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Some Music Festivals Balk at Booking 50% Female Acts. One Just Did It. An Icelandic music festival has become the first to meet a target ensuring half its acts are women increasing pressure on the world's biggest festivals to step up the number of women they book. Iceland Airwaves, the country's answer to South By Southwest, is one of 109 festivals that signed up in September to a global initiative called Keychange that aims to address gender inequality at such events. The festivals, which include one of Sweden's largest, Way Out West, and the BBC Proms, which describes itself as the world's largest classical music event, agreed to aim for gender parity by 2022. The pledge came after years of complaints about the gender gap at festivals. Social media users have manipulated the posters of major festivals such as Coachella to show how few women were playing. None of the world's largest pop festivals like Glastonbury in Britain and Roskilde in Denmark signed up to the target, although some are supporting the campaign financially. "We still have another round of acts to announce, but we'll be over 50 percent," Will Larnach Jones, Iceland Airwaves' head of operations, said in a telephone interview. Female acts already scheduled to play the event, which runs from Nov. 7 to Nov. 10, include the acclaimed electronic act Fever Ray and the American singer songwriter Soccer Mommy, he said. The festival's staff kept the target at the back of their minds when booking acts, he added, but they had found it easy to meet. "It was almost back to front," he said. "We looked at people we really liked, and then in meetings said, 'Do we have enough?' Happily we always did." "That shows you don't have to try hard there's so many inspiring women around," he added. Never miss a pop music story: Sign up for our weekly newsletter, Louder. Iceland Airwaves, however, has an easier job than other festivals, Mr. Larnach Jones said. It is dedicated to new music, of all genres, whereas large festivals need established star names, meaning they have fewer women to choose from. But all festivals should be doing something positive on gender, he said. Wireless's organizers, Festival Republic, said in a statement that they had approached more female acts but some chose not to perform. In June, Wireless announced an all female stage in an effort to fill the gap. However, that was the initiative of the vodka brand Smirnoff, according to Rob Mathie, the founder of a communications agency that works with the brand. Smirnoff is running a marketing campaign focused around gender equality in music. Europe's largest festivals are unlikely to adopt the 50 percent target. A statement on Roskilde's website says, "The balance is definitely off. Only 20 percent of live musical acts in Denmark are female." Roskilde aims to change that not with quotas but by presenting inspiring "role models" on stage, like Beyonce's sister Solange, the statement adds. Large events rely on stadium sized acts and there are only so many of these in the world men or women, she said. They also have dozens of stages, with different bookers working on each. The whole industry needs to focus on developing women so the pool of acts gets wider, she added. "It could be really, really easy to fill a quota if we just looked at small artists and put them on at five in the afternoon," said Marta Pallares, a spokeswoman for the Primavera Sound festival in Barcelona, Spain. "But we want to have women on every stage and every hour." The festival had a 50/50 gender split on its main stage this year, with acts like Bjork playing headline slots, but women represented only 30 percent of acts across the festival as a whole. That was better than other Spanish festivals, she said, adding they average around 15 percent. "There is a great deal of restraint against booking as many female acts as male acts," Alexander Schulz, director of Germany's Reeperbahn festival, said by email. "Even female bookers tell me that they are frightened of an economic failure for their festival if they would do so, because popular and well selling acts out there in the market are mainly male." The Keychange initiative, which is backed by the European Union, was set up to develop female talent across the music industry. Mr. Schulz came up with the idea of a 50 percent target for festivals, although other events have adapted it to their circumstances. The BBC Proms, for instance, has pledged to ensure half of the classical pieces it commissions each year are from female composers, but it does not have targets to achieve gender parity among its performers. Of all the composers whose music is being performed at the Proms this year, 18 percent are women. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Music |
President elect Joe Biden's rhetoric on Saudi Arabia over the years has been far tougher than the monarchy is used to. But words alone won't make much of a difference. Mr. Biden's policy toward Riyadh should adopt a more cleared headed look at what the kingdom is, and, crucially, what it is not. Saudi Arabia is not entitled to U.S. military or diplomatic support. It's not a treaty ally like Japan. Its importance to U.S. security has dwindled as the United States seeks to reorient its foreign policy away from the Middle East. And if Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman's tutelage is any indication, the kingdom is proving to be a wildly destabilizing force in the region. Mr. Biden should base the U.S. Saudi relationship on first order principles: cooperate when possible and deviate when U.S. and Saudi interests don't match up. For Washington, that means understanding when Saudi requests for help are counterproductive; removing itself from a war in Yemen that serves no purpose for the U.S.; and all the while continuing a pragmatic intelligence sharing on terrorism. Ultimately, Saudi Arabia needs the United States more than the United States needs Saudi Arabia. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Opinion |
Shortly after the Nazis rose to power in Germany in 1933 the family of a prominent newspaper publisher there fled to France, leaving behind an eclectic art collection that included Benin bronzes, Egyptian antiquities and 20th century realist paintings. The works were confiscated, many were auctioned and most have been presumed lost. Now a partnership including German museums, university researchers and the descendants of the publisher, Rudolf Mosse, will search for the plundered works as part of a two year contract that the Mosse heirs have signed with the Freie Universitat Berlin. The project, called the Mosse Art Research Initiative, will be partly funded by the German Lost Art Foundation, which was formed in 2015 by the federal and state governments in Germany to find and identify cultural artifacts seized by the Nazi regime. Officials at the Lost Art Foundation said that this was the first time they had financed a plan to track down a set of works that had belonged to a particular family. The application for help from the initiative stood out, the foundation officials, said, because it included heirs and public institutions that were willing to work together on researching and supporting the project financially. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Art & Design |
When Nikki and Brie Bella, twin sisters who are also reality stars and recently retired WWE champions, found out they were both pregnant last November, they were most excited about the pizookies. While working as professional athletes, pizookies cookies baked in a cast iron pan like a pizza, of course were off limits. For more than a decade, both sisters regularly traveled 300 days a year, performing acrobatics five nights a week before a live audience in fights that, though scripted, required intense daily workouts and strict diets. "I have not had a pizookie, I feel like, in 10 or more years, because I'd have to get in wrestling gear," Nikki said. "Finally it's allowed." Neither woman had considered that they might spend their pregnancies isolated, trying to film their show "Total Bellas," which airs on E!, from their homes in a gated community in Phoenix, Ariz., during a pandemic. Let alone without professional grade pizookies from Oregano's, a local restaurant chain. A skeleton film crew has been living nearby, in Airbnb rentals. Its members are required to wear masks on set at all times, have their temperatures checked multiple times a day and maintain proper social distance from behind the camera. Though filming largely wrapped at the beginning of July, at least two crew members will remain in Arizona, apart from their own families, as they wait for both Bella babies to be born. (Outside cameras are banned from the delivery room, so any footage will be taken by the twins' partners.) Conveniently, the twins live next door to one another. Nikki's fiance is the "Dancing with the Stars" pro Artem Chigvintsev, and Brie's husband is Daniel Bryan, a WWE heavyweight champion. Now, when Nikki has an uncontrollable pregnancy craving for pizookies (homemade, alas), Brie provides the means of production for Artem, the baker. "Tell Artem I have a skillet," Brie said to Nikki, on a Zoom conference call with both twins from their respective homes. "If he makes us pizookie, I will," and here, she paused "freak out." Of their living arrangement, Nikki said: "There's no boundaries." (She conceived her child in her sister's home, she offered as example.) There is "zero property line" between their homes, Brie said. For early morning coffee, "I literally just walk over, the majority of the time in my robe and slippers, just walk into Brie's," said Nikki. "If she's cooking food, I guess I have the expectation that there's some for me." "We feel we have a mini compound," Brie added. "We don't ever feel alone." In 2005, they moved to Los Angeles to start auditioning for TV and modeling gigs. Brie worked part time as a server at the Mondrian Hotel on Sunset. They got a callback from the WWE in 2007 and made their "Smackdown" debuts a year later, with a script written by the actor and WWE superfan Freddie Prinze Jr. The maneuver he helped design, called "Twin Magic," was a sort of "Parent Trap" style swap, with the women trading spots under the stage whenever one needed a breather. The audience was at first oblivious to the trick. Nikki performed for almost two months as Brie before she was officially introduced, and for the next decade, the twins dominated the franchise as a tag team. They were cast in "Total Divas," a reality show on E!, in 2013. "Total Bellas," a spinoff, began in 2016. The shows have intimately chronicled the twins' lives, including Nikki's six year relationship, on air engagement to and subsequent breakup from the former wrestler and actor John Cena, and Brie's ups and downs with her husband, Mr. Bryan. Last year, both sisters joined Mr. Bryan in retirement, citing the birth of Brie's daughter, Birdie, 3, and Nikki's string of injuries including a broken neck, herniated disc and brain cysts that she suspected were caused by her signature ring move, the "Rack Attack," during which Nikki would lift opponents atop her shoulders and slam down onto her knees, dropping them to the floor behind her. (Professional wrestling is remarkably dangerous for its practitioners, who are often independent contractors even if they are exclusive to the WWE.) The twins had been scheduled for induction into the WWE Hall of Fame in April, but the ceremony was postponed because of the coronavirus. Their legacy, however, remains: The Bellas helped usher in a more female focused era of the WWE, with the Divas Championship, which started in 2008 (and has since been renamed the WWE Womens' Championship) getting more airtime over the course of their run. Keeping Up With the Kardashians Filming on "Total Bellas," which is produced by the reality juggernaut Bunim/Murray, had just started in "little bites and pieces," according to the twins, when the coronavirus began to spread, shutting down production for five weeks while the principals regrouped. In early May, after ratifying a new list of safety protocols, it became one of the first Bunim/Murray Productions reality shows which include "Project Runway," "The Real World," "Lindsay Lohan's Beach Club," and "Keeping up with the Kardashians" to resume production in the pandemic, a decision made more urgent by the twins' impending due dates. In pre Covid times, said Farnaz Farjam, the show's executive producer, there might have been as many as 16 people present for filming at a given location. "Total Bellas" is now getting by with a maximum of six. Still, it's a contrast to the scene over at "Keeping up with the Kardashians," which is also executive produced by Ms. Farjam. Faced with the choice of either shutting down or switching to entirely self filmed episodes, the Kardashian family members chose to produce hours of footage themselves, using iPhones that are collected each week by a masked showrunner and dropped off at the production offices. "With Kardashians, we kind of had to resort to self shooting, just because the city restrictions were so different," Ms. Farjam said. "In Arizona, we were allowed to film, but to keep everybody safe, we basically cut our team in half." Having even a pared down crew is preferable to no crew at all, she acknowledged. "You guys are going to get to see the self shot stuff with the Kardashians when it comes out, and you're going to notice the difference. It's still so entertaining and so compelling, and I'm so excited for it," Ms. Farjam said. "But I think there's an art behind the way a producer and camera operators capture storytelling that people self shooting can't always do." The Bella twins, who do not wear masks while filming, have felt protected but somewhat disconcerted. "It's a different feeling this season than I've ever felt before, because we can't be close," Brie said. Though Brie's husband still has to travel occasionally for work, the families have been limiting their exposure to anyone else who hasn't self isolated for two weeks. That means the Bellas have had to do almost all of their own hair and makeup this season. They are convinced that viewers will be able to pinpoint the moment their quarantined longtime makeup artist returns to set. By the finale of the season, "you'll see the Bellas in good glam," Brie said. "But there's still no hair," Nikki said. "Yeah, still no hair," Brie said. Demand for hair styling services in Arizona, where infection rates skyrocketed following the state's early reopening, had been so high that the twins decided to just wing it themselves. "All of our friends who are hairstylists, they're slammed here. Having their busiest weeks," Nikki said. "Everyone else is already working again, and to ask someone to quarantine and then just be a part of us, they'd be missing out on so much business. Because we've thought about that. We're like, 'Let's just make people around us quarantine.' Everyone's like, 'No, no. We have to work.'" Both sisters also said they are thinking more critically about workers' protections and the morals they're bringing to their own companies, which include a clothing line, makeup line and a wine brand. "Everyone's seen the shift in the world and whether you want to accept it or not, when you do accept it, it's nice to go with the shift and just evolve, because I feel if you don't evolve with whatever's going on right now and what the future may bring, then you're going to be left out in the dust," Brie said. "I do believe we have a new normal. It's crazy because I feel our generations never saw that, but our grandparents saw it. They knew what it was like to go through war, the Great Depression. They had to shift. They had to evolve. And I feel like that's what we're all going to have to do too." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Style |
Want more basketball in your inbox? Sign up for Marc Stein's weekly N.B.A. newsletter here. Amid the havoc wreaked by three trades he made last week, involving seven other teams and 23 players, Gersson Rosas of the Minnesota Timberwolves missed one of the most important news bulletins of his professional life. Three days before the N.B.A. trade deadline, BlackBerry announced that it was taking another significant step away from the device making business to continue its recent focus on operating as a software cybersecurity company. "You broke my heart," said Rosas, who hadn't heard the news until I relayed it to him after the deadline. Rosas, Minnesota's first year president of basketball operations, had been feeling rather triumphant otherwise after a series of trades that began with a Jan. 16 swap with Atlanta, which sent Jeff Teague and Treveon Graham to the Hawks in exchange for Allen Crabbe. When things finally settled after three further trades, Minnesota had at last acquired the former All Star point guard D'Angelo Russell to end a seven month pursuit. The BlackBerry development, though, undeniably stung. Rosas, you see, is one of four lead decision makers for N.B.A. teams known to still do the bulk of their business on a BlackBerry. Rosas, Houston's Daryl Morey, Oklahoma City's Sam Presti and Toronto's Masai Ujiri compose the confirmed quartet. Milt Newton, Milwaukee's assistant general manager, is another Blackberry devotee. Perhaps more will become known after this article hits, but Rosas described the adherents as "a small community." BlackBerry stopped producing its own phones in 2016 but had a licensing agreement with a Chinese company (TCL Corporation) to keep making them, which led to the KEYone model in February 2017 and the KEY2 in June 2018. According to the Feb. 3 announcement, no new phones will be released through TCL after Aug. 31. So barring the emergence of a new licensing partner to keep the brand alive, BlackBerry loyalists subjected to a steady stream of doomsday headlines over the years are thus forced to brace for the worst this time. "It's something," Rosas said, "I haven't been able to give up." I completely co sign the sentiment. There is simply nothing in the smartphone game that can replicate typing on BlackBerry's physical QWERTY keyboard nothing. I still assemble the first draft of every story I write on my KEY2. That's largely because of the keyboard, but it is also because the phone is ultramobile and, unlike bigger devices that encourage the easily distracted (like me) to multitask, it helps me focus. I will bust it out on planes, in restaurants and at coffee shops any time the planets align and a stream of paragraphs hits me. Whenever I encounter N.B.A. executives who I know still use various BlackBerry devices, we always end up talking about our phones. Rosas carries an iPhone as a companion device for music, watching videos and its greater selection of apps. (Confession: So do I.) Yet he estimated that roughly 35 percent of the work and negotiations that went into Minnesota's three trades last week were BlackBerry driven. "In this day and age, you're really using every device and mode of communication that you can phone, email, laptop, iPad," Rosas said. While making it clear that there is no substitute for direct communication to "make sure you and your trade partners are on the same page to confirm deal terms and confirm everything that's been talked about," Rosas said, "the BlackBerry is a constant companion." The most recent BlackBerry models typically received high marks in the areas of cybersecurity and battery life, but it's that "feel" Rosas described that has kept the device from going extinct in the N.B.A. Two of the league's more popular veteran guards, Detroit's Derrick Rose and the free agent Jamal Crawford, also can't quit the phone that former President Barack Obama famously relied on so heavily throughout his two terms in the White House. Yet the last few BlackBerry holdouts around the league have come to expect grief from colleagues for hanging onto a smartphone often mocked as a relic. "We always get our chops busted for being the guy responsible for the green bubble in group messages," Rosas said, referring to the green background that pops up in text exchanges with an iPhone when the message comes from a phone with a different operating system. Asked if Newton gets a hard time from fellow Bucks employees about his insistence on using a BlackBerry, Milwaukee General Manager Jon Horst said: "Constantly." Absorbing such barbs, mind you, had never been more enjoyable for Rosas than they were last week. On Wednesday, Minnesota and Houston were the headliners in a four team trade that landed the highly coveted Robert Covington with the Rockets and sent the Timberwolves a Nets first round pick in June and Malik Beasley, the promising Denver swingman. Then on Thursday, trade deadline day, Rosas persuaded the Golden State Warriors to surrender Russell in exchange for Andrew Wiggins and the Wolves' first and second round picks in 2021. (The Wolves also sent the veteran center Gorgui Dieng to Memphis, the third team in a deal that landed Andre Iguodala in Miami.) Minnesota and Golden State reached an agreement in principle on the trade on Thursday morning, prompting Rosas to seek out Karl Anthony Towns, the franchise star, with an early phone call. "He was shocked," Rosas said. "I actually woke him up. He was like, 'You're not messing with me, are you?' I told him, 'No but don't say anything. Keep it to yourself.'" Rosas conceded that he had "paid a premium" for a player the whole league knew he wanted, but the Wolves desperately needed a shake up. They were mired in a 5 27 funk, and Towns, the highly rated center, was clearly losing heart when Rosas found a way to deliver Russell, one of Towns's best friends. The onus now falls on Towns and Russell to form the sort of lasting partnership Kevin Garnett and Stephon Marbury could not create in Minneapolis and give the long suffering Wolves who will almost certainly miss the playoffs for the 15th time in 16 seasons something to build around. He can joke about it now, but he put up with a severely cracked screen on his trusty gadget through all four trades he made in a 37 day span. One of his 4 year old twins threw it onto a wooden floor in a fit of pique around Christmas, quickly revealing one of the hazards for today's BlackBerry users. You are unlikely to find a new screen at the nearest corner store. "It didn't bounce the right way," Rosas said with a laugh. "In Houston, we were always stocked up with replacements. I'm going to have to go back to the well and build up the inventory." Stein: Saturday night was, uh, interesting. I probably received 50 tweets from Knicks fans along these same lines as their team's winning streak hit four games with a victory against Detroit. I came away admiring the loyalty and coordinated effort of the fans but also wondering how many in this angry lot, still aggrieved by a tweet I fired off in early December, actually read the whole tweet. Nowhere, on any platform, did I say I disagreed with the firing of David Fizdale. The Knicks were 4 18 at the time and had just lost games to Milwaukee and Denver by a combined 81 points. The very tweet you cite A) was sent out the night before his firing and essentially predicted it and B) acknowledged that "a team has to do something" in those circumstances. Firing Fizdale was a natural response. The tweet also made the point that the Knicks have "veered way too far off course for anyone to think that a coaching change is all it takes" to put the franchise back on a hopeful track. Which remains 100 percent true. I'll add some further context in a special section below. Q: With the Clippers waiving Isaiah Thomas, could you feasibly see the Celtics picking him up as an offensive upgrade to the Brad Wanamaker minutes? This may be a Boston fan's fever dream, but I had to ask. Yowana Wamala (Charlotte, N.C.) Stein: It doesn't strike me as feasible. The Celtics' big need, as we've been talking about all season, is frontcourt size to combat power players like Milwaukee's Giannis Antetokounmpo and Philadelphia's Joel Embiid. Before last Thursday's trade deadline, they also reportedly pursued swingmen who specialized in long distance shooting, such as Washington's Davis Bertans and Detroit's Luke Kennard, without success. If Boston makes a post deadline move to upgrade the roster, since it has a capable complement of ballhandlers when the team is healthy, I would expect bolstering the frontcourt to be the priority. Thomas's steep fall since making All Star appearances as a Celtic in 2016 and 2017, accelerated by various injuries and ever present concerns about his defense, has been hard to watch. I am not a "New England expat," as you described yourself in your email, but I am the league's self anointed keeper of the All Lefty Team. So I, too, hope Thomas, 31, gets another shot somewhere after averaging 12.2 points in 23.1 minutes in 40 games with Washington this season while shooting 41.3 percent on 3 pointers. Q: Kobe Bryant was voted as an All Star in his second season, not his third. The 1999 N.B.A. All Star game didn't happen because of a lockout. David Clark None The Knicks, I'm afraid, are not even close to being fixed. A 13 19 record under interim coach Mike Miller is certainly passable Miller has gotten far more out of this group than Fizdale but the Knicks have beaten two teams with winning records in those 32 games. Two. None A four game winning streak in February, with as many unanswered questions as we can list about the Knicks' organizational structure going forward, does not amount to much. I'd say that was evident on Sunday night when the Knicks brought the winning streak to an unceremonious halt by blowing an 8 point lead in the final 90 seconds of the first overtime in Atlanta and losing to the Hawks in double overtime. None My original tweet was always more about the organization than what was happening on the floor. As detailed in this December piece, right after Fizdale's ouster, my belief was that the Knicks were long overdue to offer the biggest check they could to Toronto's Masai Ujiri or another top tier, proven N.B.A. team builder to oversee the comprehensive rebuild that this franchise has needed for ages. None We've since learned that James L. Dolan quickly lost the stomach for navigating hurdles in pursuit of the under contract Ujiri and planned instead to hire the veteran player agent Leon Rose as his next team president. My sense is that the Knicks' owner also grew weary of hearing from external sources that Ujiri was the obvious choice, abruptly cooled on that idea and, as we've so often seen in the Dolan era, decided to plot his own course no matter how much sense it made to try to import Toronto's president of basketball operations. None "Decent first step" are the words I used in Friday's paper to describe the looming Rose hire because, well, it was the fairest description I could settle on while still processing the move (and its suddenness). Rose is a well liked, well respected figure in the game, so on that basis you have to give this a chance. Maybe he can bring the Knicks a measure of credibility they don't currently possess. None Be advised, however, that there is no shortage of skepticism around the league that Rose, with zero front office experience, can really change Dolan's universe skepticism that the Knicks have earned based on their many, many missteps since last reaching the N.B.A. finals in 1999. Rival teams and agents have long accused the Knicks of letting the talent agency Creative Artists Agency influence their basketball decisions. Now they are hiring C.A.A.'s most veteran basketball agent. (Full disclosure: I am a former C.A.A. client.) None The so called "agent model" they are adopting, furthermore, has flopped (with Lon Babby in Phoenix and Arn Tellem in Detroit) as often as it has flourished (Bob Myers in Golden State and Rob Pelinka with the Los Angeles Lakers). The skeptics are also bound to point out that, as recently as last May, no one was looking to the Lakers for any sort of blueprint. LeBron James chose to sign with the Lakers as a free agent in July 2018 independent of anyone working for them and they were a franchise in disarray, after Magic Johnson's unforeseen resignation as team president in April, until Anthony Davis forced a trade to the Lakers to team up with James. None The hiring of Steve Stoute as the Knicks' new branding consultant has also quickly raised questions. Profiled on Sunday by my colleague Sopan Deb, Stoute appeared on ESPN's "First Take" on Tuesday and acknowledged that he will have "a loud voice" with the Knicks going forward. Stoute may indeed be a "branding guru" and a "music guru," as he described himself in the interview with my longtime colleague Stephen A. Smith, but Stoute's complete lack of basketball background will rightly give Knicks fans pause if he indeed has the level of input he's describing. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Sports |
James Bennet resigned on Sunday from his job as the editorial page editor of The New York Times, days after the newspaper's opinion section, which he oversaw, published a much criticized Op Ed by a United States senator calling for a military response to civic unrest in American cities. "Last week we saw a significant breakdown in our editing processes, not the first we've experienced in recent years," said A. G. Sulzberger, the publisher, in a note to the staff on Sunday announcing Mr. Bennet's departure. In a brief interview, Mr. Sulzberger added: "Both of us concluded that James would not be able to lead the team through the next leg of change that is required." At an all staff virtual meeting on Friday, Mr. Bennet, 54, apologized for the Op Ed, saying that it should not have been published and that it had not been edited carefully enough. An editors' note posted late Friday noted factual inaccuracies and a "needlessly harsh" tone. "The essay fell short of our standards and should not have been published," the note said. The Op Ed, by Senator Tom Cotton, Republican of Arkansas, had "Send In the Troops" as its headline. "One thing above all else will restore order to our streets: an overwhelming show of force to disperse, detain and ultimately deter lawbreakers," he wrote. The piece, published on Wednesday, drew anger from readers and Times journalists. Mr. Bennet declined to comment. Mr. Bennet's swift fall from one of the most powerful positions in American journalism comes as hundreds of thousands of people have marched in recent weeks in protest of racism in law enforcement and society. The protests were set in motion when George Floyd, a black man in Minneapolis, died last month after being handcuffed and pinned to the ground by a white police officer's knee. The foment has reached other newsrooms. On Saturday night, Stan Wischnowski resigned as top editor of The Philadelphia Inquirer days after an article in the newspaper about the effects of protests on the urban landscape carried the headline "Buildings Matter, Too." The headline prompted an apology published in The Inquirer, a heated staff meeting and a "sickout" by dozens of journalists at the paper. Mr. Bennet's tenure as editorial page editor, which started in 2016, was marked by several missteps. Last spring, The Times apologized for an anti Semitic cartoon that appeared in the Opinion pages of its international edition. Last August, a federal appellate court found that Sarah Palin, the former vice presidential candidate, could proceed with a defamation lawsuit against The Times over an editorial edited by Mr. Bennet that inaccurately linked her statements to the 2011 shooting of a congresswoman. During Mr. Bennet's first year on the job, two Times national security reporters publicly objected to an Op Ed by the journalist Louise Mensch, who cited her own reporting on United States law enforcement's purported monitoring of the Trump presidential campaign. Times reporters who had covered the same story, along with reporters at other outlets, were skeptical of her claim. 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. Mr. Bennet worked and held key jobs in the Times newsroom from 1991 until 2006, when he left the newspaper to become the editor of The Atlantic. Since his return, he has widely been considered a possible successor to Dean Baquet, who has been in charge of the newsroom for six years. In his four years as editorial page editor, Mr. Bennet sought to expand Opinion's range, making it more responsive to breaking news and better positioned to cover the tech industry. While he hired several progressive columnists and contributors, he also added conservative voices to the traditionally liberal department. He reduced the number of unsigned editorials and encouraged editorial board members to write more signed opinion pieces; one editorial board member, Brent Staples, won the Pulitzer Prize for editorial writing last year for a series of opinion columns on race in America. Under Mr. Bennet, the opinion section also published investigative journalism, developed newsletters and a podcast. It also published a much discussed Op Ed by an anonymous Trump administration official who described a "quiet resistance" within the federal government. The most prominent conservative columnist hired by Mr. Bennet, Bret Stephens, angered many readers with his inaugural Times column, in which he chastised the "moral superiority" of those who look down on climate change skeptics. Late last year, Mr. Stephens published another column, headlined "The Secrets of Jewish Genius," that led to widespread criticism. After a review, the editors appended a note to the column and re edited it to remove a reference to a study cited in the original version after it was revealed that one of the study's authors had promoted racist views. Mr. Bennet is the brother of Michael Bennet, a U.S. senator from Colorado, and he recused himself from presidential campaign coverage during his brother's unsuccessful run for this year's Democratic nomination. Katie Kingsbury, a deputy editorial page editor, will be the acting editorial page editor through the November election, Mr. Sulzberger said in his memo to the staff. Jim Dao, the deputy editorial page editor who oversees Op Eds, is stepping down from his position, which was on the Times masthead, and taking a new job in the newsroom. Mr. Baquet, the executive editor, said Sunday that he and Mr. Dao had just started discussing possible jobs for Mr. Dao. Mr. Dao did not reply to a request for comment. Ms. Kingsbury, 41, was hired in 2017. Previously she was on The Boston Globe's editorial board, where she won a Pulitzer for editorial writing and edited another Pulitzer winning series. In a note to the Opinion staff Sunday, Ms. Kingsbury, who declined to comment for this article, said that until a more "technical solution" is in place, anyone who sees "any piece of Opinion journalism including headlines or social posts or photos or you name it that gives you the slightest pause, please call or text me immediately." Senator Cotton's Op Ed prompted criticism on social media from many Times employees from different departments, an online protest that was led by African American staff members. Much of the dissent included tweets that said the Op Ed "puts Black NYTimes staff in danger." Times employees objected despite a company policy instructing them not to post partisan comments on social media or take sides on issues in public forums. In addition, more than 800 staff members had signed a letter by Thursday evening protesting the Op Ed's publication. The letter, addressed to high ranking editors in the opinion and news divisions, as well as New York Times Company executives, argued that Mr. Cotton's essay contained misinformation, such as his depiction of the role of "antifa" in the protests. Mr. Sulzberger said at the Friday town hall meeting and in his note on Sunday that a rethinking of Opinion was necessary for an era in which readers are likely to come upon Op Eds in social media posts, divorced from their print context next to the editorial page. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Media |
Pediatric patients are not the sickest group right now, or the group most in danger. But pediatricians are worried, worried for children and families, for now and for the future. On our conference calls and Zoom meetings, everyone is worried about how stressed families are right now, about what we hear from our patients or their parents about the strain of staying home or about the strain of parents whose work requires that they go out. About parents losing jobs, and families not having enough to eat. Let me separate out without trying to rank them some of the top specific worries that come up again and again from those whose business is children and children's health. I have to start with what we all believe is the greatest triumph of pediatrics: the ability to protect children from the diseases that used to make them sick and even kill them. This pandemic makes us remember every day that viruses and bacteria can hurt us, that infections can spread in populations without immunity. Dr. Sally Goza, the president of the American Academy of Pediatrics, who is a primary care private practice pediatrician in Fayetteville, Ga., remembered the devastating diseases that she used to see in infants and young children as recently as the 1980s. "For the infants, if we don't get their meningitis vaccine to them, we could start seeing meningitis again," she said. "All those diseases I saw when I was starting out, I don't want them to be the end of my career as well as the beginning." Dr. Hans Kersten, a professor of pediatrics at Drexel and St. Christopher's Hospital for Children in Philadelphia, wrote that though they were still seeing children under 2 at his clinic, many miss visits, and the older children are missing the vaccines that are usually given at 4 and 11 years of age. We all know that even before the epidemic, pediatricians were working hard to convince parents of the importance of vaccinating children. Now, even though many of us are dreaming of a coronavirus vaccine, many families are frightened to come anywhere near clinics or hospitals, raising the specter of resurgent infections, from measles to whooping cough, meningitis and bacterial sepsis. Dr. Goza said that even 3 and 4 and 5 year olds express anxiety about the virus. Children are living in an anxious world right now as are we all and living with their scared, anxious parents. Many children like many adults are losing people they love, or at the very least, are terrified of losing people they love. No question that parents, everywhere, are doing their best, but children are going to need a lot of help, now and in the future, to deal with their feelings and their fears. Developmental impacts of the pandemic, and especially of social distancing Since children grow and change, their emotional needs and their vulnerabilities change as well. "My biggest worry about children right now is that they miss out on so many critical connections connections with parents that are stressed out by the demands that they face at this time, connections with extended family and with other children, all of which are so critical for their social and emotional development," wrote Dr. Danielle Erkoboni, a general pediatrician in the policy lab at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia. Dr. Marilyn Augustyn, a developmental and behavioral pediatrician at Boston Medical Center, sorted her top developmental worries by age: that toddlers "will have learned that we need to be afraid of other people, wear masks and cross to the other side of the street if we see them." That preschoolers, who tend toward magical thinking, will think that deprivations like padlocked playgrounds are punishments for doing something bad. And that middle school kids and adolescents "will have consumed astronomical volumes of online media and will forget how to disconnect." Virginia's new lieutenant governor elect says she won't force vaccines. We've all come to understand the ways that poverty is poisonous for children, and we're in a pandemic that seems on course to increase poverty, and to hit hardest in poor and minority communities. Even before coronavirus, the United States had a much too high rate of child poverty, and families with children especially minority families are going to need systematic and extraordinary help afterward, or the intergenerational effects will be with us all for a long time. Dr. Daniel Taylor, an associate professor at Drexel and St. Christopher's Hospital for Children, wrote that his biggest worry was "post Covid amplification of existing inequities in health care for impoverished children and children of color with no viable plan, political will or financing for recovery." "I worry most about the lack of social safety net for not only children but the communities they live in, which are so vital to them being able to thrive," wrote Dr. Nathan Chomilo, a pediatrician at Park Nicollet in Minneapolis, and medical director of Minnesota's Medicaid program. We risk, he said, another generation faced with "an opportunity gap that saps them, and us as a society, of our full potential." Having school online hasn't been easy for any set of students, but it's harder for the most vulnerable children, the children in poverty who were already at highest risk of school problems and attend the most poorly resourced schools and often are living in homes with parents who are under additional pressures. Lacking internet service or devices, studying with many people in the home, having unresolved learning issues all these make keeping up much harder. These are the children who will need systematic help to come back to where they need to be educationally and make progress. Families are under stress. Children are home with parents who are under stress. And the usual checks and balances are missing even the pediatric checkups are not happening in person. "There are no on the ground teachers, therapists, coaches or other workers to look out for these children, and no visits for them to come in to their providers," Dr. Kersten wrote. Dr. Goza cited a child recently diagnosed with leukemia in her practice, and another who had broken an arm, but whose parents were afraid to go to the emergency room. "Because there's a pandemic doesn't mean there are no other diagnoses," she said. Dr. Julia Chang Lin, an attending pediatrician at Bellevue Hospital, takes care of many children with special needs, who are now receiving their physical therapy, occupational therapy and speech therapy via screens; one of her patients attempted to hug the therapist on the screen, and when she couldn't, lost interest in participating. She said that it was difficult for kids with special needs to be missing out on working in person with a trained therapist, though she wrote, "I give the parents credit for stepping up and doing all they can to support their kids." Concerns about what the future brings Everyone in this story knows how hard parents are working and everyone knows that parents are worried as well. My colleagues who are calling their patients at home are doing their best like teachers, like therapists, like everyone who would rather be able to meet in person to offer guidance and advice to help families navigate through this strange and scary time. Pediatric offices are going to all kinds of lengths to give vaccines safely, setting special "non sick" hours, reducing waiting room time, vaccinating in the parking lot or at the curbside. Some of these worries will be hard to address until the world can safely open up a little more, but they will need to be addressed. Dr. Trude Haecker, the medical director of global patient services at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, asked: "As we ramp up our collective reliance on digital interactions out of necessity, what does the future hold when children have been away from their extended support group for so many months?" In general, pediatricians seem worried that in this crisis, locked into their homes, children are in some danger of becoming invisible. Children are not essential employees or front line heroes and they are not voters or consumers but they are, of course, our collective future. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Well |
That first cold spell of the season always feels especially harsh. If you've ever wondered, from beneath several layers of clothing, whether you were overreacting to those frigid early fall days, take solace. It may not just be in your head: The human body takes time to acclimate to the cold. "We kind of get a global response over time over the winter so that a 50 degree day in, say, February, feels glorious, whereas at this time of year it feels chilly," said John Castellani, a physiologist who specializes in cold weather research at the United States Army Research Institute of Environmental Medicine in Massachusetts. Some experts argue that the shift in perception is mostly psychological, but others, including Dr. Castellani, say there's more to it: The evidence suggests that the body grows to tolerate the cold over time. Here's a brief look at what we do and don't know about how the body responds to the cold in, say, autumn, compared to the spring. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Science |
A roundup of motoring news from the web: A confidential source told Automotive News that Ford had asked Alcoa to provide military grade aluminum for Ford's F 150 display at the Detroit auto show next month, where the all new truck will be revealed. By making the connection with military vehicles Alcoa makes aluminum blast shields for the military Ford is betting that it can convince customers used to buying the currently steel framed F 150 that a new aluminum design will meet their needs. (Automotive News, subscription required) Fiat has restarted talks in a bid to buy shares of the Chrysler Group from the United Auto Workers union health care trust, which owns 41.5 percent of the company. Sergio Marchionne, Fiat's chief executive, is trying to avoid an initial public offering on the Chrysler stake, which would increase the price Fiat would have to pay to for the shares. (Bloomberg) Buying a car in Cuba, where postwar American and Soviet models are common, is about to change. The government last week did away with a restriction on new car buying, which will bring thousands of new cars into the country after decades of stagnation. (The Detroit News) Although Russia's automotive market once seemed on its way to becoming the largest in Europe, sales have declined over the last year, leading analysts to ask if the glory days are over. The Association of European Businesses, a trade lobbying group that represents auto manufacturers, among other businesses, reported that sales had fallen by 6 percent this year. (Reuters) | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Automobiles |
At Cooper Union, it was outrage over a new tuition policy. At City College, it was anger over the closing of a community center. At both Manhattan colleges, student protest shut down buildings, garnered headlines and largely defined campus life over the past year. Now those two very different institutions are considering policies that could restrict how, when and where students can express dissent, while raising the penalties for those who disobey. Representatives of Cooper Union's student government were surprised when, a few weeks ago, administrators showed them a draft of a new code of conduct. In addition to addressing matters like fire safety and drug use, the document would forbid "deliberate or knowing disruption of the free flow of pedestrian traffic on Cooper Union premises" and "behavior that disturbs the peace, academic study or sleep of others on or off campus." A section on bullying and intimidation mentions communication, in any medium, that "disrupts or interferes with the orderly operation of the Cooper Union." Policies like that might be unremarkable at some universities. But they would be a significant departure at Cooper Union, where student protesters occupied President Jamshed Bharucha's office for months, and continue to produce a torrent of documents, videos, staged readings, holiday carols, Ping Pong ball drops and other creative stunts. The City University of New York, of which City College is a part, has floated its own new set of policies on what it terms "expressive activity." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Education |
Straddling the intersection of drug dealing and the music industry, "Yardie," the big screen directing debut of the actor Idris Elba, struggles to carve a path between warring gangs and reggae beats. Leaping from 1970s Jamaica to 1980s London, the story follows D (Aml Ameen), a drug courier and aspiring music artist who arrives in Hackney with a package for Rico (the reliable Stephen Graham, whose queasily hilarious performance of cultural appropriation is mitigated by his Jamaican heritage). But D, in a pointlessly stupid move that endangers his newly rediscovered childhood sweetheart (an excellent Shantol Jackson) and their young daughter, decides to give his package to the Turks instead. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Movies |
Re "Racism in the Principal's Office: Seeking Justice for Black Girls" (front page, Oct. 2): In New York City, in the year 2020, a girl who defends her friend in a fight can be charged with a felony for gang activity, sending her to detention and a lifetime of consequences. Thank you for shining a light on the unfair punishment meted out in the school system to young Black and brown girls, who have for generations been the target of neglect, surveillance and punitive discipline policies for being "loud" or "threatening." Every day at the youth organization I run, we teach our students a survival skill: code switching. For them, changing how they present themselves to society from body language to wardrobe to speech can keep them alive, employed and free. I look forward to the day when fashion choices and "sassy" attitudes are accepted for what they really are: an expression of strength, independence and spirit. I look forward to the day we stop silencing, penalizing and incarcerating our girls of color, and start listening to what they are telling us and give them the same opportunities and respect as their white or white passing peers. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Opinion |
Many years ago while living in South Africa I came across a Romanian kilim. Its pastel floral designs a sampler of sorts was captivating, but also beyond my budget. Decades passed, but it lingered in my memory every time I shopped for a rug to dress up a dreary room. Then I found myself living in Warsaw, Poland, last college tuition payment made, and Romania just a short flight away. Inspired by the idea that I might find a wealth of kilims at bargain basement prices, I set off from Bucharest on a 10 day, 1,288 mile journey around the central European country in a small Dacia Logan stick shift in search of kilims and the people who still weave them. The trip began with a 20 hour stay in Bucharest, long enough to visit Old Town and the Stavropoleos Monastery, the massive Palace of the Parliament and the Peasant Museum, where I met with Ana Iuga, who has an extensive background in kilims. The museum was closed for renovation, but lunch with Ms. Iuga, who wrote her thesis on rug making in Maramures, paid off in terms of tips on where to look for kilims along the way. I was also helped by Unesco's list of Intangible Cultural Heritage sites, which includes "traditional wall carpet craftsmanship" in Romania and the Republic of Moldavia. And Ruraltourism.ro was valuable in locating weavers I could stay with. My first and worst mistake was deciding to save on data by using a map rather than online navigation to get out of Bucharest. There are few street signs and it took twice as long as I expected to reach Bechet (for nearly half the journey I was driving in the dark, dodging dogs, people walking down the center of the road and horse drawn carts piled precariously high with everything from hay to workers). Bechet is home to Arta La Sat, the weaving studio of Antoneta Nadu. The rug designs from this region, Oltenia, are typically based on nature, featuring flowers, trees and birds. They are my favorite or at least I thought so at the beginning of the trip. When it became apparent that language was an issue, Ms. Nadu called a young friend of the family who had mastered English by watching American cartoons. That enabled us to get down to business. I wanted to buy at least one large rug. On her website, prices vary based on size and intricacy of the designs, but they basically run from about 300 for a 3 feet by 6 feet rug to as much as 1,000 for a 6 feet by 9 feet rug. Because they are traditionally part of a woman's dowry, I bought a medium size rug in pastels as a wedding gift for my daughter who's getting married later this month . But I wanted something very large for myself and nothing in the shop was the right color. Ms. Nadu went into her home and came back with a 70 year old rug that had belonged to her mother. It was perfect, with a rich burgundy border and black center, featuring a botanical motif. Together the price of the rugs was 4,800 leu, which was less than buying them online. I only had 4,000 leu (about 1,000) to spend and she accepted it. Having exhausted my questions and bank account, I headed to Domeniul Dragasi, a winery with a guesthouse overlooking the Olt River. Perhaps it was because I was the only guest that night but I was treated like royalty, with a personal wine tasting (higher quality than I expected), followed by a dinner of mixed bruschetta, duck confit with split peas, dessert and more wine. I was then escorted back to the guesthouse where I was tucked into a seat on the porch to watch a full moon rise over the Olt. Total price: about 120, including breakfast. As I drove north, the roads became increasingly scenic, cutting through fields and pastures dotted with distinctive conical haystacks before ascending into the forested mountains of Maramures, home to centuries old wooden churches, carved gates and small villages where life is dictated by the seasons and traditions. There is not much in the way of restaurants or entertainment in Maramures. A visit is really more of an opportunity to get a glimpse of rural life while exploring the region's history. My first stop was the Church of Archangels Michael and Gabriel in Rogoz, which dates to 1663. The church and a nearby ethnographic museum were locked up at 4 p.m., leaving me and some chickens to wander through the overgrown cemetery there. The family created a small museum in a traditional wood home near the entrance to the village, with a guesthouse on the second floor. Ms. Berbecaru's daughter, Ioana Pop, who speaks English, helps with guests. A family was already in the guesthouse so I was taken to the home of Maria Goldean, who lives in a quaint vine covered cottage with her husband and has a more modern cinder block home on the property for travelers. After I settled in, Mrs. Pop took me on a stroll through the village to look for weavers. Stops at two homes were disappointing; one of the women was no longer weaving and the other had put her loom away until winter. Discouraged, we decided to try just one more home, where we were greeted by Ioana Petreus, who was sitting on a bench outside her house spinning wool. She had been out all day foraging for mushrooms and her daughter was at the loom inside. The leaves, bark, nut shells and onion skins used to dye the yarn sat near her loom. She was one of Ms. Berbecara's students, and typically weaves traditional patterns. For 15, I bought a placemat size wall hanging that featured scenes from village life. The next day, after a visit to a wooden church in the center of Botiza, notable for the eerie painting of "Death" on the back of its entry door, I drove north to Ieud in search of the Ples Museum, set in a 200 year old homestead and said to display an array of items from a woman's dowry. It turned out to be the best day of the trip. Since it was a holiday, women gathered at the small museum to chat after services at Ieud's Church on the Hill, also known as "The Birth of the Mother of God" church , built in 1364. According to its literature, it is the oldest wooden church in Romania. The museum, which is down the hill from the church, is filled with hand woven rugs and blankets, embroidered cloths, hand painted plates and other handiwork. An old wooden loom dominates the room, its parts worn smooth from years of use. Next to the loom, a doll the size of a toddler stands in a wooden contraption designed to keep a child contained within reach; behind that is a cradle that can be rocked by a pedal next to those on the loom. My last stop of the day was Sapanta, home of the Merry Cemetery, near the Ukrainian border. In 1935, a local artist and painter, Stan Ioan Patras, began a tradition of creating brightly painted grave markers inlaid with unique and often humorous epitaphs he wrote for young and old alike. Hundreds of bright blue markers fill the cemetery, which was packed with sightseers reading the inscriptions some humorous, some sad, but all of them to the point. I spent the night at Guesthouse Ileana ( 30 a night, including breakfast) across the street from the cemetery, that the rural tourism website said organizes tours to visit weavers. In reality, I had to go no farther than a small covered area in the backyard where Maria Stetca, the guesthouse's owner, and her mother, Iona Stetca, still weave on their 80 year old horizontal loom. On a sunny Saturday, her mother worked on a striped wool blanket as Ms. Stetca spun wool nearby. From Sapanta, I wound east through the Carpathian Mountains to Gura Humorului in Bucovina, a lovely if slow drive, passing through tree covered mountains that open onto bucolic vistas. It's a good place to stay when visiting the painted monasteries for which the region is known. The first monastery I came to was Voronet, which is often referred to as the "Sistine Chapel of the East" for its detailed frescoes that draw on stories from the Bible. The best known of the frescoes, which date to the 15th and 16th centuries, is an intricate illustration of the Last Judgment on the monastery's western end. Outside the monastery, vendors sell all sorts of weaving, embroidery and local crafts, but much of it is from China and not worth a second look. After a short and confusing drive, I finally found Ms. Mihalachi's studio, which is in her house and was closed for renovation. Her husband, Julian Mihalachi, a chemist, was home and pulled out several rugs notable for their geometric and linear designs to illustrate their work, which involves teaching women how to weave, using old patterns and wool dyed naturally. "Very few people weave now," said Mr. Mihalachi, who assists his wife in the business. "It's difficult now because kids prefer carpets." I hope that is not the case with my daughter. With her wedding just a few weeks away, I've taken her rug out of the closet and begun contemplating the future. She doesn't really have much to constitute a dowry a few quilts made by my mother, some embroidered pillowcases from her great grandmothers and a set of Haviland china. But maybe those items and the handmade kilim acquired on an indelible road trip through Romania will be something meaningful to pass along for generations to come. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Travel |
Q. I have multiple accounts set up in the Mac's default Mail program. I notice sometimes when I create a message, Mail automatically sets the sender address to the account I use for personal correspondence and not my preferred home business account. How can I specify that my business account should be the default sender address? A. You can manually switch accounts on a new Mail message by selecting an address from the drop down menu in the Sender field, but if you have a preferred address, you can designate it as your default outgoing address for new messages. To do so, open the program and, under the Mail menu in the top left corner, choose Preferences. (If you are already in the Mail program, press the Command and comma keys to open the app's Preferences box.) | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Technology |
The Yale Center for British Art announced Wednesday that it had named Courtney J. Martin as its new director. Ms. Martin is currently deputy director and chief curator of the Dia Art Foundation in New York. In an interview, Ms. Martin described the appointment as an "opportunity to expand what we think of as British art, not only for the 20th and 21st centuries, but for all periods." One of her priorities as director will be to reposition British art within a global framework of migration and cultural exchange. "The museum has amazing collections of art that might have once been described as coming from the Commonwealth, and I would really like to show more works that come from the South Pacific and South Asia," she said. "There are notable links between British artists working outside of the country and artists born in those places." Ms. Martin has deep experience with British art, particularly of the postcolonial era. She has written extensively on the Pakistani born artist and editor Rasheed Araeen, and in 2012 she organized an exhibition of the Guyanese British painter Frank Bowling at Tate Britain in London. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Art & Design |
