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At the start of his recent Netflix special, "Staying Alive," Tracy Morgan doesn't waste any time addressing his near death experience, when a car he was in collided with a Wal Mart truck; he broke his nose, a leg and ribs in the crash and sustained a traumatic brain injury. "Could have been worse," he said. "I could've got hit by a Bob's Discount Furniture truck." Recovering from the 2014 accident, with a healthy settlement, he has not only emerged every bit as strong as a comic, but he's also incorporated the experience into his act. Mr. Morgan, who stars in a new TBS comedy "The Last O.G.," which makes its premiere this fall, has always been an effortlessly funny performer, equally at ease onstage or on a talk show. He finishes a short stint at Caroline's on Broadway on Sunday, Aug. 20, where chances are he finds as many laughs in spontaneous tangents as in his material. (carolines.com.) | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Theater |
Will New N.C.A.A. Rules Really Keep Agents and Boosters at Bay? None The world of college sports was rocked nearly 30 years ago when a Las Vegas newspaper published a photograph of three U.N.L.V. basketball players casually drinking beer in a hot tub with Richard Perry, a man nicknamed the Fixer who was known for rigging horse races and basketball games. Though the players admitted only to accepting money from Perry, and gambling charges were never brought, the scandal provoked by that photograph published in The Las Vegas Review Journal a little more than a month after the unbeaten Rebels lost to Duke in the Final Four accomplished what an armada of N.C.A.A. investigators could not. It ushered Coach Jerry Tarkanian out the door. After the N.C.A.A. laid out plans this week for allowing athletes to cash in on the use of their names, images and likenesses, that long ago photo might be viewed through a contemporary prism as a simple branding exercise an embodiment of college basketball's first bad boy team. If a photograph like that surfaced now, it would almost certainly not be published in a newspaper, but on a player's Instagram feed. And perhaps instead of empty Miller High Life cans, champagne flutes or something more carefully curated would be visible. One of the more intriguing aspects of the N.C.A.A.'s move toward lifting the lid off income opportunities for athletes is that it will require the association to gingerly welcome boosters and agents into a world where they have largely operated in the shadows if only to avoid brazenly flouting the amateurism edicts of college sports, a billion dollar industry whose bedrock is an unpaid labor force. If the N.C.A.A is to allow athletes to cash in on their fame, how can it not permit them to hire agents and advisers to guide them along the way? And while it may now allow a booster with, say, a car dealership to use the star running back or point guard as the centerpiece of a marketing campaign, how can the N.C.A.A. police whether that offer was made improperly during recruiting? Determining what constitutes fair market value in the world of social media influencing, versus a bribe to attend a particular college, will also be cloudy. As suggested in the 31 page report on the topic that the N.C.A.A. released on Wednesday, the Division I, II and III committees that are charged with developing rules from the report's guidelines "will be in uncharted territory." In more colloquial terms, the N.C.A.A. is allowing what it has long viewed as a fox into its henhouse, and then asking committees to develop rules or "guardrails" in the association's jargon to keep the chickens safe. "Among the complex issues that must be addressed is the role 'advisers' will have in guiding student athletes and the process for certifying and regulating these advisers," the Southeastern Conference said in a statement. And despite its notorious history of paying to procure players, the conference also rather richly stressed the importance of creating rules that "will, to the extent possible, deter boosters from directly or indirectly paying student athletes." One likely outcome is even more beefed up compliance staffs at universities. (Ohio State, to pick one of the more well heeled, already has 14 employees in that department.) Three U.N.L.V. basketball players drinking beers in a hot tub with the convicted sports fixer Richard Perry, second from left, in a photograph that was published in 1991. Val Ackerman, the Big East Commissioner who co chaired the committee that wrote the report, noted that one possibility would be to create a clearinghouse where athletes would be required to file how much they were being paid, who was paying them and what for. There would then be a database that could be monitored. "The sunshine is the transparency," Ackerman said. Of course, there can only be so much sunshine when there are restrictions or guardrails in place. In professional sports, the money changes hands above the table. In college, it has simply been handed under the table. When athletes reach the N.F.L. and the N.B.A., the hypocrisy of college sports becomes far clearer to many of them. That is why Odell Beckham Jr., the star N.F.L. receiver, felt no compunction about handing wads of cash to Louisiana State players on the field after his alma mater won the national football championship in January. Beckham was only more brazen than Sam Gilbert, a shadowy booster who helped fuel U.C.L.A's basketball dynasty under Coach John Wooden. A Los Angeles Times investigation once called Gilbert "a one man clearinghouse," who helped U.C.L.A. players get cars, clothes, airline tickets and scalper's prices for season tickets. Beckham's motives were only purer than those of Nevin Shapiro, a convicted Ponzi schemer who said he had lavished money, cars, yacht trips, jewelry, televisions and other gifts on Miami football players. It is no small irony that two people at the forefront of loosening the N.C.A.A.'s grip on athletes cashing in on their fame are Ohio State's president, Michael Drake, and its athletic director, Gene Smith. Smith led the department a decade ago when five football players including the star quarterback Terrelle Pryor were suspended after trading memorabilia for cash and tattoos. The case set off such a furor that the team's football coach, Jim Tressel, resigned. And yet, such an arrangement is likely to be within the rules sometime next year. In fact, it is easy to imagine in the not too distant future a few teammates getting together at a friend of the program's house for a proposal. Soon, they're in the hot tub with drinks in hand, smiling for the camera and listening to an offer they can't refuse. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Sports |
For any gardener, high summer is quiet compared to spring or fall, with the requisite cleanup. But while it may not be a time for ambitious planting projects, it is a time for ongoing maintenance especially chores that pay off long term. At public gardens like Untermyer Park and Gardens in Yonkers, N.Y., a 43 acre former estate on the Hudson, it was an eerily quiet spring and early summer without visitors, even before the "summer pause," as Timothy Tilghman, the head gardener calls it. But there is still work to be done. "Patrons elevate the standards," Mr. Tilghman said, but even without them, "a public garden should always be display worthy." He keeps his eye on his list of tasks, reshuffling entries as priorities and staffing levels shift. Almost no one saw the pink and purple palette carefully planned to delight early season visitors, although the seeds had been tracked down and propagated. To spare those sweet peas, purple leaf mustards and violets a fate as compost before their time, the bare bones crew took some home for private enjoyment, which eliminated one chore watering them from their to do list. The lockdown did allow a little cheating: The crew left sprinklers and hoses out between waterings of the 2,000 newly planted perennials, rather than dragging them back into storage daily, as they would in a normal year. But in other ways, the public's absence got back at the gardeners by creating additional tasks: "We never have to weed our paths, because usually visitors walk on them," Mr. Tilghman said. "But this year, no feet." Perhaps he can cross that job off his list now, as Untermyer reopened on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays beginning July 10, with timed tickets. Guests are back, and as August beckons, Mr. Tilghman shared his high summer to do list. "If you can't enjoy weeding, you won't be a happy gardener," said Mr. Tilghman, citing its importance to a garden's health and visuals. "Everyone enjoys the neatness of a fresh planting, but unless you're willing and eager to get in there and weed ..." Deep, diligent watering, like weeding, is also crucial. (Although after each session at Untermyer, the gear must once again be stowed.) And while you're tending to both: Observe and make note of what needs fixing. "We look for scale, vigor, composition and aesthetic worthiness," Mr. Tilghman said. "Does a plant look good in the border, and is it worth growing?" Sometimes what was irresistible in a catalog isn't as appealing in your garden. "Once established, maybe it doesn't add a strong visual element, or it's too compact or colonizes when you didn't expect it to," he said. At Untermyer, those insights become essential fodder for action plans in the fall and the following spring. Untermyer's lavish annual and tropical schemes in beds and pots are deadheaded regularly and pinched back for scale. But not just the annuals. Some shrubs, including messy looking spent roses and even certain hydrangeas, also need grooming. "While most hydrangeas look great through winter, some don't," Mr. Tilghman said. "The arborescens flowers that won't look good dry and tawny, and pull the plant down into a flattened mess they get deadheaded, too," along with any floppy blue mopheads or macrophyllas. "We'd rather have nice green shrubs," he said. "Thankfully, the oakleaf types, you usually don't have to touch." Some annuals self sow if they are allowed to set seed including Nicotiana, Verbena bonariensis and annual poppies. So don't deadhead every last fading flower as late summer approaches. "When I go into a nursery and there's a flat of 12 seedlings at 5 a plant, I just can't buy it," Mr. Tilghman said. "With the really prolific self sowers, it's much more economical to gather seed this summer and fall or just plan to leave plants in place to sow themselves." Attention to detail was instilled in Mr. Tilghman when he worked for Marco Polo Stufano, the founding director of horticulture at Wave Hill, a public garden not far down the Hudson, in the Bronx. "A secret: You can make your garden look pretty good, no matter what's really going on," he said, "as long as path and bed edges are crisp and weed free. Marco used to remind us that 'God is in the edges.'" Although the traditional method involves the use of an edging tool or spade, or even sheep shears to clip errant grass, Mr. Tilghman automates the process (always wearing eye and ear protection): He turns a weed whip, or string trimmer, 180 degrees to cut a vertical slice rather than a horizontal one. The trigger will be on top of the pole, meaning you use your thumb to operate it. "Rather than working in a sweeping motion," he said, "I put the motor against my hip, so I'm not moving the whip, but slowly walking with it in position." It takes practice, but is a timesaver. "I got yelled at the first time I did it at Wave Hill, but then Marco followed me around for a minute and acknowledged it wasn't as good, but good enough which I took for an approval." Untermyer's two most important trees, old weeping beeches, had been underplanted with pachysandra, which Mr. Tilghman removed in favor of mulch. But just two or three inches, no deeper never the dreaded "volcano mulch" and never mulch against the trunk, where it can harm the bark and invite decline. "If you do have ground cover growing around trees," he said, "this is a good time to edit and get it six to 12 inches away from the trunk, like the mulch." Rodents love to tuck in and gnaw on bark, especially in winter. Rampant vines like wisteria which got their precise, hard pruning at Untermyer back to three to five nodes for each strong shoot in late winter need touch ups once or twice in season. "It's so vigorous it outgrows its space, and just looks bad," Mr. Tilghman said. "We don't cut back as far as the detailed March pruning, but we keep it from going wild." Lusty climbers like Dutchman's pipe (Aristolochia) and trumpet vine (Campsis) also benefit from pruning. And with the trumpet vine, he said, "look for any growth coming up from underground runners now, too, and cut it out." Other summer pruning targets include fruit trees. At Untermyer, Mr. Tilghman identifies and removes any bad branching in the ornamental cherries and other trees, including suckers at the base, vertical shoots jutting up off branches and inward facing or crossing ones. "Sometimes it's easier to prune for shape and scale when you see the plant in leaf," he said. "Some structural cuts may sacrifice a little spring show, but it's healthier for the tree than getting more overgrown." The Untermyer crew did that and more in August 2018, in the former estate gatehouse that is now the Ruin Garden. Because the estate and its gardens had been abandoned and in decline for decades before being rescued in 2011, a major cleanup was required. "Hopefully, your task will not be quite as daunting," Mr. Tilghman said. "We had soil full of trash, broken bottles so we had to excavate three plus feet and build it back up." What they didn't remove: the graffiti on the walls. It remains as a testament to Untermyer's incredible history. For weekly email updates on residential real estate news, sign up here. Follow us on Twitter: nytrealestate. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Real Estate |
Jason Reynolds spoke to about 400 students in Baltimore earlier this month about his book "Long Way Down." "I can talk directly to them in a way that I know they're going to relate to because I am them," he said, "and I still feel like them." When the writer Jason Reynolds speaks to young people, he rarely starts by talking about books. "They've been hearing that all day, all year," he said. Instead he talks about ramen noodles, Jordan 11s, the rapper DaBaby, "whatever it takes to get them engaged." Earlier this month , when Reynolds's "Long Way Down" was selected as Baltimore's "One Book Baltimore" pick, he came to the city to field questions about the book and sign copies for hundreds of middle school students. They listened to him as he compared hip hop to poetry "There's a direct connection between Tupac and Langston Hughes" and said that early rappers should've been considered "teenage geniuses ." These events he's done about 50 this year are a driving part of his work as a writer: to make black children and teenagers feel seen in real life as well as on the page. "I can talk directly to them in a way that I know they're going to relate to because I am them," Reynolds said, "and I still feel like them." If his book sales and literary accolades are any indication, his approach is working. Reynolds, 35, is a finalist for the National Book Award in young people's literature for "Look Both Ways," which came out this month. (It is his second time as a finalist, having made the list in 2016 for his book "Ghost.") "Look Both Ways" is his 13th book, with a 14th, an adaptation of Ibram X. Kendi's "Stamped From the Beginning," scheduled for release next year. His 2017 book "Long Way Down" was named a Newbery Honor Book by the American Library Association, as well as a Michael L. Printz Honor Book, the organization's award for young adult literature. His books have sold more than 2.5 million copies . Jason Reynolds's "crackling, witty prose is a joy to read," Nalini Jones writes in her review of "Look Both Ways." "Look Both Ways" unfolds across 10 city blocks, delving into the lives of middle schoolers on their way home from school in the afternoons . It is a time when they are unsupervised, Reynolds said, and they "get to learn about the world on their own, for better or for worse." 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. Writing for black children first and foremost, Reynolds attempts to portray the scope of their lives sometimes including guns and violence but also happiness and laughter. "There's always a joke somewhere," he said. "You don't go through what black and brown people have been through in this country and survive without understanding how to tap into joy." And he often portrays boys crying or feeling uncertainty or fear, because, he said, "I need boys to know that it's O.K." Reynolds, who grew up in Oxon Hill, Md., just outside Washington , credits his success to "sheer hustling." It didn't happen right away. He described his first attempts at getting published as straight out of a rapper's playbook: cut a demo, then "run into a record company or you find Russell Simmons's limousine and you throw it in the car." For him, the demo was a book he and his college roommate had self published. After graduating from the University of Maryland in 2005, they moved to New York and tried to slip it to security guards at publishing houses, hoping it would wind up in an editor's hands. The method didn't work. Reynolds settled into a career in retail, and tried three times to get into M.F.A. programs but was rejected. One day, his friend Christopher Myers visited him at the Rag Bone store he was managing and encouraged him to start writing again. When Reynolds hesitated, Myers recommended he read a book by his father, the children's book author Walter Dean Myers, for inspiration. Reynolds, who was not a reader growing up, in 2011 picked up "The Young Landlords," about six teenagers tricked into taking on a rundown Harlem building. " It chemically changed me," Reynolds said, because it gave him permission to draw from the stories of his friends and family and write the way they speak . Soon after, he opened a notebook and started writing what would become his first solo book , "When I Was the Greatest," published in 2014, about three black teenage boys growing up in Brooklyn's Bedford Stuyvesant neighborhood. Reynolds released his next books in rapid succession: "The Boy in the Black Suit" (2015), about grief and loss; "All American Boys" (2015), written with Brendan Kiely, about two teenagers of different races reckoning with police brutality; "As Brave as You" (2016), based on his brother and blind grandfather; "Ghost," (2016), based on the life of his friend Matthew Carter. Each book did better than the last, buoyed in part by a market for children's literature that was increasingly vocal about its lack of diversity. "The publishing world has caught up with him," said Christopher Myers , who started Make Me a World, a diversity focused imprint at Penguin Random House. "They are catching up with the idea that there are new voices to be heard." Asked why she feels young people are drawn to Reynolds, the writer Jacqueline Woodson said: "Have you seen him?" "Kids have not been exposed to a writer who looks like he does, who sounds like he does, who has that deep honesty and connection with them like he does," she said. "He really sees these kids." Sidney Thomas, a teacher who attended the event in Baltimore, said her students responded to "Long Way Down," a novel in verse about a boy contemplating revenge after his brother is fatally shot, because many have experienced similar losses. "I think they have a connection to it, and I think it feels very real," she said. One such student, an eighth grader who lost her sister and other relatives to gun violence, said the book "brings back memories about losing my family, but it helps me." She added: "If more people would focus on these topics, then less people would be gunned down." Reynolds worries sometimes that his books might be read as "trauma porn" by people who didn't grow up where he did, where "your neighbor could be a schoolteacher, federal government workers, but then you also had dope boys." But, he added, referring to "Long Way Down," "my shorties, my kids, my family, they read it, and they know exactly what this book is about." His own emotional growth was nurtured by his mother and a group of childhood friends with whom he'd run around town. They went to each other's football games and Reynolds's poetry slams, or took joy rides in his mother's Mazda. "We were just kids. We were playing around," Reynolds said. "It just so happens that some of us died, and some of us got caught up." For him, though, it was his friends who kept him out of trouble and allowed him to be his full self, he said. "I could always say to them, 'It hurts. It hurts,' and they could hold that." Myers, who has known Reynolds since his early days in New York City, has observed Reynolds's work "changing, moving, growing with him," and Reynolds's editor, Caitlyn Dlouhy, agreed. "He never wants to do what he's done before," she said. "He is always pushing his own abilities to play within the different formats, to give kids other ways to have a reading experience." Reynolds said he might write for adults one day, but he'll never stop writing for young people. "I just think it's a wonderful experience to sit down at the page with such intention," he said. One student in Baltimore asked the author whether the street rules in "Long Way Down" no crying, no snitching, get revenge were ones kids like her should be following. "It's complicated," Reynolds said. He explained that he doesn't advocate violence, but he understands the "pain and the anger" underpinning the desire for revenge. "I think your generation has to start grappling with whether or not those rules work for you in your time," he told the middle schoolers. "My job," he said, "is to say, 'I understand. I see you.'" Follow New York Times Books on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, sign up for our newsletter or our literary calendar. And listen to us on the Book Review podcast. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Books |
THE race to anoint the latest neighborhood for New Yorkers eager to pursue careers in the arts is never ending. Greenwich Village, for much of the 20th century the heart of American Bohemia, was shoved aside by one after another newcomer, first the East Village, then SoHo and the Lower East Side, and most recently the Brooklyn quartet of Williamsburg, Greenpoint, Bedford Stuyvesant and Bushwick. These days, a new destination seems to be proclaimed every few weeks, as artists rush about pell mell in search of fresh terrain to colonize. The first sign that the artists are arriving can be seen at the entrance to the local subway station. Seemingly overnight, the crowd is swelled by lanky 20 somethings in the uniform of skinny jeans, cowboy boots and black rimmed eyeglasses. In short order, an old school bar starts serving lattes along with the Buds. Wildly colored paintings sprout on the grubby walls of a onetime factory, and in abandoned storefronts, bands with wonderfully arcane names can be heard blasting away far into the night. For young people laboring in notoriously low paying fields, the grail is cheap rent, followed by proximity to like minded souls and especially to mass transit. It's no accident that Brooklyn's outposts for artists are strung like beads along the necklace of the L train and more recently the G. If these young people are lucky, their homes also offer space in which to create art and music. Still, the next wave of artists' neighborhoods might not have the grit and authenticity of those that came before, said Robert Anasi, the author of a forthcoming book on Williamsburg, where he lived from 1994 to 2008. "Artists' neighborhoods turn over so quickly these days," said Mr. Anasi, whose memoir, "The Last Bohemia: Scenes From the Life of Williamsburg, Brooklyn," explores the neighborhood's transformation from industrial backwater to artists' district to trendy high rise colony. "The speculators are there practically before the artists themselves." What's more, 21st century technology guarantees that neighborhoods will be discovered almost instantaneously. "People learn about the cool place the day after it happens," Mr. Anasi said. "And because people have so much mobility, they can be there the next day from France, from Germany, from Japan. Neighborhoods are overrun so rapidly, they don't have a chance to establish an identity." In a few months, as newly minted college graduates start flooding into the city, their numbers will include the latest wave of young artists seeking living quarters. In a city in which rents move in only one direction, they will search ever farther afield for compatible and affordable neighborhoods. The list of possibilities includes Ridgewood, just across the Brooklyn Queens border from Bushwick, along with Upper Manhattan and a tiny outpost on Staten Island. Gena Mimozo, an island girl through and through, personifies this population. Ms. Mimozo, 29, grew up in West Brighton, studied at nearby Wagner College and the New York Film Academy, worked for the Snug Harbor Cultural Center and Botanical Gardens, and is the arts in education program officer for the island's Council on the Arts and Humanities. For the past three years, she and two roommates have shared a three bedroom apartment in a small, century old brick building on Van Duzer Street. One roommate, Corinne Guglielmo, 22, is a visual artist who recently graduated from the Fashion Institute of Technology. The other, Keith Joergens, 29, who was raised on the island, was trained as a chef and works delivering meat for Boar's Head. Amenities include a back porch where they can barbecue and, on the walls of Ms. Mimozo's bedroom, paintings by a friend of birds and flowers with the heads of aliens. The total rent, split three ways, is 1,575. Ms. Mimozo is a founder of SIcoLab (Staten Island Collaboration), an organization that offers support for local artists, and she is a project manager of Van Duzer Days, a music and arts festival on Van Duzer Street that is heading into its fourth year. Since graduating from film school last August, she made a 20 minute short, "Left Behind," the story of two young people whose friend has committed suicide after having been bullied at school. She also created an "It Gets Better" video for the Staten Island LGBT Center, among other works. Conveniently, her apartment sits atop a combined cafe and performance space known as the Full Cup, which functions as the epicenter of Stapleton's artistic community. Patrons can curl up on worn brown leather sofas, sip herbal tea or microbrews, and admire the paintings that line the brick walls. A blackboard lists forthcoming events comedy on Tuesday, acoustic showcases on Wednesday, karaoke on Thursday and so on. On a good night, the performance space in the rear draws a couple of hundred people. The audience typically includes people living much as Ms. Mimozo does, in apartments in modest houses that for groups with roommates rent for well under 1,000 a month each. While some might find the neighborhood remote, Ms. Mimozo does not. One roommate has a car, three buses stop on her corner, and the ferry is a five minute walk. For years, fear of crime deterred even many intrepid young people from settling in the area, and residents are upset by a recent string of muggings and car break ins. But the neighborhood is forging an additional identity. "Today," Ms. Mimozo said, "people know that Stapleton is where the art kids hang out." The ambience of Upper Broadway between the Columbias (the university and the hospital) hardly qualifies as cool. On this unprepossessing stretch of northern Manhattan, bodegas jostle for space with travel agencies touting cheap trips to Latin America. But young people in the arts are being drawn to apartments in the town houses that line the side streets, thanks to a trifecta of low rents, relative safety and straight shot access to neighborhoods like Morningside Heights, Lincoln Center and the Village, where they study, play and hang out. A few of these newcomers have ended up in an airy three bedroom atop a town house on West 162nd Street, which the house's owners, Ben Lopez and Rose Deler, rent out for 2,000 a month. "Our first group of tenants were three actors in their early 20s," Ms. Deler said. "And of the dozen people who checked out the place after they left, I'd say the majority were in arts related fields actresses, dancers, musicians." Ms. Skeist, a student at the Maggie Flanigan Studio, performed in "Naked Holidays" at Roy Arias Studios and Theaters in Midtown, and has made several short films and Webisodes. For a time her day job was waiting tables at Jean Georges. The newest arrival, Caitlin Kleinschmidt, 23, who works as an editorial assistant at Oxford University Press, replaced a young playwright who left the city to pursue an M.F.A. at Smith. For less than 700 a month, each woman has her own bedroom, and thanks to skylights and tall windows, the space is flooded with sunshine. They have noticed that once grungy coin laundromats and hardware stores have been spruced up, as if readying themselves for the new arrivals. And increasingly they see people much like themselves. "It's bizarre," Ms. Skeist said. "In class, I have two scene partners, and as it turns out, one lives at 181st Street and the other lives just two blocks away." The proximity makes it easy for her to rehearse in the neighborhood, at her place or theirs. "It's really convenient," Ms. Skeist said. "Lots of our other classmates have to pay for studio space near our school since they don't live close to each other. So I've gotten really lucky." Ms. Kiechel has also discovered that the apartment nurtures creative juices. Often she wakes early and stays in bed to write until 8, opening the curtains to let in the morning light. "I find that the early morning grogginess helps me access a different, more relaxed and creative part of my brain," she said. Except for Antika, a popular pizza place, and Carrot Top Pastries, celebrated for what Ms. Kiechel described as "the most bragworthy carrot muffins," the cafes, clubs and boutiques that typically signal the existence of an artists' neighborhood have yet to reach this part of Broadway. "Coffee is a major problem," Ms. Skeist said. "And there are no local bars that serve craft beer." Matthew J. Mahler is one of the growing number of newcomers you see these days on the streets of Ridgewood, Queens. Mr. Mahler, 30, has a master's degree in fine arts from Queens College and is a painter. With Jonathan Terranova, a childhood friend from Long Island, he runs the Small Black Door, a basement gallery on Palmetto Street. Like many of his artist friends, Mr. Mahler rents an apartment in one of the hundreds of neat brick row houses that define this working class community. Still very much a family neighborhood, it was settled by Germans and East Europeans, many of whom worked at local knitting mills. His space serves him well. For two years, until he acquired a studio in Greenpoint, he used the master bedroom as a studio, covering the carpeting with canvas dropcloths and outfitting it with a few worktables. To help pay the rent, he teaches art to private students and at an afterschool program. He also works freelance at a picture framing company in Brooklyn. Mr. Mahler, who pays 600 for his two bedroom space, didn't have to search hard for housing. The building where he lives, on Stanhope Street, belonged to his grandparents and was inherited by an aunt who lives on the first floor. Because he knows the neighborhood well, he understands its attractions and drawbacks to artists. "Ridgewood is mostly residential," Mr. Mahler said, "so it doesn't have the lofts and industrial spaces where artists can work. That's why artists who move here need to find studios outside the neighborhood. On the plus side, it's just one stop beyond Bushwick on the L train. It's safer than Bushwick. Rents are cheap, and there are more and more art spaces." Among the first galleries to arrive, in 2009, was Famous Accountants, in a basement on Gates Avenue. Valentine, on Seneca Avenue, was opened last June by Fred Valentine, a founder of Galapagos Art Space in Williamsburg. Mr. Mahler's gallery, which held its first show early last year, offers five exhibitions a year in the basement of a building that Mr. Terranova's family has owned for decades. The openings often attract more than 100 people. "They're like celebrations," Mr. Mahler said. "Then afterward, we all go to the Gottscheer Hall, this beer hall on Fairview Avenue." The ambience is distinctly old fashioned, he said, but "it's cool because we make it cool." The neighborhood suffered a blow last July when the Silent Barn, a beloved D.I.Y. performance space on Wyckoff Avenue, was robbed, ransacked and forced to close. But despite this loss, local blogs and newspapers have been quick to spread the word of Ridgewood's growing appeal. In January, a headline on Gothamist announced: "Local Paper Declares Next Big Neighborhood: Ridgewood." The Queens Chronicle, which trumpeted Ridgewood as "the next hipster hot spot ... the new place to go without going broke," quoted a dean at LaGuardia Community College as saying: "Ten years ago, you didn't think anybody cool would live in Ridgewood. But it's happening." Mr. Mahler has many artist friends who have moved to the neighborhood in the past few years, paying from 1,200 to 1,600 for two bedroom spaces like his own. Despite the lure of neighboring Bushwick, he expects their numbers to increase. "Bushwick has a lot of wind in its sail," he said, "and people who live here end up hanging out in Bushwick a lot. Ridgewood is still a hidden gem. It's not the hippest neighborhood. But it's getting there." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Real Estate |
EARLIER this month a phalanx of limousines and black vans lined up near the Palais du Pharo, an imposing Napoleonic era chateau here whose chandeliered halls had been temporarily transformed into a bunker. Chauffeurs had just dropped off precious cargo the dark suited finance ministers of Germany, France, the United States and the four other wealthy nations that form the Group of 7. The officials were gathering for a working dinner to talk about the swirling European debt crisis, which, despite their concerted efforts, seems to worsen by the day. Their eyes soon turned toward Christine Lagarde, the new managing director of the International Monetary Fund. Not so long ago, she was one of them. But almost as soon as she crossed the Atlantic to take up her post in Washington, she had morphed into someone who now slightly bewildered them. In the few short months since becoming the first woman to lead the monetary fund, Ms. Lagarde, 55, had taken her former European colleagues to task for not talking with a single voice to save the euro. In speech after speech, she had warned that the austerity that Europe was pressing on Greece and its debt weakened neighbors was choking economic growth and needed to be tamed. Worse, as far as the men seated in the room were concerned, Ms. Lagarde was partly responsible for the collapse of confidence bedeviling the financial markets. She had dared to state what few of them would admit publicly: European banks were not as sheltered from this storm as they might seem. Was this the International Monetary Fund talking? It was now, under Ms. Lagarde. As the future of the euro hangs in the balance, she is emerging as a European who is willing to speak openly about Europe's problems. If Greece defaults on its government debt, as many predict, and Europe's banks stumble, as some fear, the reverberations would be felt around the world. The next domino would be Italy, itself a member of the Group of 7. The Obama administration, alarmed by the possible spillover effects, is pressing European leaders to act decisively. The monetary fund is already overseeing multibillion euro bailouts in Greece, Ireland and Portugal a situation that would have been unthinkable just three years ago. So, as much as anyone, Ms. Lagarde will help determine whether the union that has bound 17 European nations together, in the biggest postwar effort to ensure peace through economic stability, survives. "Her first couple of months have been reassuring for those who feared the appointment of a European from a euro zone economy at a time of crisis," says Simon Tilford, the chief economist of the Center for European Reform, a London research group that supports European integration. "She recognizes that the I.M.F. has to distance itself from the euro zone policy elite and its strategy for the crisis, which is clearly not working." At the annual meetings of the monetary fund and the World Bank continuing in Washington, Europe has dominated the discussion. In an announcement that added to the gloom in world markets last week, the fund cut its forecast for global growth and warned of worldwide economic repercussions if Europe couldn't solve its debt problem soon. Ms. Lagarde's lieutenant, the monetary fund's chief economist, Olivier Blanchard, said the Continent needed to "get its act together." WHETHER MS. LAGARDE can do much to contain this crisis is uncertain. Sometimes her blunt talk has made a bad situation worse, and she has backpedaled after overstepping her bounds. In August, the share prices of Societe Generale, Deutsche Bank, and many other big European banks tumbled after she proclaimed that European banks were in "urgent" need of capital. Irritated European officials and an even angrier banking establishment scrambled to control the damage. Christian Noyer, the governor of the French central bank and a friend of Ms. Lagarde, declared: "Quite frankly, I don't understand what she said." Now, on this sweltering September evening in Marseille, finance officials pressed Ms. Lagarde to ease up. A senior American official let it be known that the monetary fund was starting to retreat on estimates that Europe's banks might need at least 200 billion euros of capital. The next day, Ms. Lagarde appeared before reporters to say that that figure was "tentative," and that the monetary fund was now discussing the final numbers with its European partners. Ms. Lagarde has backed off in the past. But this time, she did not climb down from her principal point: That many banks still need a bigger cushion against potential losses in the event of a Greek default. Last week, the monetary fund warned that Europe's banks had as much as 300 billion euros at risk on various European government bonds but stopped short of saying they needed to raise that much in new capital. "It's a long time coming that the I.M.F. called a spade a spade when it comes to the banking sector," says Kenneth Rogoff, a professor of economics at Harvard and a former chief economist for the fund. "They know there's a problem and they don't want to acknowledge it." Another former monetary fund economist, Simon Johnson, says it is too soon to know if Ms. Lagarde will succeed. "We need at least another month or two to get a fix on who she is and what she will achieve," he says. IN A SENSE, Ms. Lagarde has something to atone for. Her record on divining trouble was spotty while she was France's finance minister. In the days before Lehman Brothers collapsed, for instance, she assured the French that the worst was already over. Last July, she predicted that financial stress tests would show that European banks were "solid and healthy," and declared that French banks were among the soundest. Indeed, as Greece began to stumble, Ms. Lagarde was among those who planted the seeds of the problems that are now destabilizing Europe. She joined the French establishment in acquiescing to a German blueprint for responding to the crisis. That plan called for tax increases and deep spending cuts in countries that were already so weak that they needed bailouts from wealthier neighbors and the monetary fund. Later, after disclosures that Greece had cooked its books to join the euro an open secret in European financial circles Ms. Lagarde warned that the country was at risk of default if it didn't do "more to bring its public finances in order." She sided with the European Central Bank in resisting any restructuring of Greece's debts. 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. That plan, many experts now agree, magnified the crisis by placing impossible demands on Greece, and fanned concern that bigger economies, like Italy and Spain, might be engulfed by the crisis too. That has come back to haunt banks in Ms. Lagarde's home of France, which bought large amounts of European government bonds. Meanwhile, the push for austerity has angered citizens in Greece and other countries. Some observers expect that the backlash might lead to a rise of far right politicians over time. "In that sense, she's culpable," Mr. Tilford says. "By backing the strategy of fiscal austerity, she has helped push some economies that were in a bad situation over the edge, and caused a profound loss of confidence that has pushed the crisis into the core of the euro zone." Since those days, Ms. Lagarde seems to have seen the writing on the wall. One of her most surprising acts at the International Monetary Fund has been an about face on austerity. The fund historically has compelled poor nations to reduce spending and raise taxes in exchange for its help. It has changed its tune for wealthier ones. Amid prolonged recessions and rising unemployment, Ms. Lagarde is advising the United States and Europe to stimulate growth and create jobs through new government spending, even if that spending temporarily inflates the public debt. Lawrence H. Summers, the former economic adviser to President Obama, says Ms. Lagarde is making the right call. She is breaking with International Monetary Fund orthodoxy, he says. "The I.M.F. has traditionally said cutting budget deficits is the solution to problems," Mr. Summers says. Ms. Lagarde's reversal is a "welcome change in thinking, emphasizing that we should be establishing a basis for growth." Ms. Lagarde said she was too busy to sit for an interview for this article but responded to questions via e mail. "Everyone including markets realize that commitments to cut spending cannot survive a lengthy stagnation with prolonged high unemployment and social dissatisfaction," she wrote. But Ms. Lagarde also made what many view as another questionable call before arriving at the monetary fund. One of the biggest problems with Europe's currency union is that no mechanism was ever put in place to ease a swift transfer of money from big countries like Germany to troubled ones like Greece. Neither Germany nor France was willing to cede an ounce of sovereignty to see that through. As the crisis snowballed, people like Mario Draghi, the Italian who will become the head of the European Central Bank in November, have called for the creation of bonds backed by countries in the euro union as a way around this problem. Ms. Lagarde has remained silent. Last week, the monetary fund said Europe should hold off until euro countries are more closely knit. But she continues to harp on Europe. "Europe needs a common vision for its future," she wrote via e mail. "Put simply, it needs more Europe, not less." That is a message that she delivered for the last couple of years from the French finance ministry, where her offices were adorned with a zebra striped rug and caricatures of her from various publications, including one depicting her as a dominatrix whipping a banker. At one point, she pressed her message so hard that she ticked off another powerful woman in Europe: Angela Merkel, the chancellor of Germany. While Ms. Lagarde's former boss, France's president, Nicolas Sarkozy, has had a tumultuous relationship with Mrs. Merkel, Ms. Lagarde has nurtured a close personal relationship with her. The women are on first name terms. But their friendship was strained last spring when Ms. Lagarde noted that Germany was at least partly to blame for the deepening divide in Europe. Germany became an economic powerhouse in part by exporting so much to weaker countries like Spain. But, now that economies like Spain's were in trouble, she said, Germany was refusing to buy imports. The solution, Ms. Lagarde insisted, was for Berlin to lift domestic consumption. "When there is an effort to make an interdependent economic zone such as the euro zone," Ms. Lagarde said at the time, "everybody must make an effort." The result was a scathing backlash in the German press, and a lot of huffing around Mrs. Merkel's office. Back in Paris, she was advised not to rock the boat further. But she was used to that: as a woman who did not come from France's Grandes Ecoles, like nearly every French politician, policy maker and corporate chief, she had long been labeled an outsider and was sometimes accused of being out of her depth on economic issues. The former head of Baker McKenzie, the big law firm based in Chicago, she lived in the United States for six years, from 1999 to 2005. The stint earned her the moniker "l'Americaine" among French who did not necessarily see an American tour as a plus. And, amid all the troubles in Europe, a French court recently opened an investigation into whether Ms. Lagarde abused her power as finance minister in 2007 by intervening in a legal dispute involving a prominent businessman and hundreds of millions of dollars in state money. The monetary fund's board was aware that a case might be opened when it selected her. Since Ms. Lagarde's German gaffe, Mr. Sarkozy has made an effort to trumpet the unity between France and Germany, giving Mrs. Merkel air kisses in front of cameras or grasping her on the arm. Tall and stylish, with an elegant wardrobe that is adorned by Chanel jackets, Hermes sacs and Christian Louboutin heels, Ms. Lagarde was also accused by members of the mostly male French establishment of studying her clothes more than her dossiers. During her candidacy for the International Monetary Fund, when asked if Ms. Lagarde would get the job, Laurent Fabius, a former finance minister, said: "She'll make it. She's an elegant woman." The French press jumped on the snub. ONCE at the monetary fund, Ms. Lagarde hopped back on her soapbox. Warning that the economic crisis has entered "a dangerous new phase" a catch phrase she repeated several times during the fund meetings she insists that further steps are needed to strengthen the euro zone. "There is no room for ambivalence about the future direction," she said via e mail. "An unclear or confused message will add to market uncertainty and magnify economic tensions." All this came back to the fore last week in Washington, when she met many of the same men she had confronted at the Palais du Pharo, as well as troupes of other finance ministers from around the globe. This time, the circumstances were different. The last set of monetary fund meetings was overseen by Dominique Strauss Kahn, who resigned in May to deal with charges of attempted rape. Ms. Lagarde allowed him to return to the fund to apologize to a cynical staff, and bid adieu before he returned to France, where he used his first television interview since the scandal to hold forth on the European crisis. At the International Monetary Fund, the D.S.K. chapter is considered closed. There is a feeling among employees that Ms. Lagarde has risen to the occasion, and the talk about her being too European has dissipated. "People feel like there is a leader, there's a boss," one monetary fund official says. Ms. Lagarde has moved full steam ahead with a multitude of speeches, television appearances and profiles in magazines as heavy as Der Spiegel and as glossy as Vogue. Some media have embraced her as proof that a woman can pay attention to world affairs as well as her wardrobe without losing credibility. A recent Huffington Post photo montage of Ms. Lagarde's "Proudly Parisian Styles" drew gushing comments from readers. Still, Ms. Lagarde faces a long road. But in a speech on Sept. 15 at the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington, she signaled that the monetary fund wouldn't back down. The fund, she said, could help during a crisis "by turning up the heat at times." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Economy |
In 1978, the Blues Brothers album "Briefcase Full of Blues" topped the Billboard charts, "Animal House" became the highest grossing comedy to that point and "Saturday Night Live" soared to a new high in the ratings. These jolts to American pop culture shared one thing: the norm shattering, can't look away whirlwind known as John Belushi. Four decades on, memories of this human dynamo are often overshadowed by Belushi's death in 1982 from a drug overdose at age 33. The director R.J. Cutler's new documentary, "Belushi," debuting Sunday on Showtime, aims to right that ratio, creating an intimate portrait of Belushi as a fully fleshed out man while emphasizing his oh so vivid life over his terrible death. "One of the important aspirations was to capture the lightness and the joy that John not only experienced but that he brought to the world," Cutler said in a recent phone interview. He hopes Belushi's longtime fans discover he "was more than just an awesomely funny guy and fearless comedian," he said. "He was a writer, a director and a visionary," Cutler continued. "He was forever reinventing himself and forever stretching." Opening with Belushi's "S.N.L." audition tape, in which he flaunts his expressive eyebrows and does his Marlon Brando impression, the movie captures his charisma immediately. "John had that connection with the audience where they could see right into his heart," Lorne Michaels, the "S.N.L." creator who hired him, with some trepidation, says in the film. "There was so much vulnerability that you thought you knew who he was." Family interviews and love letters to his future wife build a complex portrait of his early life as the ambitious son of an Albanian immigrant, hinting at the success and difficulties to come. The documentary was a long time in the making in fact, its first seeds were planted with the 1984 Bob Woodward book about Belushi, "Wired," which his widow, Judith Belushi Pisano, and many friends and family members viewed as a sensationalist and distorted view of the actor's life. In response, Belushi Pisano began recording interviews with Belushi's friends and family, hoping to someday present a different view. For nearly two decades, Belushi Pisano sat on those tapes before deciding to bring in a friend, the writer Tanner Colby, to collaborate on an oral biography. To that already rich trove of material Colby added new interviews with people like Michaels, Robin Williams, Christopher Guest and Carrie Fisher, which the two assembled into their book, "Belushi: A Biography," published in 2005. Shortly after the book came out, Belushi Pisano met the documentary producer John Battsek, who said that he would love to tell John's story on film. She said no. "What was holding me back was my second marriage," she recalled. "I didn't think it would be a good thing for me again to be putting my time and attention to my late husband." Battsek was undeterred, calling every six months, always graciously accepting her "now's not the time" response. "I felt really passionately that there was a great story to be told, not just a tragic story," Battsek said. "With enough complexity to make a really interesting film." Then in 2015, five years after divorcing her second husband, she finally said yes ... to someone else. Battsek "was devastated," he said, but he kept calling. When the project stagnated without financing, he persuaded them to hand over the reins to produce if he could quickly obtain backing. Showtime, for whom he had just produced "Listen to Me Marlon," a documentary based on Marlon Brando's personal tapes, immediately signed on. (Couturie and Daniel stayed on as executive producers.) To direct, Battsek brought in Cutler, a fellow producer on the Brando documentary, who had already directed documentaries on Oliver North, Anna Wintour and Dick Cheney and had a good relationship with Showtime. Cutler set to work, unaware of the trove of tapes and letters amassed by Belushi Pisano and Colby. His initial conversations with Belushi's friends and colleagues frustrated him. "Some stories were lost in the foggy haze of memory and some felt like they were merely telling their 'John Belushi stories' and they were performative," Cutler said. "How I would bring this story to life became a big question." Cutler cracked the conundrum when he and Battsek visited Belushi Pisano's home in Martha's Vineyard. She showed them her basement room that Battsek describes as a John Belushi museum. "It's one of those out of body moments there's the original, typed out cheeseburger skit" from "S.N.L.," he said. "And she had all these letters and all the audiotapes from those interviews." The letters John had written to her (read in the film by Bill Hader) offered a rare glimpse into a private man who gave away little to the media. But the cache of recorded interviews with friends and family were "the key that unlocked the riddle," Cutler said. "They were raw and had an immediacy." Belushi Pisano turned over the material and put her trust in Cutler, but she worried about the family getting hurt again. Jim Belushi, the most famous of John's three siblings, was nervous but not hesitant. "I'm always wary," he said, toward anybody who wanted to dig into his brother's life. "But I support Judy," he added, "in any decision she makes about her husband. All I said to Judy was, 'Please tell them not to show the body coming out of the expletive hotel.'" The film doesn't shy from Belushi's difficult side. He could be moody and unreliable, picking fights with "S.N.L." castmates, showing up late or missing work. He could be insecure, racked with jealousy when Chevy Chase became the show's first breakout star. In one segment, Belushi's castmate Jane Curtin and others are heard criticizing his attitude toward female colleagues. ("It was difficult working with John," Curtin says in the film. "He didn't seem to respect the women on the show.") In recordings, Michaels recounts their tumultuous work relationship on "S.N.L." By Belushi's fourth and final season, as stardom and drug abuse took its toll, Michaels appears to have reached his limit. When a doctor told him one Saturday that there was a 50 50 chance Belushi would die if he performed that night, Michaels recalls in the documentary, he replied, "I can live with those odds." Unlike the Woodward book, which seemed eager to dive into the image of Belushi as a hard partying druggie, the movie frames Belushi's final days more as what Battsek described as "a fight he's having with the drugs he's in so much pain, but there's an inability to stop." We read Belushi's desperate, heart rending letters to Judy ("I'm afraid I'm too far gone") as he was swallowed up by addiction. We hear Aykroyd's regret filled remembrances. We listen to Belushi's mournful rendition of the song "Guilty," singing "it takes a whole lot of medicine for me to pretend to be somebody else." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Television |
Kaia Gerber walks in the last of three Alexander Wang shows on Saturday evening. On Saturday night, long after the sun had set and a pre autumn chill had returned to the air, a horde of fashion folk were standing on the sides of an otherwise deserted dead end street in Bushwick, Brooklyn, penned up and shivering behind metal barriers. Even Kim Kardashian West and Kris Jenner were stuck on the concrete outside, balanced on their teetering heels. Everyone was waiting for a bus to arrive. When it finally did, an hour later than scheduled, and more than two hours after it had set off (the bus made two "surprise" stops in Manhattan beforehand, much to the confusion of unsuspecting pedestrians), it disgorged Kaia Gerber, newly minted supermodel, daughter of Cindy Crawford, who strut her way down the road in a tiny white tank dress and into a warehouse. A host of her peers in cropped chain mail tops, distressed and bedazzled denim, zips and corsets and revisionist suiting (shorts, backward shirts, oversize jackets) followed. There was a bouncy house in the back and a live rock concert inside. The clothes themselves were the kind of club gear for the 1 percent at which Mr. Wang, when he is focused, excels, but the party entirely eclipsed the product. And the idea that it is somehow cool for designers to drag their audience to the back of beyond is an old one (John Galliano and Alexander McQueen had been there, done that, years before), as is the obvious suggestion that the street is the runway. Not to mention the fact that the pretense of a "guerrilla" fashion action is itself kind of a joke when the whole thing is Instagrammed by Bella Hadid, among others, and Kardashians are involved. How to make fashion relevant is the conundrum of the moment, and adding a hashtag is not the answer. There's so much else going on so much trauma and chaos, natural or man made that current events have a way of overshadowing clothes. Sitting in the sun in a faux English garden recreated by Tory Burch in the courtyard of the Cooper Hewitt design museum, watching a parade of perfect for the beach club looks while a natural disaster of epic proportions bears down on the Florida Peninsula is an eerily unsettling experience. It's hard to keep your mind on David Hicks inspired scarf separates, breezily chic though they may be. When even Jeremy Scott, erstwhile joker of fashion, chooses not to celebrate his 20th anniversary with an all out blast of crazy spray streamers, but rather simply wink at his past with camo and cartoons, silver sweats that will go to the ball, and rock chick dresses made out of exactly that (strategically placed encrustations of big crystal rock), it's an acknowledgment of the complexity of the situation. In this context, Mr. Wang's doodle seemed a fairly hollow response, less Weimar than Wikipedia. But there were others. It was abstruse but weirdly true. Just like the refrain, "Come again," that showed up the next morning on shorts and shopping bags and the back of sweats at a notably good Public School show (Maxwell Anderson and Dao Yi Chow can do more with a plaid shirt, a nylon anorak and a luggage strap than you'd ever imagine). Though perhaps adding a question mark to the end of the phrase would make it even more fitting. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Fashion & Style |
For the second consecutive week, the N.F.L. has shuffled its schedule to accommodate teams that have had players and staff members who have tested positive for the coronavirus. The league announced on Thursday that the Tennessee Titans who have had the league's worst outbreak, with nearly two dozen players, coaches and staff members testing positive would play the Buffalo Bills on Tuesday at 7 p.m. Eastern time, instead of on Sunday, assuming that the team reports no more positive tests. The Titans reported two additional positive tests in their organization on Thursday. If Tennessee and Buffalo play as now scheduled on Tuesday, the Bills' following game, against the Kansas City Chiefs, would be moved back three days from Thursday, Oct. 15. The league had already postponed the Titans' game against the Pittsburgh Steelers, scheduled for this past Sunday, by three weeks because of the Titans' outbreak. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Sports |
The historic Crowne Plaza Key West La Concha, in the heart of the ever boisterous Duval Street corridor of Key West, has several claims to fame, including its prominence as the tallest building downtown. Now, following a 13 million renovation, it also has a sleek, modern restaurant that serves dishes blending Key West seafood with Cuban influences and some Asian touches, courtesy of Andrew Nguyen, the Vietnam born executive chef who oversaw its opening. The 50 seat lobby restaurant had its grand opening in October with a distinctly different feel from many of Duval Street's hopping establishments. With its cream and mahogany leather banquettes and chic high backed wing chairs, the style sensibility of 430 Duval is more comparable to a sophisticated SoHo lounge than Sloppy Joe's, the rowdy tourist spot down the street. "We wanted guests to enjoy a little bit of an oasis away from the chaotic bars and old Key West feel," said Mr. Nguyen, who cooked in New York City for 13 years before moving to Key West almost 10 years ago. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Travel |
Only a few minutes have elapsed in Luke Greenfield's dual language road trip comedy "Half Brothers" before the mawkish meter hits the red. The movie never stops revving it. Renato (Luis Gerardo Mendez as an adult), the head of an aviation company in Mexico, resents that his father, Flavio (Juan Pablo Espinosa), didn't return after leaving to find work in the United States. But days before Renato's wedding, he gets a call from his dad's current wife (Ashley Poole). The old man is dying, and he wants his son to come to Chicago. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Movies |
