hundred years ago, and how might the minds of the people of a hundred years from now be different their experience of reality, their experience of time and what it means to sit in a concert hall quietly for 45 minutes and listen to a symphony orchestra play a piece? Suddenly that became a thousand years from now and then a million years from now. The piece became about so much more than just a small view; it's relating me and my sense of time to things that are much bigger. It's been a very chaotic and contentious time in our country. I think I was feeling the need to find a sense of a long view, because it's so easy for me to get completely lost and bogged down in the kind of chaos and craziness of our world. So in that sense, it felt like a very personal response to the world around me. That's a lot to reckon with, and I imagine difficult to keep control of during the writing process. I really am entirely alone with my own thoughts, and every piece is this journey. It's never a clear or straightforward path. With every piece, I have this notion that I have to go into the studio and really reinvent myself. This one was a huge challenge for me: I needed to relearn my language and how to compose again. I spent a lot of time thinking about what was worth saying for this huge venue; where could I go that felt honest, but also significant, a testament to what it means to be alive in 2018 but also to my feelings about how the orchestra relates to society? Somehow as I'm working, a kind of nucleus of the piece emerges and I follow that. It became clear that this wanted to be something different from what I wanted it to be. I wanted to write a big tribute to the L.A. Phil, almost like a concerto for orchestra. But in the end I felt like that wasn't the piece I had to write at this moment, and I actually had to go and explore these more abstract ideas of time and space, how I relate to time and how we communally relate to time. The themes here feel very Californian, in a way. Did a sense of place factor in your writing? I think my identity as a West Coast composer started to matter once I figured out what this piece was. I was able to connect it then to a tradition of West Coast expansiveness, thinking about nature. There's a certain minimal quality to this music not in a sense of lacking material, but in the expansive thinking about how sounds evolve over time, which I would definitely connect to a kind of California minimalist tradition. I was able to pick up that thread in the process and think about composers like John Adams, Terry Riley and even Lou Harrison, people for whom the natural world seems to be a part of the fabric of their music. What about the title? There were a few ideas and words I often try out in my mind as I'm writing how the words might interact with the sounds. "Sustain" is a word that means something technical to musicians, but I was really interested in some of the phrases that came to mind. I thought of sustained attention, and of how difficult it is in our world to have that. What does that mean for me to ask for that kind of attention from the audience and musicians? There's also sustained discourse: How do you create an argument that unfolds over time? I wanted to sustain an argument, a kind of through line of thought from the beginning. And, of course, all of this feels like a response to our particular moment and what I want in a concert experience, which is to have a long, unfolding, sustained communal experience. That's what I feel like I need, and that's what I try to write. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Music |
In a move that underscores both the upheaval in the men's wear world and the new equality of the sexes in fashion, Berluti, the anchor men's wear label in the LVMH stable, announced on Thursday that it had named Haider Ackermann, a designer known largely for the edgy high romance of his namesake women's line, as creative director. "I am sure that his vision will bring a unique opportunity to Berluti," said Antoine Arnault, the company's chief executive, in announcing the news. Though Mr. Ackermann, who is in his 40s (he will not give his age), also has a men's wear line, it was introduced in only 2013, 10 years after the women's line. And though he has been a rumored contender for many big brand job openings over the years, including Maison Martin Margiela back when Mr. Margiela was involved, and Dior, it was never in the context of men's wear. That he is now at the helm of a global brand like Berluti reflects the current change roiling the sector, which after a period of much lauded growth seems to be casting around for a way to stay relevant. In April, Brioni, a men's wear brand owned by the Kering luxury group, appointed Justin O'Shea, an iconoclastic Australian with a retail background, as its designer. He is now in the midst of effecting what the New York Times critic Guy Trebay called "a radical brand reset" infused with a slick, 24 carat pimp gloss. And it speaks to the growing convergence of the men's and women's wear worlds, as expressed both in the design and in the simultaneous presentation of the lines, normally shown months apart, at brands like Tom Ford, Burberry and Bottega Veneta. Earlier this year, a Louis Vuitton ad campaign featured the actor Jaden Smith in products from the women's line. This has not escaped Mr. Ackermann, who laughed on the phone from Paris as he anticipated the reaction to his appointment. "Everyone was expecting me to do women's wear, so I wanted to do something else," he said. "I have another story to tell." He said he had begun speaking to Mr. Arnault, the oldest son of Bernard Arnault, the founder and chairman of LVMH, a few months ago. "It just felt right," Mr. Ackermann said. "Like having a new lover. Men's is a very interesting world nowadays because the customer wants more of an individual identity. But he also wants timeless, so you are always balancing on that line." Berluti, originally founded as an upscale men's show brand in 1895 and run by four generations of the Berluti family, was acquired by LVMH in 1993, and the younger Mr. Arnault (whom Mr. Ackermann now calls "my partner in crime") took over as chief executive in 2011 with the mission to develop it into a full men's wear brand. He hired Alessandro Sartori from Z Zegna, the more fashion forward line of the Ermenegildo Zegna behemoth; bought the custom French suitmaker Arnys in 2012, merging it with Berluti; and began to open stores. By the time Mr. Sartori left early this year (he returned to Zegna as artistic director), Mr. Arnault told Women's Wear Daily that revenues had grown to more than 100 million euros ( 111.6 million), from under EUR30 million ( 33.5 million). The brand now has 45 stores around the world. The aesthetic Mr. Sartori created for Berluti was signified by a quirky classicism and built on a high luxury sneaker, so it is now up to Mr. Ackermann a Colombian born, African raised, Paris based graduate of the Belgian school of fashion with an affinity for leather to redefine it. "I don't want to make men beautiful or handsome," he said. "I want to create attitude." He will continue to run his own women's and men's lines concurrently with his job at Berluti (LVMH has not invested in his company), which involves not only the full product design, including sporting accessories, but also ad campaigns, image and stores. "Hell, yeah," he said when asked if he would be in charge of all creative aspects. "'I've been dreaming of it all summer." Mr. Ackermann said he is not worried about the juggling act demanded by designing two labels. Indeed, he said, one of the reasons he signed on to a men's wear label rather than a women's label was that men's wear, which has only two seasons as opposed to four or six, is a relatively more manageable commitment. Nor is he worried about the problems of duplicating aesthetics. Berluti is, he said in something of an understatement, "quite expensive. To be able to afford that, one needs to make a living, and that means one has achieved a certain level of success." And, probably, reached a certain life stage. The Haider Ackermann man, he said, is "more of a daydreamer." "I don't think anyone will be surprised by me being there after the show," he said. The truth of his words will be revealed in January 2017 during the Paris men's wear season. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Fashion & Style |
Coral reefs are sprawling, intricate ecosystems that house an estimated 25 percent of all marine life and can sometimes be seen from space. Yet they are formed by a process invisible to us. A study published in Science on Wednesday now presents a microscopic picture of the biology that makes corals' skeletons grow. The findings suggest that coral may be more robust in the face of human driven ocean acidification than commonly thought. Corals grow their armor by diligently secreting a chunk of hard skeleton smaller than the width of a human hair each day. This process is called calcification and scientists have debated which parts of it are most important for decades. One view prioritizes chemical interactions with the seawater. Using ion pumps, corals can possibly decrease the acidity of seawater enough that calcium carbonate the stuff of limestone and chalk and the basis of coral skeletons forms spontaneously. Under these circumstances, if oceans become more acidic a potential consequence of human emitted carbon dioxide in the atmosphere being absorbed by the seas coral may struggle to form a skeleton. "Coral is not just a rock," said Paul Falkowski, a professor of marine sciences at Rutgers University and senior author of the study. "And because of that, we're pretty confident that they'll be able to continuing making their skeletons even if the ocean becomes slightly more acidic." "The problem is, we have lots of data that show many coral species are very sensitive to environmental change," said Alexander Venn, a senior scientist at the Scientific Center of Monaco, who was not involved in the study. "While this paper builds a strong model for the biological control of calcification, there are still pieces of the puzzle missing." Dr. Falkowski and his colleagues used ultrahigh resolution microscopic imaging and techniques for observing the structure of molecules to study skeletal branches from smooth cauliflower coral, a well studied species common in the Indo Pacific. The result is a model of coral calcification that starts with a malleable form of calcium carbonate, called amorphous calcium carbonate. The researchers say they believe that amorphous calcium carbonate is initially formed by proteins. Through a process not yet fully understood, little balls of the material then give way to aragonite, the form of calcium carbonate that makes up a mature coral skeleton. Similar transitions have been observed in sea urchins and shellfish, and some scientists even suspect amorphous calcium carbonate may be a common precursor for calcification across the tree of life. "When we precipitate aragonite in the lab, just in a bucket of seawater, it forms this very characteristic pattern with very long, needle shaped crystals," said Nicola Allison, a lecturer in earth sciences at the University of St. Andrews, who did not participate in the research. "This is the first report of amorphous calcium carbonate in coral, and it really does suggest the organism is able to control how solid material is deposited," she added. Alex Gagnon, an assistant professor of oceanography at the University of Washington who was not involved in the research, suggested it was an oversimplification to take seawater chemistry out of the equation. Acid dissolves calcium carbonate, so the more acidic the ocean is, the more difficult it is for corals to organize that first bit of skeleton. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Science |
Most politicians have a public record of speeches and votes on issues of the day, but Donald J. Trump, the Republican nominee for president, has left a different type of record: a near constant presence in TV shows, movies, documentaries, pageants and even professional wrestling events over 30 years. His first television appearance seems to have been an uncredited 1981 cameo on the sitcom "The Jeffersons." Since then, Mr. Trump has seized on opportunities to create a recurring character over three decades: a larger than life New York billionaire named Donald Trump. His cameos have included numerous TV shows ("The Nanny," "Fresh Prince of Bel Air," "Sex and the City") and movies ("Home Alone 2," "Zoolander" and Woody Allen's "Celebrity."). Including his many interviews on late night talk shows, appearances on beauty pageant and professional wrestling shows, and a recurring role on his reality program "The Apprentice," his credits have numbered in the hundreds, according to the Internet Movie Database. His memorable cameos have been collected in at least one YouTube supercut. This public record has created problems for Trump the candidate. It was an appearance in 2005 on "Access Hollywood," that caused serious damage to his campaign earlier this month. Behind the scenes audio leaked in which Mr. Trump used lewd and vulgar language to describe women and his behavior toward them, prompting a series of women to come forward and claim that he had groped them or otherwise behaved inappropriately. When asked by Oprah Winfrey if he planned to run, Mr. Trump replied, "Probably not, but I do get tired of seeing the country ripped off." He added: "I think I'd win. I tell you what, I wouldn't go in to lose." Shortly after the 1988 election, Mr. Trump told David Letterman that he was mulling a presidential run. "I'm not sure that you want to see the United States become a winner," Mr. Trump told Mr. Letterman. This back and forth continued for years. "Is it another phony campaign?" Mr. Letterman asked Mr. Trump in a "Late Show" segment last year, "or are you really running?" We all know how that turned out. In a recent interview with The Times, Mr. Letterman described their relationship as ultimately playful, but called Mr. Trump a "damaged person" because of his behavior on the campaign trail. In one case, Mr. Trump had a direct hand in shaping his characters: Peter Marc Jacobson, a creator of the sitcom "The Nanny," said that he had received a note from Mr. Trump's representative that quibbled over a script's reference to the real estate mogul's wealth. The script called him a millionaire. 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. "Since he's a billionaire, he would like the line changed accordingly," the note read. In the end, Mr. Jacobson changed the script to say "zillionaire." He also framed the note. "It's so bizarre and so narcissistic that somebody would want something like that changed," Mr. Jacobson said. "It's a sitcom. You want to be humble about it." In "The Apprentice" and "The Celebrity Apprentice," competition reality shows that Mr. Trump hosted from 2004 through 2015, the businessman found a way to use business failures to his advantage, claiming they had made him the consummate businessman. Now was time to pass on that knowledge to somebody else, he said. "The Apprentice" billed itself as a show that collected contestants from all economic and educational backgrounds. The ultimate prize was a job close to Mr. Trump. But behind the scenes, more than 20 people who worked on the show said that Mr. Trump's behavior was sexist and demeaning toward women, according to a report filed in October by The Associated Press. One former crew member said that Mr. Trump asked a group of male contestants if they'd sleep with one of their female competitors. That person, whom The Associated Press did not identify because of a nondisclosure agreement, added: "Everyone is trying to make him stop talking, and the woman is shrinking in her seat." Mr. Trump hosted the comedy sketch show twice, once in 2014 and again last November, several months after he had announced his run for the presidency. "Whatever one can say about Donald Trump, he's shrewd about the TV business," James Poniewozik, a critic for The Times, wrote in his review of Mr. Trump's 2015 hosting gig. "He knows what pressures producers work under, he knows what he can deliver in ratings and he knows the leverage that gives him." Lately, Mr. Trump has been the subject of overt mocking from the SNL crew, which has cast the actor Alec Baldwin to exaggerate Mr. Trump's mannerisms and lampoon his recent statements about immigration, women and minorities. Mr. Trump did not appreciate the joke. "Watched Saturday Night Live hit job on me," Mr. Trump tweeted on Oct. 16. "Time to retire the boring and unfunny show. Alec Baldwin portrayal stinks. Media rigging election!" Mr. Trump has made several appearances on World Wrestling Entertainment Inc. productions. In his role, he appeared as himself, styled as a beloved voice of the people who butted heads with Vince McMahon, W.W.E.'s chief executive. In 2007 on "WrestleMania 23," Mr. Trump tackled Mr. McMahon to the floor and shaved his head. "Donald Trump is in a world he is not familiar with," a commentator says. "This is not real estate." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Media |
Want more basketball in your inbox? Sign up for Marc Stein's weekly N.B.A. newsletter here. Josh Hart and the New Orleans Pelicans were supposed to play at home against the Knicks last Friday. Hart instead found himself stuck at home and in a mood to muse. "I miss the Premier League," Hart said on Twitter along with a sad face emoji. With the weekend approaching, Hart couldn't help himself. The N.B.A.'s shutdown in response to the global coronavirus outbreak has abruptly foisted chaos and uncertainty upon everyone associated with professional basketball. But Saturdays and Sundays, marquee N.B.A. days, have also meant watching Chelsea matches by any means necessary for Hart and his close friend, Larry Nance Jr. of the Cleveland Cavaliers. "My two favorite things to do this time of year are to play basketball and watch soccer," Nance said. "I know how all N.B.A. fans feel. I feel like I lost two seasons." Hart and Nance are among the most vocal of a growing community of N.B.A. players who fervently follow international soccer, which has also been largely brought to a halt by the coronavirus pandemic. They were teammates on the Los Angeles Lakers for half a season and excitedly shared their fandom with two other soccer loving Lakers: Alex Caruso, a Manchester City supporter, and the retired forward Luol Deng, who spent a chunk of his youth in London and closely follows Arsenal. Like countless players across the N.B.A. map, Hart and Nance are adjusting to their new realities, trying to maintain some semblance of conditioning without games, practices or much permissible contact with other humans amid strict instructions to self quarantine. Many players, Hart said, can't do anything constructive with a basketball under these circumstances because they don't have access to team facilities, and both private gyms and public courts are widely off limits. "When you're not even getting shots up, it's definitely going to take a long time for guys to get back, not only physically into playing shape but also mentally," Hart said. Yet Hart and Nance are inevitably pining for their favorite off court outlet, too. The Premier League season has been suspended until at least April 30 and will likely be further delayed. Hart and Nance have become two of Chelsea's most widely known celebrity fans, embraced to such a degree that they were featured together last week on the club's official American podcast. Last April, Nance traveled to England after the Cavaliers' season ended to watch five Premier League matches in five days. He naturally built the trip around a trip to Chelsea's Stamford Bridge and added stops at Manchester City, Everton, Tottenham and Manchester United. Hart's chance to make his first trip to "The Bridge" came in August, starting with a visit to the new Tottenham Hotspur Stadium. Hart remembered excitedly calling Nance before the kickoff, awestruck by the noise rising around him at his first ever live Premier League game as a spectator. Nance advised him to stay ready for the first "when the Spurs go marching in" chant from the Tottenham fans. Now Hart and Nance are closely monitoring Premier League developments for entirely different reasons. The Independent newspaper reported on Sunday that league officials are considering bringing all 20 teams in the top tier of English soccer to one or two centralized locations in June and July to isolate them in "World Cup style" training camps. They would then try to complete the remaining 92 matches in a closed door, made for TV extravaganza. Similar concepts have likewise been circulating in N.B.A. circles in recent days, with Commissioner Adam Silver describing himself as "an optimist by nature" in an ESPN interview and encouraging open thinking provided the coronavirus outbreak eases soon. Hope persists in some corners of the league that 30 teams could somehow convene in, say, Las Vegas to try to play out, at worst, a modified postseason in July, August and/or September. "If they try that in England and it works, you better believe that we're going to be a few weeks behind that and probably try the same thing," Nance said. Nance, though, said he feared that "we're done" for this N.B.A. season. He has been deeply unsettled by the Covid 19 outbreak as someone who long ago learned he had Crohn's disease, an inflammatory bowel disease whose immunosuppressive medication makes him more at risk for infections because it weakens his immune system. On top of that constant worry is the general concern harbored by many N.B.A. players about what such a sudden halt to the schedule will do to his body. "Right now, if you're really doing what you're supposed to do and just staying at home and not seeing anybody and you're following the rules that you're supposed to follow, unless you have a home gym you can't work out," Nance said. "In my house, I don't have a home gym. I've got a Peloton bike and a few weights here and there, but that's not going to keep me in shape for basketball. Everybody's out of basketball shape." Hart had eagerly anticipated a busy March and April toggling between his day job and his intoxicating hobby following Chelsea. While Hart's soccer team had climbed into a top four spot in the Premier League, New Orleans (28 36) was just 3 1/2 games behind eighth seeded Memphis and had the most favorable closing schedule of any team in the hunt for the West's final playoff berth when the N.B.A. announced its indefinite suspension on March 11. "I'm not very optimistic about the season starting any time in the next two, three, four months," Hart said. "It's just too hard. Unless they were somehow able to build a huge hotel and an arena and put a bubble over it in some random place somewhere, that's my only guess how to actually finish the season in the next several months. You really do have to create a bubble." It would appear that fans of both the N.B.A. and international soccer can identify with the sense of emptiness Hart tweeted about: By Tuesday, his post had more than 70,000 likes. You ask; I answer. Every week in this space, I'll field three questions posed via email at marcstein newsletter nytimes.com. (Please include your first and last name, as well as the city you're writing in from, and make sure "Corner Three" is in the subject line.) Q: What is your opinion now on the 2018 draft day trade that the Hawks made with the Mavericks to swap Luka Doncic for Trae Young and the future first round pick that became Cam Reddish? Joe Schulman (Atlanta) Ed. note: In a pre arranged deal, Atlanta drafted Doncic No. 3 over all in 2018; Dallas took Young at No. 5. The teams swapped players, with the Mavericks also sending the Hawks a 2019 first rounder. Stein: My opinion really hasn't changed since the deal was made. I would never pretend to claim that I knew Doncic would emerge as one of the league's 10 best players by his second season, but I was a believer from the start and felt he should have gone No. 1 over all. That said, I'm a big Trae Young fan, too. He looks like the second best player in the draft, so Atlanta's ultimate grade is really riding on what Reddish becomes. The Hawks need Reddish to flourish to hush the criticism that will continue, no matter how productive Young is, if Doncic cements himself as the perennial Most Valuable Player Award candidate he appears to be. Reddish averaged 16.4 points and shot 38.9 percent on 3 pointers over a 10 game stretch leading into the N.B.A.'s abrupt shutdown, but his rookie season had been a worrisome struggle before that. I know you asked this question from a Hawks perspective, as an Atlanta resident, so perhaps it will hearten you to hear that, as I've also maintained for some time, Phoenix and Sacramento are likely headed for more regret here than Atlanta. The Suns had the No. 1 pick in 2018 and had just hired one of the world's foremost Doncic experts, Igor Kokoskov, as their new head coach. It would have been gutsy at the time to take Doncic over Deandre Ayton especially after Ayton starred at Arizona but they certainly had no shortage of inside intel. As for Sacramento and the mounting disappointment among Kings fans after their team used 2018's No. 2 pick on Marvin Bagley, team officials believed that they already had a young, top flight lead guard: De'Aaron Fox. So you can understand their thinking to a degree. Much harder to digest is the opportunity the Kings squandered. Even if they were convinced that Bagley was their man, why not try to make the same trade with Dallas that Atlanta did? The Kings could have drafted Doncic at No. 2 in a deal with the Mavericks that would have netted the No. 5 pick and a 2019 first rounder. Atlanta, at No. 3, would have then been expected to take Young, followed by Memphis drafting Jaren Jackson Jr. at No. 4, leaving Bagley at No. 5 for Dallas to pick up on Sacramento's behalf. Drafting Doncic and trading his rights immediately would have invited plenty of criticism for any team, given the way Doncic has developed, but passing on the Slovenian star becomes more palatable if a second lottery pick is part of the deal. Q: How do they resume games when players' contracts expire and salary caps reset in June? blake stakes from Twitter Stein: Countless player and coach contracts expire June 30. The 2019 20 league year is supposed to end that same day, with a new salary cap ceiling going into effect on July 1. The N.B.A. draft is scheduled for June 25. Free agency negotiations can begin at 6 p.m. Eastern time on June 30. It's daunting when you start to run through all the revisions that would be required. But those would all rank as welcome problems compared to the far more unsettling obstacles that must be negotiated to avoid canceling the rest of the 2019 20 season. I posted a fairly lengthy Twitter thread on Sunday night in hopes of listing some of the health and safety hurdles that have to be cleared before the N.B.A. can even think about staging games again, even behind closed doors. Instinct tells me that league officials and the union would figure out how to extend contracts and manage all the salary cap and calendar tweaks needed to complete the season. Far harder to imagine, though, is how the league can ensure a sufficient amount of safety from the spread of the coronavirus to secure the buy in from players, coaches, referees, television crews and everyone else who will be needed to produce games without fans. Everyone wants the league to return as quickly as possible, but are players really going to accept being sequestered in a centralized location for an extended period to play game after game in this fashion? Maybe they will after two or three more months of the current gloom, but these are big asks. The safest bet, as we finally exit the longest and saddest March this league (and sport) has ever endured: The draft will not happen on June 25 if the league musters tangible hope in coming weeks that it can play some regular season games this summer. The draft order can't be set until the regular season standings are final. Q: Couldn't this be, like, the 100th take? Andrew Goldwasser (Dallas) Stein: Andrew was responding to my praise on social media for the broadcaster Mike Breen, who sank what I deemed to be a clutch jumper in a public service announcement for the league about the need for vigilant hand washing and social distancing to fight the coronavirus. I checked with Breen on Tuesday, and he said he needed only two takes. Breen's daughter Nicole, who works for the N.B.A. in its youth development department, filmed the clip, which Breen said needed a redo because he flubbed a line on the first try after making that shot as well. I wasn't there to witness any of this, but I am vouching for the Knicks' play by play man and ESPN veteran. Be a skeptic if you wish, but listen to the energy he brings in that 45 second speech. If he had missed a bunch of shots, forcing retakes, I don't think we'd hear that sort of vitality in his voice. Unfortunately I know this firsthand: Retakes bring you down. We'd be able to tell if Breen who in February was named the Basketball Hall of Fame's 2020 Curt Gowdy Award winner for broadcasting excellence had been repeatedly clanking and starting over. Only two father and son duos in Division I college basketball history have scored at least 2,000 points apiece: Dell Curry (Virginia Tech) and Stephen Curry (Davidson), and Steve Burtt Sr. and Steve Burtt Jr. both of Iona. Burtt Sr. was featured in our recent article about how hard Covid 19 has hit the New York City basketball community. A follow up to last week's note about San Antonio's Gregg Popovich still needing 64 regular season victories to pass his good friend Don Nelson (1,335 career wins) for the N.B.A. lead: Next in line behind Popovich (1,272) among active coaches is the Los Angeles Clippers' Doc Rivers with 938 397 behind Nelson. Rivers is tied for 11th in career wins with Red Auerbach, the legendary Boston Celtics coach. In other words, if Popovich, 71, doesn't stick around long enough to get to 1,336, Nelson may hold that record for a while. Three teams the Milwaukee Bucks, the Toronto Raptors and the Los Angeles Lakers were 23 7 since Jan. 1 when the N.B.A. season was indefinitely suspended on March 11, forging a three way tie for the league's best record in 2020. Next in line: Oklahoma City at 22 9. For 67.5 million and multiple land swaps with Jack Kent Cooke in 1979, Jerry Buss purchased the Lakers, the N.H.L.'s Los Angeles Kings and the Forum sports arena, which hosted both teams. Forty one years later, buying the Forum alone cost the Clippers' Steve Ballmer 400 million last week. Your humble newsletter curator has been home for 18 consecutive nights in March. This is believed to be some sort of personal record in adulthood. Hit me up anytime on Twitter ( TheSteinLine) or Facebook ( MarcSteinNBA) or Instagram ( marcsteinnba). Send any other feedback to marcstein newsletter nytimes.com. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Sports |
