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This is activist theater, and in the tumultuous opening minutes of the performance Mr. Maharaj, who is also the director, lays everything on worrisomely thick and fast. Each character reads as two dimensional, from the young black teenager who arrives alone on the first day of school to the white adults spewing hatred at her. The blatant artificiality drains the vileness of its potency. But the play gradually rights itself, and the complexity of the students and their situation comes into focus: in Act I, their fight to get through the school doors; in Act II, what happens inside. Mr. Maharaj ("Mother Emanuel") uses a strong cast of nine that does a lot of doubling to depict characters both black and white in an unfolding story that captured national attention. Sign up for Theater Update, a weekly email of news and features. Smartly, he relies heavily on Wendall K. Harrington's powerful projections: period images that show the real students' bobby soxer youthfulness (six were girls, three boys), the choler they faced from flag waving racists, and the heavily armed soldiers it took to get the teenagers through. It's O.K. that photographs sometimes upstage the live action like the shot of the students crammed into a United States Army station wagon, or the faces of the nine projected in the final scene, each labeled with a name. Onstage, the most clearly drawn are the Shakespeare loving Melba Pattillo (Anita Welch), who can recite swaths of "Hamlet" by heart; Minnijean Brown (Shanice Williams, who played Dorothy on NBC's "The Wiz Live!"), a boy crazy member of the Pat Boone fan club; Ernest Green (Charlie Hudson III), an Eagle Scout who faces death threats as his graduation nears; and Jefferson Allison Thomas (Justin Cunningham), whose corny jokes keep his friends' spirits up. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Theater |
Edith O'Hara at the 13th Street Repertory Company in 2006. The theater, which she founded in 1972, offered a place for playwrights to try out new works and would be actors to test their skills. Edith O'Hara, who started the 13th Street Repertory Company in Greenwich Village in 1972 and made it a quirky mainstay of New York's Off Off Broadway scene, keeping it going through the decades while countless other companies fell by the wayside, died on Oct. 16 at her home, an apartment above the theater. She was 103. Ms. O'Hara didn't move to Manhattan until midway through her long life, but once she did she plunged into the theater scene with gusto. Her children called her the Hurricane. She had come to the city from Warren County in northwestern Pennsylvania, bringing a show she had developed at a small theater she founded there: a musical called "Touch," about young people trying the communal life. In the age of "Hair," it found an audience, enjoying a two year run. Ms. O'Hara was smitten by the bohemian theater scene. When a building at 50 West 13th Street was advertised as being for rent and containing a small theater, Ms. O'Hara took a lease, and the 13th Street Rep was born. The theater was never the type of feeder institution that sends plays to Broadway, but it had its place in the city's theater ecosystem. "It was an initial stop for many people who arrived in New York," said Albert Poland, a theater historian whose publications include "The Off Off Broadway Book," written with Bruce Mailman. "I would say it was a nurturing place." The theater offered a place for playwrights to try out new works and for would be actors to test their skills. And it was not without its long running successes. An Israel Horovitz play, "Line," which opened there in 1974, was still running until recently, its cast ever changing; it lays claim to the longest run in Off Off Broadway history. The comic monologuist Brother Theodore, who died in 2001, did a regular show there for almost two decades. Ms. O'Hara joined a partnership that acquired the building in the early 1980s, but about 15 years ago she became embroiled in a protracted legal dispute as the building's majority shareholder, a bookseller in Baltimore, first sought to buy her out, then threatened to evict her when she declined to sell. A settlement in 2010 allowed her and the theater to stay until her death. Joe John Battista, who became the theater's artistic director five years ago and has tried to bring a more businesslike approach to its programming and finances, said in a phone interview that the future of the 13th Street Rep was unclear, especially in light of the pandemic. But he vowed to keep it going in some form. That Ms. O'Hara had managed to do so for so long, he said, was "a miracle," given the pressures of producing theater in New York. "Edith had such a big heart," he said. "She gave so many people, whether they really deserved it or not, a chance to come in and try to create." Her story began a long way from the bright lights of Manhattan. Edith Mildred Hopkins was born on Feb. 15, 1917, on a farm outside Coeur d'Alene in northwest Idaho. Her father, Oscar, was a logger, and her mother, Mary, who died when she was a girl, was a homemaker. "Growing up, I never heard the word 'theater' because I was born in the wilds of northern Idaho, and we were up in the mountains," Ms. O'Hara said in "A Home in the Theater," a 2010 documentary directed by Melodie Bryant about Ms. O'Hara and her fight to save the theater. "My father had a logging camp no telephone, no electric power lines up there, no indoor plumbing." There was a one room school, but it went only through sixth grade, so when she aged out of that the family moved to Coeur d'Alene so she could continue her education. Jill O'Hara said her mother had a summer job at a food stand catering to visitors to the scenic lake there, and the stand had a bear cub for the amusement of the tourists; her job included caring for the bear. A life changing moment came when her seventh grade teacher put her in a school play. "I played George Washington," Ms. O'Hara said in the documentary. "Little boys weren't too eager to be on the stage in those days." The experience kindled an interest in theater. She took theater classes at the University of Idaho and, while a student there, did an apprenticeship in New York. She wanted to stay, but, she said in an interview with the video project Active Aging Stories, she had been accepted at the University of California, Los Angeles, for junior year and figured she had better pursue that. "On top of that," she added, "I had my classmates in the car who needed a ride home." Her plans to return to New York were put on hold when she married John O'Hara and had three children; the family settled in Warren, Pa., in the 1950s. She and Mr. O'Hara divorced in 1962, but she stayed in Warren and started a children's theater. "I only did it because I was working as a children's librarian and I noted they really could use help with their speech and diction," she said. That led her to found a summer theater in a barn. Productions by the company, the Plowright Players, included "Touch," which generated enough buzz that theater producers came. "One of them said: 'I have a theater on East Fourth Street. I have grant money. If you bring your actors down, we'll put it on together,'" she recalled in the documentary. The show played at the Village Arena Theater. Mr. Poland signed on as the production's general manager, and when the opportunity to rent the 13th Street space, a rather ancient building, came up, he accompanied Ms. O'Hara to look at the property. Ms. O'Hara not only lived in the building herself, but would also use its various spaces to give actors, writers and others a place to stay if they needed one. Some years ago she offered a crawl space to Tom Hanlan, who had been homeless. He became the theater's resident set and costume designer. "She took me in," he told The Times in 2017. "I was about to sleep on a bench and I heard someone coming. I was going to run because I knew that sound. But it was Edith." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Theater |
Aging Parents With Lots of Stuff, and Children Who Don't Want It Mothers and daughters talk about all kinds of things. But there is one conversation Susan Beauregard, 49, of Hampton, Conn., is reluctant to have with her 89 year old mother, Anita Shear: What to do eventually with Mrs. Shear's beloved set of Lenox china? Ms. Beauregard said she never uses her own fine china, which she received as a wedding gift long ago. "I feel obligated to take my mom's Lenox, but it's just going to sit in the cupboard next to my stuff," she said. The only heirlooms she wants from her mother, who lives about an hour away, in the home where Ms. Beauregard was raised, are a few pictures and her mother's wedding band and engagement ring, which she plans to pass along to her son. So, in a quandary familiar to many adults who must soon dispose of the beloved stuff their parents would love them to inherit, Ms. Beauregard has to break it to her mother that she does not intend to keep the Hitchcock dining room set or the buffet full of matching Lenox dinnerware, saucers and gravy boats. As baby boomers grow older, the volume of unwanted keepsakes and family heirlooms is poised to grow along with the number of delicate conversations about what to do with them. According to a 2014 United States census report, more than 20 percent of America's population will be 65 or older by 2030. As these waves of older adults start moving to smaller dwellings, assisted living facilities or retirement homes, they and their kin will have to part with household possessions that the heirs simply don't want. "We went from a 3,000 square foot colonial with three floors to a single story, 1,400 square foot living space," said Tena Bluhm, 76, formerly of Fairfax, Va. She and her 77 year old husband, Ray Bluhm, moved this month to a retirement community in Lake Ridge, Va. Before the move, their two adult children took a handful of items, including a new bed and a dining table and chairs. But Mrs. Bluhm could not interest them in "the china and the silver and the crystal," her own generation's hallmarks of a properly furnished, middle class home. The competitive accumulation of material goods, a cornerstone of the American dream, dates to the post World War II economy, when returning veterans fled the cities to establish homes and status in the suburbs. Couples married when they were young, and wedding gifts were meant to be used and treasured for life. "Americans spent to keep up with the Joneses, using their possessions to make the statement that they were not failing in their careers," wrote Juliet B. Schor, the Boston College sociologist, in her 1998 book, "The Overspent American: Why We Want What We Don't Need." But for a variety of social, cultural, and economic reasons, this is no longer the case. Today's young adults tend to acquire household goods that they consider temporary or disposable, from online retailers or stores like Ikea and Target, instead of inheriting them from parents or grandparents. This represents a significant shift in material culture, said Mary Kay Buysse, executive director of the National Association of Senior Move Managers, a professional organization of moving specialists who help older people downsize. "This is the first time we're seeing a kink in the chain of passing down mementos from one generation to another," Ms. Buysse said in a telephone interview from the group's headquarters in Hinsdale, Ill. Accordingly, the senior move management industry has experienced unprecedented growth in recent years, Ms. Buysse said. These move managers usually charge an hourly rate, typically 50 to 125. They spend time with clients, helping them sort through years of accumulated possessions and make decisions about what to dispose, what to donate to charities and what to try to fit into their new living spaces. Locast, a nonprofit streaming service for local TV, is shutting down Capital One's chief executive was fined after being called a 'repeat offender.' Final costs of the service, which may also involve an estate sale, can be 2,500 to 5,000 or more, depending on the size of the home and the density of its contents. Once the children have picked over what they want, and the items slated for the next home have been boxed up, the question is, what becomes of the rest? "Some goes to auction, some goes to eBay, and some goes to our retail shop," said Chris Fultz, an owner of Nova Liquidations, an estate liquidation company in Luray, Va., that works closely with companies like Wise Moves. Ms. Niro said her company also works with nonprofits, like Habitat for Humanity, to find new homes for discarded items. Yet even these operations are feeling overwhelmed by the growing inventory of household goods delivered at their doorsteps. "We are definitely getting overrun with furniture, and about 20 percent more donations of everything than in previous years," said Michael Frohm, chief operating officer of Goodwill of Greater Washington, in a telephone interview. Changing aesthetic tastes are also responsible for the overflow. "The whole '90s were the English country look, collections, chintz," said Jennifer Lacker, an antiques appraiser in Mystic, Conn., who cited the influence of the interior designer Mario Buatta (known as the "Prince of Chintz"). The look, she added, was decidedly "rich and lavish." Beginning in the 2000s, though, clutter was out, and minimalism in. Mr. Buatta's paradigm has been replaced most recently by that of Marie Kondo, whose 2014 book, "The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing," remains a steady best seller. Millennials are also less inclined to want their parents' household goods simply because they have no place to put them. As his parents begin to contemplate moving from their two story colonial home in Annandale, N.J., to a smaller living space, Travis Miscia, a 30 year old lawyer, would like to lay claim to a good number of his family's belongings. But he and his wife live in a two bedroom apartment in Jersey City that is too small to hold them. "I am very interested in family history, and I would like a lot of my parents' things on some level," Mr. Miscia said, "but I have had to limit myself to taking what I would call primary source documents, like books and some pictures." Another option for older people and their heirs is self storage. Like the industry that manages moves for older adults, the 32.7 billion storage business is experiencing rapid growth, projected at 3.5 percent annually over the next five years, according to statistics reported this month by SpareFoot Storage Beat, an industry tracker. Yet often this strategy only postpones the inevitable. "Some children take the objects just to keep Mom and Dad quiet," said Roger Schrenk, Mr. Fultz's business partner at Nova Liquidations. "They'll take them and store them until Mom's dead, and then they can't wait to get rid of them." With this in mind, Mrs. Bluhm, whose adult children only wanted the new bed and dining set, recommends a philosophical approach to the process of letting go of possessions that children may not cherish but others may. "By donating them to charity, I knew they weren't going to go into a Dumpster and that someone who really wanted them would purchase them," she said. Though the items are no longer hers, she said, many of her familiar household objects are not altogether gone. "What I had left were the memories attached to them, in my heart and in my head," Mrs. Bluhm said. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Your Money |
A test of a prototype of a rocket that Elon Musk has dreams of sending people to Mars in flew several miles high on Wednesday. But in attempting to land, it hit the ground too fast and exploded. That was the latest test, partly successful, in the development of next generation spacecraft built by SpaceX, Mr. Musk's rocket company. SpaceX's live broadcast showed the smoldering remains of the rocket, named Starship, at the company's test site in southern Texas. "Awesome test," read text across the screen of the broadcast after the fiery conclusion. "Congratulations, Starship team!" With the late afternoon sun low on the horizon, the gargantuan stainless steel spacecraft lifted off from a launchpad at 5:45 p.m. After reaching its apogee, it started falling, as planned, tipping over in a controlled glide back to Earth. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Science |
In Denver, Beat Starts to Pick Up in a Once Thriving Hub for Jazz DENVER At one time, the best place to hear live jazz between St. Louis and San Francisco was along Welton Street in Denver, where Duke and Ella were among the marquee legends stopping by to perform. Dozens of night spots and clubs dotted Welton Street in the predominantly African American neighborhood of Five Points for more than half the 20th century, making it a premier destination that some called the Harlem of the West. The neighborhood's rich heritage was recognized in 2002 through its designation as a cultural historic district. Its fragile history remains a living memory for some, and it has been commemorated with an archive at the local public library and in the literature of Jack Kerouac and the Beat Generation. For much of the 1920s to 1950s, the neighborhood provided a haven for African American residents, who gravitated to areas where housing discrimination was less prevalent and segregation less visible. But much like the urban centers of other cities and other pockets of Denver, Five Points began declining in the 1960s and '70s and has yet to return to its robust past. Carl Bourgeois, a property developer who owns the area's star attraction, the now empty Rossonian Hotel, where jazz greats would stay, has tried for three decades to revive the neighborhood. He and others point to the trove of historic buildings and landmarks, along with a light rail line, that should be spurring change. But while nearby areas in Denver have experienced revivals, many buildings along Welton Street sit crumbling and untouched next to dusty plots of vacant land or surface parking lots. Now, developers are starting projects, encouraged by the formation of a Five Points Business District in 2009 and a push for city approval of a "vision plan" for Welton Street, which was granted in 2011. The area also received a 300,000 federal grant under the Sustainable Main Street program, and individual property owners may be eligible for a variety of state and local tax incentives or grants. Next Wednesday, the city of Denver plans to announce the "Welton Challenge," in which three property owners along Welton Street in the urban renewal area will be chosen in a competition over their development plans. At least 250,000 in financing, possibly more, will be made available. That "pop" has been a long time coming. Mr. Bourgeois has struggled nearly brick by brick to bring Five Points back, particularly along Washington Street, one of the three streets intersecting Welton that give the area its name. The street is home to the fire station that housed Denver's first African American fire squad, a building that Mr. Bourgeois has been renovating for possible use as a restaurant. As the owner of the Rossonian since 2006, Mr. Bourgeois said he's been working to resolve myriad issues with Denver's infrastructure before taking on the financial risk of redeveloping the hotel. Those problems which include an inadequate, 100 year old drainage system weren't on the city's agenda until recently, he said. The progress made may have taken just a bit too long for Mr. Bourgeois, who said he's grown old with the crusade and is poised to retire. "Right now, we're kind of on the fence which way we're going to go with the hotel," Mr. Bourgeois said. "Nevertheless, I think that if we or someone else develops the property, going forward there's going to be a lot greater possibility of success." Other property developers, younger and newer to the area, said the time was ripe for redevelopment along Welton Street. "I really wanted to be a part of something that was revitalizing," said Ms. Harris, pointing out that the homes will have some architectural details, like parapets, that nod to the neighborhood. "It was really the redevelopment plan that drew me to this area, plus the availability of land right in the city was kind of a little gold mine for us." The developers of two mixed use sites planned for vacant lots on Welton Street, each with almost 200 rental apartments, are working to break ground this year as well, said Tracy J. Winchester, the executive director of the Five Points Business District. Some or all of those units will have income restrictions. In recent years, the Five Points neighborhood has been one of Denver's fastest growing, with a population now roughly 50 percent white, 25 percent African American and 25 percent Hispanic. Property owners along Welton Street remain largely African American, however, and there have been some fears that development is "happening a little too fast," Ms. Winchester said. Without significant development of housing, retailers are loath to take a risk in the Welton Street area. But the three residential projects breaking ground this year are a good start toward building the critical mass of potential shoppers that most retailers need, she said. "We'd like to have a commercial main street here, so you don't have to walk downtown," Ms. Winchester said. "But our studies have shown that we need to bring in more housing that targets 30 to 40 year olds. We've got to bring the rooftops before the retail not everybody's going to be a pioneer." However, one property developer, Nathan Beal, has been just that. Five years ago, Mr. Beal and his wife were living in the neighborhood and using the light rail to commute to their jobs as accountants when they learned of an old two story building for sale one block off Welton. "We saw the great bones of the neighborhood," Mr. Beal said. "The light rail, the density, a lot of the historic structures that had character, and we said, 'It's just a matter of time before this neighborhood becomes really desirable.'" After buying that building and successfully developing it into four small retail spaces and five apartments, last year Mr. Beal renovated a building on Welton Street and leased out four retail spaces to businesses that include the Purple Door Coffee Shop and Winter Session, a manufacturer of high end, handcrafted canvas and leather goods. "There's just this whole culture of small business that's trying to make it happen," said Mr. Crichlow, who does general bike repair, along with building custom bicycles and selling "bean to bar" chocolate. "And Five Points is kind of ripe to do that, because it's affordable, and it's an enterprise zone for the city, so they want investment here." At Welton Homes at the Point, the last mixed use development to open in 2002, Coffee at the Point is the latest in a series of coffee shops that have attempted to make it in a 2,500 square foot ground floor retail space. Ryan Cobbins, the young owner, has struggled for almost three years to make the location a "second living room" for the community, he said. That has included combating negative stereotypes about crime in the area. "That's why this area's such a jewel now, because there's a population that doesn't see it yet," Mr. Cobbins said. "If everybody saw it, it wouldn't be the diamond in the rough that it is." Mr. Cobbins said he recently obtained a liquor license enabling him to serve craft beers and wine, and he's prepared to stick it out through the long haul. "Our business plan when we started depended on mobilization of other businesses in the area," he said. "It's been a slow moving process. So we've kind of adopted a new phrase, which is 'We'll do it with or without anyone new moving into the neighborhood.'" | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Real Estate |