Joe Iconis at his annual Christmas show at Feinstein's/54 Below, which brings together his regular collaborators, many of whom, like him, have been waiting for their break in New York theater. The Guy Behind 'Be More Chill' Is Keeping It in the Family Joe Iconis exploded out of N.Y.U. on a wave of hope. A songwriter with a knack for story and a taste for strange, he won the Jonathan Larson grant for early career composers. He scooped up the Kleban prize for most promising lyricist. He was hailed by Newsday as "ginormously talented." The descriptors piled up until they made no sense any more. Emerging. Rising. Up and coming. But something wasn't clicking. Year after year he wrote song after song, show after show. Small scale productions came and went; big time producers did not. He sustained himself on determination. And side jobs. And borrowed money. But mostly, he sustained himself with an unusual artistic collective the Family, an evolving cohort of multitalented misfits (their word) that, for more than a decade, has plied basements and barns, singing Mr. Iconis's rock and pop influenced songs to a growing audience of fans. It is fandom that is finally propelling Mr. Iconis to Broadway. The sci fi high school musical "Be More Chill," for which he wrote music and lyrics, was left for dead in New Jersey after a tepid review from The New York Times. Resurrection has come thanks to young enthusiasts, who created YouTube videos using the show's music, shared fan art on Tumblr, and have streamed the cast album more than 200 million times. He loved theater. But he hated performing. "I was always terrible," he said. "I knew I was terrible. And it terrified me." So he took to the piano, writing songs, directing shows, doing anything that allowed him to make theater without being center stage. "I both gravitate toward and identify with people who feel like they don't quite fit in," he said. In college and grad school, both at New York University, he zeroed in on writing, and for his thesis in 2005, he crafted a musical about a garage band, "The Black Suits," that seemed to have promise. "I thought, 'This show will be produced Off Broadway, it will be well received, it will go to Broadway, and this is how I will enter into the musical theater world,'" he said. The universe had other ideas. And Mr. Iconis, a prolific writer, was impatient to get his songs heard. So in 2006 he staged a concert at Ars Nova, a small but prestigious theater that seeks to develop early career artists. He thought of "Things to Ruin," as he called it, as a theatrical version of a rock album that never existed. He was the de facto frontman, playing the piano and occasionally singing, and he found that he now relished that. But his shows were also a showcase for his friends. By last Christmas, when Joe Iconis and Friends performed what are now their annual Christmas shows at Feinstein's/54 Below, directed by his longtime collaborator John Simpkins, there were 65 performers onstage, interspersed among the audience, even caroling in the bathrooms. "We were a bunch of rambunctious punk kids that loved musical theater but maybe didn't quite fit into the quintessential musical theater mold," Mr. Tam said. "But we found each other and we found Joe Iconis." Many of his songs are clever and raw, like "Everybody's at the Bar Without Me," a furious ballad about feeling left out, and "The Goodbye Song," the raucous singalong which closes most shows, inspired by a dying father bidding farewell to his child, but also weaving in affectionate allusions to E.T.'s return home in the great 1982 Spielberg movie. In the early years, the concerts were mostly at the Laurie Beechman Theater, a basement space underneath a Times Square restaurant, and at Joe's Pub, part of the Public Theater. In recent years, the main performances have been over Labor Day weekend at Barrington Stage Company in the Berkshires, and in December with a series of Christmas themed shows at 54 Below, but there have been lots of others even a private party attended by James Earl Jones. "It feels like this crazy circus that has followed him and helped put the music out there and spread the word about what he does," said Lauren Marcus, who met Mr. Iconis when she was at N.Y.U., sang in one of his earliest concerts, and then married him at a ceremony followed by a jamboree. Over the years, artists have come, and gone, and come again. "The more I met people, the more it started to become this idea like I'm driving a bus, and I would tell people to hop on, and they could stay as long as they want to," Mr. Iconis said. "The whole Family idea is loose enough to accommodate the lives of working artists it needed to allow people to come and go as their life allowed." Some are on Broadway Eric William Morris, a longtime member of the Family who portrays an addled bartender in the Christmas shows, is now starring in a musical adaptation of "King Kong" but many, like Mr. Iconis, have long been waiting for a big break. "We shared that feeling when is this going to happen, and should we just go be investment bankers?" Mr. Williams said. "What got him and all of us through these struggling times were these concerts that we did together." There's been some blowback. "I definitely have a reputation of being very loyal, and that's important to me I love creating art with artists I have a history and a relationship with," Mr. Iconis said. "But there was this notion of me as a frat boy working with his college friends. People got so insane about this idea of me just working with my buds." He is unapologetic about wanting to advance his collaborators, and not simply allow them to be replaced by "someone who was on a TV show in 2003," which is how he often sees theater casting. "Many people have performed my stuff brilliantly for years, and I feel like it's my responsibility to do whatever I can to help," he said. George Salazar, an actor who was featured in a Broadway revival of "Godspell" when he met Mr. Iconis, started singing in his concerts, and is now starring in "Be More Chill" as the protagonist's best friend; his emotional rendition of the show's big number, "Michael in the Bathroom," has made him an internet sensation. "The Family is a group of misfits," Mr. Salazar said, "but the things that make us strange and different are the very things Joe enjoys." Mr. Iconis likes to write in public spaces coffee shops and bars away from the piano, focusing on lyric and drama, and letting that drive melody. He has been prolific, helping to create 10 full length musicals, but has also been increasingly disappointed that none found commercial success, and at times has even wondered whether he should try to convert one of his side jobs, graphic design, into a full time career. "He's had a tough time getting shows on, because people don't know where to place his shows they have a childlike exuberance for adults," said Julianne Boyd, the artistic director of Barrington Stage. He is culturally omnivorous, and often turns to musicals or films to explain his own feelings. Asked about his frustration, he cites a scene in "Boogie Nights" when the porn star protagonist realizes he is not going to get where he wanted, and a moment in "Synecdoche, New York" when a character buys a house on fire, knowing it might kill her. But one doesn't have to look far to see how taxing his long journey has been: His breakout song, "Broadway, Here I Come!," an oft covered number featured on the NBC television series "Smash," is, at its most literal, about someone hoping to get to Broadway who contemplates suicide. Emboldened by "Be More Chill," which is selling well in early previews, Ms. Tepper is planning this week to announce a commercial Off Broadway production of another Iconis show, "Broadway Bounty Hunter," about an out of work actor who finds a job hunting criminals. It stars Annie Golden, who, although more than a generation older than Mr. Iconis and his college friends, is one of his most loyal collaborators. He has two more high profile works in process: "The Untitled Unauthorized Hunter S. Thompson Musical," commissioned by La Jolla Playhouse, with a Tony winning director, Christopher Ashley, attached; and "Punk Rock Girl," a jukebox musical featuring songs popularized by female musicians. "The dream is that it's a show done by school groups, and that it would be impossible not to cast the strangest kids the kids who would normally do tech," Mr. Iconis said. "That was my guiding principle to write roles for the weird kids." As he watches "Be More Chill" through the preview process, he is obviously nervous, aware that critics still may not embrace his work. But he is determined to use the energy surrounding this show to fuel his other projects. "You can use your theater cred to do film or TV or music, but I'm just not interested," he said. "The thing I want to do is have musicals running in theaters, hopefully close to, or on, Broadway." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Theater |
Gavin MacFadyen, an American investigative journalist who became an early mentor and defender of the founder of WikiLeaks, Julian Assange, died on Saturday in London, where he lived and spent much of his professional life. He was 76. The cause was lung cancer, his wife, Susan Benn, said. Since the 1970s, Mr. MacFadyen produced and directed scores of television documentaries on a wide range of subjects, including neo Nazi violence, child labor, nuclear proliferation and industrial accidents. Sometimes he worked in disguise. He also co founded the nonprofit Center for Investigative Journalism in London in 2003, a training program in skeptical reporting, and WhistleblowersUK, a support group for tipsters. He was a director of WikiLeaks and, with his wife and another journalist, John Pilger, formed the Julian Assange Legal Defense Committee. Mr. Assange, an Australian computer programmer, founded WikiLeaks in 2006 and published millions of secret documents, many supplied by Chelsea Manning, a United States Army intelligence analyst. Mr. Assange has been under investigation by the American government and is wanted for questioning about rape allegations in Sweden. He has found refuge in the Ecuadorean Embassy in London to avoid extradition. Immediately after Mr. MacFadyen's death, WikiLeaks issued this Twitter post: "Gavin Macfadyen, beloved director of WikiLeaks, now takes his fists and his fight to battle God. Sock it to him, forever, Gavin." It was signed "JA." In his book "WikiLeaks: News in the Networked Era" (2012), Charlie Beckett wrote that Mr. MacFadyen "was a core WikiLeaks supporter who had offered the services of interns, facilities and even on occasion his sofa to the team." Mr. Assange moved into Mr. MacFadyen's London townhouse in 2010, bringing with him only three pairs of socks. Elaine Potter, a philanthropist and co founder of the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, based in London, said Mr. MacFadyen had been driven by "passion, politics and curiosity." "He recognized the significance of WikiLeaks and made contact from the moment they arrived on the internet," she said. "He became obsessed with providing support for whistle blowers." Mr. Assange and WikiLeaks have been thrust into the spotlight in recent months by the release of thousands of Democratic National Committee emails amid suspicions by United States officials that the files were hacked by the Russian government, possibly to influence the American elections. But Mr. MacFadyen maintained that Western news organizations had uncritically published material provided by the Central Intelligence Agency and that the fundamental question was whether the information was true and in the public interest, rather than its source. "His commitment to exposing the true nature of power was his life force," Ms. Benn, his wife, said. "He spearheaded the creation of a journalistic landscape which has irrevocably lifted the bar for ethical and hard hitting reporting." She added: "Gavin worked tirelessly to hold power to account. He once said, 'Good journalism is always political journalism.'" Mr. MacFadyen was born Gavin Hall Galter on Jan. 1, 1940, in Greeley, Colo., and grew up in Chicago. He never knew his father, and he adopted the surname of his stepfather, Douglas Archibald MacFadyen, a medical researcher. His mother, Marion Hall, was a pianist. He worked as a union organizer and demonstrated for civil rights before moving to Britain, where he graduated from the London School of Film Technique (now the London Film School). Afterward, he created a documentary film group to chronicle the political turmoil in the United States during the late 1960s for the BBC, covering anti Vietnam War protests, race riots and the police clash with demonstrators at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago in 1968. He went on to cover the war in Nicaragua between the right wing contra rebels and the Marxist Sandinista government in the 1980s. Collaborating with the director Michael Mann, he played Boreksco, a crooked police officer, in Mr. Mann's 1981 debut feature film, "Thief," and was a technical adviser to "The Insider," Mr. Mann's 1999 film about Jeffrey Wigand, a tobacco company whistle blower, starring Russell Crowe and Al Pacino. He produced documentaries for the BBC, Granada Television and ABC TV and for Frontline on PBS. He was a visiting professor at City, University of London. In addition to Ms. Benn, he is survived by a son, Michael, from his first marriage, to Virginia Daum, which ended in divorce; three stepdaughters, Sarah Saunders, Deborah Ramsay and Samantha McLean; and six grandchildren. In an interview with Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands in 2009, Mr. MacFadyen drew a distinction between being a witness and bearing witness, and defined a whistle blower or an informer as someone who values the truth because it will affect the future. "The wealthy and powerful often are unhappy about telling the truth," he said. "There is a famous story that if you give a poor man on the street a dollar, you're considered a good Christian, but if you ask, 'Why is that man poor?' you'll go to prison." Journalism, he suggested, was essentially pursuing answers to basic questions: "A building has blown up. Great. We need to know that very important. Who did it? Why did it blow up? What are the consequences? Who was killed? Who benefits from this? Those are the questions I want to ask." He added: "The more we know, the more we can control an event or stop those events. To understand the events, not to cry, not to laugh, but to understand." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Media |
Long known for their passionate onstage partnership, the Russian ballerina Natalia Osipova and the American Ballet Theater principal David Hallberg are spending quality time together at City Center this week. "Natalia Osipova's Pure Dance With David Hallberg" is a suite of solos and duets with these stars at its center, together and alone. Yet Ms. Osipova, a principal at the Royal Ballet in London, also uses the program to cultivate new partnerships: with other dancers and with choreographers she has handpicked to showcase the range of her artistry. In some cases, these rival the strength of the show's most advertised pairing. Ms. Osipova and Mr. Hallberg bookend the program, which opened on Wednesday, appearing first in the main pas de deux from Antony Tudor's "The Leaves Are Fading," then in a ravishing six minute ballet by Alexei Ratmansky, created for them last year. (A production of Sadler's Wells, "Pure Dance" had its world premiere in London last fall.) With its elegiac sweep and opportunities for high drama not squandered by either dancer the Tudor excerpt served as a historical and stylistic anchor, before the evening moved into less traditional territory. ("Leaves" was made in 1975 for Ballet Theater, where Ms. Osipova has been a principal and frequent guest artist.) | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Dance |
Passing out the Constitution on campus isn't the benign activity one might expect, especially when egged on by the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education. The group provides a pocket size "Student Activist Edition" of the Constitution, which includes directions on how to hand it out and what to do if you get stopped: "Refer administrators to the First Amendment (p. 43)"; "Consider taking a video of the conversation"; "Contact FIRE for further assistance." On Constitution Day the day delegates signed the document, Sept. 17, 1787 a student Army veteran at Modesto Junior College in Modesto, Calif., was prevented from distributing copies and told to make an appointment to use the "free speech zone," a small, remote area available only certain hours of the day (three states now prohibit public colleges from designating only certain areas as free speech zones). Likewise, at the University of Hawaii, Hilo, student members of Young Americans for Liberty, a national libertarian group, were ordered back to their table after handing out copies. It's hard to imagine that such activity could rise to the level of infraction, but both are cases FIRE filed suit over, and settled for a combined 100,000. Then there are free speech balls. On Freedom Day (April 13), the Young Americans at the University of Delaware stacked up their Constitutions for distribution and inflated their ball, on which passers by write whatever strikes their fancy. For one student, that was the word "penis" and accompanying illustration. A police officer told them to remove the word and image. FIRE shot off a letter. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Education |
Jay O. Sanders is, by his own definition, "an oak tree" an imposing physical type associated with sturdiness, reliability and, on occasion, menace. And because Mr. Sanders has been a much employed actor on stage and screen for some 40 years, he knows that oaks are rarely cast as the neurotic and cerebral title character of Chekhov's "Uncle Vanya." "Wally Shawn and Reed Birney would never be described as oaks," he said, referring to the 1994 Louis Malle film "Vanya on 42nd Street," starring Mr. Shawn, and Annie Baker's celebrated Off Broadway adaptation of 2012, starring Mr. Birney. In fact, until this year, Mr. Sanders whose credits range from a whole lot of Shakespeare at the Public Theater to an assortment of bad and good guys on "Law and Order" shows had never appeared in a Chekhov play. But for the past couple of months, eight times a week, the 65 year old Mr. Sanders has been transforming himself into the emotionally fragile, perpetually thwarted Vanya with such devastating transparency that no one could dispute his right to play that part. Critics have called it the performance of his career and, in some cases, the best Vanya they have ever seen. Speaking recently over a cappuccino in a Greenwich Village cafe, Mr. Sanders did not seem especially surprised by such a reception. In a sense, he has been preparing for Chekhov since 2010, when he first appeared in a production by Richard Nelson. That would be the playwright who adapted and directed this "Uncle Vanya," which runs through Nov. 18 at the 192 seat Frederick Loewe Theater at Hunter College. Though Mr. Nelson and Mr. Sanders had been friends for four decades, from the time they worked together on an early Nelson play at the Arena Stage in Washington, D.C., they had not collaborated since. Mr. Sanders's wife, the actress Maryann Plunkett, had often appeared in Nelson works, prompting Mr. Sanders to ask the playwright, "Did I kill your mother or something?" Mr. Nelson's response was to cast both Mr. Sanders and Ms. Plunkett in "That Hopey Changey Thing," a domestic drama that opened at the Public Theater on the day it was set, Nov. 1, 2010, midterm election night. This was the first of a quartet of works that would come to be known as "The Apple Family Plays," an uncommonly intimate series (staged between 2010 and 2013) in which the extended members of a clan in Rhinebeck, N.Y., discussed the events of their lives and their nation. These were followed by "The Gabriels," a trilogy about another Rhinebeck family. At the Public and on the subsequent international tours, Mr. Sanders appeared in all of them (as did Ms. Plunkett), and in doing so, acquired a new command of soft spoken, internalized acting onstage. The experience turned out to be ideal preparation for the subtleties of "Uncle Vanya," which delicately maps the growing tensions among a family on a remote Russian estate in the late 19th century. Like the Gabriel and Apple plays, Mr. Nelson's "Uncle Vanya" suspends microphones (14 in this case) over the stage, which allow the ensemble members to talk at normal conversation level, even whispering when it suits the occasion. "I happen to have a voice that can fill a theater rather easily," Mr. Sanders said. "But suddenly I was being told, don't use that. Use your voice, but don't do it to reach the audience; do it to reach the other people onstage, and the freedom of that has been extraordinary." This quietness encourages theatergoers to lean in and listen, Mr. Sanders said, to become participants in what's happening onstage. "It's an invitation. And as soon as you've given into that, you've accepted that you're going to watch a show in a different way." Mr. Sanders believes that what Mr. Nelson has achieved with this approach is "as big as what Peter Brook did for the '60s," referring to the venerable British director whose "Midsummer Night's Dream" revolutionized productions of Shakespeare. "Richard saw this as the way to bring theater into the 21st century in a society that lives on screens," Mr. Sanders said. Tears and even sobs are a common among audiences for this "Uncle Vanya." Adapted by Mr. Nelson and the veteran translators Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky to a swift intermissionless 105 minutes, this version confines its seven characters to a single space. Vanya is a learned man who has devoted his life to overseeing the estate of his late sister and assisting in the academic studies of her husband, a professor. In the play, which is set around the visit of the aging professor (Jon DeVries) and his alluringly beautiful young wife (Celeste Arias), he has begun to wonder if all that selfless labor has meant anything whatsoever. Mr. Nelson initially offered the role of the professor to Mr. Sanders, who hedged and was subsequently awarded the part it now feels he was born to play. In describing his role in this "Uncle Vanya," which was first staged at the Old Globe Theater in San Diego earlier this year, Mr. Sanders tended to shift from the third person to the first. That close identification with his part has been shaped, he said, by memorizing it so completely that once he's onstage he can exist in a state of "willed amnesia." He explained: "My aim when I come onstage is to not know what I'm saying next. The idea that you know it so well that it will come to you. And it just flows out. It literally comes out differently every night." Such spontaneity is particularly wrenching in the climactic scene in which Vanya explodes during a family meeting called by the professor. As Mr. Sanders put it, "All my personal regard, my sense of self has been shattered." Vanya finds a gun and fires it at the professor (spoiler: He misses). The staging of the subsequent scenes has been modified since the San Diego production, to justify the reactions of the other characters. In the immediate interim, Mr. Sanders spends time offstage, in character, with the gun in his hand, considering suicide. "I think I go off distraught enough that I'm capable of killing myself," he said. "And I look at the gun and I pick it up and I can't really do it. But I'm sitting there thinking about it." Plunging into such psychological darkness on a nightly basis must surely take its toll on Mr. Sanders's civilian life? Not at all, he insisted: "I feel that pain every night with him. But I don't carry it offstage." As the production nears the end of its run, he said, people keep asking him if he won't be "happy when it's over." No, he tells them. "The more you've relaxed and the more different ways you've gone through these same things, you can't help but deepen," he said. "It only makes me want to do it more." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Theater |
Imagine wanting, needing, to take a gulp of air and finding that you can't. On Monday, a patient walked into the emergency room where I work. He struggled to breathe as he explained his symptoms to me. When the test result came back positive for the coronavirus, his eyes brimmed, and he spoke quietly: "Will I be OK?" I see some version of this story every day at my hospital in rural west Michigan. It's some 700 miles away from the White House, and feels even farther as I watch President Trump whisked to the hospital and back in helicopters, and flanked by men in white lab coats, ready to serve him. And yet he tweets, "Don't be afraid of Covid." My patients are genuinely afraid. That fear didn't come from CNN or "fake news." Nor did it come from Dr. Anthony Fauci. My patients' fears come from the fact that they can't breathe. The people who come to my hospital seeking care are largely underserved with underlying conditions. As they struggled and wheezed, they may have thought of their own mortality in the context of the more than 211,000 lives cut short too many in their prime, healthy one day, dead a week or two later. For nearly 20 years, I've had the privilege of serving the same small community and getting to know many of the people who now come to my emergency room. Two thirds of the voters in our county voted for this president. In my area, many fly his flag and hang on every word he says. Compliance with safety guidelines is thin; most people in our community refuse to wear masks or stay six feet apart. Because social distancing naturally occurs in sparsely populated rural areas, we didn't see the summertime surge of positive cases like Arizona, Texas and Florida did. But two weeks after our schools resumed in early September, we began to see a spike in Covid 19 cases among children and teenagers. As President Trump urged Americans not to let a highly contagious and lethal disease "dominate" our lives, their parents began showing up in my emergency room, gasping for air. This is the terrible but predictable outcome after the most powerful man in the world told people to "LIBERATE MICHIGAN!" and "SCHOOLS MUST OPEN IN THE FALL!!!" even when we didn't have enough masks, tests and contact tracers. We still don't. Eight months after the first Covid 19 case was reported in the United States, my hospital still has only a limited supply of N 95 masks and tests. And Michigan, like many states, is still fighting over mask requirements and crowd limits. Now the patients I have come to know and love over the years are starting to feel the full impact of following a science denier down the primrose path. As the president mocked masks and flouted social distancing by holding packed campaign rallies, the virus took hold of my corner of America, accessible only by winding roads through small farms and single street hamlets. The coronavirus is indiscriminate. If you're young, healthy and lucky, you may be fine in the near term, but there's a lot we still don't know. We don't know what kind of carnage the virus could wreak on your lungs, brain and kidney long after you test negative after having been infected, or if an infected patient is immune after recovery. Science takes time. What is virtually certain is that you will get the coronavirus if you don't wear a mask and are exposed to it in an enclosed space. And we know that people older than 55 with high blood pressure, obesity and diabetes are more likely to get severely ill, even die, from the virus. My patients may not know that of the more than 211,000 that have died of Covid 19 in the United States, roughly 40,000 have been between the ages of 65 and 74, a rate much higher than deaths from the flu. They may not have seen Mr. Trump struggling to breathe after he bailed out of the hospital. They may or may not understand the Hail Mary cocktail of antivirals, plasma, antibodies and dexamethasone (the only drug so far shown to help with Covid 19, which we may have to use if their vitals go south). They may not care that their governor, Gretchen Whitmer, is using every science based intervention she has to protect people a stay at home order, masking requirements, limits to gatherings while the Republican Legislature, like Mr. Trump, has given up even trying to slow the spread. What they do know is they can't breathe. They're afraid. And until the president takes the coronavirus seriously, and models how to combat this virus for the rest of the nation, the rest of us should be too. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Opinion |
One point is undeniable about Jessica Lang: She is prolific, having created more than 80 dances since she started working as a freelance choreographer in 1999. But what drives her vision? After the curtain fell on the last of six pieces presented by Jessica Lang Dance at the Joyce Theater on Wednesday, I still wasn't sure. The company opened with "Lines Cubed," a Mondrian inspired work from 2012 having its New York premiere. Organized by hue (black, red, yellow and blue), the work explores line and color. Using molo pieces, or accordionlike shapes, to create the straight, movable bands of her set, Ms. Lang extends the design element to her dancers. Echoing the strict edges in a Mondrian painting, they stand with their arms out, flexed at the wrists, or raise a leg high in front of the torso. Certain sections focus on the mood of primary colors: red (passion), yellow (happiness) and blue (melancholy). Though innocuous, "Lines Cubed" feels like a knockoff, a notion that extends into her other works. In "Mendelssohn/Incomplete," a New York premiere from 2011, Ms. Lang mirrors the tone of a gentle Paul Taylor dance, in which three couples meet and part to Mendelssohn's Andante movement from Concerto No. 1. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Dance |
RISE AND KILL FIRST The Secret History of Israel's Targeted Assassinations By Ronen Bergman Translated by Ronnie Hope Illustrated. 753 pp. Random House. 35 One of the very first things I was taught when I joined the C.I.A. was that we do not conduct assassinations. It was drilled into new recruits over and over again. Today, it seems that all that is left of this policy is a euphemism. We don't call them assassinations anymore. Now, they are "targeted killings," most often performed by drone strike, and they have become America's go to weapon in the war on terror. There have been many who have objected, claiming that the killings inspire more attacks on the United States, complicate our diplomacy and undermine our moral authority in the world. Yet the targeted killings drone on with no end in sight. Just counting the campaigns in Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia, the Bush administration conducted at least 47 targeted killings by drones, while under the Obama administration that number rose to 542. America's difficult relationship with targeted killing and the dilemmas we may face in the future are beautifully illuminated by the longer story of Israel's experiences with assassination in its own endless war against terrorism. Israel has always been just a bit farther down this slippery slope than the United States. If we're willing, we can learn where the bumps are along the way by watching the Israelis careening ahead of us. Americans now have a terrific new introduction to that story with the publication of Ronen Bergman's "Rise and Kill First: The Secret History of Israel's Targeted Assassinations." It's easy to understand why Bergman's book is already a best seller. It moves at a torrid pace and tells stories that would make Jason Bourne sit up and say "Wow!" It is smart, thoughtful and balanced, and the English translation is superb. It deserves all of the plaudits it has already received. A word of warning: Bergman is properly focused on the narrow story of Israel's targeted killings. Other aspects of its lifelong counterterrorism struggle are largely absent. For instance, Israel's "security barriers" against the West Bank and Gaza, highly controversial and highly successful, are not even mentioned. For those looking for a more comprehensive account, try Daniel Byman's outstanding "A High Price: The Triumphs and Failures of Israeli Counterterrorism," or Ami Pedahzur's older but still insightful "The Israeli Secret Services and the Struggle Against Terrorism." 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. Yet the biggest thing (almost) left out of Bergman's book is that targeted killing offers no end to the terrorism. Targeted killings are a tactic, not a strategy. Only at the very end of "Rise and Kill First" is this problem confronted, and only because Bergman himself puts it squarely on the table before finishing his narrative. That's a compliment, not a criticism of Bergman, because it reflects the inability of Israel's own national security community to solve this problem, and too often even to acknowledge it. What Bergman demonstrates is that targeted killing can be a highly effective tactic to neutralize terrorist cells and can be part of a powerful operational approach to cripple terror groups. Israel's internal security agency, known as Shin Bet, believes that every successful killing of a suicide bomber saves 16 to 20 Israeli lives. But it does not offer a strategic answer to the problem of terrorism because it cannot defeat the broader movements that breed and feed the terrorist groups. Like some modern day hydra, no matter how many heads Israel chops off, the beast always grows new ones sometimes more dangerous than before. Terrorism is a form of insurgency, and the way that nations have learned to defeat it is by applying what we now call counterinsurgency (COIN) strategy. The core of a COIN strategy is to suppress the groups' military operations while addressing the underlying grievances that inspire the movement behind them. It is ultimately what is meant by the worn phrase "winning hearts and minds." Israel has a big problem here. Targeted killings, barriers and other security activities can suppress terror attacks, but it is not at all clear that Israel can ever win the hearts and minds of the Palestinians, the crucial foundation for Palestinian terrorist groups. It had the same problem with the Shiites of Lebanon and their support for Hezbollah. That's because the Israeli occupation is a central grievance of the Palestinians, as it was for Lebanon's Shiites. Israeli military officers have devoured the vast literature on COIN warfare, eagerly adapting its tactics and operational methods. However, ask an Israeli soldier or general about the strategic aspects of COIN and they almost invariably insist that it's wrong. They will claim that they tried to win hearts and minds in Gaza and the West Bank and it just didn't work because it just doesn't work. Only a few will acknowledge that the problem is not with COIN strategy, but with Israel's ability to execute the strategy without doing something that is politically ... hard. The deepest truth is that Israel so far has not tried the one thing that could address the underlying grievances that give life to its terrorist enemies, trading land for peace. Some of Israel's brightest counterterror minds know this. It is why the senior leadership of its defense and intelligence establishments are typically so committed to the peace process, as revealed by the 2012 Israeli documentary "The Gatekeepers." Today many Israelis are justifiably skeptical that they have a partner for peace. Many Palestinians are justifiably skeptical that Israel is a partner for peace. Regardless of whether you believe one side, the other, or both, it still means that the most obvious approach Israel might try to find a strategic end to the problem of terrorism is off the table. Israel's political right has insisted that there are one state solutions that could address Palestinian grievances, but the plans they have presented so far seem fanciful, and the Israeli government has shown no inclination to try them. Some in the current Israeli government seem to believe that its new covert alliances with Sunni Arab states like Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates against Iran will furnish a strategic path out that the Arab states will persuade the Palestinians to give up and reconcile themselves to Israeli suzerainty. One can't be certain it won't work, but you shouldn't bet money that it will. Since Israel cannot or will not employ the core strategic approach of COIN, it is left with nothing but tactics, targeted killings high among them. It consigns Israel to endless repression, endless assassinations, endless criticism and endless racking internal debate like that which Bergman diligently recounts. All of this holds inevitable lessons for the United States. The most successful counterterror campaigns in American history rested on strategic efforts to undermine the popular movements behind the terrorist groups. In 2006 8, in Iraq, George W. Bush's surge strategy crippled the Sunni Arab terrorist groups by helping Sunni Arabs defend themselves, granting them economic benefits and political power, and shutting down the ethnic cleansing campaigns of the Shiite militias. It was a virtuoso effort that eliminated the grievances of the Sunni community, at least until the United States and Nuri al Maliki let them come roaring back after 2010. Yet when it comes to fighting terrorism in places like Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, Niger and Libya, the tactics starting with targeted killing by drone are all we seem willing to employ. It consigns us to the same kind of endless war that the Israelis seem ready to bear. Yet how sure are we that America's people and political system are as inured to the forever war as Israel's claim to be? By the end of Bergman's book, targeted killing feels almost like a drug that Israel uses to treat the worst symptom (terrorism) of a terrible disease (Palestinian anger). It is a very effective drug, but it treats only the symptom and so offers no cure. It is also a very addictive one, in part because it is so effective at suppressing the symptoms. I fear that we are all becoming targeted killing junkies, unable to kick the habit and unwilling to treat the disease that got us hooked in the first place. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Books |
WASHINGTON Her somber gaze is direct, and in her lap, she firmly holds a book. The circa 1855 daguerreotype portrait of Lucy Stone, the suffragist and abolitionist , is powerful in its simplicity. Not surprisingly, Ms. Stone's mission was incited by the inequality in a society that discouraged women from becoming educated. The image is part of "Women of Progress: Early Camera Portraits," an exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery , one of several major exhibitions in the nation's capital that celebrate women from the battle for voting rights, spurred by the 100th anniversary of the 19th Amendment, to artworks by feminist icons who embody the challenging issues of their epochs. "Considering the longstanding imbalance in museum prerogatives, a convergence of exhibitions addressing women as artists, as activists, as historical figures is notable," said Susan Fisher Sterling , the director of the National Museum of Women in the Arts. "In part, this is inspired by the news cycle or the centennial anniversary of women's suffrage. However, from the vantage of history, it hardly seems enough," Ms. Sterling said. "It is essential for cultural institutions to take substantial and systematic steps to address gender inequity and diversity in their programming, their collections, and their leadership, so that this conversation moves beyond a single moment." "Votes for Women: A Portrait of Persistence" commemorates the centennial of the ratification of the 19th Amendment. The exhibition runs the gamut from early photographs and paintings to newspapers and fliers, as well as original banners from the National Woman's Party . It's organized chronologically: "Radical Women: 1832 1869," "Women Activists: 1870 1892," "The New Woman: 1893 1912," "Compelling Tactics: 1913 1916," "Militancy in the American Suffragist Movement: 1917 1919" and "The Nineteenth Amendment and Its Legacy." There are portraits of Susan B. Anthony and the abolitionist Sojourner Truth, Victoria Woodhull , the first woman to run for president; Alice Paul , who organized the first march on Washington's National Mall; and Lucy Burns , who served six different prison sentences for picketing the White House. "It's something that I've been really committed to," said Kim Sajet , the director of the museum, who is the first woman to lead the Gallery. "As soon as I arrived in 2013, we made a policy that 50 percent of all the funds we would spend should go to a minority subject or artist, which means that well over 50 percent of the portraits we have collected are of women now at 53 percent. "One Life: Marian Anderson" explores the life of the renowned contralto and how she became an icon of the civil rights movement. Ms. Anderson sang for 75,000 people on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in 1939 after segregationist policies barred her from performing at Washington's DAR Constitution Hall the largest auditorium in the city . The exhibition goes beyond that pivotal performance and examines her entire career, emphasizing her influence on other artists ranging from the Harlem Renaissance painter Beauford Delaney to the fashion photographer Irving Penn . "It is still kind of shocking to me how few people know her name, or what she did in terms of civil rights," Ms. Sajet said. "I think it is really important to keep innovating and keep updating our knowledge and our history of women's stories and their contributions to America. We know that representation matters." "Judy Chicago The End: A Meditation on Death and Extinction" is a series of nearly 40 works of painted porcelain and glass, as well as two large bronze sculptures, that reflect the artist's views on her own mortality, compassion and justice. Ms. Chicago is one of the principal artists from the feminist art movement of the 1970s. "For decades, Judy Chicago has modeled for artists of all genders how to step up and speak out about inclusion and injustice," said Kathryn Wat , deputy director of arts, programs, and public engagement and the chief curator at the museum. "'The End,' which presents an unflinching reflection on individual mortality and our shared ecological fragility, demonstrates how she continues to fearlessly confront the subjects that many prefer to ignore or deny." "Live Dangerously" spotlights the works of 12 photographers who defy predictable, passive images of the female form in nature. It includes works by Ana Mendieta , Louise Dahl Wolfe , Anna Gaskell , Dana Hoey , Graciela Iturbide , Kirsten Justesen , Justine Kurland , Rania Matar , Laurie Simmons , Xaviera Simmons , and Janaina Tschape . | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Art & Design |
Hannah Bronfman, 29, is what you might call a millennial multihyphenate, D.J. ing fashion parties at night, posing for Adidas and fueling her social media empire by day. (Her Instagram following numbers 358,000 and counting.) Recently she also expanded her Hbfit.com site with the addition of video. Ms. Bronfman grew up on the Upper West Side, but these days she is more likely to be found below 14th Street, in the East Village, which she calls home. This month she is preparing for her wedding to her fellow D.J., Brendan Fallis. Here, learn the beauty products and services she will be relying on. My biggest issue is hyperpigmentation and evening out my skin tone. I also break out easily so there are a lot of things I can't use. I use a cleanser from iS Clinical, and then I spray on this really lovely rose tonic from Pratima. I mix two different vitamin C serums, one by Glossier, called Super C, and one from Drunk Elephant. During the day, I use the 37 Actives cream by Dr. Macrene. And depending on the weather, I might use the Sun Drops by Dr. Barbara Sturm. Dr. Sturm also has a line with Angela Bassett that's geared toward pigmented skin, and that's how I first heard about her. One day I was in an Instagram hole, looking at all these beautiful dark girls with beautiful skin, and they were talking about the line. At night, I have a foam cleanser I love from a natural Canadian brand called Consonant. I've been using it since college. I use that as a first layer of cleansing, then I use either a prescription sulfur based wash or this facial bar by Drunk Elephant. Then I use P50 by Biologique Recherche, the one for pigmentation. That's a pretty heavy duty product. The first time I tried it, it was way too intense, and I didn't use it again for three years. But then the founder of Vintner's Daughter they have some of the few oils that don't break me out said she uses P50, and I thought I'd try it again. After that, I like the Hydra Cool Serum by iS Clinical. If I'm traveling a lot, I put a Laneige Water Sleeping Mask on top of that. I love the idea of something other than an oil. I'm prone to breaking out on my chest and back because I work out a lot. I've been using a body wash by Cane Austin, and my skin has been reacting so well to it. Actually Cane Austin just opened its first medi spa, and I'm going there to do my first ever back facial. No one ever wants to talk about "bacne," but I'm getting married and my dress is backless. I have to get my skin in check. After the shower and before I towel dry, I mix an oil by Mun and another by Pratima. Those, along with Vintner's Daughter, are the only oils in my regimen. I'm obsessed with this all purpose balm by Make. Morning and night I put it under my brow bone and on my lips. Maybe I'll use a little lipstick from Charlotte Tilbury, in Pillow Talk. If I'm really amping it up, I'll add a lip liner from Make Up For Ever. I have a concealer from Hourglass the shade is tan. If it's day to day, I might not put on foundation. If it's sunny, I use a BB cream with SPF. I have one from Nars I really like, and Jouer and Honest Beauty have good ones. They're in rotation. I don't do mascara because I have lash extensions from Christian Zamora. Having lashes makes it easier to not wear makeup. I do wear a little blush. Right now, I'm using one from Tom Ford that's bronze y and not too pink. I don't really use fragrance. I use essential oils, but not necessarily every day. I got a little bottle of jasmine oil from the Whole Foods in Williamsburg that I really like. Shampoo, conditioner I have some from R Co and from the Aveda Damage Remedy line. I have a leave in conditioner from It's a 10 that I'm obsessed with. I put a little in my hair before I get it blown out. I'm not going places to get my hair done but using apps for people to come to my house. I prefer to use my own products, and I can schedule things a little better. This is my natural hair color. I had a good cut in December from Frank Rizzieri, who has a salon in TriBeCa. I met him on a shoot in L.A. For my next haircut, I'm going to see the craziest person, the master guru Garren. He happens to be best friends with my wedding planner's mother. It's so random. They grew up together in upstate New York. I'm trying to meditate and de stress instead of working out for the wedding. There's all this stupid pressure about losing weight for your wedding. I'm really not into it. I work out all the time, but because it's good for my mental state. I have this whole breathing routine I do before bed and when I wake up. I've been trying to go to meditation classes in the city, and I have an app for my phone. In terms of eating, I'm trying to be good. I'm not really drinking much. I'm definitely into a high fat, high protein type of diet with lots of vegetables. On fitness, I can't believe these words are coming out of my mouth: I've been going to Tracy Anderson. I D.J.'ed for them, and they gave me a bunch of classes, and I'm kind of loving it. I also love boxing and dancing classes. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Fashion & Style |
Merele Williams Adkins in her family's home in Clinton Hill, with work by her husband, Terry Adkins, behind her, and a piece by Glenn Ligon, lower left. She Married an Artist, and Now Finds Comfort in His Work Merele Williams, a lawyer by training, was sick of dating doctors and lawyers. She set her sights on meeting an artist, and at a party in 1991, she did. Chatting with the sculptor and musician Terry Adkins, Ms. Williams gave him a thorough grilling on his bona fides. Mr. Adkins, in turn, scoffed at her preferences in art. That night he proposed, and nine months later they were married. They lived, with their two children, in a Clinton Hill, Brooklyn, brownstone surrounded by Mr. Adkins's work and filled with collections of African art, musical instruments and pieces by his peers. Long admired within New York circles of African American artists and curators like Thelma Golden and Kellie Jones, Mr. Adkins had been gaining broader recognition including being chosen for the 2014 Whitney Biennial and the 2015 Venice Biennale when he died from cardiomyopathy in 2014 at the age of 60. Today, Ms. Williams Adkins is committed to preserving her husband's legacy and last year brought his estate to the Levy Gorvy gallery. A survey of his sculpture often refined hybrids of found objects that were used as props in his musical performances is on view through Feb. 17 in "Terry Adkins: The Smooth, The Cut, and The Assembled." The show was curated by Charles Gaines, one of several artists close to Mr. Adkins. They traded works and Mr. Gaines is represented in the Adkins's home, along with many others. A print by Glenn Ligon based on Afro centric coloring books leans on a credenza near a vivid blue abstract print by Mr. Adkins, who liked the way both Yves Klein and George Washington Carver used the color. Woodcuts by David Driskell, a scholar of African American art who taught Mr. Adkins at Fisk University, hang in the dining room near prints of women's heads by Lorna Simpson (whose daughter modeled for a painting in the living room by Turiya Adkins, following in her father's footsteps by studying art at Dartmouth). The following are edited excerpts from a conversation with Ms. Williams Adkins. How did you and your husband put this collection together? We didn't have a lot of money, but Terry would do trades with friends. It was organic. He loved his students at the University of Pennsylvania and collected their work. Jamal Cyrus was one of his students and Demetrius Oliver. Wilmer Wilson was in Terry's last class. Would he do trades even for the African art? Whatever it was he wanted, it was like a barter system. He knew a lot about African art, what was good and what wasn't good. He started collecting musical instruments in Zurich in 1987. He found this kora lute through an African art dealer. That was one of the things he loved the most. There's a photograph of him before I knew him playing it in the Alps. For two years after he passed away, we couldn't find it. I sent photographs out to all the people who had moved his things from Penn. Then somehow it showed up. It was him bringing it back to me so I could rest easily. Have you continued to collect on your own? I go to benefits and I will buy things. My eye is not like Terry's, but I think I'm pretty good at it. These little thumb pianos seem to crop up on every shelf and mantel. There are a million thumb pianos around the house. They are wood and metal and he would play them. They make really cool tonal sounds. You'll also see tons of bells, which he bought on eBay and at flea markets, like this heap on the floor that have rabbit's feet on them he being superstitious. When people come in, inevitably somebody kicks them and it's like he's still here. When Terry was alive, there was always music blaring, whether it was Beethoven or Bessie Smith or Mahalia Jackson. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Art & Design |
Irish artists have long made great use of drink and its natural habitat, pubs, as lubricants for storytelling. One of Mr. McPherson's best known plays, "The Weir" the immediate predecessor to "Dublin Carol" is even set in a barroom. But "Dublin Carol," which premiered in New York in 2003 and is now revived by the Irish Repertory Theater, eschews the verbal fireworks booze so often encourages and fuels. Alcohol did not make John a charismatic raconteur; it made him a lonely, self pitying sad sack estranged from his wife and two grown children. The director Ciaran O'Reilly and Mr. Bean approach both the play and the part in a excuse the pun sober manner that underlines the material's unsentimental perspective. (Even the aforementioned scenic design, by Charlie Corcoran, narrowly avoids turning into a parody of working class kitsch.) "I wish I'd never been born," John, at one point, tells his daughter, Mary (Sarah Street), who has come by to inform him that her mother is dying of cancer. The pair engage in wistful chitchat and reminiscences, but this isn't an easy reunion she recalls how her dad once took her to a pub when she was a young child, and he drank so much that he got into a brawl and fell on top of her. The conversation with Mary is book ended by two scenes with John's young colleague, Mark (Cillian Hegarty). In the first, which takes place in the morning, the men are tentative, unsure of how to conduct small talk. John assures Mark that he still drinks, just not as much as he used to. Yet he is recovering from a hangover, and we see him hit the whiskey with Mary. By the third and final scene, when Mark returns in the late afternoon, John is so inebriated that he is staggering, and his mood has plummeted in parallel with the shrinking level inside the bottle of Jameson. This is just one more day in a wrecked life, and ultimately the show wrings little out of John as a theatrical creation, proving that drinking can smother drama as well as people. Happily, it's a fault Mr. McPherson corrected in his lovely Broadway bound musical, "Girl from the North Country," which, unlike "Dublin Carol," draws a dark form of illumination and beauty out of loneliness and despair. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Theater |
WE CAN SAVE US ALL By Adam Nemett 363 pp. Unnamed Press. Paper, 18.99. A solitary woman in her 20s stands outside of the Juicy Couture flagship shop in Midtown Manhattan, watching a salesperson fold a "candy rainbow" of velour tracksuits. A superstorm and fever epidemic have decimated New York, but the shopkeeper, who is missing half of her jaw, folds with rote acuity. Candace, the protagonist of 's debut novel, "Severance," is frequently enraptured while observing the routines of those around her. "You could lose yourself this way," Candace says, "watching the most banal activities cycle through on an infinite loop. It is a fever of repetition, of routine." Five days per week, Candace's own regimen involves walking unemployed through the city, her mind "drained until empty." Keeping her own proverbial business hours, she wafts through the streets propelled by a "deep, grim satisfaction." In the evening, as people traipse home, she chronicles their "hanging spider ferns in wicker baskets, calico cats lounging on throw pillows," and wonders if she could live indefinitely in this liminal state just imagining herself into the lives of others. Eventually Candace begins a job in an office, and it's at this point that a pulsing refrain begins: "I got up. I went to work in the morning. I went home in the evening. I repeated the routine." Work is trancelike and Candace submerges herself in it. At her swank publishing company, she's overseen the production of so many Bibles that she instinctively dissociates the holy book into its components, "disassembling it down to its varied, assorted offal." "Severance" offers blatant commentary on "dizzying abundance" and unrelenting consumption, evolving into a semi surreal sendup of a workplace and its utopia of rules, not unlike Joshua Ferris's "Then We Came to the End." Ma revivifies this model. Set against the backdrop of a catastrophic illness Shen Fever, which results in a "fatal loss of consciousness" the novel draws a circle around the lives of Candace's office cohort and the fever stricken. Both live in an "infinite loop" that marks them as "creatures of habit, mimicking old routines and gestures they must have inhabited for years, decades." Candace's uninfected state is not all that divorced from that of the fevered, who exist in an interstitial stage of "residual humanity." But laced within its dystopian narrative is an encapsulation of a first generation immigrant's nostalgia for New York, a place where, as Candace notes, "most people have already lived, in some sense, in the public imagination, before they ever arrive." Ma conjures the expat protagonist of Joseph O'Neill's "Netherland," who argues that "we are in the realm not of logic but of wistfulness." In its most lucid moments, "Severance" evokes traces of, if not Meghan Daum in her "misspent youth," then the essay "Goodbye to All That," when a young and equally bemused Joan Didion looks at gleaming kitchens through brownstone windows, considering New York not as a place of residence but as a romantic notion: "One does not 'live' at Xanadu." Candace dips elliptically into her past, unfurling memories of her dead parents and her childhood in China. When she recalls her mother telling her stories, "her remembering elicited my remembering." Though she lingers on long after most have fled or perished, Candace eventually departs New York in a "nostalgia yellow" taxi and joins a group of survivors who find her outside the city. "After the End came the Beginning," Ma writes in the opening line of the prologue. The cultlike group's self appointed leader pulls on a French vanilla scented e cigarette and sermonizes that "the internet is the flattening of time." The survivors "theorized grandly" and Google the states of grief, "Is there a god," Maslow's pyramid. They end up living in an abandoned mall an inversion of life in which the department stores are communal spaces and the boutiques are personal rooms. In the parallel dystopian universe of Adam Nemett's debut, "We Can Save Us All," David lives in the Egg, an off campus end times cult where a group of Princeton undergrads toy "with drugs and, you know, the fabric of time and stuff." The end of the world is not yet upon us, but the group is faced with both a climate emergency and something called "chronostrictesis," a condition in which time itself is running out, and only the drug Zeronal can slow down one's experience of it. A contained community of its own, the earnest "Unnamed Supersquadron of Vigilantes," hunkers down in a geodesic dome, pulsing with dogged optimism for the future world as Mathias, its leader, says: "It's going to be our job to make that smaller world into a close knit community." Nemett's book swerves between speculative coming of age fiction, a superhero story and an apocalyptic campus novel. At one point when a character describes the squad's plans, "he jumps from topic to topic. Nietzsche to chronostrictesis to education to moral determinism to his own disappearing hands." David presides over what reads at times like a Marvel movie action sequence being recounted by a stranger in the ticket line. Though the Egg's residents are hopeful about the future, Nemett's novel assumes a bleak and sophomoric inner life for these students: "Ultimately, he knew it was selfish and sexist, but he still wanted to save the day, the way superheroes do. But saving the day is so impersonal. Saving the girl, though?" Such is just one of the comic book tropes he unflinchingly deploys throughout the book; David whispers observations like "superheroes never die" and "knowledge can become a superpower," and uses a nasty and condescending nickname (itself reminiscent of comic books) for the main female character. After sleeping with her, David declares, "They'd be together now, superheroes flying through the air." But I begrudgingly found the sincerities of both Nemett and his characters refreshing in their vulnerability: "David only and infinitely believed in" Mathias. Nemett captures a group whose unfettered exuberance is seldom found in today's novels. There's no final act in which they're heroically rescued by self awareness; the group remains forever "masters of denial, impervious to reality." If this were a choose your own disaster adventure, I'd sooner end up in the shopping mall apocalypse. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Books |