Apple unveiled iPhone X, its first premium tier phone, at an event in Cupertino, Calif., on Tuesday. Here's what else the company had to say. iPhone X is priced at 999, the most expensive ever for a new iPhone model. It will ship on Nov. 3. (Pro tip: The X is pronounced 10, and not "ex.") The phone has a newer screen technology known as OLED, a type of display that can be made thinner, lighter and brighter with better color accuracy and contrast than its predecessor, LCD. The screen on the X has a so called edge to edge display that takes up the entire face by eliminating the borders around the screen. Apple also eliminated the physical home button that has been a signature feature of the iPhone for a decade. iPhone 8 is also here, as well as its bigger sibling, the iPhone 8 Plus. The models include a glass body and a faster chip. Apple TV, the company's set top box that has never been a blockbuster hit, got an upgrade. The device will now be able to stream so called 4K resolution, which refers to screens with two times the vertical resolution and twice the horizontal resolution of older high definition TVs. Apple took the wraps off a new Apple Watch. Called Apple Watch Series 3, it has cellular capabilities. There's also a new Watch OS. iPhone X Pushes Apple Into New Territory on Price. With the 999 iPhone X, Apple moved to a new premium level of pricing. The smartphone will cost 300 more than the iPhone 8 and 200 more than the iPhone 8 Plus. While that will be too expensive for many people, the company said it saw the iPhone X defining a new era for the smartphone, much like the original iPhone did 10 years ago. Timothy D. Cook, Apple's chief executive, said the device would "set the path for the next decade." That's because Apple will likely build on some of the iPhone X's most notable features, including infrared facial recognition, wireless battery charging and sophisticated camera effects. The iPhone X is the first redesigned iPhone in three years, and Apple says it is the blueprint for "the future of the smartphone." Many of the design details had leaked to the press before today's unveiling we'd heard that it would have a new display that stretched across much more of the phone's front, and that it would do away with the trademark home button. Much of that turned out to be true. The iPhone X is essentially the same size and overall shape as the iPhone 7, but because the screen occupies all of the front of the phone, it is far larger than that of older models. The screen uses a technology new for Apple (which many competitors already use), called OLED. It produces better image quality than Apple's older LCD screens. What we didn't quite know was how Apple would integrate the new button free design with the operating system how would you navigate the phone without a physical button? It's quite simple: You swipe. To go home, swipe up from the bottom of the screen. To see other apps, swipe up from the bottom and pause now you see the multitasking pane. And to unlock your phone, you look at it. The iPhone X eliminates Apple's Touch ID, and replaces it with a facial recognition system that Apple calls Face ID. The brand new feature in the iPhone X that has never existed on any other iPhone is infrared face scanning. The technology, called Face ID, uses an infrared camera system on the front of the phone to scan the contours and shape of a person's head to unlock the phone and authorize mobile payments. The technology works by spraying an object with infrared dots to gather information about the depth of an object based on the size and the contortion of the dots. The imaging system can then stitch the patterns into a detailed 3 D image of your face to determine if you are indeed the owner of your smartphone before unlocking it. For Apple, Face ID has been years in the making. In 2013, the iPhone maker acquired PrimeSense, a company that developed sensors for Microsoft's Kinect, a camera system that scanned people's bodies so people could play Xbox games using body movements. Face ID is a direct response to the face recognition feature in smartphones offered by Samsung, Apple's fiercest rival. Experts have criticized Samsung's face recognition feature, which could be tricked by holding a photo of the smartphone owner's face in front of the camera. Apple improved the phones' cameras with new sensors and added new motion sensors to better support applications made for augmented reality, which use data to digitally manipulate the physical world when people look through a smartphone lens. In particular, the dual cameras in the iPhone 8 Plus take photos with sharp details in low light. Apple also added a new portrait mode to improve the lighting on faces regardless of the background. Another notable new feature is the introduction of magnetic induction to the iPhones. Similar to Apple Watch, the iPhones can now be charged by being placed on a charging pad as opposed to being plugged in with a cable. The new iPhone 8 line will be one of the most important for Apple. Wall Street analysts have estimated that more than half of iPhone buyers will buy the 8 and 8 Plus over the next year. The models have a slightly higher starting price than their predecessors: The iPhone 8 starts at 699, up from 650 for older iPhone models. The new Apple TV, called Apple TV 4K, it is an iteration of the last model, which introduced a touch pad remote control. The new box will now be able to stream so called 4K resolution, which refers to screens with two times the vertical resolution and twice the horizontal resolution of older high definition TVs. Eddy Cue, Apple's head of internet software and services, added that 4K titles would cost the same to purchase as traditional high definition titles, and those who previously bought high definition titles would be upgraded to 4K at no additional cost. Apple said the new Apple TV 4K is also two times faster than the last one and includes support for a new color technology called H.D.R., or high dynamic range. This software feature enhances the contrast and color profile of a picture. In bright colors, you will see brighter highlights; in dark colors, you will see more details. Apple Watch can now work without an iPhone. The Apple Watch has been a sleeper hit for the company. Though early reviews were mixed, Apple has steadily improved the device, and now the smartwatch is the best selling watch in the world, according to Apple. Today, Apple unveiled the third version of the device. It looks identical to the old version, but the new one carries a much requested feature for the first time: It will come with a cellular chip, meaning it can access the internet even if it isn't connected to your phone. Among other capabilities, the cellular version can make calls, send texts and stream music when you're on the go. "Now you have the freedom to go anywhere with just the Apple Watch," said Jeff Williams, Apple's chief operating officer. The cellular version completes a long term vision for the Watch to liberate you, in some small way, from Apple's best selling phone. In a demo, a live call was made from the keynote address to an Apple employee on paddle board in the middle of a lake. Apple is set to unveil several new gadgets later this morning, but the highlight of today's event isn't something you can buy. It's Apple Park, the company's new 5 billion spaceship shaped campus, which the company is showing off to the media for the first time. The press were penned off just out of range of the main building, at the Steve Jobs Theater, the 1,000 seat venue with a commanding view of the spaceship. A quick review: This place is just what you'd imagine an Apple designed campus would look like. Think of the aesthetics of an Apple Store lots of wood and glass, everything in muted tans and greys, all signage in white on black Apple Sans type set on an otherwise barren landscape. It is, unsurprisingly, very pretty, but its beauty comes with a deliberate touch of fright. Nothing here is to human scale, and the overall impression is one of being overwhelmed by Apple's sheer might. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Technology |
In recorded announcements at airports passengers are frequently reminded to report any "suspicious activity." But what qualifies as suspicious isn't always clear, as an incident earlier this month illustrates, calling into question the effectiveness of citizen vigilance. On May 5, aboard a plane about to fly from Philadelphia to Syracuse, a passenger, apparently alarmed by math equations her seatmate was working on, caused its departure to be delayed when she suggested he might be a terrorist. The man turned out to be Guido Menzio, a University of Pennsylvania economics professor working on a differential equation. The crew of the flight, operated by Air Wisconsin for American Airlines, apparently followed protocol when the woman notified the flight attendant that she was too sick to fly. As she left the plane, according to American Airlines, she mentioned her concerns about her seatmate to a crew member who then met with the captain, an airline security officer and eventually Mr. Menzio. The captain determined that he was not a security risk and the flight departed. The woman was rebooked on a later flight with no fee penalty. "Anytime we have a dispute or a disagreement or concerns expressed by one passenger about another about safety, the flight crew will do their best to resolve the matter peacefully and quickly," said Casey Norton, director of corporate communications for American Airlines. Options include reseating the passengers so they are no longer neighbors, moderating a conversation between them or, as in this case, rebooking on another flight. The Department of Homeland Security urges awareness of potential threats through a program, begun in 2010, called "If You See Something, Say Something." It defines suspicious activity as packages or luggage left unattended; an unusual circumstance, like an open door that is usually closed; a person seeking in depth information on a building's purpose, security procedures or shift changes; and anyone loitering around a building, taking notes, sketches, photographs or measurements. On its website, the department notes, "Factors such as race, ethnicity, and/or religious affiliation are not suspicious." Yet ethnic profiling has resulted in several incidents, including one in which a Southwest Airlines passenger was taken off a flight in April for speaking Arabic. "This seems to be a case of 'see something, say something' getting out of control," wrote George Hobica, founder of Airfarewatchdog.com, in an email. "If too many passengers cry 'terrorist' every time someone looks 'Middle Eastern' or has curly hair or is merely having a phone conversation in Arabic and wears a beard, it may lessen the effectiveness of 'citizen vigilance' efforts." Some fliers have been successful in spotting suspicious behavior and defusing dangerous situations, including passengers who tackled the "shoe bomber," Richard Reid, on a flight from Paris in 2001, and another who subdued the "underwear bomber," Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, on a trans Atlantic flight to Detroit in 2009. On 9/11, when United Flight 93 was hijacked by terrorists, it was a group of brave passengers who managed to divert its course from Washington to rural Pennsylvania, where it crashed, killing everyone on board. In each of these situations, the passengers reacted to an immediate and evident threat, including smoke and fire in the first two cases. Short of that, the gray area is vast, and subject to biases about appearance, speech and religion. Some experts recommend discreetly informing the crew of any suspicions. Others say a casual conversation can quell fears of the unknown flier. "The challenge is, just like policing's Neighborhood Watch program, a certain percent of suspicious calls turn out to be nothing," said Jeffrey C. Price, professor of aviation management at Metropolitan State University of Denver. The March bombing of the Brussels airport may be contributing to a climate of greater intolerance, although the moods of fliers may also reflect their air travel experience. "These issues have grown in the last decade as air travel as gotten less fun and more stressful," Mr. Price said. "Passengers on planes are more on edge. They've been standing in line for possibly hours and now they're crammed into a seat with no leg room and given no food. All of this is just a recipe for someone who is already upset and won't take much more to tip into an argument." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Travel |
The New York Times said on Monday that it was suspending Glenn Thrush, one of its most prominent reporters, after he was accused of inappropriate sexual behavior. The move came after the website Vox published a report containing allegations from four female journalists that Mr. Thrush, who was hired by The Times in January to cover the Trump administration, had acted inappropriately toward them. Mr. Thrush was a star reporter at Politico before joining The Times. The women cited in the Vox article described Mr. Thrush's behavior as including unwanted kissing and touching. Three of the women were not identified by name. The fourth, Laura McGann, wrote the article, which was presented in the first person. "The behavior attributed to Glenn in this Vox story is very concerning and not in keeping with the standards and values of The New York Times," The Times said in a statement on Monday. "We intend to fully investigate and while we do, Glenn will be suspended." The Times began an inquiry into Mr. Thrush's behavior last week after learning that Vox planned to publish its article about him, according to a person briefed on The Times's response. In a statement on Monday, Mr. Thrush said: "I apologize to any woman who felt uncomfortable in my presence, and for any situation where I behaved inappropriately. Any behavior that makes a woman feel disrespected or uncomfortable is unacceptable." Mr. Thrush's byline has been among the most recognizable this year at The Times, where he was one of six reporters covering the White House full time. In addition, Random House recently announced that it would publish a book about President Trump by Mr. Thrush and Maggie Haberman, another White House reporter for The Times and a former colleague of Mr. Thrush's at Politico. In a statement on Monday, Random House said, "This matter recently came to our attention and we are looking at it closely and seriously." Mr. Thrush, 50, became so well known that he was portrayed several times on "Saturday Night Live" as a foil to Sean Spicer, the former White House press secretary. Bobby Moynihan, a cast member on the show for nine seasons, portrayed Mr. Thrush, while Mr. Spicer was played by the film and television star Melissa McCarthy. Before joining The Times, Mr. Thrush was the chief political correspondent at Politico and a senior staff writer for Politico Magazine. He has also worked at Newsday. In the article, Ms. McGann, Vox's editorial director, said that Mr. Thrush had put his hand on her thigh and started to kiss her at a bar near Politico's headquarters five years ago. She was a Politico editor at the time, and Mr. Thrush was a reporter. The next day, she wrote, she saw him talking to male colleagues. Later, she reported that she felt some men in the Politico office began to look at her differently than they had before. In his statement, Mr. Thrush said his recollection differed from Ms. McGann's. "The encounter was consensual, brief and ended by me," he said. "She was an editor above me at the time and I did not disparage her to colleagues at Politico as she claims." Another woman interviewed by Vox described an interaction with Mr. Thrush that occurred in June, when he attended a going away party for one of his former Politico colleagues. The woman, who is in her early 20s, according to the Vox article, said he suggested they go for a walk outside. After they left the party, she said, Mr. Thrush kissed her and tried to hold her hand. In his statement, Mr. Thrush said the June episode "was a life changing event." "The woman involved was upset by my actions and for that I am deeply sorry," he said. He added: "Over the past several years, I have responded to a succession of personal and health crises by drinking heavily. During that period, I have done things that I am ashamed of, actions that have brought great hurt to my family and friends. I have not taken a drink since June 15, 2017, have resumed counseling and will soon begin outpatient treatment for alcoholism. I am working hard to repair the damage I have done." A third woman interviewed by Vox described an encounter with Mr. Thrush after the two of them left a Politico going away party sometime in late 2012 or early 2013. She said that they had gone to her apartment but that the encounter ended after she reminded Mr. Thrush that he was married. She told Vox she did not believe he had pressured her, and did not consider herself a victim. The fourth woman whose experience with Mr. Thrush was described in the Vox article said he had given her a sudden "wet kiss" on the ear. Vox published its article just after 10:30 a.m. on Monday, when reporters and editors in The Times's Washington bureau were attending a weekly news meeting. The meeting came to a halt as everyone stopped to read the article, according to one person who was present. In a note to newsroom employees on Monday, Dean Baquet, the executive editor of The Times, said: "All allegations of sexual harassment must be taken seriously and it's critical that we hold ourselves to the highest possible standards of behavior. The workplace culture we embrace at The Times, like our news report, places fairness, integrity and truth above all else." Mr. Thrush is also a contributor to MSNBC. In a statement on Monday, the company said: "We're awaiting the outcome of the Times's investigation. He currently has no scheduled appearances." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Media |
Even before the coronavirus began to test our social order, the world was experiencing another plague, a pandemic of authoritarianism. Over the past decade it has infected democracies around the globe, including our own. Among the first responders were writers offering dystopian fiction and apocalyptic nonfiction, all questioning the durability of democracy under stress. "The Death of Democracy," Benjamin Carter Hett's reconsideration of Weimar Germany, explored how partisan intransigence enabled the rise of Hitler, a lesson clearly intended as a timely warning. In their all too credible alarum, "How Democracies Die," the Harvard political scientists Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt drew on a global roster of recently failed democracies to identify symptoms of would be autocrats. (Donald Trump checks all the boxes.) In "Surviving Autocracy," the journalist Masha Gessen, having sharpened a scalpel on Vladimir Putin, dissected Trumpism and concluded that curing it will take more than an election. Anne Applebaum's contribution to this discussion, "Twilight of Democracy: The Seductive Lure of Authoritarianism," is concerned less with the aspiring autocrats and their compliant mobs than with the mentality of the courtiers who make a tyrant possible: "the writers, intellectuals, pamphleteers, bloggers, spin doctors, producers of television programs and creators of memes who can sell his image to the public." Are these enablers true believers or just cynical opportunists? Do they believe the lies they tell and the conspiracies they invent or are they simply greedy for wealth and power? The answers she reaches are frankly equivocal, which in our era of dueling absolutes is commendable if sometimes a little frustrating. Applebaum, an American journalist who lives mostly in Poland, has earned accolades (including a Pulitzer Prize) for prodigiously researched popular histories of the Cold War, the Gulag and Stalin's forced famine in Ukraine. "Twilight of Democracy" is less substantial, a magazine essay expanded into a book that is part rumination, part memoir. 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 book was one of our most anticipated titles of July. See the full list. The book, like the magazine piece, begins with a party she and her Polish husband (who was then a deputy foreign minister in a center right government) hosted on New Year's Eve, 1999, at their home in the Polish countryside. The guest list was multinational and politically diverse, united by the afterglow of the Cold War victory over Communism and a shared belief in "democracy, in the rule of law, in checks and balances, and in ... a Poland that was an integrated part of modern Europe." "Nearly two decades later, I would now cross the street to avoid some of the people who were at my New Year's Eve party," Applebaum writes. "They, in turn, would not only refuse to enter my house, they would be embarrassed to admit they had ever been there." These erstwhile friends, classmates and colleagues have lost faith in democracy and gravitated to right wing nationalist regimes and movements. She calls them "clercs," borrowing from the French philosopher Julien Benda, who a century ago seems to have meant a sarcastic fusion of "clerks" and "clerics," functionaries and evangelists. Applebaum believes the usual explanations for how authoritarians come to power economic distress, fear of terrorism, the pressures of immigration while important, do not fully explain the clercs. After all, when Poland, where she begins her investigation, brought the right wing nativists of the Law and Justice Party to power in 2015, the country was prosperous, was not a migrant destination, faced no terrorist threat. "Something else is going on right now, something that is affecting very different democracies, with very different economics and very different demographics, all over the world," she writes. She introduces the Polish brothers Jacek and Jaroslaw Kurski, who marched with the dissident labor union Solidarity in the 1980s. After the Soviet empire dissolved, Jaroslaw kept the liberal faith and now edits a major opposition newspaper, but Jacek hooked up with Law and Justice and became the director of Polish state television and "chief ideologist of the would be one party state." In Jacek, Applebaum diagnoses a toxic sense of entitlement, a conviction that he had not been aptly rewarded for standing up to Communism. "Resentment, envy and above all the belief that the 'system' is unfair not just to the country, but to you these are important sentiments among the nativist ideologues of the Polish right, so much so that it is not easy to pick apart their personal and political motives." A recurring problem in this book is that most of the clercs refuse to talk to Applebaum, leaving her dependent on the public record and the wisdom of mutual acquaintances. But she makes the best of what she's got. She is most sure footed when appraising intellectuals who have lived in, and escaped, the Soviet orbit. From Poland, she moves on to Hungary, then to Britain and finally to Trump's United States, with detours to Spain and Greece, in pursuit of the fallen intellectuals. She identifies layers of disenchantment: nostalgia for the moral purpose of the Cold War, disappointment with meritocracy, the appeal of conspiracy theories (often involving George Soros, the Hungarian American and, not incidentally, Jewish billionaire). She adds that part of the answer lies in the "cantankerous nature of modern discourse itself," the mixed blessing of the internet, which has deprived us of a shared narrative and diminished the responsible media elite that used to filter out conspiracy theories and temper partisan passions. This is hardly an original complaint, but no less true for that. "As polarization increases, the employees of the state are invariably portrayed as having been 'captured' by their opponents. It is not an accident that the Law and Justice Party in Poland, the Brexiteers in Britain and the Trump administration in the United States have launched verbal assaults on civil servants and professional diplomats." Virulent populist movements have always existed in America, on the right (the Klan, say) and the left (the Weather Underground, say). Applebaum finds it surprising that its current incarnation emerged in the Republican Party. "For the party of Reagan to become the party of Trump for Republicans to abandon American idealism and to adopt, instead, the rhetoric of despair a sea change had to take place, not just among the party's voters, but among the party's clercs." This is probably the place to note that Applebaum deserted the Republican Party in 2008, over the nomination of the "proto Trump" Sarah Palin. Her sampling of the American clercs consists mainly of Pat Buchanan, Franklin Graham, Steve Bannon and Laura Ingraham, none of whom talked to her, but all of whom are copiously on the record. She is struck by the way their Reaganite optimism gave way to a dark sense of a decadent and doomed America "where universities teach people to hate their country, where victims are more celebrated than heroes, where older values have been discarded. Any price should be paid, any crime should be forgiven, any outrage should be ignored if that's what it takes to get the real America, the old America, back." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Books |
AS a young lawyer in New York, Robert Rich sometimes bought stocks based on tips he received while playing squash at the Yale Club. Most of them did not do well, so eventually he chose to put his money into mutual funds and focus on his work. But then the itch for more control and the potential for bigger gains got the best of him and now, at 76, Mr. Rich has put nearly a fifth of his wealth into private equity an illiquid, risky asset class with returns that range from double digits to a complete loss of principal. In this, Mr. Rich has been at the vanguard of a wave of affluent do it yourselfers investing in private equity by buying into funds that focus on a sector of the economy or on direct investments in particular companies. They most often do this through self directed I.R.A.s a type of retirement account that can invest in nonpublic securities. These accounts have been around since the 1970s and are typically used to invest in real estate. But in the last five years, the custodians for self directed I.R.A.s report an increasing interest in private equity. Equity Trust, in Westlake, Ohio, said private equity now accounted for 10 to 15 percent of the 12 billion it holds as a custodian. The Pensco Trust Company, based in San Francisco, said 60 percent of new accounts in the last three years had been opened by people who wanted to invest in private equity. Kelly Rodriques, chief executive and president of Pensco, attributed the increase to the financial crisis. People left or lost jobs and converted their 401(k)'s to retirement accounts, and many of them lost confidence in the stock market and became more interested in investing directly in companies. "It's more comforting to be in a business or tangible asset that you know," Mr. Rodriques said. While this may be comforting to certain people, it is not risk free or easy to do successfully. People investing through self directed retirement accounts do not have the staff to vet deals the way very wealthy investors do. Nor do they have hundreds of millions of dollars to lessen the sting of a loss. Mr. Rodriques says his firm, which holds just under 11 billion as a custodian, focuses on people who are accredited investors meaning their annual income has exceeded 200,000 for two consecutive years or they have assets greater than 1 million, not including a primary residence. He said the average account was 250,000. Self directed accounts are still a niche. Equity Trust said they accounted for only 2 percent of all money held in I.R.A.s. But the growing interest in private equity shows a shift in some investors' mind set toward what Pensco calls "choose and control." Today Mr. Rich, for example, has investments in separate funds invested in technology, health care and biotechnology as well as different financial strategies. His most recent investment was in a fund focused on hydraulic fracturing, or "fracking" a controversial method for obtaining natural gas. The opportunity came to him like the others. "The fracking fund was a man I had known for years," he said. "They gave me the opportunity to join it if I wanted to." This may sound as reckless as getting stock tips on the squash court. But Mr. Rich said he had been part of the vetting process for the fund in his role as a trustee for a trust. "It's a different story from the average guy who wouldn't have access," he said. "If I was someone who hadn't had that access I'd have been a little more cautious." Mr. Rich's candor points to an important issue for anyone investing in this world: Do your homework, understand the investment and ask why you are being offered it. "You have to be fully versed in what you're doing," said Robert M. Hofeditz, who works in private equity and also has 40 percent of his wealth invested in private equity, with three quarters of that in his retirement account. "You have to have a level of expertise to do something like this. It's not for everyone. It's for people who have the time to study the asset class." Locast, a nonprofit streaming service for local TV, is shutting down Capital One's chief executive was fined after being called a 'repeat offender.' Custodians like Equity Trust and Pensco make investing I.R.A. money in private equity fairly easy. They assess the validity of an investment by Internal Revenue Service standards. They also hold the investments, as a traditional custodian would, and process forms, like the ones calling for money. "Our role is to figure out if something is administratively feasible," said Eileen Loustau, senior vice president and head of marketing at Pensco. "Is this a going concern? Is your paperwork in order?" The company has developed an online tool that it calls an Opportunity Analyzer. It allows people to check if the I.R.S. would disallow their investment, which could disqualify the whole I.R.A. and result in taxes and penalties. Red flags for private equity investments through an I.R.A. revolve around who owns the company ownership by you, your parents or your children would disqualify the investment or whether the opportunity to invest is part of a compensation package. Knowing someone does not disqualify you. But making sure an investment will not run afoul of I.R.S. regulations is not the same as assessing whether it is a good investment. Custodians don't do this. Mr. Rodriques said, for example, that his firm approved a retirement account investment in an underwater pet cemetery. (The man making the investment owned several pet cemeteries and saw this investment as the next wave, as it were.) Jeffrey A. Desich, chief executive of Equity Trust, said his firm told clients it was up to them to make sure they understood the investment. "Private equity provides a lot of opportunity but one has to do their homework and understand what they're getting into," he said. With smaller retirement accounts, people tend to make direct investments in a local business a different level of risk and compliance. William Humphrey, co founder of New Direction I.R.A., which is a custodian for 800 million in 8,500 self directed retirement accounts, said while the firm had noticed an uptick in private equity, the increase had been in direct investments into small, private companies. "With real estate you can drive by and make sure it's still standing," Mr. Humphrey said. "With private equity you need to make sure whoever is running the company sends a report telling you what is going on." Despite the risks and responsibility of assessing the investment, a self directed account that is not someone's sole source of income could be a good match of retirement money and private equity investments. Mr. Hofeditz said that earlier in his career he invested in private equity deals from his personal account, until he realized how hard it would have been to get that money if he needed it. "That's why I use my retirement account for a lot of the illiquid stuff because you can't touch it anyway," he said. "The rest of my money is invested in index funds and exchange traded funds." Mr. Rich has converted 80 percent of his retirement account to a Roth I.R.A., which will pay out distributions tax free, with plans to leave it to his children. But he still brings to bear a certain cautiousness in selecting private equity managers. "I go with organizations that seem conservative," he said, "and not ones that are trying to hit a home run." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Your Money |
THE LOTTERYS PLUS ONE By Emma Donoghue Illustrated by Caroline Hadilaksono 303 pp. Scholastic/ Arthur A. Levine Books. 17.99. (Middle grade; ages 8 to 12 ) O Canada, must you be so wonderful? While our government is busy breaking up immigrant families and banishing innocent trans kids from school bathrooms, along comes this postcard from a progressive Eden to the north. So sorry, guys! Wish you were here! To be fair, even in Toronto the family at the center of Emma Donoghue's "The Lotterys Plus One" is exceptional. "Once upon a time," reads the prologue to Donoghue's delightful new middle grade novel, "a man from Delhi and a man from Yukon fell in love, and so did a woman from Jamaica and a Mohawk woman." As if in a modern day fairy tale, the four friends win the lottery, and go on to co parent seven children in a rambling old mansion known as Camelottery. To call this family diverse is an understatement bordering on euphemism. All named after trees, the Lottery kids are a multicultural, multicolored crew, each with a distinct set of issues. There is, for example, Aspen, a 10 year old with an attention disorder; Oak, a baby with developmental challenges; and Brian, nee Briar, a trans (so far) 4 year old. To say nothing of the frightening pet rat, the introverted cat, the three legged dog or the rescue parrot. Donoghue is the author, most famously, of "Room," the claustrophobic best seller for grown ups about an imprisoned mother and son. While her new book, her first for children, could hardly be more of a departure, fans will recognize not only her gift for representing a child's point of view, but also her knack for showing how a family, no matter how small or large, develops its own language, even its own culture. At Camelottery, decisions are made democratically in family "fleetings." During "one on ones" with their parents, the home schooled kids study things like Haudenosaunee long houses or how the art of weaving led to the invention of computers. On their own they pursue "citizen science" projects like monitoring milkweed for a monarch butterfly program. And on their birthdays, they get letters from the other family members explaining just what makes them so lovable. If all this seems a little too good to be true, the novel's heroine, 9 year old know it all Sumac, doesn't notice: She's preoccupied with her study of Mesopotamia. But inevitably, her family's bohemian bonhomie and core liberal values are tested. This test comes in the form of an extended visit from an estranged grandfather who is beginning to suffer from dementia. As it turns out, Canada has its own version of Trumpland; Grumps, as they call him, hails from a small town in Yukon, which used to have "the biggest open pit lead and zinc mine in the world," but now has "more moose than humans." Not surprisingly, he has trouble adjusting to life with the "hippy dippy" Lotterys. To Donoghue's credit, Grumps is not the lovable curmudgeon one might expect. He is thoroughly unlikable, and we sympathize with Sumac's resentment when he takes over her bedroom. At the same time, even she admits he has a point when he complains about the family's "If it's yellow, let it mellow" policy. Or when he tsks tsks about "gadzillionaires" Dumpster diving for fun. As designated family ambassador, Sumac does her best to integrate her grandfather, but eventually must confront her own not so selfless desires. If the book ends on a reconciliatory note, it's only after bruising misbehavior on both sides. Unlike Grumps, most young readers will be amused by the pee filled toilets. And no doubt they will revel in the independence of the Lottery children. I suspect, however, that some will be put off by the many names in the novel, and by all the brilliant family chatter, as fascinating as it is. (I for one did not know that female garter snakes form "mating balls" with up to 25 males.) I hope these readers will not toss the book away; it couldn't be better suited to a time when so many people are feeling tossed away themselves. I can only imagine what Donoghue's expansive vision of family would have meant to me when I was a lonely middle school student wondering where I fit in. Or for that matter, when I was a newly out college student wondering whether I'd ever have a family of my own. Alas, aside from the two dads, the family I wound up with isn't exactly the Lotterys. I look forward to rereading this warm and funny book with my daughters, and hearing about how boring we are in comparison. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Books |