Weeks have stretched into months, and many of us are still spending a lot of our time inside, staring down an ever shrinking queue of must see movies. So it's time to take some chances again, going beyond streaming platforms' carefully curated front page recommendations to check out less obvious choices: gnarly genre films, riveting documentaries, indie dramas and more of what's hiding in the back rooms of your subscription services. Late on the night of Oct. 20, 2014, a Chicago teenager named Laquan McDonald was shot (16 times) and killed by Jason Van Dyke, a police officer with 20 previous allegations of misconduct. Local media dutifully reported the official version of events that McDonald was carrying a knife and had charged officers "in a crazed condition" but in the weeks and months that followed, details emerged about not only the actual events of that night, but also the nearly successful attempts by police officials to cover it up. Richard Rowley's 2019 documentary, as gripping as a political thriller and as currently relevant as the nightly news, meticulously pieces together how this shocking shooting upended the city's entire power structure. The 1992 Los Angeles uprising, also prompted by police brutality (and political indifference to it), provides the setting for this fictional story of two Korean American brothers and their interactions with the members of the African American community where they work. The writer and director, Justin Chon, constructs much of the film as a laid back, day in the life story in the style of "Do the Right Thing" with similar tension bubbling underneath, ready to boil over. Urban unrest also brews in this 2017 action thriller, with Brittany Snow as Lucy, a young woman on a Little Red Riding Hood style mission to her grandmother's house, interrupted by an armed rebellion in the streets of Brooklyn. Dave Bautista co stars as a Navy vet who becomes Lucy's unlikely ally, as the pair attempts to navigate their way to the "green zone" while unraveling the mystery of who is shooting in the streets, and why. The direction, by Jonathan Milott and Cary Murnion, is effectively stylized, playing out as a series of floating, unbroken shots perhaps to divert our attention as they unpack the explosively timely political subtext. When more than 11,000 untested rape kits were discovered in a dilapidated warehouse in Detroit in 2009, citizens were shocked not just by the number or the conditions, but also by the choices that had clearly been made about which kits were worth the limited funds and resources of the police. Trish Adlesic and Geeta Gandbhir's tough, emotional documentary looks at the sloppiness, oversight and outright incompetence that allowed those kits and similar backlogs in Cleveland and Los Angeles to go ignored for years. It also tells the stories of the women victimized in those cases, finally glimpsing the possibility of justice and closure. "What I really want to do is direct" is a cliche for a reason. Plenty of fine actors have harbored the urge to step behind the camera and have done so with varying degrees of success. But few have displayed such a keen filmmaking sense, so immediately and strikingly, as Karen Gillan (of the "Guardians of the Galaxy" and "Jumanji" films), who writes, directs and stars in this 2018 indie, set and shot in her native Scotland. Dramatizing the rough days and reckless nights of a hard partying young woman still mourning the loss of her best friend, "Party" moves like a freight train, nimbly shifting gears from tragedy to comedy to reluctant romance. A young woman returns to her hometown for the funeral of her estranged best friend and finds herself drawn into a paranoid web of patterns, signals and disappearances in this haunted mix of character drama and brainy sci fi from the writer and director A.T. White. It's thrillingly unpredictable, with atmosphere to burn and a leading performance by Virginia Gardner that's impossible to forget. The opening scenes of this '90s set high school indie unfold like an observational drama, displaying a good ear for the pop culture chatter and ill informed sex talk of teenage boys. But then it takes a turn, with a horrifying accident that leaves one boy dead and two friends at the mercy of fear and paranoia. The plot thickens, the ripple effects widen, and the boys' nightmares intensify. For his feature debut, the director Kevin Phillips leans a bit too much into conventional thriller territory in the clutch, but for most of the film, "Super Dark Times" is an unsettling exercise of merciless dread. And its characters are so grounded and recognizable that the inevitable violence lands with unexpected power. The opening sequence of this 2017 actioner is such a stunner a breathless, ultraviolent eight minute one killer takes on an army set piece that you wonder how the director Jung Byung gil can possibly top it. Improbably, the hyperkinetic climax, a bone cracking sequence on a speeding city bus, does just that. But "The Villainess" offers more than empty thrills. Though best explained to Western audiences as a South Korean gender flipped "John Wick," the narrative that plays out between those memorable book ends has a potent emotional core and a complex dual timeline structure, explaining exactly how the ruthless killing machine at the story's center became who (and what) she is. After masterfully reanimating the conventions of '80s slow burn horror in "The House of the Devil" and "The Innkeepers," the writer and director Ti West tried his hand at spaghetti westerns with this sadly underappreciated effort from 2016. Ethan Hawke is sturdy and reliable as ever as the conflicted gunslinger who ruffles the wrong feathers in a border town, but the most noteworthy performance comes from John Travolta, with a terrific turn as the conflicted local lawman. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Movies |
"I said, if it doesn't work, there goes my best friend," Ms. Fairstein recalled of the night Mr. Goldberg asked her out in 2013. "And it's worked. It's been a very happy, easy thing." These are edited excerpts from the conversation. About all these Westchester miscreants in your bathroom ... I'm from Mount Vernon, so they're from my home turf. I picked the most interesting faces or expressions or manner of dress. This guy looks like Lyle Lovett, this one like Matt Damon and this one like he'd be singing opera. And this woman was arrested so many times! I had them framed in my palette, a nice bright aqua, so they'd pop. They just make me smile when I walk in. And this glam shot of Mariska Hargitay of "Law Order: Special Victims Unit"? Dick Wolf has always said that the show was based on our unit. This morning I went down to the D.A.'s office to meet with the new showrunner and writers to talk about the tricks of the trade. I adore Mariska, who calls me her fairy godmother. She cares enormously about victims of sexual violence. Justin's best friend in the '50s and '60s was Franklin Roosevelt Jr., and they had houses near each other in Dutchess County. Mrs. Roosevelt was very ill and wanted to be on the Hudson, and Franklin Jr. had a boat. And she said, "Get Justin and his three children. Let's all go out on the river." That was supposedly the last weekend before she died. Who's the guy in the fedora? It's Mickey Spillane, an author I've read for a very long time. Mike and I were standing in the Park Avenue Armory, and I was just mesmerized by his face. And these two women next to us were saying, "Why would anyone buy a picture of a man holding a gun?" | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Art & Design |
Bike shorts were making their comeback as a fashion item well before "social distancing" entered our everyday vocabulary. In recent years, skintight, stretchy shorts have appeared in collections by designer brands including Off White, Yeezy, Maryam Nassir Zadeh and Jacquemus. Celebrities like Kim Kardashian West, Bella Hadid and Hailey Bieber have also helped propel the trend into the contemporary mainstream by wearing them though Princess Diana's gym outfits have remained a continuous source of bike shorts styling inspiration since the 1990s, as well. So maybe bike shorts were always destined to have a moment in the summer of 2020. But as with 1,000 piece puzzles and sourdough bread, quarantine has given them new appeal: Bike shorts are a comfortable, practical item of clothing that can seamlessly transition through the vague shifts between work, exercise, worry and rest that characterize a life spent mostly at home. Nikki Ogunnaike, the deputy fashion director of GQ and an avid runner, got into bike shorts three years ago, after discovering that they didn't ride up when she was moving around and working out. In quarantine, they've become a daily staple, thanks to their breathability in her hot New York City apartment. "It's pretty much all I wear," she said. For working from home, Ms. Ogunnaike, 34, prefers bike shorts with an inseam of seven to nine inches, which strikes her as more deliberate looking than a shorter cut. She also takes a considered approach to what she wears on top usually a tank top and a collared camp shirt, which she previously would have worn to the office. "It looks like I put together an outfit, rather than the shorts I rolled out of bed in," Ms. Ogunnaike said. Justina Sharp, a 22 year old influencer and creative strategist, usually pairs her high waisted bike shorts with oversized vintage T shirts or button downs. She was in her final semester of college when stay at home orders went into effect in Los Angeles, where she lives, and decided to embrace what seemed like a short term lockdown by wearing pajamas all day. "After a week of that, you feel gross," Ms. Sharp said. "I have anxiety. Not getting dressed for that long, I was like: 'I'm going to die here. I need to get dressed.'" Bike shorts, on the other hand, walk that careful line between loungewear and actual clothing. Plus, hers have pockets. The fact that they are comfortable and form fitting makes her feel tucked in and dressed, she said. Tess Gattuso, a 27 year old writer and comedian in Los Angeles, took it a step further. "I think they're super sexy," she said. "I need that excitement in quarantine." While bike shorts have in many ways been popularized by very thin celebrities and influencers, enthusiasts dismiss the idea that they can or should only be worn by people with a certain body type. "I think when they first came out, you were used to seeing them in vintage Princess Diana photos, or you saw them on Hailey Bieber or Kendall Jenner," Ms. Ogunnaike said. "But with brands like Girlfriend Collective, they're cutting them for all body types, so many people can get in on the trend." She added that it's difficult to determine whether that sales growth has more to do with the pandemic, the season, or the fact that the bike shorts trend simply reached a maturation point where more customers are ready to try it out. (The brand's leggings remain its best seller by volume, but the bike shorts, available since in 2017, recently surpassed them in terms of sell through rate.) But the brand often uses customer photos on its website, and Ms. Smith noted that whereas customers predominantly used to wear their bike shorts with a matching bra top, they're now styling them in a wide range of ways, with oversized sweatshirts or more refined blouses. When Ms. Sharp first bought a pair of bike shorts in 2019, she was inspired by those who had gotten on the bandwagon before her: VSCO girls on TikTok, teenagers she knows from the summer camp she works at, and Princess Diana, who was also name checked by Ms. Ogunnaike and Ms. Gattuso. Diana regularly wore bike shorts with graphic sweatshirts, tube socks and sneakers when going to the gym at the Chelsea Harbour Club in the mid 1990s a period of time when she was shedding some of the rules of royal fashion, said Elizabeth Holmes, the author of the forthcoming book "HRH: So Many Thoughts on Royal Style." "Given the fact that bike shorts have now come back around, this is the look of Diana's that feels, in some way, the most timeless," Ms. Holmes said. "She looks like she could be walking to the gym today." Which is to say, bike shorts have long been a practical and functional option for daily life. Melanie Pochat, a 35 year old stay at home mother in San Francisco, started wearing them in 2019 after giving birth to her first child. They ticked a lot of boxes: they didn't cause thigh chafe, they didn't budge when she bent over to pick up her kid, and they were perfect for 30 second bathroom breaks. Ms. Pochat was also having trouble coming to terms with how her body had changed after her unplanned C section, and bike shorts, tight as they are, served as "a gateway to body acceptance." "They sort of show off my stomach. But also I want them to in a way, because it's like, all right, this is me, this is what it is," Ms. Pochat said. "My main goals are to be comfortable and to keep up with my child and be happy. This is it." Ms. Pochat got so hooked on bike shorts that she created an Excel spreadsheet ranking different models according to metrics such as "thigh squish," "stays up," "pocket size" and "camel toe." Ms. Pochat posted it on Twitter and distributed it to a Facebook group for moms that she's in, and said that she's seen friends and acquaintances take the plunge and buy them especially during quarantine. She believes that the intimidating nature of ultratight shorts (or other fashion risks, for that matter) has diminished compared to people's fears of getting sick. "I think it's this shedding of the idea of what other people think of us. It's no longer as much of a priority as it was," Ms. Pochat said. "There is no 'dressed appropriately' anymore. The only 'dressed appropriately' is wearing a mask." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Style |
THE FIFTH ANNUAL ALLY COALITION TALENT SHOW at Town Hall (Dec. 5, 7:30 p.m.). Bleachers frontman Jack Antonoff and his sister, designer Rachel Antonoff, founded the Ally Coalition six years ago to raise money for organizations working for LGBTQ equality. This year's concert features the macabre yet compelling Lana Del Rey, singular singer songwriter Regina Spektor, Vampire Weekend alum Rostam, and Hayley Kiyoko, a young pop singer who's made advocating for LGBTQ representation a central part of her music. The show is a benefit for New York charity New Alternatives for LGBTQ Homeless Youth. 212 997 6661, thetownhall.org NENEH CHERRY at National Sawdust (Dec. 2, 8 p.m.). Most artists can't boast a remix by the Notorious B.I.G., a song with R.E.M.'s Michael Stipe and an album with an experimental jazz trio, but Neneh Cherry has long eschewed the status quo. Now 54, the singer, bandleader and occasional rapper and D.J. has traversed most corners of the pop musical universe over her nearly four decade long career. On her new album, "Broken Politics," she's as political and genre agnostic as ever, using a blend of familiar R B sounds, instruments from across the globe, and asymmetrical experimentation to convey anticolonial critiques. 646 779 8455, nationalsawdust.org MITSKI at Brooklyn Steel (Nov. 30 Dec. 3, 8 p.m.). The Japanese born singer songwriter puts an upbeat spin on Millennial angst with easy to dance to songs that touch on everything from the inevitability of global warming ("Nobody") to high school reunions ("Two Slow Dancers"). All four of her New York shows are sold out (tickets are available from resellers), evidence that her similarly preoccupied peers have found musical catharsis in her cheery but never cloying songs. Mitski is one of a suddenly rich community of women driving indie rock forward with uncompromising, deft music from a point of view that's still too often ignored. 888 929 7849, bowerypresents.com/venues/brooklyn steel THE FOURTH ANNUAL ROOTS N' RUCKUS FEST at the Jalopy Theater (Dec. 5 8 at various times). This festival celebrates a free, weekly concert of the same name that's been a fixture of Red Hook's Jalopy Theatre since 2008. Most of the artists booked, predictably, fall somewhere in the broad category of American roots music; the "ruckus" comes from both the more unconventional acts and the shows' jovial atmosphere. At the four day festival, which includes the neighboring Jalopy Pub, audiences can sample everything from Indian classical music via Brooklyn Raga Massive to old time folk from 13 year old banjo prodigy Nora Brown. The only cover charge is a suggested contribution to the tip jar after each set. 718 395 3214, jalopytheatre.org SOCCER MOMMY at Music Hall of Williamsburg (Dec. 5 6, 9 p.m.). 20 year old Sophie Allison might write songs about wanting to be cool inspired by, according to her, insecurity, but the music itself sounds anything but juvenile. Under the suburban sounding stage name Soccer Mommy, the Nashville bred singer songwriter crafts intimate, confessional songs that bridge grungy, distorted guitar and irresistible bass grooves they're catchy too, which is fitting given her self professed fandom of poppier acts like Avril Lavigne and Taylor Swift. Wednesday's show is sold out, but tickets are available via resellers. 718 486 5400, musichallofwilliamsburg.com NATALIE WEINER THE COMET IS COMING at Nublu 151 (Dec. 3, 8 p.m.). The tenor saxophonist Shabaka Hutchings doesn't always need solid grounding or clattering pulse to establish the power and conviction of his music. In the Comet Is Coming, a trio that includes Dan Levers on keyboards and Max Hallett on drums, Hutchings makes some of his most vaporous and spacy music. But this group's coming album (due in March) has just as much urgency as his recent release with Sons of Kemet, a much earthier quartet, featuring two drummers and a tuba. With both bands, the best way to experience them is live. And Nublu 151 a small, well outfitted club is an ideal place to do it. nublu.net 'CONQUISTADOR! THE LEGACY OF CECIL TAYLOR' at the Clemente/Soto Velez Cultural Center (Dec. 5, 6:30 p.m.). The pianist Cecil Taylor was a world altering talent, a hero of modern American creativity whose only loyalty was to the promise of invention. He pried at the languages of bebop and stride and Romantic piano, breaking them open and refusing to suture them back together into any sort of hybrid. Taylor died in April at 89, and this event pays tribute to his artistry in an appropriately broad fashion: with music from the pianists Craig Taborn, Kris Davis and Matthew Shipp, as well as the drummer Andrew Cyrille (who played with Taylor in the 1960s and '70s); poetry from Tracie Morris and Steve Dalachinsky; and readings from the scholars Fred Moten and Adam Shatz. 212 998 2101, nyihumanities.org SYLVIE COURVOISIER TRIO AND NATE WOOLEY (Dec. 3, 8 p.m.). The pianist Sylvie Courvoisier recently released a sneakily expansive album packed with small surprises and irreverent redirections titled "D'Agala." She appears here with the trio from that recording: Drew Gress on bass and Kenny Wollesen on drums. After a set break, she will join the trumpeter Nate Wooley in a different group, with the saxophonist Ingrid Laubrock and the vibraphonist Matt Moran, playing the fourth installment of Wooley's "Battle Pieces." This continuing work, specifically built to feature these four musicians, mixes free improvisation with flexible miniature elements composed by Wooley. 917 267 0368, roulette.org FORWARD FESTIVAL at ShapeShifter Lab (Dec. 6 7, 7 p.m.). An independent label devoted to presenting concerts as well as releasing albums, 577 Records convenes its annual festival, featuring eight sets over two nights from a range of experimental improvisers. On Thursday the bill includes a performance from the British saxophonist Rachel Musson, playing solo, and one by a quartet featuring both of the label's founders: the versatile wind instrumentalist Daniel Carter and the drummer Federico Ughi (the group also features the pianist Mary Anne Driscoll and the bassist William Parker). The following night, the electronic musician Tobias Wilner will give a solo set under the name Bichi, and New York United, a quintet featuring Carter and Ughi, will close the evening. shapeshifterlab.com MAKAYA MCCRAVEN at Le Poisson Rouge (Dec. 2, 8 p.m.). Since the release of his 2015 album, "In the Moment," McCraven, a drummer, has become one of improvised music's vanguard bandleaders. His latest record, "Universal Beings," collects performances in four cities across the United States and Britain, each with a different band; after the shows, using an approach that's become his calling card, McCraven sliced up the recordings and created original tracks that, at their best, feel as fresh as the live performances themselves. He performs here with many of the musicians who appear on "Universal Beings," including the New York based harpist Brandee Younger, the Los Angeles violinist Miguel Atwood Ferguson, the British tenor saxophonists Shabaka Hutchings and Nubya Garcia, and the Chicagoan bassist Junius Paul. 212 505 3474, lpr.com PHAROAH SANDERS at Birdland (Dec. 4 8, 8:30 and 11 p.m.). When John Coltrane died unexpectedly in 1967, leaving the jazz world in shock, Pharoah Sanders came to be seen as the musician best equipped to carry his torch. (He had played in some of Coltrane's last ensembles, then joined the band of Alice Coltrane.) Ever since Sanders has remained a symbol of the upward bound spiritual jazz that took root in that era. Now 78, he retains an ebullient stage presence and a broad, enchanting tenor saxophone sound. Sanders appears here in a quartet featuring William Henderson on piano, Nat Reeves on bass and Johnathan Blake on drums. 212 581 3080, birdlandjazz.com MARK TURNER at the Village Vanguard (through Dec. 2, 8:30 and 10:30 p.m.). Few saxophonists have had a starker influence on today's young jazz musicians than Mark Turner, 53, whose even toned but constantly evasive improvisations helped to define the sound of New York jazz in the 1990s, uniting ideas from such diverse figures as Lennie Tristano, Joe Henderson and Sonny Rollins. He continues to forge ahead, as a member of Billy Hart's reputed quartet and a leader of his own ensembles. At the Vanguard he appears with a quintet featuring top talent from across the jazz landscape: Jason Palmer on trumpet, David Virelles on piano, Matt Brewer on bass and Nasheet Waits on drums. 212 255 4037, villagevanguard.com GIOVANNI RUSSONELLO | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Music |