When President Trump sent an angry tweet in February blasting Nordstrom for dropping his daughter Ivanka's clothing line from its stores, his supporters took to social media to intensify their previous calls to boycott the retailer. Nordstrom had reason to worry: Previous tweets from Mr. Trump calling out other brands, such as Lockheed Martin, had hurt share prices. Instead, Nordstrom's shares rose, and its business outperformed many of its rivals in the troubled retail industry in the months that followed. It was an example of the "dichotomy" between what people say in the heat of a moment online and how they act offline, said Jay York, a senior digital marketing strategist at EMSI Public Relations. And it showcases the need for companies to monitor both online and offline conversations to get a true picture of how people feel about a brand and any controversies it may find itself embroiled in. On average, 19 percent of a brand's sales or between 7 trillion and 10 trillion in annual consumer spending in the United States are driven by social conversations, both online and offline, according to a new study conducted by Engagement Labs, a Canadian company that analyzes conversations around brands. The study, which looked at 170 brands, found that companies often wrongly saw social media as an accurate and sufficient guide for tracking consumer sentiment. Often, though, that social conversation might be much different from what people are saying in private conversations with friends and family, the study said. "The danger is you can make some pretty big mistakes if you assume the conversations happening online are also happening offline," said Brad Fay, chief research officer at Engagement Labs and a co author of the study. "Very often, they're heading in different directions." The most negative and most outrageous comments often get the most traction on social media. And sometimes, people post comments about a topic just to get a reaction or to reflect an "image" or appear "cool" to their social media followers, when their actual views may be the opposite. Social media is a valuable tool for detecting early signs of trouble. "It's a wake up call, a warning that something is afoot and there is a negative force there," said Elissa Moses, chief executive of neuroscience and behavioral science for Ipsos, a market research company. But a brand then needs to dig deeper to see if offline chatter matches it and if not, why not. Ms. Moses recalled being angry when Ann Curry was forced off NBC's "Today" five years ago. "I took to social media to voice my outrage, and I vowed to not watch the show anymore," she said. "But after years of watching the 'Today' show and my liking of their format and familiarity, I found myself gradually coming back to be a regular watcher." "The Nordstrom customer is rock solid, with a very loyal customer base, and that's more important than any idiot social comment," said Howard Davidowitz, chairman of Davidowitz Associates, a retail consulting and investment banking services firm. So, how do companies track offline conversations? Focus groups, online questionnaires, in store survey cards, home visits and even a chat between a manager and a customer in the store can all track consumer sentiment. Retailers like Bloomingdale's and Saks Fifth Avenue often invite loyal customers to meetings to quiz them on everything from the latest promotional campaign to the store's mannequins. 15 minimum wage for federal contractors will take effect Jan. 30. Jeff Bezos gives 100 million to the Obama Foundation. A facial expression, a tone of voice or even a pause can reveal concerns that a social media post or tweet will not, Ms. Moses said. Robin Hafitz, the founder and chief executive of Open Mind Strategy, sometimes hooks up focus group participants to diodes and heat sensors to detect emotional reactions. "While they're saying they don't like this sexy or negative commercial, their galvanic responses may actually indicate they're excited by it or have a positive response," she said. When Craig Schmeizer co founded the mattress company Nectar, he underestimated initial demand and quickly ran out of inventory when sales began in January. That meant long waits and a mountain of negative complaints on social media. He feared his new business might be finished before it ever really started. But when he reached out to customers through online and phone surveys, he discovered they had no interest in canceling their orders. The more candid he was about the inventory debacle and shipping delays, the more customers seemed to respond. "Every time we told them the wait would get longer, our sales would go up," said Mr. Schmeizer, whose company has more than 40 million in sales since January. When Wendy's started its "fresh, never frozen beef" campaign, it generated positive buzz but failed to stimulate sales. When offline surveys were done, the company found "most people just didn't care because they freeze their own beef," Ms. Hafitz said And when Chick fil A's chief executive, Dan Cathy, made comments opposing same sex marriage in 2012, a social media campaign urged a boycott of the fast food chain. Instead, sales surged 12 percent to 4.6 billion that year. "The running joke is they'll still eat a Chick fil A, even though they feel bad about it," Mr. York said. "Will they post a picture of themselves eating a Chick fil A? Probably not." All of this shows why it's critical that brands track all conversations, online and off. "It's not an either/or question; it's important to look at both," Mr. Fay said. "Brands need to look at the total picture if they're going to be successful." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Media |
MANTUA, Italy In 1972, Gerhard Richter represented West Germany at the Venice Biennale and presented one of his most renowned series of paintings: "48 Portraits," which depict famous and forgotten white men in blurry, pallid black and white. While in Venice that summer, he went to the Scuola Grande di San Rocco, where he came upon a painting by Titian from around 1539. It was a small, foamy scene of the Annunciation, hiding in plain sight amid the Scuola's dozens of more dramatic works by Tintoretto. Titian paints Mary crouched to the right of the composition, her eyes cast down and her hand clasped over her breast. The archangel wafts in from the left on a cloud of smoke, wearing a tunic of lustrous magenta, spreading his wings of steely gray as he delivers the big news. Mr. Richter bought a postcard. The next year, back in his spotless German studio, he started to repaint the Titian the first and only time he copied a work of art history. His "Annunciation After Titian" (1973) represents the same dramatic announcement of the Incarnation, but Titian's already soft brush strokes have deliquesced into an even blur. The cloud beneath Gabriel that Titian depicted as smoke has turned an impalpable white, while the column and pediment to Mary's right have vanished into fuzziness. Four other "Annunciations After Titian" from that year are blurrier still, the last of them evaporating into a nearly monochrome cloud of pink. The Venetian master's hold on the great skeptic of contemporary painting is the subject of "Titian/Gerhard Richter: Heaven on Earth," an idiosyncratic and wonderfully challenging exhibition on view at the Palazzo Te, a 16th century palace in Mantua, Italy, 90 miles west of Venice. (The palace attracts tens of thousands of visitors a year, many drawn to its massive Mannerist frescoes by Giulio Romano, which date from slightly before Titian.) The exhibition includes the 1539 "Annunciation" that so inspired Mr. Richter, as well as a grander and looser painting of the same subject that Titian made in 1558 59. The show was also meant to include Mr. Richter's "Annunciations," but loans fell through at the last minute. Mr. Richter stepped in, lending a print on aluminum of "Annunciation After Titian" that he made in 2015, and a dozen other works some with figurative imagery, many abstract and never before exhibited. The absence of the "original copy" Mr. Richter made in 1973 is in some ways a lucky accident, as it lets this show escape a one on one face off between the "Annunciations" and explore deeper, less direct interplays between Renaissance and contemporary art. Mr. Richter's pictures of his wife, Sabine, and his daughters, Betty and Ella, are usually treated by curators as intentionally, almost sarcastically banal. Alongside Titian's religious paintings, as well as an arresting 1559 drawing of Gabriel melting into a cloud of charcoal, the Richter portraits appear far less ironic. The anachronistic hang lets you see the family portraits as coherent with a Counter Reformation painterly tradition, in which saints were depicted as recognizable humans on the cusp of divine transformation. "Titian/Gerhard Richter" is not really about the direct influence of one painter on another; that would be too simple for the German artist, anyway. It's about the promises and constraints of painterly style, and also about how old age permits artists a new freedom that often takes the form of formlessness. The new abstract works, dating from 2015 to 2017, are freer and less gloomy than many of Mr. Richter's more recent squeegeed canvases, and their oily fields of teal, yellow, orange and chartreuse disclose even more stammers and streaks than usual. One small abstract painting here, bleeding with rivers of white and sweeps of purple and vermilion, is a virtuoso performance of gestures and countergestures, so active you're shocked the paint has dried. In the later Titian "Annunciation" here, standing nine feet tall and on loan from the Museo di Capodimonte in Naples, the free brush strokes of Gabriel's wings and the parting clouds cohere only at a distance; get up close and marvel at how Titian breaks down color, makes the brush stroke its own justification, and pushes the visible to the limit. More than four centuries before Mr. Richter, he was laying the ground for a new kind of painting, one whose principal meaning lies in the handling of paint itself. What is an annunciation? It is a scene where the divine comes down to the scale of the domestic. It therefore lacks the lucidity of a crucifixion or a Pieta; it is an irresolute, in between vista, where doubt and belief are one. That may explain why it appealed to Mr. Richter in 1973, who zeroed in on Titian's small, quiet painting amid the clamor of Tintoretto at San Rocco. It may also be a model for a whole practice of painting, where the border between representation and abstraction recedes into a blur. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Art & Design |
Two years ago, Emese M. Bordy, a sedimentologist at the University of Cape Town, was flipping through an obscure dissertation from the 1960s when a clue leapt out at her. It was an image of a footprint on a farm located on the northern Karoo Basin of South Africa. The Karoo region contains huge volcanic flood basalts that chronicle the final epoch of the ancient supercontinent Gondwana before it broke apart about 180 million years ago during a period of tectonic and volcanic catastrophe. Geologists have been studying it for decades to understand this major change in the layout of Earth's landmasses, which coincided with a mass extinction event. But the image suggested to Dr. Bordy that there was more to learn about the prehistoric animals that had lived on that dying supercontinent. That initial hunch sparked something like a paleontological detective tale. First, Dr. Bordy and her colleagues were able to track down the farm's owner with the help of a local historian. He gave her team permission to hunt for fossils on his property. There, the team not only found the pictured footprint, but also discovered two dozen other prints left 183 million years ago by carnivorous and herbivorous dinosaurs, as well as small creatures called synapsids. "These tracks are special to me because they really allowed me to enjoy that incredible feeling of discovery twice, once while reading the old literature and then again in the field," Dr. Bordy said. The prints, which the team reported Wednesday in the journal PLOS ONE, are preserved in sandstone positioned between layers of basalt, the remains of lava flows, which indicates that the animals walked through this area after the eruptions began. Their tracks were preserved in the bed of a fast running seasonal stream that may have offered reprieve from this "land of fire," as the study calls it. "These volcanic eruptions were mind bogglingly voluminous," Dr. Bordy said, noting that basalt piles in southern Africa can be a mile thick and that's after more than 100 million years of erosion and weathering. Sandstone layers of the Karoo Basin are more commonly buried beneath these huge basalt piles, which shows "that eventually the land surface was overwhelmed by the lava flows." The smallest tracks measure just under one inch, and are tentatively identified as four legged synapsids, a lineage of animals that eventually gave rise to modern mammals. At the other end of the size spectrum are 5 and 1/2 inch tracks made by feet with three toes, suggesting that bipedal meat eating dinosaurs such as Coelophysis walked through this volatile landscape. The team also reports the discovery of a new ichnospecies, the term for a species identified by trace fossils such as tracks, which the researchers named Afrodelatorrichnus ellenbergeri. These animals left 1 and 1/2 inch footprints with three toes, and were small quadrupedal herbivores that belonged to the ornithischian clade of dinosaurs, a group that includes much bigger superstars like Stegosaurus and Triceratops. The track makers were some of the last creatures to trek through this ephemeral landscape before it was incinerated by lava, likely within a single season. "Despite the eruptions and harsh climate, this area maintained a diversity of animals, at least during part of the eruptive phase," said Steve Brusatte, a paleontologist at the University of Edinburgh who was not involved in the study. "There's also something striking about dinosaurs and early mammal relatives surviving together in this dangerous landscape," Dr. Brusatte added. "Dinosaur tracks usually get most of the attention, but I think it's remarkable to think that we had mammal ancestors that had to endure volcanic eruptions, asteroid impacts and other environmental changes in the deep past, and if they didn't, we wouldn't be here today." The discovery demonstrates that South African basalts could be packed with untapped insights about survival during a period of global ecological distress, the likes of which have never been experienced in human history. It could also help scientists anticipate what might happen if we are unfortunate enough to be rocked by another bout of massive volcanic activity, or disasters on a similar scale. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Science |
From left; Lucas Jackson/Reuters, Jared Soares for The New York Times, Joshua Bright for The New York Times, Kevin Lamarque, via Reuters, Joshua Bright for The New York Times, Jared Soares for The New York Times. From left; Lucas Jackson/Reuters, Jared Soares for The New York Times, Joshua Bright for The New York Times, Kevin Lamarque, via Reuters, Joshua Bright for The New York Times, Jared Soares for The New York Times. Credit... From left; Lucas Jackson/Reuters, Jared Soares for The New York Times, Joshua Bright for The New York Times, Kevin Lamarque, via Reuters, Joshua Bright for The New York Times, Jared Soares for The New York Times. Amazon's critics were apoplectic at what they called a bait and switch. "I was shocked," said Robert B. Engel of the Free Fair Markets Initiative, a nonprofit that is a determined foe of the retailer on all fronts. "They've duped more than the bidders. They've duped all of us. They can't even live up to a promise that wasn't fair to anyone but Amazon." From the company's point of view, however, things seem to be working out rather nicely. The quest kept a persistent spotlight on Amazon as the suitor everyone sought would it choose Denver? maybe Atlanta? surely Chicago? even as the company apparently decided instead to set up smaller operations in the Washington metro area and in New York City, the two most obvious places all along. (Amazon declined to comment.) Amid the guessing game, the company got information from dozens of cities about how much they would pay for a strong Amazon presence, valuable data that it will no doubt use to expand. "What we see is Amazon evolving into a corporation whose headquarters is virtual and whose physical presence will span the globe," said Charles R. T. O'Kelley, director of the Berle Center on Corporations, Law and Society at Seattle University. "Instead of being headquartered in one place and moving to a second headquarters, Amazon is going to be, and be thought of as, everywhere." This, after all, is how Amazon sees its destiny: to become not just the everything store, as it was branded a mere five years ago, but the everything company. People will buy groceries from Amazon, be entertained by Amazon shows, pick up snacks at Amazon Go stores, see all the ads they need on Amazon, find a plumber through Amazon, communicate through Amazon's Alexa virtual assistant and that is just the beginning. "The word 'headquarters' is a nontechnical, nonlegal term, but it plays well in the press to talk like this," Mr. O'Kelley said. "It was a great P.R. move in all kinds of ways." Qinghai Wang, a finance professor at the University of Central Florida who has studied corporate headquarters, agreed. "Corporate headquarters, or at least the part that is central to decision making, should be just in one place," he said. "Boeing, another Seattle company that moved headquarters more than 10 years ago, only moved a few hundred people to Chicago. Amazon is a big company, and it has a very big headquarters already." At least one expert realized some time ago how the game would end. "Don't be surprised if later this year, Amazon announces that it's going to have more than one HQ2," the City Observatory, a think tank in Portland, Ore., said in an essay posted in January. One reason: "If a single winner is announced, and its competitors are dismissed, then Amazon's negotiating position becomes much weaker," the essay said. Having multiple winners, on the other hand, would allow the company to play one off the other. Even as the news sank in on Monday, some people rued the lost chance that Amazon would do something truly transformative not just for the company, but for its new home. "Big tech is at a pivotal moment, and Amazon is at the head of the class," said Scott Phillips, an entrepreneur who submitted a proposal to build an enormous city for Amazon in rural Oklahoma. "It is time for them to aggressively think not just about their bottom line but about ways they can do right by the world." In a way, the two headquarters story was too good to be true even when Amazon proclaimed it bluntly and at length. "Amazon HQ2 will be Amazon's second headquarters in North America," the company said in its promotional material. "We expect to invest over 5 billion in construction and grow this second headquarters to include as many as 50,000 high paying jobs it will be a full equal to our current campus in Seattle." Instead, while nothing official has been announced and things could shift at the last minute, it appears HQ2 will rank with the company's proclamation that drones would deliver packages. When the chief executive, Jeff Bezos, unveiled that initiative on "60 Minutes," he said the drones would come in "four, five years." That was almost exactly five years ago. The drones have not taken flight, but many articles about them did. Amazon likewise gained enormous amounts of raw publicity from its search for a second headquarters. It gained something else as well. "It's tempting to roll your eyes at this soap opera, but Amazon will walk away from this stunt with a cache of incredibly valuable data," said Stacy Mitchell of the Institute for Local Self Reliance, a frequent Amazon critic. "It's learned all kinds of things from the bidding cities like their future infrastructure plans that even their citizens are not privy to." Here's what's next, she said: "Amazon will put this data to prodigious use in the coming years as it looks to expand its market power and sideline the competition." Amazon is always expanding its market power. Consider a recent routine news release: "Amazon Announces 14th Inland Empire Fulfillment Center in Beaumont," it said. Fulfillment center is a fancy term for warehouse. The Inland Empire is a vast area east of Los Angeles. To build 14 warehouses there in six years is a feat. Amazon said it was now the largest employer in the region. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Technology |
It can be difficult to tell the good guys from the bad in "Der Ring des Nibelungen," Wagner's four opera saga of greed and mistakes. It's even more difficult in the Metropolitan Opera's current revival of the "Ring," in which the typically villainous Alberich the dwarfish Nibelung of the title is portrayed with nobility and nuance by Tomasz Konieczny, in a stunning company debut. In "Das Rheingold," the first of the "Ring" operas, Mr. Konieczny stood out among the large cast not only for his unusually rich characterization, but also for his voice: a sonorous bass, filling the Met with ease and delivered with crystalline articulation. His character returns on Saturday in "Siegfried." Peter Gelb, the Met's general manager, said in an interview that he was "bowled over" by Mr. Konieczny's performance so much so that Mr. Gelb immediately invited him to star in Wagner's "Der Fliegende Hollander" when the opera is revived in a future season after a new production has its premiere next March. "Wagner is really my life," Mr. Konieczny said in his dressing room recently after a rehearsal of "Siegfried." "And I'm still learning. His music is work for life." Mr. Konieczny, 47, grew up in Poland wanting to be a director; he was a child impresario, putting on humble shows with friends. But he ended up studying acting, appearing in some films but preferring theater. On the side, Mr. Konieczny started taking singing lessons and eventually moved to Dresden, Germany, to attend its Hochschule fur Musik. After some success there and in Leipzig, he decided to commit to opera full time. Then came Mr. Konieczny's first Wagner assignment: the "Ring." It was in Ireland, he recalled, and he sang the giant Fasolt and Gunther, a human. The conductor was a Russian man who didn't understand German, but everything came together after three a day rehearsals for three weeks. "I was in love with Wagner, definitively," Mr. Konieczny said. "I saw what the text was capable of, how you could tell if a character was lying if what he said didn't match the music. And every time I hear or sing it now, I can still see a new story." He has since graduated to higher profile "Ring" roles, including Alberich and Wotan in nearly equal measure. He has developed close relationships with conductors including Adam Fischer, Franz Welser Most and Christian Thielemann, who, after working with Mr. Konieczny in Dresden, invited him to make his Bayreuth debut in last summer's "Lohengrin." During the interview in his dressing room, still in costume and switching back and forth between English and German, he explained what went into his performance as Alberich. Here are edited excerpts from the conversation. How did you arrive at your Alberich? The most important thing for me as an actor is to see his perspective, and the possibility to change. It's very difficult to sing parts like Telramund, because there's not much possibility to change between the beginning and the end. But Alberich, he is completely different at the beginning. He is ambitious; he would like to have another woman, but not from his race. Wotan wants more, too more than other gods. Both of them want more than they can have. I'm also very ambitious, so I can understand. Alberich is not a bad guy. But in "Das Rheingold," there is a situation that makes it impossible to be good. The Rhinemaidens make fun of him, laugh at him. He only wants better love, but he ends up taking the gold because of revenge, because he is pushed to the end of his emotional possibilities. His decision to choose power is a reaction, because he is made crazy. Then how does he change again? When he loses the ring. You have the possibility to make Alberich only the bad guy. Or you can play him as sympathetic, someone who only wants to survive the situation when he is caught. I think it is most important to make people feel with Alberich at this moment. He is suffering. You have to be careful not to make Alberich stupid. It's never written that he's a dolt. He is emotional; you know that this picture of Wotan catching him is so strong, he cannot ever forget it. He's thinking of it still in "Siegfried." Who, do you think, is the villain: Wotan or Alberich? Wotan. He is incredibly sympathetic, but he is like a mafioso. Alberich never lies. But Wotan is always lying, always manipulating. But of powerful people in the world today, who is not lying? Which role do you prefer to sing? Wotan is more interesting, and much easier to sing. Alberich is the way to contemporary music, and it's not always good for the voice. The only big Wagner opera left for you is "Meistersinger." Will you make your debut as Hans Sachs anytime soon? At the moment we have a really good Hans Sachs, Michael Volle who is singing Wotan in the Met's "Ring" . Three times I've had proposals for "Meistersinger," and I would like it very much. It's a really fantastic part; he's like Wotan, though never a bad guy. But I have time. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Music |
Our columnist, Sebastian Modak, is visiting each destination on our 52 Places to Go in 2019 list. He went camping and scuba diving in Israel before heading to Plovdiv. I was getting into bed after a long day of traveling when I heard the bells: two tones clanging out an urgent rhythm that filled the night. I peeked out my window but couldn't see where the sound was coming from. Despite my fatigue, curiosity got the best of me. I grabbed my shoes and jacket and followed the sounds to the nearest church, where scores of people were holding candles and walking solemnly around the building. The frenetic pace of the 52 Places trip means that I often lose track of the date. Turns out, I had arrived in Plovdiv, Bulgaria, just in time for Orthodox Easter Sunday. With the bells signaling midnight, the faithful families, couples, older people helped along by young neighbors were marking the occasion. The glow of candlelight illuminated the faces of those who circled the church three times before dispersing into the night. I sat in the Roman amphitheater, which dates from the second century A.D., when the city was known as Philippopolis. I passed under a medieval gate marking one of the entrances into the Old Town, and marveled at the Bulgarian Revival architecture from the dying days of Ottoman rule in the 19th century: pastel facades with second floors supported by wooden beams; intricately painted ceilings; windows that could be thrown open on crisp, spring days like this one. Following the winding stone roads, I came to the crumbled site of a fortress, believed to have roots in an ancient Thracian settlement, and made my way to Knyaz Alexander I, a pedestrian only street lined with shops and restaurants and doner kebab stands. Then I passed through a Roman stadium and gate and crossed an underpass paved with ancient flagstones beneath a busy thoroughfare. Plovdiv was on the 52 Places list because it is one of the 2019 European Capitals of Culture, an annual designation given out by the European Commission that's meant to boost the arts across the continent. As such, there's a lot going on this year: hundreds of events spanning every art form you can think of. More a coincidence of timing than a concerted effort, the Bishop's Basilica, which will house some 21,000 square feet of Roman mosaics, opens this fall. The energy inspired by the Capital of Culture designation pervades everything. But in Plovdiv, the title is actually more recognition for a longstanding creative vision than it is a jump start to new programs. It is easy to view towns like Plovdiv with their quaint streets and carefully preserved, achingly charming architecture as one dimensional in their beauty. It took me a few days to realize that Plovdiv is not a place built around tourism, but rather a booming city whose appeal to travelers can and should extend beyond the histor ical allure that attracts so many. Bulgaria's second city is a place of layers, where a new breed of artists, entrepreneurs and community leaders are just as concerned with the city's future as they are with its past. Sariev Contemporary is a gallery just off Plovdiv's main street, past the office of the Open Arts Foundation and the bohemian hangout, Artnewscafe. A 180 square foot white box, it is easy to miss. But the gallery is the heartbeat of Plovdiv's contemporary art scene, and over the last decade, its proprietors Katrin Sarieva and her daughter, Vesselina , who also run the cafe and the foundation have created an ecosystem that combines the arts, community organizing and historical preservation. More than one person I met credited them with bringing contemporary art to the fore, not just in Plovdiv, but in Bulgaria and Eastern Europe as a whole. Vesselina has taken Bulgarian exhibitions to art shows all over the world, and works with young up and coming artists and big name collectors alike. The event the Sarievas are best known for, though, is Night/Plovdiv, held every September for the past 10 years, when the city's galleries, museums, bars and historical sites stay open after hours and host events that span the artistic spectrum. "Before we started the Night, the idea of culture here was very narrow," Vesselina said. "You had high culture the museums, the opera and then everything else was 'low culture.' People thought galleries were just shops for art." Without the work of the Sarievas, it's hard to say whether the conditions for a "capital of culture" would have been realized at all. On a sunny day, Vesselina took me for a long walk to hit some of the destinations on the Alternative Map of Plovdiv, a project started by Katrin Sarieva, who doubles as the city's unofficial historian. A concerted effort to show tourists and residents the attractions that exist outside of the usual tourist routes, the map offers a fascinating look at a city with many facets and a story of survival. We walked through the Hadji Hassan Quarter, tucked next to the Old Town, where many of the city's Romani residents, sometimes referred to as Gypsies, live. There, in hastily built homes with the occasional horse cart parked out front, they've preserved their language and customs even after decades of tradition crushing communism. One woman smiled at us as she washed clothes using an ibrik, a Turkish pitcher which, as Vesselina described it, is "the kind of thing you usually see in the Ethnographic Museum." We passed the remnants of Bulgaria's communist years, the Brutalist Central Post Office and National Library. On this part of my tour, too, there were stories of perseverance. One building, the Cosmos Cinema, is an abandoned movie theater built in the 1960s. About 10 years ago, it was almost destroyed to make way for a shopping mall. It was Vesselina and others in the artistic community who rallied around the cause to stop the city from doing it. Its future is still uncertain, but it won't be turned into a pile of rubble. Vesselina introduced me to Martina Vacheva, 31, one of the most promising young artists she works with. Together, we walked around the neighborhood where Ms. Vacheva was raised. Trakia, a city within a city, is a seemingly never ending collection of massive Communist era apartment blocks, 50 year old paint peeling off soot stained walls. Ms. Vacheva was discovered by Vesselina when she was creating fanzines for "Baywatch," "Twin Peaks" and (seriously) "Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman" some of the first American TV shows to come to post Communist Bulgaria. In her work, Ms. Vacheva marries the grandness of history with absurd elements from the present day. In a recent series of ceramics, for example, she takes inspiration from Thracian works discovered in Plovdiv and, using traditional techniques, imbues them with modern motifs: A beer bottle is included in a scene of ancient revelry, a boombox is placed in the back of a donkey cart . None There are a few big name hotels in the city, but I chose The Family Hotel at Renaissance Square a small guesthouse with five rooms in a 19th century house at the base of the Old Town and it was a delight. Its owner, Dimitar, speaks fluent English, is full of tips for exploring the city and makes a killer breakfast. None Pavaj, in the neighborhood of Kapana, is the most sought after dinner reservation in the city and for good reason. Everything is fresh I was told the restaurant runs on a no freezer policy and its unpretentious, cozy interior belies the sophistication of the dishes. It's also got a wide selection of rakia, the local fruit brandy, that proves the drink isn't just a cheap way to get a buzz. None Three of Plovdiv's hills are nature reserves, and that means you can take a break from exploring the city and go on an afternoon hike. The farthest hill from the center, Dzhendem Tepe, or Youth Hill, is also the highest. It's a bit of a trek to get to, but absolutely worth a climb for the views of some of the newer parts of the city, offering another angle to Plovdiv beyond the historical. Plovdiv, like Rome, is known as the "City of Seven Hills." But, in fact, there are only six. One was torn apart decades ago to make pavement in its place is a shopping mall and parking lot. But there, too, artists reacted. Eight years ago, Atanas Hranov, one of Plovdiv's most prominent artists, took stones from the torn down hill, inscribed them with quotes from the city's poets and, in the shadow of the city's 14th century Dzhumaya Mosque, built a seventh "hill," a mound that serves as a tribute to the resilience of art. "We have seven hills in our city's coat of arms," Mr. Hranov told me. "Now, it's true again." The people shaping Plovdiv into a center for unbridled creativity aren't limited to its artists. The neighborhood of Kapana ("The Trap") is named for its confusing layout, but it would be just as appropriate a name for the way its residents and small business owners draw you in. A short walk from the main street, the neighborhood's stone streets are lined with bars, cafes and boutiques. It's familiar by now the hip, gentrified neighborhood where young people smoke hand rolled cigarettes and trade stories over craft beers or overpriced coffee but there's something different about Kapana, something that makes it feel unlike all the Williamsburg carbon copies. I found an overwhelming sense of calm here no one was out to impress; you could nurse a beer for a full hour at a neighborhood bar without getting dirty looks. The Kapana spot I frequented most, Cat and Mouse, was one of the first bars in the neighborhood. While acknowledging that the story of Kapana is a familiar one of gentrification, its owners, Dimitar Semkov, 37, and Ivailo Dernev, 40, said the buildings in the area were largely abandoned when they moved in. "It was basically a parking lot for people working in the city," Dimitar said as the three of us sipped the house dark ale. "We decided to stay here because we saw potential." It was another example of innovative thinking. Ivailo and Dimitar are journalists and their online publication, Pod Tepeto ("Under the Hill"), is still, according to others I talked to, one of the only independent media outlets in the country. The bar was a way to finance their journalism so they wouldn't be beholden to advertisers. The enterprise has progressed into a co working space, a guesthouse and an online guide for tourists. But they've never had ambitions beyond Plovdiv. "Our mission is to show the passion of the people in this city," Ivailo said. "When something good happens, we want to be a part of it," Dimitar chimed in. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Travel |
Investing is hard enough when you're focused on fundamentals like earnings, debt loads and cash flow. But when you add geopolitics and military skirmishes to the mix, it turns into something else entirely: gambling. And that's usually treacherous, even if it's occasionally extraordinarily rewarding. The crisis in Ukraine is a case in point. Just last week, Russian military maneuvers in Crimea and on Ukraine's eastern border set off breathtaking movements in markets around the world. The greatest financial shifts occurred in emerging markets, most particularly in Ukraine and Russia themselves. Anyone speculating with dollars could have made or lost a fortune on Monday, only to experience a total reversal the very next day. "In a crisis like that, you've got to be prepared for a total shift in the market outlook from day to day," said Jim McDonald, chief investment strategist at Northern Trust Asset Management in Chicago. He doesn't recommend buying emerging market stocks in the hope of making a quick killing. "I think the odds of outperforming are very good right now if you've got a five year horizon, because those markets have become relatively cheap," he said. But short term bets are another matter. "We have no idea where things are going," he said. "You're taking big risks." The short term risks were remarkably clear last week. Consider what happened in global stock markets in just two days, Monday and Tuesday. As the week opened, stock markets plummeted worldwide in an apparent reaction to military movements by Russian forces in Crimea and on the Ukrainian border. Among the very hardest hit were markets at the epicenter of the crisis: Russia's fell 12 percent in dollar terms, and Ukraine's lost almost 10 percent. If you had shorted those markets that day, you would have had reason to be smug. But if you had made a bullish bet, you would have lost more in one day than many people could easily tolerate for an entire year. By the next morning, though, the situation was different: The financial markets were behaving as though the world had become a much happier place. While traders were still sleeping in New York, Vladimir V. Putin, the Russian president, held a news conference in Moscow that eased fears that outright war was imminent. Global markets soared. The Standard Poor's 500 stock index set a record high that day, but it was the battered Ukrainian stock market that rose to the top of the best performance list. On that day alone, it posted a gain, in dollar terms, of more than 17 percent, followed by the Russian stock market, which rose more than 6 percent. Extreme as those fluctuations may be, there is a good chance that they will continue, because the problems in Ukraine and Russia are far from settled, said Ben Pace, chief investment officer for the Americas at Deutsche Asset Wealth Management in New York. And high volatility is likely in many other emerging markets as well. Turkey, for example, has suddenly become less attractive in the eyes of many foreign investors because of the events in nearby Ukraine and Russia, Mr. Pace said. So have many other countries that are much farther from the region. "It may not be right, it may not be rational to look at it that way, but that's the way people have been responding," he said. "When an asset manager in New York wants to take risk off the table, he doesn't only target Russia and Ukraine," he said. "He cuts back on holdings in Turkey and Thailand and many other countries that aren't directly involved in the conflict." One reason for this kind of indiscriminate risk reduction is that global asset allocation strategies often include very small holdings for emerging markets as a group, Mr. Pace said. For moderate investors in the United States, for example, his firm is recommending that they hold only 3.5 percent of their portfolios in emerging market equities of all sorts, he said. That represents a reduction from an allocation of 5.5 percent made by the firm in the middle of last year. "We were concerned about Chinese economic growth, problems in Brazil, disappointing economic growth in Russia, and India as well," he said. And it's quite possible that if the Ukraine crisis continues, his recommended allocation for emerging markets will drop even further, he said: "We're monitoring it closely." On the other hand, negative sentiment has made many emerging markets cheaper, using fundamental valuation measures. For example, emerging market stocks generally trade at a 27 percent discount to those of developed markets, based on price to earnings ratios. That's probably because emerging market stocks are deemed riskier and investors expect greater compensation for holding them. Recently, though, the valuation gap has widened, with emerging market stocks now 35 percent cheaper than those in developed markets. The disparity in valuation has not been this great since 2005, said Mr. McDonald of Northern Trust. "That's why emerging market stocks should do better over five years or more," he said. The relationship or, more precisely, the correlation between valuations and market returns appears strong for such periods, he said, though not for shorter stretches. Todd Henry, an emerging market portfolio specialist at T. Rowe Price in Baltimore, took a similar perspective. "From a contrarian standpoint, emerging markets look very good right now," he said. "But that doesn't mean that you're going to do well in them over the short term." He defined the short term as up to three years. If you are prepared to hang in for longer than that, he said, the odds for emerging markets are pretty good. For shorter periods, he said, people should realize "that they are going against prevailing market sentiment, which is one of the reasons that emerging markets are a contrarian bet and one of the reasons that prices have become so appealing." A big bet on emerging markets, he said, would mean elevating them to a larger position in your equity portfolio than the 10 percent share these markets now hold in world markets. Conservative investors would want to hold much less, he said. And while emerging markets globally are being tarred by the same brush at the moment just about all of them have been rising and falling in response to factors like the Ukraine crisis, the level of economic growth in China and interest rates in the United States individual emerging markets vary enormously. In Mr. Henry's view, Mexico is overpriced, probably because it is being valued as something of an adjunct of the rich United States market. On the other hand, valuations in Brazil, Russia, India and China the so called BRIC countries are relatively low. Of the four BRICs, he said that he would be very cautious about Russia, but that the others are likely to outperform. Still, even if emerging market prices are low, they may not attract much interest from investors anytime soon. As Mr. Pace of Deutsche Asset said: "Markets can be undervalued for a very long time. They need a catalyst to make them rise. At the moment, for emerging markets, we don't see one." The longer term view, however, looks considerably better. It may make a great deal of sense to invest in emerging markets and not to gamble on them. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Your Money |
If we're going to survive this pandemic we need music, more than ever. There is nothing else that can meet us in our heartbreak, elevate our spirits, move us to laughter and let us dream in the way that music can. I was apprenticed to loss and grief at the age of 17 when my best friend, Brian, died in a car accident on his way home from high school. His uncle, Tom, wrote a beautiful song called "Lake Michigan (for Brian)" soon after that carries the lines, "Hear the sun, hiss into the lake; Hear my heart, feels like it's gonna break." That song spoke for me when I could find no words. It knew my heart better than I did. It didn't try to pull me out, it met me where I was. Music saved me from drowning in my grief, a buoy that kept me afloat in those dark waters. We are all feeling individual and collective grief for all the losses that Covid 19 has brought: lives, health, plans, rhythms, connection. The path through grief is mourning, and it's music that can meet us on the path and help us keep walking. As a hospice chaplain and former intensive care unit and palliative care chaplain, I've been at the bedsides of the dying for many years, with music often holding the space when all else has failed. The deepest sense of transcendence I've encountered has been at the times spent listening to the music families put on as they hold vigil. Together, we have heard the rhythms of the patient's breath meld into the rhythms of the music. Sometime I sing, sometimes I listen. Every time I bow in reverence and wonder. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Well |
Despite the worsening pandemic, Marie's Crisis Cafe, a West Village piano bar, reopened with a singalong this week. Like other venues, it says its music is "incidental," and therefore allowed. Although most indoor live performances have been banned in New York since the coronavirus began its deadly spread in March, about a dozen people turned up Wednesday night at Birdland, the jazz club near Times Square, for a 7 p.m. performance that was billed as dinner with live jazz. They had reservations. Among them was Tricia Tait, 63, of Manhattan, who came for the band, led by the tuba player David Ostwald, which plays the music of Louis Armstrong. Until the pandemic hit, it had performed on most Wednesdays at Birdland. She admitted to health worries "in the back of my mind," but said, "Sometimes you just have to take a chance and enjoy things." Birdland, and a number of other noted jazz clubs and piano bars across the city, were quietly offering live performances again, arguing that the performers were playing "incidental" music for diners, and that the music was therefore permitted by the pandemic era guidelines set by the State Liquor Authority. But the shows will not last long: Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo said Friday that he would close all indoor dining in New York City beginning Monday, citing troubling signs of the virus's spread. "We're going to close," Ryan Paternite, the director of programming and media at Birdland, said after the announcement. "We're not going to flout the law." That the performances had been taking place at all was perhaps surprising, given that the number of daily new coronavirus cases in New York City has been climbing to levels not seen since April, in person learning has been suspended at public middle schools and high schools, and most other indoor shows were banned. But the clubs argued that they were following guidelines from the liquor authority, which state that "only incidental music is permissible at this time" and that "advertised and/or ticketed shows are not permissible." The guidelines continue: "Music should be incidental to the dining experience and not the draw itself." That was enough for a number of New York venues that are better known for their performances than their cuisine including Birdland, the Blue Note and Marie's Crisis Cafe, a West Village piano bar that reopened Monday with a show tune singalong after declaring itself a dining establishment to begin offering live music again. "We think it's incidental," Mr. Paternite said of its calendar of performances that included a brass band and a jazz quartet. "It's background music. That's the rule." The state rules have been challenged in court. After Michael Hund, a Buffalo guitarist, filed a lawsuit in August challenging them, a judge in the U.S. District Court in the Western District of New York issued a preliminary injunction last month preventing the state from enforcing its ban on advertised and ticketed shows. "The incidental music rule prohibits one kind of live music and permits another," the judge, John L. Sinatra Jr., wrote in his Nov. 13 decision. "This distinction is arbitrary." The state is appealing the ruling. "The science is clear that mass gatherings can easily turn into superspreader events, and it is unconscionable that businesses would attempt to undermine proven public health rules like this as infections, hospitalizations and deaths continue to rise," William Crowley, a spokesman for the liquor authority, said Thursday. He noted that a federal judge in New York City had ruled in another case that the restrictions were constitutional. He said that the state would "continue to vigorously defend our ability to fight this pandemic whenever it is challenged." But it is far from clear what, exactly, "incidental" music means. Does that mean a guitar player in the corner? A six person jazz band like the one that played at Birdland on Wednesday night? The Harlem Gospel Choir, which had been set to perform at the Blue Note on Christmas Day? Mr. Crowley did not respond to questions seeking further clarity on Thursday, or about what enforcement actions the state has taken. Robert Bookman, a lawyer who represents a number of New York's live music venues, said venues interpreted the ruling as allowing them to advertise and sell tickets for incidental music performances during dinner. So venues had been choosing their words carefully. They were taking dinner reservations, and are announcing calendars of lineups for what Mr. Paternite, of Birdland, characterizes as "background music during dinner." Unlike Mac's Public House, the Staten Island bar that declared itself an autonomous zone and was recently lampooned on "Saturday Night Live," they have no interest in openly flouting regulations. Mr. Paternite said that Birdland, after laying off nearly all of its 60 employees in March, came back with what he called a "skeleton staff" of about 10 people. "It's a huge risk for us to be open," he said. "And it only brings in a pittance. But it helps us out in our agreement with our landlord, because to pay our rent over time and stay current on our utilities and taxes, we need to stay open. But we're losing massive amounts every day." Mr. Cuomo, in announcing the pending closure of indoor dining, called for federal aid to help bars and restaurants survive, and for a moratorium on commercial evictions. If venues are unable to reopen now, Mr. Paternite fears, they may never do so. The Jazz Standard, a beloved 130 seat club on East 27th Street in Manhattan, announced last week that it would close permanently because of the pandemic. Arlene's Grocery, a Lower East Side club that hosted the Strokes before they became well known, said it was "on life support" and, without aid, would have to close on Feb. 1. Randy Taylor, the bartender and manager at Marie's Crisis Cafe, said the last time the piano bar had served food was probably back in the 1970s or perhaps earlier. "There's a very old kitchen that's totally disconnected upstairs," he said. Its dining options had been extremely limited: It was offering 4 bowls of chips and salsa. "We are required to sell them," he said. "We can't just give them away." Shortly before the indoor dining ban was announced, Steven Bensusan, the president of Blue Note Entertainment Group, said that he hoped it could be avoided. "I know cases are spiking," he said. "But we're doing our best to keep people safe, and I hope we can continue to stay open. We're not going to be profitable, but we have the ability to give some people work who've been with us for a long time." The clubs said they had been taking precautions. At the Blue Note, which reopened Nov. 27, the formerly shared tables were six feet apart and separated by plexiglass barriers, and its two nightly dinner seatings were each capped at 25 percent capacity, or about 50 people. At Marie's Crisis Cafe, where the masked pianist Alexander Barylski was ensconced behind clear shielding on Wednesday night as he led a jubilant group chorus of "Frosty the Snowman," Mr. Taylor said that tables were separated by plastic barriers, and that the venue conducted temperature checks and collected contact tracing information at the door. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Music |
Matt Drudge started showing signs that he had soured on President Trump months before the election. Since the vote, the fedora topped media pioneer has seemed even more eager to distance himself and his site from the man in the White House. "YOU'RE FIRED!" Drudge Report blared in a headline within minutes of CNN's calling the election for Joseph R. Biden Jr. on Saturday. For nearly 24 hours afterward, that headline remained at the top of the site. In addition, a screenshot of the Drudge Report main page, with the "YOU'RE FIRED!" headline, has been the only tweet on the DRUDGE Twitter account since Saturday. In his 25 year career, Mr. Drudge has proved himself an expert aggregator, a digital journalist who links to articles plucked from the web. And he has done it with style, packaging his links with tabloid poetry headlines that make readers click. After the "YOU'RE FIRED!" headline, Drudge Report turned this week to the coming transfer of power. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Media |
Jay Riffe in the late 1950s. He said he took up spearfishing with his brother just "to get food for the table." Jay Riffe recalled his first spearfishing outing as a fearsome affair not for the fish but for him. Mr. Riffe, a celebrated California speargun designer, entrepreneur and pioneer of tankless hunting and diving, was about 10 years old, stalking lobster and sea bass in 70 degree Pacific waters while wearing a sweatshirt, gardening gloves and boxer trunks. "When you came out," he recalled of his early forays as a sport fisherman in a 2015 interview with the podcast "The Spear," his body would be bruised and battered "from being rolled in the surf and the rocks and the sea urchins." He added, "But no one ever complained because this was the sport this was the thrill." When he died on May 11 at 82, at his home in Dana Point, Calif. a death not widely reported beyond spearfishing circles Mr. Riffe left behind a trail of accomplishments in his undersea world, including breaking three world records for deepwater sport fishing; founding Riffe International, a premier American spearfishing and freediving equipment maker; and advancing a campaign for sustainable fishing regulations. His family said the cause was heart failure. A powerfully built freediver who could hold his breath for five minutes or more while chasing after tuna, grouper and dorado at depths of up to 100 feet, Mr. Riffe (pronounced rife) first took up spearfishing with his eldest brother, John, for a simple reason "to get food for the table," as he put it. By age 22 he was the Pacific Coast spearfishing champion "Back then the water was so clear, you could see down forever," he once recalled, adding that the abundance of fish off Palos Verdes and Laguna Beach was far greater than it is today. "So spearfishing started to spread by word of mouth," he said, and hunters were looking for guns that were easier to hoist and did not "go off like a spring loaded bazooka." For nearly 50 years, beginning in the late 1960s, Mr. Riffe built and developed spearguns and other devices that revolutionized the sport in the United States. His company used supple woods, like teak, which could be grooved to fit a spear shaft snugly; corrosion resistant magnets, which kept spear tips from wobbling; and textured nylon grips, which kept guns from slipping from the spearfisher's hand. "He was a gentle giant, and he had a passion for engineering the perfect speargun for the world," said his wife, Jackie Riffe, who co founded Riffe International. Along the way, she said, her husband boated and hunted with the likes of Desi Arnaz Jr., Bing Crosby, Jacques Cousteau and Buzz Aldrin. "Everybody wanted to hear Jay Riffe's stories," she said. "He was known all over the world." Jesse Taylor Riffe Jr. was born on Feb. 23, 1938, the son of Jesse Sr. and Eva May (Mortimer) Riffe. He started his diving career at age 8 as a "caddy" for his eldest brother, John: John would dive down to grab lobsters and abalone and Jesse Jr., who came to be known as Jay, would swim above and collect the catch in a rucksack. John would go on to become a Navy frogman while Jay worked as a lifeguard, married Jackie Pierson and moved to Australia in 1973 to help start up the DoALL Co., a maker of industrial machinery. He returned to California a year later to set up DoALL's American operations and to help raise his two daughters, Julie and Jill. Budgets were tight, his daughter Jill Riffe Salerno said. "He was really stressing out to make ends meet, and part of that was catching fish for dinner," she said. "He had this wood bench in the garage where he would filet everything yellow tail, dorado, white sea bass, calico bass, lobsters and we would go camping and fishing along the beaches in Mexico too." Mr. Riffe soon realized that the spearguns prevalent on the West Coast were unwieldy and inaccurate. An inveterate tinkerer, he set up a shop in his garage in Dana Point, south of Los Angeles in Orange County, and began perfecting what became the Riffe line, led by a gun called the Marauder. (The smaller Riffe Euro gun will be featured in a forthcoming James Bond movie, "No Time to Die.") Before long Mr. Riffe's garage became a focal point for "spearos," and demand for his handmade guns grew. Soon he had a small plant and warehouse as well as hunting buddies and customers like Mr. Arnaz and Mr. Cousteau. Today, Riffe International makes all of its spearfishing equipment a few miles down the road in San Clemente. "He dove with many influential people," Jill Riffe said. "Plane tickets would arrive from the Middle East and Europe because they all wanted to dive with Jay Riffe." Mr. Riffe was instrumental in altering sportfishing rules so that hunters would be required to submit one catch per contest, rather than accumulate as many fish as possible to win by overall weight. "Dad always said, 'We have to fish so that future generations can enjoy the sport,'" Jill Riffe said. "He didn't want people to abuse the power and overtake or deplete the stock. He was very firm about keeping it selective and sustainable." She said he had encouraged freedivers to harvest just what they needed. "Conservation was his philosophy," she said In addition to his wife and daughter Jill, Mr. Riffe is survived by his daughter Julie and several grandchildren. The family plans to hold a memorial service in August. Like all great fishermen, Mr. Riffe had his share of harrowing undersea encounters, including coming jaw to jaw with a great white shark (no blood drawn by either side), and finding himself among a swarm of hammerheads off Costa Rica while teaching the sport to his daughter Julie, herself a highly accomplished spearo. "She learned how to cope fast," Jill Riffe said. "It's a pretty surreal moment when you realize that down there you're just part of the food chain." Mr. Riffe, who owned a fishing cruiser named "The Silent Hunter," took his last dive in 2010 off Baja California. He always said freediving was the best way to spearfish because it required enormous patience and concentration, without the benefit of a scuba tank, to hold one's position until the right prey came along. "There was no greater way to build up your body and your lungs," he said, "and no greater way to be in the ocean." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Sports |