On her second anniversary as chief executive of the Bill Melinda Gates Foundation, a global colossus of philanthropy, Dr. Susan Desmond Hellmann wrote an open letter about progress against smoking in the Philippines, polio across the world and sleeping sickness in Africa. Before joining the foundation, she led development of the cancer drugs Avastin and Herceptin at Genentech, then was chancellor of the University of California, San Francisco. We spoke for an hour at her office in Seattle. A condensed and edited version of the conversation follows. What are some of the coolest, most surprising things the foundation is doing? What I think the foundation ought to be known for is making sure we do things that others can't or won't. So I wrote about the tobacco work for a couple reasons. One, people probably didn't know we did tobacco control work. I'm an oncologist, so I know that tobacco is the cause of death for six million people. What did you do in the Philippines? They increased the tobacco tax. So we can pay, and did pay, for a group that can supply them with legal aid. If you're a relatively small government and Big Tobacco, you might call it, has a legal staff that can challenge your use of a tax or a policy, you could access excellent legal advice. Tell us a little bit about how you're trying to figure out what's killing millions of kids before their fifth birthday. If you look at what's happened 1990 to 2015, vast improvement. But we want to decrease by half again that under 5 mortality by 2030. About 40 percent of those deaths now are in the first 30 days of life, most coming actually on your birthday, your first day. So here's a good news story. We know where pregnant women have H.I.V. in sub Saharan Africa, so we can do extremely effective, nearly universally effective ARVs antiretrovirals for pregnant women. Using that precision public health, we decreased H.I.V. transmission from mother to child in sub Saharan Africa by nearly half in five years. So we're doing surveillance. What we're doing actually is minimally invasive tissue sampling. So the way that we used to do it and we still do it is actually reasonably effective but excruciatingly difficult. A baby dies and you go to Mom, and it might be weeks after the death, and you say, "Did the baby have a fever, were they holding their stomach, did they vomit?" A verbal autopsy, it's called. What we're doing is adding minimally invasive tissue sampling: liver, lung. Are mothers receptive or horrified that you're suggesting this? These families have lost a child. And to my delight, the principal investigator said that one of the things that people felt is this helps with closure. With the departure of the U.S. military on Aug. 30, Afghanistan quickly fell back under control of the Taliban. Across the country, there is widespread anxiety about the future. None Vanishing Rights: The Taliban's decision to restrict women's freedom may be a political choice as much as it is a matter of ideology. Far From Home: Some Afghans who were abroad when the country collapsed are desperate to return, but have no clear route home. Can Afghan Art Survive? The Taliban have not banned art outright. But many artists have fled, fearing for their work and their lives. A Growing Threat: A local affiliate of the Islamic State group is upending security and putting the Taliban government in a precarious position. How will you use the information? Most importantly, we can start to see here's what we believe about epidemiology of H.I.V., TB, malaria, all of the things that we think are going on, and here's actually truth. I want the minister of health to say here's why babies die in this community, in my country. What do I have in my tool kit? What are the kinds of medicines I want my government to buy? Bill Gates and the foundation have joined the fight against polio. Do you think this is going to be the year that it ends? It's almost like you're afraid to celebrate, but Nigeria has been polio free now for over a year, and that means the continent of Africa has been wild polio virus free for over a year. And we're down to Pakistan and Afghanistan. I'm a believer. I think we're at the end of polio. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Health |
In an unusual broadside during NBC's morning hours on Monday, Megyn Kelly blasted Jane Fonda, the 80 year old Hollywood eminence who has been critical of the NBC host in recent months. It wasn't even 10 a.m. "When she first complained publicly after the program and repeatedly I chose to say nothing, as my general philosophy is what other people think of me is none of my business," Ms. Kelly said, giving NBC viewers a glimpse of her old Fox News persona. "However, Fonda was at it again last week, including right here on NBC, and then again elsewhere. So it's time to address the 'poor me' routine." The Kelly Fonda skirmish began in September, when Ms. Kelly asked about her use of plastic surgery in the first week of "Megyn Kelly Today." Ms. Fonda seemed thrown by the question, and the clip of the interview went viral, becoming symbolic of Ms. Kelly's rocky transition from hard hitting cable news prime time anchor to sunny morning host. Ms. Fonda has brought up the interview twice in the last week during a "Today" appearance with co anchors Savannah Guthrie and Hoda Kotb, and in a Variety interview over the weekend. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Media |
Senator Elizabeth Warren's plan to tax the assets of America's wealthiest individuals continues to draw broad support from voters, across party, gender and educational lines. Only one slice of the electorate opposes it staunchly: Republican men with college degrees. Not surprisingly, that is also the profile of many who'd be hit by Ms. Warren's so called wealth tax, which has emerged as the breakout economic proposal in the Democratic presidential primary race. Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont has also proposed a wealth tax, which would hit more taxpayers than Ms. Warren's version, and several other candidates have announced their own plans to raise taxes on the rich, with varying degrees of detail. The other policy plan dominating the primary debate so far the conversion to a government financed health care system known as "Medicare for all" enjoys narrower support that breaks much more cleanly along party lines. Republicans overwhelmingly oppose it. Independents favor it two to one, and Democrats support it by an even higher ratio. As the Democratic contest barrels toward the first caucuses in Iowa and beyond, the polling continues to show a racial fissure on the subject of the economy, with nonwhite Democrats expressing more concern about their economic situations than white Democrats. Those more anxious voters are less likely to support Ms. Warren, or her wealth tax, a dynamic that could prove consequential as Democrats winnow their field. Here are three takeaways on Democratic voters, policy proposals and the role of the economy in the campaign. The wealth tax has lost a few points of support since the last time The Times asked about the issue, in July. But it remains broadly popular, even more so than it was in February. Three quarters of Democrats and more than half of Republicans say they approve of the idea of a 2 percent tax on wealth above 50 million. Support for a wealth tax cuts across many of the demographic dividing lines in American politics. Men and women like it. So do the young and the old. The proposal receives majority support among every major racial, educational and income group. 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. College educated Republican men, though, disapprove of it by a 15 point margin though a vast majority of Republican men with college degrees would have a net worth below the tax threshold. (College educated Republican women approve of the policy by an even wider margin than their male counterparts oppose it.) One note that might give Republicans pause: The wealth tax is much more popular than the tax cut package that President Trump signed in 2017, which only 45 percent of Americans in this Times survey said was a good move. That's a decline from April, when the law was drawing slightly more approval than disapproval. The movement against the Trump tax cuts since then has been powered, oddly enough, by Republicans. They largely still back the law by 76 percent over all, compared with 20 percent of Democrats but that support has dropped six percentage points since April. Among Democrats, education has emerged as a key dividing line on economic policy. Ms. Warren's tax is overwhelmingly popular (86 percent support) with Democratic voters who have graduate degrees. Among voters with a high school diploma or less, the policy is still popular, but meaningfully less so, drawing 75 percent support. Accordingly, less educated voters are also less likely to say they favor Ms. Warren on the economy. That fits with other polling that has found the Massachusetts senator struggling to win over voters without a college degree. Strikingly for a candidate who has put so much emphasis on the economy, Ms. Warren is viewed with caution by voters who care the most about the economy, and by those who are most worried about it. Among Democrats who say they are "very concerned" about losing their job, for example, 15 percent say they would trust Ms. Warren most on the economy out of all the Democratic candidates, compared with 23 percent of other Democratic voters. Those struggles for Ms. Warren may partly reflect another important divide in the Democratic electorate: race. Black and Hispanic voters tend to rate the economy more highly as an issue than their white counterparts. They are also less likely to trust Ms. Warren on the economy. Black and Hispanic voters are more likely to choose former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. as the candidate they would trust on the economy. So are voters who say they are concerned about their jobs or their economic prospects. But voters' preferences don't fall neatly along ideological lines: Those same groups also tend to give high ratings to Mr. Sanders, who is closer to Ms. Warren than to Mr. Biden on most policy matters. The survey suggests that the newest member of the Democratic field, former Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg of New York, may have at least a narrow opening with voters on economic issues. About 6 percent of Democrats said they trusted Mr. Bloomberg most on the economy, putting him outside the four person top tier (Mr. Biden, Ms. Warren, Mr. Sanders and Mayor Pete Buttigieg of South Bend, Ind.) but ahead of the rest of the field. Mr. Bloomberg drew less support on his handling of health care and international affairs, however. The other late entrant to the race, former Gov. Deval Patrick of Massachusetts, was well outside the top tier of candidates on all three issues. The findings on that question came after Mr. Patrick entered the race and after Mr. Bloomberg filed paperwork for a presidential bid; he formally announced his candidacy later in the month. Apart from taxes, health care policy has been perhaps the most significant point of disagreement among the Democratic candidates. Among the top tier of candidates, Mr. Sanders and Ms. Warren have emphasized their support for a government run insurance system that they call Medicare for all, while Mr. Biden and Mr. Buttigieg have argued for less significant changes to the existing system. Compared with the wealth tax, Medicare for all is a much more partisan issue. Republicans strongly oppose the idea; Democrats even more strongly support it. (Independents support it, too, but by a narrower margin.) And Medicare for all doesn't divide Democrats the way the wealth tax does. Democrats of all ages, races and education and levels support the policy by similar margins. About the survey: The data in this article came from an online survey of 2,672 adults conducted by the polling firm SurveyMonkey from Nov. 4 to Nov. 11. A supplemental survey of 2,489 adults was conducted from Nov. 14 to Nov. 17 to collect more data on opinions of the Democratic candidates; that survey did not ask about taxes or health care policy. In both cases, SurveyMonkey selected respondents at random from the nearly three million people who take surveys on its platform each day. Responses were weighted to match the demographic profile of the population of the United States. The primary survey has a modeled error estimate (similar to a margin of error in a standard telephone poll) of plus or minus three percentage points, so differences of less than that amount are statistically insignificant. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Economy |
"The Scream" is fading. And tiny samples of paint from the 1910 version of Edvard Munch's famous image of angst have been under the X ray, the laser beam and even a high powered electron microscope, as scientists have used cutting edge technology to try to figure out why portions of the canvas that were a brilliant orangeish yellow are now an ivory white. Since 2012, scientists based in New York and experts at the Munch Museum in Oslo have been working on this canvas which was stolen in 2004 and recovered two years later to tell a story of color. But the research also provides insight into Munch and how he worked, laying out a map for conservators to prevent further change, and helping viewers and art historians understand how one of the world's most widely recognized paintings might have originally looked. The art world is increasingly turning to labs to understand how paintings from the late 19th and early 20th centuries are behaving. Vincent van Gogh's chrome yellows, some of which have started to brown, and his purples, some of which have turned blue, have been widely studied. But less is known about Munch's palette, and scientists, using updated technologies and tools like transmission electron microscopes, are breaking new ground. Jennifer Mass, the president of the Scientific Analysis of Fine Art lab in Harlem, whose team is on "The Scream" research, explained the science recently in her lab. She pointed to a photograph of what looked like a set of stalagmites: It was the surface of "The Scream" seen under a microscope. Conservators and researchers at the Munch Museum contacted Dr. Mass, who has been working as a fine art scientist since she was a postdoctoral fellow at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1995. She is also a professor at the Bard Graduate Center and has partnered with many major institutions in research. Eva Storevik Tveit, paintings conservator at the Munch Museum, said the museum had sought out Dr. Mass because of her expertise in cadmium yellow, which she had studied in Matisse's work, and because of the high quality scientific tools the lab has at its disposal. (One of Dr. Mass's colleagues, Adam Finnefrock, once took tiny samples of Cezanne's emerald green pigments to a particle accelerator at Stanford University.) And the museum, which moves to a new building later this year, needs to figure out how to best display the painting, balancing conservation concerns with viewing experience. Munch's materials have now been more fully analyzed, and the research, due out this spring, fleshes out a more complete story about the painting. Dr. Mass's team was able to narrow down Munch's paint choices using his paint tubes, some 1,400 of which are held by the Munch Museum. Over time, with exposure, the yellow cadmium sulfide has oxidized into two white chemical compounds, cadmium sulfate and cadmium carbonate. The analysis, Dr. Mass said, has implications for Impressionist through Expressionist paintings made between the 1880s and the 1920s painted with cadmium yellow, 20 percent of which she estimates are experiencing similar phenomena. Dr. Mass and her team work with museums, private clients, auction houses, art fairs and artists on everything from large scale contemporary outdoor sculpture in the Hamptons to ancient Roman sculpture. They are a part of a niche in the art world boutique labs that operate outside of large institutions, though often in tandem with them something that's become more common as the demand for scientific research has increased. Perhaps best known was James Martin's Orion Analytical, which was purchased by Sotheby's and became the first in house lab of its kind at a major auction house. Other such companies include Geneva Fine Art Analysis, based in Geneva's Free Port, and the London based Art Analysis Research. Often they are called in by collectors or potential buyers who are interested in questions of authenticity. "There's been a real explosion in the field," Nicholas Eastaugh, founder and chief scientist at Art Analysis Research, said. "There are a lot more people coming in with new approaches, new ideas, and new insights." Whether for conservation or authentication, the work often reveals something about an art object that the naked eye can't see how old a painting really is, whether it contains drawings underneath its surface, or what factors in the environment might be causing it to deteriorate. This last question is particularly important when it comes to artists working in the same period as Munch, as research is just starting to illuminate the era. "There tends to be an interest in the bigger name artists, for obvious reasons," Dr. Eastaugh said. "But actually these are problems that will affect all artists of that period if they are using these materials." He said that more research would be helpful in showing "more general patterns" in the pigment degradation mechanism. The colors of the late 19th century and early 20th century are fading especially rapidly because of changes that took place in paintmaking. Paints had been made by hand grinding minerals extracted from the ground or using dyes made from plants and insects. The industrial revolution brought about the production of synthetic pigments like cadmium or chrome yellows, which artists would mix with oil and fillers. Artists began experimenting with these synthetic pigments, which were sometimes haphazardly prepared and untested for the purposes of longevity but were exceptionally bright enabling the brilliant palettes of Fauvism, Post Impressionism and modernism. At that moment, many artists were abandoning traditional painting techniques, said Lena Stringari, deputy director and chief conservator of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and Foundation, who has studied color change and pigments in van Gogh's work. "Many artists were working in plein air, and they were experimenting with various paints and color theories," she said. "There was this explosion of color with the rejection of the academy." That made the new pigments popular, Dr. Mass said, but they were unpredictable. "We can't say, 'Oh it's a tree, so we know that the foliage would be green,'" she explained, "because in the case of Matisse or Munch, that's not necessarily true, so we need to turn to science." Recapturing these hues is impossible, but science can get us closer. Koen Janssens, a professor in the department of chemistry at the University of Antwerp who has studied the pigments of van Gogh, Matisse and others, said, "The idea is to try, in a sort of virtual way, to reverse time." Conservators wouldn't apply new pigments to a canvas but digital reconstructions can gesture at the past. Dr. Mass predicts a shift toward augmented reality in reconstructions, so that you might hold up your phone to a painting and see its former color layered on the canvas. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Art & Design |
The headline: "Hold Me! Squeeze Me! Buy a 6 Pack!," published here in November 1997. The story: It was the '90s, and celebrities were no longer content to be famous. They had to be "brands." Leading the way were Martha Stewart, whose popular magazines and television show led to a home goods line at Kmart, and Michael Jordan, whose name suddenly adorned shower curtains, pot holders and walkie talkies in addition to sneakers and basketball jerseys. No wonder regular people began to reimagine themselves as walking conglomerates in their own right, poring over self help books and even hiring consultants to help them polish their "brand image" in order to clamber up the corporate ladder and fine tune their romantic lives. Case studies: In an effort to hone his brand message for the dating world, one Manhattan author hired a market research consultant who assembled a focus group of single women, all of whom had shot him down on previous dates, to offer tweaks to his wardrobe and manner while the client looked on behind a one way mirror. A 17 year old in Oregon named Jesse Daggett adopted the self branding mind set in order to vault past older, more experienced colleagues at work. "I like to think of the brand Jesse this way," he said. "Hard worker. Putting yourself in charge. If something needs to be done, Jesse can do it and get it done and be the leader of the team." His job? Dairy Queen clerk. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Style |
The Special Collections and College Archives, a unit of the Fashion Institute of Technology's Gladys Marcus Library, after a recent renovation. Even with the boundless wonders of the internet, many students writing papers are daunted by the fear of research: where to begin, how to begin, which library to use and so on. But for Bethany Gingrich, 26, starting to write a thesis about Erte, the Russian French illustrator and designer, was thrilling. Ms. Gingrich, a second year graduate student at the Fashion Institute of Technology, works in Special Collections and College Archives, a unit of F.I.T.'s Gladys Marcus Library, which is on the fourth floor of the school's Manhattan campus and is nicknamed Sparc. She has relied on autobiographies and biographies as well as Erte's sketches to get the right information. These resources were recently upgraded, with a sleek 3.6 million renovation designed by Samuel Anderson Architects and unveiled in the fall. Sparc was expanded from 3,500 square feet to 6,100 square feet and now has a 1,000 square foot mechanical room. New compact shelving, which provides more storage space and climate controlled storage with sliding steel shelves, allow for better protection of rare and in some cases fragile fashion documents and prototypes. Among the many artifacts at Sparc are original Marc Bohan sketches for Dior. A note from the vendeuse at Dior addressed to "Miss Coleman" sits at the front of a large book of several sketches sent to a debutante in 1966 with options for dresses that she could have personally made. Minutes of Council of Fashion Designers of America (CFDA) meetings, invoices to designers and letters to Oscar de la Renta kept by Eleanor Lambert, the storied publicist, are also housed in the library, telling the story of a busy woman who cared deeply about American designers and the future of textile manufacturing. Additionally there is a nearly complete set of Fashion Calendars from the longtime show scheduler Ruth Finley, which put together provide a timeline of trends and up and coming designers over several decades, and prototypes of shoes dating back to the 1960s. Many contemporary designers do research for current collections at Sparc. Professional costume designers as well rely on the documents in the library to accurately depict moments in history, among them Catherine Martin, who designed the Oscar winning costumes for the "The Great Gatsby" (2013), featuring Leonardo DiCaprio and Carey Mulligan. Historians and university administrators interested in the institution's past also can be found burrowing in Sparc's 240 linear feet of institutional archives. There are books and periodicals, oral histories and designer scrapbooks, including 10,000 rare books from around the world and a collection of 375 unique manuscript collections. The renovation effort was led by Karen Trivette, the archivist and special collections librarian. When she accepted the job nearly a decade ago, Ms. Trivette knew the renovation was on the horizon, but didn't fully grasp what was ahead. "I reached out to colleagues that I knew had been through renovations because I had never in my professional career been through such a renovation, and it was a very scary proposition," she said. For inspiration, Ms. Trivette visited the Morgan Library Museum, the Frances Mulhall Achilles Library at the Whitney Museum of American Art (particularly to see its new storage spaces), the Museum of Modern Art Library, Museum of the City of New York and the Brooklyn Museum of Art Library. "I was like Indiana Jones," she said. "All over the map." And finding untold treasures. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Fashion & Style |
Just when I thought I'd had enough for one evening, an Afro Cuban American gentleman pulled me off the bustling Calle Ocho and into a room jammed with dancers bouncing up and down to the beat of congas. No, this wasn't a '90s style rave; this was the normally unassuming lounge at Top Cigars, a cigar shop in Miami's Little Havana. I recognized the owner, Cristobal Mena, from an exchange we'd had that morning at a Cuban restaurant across the street about what constitutes a classic Cuban dish. Now, I was hopping in a sea of his patrons on the famous boulevard that is the social and commercial hub of Little Havana. The occasion was Viernes Culturales (Cultural Fridays), the last Friday of each month when the storied neighborhood hosts what feels like a block party on Calle Ocho (actually Southwest Eighth Street) between 13th and 17th Avenues. The monthly festival serves as a showcase of what this Cuban American enclave has to offer. Painters and artisans mingle with the crowds. Music from Latin bands intermixes, and double decker buses unpack tourists while the smells of arroz con pollo, fried plantains and cafe Cubano drift from restaurants and cafecito windows. As soon as you step onto the street, lined with wide sidewalks and colorful facades, the music fairly insists that either your shoulders or your hips move, not necessarily together. Here in this adaptation of Havana, where the thrum of the old country persists, proposed zoning changes have led the National Trust for Historic Preservation to place a portion of Little Havana on its list of America's 11 Most Endangered Historic Places for 2015. News of that development was reason enough to send me back to the city where I grew up. For years, I had wanted to see if I could find something of what my father had so often recounted of the time he'd taught dance on cruise ships from New York that docked in Havana during Cuba's reign in the '40s and '50s as "America's Caribbean Playground." I wanted to catch a glimpse of what he called "a better time" before time ran out, and thought I might find it here, on American soil, before gentrification had a chance to dilute this neighborhood's distinctive character. I had visited Calle Ocho only a few times as a teenager, back when mom and pop restaurants, bodegas and bakeries dotted the shady boulevard. But those were calmer days before Calle Ocho earned its way into the Guinness Book of World Records with the "world's longest conga line" in 1988. The focus of my visit last fall was Calle Ocho, the artery that fuels the heart of Little Havana, a roughly three square mile area that is home to some 55,000 residents. Over the years, much of Cuba's deeply rooted culture remained intact here as it rode in on succeeding waves of the Cuban diaspora. One of those waves occurred between Castro's 1959 coup and 1973; another brought in over 120,000 Cuban immigrants in 1980. The latter influx, known as the Mariel boatlift, was a controversial mass flotilla to Florida shores that also included individuals freed from Cuban jails and mental institutions. The majority of immigrants, however, simply wanted a new start in the United States. More recently, concerns that the 1966 Cuban Adjustment Act a pathway to American citizenship for Cubans could be rolled back as part of the normalization of relations between the United States and Cuba, have generated another wave of new arrivals. Conversely, some Cubans are going back to their homeland now that Cuba has loosened its grip on returning immigrants. In the meantime, Little Havana and Calle Ocho have, inevitably, evolved. These days it is home not only to Cuban Americans but also to immigrants from Central and South American countries. Hence, visitors will find dishes like vigoron, a yucca, cabbage and chicharrones Nicaraguan dish served alongside Cuban fare. Punta, a traditional Central American dance, is often performed at birthdays and weddings. And that culture is bountiful. Cuba brought us the cha cha, the Cuban son and the mambo (all three musical forms as well as dance styles), literary figures like Jose Lezama Lima, Dulce Maria Loynaz and, more recently, Pedro Juan Gutierrez and Leonardo Padura Fuentes, as well as boundary pushing artists like Michel Mirabal and Kadir Lopez. Cuba gave us the mojito, Cuban coffee and the Cuban sandwich, and, arguably, the world's finest cigars and rums. Factor in the sheer gravitas of Celia Cruz, one of the most influential Latin singers of the 20th century, and there's small reason to wonder why Cubans are so proud of being Cuban. This from an island about the size of Ohio. Before the dancing at Top Cigars that Friday, I joined a crowded walking tour led by Dr. George at one of Miami's oldest cultural landmarks, the Tower Theater on the corner of Calle Ocho and Southwest 15th Avenue. The Art Deco theater opened in 1926 as a state of the art movie venue in Miami. But for families arriving from Cuba decades later, mass culture blockbusters like "The Good, the Bad and the Ugly" would serve as a way to understand American culture and the language with the help of Spanish subtitles. The building was renovated in 2002 and now operates under the auspices of Miami Dade College. We wandered past restaurants and markets. Everywhere, people were chatting on sidewalks, at storefronts and cafecito counters. The tour squired us through Cuba's past: the Eternal Torch of Brigade 2506 monument, a memorial to those who died during the failed Bay of Pigs invasion in 1961; a bust of the Cuban poet and journalist Jose Marti; and a monument to the great Cuban war general Antonio Maceo Grajales (El Titan de Bronce, or Bronze Titan), among others. It also included the Latin Walk of Fame, which honors those who've influenced the Latin community, including the Cuban American salsa singer Willy Chirino, the bandleader and percussionist of Puerto Rican heritage Tito Puente, and the Panamanian boxer Roberto Duran. As night approached so did the lure of Little Havana's night life. Ball Chain, I discovered, is a gorgeous, lush modern stab at a classic Cuban nightclub with napkin over forearm service. The mojitos here are a near perfect blend of rum, lime, club soda, fresh mint and sugar, and the tapas are flavorful and Cuban inspired. During the 1950s, the club brought in headliners like Billie Holiday, Count Basie and Chet Baker. It closed in 1957, and reopened in 2014 to rave reviews. That night, the bar was packed with millennials, the back of the club having transformed into a tropically decorated open air patio, and the Pineapple Stage animated with Latin jazz. If Ball Chain claims modernity, Hoy Como Ayer (Today Like Yesterday) celebrates a connection to tradition. The lounge offers an authentic musical experience (and one that my father would have loved) in a small space that never manages to dampen the enthusiasm of dancers. Black and white portraits of Cuban musical icons such as La Lupe, Olga Guillot (known as the Queen of Bolero) and the fluid tenor Benny More cover the walls. The glittery decor and the slightly kitschy vibe, including a disco ball, are part of the charm. Mr. Vilela's statement is still important to some Cubans in Little Havana. Association with Cuba's government is often frowned on even though the fierce rhetoric has grown less intense over time, until the din has been nearly drowned out generationally. Native Cuban Americans seem more accepting of detente than their Cuban born parents or grandparents, but that conversation (or debate) can still be overheard in restaurants and on the streets. The morning after Cultural Friday's festivities, I headed to a cafecito window on Calle Ocho. Unlike so many concoctions in American cafes, Cuban coffee has no identity crisis; it is sweet and freighted with espresso intensity. Because the young girl at the counter spoke little English, I ordered a colada in what must have seemed like a cross between sign language and Spanglish, and unwittingly downed the entire cup fast. A colada contains three to six shots of Cuban espresso and is made to be shared, or at the very least paced. It would be hours before I could rein in my accelerated speech and flurrying hands. Fog erased, I headed to El Pub for an early lunch. El Pub offers hearty country style Cuban favorites such as ropa vieja (stewed beef with vegetables) and bistec empanizado (breaded steak) and the Cubano sandwich, which I was intent on ordering. I took note of the colorful memorabilia on the walls and claimed a booth with a view to the busy street, and shortly the great panini style sandwich arrived at my table. There is a reason this sandwich is showing up in non Latin restaurants. If you combine Cuban bread, ham, slow roasted pork, Swiss cheese, pickles and mustard and then grill it, you have a perfectly layered sandwich with a little crunch. I continued my mini culinary tour at El Nuevo Siglo Supermarket, four blocks to the east. Both a beautiful and well stocked Latin market and