"Now I'm going to do something I'll regret." The singer Molly Pope stood at a mike in the cavernous Judson Memorial Church in Manhattan and started to read what appeared to be a deeply personal short story. An audience of 50 or so reacted with nervous laughter and, at times, intense silence, as she shared a story that was never meant to be heard in public. It was an episodic tale of a fraught relationship set in a variety of hotel rooms. And when she was done, the crowd, many of them fellow writers, artists and performers, cheered. The creator and host for this airing of creative laundry is Amanda Duarte, 41, a writer, performer and podcaster who lives in Brooklyn. She came up with the concept four years ago while struggling with a new play and musing on the adage that writers often have to "kill their darlings" as part of the process. "I remember one day cutting and cutting, and thinking to myself, I'm just sitting here surrounded by all these dead darlings," Ms. Duarte said. "I bet a lot of people feel this way, and wouldn't it be nice if we all had a venue where we could give these darlings a little life." So in 2013, Ms. Duarte pitched the idea to her friend Micah Bucey, 36, who is the minister of the arts at Judson, a Greenwich Village church where cultivating creativity is part of its mission. The show usually takes place in the choir loft next to a bank of stained glass windows, but sometimes occupies the main floor of the church for big crowds and benefit shows. "Nothing can really bomb at this show," Ms. Duarte said. "People are being extremely vulnerable and brave, sharing things that failed or didn't work, and the audience reveres that. That's what they come for. The more humiliating or difficult or scary the material is to present, the more the audience loves it." A petite but boisterous host, Ms. Duarte stalks the stage in her signature neon pumps, lending the gatherings a fun, freewheeling atmosphere, with an emphasis on the comic nature of failure. The worse something seemed in private, the better it is for this setting. At the show in January, Erin Gloria Ryan, a senior editor at The Daily Beast, read her bizarre notes for a story about dropping acid at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. And Dylan Marron, a video maker, shared half baked jokes from his first stand up set, inviting the audience to workshop his clunkers. There was a lot of interplay between audience and performers, making it feel like an artistic therapy session, laughing through the pain of failure. But "Dead Darlings" is not all jokes at a writer's expense. The January lineup also included Rick Herron, a young art curator who shared the first draft of an essay he had written for a gallery show about mentorship. As it turned out, the essay had little to say about the show and ended up being, like many things these days, about the election of President Trump. After a few uneasy laughs, the audience grew hushed as Mr. Herron related telling his partner the news on election night. "When I came in crying, he asked what had happened, all I could do was cling to him and say, 'I'm so sorry,' over and over again," said Mr. Herron, his voice breaking as he read. "We talked for a little while and held each other until we both fell asleep." Sometimes, these creative exorcisms can even turn into resurrections, which is apt given the religious setting. The actor and comedian John Early, who has been a regular contributor, once brought in photos from a Toni Collette fan website he had built as a teenager. It had the audience in such hysterics that Mr. Early eventually included the material in his own show. "We censor ourselves before our work even hits an audience," Ms. Duarte said. "This is just a safe space to do that stuff we're going to throw away. And then we get a response, and we're kind of like, 'Hey wait a minute, maybe I should bring this back.'" | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Fashion & Style |
One day in 2009, Frank Rheindt was wandering up a forested mountainside on an Indonesian island when the skies opened up. He had spent months planning this trip, days finding a charter boat that would carry him to this remote place, and hours plodding uphill, but the local tour guides insisted that the rain would make the search impossible. But on the way down, even with the deluge, he was startled by the sight of a thrush sitting on a log. Dr. Rheindt, an ornithologist, knew that a thrush shouldn't have been on that island, and that the species normally would seek shelter from the rain. A little farther along, he heard the distinctive call of a grasshopper warbler, an endangered bird that's normally hard to spot. "I could tell from the sound that it was a grasshopper warbler, but different than I was used to," he said. "That's when I knew I was going to come up again." On his second ascent a few days later, Dr. Rheindt, an associate professor at the National University of Singapore, saw little besides the devastation from a forest fire a few years earlier. But on his third mile high climb, he found what he had struggled so long and hard to track: birds that no scientist had ever before recorded. Dr. Rheindt and colleagues published a study in Science on Thursday on their findings from that six week trip and a follow up in 2013. They identified five new songbird species and five subspecies a number considered remarkable from one place and time. Their proposed names for the birds include: Peleng Fantail, Togian Jungle Flycatcher and Sula Mountain Leaftoiler. The region off the coast of Sulawesi, Indonesia, that was explored by the team has a rich history, one that Dr. Rheindt anticipated would yield exciting finds. The Indonesian islands of Taliabu, Peleng and Batudaka are in a region named Wallacea, after Alfred Russel Wallace, the 19th century naturalist who developed a theory of evolution alongside Charles Darwin's. Wallace and other explorers spent decades cataloging the birds of Wallacea, but they had somehow missed these birds probably, Dr. Rheindt said, because his own search focused on the highest elevations. Birds are considered the most well cataloged class of organisms far more is known about them than about insects, for instance. But still, 160 new species have been discovered in the last 30 years. Dr. Rheindt's addition of so many more is a substantial contribution, said Joel Cracraft, curator of the department of ornithology at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City. "They found 10 new things, which is remarkable," Dr. Cracraft said. "It really points to how little we actually know." The definition of a bird species is somewhat fluid, he said, because 60 percent of bird species interbreed. "This is the internecine battle over species concepts, which goes on and on," Dr. Cracraft said. He thinks all 10 of Dr. Rheindt's birds meet criteria he and colleagues established in a 2007 study, which essentially comes down to: "If it's distinguishable, it's a new species." Dr. Rheindt said it had taken him more than six years since his last expedition to publish his results, because of the need to confirm each bird's distinctiveness including genetics, appearance and vocalizations. It also took time to collaborate with colleagues in Indonesia and get appropriate permits and buy in from Indonesian authorities. Two of the new species are named in honor of Indonesian officials. Taliabu and Peleng are surrounded by deep water, suggesting that they had been separated from other land masses for hundreds of thousands of years, enough time for new species to evolve. Since Darwin wrote about his explorations of the Galapagos Islands off Ecuador, scientists have known that isolated island populations often evolve into new species. Most of the 10 new birds discovered in Wallacea are related to species found elsewhere, but they sing somewhat different songs and have distinct genetics. The islands are both inhabited largely at lower elevations than where Dr. Rheindt traveled, but he used logging trails to reach some sites. Human habitation and exploitation of natural resources threaten the islands' habitats, he said. Andrew Berry, a lecturer on evolutionary biology at Harvard University, said via email that Wallace would have loved the new study, because it targeted the same types of locations remote and geologically unusual that Wallace favored during his exploration of Southeast Asia from 1854 to 1862. Wallace described nearly 2 percent of all known bird species during his time there, Dr. Berry said, conducting the kind of basic descriptive biology that undergirds this new research. "Identifying new species might seem unsexy, the scientific equivalent of stamp collecting," Dr. Berry said. "Wallace was extraordinarily prescient about this," he said, "complaining as early as 1863 that his fellow Victorians were hypocrites in their insistence, as creationists, that each species was the handiwork of God, yet all the while failing to lift a finger to conserve them." In an essay, Wallace wrote that: Future ages will certainly look back upon us as a people so immersed in the pursuit of wealth as to be blind to higher considerations. They will charge us with having culpably allowed the destruction of some of those records of Creation which we had it in our power to preserve; and while professing to regard every living thing as the direct handiwork and best evidence of a Creator, yet, with a strange inconsistency, seeing many of them perish irrecoverably from the face of the earth, uncared for and unknown. The new findings highlight the need to catalog and conserve biological diversity, said Jonathan Kennedy, an ornithologist and evolutionary biologist at the University of Sheffield, who wrote a commentary that ran with the new study. It was from Wallacea, Dr. Kennedy said, that Wallace sent his famous letter to Darwin, laying out what he had reasoned about evolution and persuading Darwin to publish his own ideas for the first time. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Science |
While the in person art world in New York City remains mostly shuttered because of the pandemic, some galleries are opening spaces in the Hamptons. One of them, Pace, will open a temporary 1,700 square foot exhibition space in July in an East Hampton Village that it plans to keep open through Oct. 12. The inaugural exhibition will feature new drawings by the Japanese artist Yoshitomo Nara. This month, the auction house Sotheby's will open a pop up gallery, which a spokesman, Darrell Rocha, said would allow for "immediate purchase across both fine art and luxury goods." In an email, he said Sotheby's recognized "that many of our established clients as well as many potential new clients have been and will continue to be out East." Marc Glimcher, chief executive and president of Pace Gallery, said in an email, "We saw an opportunity to get business back on its feet during the summer by opening in East Hampton." He added, "Above all else, we believe the opportunity to connect audiences with art in person is an important one." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Art & Design |
There was one big question hovering over the Boston Symphony Orchestra's ambitious programs at Carnegie Hall this week: How would the tenor Jonas Kaufmann fare in his trial run in one of the mightiest roles in opera, Wagner's Tristan? For the second program, on Thursday, Andris Nelsons, the orchestra's music director, led a concert performance of Act II of "Tristan und Isolde." For both Mr. Kaufmann and his Isolde, the soprano Camilla Nylund, this 75 minute act, which contains the most unbridled, aching and ecstatic love scene in the repertory, represented first attempts at these touchstone roles. Isolde is a summit for dramatic sopranos, and Ms. Nylund brought vocal radiance and affecting volatility to her performance. But a great Tristan is a real rarity. Is Mr. Kaufmann, who has excelled as Wagner's Lohengrin, Parsifal and Siegmund, the Tristan we've been waiting for? There were tantalizing moments long stretches, even in his courageous performance. When Tristan arrives at night to meet Isolde, Mr. Kaufmann combines virile energy with dusky colorings to suggest a man caught between desire and world weary sadness. But he was particularly fine when passions calm for a while and the two lovers sink into Wagner's nocturne, longing to be eternally united in death. The covered quality of Mr. Kaufmann's voice, in which even firm, sustained notes have a slightly shaded cast, was what you dream of hearing when Tristan sings these melting phrases. The mezzo soprano Mihoko Fujimura sang Brangane with big, bright sound and urgency. The stentorian bass Georg Zeppenfeld brought sad dignity to the scene when King Marke, who has been like a father to Tristan, is crushed by the young man's betrayal with Isolde, who is betrothed to Marke. Mr. Nelsons drew vivid colors dark strings, reedy woodwinds, mellow brasses and impressive clarity from the orchestra. He brought shape and flow to the coursing music. Some of the playing, though, was a little blunt and forceful, especially when the lovers had their first ecstatic exchanges. The orchestra sometimes swamped them. Bluntness of the most exciting kind, however, characterized the performance Mr. Nelsons led on Wednesday of Shostakovich's Fourth Symphony. This 70 minute, three movement work for an enormous, brassy orchestra, written in the mid 1930s, shows the composer at his most audaciously modernist. The music seems to defy formal constraints, shifting from crazed vehemence to bitterly ironic dances, blasting marches to spans of industrious counterpoint. It's confounding. But Mr. Nelsons and his players had me hooked. Between that Boston program and the Philadelphia Orchestra's concert on Tuesday, Carnegie offered a miniature Bernstein festival for that composer's centennial year. Mr. Nelsons led Bernstein's "The Age of Anxiety" (Symphony No. 2), a restless, episodic and exhilarating piece with a formidably difficult solo piano part, here played with dreaminess, blazing technique and jazzy intensity by Jean Yves Thibaudet. On Tuesday, Yannick Nezet Seguin opened the Philadelphians' program with a vibrant and sensitive account of Bernstein's "Chichester Psalms," a 1965 work that blends poignant choral settings of psalm texts with overt elements of theatricality. The Westminster Symphonic Choir was excellent, and the boy soprano Dante Michael DiMaio brought disarming beauty to Bernstein's wistful, blue note inflected melodies. The program also offered the New York premiere of Tod Machover's "Philadelphia Voices," the latest in his series of collaborative "city symphonies." This 30 minute work folds in crowdsourced elements, including recorded voices of Philadelphia residents and sounds of urban bustle. The texts include poems by two Philadelphia area teenagers, Jayda Hepburn and Cameron Coles, who made their first trips to Manhattan to attend this premiere. The piece is an eclectic musical celebration of a city that also looks at issues of injustice and inclusion. I wish Mr. Machover had worked a little harder to fashion some of the recorded sounds and sourced bits into a more intricate work. Still, it was inspiring to see the Westminster choristers joined by the eager members of three young ensembles: the Keystone State Boychoir, the Pennsylvania Girlchoir and the Sister Cities Girlchoir. The kinetic Mr. Nezet Seguin looked like one of the kids as he led an impassioned performance. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Music |
Four astronauts three from NASA, one from JAXA, the Japanese space agency will be sitting inside a SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule, boosted to orbit on top of a Falcon 9 rocket. The mission is known as Crew 1, and the astronauts named their capsule Resilience. They are headed to the International Space Station for a six month stay. A live video stream from NASA showed the astronauts in good spirits in the suit up room where they had already put on their modern SpaceX flight suits. As numerous SpaceX technicians in black uniforms and face masks assisted them, the astronauts smiled and took photos with visitors, including Jim Bridenstine, the administrator of NASA, and Gwynne Shotwell, the president and chief operations officer of SpaceX. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Science |
Arata Isozaki, the Japanese architect, teacher and theorist, who won the 2019 Pritzker Architecture Prize, in Naha on Feb. 28. NAHA, Japan He has been called the "emperor of Japanese architecture" by his peers and "visionary" by critics. Now, the internationally renowned architect Arata Isozaki can add yet another tribute: the 2019 Pritzker Architecture Prize. The announcement on Tuesday of architecture's highest award was seen by many as a long overdue honor for this 87 year old architect, urban designer and theorist, who is credited with fusing East and West, modern and postmodern, and global and local in a visually diverse body of work that symbolized Japan's global influence. Mr. Isozaki's more than 100 buildings include the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, the Palau Sant Jordi in Barcelona and the Qatar National Convention Center in Doha. At his modest apartment in Naha, the capital of Okinawa, Mr. Isozaki said he was "overjoyed" to receive the prize. Dressed in a mud dyed silk kimono with a folding fan tucked into his obi and his unruly white shoulder length hair combed back behind his ears, Mr. Isozaki reflected on a six decade long career blending architecture with visual art, poetry, philosophy, theater, writing and design. "My concept of architecture is that it is invisible," he said. "It's intangible. But I believe it can be felt through the five senses." Crucial to Mr. Isozaki's avant garde approach to architecture is the Japanese concept of ma, signifying the merging of time and space, which was the subject of a traveling exhibition in 1978. "Like the universe, architecture comes out of nothing, becomes something, and eventually becomes nothing again," said Mr. Isozaki. "That life cycle from birth to death is a process that I want to showcase." "Possessing a profound knowledge of architectural history and theory, and embracing the avant garde, he never merely replicated the status quo," said the Pritzker jury in its citation, which also noted Mr. Isozaki's support for young architects. "But his search for meaningful architecture was reflected in his buildings that to this day, defy stylistic categorizations, are constantly evolving, and always fresh in their approach." Born in Oita on the island of Kyushu in 1931, Mr. Isozaki came of age in a postwar Japan that was "in complete ruins," with an emperor demoted and social customs in flux. "Air bombardment had destroyed many of the cities, buildings had vanished and there was only rubble on the ground," he wrote. "However, Japan had already assimilated western modernization by that time. The only possible choice I had was to start from the ruins the degree zero where nothing remained." After graduating from the architecture department at the University of Tokyo in 1954, Mr. Isozaki apprenticed with Kenzo Tange, the 1987 Pritzker Prize winner known as the father of postwar Japanese architecture. The young architect rode the building wave of postwar Japan, showing the influence of Le Corbusier and Louis I. Kahn as well as that of Mr. Tange in works like the Oita Prefectural Library (1962 1966), the Museum of Modern Art in Gunma (1971 74) and the Kitakyushu Municipal Museum of Art in Fukuoka (1972 74). It was during this time that Mr. Isozaki honed his ability to blend architectural styles and invent new forms by joining simple geometric shapes in powerful ways, while maintaining an exacting attention to detail and refinement. "Unlike those American postmodernists who believed that classicism held the key to a usable past, Mr. Isozaki appeared to understand that no amount of historical excavation could uncover a firm foundation on which to build the present," the critic Herbert Muschamp wrote in The Times in 1993. "He perceived that a time that had lost its faith in the future had also lost its grip on the past." Another constant was his playful approach to architecture. Seen from above, the cylindrical roof of the Fujimi Country Club (1973 74) in his hometown, Oita, appears in the shape of a giant question mark, a reflection of Mr. Isozaki's befuddlement with his country's obsession with golf. "At the time, MoMA" the Museum of Modern Art in New York "was so popular, I sensed that Los Angeles really wanted to surpass it," said Mr. Isozaki. "So instead of showcasing the artwork in a dark area with artificial light like MoMA did, we destroyed this concept and totally turned it upside down." Completed in 1986, the sunken red Indian sandstone clad museum in downtown Los Angeles features a barrel vaulted library and a series of glass pyramids skylights that were intended to let natural light stream down into galleries. "Not since the French architectural visionaries of the 18th century has an architect used solid geometric volumes with such clarity and purity, and never with his sense of playfulness," the critic Joseph Giovannini wrote of the project in The Times in 1986. The project catapulted Mr. Isozaki onto the international stage, paving the way for a stream of global commissions including the Team Disney building in Florida and the China Central Academy of Fine Arts Art Museum in Beijing, and the Sant Jordi stadium (designed for the 1992 Olympics in Barcelona). While his best known projects are in cities, Mr. Isozaki said last week that he was "more nostalgic about the rural projects." Asked to pick a favorite, he named the Domus Museum (1993 1995) in A Coruna, Spain. Built atop a rocky outcrop by the Bay of Riazor, the museum features a curved slate clad facade that resembles a sail billowing in the wind. "Mr. Isozaki's is an architecture that thrusts aside the shopworn debate between modernism and postmodernism, for it is both modern and postmodern," the critic Paul Goldberger wrote in The Times in 1986. "Modern in its reliance on strong, self assured abstraction, postmodern in the degree to which it feels connected to the larger stream of history." In 2017, Mr. Isozaki donated his vast collection of books and quietly moved with his partner, Misa Shin, from Tokyo to Okinawa in search of warmer climes. The couple rented a nondescript apartment with a view of the sea in a peaceful residential neighborhood. The neighbors have no idea that living in the peach colored walk up is a bona fide starchitect. Despite having moved to what might be called the "Florida of Japan," Mr. Isozaki said he has no immediate plans to retire. Recent building booms in the Middle East and Asia and China, in particular have allowed the architect to finally realize ideas for urban planning that he first conceptualized in his unbuilt project "City in the Air" (1962), which envisioned a multilayered city hovering above the traditional city. The opportunities were exciting. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Art & Design |