The death of Hana Kimura, a cast member in "Terrace House: Tokyo," brought an end to the hit reality show and provoked a national reckoning with online hatred in Japan. Hana Kimura, a professional wrestler in Japan, joined the cast of the hit reality show "Terrace House" in September because, as she said, she wanted "to find a wonderful romance." It was a common enough goal on "Terrace House," which follows six young men and women living together in a gorgeous house as they navigate love, life and their careers. Over five seasons on Japan's Fuji TV and Netflix, which carries it in about 190 countries, the series became a global phenomenon, beloved by fans and critics around the world for its gentle spin on the "strangers sharing a posh residence" genre, one of the oldest reality TV formats. Nine months later Kimura was dead. She was found at her home in Tokyo on May 23, along with several suicide notes. A series of foreboding tweets and Instagram stories preceded her death. She was 22 years old. It is impossible to know why someone would take her own life. But in the weeks leading up to her death, Kimura had become the target of a vicious wave of hatred on social media much of it inspired by behavior on "Terrace House" that, she told a friend, the show's producers had instructed her to perform. Hours before Kimura died, she tweeted, "Every day, I receive nearly 100 honest opinions and I cannot deny that I get hurt." It's common knowledge that reality shows are heavily produced and edited to create narratives and drama, but many fans believed that the artfully banal "Terrace House" was realer than most. The interactions between the roommates could be endearingly halting and clumsy, and long stretches of time might pass in which hardly anything happened. Both Fuji TV and the show's "gossip panel" of celebrities, who provided running commentary on the action in the house from a separate studio, repeatedly claimed that there was "no script at all." While some former cast members stand behind "Terrace House" as an honest, transparent look into their time and experience in the house, others say that the show was just as manipulated as its crasser reality TV cousins. In interviews, they said Fuji TV staff extensively consulted with participants about their feelings, and told them to have certain conversations or take certain action. They said staff interventions resulted in dates, arguments and some of the show's most iconic scenes. Several cast members who spoke with The Times requested anonymity because participants all sign nondisclosure agreements forbidding them from talking about what happens on set. Three of them interviewed by The Times said the show aggressively dictated how some interactions should unfold and how some participants should act. "I got pulled aside by multiple producers and they went off on me," said one former "Terrace House" resident. "They put a lot of pressure on me to do things on the show I was cast to fit a certain role." This intervention includes the event that turned Kimura into a pariah. One episode in particular, in which she reacted angrily to a roommate for accidentally ruining one of her prized wrestling costumes, led to a barrage of insults on Twitter and Instagram, including some telling Kimura to "die" and "disappear." (The most inflammatory messages have since been removed from the platforms.) Since cast members tended to have a more indirect and less confrontational approach to conflict resolution, as is common in Japan, the outburst likely seemed like climactic drama to many viewers. Reiko Hara, a spokeswoman for Fuji TV said "there was no improper staging or instruction given," and added that "we are in the middle of investigating the situation." In a news conference earlier this month, Ryunosuke Endo, the president of Fuji TV, said that show only depicts scenes that accurately represent the feelings of the cast. Many former "Terrace House" participants look back fondly on their time on the show, remembering it as a meaningful experience as well as a potential career booster. Shohei Uemura, a popular cast member from the "Opening New Doors" season, which ran from 2017 18, credits living in the house as a source of growth for him. "I had to think outside of my limits," he said. Four former cast members also remarked upon how friendly and supportive the staff was. "I really liked everyone involved," said Chikako Fukuyama, part of the show's 2016 "Aloha State" season. "They weren't thinking that we didn't matter." Some former participants dispute claims that the action was engineered by producers. One cast member said she never received any specific instructions. Another explained that while he did not receive any guidance from the staff, the "Terrace House" residents themselves would often act differently on and off camera. But even those who enjoyed their time on the show acknowledged that the passionate fan base could be cruel. "Commentary on the Kardashians is more lighthearted," a different cast member said. "I felt like I was the worst person in the world." The residents developed coping strategies and in some cases bonded over the online attacks. "We tried to comfort and support one another when new episodes came out," Uemura said. Fukuyama said that "it was painful to see someone who you live with get targeted." The effect could be exacerbated by the panel of commentators, who over the years have been criticized for their occasionally snide assessments and for cheering on aggressive attempts by male cast members to kiss women, which in some cases have crossed the line from romantic pursuit to harassment. When Fukuyama first appeared on the show, for example, panelists made multiple overtly sexual comments about her. She "was able to protect myself," she said, by avoiding watching the show "when I was living there, so I didn't see how the commentators were talking about me." Critics point out that the structure of "Terrace House" may have contributed to the online attacks against Kimura. "Because we are told that the show is real, the viewer accepts that it is," said Hiroaki Mizushima, a TV critic for Yahoo News Japan and a literature professor at Sophia University in Tokyo. "So when someone does something a viewer doesn't like, the viewer attacks them as a human being." The cast members' youth and relative inexperience with relationships and intimate partnerships probably made them even more vulnerable to such judgment, said Dr. Julie Ancis, the director of cyberpsychology at the New Jersey Institute of Technology. The more troublesome aspects of "Terrace House" also shed a light on pressing social issues in Japan. Government authorities have wrestled for years with how to balance online abuse with freedom of expression. After Kimura's suicide, they renewed the push to punish cyberbullying, and on June 4 an Internal Affairs and Communications Ministry panel proposed that social media operators should be able to be compelled to disclose the names and phone numbers of people who make defamatory posts. The ministry hopes to draw up the final version of the plan in November. But Japan also suffers from a high suicide rate, high levels of bullying in schools and limited access to mental health care resources. New cyberbullying laws may mean little without first addressing a more basic lack of mental health care. "Our research has shown that laws and punishments do not deter cyberbullying aggressors," said Sameer Hinduja, a criminology professor at Florida Atlantic University and a co director of the Cyberbullying Research Center. "What seems to matter most is the role of social institutions like the family, community and school in providing instruction and education in areas like empathy and resilience." Currently, cyberbullying education in Japan is not sufficient to deal with the breadth of the problem, said Michal Ptaszynski, a computer science professor at the Kitami Institute of Technology in Hokkaido who researches cyberbullying. "Kids learn briefly about harassment in classes on society," he said. "It still does not give them any means of defense in actual cyberbullying situations." Kimura came across as another charmingly relatable addition to the "Terrace House" cast, despite a short but storied wrestling career that included multiple championships and awards. Pink haired and bubbly, she was so shy in her early days on the show that she couldn't even bear to look at her crush, the basketball player Ryo Tawatari, and covered her face with a pillow instead. "She was really happy when she first joined the show," Kyoko Kimura said. But Hana soon began to struggle with social media criticism, even before the costume flap this spring. "Terrace House" is a relative rarity in Japan television for casting multiracial and occasionally non Japanese participants. Kimura's half Indonesian heritage became a target for racists and cyberbullies. "I remember seeing crudely drawn comics where she was drawn as a gorilla, mocking her darker complexion," said Farrah Hasnain, a Japan Times contributor who has been translating Japanese articles and social media posts about Kimura into English for her international fans. "I was so upset about it, because nobody on Fuji TV or the panel seemed to defend her it was a free for all." According to her mother, Kimura had been thinking about leaving the show for several months. Then, an explosive outbreak of cruel online comments following "The Costume Incident" episode, which premiered on March 31 on Netflix and May 18 on Fuji TV, significantly contributed to Kimura's emotional decline. At the time, her mother said, Kimura was living alone in a rented apartment after the pandemic brought a halt to filming, and was unable to meet with her family often as cyberbullying turned from a steady stream into a full blown onslaught. In an interview, Kai Kobayashi, the co star of the costume scene, said that Kimura called him in May, a month and a half after the episode premiered on Netflix, to apologize and tell him that the producers told her to act that way. "I was glad to hear that from her because I didn't think she was the type of person to react like that," Kobayashi said. Kobayashi said the production staff could be coercive. When he declined to go on a trip to Kyoto with some of the other housemates, he said that first one production staff member, then two, and eventually more than four all met with him to convince him to go. "Under that sort of pressure, it's hard to say what you want to say, especially if you're a pure girl like Hana," he said. "I think they talked her into creating something that didn't reflect what she was feeling or wanted to do." "I think that the only effort the staff made to support Hana was to try to keep her on the show," he said. Kyoko Kimura said Fuji TV, East Entertainment and Hana's agencies, World Wonder Ring Stardom and WALK, deflected responsibility and treated her like a nuisance when she reached out after Hana's death. "They told me that Hana had never said she wanted to leave the show, but Hana had been talking about wanting to leave since late November," she said. World Wonder Ring Stardom and WALK did not respond to requests to comment. (East Entertainment referred queries to Fuji TV.) When asked if they were aware that Hana Kimura may have become depressed by the outbreak of online comments, the Fuji TV representative said the company would not comment out of concern for the bereaved family. "We are very sorry that comments appearing on social media have become such a problem," she said. Such platitudes are no consolation to Hana's mother, who hopes people, lawmakers and companies around the world, including in the United States, will use this opportunity to reconsider rules and laws around social media and cyberbullying. "We need to change things," she said. "Don't think this isn't relevant to you," she added. "It could hurt you or the people you love." She is currently working on starting a new nonprofit organization in her daughter's name to help people cope with cyberbullying. "Hana was so bright, so cheerful she made everyone laugh," her mother said. "I want you all to remember that Hana." If you are having thoughts of suicide, call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1 800 273 8255 (TALK). | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Television |
The vibrant, eye catching works that fill the sculpture garden at the Smithsonian's Hirshhorn Museum make it easy to overlook their environs. An eclectic mix of installations, like casts of sculptures by Auguste Rodin and one of Yoko Ono's "Wish Trees," dot the space. But since March, when the museum announced plans to redesign it to accommodate a wider variety of programming, the garden has become the subject of intense interest among aficionados of landscape architecture and Washington history. First designed by the architect Gordon Bunshaft, and opened in 1974, the sculpture garden was disparaged by critics for its open and barren concrete layout, which could become sweltering in the summer. In response, the museum commissioned the prominent Washington landscape architect Lester Collins to rethink the space. His renovation, completed in 1981, transformed the garden into the shadier, leafier version visitors experience today, replete with lawns and trees. To those familiar with Mr. Collins's work, the garden ranks among his most notable creations, and some fear that his vision, which has defined the space for nearly 40 years, could be lost in the redesign. This week, the Cultural Landscape Foundation, an education and advocacy group, designated the garden as an at risk landscape as part of its Landslide program, which calls attention to significant works of landscape architecture that are threatened. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Art & Design |
Walker Buehler wore a blue sweatshirt in the dugout and the contented smile of someone who had successfully completed his job. But that's a little like saying Michelangelo relaxed after he painted the room not to put Walker's latest opus on the same level as the artistic masterwork, but in the baseball sense, it was excellent. With the World Series knotted at a game apiece, Buehler provided a commanding pitching performance worthy of the Dodgers' legendary aces, and his teammates did equally well on offense. The result was a 6 2 win on Friday over the Tampa Bay Rays in Game 3 of the World Series at Globe Life Field in Arlington, Texas, as the Dodgers seized momentum with a terrific all around effort. Game 4 set for Saturday night at the same stadium. In six dominating innings, Buehler allowed three hits, one run and one walk while collecting 10 strikeouts, three of them coming at the expense of Brandon Lowe, the hero of Game 2. Four of the Rays' first six outs were by strikeout as Buehler set the tone for the game. He did not allow a hit until Manuel Margot's double into the left field corner with one out in the fifth inning. "That might be the best I've ever seen his stuff," said Austin Barnes, the Dodgers' catcher. Buehler was almost impenetrable. With a fiery fastball that he spotted with pinpoint location and a curveball that kept the Rays' hitters off balance, Buehler buzzed through the Rays' lineup. Perhaps the only reasons he was smiling casually in a sweatshirt on the bench in the seventh inning, instead of pitching, had to do with his recent history of dealing with a blister on his pitching hand, and the fact that his manager, Dave Roberts, wanted to get some relief pitchers some work. None Everyone Loves Ohtani: The Angels' two way star was a unanimous pick for A.L. M.V.P. and his superfans redefine devotion. Phillie Phavorite: Bryce Harper truly committed to Philadelphia and now he's back on top of baseball, winning the N.L. M.V.P. Cy Young Winners: Milwaukee's Corbin Burnes and Toronto's Robbie Ray had hit rock bottom before they worked their way up to stardom. Baseball Is Stuck in Neutral: The potential of a lockout has a star studded group of free agents waiting for the dust to settle. Free Agency Tracker: Get the latest updates on signings, contract extensions and trades. "He gave us all that he needed to give," Roberts said, "and we should close it out." The game began as a matchup of two superb starting pitchers Buehler, who went into the game with a 1.89 earned run average in the 2020 postseason, and Charlie Morton, with a 3 0 record, a 0.57 E.R.A. and a reputation as a big game pitcher. But Morton struggled to put the Dodgers away with two outs. Los Angeles scored five of their runs with two outs, and now have 50 such runs in the postseason. "There's two outs, but you can still build an inning," said Mookie Betts, who hit a run scoring single with two outs in the fourth. "Not giving away at bats, that's the recipe for that and that's how you win a World Series, so we have to continue to do it for at least two more games." Justin Turner sparked the Dodgers offense by hitting a bases empty home run with two outs in the first inning, and then hit a two out double his next time up, in the third inning. That set Max Muncy up to rap a two run single to center field off Morton for a 3 0 Dodgers lead. Turner also made a terrific play at third base, going to his left to backhand a sharp bouncer off the bat of Mike Zunino to initiate a double play and wipe away the only base runner the Rays had in the first four and one third innings. While Buehler remained locked in a groove, the Dodgers also demonstrated that, while the tendency in baseball over the past several years drifted away from the small ball tactics of past years, they have not been totally abandoned. In recent years, baseball has increasingly moved toward a heavy reliance on home runs and big innings, with techniques like stolen bases and sacrifice bunts consigned to the strategic trash heap. But the Dodgers put both of the largely abandoned tactics on display Friday, with Betts stealing a couple of bases and Barnes executing a perfect safety squeeze bunt. In the top of the fourth, Cody Bellinger led off the inning with a single to right field. Morton struck out Chris Taylor, but Joc Pederson ripped a line drive over the outstretched glove of Ji Man Choi, the Rays' athletic first baseman, for a single. With runners at first and third, Pederson feigned as if he were stealing second, which temporarily froze Lowe, the Rays' second baseman. On the pitch, Barnes gently tapped a bunt up the first base line. Bellinger ran home on contact, and Choi's only play was to toss the ball to Lowe, covering first base, to force out Barnes. Not only did the sacrifice bunt score a run, it also moved Pederson to second base, and he scored on a single by Betts. Of course, Barnes is also capable of playing the more modern game: He whacked a home run in the top of the sixth that provided an exclamation point on an emphatic Dodgers win. One of the few bright spots for the Rays was that Randy Arozarena, who had gone 1 for 6 in the first two games of the series, drilled a home run in the ninth inning off Kenley Jansen. It was his eighth home run of the postseason, tying him with Barry Bonds, Carlos Beltran and Nelson Cruz. It was also his 23rd hit of the postseason, breaking a postseason record for rookies that he had shared with Derek Jeter, who had 22 in the 1996 postseason. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Sports |
The young Han Solo will make his debut at the Cannes Film Festival in May. Lucasfilm announced on Friday that "Solo: A Star Wars Story," which depicts Solo's life before the events of "Star Wars: A New Hope," would have its premiere at the festival before opening in France on May 23 and in the United States two days later. The film's director, Ron Howard, is expected to attend the festival, along with the cast members Alden Ehrenreich, Donald Glover and Emilia Clarke, among others. Mr. Ehrenreich plays Han Solo and Mr. Glover plays Lando Calrissian. Ms. Clarke will be featured as Qi'ra, a childhood friend and accomplice of Solo. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Movies |
In July 1996, two college students were wading in the shallows of the Columbia River near the town of Kennewick, Wash., when they stumbled across a human skull. At first the police treated the case as a possible murder. But once a nearly complete skeleton emerged from the riverbed and was examined, it became clear that the bones were extremely old 8,500 years old, it would later turn out. The skeleton, which came to be known as Kennewick Man or the Ancient One, is one of the oldest and perhaps the most important and controversial ever found in North America. Native American tribes said that the bones were the remains of an ancestor and moved to reclaim them in order to provide a ritual burial. But a group of scientists filed a lawsuit to stop them, arguing that Kennewick Man could not be linked to living Native Americans. Adding to the controversy was the claim from some scientists that Kennewick Man's skull had unusual "Caucasoid" features. Speculation flew that Kennewick Man was European. A California pagan group went so far as to file a lawsuit seeking to bury the skeleton in a pre Christian Norse ceremony. On Thursday, Danish scientists published an analysis of DNA obtained from the skeleton. Kennewick Man's genome clearly does not belong to a European, the scientists said. "It's very clear that Kennewick Man is most closely related to contemporary Native Americans," said Eske Willerslev, a geneticist at the University of Copenhagen and lead author of the study, which was published in the journal Nature. "In my view, it's bone solid." Kennewick Man's genome also sheds new light on how people first spread throughout the New World, experts said. There was no mysterious intrusion of Europeans thousands of years ago. Instead, several waves spread across the New World, with distinct branches reaching South America, Northern North America, and the Arctic. "It's probably a lot more complicated than we had initially envisioned," said Jennifer A. Raff, a research fellow at the University of Texas, who was not involved in the study. But the new study has not extinguished the debate over what to do with Kennewick Man. Dr. Willerslev and his colleagues found that the Colville, one of the tribes that claims Kennewick Man as their own, is closely related to him. But the researchers acknowledge that they can't say whether he is in fact an ancestor of the tribe. Nonetheless, James Boyd, the chairman of the governing board of the Confederated Tribes of the Colville Reservation, said that his tribe and four others still hope to rebury Kennewick Man and that the new study should help in their efforts. "We're enjoying this moment," said Mr. Boyd. "The findings were what we thought all along." The scientific study of Kennewick Man began in 2005, after eight years of litigation seeking to prevent repatriation of Kennewick Man to the Native American tribes. A group of scientists led by Douglas W. Owsley, division head of physical anthropology at the Smithsonian Institution, gained permission to study the bones. Last year, they published a 670 page book laying out their findings. Kennewick Man stood about 5 foot 7 inches, they reported, and died at about the age of 40. He was probably a right handed spear thrower, judging from the oversized bones in his right arm and leg. Other scientists, including Dr. Owsley and his colleagues, suggested the skull resembled those of the Moriori people, who live on the Chatham Islands 420 miles southeast of New Zealand, or the Ainu, a group of people who live in northern Japan. They speculated that the ancestors of the Ainu might have paddled canoes to the New World. In 2013, one of the scientists examining the skeleton, Thomas W. Stafford of the University of Aarhus in Denmark, provided Dr. Willerslev and his colleagues with part of a hand bone. Dr. Willerslev and other researchers have developed powerful methods for gathering ancient DNA. Once they had assembled the DNA into its original sequence, the scientists compared it with genomes from a number of individuals selected from around the world. They also examined genomes from living New World people, as well as the genome Dr. Willerslev and his colleagues found in a 12,600 year old skeleton in Montana known as the Anzick child. This analysis clearly established that Kennewick Man's DNA is Native American. But the result is at odds with the shape of his skull, which seemed to be very different from living Native Americans. To explore that paradox, Dr. Willerslev collaborated with Christoph P. E. Zollikofer and Marcia S. Ponce de Leon, experts on skull shapes at the University of Zurich. In the new research, Dr. Zollikofer and Dr. Ponce de Leon demonstrated that living Native Americans include a wide range of head shapes, and Kennewick Man doesn't lie outside that range. Still, it would take many skulls of Kennewick Man's contemporaries to figure out if they were distinct from living Native Americans. A single skull isn't enough. "If I take my own skull and print it out with a 3 D printer, many people would see a Neanderthal," said Dr. Zollikofer. After determining that Kennewick Man was a Native American, Dr. Willerslev approached the five tribes that had fought in court to repatriate the skeleton. He asked if they would be interested in joining the study. "We were hesitant," said Mr. Boyd, of the Colville Tribes. "Science hasn't been good to us." Eventually, the Colville agreed to join the study; the other four tribes did not. The Colville Tribes and the scientists worked out an arrangement that suited them all. Dr. Willerslev and his colleagues sent equipment for collecting saliva to the reservation. Colville tribe members gathered samples and sent them back. In exchange for permission to sequence the DNA, Dr. Willerslev and his colleagues agreed that they would share the data with other scientists only for confirmation of the findings in the Nature study. Kim M. TallBear, a cultural anthropologist at the University of Texas, praised the way the scientists worked with the Native Americans. "There's progress there, and I'm happy about that," she said. When Dr. Willerslev and his colleagues looked at the Colville DNA, they found that it was the closest match to Kennewick Man among all the samples from Native Americans in the study. But other scientists stressed that the new study didn't have enough data to establish a tight link between Kennewick Man and any of the tribes in the region where he was found. Unlike in Canada or Latin America, scientists in the United States do not have many genomes of Native Americans. Dr. TallBear saw this gap as a legacy of the distrust between Native Americans and scientists. In addition to the conflict over Kennewick Man, the Havasupai Indians of Arizona won a court case in 2010 to take back blood samples that they argued were being used for genetic tests to which they didn't consent. Some scientists may be reluctant to get into a similar conflict. As a result, said Dr. Raff, scientists can't rule out the possibility that Kennewick Man is an ancestor of another tribe, or that he is the ancestor of many Native Americans. "It's impossible to say without additional data from other tribes," she said. To Dr. Raff and other researchers, the most significant result of the new study is how Kennewick Man is related to other people of the New World. The new study points to two major branches of Native Americans. One branch, to which Kennewick Man and the Colville belong, spread out across the northern stretch of the New World, giving rise to tribes such as the Ojibwe and Athabaskan. The Anzick child, on the other hand, appears to belong to a separate branch of Native Americans who spread down into Central and South America. Given the ages of the Kennewick Man and the Anzick Child, the split between these branches must have been early in the peopling of the New World perhaps even before their ancestors spread east from Asia. About 4,000 years ago, two more waves of people spread across the Arctic. One lineage, known as the Paleo Eskimos disappeared several centuries ago, while the other gave rise to today's Inuit peoples. The DNA of the Colville tribe contains Asian like pieces of DNA not found in Kennewick Man. They may have gained that genetic material by having children with the Arctic peoples. Testing these possibilities will require more Native American DNA, and a better understanding of Native American culture, said Dr. Raff. New programs, such as the Summer Internship for Native Americans in Genomics at the University of Illinois, are giving Native Americans training that they can use to study their own history. "They'll have valuable insights to bring into this work themselves," said Dr. Raff. "It really only strengthens the science to learn from Native Americans about their own history." "It doesn't have to go the way Kennewick Man went at all," said Dr. TallBear. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Science |
As soon as she saw the script. Deepika Padukone recalled, she said: "'Boom, this is it.'"Credit...Ashish Shah for The New York Times As soon as she saw the script. Deepika Padukone recalled, she said: "'Boom, this is it.'" Deepika Padukone, one of the highest paid and best known actresses in Bollywood, can afford to choose her roles carefully and with purpose. With her newest film the first she has produced she chose to make a statement about acid attacks in India. "Chhapaak," which was released on Jan. 10 in India and select cities around the world, is based on the life of Laxmi Agarwal, who was attacked in New Delhi in 2005 by a man whose advances she had spurned. Since then, Ms. Agarwal, 29, has become an activist; she has pushed the Supreme Court of India to regulate the sale of acid and Parliament to make it easier to prosecute acid attack perpetrators. Acid attacks are on the rise in many countries and affect women disproportionately, according to Acid Survivors Trust International. India alone recorded close to 300 attacks in 2016, but the true number was probably much higher. The stigma of acid attacks is a form of social banishment, bringing a second and longer lasting wave of trauma to survivors. "The attacker is attacking you once. But society attacks you every time, in every moment," said Ms. Agarwal in an interview, reflecting on her path to activism. She suffered burns mostly on her face, and has undergone seven reconstructive surgeries, all while enduring taunts about who would marry her and how she would ever achieve success in life. At her lowest moment, she said, she realized: "A crime has happened to me. I didn't commit the crime. So why should I sit quietly?" After hiding her face in public for eight years, Ms. Agarwal began a different kind of coming out. She filed a police report against her attacker, who was sentenced to 10 years in prison a rarity in India. She pushed lawmakers to restrict the sale of acid (including the kinds most commonly used in these attacks, hydrochloric and sulfuric) and became the director of Chhanv Foundation, a nonprofit dedicated to helping acid attack survivors. In 2014, she was honored at the White House by the former first lady Michelle Obama. Much of her journey is recounted in the movie, which fictionalizes Ms. Agarwal's story but adheres to the heart of its substance. The script, which had been turned into a screenplay by the director Meghna Gulzar, caught Ms. Padukone's eye immediately. In 2018 she was finishing up filming for two period dramas, and looking for something emotionally lighter. But Ms. Agarwal's story was too compelling. (Ms. Padukone has been in dozens of Indian films but may be best known in the U.S. for starring alongside Vin Diesel in the 2017 movie "XXX: Return of Xander Cage.") "It's not very often where you know in literally a couple of minutes that this is a movie you want to commit to," Ms. Padukone said, "where reading through the first few pages, you're like, 'Boom, this is it, and I want to do this.'" She saw real beauty and heroism in the storytelling. "As much as the movie will talk about acid violence," Ms. Padukone said, it is also about what women "have made of their lives after having been through something like this, which in my mind, it is about grit and determination and spirit." Ms. Gulzar, the director, saw the film as a way to highlight the legal, financial and social struggles of acid attack survivors in a joyful way. She cast real survivors of acid assaults and let the camera rest just as lovingly on their faces as it does upon the main character, called Malti. "They have overcome their trauma, they have accepted the face that looks back at them in the mirror," Ms. Gulzar said. "It's time to accept them, to meet their gaze. They don't have that hesitation. We do. We need to overcome it." "It's a film that will inherently lend itself to extremely graphic visuals and yet it is a story you want people to know and come and see," Ms. Gulzar said. "You don't want them to turn away because they're afraid of what they might get to see." During the early stages of the film, when the crew was trying to get the right look, they spent four to five hours a day on Ms. Padukone's prosthetic makeup. The actress had her own realization as she watched her face change. "When I looked at myself in the mirror, I felt like myself," she said. Ms. Agarwal sees this as the key to ending the stigma, and perhaps curbing the attacks themselves. "If beauty was important, maybe you wouldn't be talking to me," she said. "When I came out, people didn't know me from my face, they knew me from my strength. That's beauty." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Style |
More than 200 bloggers in California will lose regular writing gigs because of a state law meant to improve working conditions at companies like Uber and Lyft that rely on contractors rather than employees. On Monday, Vox Media announced that it would eliminate the 200 freelance positions at its sports outlet, SB Nation, to comply with the legislation. The affected writers are frequent contributors to the 25 SB Nation blogs focused on California teams. The team centric sites include Golden State of Mind, for the N.B.A.'s Warriors; Conquest Chronicles, for the University of Southern California sports; and True Blue LA, which covers baseball's Dodgers. Many of the SB Nation writers contributed dozens of posts to the sites each year for little pay, according to filings in a related lawsuit. The law, which goes into effect on Jan. 1, "makes it impossible for us to continue with our current California team site structure," John Ness, executive director at SB Nation, said in a post on Monday, "because it restricts contractors from producing more than 35 written content 'submissions' per year." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Media |
Every year, 300,000 Americans with appendicitis are rushed into emergency surgery. Most think that if the appendix is not immediately removed, it will burst with potentially fatal consequences. But now some doctors say there may another option: antibiotics. Five small studies from Europe, involving a total of 1,000 patients, indicate that antibiotics can cure some patients with appendicitis; about 70 percent of those who took the pills did not require surgery. Patients who wound up having an appendectomy after trying antibiotics first did not face any more complications that those who had surgery immediately. "These studies seem to indicate that antibiotics can cure appendicitis in many patients," said Dr. David Talan, a specialist in emergency medicine and infectious diseases at the University of California, Los Angeles. "You at least have the chance of avoiding surgery altogether." Dr. Talan and other researchers are planning a large clinical trial to compare people with appendicitis who receive antibiotics or surgery. In preparation, Dr. Talan and his colleague Dr. David Flum, a surgeon at the University of Washington, spent much of the past year asking patients if they would be interested in participating. Nearly half said yes. In another survey, nearly three quarters of those who had already had an appendectomy said they would have preferred to try antibiotics first. By suggesting an antibiotic alternative, the researchers are bucking longstanding medical tradition. As surgery and anesthesia improved, however, the appendectomy became the treatment of choice. According to the medical thinking of the day, it made sense. For years, doctors thought the appendix a tiny worm shaped tube that hangs off the right side of the colon became inflamed because it was blocked by a small piece of hardened feces. As it turns out, though, the vast majority of people with appendicitis do not have such a blockage. "No one knows what causes appendicitis," said Dr. James Barone, a retired chairman of surgery at Stamford Hospital in Connecticut and Lincoln Hospital in the Bronx. And an inflamed appendix is not, as most people think, a ticking time bomb. While perforation occurs in 15 percent to 25 percent of patients, researchers hypothesize that those who get perforations may have a predisposing immune response or infection with certain kinds of bacteria. In others, appendicitis goes away on its own. Nor is the length of time that an appendix is inflamed necessarily linked to the risk of perforation. Most people with a ruptured appendix already have it when they show up in the emergency room. But surprising as antibiotics might seem, this is not the first time they have emerged as a possible alternative to an appendectomy. When antibiotics became available in the 1940s and '50s, doctors in England began giving them to patients with appendicitis, reporting excellent results. During the Cold War, when American sailors spent six months or more on nuclear submarines prohibited from surfacing, those who developed appendicitis were given antibiotics. "Those submariners did great, and no deaths or complications were reported," Dr. Flum said. But that did not put a dint in the perception that surgery was the treatment of choice. In 1961 a Russian doctor stationed in Antarctica, Leonid Rogozov, went so far as to cut out his own appendix when it became inflamed. "I work mainly by touch. The bleeding is quite heavy, but I take my time," he wrote in his journal. "I grow weaker and weaker, my head starts to spin ...Finally, here it is, the accursed appendix." The planned clinical trial pitting antibiotics against surgery will attempt to answer important questions. Are antibiotics as good as surgery in curing appendicitis? Could they do so at less cost, avoiding a hospitalization afterward? How often does appendicitis recur after a person is treated with antibiotics? Will patients successfully treated with antibiotics later rush to the emergency room every time they feel abdominal pain? There is already a debate in the medical field over whether to tell patients about the antibiotic option, and if so, which patients to tell. Dr. Giana Davidson, a general surgeon at the University of Washington, will discuss antibiotics with appendicitis patients who ask, but has qualms about drugs as a treatment option. "We don't have the answers to questions that matter to patients," Dr. Davidson said. "What are the chances of it coming back? When I get belly pain, what should make me come back to the hospital?" "I just have a lot of hesitation on my side to go away from a 30 minute operation that cures them for the rest of their lives," she added. Dr. Philip S. Barie, the editor in chief of the journal Surgical Infections and a professor of surgery at Weill Cornell Medical College, does not routinely mention antibiotics, saying he would like to see results of a national clinical trial. For now, he says, "I would not include it as part of informed consent as an equivalent option." But patients are beginning to find out on their own. Richard Redelfs, a 40 year old manager of condominiums and homeowner associations in Edmonds, Wash., woke up with abdominal pain a few years ago. An emergency room doctor told Mr. Redelfs he needed immediate surgery for appendicitis. But Mr. Redelfs was uninsured, and he told the surgeon that he had read online that antibiotics might be a viable alternative. "Once he found out I didn't have insurance, it was easy to talk him into prescribing me antibiotics," Mr. Redelfs said. He felt better almost immediately. But six months later, Mr. Redelfs felt a twinge in his abdomen and returned to the hospital. This time, he had insurance. Told he had appendicitis again, he opted for surgery. "I wanted the peace of mind," he said. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Health |
Norma Tanega on the British television show "Ready Steady Go!" in 1966, the year her song "Walkin' My Cat Named Dog" was a hit. In 1966, when Norma Tanega released her first single, rock fans were becoming used to unusual lyrics. But as it turned out, that song, "Walkin' My Cat Named Dog," wasn't as quirky as the title suggested: The song was inspired by her cat, whose name was indeed Dog. "I had always wanted a dog, but because of my living situation, I could only have a cat," she said on her website. "I named my cat Dog and wrote a song about my dilemma." She turned that situation into a lilting song about freedom, "perpetual dreamin'" and "walkin' high against the fog" around town with Dog. (In real life she really did walk her cat.) Accompanying herself on guitar and also playing harmonica, she sang, in a low voice: "Dog is a good old cat/People, what you think of that?/That's where I'm at, that's where I'm at." The song reached No. 22 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart and quickly assumed a life of its own, covered by various artists, including Barry McGuire, whose apocalyptic "Eve of Destruction" had reached No. 1 a year earlier, as well as jazz artists like the drummer Art Blakey and the Jazz Crusaders. Decades later, versions of the song were recorded by Yo La Tengo and They Might Be Giants. But she would never have another hit. Ms. Tanega died on Dec. 29 at her home in Claremont, Calif., about 30 miles east of Los Angeles. She was 80. Her lawyer, Alfred Shine, said the cause was colon cancer. Soon after the release of her hit song, Ms. Tanega was part of a nationwide tour with Gene Pitney, Chad Jeremy and many other artists. Later in 1966 she performed in England, where she met Dusty Springfield, the British pop star. The meeting led Ms. Tanega to write or co write songs for Ms. Springfield, including "No Stranger Am I," "The Colour of Your Eyes" and "Earthbound Gypsy." They also had a romantic relationship for several years, during which Ms. Tanega wrote a song called "Dusty Springfield" with Jim Council and the jazz pianist and vocalist Blossom Dearie. Ms. Dearie sang it on her 1970 album, "That's Just the Way I Want to Be." "Dusty Springfield, that's a pretty name," the song starts. "It even sounds like a game/In a green field, hobby horses play the dusty game/When it's May." Recalling her chemistry with Ms. Springfield in an interview with the Southern California newspaper The Daily Bulletin in 2019, Ms. Tanega closed her eyes and said, "She heard me." While in England, Ms. Tanega recorded her second and last solo album, "I Don't Think It Will Hurt If You Smile" (1971). When her relationship with Ms. Springfield ended, she returned to the United States, settling in Claremont. Norma Cecilia Tanega was born on Nov. 30, 1939, in Vallejo, Calif., and grew up in Long Beach. Her father, Tomas, was a Navy bandmaster and musician. Her mother, Otilda (Ramirez) Tanega, was a homemaker. As a teenager, Norma painted, gave classical piano recitals and taught herself the guitar. After graduating from Scripps College in Claremont and earning a master's in fine arts from Claremont Graduate School, she moved to Manhattan to join the folk music scene. "I just want to sing for people," Ms. Tanega said. "You might say it's mass love." A job singing in a summer camp in the Catskills brought Ms. Tanega to the attention of a producer, Herb Bernstein, and to Bob Crewe, the songwriter and producer behind many of the Four Seasons' hits; he signed her to his New Voice record label in 1965. "Walkin' My Cat Named Dog" came out early the next year. During a stopover on her nationwide tour, Ms. Tanega told The Detroit Free Press that she wasn't sure what genre to put herself in. "The folkies don't like me and the rock 'n' rollies don't like me," she said. She nonetheless enjoyed performing, she said: "I just want to sing for people. You might say it's mass love." After her second album and her return to Claremont, she began a long teaching career. She was an adjunct professor of art at California State Polytechnic University, Pomona, and taught music, art and English as a second language in Claremont public schools. She also focused on her art. Last year, Claremont Heritage, a historic preservation center, held an exhibition of her landscapes and abstract paintings. In comments published for the show, David Shearer, the executive director of the center and the curator of the exhibition, compared some of her work to that of Jean Michel Basquiat and Robert Rauschenberg. Ms. Tanega never gave up music. Over the years she played earthenware instruments in the Brian Ransom Ceramic Art Ensemble and performed and recorded with several bands, including Hybrid Vigor, the Latin Lizards and Baboonz. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Music |
A painting by Paul Cezanne owned by the billionaire magazine publisher S. I. Newhouse Jr. sold for 59.3 million on Monday night at a Christie's sale of Impressionist and modern art, kick starting a week of marquee auctions in New York that is expected to raise at least 1.6 billion. The Cezanne was one of 11 trophy artworks being offered over two evenings at Christie's by the family of Mr. Newhouse, who died in 2017. It is the most valuable of several distinguished American estate collections coming to market this week, and the Newhouse provenance gave a lift to the sale's top lots: Five Newhouse entries brought a total of 101 million. But a more significant test of its appeal and of the market as a whole will come when his more fashionable contemporary works, such as Jeff Koons's iconic "Rabbit," are sold on Wednesday. Cezanne's chromatic still life, "Bouilloire et Fruits (Pitcher and Fruit)," a mature work painted in Aix en Provence in 1888 1890, sold to one of three telephone bidders well above its estimate of 40 million, but competition was measured, as it so often is now at "Imps and mods" auctions. The work had been acquired by Mr. Newhouse at auction in 1999 for 29.5 million, according to the Artnet database of salesroom results. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Art & Design |
When the San Diego Padres announced their first round playoff roster Wednesday, it was hard not to look and think: Well, it was fun while it lasted. There were 14 pitchers among the 28 names, but not Mike Clevinger or Dinelson Lamet. Clevinger and Lamet are the Padres' aces, hard throwing right handers with wipeout sliders. They combined for a 2.17 earned run average in 10 September starts dominant until the moment their arms gave out. Clevinger went down with elbow impingement, Lamet with biceps tendinitis. Both tried to return for Padres' first playoff series in 14 years, but neither was ready. "Those two guys are just phenomenal, the way they execute," said catcher Austin Nola, who joined the Padres in late August. "But as soon as I came to this organization, I realized how many good arms we have." On Friday, in the winner take all Game 3 of their series with the St. Louis Cardinals, the Padres used nine of those arms a different one each inning to survive. Their 4 0 victory was the first nine man shutout in postseason history, a fitting end to a series in which no Padres pitcher worked more than two and a third innings in a game. The staff combined for 26 appearances to get 27 outs. For the Padres, patchwork pitching fits with their postseason pedigree. When they won their first pennant, in 1984, the rotation averaged two innings per start in a five game World Series mauling by the Detroit Tigers. At least the Padres looked good then or distinctive, anyway in their lively brown and gold uniforms. They dropped gold the next year and soon ditched brown for navy blue, with subsequent bland alterations underscoring the team's fading identity. The Padres won only one more pennant, in 1998, and finally revived their old colors this season. This year's team, pitcher Craig Stammen said on Friday, wants to make its own history and "turn the page on maybe some struggles within the organization the blue Padres. Now we're the brown Padres, excited to build some new memories with the new colors." Stammen, 36, is the Padres' oldest player, a clubhouse leader who has learned to channel adrenaline since flopping in his first playoff experience, for Washington in 2012. On Friday Tingler trusted him with the first leg of an epic pitching relay, no matter his 5.63 regular season E.R.A. None Everyone Loves Ohtani: The Angels' two way star was a unanimous pick for A.L. M.V.P. and his superfans redefine devotion. Phillie Phavorite: Bryce Harper truly committed to Philadelphia and now he's back on top of baseball, winning the N.L. M.V.P. Cy Young Winners: Milwaukee's Corbin Burnes and Toronto's Robbie Ray had hit rock bottom before they worked their way up to stardom. Baseball Is Stuck in Neutral: The potential of a lockout has a star studded group of free agents waiting for the dust to settle. Free Agency Tracker: Get the latest updates on signings, contract extensions and trades. "We looked at numbers, we looked at other options, and we just gave it to a trustworthy man," Tingler said. "How he was able to set the tone and get us out of there in an even game, when we hadn't done that yet it was huge, and I think it set the tone on the domino effect for the other guys coming in." Stammen, a right hander, retired the side in the top of the first. He gave way to a lefty, Tim Hill, with two outs in the second, and the right handed Pierce Johnson bailed Hill out of a jam in the third. St. Louis never put another runner past second base, and closer Trevor Rosenthal, a former Cardinal, struck out the side in the ninth. Padres General Manager A.J. Preller acquired Rosenthal from Kansas City in August after losing Kirby Yates last year's major league leader in saves to elbow surgery. Preller also grabbed Nola and two relievers in an August deal with Seattle, part of a deadline haul in which Clevinger was thought to be the prize. Preller sent six players to Cleveland for Clevinger, tapping into the prospect depth he had built since taking over in August 2014. Five losing seasons followed, but this year the plan came together, with the highest paid Padres Manny Machado, Eric Hosmer and Wil Myers all producing, and Fernando Tatis Jr. emerging as a magnetic star. "The talent and energy is off the charts," Nola said of Tatis. "You can watch it and it just brings everybody's energy level up when he's so enthusiastic to play the game." That excitement has spread through San Diego, where the Chargers' departure in 2017 has left the Padres as the only major sports franchise in town. From the field, Hosmer said, the players could hear the fans cheering outside. The city has not won a championship since the Chargers ruled the American Football League in 1963. "There would be nothing sweeter than to see this place sold out, to see the fans going crazy, to see good baseball being played in San Diego at Petco Park," Hosmer said. "I know it's unfortunate they can't be in the stadium, but we definitely feel their energy." Petco Park will continue to host playoff games this month, but in a cruel twist of this strange pandemic season, the Padres are leaving town. The rest of the postseason takes place in neutral sites, so the Padres will play in Arlington, Texas, for their best of five division series with the Los Angeles Dodgers starting Tuesday (Clevinger and Lamet, who both played catch on Friday, have not been ruled out). San Diego, as its team departs, will play host to the Yankees and the Tampa Bay Rays, and then the American League Championship Series. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Sports |
Google, Facebook, Amazon and Apple are targets of government investigations and public outrage, facing accusations that they abuse their power in various ways, from exploiting personal information to stifling rivals. Conspicuously absent from most of that criticism? Microsoft, a tech company worth more than them all. The software giant, valued at more than 1 trillion by investors, is no stranger to government scrutiny and public criticism. It endured years of antitrust investigations, and faced a long public trial that almost split up the company. In the end, Microsoft paid billions in fines and settlements, and absorbed humbling lessons. But its "Evil Empire" moniker, once a label favored by the company's critics, has fallen by the wayside. Today, Microsoft has positioned itself as the tech sector's leading advocate on public policy matters like protecting consumer privacy and establishing ethical guidelines for artificial intelligence. Though it has sued to limit government access to users' data, Microsoft is seen in capitals around the world as the most government friendly of the tech companies. "It's in a league of its own," said Casper Klynge, a foreign service officer who is Denmark's ambassador to the technology industry, based in Silicon Valley. "There is self interest, of course. But Microsoft actively engages with governments on important issues far more than we see from the other big tech companies." Market shifts and the evolution of Microsoft's business over the years help explain the transformation. It is less a consumer company than its peers. For example, Microsoft's Bing search engine and LinkedIn professional network sell ads, but the company as a whole is not dependent on online advertising and the harvesting of personal data, unlike Facebook and Google. And while big, Microsoft no longer looms as the threatening bully it was in the personal computer era. The company is a healthy No. 2 in markets like cloud computing (behind Amazon) and video games (behind Sony) rather than a dominant No. 1. "Microsoft can afford to be more self righteous on some of those social issues because of its business model," said David B. Yoffie, a professor at the Harvard Business School. But Microsoft has also undergone a corporate personality change over the years, becoming more outward looking and seeking the views of policymakers, critics and competitors. That shift has been guided by Brad Smith, Microsoft's president, diplomat in residence and emissary to the outside world. His work has been endorsed and his role enlarged under Satya Nadella, who became chief executive in 2014 and led a resurgence in the company's fortunes. In a new book, Mr. Smith makes the case for a new relationship between the tech sector and government closer cooperation and challenges for each side. "When your technology changes the world," he writes, "you bear a responsibility to help address the world that you have helped create." And governments, he writes, "need to move faster and start to catch up with the pace of technology." In a lengthy interview, Mr. Smith talked about the lessons he had learned from Microsoft's past battles and what he saw as the future of tech policymaking arguing for closer cooperation between the tech sector and the government. It's a theme echoed in the book, "Tools and Weapons: The Promise and the Peril of the Digital Age," which he wrote with Carol Ann Browne, a member of Microsoft's communications staff. Mr. Smith, 60, was at Microsoft during the company's antitrust conflict in the 1990s, but he did not direct the legal strategy. Microsoft lost the suit filed by the Justice Department and 20 states, narrowly avoided being broken up and then settled the case with the Bush administration in 2001. Mr. Smith, who became general counsel in 2002, then served as Microsoft's global peacemaker, settling the follow on cases with companies and governments. "And once you're in the cross hairs, it is hard to get out," Mr. Smith said. The natural tendency for the young tech powers is to fight. "They didn't get to where they are by compromising," Mr. Smith said. "They got to where they are because they stuck to their guns. And so they tend to think they're right and the government is wrong." That mentality is especially true for immensely successful and wealthy founders. The Microsoft co founder Bill Gates, according to Mr. Smith, "learned that life actually does require compromise and governments actually are stronger than companies," if only after a bruising confrontation. Mr. Gates, who wrote the foreword in Mr. Smith's book, recalled that for years he was proud of how little time he spent talking to people in government. "As I learned the hard way in the antitrust suit," he wrote, "that was not a wise position to take." At Microsoft, Mr. Smith pushed for the new path. Horacio Gutierrez, a former senior Microsoft lawyer, who is now the general counsel of Spotify, said, "We went from dealing with governments in a reactive, defensive way to reaching out and being proactive." As Mr. Smith was cleaning up Microsoft's legacy of legal troubles, the tech industry was moving on. The personal computer was no longer the center of gravity, displaced by smartphones, internet search, social networks and cloud computing. "What you saw at Microsoft was acknowledging reality and a response to changed circumstances," said A. Douglas Melamed, a professor at Stanford Law School. Microsoft is not in a spotlight of criticism today, he said, "largely because the company is not dominant in visible ways as it used to be." Under Mr. Nadella, Microsoft has fully embraced the cloud, including offering its lucrative Office productivity software as a cloud service. While Mr. Nadella was transforming the business, Mr. Smith increasingly became Microsoft's envoy to the world on policy matters. In 2015, he was named the company's president as well as chief legal officer. Mr. Smith, whose first stint at Microsoft was a posting in Paris, is a globalist on tech policy. He has called for a Digital Geneva Convention, new rules to protect the public from the dangers of digital warfare, just as governments pledged in 1949 to protect civilians in times of war waged with bombs and bullets. In 2018, Mr. Smith played a leading role in marshaling support for the Paris Call for international norms of behavior on the internet, which was endorsed by dozens of nations, and hundreds of companies and public interest groups. And this year, he did the same for the Christchurch Call to curb terrorist and extremist content online. While these initiatives lack the force of law, Mr. Smith said they could start global conversations that shaped policy. After the terrorist attack at two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, in which an Australian gunman killed 51 people and video of the carnage spread rapidly on social media, Australia enacted legislation that holds social networks responsible if they do not remove violent video quickly enough. Mr. Smith pointed to the Australian move and similar proposals in Britain, France and Germany as evidence that a wave of technology regulation can move quickly. Even states can set policy. Microsoft, for example, is supporting a proposed law in Washington State on facial recognition technology. The legislation would require organizations deploying facial recognition to clearly tell people how they are using it. Law enforcement could not use the technology for ongoing surveillance of someone without a warrant. And companies that sell facial recognition software would have to make their code available for testing to check for racial and gender bias a crucial weakness if the software is trained on data sets with too few images of women or people of color. The American Civil Liberties Union opposes the Microsoft supported proposal, calling for tighter restrictions and a ban on facial recognition until it can be shown to be biasproof. But the biggest impact on Microsoft's policy posture is Europe. The Continent may not be leading the way in high tech innovation, but it is the pacesetter in tech policy. Mr. Smith is a fan. He calls Europe's General Data Protection Regulation "a Magna Carta for data." The law, which took effect last year, lets people request their online data and restricts how businesses obtain and handle information. At another point, Mr. Smith said Europe is "the world's best hope for privacy's future." In America, there have been activist states on privacy, like California, but the political gridlock in Washington has held back a national policy. "That means the decisions that impact Americans," Mr. Smith said, "are going to be made in Brussels and interpreted in Berlin, because those are the two places that have the most impact." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Technology |
In 1975, in the dining room of her East 72nd Street townhouse, Adela Holzer was interviewed by a reporter for The New York Times, who later declared her "Broadway's hottest producer." The same year, People magazine described her as "a strong willed 41 year old Spanish born redhead" (the age was quite a bit off) who "has what it takes money, taste and, perhaps most important, a willingness to back new plays to the hilt, take a bath and still try again." The theater world was smitten. At a time when almost all producers were men, Ms. Holzer, a shipping magnate's glamorous, self possessed European wife, had two hits on Broadway: "All Over Town," a farce by Murray Schisgal about a psychiatrist, directed by Dustin Hoffman, and "The Ritz," Terrence McNally's bathhouse comedy, which brought Rita Moreno a Tony Award. Ms. Holzer was also a producer of the Royal Shakespeare Company's latest import, "Sherlock Holmes." Determined and confident about working only on worthy productions, she told The Times, "I have three college degrees, and I know if something is good." Two years later, Ms. Holzer was bankrupt. Two years after that, she was in prison, convicted of seven counts of grand larceny. Over the next three decades, she spent a total of 14 years behind bars for schemes that involved European land deals, oil wells, international car dealerships, immigration scams and an imaginary marriage to a Rockefeller. Ms. Holzer died on Sept. 1 in Boca Raton, Fla. She was somewhere between 90 and 95. The death, which was not reported at the time, was confirmed this week by her son Carlos Castresana, with whom she had lived in a suburb of Fort Lauderdale. The Wall Street Journal once compared Ms. Holzer to Jay Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald's fictional social climber mysterious, elegant and doomed. In 1979, a writer for The Washington Post had another author in mind. In the same article, Mark Tepper, who prosecuted Ms. Holzer's 1979 case as an assistant New York attorney general, called her "one of the cleverest and most successful white collar criminals in the history of this state." Ms. Holzer's theater career began when she invested in the Broadway production of "Hair," the blazingly original counterculture musical that ran for four years after its move from an Off Broadway theater in 1968. Magazine and newspaper articles recounted her good fortune, turning a 57,000 investment into more than 2 million. New York magazine later reported that she had put in only about 7,500 and earned 115,000 or so. Whatever the exact numbers were, Ms. Holzer was inspired to do more theatrical investing. Her next shows included hits like "Lenny" and "Sleuth." But she wanted to be a hands on producer, not just a signer of checks. One of her first efforts, "Dude," a 1972 musical by two of the creators of "Hair," bombed with a vengeance, closing after 16 performances. But she persisted. In 1975, she was riding high. Then she wasn't. By the next spring, she had produced three new Broadway flops: The Scott Joplin opera "Treemonisha" held on for almost two months, but both "Truckload" and "Me Jack, You Jill" closed in previews. She followed those with "Something Old, Something New," starring Hans Conried and the Yiddish theater star Molly Picon; it closed on opening night, Jan. 1, 1977. At that point, theater was the least of Ms. Holzer's problems. She had declared bankruptcy seven weeks earlier. She had been arrested on fraud charges over the summer and was free on 50,000 bail, awaiting the first of the three criminal trials that would shape the rest of her life. The indictment, which finally came in 1979, was for a classic Ponzi scheme: paying her earliest victims "profits," which were really just funds from her next group of investors, and so on. One of those early investors was Jeffrey Picower, who was later implicated in the Bernie Madoff scandal, a much larger Ponzi scheme. Ms. Holzer was offering shares not in theater productions but in a Toyota dealership in Indonesia and real estate in Spain. At the time, she insisted that she could have cleared things up if she had been allowed to travel to Indonesia. (Her passport had been taken away.) Ms. Holzer served two years (1981 83) in state prison. Her lawyer was Roy Cohn. In the late 1980s, she attempted a comeback with "Senator Joe," a pop opera about Joseph McCarthy. (Mr. Cohn had been his right hand man in pursuing suspected Communists in government.) But the show never opened, partly because of financial problems. She was soon arrested again, on grand larceny charges. It was revealed that she had told numerous associates that their investments in oil and mineral deals had been guaranteed by the banker David Rockefeller, to whom she claimed to be secretly married. That lie was bolstered by at least one fake marriage license and by a framed silver photo of him at her bedside. It was later reported that the photo had been clipped from a magazine. When detectives approached her on East 43rd Street to make the arrest, she ran and had to be caught and pinned on a car hood to be handcuffed. She thought the three detectives were muggers, she said later. As part of a plea deal, she acknowledged guilt on one count of larceny and was sentenced to four to eight years. She served four (1990 94). Things had changed in 2001, when she was arrested yet again, this time charged with 39 counts of fraud. At the time, she was using a different surname, Rosian she was living with a man named Vladimir Rosian on the Upper West Side and the stakes were much lower. She had been charging immigrants 2,000 to 2,700 each, falsely telling them that she had influence on immigration legislation and could help them gain permanent resident status. This time she was sentenced to nine to 18 years. When she was released in June 2010, she was in her 80s. She was born Adela Sanchez (her middle name may have been Maria; she used it in more than one alias) in Madrid on Dec. 14 possibly in 1928, although her death certificate said 1923. As New York magazine reported in 1989, her father, Felipe, was an engineer, not a rich industrialist, as she had told her new American friends. Her mother, Beatriz, was not a member of the Guinness brewing family, as Ms. Holzer had claimed. Ms. Holzer always said that she arrived in the United States in 1954, alone and pregnant, escaping an early marriage, and that was true. Even the details, about having arrived on the Cunard liner Queen Elizabeth and traveling first class, are documented. (According to Cunard's records, she was born in 1926.) The part she didn't mention was that the marriage to Juan Castresana, an insurance company executive had already lasted nine years, and that she was leaving her first three sons behind. The story she told journalists about her early years in New York was that she had worked as an interpreter at the United Nations and taught Spanish literature at Columbia University, but no records of those jobs could be found. She later began dabbling in commodities or so she said. In 1955, according to The Washington Post, she was charged with grand larceny for forging a Spanish notary stamp on a 3,000 note. In 1963, according to Vanity Fair, she was arrested after offering sex to an undercover police officer for 25. The charges were dismissed in both cases. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Theater |
