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Trump Reverses Course on TikTok, Opening Door to Microsoft Bid None TikTok Must Be Sold or Risk Being Shutdown, Trump Says During a news conference on Monday, President Trump set a deadline for the social media app TikTok to be sold to a U.S. company or risk being shut down. He called me to see whether or not how I felt about it. And I said, "Look it can't be controlled for security reasons by China too big, too invasive, and it can't be. And here's the deal: I don't mind if whether it's Microsoft or somebody else, a big company, a secure company, a very, very American company buy it. It's probably easier to buy the whole thing then to by 30 percent of it. I think buying 30 percent is complicated. And I suggested that he can go ahead. He can try, we set a date I set a date of around Sept. 15, at which point it's going to be out of business in the United States. But if somebody, and whether it's Microsoft or somebody else buys it, that'll be interesting. If you buy it, whatever the price is that goes to whoever owns it, because I guess it's China essentially. But more than anything else, I said a very substantial portion of that price is going to have to come into the treasury of the United States because we're making it possible for this deal to happen. During a news conference on Monday, President Trump set a deadline for the social media app TikTok to be sold to a U.S. company or risk being shut down. Anna Moneymaker for The New York Times WASHINGTON President Trump gave the go ahead for Microsoft to pursue an acquisition of TikTok, in his first public comments about the popular Chinese owned video app after he had threatened to ban it from the United States entirely. At the White House on Monday, Mr. Trump said that TikTok would shut down on Sept. 15 unless Microsoft or another company purchased it, and that he had suggested in a call this weekend that the chief executive of Microsoft "go ahead" with the acquisition. "It can't be controlled for security reasons by China," Mr. Trump said of TikTok, adding that he did not mind if Microsoft or another very secure, "very American" company bought it instead. Mr. Trump said such a purchase would funnel a large amount of money to China, and argued that the United States should receive money in return for letting the deal happen, without explaining how that would work. "A very substantial portion of that price is going to have to come into the Treasury of the United States, because we're making it possible for this deal to happen," Mr. Trump said. His comments indicated at least a temporary reprieve for TikTok, which has come under scrutiny in Washington for its Chinese ownership. Trump administration officials and lawmakers of both parties have argued that the app, which is known for dance videos and other fun viral clips, could pose a national security threat by potentially giving the Chinese government access to vast quantities of American user data. Executives at TikTok have insisted that it does not take direction from ByteDance, its parent company in Beijing. Microsoft declined to comment on Monday. TikTok said in a statement that it was "committed to continuing to bring joy to families and meaningful careers to those who create on our platform as we build TikTok for the long term." "TikTok will be here for many years to come," the statement added. A special government panel that examines national security threats, the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, has extended its deadline by 45 days to allow Microsoft to explore the purchase, a person familiar with the matter said. The 45 day extension was reported earlier by Reuters. After months of deliberations, that panel had recommended that TikTok sell its assets to an American company to curtail China's potential influence in the United States, and Microsoft had stepped forward as a potential buyer. But several China hawks in the Trump administration, including the White House trade adviser Peter Navarro, argued against the sale, seeing the moment as an opportunity to take more sweeping action to ban TikTok and other Chinese run internet services like Tencent's WeChat. On Monday, Mr. Navarro doubled down on that approach, suggesting that Microsoft should be required to divest any business it had in China if it bought TikTok. In an interview with CNN, Mr. Navarro accused Microsoft of enabling Chinese censorship and surveillance through products like Skype and its search engine, Bing. "This is not a white hat company," he said. Mr. Trump appeared to take Mr. Navarro's side on Friday, saying that he did not favor a sale of TikTok and that he instead planned to ban the app entirely. But after a series of calls, including from Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, and Satya Nadella, the chief executive of Microsoft, Mr. Trump appeared to change his mind. Several of Mr. Trump's aides had warned that a ban could prompt an intense legal battle, as well as hurt the president's popularity with younger Americans. TikTok has said 100 million Americans use it. TikTok acquired something of an anti Trump reputation in June, after some of its users boasted that they had registered for thousands of tickets to Mr. Trump's campaign rally in Tulsa, Okla., to embarrass the campaign, but pro Trump content on the app is widespread. Some of its most popular users are conservatives, and the hashtag conservative has 1.9 billion views. In a blog post on Sunday, Microsoft said it would "move quickly to pursue discussions with TikTok's parent company, ByteDance, in a matter of weeks" and conclude the talks no later than Sept. 15. Microsoft said the talks could result in its purchase of TikTok's service in the United States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, though it cautioned that the discussions were still "preliminary." The company also said any deal would include transferring any and all user information to servers in the United States. Microsoft may also bring on other outside minority investors if a deal moves forward. Ana Swanson reported from Washington, and Mike Isaac from San Francisco.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Technology
Get ready for the second coming of Fenty. On Friday, LVMH Moet Hennessy Louis Vuitton, the world's largest luxury group, officially confirmed not only that the fashion line created by Rihanna was becoming part of its gilded stable, but also that the first products from the new company would be unveiled in a few weeks. Thus the disruption of the status quo begins. Rihanna will become the first woman to create an original brand at LVMH, the first woman of color at the top of an LVMH maison, and her line will be the first new house created by the group since Christian Lacroix in 1987. It joins such storied heritage brands as Dior, Givenchy, Celine and Fendi and positions Rihanna as a breakthrough designer on a number of levels. An update: In 2021, LVMH and Rihanna hit pause on the Fenty lines. The move is a formal acknowledgment from the establishment that a multi hyphenate pop star/actress/image maker now has as much global currency, name recognition and (yes) influence as designers like Hedi Slimane and Nicolas Ghesquiere. That there is no need to limit them to the street or sportswear world. And that growth in the luxury industry may no longer come just from reinventing old heritage names, but by embracing a new diverse, digital, direct communication enabled reality. It is, in other words, the first brand of the Instagram age supported by one of the three big groups that have defined the global luxury era. "Designing a line like this with LVMH is an incredibly special moment for us," Rihanna, 31, said in the statement. "Mr. Arnault has given me a unique opportunity to develop a fashion house in the luxury sector, with no artistic limits. I couldn't imagine a better partner both creatively and business wise, and I'm ready for the world to see what we have built together." The news of a deal between LVMH and Rihanna, whose full name is Robyn Rihanna Fenty, was originally leaked in January, but this is the first time either party has spoken about their agreement. It marks an evolution in the celebrity style synergy, which has progressed from one off collaborations (Selena Gomez and Coach) to longer term deals between sports brands and stars (Beyonce and Adidas) to, now, the sort of brand that Emilio Pucci built. "Everybody knows Rihanna as a wonderful singer, but through our partnership at Fenty Beauty, I discovered a true entrepreneur, a real C.E.O. and a terrific leader," Bernard Arnault, the chairman of LVMH, said in the statement, referring to the partnership Fenty has had with LVMH since 2017 to create and distribute its beauty line. "She naturally finds her full place within LVMH," he continued. "To support Rihanna to start up the Fenty Maison, we have built a talented and multicultural team supported by the Group resources." The Group resources are notably large LVMH reported first quarter revenues in April of 12.5 billion euros ( 14.1 billion), an increase of 16 percent and the emphasis on "multicultural," in a time when many luxury brands are suffering from charges of cultural insensitivity and discrimination, is significant. LVMH has been making strides in recent years to right the gender balance in luxury, appointing the first female designers of Givenchy in 2017 and Dior in 2016. It has also begun to address the need for diversity, naming Virgil Abloh as the first African American to head Louis Vuitton men's wear in 2018. Fenty, however, has made inclusivity of all kinds size, race, gender identity part of its identity from the beginning. Founded in 2016 under an agreement with Puma, which was then owned by the LVMH rival Kering (the brand was originally called Fenty x Puma), Fenty had its debut at New York Fashion Week before moving to Paris for two seasons and unexpectedly charming the normally suspicious French fashion world with the kind of clothes that, she said at the time, "Marie Antoinette would wear if she was going to the gym." In 2017, it returned to New York for a show at the Park Avenue Armory that featured freestyle motocross racers zooming around a runway and doing tricks over mounds of sparkly pink sand, demonstrating that when it comes to spectacle (and LVMH loves a fashion show spectacle), Rihanna can hold her own with any marketing machine. Last year she expanded the line to lingerie with Savage x Fenty.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Fashion & Style
The intimidating wish list flaunted by discriminating house hunters in the Hamptons is nothing new. These shoppers are like diners who blithely order dishes nowhere in sight on the restaurant menu: Their sense of entitlement is accompanied by a desire for a totally customized experience. The latest residential trophy for these buyers is an elegant new abode with services attached. They want an injection of sophisticated city style amenities in blissed out beach country, the better to spend their time enjoying their getaways, not fretting over mundane details like upkeep. One result of this craving is the appearance of luxury condominiums, a commodity not traditionally identified with the Hamptons. They seem to be the of the moment alternative to the sprawling shingled, tricked out McChateaux that have held sway for the last few decades. New high end developments in the villages of Sag Harbor and Southampton have already attracted buyers. A handful of other condo/townhouse projects are in various stages of the planning and approval process, among them a 48 unit townhouse project proposed for Water Mill; a 25 unit condo community on the site of the Lobster Inn in Southampton; and a 37 unit townhouse development just across the Shinnecock Canal from the historic Canoe Place Inn in Hampton Bays, whose restoration was part of the approval package. "In the Hamptons, the word condo used to be like a punch line," said Andrew Saunders, the president of Saunders Associates, a real estate brokerage. "But that isn't the reaction the new luxury developments like Watchcase in Sag Harbor and Bishops Pond in Southampton, which is already into its second phase, are receiving. What we're seeing as a sort of mini trend relating to condos is really part of an overall evolution in 2014 and 2015 of buyers wanting everything to be new. "Interest in the condo lifestyle is particularly acute among aging baby boomers who may already own big homes out here," Mr. Saunders added. "They want to stay in the Hamptons, and they want updates, but they don't want to deal with the headache of renovating or building." However, the prevailing civic sentiment on the South Fork regarding condo developments leans heavily toward barring the gate. In general, local officials and longtime residents are not fans of multifamily housing developments, no matter how upscale they might be. "Right now it's almost like we have two societal forces colliding," said Keith Green of Halstead Property Development Marketing, the sales manager for Harbor's Edge, a condominium development in Sag Harbor, with the baby boomer demand for luxury condos "running up against a tradition of civic pressure against condos that is common all across the Hamptons. It's a Nimby ism that says: 'We don't want more traffic or more crowds, and we don't want more change.' " Condo sales held just a 4.3 percent share of the Hamptons market in the first quarter of 2015, according to Jonathan J. Miller, the president of Miller Samuel, the appraisal firm. "But I would expect their market share to expand in the coming years with the rising popularity of condos on the East End," Mr. Miller said. "Luxury condos are a relatively new phenomenon out East, but today's weekend warriors evidently like the idea of little to no upkeep." Another twist on the theme are high end subdivisions, like Barn Vine, 37 single family houses off Scuttlehole Road in Bridgehampton, with, for those residents who want it, a menu of concierge extras aimed at making homeownership a truly turnkey experience. Barn Vine, on 50 acres adjacent to the Channing Daughters Winery, offers seven house styles, from the Twin Gable to the Sonoma Barn, priced at a proven market sweet spot, 2.75 million to 3.99 million, all in varying shades of cedar, with brick or stone fireplaces and a 40 foot pool in the backyard. Determined to make life easy for residents from the get go, the developer, a collaboration between Continental Ventures and Pinewood Development, is providing a free move in package, 30 hours of concierge services that can include meeting the moving van. For instance, Jane Gol, the president of Continental Ventures, suggested, "We'll move them in, have their beach passes ready and their cable and Wi Fi installed, and all they really need to do is bring their toothbrush." Ms. Gol said that two years of market research guided the creation of the final product: "The market spoke strongly of a need for more homes in the 3 million range, and we saw a big desire for this size home, around 4,000 to 4,700 square feet, not counting the lower level," she continued. "People don't want something too large if it's not their only home and they're only using it for vacations or weekends." Susan and Michael Sokol, Manhattan fashion executives who had built and sold three houses in the Hamptons and relied on summer rentals for the last four years, were looking to downsize a little and were among the first buyers at Barn Vine. "The idea is fully curated," she said, "but you put your own personal stamp on it with your choices of tile, stone, lighting and hardware, whatever. We actually changed the formal dining room to a family room. At 4,100 square feet, it feels manageable and not overwhelming, and the concierge service is another lovely perk." For house hunters who want turnkey but prefer a little more privacy and acreage with their acquisition, there are options like Black Barn, a fledgling brand from the designer Mark Zeff that bills itself as the anti McMansion and, more to the point, looks it. Mr. Zeff built a Black Barn prototype for his family near a bay beach in East Hampton after he couldn't find anything on the market that appealed to him. His 6,200 square foot house is stark on the outside and bursting with industrial chic on the inside. And thanks to investors like Robert Dankner, the president of Prime Manhattan Residential, and the developer/physician Jerry Lubliner, the place has spawned a potential franchise. "I fell for it and I don't fall for anything," Mr. Dankner said. "It's like the coolest Manhattan loft you'll ever find, crossbred with the greatest Hamptons house: It's the Labradoodle of houses. It's an art project, but it's livable and the antithesis of show offy." The second Black Barn is under construction on Noyac Path in Sag Harbor. The 4 million house will have nearly 8,000 square feet of living space; outside will be a pool and a tennis court. Mr. Zeff said he can build Black Barns on a fast track his house took just seven months, and the Sag Harbor house is expected to be completed by autumn of this year. Furthermore, he says he can bring in a Black Barn for about half the cost per square foot of a typical Hamptons spec house. "Not everybody can go and spend 37 million to live on the ocean in a 1910 cottage, but you don't need to spend that kind of money to have a unique living experience in the Hamptons," Mr. Zeff said. "My aesthetic is: Take out the faux Tudor, the faux Normandy cottage, take out all the fauxness and give buyers elegance without all the trim." For buyers seeking luxury without guilt, there's 183 Bull Path in East Hampton, an environmentally friendly 3.995 million newcomer that generates its own energy. The house was developed by Marc Clejan, the owner of GreenLogic, a renewable energy firm. Like Mr. Zeff, he used his own home as a guinea pig for what he hopes will become a sought after brand, a "net zero energy" house that provides as much energy as it consumes. Built in a cubist style, Mr. Clejan's 3,800 square foot geothermal house is performing just as he'd hoped. "It's the Tesla of houses," he said. "I have no utility bills except the propane for my stovetop." His spec house at 183 Bull Path is decidedly grander it has six bedroom, six baths, four decks and five gas fireplaces but incorporates all of the same technology. "This is a house that literally works for you instead of you working for it," said Meg Salem of Saunders, the listing agent. "We are selling relaxation in an environmentally aware package." But in the haute assemblage of hamlets and villages in the Hamptons, the emergence of a very visible cadre of luxury condo developments is probably the most surprising addition to the horizon. Doormen? Pool attendants? Dog walkers? Wine cellar restocking? In house interior decorators? Groceries not just shopped for but delivered and unpacked? All these services are potentially available. There is now an opportunity to be shamelessly pampered 24/7, without having to pay the salaries of, and surrender space and privacy to, live in staff. "We do everything for our clients as long as it's legal," said Chaloner Chute, a Scotsman who with his wife, Kathleen Doherty, operates Chaloners of the Hamptons, a concierge service with 40 clients and, thanks to an affiliation with Bishops Pond and Barn Vine, more on the way. Mr. Chute describes himself as a middleman between wealthy residents and the blue collar workers who provide the services that streamline the homeowner experience. "To be effective in this business, you've got to have the attitude that anything is possible," Mr. Chute said. "Maybe three or four years ago, if you mentioned the word concierge out here, people's eyes would glaze over, but it is catching on like wildfire. I've had to fish a dead raccoon out of a swimming pool, make coffee and lemon stains vanish from marble counters, remove a ball stuck in the pocket of a billiards table and, what was probably the hardest task, build a Barbie dollhouse." Bishops Pond, 69 units on 13 lush acres that were formerly zoned for industrial use, considers itself a pioneer of the upscale Hamptons condo genre. "This was an untested product," said Steven Dubb, a principal of the Beechwood Organization, the developer of Bishops Pond and, more recently, of 10 townhouses ranging from 1.75 million to 2.2 million on an adjacent site called the Enclave at Bishops Pond. "We build condos all over Long Island, but when you go east of the Shinnecock Canal, in some ways it's like a different state; it really is the 'Land of No.' " Apparently plenty of people liked the idea. Of the 69 Bishops Pond condos, just two are not yet spoken for. Prices, which began at 837,000 when the sales office opened on a snowy March weekend in 2013, have been raised six times. "As it turned out," Mr. Dubb said, "people prefer to have certain things done for them." Marlo Golub Spilko and her husband, Howard Spilko, a lawyer, live in Port Washington, N.Y., and had searched for an appropriate weekend home for years before pouncing on a 1.7 million five bedroom, four bath condo at Bishops Pond. "It's a dream house, I felt like I custom built it," said Ms. Golub Spilko, one of the 25 or so buyers who have opted for the concierge service. "It gives me peace of mind to know that Chal has a key to my house and can come by to check the thermostat or be there for a furniture delivery." Mr. Green, the sales manager at Harbor's Edge in Sag Harbor, where the 18 condos range from 2.25 million for a two bedroom to 6.5 million for a penthouse with a garage, described the ease awaiting owners. "People buying at Harbor's Edge and similar new developments really only need to have two skill sets: They have to be able to write a check and they have to be able to turn a key." Besides offering manicured grounds, underground parking and water views from all of its units, Harbor's Edge, which is aiming for summer/fall occupancy, will have a rooftop pool, a sun deck, a spa, a bar and, of course, an on premises concierge. "These developments are answering the demand for a different kind of lifestyle," Mr. Green said. Owning in a development with a concierge, he added, is "a rational grab for freedom from having to deal with the 14 different service companies you rely on to keep your single family home functional and beautiful. Move into a condo and you don't worry about the plumber, the landscaper, the pool guy. You can spend more time with the grandkids, or traveling, or doing whatever you moved to the Hamptons for in the first place." The Watchcase, the former Bulova plant, was resurrected as luxury condos in late 2013. It has 47 units ranging in price from 1 million to 10 million for a penthouse, as well as nine adjacent new townhouses and seven new bungalows. The project is 72 percent in contract, according to Cee Scott Brown of Corcoran Sunshine Marketing, the listing agent and the future resident of a "little retirement pied a terre" there. When James Wilson and his wife, Katy, went to see the Watchcase, they already had a "showcase, five bedroom, five bath house in Sag Harbor," Mr. Wilson said. The couple's plan was to buy a unit as an investment. "Then what intrigued me was the thought of being able to go out for the weekend and not have to worry about taking care of a house and pool, which gets kind of exhausting," said Mr. Wilson, the creative director for a men's apparel firm and, with his wife and two children, a weekday resident of Dumbo, Brooklyn. The Wilsons wound up selling their house and buying a 1,200 square foot unit at the old factory for themselves for just under 2 million. "At Watchcase, the time management quotient is zero we just show up and enjoy the amenities," Mr. Wilson said. "It feels more like a vacation." Vacation mode is, after all, the pulse of the Hamptons. "Our weekend residents will be able to pull into their driveways on a Thursday or Friday night and see that their house is ready and waiting for them," Ms. Gol said of the potential Barn Vine hospitality packages. "The lights will be on, the wine will be chilled, and the pool will be heated."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Real Estate
In "Rameau, Maitre a Danser," the musical values of Les Arts Florissants are faithful to what is known of the historical style. But the dancing, like the staging, is more fluid. "A week ago I was dancing a bourree," the conductor William Christie said over the phone from Paris, where his baroque ensemble, Les Arts Florissants, is based. "A group of us sang a little song around the fire, and we all danced." This impromptu dance erupted at the inauguration of a 17th century fireplace in a house in the Loire that's part of a complex where the Fondation Les Arts Florissants now resides. But it could almost describe a moment in the program his ensemble is bringing to the Brooklyn Academy of Music this week under the title "Rameau, Maitre a Danser." These works, too, were written to celebrate happy events in one case, the birth of a king and involved singing and dancing, in equal measure. The French court loved to dance, a passion that can be traced to Louis XIV, an avid dancer and a supporter of the creation of the Royal Academy of Dance, where the basic positions and movements of ballet were first codified. "Everyone danced in France," the Baroque dance specialist Catherine Turocy said in a phone interview from her home in Dallas. "The singers danced, the dancers sang, and everyone played instruments. In that sense it was more like today's musical theater." All the 17th and 18th century French opera forms included dance, from the solemn tragedie lyrique to the lighter opera ballets, the loose genre to which the works of "Rameau, Maitre a Danser" belong. "Daphnis et Egle" and "La Naissance d'Osiris" were composed for the court of Louis XV, to be performed at the palace of Fontainebleau, where the royal family (and much of the aristocracy) retired each fall in to enjoy the hunt. The two operas were performed in successive seasons 1753 and 1754 and seldom since, which is why Mr. Christie decided to revive them in 2014, on the 250th anniversary of the composer's death. (The Brooklyn Academy's production is the show's American premiere.) Each about 45 minutes long, neither of the two works would have taxed the attention of the aristocratic audience with complicated plots or deep subjects. "The plots are essentially nonexistent," Mr. Christie said. "It's just exquisitely beautiful music, tender and melancholy, and fabulous for dancing." There is just a whisper of a plot or, more accurately, a dramatic situation. In "Daphnis et Egle" (1753), a shepherd and a shepherdess approach the Temple of Friendship, only to be turned away, because, as Cupid points out to them, they are actually in love. In "Osiris," shepherds and shepherdesses (notice a theme) await the birth of the god Osiris. (The piece, called a "ballet allegorique," was meant to echo the birth of the future Louis XVI.) "It was my idea to make the two works into one story," the director, Sophie Daneman explained from London, where she lives. "I thought, gosh, they're very similar: They're both incredibly pastoral, and in that sense, very human." While the musical values of the Arts Florissants ensemble are faithful to what is known of the historical style, the dancing, like the staging, is more fluid. "There are elements and suggestions of period style," Mr. Christie said, "but this has nothing to do with pure period staging." Ms. Daneman noted that Mr. Christie "doesn't have a strong philosophy on whether something should be 'authentic.' He's more interested in authenticity of spirit." In this spirit, the dances are not meant to replicate Baroque styles, though they do make reference to their vocabulary of small jumps, elegant footwork and decorative wrists. Originally choreographed by Francoise Denieau, who died in 2015, the dances are being restaged for this run by her assistant, Gilles Poirier. "For the most part," Mr. Poirier said from Paris, Ms. Denieau "wanted to use a slightly later style of dance, closer to Noverre," the ballet master who taught Marie Antoinette and Antoine Bournonville, the father of the 19th century Danish choreographer August Bournonville. She even included a moment that is closer to something like contemporary dance, using expansive and stylized gestures that Noverre could not have imagined. "Francoise wanted that part to be in a style that was more undefined," Mr. Poirier said, "neither classical nor contemporary" as a way to evoke timelessness. In Ms. Daneman's reimagined staging, the dancers and singers occupy the same world, taking turns at the center of the action. There are times when the dancers and singers interact, communicating through shared glances or touch.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Dance
Because Rashaun Mitchell and Silas Riener are superlative dancers, a dancegoer wants them only to appear in work worthy of them, or in choreography that's at least remotely important. In their most recent show the premiere performances of "Horizon Events," on Friday through Sunday at MoMA PS1 in Long Island City, Queens they gave mere glimpses of what they and their five companion dancers can do. Saturday's performance was little but dance doodling. These two, like their fellow dancer Melissa Toogood, first hit us when at full stretch with the Merce Cunningham Dance Company. Can they be content with the low key waffling they've given us here and in other recent productions of theirs? The hourlong "Horizon Events" featured a reactive score by Jesse Stiles, video by Charles Atlas and attractively simple white and black costumes by Mr. Mitchell, Mr. Riener and Julia Donaldson. There was no printed program; I derive this information from the MoMA PS1 website, which credits "direction and visual design" to Mr. Mitchell and Mr. Riener, omits the words "choreography" and "lighting" and announces, not once but twice: "'Horizon Events' is a series of evening length group dances constructed specifically for PS1's third floor main gallery. Partly improvisational, the installations are designed to negotiate proximity and distance, reality and fantasy. Abstraction and representation collide in queer framings of space, time and bodies in action." That final sentence proves entirely specious. The performance unfolded in a room with six entrances and five pieces of portable orange framework (from one to three feet tall; sphere, pyramid, cube). Six of the performers spent time waiting in each entrance, and sometimes dancing could be seen behind them. (I had a good view of David Rafael Botana boogieing, as if to unheard music.)	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Dance
Welcome to Best of Late Night, a rundown of the previous night's highlights that lets you sleep and lets us get paid to watch comedy. If you're interested in hearing from The Times regularly about great TV, sign up for our Watching newsletter and get recommendations straight to your inbox. During the impeachment trial, a lawyer for President Trump, Alan Dershowitz, has argued that Trump was acting in the public interest in regard to his Ukraine pressure campaign, telling senators, "If a president does something which he believes will help him get elected, in the public interest, that cannot be the kind of quid pro quo that results in impeachment." Seth Meyers, among other late night hosts, took a closer look at Dershowitz's reasoning, eventually arriving at the conclusion that it was "absolutely insane." "By that logic, Trump could shut down airports under the pretense of high winds any time one of his Democratic challengers had a flight, which would affect everyone but Bernie, who likely has a backup mule." SETH MEYERS "He's basically saying Trump could just do whatever he wants, by saying that his re election is in our best interest. By that logic, he could start eating bald eagles for breakfast and he'd say, 'I have to. I need my strength for the campaign trail!'" JIMMY KIMMEL This week, Senate Democrats pushed for witnesses to be admitted in the impeachment trial, with the Republican opposition scrambling to come up with arguments as to why that would be a bad idea. "Trump's lawyers keep threatening that if Democrats call their witnesses, Trump will have the right to call his witnesses, too. Which, right yeah. That's how trials work! That's like if the 49ers threatened to send out their special teams: 'You kick off, I swear to God we will try to run it back!'" JIMMY KIMMEL "And the other big argument is that if they open it up to witnesses, the trial could go on for months and prevent the Senate from getting business done. As if they've done any business. Blockbuster Video has done more business than the Senate in the last three years." JIMMY KIMMEL The Punchiest Punchlines (All Fall Down Edition) "And Trump shouldn't tolerate this he needs to go down to the border and teach these walls how to handle the wind. Because if there's one thing Trump knows, it's how to dodge a draft." TREVOR NOAH "And I know they said this is only because that specific part of the wall wasn't finished being built yet, but that's still on Trump. He would have known that this could happen, but he never finished reading 'The Three Little Pigs.'" TREVOR NOAH Tom Brady, Joey Bosa, Todd Gurley and Clay Matthews are just a few players who participated in an all N.F.L. edition of Kimmel's Mean Tweets.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Television
DUBLIN The Irish are renowned for their way with words. But the nation of bardic poetry, James Joyce and W. B. Yeats has proved a latecomer to the wordiest of music genres, hip hop. "It's always been corny to rap and be from Dublin," Rejjie Snow said in an interview in his dressing room in the Olympia Theater, a plush 19th century concert hall in the Irish capital. "I don't know why. Maybe it's the accent, maybe it's the lifestyle. When I told people I wanted to rap as a kid, they were like, 'Oh you want to rap?'" But Rejjie Snow's eccentric choice of career has been vindicated. A few hours later, one of the rising stars of Irish hip hop, 24, stood in the spotlight on the Olympia's stage, microphone in hand, faced by a young, excited crowd chanting "Rejjie, Rejjie" and rapping verses from his newly released debut album, "Dear Annie," back at him. At one point, a teenager at the front hauled herself onto the barrier separating audience from stage to shout, "Rejjie, I love you!" The first rap acts in Ireland emerged in the early 1990s. But it has taken until now for hip hop culture to start flourishing, with rappers and groups proliferating across the country. The situation resembles Irish rock in the 1970s, when bands sprung up in a grass roots modernization of Irish music. Two forces lie behind Irish rap's rise. One is a new generation of immigrants from Africa and the Caribbean, attracted to Ireland during its "Celtic Tiger" boom years in the 1990s and 2000s. Their numbers are tiny by the standards of other European countries in the 2016 census, just under 65,000 people identified as black in a nation of almost 4.7 million but talent in the emerging music scene is disproportionately drawn from among them. Rejjie Snow, whose given name is Alexander Anyaegbunam, has a Nigerian father and an Irish Jamaican mother. The other factor is the growth in popularity of hip hop itself. Since 2010, it has eclipsed other genres to become the global lingua franca of youth culture. In 2016, Drake was the most streamed act in the world on Spotify. He was also the most streamed in Ireland, which has the youngest population in the European Union. This year's lineup for one of the country's main music events, the Longitude Festival, has risked rock fans' ire by turning to hip hop artists. Casey Walsh, 20, and his childhood friend Alex Sheehan, 21, make up the duo Versatile, a north Dublin take on the strain of delinquent rap acts running back from Eminem to the Beastie Boys. They made a surprise appearance at Rejjie Snow's Olympia Theatre gig, to a fervid response from the audience. "Ireland never really took to the hip hop music, it was just a select few," Mr. Walsh said in a Skype interview. "But now, festival lineups are just hip hop acts. It's crazy." "I used to cringe when I heard Irish rap," he added. "Stuff about how the government's robbing us and our lives are so bad." "And no one wants to hear it," Mr. Walsh said. A do it yourself ethos predominates among Irish hip hop acts. Audiences are built using social media and YouTube videos: Versatile get as many as a million views for theirs. But like the Irish rock bands in the 1970s, rappers in search of a record deal are forced to look to Britain or the United States. Rejjie Snow, who lives in Brooklyn, is signed to the influential New York label 300 Entertainment. His latest album was mainly recorded in London and Paris. "Compared to two years ago it's so much better," Celaviedmai, a 25 year old rapper from Galway whose given name is Maimouna Salif, said in a telephone interview. "It's seen as a real career, it's not seen as a hobby or a pastime." Celaviedmai is one of a handful of female rappers in Ireland, in what is still a male dominated scene. "Ireland is so small that it's so difficult to do things on your own," she said. "There aren't enough resources, or they're too expensive." The positive side effect of limited resources is artistic ingenuity. Irish rap abounds in different styles. Rejjie Snow's songs are dreamy and off center. Socially conscious rap is common; its criminal minded flip side, street rap, does exist, but to a lesser degree. Grime, a vibrant Britain based offshoot of rap, is beginning to make its presence felt. Other acts fuse hip hop with Afrobeats, R B and dance music. The free for all mirrors wider rap trends. The last decade has seen a breakdown of the importance of region to hip hop, its reliance on place as a marker of a particular sound. The internet has collapsed distances between scenes. But Irish rap's lack of definition also points to a fluidity within Irish identity. "Thought I had to be American, thought I had to be English, everything else but Irish," the Rusangano Family, a trio from Limerick, rap on one of their tracks. In an interview, Godknows Jonas, 27, a member of the group, said, "That's a very personal line, because identity is something that has always been a confusing one as someone who got here from Zimbabwe." "When I was younger, I'd feel like I didn't fit in with my friends, and then I'd go home and feel I didn't fit in with my parents: They were still holding onto the culture from back home," he added. "For me, writing those lines was like me staking a claim of who I am. I'm proud to be Irish, I'm proud to be African, I'm proud to be who I am." What it means to be Irish in 2018 is up for grabs. "Our identity as Irish people is socially and culturally evolving," said Mango, whose given name is Karl Mangan, a 27 year old rapper who makes grime music with the producer Adam Fogarty, 35, who is known as Mathman. The process is not without tensions. In rap, they center on the question of accent. American or mid Atlantic accents are not uncommon among Irish rappers. Rejjie Snow, who left Dublin at 17 to live in Florida, is an example, though he described his own rapping voice as "neutral." Mr. Fogarty has his own views about how an Irish M.C. should sound. He said there was "a quite significant part of our hip hop history where artists were using fake accents. Slowly but surely, there has been a shift away from that." Lilo Blues, 21, a member of the Dublin rap trio the Hare Squead, groaned when the issue was raised. He grew up in southern Dublin listening to American hip hop and R B. "I didn't have anything in Ireland to grasp onto in terms of urban culture or sound," he said. "It's not even conscious. It's not like, 'I'll put this phrase in so they can tell I'm from Ireland.' No, it's natural." At Rejjie Snow's gig at the Olympia, issues of accent and music industry infrastructure faded into the background. Here was Irish rap's acceleration in its distilled form, a propulsive release of energy. Thinking about the destination could wait for another day. "Yo Dublin, are you ready for Rejjie Snow?" the D.J. shouted. The answering roar drowned out the beats.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Music
The floor of the New York Stock Exchange last week. Wall Street experienced its worst day in a decade on Monday. WASHINGTON The Federal Reserve tried to insulate both Main Street and Wall Street from the coronavirus's economic fallout on Monday, encouraging banks to work with affected customers while taking measures to keep money flowing smoothly between financial institutions. The Fed, together with other regulators, said on Monday afternoon that it "encouraged financial institutions to meet the financial needs of customers and members affected by the coronavirus." Regulators added that "prudent efforts that are consistent with safe and sound lending practices should not be subject to examiner criticism" suggesting that supervisors will be understanding if banks are flexible with customers who experience income disruptions or other virus related issues. The announcement came hours after the Federal Reserve Bank of New York announced that it would ramp up the amount of short term loans it offers banks, an attempt to keep cash flowing smoothly through the financial system. The Fed's efforts to preserve normalcy have come as markets continued to plunge amid uncertainty about economic fallout from the virus. The infection has now sickened more than 110,000 people, and as it spreads through the United States and Europe, worries are mounting that growth will slow drastically. That, together with falling oil prices, has sent global markets into turmoil Wall Street experienced its worst day in a decade on Monday. It is the central bank's latest offensive to try to mitigate the coronavirus's fallout. Policymakers had already cut interest rates by half a percentage point last week in an emergency move, lowering the Fed's benchmark policy tool to a range of 1.0 to 1.25 percent. Chair Jerome H. Powell and his colleagues are trying to protect the U.S. economy before a slowdown caused by worker quarantines, weaker tourism and swooning markets fully takes hold. The central bank is also trying to make sure that markets themselves function properly. The New York Fed pledged to increase its daily offering of overnight repurchase agreements essentially short term loans to eligible banks to at least 150 billion from 100 billion between Monday and Thursday. It is also increasing its offering of two week loans starting tomorrow, to at least 45 billion from at least 20 billion. The moves "are intended to ensure that the supply of reserves remains ample and to mitigate the risk of money market pressures," the New York Fed said in a statement. "They should help support smooth functioning of funding markets as market participants implement business resiliency plans in response to the coronavirus," the statement said, though it added that the Fed would "continue to adjust" operations as needed. The Fed had already been active in the market for short lived loans between banks and financial institutions called the repurchase, or "repo," market for months, starting after rates in that obscure but important corner of the financial system's plumbing spiked back in September. It had recently been shrinking the size of its injections as markets calmed. How Theranos changed tech coverage: 'You can't just buy what they're selling.' One meme stock lawsuit against Robinhood is dismissed, but others loom. But demand at its regular repo operations surged as markets swung, fueling speculation by investors that the Fed might lift the size of its offerings. Officials have also been buying 60 billion in short term Treasury bills each month to build up the financial system's buffer of bank reserves, essentially deposits at the Fed. The goal was to keep cash flowing smoothly so that borrowing costs in money markets would stay under control. "We will ensure that the supply of reserves in the banking system remains ample," John C. Williams, the New York Fed president, said in a speech last week. "We are monitoring conditions in money markets closely." Many economists expect the Fed to do more to protect growth while keeping financial plumbing functioning normally. The Fed is widely expected to slash rates by another half point by March 18, the conclusion of its next meeting. Many investors anticipate that the Fed, which cut rates to near zero during the financial crisis, will return to that level by April. And when it comes to market functioning, "in our view much more will need to be forthcoming and very soon," economists at Evercore ISI wrote in a note on Monday. They speculated that the central bank might extend its Treasury bill buying program, which would help to keep the financial system flush with cash and potentially help to avert short term funding disruptions.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Economy
Senator Lamar Alexander really knows how to drain the suspense from an impeachment fight, doesn't he? Friday was supposed to be the big showdown in the Senate's trial of President Trump the long awaited skirmish over whether to call for new witnesses and documents. To hit the 51 vote threshold, four Republicans needed to vote "aye" with the Democrats. The chances of this had seemed negligible until last Sunday, when The Times reported that, in a forthcoming book, John Bolton, the former national security adviser, shares that the president told him that the security aid for Ukraine was linked to Ukraine announcing the corruption inquiries Mr. Trump sought. Since a central piece of the president's defense has been to complain about the dearth of witnesses who spoke directly with the president about Ukraine, the revelations cranked up the heat on Senators to hear from Mr. Bolton. Mr. Alexander was considered one of the Republicans most likely to grow a spine and cross the aisle.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Opinion
Like the killer himself, the action and suspense that fueled last week's intense and engaging episode of "The Alienist" slinked back into the shadows this time around. But what this week's episode lacks in adrenaline it makes up for in oratory. Written by the screenwriter, director and novelist John Sayles, the episode features meaty near monologues from a variety of characters, all of whom offer insight into the evil that people do. The first to climb the soapbox is Chief Byrnes, who is livid after learning that his dogsbody Captain Connor excuse me, ex Captain Connor murdered Willem Van Bergen, the filthy rich predator he had been assigned to protect. "Let me tell you how this city is run, you stupid mick," Byrnes growls (in an Irish accent). "We serve the rich, and in return they raise us above the primordial filth. And God help us if we don't keep up our end of the bargain." As he delivers the rest of the speech, the Chief's face looks as if it were hewed from stone, while his eyes burn with anger and fear. It's a marvelous moment for the actor Ted Levine, and a clarifying jolt for Connor. Next up is Byrnes's occasional ally of convenience, the Italian American gangster Paul Kelly (nee Paolo Vaccarelli). Having rescued Dr. Laszlo Kreizler and John Moore from a near riot over the killing they failed to prevent a riot he himself engineered Kelly warns Kreizler and Moore that they have more to worry about than the murderer, or his own organization for that matter. "You are fighting a monster," he says, "one that reaches from Millionaire's Mile all the way down to Mulberry Street. And if you're not careful, it will devour you long before you find your child killer." Kelly paints the entire city as haunted by malevolent force, like a small Maine town in a Stephen King novel. A different kind of inescapable evil gets an airing when Kreizler visits Cyrus in the hospital, who is recovering from a head wound inflicted by the killer. The doctor finds Cyrus's niece, Joanna Crawford (Brittany Marie Batchelder), tending to him. A reporter for The Philadelphia Tribune, she attended college courtesy of Kreizler, who paid for her schooling as a gift to Cyrus and his family. To Crawford, however, both this gift and his continued "friendship" with her uncle, who entered Laszlo's service after committing a justifiable homicide, are signs of condescension and control, not generosity. Kreizler, she believes, is simply keeping Cyrus downtrodden with his courtesies and progressive ideas "more effective than using shackles and a whip." Echoing criticisms leveled today at "performative wokeness," Joanna's assertions about Laszlo's character hit him as hard as any he's heard so far. He spends the rest of the episode attempting to make it up to not only Cyrus but also to his other servants, Stevie and Mary. In Mary's case, his suggestion that perhaps it's time she strike out on her own is greeted with explosive indignation. So he invites her to dinner instead. When he finally reaches out to take her hand, initiating what becomes a passionate kiss, a clever bit of camerawork begins with Mary offscreen and follows Laszlo's his hand as it traverses the space between them until she is finally in the frame a visual representation of the effort required to bridge the emotional gap. Yet another speech on the evils that plague the city isn't delivered by a knowing scoundrel like Byrnes or Kelly, nor by a sharp sociopolitical analyst like Joanna. It's delivered by a man so rich and powerful that he can bend society and politics to his will and no one thinks of him as a scoundrel at all. Using Connor as muscle and employing Byrnes (and Bishop Potter) as backup, J.P. Morgan has Moore and Kreizler abducted and brought to his mansion. At first, Morgan indulges his cohorts' demands that the investigation be dropped because of the high social standing of their suspect. But Kreizler's insistence that Willem Van Bergen isn't the killer enables Morgan to put aside upper class solidarity and address his real concerns. New York, he says, is on the verge of becoming history's greatest economic powerhouse. But for that to happen, he says, "We need a compliant work force." He continues: "The civil unrest caused by these murders troubles me a great deal. A great deal indeed. Perhaps even more than the murders themselves. A harsh truth, but a truth nonetheless." In other words, dead children are usually just unfortunate; when their corpses clog the flow of capital, it's a crisis. Wisely, Kreizler refuses Morgan's offer of financial support for the investigation, knowing Morgan would want something in return. ("What could a man like J.P. Morgan want from you?" John asks incredulously. "I don't know," Laszlo replies, "but I'm most unwilling to find out.") And the investigation continues despite these obstacles. Changes in the killer's methods of mutilation remind Commissioner Roosevelt, who is present when the team examines the corpse, of massacres he witnessed during his time in the Dakotas. (The future president befriended Seth Bullock, the real life basis for the "Deadwood" lawman, during his time out West. I smell a crossover!) With a surprisingly low level of colonialist racism for their time, the team figures out that the killer is not actually a Native American, whose mutilations of enemy corpses are informed by a very specific spiritual logic. The killer is likely a white man who witnessed such mutilations, probably as a child, and who applies his own twisted meanings to them as he recreates them. After a harrowing visit to a mental institution, Sara Howard identifies a new suspect: a soldier, previously interned in the United States government's secret hospital for soldiers suffering from what today we would call post traumatic stress, and other mental disorders. Thus the breadth of any potential conspiracy widens even further. On a final note, the progress of Sara and John's romance has become nearly as compelling to track as the murder investigation because of the character insights it uncovers along the way. In fact, the couple's most intimate scene in this week's episode isn't actually romantic at all, although it does end with Miss Howard leaning against Mr. Moore in a heartfelt embrace. When Sara presents her breakthrough in the child killer case to John, the vehemence of her refusal to reveal her findings to Kreizler directly is unmistakable. John knows something must have happened between them, and asks what it was with an edge of alarm in his voice. "He was right about one thing," Sara explains. "Given certain circumstances, we're all capable of violence." The actor Dakota Fanning excels at radiating shock, pain, and betrayal from behind Sara's practiced composure, and the script follows suit: She never says outright that Laszlo struck her, but she powerfully conveys the moral gravity of Kreizler's blow nonetheless. "The Alienist" has often been so focused on its central murders that its other acts of violence feel like afterthoughts most notably the sexual assault against John arranged by Captain Connor and Paul Kelly, which at least gets alluded to by Kelly during their carriage ride, but which doesn't seem to have affected John at all. It's good to see the show treat this assault a man's hitting a woman, essentially for mouthing off to him with due seriousness.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Television
Famous but underappreciated has become a foolproof template for documentary subjects in recent years, used in films as disparate as "Searching for Sugar Man," "20 Feet From Stardom" and "My Architect." Add to the trope a cinematic fascination with fashion and you have the basis for a poetic documentary about a tempestuous and imposingly gifted Tunisian born French designer who, while exalted among cognoscenti, is all but unknown to the wider world. The designer is Azzedine Alaia, a septuagenarian best known for the figure enhancing designs he has created for some of world's more exceptional women, including Marion Cotillard, Greta Garbo, Grace Jones and Michelle Obama. The film is a self financed labor of love created with the rare cooperation of Mr. Alaia by the fashion stylist Joe McKenna, himself the quiet force behind campaigns for Balmain, Giorgio Armani, Jil Sander, Miu Miu and Versace, and formerly the fashion director at large for The New York Times's T magazine. In 2013, Mr. McKenna first asked himself how no one had thought to record the life and working process of an award winning master at times as much feared as revered. "I'd been asked to guest edit an issue of Self Service magazine," he said by telephone from Paris. "And I thought there was sort of restlessness in fashion, so I interviewed a lot of designers and C.E.O.s and asked them what was wrong."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Fashion & Style
Forests are disappearing. Maps show shrinking woodlands all over the world. Even trees coveted for their wood that are protected from logging are chopped down. Worried about such deforestation, environmental advocates are driving a project to create a DNA database of populations of the bigleaf maple tree on the West Coast. The eventual goal is to use DNA mapping to combat the thriving black markets for timber in tropical countries that are plagued by illegal logging. "We are taking leaf tissue from the maple trees and taking samples along the entire length of the species range from Southern California to British Columbia," said Meaghan Parker Forney, a science officer with the World Resources Institute, a nonprofit group that promotes environmental sustainability and is working on the monthslong initiative. The DNA database is an experimental project for the Norwegian government, which is jointly funding the effort with the United States Forest Service's international program. Norway hopes to see whether such a database is feasible in places like Indonesia and Peru, where illegal logging is rampant. Using volunteers from Adventure Scientists, a nonprofit organization that specializes in outdoor data collection, the World Resources Institute has recorded different populations of the bigleaf maple, and the unique characteristics of each population. Environmental advocates hope that DNA databases could be used for legal cases. Several people in the United States have been convicted of illegal logging using DNA evidence. Genetic markers can indicate whether a tree was logged from a protected location. "If someone came to us and told us their wood came from Washington State and it in fact did not, we would be able to say if the wood they were declaring came from a legal location, or we could say that in fact that is not where it came from," Ms. Parker Forney said. Collecting the DNA is fairly simple. Volunteers are trained online by Adventure Scientists and use an app to log information in the field. Ashley Plaga, 33, planned her vacation around collecting tree DNA for the project. "I just got back from a backpacking trip to Ventana Wilderness in Big Sur," Ms. Plaga said in a phone interview, referring to the region in Central California. "We had 20 miles of trail that we were backpacking, and when we reached certain areas that coincided with where a bigleaf maple would be, I would look for trees that fit the description and I would take a leaf from the tree." Before setting out on their adventures, volunteers take two brief online courses. The courses and a quiz detail the goals of the project and teach volunteers how to identify the environment of the tree as well as how to collect and store the DNA samples. "I would take a leaf from the tree and use an app that asks a number of questions, like the latitude and longitude of the location, the circumference of the tree," Ms. Plaga said. "We also had to take pictures of the tree and leaves and log the information into the system." A similar DNA database system is being put in place to help fight illegal wildlife poaching and trafficking. The Barcode of Wildlife Project, for example, aims to use DNA to enforce laws protecting endangered species, combating an illegal wildlife trade that it says is a 20 billion a year industry. The project says on its website that it hopes to help prevent the poaching of endangered wildlife by demonstrating "the value of DNA bar coding for investigating and prosecuting wildlife crime." Collecting DNA from wild animals is much easier than collecting from leaves because the DNA survives for much longer, according to Ms. Parker Forney, who previously worked with the Barcode of Wildlife initiative as a project manager. "We helped build a capacity in countries dealing in the trade and illegal poaching of endangered animals to help them set up a chain of custody system where they had the ability to test the illegal material in a database," she said. If an elephant tusk is found, it is possible to use its DNA to map where the animal was poached and to match its sister tusk, which may be tracked down elsewhere, Ms. Parker Forney said. "We focused on the most highly trafficked material."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Science