As leaders in Europe try to contain a deepening financial crisis, they are also increasingly talking about making fundamental changes to the way their 17 nation economic union works. The idea is to create a central financial authority with powers in areas like taxation, bond issuance and budget approval that could eventually turn the euro zone into something resembling a United States of Europe. Officials have been hesitant to publicly endorse such a drastic change. But privately they say the issue has gained urgency in recent months, as it has become clear that Europe's current approach, which requires unanimity on any significant moves, is unwieldy and inefficient. The idea is being promoted by some global financial officials, who worry about the risks that continued uncertainty in Europe poses to the global economy. Recently, for instance, when an official from a European central bank met with a financial official in Washington, his host brandished the Articles of Confederation, the 1781 precursor to the United States Constitution, to use as an example of why stronger unions become necessary. The story of America's failed early effort to operate as a loose confederation of 13 states is looking increasingly relevant for many European officials. The lack of strong central coordination of the euro zone's debt and spending policies is a crucial reason Europe has been unable to resolve its financial crisis despite more than 18 months of effort. The lack of progress has contributed to steep declines in European stocks recently, sending tremors through markets in the United States as well. On Monday alone, several major European markets fell more than 4 percent while markets were also down on Tuesday morning in Australia and Japan. And that is why, despite all the political obstacles, Europe appears to be inching closer to a more centralized approach, and some officials are going public on the issue. "If today's policy makers want to successfully stay the course, they will have to press ahead with structural changes and deeper economic integration," Antonio Borges, director of the International Monetary Fund's European unit, said in a recent speech. "To put the crisis behind us, we need more Europe, not less. And we need it now." Nothing happens quickly in Europe, however. For the most part, such efforts are still being made behind the scenes. But several longtime financial and central bank officials and staff members said there had been a substantial step up in planning for a closer European fiscal relationship to match the unified monetary union under which the euro zone has operated for more than a decade. For now, officials are mainly talking in generalities. "The crisis has clearly revealed the need for strong economic governance in a zone with a single currency," Jean Claude Trichet, the departing president of the European Central Bank, said in a speech Monday, repeating earlier calls for greater fiscal discipline. Officials, who spoke anonymously because their discussions were politically charged, said a major overhaul of the way Europe conducts fiscal policy was likely to take a long time and require changes in the treaties governing the euro. But they pointed to the smaller changes that were already taking place as evidence that euro area financial ministries see that they have little choice but to move together if they want to avoid a catastrophic breakdown. With the new bailout for Greece that was agreed upon by European leaders in July still awaiting approval from each country in the euro zone, the fractionalized way that Europe runs fiscal decision making risks setting off yet another crisis at each step along the way. Every plan requires agreement among finance ministers and the Parliament of any member country can veto the deal. Many economists say that the Continent's debt crisis, which began in early 2010 with the threat that Greece might have to default on its loans, could have been resolved far more quickly if there were some sort of central financial body, akin to the Treasury Department in the United States. "If they had the equivalent of the U.S. Treasury, then this treasury could have formulated proposals with the collective objective in mind, rather than 17 national objectives competing with each other," said Garry J. Schinasi, a former official with the International Monetary Fund who now privately advises European central banks and governments. "Instead, they fumbled around and took two baby steps forward and three backward." The idea of a European Treasury that would enforce fiscal discipline on wayward countries, while also having the power to spread European Union wealth from healthier countries to ones struggling to pay their debts, is fiercely unpopular among voters in many countries. Those in prosperous nations like Germany do not want to see their taxes used to bail out countries that borrowed their way into trouble. And those in weaker nations are reluctant to allow outsiders to dictate how their governments spend their money and tax their citizens. Europe's currency union has its roots in the agreement signed in 1992 known as the Maastricht Treaty, which set in motion the rules for creating the euro and for joining the euro zone. A later agreement established the European Central Bank, which manages interest rates much like the United States Federal Reserve. But the Maastricht Treaty stopped short of telling countries how to handle spending or taxation, leaving them loose rules on budget deficits to follow or break, as many did, including Germany and France in the early days of the euro. In the United States, of course, agreements between Congress and the White House on budget measures can be extremely difficult to reach. But the European process is even more arduous. The problems were highlighted Friday when talks between the Europeans, the I.M.F. and Greece were put off because Athens was coming up short in its plans for meeting budget targets. Stock markets promptly fell on the news. This week, more challenges await. The top court in Germany is scheduled to rule Wednesday on whether it is legal for that country's leaders to make such an agreement. While it is expected to allow Germany to participate in the bailout, the constitutional court could surprise the experts. On Thursday, officials in Finland are supposed to make a statement outlining their conditions for approving the deal, which will probably set the pattern for other countries seeking guarantees from Greece that their loans will be paid back. The heavy lifting involved in approving the new deal for Greece illustrates how difficult it would be to create a European Treasury. But that has not stopped some officials from calling for moves in that direction. Last month, Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, and Nicolas Sarkozy, the French president, proposed new financial transaction taxes for the euro zone, as well as standards for corporate tax laws, so no country could lure businesses at the expense of others with exceptionally low tax rates. They also proposed that each country enshrine in its constitution rules that would limit deficits, a process that is now under way in Spain, Portugal and elsewhere. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Global Business |
Today we take a momentous step, one that has never been taken before with China toward a future of fair and reciprocal trade, as we sign phase one of the historic trade deal between the United States and China. Together we are righting the wrongs of the past, and delivering a future of economic justice and security for American workers, farmers and families. And this is going to be a great agreement for both countries. It's far greater than 200 billion, and it'll grow every year. It also unifies the countries. WASHINGTON President Trump signed an initial trade deal with China on Wednesday, bringing the first chapter of a protracted and economically damaging fight with one of the world's largest economies to a close. The pact is intended to open Chinese markets to more American companies, increase farm and energy exports and provide greater protection for American technology and trade secrets. China has committed to buying an additional 200 billion worth of American goods and services by 2021 and is expected to ease some of the tariffs it has placed on American products. But the agreement preserves the bulk of the tariffs that Mr. Trump has placed on 360 billion worth of Chinese goods, and it maintains the threat of additional punishment if Beijing does not live up to the terms of the deal. The deal caps more than two years of tense negotiations and escalating threats that at times seemed destined to plunge the United States and China into a permanent economic war. Mr. Trump, who campaigned for president in 2016 on a promise to get tough on China, pushed his negotiators to rewrite trade terms that he said had destroyed American industry and jobs, and he imposed record tariffs on Chinese goods in a gamble to get Beijing to accede to his demands. "As a candidate for president, I vowed strong action," Mr. Trump said. "Unlike those who came before me, I kept my promise." The agreement is a significant turning point in American trade policy and the types of free trade agreements that the United States has typically supported. Rather than lowering tariffs to allow for the flow of goods and services to meet market demand, this deal leaves a record level of tariffs in place and forces China to buy 200 billion worth of specific products within two years. To Mr. Trump and other supporters, the approach corrects for past trade deals that enabled corporate outsourcing and led to lost jobs and industries. To critics, it is the type of managed trade approach that the United States has long criticized, especially with regard to China and its control over its economy. While other presidents have tried to change China's economic approach, Mr. Trump has leaned into it. The agreement stipulates that "China shall ensure" that its purchases meet the 200 billion figure by 2021, all but guaranteeing an export boom as Mr. Trump heads into the 2020 election. "Although the administration claims it wants to enhance market forces in China, the purchase commitments hailed by the president will only strengthen the role of the state in the economy," said Daniel Price, a former George W. Bush administration official and the managing director of Rock Creek Global Advisors. The president's approach may pay off politically. He will head into a re election campaign with a commitment from China to strengthen its intellectual property protections, make large purchases of American products and pursue other economic changes that will benefit American business. China's leader, Xi Jinping, said in a message conveyed to Mr. Trump that the deal is "beneficial to both China, the U.S. and the world." Mr. Xi also said the agreement showed that the two countries, "based on equality and mutual respect, through dialogue and consultations," can find proper and effective solutions to problems. At a lavish White House ceremony crowded with cabinet members, lawmakers and executives from America's biggest companies, Mr. Trump seized on the signing as a counterweight to impeachment proceedings that were taking place across town, where lawmakers were about to vote to approve House prosecutors for a Senate trial. Those include cybersecurity and China's tight controls over how companies handle data and cloud computing. China rejected demands that the text include promises to refrain from hacking American companies, insisting it was not a trade issue. 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. And the deal does little to resolve more pernicious structural issues surrounding China's approach, particularly its pattern of subsidizing and supporting crucial industries that compete with American companies, like solar energy and steel. American businesses blame those economic practices for allowing cheap Chinese goods to flood the United States. "A ceremony at the White House can't hide the stark truth about the 'Phase 1' China trade deal: The deal does absolutely nothing to curtail China's subsidies to its manufacturers," Scott Paul, president of the Alliance for American Manufacturing, which includes manufacturers and the United Steelworkers union, said in a tweet. "All those 'forgotten men and women' in U.S. factories have, once again, been forgotten." The administration has said it will address some of these changes in Phase 2 of the negotiations and is keeping tariffs in place in part to maintain leverage for the next round of talks. Mr. Trump said he would remove all tariffs if the two sides reach agreement on the next phase. "I will agree to take those tariffs off if we're able to do Phase 2," he said. But Mr. Trump has already kicked the deadline for another agreement past the November election, and there is deep skepticism that the two countries will reach another deal anytime soon. As part of the deal, Mr. Trump agreed to reduce the rate on tariffs imposed in September and forgo additional import taxes in the future. But the United States will continue to maintain tariffs covering 65 percent of American imports from China, according to tracking by Chad Bown, a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute of International Economics. That leaves the United States with an overall tariff rate higher than that of any other advanced nation, as well as China, India and Turkey. China will still tax 57 percent of imports from the United States in retaliation, according to Mr. Bown, though it's possible some of those levies may be waived in the weeks to come. The two sides did not immediately distribute copies of the agreement in Chinese, raising the question of whether translation issues had been fully resolved and whether the final text would be as demanding of the Beijing government in the Chinese version as in the English version. "We also need to be sure that the wording of the agreement is the same in both the Chinese and English versions history has shown that mismatches become easily exploited loopholes," said Ker Gibbs, the president of the American Chamber of Commerce in Shanghai. While updates about the trade war transfixed investors for much of the last two years, the official signing of the deal was greeted with something of a shrug. The S P 500 rose roughly 0.2 percent. A gauge of semiconductor companies, which have been particularly sensitive to the trade war, fell more than 1 percent. The deal came under fire from top Democrats, including Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, who criticized the agreement for failing to address China's state owned enterprises and industrial subsidies. He suggested that President Xi was privately laughing at the United States and that China has "taken President Trump to the cleaners." "This Phase 1 deal is an extreme disappointment to me and to millions and millions of Americans who want to see us make China play fair," Mr. Schumer said on the Senate floor. Wendy Cutler, a vice president at the Asia Society Policy Institute who negotiated trade pacts for the Obama administration, called the gains "meaningful, but modest." "Because the United States was willing to compromise with China and not press them on the most difficult issues, they were able to reach positive ground," she said. The trade deal contains a variety of victories for American industry, including opening up markets for biotechnology, beef and poultry. Banks, insurers, drug companies and the energy industry are also big beneficiaries. China has also agreed not to force American companies to hand over their technology as a condition of doing business there, under penalty of further tariffs. And it will refrain from directing its companies to obtain sensitive foreign technology through acquisitions. The agreement also includes a pledge by both countries not to devalue their currencies to gain an advantage in export markets. The president trumpeted many of China's concessions during the signing ceremony, singling out audience members who will benefit. He called out a litany of Wall Street executives, many of whom have been pressing for greater access to China's financial services market, including Stephen A. Schwarzman, the chief executive of the private equity firm the Blackstone Group, and Kenneth C. Griffin, the billionaire founder of the hedge fund Citadel. He also mentioned the chiefs of Boeing, Citibank, Visa and the American International Group, and the chip makers Micron and Qualcomm. Referring to the energy purchases in the agreement, Mr. Trump told Senator Joni Ernst, the Iowa Republican, who was in attendance: "You got ethanol, so you can't be complaining." But those victories have come at a heavy price. The uncertainty created by Mr. Trump's tariff threats and approach to trade has weighed on the economy, raising prices for businesses and consumers, delaying corporate investments and slowing growth around the globe. Businesses with exposure to China, like Deere Company and Caterpillar, have laid off some workers and lowered revenue expectations, in part citing the trade war. And other sources of tension remain in the United States China relationship. The Trump administration has taken a tougher approach to scrutinizing Chinese investments and technology purchases for national security threats, including blacklisting Chinese companies like Huawei, the telecom firm. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Economy |
AMERICAN BALLET THEATER at the Metropolitan Opera (through July 6). What hasn't Alexei Ratmansky choreographed? For the time being, his ballets monopolize the repertory and that's not a bad thing. Friday and Saturday feature the final presentations of his staging of "Harlequinade," a comic ballet in the commedia dell'arte tradition, inspired by the archival notes of Marius Petipa. On Monday, the company's spring gala, which celebrates his 10th anniversary as the artist in residence, offers his "Serenade After Plato's Symposium" and the premiere of "The Seasons." The following day showcases a Ratmansky triple bill with "Seasons" and more new works: "Songs of Bukovina" and "On the Dnieper." 212 362 6000, abt.org DANCE PARADE at Broadway and 21st Street (May 18, 1 p.m.). The 13th annual celebration of all forms of dance more than 100 genres are included is presided over by this year's grand marshals: Bill T. Jones, Baayork Lee, Louis Mofsie and D.J. Dara. At 12:35 p.m., in advance of the march, a traditional Native American Circle Dance will be led by Mofsie, who is the director of the Thunderbird American Indian Dancers. Afterward, paraders will work their way down Broadway and across Eighth Street to Astor Place, where there will be a grandstand for brief performances, and then head to Tompkins Square Park for many more. There will be five stages throughout the park, along with free lessons from 3 to 7 p.m. danceparade.org NIC KAY at Abrons Arts Center (May 23 25, 7 p.m.). As part of an ongoing meditation looking at ideas surrounding the notion of recovery, this dance artist unveils "You Black Bluised Exercise 5 in Getting Well Soon ." The project will take place in three sections and be performed over three evenings as "Prayer," "Protest" and "A Pieace." The exercises referred to in the title of the work, which is partly inspired by the center's architecture, come to life in different forms: movement, installation, games, endurance, ritual, poetry and collective action. Here, the choreographer asks, How can a performance serve as a space for a reparative action? 212 598 0400, ext. 1422; abronsartscenter.org | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Dance |
The Tony winning actress Kelli O'Hara will take a short trip to the mystical world of "Brigadoon," for a concert staging of the musical at City Center, the theater announced on Thursday. The production will run from Nov. 15 to 19, beginning with a Nov. 15 gala performance in honor of the theater producer Stacey Mindich. Steven Pasquale, who shared romantic duets with Ms. O'Hara in "The Bridges of Madison County" on Broadway, will play opposite her at City Center as well. Christopher Wheeldon, who won a Tony for choreographing "An American in Paris," which he also directed, will direct and choreograph the concert staging. Robert Fairchild, who leapt from the ballet stage to Broadway in "American in Paris," will be part of the "Brigadoon" cast as well. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Theater |
The artist C. Finley, organizer of the Every Woman Biennial, in front of works by Deming Harriman, Florencia Escudero, Cynthia Alvarez, Amy Vensel and Valincy Jean Patelli that are part of the exhibition. What would you do, a friend asked the artist C. Finley, if you could curate the Whitney Biennial? Easy, Ms. Finley replied: It would be all women. "The Whitney Houston Biennial!" her friend announced. That was in 2014. Ms. Finley laughed, and then she got to work from that throwaway line, a festival was born. Now in its third edition, the Every Woman Biennial is the most expansive and ambitious yet. (Ms. Finley only recently changed its name from the Whitney Houston Biennial, for ease of fund raising and after a polite but firm letter from the Houston family.) Opening Sunday, it features the work of over 600 women and gender nonbinary artists nine times the number of people in the actual Whitney Biennial that it is designed to run alongside. Ms. Finley's exhibition will also include a female centric film festival and, for the first time, will pop up in Los Angeles, with new artists, next month. It came together on a shoestring, with donations and a network of volunteers, most of them female artists who brought their power tools and multimedia know how to two downtown spaces. This week, they were completing the installation of pieces in materials ranging from textiles to video, driftwood to Flamin' Hot Cheetos. "There's this lady power that happens," said Ms. Finley, 43, a painter who splits her time between New York and Rome. "It's very connected; we're basically all putting our powers together and raising each other up." An extrovert in glitter eye shadow, she also wants the festival to be fun: The New York opening will include a parading flash mob performance, set to Houston's "I Wanna Dance With Somebody." (Anyone can join in; the choreography is available on YouTube.) Though it's been described as an alternative to the Whitney Biennial, Ms. Finley said she conceived the Every Woman to supplement, not negate. Her aim was to lift up women in the art world, especially talented ones who are in a midcareer plateau, perhaps assisting better known artists, raising children or otherwise not as focused on exhibitions. She scouted people on Instagram and did not charge a fee to apply, rare in the festival world. And there are art stars in her show, like Mickalene Thomas and Marilyn Minter, who are veterans of the Whitney. Ms. Finley is also fairly loose about defining "every woman." "I say, 'if you're making work from a divine feminine place, send it over,'" she said. "We have a 13 year old trans girl from Colorado with a GenderCool project," an initiative to tell transgender young people's stories. In the first year, she added, the exhibition featured "an 89 year old artist from New York City that I happened to find. Part of the ethos of this is to be really inclusive and really loving, so people can feel comfortable here." In curating, she had only two rules: no hate, and no headless women. "I don't want a nude body with her head cut off in the show," she said. (There is also blissfully little Trump art.) Ms. Thomas, a friend of Ms. Finley's since their days as Pratt students, provided " Racquel Come to Me Two," a collaged print of her partner in what she called an empowering pose, one that represented to her the biennial's and Ms. Finley's mission. "Even as an undergrad, she was putting on shows and curating and definitely spearheading conversations," Ms. Thomas, 48, said. "She was definitely a leader, and one who was about mentorship and supporting other artists." The show is hung salon style in a donated space at 222 Bowery, once home to William S. Burroughs and studios for Mark Rothko and Fernand Leger. Now, there's a collage of fliers from lesbian bars, panels illustrating most of "Game of Thrones," and a platform, dotted with semiprecious stones, that invites meditation. (Almost everything is for sale, with prices starting low.) The sense of community is "better than any graduate school," said Liz Liguori, 40, a photographer turned multimedia artist whose work merges high and low tech. For this biennial, she created an interactive "drawing machine," in which a laser translates viewers' hand motions into fleeting shapes. Nearby, Ayo Jackson, a recent M.F.A. grad, was pinning cotton puffs into the background of her piece, while a mirrored version of her, with a braided unicorn horn, twirled above; it was inspired by the medieval Unicorn Tapestries at the Cloisters in northern Manhattan. "I like the last image, where the unicorn is resurrected," she explained. "I wanted it to be an analogue for black stories that end in pain." Ms. Jackson, 41, a former dancer with Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Company, was introduced to the biennial through its dance component. It's her first major show. "This is a huge first step for me," she said. The artist Deborah Kass, 67, whose sculpture "OY/YO" is installed outside the Brooklyn Museum, contributed a 2009 silk screen edition, "Nobody Puts Baby in the Corner." It will be on display at La MaMa's Galleria, the biennial's other venue. "I've been an artist in New York City my whole life, and I always wanted to be in a biennial in my hometown," Ms. Kass said pointedly. "So why not this one?" In 2014, the year Ms. Finley's show began, only one third of the artists in the Whitney Biennial were women . (This year's edition is more balanced.) "The real question is why, at this point in time, the gender disparity still exists in our institutions and exhibitions and galleries," Ms. Kass said, adding: "It affects just about every woman. And let's not forget the pay gap, which is enormous." Ms. Finley, a studio artist who takes commercial gigs to get by, is, of course, keenly aware of the inequities she financed the last biennial herself, using money she got painting murals for the 2017 "Wonder Woman" reboot. She views the Every Woman Biennial as an extension of her own work, and a step toward professional fulfillment for artists of her stature. "I want studio visits, I want someone to encourage me, to show and sell my work all the things that every artist wants, is what this show provides," she said. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Art & Design |
Sailors, skiers and fans of activities such as tug of war and rock 'n' roll dancing the competitive kind will find much to cheer on the global sports circuit in 2017. Super Bowl LI, or 51, is scheduled in Houston on Feb. 5. Lady Gaga will appear at halftime. Held every two years, the Alpine World Ski Championships head to St. Moritz, Switzerland, Feb. 6 to 19. Men's and women's super G, downhill, slalom and combined (downhill and slalom) medals will be contested on Corviglia Mountain. The men's downhill run starts out at a 45 degree angle, pushing skiers to a speed of 87 miles per hour in just six seconds. Winter athletes will also seek speed, though on flatter terrain, during the FIS Nordic World Ski Championships in Lahti, Finland, Feb. 22 to March 5. Taking place during the 100th anniversary of Finland's independence, the Nordic meet will amplify its entertainment offerings, from circus artists to tango shows, and staging races in 21 disciplines, including ski jumping. It's an off year for the Olympic Games and soccer's World Cup, but the international matches will be on for the 2017 Women's Rugby World Cup in Ireland. England's women will defend their title in the 12 team rugby tournament, Aug. 9 to 26. Pool play will take place in Dublin and move to Belfast for the semis and the final. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Travel |
Uber Wants to Rule the World. First It Must Conquer India. BANGALORE, India Nandini Balasubramanya's office here on the southern edge of India's technology capital does not look as if it would play a key role in the world's most valuable start up's plans for global conquest. On many days, the tiny space has no electricity. So Ms. Balasubramanya keeps the door open, the noise and dust of Bangalore's traffic choked streets streaming in. On one wall, next to a table where she greets a stream of neighborhood job seekers, is a large menu of the documents she asks of each applicant driver's license, proof of insurance, vehicle registration permit, proof of bank account, and a half dozen other chits to pass through India's bureaucracy. There is also a framed photograph of a smiling Travis Kalanick, the chief executive of the American ride hailing company, Uber. Ms. Balasubramanya, 32, does not work for Uber, though. She is an "UberDost" or "friend of Uber," an independent recruiter who is paid by the company for each driver she brings on. The work is rewarding but often difficult, she said. Uber is famously aggressive, and that trait shines through in its ambitions for India. Relatively few people own cars here, so Uber's long term goal is to leapfrog Western style car ownership culture and move directly into a society where people don't buy cars, they hail Ubers. India is also where Uber's vision of itself as a lean software company has come crashing into the sobering realities of analog life in a rapidly developing country. Its aim of blanketing the world in hail able cars remains complex and daunting. "The way to think about it is that India is a super important place in the world that has huge cities, with huge transportation needs, that we want to serve," Mr. Kalanick said in an interview. "We want to be there, and want to be there in a big way." That interview, in which Mr. Kalanick was by turns combative and charming, took place in mid January, just before Uber descended into a sustained series of corporate crises. The company is now dealing with a sexual harassment scandal and greater scrutiny of its freewheeling culture. Mr. Kalanick has since pledged to "fundamentally change as a leader and grow up." The troubles have cast a shadow over any plans the privately held company, which is valued at nearly 70 billion, might have had to launch a public stock offering. The particulars of its operation in India also highlight the fact that, for a business dependent on global domination, Uber still has a long way to go. It's not just the roads. India's cellular networks can be spotty and slow, and banking, credit cards and other financial mainstays cannot be taken for granted. More than that, vast differences in education and wealth create a social dynamic between riders and drivers that cannot be smoothed over by improving an app interface. Not only are many of Uber's drivers here unfamiliar with smartphones, some are illiterate. Often, drivers and riders don't speak the same language. Many drivers need financial help to purchase or lease cars, and then require continuing help to manage their finances and other details of their small businesses. On top of all this is competition. Uber faces an aggressive and well funded Indian rival, Ola Cabs, which operates in 100 cities and offers a wider range of services than Uber does. Both Uber and Ola argue that the long term payoff for their efforts in India could be transformative. Ride sharing is already changing Indian urban life; getting around cities has become cheaper and safer, especially for women. It is also altering life for hundreds of thousands of drivers, many of whom are drawn from India's poorest ranks. Yet Uber's quest toward remaking transportation in India, which the company sees as a template for other developing nations, is bound to be long, expensive and complicated. Uber said on Friday that it lost 2.8 billion in 2016. The company did not break out losses in India, but Mr. Kalanick said the company's investment here is "an order of magnitude lower" than the spending on its misadventure in China. "We are not profitable in any of the cities we're in now," Amit Jain, the president of Uber India, said in a phone interview. "We have a path to get there, and we are confident we will." Such supreme ease of use was Uber's founding stroke of genius. Everything unpleasant about using a cab finding one, getting one to stop for you, figuring out a way to pay if you didn't have cash, and fretting about whether you were being ripped off had been improved by software. In India, too, Uber saw a transportation sector ripe for remaking. As India's economy grew over the last 40 years, hundreds of millions of people have moved to urban areas from villages. India now has three cities Mumbai, Delhi and Kolkata with more than 15 million residents, and it has dozens more with more than a million. Yet India's urban infrastructure has not kept up. By the turn of the last century, transportation scholars began warning of an urban transportation crisis that had driven air and noise pollution, traffic, and road fatalities to some of the highest levels in the world. It is especially difficult for India's poor to get around. A tiny slice of the wealthiest Indians can afford private cars and drivers to ferry them. Others make do with an array of lesser choices: bicycles, scooters, bicycle rickshaws, motorized rickshaws, buses so crowded that passengers hang out the door. Most Indian cities lack adequate public transportation, and because of the foul air and the dearth of sidewalks, walking itself can be perilous. In Bangalore, three pedestrians are killed on the roads every two days. For both Uber and Ola, this presented an opportunity. Both thought technology would enable them to provide rides that were cheaper than other forms of transportation and more accessible to a wider swath of Indians. "Before we existed, getting a cab in most Indian cities was expensive and difficult," said Pranay Jivrajka, a founding partner of Ola. "You'd have to call one day in advance. We started booking cabs with 12 hours notice, then four hours, and then we started on demand. And today, if an E.T.A. is more than five minutes, people start complaining." Uber had a grander goal. Mr. Kalanick has long said Uber's primary competition is private car ownership; if Uber can give you a cheap ride instantly, it could conceivably beat the cost and associated hassles of owning your own vehicle. In developed countries like the United States, car ownership is entrenched, but not in India. There was a chance, then, for ride hailing companies to vault over private car ownership entirely. "You can't have every resident of Delhi driving a car that just wouldn't work," Mr. Kalanick said. "They just don't have the infrastructure to support it, so why build it out? So that will be a big deal." The leapfrogging of private car ownership remains far off. At this point, Uber has 200,400 active drivers on its platform in India. Ola said it has 640,000. Those numbers sound large, until you consider that nearly 400 million people live in India's cities. Still, citizens of a certain professional class tech workers, frequent travelers said Uber and Ola had become part of the fabric of Indian urban life. Before Uber, "folks were rather locked up at home," said Christian Freese, the general manager for Uber's Bangalore office, where the company has placed its only dedicated engineering center outside of San Francisco. "Now you can see people go out, especially on the weekend. You just press a button and the car is there." Well, sometimes. Often in India, you open the Uber app, press a button, and then nothing. The app selects a driver, but the driver does nothing. His car's icon just sits there, unmoving. One reason may be the drivers: Many are unaccustomed to smartphones and may not trust the digital notification that comes in over the app. Most Uber rides in India involve riders phoning drivers to confirm that the ride is for real. On top of that, Uber's digital maps sometimes don't match India's ever shifting road patterns, so riders may have to tell drivers how to find them. For instance, just outside one of Uber's offices in Bangalore, two roads meet in a Y shaped junction. The junction is often snarled with traffic, so in January, someone either a local authority or a concerned citizen, it's not clear placed a makeshift concrete median in the road to better manage the flow. A two way street was turned into two one way streets, but because the Uber app's map didn't know about the change, Uber's cars entering the area suffered long delays, for several days. "When we look at the average time to begin a trip from the time a driver accepts a trip to when he picks up the rider and starts the trip that is the highest in the world for Uber here in India," said Mr. Jain, the president of Uber India. "So our task is, how do you reduce that time?" About half the Uber cars I tried in Bangalore were pleasant, and seemed in good physical and mechanical order. Others had no seatbelts, or lacked air conditioning. Compared to other options available to most Indian riders, Ola and Uber represent an improvement in access to transportation, and a steep drop in price. In Bangalore, a 22 mile Uber ride that lasted nearly an hour cost me 548 rupees, or about 8.50. That was on UberX, the company's middle tier service; with UberGo or OlaMicro, which use smaller cars, it might have been a dollar or two cheaper. A taxi taking the same route might have cost more than 10. At these prices, Ola and Uber are becoming everyday options for India's rising middle class. Uber has made several adjustments to its practices to get along in India. Cash is king here because credit cards and other digital payment systems aren't widely used. It was an issue for Uber's just get out of the car when you're done payment method. So in 2015, in a move that Mr. Kalanick said took him "a little time" to get used to, Uber began accepting cash payments for the first time in the city of Hyderabad. Soon it started accepting cash across India, as well as in Southeast Asia and South America. By last fall, when the Indian government began a plan to cut down on the use of cash in the economy, about 80 percent of Uber's Indian rides were paid for in cash. All this money created a new economy surrounding the car business in India. Several Uber and Ola drivers described the services as life changing. They make 30,000 to 60,000 rupees a month, or 450 to 900, far above the median income. Lokesh N., a driver who lost his business and who now owns a fleet of cars on the Ola platform, said, "In India, there is a social stigma about driving, but now the public is starting to accept it. People who come into my car accept the dignity of my labor." The ecosystem these drivers depend upon rests on a shifting economic calculus controlled entirely by two companies. In the last few months, both Uber and Ola have begun substantially reducing incentive payments, sparking protests and strikes by drivers. Uber has said the subsidies will continue to decline. Back at Uber's headquarters in San Francisco in January, Mr. Kalanick, sitting at the head of a small conference table, offered a proud assessment of his company's role in India. Sipping an iced tea, he said he planned to spend 20 days year in the country, more than in any other market outside of the United States. (He made headlines on a recent trip for offering to become an Indian citizen if it would help Uber's prospects there.) At other times during the 40 minute conversation, Mr. Kalanick seemed to grow agitated at questions about some of the difficulties of working in the Indian market. Indian cities do not present any problems that Uber couldn't overcome, he said, or that it hadn't seen anywhere else in the world. What about the traffic, the low ownership of cars, the local competitor? "I'm losing your angle," Mr. Kalanick responded. "I feel like I'm getting asked the same question over and over again. I don't get it." Then he excused himself to get a second iced tea. A few minutes later, he returned and I asked again if he was sure Uber would be profitable in India. "Yeah," he said. He didn't elaborate, so I prodded him on how he might know that to be true. "I mean, I know all the data," he said. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Technology |
Bobby Axelrod can see the Matrix. Or whatever the moneymaking equivalent of the Matrix would be. After popping a barely legal brain enhancement pill called Vigilantix, provided by Axe Cap's resident dark arts practitioner Victor Mateo, Bobby is convinced that both he and any of his employees who have taken this dubious drug are thinking five, 15, 50 steps ahead of their competitors. As stock ticker numbers fly across the screen, his eyes glow as blue as the Night King's from "Game of Thrones," as if he had literal superpowers. And he is focusing those powers on a single goal: Corner the rare minerals market by investing in meteor harvesting. It takes all the argumentative power of his protege turned rival turned partner, Taylor Mason, to convince him of the truth: This get rich quick scheme will shoot a 3 billion hole in the company's bottom line. Didn't he realize that if meteors become an abundant source of precious minerals, those minerals will become ... not so precious anymore? It's simple supply and demand, and thanks to Victor's little pink pills, blue eyed Bobby's vision was too clouded to see it. Directed by David Costabile (who plays Wags) from a script by Emily Hornsby and the co showrunners Brian Koppelman and David Levien, this episode of "Billions" is replete with punchy plotlines and payoffs. Schemes are cooked up and pulled off in rapid fire succession, ending with a declaration of all out war. Thanks to a Covid 19 necessitated hiatus, the episode stands as an ersatz season finale, and as such it stands tall. Let's circle back to Taylor, for instance. Taylor Mason Carbon starts the episode in a bind, as a company in which the firm has invested reveals that the tin it uses to build cheap solar panels has been sourced from the conflict ravaged Congo. As impact investors, they have both a moral and a financial imperative to change directions, and pronto. So too does their fellow investor Mike Prince. He may be Bobby Axelrod's latest bete noire, but he's also a potential ally in the effort to right this particular ship. With Lauren and Wendy in tow, Taylor makes the pilgrimage to Prince, where their two teams are to collaborate on a plan of action. Mike makes the call against a slow transition to a more ethical source of tin, on the grounds that eating a few quarters of losses is a small price to pay for what they would otherwise lose in reputation. He even offers to buy Taylor Mason Carbon out of their position should they prefer it. Both Taylor and Wendy feel he's being honest with them, so they volunteer to stay aboard and back Prince's rapid transition plan. Only a few scant hours pass between when Taylor saves Bobby's bacon on the meteor mineral play and when Taylor divulges the partnership with Prince. To say it goes over like a lead balloon would be to insult lead balloons. Axe, and his right hand man Wags, are convinced Prince has played Taylor, that the whole partnership was concocted to put a multiquarter loss on Axe Cap's balance sheet. Quoting "The Godfather" (of course), Axe and Wags vow to go to the mattresses, declaring all out war on Prince and anything he holds dear. No Vigilantix derived mania here: He means what he says. And it's hardly the first time he has gone to war in this episode. Over the course of this season, Axe has seemed increasingly unable to bear Wendy's relationship with the Michalengelo to his Medici, Nico Tanner. After a cringingly awkward dinner date involving Wendy, Tanner, the real life tennis star Maria Sharapova, Wags and ... well, the intended mother of Wags's children, Axe unilaterally holds a viewing party in Tanner's studio, allowing a bunch of real life "appearing as themselves" bigwigs (C. C. Sabathia, sports fans!) to browse the artist's latest works. When an attractive socialite catches Tanner's attention, Axe's plan becomes clear. He wants to shatter the illusion of integrity for Wendy, showing her that her new beau is just as corruptible by money, power and influence and not to mention sex as anyone else. It's an ugly power play to pull on someone Bobby has considered a peer and partner for years. But by this point we know him too well to put any amount of ugliness past him. The same is almost true of our relationship with Chuck Rhoades. Some of the New York attorney general's ends seem to justify their means well enough, as when he sends his Yale Law students on a fishing expedition for evidence against the unctuous treasury secretary Todd Krakow. When half the class bails and the other half fails, he heeds his lieutenant Kate Sacker's advice and ushers Krakow to his own undoing. By simply hinting that an investigation into his wrongdoings might be underway, he causes Krakow to torpedo his own career, getting him bounced out of the cabinet within 24 hours. Fortunately for those of us who hold out hope for the fate of Chuck's soul, there are still some measures he won't stoop to in order to get the job done. Sure, he'll drum up a fake blood drive in the attorney general's office in order to see whether any of his employees are viable donors for his ailing father, whose failing kidneys currently constitute a death sentence. But that's really just a workaround for his original plan: tapping the sketchy fitness impresario Pete Decker (Scott Cohen) and his mind boggling sleazy friend Dr. Swerlow (Rick Hoffman) for help in beating the tests that prove his old man isn't a fit donation recipient and in finding a black market donor source, should it come to that. Chuck ultimately stops short of agreeing to harvest a kidney from an undocumented child in federal custody, as Dr. Swerlow proposes. But when he has danced right up to that line, would it surprise anyone if, eventually, he marched right over it? None "Godfather" reference watchers will of course have made note of Axe and Wags's disquisition on "going to the mattresses," but the more subtle allusion well, by "Billions" standards is the sound of a subway that accompanies Krakow's in the moment decision to torpedo himself, borrowed directly from the crescendoing cacophony that accompanies Michael Corleone's assassination of Captain McCluskey and the Turk. None I don't know about you, but my biggest laugh out loud moment in this episode was when the new Mason Carbon hire Rian claimed to have become fluent in Spanish thanks to Victor's brain pills, but then spewed forth utter gibberish along the lines of John Lennon's Spanish folderol in "Sun King." None Bobby's vision of the stock numbers flying through the air around him will be an animated gif by night's end, mark my words. None Considering the state of the world, it's a small thing indeed, but I'm choosing to look at the breakup of this season of "Billions" into two separate halves as a good thing. It means one more "Hey, it's 'Billions' season again!" to look forward to. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Television |
BEND, Ore. Residents of this mountain town like doing things outdoors, and dining seems to be no exception. Last Friday evening, after an unseasonably warm day, there were no empty tables at The Lot, a food cart pavilion that features long bistro tables, pours local microbrews and hosts trivia nights and live music. It's as popular as any restaurant, despite having no walls, wait staff or kitchen. The food, as varied as gourmet burgers and Mexican street food, is prepared and sold by the five food carts that rent space on the property. "Bend had food carts, but they were scattered all over town," said The Lot's owner, David Staley, who bought the land in 2012 to develop it for carts. The pavilion opened last August and stayed busy throughout the winter; heated benches, overhead heaters and a giant gas fire pit seem to simply add to the allure. The food cart movement has rolled into countless cities in recent years. In the process it has transformed once vacant lots into permanent food courts and brought new dining options to commercial buildings. Owners of these spaces which are known as pods, lots, parks and marketplaces have become as creative as their mobile vendors. Leah Nash for The New York Times A few hours away in Portland, food carts occupy entire city blocks, and developers are attracting tenants and customers with such amenities as underground electrical service, water, play areas and enclosed seating with plasma televisions. Carts pay from 500 to 1,000 a month for prime parking, said Roger Goldingay, owner of two such pods. For Mr. Goldingay, opening a permanent food pod was initially an alternative to foreclosure. "A lot of food courts came out of 2008 real estate catastrophes," said Mr. Goldingay, who was planning to put up a 13 million mixed use development on a lot in North Portland when the bank backed out on financing. Rather than lose everything, he said, "we spent our last 100,000 and borrowed 100,000" to convert the existing building, which he had planned to tear down, to a German pub, and put in infrastructure for 10 permanent food carts. "At the time I was pretty desperate," Mr. Goldingay said, adding that it was highly uncertain whether food carts would venture into north Portland, to his pod named Mississippi Marketplace. "When we completed that, I had 70 applications for my 10 spots, so I was able to pick and choose the carts." In late 2010, he bought a used car lot on the southeastern side of the city and spent 300,000 adding electrical meters, sewer, grease entrapments and a gray water system. Customers can sit in a covered area that serves beer. The first cart these are permanent spots with one year lease agreements moved in the following May. Today nearly all 30 places at what is now called Cartlandia are occupied. Mr. Goldingay sees these pods as a relatively inexpensive way to cover his costs and improve the value of these parcels over the long term. "What I did was take a used car lot from a position of 5,000 a month to 18,000 a month in income," he said, referring to Cartlandia, where tenants pay roughly 600 a month. "It doesn't put cash in my pocket but it has increased the value of the property." Some of that improvement comes from the effect these carts can have on the neighborhood. "We took some pretty nasty, socially disparaging locations where people wouldn't go and turned them into community gathering places," he said, noting that traffic to the pods has been strong all winter but typically doubles when the weather turns warm and sunny. Of course, landowners like Mr. Goldingay recognize that one story lots will never command the same rent as a multistory development. In Austin, Tex., one of the city's more popular cart parks, near the Capitol on South Congress, asked vendors to vacate the land last spring to make way for construction of a 300 million JW Marriott. Every city has its nuances, which depend in part on food codes. In the Los Angeles area, for example, permanent food cart pods don't work because vendors are required to return to a commissary every night, said Matthew Geller, chief executive of the Southern California Mobile Food Vendors Association and national mobile food expert. The advocacy group books its member food trucks at lots, events and commercial buildings throughout the region. Even if staying put were an option, he said, most association members prefer to stay mobile. "A lot of trucks believe that being at the same lot every day burns out their brand," he said. "Also, after the course of a year, a food truck that has been all over L.A. is going to know where to put its first brick and mortar location." Nevertheless, food cart lots with daily spots for vendors are a "great way for owners to make money on space that's underutilized," Mr. Geller added. Lunch lots in the region charge roughly 35 to 55 a day per truck, he said, while evening lots can make as much as 120 a day per truck. "The alternative is to circle around to find parking," he said. "It's a nightmare." When Eliza Ho and her husband, Tim Lai, opened their food cart cafeteria near downtown Columbus, Ohio, they weren't looking to start a new business. They were hungry. A few months before opening their cafeteria, they had moved their architectural design firm into 400 West Rich, a building in the historic Franklinton neighborhood. While the converted warehouse space was aesthetically ideal, it fell short on nearby lunch spots. "We thought, 'Why don't we try to bring some food trucks down here?' " Ms. Ho recalled. In 2012, they opened Dinin' Hall, a 1,200 square foot cafeteria with no kitchen. Instead, two trucks from a rotating list of vendors back up to what was once a loading dock, selling food that can include Korean pancakes or pirogies. A central register takes care of sales making a percentage of food sales and a little extra on beverages and snacks. On a typical nice day, Ms. Ho said, the cafeteria brings in 60 to 80 people during the three hours that it's open. It's closed on weekends and in the winter. "It's too cold to stay open all year," said Ms. Ho, who plans to bring back the food carts in May. For the lunch crowd in the building, spring can't come soon enough. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Real Estate |
Mandatory vaccination is rare, but it has been done and upheld by the courts. While judges have allowed health officials to fine citizens for refusing, forced vaccinations are highly unusual. New York City Is Requiring Vaccinations Against Measles. Can Officials Do That? Faced with an expanding measles outbreak, Mayor Bill de Blasio of New York declared a public health emergency on Tuesday and ordered a program of mandatory vaccination in parts of Brooklyn. Such a health order is rare but not unheard of in American history, medical experts said. It has occurred several times. The Supreme Court ruled more than a century ago that mandatory vaccination was legal, although the court drew a distinction between punishing citizens for refusing and actually vaccinating them by force. Nonetheless, both of those tactics have been imposed in the past 120 years as long ago as a 1900 plague outbreak in San Francisco, and as recently as a measles outbreak in Philadelphia in 1991. Like the Science Times page on Facebook. Sign up for the Science Times newsletter. The New York vaccination order is written in a way that seems to leave open both possibilities, depending on how strictly the city chooses to enforce it. Mayor de Blasio said New Yorkers in the affected neighborhoods who refuse to let themselves or their children be vaccinated could be fined 1,000. But the order issued by the health commissioner, Dr. Oxiris Barbot, said anyone who has not been vaccinated and cannot prove they are immune to measles or produce a medical exemption "shall be vaccinated." Below the commissioner's signature outside the actual text of the order is an added warning saying failure to comply is a misdemeanor and can lead to fines or imprisonment. On Tuesday, Dr. Barbot said persistent refusals would be handled on a "case by case basis, and we'll have to confer with our legal counsel." The defining case in the field, according to Daniel A. Salmon, director of the Institute for Vaccine Safety at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, is the 1905 Supreme Court ruling in Jacobson v. Massachusetts. The court upheld the authority of states to enforce compulsory vaccination on the grounds that, when danger loomed, an individual's freedom could be subordinated to the common good. The plaintiff, Henning Jacobson, was a Cambridge, Mass., pastor who had been vaccinated against smallpox as a child in Sweden and claimed it had caused him lifelong suffering. He also argued that vaccination was an "invasion of his liberty" under the 14th Amendment. During a smallpox outbreak, he refused to let himself or his son be vaccinated and was fined 5. Massachusetts was then one of 11 states with compulsory vaccination laws, but it did not allow vaccination by force. By a 7 to 2 vote, the court let the fine stand and said imprisonment could also have been imposed. But Justice John Harlan wrote for the majority that individuals could not be forcibly vaccinated. Yet vaccination by force was used in 1991 in Philadelphia, said Dr. Paul A. Offit, director of the Vaccine Education Center at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia. A measles outbreak that year infected over 1,400 people and killed several children. It had begun in two fundamentalist churches that rejected modern medicine and practiced faith healing. A court ordered that the children in those churches be vaccinated. Their families did not resist. "They were a peaceful lot," Dr. Offit recalled. "Once it was the law of the city, they realized it and they were pretty placid about it." City and state health commissioners often have vast powers. Most public health laws were written in the 19th century, when cities were regularly swept by waves of cholera, yellow fever and smallpox that killed thousands. In the 1892 cholera outbreak, New York City's health commissioner, Dr. Cyrus Edson, was asked by a congressional committee what the limits of his powers were. He answered that he could even seize City Hall and turn it into a hospital. In the 1990s, when a few New Yorkers with multi drug resistant tuberculosis mostly homeless men refused to take antibiotics, they were held involuntarily in a locked ward of Bellevue Hospital and forced to take medicine until they were no longer contagious. Forced vaccination, however, is more politically sensitive than quarantines or forced treatment. Vaccines are given to healthy persons sometimes infants instead of to those who are sick and clearly endangering others. As he described it in his book "When Germs Travel," the entire neighborhood was cordoned off by police on March 7, 1900, less than 24 hours after local health officials tentatively concluded that a scrap wood dealer found dead in a basement cot in a dime a night boardinghouse had perished from plague. Plague was then common in China and in 1899 had reached Honolulu's Chinatown. A "controlled burn" of a few plague infested houses ordered by the city board of health had gotten out of control and burned down 4,000 houses, leaving thousands homeless. Anti Chinese prejudice was rampant in California, and the Chinese were terrified that what had happened in Hawaii would be repeated. The San Francisco quarantine was lifted on March 9, in part because employers needed their workers. Health inspectors and police began searching the community for the sick, beating anyone who resisted. In May, the surgeon general in Washington telegraphed orders that federal health officials should take over response to the outbreak, cordon off Chinatown again, prevent all Chinese and Japanese people from leaving the city, disinfect all their homes and inoculate them all with an experimental plague vaccine. The vaccine had been invented just three years earlier by Waldemar Haffkine, an Orthodox Jew who had been driven out of Russia by anti Semitism and had moved his laboratory to India. The second quarantine went on for weeks, and Chinatown faced starvation until local merchants donated food. The Chinese press reported that the Haffkine vaccine had killed some Indians and that a few Chinatown residents who accepted it had fallen ill. The Chinese Consolidated Benevolent Association, a civic group, sued, and a federal district judge stopped the vaccinations, saying the order singled out Asians for no medical reason. Ultimately, the vaccination effort was dropped because the governor asked President William McKinley to step in. The local federal health official had started issuing orders so sweeping that they effectively prevented all Californians from leaving the state without his permission. Even fining people for refusing to be vaccinated has a complex history, Dr. Salmon said. In Britain, he noted, fines have sometimes been imposed repeatedly for repeated refusals. "People lost their houses and became martyrs," he said. Also, fines create inequities because some can afford them and some cannot. "You end up punishing people based on their ability to pay," Dr. Salmon said. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Health |
As the Joyce Theater curtain descends at the end of the Sarasota Ballet's production of Frederick Ashton's "Valses Nobles et Sentimentales," a softly dazzling masterstroke of choreography is still occurring. There are just three dancers center stage. But each faces a different screen left, center back, and right and behind these transparent screens are seven other dancers. The three central dancers, kneeling, move only their arms and upper bodies. But it's as if each screen becomes a magnifying lens. In the corridors of space behind, those other dancers are traveling from side to side. West, north, east of the center, three women are carried in marvelous vaulting arcs by the men. The music (orchestral, taped here), from which the ballet takes its name, is by Ravel; those arms and arcs catch its sway and pulse. You could easily imagine that the dancers on the stage's borders are conjured by the arms of the three dancers in its center "Valses Nobles," for 10 dancers, is a fantasy of ballroom romance but the gentle knockout effect is in multidimensional geometries. Peripheral movement becomes a vast amplification of central action. Marvels of poetry, comedy, romance, imagination, humanity pervade the Sarasota company's all Ashton program this week at the Joyce. On a first viewing, it's easy to miss most of them, because they occur within atmospheric stage worlds so generally charming and potent that you overlook their wealth of details. But Ashton (1904 1988) was, with George Balanchine (1904 1983) and Merce Cunningham (1919 2009), one of the three greatest dance makers of the 20th century and I shall be returning to the Joyce this week, confident that each viewing will yield more felicities of construction. What's unmissable even on first viewing is range of temperament. The "Tweedledum and Tweedledee" trio (1977) is an adorable Lewis Carroll romp (with a tiny, brilliant, solo for Alice). The "Friday's Child" duet from "Jazz Calendar" (1968) is Swinging Sixties self conscious sexiness (costumes by Derek Jarman). "A Walk to the Paradise Garden" (1972) is a duet of postcoital rapture whose lovers, at the end, advance calmly into the embrace of Death. The second movement from "Sinfonietta" (1967) is remote, lunar, a brilliantly formal ceremony in white picked out against surrounding darkness. And "Facade" (1931) is a debonair, comically surreal pastiche of the dance idioms of its era. Except in one respect, the Sarasota dancers are terrific. They show beautifully, musically and often more vividly than Ashton's own Royal Ballet how Ashton reveled in movement in every part of the body: rhythmic hops on point, jumps large and small, long stretched lines, luxurious twists of the upper torso, urgent bendings of the entire spine, chugs of the pelvis, flourishes of the wrists, elegant turns of the head and harmonious configurations of limbs and thorax. The whole style is intensely British, and yet its uninhibited vitality shows how Ashton, who was born in South America, spent his career fighting what he labeled "Englishness, stiffness, primness, stuffiness." So what's my chief reservation about the company? Most of its dancers rely on unrelaxed, overly bright facial expressions. Principally, they often smile, fixedly, on entrance. (The ballerina Merle Park recalls how Ashton told her not to smile, especially at the beginning of a role: "Smile at the start and you've got nowhere to go from there.") But the Sarasota dancers also make eyes at the audience and present fixed looks, as if trying to tell us how to react. This unspontaneous charm has been an occasional Sarasota failing since I first saw the company in 2008, but at the Joyce it's more pronounced. On Monday, it may have been exacerbated by New York first night nerves (there were a couple of small slips), but it should be dispensed with. It stops you from noticing how excellently these dancers move from the face down. The flame of dance inspiration passes from place to place. Today I'm tempted to ask if the torch is passing to Florida. What these Sarasotans are doing for Ashton is comparable to what Miami City Ballet is doing for Balanchine. Those of us who witnessed these choreographers' ballets in their lifetimes watch with a sense of recognition "This is how it used to be" and marvel to see qualities of musicality and energy as fresh today as long ago. The Sarasota company gives us a double sense of recognition, because several of these dances have been neglected in Britain. Since Ashton's death, this is the only company to perform this program's pure dance masterpieces, "Valses Nobles" and "Sinfonietta." Ashton might not be surprised. He often remarked that he was better appreciated in America. He first choreographed here in 1933, some months before Balanchine's first ballet for American dancers, and loved his many return visits; under him, his company's New York seasons were known in New York as "Royal Ballet fever," a high water mark unforgotten by many balletomanes. Two other reservations. "Jazz Calendar" was always an unfortunate exercise in middle aged trendiness. And second, why on earth is an American company calling this program "A Knight of the British Ballet"? The British honors system is a derangement, not to be passed on abroad. Use such parlance and you imply that Sir Frederick Ashton is somehow more elevated than Mr. Balanchine. I'm especially impatient to see again the coolly classical ceremony of the second movement of "Sinfonietta." There are long sequences (sometimes highly Balanchinean and yet reaccentuated) when the ballerina is borne aloft (by five men), rotated in the air and plunged downward without reaching the floor. But there are also images of spatial organization, as when, in an image of centrifugal force, she, center stage, does supported pirouettes that are powerfully matched by unsupported pirouettes by four men in the four corners. At times, men in pairs take turns to partner each other. Without sexual implications, Ashton had developed same sex partnering, decades ahead of his time. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Dance |