In this week's newsletter, Marc Stein discusses the unusual way the Bucks have prepared for a run to the finals and why the Los Angeles Clippers may meet them there. Want more basketball in your inbox? Sign up for Marc Stein's weekly N.B.A. newsletter here. LAKE BUENA VISTA, Fla. The shift was seemingly slight and went unannounced, but it was undeniably significant for the N.B.A. Throughout the coronavirus pandemic, memos from the league office had been titled "HIATUS." The N.B.A. sent 97 of them to teams from March 12 through July 29, while the season was on an indefinite hold. That finally changed last Thursday, hours before the Utah Jazz beat the New Orleans Pelicans in the first N.B.A. game that had counted since March 11. Memo No. 98 had a new title: "RESTART." Four months is a longer hiatus than the N.B.A. ever envisioned when it began using the term, but there were also times in April and May when many around the league feared that the 2019 20 season would not resume. Friday marks one month since the 22 teams that qualified for the restart began arriving at Walt Disney World, and the steady flow of real games has spawned some optimism throughout the N.B.A. campus. An occasional coronavirus test has been missed, and many teams are spooked by the prospect of false positives sidelining key players, but the league has thus far kept the coronavirus from infiltrating its village. In addition, players are duly seizing the platform of the rebooted season to amplify their social justice messages, while the quality of play has received unexpectedly good reviews after five days of games. "In all honestly, it's better than I was expecting," San Antonio Spurs Coach Gregg Popovich said. Many teams, Popovich said, look "more in rhythm that I ever expected" after such a long layoff. In an interview before the restart, N.B.A. Commissioner Adam Silver told me: "We continue to approach it with humility and recognize that there's a fair amount that's unpredictable. We have a long way to go, but we're learning every day." A few more items from my bubble notebook: Milwaukee's unique approach to the restart got my attention. Upon arrival at Disney World, Milwaukee's coaching staff backed off for the first week and let its players engage in the sort of pickup games commonplace at team practice facilities after Labor Day in a typical year. The idea was to ease into structure. Tempting as it surely was to zoom right into practices after such a long layoff to make up for lost time, I'm told that the Bucks wanted to move cautiously and pace themselves in the belief that, if things go right, they will be in Florida for three months chasing a championship. I was alerted to the Bucks' concept by an admiring rival who found their patience "smart." Time will tell, of course, but my reaction was the same. For decades, Popovich has (unknowingly) been preparing for bubble coaching. As an assistant coach under both Larry Brown (in San Antonio) and Don Nelson (in Golden State), Popovich watched as these coaching giants used baseball style hand signals to call out plays and became a fan. Hand signals have since become a staple of Popovich's playbook to an even larger degree. In a story I did years ago on Popovich's enduring partnership with Tim Duncan, the former Spur Robert Horry said Popovich could have been "a great third base coach." In the bubble, Popovich is coaching games with a mask on, in a nod to warnings from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that people 65 and older are at greater risk for complications from the coronavirus. Popovich, the league's oldest coach at 71, uses his extensive array of signals to overcome the limits on projecting his voice caused by the mask. Patty Mills is as fond of Sixers Coach Brett Brown as he is of Popovich. This Mills tale I was not able to include in Sunday's feature about the San Antonio guard and his emerging activism will explain why: At his first Olympics in 2008, with great pride, Mills hung Australia's Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islands flags from the balcony of his room in Beijing in the Olympic Village. One of the flags was given to him by his uncle Danny Morseu, who had taken it to the 1980 and 1984 Olympics as a member of Australia's team. "My two identities," said Mills, whose mother, Yvonne, is Aboriginal and whose father, Benny, is a Torres Strait Islander. At the 2012 Olympics in London, on a much lower floor, Mills repeated his ritual with the two flags representing Australia's Indigenous populations, only to be ordered by a few Australian Olympic Committee officials to take the flags down. An argument ensued, Mills said, before he turned to Brown, who doubles as Australia's head coach. Mills was distraught after the federation officials ignored pleas from Matt Nielsen, Mills' teammate and Australia's white captain, to let him keep the flags displayed. "Brownie absolutely squashed the whole thing in 10 minutes," Mills said. "Before Brownie and Pop, I never really had support like that from someone of authority to help me educate people on my environment on who I am." I did not make new postseason predictions before the restart. Let me explain. Some of that reluctance admittedly stems from the uncertainty that reigns all over the N.B.A. map after Golden State's five consecutive years representing the Western Conference in the finals. Yet it's also another example of the struggle to mentally connect the restart to the season that was paused so abruptly nearly five months ago. I agreed with the Clippers' Kawhi Leonard when he said recently that "basically it's a new season" after such a long break. But that's only how it feels. Rosters are essentially the same as they were on March 11 unless you're the Nets. The standings were not reset. There isn't much to go off in terms of making new predictions. You ask; I answer. Every week in this space, I'll field three questions posed via email at marcstein newsletter nytimes.com. (Please include your first and last name, as well as the city you're writing in from, and make sure "Corner Three" is in the subject line. Responses may be condensed and lightly edited for clarity.) Q: I know it is very early to ask this, but could Luka Doncic and Kristaps Porzingis (especially Doncic) surpass Dirk Nowitzki's legacy with the Dallas Mavericks if they win a title together? Or has Dirk already established sort of an unreachable apex? Taylan Ozdemir (Istanbul) Stein: Doncic has so quickly emerged as a top 10 player that it makes me reluctant to say any achievements are unattainable. He just turned 21 in February. Yet it seems, given how you worded the question, that you already have a sense of how high the bar is given what Nowitzki means to both Mavericks fans and the city of Dallas. Doncic has plenty of time to surpass the lone championship on Nowitzki's resume, but Dirk's record 21 seasons with a single franchise essentially carry the weight of at least one more ring. Throw in the Mavericks' 1990s laughingstock status that Nowitzki had to overcome, along with the revolutionary impact he had on the power forward position as a European import, and you can see how I reached my oft cited claim that Nowitzki is more popular than any Dallas Cowboy you wish to nominate even in a noted football town. Doncic, in other words, would likely need multiple titles and Most Valuable Player Awards to usurp all that. He also just might be good enough to do so, but I don't get the sense that he is expending a lot of mental energy thinking about chasing Nowitzki's legacy. Stein: In a reference to Jimmy Butler's attempt on Saturday to wear a jersey without a name, jcolton31 tweeted the famed picture of Michael Jordan from Valentine's Day in 1990 that showed His Airness wearing an otherwise blank No. 12 after his No. 23 went missing that day. It's one of the most enduring tales from the Jordan archive, but the circumstances won't help Butler, who, as a statement of equality, tried to wear a jersey with no name or social justice message. Butler, though, was required to switch jerseys before the Heat tipped off or risk ejection because it is against league rules to wear a jersey that has been altered. The league office, on this violation, was unwilling to yield, though Commissioner Adam Silver announced last week that he would not enforce the league's policy requiring "dignified" standing during the national anthem. In Jordan's days, furthermore, teams didn't travel with as many extra jerseys as they do now. On that occasion, Jordan had to wear No. 12 because it was the only extra one the Bulls had on that road trip. As seen Sunday, Miami's bench had a No. 22 with Butler's nameplate affixed to it ready as soon as he was told to remove the No. 22 that was otherwise blank. Jordan, for the record, scored 49 points (on 43 shots) in his lone outing as No. 12. Q: As a fan of both the English Premier League and N.B.A., or soccer and basketball more broadly, I'm wondering if you can envision some form of the soccer's loan system ever being used in the N.B.A.? It might be better suited to Major League Baseball, where a big market American League team could loan a top prospect to a smaller market team in the National League, or vice versa, but I'm curious whether some approximation of the same system is possible in basketball. Alex von Nordheim (Baltimore) Stein: We're on a roll lately with the questions that inject soccer into the basketball discussion. Kudos, Alex. But I'm sorry. No chance. It's not just, as you hypothesized, that the N.B.A. lacks baseball's American League/National League structure. Our sporting culture is just completely different than soccer's, and the loan system, even more so than promotion and relegation, is impossible to imagine in North America's traditional major team sports. Soccer loans are an offshoot of buying and selling the rights to players, both of which are foreign concepts to N.B.A. operations. Soccer clubs also have a number of leagues all over the world, at a variety of levels, to send players out on loan. Where else could N.B.A. teams realistically loan players except to other N.B.A. teams? Such a concept would be fraught with potential conflicts of interest and assorted complications. I feel safe saying you will never see N.B.A. teams engaged in the loan business, buying a player's rights or selling them for a hefty profit like Premier League teams can. This league, remember, has used a salary cap since the 1983 84 season that, at least theoretically, is intended to give all 30 teams a shot at the championship and avoid the sort of parity gulf we usually see between soccer's elite and the chasing masses. The reality, of course, is that North America's major sports leagues have their own chasms between the haves and have nots, just like soccer, but the financial models that govern these worlds remain dramatically different. Giving teams the sort of control that soccer clubs worldwide hold in terms of player rights would be a dramatic concession that the various players' unions on our shores would never allow. T.J. Warren scored 53 points for Indiana on Saturday night, five short of the franchise record. George McGinnis scored 58 points in an overtime win for the Pacers in 1972 when they were in the A.B.A.; Reggie Miller holds the club's N.B.A. record with 57 points. Remember last week when we pined for dunks and dunk stats? League leaders in dunks, amazingly, have only been tracked for the past 23 seasons. Utah's Rudy Gobert set the league's single season record last season with 306, but it's obviously a disappointing hole in the records that we can't conclusively say how many dunks Michael Jordan or Dominique Wilkins threw down in any one season in their primes. Houston's James Harden scored 23 points in the first quarter of the Rockets' first game at the N.B.A. restart. It was the 24th time Harden had scored at least 20 points in a quarter, according to Basketball Reference. Harden arrived in Florida needing 68 points to become the highest scoring left handed player in N.B.A. history. It took him just two games to get there and surpass the San Antonio Spurs legend David Robinson's 20,790 career points, as shown in this expansive list from my pals at Stathead. Robinson played 14 seasons in the N.B.A.; Harden is in his 11th season. Hit me up anytime on Twitter ( TheSteinLine) or Facebook ( MarcSteinNBA) or Instagram ( thesteinline). Send any other feedback to marcstein newsletter nytimes.com. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Sports |
After being transferred to a job in Mahwah, N.J., Andrew Mitchell was hoping for a pedestrian friendly neighborhood like the one he had left behind in Annapolis, Md. He found what he was looking for just across the New Jersey state line, in Suffern, N.Y., where he recently moved into a new apartment building close to the commuter rail station and the shopping district. "I wanted a place that had great walkability, where most errands could be accomplished on foot," said Mr. Mitchell, 64, a regional training coordinator for Jaguar Land Rover North America. He now pays about 2,000 a month for a one bedroom at the Sheldon, a 92 unit luxury rental complex. With 11,000 people living in two square miles, the village of Suffern, part of the town of Ramapo in Rockland County, offers a compact downtown and a train commute of around an hour to New York City, as well as access to the New York State Thruway and Interstate 287. Although it is largely residential, the village is also home to Good Samaritan Hospital, Avon's research and development center, the Salvation Army's College for Officer Training and the Tagaste Monastery, which serves a Catholic religious order. One recent challenge for officials has been the shutdown of a Novartis pharmaceutical plant that employed hundreds of workers and was the village's largest taxpayer. Since the shutdown, Suffern's annual tax revenue from the 162 acre property has dropped from a high of 1.1 million to about 329,000, according to the village clerk's office. The plant's new owners are offering leases on office and warehouse space. Beth Toubin, 46, a teacher and single mother of 14 year old twins, moved to Suffern 17 years ago, in part because it was more affordable than Westchester and Bergen counties. She has been happy with Suffern's schools, she said, because of their services "for advanced children and for children with special needs, as well." There are many opportunities for children to participate in sports and other activities, said Ms. Toubin, whose sons play soccer. She also likes the village's diversity: Suffern's population is about 8 percent Asian and 19.6 percent Hispanic, according to census figures. "I think everyone should have that exposure to different cultures," said Ms. Toubin, who teaches in a neighboring school district. Gina Bertolino, 54, grew up in Suffern and lived in Orange County, N.Y., before returning in 2002 because she wanted to raise her sons, now 20 and 21, in the village. "I wanted a place for my kids to be able to jump on their bikes and go downtown," said Ms. Bertolino, who owns Mystic Images Salon on Lafayette Avenue. Her husband, Joseph Bertolino, 61, works in the village as a construction administrator for an architect. Mike Curley, 58, a retired New York City firefighter, owns Curley's Corner, a restaurant and bar on Orange Avenue, and has lived in Suffern since he was 11. Mr. Curley said he appreciates the neighborly spirit, as well as the proximity to the train and highways. As he put it, "Suffern has a small town feel with big city access." Suffern is right on the New York New Jersey border, near Harriman State Park, and about 35 miles northwest of Times Square. Near the shopping district, houses built before World War II line quiet streets. Other neighborhoods have homes built in the postwar period. 21 CLAREMONT LANE A three bedroom, two and a half bathroom house, built in 1965 on 0.41 acres, listed for 450,000. 914 290 5881 Katherine Marks for The New York Times The village has a number of townhouses, condos and co ops, including units in two midcentury garden complexes, Stonegate Homes at Suffern and Bon Aire Park. Debra Durkin, an agent with Better Homes and Gardens Rand Realty in Suffern, said the village attracts many buyers from New York City. Although you're only about an hour from the city, Ms. Durkin said, "you feel like you're up in the country." Home prices range from about 30,000 for a studio co op to around 500,000 for a colonial, with larger, pricier houses in the nearby villages of Airmont and Montebello, according to the Hudson Gateway Multiple Listing Service. 1 YORKSHIRE DRIVE A four bedroom, two and a half bathroom house, built in 1974 on 0.37 acres, listed for 449,000. 845 494 9772 Katherine Marks for The New York Times In the 12 months ending Aug. 1, 73 single family homes sold in the village for an average price of 330,000, compared with 54 sales at an average of 317,000 in the same period a year earlier, Ms. Durkin said, based on figures from the multiple listing service. Sales of condos, co ops and townhouses jumped to 131 in the 12 months ending Aug. 1, up from 58 during the same period the year before. The average price of a condo, co op and townhouse rose to 189,000 from 173,000 during the 12 month period. Suffern's supply of townhouses, condos and co ops makes it more affordable than many other suburban towns, said Jon Paul Molfetta, a Keller Williams Valley Realty agent in nearby Woodcliff Lake, N.J., who is active in the Suffern market. "I think that Suffern townhouses, for what they offer size wise, are the best buy in Rockland County," Mr. Molfetta said. Townhouses of 1,300 to 1,600 square feet (not including basement space) typically sell for 330,000 to 390,000, depending on their condition, he said. 71 WASHINGTON AVENUE A five bedroom, one and a half bathroom house, built in 1900 on 0.33 acres, listed for 399,000. 914 329 1320 Katherine Marks for The New York Times Suffern's downtown area, centered on Lafayette Avenue, offers a number of ethnic restaurants, including Italian, Thai, Afghan and Mexican. The Lafayette Theater, a one screen movie house that opened in 1924, features first run and classic films. Hikers can explore the trails at Harriman State Park. For wine lovers, there is the Torne Valley Vineyards in nearby Hillburn, N.Y. The shopping centers of Paramus, N.J., Nanuet, N.Y., and West Nyack, N.Y., as well as the Woodbury Common outlet center, in Central Valley, N.Y., are all within a 20 minute drive. Small town traditions include summer concerts, a fishing derby and parades for Memorial Day, Halloween, Veterans Day and Christmas. Suffern's library is "a community hub," said Gertrude Szyferblatt, 61, a retired editor who bought a condo in Suffern 32 years ago. Among the library's unconventional programs are a sleepover for teens who complete a summer reading plan and Book a Librarian, a service that allows patrons to reserve one on one time with a staff member. Often, patrons want help setting up tablets and smartphones, said Carol Connell Cannon, the library director. Suffern is on New Jersey Transit's Main Bergen County Line. The trip to Penn Station in New York takes 55 to 80 minutes, with a change at Secaucus Junction. The fare is 14 one way or 376 monthly. Commuters who drive have easy access to Interstate 287, the New York State Thruway, Route 17 and Route 59. The trip can take anywhere from 40 minutes to two hours, depending on traffic. Suffern was founded by John Suffern and incorporated as a village in 1796. Fifteen years earlier, during the Revolutionary War, Jean Baptiste Donatien de Vimeur, Count of Rochambeau, the commander of the French forces in America, camped in Suffern with 5,000 soldiers en route from Newport, R.I., to Virginia. Rochambeau's troops then joined George Washington to fight the British at Yorktown, Va., in the final battle of the Revolution. For weekly email updates on residential real estate news, sign up here. Follow us on Twitter: nytrealestate. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Real Estate |
So did they? Sort of. In both cases, the clothes were good polished, smart, signature but, though Paris is often positioned as a place to raise the creativity game, this was more like maintenance. At Proenza, the designers Lazaro Hernandez and Jack McCollough effectively recreated Manhattan on the Seine via a grimy industrial warehouse space apparently under construction, benches placed atop bags of cement mix, and then sent out an urban warrior collection of swaddling teddy bear coats; skinny tie dye tribal turtlenecks mixed with leather patchwork skirts and big grommet belts; leather and chenille macrame finished in extravagant fringe; and prairie dresses with graphic cutouts at the upper ribs and stomach. Meanwhile, at Rodarte, Kate and Laura Mulleavy just off their first feature film, "Woodshock," as writers directors took a break from the catwalk and instead created a mise en scene in an airy showroom, the better to display their trademark high romance dresses in macaron shades and tiers of pointillist netting (some veiling an underlayer of nude sequins for a suggestion of shine), plus their ode to Santa Cruz sweats, splashed with the tongue in cheek logo "Radarte." The latter is not a typo, but a play on words. Now you get it; now you don't. Or perhaps, in a longish while, you will. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Fashion & Style |
Mark Halperin built an empire as journalism's ultimate political insider, spinning the world of government into dramatic narratives of power and ambition. His best selling books and television appearances made him one of the most prominent and highly paid reporters in the country. That empire began to collapse on Thursday after allegations surfaced that he had sexually harassed multiple women years ago while working as the director of political coverage at ABC News. A report published by CNN late Wednesday included interviews with five unidentified women who described Mr. Halperin making unwanted and aggressive sexual advances toward them. It was the latest instance of harassment claims against a towering figure in American media, and the fallout was swift. MSNBC, where Mr. Halperin was an analyst on the influential show "Morning Joe," said he would no longer serve as a contributor. HBO dropped a planned television adaptation of Mr. Halperin's upcoming book about the 2016 presidential election. And by Thursday evening, his publisher, Penguin Press, said in a statement that it had canceled plans for the book entirely, "in light of the recent news." In a statement, Mr. Halperin denied any nonconsensual contact with the women who spoke to CNN, but he apologized for his behavior with his ABC News colleagues. "During this period, I did pursue relationships with women that I worked with, including some junior to me," Mr. Halperin said through a spokesman. "I now understand from these accounts that my behavior was inappropriate and caused others pain. For that, I am deeply sorry and I apologize. Under the circumstances, I'm going to take a step back from my day to day work while I properly deal with this situation." Jeff Bezos gives 100 million to the Obama Foundation. Stocks rise after President Biden says Jerome Powell will stay atop the Fed. Mr. Halperin left ABC News 10 years ago, and a network spokesman said on Thursday that no complaints had been filed about him during his tenure. The speed with which Mr. Halperin lost major television and book projects his account of the 2016 election was among the most anticipated publishing releases of next year reflected a growing national discussion about the misbehavior of powerful men. Mr. Halperin's role as a chronicler of the race between Hillary Clinton and Donald J. Trump also put him at the center of an election that was defined by intense debates over gender, power, and the consequences of sexual harassment. Like the movie mogul Harvey Weinstein and the Fox News anchor Bill O'Reilly who were both forced from powerful perches this year by harassment scandals Mr. Halperin was a gatekeeper in his industry, whose favor could mint careers and bring credibility to politicians, both current and aspiring. His pioneering newsletter "The Note," a political tipsheet that he started at ABC News, established him as an influential figure in the power circles of Washington and New York; who he quoted, and what stories he cited, mattered. But it was his 2010 book "Game Change," written with John Heilemann, that cemented the Halperin style. A juicy, melodramatic account of the 2008 presidential race, the book was adapted into an Emmy Award winning HBO movie starring Ed Harris and Julianne Moore. The book's success and the authors' ability to infuse politics with reality show like drama led to contracts with Bloomberg News said to be in the 1 million range. The show Mr. Halperin and Mr. Heilemann developed for Bloomberg, "With All Due Respect," was a dishy and sometimes whimsical political talk show that failed to attract a wide viewership; it ended after Mr. Trump's victory. With Mr. Heilemann, Mr. Halperin also developed a political documentary series for Showtime called "The Circus," which covered the 2016 campaign in real time. On Thursday, Showtime said it had no record of allegations of untoward behavior by Mr. Halperin during his time on the series. The network said it would "evaluate all options" before signing on to another season of the show. A spokesman for Mr. Heilemann said on Thursday that he had no comment about the allegations against Mr. Halperin. MSNBC, in a statement, said that the allegations reported by CNN were "very troubling" and that Mr. Halperin would leave his role at the network "until the questions around his past conduct are fully understood." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Media |
Medicare, the federal program that insures 55 million older and disabled Americans, announced plans on Wednesday to reimburse doctors for conversations with patients about whether and how they would want to be kept alive if they became too sick to speak for themselves. The proposal would settle a debate that raged before the passage of the Affordable Care Act, when Sarah Palin labeled a similar plan as tantamount to setting up "death panels" that could cut off care for the sick. The new plan is expected to be approved and to take effect in January, although it will be open to public comment for 60 days. Medicare's plan comes as many patients, families and health providers are pushing to give people greater say about how they die whether that means trying every possible medical option to stay alive or discontinuing life support for those who do not want to be sustained by ventilators and feeding tubes. "We think that today's proposal supports individuals and families who wish to have the opportunity to discuss advance care planning with their physician and care team," said Dr. Patrick Conway, the chief medical officer for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid, which administers Medicare. "We think those discussions are an important part of patient and family centered care." Dr. Conway said a final decision on the proposal would be made by Nov. 1. The plan would allow qualified professionals like nurse practitioners and physician assistants, as well as doctors, to be reimbursed for face to face meetings with a patient and any relatives or caregivers the patient wants to include. Dr. Conway said the proposal did not limit the number of conversations reimbursed. "The reality is these conversations, their length can vary based on patients' needs," he said. "Sometimes, they're short conversations the person has thought about it. Sometimes, they're a much longer conversation. Sometimes, they're a series of conversations." Dr. Diane Meier, a member of the national panel and the director of the Center to Advance Palliative Care. Major medical organizations endorsed Medicare's proposal. The National Right to Life Committee opposed it on grounds that it could lead to patients' being pressured to forgo treatment. The reimbursement rate paid under the proposal and other details will be determined after public comments are received, Dr. Conway said. People covered by Medicare account for about 80 percent of deaths each year. Because Medicare often sets the standard for private insurers as well, the new policy would prompt many more doctors to engage patients in such discussions about their preferences. Some private health insurance companies have recently begun covering such advance care planning conversations, and more are likely to do so once Medicare formally adopts its new rules. Efforts to support end of life planning were derailed in 2009 during the debate over the Affordable Care Act. The next year, Medicare decided through its regulatory powers to allow coverage for "voluntary advance care planning" in annual wellness visits. But soon after, the Obama administration capitulated to political pressure and rescinded that part of the regulation. As a big part of the American population ages, and more people live longer with grave illnesses, a growing number of people want to be able to talk over options with their doctors deciding, for example, whether they want to die at home or in the hospital, or under what circumstances they would want life sustaining treatment. Last September, a national nonpartisan panel of medical, legal and religious leaders issued a far reaching report saying that the country's system for dealing with end of life care was seriously flawed and should be overhauled. Among its recommendations was that insurers reimburse health providers for advance care planning conversations. Filling out advance directives can help, and some states have created central databases of these forms so they are easier for a patient's doctor or specialist to find in moments of crisis. But end of life experts, and the members of the national panel, said simply checking boxes on a form was of limited value because many patients needed several conversations to consider their options and to talk them over with their families. "It's a huge step forward," said Dr. Diane Meier, a member of the national panel and the director of the Center to Advance Palliative Care. "I think it's great news that Medicare, the major payer for health care in the U.S., is now formally recognizing that advance care planning is worthy of its attention and reimbursement and that in fact is a way to restore power and control to patients." But, she said, "It's not enough to pay for it. You have to make sure people know what they're doing and are well trained." Dr. Meier said that in the final policy, Medicare should identify and require documentation of specific components of end of life discussions. "What you don't want to have is a check box," she said. " 'Yes I had a conversation I'm billing for it,' should not be enough." Burke Balch, the director of the National Right to Life Committee's Powell Center for Medical Ethics, said his organization objected to Medicare's plan under current circumstances. "We feel there is pervasive bias against treatment that is occurring in advance care planning that involves nudging individuals to reject lifesaving medical treatment," he said. He said such pressure on patients was "motivated in large part by a desire to cut health care costs." Mr. Balch said his organization was trying to find a congressional sponsor for a bill that would instead direct Medicare to produce materials about end of life decisions that reflect a range of views, including those "concerned with protecting people's right to treatment." In the rural upstate New York community of Dundee, Dr. Joseph Hinterberger, a family physician who has been conducting end of life discussions with his patients at no cost, took a different view. He praised several aspects of the plan and suggested also covering social workers and other trained providers. "I think what it will mostly do is decrease confusion at the end of life," he said. "It will potentially decrease unnecessary use of resources because it will be very clear what the patient did and did not want. And it should also make it easier for physicians and other caregivers to make decisions because they can say, 'We all know what Mildred's wishes were. We shall not tread upon them.' " | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Health |
Millions of years before humans set foot in the Americas, a rush of alien animals began arriving in South America. As the Isthmus of Panama came up from the waves, bridging the North and South American continents, llamas, raccoons, wolves, bears and many other species headed south. At the same time, the ancestors of armadillos, possums and porcupines headed north. Paleontologists call the event the Great American Interchange. But they've long been puzzled by one aspect of it: Why did the majority of mammal immigrants go south, rather than the other way around? What happened to the southern mammals? After a detailed analysis of fossil data from both continents, a group of researchers think they have an answer: a nasty extinction event struck South American mammals during the interchange, leaving fewer of them available to head north. Their research was published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Science |
With its pilots on strike for the first time, British Airways canceled almost all of its flights on Monday, affecting some 195,000 people slated to travel on Monday and Tuesday. The 48 hour strike comes during a heated pay dispute between the airline and its pilots union, and is the first in the union's 100 year history. British Airways operates up to 850 flights a day, with the majority in the United Kingdom. Its hub, London's Heathrow Airport, will be most affected. For nearly a year, British pilots have been negotiating with the airline for higher pay, but negotiations have been at a standstill. "We have been in negotiations about this particular issue since November last year," a spokeswoman for the union said in an email to The Times. The British Airline Pilots Association (Balpa) is seeking higher salaries for pilots, and has said that pilots "deserve a small fraction of that profit via, for instance, a profit share scheme." "British Airways needs to wake up and realize its pilots are determined to be heard," said Brian Strutton, the general secretary for Balpa, in a statement on Sunday. Pilots have taken pay cuts in the past "to help the company through hard times," Mr. Strutton said. "Now B.A. is making billions of pounds of profit, its pilots have made a fair, reasonable and affordable claim for pay and benefits." "But the company's leaders, who themselves are paid huge salaries and have generous benefits packages, won't listen, are refusing to negotiate and are putting profits before the needs of passengers and staff," Mr. Strutton said. The pilots have another strike scheduled for Sept. 27. What is the airline saying? British Airways said that "after many months of trying to resolve the pay dispute" it was sorry things had "come to this." The airline also said that it is "ready and willing to return to talks" with Balpa. In August, after Balpa said it would strike this month, the airline notified scores of travelers that their flights would be canceled, but then said the flights were not, in fact, canceled, resulting in 38,000 phone calls from furious travelers to the airline in 24 hours. I have a British Airways flight on Monday or Tuesday. What should I do? British Airways is asking people who were supposed to travel on Monday and Tuesday not to go to the airport. Travelers can rebook flights or get a refund on the airline's "manage my booking" page. Travelers can also call the airline for assistance with rescheduling or canceling flights for no penalty. If you booked a flight on British Airways through a travel agent, the airline advises getting in touch with your agent. People traveling to or from the European Union may be entitled to up to 700 in compensation, regardless of whether the airline canceled the flight and refunds the ticket or provided a replacement flight to the original destination, according to AirHelp, an organization that helps passengers file compensation claims. "Airlines will often reject passengers' claims for compensation by arguing that strikes are beyond the airline's control and that airlines are thus not responsible for paying for compensation," according to AirHelp, but "a flight disruption caused by airline staff strike is definitely eligible despite what the airline states." The airline said it would be in touch with people scheduled to travel on Sept. 27, the expected date for the next strike, if their flight is affected by the strike. 52 PLACES AND MUCH, MUCH MORE Follow our 52 Places traveler, Sebastian Modak, on Instagram as he travels the world, and discover more Travel coverage by following us on Twitter and Facebook. And sign up for our Travel Dispatch newsletter: Each week you'll receive tips on traveling smarter, stories on hot destinations and access to photos from all over the world. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Travel |
SOFIA, Bulgaria When a crowd of young Bulgarians thronged the inaugural Balkan Beats Festival on the outskirts of Sofia, the capital, it was the first time the host facility had accommodated such a large crowd in decades. The building, a former aquatics arena, had been forced to shut down just three years after hosting the 1985 European Swimming Championships, and had sat largely unused ever since. But it has found a new life in recent years, not just for hosting the music festival, but for use as office space and as storage space. And as Sofia's culture and music scene has emerged, catering to a generation of well traveled young Bulgarians who are hungry for art and entertainment, it has provided further opportunities. "Sofia needs more underground venues like this one." The arena is one of several communist era buildings in Bulgaria repurposed to accommodate cultural events or provide a home to emerging artists. The trend comes as economic growth in the country, long one of the European Union's poorest, is outpacing the bloc's average. Incomes are rising, leaving many Bulgarians with additional spending power, money they can spend on events like the Balkan Beats Festival. Sports Club Slavia, which owned the arena, had rented it to Nu Boyana Film Studios, an American owned company that used the rundown building as an office and movie set. The repurposed pool was even featured in Hollywood films like "The Expendables 3." Still, Nikolay Valkov, a native of Sofia, was not even aware of the swimming arena when he set about organizing the Balkan Beats Festival. Mr. Valkov, 24, the founder of Swift Gap Events, a small Sofia based events management company, chanced upon it while scouting performance spaces last fall. "From the outside, this looks like just another communist era building," Mr. Valkov said. "But when I entered inside, I was like, Wow, we need to organize an event here." By May, the facility was the site of the Balkan Beats Festival, which featured an eclectic array of music, from Berlin based D.J.s to a band that fused jazz with Bulgarian folk music. Hundreds of people danced in the empty pool, while acts emerged through smoke to take the stage as blue, red and purple lights brightened up the arena. Mr. Valkov has since called the site the "Underpool Arena." Several other arenas in Sofia are trying to undergo similar transformations from communist era afterthoughts to trendy present day cultural sites. Half of a former wholesale food market, for example, is now home to a collective of young artists. When the market opened in 1985, cargo trains would unload tons of food supplies into its yard. Once big supermarket chains entered the country, however, the market gradually lost relevance. Now, some companies use the ground floor as a storage depot, but the rest of the seven story building had been empty for years. It was taken over in 2014 by Culture Lab, which rented the vast area to house a diverse array of artists, creative workshops, galleries and Sofia's only indoor skate park. Visitors to the building are greeted by a giant white sign reading "Keep calm and rule the world" painted in English on the scarlet red iron doors. Nineteen groups of artists now occupy the space, including Chudomir Dragnev and his metalworks studio, Looneytools. There are hardly any bare surfaces in Mr. Dragnev's workshop. Metallurgical instruments and communist era memorabilia cover the walls, while the studio is filled with giant welding equipment, discarded mechanical parts, scattered carcasses of typewriters and television sets, and piles of scrap metal. Flat surfaces are adorned with metal sculptures of insects, trains, ships, stylized demons and robotlike figures. "It's hard to make a living from artwork anywhere in the world, but in Bulgaria, it's especially difficult," Mr. Dragnev said. "It's great to have a space like this where a lot of different arts, crafts and talents can coexist together." On another floor, skateboarding enthusiasts and volunteers commandeered an indoor skate park, including ramps and rails, for their own skating use. Members of the group, FiveHigh, had been unable to use skateboards outdoors in Bulgaria's bitterly cold winter, so they built the skate park at the end of 2015. "It wouldn't have been the same if we built it in a new, shiny building," said Viktor Berger, a 31 year old architect and one of FiveHigh's founders. The city's own authorities are now getting in on the act. Officials plan to renovate a derelict, windowless, graffiti covered building that used to house the heating system for Bulgaria's National Palace of Culture, itself a communist era building, albeit one that is still used as intended: to host concerts, dance performances and conferences. Urban planners estimate that it will cost several million lev to overhaul the empty building and turn it into a creative space for artists, musicians and performers. They hope to open the new facility by 2020, but while the authorities have chosen a winning design, no work has yet begun. "This is part of our vision for the cultural development of the capital," said Todor Chobanov, Sofia's deputy mayor in charge of culture. "We believe that artists should be the ones steering the cultural life of Sofia, not the authorities." But despite the positive messages and the relative success of the repurposed swimming pool and wholesale market, the future of such reimagined sites is in doubt. The building that houses Culture Lab is owned by a private company that has been trying unsuccessfully to sell it. Artists and performers at the site are aware that if a deal is reached, they may well be told to leave. And even though hundreds attended the Balkan Beats Festival, Mr. Valkov's company incurred a loss on the event. He is hopeful, though, that a white knight could come in and take over the pool, turning it into a more permanent cultural fixture. "We would like to find an investor who would rent the place long term and develop it," he said, "as a permanent underground haunt." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Real Estate |
ST. PETERSBURG, Russia A renowned Russian director was released on Monday by a court in Moscow after nearly 20 months of house arrest, in a financial fraud case that is widely seen by Russia's intelligentsia as a test for artistic freedom. Kirill Serebrennikov, one of Russia's leading stage and film directors, had been imprisoned in his apartment since August, 2017, after Russian investigators accused him of conspiring with three of his colleagues to embezzle 133 million rubles, or around 2 million, of government funds allocated to a theater festival. Mr. Serebrennikov and his three co defendants have pleaded not guilty. Speaking on Monday to reporters outside the court, which released him on bail, Mr. Serebrennikov thanked his supporters and added, "This is not over yet." If convicted, he could face up to 10 years in prison. "We need to continue and prove our complete innocence in court," he said, adding that he would return as soon as possible to work at the Gogol Center, a state run theater where he is the artistic director. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Theater |
MILAN When models start quoting Baudrillard, the creative director at Gucci name checks Walter Benjamin and Miuccia Prada makes prints depicting Freud in a wrestling match, you know the world is upside down. "He talks about the rhizomatic growth," the French model Felix Gesnouin was saying here on Monday. He was probably referring to Deleuze and Guattari's famously influential writing on multiplicities. This was backstage at Canali, where a long line of smooth skinned Caucasian men had lined up for some last minute primping. Fingering the lapel of a sleek black pony skin motorcycle jacket worn by Clement Chabernaud, the label's proprietor, Elisabetta Canali, said, "Color can be very scaring." Looking around it seemed there was almost no color at all. There was much to baffle a viewer in the six days between the trade fair Pitti Uomo in Florence and the wind down of Milan Fashion Week, where designers were showing their fall 2016 looks. It was a period during which one designer (Thom Browne at Moncler Gamme Bleu) showed trench coats, cardigans, Chesterfields, sports coats and puffers in Alpine camouflage patterns on models with faces hidden unnervingly behind masks of the kind worn by snipers; when another (Italo Zucchelli at Calvin Klein) referenced his fascination with alchemy to explain a highly eroticized collection built around bonded foil colored silver and gold; when Kean Etro at Etro evoked the fragility of nature while handing out lavish color catalogs that whole forests were felled to produce; and when Alessandro Michele at Gucci quoted the Russian anarchist Mikhail Bakunin by way of elucidating how he had come up with his latest floral pajamas for daytime men's wear. "An assemblage of fragments," is how Mr. Michele's show notes explained his current collection and thinking process. So many shows are. At Dsquared2, the designers Dean and Dan Caten produced a collection they characterized as "mangapunk," an unlikely though bold mash up of elements like patterns from Japanese cult comics and antique kimonos; kilts and the heavy soled shoes they are worn with; pleated skirts and skorts and aprons that float behind the wearer. What says a man can't wear a train? The cool waxed indigo denim trousers she showed were wide legged. The pea coats looked hefty enough to stand up to the elements or the lack of a wearer. The coats and jackets had semidetached cuffs and collars, as if created by an indecisive tailor. There were sailor caps and smocks with twining botanical prints. There were clerical looking overcoats like those the Vatican elite order from the papal tailor Ditta Annibale Gammarelli. There were sculptural capes reminiscent of the admiral's boat cloak Queen Elizabeth II wore in her famous Beaton portrait. There were women, too. They wore women's clothes. That it all hung together owed to Ms. Prada's considerable skills as a cultural impresario. Occasionally Ms. Prada has wondered aloud about what she might have done had she not gone into the family business. One likely answer is that she would have been Robert Wilson. Giorgio Armani is only himself, never referencing other designers. If his are seldom shows you go to looking for innovation, that is because he made his important innovation the soft suit 35 years ago and thus considers his place in fashion history secure. If much of what he has done since feels like theme and variation, it is because he is the grammarian of fashion, in love with the grammar he helped create, content to ring regular changes on the fricative. His show notes were titled "Disconnected Thoughts," and wistfully referenced a long life journey, one whose themes have remained consistent whatever else is going on in the world. That is to say, his shapes will always be soft and body hugging or else structured and volumetric, and he will express himself mostly through the details: a subtle tape applied in rectangular patterns to the sportswear at Emporio Armani; a somber palette of deep blue evoking the nocturnal Mediterranean for the core Armani collection; unapologetic deployment of fur; and sweatpants cuffs on the trousers of evening clothes. The sweatpants cuffs seemed jarring until one remembered the tuxedo is in itself a form of casual wear. Before it came along, most evening coats had tails. There is a moment in the 2007 documentary "Marc Jacobs Louis Vuitton" in which the designer explains how, after his first big success designing an "it" bag, Bernard Arnault, the head of LVMH, instructed him to show the same bag every season. Mr. Jacobs had the unhappy task of explaining to the big boss that that's not how fashion works. The scene came to mind when models at the Gucci show sloped down the runway wearing the backless fur lined shoes the designer Alessandro Michele showed in his debut for the label; they succeeded so well, stores couldn't keep them in stock. Mr. Michele is not afraid of a reprise, of wearing the same thing twice or showing it. In his vision of a revamped Gucci, elements that seemed radical in the way they appeared to flout gender binaries became the new normal once the eye had time to adjust. The transgender model Hari Nef, a Michele favorite, put it best when she remarked somewhere that fashion's current preoccupation with gender fluidity should not be taken as a sign of a radical new politics. "Designers are presenting masculinity as an option for women, and vice versa," she said. "That's not ontology, that's aesthetics." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Fashion & Style |
Do world class swimmers' hearts function differently than the hearts of elite runners? A new study finds that the answer may be yes, and the differences, although slight, could be telling and consequential, even for those of us who swim or run at a much less lofty level. Cardiologists and exercise scientists already know that regular exercise changes the look and workings of the human heart. The left ventricle, in particular, alters with exercise. This chamber of the heart receives oxygen rich blood from the lungs and pumps it out to the rest of the body, using a rather strenuous twisting and unspooling motion, as if the ventricle were a sponge being wrung out before springing back into shape. Exercise, especially aerobic exercise, requires that considerable oxygen be delivered to working muscles, placing high demands on the left ventricle. In response, this part of the heart in athletes typically becomes larger and stronger than in sedentary people and functions more efficiently, filling with blood a little earlier and more fully and untwisting with each heartbeat a bit more rapidly, allowing the heart to pump more blood more quickly. While almost any exercise can prompt remodeling of the left ventricle over time, different types of exercise often produce subtly different effects. A 2015 study found, for instance, that competitive rowers, whose sport combines endurance and power, had greater muscle mass in their left ventricles than runners, making their hearts strong but potentially less nimble during the twisting that pumps blood to muscles. These past studies compared the cardiac effects of land based activities, though, with an emphasis on running. Few have examined swimming, even though it is not only a popular exercise but unique. Swimmers, unlike runners, lie prone, in buoyant water and hold their breaths, all of which could affect cardiac demands and how the heart responds and remakes itself. So, for the new study, which was published in November in Frontiers in Physiology, researchers at the University of Guelph in Canada and other institutions set out to map the structure and function of elite swimmers' and runners' hearts. The researchers focused on world class performers because those athletes would have been running or swimming strenuously for years, presumably exaggerating any differential effects of their training, the researchers reasoned. Eventually they recruited 16 national team runners and another 16 comparable swimmers, male and female, some of them sprinters and others distance specialists. They asked the athletes to visit the exercise lab after not exercising for 12 hours and then, when on site, to lie quietly. They checked heart rates and blood pressures and finally examined the athletes' hearts with echocardiograms, which show both the structure and functioning of the organ. It turned out, to no one's surprise, that the athletes, whether runners or swimmers, enjoyed enviable heart health. Their heart rates hovered around 50 beats per minute, with the runners' rates slightly lower than the swimmers'. But all of the athletes' heart rates were much lower than is typical for sedentary people, signifying that their hearts were robust. The athletes also had relatively large, efficient left ventricles, their echocardiograms showed. But there were interesting if small differences between the swimmers and runners, the researchers found. While all of the athletes' left ventricles filled with blood earlier than average and untwisted more quickly during each heartbeat, those desirable changes were amplified in the runners. Their ventricles filled even earlier and untwisted more emphatically than the swimmers' hearts did. In theory, those differences should allow blood to move from and back to the runners' hearts more rapidly than would happen inside the swimmers'. But these differences do not necessarily show that the runners' hearts worked better than the swimmers', says Jamie Burr, a professor at the University of Guelph and director of its human performance lab, who conducted the new study with the lead author, Katharine Currie, and others. Since swimmers exercise in a horizontal position, he says, their hearts do not have to fight gravity to get blood back to the heart, unlike in upright runners. Posture does some of the work for swimmers, and so their hearts reshape themselves only as much as needed for the demands of their sport. The findings underscore how exquisitely sensitive our bodies are to different types of exercise, Dr. Burr says. They also might provide a reason for swimmers sometimes to consider logging miles on the road, he says, to intensify the remodeling of their hearts. Of course, the athletes here were tested while resting, not competing, he says, and it is not clear whether any variations in their ventricles would be meaningful during races. The study also was cross sectional, meaning it looked at the athletes only once. They might have been born with unusual cardiac structures that somehow allowed them to excel at their sports, instead of the sports changing their hearts. Dr. Burr, however, doubts that. Exercise almost certainly remakes our hearts, he says, and he hopes future experiments can tell us more about how each activity affects us and which might be best for different people. But even now, he says, "an important message is that all of the athletes showed better function than a normal person off the street, which supports the message that exercise is good for hearts." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Well |