LOS ANGELES Last month, when the 32 year old co owner of Hostess Brands plunked down 100 million for the Playboy Mansion, the snickering was instant: Hugh Hefner's pleasure palace had sold to the maker of snack cakes like Twinkies and Ho Hos. The buyer, J. Daren Metropoulos, heir to a fortune built on Chef Boyardee meatballs, Pabst Blue Ribbon beer and Bumble Bee tuna, sure seemed to fit the playboy bill. He was the kind of guy who, judging by a quick web search, could put even Mr. Hefner to hard partying shame. One photo showed the young tycoon posing with a P.B.R. tall boy on a private jet while wearing sunglasses and a trucker hat. Another found him whooping it up at the Playboy Mansion with Snoop Dogg and several Playmates. A sordid TMZ moment resurfaced a former girlfriend, the 2002 Playmate of the Year, claimed in a 2009 lawsuit (since dismissed) that Mr. Metropoulos had assaulted her and a close relationship with his older brother only appeared to complete the picture. As Evan Metropoulos once told a night life reporter for The New York Times, as Daren lounged nearby, "I've been with more chicks than any fat guy you know, except Pavarotti." But something didn't quite add up. For a start, none of the usual suspects in Los Angeles knew this supposed mover and shaker. I called party promoters, paparazzi, neighbors (Daren Metropoulos has lived next door to the Playboy Mansion in Holmby Hills since 2009) and Hollywood agents who make it their business to know everyone in town with money to burn. Their repeated response: "Daren who?" "The offer then was for about 75 million," Mr. Hyland said. Adding to the mystery, the few people who did agree to speak on the record about Mr. Metropoulos (pictured on his company's website in a pinstriped suit against a row of serious looking books) described him as a saintly homebody. "He's not some bratty billionaire's son in any way, shape or form," said Andrew van der Vord, co head of consumer investment at Royal Bank of Canada, who helped the Metropouloses sell Pabst Brewing for 700 million in 2014. (They bought it for 250 million in 2010; Daren and Evan Metropoulos, rather controversially, served as co chief executives.) "Daren is a quiet, unassuming guy," Mr. van der Vord continued. "He's very polite and considerate. There's a really nice demeanor to him, actually." Bill Toler, the chief executive of Hostess, told me that Mr. Metropoulos had worked in the family food businesses since he was a teenager. "I was always impressed by the way Daren wanted to learn how to do things the right way," Mr. Toler said. "He would go spend a day working at retail. He would delve into marketing and then go learn how the sales department operated." Mr. Toler added: "I assure you, his interest in the Playboy Mansion is very pure. He's not the new Hugh Hefner. That's just silly." But I still had unanswered questions. What are his interests? Sports? Art? Travel? Nobody seemed to know. A spokeswoman for the Metropoulos family did confirm that Mr. Metropoulos, who grew up in Greenwich, Conn., did not graduate from college, having dropped out after his sophomore year to work for his father. He had been studying business at the University of Connecticut. If Mr. Metropoulos, who has never married and has no children, is as ordinary as family friends insist, preferring a night at home to hanging at Chateau Marmont and yet still has an unruly public image he may be the perfect fit for the Playboy Mansion. Purchased by Mr. Hefner in 1971 for about 1 million, the 29 room, five acre estate (replete with a zoo license and year round fireworks permit) now bears little resemblance in reality to its mythic reputation. The stone house was built in 1927 for an heir to the Broadway and Bullock's department store fortune. Located a few hundred feet off Sunset Boulevard, the property is valuable because it abuts the Los Angeles Country Club. Neighbors include the music mogul Jimmy Iovine; the Google kingpin Eric Schmidt; and Alexandra von Furstenberg and her husband, Dax Miller, who has become a friend to Mr. Metropoulos. (Mr. Miller did not respond to an interview request.) The Playboy Mansion's history as a den of iniquity is true, but most of the more libidinous stories date from the distant past. These days, the parties are primarily of a corporate nature, and upkeep has been slight. A few years ago, for an article on Mr. Hefner, I was given a daytime tour of the house and grounds. It was gross. The famous grotto pools, linked in 2011 to an outbreak of Legionnaires' disease, reminded me of one of those fetid animal enclosures at a low rent marine exhibit. Don't get me started on the bathroom off the mansion's main hall. There is a separate house that contains arcade games and has bedrooms with carpeting I could only describe as crispy. Whether hipster doofus or titan of industry or a bit of both Mr. Metropoulos may have plans for the Playboy Mansion that go beyond what has been reported. The official line is that Mr. Metropoulos, with a passion for architecture and history, wants to restore the estate and connect it to his adjacent compound. Mr. Metropoulos bought his current home from Mr. Hefner for 18 million in 2009; the previous occupants were Mr. Hefner's former wife Kimberley Conrad and their two sons. "The heritage of this property transcends its celebrity, and to have the opportunity to serve as its steward would be a true privilege," Mr. Metropoulos said in a statement last month. (The deal had not closed escrow as of Friday.) But living quietly on Charing Cross Road may not be the intention. "If there is anybody who can make Playboy more interesting, more relevant, it's Daren," Mr. van der Vord said. "It will be fascinating to watch what he does with that brand." Mr. Metropoulos did not buy Playboy Enterprises, which continues to run a licensing business and publish its flagship magazine. But the struggling company has been for sale. And it would seem like a perfect fit for the Metropouloses, who specialize in taking timeworn products albeit mostly edible ones and dusting them off. The young Mr. Metropoulos is skilled, according to his corporate biography, in developing marketing campaigns that "connect brands with contemporary audiences and regain relevance, both in the marketplace and pop culture." When the family owned Chef Boyardee, Mr. Metropoulos contributed to a successful ad campaign featuring pro wrestlers. At Pabst, he promoted the company's lesser known brews with celebrity endorsements. (Hence the Snoop Dogg party.) Whatever his plans for the mansion, Mr. Metropoulos will have to contend with the Holmby Westwood Property Owners Association. "Our antennae are up," said Sandy Brown, the group's president. "Any new uses a private club, some kind of hotel will certainly get community pushback."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Fashion & Style
It's January and you've gone and done it: You've resolved to keep better track of your personal finances. But deep down, you're not sure where to start. Sure, you can buy accounting software, sign up for a service or poke around your bank's online offerings for money management. But don't overlook what is probably the best option of all: a simple and free spreadsheet you make yourself. Never used spreadsheet software before and not quite sure what it does? Relax, using it to make a budget is easy, because someone has already done most of the work. Here's how to get started. First, select an application that can create and edit spreadsheet files. Microsoft Excel has long been a core component of the Microsoft Office suite for Mac and Windows ( 70 a year). If you don't have it already, you can also find versions for Android and iOS or the free basic version that runs in a web browser. If you don't care for the offerings from Microsoft, Google or Apple, there are alternatives. Apache OpenOffice has a Calc spreadsheet program, as does LibreOffice, and both are free open source suites that run on Windows, Mac and Linux systems. And there are plenty of other options in the app stores if you want to shop around. Spreadsheet programs for home computers have been around for 40 years, giving developers plenty of time to make them more intuitive. Most have a version of the "personal budget" template with the spending categories, design and formulas already formatted. Take advantage of them. Just type over the sample numbers with your own information and the software does the math. Open your program of choice and look for the "Template" or "Project" gallery. Select the template that best matches your needs, like "Monthly Home Budget," to create a new spreadsheet. Don't see a template that suits you? With a quick search, you can find plenty more to download online, like the selection at BudgetsAreSexy.com, which has specialized templates for those aiming for early retirement, or recent college graduates. The Measure of a Plan personal finance site also has a detailed budget tracking template that works in Microsoft Excel and Google Sheets. Online video tutorials and software guides can also help you build your own spreadsheets. Once you open a template, you'll see the boxes (called "cells" in spreadsheet lingo) to fill in your own numbers. Gather up pay stubs, bills, statements and any other forms that show what you made or spent that month. Enter the information into the designated place. Along with your salary, your pay stub should show the money taken out for things like taxes, retirement savings and health insurance. Add in monthly expenses, like phone, credit card and power bills; car loans; gas, insurance, rent and mortgage costs; gym fees; restaurant meals; and shopping sprees. Once you have all your numbers punched into the spreadsheet, you can see two things. First, you have a line by line accounting of your finances for the month.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Technology
Dr. Teruko Ishizaka worked in a lab in 1966. A prominent immunologist, she helped figure out why we wheeze and sneeze. Dr. Teruko Ishizaka, an immunologist whose joint research with her husband in the 1960s advanced the monitoring, treatment and prevention of asthma, hay fever and drug and food allergies, died on June 4 in Yamagata, Japan. She was 92. Her death was announced by the La Jolla Institute for Immunology in San Diego, where she had been head of the allergy division. Her husband, Dr. Kimishige Ishizaka, had been the institute's scientific director and president. He died last July, also at 92. They had retired to their native Japan in 1996. Together they discovered a novel class of antibodies that trigger wheezing, itching, rashes and various allergic reactions. The couple joined the newly formed La Jolla Institute in 1989. "Terry, as we called her, not only distinguished herself scientifically," said Amnon Altman, who was recruited by the couple in 1990 and is now the head of the institute's cell biology division, "but set a shining example in inspiring young scientists to work in a truly collaborative spirit." Teruko Matsuura was born on Sept. 28, 1926, in Yamagata, about 220 miles north of Tokyo, to Matsujiro and Toshi Matsuura. Her father was a lawyer; her mother was a homemaker who encouraged her daughter to pursue a professional career, an unusual path for women at the time. In 1949, the same year she married, she graduated with a medical degree from Tokyo Women's Medical University. She earned a doctorate in medical science from the University of Tokyo and continued her studies at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. The couple conducted their defining research at the Children's Asthma Research Institute and Hospital (now National Jewish Health) in Denver, which they joined in 1962. Their research team, analyzing the serum of hay fever sufferers exposed to ragweed, identified and isolated a rare antibody, or blood protein, that attacks foreign substances entering the body. They deciphered how the antibody, immunoglobulin E, or IgE, worked. The team published its findings in 1966. Another team, headed by S.G.O Johansson and Hans Bennich in Uppsala, Sweden, published similar findings in 1969. In "History of Allergy" (2014), Karl Christian Bergmann wrote that the research had been groundbreaking because it enabled doctors to diagnose allergies by measuring the amount of IgE in an individual's blood. The Ishizakas conducted research at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore from 1970 to 1989 before joining the La Jolla Institute. Dr. Teruko Ishizaka was the first female scientist in Japan to receive the Behring Kitasato Prize, in 1990, for her "study of mast cells and elucidating the mechanism of allergy." (The award is named after the Nobel Prize winner Emil Adolf von Behring and the Japanese physician and bacteriologist Shibasaburo Kitasato, who together laid the foundation for serum therapy.) She and her husband together won numerous other professional awards. She retired in 1993, and they returned to Japan three years later, after her husband had retired.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Science
What does a feminist work look like without women? The response by Vanessa Anspaugh, "The End of Men; An Ode to Ocean," features an all male cast. If the first half of her title finds inspiration in Hanna Rosin's book theorizing that men have lost their power to women in recent years, the "Ode" of the second half pays homage, not to the sea but to her recently born son. (His name is Ocean.) Clearly, Ms. Anspaugh is not rooting for the end of men in her meandering work. She wants to make a better man. Part of the 2016 Joyce Unleashed series, the performance presented Wednesday at Abrons Arts Center, in partnership with the Joyce Theater takes place with both the audience and the dancers onstage. The center block of the theater's seats, visible at a distance, have been roped off to resemble a boxing ring, where Ms. Anspaugh stands holding Ocean. He's already a pro; he hardly cried once. Initially, the stage is strewn with six men who lounge on the floor partially clothed as Ryan MacDonald's ambient score plays. Jesse Zaritt dresses Massimiliano Balduzzi gingerly, as if putting clothes on a child; the others follow suit. (Yes, the baby references in "The End of Men" are that literal.) The stage darkens as the men stand close, eyes lowered, while peeling their toes off the floor; eventually, they hop wildly in place evoking a stampede until one falls back and is carried by the rest. Simon Thomas Train and Mr. Balduzzi the two cast members with the most authority begin a verbal exchange beginning with the words "I want." Mr. Balduzzi, whose long dark hair and lanky frame conjure the popular conception of Jesus, says, "I want my mom in the audience."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Dance
I never write fan letters, and certainly not to people I don't know. But about 10 years ago, I wrote to Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky and described how their translations of Tolstoy, Gogol and especially Dostoevsky had deeply affected me both as a reader and writer. And, with some hubris, asked: Was it indeed true that they had not translated plays, and was there a reason? And, by the way, I was a playwright who had often translated classic plays, working off what are called "literal translations" but without any knowledge of the original language. I suggested that this might seem bogus to them; still, I made the argument that translating plays requires a different skill from translating prose, and that the former was enhanced by a thorough knowledge of playwriting and theater. I sent the email, and had to wait only a day for a response. The Pevears, who live in France, wrote back that they would soon to be in New York to give a reading. I had a play running at the Public Theater at the time; and so we met for dinner, then I took them to see it. To this day, I think not one of us completely understands how we were able to take the plunge and commit to collaborating after just one evening together. And I am sure it occurred to each of us, at some point as our time together approached, that such a collaboration was bound to fail. After all, the Pevears are married and had never allowed anyone into their working methods before; they finished each other's sentences; they had the same references; they knew each other so profoundly well that anyone, especially one who knows no Russian, would have a very hard time "fitting in." The couple, I later learned, had always been conflicted about translating plays; Larissa had wanted to, but Richard felt they'd need to work with a director or someone who knows theater. And, of course, I had never collaborated on a translation before; never had to compromise or convince or admit to being wrong. Yet, for some fated reason, we all agreed to go forward. We selected "A Month in the Country" as our initial effort; this being a play, I felt, that had not been adequately translated before, and so had often been misunderstood or misrepresented. Here's how we worked then and have worked since: Larissa, with a native experience of Russian literature and an extraordinary linguistic gift, does the first draft. She then hands it to Richard, who besides being an important translator in his own right is a poet and a rigorous stylist. He does the next draft. Then they sit down together and discuss it in minute detail, raising questions, making decisions about the style, the level of diction, the choice of words, phrases, and so on. After that, Richard writes the third draft. This is sent to me; I make notes, write out questions nearly all relating to how the play works as a play. Then we meet; work through the translation word by word; discuss, argue, cajole, but always with the understanding that we all needed to agree all of the time. Perhaps the greatest lesson I learned from this first effort at collaboration occurred one morning in their kitchen. I was at a small table looking out into their garden, and Larissa said something like, "You know, Richard, you keep asking us one question that, in all our other translations, we never ask." "Why?" she said. "You are always asking why did this character say this, and why this way and not that, and why now? In our other translations, we don't ask why; we are simply trying to translate the words." Of course, here was the essence of our collaboration or rather, what I think I was bringing to them. Unlike a novel or a story, a play is basically a series of notations for something else. It is not an end in itself. It is the notation for the production of the play, and so, as we worked together, I, as both a playwright and director, was always thinking toward production, imagining the questions that would be asked by actors and designers, and trying to make sure we were asking them as we translated. We decided to come together once a year and translate a play, and found a publisher, TCG books, for the series. We began to get commissioned by theaters and eventually turned to the Everest of our ambitions: the major plays of Anton Chekhov. We began with my favorite, "The Cherry Orchard." What we soon discovered was that significant changes had been made to Chekhov's script during the rehearsals at the Moscow Art Theater. Thanks to the latest, 30 volume edition of Chekhov and its extensive endnotes, we were able to reconstruct this script, eliminating all the changes made in rehearsal. I soon became convinced that all of these changes were, in fact, to the detriment of the play. So what I had known to be one of the greatest plays ever written, was in fact even greater! "The Cherry Orchard" was written and produced while Chekhov knew he was dying of consumption. He couldn't attend many rehearsals. The Moscow Art Theater itself was going through a crisis; its founders, Stanislavsky and Nemirovich Danchenko, were hardly speaking. A few days after the play's premiere, Russia was at war with Japan. These were tumultuous times, personally, professionally and politically. Stanislavsky clearly made these changes (as directors have and always will) to make his production "work." He cut up the character of Charlotta, making her all but unplayable in future productions. He changed locations (making the last act the same as the first), the ages of characters (to fit casting) and so forth. In other words, we were reminded of the lesson every living playwright is faced with: that plays are not literature, they are but notations for productions; and between the words and the audience are actors and directors and designers. Our latest effort has been "Uncle Vanya" the result of which had its stage premiere at the Old Globe in San Diego last spring and is being remounted in New York, with the Hunter Theater Project, starting this week. When Larissa described it as Chekhov's most religious, or at least most spiritual, play, I hesitated. I did not see Chekhov as either a religious or spiritual writer, but rather as the most profound humanist. But after a month working on the play, I came to understand what she meant, and eventually to be completely convinced. "Vanya" poses the deepest question that we humans ask: Do we matter? No answers are given. However, by the end of the play, I believe, we are left with the unmistakable assurance that we must, or there must be something greater than ourselves. There is much more I could say, but I will just mention one other thing. We often began our work day together saying, "You know, this is an untranslatable play!" It is, for this simple reason: There is an untranslatable Russian word, "chudak" (plural "chudaki"), that is used in the play six or seven times. Astrov at one point says something like "You come to the country and all the people here are ..." and then the word, "chudaki." "And you live here long enough and you too become a 'chudak.'" Then, at the end, he says, "You know I think we're all 'chudaki.'" That word goes to the moral center of the play and its meaning. It has been translated in so many different ways; three examples: creep, crackpot, old fart. But the original Russian word is not a criticism or a judgment. The word we finally chose for "chudak" is misfit. So, "We are all misfits." And that, I think, goes to the heart of what the play is all about, what people are feeling and what they're trying to sort out about their lives. Translations, I've learned, are very complicated animals. "We are all crackpots." "We are all misfits." Those are two different plays.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Theater
Late Night: No One Says 'Losers' and 'Suckers' Like Trump Welcome to Best of Late Night, a rundown of the previous night's highlights that lets you sleep and lets us get paid to watch comedy. We're all stuck at home at the moment, so here are the 50 best movies on Netflix right now. The Chief of All the Commanders Most of the late night hosts were off last week and on Labor Day, so Tuesday was their first chance to riff on reports that President Trump had called American troops "losers" and "suckers." Trump denied the allegations, first reported in The Atlantic magazine, during a news conference at the White House on Monday. "That was a pretty crazy press conference. At one point, Trump went off on a rant attacking military leaders. Because when you're in a scandal about calling soldiers names, the best defense is to antagonize their bosses. Trump was like, 'This goes all the way to the top, people whoever is the chief of all the commanders.'" JIMMY FALLON "Other than the 245 times Trump has actually called someone a loser and a sucker on Twitter, he'd never say anything like that." JIMMY FALLON "That's right, Trump allegedly made outrageously offensive remarks, so you know what that means nothing happens to Trump, and Billy Bush gets fired." JIMMY FALLON "I'm not sure what's more upsetting: the comments Trump reportedly made or what he's going to say to change the subject. imitating Trump 'And that's why we're nuking the moon.'" JIMMY FALLON "Trump was reacting to the furor over The Atlantic's bombshell report that he called Americans who died in war 'losers' and 'suckers,' which has been confirmed by multiple outlets including The A.P., CNN and even Fox News, and also by common sense. I mean, it sounds exactly like something Trump would say. He probably thinks anyone who dies is a sucker." SETH MEYERS "According to a new report, President Trump canceled a 2018 visit to an American veterans cemetery in France because he was afraid his hair would get disheveled in the rain. What? When's it ever been 'sheveled.'" SETH MEYERS "This year's wildfire season has been one of the worst in history, with dozens of fires burning a record two million acres. And now we're finding out that one of this weekend's biggest blazes started in one of the dumbest ways possible." TREVOR NOAH "OK people, I've said it before and I'll say it again: These gender reveals have gone too far. Ten thousand acres have burned and it's not even the first time this kind of thing has happened. I mean, at this point, a gender reveal party is now one of the most dangerous terrorist organizations. It's ISIS, Al Qaeda, Taylor Swift fans and gender reveal parties." TREVOR NOAH "And aside from all the damage it can cause, celebrating a baby's genitalia is starting to feel very outdated. Like, given everything we're learning about gender, gender reveal parties should only happen when the child is old enough to know their actual gender and to pitch in some cash for the fire damage." TREVOR NOAH	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Television
In 1988, my family and I were honored when New York City named the new women's jail on Rikers Island for my grandmother, Rose M. Singer, a longtime jail reform activist. The Rose M. Singer Center was supposed to be a beacon to the world, a place where women caught up in the criminal justice system would be treated humanely and kept safe. The jail has not lived up to that vision, however. Instead, it has devolved into a torture chamber, where women are routinely abused, housed in unsanitary conditions, and denied medical and mental health services. They are treated as less than human, not as our grandmothers, mothers, daughters and sisters. The conditions at the jail are an affront to the good name and legacy of my grandmother, who fought tirelessly for criminal justice reform. I applaud the mayor and the City Council for voting to close Rikers Island, which includes Rosie's, as it is commonly known, but this will not take place until 2026. Women should not be forced to live in these abject conditions for a day longer. Covid 19 has made the release of women who pose no threat to society even more urgent. Right now, as the virus continues to sweep through the city, we are witnessing the virus' ferocity in close packed jails and prisons, with at least 1,200 reported cases of Covid 19 among inmates and officers in city jails as of late April. Social distancing is next to impossible in crowded detention centers.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Opinion
THE DEAD ARE ARISING The Life of Malcolm X By Les Payne and Tamara Payne Les Payne's "The Dead Are Arising" arrives in late 2020, bequeathed to an America choked by racism and lawlessness. The book's subject, Malcolm X, knows this place well, though he died in 1965. Readers may pick up this biography hoping for a celebration of Black pride and resilience in the midst of madness. Payne, a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist who devoted nearly 30 years to the book before his death in 2018, meets these needs intermittently, but that is not his primary goal. Malcolm's presence is beautifully rendered, but "The Dead Are Arising," which was ultimately completed by Payne's daughter and principal researcher, Tamara Payne, is not a tribute or enshrinement of achievements. Instead, it reconstructs the conditions and key moments of Malcolm's life, thanks to hundreds of original interviews with his family, friends, colleagues and adversaries. Nobody has written a more poetic account. This book reveals more of Malcolm's childhood than we have ever seen. The Paynes' research elucidates a family history of American racial terror that preceded his birth in 1925. Malcolm's middle class parents moved several times, often into neighborhoods they knew were hostile, confronting the Ku Klux Klan, local officials and bigoted employers. His father, Earl Little, died when Malcolm (born Malcolm Little) was 6, the victim of a streetcar accident that Malcolm later suspected was a cover up for the work of a racist mob. His mother, Louise, kept the family together as long as she could, but eventually succumbed to poverty and mental illness. Malcolm, then 13, and his seven siblings were scattered into foster care and other arrangements. Still, the influence of his parents, who were steeped in the teachings of Marcus Garvey, cannot be overstated. They could not nurture Malcolm through childhood, but they steeled him with the truth: He owed white people nothing. Not deference, or trust, or gratitude for whatever comfort he might find in life. Malcolm's character and beliefs changed over the years. Defiance of white supremacy was his essence. Les Payne wrote "The Dead Are Arising" in part to correct the record in Malcolm X's autobiography, as is evident in his treatment of Malcolm's troubled adolescence. Malcolm's time as a hustler is subject to debate. The historian Manning Marable's award winning biography, published in 2011, argues that Malcolm's autobiography embellishes his early crimes to dramatize his later redemption. "The Dead Are Arising" does not directly engage Marable, but it refutes his interpretation and fills in gaps in Malcolm's own account. Though he was rarely violent, Malcolm was embedded in a social network of thieves, drug dealers, racketeers and prostitutes as he split his late teenage years between Boston and New York City. His tragic and frequently despicable behavior marked him for early imprisonment, if not death.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Books
A.O. Scott, The Times's co chief film critic, returns to the Book Review's podcast this week to discuss the work of Joy Williams, the third subject in Scott's essay series The Americans, about writers who give a sense of the country's complex identity. Scott argues that Williams forces readers to see their surroundings anew. "She takes nothing for granted," Scott says. "She defamiliarizes everything. So you might think, in a short story, 'Oh, this takes place in New England in the winter, in Maine.' But it doesn't conform to any of your preconceived ideas about what that place and setting might be like. I think the same is true of 'The Quick and the Dead,' which takes place in Arizona. It's not Barbara Kingsolver's Arizona, it's not the Southwest as we have thought about it through travel or through other reading. So every place that she comes to, it's as if you're there for the first time, and everything has to be described to you and conveyed to you in the most immediate and vivid and specific terms, because you've sort of dropped in from another planet and you need to get your bearings." Nicholas Christakis visits the podcast to talk about his new book, "Apollo's Arrow: The Profound and Enduring Impact of Coronavirus on the Way We Live."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Books
Solomon Eagle, a Quaker who "prophesied evil tidings" during the Great Plague of London in 1665. Engraving from Daniel Defoe's "A Journal of the Plague Year."Credit...Davenport after Cruikshank/SSPL, via Getty Images ISTANBUL For the past four years I have been writing a historical novel set in 1901 during what is known as the third plague pandemic, an outbreak of bubonic plague that killed millions of people in Asia but not very many in Europe. Over the last two months, friends and family, editors and journalists who know the subject of that novel, "Nights of Plague," have been asking me a barrage of questions about pandemics. They are most curious about similarities between the current coronavirus pandemic and the historical outbreaks of plague and cholera. There is an overabundance of similarities. Throughout human and literary history what makes pandemics alike is not mere commonality of germs and viruses but that our initial responses were always the same. The initial response to the outbreak of a pandemic has always been denial. National and local governments have always been late to respond and have distorted facts and manipulated figures to deny the existence of the outbreak. In the early pages of "A Journal of the Plague Year," the single most illuminating work of literature ever written on contagion and human behavior, Daniel Defoe reports that in 1664, local authorities in some neighborhoods of London tried to make the number of plague deaths appear lower than it was by registering other, invented diseases as the recorded cause of death. Much of the literature of plague and contagious diseases presents the carelessness, incompetence and selfishness of those in power as the sole instigator of the fury of the masses. But the best writers, such as Defoe and Camus, allowed their readers a glimpse at something other than politics lying beneath the wave of popular fury, something intrinsic to the human condition. Defoe's novel shows us that behind the endless remonstrances and boundless rage there also lies an anger against fate, against a divine will that witnesses and perhaps even condones all this death and human suffering, and a rage against the institutions of organized religion that seem unsure how to deal with any of it. Defoe and Manzoni wrote about people keeping their distance when they met each other on the streets during the plagues, but also asking each other for news and stories from their respective hometowns and neighborhoods, so that they might piece together a broader picture of the disease. Only through that wider view could they hope to escape death and find a safe place for shelter. In a world without newspapers, radio, television or internet, the illiterate majority had only their imaginations with which to fathom where the danger lay, its severity and the extent of the torment it could cause. This reliance on imagination gave each person's fear its own individual voice, and imbued it with a lyrical quality localized, spiritual and mythical. The most common rumors during outbreaks of plague were about who had brought the disease in, and where it had come from. Around mid March, as panic and fear began to spread through Turkey, the manager of my bank in Cihangir, my neighborhood in Istanbul, told me with a knowing air that "this thing" was China's economic retort to the United States and the rest of the world. Like evil itself, plague was always portrayed as something that had come from outside. It had struck elsewhere before, and not enough had been done to contain it. In his account of the spread of plague in Athens, Thucydides began by noting that the outbreak had started far away, in Ethiopia and Egypt. The disease is foreign, it comes from outside, it is brought in with malicious intent. Rumors about the supposed identity of its original carriers are always the most pervasive and popular. In "The Betrothed," Manzoni described a figure that has been a fixture of the popular imagination during outbreaks of plague since the Middle Ages: Every day there would be a rumor about this malevolent, demonic presence who went about in the dark smearing plague infected liquid on doorknobs and water fountains. Or perhaps a tired old man who had sat down to rest on the floor inside a church would be accused by a woman passing by of having rubbed his coat around to spread the disease. And soon a lynch mob would gather. These unexpected and uncontrollable outbursts of violence, hearsay, panic and rebellion are common in accounts of plague epidemics from the Renaissance on. Marcus Aurelius blamed Christians in the Roman Empire for the Antonine smallpox plague, as they did not join the rituals to propitiate the Roman gods. And during subsequent plagues Jews were accused of poisoning the wells both in the Ottoman Empire and Christian Europe. The history and literature of plagues shows us that the intensity of the suffering, of the fear of death, of the metaphysical dread, and of the sense of the uncanny experienced by the stricken populace will also determine the depth of their anger and political discontent. As with those old plague pandemics, unfounded rumors and accusations based on nationalist, religious, ethnic and regionalist identity have had a significant effect on how events have unfolded during the coronavirus outbreak. The social media's and right wing populist media's penchant for amplifying lies has also played a part. But today we have access to a greater volume of reliable information about the pandemic we are living through than people have ever had in any previous pandemic. That is also what makes the powerful and justifiable fear we are all feeling today so different. Our terror is fed less by rumors and based more on accurate information. As we see the red dots on the maps of our countries and the world multiply, we realize there is nowhere left to escape to. We do not even need our imagination to start fearing the worst. We watch videos of convoys of big black army trucks carrying dead bodies from small Italian towns to nearby crematories as if we were watching our own funeral processions. The knowledge that the whole of humanity, from Thailand to New York, shares our anxieties about how and where to use a face mask, the safest way to deal with the food we have bought from the grocer and whether to self quarantine is a constant reminder that we are not alone. It begets a sense of solidarity. We are no longer mortified by our fear; we discover a humility in it that encourages mutual understanding. When I watch the televised images of people waiting outside the world's biggest hospitals, I can see that my terror is shared by the rest of the humanity, and I do not feel alone. In time I feel less ashamed of my fear, and increasingly come to see it as a perfectly sensible response. I am reminded of that adage about pandemics and plagues, that those who are afraid live longer. Eventually I realize that fear elicits two distinct responses in me, and perhaps in all of us. Sometimes it causes me to withdraw into myself, toward solitude and silence. But other times it teaches me to be humble and to practice solidarity. I first began to dream of writing a plague novel 30 years ago, and even at that early stage my focus was on the fear of death. In 1561, the writer Ogier Ghiselin de Busbecq who was the Hapsburg Empire's ambassador to the Ottoman Empire during the reign of Suleiman the Magnificent escaped the plague in Istanbul by taking refuge six hours away on the island of Prinkipo, the largest of the Princes' Islands southeast of Istanbul in the Sea of Marmara. He noted the insufficiently strict quarantine laws introduced in Istanbul and declared that the Turks were "fatalists" because of their religion, Islam. About a century and half later, even the wise Defoe wrote in his London plague novel that Turks and Mahometans "professed predestinating Notions, and of every Man's End being predetermined." My plague novel would help me think about Muslim 'fatalism' in the context of secularism and modernity. Fatalist or otherwise, historically it had always been harder to convince Muslims to tolerate quarantine measures during a pandemic than Christians, especially in the Ottoman Empire. The commercially motivated protests that shopkeepers and rural folk of all faiths tended to raise when resisting quarantine were compounded, among Muslim communities, by issues around female modesty and domestic privacy. Muslim communities at the start of the 19th century demanded "Muslim doctors," for at the time most doctors were Christians, even in the Ottoman Empire. From the 1850s, as traveling with steamboats was getting cheaper, pilgrims traveling to the Muslim holy lands of Mecca and Medina became the world's most prolific carriers and spreaders of infectious disease. At the turn of the 20th century, to control the flow of pilgrims to Mecca and Medina and back to their countries, the British set up one of the world's leading quarantine offices in Alexandria, Egypt. These historical developments were responsible for spreading not only the stereotypical notion of Muslim 'fatalism,' but also the preconception that they and the other peoples of Asia were both the originators and the sole carriers of contagious disease. When at the end of Fyodor Dostoyevsky's "Crime and Punishment," Raskolnikov, the protagonist of the novel, dreams of a plague, he is speaking within that same literary tradition: "He dreamed that the whole world was condemned to a terrible new strange plague that had come to Europe from the depths of Asia." In maps from the 17th and 18th centuries, the political border of the Ottoman Empire, where the world beyond the West was considered to begin, was marked by the Danube. But the cultural and anthropological border between the two worlds was signaled by the plague, and the fact that the likelihood of catching it was much higher east of the Danube. All this reinforced not just the idea of the innate fatalism so often attributed to Eastern and Asian cultures, but also the preconceived notion that plagues and other epidemics always came from the darkest recesses of the East. The picture we glean from numerous local historical accounts tells us that even during major plague pandemics, mosques in Istanbul still conducted funerals, mourners still visited one another to offer condolences and tearful embraces, and rather than worry about where the disease had come from and how it was spreading, people were more concerned about being adequately prepared for the next funeral. Yet during the current coronavirus pandemic, the Turkish government has taken a secular approach, banning funerals for those who have died of the disease and making the unambiguous decision to shut mosques on Fridays, when worshipers would ordinarily gather in large groups for the week's most important prayer. Turks have not opposed these measures. As great as our fear is, it is also wise and forbearing. For a better world to emerge after this pandemic, we must embrace and nourish the feelings of humility and solidarity engendered by the current moment. Orhan Pamuk, who was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2006, is the author of the forthcoming novel "Nights of Plague." This essay was translated by Ekin Oklap from the Turkish. The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We'd like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here's our email: letters nytimes.com. Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter ( NYTopinion) and Instagram.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Opinion
Peter Navarro said late Monday night that comments he had made earlier in the day on Fox News had been taken "wildly out of context." WASHINGTON The White House trade adviser, Peter Navarro, said on Monday night that the trade deal between the United States and China was "over," briefly causing stock markets to dive before he and President Trump quickly walked back the remarks. "The China Trade Deal is fully intact," Mr. Trump wrote on Twitter after Mr. Navarro, a noted China critic, had appeared on Fox News. "Hopefully they will continue to live up to the terms of the Agreement!" The events underscored the sensitivity of the "Phase 1" trade deal that the United States and China signed in January, which buoyed stock markets and brought to a close a prolonged and bruising trade war. But tensions have been rising sharply between the two countries over the origins of the coronavirus pandemic and China's assertion of power over Hong Kong, putting that pact into an increasingly precarious position. Mr. Trump's tweet was his firmest defense of his signature trade deal in weeks. While some of the president's advisers believe that he has little to gain politically from scrapping it, others have said that his dissatisfaction with China is growing, raising the question of whether the United States would challenge China's compliance with the pact. Mr. Trump has also turned increasingly critical of China because of the spread of the coronavirus, which originated in a city there, and its damaging effects on the United States economy. And agricultural groups that were intended to benefit from the trade deal have complained to the Trump administration that China is lagging significantly behind targets in its promised purchases of farm goods, and that Chinese buyers are bypassing American soybeans for Brazilian ones. But in testimony before Congress last week, Robert Lighthizer, the United States trade representative and the deal's primary architect, forcefully defended China's progress in fulfilling the pact. He said that he was in frequent contact with Chinese officials and that they were working hard to live up to their agreements. "Every indication is that in spite of this Covid 19, they are going to do what they say," Mr. Lighthizer said. In an interview on Monday evening, Martha MacCallum of Fox News asked Mr. Navarro about the president's desire to maintain the deal as long as possible. "He wanted them to make good on the promises because there had been progress made on that trade deal, but given everything that's happened and all the things you just listed, is that over?" she asked. "It's over. Yes," Mr. Navarro responded, adding that the "turning point" was China's failure to warn the United States about the dangers of the coronavirus, which was spreading even as they concluded the pact. "It was just minutes after wheels up when that plane took off that we began to hear about this pandemic," he said. Shortly after the interview, Mr. Navarro issued a statement recanting the remarks, saying they had been taken "wildly out of context." "They had nothing at all to do with the Phase 1 trade deal, which continues in place," Mr. Navarro said. "I was simply speaking to the lack of trust we now have of the Chinese Communist Party after they lied about the origins of the China virus and foisted a pandemic upon the world."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Economy
"A Star Is Born" has all the makings of a modern movie blockbuster: A list talent, catchy songs, a lusty sense of its own self importance and huge currency in the meme ecosystem. Bradley Cooper, who plays the withering rock star Jackson Maine, and Lady Gaga, who plays the rising pop siren Ally, are apt partners onscreen, and the story strikes many familiar music business notes. It is also among the most discussed films of this year, sparking some genuine questions: Where does Ally live? Why does it only take her about four months to win a Grammy? How does Jackson Maine's hair stay that way? This week's Popcast goes far from the shallow with a crew of rowdy "Star" enthusiasts and anti enthusiasts:	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Music
The greater problems with Craig Borten's slushy screenplay, though, are its extreme earnestness Sergio's lengthy conversation with a female Timorese weaver is a sinkhole of sap and an overemphasis on the love affair between the married Sergio and Carolina Larriera (Ana de Armas), an alluring United Nations economist. They meet in East Timor, lock lips in a downpour, and their ensuing, soft focus romance has the effect of smoothing away any narrative grit or sense of the cerebral knife edge that Sergio walked with such skill. Even his meeting with the infamous Khmer Rouge leader Ieng Sary looks like just a friendly chat. Moreover, the choppiness of the storytelling gives short shrift to the bombing and Sergio's tense interaction with L. Paul Bremer III (Bradley Whitford), President George W. Bush's representative in Iraq. Tasked with restoring order and enabling legal elections, Sergio and his team are appalled by what they view as the United States' excessive use of force and human rights violations. The two men symbolize the eternal push and pull between diplomacy and violence, and their relationship could have given the movie the intellectual heft it so badly needs. "We're mopping up resistance," Bremer tells Sergio at one point, curtly explaining the rising number of detainees. He forgot he was talking to a man who had made a career out of doing just that, and without detaining anyone. Rated R for nudity and violence. In English, Portuguese, Spanish and French, with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 58 minutes. Watch on Netflix.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Movies
With a pandemic, social unrest and electoral uncertainty, this year has been a petri dish of anxiety, angst and decision making based on fear or folly. Stressed About the Election? Don't Take It Out on Your Investments Here's an election prediction you can take to the bank: Whenever the count is over and no matter who wins the presidency, tens of millions of people are going to be elated and millions of others are going to be despondent. But regardless of the emotion driving them, people acting in the heat of the moment may make decisions about their personal finances that prove costly. While those decisions often seem irrational in hindsight, they're completely predictable to people who study behavioral finance, the branch of economics that aims to understand how emotions affect financial choices. In many circles, it has supplanted the traditional economic view that people are rational actors who look to maximize gain and minimize loss. Instead, behavioral finance concedes that most people are prone to being fallible and foolish. For Americans grappling with a pandemic, social unrest and electoral uncertainty, this year has been a petri dish of anxiety, angst and decisions based on fear or folly. Practitioners of behavioral finance have had a field day examining the responses. "From the new day trader up to endowment and hedge fund managers, we're all subject to these biases that don't change," said Emmett Maguire III, director of manager search and selection at Boston Private, a wealth management firm. "There's a physiological and a psychological hard wiring that we can't override." Dan Egan, director of behavioral finance at the roboadviser Betterment, put it another way. "We don't have well organized compartments in our brain for how we feel about circumstances," he said. "We often get strong emotional leakage from one side to another. We're mad at a child and we end up snapping at a co worker." That behavioral bias, Mr. Egan said, is "getting worse with the election." He added, "People are thinking, 'If my side wins, it's going to go well and be great for the economy, and if the other side wins, it's going to be horrible.'" Here is a look at some behavioral finance biases that have affected people's decision making this year and others that are likely to crop up around the election. The good news is that there are ways to minimize their impact, at least on your financial decisions. What you've been feeling: If you were feeling deeply pessimistic about your investments in the spring, even after the market rallied, you were exhibiting signs of what the behavioral economists call "extrapolation bias." But guess what. If you decided to become a day trader in April when the stock market rebounded, and you're thrilled with the gains you've made, you are under the same effect now. Extrapolation bias occurs when people give added weight to current events in the belief that those events will continue. Stefano Giglio, a professor of finance at the Yale School of Management, conducted surveys of investors as the pandemic began. In February, as the coronavirus was just beginning its spread in the United States, investors expected a 6 percent return this year for the S P 500. By mid March, investors were expecting just a 1 percent return, and that expectation stayed there through April even though stocks had begun to rebound. "People across the board became more pessimistic," Professor Giglio said. Yet new investors who had little experience in investing have found themselves performing like hedge fund stars if they started investing in the spring, Mr. Maguire, of Boston Private, said. Since late March, stocks have generally gone up, although they've been more choppy recently. But if those investors think their returns are the result of immense skill and not a bit of good market timing, they could suffer mightily in a market correction. "I fully intend people to keep doing this, but it could end badly for them," Mr. Maguire said. "It's a change in behavior that's explained by the anticipation of gains, which triggers a dopamine response in the brain." Another contributor to anxiety about investing is the availability bias, which means the more you see information repeated, the more you think that information will be true in the long term without examining other potential outcomes. With the pandemic, many people could not help but draw lessons from them previous pandemics, said Michael Liersch, head of advice and planning for Wells Fargo's wealth and investment management division. But, he said, that kind of thinking doesn't work in the long run, even if it makes us feel better in the moment. One is the disjunction effect, in which people want information to be revealed before they make a decision, even if they would make that same decision with or without that information. Knowing the election results is an example. Even if there is a clear victor next week, there are still a lot of unknowns about the incoming administration that might affect investments. "What will be implemented?" Mr. Liersch said. "Is there tax reform? What will change, and what won't change? When we're in this moment, when we don't know the outcomes, a lot of people can't continue to engage." But that's the moment when you should engage, Mr. Liersch said. In other words, who wins the presidential election or which party controls Congress are just parts of a bigger puzzle that investors need to consider. For example, if someone's preferred candidate doesn't win, Mr. Egan said, that person might look to sell whole chunks of his portfolio to detrimental effect. "What we were hearing now from clients is more about anxiety and people saying, 'We want to wait until things are certain,'" Mr. Egan said. "What we're telling people is: 'You'd need the candidates to have radically different policies to cause harm. And there isn't that big of a difference between candidates that would have short term impacts on the stock market.'" What you can do about it: You are subject to these behavioral biases because of the hard wiring in your brain. But how best to manage them? "What we know is these behavioral biases are accentuated in periods of stress," said Scott Clemons, chief investment strategist at the wealth management advisory firm Brown Brothers Harriman. "That alone heightens the risk of giving into that subconscious knee jerk reaction." He said he was already seeing hindsight bias in clients. "It's the thinking that everyone knew the market was going to bounce back, that that was inevitable," he said. "But it wasn't inevitable in April. We were all staring into a black hole." So how do you combat these hard wired biases? Start with going back to your financial plan and analyzing how a sudden drop in your portfolio's value might affect you next year or 10 years from now. Then, in an anxious moment, write down what you're thinking and feeling. This will be valuable to return to later, when chances are your worst fears did not come to pass. Mr. Clemons is pushing clients to record their feelings now, he said, so that however things are in the new year, they have something to look back on during future bouts of anxiety. "In the new year, everyone will say they knew a Biden or a Trump victory is good for markets, or it was bad for the markets," he said. "But no one knows anything right now." In a survey from Betterment released on Wednesday, more than three quarters of respondents said in September that they didn't intend to make an investment change after the election. Doing nothing is fine if that was part of your original plan. But be aware that it is as much a choice as buying or selling. One way to approach any stressful moment is to seek out contrary opinions before making any decision. This will help with what's known as familiarity bias the tendency to seek out things we know in times of uncertainty. That could lead to investing in companies that have their headquarters near where we live or in a company where a friend works. Or it could mean focusing on things we see, like local real estate. "That can create risks in someone's portfolio," Mr. Liersch said. "Who knows what could happen in one area? We need to diversify across the country and the globe." Most important, though, people who are stressed out next week need to look beyond the current moment. It also wouldn't hurt to have some extra cash on hand just in case your hard wired biases take hold and you consider doing something you may later regret.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Your Money
Gavin Kaysen, previously the chef de cuisine at Cafe Boulud in New York City, where he earned the James Beard Rising Star Chef Award and a Michelin star, returned to his Minnesota hometown in 2014 to open Minneapolis' revered Spoon and Stable. This March, he added to his portfolio by opening Bellecour in the Minneapolis suburb of Wayzata; since then, it has become a destination for foodies and Francophiles across the Twin Cities and beyond. He named the bistro after a historic town square in Lyon, France, hometown to Daniel Boulud and Paul Bocuse, both mentors to Mr. Kaysen. ("My time with Daniel was my Ph.D. in this business," he said.) Indeed, Bellecour pays homage to friends and family who were instrumental in Mr. Kaysen's success. Tributes are sprinkled throughout the restaurant: French fry cones are emblazoned with quotes from Mr. Bocuse; the signature house coffee blend is named after Mr. Kaysen's grandmother, Dorothy; a framed photo of her handwritten recipes adorns a wall of the bakery, which serves fresh pastries starting at 7 a.m. The inviting, airy space is located in a prime spot on Lake Street, steps from Lake Minnetonka. Mr. Kaysen's wife, Linda, collaborated on the interior, which features an open kitchen and intimate dining spaces, including a garden room and an outdoor patio, with a sophisticated yet relaxed vibe. "Bellecour is the brother that you're always happy to go hang out with," Mr. Kaysen said. "I want it to always mimic that comfort."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Travel