Baseball's New Rules: No Spitting, No Arguing, and Lots of Testing Coronavirus testing every other day for players and coaches. Wet rags for pitchers' pockets to prevent them from licking their fingers. Masks in the dugout and bullpen for any non players. And no public transportation to the stadium, communal food spreads, saunas, fighting, spitting, smokeless tobacco or sunflower seeds. These are among the many new rules that Major League Baseball teams will have to follow for the shortened 2020 season. This week, after months of haggling over pay and how many games to play, M.L.B. and the players' union finalized their season plan, including an 113 page operations manual that will govern this unprecedented 60 game season without fans in the stands. "There's a lot of stuff to get used to," Mets pitcher Seth Lugo said. Unlike some other pro leagues that will play in a single, sequestered environment, M.L.B. will play games at teams' home stadiums, with the regular season beginning either July 23 or 24 after a second round of spring training starting July 1. "This is a challenging time, but we will meet the challenge by continuing to work together," read part of the introduction to the M.L.B. manual, a copy of which was obtained by The New York Times. "Adherence to the health and safety protocols described in this manual will increase our likelihood of being successful." Dr. Michael Saag, an infectious diseases expert at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, commended baseball's health and safety plan, calling it "fairly detailed" in a telephone interview on Wednesday. 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. "A player's risk, based on what they're planning, is probably greater for acquiring this infection in the community than while engaged in baseball related activities," Saag said. A four person committee, which includes doctors appointed by the league and the players' union, will oversee the implementation of the plan. Each team must designate an individual to serve as a coronavirus point person who ensures compliance with the rules. To facilitate testing, the Sports Medicine Research and Testing Laboratory, which normally helps run the league's antidoping testing, has converted a portion of its facility in Salt Lake City for virus tests, promising a 24 hour turnaround on results. The manual designates the different tiers of people: Tier 1 consists of players and on field personnel, like coaches and umpires; Tier 2 is other essential personnel, like members of the front office or strength and conditioning staff; Tier 3 is other necessary workers, like cleaning crews, who do not come in contact with players and coaches. Before spring training begins, players and key staff must be screened for any symptoms and potential exposure to the virus, as well as a separate examination that includes a saliva or oral/nasal swab test and a blood sample for an antibody test. During spring training and the season, players and select staff will have their temperatures and symptoms checked twice per day at club facilities. They will also be given oral digital thermometers for self screening each morning. Those with temperatures at or above 100.4 degrees will not be allowed to enter a team facility. Players and on field personnel will be tested for the virus every other day, while other key staff will be tested "multiple times per week." Antibody testing will happen about once a month. If anyone tests positive for the virus, they will receive medical attention and be required to self isolate. Contact tracing will be conducted and the team facility will be disinfected. Teams' medical staffs must identify players and key staff members who are at higher risk of contracting the virus because of age or medical history, for example or who live with someone who is at a higher risk. Those individuals could receive special treatment, including separate travel arrangements. If a higher risk player still wants to opt out of playing this season after consulting with the team doctor, he would be placed on the "Covid 19 Related Injured List" and would still receive service time and pay. The Covid 19 list will have no time limits and will also be open to players who test positive for the virus, were exposed to a confirmed case or exhibit symptoms. The manual includes 11 pages of diagrams to ensure social distancing during on field drills and in dugouts, batting cages and bullpens. Among the other measures in the manual: None Players should keep at least six feet away from one another in the clubhouse, and additional clubhouse space should be provided if needed None Players are "discouraged but not prohibited" from showering in the clubhouse None Inactive players are asked to sit six feet apart in the stands None Clubhouse food must be served in individual to go containers None Players (or managers) who leave their positions to argue with umpires or come within six feet of them or an opposing player or manager face ejection and discipline None Any ball in play or touched by multiple players will be replaced None The traveling party will have a private check in and entrance at hotels to avoid interactions with the public None Members of the traveling team are "not permitted to leave the hotel to eat or otherwise use any restaurants (in the hotel or otherwise) open to the public." They must be provided with a private dining room at the hotel, and they can use room service or food delivery services. None Hotel room visits are permitted for only other members of a traveling party or immediate family. Given the stakes, some players have said they must police themselves away from the field to prevent the type of virus outbreaks that have occurred in women's professional soccer or college football because of visits to bars or nightclubs. Despite the rules for when clubs travel, the manual said that "M.L.B. will not formally restrict" the activities of players and key staff members away from team facilities. Individuals were asked to exercise caution and teams were asked to come up with their own off the field code of conduct guides. A strong warning was included: "The careless actions of a single individual places the entire team (and their families) at risk." Dr. Saag added some advice for players: "They would be wise to imagine themselves as a 75 year old retiree living somewhere in Florida. And those retirees who are concerned about their health are staying mostly at home." Lugo said on Wednesday afternoon that he had only read a three page summary of the M.L.B. manual that had been provided by his agents. But given the complexities of the protocols and the virus, Lugo, who lives in Louisiana, said he expected to learn more when he arrived in New York this week. According to the manual, players and employees will undergo mandatory training about the virus throughout the year. "A lot of it is pretty much common sense," Lugo said of the rules. "Just don't touch anybody." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Sports |
The force that gives one couture house, or one fashion designer, the power to shape the tastes of women has always verged on the magical sometimes literally. When the French couturier Christian Dior was a teenager in Normandy, a fortuneteller told him, "You will be poor, but you will achieve success through women." He was, apparently, "mystified" by the prediction, or so it is revealed in "Couture Confessions," a collection of posthumous conversations between the author, Pamela Golbin, the chief curator of fashion and textiles at the Musee des Arts Decoratifs in Paris, and 11 fashion eminences of the 20th century, including Paul Poiret, Jeanne Lanvin, Madeleine Vionnet, Dior, Coco Chanel, Yves Saint Laurent and Alexander McQueen. But Ms. Golbin did not need to consult a fortuneteller (or a Ouija board) to channel her subjects. The couturiers may no longer be living, but each left behind hundreds of opinionated, character filled interviews (and, in some cases, autobiographies), making it possible for her to invent tailor made questions about their challenges and creative processes and then provide answers in their recorded words. While this may sound a mite peculiar, it works convincingly, rather like an extended seance in which the dressmakers visit Ms. Golbin, one after another, and share their secrets. The book is enhanced with black and white drawings by the illustrator Yann Legendre. And as you read it, you feel like a boulevardier in present day Paris, sitting at a cafe and leafing through a magazine chock full of revelations. The most charming of Ms. Goldin's subjects is probably Poiret, the "king of fashion" in the Belle Epoque, who is quoted speaking with entertaining false humility about his renown. "Some have been good enough to say that I exercised a powerful influence over my age, and inspired an entire generation," he said. While it would be "presumptuous" to agree, "If memory serves, when I started out all color was absent from fashion," he added. A more modest contemporary of Poiret's, Jeanne Lanvin, acknowledged her expertise at the robe de style, the favorite of brides and prom queens everywhere: a "clinging bodice rising above a billowing skirt of rich or dainty fabric." But, she said, "I very much prefer that my work shall speak for me." The British designer Alexander McQueen characterized his double duty life, running his own house in London and Givenchy in Paris, as a kind of madness, saying: "I'm not tortured, I'm schizophrenic. I express the collision of my contradictions: romanticism encased in sadomasochism, for example." "All my work is biographical in some sense," the collection quotes McQueen, who committed suicide in February 2010, as saying. "It has to be; otherwise there is no soul to it." Coco Chanel, frank and combative as always, attacked the miniskirt as "an exhibition of meat," but upheld the primacy of the "spirit of Paris" as fashion's supreme instigator. "The genius of the French, in matters of fashion, has always been to be its wellspring," she said. "Draw as much water as you want, but you can't walk off with the fountain." This may be why she didn't mind when people copied her designs. "Every imitation has its basis in love for the original," she said. Pierre Balmain liked to say that "a couturier should let his work speak for itself," but like Lanvin, he could not resist the temptation to verbally embellish his fashions. And neither could the rest of them with the exception of the notoriously closemouthed Cristobal Balenciaga, whose chapter Ms. Golbin fills with admiring commentary by Cecil Beaton, John Fairchild, Diana Vreeland, Coco Chanel and other tastemakers. She hit upon the idea for the book in 2009, after curating a retrospective in Paris on Madeleine Vionnet, inventor of the bias cut, which gave a "supple, easy and promising" fluidity to fabric, freeing women from the armature of pre World War I designs. For the exhibition catalog, Ms. Golbin explained to Hamish Bowles, European editor at large for American Vogue, that she devised a "conversation" with Vionnet the lively, chatty dressmaker (who died in 1976) folding in the couturiere's previously published comments. Readers felt such a connection, they sent her letters addressed to Vionnet, assuming she was still alive. "Hearing them speak creates a dialogue, a conversation," Ms. Golbin said. "I wanted to give the reader access into the private studio of each of these designers, to learn more about them and what makes them tick." Yves Saint Laurent once said: "Couture is a multitude of whispered secrets. Few have the privilege of transmitting them." In "Couture Confessions," Ms. Golbin removes the barrier, making visible the secrets that lurk in the dresses we once wore. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Fashion & Style |
Best performance by an actress in a television series, drama: Elisabeth Moss, "The Handmaid's Tale" Best performance by an actor in a television series, drama: Sterling K. Brown, "This Is Us" Best performance by an actress in a television series, musical or comedy: Rachel Brosnahan, "The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel" Best performance by an actor in a television series, musical or comedy: Aziz Ansari, "Master of None" Best television limited series or motion picture made for television: "Big Little Lies," HBO Best performance by an actress in a limited series or motion picture made for television: Nicole Kidman, "Big Little Lies" Best performance by an actor in a limited series or motion picture made for television: Ewan McGregor, "Fargo" | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Movies |
Lynn Steuer and Pudding at Broadway and 71st Street, the heart of their current preferred neighborhood. Ms. Steuer guesses she's moved more than a dozen times. Now 76, she says, "I still think of moving as a great adventure." It is generally agreed that moving is a nightmare: Most people would rather lock themselves in and shove the renewal paperwork under the door than pack up and depart for unfamiliar environs and, horrors, new landlords. On top of liability crammed leases are broker's fees and damage deposits, more money to kiss goodbye. And don't forget the secret price of relocation: the inevitable loss or breakage of a cherished possession and, after the move, the acquisition of neighbors who smoke, tap dance, play the drums or bark. The potential for renter's regret seems endless, and yet, in New York City, where the vast majority of housing stock is rental, there is a cadre of nomadic souls who move on an annual basis, often with enthusiasm. Various motivations stoke their mobility, but what these serial renters share is the talent of adaptability to a chronic change of address. "One year leases are popular because most people don't know if they want to live in a particular place for more than a year," said Sofia Song, the head of research at Urban Compass, an online brokerage. "Their living situation may change, or they may realize they don't like the apartment, the landlord or the neighborhood." According to data compiled by the Furman Center for Real Estate and Urban Policy of New York University, frequent movers pay higher rents than fence sitters. The median monthly rent for someone who has moved within the past five years is 1,428; for non movers, it's 1,191. The disparity is greatest in Manhattan: Frequent renters spent 1,937, homebodies 1,431. "It's difficult to see what benefits renters would get from moving frequently within New York City," said Max Weselcouch, a research analyst at Furman. She noted that, like serial daters, serial renters tend to be young: "As people age in New York City, they are less likely to move." Lynn Steuer, 76, a native New Yorker, defies that characterization. "If I've moved once, I've moved a dozen times," she said. "Every time you do, it's like starting over." Over the decades, she has lived not only all over Manhattan but, testing her relocation skills, seven years in Pennsylvania and five in Santa Fe, N.M., where she was an owner of an art gallery. Since girlhood, she has never lived in one place for more than seven years. It is less, she said, about being a residential dilettante than about savoring change. Ms. Steuer grew up on Park Avenue in an apartment that now belongs, she said, to Caroline Kennedy and Edwin Schlossberg. After her marriage, she lived in a rental at 74th and Second Avenue. "I think the rent was 215," she recalled. "Then I got divorced and moved to a studio in Gramercy, but I was robbed there and my parents insisted I move back to the Upper East Side, where it was safer." She rented on East 74th Street, moved to Pennsylvania, got bored, and returned to rent at the Wellesley, on 72nd Street at Third Avenue. In 1985, after her father died, Ms. Steuer bought an apartment in a new building at 83rd and Broadway; four years later, she sold it to buy a four level unit downtown at the Silk Building on East Fourth Street. "I fell in love with that apartment," she said. But she parted with it in 1994 to move to Santa Fe, and for the next several years rented pieds a terre on the West Side, her preferred side of town. In 2002 she returned from New Mexico and leased a studio for 3,000 a month at the Dorchester Towers at Broadway and 68th Street. She loved the neighborhood but not her building, and chafed at its no dog stipulation (since relaxed). "The huge closets were its only saving grace," she said. She decided to move to a dog friendly building. She bought a new two bedroom condo at Ariel East at Broadway and 100th Street in 2006, adopted a Yorkshire terrier, Pudding, and thought her moving days were done until, while riding the bus downtown in 2013, she noticed the Larstrand going up in the heart of her favorite neighborhood. At 227 West 77th Street, the Larstrand was a rental; after doing some Internet research, she decided to sell her condo it took just a week and downsize. The rental application asked her to specify her reason for moving, so she concocted a historically accurate response: "Seven year itch." Ms. Steuer signed a 5,100 per month one year lease and happily moved, with Pudding, to the Larstrand in December. She received two months of free rent for being one of the unfinished development's earliest residents. Fabrizio Uberti Bona, 38, a managing director of Citi Habitats, changed apartments four times while working in the restaurant industry in 1999, his first year in the city, and once hired a limousine to move his minimalist belongings to the West Village from Roosevelt Island because no moving company would take the job. Despite owning a studio at the Edge in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, he doesn't live there: He leases it out and rents elsewhere in the complex. "I haven't found a real home in N.Y.C.," he said, "so the moment I find a place with better views, more space and a better price, I rent it." He now gives painting parties and moving parties each time he switches apartments. "It's a way to make moving seem less like work and more like fun," he said. Ryan McCann relocated to Manhattan 10 years ago and has moved each year since. "Moving is probably the fourth ring of hell," said Mr. McCann, 35, the chief executive of Profile Marketing, "but I keep doing it." His first stop was a scruffy studio at Eighth Street and Avenue D for 1,400 a month, exactly twice the amount he'd been spending for "a lovely one bedroom back in Arizona." "But I probably had the same first experience as most newcomers to New York," he said. "Chances are you're going to be making lots of concessions, paying more than expected for less than you were hoping for, and living in an area that wasn't your top choice." Mr. McCann signed a one year lease and, as soon as it expired, moved to Avenue A, a more subway accessible locale. His best find was a NoLIta apartment abruptly vacated by a Lehman trader after the 2008 collapse. It was for sale, and in exchange for agreeing to submit to showings, he negotiated a monthly rent of 2,100, down from 3,400. When the place sold, he moved again, this time to check out the western border of Chelsea. He spent two years there in two different apartments, and in 2013 arrived at the Edge in Williamsburg with his dog, Arnold, intent on soaking up the ambience of Brooklyn. "Moving gets less traumatic when you can afford to hire movers," Mr. McCann said. "But there are always major bumps and surprises in the process, and now having the dog, I've lost out on apartments because the applicant who doesn't have a dog is a landlord's first choice." The Edge, where he is paying 4,000 a month, was his second choice, though he has grown to appreciate its views and amenities. "But who knows what I'll do when my lease is up? Chances are I'm moving again," he said. "To me, every new little neighborhood is like finding a whole new New York, and that sort of sustains you through the hassles of moving." Mr. McCann no longer hangs his art after unpacking; he leans it against the walls. "Too much effort to hang it," he said, "and then have to patch up the walls 11 months later before I move out." Leslie Bettison, 37, came to New York from Venezuela in 2001 to work as a paralegal and moved into a mouse ridden sublet on West 57th Street. She and her roommate then moved three times within the same Mott Street building, each time to a higher floor, and in 2004, by then a law school graduate with a lawyer's salary, she found a 4,200 a month duplex on Mulberry Street. "It was the best move of all," she recalled, "because I had my own bedroom and terrace." But the roomie relationship soured. Ms. Bettison next lived in a no fee building in Midtown East with her ailing mother as a roommate, but when her mother died in the apartment, she couldn't bear to stay on, and tried to break the lease without success. She found a replacement tenant and moved out. "Landlords can be tough," Ms. Bettison said. "I think I'm still a bit traumatized." Now married and working for Coldwell Banker Bellmarc, she's still renting; on the second year of a two year lease and beset by moving fatigue, she's leaning toward renewal. "Our last move was pretty gruesome: two adults, a set of triplets and a nanny. When you're young and packing for one, it's different, but still annoying." Takk Yamaguchi specialized in rentals at Town Residential and now does the same at Urban Compass. "In my experience," he said, "nobody just wants to move after only a year for the fun of it. The general scenario I see with serial renters typically involves just life changes. They trade up, move in with a girlfriend or boyfriend, figure out the neighborhood that most suits their lifestyle." Jack Harris, 28, the chef de cuisine at Perla in the West Village, left Washington, D.C., in 2008 and landed in a two bedroom sublet in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, where his roommate was his ex girlfriend's sister. The replacement tenant stayed a year before deciding he couldn't afford the rent, which was being raised. Mr. Harris waffled, ultimately influenced by a plumbing issue. "The upstairs neighbor kept letting her bathtub overflow," he said, "and it created a gaping hole in the ceiling above my shower." Again with Mr. Yamaguchi's help, he moved to a courtyard studio at Sky East on Avenue C and 11th Street. Its bathroom had no overhead bathtub problem, but when the rent went up to 2,200 in 2011, he moved with his girlfriend, Kira Visser, to 200 East 11th Street, which is nearby. The 3,400 rent was a bit of a stretch, and worse, it went up to 3,550 the second year. Then the building was sold for a condo conversion, and the couple needed to vacate. Priced out of Manhattan, they moved last month to a 3,100 one bedroom that Mr. Yamaguchi found for them in Williamsburg. "I hated moving and I thought it was terrible that I couldn't seem to find a place to stay put," Mr. Harris said, "But we lucked out this time: The East Village apartment gave us January for free because of the construction, and we got a month's free rent in Brooklyn, so in the great scheme of things, two months' free rent is a good deal." Violetta Bitici, a broker at A. C. Lawrence, theorizes that women move more often than men: "Apartments are like dresses and men: You have to try a few on before you fall in love enough to commit." Kelly Marek, 30, may be one of those circumspect women. After enlisting Renee Smith of Citi Habitats to find an apartment that satisfied the non negotiables (a bathtub, laundry facilities, sunlight, quiet), Ms. Marek, 30, a global account director for TransPerfect, a translation services company, moved this month to a 750 square foot apartment on the Upper East Side. The rent is 3,600 a month, and although the corner apartment has partial river views, she signed a one year lease, not willing to commit to a longer term. "I think this might be my 10th apartment in 10 years," said Ms. Marek, who moved with a roommate to a "horrible" fifth floor walk up in Fort Greene, Brooklyn, from Long Island in 2004. She lasted four months. "I think it was the asylum for every form of pest and vermin in the building," she said. "We left everything behind when we moved out." She found her next apartment, a rent stabilized second floor studio in Brooklyn Heights, through a broker. The rent was 1,600 a month for a two year lease; the drawback was that the studio, though charming, faced a noisy street. "But when you rent," she said, "you're always compromising something." After Brooklyn came Yonkers, Philadelphia (where her company has an office), Gramercy (a "cute" 280 square foot bachelorette pad for 1,750) and Williamsburg, where in January 2013 she signed an 18 month lease through an owner/broker on a "palatial" 3,900 two bedroom in a townhouse. But Williamsburg was too noisy. "I was sleeping with my headphones on," she said. She sublet the unit at a 700 loss and took over the lease on a tiny Upper East Side studio she had found through Craigslist. That lease ended last month, just in time for her to move to the apartment found through Ms. Smith. But before she left the studio, she had to prime the walls, which her predecessor had unfortunately painted an unauthorized shade of tan. "Probably the key thing about my being able to move so often is that I didn't own a single piece of furniture," said Ms. Marek, who at last invested in furniture for her most recent address. "I will say that it costs more to live this way: I've practically bankrupted myself buying new light bulbs and sheets and whatever else. But on the plus side, it's like constantly having someplace new to decorate. "You definitely strap in for an adventure when you live that way." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Real Estate |
This was not the way Des Linden was planning to finish a marathon in Central Park this weekend, when she and 50,000 other runners were supposed to run the New York City Marathon. But there she was Saturday afternoon, crossing a finish line in front of Tavern on the Green, where she has finished marathons so many other times. There were no bleachers filled with screaming fans, no finish line towers or balloon arches, even though on this day she was finishing something wild that she had never done before and most likely won't ever do again. "Legs are definitely shot," Linden, 37, said near the end of what would turn out to be a 31 mile day. As with most other mass events scheduled for the final nine months of the year, 2020 had other plans for the New York City Marathon. But Linden wanted to come to New York this weekend anyway. And she wanted to run. Without races, Linden was on the same playing field as other mere mortals who were missing road races. She was bored and in search of a challenge. And so this was the month Linden decided to create a "calendar club" running as many miles as the date on the calendar. The first few days of a calendar club challenge are pretty easy, but the final third of the month, when every day requires at least 20 miles, is brutal. You can break up the daily miles into segments and go as slowly as you like, but it still requires following up one ultramarathon after another for four days. If you do the math, it's 496 miles for the month, including 196 miles during the final week. Linden had never run more than 130 miles in a week before the third week of her challenge, when she ran nearly 150. She ran 18 miles at a pace of 7 minutes 3 seconds, 19 miles at a 7:08 pace, and 22 miles at a 7:14 pace. Day 26 happened in a heavy, freezing downpour. "Boston 2018 weather," she said. She decided to ease back (a relative term when you are the 2018 Boston Marathon champion) and break up the runs she ran 16 miles in one stint and 10 in another. The next two days, she went 21 miles in one run and six in another, and then 22 miles followed by six miles. On her Instagram feed, bright smiles gave way to pictures of Linden with her feet up, her eyes weary with exhaustion. For Day 31, she wanted something special. She wanted to run in New York. She arrived in the city from her home in northern Michigan on Friday evening, and by 8:40 a.m. Saturday, with the temperature hovering a little above freezing, she had begun a socially distanced 5 kilometer race in Central Park. When that was done, she ran two miles down to Tavern on the Green and began her next feat: a marathon on the course that the first New York City Marathon followed 50 years ago. Like a lot of runners of varying abilities, Linden has spent the pandemic hunting for challenges and motivation. She loves to run and has been racing since she was a child. She sets goals like the rest of us have breakfast, something that just happens out of habit. Earlier in the year, she wanted to pull off a rare marathon double that required a seven week turnaround between the Olympic trials marathon on Feb. 29 and the Boston Marathon on April 20. She managed the first leg of that, coming in a heartbreaking fourth place at the trials. But in March, the Boston Athletic Association postponed the 2020 race until September 14. She decided to focus on a different double yet another seven week turnaround between Boston and the New York City Marathon. By the end of June, both had been called off. For weeks, Linden tried to figure out what might motivate her to train on the rolling dirt roads near her home. She thought about trying to do a "fastest known time" on a well known trail run, or maybe an ultramarathon, since races longer than the marathon distance, with small fields, were still on the calendar. Then she saw that a friend was pursuing his own month of self imposed punishment during July. She thought it was a pretty hard core endeavor and might be a good fit for her during a year when the pandemic had thwarted her hard core endeavors. Linden's challenge RunDestober, she called it was born. On Day 30, one of her hamstrings felt as if it were tied in a knot, but the end was in sight and 24 hours later, she was doing loops in Central Park rather than running in the solitude of the northern Michigan countryside. "This is the most people I have seen in six months," she said roughly halfway through her run. Every few miles, a pack of runners would notice exactly who was running past them. "Go, Desi!" they yelled. She hasn't heard that much lately. It never gets old. As she approached the finish line at Tavern on the Green, a few people from New York Road Runners appeared with a small tape. Nearby, other runners who had just finished their own marathons at the foot wide line the organizers had laminated to the road were snapping selfies to memorialize their accomplishments. It's not clear when Linden will race again, a nerve racking circumstance with the clock ticking on her career. For one day though, she had reached a goal she had worked extremely hard for, grinding out mile after mile in New York, even if, in a gracious gesture to her running companion, the 7:45 pace was two minutes slower than her usual marathon speed. When it was over, there was Champagne, the first slug sipped from her shoe and then many more from the bottle. There was something to celebrate, and knowing Linden, there was probably going to be whiskey in her future. As she had put it, a small dose of normal during a very abnormal year. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Sports |
MILAN The show was of summer clothes, of course, and yet more than anything it emblematized a lion in winter. Like Henry II of England, Giorgio Armani is an aged monarch with no designated heir to his throne. Having created a multibillion dollar company almost single handedly over nearly five decades, Mr. Armani by training an architectural draftsman who entered fashion as a stylist and only reluctantly became a businessman after the death of his life partner, Sergio Galeotti, in 1985 from complications of AIDS has built his career on cunning and, not infrequently, hubristic self reliance. He swats away both trends and deep pocketed corporate suitors and exerts his sway over an Italian industry he continues to dominate in a manner that can be regal to the point of caprice. When Mr. Armani announced late in the process that he would shift a show that typically ends the Milan Fashion Week calendar on a Monday morning, allowing everyone involved time to sprint to the airport and Paris, to the early evening of that same day, international buyers and the press were sent scrambling to alter schedules booked months in advance. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Fashion & Style |
MILAN Milan and the rest of the fashion world stepped off the ready to wear hamster wheel this week to pay tribute to Franca Sozzani, the longtime editor of Italian Vogue, who died in December at 66. The winter sky was slate gray on Monday afternoon as the great and the good of the industry gathered in the Duomo, the city's massive Gothic cathedral, for a service in Ms. Sozzani's memory. Crowds thronged behind safety barriers outside as hundreds of mourners filed in. Stella McCartney, Christopher Bailey, Victoria Beckham, Phoebe Philo and Sarah Burton flew in from London. Alber Elbaz, Bruno Frisoni, Sidney Toledano and Francois Henri Pinault came from Paris. Pierpaolo Piccioli, Maria Grazia Chiuri, Giorgio Armani, Miuccia Prada and Valentino Garavani were there; so, too, were the supermodels Kate Moss, Naomi Campbell and Eva Herzigova, and the photographers Mario Testino, Peter Lindbergh and Mario Sorrenti. Members of the Fendi, Versace, Pucci, Missoni and Ferretti families were in attendance, as was Matteo Renzi, the former Italian prime minister, and Carla Bruni Sarkozy, the former first lady of France. The Catholic Mass, conducted in Italian, had been arranged by Giuseppe Sala, the mayor of Milan; Carlo Capasa, president of Camera Nazionale della Moda Italiana, the Italian fashion industry organization; and Jonathan Newhouse, chairman and chief executive of Conde Nast International, the parent company of Italian Vogue. Before the memorial, Ms. Sozzani's family had invited some of the attendees to a light lunch, held across the piazza from the Duomo. From left, Sara Maino, Ms. Sozzani's niece and head of talent at Italian Vogue; Francesco Carrozzini, Ms. Sozzani's son; Carla Sozzani, founder of 10 Corso Como and Ms. Sozzani's sister; Bee Shaffer, Anna Wintour's daughter; Ms. Wintour (obscured); and Jonathan Newhouse, chairman and chief executive of Conde Nast International, the parent company of Italian Vogue. Alessandro Grassani for The New York Times Ms. Sozzani, once described by this newspaper as "a daring and often impious iconoclast on the newsstand," was widely respected for reshaping the job of a fashion editor during her 28 years at the helm of Italian Vogue. She often used the magazine as a platform for activism, tackling controversial topics like race, domestic violence, plastic surgery and drug addiction. She also made a point of championing young and emerging talents, particularly in her home country, where the industry has often proved resistant to change. Her niece Sara Maino, head of talent at Italian Vogue, gave one of two readings during the service. The other came from Ms. Sozzani's only child, Francesco Carrozzini, a film director, whose documentary on his mother's life made its debut at the Venice Film Festival in September. Once communion had been given and the last hymn had been sung, the congregation spilled out onto the cobblestones and into their waiting cars many to take the next plane to Paris. But for that moment, gathered in memoriam of one woman, fashion was united. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Fashion & Style |
Rejecting the advice of its scientific advisers, the federal government has released new dietary recommendations that sound a familiar nutritional refrain, advising Americans to "make every bite count" but dismissing experts' specific recommendations to set new low targets for consumption of sugar and alcoholic beverages. The "Dietary Guidelines for Americans" are updated every five years, and the latest iteration arrived on Tuesday, 10 months into a pandemic that has posed a historic health threat to Americans. Confined to their homes, even many of those who have dodged the coronavirus itself are drinking more and gaining weight, a phenomenon often called "quarantine 15." The dietary guidelines have an impact on Americans' eating habits, influencing food stamp policies and school lunch menus and indirectly affecting how food manufacturers formulate their products. But the latest guidelines do not address the current pandemic nor, critics said, new scientific consensus about the need to adopt dietary patterns that reduce food insecurity and chronic diseases. Climate change does not figure in the advice, which does not address sustainability or greenhouse gas emissions, both intimately tied to modern food production. A report issued by a scientific advisory committee last summer had recommended that the guidelines encourage Americans to make drastic cuts in their consumption of sugars added to drinks and foods to 6 percent of daily calories, from the currently recommended 10 percent. Evidence suggests that added sugars, particularly those in sweetened beverages, may contribute to obesity and weight gain, which are linked to higher rates of chronic health conditions like heart disease and Type 2 diabetes, the scientific panel noted. More than two thirds of American adults are overweight or obese; obesity, diabetes and other related conditions also increase the risk of developing severe Covid 19 illness. The scientific advisory group also called for limiting daily alcohol consumption to one drink a day for both men and women, citing a growing body of evidence that consuming higher amounts of alcohol is associated with an increased risk of death, compared with drinking lower amounts. The new guidelines acknowledge that added sugars are nutritionally empty calories that can add extra pounds, and concede that emerging evidence links alcohol to certain cancers and some forms of cardiovascular disease a retreat from the once popular notion that moderate drinking is beneficial to health. But officials at the Department of Agriculture and the Department of Health and Human Services rejected explicit caps on sugar and alcohol consumption. Although "the preponderance of evidence supports limiting intakes of added sugars and alcoholic beverages to promote health and prevent disease," the report said, "the evidence reviewed since the 2015 2020 edition does not substantiate quantitative changes at this time." The new guidelines concede that scientific research "suggests that even drinking within the recommended limits may increase the overall risk of death," and that alcohol has been found to increase the risk for some cancers even at low levels of consumption. But the recommendation from five years ago one drink per day for women and two for men remains in place. The new guidelines do clarify, for the first time, that the limits apply to those days when alcohol is consumed. The vagueness of the previous recommendations left suggested to many American men that they could binge drink a couple of days a week, so long as they did not exceed 14 drinks over the course of a week. Dr. Timothy Naimi, a member of the dietary guidelines advisory committee, said the guidelines "reaffirm two important but overlooked health messages": that alcohol is "a dangerous substance" and that drinking less is better than drinking more at all levels of consumption. "This is especially a key point in the time of Covid and holidays, in which consumption has increased and important alcohol control policies have been relaxed," such as restrictions on home delivery, Dr. Naimi said. The main sources of added sugars in the American diet are sweetened beverages including sodas, as well as sweetened coffees and teas desserts, snacks, candy, and breakfast cereals and bars. Most Americans exceed even the 10 percent benchmark; sugars make up 13 percent of daily calories, on average. The new guidelines do say for the first time that children under 2 should avoid consuming any added sugars, which are found in many cereals and beverages. Like the Science Times page on Facebook. Sign up for the Science Times newsletter. Critics were disappointed that the federal agencies had ignored the recommendations of the scientific advisory committee. "I'm stunned by the whole thing," said Marion Nestle, a professor emerita of nutrition and food studies at New York University and author of several books on the government's dietary guidelines. "Despite repeated claims that the guidelines are science based, the Trump agencies ignored the recommendation of the scientific committee they had appointed, and instead reverted to the recommendation of the previous guidelines," she said. The composition of the dietary advisory committees drew controversy earlier this year, because many of the experts had ties to the beef and dairy industries. Yet the scientists went further in their advice than had previous committees, particularly with the recommendations to limit sugar and alcohol, Dr. Nestle said. "Those were big changes, and they got all the attention when the report came out last summer for very good reasons and they were ignored in the final report," Dr. Nestle said. "The report was introduced as science based they used the word 'science' many times, and made a big point about it," she added. "But they ignored the scientific committee which they appointed, which I thought was astounding." In other ways, the new guidelines are consistent with previously issued federal recommendations. Americans are encouraged to eat more healthy foods, like vegetables, fruits, legumes, whole grains, nuts, seafood, low fat or nonfat dairy, and lean meat and poultry. The guidelines urge the nation to consume less saturated fat, sodium and alcohol, and to limit calorie intake. Indeed, officials with the Center for Science in the Public Interest, an advocacy organization, said they were pleased the guidelines continued to affirm a diet rich in fruits and vegetables and lower in red meat and processed meats, though they said it "misses the mark" on added sugars. Jessi Silverman, a registered dietitian and public health advocacy fellow at C.S.P.I., called on the incoming Biden administration to take action to remove barriers to healthy eating, such as restoring nutritional standards for whole grains, sodium and milk in the national school lunch program, which were rolled back under President Trump. For the first time, the guidelines take a "full life span approach," trying to sketch out broad advice for pregnant and breastfeeding adults and for children under 2. One of the recommendations for pregnant women, those about to become pregnant and those who are breastfeeding is to eat ample seafood and fish that is rich in omega 3 fatty acids but low in methylmercury content, which can have harmful effects on a developing fetus. This dietary pattern has been linked to healthier pregnancies and better cognitive development in children. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Health |
Yes, it may be better to give than to receive, but who wants to give up a gift this good? As re established on Friday, when the production began its final local run, this "Nutcracker" is special. And what is most special about it is the ear of its choreographer, Alexei Ratmansky. This is a "Nutcracker" that attends to every measure and nuance of Tchaikovsky's great score. The steps, the characterizations, the comic gags: Whether or not you approve of each one of Mr. Ratmansky's choices, all of them arise from and are justified by the music. With surprise and heart catching emotion, you feel that Mr. Ratmansky's visions were in the Tchaikovsky all along. That's especially true in the first act. The opening kitchen scene, which introduces the brilliant invention of the mischievous Little Mouse (played, for one last time, presumably, by the wonderful Justin Souriau Levine), is so perfectly attuned, you might wonder why all "Nutcracker" stagings don't have it. The way the children in the party scene rush on like a mob, or a swirling storm: It's in the score. (The children's behavior is also indicative of the production's balance between naturalism and caricature.) The little solo that the Grandmother (Adrienne Schulte) indulges in after the formal adult dance: The coda calls for something just like that. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Dance |
LOS ANGELES Audiences have splintered into a million personalized subsets. Streaming services are sprouting like mushrooms. Attention spans are now measured in seconds. For those reasons and others a decade of stagnant attendance, studios that only seem to make sequels of sequels (of sequels) movie theaters are seen as a dying business. Why trudge to a theater when Netflix is available in your pocket anytime you want? Yet almost every multiplex on the planet was gridlocked over the weekend. "Avengers: Endgame" took in 1.2 billion worldwide, arriving as the No. 1 movie in at least 54 countries. The euphorically reviewed movie collected a record breaking 350 million in the United States and Canada, zooming past "Star Wars: The Force Awakens" (2015), which had opening weekend sales of 248 million, or about 270 million in today's dollars. "It shows the power of theaters the ability, even in a hyper fragmented culture, to deliver that wildly big communal experience," Megan Colligan, president of Imax Filmed Entertainment, said in an interview. Read our review of "Avengers: Endgame." Catch up on all the M.C.U. movies in two minutes. Analyze the character makeovers in "Endgame." It also shows that Hollywood is increasingly reliant on spectacle to jolt people away from Facebook, Fortnite, Hulu and Netflix and into movie theaters. All kinds of movies used to break through at the box office. In 1998, the top 10 grossing movies of the year included an Oscar nominated war epic ("Saving Private Ryan"), three comedies, a couple of science fiction extravaganzas ("Armageddon"), the comedic drama "Patch Adams" and a smattering of family films ("Dr. Doolittle"). Last year, there were no comedies and only one drama: "Bohemian Rhapsody," which doubled as a musical. Big budget fantasies and animated movies took up eight slots. When the industry's new strategy works, it works big. Demand for "Avengers: Endgame" was so astronomical over the weekend that AMC Theaters, the largest multiplex operator in North America, added 5,000 last minute showtimes in the United States, lifting its total number to more than 63,000. Nineteen AMC locations played the film around the clock. On Saturday alone, 2.3 million people turned up at AMC cinemas. "Young moviegoers will remember where they were when they saw 'Endgame,' who they saw it with and what it felt like," John Fithian, president of the National Association of Theater Owners, wrote in an email. "That will pay off for years to come in the same way that moviegoers who grew up in the '70s and '80s still talk about the impact that 'Star Wars' had on them." And there could be more to come. Disney's "The Lion King," a retelling of the animated musical using photo realistic visual effects, arrives in July and is generating runaway advance interest. In December, Disney will release "Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker," the final chapter in a nine part saga. Also coming this year are giants like "Toy Story 4" (Disney), "The Secret Life of Pets 2" (Universal), "Spider Man: Far From Home" (Sony) and "It: Chapter 2" (Warner Bros.). Even so, concerns about the health of theatrical business are unlikely to abate, at least behind closed doors in Hollywood. In some ways, "Avengers: Endgame" could add to them. People like Steven Spielberg worry that the film business is headed toward a bifurcated future where megamovies play in cinemas and everything else gets squeezed onto streaming service screens. Given the film industry's current trajectory, there could soon come a day when you can see popcorn movies like "Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull" in theaters but must watch more sober fare like "Lincoln" online to take just two of Mr. Spielberg's films as examples. To that end, there is heated debate in Hollywood over what constitutes a movie. Should the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences try to protect the big screen experience by blocking films like Netflix's award winning "Roma" that are primarily distributed on the internet from competing for Oscars? Last week, members of the academy board debated what to do, ultimately deciding to keep weighing the options. Media analysts have also sounded alarms. Doug Creutz, a managing director at Cowen and Company, wrote in a report last month that "the market is concentrating into fewer, but bigger, successful films." Mr. Creutz noted that the top 10 grossing movies last year accounted for 35 percent of total annual ticket sales. At the start of the decade, the contribution from the top 10 was about 27 percent. "Avengers: Endgame," which cost roughly 350 million to make and 150 million to market worldwide, played in 4,662 theaters in North America over the weekend. In another show of Marvel's dominance, the No. 2 movie of the weekend was "Captain Marvel," which took in 8 million at 2,435 theaters in its eighth week, according to Comscore, which compiles box office data. The weekend's third best performer, the horror movie "The Curse of La Llorona" (Warner), collected about 7.5 million from 3,372 theaters. Hollywood has long expected "Avengers: Endgame" to be a sensation. When tickets became available for presale on April 2, the demand crashed AMC servers. In addition to its own ads, which began running late last year, Disney secured promotional partnerships worth an additional 200 million. Ziploc started selling Avengers themed sandwich bags; McDonald's, teaming with Marvel for the first time, introduced 24 Avengers toys. "We wanted it to feel like an epic, important, seminal, can't miss event," said Asad Ayaz, president of marketing at Walt Disney Studios. Mr. Ayaz and his lieutenants devised a strategy in which Disney spent massively on television ads around a few important moments (the day tickets went on presale, for instance) and then went completely dark for a week or more. "The idea was to stun and surprise people with new creative messaging and then leave them wanting more," Mr. Ayaz said. The movie ended up defying all kinds of conventional wisdom that sequels are not supposed to be critical darlings, that there is no center of the culture anymore, that marathon running times (three hours in this case) drive people away, that every studio has hits and misses. Marvel is now 22 0 when it comes to the box office. Alan Horn, chairman of Walt Disney Studios, called the results "monumental" and noted that Marvel had challenged "the notions of what is possible at the movie theater." About 44 percent of the global total came from 3 D screenings, according to the technology company RealD. Disney said on Sunday morning that the movie set a record for the largest opening weekend in 44 overseas markets, with Imax theaters contributing an outsized portion of ticket sales, particularly in China. Ticket sales for "Avengers: Endgame" were assuredly helped by improvements that multiplex chains have introduced in recent years. For instance, after the subscription based ticketing service MoviePass proved to be popular with millennials, AMC and other theater operators created their own subscription programs. Apps like Atom Tickets and Fandango have made buying tickets in advance more popular, which helps to create buzz and reduce the need to wait in line at box office windows. But the movie, directed by Anthony and Joe Russo, arrived as a cultural and commercial thunderclap because of the way in which Kevin Feige, Marvel's president, built the "Avengers" series to a storytelling climax. In the last installment, "Avengers: Infinity War," a lantern jawed villain named Thanos (Josh Brolin) snapped his fingers and turned half the creatures in the universe to dust, including a vast number of superheroes. "Avengers: Endgame" finds battered survivors like Iron Man (Robert Downey Jr.), Thor (Chris Hemsworth), Captain America (Chris Evans) and Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson) joining together in one final attempt to restore order. "It is likely to be the last film with the original and beloved Avengers cast," Mr. Creutz said. If so, plenty of people made sure they were there to see it. And they appear to have been satisfied: In CinemaScore exit polls, ticket buyers gave the film an A plus. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Movies |
There are no fried peanut butter and banana sandwiches. Nor is there a television with a bullet hole in its screen. Drugs, an unavoidable topic, are mentioned in sympathetic tones as an overworked performer's self medication. "Elvis Presley: The Searcher," a two part, three hour documentary that begins airing Saturday on HBO, strives to rescue the Elvis Presley story from its tabloid side. Instead, it presents a biography of an artist and musician who was both spectacularly gifted and unconscionably misdirected. Guided by his own ideas and instincts, he transformed 20th century culture in the 1950s. But afterward, treated by his manager as a commercial workhorse, he spent years making trivial movies and performing as a nostalgia act. Priscilla Presley, his ex wife, is an executive producer and a narrative presence throughout the film, which was directed by Thom Zimny, who has made documentaries about Bruce Springsteen. Commentators including Mr. Springsteen, Tom Petty and Emmylou Harris are heard but stay offscreen. Archives of still photos, vintage film and what look like home movies provide many fleeting, previously unseen images of Presley, his family and his environment through the decades. Mr. Zimny's own cameras prowl the Presley mansion, Graceland, lingering over family photos and trinkets. The documentary and an accompanying three CD boxed set also cull songs from Presley's entire career to insist that he could be soulful to the end. The documentary presents Presley's relationship to African American music as one of affinity and appreciation, not exploitation. "Elvis and Elvis's music pointed to black culture and said, 'This is filled with the force of life,'" Mr. Springsteen comments. "If you want to be an American, this is something you need to pay attention to." The excerpt chosen from "King Creole," the 1958 Presley film set in New Orleans, shows Presley listening to and then joining African American street vendors' cries, acknowledging their influence. "He did not invent rock 'n' roll per se," Mr. Petty bluntly notes, citing Little Richard and Joe Turner. "What he did was different" a fusion of all Presley had absorbed. He was not a copyist. The film and boxed set include enough of Presley's sources to demonstrate how thoroughly he personalized songs like Arthur Crudup's "That's All Right" and Bill Monroe's "Blue Moon of Kentucky": the two sides, drawn from (black) blues and (white) bluegrass, of his first single for Sun Records. In retrospect, it was a perfect, archetypal mission statement of how he would defy categories. He wiggled his legs, hips and shoulders, too onstage and then on television inciting screams among young women and a moral panic in the older generation. (Musicians in the documentary note that his moves also directed his band.) In a precipitous rise, Presley had the whole country watching and listening. Yet the more popular he got, the more backlash he faced. The condescending Steve Allen had him sing "Hound Dog" to a hound dog, trying (and failing) to humiliate him. Ed Sullivan only showed him from the waist up. It was too late; teenagers were listening. Then he was drafted and sent overseas, his pompadour clipped. He had signed a management contract with the documentary's villain: Colonel Tom Parker, who was only an honorary colonel and not an American citizen (he was Dutch), which resulted in Presley never touring internationally. When Presley came back from the army, the Colonel envisioned a conventionally grown up career for him: pop singing (a TV special with Frank Sinatra), movies, merchandise. The rock revolutionary was supposed to fall into line as an entertainer. Sadly, he did. There was no other career map at the time, and the Colonel did not encourage artistic exploration. Parker also had a financial interest in Hill and Range Music, the only publisher he allowed to supply Presley with (often mediocre) songs. Through the eventful mid 1960s the British Invasion, Bob Dylan's "wild mercury sound," the Summer of Love Presley was contractually bound to make movies with lame songs and diminishing returns. One of the documentary's most bitterly telling finds is an audio interview with a defeated sounding Presley, where he says that while he'd like to make "artistic" films, "if what you're doing is doing O.K., you're better off sticking with it." Somehow, in 1968 he was able to accept a TV offer performing to a real (studio) audience, singing in the moment and he grabbed it, for the 1968 special that could have started his rock comeback. His next album, "From Elvis in Memphis," set aside Hill and Range and included a real hit, "Suspicious Minds." He had found a contemporary producer. But there was no follow through. Instead, there were Las Vegas residencies and arena oldies tours: sequined jump suits, capes, nostalgia. The Vegas shows had gospel singers and a mini orchestra; he sang "American Trilogy," merging Civil War anthems of North and South, fusing cultural touchstones. He had his charisma; he had his voice. But he was being presented as an icon of the past. And the uppers and downers were in his blood. "Anything that he ever had was prescribed," Priscilla Presley says. Isolated and eccentric, he set up his final recording sessions at home in Graceland in 1976, cramming musicians into the Jungle Room; a bitter song about infidelity, "Hurt," became a hit. But the immediate profit was in touring, the grind that wore him out. The documentary seizes on moments rehearsals, outtakes when Presley's grit and fervor blasted away corniness and shtick. It shows him touching down in gospel music at his bleakest times and, near the end, strains to present him as a spiritual figure. Its finale is from that 1968 TV special: his wrenching performance of "If I Can Dream," longing for equality and redemption during a year of social turmoil. It shows Presley's passion and control, his visceral drama, his mastery. But it can't explain all that he left undone. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Television |