Haiti is a fixture in my mind, as permanent as memories of high school graduation or the weekend I first met my wife. I lived there twice as an American diplomat for a total of four years since 2000, but its hold on me is not a function of time. Of all the countries I lived and worked in, Haiti stood out as the most beautiful, the most colorful and the poorest. It melds French, African and Caribbean cultures into something truly unique, less than two hours from Miami. Yet it also resists easy definition. It is an open, free place filled with secrets. Today there are conflicting signs about where Haiti is going. The U.N. Security Council decided recently to close down the peacekeeping mission it has maintained in Haiti since 2004. The U.N. Secretary General's final report on the mission concluded: "The many setbacks and challenges notwithstanding, including the disaster caused by the January 2010 earthquake and at least six major hurricanes, substantial headway was made, and today the Haitian people enjoy a considerable degree of security and greater stability." It has been several generations since Haiti was a major tourist destination, but it may become one again. International hotel chains have arrived, and the number of flights to the country has increased substantially. For years, American Airlines was the only U.S. carrier flying in or out but now JetBlue, Spirit and Delta also serve Port au Prince, and American has begun a daily flight to Cap Haitien. When I arrived this fall, my friend Pierre Esperance picked me up at the Port au Prince airport. I've known Pierre since 2000, a year after he was attacked and almost assassinated due to his occupation as Haiti's most prominent human rights activist. Despite the attack and other threats, he's still in the same line of work. Pierre is optimistic, even ebullient, yet also a cleareyed observer of Haiti's dysfunction. That evening, when I asked him to assess the country's current situation, his amiable disposition shifted to neutral. Haiti was in an uncertain place, he said, facing a mix of progress and setbacks. Road infrastructure had improved, as had the police, but Haiti's institutions were much too weak and the political will to support them did not exist. The justice and prison sectors were particularly problematic. We chatted on his terrace, filled with pink, white, red, and orange bougainvillea, and waited for the electricity to come on. Pierre's house gets power only a few hours every day, and he is one of the lucky ones. It is a stark reminder that in some ways Haiti has progressed very little. Pierre was born on nearby Gonave Island, and grew up without any electricity during the dictatorship of Jean Claude Duvalier. Near the end of our evening together, I asked Pierre to compare that dictatorship to the current moment. He laughed and looked surprised. "It's night and day," he said. "Because today we have liberty of expression. Under Duvalier's regime, you could not come here to sit and talk, because there'd be people listening to us and they'd come to arrest us. But today you can walk down the street and speak however you want." The area improved since I last lived there, with recently paved streets and some new construction. The camps for earthquake victims, which used to cover every open space, were gone. Despite these improvements, though, it was clear that Port au Prince was not going to be a tourism hot spot for a long time to come. It is too difficult to move around, and security concerns dominate. If tourism ever returns to Haiti in a meaningful way, it will likely happen first in the provinces. For a road trip into the Haiti that exists outside of its capital, I turned to the driver I trust most in the world, Frantz Newbold. I met him in 2000, when he had started work as a driver for the U.S. Embassy, and I had just arrived for a two year assignment. Frantz, the photographer Chris Miller and I started our road trip by heading south toward Saint Louis du Sud, a town on Haiti's southern coast. Inspired by the Bradt Haiti guide, I was looking for old forts. We found the first one, Fort Olivier, on the edge of a promontory near town, in a pleasant open area dotted with palm trees. By itself, it would be a worthy stop on any tourist excursion. The real masterpiece, though, was Fort Anglais, which occupied an entire island just offshore. We bargained with local fishermen to take us there, and climbed into their rickety dugout canoe, literally a floating mango tree trunk with its insides scooped out. It was brightly painted in the red and blue of the Haitian flag. Chris and I spent hours clambering through the fort, which was thickly covered in underbrush, banyan trees and guarded by suspicious goats. Built by the French in 1702, Fort Anglais was a spectacular find, the type of place that if properly restored, would undoubtedly be a top destination. There was even the beginning of tourist infrastructure, in the form of two concrete piers built to connect Fort Anglais to the mainland. For the time being, though, it sat in the middle of a gorgeous, white sand lined Caribbean bay, largely ignored. While clawing through the fort's underbrush, I suddenly came upon a thick drapery of banyan roots covering the entrance to an intact room. Blue tailed lizards congregated on the roots and I spent a few minutes just looking at them. When I finally pushed into the room, I discovered an alcove on the far side. Using my phone's flashlight, I realized that the alcove was actually a tunnel leading down and to the left. For a moment, I was an excited child. I climbed into the alcove and started down the tunnel. I crept forward but the walls narrowed and the remaining space filled with even more insects. I held the flashlight out and saw the passageway curve down into another room. I wanted so badly to go, but I could almost feel the spider crickets dropping onto my neck and crawling under my T shirt. In the battle between exciting adventure and large, noisy insects, the insects won. I retreated back into the sun. To erase my skin's memory of this encounter, I walked to the sea facing side of the island and found a spit of perfectly white sand. Remains of the fort's exterior walls stuck out of the ankle high water, which was warm and crystal clear. The beach was perfect, or at least it would be once the washed up plastic bottles were removed. I snorkeled for a half hour, finding coral and small fish, and glancing back now and then at the fort. This was an ideal area for tourism: perfect sand, warm water, and a massive, mysterious fort evoking pirates and buried treasure. Its future, however, was as uncertain as Haiti's. We continued exploring Haiti over the next two days as we raced across the southern coast. We found time to root around one of the many caves scattered throughout the mountainous country. Most have a cultural and historical resonance. Taino Indians, the first inhabitants in Haiti, as well as runaway slaves, used the caves to hide from their oppressors. Haiti's best known cave and one of its largest is Grotte Marie Jeanne. It has several levels, and certain areas remain unexplored. Guides from the nearby town of Port a Piment take visitors into deep areas, but many easily accessible caverns are on the surface. While clambering around one of them, we came across an underground chamber dotted with bottles of Barbancourt rum. Apparently, the cave is still used. We also stopped by the town of Jacmel, one of Haiti's top tourist destinations, mainly for the festivities and parades that culminate with the Feb. 4 carnival. Jacmel's walkable downtown is filled with buildings that evoke its 19th and 20th century role as a commercial and shipping hub. The minister of tourism envisions Jacmel becoming a cruise ship stop too. It isn't hard to imagine the old pretty streets downtown and along the seaside boardwalk filled with tourists. Although some buildings in this historic commercial and shipping hub required work, some appeared to need nothing more than a coat of paint. Jacmel was an alluring a mix of history, culture, beaches and beauty. Nearby, it even boasts Haiti's first and only surf club. Surf Haiti is several miles outside of Jacmel, in the commune of Cayes Jacmel. The thatched roof, beachfront restaurant called Le Cam's, where I met members of Surf Haiti, looked the part of a surfing hub. I was there to meet Lionel Andre Pierre, born in New York to Haitian parents. When he and his family moved to Jacmel several years ago, he fell in with the tiny surfing community that had started because of the presence of several international aid workers with a passion for surfing. The workers found local children already "surfing on driftwood and plywood," he said. They gave the children surfing instruction and organized them, which led to the creation of Surf Haiti. Today, Surf Haiti is the country's only member of the International Surf Association, which functions as surfing's governing body. Some in Surf Haiti dream of competing in the 2020 Summer Olympics in Tokyo, when surfing will make its debut as an Olympic sport. For the time being, though, the group is focused on more prosaic opportunities. Members teach surf and swimming lessons, and also run an eco guesthouse nearby. Surf Haiti gets about 5 to 10 requests for lessons a month, a small number but enough to imagine what larger scale tourism could bring. An hourlong surf lesson costs between 8 and 15 US dollars, much more than Haiti's daily minimum wage of 290 gourdes ( 4.55) for eight hours of work in hotels, restaurants and agriculture. Also soaking in Le Cam's relaxed Sunday atmosphere was Ericka Bourraine, director of the Ministry of Tourism in the Southeast Department. Like Lionel, Bourraine was born in the United States to Haitian parents and decided to return to Haiti in recent years. Her office supports major events each trimester, including a summer surfing and music festival in collaboration with Surf Haiti. She also is encouraging the development of excursions, like a day trip along the "route du cafe" to show how Haitian coffee is grown, harvested and prepared. Ms. Bourraine said the goal is to provide vacation options to potential tourists like the Haitian diaspora, although some fear their country's insecurity. Bourraine said she had heard those in the generation before her say, "I'll never step foot in Haiti again. I'll never go back to that place." However, Ms. Bourraine said the generation after that is very interested in seeing the country. "It's just about making the connections and making those people feel safe and feel brave enough to venture out," she said. There was no electricity, so I took a shower in darkening shadow. When I walked onto the hotel's veranda, the abundant tropical flowers glowed in the last rays of sun. WE SET OFF on an epic drive the next day from Cayes Jacmel on the southern coast to Cap Haitian on the northern coast. The distance is relatively modest in absolute terms, about 193 miles. That this journey seems so intimidating is due to two factors Haiti's mountainous interior and the lack of any bypass to avoid Port au Prince. It ended up taking over 10 hours, through the mountains along the southern coast, down into the broad plain of Port au Prince, then due north until we climbed into the mountains of Haiti's northern claw. We passed through forest stippled with thousands of shades of green. Thick clouds swirled around the car and hugged the road. At times the roads were wide and recently paved, the rust red earth neatly graded and stacked on each side. In other moments, I gripped the dashboard with white knuckles. Weaving through Port au Prince, we took rutted gravel roads to avoid a demonstration. When we finally arrived in Cap Haitien, Frantz drove through torrential rain that poured across the streets and disabled several trucks. This was Haiti from south to north, its problems and promise on clear display. That evening, we unwound on the veranda of Cormier Plage, a beach hotel I had visited during my first assignment to the country. It is tucked between Cap Haitien and Labadee, a private beach resort closed off peninsula leased by Royal Caribbean as a day stop for many of its cruise ships. At dinner, we sat in comfortable lounge chairs and listened to waves breaking on the beach only feet away. It was so dark that the lights above us shone like beacons. In the aftermath of that day's drive, I felt optimistic and wondered out loud whether Haiti had turned a corner. Only skeletal walls remain of Sans Souci Palace, which was severely damaged by an earthquake in 1842. However, the Citadel still looks every bit as impressive as the statistics cited about it largest fortress in the Western Hemisphere, filled with original, French, English and Haitian built cannons, walls 13 feet thick and 131 feet tall. It took 20,000 people 14 years to build it. This complex has been a tourist attraction for a long time. In 1937, The New York Times announced a new steamship service that would make the Citadel more accessible. "The main offering of the new tourist service is the chance of visiting the famous citadel, La Ferriere, sometimes rated among the ten wonders of the world." My tour guide was Nicolas Antoine, a 62 year old who has been showing people around the complex for 25 years. When he began, Antoine said, the Citadel was in poor shape, abandoned, with trees growing on and inside its walls. The task of ferrying up tourists was given to sure footed donkeys climbing through scrub. His description reminded me of the current condition of Fort Anglais on the southern coast, another impressive site in a country filled with them. The complex was truly spectacular, a testament to Haiti's world changing struggle for independence. When we arrived, it was late morning, blindingly hot and humid. I stepped across a crumbling wall of Sans Souci Palace into a field of tall grass. Chattering from the village of Milot below rose through the air. Facing me, on the other side of the village, was a steep mountain slope covered with rubber, mahogany, mango and palm trees. I greedily drank in the view. Haiti's struggle with deforestation is well known, making these types of unadulterated visions of nature all the more precious. Turning in the other direction, I noticed a young man sitting nearby, intently staring at a piece of paper, his lips moving as if in prayer. I asked him what he was doing. He was studying for an economics test. In the distance stood a large school building, and I heard the chant of students repeating lessons. This moment occupied my thoughts on the climb up to the Citadel and while walking through the fortress's cool, mist wreathed corridors. Finally, I realized why it resonated so strongly. I had witnessed a normal Tuesday morning: school, studying for a test, daily chatter, guides, shopkeepers looking for tourists, and tourists looking at the sights. It could have been any tourist destination anywhere in the world. But this time, it was in Haiti. Like many who have filtered through the country, I held memories of Haiti that were complicated, any happiness diluted by the things I lived through. But near the end of my road trip, in a grassy field alongside Sans Souci Palace, the power of these memories receded a bit. A new narrative began, in which it wasn't brave or unusual to see Haiti's sights, to eat its food, to interact with the people I came across, and to be a tourist. It was normal. At the Cap Haitien airport the next day, the waiting area was new and well maintained. As I waited for the flight, I thought about the last moments of our road trip and about saying goodbye to Frantz. We had stood in the airport parking lot under the shade of a big yellow school bus and ate lunch his mother had prepared for us Creole sauce, pan fried fish, pickled vegetables, and Haitian rice. It was so delicious that I can still taste it. When we were done, he drove me to the departure area. I gave Frantz a picture I had recently come across. It was the two of us 17 years ago, on one of our first road trips through the country. Saying goodbye felt like the end of an era, one that expressed itself through silence rather than words. In the airport waiting area, the lights flickered and went out. The fast descending tropical sun threw broad shadows across the walls, but unlike past moments, I did not assume the worst. I figured the lights would come back on, and soon they did. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Travel |
COMMERCIALS for the revised 2011 Toyota Avalon practically drip with Brylcreem, Pepsodent and Kennedy era nostalgia. It's the "Mad Men" aesthetic buffed to a blindingly perfect gloss right along the razor's edge, in obscure early 1960s cinematic terms, that separates a Douglas Sirk melodrama from a Frank Tashlin comedy. If you're old enough to get the Sirk and Tashlin references without consulting Wikipedia, you're right in the Avalon's demographic sweet spot. You know, old. So old you may not know what Wikipedia is. Toyota says the median age of Avalon buyers is 64. At a time when even Buick is promoting the German engineering of its new Regal, Toyota has refocused the Avalon as a car aimed at buyers who aren't looking for an ultimate driving machine or a car engineered like no other in the world. The Avalon is for buyers who want a comfortable, understated isolation chamber for the daily commute from their corner office to their paid off four bedroom colonial. Buyers who want their cars to waft along, smothering out the road's irregularities and keeping quiet about it. It's a car for grownups. Toyota introduced the Avalon in 1995 to fill the flagship role left open after the Cressida was discontinued in 1993. But unlike the rear drive, straight 6 powered Cressida, the first Avalon was basically a front drive V 6 Camry sedan with an additional four inches spliced into its wheelbase. And while the Cressida had been built in Japan, the Avalon is assembled at Toyota's plant in Georgetown, Ky., alongside the Camry. A decade and a half later, that formula hasn't changed much. Since the current third generation Avalon appeared five years ago, this updating was overdue. First revealed at the Chicago Auto Show in February, and on sale since April, the 2011 Avalon received cosmetic tweaks including a new wider grille, high intensity discharge headlamps, some additional chrome trim and redesigned rocker panels along the flanks, along with new wheel designs and LED taillights. All of the main mechanical elements were carried over from 2010. The big changes are inside, where last year's Elks Club interior has been remodeled along the lines of a Ruth's Chris Steak House. The shiny fake wood and silvery trim has been traded for fake wood with a more fashionable matte finish, along with textured, darker plastics. Leather seat surfaces are standard in even the regular grade Avalon. Moving up to the Limited adds a ventilation system to the front thrones that blows heated or cooled air through perforations in the upholstery. The instrument cluster has been redesigned with new "Optitron" electroluminescent gauges that glow with brilliant white numerals and impart an aircraft style feel. And one of the few factory options is a DVD based, voice activated navigation system with a rear view camera. With its blunt nose wearing a humongous Toyota emblem, square shouldered fenders and thick rear roof pillars, the Avalon looks intentionally imposing. And with a length of 197.6 inches and a width of 72.8 inches, it is a big car. But it lacks the intimidation factor of a big Benz or an old full size Oldsmobile. Toyotas have an almost inherent comforting presence and the Avalon is no exception; this car isn't a fighter, it's a coddler. Approach the Avalon Limited with the key fob in your pocket and the driver's door unlocks almost silently. The door handles are thick, and they open weighty slabs of steel that feel vacuum sealed to the car. There's not much shape to the front seats, but all the controls are logically arrayed including 14 switches or knobs to operate the navigation and sound systems, and 10 buttons integrated into the steering wheel. That's a lot of logic. The Avalon uses the same 3.5 liter V 6 (with variable valve timing) and 6 speed automatic transaxle that are installed in a vast crop of Toyota products from the Sienna minivan and Venza crossover to the Lexus ES 350 sedan and RX 350 crossover. In this application, as in the Camry, the engine is rated at 268 horsepower and is paired with a relatively "tall" final drive ratio, which ensures low engine speeds while cruising in the overdrive fifth and sixth gears. Its ubiquity may define it as ordinary, but this combination of engine and transmission is so buttery smooth that its gears could well be lubricated by cholesterol. Throw in the thick sound insulation package and the result is a suitably powerful drivetrain that operates in virtual silence with shifts you practically need a stethoscope to detect. With three full size and two smaller Huffmans aboard, along with a full load of luggage, the Avalon never felt strained while returning 22.6 miles per gallon during a 350 mile trip through Southern California. The E.P.A. rates the Avalon at 20 m.p.g. in the city and 28 m.p.g. on the highway. After the 2008 model year, Toyota killed the Touring trim level, and with it all pretense that the Avalon is a driver's car. The suspension is identical to the Camry's in general specification, with MacPherson struts in both the front and the back. The ride is always poised: isolated, but never floaty or undulating. Road noise is minimal. But the left and right all season tires could be lobbing hand grenades at one another and the numb rack and pinion steering would never issue a battle report. Comfort is this car's reason for being, and the Avalon is an almost startlingly relaxed machine. All the seats are flat and thickly padded, and the ones in the rear even recline a bit. All passengers have room to stretch their legs and the carpeting is so plush they might opt to go barefoot. The only way the car could be quieter would be to eliminate the moving parts. With its comprehensive equipment and immediately apparent quality, the Avalon is in most ways a Lexus ES 350 with an additional five inches of rear legroom. And the 33,205 price of the base Avalon undercuts that Lexus by 3,200. (At 36,445 the Avalon Limited is 45 more expensive than the ES 350, which is just 9 per inch of additional rear legroom. (The fully equipped Avalon Limited that I tested carried a 37,884 sticker price.) And buying the Toyota means not being burdened by all that Lexus prestige. The more interesting alternative to the Avalon isn't the ES 350, however: it is the high end Camry XLE V 6. Over the years the Camry has grown so that its wheelbase is now a scant 1.7 inches shorter than the Avalon's and offers just 2.6 inches less rear legroom. Beyond that, since the Camry XLE V 6 starts at 29,045, it's possible to ladle on the options before hitting the Avalon's price level. And, frankly, the Camry XLE V 6 with its identical engine, transmission and suspension design delivers virtually the same driving experience. That's probably why, despite the commercial grade John Gavins and Lana Turners in those superslick new ads, Toyota sells more than 13 Camrys for every Avalon it ships. INSIDE TRACK: Reconnecting with its inner Oldsmobile. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Automobiles |
Artists and architects may be sheltering at home, but their creativity still flows and the results surprise even them. Here's what 10 famous makers are looking at, reading, and sketching now. Under most circumstances, the life of an artist or architect requires a lot of solitary time. But none of the 10 artists and architects I spoke to expected to be sheltering somewhere, hiding out from a deadly pandemic with a small number of family members or close friends. When asked how they were spending their time, they answered that, despite their fears, the pandemic is proving to be fertile ground and they sent along some proof. The anxiety of the coronavirus era has already seeped into the work of Rashid Johnson, who suddenly started making blood red drawings. Steven Holl depicted a pair of struggling lungs, and mourned a close friend while continuing to design buildings. Adam Pendleton, whose artwork incorporates text, looked out the window and said he saw the words "SEE THE SIN." Frank Gehry sketched, but his big meeting got Zoombombed. Leidy Churchman started an epistolary romance, and Doris Salcedo doubled down on her constant theme: memorializing the forgotten. One thing is clear: Like the generation after World War I, today's artists will take this traumatic and uncertain time and turn it into something unexpected. As Maya Lin put it, "We're going to get really interesting creativity out of this." The following interviews have been edited and condensed. I am in Normandy, and we don't have TV. I am in the middle of nature, which I prefer to the city. I must admit I had been planning this for the past year I don't like crowds. So for me, nothing has changed that much. My book "My Window" the U.S. edition comes out in May consists of drawings made on an iPhone and then an iPad of a window in Bridlington, East Yorkshire, starting in 2009 and 2010. Being backlit, I could draw the sunrise I could see over Flamborough Head on the Yorkshire coast , in the dark without getting out of bed. I wouldn't have done these without this technology. In fact, you couldn't. I would have had to get up, put on the light and get paper and colors, so I was thrilled to draw this way. Now I have a new iPad, and we got a mathematician in Leeds to make a new version of a drawing app. So when I came here I started drawing the arrival of spring. We have a large garden here that has apple, pear, cherry, plum and apricot trees. The blossoming is just now beginning and I am very occupied. The only difference is now we can't leave here, and the restaurants are closed. But nobody can cancel the spring. Nature just goes on relentlessly, I am glad to say. I also plan to attempt to make something like the Bayeux Tapestry, which is just nearby to me. The tapestry which tells the story of the conquest of England by William, Duke of Normandy in 1066 is like a Chinese scroll, it has no shadows, no reflections and of course no perspective. I think it's a great work of art that is ignored in European art histories. It was made in about 1100. If you really think about it, it is like a movie, but you do the moving. It's 70 meters long and you have to walk past it. I find it totally engrossing. I'm not sure how I am going to do it. But I will work it out, pondering with the aid of tobacco, which I find very good for thinking something out. At 91, the Pritzker Prize winning architect was sketching at home in Santa Monica, and chafing at being cooped up. What I'm doing now is redoing the entrance to the Guggenheim Abu Dhabi. And now we're looking at it and wondering if we haven't focused too much on the functional things and forgotten that this is the major entrance to the building. The client mentioned it, and I'm agreeing with him. I listen to a lot of music, because I've been very involved with music all my life. I'm working on the sets for an opera, Michael Tilson Thomas's production of Wagner's "The Flying Dutchman," which is probably going to be delayed, in San Francisco. I listen to recordings by Daniel Barenboim we worked on the Berlin concert hall together the L.A. Philharmonic, Gustavo Dudamel, Esa Pekka Salonen all my buddies. It makes me feel closer to them, and to the music. I'm not a musician, so I can't explain it all to you: It's a big feeling. I don't use free time to look at classic architecture a lot, and I've wondered about that myself. Is it an ego thing? I hope it's not. I'm an older guy, so I know that stuff pretty well I can draw it, and used to do that. When I was a kid, it was World War II, so I lived through all of that. I remember polio too. You can't get yourself cornered into fear about things. But this is something out of this world that I've never experienced; it's scary. And especially when you have kids and grandchildren. I've been fantasizing about pulling out my old watercolors to use. At my age, the ideas are coming at me at a fast speed. I can't even keep up with them. I guess I'm trying to get everything done before I leave the Earth. The drawings I am doing are part of my project "Bosque de Humo" "Smoke Forest" about Colombia's disappeared people; there are between 50,000 and 200,000 of them. I call the works acts of mourning, and I do them in areas that have what I call the geography of fear, because of what happened there. I found a place where, between 2001 and 2004, the paramilitary had crematory ovens. But recently the site was taken over, and they planted a coriander field. I was horrified. These people were disappeared and now someone comes along and tries to disappear the disappearing. It's very sad. The paramilitary said they burned people and they sprayed the ashes with water. I'm trying to draw in a way that brings these molecules back to life. I'm shocked when I look at the news. All I can read about is the pandemic. No one is writing about war or violence. I've always done stories about the most vulnerable population. And this pandemic is going to make that population even more abandoned. What's going to happen to the million and a half Venezuelan migrants here? People talk about isolating in your home, but most of the migrants don't have a home. I wish the world was thinking about them more. The conceptual artist, 43, who works in various media including film, painting, and installation, was at his home in the Hamptons with his family. I've actually been busy doing drawings similar to one from 2018 called "Anxiety Drawing." They were black, and now they are red. It's the first one in this series that depict anxious men. I posted one on Instagram. There's a real brutality to them, they feel visceral and really current. It's just a small move, just by adding a different pigment. And it just speaks volumes to how it has changed the urgency of those works. These are, if you will, my quarantine drawings. I'm hesitating to use that language because I think it's probably going to be massively oversubscribed. This is going to have probably one of the most significant impacts on artist practices for multiple reasons. For one, the limitations of it, meaning what we have accessible to us materially some artists have had assistants or help in fabrication and that's been fundamentally a part of a lot of contemporary art practices. The removal of some of that means getting back to the individual just responding to the world. From that perspective we're going to see a lot of inner visions, you know? It's Stevie Wonder time. I think the most current thing that I've really spent any time looking at is Brutalist architecture, mostly in books. There's a book called "Atlas of Brutalist Architecture." I grew up in Chicago near a Brutalist hospital on Division Street, and I think there's a strictness and heaviness that you can recognize in this architecture. It feels foreboding and all consuming now. There's a loneliness to it. When I left New York, I had a studio full of work that I was in the process of finishing. I did ship out some collage materials, and I have a bedroom that is like an office here. I circled around the boxes at first, which has to do with this new normal. We're all watching out for one another now, and that takes a lot of mental energy.I'm also giving myself the permission to take a break and just submerge myself and make some art. I've only made one collage so far: "Walk With Me." I don't edit myself when I make collages, but I'm sure they are connected to my subconscious. I see it as part of a series. A lot of the collages I've done in the past are clippings from Ebony magazine. And I have a 100 copies here from different eras. It's an amazing, beautiful archive of American history. Many of the pictures come from ads and some from editorial photographs. And it relates to the paintings that I have done recently, showing these special characters that are digital collages, creating more surreal looking faces. I actually have a crush on someone, and I used this time to write to them. It just feels like in this moment, it's really important to reach out to people and tell them how you feel on all levels. And they did write back. So far it's really nicely up in the air, because right now there's no action to be followed. It feels like it could be an amazing correspondence. Maybe people will feel a lot more connected to art in their isolation. The world is very precious, it's very sacred. I think art speaks to that. I've been setting up my paints like a shrine. I've been having flashes of feeling that my work will have more vibrant colors somehow everything is a bit closer up now, like something flashing in your face, more vivid than normal. The architect, 72, whose addition to the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston is slated to debut this fall, spoke from his home in the Hudson Valley. We're next to a national forest, and I'm looking at a mountaintop covered with snow. We're miles up a dirt road, it's very remote. The forest has vast die out areas caused by beetle infestation. And that led me to "Ghost Forest," my installation for Madison Square Park that has been put off for a year originally scheduled for June . I've been looking out the window and I'm starting a series of drawings that are about rivers, in walnut ink. A lot of my time is spent on the project What Is Missing?, a website that is a global memorial to the planet. This is my fifth memorial. I'm focused on what we call Mapping the Future, and it'll be these interactive maps that will showcase nature based solutions to carbon emissions. It mourns what we're losing just think, some 70 percent of all songbird species are in a state of decline, but we don't necessarily notice it. So we asked the question, "How can you protect it if you don't even realize it's missing?" | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Art & Design |
In 2013, I ruled in Floyd vs. City of New York that the tactics underlying the city's stop and frisk program violated the constitutional rights of people of color. While Michael Bloomberg was mayor of New York, black and Latino people were disproportionately stopped, and often frisked, millions of times, peaking at 690,000 in 2011. After my ruling, the number of stops plummeted to 11,000 in 2018. And crime did not rise. Despite this, Mayor Bloomberg continued to zealously defend stop and frisk, including in eyebrow raising comments at the Aspen Institute in 2015 which recently resurfaced. He apologized for the policy only days before jumping into the presidential race. Many people are wondering is he a racist? I don't think so. Not if you look at many other valuable things he has done for minorities. I don't believe he ever understood the human toll of the stops of black and Latino men, 90 percent of which did not result in a summons or arrest. But the stops were frightening, humiliating and unwarranted invasions of black and brown people's bodies. At the time of the Floyd trial, and still today, I am convinced that Mayor Bloomberg believed that the stop and frisk policy which began under Rudy Giuliani, his immediate predecessor, but grew significantly during Mr. Bloomberg's tenure was protecting African Americans, who were disproportionately the victims of crime. Although it has been widely disproved, he believed in the "broken windows" theory of policing, where stopping small infractions would prevent an escalation of crime. He believed his police commissioner, Ray Kelly, who told him that young black men would leave their guns at home if they thought they would be stopped. This was misguided because a stop based on racial profiling instead of reasonable suspicion is unconstitutional. But this does not mean he hates black people. The most I can say is he had a pure heart but an empty head; the stop and frisk program was very poorly executed. It is easy to write in general terms about the humiliation of being stopped and frisked. So consider two examples which reveal the impact on the victims and the futility of the policy. In August 2008, a black man in his 30s stood in front of a chain link fence near his house and talked to a friend on his cellphone. He held the phone in one hand and the mouthpiece on a cord in the other. Two white plainclothes officers approached him. One officer said it looked like he was smoking weed and shoved him against the fence. The man explained that he was talking on his phone, not smoking marijuana, and that he was a drug counselor. Without asking permission, the officers patted him down and reached into his pockets. No contraband was found. In March 2010, a boy, 13, was stopped on his way home by two white officers in plain clothes who were responding to 911 calls about a group of rowdy men. They pulled up alongside the boy, pushed him down on the hood of the police car, handcuffed him and patted him down as he cried. The officers recovered only a cellphone and a few dollars. Yet they took him to the precinct and wrote a false report stating that he was in criminal possession of a weapon. The reason for the stop was listed as "fits description" and "furtive movements." There were many other stops described by the victims in painstaking detail during the Floyd trial. But the point should be obvious: Mayor Bloomberg, and so many others who were born and raised into what is now known as white privilege, don't put themselves in the shoes of these victims. As an older white woman, I will never be stopped and thrown up against a wall. I know that. And Mayor Bloomberg does too. No one is perfect. But there is another side to Mr. Bloomberg that may not be as well known: his achievements in creating opportunities for many minority New Yorkers while mayor and his commitment to good works in his post mayoral years. In 2005, he started the WeCare initiative, which provided job opportunities to low income people. The next year, he created a citywide antipoverty program around a new Center for Economic Opportunity, which received half of its 100 million initial funding from the city. This program, too, focused on job creation. In 2009, he spearheaded an agreement with the Building Trades Employers' Association to ensure more construction job opportunities for women and minority owned businesses and ensured that 45 percent of apprenticeship slots would be filled from underrepresented groups. Two years later, he started the Corporate Alliance Program, dedicated to increasing the value of public contracts to women and minority businesses, with a 47 percent increase in contracts in 2010 to these groups. In 2006, just 379 such enterprises were certified to do business with the city. By Mr. Bloomberg's final year in office, that number grew to 3,700. The Bloomberg administration placed job recruitment centers in many city Housing Authority buildings. When these achievements are viewed in combination with his post mayoral advocacy in support of immigrants rights, environmental protections, abortion rights and gun regulation, I am convinced that he has done much to atone for his unforgivable overuse of stop and frisk. He should now be evaluated on his entire record. If he is the best person to head the Democratic ticket this fall, then his failed stop and frisk policy should not prevent him from assuming that most important role. After all, defeating a committed racist one who called for the death penalty of the Central Park Five and who called the neo Nazis in Charlottesville, Va., "very fine people" should be everyone's priority. Shira A. Scheindlin is an arbitrator and mediator and of counsel at the Stroock law firm. The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We'd like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here's our email: letters nytimes.com. Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter ( NYTopinion) and Instagram. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Opinion |
Netflix has added a warning video that will play before its series "13 Reasons Why" and will promote resources to help young viewers and their parents address the show's themes, the streaming service announced Wednesday. After being criticized for how the series' first season depicted suicide, which had already led the network to add warning messages to the show, Netflix commissioned a study by the Northwestern University Center on Media and Human Development to gauge its impact on viewers. The show's second season will be released this year. According to a statement from Netflix, the study showed that "nearly three quarters of teen and young adult viewers said the show made them feel more comfortable processing tough topics." However, the results also showed that Netflix could do more to respond to the concerns of parents, the company said. In a statement, Brian Wright, Netflix's vice president of original series, said, "Research indicated the majority of parents felt that while the show brought up important topics, they wanted more resources from us." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Television |
THE AGE OF INNOCENCE (1993) Stream on Criterion Channel; rent on Amazon, Google Play, iTunes, Vudu and YouTube. We won't see a new Martin Scorsese movie until 2021, when Scorsese's David Grann adaptation, "Killers of the Flower Moon," is slated for release. In the meantime, Scorsese devotees can revisit another of his book adaptations. "The Age of Innocence," based on the Edith Wharton novel, cast Daniel Day Lewis, Michelle Pfeiffer and Winona Ryder in a satirical story of love among the upper crust of 19th century New York City a world of white gloves, horse drawn carriages and chandeliers. In other words: It's a far cry from the New Yorks of "Taxi Driver" or "Goodfellas." In his review for The Times in 1993, Vincent Canby called the movie "a robust gamble that pays off." CELEBRITY ESCAPE ROOM 8 p.m. on NBC. Four funny people Ben Stiller, Courteney Cox, Lisa Kudrow and Adam Scott work together to solve an escape room puzzle in this special, part of a night of programming that supports the fund raising campaign Red Nose Day. Jack Black hosts. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Television |
WITH gasoline prices likely to remain over 3 a gallon for some time, fuel economy is on the minds of most vehicle buyers. And with the government's Corporate Average Fuel Economy regulations scheduled to reach 54.5 m.p.g. by 2025, auto executives, including those whose cars are at the high end of the price scale, are also focused on squeezing more miles from every gallon. In fact, the fuel economy challenge is probably tougher for luxury brands like BMW, Jaguar, Land Rover and Mercedes Benz. Unlike the Cadillac division of General Motors, or the Audi, Bentley, Bugatti, Lamborghini and Porsche units of the Volkswagen Group, the stand alone premium carmakers sell few of the small, efficient vehicles that would offset the thirstiness of their big, powerful luxury models at least in the United States. For that reason, the latest fuel economy technologies are introduced most rapidly in these luxury models, which have price tags that can absorb the added cost of the advanced hardware. A perfect example of this trend is the 2012 BMW 528i. The 5 Series is BMW's midsize model offering, introduced in its latest form as a 2011 model. It is available with a variety of engines, but the biggest seller has always been the version with the smallest displacement, known for at least two decades as the 525i or the 528i. Under their hoods lay one of BMW's in line 6 cylinder engines of 2.5 to 3 liters, all justly lauded for their ample thrust and silky smoothness. Smaller engines have generally been regarded as beneath the dignity of the 5 Series and most other BMWs sold in America. This thinking goes out the window with the release of the 2012 528i, which is powered by a 2 liter engine having just 4 cylinders. It's an unusually small power plant for a car that in its basic rear drive configuration weighs about 3,800 pounds and, with just a few checkmarks on the option list, can cost 60,000. There is but one motivation for this change: fuel efficiency. The window sticker on my test car, a 528i xDrive that weighed closer to 4,000 pounds, promised 22 miles per gallon in town and 32 on the highway, per the Environmental Protection Agency's rating. That's a significant step up from the 18 city and 27 highway rating of the previous generation 528i, which was powered by 3 liter 6 cylinder coupled to a 6 speed automatic transmission. (BMW's model designations no longer reflect the actual engine displacement, but are assigned according to their general horsepower levels). Based on the E.P.A. ratings, much of that fuel economy improvement came from the switch to 8 speed automatics for the new 5 Series, with some of it a result of the smaller engine. It's not hard to grasp that a small engine would consume less fuel than a big one, especially for drivers who have a lead foot. What is not as widely understood is that smaller engines are more efficient at every power level. In other words, if it takes 25 horsepower to push the 528i down the highway at a steady 75 miles an hour, a 2 liter engine will use less fuel to generate those 25 horses than a 3 liter engine will. That's because engines are more efficient when they are working harder, and small engines are almost always working harder than big ones. This is also why cars are getting more gear ratios in their transmissions to let their engines maintain lower r.p.m. levels at highway speeds. An engine producing 25 horsepower at 2,000 r.p.m. must work each cylinder harder than it would at 3,000 r.p.m. and that translates into lower fuel consumption. There are drawbacks to such a strategy, though. Because a small, low revving engine is already working pretty hard, there is little reserve power available when the driver floors the accelerator. An automatic transmission can downshift, of course, but if it has to kick down every time you ask for a bit more speed, the car will feel gutless and unsatisfying. In other words, not very BMW like. A solution chosen by BMW, and many other automakers, is turbocharging, which captures the energy in the engine's hot exhaust gases to spin a compressor that pumps extra air into the cylinders. If you force feed a 2 liter engine the same amount of air and fuel that a 3 liter engine would consume, you get 3 liter power and then some. Yet under most circumstances, you still get the innate fuel efficiency of the 2 liter engine. Turbochargers have been around for decades, but only in recent years have they realized the benefits of several modern technologies. Developments like direct fuel injection, variable valve timing and computerized engine controls work together to make small turbo engines a viable path to fuel efficiency. With the same or greater peak output coming at lower engine speeds, the 4 cylinder 528i is nearly half a second quicker to 60 m.p.h. than its 6 cylinder predecessor, according to BMW. In normal driving, the new 528 feels more energetic than you would expect for a two ton car with a 2 liter engine. Acceleration from stoplights was strong and there was plenty of urge even at 80 m.p.h. While there's no question that the 2012 528i delivers both better performance and higher fuel economy than its 6 cylinder predecessor, smooth operation and refined character are equally important in a luxury car. In those areas, a critical driver will sense some rough spots. For example, when the engine is cold, it idles at around 800 r.p.m. and throbs somewhat like a diesel. With two fewer cylinders, the engine's firing impulses are naturally farther apart, and the driver feels the difference. Once the engine warms up, though, the idle drops to 700 r.p.m. and the engine feels much smoother. With the engine warm, however, the stop start system engages, shutting off the engine at traffic lights. This feature saves fuel, especially in urban driving, but you instantly notice when the engine has been shut off. I would have expected BMW to apply some tuning magic to make this operation less apparent. At 75 m.p.h. with the transmission in eighth gear, the 4 cylinder is revving at only about 2,100 r.p.m. and feels completely unobtrusive. But at a steady 50 m.p.h., also in eighth gear, the r.p.m. drops to 1,400, generating a slight drone that no 6 cylinder BMW ever produced. Yet even at such low engine speeds acceleration is available with a push on the gas pedal, a benefit of the turbocharger's helping hand. Push the pedal farther and the transmission downshifts smoothly even when it must reach for a gear two, three or even five steps lower in response to the driver's call for maximum acceleration. The 8 speed automatic is almost telepathic in the way it anticipates your needs and selects the right gear. On one highway run that averaged 74 m.p.h., the trip computer calculated 32 m.p.g. Over all, I averaged better than 25 m.p.g. in fairly typical suburban driving. That's outstanding for a lavishly equipped all wheel drive luxury sedan that delivers such brisk performance. Other than the new 4 cylinder powertrain, the 2012 528i is little changed from last year. Some might say that it resembles the 7 and 3 Series sedans too much the same sausage, cut to a different length. But unlike its awkward fifth generation predecessor, the car is conventionally handsome in the husky and muscular way of a German soccer fullback. The cabin is beautifully finished and fitted with many comfort and convenience features. But I was a bit taken aback when I noticed that despite my test car's 61,125 sticker price, another 15,000 in available options could have been added. And while this 5 Series is a couple of inches longer than its predecessor, interior space remains less than generous. For those who still think of BMWs as primarily sport sedans, this 528i will not be particularly satisfying. While smooth, responsive and capable, it never pulls at its leash. Not much information makes it through the steering system to disturb or inform the driver. The ride is comfortable and well controlled, but the size and weight of the car don't encourage one to toss it around. Of course, with the exception of my test car's sport package, the 528i xDrive is the most workaday and least athletic version of the 5 Series. There are more entertaining variations with 6 and 8 cylinder engines, ranging from 300 horsepower up to the very sporting 560 horsepower M5, with appropriate upgrades in running gear. For the majority of 5 Series buyers, however, the new powertrain is a great success, achieving about 20 percent better fuel economy than the fifth generation model they might be trading in, with even better performance and only a few subtle losses of refinement. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Automobiles |
THE AFFAIR 9 p.m. on Showtime. When this show debuted in 2014, it focused on the deception and perspectives of Alison (Ruth Wilson), a married waitress, and Noah (Dominic West), a husband and father of four, who step out on their spouses to engage in an affair. The subsequent seasons have dealt with the fallout from that transgression, exploring how the dissolution of those marriages have affected their family members. By its fifth and final season, the show has expanded even further into two narrative timelines: one set in the present day, and the other decades in the future. The series finale brings together Noah's family for his daughter's wedding, while Alison's adult daughter Joanie (Anna Paquin) grows closer to uncovering the truth about her mother's death. 90 DAY FIANCE 8 p.m. on TLC. On a new season of this reality show that combines the perils of dating with culture shock, seven new couples allow cameras to capture their tumultuous K 1 visa process, which allows Americans to bring their fiance or fiancee into the country for 90 days. In that time period, the couples will have to decide whether they'll walk down the aisle or whether their non American partner will have to leave the country. In this seventh season, we'll be introduced to couples who are either meeting in person for the first time or are just getting to know each other. They include a 41 year old banker and a 23 year old Brazilian model; and a Nebraskan mother of three dating a man from Turkey despite the language barrier. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Television |
FRANKFURT It's way too early to call a turning point. But while Greeks were marching in the streets against austerity, their economy may actually have been growing for the first time since 2009. That surprise news resided deep within first quarter economic data for Europe released Tuesday that also showed, to everyone's mild relief, that the euro zone as a whole has still avoided slipping into a regional recession. Greece, where the economy has been in free fall, "grew" only after adjusting for seasonal effects a calculation made by economists at Barclays. The Greek government did not provide an official figure. "I cannot imagine this is really a new spring," said Fabio Fois, European economist at Barclays in London. Nor is news of technically defined growth likely to offer much consolation to ordinary Greeks. Not while one in five people in the work force are out of work. Still, along with growth in Germany that was much better than expected, the data provided mild respite from the gloom that has pervaded Europe in recent days. Despite the figures, major stock indexes retreated Tuesday in Europe, and Spanish and Italian bond yields, or interest rates, edged up on news that those two countries' economies continued to contract. Indexes in the United States, however, were modestly higher in afternoon trading. The euro zone, by not slipping into recession in the first quarter of 2012, ran counter to expectations. Growth in the region was zero compared to the previous quarter, according to the figures, from Eurostat, the E.U. statistics agency. "In the current context, zero growth in the euro zone in the first quarter is relatively good news," Marie Diron, an economist who advises the consulting firm Ernst Young, said in a statement. "It suggests that the economy is not falling off a cliff under the burden of fiscal austerity." In the fourth quarter of 2011, gross domestic product in the euro zone had declined 0.3 percent. A second consecutive quarter of decline would have met the general definition of a recession. Germany's economy expanded 0.5 percent in the first quarter, more than analysts expected. But France did not grow at all, Spain's economy slipped 0.3 percent, and Italy experienced a 0.8 percent decline in output. The divergence in the numbers, which officials adjusted for seasonal effects, showed that there remains a wide gulf between Northern and Southern Europe. "Even if the euro zone as a whole narrowly escaped technical recession in the first quarter, there is no sign of a strong, sustained economic bounceback on the horizon," Martin van Vliet, an economist at ING Bank, wrote in a note to clients. The data, he said, "offers scant consolation for the peripheral economies, where the recession is deepening and whose economic fortunes look bleak at best and downright depressing at worst." The growth numbers arrived hours before Francois Hollande, newly sworn in as French president, traveled to Berlin, where he was to meet with Chancellor Angela Merkel. She was likely to see the data as vindication of her position that growth must be the product of sound government finances and economic restructuring, not the stimulus advocated by Mr. Hollande. The Greek economy has shrunk by more than a quarter since 2008, and continued to plunge at the beginning of the year without adjusting for seasonal effects, although at a slower velocity. While Greece's official statisticians do not make such adjustments, statistics agencies in most countries adjust quarterly data to reflect the fact that economic activity typically picks up at the end of a year and slows at the beginning of the next. 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. Bank regulators released a 'road map' for crypto regulation that is short on details. Another euro zone trouble spot, Portugal, also performed less dismally than expected. Its economy shrank 0.1 percent in the first quarter from the previous quarter, compared with a 1 percent decline that analysts had forecast. Portugal, which is seen as having done more than Greece to improve economic performance, may have benefited from stronger exports. But Mr. Fois of Barclays said a recovery probably remains distant. "Expecting sustained growth in the short term would be a bit optimistic," he said. "You still have a lot of fiscal austerity to come through." Germany has benefited from the European Central Bank's low lending rate of 1 percent, a benchmark that is set with the euro zone as a whole in mind but is probably too low for German conditions. While credit is tight in much of Europe, it is still available in Germany at inexpensive rates that have pushed up real estate prices in urban areas. German wages are also likely to rise as companies have trouble finding skilled workers, fueling inflation which is already above the official target of about 2 percent. Higher wages and inflation in Germany are likely to trouble some policy makers and segments of the German public, but may be good news for other countries in Europe. They would have an easier time competing with Germany for investment, while higher wages might increase German demand for their products. "Robust German demand is essential to help offset falling domestic activity in the peripheral countries," Ms. Diron said. Germany depends on trade with other euro zone members, and in coming months there is a risk its economy may suffer from problems in countries like Italy and Spain. "The highly competitive German economy has not entered a recession," Jorg Kramer, chief economist at Commerzbank, wrote in a note. "Still, it is unlikely to expand at the same pace in the next few months." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Global Business |
Sam Rosenbaum has Stephen Colbert to thank for his career switch from accountant to cannabis tour operator. The newly minted M.B.A. was watching an episode of "The Colbert Report" in 2014 when the comedian spoke of a "cannabis green rush" coming to Colorado, which had recently become the first state to legalize recreational marijuana. "The part about bus tours kind of jumped out at me," Mr. Rosenbaum, 34, said. "I came up with High 5 Tours and registered it the next week." It was a prescient move. One year later, when Mr. Rosenbaum's home state of Oregon voted to legalize cannabis, High 5 Tours was the state's first cannabis bus tour. Mr. Rosenbaum is not alone in his attempts in growing the world of cannabis tourism. Eleven states in the United States so far have voted to allow people 21 and older to buy regulated amounts of cannabis product for consumption on private property. Sales systems are not yet in place in Michigan and Maine, and in Massachusetts a gradual licensing of dispensaries began last November. In Vermont, as in Washington, D.C., possession, growing and sharing cannabis are legal, but not buying or selling. But in six other states (Alaska, California, Colorado, Nevada, Oregon and Washington), business is booming at cannabis dispensaries and related businesses. As for cannabis tourism, it is totally hot in Colorado and California and emerging in others. Travel entrepreneurs like Mr. Rosenbaum are organizing marijuana infused experiences, including painting classes, bus tours and food classes. The pioneers of cannabis tourism, Colorado Cannabis Tours and My 420 Tours, are in Denver. The Original Colorado Cannabis Tour includes visits to two dispensaries, after which onboard consumption of purchases is encouraged. Visits to a growing facility and a glass pipe blowing demonstration round out the 89 bus tour, which lasts precisely four hours and 20 minutes. Colorado Cannabis Tours is also behind the Puff, Pass Paint class. Mike Eymer, the company's chief executive, teamed up with the artist Heidi Keyes to create the first class in 2015. For 49, the tour includes teacher guidance and art supplies, including a canvas to take home. Cannabis is B.Y.O.C. The concept has since spread to other states. "There are really some amazing paintings that come out of it," Ms. Keyes said. "With smoking you're able to concentrate better. The colors are more vibrant and people are more willing to think outside the box." My 420 Tours offers the Blaze Gaze Graffiti Walking Tour ( 29), a post consumption 2.5 mile walking tour of Denver's RiNo Art District, and the Sushi Joint Rolling Class ( 79). "It's our plan to copy and paste this model across the country," said Danny Schaefer, the chief executive of My 420 Tours. California has also rolled out the green carpet for tourists. West Coast Cannabis Tours, in San Diego, offers various tours and classes, including an exclusive tour of a 32,000 square foot growing facility ( 99). Todd Green, who started the company when only medical marijuana was legal, said, "Now that it's recreational, people are coming out of the woodwork." But regulations abound, especially for bus tours. In Colorado, Oregon and California, passengers on tour buses are allowed to consume what they have just purchased at cannabis dispensaries, which is almost every tour's first stop. However, in Washington and Nevada, laws prohibiting smoking in moving vehicles limit operators to tours that are strictly educational. Seattle Kush Tours, for example, offers a three and a half hour tour for 99 that informs passengers about the new industry through stops at a dispensary, a growing site and a glass pipe blowing demonstration. State law also prohibits the use of cannabis in a Seattle cannabis cooking class. Hemp is the substitute. In Las Vegas, Matthew Miner, the chief executive of Herbology Tours, offers for 109 a daily three hour Herbology 101 tour. Well informed guides share literature and knowledge during stops at a dispensary, a kitchen where cannabis edibles are made, and even a cannabis art museum, Cannabition, which it says features the world's largest bong. "It's a really cool experience, within limitations, because we can't smoke at any lounges ... yet," he says. West Hollywood, as well as some cities in the San Francisco Bay Area, have circumvented state restrictions by allowing cannabis social clubs or consumption lounges. Alaska will soon be the first state permitting consumption lounges attached to dispensaries. And in late May, Colorado's governor signed a bill allowing cannabis "hospitality spaces" at dispensaries and at B.Y.O.C. clubs. The lack of smoking lounges has been a frustrating issue for Mitchell Knottingham, who owns Juneau Cannabis Tours in Alaska but has yet to launch his first tour. Mr. Knottingham said he got involved in things early in order to be ready when lounge approval came around. That may happen as early as mid July. And in Portland, Mr. Rosenbaum's bright yellow High Five Tours bus takes off every day at 6 p.m. on a dispensary tour ( 79) that includes stops at food carts and a brewery. Every Friday, following the tour of the Columbia River Gorge ( 89), he treats his passengers to ice cream sandwiches. It's been more than two years since he worked as an accountant. He hasn't looked back. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Travel |
LOS ANGELES Nearly a century ago, the Ford Amphitheater was built in the Hollywood Hills as a site for Christian pageants. Although in more recent decades it has been home to secular performances, the mood there was consecratory on Saturday night as Daniel Ezralow's new company, Ezralow Dance, made its debut. The local chamber orchestra wild Up entered down the aisles, slowly assembling fragments of Bach, almost note by note. Answering that call, nine dancers and many extras descended from the terraces of cypress and chaparral behind the theater. Meeting onstage, they all circled around portable spotlights in a ritual befitting a Hollywood premiere. This invocation, the first of 14 numbers in a show supposedly organized around classical music, was titled "Awaken." Alas, what was most eye opening about the program was how the astonishing banality of the musical selections greatest hits compilations sold on TV are more adventurous was matched by the general awfulness of the choreography. Some routines were merely dumb, unmusical and sloppily danced: a bobble headed, mock Baroque romp to Bach's Prelude in C minor; a vapidly acrobatic love duet for a beach fantasy to a Chopin nocturne; a debased cross of fake Greek poses and jazz dance accents for nymphs and satyrs cavorting to Debussy; an ensemble piece to Bach's third Brandenburg Concerto that managed to borrow from Paul Taylor, "Stomp" and commercial hip hop in a way that canceled out the virtues of each. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Dance |
Gary Cartwright, a longtime Texas journalist whose sharp writing, fearless reporting and fast living established him as one of the state's greatest nonfiction writers and a kind of Lone Star cousin to Hunter S. Thompson, died on Wednesday in Austin, Tex. He was 82. His death, in a hospital hospice unit, was confirmed by the author Jan Reid, a friend. Friends said Mr. Cartwright had fallen recently inside his home in Austin, where he lived alone, and was unable to reach a phone. He remained there for days before he was discovered and taken to the hospital, they said. Mr. Cartwright was the dean of a loose knit class of Texas journalists who pushed the bounds of long form journalism and helped bring national acclaim to the regional magazine some of them wrote for, Texas Monthly. His career with the magazine began with the first issue, in 1973, and continued to his retirement in 2010. He practiced the brand of irreverent, participatory storytelling that Mr. Thompson had made famous as "gonzo journalism." "He was definitely our version of Hunter Thompson as much as anybody," said Evan Smith, the chief executive of The Texas Tribune and a former editor in chief of Texas Monthly. Mr. Cartwright wrote a 1998 memoir about his life changing heart attack ("HeartWiseGuy"), mused in print about the con man who was the best man at his wedding (his second of four) and described his sex life as an elderly man in the pages of Texas Monthly. "One of the best stories ever that Cartwright wrote, or that the magazine published, was one of Cartwright's first stories," Mr. Smith said. "It was about Jay J. Armes, a private detective in El Paso who literally had hooks for arms. You cannot make this up." In the weeks leading up to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in 1963, the Dallas apartment that Mr. Cartwright shared with his friend and fellow reporter, Bud Shrake, was a popular late night hangout for, among others, Jack Ruby and one of Ruby's favorite strippers, Jada. Mr. Ruby, the nightclub owner who shot Lee Harvey Oswald, was a recurring figure in Mr. Cartwright's journalism. As Mr. Cartwright wrote in "Confessions of a Washed up Sportswriter" (1983), "On the morning of the assassination, Ruby called our apartment and asked if we'd seen Jada." In the 1960s and '70s Mr. Cartwright belonged to a group of writers including Mr. Shrake, Dan Jenkins, Billy Lee Brammer and Larry L. King, one of the writers of the hit Broadway musical "The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas" whose hard, boozy living and freewheeling prose captured and exemplified the era. Mr. Cartwright published a second memoir, "The Best I Recall," in 2015. "It seemed like they were living lives of joy and engagement and with a sense of recklessness that was beyond the reach of most of us," Joe Holley, a columnist and editorial writer for The Houston Chronicle, said in an interview. "They lived hard. They wrote well, and they seemed to be intensely alive. "What we didn't realize until later, when the heart attacks began and when they started writing confessional memoirs, was that hard living exacted a price." Mr. Cartwright published another memoir, "The Best I Recall," in 2015. He also wrote screenplays and novels. He was born in Dallas in 1934 and grew up in the tiny West Texas oil town of Royalty in the late 1930s. With defense plants in the Dallas Fort Worth area hiring after the start of World War II, the family moved to Arlington, the Dallas suburb, where his mother worked in a dress shop. His father worked at a defense plant in Fort Worth. After high school Mr. Cartwright attended Arlington State College and the University of Texas, enlisted in the Army for a two year stateside stint and earned his bachelor's degree afterward at Texas Christian University. He got his start in journalism in the mid 1950s, covering the police and sports for newspapers in Fort Worth and Dallas. He became the anchor of Texas Monthly and mentored a generation of young journalists, including Nicholas Lemann, the author and former dean of the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. "Gary was a Texas news guy to the core somebody who grew up in old school, smoke filled, blue collar newsrooms and went on to become one of the first Texas journalists to make a national reputation in long form journalism," Mr. Lemann said. Mr. Cartwright is survived by a son, Shea; a sister, Lea Hickman; five grandchildren and numerous great grandchildren, Mr. Reid said. Another son, Mark, died of leukemia in 1997. Mr. Cartwright's work appeared alongside that of Larry McMurtry, J. Frank Dobie, Molly Ivins, Katherine Anne Porter and other Texas writers in the 2003 anthology "Lone Star Literature." The book included this Cartwright passage: "If there is a tear left, shed it for Jack Ruby. He didn't make history; he only stepped in front of it. When he emerged from obscurity into that inextricable freeze frame that joins all of our minds to Dallas, Jack Ruby, a baldheaded little man who wanted above all else to make it big, had his back to the camera." Even more famous was his 1976 Texas Monthly cover article about one of Ruby's stripper friends, a Texas folk hero named Candy Barr. "They say she once sat waiting in a rocking chair talking to sweet Jesus," Mr. Cartwright wrote, "and when her ex husband kicked down the door, she threw down on him with a pistol that was resting conveniently in her lap. She shot him in the stomach, but she was aiming for the groin." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Media |