Public health experts warned on Sunday that the coronavirus pandemic is not going away anytime soon. They directly contradicted President Trump's promise that the disease that has infected more than two million Americans would "fade away" and his remarks that disparaged the value of evidence from coronavirus tests. A day after Mr. Trump told a largely maskless audience at an indoor rally in Tulsa, Okla., that he had asked to "slow down the testing" because it inevitably increased the number of confirmed coronavirus cases, infectious disease experts countered that the latest rise of infections in the United States is real, the country's response to the pandemic is not working and rallies like the president's risk becoming major spreading events. Dr. Tom Inglesby, the director of the Center for Health Security at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, said on "Fox News Sunday" that the spikes in confirmed cases in many states in the South and West are not simply a result of increased testing. Data show that the percentage of tests that are positive is increasing, he said, and in some states is accompanied by increased hospitalizations. In states like Arizona, Texas, North and South Carolina and Florida, he said, "That's a real rise." On "Face the Nation" on CBS, Dr. Scott Gottlieb, the former commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration, said, "We're seeing the positivity rates go up. That's a clear indication there is now community spread underway, and this isn't just a function of testing more." And Dr. Michael T. Osterholm, the director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota, repeated his call for a national plan to respond to the pandemic, calling the existing patchwork of state by state policy "disjointed." In an interview on NBC's "Meet the Press," Dr. Osterholm noted, "We're at 70 percent of the number of cases today that we were at the very height of the pandemic cases in early April." He said that a wave and trough pattern of the virus rising and falling like influenza was one of the scenarios described in an April report that he helped to write. Now, however, the data on how the virus spreads do not support that pattern. "I don't see this slowing down for the summer or into the fall," he said. "I think this is more like a forest fire," he said. "I think that wherever there's wood to burn, this fire is going to burn it." The experts mainly urged greater use of proven interventions to slow the spread of disease, like hand washing, mask wearing and maintaining social distancing when out in public. When asked whether states should consider reversing the levels of reopening, Dr. Inglesby did not recommend a return to lockdown. "Each state has a different story," he said, adding that "leaders should be encouraging people to use the tools we know work." He said indoor gatherings like the president's rally were a concern, as were outdoor demonstrations like the mass protests against police brutality, but to a lesser degree. "We know from what we've seen so far in the last few months," said Dr. Inglesby, "that outdoors is less of a risk than indoors and that mask use has a major impact." The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, he noted, has advised that "the highest risk gatherings are those that are large indoors, where people can't stay apart from each other more than six feet, and where people travel from out of town. And this rally met all of those criteria." He and other public health specialists expressed concerns about the potential for a significant spreading event. Oklahoma has a rapidly rising infection rate, although its absolute numbers are still small. It had a record number of cases 450 and the last five days have been the highest the state has recorded. Deaths in that state have been in the single digits since the end of April.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Health
LISBON Portugal's caretaker government gave in to market pressures on Wednesday and joined Greece and Ireland in seeking an emergency bailout. The decision came after the government was forced to pay much higher rates to sell more debt. Jose Socrates, Portugal's prime minister, said in a televised address Wednesday night that he had requested aid from the European Commission after recognizing that borrowing costs had become unsustainable. "I had always considered outside aid as a last recourse scenario," he said. "I say today to the Portuguese that it is in our national interest to take this step." He did not, however, specify the timing of any bailout. Portugal will probably need about 75 billion euros ( 106.5 billion) in assistance, according to a recent estimate by Jean Claude Juncker, the prime minister of Luxembourg, who presides over meetings of euro zone ministers. Some analysts have suggested that the amount could be as much as 100 billion euros. A Portuguese bailout has long been expected, but the speed with which things moved Wednesday appeared to have taken European officials in Brussels by surprise, leaving the timetable unclear. European leaders have been working to keep the financial contagion from spreading. Lisbon's move now puts pressure on Spain, which has undertaken major economic reforms, budget cuts and a banking clean up to stay out of danger. In a statement the president of the European Commission, Jose Manuel Barroso, said Portugal's request "will be processed in the swiftest possible manner, according to the rules applicable." If the pattern of previous bailouts is repeated, a team of officials will be sent to Lisbon to discuss the conditions of a bailout, which will then need to be agreed upon by European finance ministers. That, however, will probably not happen for several weeks. Caught in a political crisis and facing tough refinancing hurdles, Portugal has also been hit by repeated downgrades by credit rating agencies, sending yields this week on Portuguese government debt to their highest levels since the introduction of the euro. Mr. Socrates, who had been governing without a parliamentary majority, resigned last month after lawmakers rejected his latest austerity package. To break the political deadlock, Portugal is set to hold a general election on June 5. In a separate televised address, Pedro Passos Coelho, the leader of the main Social Democratic opposition party, said that he backed the decision to seek outside help. Adding to the pressure on the government, Portuguese banking executives warned this week that they did not want to take on more sovereign debt, urging the government to negotiate a bridge loan with its European partners. Alongside that of Portuguese banks and companies, "the rating of the country has fallen like never before," Mr. Socrates said. "This is a particularly serious situation for our country." European ministers agreed last May to provide 80 billion euros in loans to Greece over three years as part of a package in which the International Monetary Fund provided an additional 30 billion euros. In November, they also agreed to a rescue package worth up to 85 billion euros for the Irish government. Last month, leaders of the euro zone countries agreed to cut the interest rate charged Greece to help ease its debt burden. No such agreement was made with Ireland because of Dublin's refusal to accede to French and German requests to raise its low corporate tax rate of 12.5 percent. For Portugal, the emergency financing will ensure that it can meet its 20 billion euros of borrowing requirements for the year. But it is likely to set off debate over what conditions will be tied to any rescue package, at a time when Portugal struggles with record unemployment and an economy that is likely to contract 1.3 percent this year, according to a recent forecast from the Bank of Portugal. Further, the government's recent effort to push through an austerity package combining more spending cuts and tax increases prompted Portuguese residents to take to the streets last month in a sign of rising social unrest. "Outside intervention will be positive for our treasury but could be a disaster for our economy," said Diogo Ortigao Ramos, a specialist on fiscal legislation at a law firm, Cuatrecasas, Goncalves Pereira. "Whoever forms the next government, our creditors will have the final word." Mr. Socrates said that the decision to seek help was taken amid expectations that market conditions would continue to worsen for Portugal. Analysts suggested that markets would respond cautiously on Thursday given the uncertainty surrounding the terms of any bailout. "I expect that the news will bring only limited relief" to the yield spread between Portuguese bonds and those of Germany, the reference securities in the euro zone, said Tullia Bucco, economist at UniCredit, adding that "it will not refrain the European Central Bank from delivering a 25 basis point interest rate hike" this week. Earlier on Wednesday, Portugal sold Treasury bills at a much higher cost than last month. It sold 455 million euros (about 646 million) in one year Treasury bills at an average yield of 5.9 percent, compared with 4.33 percent yield when Portugal last sold such bills on March 16. The national debt agency also sold 550 million euros of six month bills at an average yield of 5.12 percent, compared with a yield of 2.98 percent at a previous auction on March 2. The Treasury bill sale came after Moody's on Tuesday cut the sovereign rating of Portugal for the second time in a month. On Wednesday, Moody's also downgraded by one or more notches the senior debt and deposit ratings of seven Portuguese banks.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Global Business
The 2019 slam dunk contest at the N.B.A.'s All Star weekend involved several props, but it was Hamidou Diallo's decision to abandon one that created the dunk that everyone will remember from Saturday night's competition. Diallo, a rookie shooting guard for the Oklahoma City Thunder, initially rolled a ball rack onto the court for his second attempt of the first round. He decided that wasn't right, so he asked "the biggest person in the building" to step into the lane instead. What ensued was a remarkable display of athleticism and creativity. After running up and going into a deep crouch, Diallo exploded into the air, leaping over Shaquille O'Neal, the 7 foot 1 Hall of Fame center, clearing the big man's head, and finishing the dunk with his hand plunged deep inside the basket.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Sports
The music business takes center stage in "Kate Nash: Underestimate the Girl," the appealingly candid documentary that finds the director Amy Goldstein working with her subject to show the financial realities of a career in pop. The British singer songwriter Kate Nash had an early rise to fame, winning prestigious awards and scaling charts at 20. Nearly a decade after her introduction to the spotlight, she still has her passion for performing, but her ambitions have become modest. The film's ho hum concert footage shows that her venues are small, her lyrics plain and her costumes have a do it yourself charm. Nash is simply happy to perform and make a living doing it.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Movies
Questions about Mr. Redstone's mental capacity and related corporate governance issues burst into public view last year when a former girlfriend filed a salacious lawsuit that revealed embarrassing details about his feeble condition and sexual desires. Amid the drama, Mr. Redstone ceded his role as chairman at Viacom and CBS in February of this year but remained on the boards of both companies as chairman emeritus. Then in May, Philippe P. Dauman, his longtime confidant and the chief executive of Viacom at the time, filed a lawsuit claiming that Mr. Redstone lacked the ability to make decisions about his businesses and was being manipulated by his daughter. Mr. Redstone, who has suffered a series of small strokes, has a severe speech impediment. He cannot read, write or do simple arithmetic, according to assertions in various court filings. In videotaped testimony taken May 5, Mr. Redstone relied on an interpreter to answer basic questions. During all this, Viacom has struggled mightily across its television and film businesses. The company's share price has plummeted about 50 percent in the last two years. In the fiscal year ended Sept. 30, Viacom's revenue tumbled 6 percent and its profit plunged 25 percent. The company on Friday also disclosed the pay package for Robert M. Bakish, the longtime Viacom executive who was named chief executive this week. Mr. Bakish's total pay could reach about 12 million a year, with his annual salary adding up to 5.25 million a year for his roles as president and chief executive, as well as chief executive of Viacom's global entertainment group. He is entitled to other bonuses and compensation.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Media
BURNLEY, England They tell the old war stories quite often at Burnley nowadays, and with a certain amount of nostalgic glee. They remember the days not so very long ago when instead of an ice bath to soothe weary legs, the club had a trash can filled with freezing cold water. These memories are shared with perhaps not actual fondness, but something quite close. They can see the absurdity in the fact that again, in very much the recent past Burnley's training facility was so rudimentary that players used to have to get changed at the club's stadium, Turf Moor, and then drive themselves 20 minutes or so to training sessions. Afterward, they had to drive back, sitting in mud caked uniforms. At the time, though, those strictures did not always seem quite so funny. The training facility on the grounds of Gawthorpe Hall, a pristine Elizabethan manor house made Burnley a hard sell to players and, particularly, their agents. It was a collection of modular outbuildings "with water dripping down" from the roof, as one former player, George Boyd, put it, next to a flood prone training field on the banks of the River Calder. This was not, to put it mildly, an attractive workplace environment for a club bobbing in and out of the Premier League every few years. The kindest word Tom Heaton, a former Burnley captain, could think of to describe it was "functional." That all changed in 2017, when work finished on Barnfield, Burnley's state of the art training facility on the other side of the river. Barnfield has all of the delicate touches Premier League players would expect: inspirational slogans painted on the walls; a medical room with floor to ceiling windows and a view of the training fields, reminding the injured where they are supposed to be; an indoor field for when the Calder bursts its banks, as it did this month. It is also a physical manifestation of Burnley's time in the Premier League. The club has spent five of the last six seasons in the richest league in the world, a feat that has brought about 500 million into the club's accounts, thanks mostly to its share of the league's television revenue. For a while this season, it looked as if Burnley's days among the elite could be numbered: The club won only twice in nine games from the end of November to the middle of January, and found itself dancing around the fringes of the struggle to avoid relegation. Though an uptick in form including wins against high flying Leicester City and the slightly more grounded Manchester United has eased those concerns, Barnfield is a reminder that, should Burnley, a club with one of the lowest budgets in the division, ever succumb to economic reality, it will have something beyond happy memories to show for its spell in the Premier League. That idea that the riches on offer in the Premier League should have a material impact on the club's existence was something that Sean Dyche, Burnley's manager, raised in his first meeting with his new employers eight years ago. Burnley had spent one season in the Premier League before that, so when Dyche arrived, he asked "where the Premier League stuff" was. "Not the money," he explained, "but what it brings. I was saying that we had to start building things that mean something." It is an approach shared by Burnley's board, if not always by the team's fans. Mike Garlick, the club's chairman, said he was aware that there had been times when the fans might have preferred for the team to invest more heavily in players, to break its rigid though highly incentivized salary structure and bring in stars. Burnley has always resisted that temptation. Until 2018, it was spending only a little more than half its revenue on wages. "It is run on a break even model," said Kieran Maguire, a lecturer in accounting and finance at the University of Liverpool and the author of "The Price of Football." "There is no debt to the owners, which is remarkable. Without wishing to stereotype, you can tell it is run by a group of northern businessmen." Now that Barnfield is complete, as is a multimillion dollar upgrade of facilities for the disabled at its stadium, Burnley is considering how else it can invest in itself. It is discussing plans to modernize Turf Moor, one of the most atmospheric stadiums in England, but hardly a gleaming beacon of 21st century progress. What is most striking about Burnley is not that the club conceived a plan to use its newfound wealth to improve its infrastructure, but that it has stuck to it. Few teams promoted to the Premier League manage the first step; barely any find that the courage of their convictions survives once they have taken their seat in the casino. There is a stark contrast, certainly, with Burnley's visitor this weekend. Bournemouth's recent history tracks neatly with Burnley: It was promoted in 2015, a year before Burnley's most recent return, and has spent the last five seasons in the Premier League. There remains, though, a risk that this will be Bournemouth's last season in the top flight. It sits only two points clear of a relegation battle that is convoluted, and unpredictable, even by English standards. Bournemouth is a prime example of a far more common approach for young Premier League teams: It has used a considerable proportion of its eye watering broadcast revenues to sign, and pay, players. Since arriving in the top flight, Bournemouth has spent 175 million on players a net, rather than gross, figure. In 2018, its salary sheet accounted for three quarters of its income. That year, its wage bill, on a slightly smaller revenues, was 25 million higher than Burnley's. Maxim Demin, Bournemouth's Russian owner, has invested around 155 million of his own money to prop up the club. Its infrastructure spending, in comparison, is negligible. Bournemouth has, by some distance, the smallest stadium in the Premier League, and the club has expanded it only a little. Bournemouth has been planning a new training facility for some time, in the village of Canford Magna, but work has just started. The delays, in part, explain why Bournemouth's academy remains only a third class facility, meaning the club has long had problems producing its own players. Instead, the club has spent millions on the squad. That is not devoid of merit, according to Maguire. "Bournemouth has more sale able assets within its squad," he said. "The cost of expanding a stadium is high, and the return is both slow and, compared to staying in the Premier League, quite small. So why not invest in the playing staff, if it increases the chances of staying up?"	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Sports
SHANGHAI Wang Bin looked down. A man wearing a blue skintight unitard writhed at his feet. Mr. Wang grinned. This was the moment he had been waiting for. So, too, had Cheng Shi. When Mr. Wang lifted the writhing man and slammed him to the floor for a three count, it completed Mr. Cheng's dream of watching a professional wrestler battling in that most American of fake spectacles who hailed from China. "I feel very proud and excited to see him onstage tonight, and so do all the fans," Mr. Cheng, a 21 year old student who makes fan videos for a Chinese audience, said before the match. He pointed at the screen of his smartphone to indicate the thousands of people watching him on his live broadcast. "We are very, very excited." China presents formidable challenges. Entertainment names like Netflix and Rupert Murdoch have taken aim at China's population of 1.4 billion only to run afoul of the country's tight controls over media. Wrestling's cartoon violence and sometimes salacious story lines could attract unwanted attention from the government. And while it has its fans, American style wrestling as scripted entertainment is largely unheard of among mainland Chinese. "There is no presence of product over here," said John Cena, the square jawed wrestler and action movie star who has learned to speak some Chinese as part of the push. By tackling the language, he added, "I'm kind of a vehicle to leverage what we've done." It has also geared up efforts to introduce a new audience to the suplex, the body slam and the drop kick. W.W.E. has hired four full time social media directors in Shanghai to maintain local language social media accounts for its wrestlers and executives. It is also hosting viewing parties, like one this month in the Chinese city of Guangzhou, in which locals devoured pizza and cream sodas while watching a pay per view wrestling match and playing the W.W.E.'s latest Xbox video game. Success requires exposing Chinese audiences to a new type of entertainment a choreographed drama in which the outcome is known, though its dangers and injuries are sometimes shockingly real. Sports or something that looks like a sport might be different. Sports enjoys thematic support from the government, which is big on hosting international events like the Olympics and promoting sports like soccer. China's push to get soccer into schools and make the country a power in the sport has led companies to pay big sums for broadcast rights. "Sports has historically been underdeveloped in China and online, and a lot of players are looking for ways to monetize that," said Vivek Couto, a founder and a director at Media Partners Asia, an industry research consultant. Professional wrestling could use the eyeballs. Like other media companies, W.W.E. is grappling with the new world of cord cutting, in which viewers drop their cable subscriptions and order shows, a la carte, via the internet. International viewers offer one potential growth area. They make up only about a quarter of the paid subscribers on W.W.E.'s digital subscription service, which is one of the biggest contributors to the company's bottom line. As China shows, international growth isn't always easy. In October, W.W.E. told investors it was still waiting to offer subscriptions directly to Chinese viewers. For now it works with a Chinese video company service called PPTV, which streams the company's weekly flagship shows, called "SmackDown" and "RAW," with real time Mandarin commentary. (Suplex, in case you were wondering, translates as deshi beishuai, or "German style back throw.") PPTV subscriptions start at less than 3 per month, roughly a third of what W.W.E.'s own subscription service costs outside China, and include movies and other shows. Mr. Wang, a 22 year old native of eastern Anhui Province, was an athlete after middle school, a member of the provincial rowing team. He later moved to Shanghai and took up sparring, and caught the attention of representatives from Inoki Genome Federation, a big Japanese wrestling and mixed martial arts promotion. Mr. Wang spent three years in Japan before he was noticed by W.W.E. He signed a three year development deal with the American company and started training in Orlando over the summer in preparation for his China debut. When the moment finally arrived in Shanghai in September, Mr. Wang entered the arena to modern Chinese music. He gave the crowd a traditional Chinese, kung fu style greeting, pressing his right fist into his left palm. His opponent, a wrestler named Bo Dallas, was booed by the Shanghai crowd before Mr. Wang tossed him to the mat, pinning him in a three count on the second try. Mr. Wang doesn't yet have a defined act or character, or even a flashy name. One of the oldest such personas in W.W.E. style wrestling is the foreign heel, or bad guy; those include personas like Mr. Fuji, a Japanese villain played by the late Harry Fujiwara. In an interview, Mr. Wang said he wasn't a big believer in appealing to such nationalistic tropes. "People shouldn't see you for your nationality or ethnic group," he said. "It's less about that and more about what you can do, personally, as a warrior and a figure in the ring."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Media
Bill Withers always sounded like he was strumming the guitar from a seat at his kitchen table or maybe, at his most luxurious, an easy chair in the living room. The ultimate homespun hitmaker, he had an innate sense of what might make a song memorable, and little interest in excess attitude or accouterments. Ultimately Withers reminded us that it's the everyday that is the most meaningful: work, family, love, loss. None of that needs dressing up to feel real; it just needs a good melody. And maybe an unswerving beat. Withers, who died on Monday, is remembered for his hits ("Lean on Me," "Use Me," "Just the Two of Us") more than for his albums, but maybe that's an error. By virtue of how he made music, there's often little difference between the great songs and the very good ones: His singles weren't surgically constructed to be smashes, and his non hits were written in roughly the same way. Idea, groove, hook and that's it. A steadily strummed acoustic guitar mixes it up with a clavinet, bass and drums; later, a string section drifts in. Some combination of these parts covers most of Withers's debut album, "Just as I Am." The record's fabulously stripped down quality commands you to focus on Withers's melodies, to get cozy with his winningly imperfect voice, to feel the hands being lain on the instruments in the studio. After the LP's first three tracks, all classics ("Harlem," "Grandma's Hands" and "Ain't No Sunshine"), we get to "Sweet Wanomi," with a summery groove and lyrics celebrating the tender side of desire. Like so many of his songs, there are only a couple of chords and no bridge, plus a beat that subtly turns folk music into funk. One of the most tenderhearted songs in the Withers songbook is also one of his most aggrieved. It's written from the perspective of a man who has just found out that a long ago lover had his child without telling him. "Can I see her?" he pleads. "Does she know/I'm her daddy?" It starts with a lonely acoustic guitar and a drizzle of fingers on a hand drum. By the time he arrives at the title line, letting his syllables linger and sometimes verge into a growl, Withers sounds bewildered by his own sadness. "I can't play the guitar or the piano, but I made a career out of writing songs on guitars and piano," Withers told The New York Times in 2015, soon after he was elected to the Rock Roll Hall of Fame. "I never learned music. I just did it." That may be more or less true, but on his debut album, the executive Clarence Avant brought in a crack team that included Booker T. Jones and Stephen Stills. On "Do It Good," over a two chord vamp, Withers acknowledges in a spoken interlude that when he first came into the studio, he felt as green as a sprout. He quotes the counsel Jones gave him: "Don't worry about it. Just do what you do, and do it good." 'Who Is He (and What Is He to You)' (1972) Before becoming a household name, Withers spent nine years as a Navy mechanic. He left shortly after the Gulf of Tonkin affair, and never had to serve in Vietnam. But "I Can't Write Left Handed" is written from the perspective of a G.I. whose right arm was shot off in the Vietnam War; it's the closest Withers ever came to penning a protest song. As the narrator asks someone to help him write a letter to his mother, there's no big climax or rousing chorus just a slowly unfolding story of heartbreak, as a young man tries to make sense of what's transpired and searches for a way forward. Think of "Liza" as a more intimate (and, yes, far less anthemic) counterpart to "Lean on Me." After dedicating the song to his niece, accompanied only by an electric piano evoking nursery lullabies, Withers sings: "I know what it means to need a shoulder/So lay your head on mine." Whereas on "Lean on Me," his voice was hoisted up by a full string section, on "Liza" it stays at a single register, like an elder telling a long story where the plot is not really the point. As he sings, you can almost feel the warmth of his breath. This is the closest Withers ever got to an epic work, but it's still Bill we're talking about: Even a 10 minute track has a certain modesty to it. For the first half, a throbbing beat and a textured blend of acoustic and electric piano carry the track along as he sings a paean to Los Angeles, where he settled after serving in the military and eventually found stardom. For the second half, with the rhythm gone, he drifts back through those same lyrics as if savoring a memory. There's no big new formal section, or dazzling instrumental solo. Simply not his style. 'It Ain't Because of Me Baby' (1977) Call it the "Hotline Bling" of the '70s a song whose lyrics basically say: Things used to be so good between us. I'm still just a phone call away. Don't you know better than not to call? And just as with Drake, the self righteousness manages to reconstitute as charm. "It Ain't Because of Me Baby" comes from "Menagerie," which to that point was Withers's most thoroughly produced album. But even through a slick architecture of strings and horns, his unpretentious romanticism cut straight through.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Music
They line up a dozen deep behind the Capitol in Washington, mostly black General Motors S.U.V.s Chevrolet Tahoes and Suburbans or their GMC equivalents waiting to shuttle important people to important places. Or to lunch at Chipotle. Look! There goes Joe Biden in an armored Suburban. Here are the latest GMCs, the Yukon (called Tahoe, over at the Chevy store) and Yukon XL (a.k.a. Suburban). Except for blunter noses and bits of trim, the GMCs are practically identical to the Chevys. All four models have been redesigned for 2015, but they haven't changed all that much. They aren't pretending to be tough crossovers; rather, these are genuine, hulking S.U.V.s with big V8s under their hoods, heavy steel ladder frames under their heavy steel bodies and hitches at their tails, ready to tow up to 8,500 pounds. Both have room for six to nine people in three rows of seats or one V.I.P., four aides and a four person security detail. The same basic vehicle platform is also the basis for the Cadillac Escalade and the stretched Escalade ESV. But missing from this new generation are the pickup bed versions previously sold as the Chevrolet Avalanche and Cadillac Escalade EXT. If anyone misses those weird truck S.U.V. combos, their grief is well hidden. Beyond that, the XL's tail overhangs the rear wheels by 6.4 inches more than the regular Yukon's. And while the new versions have grown a minuscule one tenth of an inch in total length, all other dimensions match those of the 2014 editions. I drove a well equipped 4 wheel drive Yukon SLT the mainstream trim level on 20 inch wheels. It carried a sticker price of 65,515 and was powered by a 5.3 liter version of G.M.'s latest small block V8 engine, with direct fuel injection, variable valve timing, 16 pushrods and a cylinder deactivation system to stretch fuel mileage under light loads. The engine is rated at 355 horsepower when running on gasoline and 380 horses on E85 fuel, which contains up to 85 percent ethanol. A conventional 6 speed automatic is the only transmission. I also tested a Yukon XL Denali on 22 inch wheels, also with 4 wheel drive; with a sticker price of 77,470, it represented the glistening top of the line. Denali models both the regular and XL versions are powered by a 6.2 liter V8 shared with the Escalade. It's rated at 420 horsepower whether on straight gas or E85. The Denali uses the same transmission as other Yukons but is geared for better acceleration. Passing up the options ladled on my test trucks will knock the prices down significantly. A base rear drive Yukon SLE is 47,330, and the Yukon XL SLE starts at 50,030. But even the cheapest Yukon Denali is 63,675. The front suspension on both models comes straight from G.M.'s pickups, whereas the rear suspension is a solid axle on coil springs. The coil springs are better for ride quality than the leaf springs of the pickups, but not as sophisticated as the all independent systems of competitors like the Ford Expedition and Mercedes Benz GL Class. So on bumpy surfaces there's some noticeable jiggle to each Yukon's back end. It's not terribly distracting, but it's noticeable, especially on the shorter version. On smooth surfaces the XL's ride motions are somewhat more restrained (particularly with the Denali's magnetic ride shock absorbers) but these are massive machines weighing from 5,400 to 6,000 pounds. Bumps don't stand a chance. The XL's additional length rewards third row passengers with 10 extra inches of legroom, as well as an added 24 cubic feet of cargo space behind the third seat. It's also easier to get in and out of the XL's third row through the larger rear doors. But all that length makes the XL clumsy to drive in the city. There's plenty of power, the steering is accurate if a bit numb, the transmission works brilliantly and the brakes do an amazing job dealing with so much mass. Yet despite backup cameras and radar parking aids, parallel parking takes courage. These S.U.V.s have evolved. They look better, inside and out, than before. Some careful carving has given the flanks of the Yukons character and LED lighting at front and rear gives them a strong presence at night. They get slightly better fuel economy, too, with their more advanced engine technology. The Yukon 4 by 4 is rated at 16 m.p.g. in town and 22 on the highway; estimates for the larger XL Denali 4 by 4 are 14/20 m.p.g. Neither comes across as apologetic for its size or shy about its grandeur. But I'd say the subdued three section grille of the regular Yukon is handsomer and more dignified than the Denali's chrome colander. No matter the trim, the majestic front seats are tremendously comfortable. And the individual chairs in the second row benches are available were only slightly less so. The second and third rows fold flat. G.M. may be reeling after recall upon recall, but its recent progress in quality is obvious. The grade of materials in these big, hugely profitable vehicles is high enough to be German. There's more flash and shiny bits than in a Mercedes or Audi, but everything feels supple and looks well finished. The Denali's partly digital dashboard is nice enough, but it is simply a re creation of the ordinary Yukon's conventional instrumentation.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Automobiles
With their bright saucer eyes, button noses and plump, fuzzy bodies, slow lorises a group of small, nocturnal Asian primates resemble adorable, living stuffed animals. But their innocuous looks belie a startling aggression: They pack vicious bites loaded with flesh rotting venom. Even more surprising, new research reveals that the most frequent recipients of their toxic bites are other slow lorises. "This very rare, weird behavior is happening in one of our closest primate relatives," said Anna Nekaris, a primate conservationist at Oxford Brookes University and lead author of the findings, published Monday in Current Biology. "If the killer bunnies on Monty Python were a real animal, they would be slow lorises but they would be attacking each other." Even before this new discovery, slow lorises already stood out as an evolutionary oddity. Scientists know of just five other types of venomous mammals: vampire bats, two species of shrew, platypuses and solenodons (an insectivorous mammal found in Cuba, the Dominican Republic and Haiti). Researchers are just beginning to untangle the many mysteries of slow loris venom. One key component resembles the protein found in cat dander that triggers allergies in humans. But other unidentified compounds seem to lend additional toxicity and cause extreme pain. Strangely, to produce the venom, the melon sized primates raise their arms above their head and quickly lick venomous oil secreting glands located on their upper arms. The venom then pools in their grooved canines, which are sharp enough to slice into bone.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Science
Rafer Johnson, who carried the American flag into Rome's Olympic Stadium in August 1960 as the first Black captain of a United States Olympic team and went on to win gold in a memorable decathlon duel, bringing him acclaim as the world's greatest all around athlete, died on Wednesday at his home in the Sherman Oaks section of Los Angeles. He was 86. Johnson never competed after that decathlon triumph. He became a good will ambassador for the United States and a close associate of the Kennedy family, taking a leadership role in the Special Olympics, which were championed by Eunice Kennedy Shriver, and joining Robert F. Kennedy's entourage during Kennedy's presidential campaign in 1968. He was remembered especially for helping to wrestle the senator's assassin to the ground in Los Angeles in 1968. Johnson's national profile was largely molded at the 1960 Olympics, one of the most celebrated in the history of the Games, a moment when a host of African American athletes burst triumphantly onto the world stage. Muhammad Ali, known then as Cassius Clay, captured boxing gold in the light heavyweight division. Wilma Rudolph swept to victory in the women's 100 and 200 meter dashes and combined with her Tennessee State teammates for gold in the 4 x 100 relay. Oscar Robertson helped take the United States basketball team to a gold medal. Johnson had been chosen to speak on behalf of the American Olympians at a sendoff rally at City Hall in New York. He "flawlessly called out the names of the dozens of teammates who stood at his side," David Maraniss wrote in "Rome 1960: The Olympics That Changed the World" (2008). "He had a firm grasp of the occasion, and team officials took notice. His performance in New York, along with his stature as the gold medal favorite in the decathlon, convinced the officials that Johnson should be the U.S. captain in Rome and the first black athlete to carry the U.S. flag at an Olympic opening ceremonies. "There could be no more valuable figure in the propaganda war with the Soviet Union, which wasted no opportunity to denounce the racial inequities of the United States." Johnson's narrow decathlon victory over C.K. Yang of Taiwan and U.C.L.A., a good friend, provided a thrilling moment in its own right. Johnson, a 25 year old graduate of U.C.L.A. and a chiseled 6 feet 3 inches and 200 pounds, was the favorite going into the two day decathlon, a 10 event test of versatility, strength, speed and endurance that included sprints, high hurdles, pole vaulting, the high jump and broad jump, the javelin and discus throws, and the 1,500 meter run. But he faced a stiff challenge in Rome from the 27 year old Yang, who was representing Formosa, the Olympic designation at the time for Taiwanese athletes. Both were trained by Elvin Drake, known as Ducky, the U.C.L.A. track and field coach. The decathlon duel was decided in its final event, the 1,500 meters, in which Yang was especially strong. Johnson, leading on points, didn't have to win the event to capture the gold medal, but he did need to finish within 10 seconds of Yang. "I planned to stick with him like a buddy in combat," Johnson told The Los Angeles Times in 1990. "I had one other advantage, and I don't think C.K. knew this at the time. This was my last decathlon. I was prepared to run as fast as I had to in this last race of my life." Yang, who died in 2007, recalled, "I knew he would never let go of me unless he collapsed." Johnson finished 1.2 seconds behind Yang, good enough to capture gold, with Yang getting silver and Kuznetsov capturing bronze. He met Robert Kennedy at an awards ceremony soon after the Rome Games and became part of the senator's campaign for the 1968 Democratic presidential nomination. He was escorting a pregnant Ethel Kennedy through a crowd of supporters at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles on June 5, 1968 moments after her husband had claimed victory in the California Democratic primary when Kennedy was fatally shot by Sirhan Sirhan, a Palestinian immigrant who had been angry at Kennedy for his support of Israel. Johnson and his fellow Kennedy supporter Roosevelt Grier, the former star defensive tackle for the Giants and the Los Angeles Rams, joined with others, including the author George Plimpton, in subduing Sirhan. "My hand clamped down on the weapon," Johnson recalled in his memoir, "The Best That I Can Be" (1998, with Philip Goldberg). "Rosey's hand came down on mine. With a dozen others pushing and shoving, we forced Sirhan onto a steam table, then to the floor. I twisted Sirhan's fingers to free up the weapon." Rafer Lewis Johnson was born on Aug. 18, 1934, in Hillsboro, Texas, south of Dallas, to Lewis and Alma (Gibson) Johnson. When he was about 18 months old, his parents moved to an African American neighborhood in Dallas, where they lived amid poverty and segregation. The family went to California when Rafer was a youngster and eventually settled in Kingsburg, in the agricultural San Joaquin Valley. The town had many people of Swedish descent, and he would remember that they welcomed his family. But life was still hard. His father worked in a cannery, among other jobs, and for a year the family lived in a nearby railroad boxcar. But as Johnson recalled it, things were far better than they had been in Texas. "I don't care if I never see Texas again," he once told ESPN. "If my family had stayed in Texas, I not only wouldn't have represented the United States in the Olympic Games, I wouldn't have ever gone to college." Johnson excelled in football, basketball and baseball as well as track and field in high school, but he focused on the decathlon, inspired by seeing the Olympic gold medalist Bob Mathias in action in nearby Tulare, Calif. He entered U.C.L.A. in 1954 and played for the renowned coach John Wooden's basketball team there while training for decathlons. He also became president of the student body. His Olympic triumph behind him, Johnson visited many countries in the early 1960s as a good will ambassador for the State Department. He acted on television shows and in Hollywood movies, including "Wild in the Country" (1961) with Elvis Presley and Tuesday Weld. He was also a sports broadcaster in Los Angeles. In 1968, Eunice Kennedy Shriver, a driving force in the creation of the Special Olympics for people with intellectual and physical disabilities, drew Johnson into the organization. He became a founder of its Southern California chapter and was later named its chairman. He also did promotional work for Hershey, Reebok and other companies. Johnson married Elizabeth Thorsen in 1971. She survives him, along with his brother Jimmy Johnson, a former cornerback for the San Francisco 49ers and a member of the Pro Football Hall of Fame; two children, Josh Johnson and Jennifer Johnson Jordan, who was a member of the U.S. women's beach volleyball team at the 2000 Sydney Olympics and is now a volleyball coach at U.C.L.A.; and four grandchildren. Johnson's final moment in the Olympic spotlight came when he climbed a precarious 99 steps at the Los Angeles Coliseum to light the caldron for the 1984 Games. "I was, in a sense, an Olympian again, preparing to will my body to do something exceptional," he wrote in his memoir. "Was I concerned about making it to the top of the stairs? Yes. Was I thinking about whether I might trip or fall? Yes. Did I have any doubt that I would come through? No."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Sports
NBC's prime time presidential forum on Wednesday with Hillary Clinton and Donald J. Trump drew nearly 15 million viewers, beating many of the debates held during the primary season, according to Nielsen statistics. The sizable audience is good news for television executives who are anticipating record ratings for this fall's presidential debates. It may have been bad news for The forum, broadcast live from the Intrepid Sea, Air Space Museum in Manhattan, aired on MSNBC and NBC broadcast affiliates, and it produced some memorable moments, including Mr. Trump expressing his admiration for President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia. Still, Mr. Lauer's perceived gaffes he was accused by critics of sloppiness and unfairness, among other journalistic sins dominated headlines on Thursday. Mrs. Clinton's team even emailed a fund raising solicitation with the subject line "Matt Lauer." The note described a moment during the forum when Mr. Lauer did not challenge a false assertion by Mr. Trump about his views on the Iraq War.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Media
"The Call of the Wild," Jack London's gripping 1903 novel, tells the story of a California house dog who discovers his inner wolf. The latest movie adaptation, directed by Chris Sanders, is, strictly speaking, the saga of a human performer who channels his inner pooch. Buck, the heroic St. Bernard Scotch shepherd mix of the book, is now a computer generated creation. Terry Notary, the movement coach who taught actors how to mimic simians on the recent "Planet of the Apes" films, played the dog on the set before animation, in what the film bills as a "live action reference performance." On the evidence, he was quite credible; any cries of "good boy!" that ring out from viewers will only seem creepy in retrospect.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Movies
The search for treatments and vaccines to curb transmission of the new coronavirus is in overdrive. Fortunately, there are a number of promising candidates thanks to the U.S. government's investment in biomedical research and development. Since the 2003 SARS outbreak, the United States has spent nearly 700 million of taxpayer money on coronavirus research more than any other country through the National Institutes of Health. Yet the question right now for Americans thousands of whom are forced to ration their insulin and face astronomical bills for live saving drugs is not only when these treatments and vaccines will become available, but at what price. As the world's leader in public financing of biomedical research, the U.S. government has the opportunity to set a precedent to ensure that medicines developed with public funding are accessible and affordable to the public; this will have enormous implications not only how for we deal with the coronavirus, but also for the crisis of unaffordable medicines in America. Health Secretary Alex Azar recently said that he could not guarantee coronavirus treatments or vaccines would be affordable, despite taxpayers' significant investment in their development. Faced with public backlash led by the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, Mr. Azar backtracked, although details on how the administration would keep prices down remain unclear.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Opinion
One evening in 2007, Preston Miller found himself at a birthday party full of "crazy talented people." A freshman in Fordham University's B.F.A. program with the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, he was surrounded by the likes of Wynton Marsalis, Desmond Richardson and a mentor, the Ailey dancer Matthew Rushing. At one point, Mr. Miller recalled, "Matthew leaned over to me and said, 'Man, if we wanted to, we could go out tonight and turn New York out, if we all got together.' " That got him to thinking. "There's this level of dancer who's at the top of the food chain where they dance, but they don't have the opportunities I did, as a student, to hop across to Juilliard or SUNY Purchase and dance with them," Mr. Miller, 26, said recently. "I was at Fordham, and New York City Ballet was right there, there were ballerinas in my class, and I was dancing at Ailey. These arts organizations were right next to each other, but no one was talking to each other." He envisioned a project allowing dancers of different genres not only to share a stage, but to collaborate as well. The result, seven years later, is "Enemy Within," an 18 minute performance film starring Mr. Rushing, 41; Tiler Peck, 25, of City Ballet; Samantha Figgins, 24, of Complexions Contemporary Ballet; and the Internet sensation Marquese Scott, 32, an animation dancer. "Enemy," after playing at the Cinedans festival in Amsterdam and the Berkshire International Film Festival, was released on iTunes this month. Mr. Miller, who choreographed the film's dances, had been working toward it throughout college, bringing together dancers from varied disciplines for his senior show. He created a piece for City Ballet's Joaquin De Luz, Ailey's Clifton Brown and the drummer Ali Jackson. "I had a different language for everybody," he said. After bringing Mr. Brown and the breakdancer Bboy Machine together for a video in 2009, the idea of a film solidified. Mr. Miller said he "didn't just want to tape things," but also "wanted to take it to the next level with an element of storytelling." Film seemed an apt way to reach to do this. He began researching potential dancers, consulting with Mr. Rushing and other friends. Mr. Rushing talked up Ms. Peck. "I had been watching Tiler her whole career," Mr. Rushing said in New York recently. "She has this quality most ballerinas don't have, this freedom. Whenever Tiler's onstage, your eye goes right to her." Mr. Miller constantly heard about Ms. Figgins as an exciting young dancer and half of "the Figgins twins" (her twin sister, Jenelle, performs with Dance Theater of Harlem). And Mr. Scott famed on YouTube for his eye popping, stop motion style kept coming up "in conversations with people who weren't artists," Mr. Miller said. "Everyone knew Marquese." That Mr. Miller succeeded in corralling all four dancers says as much about his taste as his persuasion skills (he also raised 35,000 for the film from board members of United Artists Initiative, which he started to promote the fine arts to those under 30). Ms. Peck recalled: "I just got an email one day saying, 'Hi, this is Preston.' I had no idea who he was. I was like, 'Oh gosh, I don't have time to do anything extra right now.' Then he was like: 'I got your name from Matthew Rushing. You'll be doing it with him.' And I was like, 'O.K., I'm in.' " Preston Miller, left, with the director David Anderson, envisioned and choreographed the film "Enemy Within." Mr. Scott said he liked the idea of working "with other dancers that do a different style from me, but actually having a meaning behind it not just making a video." Last June, Mr. Miller and the dancers gathered for a three day shoot at a high school outside Chicago. The director, David Anderson, had never shot dance before. He watched dance films to prepare, but, oddly, found kung fu movies more helpful. "There's a lot of big movements, two people moving together," he said. On the set, he said, he studied the dancers, "walking around and finding some angles that were flattering." "But," he added, "I didn't see the choreography until Day 1." Neither, for that matter, did the dancers, who learned their parts separately, from assistants. Mr. Miller said his choreography aimed to play to their strengths: Mr. Rushing's "liquid butter" sensuality; Ms. Peck's classical virtuosity and "competition, spitfire spirit"; and Ms. Figgins's earthy fierceness. Mr. Scott, whose style is based in improvisation, was a tougher fit. "I asked him to stretch a bit," Mr. Miller said. "I said, 'I'm going to use my language, and then let's fill in the gaps.' He met me halfway." "Enemy" explores the idea of insecurity, as it affects three characters (Ms. Figgins embodies their inner demon). Ms. Peck, Mr. Rushing and Mr. Scott begin seated at a table, performing a repeated gestural motif, then solos and duets in vignettes. Insecurity was a subject close to the dancers' hearts. "It's something we all deal with on a regular basis and don't necessarily want to admit," Ms. Figgins said. And Mr. Rushing, who partners Ms. Peck in "Enemy," found himself more nervous than he expected. "Because I'm a modern dancer, rarely do I partner a woman on point," he said. "Considering I haven't done it since high school, you start getting a little 'Ooooh my God.'" Though there was little time for bonding on the set, all four dancers spoke of the experience as pushing their art to new levels.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Dance
Ms. Chiang said its well thought out floor plan, generous ceiling heights and multiple outdoor spaces set it apart from other town houses on the market. "Some of the houses, when you go to the high floors the fourth and fifth the ceiling is compromised," she said. In this one, most of the ceilings are 10 feet or higher. Built in 1879, the town house was altered in the neo Georgian style in the 1930s. Large scale rooms and gracious features evoke a sense of grandeur, among them an expansive entry hall with a decorative fireplace and an original sweeping balustrade, and a second floor parlor with French doors opening onto a Juliet balcony. The parlor, toward the front of the house, is covered in imported Baltic pine woodwork. On the same floor, toward the back, is a formal dining room, with striking peacock blue lacquered walls and a wood burning fireplace with blue marble accents that opens onto a terrace. Designed for entertaining, the house has a butler's pantry with a sink, a dishwasher and a blue marble counter, and a back staircase that leads to the ground floor kitchen, which is decidedly homier. Four seats in the kitchen pull up to a large turquoise lava stone counter surrounded by high end appliances, including the seamlessly concealed refrigerator and dishwasher. An adjacent family room and dining area overlook the patio garden. The third floor consists of a 340 square foot master bedroom with blue walls and an en suite marble bath toward the front of the house. Toward the back is a home office/library and his and hers dressing rooms. Only a handful of rooms escape the decidedly blue palette found throughout, including a fourth floor junior suite with en suite bath that opens onto a 245 square foot terrace. A fifth floor bedroom with en suite steam shower is being used as a gym. A large luggage closet on that floor is currently dedicated to golf equipment (the owner ranks among the top golfers on Wall Street). There is also a finished basement that houses mechanical equipment, a laundry room and a walk in cedar storage closet.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Real Estate