In spring 2013, Joanna Demkiewicz, a journalism student at the University of Missouri, went to hear the longtime Esquire writer Mike Sager talk about his new book, "Next Wave: America's New Generation of Great Literary Journalists." The collection, which Mr. Sager had edited, celebrates 19 underappreciated young writers. But there was a problem. "I looked around, and almost the entire room was filled with women," Ms. Demkiewicz said. "And then someone raised her hand and said, 'Why are there only three women in this collection?'" Mr. Sager argued that his parameters writers under 40, no first person essays had limited the number of women. "Female researchers came up with the initial list," he said. The room was unconvinced. Eventually, he stopped protesting and issued a challenge: "Why don't you guys do something about this?" After the panel, Ms. Demkiewicz, a book publicist, and her friend Kaylen Ralph, a stylist, marched up to Mr. Sager. "We're not buying your book," Ms. Demkiewicz said. "But we are starting a magazine." Mr. Sager gave them his card and told them if they were serious, he would help. The result was The Riveter, an online and quarterly print magazine featuring narrative journalism by women. Ms. Demkiewicz and Ms. Ralph funded the first year of the magazine through Kickstarter. Mr. Sager helped with publicity and hired them to edit his next book a collection devoted to female journalists. The sixth issue will be published this month. The Riveter has company. At least five new publications with women at the helm have started since 2010, running deeply reported articles on culture, politics and style that are often several thousand words. The magazines seek to redefine how women are portrayed in print, and who might want to read stories by and about them. "Good reporting is just good reporting," Ms. Ralph said. "Yes, it's by women. But it should be read by everyone." The underrepresentation of women in journalism has been well publicized, largely because of the VIDA Count, an annual statistical roundup. According to the organization's most recent statistics, about 70 percent of bylines in The New Yorker and The Atlantic were men in 2015. About 55 percent of The New Republic's bylines were those of men (a marked improvement from about 80 percent in 2011). Few women make it to the "reporting" or "feature writing" finals of the National Magazine Awards. "If I want to pursue a topic that skews feminine, my options for where I can publish the piece are automatically limited," said Jillian Goodman, 30, the founder of Mary Review, a female produced magazine, which raised 27,000 on Kickstarter and published its first issue last fall. "It just blows my mind how hard it is to get certain outlets to listen." The founders of The Establishment, an online magazine for feminist voices, had the same concerns. "What about people with marginalized identities who want to write about whales or baseball or the Fibonacci sequence?" said Kelley Calkins, a founder. "Where are they going to be respected and taken seriously in the way that straight white dudes are?" Before starting The Establishment in 2015, Ms. Calkins, 29, and her co founders, Nikki Gloudeman, 32, and Katie Tandy, 33, had helped a male entrepreneur who wanted to start an online feminist magazine called Ravishly. They said there were problems from the beginning, from the questionable name of the publication to an uncomfortable work environment. Shauna Stark, 63, a former Intel executive who left corporate America in the 1980s because she found it sexist, encouraged them to quit. "These women represented an opportunity where I could put my money where my mouth was," said Ms. Stark, who invested 1 million in The Establishment. Today, the magazine has about a million unique monthly visitors, about 30 percent to 35 percent of which are men, according to Google Analytics. Ms. Goodman, who calls Mary Review a publication "by women, for everyone," also has a male readership of about 30 percent. "I want to believe that men will read a story about conflict in Ukraine that happens to be about women," she said, "or a story about culture clashes in modern Kurdistan that happens to be focused on a woman. It would be both depressing and shocking to me if that were categorically not the case." A male audience of 30 percent isn't bad, considering that the traditional women's magazine Cosmopolitan has a male audience of only 15 percent, and Elle has 12 percent, according to market research firm GfK Global. In contrast, Esquire's readership is almost 39 percent female. Ms. Goodman hates that "women read men's magazines but not vice versa." Recently, Cosmopolitan, once known for offering tips on how to please men, has "built a reputation for producing really smart, well reported, sharp, valuable stories," she said, and Teen Vogue has run stories on President Trump and sexism and the position of Vice President Mike Pence on reproductive rights. But women's glossies generally don't cover topics as broadly and deeply as other publications. "In most women's magazines," Ms. Demkiewicz said, "fashion, beauty and sex topics are recycled, over and over." Penny Martin, editor of The Gentlewoman, a biannual magazine based in Britain, said she helped start the publication in 2010 to provide an alternative to "anti intellectualizing" women's magazines, which "were always covering the same five Jennifers." Though the magazine reports on fashion, you are more likely to find a 5,000 word oral history about the radical 1989 Maison Martin Margiela fashion show than you would an article on "celebrities with very thin arms and very big handbags," Ms. Martin said. Cover models are as likely to be about women like Angela Lansbury, Zadie Smith or the fashion photographer Inez Van Lamsweerde (wearing a fake mustache and beard) as they are about megastars. Gravitas magazine covers professional women in Sarasota and the Tampa Bay Area in Florida. Gravitas, which began publishing in 2014 and covers professional women in Sarasota and the Tampa Bay Area in Florida, eschews models altogether. "I use successful women so we can show what success really looks like," said Jules Lewis Gibson, 47, the magazine's founder and owner. "Real women shop at Macy's, Nordstrom and Marshalls. They're not wearing Gucci couture to the grocery store." Qimmah Saafir, an African American journalist in her mid 30s, has written for a number of women's magazines but rarely sees herself reflected in their pages. In 2015, she raised 37,000 on Kickstarter to start Hannah Magazine, a biannual publication billed as "an unapologetic celebration of and safe space for black women." The inaugural issue of Hannah includes an interview with the singer Alice Smith, a series of meditations on new motherhood and an essay on how to grieve for black artists like Prince and shooting victims who died in 2016. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Style |
WASHINGTON The Food and Drug Administration on Friday approved a new form of an extremely potent opioid to manage acute pain in adults, weeks after the chairman of the advisory committee that reviewed it asked the agency to reject it on grounds that it would likely be abused. The drug, Dsuvia, is a tablet form of sufentanil, a synthetic opioid that has been used intravenously and in epidurals since the 1980s. It is 10 times stronger than fentanyl, a parent drug that is often used in hospitals but is also produced illegally in forms that have caused tens of thousands of overdose deaths in recent years. Although the F.D.A. advisory committee charged with evaluating the new formulation ultimately recommended in a 10 3 vote last month that the agency approve it, the panel's chairman, Dr. Raeford Brown, wrote a letter to top F.D.A. officials afterward expressing deep concern. In the letter, which he wrote with leaders of the consumer advocacy group Public Citizen, Dr. Brown, an anesthesiology professor at the University of Kentucky, described Dsuvia, made by AcelRx Pharmaceuticals, as "an extremely divertible drug," adding, "I predict that we will encounter diversion, abuse and death within the early months of its availability on the market." After the final approval on Friday, Dr. Scott Gottlieb, the F.D.A. commissioner, released a lengthy statement defending the agency's decision. He emphasized that Dsuvia is delivered through a "pre filled, single dose applicator," and said that its only permitted use will be in hospitals, surgical centers and other medically supervised settings. It is ideally suited for certain special circumstances, he said, particularly for soldiers wounded on the battlefield who might not have access to intravenous painkillers. Dr. Gottlieb wrote that Dsuvia will not be dispensed to patients for home use or available at retail pharmacies, and that it should only be administered by health care providers with the single dose applicators. It will likely hit the market early next year. "These measures to restrict the use of this product only within a supervised health care setting, and not for home use, are important steps to help prevent misuse and abuse," he wrote. He also pointed to the agency's new powers to require post market studies evaluating the efficacy of opioid medications that the F.D.A. might be having second thoughts about, and to consider abuse risk as a factor in making regulatory decisions about drugs after, as well as before, they're on the market. Last year, the F.D.A. asked the maker of Opana ER, another super potent opioid, to take it off the market because of concerns about abuse. Vince Angotti, the chief executive of AcelRx, said in a statement that the company would diligently follow a safety program, known as a risk evaluation and mitigation strategy, that the F.D.A. had approved for Dsuvia, including monitoring distribution of the drug and auditing wholesalers' data; evaluating whether hospitals and other health care providers are using the drug properly; and monitoring for any diversion or abuse. The divisions over the new drug's approval comes after opioid overdose deaths surged to more than 40,000 last year, including more than 30,000 from fentanyl and other synthetic opioids. States and the federal governments have cracked down on the prescribing of opioids, and many chronic pain patients have complained about being undertreated or losing access to opioids entirely. Dr. Brown, who heads the advisory committee on analgesics and anesthetic drug products, was not present for the committee vote last month. But in the letter he wrote afterward, he described trying to resuscitate doctors, medical students and other health care providers "some successfully" who had overdosed on the IV form of sufentanil at the medical center where he works "It is so potent that abusers of this intravenous formulation often die when they inject the first dose," he wrote. Dr. Brown also questioned whether the F.D.A. would succeed in enforcing regulations once dangerous drugs hit the market. "It is my observation that once the F.D.A. approves an opioid compound," he wrote, "there are no safeguards as to the population that will be exposed, the post marketing analysis of prescribing behavior, or the ongoing analysis of the risks of the drug to the general population." Critics of the approval include four Democratic senators Edward Markey of Massachusetts, Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut, Claire McCaskill of Missouri and Joe Manchin of West Virginia. In a letter to Dr. Gottlieb on Tuesday, they questioned why Dr. Brown's committee went ahead and recommended approval on Oct. 12 without him present. They also asked why a different F.D.A. advisory group, the Drug Safety and Risk Management Advisory Committee, had not been involved. An F.D.A. spokeswoman said that while the issue was not brought formally in front of the drug safety committee, "there were drug safety and risk experts on the committee whose expert input was taken very seriously throughout this process." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Health |
The Hollywood Reporter obituary for Doris Day describes her in the headline as "Hollywood's Favorite Girl Next Door," which is reasonable enough, if not terribly imaginative. Day, who was 97 when she died on Monday, broke through as a singer in the mid 1940s and crossed over into movie stardom in the next decade. She's still often remembered as an avatar of the postwar, pre counterculture pop culture mainstream: wholesome, friendly, sexless. Accordingly, the first adjective applied to her in that article's summary is "virginal." That word evokes a leering one liner attributed to the musician and wit Oscar Levant, who said he "knew Doris Day before she was a virgin." Levant's joke depends on a category mistake, confusing the persona of a star with her person (Day was married four times), even as it misses the joke tucked into the persona itself. The v word applied to Day signals the acceptance of an alibi that was never meant to be believed in the first place, the literal minded gloss on a text that was only there to beckon us toward the subtext. The truth, hidden in plain sight in so many of her movies and musical performances, is that Doris Day was a sex goddess. That's not a term we use much anymore (for good reason), and in its heyday it was generally applied to actresses who wielded their erotic energies more nakedly, so to speak. Read our obituary of Doris Day. Stream four great Day movies (and one TV show). Day wasn't a glamorous blond enigma like Grace Kelly or Kim Novak though she did, like both of them, work with Alfred Hitchcock. She was not a Hollywood bombshell in the manner of Marilyn Monroe (or Mamie Van Doren, with whom she competed for Clark Gable's attention in the 1958 comedy "Teacher's Pet"). And she certainly didn't work in the same erogenous zone as European actresses like Brigitte Bardot and Sophia Loren, who promised sophisticated American moviegoers a glimpse of freedom from Puritanical inhibition, and sometimes also from clothes. But it's too easy to say that Day was simply the opposite the prim, prudish, all American avatar of Eisenhower era repression, with her hair in a neat chignon and her figure sheathed in a soberly tailored suit. To see her that way is to take at face value an archetype that she did everything in her formidable power to subvert. Really, though, the whole virgin thing doesn't even rise to the level of archetype. It's an artifact of a movie censorship system that was, in the years after the Kinsey Report, rapidly losing touch with the realities of American behavior, and with the rest of popular culture as well. In the canonical romantic comedies she made with Rock Hudson "Pillow Talk" and "Lover Come Back" two years later Day, in her late 30s, played unmarried New York career women. Jan Morrow in "Pillow Talk" is an interior designer with a thriving, if hectic, business. Her counterpart in "Lover Come Back," Carol Templeton, is a high ranking executive in a Manhattan advertising firm. They are (implicitly) virgins by fiat of the production code, but really it's up to the audience to decide how credible it is that neither one has managed to sleep with anyone until Hudson shows up. (When Hudson and Day reunited for "Send Me No Flowers" in 1964, they were playing husband and wife, and it wasn't as much fun.) The simple, sexist premise of these movies and also of "Teacher's Pet," in which Day's uptight professor is seduced by Gable, her most unlikely student is that Day needs a raffish he man to come along and ruffle her feathers with his sheer masculine irresistibility, getting her into bed with the benefit of clergy. But that pursuit is played out by means of a plot that relishes its own ridiculousness. The color schemes and production designs in the Hudson Day comedies pulsate with whimsy. The atmosphere is pure camp, of the zany rather than the melodramatic variety. Every line sounds like a double entendre. Every encounter is full of implication and innuendo, every character a collection of mixed signals. The plot of "Lover Come Back" turns on the mass marketing of a powerful, possibly hallucinogenic drug. Heterosexual courtship under the mandate of matrimony has rarely looked so kinky. We're not even talking about what it means that Rock Hudson is the male lead. The ambiguity is ambient. The deniability is perfect, and perfectly preposterous. Day is the key to it all, because her presence simultaneously upholds the pretense of virtuous normality and utterly transgresses it. She is a walking semiotic riot with a pert nose and a winning smile, keeper and scrambler of a whole book of social norms and cultural codes. To see what I mean, consider a scene from "Pillow Talk" in which Jan takes Brad Allen (Hudson's playboy classical music composer) to a nightclub. It's maybe daring for his square sensibilities, which is to say that the music is being performed by black people. (The clientele is all white.) It turns out that his date is familiar with the musicians, and the music. Midway through a song called "Roly Poly," the pianist and singer (Perry Blackwell) invites Jan to take a verse "come on Miss Morrow, you know this one" and pretty soon Brad is clapping along. By the chorus, he and Jan are playing patty cake, and pretty soon the whole joint is singing about the satisfactions of a lover who is built for comfort rather than for speed. It's impossible not to interpret this number as a cringe inducing spectacle of cultural appropriation, pushed to and past the point of parody. The sexual and racial undercurrents eddy and swirl under a surface of pure silliness. In old Hollywood movies, African American music is a complicated signifier, not least for the white characters who appreciate it. In not so old movies, too. When, for example, Ryan Gosling takes Emma Stone to listen to jazz in "La La Land," he is telling her, and us, something about the kind of guy he is. He's claiming access to, and a share of, what the music represents. Passion. Authenticity. Sex, too, of course. In 1959, one name for this transaction which might look from one angle like a gesture of respect, from another like an act of brazen existential plunder was "hip." It was a noun as much as an adjective, and it was not a word that anyone would have thought to apply to Doris Day. Partly because she was too canny to take it seriously, notwithstanding her serious interest in African American music. In "Love Me or Leave Me," a show business biopic from 1955, she performs a version of Irving Berlin's "Shaking the Blues Away," wearing a low cut bright blue gown slit up to her thigh. The lyric's absurd evocation of religious revivals "way down South" gives way to a stageful of male chorines in top hats and tails, as Day belts out a paean to dancing that is a rollicking celebration of ... something else. She's singing the language of rock 'n' roll at the moment of rock 'n' roll's emergence, but what she's doing is ... something else. She's messing with all our categories. Which was her great and underappreciated gift. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Movies |
NEW YEAR'S EVE SPECIALS 8 p.m. on various networks. If you're ringing in the new year from the comfort of your couch, there is plenty of programming to keep you entertained. Ryan Seacrest hosts DICK CLARK'S PRIMETIME NEW YEAR'S ROCKIN' EVE on ABC, alongside the actress Lucy Hale. Ciara leads the festivities from Los Angeles, while Billy Porter reports from New Orleans. Paula Abdul, Green Day and Sheryl Crow are set to perform. Over on NBC, Hoda Kotb and Jenna Bush Hager recap the year's biggest pop culture moments in A TOAST TO 2019!, joined by celebrity guests including Kristen Bell and Tony Hale. At 10 p.m., Carson Daly and Julianne Hough will take over to host NBC'S NEW YEAR'S EVE 2020, featuring performances by Gwen Stefani, X Ambassadors and Ne Yo. Keith Urban will join the telecast from Nashville. Fox will broadcast FOX'S NEW YEAR'S EVE WITH STEVE HARVEY, with acts by LL Cool J, the Lumineers and the Chainsmokers. (The special will break between 10 and 11 p.m.) Anderson Cooper and Andy Cohen host CNN'S NEW YEAR'S EVE LIVE, and, on PBS, the New York Philharmonic perform Stephen Sondheim's most notable works in LIVE FROM LINCOLN CENTER. THE DEGENERATES Stream on Netflix. The stand up specials in this series are best watched after the children are put to bed. Season 2 features six, 30 minute sets by up and coming comedians who specialize in inappropriate, no holds barred humor. Among the comics are Donnell Rawlings, whose credits include "Chappelle's Show" and "The Wire," and Nikki Glaser, who had a short lived sex themed talk show on Comedy Central and whose first Netflix special, "Bangin,'" debuted in October. MAN ON THE MOON (1999) Stream on Amazon; rent on Google Play, iTunes, Vudu or YouTube. Jim Carrey stars in this biographical comedy about the maverick comic Andy Kaufman, who died in 1984. The movie chronicles Kaufman's unusual career as a performance artist, actor and wrestler, starting with his early days in comedy clubs and ending with his battle with lung cancer. "Jim Andy: The Great Beyond," a behind the scenes documentary on Carrey's commitment to Kaufman's character, is available to stream on Netflix. HOT TUB TIME MACHINE (2010) Stream on Amazon or Hulu; rent on Google Play, iTunes, Vudu or YouTube. "The Hangover" meets "Back to the Future" in this R rated time travel comedy. Adam (John Cusack), Nick (Craig Robinson) and Lou (Rob Corddry) are three middle aged friends in a rut. They reunite at a ski resort they used to frequent when they were younger, joined by Adam's awkward nephew Jacob (Clark Duke), and proceed to get inebriated in the hotel hot tub. The next morning, they wake up in 1986 and are warned by a strange hot tub repairman (Chevy Chase) not to change history. What ensues is a hilarious journey that proves the men may have been looking back at life through rose colored glasses. The movie leaves Amazon and Hulu on Dec. 31. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Television |
But the thing to admire about "The 15:17 to Paris" is precisely its artlessness. Mr. Eastwood, who has long favored a lean, functional directing style, practices an economy here that makes some of his earlier movies look positively baroque. He almost seems to be testing the limits of minimalism, seeing how much artifice he can strip away and still achieve some kind of dramatic impact. There is not a lot of suspense, and not much psychological exploration, either. A certain blunt power is guaranteed by the facts of the story, and Mr. Eastwood doesn't obviously try for anything more than that. But his workmanlike absorption in the task at hand is precisely what makes this movie fascinating as well as moving. Its radical plainness is tinged with mystery. Who exactly are these guys? They first met as boys in Sacramento, which is where we meet them, played by Cole Eichenberger (Spencer Stone), Paul Mikel Williams (Anthony Sadler) and Bryce Gheisar (Alek Skarlatos). Alek and Spencer, whose mothers (Judy Greer and Jenna Fischer) are friends, pull their sons out of public school and enroll them in a Christian academy, where they meet Anthony, a regular visitor to the principal's office. Frustrated by the educational demands of both church and state, the boys indulge in minor acts of rebellion: toilet papering a neighbor's house, swearing in gym class, playing war in the woods. They are separated when Alek moves to Oregon to live with his father and Anthony changes schools, but the three stay in touch as Anthony attends college and Alek and Spencer enlist in the military. Spencer, stationed in Portugal, meets up with Anthony in Rome, and Alek, who is serving in Afghanistan, visits a girlfriend in Germany before joining his pals in Berlin. They go clubbing in Amsterdam, wake up hung over and, after some debate, head for Paris. To call what happens before the confrontation with the gunman a plot, in the conventional sense, does not seem quite accurate. Nor do Spencer, Anthony and Alek seem quite like movie characters. But they aren't documentary subjects, either. Mr. Eastwood, famous for avoiding extensive rehearsals and retakes, doesn't demand too much acting. Throughout the film, the principal performers behave with the mix of affability and reserve they might display when meeting a group of people for the first time. They are polite, direct and unfailingly good natured, even when a given scene might call for more emotional intensity. In a normal movie, they would be extras. And on a normal day, they would have been part of the mass of tourists, commuters and other travelers taking a quick ride from one European capital to another. At times, Spencer, the most restless of the three and the one whose life choices receive the most attention, talks about the feeling of being "catapulted" toward some obscure destiny. But "The 15:17 to Paris" isn't a meditation on fate any more than it is an exploration of the politics of global terrorism. Rather, it is concerned with locating the precise boundary between the banal and the extraordinary, between routine and violence, between complacency and courage. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Movies |
Domio, a start up that offers short term rentals, has its headquarters in a New York City loft that features beer on tap, a game room and a wall of house slippers for visitors. The fast growing and unprofitable company has raised 117 million in venture capital, including 100 million in August. When the coronavirus pandemic caused Domio's bookings to dry up last month, it laid off staff but did not ask its investors for more funding. Instead, Domio applied for a federal loan under the Paycheck Protection Program, the 349 billion plan to save jobs at small businesses during the outbreak. It received a loan on April 13. Jay Roberts, Domio's chief executive, said it now most likely had enough cash to last until 2021. Three days later, the program's funding ran out, even as hundreds of hard hit restaurants, hair salons and shops around the country missed out on the relief. Questions about whether the funds were disbursed fairly and whether some applicants deserved them have drawn scrutiny to the aid program. Several companies that got millions of dollars in loans, such as the Shake Shack and Kura Sushi restaurant chains, faced criticism and eventually gave the money back. On Friday, President Trump signed legislation approving a fresh 320 billion to replenish the program, which the Small Business Administration is directing. Now, scrutiny of the program has reached technology start ups like Domio. While many of these young companies have been hurt by the pandemic, they are not ailing in the same way that traditional small businesses are. Many mom and pop enterprises, which tend to employ hourly workers and operate on razor thin margins, are shutting down immediately because of economic pain or begging for donations via GoFundMe campaigns. But start ups, which last year raised more than 130 billion in funding, have sometimes turned to the government loans not for day to day survival but simply to buy useful time. In Silicon Valley parlance, they want to extend their "runway," or cash on hand, to a year or more. Many are backed by venture capital investors, who have accumulated record sums of capital 121 billion as of the start of this year that could be used to keep companies afloat. Silicon Valley Bank, which serves start ups and is one of the lenders offering the Small Business Administration loans, said that it had received 5,500 applications and that nearly two thirds more than than 3,600 had been approved. Most tech start ups have fewer than 500 employees, making them eligible for the federal loans. They needed simply to certify that current "economic uncertainty" made the funds necessary to support their "ongoing operations." The loans can be forgiven if used to cover payroll. The government has not shared a list of recipients. Justin Field, the senior vice president of government affairs at the National Venture Capital Association, a lobbying group, said start ups were justified in seeking the federal aid. "These are potentially some of the most important companies for America's future competitiveness," he said. Some start ups said they saw how they had an advantage over traditional small businesses in obtaining the loans. While the application process has been difficult to navigate, many of the start ups leaned on their relationships with banks, investors, law firms and the lobbying group. AltMarket, a Los Angeles start up that released a cryptocurrency honoring the late Wu Tang Clan rapper O.D.B., received a federal loan on April 14, its chief executive, Bryce Weiner, said. He said his company, which has worked with financial regulators in the past, was better equipped to sort through the loan application than, say, a restaurant owner. He added that he had worked closely with his lawyer for a week, contacting banks and loan providers. Jamie Baxter, chief executive of the staffing start up Qwick, said his chief financial officer had worked overtime for two weeks figuring out the loan application process. Qwick, backed by 7 million in venture funding, received a loan for 500,000. It also cut staff by 70 percent and tapped its investors for an additional 1 million, Mr. Baxter said. While it wasn't initially clear that venture backed start ups were eligible for the federal loans, lobbyists spent weeks pushing to clarify that they could participate. The idea gained support in Congress, including from two powerful Californians, Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Representative Kevin McCarthy, who leads House Republicans. The National Venture Capital Association also guided investors on participation. Firms like Menlo Ventures distributed messages from the group, asking founders to persuade Senator Marco Rubio, the Florida Republican who leads the small business subcommittee, to support rule changes. Mr. Field, the association lobbyist, said it was up to individual companies to decide whether they could truthfully tell the government that they required help. "You have to certify need, there's no doubt about that," he said. "How do you define need is a subjective question that you have to figure out." In recent weeks, prominent investors including Albert Wenger at Union Square Ventures, Mark Suster of Upfront Ventures, Seth Levine of Foundry Group and Mr. Olsen of Drive Capital, have published blog posts or letters urging most start ups not to pursue the money. "We just think those companies ought to not get in line in front of Main Street businesses," Mr. Wenger said. Manny Medina, founder of Outreach, a sales software start up that has raised 238 million and is valued at 1.1 billion, said his board of directors and bank had initially pushed him to apply for a loan. His contacts at Silicon Valley Bank told him that the program would be a "free for all" and a "run to the money," he said. Outreach did not apply, he said, but "there was some real pressure." Julia Thompson, a spokeswoman for Silicon Valley Bank, said that what Mr. Medina had described did not represent the lender's "official stance, but may have been one person's characterization." Other entrepreneurs said they had no better option than to seek the aid. JetClosing, a real estate tech start up in Seattle, said its fund raising plans had been derailed by the virus in March, leading to layoffs of 20 of its 100 employees. Dan Greenshields, the chief executive, said he had applied for a government loan to stave off further cuts. Last Wednesday, JetClosing received a 1.6 million loan. The League, a members only dating app based in San Francisco, also applied for a federal loan. Amanda Bradford, the chief executive, said that revenue had fallen 10 to 15 percent this year and that the company's landlord had declined to lower the monthly 13,000 rent. While the League looked into traditional loans, they carried a 16 percent interest rate. A government loan, with an interest rate of 1 percent, would help the company get to one year of cash, she said. LiveRecover, a software start up in Austin, Texas, opted not to apply but was torn over the decision, a co founder, Dennis Hegstad, said. "If there's money flying from the sky and everyone's grabbing it, why would you not grab it?" he asked. Then he answered his own question: "There are other people who need it more." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Technology |
Each Saturday, Farhad Manjoo and Mike Isaac, technology reporters at The New York Times, review the week's news, offering analysis and maybe a joke or two about the most important developments in the tech industry. Mike is out this week, so Cecilia Kang, a tech reporter in Washington, stepped in. Farhad: Hi, Cecilia! Great to have you here. Mike is on vacation, blessedly. He's barely even been on Twitter. In unrelated news, I've had a really terrific week, and the strange odor in the office is completely gone. How's D.C.? Cecilia: Hey Farhad! Awesome to be here in the newsletter and in D.C., where every day since Nov. 8 feels like a whirlwind. It also smells awfully nice here with the flowers blooming. Farhad: O.K., so I'm excited you're here because I love to talk about tech and government. Tech policy has undergone a huge change under President Trump, but it doesn't seem that a lot of the changes are getting much attention, considering everything else the administration is doing. Cecilia: Excited to talk about tech policy? Music to my ears. So much is happening, and in a normal news cycle, the rollback of Obama era tech policies would get a lot more attention. But make no mistake, the changes coming in privacy, net neutrality and potentially many more tech regulations will be profound. Trump's chief strategist, Steve Bannon, promised the "deconstruction of the administrative state," and right away we've begun to see that happen. Farhad: So we'll get to all that in a second. But first, let's go over the news of the week. WikiLeaks released a huge cache of documents that purport to show the tools that the C.I.A. uses to break into smartphones, computers and even smart TVs. Other than embarrassing the United States government, the leak has fed into more conspiracy theories about Russia (Sean Hannity was having a ball this week), and they've given people some tips for how to protect themselves from governmental spying. If you want to safeguard your own devices, read our colleague Brian Chen's handy guide. But the best take I read on the leak came from the social media scholar Zeynep Tufecki, who pointed out that WikiLeaks overhyped this cache. The documents actually show that the C.I.A. finds encrypted communications apps like Signal and WhatsApp very difficult to break into. Cecilia: And it was amazing to see the WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange offer help to tech companies like Apple and Google by sharing the leaked computer code so they could fix the flaws described in the C.I.A. documents. How awkward would that be? Remember, relations are still pretty tense between tech and law enforcement on the issue of encryption, which is certainly going to come up again. Farhad: This week, there was also another attempt by Facebook to copy Snapchat. This time it was Messenger's turn. Facebook's messaging app rolled out a new feature that allows people to create Snapchat like slide shows known in the Snapchat world as Stories on the service. Facebook calls it Messenger Day. I don't know about this. Messenger used to be a simple beloved chat app. Now it's a mess of different things. I don't get it, honestly. Cecilia: I left Messenger when it became a separate app. If you make me jump through even one extra hoop, I'm out. Farhad: Oh man, you'd never be able to work with Mike. Google also had a huge conference to show off its cloud computing services. A lot of these are too boring and business y to mention here, but there was one thing that caught my eye: Google Hangouts is being transformed into something more like Slack, the group messaging app that has taken businesses by storm. I'm happy about this because Google seemed to have forgotten about working on Hangouts these last few years. An overhaul is way overdue. Cecilia: Zzz. You kinda lost me at cloud conference. But seriously, I'm pumped about any improvements to Hangouts. Essential reporting tool. Tech's biggest boosters of space exploration, Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk, were in Washington this week. Musk came for his fifth visit to Team Trump since the election to talk about ways to improve the nation's infrastructure. One idea he mentioned was building tunnels under cities. Musk's companies SpaceX, Tesla and SolarCity have a lot at stake with any changes that could occur in government contracting and energy tax breaks and subsidies. It's been fascinating to watch how he's basically dodged criticism for advising the president. Why is Musk Teflon while Uber's chief executive, Travis Kalanick, was pressured a few weeks ago by anti Trump employees and customers to resign from the president's advisory council? Bezos was also here this week to announce the first paying customer for Blue Origin, his rocket company. A day later, he announced another customer for Blue Origin rockets. Blue Origin probably won't be profitable for a long time, but the company is now officially more than just a billionaire hobby horse. Farhad: Now to tech and Trump. Under the new president we have a new F.C.C. commissioner, possibly a different standard for antitrust review on big mergers, and maybe lots of money for infrastructure that might seep into the tech economy. Can you go over the biggest tech policy changes we're expecting under Trump? Cecilia: Ajit Pai, Trump's pick to head the F.C.C., has quickly repealed rules created during the Obama administration. The first big real target will be broadband privacy. Mr. Pai started by shelving new data security rules that were supposed to go into effect this month. He is also targeting broader broadband privacy rules approved last fall that would have forced AT T and Comcast to ask for a consumer's permission to track browsing and app activity. If he doesn't scrap those rules first, Congress will. Mr. Pai's Republican allies, Senator Jeff Flake of Arizona and Representative Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee, are in the process of rescinding the F.C.C. privacy rules through the Congressional Review Act, which is basically a tactic used by Congress to remove recently adopted agency rules. Farhad: Wait, wait, what would these rules have done? From what I've read, they would have just stopped your broadband company from tracking you unless they asked permission. That seems ... good? Cecilia: Yep, and that "opt in" mandate underlies potential fortunes for advertisers. If given the explicit choice of getting tracked online, many consumers would say no. Pai has an interesting argument against the broadband rules that says a lot about his view of the tech industry. He says broadband providers shouldn't have heavy handed privacy rules when Google and Facebook don't. Privacy violations by telecom and tech companies should be policed by the Federal Trade Commission, he argues. Cecilia: The next big target will be net neutrality, which ensures equal access to all content online. Pai wants a diluted version of the rules put in place by Tom Wheeler, his predecessor. He's going to permit zero rating and could also be flexible on things like sponsored data, which is when a company like AT T gives unlimited streaming of DirecTV channels for its mobile customers. That offering would make it much harder for a streaming company like Vimeo to compete. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Technology |
The calls to the White House come at least once a week. "Murdoch here," the blunt, accented voice on the other end of the line says. For decades, Rupert Murdoch has used his media properties to establish a direct line to Australian and British leaders. But in the 44 years since he bought his first newspaper in the United States, he has largely failed to cultivate close ties to an American president. Until now. Mr. Murdoch and President Trump both forged in New York's tabloid culture, one as the owner of The New York Post, the other as its perfect subject have traveled in the same circles since the 1970s, but they did not become close until recently, when their interests began to align more than ever before. Since Inauguration Day, Mr. Murdoch has talked regularly with Mr. Trump, often bypassing the White House chief of staff, Gen. John F. Kelly, who screens incoming calls. Mr. Murdoch has felt comfortable enough to offer counsel that others may shy away from, such as urging the president to stop tweeting and advising him to improve his relationship with Secretary of State Rex W. Tillerson. Mr. Murdoch also has weekly conversations with Mr. Trump's son in law and senior adviser, Jared Kushner. Before the news broke that Mr. Murdoch had agreed to sell vast parts of his 21st Century Fox to the Walt Disney Company for 52.4 billion, Mr. Trump called him to get his assurance that the Fox News Channel, the highly rated cable network and frequent bullhorn of the Trump agenda, would not be affected. On Dec. 14, the day the agreement was announced, Mr. Trump let the world know that he had made a congratulatory call to Mr. Murdoch. Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the White House press secretary, also passed along the president's belief that the deal would be "a great thing" for jobs a claim disputed by Wall Street analysts. After decades of ups and downs, Mr. Trump now counts Mr. Murdoch as one of his closest confidants. The two titans made a show of their improved relationship in June 2016, when Mr. Murdoch visited Mr. Trump at the Trump International Golf Links Scotland before a group of reporters. They appeared together again at a black tie dinner in May in honor of American and Australian veterans who fought side by side in World War II. Mr. Murdoch introduced the president as "my friend Donald J. Trump" before they engaged in a brief hug. They are opposites in personal style, with Mr. Murdoch gruff and low key, preferring schlubby newsrooms to Mr. Trump's gilded towers and glitz. But they have much in common. Both were born to wealth, but at a distance from the centers of power. Mr. Trump grew up in Jamaica, Queens, the son of a real estate developer content to earn his fortune in the boroughs outside Manhattan so close but so far from glittering Midtown, where the son would make his name and his home. Mr. Murdoch, the son of a journalist who became the owner of a newspaper chain, spent his childhood in Melbourne, Australia. Mr. Murdoch, 86, and Mr. Trump, 71, are also alike in that they were both sent to military schools as boys before going on to outdo their fathers in the family businesses. Although both men parlayed their inheritances into global power, they have stubbornly viewed themselves as outsiders at odds with the establishment. When Mr. Murdoch entered the British newspaper market in 1968, London society shunned him and his vulgar tabloids, The Sun and The News of the World, which he used to wound his enemies and advance his political interests. Mr. Trump withstood a similar wariness among the elite after he made himself a Manhattan player through his brazen deal making and hucksterism. To make their way upward in New York, both men relied on a powerful friend, the lawyer Roy M. Cohn, a ruthless fixer who made his name in the 1950s as the chief counsel to Joseph McCarthy, the Red baiting senator, before representing some of the city's most powerful figures, including the mobster John Gotti and the New York Yankees owner George Steinbrenner. Mr. Cohn connected Mr. Trump to Mr. Murdoch and the tabloid he bought in 1976, The New York Post. The upstart developer saw that he could benefit from the brash daily especially its Page Six gossip column, which started a year after Mr. Murdoch became the paper's owner. "Trump was interested in specifically Rupert's ownership of The Post, because Page Six is very important to his rising stature in New York City and branding efforts," said Roger J. Stone Jr., a Republican operative who has known both men for decades. Mr. Trump seemed to revel in the tabloid's saucy coverage of his personal life. In 1989 and 1990, The Post turned out a series of front pages on Mr. Trump's split from his first wife, Ivana Trump, and his affair with Marla Maples. The stream of headlines in bold block letters culminated in a quote attributed to Ms. Maples: "Best Sex I've Ever Had." Mr. Trump's enthusiastic response to the planned Disney Fox megadeal may have been lost in the swirl of Washington news had it not been for his vehement opposition to another recent attempt at media consolidation AT T's proposed 85.4 billion acquisition of Time Warner, the parent company of CNN, a frequent target of the president's "fake news" complaints. While so far making no move on the Disney Fox plan, the Justice Department has sued to block the AT T Time Warner deal on antitrust grounds in a rare instance of governmental interference in a merger of two companies that do not directly compete with each other. Even as Mr. Murdoch enjoyed an open invitation to 10 Downing Street, he found that his overtures to United States presidents mostly fell short. And before making their alliance, Mr. Murdoch and Mr. Trump had to put their old spats behind them. Before the recent rapprochement, Mr. Murdoch privately called Mr. Trump "phony," and accused him of exaggerating his net worth. For his part, Mr. Trump once threatened to sue Mr. Murdoch for libel after The Post reported that the storied Maidstone Club in East Hampton, N.Y., had denied him membership. During much of the 2016 presidential campaign, Mr. Murdoch who initially swooned over Jeb Bush stood against Mr. Trump, declaring on Twitter that he was "embarrassing his friends" and "the whole country." The Wall Street Journal, Mr. Murdoch's crown jewel, ran an editorial calling the candidate a "catastrophe." The Post led with the headline "Don Voyage" and declared, "Trump is toast." Mr. Trump shot back on Twitter: "Wow, I have always liked the nypost but they have really lied when they covered me in Iowa." He also went after the Journal: "Look how small the pages have become WSJ," he wrote. "Looks like a tabloid saving money I assume!" The Post ended up endorsing Mr. Trump, with reservations, in the New York primary, but refrained from endorsing either him or Hillary Clinton in the general election. More recently, Mr. Murdoch expressed exasperation with Mr. Trump's immigration policies. In response to the White House ban on travel of people from majority Muslim nations, his company, 21st Century Fox, released a memo offering assistance to any employees hurt by the executive order and reminding them that "21CF is a global company, proudly headquartered in the U.S., founded by and comprising at all levels of the business immigrants." In August, James Murdoch, the younger son of Mr. Murdoch and the chief executive of 21st Century Fox, condemned the president's response to the riots in Charlottesville, Va. The man partly responsible for the detente was another moneyed outsider who craved status and respect: Jared Kushner. When Mr. Kushner bought The New York Observer in 2006, he wasted little time reaching out to Mr. Murdoch. "He wanted to be Murdoch," said one person close to both men at the time. In early 2016, after a presidential debate during which Mr. Trump faced aggressive questioning from Megyn Kelly, then a Fox News anchor, the candidate sent Mr. Kushner to Mr. Murdoch on a media diplomacy mission. Mr. Kushner's wife, Ivanka Trump, is close friends with Mr. Murdoch's third wife, Wendi Deng. Mr. Murdoch and Ms. Deng attended the Kushner Trump wedding in 2009 at the Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster, N.J., and the Murdoch daughters, Grace and Chloe, served as flower girls. In June 2016, when Mr. Trump appeared to be the inevitable Republican nominee, Mr. Murdoch made the visit to Trump International Golf Links Scotland. Completed in 2012 over the objections of nearby residents, the course lies 35 miles from the herring fishing port of Rosehearty, the town left behind by the Murdoch clan when it emigrated to Australia in 1884. Mr. Murdoch arrived with the former model Jerry Hall, his fourth wife, whom he married in March 2016. Under cloudy skies, the newlyweds toured the property in a golf cart large enough for four. Mr. Trump was at the wheel, with Ms. Hall seated beside him. Mr. Murdoch, wearing sunglasses, sat on a backward facing rumble seat as they made their way to the Trump refurbished Macleod House, a 15th century mansion, where they had dinner. Mr. Trump's mended relationship with Mr. Murdoch has not gone unnoticed by Time Warner executives, who wonder why AT T's attempt to buy the company has run into regulatory trouble at a time when the president has smiled on the Disney Fox deal. "If you look at the facts of our case, even before you heard the administration's endorsement of the Disney Fox deal, it was hard to understand how the Justice Department could reach a decision to block our deal," Jeffrey L. Bewkes, the chief executive of Time Warner, said. A spokesman for the White House, Raj Shah, said that Mr. Trump hadn't spoken to Attorney General Jeff Sessions about the AT T Time Warner deal and that "no White House official was authorized to speak with the Department of Justice on this matter." The way CNN's parent company views it, Fox News has adopted a role similar to the one played by Mr. Murdoch's British tabloids when they helped advance the agendas of British leaders. As Mr. Blair learned, however, even a special relationship with the media baron can sour quickly. He and Mr. Murdoch once so close that Mr. Blair was the godfather to Grace Murdoch are no longer on speaking terms. During the British government's 2012 inquiry into the mogul's political influence, the former prime minister described what it was like when a story subject falls out of favor with a Murdoch controlled tabloid. "Once they're against you, that's it," Mr. Blair said. "It's full on, full frontal, day in, day out, basically a lifetime commitment." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Media |
Willem Dafoe and Robert Pattinson have two of the most mesmerizing and pleasurably unnerving physiognomies in movies. In "The Lighthouse," a sly American Gothic set in the late 19th century, the director Robert Eggers lights and frames the actors to emphasize every bony plane, every facial crease, hollow and pinprick of stubble. The stark black and white cinematography deepens the film's shadows and unease, but it also throws these grizzled faces into relief, sharpening their cheekbones and revealing the death's head under each man's grimace . A horror movie about inner and outer darkness, the film begins with two lighthouse workers, Wake (Dafoe) and Winslow (Pattinson), arriving on a small, desolate island. Over many solitary days and nights, they work, eat, drink and dig at each other, establishing a bristling antagonism born of temperament and boredom or maybe just narrative convenience. Wake likes to yammer, but the men aren't ready conversationalists. In time, their minds and tongues are loosened by alcohol and perhaps a simple human need for companionship. The wind howls, the camera prowls, the sea roars and Eggers flexes his estimable filmmaking technique as an air of mystery rapidly thickens. Much as he did in his shivery feature debut, "The Witch," about an isolated family of fundamentalists coming unglued in early 17th century America, Eggers makes the secluded world in "The Lighthouse" at once recognizable and eerily unfamiliar, a combination that draws you in but makes you feel unsettled. (He shares script credit with Max Eggers, his brother.) The image of the lighthouse evokes visions of high seas and storms as well as the promise of safe passage and harbor. But here, that romantic idea soon sours. Looming against the perennially gray sky this brick tower looks utilitarian and ominous, a twin to the 19th century's industrial smokestacks. An old salt with alarmed hair and a wedge shaped beard worthy of Melville, Wake is the veteran keeper of the lighthouse flame, the guardian of its traditions, language and superstitions. (Never ever kill a sea gull, he cautions.) Dafoe's mercurial movements, his rippling face and spooky smiles, dovetail beautifully, articulating Wake's moods and adding to the destabilization. He barks orders, sings a shanty, indulges in sentimentality and turns his yowling mouth into an abyss. To Winslow's mounting irritation, Wake also guards the key to the lantern room, a glowing, near mystical chamber with a magnificent prism that provides the film with blasts of bright light. With control and precision, expressionist lighting and an old fashioned square film frame that adds to the claustrophobia, Eggers seamlessly blurs the lines between physical space and head space. The men in "The Lighthouse" don't use the therapy speak of contemporary American cinema (or life) with its endless overexplaining. Instead, Wake and Winslow come into focus through guttural exchanges, their physicality ( farting , sweating, straining) and their built and natural environments. The sparse grass and rocky outcrops, the cramped rooms and vertiginous stairs speak to the men's existential condition the hardness, confinement and downward spiraling while (as in "The Witch") a menacing animal suggests a supernatural threat. Early on, Wake strips as if to bathe in the lighthouse's radiance and the story takes a turn for the amusingly perverse as trouble starts creeping around the edges. The men's antagonism deepens as Wake jabbers and Winslow rages, a fury that Pattinson makes visible with eyes that widen into bulges and tremors of emotion that ping under a masklike vacancy. One man masturbates in a frenzy; at another point, he spies on the other grinding alone. The men's sloppy, alcohol saturated time together produces intimacy but also menace. They laugh, descending into riotous drunkenness and finding connection that both they and Eggers skitter around. The film itself doesn't so much deepen as continue to glide on its seductive surfaces and teasing promise. "The Lighthouse" is largely without women. But their traces are strewn throughout, surfacing in the men's anecdotes (their stories obscure as much as they reveal) and in a mermaid figurine that Winslow finds. He retrieves the crude statuette through a tear in his mattress, digging it out of the hairy stuffing with probing fingers that Eggers who has the eye of a miniaturist shows in close up. (The scene evokes Harvey Keitel stroking a hole in Holly Hunter's stocking in "The Piano," another 19th century Gothic tale.) For Winslow, the mermaid is a fetish, a replacement for something that remains elusive and that as a flashback suggests he can't fully voice. The story in "The Lighthouse" is thin enough to invite plentiful interpretations about masculinity, homosocial relations and desire, even if its more suggestive theme is Wake's punishing exploitation of Winslow. (It recalls Leslie Fiedler's observation that "the proper subject" of the American Gothic is slavery.) The film's more sustained pleasures, though, are its form and style, its presumptive influences (von Stroheim's "Greed," German Expressionism), the frowning curve of Winslow's mustache, the whites of eyes rolled back in terror. Eggers meticulously sets the scene, adds texture and builds tension and mystery from men locked in battle and sometimes in embrace. He has created a story about an age old struggle, one that is most satisfyingly expressed in this film's own tussle between genre and its deviations. Rated R for nudity, salty language and violence toward animals. Running time: 1 hour 49 minutes. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Movies |
Lining the southern section of the island of Manhattan like bristles on a brush, some decaying piers with their dilapidated buildings remain symbols of failed promises and discarded proposals. And while some successes involved waterfront developments in public parks, a new wave of commercial projects offering bistros, hotels and apartments is setting a more aggressive course to dust off these shoreline relics. "We feel like, what took the city so long? Boston and San Francisco embraced retail on their waterfronts a long time ago," said Peter Poulakakos, a local restaurateur who has teamed with the Dermot Company, a residential developer, on two of the planned pier makeovers in Manhattan. Perhaps the most anticipated project, owing to its history and challenges, is Pier A Harbor House, a restaurant and event space opening next spring at the foot of West Street, in the financial district, in a major public private deal. The pier's three level, 38,000 square foot Beaux Arts building originally housed the city's docks department and later served as a place to greet arriving dignitaries, like King George VI during the 1939 World's Fair, according to historical accounts. Later it served as a command post for the city's fire boats. But after an earlier development plan failed, the clock topped building has mostly sat vacant for decades, save for pigeons and raccoons. Mr. Poulakakos, whose restaurants includes Ulysses, the Dead Rabbit and Harry's Cafe and Steak, said the Harbor House was expected to reopen next May. Its first two floors would serve patrons such seaside fare as beer and oysters, while a third floor, with a stage, would be used for events like weddings. In a 25 year deal valued at 41 million, Mr. Poulakakos and Dermot will lease the space from the Battery Park City Authority, the state agency that is responsible for renovating the city owned Pier A. The development team is also spending 20 million to refurbish the interior, adding tufted leather banquettes, a 128 foot long bar, and a stained glass ceiling fixture adorned with a large "A," according to renderings. Much of the renovation is complete. Over the last five years, the authority repaired masonry pilings, added new plumbing and electrical systems and replaced a copper roof, as part of a 37 million project that included 30 million in city funds, said Gwen Dawson, the authority vice president overseeing construction. Separately, Hurricane Sandy set back the project for several months, with about 4.3 million in damage resulting from five feet of water rushing through parts of the building. Wiring and walls had to be replaced, and the exterior doors are now a more water impervious mahogany, instead of pine, Ms. Dawson said. Insurance covered most of the tab, she added. Drew Spitler, the director of development for Dermot, whose mostly residential development portfolio includes One Hanson Place, a Brooklyn condo conversion, said Pier A had also been outfitted with refrigerators, tables and chairs on wheels so they can be whisked away in the event of a severe storm. "We are building assuming that a major storm will happen again in the next 25 years," Mr. Spitler said on a recent tour. This month, the city agreed to add 5 million to build a new plaza outside Pier A, which had been stalled because of a lack of funds. Because the area teems with tourists, the Pier A business cannot block access to public paths with its dinner tables. The same development team has had to be even more creative, and spend more money, to redevelop a pier on the other side of Battery Park, at Manhattan's tip. That 100 million project focuses on another historic Beaux Arts building, the green shaded Battery Maritime Building, once a major transportation hub, extending into New York Harbor. Today, the 1909 building, whose architectural details include metalwork in the shape of anchors and life preservers, mostly serves as the terminal for Governors Island ferries. In the upper stories of the structure, which is next door to the Whitehall Terminal for the Staten Island Ferry, Mr. Poulakakos and Dermot are developing a 61 room boutique hotel and a restaurant that are scheduled to open in 2015. Commercial uses for public piers in New York is not new. Chelsea Piers, the giant sports complex on the Hudson River occupying Piers 59 to 61, after all, has hosted weddings, golfers and TV and film productions, since the mid 1990s. Before their renovation, the state owned properties had faced the threat of demolition. None Testing the Limits: Only three of New York's 25 tallest residential buildings have completed safety tasks required by the city. The Downside to Life in a Supertall: 432 Park faces some significant design problems, and other luxury high rises may share its fate. Luxury Developers' Loophole: Soaring towers are able to push high into the sky because of a loophole in the city's labyrinthine zoning laws. An Evolving Skyline: The high rise building boom has transformed the city's skyline in recent years. Its impact will echo for years to come. Hidden Feats: Our critic looks at some supertall N.Y.C. buildings and how the ingenuity of engineers helped build landmarks. And at the adjacent Hudson River Park, Pier 40, collects fees for parking, though that revenue is now largely seen as inadequate to cover the huge costs of running the parent park. Other concessionaires, like kayak rental slots, dot the park, which run from Chambers Street to Midtown. But the hybrid model seems more viable these days. Pier 15, which opened on the East River by John Street in 2011, offers a checkerboard of lawns and boardwalks on its upper level, which also provides views of the rigging on Wavertree, a preserved 19th century sailing ship. And private cruise boats can anchor along the ground level, where the Watermark Bar features a tequila and cucumber cocktail for 14. Similarly, at Pier 57, on the West Side, a 200 million plan to add sushi bars and shops to a former waterside passenger terminal continues. But redevelopment schemes for piers are by no means a guaranteed hit. Indeed, the 125,000 square foot mall that was built at Pier 17 in 1985, at the South Street Seaport on the East River, struggled to catch on for years, through several iterations. And that pier had pedigree; it was developed by the Rouse Company, which in the 1970s created Boston's popular Faneuil Hall Marketplace. Issues that dogged Pier 17 when it was built still resonate today, including to what degree private interests should control public seafront. The Howard Hughes Corporation, which holds Pier 17's lease and has won city permission to build a larger shopping center on it, with more public space, has also unveiled plans for a 50 story hotel and apartment tower on an adjacent site, which requires separate approvals. Some neighbors, though, have said they are opposed to that part of the project, questioning its compatibility with the area's history and aesthetic. When the residential plan comes up for review next year, it might be a tough sell. An earlier proposal by General Growth Properties, the former leaseholder, to build a 42 story apartment building encountered fierce opposition and was ultimately rejected, noted Anthony Notaro Jr., vice chairman of the local community board. "These are publicly owned properties, and the public has concerns," he said. "We expect this project will become a major issue." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Real Estate |