It used to be taken for granted that old people would get confused and disoriented in the hospital. It is not a minor problem. Delirium, as the condition is called, can keep people in the hospital longer, inhibit treatment and even increase the likelihood of death. Then researchers began to understand that this state, in which patients do not know where they are, do not recognize their loved ones and sometimes even hallucinate, was often caused by what happened in hospitals overmedication, a lack of sleep and a lack of food, fluids or mobility. (It's easy to overlook someone too dazed to ring a buzzer.) Delirium can also accelerate lasting declines in brain function in those with normal brains or with dementia. For the past 30 years we have made great strides in reducing delirium by focusing on humanistic care and minimizing sedating drugs. One of the most effective preventive measures is keeping patients from feeling isolated. Just the presence of a family member or volunteer provides comfort and orientation. But Covid 19 is reversing those gains. Scores of colleagues from around the world have contacted me, reporting a rise in delirium of up to 70 percent because of Covid 19. It is occurring in both younger and older patients. Because of the restrictions on visitation and care to limit infection, Arjen Slooter, president of the European Delirium Association, told me, "it's difficult to provide the humanistic care necessary to prevent delirium." Dr. Slooter practices in the Netherlands, a world leader in geriatric care, but even there, he said, "All our patients are delirious, just like 20 years ago." With this regression, patients are routinely being managed with strong sedatives and physical restraints (wrist cuffs, Posey vests, bed alarms). There is a sharp increase in the use of strong tranquilizers for anxiety, agitation and delirium. With no visitor policies, families are absent, increasing the likelihood that patients grow fearful, agitated and confused. If you could design a health care system that would generate delirium, you would design exactly the system we have with Covid 19: where patients are socially isolated, deprived of human comfort and communication; where staffs are stressed, rushed, wearing protective equipment that obscures their faces and muffles their voices; where they are instructed to minimize visits to patients' rooms since protective equipment is scarce; where short acting, less toxic drugs like propofol have run out, so long acting, more toxic drugs are used; and where staffing shortages are so severe that nurses feel they can deliver only the bare necessities of care. In hot spots, my colleagues are dealing with unimaginable pressure. It's understandable that physicians and nurses feel they cannot spare the extra minutes needed to calm a frightened older adult. But sedatives and restraints not only make delirium and poor outcomes more likely but also prevent staffs from using non pharmacologic strategies that improve patients' overall health. The Hospital Elder Life Program, which I created in 1993, has prevented delirium in clinical trials. Under the program, adopted by the American Geriatrics Society and used by hundreds of hospitals worldwide, trained volunteers help reorient patients three times a day and provide activities like reading the newspaper and playing games. They assist with meals, drinking and walking. Evening volunteers provide massage and relaxation to enhance sleep without medication. Even in the face of isolation, staffs can apply more humanistic measures. If able, patients should be encouraged to walk safely in their room, with a cane or walker if needed. If unable to walk, the patient can be instructed to exercise in bed. Patients should be provided with crosswords, games, Sudoku. They should have their glasses, hearing aids and dentures, so that they can see, hear and eat. Their favorite music, audiobooks and recorded messages from family can be calming. To avoid sleeping pills, staffs should raise shades and open blinds during the daytime and provide a dark, quiet room at night without interruptions; ear plugs, eye masks and melatonin can help. No visitor policies have been a widespread response by hospitals, with some exceptions. Yet family caregivers for patients with or at risk for delirium (those with dementia, for example) shouldn't be classified as "visitors" they are essential care providers. Their presence helps the patient and lessens demands on the staff. They should be provided protective equipment and training, and allowed in the rooms. These approaches ultimately benefit public health by preventing bad outcomes and freeing up hospital beds more quickly, thus permitting more patients to receive care. And they would head off the crisis of conscience facing health care professionals, who know they are not providing adequate care. With careful management, delirium can be prevented or lessened, and we need to try because it will save minds and lives. Over the past decade, we have made tremendous advances in recognizing the fundamental human rights of our patients. Chemical and physical restraints, administered without consent, rob individuals of their personhood and autonomy. There are many cases where a comforting word or touch, or a brief remote connection to family, may have offset the need for these potentially harmful approaches, which can substantially delay recovery and increase mortality far beyond that of Covid 19 itself. Our heroic health care professionals are dealing with heart wrenching crises in this pandemic. I remember well my very first day as a physician when I was called to a "code blue," a true medical emergency. As I ran into the room, a wise senior colleague said, "Sharon, the first thing to do at a code is to check your own pulse." He meant to slow down, calm myself and carefully assess the situation. We as a profession need to slow down and take our own pulse, lest we make grievous errors on a grand scale. As some hospitals have done for patients with delirium or dementia, we must allow caregivers back to the bedside and commit to person centered, humanistic care. That is the necessary standard, pandemic or no pandemic. It is the right thing to do and it will save lives. Sharon K. Inouye ( sharon inouye) is a geriatrician at Hebrew SeniorLife in Boston, founder of the Hospital Elder Life Program and a professor at Harvard Medical School. The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We'd like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here's our email: letters nytimes.com. Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter ( NYTopinion) and Instagram. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Opinion |
As China's economy cools, American exporters are increasingly feeling the chill. Cummins, the big Indiana engine maker, lowered its revenue forecast earlier this month and said it would eliminate 1,000 to 1,500 jobs by the end of the year, citing weak demand from China as a major reason. Schnitzer Steel Industries, a Portland, Ore., company that is one of the nation's biggest metal recyclers, is cutting 300 jobs, or 7 percent of its work force, as scrap exports to China plunge. And on Monday, Caterpillar reported lower sales in China and cut its global outlook for 2012. Job reductions are hitting industries like mining, heavy machinery and scrap metal that prospered as China boomed, illustrating some of the risks to the broader American economy if growth continues to slow in what is now the world's second largest economy. Last week the Chinese government announced that gross domestic product grew at an annual rate of 7.4 percent in the third quarter, the slowest pace in more than three years. Even as the presidential candidates try to outdo each other in promising to get tough on Chinese exports to protect American jobs, experts say the more immediate threat to American workers may actually be the slowing of sales to China, which has bid up the price of much of what the United States sent overseas in recent years. In fact, in the presidential debate on Monday evening, President Obama noted that exports to China had doubled during his term, even as both he and Mitt Romney again vowed to crack down on Chinese trade abuses. Over all, China's growth is expected to decelerate to 7.7 percent this year from last year's breakneck 9.3 percent pace, adding to fears of a global slowdown, especially with much of Europe in recession and the economic recovery in the United States stubbornly anemic. "There's definitely been an effect from slowing exports to China on U.S. exports," said Dean Maki, chief United States economist at Barclays. According to his analysis, the drop in exports to China alone is responsible for shaving 0.1 to 0.2 percentage point off the growth rate for the American economy, which expanded at an annualized rate of 1.3 percent in the second quarter. The recent slowdown in export growth has probably contributed to the loss of 38,000 jobs in the American manufacturing sector since July, while the overall job market has improved and unemployment has fallen. The decline has been striking because exports, along with manufacturing, have been relative bright spots since the recession's end. Wall Street will be looking for further signals about Chinese demand Tuesday, as export dependent giants like 3M and DuPont report results and discuss their business outlook. Earlier, Alcoa, the first such major company to report third quarter earnings, slightly lowered its estimate for global growth in aluminum demand because of slowing sales in China for products like trucks, trailers and aluminum cans this month. On Monday, Caterpillar became the latest company to confirm that after a long boom, business in China is down. "I don't think there's any doubt that things got overheated in China," said Ed Rapp, Caterpillar's chief financial officer. "Our long term view is still positive but things have slowed considerably in China in 2012." The American outlook for growth and jobs will depend on many factors. A pickup in economic activity in Europe or the United States, for example, could help compensate for any weakness in China, the source of roughly 10 percent of the world's economic output in 2012. And the United States still brings in far more than it sends to China, importing nearly 4 in goods for every 1 it exports. Nevertheless, the rapid growth rate there benefited many large American exporters and made China the third largest buyer of American goods after Canada and Mexico. In 2011, China imported 103.9 billion in American products, or 7 percent of worldwide American exports. What's more, Chinese demand growth has obviously been cooling. In the first half of 2012, exports to China rose 7 percent from the comparable period a year earlier, according to Commerce Department data, down from a 20 percent annual increase in 2011 and a 36 percent jump in 2010. 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. Five industries machinery, computers and electronics, chemicals, transportation equipment, and waste and scrap accounted for 62 percent of exports to China in August, according to Census Bureau data. But the impact is felt beyond those categories. That's because Chinese demand pumped up prices globally for commodities like coal, paper and many kinds of metal. For example, Thompson Creek Metals does not sell directly to China, but the company was forced to lay off more than 100 miners at its molybdenum mine in central Idaho earlier this month. Weaker demand from China for the specialty metal has helped drive down prices by 30 percent from where they were a year ago, crimping profit margins at the mine. China is the world's leading consumer of molybdenum, which is used to strengthen steel and prevent corrosion, said Kevin Loughrey, Thompson Creek's chief executive. "China has fueled a lot of the growth in demand for natural resources over the last several years," he said. "And it's a fungible market. It's like a balloon that you push in one place and it comes out somewhere else." For Cummins, the impact is more direct. China is its fifth largest market, accounting for 8 percent of the company's 18 billion in revenues last year. And sales there have fallen significantly, dropping 29 percent in the first half of the year from the same period in 2011, on sinking demand for excavators and trucks. The job cuts will trim about 3 percent of Cummins's global work force of 45,000 but it is not clear how many of those cuts will fall in the United States. With 3.5 billion in revenues last year, Schnitzer Steel Industries is far smaller than Cummins, but it, too, considers China a key market. Scrap metal gathered in the junkyards of Schnitzer and other recyclers across the United States provides the raw material for stainless steel consumer goods made in China, as well as for the iron and steel bars undergirding construction there. Now, with local construction stalling, and demand for its consumer products weakening in Europe, China needs far less scrap. Exports of steel and iron scrap among the top products exported to China from the United States are down 53 percent this year from the comparable period in 2011, according to the Institute of Scrap Recycling Industries, a trade group. Prices are down roughly 30 percent as a result, said Joel Denbo, chief at Tennessee Valley Recycling in Decatur, Ala. Mr. Denbo's family founded the company 105 years ago, and he's struggling to avoid layoffs among his work force of 175. He has already let 15 contractors go and eliminated overtime in a bid to keep the company profitable. "People are asking me, 'Boss, what do we do?' " he said. "We don't want to lose a single man or woman." Exports of recycled paper from the United States which comes back from Asia in the form of cardboard boxes are also off sharply, putting pressure on local recycling and waste pickup companies, as prices for their products slip. "China is such a large market for paper, particularly in North America, that you can't hide from that," said Joe Fusco, vice president of Casella Waste Systems in Rutland, Vt., which serves rural New England, upstate New York and part of Pennsylvania. In August, Casella announced it would eliminate several dozen jobs as part of a broader cost cutting effort. "You're constantly looking for pennies, hoping it adds up to millions," he said. "It's a lot different when you get 50 a ton than 100 a ton." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Global Business |
Follow NASA's New Horizons Mission as It Heads for New Year's Flyby With Ultima Thule Update: Read Times coverage of the aftermath of the New Horizons flyby of Ultima Thule here. LAUREL, Md. NASA's New Horizons spacecraft, which flew past Pluto in 2015, will zip past another icy world nicknamed Ultima Thule on New Year's Day, gathering information on what is believed to be a pristine fragment from the earliest days of the solar system. It will be the most distant object ever visited by a spacecraft. As 2019 dawns on the East Coast of the United States, New Horizons will pass within about 2,200 miles of Ultima Thule, speeding at 31,500 m.p.h. "It's on course, it's healthy, it's conducting observations as we speak and it's going to arrive on time," said S. Alan Stern, the principal investigator for the mission, during a news conference on Monday afternoon. How do I watch the flyby? Though it is a NASA spacecraft, the New Horizons mission is operated by the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory in Maryland. Coverage of the flyby will be broadcast on the lab's website and YouTube channel as well as NASA TV. On Twitter, updates will appear on NewHorizons2015, the account maintained by Dr. Stern, and on NASA's NASANewHorizons account. Or watch the countdown to the flyby in the video player below: While the scientists will celebrate the moment of flyby as if it were New Year's, they will have no idea how the mission is actually going at that point. The spacecraft, busy making its science observations, will not turn to send a message back to Earth until a few hours later. Then it will take six hours for that radio signal, traveling at the speed of light, to reach Earth. Sign up to get reminders for space and astronomy events on your calendar. Tell me about this small frozen world Based on suggestions from the public, the New Horizons team chose a nickname for the world: Ultima Thule, which means "distant places beyond the known world." Officially, it is 2014 MU69, a catalog designation assigned by the International Astronomical Union's Minor Planet Center. The "2014" refers to the year it was discovered, the result of a careful scan of the night sky by the Hubble Space Telescope for targets that New Horizons might be able to fly by after its Pluto encounter. No telescope on Earth has been able to clearly spot MU69. Even sharp eyed Hubble can make out only a dot of light. Scientists estimate that it is 12 to 22 miles wide, and that it is dark, reflecting about 10 percent of the light that hits it. Four billion miles from the sun, MU69 is a billion miles farther out than Pluto, part of the ring of icy worlds beyond Neptune known as the Kuiper belt. Its orbit, nearly circular, suggests that it has been undisturbed since the birth of the solar system 4.5 billion years ago. Why do planetary scientists care about this small thing 4 billion miles from the sun? Every time a spacecraft visits an asteroid or a comet, planetary scientists talk about how it is a precious time capsule from the solar system's baby days when the planets were forming. That is true, but especially true for Ultima Thule. Asteroids around the solar system have collided with each other and broken apart. Comets partially vaporize each time they pass close to the sun. But Ultima Thule may have instead been in a deep freeze the whole time, perhaps essentially pristine since it formed 4.5 billion years ago. Will there be pictures of Ultima Thule? New Horizons has been taking pictures for months, but for most of that time Ultima Thule has been little more than a dot in any of these images. A picture shown during a Monday news conference offered hints at the shape of the object. "We know it's not round," said John Spencer, the mission's deputy project scientist. At a news conference on Tuesday morning after the flyby, the scientists expect to release a picture taken before the flyby. Ultima Thule is expected to be a mere six pixels wide in that picture enough to get a rough idea of its shape but not much more. A composite image of Ultima Thule recorded between August and mid December by the New Horizons spacecraft. The first set of images captured by New Horizons during the flyby should be back on Earth by Tuesday evening, and those are to be shown at news conferences describing the science results on Wednesday and Thursday. Yes, NASA is one of the agencies affected by the partial federal government shutdown, and most NASA employees are currently furloughed. However, missions in space, including New Horizons, are considered essential activities. (It would be a shame if NASA had to throw away spacecraft costing hundreds of millions of dollars. ) NASA will not be issuing news releases, but the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory public affairs staff will get the news out, and on Friday, NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine indicated that the agency would continue providing information on New Horizons as well as Osiris Rex, a mission that is exploring a near earth asteroid, Bennu. The spacecraft has enough propellant left to possibly head to a third target, but that depends on whether there is anything close enough along its path. Astronomers, busy with Ultima Thule, have yet to start that new search. Beyond that, New Horizons will continue heading out of the solar system. Powered by a plutonium power source, it will take data and communicate home with Earth for perhaps another 20 years, headed out of the solar system. However, it is not moving quite as fast as the Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 spacecraft that have now both entered interstellar space, so it is unclear whether New Horizons will make a similar crossing before its power runs out. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Science |
Fear of the virus has prompted companies like Amazon and Nestle to suspend international travel by some employees, and airlines have cut flights to Asian cities. As the coronavirus outbreak spreads, the world's biggest companies have begun painting a bleak picture of broken supply chains, disrupted manufacturing, empty stores and flagging demand for their wares. The announcements by businesses like Mastercard, Microsoft, Apple and United Airlines offer a reading on how the virus is affecting consumer behavior and business sentiment. These corporate bulletins and what executives do in response could determine how much economic damage the outbreak inflicts and whether a recession looms. Some companies have expressed optimism that governments will curb new infections and that consumer spending in Europe and North America will be largely unscathed. But if executives see a threat beyond the first three months of the year, they may pare planned investments and even start laying off workers. That, in turn, would further dampen economic activity. The stock market plunge this week, the steepest since the financial crisis, suggests that investors are bracing for a lot more bad news. The correction in the S P 500 stock index a decline of 10 percent or more from a recent peak was its fastest ever. In the midst of the sell off, analysts at Goldman Sachs said they expected that the companies making up the S P 500 would collectively show no profit growth this year. The bank had previously forecast a 6 percent increase in earnings. A major vulnerability for businesses in the United States and Europe is their increasing reliance on China as a supplier and customer over the last 10 or 20 years. The supply chain problems have started to affect American homebuilders as well. A senior executive at Toll Brothers said the virus appeared to have delayed the supply of lighting parts. At the same time, Chinese consumers are buying less. Apple said the closing of stores in China would depress sales of iPhones and other devices. Mastercard cut its growth forecast in part because people are taking fewer international trips. Fear of the virus has prompted companies like Amazon and Nestle to suspend international travel by some employees. That drop in demand, combined with their own concerns about the virus, has prompted United and other airlines in the United States and Europe to cancel flights to cities in China and elsewhere in Asia. Ford and Rivian no longer plan to work jointly on electric vehicles. Elizabeth Holmes took the stand in her trial. Follow along with our reporters. Ken Griffin, head of Citadel, bid highest for a copy of the Constitution. On Friday, United said an investor briefing scheduled next week would be postponed until September. Citing concern over the virus, the airline said it "does not believe it is practical to expect that it can have a productive conversation focused on its long term strategy." Companies may also struggle because investors are becoming more reluctant to lend them money. Appetite for new bonds, especially those issued by less creditworthy businesses, has fallen off. Banks may also have to tighten lending standards. In a sign that investors believe the coronavirus concerns could hit banks hard, the stocks of the three largest U.S. banks JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup and Bank of America are all down by a lot more than the S P 500 so far this year. Of course, the coronavirus outbreak could end up resembling other brief shocks that have landed only glancing blows on companies and the stock market. These include the fiscal battles of the previous decade that consumed Washington and Wall Street for weeks at a time. And as recently as Friday, some companies were predicting that their sales would hold up just fine. Volkswagen, the German auto giant, said it expected deliveries this year to be "in line" with 2019. And Apple said conditions were gradually returning to normal in China. "It feels to me that China is getting the coronavirus under control," Tim Cook, Apple's chief executive told Fox Business on Thursday. "When you look at the parts that are done in China, we have reopened factories." Some Wall Street analysts have expressed optimism that the Federal Reserve and other central banks will cut interest rates to help offset the economic stress caused by the virus. Such cuts would help lower borrowing costs, giving consumers a fresh incentive to spend and businesses to invest. Those hopes were buoyed when the Fed chair, Jerome H. Powell, unexpectedly issued a statement on Friday saying the central bank would "act as appropriate to support the economy." Economists at Bank of America wrote on Friday that they expected the Fed to cut rates by half a percentage point at its March meeting "as a way to stem panic." Some companies are already talking about how much business will come their way when the outbreak begins to recede including Las Vegas Sands, which has major interests in the Chinese gambling haven of Macau. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Economy |
A battle of the hedge funds is brewing in the bankruptcy auction of the McClatchy Company, one of the nation's largest and most decorated newspaper chains, pitting Chatham Asset Management and Brigade Capital Management, both debt holders in the chain, against a newcomer to the proceedings, Alden Global Capital. Chatham and Brigade seemed to have an advantage going into the planned court supervised sale of McClatchy. In April, McClatchy said it had received an offer worth more than 300 million from the two firms, which had taken on much of McClatchy's debt in a Chapter 11 restructuring. The two hedge funds planned to use that debt as part of the bid, which would keep the chain, with 30 newsrooms across the country, intact. Alden, a New York hedge fund that has become a force in the newspaper business, tried to disrupt the Chatham Brigade proposal on Wednesday by filing an emergency motion in a U.S. Bankruptcy Court. Alden asked Judge Michael E. Wiles to stop any attempt to buy McClatchy through a credit bid, a transaction that would allow Chatham and Brigade to use the company debt they had assumed toward the purchase price. Alden's maneuver suggested that it, too, had an interest in acquiring McClatchy, a 163 year old chain that fell on hard times not long after its 4.5 billion purchase in 2006 of a much larger rival, Knight Ridder. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Media |
SLAM DUNK: "I believe that books are like amusement parks and sometimes kids ought to be able to choose the ride that's going to thrill them," the children's book author says. His last novel "The Crossover," a Newbery winning, hip hop inflected tale of basketball loving twin boys Josh and Jordan was written in verse, as is his new one, a prequel called "Rebound." It enters the middle grade hardcover list at No. 3. His books pulse with musicality, so it's no surprise that Alexander plays tunes while he writes. "I listen to jazz, mostly for the rhythm and the joy," he says. "Songs that inspire and enrapture me, that never end. Long jazz songs like 'So What' by Miles Davis and John Coltrane's almost 14 minute, avant garde, hypnotic rendition of 'My Favorite Things.'" A playlist for "Rebound," he says, "would be a cornucopia of all the songs that defined my teen years, from 'Man in the Mirror' to Phil Collins to the Fresh Prince and LL Cool J. But also, there'd be some Luther Vandross and Earth, Wind and Fire, because when we went to our grandparents' house, that was what was playing on the record player. I think there'd be a Nancy Wilson or Ella Fitzgerald song on there." Though some educators credit his books with drawing in the most reluctant readers, Alexander says, "I don't believe in reluctant readers in the same way I don't believe in reluctant moviegoers or reluctant eaters. If I'm at a play and I'm severely unimpressed, I will ask my wife, 'Can we leave at intermission?' If something doesn't rip our heart out and stomp on it, it doesn't have to mean that we are reluctant, just that it's not interesting." Kids, he believes, are the same way. He adds, "I think poetry is a surefire way to get young people engaged with literature because of its immediacy, its emotional intimacy, its rhythm, its ability to take the human soul entire, as Langston Hughes said, and squeeze it, 'like a lemon or lime, drop by drop, into atomic words.'" In his books, the twins follow guides to life called the "basketball rules." Alexander lives by them too. "'A loss is inevitable,'" he says, quoting rule No. 10. "'Like snow in winter. / True champions / learn / to dance / through / the storm.'" He explains, "Recently, my mom passed. While I was writing 'Rebound,' about a boy dealing with loss and grief and trying to find himself in the new normal of his life, I was trying to rebound from loss and grief and trying to find my new self. And it was cathartic to be writing my life. It helped me get back on the dance floor." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Books |
After years of financial turbulence, and significant damage from Hurricane Sandy, the South Street Seaport Museum has received another substantial financial commitment from the City of New York: 4.5 million to stabilize and restore a 110 year old lightship. The museum, located on the lower tip of Manhattan on the East River, showcases the city's maritime history. In addition to galleries and educational spaces, it features an active fleet of five historic ships. The city paid 13 million for a restoration of the sailing ship Wavertree, which was completed last year, plus another 4.5 million to make the ship accessible. Now, New York is funding the restoration of the lightship Ambrose, which guided vessels into lower New York Bay between 1908 and 1932, a period of major immigration. "For millions of immigrants, Ambrose was the literal light of liberty," said Jonathan Boulware, executive director of the museum. "Passing Ambrose lightship meant that you'd arrived at America's shores. Ambrose's light was the beacon of liberty visible long before the Statue of Liberty." There is also symbolic significance to the city's funding of this beleaguered museum. The museum has had major setbacks over the past decade: It struggled financially for years, resulting in staff layoffs, trustees' resignations, and board members making personal loans to keep it afloat. Then, Hurricane Sandy hit hard. Six feet of oil laced water surged into the lobby, the electrical system and computer network failed, and the museum was shuttered for nearly four years. It eventually received 10.4 million from the Federal Emergency Management Agency and reopened in 2016. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Art & Design |
After the 2016 election, engineers at YouTube went to work on changes to a YouTube algorithm that had become one of the world's most influential lines of computer code. That algorithm decided which videos YouTube recommended that users watch next; the company said it was responsible for 70 percent of the one billion hours a day people spent on YouTube. But it had become clear that those recommendations tended to steer viewers toward videos that were hyperpartisan, divisive, misleading or downright false. New data now shows that the effort, which was completed last year, mostly worked. In the weeks leading up to Tuesday's election, YouTube recommended far fewer fringe channels alongside news videos than it did in 2016, which helped it to reduce its spread of disinformation, according to research by Guillaume Chaslot, a former Google engineer who helped build YouTube's recommendation engine and now studies it. YouTube's efforts also had a knock on effect: the amplification of Fox News. "The channel most recommended in our data set in 2016 was Alex Jones," the notorious internet conspiracy theorist, who has since been barred from YouTube, Mr. Chaslot said. "Now it's Fox News." In several analyses of YouTube's recommendations on popular news and election videos over the past month, Fox News was consistently the most recommended channel, sometimes by a wide margin, according to data from Mr. Chaslot and Marc Faddoul, a researcher at the University of California, Berkeley. The data also showed that the Fox News clips most frequently recommended by YouTube were from its pro Trump prime time shows that often attack Democrats and sometimes spread unreliable information about voter fraud and the coronavirus. The findings were affirmed by separate data that showed Fox News's views on YouTube have more than doubled over the past year, surpassing six billion on Monday, according to Social Blade, a social media analytics firm. That rate outpaced every other major American news network aside from NBC News, which grew nearly twice as fast over the period but had 2.3 billion total views, according to the data. Facebook, which has also tweaked its algorithms to steer people toward more reliable information, has shown similar results. Fox News has far outperformed other large news outlets when measured by users' interactions with posts, the only such data publicly available. The ascent of Fox News on the social media platforms was a reminder that tech companies have been walking a tricky line between limiting misinformation and appeasing politicians complaining that Silicon Valley is biased all while still keeping people clicking, watching and sharing on their sites. YouTube's promotion of Fox News's unabashedly conservative pundits also undercut arguments from some of those same pundits that the biggest tech companies are trying to silence them. The Fox News star Tucker Carlson recently criticized comments by a Google executive that the company, which owns YouTube, would try to improve its search results to promote "better quality of governance" and decision making. "What does that mean?" Mr. Carlson said. "In other words, they want to subvert democracy." YouTube has recommended that clip of Mr. Carlson more than almost any other news related video in recent weeks, according to Mr. Chaslot's data. The researchers and other analysts estimated that Fox News's growing popularity on YouTube and Facebook was largely due to its fitting into their algorithmic sweet spots. The network has been rubber stamped as an authoritative source, which tells the algorithms to give it a boost, while its conservative talk shows' partisan headlines are effective at drawing clicks, which also tells the algorithms to keep promoting them. MSNBC and CNN were also among YouTube's most recommended channels on recent popular news videos, according to Mr. Chaslot's analysis, though less than Fox News. YouTube also frequently directed people toward their videos that had more partisan and sensational headlines. "Clickbaitiness is still really important, as it was in 2016," Mr. Chaslot said. Farshad Shadloo, a YouTube spokesman, said in a statement that YouTube's algorithm changes contributed to a 141 percent increase in the time people spent watching videos from Fox News, MSNBC, CNN, NBC News, ABC News and CBS News collectively over the past year. "Since 2018, we've been focused on ensuring when people come to YouTube looking for news and information, they get it from authoritative sources," he said. A Fox News spokesperson said the network had worked hard to elevate its presence on YouTube. Fox News created a team focused on the platform and has made a point of posting videos that perform well with YouTube's search engine and with viewers, such as live broadcasts of breaking news. On Facebook, Fox News's page accounted for 10 percent of all interactions with posts about the election over the past week, according to CrowdTangle. That was second only to President Trump's official page, at 18 percent, and above Breitbart's at 6 percent. The next major network was CNN at 2 percent, roughly on a par with the page of "Fox Friends," the Fox News morning show. Facebook declined to comment but noted that interactions do not entirely reflect a post's reach, though they are the only measure of a post's popularity that the company makes available. In one analysis, Mr. Chaslot and Mr. Faddoul collected recommendations daily on videos posted by 800 of YouTube's most popular news related channels over the three weeks that ended on Oct. 27. Fox News accounted for more than 3 percent of the 300,000 recommendations collected, more than twice the rate of the next closest channel, the History Channel. CNN and MSNBC accounted for about 1 percent of recommendations. When the researchers analyzed only videos about the election from the same channels, Fox News accounted for 10 percent of all the recommendations, nearly three times the rate of the No. 2 most promoted channel, MSNBC. Other analyses of recommendations alongside some of the most popular election related videos also showed Fox News as the most promoted channel. Given the enormous size and influence of social networks like YouTube and Facebook, changes to how they promote content often causes unforeseen outcomes, such as news organizations writing headlines or framing stories to please the new algorithms, said Arvind Narayanan, a computer scientist at Princeton University who studies the effect of algorithms on society. "YouTube is constantly tinkering with its algorithms," he said. "And when it does that, it always is going to have both intended and unintended effects." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Technology |
WASHINGTON Leaders of the House Intelligence Committee said on Wednesday that they planned to make public the thousands of Facebook ads linked to Russia that appeared during the 2016 presidential election campaign, the first indication that the ads would be released. The lawmakers told reporters about their plans after an afternoon meeting with Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook's chief operating officer. They said the 3,000 ads would probably be released after a Nov. 1 hearing on the role of social media platforms in Russia's interference in the election. That hearing, and a similar one that the Senate Intelligence Committee plans to hold with Facebook, Google and Twitter, will place Silicon Valley's top companies under a harsh spotlight as the public perception of the giants shifts in Washington. Ms. Sandberg sat down with Representative K. Michael Conaway of Texas, the Republican leader of the House investigation, and Representative Adam B. Schiff of California, the top Democrat on the committee, at the start of two full days of meetings with federal officials. The meetings are a part of the company's lobbying and public relations push to contain fallout from disclosures that a group linked to Russia bought more than 100,000 in ads on divisive issues on Facebook. Lawmakers and public interest groups have called for the release of the ads, which Facebook shared with Congress last month, to understand what kind of material foreign buyers placed in front of Facebook users. But Facebook has said it had no plans to release the ads. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Technology |
THE CHEF SHOW Stream on Netflix. It's easy to see why Jon Favreau and Roy Choi signed on to host this food travel show. One of the new episodes finds them chomping down smoked fish at Wexler's Deli in Southern California. ("It looks so good," Choi marvels.) Another begins with footage of the two sampling red wine given to them by Wolfgang Puck. (Favreau's conclusion: "It's good.") Other highlights from the latest batch of episodes, released Wednesday, include the pair getting a lesson in cooking Peruvian ceviche from the chefs and restaurateurs Susan Feniger and Mary Sue Milliken, and cooking bread and biscuits with the filmmaker Sam Raimi. Raimi seems mildly envious of the pair's gig: "Boy," he says while holding a steaming bowl of delicious looking food, "this is one of the toughest shoots I've been on." JUSTIN BIEBER: SEASONS Stream on YouTube. Last week, Justin Bieber released "Changes," his first album in a half decade, in which he attempts to reimagine himself by fully embracing R B. Accompanying the new album is "Seasons," a YouTube series that chronicles his return, his music making process and his struggles with stardom, which include several years of drug abuse. "The first few episodes of 'Seasons' are about, loosely, how the sausage gets made," Jon Caramanica wrote in a recent article in The New York Times. "But the subsequent ones are something else altogether a picture of how the sausage almost doesn't get made." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Television |
U.S. Companies Brace for an Exit From the Euro by Greece Even as Greece desperately tries to avoid defaulting on its debt, American companies are preparing for what was once unthinkable: that Greece could soon be forced to leave the euro zone. Bank of America Merrill Lynch has looked into filling trucks with cash and sending them over the Greek border so clients can continue to pay local employees and suppliers in the event money is unavailable. Ford has configured its computer systems so they will be able to immediately handle a new Greek currency. No one knows just how broad the shock waves from a Greek exit would be, but big American banks and consulting firms have also been doing a brisk business advising their corporate clients on how to prepare for a splintering of the euro zone. That is a striking contrast to the assurances from European politicians that the crisis is manageable and that the currency union can be held together. On Thursday, the European Central Bank will consider measures that would ease pressure on Europe's cash starved countries. JPMorgan Chase, though, is taking no chances. It has already created new accounts for a handful of American giants that are reserved for a new drachma in Greece or whatever currency might succeed the euro in other countries. Stock markets around the world have rallied this summer on hopes that European leaders will solve the Continent's debt problems, but the quickening tempo of preparations by big business for a potential Greek exit this summer suggests that investors may be unduly optimistic. Many executives are deeply skeptical that Greece will accede to the austere fiscal policies being demanded by Europe in return for financial assistance. Greece's abandonment of the euro would most likely create turmoil in global markets, which have experienced periodic sell offs whenever Europe's debt problems have flared up over the last two and a half years. It would also increase the pressure on Italy and Spain, much larger economic powers that are struggling with debt problems of their own. "It's safe to say most companies are preparing," said Paul Dennis, a program manager with Corporate Executive Board, a private advisory firm. In a survey this summer, the firm found that 80 percent of clients polled expected Greece to leave the euro zone, and a fifth of those expected more countries to follow. "Fifteen months ago when we started looking at this, we said it was unthinkable," said Heiner Leisten, a partner with the Boston Consulting Group in Cologne, Germany, who heads up its global insurance practice. "It's not impossible or unthinkable now." Mr. Leisten's firm, as well as PricewaterhouseCoopers, has already considered the timing of a Greek withdrawal for example, the news might hit on a Friday night, when global markets are closed. A bank holiday could quickly follow, with the stock market and most local financial institutions shutting down, while new capital controls make it hard to move money in and out of the country. "We've had conversations with several dozen companies and we're doing work for a number of these," said Peter Frank, who advises corporate treasurers as a principal at Pricewaterhouse. "Almost all of that has come in over the transom in the last 90 days." 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. He added: "Companies are asking some very granular questions, like 'If a news release comes out on a Friday night announcing that Greece has pulled out of the euro, what do we do?' In some cases, companies have contingency plans in place, such as having someone take a train to Athens with 50,000 euros to pay employees." The recent wave of preparations by American companies for a Greek exit from the euro signals a stark switch from their stance in the past, said Carole Berndt, head of global transaction services in Europe, the Middle East and Africa for Bank of America Merrill Lynch. "When we started giving advice, they came for the free sandwiches and chocolate cookies," she said jokingly. "Now that has changed, and contingency planning is focused on three primary scenarios a single country exit, a multicountry exit and a breakup of the euro zone in its entirety." Banks and consulting firms are reluctant to name clients, and many big companies also declined to discuss their contingency plans, fearing it could anger customers in Europe if it became known they were contemplating the euro's demise. Central banks, as well as Germany's finance ministry, have also been considering the implications of a Greek exit but have been even more secretive about specific plans. But some corporations are beginning to acknowledge they are ready if Greece or even additional countries leave the euro zone, making sure systems can handle a quick transition to a new currency. In Europe, the holding company for Iberia Airlines and British Airways has acknowledged it is preparing plans in the event of a euro exit by Spain. "We've looked at many scenarios, including where one or more countries decides to redenominate," said Roger Griffith, who oversees global settlement and customer risk for MasterCard. "We have defined operating steps and communications steps to take." He added: "Practically, we could make a change in a day or two and be prepared in terms of our systems." In a statement, Visa said that it too would also be able to make "a swift transition to a new currency with the minimum possible disruption to consumers and retailers." Juniper Networks, a provider of networking technology based in California, created a "Euro Zone Crisis Assessment and Contingency Plan," which company officials liken to the kind of business continuity plans they maintain in the event of an earthquake. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Economy |
THE GUARDED GATE Bigotry, Eugenics, and the Law That Kept Two Generations of Jews, Italians and Other European Immigrants Out of America By Daniel Okrent Today's vehement demands to stop immigrants are neither new nor proportional to their numbers. Immigrants arriving between 2000 and 2010 constituted approximately 3 percent of the United States population, while those arriving between 1900 and 1910 constituted 8.9 percent of the population. The nativist movement, as anti immigrant campaigns were once called, began a century and a half ago, directed first against the Irish, later against those arriving from southern and eastern Europe. The case against these European immigrants was remarkably similar to today's complaints about those at our gates: They steal jobs from the native born, they are costly to taxpayers, they don't respect American values, and they are inclined to be criminals. This does not mean that history repeats itself. Up through at least the 1920s nativists primarily targeted Catholics and Jews. And their bigotry was quite possibly shared by the majority of white Protestant Americans. Still, in a vivid new book by Daniel Okrent, who was the first public editor of The New York Times, "The Guarded Gate," jam packed with appalling examples, most readers will be unable to miss the book's implications for present day anti immigration sentiment. Okrent's is largely an intellectual history if we can use that term to describe the shoddy thinking of his subjects of nativist ideology and ideologues from the mid 19th century to the first comprehensive immigration restriction law of 1924. He explores who these nativist leaders were and how their elite status allowed them to pass off bogus claims as science. Nativist leaders were among the most distinguished men of the country: upper class, highly educated and Protestant, men who personally had nothing to fear from new immigrants. Let me introduce some of them. Charles Benedict Davenport, Harvard graduate, Harvard professor, descendant of Puritans. Robert DeCourcy Ward, whose ancestors arrived with John Winthrop. Prescott Farnsworth Hall, who descended from Charlemagne. Charles Warren, whose ancestors came on the Mayflower. H. Fairfield Osborn, son of a railroad tycoon, president of the American Museum of Natural History. Henry Cabot Lodge, of whom Okrent writes, "There wasn't a box on the Brahmin checklist he didn't tick." Their class privilege is important because then, as now, critics tend to associate bigotry with poor, uneducated rural and working class people, a misleading analysis. 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. All scientists, and all boasting familiarity with Mendelian genetics, these nativists nevertheless considered loyalty and "shiftlessness," for example, to be genetic characteristics. Davenport's 1919 "The Trait Book" listed 3,500 human genetic attributes, each assigned a numerical value; these included "forwardness," "forehead, low," "fondness of children," "frivolousness." Osborn opined that "education and environment do not fundamentally alter racial values." To gather "facts" about who could become desirable Americans, nativist leaders sought public opinion, but their respondents were limited to men listed in "Who's Who," Harvard Medical School graduates, prominent white Southerners and labor union officials such as Samuel Gompers (an ardent restrictionist). This extremely non random sample reflected the kind of people whose opinions these scientists respected. Leaving nothing to chance, their survey used a multiple choice questionnaire; respondents were asked to rank several groups in order of desirability: "native born; persons from northern Europe; skilled persons; families with some money, intending to settle in the country; British; Scandinavians; Germans." Henry Goddard's famed Kallikak study of "defectives" persuaded more than 30 states to impose forced sterilization on the "feeble minded." He also tested arrivals at Ellis Island and "found" that 83 percent of the Jews, 80 percent of Hungarians, 79 percent of Italians were either "morons" or "imbeciles." Misunderstanding what was and wasn't genetic led to enthusiasm for eugenics, the science of human breeding. Not all eugenics was discriminatory. In the late 19th century progressive reformers used eugenic arguments for improving public health through, for example, the promotion of healthy pregnancies. But by the 1920s eugenicists were ranking ethnic groups as superior or inferior, and their work was considered state of the art science, taught in standard biology textbooks. Up to World War II nativist bigotry could be found across the political spectrum. Socialists, anarchists, civil rights leaders (including W.E.B. Du Bois), Jewish leaders and feminists tried unsuccessfully to formulate progressive versions of eugenics. Few of the mainstream eugenicists, however, considered Jews and people of color as desirable immigrants. The young Eleanor Roosevelt who would later become an outspoken anti racist described someone as "an interesting little man, but very Jew," and allowed that she'd "rather be hung" than attend another "Jew party." The most influential opposition to nativism came from a different sector of the wealthy: industrialists who wanted the cheap labor only immigrants could provide. Okrent's discussion misses a major aspect of eugenics: anxiety about falling fertility among educated women. When Theodore Roosevelt spoke of "race suicide" as a national problem, he was worrying that a significant minority of privileged women were not marrying and reproducing. They chose to be single, and in some cases to form romantic partnerships with other women, because dominant gender norms labeled employment and public activism improper activities for married women. Supremely confident of their objectivity, nativist leaders sought to put eugenics into practice. Willet Hays a plant breeder proposed that each American be assigned an 11 digit "number name," a score of their genetic lineage, to guarantee their "mating with those of equal general excellence." Okrent reproduces a sample report on an individual's physical, mental and temperamental qualities. Eugenicists persuaded the Public Health Service to offer certificates of eugenic suitability for marriage. The temperature of nativist bigotry reached new heights in the World War I era, through the efforts of Madison Grant, also a proud descendant of Puritans. His 1916 book, "The Passing of the Great Race," promoted the myth that the "master race" was facing extinction this view, incidentally, was recently borrowed by the white nationalists in Charlottesville, Va., who were chanting, "Jews will not replace us." Eugenic claims became increasingly absurd: Dante and Leonardo were Nordics, Marco Polo and Galileo were really Germans, Jesus was not a Jew. Nativism's denouement was the Johnson Reed Act of 1924. Previous immigration restrictions targeted particular groups notably people from Asia but this comprehensive law aimed not just to limit immigration but to preserve white Protestant dominance in America. It assigned a quota to each nation, ranging from 51,000 for Germany to 2,000 for Russia to 1,100 for the entire African continent. The northern Ku Klux Klan drummed up support for the law, claiming that America was ordained by God to be a white Protestant nation. Okrent slights the Klan's influence, understandably, because his book is a history of elite nativist spokesmen rather than a social history. But recognizing the Klan's campaign can serve as a reminder that bigotry has no life of its own; it needs deliberate promotion. The 1920s K.K.K. gained astonishing strength four to six million members and operated a sophisticated lobbying and get out the vote machine, putting into office 11 governors, 45 congressmen and hundreds of state, county and municipal officials. The Klan identified congressman Albert Johnson, chairman of the House immigration committee, shepherded the anti immigration bill into enactment. The law remained in effect until 1965, with some dreadful consequences. To name just one: It justified the refusal to accept refugees from Nazism, including 20,000 Jewish children. Equally chilling is Okrent's documentation of American influence on Nazi "race hygiene." As early as 1932 Walter Schultze of the Nazi euthanasia program called on German geneticists to "heed the example" of the United States. The Nazi Handbook for Law and Legislation cited American immigration law as a model for Germany. Osborn complained that negative press about the Nazis resulted from Jewish influence. Perhaps paradoxically, it was the Nazi genocide that stigmatized eugenics forever. But bigotry was by no means buried by World War II. Its targets are fungible but it typically blames disadvantaged groups for problems more often created by privileged groups. It is a stream that has sometimes been forced underground, and some argue that polite, whispered racism is as bad as the loud kind. Okrent's history belies that argument: Quiet bigotry should be condemned, but when it is shouted and legitimated by people with power and influence, it can become deadly. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Books |
When you purchase an independently reviewed book through our site, we earn an affiliate commission. In his 1956 book "In the Winter of Cities," Tennessee Williams printed a small and exquisite poem titled "Little Horse," a tribute to his lover Frank Merlo. This poem ends: Mignon he is or mignonette avec les yeux plus grands que lui. My name for him is Little Horse. I wish he had a name for me. Williams and Merlo were together from roughly 1947 to 1963, a stretch during which the playwright composed some of the American theater's enduring classics, including "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof," "Suddenly Last Summer" and "The Rose Tattoo." Merlo was a working class New Jersey boy from an Italian family and a charming young war hero. When they met, Tennessee Williams was already Tennessee Williams, flush from the success of "A Streetcar Named Desire," voluble and lit as if by klieg lights. Not long into their relationship, Williams wrote in a letter to a friend: "Have I ever told you that I like Italians? They are the last of the beautiful young comedians of the world." Williams and Merlo's years together are the subject of Christopher Castellani's blazing new novel, "Leading Men." Writing fiction is to no small degree a confidence game, and "Leading Men" casts a spell right from the start. "Truman was throwing a party in Portofino," the first sentence reads, "and Frank wanted to go." This is Italy, 1953. You know Truman's last name without being told. What you've yet to learn is how reliably tender and evocative Castellani's onrushing prose can be. His first achievement in "Leading Men" is to create a world, one inhabited largely by young, charming gay men, that seems to be comprised almost entirely of late nights and last cigarettes and picnics on good blankets and linen suits with the trousers rolled to the knees. This writer's scenes glitter, and they have a strong sexual pulse. At the end of one party, in writing that has some of F. Scott Fitzgerald's opaline poise, Castellani observes: "Then, slowly, as the ashes fluttered away and the eggy firework smell wore off and the yachts cut their radios, couple by couple staggered back up the steep narrow inclines, men in each other's arms, men with women, packs of friends, their songs and shouts and laughter bouncing off the stone in hollow echoes." His second achievement is to pry this milieu open and pour a series of intricate themes into it not merely the nature of fidelity and of the artistic impulse but also the manifold variety of estrangements and humiliations that come with being the lover of a much more famous and talented man. Williams and Merlo drift aimlessly around Europe. Williams writes intensely (he had a fierce work ethic) and enjoys himself nearly as fulsomely. Merlo is Williams's factotum and aide de camp. He makes the reservations and buys the tickets; he mends Williams's socks, plumps the pillows and goes on late night pill runs. "It was a job in itself keeping track of who he was angry with, and who was jealous of him, whose parties he was looking forward to and whose they'd have to make up some excuse to get out of." Merlo had a sense of humor about his position. In life, as in this novel, when asked what he did, he replied: "I sleep with Mr. Williams." Theirs was, for many years, a great love, one that Castellani describes as a "one night stand that lasted 15 years or 16, or 14, depending on who told the story." In John Lahr's agile 2014 biography, "Tennessee Williams: Mad Pilgrimage of the Flesh," Lahr notes that Merlo's other fundamental task was to tend to Williams through his "hysterical outbursts, his paranoia, his hypochondria." "Leading Men" is largely told from the perspective of 10 years after its opening scene, when Merlo is dying from lung cancer in Manhattan and hoping Williams will visit. The book wraps a second, slightly less successful story around this first one. It's about a fictional actress named Anja Blomgren whom Williams and Merlo meet in 1953. She goes on to become a Garbo like film legend, adopting the name Anja Bloom. More centrally, in terms of this novel's plot, she comes to possess the only copy of a short, final, previously unknown Williams play, which he had sent to her before his death. A young man wants to have it produced. Castellani hews closely to the facts of Williams and Merlo's time together without being pinned down by those facts. There is nothing dutiful about the reimagining of their lives. This book is a kind of poem in praise of pleasure, and those pleasures are sometimes stern. Its author knows a great deal about life; better, he knows how to express what he knows. This novel's furniture is spare but well placed. There are just enough pivotal scenes (one involves a pack of feral boys and the apparent rape of two women) that each leaves room for overlapping echoes to rebound. Williams and Merlo were not monogamous. Williams once called crab lice his "occupational disease." Merlo cheated, too, sometimes in revenge. He grew distant and moody over time. Men like Merlo were often scorned, even by other gay men. (Truman Capote once asked the poet James Merrill's lover, the writer and artist David Jackson, "Tell me, David, how much do you get a throw?") The love Merlo and others felt for the great men in their lives was not recognized by society. Among this book's characters is the writer John Horne Burns (1916 1953). Burns's unanticipated death in this novel leaves his longtime male lover with this painful realization: "His name would never appear beside Jack's anywhere but private letters and the backs of photographs." "Leading Men" has a few dead nodes in it and the subplot, involving the reclusive actress and a production of Williams's final play, generates fewer sparks than does the account of Williams and Merlo's dazzled propinquity. But this is an alert, serious, sweeping novel. To hold it in your hands is like holding, to crib a line from Castellani, a front row opera ticket. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Books |
London never goes out of style, especially for travelers from the United States. Both luxury travel network Virtuoso and American Express Travel report the city is consistently a top destination. "For Americans, London is an easy pick for a getaway because the city has no language barrier and offers great cultural attractions, from theater to museums," said Misty Belles, Virtuoso's global head of public relations. "And, since the value of the pound has dropped since Brexit, visiting is less expensive than it has been for many years." Value seeking travelers interested in a London vacation for this fall and winter have their pick of affordable trips, many offering budget friendly options and tempting luxury amenities. British Airways Vacations, for one, has several hundred air inclusive packages to London departing from more than 20 cities in the United States. Each option is valid for specific travel dates, and the inventory is updated frequently. One recent deal is a trip from Jan. 20 to 25, which includes round trip flights from Los Angeles International Airport to Heathrow Airport, four nights' accommodations in a four star hotel in central London and breakfast, for 1,455 a person. Book through ba.com. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Travel |