Philippe Corbe almost didn't go out that night in February 2017. He had a nonstop schedule as a New York based correspondent for the French radio station RTL, a job that required waking up in the middle of the night to appear on early morning newscasts in France. Covering the United States presidential election and its aftermath had left him depleted, and he also had just finished a book about the gay nightclub shooting in Orlando, Fla. He had written for the first time about his own struggles as a gay man growing up in Brittany, a conservative rural region in northwest France. "I was not only physically but emotionally exhausted," Mr. Corbe said. He fell asleep early that evening, but not before setting an alarm for 11 p.m. Javier Miguel Cespedes, 44, was overcoming a similar reluctance about continuing his evening. After dinner with friends, something compelled him to go out for one more drink. As he stood at the bar at Industry, an unpretentious Midtown Manhattan gay bar that draws an international crowd, he noticed a man still wearing his winter coat and silently admired his elegant profile. Mr. Corbe had noticed Mr. Cespedes, too, and had worried that if he stepped away to check his coat, someone else would take his spot at the bar. But Mr. Corbe was too nervous to make the first move. "I'm not good at talking to men, I'm too shy," he said. As he was heading back to his apartment that evening, he received a call from Paris informing him about the shooting at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando. Hours later, Mr. Corbe was on a plane to Florida. He interviewed grieving family members, Pulse regulars, and a survivor who had hidden inside the club. As a reporter, he had been proximate to tragedy before, but this time felt different. He spent a sleepless night writing an essay about the shooting and his own relationship to clubs like Pulse. "These really are sanctuaries," he said, "bubbles of fresh air for a few hours of relief." The essay went viral in France, and Mr. Corbe was asked to expand it into a book. "J'irai Danser a Orlando" ("I Will Dance in Orlando") was published by Grasset in 2017. Mr. Corbe finally had forthright conversations about his sexuality with his parents and brother, who had previously talked around the subject. Mr. Corbe continued to return to Industry with a new appreciation for the fragility, and importance, of such spaces. Then came that night in February when he stood silently next to Mr. Cespedes. He didn't know it at the time, but Mr. Cespedes had his own journey as an outsider. Mr. Cespedes was born in Cuba; he was 5 when he and his family arrived in the United States as refugees in 1980. He lived in Texas, Louisiana and New York before settling in Elizabeth, N.J. Mr. Cespedes's parents, Maria Cespedes Perez Bello and Celestino Rodolfo Cespedes, divorced shortly after their immigration. His mother, who had been a child psychiatrist in Cuba, worked as a cashier, supporting two children on an annual salary of 11,000. Ms. Bello instilled in her children a fierce independence and an appreciation for hard work. Mr. Cespedes's sister, Karina Cespedes, received a Ph.D. in ethnic studies from the University of California, Berkeley and currently teaches at the University of Central Florida. Mr. Cespedes, who works as a project manager for a corporate office, paid off his student loans by age 29 and then bought and fully paid off an apartment on Manhattan's Upper West Side. "I wanted the freedom," he said. "If I felt like living in Paris for a year, I wanted to be able to do that." After a two year marriage ended in 2015, he focused on work and spending time with friends. By the time he stood next to Mr. Corbe at Industry, he felt ready to jump back in the dating pool, but felt a visceral antipathy to dating apps. Fortunately, Mr. Cespedes was more courageous than Mr. Corbe. "I just said, 'hi,'" he recalled. The two embarked on a lively conversation in English, neither of their first languages, during which Mr. Cespedes, who had recently traveled to Paris, tried out his French. ("It was really bad," Mr. Corbe admitted later.) The two eventually took the conversation to Mr. Corbe's apartment nearby, where they played their favorite songs for each other and danced in the living room. The next day, Mr. Corbe suggested that they go see a French film playing nearby. The following day, they watched the Super Bowl, and Mr. Corbe ate nachos for the first time. By the end of the weekend it was clear to both of them that the relationship was going to be serious. "We don't 'date' in France," Mr. Corbe said. "We don't have a word for it. You're with someone or you're not. And from that weekend, I was with him, and that was it. It was as simple as that." In January 2018, Mr. Cespedes took a job in Washington, a career move he had planned before meeting Mr. Corbe. They tried to keep up their spirits as they faced the prospect of a long distance relationship. Mr. Corbe drove Mr. Cespedes to his new apartment and helped him get settled. On their final morning together, they had breakfast at a diner, delaying the inevitable departure. Finally, Mr. Corbe got up to go. "I thought, that doesn't make any sense," Mr. Cespedes said. "I had finally found somebody I knew I could be with and now because of obligations I had to go." Over the next six months, they spoke on the phone for hours every day. Mr. Corbe regularly took the bus or train to Washington, waking up at 3 a.m. to appear live on air in France. "I remember when Billy Graham died, thinking how strange it was that I was doing a live story about an evangelical preacher while I was sitting in my boyfriend's walk in closet," he said. By that summer, Mr. Corbe made up his mind to propose. He visited the Tiffany store in Manhattan three times, in part because he wanted to pick the right ring, but also because browsers were provided with a glass of champagne. The couple continued to travel together, and on a trip to Paris last August, a friend lent them an apartment with an amazing view of the city. Mr. Corbe produced a bottle of champagne and presented Mr. Cespedes with his favorite dish from a Parisian restaurant, Camembert with honey. Then he proposed. Mr. Cespedes accepted enthusiastically. A few weeks later, Mr. Cespedes told Mr. Corbe that he was heading back to New York; he let his employer know that the situation wasn't working for him. With their ties to many disparate places, the couple had a hard time settling on a wedding location. Paris? New York? Ultimately, they decided on a more unexpected option. In May 2018, on the way to visit Mr. Cespedes's mother, who now lives in Santa Fe, N.M., they stopped in Marfa, a small town in Far West Texas that Mr. Corbe had been visiting for the last decade. They stayed at the Paisano Hotel, famous for having lodged Rock Hudson, Elizabeth Taylor and James Dean during the filming of "Giant" in 1956. Despite the triple digit temperatures, Mr. Cespedes was as entranced by the town's expansive skies and vibrant arts community as his fiance. In April, the couple were legally married in a ceremony at the Bronx County Courthouse, because Mr. Corbe wasn't sure whether he would be transferred back to France. (His contract in the United States ended up being renewed for one more year.) A few weeks later, two dozen friends and family members traveled to this remote spot in West Texas, 200 miles from the nearest airport, for the spiritual ceremony. It was only the second time that Mr. Corbe's parents had been in the country. "If I had been told 10 years ago or even five! that my parents would be here in Texas to see their son being married to a man," Mr. Corbe said, laughing at the improbability. On June 1, Mr. Corbe and Mr. Cespedes were married by the Rev. Mike Wallens, the vicar at St. Paul's Episcopal Church, in a ceremony that incorporated English, Spanish and French. Jerome Godefroy, Mr. Corbe's friend and fellow journalist at RTL, translated for Mr. Corbe's parents, who speak only French. The couple wore daisies in their lapels; when they looked at each other they began tearing up, and so they spent a portion of the ceremony gazing down at their shoes. The reception was held in the Paisano Hotel's Rock Hudson suite, where the guests mingling on the terrace were startled by a loud clap of thunder and a torrent of rain. Inside the suite, several French speaking guests quoted a popular saying: "mariage pluvieux, mariage heureux," or rainy wedding, happy marriage. After the storm passed, Mr. Corbe ventured outside to the balcony and beckoned Mr. Cespedes over. They stood with their arms around each other, admiring a faint rainbow emerging from the storm clouds. Two days after the ceremony, Mr. Corbe's mother fell ill and was taken to the University Medical Center in El Paso. Mr. Corbe spoke with her over the phone, telling her how much he loved her and how proud he had been to stand next to her at the wedding. "Je sais bien"("I know it well"), he recalled her saying through the respirator. She died the following morning. "I loved her so much," Mr. Corbe wrote in an email. "And it meant the world to me to see her with me in that church."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Fashion & Style
Tuvan throat singing was never in my repertoire. I had never heard of Tuva, a small Russian republic north of Mongolia. And until the third week of "Listening to World Music," a free online course taught by a University of Pennsylvania professor, I did not know that the human throat was capable of producing two notes simultaneously. But after listening to a lecture on Tuvan culture and history and viewing throat singing videos, I was hooked on the sound a deep buzz saw with high overtone whistles and was happy to watch the assigned 90 minute concert by a touring Tuvan ensemble. I wrote the required essay that night, the Tuvan steppes still on my mind. Three days later, I was given five essays by classmates to grade. (With 36,000 students enrolled, peer grading was the only practical way that Coursera, the company offering the course, could assess students' work.) I had my doubts about the process, but to my surprise, the process was interesting and useful and taught me as much as the lectures did. Some of the essays were remarkably good, especially the first one I read, from a classmate who tackled a question I had avoided, on the view of Arjun Appadurai, a sociocultural anthropologist, that modernity necessarily means rupture. (Not what I was expecting from a world music course.) The classmate described her family's migration experience, and concluded: "Appadurai says modernity is rupture, but I say it's rapture." Enraptured myself, I gave her the top score, a 10.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Education
FRANKFURT The euro zone remains vulnerable to shocks because of weak banks and incomplete regulatory safeguards, the International Monetary Fund said Friday, in a warning to European leaders not to slacken their efforts to build a more resilient financial system. In its first official assessment of the European Union financial system, the I.M.F. urged political leaders to show resolve in addressing the remaining weaknesses in the structure of the euro zone. Unfinished tasks include creation of a mechanism for winding down failed banks, and a system to guarantee customer deposits in order to prevent runs on banks, the I.M.F. said. The fund praised the decision by euro zone leaders last year to concentrate bank supervision in the hands of the European Central Bank, rather than solely with national regulators who have sometimes been reluctant to impose tough measures on their home banks. But, in a 60 page report, the fund also said that a lot of work remained to be done. "More forceful action is warranted to cement recent gains in market confidence and end the crisis," the I.M.F. said.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Global Business
F.D.A. Approves the First Vaccine for Dengue Fever, but Limits Its Use The Food and Drug Administration has approved the first vaccine for dengue, Dengvaxia, but placed significant restrictions on its use because the vaccine has been shown to put some people at heightened risk for a severe form of the disease. In clearing the vaccine, the agency acknowledged the serious public health benefit of slowing a disease that affects hundreds of millions of people around the world. The decision may also help a struggling product whose use has stalled because of concerns over its possible risks. "It tells the world that if properly used, the vaccine can be effective," said Duane Gubler, an emeritus professor at Duke NUS Medical School who is one of the inventors of a competing dengue vaccine made by Takeda, and has consulted in the past for Sanofi, which makes Dengvaxia. Sanofi has sold Dengvaxia overseas since 2015, but the vaccine hit a major roadblock in 2017 after the Philippines, which had widely distributed the product to schoolchildren, halted its use and revoked Sanofi's license. That decision came after Sanofi announced that in rare cases, if people who never had dengue were vaccinated and later became infected, the vaccine might provoke a much more severe form of the illness. On May 1, the F.D.A. limited its approval to people aged 9 to 16 who live in areas where dengue is endemic and who are shown by lab testing already to have been infected with the disease. More than one third of the world's population lives in areas at risk for infection with the dengue virus, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The virus is spread by mosquitoes. An estimated 400 million dengue virus infections occur around the world, and there are about 500,000 cases of the severe form, dengue hemorrhagic fever, which causes about 20,000 deaths, according to the C.D.C. No drugs are approved to treat dengue disease. According to the C.D.C., most cases of dengue fever in the 48 contiguous states were acquired elsewhere by travelers or by immigrants, although some isolated outbreaks have occurred, such as in South Texas in 2005. Dengue is endemic in the United States territories of American Samoa, Guam, Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands. "I think the message is that this is such a serious disease that we need to have something," said Vincent Racaniello, a professor of microbiology and immunology at Columbia University. He expressed concern that the vaccine's acknowledged risks could worsen broader and unfounded skepticism about vaccines, which is fueling a separate global outbreak of measles. "This is going to give them more ammunition," he said. "They can take this and say look, we are releasing a vaccine that is known to have issues." In the Philippines, childhood vaccinations against measles dipped in the aftermath of the uproar over Dengvaxia, contributing to an outbreak in that country that has led to more than 400 deaths since January, according to a report this week by Unicef and the World Health Organization. Although Dengvaxia is currently the only dengue vaccine on the market, other vaccines are in development that are believed to be more effective and could be used by people who have never had dengue. Those include one by Takeda in late stage clinical trials and others that Merck is planning to bring to market. "It's quite a big pipeline for dengue," Dr. Racaniello said.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Health
Coronavirus Has Taught Us More About Trump Than We Wanted to Know Bret Stephens: Gail, I'm having a weird disconnect. On Friday, I rode my bike all the way up to the George Washington Bridge. The weather was perfect and New York had never looked so glorious. The next day, which was dank and rainy, Donald Trump raised the possibility of quarantining New York, along with parts of the tristate area. I experience this presidency as a cross between Stephen King's "It" and "The Truman Show." Nonetheless, Donald Trump's popularity is rising. What gives? Gail Collins: I still adhere to the rule that there is no situation so bad that Donald Trump can't make it worse. Bret: If he had been the designer of the Titanic, there would have been fewer lifeboats. Gail: Or his minions would have forgotten to check for holes. But even as we're seeing him flounder, people want to believe they have a leader who knows what he's doing in this crisis. So it's not surprising his polls have ticked up. Although actually Trump's popularity hasn't risen all that much considering the intensity of the situation. Certainly nothing compared to what we saw with George W. Bush after 9/11. Bret: Not a perfect comparison. You can fault George W. Bush in any number of ways, but he did not spend the months before 9/11 repeatedly telling the public that there was absolutely no threat of a terrorist attack on our soil or boasting that he had it all under control, or claiming Osama bin Laden was a liberal hoax to delegitimize his presidency and wreck the economy. Bret: The inability of so much of the public to remember what Trump was saying just a month ago suggests that, in addition to the coronavirus crisis, we're also experiencing a national amnesia pandemic. Gail: Maybe it's just national attention deficit disorder. People do hit a point where they just can't cope with coronavirus discussions 24 7. Hey, maybe as a public service we should briefly change the subject. Have you heard there's a race for the Democratic presidential nomination? Bret: Could we have a do over? Watching Andrew Cuomo's press conferences in recent weeks, I find myself fantasizing about the New York governor becoming the party's nominee. Your thoughts? Gail: Cuomo has an, um, forceful personality. Perfect for the present moment, when he can represent the frightened, beleaguered public. Joe Biden got to be the likely Democratic presidential nominee with the exact opposite aura the candidate who didn't drive a large chunk of the voting public nuts. Bret: Fair point, and if the pandemic is behind us by Election Day, maybe Cuomo's style won't wear as well, just as Rudy Giuliani's wore thin a few years after 9/11. But for the time being, Cuomo is playing the part of the president we wish we had compassionate, well informed, firm, but also flexibly responding to changing conditions as opposed to the irascible, ignorant and self infatuated president we do have. Gail: No question Cuomo's the hero in that pairing. And you could certainly sell tickets to the debate. Bret: Biden is like the guy in the audience raising his hand and hoping the moderator calls on him. I fear this is an inauspicious beginning for the general election. Gail: I'm not going to argue that Biden has been a stirring presence. But I was listening to him on TV the other night, and he was pretty clear in what he thought should be happening, policy wise. The moments when he really makes contact, though, are the personal ones talking about having get togethers with his grandkids where Biden and his wife sit on the porch while the kids sit a distance away on the lawn. Hard to imagine Donald Trump sitting still for that. And of course Biden relates so intensely to what the country's going through because of his own history of family tragedies. Bret: Those of us in lockdown nation definitely could use an empathizer in chief. I just went back and looked at the clip of Biden's interview on CNN, when he spoke about his own extensive experience of tragedy and grief. It was moving and real, the candidate at his best. Gail: This is not the moment to have a leader whose most stirring emotional experience was firing people on reality TV. Bret: But here's my fear: the Biden campaign reminds me a bit of John McCain's 2008 campaign minus the Sarah Palin part, of course. McCain started off as the presumptive front runner, then nearly ran out of gas before making a miraculous primary comeback. But then his campaign sorta just flatlined. In the meantime, he ran as the candidate of character and personal biography, not energy, ideas, and hope. And he got crushed as the country went through the crucible of the 2008 financial crisis. Gail: I was covering McCain when he crashed and burned. Once the national focus switched over to the economic crisis, he was just sort of lost. He and Barack Obama were at a big bipartisan meeting on what to do next, and McCain didn't seem to have a clue. Biden's not like that. He isn't a personality personal history candidate; he's a former vice president who knows how the system works candidate. Bret: If Biden is going to make himself more relevant to the moment, I think he needs to do more than emphasize his command of bureaucracy or his experience of personal tragedy. He's going to need to reintroduce voters to the "Scranton Joe" side of his biography. One reason I suspect Trump is benefiting politically from the pandemic is that he's been talking about minimizing the economic fallout and getting the country back to work. That might be irresponsible from a medical and epidemiological point of view. But it resonates with millions of Americans, especially small business owners and their employees faced with complete financial ruin if the shutdowns carry on for months. Biden needs to compete for those voters, particularly those in must win states like Pennsylvania and Michigan. Gail: How are you feeling about the shutdowns? As it stands now, it's easy to imagine them going on for months. Even if New York does hit its peak in April, as the experts are now predicting, it'll be summer before we're really back to normalcy. And even then the virus will probably be wreaking havoc in other parts of the country where the contagion started later. Bret: I'm not averse to the kinds of shutdowns that have been imposed so far, especially in dense urban areas where the risk of mass contagion is so high. I'm not averse to extending them by another three weeks, either, as Trump did over the weekend. We've got an urgent health crisis and critical shortages of essential medical equipment, particularly ventilators, so buying some time makes sense. On the other hand, the idea of a much longer nationwide shutdown strikes me as no less dangerous, potentially more so. The economic damage would be monumental, beyond anything in the power of the government to fix. It runs the risk of creating a secondary health crisis in terms of depression, isolation, suicide, addiction and so on. And even then the virus is going to continue to run its course until we've found a vaccine or at least more effective medication. Gail: You know I'm going to ask you what the alternative is. Bret: I'm intrigued by countries like Holland and Sweden, which are pursuing a mitigation strategy instead of a suppression strategy. Obviously the jury is still out on what sort of outcomes they'll have, and perhaps they'll be terrible. But given that this is a pandemic whose consequences are going to be so far reaching, I think there ought to be room for a certain amount of variety and intelligent experimentation in terms of response. Then again, I'm not often in the habit of advocating the Swedish model! Gail: Having lived through decades of fruitless arguments about why we should emulate Sweden, I'm just going to shrug and cede the point. But go on. Bret: Can we encourage habits of social distancing without enforcing total lockdowns? Can we have restaurants open but cut their seating capacity by 60 or 70 percent, so customers aren't so close? Can we focus our efforts on protecting the most vulnerable part of the population, especially the elderly and those with pre existing conditions, while accepting a heightened level of risk for others? Gail: God, the idea of going out with friends to a restaurant sounds like a kind of Shangri La. But it also scares the heck out of me. Maybe I've been brainwashed over the last couple of weeks, but given the incredible stress on our hospitals right now, the idea of just taking the risk to see what happens is ... unnerving. Bret: I don't know. As my very wise mom never tires of reminding me, I don't have a degree in medicine or public health. Gail: Loved that column about your mother, by the way. Bret: Thanks! She liked it too and only wishes I would agree with her more often. (As in: always.) But I was struck by a quote from John F. Kennedy that appeared in a recent Times obituary of the science writer Daniel Greenberg: "Scientists alone can establish the objectives of their research, but society, in extending support to science, must take into account its own needs." Gail: Nice, but I don't think we're letting scientists run the game. The real decisions are being made by people like Andrew Cuomo. I'd love to hear you two argue the point out. Winner gets to run for president.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Opinion
The Alvin Ailey installment, a portion of "Revelations," in Netta Yerushalmy's "Paramodernities," featuring, from left, Ms. Yerushalmy, Jeremy Jae Neal, Brittany Engel Adams, Stanley Gambucci and Nicholas Leichter. The choreographer Netta Yerushalmy has invented a recipe for her latest work, "Paramodernities": Take six classic dances. Chop them up. Then tear open the modern canon, with equal parts love and fury. For her ambitious project, which opens on Aug. 8 at Jacob's Pillow, Ms. Yerushalmy, 40, has created a collection of deconstructed works by choreographers, including Martha Graham and Bob Fosse. "I started by compiling people's icons," she said in a recent interview. "And then I was in the library for a long time: watching, watching, watching." What was she looking for? "The point of view of the shapes and what the body was doing," Ms. Yerushalmy said. "That's what got me so hooked in wanting to do this." "Paramodernities" is an extension of that. The seed for it was first planted in 2013 when Ms. Yerushalmy deconstructed Vaslav Nijinsky's "Rite of Spring" for a centennial celebration in Berlin. For the six part production, which is scheduled to be at New York Live Arts next March, each piece is set, not to music, but to text, read live, by scholars and writers who place the dances within the larger frame of modernism. The installments are Nijinsky's "Rite"; Graham's "Night Journey" (1947); Alvin Ailey's "Revelations" (1960); a mash up of Merce Cunningham works, including "Rainforest," "Sounddance" and "Ocean" (1968 1990); dance numbers from the 1969 film of Fosse's "Sweet Charity"; and George Balanchine's "Agon" (1957). In creating the choreography, Ms. Yerushalmy invented a different movement score for each installment. "They're all a little brainy," she said with an apologetic grin. For "Rite," she printed out Stravinsky's score even though she doesn't read music and cataloged the movements according to notes; a B flat, for instance, means a jump. "Revelations" is based on the words of its spirituals. Ms. Yerushalmy assigned movement to phrases like, "fix me, Jesus," and then wrote them on cardboard, cut them up and put them together randomly. "I didn't want to be involved," she said. "I just wanted to put it in the blender." Pamela Tatge, the director of the Pillow, was intrigued from the start. "I'm very interested in finding ways for archival material to live," she said. "Netta is examining these works today because she is making the case for how these choreographer's ideologies figured in modernism." For the dancer Marc Crousillat, watching cast members drawn from the contemporary dance world perform these works has been odd. "But it makes sense," he said. "All of these dancers who have been around for a long time in the city are engaging in what has been around us in this very endearing way." The project is one that "feels like it can go on and on," Ms. Yerushalmy said. "What about Paul Taylor? What about Jose Limon, Mary Wigman and Pearl Primus?" And the project has changed her, too. She regularly attends Ailey and Graham company performances. And she arrived for our interview having just been at Cunningham technique class. "I have to take class to stay sane," she said. "But this project brought me to that class. And I was swept in." What has it shown you about yourself as a choreographer? I'm still figuring that out. There's the total displacement of my authorship. Who's making this thing? Is it mine? Is it the scholars? Is it Ailey's? What is this? I didn't really tell the dancers what to do. I said, "Here's the video. Learn it." So I'm authoring it, but in a very different way from anything I've ever made, so that feels destabilizing. I do know it feels worthwhile. Do you think that you'll make people look at these dances and appreciate them more? My assumption is that people in the field are sort of like, why are you re canonizing the canon? Why do we even say their names again? Choreographers often rebel against those who came before them. So why are you exploring their work in such great detail? Because I don't take any of it for granted. I'm far enough away that it's like a cabinet of curiosities. I'm not just like, oh, old hat I know that. And I think it might be useful for the field to have an opportunity to view things in a different way and have a little tension around them. I'm also saying that it's ours. I'm not so concerned with keeping the legacies alive, but with taking something for myself and for everybody who's trained and danced and been in a company. That's how we learned to dance. Even if it was removed in some way? Totally. Early on, we were studying "Revelations" and Jesse Zaritt was very uncomfortable: Why am I, this white Jewish dude in the studio, trying to do all the stuff? By doing this movement, I can ask, "How is this me and not me at the same time?" I can figure out the ways in which I'm intimate with it. And does it belong to a culture or a protected technique that I don't quite have access to? The whole project has a lot of these tensions. Smiles happily It doesn't quite land.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Dance
The word came sailing out of a man's mouth after a screening of Jennifer Kent's latest movie, "The Nightingale," at the Venice Film Festival last year. At first Kent thought the livid viewer must be joking: The heroine of "The Nightingale," an Irish convict in 1820s Tasmania, is called a whore by her tormentors all through the film. But the man wasn't joking; he had hollered other angry phrases like "Shame on you!" He turned out to be a journalist and later apologized, and though the festival responded by revoking his credentials, the vitriol directed at Kent and her movie proved a harbinger of reactions to come. In June, the film made headlines again, after a few dozen people walked out of showings at the Sydney Film Festival, one incensed woman shouting about the film's portrayal of rape. Others took to Twitter to condemn the brutality borne onscreen by Aboriginal people. Kent, the auteur of the spooky 2014 breakout hit "The Babadook," struggled with the reactions as well as the media's coverage, which she said distorted how Australians received the film. The Sydney Film Festival had added an extra screening to meet heightened ticket demands, critics variously described it as harrowing but essential viewing, and an audience had given it a standing ovation months earlier in Adelaide. The controversy raised questions about how stories involving rape should be told and by whom. While depictions of rape onscreen have unleashed storms of criticism in recent years, the debates were about stories almost exclusively created and directed by men. Was Paul Verhoeven's 2016 feature, "Elle," starring Isabelle Huppert as a rape victim who becomes attracted to her attacker, misogynistic or feminist? Were the numerous sexual assaults in "Game of Thrones" gratuitous at best? "The Nightingale" was also set in time and place that historians describe as even more grim than the world Kent created onscreen, and several critics praised the film as a rare example of horrific violence done right. "One way to look at the world is, 'If I turn away from all the suffering, it doesn't exist,'" Kent said in a recent Skype interview from her home in Brisbane, Australia. "The other way is to look at it boldly in the face, and let it into your head, and see how it feels, and be motivated to be a more loving, compassionate person." In "The Nightingale," the convict Clare, played by Aisling Franciosi (Lyanna Stark in "Game of Thrones") sets out into the unforgiving Tasmanian wilderness to avenge atrocities committed against her and her family by an English officer, played by Sam Claflin (the "Hunger Games" films), and his underlings. She is accompanied by an Aboriginal tracker named Billy, played by the first time actor Baykali Ganambarr, whose performance earned the best new talent award in Venice. "I wanted to see what are the other options," she said, "because clearly we're going to end our humanity if we choose revenge as an option continuously." The idea of the story started small, decades ago, when Kent visited Tasmania, off Australia's southeastern coast, with her first serious boyfriend. Tasmania is wildly different from the mainland's vast bushland swaths. It is colder and greener, more like Scotland or Ireland, and, in Kent's view, suffused with a deep sadness that she wanted to probe. In the 1800s, female convicts were sent by the shipload to the island, then known as Van Diemen's Land, usually for far lesser crimes than men. Men also outnumbered them nine to one. Visiting a former prison, Kent saw the cold, dark solitary cells where women were confined, in total sensory deprivation, for weeks at time. She learned that after their release, some women deliberately committed crimes to be sent right back in. "So of course my mind was thinking, 'What on earth was it that was worse than that, that made them want to flee and return to the darkness?'" Kent said. "Women's rage is immense, and there's an ocean of it," she said. "It's not hard, being a woman, to find reasons to have rage." To ensure the veracity of "The Nightingale," she asked Jim Everett, a Tasmanian, Aboriginal elder, playwright and activist, to serve as an adviser. He initially said he had no time, but then read the script and couldn't say no. "People are realizing this country has a history that has been hidden from it, a history that a lot of people won't accept," Everett said, speaking by phone from Tasmania. "They can't say it's not there because it's in the records. This is a discussion that Australia needs to have." Everett advised Kent on the body paint, clothes and shell necklaces worn by the Indigenous Australian actors, as well as their ceremonies, customs and language. One criticism lobbed at the film was that it was a white empowerment tale propped up by cruelties inflicted on black bodies. Yet Kristyn Harman, an author and professor of Aboriginal history at the University of Tasmania, described British colonial tactics against the Indigenous Australian people of the time as genocidal. "Tens of thousands were in fact killed," she said. "Sometimes people boasted of these killings." Coverage of the walkouts at the Sydney Film Festival converged on a single line reportedly shouted by a woman as she left the theater: "She's already been raped, we don't need to see it again." For Kent, there was no way to tell a story about what happened to female convicts in colonial Tasmania without including rape. Deborah Swiss, the author of "The Tin Ticket: The Heroic Journey of Australia's Convict Women," said sexual assault was threaded through their lives. "There was horrific discrimination against the Irish," Swiss said, "and the convict maids lived in a culture of rape and violence." Kent said she did not believe in upholding taboos against talking about or depicting sexual violence onscreen. "Speaking from my perspective, and having done a lot of research, the way is not to sweep things under the carpet ," Kent continued. "If a woman or anyone who has a painful experience and they can talk about it , that's a miracle. And that's all I wanted to say with the film. That ultimately we shouldn't turn away from these things." In preparation for her role, Franciosi spent time with sexual assault victims and worked closely with a psychologist on set. During the rape scenes, Kent kept the camera focused closely on the victim's face; her intent was to make the viewer experience the violence, too. "What you really have to reckon with is, this is a human being," Franciosi said.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Movies
A stretch of DNA linked to Covid 19 was passed down from Neanderthals 60,000 years ago, according to a new study. Scientists don't yet know why this particular segment increases the risk of severe illness from the coronavirus. But the new findings, which were posted online on Friday and have not yet been published in a scientific journal, show how some clues to modern health stem from ancient history. "This interbreeding effect that happened 60,000 years ago is still having an impact today," said Joshua Akey, a geneticist at Princeton University who was not involved in the new study. This piece of the genome, which spans six genes on Chromosome 3, has had a puzzling journey through human history, the study found. The variant is now common in Bangladesh, where 63 percent of people carry at least one copy. Across all of South Asia, almost one third of people have inherited the segment. Elsewhere, however, the segment is far less common. Only 8 percent of Europeans carry it, and just 4 percent have it in East Asia. It is almost completely absent in Africa. It's not clear what evolutionary pattern produced this distribution over the past 60,000 years. "That's the 10,000 question," said Hugo Zeberg, a geneticist at the Karolinska Institute in Sweden who was one of the authors of the new study. One possibility is that the Neanderthal version is harmful and has been getting rarer over all. It's also possible that the segment improved people's health in South Asia, perhaps providing a strong immune response to viruses in the region. "One should stress that at this point this is pure speculation," said Dr. Zeberg's co author, Svante Paabo, the director of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany. Researchers are only beginning to understand why Covid 19 is more dangerous for some people than others. Older people are more likely to become severely ill than younger ones. Men are at more risk than women. Social inequality matters, too. In the United States, Black people are far more likely than white people to become severely ill from the coronavirus, for example, most likely due in part to the country's history of systemic racism. It has left Black people with a high rate of chronic diseases such as diabetes, as well as living conditions and jobs that may increase exposure to the virus. Genes play a role as well. Last month, researchers compared people in Italy and Spain who became very sick with Covid 19 to those who had only mild infections. They found two places in the genome associated with a greater risk. One is on Chromosome 9 and includes ABO, a gene that determines blood type. The other is the Neanderthal segment on Chromosome 3. But these genetic findings are being rapidly updated as more people infected with the coronavirus are studied. Just last week, an international group of scientists called the Covid 19 Host Genetics Initiative released a new set of data downplaying the risk of blood type. "The jury is still out on ABO," said Mark Daly, a geneticist at Harvard Medical School who is a member of the initiative. The new data showed an even stronger link between the disease and the Chromosome 3 segment. People who carry two copies of the variant are three times more likely to suffer from severe illness than people who do not. After the new batch of data came out on Monday, Dr. Zeberg decided to find out if the Chromosome 3 segment was passed down from Neanderthals. About 60,000 years ago, some ancestors of modern humans expanded out of Africa and swept across Europe, Asia and Australia. These people encountered Neanderthals and interbred. Once Neanderthal DNA entered our gene pool, it spread down through the generations, long after Neanderthals became extinct. Most Neanderthal genes turned out to be harmful to modern humans. They may have been a burden on people's health or made it harder to have children. As a result, Neanderthal genes became rarer, and many disappeared from our gene pool. But some genes appear to have provided an evolutionary edge and have become quite common. In May, Dr. Zeberg, Dr. Paabo and Dr. Janet Kelso, also of the Max Planck Institute, discovered that one third of European women have a Neanderthal hormone receptor. It is associated with increased fertility and fewer miscarriages. Dr. Zeberg knew that other Neanderthal genes that are common today even help us fight viruses. When modern humans expanded into Asia and Europe, they may have encountered new viruses against which Neanderthals had already evolved defenses. We have held onto those genes ever since. Dr. Zeberg looked at Chromosome 3 in an online database of Neanderthal genomes. He found that the version that raises people's risk of severe Covid 19 is the same version found in a Neanderthal who lived in Croatia 50,000 years ago. "I texted Svante immediately," Dr. Zeberg said in an interview, referring to Dr. Paabo. Dr. Paabo was on vacation in a cottage in the remote Swedish countryside. Dr. Zeberg showed up the next day, and they worked day and night until they posted the study online on Friday. "It's the most crazy vacation I've ever had in this cottage," Dr. Paabo said. Tony Capra, a geneticist at Vanderbilt University who was not involved in the study, thought it was plausible that the Neanderthal chunk of DNA originally provided a benefit perhaps even against other viruses. "But that was 40,000 years ago, and here we are now," he said. It's possible that an immune response that worked against ancient viruses has ended up overreacting against the new coronavirus. People who develop severe cases of Covid 19 typically do so because their immune systems launch uncontrolled attacks that end up scarring their lungs and causing inflammation. Dr. Paabo said the DNA segment may account in part for why people of Bangladeshi descent are dying at a high rate of Covid 19 in the United Kingdom.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Health
BOTH Honda and Toyota are far more committed to the hybrid car than to the battery electric vehicle, a fact that Toyota made clear this month when it scaled back its Scion iQ electric car project. And Honda is so enthusiastic about hybrids that, as its chief executive, Takanobu Ito, outlined in a recent speech, it will have three separate systems with up to three electric motors. Honda is broadening its hybrid strategy. It is improving its existing single motor system to make it simpler and less expensive. It is adding a new two motor system to challenge the Chevrolet Volt and add plug in hybrid capability to its arsenal. And it is developing a three motor system aimed at high performance and improved handling. Does Honda need three hybrid systems? It makes sense if the company can build exciting cars to take advantage of the engineering. A range of solutions matches costs to market realities: simpler systems at the lower end and more complex designs upmarket, where higher prices can absorb the added costs. The venerable Integrated Motor Assist system, as seen in various guises on cars like the Insight and Civic Hybrid, relies mainly on the gasoline engine, drawing on the electric motor for extra power during acceleration. When the car slows, the slim electric motor, sandwiched between the gas engine and the transmission, turns into a generator to send electricity to the battery pack.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Automobiles
In the months since the November terrorist attack in Paris and the March bombing of the Brussels airport, Americans did something that may seem counterintuitive. They went to Europe more, with travelers up 5 percent in April, according to the Department of Commerce's National Travel Tourism Office. Most of those trips were probably booked well in advance, as international travel usually is, and these numbers predate the June terrorist bombing in Istanbul and the Bastille Day truck attack in Nice. But airline data, tourism statistics and the reports of travel agencies and tour operators show international travel is alive and well, though it may be shifting to countries like Spain and Ireland in the European Union, as well as farther flung destinations like the Galapagos Islands, even as travel to closer to home destinations like Canada and the national parks surges. "It's not a great year to have France as your No. 1 destination," said Norman Howe, president and chief executive of the high end tour operator Butterfield Robinson, which historically conducted most of its trips in France. This year, Italy has supplanted France, where the company's business is down 10 to 15 percent. "In France, there was a sustained cycle of events starting around last November, and the reality is these days we're not falling off a cliff, but there's a cumulative effect." One place that has benefited among Butterfield Robinson's clients is North America, where business has doubled. Trips have surged to Newfoundland, Quebec and British Columbia. "Canada's a triple whammy," Mr. Howe said, citing its popular new prime minister, the favorable exchange rate and its reputation as safe. At Abercrombie Kent, Europe still did well this summer, especially Italy and Spain. "We've seen very, very few cancellations in areas specifically impacted by terrorism issues in Europe," said Keith Baron, a senior vice president. "We have seen a slowdown in new business to those areas." It's hard to pin terrorism fears to the spike in interest in America's National Parks, especially given their widely publicized centennial celebration this year, but traffic has jumped for several operators, including Austin Adventures. "As we talk to guests, many who have families, they are not giving up on Europe, but are just looking closer to home for now," wrote Dan Austin, the owner of Austin Adventures, in an email. "Europe was the only region where we saw a dip in bookings. Everything else across the board was up, with domestic travel seeing the biggest increase. For us, domestic travel definitely picked up the Europe fallout." Bookings at Ovation Vacations, a New York agency that specializes in luxury travel, went to Italy, Spain and Greece, while its France business fell by 43 percent. Having suffered its own downturn in the last few years related to bankruptcy concerns and refugee traffic, Greece rebounded strongly. Still, the biggest gains were domestic. "In my market, our people are going to travel," said Jack S. Ezon, president of Ovation Vacations. "They may just change where they're going this year. They said, 'All right, I can always go back to Paris. Why go this year? This year, let's explore something new.' For so many of them, new and exotic became the Grand Canyon. Some have been to Luang Prabang or the Irrawaddy River and the Mekong, but they've never been to Arizona." Airlines have done their part to stimulate European travel by dropping prices. The airfare prediction app Hopper found that this August, relative to August 2015, airfares dropped the most to Europe, by 22.5 percent, compared with other regions, including domestic. "We've seen incredible discounting to Europe over this last summer, and we're still seeing traffic being weak," said Patrick Surry, chief data scientist with Hopper. He said that European searches were down by nearly a quarter over last year, with Mexico, Central America and United States destinations picking up that slack. Still, Europe has bright spots in places like Spain and Ireland. In the first half of the year, the online travel planner Expedia found its air traffic rise 20 percent to Madrid and Barcelona, and 33 percent to Dublin. Confirming those trends, Tourism Ireland said its year to date traffic from North America was up 18 percent in the first five months of the year, with year over year growth of 80,000 more North American visitors in May alone. The Tourist Office of Spain showed an increase of international visitors in June, up 12.7 percent over June 2015. For the first six months of 2016, Americans accounted for nearly 900,000 visitors to Spain, an increase of almost 8 percent over the same period last year. "In every crisis there's an opportunity," said Mr. Ezon, who has sent many clients to Ibiza, Majorca, Andalusia and, for those interested in food, the Basque region. "The iconic cities in general London, Paris and Rome are down. People are drawn to secondary cities for safety concerns." Nonetheless, the Virtuoso network of luxury travel agencies found that eight of its top 10 vacation destinations booked this summer were in Europe, including France at No. 3 (Italy and Britain were one and two, with Spain at four). The biggest gainers in terms of year over year bookings were Tanzania (98 percent), Portugal (88 percent) and Ireland (58 percent). Whether the impetus is to see Arctic glaciers before global warming shrinks them, or to go remote, Scandinavian traffic has picked up with some operators, ranging from Abercrombie Kent, on the high end, to SmarTours on the more affordable end. "The overall trend of interest in the northern realms Norway, Iceland and our Northern Lights trips is continuing, and may be a result of fears of terrorism, or simply a discovery of these fantastic destinations," wrote Barbara Banks, director of marketing and new trip development for Wilderness Travel, in an email. "Iceland is hot," Mr. Ezon said. "It's again perceived as safe by a lot of people because it's so off the radar screen." The concept of what's exotic is a relative term, but long haul air traffic to Asia has been slowly growing over the last few years. In South America, Metropolitan Touring, a major operator in the Galapagos Islands, reported strong growth among North Americans, up 11 percent June through the start of September versus the year prior. "We say that it's close, tolerant and safe," said Tamara de Karolys, commercial director for Metropolitan Touring who works closely with North American travel agencies. "Most of the time we're in the same time zone and have the same currency. It's a nature based bucket list destination. We have an opportunity here." More exotic destinations like Africa and Vietnam have also gained at Butterfield Robinson. "There are no lack of challenges in these other places, but they don't have that specific one," Mr. Howe said. "The antiterror component makes other issues seem small."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Travel
With travel restrictions in place worldwide, we've launched a new series, The World Through a Lens, in which photojournalists help transport you, virtually, to some of our planet's most beautiful and intriguing places. This week, Greta Rybus shares a collection of photographs from a set of islands in Maine. Three miles off the coast of Maine, in a remote area northeast of Acadia National Park, lies a cluster of islands including Little Nash Island, Big Nash Island and Flat Island populated only by sheep. Each spring, Alfie leaves his medical practice for three weeks to live on Big Nash Island for the lambing season. (In his text messages, Alfie includes smiley faces when he talks about going to the island, or about new lambs; sad faces punctuate his texts when he discusses leaving the island.) The sheep, wild and self sufficient, are able to thrive off the providence of the island. But every so often a sick lamb needs special care. At the end of lambing season, a community gathers on Big Nash to help round up and shear the sheep. (The other islands' sheep will be sheared, too, but those require smaller crews.) The volunteers around 40 people include a handful of knitters and spinners; they often wear sweaters made of Nash Island wool. Some show up because they live down the road and are accustomed to pitching in. Others are lured by an adoration of good wool. Still others come because of the island itself for the tradition, for the memory of Jenny. When the corral is full, the crew works to pull lambs from underneath the sheep, moving them to a separate pen; there, the rams are castrated and the ewes' tails are docked. Each lamb and sheep is carefully checked and given any necessary care. Meanwhile, the shearers skim whirring blades along the bodies of the sheep, their hands and the clippers hidden under the thick wool. (Much of shearing is done blindly, by feel.) The sheep chosen for slaughter will be scooped up, their soft woolen bodies carried from the driftwood pen, down the rocky beach, to a dinghy. Then, from the dinghy to the family's lobster boat, until sheep are packed from bulkhead to transom, calm and blinking in the sun. Volunteers will sit on the sides of the boat or climb onto its top as it motors back to the mainland. A waiting truck will bring the sheep to the local butcher. Maine was once a land of shepherds. Its islands and coastal communities were dotted with the fleeced bodies of sheep, its shrubs and trees grazed into oblivion. Historical photos show wide expanses of pasture that have now become thick with forests and houses. Back then, there were more families like the Wakemans, who raised their own animals and grew their own food, who gathered people together to share both their work and a meal, who used dark humor and whispered their thanks on the days when animals gave up their wool or became food.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Travel
SAN PEDRO, Calif. Opera lends stature to its characters. (Even to its villains.) It expands their scope; it ennobles them. This can cause problems when the art form turns to recent history and its contentious figures. It was the main objection to the title character in John Adams's "Nixon in China" and to the Palestinian terrorists depicted in his "The Death of Klinghoffer": The kind of immortality opera grants was being extended to those who didn't deserve it. Well, no one could say that the quintet of protagonists of "The Central Park Five," a jazz infused new opera by Anthony Davis and Richard Wesley that was premiered on Saturday at the Warner Grand Theater here by Long Beach Opera, don't deserve it. These are boys and then men who earned their nobility, their place on the opera stage. Their wrenching journey, going back 30 years now, has long been known. But it has reached a broad new audience this month with Ava DuVernay's Netflix mini series "When They See Us," an almost unbearably intense treatment of the story. When a white woman was raped and brutally beaten in Central Park in 1989, five black teenagers were accused and convicted of the crime, based on confessions later found to have been coerced. It was not until 2002, when another man confessed and DNA evidence backed him up, that the judgments against the five were vacated; in 2014, New York City paid 41 million to settle a lawsuit brought by them. It is a tale that unfortunately never gets old, and it has fresh resonance in the era of Black Lives Matter and renewed attention to issues of police misconduct, wrongful convictions and mass incarceration. What's more, one of its crucial supporting characters has turned up again in the news, to say the least: Donald Trump, who crusaded against the Central Park Five as they stood accused and insisted on their guilt as recently as the 2016 presidential campaign. So it's no coincidence that this story is being told by artists today. What is a coincidence is that "The Central Park Five," with a score by Mr. Davis and a libretto by Mr. Wesley, is opening within a month of "When They See Us." But this isn't the first time that the operas of Mr. Davis, a noted jazz composer and performer, have been at the vanguard of more popular culture. His "X: The Life and Times of Malcolm X" anticipated Spike Lee's blockbuster biopic. "Amistad" opened days before Steven Spielberg's 1997 film of the same name. There was a sense in these works, particularly the seething "X," of opera being newly used to give resonance literally and figuratively to real life events. While opera can't compete with the screen for verisimilitude, it can provide "the opportunity to explore the emotional impact beyond the mere facts," as Andreas Mitisek, the artistic and general director of Long Beach Opera, wrote in a news release for "The Central Park Five ." The art form can be particularly arresting when it teases out those subtleties in stories we've known primarily as black and white reportage when it imagines Malcolm X or Richard Nixon's private musings and sets them to music. This is what Mr. Davis, among others, have shown that opera can do. But "The Central Park Five" doesn't, or doesn't always. Forthright and impassioned, it makes clear the crushing injustice of the situation, but provides little emotional nuance beyond that. Part of the problem is its treatment of the title group: The opera has a Greek chorus as an unwieldy main character. Singing largely in unison or in counterpoint ensemble, the five (played by Derrell Acon, Cedric Berry, Orson Van Gay, Nathan Granner and Bernard Holcomb) never have the chance to come to life as individuals, either in music or words. And the evocation of their life together as friends in Harlem is too weak to make us really miss it after all goes wrong. Mr. Mitisek's simple, bland production movable door frames and projected tabloid headlines doesn't help. Opening with a saturated, scratchy chord that fractures into jitters, the score, conducted by Leslie Dunner, is most interesting in brief instrumental interludes. The scenes are generally painted with urbane, rhythmically punchy big band style jazz, beefed up with strings, under declamatory vocal lines. (Unlike in some contemporary operas, the text is delivered with consistent clarity.) But in the instrumental passages between those scenes, the musical flesh melts away to reveal scattered flecks of instrumentation and an electronic haze a scraping, buzzing sonic landscape that swiftly evokes the ominousness of the story. An unnamed district attorney (the mezzo Jessica Mamey), clearly meant to suggest the prosecutor Linda Fairstein, isn't quite as much of a monster as she could be (or as the character of Ms. Fairstein is in "When They See Us"). But neither composer nor librettist really develops her character. A more stock villain is a multipurpose male character called the Masque (the baritone Zeffin Quinn Hollis), who shape shifts from a bigoted reporter ("Harlem," he sings, "a black and tan fantasy that attracts me and repels me all the same") to a tourist to a police officer. And, sung by a high tenor, the stereotype of operatic arrogance, Mr. Trump (Thomas Segen) is portrayed as a sour blowhard. His part in the story has been expanded beyond the historical record, to the point that he is seen acting as a kind of Svengali to the police and prosecutors working on the case. The second act opens with him sitting on a golden toilet, a moment that's intended as satirical relief but comes off as overkill. Surely we can never have enough reminders of the injustice done to these five young men. But Mr. Davis and Mr. Wesley's blunt work doesn't show off the depth and heightened feeling that opera could add to what we already know. Through June 23 at the Warner Grand Theater, San Pedro, Calif.; longbeachopera.org.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Music
Cancer Is Contagious Among Clams. What About Us? The ocean contains a vast number of living things, including many, many pathogens from bacteria that thrive on coral to fungi that infect lobsters. A drop of seawater may hold 10 million viruses. Recently, a team of scientists revealed a frightening member of this menagerie: free floating cancer cells that cause contagious tumors in shellfish. Last year, they found one such cancer in a species of clam. On Wednesday, they reported that three more species were plagued with contagious cancers. The cancers are specific to shellfish and do not appear to pose a danger to humans who eat them. But until now, infectious cancer was considered something of a fluke in the natural world, initially observed only in dogs and Tasmanian devils. The latest research has made scientists wonder whether infectious tumors are actually more widespread. "We were always thinking there would be more contagious cancer out there, but we didn't know where they would be discovered," said Elizabeth P. Murchison, a cancer biologist at the University of Cambridge who was not involved in the new study. In the traditional view of cancer, mutations strike a cell. These mutations have several causes, including toxins and viruses. However they arise, they drive a cell to multiply uncontrollably until the cancer is wiped out by the immune system or kills its victim. Either way, the cancer stays inside the body where it started. A decade ago, scientists discovered two exceptions. In the 1990s Tasmanian devils in Australia began developing deadly face tumors. But DNA in the tumor cells did not match that of the affected animals, studies showed. Tasmanian facial tumor disease, as it was eventually called, appears to have had its start in a single Tasmanian devil that lived in the 1980s. Transmitted by bites, the cancer spread to other Tasmanian devils and acquired mutations along the way that helped make it even more infectious. A second strain of the cancer was identified last year. Dogs, too, can get a type of contagious cancer called canine transmissible venereal tumor, which jumps from host to host during sex. The tumor usually disappears in a few months, however. Scientists have determined that the cancer originated in dogs 11,000 years ago. For years, Tasmanian devils and dogs were the only species known to contract contagious cancer. But last year, Stephen P. Goff, a molecular biologist at Columbia University, and his colleagues found contagious cancer in soft shell clams. From New York to Prince Edward Island, these clams have suffered from aggressive tumors since the 1970s. Carol Reinisch, a marine biologist at Environment Canada, found that the cancer clustered in populations, as if it was caused by an outbreak of some sort. She suspected a cancer causing virus moving from host to host. For help, Dr. Reinisch turned to Dr. Goff. The two researchers found no evidence of a virus in the soft shell clams. But they did discover that DNA in the tumor cells carried a genetic sequence not found in healthy cells in the clams. After examining the DNA, they confirmed that the cancer cells in different clams all came from a single common ancestor. "Somehow, this cancer has been spreading from clam to clam up the coast," Dr. Goff said. He and his colleagues began to wonder if other species of clams or related animals known collectively as bivalves had contagious cancers of their own, and, if so, why. They chose to study cancers in mussels, cockles and golden carpet shell clams. In every case, the researchers reported in the journal Nature, the cancers in the animals were contagious. "We are now at four for four," Dr. Goff said. As it turned out, the cancer in cockles comprises two separate strains. Even stranger, the cancer cells in the golden carpet shell clams did not develop from the species's own cells. Instead, the scientists matched the cancer's DNA to pullet shell clams, which live in the same intertidal beds off the coast of Spain. But Dr. Goff and his colleagues could not locate any pullet shell clams with this disease. They concluded that this strain of contagious cancer must have started in pullet shell clams and then jumped species, infecting golden carpet shell clams. It killed all the vulnerable pullet shell clams, leaving only resistant ones behind. "That's really quite incredible," Dr. Murchison said, noting that scientists had tried without success to infect foxes and other dog relatives with canine cancer. The new study, she said, shows that contagious cancer can indeed cross the species barrier. With eight contagious cancers now on the books, Dr. Murchison has started to wonder if they are not as peculiar as previously thought. "They might be emerging fairly often," she said.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Science