The goal: to make the ad understandable to people who viewed it on Facebook without sound. Scenes from the Geico ad that was adapted, with text over the video, to be used on Facebook. The video was also resized to be less horizontal. In the last year, Facebook has been vocal about its plan to put videos at the center of the social network. But to bring advertisers on board, it has had to convince them that their commercials can work in a News Feed where videos autoplay in silence, nestled between engagement photos and birthday wishes. As Facebook has urged brands to edit and reframe commercials to resonate in that environment, advertisers have asked whether such efforts are worth it. "For a lot of our clients, Facebook is a very important platform, so thinking about how it's going to play out there without sound is coming into the discussion earlier and earlier in the process," said Neel Williams, a creative director at the Martin Agency, which has also repurposed TV Chips Ahoy commercials for Facebook. Advertising is a medium that has long relied on the hummable jingle, the memorable catchphrase and the familiar voice over to connect with its audience. Now, as technology companies like Facebook, Twitter and Snapchat hustle for a bigger cut of television marketing dollars by adding videos, they have been working to show advertisers that their videos can be just as effective, even if they are played on mute or are viewed for just a few seconds. With advertisers seeking to reach an increasingly fractured and fickle audience, the challenges of presenting ads on platforms that are not one size fits all are sure to be much discussed at Advertising Week, a top industry gathering that begins Monday in Manhattan. Facebook executives will probably also have to to field questions about how it gauges the success of video ads, after the company was forced to apologize last week for an error in the way it measured video viewership. The miscalculation greatly overstated how much time, on average, its users spent watching videos, and the incorrect numbers were displayed to partners, including advertisers and publishers, for more than two years. Even before Facebook drew criticism for that metric, advertisers were charting new territory with sound on Facebook. Facebook has visited the Martin Agency "several times" to share tips on how to tailor ads effectively, Mr. Williams said, and it has emphasized the importance of catching a user's attention in the first three seconds of a video, at which point it officially counts as a view. "If you're a creative person, this is an extraordinary time to be in the opening chapters of quite an extraordinary development platform," said Mark D'Arcy, chief creative officer of Facebook's Creative Shop, which helps companies tailor their ads to the social network. Facebook says more than 500 million people watch videos on it every day and viewers have the sound on 50 percent of the time. But the Martin Agency said its data showed that 94 percent of its video ads on Facebook were viewed in silence. Omnicom's BBDO, which tracks Facebook video views across more than 18 advertising clients, said that on average 82 percent of users watched without sound. Publishers have said the figure is between 82 and 85 percent. "You can't elicit the same amount of emotion as when you have sound and visual working together," said Julian Cole, head of communications planning at BBDO. 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. Even as such ads have been shortened or created anew for the web, particularly for mobile devices, where Facebook says 75 percent of its video views occur, sound has remained on in apps like YouTube and Snapchat. "When people are watching on YouTube, they have earbuds in and the volume up," said Kellie Judge, senior vice president of global media partnerships at Amplifi, the central investment division of the ad agency Dentsu Aegis Network. "With Facebook and Twitter, people are scrolling a feed with the volume off. The distinction we've been talking more and more about is not just creating for television versus in feed, but how it's so different from other video," she said. It is difficult to tell brands they need to tailor their ads for each platform not to mention pay TV like dollars to place them there without proof of their effectiveness, so "Facebook and Twitter are doing a ton of research in that space to combat the advertiser hesitation," Ms. Judge said. In the United States, television still commands 72 percent of all video viewing time and television advertising still accounts for about 36 percent of all video related revenue, according to Activate, a consulting firm for tech and media companies. "People are less willing to sit through an online ad than a 30 second TV commercial," said Michael J. Wolf, managing director at Activate. "Most online video ads get about six seconds of play before they are skipped." While Facebook promoted the "sight, sound and motion" of its premium video ads in a March 2014 statement, invoking a mantra used by television advertisers for decades, it has since mostly embraced silence. It introduced an auto captioning feature for video ads in February and instructed brands to "express your message visually," citing an internal study that showed "41 percent of videos were basically meaningless without sound." In April, Facebook shared examples from companies like Wells Fargo and Wrigley, and it made recommendations like start "your video with lifestyle and product shots, recognizable spokespeople, action scenes or a vivid background to spark interest." Facebook did confirm last month that it was testing videos that autoplay with sound through some users in Australia, but that it was in the early stages. Joe Marchese, president of advertising products for the Fox Networks Group, said the lack of sound was a factor that made it hard to assess the value of online video advertising against traditional TV commercials. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Media |
In horror films, it isn't always a maniac who has a thirst for blood. Sometimes it's a tomato. "Attack of the Killer Tomatoes" (1978), a schlocky horror spoof, is just one beloved example of a horror movie built around an inanimate object that causes mayhem. Other evil things in this sometimes goofball, sometimes terrifying genre have included dolls ("Child's Play," "Annabelle"), vehicles ("Christine," "Killdozer"), food ("Attack of the Killer Donuts," "Poultrygeist: Night of the Chicken Dead"), elevators ("The Lift," "Devil") and beds ("Death Bed: The Bed That Eats," "Bed of the Dead"). There are a whopping eight films in the comedic "Evil Bong" franchise, including the raunchy "Gingerdead Man vs. Evil Bong," a rare cinematic battle between killer objects, in this case a coldblooded cookie and a bloodthirsty bong. Check the closet and the kitchen cabinets before watching these horror films some recent, others time honored that explore what happens when the material becomes monstrous. A woman's life becomes a bloody nightmare after she buys a crimson dress on the advice of a stylish ghoulish department store clerk who speaks in bizarrely cadenced, incantation like English. Peter Strickland's gleefully dark film is infused with the disco chic fashion spirit of giallo, the sexually charged, gory Italian horror genre from the '70s and '80s. But it also has an arch edge that turns a tragicomic story about a woman's quest for self discovery into an examination of relationship anxiety and body dysmorphia. In an interview, Strickland said he used the framework of object horror as a way of exploring "our anxieties around clothing." "I wasn't interested in making a movie about fashion, but rather about the power that clothing has over us," he said. A comfy but possessed recliner (not a sofa) comes to life with rage, employing its thick inner springs to kill in Bernie Rao's supernatural horror comedy from New Zealand. Although the twistedly nutty story is about romance and revenge with a medieval edge, the killer chair is a rather cuddly little creep, with shiny buttons that look like wet eyes and strategically placed creases that gives its face ugly sneers. In the movie's most ferocious scene, the chair rises up on its footrest and launches an attack, eyes aglow. The villain in Justin Dec's new supernatural thriller is an app with a timer that ticks down by the second how much time a person has to live. (The first victim had a measly three hours.) In addition to taking the killer object genre into the app age, the film also echoes other beat the clock films that center their suspense around objects, like "Sorry, Wrong Number" (a phone) and "Speed" (a bus). In a real world twist, a fan made fictional version of the movie's app is one of the top free downloads in Apple's app store. Just as a dead killer possessed a doll via lightning strike in "Child's Play," the consciousness of a killer psychopath inhabits a recreational drone via lightning strike in this satirical horror film by Jordan Rubin. With its whirring blades, glowing red eyes and speedy maneuvers, the drone is a natural and efficient killer. This one gets an award for best tagline: "Your remote has no control." This sci fi horror hybrid is a bleakly funny tale about a tasty yogurt like substance that gets packaged for mass consumption and turns Americans into killer consumer zombies. With a nod to the B movie pleasures of "The Blob," "The Stuff" capitalizes on a very real human fear of things that ooze, for sure. But like other films directed by Larry Cohen, the indie outre director who died in March, it's a smartly considered indictment of capitalism and the American food industry. A couple moves from suburban Cleveland to an Avenue D walk up apartment, only to be menaced by a flesh eating icebox. This low budget supernatural horror comedy, directed by Nicholas Jacobs and filmed on the streets of New York, ends with a spectacular massacre at the hands of an array of appliances, including fans, a garbage can and a Cuisinart. One critic called this "the 'Citizen Kane' of killer fridge movies," a category that also includes "Attack of the Killer Refrigerator" and the Filipino thriller "Pridyider." A tire named Robert comes to life and begins a savage killing spree in the California desert in this surreal, stylized comedy by the director Quentin Dupieux. While other films in this genre attribute evil acts to demons or the environment, this film takes a purely nihilistic route, suggesting the tire has agency and kills simply because it wants to. Dupieux said he was inspired by "Duel," Steven Spielberg's 1971 film about a motorist pursued by a mostly unseen truck driver. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Movies |
The show isn't as static as a series of tableaux vivants (people posing, as if in paintings), but neither is it kinetically exciting. The choreography by Katy Pyle and members of Ballez, who impersonate the goddesses (and a few gods) one by one is individuated without being very interesting. Touches of folk dance fail to kick it out of the low action density of pageantry or into poetry, and Sergei Tcherepnin's music (spare and odd, when not New Age y and synthesized) doesn't help. The amateur theatricals quality has a certain charm, but "the Slavic spirit" Stryjenska wrote about is a force more potent than this production can summon. You could find something closer to it, something more pagan, in Alexandra Bachzetsis's "Massacre: Variations on a Theme." Performed in the Marron Atrium at the Museum of Modern Art, the work is modern on its surface: three women in T shirts and tight jeans, moving and posing with the blank affect of fashion models, putting on and taking off stiletto boots or gloves wrapped in packing tape. The pagan violence comes through Tobias Koch's score: a volcanic composition clearly based on "The Rite of Spring," hammered by two pianists, dressed like house painters, who seem to play every note on the keyboard, and sometimes somewhat spookily by one of the pianos apparently playing itself. The physicality of the music and how it's produced give urgency and direction to the choreography. Here, it's movement more than imagery that has been appropriated: the obsessive rocking and progressive spasms of tarantism (the condition believed in the Middle Ages to be caused by a tarantula bite); the cool swiveling of Northern Soul (the British dance inspired by African American soul music). When one of the women seems to bisect herself with tall mirrors, the conflation of missing and extra body parts is Surrealistic. (Such art historical echoes register more strongly in the companion video installation, projected on the atrium's walls during museum hours.) There's eroticism pelvic thrusts, shaking like twerking, the sensuality of hair but the women stay as dispassionate as bored strippers. As the disparate movement modes merge, the similarities spark mental circuits, suggesting something powerful and dangerous that the work won't disclose. One of the women strips off her outfit to reveal an identical one underneath. But none of that is as arresting as when the women, loping like apes, catch the eyes of viewers close by with a gaze uncannily like that of primates in a zoo the kind of piercing, accusatory communication that's all the more unsettling because you wonder if you really saw it. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Dance |
First there were the impossible to get into 40 exercise classes. Then came 365 foam rollers and 1,000 yoga mats. And now: 320 workout tights you basically have to pass a background check to be allowed to buy. Of course, they're sold out. No, you're not reading The Onion. The matte black, logo free leggings came to market in June, part of the five piece first collection of a company called Wone (pronounced "won"), started by Kristin Hildebrand, a onetime fashion blogger and former global concept creative director for Nike. Each piece in the all black collection (two sports bras, one pair of shorts, a sheer cardigan and the leggings) was numbered like a limited edition lithograph, and they have all sold out. To buy anything, hopefuls (who mostly heard about the brand by word of mouth) had to request access to the Wone website by clicking a button. Ms. Hildebrand, 36, then Googled aspiring customers "these people have fascinating lives," she said before writing to some personally to grant them one week access to make a purchase. She described, with distaste, going to a pop up boutique in Los Angeles, where a brand took the time to confirm the time she planned to show up. When she arrived, the owner seemed more interested in checking Instagram than in interacting with Ms. Hildebrand. Who didn't make the cut? People who want to buy "five of everything," Ms. Hildebrand said. "I get multiples of the bra or of the legging, but excessive numbers of the entire collection and I get skeptical,." (She feared these people planned to resell at higher prices.) She also rejected anyone she suspected was buying to knock off her design, or for research. "I'll email them and say, 'Is this you on LinkedIn?'" Ms. Hildebrand said. There is no actual rejection email; she just ghosts those she doesn't want to buy her wares. Approved buyers talk about Ms. Hildebrand's wares with the zeal of religious converts, or maybe just of people who've paid a premium. "A little slice of heaven," said Chloe Pacheco, 27, a pediatric nurse in Albuquerque. Sarah Burdash, 30, a financial analyst in St. Paul, Minn., second guessed her leggings order, wondering if "it was all just hype." Then she went for her first run in what are the most expensive leggings she has ever bought. "They were so buttery soft I forgot to turn my Garmin on," she said, referring to her performance tracking watch. Wone's leggings aren't the only ones that are hard to get. In December, the upscale London brand Lucas Hugh will begin offering leggings featuring a design that looks like the support tape physiotherapists use, in a limited edition of 20. Cost: 250 apiece. This past summer, Bandier boutiques, which sell designer active wear, quickly sold out of 198 black Ultracor leggings printed with lightning bolts. The wait list topped 1,000, according to the company. The brand eventually was restocked in five patterns some women bought one of each and special fits like a higher waist. Jennifer Bandier, the boutique's founder, was not surprised. "The customer needs to feel like making a purchase is an experience and that what they are buying has a good story that they can share with their friends (and their social media followers)," Ms. Bandier wrote in an email. Wone's offerings also aren't the most expensive out there. Katie Warner Johnson, a founder and the chief executive of Carbon38, which sells fashion forward active wear, said that women's willingness to pay about 300 for Michi leggings was "essentially the foundation of our business." One of the first items Carbon38 offered was a style called Medusa: a swirling patchwork of black spandex, mesh and heather gray fabric that made it look as if the pants were growing up the wearer's leg. And women were lining up for them back in 2014. "We've been really able to play with the price spectrum since then," Ms. Johnson said. Elizabeth van der Goltz, the global buying director of Net a Porter, said the site was initially "nervous" to stock leggings over 200. Now there are 490 blue and black Fendi leggings printed with scribbled hearts and 345 Lucas Hugh black leggings with opalescent tape stripes and pinhole mesh inserts for ventilation. These brands have "high sell throughs," Ms. Van der Goltz wrote in an email. (Their cost continues to accrue after purchase: The Fendi leggings, though designed to sweat in, require hand washing or dry cleaning.) What does 300 and up buy you? In the case of Wone, not strategic color blocking, or extra ventilation. Instead, Ms. Hildebrand touts personalized finishing and Italian and French fabrics, which cost 20 to 25 per yard, as opposed to the 3 to 4 for fabrics more typically used in active wear. As opposed to the standard promise of holding up through 50 machine washes, Wone's are guaranteed through 50,000 washes that's every single day for the next 136 years, or at least through your lifetime, no matter how much exercise might extend it. (What will future archaeologists think when they excavate large amounts of indestructible athleisure?) | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Style |