restaurant, El Nuevo Siglo is a bright luncheonette that is a favorite of locals. Make sure you have a translation app on your phone ready as some of the servers here don't speak any English. El Nuevo also sells excellent fortifying snacks from around Latin America, and I left with an Argentine empanada de carne in hand for later sustenance. "This is not a tourist trap," Ms. Moebius said as we entered the museum. "On any day, you'll find Cuban artists working on their art in the center's beautiful courtyard. Famous musicians jam here; this is where the locals go, and this is where Cuban intellectuals, artists and cigar and rum aficionados hang out." "Roberto's philosophy is that art and music and poetry and dance and a good mojito all need to coexist," she added, referring to Roberto Ramos, the man behind Cubaocho. Cubaocho is also home to one of the largest privately owned Cuban art collections in the world and is the linchpin of the arts renaissance now flourishing in Little Havana. The enormous, and famous, pre revolutionary 1937 work "La Rumba" by Antonio Sanchez Araujo is on display here. The spacious gallery, brimming with art from ceiling to floor, is nearly as epic as its back story. In 1992, Mr. Ramos and his brother Carlos Ramos set sail from Cuba to America on a small wooden boat. Hidden away on the vessel was Carlos Sobrino's 1953 painting "El Saxofonista" ("The Saxophone Player"), which now hangs in Mr. Ramos's home. Back in Cuba, when Mr. Ramos was 17, he'd helped an elderly man move, and in return the man gave him the Sobrino painting though neither knew who the painter was. Mr. Ramos later discovered that Sobrino had left Cuba in exile just as he had won Cuba's National Prize for Painting in 1959. Once Mr. Ramos established himself in Miami, he embarked on a journey that would take him back to Havana a risky endeavor and around the world to collect works depicting Cuba between 1800 and 1958 that are the core of the collection. After the tour, I walked through the quiet neighborhood surrounding the museum. Modest but charming two story Mission and Mediterranean style apartment buildings were ubiquitous. The occasional red bougainvillea bush hid chain link fences, and ornate wrought iron was everywhere. Little Havana has more bungalow houses than almost anywhere in Miami, with deep verandas that are ideal for keeping cool in the Florida heat. It was odd to think that a mere few blocks away were Latin bands, bars, souvenir stores selling Cuban fedoras, flags and T shirts, and people lounging in cigar stores. I made my way to the corner of Calle Ocho and Southwest 15th Avenue to tiny Domino Park, formally known as Maximo Gomez Park, after Cuba's military commander in the country's War of Independence. Here, men of a certain age, some wearing classic Cuban white guayabera shirts and Panama hats, play spirited games of dominoes, a national pastime in Cuba. The clacking of tiles is interspersed with the players' occasional shouts of triumph or despair all day. If you keep your eyes open, you can find guayabera shirts and other traditional Cuban apparel in mom and pop clothing stores along Calle Ocho. What you won't miss are the ubiquitous cigar shops. La Tradicion Cubana, for instance, is small, with family photos on the walls. The owner, Luis Sanchez known in the industry as the "Mad Scientist" for his tobacco blending skills relies on Cuban tobacco seeds that are planted in fields in the Dominican Republic and several other Latin American countries. "It had been a family business from 1928 to 1959," Mr. Sanchez told me. "Then Castro said, 'Give me the keys and get out.' Everything we sell we make. We lost most of our family to the Castro regime, and lost all of our businesses. To be able to try to recreate that image and the business is just a great feeling." Other cigar emporiums in Little Havana have elaborate lounges with British era Bombay furniture and gold appointed cases. Many shops employ skilled tabaqueros (cigar rollers) on site so tourists and aficionados can watch the process. El Titan de Bronze, a space that blends beauty with pragmatism, employs 10 Level 9 (the highest skill level) tabaqueros, all with extensive experience working in cigar factories in Cuba. Cristobal Mena's shop, Top Cigars, has found a unique niche: reputable cigar store plus something like a rumpus room on Cultural Fridays when the drinks are free. Mr. Mena, who came to the United States 20 years ago, is a huge fan of fun, noticeable when you meet him. Versailles opened when emotions in Little Havana were raw, in 1971, and quickly became the gathering place for Cuban exiles. It also is the place local news media often use as a backdrop for political events. Versailles is where reporters, photographers, politicians and Cuban Americans automatically descended after President Obama announced the policy shift between the United States and Cuba on Dec. 17, 2014, resulting in a frenzy outside the restaurant. At Versailles, I met the teacher and community activist Marta Zayas who has been relentless in her quest to help Little Havana retain its unique flavor and approachable appeal. Over cafe con leche, we discussed the situation Little Havana is currently facing. She, and others, are worried that the working class that makes up much of the local character will be ousted when property values inevitably rise and residents can no longer afford to live here. "Little Havana is dear to so many immigrants here," Ms. Zayas said. "It has a special type of support system. It has friendly faces and connections to the past, but the feel in Little Havana is one of hope, so there is an inherent aspiration to the future. All of that seems to come together here." Top Cigars (1551 Southwest Eighth Street; 305 643 1150) is a cigar shop and emporium that sells cigars and paraphernalia. Drinks on Cultural Fridays are free. El Pub Restaurant (1548 Southwest Eighth Street; elpubcubancuisine.com) is a family style restaurant on Calle Ocho that serves country Cuban cuisine. Dinner is around 10. El Nuevo Siglo (1305 Southwest Eighth Street; 305 854 1916) is a supermarket and luncheonette on Calle Ocho that serves Cuban and Latin food and sells baked goods from around Latin America. Lunch is about 7. Corinna Moebius is a cultural anthropologist and tour guide (littlehavanaguide.com) who offers tours of Little Havana. Tours are 45 per person and up. Cubaocho Museum Performing Arts Center (1465 Southwest Eighth Street; cubaocho.com) is a free art gallery and gathering space for local artists and residents. Drinks with tapas is about 27. La Tradicion Cubana (1336 Southwest Eighth Street; tradicion.com) is a family owned cigar shop, cigar manufacturer and emporium that sells cigars and cigar paraphernalia. El Titan de Bronze (1071 Southwest Eighth Street; eltitancigars.com) is another family owned cigar manufacturer and cigar shop that employs tabaqueros (cigar rollers) on site. Versailles Restaurant (3555 Southwest Eighth Street; versaillesrestaurant.com) is a landmark Cuban restaurant on Calle Ocho that serves a variety of Cuban and Latin dishes and baked goods. Dinner and drinks run around 25. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Travel |
SHENZHEN, China Huawei, the Chinese technology powerhouse, is suing the Federal Communications Commission for choking off its sales in the United States, the latest in the besieged company's widening efforts to hit back at regulators and critics across the globe. The F.C.C. voted last month to bar American telecommunications companies from using federal subsidies to buy equipment from Huawei and another Chinese supplier, ZTE. Washington considers both firms to be national security risks. Large wireless providers such as Verizon and AT T have long shunned the companies' gear. But carriers in remote, rural parts of the United States have depended on it for years. The F.C.C. rule could force them to find pricier replacements. "The F.C.C. claims that Huawei is a security threat, but F.C.C. Chairman Ajit Pai has not provided any evidence," Song Liuping, Huawei's chief legal officer, said during a news conference on Thursday at the company's headquarters in the southern Chinese city of Shenzhen. "This is a common trend in Washington these days," Mr. Song said. "The F.C.C.'s order violates the Constitution, and we have no choice but to seek legal remedy." The Trump administration has led an all out effort to keep Huawei, the world's largest supplier of telecom equipment, out of wireless networks in the United States and globally. American officials believe the Chinese government could use the company for espionage, an accusation the firm denies. Washington's clampdown on Huawei has become a sticking point in trade talks with Beijing, which is demanding clemency for one of China's leading corporate champions. Huawei already sued the United States government this year, challenging a spending law that blocked federal agencies from doing business with it. The company has also increased its lobbying activities in Washington and filed defamation complaints in France against a researcher who suggested that the company was state controlled. Suing the F.C.C. lends heft to Huawei's protestations that Washington is treating it unfairly, said Julian Ku, a professor of law at Hofstra University. "They want to show their customers in the U.S. that they're a serious company, that they're not an outlaw," he said. "Even a small victory in the case, one that makes the F.C.C. go and start the process over again, would be a huge victory for them." Still, courts generally give federal agencies wide leeway to interpret the law, Mr. Ku said. "There's usually a tremendous amount of deference." Huawei filed its petition for review in the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, which covers the region that includes Huawei's American headquarters in Plano, Texas. The company asked the court to hold the F.C.C.'s order unlawful because the commission did not offer it due process protections before designating it a security threat. "Carriers across rural America in small towns in Montana, Kentucky, and farmers in Wyoming they choose to work with Huawei because they respect the quality and integrity of our equipment," Mr. Song said. Huawei is embarking upon this new legal battle as the company's fortunes, despite the onslaught from Washington and apprehension in other world capitals, appear to be looking up. The Commerce Department has begun allowing some American suppliers to resume selling parts and other technology to Huawei. Earlier this year the department had barred such sales without prior approval. Huawei's business has remained steady over all, thanks to brisk sales of its smartphones and telecom equipment in China. Throughout the rest of the world, the company has been supercharging its efforts to court the sympathies of the public and of governments. Hundreds of journalists have been invited to visit Huawei's campuses. The company's founder and chief executive, Ren Zhengfei, has given interview after interview in which he assures the world that neither he nor his firm has anything to hide. In Washington, Huawei has spent 1.9 million on lobbying this year, according to federal disclosures, dwarfing its past totals. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Technology |
The PGA Tour returns from a 90 day layoff on Thursday with a tournament in Fort Worth that will be contested without spectators and with one new golfing ritual: Players are directed to sanitize their hands after every hole while their caddies wipe down golf bags with disinfectant. But of the dozens of safety procedures enacted for professional golf's return, none has vexed the players more so far than the coronavirus testing they have been required to undergo upon arriving in Texas. "Hurt more than I thought it would, I'm not going to lie," Jon Rahm, the tour's No. 2 ranked player, said on Tuesday, hours after he tested negative for the coronavirus. And when Jordan Spieth, the three time major championship winner, was asked what was the most uncomfortable part of adapting to golf's new competitive environment, he batted away suggestions that it might be the spectator free atmosphere or not being able to high five someone after a birdie putt. "I think the swab test was probably the most uncomfortable," Spieth said, referring to the long swab that must be inserted deep into the nasal cavity. "There was nothing comfortable about it." While nothing may be as directly off putting as the virus swab test, there are likely to be a host of uncommon and anomalous situations during the four days at the Charles Schwab Challenge at the venerable Colonial Country Club. Scores of players rarely touched their clubs for two months after the PGA Tour suspended its schedule on March 13 because of the pandemic. Golf may be leisurely to recreational players, but for pros the pause was viewed as an unexpected vacation from taut competition and the grind of lengthy practice days. In the last several weeks, players have picked up their clubs again. But friendly matches with peers on a comfy home course, or formless range sessions, are not the usual preparation for the stress of a PGA Tour event. Rahm said he took seven weeks away from the game, and when he decided to play again his first goal was to, "not shank the first seven balls I hit." With that experience in mind, and with a chuckle, Rahm predicted "a variety of scores" from his fellow competitors this week. The long layoff has unwittingly led to what is probably the strongest field in the recent history of the event at Colonial, which dates to 1946. The world's top five ranked golfers, and 16 of the top 20, will be teeing off on Thursday, although that group does not include the 11th ranked Tiger Woods. Woods, who has not played on the tour since mid February at the Genesis Invitational when he finished last among golfers who made the cut, has only played the Colonial tournament once, in 1997, and he typically does not play any of the other tour events scheduled in the next four weeks. Based on his usual schedule of preferred events, Woods would not make his return until mid July to play in the Memorial Tournament in Dublin, Ohio, hosted by Jack Nicklaus. But with the 2020 golf schedule upended and revised the United States Open will be in September and the Masters in November it is reasonable to expect Woods to break with tradition and play relatively soon, perhaps in next week's RBC Heritage Classic at Hilton Head, S.C. or at the Travelers Championship outside Hartford, Conn., from June 25 to 28. Besides Woods, there are other prominent golfers missing from this week's field, but most are non Americans who did not make the trip to Texas because of governmental travel guidelines requiring a 14 day quarantine. That group includes Tommy Fleetwood and Lee Westwood of England, Francesco Molinari of Italy and Adam Scott of Australia. Each is ranked in the top 31on the tour. This weekend's tournament will be reflective of recent events besides the pandemic. Tour officials plan to honor George Floyd, the 46 year old black man killed in police custody in Minnesota last month, and the racial justice movement by keeping open the 8:46 a.m. tee time Thursday. Players around the golf course will pause for a minute of silence. The tee time represents the 8 minutes and 46 seconds that former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin knelt on Floyd's neck. "Especially being one of the first sports back, it's important to set the tone going forward for other sports for just people in general," Koepka said. He added: "There needs to be change, and I want to be part of the solution." The tournament is being contested without fans, which the golfers have readily conceded will be the strangest part of their return to competition. Rahm wondered what players will hear if the final act of the tournament is a dramatic 30 foot putt holed to win the title. The tour, meanwhile, has issued warnings about players and caddies maintaining social distancing protocols. Some players have so far appeared better at keeping the appropriate distance than others. The frequent testing of players, caddies and course volunteers, which includes daily thermal readings, may be playing a role in that phenomenon. Kevin Na, the event's defending champion, explained "You've got to remember that all of us tested negative. I think guys get a little comfortable." Na continued: "I think people need to realize that some mistakes will happen. Someone will fist bump." Na, however, said he asked tour officials about the potential for the virus spreading. "The answer I got was we hope it doesn't happen, and we don't think it's going to happen because with all the testing that we're doing and the precautions we're taking," he said. "But if it does, if it starts spreading, then they will reassess and they'll most likely start having to have to cancel tournaments." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Sports |
One mask depicts a middle finger, stuck defiantly upward, silk screened in black ink on a blue background. Others feature sunflower seeds, a surveillance camera or creatures from ancient Chinese mythology. All these masks are works by the artist and dissident Ai Weiwei. The assortment of masks, made of nonsurgical cloth, will be sold on eBay for Charity, from Thursday until June 27, to raise funds for humanitarian and emergency relief efforts around the coronavirus pandemic. Mr. Ai said that the idea came to him late one night; he's been working across time zones, with a team in Wuhan, on a documentary about Covid 19. While making carvings with his son, he printed a middle finger on a mask and posted it to Instagram. (He has used this image before, including in a "Study of Perspective" series that had backdrops of different monuments.) People wanted to know where they could get one. "I wanted to do something," he said in a phone interview on Wednesday. "I didn't want to just be sitting there and waiting for the time to pass." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Art & Design |
Now Lives In a four bedroom, three story apartment in Bushwick, Brooklyn, with two other young entrepreneurs and a filmmaker. Claim to Fame Mr. Brown is a new media wunderkind, having helped found NYU Local, a student run news blog while he was an undergraduate at New York University and, more recently, Scroll Kit, a visual online editor for stories, which was sold to WordPress in 2014. "We wanted to make it as intuitive as writing on paper," he said. His latest venture, IRL, seeks to make virtual reality more accessible. Big Break In 2009, while a senior at N.Y.U., Mr. Brown wrote and published on his personal blog a 3,462 word essay titled "A Public Can Talk to Itself: Why the Future of Journalism Is Actually Pretty Clear." It showcased his unflagging tech optimism at a time when the news industry seemed to be unhinged by the internet. The post caught the attention of entrepreneurs including Chris Dixon, who took the young techie under his wing. That move elevated Mr. Brown's place in the tech scene. From there, his career as a new media entrepreneur took off. Latest Project IRL, which was started in 2016, seeks to exploit what Mr. Brown calls virtual reality's untapped social potential. "An overwhelming number of people have not discovered room scale V.R., or high end V.R., and they will not believe the hype until you put it on their face," he said. To that end, he has been hosting parties in Brooklyn and Manhattan for friends, colleagues and V.I.P.s like Josh Miller, a former digital strategy specialist for the White House. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Style |
When Dick Buerkle stood at the starting line of an indoor mile race in College Park, Md., in 1978, he was in a new phase of his career. He had been a leading middle distance runner but had fizzled out at 5,000 meters in the 1976 Summer Olympics in Montreal. He took a year off from competing and focused on a new challenge: winning at the mile. "I've always wondered how fast I could run the mile," Buerkle (pronounced BERK lee) told Sports Illustrated in 1978. "There was only one way to find out." Before the race, at the Cole Field House at the University of Maryland, he ate his usual pre race meal of a couple of peanut butter sandwiches and a bunch of Hydrox cookies. And he won the race. Leading from start to finish, Buerkle held off Filbert Bayi of Tanzania, the favorite. With a time of 3 minutes 54 seconds and nine tenths of a second, Buerkle narrowly eclipsed Tony Waldrop's four year old record of 3:55. Two weeks later, Buerkle won the mile race at the Millrose Games in Madison Square Garden with a time of 3:58.4, fast enough to beat Bayi again and significant enough for Sports Illustrated to laud Buerkle on its cover as the "New Master of the Mile." The reign did not last long, however. Thirteen months later, the Irish runner Eamonn Coghlan cut two seconds off Buerkle's record. "Dick Buerkle was a great hard working athlete true gent," Coghlan wrote on Twitter after Buerkle's death, on June 22. "His world indoor mile record was the one I dreamed of beating." Buerkle died at his home in Atlanta at 72. His wife, Jean Buerkle, said the cause was multiple system atrophy, a rare neurodegenerative disorder. He received a diagnosis of Parkinson's disease in 2008, but it was later changed to multiple system atrophy. Buerkle was slightly built 5 foot 7 and 130 pounds with a short, efficient stride that, as Neil Amdur of The New York Times once wrote, made him "look more like someone racing to catch a commuter train than a world class competitor." Buerkle's most noticeable physical characteristic was his total baldness; he lost his hair at age 12 because of alopecia areata, an autoimmune disorder. The taunts he heard at track meets, as early as high school, helped fuel his determination to succeed. "Michael Jordan was his savior," Ms. Buerkle said in a phone interview. "When Michael shaved his head, Dick wasn't taunted any longer. He had a purplish blue Michael Jordan sweatsuit that was his favorite." Richard Thomas Buerkle was born on Sept. 3, 1947, in Rochester, N.Y., to Raymond and Margaret (Kelleher) Buerkle. His father owned a floor covering store, where his mother, kept the financial books; she was also a bookkeeper for other clients. Buerkle got a late start in competitive running; he did not compete for his high school track and field team until his senior year. And he was a walk on, without an athletic scholarship, when he joined the powerful Villanova University track team. But he wound up as part of the Wildcats' N.C.A.A. national championship teams in cross country in 1967 and 1968 and indoor track in 1968. During his junior year, he finished second in a two mile race in Knoxville, Tenn., but by running in under nine minutes, he persuaded his coach, Jumbo Elliott, to finally give him his scholarship. A year later, Buerkle was the indoor two mile champion at the elite track meet of the IC4A, or the Intercollegiate Association of Amateur Athletes of America. After graduating from Villanova in 1970 with a major in Spanish studies, he ran at top levels for more than a decade, showing versatility at one, two and three miles, as well as at distances of 3,000, 5,000 and 10,000 meters. In 1976, Buerkle won the 5,000 meter race at the United States Olympic trials but finished ninth in a heat at the 1976 Summer Olympics in Montreal. He qualified again at 5,000 meters for the 1980 Summer Games in Moscow, but the American team did not compete after the United States boycotted the event because of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Buerkle disagreed with boycott, ordered by President Jimmy Carter. "Of course, the boycott is justified if it can bring about peace," he told The Philadelphia Inquirer at the time, "but the way it was handled was obnoxious, underhanded, threatening." He left elite racing in 1981 and worked primarily as a Spanish teacher and track coach at middle and high schools in Atlanta. He married Jean Brockwell in 1971. In addition to her, he is survived by two daughters, Lily and Tera Buerkle; a son, Gabriel; four grandchildren; three sisters, Anne, Teresa and Mary Pat Buerkle; and four brothers, Daniel, Robert, Joseph and Thomas. As a top American at 5,000 meters from 1970 to 1981, Buerkle's chief rival was Steve Prefontaine, America's finest distant runner at the time. Competing in a two mile event in 1974, Buerkle won decisively, breaking Prefontaine's four year winning streak at numerous distances. Shortly after Prefontaine's death the following year in an automobile accident in Eugene, Ore., Buerkle wrote a poem that he dictated over the telephone to a reporter at The Register Guard in Eugene. It read in part: And now it's over just like that. No more will dirt in London, Oslo, It's up to other artists now | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Sports |
The seller, Dimitrios Contominas of Athens, was represented by Stratos Costalas of the Oxford Property Group. Alina Green of Granal Inc., a boutique residential brokerage, negotiated on behalf of the buyer, who made the acquisition through Arcus Properties V, a limited liability company based in Brooklyn. The runner up, at 16.55 million, was a full floor residence at 760 Park Avenue, a 14 story co op built in the neo Renaissance style in 1924 on the northwest corner of East 72nd Street. The fully renovated 13 room apartment on the third floor of the white glove co op had been listed at 17.5 million. The apartment has five bedrooms, four and a half baths and a lavishly paneled home theater. The corner master suite, living room, library and corner dining room all face the avenue; both the master and the living room have ornate marble fireplaces. John Burger of Brown Harris Stevens handled the listing for the sellers, James and Marie Kelly; the buyers, Robert and Natasha Boucai, were represented by Nancy J. Elias, also of Brown Harris Stevens. Mr. Boucai is the manager of Newbrook Capital Advisors, a hedge fund. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Real Estate |
In CAR T therapy, a patient's T cells are reprogrammed in the laboratory to create modified T cells that are genetically coded to recognize and fight the patient's cancer. The approval of gene therapy for leukemia, expected in the next few months, will open the door to a radically new class of cancer treatments. Companies and universities are racing to develop these new therapies, which re engineer and turbocharge millions of a patient's own immune cells, turning them into cancer killers that researchers call a "living drug." One of the big goals now is to get them to work for many other cancers, including those of the breast, prostate, ovary, lung and pancreas. "This has been utterly transformative in blood cancers," said Dr. Stephan Grupp, director of the cancer immunotherapy program at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, a professor of pediatrics at the University of Pennsylvania and a leader of major studies. "If it can start to work in solid tumors, it will be utterly transformative for the whole field." But it will take time to find that out, he said, at least five years. This type of treatment is now also being studied in glioblastoma, the aggressive brain tumor that Senator John McCain was found to have this week. Results of a study at the University of Pennsylvania, published Wednesday, were mixed. In the first 10 patients treated there, one has lived more than 18 months with what the researchers called "stable disease." Two other survivors have cancer that has progressed, and the rest have died. Studies are forging ahead on many fronts. Researchers plan to try giving the cell treatment to children with earlier stages of leukemia than in the past, combining it with other treatments and developing new types of cell therapy. One new version, with human trials just starting, uses immune cells extracted not from the patient, but from samples of umbilical cord blood donated by mothers when they give birth. The products closest to approval so far have a limited focus to treat blood cancers like leukemia (for which an F.D.A. advisory panel recommended approval of the first treatment last week) and lymphoma, as opposed to the solid tumors that form in organs like the breasts and lungs and cause many more deaths. About 80,000 people a year have the kinds of blood cancers that the first round of new treatments can fight, out of the 1.7 million cases of cancer diagnosed annually in the United States. The new treatments are expected to cost hundreds of thousands of dollars, and they come with risks. Patients in the earliest studies nearly died from side effects like raging fever, low blood pressure and lung congestion. Doctors have learned how to control those reactions, but experts also have concerns about possible long term effects like second cancers that could in theory be caused by the disabled viruses used in genetic engineering. No such cancers have been seen so far, but it is too soon to rule them out. Solid tumors are less amenable to treatment with these altered cells which scientists call CAR T cells but studies at various centers are trying to find ways to use it against mesothelioma and cancers of the ovary, breast, prostate, pancreas and lung. "These solid tumors are like Fort Knox," Dr. Grupp said. "They don't want to let the T cells in. We need combination approaches, CAR T plus something else, but until the something else is defined we're not going to see the same kind of responses." The pioneering T cell therapy for leukemia was created at the University of Pennsylvania, which licensed it to Novartis. The F.D.A. panel recommended approval of it for a narrow subset of severely ill patients, only a few hundred a year in the United States: those ages 3 to 25 who have B cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia that has relapsed or not responded to the standard treatments. Those patients have poor odds of surviving, but in clinical trials, a single T cell treatment has produced long remissions in many and possibly even cured some. Novartis plans to request another approval later this year of the same treatment (which it calls CTL019 or tisagenlecleucel) for adults who have a type of lymphoma diffuse large B cell lymphoma that has relapsed or resisted treatment. A competitor, Kite Pharma, has also filed for approval of a T cell treatment for lymphoma. Another competitor, Juno, suffered a setback when it shut down a T cell study in adults after five patients died from brain swelling. Kite has also reported one such death. Novartis is studying several other types of T cells, with different genetic tweaks, to treat chronic lymphocytic leukemia, multiple myeloma as well as glioblastoma. Some of the more promising work so far involves efforts to make the existing gene treatments even more effective in blood cancers. For lymphoma patients, the T cells are being given along with a drug, ibrutinib, and the combination seems to work better than either treatment alone. Dr. Grupp said that one encouraging avenue of research involved giving the T cells at an earlier stage of the disease, instead of very late, as rules now require. He said a study was being planned at multiple centers that he hoped would start within the next six months or so. The patients would be children with early signs that the usual chemotherapy which cures many is not working well for them. "We could deploy the treatment considerably earlier and before they get so sick," he said. He added, "That is another big step in terms of trying to figure out how to use these cells appropriately." Earlier treatment, he said, might help some patients avoid bone marrow transplant, a grueling, last ditch treatment. Children with less advanced disease also tend to have milder side effects from the T cell treatment. Studies in children are also underway to combine T cell treatment with the immunotherapy drugs called checkpoint inhibitors, which help unleash the cancer killing power of T cells. There will be many such studies, Dr. Grupp predicted, but, he said, "It's early days." The T cells in the Novartis products, and in the earliest ones its competitors are developing, have been engineered to seek and destroy cells that display on their surfaces a protein called CD19 a characteristic of many leukemias and lymphomas. Identifying other targets would be a boon, Dr. Grupp said, because sometimes leukemic cells lacking CD19 proliferate, escape the treatment and cause relapse. Another target is being studied, and Dr. Grupp said the next step, which he called "superimportant," would be to attack two cellular targets in the same patient. In the next year or so, he said, that approach will also be studied in both children and adults who have acute myeloid leukemia, which he described as a "tough disease." Researchers at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston are trying a completely different approach to engineering cells, one that they hope might eventually yield an "off the shelf" treatment that would not have to be tailored to each individual patient and that might be less expensive. Instead of using T cells, the team uses natural killer cells, another component of the immune system, one that has a powerful ability to fight anything it recognizes as foreign. Instead of extracting the cells from patients, the researchers, Dr. Katy Rezvani and Dr. Elizabeth Shpall, remove the natural killers from samples of umbilical cord blood donated by women who have just given birth. They use natural killer cells because T cells from one person cannot be safely given to another, lest they attack the host's tissue, causing graft versus host disease, which can be fatal. Natural killer cells do not cause that deadly reaction, so it is safe to use such cells from a newborn's cord blood to treat patients. The natural killer cells are genetically engineered to attack CD19, and also to produce a substance that activates them and helps them persist in the body. They also have an "off switch," a gene that will let the researchers shut down the cells with a certain drug if they cause dangerous side effects that cannot be controlled. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Health |