Wednesday night, in no particular order in the space of an hour: The N.B.A. suspended its season. Tom Hanks announced that he and his wife have the coronavirus. President Trump, who had spent time hate tweeting Vanity Fair magazine earlier in the day, banned travel from Europe. And, of course, the former vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin, wearing a pink, fluffy bear outfit, sang Sir Mix A Lot's "Baby Got Back" on "The Masked Singer." Correction: Badly sang it. In perhaps the most accurate assessment of the night, Josh Jordan tweeted: "We are living in a simulation and it has collapsed on itself." I do not believe in the simulation hypothesis, which he is joking about here. For those not familiar, it posits that what we think of as reality is not actually real. Instead, we are living in a complex simulation that was probably created by a supercomputer, invented by an obviously superior being. Everything's fake news, if you will, or really just designed as a giant video game to amuse what would have to be the brainiest teenagers who ever lived. But while most people think they actually do exist, wouldn't it be nice to have a blame free explanation to cope with the freak show that has become our country and the world? (I vote yes, even if some quantum computer just made me type that.) It would be, which is why the idea of the simulation hypothesis has been a long running, sort of joke among some of Silicon Valley's top players, some of whom take it more seriously than you might imagine. Some background: While the basic idea around the simulation hypothesis really goes back to philosophers like Descartes, we got a look see at this tech heavy idea in the 1999 movie "The Matrix." In the film, Keanu Reeves's character, Neo, is jarred out of his anodyne existence to find that he has been living, unaware, in a virtual world in which the energy from his body, and everyone else's, is used as fuel for the giant computer. Neo's body is literally jacked with all kinds of scary looking plugs, and he finally becomes powerful enough to wave his hands around real fast and break the bad guys into itty bitty bytes. The idea that we're all living in a simulation took off big time among tech folks in 2003 when Oxford University's big thinker of the future, Nick Bostrom, wrote a paper on the subject. He focused on the likely amazing computing abilities of advanced civilizations and the fact that it is not too crazy to imagine that the devices they make could simulate human consciousness. So why not do that to run what Mr. Bostrom called the "ancestor simulation" game? The ancestors, by the way, are us. My mind was blown again a few years later on the topic. During an interview that Walt Mossberg and I did in 2016 with the tech entrepreneur Elon Musk, an audience member asked Mr. Musk what he thought of the idea. As it turned out, he had thought a lot about it, saying that he had had "so many simulation discussions it's crazy." Which was not to say the discussions were crazy. In fact, Mr. Musk quickly made the case that video game development had become so sophisticated that it was "indistinguishable from reality." And, as to that "base reality" we think we are living in? Not so much, said Mr. Musk. In fact, he insisted this was a good thing, arguing that "either we're going to create simulations that are indistinguishable from reality or civilization will cease to exist. Those are the two options." I would like to tell you that was not the last time I heard that formulation, or one like it, from the tech moguls I have covered. The Zappos founder Tony Hsieh once told me we were in one after we did an interview, as we were exiting the stage. I think he was kidding, but he also went over why it might be so and why it was important to bend your mind to consider the possibility. After hearing the simulation idea so many times, I started to figure out that it was less about the idea that none of this is real. Instead, these tech inventors used it more to explain, inspire and even to force innovation, rather than to negate reality and its inherently hopeless messiness. In fact, it was freeing. At least that is my take, giving me something that I could like about them, since there was so much not to like. To my mind, tech leaders do not use the simulation hypothesis as an excuse to do whatever they want. They're not positing that nothing matters because none of this is happening. Instead, it allows them to hold out the possibility that this game could also change for the better rather than the worse. And, perhaps, we as pawns have some influence on that outcome too and could turn our story into a better one. Perhaps this optimism was manifesting in the hopeful news that the Cleveland Clinic may have come up with a faster test for the coronavirus. Or that Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and a key member of the coronavirus task force, exists as a scientific superhero to counter all the bad information that is spewed out to vulnerable citizens like my own mother by outlets like Fox News. In fact, it felt like a minor miracle when the tireless Dr. Fauci popped up on Sean Hannity's show this week to kindly school him on his irresponsible downplaying and deep state conspiracy mongering of the health crisis. Pushing back on the specious claim that the coronavirus is just like the flu a notion also promoted by Mr. Trump Dr. Fauci said, "It's 10 times more lethal than the seasonal flu," to a temporarily speechless Mr. Hannity. "You got to make sure that people understand that!" I sure have Dr. Fauci to thank for saying that, which he repeated in congressional testimony too. In all this mess, it felt like a positive turn in the game. But just in case a game it is, I'll also raise a simulated glass to those teenagers somewhere out there pushing all the buttons to make it so. Not so much for Sarah Palin's singing, but I'll take that too. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Opinion |
Life is not fair, I know, but this is getting ridiculous. Whenever a big corporation settles an enforcement matter with prosecutors, penalties levied in the case and they can be enormous are usually paid by the company's shareholders. Yet the people who actually did the deeds or oversaw the operations rarely so much as open their wallets. Economists have a name for this sort of thing: It's called a perverse incentive. Essentially, company executives and other major players are encouraged to take outsize risks because they can earn princely amounts from their actions. At the same time, they know that they rarely have to pay any fines or face other costly consequences from taking dangerous actions. Changing this troubling dynamic won't be easy. But it is the goal of two new proposals worth consideration. One will be put to a vote of Citigroup shareholders at the bank's annual meeting this year. The other is outlined in a paper in the Michigan State Journal of Business and Securities Law. Let's take up the Citigroup proposal first. It would require that top executives at the company contribute a substantial portion of their compensation each year to a pool of money that would be available to pay penalties if legal violations were uncovered at the bank. To ensure that the money would be available for a long enough period investigations into wrongdoing take years to develop the proposal would require that the executives keep their pay in the pool for 10 years. The proposal would also require that Citigroup advise shareholders of forfeitures that resulted under the program. And the money could be tapped even if the executives contributing to it were not responsible for the wrongdoing. The man behind this proposal is Bartlett Naylor, financial policy advocate at the Congress Watch division of Public Citizen, a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization in Washington. "Bank managers are paid to keep a bank compliant with the law," Mr. Naylor said in an interview last week. "When the bank is not compliant, those managers should be held accountable. Docking their paycheck is one way to do that." Mr. Naylor said he began working on the proposal after the Justice Department announced a 7 billion settlement in July with Citigroup over mortgage improprieties. "Citi employees committed these unlawful acts," Mr. Naylor wrote in a statement supporting the proposal. "They did not contribute to this penalty payment, but instead undoubtedly received bonuses." 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. Citigroup, not surprisingly, asked the Securities and Exchange Commission for permission to exclude the policy from its 2015 shareholder proxy. The S.E.C. said no, and Citi's shareholders will vote on the proposal when they meet on April 28. The proposal is nonbinding; Citigroup need not abide by its terms even if a majority of shareholders favor it. Citi has urged shareholders to reject the proposal, saying that its current policies do the job and that the terms of Mr. Naylor's proposal would put the bank at a disadvantage to its peers. But if broad support for the proposal emerges, Citi might throw in the towel. The proposal has additional heft, Mr. Naylor said, because William Dudley, the president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, has publicly suggested a similar approach. In a speech in October, he described the benefits of a so called performance bond to be issued to bank executives. "In the case of a large fine, the senior management and the material risk takers would forfeit their performance bond," Mr. Dudley said. "Not only would this deferred debt compensation discipline individual behavior and decision making, but it would provide strong incentives for individuals to flag issues when problems develop." Another way to overcome this type of perverse incentive is a proposal by Greg Zipes, a trial lawyer for the Office of the United States Trustee, the nation's watchdog over the bankruptcy system, who also teaches at the New York University School for Professional Studies. Mr. Zipes wrote an article for the Michigan law journal titled "Ties That Bind: Codes of Conduct That Require Automatic Reductions to the Pay of Directors, Officers, and Their Advisors for Failures of Corporate Governance." (The views in the article do not represent the views of the Justice Department or the United States Trustee Program, Mr. Zipes was quick to point out.) In the article, Mr. Zipes calls for the creation of a contract to be signed by a company's top executives that could be enforced after a significant corporate governance failure. Executives would agree to pay back 25 percent of their gross compensation for the three years before the beginning of improprieties. The agreement would be in effect whether or not the executives knew about the misdeeds inside their companies. It's only fitting for executives to hold themselves accountable for costly misdeeds, Mr. Zipes argues, even if they were unaware of them. After all, top managers often take credit and receive bonuses for positive corporate activities in which they had little role or knew nothing about. What kinds of governance failings would be covered by the contracts? Mr. Zipes identified nine possibilities, among them imposing a reduction if a company pleaded guilty to a crime. Another might occur if an executive signed a financial document filed with the S.E.C. that subsequently proved false and required an earnings restatement of at least 5 million. Corporate executives are unlikely to sign such codes of conduct of their own volition, Mr. Zipes conceded. But independent corporate directors who are serious about their fiduciary duties to shareholders could push for these kinds of contracts, he argued. If a few corporate executives signed these kinds of agreements, and if they publicized their actions, others might feel compelled to follow. Consumers who are interested in holding executives accountable could also play a role by boycotting products at companies whose executives declined to sign such contracts. "This idea doesn't require regulation and it doesn't require new laws," Mr. Zipes said in an interview last week. "Executives can sign the binding code of conduct or not, but the idea is that the marketplace would reward those who do." Who knows how many Citi shareholders will support Mr. Naylor's proposal? But if a significant number do, that would be a big step forward in helping avoid another plague of corporate disasters. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Economy |
CINCINNATI If you're a fan of classical music, chances are you've fantasized about what you would do with a time machine. You could visit Paris in 1913, to see just how riotous, if at all, the audience was at the premiere of Stravinsky's "The Rite of Spring." Or Munich, where the stubbornly unresolved chord of Wagner's "Tristan und Isolde" was first unleashed on the world in 1865. The most popular destination, however, might be Vienna, for Beethoven's Akademie concert of 1808 one of the most important nights of his life, and the stuff of legend. Time travel may be impossible, but the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra offered the next best thing in a marvelous, if anachronistically lavish, re creation at Music Hall here over the weekend. That night in Vienna, Beethoven unveiled the Fifth Symphony and the "Pastoral" Sixth. And the Fourth Piano Concerto and "Choral Fantasy," in his last public appearance as a pianist. Any one of those pieces would make for a noteworthy evening; together, they were overwhelming. A critic who was there for the magazine Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung wrote that judging them all would be "downright impossible." The composer Johann Friedrich Reichardt said it was proof that "one may have too much of a good thing." Never mind that the experience of the concert itself could not have been that enjoyable. It was Dec. 22 frosty outside, and not much better inside the Theater an der Wien as the audience was made to shiver through several hours of music. The orchestra was under rehearsed and patched with amateurs; the soprano was a late replacement; the "Choral Fantasy" derailed so severely, Beethoven had to stop and restart it. Conditions were much more favorable at Music Hall on Saturday. For one, there was heat. And the able Cincinnatians led by Louis Langree, who has proved his Classical era bona fides summer after summer at the Mostly Mozart Festival in New York were far from amateurs. Beethoven himself may not have been present, but the pianist Inon Barnatan, charismatic and often luminous, was more than an acceptable stand in. With the distance of two centuries, the now famous music also went down much more easily than it must have in Vienna. It was broken up by intermissions and a generously long dinner break featuring the indefatigable Mr. Langree in a piano performance at Music Hall's pop up biergarten that stretched the concert to six hours. Perhaps a bit unfortunately, it never approached the arduousness experienced by Beethoven's contemporaries. But, in a year when celebrating the 250th anniversary of Beethoven's birth is all but inescapable, this was nonetheless a welcome, and informative, addition to the festivities. Because the Akademie concert, for all its sensational history, is also a rich snapshot of Beethoven at his most prolific and prosperous and a testament to the brilliance of a composer who, in one evening, could present four singular works linked only by their mastery of craft. Mr. Langree, speaking from the podium before the concert on Saturday, took the spirit of the Akademie even further, describing it as an encapsulation of the composer's beliefs in the power of art and human potential. This kind of rosiness perpetuates the most dubious cliches of Beethoven's greatness; but, to Mr. Langree's credit, he carried out that statement like a thesis to be proven throughout the night. His conducting tended toward the more lush side of Beethoven interpretations not nearly as ponderous as the Romanticized heft that dominated much of the 20th century, yet lacking the dashing lightness of historically informed performance. The "Pastoral" Symphony flowed more like a river than a brook; often elevated, it had little room for the shock value of the fourth movement's thunderstorm. The Fifth had more of a level head, with a refreshing emphasis on rhythmic ingenuity over grandeur that made for a wonderfully startling turn into the jubilant finale. There was more to the orchestra's sound, however. It was constantly in flux, adapting to the energy of each piece. "Ah! perfido," an underrated concert aria from the 1790s, had a Mozartean modesty in captivating counterpoint to the Olympic vocal part, sung with a touch of Wagner by the soprano Dorothea Roschmann. (Another soprano, Janai Brugger, stood out in program's two sections from the Mass in C, her honeyed tone elegantly woven with the strings behind her onstage.) Mr. Barnatan's pianism was playfully agile in the concerto, yet delicate, defiantly so, against the menacingly united front of the orchestra in the second movement. When he returned later for an improvisation the portion of the Akademie that you truly would need a time machine to know in its original form he happily embodied Beethoven the entertainer, who was known to spin variations on a theme for hours. In this case, Mr. Barnatan chose the Shepherd's Hymn from the "Pastoral," dressing it up with an encore's showiness and toying with shifts between major and minor keys. He remained onstage for the "Choral Fantasy," which Beethoven hastily wrote as a finale for the Akademie, utilizing all the instrumental and vocal forces of the program for a paean to art and music. But, like many of his pieces d'occasion (just listen to "Wellington's Victory"), it's among his thinner efforts. You had to admire the earnestness, then, of Saturday's performance: Mr. Barnatan milking what integrity he could from the melodramatic opening chords, the May Festival Chorus treating the piece as if it were the "Ode to Joy." Mr. Langree brought them and the orchestra to a swell at the text's mentions of art, love and power insisting, to the end, on the Akademie as a tribute not just to a single composer, but all of humanity. Performed on Saturday and Sunday at Music Hall, Cincinnati. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Music |
It's not just the lungs the pathogen may enter brain cells, causing symptoms like delirium and confusion, scientists reported. The coronavirus targets the lungs foremost, but also the kidneys, liver and blood vessels. Still, about half of patients report neurological symptoms, including headaches, confusion and delirium, suggesting the virus may also attack the brain. A new study offers the first clear evidence that, in some people, the coronavirus invades brain cells, hijacking them to make copies of itself. The virus also seems to suck up all of the oxygen nearby, starving neighboring cells to death. It's unclear how the virus gets to the brain or how often it sets off this trail of destruction. Infection of the brain is likely to be rare, but some people may be susceptible because of their genetic backgrounds, a high viral load or other reasons. "If the brain does become infected, it could have a lethal consequence," said Akiko Iwasaki, an immunologist at Yale University who led the work. The study was posted online on Wednesday and has not yet been vetted by experts for publication. But several researchers said it was careful and elegant, showing in multiple ways that the virus can infect brain cells. Scientists have had to rely on brain imaging and patient symptoms to infer effects on the brain, but "we hadn't really seen much evidence that the virus can infect the brain, even though we knew it was a potential possibility," said Dr. Michael Zandi, consultant neurologist at the National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery in Britain. "This data just provides a little bit more evidence that it certainly can." Dr. Zandi and his colleagues published research in July showing that some patients with Covid 19, the illness caused by the coronavirus, develop serious neurological complications, including nerve damage. In the new study, Dr. Iwasaki and her colleagues documented brain infection in three ways: in brain tissue from a person who died of Covid 19, in a mouse model and in organoids clusters of brain cells in a lab dish meant to mimic the brain's three dimensional structure. Other pathogens including the Zika virus are known to infect brain cells. Immune cells then flood the damaged sites, trying to cleanse the brain by destroying infected cells. The coronavirus is much stealthier: It exploits the brain cells' machinery to multiply, but doesn't destroy them. Instead, it chokes off oxygen to adjacent cells, causing them to wither and die. The researchers didn't find any evidence of an immune response to remedy this problem. "It's kind of a silent infection," Dr. Iwasaki said. "This virus has a lot of evasion mechanisms." These findings are consistent with other observations in organoids infected with the coronavirus, said Alysson Muotri, a neuroscientist at the University of California, San Diego, who has also studied the Zika virus. The coronavirus seems to rapidly decrease the number of synapses, the connections between neurons. "Days after infection, and we already see a dramatic reduction in the amount of synapses," Dr. Muotri said. "We don't know yet if that is reversible or not." The virus infects a cell via a protein on its surface called ACE2. That protein appears throughout the body and especially in the lungs, explaining why they are favored targets of the virus. Previous studies have suggested, based on a proxy for protein levels, that the brain has very little ACE2 and is likely to be spared. But Dr. Iwasaki and her colleagues looked more closely and found that the virus could indeed enter brain cells using this doorway. "It's pretty clear that it is expressed in the neurons and it's required for entry," Dr. Iwasaki said. Her team then looked at two sets of mice one with the ACE2 receptor expressed only in the brain, and the other with the receptor only in the lungs. When researchers introduced the virus into these mice, the brain infected mice rapidly lost weight and died within six days. The lung infected mice did neither. Despite the caveats attached to mouse studies, the results still suggest that virus infection in the brain may be more lethal than respiratory infection, Dr. Iwasaki said. The virus may get to the brain through the olfactory bulb which regulates smell through the eyes or even from the bloodstream. It's unclear which route the pathogen is taking, and whether it does so often enough to explain the symptoms seen in people. "I think this is a case where the scientific data is ahead of the clinical evidence," Dr. Muotri said. Researchers will need to analyze many autopsy samples to estimate how common brain infection is and whether it is present in people with milder disease or in so called long haulers, many of whom have a host of neurological symptoms. Forty percent to 60 percent of hospitalized Covid 19 patients experience neurological and psychiatric symptoms, said Dr. Robert Stevens, a neurologist at Johns Hopkins University. But the symptoms may not all stem from the virus's invasion of brain cells. They may be the result of pervasive inflammation throughout the body. For example, inflammation in the lungs can release molecules that make the blood sticky and clog up blood vessels, leading to strokes. "There's no need for the brain cells themselves to be infected for that to occur," Dr. Zandi said. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Health |
Are the Bears That Good or Are the Falcons That Bad? Bears 30, Falcons 26. If you didn't closely follow the N.F.L. weekend action, you might guess it was a decent game, closely contested. But hidden beneath the score was a most unlikely game, played by two teams whose fortunes are now on drastically different trajectories. The Atlanta Falcons and the Chicago Bears were expected to be OK this season, perhaps .500. Last year they were 7 9 and 8 8. They may still wind up around those marks, but their starts show that one team is reeling and the other seems to be flying high, though there are ripples of concern. After close victories over the Detroit Lions and the Giants, the Bears were close to losing their perfect record on Sunday, falling behind the Falcons, 16 10, at the half and 26 10 through three quarters. Enter Nick Foles. Signed in the off season to a big contract, Foles unaccountably had been beaten out for the starting quarterback job by the three year incumbent, Mitch Trubisky, who has electrified few in Chicago in his tenure. The Bears decided to turn to Foles in the third quarter, still down, 26 10, with more than nine minutes left. But three touchdown passes later, the Bears had completed an improbable comeback. Foles even had two other touchdown passes overturned. Foles is still best remembered for subbing for an injured Carson Wentz and leading the Philadelphia Eagles to their only Super Bowl victory, in the 2017 season. Many fans are still ruing his departure, especially as Wentz has led that team to an uninspiring 0 2 1 start. "It kind of happened out of nowhere," Trubisky told reporters of his abrupt benching. "I just accepted the news." That should end the 3 0 Bears' quarterback controversy but it's still unclear what kind of team Foles is inheriting after a perfect start that's been less than worldbeating. The Bears beat the Lions in Week 1 only after Detroit running back D'Andre Swift dropped a potential game winning pass in the end zone. They beat the Giants in Week 2 after receiver Golden Tate was called for pushing off a defender, nearing a late touchdown. After Sunday's action, there were still eight unbeaten N.F.L. teams. Computer rankings understandably put the Baltimore Ravens and Kansas City Chiefs, who meet Monday night, at the top. Of the unbeatens, the Bears rank last, even behind the Bills. Though the Bears are tied at the top of the N.F.C. North with the Packers, another team that nominally came into the season with questions about its quarterback, Green Bay's 3 0 season looks a lot more impressive. Of course, even if the Bears revert to mediocrity, they still could go, say, 7 6, the rest of the way and comfortably make the playoffs, which were expanded to 14 teams this season. That's true even though a glance down Chicago's roster seems to show little in the way of star power. The Bears have a strong defensive unit on paper, but the skill offensive positions are not chock full of talent. Historically, 3 0 teams make the playoffs much more often than not, but you might not be wise to bet on the Bears at even money. For the Falcons, things are more unambiguous. The thing about sports is, for every comeback, there's a collapse. And, yeah, the Falcons collapsed on Sunday. For the second week in a row. But after dropping their opener to the Seahawks, the Falcons had a nightmare against the Cowboys, blowing a 39 24 lead in the last eight minutes of the game. The debacle was capped by an onside kick by Dallas that several Falcons merely watched as it rolled by before the Cowboys recovered, a phenomenon that had the team's owner convinced that players did not know the rules and its coach arguing on talk radio that they definitely did. Even before this week, Coach Dan Quinn was considered one of the most likely coaches to be fired, perhaps trailing only Adam Gase of the Jets. Sunday's game may have moved him to No. 1. It was the first time in 20 years a team blew two 15 point plus leads in the fourth quarter in the same season, The Associated Press reported. ESPN's live GameCast gave the Falcons up to a 99 percent chance of winning late in both of those games. Like the Bears, the Falcons could still change the course of their season. Given their close losses and the questions around the Bears, you could probably even make a contrarian case that they are the better team. But the bottom line is, the teams both have a 3 in their records after three games. And the Bears are the team with the 3 on the better side. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Sports |
As people, the members of the Fantomes are nasty, trivial and boring. Their music sounds like backing tracks for, say, failed follow up singles by After the Fire, hoping to capitalize on the success of their cover of Falco's "Der Kommissar." There's a lot of chipped nail polish and weeks old eyeliner on everyone. The movie nevertheless operates on the fallacy that the mere fact of being concerned with a band suffices to generate interest. The wide eyed, stringy haired Viena, romancing the pouty (they're all pouty) band member Freddy (Jeremy Allen White), tells him her real name, and when he addresses her with it, shoots back, "don't call me that." Such is the totality of her character. The Mexican born Naranjo, best known for the showy 2011 thriller "Miss Bala," here depicts the toxic gender relations of young louts culminating in assault, forced drugging, and general grossness and incoherence with a stoic grimness that wants to look like resigned wisdom. It's not. Rated R for language, sexuality, drugs and violence. Running time: 1 hour 36 minutes. Rent or buy on Google Play and Amazon Prime Video. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Movies |
I Played in the N.F.L. It Needs Way More Than a Black Anthem. WASHINGTON In response to the Black Lives Matter protests, the N.F.L. has decided to play "Lift Every Voice and Sing," known as the Black national anthem, in Week 1 of its coming season. As a former N.F.L. player, my initial reaction was: Why? Is this a sign that the N.F.L. is serious now, that it truly wants to honor its commitment to promote racial equality in the league? Or is it just a symbolic gesture, one meant to placate its players, without any meaningful change? Don't get me wrong, symbolism can be a powerful thing. "Lift Every Voice and Sing" is a fixture of Black life, a celebration of our tumultuous experience the struggle and triumph, the joy and pain of being Americans. The song was originally a poem, written by James Weldon Johnson, the historian, author and civil rights activist. He was no stranger to police brutality. In his book "Black Manhattan," he describes Black people running away from white mobs during the New York race riot in 1900, only to be violently beaten by the police officers, from whom they had sought protection. An investigation into the police violence was turned on its head and the police were treated as if they were the victims of a crime. Similar themes are playing out today: no accountability and no justice. The N.F.L. has had plenty of opportunities to be on the right side of history. It could have supported Colin Kaepernick and other players who took a knee four years ago to protest police brutality and racial inequities in the U.S. justice system. But the league failed to protect them, when the players needed them most. It was only last month that the league issued an apology of sorts, admitting that "it was wrong for not listening to N.F.L. players earlier." This mea culpa took place only after demands by more than a dozen of its young stars, including Patrick Mahomes, the Kansas City quarterback who was named the Super Bowl's most valuable player last season. How could the N.F.L. be so blind? The author and historian George M. Fredrickson wrote that "societal racism did not require an ideology to sustain it so long as it was taken for granted." The N.F.L. is not immune from this observation. An overwhelming majority of owners in the N.F.L.'s history have been white men. Today, more than two thirds of the players are Black. But across 32 teams, there are only three Black head coaches and two Black general managers. Over the past three years, there have been 20 head coaching vacancies, but Black coaches filled only two of them. And then there are the politics. Almost a dozen owners of N.F.L. teams have supported President Trump by contributing money or hosting fund raisers. This is the man whose words and Twitter account can attest to his racism who has insulted N.F.L. players who took a knee, suggesting that they shouldn't be in the country. If the N.F.L. wants to send an unambiguous message that its concern is genuine and not performative, it must start with this political disconnect. The recent pledge of the N.F.L. and its team owners to contribute 250 million over 10 years to fight systematic racism is not enough. Nor is honoring victims of police brutality with helmet decals and jerseys. (Though this is, no doubt, a departure for a league that has routinely sanctioned its players for minor uniform infractions, including fines of 7,000 for untucked shirts.) The owners must make radical changes. First, they must immediately stop raising money for President Trump. It is impossible to walk in opposite directions at the same time, and supporting the president is the antithesis of supporting the players. Then, using their vast political connections, the owners must personally lobby for issues that matter to the players' coalition, like legislation to reform policing. And they should clean up their own house. The N.F.L. must be committed to hiring more Black head coaches and Black executives. It needs to build a pipeline for junior coaches, who can be promoted to coordinator and play caller positions, jobs that are essential for promotion to head coach. There is other work to be done including by my former team in Washington. Its founder, George Preston Marshall, an avowed segregationist, was the last N.F.L. owner to integrate his team. His statue was finally removed from the front of RFK Stadium, the team's former home, as was his name from the stadium's Ring of Honor. But the team has not removed the club's offensive name, despite decades of opposition from Indigenous people. Dan Snyder, the team's current owner, said in a 2013 interview that he would "never change the name." "It's that simple," he said. "NEVER you can use caps." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Opinion |
As versatile containers for things that otherwise wouldn't have a home, they can control clutter in a hurry and help maintain a sense of order. "We use them all over," said Lauren Buxbaum Gordon, who became Nate Berkus's partner at Nate Berkus Associates, in Chicago, this summer. "People mainly associate baskets with storage for toys, but we use them for towels, accessories, logs for fireplaces, umbrellas." Sometimes, she said, the designers at Nate Berkus even use small baskets to elevate the appearance of simple paper towels in a powder room: "Anything to disguise what's really going on." The best baskets are attractive, but don't call too much attention to themselves. "We look for something that's sturdy, the right price and that blends into the interior," Ms. Buxbaum Gordon said, unless the basket is for a child's room, where they might choose something more playful. "We usually just like them to be quiet." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Real Estate |
"I've seen Black voices become a trend, and I've seen the trend die," Krishan Trotman said. She is starting a new Hachette imprint, Legacy Lit, focused on books by writers of color. This summer, as people across the United States gathered to protest police brutality and racial injustice, Krishan Trotman, an executive editor at Hachette Books, approached the head of the company with a proposal. Ms. Trotman was worried that the conversation about inequality in the literary world would fade away after the marches died down. "I've worked in publishing for more than 15 years, and I've seen Black voices become a trend, and I've seen the trend die," Ms. Trotman said. "We should not have to wait for a moment in the country like George Floyd to wake everybody up to the fact that there are tons of brown faces missing in the room." So she pitched a new publishing imprint called Legacy Lit, dedicated to social justice and focused on works by writers of color. Michael Pietsch, Hachette's chief executive, said yes, and Legacy is now planning to release its first books in January 2022. Publishing houses across the industry are making senior level hires and structural changes to try to make their companies, and the books they acquire, more diverse racially, ethnically and even geographically. While critics, including authors and publishing insiders, have accused publishers of paying lip service to these issues, the companies are increasingly making lasting changes to the way they do business, and in some cases they are already being driven by newly hired executives of color. On Thursday, Simon Schuster also took another step in that direction when it announced the hiring of a new vice president and executive editor: Aminda Marques Gonzalez, the executive editor of The Miami Herald. "Both newspapers and book publishing are too Northeast centric," said Dana Canedy, who became publisher of the Simon Schuster imprint in July. "So she will not be moving to New York. She'll be remaining in Miami." Legacy is the first imprint focused on work by writers of color at Hachette, which, like Simon Schuster, is one of the five largest American publishing companies. 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. With the launch of her own imprint, Ms. Trotman, 39, will join the ranks of a small but growing group of Black publishers who are reshaping the industry, which remains overwhelmingly white. In a company survey released in September, Hachette found that among its new 2019 authors and illustrators, only 22 percent were people of color. Lack of diversity is also an issue within Hachette's work force, which is 69 percent white. Among executives in senior management roles, 80 percent are white. Other major publishing companies are similarly homogeneous in their ethnic and racial makeup:A study conducted this year at Penguin Random House found that around 80 percent of its employees are white. Mr. Pietsch said that he hopes Hachette's new imprint will "bring more attention and focus" to books about social, economic and racial justice, and will help the company attract more authors from diverse backgrounds. "There are a lot of writers who are going to want to work with a Black publisher, and that's an asset," he said in an interview. "There are not very many Black editors and publishers in the business, and that will be meaningful." Other publishers are also launching diversity minded imprints. This summer, the writer and comedian Phoebe Robinson started Tiny Reparations Books, an imprint at Dutton/Plume, where she is acquiring and publishing literary fiction, nonfiction and essay collections by diverse writers. At Random House Children's Books, the young adult author Nicola Yoon and her husband, the novelist David Yoon, founded Joy Revolution, which will publish YA romance by and about people of color. Simon Schuster is taking a different tack. It has chosen to retire 37 Ink, an imprint that focused on marginalized voices. Its publisher, Dawn Davis, was named executive editor of Bon Appetit in August, and she will not be replaced. The imprint's existence "allowed people to say, 'Oh, that's a 37 Ink book, talk to Dawn,'" Ms. Canedy said. "I want everyone publishing what would formerly have been thought of as 37 Ink books. Not to say we didn't have books by and about people of color, but all of the books we acquire by and about people of color should be Simon Schuster books." Ms. Canedy a former New York Times editor and administrator of the Pulitzer Prizes is the first Black person to lead Simon Schuster's namesake imprint. This week, the company announced her first acquisition as an editor, a memoir by the Pulitzer Prize winning Washington Post columnist Eugene Robinson, which will be called "Freedom Lost, Freedom Won." When she was considering the job, Ms. Canedy said, Mr. Robinson was one of the people she called for advice, and he urged her to take it. "As we were about to hang up, I said, 'If I do this, you're going to be the first person I call about coming to Simon Schuster as an author,'" she said. "He thought I was joking." Book editors tend to shuffle from one publishing house to another in a profession that remains fairly insular. But like Ms. Canedy, Ms. Marques, who is Cuban American, comes from the world of journalism. She has been executive editor of The Miami Herald for 10 years and is also the executive editor of its Spanish language sister publication, El Nuevo Herald, and the Bradenton Herald. She became publisher of The Miami Herald and El Nuevo Herald last year. Ms. Marques faced criticism last month after a racist and anti Semitic column appeared in an advertising insert in El Nuevo Herald. In an apology to readers, Ms. Marques said that no one in the paper's leadership saw the supplement before publication. Ms. Marques left her role as publisher soon after, but Kristin Roberts, senior vice president for news at McClatchy, the Herald's parent company, said that move was an organizational decision unrelated to the advertising supplement. Ms. Marques stayed on as executive editor. Ms. Marques has also been a member of the Pulitzer board since 2012, where judges weigh in not only on journalism but on poetry, music, drama and fiction. To plow through all the required reading, she would toggle back and forth between paper copies at home and audiobooks on her commute. Her children got used to hearing a lot of "not now, I'm reading," she said. "When you're deliberating about the best work and you're trying to decide between the finalists, you really need to start thinking in ways that are so granular about what separates one entry from another," she said. "What separates great from excellent, or good from great." In recent months, several other people of color have been named to top executive roles at major publishing companies, high profile hires that could have a lasting impact on the literary landscape. Last month, Crown brought on Madhulika Sikka, executive producer of audio at the Washington Post, as a vice president and executive editor. In July, Penguin Random House hired Lisa Lucas, the executive director of the National Book Foundation, to become the publisher of Pantheon and Schocken Books. This fall, Jamia Wilson was named executive editor of the Random House imprint, and Francis Lam became editor in chief of the lifestyle publisher Clarkson Potter. Ms. Marques said it makes good business sense that American publishers are seeking to better reflect the population in their books, authors and publishing employees. "I wanted to see myself in these books," she said of herself as a reader. "I wanted to be able to relate to the characters, somebody who could understand what I was feeling and going through. That's what our readers want." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Books |
Blanket, a longhaired Persian the color of steel wool, gave up his spot on the dining room table when a reporter came knocking, and made himself scarce. His owner, Grace Coddington, the longtime creative director of Vogue, shrugged and settled down in a chair to discuss her new project: her first perfume, which sat on the table like a rosy pepper mill, its long flacon topped with a stopper modeled on the head of a cat. Ms. Coddington is well known to those in the fashion industry and indeed many outside of it, thanks to a fabulously upstaging turn in the 2009 documentary "The September Issue" and the memoir, "Grace," that followed it as one of the driving forces of Vogue. Ms. Coddington has spent more than 25 years at the magazine, styling its most lavish shoots. So long was her tenure, and so certain her reign, that it came as a shock when she announced in January that she was stepping down from her full time position to become creative director at large, a role that will allow her to do several Vogue shoots a year but also pursue outside projects. In short order, she signed with the new agency Great Bowery, whose stated mission is to create and pursue hitherto unexplored opportunities for the fashion and art stars it represents. The perfume, Grace by Grace Coddington, is the first such effort, though it was actually begun before Ms. Coddington's change of role. It smells primarily of roses, a scent Ms. Coddington associates with childhood ("I've come from a trail of roses," she said) and now can see her through to old age. (She is 74.) It is being produced by the perfume branch of the Comme des Garcons empire, whose resident nose, Christian Astuguevieille, developed the scent with Ms. Coddington and encouraged her to spray it into her hair. She travels in a ready made diffuser, a nimbus of coppery frizz. That this vision found its focus on a cat should come as no surprise to anyone who has followed Ms. Coddington's career. "I'm obsessed with a cat, to a boring degree," Ms. Coddington said, deadpan. Persians have been illustrated in one of Ms. Coddington's books ("The Catwalk Cats") and one of her collaborations (a limited edition series of Balenciaga bags in 2012), and occasionally appeared in her editorial shoots. "I've designed a lot of fragrance bottles," said her friend Fabien Baron, whose company, Baron Baron, designed Ms. Coddington's, "but this is the first cat." It is not, it turns out, the first cat bottle anywhere: Some of Katy Perry's fragrances come in a feline bottle. Fragrance marketing, in fact, is more often the province of celebrities like Ms. Perry (who has a handful) or Paris Hilton (who has more than a dozen). Ms. Coddington professed to be shy about the prospect of selling herself in this way. "My immediate thought was something like, 'But I'm not J. Lo, so how's it going to work?'" she said of the idea to do a perfume at all, which was proposed by a friend and former co worker. "I'm not really a celebrity person, but just by chance, my name is known a little bit, which I keep trying to deny, but it is. Then I think, well, if it is, maybe I'll cash in." Ms. Coddington's fragrance will come in two sizes: a 50 milliliter size for 110 and 100 milliliters for 145. When it arrives on April 19, it will be sold not only at Dover Street Market New York, the multibrand concept store owned by Comme des Garcons (and its Tokyo, London and Beijing stores thereafter), but also on GraceCoddington.com, Ms. Coddington's new website. This is a milestone of sorts for a woman who proudly claims not to know how to use a computer. "This is my computer," she said, gesturing at her assistant, Lauren Bellamy, sitting on a couch nearby. Ms. Coddington is a proud Luddite, the last of an earlier generation that sketches during fashion shows instead of Instagramming and uses the telephone instead of email. (Her cellphone quacks for incoming calls. "Everyone is upset by that, but it makes sure that I hear it," she said.) Which is not to suggest that she is insensible to the changes brewing in the fashion industry, citing the ever increasing pace as one of the reasons for leaving her full time Vogue position. "There are just so many designers," she said. "Seems like there's too many. Certainly too many fashion shows. I can't really see where it's going on a website, isn't it? Since I don't know how to work a website, I guess I won't be looking at magazines anymore." She added: "Will there be any runways anymore? I don't know. They're a dying trade." Change or no change, her phone still quacks and the offers pour in, including a current project to adapt "Grace," Ms. Coddington's memoir, for the screen. She hopes it will focus on her early life in Wales, rather than the well trod fashion years. "I don't want to make another 'Devil Wears Prada' movie, or indeed 'September Issue,' because they did it, and they did it well," she said. Until the film arrives onscreen, the cats Blanket and his companion, Pumpkin remain the stars of Ms. Coddington's show. They do not, however, seem inclined toward perfume. "I should think they'd probably run a mile" from a sniff of it, Ms. Coddington said. But by the end of an hour's interview, Blanket was taking tentative steps toward the table again. He even approached his bottle topper likeness. But the click of a shutter scared him away, and he declined to be photographed with it. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Fashion & Style |
How the third monolith to crop up in the past month arrived atop Pine Mountain in Atascadero, Calif., where it was discovered by a hiker on Wednesday, remains a mystery. How it left is no secret: Several young men who officials said had apparently driven five hours from Southern California livestreamed themselves tearing out the shiny, three sided steel structure in Stadium Park early Thursday morning, and then leaving a plywood cross behind in its place. "Christ is king!" the men, wearing night vision goggles and camo gear, chanted in the grainy video as they toppled the shiny structure, in a video that was posted to the streaming site DLive.tv by someone using the name CultureWarCriminal, but later removed, according to The San Luis Obispo Tribune. The Tribune described the video as "at times racist and homophobic" and said that the men sang along to country songs. One of the men said in the video that they removed the structure to "tell the alien overlords they are not welcome," according to The Tribune. Another claimed they were operating "on direct orders of QAnon and President Trump himself," referring to the conspiracy theory that falsely claims Mr. Trump is being undermined by a group of Democratic pedophiles. More than 600 people were watching at one point, according to the paper. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Art & Design |
A drawn out and often divisive plan to create a new neighborhood atop railroad tracks on the Far West Side and, surprisingly, one having nothing to do with Hudson Yards is embarking on its final phase. Two towers are now rising at Riverside Center, an eight acre development in the low West 60s near the Hudson River that is the last piece of the Riverside South mega project, which since its conception five decades ago has put a shiny stamp on land once crossed by Penn Central trains. The two new high rises at West 60th Street One West End, a 362 unit condominium from the Elad Group and Silverstein Properties, and 21 West End Avenue, a 616 unit rental from the Dermot Company and AFL CIO Building Investment Trust will be lofty and gleaming like their predecessors. These buildings will also add a public school and stores, and possibly a European style food market and restaurant, which brokers and residents hope will help to ease a lingering stigma that the area is an underserved backwater. "We've had room to grow, and this kind of growth is only positive," said David Tobon, a resident and a founder of the BLU Realty Group, a brokerage with an office on Riverside Boulevard, the main strip. A section of that office is BLU Cafe, one of the only places, so far, to sit down and eat a sandwich. The towers won't be making a subtle entrance. Both have bold styles in an area that can seem dominated by cookie cutter architecture. The 42 story One West End, for instance, balances soaring glass and slightly off center sections atop a limestone base that echoes an early 1900s steam plant still in operation across the street. Designed by Pelli Clarke Pelli Architects, the condo will offer 246 market rate apartments, on floors eight and above; they will mostly range from one bedrooms starting at 800 square feet to four bedrooms that start at 3,000 square feet. Finished with wide plank wood floors and gas fireplaces, the units will also feature marble kitchen counters and walnut vanities in their master baths. Also, bronze mailboxes will be set into the walls outside the front doors of each unit, so building staff can deliver newspapers and mail daily. If touches like these recall a hotel, it's no accident. Jeffrey Beers, the architect behind many hotels, including the Cove Atlantis resort in the Bahamas, as well as restaurants for Daniel Boulud, handled the interiors, in his first multifamily assignment. "From the moment you enter the lobby," which will be decorated in dark colored stone and wood, he said, "there will be a warmth and welcoming feeling you would find entering someone's home." A vacation in place vibe, however, does extend to the amenities, including a 75 foot glass walled swimming pool that will cantilever out from the tower, giving swimmers the illusion of being suspended over West End Avenue, according to Elad. Nearby will be a 12,000 square foot terrace on a roof lined with recliners, cabanas and barbecue grills, though in a nod to the building's location in a part of town that often gets strafed by winds off the Hudson River, glass walls will protect it, Mr. Beers said. Perhaps most significant, from a neighborhood building perspective, One West will offer a market selling fresh produce and meats along West 60th Street, which is to be extended into Riverside Center. Details about the market are still being hammered out. But Mr. Beers said he hopes that unlike the voguish food courts found at the Gotham West complex and other places, where there are a number of tables and counters for eating, any market at One West would be more akin to ones found in England, which mostly contain food stalls. Mr. Beers also designed the Plaza Food Hall in the basement of the Plaza Hotel. As required by the 2010 rezoning that allowed One West End to go forward, the tower will also have 116 affordable rental units in a separate but connected structure entered through its own lobby. Though so called poor door arrangements have come under fire in mixed income buildings, the affordable residents will have equal access to building amenities, according to Elad. When sales kick off this winter after the offering plan is approved, prices will start at around 2,000 a square foot, or from 1.3 million to 20 million, said Samantha Sax, an executive vice president of Elad, which converted the Plaza to condos. Silverstein is known more for rental properties like Silver Towers. The foundation is complete and the building is expected to open at the end of 2016. "If you went downtown or uptown not even a half mile, the prices would be substantially higher," said Ms. Sax, who would not disclose the development cost, though Elad and Silverstein did buy the site from the Extell Development Company and the Carlyle Group for 168 million in 2013, according to city records. The 43 story tower at 21 West End, across West 60th Street, is now several floors out of the ground and is expected to open in the spring of 2016. A mix of boxy glass and masonry sections stacked like children's blocks, the design, from SLCE Architects, also includes a cubelike section on stilts. The building will have 616 apartments, from studios to three bedrooms, 127 of which will be affordable, reserved for those within certain income limits and scattered throughout the full block project, said Drew Spitler, Dermot's director of development. Market rate rents at the units, which will have washers and dryers, stainless steel appliances and walk in closets, will be about 90 a square foot, or 3,700 a month for studios. That is similar to rents charged at other ground up luxury towers on the nearby Upper West Side, Mr. Spitler added. Aware that hefty amenities packages can entice residents to out of the way locales like Riverside Center, Dermot will pack 21 West End with 30,000 square feet of them. A 60 foot pool will be in the basement and a huge fitness center will have yoga studios. The site, which was bought from Extell and Carlyle in 2012 for 70 million, will also have a public school, which Dermot was required to help build as part of the rezoning deal. About 700 students will enroll there for prekindergarten through fifth grades. The school could better knit these blocks to the urban fabric; 21 West End's stores, which will total 24,000 square feet across two levels, large for the area, may also help. Mr. Spitler also wants to court a restaurant to introduce night life to an area that can be gated community quiet after the sun goes down. But any place that serves dinner would mark a major change; in recent years, some places wouldn't even deliver food to Riverside Boulevard, according to some residents. "What has lagged a bit has been the retail, supermarkets, restaurants," Mr. Spitler said, "but they are coming." Even as they brighten the area's corners, the pair of new towers will still be somewhat marooned at the site, which will not be completed until it has a total of five towers, a three acre park and an extension of Riverside Boulevard connecting to West 59th Street, according to the master plan. The three last building sites are now in contract to be sold by Extell and Carlyle to the General Investment and Development Companies, which is based in Boston, according to a source familiar with the negotiations. A spokesman for Extell had no comment; phone messages left with GID officials, including James E. Linsley, the president of the development group, were not returned. GID has already been active in the area. In 2013, it teamed with a California pension fund to buy the Aldyn and Ashley, a connected condo rental complex a few blocks away, from Extell and Carlyle. When this last parcel of Riverside South is built out, a long, controversy laden saga may finally come to a close. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Real Estate |
Much of the housing in Fort Hamilton is prewar, and residents tend to stick around so faithfully that prices wobbled only a little after the 2008 crash. Fort Hamilton, the square mile size southern half of Bay Ridge, which takes its name from the local Army garrison, is not a place that people tend to leave. Judging from the numbers, this magnetism has effectively turned it into a "NORC," or naturally occurring retirement community. Almost a third of the 28,500 or so residents are over 55, according to 2010 census data. That compares with only a quarter in the city as a whole. Those 55 to 64 constituted the fastest growing group by far from 2000 to 2010; their numbers increased by 25 percent. Josephine Beckmann, the district manager of Community Board 10, which covers Fort Hamilton, says she frequently goes with her father in law to the well attended Fort Hamilton Senior Recreation Center. "You have seniors living immediately in the area who are learning how to use a computer, taking dance classes, going to work out," Ms. Beckmann said. "They have a big social network and dances every week. It's a fun place to go." Many of these buildings are prewar, and many of the houses, too, were built decades ago. The real estate market, known for its constancy, barely stumbled during the financial crisis, brokers said. "It stayed stable because of the convenience of where we're located," said Joseph Madaio, the managing broker of Re/Max Metro, who grew up and works locally. Settled starting in the 19th century by Norwegians, followed in the 20th by immigrants from Ireland and Italy, the area has in recent years grown more diverse, with arrivals from Greece, Egypt, Lebanon and China, along with other Mideastern and Asian countries, residents say. Doris Cruz, a 30 year Fort Hamilton resident of Norwegian descent living on 99th Street, says that two families on her block have been in the same home for three generations, or about 75 years. Others have lived there for 40 or more years. Fort Hamilton "is a neighborhood where people age in place," Ms. Cruz said. "There are some very established families on my block, and I think that's typical." Not that there aren't younger people moving in primarily to take advantage of Fort Hamilton's relatively reasonable house prices and convenient Manhattan commuting options, Mr. Madaio said. Stephen Nesbit, a 33 year old law student and program coordinator for a graduate school on the Upper East Side, commutes daily and searched in the area for an apartment "because it's affordable housing, tree lined streets, a very safe neighborhood," he said. "And the people are very friendly here." Mr. Nesbit grew up in Bay Ridge, frequently accompanying his father to business meetings in the Fort Hamilton area. In particular, he remembers the neighborhood's parks, along with the Civil War memorial, a massive cannon surrounded by cannonballs. The area is frequently used as a site for weddings. "Those things are nice landmarks," Mr. Nesbit said. "This is part of Brooklyn that you wouldn't necessarily expect to exist if you weren't familiar with the borough." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Real Estate |