Adele at the Grammy Awards in Los Angeles in February. The ceremony has been held there for 17 of the last 18 years a visit to Madison Square Garden in 2003 was the only interruption. Mayor Bill de Blasio and executives from Madison Square Garden, CBS and the Recording Academy announced on Tuesday that the Grammy Awards ceremony would be held in New York on Jan. 28, returning the event to the city for the first time in 15 years. "There is no better place for music's biggest night than the world's greatest city," Mr. de Blasio said in a statement. "Bringing these awards back to the city will allow us to further support and foster the music industry in New York." The news which most in the music industry had expected came after months of negotiations among the city, the Garden, its labor unions and the academy, which presents the awards. In the middle of those talks was Julie Menin, the commissioner of the Mayor's Office of Media and Entertainment, the agency best known for coordinating permits for film and television productions. When the mayor appointed Ms. Menin last year, he added music, publishing, advertising and digital media to the office's portfolio, giving the music industry its first liaison and advocate in the city's government. "I think it's incredibly important that we have one agency that soup to nuts is dealing with all of these various media and entertainment industries," Ms. Menin, previously the commissioner of the city's Department of Consumer Affairs, said in a recent interview. In just over a year on the job, Ms. Menin, 48, has ordered a study on the music industry's economic impact on New York, arranged for the city to underwrite 30,000 in free rehearsal space for musicians, and announced a conference at New York University in June that will examine two of the biggest forces on music in the city: technology and real estate. But her biggest task by far has been helping to bring the Grammys back to New York, a process that has introduced her to the delicate politics of the music industry. In her first week on the job, in February 2016, Ms. Menin met in Los Angeles with executives at the Recording Academy, she said. The Grammys have been held at Staples Center there for 17 of the last 18 years a visit to Madison Square Garden in 2003 was the only interruption and the awards are closely intertwined with the location, through a walk of fame and the Grammy Museum nearby. The expansion of the Grammys into a full week of conferences and other industry events has made the event even more attractive to a host city. An economic study of the 2014 awards found 82 million in benefits to Los Angeles. The higher costs to stage the event in New York have been a longstanding obstacle, as has a lack of political will. Expenses for facilities, labor and housing the Recording Academy's staff contribute to a total price that is 6 million to 8 million higher than in Los Angeles, according to Ms. Menin and others involved in the talks. To accommodate staging and rehearsals, the Grammys can require a venue for as many as 11 days. "There was a tough relationship in the past," Ms. Menin said in her office above Broadway as sirens blared outside. "I wanted them to know there was an extremely hospitable agency that was looking to work with them as a partner." To that end, she arranged for millions in sponsorship dollars, nudged labor unions and, in early November, assembled a host committee, including representatives of Spotify, Adidas, the Partnership for New York City and other business groups, to help raise nearly 3 million in a final 72 hour push. (Spotify is no longer on the committee.) Labor concessions amounted to only about 250,000, mostly through scheduling adjustments, according to two people with direct knowledge of the talks who were not authorized to speak about them publicly. Still, labor leaders and others in the music industry are quick to credit Ms. Menin with pushing the deals through. Retail earnings and Black Friday: the week in business. Elizabeth Holmes will resume her testimony in her fraud trial. "The Grammys do not come here without Julie Menin," said James J. Claffey Jr., the president of Local 1 of the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees. "A lot of us even doubted she could do it. She proved us wrong." Yet the city's excitement clashed with the academy's reluctance to announce anything prematurely. A leaked invitation to a we did it dinner in New York last fall was followed by months of nonstatements and delays from the academy and Madison Square Garden, whose executives said that detailed contracts not to mention the scheduling of Knicks and Rangers games needed to be worked out. In an interview, Neil Portnow, the chief executive of the Recording Academy, praised Ms. Menin for her work and enthusiasm, calling her "a pistol." But he said the initial discussions with the Garden preceded the city's involvement. "We have to be careful about any entity or individual claiming credit," Mr. Portnow said. "Credit for the Grammys coming to New York is with the academy." Los Angeles was also eager to get the Grammys back. AEG, the entertainment company that owns Staples Center and competes with the Madison Square Garden Company, which owns the Forum in Inglewood, Calif. booked the awards to a multiyear deal, starting in 2019, well before next year's show was confirmed for New York. Ms. Menin said the Grammys were only one component of the support she wanted the city to lend to the music industry. In March, her office released a report, conducted by the Boston Consulting Group, that examined for the first time the economic impact of the city's music industry. Among its findings were that the broader music business including not only musicians and record companies but also studios and technology companies was responsible for 31,400 jobs and 2.8 billion in wages, with billions more attributed to ancillary spending and tourism. "The music industry has never gotten the recognition at the city and state level for the impact that it has in New York's broader economy," said Justin Kalifowitz, the chief executive of Downtown Music Publishing and a founder of the advocacy group New York Is Music. "This study finally quantifies that impact." For several years, New York Is Music pushed for a state tax credit for music production, but the lack of a formal study posed an obstacle in the lobbying effort, Mr. Kalifowitz said. Last year, a bill on the music tax credit passed the Legislature but was vetoed by Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Media
In the museum world, there is an increasing sense of emergency about how few curators of color are coming up through the ranks. Now two institutions are trying to do something about it. The Los Angeles County Museum of Art is teaming up with the Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts at Arizona State University to establish a three year program that combines academic training and work experience to develop a new generation of diverse curators, directors and other museum professionals. The Lacma A.S.U. Masters Fellowship in Art History, announced Tuesday at the American Alliance of Museums Conference in Phoenix, will combine master's level coursework and a thesis with on the job work experience at Lacma or the Herberger's art museum.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Art & Design
The short answer is not really. The more nuanced answer is that many ballet choreographers, often reworking the famous 1895 version by Marius Petipa and Lev Ivanov, find it difficult to get "Swan Lake" right. (A major exception: Alexei Ratmansky, whose production is faithful to the original and somehow sparklingly modern.) Contemporary dance choreographers Mats Ek, Matthew Bourne, Dada Masilo have tended to provide a specific take on the tale that departs substantially from tradition. Mr. Preljocaj has opted for something in between. He uses Tchaikovsky's great score, with a few electronic music interpolations and extracts from other works, including Tchaikovsky's Second and Fourth Symphonies. He more or less sticks to the narrative: The young Prince Siegfried (Laurent Le Gall), at odds with his destiny and longing for some form of transcendence, falls in love with Odette (Clara Freschel), a princess who has been transformed into a swan by von Rothbart, an evil magician. But Mr. Preljocaj's world is a contemporary one, and Rothbart (Antoine Dubois), as he is called here, is a leather trouser wearing, brutish property developer whose evil, world dominating plans are supported by Siegfried's parents. (In the traditional version, the prince has only a mother, but here he has a father, too, played with melodramatic, slicked hair villainy by Baptiste Coissieu.) These ideas are clumsily set out in the opening act, with architectural plans brandished by the king and Rothbart and a model of a futuristic city wheeled about. How the prince could thwart these plans and why he needs to be seduced by Odile, Rothbart's daughter, is never clear; nor are the origins of Odette's metamorphosis into a swan. We only see her being attacked by Rothbart and his henchman at the beginning. Vestiges of the traditional "Swan Lake" remain, though sometimes without enough context to make sense: courtiers perform incessantly for one another, despite no allusions to the prince's birthday and a later ball; Siegfried and Odette get their requisite pas de deux; there is even a dance for the four little swans.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Dance
During this age of reality television and its aggressive pursuit of chaos, it doesn't seem a coincidence that the choreographer Juliana F. May has created "Adult Documentary," a work constructed of real and fictional stories by its performers. Those stories serve as raw material, distorted over time and replayed on an incessant loop as Ms. May drains and fills in her choreographic terrain. That, by the way, is an expanse of sandy brown carpet just thick enough that if you walked into a hotel room covered with it you'd think twice before taking off your socks. "Adult Documentary," performed Tuesday at the Chocolate Factory, is a duet of language and movement. It makes for a dense and difficult hour in which the performers Lindsay Clark, Talya Epstein, Rennie McDougall, Kayvon Pourazar and Connor Voss are troupers, diligently hustling from one cue to the next. What does such tenacity add up to? "Adult Documentary" is tough, yet comes off as more relentless than rigorous. Mr. Voss is the first to inhabit Ms. May's jagged world, which feels like a psychiatric hospital. Speaking in a high pitched voice, not unlike Andy Kaufman's Latka, he drifts around the stage uttering lines that include references to a "sexy baby." Mr. Voss saves this grating opening, somewhat, with his wry, knowing eyes and wiry body. As words battle with movement, the dancers repeatedly form a tableau in which they remove clothing and position themselves on the floor or on metal folding chairs. Ms. Clark begins a story: "So, what ended up happening is that people just wanted to hang out and have a good time. It turned out to be sad." Alongside yelps, there are simple, raw moves like the wheelbarrow or crawls on the floor embellished with lifts of elbows and knees that flap briskly to the side. As always, Ms. May shows an admirable handle on structure, but the characters inside of her carefully delineated patterns are inconsistent; in this experiment, that's obviously part of the point, but Mr. Pourazar, especially, seems here like a fifth wheel on a nonsensical double date. Toward the end, the text recedes as Chris Seeds's score, quietly then more insistently, rumbles throughout the space leading the way for more the repetition of the movement. True, abstraction wins out over narrative, but it was never a fair fight.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Dance
Now Lives In a quaint house in Ridgewood, Queens, with her boyfriend and pet python. The space doubles as her test kitchen and studio. Claim to Fame Ms. Smith is a baker and an artist, known for her work as the pastry chef at New York hot spots like Cafe Henrie, El Rey Coffee Bar and Luncheonette. She creates sculptures out of bread and posts photos of them on Instagram, leche smith. "It's a way to encourage the viewing of bread as a medium to be appreciated," she said. Part of Ms. Smith's process is also observing her creations as they grow stale and decompose, creating no waste. Big Break A self taught baker, Ms. Smith met Gerardo Gonzalez, the chef at El Rey and Lalito, through her brother in law, who was a regular at those establishments. As she worked her way up to pastry chef, Mr. Gonzalez introduced her to artists like Laila Gohar, who use food as a medium. Ms. Smith began experimenting with bread herself. Her first project, for a pop up gallery in SoHo in 2015, involved 15 loaves of sourdough bread, which were stacked into tower like sculptures before spectators were invited to consume them.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Fashion & Style
As corporate giants like Ford, G.M. and Waymo struggle to get their self driving cars on the road, a team of researchers in China is rethinking autonomous transportation using a souped up bicycle. This bike can roll over a bump on its own, staying perfectly upright. When the man walking just behind it says "left," it turns left, angling back in the direction it came. It also has eyes: It can follow someone jogging several yards ahead, turning each time the person turns. And if it encounters an obstacle, it can swerve to the side, keeping its balance and continuing its pursuit. It is not the first ever autonomous bicycle (Cornell University has a project underway) or, probably, the future of transportation, although it could find a niche in a future world swarming with package delivery vehicles, drones and robots. (There are even weirder ideas out there.) Nonetheless, the Chinese researchers who built the bike believe it demonstrates the future of computer hardware. It navigates the world with help from what is called a neuromorphic chip, modeled after the human brain. The short video did not show the limitations of the bicycle (which presumably tips over occasionally), and even the researchers who built the bike admitted in an email to The Times that the skills on display c ould be duplicated with existing computer hardware. But in handling all these skills with a neuromorphic processor, the project highlighted the wider effort to achieve new levels of artificial intelligence with novel kinds of chips. This effort spans myriad start up companies and academic labs, as well as big name tech companies like Google, Intel and IBM. And as the Nature paper demonstrates, the movement is gaining significant momentum in China, a country with little experience designing its own computer processors, but which has invested heavily in the idea of an "A.I. chip." The hope is that such chips will eventually allow machines to navigate the world with an autonomy not possible today. Existing robots can learn to open a door or toss a Ping Pong ball into a plastic bin, but the training takes hours to days of trial and error. Even then, the skills are viable only in very particular situations. With help from neuromorphic chips and other new processors, machines could learn more complex tasks more efficiently, and be more adaptable in executing them. "That is where we see the big promise," said Mike Davies, who oversees Intel's efforts to build neuromorphic chips. Over the past decade, the development of artificial intelligence has accelerated thanks to what are called neural networks : complex mathematical systems that can learn tasks by analyzing vast amounts of data. By metabolizing thousands of cat photos, for instance, a neural network can learn to recognize a cat. This is the technology that recognizes faces in the photos you post to Facebook, identifies the commands you bark into your smartphone and translates between languages on internet services like Microsoft Skype. It is also hastening the advance of autonomous robots, including self driving cars. But it faces significant limitations. A neural network doesn't really learn on the fly. Engineers train a neural network for a particular task before sending it out into the real world, and it can't learn without enormous numbers of examples. OpenAI, a San Francisco artificial intelligence lab, recently built a system that could beat the world's best players at a complex video game called Dota 2. But the system first spent months playing the game against itself, burning through millions of dollars in computing power. Researchers aim to build systems that can learn skills in a manner similar to the way people do. And that could require new kinds of computer hardware. Dozens of companies and academic labs are now developing chips specifically for training and operating A.I. systems. The most ambitious projects are the neuromorphic processors, including the Tianjic chip under development at Tsinghua University in China. Such chips are designed to imitate the network of neurons in the brain, not unlike a neural network but with even greater fidelity, at least in theory. Neuromorphic chips typically include hundreds of thousands of faux neurons, and rather than just processing 1s and 0s, these neurons operate by trading tiny bursts of electrical signals, "firing" or "spiking" only when input signals reach critical thresholds, as biological neurons do. "This is about trying to bridge and unify computer science and neuroscience," said Gordon Wilson, the chief executive of Rain Neuromorphics, a start up company that is developing a neuromorphic chip. Neuromorphic chips are by no means a recreation of the brain. In so many respects, the workings of the brain remain a mystery. But the hope for such chips is that, by operating a bit more like the brain, they can help A.I. systems learn skills and execute tasks more efficiently. Because each faux neuron fires only on demand rather than continuously, neuromorphic chips consume less energy than traditional processors. And because they are designed to process information in short bursts, some researchers believe they could lead to systems that learn on the fly, from much smaller amounts of data. In the video, the bicycle is not learning; it is merely executing software that had been trained to handle specific tasks, including recognizing spoken words and avoiding obstacles. But it is executing the software in an efficient way, which is important to vehicles that run on battery power. Researchers believe they can eventually merge the training process and the in the moment execution, so that a bicycle could learn as it goes, from just a few moments of experience. The rub is that building the right hardware may require at least several more years of research. "We are still in the trial and error stage," said Georgios Dimou, who previously worked on Intel's neuromorphic project. The Chinese researchers believe that time will bring far more than just autonomous bicycles. Their paper paints the Tianjic chip as a step toward "artificial general intelligence," a machine that can do anything you and your brain can do. But that is merely the promise du jour. Maybe start with helping it learn to ride a bike.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Science
There's a place in Chile's Atacama Desert where trails of depressions punctuate the fine chusca dust. But what might seem like the footsteps left by a giant creature are in fact exquisitely preserved evidence of boulders that tumbled down a nearby cliff face before bouncing to their final resting place. The site, the Chuculay Boulder Field, is home to thousands of granite goliaths, some as big as houses. And because the desert's hyper arid conditions preserve the boulders' steps, it's "an ideal place to study rockfall theory and physics," said Paul Morgan, a geologist at Cornell University. Mr. Morgan and his collaborators analyzed the trajectories of some of these boulders and presented their research last week at the American Geophysical Union conference in San Francisco. Their findings of how far boulders tumble are useful for designing structures that could protect people and property in rockfall prone areas. In July 2018, Mr. Morgan and his collaborators from Cornell and Chile's Universidad Catolica del Norte pitched tents amid the granite giants of Chuculay. A 1,000 foot high scarp, a geological feature created by a tectonic fault, towered nearby. The site's rocks probably tumbled down from that scarp during one of the numerous earthquakes experienced in tectonically active Chile, the researchers hypothesize.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Science
Two rooms, six actors, one hour: This week, "Mr. Robot" served us a bottle episode. There was no way of knowing we would find something so truly dark at the bottom of it. For most of its duration, this commercial free installment, written and directed by the series's creator and showrunner, Sam Esmail, plays out like a tense hostage thriller. Elliot Alderson and his therapist, Krista, are the prisoners, wide eyed with fear. Their chief captor: Fernando Vera, a meth smoking mystic with visions of conquering New York City with the help of his hacker captive. Each of the two sides has its henchmen. For Elliot, that's his Mr. Robot persona, fearless in the face of the gangster's aggression. Vera has his own minions, Peanuts ( Young M.A ) and Javi ( Jahneer E. Williams ), who view both their boss's flights of fancy and Elliot's shattered psyche with wry bemusement. The story beats seem standard at first. Elliot and Mr. Robot argue between themselves about finding an escape route and ensuring Krista's safety. Vera holds forth in supervillainous soliloquies about his conquest of the island of Hispaniola's drug trade, until he is told by a shaman that Manhattan is the island he should really set his sights on. Peanuts threatens to shoot Elliot when his Mr. Robot persona takes over, while the threat of rape by Javi is held over Krista's head when she and Elliot are deemed uncooperative. Elliot even pulls a gun on his captors, only to discover that they've already removed the bullets. But there's something about the episode's ostentatious use of a five act structure, complete with title cards and fades to black between acts, that portends more than a detour into crime fiction. The dread builds. And when Vera forces Krista and Elliot to conduct a therapy session, we find out what it's building to. At Vera's insistence, Krista digs deep into Elliot's past, into the day he fell from his bedroom window as a child. Elliot learned from his sister, Darlene, that he jumped through the window, though he had thought his father pushed him. Krista asks him why his memories of the event are so foggy. Isn't it a lot like the way he loses time when Mr. Robot takes over to protect him? If so, what was Mr. Robot protecting him from way back then? Why did he grab a baseball bat and swing it at his father, trashing his room in the process? Why did he hide his sister in the closet before his father came into the room? Why did he jump? "Did your father sexually molest you?" she asks, every word audibly painful. "Yes," Elliot replies, realizing the horrible truth before our eyes. The revelation poleaxes Elliot. Rami Malek bests even his own usually exceptional work in the role. His jaw appears to come unhinged as he writhes from the shock and pain, as if his emotional distress were a physical thing tormenting his body. For those who have experienced severe psychological trauma, the sight is uncomfortably familiar. But in the end, the very severity of that trauma is Elliot's salvation. Seeming genuinely moved by Elliot's ordeal, Vera reveals that he, too, was molested as a child, and he encourages Elliot to embrace his newfound strength. "Once you've weathered a storm like yours," he says, "you become the storm. You hear me? You are the storm, and it's the rest of the world that needs to run for cover." Vera is so engrossed with comforting and praising Elliot that he is taken completely unawares by a knife in his back, wielded by Krista. It's one last fascinating twist: We realize suddenly that Elliot must have seen her creeping up the entire time he appeared to be engaged in a one on one heart to heart with his captor. He was just waiting for the blade to get buried in the man's body. Once Vera collapses, the power appears to go out in Krista's apartment, one light at a time. It's not clear why, as the storm raging outside would have knocked out all the power in one shot. But as the credits roll, we're left to contemplate what this revelation means for Elliot, and for the show. For one thing, it finally solves the dilemma of the window incident. For most of the show's duration, Elliot believed that his father had pushed him out of the window; the revelation last season that he jumped appeared to be a way to sand down the rough edges of his relationship with his father, and by extension with his father's doppelganger, Mr. Robot. Now, however, we see that the truth is somewhere in between, and uglier than either of the other two options. His father did push him out of the window, in the sense that his behavior drove Elliot to fling himself two stories to the ground outside rather than endure his abuse. Thus his entire vendetta against E Corp and its puppet masters waged to avenge the death of his father is called into question. So, too, is his relationship with Mr. Robot, whom Elliot will likely no longer be able to tolerate in the form of an avatar of his father. With so few episodes remaining, this is a savage left turn for the story to take. But "Mr. Robot" has always been at its best when engaging in high risk, high reward maneuvers. Asking the audience to wrestle with something this horrific right at the root of the show is asking a lot. I wish more shows had this courage. None Rami Malek and his therapeutic foil, Gloria Reuben, are obviously the all stars of this episode, but Elliot Villar deserves praise for his performance as Vera as well. He has the difficult task of playing a man who is both wise and stupid, sensitive and sadistic, caring and cruel, and who has to exhibit each of these qualities at different points throughout the episode. He has to make "Scarface" style bluster and teary eyed confessions convincing, and he nails it. None The use of thunder and lightning as audiovisual effects throughout the episode is both overtly theatrical and intelligently expressionistic. What the characters are going through is so powerful that you almost believe the heavens are responding to them directly. None When Elliot showed Vera and his minions the trillions of dollars they could steal from the Deus Group, I actually thought for a moment that Elliot might really join forces with them, if only to use them as muscle against the Dark Army. None The cinematographer Tod Campbell once again showed off his chops in an early shot that floated above the action in one room before settling back down to earth in the other. It looked both eerie and effortless.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Television
The day after I watched the documentary "Earth," I spent time working in my garden, digging, planting, getting my hands dirty. I didn't grow up gardening and I'm not especially good at it. Even so, when I'm not inadvertently killing plants, I find it satisfying tending the yard. It's a small pleasure, though given what the domination of nature has wrought, also a paradoxical one. More than 12 million acres have burned in Australia as of this week and, as this movie reminds you, there is no escaping complicity in what the environmentalist Bill McKibben has called "the end of nature." While gardening, I kept thinking about "Earth," which offers a look at how humans by excavating, by tunneling, by fetishizing Carrara marble countertops are changing material existence. The displacement of earth in the documentary is on a far larger, more dramatic scale than what any casual gardener does, true, but the movie is a stark reminder that someone, at some point, cleared and gouged the land to build that gardener's house, streets and city. This isn't news, but it is still sobering to see the planet ruined one backhoe at a time. The movie opens with a fixed, perfectly framed shot of a dun colored, gently sloping terrain. The place is somewhere in the San Fernando Valley, a huge swath just north of the Los Angeles basin. Centuries ago, the area was a prairie alive with people, flora and fauna, including the now extinct California grizzly. Over time, much of this life was supplanted by non native settlers, livestock, citrus groves, film studios, tract housing and that pop culture cliche called the Valley Girl. In "Earth," the area's continued expansion is bleakly expressed by a parade of bulldozers and backhoes that, from a distance, appear to be engaged in a perverse, choreographed dance. The men operating those machines are cutting mountains for a development, which is as mesmerizing to watch as it is appalling to think about. You grasp the enormous scale of this project from the long shots that the director Nikolaus Geyrhalter ("Our Daily Bread") liberally uses. These shots tend either to render people invisible (when inside the machines they operate) or to turn them into undifferentiated specks. There's a strangely paradoxical and dystopian quality to these visions, which are at once wholly human and inhuman. If this were science fiction, you could say the machines had already risen, which would be almost reassuring in its nihilistic finality.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Movies
WASHINGTON Christopher Wheeldon's "The Winter's Tale" the first ballet to dramatize that Shakespeare play achieves an extraordinary amount. Movingly, over three acts, it takes us on a great arc of emotion and experience, capturing the play's themes of death and regeneration, hostility and reconciliation. When it takes liberties with aspects of the story, it does so persuasively. Its five leading roles three for women, two for men are marvelously distinct, while never seeming like copies of other roles in the repertory. The ballet, which had its premiere with the Royal Ballet in London in 2014, is a coproduction with the National Ballet of Canada, which is presenting its American premiere at the Kennedy Center here, with four casts. Appropriately, snow was falling outside throughout Wednesday's performance. And just as I was thinking I'd like to see it with a variety of casts, news came that the Canadian company will present it in New York this summer as part of the Lincoln Center Festival (July 28 31 at the David H. Koch Theater). "The Winter's Tale" is a big advance from Mr. Wheeldon's earlier three act ballets, "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland" (2011) and "Cinderella" (2013). Like "Alice," it's a collaboration with the composer Joby Talbot and the designer Bob Crowley; like "Cinderella," it uses special effects by the theater artist Basil Twist. Both composer and choreographer have grown as ballet artists, though Mr. Talbot has been in demand as a ballet composer since his score for Wayne McGregor's one act "Chroma" (2006). Here he has really begun to create propulsive rhythms as well as to conjure a wide range of dramatic colors. It's Mr. Wheeldon, however, who has grown most. Each of the ballet's three acts has its own distinct character; each character has individual motifs not limiting shticks but memorable features that return and develop. Paulina (who at the end of the play compares herself to an "old turtle" i.e., the dove grieving for her lost mate) has winglike arm gestures; the part was played on Wednesday by Svetlana Lunkina (formerly of the Bolshoi Ballet), who tellingly showed how Paulina's grief expresses itself in the splayed fingers and turning wrists at the end of those spread arms. Hermione (Jurgita Dronina), in anguish in Act I and again when reunited with her husband in Act III, stretches a powerfully pure arabesque line from front arm to raised back leg, and then repeatedly turns on the spot in this position, rising again and again, urgently, onto point. This duet between Hermione and Leontes, danced with no one else present, is a particular breakthrough for Mr. Wheeldon. He has been inclined to make duets where men forever hold on to women and manipulate them; but here we're often aware of the space between husband and wife, the gaps they keep making and then bridging. Act I is largely drama. I admired it more in this performance than when I saw the ballet's first performances in London, principally because of Evan McKie's eloquent interpretation of Leontes. He's an authoritative figure whose jealous torments and violent outbreaks are composed of telling contradictions and vividly dramatic points. His hand bitterly but clearly conjures the spider that is the most astonishing image of one speech in the play. Elsewhere, the way he needs to conjoin his wife with Polixenes to summoning the very adultery that appalls him is compelling. Act II is largely dance: Mr. Wheeldon takes the fourth of Shakespeare's five acts and expands it into the jubilant, innocent peak of the whole ballet, in contrast with the adult miseries of the first act and the mature resolution of the third. The main scene is a rural one in Bohemia. For this, Mr. Crowley's set creates a marvelous green tree, with hanging folk ornaments: It seems to perch on its roots as if suspended in air against a bright blue sky. It's here that Mr. Talbot's score takes flight, first with a floating flute melody that seems both Eastern (perhaps Asian) and timeless, and then with pulsating rhythms that suggest Balkan folk dances. A dance idea used engagingly here by Mr. Wheeldon is the rapid alternation of right and left sides of the body. When Perdita flourishes left hand, then right, it's the kind of juicy gesture Mr. Wheeldon has learned from works by the British master choreographer Frederick Ashton. But he also makes steps in which left and right feet pounce in quick succession, and exuberantly jumping phrases in which, in vivid self contradiction, the jumper bends one knee in midair back against the direction he's traveling and then bends the other knee in the opposite direction. The vitality of these dances is terrific. Occasionally their grammar becomes a bit clotted, but they abound with invention. When Perdita's princely sweetheart, Florizel (Francesco Gabriele Frola), cuts loose in a circuit of jumps this high energy outpouring is a climax for the audience (one of several moments that won applause on Wednesday) it avoids cliche: Each of those jumps is different, and seems a poetic part of Florizel's rapture. There are a few moments of melodrama here, and some passages that seem effective rather than inspired. To audiences who have no knowledge of the Shakespeare play, there's a lot of unfamiliar story to fathom. And yet its characters live. Though this is one of the most endlessly moving plays, nothing in Mr. Wheeldon's version is unworthy of the great original.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Dance
Credit...Erin Schaff/The New York Times The coronavirus patient, a 75 year old man, was dying. No family member was allowed in the room with him, only a young nurse. In full protective gear, she dimmed the lights and put on quiet music. She freshened his pillows, dabbed his lips with moistened swabs, held his hand, spoke softly to him. He wasn't even her patient, but everyone else was slammed. Finally, she held an iPad close to him, so he could see the face and hear the voice of a grief stricken relative Skyping from the hospital corridor. After the man died, the nurse found a secluded hallway, and wept. A few days later, she shared her anguish in a private Facebook message to Dr. Heather Farley, who directs a comprehensive staff support program at Christiana Hospital in Newark, Del. "I'm not the kind of nurse that can act like I'm fine and that something sad didn't just happen," she wrote. Medical workers like the young nurse have been celebrated as heroes for their commitment to treating desperately ill coronavirus patients. But the heroes are hurting, badly. Even as applause to honor them swells nightly from city windows, and cookies and thank you notes arrive at hospitals, the doctors, nurses and emergency responders on the front lines of a pandemic they cannot control are battling a crushing sense of inadequacy and anxiety. Every day they become more susceptible to post traumatic stress, mental health experts say. And their psychological struggles could impede their ability to keep working with the intensity and focus their jobs require. Although the causes for the suicides last month of Dr. Lorna M. Breen, the medical director of the emergency department at NewYork Presbyterian Allen Hospital, and John Mondello, a rookie New York emergency medical technician, are unknown, the tragedies served as a devastating wake up call about the mental health of medical workers. Even before the coronavirus pandemic, their professions were pockmarked with burnout and even suicide. On Wednesday, the World Health Organization issued a report about the pandemic's impact on mental health, highlighting health care workers as vulnerable. Recent studies of medical workers in China, Canada and Italy who treated Covid 19 patients found soaring rates of anxiety, depression and insomnia. To address the ballooning problem, therapists who specialize in treating trauma are offering free sessions to medical workers and emergency responders nationwide. New York City has joined with the Defense Department to train 1,000 counselors to address the combat like stress. Rutgers Health/RWJ Barnabas Health, a New Jersey system, just adopted a "Check You, Check Two" initiative, urging staff to attend to their own needs and touch base with two colleagues daily. "Physicians are often very self reliant and may not easily ask for help. In this time of crisis, with high workload and many uncertainties, this trait can add to the load that they carry internally," said Dr. Chantal Brazeau, a psychiatrist at the Rutgers New Jersey Medical School. Even when new Covid 19 cases and deaths begin to ebb, as they have in some places, mental health experts say the psychological pain of medical workers is likely to continue and even worsen. "As the pandemic intensity seems to fade, so does the adrenaline. What's left are the emotions of dealing with the trauma and stress of the many patients we cared for," said Dr. Mark Rosenberg, the chairman of the emergency department at St. Joseph's Health in Paterson, N.J. "There is a wave of depression, letdown, true PTSD and a feeling of not caring anymore that is coming." Screw all of you now I see exactly why the only thing left to do is suicide. a Facebook post by a St. Louis paramedic in April After Kurt Becker, a paramedic firefighter in St. Louis County, saw that post, which included a profanity laced screed of frustration and despair over the job, he sent a copy to the man's therapist with a note saying, "You need to check this out." "I'm reading this, and I'm ticking off each comment with, 'stress marker,' 'stress marker,' 'stress marker,' " said Mr. Becker, who manages a 300 person union district. (The writer is in treatment and gave permission for the post to be quoted.) Mr. Becker, 48, is himself the grandson of a bomber pilot and son of a Vietnam veteran. But his local has been hit by a dozen suicides since 2004, and he has become an advocate for the mental health of its members. To maintain his equilibrium, he works out and sees a therapist. Recently, he has been getting more requests than usual for the union's peer support team and its roster of clinicians who understand the singular experiences of emergency medical workers. "The virus scares the hell out of our guys," he said. "And now, when they go home to decompress, instead, they and their spouses are home schooling. The spouse has lost a job, and is at wit's end. The kids are screaming. Let me tell you: The tension level in the crews is through the roof." Many besieged health care workers are exhibiting what Alynn Schmitt McManus, a St. Louis based clinical social worker, calls "betrayal trauma." "They feel overwhelmed and abandoned" by fire chiefs who, she said, rarely acknowledge the newly relentless demands of the job. Many paramedics, she added, are "aggressive and depressed. They are so committed to the work, they are such good human beings, but they feel so compromised now." Brendan, who asked for his last name to be withheld to protect his privacy, is a 24 year old paramedic firefighter who works 48 hour shifts on the tough north side of St. Louis. His unit has been so busy running calls that he goes for long stretches without showering, eating or sleeping. He is terrified he might infect his fiancee and their daughter. "We got a letter from our chief saying that there's a national shortage of gloves, gowns, masks and goggles because the public is taking them," he said. "Then we walk into Walmart and see that 90 percent of the people have better masks than we do." With no end in sight to the crisis, Brendan sought out a therapist. "We are a lot quicker to be angry with each other," he said. "Any little thing sends us over the edge. But among the older guys in their late 30s and 40s, it's not OK to talk about things. So all anyone talks about is alcohol." "They were coming in very sick and deteriorating so fast. I was carrying a lot inside me, and I was very sad when I came home. I was feeling like I wasn't doing a good job. My mother in law is a nurse, and she saw I needed help so she connected me with a therapist." Kristina, a nurse at Long Island Jewish Medical Center in Queens Therapists around the country, many affiliated with the Trauma Recovery Network, which includes a large New York team, have been lining up to offer free treatment to medical workers. But the number of requests for help has been modest. "People are nervous that if they pause to get treatment, they'll crash, "said Karen Alter Reid, a psychologist and the founder of the Fairfield County Trauma Response Team in Connecticut, who has treated disaster relief workers at school shootings and hurricanes. The reasons to offer front line workers specialized trauma therapy now are both to forestall destructive symptoms from settling in long term, and to patch up depleted people so they can keep doing their jobs with the intensity demanded of them. Since mid March, Dr. Alter Reid's group has been treating dozens of emergency medical technicians, doctors and nurses. What distinguishes this pandemic as a traumatic experience, she said, is that no one knows when it will end, which protracts anxiety. Through Zoom group therapy, the crews have been regaining some semblance of solidarity as they unburden with each other, unmasked, through a computer screen, hearing everyone talk about similar struggles: Living away from families, to keep them safe. The smell of disinfectant in their clothes and hair. The clumsy haz mat gear. In the sessions, Dr. Alter Reid instructs them to tap on their desktops. The tapping is integral to her technique, a well studied trauma treatment called eye movement desensitization and reprocessing. As they tap, which can sound like group drumming, she asks them to recall a challenging case when they each prevailed, and to share it. Through these sessions, she tries to help them subdue memories of fear, failure and death so they can summon their innate resilience: Remember what you can do. I have nightmares that I won't have my P.P.E. I worry about my patients, my co workers, my family, myself. I can't turn my brain off. Christina Burke, an I.C.U. nurse at Christiana Hospital, Newark, Del. A nagging detail sticks in Christina Burke's mind like a burr. Not only is hers the last face that patients see before they die, but because of her mandatory mask, all they glimpse are her eyes. Her identity as a compassionate nurse feels diminished. She longs to lift up her mask and reveal her full self to patients. Still mourning, Dr. Cohen wonders, "Did I bring this virus into my house?" As he prepares to go to work, "My son says, 'Daddy, be very, very careful,' and I know what he's thinking." The guilt threatens to swamp him. What if he is the third person in this household to die? After the shift, Dr. Cohen photocopies his notes, so there's no risk he leaves with paper that might have coronavirus on it. He cleans his stethoscope, pens, goggles, face shield and the bottom of his sneakers with antimicrobial wipes. He does a surgical hand wash, up to his elbows. He changes into a clean set of scrubs, putting the dirty ones in a plastic bag, and walks through the hospital parking lot. Sitting in his car, he sprays the bottom of his shoes with Lysol. At home, he removes his sneakers and scrubs, leaving them in a box in the garage, and heads to the shower. Only after will he allow himself to embrace his family. How long will Dr. Cohen march through this meticulous ritual? When will fear loosen its grip? "We've always been told to suck it up and move on," he said. He wonders: When his own emotional crash comes, when colleagues start unraveling, "Will there be people there to help us?"	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Health
What Should Young Children Drink? Mostly Milk and Water, Scientists Say A panel of scientists issued new nutritional guidelines for children on Wednesday, describing in detail what they should be allowed to drink in the first years of life. The recommendations, among the most comprehensive and restrictive to date, may startle some parents. Babies should receive only breast milk or formula, the panel said. Water may be added to the diet at 6 months; infants receiving formula may be switched to cow's milk at 12 months. For the first five years, children should drink mostly milk and water, according to the guidelines. Children aged 5 and under should not be given any drink with sugar or other sweeteners, including low calorie or artificially sweetened beverages, chocolate milk or other flavored milk, caffeinated drinks and toddler formulas. Plant based beverages, like almond, rice or oat milk, also should be avoided. (Soy milk i s the preferred alternative for parents who want an alternative to cow's milk.) In what may come as a shock to parents with pantries full of juice boxes, the panel also said that young children should drink less than a cup of 100 percent juice per day and that none at all is a better choice. The new guidelines were produced by Healthy Eating Research, a nutrition advocacy group, and funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The recommendations are likely to be influential, as they were developed by the American Academy of Pediatrics, the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics, the American Heart Association and the American Academy of Pediatric Dentistry. The cautions against sweetened beverages arrive amid persistent concerns about childhood obesity, which can set the stage for lifelong chronic illness. About 19 percent of children in the United States are obese. "Close to half of all 2 to 5 year olds in the U.S. drink sugary drinks every day, which we know increases their risk of obesity, diabetes and other health problems," said Megan Lott, deputy director of Healthy Eating Research. "These recommendations simplify everything for parents water, milk and limited amounts of 100 percent fruit juice," she added. Children do not need juice and are better off eating fruit, the panel said. Excessive juice consumption can lead to dental decay and weight gain, and is linked to overall poor nutrition. "When we talk about empty calories that are consumed through beverages and the number of calories people get from sugar sweetened drinks, we're not just talking about soda," said Dr. Richard Besser, president and chief executive of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. "Juice is another source of calories that nutritionally aren't terrific." Recommendations to limit juice are not new: The pediatrics academy has long advised that babies not be given juice till they are a year old, and that the amount of juice be limited to four ounces per day for children between the ages of 1 and 3. Like the Science Times page on Facebook. Sign up for the Science Times newsletter. Plant based milk beverages like almond, oat and rice milk often contain added sweeteners or artificial flavorings, and are less nutritious than cow's milk, a glass of which contains eight grams of protein along with nutrients such as calcium. With the exception of soy milk, plant based milks are poor in protein. Though they are often fortified, scientists do not know whether people are able to absorb these nutrients as efficiently as those naturally present in other foods. Formulas marketed for toddlers are usually unnecessary, since most toddlers eat solid food; the products tend to be expensive and often contain added sugars, Ms. Lott said. There is no rigorous data from studies of children about the safety of artificially sweetened drinks and other low calorie sweetened beverages, she said, and the products can condition a child to prefer sweet drinks generally. A spokesman for the American Beverage Association, William M. Dermody Jr., said beverage companies agree that "it's important for families to moderate sugar consumption to ensure a balanced, healthy lifestyle, and this is especially true for young children." A spokesman for the Juice Products Association, however, said that for children with limited access to fresh produce, juice can help improve fruit intake. Federal dietary guidelines recognize three quarters of a cup of 100 percent juice as equivalent to three quarters of a cup of fruit. But many products that appear to contain natural juice may actually contain only a small amount of real juice, experts cautioned, saying parents must read labels carefully. Children develop preferences for foods and beverages at a young age, and the recommendations are made with an eye to shaping a healthy palate. About a third of children and adolescents in the United States are overweight or obese, conditions that increase the risk of developing chronic illnesses, such as high blood pressure, high cholesterol, sleep apnea, Type 2 diabetes, heart disease, stroke and some cancers. "The hope is that through this approach, you'll help your child develop a taste for what's good for them," Dr. Besser said. Though the occasional glass of 100 percent juice is not going to be harmful, "what you want your children as they grow older to be drinking primarily is water." The new recommendations are broken down by age group: Birth to six months: Infants should drink only breast milk or infant formula. They should not drink juice, milk, flavored milk, so called transition or weaning formulas (also called toddler milks, growing up milks or follow up formula), low calorie sweetened beverages (diet or "light" drinks, or those sweetened with Stevia or Sucralose).	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Health
COMMACK, N.Y. There have been so many honor societies created at Commack High School on Long Island in recent years that some students ended up in six or seven of them, racking up memberships like so many merit badges or thanks for playing trophies. But the school reversed course this school year, cutting out its 28 student technology honor society and combining those for sign language, Latin, German and French. That left 11 societies, and a community wondering how much honor is too much. With so many societies, some students are unable to attend all of the meetings and shirk their duties with the groups, showing up only to collect the "honor cord" a decorative tassel to wear at graduation. Commack is one of many places where educators and parents are re examining the role of honor societies, which started out as an academic distinction reserved for the top 5 or 10 percent of a class but have become a routine item on college resumes. While the prestigious National Honor Society still requires members to maintain at least a 3.0 grade point average (many chapters like Commack set the bar higher), fledgling societies in individual subjects often accept lower grades in other areas. In Commack, where a sizeable number of graduates are accepted into Ivy League schools every year, nearly a third of the 1,200 juniors and seniors belong to honor societies; the average among those students is three apiece. "This cheapens the currency," said Chester E. Finn Jr., president of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, a nonprofit educational policy group in Washington. "Once everyone's wearing rhinestones, you might not notice someone wearing diamonds." Many college admissions offices, which inadvertently inspired the growth of such societies, find them confusing. "It's very difficult to know with so many different honor societies and so many different criteria, what exactly we have in front of us," said William R. Fitzsimmons, dean of admissions at Harvard. Nationally, there are nearly two dozen recognized high school honor societies, including recent additions like the National English Honor Society, which has grown to nearly 21,000 members in 337 schools since 2005. The gold standard, the National Honor Society, has more than 700,000 members in 15,869 high schools; an elementary version, introduced last year, is already in more than 1,000 schools. David Cordts, associate director of honor societies for the National Association of Secondary School Principals, said the groups motivate students to explore their interests and build their confidence and self esteem. "We've been giving gold stars and putting names on honor rolls going back to Socrates," he noted. Timberlane Regional High School in New Hampshire added its 10th honor society the International Thespian Society, with two members last year after the school expanded its drama classes. In New Jersey, Cherry Hill High School West started its eighth society, Platinum Torch, in 2007 to recognize students dedicated to community service. Students wait to enter the Spanish Honor Society induction ceremony at Commack High. Katie Orlinsky for The New York Times But as honor societies have grown, some schools have screened out less serious students. At Florida's South Miami Senior High School, the math society delays induction of new members until they fulfill a requirement for community service, and withholds honor cords from seniors who skip meetings, said Ileana Rodriguez, the activities director. Even so, at schools like South Portland High School in Maine, with six honor societies, the student body sports so many cords, sashes and pins at graduation that a few teachers have asked whether the standards for such honors are high enough, said the principal, Jeanne Crocker. On Long Island, the Port Washington district has added English, art and music honor societies since 2006 for a total of seven, but Geoffrey N. Gordon, the superintendent, opposes any more because he is already seeing a handful of students who do not bother to show up for induction ceremonies. "If you go to too many of them, it waters it down so much that it doesn't mean anything," he said. Here at Commack High School, the number of societies doubled in the past decade, as students who did not qualify for the National Honor Society lobbied for a chance to be recognized. The groups generally meet outside school hours and require students to tutor or perform other community service. The school spends an average of 1,200 a year for each society's faculty adviser, while students cover the cost of activities through dues and fund raising. Budget cuts were part of what motivated the school to cut the technology society, its smallest, and combine the others into a "world language" society. Officials also cut funding for the English, history, math, science and business societies, but students, teachers, parents and a local education foundation raised money over the summer to restore them. Now, administrators are considering turning some of the remaining societies into clubs open to all, and limiting the number a student can join. "Each of the honor societies has a very specific purpose, but I don't think you have to be in every one and that's what went wrong," said Carol Bertolotti, an assistant principal. Steven Mauser, 17, applied to every group he qualified for in what he called an "honor society frenzy." He belongs to six (it was seven before technology got axed), but said he spends the most time on history, where he is treasurer, and the least on Spanish. "I'm one of the offenders," he said. "Sometimes I fall a little short and maybe next month I bump that up a little to make up for the time that I didn't spend there, but by the end, I meet all the requirements." The Spanish society has 258 members, so "taking attendance is a nightmare at meetings," said Grace Silva, the adviser, who wants to raise the criteria for admission from the current 90 average in Spanish and 85 over all. "The problem comes when you're trying to run an honor society where kids don't want to be and they're skipping meetings and they're not doing anything," said Amanda Seres, president of the 168 member English society. Amanda said she joined only two other societies (national and English) so as not to overextend, but acknowledged that "it will be kind of hard in May when I'll have three honor cords and everyone else will have nine." Some parents agree that honor societies have become too much of a good thing. "There should be a limit," said Dmitriy Vaysman. "I mean how can you be in seven honor societies? There are five days in a week." (Dr. Vaysman's son, Max, is in four societies.) Drew Meyers, 17, spent the summer organizing and attending fund raisers to save the history and math honor societies, of which he is president, and the science society, of which he is a member, borrowing 300 from his parents when math came up short. He wrote about the experience for his Yale application. "One of the essays was talk about something you committed to over the summer, and I was just like, 'Oh boy,' " he recalled. "It's a nice bonus, but to put this kind of time into this many honor societies, you have to really love the subjects."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Education