JACKSON HOLE, Wyo. The Federal Reserve chairman, Ben S. Bernanke, said Friday that the political battle this summer over the federal government's borrowing and spending had disrupted financial markets "and probably the economy as well." In remarks that went well beyond his previous calls for Congress and the White House to address the nation's long term fiscal challenges, Mr. Bernanke suggested the process itself was broken. "The country would be well served by a better process for making fiscal decisions," he said. Mr. Bernanke said he remained optimistic about future growth he gave no indication that the Fed would increase its economic aid programs, though he said the central bank's policy making board would revisit the issue at a scheduled meeting in September but he warned that the government had emerged as perhaps the greatest threat to recovery. "The quality of economic policy making in the United States will heavily influence the nation's long term prospects," Mr. Bernanke said in the much anticipated speech, delivered at a policy conference held each August here at a resort in Grand Teton National Park. The turn toward stronger language was welcomed by some lawmakers and observers of the partisan battle that has pitted Republicans seeking to reduce the federal debt through spending cuts against Democrats arguing for a mix of cuts and increases in revenue. Maya MacGuineas, president of the nonpartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, described Mr. Bernanke's remarks as "an emergency intervention." "It was great to hear him weigh in so strongly," said Ms. MacGuineas. "He's saying what needs to be said, and hopefully people will listen because of the messenger." But the Fed chairman has no authority over fiscal policy. While he has advised Congress and the administration to make hard choices to bring down spending and deficits, his comments have held little sway in the deliberations. A deal reached earlier this month to raise the amount the government can borrow, in exchange for spending cuts of at least 2.1 trillion, would not reduce the debt to a level most economists consider sustainable, and the political brinksmanship preceding the deal led Standard Poor's to remove long term Treasury securities from its list of risk free investments. The battle now is shifting to a special Congressional committee that will negotiate the details of those cuts. President Obama plans to deliver a speech after Labor Day detailing proposals for job creation and spending cuts intended to influence the work of that committee. On Capitol Hill, Democrats seized on the Fed chairman's remarks to criticize Republicans for what they described as intransigence during the debt ceiling negotiations. Representative Steny H. Hoyer of Maryland, the Democratic whip, said in a statement, "I believe that Federal Reserve Chairman Bernanke was correct today when he observed that partisan brinksmanship over the debt limit damaged financial markets and the American economy." The White House, while declining to address Mr. Bernanke's remarks specifically, chimed in. "The president has repeatedly expressed in his own right his frustration with the dysfunction and the partisan rancor that we've seen on Capitol Hill that has interfered with the government's ability to address these challenges," said Josh Earnest, a White House spokesman. Republicans, however, offered little response. And market reaction was muted. Stocks fell in early trading, then gradually recovered. The Standard Poor's 500 stock index rose 1.5 percent and the Dow Jones industrial average rose 1.2 percent to close at 11,284.54. Friday's speech was eagerly anticipated because Mr. Bernanke and his predecessors have made a habit of coming to this conference, hosted by the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, to clarify their views on the economy and monetary policy. The Fed announced earlier this month that it intended to hold short term interest rates near zero until at least the middle of 2013, a reflection of its forecast that growth will not be fast enough during that period to drive up wages and prices. Many investors had viewed that announcement as a potential prelude to further steps. More than 25 million Americans cannot find full time jobs, and the government said Friday that the economy expanded at an annual pace of 0.7 percent during the first half of the year, down from an earlier estimate of 0.8 percent. But Mr. Bernanke, while noting those economic challenges, returned to the language of speeches he gave earlier this year, arguing that the Fed had largely exhausted the power of its monetary policy. "Most of the economic policies that support robust economic growth in the long run are outside the province of the central bank," he said. While offering his standard disclaimer that the Fed would take any steps necessary, he notably omitted his usual description of those possible measures. He did say, however, that a scheduled meeting of the Federal Open Market Committee in late September would be extended to two days from one day "to allow a fuller discussion." Instead, Mr. Bernanke focused on fiscal policy, reiterating his frequent call for fiscal measures that focus on long term reductions in the federal debt, while avoiding short term cuts or tax increases that might impede recovery. He also said the government could help to speed recovery through steps that include "good, proactive housing policy." "Notwithstanding the severe difficulties we currently face, I do not expect the long run growth potential of the U.S. economy to be materially affected by the crisis and the recession if and I stress if our country takes the necessary steps to secure that outcome," he said. Mr. Bernanke did not lay blame for the debt ceiling battle on either political party. But his recommendations for future fiscal policy particularly the emphasis on the need for continued investment and reducing unemployment generally hews closer to Mr. Obama's position than to the views of Congressional Republicans. Mr. Bernanke elaborated only briefly on his suggestion for a different process to address these issues, suggesting that politicians should consider the establishment of "clear and transparent budget goals, together with budget mechanisms to establish the credibility of these goals." Mr. Bernanke and his colleagues remain more optimistic about the health of the American economy than forecasters like the International Monetary Fund, one important reason the Fed is reluctant to consider additional measures. The central bank also maintains an overriding focus on inflation, aiming to keep wages and prices rising no more than about 2 percent a year. The Fed expects inflation to exceed that pace in 2011, then to settle around that level. Additional stimulus could increase the pace above its comfort level. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Economy |
Elena Delle Donne, the W.N.B.A.'s reigning most valuable player, said she had been denied a medical waiver for the league's abbreviated season, which begins July 25. Had she received the waiver, Delle Donne, who has struggled with Lyme disease for more than a decade, would have been able to sit out while still being paid for the season. Now if she chooses not to play, she will not be paid. Delle Donne, 30, made the revelation to ESPN. She said she had not yet made a decision on whether to play. She is the star player for the defending champions, the Washington Mystics. The decision to deny her the waiver came from a panel of doctors, selected jointly by the league and the players' union. Delle Donne said her personal physician had advised her not to play because of an increased risk of contracting and suffering complications from Covid 19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Sports |
WILL SMITH: OFF THE DEEP END 9 p.m. on Discovery. After celebrating his 50th birthday by bungee jumping at the Grand Canyon, the actor Will Smith will continue his thrill seeking streak during Shark Week. On this special, Smith will swim with sharks in order to face his fears of the open ocean and its predators. HARD KNOCKS: LOS ANGELES 10 p.m. on HBO. This sports documentary series will follow both of Los Angeles's N.F.L. teams the Chargers and the Rams as the organizations prepare for the 2020 season. Film crews followed the Rams head coach, Sean McVay, as well as embedding with the Chargers head coach Anthony Lynn, who was focused on coming back from the team's 2019 season, which was derailed by multiple injuries. The show will capture the daily lives and routines of the two franchises' players and coaches, as well as track the construction of the teams' shared 70,000 seat stadium in Inglewood. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Television |
The decision this week by the Danish government to kill millions of mink because of coronavirus concerns, effectively wiping out a major national industry, has put the spotlight on simmering worries among scientists and conservationists about the vulnerability of animals to the pandemic virus, and what infections among animals could mean for humans. The most disturbing possibility is that the virus could mutate in animals and become more transmissible or more dangerous to humans. In Denmark, the virus has shifted from humans to mink and back to humans, and has mutated in the process. Mink are the only animals known to have passed the coronavirus to humans, except for the initial spillover event from an unknown species. Other animals, like cats and dogs, have been infected by exposure to humans, but there are no known cases of people being infected by exposure to their pets. The versions of the virus that have mutated in mink and spread to humans are not more transmissible or causing more severe illness in humans. But one of the variants, found in 12 people so far, was less responsive to antibodies in lab tests. Danish health authorities worried that the effectiveness of vaccines in development might be diminished for this variant, and decided to take all possible measures to stop its spread. This included killing all of the country's mink and effectively locking down the northern part of the country, where the mutated virus was found. The United Kingdom has banned travelers from Denmark who are not U.K. citizens. The World Health Organization and scientists outside of Denmark have said they have yet to see evidence that this variant will have any effect on vaccines. They have not, however, criticized Denmark's decision to cull its mink population. Read more on how Mink were affected by the coronavirus. Mink are not the only animals that can be infected with the coronavirus. Dogs, cats, tigers, hamsters, monkeys, ferrets and genetically engineered mice have also been infected. Dogs and cats, including tigers, seem to suffer few ill effects. The other animals, which are used in laboratory experiments, have exhibited varying responses. Farmed mink, however, have died in large numbers in Europe and in the United States, perhaps partly because of the crowded conditions on those ranches, which could increase the amount of exposure. Public health experts worry, however, that any species capable of infection could become a reservoir that allowed the virus to re emerge at any time and infect people. The virus would likely mutate in other animal species, as it has been shown to do in mink. Although most mutations are likely to be harmless, SARS CoV 2 conceivably could recombine with another coronavirus and become more dangerous. Conservation experts also worry about the effect on animal species that are already in trouble. One approach to studying susceptibility has been to look at the genomes of animals and see which ones have a genetic sequence that codes for a protein on cells called an ACE2 receptor, which allows the virus to latch on. One team of researchers studied the genomes of more than 400 animals. Another group did a similar study of primates, which are often infected with human respiratory viruses. "One of the premises for doing this research was that we thought that great apes would be very at risk because of their close relationship to humans, genetically," said Amanda D. Melin, an anthropologist at the University of Calgary and an author of the primate study. But, she added, she and her colleagues also wanted to consider "all of the other primates and their potential risk." In addition to investigating genomes, the team also did computer modeling of the interaction of the virus spike protein with different ACE2 receptors. The Australian Open will require players to be fully vaccinated. A C.D.C. study finds stillbirths are higher in pregnant women with Covid. The findings of both papers reinforced each other, revealing old world monkeys and all apes to be most at risk. Both papers were released as non peer reviewed studies earlier this year. Dr. Melin and her colleagues have been talking to representatives of wildlife sanctuaries and zoos about the need for caution. Many of these facilities have increased restrictions for the interactions between people and the primates. Zarin Machanda, of Tufts University, who studies chimpanzee behavior at the Kibale Chimpanzee Project in Uganda, said that the preserve had increased its safety precautions because of the pandemic. "We're always cautious about respiratory viruses," she said, because such viruses are the leading cause of death in the chimps at Kibale. Even the human common cold can be lethal. Chimpanzees have suffered from outbreaks of other coronaviruses. Normally, humans at Kibale maintain a minimum distance of two dozen feet from chimpanzees; that has been increased to 30 feet or more. Local workers have been staying at the reserve, rather than commuting back and forth to their communities. And the project has reduced the hours for field studies. All these measures were directed by the Ugandan government. "The last thing we need is for SARS CoV 2 to move into an animal reservoir from which it could re emerge," Dr. Goldberg said. Other researchers are studying species from Beluga whales to deer mice for signs of the coronavirus. Kate Sawatzki, the animal surveillance coordinator for a testing project in pets and other animals at the Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine at Tufts University, said: "To date, we have tested 282 wildlife samples from 22 species, primarily bats in New England rehabilitation facilities, and we are happy to report that none have been positive." They have also tested 538 domestic pets, including from households with people with Covid 19, and none have shown signs of active virus. However, Dr. Sawatzki said, the lab also conducted blood tests for antibodies, showing exposure, and there they did find antibodies, as is common in humans. The pets seemed to be getting infected but not getting sick or passing the virus on. So far, the mink in Denmark are the only known instance of the virus infecting an animal, mutating, and transferring back to humans. Emma Hodcroft of the University of Basel, Switzerland, traces various mutated versions of the coronavirus as it has spread through Europe and has reviewed scientific information released by Danish health authorities. She said she applauded the government's decision to take swift action and cull the mink: "Many countries have hesitated and waited before acting, and it can be incredibly detrimental in the face of SARS CoV 2, as we see." But she did not approve of the way the information was released, particularly in the government's Wednesday news briefing, which warned of a dire threat to potential human vaccines but offered no detail for the concern. "The communication of the science could have been much clearer and led to less worry around the world," Dr. Hodcroft said. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Science |
In September 1952, Dwight D. Eisenhower spoke to a convention of labor leaders and told them that before joining the Army, he took a job at a dairy plant where "I worked 84 hours a week on the night shift from 6 to 6, seven nights a week." Recognizing how extreme that was, Eisenhower said, in a nod to labor, "In the years since, unions, cooperating with employers, have vastly improved the lot of working men and women." It is often forgotten that Eisenhower and many other Republicans used to support labor unions, if not always enthusiastically. In that speech, Eisenhower noted that the first federal law giving workers a right to organize and bargain came under a Republican, Calvin Coolidge that was the Railway Labor Act, passed in 1926. "Only a handful of unreconstructed reactionaries harbor the ugly thought of breaking unions," Eisenhower told labor leaders that day. "Only a fool would try to deprive working men and women of the right to join the union of their choice." In that era, Republicans often praised unions for fighting Communism and lifting living standards to help them make the case that American capitalism was delivering more to workers than Soviet communism was. Richard Nixon also courted labor, inviting union leaders and their wives to a 1970 Labor Day dinner at the White House with a torchlight military pageant. Nixon tried to woo unions by signing the most significant pro labor legislation since the 1930s, the Occupational Safety and Health Act of 1970. His Republican successor, Gerald Ford, also signed important pro labor legislation, the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974, which safeguarded pensions after the automaker Studebaker collapsed, leaving 4,100 of its workers with just 15 percent of their promised pensions. It was Ronald Reagan, with his firing of 11,000 striking air traffic controllers, who sent the Republican Party's relations with labor into a tailspin. Despite the party's shift to the right under Reagan, there continued to be many pro labor Republicans in Congress well into the 1990s, like Representatives Jack Quinn of New York and Bob Ney of Ohio. They often bucked party leaders, for instance, to support a higher minimum wage. The decisive break came in 1996 when Speaker Newt Gingrich was struggling to retain control of the House. With Gingrich openly hostile to unions, the A.F.L. C.I.O. endorsed Democrats over many longtime G.O.P. allies. At the time, the A.F.L. C.I.O.'s political director justified the move, saying, "Anybody who stands with Gingrich as often as they do is not standing with working people." But the spurned Republicans said labor had turned its back on the G.O.P. That ended a 120 year stretch during which unions had always been able to maintain some level of bipartisan support. As politics grew more polarized over the past quarter century, the Republican Party, pushed by wealthy donors like the Koch brothers, grew more anti union (and more opposed to regulations on business). In state after state, Republicans have moved to hobble unions, especially through right to work laws, enacted in recent years in Indiana, Kentucky, Michigan, West Virginia and Wisconsin. In 2011, Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin pushed through a law that crippled most of the state's public sector unions. And in 2017, after Republicans won control of Kentucky's legislature for the first time since 1921, one of the very first laws they passed was a right to work law. In recent decades, Republicans in Congress have opposed not just pro union measures, but many pro worker ones. They overwhelmingly oppose a higher minimum wage and proposals for employer paid parental leave and sick days, castigating those ideas as big government "employer mandates." Donald Trump, the presidential candidate, seemed like he might reverse course. In 2016, recognizing that Republicans had alienated unions and many workers, he campaigned as a champion of blue collar workers. Many of them loved his promises to bring back jobs, but his administration, with its close ties to corporations and business lobbyists, has been vigorously anti union and often anti worker (except on trade, where Trump has delivered far less than he says). Trump invited construction union leaders to the White House, but he utterly failed on delivering what they wanted most: his promised 1 trillion infrastructure plan that would have created hundreds of thousands of construction jobs. Infuriating union leaders and many workers, the Trump administration has refused to adopt any regulations requiring employers to take specific steps to protect workers against Covid 19. Many labor experts say the Trump National Labor Relations Board has taken myriad steps to make it harder to unionize. Mr. Trump has tweeted out attacks against the A.F.L. C.I.O.'s president and several union presidents. That one of the nation's two major political parties has aligned itself so strongly against unions has contributed to two troubling trends: wage stagnation and increased income inequality. (Nor have the Democrats done nearly enough to address those problems.) It is promising that Republican senators like Marco Rubio and Josh Hawley say their party needs to broaden beyond its largely white base by doing more to help workers. Thus far their proposals have made little headway, and their party remains anti union and unsympathetic to workers whether on raising the minimum wage, extending the 600 jobless supplement or tilting tax cuts toward the rich. Mr. Trump and many Republican lawmakers would be in a much stronger position politically if they had truly done more to help workers and align themselves with unions. Most Republican voters support a higher minimum wage referendums in red states like Missouri and Nebraska approved a higher minimum but Republican lawmakers generally oppose such a move. With the success of the RedforEd teacher strikes and a new Gallup poll showing strong public approval of unions, it would be smart for Republicans to show some real support for labor if only for their own future electoral success. Steven Greenhouse was a New York Times reporter for 31 years, including 19 years as its labor and workplace reporter. He is the author of "Beaten Down, Worked Up: The Past, Present, and Future of American Labor." The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We'd like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here's our email: letters nytimes.com. Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter ( NYTopinion) and Instagram. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Opinion |
Compared with women who have never given birth, those who recently had babies may have a slight increased risk of breast cancer that peaks after about five years and then gradually declines, according to a study published this week. The degree of risk increases with the mother's age at the time she gave birth. The results sound disturbing, especially for women who already have more than enough stress taking care of young children. But even with the increase, the risk of breast cancer in young women before menopause remains very low, researchers say. "We don't want women to feel alarmed or frightened," Hazel B. Nichols, an epidemiologist at the University of North Carolina Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center, and the lead author of the study, said in an interview. The results, based on pooled data from 15 studies involving 890,000 women, were published in Annals of Internal Medicine. Like the Science Times page on Facebook. Sign up for the Science Times newsletter. To show that the risk is small, Dr. Nichols explained that in women between the ages of 41 and 50 who had given birth in the previous three to seven years, the study found that 2.2 percent developed breast cancer, while in those who had not had babies, the figure was 1.9 percent. The increase in risk lasted for about 20 years. No rise in risk was detected in women who had babies before age 25. But having children also seems to make it less likely that breast cancer will develop later in life, when the disease becomes more common, said Dr. Katrina Armstrong, physician in chief at the Massachusetts General Hospital and an expert on cancer prevention, who wrote an editorial that accompanied the study. The median age at diagnosis is 62. Other studies have shown that women who had children appear to gain a protective benefit against breast cancer later in life, which Dr. Armstrong said is likely to far outweigh the earlier rise in risk. "In almost every study, the overarching result is that having children reduces your risk of breast cancer over your life time," Dr. Armstrong said in an interview. She added that although the transient increase in risk is small, it is important for women who have given birth recently to see a doctor if they notice anything abnormal in their breasts, and not to chalk it up to some quirk of pregnancy, childbirth or breastfeeding. Both researchers said that the findings should not influence women's decisions about if or when to have children. But they said the information, combined with other factors like family history, reproductive history and genetic tests, could help women and their doctors assess their individual risks and decide if and when to begin screening tests like mammography. For instance, Dr. Armstrong said, a woman who had no children before 25 and gave birth in her late 30s might decide to start screening earlier. Health authorities differ in recommendations about when mammography should begin and how often it should be done. The studies were observational, meaning they were not controlled experiments, but were based on following patients' histories and looking for patterns and associations. Such studies cannot prove cause and effect, but in this case they are the only source of information because women cannot be picked at random and assigned to groups that either do or don't have babies. Paradoxical as it may seem that childbirth could both raise and lower the risk of breast cancer, researchers say that appears to be the case. The pattern has turned up in study after study. The reason is not known, but there are possible explanations. The risk might increase after birth, Dr. Nichols said, because "there is rapid cellular proliferation in the breast, and any time where tissue or cells are rapidly growing, there is a small potential for errors to be made when a cell is copying or dividing, or if there is an error in the cell, there's an opportunity for it to be copied and reproduced many times." As for the protective effect of childbirth, she said that when breast tissue goes through the complete development process involved in producing milk, it becomes less susceptible to developing cancer later in life. Dr. Armstrong said other factors might also be involved, like changes in the immune system related to pregnancy or to the stress and fatigue of caring for young children, or to changes in the microbiome in the breast. The average age of women entering the studies was 41.8 years, ranging from 16 to 54.9. On average, they were followed for 10.8 years, but not past 55. Those who had children when they were young were followed for decades, long enough for researchers to see that the risk gradually diminished, and at about 24 years after the last birth, the protective effect actually emerged. Because so many women were studied, the researchers were able to get meaningful information about various factors that could influence the odds of developing breast cancer. They found that the transient risk increased in women who had more than one child or were older at their first birth, and in those who had a family history of breast cancer. Contrary to popular beliefs, breastfeeding did not lower the risk that followed childbirth, though it does appear to have a protective effect later in life. Most breast cancers, 70 percent or 80 percent, are "ER positive," meaning that the hormone estrogen helps them grow. The study found that in women who had another type of breast tumor ER negative, or not sensitive to estrogen the late in life benefit of childbirth never kicked in. Dr. Nichols said that the point of the study was to help determine how the risk factors for breast cancer change over the course of a woman's life. "We have to move to really understanding the biological mechanisms," Dr. Armstrong said. "We're going to have to take these studies and the transformation in our ability to study human biology, using new tools like genomics, proteomics and immunology. Otherwise, you just create a kind of pregnancy scare." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Health |
Harry B. Macklowe flew an Emmy award winning film crew to southern England, hired the famed tightrope walker Philippe Petit and bought the song rights to a Mama Cass classic, all for a four minute movie to market his latest condominium development. For years now, developers seeking to sell their condominiums have produced videos, typically featuring interviews with architects and designers, and rarely costing more than 100,000. But to make the movie for 432 Park Avenue the luxury condominium that will reign as the tallest residential building in the Western Hemisphere when completed in 2015 Mr. Macklowe spent more than 1 million. The price tag, which comes to 250,000 a minute, or more than 4,000 a second, raises eyebrows even in a city where the average condo costs 2 million. "This film is a story, a trip, an experience it isn't about showing P. Diddy in a yacht," said Danny Forster, one of the architects who wrote and directed the movie in partnership with DBOX, a marketing and branding agency that won an Emmy Award last year for its six part miniseries "Rising: Rebuilding Ground Zero." The movie consists of a series of dreamlike sequences, rife with images of wealth and privilege, and loosely plotted around a stunning brunette as she travels to her home at 432 Park Avenue from her country estate in England. She is shown leaving the manor in the backseat of a 1957 Rolls Royce and then flying across the Atlantic in her Learjet. "It was Harry's idea to have Philippe welcoming buyers to their homes in the sky," said Matthew Bannister, the chief executive and founder of DBOX. "He is like a virtual doorman in a trippy way." Mr. Bannister, Mr. Forster, who is the host of 'Build It Bigger' on the Discovery Channel, and Keith Bomely, a partner at DBOX and its chief creative officer, wrote and directed the movie. (They are all trained architects, although only Mr. Forster continues to practice.) "We never wanted to look at real estate marketing in any way to describe this project," Mr. Bannister said. "There is no butler making beds or doorman opening the doors for you; that wasn't of interest to us." There is not even dialog, just the throaty contralto of Mama Cass singing, "Stars shining bright above you/Night breezes seem to whisper 'I love you,' " as the images on screen come and go. Achievement is a recurring theme, with references to the Wright Brothers, silent movie stars and even Spiderman. A ballerina stretches and bends inside a window frame, in an allusion to the building's 10 by 10 foot windows. "Ballet is a cultural nod to New York," Mr. Forster said, "but we also put her in the window because what better way to see how truly large they are?" There are also references to minimalist and grand architecture, as Mies van der Rohe's Barcelona Pavilion morphs into a vision of the building's lap pool, and the ceiling of the Pantheon evokes 432 Park Avenue's geometric facade. And there is humor: King Kong makes two appearances, as a giant ape peering into the living room, and at a fantastical party, briefly removing his mask to reveal the face of Mr. Macklowe. It is the only sighting of the developer, who met weekly with DBOX and Mr. Forster while creating the movie, and is also credited as a writer. Just as the movie takes pains to paint a picture of exclusivity, so too do its producers treat the film as a precious commodity. They bristle at any labeling of their effort with so pedestrian a term as "video" "we prefer film," Mr. Bannister said and whereas most marketing videos are readily available online, this movie can be seen only at the building's sales center. "This isn't a film for everyone," said Jarrett White, the vice president for marketing of Macklowe Properties. "It needs to be seen here." The process of making the movie took six months, with few expenses spared. There was the trip to Britain, for an on screen snippet of at most two seconds. "It wasn't hard to convince Harry that we needed to make the trip," Mr. Bannister said. "We are asking you to make an investment," said Mr. Macklowe, referring to potential buyers at 432 Park. "This will be a legacy apartment. That value will increase as part of your estate, and to get there, you cannot take any shortcuts." The team argued for more than two months over song choice, eventually settling on Mama Cass's "Dream a Little Dream" and paying Warner Brothers Music and others for the rights. The song "is like a waltz, going fast and then slow," Mr. Macklowe said, and the motion of the cameras and the images on screen mimics that rhythm. "We really wanted the film to dance to the music," Mr. Bannister added. The team organized a big casting call, with more than 200 models, from whom it chose Christina Makowski, the brunette who is the face of 432 Park. "We had to find someone not just for the film, but to do a three day shoot for the fashion editorial," Mr. Bannister said, referring to a 200 page magazine given to potential buyers as part of the marketing material. "So not only did she have to look good, but she had to have the right personality." They rented space for five days at Silvercup Studios in Queens, employing a staff of as many as 75. There, Mr. Petit created his own rigging system for the tightrope and performed in front of a green screen so they could digitally create his skywalk from the spire of the Empire State Building to a finished 432 Park several blocks to the north. The team also hired tango dancers who choreographed a routine to perform during the party scene, which features Ms. Makowski, leaning on a grand piano, mouthing Mama Cass's lyrics. In addition to Mr. Macklowe's King Kong, party guests include Le Corbusier, Al Capone and the silent movie star Anna May Wong. They mug for a photographer, and the snapshot transforms into a framed photo on a living room mantelpiece. The movie's creators also designed or perhaps more accurately choreographed the sales center. Upon entering the space, potential buyers are marched down a gleaming white hallway lined with custom car ornaments, a photograph of Babe Ruth and prints by Irving Penn. There is a video of a fashion show by Giorgio Armani (a "friend," said Mr. Macklowe), who designed many of the interior spaces seen in the movie. Entering the main gallery, visitors are shown miniature replicas of the building, complete with rows of minuscule treadmills in the model gym and toy Mercedes parked in the plastic driveway. It is only then that they are taken to the small screening room, where they sit on Eames style sofas, sip from bottles of Evian and watch the film. It ends with Mr. Petit, in a purple velvet jacket and top hat, gazing out at the horizon. Mama Cass's lyrics, "Sweet dreams till sunbeams find you/Sweet dreams that leave all worries behind you," tug on your heartstrings, until finally they beseech, "Dream a little dream of me." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Real Estate |