FOR nearly a decade, Dos Equis has advertised its beer through a pitchman known as the "Most Interesting Man in the World." Typically clad in a white button down shirt and black blazer, the bearded, gray haired gentleman would be shown in commercials bench pressing chairs holding nurses or doing handstands on a horse while a narrator dryly delivered hyperbolic testaments to his greatness. "His charm is so contagious, vaccines have been created for it," one said. "If he were to pat you on the back, you would list it on your resume," went another. The campaign and its witty lines have been a big success, helping to send sales of Dos Equis soaring since 2007 and making a star out of the most interesting man himself, a 77 year old actor named Jonathan Goldsmith. So it came as a surprise this year when Dos Equis cut ties with Mr. Goldsmith, citing a need to attract younger consumers. Rather than retire the campaign, the brand created a commercial that sent the beloved character on a one way mission to Mars, and last week it announced that the new Most Interesting Man in the World will be the 41 year old French actor Augustin Legrand. Dos Equis, hoping for a seamless transition, likened the move to picking a new actor to play James Bond, but it has put the brand in the awkward position of explaining why the previous Most Interesting Man in the World was no longer interesting enough. Mr. Goldsmith, after all, has been the face of the campaign since it started. Andrew Katz, the vice president for marketing for Dos Equis, denied that the change was made because Mr. Goldsmith had "aged out." "It had more to do with really trying to evolve the campaign story line," Mr. Katz said in an interview. "This new interesting man is more resourceful, he's more willing to roll up his sleeves and he is more present tense than past tense." Mr. Katz added that the meaning of the word "interesting" has "obviously evolved over time" and that millennials in particular "value different things" than other generations. To underscore that, Dos Equis said it had conducted a survey in February of about 1,000 men ages 21 to 35, in which 84 percent of respondents said that "what is interesting today is different from what was interesting a decade ago." Several critical comments on social media were delivered in the tone of the commercials: "The most interesting man in the world doesn't get replaced by the beer company. He replaces the beer company," one person wrote on the Dos Equis Facebook page. The comment received more than 3,000 "likes." The transition shows how tricky it is for a company to form such a strong attachment with a single representative, said Allen Adamson, a brand strategy consultant whose clients have included Samuel Adams and the spirits company Diageo. Kevin Spacey was ordered to pay 31 million to the 'House of Cards' studio after sexual harassment allegations. Netflix buys a visual effects company in a move to support its global ambitions. Brands have an easier time with animated characters like Mr. Clean or figures like Colonel Sanders of KFC "where you can control the image and keep it and freeze it in time," he said. (To that point, KFC has hired at least four actors to play the colonel in the last year and a half, including the comedians Darrell Hammond and Jim Gaffigan.) "There's always a risk anytime you make a change that people will ask what's going on, especially when you've branded that person 'the most interesting guy' and given them a superlative," Mr. Adamson said. "Then the eyes will be more critical to: 'Do I believe it? Do I like it? How does he compare to that other guy?'" Mr. Goldsmith, who turns 78 this month, said that it was not his decision to leave the brand but that he wishes Dos Equis "the very best in every way." When asked about his appeal among different age groups, he said he was "very privileged to have the demographics from 7 to 80." "These corporate decisions are just that, and I have very little comment on that," he said in an interview. "It's their campaign and they did what they did. Time will tell about the success of it, but you know, that's business." Mr. Katz said Mr. Legrand would be more active and adventurous than his predecessor, though the campaign will maintain its "legend lines," which is how the brand refers to remarks like: "His fortune cookies simply read 'Congratulations.'" A clip on YouTube introducing Mr. Legrand last week showed a montage of scenes in which he exits a rocket ship, flees down an alleyway and emerges drenched from a well to return a soccer ball to a group of men. It was narrated in Spanish with subtitles, one of the languages Mr. Legrand speaks, which Mr. Katz said was an effort to "lean into our authenticity" as a Mexican beer. (When asked whether it considered casting a Latino actor to play the role, Dos Equis said it chose to "not limit ourselves to a specific ethnicity or region," noting the beer was made by a German brewmaster in Mexico.) | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Media |
Back in September, Nigel Warren rented out his bedroom in the apartment where he lives for 100 a night on Airbnb, the fast growing Web site for short term home and apartment stays. His roommate was cool with it, and his guests behaved themselves during their stay in the East Village building where he is a renter. But when he returned from a three night trip to Colorado, he heard from his landlord. Special enforcement officers from the city showed up while he was gone, and the landlord received five violations for running afoul of rules related to illegal transient hotels. Added together, the potential fines looked as if they could reach over 40,000. Mr. Warren, like many if not most Airbnb users, had not read the terms and conditions on Airbnb's Web site telling him not to break any laws (while also wiping the company's hands clean of responsibility for hosts' compliance with those laws). So he gulped hard, begged his landlord not to evict him and told him that he would attend the mandatory administrative hearing related to the violations and pay any fines. Then, he gulped harder and hired a lawyer for 415 an hour. He also fired off a note to Airbnb, which collects the nightly fee on behalf of its hosts and keeps a bit for itself. Given that the company knows good and well that many of the hosts on its site who live in big cities are violating the rules, he said, why not warn people more explicitly about the kind of trouble they could find themselves in? "By ignoring local laws, you are making casualties of the very people you need to make your site a success." From the perspective of an Airbnb customer who needs someplace to stay and I count myself among the growing numbers of satisfied Airbnb customers its service pushes every possible consumer pleasure button. You beat the system by avoiding high hotel rates, get to stay in neighborhoods where there aren't hotels at all and can connect with plugged in local hosts, too. But all airy talk in tech start up circles of "collaborative consumption" and "the sharing economy" aside, five figure fines and the possibility of eviction are no joke for those hosts. In fact, local laws may prohibit most or all short term rentals under many circumstances, though enforcement can be sporadic and you have no way of knowing how tough your local authorities will be. Your landlord may not allow such rentals in your lease or your condominium board may not look kindly on it. But one enduring mystery for him was why the city came after him in the first place. He was not renting out his bedroom all that often, after all. Still, he was breaking the law. And that law says you cannot rent out single family homes or apartments, or rooms in them, for less than 30 days unless you are living in the home at the same time. Popular Airbnb markets like San Francisco and New Orleans have even more restrictive rules, and London and Paris have their own ordinances. People who want to go through the official licensing process for inns or bed and breakfasts have that option if they so choose. That said, New York City officials don't come looking for you unless your neighbor, doorman or janitor has complained to the authorities about the strangers traipsing around. "It's not the bargain that somebody who bought or rented an apartment struck, that their neighbors could change by the day," said John Feinblatt, the chief adviser to Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg for policy and strategic planning and the criminal justice coordinator. The city is also concerned with fire safety and maintaining at least some availability of rental inventory for people who live there. Since the mayor's office of special enforcement began looking at the short term rental issue in earnest in 2006, it has received more than 3,000 complaints, conducted nearly 2,000 inspections and issued nearly 6,000 notices of violation. On Thursday, Mr. Warren became one of the lucky violators. He arrived on the 10th floor of a city building in Lower Manhattan expecting to take his lumps during a hearing and write a large check. Instead, he discovered that the buildings department never filed the proper paperwork with the Environmental Control Board, which runs the hearings. A clerk there dismissed all violations against him with no fines, and I could see the color coming back into Mr. Warren's face. His complaint with Airbnb remains, though. "They need to start being a little more responsible and acknowledging what happened and providing a warning to users," he said. "They're in some kind of fight with the cities, and the users are paying the price." Mr. Warren happens to make his living by making Web sites easier to use, and he and I kicked around the idea of a box that would appear when you register as a host on Airbnb in certain cities where the laws are clear. Perhaps it isn't reasonable to expect the company, which believes it's worth at least 2 billion according to a TechCrunch report on its latest fund raising efforts, to track down every zoning law in tiny vacation hamlets. But it can certainly make the rules clear in urban areas where it knows that people like Mr. Warren could easily end up in hot water. "I believe that any company that claims that sort of worth should have the social responsibility to disclose what the laws are in the jurisdiction that they're in," said Janan New, executive director of the San Francisco Apartment Association, a membership group for landlords that has repeatedly tangled with Airbnb. "And if they're not capable of that, then their worth isn't that high." Airbnb's spokeswoman, Kim Rubey, did not answer either question on the phone and e mailed a statement several hours later that didn't really answer them either. I've reprinted it in full (and dissected it in detail) on our Bucks blog. The company is "constantly re evaluating how to do its job better," the statement said. Or is it? Many people believe that living on the Web grants them membership in an exalted class to which old laws cannot possibly apply. This sort of arrogance takes your breath away, until you realize just how brilliant a corporate strategy it is. If you stopped to reckon with every 80 year old zoning law or tried to change the ones that you knew your customers would violate, you'd never even open for business. But if you can create facts on the ground and 200,000 listings worldwide then you have a constituency that is willing to lobby on your behalf. Better then, to march forward with earplugs in, blindfolds on and fingers crossed. If you hear no evil and see no evil, then you've got a fighting chance at a billion dollar valuation as long as the regulators don't have enough firepower to slow you down. This is all well and good for venture capitalists and start up executives and Airbnb guests who aren't worried about underinsured hosts. But if you're a host, you need to consider a couple of things. Could you afford the kinds of fines that Mr. Warren was facing? If not, take your listing down. Even if your guests are considerate, as Mr. Warren's supposedly were, that won't protect you. Nosy neighbors are everywhere, and if they don't like you or your music or your dog or the smells of your cooking, they will not hesitate to anonymously report you to the proper authorities the moment they spot strangers in or near your home. Then, consider the tactics like the ones that Ms. New and her members in San Francisco are now deploying. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Your Money |
Oils, tinctures and salves and sometimes old fashioned buds are increasingly common in seniors' homes. Doctors warn that popularity has outstripped scientific evidence. Shari Horne broke her toes a decade ago, and after surgery, "I have plates and pins and screws in my feet, and they get achy at times," she said. So Ms. Horne, 66, applies a salve containing cannabidiol , derived from the cannabis, or marijuana, plant. It eases the pain. The salve didn't help when she developed bursitis in her shoulder, but a tincture of cannabidiol mixed with T.H.C., the psychoactive ingredient in cannabis, provided relief. Using a pipe, she also smokes "a few hits" of a cannabis brand called Blue Dream after dinner, because "I think relaxing is healthy for you." Many of her neighbors in Laguna Woods, Calif., a community of mostly older adults in Orange County, where she serves on the City Council, have developed similar routines. "People in their 80s and 90s, even retired Air Force colonels, are finding such relief" with cannabis, said Ms. Horne. "Almost everybody I know is using it in one form or another" including her husband Hal, 68, a retired insurance broker, who says it helps him sleep. In fact, so many Laguna Woods seniors use medical cannabis for ailments ranging from arthritis and diabetes nerve pain to back injuries and insomnia that the local dispensary, Bud and Bloom, charters a free bus to bring residents to its Santa Ana location to stock up on supplies. Along with a catered lunch, the bus riders get a seniors discount. Physicians who treat older adults expect their cannabis use to increase as the number of states legalizing medical marijuana keeps growing. After the midterm elections, when Utah and Missouri voters approved medical use, 33 states and the District of Columbia have legalized medical marijuana, along with ten states that also have legalized recreational use. Though the federal government still outlaws cannabis, classified as a Schedule I drug along with heroin (meaning that it has no therapeutic value), public support has swung sharply in favor of legalization, polls have found. That support may rise as the baby boomers, often no strangers to marijuana, succeed their more leery parents as the oldest cohort. People aged 50 to 64 are more likely to report recent marijuana use than their elders. "You might not like it," Dr. David Casarett, chief of palliative care at Duke University Medical Center, tells fellow physicians. "You might not believe in it. But your patients are using this stuff." He and Dr. Joshua Briscoe, a psychiatrist at Duke also trained in palliative care, have mixed feelings about that. Co authors of a recent article on medical marijuana and older adults in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society, they support legalization for medical use. They hope the federal government will reclassify cannabis ("a huge undertaking," Dr. Briscoe admitted), reducing obstacles to much needed research. "We're always searching for a better medication that can treat pain and a host of other symptoms without burdensome side effects, and cannabis is promising" as a treatment for a number of conditions, Dr. Briscoe said. Their overview along with a major report last year from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine points out disorders for which cannabis does appear to have therapeutic effects. Tired of tossing and turning? There are some strategies you could try to improve your hours in bed. None Four out of five people say that they suffer from sleep problems at least once a week and wake up feeling exhausted. Here's a guide to becoming a more successful sleeper. Stretching and meditative movement like yoga before bed can improve the quality of your sleep and the amount you sleep. Try this short and calming routine of 11 stretches and exercises. Nearly 40 percent of people surveyed in a recent study reported having more or much more trouble than usual during the pandemic. Follow these seven simple steps for improving your shut eye. When it comes to gadgets that claim to solve your sleep problems, newer doesn't always mean better. Here are nine tools for better, longer sleep. But the researchers are uneasy about the fact that older people essentially are undertaking self treatment, with scant guidance from medical professionals. Cannabis consumers face a confusing array of options, including various strains and brands and many methods of ingestion: smoking, vaping, tinctures, edibles, topical creams or patches. Users can also experience potentially harmful side effects. When Joy Kavianian, 55, a Laguna Woods resident with Parkinson's disease, wanted to reduce her right side tremors so that she could continue making ceramics, a cherished pursuit, she had lots of questions about cannabis. "I didn't know how this would mix with my other meds," she said. "How would it affect my sleep? The only answer was to slowly introduce it and see." She has learned that a tincture, placed under her tongue about 40 minutes before she heads to the art studio, gives her four hours in which to work effectively. But that discovery took weeks of trial and error. "The social support and legislation is outpacing the research," Dr. Briscoe said. "If I want to say, 'Take this dose for this condition and that dose for that one' the evidence just isn't there." For older people, what does the still limited evidence show? The strongest case, Dr. Casarett said, is that cannabis can reduce neuropathic pain, s ometimes caused by diabetes, shingles or chemotherapy, without the toxic effects of opioids. Studies have also shown that cannabis alleviates the nausea and vomiting that often follows chemotherapy. In fact, the Food and Drug Administration has approved two synthetic T.H.C. drugs for that purpose, though some patients insist that smoking the real thing works better. Cannabis appears to relieve muscle spasms in people with multiple sclerosis, though that research is less extensive, and to improve appetite for patients with cancer or AIDS, Dr. Briscoe said. "Plenty of patients swear it's the only thing that helps them sleep," he added. But while drowsiness often accompanies cannabis use, the evidence that it reliably improves sleep remains modest. Its effects on anxiety and depression are also unclear. And like any drug, cannabis has side effects, some of particular concern for older users, who metabolize medications differently from younger adults. Dizziness, for instance, can lead to injurious falls. Marijuana use is also associated with an increased risk of motor vehicle accidents, so Dr. Casarett and Dr. Briscoe advise counseling older patients not to drive for six to nine hours after use, depending on ingestion method. Y. Tony Yang, a health services and policy researcher at George Washington University, recently predicted in a JAMA Neurology editorial that a June decision by the F.D.A. will have far reaching consequences. The agency approved Epidiolex, the first C.B.D. prescription drug to be legally sold in the United States, for reducing seizures in rare adolescent forms of epilepsy. "A doctor can now prescribe this off label for other uses, which is legal and common," Dr. Yang said. "And on the research side, this could pave the way for controlled clinical trials for other purposes." Insurers may balk at covering off label use, he conceded. Medicare, for instance, doesn't cover medical cannabis, and it won't cover drugs used off label. The bus riders from Laguna Woods often pay 100 to 200 a month out of pocket for cannabis products, a financial struggle for some. But riders like Catherine McCormick, who's 53, find it a worthwhile expenditure. To lessen pain after knee replacement surgery, she was relying on high doses of ibuprofen, "too much wine" and several prescription drugs, including oxycodone, benzodiazepines and an antidepressant. She weaned herself from them all in a few months, she said, by smoking cannabis. That's made her a believer. "I have more energy. I can walk," she said. "I'm not in pain. I feel so much better." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Health |
The Number of Diagnoses Soared Amid a 20 Year Drug Marketing Campaign After more than 50 years leading the fight to legitimize attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, Keith Conners could be celebrating. Severely hyperactive and impulsive children, once shunned as bad seeds, are now recognized as having a real neurological problem. Doctors and parents have largely accepted drugs like Adderall and Concerta to temper the traits of classic A.D.H.D., helping youngsters succeed in school and beyond. But Dr. Conners did not feel triumphant this fall as he addressed a group of fellow A.D.H.D. specialists in Washington. He noted that recent data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention show that the diagnosis had been made in 15 percent of high school age children, and that the number of children on medication for the disorder had soared to 3.5 million from 600,000 in 1990. He questioned the rising rates of diagnosis and called them "a national disaster of dangerous proportions." "The numbers make it look like an epidemic. Well, it's not. It's preposterous," Dr. Conners, a psychologist and professor emeritus at Duke University, said in a subsequent interview. "This is a concoction to justify the giving out of medication at unprecedented and unjustifiable levels." The rise of A.D.H.D. diagnoses and prescriptions for stimulants over the years coincided with a remarkably successful two decade campaign by pharmaceutical companies to publicize the syndrome and promote the pills to doctors, educators and parents. With the children's market booming, the industry is now employing similar marketing techniques as it focuses on adult A.D.H.D., which could become even more profitable. Few dispute that classic A.D.H.D., historically estimated to affect 5 percent of children, is a legitimate disability that impedes success at school, work and personal life. Medication often assuages the severe impulsiveness and inability to concentrate, allowing a person's underlying drive and intelligence to emerge. But even some of the field's longtime advocates say the zeal to find and treat every A.D.H.D. child has led to too many people with scant symptoms receiving the diagnosis and medication. The disorder is now the second most frequent long term diagnosis made in children, narrowly trailing asthma, according to a New York Times analysis of C.D.C. data. Behind that growth has been drug company marketing that has stretched the image of classic A.D.H.D. to include relatively normal behavior like carelessness and impatience, and has often overstated the pills' benefits. Advertising on television and in popular magazines like People and Good Housekeeping has cast common childhood forgetfulness and poor grades as grounds for medication that, among other benefits, can result in "schoolwork that matches his intelligence" and ease family tension. A 2002 ad for Adderall showed a mother playing with her son and saying, "Thanks for taking out the garbage." The Food and Drug Administration has cited every major A.D.H.D. drug stimulants like Adderall, Concerta, Focalin and Vyvanse, and nonstimulants like Intuniv and Strattera for false and misleading advertising since 2000, some multiple times. Sources of information that would seem neutral also delivered messages from the pharmaceutical industry. Doctors paid by drug companies have published research and delivered presentations that encourage physicians to make diagnoses more often that discredit growing concerns about overdiagnosis. Many doctors have portrayed the medications as benign "safer than aspirin," some say even though they can have significant side effects and are regulated in the same class as morphine and oxycodone because of their potential for abuse and addiction. Patient advocacy groups tried to get the government to loosen regulation of stimulants while having sizable portions of their operating budgets covered by pharmaceutical interests. Companies even try to speak to youngsters directly. Shire the longtime market leader, with several A.D.H.D. medications including Adderall recently subsidized 50,000 copies of a comic book that tries to demystify the disorder and uses superheroes to tell children, "Medicines may make it easier to pay attention and control your behavior!" Profits for the A.D.H.D. drug industry have soared. Sales of stimulant medication in 2012 were nearly 9 billion, more than five times the 1.7 billion a decade before, according to the data company IMS Health. Even Roger Griggs, the pharmaceutical executive who introduced Adderall in 1994, said he strongly opposes marketing stimulants to the general public because of their dangers. He calls them "nuclear bombs," warranted only under extreme circumstances and when carefully overseen by a physician. Psychiatric breakdown and suicidal thoughts are the most rare and extreme results of stimulant addiction, but those horror stories are far outnumbered by people who, seeking to study or work longer hours, cannot sleep for days, lose their appetite or hallucinate. More can simply become habituated to the pills and feel they cannot cope without them. "Pharma pushed as far as they could, but you can't just blame the virus," said Dr. Lawrence Diller, a behavioral pediatrician in Walnut Creek, Calif. "You have to have a susceptible host for the epidemic to take hold. There's something they know about us that they utilize and exploit." Modern marketing of stimulants began with the name Adderall itself. Mr. Griggs bought a small pharmaceutical company that produced a weight loss pill named Obetrol. Suspecting that it might treat a relatively unappreciated condition then called attention deficit disorder, and found in about 3 to 5 percent of children, he took "A.D.D." and fiddled with snappy suffixes. He cast a word with the widest net. "It was meant to be kind of an inclusive thing," Mr. Griggs recalled. Adderall quickly established itself as a competitor of the field's most popular drug, Ritalin. Shire, realizing the drug's potential, bought Mr. Griggs's company for 186 million and spent millions more to market the pill to doctors. After all, patients can buy only what their physicians buy into. As is typical among pharmaceutical companies, Shire gathered hundreds of doctors at meetings at which a physician paid by the company explained a new drug's value. Such a meeting was held for Shire's long acting version of Adderall, Adderall XR, in April 2002, and included a presentation that to many critics, exemplifies how questionable A.D.H.D. messages are delivered. Dr. William W. Dodson, a psychiatrist from Denver, stood before 70 doctors at the Ritz Carlton Hotel and Spa in Pasadena, Calif., and clicked through slides that encouraged them to "educate the patient on the lifelong nature of the disorder and the benefits of lifelong treatment." But that assertion was not supported by science, as studies then and now have shown that perhaps half of A.D.H.D. children are not impaired as adults, and that little is known about the risks or efficacy of long term medication use. "He gave them credibility," said Richard M. Scheffler, a professor of health economics and public policy at the University of California, Berkeley, who has written extensively on stimulants. "He didn't have a balance. He became totally convinced that it's a good thing and can be more widely used." Drug companies used the research of Dr. Biederman and others to create compelling messages for doctors. "Adderall XR Improves Academic Performance," an ad in a psychiatry journal declared in 2003, leveraging two Biederman studies financed by Shire. A Concerta ad barely mentioned A.D.H.D., but said the medication would "allow your patients to experience life's successes every day." Some studies had shown that stimulant medication helped some elementary school children with carefully evaluated A.D.H.D. to improve scores in reading and math tests, primarily by helping them concentrate. The concern, some doctors said, is that long term, wider academic benefits have not been proved and that ads suggesting they have can tempt doctors, perhaps subconsciously, to prescribe drugs with risks to healthy children merely to improve their grades or self esteem. "There are decades of research into how advertising influences doctors' prescribing practices," said Dr. Aaron Kesselheim of Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston, who specializes in pharmaceutical ethics. "Even though they'll tell you that they're giving patients unbiased, evidence based information, in fact they're more likely to tell you what the drug company told them, whether it's the benefits of the drugs or the risks of those drugs." Drug company advertising also meant good business for medical journals the same journals that published papers supporting the use of the drugs. The most prominent publication in the field, The Journal of the American Academy of Child Adolescent Psychiatry, went from no ads for A.D.H.D. medications from 1990 to 1993 to about 100 pages per year a decade later. Almost every full page color ad was for an A.D.H.D. drug. As is legal and common in pharmaceutical marketing, stimulants' possible side effects like insomnia, irritability and psychotic episodes were printed in small type and dominated by other messages. One Adderall XR brochure included the recording of a man's voice reassuring doctors: "Amphetamines have been used medically for nearly 70 years. That's a legacy of safety you can count on." He did not mention any side effects. Drug companies used sales representatives to promote the drugs in person. Brian Lutz, a Shire salesman for Adderall XR from 2004 to 2009, said he met with 75 psychiatrists in his Oakland, Calif., territory at least every two weeks about 30 to 40 times apiece annually to show them posters and pamphlets that highlighted the medicine's benefits for grades and behavior. "Finally!" she said. "Schoolwork that matches his intelligence." When federal guidelines were loosened in the late 1990s to allow the marketing of controlled substances like stimulants directly to the public, pharmaceutical companies began targeting perhaps the most impressionable consumers of all: parents, specifically mothers. A magazine ad for Concerta had a grateful mother saying, "Better test scores at school, more chores done at home, an independence I try to encourage, a smile I can always count on." A 2009 ad for Intuniv, Shire's nonstimulant treatment for A.D.H.D., showed a child in a monster suit taking off his hairy mask to reveal his adorable smiling self. "There's a great kid in there," the text read. "There's no way in God's green earth we would ever promote" a controlled substance like Adderall directly to consumers, Mr. Griggs said as he was shown several advertisements. "You're talking about a product that's having a major impact on brain chemistry. Parents are very susceptible to this type of stuff." The Food and Drug Administration has repeatedly instructed drug companies to withdraw such ads for being false and misleading, or exaggerating the effects of the medication. Many studies, often sponsored by pharmaceutical companies, have determined that untreated A.D.H.D. was associated with later life problems. But no science determined that stimulant treatment has the overarching benefits suggested in those ads, the F.D.A. has pointed out in numerous warning letters to manufacturers since 2000. Shire agreed last February to pay 57.5 million in fines to resolve allegations of improper sales and advertising of several drugs, including Vyvanse, Adderall XR and Daytrana, a patch that delivers stimulant medication through the skin. Mr. Casola of Shire declined to comment on the settlement because it was not fully resolved. He added that the company's current promotional materials emphasize how its medications provide "symptom control" rather than turn monsters into children who take out the garbage. He pointed to a Shire brochure and web page that more candidly than ever discuss side effects and the dangers of sharing medication with others. However, many critics said that the most questionable advertising helped build a market that is now virtually self sustaining. Drug companies also communicated with parents through sources who appeared independent, from support groups to teachers. A.D.H.D. patient advocates often say that many parents resist having their child evaluated because of the stigma of mental illness and the perceived risks of medication. To combat this, groups have published lists of "Famous People With A.D.H.D." to reassure parents of the good company their children could join with a diagnosis. One, in circulation since the mid 1990s and now posted on the psychcentral.com information portal beside two ads for Strattera, includes Thomas Edison, Abraham Lincoln, Galileo and Socrates. The idea of unleashing children's potential is attractive to teachers and school administrators, who can be lured by A.D.H.D. drugs' ability to subdue some of their most rambunctious and underachieving students. Some have provided parents with pamphlets to explain the disorder and the promise of stimulants. Susan Parry, who raised three boys in a top public school system on Mercer Island, outside Seattle, in the 1990s, said teachers pushed her into having her feisty son Andy evaluated for A.D.H.D. She said one teacher told her that her own twins were thriving on Ritalin. Mrs. Parry still has the pamphlet given to her by the school psychologist, which states: "Parents should be aware that these medicines do not 'drug' or 'alter' the brain of the child. They make the child 'normal.' " She and her husband, Michael, put Andy on Ritalin. The Parrys later noticed that on the back of the pamphlet, in small type, was the logo of Ciba Geigy. A school official told them in a letter, which they provided to The Times, that the materials had been given to the district by a Ciba representative. "They couldn't advertise to the general public yet," said Michael Parry, adding that his son never had A.D.H.D. and after three years was taken off Ritalin because of sleep problems and heart palpitations. "But somebody came up with this idea, which was genius. I definitely felt seduced and enticed. I'd say baited." Although proper A.D.H.D. diagnoses and medication have helped millions of children lead more productive lives, concerns remain that questionable diagnoses carry unappreciated costs. Adults searching for information on A.D.H.D. encounter websites with short quizzes that can encourage normal people to think they might have it. Many such tests are sponsored by drug companies in ways hidden or easily missed. "Could you have A.D.H.D.?" beckons one quiz, sponsored by Shire, on the website everydayhealth.com. Six questions ask how often someone has trouble in matters like "getting things in order," "remembering appointments" or "getting started" on projects. A user who splits answers evenly between "rarely" and "sometimes" receives the result "A.D.H.D. Possible." Five answers of "sometimes" and one "often" tell the user, "A.D.H.D. May Be Likely." In a nationwide telephone poll conducted by The Times in early December, 1,106 adults took the quiz. Almost half scored in the range that would have told them A.D.H.D. may be possible or likely. About 570,000 people took the EverydayHealth test after a 2011 advertisement starring Mr. Levine of Maroon 5 sponsored by Shire, Chadd and another advocacy group, according to the website Medical Marketing Media. A similar test on the website for Concerta prompted L2ThinkTank.com, which assesses pharmaceutical marketing, to award the campaign its top rating, "Genius." John Grohol, a Boston area psychologist who licensed the test to EverydayHealth, said such screening tools do not make a diagnosis; they merely "give you a little push into looking into" whether you have A.D.H.D. Other doctors countered that, given many studies showing that doctors are strongly influenced by their patients' image of what ails them, such tests invite too many patients and doctors to see the disorder where it is not. "I think it is misleading," said Dr. Tyrone Williams, a psychiatrist in Cambridge, Mass. "I do think that there are some people out there who are really suffering and find out that maybe it's treatable. But these symptoms can be a bazillion things. Sometimes the answers are so simple and they don't require prescriptions like 'How about eight hours of sleep, Mom, because four hours doesn't cut it?' And then all their A.D.H.D. symptoms magically disappear." Because studies have shown that A.D.H.D. can run in families, drug companies use the children's market to grow the adult one. A pamphlet published in 2008 by Janssen, Concerta's manufacturer headlined "Like Parent, Like Child?" claimed that "A.D.H.D. is a highly heritable disorder" despite studies showing that the vast majority of parents of A.D.H.D. children do not qualify for a diagnosis themselves. A current Shire manual for therapists illustrates the genetic issue with a family tree: three grandparents with the disorder, all six of their children with it, and seven of eight grandchildren, too. Insurance plans, increasingly reluctant to pay for specialists like psychiatrists, are leaving many A.D.H.D. evaluations to primary care physicians with little to no training in the disorder. If those doctors choose to learn about the diagnostic process, they can turn to web based continuing education courses, programs often subsidized by drug companies. A recent course titled "Unmasking A.D.H.D. in Adults," on the website Medscape and sponsored by Shire, featured an instructional video of a primary care physician listening to a college professor detail his work related sleep problems. After three minutes he described some attention issues he had as a child, then revealed that his son was recently found to have the disorder and was thriving in college on medication. Six minutes into their encounter, the doctor said: "If you have A.D.H.D., which I believe you do, family members often respond well to similar medications. Would you consider giving that a try?" The psychiatrist who oversaw the course, Dr. David Goodman of Johns Hopkins and the Adult Attention Deficit Disorder Center of Maryland, said that he was paid several thousand dollars to oversee the course by Medscape, not Shire directly, and that such income did not influence his decisions with patients. But as he reviewed the video in September, Dr. Goodman reconsidered its message to untrained doctors about how quickly the disorder can be assessed and said, "That was not an acceptable way to evaluate and conclude that the patient has A.D.H.D." A Shire spokeswoman declined to comment on the video and the company's sponsorship of it. Mr. Casola said Shire remains committed to raising awareness of A.D.H.D. Shire spent 1 million in the first three quarters of 2013, according to company documents, to support A.D.H.D. conferences to educate doctors. One this autumn found J. Russell Ramsay, a psychologist at the University of Pennsylvania's medical school, who also serves as a consultant and speaker for Shire, reading aloud one of his slides to the audience: "A.D.H.D. It's Everywhere You Want to Be." "We are a commercial organization trying to bring health care treatments to patients," Mr. Casola said. "I think, on balance, we are helping people." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Health |
IBM Bets 34 Billion That Red Hat Can Help It Catch Amazon and Microsoft IBM has tried multiple ways to stay relevant in the technology world. But it has often been outgunned by rivals like Amazon and Microsoft. On Tuesday, IBM outlined its latest strategy: using its 34 billion purchase of Red Hat, the largest ever acquisition of a business software company, to get a big piece of the lucrative cloud computing market. The deal is a high stakes bet for IBM and its leader, Ginni Rometty. Amazon and Microsoft dominate the cloud computing industry, with Google a distant third. (In China, Alibaba is the clear leader.) They have the internet skills and the deep pockets to spend many billions a year building the vast data centers that power the cloud, helping to protect their lead. But their grasp has raised concerns from customers about being dependent on a single provider. IBM arrived late to the business. It has money and data centers, but the company cannot go head to head with the cloud giants. In Red Hat, IBM is getting a leading provider of software tools that are widely used to write cloud computing applications. Red Hat specializes in open source software, which means the basic code is free. It has partnerships with the major cloud services including Amazon, Microsoft, Google and Alibaba. Under IBM, Red Hat will maintain and, it insists, expand those alliances. The IBM Red Hat proposition is that it will offer a layer of software that sits atop the big clouds, and works with them all. "Write once, run anywhere," James Whitehurst, Red Hat's chief executive, explained in an interview on Tuesday. Get the Bits newsletter for the latest from Silicon Valley and the technology industry. His phrasing is telling. It is the exactly the same pitch made in the 1990s for the Java programming language and platform, developed by Sun Microsystems. Then, the fear was being locked in to the technology of Microsoft, the overbearing giant of the personal computer era. Today, the fear in business circles is being tied to a powerful cloud provider. And Mr. Whitehurst invoked the lock in concerns, describing the IBM Red Hat combination as an alternative to "three incompatible walled gardens." That is a real issue. Most large corporations now want to, and increasingly do, use more than one cloud supplier. They are also adopting cloud technology inside their own data centers, for its flexibility and cost savings. "Hybrid multi cloud" is the industry term for this a la carte adoption of cloud computing some computing purchased from the big cloud suppliers and some cloud done in house, and buying from more than one of the cloud giants. The hybrid market is where IBM sees its future. In an interview, Ms. Rometty, the company's chief executive, said helping IBM's corporate customers move to the cloud was a huge opportunity. She calls this "Chapter 2" of the cloud, as companies increasingly shift mainstream computer chores to the cloud. About 80 percent of the corporate cloud transition remains, Ms. Rometty said, and she compared it to "renovating a house." You build on what you have rather than ripping and replacing everything. IBM and Red Hat do seem to offer complementary strengths. Red Hat brings open source skills and credibility with software developers, while IBM contributes industry expertise and marketing muscle. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Technology |
"I hope my example will give courage to other women to stand and fight for our rights," Aleksandra Shelton said. Aleksandra Shelton, a four time Olympic fencer for Poland, has prevailed in a contentious battle with the country's sports authorities to gain eligibility to compete for the United States at the Tokyo Olympics, which were postponed from 2020 to next summer because of the coronavirus pandemic. The Switzerland based Court of Arbitration for Sport has ruled that Shelton's public criticism of Polish fencing officials was an improper basis on which to deny her request to compete as an American in the Summer Games, scheduled for July and August 2021. She is a dual citizen, married to an American serviceman. The court had not yet published its ruling by Wednesday afternoon, but it was provided to The New York Times by Shelton's lawyer. Her case, chronicled in February in The New York Times, had broader implications regarding age and gender discrimination, and it represented another high profile effort by a female athlete to stand up for what they consider their fundamental rights and freedoms in Olympic sports, where women's eligibility and voices have historically been restricted. Those efforts include Caster Semenya's attempt to gain eligibility to run the 800 meters, at which she is a two time Olympic champion for South Africa, in a case involving testosterone limits placed on intersex athletes in certain events. Semenya lost her appeal before the Swiss sports arbitration court and the Swiss Supreme Court but is considering appealing to the European Court of Human Rights. Gwen Berry, an American Olympian in the hammer throw event, has been at the forefront of an attempt by athletes to overturn a prohibition against making political gestures at international sporting events. She was reprimanded by the United States Olympic and Paralympic Committee for raising her fist on the medal podium at the 2019 Pan American Games to protest social and racial injustice. But Sebastian Coe, the president of track and field's world governing body, said recently that he would support athletes' taking a knee on the medal podium at the Tokyo Games. Carlos Sayao, Shelton's Toronto based lawyer, said her victory before the arbitration court represented "the imposing of important checks and balances on the powers of national Olympic committees over their athletes." After competing in the 2016 Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, Shelton, now 38, said that Polish fencing officials had reduced their support for her once she became pregnant and had made comments that she was too old and should stay home to care for her son, who was born in 2017. Polish officials denied making the remarks or discriminating against Shelton. But, feeling frustrated, she sought to gain eligibility to compete in a fifth Olympics for the United States instead of her native Poland. Athletes must generally wait three years after switching countries to become eligible to compete in the Olympics, unless they are granted a waiver. In January 2019, the Polish fencing federation granted Shelton a release to change sporting nationalities and to compete for the United States. The matter seemed settled, except for final approval from the Polish Olympic Committee, which said it would support Shelton's change of nationality but then changed its mind as the case went sideways. In March 2019, Shelton gave two interviews to Polish reporters to explain her switch to competing for the United States. During the interviews, she criticized what she considered the lack of support from the Polish fencing federation and its demand for sporting equipment worth 43,000 euros, now about 50,000, to grant her release. The Polish fencing federation threatened to sue Shelton unless she apologized and then attempted to rescind its waiver. In January 2020, Shelton appealed to the Court of Arbitration for Sport. The court ruled in her favor on Sept. 28, saying that her remarks to reporters were "irrelevant" to the case and that the Polish Olympic Committee had in 2019 "irrevocably agreed to the immediate change" of Shelton's sporting nationality and to the cancellation of the three year waiting period to be eligible to participate in the Games. If she makes the American Olympic team in April, Shelton would become approximately the 220th woman worldwide to compete in five or more Games. "It's a huge relief," Shelton said. "I should never have had to go that far to get help. I hope my example will give courage to other women to stand and fight for our rights." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Sports |
The title character in "Gloria Bell" played by a transcendent Julianne Moore is a restless life force. In most other movies, she might also be a cliche. A middle aged divorcee, she lives alone in a Los Angeles apartment that doesn't quite feel like a home. Her adult children are off having their own lives; her son has a new baby. Gloria keeps a tidy house, works in insurance, has friends, smokes. She also sings and she dances, moving to pop confections that sound like chapter titles in a wistful romance: "A Little More Love," "All Out of Love," "No More Lonely Nights." The Chilean writer director Sebastian Lelio has told this story before in a somewhat different key. His 2013 movie "Gloria" also centers on a divorced middle aged woman who lives by herself and doesn't like the hairless cat who keeps stealthily invading her place. That Gloria lived (and danced) in Santiago and was played by the superb Paulina Garcia, who, like Moore, inhabits the character so deeply that the performance can feel like a possession. Beat for beat and subtly different line for line, the two movies can seem eerily alike; Lelio has likened "Gloria Bell" to a cover version. The redo feels lighter, perhaps because it is unburdened by originality. The first movie was inexorably saturated in the Chilean history that comes with any character who's lived through the Pinochet dictatorship. The new Gloria, by contrast, feels unselfconsciously free of her country's history, its immensity and heaviness, which feels very American. There's music on Gloria's car radio, not news, and the Trump presidency might as well not exist. (The movie was shot in 2017.) It's easy to imagine that Gloria has attended a woman's march or two (if just for the company), but her pastimes skew classic Californian: She takes a yoga class, smokes weed and attends what looks like a laughter therapy session filled with joyous, hands on communion. The laughter scene is brief and invitingly enigmatic; Lelio doesn't over explain his characters, which is very non American, even in cinema's ostensibly independent registers. The episodic narrative tracks Gloria over a period rived by minor as well as life altering change. Her daughter (Caren Pistorius) has a new love, and so does Gloria, who shortly after the story opens begins an affair with Arnold (a wonderful John Turturro), a sincere, plodding man with need in his eyes and a girdle cinching his waist. Recently divorced, Arnold has overhauled his life (he had gastric bypass surgery, hence the girdle), and when he and Gloria see each other across the dance floor he comes at her hard. She responds, and they soon become a couple. Lelio conveys the affair beautifully, including in the delicate, fragmented scenes of lovemaking that convey the profundity of desire and its ordinariness. Gloria learns how to shoot a paintball gun at the amusement park that Arnold owns; he meets her friends, and the talk turns to guns. Arnold is a former Marine, a detail that enriches a portrait of a man in permanent crisis, a state of personal emergency that is announced each time he answers a call from his similarly needy adult daughters and former wife. The ponderous music that blares when Arnold's phone rings is amusing, and then it's abruptly not, having transformed, call after call, into a dirge, a requiem, a discordant family bleat. "Gloria Bell" is filled with quicksilver tone shifts. It's often quietly funny and then a little (or very) sad and then funny again. The humor is sometimes as obvious as the hairless cat that looks like a wizened extraterrestrial and the Velcro crackle of a girdle being hastily removed in a dark bedroom. Lelio is acutely sensitive to the absurdities of everyday life, including the comedy of humiliation, both petty and wounding. But while his characters can be cruel, he never succumbs to meanness. His generosity is animated by Moore's limpid, precise performance. An emotionally open character, Gloria laughs easily and listens closely, often leaning into others when they talk. But she holds back, too, keeping part of herself hidden, which feels natural given all the years that she's spent taking care of people, her family, her friends, her clients. (The cast includes Michael Cera, Brad Garrett, Jeanne Tripplehorn, Rita Wilson and Holland Taylor.) As a performer, Moore can go big, and a terrible yowl here pierces the heart. But she's a virtuoso of restraint. She shows you the rush of emotions just before they break the surface, so the hurt and confusion flicker on her face like minute shifts of light. "Gloria Bell" is at once obvious and filled with ambiguities, like the raging neighbor upstairs having a nervous breakdown, a man whose violent, mysterious thundering periodically shakes her apartment and equilibrium. Lelio lets some of his scenes play out from beginning to rounded end, but he also likes to cut away before the joint is completely smoked, the conversation finished, so you can fill in the ellipses. He's playing with the idiom of the women's picture, but he self consciously approaches the genre with expressionistic flourishes ripples and blasts of color, luminous and diffuse lighting that show his debt both to Rainer Werner Fassbinder and to old Hollywood. He tips his hand openly with the casting of Barbara Sukowa, the star of Fassbinder's "Lola," who briefly appears as a co worker of Gloria's who's struggling in the job. She's worried about the future and, during a short break at the insurance company, the women speak anxiously about retirement money. The scene is almost over before it begins but it offers a glimpse of a world of cruelty and confusion that also pulses under the surface here, suggesting why Gloria likes to lose herself on the dance floor. Gloria dances because it makes her happy, but also maybe because like many as the song says she's on the run. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Movies |
For three decades, Winnie's, an old school dive and raucous karaoke bar, lured Chinatown residents and fashionable visitors for boozy singalongs in the shadow of the Tombs (otherwise known as the Manhattan Detention Complex). When it shut in 2015, it became another casualty of a gilded city. But an unlikely resurrection occurred on Valentine's Day this year, when Winnie's was reborn on East Broadway. On a cold Friday night in March, Teddy Mui, the manager and 40 year old son of Winnie Mui, the owner, seemed as if he had returned from a lengthy stay on a desert island. "They're not even calling it Chinatown it's Two Bridges," he said of neighborhood newcomers. "At the old Winnie's, our first crowd was Chinese gangsters." As he reminisced, lyrics from a Journey song lit up the karaoke screen: "Strangers waiting / Up and down the boulevard." Winnie's is lodged above one of Chinatown's busiest stretches, threaded up a staircase within a knot of cellphone repair shops and jewelry emporiums. The rectangular room has ambiguously underdesigned decor. The dark wood bar is decorated with a ZZ plant and a framed photo of Ms. Mui with Bill Clinton; a small stage and red booths conjure the spirit of its first location. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Style |
The same scene plays out in Robert DeMeola's Midtown Manhattan office every few weeks now not that it ever gets any easier. In walks a director or senior accountant, job offer in hand, threatening to leave for a hedge fund or big bank unless Mr. DeMeola can deliver a raise of 30 percent, sometimes more. "It used to be once a quarter. Now it's every month," said Mr. DeMeola, chief operating officer of CohnReznick, a national accounting, tax and advisory firm headquartered in New York. "They expect you to negotiate." For much less senior workers at CohnReznick, even those with a college degree or other postsecondary education, it is another story. "We never like to lose someone good, but it's easy to teach someone those skills, and there are others in the marketplace who want those jobs," Mr. DeMeola said. The very different treatment accorded employees at the very top versus those in the bottom or middle ranks has become a fact of life at corporate offices, law and accounting firms, and other white collar bastions across the country. For the first time since the economic recovery began six years ago, white collar professionals with specialized skills in fields like technology, finance, engineering and software find themselves in the catbird seat. But despite the steady addition of more than 200,000 jobs a month and a decline in the official jobless rate to a postrecession low of 5.3 percent, most American workers, including many college graduates, still face lukewarm wage growth at best and very limited bargaining power with bosses. Strikingly, this feast or famine pattern does not simply pit people with less than a college degree against their more highly educated peers. It is also pronounced even within the 32 percent of American workers who are college graduates. Since the beginning of 2014, median wages for all holders of a bachelor's degree or more have risen 2.7 percent, compared with about 2 percent for all workers. Among the top 10 percent of earners holding college degrees, however, wages are up more than 6 percent. The pattern has been especially pronounced in more elite, even glamorous fields that typically require a college degree or more and that pay more than the national average. A new study by the Bureau of Labor Statistics shows that pay near the top of the scale in fields like art, entertainment and media was six times what it was near the bottom in 2014, compared with four times in 2007. The best paid health care professionals now earn nearly four times what workers in the lowest tier make, compared with less than three times in 2007. Nor are industries like finance and real estate, which have gilded New York City's economic fortunes in recent years, immune. For workers making less than 50,000 in these fields, wages fell last quarter, while their colleagues in the 75,000 and above category enjoyed a 3.4 percent rise in wages, according to ADP, the payroll processing giant. Elizabeth Holmes Hones Her Defense in Day 2 of Testimony Kevin Spacey was ordered to pay 31 million to the 'House of Cards' studio after sexual harassment allegations. "Overall employment growth is everywhere, but in terms of wage growth, it's people making more than 75,000," said Ahu Yildirmaz, head of ADP Research Institute in Roseland, N.J. Lawrence Katz, a professor of economics at Harvard, called the phenomenon polarization. He said it was likely to add to the growing debate over income inequality in the United States, as college graduates find themselves taking jobs that pay less than they expected to earn. A December survey by CareerBuilder found that 37 percent of employers were hiring college graduates for jobs that once required only a high school diploma. The great exception to this trend is for holders of degrees in the so called STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) fields. STEM specialties have eclipsed the liberal arts as the portal to the executive track and ultimately the corner office in corporate America, even in fields where an English or sociology degree once provided entry. "You can range further across industries and, crucially, get into management if you're an engineer or know chemistry and math," said Anthony P. Carnevale, a Georgetown University professor who runs the Center on Education and the Workforce. Now, "the engineer becomes the director of sales and marketing. In the old days, it was the generalist," he said. Of course, even STEM graduates can lose out, finding that the skills they learned in school are becoming obsolete in rapidly evolving specialties like social media. New engineers have long earned much more than humanities majors, according to the National Association of Colleges and Employers, which connects on campus career services staffs and university officials with recruiters and businesses. But that gap has been widening. Engineers from the class of 2014 now start with salaries of 65,000 a year compared with just under 42,000 annually for liberal arts graduates. Some of the biggest names on Wall Street and in other top professions were undergraduate humanities majors, like Lloyd C. Blankfein, the chief and chairman of Goldman Sachs, who majored in history at Harvard before going on to law school there. Or Carl C. Icahn, who studied philosophy at Princeton before amassing a 21 billion fortune as a legendary corporate raider and activist investor. But graduates from the nation's top 25 colleges and universities make up only a tiny part of the work force. "If you go to Harvard, you can take some chances that other people don't," like majoring in history, philosophy or English, Mr. Carnevale said. "Harvard will get you into graduate school, so these kids get the best of both worlds." Most recent graduates from less elite colleges face a much less forgiving job market. "The person coming out of Harvard or Berkeley is doing just fine, pretty much in any major, as long as they have some analytical skills," Mr. Katz said. "For many graduates of the University of Massachusetts, Boston or a local community college, it's still a tough job market." Still, experts caution that simply studying something "practical" is hardly a guarantee of rising wages in today's economy. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Economy |