This renovated 14th century farm, known as a finca, is just outside Llucmajor, a small town on Majorca, the Spanish island about 130 miles off the Iberian coast. Set on nearly 60 acres near the southern foothills of the Puig de Randa mountain, the property is surrounded by a stone wall and includes several structures made from local stone, mortar and cement: a three bedroom villa; a guesthouse and separate casita with one bedroom each; a pool house with a spa; and a fully equipped stable house with two bedrooms. Scattered around the estate are several covered and uncovered terraces, as well as orchards, riding trails, a large garage and a swimming pool. "What makes it so spectacular is the location on a valley surrounded by beautiful mountains, but close to natural sandy beaches," Mr. Feliu wrote in an email. A long gravel driveway leads to the property, which is anchored by the 3,700 square foot villa. The front door opens to a foyer. To the left, in what was once a kitchen, is a den with a brick fireplace. To the right is a library with built in bookshelves and a stone fireplace. Straight ahead from the foyer is a long common living area, with wide floor beams and high ceilings. At one end is an open office on an elevated platform. A dining table and a seating area with a fireplace are in the center. A second seating area with aluminum framed French doors opening to a patio is at the opposite end. Past the library is the kitchen, with a wood dining table, a marble topped island with built in appliances, and doors leading out to the grounds. (The antique, designer and custom furnishings are available to buy, but not included in the asking price, Mr. Feliu said.) The one bedroom guesthouse, one of several structures that can accommodate guests, has a bedroom and bathroom, and the stable house has two bedrooms and two bathrooms. The stone pool house has a bar and kitchen, a spa with a sauna and Jacuzzi, and a covered seating area. The center of Llucmajor, a historic manufacturing town dotted with restaurants and markets, is a 10 minute drive from the property. The area is known for its vineyards, hiking trails, horseback riding and cycling. Puig de Randa mountain, to the north, is a popular climbing and cycling destination. Palma, Majorca's capital and most populous city, is about 30 minutes away on the Mediterranean coast, and has the island's only international airport. Majorca is the largest of Spain's Balearic Islands archipelago, in the western Mediterranean Sea. A longtime destination for tourists and foreign buyers, it has seen real estate prices rise for several years, in tune with those of the rest of the archipelago, according to a report on the 2019 market outlook by the Knight Frank agency. Since the market low during the global financial crisis of 2008, prices have rebounded by 23 percent, although they are still 9 percent below the peak. Florian Hofer, the managing director of Engel Volkers Balearic Islands, based in Port Andratx, said the rising prices are the result of increased demand and the improving quality of the homes on the market. Other agents agreed that British buyers receded in 2018. "They are on hold," Mr. Hofer said. But some of them have been replaced by buyers from Switzerland and Russia, Mr. Feliu said. Hanns Christopher Deppe, the managing director of Dahler Company in Majorca, said his agency saw a 20 percent drop in online inquiries in 2018, citing Brexit and the trade conflict between the United States and China as "the most important factors influencing the luxury real estate market in Majorca." The island's southwestern coastal communities are its most desirable. According to the Knight Frank report, newly built properties with sea views generate strong demand, particularly those priced from 5 million to 7 million euros ( 5.7 million to 8 million). Average prices in the southwest in early 2018 were around 6,250 euros a square meter ( 665 a square foot), while inland properties averaged 3,350 euros a square meter ( 356 a square foot), according to a report by the Center for Real Estate Studies. Prices are typically lower in the southeast. In the capital city of Palma, on the Mediterranean coast, Mr. Feliu pointed to Santa Catalina and La Calatrava as upscale neighborhoods where prices of renovated properties run from 7,000 to 10,000 euros a square meter ( 740 to 1,060 a square foot). Mr. Feliu and Mr. Deppe estimated that in 2018 around 90 percent of their agencies' buyers in Majorca were foreign. But as the Knight Frank report did, they noted a change in where those buyers were coming from. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Real Estate |
On Monday, Snyder said in a statement that he suggested to Goodell that the league take over the investigation "so that the results are thorough, complete and trusted by the fans, the players, our employees and the public." Wilkinson will now report directly to the league, not to Snyder. Lisa Friel, a special counsel for investigations at the N.F.L., met yesterday with lawyers representing some of the women who spoke to the Washington Post. After their meeting, Lisa Banks and Debra Katz, lawyers who represent more than 15 former team employees, said that the N.F.L. "assured us that any repercussions for the team or its owner will be commensurate" with the findings of the investigation. Some of those employees said they would not cooperate if Snyder had ultimate say over the investigation. "Our clients would gladly participate in such an N.F.L. investigation, but do not feel safe speaking to investigators hired by Mr. Snyder and do not trust the investigation that is currently underway," the lawyers said in a letter to Goodell last week. The N.F.L. also said the Washington team would release employees or former employees from nondisclosure agreements to allow them to speak with investigators. Lawyers for the accusers want the team to go a step further and release them from all elements of their nondisclosure agreements, freeing them to speak with each other and to family, friends, and the media. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Sports |
SAN FRANCISCO As people turned in droves to the video chatting app Zoom in recent weeks, the buzz caught Facebook's attention. Inside the social network, that immediately set off a scramble. Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook's chief executive, ordered employees to ramp up and focus on the company's own video chat projects, especially as use of its products also increased, said three people with knowledge of the plans, who declined to be identified because the details are confidential. On Facebook's internal message boards, employees openly gawked at public data showing Zoom's growing popularity, they said. On Friday, Facebook unveiled one of its biggest expansions into videoconferencing with several new video chat features and services. They included video group chats for as many as 50 people on Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp video calls for up to eight people and video calls in Facebook Dating. Mr. Zuckerberg is not the only tech titan with Zoom on his mind. Google this month made its video chat app, Meet, more accessible through Gmail. Cisco recently promoted its Webex teleconferencing service as highly secure compared with Zoom. And Verizon announced last week that it was acquiring BlueJeans Network, a videoconferencing service. Tech and telecommunications giants are mobilizing against Zoom as the Silicon Valley company has become one of the biggest tech beneficiaries of the coronavirus outbreak. Over the past month, downloads of Zoom have increased 740 percent, according to App Annie, an analytics firm. Zoom has said it now has more than 300 million daily participants, up from 10 million before the pandemic. Facebook, Google and others want a piece of that success. Behind the scenes, people with knowledge of the companies said, employees are sore that they have not grabbed more of the same buzz as Zoom, especially since many of the giants have offered their own video chat software like Google Meet for years. In targeting Zoom, the tech behemoths are following a playbook of deploying their vast resources to outmuscle a smaller, fast rising competitor. Last year, Facebook and Google trained their sights on TikTok, the Chinese made video app, which had become a hit with young audiences. Often, the largest companies have opened up their wallets and snapped up tiny rivals to eliminate them as competition. In an interview, Mr. Zuckerberg chafed at comparisons to Zoom and said video chat was just beginning to be a larger phenomenon as people aimed to digitally connect in more intimate ways. "The world was already trending in this direction before Covid 19," Mr. Zuckerberg said while using the new Facebook Messenger video product. "This is the trend in general the ability to feel more present, even when you're not physically together." Zoom, founded in 2011 by Mr. Yuan, a former Cisco executive, was designed to be easy to use and install. Unlike other video chat products, the app also has a popular grid view that lets people see everyone on a call at once, creating a more social atmosphere. The company, based in San Jose, Calif., went public last year. When the spread of Covid 19 turbocharged the video chat phenomenon, Zoom emerged as a clear front runner, owing largely to word of mouth about its ease and simplicity. It has been the most downloaded app in Apple's App Store for more than a month. The company is valued at around 47 billion, more than Slack and Pinterest. But its success has been bumpy, with scrutiny falling on Zoom's lack of security and privacy practices. Zoombombing intentionally disrupting other people's Zoom sessions with pornography or other forms of digital harassment has grown so pervasive that the term has become a part of mainstream discourse. Let Us Help You Protect Your Digital Life None With Apple's latest mobile software update, we can decide whether apps monitor and share our activities with others. Here's what to know. A little maintenance on your devices and accounts can go a long way in maintaining your security against outside parties' unwanted attempts to access your data. Here's a guide to the few simple changes you can make to protect yourself and your information online. Ever considered a password manager? You should. There are also many ways to brush away the tracks you leave on the internet. Bigger tech and telecom companies are racing to catch up, even though they were earlier to roll out videoconferencing services. Cisco acquired Webex in 2007 for 3.2 billion. Facebook has long hyped its own video chat offerings. Microsoft bought the internet calling service Skype in 2011 for 8.5 billion. This month, Google said it would plug Meet directly into Gmail so users could take video calls inside their email browser window. Google is also mimicking Zoom, releasing a grid style view for Meet and adding features to improve video quality in low light conditions. On Wednesday, Google added a noise cancellation option for video calls and expanded the advanced features to all of its customers for free. Google said Meet use was up more than 25 times what it was in January, with more than two million new user sign ups every day. After questions arose about Zoom's privacy and security, competitors also rushed to assure customers that their offerings were safer. Javed Khan, a Cisco vice president, said that not only had use of Webex skyrocketed at one point, the company added 240,000 new users in 24 hours but so had its security business. "As the largest enterprise security company in the world, we're helping our customers connect and collaborate, securely," he said. When Verizon announced its purchase of BlueJeans on April 16, BlueJeans also emphasized security. "As this current work from home era has shown us, having secure, reliable and high quality collaboration tools like BlueJeans is essential," the company said in a blog post. Houseparty, a video chat app that Epic Games acquired last year, has been popular with younger audiences. In recent weeks, more than 50 million people have signed up for it, widening its audience to those who also use Zoom. To differentiate itself, Houseparty said it was emphasizing features like the ability to play games with other participants in the app. Those include Messenger Rooms, a way to quickly create video chat rooms using Facebook Messenger that can support dozens of people simultaneously. Facebook also integrated video chat into its Dating product and plans to bring the ability to create Rooms to WhatsApp, Instagram Direct and other services. Mr. Zuckerberg said Zoom felt more scheduled and a little less casual than Messenger Rooms. He said he wanted to make the video chat experience more serendipitous. "I don't really think there's anything today that you can display on an ad hoc basis that you're hanging out and have whoever wants to join you over video," he said. "Sometimes people compare what we do to other companies, like you did earlier with Zoom. I think the main thrust of how people are going to experience Rooms will be very different." Facebook's augmented and virtual reality division, which offers a video communications device called Portal, has also been working with Zoom since January on a partnership so people could make Zoom video calls on the gadget, according to three people with knowledge of the company's plans. The companies had planned to release the product in May, these people said, but that was put on hold when Zoom recently decided to freeze all new feature development for 90 days to spend time beefing up its security practices. Facebook's augmented and virtual reality division is also in discussions with other companies to expand video chat partnerships, two of the people said. Press officers for Facebook and Zoom declined to comment. Yet Zoom may already be too ingrained for Silicon Valley's giants to dislodge. Late last month, Philipp Schindler, Google's chief business officer, held a videoconference with thousands of the search giant's employees using Google Meet, three people who attended the call said. During the session, one employee asked why Zoom was reaping the biggest benefits even though Google had long offered Meet. Mr. Schindler tried placating the engineer's concerns, the people said. Then his young son stumbled into view of the camera and asked if his father was talking to his co workers on Zoom. Mr. Schindler tried correcting him, but the boy went on to say how much he and his friends loved using Zoom. A Google spokesman declined to comment on the episode. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Technology |
A streaming production of the Moliere comedy, with allusions to the White House as well as Black Lives Matter, tears down walls to rebuild a classic. The rain that arrived in Brooklyn by the bucketful in the middle of Act II of "Tartuffe" on Saturday would normally have stopped the show. But now isn't normal for the young theater company Moliere in the Park, whose name and mission promise outdoor performance. Originally planned, pre pandemic, as an in person, open air staging at the LeFrak Center at Lakeside in Brooklyn's Prospect Park, the production took place online instead, where weather doesn't matter and no one gets wet. That might not have mattered if it weren't so good, but this is an implicitly political "Tartuffe," full of delight for our undelightful time. Under the swift, clear direction of Lucie Tiberghien, and starring Raul Esparza as the title con man and Samira Wiley as his mark, it reminds us that hypocrisy is nothing new and that the hope of overcoming it is still alive today. That was partly the message of the technical workaround, which turned disadvantages of the format the lack of intimacy, the unreal space, the inevitable glitches into advantages of access. Many more people could watch, for one thing, and could see the actors more closely than usual even if the actors could not see back. What's more, the unceasing felicities of Richard Wilbur's 1963 verse translation were clearer via earbuds than they typically are to unaided ears; if they weren't, there were captions available in English and French. (The French Institute Alliance Francaise is a co presenter of the event.) But those are technical matters, not at the core of the production's strength and timeliness. "Tartuffe" is obviously a strong play to begin with, having kept its place in the world's dramatic repertoire (with brief pauses for banning) since its first performance in 1664. Moliere, taking aim at the problem of weak people laying out welcome mats for evil, used uncommonly sharp darts; they pierce us still. What abets the story's resonance now is that Tartuffe, especially in Esparza's hilariously outre performance, is not really a hypocrite, which implies core beliefs, but a flat out huckster, with none. Religiosity is merely a disguise he dons to gull Wiley's Orgon, a rich old man who, with little morality of his own, is especially susceptible to the appearance of morality in others. To watch Esparza finger his rosary as if it were a sex toy and Wiley fall gushingly in love with him, is to see how swindlers and dupes depend on each other's extremes. Another reason this "Tartuffe" succeeds in 2020 is that almost all of its principal cast are people of color and several, like Wiley, a star of "Orange Is the New Black" and "The Handmaid's Tale," are also playing across gender. It's a joy to see Kaliswa Brewster (as the daughter Orgon tries to marry to Tartuffe) and Toccarra Cash (as the wife he likewise pushes into his arms) dig into roles that might not be available to them in more traditional productions. Notably, the most prominent role played by a white actor is Dorine, the maid, in a classic soubrette turn by Jennifer Mudge. But the casting is more than a show of diversity for its own sake, however welcome that is. As the play comes to its crisis, with Orgon realizing too late that he has ruined his family through sheer gullibility, Tiberghien makes a slight but crucial amendment to the story. No longer is Orgon saved by the intervention of Louis XIV, as in the standard text; he is saved by the people themselves, finally using their power to prosecute the fraud in their midst. "With one keen glance, we've perceived the whole/Perverseness and corruption of his soul," Esparza recites, no longer as Tartuffe but as himself. It would be hard to miss, or discount as irrelevant, the allusion to current cons and crises, in the White House and beyond. In that context a simple line of relief in Wilbur's translation "I breathe again, at last" takes on profound new meaning, especially spoken by this cast. As each actor uttered it from separate Zoom like boxes (and from separate time zones, in Los Angeles, New York and Italy) "Tartuffe" delivered a moment of grace I would not have thought it could in our day. It also delivered on a promise of streamed theater I hadn't considered before: the promise of approachability. I don't just mean that more than 5,000 people were able to watch the two shows on Saturday, though this is hugely more than the LeFrak Center's typical in person capacity of about 200. (Infinitely more can watch the recording available on YouTube through 2 p.m. on Wednesday.) I also mean that the many people who have been living and surfing the uprisings on their phones and laptops will feel at home in this "Tartuffe," with its deliberately pixelated, low tech vibe and unassuming green screen aesthetic. (The music by Paul Pinto is especially apt.) As the barriers to theater as a genre come down this show is free what comes up may be a revolution of its own. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Theater |
Paris Men's Fashion Week is over, and we've shared some of the digital fashion week line up online right here for you. Scroll down for more and more and more! | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Fashion & Style |
Welcome to Best of Late Night, a rundown of the previous night's highlights that lets you sleep and lets us get paid to watch comedy. We're all stuck at home at the moment, so here are the 50 best movies on Netflix right now. President Trump, in a Fox News interview on Wednesday, discussed the results of a recent cognitive assessment. The president gave the interviewer, Dr. Marc K. Siegel, an example of a question that tests patients' memory. "It's, like, you'll go: Person. Woman. Man. Camera. TV. So they say, 'Could you repeat that?' So it's: Person. Woman. Man. Camera. TV.'" "It was impressive until they asked Trump what he ate for lunch that day and he said, 'Person. Woman. Man. Camera. TV,'" Jimmy Fallon joked on "The Tonight Show" Thursday. "What is he doing? He sounds like someone playing charades after pounding chardonnay." JIMMY FALLON "It's not an intelligence test. In fact, getting a perfect score merely signifies that the test taker probably does not have a cognitive impairment. I'm going to need something stronger than 'probably' for the person who has the nuclear codes. Wait, unless those are the nuclear codes." STEPHEN COLBERT "You know, I actually feel a lot better knowing that the president of the United States passed concussion protocol." JIMMY FALLON "Donald Trump is the only person who can talk about a cognitive test but make me feel like I have brain damage." TREVOR NOAH "He's gone from bragging about his historic Electoral College win to boasting that he can solve the puzzle in a happy meal. In fact, I almost feel like obsessing over a dementia test you took two years ago is the real dementia test." TREVOR NOAH "See, he's been harping for weeks now about this cognitive test he took, and just to remind you, it's not a hard test. It includes questions like 'Name these animals.' Imitating Trump 'Well, that's easy. I'll call the first one Corey. The second one I will call Lance. And the last one Corey Two.'" STEPHEN COLBERT "Oh my God, he can name five objects in his field of vision. How does he do it? Send this man his Macarthur genius grant. Get MENSA on the phone they're going to want to see this. It's like if the minds of Einstein, Hawking, Kasparov and Jobs were all rolled into one and then stuffed inside the body of an alcoholic walrus." SETH MEYERS "So you see, acing this test, it doesn't make him a genius; it makes him a guy desperate for accomplishment." TREVOR NOAH "Seriously, dude, it's not a test to see how smart you are it's a test to see if you're OK. When the referee asks a boxer what city he's in, it's not a geography test." SETH MEYERS "This is a test they give grandpas to see if they can keep living in their house because God forbid you miss a payment on your reverse mortgage." SETH MEYERS "Today is a historic day for D.C. football fans because, after getting rid of the team's previous name, Washington's N.F.L. team will go by the name 'The Washington Football Team' until a new name can be chosen. So the Washington football team is now The Washington Football Team." STEPHEN COLBERT "That's what they came up with? That name sounds like someone trying to talk about sports who knows nothing about sports. It's like, 'I love the Washington Football Team.'" JIMMY FALLON "I'm sorry, that is the laziest team name I have ever heard. I mean, they pre named a professional football franchise the same way you save phone numbers of people you just met." TREVOR NOAH "The Washington Football Team? Sounds like they can only afford the store brand version of team names. It's like when my mom couldn't buy us Cheerios so she brought Oat Circles." TREVOR NOAH "The only silver lining is it's going to be helpful to people who don't follow the N.F.L. If someone asks you who you're rooting for, you will be, like, 'The football team.' Sounds like you know what you're talking about." TREVOR NOAH Houston Texans receiver Kenny Stills spoke with Desus and Mero about his recent arrest after protesting the lack of action in Breonna Taylor's killing, alongside 86 others at the home of the Kentucky attorney general. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Television |