When a show's cast welcomes the audience by dancing to Elvis Crespo's merengue hit "Suavemente" and Beyonce's "Countdown," as happened at the Tuesday performance of "A Midsummer Night's Dream" at the Public Theater, you have to wonder where the play could possibly go. When the party needle is in the red right from the start, there's a high risk the only way is down. Amazingly, Jenny Koons's perkily ramshackle production manages to keep the energy up for the next 90 minutes. As a result, quite a bit is lost in the rush, from chunks of text to nuance this is not the most polished Shakespeare you'll ever see, or even in the top 20. But like a fair number of productions from the Public's Mobile Unit, the show has a likable messy elan that compensates for many sins. The Public's Shakespeare in the Park series has become an institution, with everything that term implies: It is as beloved as the old Rolling Stones and as rocking as that band's current version, and it can be just as difficult to get tickets. The Mobile Unit, on the other hand, is the D.Y.I. punk kid who keeps alive Joe Papp's dream of Shakespeare for the masses by taking abridged, stripped down versions of the plays to unconventional venues community centers, retirement homes, shelters, detention centers all over the five boroughs before ending with a short run at the mothership. (This fall the program went national for the first time with an 18 stop Midwest tour of Lynn Nottage's "Sweat.") The focus in this "Midsummer Night's Dream" is decidedly on the play's comic side, sacrificing the dreamlike atmosphere and the story's bittersweet undercurrents in favor of speed and slapstick. Everything goes so fast that you almost don't notice that a plot point involves slipping someone a roofie. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Theater |
Moments after Ann Liv Young's "Elektra Cabaret" began at Joe's Pub at the Public Theater on Wednesday, she interrupted the show, smack in the middle of belting out Beyonce's power ballad "1 1." "This monitor," she said darkly, "is way, way, way too loud." Such disruptions in a program by Ms. Young, the provocative choreographer and performance artist, are commonplace, but in this hourlong work, a companion to her forthcoming "Elektra," the do over was a rare occurrence. A highly structured piece intended to appear on the ragged side, "Elektra" is based on the text by Sophocles and relies on Ms. Young's usual tools: ravaged emotions; pop music in which lyrics become the poetic through line; and dancing, both flamboyant and aggressive. This transformation of a Greek myth into a contemporary tale also features Lovey Guerrero, Ms. Young's daughter, who sings and dances, looking like a miniature doppelganger of her mother. Lovey, 7, did, for the record, leave the stage for most of the bawdier moments, including some nudity, simulated masturbation ... you get the picture. After a fiery rendition of Kanye West's "Black Skinhead," the characters were introduced via voice over: Klytemnestra (Bailey Nolan), Elektra's mother, whose "lack of self awareness is staggering"; Elektra (Ms. Young), consumed by fantasies of revenge after her mother murders her father, King Agamemnon; Elektra's sister Chrysothemis (Vanessa Soudan), who has crippling panic attacks and whose duet with a pogo stick is a highlight; and Orestes (Charley Parden), recently returned from exile. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Dance |
Contrary to most sports agents, Leigh Steinberg said, he never had a problem with his clients talking publicly about politics. "Traditionally the definition of a conservative athlete has been a campus liberal who just saw the withholding from his first bonus check," Mr. Steinberg joked. But when it came to wading deeper into sociopolitical issues, many of the most prominent athletes like Michael Jordan, Tiger Woods and Derek Jeter preferred staying, in Mr. Steinberg's terms, "scrupulously apolitical." The reason was often financial. As Mr. Jordan famously, or perhaps apocryphally, contended, "Republicans buy sneakers, too." But this month, Stephen Curry, the N.B.A.'s marquee attraction, effectively ditched that notion like a pair of old sneakers. In an act that some might once have considered commercial suicide, he criticized the chief executive of his own sneaker brand, Under Armour, for complimenting President Trump. After Under Armour's C.E.O., Kevin Plank, described Mr. Trump's pro business approach as "a real asset" to the country, Mr. Curry told The San Jose Mercury News, "I agree with that description, if you remove the 'et.'" He later said he would not be afraid to leave any company "if it wasn't in line with who I am." The reaction was forceful in support of Mr. Curry. Other Under Armour endorsers, like the movie star Dwayne Johnson, also known as the Rock, and the ballerina Misty Copeland, released their own critical statements aimed at Mr. Plank. One analyst downgraded Under Armour's stock price target, to 14 from 24 per share. And on Feb. 15, Mr. Plank took out a full page ad in The Baltimore Sun saying, in part, that his comments "did not accurately reflect my intent." An Under Armour spokeswoman said that Mr. Plank had since spoken to Mr. Curry, Mr. Johnson and Ms. Copeland and "they all understand the context in which those comments were made." Mr. Steinberg who is perhaps best known as being the inspiration for Tom Cruise's sports agent character in "Jerry Maguire" was stunned at how it all unfolded. "In days past, what would Under Armour have done?" Mr. Steinberg said. "They would have cut Steph Curry." The fact that Under Armour did not cut Mr. Curry, and instead reached out to him in a conciliatory manner after his comments, was, to Mr. Steinberg, a sign of a transformative shift in the endorser endorsee dynamic. Ford and Rivian no longer plan to work jointly on electric vehicles. Elizabeth Holmes has taken the stand in her trial. Follow along with our reporters. Ken Griffin, head of Citadel, bid highest for a copy of the Constitution. "Seriously, an athlete calling out the C.E.O. of the company?" Mr. Steinberg said. "It's remarkable." It is fair to wonder how much Mr. Curry had to lose by speaking out. As one of the most talented and popular players in the N.B.A. with the top selling jersey in the league and a salary of 11 million he would appear to be fine financially. But so, too, were those celebrities, like Mr. Jordan, who typically declined to weigh in on contentious topics. By taking a political stand, particularly in today's divisive climate, Mr. Curry is potentially alienating the millions of people who support Mr. Trump, many of whom might no longer want to wear or buy his apparel. "You are making a strategic decision that, 'hey, I accept the wrath that might come from these 65 million people who I'm now speaking out against,'" said Americus Reed, a professor of marketing at the University of Pennsylvania. "I'm not sure that courage is the right word, but it's a decision that bears costs." Those costs, said Harry Edwards, the sociologist and civil rights activist who helped to inspire the raised fist protest by Tommie Smith and John Carlos during the 1968 Summer Olympics, were overstated in the past and are understated today. "For years, people said athletes are making so much money they have so much to risk that they won't speak out. Today they're saying they're making so much money they can afford to speak out," Mr. Edwards said. "The reality is that both are equally wrong." The influence of endorsers, particularly athletes, has changed in recent years. Joe Favorito, a longtime communications strategist in sports and entertainment, said Mr. Curry wore the Under Armour logo on a televised stage every night and, through social media, had an enormous platform to reach consumers on a whim. This creates more of a necessity to pair endorsers with companies that match their personalities. "You have athletes who are more in control of their brand than ever before," Mr. Favorito said. "They're not just signing on to take a check. They're signing because everything about their personal brand is aligned with the brand they're working with." In some cases, the personal brand's allure has grown stronger than the company's. In the past, endorsement contracts were often drafted with language that penalized the endorser for "making comments or taking positions that were controversial and potentially incur negative reaction," Mr. Steinberg said. Today, however, he might approach a new endorsement deal particularly with a high profile client a little differently. "There needs to be a discussion going in about the nature of the athlete's views or what his actions might be, and the nature of what the executive's actions might be, and where that might conflict," Mr. Steinberg said. As more endorsers relinquish their political neutrality, companies may have to decide if signing a celebrity like Mr. Curry is ultimately worth it if they don't see eye to eye on matters beyond the color of the sneaker. "He is not biting the hand that feeds him. The hand that he's feeding bit him," Mr. Edwards said, "We always had that a little bit backwards, but now it is clear whom is feeding whom." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Media |
THE number of children conceived through in vitro fertilization has doubled over the last decade. The technology that has made these children possible has also challenged inheritance laws, especially in circumstances when a child is conceived after the death of a parent. While this may sound bizarre, posthumously conceived children can become a quandary for the rich and the not so rich alike. The problem is always about money. The rich worry about who will get their assets after they are dead, while people of more meager means have turned to the courts in the hope of collecting federal benefits. "We're going to see a flurry of activity on this, because new technologies are ballooning," said Sharon L. Klein, managing director at Wilmington Trust and chairwoman of the trusts, estates and surrogate's courts committee of the New York City Bar Association. "You read about women in their late 20s and early 30s who are saving their eggs and want to focus on their careers and haven't met the right partner yet," she said. The woman's eggs could be used to produce a child even if the woman never wanted the eggs used after her death. The law is clear on one thing: when a trust document does not address the issue, Ms. Klein said, "children born with the new technology are entitled to inherit with the same rights as a natural born child." Consider the example of a sick person who, before undergoing chemotherapy that will cause sterility, donates sperm or eggs to be frozen, in hopes of having children later. The patient intends to have the children after recovery. But should the patient die without something in writing stating this intent, the surviving partner could have a claim on that genetic material and could use it to produce a child. Other possibilities exist. A couple who has embryos left over after having children through in vitro fertilization could, instead of destroying them, donate them to a woman, essentially giving her a child they created. That could have unintended consequences. "It's not inconceivable now that if the father and mother of that embryo were to strike it rich, the child born of that other woman could say, 'Those are my genetic parents,' " said John M. Olivieri, a partner at White Case. And if the child says that, chances are he or she would ask for a share of the genetic parents' wealth. "Posthumous reproduction is the perfect storm of competing interests," said Susan M. Wolf, professor of law, medicine and public policy at the University of Minnesota School of Law. "There's the surviving partner who wants to reproduce, the interests of the deceased while they were alive or as they memorialized them, the pre existing kids who don't want their interest diluted and finally the kids who are brought into the picture but who may be financially most at risk." In 2007, the New York County Surrogate's Court decided in the case In re Martin B. that two posthumously conceived children could benefit from a trust created by their grandfather, Martin B., for his two sons and any grandchildren. (Real names were not used in the suit to protect the children.) The case was brought jointly by Martin B.'s wife and the widow of their son, whose frozen sperm had been used to conceive two children three and five years after his death. They wanted to know whether the posthumously conceived children were descendants for the purpose of the trust. The answer decided whether tens, if not hundreds, of millions of dollars from the estate of Martin B. went to those children or if all of it was divided among the surviving son and his children. What made this case even more intriguing was that Martin B.'s wife had the ability to divide the assets in the trusts her husband set up as she saw fit. Lawyers on both sides said even if her posthumously conceived grandchildren were not considered, she could have cut her living son out of his inheritance. "Biologically, were they the grantor's grandkids? Yes," said Jonathan Blattmachr, the lawyer who represented Martin B.'s wife. "But legally, were they his grandkids? Most people would say yes." Mr. Olivieri, who represented the surviving son, had a different interpretation, hinging on the motivation of the widow for conceiving two children after her husband's death. "My take is here is a woman who married into a wealthy family," he said. "The only way she could stay on the gravy train was by having his children." He added: "She wasn't hated. She was going to be O.K. But she got herself a better situation." While she did not directly benefit from the settlement, her children were ultimately deemed to be descendants and therefore entitled to distributions from the trust. At the other end of the economic spectrum is the case of Astrue v. Capato. It was brought by Karen K. Capato against the Social Security Administration to claim benefits for twins conceived after her husband died. Last year, the United States Supreme Court reversed a lower court ruling and said that state law should determine such claims. Since at the time of his death the father lived in Florida, which does not recognize posthumously conceived children not mentioned in a will, she could not receive Social Security benefits for them. Right now about a third of the states have laws recognizing the rights of posthumously conceived children; of that group, Ohio is the only other one that does not allow them to received federal benefits. So how should people wade through this murky area of the law and ensure that children who are genetically linked to them are treated fairly? In the example of the couple with leftover embryos from their own I.V.F., Mr. Olivieri said he would encourage them to write into their estate documents that frozen embryos exist but that children born to someone else using those embryos are not considered descendants. When it comes to setting up a trust for children conceived after death, the conversation shifts. Joshua S. Rubenstein, managing partner at Katten Muchin Rosenman in New York, who represented the surviving brother's children in In re Martin B., said he had pressed clients to consider this issue for more than a decade. "To anyone who thinks about it, 99 times out of 100 they don't want to include children born after they're dead," he said. "They've lived with their own kids and they want them to get their things and not some kid who was born years later that they never knew." Mr. Rubenstein said that he had represented both sides of this issue and that he counseled people planning to conceive a dead spouse's child posthumously to understand that having the right to use genetic material for a child is not the same as having the right to inherit as if that spouse were still alive. If a trust prohibits children born to unwed parents from inheriting money, there could be problems. Mr. Rubenstein pointed out that any child conceived posthumously automatically falls into this category, because the parents are no longer married when one of them is dead. If they don't exclude those children, Ms. Klein said clients generally set a time limit for them to be conceived. Otherwise a frozen embryo could be used decades later and be considered a descendant, eligible for a share of an estate that has already been settled. Of the states that have passed laws clearing up the inheritance rights of posthumously conceived children, eight have set time limits of one to three years. In New York, legislation setting guidelines for posthumously conceived children passed the Assembly but was not taken up by the Senate. For the child to inherit, the proposed legislation requires written consent from a person that genetic material can be used posthumously and sets a time limit on when the child must be conceived and born. Ms. Klein said setting a time limit was important in all cases and should be written into estate plans. "The fundamental issue is balancing competing interests," she said. "There is the need for certainty and finality versus the interests of these children born as a result of scientific advancement." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Your Money |
Anyone who thinks that Irish dance is a necessarily rigid form, defined by a stiff upper body and dancers moving in militaristic unison, should spend some time watching Colin Dunne. New Yorkers had the chance to do so when the singular Mr. Dunne, who has long moved past his flashier days as a star of "Riverdance," appeared on the small, no frills stage of Irish Arts Center last weekend with the fiddler Tola Custy, the harpist Maeve Gilchrist and the piper David Power. In their collaborative concert, "Edges of Light," Mr. Dunne's percussive dancing performed both in the footwear known as hard shoes and, more adventurously, barefoot functions as a fourth musician, his feet doing the work of a drummer as they scuff, patter, chug, poke and swipe at the floor. Irish dance, though inherently musical, can have a rote relationship to music, as if obeying rhythmic orders. But Mr. Dunne, who joins his wildly talented colleagues for about half of the numbers in this 70 minute show, is a soulful, integral part of the band. "Edges of Light," created last year, brings together traditional time honored tunes ("We decided to go for the really old ones," Mr. Dunne said on Thursday) with more contemporary compositions and devices, like the sonic manipulation of his tapping into rippling echoes. The unifying theme, as the title suggests, is dawn, Irish dawn in particular, and the music evokes both the hush and the brilliance of early morning. In one of the more unusual moments, Mr. Dunne, seated, pulls a foot toward his mouth and whistles a church bell refrain into the microphone on the sole of his shoe. Most of his experiments, though, happen while he's standing. He ushers in the work with the sound of a whisper or a gust of wind, produced through the swinging action of one foot pawing the air, before moving into more intricate territory. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Dance |
Ellen Frances Toobin and Eric Jamison Dodd were married Aug. 18 in New Fairfield, Conn. Allen W. Bernard, the life partner of the bride's late grandfather, Robert McIntosh, and who became a Universal Life minister for this event, officiated at Great Hollow Nature Preserve and Ecological Research Center. Ms. Toobin, 27, began studying for an M.B.A. on Aug. 13 at the Olin Business School at Washington University in St. Louis. Until the end of May, she was a project manager at Uptake, a predictive analytics technology company in Chicago. She is also a board member for the Next Generation Society of the American Civil Liberties Union of Illinois in Chicago. She is the daughter of Amy B. McIntosh and Jeffrey Toobin of New York. The bride's father is a staff writer for The New Yorker and is the chief legal analyst on CNN. Her mother is the associate vice chancellor for academic strategy at the City University of New York, and was an acting assistant secretary for planning, evaluation and policy development, in Washington, at the Education Department from 2014 to 2017. Mr. Dodd, 27, is a product manager in the Chicago office of Retail Next, an analytics company that serves the retail industry. He is also the vice president of the associates board at the Chicago Fire Foundation, which is the arm of the local Major League Soccer team that supports after school soccer programs in the Chicago area. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Fashion & Style |
The Senate and the House closed in on a final version of the tax bill on Friday, as Republican leaders stay on track for final votes on the consensus bill next week. Some tempting planning opportunities might come to fruition next year, but tax advisers suggest that people resist until the bill becomes law. Why wait? Because taxpayers will be no worse off than they are today, and could be better off if a new tax code is enacted. Last week, I wrote about the tax strategies that affluent people might want to undertake before the end of the year. These included paying property taxes and state taxes early for taxpayers who have not set off the alternative minimum tax, making large charitable gifts or filling a donor advised fund, and harvesting stock losses because of a potential tax change about how different blocks of stock can be sold. This week, I look at the strategies that could be important next year if the tax overhaul shakes out the way advisers believe it will. If you are expecting a large portion of income before the end of the year, consider delaying it until 2018. The tax rates will be lower then and could be low enough to offset the loss of deductions. It's a good strategy, but not everyone can control their income. Most people, including high earners who do not own their own companies, do not have authority over when they are paid. Think of Wall Street banks and law firms: Some pay bonuses now, while many wait until February or March when all the 2017 revenue has been accounted for. And it's tricky. Income can be legally delayed, but once it has been received, you must pay tax on it. Delaying tax payment on income that has already been received is called constructive receipt, and it can run you afoul of the tax collector. One example of how someone could get into trouble is to deposit in January a check that was received in December. Another is to send someone a bill for services rendered this year but ask that person not to pay it until the next year, said David A. Stolz, president of Stolz Associates, a wealth management firm in Tacoma, Wash. "You have to be able to control that payment legally," Mr. Stolz said. "And then the question is, if you could, what's the tax rate going to be? You don't know." Proposals to cut deductions for state and local taxes, limit them on property taxes and reduce them on mortgage interest will raise the overall tax for people living in the Northeast, California and a few other states with high property values and high state taxes. But resist the urge to move for tax reasons. For most taxpayers, it's not going to be that bad. Timothy M. Steffen, director of advanced planning at Baird, a wealth management firm, ran the numbers for The New York Times. He went through four situations for people living in Westchester County, an affluent area in New York State that has the highest property taxes in the country, and Tampa, Fla., a business hub with no state tax. In the four examples, couples earned 500,000 and rented a home; earned 500,000 and owned a 1 million house; earned 1 million and owned a 2 million house; or earned 3 million and owned a 6 million house. All other variables, like mortgage deductibility and percentage of income donated to charities (4 percent), were kept the same. Only the couple in Westchester County earning 3 million would pay more in taxes about 90,000 more while their counterparts in Tampa would pay less at all wealth levels, Mr. Steffen found. Most people who are still working are not going to uproot their families to move so far away. But for New Yorkers, Mr. Steffen said, there could be some savings on the margin if they moved to Connecticut, for instance, which also has lower property taxes. "Connecticut's top rate is 7 percent on 1 million, while New York is almost 9 percent plus the city tax," he said. "But if you're driving back into the city, you're not saving anything on your wages." The estate tax has not been a concern for more than 99 percent of Americans since President Barack Obama and Congress increased the exemption in 2012 to 5 million per person and indexed it to inflation. And under the joint plan discussed this week, that exemption would rise to more than 11 million. Yet that does not mean there are not planning opportunities for the very wealthy. For one, those who are thinking of making a taxable gift above the current exemption amount should generally wait. "House, Senate, compromise or no tax law under any of those scenarios, the estate and gift tax news is either good news or status quo," said Daniel L. Kesten, partner at the law firm Davis Gilbert. "The only exception is if you're holding an asset that could skyrocket in value, like Bitcoin. You may want to make that gift now." In that case, you could give that asset away and pay the tax on it now, with the assumption it would be worth more to the beneficiary later. (Of course, that asset could also plummet in value.) John D. Dadakis, a partner at Holland Knight, said that he advised clients to wait on gifts, but that many were telling him they were eager to make larger, tax free gifts next year. "They look at it and say the next administration that comes in, if it's a Democratic administration, there's a high possibility that they change the entire rule," Mr. Dadakis said. He added that his clients were preparing to make gifts as soon as they could under the new tax code. If the first in, first out rule for selling blocks of stock, which I wrote about last week, takes effect, one option that increases in attractiveness is giving appreciated stock to young adults. If the owner were to sell the stock, the downside would be a capital gains tax on the appreciated value, likely at the highest rate. But if the stock were given to a child over 21 who was in a low tax bracket, the child could sell the stock and pay little or no tax on the years of gains, said Liz Miller, president of Summit Place Financial Advisors, which focuses on multigenerational families. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Your Money |
"It's America first, you better believe it," President Trump said, standing over a tool cabinet at the Snap On Tools headquarters in Kenosha, Wis., where he signed his "Buy American, Hire American" executive order this month to favor American companies for federal contracts. And with that, Mr. Trump staked claim to an issue that has become a pet cause for a group that, generally speaking, would just as soon wear a Power Rangers helmet as a "Make America Great Again" hat: the urban beards and selvage jeans set who transformed the "Made in U.S.A." clothing label into a men's wear status symbol over the past decade. In any other year, having the president as an ally might be considered a coup. With this president? Well, for brands that have staked their identity on "Made in U.S.A." chic, it is complicated. "Politics has become extremely contentious and polarizing in this country, and we don't want our brand caught in the political crossfire," said Jacob Hurwitz, a founder of American Trench, a maker of fashion forward outerwear and hosiery in Philadelphia that prominently displays the motto "Always American Made" on its website. "To be honest, we can't afford it." In fact, Mr. Trump's "Buy American, Hire American" order will have no tangible effect on the market for plaid shirts or hand sewn leather hunting boots, since it concerns procurement policies by federal agencies, not purchases by individual consumers, on products like steel (it also aims to rework the visa program for foreign technical workers). Even so, the order helps cement the "Buy American" impulse with the protectionist "America First" policies that Mr. Trump hammered away at on the campaign trail. To some on the political left, the president's appropriation of "Buy American" feels like a violation. "Before he co opted it for his own gains, 'Made in the U.S.A.' was about celebrating craft and investing in quality, lasting garments, while also helping to revitalize a dying industry," said Brad Bennett, who writes the men's wear blog Well Spent, which focuses largely on premium American made brands. "Now, it's become just another platform for xenophobes and white nationalists." Others in this locavore men's wear subculture find it irksome that the president espouses American manufacturing while his branded apparel, as well as that of his daughter Ivanka, is largely made in Asia. "Instead of just blurting out ridiculous promises and false statements, he could easily make his ties, shirts and suits in the U.S.," said Chris Molnar, the founder of Goodlife, which makes its premium T shirts and sweatshirts in Los Angeles. This is not to say that opinions are unanimous, especially among fashion brand owners who happened to have supported Mr. Trump. Todd Shelton, a designer who runs a namesake clothing label, recently moved production from China to East Rutherford, N.J., so he could closely oversee production of his jeans, shirts and sweaters. Mr. Shelton was recently quoted in The Los Angeles Times explaining his support for Mr. Trump. "As business owners, we've heard support for 'Made in U.S.A.' before from politicians, but with Trump, it felt sincere," he said. Even so, few in the industry have been willing to speak out in favor of the president. Shortly after the election, for example, New Balance a brand cherished by many young urban creatives, in part because it still manufactures some of its shoes in the United States landed in a social media firestorm after an executive was quoted in The Wall Street Journal saying, "We feel things are going to move in the right direction" under Mr. Trump. Shawn Gorman, the company's executive chairman, quickly amended that: "We stay out of politics," but the company nevertheless was added to Grab Your Wallet, a list of businesses that are said to have supported Mr. Trump in some fashion (a list that is, by the way, largely free of heritage brand clothing companies). The message for many brands: Tread carefully. American Trench, for example, hired a writer to rework the "About Us" section on its website "to remove anything that could be construed as making a statement that appealed more to one party or the other, and also make very clear that 'Made in America' for us is inclusive to all Americans, not exclusive," Mr. Hurwitz said. In less divided times, "Buy American" might seem like an issue that every American could rally behind. After all, 97 percent of apparel sold in the United States is now made overseas, according to the American Apparel Footwear Association. Who would not want to see at least some of those jobs trickle back? But these days, "Buy American" is not always a question of politics, but of economics. For many Americans, low cost is paramount. According to a poll last year by The Associated Press GfK, nearly three quarters of those surveyed said they would prefer to buy American. But faced with a choice of 50 pants made abroad or 85 pants made domestically, 67 percent said they would buy the cheaper pair. There are still some affordably priced staples produced in America; Diamond Gusset, for example, sells several styles of jeans in the 60 to 70 range. But generally speaking, the brands that are left are premium ones that appeal to well heeled cosmopolitans, customers who are willing to fork over 300 for some pairs of Red Wing boots and 165 for an handsomely cut oxford cloth shirt from Gitman Bros. Vintage. "We have a customer base that can afford to make choices about garment provenance," said Bradley Schmidt, a founder of Cadet, a Brooklyn maker of military inspired men's wear, most of it manufactured in the garment district in Manhattan. "But I don't feel they would want to be associated with a brand that would align itself with the entire ethos behind 'Make America Great Again.'" Many such premium brands got a big boost from the heritage chic look of recent years. That trend is, by most accounts, fading. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Fashion & Style |