Pierre Laurent Aimard, the French pianist, was staring up at the beautiful blue sky on Tuesday morning and playing the solemn strains of a Beethoven sonata. Staring up out of my phone, that is. I had put it down flat on a gnarled tree root while I fished out a plastic bag with which to manage my dog's unmentionables. There have been times in my reviewing career when I felt like I was handling refuse, but never had the sensation been so literal. The proximity of Mr. Aimard's lucid, passionate virtuosity to the waste of my toy poodle, Gus, came about because of an experiment. I wanted to try, for the first time since the coronavirus pandemic largely closed down live performing arts worldwide, to review a concert taken in the way I have most music since March: while running in Prospect Park in Brooklyn, ducking into the bodega for milk, walking Gus, living life. Yes? Well, sort of. I consumed Mr. Aimard's recital, which was presented by the Gilmore, an eminent keyboard festival based in Kalamazoo, Mich., as a series of episodes, as fragments rather than a cohesive entity. So much indeed, almost everything was lost in terms of my focus. But Mr. Aimard's overarching agenda, connecting Beethoven's music, in his 250th birthday year, to strands of 20th century modernism, came through with clarity, attesting to the strength of his vision and the savvy of his juxtapositions. I planned to watch the concert as it was streamed live from Berlin on Sunday afternoon, New York time; in characteristically scattered 2020 fashion, I forgot. But it is available until Wednesday, so on Monday evening I set out on a jog toward Prospect Park, glancing down at the screen when I could to see Mr. Aimard grow sweatier over the hourlong program. (Don't try this at home; I had some close calls with cars making tight turns in the gathering dark.) The program felt, in these surroundings, appropriately nocturnal, the park's forested paths a mirror of the moody depths and wary, milky, moonlit glints of Messiaen's "L'Alouette Lulu" ("The Woodlark"), from his "Catalogue d'Oiseaux" ("Catalog of Birds"). From the beginning, Mr. Aimard's playing was a study in reverberation; it was perceptible even through slipping headphones how the music expanded in space and time. I only regret that, just as he moved from "L'Alouette Lulu" into the classic, slowly unwinding first bars of Beethoven's "Moonlight" Sonata, I accidentally turned off my phone. Despite that unwelcome pause, Mr. Aimard's point was clear: Messiaen's forlorn yet slyly confident sounds were Beethoven's, too. The transitions were crucial in this presentation; I think that by paying close attention to those, I experienced much of what Mr. Aimard wanted me to, even if I lost other aspects of the performance while trying to keep a halfway decent running pace. The roiling, abrupt ending of the "Moonlight" led, without pause, to the dark, wet sounds like the autumn leaves I was crushing underfoot of another section from Messiaen's "Oiseaux," "La Chouette Hulotte" ("The Tawny Owl"). The ferocious ending of Beethoven's "Appassionata" Sonata was immediately followed by the similarly pounding opening chords of Stockhausen's "Klavierstuck IX." I had saved the "Appassionata" and "Klavierstuck" for Tuesday morning; what might have been weighty the night before now seemed, as I strolled with the dog, practically sunny the Beethoven coming across as an attempt to rise above darkness, rather than succumb to it. (It was at the noble beginning of the second movement that Gus decided he needed to go: a collision of the sacred and the profane on President Street.) The Stockhausen is best known for that relentless beginning, but I was more struck in Mr. Aimard's performance and on this particular walk by the sensual, dawnlike curlicues near the end. When he finished, this superb pianist bowed to the empty studio and walked offscreen, his footfalls echoing as his tones had. I didn't hear him under ideal conditions, but so little is ideal these days. I heard him, is what matters, and he was very, very good.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Music
ATHENS While money pours out of Greek banks and Europe debates whether or not Greece deserves its next handout, the people potentially in the best position to help shore up the nation's finances are mainly keeping their heads down. They are among the wealthiest Greeks whether shipping magnates, whose tax free status is enshrined in the constitution, or the so called oligarchs who have accumulated vast wealth via their dominance in core areas of the economy like oil, gas, media, banking and even cement. Astute investors, they have been reluctant to lend a hand to the Greek treasury through the risky proposition of buying government bonds. But they have also been slow to dispense funds to philanthropies trying to combat the mounting social ills that their nation's economic collapse has wrought drawing a sharp rebuke from the head of a foundation created from Greek shipping wealth that has become Greece's largest charitable donor in recent years. Mainly, though, they have done what Greeks, from the richest to those of modest means, have traditionally done: pay as little as they can in the way of taxes. Many economists say the oligarchs are a big part of Greece's economic problem, because they have capitalized on the insular, quasi monopolistic approach to business that is one reason their nation has long lagged the far more competitive economies of many other euro zone nations. The moneyed elite in Greece have always been secretive in nature, especially when it comes to their fortunes. Assessing the ultimate value of Greek private sector wealth is a nearly impossible task, because much of the money exists offshore, secreted away in Swiss bank accounts or invested in real estate in London and Monaco. Now, with the country's top vote getter, the leftist firebrand Alexis Tsipras, talking more and more about nationalizing companies and industries and, in the words of his top economic adviser, "taxing the rich," there is even more incentive to lie low. Of course, the left is not alone in this view. "Let's be frank the well off need to pay their fair share of taxes," Bob Traa, the International Monetary Fund's representative in Greece, said in a speech last year in Athens. Last year alone, an estimated 8 billion euros ( 10.2 billion) in collectible taxes were in arrears nearly half of the country's budget deficit. "The oligarchs want to keep the euro largely because of the banks which are so deeply integrated in the euro system," said Costas Lapavitsas, an economist at the University of London. "But they are keeping quiet about it." But as children go hungry in Greek schools because their parents have no money with which to feed them, and the streets of Athens become home to growing numbers of desperate, jobless people, pressure is mounting on the country's rich to do what the state can no longer effectively do: write checks. After all, philanthropy is a Greek word. But with many wealthy Greeks still fearful of showing their financial hand, private giving to date has been relatively meager. Today in On Tech: Imagine not living in Big Tech's world. Dollar Tree will raise prices to 1.25 by the end of April. "I get the sense that almost nothing is being done," said Andreas C. Dracopoulos, co president of the Stavros Niarchos Foundation, which was set up in the 1990s to put to charitable use the winnings of its shipping tycoon founder. "Everyone is saying let someone else do it, and so far I am seeing little action." This January, the Niarchos foundation, which describes itself as an international charity with offices in Athens, New York and Monaco, said it would donate 100 million euros to a series of projects aimed at helping Greeks cope with the economic crisis. Plans include food vouchers to help destitute parents feed their children and programs to attack the growing epidemic of homelessness in big cities like Athens and Piraeus. Shipping analysts guess that the value of Greek shipping assets alone is about 85 billion although they hasten to add that those assets underpin a substantial debt burden of around 300 billion euros ( 380 billion) for the industry, used to finance vessels that can cost hundreds of millions of euros each. And in the slack global economy, shipping and shipping magnates are feeling the pinch. Thanassis Martinos, a second generation shipping heir, said his company, Eastern Mediterranean, was having one of its worst years on record and was likely to lose money in 2012. Still, he and some other shipping billionaires say they are doing their part. In addition to philanthropic giving, Mr. Martinos said it was important that wealthier Greeks contribute by providing jobs for the country's increasingly rootless youth, among whom employment is above 50 percent. That is why, despite the slump in his business, he said he had refrained from laying off workers. "The biggest problem is not feeding young people," he said. "It is giving them jobs." Another rich shipper, who insisted on not being identified because he did not want to draw attention to himself, said that he was providing thousands of free meals to families in and around his ancestral village. Several shippers said they had also donated to a nascent campaign being organized by the trade group that represents Greek shipowners in Athens although its president, Theodoros Veniamis, declined to say how much money they hoped to raise. What the shipping magnates are not doing, though, is paying taxes. Mr. Martinos's company, for example, bases its fleet of tankers offshore as do all shipping companies here although the administrative offices are in Athens. Greece's income tax revenue is 7.3 percent of gross domestic product, well below the 11 percent average for euro zone countries, according to Eurostat. Even so, there has been little talk by recent governments or even by Greece's financial backers about imposing taxes on shippers a move, it is assumed, that would prompt them to take their business elsewhere. That is a blow Greece would have trouble absorbing. The shipping industry employs about 200,000 people. And it brought in 13 billion euros in foreign exchange in 2010, making it the country's top single foreign exchange earner. Would shipping's special tax exclusion change under a left wing government? It is hard to say. Euclid Tsakalotos, a top economic adviser to Mr. Tsipras, said in an interview last week that the first thing Mr. Tsipras would do was to "tax the people that past governments have been afraid of taxing." Mr. Martinos says such an outcome is unlikely, given shipping's vital role in the economy. Greek shippers are also some of the country's largest investors, owning large tracts of real estate and interests in tourism, banking and media. "I don't think the policy will change," he said. "Shipping is a net profit for Greece." Many shipowners and other wealthy Greeks are said to be taking the long view, arguing that Greeks will come to their senses in the next election and not vote in large numbers for Mr. Tsipras if they become convinced that it means a forced march out of the euro zone. But privately, they cannot ignore the increasingly grim economic and social environment which is why some have bolstered their already tight security forces by hiring more bodyguards. Peter Nomikos, a 33 year old shipping scion, has started a campaign to raise money from Greek businesses and individuals and then, through a foundation he set up in the United States, use those funds to buy back as many of Greece's deeply discounted bonds on the open market as possible. The plan would be to retire them to help bring down the country's staggering debt burden, which is now 350 billion euros 165 percent of the nation's G.D.P. Mr. Nomikos is also building a microbrewery on Santorini, the island of his shipping forefathers. He says that he hopes to create a few jobs in the community and that he plans to contribute 50 percent of the profit to the foundation. "No single person is rich enough to bail out Greece not least myself," said Mr. Nomikos, who through his beer company has already bought 100,000 euros worth of bonds at current rock bottom prices of around 15 euro cents on the euro.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Global Business
Even the cocktails will be stylish. Following New York Fashion Week: the shows, being held from Sept. 8 to 15, London, Milan and Paris celebrate spring 2017 fashion with their own events. The runway aside, there's plenty going on in hotels in each city where travelers and locals alike can get a taste of the scene without attending an actual, invitation only show. It's a nice way to feel, well, fashionable. The Berkeley, in Knightsbridge, is hosting two fashion themed tea classes one on Sept. 16 and the other on Sept. 19, both from 2 to 4 p.m. Guests will receive a personalized apron and spend the afternoon with the property's pastry chef, Mourad Khiat, learning how to ice Jimmy Choo cookies, cut out a Valentino handbag cake and whip up a Jason Wu mousse. They can enjoy the treats afterward in the Collins Room, the hotel's dining room. 150 pounds a person ( 196). Reservations can be made at 44 207 201 1619. On Sept. 19 from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m., St. Martins Lane, in Covent Garden, will host Christian Dior's international makeup artist, Jamie Coombes, for a backstage makeup demonstration. Mr. Coombes will share his latest tips from London Fashion Week. PS30; includes a Bellini. Como Metropolitan London, near Hyde Park, has begun a partnership with the premium British accessories brand Gladstone, and during Fashion Week the brand will have a pop up store in the hotel lobby. The selection includes unisex backpacks, messenger bags, totes and carry on luggage. Prices begin at 370. Also, the hotel's Met Bar will offer a menu of four fashion themed cocktails including the Fashionista, a blend of fresh grapefruit, orange and tomato juices, agave, cherry liqueur, tequila, cinnamon, cardamom and fresh chile. About 18 each. The Library Bar at the Lanesborough, by Hyde Park Corner, has a menu of three drinks on its Cocktail Catwalk menu. One of them is the Ruby Seduction, which includes cherry brandy, hibiscus syrup, Creole bitters and Champagne. The drink is served in a teacup with a layer of cranberry and cherry blossom foam; PS25 each. The Mandarin Bar at the Mandarin Oriental Hyde Park, London has teamed with the makeup artist Laura Mercier during Fashion Week for two chocolate cocktails, one alcoholic and one nonalcoholic, because Ms. Mercier loves chocolate but doesn't imbibe. The Ershi kiss is made with Baileys, chocolate, raspberry and cinnamon (PS18), and the Sweet Wugu has chocolate, raspberry, cinnamon and cream (PS12.50). The new boutique hotel the Franklin, in Knightsbridge, has a fashion themed package that includes overnight accommodations, a five course dinner paired with gin and Champagne cocktails and a PS100 gift certificate to Harrods. Prices start at PS650. The Donovan Bar at Brown's Hotel, in Mayfair, will offer two healthy snacks during Fashion Week: a cold pressed juice with a quinoa burger for PS34 and a cold pressed juice with crudite and goji energy balls for PS30 Park Hyatt Milan, in the city center, will host a Fashion Week party with a D.J. on Sept. 20 in its Mio Bar; the 7 p.m. event is open to the public. There's no cost to attend, and fashion themed cocktails are 20 euros, about 22, each. Four Seasons Hotel Milan, in the city center, is offering Taste and Shine a health conscious breakfast paired with a choice of an express beauty treatment. The service is available from 7 to 9 a.m. at the spa or in guest rooms. Rooms are available during Fashion Week, and prices begin at EUR620 a night. Baglioni Hotel Carlton, overlooking the Via della Spiga shopping thoroughfare, offers the Inside Milan Fashion package, which includes a two night stay in a junior suite, breakfast, a three hour shopping excursion with a personal shopper and a health conscious lunch for two in its outdoor restaurant, Baglioni Terrace. Prices from EUR1,285. The Spa at Mandarin Oriental, Milan is introducing the Digital Detox Retreat treatment during Fashion Week, which encourages guests to surrender their phones and other gadgets upon arrival at the spa. The service itself is 80 minutes long and includes an aromatic bath and a massage. EUR200 Le Bristol Paris, on the elegant Rue du Faubourg Saint Honore, will have a Fashion Saturday tea on Oct. 1 from 2 to 4 p.m. The menu includes sandwiches, a glass of Champagne and fashion themed pastries. There will be an additional Fashion tea on Oct. 8. 70 euros a person. The Hotel Plaza Athenee, on Avenue Montaigne, renowned for its views of the Eiffel Tower, will debut a three course dinner menu at its 1920s themed restaurant, Le Relais Plaza, that is inspired by Christian Dior's cookbook "La Cuisine Cousu Main." The options include the designer's favorite dishes such as green pea and mint soup, chilled langoustine and grilled lamb chops. EUR90 a person. During Fashion Week, all guests who stay at La Reserve Hotel and Spa Paris, a boutique property near the Champs Elysees, will receive a red lacquer jewelry box as a gift. The box, which the hotel sells for EUR2,000, is designed by Sema, an artisan who also worked on the hotel's library. Rooms are available during Fashion Week, and prices start at EUR1,100 a night. Le George, the Mediterranean restaurant at Four Seasons Hotel George V, will serve the four course "Be Trendy, Be Healthy" menu during Fashion Week, which has dishes like sea bass crudo with balsamic vinegar powder and baby spinach with red prawns and truffle. The meal comes with the Good Green cocktail, made of basil, cucumber, lemon grass, lime and ginger. EUR115 per person. The Kleber Bar at the Peninsula Paris will offer the Better in Red cocktail during Fashion Week. The drink includes Aperol, cherry nectar, raspberry infused cordial and ginger beer. The price is EUR26.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Travel
GIRL ON FIRE: committed to her writing career after setting her hair on fire. She was waitressing, it was the '80s "and there was a lot of Aqua Net involved," she recalls. "I had to serve an appetizer involving flaming cheese. Except I kind of poured the brandy down my arm, meaning when I lit the match, the fire raced up my limb and melted my highly permed and poofed bangs. I took the hint. No more food service. Lots more time at the keyboard." Now Gardner has just published her 20th novel, "Look for Me," which debuts at No. 5 on the hardcover fiction list. "It's based on a ripped from the headlines kind of crime a family is murdered and their daughter missing," she explains. Gardner talked to homicide detectives about how they'd approach such a case. "In real life, it's a 50/50 proposition: Half of the time the teen assisted in her family's demise. But the other half, the family is killed in order to abduct the teenager," she says. "You need to know everything about this family, and you need to know it yesterday. Yet you still can't answer the most basic question: Are you searching for a killer, or a victim? The detectives I spoke with impressed upon me the need to have no preconceived judgments. Start with the crime scene, work your way out." IN SICKNESS: Everything changed for Kate Bowler a professor at the Duke Divinity School who studies the prosperity gospel when she was diagnosed with stage 4 cancer. "The hardest part about this diagnosis was feeling eclipsed by something I did not choose," she says. "I chose my career. I chose my husband. I like to imagine that I willed my beautiful son into existence, even though that can't be biologically accurate. But cancer doesn't care if I want it or not. Cancer doesn't care if I'm special or I'm boring, if I have things I want to live for or I'm wasting every opportunity. The randomness of tragedy is hard to get used to and requires a whole new imagination for how to live after certainty is no longer an option." As Bowler grappled with her situation, first she wrote a New York Times Op Ed that went viral and then a memoir, "Everything Happens For a Reason," which enters the hardcover nonfiction list at No. 8. "This book poured out of me in a summer that I thought would be my last," she says. "I wanted to come to grips with the basic questions of my life. What did I hope for? What am I allowed to expect? And did I really think I was running this show? I started writing to make sense of my own outrageous certainties."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Books
Daniel Craig as James Bond, wearing a corduroy jacket designed by Massimo Alba, in a scene from the trailer of the new James Bond movie "No Time to Die." MILAN James Bond has an unexpected weapon in the forthcoming espionage flick, "No Time to Die." What? The famously slick Tom Ford tuxedo clad super spy invented by Ian Fleming now wearing the fuddy duddy fabric most often associated with 1970s literature professors? Yes, if the trailer for the April release, directed by Cary Joji Fukunaga ("True Detective") and with script tweaks by Phoebe Waller Bridge ("Fleabag"), is anything to go by. But then, this cord is not exactly the look of the cord of yore. Even Mr. Alba was surprised by the sartorial choice, saying he assumed the whole thing was a joke when he received an email last March from Jane Gooday, the film's head costume buyer at Pinewood Studios, outside London. "I spoke with my personal trainer that morning and he couldn't believe it," Mr. Alba said. "He told me not to get my hopes up, that maybe I wouldn't even get to see my clothes in the film." After receiving the look books for Mr. Alba's spring 2019 and fall 2019 collections, the studio ordered 30 suits, raincoats and trousers from the spring styles, each in three European sizes 50, 52 and 54. The unlined Sloop suit came in what Mr. Alba called "Desert," a sandy hue; the duster coat in "Agades," a moss green color named after the Niger city Agadez; and the pants in a gray shade called "Alluminio" or aluminum. And the studio paid the bill though Mr. Alba declined to say just how much it was. For this was no big budget product placement deal. Mr. Alba, 59, who started his business in 2006 after stints at the knitwear labels Ballantyne and Malo, has no marketing department or digital communications division (he posts on Instagram himself, where he has about 14,400 followers). He has six stores in Italy, wholesales to 130 stores worldwide and hosts presentations in his atelier during Milan's men's fashion weeks. Yet from his showroom tucked away in Milan's Navigli canal district, the soft spoken, bespectacled designer, a reluctant name dropper, has dressed such celebrities as Leonardo DiCaprio, James Franco, Stanley Tucci, Ian McKellen, and yes the current Bond, Daniel Craig. It was Mr. Craig, Ms. Gooday said, who suggested that they seek out Mr. Alba for the film wardrobe. The actor "had bought a pair of the designer's needlecord jeans for his personal life," she wrote in an email, and clearly liked them. As to why, well, Mr. Alba "doesn't do mood boards or second guess the season's fashionable color," said David Coggins, author of the 2016 book "Men and Style." But, "he's a very enlightened designer, perfect for this enlightened Bond." This is a Bond, after all, that comes post MeToo and post Brexit. "The world has moved on, Commander Bond," a female agent, played by Lashana Lynch, says in an online teaser. So how to give Bond a blast of the contemporary? Enter Mr. Alba. "Informality is the key to my label," said Mr. Alba, with his 10 year old golden Labrador, Jasper, at his feet. "There's nothing pressed or rigid," he said of the watercolor hued garments hanging around him. According to Bruce Pask, men's fashion director at Bergdorf Goodman and Neiman Marcus, "Massimo's corduroy suit is deconstructed, unlined and soft. It reflects the uniform of contract worker today, or the freelance and creative class." Indeed, previous criticism of the Bond's wardrobe in the 2015 "Spectre" centered on the somewhat constricting look of Mr. Craig's Ford suits. On Matt Spaiser's site, The Suits of James Bond, there are several threads devoted to the spy's sartorial choices. "Daniel Craig's suits in 'Skyfall' and 'Spectre' are clearly too tight and should look better than they do when he stands in relaxed manner," Mr. Spaiser wrote. "His suits don't move well with him, and his trousers are so tight that they split on the set." Mr. Alba sees the turn from the Ford and Brioni suits of past Bonds to his styles as evolution. "Bond wore them like a suit of armor," he said. "They were very rigid. Mine isn't linked to that James Bond legacy, but I feel closer to this ideal of a man; he's more poetic, and doesn't need to hide behind his suits. He has a newfound confidence." And Mr. Spaiser said Mr. Alba's work would provide collectors with an opportunity: "They're much cheaper than a Tom Ford." (Mr. Alba's Sloop suit retails for about 1,000; a Tom Ford wool suit is online for 3,960.) For Mr. Spaiser, whose site receives 30,000 visitors a month, and usually sees a spike ahead of the franchise's latest release, "Bond in an off duty suit implies a man who appreciates clothes. If you're wearing a cord suit, it means you don't have to wear a suit, it's because you want to wear it."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Style
The swarm of wealthy international travelers to and from New York can inspire grand attempts to recreate chic drinking and dining destinations enjoyed in more exotic locales. That's the story behind the Gitano Jungle Room, a lounge y tropical restaurant and bar that opened in the James Hotel in January as a reimagining of Gitano, a decadent beach restaurant in Tulum, Mexico. Gitano's first iteration in New York came last summer in the form of a seasonal, palm tree filled oasis on a nearby lot on Canal Street. Though it quickly proved an Instagram worthy hot spot for models and influencers, it was shut down twice because of health code violations. (It is set to reopen this summer.) The new year round setup may be designed beautifully, but if it's authentic Mexican food or culture you're looking for, look elsewhere. Style trumps substance, and it's hard to shake the feeling that this is just another place for the moneyed clubby elite to party.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Style
Every spring in Australia, billions of bogong moths migrate from the arid plains of Queensland, New South Wales and Victoria to the meadows of the Australian Alps to escape the impending heat. There, they congregate in caves like living shingles, and go dormant over the summer. Autumn arrives, and they return to their birthplaces to mate, lay eggs and die. The eggs hatch into caterpillars that develop underground through winter. The cycle continues. How these animals complete this epic journey to a place they've never been and back, traveling hundreds of miles at night, for days to weeks each way, has long been a mystery. But scientists have now discovered that bogong moths have a magnetic sense to help them. In a paper published Thursday in Current Biology, they tested how the moths reacted to moving visual cues and magnetic fields in an outdoor flight simulator and found that the winged insects use magnetic fields like a compass. While other animals like nocturnal songbirds and sea turtles are known to migrate by Earth's magnetic fields, the researchers say this is the first reliable evidence that insects can, too. Like the Science Times page on Facebook. Sign up for the Science Times newsletter. Australia's small, brown, ordinary looking bogong moths are the only known insect besides the monarch butterfly to manage such a long, directed and specific migration.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Science
The opening shot of "The Sweet Requiem," a sometimes compelling film by the wife and husband directing team of Ritu Sarin and Tenzing Sonam, instantly seizes your attention. Two figures, not quite in focus and seen from behind, from their calves down to their feet, trudge through fresh white snow. Their breathing is heavy. There are others in their party several adults and one child , headed toward a formidable mountain range. Suddenly, gunshots ring out. We don't return to this scene, and its unexplained action, for some time. First we are taken to South Delhi, where Dolkar (Tenzin Dolker), a young woman from Tibet, walks in on a small surprise party.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Movies
'To Be of Service' Review: Veterans Heal With the Help of Dogs Josh Aronson 's documentary follows former military members whose service dogs help them cope with post traumatic stress. None Greg Kolodziejczyk and his dog, Valor, in "To Be of Service." Many of the smiles mask deep sorrows in "To Be of Service." But hope still runs throughout much of this documentary. Directed by Josh Aronson (whose exceptional, Oscar nominated 2000 documentary "Sound and Fury" remains etched in my mind), the film looks at American veterans of wars in Afghanistan, Iraq and Vietnam whose post traumatic stress has devastated them. One man mentions the more than 31 pills he takes daily to try to control his illness, while others have turned to alcohol and illegal drugs. Yet some of the most successful treatments come from programs that provide the veterans with specially trained service dogs. The animals give these men and women companionship and a sense of purpose, and we watch them go through their days together. Among those we meet is Greg, who returned from Iraq and later spent 19 days in a coma after a suicide attempt. He's interviewed before and after he receives Valor, a golden retriever. The change in Greg is evident, and heartening. Aronson is skilled in helping veterans share their difficult stories. But essential details go unexplored: We're told that one of these dogs can cost upward of 30,000, but not why they are so expensive; there's also scant discussion of the animals' training, care and other particulars. For a film so focused on the dogs, the omissions are significant. Though "To Be of Service" skips over specifics, the big picture is clear, and its overriding point well made: These dogs are saving the lives of those who've sacrificed so much. Every person profiled here deserves an immense amount of respect. Every animal, too.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Movies
Traveling from Athens to Crete in 1939, Henry Miller, the author of bawdy novels, many of them banned in America, flew in an airplane for the first time an experience he described in "The Colossus of Maroussi," his exuberant travelogue of a nine month journey through Greece. Once aloft, the American expatriate then living in Paris regretted not booking passage on a ship. Ever able to make literary lemonade out of loathsome experiences, Miller wrote: "Man is made to walk the earth and sail the seas; the conquest of the air is reserved for a later stage of his evolution, when he will have sprouted real wings and assumed the form of the angel which he is in essence." I, too, wished I had sailed when I flew to Crete from Athens on a roasting September afternoon last year, our plane's air conditioning on the fritz as temperatures crested 100 degrees and the cobalt sea amplified a dazzling Aegean sun, which seemed to hover at precisely our cruising altitude. My shirt and brow soaked and my 2 year old daughter wailing, I tried to channel Miller, who relished the rough aspects of travel in Greece and particularly on Crete, its largest island as much as he did the smooth, never losing a giddy enthusiasm for the country and a near irrational belief in the infallibility of its people. Miller is most associated with "Tropic of Cancer" and "Tropic of Capricorn," the formless, sex soaked autobiographical novels he wrote in Paris in the 1930s, but the taut, inspired "Colossus," published in 1941, has always been a connoisseur's favorite. In it, Miller's lyrical but often unruly prose is tamed by the structure of a straightforward, linear travelogue: He went to Greece as the Nazis bore down on Paris, taking his first real vacation, alone, at 48, to visit the English novelist Lawrence Durrell on the Greek island of Corfu. After years of anonymous toil, perhaps Miller was just ready to enjoy himself, and the result is a total zeal for Greece, unfettered by his ignorance of the classical world, the prism through which modern Greece was, and still is, often viewed. He's never read Homer; gives the Acropolis a pass. "I don't like jails, churches, fortresses, palaces, libraries, museums, nor public statues to the dead," he wrote. Instead, he relied on an instinctive, emotional response to his surroundings and preferred interacting with locals over rigid itineraries. He is my kind of guide. The lush Greek landscape, with its intense greens and blues, according to Miller, "is what you expect the earth to look like given a fair chance." The Crete of Miller's journey was not yet a full fledged tourist destination, especially on the cusp of war, and was a relative backwater, putting him in the mind of "the back pages of Dickens' novels, of a quaint one legged world illuminated by a jaded moon: a land that had survived every catastrophe and was now palpitating with a blood beat, a land of owls and herons and crazy relics such as sailors bring back from foreign shores." Today, crowded beaches and droves of tourists on package deals characterize much of Crete, at least in high season. But with minimal effort, beaches and tavernas away from crowds could be found. On the eve of World War II, though, it must have seemed as if Miller had the place to himself. Looking for some of the tranquillity he experienced, my wife, daughter and I put up at Metohi Kindelis, a bed and breakfast a few miles inland from the walled city of Chania, with vestiges of Venetian rule in its lighthouse and bulwarked harbor. The city was a robust trading hub and remains a quaint, if oversubscribed, tourist destination. Crete was governed by Venice for more than 400 years until being captured in 1669 by the Ottomans, who ruled for two centuries. (The island wasn't officially made part of Greece until 1913.) The main rose colored limestone structure of Metohi Kindelis, which means something like "the Kindeli farmhouse," was built toward the end of the Venetian period, in the 17th century, said Danai Kindeli, the property's manager. The farm produced olive oil in Ottoman times, Ms. Kindeli said, and our large, ground floor quarters with their high, arched ceilings once housed the olive presses. On my visit, I decided to follow Miller's Cretan itinerary, which comprises about a third of the book and includes Crete's capital, Iraklion, and the ancient settlements of Knossos and Phaistos. But Miller omits his time in Chania, which he describes in the essay "First Impressions of Greece," published much later, as "a real labyrinth. An image of Venice in tatters." (Ms. Kindeli suggested visiting Chania after Sept. 15, when the tourists are gone and the city once again reclaims its lazy charm.) My father in law, who is English but lives in Greece half the year, was my traveling companion on Miller's route. Ms. Kindeli's mother, Vanna Niyiou Kindeli, it turned out, was also a big "Colossus" fan. "Among my generation, in the '60s and '70s, Henry Miller was read very much. He introduced my generation to the 30s Generation," said Ms. Kindeli, who is an archaeologist. "He didn't present Greece in the usual way, in a romantic way, and say 'I admire Greece just because of its past and its antiquities.' That is a dead past," she said. Miller wasn't impressed with Iraklion, which is a two hour drive from Chania, along an often dramatic two lane road that winds along bluffs above the glimmering Aegean on the island's north coast. He described it as "a carbuncle on the face of time" and "a confused, nightmarish town, thoroughly anomalous, thoroughly heterogeneous, a place dream suspended in a void between Europe and Africa, smelling strongly of raw hides, caraway seeds, tar and subtropical fruits." On Iraklion, the fourth largest city in Greece, mostly built up after World War II, our opinions diverged. We loved it. While it lacked the Old World charm of Chania, it had a calm, seaside appeal to it. Compared with Chania, whose pursuit of tourist euros seemed mercenary, Iraklion felt like a real place, a workaday city with a robust cafe society and palm tree lined public squares surrounding Turkish and Venetian fountains. The Armenian language mingled with Greek, and many walls held anti European Union and pro soccer graffiti. (There was no overt evidence of the Greek financial crisis on Crete during tourist season, but it was a leitmotif if not an actual topic of many conversations I had during my visit.) Like many Greek towns, Iraklion has impossibly narrow, winding back streets. No sooner had I got my rented Prius (a big car by European standards) hemmed in between parked cars and alley walls than a crowd of convivial Cretans emerged to offer the most stressful kind of help: shouting at me in Greek, gesticulating wildly and even reaching through my open window to turn the wheel for me. The car safely parked, we found the town's main square and Venetian Loggia, a huge arcaded structure completed in 1628 that is one of the city's administrative centers. We were looking for a mosque that Miller wrote had been converted into a movie theater, where he saw a Laurel and Hardy film. We thought this mosque might have been what is now the hulking Church of St. Titus, the patron saint of Crete, which dominated the main square. The building, once a mosque, was converted to a Greek Orthodox Church in the 1920s, and its minaret dismantled. The church's administrator seemed slightly offended by the suggestion that the church was ever used as a movie theater, but suggested that maybe at the time of Miller's visit it had screened the odd wartime propaganda film. I didn't want to lower the church's august tone by asking if it was possible that Miller watched slapstick comedies there. The write Henry Miller took his first real vacation at 48, when he went alone to Greece. When Miller visited, Iraklion was a small, provincial town and the ruins of the Minoan palace of Knossos were in the surrounding countryside. Today, the five acre mazelike hilltop ruins of Knossos, the largest Bronze Age archaeological site on Crete and believed to be Europe's oldest city, dating to around 1900 B.C., are on the outskirts of Iraklion, which has grown exponentially since Miller's visit. Beginning in 1900, Knossos was subjected to a controversial reconstruction by the British archaeologist Sir Arthur Evans, who not only excavated Knossos, but rather questionably rebuilt some structures according to what he thought they might have looked like. Evans repainted murals and rebuilt some structures, adding ceilings, floors and columns made of wood and concrete. Acknowledging these historical inaccuracies, a sign at Knossos somewhat sheepishly states, "It has been observed that the archaeological evidence is sometimes insufficient to support reconstruction." Miller saw everything through a writer's lens, and wrote about everything he saw and used similar techniques in his next book, which was a travelogue of America, "The Air Conditioned Nightmare." Like the archaeologist Evans, he was not afraid to embellish the facts so he wasn't bothered by this weird, now incomprehensible restoration. "However Knossus sic may have looked in the past, however it may look in the future, this one which Evans has created is the only one I shall ever know. I am grateful to him for what he did," Miller wrote. What we actually liked about Knossos was the color, despite Evans's speculative touch ups. The murals and red painted walls and columns of some rooms remind visitors that ancient people did not, in fact, live in a monochromatic, stone colored world. To Miller it suggested "the splendor and sanity and opulence of a powerful and peaceful people." While Knossos was crowded with busloads of tourists, the ruins of the Bronze Age city of Phaistos on a ridge above Crete's south coast, overlooking the Mediterranean, were nearly deserted, with only about a dozen visitors. The two hour drive from Chania took us over parched mountains on windy roads Crete, locals like to point out, has more mountains than beaches. As we entered Phaistos, I overheard a French accented tourist say to her companion: "I don't like this place. It is not so interesting." Indeed, it didn't look like more than a pile of rubble, and the maps we were given were, to be generous, esoteric. After a half hour of wandering amid the footprints of the complex, which are just about all that remains, Phaistos began to grow on us. Unlike at Knossos, Phaistos required the imagination to do most of the work, and we slowly began to piece together what went where based on the layout of various stone foundations. Because the map was so opaque, we felt as if we were solving a puzzle. Benches under pine trees on the site's perimeter suggested it was a place to linger over. This was the Crete, Miller wrote, that can "hush the mind, still the bubble of thought, " though the blistering heat had a sedating effect, too. Miller traveled alone to Phaistos, which is, according to Greek mythology, the seat of King Radamanthis, brother of King Minos, the first king of Crete and the son of Zeus and Europa, the latter being the God for which Europe was named. The ruins overlook farms and, beyond that, the sea and the sky. Nature was Miller's God and he wrote that at Phaistos, he wanted to strip naked and "take a running leap and vault into the blue." Miller wrote that, despite what historians think, he was given a "strong intuition" that "Phaistos was the female stronghold of the Minos family." The footprint of the Minoan queen's apartment, or megaron, is quite a bit smaller than the king's, a fact that scuttles Miller's theory, but the knowledge probably wouldn't have changed his impressions of the place. It is no wonder Miller felt such an affinity for Arthur Evans: Neither man let what they didn't know interfere with their enjoyment of Crete.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Travel
El Espace is a column dedicated to news and culture relevant to Latinx communities. Expect politics, arts, analysis, personal essays and more. ?Lo mejor? It'll be in Spanish and English, so you can forward it to your tia, your primo Lalo or anyone else (read: everyone). Within my friend group in New York, even those of us who aren't Puerto Rican all seem to know someone affected by Hurricane Maria. It seems no Boricua was untouched by the unspeakable impact of the storm, from which the island is still recovering. Ahead of the two year anniversary of Maria, a new book, "Fantasy Island: Colonialism, Exploitation and the Betrayal of Puerto Rico," explores the effects of the disaster, as well as the political struggles of the island. Its author, Ed Morales, who teaches at Columbia University and has reported on Puerto Rico for more than 20 years, unearths the roots of the island's current crisis by tracing its relationship to the United States since 1898, illustrating how the island has become a colonial outpost. Mr. Morales also interweaves his own family's migration to New York in his discussion of the United States' policy toward the island. I sat down with Mr. Morales to discuss his new book, Puerto Rico's continued colonial relationship with the United States and the island's political destiny. This interview has been edited and condensed. How does your family's story serve as a blueprint for talking about the relationship between Puerto Rico and the United States? When I was a little boy, I loved maps. I saw a map of the Caribbean and Puerto Rico, and in parentheses, it said "U.S." underneath it. So I asked my dad, "Why does it say that?" He said, "Oh, that just means that Puerto Rico is part of the U.S." So I said, "Oh, so it's not a country?" And he said, "No, no, Puerto Rico is a country, and it's my country." It was the first strange contact I had with this idea that Puerto Ricans feel very strongly about Puerto Rico being a country, but the technical status is not that. My family came to the U.S. as migrants in the early '20s during the period that was part of Operation Bootstrap, which was something the U.S. government set up to industrialize Puerto Rico's economy. My parents and about half of both of their large families came. They met in Spanish Harlem they didn't know each other in Puerto Rico, so their whole lives were really framed by U.S. policy toward Puerto Rico. It was basically the "West Side Story" moment. That's how we were identified by the mainstream. We were stereotyped during that period. When Maria came, there was so much neglect from the federal government. With President Trump, what happened is that people really started to think, "Wow, it's really true. The U.S. doesn't care about us and we're just a territory. They don't respond to our emergencies." The terrible physical, psychological and emotional suffering that they experienced because of Maria really sharpened that dismay. Yes, they're U.S. citizens, but there are a lot of caveats to that citizenship. It's not full citizenship. How would you describe the impact that Maria continues to have today? People still don't have a secure belief that the electrical infrastructure is really going to hold up. The experience with Maria has led to continued uncertainty and insecurity on that front. A lot of the things that were begun through the Financial Oversight Management Board, as far as imposing austerity measures, have been reflected in school closures. The island is still suffering from depopulation and out migration, and also a looming health care crisis. All of these things that were pointed out by Maria are still in effect. In 2011, there was concern about the police department using tear gas and violence against protests that were being carried out by students. They were upset about police violence and the funding for the university being cut. There were also labor unions who were reacting to the previous government cutting 20,000 to 30,000 government jobs. That was a real constituency of people who were not happy with what was going on. There were huge demonstrations. A lot of those people who were involved in those movements, they graduated from university and remained activists. The Colectiva Feminista started organizing around that time, or shortly afterward. So there was a lot of momentum. What happened with RickyRenuncia is that all those groups that had been active were then joined by people who were not necessarily involved in activism, because they were so outraged by what was revealed in the Telegram chat. First, there were all the sexist, racist and homophobic comments, but also there were jokes about the victims of Maria, when again, people had not gotten completely over the trauma of what they went through. And then you add Bad Bunny, Ricky Martin and Residente, and you get a huge constituency of young people, as well as older people who all along had been very skeptical of what was going on. What hopes do you have for the island now in terms of its political destiny? What I see as the best possible future is definitely a change in status, whether it's a more autonomous relationship with the U.S., or independence. I'm really hoping Puerto Rico can move to a new stage by a vast reduction of the debt, and then come up with a serious proposal to ask for reparations from the United States for having kept it as a colonial territory for more than a century and having repressed its independence movement in the 1950s. We have in place the possibility of a new intersectional movement that has a lot of potential to solve this problem of the disconnect between classic politics and identity politics in the U.S. It does that by being a nationalist movement that is trying to move past some of the problems of previous versions of nationalism, which are often patriarchal and discriminate against women and L.G.B.T.Q. people.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Style
SINTRA, Portugal The rise of robots has long been a topic for sci fi best sellers and video games and, as of this week, a threat officially taken seriously by central bankers. The bankers are not yet ready to buy into dystopian visions in which robots render humans superfluous. But, at an exclusive gathering at a golf resort near Lisbon, the big minds of monetary policy were seriously discussing the risk that artificial intelligence could eliminate jobs on a scale that would dwarf previous waves of technological change. "There is no question we are in an era of people asking, 'Is the Robocalypse upon us?'" David Autor, a professor of economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, told an audience on Tuesday that included Mario Draghi, the president of the European Central Bank, James Bullard, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, and dozens of other top central bankers and economists. The discussion occurred as economists were more optimistic than they had been for a decade about growth. Mr. Draghi used the occasion to signal that the European Central Bank is edging closer to the day when it will begin paring measures intended to keep interest rates very low and bolster the economy. "All the signs now point to a strengthening and broadening recovery in the euro area," Mr. Draghi said. His comments pushed the euro to almost its highest level in a year, though it later gave up some of the gains. But along with the optimism is a fear that the economic expansion might bypass large swaths of the population, in part because a growing number of jobs could be replaced by computers capable of learning artificial intelligence. Policy makers and economists conceded that they have not paid enough attention to how much technology has hurt the earning power of some segments of society, or planned to address the concerns of those who have lost out. That has, in part, nourished the political populism that contributed to Britain's vote a year ago to leave the European Union, and the election of President Trump. "Generally speaking, economic growth is a good thing," Ben S. Bernanke, former chairman of the Federal Reserve, said at the forum. "But, as recent political developments have brought home, growth is not always enough." In the past, technical advances caused temporary disruptions but ultimately improved living standards, creating new categories of employment along the way. Farm machinery displaced farmworkers but eventually they found better paying jobs, and today their great grandchildren may design video games. But artificial intelligence threatens broad categories of jobs previously seen as safe from automation, such as legal assistants, corporate auditors and investment managers. Large groups of people could become obsolete, suffering the same fate as plow horses after the invention of the tractor. "More and more, we are seeing economists saying, 'This time could be different,'" said Mr. Autor, who presented a paper on the subject that he wrote with Anna Salomons, an associate professor at the Utrecht University School of Economics in the Netherlands. Central bankers have begun examining the effect of technology on employment because it might help solve several economic quandaries. Why is workers' share of total earnings declining, even though unemployment is at record lows and corporate profits at record highs? Why is productivity the amount that a given worker produces stuck in neutral? Stocks rise after President Biden says Jerome Powell will stay atop the Fed. Retail earnings and Black Friday: the week in business. "The mere fact that we are organizing this conference here in Sintra testifies to our interest in that discussion," Benoit Coeure, a member of the European Central Bank's executive board, said in an interview, referring to the "Robocalypse" debate. Of particular interest to the European Central Bank is why faster economic growth has not caused wages and prices to rise. The central bank has pulled out all the stops to stimulate the eurozone economy, cutting interest rates to zero and even below, while printing money. Four years of growth have led to the creation of 6.4 million jobs. Yet inflation remains well below the bank's official target of below, but close to, 2 percent. One explanation is that more work is being done by advanced computers, with the rewards flowing to the narrow elite that owns them. Still, among the economists in Sintra there was plenty of skepticism about whether the Robocalypse is nigh. Since the beginning of the industrial age, almost every major technological innovation has led to dire predictions that humans were being permanently replaced by machines. While some kinds of jobs were lost forever, greater efficiency led to more affordable goods and other industries soaked up the excess workers. Few people alive today would want to return to the late 1800s, when 40 percent of Americans worked on farms. Robocalypse advocates underestimate the power of scientific advances to beget more scientific advances, said Joel Mokyr, a professor at Northwestern University who studies the history of economics. "Think about what computers are doing to our ability to discover science," Professor Mokyr said during a panel discussion, citing computers that can solve equations that have baffled mathematicians for decades. There may be breakthroughs that "we can't even begin to imagine." There are other explanations for stagnant wages besides technology. Companies in Japan, the United States and Europe are sitting on hoards of cash, doling out the money to shareholders rather than investing in new buildings, equipment or innovative products. Just why is another topic of debate.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Economy