It's all Barbie, all the time. There are over 1,000 Barbies on display, and each is a one of a kind creation. Some of the dolls are dressed by famous fashion houses such as Christian Dior, Giorgio Armani and Carolina Herrera, while others are made to model famous movie characters like Sandy from "Grease" as well as real life personalities like Beyonce and Elizabeth Taylor. Admission is free. Chilean food is the focus at Hacienda Hotel Vira Vira, an 18 room Relais Chateaux property in Pucon, a village on the banks of Lake Villarrica in the Lake District of Chile. More than 90 percent of the products used in the hotel's cuisine are produced or grown on site, including cheese, meat, eggs and organic vegetables, and now the owner, Michael Paravicini, is expanding his farm to table concept by giving guests the chance to participate in preparing the food they enjoy. The hotel recently opened a separate building outfitted with a professional kitchen where the chef Damian Fernandez hosts cooking classes on how to make classic Chilean dishes such as pastel de choclo (a meat and corn pie) and on baking bread using wheat grown near the hotel that guests grind themselves. Guests also learn how to make cheese and yogurt and visit the beehives where Mr. Paravicini teaches them how honey is made. In addition, the hotel offers an excursion, based upon availability, to a Mapuche village where guests can learn about indigenous cuisine and have a traditional lunch. A three night stay including meals, drinks, excursions, activities and airport transfers starts at 1,905 a person. A renowned Indian jewelry designer has gone into the hotel business: Siddharth Kasliwal, the creative director of the Jaipur, India, based Munnu the Gem Palace, recently opened 28 Kothi in Jaipur's historical district. The French architect Georges Floret built the five room property; it has a contemporary aesthetic mixed with antique pieces and offers organic vegetarian meals, yoga classes, cultural workshops and Ayurvedic massages. Prices from 4,500 rupees a night. Fans of the mystery series the No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency can immerse themselves in the books with a new safari from Belmond with the author, Alexander McCall Smith. Called "Journey to the Heart of Botswana with Alexander McCall Smith," the trip is from Nov. 10 to 16 and includes stays at three of Belmond's lodges in northern Botswana. The six night itinerary begins at Belmond Savute Elephant Lodge in Chobe National Park, known for its herds of elephants and lion prides. The Belmond Khwai River Lodge is next and offers night safaris where guests can spot predators on the hunt and nocturnal birds like the giant eagle owl. The adventure ends at Belmond Eagle Island Lodge in the Okavango Delta, a destination featured in Mr. McCall Smith's novel, "The Double Comfort Safari Club" as well as his children's book "Precious and the Mystery of the Missing Lion." Throughout the safari, Mr. McCall Smith will share memories of living in Botswana and chat with guests about the inspiration for his books. Prices from 7,985 a person. For details or to make a booking, go to belmondsafaris.com. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Travel |
Latest Project: Ms. Khan is working on a self published book, "Vector Equilibrium: Journey Through the Major Arcana," to teach others how to read tarot using characters that represent ancient archetypes. "Your intuition is a lot better than you think it is," she said. She is also designing her own deck of tarot cards. "I like arming people with enough insight into themselves that they can understand whatever is going on with them," she said. "Mythologies are necessary, we need them to understand ourselves." Next Thing: Later this year, Ms. Khan is filming a documentary at Ted's Shroom Boom, a psychedelic mushroom farm in Negril, Jamaica, about psilocybin and the "fundamental changes it can make in the neuroplasticity of the brain," she said. She will work with trauma survivors "in the warm water of the beach, letting the tears come, and the laughter come, and walk away changed." Self Care: Ms. Khan is used to skeptics and having her work seen as a gimmick. "It's not as mystical as we think," she said. "Pharmacology is failing us. People are scared to go to the psychiatrist. Everyone out here now is trying to become their own shaman, to heal themselves." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Style |
Federal officials outlined details Wednesday of their preparations to administer a future coronavirus vaccine to Americans, saying they would begin distribution within 24 hours of any approval or emergency authorization, and that their goal was that no American "has to pay a single dime" out of their own pocket. The officials, who are part of the federal government's Operation Warp Speed the multiagency effort to quickly make a coronavirus vaccine available to Americans also said the timing of a vaccine was still unclear, despite repeated statements by President Trump that one could be ready before the election on Nov. 3. "We're dealing in a world of great uncertainty. We don't know the timing of when we'll have a vaccine, we don't know the quantities, we don't know the efficacy of those vaccines," said Paul Mango, the deputy chief of staff for policy at the Department of Health and Human Services. "This is a really quite extraordinary, logistically complex undertaking, and a lot of uncertainties right now. I think the message we want you to leave with is, we are prepared for all of those uncertainties." The officials said they were planning for initial distribution of a vaccine perhaps on an emergency basis, and to a limited group of high priority people such as health care workers in the final three months of this year and into next year. The Department of Defense is providing logistical support to plan how the vaccines will be shipped and stored, as well as how to keep track of who has gotten the vaccine and whether they have gotten one or two doses. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Health |
In 2013, Travis Reginal wrote an essay in Education Life about making his way from Jackson, Miss., to Yale, as a first generation student. In his admissions essay, he had examined his love of writing poetry. He updates his journey, in his favorite format. My room appears as if it were just the first week of school. Most of my belongings still lie in boxes. The items that are out seem to have been tossed about randomly, Finding no spot in particular to call home. Hands on hips, I look at where to start. Even though I am almost through my junior year, it's not too late | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Education |
MEXICO CITY Starwood Hotels and Resorts is set become the first American hospitality chain to run hotels in Cuba in more than half a century, signaling the return of American companies to the Cuban travel market as the island gears up to receive a surge in visits from the United States. Under two deals signed on the eve of a visit to Cuba by President Obama, Starwood will refurbish and manage the Hotel Inglaterra on the Parque Central near Old Havana and the Hotel Quinta Avenida, a 186 room business hotel in the upscale district of Miramar. The hotels should begin running under the Starwood brand this year, the company said. Starwood, which has its corporate headquarters in Stamford, Conn., will be managing hotels owned by Cuban state enterprises including a military conglomerate creating the deepest ties so far between an American company and the Cuban government since President Obama announced a diplomatic thaw between the countries in December 2014. Jorge Giannattasio, Starwood's senior vice president and the head of its Latin America operations, said that Saturday's deals were "a pivotal moment." "We are in an inflection point in the relationship between the two countries and in the hospitality industry," said Mr. Giannattasio, who spoke by phone from Havana. The deal, he added, would "create new expectations for the quality of Cuban hotels." Under the management agreement, the Hotel Inglaterra, which is owned by Gran Caribe, a Cuban state tourism company, will become one of Starwood's Luxury Collection hotels. The Quinta Avenida, which is run by Gaviota, a Cuban military run tourism group, will become a Four Points by Sheraton hotel. Mr. Giannattasio said that the company received a license from United States Treasury Department last week that, in addition to the Inglaterra and Quinta Avenida hotels, allowed it to operate the Hotel Santa Isabel in Old Havana and one other, which he declined to name. Starwood has signed a letter of intent with Habaguanex, a Cuban state run company that owns many properties in Old Havana, to manage the Santa Isabel, he said. Saturday's announcement could presage an influx of American hotel chains into Cuba, where many hotels are run under management contracts with European brands, including Sol Melia and Iberostar. Marriott International is also reported to be seeking a license from the Treasury Department to run hotels in Cuba. The island has a shortage of high quality hotel rooms, and Cuban officials and foreign tour operators have wondered how it will cope with a deluge of American travelers, who are expected to visit Cuba in growing numbers after the Treasury Department relaxed travel regulations last week. The Obama administration said in February that it was preparing to sign an agreement with Cuban authorities that would allow commercial airlines to offer more than 100 daily flights to Cuba from the United States. There are currently only about 15 flights a day run by charter companies. Last week, the administration said that Americans who wish to visit Cuba on "people to people" trips can now travel independently, rather than as part of organized tours that cost several thousand dollars. Still, hotel accommodations in Cuba are often overbooked and very outdated. Travelers have complained of musty smelling rooms with poor air conditioning or no toilet paper and unappetizing food at state run hotels. The Hotel Inglaterra, for example, has an elaborate neo Classical facade and a storied history Winston Churchill stayed there during the Spanish American War but modest bedrooms. Under the deals signed on Saturday, the two hotels will be run by management crews from Starwood but will be primarily staffed by Cubans. Mr. Giannattasio said that Starwood would be paid a management fee to run the hotels, a similar arrangement to those the group has in other countries. The hotel is interested in running more hotels in Havana or other cities of cultural interest, he said, adding that hotels in tourist resorts were off limits because restrictions still forbid American tourism under the embargo. "There are many opportunities for us and other American companies," said Mr. Giannattasio. "This is just the beginning." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Travel |
SINGAPORE Lamborghinis, Porsches and Bentleys fill the driveways of multimillion dollar villas in Sentosa Cove. Yachts line the 400 berth marina nearby. A number of homes have guardhouses for security. But signs of a slowdown are just beneath the shiny surface. The grass on front lawns has turned brown from neglect. Two condominiums last summer went for less than half their original price, while others sit empty. At the W Residences, one of the newest condominiums, fewer than half of the units have been sold. Walking around a lavish showroom apartment with infinity pool, Sheena Teng, a sale consultant for City Developments Limited, the developer of the W Residences, says that prospective buyers in Sentosa once were rich Asians looking for vacation homes. She said most of the current occupants at the W Residences were expatriate professionals in Singapore and they are renting. As Singapore pitched itself as a place for Asia's rich, Sentosa Cove attracted many wealthy Chinese, Malaysians and Indonesians. But the momentum behind that boom is slowing, putting the gated community at the center of the weakness. The slowdown has been orchestrated, in part, by Singapore's leadership. Faced with simmering discontent over rising living and housing costs, the government executed a succession of cooling measures that have hit the high end market especially hard. A property sales tax of 18 percent for foreigners has reduced buyers' enthusiasm. Levies are nearly as high for those hoping to flip their properties in the first or second year. "So far, Sentosa Cove has been the worst hit because the market frenzy was probably most apparent there," said Wee Siang Ng, head of research at Maybank Kim Eng Securities. The value of prime properties rose by 80 percent from 2004 to the market peak in 2013, according to Mr. Ng. The money started flowing around 2004, after the Asian financial crisis and the SARS outbreak. Seeking to strengthen the city state, the government promoted itself as a center for global finance and private banking, offering tax incentives and other favorable policies to lure foreign companies. After that, villas rose in all shapes and styles. One house was built like an Egyptian tomb, with two pharaoh dog guard statues. Others have palm thatched roofs, evoking tiki huts. There was gossip about who splashed money on which homes. Local papers like The Business Times unearthed the names of billionaires behind major purchases, like Gina Rinehart, an Australian mining heiress, and Bhupendra Kumar Modi, an Indian telecom mogul. Construction continued unabated for years. Developers erected luxury condominiums and marketed the properties as the only waterside living in Singapore. "We call it the Monte Carlo of Asia," said Stephane Fabregoul, the general manager of the W Singapore hotel in Sentosa Cove. Other parts of Sentosa were being developed too. In 2010, a Resorts World casino was opened on the main part of Sentosa. Officially, gambling is discouraged in Singapore for its own citizens and permanent residents, who must pay a fee of 100 Singapore dollars, about 75, for each visit to the casino. A Universal Studios theme park was also built in a move to attract tourists. Across Singapore, the property market was booming. Interest rates were low, prompting buyers to take on more debt. Confidence was high. Banks built regional headquarters in Singapore and jobs were created. Singapore's skyline changed drastically. A new financial district rose and Marina Bay Sands, a three tower building housing a casino with a boatlike structure on top, was built for a reported 5.4 billion. With the government unable to contain the heated market, the growing presence of foreigners and the rising cost of housing became a flash point for discontent. And Sentosa, with its new villas, yachts and luxury condominium towers, became a particular symbol of the rising inequality for many citizens. In the 2011 general election, the People's Action Party, which has been the ruling party since Singapore's independence from Malaysia in 1965, won by the narrowest margin in its history. Soon after the elections, the government took measures to reduce foreign investment. While it had already adopted broad based measures to cool speculation, the latest moves were more targeted at the high end market. "There was concern that was aired in the last election that foreigners participating in the property market were contributing to high prices," said Christopher Fossick, the managing director of Jones Lang LaSalle in Southeast Asia. A model apartment at the W Residencies. Multimillion dollar apartments in Sentosa Cove remain unsold. Edwin Koo for The New York Times To slow demand, foreign buyers were charged an additional tax on top of a basic buyer's stamp duty. This tax was raised a year later, bringing the total tax for foreigners to 18 percent. Today, anyone who wants to resell a property within a year of buying it must pay a 16 percent tax on the sale price. If they sell within two years, the tax is 12 percent. The levy gradually decreases over the following two years. The most effective measure taken by the government was to cap the amount of debt a borrower was allowed to take as a percentage of their income. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Real Estate |
Josh Barone and I chose five of the artists whose work we're most looking forward to hearing this fall check out Daniel Dorsa's gorgeous portraits. And Tony Tommasini described what he's hoping for from the two count 'em new music directors arriving at Lincoln Center this September. This week hasn't been silent, of course. Seth Colter Walls checked out and gave a Critic's Pick review to the sixth annual Resonant Bodies Festival of new vocal music, one of my favorite just post Labor Day traditions. And Gio Russonello listened through the first complete solo covers of the complete Thelonious Monk songbook. I was delighted we agreed on the quality of what Gio calls the "affectionate daring" of the guitarist Miles Okazaki's version. Here are some elegant samples: | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Music |
There was nothing unusual at the New Victory theater last week in a request to turn off electronic devices, except that it was directed at audience members not entirely versed in theatrical etiquette. When the lights went out, they howled. When someone fell, they laughed. In silent sections, they started clapping a beat. In between selections, they tested out moves. The spectators were schoolchildren, from grades 5 to 11. For the New Victory, this was not unusual, either. The theater specializes in children's entertainment. Yet the performances were part of a new three week experiment called Victory Dance. Through Friday, the theater is presenting wide ranging programs of contemporary dance, free of charge, to children in participating summer schools, day camps and homeless shelters. (There is also one performance each week for the paying public; the last one is on Thursday evening at the theater, on West 42nd Street in Manhattan.) Like all New Victory shows, this one has an educational component. The theater's teaching artists meet with the children beforehand and in some cases afterward to lead discussions. During the performances, staff members surround each piece with questions and activities. Hence, the try it yourself moments. At the end, the children get to ask their own questions of the dancers and choreographers. The midshow interaction isn't part of every New Victory performance, but the Victory Dance programs are typical of the theater in one crucial aspect: The dancers are performing pieces that they normally present to adult audiences. Mary Rose Lloyd, the theater's director of artistic programming, explained that it's work "that doesn't speak down to children but that will excite them." Victory Dance originated in discussions between Ms. Cahan and Ms. Lloyd about what to do with the theater this summer. They were looking for something consistent with the organization's mission that wouldn't compete with regular fall programming or break the budget. Ms. Cahan, once a dancer herself, thought of a mixed bill of dance, possibly like the ones she used to perform in, decades ago, at the Delacorte Theater in Central Park. ("That's where I met my husband," Ms. Cahan said. "I was in the air and he was on the ground.") Then came the idea of free shows for children in the city. "These are kids that are going to grow up here," Ms. Cahan said. "I want them to fall in love with the whole spectrum of what's available here in dance." Though much of the regular New Victory programming is international in origin, Ms. Cahan and Ms. Lloyd decided to use New York companies. The rationale was partly practical ("they can get here on the subway," Ms. Cahan said) and partly civic minded ("we want to give them work," Ms. Lloyd said). Ms. Lloyd came up with a "fantasy program" of nine high profile choices (including Keigwin Company, Ronald K. Brown/Evidence, the tap dancer Michelle Dorrance and Doug Elkins Choreography, Etc.), expecting most to decline. None did. As she discussed with them which pieces they might bring, she kept having similar conversations: "They would show me work and say, 'We couldn't do this,' and I would say, 'You can do more than you think.' " Ms. Lloyd made her choices according to quality and artistic variety, yet after the first shows she and Ms. Cahan were nevertheless gratified to hear comments about how the children love seeing people who look like them on the stage. "These are New York companies," Ms. Cahan said. "They look like New Yorkers." Finding interested schools and day camps proved more difficult than Ms. Cahan had expected, but she was even more surprised to find herself crying during the first Victory Dance shows, moved by the sensitivity of the children's responses. "The project has exceeded our rather lofty expectations," she said. After a morning show last week, dancers and choreographers gathered to discuss the experience. Monica Bill Barnes, who hadn't performed much for children before, said it was a pleasure "because I feel like they haven't learned not to react." She continued, "As a performer, I'm trying to understand the work by reading the audience. With kids, you hear this inner monologue on how it's going." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Dance |
"Purposefully naff, twinkly, 1970s Capri glam" that is completely at odds with the London restaurant scene right now, one reviewer from The Guardian newspaper wrote. "It feels pleasantly deranged," wrote another for The Evening Standard. As the traveling circus rolls into town for fashion week, London is sulking under the looming prospect of a chaotic Brexit. But Gloria an all but unspeakably trendy Shoreditch trattoria frequented by style set types like Alexa Chung and Georgia May Jagger since it opened six months ago offers a dollop of escapism for hordes of bright young things. Those who are willing to grin and bear the two hour waiting time for a table, anyway. The recipe for success at London's "It" restaurant of 2019 appears to be very simple: More is more is more. Take the mirrored ceilings and gilded raspberry ripple marble countertop of the bar area, staffed until 2 a.m. by beaming Italians in outrageously gaudy printed waistcoats. Or the twinkling dining rooms: all frilly net curtains, pink walls, kaleidoscope patterned carpets and tiny tables, crammed with teetering piles of hand painted ceramic crockery (think plates covered in colorful swirls and cocktail mugs shaped like heaving bosoms or ladies' faces) that showcase gargantuan portions of Italian fare. (Enthusiastic diners have posted social media snaps of almost every dish.) Which brings us to the food. For the most part it is actually very good, and at reasonable prices (well, for London). Homespun highlights include sloppy Neapolitan pizzas, plates of rosy hued San Daniele ham and a 10 level lasagna, as well as spaghetti alla carbonara served steaming out of a giant round of pecorino and a pillowy soft burrata cheese with oozing innards of fresh homemade pesto. Diet food this is not. But it hits a comfort craving spot, thanks largely to the quality produce they say is sourced directly from small suppliers and a menu that draws smiles (and some groans) with its innuendo laden titles: consider Fry Me A River (deep fried octopus tentacle with saffron) or Filippo's Big Balls (slow cooked meatballs in tomato sauce). It's all very silly. It's all very jolly. And it's all very welcome, amid the slate autumnal skies and the nonstop headlines forecasting disaster if Britain makes a disorderly exit from the European Union. So who are the masterminds behind Gloria and its kitschy homage to sun drenched Italian excess? The French, of course. Or more specifically, Victor Lugger and Tigrane Seydoux . The duo runs the Big Mamma Group , the Paris headquartered operator of eight restaurants in France as well as Circolo Popolare , the 280 seat cavernous sister restaurant to Gloria that opened near Oxford Street in June , complete with a plant festooned and fairy lit ceiling and what they say are 20,000 glass and liquor bottles lining its whitewashed walls. The restaurateurs said they had been considering the London scene for some time. So why come now, when so many Europeans are leaving? "Yes, there is Brexit and it's a competitive market, but we saw a real opportunity for what we built in France to find new fans over here," Mr. Lugger said. "We think the risks on the spreadsheet are all worth it. "We don't just deliver food if they want that, customers can order Deliveroo," he added. "We work hard to deliver a vibrant slice of Italy and create memorable nights out at great value for money. Well priced food does not have to be at the expense of a high end dining experience." Cheers to that. Or as the Italians at Gloria would say: "Alla salute!" | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Fashion & Style |
I met Mekas in the late 1980s after I started writing for The Voice about avant garde cinema. He recognized that my last name is Lithuanian, which obviously amused him. He was a vibrant, persistent presence whether in the audience at a screening or at Anthology Film Archives, the cinematheque he co founded. Over the years, I wrote about his work and in 2005 interviewed him just before he left for the Venice Biennale, where he represented Lithuania. He was 82, filled with plans and, he animatedly confided, in love. Later, I sent him a newspaper article about the ship, the General Howze, that brought him to the United States. He was 26 when he and Adolfas landed in New York in 1949 along with 1,352 other displaced persons. The brothers moved to Williamsburg, Brooklyn, and Jonas worked in manufacturing in Long Island City. He visited museums, got fired, struggled, watched "The Blood of a Poet," bought a Bolex 16 millimeter camera. "In Hollywood, it's much simpler: it's done with money," he wrote in 1950. "But we are trying to do it with our own last miserable pennies." People said that the cinema made him mad. "But today, if you don't want to sell yourself for money and work work work," he wrote, and if you dreamed of being an artist, you had to become mad. He wrote about his early days in his hauntingly elegiac memoir "I Had Nowhere to Go," a collection of diary entries that cover 1944 to 1955 and that he began while in a Nazi labor camp. Published in 1991, the memoir opens with some background about his early life in Lithuania, the Nazi occupation, and the brothers' departure and detention. Mekas wrote that before he was interned, he had engaged in "various anti German activities." He also wrote that he didn't know anymore "is this truth or fiction," a thread that Michael Casper amplified in a 2018 article in The New York Review of Books that accused Mekas of distorting his history. The grim charges are that Mekas supported the Nazi occupation and worked for Nazi publications, although Casper writes that none of Mekas's writing was anti Semitic. Mekas and his circle saw the Germans as liberating them from the Soviets; and he characterized the newspapers as provincial, not Nazi. Casper wrote that "Mekas's life during the war years was more complicated than he makes it out to be." In a response, the art critic Barry Schwabsky lamented that Mekas had written for these papers and noted his memory lapses, but also wrote that "Mekas's own explanation for his inaccuracies the trauma of living amidst so many murders, and the need to respond to them as a poet if at all seems worthy of more respect." This seems right and fair, and I don't believe the revelations lessen Mekas's work. Casper agrees. "As for Mekas's films," he wrote, "the truth of his life does not diminish the beauty of his work; it complicates and even enhances it." I wonder what Mekas would make of that enhancing comment. It is painful to think that the last year of his life was clouded by this. It is also hard not to wish that he had made other choices when he was young and joined the partisans in the woods. But he didn't. "If you want to criticize me for my lack of 'patriotism' or 'courage,'" he wrote in his memoir, "you can go to hell!" Instead, he was in a Nazi labor camp and he survived. In time, he found his way to New York, the home where he made films and history. This brings me back to Mekas's line about making films to live, which he delivers in "Walden" over images of a wedding, an event that can seem less interesting to him than the laughing, smoking and chatting people around the couple. The darkly colored sequence is jagged looking and often out of focus, and the quick cutting and rapid, agitated camera movements at times turn it into an impressionistic blur. Mekas utters his film live comment, pauses and then repeats it with a crucial difference. "I make home movies, therefore I live," Mekas says, "I live, therefore I make home movies." Only recently, while rewatching "Walden," did I finally grasp the full implications of his use of "home movies," and how for him these two words had become inseparable. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Movies |
Tips from Sneaker Heads on Scoring the Hottest Shoes and Keeping Them Fresh Sneaker Con, a gathering of shoe fanatics founded in 2009, brought 500 vendors and over 19,000 people to the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center in New York late last year. The heart and soul of the event is the trading pit, an area in the back of the 840,000 square foot center where a crowd of mostly teenage boys was talking and holding up their sneakers, looking for buyers. The experience was overwhelming, confusing (where are their parents?) and educational. But first, some quick tips: 1) Store your sneakers in a dark space, because light can cause yellowing, which devalues your shoes. 2) Become friends with people who work at sneaker shops. 3) Always check details like font and stitching when verifying real versus fake sneakers. 4) Ask your elders for their old clothes and sneakers. Chances are they will eventually come back in style. What are the things you look for first when authenticating sneakers? Ultimately it always comes down to craftsmanship, detail and the material used. The counterfeit industry is going to get as close as possible to the original materials, but they cut corners and use inferior products. Stitching is usually a big thing to check across the board, whether it is a hoodie or a pair of shoes. What are some of the biggest differences between real and fake sneakers? A common difference amongst real from fakes is usually on inside size tags of sneakers, as well as on the box labels. The font style is 99.9 percent different, always. On Yeezys, for example, since they are some of the most counterfeited items I see, I look at the stitching; build structure; wherever it says, "boost"; the font style; and the box. On eBay, some users will post photos of the real shoes, but then send counterfeit ones. How do you know you are not getting scammed? I personally do not use eBay. Why I started fake education was by getting scammed on eBay. What about people with good ratings? Buy from somebody credible, from somebody reputable that has a reputation to uphold. To be 100 percent certain, buy from somewhere that has a return policy. Somewhere that if it gets out that they sold a fake, that it's going to tarnish the image. What are the top counterfeit items that you see? Anything made by Adidas: the Yeezys, NMD, Ultraboost. They're selling off demand as well. For example, a general release NMD or an Ultraboost shoe holds almost no resale value, but that's some of the most popular replicas on the market, because people are not even thinking that they're buying a counterfeit. Whereas when it comes to Yeezys, they're calling every lifeline possible to prove legitimacy. But when you come up to somebody with a pair that's 180 in store and they're giving it to you for, let's say, 150, you just think you're getting a good deal, right? Little do you know, they bought it for 60 bucks. How do you know when a sneaker will be an investment? Now it's a lot of hype. Kanye West drops something and all the kids are running, and a month or two months later, the price just drops. We don't buy into the hype stuff. We buy stuff that held its value over time. We have sneaker patents. We have one of a kind Yeezy samples. We specialize in prototype, samples, vintage, rare samples. How do you know when something will generate hype? Right now the market is all hype. So your strategy is that you look for rare and unique sneakers that you know will hold value. What are some of the rarest pieces you have? 1985 Air Jordan 1s; we have the largest collection. That's my favorite part of our collection, just because it holds so much history it's the first year of the Jordan. We have signed Julius Erving Converse sneakers. We have Yeezy samples, a few different colorways that have never been seen. How many sneakers do you have in your collection? My sisters and I have over 6,000 pairs, but we stopped counting. Our dad started the collection over 25 years ago, and we took it over about five or six years ago. What are you looking for when buying sneakers? It depends on the sneaker. Let's say I were buying a 1985 Air Jordan: I would look at the yellowing, the cracking in the paint. If it's metallic, that's a big issue. You can use sneaker cleaning products, and a lot of issues when it comes to yellowing just happen with age. So if you can get a dead stock pair from, like, '85 or the '90s and it has no yellowing, the value is just astronomically more. What is your favorite sneaker? The Nike Air Max 1. If we have to kind of go down to actual colorway, it would be the 2002 or 2003 Atmos colorway. It has a very safari, fun print to it. You told me that you've waited years to find a pair of shoes. Which ones were they? The Nike Air Max 1s in the Amsterdam colorway. I've probably spent now nine or 10 years looking for them. For the longest time, I refused to pay the high prices for them. I broke down this year. What is the most you would pay for sneakers? Most recently I have been contemplating purchasing the real auto lacing Nike Air Mags, the "Back to the Future" shoes which were released last year. Today they go for anywhere from 23,000 to about 60,000. I found a pair on eBay for 33,000, and I talked them down to 27,000. If I do get them, that will be the most expensive pair of shoes I will ever purchase in my life. The price of a nice decent car. Tips for getting your hands on hard to get sneakers? It's tough. Today I try to be as safe as possible. I use eBay much more rarely. I am involved with the resell shop Stadium Goods here in New York City. I try to buy most of my shoes from there, just because they're authenticated. What are some tips for eBay? I generally look at sellers that have excellent feedback on eBay. I always look at people who write their name. How do you care for your sneakers? I do sometimes use Mylar bags. For people who've collected comic books out there, they use Mylar bags to keep them from getting the acid air or whatever it is from boxes. I also sometimes take out the insoles and throw them in with my bleach cycle, or I also use vinegar. You wash your underwear and your socks, but you'd never wash insoles. Those guys get pretty nasty. Firstly, how many pairs of sneakers do you have? About 4,500 pairs. I've got a storage facility. I've been collecting since maybe 1996. So it's been a long time to accumulate a lot of shoes. Favorite sneakers? Supreme Dunk High Stars. I just love the whole aesthetic of them. The embossed croc leather, the gold stars. The fact that they brought out three, it was very premium at that time. How do you know what shoes will be investments later? Trends are moving so quickly nowadays that it's hard to predict. A pair that you've hedged a lot of bets on and think that is going to be very hot, eight months later doesn't end up being so hot because the kids don't get into it. But if a brand puts enough money behind something, it's generally a sure winner. So looking at 2018, we're hoping that Nike comes back because I've had a tough couple of years. And Adidas either maintained or even improves on the previous year. How can you tell a counterfeit sneaker from a real? There's lots of telltale signs: the box, the sticker tags, the inside label. If you know that there's a certain number that comes out of a shoe and someone's got 15, 20 pairs, you've got to think that's a little bit suspect. Any tips on getting limited edition sneakers? You can try to get lucky with a raffle or a queue. Try eBay. Or even like Sneak Con is the best way to get what you want and what you need. The prices might be inflamed, but think of it as an investment piece. If you love it that much, go for it. Why not? What the most you've paid for sneakers? I've been in the footwear industry so long, I don't think I have to have paid for sneakers in the last 15 years. It sounds like I'm spoiled, but I've been very fortunate to be in this industry where I haven't had to pay for my own shoes. I pay for shoes for my son. What is your son wearing? He's wearing Jordan 1s. He enjoys mixing them up, so he has one blue and one red. We bought two pairs to accomplish that. What was you first pair of sneakers? It was a Nike Jordan. I think seventh or eighth grade. My parents were very strict, so it was unheard of to spend a hundred dollars for sneakers. Between birthday money, Christmas money, Chinese New Year money and rolling up quarters and coins, I scraped up enough money. They took me to New Jersey, because there it was tax free. We went to some mall and I think I bought it at the Athlete's Foot over 20 years ago. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Style |
The actress Jaina Lee Ortiz isn't normally drawn to high adrenaline pursuits. Her favorite hobby: flower arranging. Her idea of bliss: neatly folded towels. Her dream job: personal organizer. And yet on a snowy Wednesday, Ms. Ortiz clambered 40 feet up in the air, clutching handholds and scrambling onto footholds as she climbed the rock wall at Chelsea Piers. "It's fun, it's really fun," she called out. Then she reached the top and dared to look down. "Oh wait," she said. "It's scary." Ms. Ortiz, 31, has been scaring herself a lot lately. She plays a firefighter named Andy Herrera the series lead on "Station 19," which had its premiere on March 22. The show is a spinoff of "Grey's Anatomy," and the latest from the creative force Shonda Rhimes. Andy risks death in pretty much every episode. A trained salsa dancer and a natural athlete, Ms. Ortiz has usually done her own stunts for other roles. But the punishing heat, the 70 pound turnout gear and the bodily risks mean that in this show, she mostly leaves the leaping out of the window action to the professionals. "You go do your thing," she tells her stunt doubles. "I'm going to be over here drinking my water in this air conditioned room." Andy, no towel folder, goes rock climbing to relax. So this is one stunt that Ms. Ortiz wanted to try herself. After a busy morning making the publicity rounds, she arrived at Chelsea Piers Fitness Center in glitzy makeup, glossy ponytail and black boots with lollipop heels. Ms. Ortiz hadn't packed workout gear, but at the front desk she bought a no nonsense Under Armour set black shirt, black leggings. Once Ms. Ortiz had switched them out for a larger size, Mr. Carter helped her into a climbing rig that looked a little like an S and M harness ("We are in Chelsea," Mr. Carter said with a deadpan) and watched as she tightened it around her waist and thighs. Then he tied on a woven pouch filled with gymnastic chalk. After all that firefighter gear, the harness felt like nothing. "It's soothing," Ms. Ortiz said. The wall looked like a hunk of moon face topped with sprinkles. Ms. Ortiz studied it warily while Mr. Carter used a carabiner to hook her to a rope anchored at the wall's top. She gripped the first handhold, and a minute and seven seconds later she had reached the top. "That was too easy for you," Mr. Carter said after she descended. He had her go up using only the green holds and then only the blue ones. She was brisk and methodical, her ponytail swinging as she maneuvered for each new hold. Mr. Carter shouted approval as she moved her legs into a wide split. Later she switched up her feet and rebalanced herself on the wall. "Stylish," he called. "Now I see why my character would do that," Ms. Ortiz said, having bounced back down to earth and chugged some water. "It's like therapy. It's like meditation." "Moving meditation," Mr. Carter said. He pointed out that it also built up forearm strength. Strength is what Ms. Ortiz projects, on the climbing wall and off it. It's what casting agents see. Still, it's not always what she feels. She has played a rookie cop, a detective, a Marine and now a firefighter "public service, badass characters," she said. She often wishes she had more of their confidence, more courage. "I am afraid sometimes," she said. But even though she is a self described "girlie girl," Ms. Ortiz is also a woman who signed herself up for the firefighter's Candidate Physical Abilities Test as soon as she landed the "Station 19" role, running up flights of stairs in weighted gear, dragging a 165 pound dummy out of a building. So she's a girlie girl with muscles and guts. She is especially proud to play Andy, because "she's not a sidekick or the friend, or the mistress. She is this strong, independent, passionate woman who will overstep any man just to get to where she wants," Ms. Ortiz said. Andy is thrill seeking, volatile. Her love life "is a hot mess," she said. That's not Ms. Ortiz. She doesn't smoke, she barely drinks, she eats sensibly. A few mornings a week she wakes up at 3 a.m. to fit in a workout before she is due on set. "Discipline, discipline, discipline," she said. Yes, she married her husband, Bradley Marques, after dating him for only two months, but they did it so that she could have health insurance. Eight years later, they're still together. But what's good for life is bad for TV. "If it's not messy then it's not worth watching, right?" Ms. Ortiz said. If Andy stayed home with a devoted husband and folded towels, ratings would tank, "end of story," Ms. Ortiz said. But maybe she and Andy aren't really so far apart. Maybe Ms. Ortiz likes the occasional adrenaline rush, too. After her climb, she rested on a red mat and looked back up at the wall she had just conquered. "I can see how that could be addicting," she said. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Style |
Waterfalls are furious cascades of water, sometimes scoring the landscapes in which they flow as they obey gravity's demands. From Iceland's shimmering Skogafoss to the family of falls in New Zealand's Milford Sound, they are zealous, aquatic showstoppers of the natural world. Powerful though waterfalls may appear, there is a longstanding assumption that they can only form when permitted by other natural forces. Tectonic movement shifting rock around, alterations in sea level, a change from a resilient rock to a more easily erodible one are all ways in which external forces are believed to influence where waterfalls form. But this paradigm may be about to change. By building a scaled down river in their laboratory, a team of researchers demonstrated that waterfalls can sometimes bring themselves into existence without any outside help. Like the Science Times page on Facebook. Sign up for the Science Times newsletter. Scientists "often use the presence of waterfalls to try and reconstruct the history of a landscape," said Edwin Baynes, a quantitative geomorphologist at the University of Auckland in New Zealand, and who was not involved in the study. By better understanding how waterfalls can form, the new study may prompt scientists to reconsider how our planet shaped itself, and help them peer back through deep geological time with greater precision. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Science |
After months of contentious behind the scenes battles, the public may finally get its chance to own a piece of a New York City landmark the Empire State Building. The real estate family that controls the 102 story Art Deco tower could move ahead as soon as this week with plans to sell shares to the public through a real estate investment trust, or REIT. It could be one of the largest initial public offerings ever of such a trust, in a deal valued at more than 5 billion. But even as Malkin Holdings races forward with the planned offering, which includes the iconic tower and 18 other office properties it operates in New York City and in Stamford, Conn., prospective buyers for the Empire State Building continue to come out of the woodwork. Last week, Joseph Sitt, a New York City landlord, increased his earlier bid. His company, Thor Equities, is now proposing to buy Empire State Building Associates, which owns the land, the building and the lease, for 1.4 billion in cash. That tops Mr. Sitt's offer from earlier this summer, and is higher than the 1.18 billion that the entity is valued at as part of the REIT. "Seeing as this new offer came in above both the appraised and exchange values in the proposed REIT, that leads me to believe they are taking it very seriously," said Jason Meister, an investment broker with Avison Young who represents Thor Equities. The offer by Mr. Sitt is the latest in a string of unsolicited bids that have been rebuffed by Peter L. Malkin and his son, Anthony E. Malkin, who contend that their plan, which has already been approved by stakeholders, is more valuable. Furthermore, most, if not all, of the bidders have had communications with Richard Edelman, a stakeholder in the Empire State Building who has led a group of dissidents opposed to the planned REIT. That has led to questions about whether the offers for the building are real or just attempts to derail the initial public offering. One of the "bids" was made on a single sheet of paper and provided no information about where the buyer would find the money to finance the building's purchase. Additionally, Mr. Meister, who represents Mr. Sitt at Thor, is the son of Stephen Meister, a lawyer representing some of the dissident shareholders. This should be a chill the Champagne moment for the Malkins. Family members, who are minority owners of the building, have already won several crucial rounds in a long running battle with dissident stakeholders. With the public offering, the Malkins would be catapulted into the upper echelons of Manhattan real estate their stake could be valued at an estimated 730 million and provide other legal and tax benefits. Anthony Malkin would become chairman of a new company, Empire State Realty Trust. In 1961, 3,300 units in the building were sold to stakeholders at 10,000 a unit, with some individuals buying multiple units. After about a year of back and forth, the Malkins early this summer persuaded the required 80 percent of the building's roughly 3,000 stakeholders to vote in favor of going public. While the Malkins still face a few remaining hurdles in their fight with the dissidents, including a court ruling expected this fall on whether a judge's ruling on New York's limited liability corporation laws was legal, they are pressing ahead with their plan for a public offering. A spokesman for the Malkins did not respond to an e mail seeking comment. There are also questions swirling around demand for a REIT featuring the Empire State Building as one of its cornerstones. While some investors will probably be drawn to the romantic notion of owning a piece of the fabled skyscraper, some analysts note that the building and several of the other properties included in the REIT are not viewed as modern, first class office buildings. In recent years, the Malkins have embarked on a major renovation of the Empire State Building that is drawing a better, more corporate class of tenants and yielding higher rents. But the once hot market for real estate investment trusts has cooled considerably since this spring. A Bloomberg index of office REITS is down 10.5 percent since hitting a four and a half year high in late May. "REITs did extremely well early in the year, but share prices have pulled back since May," said Michael Knott, a managing director with real estate research firm Green Street Advisors. He said, however, that New York office REITs have held up better than those in other parts of the country, in the belief that Manhattan real estate has stabilized. While some of the bidders hope that the wobbly REIT market has opened the door for them to sweep in with a competing offer, analysts say the bids, so far, appear to be falling short. "The offers don't appear high enough to persuade the Malkins to change direction," Mr. Knott said. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Real Estate |
"What I really wanted to do was tend to my own obsessions and figure out how to do it independently," Molly Stern said. Two years ago, at what seemed to be the pinnacle of her 25 years in publishing, Molly Stern's career came to an abrupt halt. As publisher of Crown, Ms. Stern had released 2018's biggest blockbuster Michelle Obama's memoir, "Becoming," which sold more than two million copies in its first two weeks. Less than a month later, Ms. Stern left the company in a shake up, after Penguin Random House merged the Crown and Random House publishing divisions. Her departure baffled many in the industry because of Ms. Stern's track record for spotting both commercial and literary hits. A natural next move would have been to set up shop with her own imprint at a rival publishing house, but as she surveyed the landscape, she decided she wanted to build something from scratch. "What I really wanted to do was tend to my own obsessions and figure out how to do it independently," she said in an interview this week. "The opportunity to do something new was just too exciting." Ms. Stern is starting a new publishing company, Zando, with an unusual marketing and publicity model. Rather than relying chiefly on bookstores, retailers, advertising and other traditional channels to promote authors, she plans to team up with high profile individuals, companies and brands, who will act as publishing partners and promote books to their fans and customers. 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. Zando is in advanced negotiations with several potential partners, Ms. Stern said, though the company was not prepared to name them or announce projects. Zando's partners will get a cut of the royalties; Ms. Stern declined to provide specific breakdowns. Launching a new publishing venture in an oversaturated media ecosystem not to mention during a pandemic and economic crisis may seem like a risky undertaking. But Ms. Stern has aligned herself with deep pocketed backers. This summer, she received a significant start up investment from Sister, an independent global studio that was founded in 2019 by the media executive Elisabeth Murdoch, the film industry executive Stacey Snider and the producer Jane Featherstone. Ms. Stern, Ms. Murdoch and Ms. Snider will sit on Zando's board of directors, along with Matthew Lieber, co founder of the podcasting company Gimlet, and David Benioff, one of the producers of "Game of Thrones." Ms. Murdoch said in an interview that she wanted to invest in Ms. Stern's publishing company because it aligned with Sister's goal of producing high quality entertainment from emerging writers. The team behind Sister produced the HBO series "Chernobyl" and the British thriller "Broadchurch." "When you have a world of massive consolidation and homogeneity, Molly and Sister have a huge passion for new voices," Ms. Murdoch, the daughter of the media mogul Rupert Murdoch, said. With her industry experience, Ms. Stern may also have an advantage when it comes to signing authors. During her tenure at Crown, the company published blockbusters like Ernest Cline's "Ready Player One," Gillian Flynn's "Gone Girl" and Andy Weir's "The Martian," as well as breakout works of translation like Han Kang's "The Vegetarian," which won the Booker International Prize. At Crown, Ms. Stern helped the actress Sarah Jessica Parker start her own literary fiction imprint, an experience she drew on in creating the business model for Zando. "That's an advantage she has from being in the business for as long as she has," said the literary agent David Kuhn. "There will be authors who have worked with Molly in the past who will be much more open to trying something different." By aligning authors with cultural ambassadors of sorts, Zando aims to deploy star power to keep its books from drowning in a sea of online content. "Discoverability is a real crisis," Ms. Stern said. At Crown, when she was publishing books by lesser known authors, the lack of broad support was constantly frustrating, even when authors got positive reviews and retail promotion. "You felt that you were publishing into a vacuum," she said. "To find an audience is increasingly complicated." Several celebrities and public figures, including Jenna Bush Hager, Emma Watson and Reese Witherspoon, have started book clubs and emerged as literary influencers. Ms. Witherspoon's endorsements helped turn novels like "Little Fires Everywhere" and "Where the Crawdads Sing" into hits, and she has made her media company, Hello Sunshine, into a book to screen factory. As an independent publishing company, Zando can also experiment with distribution in ways that might be challenging for legacy publishers. Ms. Stern said she would rely on traditional distribution networks to get print copies to bookstores but also plans to experiment with alternative distribution channels such as direct to consumer sales. She also plans to make audio a centerpiece of the company's content; after leaving Crown, she has advised Spotify on how to build its audiobook business. Zando expects to publish its first books in the fall of 2021. Ms. Stern, who will take on the role of chief executive, initially plans to hire eight staff members and later to grow to a staff of 20. She came up with the name as a nod to the first letters of her sons' names, Zach and Oscar. 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 |
BEIJING The Chinese government has fined six companies that sell infant milk powder a total of 109 million for anticompetitive behavior and price fixing, the country's top economic planning agency said on Wednesday. It is the largest fine China has ever issued for violations of its antimonopoly law, according to Xinhua, the official state news agency. Five of the companies are foreign, and one is based in Hong Kong. They are Mead Johnson Nutrition of the United States; Dumex Baby Food, a subsidiary of Danone in France; Biostime International of Hong Kong; Royal FrieslandCampina of the Netherlands; the Fonterra Co operative Group of New Zealand; and Abbott Laboratories of the United States, according to a statement from the National Development and Reform Commission, the Chinese economic planning agency. The statement said three other companies were exempt from the punishment because they "cooperated with the government investigation, provided important evidence and actively took self rectification measures." Those not subject to the action were Wyeth Nutrition, a subsidiary of Nestle of Switzerland; Zhejiang Beingmate Technology Industry and Trade Company, a Chinese company; and Meiji Holdings of Japan. The decision concluded an investigation that began in March into the infant formula industry for what the commission said was price fixing of baby formula in the Chinese market. The statement said evidence gathered during the course of the investigation showed that the companies used various methods to ensure that distributors raised prices, including signing contractual agreements, imposing fines, cutting rebates and restricting the supply of goods. People's Daily, the Communist Party's official newspaper, and at least one analyst of China's market for baby products have said that prices of foreign branded infant milk powder had risen by at least 30 percent since 2008, when the Chinese began buying foreign brands in droves because of a wide scandal involving tainted Chinese made milk powder that caused widespread illness and some deaths. After the investigation began, at least three foreign companies Mead Johnson, Dumex and Nestle cut their product prices about 20 percent in the Chinese market. Mead Johnson was fined the equivalent of 4 percent of its 2012 revenue in China, or about 33 million. In its announcement, the agency said Mead Johnson did not actively cooperate with the investigation but was quick to take corrective measures. Open or closed on Thanksgiving? Here are stores' plans for Thursday and Friday. The high cost of gas is forcing families to cut back on activities and essentials. Mead Johnson said it did not intend to contest the agency's decision. A company spokeswoman said in an e mail on Wednesday, "We believe our business practices were consistent with prevailing interpretations of regulatory requirements applicable to our industry." Biostime, which was fined 6 percent of its revenue from last year, or 26.6 million, received the harshest punishment of the six companies for its "serious violations" of the antimonopoly law. A statement by the company, released on Wednesday, said it intended to pay the fine and would continue to work to ensure that its "various business decisions comply with the applicable P.R.C. laws and regulations," referring to the People's Republic of China. Dumex was fined 28 million, Abbott was fined 12.63 million and Friesland was penalized 7.89 million all representing about 3 percent of their 2012 revenue in China. The Chinese agency said they had cooperated with the investigation and had been quick to change their practices. Fonterra was fined only about 730,000, but it has been mired in a separate food safety scandal in China related to potentially tainted ingredients used in baby formula products made by other companies. This week, a top Fonterra executive flew to China to issue an apology at a news conference. Chinese officials have banned imports of New Zealand milk products and several foreign companies have said they would take precautions and recall products containing the Fonterra ingredients. The Chinese state run news media has run front page articles and harsh editorials over the case. Foreign brands have become popular since the Chinese milk industry experienced severe losses after the 2008 scandal, when six babies died and more than 300,000 children fell ill as a result of drinking milk products tainted with melamine, a toxic chemical. When Chinese officials announced the price fixing investigation a month ago, they also said they would ensure stricter standards within the domestic industry. Chinese state run newspapers ran editorials saying they hoped that the new standards would bolster the competitive ability of the domestic companies versus foreign rivals. For various reasons, including aggressive marketing by the formula makers, many Chinese mothers prefer to give their babies formula rather than breast milk, though breast feeding has grown in popularity since the 2008 scandal. The market for infant formula in China is enormous and growing fast. It was estimated to be worth about 12.7 billion in 2012, and is projected to grow to 15.4 billion this year and 18.4 billion in 2014, according to data from Euromonitor, a research organization. Chinese parents have gone to great lengths to buy foreign made infant milk powder, and that has led to shortages in at least a half dozen countries around the world. Some large retail chains have imposed a limit of two to four cans of milk powder per customer, and Hong Kong has made it a criminal offense to take more than two cans of milk powder out of the territory. The law was imposed in March to crack down on smuggling of milk powder to the mainland. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Global Business |