The author Andrea Camilleri in Rome in 2002. He was in his 60s when he decided to try writing a mystery in part, he said, as an exercise in self discipline. Andrea Camilleri, who took a late career stab at writing a mystery novel and came up with the Inspector Montalbano detective books, which became wildly successful in Italy and were the basis for a popular television series, died on Wednesday morning in a hospital in Rome. He was 93. A spokeswoman for the hospital, the Santo Spirito, confirmed the death, which came a month after Mr. Camilleri was hospitalized with complications of a broken thigh bone and heart problems. "I have an extremely disorderly manner of writing," Mr. Camilleri told The Times in 2002. "I don't write like Snoopy: 'It was a dark and stormy night.' I couldn't start with Chapter 1." A mystery, he thought, might force him into more manageable habits. "Everything has to follow a certain logic," he said. "Everything has to be in a certain place." In the opening novel, when a local power broker is found dead in a dicey part of town with his pants around his ankles, a coroner rules that he had died of natural causes, and officials pressure Montalbano not to look further. But Montalbano is a man with a strong sense of justice and a willingness to bend rules to achieve it. The book, published when Mr. Camilleri was 69, sold well enough to warrant a sequel, "The Terra Cotta Dog," in 1996, and then another, and another. In a 1998 interview with the Italian magazine L'Espresso, he said word of mouth had done the trick. "I sold 10,000 copies because people phoned each other, and in the same way you suggest a movie, they were suggesting my books," he said. The series, written in a combination of Italian and Sicilian, grew to more than two dozen titles. Mr. Camilleri was four books into it when his inspector was elevated to a whole new level of popularity by "Il Commissario Montalbano," a television series from the Italian state broadcaster RAI that has been running since 1999. It has also aired abroad, including on the BBC in Britain. Luca Zingaretti plays Montalbano. Andrea Calogero Camilleri was born on Sept. 6, 1925, to Carmella and Giuseppe Camilleri in Porto Empedocle, a town in southwestern Sicily that became a model for Vigata. (For a time in the last decade, the town changed its name to Porto Empedocle Vigata, hoping to capitalize on tourism inspired by the Montalbano books.) His father worked for the Italian Coast Guard and, Mr. Camilleri told the British newspaper The Independent in 2007, was his model for Montalbano, a man with a certain disregard for authority, although that did not become clear to the author until several books into the series. His father, he told the newspaper, was a hard line Fascist until the day in 1938 when Andrea told him a friend had been barred from school because he was Jewish. "My father hit the roof, saying, 'That bastard,' referring to Mussolini," Mr. Camilleri said. The connection to his famous inspector? "I've always tried to make Montalbano critical about the behavior and orders of his bosses, the imbecility of power," he said. After high school in Porto Empedocle, Mr. Camilleri earned a degree in modern literature at the University of Palermo. As a teenager and young man, he had some success as a poet. He was also involved in theatrical productions, and in 1949 he won a scholarship to study at the National Academy of Dramatic Art in Rome. He lasted only a year there but stayed in Rome, working as a stage director. Mr. Camilleri was hired by RAI's radio division in 1958, then switched to the television side, directing and adapting scripts. He began teaching theater at the National Academy in 1974 and continued to do so for more than 20 years. He had begun writing novels by this point, although the first, "The Way Things Go," written in the late 1960s, wasn't published until 1978. Several other novels in various genres followed, though none got much attention. The best known of the pre Montalbano books was "Hunting Season," a comic historical novel published in 1992. He was working on another when he got stuck and tried a detective tale. The Montalbano books are known not just for their distinctive inspector but also for a colorful array of underlings and other recurring characters. And unlike most other crime series, they indulge in occasional commentary on Italian politics. Mr. Camilleri was not a fan of Silvio Berlusconi, the longtime prime minister, and his displeasure, which he voiced in a series of essays, could be detected in the books. "In my books," he told The Guardian in 2012, "I deliberately decided to smuggle into a detective novel a critical commentary on my times." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Books |
The Netflix fourth quarter results paint two different pictures of the company: one achieving record global growth, the other facing a slowdown in the United States, where its already high penetration is making it increasingly difficult to add new subscribers. The company announced Tuesday that it had topped expectations in adding a record 5.59 million total streaming members during the quarter, for a total 74.76 million across the globe. The success of the original series "Narcos" and "Marvel's Jessica Jones" helped to fuel growth. Netflix said that it expected to add 6.1 million members during the current quarter. In the United States, however, Netflix missed growth forecasts, adding just 1.56 million subscribers, a decline from the 1.9 million it added during the same period the previous year. The company said that increasing its subscriber base in the United States was becoming harder. Netflix said growth challenges in the United States include the transition to new chip based credit and debit cards that made it more difficult for members to renew their subscriptions and forthcoming price increases for the service. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Media |
For all the rejoicing that comes with the arrival of summer, we know that warmer weather brings a new set of beauty concerns: humidity frizzed hair, newly exposed skin begging for additional SPF, and a problem area or two aching for exfoliating and toning after being covered up for months. Below, the sunscreens, hair products and spa services to get you ready for the season. To make applying SPF more appealing, there are new sunscreens that aren't creamy or streaky. "It's all about functionality," said Patricia Wexler, a dermatologist in Manhattan. "There are new formulations that make using SPF much less invasive than it used to be." Dr. Wexler also advises regular exfoliation, which can help ensure that sunscreen is evenly distributed. Fresh Sugar Sport Treatment SPF 30 is a thick, waxy stick that comes in a tube reminiscent of the shade of an Hermes shopping bag. It's a tweak of the popular Sugar line of lip balms, but designed to be used on the face and body as well, providing a higher level of sun protection. The water resistant formula includes moisturizing avocado and black currant seed oil. Soleil Toujours, a line of sunscreens that is sold at stores like Barneys New York, is adding several new products to its offerings next month. Set Protect Micro Mist is applied over makeup. It leaves the skin looking pleasantly matte while providing broad spectrum SPF 30 sun protection. Another addition to the line is an SPF 30 mineral body lotion that comes in transparent and tinted formulas. Zelens Body Defence Sunscreen was formulated by a plastic surgeon with a practice in London. It is an oil that has common sunscreen ingredients like octinoxate and avobenzone added for broad spectrum SPF 30 protection, along with squalane to moisturize and vitamin E. The texture isn't greasy, and it blends quickly into the skin. It can be used on the hair as well as the body. Dr Russo Sun Protective Day Cleanser SPF 30 was conceived by a dermatologist based in Britain. It works counterintuitively: a milky face wash that leaves a protective layer of sunscreen on the skin after the product is rinsed off. In the United States, where it was introduced a few months ago, the cleanser is available exclusively at Space NK. For hair in particular, switching up one's routine with the season makes sense. "What you do in the wintertime is not what you're going to do in the summer," said Eva Scrivo, a hairstylist with two salons in Manhattan. She suggests washing your hair less frequently, because natural oils can help prevent the onslaught of frizz when humidity levels are high. Goldwell Kerasilk Control Smoothing Fluid is part of a new collection of products introduced this month that aim to tame frizz and smooth the hair with ingredients like silk and glyoxylic acid. It can be used on either dry or damp hair to counteract the effects of humidity. Also new this month is the Kerastase Nutritive Magistral Collection, which targets dryness and damage from factors like sun exposure. The line's formulas include benjoin tree resin, sourced from Laos and Indonesia, to fortify the hair. All promise to leave the hair moisturized for three days. A standout is the Nutrive Masque Magistral, which was designed for thick locks but can help smooth any hair that's parched. Rahua Elixir Daily Hair Drops, introduced last month, promises to help repair hair that's been damaged from the sun. Like the company's other products, this one is made with ungurahua oil from the Amazon. It can be applied to the scalp and the hair itself, especially at the ends. Ouidad, which specializes in products for curly hair, is introducing Curl Immersion Hi Defining Custard on June 1. It includes moisturizing coconut oil as well as Kalahari melon seed oil to fortify the hair and maintain curly and wavy shapes. Once applied, the thick gel has a light feel and delivers significant hold on humid days for even extremely curly hair. Philip Kingsley Citrus Sunshine Swimcap is a new iteration of the popular Swimcap conditioning treatment, originally created in 1984 for the United States Olympic synchronized swimming team. Like its predecessor, it is meant to be used on damp hair to thwart the effects of chlorine and sun. This version is lightly fragrant with notes of orange and bergamot. In time for bikini season, the Caudalie Vinotherapie Spa at the Plaza Hotel recently added Remodelage by Martine de Richeville, a Parisian aesthetician, to its menu. The treatment consists of a targeted massage to improve lymphatic drainage and stimulate the metabolism. While not the most relaxing experience the pressured circular motions can feel a bit like a rope burn it also aims to help rid the body of toxins. A few blocks away, at the Peninsula Spa New York, the new Micro Puncture Treatment aims to improve appearance areas like the neck and decolletage. Introduced this month, it stimulates collagen production by piercing the top layer of the skin with tiny sterile needles, followed by a Biologique Recherche serum that consists of 24 amino acids and vitamins. The treatment is also offered for the face as well as, without the serum, targeted parts of the body. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Fashion & Style |
LEWISTON, Me. Wall Street may be growing anxious about the negative impact of falling oil prices on energy producers, but the steep declines of recent weeks are delivering substantial benefits to American working class families and retirees who have largely missed out on the fruits of the five and a half year economic recovery. Just last week, the federal Energy Information Administration estimated that the typical American household would save 750 because of lower gasoline prices this year, 200 more than government experts predicted a month ago. People who depend on home heating oil and propane to warm their homes, as millions do in the Northeast and Midwest, should enjoy an additional savings of about 750 this winter. "It may not have a huge effect on the top 10 percent of households, but if you're earning 30,000 or 40,000 a year and drive to work, this is a big deal," said Guy Berger, United States economist at RBS. "Conceptually, this is the opposite of the stock market boom, which was concentrated at the top." In recent years, most of the other positive economic trends things like efficiency gains driven by new technologies, higher corporate profits, rising home prices, lower borrowing rates and stronger demand for white collar workers with advanced degrees have also mostly benefited businesses and wealthier Americans. But the latest drop in energy prices regular gas in New England now averages 2.35 a gallon, compared with 2.94 in early December, and it is even cheaper in the Midwest at 1.95 is disproportionately helping lower income groups, since fuel costs eat up a larger share of their more limited earnings. For many residents of the bone chilling state of Maine, the plunge in energy prices adds up to more than just a few extra dollars in their pockets and purses at the end of the month. Take April Smith, a home health aide, and her husband, Eddie, who works in the auto services department of the Walmart in Brunswick, Me. Together they bring in about 42,000 a year. For them, the decline in energy prices means being able to put meatloaf on the table instead of serving their four children hot dogs, ramen noodles and macaroni and cheese. "Oil prices, gas prices, food prices luckily it's going down, which is great," Ms. Smith said, explaining that when prices were higher she had to scale back on groceries to save money for heating oil. "I hope it keeps going." Tristan Spinski for The New York Times For the overall economy, the tailwind generated by falling crude prices is expected to be particularly welcome as growth appears to be slackening overseas. Oil finished Friday at just under 49 a barrel, down from 65 early last month. What might be called an energy shock in reverse is creating losers as well as winners. States like Texas and North Dakota, which boomed as oil prices mostly stayed above 90 a barrel from 2011 to mid 2014, are now feeling a chill. So are industries that supply pipes and other material to energy drillers and frackers, including steel makers and sand producers. Nevertheless, economists say the benefits of lower energy prices will be felt much more broadly than the expected drag on some industries and regions. Household consumer spending contributes roughly 65 percent of gross domestic product, compared with about 1 percent from oil and gas industry investment, said Michael Gapen, chief United States economist at Barclays. In addition, consumers typically spend the money they save on fuel in sectors that are more "employment heavy" than the energy industry, Mr. Gapen said, like dining, travel and retail. He noted that stores employ about 13 percent of American workers, compared with the less than 1 percent of Americans who work in oil and gas extraction and related fields. On Friday, the University of Michigan said that its preliminary survey of consumer sentiment in early January recorded the best reading in 11 years, while the Labor Department said consumer prices declined slightly in December. Although deflation is usually a worry for policy makers, in this case the energy led drop in prices makes the weak wage gains of recent months a little more bearable for American workers. Few places are more sensitive to shifts in oil prices than Maine, especially in winter. The state is dotted with struggling blue collar towns like this one, where the economy is still reeling from the hangover from the recession, which only added to the woes created by sky high energy prices and disappearing factory jobs. People here spend a significant proportion of their incomes on heating and transportation fuel, said Patrick C. Woodcock, who directs the governor's energy office. He estimates the typical family will save 3,000 this year if the cost of oil remains low. "For people who have been struggling with the economy, the winter has been the hardest time," he said. "This is the first time that there has been this space where you can make it through the winter in a more affordable way." High crude prices pose a particular threat here because almost two thirds of Maine homes, which tend to be older and less efficient, rely on oil for heat. Officials have been urging residents to upgrade equipment and better insulate their houses, but the federal government gives the state only 1 million to promote insulation, Mr. Woodcock said, compared with 35 million to 40 million annually on fuel assistance. With oil prices down, at least for now, the aid that agencies dole out either as part of the federal low income home energy assistance program, Liheap, or other efforts, goes much further. Suppliers can impose hefty fees to deliver small volumes of fuel, and last winter's emergency grants often fell short of the minimum needed to avoid these charges. "This year, we've been able to get people a full 100 gallons," said Linda Dudley, assistant manager of the heat program at Waldo Community Action Partners in Belfast, on the coast. 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 for a vast portion of the country's population, such aid makes a huge difference. Households that earn 40,000 or less represent about 40 percent of American families, according to the Census Bureau. Even middle class families who earn much more will see clear benefits, especially compared with wealthier Americans, who spend a much smaller share of their income on fuel. For example, Census Bureau data shows that households with annual earnings of less than 70,000 spent 5.9 percent of their income on gasoline in 2013 versus 3.4 percent in households where income tops 150,000. At the opposite end of the wealth spectrum, especially in states like this one, people are still grappling with difficult financial choices, despite the seeming windfall from lower energy costs. For Ms. Smith, the lower oil and gas prices mean she is talking with her husband about possibly quitting the second job she took on after they fell behind on bills last winter, despite the heating assistance they received through Community Concepts, which helps low income residents in western Maine. She works 60 to 80 hours a week and worries that she is not spending enough time with the couple's four children, including a grandchild they are raising. First, though, Ms. Smith said she would like to catch up on current bills and "maybe get a little bit of money put away just in case things decide to go south." Ms. Smith's fear, echoed by other still cautious residents here, is that prices will turn back up, squeezing household budgets again. "Us small people, we just see it go up and down, up and down," she said. "We throw a party when it's down but not too much of a party because we know it's going up." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Economy |
Some Older Smokers Turn to Vaping. That May Not Be a Bad Idea. Jeannie Cox currently enjoys a flavor called Coffee Cream when she vapes. She's also fond of White Lotus, which tastes "kind of fruity." She buys those nicotine containing liquids, along with her other e cigarette supplies, at Mountain Oak Vapors in Chattanooga, Tenn., where she lives. A retired secretary in her 70s, she's often the oldest customer in the shop. Not that she cares. What matters is that after ignoring decades of doctors' warnings and smoking two packs a day, she hasn't lit up a conventional cigarette in four years and four months. "Not one cigarette," she said. "Vaping took its place." Like Ms. Cox, some smokers have been able to stop smoking by switching to e cigarettes, and many are trying. A recent study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that more smokers now attempt to quit by using e cigarettes as a partial or total substitute for cigarettes than by using nicotine gum or lozenges, prescription medications or several other more established methods. Her success is what researchers disdainfully call "anecdotal evidence," however. There's "no conclusive evidence" that e cigarettes help people stop smoking long term, said Brian King, deputy director of the C.D.C.'s Office of Smoking and Health. At the moment, therefore, neither the C.D.C., the Food and Drug Administration nor the United States Preventive Services Task Force has approved or recommended e cigarettes for smoking cessation. In fact, the rise of e cigarettes has generated contentious debate among public health officials and advocates. But while the proportion of Americans who smoke continues to decrease down to 15.1 percent in 2015 the decline has stalled among older adults. People over age 65 have always been less likely to smoke than adults in general, in part because premature death means fewer smokers survive to older ages. In 1965, when the C.D.C. started tracking smoking rates, 18.3 percent of older adults were smokers. It took 20 plus years for the proportion to fall below 15 percent. Might switching to vaping improve their health, even if they never become completely nicotine free? "Vaping is clearly less harmful than regular cigarettes," said Dr. Steven Schroeder, who directs the Smoking Cessation Leadership Center at the University of California, San Francisco, and is a co author of a recent JAMA article reviewing tobacco control developments. Some studies have estimated that e cigarettes confer at least a two thirds reduction in health risks, compared with smoking. Nicotine, Dr. Schroeder pointed out, isn't the primary culprit in the long list of smoking related diseases. It's the addictive ingredient that keeps smokers lighting up, but the thousands of other chemicals in combustible cigarettes, among them 70 known carcinogens, do most of the damage. "If you could get nicotine in a safer form, like an F.D.A. approved medication, even for the rest of your life, you'd be in far better shape," said David Abrams, a clinical psychologist at New York University who researches nicotine and smoking. This argument, known as harm reduction, recognizes that the best course for older smokers is to quit both cigarettes and e cigarettes especially since questions remain about the latter's safety, for users and for those inhaling secondhand vapor. But harm reduction proponents like Dr. Abrams maintain that given the difficulty of quitting altogether, vaping could provide a reasonable alternative. "Any smoker, especially an older smoker, who isn't thinking about switching is doing himself a major disservice," he said. Ms. Cox wasn't actually thinking about switching. She had loved smoking ever since she was a teenager sneaking Marlboros, and although she had developed a nighttime cough, she wasn't trying to quit. But she'd planned a fall visit to her nonsmoking children in Alaska in 2013, and standing outside their home to smoke sounded unappealingly chilly. Ms. Cox did some online research, tried several flavors at Mountain Oak and bought a starter kit. "I'm not quitting smoking, I'm just trying this newfangled thing," she told herself. "Three days later, I realized I hadn't smoked a cigarette in three days. I thought, 'This is working out kind of nice. Quitting is not supposed to be this easy.'" Usually, it's not. Although older smokers don't seem to have a harder time than others, stopping cigarettes cold turkey only rarely works. Would be quitters can greatly increase their odds of success by using F.D.A. approved nicotine replacement products, or a prescription drug like Chantix, and by seeking support from smoking cessation counselors or telephone quit lines like 1 800 NOBUTTS. But older smokers also have a greater need to give up cigarettes. Not only can quitting extend their lives, but it can ward off many of the debilitating effects of heart disease, diabetes and other chronic disorders. Nonsmokers respond better to surgery and chemotherapy, Dr. Schroder noted, and older adults often face one or both. Ms. Cox wasn't feeling ill, apart from that cough, when she switched to a vaporizer and unintentionally stopped smoking. But she felt better afterward. "I could breathe easier," she said. "I was no longer coughing. I could sleep longer. I got happier." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Health |
Ryan Baylock was happily settled in Fort Greene, Brooklyn, where he shared a three bedroom apartment with roommates. It had a washer dryer, a parking spot and a backyard. "It was a great situation," he said. "I couldn't really ask for anything else." Time marched on. New roommates, almost always acquaintances, moved in and out. His share of the rent rose to 975 a month. Then last winter, when a roommate vacated, no friends of friends surfaced. "Having to fill the spot was an added stress," Mr. Baylock said. "I didn't want this being part of my life, having to go through this process every year or two." Mr. Baylock, 36, who is originally from New Britain, Conn., is a teacher and basketball coach at Newark Collegiate Academy, where he drives every day. He was reluctant to move deeper into Brooklyn and endure a longer commute, so he focused on Hoboken and Jersey City, where he could be closer to work and also near public transportation for trips back to New York. He was hoping for a spacious one bedroom condo for 300,000 to 400,000. "I was looking for something that was newly refinished and move in ready," he said. "I am not a handy person." Nor did he want to make "serious concessions" for space, location or finishing. "I would be kicking myself for the next however many years I lived there for having bought it," he said. Through Zillow, Mr. Baylock connected with Bruna Santana, an agent in the Jill Biggs Group at Coldwell Banker's Hoboken office. She showed him a large one bedroom in a well kept building on Madison Street in Hoboken, asking around 379,000. "It was what you would call newly refinished, but it wasn't newly refinished last year," Mr. Baylock said. The apartment was in contract within a week and sold for 392,000. "I knew this was going to a bidding war," Ms. Santana said. Mr. Baylock quickly realized why it had been so appealing: Other places in the price range were smaller, often with railroad layouts and dated interiors. One exception was on Park Avenue, asking 390,000. The apartment, closer to the Hudson River, had high ceilings with a skylight and a postcard view of Manhattan from the kitchen. But it was a fifth floor walk up and almost a mile from the nearest PATH station. "It was nice, but not nice enough to go to the top of my price range," he said. It later sold for 385,000. Mr. Baylock couldn't afford a place in one of Jersey City's condominium high rises or older rowhouses, but he could afford a modest apartment in Jersey City Heights, a couple of miles north of downtown. There, he saw a listing on Palisade Avenue asking 349,000. He almost ignored it. The building didn't look like anything special. The interior pictures were nice enough, "but a lot of pictures look nice," he said. "I figured it must be in a terrible neighborhood or building for a place that size with that finish at that price." But the location equidistant from the Journal Square PATH station and the Holland Tunnel was convenient, so he decided to take a look. The apartment, with its pristine interior, was nearly 750 square feet. The ceilings were high, the kitchen open and the bedroom big. The view from the bedroom was a brick walled alley, but the living room view included the Manhattan skyline beyond a tangle of highways. "The view was a selling point," Ms. Santana said. "You have to be on a specific street to have that view." Mr. Baylock researched the area and concluded it was ripe for appreciation. "Downtown Jersey City is no longer a steal, so I think this neighborhood could be that next spot," he said. He stopped by at night, drove the streets, walked to Journal Square and ate at Rumba's Cafe on Central Avenue, the main strip. When he went for a second visit, the price had dropped by 10,000. He made the deal last spring for 339,000, with the condominium fee and taxes at around 500 a month. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Real Estate |
The Mars rover Curiosity appears to be suffering intermittent short circuits in its robotic arm, which could limit its drilling of rocks, NASA said on Friday. The problem cropped up on Feb. 27 when sensors on the rover observed a surge of current. The rover automatically stopped what it was doing and waited for further instructions from Earth. Curiosity had been in the middle of shaking a sample of rock powder, preparing to deliver it to an onboard chemical laboratory. That same process was used without a problem in five drilling efforts in 2013 and 2014. In a first test after the power surge, the rover retraced its steps up to the shaking. There were no problems. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Science |
TESTED 2012 Prius V (though Toyota, which seems to have a shortage of capital letters, prefers "v"). WHAT IS IT? A stretched Prius with 58 percent more cargo capacity than the standard version. HOW MUCH? Prices won't be released until closer to the car's showroom debut this fall. WHAT MAKES IT RUN? A slightly tweaked version of the Prius's hybrid drivetrain, built around a 1.8 liter Atkinson cycle 4 cylinder engine, with a 60 kilowatt motor generator and a nickel metal hydride battery pack. IS IT QUICK? Not exactly, with 0 to 60 m.p.h. acceleration in 10.4 seconds. IS IT THIRSTY? Quite the contrary: it carries a federal rating of 44 m.p.g. in the city and 40 on the highway (42 combined). ALTERNATIVES? There's nothing directly comparable, but hybrid versions of the Ford Escape and Toyota Highlander crossovers offer at least as much utility. Honda plans to bring out a hybrid version of the Fit Shuttle that it will sell overseas, but has not confirmed that it will come to America. GIVEN that the Prius V, a wagonlike variant of the world's most popular hybrid car, is meant to add a shopping friendly face to the brand, it was appropriate that I had a chance to drive a preproduction model in the high consumption suburbs north of New York City. The commodious, but far less fuel efficient, Ford Country Squire once ruled the roads around the affluent hamlet of Chappaqua, but these days a huge wagon like that wouldn't do. At the train station, preferential parking for environmentally friendly vehicles revealed a solid row of Priuses (with the exception of one Chevrolet Volt). The stretched Prius is ungainly looking, especially from the side. But the tradeoff is a big gain in cargo space. There is plenty of legroom for tall people in the back seat. But if you fold the seat flat, which is easy to do, you'll find a cavernous 67.3 cubic feet of usable luggage capacity, more than the Volkswagen Jetta SportWagen. The 3.3 inches of extra height, compared with the regular Prius, really helps when loading bulky items at the big box store. The V, which will be available in the fall, is part of a family that will expand again in the spring to include a plug in hybrid and a production version of the smaller Prius C concept car. Although there are some mechanical differences larger brakes and a redesigned suspension, among them the drivetrain is essentially the same as in the current Prius. The new car is, however, bigger, 232 pounds heavier and slightly less aerodynamic, and that means its fuel economy is not quite as good as that of the 2011 Prius (with a combined city highway rating of 50 m.p.g.). Toyota's new, bigger Prius drives like, well, the old, smaller Prius. Enlarging the car didn't change its essential character, though the driver is conscious that the center of gravity has moved upward and that the body is 6.1 inches longer. With 134 net horsepower from the hybrid system, the Prius V isn't a rally car, but acceleration will be adequate for most of its economy minded owners. The V is even slower as an electric car. There is an EV button, one of four drive modes, that delivers about a mile of leisurely and very quiet driving on the battery alone. A Toyota spokesman, Wade Hoyt, described it as useful for "sneaking home late at night." I drove the Prius V around Armonk and Chappaqua on smooth roads that didn't pose much challenge for the new "pitch and bounce control," intended to dampen the thumps and bumps of uneven pavement. Visibility is good all around. In panic stops, the car remained effectively anchored, but the regenerative braking effect, which the driver feels as some push back from the pedal, is pronounced. Drivers are likely to get used to it, equating the sensation to the electric energy that is being deposited in the bank. The V's interior offers many of the same storage and utility features prized by minivan owners. The familiar Prius controls are present, including the push button ignition, but there is also an abundance of storage options, including two gloveboxes, five cup holders and a console that can handle 23 compact disk cases (still used, presumably, by those who don't dance to the MP3 beat). The SofTex seats are intended to resist a variety of spills from younger family members. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Automobiles |
The director Sasie Sealy's feature debut has style and keenly observed visual humor. Each scene is paced as perfectly as a punchline, whether it's Wong swaggering through the streets of New York, a cigarette dangling from her lips, or her tense maneuvers at the casino set to Andrew Orkin's dramatic jazz score. The action parodies the quirks of New York's Chinese American underworld, often cleverly recasting cultural stereotypes in a new light: At one point, Wong outwits a gangster by haggling for a bodyguard (a tall, deceptively sheepish Corey Ha) as if she were buying an off brand handbag. "Lucky Grandma" puts an older Asian woman center stage without infantilizing her or rendering her pitiful. Chin, best known for "The Joy Luck Club," exudes cool, and she's effortlessly funny with her dagger eyes and sardonic jibes. Sealy can't resist a bit of sentimentality toward the end, however, which upsets the film's tightrope walk between charm and dark, razor sharp wit. Not rated. In English, Mandarin and Cantonese, with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 27 minutes. Watch on virtual cinemas. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Movies |