This spring I taught a seminar (via Zoom, of course) at the University of Chicago on the art of political persuasion. We read Lincoln, Pericles, King, Orwell, Havel and Churchill, among other great practitioners of the art. We ended with a study of Donald Trump's tweets, as part of a class on demagogy. If the closing subject was depressing, at least the timing was appropriate. We are in the midst of an unprecedented national catastrophe. The catastrophe is not the pandemic, or an economic depression, or killer cops, or looted cities, or racial inequities. These are all too precedented. What's unprecedented is that never before have we been led by a man who so completely inverts the spirit of Lincoln's Second Inaugural Address. With malice toward all; with charity for none: eight words that encapsulate everything this president is, does and stands for. What does one learn when reading great political speeches and writings? That well chosen words are the way by which past deeds acquire meaning and future deeds acquire purpose. "The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here," are the only false notes in the Gettysburg Address. The Battle of Gettysburg is etched in national memory less for its military significance than because Lincoln reinvented the goals of the Civil War in that speech and, in doing so, reimagined the possibilities of America. Political writing doesn't just provide meaning and purpose. It also offers determination, hope and instruction. In "The Power of the Powerless," written at one of the grimmer moments of Communist tyranny, Vaclav Havel laid out why the system was so much weaker, and the individual so much stronger, than either side knew. In his "Fight on the beaches" speech after Dunkirk, Winston Churchill told Britons of "a victory inside this deliverance" a reason, however remote, for resolve and optimism. In "Letter From Birmingham Jail," Martin Luther King Jr., explained why patience was no answer to injustice: "When you have seen hate filled policemen curse, kick, brutalize, and even kill your black brothers and sisters with impunity ... then you will understand why we find it difficult to wait." In a word, great political writing aims to elevate. What, by contrast, does one learn by studying Trump's utterances? The purpose of Trump's presidency is to debase, first by debasing the currency of speech. It's why he refuses to hire reasonably competent speechwriters to craft reasonably competent speeches. It's why his communication team has been filled by people like Dan Scavino and Stephanie Grisham and Sarah Sanders. And it's why Twitter is his preferred medium of communication. It is speech designed for provocations and put downs; for making supporters feel smug; for making opponents seethe; for reducing national discourse to the level of grunts and counter grunts. That's a level that suits Trump because it's the level at which he excels. Anyone who studies Trump's tweets carefully must come away impressed by the way he has mastered the demagogic arts. He doesn't lead his base, as most politicians do. He personifies it. He speaks to his followers as if he were them. He cultivates their resentments, demonizes their opponents, validates their hatreds. He glorifies himself so they may bask in the reflection. Whatever this has achieved for him, or them, it's a calamity for us. At a moment when disease has left more than 100,000 American families bereft, we have a president incapable of expressing the nation's heartbreak. At a moment of the most bitter racial grief since the 1960s, we have a president who has bankrupted the moral capital of the office he holds. And at a moment when many Americans, particularly conservatives, are aghast at the outbursts of looting and rioting that have come in the wake of peaceful protests, we have a president who wants to replace rule of law with rule by the gun. If Trump now faces a revolt by the Pentagon's civilian and military leadership (both current and former) against his desire to deploy active duty troops in American cities, it's because his words continue to drain whatever is left of his credibility as commander in chief. I write this as someone who doesn't lay every national problem at Trump's feet and tries to give him credit when I think it's due. Trump is no more responsible for the policing in Minneapolis than Barack Obama was responsible for policing in Ferguson. I doubt the pandemic would have been handled much better by a Hillary Clinton administration, especially considering the catastrophic errors of judgment by people like Bill de Blasio and Andrew Cuomo. And our economic woes are largely the result of a lockdown strategy most avidly embraced by the president's critics. But the point here isn't that Trump is responsible for the nation's wounds. It's that he is the reason some of those wounds have festered and why none of them can heal, at least for as long as he remains in office. Until we have a president who can say, as Lincoln did in his first inaugural, "We are not enemies, but friends" and be believed in the bargain our national agony will only grow worse. The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We'd like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here's our email: letters nytimes.com. Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter ( NYTopinion) and Instagram. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Opinion |
The child Krishna, playing, has filled his mouth with mud. Yashoda, his mother, rebukes him. He winces, and when she orders him to open his mouth, he refuses. Finally, however, he opens it. She is overcome by amazement. For his mouth contains the whole universe: moon, stars, sun and more. He is, she realizes, the lord Vishnu. On Monday night the first evening of the annual Drive East anthology of Indian music and dance, at Dixon Place this was just a single incident among many in Sujata Mohapatra's 90 minute recital of Odissi dance, just a single facet of her astonishingly complex art. Ms. Mohapatra is a dancer as marvelous as any in the world today, and part of her skill lies in abhinaya, the expressional aspect of Indian dance. Without skipping a beat, she embodied mother and son in the same long, action packed phrase and then suddenly slowed for that moment of epiphany: to Yashoda's expression of wonder as she sees what her naughty young son's mouth contains and who he is. One vivid character melts into another; we're also shown the human charm of the storyteller herself, delighted to have shared this myth in which an adorable fairy tale turns into a demonstration of religious awe. The dancer embodies many people: to borrow from Walt Whitman, she contains multitudes. Sometimes there seems to be nothing but face for us to see. The eyes, the mouth, the cheeks the changing expressions that these contain prove all absorbing: intensely beautiful, too. Yet this is just the top layer of Ms. Mohapatra's ravishing art. For these narrative incidents about gods, demons, destruction, love are acted out on a musical current, pouring forth in marvelously changing meters. The communicative face is blended with the arcs, lines, sub phrases of arms, shoulders, thighs, feet. Acting and dance become indivisible. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Dance |
In 1693, the townspeople of Salem tried to get rid of them. In 1993, a couple of teenagers and a cat named Thackery Binx tried, too. Now the Sanderson sisters are angling for another comeback. The sisters, Winifred , Sarah and Mary possibly joined by good, old Book may appear in a new "Hocus Pocus" movie : A Disney executive involved in the project, which has long been rumored, confirmed on Thursday that it was in the early stages of development. The film will be part of Disney Plus, the Walt Disney Company's Netflix style streaming service, according to the executive. Disney's strategy to market the streaming service has so far emphasized its kingdom of original movies and TV shows, as well as live action remakes like "The Lion King," which it released this year, and the upcoming "Lady and the Tramp." The company also plans on using its Disney Plus studios to remake and modernize classics. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Movies |
SAN FRANCISCO Congress on Tuesday moved to dismantle online privacy rules created during the Obama era. The rules, which were scheduled to take effect this year, would have required internet providers to get permission before collecting and selling a customer's online information, including browsing activities. What does this mean for your privacy and what can you do? Here's what to know. Congress voted to overturn rules created by the Federal Communications Commission in October that required broadband providers to get your permission before collecting private data on your online activities and offering it for sale to advertisers. How does that affect my online privacy? The truth is, you never had much online privacy. The new F.C.C. rules had not taken effect, so you probably won't notice any difference. Internet service providers have always been able to monitor network traffic, see what websites you visit and share some of that information with advertisers. So is this a big deal? The new F.C.C. rules would have given consumers stronger privacy protections without such restrictions, internet providers may decide to become more aggressive with data collection and retention. Expect more targeted advertising to come your way. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Technology |
In the wake of controversy over the city's public monuments, Mayor Bill de Blasio on Thursday said that his cultural affairs commissioner, Tom Finkelpearl, would be departing after five years in the position, an announcement that took arts institutions by surprise. "I'm shocked by the news," said Anne Pasternak, the director of the Brooklyn Museum. "Tom has made tremendous, historic achievements for our city." The mayor's statement made no mention of the recent battles over the city's efforts to rethink its public monuments and to build more statues honoring women and people of color, an effort that has largely been led by Mr. de Blasio's wife, Chirlane McCray. "Tom has done a remarkable job in creating a more equitable and accessible cultural sector for all New Yorkers," Mr. de Blasio said in his statement, adding, "He has touched the lives of millions of everyday New Yorkers with the joys of art, history and nature and I thank him for his dedicated service to the City." Mr. Finkelpearl in a telephone interview said the decision was made by "mutual agreement " (and that it was unrelated to his previous treatment for cancer, which is in remission). "It's time for new leadership at this agency," Mr. Finkelpearl said. "The energy that is needed to get to the finish line would be better done by a new person." He also said he was proud of his tenure, during which the city's cultural budget increased more than 35 percent to 211.6 million for fiscal year 2020 from 156.1 million for fiscal year 2014. "This is the best budget in the history of New York City," he said. "That's an achievement." Mr. Finkelpearl helped spearhead the city's efforts to tie its funding to the diversity of arts institutions' employees and board members under the cultural plan, unveiled in 2017. "There's a long way to go," he said, "but we've really opened up a dialogue toward making a change." He also cited the fact that more than 700,000 people have received free museum memberships through the city's new ID cards. The commissioner declined to discuss the reasons for his seemingly abrupt departure, but those close to the situation who declined to be identified for fear of repercussions from the mayor theorized that Mr. de Blasio had grown frustrated with the blowback from the city's public monuments efforts. Most recently, Harlem residents protested the artist Simone Leigh, who had been recommended by a city appointed advisory panel to create a replacement for the monument that honored J. Marion Sims, the 19th century "father of gynecology" who conducted experimental operations on enslaved women. The city ultimately instead selected the artist favored by the community, Vinnie Bagwell. Mr. de Blasio also found himself having to defend the city's decision not to make the nun Mother Cabrini one of its first new statues even though she received the most votes in an online city poll asking which women should be honored. The outcry from Catholics not to mention the actor Chazz Palminteri calling the mayor's wife, Chirlane McCray, a "racist" gave Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo the opportunity to be the hero, announcing on Columbus Day that the state would pay for a monument honoring Cabrini, who created health and social welfare programs for poor Italian immigrants and was made a saint in 1946. Another hornet's nest resulted after a planned Central Park monument to women's suffrage, featuring Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony, was criticized for excluding black women. Sojourner Truth was added to the design, but that in turn prompted more than 20 academics to object that the grouping would be misleading, because the white suffragists' rhetoric "treated black intelligence and capability in a manner that Truth opposed." Some in the city's cultural world wondered on Thursday if Mr. Finkelpearl was unfairly taking the fall for these missteps, perhaps in an effort to shift accountability away from Ms. McCray. Asked in a news conference on Thursday to elaborate on his reasons for parting ways with Mr. Finkelpearl, Mr. de Blasio said: "I'm just not going into the day to day inner workings. Personnel matters are personnel matters. They are treated with respect and discretion." A mild mannered, by the book administrator, Mr. Finkelpearl often seemed ill suited for a job that required political savvy and occasional brass knuckles. Jimmy Van Bramer of Queens, chairman of the City Council committee that oversees cultural affairs, in hearings would urge Mr. Finkelpearl to take the gloves off. "I called on him to be a more public and forceful advocate on behalf of the community," Mr. Van Bramer said. "I would say, 'Don't you agree that we need more funding for culture and the arts?' And he would never say yes. I would have to ask him the question 10 different ways, but he wasn't getting out in front of the mayor, which I respect. That's his job. He knows who he works for." Mr. Finkelpearl had been reluctant to take on the commissioner position in the first place. Having just completed a major renovation at the Queens Museum as its longtime president and executive director, he was loath to abandon that institution just when the doors had reopened. Nevertheless, after accepting the job, Mr. Finkelpearl became a loyal soldier. "He has led with character, integrity and humility and the city owes him a debt of gratitude," said Darren Walker, the president of the Ford Foundation. "He should be taking a bow." In light of that performance, some city officials expressed exasperation on Thursday about what they assumed was Mr. de Blasio's decision to cut him loose. "What did Tom do wrong?" asked one such official. "I don't see what he did to merit this inglorious departure." The news rippled through the city's arts community, in part because Mr. Finkelpearl is so widely admired. "Tom has a deep understanding of how museums work," said Max Hollein, the director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, "and what important role they play in the community." Mr. Finkelpearl also has a long history with the city's cultural life, having begun his career in 1982 at P.S. 1 Contemporary Art Center now MoMA PS1 in Long Island City, Queens, which he joined as a public affairs officer. After serving as the executive director of programs at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in Maine from 1996 to 1999, Mr. Finkelpearl returned to P.S. 1 in 1999 as deputy director, and helped manage its 2000 merger with the Museum of Modern Art. He became executive director of the Queens Museum in 2002. "There's a terrific legacy for Tom Finkelpearl when it comes to promoting culture and the arts in the City of New York," Mr. Van Bramer said. "He's a true believer." Mr. Finkelpearl said he was looking forward to the next chapter, which will likely include a new book about cultural policy (he has written two others) and that he was leaving with no hard feelings. "I've been able to talk to the Mayor when I need to; I'm a de Blasio loyalist to this day," he said. "It's a completely amicable separation." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Art & Design |
For the first time, Mr. Colbert's "Late Show" on CBS has drawn a bigger Nielsen rating point among young adult viewers than any other late night talk show. Until now, Jimmy Fallon's "Tonight Show" on NBC has been the leader in that category, which is vital to advertisers. Mr. Colbert had a tepid start after his much ballyhooed debut in September 2015. His show pulled ahead of Mr. Fallon's in total viewers in February 2017 the month after President Trump was inaugurated. Between then and the latest Nielsen report, Mr. Fallon had clung to the lead among the 18 to 49 year old crowd. The latest season to date ratings from Nielsen show that Mr. Colbert has drawn an average of 692,000 adult viewers under 50 during the 2018 2019 season, which began in September. That gives him a slim lead over Mr. Fallon, who averaged 686,000 such viewers in that same period. Those figures have helped push Mr. Colbert to his first lead as measured by Nielsen rating points, with a margin of 0.54 to 0.53. As New York magazine's Vulture website reported, Mr. Colbert squeaked past Mr. Fallon in viewers as early as mid November, but that victory wasn't sizable enough to give him the lead in the Nielsen numbers. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Media |