Its Football Season Over, Cal Wonders: Was It Worth It? For much of 2020, the Cal football program thought it had a chance to play in Friday night's Pac 12 Conference championship game. It thought it had a chance to win its first outright conference title in more than 60 years. It thought it had a chance to play in a major bowl game. Instead, after only four games, Cal's season ended just the way it started with back to back game cancellations linked to the coronavirus, and a lingering question: Was that even worth the time, risk, energy and money? "It wasn't ideal, how it all went," Coach Justin Wilcox said earlier this week, summing up a 1 3 season. "But I think it's better than nothing." Cal is not part of any of that. A member of the Pac 12, Cal entered the football fray late and exited early. Over the course of its shortened season, Cal announced only three coronavirus cases in its football program, far fewer than many of the teams playing this weekend and the handful vying for the national title. Yet it had four games canceled, mostly because of tighter local restrictions over contact tracing and opponents who found themselves in the same spot. Other programs around the country played on through much bigger outbreaks. Top ranked Alabama and No. 2 Notre Dame, for example, will each play its 11th game of the season this weekend, although Alabama Coach Nick Saban and the Crimson Tide's athletic director, Greg Byrne, were among those in the program to test positive this fall, and Notre Dame had an early season outbreak in its locker room. No. 3 Clemson, Notre Dame's opponent in Saturday's Atlantic Coast Conference championship, played two games without its star quarterback, Trevor Lawrence, after he tested positive. One of those games was the same weekend that Cal had a game canceled because it, too, had a single positive test. The difference was that local health officials in California required the teammates of the Cal player to be placed in isolation, a game canceling protocol that many other teams did not face. Lawrence, meanwhile, accompanied his team on its visit to Notre Dame, where his mask discipline on the sidelines raised questions during the national television broadcast. When Notre Dame won, the crowd stormed the field. "The confusing and a bit of the frustrating part is that it's not consistent throughout the state or certainly the country, and that's why you see the differences," Wilcox said. "I'm not saying I know what the right answer is, but I know that it's not uniform on how that's done." College sports do not have a commissioner or a centralized power structure beyond the N.C.A.A., which mostly provides a loose framework of rules and championship events for hundreds of universities playing in dozens of conferences. The response to the pandemic in college sports has been an echo of the overall federal response mainly, let local and regional powers figure it out. The Pac 12 did not join in until the fall, and made plans for a seven game season, without fans, only once it had a system for daily testing of athletes. Testing was supposed to create order amid the chaos. It did not, because each positive test result required contact tracing, where concerns about possible spread were far less clear than a positive versus negative test result. Who was he with? When? How close? How long? Coronavirus protocols differed between campuses, cities and states. Tight regulations in California's Santa Clara County, for example, led Stanford, San Jose State and the N.F.L.'s San Francisco 49ers to temporarily relocate out of state. The objective was not to find a safer place to play. It was to find a place with fewer rules. Cal never uprooted, but its efforts felt like a two month balancing act. Cal never opened its locker rooms and held team meetings outdoors. It moved its weight room and training table outside, too, and required masks everywhere. It preached to players the importance of social distancing, for the good of the team. Two days before its season opener against Washington on Nov. 7, though, Cal announced the game was off because an undisclosed player had tested positive. Because that player had been in proximity with others at his position, local health officials mandated isolation for all of them. Cal could not field a team that met the roster requirements from the Pac 12. Cal's next game was canceled, too, the day before the game, after Arizona State announced its own outbreak. But in a bit of twisted luck, another Pac 12 game was also canceled, leaving Cal and U.C.L.A to forge an impromptu meeting. Cal was wiped out, 34 10, at an empty Rose Bowl. Two of every six Pac 12 games were canceled in a typical week, but Cal managed a string of three consecutive games. The Golden Bears lost close games at Oregon State and at home to rival Stanford by a combined five points. No one planned for a 0 3 start. Then Cal upset Oregon which, with a 3 2 record and because of cases at Washington, got a late invitation to Friday's Pac 12 title game against Southern California (5 0). Feeling rejuvenated last weekend, Cal traveled to play Washington State. Everyone in the traveling party was tested before the flight, then again after dinner the night before the game, then again at the hotel on the morning of the game. The team loaded into six buses, twice as many as usual to obey social distancing guidelines. They were driving to the stadium when Athletic Director Jim Knowlton got a text message: Please come back into the hotel. A player had tested positive. Cal's medical officials did their work, tracing the players' contacts. Fairly quickly, it was determined that there would be no game. It was less than two hours before kickoff. Washington State was already warming up at the stadium. Knowlton contacted the Pac 12. He called Cal's chancellor. He looked out the window. "Our entire football team, offense versus defense, is in this snowball fight, and they are having the best time," Knowlton said. "And I thought, we just gave them heartbreaking news a half an hour ago. It just shows the resiliency of kids, the camaraderie that sports brings to teams, and all the second and third order effects." Once Cal was home in California, this weekend's planned game against 0 5 Arizona was called off, too. Both teams had virus isolation issues. And, really, what was the point? It was a question that reasonably might have been asked all along. "I absolutely think it was worth it," Knowlton said of Cal's four game football season. "Being part of a team is special, the life lessons you learn are special, and what we were able to provide our young men during an abbreviated season was a little bit of special." Knowlton now has other issues requiring his attention: two basketball teams already a few games into seasons as the coronavirus rages; plans to get all other sports rebooted this winter and spring; an investigation into a Cal women's soccer coach accused of abuse by former players; and an athletic department budget shortfall of tens of millions of dollars caused by the coronavirus. Playing a few more football games would have helped. That will have to wait until next year.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Sports
George Lardner Jr. in 1997. When he won a 1993 Pulitzer Prize for an article about his daughter's murder, he said, "I'd give anything not to have written it." George Lardner Jr., a Washington Post reporter who won a Pulitzer Prize for his monthslong investigation into the murder of his 21 year old daughter by a former boyfriend, died on Saturday in a hospice facility in Aldie, Va. He was 85 . His daughter Helen Lardner said the cause was complications of a series of strokes. By the time Kristin Lardner was shot dead in 1992, Mr. Lardner had distinguished himself over nearly 30 years at The Post, writing about assassinations, civil rights, savings and loan scandals, politics and national security. But investigating his daughter's death became his most important assignment and one that The Post believed he was well suited to handle despite his personal connection to the subject . "When he suggested this was something he wanted to do, it seemed logical to me," Leonard Downie Jr., the former executive editor of The Post, said in a phone interview. "He was a great reporter a determined investigative reporter and a grieving father. It seemed like the therapeutic thing to do." To emphasize that it was written by the victim's father and had a viewpoint, the article appeared in Outlook, an opinion section. Mr. Lardner began his reporting with the basic details: On May 30, 1992, Ms. Lardner, a 21 year old student at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts University in Boston, was shot in the head by Michael Cartier, a bouncer with a violent history whom she had dated for a short time. Later that day he committed suicide in his apartment. In his 9,000 word article, Mr. Lardner wrote that he had heard the news of his daughter's death from her older sister, Helen, who called him at The Post. "Kristin? My Kristin? Our Kristin?" he recalled thinking. "I'd talked to her the afternoon before. Her last words to me were, 'I love you, Dad.' Suddenly I had trouble breathing myself." Mr. Lardner expanded the story of his daughter's life and murder into a book, "The Stalking of Kristin: A Father Investigates the Murder of His Daughter," published in 1995. Mr. Lardner's reporting over the next few months illustrated the many lapses in the criminal justice system that had led to his daughter's death from judges who had dealt cavalierly with domestic abuse cases to probation officers who had not cracked down on Mr. Cartier's behavior. Mr. Cartier had a felony record that included burglary and grand larceny, and he had beaten a previous girlfriend, then violated a restraining order she had been granted. Eleven days before Ms. Lardner's death, she had asked a judge in Boston for a permanent restraining order against Mr. Cartier, having received one that had lasted only a week. Mr. Cartier had violated that one by calling her that morning to ask her not to go to court. At the hearing, the judge did not check Mr. Cartier's criminal record; he had been imprisoned for the attack on his previous girlfriend, then violated his probation, which should have sent him back to jail. But he left the hearing with warnings not to contact Ms. Lardner for a year and to stay away from her apartment and school. "Kristin was looking for protection," Mr. Lardner wrote. "She was processed like a slice of cheese." At 5 p.m. on May 30, Ms. Lardner left her job as a cashier at a liquor store on Commonwealth Avenue in Boston. She returned to the area about an hour later to meet up with another cashier, who was getting off her shift. Mr. Cartier shot Ms. Lardner once from behind; moments later, as she lay wounded, he shot her twice more. Nearly three weeks after her death, a summons that a police officer had filled out for Ms. Lardner citing Mr. Cartier for assault and battery, intimidation of a witness and violating domestic abuse law had not been issued. It was still waiting to be typed. When Mr. Lardner won the 1993 Pulitzer Prize for feature writing months after his article was published, he told The Associated Press that he was "stunned, elated and sad ." He added, "I'd give anything not to have written it." Mr. Lardner expanded the story into a book, "The Stalking of Kristin: A Father Investigates the Murder of His Daughter" (1995). Reviewing it in The New York Times, Richard Bernstein wrote: "A father who has lost his daughter is, it could be argued, not the sort of dispassionate observer to write about that very crime. On the other hand, those who have suffered the kind of terrible loss that Mr. Lardner did are more likely to have the passion and commitment to investigate the issue thoroughly, to track down the operations of the system in every detail." George Edmund Lardner Jr. was born on Aug. 10, 1934, in Brooklyn and was raised there and in Jackson Heights, Queens. His mother, Rosetta (Russo) Lardner, was an elementary school teacher. His father was a syndicated golf writer and part of the celebrated Lardner family of writers; Ring Lardner, the sports columnist and short story writer, was George Jr.'s great uncle. After earning bachelor's and master's degrees in journalism from Marquette University in Milwaukee, George began his reporting career at The Worcester Telegram in Massachusetts, then moved on to The Miami Herald. He was hired by The Post in 1962 and developed a reputation there for dogged investigative reporting and elegant writing. "I was impressed by his complete open mindedness, skepticism and reluctance to draw conclusions that weren't warranted," Mr. Downie , now a professor at the Cronkite School of Journalism at Arizona State University, said. "He had this remarkable curiosity." Mr. Lardner investigated the life of Sirhan B. Sirhan after his assassination of Senator Robert F. Kennedy in 1968. He also revealed that Senator Gary Hart of Colorado, then a candidate for the 1984 Democratic nomination for president, had been born a year earlier than he had long claimed, and delved into why he had shortened his surname from Hartpence. "His biographies give the date as Nov. 28, 1937, but official records in Kansas and a family birth book kept by Uncle George Hartpence reportedly say 1936," Mr. Lardner wrote. For many years he followed the threads emanating from President John F. Kennedy's assassination, from conspiracy theories to investigations. His expertise was clear in a 1991 article critical of the director Oliver Stone for "chasing fiction," as Mr. Lardner put it, in his film "JFK."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Media
What books are on your nightstand? "Alice: Memoirs of a Barbary Coast Prostitute," edited by Ivy Anderson and Devon Angus; "Opium Culture: The Art Ritual of the Chinese Tradition," by Peter Lee; and "Less Than Zero," by Bret Easton Ellis. What's the last great book you read? "Coming Through Slaughter," a short novel by Michael Ondaatje about the insane jazz genius Buddy Bolden. When you're a writer, watching another writer do things with language you can't possibly explain or parse out is totally jarring and fantastical. It reminds me of why I became a writer; I fell in love with the magic of storytelling. "How'd he do that?" I kept asking myself. What's the most interesting thing you learned from a book recently? I learned that I.B.M. began with technology used to count workers in factories. I also learned that in San Francisco's original Chinatown, before the devastating earthquake of 1906, buildings were largely composed of pieces that had been imported from China itself. What's the last book you recommended to a member of your family? I don't usually recommend books to my family, but after my dad read and enjoyed my short story collection, "Homesick for Another World," I recommended Amie Barrodale's collection, "You Are Having a Good Time." It's one of my favorite books. Like Ondaatje, Barrodale makes me hold my head and ask, "How?" 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. What kinds of books bring you the most reading pleasure these days? I've been reading for research about Victorian America, all while imagining the next historical novel I want to write. It's fun to time travel, and the books I've been reading widen my perspective on what's going on right now. My novel will be partially set in San Francisco, and reading about all the technological developments that took place at the dawn of the 20th century, I can't help drawing parallels between now and then, as Silicon Valley is the hub for so much tech development. Victorian technology caused a major cultural shift and brought the middle class to the fore through media, manufacturing, capitalist marketing, entertainment. I really wonder what will happen next. The internet bubble is bigger than the planet now. Will it pop? Will people stop existing IRL? One day, you'll buy a soul online with Bitcoin and live in SimCity, a virtual life. Maybe that's already happened. Isn't that what Elon Musk has argued that we are living in a video game? I can't read self help books. Please, everybody, stop sending them to me! How do you like to read? Paper or electronic? One book at a time or several simultaneously? Morning or night? I tend to read books for research over weeks during the day, and consume novels either in a single afternoon, or a few pages once a week for years. Sometimes reading is like medicine, other times it is a confrontation with God I don't do it much in public. I like to read physical books, mostly in bed with earplugs in. What's the best book you've ever received as a gift? "Live at the Masque: Nightmare in Punk Alley," a book of photographs and ephemera from Los Angeles in the '70s, when punk was punk and the young people were so creative and full of energy. So refreshing to see images of nonconformists. The Masque was a basement club where bands like X, the Weirdos and the Bags all played. Kristine McKenna, who is a dear friend and recently wrote "Room to Dream" with David Lynch, wrote a stunning foreword. What kind of reader were you as a child? Which childhood books and authors stick with you most? Our house was always filled to the ceiling with books, and when I needed a new book to read, I'd wander through the rooms, feeling out what book called to me vibrationally. It was never about the title or the cover. Certain books just gave me a special feeling. Inevitably I'd end up with a stack of half a dozen novels, take them to bed, and play eeny, meeny, miny, mo. This is how I ended up reading Hermann Hesse and Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Anais Nin and Hemingway at age 9 or 10. There was a lot of James Baldwin in the house, as well. If you could require the president to read one book, what would it be? "Working: People Talk About What They Do All Day and How They Feel About What They Do," the oral history by Studs Terkel from 1974. I'd suggest this because it's very readable it's an oral history and because it might give the president some insight into the everyday lives of Americans. You're organizing a literary dinner party. Which three writers, dead or alive, do you invite? Edith Wharton, Ralph Ellison, and Charles Bukowski. I'd love to see how they got along. "What is your biggest regret?" I'd ask each of them, and "What book did you not get to write while you were alive and wish you had?" I'd also want to know what it's like to be dead, and whether writing great books has earned them any merit in the afterlife. Disappointing, overrated, just not good: What book did you feel as if you were supposed to like, and didn't? Do you remember the last book you put down without finishing? I'll never say! There should be a code among authors to never publicly pooh pooh another writer's work. (If they're dead, the code changes, I think.) It's also very tricky to speak about a book I have dismissed because it's likely that I'll pick it up again and find out I was dumb to put it down in the first place. Who would you want to write your life story? My fiance, the writer Luke Goebel. He's the person I want to know me best. You're being hired as a ghostwriter. Whose story do you most want to tell? Probably my parents'. Their stories are so dynamic, and especially interesting to me; I've still never really heard the full deal. What do you plan to read next? I just ordered "Sacred Games," a novel by Vikram Chandra. My Vedic astrologer told me our natal charts are very similar. I just read the first page, it's a very exciting opening.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Books
Credit...Jenn Ackerman for The New York Times 'Woe Is You,' White People Say. What We Need Is a Remedy. MINNEAPOLIS The 12 hour drive to Detroit is always a chore, but on the last day of March, the pandemic gave a sinister hue to even the most banal elements of a Midwest road trip. Every time we used a bathroom, grabbed a gas pump or bought a snack was an opportunity to get infected. Making things worse, Detroit was seeing an explosion of coronavirus cases. My grandmother had just died unexpectedly at the age of 82 raised on a farm in Louisiana, she had always been healthy; to me, she seemed indestructible. Nana raised us not just my dad and uncles, but nearly the whole family. Skipping her funeral didn't seem like an option. Nana was so beloved. She could have easily packed Gesu Catholic Church under normal circumstances. Instead, we sat in the James H. Cole Funeral Home, a beautiful little spot near the Motown Museum, but not where I would have imagined having her funeral. All in attendance sat six feet apart and in every other row; nearly everyone wore a face mask. Funerals have, all of a sudden, become tricky dangerous even. I hope it won't surprise anyone to hear that Detroit has a history of racial violence interpersonal, economic and institutional. The short version goes something like this: Black people began to make incremental economic and political gains; white Michiganders became incensed, fled as fast as possible into the surrounding area and bled the city for every drop of wealth on their way out. There's more, but that's really a story for native Detroiters to tell. Given that history, it's no wonder Detroit and places like it are underwater in this crisis. Milwaukee, Chicago and New Orleans have all seen black people absorbing the full force of the outbreak. This virus is poised to rip through every black neighborhood in America. Quietly, on the north side of Minneapolis, sits one of those neighborhoods. I represent Ward 5 on the Minneapolis City Council, but where I'm from, people just call it the Northside. The short version, again, goes like this: Our corner of the city has always been plagued by flooding and weak soils, so naturally, it's where the city parked its "undesirable" populations. In the early part of the 20th century, that population was Jewish, then black, then Southeast Asian. Today the Northside is about half black, a quarter Hmong and a quarter everything else. It's a neighborhood challenged by low wealth and some violence, but we're not defined by that. The Northside is where Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis created the Minneapolis Sound that Prince would later make famous. The Northside was the home of the underappreciated but behemoth civil rights figure and union organizer Nellie Stone Johnson. It's the place my parents were told was "the hood" when they arrived, but coming from Detroit, it was the only place in the city where they felt comfortable raising us. In 2015, an Atlantic article called "The Miracle of Minneapolis" said that "no other place" in America "mixes affordability, opportunity and wealth so well." But that wealth has always eluded Northsiders. And by eluded, I, of course, mean, it has been denied. Minneapolis is not unique in its use of redlining and restrictive covenants that kept blacks from owning property. Minneapolis is not unique in using the construction of highways to annihilate black neighborhoods. Minneapolis is not unique in placing its worst polluters in and near its black and brown neighborhoods. And unfortunately, we are also not unique in our failure to seriously seek a remedy to these harms. Minneapolis hosts some of the worst disparities between black and white success in America. Educational outcomes, wealth and wages and homeownership gaps shouldn't be this wide, much less in a place so prosperous for white people. It should be noted that disparities between whites and Latinos, and whites and Southeast Asians, are also incredibly pronounced here. And it should be doubly noted that Native Americans are the poorest residents in the city. Black people are not the only ones left behind in the "miracle of Minneapolis." More from "The America We Need" During every crisis, well meaning white people here make a ritual of acknowledging the city's steep inequities, but we've been hearing the same "woe is you" sentiment for a long time. It's as if people think the mere acknowledgment is the work. But as North Minneapolis prepares to brace ourselves for the grim future Detroit and Milwaukee have shown us, the death tolls suggest that acknowledgments don't mean a thing. I want to take us back to this notion of remedy. When I joined the City Council two years ago, I focused on housing stability and environmental justice. Last year we became the first city in the country to end single family zoning, making more housing units possible. We passed inclusionary zoning, which requires a percentage of affordable housing on every project. The Council president and I rewrote our housing inspections approach to focus more on creating livable conditions, not just issuing citations. This allowed us to keep renters in place while holding their landlords accountable for safe, dignified conditions a proposition that had previously been an either or deal. I stood with my constituents to fight a major polluter in the neighborhood, Northern Metals. It had been caught lying about its emissions spewing lead, cobalt, chromium, nickel and other dangerous particulates that can cause asthma. The courts seemed determined to give the company a soft landing. It had been given years to shut down, but when the deadline came, the company asked for an extension and kept operating. Then it was caught lying about its emissions again. Finally, on Sept. 23, 2019, more than 30 months after it had first been caught, Northern Metals was sent packing. Northern Metals paid nearly 3 million in fines to the state, but just a fraction of that went to the people most harmed. Given their lifelong health issues, it was pennies when fortunes are owed. We're now learning that underlying conditions like asthma can be a death sentence for people of any age if they come down with Covid 19. Staring down the barrel of this threat, it feels like we're too late. The real fight isn't won by defeating Northern Metals. The real fight is won when the air is clean an ask that is always made to feel far fetched. Discrimination shouldn't just end; the inequity it causes should be remedied. In "The Case for Reparations," Ta Nehisi Coates chronicled the carefully designed circumstances that have placed black people, by and large, in a position of low wealth in America. It's not a force of nature, it's not even a puzzle the how we got here is known and the path out is knowable. In modern American politics, the concept of reparations is still more fantasy than viable policy option. Name dropping it may get you applause from certain crowds, but the discussion typically ends there. We should have found a way to pay out reparations long ago. Now this pandemic is bringing forward the full horror of our inability to reckon with America's history of racial terror. For many black people experiencing the disproportionate impact of this crisis, any solution will come too late; the consequences of our inaction are too final. Leaving Detroit, I thought about the disproportionate number of black folks dying from the coronavirus because they had asthma, diabetes or hypertension. Because they had limited access to affordable, healthy food. Because they lived near factories. Because they couldn't afford to visit a doctor or because they couldn't afford to miss work. Because their blood pressure was perpetually too high from a lifetime of being stressed out by all of the above. I thought about how predictable this all was. How preventable. Remembering the funeral, the absence of hugs, the absence of a full church and the absence of Nana, I pictured all the funerals happening or being postponed in New Orleans, Chicago, Milwaukee and elsewhere. Last week, I learned that Nana had tested positive for the coronavirus, and knowing that makes me angrier as though she didn't truly pass but was snatched from us. In my last conversation with Nana, about a month ago, she called to tell me she'd seen a clip of me on CNN giving a speech at a Bernie Sanders rally: "Guess who just saw your black behind on TV all the way from here in Detroit?" She teased me, about my shirt and my facial hair, and told me they didn't actually play any of the audio from my speech, but that she was excited anyway. Before hanging up, she took on her serious tone, where her voice gets just a little deeper but you can still tell she's smiling ear to ear: "I'm proud of you, kid. Keep doing great work." It's a simple instruction. And no matter how futile the work can feel, I'm not going to let those words leave my mind.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Opinion
The pianist Jean Efflam Bavouzet, shown here in 2013, has a new recording of works by Beethoven's contemporaries Muzio Clementi, Johann Nepomuk Hummel, Jan Ladislav Dussek and Joseph Wolfl. The pianist Jean Efflam Bavouzet has already recorded Beethoven's sonatas, with striking elegance and poise. His survey of the composer's concertos with the Swedish Chamber Orchestra will come out in September. But might it be possible to celebrate Beethoven's 250th birthday this year without playing Beethoven? In a recording to be released by Chandos on June 5, Mr. Bavouzet, 57, instead plays sonatas by Muzio Clementi, Johann Nepomuk Hummel, Jan Ladislav Dussek and Joseph Wolfl. These composers were not just Beethoven's contemporaries, but also knew him personally, competed with him for attention and even published his music. Don't be ashamed if you haven't heard of all of them: They have been in Beethoven's shadow ever since. Speaking from his home in Normandy, France, Mr. Bavouzet said that there was value in rediscovering this music for its own worth, and for what it can teach us about Beethoven. Here are edited excerpts from the conversation. Why should we listen to this music, which some would call insignificant? I make the analogy with mountains. A Himalaya is not a Himalaya because it's alone, coming out of the desert. There are thousands of other mountains around it, creating this whole. But we forget all the other mountains; we don't hear them. The lesser known composers have very strong ideas, sometimes more beautiful than others but, true enough, they sometimes had difficulty putting them all together. Clementi is very Classical and is very strong. Dussek has more problems. Hummel sometimes is too long. Frankly, I have nothing to say against the Wolfl; it's a pure gem. How did you come across these pieces? The Dussek and the Clementi have been in my repertoire for a good 25 years or so. I was especially interested in this Clementi sonata, the A major, and the big G minor, which starts almost like a Beethoven Fifth Symphony in slow motion. I was playing Beethoven's Opus 101 when I discovered the A major Clementi, and I was amazed at the similarities: the canons, especially in the middle of Beethoven's second movement and the finale. And they're in the same key. The Dussek was a very strange discovery. It was part of the same program 25 years ago, and I totally fell in love with the music. You hear Schumann in the second movement; some passages make you really think of Chopin; there are some arpeggios that make you think of Liszt; if you play very carefully and slowly, you will hear Wagner; and, as a cherry on the cake, you can even find Michel Legrand. The two others are the great suggestion of the musicologist Marc Vignal. I was digging into small pieces by Czerny, Cramer, Moscheles, Tomasek, Vorisek and many others, but the CD was unbalanced between the two big sonatas and all these little pieces. He found the Hummel and the Wolfl. When I was learning the Hummel sonata, playing it slowly, I said, I know this music, where is it coming from? Of course, it's Beethoven's Opus 110. If it's played fast, you don't recognize it. It's exactly the same texture, the same harmonic progression, but Opus 110 is much later. Clementi published Beethoven's works; Hummel knew Beethoven well enough to visit him on his deathbed; and Beethoven seems to have plagiarized Dussek for the slow movement of his First Piano Concerto. Why resurrect Wolfl? I had to ask Marc Vignal three times to repeat the name of Wolfl. Clementi, Hummel, Dussek are names, somehow, we know of; they are not played much, but you know of them. Wolfl totally disappeared. I didn't read all his pieces, and the little I read was maybe not so superior, but this sonata is absolutely a gem. The charm, the beauty the slow movement could be written by a 9 year old Chopin, but the first movement is Mozart at his best. In 1799, Wolfl and Beethoven competed in a duel of improvisation. Wolfl was probably a more formal composer, so when they had their duel, many people preferred Wolfl, because the way he was going from one idea to another was easier to follow. He didn't come out of this duel as a complete idiot. That's something we forget. It's too easy for us to say that the people who liked Wolfl were stupid, that they didn't recognize the genius of Beethoven. What I want to demonstrate is the opposite, that other composers than Beethoven had very good reason to be famous. On the recording you even include a track explicitly illustrating how Beethoven shared a style with his fellow composers. Definitely my work on the Haydn sonatas. I was recording Haydn and Beethoven in parallel. Working on Haydn helped me tremendously to refine the early Beethoven period. The middle period, that went OK. But when I was recording Volume 3, the last 10 sonatas of Beethoven, I had to stop playing Haydn, because working on small phrases was really not helping me to deal with the extended phrases in Beethoven's late period, leading to Romanticism. I don't think there is any composer, at least to me, that asks the performer to be such a virtuoso, such an architect, and such a poet. You really need to have the three at the highest level, to play Beethoven well. Chopin, you need to be a virtuoso, and you need to be a poet, but you don't need to be an architect. These three qualities are so changeable in your personal life, as you grow. I don't think there is any composer where your view of the piece can change so much over time.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Music
FAIRFIELD, Conn. General Electric's announcement in January that it will abandon its suburban headquarters here after more than 40 years sent a chill through Albert J. Kleban, the 85 year old chairman of Kleban Properties, the largest commercial property owner in town. "The news was a very devastating blow to us here in Fairfield, and we recognized the ramifications of it all," Mr. Kleban said. "The tax blow will affect the real estate taxes of everybody in this town." What's more, he added, a sudden glut of workers' homes going up for sale could depress real estate values. And so, even as Bostonians were still cheering the news that the corporate giant would resettle on their waterfront, Mr. Kleban decided he had to act. Less than a week after G.E.'s announcement, he let it be known that Kleban Properties would try to buy the 70 acre G.E. campus. He and his son Ken, Kleban Properties' president, plan to turn the site into a "technology center," with a mix of high tech businesses and possibly an educational campus connected to a university. Though still vague in concept, it is the first public imagining of a new use for the wooded campus that has housed G.E. since 1974. The gated headquarters property, where about 800 workers are now employed, is flanked by Merritt Parkway, preservation land and residential neighborhoods. Two three story office buildings on the site contain a total of about 500,000 square feet, and sit above 300,000 square feet of underground parking, according to a company spokesman. Amenities include a cafeteria, a gym, a television studio, a guesthouse for overnight visitors and a helipad large enough to accommodate two helicopters. About 20 of the property's 70 acres are undeveloped. About 200 G.E. headquarters employees will move to temporary offices in Boston in the second half of this year, the company has said. Others will be shifted to G.E. offices in Norwalk, Conn., and to the company's various shared services sites, one of the largest of which is in Cincinnati. The move to new, permanent headquarters in Boston's seaport district is expected to be completed in 2018. The move means the loss of one of Fairfield's top taxpayers, with a July 2015 property tax bill of 1.89 million, according to town records. This year, after a revaluation, Kleban edged out G.E. as the No. 1 taxpayer in Fairfield, with property holdings assessed at 75.6 million, compared to G.E.'s 70.8 million. Kleban owns several major retail/office plazas in Fairfield's downtown, including the Fairfield Center building, which houses a Fairfield University bookstore, as well as a Starbucks, a Victoria's Secret and other national chain stores, and at least 10 shopping centers along the Black Rock Turnpike commercial corridor. The company also owns properties elsewhere in Connecticut and in other states. "They're very capable at what they do," he said, "and they have the financial wherewithal." According to Mr. Kleban, G.E. is drawing up a nondisclosure agreement, which must be agreed upon before the two parties begin any talks. Truth be told, he said, he is hoping for some competition at the negotiating table. "I thought we should lead the way on this and others might follow," he said. "I hope that others will come to the surface and maybe joint venture it with us or come up with a better idea." The site's future prospects might very well need some more brainstorming. Selling tech oriented businesses on a somewhat removed suburban setting could be tough, given that the trend is toward locations accessible by mass transit, space optimization in downtown settings and telecommuting, said Tim Rorick, a senior managing director in Newmark Grubb Knight Frank's Stamford office. As it is, Fairfield County's overall office availability rate is fairly high, nearly 22 percent at the end of 2015, according to Newmark's research office. And the county's average space per employee has declined from 250 to 300 square feet in the 1980s and '90s to around 150 to 225 today. (In New York City, the average is closer to 120 square feet.) The G.E. site also faces hometown competition from a long delayed commercial development to be built alongside the town's third and newest train station, Fairfield Metro, on the border with Bridgeport. The 10 year old master plan for that project originally called for about one million square feet of office space, but Mr. Barnhart said the ownership group had revised its plan to reflect current market conditions and would soon submit an application proposing a mix of retail, office and residential space. James Fagan, the senior managing director of Cushman Wakefield of Connecticut, said that given the age of the G.E. buildings and their distance from mass transit, he sees the site as more suited for residential development, perhaps a gated community, or, most ideally in his opinion, a campus for a major university. A 20,000 student institution, he said, could help draw employers to Fairfield County in the same way that Boston's plentiful supply of highly educated graduates helped lure G.E. "Connecticut's behind the curve," he said. "We need to do something drastic." Fairfield is already home to two Catholic universities Fairfield University, a Jesuit institution, and Sacred Heart University each of which has fewer than 10,000 students. Suburban office parks continue to do well in some areas, like northern New Jersey. For example, in 2010, Rubenstein Partners, a real estate investment firm in Philadelphia specializing in office markets, bought the 200 acre former headquarters of Alcatel Lucent in Whippany. At the time, commercial brokers were not optimistic that the property would continue to attract office tenants, according to Stephen Card, a senior acquisitions executive for Rubenstein. But the firm subsequently demolished several obsolete buildings and redeveloped one section of the campus as a 675,000 square foot office building for Bayer HealthCare. It is now building a 185,000 square foot headquarters for MetLife Investments, he said. Rubenstein has also redeveloped what Mr. Card called a 300,000 square foot "corporate bunker" formerly occupied by Avaya in Basking Ridge, bringing in light with a floor to ceiling glass facade, and upgrading an auditorium, conference center and other conveniences. Avaya leased back some space, and other lease proposals are under negotiation. "These suburban campuses need amenities and attributes that cater to a younger work force," like on site food services, fitness facilities and bike share services, Mr. Card said. "But these campuses aren't going away."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Real Estate
The rock guitarist Peter Frampton said on Saturday that he was planning to issue a double album this summer, his first release in three years. He hinted at another mysterious project in the works. And he said he was going to go on tour for about 50 dates across the country. Yet Saturday's most significant news was what Frampton, the British star best known for "Frampton Comes Alive!," one of history's best selling live rock albums, revealed as the sobering motivation for his musical frenzy. In two interviews released on Saturday, one with CBS News and one with Rolling Stone, Frampton, 68, said he had a degenerative muscle disease called inclusion body myositis, also known as I.B.M. The disease causes muscles to weaken over time but generally does not affect life expectancy. His condition will not affect his singing voice, Frampton said, but it could slow his fingers and his ability to move around. "In a year's time, I might not be able to play," Frampton told Rolling Stone, adding, "I want to record as much as I can in the shortest space of time." A publicist for Frampton said he could not be reached Saturday evening. Frampton became the lead singer and guitarist for the Herd at 16, and two years later co founded Humble Pie. His popularity in the United States skyrocketed after the 1976 release of "Frampton Comes Alive!," a double album that has sold more than 17 million copies. It features songs like "Baby, I Love Your Way" and "Show Me the Way." Frampton did not always receive the critics' praise, but he has played on albums by George Harrison and David Bowie, and in the 1970s he helped popularize the talk box, a device that creates the effect of a "talking" musical instrument. The Musicians Hall of Fame, which inducted Frampton in 2014, has called him "one of the most celebrated artists and guitarists in rock history." Frampton recounted to Rolling Stone a series of warning signs regarding his health: He noticed tightness in his ankles about eight years ago, and there were times his legs felt weak; four years ago, he fell while trying to kick a beach ball off a concert stage; shortly after, he tripped over a guitar cord onstage; and he could not easily put things in overhead compartments on airplanes. Frampton told Rolling Stone that for four years, his children and his band knew about his diagnosis, but that he did not tell anybody else. He said that there was no traditional medicine to treat inclusion body myositis, but that he was exercising every day and hoped to participate in future drug trials. He said he thought the time was right to reveal his condition to the public because his talents may soon ebb, hence the new album and the announcement of the tour, which he is calling the "Peter Frampton Finale The Farewell Tour." He said that he may tour in Europe in the spring of 2020, but that this summer's tour will most likely be his last. Frampton declined to elaborate much on his double album, and said he probably would not play "Frampton Comes Alive!" straight through on the coming tour. Frampton told Rolling Stone that 1 from every ticket sale on the coming tour would go toward a fund he had started with Johns Hopkins University to research myositis. "Maybe a huge door is closing in my life, but then there's lots of other doors that open," he said. He told CBS that the condition had already affected his fingers but that he could still play guitar well. "If I'm going to do a farewell tour, I want to play good," Frampton said. "I want to rock it. I know that this tour, I will be able to do everything I did last year and the year before. That's the most important thing to me. I want to go out screaming as opposed to, 'He can't play anymore.'"	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Music
CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. In a defiant defense of the magazine he founded and owns, Jann S. Wenner said Rolling Stone was wrong to fully retract a discredited 2014 article about allegations of a gang rape at the University of Virginia, asserting in videotaped testimony shown on Friday that much of the material in the article was correct. "We did everything reasonable, appropriate up to the highest standards of journalism to check on this thing," Mr. Wenner said in a libel trial in federal court here. "The one thing we didn't do was confront Jackie's accusers the rapists." As he has previously, Mr. Wenner assigned much of the blame to the woman at the center of the article, identified as Jackie, whose account of being raped began to fall apart shortly after the article was published two years ago. Mr. Wenner said there was nothing a journalist could do "if someone is really determined to commit a fraud." He said that while the magazine rightly retracted "the Jackie stuff," he disagreed with the decision to retract the entire article in the wake of a damning report on it in April 2015 by The Columbia Journalism Review. He said the bulk of the article detailed ways that the University of Virginia could improve its treatment of victims of sexual assault.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Media
The Opera Bastille, the larger and more modern of the Paris Opera's two theaters, turns 30 this year. PARIS The Opera Bastille was a laughingstock before it was even built. Turning 30 this year, the larger and more modern of the Paris Opera's two theaters is widely regarded as one of the ugliest in Europe. And its comically embarrassing origin story which even Stephane Lissner, the company's director, tells through chuckles begins with a mistake. The long serving French president Francois Mitterrand ordered a new opera house to be built in the early 1980s as one of his Grands Projets, like the I.M. Pei designed Louvre Pyramid and the Grande Arche of La Defense. After receiving more than 700 proposals, with the architects' names kept hidden, Mitterrand and his aides chose a design they thought was by Richard Meier, then a star (and now disgraced). The name that was unveiled was Carlos Ott, a relatively unknown Uruguayan Canadian architect who didn't have any major credits on his resume. But Mitterrand moved forward with the project, committing to a behemoth that became the third largest building in the city, after two other Grands Projets the enormous Bibliotheque Nationale and the Ministry for the Economy and Finance. On that front, the Opera Bastille has been a success: The average age of its audience is nearly 10 years younger than that of the Metropolitan Opera, and it's not unusual for the Paris Opera to sell out both the 19th century Palais Garnier (its 2,000 seat house in the expensive center of town, now primarily home to ballet and small scale opera) and the 2,700 seat Bastille. "I think a lot of people don't like the building," Mr. Lissner said in an interview. "But the big majority today believes it was worth it, because a lot of people are able to go to the opera," with more seats, and more diverse programming available. But while the Bastille has been a blessing in some respects (it also provided a wealth of new spaces for rehearsals and workshops), it has been glumly tolerated and mocked for virtually all of its existence. When the opera house opened in 1989, it wasn't quite finished along the way, concessions had been made, including the loss of a modular, or flexible, space desired by the influential composer and conductor Pierre Boulez, a de facto culture czar and it didn't even have a music director. In an article about the tumultuous days leading up to opening night, The New York Times repeated a common joke: "What is the difference between the Bastille Opera and the Titanic? The Titanic had an orchestra." Another comparison with the Titanic could be made with the Bastille's appearance, which from certain angles resembles a cruise ship. But ask 10 people in Paris what the building looks like, and you'll probably hear 10 different answers: hospital, swimming pool, government office, airport. Few, if any, would say it looks like an opera house. The eminent French critic Christian Merlin, who attended the earliest productions at the Bastille, recalled in an interview finding the building "impressive but cold and gray, somewhat anonymous." Mr. Lissner said it is "absolutely not convincing, aesthetically, from the outside." Inside is not much different. Even entering is a challenge: The door appears to be on the second floor, accessible by way of a grand staircase. But it's rarely used, and newcomers are left to find the real entrance on the ground floor. (On a recent visit for the opening night of a new production of Berlioz's "Les Troyens," the stairs were closed off with bright yellow tape.) Despite the building's size, the lobby spaces are narrow, crowded and brightly lighted; it is nearly impossible to make it through an entire intermission without getting pushed. The theater itself, which occupies only about 5 percent of the building, is devoid of warmth: Its stone walls and fixtures have all the charm of a hotel convention center. (Mr. Ott, in a mid 2000s interview with the newsletter of the Institut Francois Mitterrand, said this was because he "didn't want anything to detract from the performance.") Balcony seats were designed to offer clear views of the stage which they do, at the cost of some vertigo. Singers and directors alike must contend with the cavernous space. Manuel Brug, a German critic who has been visiting the theater for years, said it is "not possible to be intimate" there. In "Les Troyens," for example, only the mezzo soprano Stephanie d'Oustrac, as Cassandre, seemed at ease penetrating the orchestra and filling the hall. The production's director, Dmitri Tcherniakov, overcame the Bastille's dimensions by pushing the cityscape of Troy back extremely far, opening up the rear of the theater to give the set the depth of three stages. Inside the theater, which is densely packed with plush red seats, a monumental chandelier the one that inspired the climax of Andrew Lloyd Webber's musical "The Phantom of the Opera" hangs from a ceiling magnificently painted by Chagall. The acoustics are forgiving, and conducive to jewel box productions like a new staging of Scarlatti's oratorio "Il Primo Omicidio," which had its premiere the night before "Les Troyens." "When I walk into the Garnier," Mr. Lissner said, "I walk into a theater." The Bastille was never meant to be an update of the Garnier its populist mission aimed at shedding some of the Garnier's perceived stuffiness but Mr. Ott might have gone too far. Mr. Brug said the Bastille's abundance of stone and metal, and harsh angles, has left it "so sober." It is also a victim of poor urban planning. The Garnier is a clearly defined anchor of the Place de l'Opera; people walking out of the Metro station there are welcomed by a postcard ready view of the facade. When you stand in the theater's loggia, you can look down l'Avenue de l'Opera to the Louvre. But the Bastille sits on more of an intersection than a plaza. It's unlikely the Bastille will change further any time soon, inside or out. Mr. Lissner said that would be difficult, and expensive. Mr. Merlin hopes that the acoustics will eventually be improved, "at any price." But the Paris Opera is planning a new space there a modular one, as once promised to Boulez, with room for an audience of 800 that is expected to open in 2023. After holding a competition, the company recently hired the Danish firm Henning Larsen Architects, known for the Copenhagen Opera House and the Harpa concert hall in Reykjavik. This time, there was no mistake about whose design had been chosen.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Music
Roger Cohen rightly supports a two state solution against its detractors. But the column doesn't mention Israel's detailed peace offers and increased Israeli public support for a two state solution while ignoring the Palestinian leadership's refusal to deal. Israelis have made or agreed to four substantive peace offers or frameworks in the last 20 years that the Palestinian leadership outright refused: Ehud Barak's peace offer in 2000; the Taba peace framework in 2001; Ehud Olmert's peace offer in 2008, and the 2014 Kerry framework, which Benjamin Netanyahu's government quietly supported. What's more, Israeli support for a two state solution has grown steadily. Twenty four years ago, when the Israeli Labor Party put in its platform that it did not oppose a Palestinian state, it was the first mainstream Israeli political party to take this stance. Today, support for a Palestinian state as part of a comprehensive peace and mutual recognition is a consensus position across the Israeli political spectrum, excepting the settler parties. Many people on both sides want a two state solution. But neither Israeli politics nor its public sentiments are the reasons we lack one. The reason is simpler: If the price of Palestinian statehood is dealing with Israel, the Palestinian leadership would prefer not to have a state.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Opinion
The team has been having Zoom meetings in lieu of in person practice and has been keeping players who tested positive isolated, Alvarez said. Wisconsin teams in other sports have had some smaller virus outbreaks, but those are more under control, he said, adding that those teams do not include basketball and hockey, which are scheduled to start playing games soon. The infections on and around the football team have played out while the state as a whole has confronted some of its most wrenching weeks of the pandemic. Statewide, about 245,000 people have tested positive for the virus; more than 2,100 have died, many of them in October, according to a New York Times database. Wisconsin, which last week canceled a game at Nebraska, will have played no more than six regular season games by the time the Big Ten Conference's championship matchup is set. Under the league's rules, if Wisconsin, the only ranked team in the conference's West Division, misses one more game, it will not be eligible to play for the conference championship. (The threshold, though, could change if more of the league's games are canceled this season.) Both of Wisconsin's canceled games will be classified "no contest." The Badgers won their first game of the season, at home against Illinois, 45 7, on Oct. 23, but have not played a game since. Their next will be at Michigan, ranked No. 23, on Nov. 14, assuming the Badgers are cleared to take the field.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Sports
I have a Nest camera for inside my house basically to watch my dog sleep on the couch while I'm at work. I'm thinking about a camera for outside, so I turned for advice to Rachel Cericola, who tests internet connected devices for The Wirecutter, the New York Times site for product evaluations. How practical and necessary is it to put an internet connected security camera outside a home? I think having an outdoor camera is more practical than an indoor one. I do enjoy watching my dog move from the couch to the floor 20 times a day, but having one outside will let you know if someone is lurking about or trying to break in. Overall, I think the decision to buy an outdoor camera may depend a lot on where you live, if you're away a lot and how paranoid you are about prowlers and packages left on the doorstep. When I say "paranoid," it doesn't necessarily mean you're like Jimmy Stewart in "Rear Window." If you have a lot of outdoor critters getting into trash cans, sheds or other areas, it can provide answers and peace of mind. I also have a milkman, so it's nice to know when things are in the box. What do you recommend camera wise, not milk wise? The best one I've seen so far is the Nest Cam Outdoor. It has killer picture quality and 24/7 recording. Many cameras record just when there's motion. This one records all the time, so you don't have to worry about missing something. Then, when something does happen, you get a little notification on your phone or you can view a timeline of videos in the cellphone app. That type of service does require a subscription, which may scare some people off, but it's not as scary as someone walking right in front of the camera and having your camera miss it.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Technology
When the British filmmaker Steve McQueen conceived the five films he collectively named "Small Axe," he could not have foreseen the drastically disrupted world into which they would be released a world that could shift, and perhaps intensify, the impact with which they would land. Narratively diverse but thematically intertwined, the anthology (beginning with "Mangrove" last month and continuing on Amazon with new releases through next week) shines a sociopolitical spotlight on London's West Indian community from the mid 1960s to the '80s. These are McQueen's people: Born in 1969 to Caribbean parents who were among those invited to settle in Britain after World War II, he has woven his own memories and family stories into a vibrant tapestry of immigrant dignity and determination. In the process, he forces a reckoning with the racism and systemic discrimination of the period that feels long overdue, one that pushes his characters to act in ways as varied as their circumstances. In "Education" (Dec. 18), set in the 1970s, a smart, stargazing 12 year old named Kingsley (Kenyah Sandy) scores poorly on a culturally biased I.Q. test and is transferred to a so called special school. Unaware of an infamous report that had designated West Indian children as educationally subnormal, Kingsley's proud, hard working mother (a very fine Sharlene Whyte), is initially reluctant to believe that her son is a victim of segregation. Also fighting, but in a very different way, is the title character of "Alex Wheatle" (Dec. 11), engagingly played as an adult by Sheyi Cole. A true story about the making of a writer and the dawning of a political consciousness, this gut punch of a movie follows the parentless Wheatle from a mostly white group home to a hostel in the South London district of Brixton and then to prison for his participation in the Brixton riot of April 1981. That multiracial uprising against myriad injustices churns through the center of a film in which violence and stillness alternate with queasy regularity. More than once, we see Wheatle stunned and bound, a repeated victim of institutional abuse. He doesn't fully understand his mistreatment: Unable to view himself as African "I'm from Surrey!" he insists to an amused Black barber Wheatle belongs nowhere. Anxious and asthmatic, he's unable to relax around the rambunctious Jamaican family of his new friend, Dennis (Jonathan Jules), finding solace in reggae music. But not until he's schooled in Black history by Simeon, a dreadlocked cellmate (a terrific Robbie Gee), do the scattered pieces of his identity begin to slide into place. Dennis might teach him how to dress and move, but it's Simeon who teaches him how to be. That the entirety of "Small Axe" feels profoundly personal is no surprise. That moments from its component parts leap from the screen with crackling recognition has perhaps less to do with the prominence of the Black Lives Matter movement than with the authenticity and heart of the filmmaking: the lived in costumes and decor; the strutting energy and colors of Wheatle's West Indian neighborhood. Again and again in these films, characters are sustained and comforted by music that enriches their stories without interrupting their flow. At the same time, the cinematographer Shabier Kirchner's camera is as gracefully intuitive in motion as when simply standing still. There's a beautiful example of this in "Red, White and Blue" shot from the back seat of a parked car, as Leroy Logan (John Boyega) and his father (Steve Toussaint) leave the vehicle and say goodbye at the entrance to a police training facility. As Al Green's version of "How Can You Mend a Broken Heart" plays softly, the scene's complicated emotions illuminate a generational divide that's one of the anthology's most moving themes. The real Logan is a former superintendent in the Metropolitan Police, and "Red, White and Blue" dramatizes his decision to abandon a career in forensic science in the early 1980s and join the force after his father is viciously beaten by the police for a spurious parking violation. Seeing the new job as a betrayal, his father is furious. He is pursuing a civil case against the police and still believes in individual rights that the system has no intention of granting. Logan, however, hopes to be a bridge to his Jamaican community, and is perhaps naively unprepared for the virulent racism he encounters from peers and superiors. Passed over for promotions and denied backup in life threatening situations, Logan nevertheless excels. Still, like Alex Wheatle, he struggles to find his place. Distrusted by the very community he hopes to serve, Logan epitomizes the tragic hero; yet Boyega never allows him to congeal into saintliness. Some of "Red, White and Blue" is hard to watch, but the film is eloquent on how an institution will resist change, perhaps especially from inside its own walls. For most of "Small Axe," men dominate the screen and the narrative, but "Lovers Rock" is all about the women. A magical mood piece set during a Notting Hill house party in 1980 and named for a romantic genre of reggae, the film celebrates the gatherings that Black people, unwelcome in white nightclubs, created for themselves. Shiny dresses with flutter sleeves compete with the men's exuberantly patterned shirts, and white "church shoes" do double duty on a dance floor where the women wriggle and sway in pretend obliviousness to the men propping up the walls. The story is a mere wisp a first flush romance that spills over into morning but the film's sensuality and flares of pure joy lingered with me long after it was over. As did its sounds and images: a thick strand of hair steaming from a hot iron; a kitchen singalong over a bubbling vat of goat curry; a rapturous, unscripted a cappella rendition of Janet Kay's 1979 single, "Silly Games," the women's voices rising to meet the song's ecstatic high note. There's a euphoria here that the occasional intrusions of bigotry and sexual assault outside the party and the sanctuary it provides can't dispel. "This is my musical," McQueen said in the press notes, and that music is divine. As one man after another silently claims a dance partner, Coral Messam's tactile choreography gives us rolling hips and expressive hand gestures, the camera weaving and sliding among stomping feet and twisting torsos. Electric and alive as few films are, "Lovers Rock" will make you giddy with longing for a pleasure we've been too long denied: The singular rush of being one with a beat and a roomful of possibilities. The "Small Axe" anthology isn't rated. The films' running times range from about one hour to a little over two hours. Watch on Amazon.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Movies