BURLINGTON, Vt. It's hard to find anyone here who believes that Joyce Irvine should have been removed as principal of Wheeler Elementary School. John Mudasigana, one of many recent African refugees whose children attend the high poverty school, says he is grateful for how Ms. Irvine and her teachers have helped his five children. "Everything is so good about the school," he said, before taking his daughter Evangeline, 11, into the school's dental clinic. Ms. Irvine's most recent job evaluation began, "Joyce has successfully completed a phenomenal year." Jeanne Collins, Burlington's school superintendent, calls Ms. Irvine "a leader among her colleagues" and "a very good principal." Beth Evans, a Wheeler teacher, said, "Joyce has done a great job," and United States Senator Bernie Sanders noted all the enrichment programs, including summer school, that Ms. Irvine had added since becoming principal six years ago. "She should not have been removed," Mr. Sanders said in an interview. "I've walked that school with her she seemed to know the name and life history of every child." Ms. Irvine wasn't removed by anyone who had seen her work (often 80 hour weeks) at a school where 37 of 39 fifth graders were either refugees or special ed children and where, much to Mr. Mudasigana's delight, his daughter Evangeline learned to play the violin. Ms. Irvine was removed because the Burlington School District wanted to qualify for up to 3 million in federal stimulus money for its dozen schools. And under the Obama administration rules, for a district to qualify, schools with very low test scores, like Wheeler, must do one of the following: close down; be replaced by a charter (Vermont does not have charters); remove the principal and half the staff; or remove the principal and transform the school. And since Ms. Irvine had already "worked tirelessly," as her evaluation said, to "successfully" transform the school last fall to an arts magnet, even she understood her removal was the least disruptive option. "Joyce Irvine versus millions," Ms. Irvine said. "You can buy a lot of help for children with that money." Burlington faced the difficult choice because performance evaluations for teachers and principals based on test results, as much as on local officials' judgment, are a hallmark of the two main competitive grant programs the Obama administration developed to spur its initiatives: the stimulus and Race to the Top. "I was distraught," said Ms. Irvine, 57, who was removed July 1. "I loved being principal I put my heart and soul into that school for six years." Still, she counts herself lucky that the superintendent moved her to an administrative job even if it will pay considerably less. "I didn't want to lose her, she's too good," Ms. Collins said, adding that the school's low scores were the result of a testing system that's "totally inappropriate" for Wheeler's children. Justin Hamilton, a spokesman for the United States Department of Education, noted that districts don't have to apply for the grants, that the rules are clear and that federal officials do not remove principals. But Burlington officials say that not applying in such hard times would have shortchanged students. At the heart of things is whether the testing system under the federal No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 can fairly assess schools full of middle class children, as well as a school like Wheeler, with a 97 percent poverty rate and large numbers of refugees, many with little previous education. President Obama's Blueprint for Reform says that "instead of a single snapshot, we will recognize progress and growth." Ms. Collins says if a year's progress for each student were the standard, Wheeler would score well. However, the reality is that measuring every student's yearly growth statewide is complex, and virtually all states, including Vermont, rely on a school's annual test scores. Under No Child rules, a student arriving one day before the state math test must take it. Burlington is a major resettlement area, and one recent September, 28 new students from Somalia, Ethiopia, Kenya, Sudan arrived at Wheeler and took the math test in October. Ms. Irvine said that in a room she monitored, 15 of 18 randomly filled in test bubbles. The math tests are word problems. A sample fourth grade question: "Use Xs to draw an array for the sum of 4 4 4." Five percent of Wheeler's refugee students scored proficient in math. About half the 230 students are foreign born, collectively speaking 30 languages. Many have been traumatized; a third see one of the school's three caseworkers. During Ms. Irvine's tenure, suspensions were reduced to 7 last year, from 100. Students take the reading test after one year in the country. Ms. Irvine tells a story about Mr. Mudasigana's son Oscar and the fifth grade test. Oscar needed 20 minutes to read a passage on Neil Armstrong landing his Eagle spacecraft on the moon; it should have taken 5 minutes, she said, but Oscar was determined, reading out loud to himself. The first question asked whether the passage was fact or fiction. "He said, 'Oh, Mrs. Irvine, man don't go on the moon, man don't go on the back of eagles, this is not true,' " she recalled. "So he got the five follow up questions wrong penalized for a lack of experience." Thirteen percent of foreign born students, 4 percent of special ed students and 23 percent of the entire school scored proficient in reading. And Ms. Irvine, who hoped to finish her career on the front lines, working with children, will be Burlington's new school improvement administrator. "Her students made so much progress," Ms. Collins said. "What's happened to her is not at all connected to reality." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Education |
SEATTLE Few believed the housing market here would ever collapse. Now they wonder if it will ever stop slumping. The rolling real estate crash that ravaged Florida and the Southwest is delivering a new wave of distress to communities once thought to be immune economically diversified cities where the boom was relatively restrained. In the last year, home prices in Seattle had a bigger decline than in Las Vegas. Minneapolis dropped more than Miami, and Atlanta fared worse than Phoenix. The bubble markets, where builders, buyers and banks ran wild, began falling first, economists say, so they are close to the end of the cycle and in some cases on their way back up. Nearly everyone else still has another season of pain. "When I go out and talk to people around town, they say, 'Wow, I thought we were going to have a 12 percent correction and call it a day,' " said Stan Humphries, chief economist for the housing site Zillow, which is based in Seattle. "But this thing just keeps on going." Seattle is down about 31 percent from its mid 2007 peak and, according to Zillow's calculations, still has as much as 10 percent to fall. Mr. Humphries estimates the rest of the country will drop a further 5 and 7 percent as last year's tax credits for home buyers continue to wear off. "We went into 2010 feeling gangbusters, thanks to Uncle Sam," Mr. Humphries said. "We ended it feeling penniless, with home values tanking." The fact that even a fairly prosperous area like Seattle was ensnared in the downturn shows just how much of a national phenomenon the crash has been. The slump began when the low quality loans that drove the latter stage of the boom began to go bad, but the resulting recession greatly enlarged the crisis. Many people could not get a mortgage, and others simply gave up the hunt. Now, though the overall economy seems to be mending, housing remains stubbornly weak. That presents a vexing problem for the Obama administration, which has introduced several initiatives intended to help homeowners, with mixed success. CoreLogic, a data firm, said last week that American home prices fell 5.5 percent in 2010, back to the recession low of March 2009. New home sales are scraping along the bottom. Mortgage applications are near a 15 year low, boding ill for the rest of the winter. It has been a long, painful slide. At the peak, a downturn in real estate in Seattle was nearly unthinkable. In September 2006, after prices started falling in many parts of the country but were still increasing here, The Seattle Times noted that the last time prices in the city dropped on a quarterly basis was during the severe recession of 1982. Two local economists were quoted all but guaranteeing that Seattle was immune "if history is any indication." A risk index from PMI Mortgage Insurance gave the odds of Seattle prices dropping at a negligible 11 percent. These days, the mood here is chastened when not downright fatalistic. If a recovery depends on a belief in better times, that seems a long way off. Those who must sell close their eyes and hope for the best. Those who hope to buy see lower prices but often have lighter wallets, removing any sense of urgency. Arne Klubberud and Melissa Lee Klubberud paid 358,000 for a new, 960 square foot townhouse on trendy Capitol Hill a few weeks after that Seattle Times article was published. Now, with one child and with hopes for more, they need more space. They just put the townhouse on the market for 300,000. "Obviously, this is not the ideal situation," said Ms. Lee Klubberud, a 32 year old lawyer. They are hoping to take advantage of the sour market to buy at a good price, but first, they must sell for an amount that is acceptable. "Everyone has their limits," she said. "We have ours." On a dark, dank Sunday, a handful of people came to look at the three level unit. One of them was Katherine Davis, who had just sold her house in the far eastern suburbs. It took 14 months, during which she had to drop the price several times. The equity she had accumulated over the decades disappeared quickly. "At first, I thought it would be nice to come out of this with 200,000, but I adjusted my expectations," Ms. Davis said. She ended up with less than half of that. Her goal is to buy a small place in the city, but not yet. "Selfishly, I'm hoping the market continues to drop," she said. Megan and Ryan Dortch tried to sell their one bedroom Eastlake condo for 325,000 two years ago. They rejected an offer of 295,000 as inadequate. A year later, they relisted it for 289,000, then 279,000, which was less than they paid. Without a sale at that price, they could not afford to buy a place big enough for them and their new baby. They have given up on real estate. They are renting out their old apartment at a small loss every month, and living in a rented house. "I don't expect the market to get better," said Ms. Dortch, 31, a customer service consultant. Neither does Gene Burrus, another frustrated seller who became a landlord. "Rent is so cheap it doesn't make sense to buy now," he said. He might reconsider if 10 or 15 percent more comes out of the market. Redfin, a real estate brokerage firm based in Seattle, says foot traffic began picking up in the last several weeks. Mortgage rates are rising, which could nudge those who need to buy to make a deal now for fear rates will rise even more. But whenever the market finally does pick up, all those accidental landlords will want to unload, putting another burden on the market. "So many sellers are waiting in the shadows," said Redfin's chief executive, Glenn Kelman. "The inventory is going to expand and expand and expand. I don't see any basis for significant price increases." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Economy |
For decades, sex education in the classroom could be pretty cringey. For some adolescents, it meant a pitch for abstinence; others watched their teachers put condoms on bananas and attempt sketches of fallopian tubes that looked more like modern art. On TikTok, sex ed is being flipped on its head. Teenagers who load the app might find guidance set to the pulsing beat of "Sex Talk" by Megan Thee Stallion. A doctor, sporting scrubs and grinning into her camera, instructs them on how to respond if a condom breaks during sex: The pill Plan B can be 95 percent effective, the video explains. The video is the work of Dr. Danielle Jones, a gynecologist in College Station, Tex., and so far has racked up over 11 million views. Comments range from effusive ("this slaps") to eye rolling ("thanks for the advice mom" and "ma'am, I'm 14 years old"). Dr. Jones is one of many medical professionals working their way through the rapidly expanding territory of TikTok, the Chinese owned short form video app, to counter medical misinformation to a surging audience. The app has been downloaded 1.5 billion times as of November, according to SensorTower, with an audience that skews young; 40 percent of its users are ages 16 to 24. Although medical professionals have long taken to social media to share healthy messages or promote their work, TikTok poses a new set of challenges, even for the internet adept. Popular posts on the app tend to be short, musical and humorous, complicating the task of physicians hoping to share nuanced lessons on health issues like vaping, coronavirus, nutrition and things you shouldn't dip in soy sauce. And some physicians who are using the platform to spread credible information have found themselves the targets of harassment. Dr. Rose Marie Leslie, a family medicine resident physician at the University of Minnesota Medical School, said TikTok provided an enormous platform for medical public service announcements. "It has this incredible viewership potential that goes beyond just your own following," she said. Like the Science Times page on Facebook. Sign up for the Science Times newsletter. Dr. Leslie's TikToks on vaping associated lung diseases drew over 3 million views, and posts on the flu and HPV vaccines also reached broad audiences beyond her hospital. Striking a chord on TikTok, Dr. Leslie said, means tailoring medical messaging to the app's often goofy form. In one post, she advised viewers to burn calories by practicing a viral TikTok dance. She takes her cues from teen users, who often use the app to offer irreverent, even slapstick commentary on public health conversations. She noted one trend in which young TikTokers brainstormed creative ways to destroy your e cigarette, like running it over with a car. TikTok's executives have welcomed the platform's uses for medical professionals. "It's been inspiring to see doctors and nurses take to TikTok in their scrubs to demystify the medical profession," said Gregory Justice, TikTok's head of content programming. Dr. Jones, the gynecologist, said she was hopeful the platform could help young people develop trust in medical practitioners and view them as more accessible. "Back in the old days, there was a town doctor and everyone knew where he lived, and you traded milk and eggs for health care," Dr. Jones said. "You had trust in your doctor because you trusted them as a person first." TikTok, she said, can help to humanize doctors she's seen that some of her own patients feel more comfortable with her because they have seen her playful social media posts. But some doctors are also encountering responses to their videos that they did not expect. Earlier this month, Dr. Nicole Baldwin, a pediatrician in Cincinnati, posted a TikTok listing the diseases that are preventable with vaccines and countering the notion that vaccines cause autism. A team of volunteers that is helping Dr. Baldwin monitor her social media has banned more than 5,200 users from her Facebook in recent weeks. Dr. Baldwin said she started out feeling enthusiastic about the opportunity TikTok provides to educate adolescents, but her experience with harassment gave her some pause. "There's a fine line physicians are walking between trying to get a message out that will appeal to this younger generation without being inappropriate or unprofessional," Dr. Baldwin said. "Because of the short content and musical aspect of TikTok, what adolescents are latching onto is not the professional persona we typically put out there." A spate of recent TikToks have further stirred questions about the potential for the app's abuse. One recent TikTok post featured a medical professional speculating as she lip synced to the Rex Orange County lyric "How Could I Ignore You?" that her patient's chest pain could have been caused by cocaine. Another showed an emergency room doctor mocking patients who sought treatment in the E.R. rather than from a primary care physician. Sarah Mojarad, a lecturer who teaches a course on social media for scientists at the University of Southern California, said she has seen physicians either "bashing their patients" on the app or "whitecoat marketing," a term that refers to the use of medical prestige to market inappropriate products like unauthorized supplements. The youth of TikTok's audience also raises the stakes when medical professionals misuse the platform. "With a young audience, it's really important to make sure that the content getting out is professional and accurate," Ms. Mojarad said. "People may think some of it is medical humor, but it impacts care." TikTok's community guidelines state that the platform does not permit "misinformation that may cause harm to an individual's health, such as misleading information about medical treatments." The company expanded its rules of conduct earlier this month, as its user base has grown. Some physicians worry that TikTok's brief, playful clips can blur the line between general education and patient specific medical advice. Dr. Austin Chiang, a gastroenterologist and chief medical social media officer at Jefferson Health in Philadelphia, said he has been asked about specific symptoms on TikTok and has to refer users to established medical sources, or directly to their doctors. Dr. Christian Assad, a cardiologist in McAllen, Tex., said he sometimes scripts his TikToks, given the potential for confusion when he compresses a 60 minute talk on low carbohydrate dieting into a 60 second musical clip. Ignoring the platform isn't an option, especially given the prevalence of disinformation on the app, Dr. Chiang said. Two of his more popular posts have countered the use of essential oils to cure diseases and exposed the failings of the celery juice fad diet. Still, for doctors turned influencers, the TikTok learning curve can be steep. Dr. Matthew Schulman, a plastic surgeon in New York, said the slightly older users of Instagram and Snapchat have been vital to his private practice, helping to drive roughly 80 percent of consultations. He often streams live from the operating room. "Buttock augmentation is really popular on social media," he said. But TikTok has presented him with cause for additional concern. The virality upside is massive: A post he made earlier this month discussing celebrity clients drew over 6.8 million views. But as he has watched his 10 year old daughter use the app, he realized that he must exercise more caution in producing content. "The demographic of TikTok is very young, and as a plastic surgeon I don't feel comfortable marketing my services to children," Dr. Schulman said. Simultaneously, he knows the app is growing fast. "I don't want to be caught playing catch up. In two or three years the platform could change, and if I already have an established account I'm ahead of the game." In the meantime, he said, he relies on top notch TikTok editors his kids. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Health |
A boarding gate area at Hongqiao Airport's second terminal in Shanghai, shown in 2010. The city relocated 10,000 residents to enable the construction. SHANGHAI For those frustrated with air travel in the United States, arriving at this city's domestic airport can be a treat. New arrivals are whisked on electronic walkways through a bright, spacious airport terminal that features elegant lounges, free Wi Fi, speedy security checks and an efficient baggage handling system. This is what the best airports now look like in the world's second largest economy. Three years after it opened, Terminal 2 at Hongqiao International Airport in Shanghai stands as a testament to China's economic ambitions, and to its unique approach to infrastructure development. With extraordinary government support, Shanghai built a massive airport terminal in 32 months as part of a 9 billion transportation hub that connects the air terminal with the city's buses, subway platforms and a new high speed railway network. "They know how to build things and how to do it efficiently," said Jeffrey N. Thomas, chief executive of Landrum Brown, an American firm that helped design the new Shanghai terminal. "That area went from plans on a piece of paper to a complex that has 14 million square feet in less than four years. That's hard to do." At a time when many American airports are falling into disrepair, China is quickening its air travel development, with plans to build nearly 100 more airports by 2015, including some at high altitudes, where special landing gear is required. Many of those airports are expected to lose money, but that hasn't deterred the government, which views the expansion of infrastructure as vital to economic development. China's big city airports are already colossal. Last year, Beijing Capital International Airport handled 81 million passengers, up from 27 million in 2002. In Shanghai, Pudong Airport which operates 25 miles east of Hongqiao as the city's international gateway has so many flights it plans to add a fourth and fifth runway, something few other airports in the world possess. The quality and speed with which China builds its big city airports is impressive. But whether China holds any lessons for airport development in America, or Europe for that matter, is unclear, analysts say. China's building programs are supported by an authoritarian political system that brooks no challenges. When the government decides to build or expand an airport, there are no public hearings or any public protests of note. And while economists ponder the long term consequences of that decision making process, this country's leaders push ahead with new megaprojects. "There's a pro investment bias here, partly because the country still has so much surplus labor, which makes it a lot cheaper to build," said Louis Kuijs, an economist at the Royal Bank of Scotland based in Hong Kong. "And this is a country that knows how to build. Look at the Great Wall!" Terminal 2 at Hongqiao Airport is one of those "this could only happen in China" developments. With Terminal 1 congested, the city announced plans in 2006 for a new transportation hub to cover 10 square miles, a project that when complete is likely to be the world's largest transit hub with about 1.1 million passengers a day. And in the case of the transportation hub, once the land was cleared, state run banks lined up to lend money to the project. 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. "The relocation and acquiring of land this size, only China can do it," said Cao Longjin, general manager of Shanghai Rainbow Investments, a state run company that helped develop the hub. "It's a miracle." When China went on an earlier airport building spree in the 1980s and early 1990s, things didn't go quite so smoothly. The airports tended to be poorly designed and minimally functional, and usually lost money. Now, big cities are flush with cash from a real estate boom. Government officials take part in overseas fact finding missions, hire international consultants and set up joint ventures that improve the chances that the biggest airports will turn a profit. In Shanghai, the city's airport authority helped set up Shanghai Rainbow Investments to develop the new transportation hub and revitalize the area around it. The plan includes a new central business district with towers, five star hotels and a vast mixed use commercial project created by the Hong Kong developer Shui On Land. The developer hired the American architect Ben Wood, who designed Shanghai's popular Xintiandi commercial and entertainment district. City officials also designed Terminal 2 with profit making ventures in mind, modeled on airports in London, Hong Kong and Singapore, where terminals double as vibrant shopping malls, packed with duty free shopping and restaurants. "We looked at what areas of an airport are profitable and which are typically not profitable," said Liu Wujun, chief technical officer at the Shanghai Airport Authority and one of the main planners behind Terminal 2. "The areas that tend to be profitable we made as large as possible; the areas not so profitable we made as small as possible." The result was smaller roadways alongside the airport (not so profitable), and larger hotels, retail outlets and cargo processing sections (more profitable). Atlanta's airport is one of the world's most cost competitive, with about 70 percent of its revenue from nonaviation areas like shops and parking. That is Shanghai's model, Mr. Liu said. Part of the profitability equation involved lowering the cost of construction. And experts say that comes easier in China, where aggressive building schedules are the norm. Shanghai, for instance, hired more than 13,000 construction workers to develop the transportation hub and did what many projects here do: it instituted a 24/7 construction schedule. Commuting time was minimal since most of the workers lived on site. So while Heathrow Airport Terminal 5 in London took nearly six years to build and cost 6.5 billion, Hongqiao's Terminal 2, roughly the same size, was built in less than half the time for a third of the cost. When it opened in early 2010, Terminal 2 had 80 check in counters and capacity to handle 300,000 flights a year. Last year, the airport handled 234,000 flights. In the United States, there are warnings that the poor state of infrastructure at American airports is likely to hold back the industry, and that one of the impediments is the way government restricts financing options. "We're going to have to change the way our airports are regulated in terms of how they finance things and how they put projects in place," said Greg Principato, president of the Airports Council International North America, which represents the nation's roughly 450 commercial airports. Of course, with expansion China's airports will face tough management challenges, particularly if labor costs rise and air traffic slows. There are also concerns among some analysts who study economic development that China's airport program is excessive and that the country's high speed rail is likely to erode the profitability of airports. But Mr. Liu, the chief technical officer at Shanghai's airport authority, jokes about how much more profit oriented state owned operators are in China. "The difference between here and the U.S. is that in the U.S., the government manages the nonprofit parts of an airport and gives the profitable parts to the private sector," he said, laughing. "The U.S. way is more socialist and the Chinese more capitalist." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Global Business |
Neither Novak Djokovic nor Roger Federer could resist Rafael Nadal on Sunday. Nadal made astonishingly quick work of them both in the French Open final, overwhelming Djokovic, the world's No. 1 player, 6 0, 6 2, 7 5, to equal Federer's record of 20 Grand Slam singles titles. It was quite possibly Nadal's finest performance at Roland Garros, which sounds like a reach considering that he had already won 12 Grand Slam singles title on the same rectangle of red clay. But there was nothing unlucky about No. 13. He was on target from the opening game, breaking Djokovic's serve under the closed roof at the Philippe Chatrier Court. Nadal, 34 years old but still an irresistible force, ripped groundstrokes with depth and purpose, hunted down drop shots, read Djokovic's mind and serve and kept his unforced errors to a strict minimum. He made just two in the opening set one of those on the opening point and 14 in the match, giving his more erratic and increasingly edgy rival little time or space to find his mojo. Djokovic, the 2016 French Open champion, is one of only two men to beat Nadal at Roland Garros. He had defeated Nadal in their last three Grand Slam matches against each other. The most recent of those came at the 2019 Australian Open final, where Djokovic overwhelmed Nadal, 6 3, 6 2, 6 3, in what Djokovic still maintains was the finest performance of his career. But that rout took place on a hardcourt, Djokovic's best surface, at the major tournament he has won most often. Sunday's payback came in Nadal's kingdom. "Sorry for today," Nadal said to Djokovic on court. Later, he elaborated. "As you know, I am not a big fan of revenge," Nadal said. "I just accept when the things are not going the way that I like. In Australia, he played amazing." He added: "Today was a little bit the opposite." Djokovic had not lost a completed match in all of 2020, his only defeat coming in the fourth round of the United States Open when he was disqualified for striking a ball and inadvertently hitting a line umpire in the throat. "I thought I was in a great form," Djokovic said. "Certainly I could have played better, especially in the first two sets. But, you know, just he did surprise me with the way he was playing, the quality of tennis he was producing." Djokovic, the bristle haired and elastic Serb, finished with 52 unforced errors and 38 winners and had his serve broken seven times (he won under 50 percent of his service points). Still, he stuck with many of the patterns that had worked well throughout this tournament and in Rome, where he won the Italian Open last month on clay. But his many drop shots rarely fooled Nadal, who had practiced chasing drop shots extensively ahead of the final. "I wanted to kind of disrupt his rhythm, obviously," Djokovic said. "But he was ready. He was there, he was prepared. He was playing all the right shots today." That has so often been the case at Roland Garros, and if Sunday's emphatic victory resembled any other, it was the 2008 final against the No. 1 ranked Federer, which Nadal won, 6 1, 6 3, 6 0 (amazingly, they remain friends). Djokovic at least generated a suspenseful third set. He battled back from an early break to break Nadal's serve for the only time in the match, unleashing a fists clenched roar that is often his way of underscoring that the momentum has shifted. But Nadal calmly and relentlessly snatched it back. At 5 5, 30 40, Djokovic hit a second serve close to the line that was initially called good but then called out for a double fault after an inspection of the mark by the chair umpire, Damien Dumusois. Djokovic took a second look and then headed glumly to his chair. Nadal served out the victory at love, finishing with a crisply sliced ace and falling to his knees. Surely not even he imagined beating Djokovic, the second most accomplished clay court player of Nadal's era, quite like this. Nadal and Djokovic have faced each other 56 times: the longest men's rivalry of the Open era. Djokovic leads by the narrow margin of 29 27. "Today, you showed why you are the king of clay," Djokovic said during the awards ceremony. "I experienced it in my own skin." Nadal did not drop a set in seven matches, and Sunday's victory was his 100th in a match at Roland Garros. That would certainly have been the number of the day if not for Federer's record. Nadal and Federer have been respectful rivals for more than a decade, playing some of the most memorable matches in the game's long history, including their classic 2008 Wimbledon final, won by Nadal in five sets not long after that Roland Garros rout. But Federer, 39, is nearly five years older than Nadal and had always been ahead of him in the Grand Slam chase. Until Sunday. "Of course I care," Nadal said after long being reluctant to discuss the chase. "I am a big fan of the history of sport in general. For me, it means a lot to share this number with Roger." Federer called winning the French Open 13 times "one of the greatest achievements in sport." He added, "I hope 20 is just another step on the continuing journey for both of us." Nadal's 20th title will deepen the conversation about who deserves to be considered the greatest men's player of the Open era and perhaps even in the history of the sport (although that is a much more difficult comparison to make). Though the outcome in Paris on Sunday was so familiar, this was not a French Open like any other. It was moved from the spring to the autumn because of the coronavirus pandemic, making for cooler temperatures that rendered Nadal's topspin forehand less lively than usual. The crowds were limited to just 1,000 paid spectators per day. Fiona Olivier, a native of Ireland who has long lived in France, was one of those in attendance for the final after she and her family were selected in the ticket lottery. "We never win anything," she said. "I thought the atmosphere today was better than when the stadium is full. There were less corporate people. The people who were here were so happy to be at a live event." That is a great deal of change to process for a champion like Nadal, who thrives on routine (see his elaborate prepoint rituals). But he managed to maintain tradition by extending his rule, winning in just 2 hours 41 minutes. That was a veritable sprint considering that he and Djokovic, both supreme defenders and serial ball bouncers before serving, once played for nearly six hours and were unable to stand for the prize ceremony after Djokovic won the 2012 Australian Open final. "I don't have a better feeling because I won, 6 0, 6 2, 7 5, than if I won, 6 4 in the fifth, honestly," Nadal said. "Even maybe it's a little bit more beautiful to win, 6 4 in the fifth, than winning in straight sets, no?" That was a thoroughly Nadalian perspective: putting the value on earning the prize, on suffering for it. But the look on his face was still full of delight after winning the championship point a broad smile, even a hint of a laugh, as he landed on his knees in the red clay that must feel like water to a dolphin at this stage. And yet there were soon tears in his eyes as the Spanish anthem played. It has been such a tough year for his country and for the wider world. At the least, another Nadal victory shows that the upheaval has its limits. "In some ways it's not that happy because we can't celebrate the tournament in a normal way," he said, a mask on his face. "I really hope that in a couple of months when we will be back here, hopefully in June, we will be able to celebrate this amazing, new, beautiful stadium with a full crowd." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Sports |
An image from "Our Planet" of over 100,000 walruses on a coast in Northern Russia. "The walrus scenes were the hardest things I've ever had to witness or film in my career," said Sophie Lanfear, one of the series' directors. It's a striking image, watching a walrus climb a rock cliff. During one episode of the new Netflix nature docu series "Our Planet," we witness something that shouldn't be happening and is only happening now, the producers say, because of climate change. Desperate marine animals driven away from their natural habitats are trying to adapt to shelter elsewhere, and falling to their deaths as a result. This is not the typical scenario featured in feel good nature documentaries, but "Our Planet" has a different aim. Its creators partnered with the World Wildlife Fund (and a team of scientists) to depict how various ecosystems around the world from the frozen Arctic to rain forest jungles to coastal seas are imperiled by human activity, and what can be done to protect or restore them. "We were trying to get to the heart of the issue with each of the great global habitats," said Keith Scholey, an executive producer of the series, "and to be very clear about the elements of destruction and the solutions." A look at recent Netflix originals worth your time. In phone interviews with Scholey and Adam Chapman, who produced and directed two episodes of the series, and, separately, with Sophie Lanfear, who produced and directed one episode, they shared their experiences making "Our Planet." These are edited excerpts from that conversation. How did your advocacy interest shape the filming and the production? SOPHIE LANFEAR The only reason I was interested in working on "Our Planet" is that it had conservation very much at the heart of the series. Often it's a last minute thing two lines of commentary at the end of the show. To me, it's about designing the whole structure of the film with a conservation message, and having the visual kinds of sequences that show you, not tell you, what is going on with the world. ADAM CHAPMAN We set up some stringent parameters when we were selecting what to do. The obvious one is that they had to be the most dynamic and new animal behaviors that we could find. And more important, each sequence had to represent a much greater truth about that habitat. LANFEAR For example, when I was designing the second episode "Frozen Worlds," I watched every single relevant documentary I could find, and what I found was that none of them told the story of sea ice. Sea ice isn't just this vast nothing. It's a living habitat. The algae feed on the ice, and the krill feed on the algae, and the krill feeds the whales and the penguins. And when you lose the sea ice, this white reflective surface at the top of our planet, we lose our protective shield from solar energy. So it's not only bad for the animals that live there, it's bad for us. What was it like seeing the impact of climate change unfold in real time? KEITH SCHOLEY I think the bit that shocked me was the coral bleaching in a 500 mile stretch of the Great Barrier Reef. It goes ghostly white when the temperature changes. It expels the algae that live in the coral. It looks rather beautiful, but then it dies. CHAPMAN The sequence for me that had the most emotional resonance was the glacial calving in Greenland, which is the final sequence in Episode 1. We waited for the glacier to calve for quite some weeks, without any luck. And we were nearly packing up. LANFEAR I kind of looked at the nose of it, and I was like, "Hmmm, that one looks like a different shape." And we could see, ever so slightly, that it was moving, so it was all systems go in the last evening in the last hour of light. About a third of the glacier broke away in that event. It sounded like a war zone. Like cannon fire. CHAPMAN We then managed to film on the ground and from a helicopter that we had on standby. The 20 minutes we spent in the helicopter were probably some of the most exciting time I've had filming in my career. But after the elation of achieving this goal, looking down at this bay with this massive iceberg in the middle of it, you realize the portent of that event. LANFEAR We could see through some of the sea ice. It was like glass. And that's when it just hits you. The scientist Alun Hubbard has studied the ice cores in that section of the glacier, and that's thousands and thousands of years old ice. Something that is thousands of years old, destroyed in the blink of an eye. It's very sobering. And when you think about the sea ice disappearing, then you realize the walruses are like refugees. They are Arctic refugees. The walrus scenes are astonishing. These walruses don't have enough ice, so they're hauling themselves over rocky areas and up cliffs. But they can't get themselves off the cliffs, and they're falling to their deaths. LANFEAR The walrus scenes were the hardest things I've ever had to witness or film in my career. When I was planning the story, I knew about the mega haul outs happening in the region, and we chose the Russian site because it was the largest aggregation in the world, bigger than the ones happening in Alaska and Canada. But there was a bit lost in translation with Anatoly Kochnev, the Russian scientist studying these sites. There's an old piece of news footage that I had in mind, and it was kind of like sausage rolls falling down. I was expecting that perhaps the walruses would tumble down, but at the end, they'd be O.K. I really wasn't prepared for the scale of death. What we think is going on is that the ones at the top can probably hear the ones in the water, and they can sense that there is water below. They teeter on the edge, and they just can't work out how to get down there. A small group of maybe six or seven would make it down safely, and we'd all celebrate. But the vast majority do not. They basically walk themselves off the cliff. The walruses are used to a soft landing. Their depth perception hasn't evolved to deal with a cliff situation, nor have they evolved to work out how to get back the way they came. So it's just tragic. It's absolutely heartbreaking. You could also make the argument that it's not plastics, as usually portrayed in nature docu series, but overfishing that is the issue for the oceans. SCHOLEY We tried to boil down for each habitat what is the really big issue. Plastic is really bad, don't get me wrong on that, but it won't destroy the ocean. The two things that will are the warming of the ocean and overfishing. We are hammering the ocean so, so hard. And what happens with overfishing, which we try to explain in the program, is that the fish all stir up the nutrients. They all keep the system going. So when you lose the fish, you lose the whole productivity of the ocean, and the whole thing collapses. The series presents a lot of no brainer solutions to show how populations can bounce back, like developing marine reserves to solve overfishing and restoring jungles where orangutans that have evolved to use tools like sticks (for finding and eating their food) are now at risk. SCHOLEY The crucial thing in the orangutan sequence was to point out that the baby has to learn so much from the mother. The real tragedy of orangutans being wiped out is that if the wild population is ever lost, they will lose the learning that the species has evolved to have . A captive animal could never learn that complex behavior without a wild mother. The way I think of it, humans are just like any other animals. We try to do our best for our immediate families. That's completely natural. What's strange about humans now is that we have to work out how not to be like other animals. Laughs We need to manage ourselves when it comes to nature. We manage our societies really well. We manage our economies really well. But the natural world, we've just taken it for granted. The wilderness was something that needed to be overcome, and we need to build it up again. And a lot of that can be done by just leaving it alone. Just leave it alone, and it will sort itself out. You don't have to put a lot of effort into it. You just have to go away. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Television |
The unsigned murals began appearing quietly in Paris last week. On Wednesday, World Refugee Day, passers by in the north of the city noticed a stencil of a young black girl near a shuttered center for migrants. Apparently homeless, with a teddy bear and blankets at her feet, she was decorating her patch of sidewalk with a pink wallpaper pattern and covering up a stark black swastika on the wall above. More stencils followed: A second mural reworked Jacques Louis David's painting of Napoleon crossing the Alps on horseback. The general's red cloak, instead of billowing around him, is wrapped tightly around his face, in an apparent reference to France's 2010 ban on face coverings in public places. Banksy's publicist, Jo Brooks, confirmed in a telephone interview on Tuesday that the works were his. Shortly afterward, Banksy posted a photo of a graffitied rat holding a box cutter on Instagram, with the caption, "Fifty years since the uprising in Paris 1968. The birthplace of modern stencil art." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Art & Design |
Mahler's music wouldn't be possible without peace and quiet. During the summer, he escaped urban life and his career as a conductor to compose in nature. When he wasn't hiking or swimming, he would labor over songs and symphonies inside a small lakeside hut. In this environment, he is said to have remarked, " everything that is base and trivial vanishes without trace ." Lincoln Center is aiming to approximate such serenity, in a way, by offering a digital detox during performances of its White Light Festival. Through the service Yondr, audience members can lock their phones in pouches for the duration of a concert; like smokers at an airport , they can also check Twitter and make calls in a designated "phone use area" of the lobby. But Yondr is optional, and the dream of a phone free concert shall remain, well, yonder. In a recital by the baritone Christian Gerhaher and the pianist Gerold Huber on Tuesday evening, not even 10 minutes had passed before a ringtone ricocheted off the wooden walls of Alice Tully Hall. Yet the moment was worth only a passing smirk at the irony, barely a blemish on an otherwise awe inspiring recital of Mahler songs distilled for piano and voice, and delivered with the trademark thoughtfulness and grace of what may be the greatest duo in the world of art song. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Music |
Cheryl Closs, a mother of four from West Islip, N.Y., wanted to save her daughter Bella's two front teeth. They were badly decayed, and one dentist wanted to just pull them out. But Ms. Closs was having none of it. Bella, who is 15 and in 8th grade, has special needs and uses a wheelchair. "They are quick to pull a child's teeth that is special needs," Ms. Closs said. So she began a search for a root canal specialist. She would take Bella out of school for the day and her husband would drive them to whichever borough for a dental appointment. But they took Bella to at least eight dentists and root canal specialists, all of whom declined to treat her. Some "didn't even look at her teeth," Ms. Closs said. "This has happened so many times." Bella favors pigtails and Wonder Woman T shirts. She smiles a lot but doesn't say much and doesn't like being touched, let alone restrained. She has a genetic disease called fucosidosis, which is deteriorating her brain function. Getting an X ray or having her teeth cleaned can be challenging, requiring more time or more hands on deck to hold her head or flailing arms. And many dentists can't or won't treat patients with disabilities. Some cannot physically accommodate a large wheelchair, "or they don't feel comfortable treating the patients," said Dr. Rita Bilello, the dental director at Metro Community Health Centers in Brooklyn, Staten Island and the Bronx. Historically, pediatric dentists were taught how to treat patients with special needs, but general dentists weren't. That means a child with autism might get regular checkups, but not necessarily an adult. However, in 2006, a new standard for dental programs went into effect. The Commission on Dental Accreditation mandated all students had to be able to competently assess the treatment needs of special needs patients. But as of 2012, less than three quarters of dental schools have predoctoral students actively involved in their treatment, according to a study in the Journal of Dental Education. Access remains a formidable problem for patients with special needs. But the N.Y.U. College of Dentistry's Oral Health Center for People With Disabilities offers a new option for patients like Bella. It is the rare facility that treats adult and pediatric patients across the spectrum of disabilities those with developmental delays like autism, intellectual disabilities, or conditions like cerebral palsy and dementia. It has two operating rooms where patients who can't sit still can be sedated. Besides expanding access for patients, N.Y.U.'s center aims to send all of its graduates into the world with the skills and confidence to care for special needs patients. Dr. Ronald Kosinski, a pediatric dentist and the director of the new center, didn't mince words. Patients with disabilities face roadblocks because "people are afraid of them," he said. "They are not looked at like people. We need to train dental students to stop throwing their hands up and to start embracing them." There's no shortage of need. Roughly 915,000 people are living with a disability in New York City alone, according to the Mayor's Office for People With Disabilities. That's potentially a lot of untreated teeth. "Access to care is a huge, huge problem," said Dr. Alan N. Queen, the attending in charge of a special needs dental clinic at NewYork Presbyterian Queens Medical Center. "The problem is that special needs patients, they are difficult to treat compared to your average patient, and unfortunately there's no allowance for that in how insurance pays." Dr. Queen, who is also in private practice in Flushing, Queens, said that to treat a Parkinson's patient with tremors, for example, he needs one assistant to "hold their head still, another to retract their tongue, another assistant suctioning, and then me doing all the dental work." Dental practices should get additional reimbursement for such cases, he said. Last October, the American Dental Association updated its code of ethics to specify that patients with disabilities should not be denied dental service. At the very least, the code said, dentists who can't treat a patient must refer them to another professional. Ultimately, that's how Bella caught a break. This spring, when an employee of a dental office called to cancel an appointment the day before because of Bella's wheelchair, Ms. Closs started sobbing: "You made me wait six months." An office manager got on the phone and found a solution. Within a few days, Bella was wheeled into N.Y.U., ending her odyssey. Many disabled New Yorkers refrain from seeing dentists at all, since many offices are not wheelchair accessible, a violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act. "The purpose of the law is to make sure that people with disabilities have the same rights and opportunities as everyone else," said Jonathan Novick, the outreach manager at the Mayor's Office for People with Disabilities. "Therefore, they have the same right to dental hygiene that everyone else does." Even if they can get into a dental office, patients in wheelchairs face an additional hurdle: Assistants often have to help move them to a dental chair, or cumbersome hoists may be used. "For a patient confined to a wheelchair, it's a source of anxiety to move from their wheelchair to a dental chair," said Dr. Charles Bertolami, the dean of the N.Y.U. College of Dentistry. N.Y.U.'s new center makes things much easier. At a recent visit, Bella had her wheelchair locked into place in a special wheelchair recliner and then tilted back to have her teeth inspected. It's just one of 24 such recliners in the United States, according to John Walters, a designer at Design Specific, the company that makes it. In the center's first month, about half of patients have used it, Dr. Robert Glickman, an oral surgeon, said. In mid April, N.Y.U. dentists determined that Bella could have root canal therapy to repair her two front teeth. A week later, Bella's smile was fixed. "The way they made her feel was a big deal for us," Ms. Closs said. Joe Dockery, Bella's father, added: "They treat her like one of their own kids." Bella showed her appreciation in her own way: After her first visit, she hugged her dentist. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Well |
Anthony Stolarz made a career high 38 saves, and Oskar Lindblom scored the lone goal Tuesday night as the Philadelphia Flyers defeated the host Rangers, 1 0. Lindblom scored in the first period for the Flyers, who have won five straight. The Rangers had a three game winning streak snapped. Stolarz, who grew up about 35 miles from Madison Square Garden in Edison, N.J., recorded his second N.H.L. shutout. He was making his first appearance for the Flyers since he sustained a lower body injury Dec. 15. The Rangers peppered him throughout a third period, outshooting the Flyers by 13 4. Stolarz stopped Brendan Smith at point blank range with 2 minutes 2 seconds left and survived a fluky opportunity with 57 seconds remaining, when Vladislav Namestnikov's redirection bounced over the top of the net. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Sports |
PARIS In a large circular chamber covered in periwinkle blue velvet and hung with curtains all around, seats curling outward in snail shell tiers, Demna Gvasalia of Balenciaga convened his parliament. Then he scented it with Blood and Money and Petrol (after starting with a bit of Anti Sceptic, literally: he had perfumes made for the show) the engines that drive the world's rotting power structures and a low thrum began. The bass reverberated through the seats. Models and people conscripted to be models but otherwise architects, engineers, students, chefs and artists of many ages ( average : 28) marched around and around and around in increasingly dizzying circles. First, both men and women wore big shouldered, big sized black trouser suits with I.D. lanyards as accessories. Then came squared off boxlike "campaign dresses," as the show notes called them. Then high necked, pleated silk dresses pulled haphazardly to the side, printed with perfume bottles and handbag chains and shoes from previous Balenciaga shows. The guys got T shirts bearing messages such as "18 " and "X rated." Silk pajama suits printed to look like denim. One dress was splashed everywhere with tabloid headlines that turned out to be messages about the earth. The shoulders got bigger and more dangerous. So did some models' cheekbones via prosthetics. Puffa jackets got so large they looked like pup tents, the heads disappearing inside. Faux furs practically ate the person. Oh modern life. I recognize you. And your discontents. Many themes have been percolating through the shows the last three weeks saving the earth, the mess of politics, historicism, the need for safe spaces but Mr. Gvasalia slapped them all down on the table, in a tour de force of an argument for just shutting up and getting down to work before it's too late. It wasn't pretty, though like the finale series of extraordinarily simple bell shaped gowns in gold and silver lame or blue and red velvet that undulated like jellyfish, it was impossible to ignore. Pointedly, the shoulder width was achieved through whalebones that could be removed; ditto the bell skirts and their crinolines. There are statements, and there are solutions. Mr. Gvasalia used Balenciaga's signature exploration of volumes to offer up both. The designer made waves a few weeks ago when he told WWD he was leaving the brand he helped found as a collective, Vetements , where he originally made his name (and came to the notice of the heritage house), saying he had "accomplished his mission." He has a lot more to say at Balenciaga. And he is saying it. Witness panniers (honestly, this has to be the weirdest trend of the season, and at this point, if I never see another pannier, I will be happy) constructed from his signature red, white and blue grosgrain ribbon, often worn atop pants and skirts laced up the back and under elaborate frock coats. Bustles and hoops and towering Marie Antoinette hair played a part; shepherdesses in loops and whorls of shell pink and baby blue, each swirling and twirling and waving what looked like a wand with a miniature straw hat on the top. Mr. Browne's shows have been getting increasingly rococo, but beneath the sugar plum shades and froth a darkness lies. All that corsetry at this point in time is hard to countenance. In the middle of the set, a pinstriped putto peed into a fountain. On plinths around the room giant curving orca shoes kept living female statuary rooted firmly in place. Interestingly, the one major contemporary conversation that has not really seeped into fashion this season is any further discussion of the growing vocalization of women, demanding their due (yes, Mr. Gvasalia was all about a power shoulder, but he was also all about a power everything for everyone). There are more shows to come, so things could change, but meanwhile, into the gap stepped Clare Waight Keller of Givenchy . She had been thinking, she said in an interview backstage before the show, about 1993, when she moved to New York and began to work for Calvin Klein. It was a time when minimalism ruled the runways, and female empowerment began to be defined as female undress: Throw off the shackles of suits! Unbind thyself! Wear ... a slip dress. That clearly didn't work. So maybe coverage was the answer. Keep yourself for yourself. How does that debate look? Using crisp white cotton, the kind many people wear every day, he applied evermore intricate couture techniques (fan pleats and feathers and flounces and frills) to transform it into something singular, before segueing via fluorescent pink and green into a Fauvist jungle of prints, sequins and shade (and monkeys, but let's ignore those), and then washing it all away again in mist light gowns of lace and tulle. They were lovely, but it was the cotton that stood out: the way he found the possibilities in the ordinary by accessing the tools of the elite. Mr. Piccioli doth not preach too much, and he does it very gently. The result may seem like an antidote to the bad dream. But it has a real punch. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Style |
Brazil, which has recently suffered serious outbreaks of Zika virus and yellow fever, now faces a new threat, according to reports from local scientists: Oropouche fever. The Oropouche virus, named for a river in Trinidad, where it was first isolated in 1955, circulates in monkeys and sloths in the Amazon jungle. The virus has caused occasional outbreaks, short but intense, in towns in tropical areas of Brazil, Peru and Panama, and on some Caribbean islands. But in the last few years, Oropouche cases have turned up more often in urban areas, including some in northeast Brazil, where Zika began its explosive spread in this hemisphere. Oropouche causes symptoms resembling those of dengue: high fever, headaches and joint pain, nausea and malaise. The infection is not normally fatal, although it can cause meningitis dangerous swelling of protective tissue around the brain if it reaches the spinal fluid. There is no vaccine. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Health |
The national security journalist and free speech advocate Glenn Greenwald has left The Intercept, the news website he helped create, claiming his work had been censored. Mr. Greenwald, a former lawyer, wrote a 3,300 word post on the digital platform Substack on Thursday saying that he was leaving the site because it had refused to publish an article he had written on Joseph R. Biden Jr. and his son, Hunter Biden, unless he agreed to remove portions that were seen as critical of the Democratic presidential nominee. In announcing his decision to leave The Intercept, Mr. Greenwald said that the site's editors "censored an article I wrote this week, refusing to publish it unless I remove all sections critical of Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden, the candidate vehemently supported by all New York based Intercept editors involved in this effort at suppression." He added that the editors' actions were "in violation of my contractual right of editorial freedom." Mr. Greenwald later posted on Substack what he called "the most recent draft" of the article, which was headlined "The Real Scandal: U.S. Media Uses Falsehoods to Defend Joe Biden From Hunter's Emails." The article, in part, examined digital data taken from a laptop computer said to belong to the candidate's son. Mr. Greenwald is best known for his investigative journalism based on National Security Agency documents leaked by the former government contractor Edward J. Snowden in 2013. At the time of the leaks, Mr. Greenwald worked for the United States edition of The Guardian newspaper, and the aggressive reporting he conducted with two colleagues, Ewen MacAskill and the documentary filmmaker Laura Poitras, gave The Guardian US the Pulitzer Prize in service journalism in 2014. Their articles on the N.S.A.'s domestic surveillance program drew heavy criticism from the American and British governments, with lawmakers saying that they had compromised national security. They also made Mr. Greenwald something of a journalistic hero to many liberals. In recent years, however, he has alienated some of his former supporters because of the skepticism he has expressed in a number of Intercept columns concerning the two year investigation by the special counsel Robert S. Mueller III into possible ties between Donald J. Trump's 2016 presidential campaign and the Russian government. Mr. Greenwald's writing on the Mueller investigation was often at odds with reports by his Intercept colleagues. He has also become a frequent guest on Tucker Carlson's prime time program on Fox News, usually a venue for conservatives. On the show's Oct. 22 episode, Mr. Greenwald took aim at what he said was "corruption that is absolutely pervasive in the U.S. news media," accusing "top newsrooms" of telling their reporters not to investigate the Hunter Biden emails and claims of corruption against Joe Biden. 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. During an appearance on Joe Rogan's podcast on Wednesday the day before he announced his exit from The Intercept Mr. Greenwald said, "I don't think I've ever been this disgusted with my colleagues in my profession as I have been in the last three weeks because of this story." He added, "They're all desperate for Trump to lose, that's the reality. They all want Biden to win, so they don't want to report any information or any stories that might help Biden lose." In the post on Thursday, Mr. Greenwald said he would continue to publish his work at Substack, a platform known for its subscription newsletters. Betsy Reed, the editor in chief of The Intercept, disputed Mr. Greenwald's claim that he had been censored. In a statement from the editors published on Thursday, The Intercept said, "He believes that anyone who disagrees with him is corrupt, and anyone who presumes to edit his words is a censor. Thus, the preposterous charge that The Intercept's editors and reporters, with the lone, noble exception of Glenn Greenwald, have betrayed our mission to engage in fearless investigative journalism because we have been seduced by the lure of a Joe Biden presidency." The statement included some qualified praise: "We have the greatest respect for the journalist Glenn Greenwald used to be, and we remain proud of much of the work we did with him over the past six years. It is Glenn who has strayed from his original journalistic roots, not The Intercept." In a phone interview, Mr. Greenwald said he had received emails from Intercept editors outlining what the publication would allow and not allow in his article. "My arrangement with The Intercept since it began is my opinion pieces are not edited by anyone," he said. The Intercept was founded in 2013 by Mr. Greenwald, Ms. Poitras and Jeremy Scahill, with backing from the eBay billionaire Pierre Omidyar. In the post announcing his departure from the site, Mr. Greenwald wrote that he was considering starting his own media outlet. In the interview, he said he had talked with "journalists who kind of are politically homeless, who are neither fully entrenched in the liberal left media or the Democratic Party, nor the pro Trump right." For now, Mr. Greenwald will be part of a growing number of journalists who have left major media outlets to try their luck at Substack. The group includes Andrew Sullivan, formerly of New York magazine, and Matt Taibbi, formerly of Rolling Stone. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Media |
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