SAN FRANCISCO Late last year, Uber, in defiance of California state regulators, went ahead with a self driving car experiment on the streets of San Francisco under the leadership of Anthony Levandowski, a new company executive. The experiment quickly ran into problems. In one case, an autonomous Volvo zoomed through a red light on a busy street in front of the city's Museum of Modern Art. Uber, a ride hailing service, said the incident was because of human error. "This is why we believe so much in making the roads safer by building self driving Ubers," Chelsea Kohler, a company spokeswoman, said in December. But even though Uber said it had suspended an employee riding in the Volvo, the self driving car was, in fact, driving itself when it barreled through the red light, according to two Uber employees, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they signed nondisclosure agreements with the company, and internal Uber documents viewed by The New York Times. All told, the mapping programs used by Uber's cars failed to recognize six traffic lights in the San Francisco area. "In this case, the car went through a red light," the documents said. The description of the traffic violation reflects Uber's aggressiveness in its efforts around self driving cars and the ambition of its project leader, Mr. Levandowski, who is now at the center of a lawsuit brought against Uber by Waymo, an autonomous car business. Waymo is Google's cousin company under their parent entity, Alphabet. The legal battle also provides a rare glimpse into the high stakes world of top technology talent, where star engineers like Mr. Levandowski, who played a central role in Google's pioneering autonomous car project, command huge sums of money to try to help define a company's technological future. After leaving Google in January 2016, Mr. Levandowski formed the self driving truck company Otto. About six months later, Uber bought Otto for 680 million, and Mr. Levandowski became Uber's vice president in charge of its self driving car project. Waymo filed a lawsuit on Thursday in federal court against Uber and Otto, accusing Mr. Levandowski and Uber of planning to steal trade secrets. Alphabet and Uber view autonomous vehicles as using critical technology that may upend the automobile industry. Google started working on driverless cars around the time when Uber was formed, and Google is eager to prove that, despite its size and past successes, it can still innovate like a start up. And replacing human drivers with self driving cars would allow Uber to theoretically provide safer rides around the clock. Robot cars would also allow the ride hailing service to avoid one of its biggest headaches its drivers. "There's an urgency to our mission about being part of the future," Travis Kalanick, Uber's chief executive, said in an interview in August after announcing Otto's acquisition. "This is not a side project. This is existential for us." Engineers like Mr. Levandowski are part of a limited pool of people with the experience and capability to lead efforts on self driving cars. They are wooed by traditional automakers looking to acquire new technical talent and tech companies, both established firms and start ups, who see the opportunity to use artificial intelligence and sensors to disrupt another industry. "What's in these people's heads is hugely in demand," because the talent pool "just doesn't have enough miles under the wheels," said Martha Josephson, a partner in the Palo Alto, Calif., office of Egon Zehnder, an executive recruiting firm. In fact, Sebastian Thrun, who founded Google's self driving car project and is now the chief executive of the online teaching start up Udacity, said last year that the going rate for driverless car engineering talent was about 10 million a person. Current and former co workers of Mr. Levandowski, who asked for anonymity because they did not have permission to speak to reporters, said he was aggressive and determined with an entrepreneurial streak. Since leaving Google, Mr. Levandowski, 36, has embodied the Silicon Valley ethos that it is better to ask for forgiveness rather than permission. Uber said in a statement that the lawsuit was a "baseless attempt to slow down a competitor," and declined to make Mr. Levandowski available. But in an internal email to Uber employees obtained by The New York Times, Mr. Levandowski said that Otto did not steal any of Google's intellectual property, and that self driving technology has been his life's passion, having worked on it since his college days. He alluded to sharing more information with employees when he could in the future. A Waymo spokesman declined to comment on whether the company would refer its claims to law enforcement. He joined Google in 2007 as part of its Maps team and helped to build the company's Street View product. When Google gave the green light to begin working on a self driving car in 2009, Mr. Thrun picked Mr. Levandowski for the original team. Mr. Levandowski gained some notoriety within Google for selling start ups, which he had done as side projects, to his employer. In his biography for a real estate firm, for which he is a board member, Mr. Levandowski said he sold three automation and robotics start ups to Google, including 510 Systems and Anthony's Robots, for nearly 500 million. After this story was published, the real estate firm updated its website erasing Mr. Levandowski's biography and said that it had "erroneously reported certain facts incorrectly without Mr. Levandowski's knowledge." During Mr. Levandowski's time on Google's self driving car project, the company's advances pushed autonomous vehicles out of the realm of science fiction. By late 2016, nearly 60 of Google's self driving cars had driven more than two million miles on the road in four different states. But according to former co workers, Mr. Levandowski became frustrated with the pace of progress at Google, worrying that the company was squandering its technical advantage by not moving fast enough. When Otto was unveiled in May, it showcased a flashy video of one of its trucks on a haul through the Nevada desert. The star of the show was the driver's seat, completely empty, as the truck drove itself down the highway. But that test drive was carried out without the proper permits and against the will of the Nevada Department of Motor Vehicles, a move that the agency eventually called "illegal." When Uber bought Otto, Mr. Levandowski found a kindred spirit in Mr. Kalanick, who is also known for pushing the rules. In an interview with Bloomberg Businessweek in August 2016, Mr. Kalanick said they were "brothers from another mother." After one week of testing in San Francisco last year, Uber backed down from its fight with California regulators and announced it was pulling its self driving Volvos out of the city after the state's D.M.V. revoked the registrations of the vehicles. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Technology |
While the movie barrels toward a final act that's more feminist fantasy than credible conclusion, Bolger's phenomenal performance locks us tightly on Sarah's side. If good women are hard to find here, good men are impossible: In hardware store and supermarket, men regard her with contempt and condescension. Police officers and social workers alike assess her appearance and parenting with barely veiled disapproval. And by wrapping the character in a miasma of sexism, the filmmakers excuse her operatic violence as more than simply a mother's need to defend her offspring: It's a long suppressed rage against every demeaning look and insinuating comment. At the same time, this potent little thriller (photographed by Richard Bell using Grand Guignol bursts of sticky red and impenetrable black) is careful to remind us regularly of Sarah's tender side. "You're too soft, Sarah," her judgmental mother (a fine Jane Brennan) snaps, watching her with the children. If she only knew. Not rated. Running time: 1 hour 37 minutes. Watch on Film Movement's Virtual Cinema or rent or buy on Amazon, iTunes and other streaming platforms and pay TV operators. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Movies |
Lockdowns have disrupted the lives of millions of Americans since March, when states began issuing shelter in place orders. For some people, a key part of their residency for tax purposes their domicile status may have shifted in that time for a number of reasons: They are now working from home, they've fled a hot spot or they thought they could ride out the pandemic in a vacation house. These unplanned geographic dislocations could result in unforeseen tax bills for those who are not diligent in keeping records. Domicile jurisdiction is typically aimed at wealthy taxpayers who have multiple homes, but a wider swath of people could now be affected. Doctors and nurses who headed to New York to help, for example, could receive New York City and New York State tax bills. Advisers say taxpayers facing domicile questions need to keep detailed records to explain where they lived, for how long and why. They will also have to match up their records with state and local quarantine orders. "People are going to need to be very precise about their own activities but also know what the states have done," said Jordan Sprechman, head of U.S. wealth advisory for JPMorgan's private bank. Yet three months into the pandemic, guidance from states on how they are going to collect tax revenue from part time residents is inconsistent. Some have been proactive in offering direction, while others have remained quiet, leaving taxpayers in limbo. Establishing residency is not an easy process in normal times, but it's even more difficult now, with so much uncertainty. Here are three tax areas that you should consider during the pandemic. Counting days has a long and often contested history for tax purposes. Many states, including New York and Maryland, have set a threshold of 183 days, or half the year, to determine residency. There are two legal concepts to understand: domicile, which is your primary home, and residence, which is a statutory test for tax purposes, said Marc J. Bloostein, partner at the law firm Ropes Gray. People who want to avoid one state's income or estate tax usually work to establish residency in other states like Florida, which has no income or estate tax. But Florida residents who are unable to leave their pied a terre in Manhattan or summer home in Southampton may be at risk of losing their residency status. New York State has not issued guidance on whether it will count the days in quarantine toward its state residency. Visitors are allowed to stay in New York if they are sick, but it's less clear what it means if they are stuck in the state under shelter in place orders. "People are sure there are going to be exceptions, but we need to be very cautious," said Ani C. Hovanessian, chair of the New York Tax and Wealth Planning Group at Venable, a law firm. "Even though we're in a pandemic and unprecedented times, these states are going to need tax revenue to make up for all the public policy and aid decisions they're making now," she added. Other states approach the question of residency differently. Massachusetts, for example, has a domicile rule with no day count: If you consider the state your domicile, then you are a resident for tax purposes, Mr. Bloostein said. For foreign nationals who are stuck in the United States because of travel restrictions, there is some direction on day count. In regular times, the federal formula that calculates the number of days known as the substantial presence test considers time spent in the United States over three years. Staying too long can mean the person could be deemed a U.S. resident for tax purposes and be subject to the country's worldwide taxing authority. The Internal Revenue Service has said the days will not count if a visitor is unable to leave the country. The exclusion extends for 60 days, starting on or after Feb. 1. But if the pandemic continues into the summer and foreign nationals cannot return to home, their days could be counted under the substantial presence test, said Aaron Schumacher, a partner at Withersworldwide, an international law firm. Many professionals commute to another state for work. Working from home during the pandemic has raised the question of which state then gets to tax that income. The test is necessity versus convenience. If you simply don't want to commute to the office, working from home is for your convenience and the state where your office is continues to collect its income tax. But if you cannot go to the office in another state because of a stay at home order, shouldn't the state where you are working from home collect that tax? The answer could set up a battle between states. Ms. Hovanessian normally works in Midtown Manhattan, but she is telecommuting at her home in northern New Jersey because of lockdown orders. New Jersey has said it will not impose a tax on the income of people who usually work in another state but are now working from home. The Landscape of the Post Pandemic Return to Office None Delta variant delays. A wave of the contagious Delta variant is causing companies to reconsider when they will require employees to return, and what health requirements should be in place when they do. A generation gap. While workers of all ages have become accustomed to dialing in and skipping the wearying commute, younger ones have grown especially attached to the new way of doing business. This is causing some difficult conversations between managers and newer hires. How to keep offices safe. Handwashing is a simple way to reduce the spread of disease, but employers should be thinking about improved ventilation systems, creative scheduling and making sure their building is ready after months of low use. Return to work anxiety. Remote work brought many challenges, particularly for women of color. But going back will also mean a return to microaggressions, pressure to conform to white standards of professionalism, and high rates of stress and burnout. But this is not broadly the case. New York has not issued guidance on what it might do, said Mr. Sprechman of JPMorgan. He added that New York could continue to tax residents of other states who normally worked in New York but were now working from home. Likewise, the city could continue to tax residents of New York State who typically work in Manhattan. That could get messy. "New York could tax you for the days you continued to work from home as a matter of convenience," he said. "You're relying on official sources for that information telling you when you can go back to work." States often give a credit for income tax exacted by another state, but what if there isn't a state income tax to credit? Say North Carolina assesses an income tax, but your home state is Florida, where there is no income tax. The taxpayer is out of luck, said Lisa R. Featherngill, managing director and head of legacy and wealth planning at Abbot Downing. The situation is worse still for doctors, nurses and other emergency personnel from other parts of the country who went to New York to help. Their income could be taxed at higher rates. "If they're earning income and not just volunteering, they're earning New York income and their income will be taxed by New York," Ms. Hovanessian said. "This is where the taxman looks more like the Grim Reaper." The pandemic is not just creating tax uncertainty in the United States. It becomes more complicated and perhaps costly with international companies that have directors living in different countries. The United States taxes companies based on where they were formed, but other countries use a test called mind and management, which essentially means where the decisions are being made. "Typically, you manage for where those meetings take place," Mr. Schumacher said. "The question now is, where are those decisions being made when all those directors are at their desks at home?" Having a tax treaty in place can change how taxation works, but absent one, there's a lot of uncertainty, he said. There may be a document no more refined than the estate plan of affluent people. Trusts are created and documents are drawn up for a particular state in which they spend most of their time. If they die outside their home state, the estate must be able to demonstrate where the home or domicile is. "In the estate tax context, it means the place you always intended to go back to, the place you consider home," Mr. Sprechman said. "If you happen to be living in your pied a terre and you happen to die in New York, if all evidence indicates you were a Florida resident, New York will not tax you as a New York resident. But it may include the value of the New York apartment for taxes." Another issue, Ms. Featherngill said, is inheritance taxes, which exist in states like Connecticut. But these, like all taxes, rest on the state's being able to argue its case successfully. The only protection against that is meticulous record keeping to prove where you were when the pandemic struck. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Your Money |
There was a bit of relief when, after the Eckardt, he shifted the mood to play Book Two of Debussy's "Images." I wanted a little more nuance and milky sonorities in "Cloches a Travers les Feuilles." But he brought welcome lucidity and rhythmic crispness to the music, especially the splashing murmurs and darting runs of "Poissons d'Or." With Xenaxis's "Evryali" (1973), Mr. Hardink was back in testing the limits mode with a work that explores extremes of expression. There are constant shifts from obsessively repeated notes and chords, to wildly skittish bursts, to rhythmic episodes that almost but never quite slip into a marching groove. Yet somehow the piece comes across as a complete entity, as least as played here with such bright sound and stamina. Liszt was a pioneer in pushing the bounds of what's possible at the piano, especially in his Transcendental Etudes. Mr. Hardink played four of these. Other pianists have made these fiercely virtuosic pieces sound more rhapsodic and poetic. But Mr. Hardink dispatched them deftly. He ended with crystalline accounts of four pieces from Messiaen's monumental cycle "Vingt Regards sur l'Enfant Jesus." Mr. Hardink's capacity for tenderness and grace came through in the ruminative, harmonically tart passages of these cosmic pieces. But, no surprise, he was at his best in the vehement dance "Regard de l'Esprit de Joie," in which he captured spiritual ecstasy as, to quote Messiaen's description, "a drunkenness, in the most extravagant sense." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Music |
We drove out a zigzagging peninsula to Finley Point Unit, a state park with a boat launch, a small public marina and a row of campsites along the lakeshore. The beach was nothing but water weathered rock. But the rounded stones of Flathead Lake, Mont., aren't mere pebbles. Beneath the crisp, transparent water, their straight from the 1970s hues dusty mauve, adobe and pale avocado are magnified, becoming deep purples, oranges and greens. They are so spectacular that when I left, a week later, I brought with me a Ziploc bag size collection that I have since arranged in a glass jar submerged in unworthy urban tap water and placed in my kitchen window. The multicolored mosaic is an unmarked memorial to my grandmother Frances Evans, who was raised among the yellow pine, lowland fir, red cedar and cherry orchard banks of the Flathead. The largest natural freshwater lake west of the Great Lakes, the Flathead is a striking body of water clear and green and fed by snowmelt from Glacier National Park, just 40 miles north. I hadn't been there since I was 3, when my entire extended family called the "California Evanses" traveled to my grandmother's hometown, Bigfork, on the lake's northern tip, for a reunion. My memories of tubing in a chilly river and camping along the shore are almost certainly lifted from family lore. Still, I feel bound to this place, which has always been central to my family's story. After becoming a mother, I was moved to take my 13 month old daughter, Roxie, there. What I didn't know was that in recent decades, Bigfork has become an affluent lakeside resort town. Its streets are lined with galleries selling paintings of landscapes and wildlife, bronze sculptures of grizzly bears and 500 cookie jars made of ornately carved wood. The lakefront is now home to an exclusive beach club and huge summer homes. And on a nearby island, the largest and most expensive residence in Montana was for sale for a deeply discounted 39 million. We arrived in Big Arm, a community on the lake's southwest side, after traveling through five Western states with Roxie and too much stuff in a tiny Toyota hatchback. The final leg of the trip Northeast Oregon to Montana ended up being our longest single day of driving. And by the time we checked into our Airbnb, we had been on the road from breakfast to dinner. Even with stops, those are a lot of hours in the car for a toddler who seems to live for crawling and climbing. But Roxie handled her car bound captivity like a stoic champion, with only the occasional outburst of understandable frustration. For 112, our Big Arm Airbnb was a surprisingly large, two bedroom apartment with a wraparound deck, a narrow view of the lake and a washer and dryer a bargain in this pricey terrain. But even with a well equipped kitchen, we decided to eat out. Normally, we would save our splurge for the tail end of a trip, but after so many hours (and days) on the road, a steak dinner had become our finish line reward. In Polson (the nearest town, 15 minutes south) a local recommended 101 Main St., a steak and seafood restaurant that dry ages its own beef. For the price of a mediocre plate of pasta in Manhattan, my husband, Tim, and I shared a large, tasty rib eye praised by our waitress for its "flavorful fat" and spoon fed Roxie our mashed potatoes. But it was our server, Leslie, who was the highlight of the meal. She wore a pink head scarf over dark braids and doted on Roxie, bringing her a rattle and entertaining her as we ate. As we handed back our check at the end of dinner, Leslie lifted Roxie into her arms and walked off with a casual, "Do you mind?" She knew we didn't. It was the kind of thing that would never happen in most places. This unaffected warmth made as much of an impression on me as Montana's dramatic vistas. Throughout our week in Flathead, I heard my grandmother's voice everywhere. Over dinner at 101 Main St., we made small talk with the next table over, where a woman from San Diego who had grown up in the area told us she was revisiting her "ruts," a pronunciation of roots that reminded me of my grandmother. I heard it in the cafe at Echo Lake, when a child was admonished, for giving his mother "guff." And I heard it two days later, when we ordered a lunch at Saddlehorn Bar and Grille, where we had kayaked from across the bay, only to realize that neither of us had brought our wallets on our watery outing. "We trust you," our server said. "Come back later, there's no hurry." Our motel, the Islander Inn, was one of the few I could find that came close to my 150 nightly budget. From the outside, it looks like a classic midcentury motor lodge, but each room is named for an island Bali, Zanzibar, Crete and decorated in the spirit of that place. Our room, "Jamaica," had deep blue accent walls, white wicker furniture and evocative watercolor paintings of Caribbean palms. Just east of Bigfork in the enclave of Woods Bay, the Islander was across the street from the Raven, a turquoise painted waterfront restaurant with a shaded patio and a dock where motorboaters tie up and go in for a drink. Though Flathead Lake Brewing Company recently opened a huge new location in Bigfork, the original taproom, next door to the Islander, is the kind of local bar where customers greet one another by name and discuss livestock futures over a pint of craft beer, their personal mugs hanging overhead. The next evening, our first night in Woods Bay, Tim was struck by what felt like a vicious case of food poisoning. Roxie and I went exploring by car on our own, eventually finding our way to the Echo Lake Cafe, an out of the way roadside restaurant that has been serving local specialties like Flathead cherry cobbler and huckleberry ice cream since 1960. Our plan had been to go kayaking, but with Tim sick I wasn't comfortable taking Roxie out on a tiny boat on such a large, unpredictable lake without a second set of hands. It would have been largely a lost day. But that afternoon, while Tim and Roxie napped, my dad's cousin, LouAnn, whom I hadn't seen since my grandmother's funeral, offered to give me a tour. An elegant woman with short blond hair, she swept me up in her silver S.U.V. We passed a large pond choked with tall reeds, and LouAnn said with a mischievous smile that her grandfather, my great grandfather, "lost more than one car in there." We went to meet Dorothy, the last of my grandmother's seven siblings, who had turned 90 the previous month. She didn't say much, but she shared Roxie's birthday and my grandmother's smile. On our way back to the Islander, LouAnn took a sharp turn down a narrow road through scraggly pines to the property where my grandmother was raised. She pointed to two tall trees in a clearing beside a sprawling ranch house. "There used to be a house a shack," she said, correcting herself, "right there." When Tim recovered the next day, we rented a tandem kayak ( 20 an hour) at a rental shop down the road, across from a small, private beach. The sturdy red vessel was stable enough for me to sit in the back, with Roxie between my legs, while Tim paddled in front. Wearing a wide straw hat, he navigated us through the placid water. Often, the wind ramps up in the afternoons and the Flathead can quickly get rough. But after our bad luck the previous day, we were treated to what LouAnn said was one of the warmest, calmest days of the year. We paddled past enormous summer cottages with immaculate gardens, gazebos, private docks and boat garages. It was hard to jibe this place with the Flathead I had heard about throughout my childhood, the humble place where my grandmother, her seven siblings, parents and grandparents all lived in a shack with a million dollar view. But once we passed the cluster of houses in the protected bay, the lakefront became less developed and more wild. Propped up by an infant life vest, Roxie stared out from beneath her purple sun hat, content to do nothing but chirp at the birds and point at the speedboats racing past, causing us to bob gently in their wake. Later, we would sit on the beach and eat cherries, which were sold on the roadside in two pound bags ( 5) and constituted a good portion of our daily diet. Tim and I took turns picking up colorful stones and handing them to Roxie, who held them like sacred objects. I tried to show her how to skip them. But she looked at me as if to say, "Why would we toss such treasures?" The Flathead might not have been the place I had imagined, but it was worth every hour in the car and every dollar of our modest budget. I don't know what my grandmother, who died while I was in college, would have thought of Bigfork as it is now. But I suspect the area's changes would not matter as much as knowing it still beckoned to us. And I know she would have loved to see Roxie there, giggling as dark red juice ran down her chin, staining her belly and leaving ruby hued splashes on Flathead's shore. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Travel |