Matt Barnes and Chris Webber, two other former players for the Kings, were among those who sharply rebuked Napear. "If it came across as dumb I apologize," Napear said in another tweet on Sunday night. "That was not my intent. That's how I was raised. It has been engrained in me since I can remember. I've been doing more listening than talking the past few days. I believe the past few days will change this country for the better!" Napear, who was often critical of Cousins during his time with the team, also told the Sacramento Bee in an interview this week that he was "not as educated on B.L.M. as I thought I was." He added, "I had no idea that when I said, 'All Lives Matter,' that it was counter to what B.L.M. was trying to get across." The fallout, though, was swift. Bonneville International said Napear's comments "do not reflect the views or values" of the company. The company also referenced George Floyd, the 46 year old black man whose death last week after he was handcuffed and pinned to the ground by a white Minneapolis police officer had ignited recent protests. "In the wake of George Floyd's tragic death and the events of the last several days," the company said, "it is crucial that we communicate the tremendous respect that we have for the black community and any other groups or individuals who have cause to feel marginalized." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Sports |
Sealed for millenniums, Qesem Cave in central Israel is a limestone time capsule of the lives and diets of Paleolithic people from 420,000 to 200,000 years ago. Inside, ancient humans once butchered fresh kills with stone blades and barbecued meat on campfires. "It was believed that early hominins were consuming everything they could put their hands on immediately, without storing or preserving or keeping things for later," said Ran Barkai, an archaeologist at Tel Aviv University in Israel. But not every meal was scarfed down right after a hunt. Dr. Barkai and his colleagues have found that the cave's earliest inhabitants may have also stored animal bones filled with tasty marrow that they feasted on for up to nine weeks after the kill, sort of like a Stone Age canned soup. The finding may be the earliest example of prehistoric humans saving food for later consumption, and may also offer insight into the abilities of ancient humans to plan for their future needs. The study was published Wednesday in Science Advances. Dr. Barkai's team examined cut marks on nearly 82,000 animal fragments from Qesem Cave, most belonging to fallow deer. The researchers noticed unusual, heavy chop marks on the ends of some leg bones known as the metapodials. The chop marks "make no sense in terms of stripping off the bone , because at this part of the bone there is no meat and very little fat," Dr. Barkai said. Usually, stripping the hide from a fresh bone requires minimal force, he said. But the heavy chops indicated that the processing used more force than should have been necessary. "We had a hypothesis that these unusual chop marks at the end of the meatless bones had to do with the removal of dry skin," he said. But why were they doing that? That presented another question: If they were after marrow, why not just remove it from the bone when it was fresh? The researchers hypothesized that the chop marks were an indication that the early humans stored the bones so they could eat the marrow later. To test their idea, the team collected freshly killed deer leg bones and then stored them for several weeks in conditions similar to those inside the cave. After every week, they would break open a bone and analyze the marrow to see how nutritious it still was. Every time, a researcher would remove the dried skin using a flint flake and then hammer open the bone with a quartzite tool, similar to what the ancient people would have had used. The researcher wasn't given instructions on how to open the bone. The team found that the researcher's chop marks on the older leg bones with dried skin were similar to what they saw in Qesem Cave. "It was a surprise when we realized that the same marks were generated experimentally," said Ruth Blasco, a zooarchaeologist at the National Research Centre on Human Evolution in Spain and lead author on the study. "The Qesem hominids have demonstrated very modern behavior in their livelihood strategies." Their chemical test showed that after nine weeks, the fat in the bone marrow degraded only a little and was still nutritious. Jessica Thompson, an archaeologist at Yale University, said the paper was a creative approach to reconstructing a past behavior that is notoriously difficult to identify in the archaeological record. "Their experimental work does a lot to convince me that some of the bones were not very fresh when they were processed, although it is still not clear how common this behavior was," Dr. Thompson said. Briana Pobiner, a paleoanthropologist at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History, praised the study and said that if this removal of dry skin did leave a unique butchery mark , "it's now up to us zooarchaeologists to look for these traces in older fossil assemblages to see if we can document a greater antiquity of this food storage behavior." As for the marrow, how did it taste? One of the researchers couldn't resist trying it. "It is like a bland sausage, without salt, and a little stale," said Jordi Rosell, an archaeologist at Rovira i Virgili University in Spain. "I can say that its taste was not bad, perhaps a little more rancid in the last weeks, but not bad." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Science |
Shortly after President Barack Obama left office in 2017, in the aftermath of a contentious election that cost his party the presidency, he sat down with a yellow notepad and began writing an account of his time in the White House. Nearly four years later, Mr. Obama is publishing his book in the wake of another volatile and polarizing presidential race. His memoir, "A Promised Land," released on Tuesday, arrives at a moment of deep political, cultural and social unrest tensions that have been heightened by a global pandemic and an economic crisis. It's a challenging environment, to say the least, in which to release a book, even one of the most highly anticipated of the decade. Bookstores have limited their foot traffic to comply with public health measures, and many customers are still wary of in person shopping. At the same time, supply chains are under intense strain as capacity issues at printing presses have delayed dozens of books this fall. But in spite of such setbacks, "A Promised Land" is shaping up to be one of the top selling political memoirs of all time, and a potential lifeline for booksellers whose sales have plummeted during the pandemic. Mr. Obama's publisher, Crown, is printing 3.4 million copies of "A Promised Land" for the United States and Canadian market, and another 2.5 million for international readers. The book, which runs to 768 pages, is being released simultaneously around the world, and will be available in 19 languages, including Spanish, Portuguese, Finnish, Romanian and Chinese (translations into six other languages are still underway). Demand among American customers is so high that Penguin Random House, Crown's parent company, has printed 1.5 million copies in Germany to bring over on cargo ships. It still may not be enough to meet demand. Barnes Noble is stocking around half a million copies of the former president's book, but the chain expects to sell even more than that, based on the preorders for "A Promised Land" and the strong sales of Michelle Obama's memoir, "Becoming," published two years ago. For struggling independent stores, Mr. Obama's book with a 45 list price could prove crucial in recovering some of the losses suffered during the shutdown. 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. Kramers, a bookstore in Washington, D.C., is opening its doors for a midnight release on Nov. 17, the sort of fanfare more typical for a new Harry Potter book than a political memoir. Politics and Prose, another D.C. area independent bookstore, has placed a substantial order for more than 2,000 copies. Bradley Graham, the store's co owner, said that the book could have a ripple effect, since shoppers who flock to buy big best sellers often pick up other titles as well. "It should make a significant difference in helping to boost sales at a time that we desperately need it," Mr. Graham said. Even before its release, "A Promised Land" was exerting a strong gravitational pull on the industry. The Booker Prize decided to move its award ceremony, initially scheduled for Nov. 17, to Nov. 19, to avoid overlapping with the publication. (Mr. Obama will make an appearance at the Booker Prize's online ceremony, alongside the novelists Kazuo Ishiguro, Margaret Atwood and Bernardine Evaristo, where he will talk about what he's taken from reading past Booker winning novels.) Readers have been waiting for years for Mr. Obama's account of his time in the White House, which took him around two and a half years longer to write than he anticipated. "I expected to be done in a year," Mr. Obama writes in his preface. "It's fair to say that the writing process didn't go exactly as I'd planned." A representative for Mr. Obama said that the timing of the release was dictated by his writing schedule, which continued on into this summer, when the election cycle was already in full swing. "President Obama was completely focused this fall on helping elect Joe Biden, so there was never a thought given to having it come out in the lead up to the election," said Katie Hill, communications director for Mr. Obama. Now, Mr. Obama is promoting his book at a tense and delicate political moment, as President elect Biden seeks to lay the groundwork for his administration while President Trump refuses to accept the results of the election. As a former president who retains high approval ratings with the public, Mr. Obama will no doubt be called on in interviews to address the current climate of partisan division, and to deliver his views on how Mr. Biden should navigate it. But Mr. Obama also wants to avoid stepping into Mr. Biden's spotlight. "President Obama is very aware, as he will be out there talking about his book, that he's not the leader of the Democratic party," Ms. Hill said. "He does not want to be out there in any way overshadowing Joe Biden." Of course, the biggest obstacle to any plan in 2020 is the coronavirus. As the virus continued to spread through the summer and early fall, it became clear that Mr. Obama would not be able to conduct a book tour with appearances in front of large audiences, like Mrs. Obama's nationwide tour for "Becoming," which involved events in major sports arenas. Mr. Obama isn't holding any in person events, except for select interviews. Instead, he will rely on reaching readers through his large social media following he has more than 125 million Twitter followers, and around 90 million followers on Facebook and Instagram combined and interviews with traditional outlets like "60 Minutes," "CBS Sunday Morning," Oprah Winfrey's Apple TV show and The Atlantic magazine, as well as on podcasts and youth focused media outlets. He may also hold some live virtual events, Ms. Hill said. There's a long literary tradition of former presidents publishing reflections of their time in office, tracing back to works by James Buchanan and Theodore Roosevelt. While some became best sellers, including George W. Bush's "Decision Points" and Bill Clinton's "My Life," former presidents' accounts can often be dutiful and plodding marches through recent history. Expectations are considerably higher for "A Promised Land," which has been highly anticipated ever since the Obamas jointly signed a record breaking multibook deal for 65 million with Penguin Random House in 2017. Mrs. Obama's book has sold 14 million copies worldwide, including more than 8 million in the U.S. and Canada. Mr. Obama's previous books have also been commercial and critical hits. "Dreams From My Father," originally published in 1995, became a best seller after Mr. Obama rose to political prominence. That memoir has sold more than 3.3 million copies in the U.S. and Canada, while his 2006 book, "The Audacity of Hope," which was more policy oriented, has sold nearly 4.3 million copies, according to Crown. Rachel Klayman, Mr. Obama's longtime editor at Crown, said "A Promised Land" was more challenging for him to write than his previous two books. While he had some assistance with the research, and sought editorial feedback from former members of his administration, he wrote the book himself. The first time Mr. Obama met with Ms. Klayman to discuss it, she said, he had several chapters outlined on a yellow legal pad. He planned to begin the book with a scene on the night he won the Iowa Caucus in 2008, a pivotal moment on his path to the White House. When he handed in the first draft, Ms. Klayman was surprised to see that he opened instead with a brief scene at the White House's West Colonnade, and then a flashback to his time as a young adult in Hawaii. Initially, Mr. Obama planned to cover his eight years as president in a single volume, but it became clear as he was writing that such a book would have been too vast and unwieldy. "A Promised Land" covers Mr. Obama's youth and his political awakening, and ends with him meeting the Navy SEAL team involved in the raid that killed Osama bin Laden. "When I read the early chapters, I told him he was a completist, and that would make it hard to bring it in at a reasonable length, and I wasn't wrong," said Ms. Klayman, who added that she felt the decision to split the book into two volumes enhanced the narrative. "He's a superb writer, but no one would accuse him of being succinct." After Mr. Obama finished the book, a handful of trusted readers got early copies, including the Pulitzer Prize winning author Isabel Wilkerson and the historian Doris Kearns Goodwin. Ms. Wilkerson said Mr. Obama's book was more introspective than a standard political memoir. "I found it to be a balance of grandeur and intimacy," she said. "He's very frank." Booksellers hope that Mr. Obama's candor will draw customers back into their stores. Lauren Zimmerman, who owns Writer's Block Bookstore in Winter Park, Fla., said that her community, just north of Orlando, is fairly purple politically, and she doesn't expect many conservatives to buy the book. But she's still placed a significant order of more than 40 copies for a John Grisham book, she said, the store would normally order about a dozen. "There are people who don't necessarily buy books all the time, but they will buy this one," she said. There will also likely be customers who want to have the book in their homes as a visible object, even if they read it as an e book or listen to it as an audiobook or don't bother to read it at all. "I remember when we had our first Catholic president, people had his picture on their wall," said Kris Kleindienst, a co owner of Left Bank Books in St. Louis. "I feel like for some of our households, this book is that." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Books |
The Food and Drug Administration said on Tuesday that it would stop routine inspections of food, drugs and medical devices overseas through April, citing the worldwide spread of the coronavirus. The agency had already pulled back its inspectors from China, which is the largest source of raw ingredients for many drugs, like aspirin, ibuprofen and penicillin. But this global action means that F.D.A. inspections would also be discontinued in India, the world's leading manufacturer of generic drugs. Last year, the agency said it conducted 3,103 inspections at overseas plants. In addition to overseas inspections, the agency also screens samples of food, drugs, tobacco, veterinary products and cosmetics imported into the United States. In recent years, several types of drugs have had to be recalled because of contamination at the production level, many of which contained ingredients made in China. Those recalls prompted the F.D.A. to revamp some of its procedures. The agency has also been monitoring the nation's drug supply chain, identifying several drugs that could face shortages if the epidemic in China and elsewhere lasts for months. It has said that at least one drug is currently in short supply in the United States because of difficulties related to the coronavirus, but has not said which one. Hospitals have struggled for years with hundreds of shortages of essential medicines, many of them generic products made overseas. "At a time when there are shortages of medicines critical medicines there's a lot of untoward activity that can take place, like counterfeits and poor quality products," said Rosemary Gibson, an expert on China's drug supply who is a senior adviser at the Hastings Center, a nonpartisan bioethics research institute. "The bottom line is, who is going to be checking?" Ms. Gibson said that while the agency does spot checks of imports, "the public needs assurance and transparency on what exact steps are being taken for every shipment of a prescription drug coming from China." Dinesh Thakur, a drug safety advocate who exposed widespread quality problems as a former executive at the Indian drug maker Ranbaxy Laboratories, said Indian drug makers have been reporting that they still have about a six month supply of active ingredients made in China. If they begin to run out, "Guess what's going to happen?" he said. "You are going to have problems. They will happen in India. The question is, how do we enforce that?" When the F.D.A. does cite pharmaceutical plants for problems, they frequently happen in India and China, according to a report by Barbara Unger, a consultant who tracks F.D.A. regulatory actions around the world. During the 2019 fiscal year, she found that the agency issued 16 warning letters to plants in India and 15 to facilities in China, accounting for a majority of the 43 warning letters issued that year to overseas drug manufacturing plants. It was not clear whether those warnings were issued after routine inspections the type being halted because of the coronavirus outbreak or after inspections for cause. The F.D.A. has a staff of about 200 investigators who conduct overseas drug inspections, according to testimony before a House committee in December by Janet Woodcock, the director of the agency's Center for Drug Evaluation and Research. Most of those inspectors are based in the United States and travel around the world to conduct anywhere from three to six inspections per year. Of those, about 12 are based in foreign offices overseas, including in China. Virginia's new lieutenant governor elect says she won't force vaccines. Lower labor, transportation and energy costs have led many drug companies to gradually move their production overseas, especially for products' active ingredients. A 2011 report from the F.D.A. found that U.S. and European companies could reduce their costs by 30 to 40 percent. Although there is no formal tracking of where active ingredients for drugs are made, experts have estimated that about 80 percent of such materials used in American drugs are made in India or China. Since 2015 reflecting this shift the F.D.A. has conducted more foreign inspections than domestic ones. Although the agency continues to do routine inspections, its program is risk based, meaning that it prioritizes inspection for facilities that are deemed higher risk. Thirty two percent of vegetables, 55 percent of fruits and 94 percent of seafood consumed in the United States are now imported. Although there are nearly 109,000 foreign facilities that are registered with the F.D.A., the agency inspects only about 1,600 of them each year. "The F.D.A. has always struggled to meet its foreign food inspection targets, and this is going to set them back even further," said Sarah Sorscher, a deputy director of the Center for Science in the Public Interest. In a statement announcing his decision, Dr. Stephen Hahn, the F.D.A.'s commissioner, said that most inspections would be postponed through at least April. He also said exceptions would be made for inspections that are deemed "mission critical," generally facilities where evidence of violation of good manufacturing practices already exists. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Health |
At the 'Summer White House,' You Are Never Far From a Trump Photo Under cloudy skies in fall 2002, as guests and reporters looked on, Donald J. Trump dug into the ground with a gold painted shovel to signify the opening of Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster, N.J. "Let's take a little dirt out of here," Mr. Trump said. Even on this occasion, long before he would use the term "fake news" to describe how he was portrayed in the news media, Mr. Trump took a shot at the huddle of reporters gathered on the soggy lawn. Waving the shovel full of dirt at them, he said, according to The Bernardsville News, "O.K., now let's throw it on the press." Fifteen years later, Eric Trump, the executive vice president of the Trump Organization and the president's second son, hopped into a golf cart to take me on a tour of the 535 acre club that people in the Trump administration have referred to as "the summer White House" and "White House North." As we rolled past the clubhouse and toward a small herd of penned goats, he complained about the coverage of his father's administration before stopping to gaze at the rolling hills of mowed grass. "There is something very pure about this property," he said. "It looks nothing like Mar a Lago." The Bedminster club is special to the president because, unlike others that bear the family name, it was built more or less from scratch, to his specifications, with two new 18 hole golf courses carved out of land where fox hunting was once a common pastime. A chandelier from Mr. Trump's home in Bedford, N.Y., hangs in the men's locker room, and he once sought to be buried in a plot near the first hole. "He is comfortable here," Eric said. "He likes the people. It's a place he enjoys." Bedminster Township has a population of roughly 8,200 residents who make a median income of 95,000 per year. Although the area is largely Republican, Mr. Trump carried the town in the 2016 election by a slim margin of eight votes 2,258 to Hillary Clinton's 2,250. "You are just as likely to see a horse coming down the road as a Range Rover," said Steven Parker, the mayor of Bedminster, who also serves as the chief executive of Somerset Air Service, which owns Somerset Airport, the town's landing spot for many private flights. European immigrants arrived in the area in the 1600s. The land was farmed until the early 20th century, when it was parceled into estates for wealthy families. Trump National, which is a 49 mile drive from Trump Tower in New York City, was once Lamington Farm, purchased in 1917 by Morgan Cowperthwaite, an executive at a New York insurance brokerage firm. In 1981, Cowperthwaite's descendants sold the estate to the automaker John Z. DeLorean and his wife, Cristina Ferrare, for 3.5 million. A year after the sale, Mr. DeLorean was arrested and charged with conspiring to sell 24 million in cocaine to fund his DeLorean Motor Company. Although he was later acquitted, he was forced to sell the property in 2000 and struck a deal with a Connecticut based golf course developer, National Fairways, in a court ordered bankruptcy auction. The price was 15.25 million. The attempt by National Fairways to build a golf club stalled, and Mr. Trump purchased it in 2002 for an estimated 35 million. (The Trump Organization declined to discuss finances.) As part of his plan to make the club into something that would attract the attention of the United States Golf Association, which decides where major tournaments will be played, Mr. Trump invested a reported 45 million in the property, with two 18 hole courses, the first ("the old course") designed by the golf architect Tom Fazio, the second by Tommy Fazio, a nephew of Mr. Fazio's. The plan has paid off: In July, the Bedminster course will host the United States Women's Open, and in 2022, it will be the site of the P.G.A. Championship. Politics and golf collided at Bedminster two weeks ago at a news conference held to draw attention to the coming women's tournament. A reporter asked about the "Access Hollywood" tape that captured Mr. Trump bragging about having made unwanted sexual advances toward women. Another asked how the club, whose members pay 200,000 to join, planned to deal with protesters. "We're simply not going to cross that line into politics," said Mike Davis, the chief executive of the U.S.G.A. The club caught the attention of nongolfers last November, when the president elect greeted potential cabinet members there on the steps of a 1939 Georgian manor turned clubhouse as if he were welcoming them to his home. The initial plan was for Mr. Trump to interview the candidates in a private conference room near the pool, said David Schutzenhofer, the club's general manager. Never one to pass up free publicity, Mr. Trump moved the interviews to the clubhouse, with its picturesque facade and driveway large enough for reporters. There, he invited prospects to meet with him in the Green Room, once Mr. DeLorean's dining room. Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner were married at the club in 2009. "It was surreal," Eric Trump said of the parade of candidates. Mr. Schutzenhofer said, "He has a vision for the pageantry." During my visit, attractive 20 something women served drinks to a crowd of mostly male club members gathered on the second story patio for a buffet lunch. In the upstairs clubroom, the vibe was alpha masculine: leather seats, dark wood paneling and equestrian paintings by the English artist Alfred James Munnings. In the men's locker room, four men laughed and sipped drinks while a bartender washed glasses. Nearby, a man sat reading The Wall Street Journal. Such sights are typical of country clubs, but Trump National in Bedminster has a feature that sets it apart: You can't escape the founder. On a clubhouse wall, a framed page ripped from The New York Post shows Mr. Trump in the company of Michael Douglas on the set of "Wall Street 2: Money Never Sleeps." There is also a undated TV Guide list headlined "Top 10 Greatest TV Quotes and Catchphrases of All Time," with Mr. Trump's signature line from "The Apprentice" highlighted in yellow at No. 3: "You're fired!" At No. 10 on the list was "I'm not a crook," the line Richard Nixon uttered not long before he resigned. There, too, in the bar next to the library, is a close up portrait of Mr. Trump making his "You're fired!" face, his index finger thrust forward, as if jabbing at the latest target of his wrath. His face shows up again, and again, and again, on framed magazine covers lining the walls Playboy, Esquire, Newsweek, TV Guide along with photographs of him hobnobbing with celebrities, including Michael Jackson. Mr. Trump is a selling point for prospective brides and grooms considering holding their weddings at the club. When I was there, I was given a marketing brochure that made the following pledge: "If he is on site for your big day, he will likely stop in congratulate the happy couple. He may take some photos with you but we ask you and your guests to be respectful of his time privacy." A spokeswoman for the club said the brochure has been discontinued. Brittany Pollack, a dancer with the New York City Ballet, was married there in August 2014. She and her husband and 175 guests gathered for cocktails in a ballroom illuminated by a dozen crystal chandeliers. Dinner included jumbo shrimp with Trump Vodka cocktail sauce and Trump Estate wines. For dessert, Ms. Pollack said, the guests ate the "Trump Cookie" pans of baked cookie dough topped with vanilla ice cream. As Ms. Pollack's father began the toast, Mr. Trump walked in with his wife, Melania. He later posed for photographs. "I could tell he liked taking pictures with people," Ms. Pollack said. "He said, 'Ivanka got married here.'" Ms. Trump wed Jared Kushner, a scion of a wealthy real estate family, on Oct. 25, 2009, in front of 500 guests, including Rupert Murdoch and Barbara Walters, who shared a 13 layer cake more than five feet tall. Ms. Trump's gown was designed by Vera Wang, and she wore her own branded jewelry. Chandeliers were brought in from Mr. Trump's golf club in Washington, D.C., according to press reports then, and each guest received a pair of white flip flops with a note: "Ivanka and Jared. What a Pair." The club's swimming pool is surrounded by connected buildings and rooms that form a small plaza. Mr. Kushner and Ms. Trump have a place there, as does the president. Mr. Trump's Bedminster residence is larger, and workers have lately been busy adding a second story deck. Ms. Trump and Mr. Kushner expanded their quarters by 2,200 square feet in 2015. The copper gutters on the second story shine against the gray roof and white walls. Behind Ms. Trump's getaway home are planters with rainbow chard, parsley, fennel, thyme and sage. A wooden swing hangs from a nearby tree. Not every detractor is willing to give way. Last month, a motorcade of protesters gathered early on a Saturday morning near the club when the president was in town. Cars were decorated with anti Trump signs, and a pickup truck featured a Trump mannequin with a Pinocchio nose perched in its bed. "This is going to be the summer of resistance," said Analilia Mejia, the executive director of the New Jersey Working Families Alliance, who helped plan the motorcade protest. So far, the inconvenience has been negligible. Unlike the easily accessible Trump Tower in New York, the Bedminster club is cushioned by acres of private land, with Mr. Trump's residence a mile away from the guard booth. Town officials, who are coordinating with the Secret Service, have estimated it will cost the township 300,000 to cover Mr. Trump's summer visits. "As long as everybody behaves and they don't disrupt the town's folk," Mr. Parker said, "everything will be O.K." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Style |
How to watch: From 4 p.m. to 7 p.m. on ESPN; and streaming on the ESPN app. On Saturday, Naomi Osaka and Victoria Azarenka will meet in the women's singles final of the United States Open. They were supposed to have to met each other in the final of the Western Southern Open in preparation for the U.S. Open, but Osaka pulled out to rest a hamstring injury before the Grand Slam tournament. On Thursday night, each needed three sets to beat an American opponent in the semifinals: Osaka edged out the 28th seed, Jennifer Brady, and Azarenka came back to defeat Serena Williams. With each player trying to secure her third Grand Slam title and playing near the top of her potential, there is much to anticipate. Azarenka, playing in her first Grand Slam final in seven years, has had some struggles in her return to the WTA Tour after taking a hiatus in 2016 for the birth of her son. In fact, before her current run of 10 wins, she had not won a professional match in a year. Not only has her baseline game reached its previous heights, but Azarenka seems to have found a new source of mental strength. In her semifinal match against Williams, she lost the first set quickly as Williams pummeled her with powerful baseline shots. In her post match news conference, she painted a comprehensive picture of the mind set that had allowed her to turn it around. "I needed to step up with my aggressivity, play a little smarter, play with a little bit more width of the court and bring the intensity up," she said. When asked about an earlier comment on her ego, she spoke at length about how limiting her ego had helped her get through tougher matches. The difference, she said, was that "instead of getting the ego damaged, I tried to remove that and learn from my mistakes." She added that she had realized that being a tennis player "doesn't make you better or worse than anybody else, that you're still human, and all you can do is try to be the best version of yourself and keep improving." Osaka's path to this final has been similar. She is on a 10 match winning streak, excluding her withdrawal from the Western Southern Open final, but she struggled earlier in the U.S. Open while managing her hamstring injury. The technical aspects of Osaka's game have been unimpeachable for some time, but problems with mental strength and consistency have occasionally plagued her. In her victory over Brady on Thursday evening, Osaka hit 35 winners compared with only 17 unforced errors in a match filled with baseline rallies. She came to net only five times over the course of two hours. The steady focus, holding up against an unrelenting onslaught from Brady, was a clear indication that Osaka would not be limited going into today's match. Osaka and Azarenka have met three times before. Although Osaka has won twice, both of those victories came on clay, a slower surface that would give her the advantage. Azarenka won their only meeting on hardcourts, at the Australian Open in 2016, but that was before Osaka elevated her game to the level of a Grand Slam champion. Expect a match dominated by lateral movement and big hitting from these baseline players. As both players jockey for position on the court, it will be important for them not to hit to the center. Cast in a similar mold, each will know that the angled shots from the wings of her opponent can be a losing situation. But if they play too conservatively, each player will risk giving the other prime position to score points. With both women playing exquisite tennis, expect both to have the confidence to go for their best shots. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Sports |
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