Simon Pegg and Nick Frost know it's been a while. Despite being best friends and an acclaimed comic double act in films like "Hot Fuzz" and "Shaun of the Dead," they have seldom crossed paths, creatively speaking, since 2013's "The World's End." It's been even longer since they worked together in television they haven't co starred in a series since the British sitcom "Spaced" aired over 20 years ago. Now, seven years on from their last substantial collaboration, Pegg and Frost have reunited for supernatural comedy "Truth Seekers," debuting Friday on Amazon Prime Video. The series stars Frost as Gus, a broadband installation expert who reluctantly gets paired up with new recruit Elton (Samson Kayo) by his boss Dave (Pegg). As the technicians go about their day job, seemingly coincidental supernatural occurrences begin to plague them with increasing regularity. These phenomena fascinate Gus, a part time paranormal investigator. That is, until he and Elton become embroiled in a conspiracy that could spell danger for the human race. What were some of the things that inspired "Truth Seekers"? You two used to go ghost hunting together when you were younger, correct? NICK FROST Yeah, but I think that was because we were sad singletons who preferred hanging out with each other than chasing girls. SIMON PEGG Really, it was an excuse to go and smoke weed. We turned it into rattling around an old abbey, or knocking on an old church door. I don't think we were under any illusions that we would have any actual encounters, but what grew out of that was this idea of an amateur paranormal sleuth in a world where that kind of thing exists. FROST "The X Files" definitely inspired us. We loved how complex and ambitious it was, and I always wanted to make a British version of that. There was also the "Book of the Strange" series, and "Arthur C. Clarke's World of Strange Powers," which had an awkward Britishness to it. What can you say about your characters? FROST Gus is a grumpy, lone wolf skeptic. He runs his own YouTube channel, which seeks to prove or debunk myths and ghost sightings. Something happened to him 20 years ago that led him into this world, and you find out why he's so lonely and desperate to find an answer to "what happens to us when we die?" PEGG Dave is very much part of what's happening, in ways that you discover as the series progresses. He's definitely plugged into events in a more significant way than it might initially seem. There is something odd about him, and it's not just the wig I wear! Why did it take you so long to work together again? FROST I love being with Simon and writing comedy. It's just what we do. I see and speak to him regularly, so we don't have to necessarily work together all the time. If we make something, I want to feel like we're enjoying it, that it's fun, and you're enjoying being with us. If we can't find that thing organically, we're not going to force it. As long as we aren't pumping rubbish out every year, I'm happy. "Truth Seekers" has the kind of quintessential British comedy hallmarks that "Shaun of the Dead" and "Spaced" had, like self deprecating humor and expert deadpan delivery. Did you try to recapture the essence of those earlier works? FROST No, we always try to keep it fresh. I'm not someone who dwells on our stuff. I hope our best stuff is to come, and I'm always searching for that. But it's unique that our characters have changed and aged as men, fathers and husbands, like we have, and our fans have aged with us as well. PEGG It's funny if we do look back, though. We had discussed making this show like Nick and I running around like in "Hot Fuzz." But then we had this idea of a team with an elder statesman and his young helpers. That was something Nick and I always wanted to do with our Stolen Picture production company. As much as producing our own material, we wanted to foster new talent and give people the opportunities that we were looking for when we were their age. Well, before "Spaced" took off, anyway. Did you shoot in any spooky locations? FROST We found an old shutdown hospital, which was terrifying to walk around. There was also an old boarding school for deaf children that shut down in the 1970s. There were tons of underground passageways and little rooms so, as someone who may believe in ghosts, it was creepy to find yourself alone. The crew would go off to set up another shot, and you'd be left in these tombs on your own shouting "Guys?" FROST The joy of making this show is that you've got the character and plot arcs, but you can also have fun with the "monster of the week." I also wanted it to be a world with drones flying around, so it's a slightly futuristic version of Earth. You feel a little unanchored watching it as you're unsure where it is. PEGG These days, if you see a U.F.O., you can whip your phone out and film. All supposed supernatural footage is shaky and slightly dubious, so that culture of on the spot, subjective personal journalism, mixed with all of this ancient hocus pocus, felt like a really fun dynamic. Despite the comedy and horror esque elements, "Truth Seekers" is also quite heartfelt. It deals with themes including trauma, loss, friendship and redemption. FROST When you look at the best shows from the past 15 years, like "The Sopranos," they have incredible characters who audiences can relate to. Tony Soprano might be a madman, but he has problems with his daughter and his wife. Normal things that are relatable, even when viewers can't relate to someone bashing in a person's head with a baseball bat. PEGG We're a sophisticated viewing audience now, and we're able to comprehend nuance and know that something doesn't have to be a comedy or a drama. There's comedy and drama in real life, so while we lean into the absurd, we also have those human relationships that remain authentic. We've always combined tragedy and comedy in our content. In "Shaun of the Dead," Shaun has to shoot his mum. That scene was never going to be hilarious. It had to be difficult and painful, so I think that makes for a richer, more invigorating style of comedy. Was it fun to collaborate on your first project in seven years? PEGG We had projects that we had been half developing, but "Truth Seekers" was already there from Nick and fellow writers James Serafinowicz and Nat Saunders. It was a well formed idea, so we hit that one first. FROST It was nice to sit in the office everyday, and we laughed a lot. That extended to the other cast members on set too. Acting isn't a team sport. It's very individual, but every so often, you'll get a job like this one where it felt like a team you were happy with. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Television |
The Oscars air on ABC. And for those without cable, three other movies our chief critics liked in 2018 but weren't nominated are streaming. THE 91ST ANNUAL ACADEMY AWARDS 8 p.m. on ABC. Will Netflix win an Oscar for best picture, further legitimizing streaming services as a viable outlet for A list filmmakers? Will Glenn Close pick up her first statuette? And just how many speeches will Alfonso Cuaron end up giving? These are some of the questions wafting through the Hollywood air in the lead up to the Academy Awards, which will go on, hostless, steeped in controversies and ready to prove (or disprove) your predictions. Look out for Jennifer Hudson singing a song from "Mary Poppins Returns," plus duets from Lady Gaga and Bradley Cooper and Gillian Welch and David Rawlings; a showdown in the wide open best supporting actress category; and the potential glory of an acceptance speech from Spike Lee, who, for the first time in his career, has a shot at the award for best director. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Television |
This year, for example, is the centennial of the end of the Great War. "The end of the first World War is very present in a lot of work in the U.K. at the moment," Mr. Linehan said. "It was the beginning of universal suffrage and the end of the Empire." So some works in the festival, like "Xenos," a new solo piece by the choreographer Akram Khan about a shellshocked colonial soldier an Indian man fighting on behalf of the British Empire reflect on this. The anniversary is also represented in "Five Telegrams," which is partly inspired by soldiers' telegrams from 1918. The lineup of youth orchestras from Canada, Scotland and the United States, and other parts of the music program, nod to Scotland's Year of Young People, an initiative of the Scottish government. "Light on the Shore," a celebration of Scottish music that will run throughout most of the festival, will showcase more of Ms. Meredith's music along with electronica, hip hop, folk and rock by Django Django, Mogwai, King Creosote and others. The French company Theatre des Bouffes du Nord will present a slate of productions including "The Beggar's Opera," directed by Robert Carsen; "The Prisoner," an exploration of justice and imprisonment created by the director Peter Brook (who is 92) and his regular collaborator Marie Helene Estienne; and the British director Katie Mitchell's "La Maladie de la Mort," an adaptation of Marguerite Duras's 1982 novella about an unconventional sexual relationship. "They kind of reflect what the Bouffes has done over the years, bringing casts from all over the world to present these fables of humanity," Mr. Linehan said. The beloved Scottish playwright David Greig ("The Events," "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory") will be represented by "Midsummer," a romantic comedy he wrote with Gordon McIntyre, that wowed at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe (the festival that pops up alongside the International every summer) almost a decade ago. "Midsummer" is arriving in an expanded version, courtesy of the National Theater of Scotland. The Galway based Druid Theater's "Waiting for Godot," Anna Deavere Smith's "Notes From the Field" and the magical American performer Geoff Sobelle's "Home" are also in the theater lineup. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Theater |
A spring green aphid clambers over a clot of soil, busily making its way to the shelter of a forest of plants in the distance. The insect's long legs help it lever itself over the uneven ground at surprising speed, but if you look closely at its back, you'll see that it has a passenger: A tiny juvenile aphid, or nymph, is riding the adult cowboy style. This behavior, which scientists described for the first time Wednesday in Frontiers in Zoology, results in the young one reaching the safety of a host plant much faster than it could on its own small legs. But the tactic is unpopular with the adults, who do not appreciate carrying a hitchhiker. Like the Science Times page on Facebook. Sign up for the Science Times newsletter. Aphids generally prefer to stay in their airy roosts among the foliage of their host plants, said ecologists Moshe Gish and Moshe Inbar of the University of Haifa in Israel, the paper's authors. The insects drop to the ground mainly when they sense serious, unavoidable danger, heralded by the plant's trembling and the warm breath of a grazing mammal intent on devouring their home. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Science |
Donald J. Trump's boardroom in "The Apprentice" was like something out of a movie. Specifically, "Network." In the Netflix documentary "The Confidence Man," two "Apprentice" producers say they found the actual Trump Organization offices too dated and dowdy for TV. So they built a set in Trump Tower, modeled on the darkened lair where the mogul, Arthur Jensen (Ned Beatty), dresses down the rebellious newsman Howard Beale (Peter Finch), howling, "The world is a business!" "The Confidence Man," a swift, brutal overview of Mr. Trump's business career, argues that he had been doing the same thing with his image for decades: He wasn't a business titan so much as he played one on TV. The film, directed by Fisher Stevens ("Bright Lights"), is the last episode of a six part anthology, "Dirty Money," from the filmmaker Alex Gibney ("Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room"), arriving Friday. The installments range from an infuriating look at payday lending to an offbeat story about Canadian maple syrup cartels. The common thread is the abuse of trust. And "The Confidence Man" argues that the problem goes all the way to the top. Mr. Stevens's narrative starts with Trump Tower, the gleaming metonym Mr. Trump hung his name on in brass letters. The splashy project landed him on talk shows and magazine covers as the photogenic shorthand for Reagan age materialism. That served his other big 1980s construction effort his media image, for which he poured the foundation in the New York tabloids. The gossip columnist A. J. Benza recalls Mr. Trump as a regular source, offering juicy tips with only one condition: that he be referred to in print as a billionaire. TV reports picked up on the description and embellished it, and Mr. Trump smiled and let them. "The Confidence Man" interviews old friends, like the music mogul Russell Simmons, and associates like Barbara Res, the executive in charge of the Trump Tower construction, who remember his mythmaking bemusedly. Compared with real estate families like the Zeckendorfs, Ms. Res says, "Who was Trump? He was nobody." Maybe Mr. Trump wasn't the biggest developer. But he was the most visible, and he banked on people taking one for the other. (A later ad for Trump University declared, "Donald Trump is, without question, the world's most famous businessman" trusting the audience to read that as "most successful.") Banks threw money at his celebrity, and he spent it on high visibility purchases: an airline, the Plaza Hotel, a football team, casinos. When it all went bad by the early '90s, fame was his guarantor. His creditors, who needed the Trump brand to survive in order to get paid back, put him on an allowance to keep up a glitzy front. Mr. Trump, the film argues, has thrived by finding partners in finance, reality TV, politics who were as invested as he was in propping up his image. Mr. Trump's self inflation has been covered before. In the 2005 book "TrumpNation" the former New York Times reporter Tim O'Brien, who figures heavily in this documentary, concluded that Mr. Trump was worth mere hundreds of millions, not billions. (Mr. Trump sued him for libel, unsuccessfully.) But "The Confidence Man" is useful for how it separates out the business thread from the recent tangle of "How we got Trump" analyses. When Mr. Trump's business became licensing his name to others, he essentially turned into a mascot. He showed up on sitcoms and did fast food ads with his ex wife Ivana and Grimace from McDonald's. He was his own Col. Sanders, personifying the herbs and spices glitter, ambition that "TRUMP" in big brass letters stood for. That made him a perfect host for "The Apprentice," whose premise was that Mr. Trump was a legendary businessman and desirable boss. TV fame opened up other opportunities, and the last half of "The Confidence Man" detours into dark intimations about Mr. Trump's partnerships with businessmen from former Soviet republics and his alleged self enrichment as president. It also re examines the fraud case, later settled, against Trump University that his opponents tried to make stick to him in the 2016 campaign. But the film's larger case is against the reasoning that helped elect him: He was the most famous businessman, therefore he was the best businessman, therefore following the logic of Mitt Romney and H. Ross Perot before him he would be the best president. "He's managed businesses," one voter quoted in the film says, "and I think he can manage this country." You could, of course, argue that branding and the ability to leverage illusions are valuable skills themselves. You could agree with Arthur Jensen that the world is a business. But the forceful conclusion of "The Confidence Man" is that Mr. Trump's world is, and has always been, a stage. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Television |
LONDON The world's major movie awards are trying to put a stop to the all white, all male shortlists their voting members frequently draw up. Earlier this year, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, which organizes the Oscars, once again widened its membership to bring in more people of color. Earlier this month, it also introduced diversity criteria for nominated films in some categories, following the lead of the BAFTAs, Britain's major film awards. Now, the British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA), which organizes the awards, has announced it is going further. Starting with the awards in 2021, all 6,700 voting members of BAFTA will have to undergo unconscious bias training before casting any ballots. In each category, their initial votes will create a longlist (a first for the awards). Members will then have to watch all the longlisted titles before they can vote in the next round, which determines the nominees. The nominees then go to a final vote, and again, voters will have to watch all the films via an online portal (which will be put into place for the 2022 BAFTAs and guarantee viewing) if they want a say. The new rule is aimed at increasing the diversity of the films considered: Time strapped voters might otherwise just focus on the most hyped titles. BAFTA also announced more specific interventions for some categories of the awards. For best director, for example, half of the spots on the 20 person longlist will go to women. For the acting prizes, the longlist will be selected by a hybrid of member votes and jury selection, before the nominees and the winner are determined by the membership in the following rounds. Another major change is that a studio will only be able to nominate an actor for a lead or supporting award, not both categories, as previously allowed. Actors will also only be allowed to be longlisted once in each acting category to prevent a recurrence of this year's events, when Margot Robbie was nominated twice for the best supporting actress award, and no people of color were. BAFTA also said it plans to increase its membership by 1,000, with goals for underrepresented groups, but a spokeswoman declined to give further details. "This is a watershed moment," Krishnendu Majumdar, BAFTA's chair, said on Thursday, in a news release announcing the changes. "This creative renewal is not just about changes to the awards," he added. "This is a reappraisal of our values." The British film awards, like the Oscars, have been repeatedly denounced for their lack of diversity. In 2016, there was a demonstration outside the award ceremony when only one Black actor, Idris Elba, was nominated in the four acting categories. This year, there were no people of color nominated for best actor or best actress, and no women for best director. The resulting furor dominated headlines around the awards and even the ceremony itself. "I think that we send a very clear message to people of color that you're not welcome here," Joaquin Phoenix said, when accepting his best actor award for his performance in "Joker" at the ceremony. Clive Nwonka, a researcher at the London School of Economics who studies race in Britain's film industry, said in a telephone interview that many of BAFTA's changes were needed, but representation onscreen and in crews wasn't something BAFTA could control. Film studios and funding bodies needed to push more diversity, he said. "What BAFTA's proposing only works for the agenda of a much more diverse film industry if the production side is also working," he said. Marc Samuelson, the chair of BAFTA's film committee, said in a Zoom interview that the changes would not eliminate the possibility of voters choosing all white, or all male shortlists. The most significant changes, he said, were the new longlist rule and the requirement that members watch all the nominated films in any category they vote on. Those updates should increase the range of films viewed. "You often hear people say afterward, 'Oh, I hadn't had time to watch that, but it was really good and I'd probably have voted for it,'" Samuelson said. According to Freuds, BAFTA's public relations agency, voting members will have to watch the movies through the portal, on a website, which will keep records of their viewing to make sure they meet the requirements. BAFTA said in a news release that the unconscious bias training which it is calling "conscious voter training" will "help voters navigate and recognize the wider societal influences that can impact the voting process." Samuelson said the training would simply make members think "more deeply about their choices." But he would not comment on whether the Academy Awards should adopt similar measures to those BAFTA announced Thursday. "I don't think it's for us to say anything to them," he said. "BAFTA's got to clear up its side of the street. I really hope this is a good start." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Movies |
Cuba has intrigued the singer songwriter Melissa Etheridge, 55, since her childhood days in Leavenworth, Kan. "There was such an air of mystery around the country, and I always knew of it as the place that Americans weren't allowed to visit," she said. With Cuba now open as a destination for United States residents, Ms. Etheridge has been taken with the idea of visiting the country. This summer she heads to Havana for a four day fan camp, from June 22 to 26, in collaboration with the event producer Music Arts Live. Ms. Etheridge will perform concerts with local musicians, lead workshops on music, visit schools and connect with lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people. (She is a lesbian.) The price of the camp, including accommodations and sightseeing tours, begins at 3,300 a person, and the musicians Ben Folds and Rufus Wainwright will host similar fan camps in May and September, respectively. Following are edited excerpts from an interview with Ms. Etheridge: How did your collaboration with Music Arts Live happen? I had never worked with them before, but they reached out to me and asked me to come to Cuba to do some concerts as a part of a four day trip that people could buy and also mentioned that they wanted me to connect with the country's L.G.B.T. community. Given my long interest in Cuba, I jumped at the opportunity. What will the lineup for the four days include? There will one large concert at Teatro Nacional the National Theater of Cuba and another smaller concert at the cultural center Fabrica de Arte. I'll also be teaching music workshops and visiting schools my band and I are taking lots of instruments down there, including guitars, drums, basses and strings, and leaving them at these schools so young Cuban children have a chance to nurture their interest in music. And I'll be meeting with L.G.B.T. Cubans. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Travel |
I don't know about you, but the election results this week filled me with more hope than I've felt in years. It felt like somebody turning down the volume. The angry and putrid shouting that has marked the last four years and that would mark a Trump vs. Sanders campaign might actually come to an end. Suddenly we got a glimpse of a world in which we can hear each other talk, in which actual governance can happen, in which gridlock can be avoided and actual change can come. But the results carried a more portentous message as well. For those of us who believe in our political system, it's put up or shut up time. The establishment gets one last chance. If Joe Biden wins the nomination but loses to Donald Trump in the general election, young progressives will turn on the Democratic establishment with unprecedented fury. "See? We were right again!" they'll say. And maybe they'll have a point. If Biden wins the White House but doesn't deliver real benefits for disaffected working class Trumpians and disillusioned young Bernie Bros, then the populist uprisings of 2024 will make the populist uprisings of today look genteel by comparison. "The system is rotten to the core," they'll say. "It's time to burn it all down." Some people are saying a Biden presidency would be a restoration or a return to normalcy. He'll be a calming Gerald Ford after the scandal of Richard Nixon. But I don't see how that could be. The politics of the last four years have taught us that tens of millions of Americans feel that their institutions have completely failed them. The legitimacy of the whole system is still hanging by a thread. The core truth of a Biden administration would be bring change or reap the whirlwind. There would be no choice but to somehow pass his agenda: a climate plan, infrastructure spending, investments in the heartland, his 750 billion education plan and health care subsidies. If disaffected voters don't see tangible changes in their lives over the next few years, it's not that one party or another will lose the next election. The current political order will be upended by some future Bernie/Trump figure times 10. This week's results carried a few more lessons: Democrats are not just a party; they're a community. In my years of covering politics I don't think I've ever seen anything like what happened in the 48 hours after South Carolina millions of Democrats from all around the country, from many different demographics, turning as one and arriving at a common decision. It was like watching a flock of geese or a school of fish, seemingly leaderless, sensing some shift in conditions, sensing each other's intuitions, and smoothly shifting direction en masse. A community is more than the sum of its parts. It is a shared sensibility and a pattern of response. This is a core Democratic strength. Intersectionality is moderate. Campus radicals have always dreamed of building a rainbow coalition of all oppressed groups. But most black voters are less radical and more institutional than the campus radicals. They rarely prefer the same primary candidates. If there's any intersectionality it's in the center. Moderate or mainstream Democrats like Biden, Clinton and Obama are the ones who put together rainbow coalitions: black, brown, white, suburban and working class. The new Democrats are coming from the right. Bernie Sanders thought he could mobilize a new mass of young progressives. That did not happen. Young voters have made up a smaller share of the electorate in the primaries so far this year than in 2016 in almost every state, including Vermont. Meanwhile there were astounding turnout surges in middle class and affluent suburbs. Turnout was up by 76 percent in the Virginia suburbs around Washington, Richmond and parts of Norfolk. Turnout was up 49 percent over all in Texas. Many of these new voters must be disaffected Republicans who now consider themselves Democrats. It's still better to work the room than storm the barricades. Biden grew up in a political era in which politics was still about persuasion, not compulsion; building diverse coalitions, not just firing up your base. He's been able to win over many of his former presidential rivals and cement a series of valuable alliances, especially with Jim Clyburn of South Carolina. As Ezra Klein pointed out in Vox, Sanders tried to win over the Democratic Party by attacking the Democratic Party and treating its leaders with contempt. In fact, some Sanders surrogates are attacking Biden's skill in building coalitions as a sign of evil elitism, as something only those nasty insiders do. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Opinion |
Bill O'Reilly has said that the claims that led to his ouster from Fox News in April have no merit, that he "never mistreated anyone." Two women who reached sexual harassment settlements with Bill O'Reilly joined a defamation lawsuit against Mr. O'Reilly and Fox News on Wednesday, asserting that statements that he and the network made depicted them as liars, political operatives and extortionists. The women are Andrea Mackris, a former producer on Mr. O'Reilly's show on Fox News who sued him for sexual harassment in 2004, and Rebecca Gomez Diamond, a former host on Fox Business Network who reached a settlement with Mr. O'Reilly in 2011 after coming forward with sexual harassment allegations against him. Both women had recorded conversations with Mr. O'Reilly, and he paid both settlements, according to people briefed on the matter. They joined a lawsuit filed earlier this month by Rachel Witlieb Bernstein, a former Fox News employee who reached a settlement with Fox News and Mr. O'Reilly in July 2002 after she repeatedly complained about his behavior to the network's human resources department and other executives. Ms. Bernstein is also suing for breach of contract. Her allegations did not include sexual harassment. The New York Times reported on the settlements in April as part of an investigation that exposed how the network had stood by Mr. O'Reilly as he faced a series of harassment allegations. There now are six publicly known harassment settlements involving Mr. O'Reilly that total about 45 million. All the women involved in the settlements are bound by nondisclosure agreements. Ms. Mackris, Ms. Diamond and Ms. Bernstein said in the lawsuit that they were not the source of the information about the settlements published by The Times. Since the public exposure of those agreements and the allegations against him, Mr. O'Reilly has said that the claims that led to his ouster from Fox News in April have no merit, that he "never mistreated anyone," that he was the victim of a "political and financial hit job," that his fame had made him a target and that he "put to rest any controversies to spare" his children. "In fact," states the lawsuit, which was filed in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York, "he mistreated both Ms. Mackris and Ms. Diamond and he is well aware of the irrefutable evidence of his harassment, abuse and mistreatment which caused him to settle their legal claims." "They are tired of being smeared with lies by a bully who thinks that his victims are afraid to answer to them," Nancy Erika Smith, a lawyer for the women, said in a statement. "They are standing up for the truth, joining the many voices of brave women who are no longer tolerating abuse or being silenced." In a statement, Fredric S. Newman, a lawyer for Mr. O'Reilly, said the latest filing had "absolutely no merit, as we will show in court." "The plaintiffs have drawn more attention to themselves than Mr. O'Reilly ever did," Mr. Newman said. "For example, Andrea Mackris invited a New York Times photographer into her home for the April 1st story, even though she had publicly declared that 'there was no wrongdoing whatsoever by Mr. O'Reilly.' Mr. O'Reilly never mentioned any of the plaintiffs, but now he has no choice but to litigate fully and aggressively." Representatives for 21st Century Fox, the parent company of Fox News, did not respond to a request for comment. 15 minimum wage for federal contractors will take effect Jan. 30. Jeff Bezos gives 100 million to the Obama Foundation. The women are seeking a release from the confidentiality and nondisparagement clauses of the settlements, an apology from Mr. O'Reilly, Fox News and Mr. Murdoch, an admission that they raised valid claims and had solid evidence, as well as compensation provided by the law for reputational damages, emotional harm and attorneys' fees, Ms. Smith said. In the lawsuit, the women said that Rupert Murdoch, the executive chairman of 21st Century Fox, disparaged and defamed them during a recent interview with Sky News in London. During the interview, Mr. Murdoch characterized sexual harassment issues at Fox News as being isolated to Roger Ailes, the founding chairman of the network, and said "there are really bad cases and people should be moved aside. There are other things which probably amount to a bit of flirting." "Murdoch knew that the plaintiffs had valid claims and significant evidence when he disparaged and defamed them," the women said in the lawsuit, adding that their claims "were never 'nonsense' or 'flirting' or because Fox News is 'conservative.' Murdoch, as C.E.O. of Fox News, speaks on behalf of defendant Fox News as an authorized spokesperson and binds defendant Fox News with his statements." The women took issue with the company's statement that "no current or former Fox News employee ever took advantage of the 21st Century Fox hotline to raise a concern about Bill O'Reilly" The lawsuit said that Ms. Mackris and Ms. Diamond raised complaints through their lawyers but that no investigation was conducted in either case. "In fact, defendant Fox News chose to get rid of women who complained about sexual harassment and insist on their silence while continuing to employ defendant O'Reilly, allowing him to continue his harassment and abuse of female Fox employees," the lawsuit states. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Media |
LAKE BUENA VISTA, Fla. It was not a season. For the Los Angeles Lakers, it was an obstacle course. It was 12 months packed with tragedies and togetherness. It was disjointed and odd, unprecedented and often unpleasant, an odyssey that began for them in a Chinese hotel amid a geopolitical feud and ended in a mostly empty arena at Walt Disney World, the site of the world's most famous bubble since the invention of chewing gum. But for all the disruptive forces that rocked the N.B.A., the Lakers triumphed in the end. The Lakers won their 17th championship and their first with LeBron James as their centerpiece with a 106 93 victory over the Miami Heat on Sunday night in Game 6 of the N.B.A. finals. A mere 355 days after the Lakers played their season opener before a packed crowd at Staples Center in Los Angeles, they toppled the Heat, four games to two, to finish off their playoff run on an elaborate made for TV sound stage that lacked spectators, aside from a few of the players' family members and friends. Read: How the Lakers Beat the Heat in Game 6. It was one of the hard realities of competing for a title in a pandemic, one that had forced the N.B.A. to suspend its season for more than four months before play resumed in July within the league's self contained slice of Disney World outside Orlando, Fla. The Lakers went about their business in isolation, winning it all as their fans cheered from home. "It doesn't matter where it happens if you win a championship," James said not long after leaving a court covered in confetti, a victory cigar in his right hand. "A bubble, Miami, Golden State it doesn't matter. When you get to this point, it's one of the greatest feelings in the world for a basketball player to be able to win at the highest level." No player was more brilliant than James, who, at age 35, was named the finals' most valuable player for the fourth time in his career. After making his ninth trip to the finals in the past 10 seasons, and his 10th appearance over all, James has now won four championships with three franchises. He powered Sunday's rout the Lakers led by as many as 36 with 28 points, 14 rebounds and 10 assists. For the series, he averaged 29.8 points, 11.8 rebounds and 8.5 assists while shooting 59 percent from the field. James was pushed by the Heat's Jimmy Butler, who solidified his place as one of the league's most dynamic two way players. Butler had extended the series in Game 5 by finishing with 35 points, 12 rebounds and 11 assists, his second triple double of the series. Ultimately, Butler and Heat posed just one final test for the Lakers, who felt the effects of the league's longest season. And consider the Los Angeles Clippers, a popular pick to win it all after Kawhi Leonard and Paul George joined a playoff tested team before the start of the season. Like the Rockets, the Clippers are shopping for a new coach after collapsing in the playoffs and parting ways with Doc Rivers. (He quickly landed a new gig with the 76ers, who had also fired their coach, Brett Brown.) All season, the Lakers treated the Clippers like background noise as if they were as irrelevant as ever. All those "L.A. Our Way" billboards and lofty expectations about contending for rings? The Lakers did not care, or at least that was the image they presented to the public. Still, the Lakers were not a perfect team, or a particularly dominant one. At a time when outside shooting has never been more valued, the Lakers were mediocre from 3 point range, shooting 34.9 percent during the regular season, which ranked 21st in the league. They ran into a game challenger in the finals in the Heat. Despite losing Goran Dragic, their starting point guard, for most of the series after he tore a ligament in his left foot in Game 1, the Heat were determined. But the Lakers had two dominant forces in James and Anthony Davis, who had 19 points and 15 rebounds in Sunday's win, and a roster full of players who were willing to defend. After ranking third in overall defense during the regular season, the Lakers were still able to compensate for the absence of Avery Bradley, their top perimeter defender, after he opted out of the restart. Davis cited the influence of Frank Vogel, the Lakers' first year coach. "He got on us Day 1 about defense," Davis said. The Lakers did not build their roster from the ground up. They were fortunate that James wanted to play for them, and they were so bad for so long that they were able to parlay some young talent (and a comical number of future draft picks) into a trade for Davis. Before James signed as a free agent in 2018, the team was in rough shape, having gone five seasons without making the playoffs. But James was drawn to the city of Los Angeles he already owned a home in Brentwood and felt the allure of the franchise's past grandeur. Last season, the Lakers were in the playoff hunt when James injured his groin in a win over the Golden State Warriors on Christmas Day. He missed a bunch of games, and the Lakers landed back in the draft lottery but only after Magic Johnson, then the team president, abruptly resigned, and Luke Walton, their coach, stepped down. At the same time, there were growing concerns about James's durability he had never missed so many games because of an injury, and most of his contemporaries had long since retired along with questions about his drive. His critics had a field day when he spent part of last off season on a studio lot filming "Space Jam 2." He acknowledged those critics real or imagined throughout this season by using the hashtags WashedKing and RevengeSZN on his social media accounts. "I think personally thinking I have something to prove fuels me," James said. "It fueled me over this last year and a half since the injury. It fueled me because no matter what I've done in my career to this point, there's still rumblings of doubt." On Sunday, James left on top. After a season full of tumult and change, at least that much was familiar. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Sports |
ANYONE puzzled by the term "premium small," which executives were tossing off at the New York International Auto Show last week, could find an example nearby. If you walked up to the Starbucks in the lobby of the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center you were tempted by a subcompact, yet upscale, version of a cupcake: "Red Velvet Whoopie Pie, 190 calories, 1.80." This year's show is full of auto design Whoopie Pies, small vehicles with a high style quotient. Rising gasoline prices, looming fuel economy standards and changing demographics have created an industry consensus that sales of subcompact cars will increase. The smallest cars in automakers' lines are getting more attention from designers and offering more sweetness for the dollar. They are starting to look sportier and more sophisticated; in some cases, visual tricks make them seem larger. Subcompacts that were once cute or podlike, or both, now have taut character lines and expressive faces. The raised crease in the side of the new Hyundai Accent and the growling face of the Kia Rio suggest how subcompacts are acquiring more visible character. The Nissan Versa, with side creases and wrap around taillights like a larger model, showed another approach. Alfonso E. Albaisa, vice president of Nissan Design America, worked on the new Versa design unveiled at the show. He said the Versa, with a starting price of less than 11,000, suggested the degree to which small cars were getting more attention from designers. "First, it looks like someone spent more time on it," he said in an interview on the show floor. "There is more style and sculpting of the surfaces." In addition, Mr. Albaisa said the new Versa was more stately. Although practical hatchbacks finally seem to be gaining popularity in America, "people still like the formality and importance of a sedan," he said. Ford is already offering a new high style Focus as a hatchback and a sedan. At the high calorie end of the segment, in price if not in size, is one of the most significant cars at the show: the Mercedes Benz Concept A Class. Though only a design study, the Concept A Class will be the basis for a radical update of the smallest car in the Mercedes line. The original A Class, which was introduced in Europe in 1997 and never offered in the United States, was a podlike model built on a novel architecture that set the passengers above the drivetrain, as do the Smart cars that are also part of the Mercedes family. The exterior forms of the Concept A Class pick up on the current Mercedes design language laid out by the company's design chief, Gorden Wagener: "the combination of defined edges and free interplay." In a video released by the company, the Concept A's chief exterior designer, Mark Fetherston, called the style "free form." He pointed out what he called the car's expressive stance, "sexy, emotional shoulder" and large wheel arches. "It has strong positive and negative surfaces, defined by crisp and dynamic lines." The hood is surprisingly prominent for such a small car. One character line streams back from the front fender, a second swoops along the side and a third anchors the rear wheel of the two door hatchback body. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Automobiles |
Boomerang Project (Friday through March 26) Matty Davis and Kora Radella began the performance collective Boomerang in 2012 to cultivate their interest in urgent and unexpected movement. In "Repercussion," the group's first evening length work, dance and sound are intricately and, occasionally violently, linked. A drum set, played by Greg Saunier of the rock band Deerhoof, provides driving rhythms, but also serves as a prop and even a kind of participant. Fridays and Saturdays at 7:30 p.m., Dixon Place, 161A Chrystie Street, between Rivington and Delancey Streets, Lower East Side, 212 219 0736, dixonplace.org. (Brian Schaefer) Company XIV (through Saturday) While the holiday season brought a titillating take on "The Nutcracker," Austin McCormick's company now applies its sensual burlesque meets ballet meets circus formula to another popular fairy tale, "Snow White." Of course, this sumptuous production is no Disney remake: Mr. McCormick takes his inspiration from the haunting Brothers Grimm version, and the abundant partial nudity makes it an adults only evening. That poisonous apple might as well be Eve's its magic spell is the release of inhibitions. At 8 p.m., Minetta Lane Theater, 18 Minetta Lane, at Avenue of the Americas, Greenwich Village, 800 745 3000, companyxiv.com. (Schaefer) Eiko (through March 23) The performance artist Eiko Otake, known simply as Eiko, has long been a quiet but powerful force in dance first in collaboration with her husband, Koma, and lately as a solo artist. For its 10th annual Platform event, a deep dive into an idea or artist, Danspace shines a spotlight on her project "A Body in Places." The work began in 2014 at the Fukushima nuclear plant and has taken her around the world in a quest to understand the body's fragility. Over the next two weeks, Eiko will offer workshops, curate a film series and give 16 solo performances, as well as engage with 25 artists who have been invited to respond to her ideas in different ways. At various locations and times. More information: 212 674 8112, danspaceproject.org. (Schaefer) Flamenco Festival New York 2016 (through March 19) The 13th iteration of this festival celebrates all things flamenco. Dance offerings this week include Compania Manuel Linan, a 10 member troupe of dancers, singers and musicians, presenting "Nomada," an exploration of the "dynamic patterns and rhythms of human migration" (Saturday). On Thursday, Compania Rocio Molina presents "Danzaora Vinatica," which refers to the "new language" of the captivating soloist Rocio Molina, combining flamenco, ballet, Spanish classical dance and more. Both performances are at 8 p.m. at City Center, 131 West 55th Street, Manhattan. The festival continues at various locations and times, a full schedule is at flamencofestival.org/eng/. (Schaefer) Stacy Grossfield Dance Projects (through Sunday) With her new work for 10 performers, "hot dark matter," Ms. Grossfield intends to stimulate many senses: sight, sound, smell, touch. Tailored to the architecture of Jack, an idiosyncratic performance space in Clinton Hill, Brooklyn, the piece takes inspiration from high speed particles and the idea of slowing them down. Friday at 8 and 10 p.m., Saturday at 8 p.m., Sunday at 3 p.m., Jack, 505 1/2 Waverly Avenue, near Fulton Street, Clinton Hill, Brooklyn, jackny.org. (Siobhan Burke) Maria Hassabi (through March 20) In recent works like "Premiere" and "Show," Ms. Hassabi has offered rigorous explorations of slowness and stillness, drawing attention to incremental shifts of weight in the body. "Plastic," a moving installation for the Museum of Modern Art in particular, its stairwells and floors extends those meditations across larger expanses of space and time, lasting all day every day (during museum hours) for a month. 212 708 9400, moma.org. (Burke) Hong Kong Ballet (Tuesday through March 20) For its Joyce Theater debut, this company presents a trio of works by three choreographers, each a formidable voice in their respective countries. Fei Bo, resident choreographer of the National Ballet of China, contributes "A Room of Her Own," inspired by Virginia Woolf's similarly named feminist tract. Krzysztof Pastor, director of the National Polish Ballet, offers "In Light and Shadow," which nods to the paintings of Rembrandt and Vermeer. The Spanish choreographer Nacho Duato is represented by "Castrati," danced by nine men. Tuesday and Wednesday at 7:30 p.m., Thursday and next Friday at 8 p.m., March 19 at 2 and 8 p.m., March 20 at 2 p.m., 175 Eighth Avenue, at 19th Street, Chelsea, 212 242 0800, joyce.org. (Schaefer) Lydia Johnson Dance (Friday and Saturday) Known for her sophisticated musicality, Ms. Johnson returns to the Ailey Citigroup Theater with her small and adept ballet company. The program includes a premiere set to jazz standards and three older works, two of which feature music by the contemporary Argentine composer Osvaldo Golijov. At 7:30 p.m., 405 West 55th Street, Clinton, lydiajohnsondance.org. (Burke) Gelsey Kirkland Ballet (Thursday through March 20) Michael Chernov's new two act ballet, "Stealing Time," tells the tale of an outsider called Algae who succumbs to temptation, commits a crime and is redeemed by love. It's a classic theme with a modern look. Mr. Chernov shares choreography credit with Akop Akopian; music credit goes to Kurt Weill. Thursday through Saturday at 7:30 p.m., Sunday at 2 p.m., GK Arts Center, 29 Jay Street, Dumbo, Brooklyn, gkarts.org. (Schaefer) Juliana May (through Saturday) In her work "Adult Documentary," Juliana May solicits real and fictional biographies from her five dancers: Lindsay Clark, Talya Epstein, Rennie McDougall, Kayvon Pourazar and Connor Voss. Then she scrambles them, as she does with their movements, using distortions in the dance's form to get at a broad idea of trauma or the disruption of the expected. At 8 p.m., Chocolate Factory, 5 49 49th Avenue, Long Island City, Queens, 718 482 7069, chocolatefactorytheater.org. (Schaefer) Peridance Contemporary Dance Company (Saturday and Sunday) For its spring offering, Igal Perry's troupe presents "After Lazarus," a work by the Swedish choreographer Charlotta Ofverholm; "Into the Light," by the Korean born choreographer Jae Man Joo; and Mr. Perry's own "Dia Mono Logues," which, as the name suggests, evokes the fragmented communication reflective of cultural differences. Saturday at 8:30 p.m., Sunday at 4 and 7 p.m., Peridance Capezio Center, 126 East 13th Street, East Village, 212 505 0886, peridance.com. (Schaefer) Stephen Petronio (through Sunday) Mr. Petronio, who founded his company more than 30 years ago, has been thinking lately about his artistic lineage. Through "Bloodlines," a project he started in 2014, he's restaging works by choreographers who have inspired him, in particular iconoclasts of the 1960s and '70s. The latest installment is Trisha Brown's "Glacial Decoy," a piece with special resonance for Mr. Petronio, who danced for Ms. Brown early in his career. It shares a program with his own "MiddleSexGorge," from 1990, and the premiere of his "Big Daddy (Deluxe)."Friday and Saturday at 8 p.m., Sunday at 2 and 7:30 p.m., Joyce Theater, 175 Eighth Avenue, at 19th Street, Chelsea, 212 242 0800, joyce.org. (Burke) Molly Poerstel (through Saturday) In "Are We a Fossil, and of Facings," Ms. Poerstel experiments with structure. How do you create a dance in the round that's also a dance for the proscenium stage? She explores the possibilities by situating viewers "inside the belly of the work," according to the website for Gibney Dance, where the piece will have its premiere. At 8 p.m., Gibney Dance: Agnes Varis Performing Arts Center, 280 Broadway, near Chambers Street, Lower Manhattan, 646 837 6809, gibneydance.org. (Burke) Rebecca Lazier (Wednesday through March 19) Terry Riley's 1964 minimalist masterpiece "In C" is the springboard for Rebecca Lazier's "There Might Be Others," presented here for her New York Live Arts debut. With a live score by Dan Trueman, accompanied by members of SO Percussion and Mobius Percussion, the musical mosaic provides a rich backdrop to Ms. Lazier's investigation of shifting autonomy from individual to the collective, and back again. And that collective consists of some swell performers, too. At 7:30 p.m., 219 West 19th Street, Chelsea, 212 924 0077, newyorklivearts.org. (Schaefer) Sokolow Theater/Dance Ensemble (through Sunday) While carrying the torch for the modern dance pioneer Anna Sokolow, who died in 2000, this company also supports choreographers of today. Its program at the theater at the 14th Street Y includes Ms. Sokolow's "Steps of Silence" (1968), "Ride the Culture Loop" (1975) and "Kurt Weill" (1988), as well as a new piece by the guest artist Rae Ballard. Friday at 8 p.m., Saturday at 3 and 8 p.m., Sunday at 3 p.m., 14th Street Y LABA Theater, 344 East 14th Street, East Village, 646 395 4322, 14streety.org. (Burke) Jo Stromgren Kompani (Friday and Saturday) Three nurses have nothing to do, so they injure and mend themselves instead. Such is the odd premise of Mr. Stromgren's "The Hospital," a 2005 dance theater work that this Norwegian company has toured to 22 countries. At 7:30 p.m., Abrons Arts Center, 466 Grand Street, at Pitt Street, Lower East Side, 866 811 4111, abronsartscenter.org (Burke) Paul Taylor's American Modern Dance (Tuesday through April 3) The company's three week spring season offers 14 works from Mr. Taylor's six decade career plus two new creations: "Dilly Dilly" (premiering Tuesday) and "Sullivaniana" (premiering Wednesday). Notable this year is the inclusion of work that Mr. Taylor has commissioned for the first time from handpicked artistic heirs Larry Keigwin and Doug Elkins. Wednesday's gala introduces Mr. Keigwin's contribution; Thursday brings Mr. Elkins's. Honoring Mr. Taylor's own forbearer, the company will perform a Martha Graham work "Diversion of Angels" for the first time. Tuesdays through Thursdays at 7 p.m. (except Wednesday's gala, which is at 6:30 p.m.), Fridays at 8 p.m., Saturdays at 2 and 8 p.m., Sundays at 2 p.m., David H. Koch Theater, Lincoln Center, 212 496 0600, davidhkochtheater.com. (Schaefer) Works Process: Malpaso Dance Company (Monday and Tuesday) The charismatic Cuban troupe was founded in 2012 and has been a frequent visitor to the United States since, reflecting the newfound openness and curiosity of the two countries. Ahead of performances in New York in May, the company drops by the Guggenheim to provide snippets of works and discuss contemporary Cuban dance. Joining the conversation are the choreographers Ronald K. Brown (Monday only) and Trey McIntyre, who have both made work for the company. At 7:30 p.m., Peter B. Lewis Theater, 1071 Fifth Avenue, at 89th Street, 212 423 3575, worksandprocess.org. (Schaefer) | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Dance |
In the coming years, the public will have the opportunity to visit Isamu Noguchi's studio at the Noguchi Museum in Queens for the first time. The museum announced on Tuesday that the studio will be restored and opened as part of a plan to expand and unify its campus. A 6,000 square foot building will also be added to hold the museum's collection and archives. "What I really admire about Noguchi was that he was one of the great 20th century polymaths," Brett Littman, the director of the Isamu Noguchi Foundation and Garden Museum, said in an interview. "He worked across so many disciplines." Mr. Littman added, "My hope is, by building this art and archives building and opening up the studio building, we'll now be able to tell more complete stories about Noguchi's work." There's much more to it, he said, than the stone sculptures for which Noguchi is best known. The studio building, which includes the Japanese American artist's pied a terre apartment, will be lightly renovated, and original objects from Noguchi's time will be returned to the space. Tours of the building will be offered, and it will also be used as an event space. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Art & Design |
Almost two weeks after the Boston Marathon bombings, which killed three and injured more than 260, the medical toll is becoming clearer, with many of the victims suffering complex wounds that are causing intense pain and that will require several more operations. Thirty one victims remained hospitalized at the city's trauma centers on Thursday, including some who lost legs or feet. Sixteen people had limbs blown off in the blasts or amputated afterward, ranging in age from 7 to 71. But in a way, their cases are the simpler ones, said Dr. David King, a trauma surgeon at Massachusetts General Hospital. For some whose limbs were preserved, Dr. King said, the wounds were so littered with debris that five or six operations have been needed to decontaminate them. "The idea is to spread out the physiological stress over multiple operations," he said. Some of the wounded also still need surgery to repair bones, veins and nerves. Many will need physical therapy as well. About 10 patients have already arrived at Spaulding Rehabilitation Hospital in Boston, said Timothy Sullivan, a spokesman, and that number could soon double. For many of the wounded, managing pain is a constant challenge. Dr. Alok Gupta, a trauma surgeon at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, said the hospital was giving patients oral and intravenous narcotics and, where possible, regional nerve blocks using catheters. Dr. King said that for those who lost limbs, so called phantom pain which feels as if it is coming from the body part that is no longer there can be excruciating and particularly hard to treat. "You have to balance between taking the pain away," he said, "and them being interactive and able to participate in their own rehabilitation." The ailments are not just physical. Some patients are upbeat, doctors said, but others are angry, anxious and depressed. Joan Smith, the manager of social work services at Tufts Medical Center, said that virtually all of the 14 victims who came through the hospital were experiencing acute stress disorder. "I also personally did a lot of work with family members who were trying to be strong for their children but at the same time were falling apart behind closed doors," said Ms. Smith, who made sure all the patients and their families had a list of mental health specialists to contact if they felt the need. Dr. Scott Ryan, chief of orthopedic trauma at Tufts, said he could not stop thinking about how traumatic it must have been for the victims, most of whom remained conscious after the blasts, to see the extent of their wounds as they were raced to hospitals. "The most disturbing thing for me in treating these patients is that they were awake after it happened and looked down and saw these terrible wounds," he said. "Most of the time, patients with that bad injuries, they're from a car accident or motorcycle accident and by the time they get to hospital they're not with it enough to look down and say, 'Oh my God, look what happened to my leg.' " Those still hospitalized include Heather Abbott, 38, whose left foot, mangled in the first blast, was initially saved by doctors at Brigham and Women's Hospital. She chose to have her leg amputated a few inches below the knee this week, after doctors essentially told her that life would be harder with the foot than without it. "I walked maybe 10 feet today on a walker and everybody was so proud of me," Ms. Abbott, a human resources manager from Newport, R.I., told reporters at the hospital on Thursday. "And I thought, 'Oh gosh, this is going to be a long time.' " Fund raising Web pages for some victims describe their physical and emotional ordeals in raw detail. A page for Christian Williams, 41, an art director whose legs were gravely injured as he stood near the marathon finish line, included a note from Mr. Williams in which he described how he felt after his fourth operation on Monday. Although the doctors "managed to get my right leg closer to being closed," he wrote, "the meds weren't working and I couldn't hide from the pain." A video posted on a fund raising page for Celeste Corcoran, 47, who lost both legs below her knees, shows her meeting with Sgt. Gabe Martinez, a Marine who lost his lower legs and came to give her a pep talk. "I can't do anything right now," Ms. Corcoran told him tearfully. Sergeant Martinez, who walked into her room at Boston Medical Center on prosthetic legs, replied: "Right now, yes. But I'm telling you with all my heart, you are going to be more independent than you ever were." At Spaulding, the rehab hospital, a team of doctors, nurses, psychologists and physical therapists will focus exclusively on the bombing victims, many of whom will be fitted with prosthetic legs while they are there. Inpatient rehabilitation usually lasts a few weeks, said Dr. Ross Zafonte, Spaulding's chief medical officer, although some of these patients will be there longer. Months of outpatient rehabilitation will follow, he said. "They're learning to walk with a prosthetic, regain balance, take care of that extremity, perform their own activities of daily living," Dr. Zafonte said. "They have to deal with all of those rather life changing issues rather quickly." Ryan McMahon, 33, who fractured her back and broke both wrists when she fell off the stands at the finish line in the panicked moments after the explosions, is starting her long recovery at her grandmother's home in Newton, Mass. Sitting straight up on her grandmother's couch on Thursday afternoon, her back supported by a brace and one arm by a pile of pillows, Ms. McMahon said she was struggling with some anxiety. "I was really nervous transitioning into coming home feeling like this was a safe environment, but looking around feeling like it was a different place again," said Ms. McMahon, who has an appointment to see a mental health counselor on Friday. Her father, John McMahon, said it would take her about a year to recover fully. Ms. McMahon, who was hospitalized for a week, was not buying it. "It's not going to be a big deal," she said. "It's not. I'm going to be fine." Ms. McMahon had run to Boston Medical Center after the bombings, and was one of the first patients to arrive there. "I just saw everyone coming in, and that was really hard," she said, adding that the sight of other patients arriving covered with blood and without limbs has been much more difficult to process than her own injuries. "Every once in a while, I just kind of break down and think about the whole big picture of it, just focusing on other people." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Health |
The new contract is a continuation of the short term pay reductions that the Philharmonic's musicians agreed to earlier in the pandemic. Since May, the musicians have been paid about 75 percent of base pay, which amounts to about 2,200 per week. Over the course of the contract, some musicians will also receive gradually increasing percentages of their seniority payments and "overscale," the amount they receive above base pay. The pandemic has been testing the relationships between arts institutions and their workers, as executives insist on pay cuts and other concessions to make up for the revenue losses accumulated over months of darkened theaters. At many orchestras, musicians have agreed to short term pay reductions while they are unable to play live concerts. But only at certain organizations, like the Philharmonic, have union collective bargaining agreements happened to expire during a year when institutions are under such pressure. "There is going to be a road to recovery and we're on it," Deborah Borda, the orchestra's president and chief executive, said an interview on Monday. "If we can make that journey more quickly we will immediately share that with our musicians." Ms. Borda said that management has been negotiating with the musicians since early April. An important step in reaching a deal, she added, was transparency about the Philharmonic's financial status and plans, which helped make clear the need for cuts that could extend beyond the duration of the pandemic. "Are we happy about it? Absolutely not," she said of the cuts. "Did we all decide that it was necessary? Yes." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Music |
Ribald more than savage, sarcastic more than explosive, the piece gives the sense that those aspirations are at the heart of Eddy's and society's downfall. "Greek" takes aim at the 1980s greed is good government of Margaret Thatcher, who was the British prime minister when the piece had its premiere. But the work's social commentary is more satirical and world weary than ruthless or crushing. (Compare the lightness of its depiction of working class suffering with, say, Berg's "Wozzeck.") Indeed, for all its lewdness, it can seem a little larky. That's why Joe Hill Gibbins's stark, raucous staging, produced by Scottish Opera and Opera Ventures, is so welcome, adding to the piece's heft and punch. The action is pressed forward to a narrow sliver of stage, over which a white wall looms and sometimes forlornly rotates to suggest the passage of space and time. The wall also becomes a projection screen for some of the production's most memorably visceral images, including a living one that succinctly, unsettlingly and spectacularly conjures the rot at the heart of the work's world. A recurring sight over the performance is the kind of food and condiments you would find at a greasy spoon canned beans, mayonnaise, wan slices of tomato. But by the end, in keeping with an opera that's more subtle than it seems at first glance, ketchup transforms from a nasty sight gag to the use you might expect for Eddy's act of self violence, taking on an unexpected tragic grandeur. And despite the brief, insolent coda, what stays with you from the final sequence is the slow, frieze like procession that leads the blinded Eddy offstage: an image of love and community, as well as sadness. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Music |
ORDER UP They specialize in brownies, cake pops and whipped hot chocolate. They make a respectable chili, diner worthy scrambled eggs and pizza with the optimal cheese to sauce ratio. Meet the celebrity chefs of the great pause: kids. For the first time in recent memory, youthful enthusiasm has propelled three cookbooks to the top of the children's middle grade hardcover list. "Everybody is home together so you're spending that quality time in the kitchen. Plus cooking has a great STEM connection; you're doing math and science but you're also making something," says Kelly Barrales Saylor, editorial director at Sourcebooks, publisher of "The Complete Cookbook for Young Chefs," and "The Complete Baking Book for Young Chefs," now at No. 1 and No. 5 on the list. ("The Big, Fun Kids Cookbook," from Food Network Magazine, is at No. 3.) Molly Birnbaum, editor in chief of America's Test Kitchen Kids, not only managed a team of recipe developers and wrote copy for both books, she sifted through hundreds of surveys from more than 8,000 junior recipe testers across the country. She says, "We won't publish a recipe unless 80 percent of our testers say they'd make it again. They give us wonderful details about the process: things they like, things they didn't like, things that worked, things that didn't work. Kids are so descriptive in their language; we get a lot of heartwarming and funny comments based on their recipe testing at home." What were the standout items? "Anything on a stick," Birnbaum says. "Anything small. Anything that can be totally your own is popular." Mug cakes a fudgy, microwaveable concoction made in (you guessed it) a mug are a particular favorite. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Books |
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