'THOMAS BAYRLE: PLAYTIME' at the New Museum (through Sept. 2). In the digital fever dream of Mr. Bayrle's work, pixelated pictures twist and bend and resolve into fuzzily warped images. Abstract films and videos pulse with psychedelic patterns. But if Mr. Bayrle's art seems like the ultimate in early computer design, most of the 115 paintings, prints, films and sculptures in his first major New York retrospective are actually handcrafted, generally using his signature "superform" of a large image made up of hundreds or thousands of smaller ones. Ultimately, Mr. Bayrle's work instead offers a window into digital thinking or, it could be said, how we got to where we are now. (Martha Schwendener) 212 219 1222, newmuseum.org 'HUMA BHABHA: WE COME IN PEACE' at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (through Oct. 28). This spare and unsettling sculptural installation for the Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Roof Garden Commission includes two figures: one that is somewhat humanoid but with a ferocious mask face and that visually dwarfs the jagged Manhattan skyline behind it, and another bowing in supplication or prayer, with long cartoonish human hands and a scraggly tail emerging from its shiny, black drapery. The title is a variant on the line an alien uttered to an anxious crowd in the 1951 science fiction movie "The Day the Earth Stood Still," but it ripples with other associations: colonization, invasion, imperialism or missionaries and other foreigners whose intentions were not always innocent. The installation also feels like an extension of the complex, cross cultural conversation going on downstairs, inside a museum packed with 5,000 years of art history. (Schwendener) 212 535 7710, metmuseum.org 'THE FACE OF DYNASTY: ROYAL CRESTS FROM WESTERN CAMEROON' at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (through Sept. 3). In the African wing, a show of just four commanding wooden crowns constitutes a blockbuster in its own right. These massive wooden crests in the form of stylized human faces with vast vertical brows served as markers of royal power among the Bamileke peoples of the Cameroonian grasslands, and the Met's recent acquisition of an 18th century specimen is joined here by three later examples, each featuring sharply protruding cheeks, broadly smiling mouths and brows incised with involute geometric patterns. Ritual objects like these were decisive for the development of Western modernist painting, and a Cameroonian crest was even shown at MoMA in the 1930s, as a "sculpture" divorced from ethnography. But these crests had legal and diplomatic significance as well as aesthetic appeal, and their anonymous African creators had a political understanding of art not so far from our own. (Jason Farago) 212 535 7710, metmuseum.org 'GIACOMETTI' at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum (through Sept. 12). This museum filling outing for the signal sculptor of Western modernism is rather cautious but revisionism can wait another day when the art looks as good as it does here. The Swiss artist's witty and erotic early sculpture, such as the still shocking "Disagreeable Object" (a phallic torture device with a spiked business end), enraptured the Surrealists in early 1930s Paris, but Giacometti was never content with an art of ideas, and in his filthy studio, he soon started making elongated, emaciated humanoids that have since become emblems of Europe's postwar trauma. If you know Giacometti best for the bronzes that now go for obscene sums at auction, it's a particular pleasure here to see his work in plaster, a medium he adored; the humility of the handwork testifies to his anxious mastery. (Farago) 212 423 3800, guggenheim.org 'HEAVENLY BODIES: FASHION AND THE CATHOLIC IMAGINATION' at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Cloisters (through Oct. 8). Let us pray. After last year's stark exhibition of Rei Kawakubo's irregular apparel, the Met Costume Institute is back in blockbuster mode with this three part blowout on the influence of Catholicism on haute couture of the last century. The trinity of fashion begins downstairs at the Met with the exceptional loans of vestments from the Vatican; upstairs are gowns fit for angels in heaven (by Lanvin, Thierry Mugler, Rodarte) or angels fallen to earth (such as slinky Versace sheaths garlanded with crosses). The scenography at the Met is willfully operatic spotlights, choir music which militates against serious thinking about fashion and religion, but up at the Cloisters, by far the strongest third of the show, you can commune more peacefully with an immaculate Balenciaga wedding gown or a divine Valentino gown embroidered with Cranach's Adam and Eve. (Farago) 212 535 7710, metmuseum.org 'THE JIM HENSON EXHIBITION' at the Museum of the Moving Image. The rainbow connection has been established in Astoria, Queens, where this museum has opened a new permanent wing devoted to the career of America's great puppeteer, who was born in Mississippi in 1936 and died, too young, in 1990. Henson began presenting the short TV program "Sam and Friends" before he was out of his teens; one of its characters, the soft faced Kermit, was fashioned from his mother's old coat and would not mature into a frog for more than a decade. The influence of early variety television, with its succession of skits and songs, runs through "Sesame Street" and "The Muppet Show," though Henson also spent the late 1960s crafting peace and love documentaries and prototyping a psychedelic nightclub. Young visitors will delight in seeing Big Bird, Elmo, Miss Piggy and the Swedish Chef; adults can dig deep into sketches and storyboards and rediscover some old friends. (Farago) 718 784 0077, movingimage.us 'HISTORY REFUSED TO DIE: HIGHLIGHTS FROM THE SOULS GROWN DEEP FOUNDATION GIFT' at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (through Sept. 23). This inspired foundation is dispersing around 1,200 works by black self taught artists from the American South to museums across the country. The Met's exhibition of 29 of the 57 pieces it received proposes an exciting broadening of postwar art. It is dominated by the dialogue between the rough hewed relief paintings of Thornton Dial and the geometrically, chromatically brilliant quilts of the Gee's Bend collective. But much else chimes in, including works by Purvis Young, Joe Minter and Lonnie Holley. (Roberta Smith) 212 535 7710, metmuseum.org 'ALEJANDRO G. INARRITU: CARNE Y ARENA' at 1611 Benning Road NE, Washington (through Aug. 31, 9 a.m. 9 p.m.). Perhaps the most technically accomplished endeavor yet in virtual reality but closer in form to immersive live theater, created by a two time Oscar winner has arrived at a former church in Washington after outings in Cannes, Milan, Los Angeles and Mexico City. In "Carne y Arena" ("Flesh and Sand"), you explore the exhibition on your own with a motion sensitive headset that transports you to Mexico's border with the United States; brutal encounters with border guards interweave with surreal dream sequences, which you can perceive in three dimensions. The characters are computer renderings of the bodies of actual migrants; the landscapes are photographed by Mr. Inarritu's brilliant longtime cinematographer, Emmanuel Lubezki. It remains too early to say whether virtual reality will reshape art institutions, but this is a rare achievement, and not only for its political urgency. Tickets will be released only on the website at 8 a.m. Eastern Time on the 1st and 15th of each month of the exhibition's duration. (Farago) carneyarenadc.com 'THE INCOMPLETE ARAKI' at the Museum of Sex (through Aug. 31). It remains a bit of a tourist trap, but the for profit Museum of Sex is making its most serious bid yet for artistic credibility with a two floor exhibition of Japan's most prominent and controversial photographer. Nobuyoshi Araki has spent decades shooting Tokyo streetscapes, blossoming flowers and, notably, women trussed up in the baroque rope bondage technique known as kinbaku bi, or "the beauty of tight binding." Given the venue, it's natural that this show concentrates on the erotic side of his art, but less lustful visitors can discover an ambitious cross section of Mr. Araki's omnivorous photography, including his lastingly moving "Sentimental Journey," picturing his beloved wife, Yoko, from honeymoon to funeral. (Farago) 212 689 6337, museumofsex.com 'THE LONG RUN' at the Museum of Modern Art (through Nov. 4). The museum upends its cherished Modern narrative of ceaseless progress by mostly young (white) men. Instead we see works by artists 45 and older who have just kept on keeping on, regardless of attention or reward, sometimes saving the best for last. Art here is an older person's game, a pursuit of a deepening personal vision over innovation. Winding through 17 galleries, the installation is alternatively visually or thematically acute and altogether inspiring. (Smith) 212 708 9400, moma.org 'GEORGIA O'KEEFFE: VISIONS OF HAWAI'I' at the New York Botanical Garden (through Oct. 28). Finding out O'Keeffe had a Hawaiian period is kind of like finding out Brian Wilson had a desert period. But here it is: 17 eye popping paradisal paintings, produced in a nine week visit in 1939. The paintings, and their almost psychedelic palette, are as fleshlike and physical as O'Keeffe's New Mexican work is stripped and metaphysical. The other star of the show, fittingly, is Hawaii, and the garden has mounted a living display of the subjects depicted in the artwork. As much as they might look like the products of an artist's imagination, the plants and flowers in the Enid Haupt Conservatory are boastfully real. On Aloha Nights every Saturday in June and every other Saturday in July and August, the garden is staging a cultural complement of activities, including lei making, hula lessons and ukulele performances. (William L. Hamilton) 718 817 8700, nybg.org 'PAINTED IN MEXICO, 1700 1790: PINXIT MEXICI' at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (through July 22). Most religious art is visual theater, none more so than the great Roman Catholic church paintings of 18th century Mexico, which are at the center of this extraordinary exhibition, one of the high points of the season. Only within the past few decades has Spanish colonial art been awarded anything like center stage status, and for reasons of unfamiliarity alone, the show is not to be missed. However, the real attraction is drama. You don't have to be religious to respond to a painterly tour de force like "Apotheosis of the Eucharist" by Rodriguez Juarez, which, like an organ chord, opens the show. Commissioned for the convent of Corpus Christi in Mexico City, the work's inspiration was as much political as devotional. (The convent was founded for Indian women of noble birth, at a time when "noble" and "Indian" were mutually exclusive concepts in much of Europe.) But what most matters about it now and surely did when it was new is its visionary imagery: the swirling clouds, the fainting saints, the angel borne host that beams like a high power flashlight. The show also features unforgettable portraits and cityscapes, though heaven remains the focal point. (Holland Cotter) 212 535 7710, metmuseum.org 'ADRIAN PIPER: A SYNTHESIS OF INTUITIONS, 1965 2016' at the Museum of Modern Art (through July 22). A clarifying and complicating 50 year view of a major American artist's career, this exhibition is also an image altering event for MoMA itself. It makes the museum feel like a more life engaged institution than the formally polished one we're accustomed to. For the first time it has given over all of its sixth floor special exhibition space to a single living female artist who is best known for her art about racism, and for good reason: It's powerful work, brilliantly varied in form. She has also consistently used her own image in inventive, distanced, self mocking ways, as in two well known self likenesses done several years apart: one, a pencil drawing titled "Self Portrait Exaggerating My Negroid Features" (1981); the other, a crayon enhanced photograph called "Self Portrait as a Nice White Lady" (1995). In these images, as in all of her work, her aim is not to assert racial identity but to destabilize the very concept of it. (Cotter) 212 708 9400, moma.org 'RENOIR: FATHER AND SON/PAINTING AND CINEMA' at Barnes Foundation, Philadelphia (through Sept. 3). Jean Renoir transformed the history of cinema with humanistic, precisely edited films like "The Grand Illusion," and especially "The Rules of the Game" considered one of the greatest films ever made, though it was a box office flop on its release in 1939. Yet the critic he strove most to please was his father, the Impressionist painter Pierre Auguste Renoir. This terrific dad and lad exhibition, organized with Paris's Musee d'Orsay, interweaves painting and cinema into a heartfelt survey of Jean Renoir's career, and finds paternal influence in the pastoral romance of "A Day in the Country" or the bright landscapes of his 1959 color film "Picnic on the Grass." The irony? It is Jean Renoir who now seems the more inventive artist, even if he was convinced that "I have always imitated my father." (Farago) 215 278 7000, barnesfoundation.org 'SCENES FROM THE COLLECTION' at the Jewish Museum. After a surgical renovation to its grand pile on Fifth Avenue, the Jewish Museum has reopened its third floor galleries with a rethought, refreshed display of its permanent collection, which intermingles 4,000 years of Judaica with modern and contemporary art by Jews and gentiles alike Mark Rothko, Lee Krasner, Nan Goldin, Cindy Sherman and the excellent young Nigerian draftswoman Ruby Onyinyechi Amanze. The works are shown in a nimble, nonchronological suite of galleries, and some of its century spanning juxtapositions are bracing; others feel reductive, even dilettantish. But always, the Jewish Museum conceives of art and religion as interlocking elements of a story of civilization, commendably open to new influences and new interpretations. (Farago) 212 423 3200, thejewishmuseum.org 'THE SENSES: DESIGN BEYOND VISION' at the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum (through Oct. 28). There's a serious, timely big idea at this exhibition: As social media, smartphones and virtual reality make us ever more "ocularcentric," we have taken leave of our nonvisual senses and need to get back in touch, literally. Thus "The Senses" features multisensory adventures such as a portable speaker size contraption that emits odors, with titles like "Surfside" and "Einstein," in timed combinations; hand painted scratch and sniff wallpaper (think Warhol's patterned cows but with cherries cherry scented, naturally); and a device that projects ultrasonic waves to simulate the touch and feel of virtual objects. The show also presents commissions, videos, products and prototypes from more than 65 designers and teams, some of which address sensory disabilities like blindness and deafness, including Vibeat, which can be worn as a bracelet, brooch or necklace and translates music into vibrations. And if you bring the kids, they will likely bliss out stroking a wavy, fur lined installation that makes music as you rub it. (Michael Kimmelman) 212 849 8400, cooperhewitt.org 'CHAIM SOUTINE: FLESH' at the Jewish Museum (through Sept. 16). The Russian Jewish artist Chaim Soutine (1893 1943), who spent most of his life in Paris, is best known for bloody, ecstatic paintings of beef carcasses. But it wasn't death that interested him it was the immaterial life force of the material world. Along with an instructive lineup of naked fowl, silver herring and popeyed sardines, this indispensable tribute to the transcendent but still undervalued painter centers on a stupendous 1925 "Carcass of Beef," glistening scarlet, streaked with orange fat and straddling a starry sky. (Will Heinrich) 212 423 3200, thejewishmuseum.org 'THROUGH A DIFFERENT LENS: STANLEY KUBRICK PHOTOGRAPHS' at the Museum of the City of New York (through Oct. 28). This exhibition of the great director's photography is essentially Kubrick before he became Kubrick. Starting in 1945, when he was 17 and living in the Bronx, he worked as a photographer for Look magazine, and the topics that he explored are chestnuts so old that they smell a little moldy: lovers embracing on a park bench as their neighbors gaze ostentatiously elsewhere, patients anxiously awaiting their doctors appointment, boxing hopefuls in the ring, celebrities at home, pampered dogs in the city. It probably helped that Kubrick was just a kid, so instead of inducing yawns, these magazine perennials struck him as novelties, and he in turn brought something fresh to them. Photographs that emphasize the mise en scene could be movie stills: a shouting circus executive who takes up the right side of the foreground while aerialists rehearse in the middle distance, a boy climbing to a roof with the city tenements surrounding him, a subway car filled with sleeping passengers. Looking at these pictures, you want to know what comes next. (Arthur Lubow) 212 534 1672, mcny.org 'WORLD ON THE HORIZON: SWAHILI ARTS ACROSS THE INDIAN OCEAN' at the National Museum of African Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington (through Sept. 3). The Swahili coast of East Africa is home to a crossroads culture. For millenniums, the port cities in Somalia, Kenya, Tanzania and Mozambique have been centers of long distance trade and cultural exchange from multiple directions. To the west, they were anciently connected by caravan with Central Africa; to the east, by ship with India, China and Japan; to the north, with an Arab world that included Oman, Iran and Yemen; and to the south, via roundabout shipping routes with Europe and the Americas. This exhibition makes evident both the great beauty and the deep disturbance of those connections East Africa was a nodal point on the international slave trade. (Cotter) 202 633 4600, africa.si.edu 'CEZANNE PORTRAITS' at the National Gallery of Art, Washington (through July 8). With some 60 likenesses by a notoriously testy, people aversive artist rebel, this is the largest gathering of its kind in a century. (The last one was in Paris in 1910.) You'll know most of the players by type, if not by name. Cezanne himself, in self portraits, is very present, looking alternately feral and professorial. So is his mate of nearly 40 years, Hortense Fiquet, who sits with her hands knotted in her lap and a lifetime of impatient patience inscribed on her face. A few celebrities are on hand. Emile Zola, Cezanne's childhood friend in Aix en Provence and an aesthetic brother in arms, reclines on a cushion, a Buddha in beige gabardine. And there are portraits of farmers and domestic workers that Cezanne painted in the decade before his death, at 67, in 1906, by which time the rebel had become a devout Roman Catholic and vehement Provencal nativist. A fascinating mix of painting and biography, the show has just a little more than a week to run, so if you're going to catch it, which I seriously recommend, the time is now. (Cotter) 202 737 4215, 'GUTAI: 1954 59' at Fergus McCaffrey Gallery (through June 30). This extraordinary exhibition of over 70 works transports us to the early, most innovative years of the Gutai group, the leading avant gardists of postwar Japan. At every turn we see forward looking artwork especially paintings that incorporate unusual materials and aspects of performance, and sense the speed with which the Gutai took possession of the latest ideas from the United States and Europe, often thanks to indigenous traditions like calligraphy. The show is the latest example of history being rewritten before our eyes. Jackson who? (Smith) 212 988 2200, fergusmccaffrey.com 'THE METROPOLIS IN LATIN AMERICA, 1830 1930' at Americas Society (through June 30). Fans of Latin American architecture are overly besotted with the modernist era: Luis Barragan's color saturated houses in Mexico City, Oscar Niemeyer's cutting edge presidential palace in Brasilia. But this eye opening exhibition turns the clock back 100 years and shows how six cities Buenos Aires; Havana; Lima, Peru; Mexico City; Rio de Janeiro; and Santiago, Chile used architecture and urban design to express new national ambitions. Vintage photographs disclose how in Mexico's sprawling capital its new republican government erected statues of Cuauhtemoc, the last Aztec emperor, while Argentina plowed out lordly avenues in imitation of Haussmann era Paris. All these cities had keen architectural ambitions, though if you have to pick the most sophisticated, it's Rio in a landslide. Stare at Marc Ferrez's jaw dropping 1895 panoramic photograph of the erstwhile Brazilian capital, with Sugarloaf Mountain looming over Botafogo and Flamengo, and book the next flight. (Farago) 212 249 8950, as coa.org	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Art & Design
PARIS Last summer, as the mounting European debt crisis was forcing many businesses in the region to scale back, the multinational Dow Chemical made a seemingly contrarian move: rather than hunker down, it doubled down. Dow expanded its presence in the region by allocating 10 million euros, or about 13.2 million, for a new water desalination research center on Spain's eastern seaboard, about 50 miles southwest of Barcelona. There a staff of engineers hopes to develop new ways to produce cheap, clean water. While not as big an investment as some of Dow's others in Europe, it showed that even in a troubled economy like Spain's, big foreign multinational companies still see opportunities. "We invested because there's good technology, educated workers and an increasingly competitive cost structure," said Geoffery E. Merszei, the president of Dow's European operations. "Europe is not growing as fast as Asia Pacific countries, but it's certainly not doomsday here." The evidence so far may be more anecdotal than statistical. But despite the lingering debt crisis and an incubating recession in many nations of the European monetary union, many global companies say they are maintaining or even increasing their investments in the euro zone and elsewhere on the Continent. They are peering past the region's current woes and betting on eventual payoffs, as European officials and politicians shift their rhetoric toward reviving growth and luring private investment, after two years of grinding austerity. The rising confidence of multinational corporations follows several years in which foreign direct investment in Europe slumped, hampered by lackluster economic activity, weakness in the region's banking system, worries about a Greek default and fears that all these troubles could ignite a second Lehman like liquidity crisis in global markets. Now, though, as the fever of the euro crisis cools, headlines regularly herald fresh investments in Europe by big foreign firms. In Ireland, for example, multinationals are increasing spending as that country's economic doldrums make it more cost competitive than ever. Microsoft, for one, recently invested 130 million to expand a data center outside Dublin. Eli Lilly, the drug giant, plans to spend 330 million euros on a new biopharmaceutical plant near Cork, creating hundreds of jobs. General Electric, meantime, is forging ahead with a 30 million euro investment to expand research and development in energy, aviation and medical technology in Germany a nation G.E. considers a haven from the euro storm and an additional 56 million euros to broaden its commercial presence. Infosys, the big Indian technology consulting and outsourcing company, plans millions in additional investments in its core northern European markets, and is girding to hire hundreds more people in Europe this year. The trend appears to counter the big reversal in 2010, the latest period for which full year figures are available, when foreign direct investment in Europe fell by 19 percent from the previous year. By contrast, in North America, where the economy had already begun showing signs of an upturn, foreign direct investment jumped 44 percent that year, according to the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development. Lately, according to analysts, economists and executives, companies and cash flush investment funds from China, India, Brazil and the United Arab Emirates are adding to their baskets of European assets and are on the prowl for fresh investments in infrastructure, technology and manufacturing across the European Union. In 2011, Europe for the first time edged out the United States as China's biggest region for overseas investment. So far this year, China's European deals have included the Shandong Heavy Industry Group's purchase of a 75 percent stake in the Italian yacht maker Ferretti, and the State Grid Corporation of China's buying 25 percent of Portugal's electric utility. "There is more optimism that the euro crisis will be solved soon or at the least people will see that we can live with it," said Marc Henry, the financial director at Michelin, the French company that is one of the world's largest tire makers. He said Michelin intended to invest more in plants, equipment, research and development on the Continent this year and beyond. The company plans to spend PS50 million (more than 79 million) to update machinery at its factories in Britain over the next five years, for instance, and is also looking at possible expansions in Eastern Europe. The hard times are hardly over, of course. For every cash rich conglomerate betting on a European turnaround, thousands of small and midsize companies have been sapped by three years of financial and economic volatility spawned by weaker countries along the euro zone's southern tier. Dollar Tree will finish raising prices to 1.25 by the end of April. Many of these smaller companies, which together typically account for the vast majority of new jobs in Europe, are hoarding cash while waiting for more clarity about the regional and global outlook, said Marc Lhermitte, a partner at Ernst Young in Paris, and the author of a recent study of investment trends in Europe. Until these potential job engines are back in gear, sustained widespread growth may be hard to come by. "We need to bring back financial stability before we see more transactions," he said. What is more, bank credit has become much tighter for many smaller companies, despite a new program by the European Central Bank to flood the euro zone's financial institutions with cheap money to ensure they continue lending into the economy. Though BNP Paribas, Deutsche Bank and other financial giants insist they have not curbed loan making to businesses and consumers, many European companies and foreign ones seeking to invest in Europe say they are having difficulty getting bank financing to expand activities. "Small and medium sized enterprises are saying they can't get financing, either for trade or for an expansion of their activities or acquisitions," said Jean Guy Carrier. He is secretary general of the Paris based International Chamber of Commerce, which counts thousands of companies among its membership. "Money is completely tied up." By contrast, big companies with their own financing arms have been able to tap into the central bank's cheap lending. Volkswagen Bank, for example, said last week that it had taken out such loans, although it did not disclose the sum. Many say that Europe also needs a better system of venture capital to enable entrepreneurs and businesses to turn innovative ideas into commercial successes. On a recent visit to Paris to inaugurate Google's new headquarters here for southern Europe, the Middle East and Africa, Eric E. Schmidt, the company's executive chairman, said there was not much difference between entrepreneurs in the United States and France except for access to money. "There's not a lack of ideas, but there's been a lack of funding and of venture capital," Mr. Schmidt said. "When you're in technology, it takes money and you need to move very fast." A widening economic divide between wealthy northern countries like Britain, Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg, and weaker ones in the south, also does not help. Companies making investments are leaning more toward markets that are already prospering, rather than extending their ties in ones where austerity budgets have raised questions about the economic, political and social environment. India's Infosys is gaining European business despite the debt crisis and rising unemployment, said B. G. Scrinivas, the head of Infosys's European operations. But the company plans to keep its investments focused mainly on Britain, Germany, France, Switzerland and the Benelux countries, as it expands its ranks of software professionals and sets up additional sales and consulting offices. "We are not really focusing on countries like Greece, Spain or Portugal," said Mr. Scrinivas, adding that it would probably take some time before the euro zone's overall economic climate improved.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Global Business
The Dutch actor Michiel Huisman doesn't believe in ghosts, but he does worship Ping Pong. On a recent Thursday afternoon, Mr. Huisman had tip tapped down a steep flight of stairs on East 23rd Street and into Spin New York, a neon lit basement Ping Pong palace with a view of the downtown 6 train. It's around the corner from the apartment he shares with his wife, the actress Tara Elder, and their 11 year old daughter. Mr. Huisman, who played the Daario Naharis in "Game of Thrones" and is now starring as a ghost skeptic in "The Haunting of Hill House" on Netflix, has been playing table tennis since he was a child. He carries his own paddle and he displayed it proudly, a Donic Appelgren Allplay faced in red and black rubber. Last summer he joined a Ping Pong club near his home in the Netherlands, and he played every Monday. "I think I won one game," he said. "It gave me a lot of hope." Dressed in a blinding white T shirt and black jeans, with a gold chain around his neck appropriated from his wife, he'd come to Spin during walk in hours hoping for a pickup game. No one seemed to want to play with him. (Starring in a hit show comes with a few privileges; this isn't one of them.) He approached two men who had finished a close match, but they turned him down, saying they had to get back to the office. He was left alone, idly toying with one of Spin's orange balls, a tiny plastic tangerine. "It's very bouncy," he said, slightly forlorn. Finally, one of the in house pros, Matt Suchy, took pity on Mr. Huisman and offered an impromptu lesson. They warmed up, and Mr. Suchy was immediately impressed. "Your serve is so nasty!" Mr. Suchy said. But Mr. Huisman struggled to keep the point in play. The problem? The paddle. Mr. Suchy took the Donic from him and showed him how the worn rubber had lost its traction a smooth surface makes spin difficult and had even begun to peel away from the wood. A kind of horror dawned. "It's been holding me back for so long," Mr. Huisman said. "Years maybe." This is the kind of horror Mr. Huisman accepts. Steve, the character he plays in "The Haunting of Hill House," is a vigorous ghost denier and Mr. Huisman isn't so different, though he did admit that once, on a night shoot in England in his early 20s, he became so terrified by a dark and yawning bathroom that he couldn't unzip and sprinted back to set. A practical person and mostly unspookable, Mr. Huisman said he was never really frightened during the eight months it took to shoot the 10 episodes. The worst shock he received was when he walked into the makeup trailer one morning and saw one of the ghost characters sitting in his chair. "Some of the special effects makeup was really intense," he said. But that was as bad as it got. "I don't want to burst the bubble too much, but generally it wasn't as scary as watching the show," Mr. Huisman said. Apparently, he doesn't think that watching the show is so scary either. He let his daughter see it, and sometimes he forgot to tell her when to cover her eyes. ("Is that really weird that she watched it?" he asked.) He gestured toward Mr. Suchy, prepping up for another go round. "This is scary," Mr. Huisman said. Mr. Suchy gave him one of his own paddles, a Tenergy the size of a salad plate. "Immediately the ball has lift and spin," Mr. Huisman said, marveling. Mr. Suchy used a smaller paddle, the size of an oatmeal cookie. The first few points were close, but Mr. Suchy pulled away and won 11 to 7. They hugged it out. "You have no backhand," Mr. Suchy said. He adjusted Mr. Huisman's grip, asking him to use only one finger on the back of the paddle. Mr. Suchy gave him a few more tips, because if Mr. Huisman is often a subtle actor, he is not a subtle player.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Style
American Ballet Theater will not perform at the Metropolitan Opera House in 2021. The company announced the cancellation of its coming season at Lincoln Center on Tuesday, citing the impact that the Covid 19 pandemic has had on its ability to prepare for resuming live performances. A decision has not yet been reached about the company's shorter fall season at the David H. Koch Theater, another Lincoln Center stage. Many other performing arts groups in New York, including the Metropolitan Opera and New York City Ballet, canceled their spring engagements earlier this fall. The Ballet Theater season was scheduled to begin late in the season, in June, which gave its leaders hope they might be able to persevere with their plans, the company's executive director, Kara Medoff Barnett, said. But as the pandemic stretched on and virus cases surged this fall, the company determined that staging a full slate of indoor performances in New York City wouldn't be feasible. Despite the setback, Kevin McKenzie, Ballet Theater's artistic director, said he was confident the company would be able to use what it's learned during the pandemic to find creative ways to make and share dances until it's possible to perform indoors again. "We know that we can do this and continue to create, because ultimately that's our lifeblood," he said. "Otherwise we'd just be, institutionally, trying to keep our pulse alive but we wouldn't be following our mission."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Dance
Soon after his arrival in New York from San Francisco two years ago, David Park took a rental at the Beatrice, rising high above the Eventi Hotel on West 29th Street. He loved his small studio, 475 contemporary square feet with a great view and a central location. After a year there, he was joined by his boyfriend, Mark Burleson, whom he'd met through friends. Mr. Burleson, who is from rural Tennessee, had been renting with roommates in Washington Heights. He had moved so often, he said, that "my grandmother said I have to get an address book just for you." Last fall, Mr. Park calculated two years' worth of outlay for rent, which had risen from the high 2,000s to the low 3,000s. The sum came to a horrifying 72,000 enough for a down payment. "I didn't think about it once a month, but when I go back, it shocks me," said Mr. Park, 28, who was born in Ohio, has an information systems degree from Carnegie Mellon University and works as an interaction designer at the shopping site gilt.com. FULTON STREET Someone had already made an offer on a large studio in a building called District in the financial district. Ashok Sinha for The New York Times Mr. Burleson encouraged him to buy a place. "David is very much about spending his money wisely," said Mr. Burleson, 42, a graduate of Middle Tennessee State University and the United States training manager for Longchamp, the leather goods retailer. "Before we go to a restaurant, if there are eight pages of reviews, he will read at least four pages of them. It is the one stars he is looking at." They conferred with Mark Ski of Town Residential, a friend of Mr. Burleson's, who emphasized the need to be ready to pounce, because a place they liked "is going to be gone in a second," he said. With a budget of up to 695,000, Mr. Park went on the hunt for a condominium, preferably in a new building, intending to leave a 10 percent down payment. "Price was the most important factor," he said. He would be making the purchase, with Mr. Burleson contributing to the mortgage payments. MYRTLE AVENUE Another party also beat the potential buyers to a one bedroom at the high rise Toren in Downtown Brooklyn. Ashok Sinha for The New York Times The men didn't mind a studio. "There was never a time where either of us needed space or needed to get away from the other," Mr. Burleson said. Both liked a sunny rectangular studio with almost 600 square feet at the amenity filled District on Fulton Street in the financial district. The asking price was 698,000, with monthly charges of almost 600. But the seller already had an offer and the deal was moving along, so the couple lost out. Disappointed, they visited some of Brooklyn's new high rises, including Toren, where a one bedroom with more than 600 square feet was listed for a comparatively low 525,000. Monthly charges were a little over 600. Again, there was already a high offer 551,000. "I knew it wasn't going to be easy, but I didn't expect to get rejected every time, so I was getting worried," Mr. Park said. "I thought in Brooklyn it would be easier to find a place, but it wasn't any easier." WEST 30th A one bedroom in a former hotel in Manhattan had an iffy layout and an uncertain occupancy date. Ashok Sinha for The New York Times Back in Manhattan, south of Penn Station, they saw a 560 square foot one bedroom with a small study for 645,000 at the former Irvin Hotel for Women, circa 1925. Monthly charges were around 900. But there was no obvious place for a couch and a television, and the interior was still unfinished. The couple, facing an expiring lease, were unwilling to wait. Mr. Park had skipped a listing for a studio on Thompson Street in one of Greenwich Village's few condominiums, assuming it would be too small. Mr. Ski, however, suggested he consider it. So he did. The studio was indeed small, about 425 square feet, "but it's New York and there is a trade off," Mr. Ski said. Mr. Park liked the central location and the rectangular layout. The asking price was 699,000, with monthly charges in the low 300s. "It wasn't my dream apartment," Mr. Park said, "because it wasn't new construction and it didn't feel as modern as my last place, so I still had some reservations."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Real Estate
Don't play "Misty" for her just yet: Bobbi Brown at her new headquarters in Montclair, N.J.Credit...Vincent Tullo for The New York Times Don't play "Misty" for her just yet: Bobbi Brown at her new headquarters in Montclair, N.J. MONTCLAIR, N.J. On a strangely warm morning in late winter, the cosmetics tycoon Bobbi Brown was in her new headquarters here: a former auto body shop left with pipes exposed and concrete floor unfinished. On a bookshelf was a case that used to belong to Frank Sinatra's makeup man; a sign reading, "I'm Not Bossy, I'm the Boss"; and a photo of Ms. Brown dancing onstage with the rap star Flo Rida, "with my 14 year old son watching in amazement or horror," she said. "Please don't find it on YouTube." Against one wall was an inspiration board with pictures of the many, many fashion models whose faces Ms. Brown has daubed. "I'm a crazy visual person words are hard for me," she said. "I can't make a business plan, but I could visually explain what I want to do, which is good if you can read my brain and in order to work with me you kind of have to. Right?" Titters from several staff members who were hanging around. After more than two decades turning her famously simple makeup line, Bobbi Brown Essentials, into a billion dollar global brand with Estee Lauder Companies, Ms. Brown, 60, is back on her own and ready to roll out her next act. Like Oprah, Gwyneth and Martha before her she is starting a lifestyle company, Beauty Evolution, with an accompanying editorial website, justbobbi.com. On April 20, she will start selling products on QVC, like a 60 calorie vanilla collagen "cocktail" and a chocolate drink fortified with protein, fiber and coconut oil. "The idea is that when you're in a slump, instead of grabbing a coffee you have this," she said. "It fills you up, keeps your brain going, and you won't eat the bread basket when you go to dinner." What does she have against bread? "I love bread more than I love my children," Ms. Brown said. She has three grown sons Dylan, Dakota and Duke with her husband, Steven Plofker, a real estate developer with many projects in the area. Like Oprah, she shared a bread fantasy: "I would have crusty bread with steak tartare. Pizza. I think I would rather have bread than pasta. I like crunch." And on it she would put? "Butterrrr!" she said lasciviously, to shrieks of laughter from her colleagues. "I mean, why mess around with cheese?" Ms. Brown sat on a leather sofa with her plump mutt, Biggie, at her feet, and shared that a tenant upstairs was Luke Parker Bowles, a film producer who is the president of the British Academy of Film and Television Arts and the nephew of Camilla, the Duchess of Cornwall. "He just comes down nonstop," she said. "It's like a sitcom." When Mr. Parker Bowles indeed made an appearance an hour later, he called Ms. Brown "the kindest woman I know in this area code," and along with Mr. Plofker, "the beating heart of Montclair." They are active in the town's philanthropy, and every Yom Kippur they have a break fast party at their house attended by prominent locals like Senator Cory Booker, Stephen Colbert and the journalist Jonathan Alter. The couple's newest baby is the George Inn, a 32 room boutique hotel, with rooms starting at around 200 per night and a library and lobby filled with pictures of famous Georges and Georgias: O'Keeffe, Hamilton, Harrison, George Herman Ruth Jr. (a.k.a. Babe Ruth), Washington, Jefferson from the TV program, Costanza (the two presidents Bush have not yet found their spots). It is the latest addition to a portfolio that has included retail, office and sports complexes, along with her namesake eyeglass line and nine books. Back at headquarters, Ms. Brown's phone beeped the opening bars of "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction." She took the call, looking like a teenager in a white Brandy Melville T shirt and black sweater, legs curled up under her in jeans with prefabricated holes. On another board nearby were some of Ms. Brown's favorite mantras, which she has had put on pencils, like "Be Who You Are" "Everyone else is taken, you know," she said, once off the phone and "Focus On What You Do Like" and "Simple Is The New Black" and "Be Nice." "Duh. Hello?" Ms. Brown said. "Like, you don't like something? Be nice." If this all seems terribly basic, consider how she amassed her fortune. Ms. Brown first moved to New York in 1980, the child of an amicable divorce in suburban Chicago (down the block, at one point, from Hugh Hefner and his ex wife) who had gotten a degree in theatrical makeup from Emerson College after years of struggling with schoolwork. She lived with her boyfriend from high school, a photographer, in a one bedroom apartment on West Fourth Street that cost 500 a month, maxing out credit cards and making cold calls to agencies and bookers. Her ad in The Village Voice offering makeup lessons got one answer, from a preppily dressed man who said he was in a play and needed to look like a woman. "I was freaked out," Ms. Brown said. "He dressed up in drag and then wanted me to teach him how to do makeup. I made a few bucks, but I didn't put an ad in again." The makeup artists' union helped find her some work, including assisting on "Saturday Night Live," and within a year she got a good gig at Glamour magazine, but there was discouragement aplenty. "I had a hairdresser tell me I would never work in this town because I didn't have a style, I didn't have a thing," Ms. Brown said. And now? "Well, I know he's in Palm Springs and he's got a salon, ha ha, and I'm still here." If Ms. Brown had any look at the time, it was "Flashdance" meets Madonna, who worked out at her gym. She knew she disliked what was then modish: white skin, red lips and the practice of contouring to create cheekbones. "Just not necessary," she said, though she admired the work of Way Bandy and Kevyn Aucoin, who "could literally paint a face. But the finished product is not a woman that walks outside. It's being photographed. It's not a real look." She tried to conform and get along, watching once as Jerry Hall redid her own makeup for a Cosmopolitan shoot. Ms. Brown got a break when an agent called to ask if she was available the next day to work with the photographer Bruce Weber. "I was a wreck," she said. "I must have tried on 15 outfits because I wanted to just have the perfect cool when I walked in." She was introduced to Mr. Plofker in 1988 by a friend over dinner at Raoul's, a restaurant in SoHo. "All I can say is, 'Boom," Ms. Brown said. They talked nonstop, she remembered, then put the friend in a cab, then "talked for an hour outside my building." The next day, Ms. Brown was happy to find out that her new swain had a master's degree from Harvard and was, like her, Jewish. "Then I realized his last name was Plofker," she said. "But I married him anyway." After the newlyweds moved to Montclair and began raising a family, Ms. Brown started to tire of the fashion industry's constant travel. She had fantasized about creating her own line. "My philosophy was women don't need a lot of makeup, they just need a few things," she said. "Clearly that's not what happened to the billion dollar brand." Its origin story is now part of corporate lore: the chemist she met during a Mademoiselle shoot at Kiehl's, the 10 subtly colored lipsticks (including one named, conveniently enough, Brown) that sold 100 units their first day at Bergdorf Goodman in 1991. Four years later, Leonard Lauder courted Ms. Brown and a business partner, Rosalind Landis, over grilled chicken, steamed vegetables, brown rice and wine on the terrace of his Fifth Avenue penthouse. "It was an out of body experience, to see Picassos and Dubuffets and everything there," Ms. Brown said. As the sounds of the New York Philharmonic playing in Central Park wafted toward the sky, Mr. Lauder told her she reminded him of his mother, Estee. "'You're beating us in all the stores, and I want to buy you,'" she recalled him saying. "'What if I told you could do exactly what you love to do and want, and I would give you complete autonomy?'" But she missed not being the boss, disliked corporate speak "things like 'optimize!' That just means 'do it better!'" and hated meetings. In the middle of one long, boring one, Ms. Brown took out a concealer she'd been given that was way too thick under the eyes. She put it all over her face, experimented and looked in a mirror. "It turned into a sheer product," she recalled: the Retouching Wand, joining her much copied Gel Eyeliner and Shimmer Brick, a highlighter. By 2010, Bobbi Brown Cosmetics was available in more than 980 doors and 56 countries. By 2012, there were over 60 freestanding Bobbi Brown Cosmetics stores worldwide. But in her later years there, Ms. Brown said she experienced more "aggravation," like when she started a "JustBobbi" Instagram account. "I would always get in trouble," she said. "Someone from corporate would always call down, you know, 'What did Bobbi post?' and I was like, 'Guys, I'm a person.'" Eventually such strictures began to chafe. "Look, anyone that leaves any kind of company will tell you how tough it was that's why you're not there anymore," Ms. Brown said. "I'm a good girl. I don't live my life trying to piss people off, but honestly sometimes I can't help it." After leaving her namesake company behind in 2016, Ms. Brown cycled through relief, anger and sadness. "I thought I was going to spend weeks and days in bed," she said. "I didn't. I moped around for a couple days and drank tequila with my best friends." In the Bahamas with Mr. Plofker for his 60th birthday, she met a chef who said, "I can't wait to see what you do next." "I don't know," Ms. Brown said. "Dude, you got this!" the chef said admiringly. "And that's why I've got posters and pencils and hats that say, 'I got this,'" Ms. Brown said. "It just kind of clicked." What Do Millennials Want? Not all of her experiments have worked out. A stint as editor of Yahoo Beauty ended after two years. ("Like going to grad school," Ms. Brown said.) A consultancy at Lord Taylor, with justBOBBI boutiques selling products from other lines as well as her own, has quietly ended. "We just didn't have the manpower," she said. "It was a great creative project, but we're overwhelmed and something had to give." It was time for lunch. Ms. Brown ordered a Bobbi salad, whose christening raised 10,000 for a school fund raiser, from the renowned local sandwich shop Egan Sons: avocado, string beans, white and black beans, bell peppers, red onion, chopped romaine, cilantro and lemon vinaigrette. Plus anchovies on the side. She had gone to bed at 9:30 the previous evening after returning again from the Bahamas, splashing her face with water (of makeup, she said, "I don't really wear any") and applying a new soothing cream derived from hemp oil on her neck and feet. The name escaped her. "Theramu!" her team said in chorus. "I think I took too much of it last night, I'm a little tired this morning," Ms. Brown said. "I was supposed to do a half a dropper but didn't measure. THC is marijuana to get you high. This is the CBD part, this is legal, and I think it's going to be the biggest trend. It's amazing, I've been putting some on Biggie, she has a little boo boo on her tail." An employee, Tara Tersigni, mentioned that Ms. Brown just met with Jen Atkin, a hairstylist and social media influencer with her own line. "She kind of came up with the Kardashians, did their hair and still does all the 'It' girls," Ms. Tersigni said. "And she said to Bobbi, 'You're the O.G." Pause. "Original gangster." "Then she said I'm 'cool AF' and I'm like, what the hell is 'AF'?" Ms. Brown said. How are millennial women, who have embraced pared down makeup lines like Emily Weiss's Glossier, different from her generation? "I think they are much cooler, much more simple and caring about things that matter, meaning family, work," Ms. Brown said. "I think it's not about the big giant handbag, not about the designer. It's not about a cream that promises you endless possibilities. Honestly, I think that the young girls are more simple and they just want the truth. They don't want, like, marketing speak. They don't want gobbledygook." The "Satisfaction" riff sounded; Ms. Brown let the call go to voice mail. She recalled early in her career, doing a shoot with the photographer Annie Leibovitz. She shut the dressing room door. Then a stylist reopened it. "As I'm cleaning up, I look in the mirror and I'm with the Rolling Stones in their underwear," Ms. Brown said. "All of them!" Years later she became friends with a girlfriend of Mr. Jagger, the fashion designer L'Wren Scott who had asked her and the hairdresser Sam McKnight to work on one of her last fashion shows in London. (Ms. Scott committed suicide in 2014.) "She was so kind to me," Ms. Brown said. "Once she invited me to this amazing dinner with Mick and Ron Wood and Daphne Guinness. One by one all these people would show up. Bryan Ferry." The next season, she and Mr. Plofker were invited to a dinner party at Mr. Jagger's house. "I'll never forget, we were wondering what are we going to bring them for a gift what do you give Mick Jagger?" Ms. Brown said. "So Steven bought him a bottle of wine and a Coravin. They said to come at 7 so we came at 7, rang the doorbell. It was only Mick, home alone. L'Wren had to run out for something, and they showed us up to the study 'Oh, Bobbi, Steven! How are you?' And I'll never forget, he's like, 'Oh my God! I can't believe you bought me a bottle, it's amazing!' He loved the Coravin and we sat there like a half hour, talking with Mick. So there have been so many of those kind of cool situations in my life because of makeup." Another happened when the musician Patti Scialfa hired Ms. Brown to do her makeup for the 12/12 concert to raise money for Hurricane Sandy. Ms. Brown told Ms. Scialfa's husband, Bruce Springsteen, that the first time she came to New Jersey she slept in the Livingston Mall to get tickets to see him, and sat in the last row. "And here I was in his S.U.V. driving to New York for the 12/12 concert," she said. "I'm with Patti and Bruce and their daughter who is a doll, and the phone rings and I hear Bruce on the phone saying, 'Bobby, no, oh Bobby that's too bad. Oh Bobby, Bobby' whatever. He hangs up and he says to Patti, you know, 'Bobby was going to surprise but he couldn't come.' Patti looks at me and she said, 'That's Bob Dylan.' So I'm in the Lincoln Tunnel with Bruce Springsteen talking to Bob Dylan. It was bizarre. Yeah, it was one of those moments." Ms. Brown was going to do Michelle Obama's makeup for the 2009 inauguration, but it fell through. "You know, she went with someone else," she said. "I was so bummed and someone said, 'Oh I know someone who knows the Bidens. I was hired to do Mrs. Biden's makeup, which was awesome. It was an amazing experience. I did Jill's makeup and touched the vice president up and I found myself alone with him in a hotel room, just me and him with a ruffled bed. I have a picture of it. The door was left open." The former second couple now visit Ms. Brown's beach house on the Jersey Shore, she said. "Joe Biden is the most simple, by the book guy. He's amazing." It was the next afternoon, and Ms. Brown, surprisingly fresh considering she'd made a quick trip to Syracuse the previous evening to watch a basketball game and feed barbecue to her youngest son and 60 of his fraternity brothers, was alone in the living room of her penthouse pied a terre, in Chelsea, overlooking the Highline, with spectacular views of uptown, downtown, the Hudson River and New Jersey. She was wearing the same casual attire as the day before. "Even at the White House I wear jeans," she said. "I don't go to the White House anymore. I'll just say that." Ms. Brown was, however, scheduled to give a talk about anti counterfeiting at the United States Chamber of Commerce (which happened this week). "When they first called, I thought they made a mistake," Ms. Brown said. "But they said, 'No, we really want you,' a female entrepreneur that had a global business." At the Obamas' last state dinner, she and Mr. Plofker were in line when former President Barack Obama got her attention. "And I run over and I say, 'Hey!' And I said, 'Oh my God, your skin looks so good! Can I touch it?'" He said yes. "He had quit smoking, I think, at the time. And he's like, 'Michelle! B. Brown just told me my skin looks good!' And Michelle goes, 'Steven!' So we had a moment.'" She hesitated to call Mr. Obama her friend. "But when I would walk into the White House, the president of the United States would say, 'Hey B squared, how you doing? Nice kicks,'" Ms. Brown said. Mr. Obama eventually appointed her to serve on the United States Trade Commission. "Even when that happens in my life, my husband says, 'That's really dumb, you hate going to meetings,'" she said. "And I said, 'I know but it's so cool.'" And the truth is, those particular meetings weren't so bad. "I'd be sitting next to someone, the head of the pork bellies," Ms. Brown said. Her maternal grandfather, "Papa Sam," had owned Sandra Motors, a big car dealership in Chicago named after Ms. Brown's mother. Calling himself "Cadillac Sam," he appeared in local TV commercials. "And every time I was in these situations I would look up at Papa Sam," Ms. Brown said, "and think, 'I used to sit in these corporate meetings, and now I'm here at the White House?'" In the apartment, staring down at her, was a large portrait of Queen Elizabeth II. "I mean, look, I haven't met the queen," Ms. Brown said. "But I did get a private tour of Buckingham Palace because I had breakfast with her granddaughter Eugenie. I started asking her questions: 'Eugenie, so your grandma's the queen?' Because Eugenie's this nice sweet girl, Fergie and Andy's daughter. I've had breakfast with Kate Middleton not Kate, Pippa! Wrong Middleton. But Kate wore Bobbi makeup on her wedding. So all those moments are close though I haven't met the queen. Yet."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Style

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