Dr. Ernesto Ruiz Tiben, who has fought to eradicate Guinea worm disease for decades, surveys a field near a village in Chad. Just 30 Guinea worm infections were reported worldwide in 2017. The Man Who (Almost) Wiped Out the Guinea Worms N'DJAMENA, Chad Dr. Ernesto Ruiz Tiben's days on the front lines of the guinea worm wars often end with a dinner of what he calls "poulet a la bicyclette" chicken so lean and muscular that it could ride in the Tour de France. But before anyone on his team eats, one tradition must be honored. Dr. Ruiz Tiben raises a beer: "To the demise of the worm!" "To the demise of the worm!" cry all in attendance, clinking glasses. It is a ritual he has followed for decades, ever since becoming the chief strategist in the war against the Guinea worm run by the Carter Center, the global health philanthropy established in Atlanta by former President Jimmy Carter. Read about the race to find out how the Guinea worm is attacking African dogs. At age 78, Dr. Ruiz Tiben still makes as many as six field trips a year, mostly to what he calls "places at the end of the road." Reaching them can mean driving for days in 110 degree heat over kidney jolting dirt tracks and sleeping in rustic guesthouses where frequent power failures mean sweltering nights passed in oven hot, bug filled rooms. Asked why he does it, Dr. Ruiz Tiben shrugged. "Because that's where the action is not in the capital city. People want to just snap their fingers and pouf, the worm is gone. That's not going to happen." In the villages, he asks questions. Where do you get drinking water? What do you eat? How do you cook it? What does your dog eat? How far from home does your dog wander? And he launches studies. Dogs get tracking collars; motion sensing cameras are mounted near ponds; fish and frogs are caught, ground up and tested for worm larvae. "African men who treat their women like donkeys, letting them walk three quarters of a mile with 40 pounds of water on their heads while they sit under the trees playing dominoes and getting drunk." At the same time, he has plenty of patience for the worm's victims. He holds trembling children who fear they are in trouble as he asks, through a translator, how they were infected with a worm. He pats dogs that have been held down so worms can be drawn from their paws. Dr. Ruiz Tiben grew up in Ponce, Puerto Rico, sailing small boats. He describes himself as something of a juvenile delinquent. Hitting neighbors' electrical transformers with a slingshot "is what got me sent to military school." In 1965, he got into parasitology "by serendipity" also, he wanted to avoid going to Vietnam. He enlisted in the United States Public Health Service and was attached to a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention laboratory in San Juan. He met his wife there; in Puerto Rico, nature abhors a bachelor. "The married ladies at the lab made me their project," he said. "They invited me to go bowling, and that's how we met." They are about to celebrate their 50th anniversary. He started off fighting schistosomiasis, a worm disease also known as bilharzia that is transmitted by water snails. He later switched to dengue, the mosquito borne virus that causes "breakbone fever." His team does exactly that in Chad. The scientists are trying to understand why over 800 dogs have gotten Guinea worm, and apparently not from drinking water, as humans do. He suspects the dogs eat an intermediate host, possibly frogs. After 26 years with the C.D.C., ultimately as head of its worm disease division, he has seen his share of public health fumbles for example, calling the agency decision to fight dengue by spraying San Juan with pesticide at treetop level "an ecological disaster" for bees and beneficial insects. And he remembers the ugly years in the 1980s, when the C.D.C. was trying to stop AIDS, but many politicians were indifferent. "They saw it as God's wrath on homosexuals," he said. "The White House wouldn't let the C.D.C. describe the reality." "Only Koop was willing to talk rationally about it," he added, referring to the former Surgeon General, Dr. C. Everett Koop. In 1991, Dr. Ruiz Tiben retired, then joined former C.D.C. directors like Dr. William Foege and Dr. Donald R Hopkins at the Carter Center. Global health was in dire shape then. AIDS in Africa seemed unstoppable and was driving a rise in tuberculosis. Malaria was surging as resistance to pesticides and drugs increased. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation had not yet injected billions of dollars into the game. As the medical teams worked furiously, Mr. Carter "went ballistic" with local officials, Dr. Ruiz Tiben recalled. "That day was the turning point for Ghana," he added. "After that, they got serious." The end is in sight for the Guinea worm, but not near. The W.H.O. demands at least three years with no cases before certifying a disease eradicated. "I'll need to retire at some time," Dr. Ruiz Tiben said. "My job is to train people to take over." President Carter is now 93, and has recovered from a serious bout with cancer. His grandson, Jason Carter, is now chairman of the center's board. "President Carter has said he wants the worm gone before he is," Dr. Ruiz Tiben said. "We may not be able to fulfill his wish, but we'll do the best we can." "But if we hadn't done this campaign, there would have been 80 to 90 million cases by now. So whether or not we eliminate the worm, this campaign has done a lot of good." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Health |
Yetemegnu survives catastrophes both private and political: her husband's imprisonment, then death; her own plight as a refugee, then as a widow; the Italian invasion with airplanes resembling crosses in the sky; Emperor Haile Selassie's return from exile to exploit his own people; an army coup and the rise of a Marxist dictatorship; mass executions and land seizures; inflation and famine. Timelines in an appendix anchor the reader in these plots, but the book's chronology is more cyclical than linear. The chapters, named after months in the Ethiopian calendar and suffused with an awe for the landscape, direct our attention to the immemorial, recurring rhythms of earth and sky: of rain, sowing and harvest, of weddings, births and funerals. Before her death, as she approaches 100 years old, Yetemegnu asks the author: "What time is it now? What time?" It's an odd question for a woman who doesn't know what year she was born, whose life is demarcated not by clocks or consequential dates but by repeating rituals, including her 10 labors to bring children into the world. Childbirth, marked by thronged women repeating prayers invoking the Virgin Mary, is her life's refrain. At her funeral, priests carrying her coffin stop seven times to recite the seven chapters of the Book of the Praise of Mary, as mourners cry out "Mother of the world," by which they mean Yetemegnu as much as the Virgin. Devotion to Mary has a distinct place in Ethiopian society and its feminine vernacular. Yetemegnu, who makes the pilgrimage to Mary's grave in Jerusalem before dying, pays homage when she names her children: There's Edemariam, or hand of Mary; Tekle Mariam, or plant of Mary; Zenna Mariam, or news of Mary. The author draws on this cult of the Virgin to enfold her grandmother in eternal, biblical (rather than geopolitical) time. At the book's close, Edemariam reflects: "Wife, mother imposed roles, unquestioned and in her time unquestionable; passive in a way, however fully inhabited and lovingly dispatched." Yet the role that Yetemegnu finally inhabits is not that of mother but storyteller. Her tales have been "told and retold for decades, shaped, reshaped or sometimes, when enough time had passed cracked open in the telling." In later years, her prowess with language, despite her illiteracy, impresses some as rivaling that of her dead husband, the trained church poet. "The Wife's Tale," which plunges us into her consciousness almost as if no seams existed between the author and her subject, as if Edemariam were channeling her grandmother's spirit, is in a sense the older woman's narrative gambit from beyond the grave. Her story is certainly cracked open in the telling, so assured and so transcendent, it could win Chaucerian contests. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Books |
The second of two women has made history by diving to the ocean's deepest spot: the Challenger Deep, the lowest point of the Mariana Trench, the greatest of the sea's many recesses. The long fissure of the western Pacific lies 200 miles southwest of Guam. The deep's muddy bottom lies nearly seven miles down in inky darkness under crushing pressure. "I made it," Vanessa O'Brien, 55, a star of adventure tourism, tweeted after emerging Friday from the icy abyss. She called herself the first woman "to Earths highest lowest points!" Her moment comes after the plunge on Sunday of Kathy Sullivan, 68, an oceanographer, astronaut and the first American woman to walk in space. Both women are passengers of Victor L. Vescovo, a wealthy investor who has climbed Mount Everest and last year piloted a mini submarine into the Challenger Deep. His innovative craft is up for sale, and earlier this year a London firm was selling dives on the expedition for 750,000. Men who have made the descent include James Cameron, the maker of the "Avatar" and "Titanic" films, who explored the deep in a 2012 dive, and two Navy divers in 1960. Dr. Sullivan became the eighth person in history to reach the deep's bottom, and the first woman. Mr. Vescovo calls his diving venture Caladan Oceanic, after a water covered planet in the science fiction saga "Dune." His two person craft features an inner five foot sphere made of titanium, a superstrong metal, and three portholes the size of dinner plates. He had it built by Triton Submarines, a company in Sebastian, Fla. The diving vessel and its mother ship cost 48 million. In a recent profile, The New Yorker described Mr. Vescovo as part of an elite group of explorers setting the last meaningful records on Earth. In an email Tuesday, Mr. Vescovo said that Ms. O'Brien was paying for her dive but gave no specific figure. "Funds she provides will allow me to fund longer science missions in the northern Mariana Trench," he wrote. Those dives are planned for July, Mr. Vescovo said. Mr. Vescovo added that Ms. O'Brien's financial contribution would help pay not only for her own dive but also for the expedition's monthlong seabed mapping effort for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and a project of the International Hydrographic Organization known as the General Bathymetric Chart of the Oceans. Ms. O'Brien told Forbes in April that she decided to pay for her part of the expedition in lieu of signing up backers, as extreme adventure fans often do. "It didn't seem appropriate to try and find sponsors," she said, at a time when the global coronavirus pandemic had upended so many lives. Vanessa Audi Rhys O'Brien grew up in Grosse Pointe Farms, Mich., worked for Barclays and Morgan Stanley and is the author of a forthcoming memoir, "To the Greatest Heights." The book describes Ms. O'Brien's fall from the corporate ladder during the 2009 economic downturn and her quest for new meaning in global mountaineering. In the depths of the global ocean, the line between raw exploration and adventure tourism has long been murky. In 1985 the deteriorating hulk of the Titanic was discovered some 73 years after the luxury liner, said to be unsinkable, struck an iceberg on its maiden voyage and went down in waters more than two miles deep, resulting in the loss of more than 1,500 lives. By 2003, scientists warned that visitors in newly capable miniature submarines were endangering the world's most famous shipwreck. Assailed by explorers, moviemakers, salvors and tourists including a couple that was married on its sunken bow as well as rust and seabed creatures, the iconic liner was described as rapidly falling apart. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Science |
Anna Burns won the Man Booker Prize on Tuesday for her novel "Milkman," which is narrated by an unnamed 18 year old girl living in 1970s Northern Ireland who is coerced into a relationship with a mysterious older married man with ties to a paramilitary group. The Booker's judges cited Ms. Burns's use of dark humor to explore weighty themes like the perils of tribalism, state sponsored terrorism, social division and the ways that sexual and political oppression often overlap. "None of us had ever read anything like this before," the writer and philosopher Kwame Anthony Appiah, chair of this year's judges, said in a statement. "It is a story of brutality, sexual encroachment and resistance threaded with mordant humor." The novel unfolds in an unnamed city during "the Troubles," a prolonged civil conflict in Northern Ireland that gave rise to sectarian violence and guerrilla warfare. Against the background of this turbulent epoch, with the constant threat of car bombs and riots, the narrator deals with a menacing stalker, who is known only as Milkman, though he doesn't deliver milk. None of the characters have names they are labeled instead, as longest friend, maybe boyfriend, wee sisters, Somebody McSomebody. "The book didn't work with names," Ms. Burns said in an interview for the Man Booker Prize website. "In the early days I tried out names a few times, but the book wouldn't stand for it. The narrative would become heavy and lifeless and refuse to move on until I took them out again." "Milkman" was published in Britain in May by Faber Faber, and the independent publisher Graywolf Press will release the novel in the United States in December. In a review for The Guardian, the novelist Claire Kilroy called the novel's narrator, and the book itself, "original, funny, disarmingly oblique and unique." Ms. Burns, 56, who was born in Belfast, Northern Ireland, and now lives south of London, is the first Northern Irish writer to win the Booker in the prize's history. She has published two previous novels and a novella; her first novel, "No Bones," which also takes place in Northern Ireland during the Troubles, was shortlisted for the 2002 Orange Prize for Fiction. "What I write about is absolutely and essentially interested in how power is used, both in a personal and in a societal sense," Ms. Burns said in an interview with the Times Literary Supplement. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Books |
THE soupy mist hanging over the lake had just begun to lift as the driver came to a stop on the stone paved entryway of the McLaren Technology Center, artfully integrated into the terrain of this tidy suburb an hour southwest of London. An enormous glass door slid open, and at the exact moment I stepped into the boldly technocentric headquarters of the McLaren Group, designed by the architectural firm of Sir Norman Foster, my morning's guide descended from above in a cylindrical glass elevator. No one who has followed the overachieving McLaren Formula One racing team in recent decades would take this precision timing to be coincidence. McLaren's painstakingly groomed reputation holds that little if anything in its operations the racing team, the fledgling automaking division or even its electronics or catering subsidiaries happens by chance. Here, technology has been advanced to unfathomable levels; each detail is the intentional result of rigorous consideration. The glass walled headquarters, which houses a treasury of cars that McLaren wielded in pursuit of grand prix championships as well as wins at the Indianapolis 500 and the 24 Hours of Le Mans, aptly set the context for my drive of the MP4 12C, a wickedly fast two seat coupe expected to arrive in the United States at the end of the summer. Implicit in the McLaren name and racing legacy and taken to unprecedented heights by the McLaren F1 model of the 1990s is an allegiance to pure uncompromised performance. With a midmounted 592 horsepower V 8 and a curb weight under 3,300 pounds, the 12C's performance is squarely in supercar territory at the upper end, in fact. Yet the 12C was engineered for the road, unlike the competition McLarens whose superstar drivers and on track accomplishments were detailed by my knowledgeable guide. So even if the 12C carries the genetics of those forebears, to compete against thoroughbred sports cars like the Ferrari 458 Italia it must temper that performance with civility. To some carmakers, that might mean backing off the ragged edge, but to Antony Sheriff, the managing director of McLaren Automotive, that would never be a consideration. Only a super sports car that would be best in class in every respect, yet still usable every day, would do. At McLaren, such a quest is just a cue to dig deeper into the technology vault or invent a solution, if necessary. While the components come from around the world the transmission is from Italy and the carbon fiber chassis from Austria Mr. Sheriff emphasized that all of the pieces, down to the dashboard switches, are McLaren creations. Meeting the 12C for the first time in this case, car PP9, a close to production, left side drive example does nothing to diminish the impression of McLaren's all business demeanor. The last century notion of a door handle has been discarded; a sweep of your hand under the ridge that leads back to the side air scoops will undo the latch and let the door arc effortlessly upward. The action is more than a gesture of grand entrance, Mr. Sheriff explained: the articulated motion results in a door that when fully open is neither as wide as a conventional hinge arrangement or as high as a gullwing. It is not for dramatic effect, but purposeful practicality you don't want to knick the Accord in the next space at the mall, right? Even before the engine roars to life, the 12C delivers surprises. Pulling the door shut does not set off the claustrophobia alarms. The forward view is surprisingly uninhibited, an impression confirmed minutes later on a drive through the Surrey countryside. When I mentioned to Mr. Sheriff that even the rear view was excellent, his response was a pure reflection of McLaren ideology: "That is by obsession." The dashboard is dominated by an enormous tachometer and the center console has a bare minimum of switches. The steering wheel, bless the designers' hearts, has none, unless you count the gearshift rocker behind the spokes. The materials are rich and well detailed, but there are none of the trimmings you might expect in a 231,000 car. Well, not exactly. For enthusiast drivers, the luxury is found in two knobs on the center dash panel, just under the starter button, which let the driver choose normal, sport or track settings for the suspension and engine controls. Starting out in the normal setting proved a relief for a reporter unaccustomed to driving on the left side of the road. Even taking the left drive car onto English lanes and motorways, the 12C never felt intimidating. It managed bumps with poise, and only the most pleasant sound levels from the engine remember, it sat just behind me made it past the carbon fiber bulkhead. By McLaren's measure, the 12C can reach 60 m.p.h. in as little as 3 seconds; a run through the quarter mile is over in 10.9 seconds. With torque peaking at a low 3,000 r.p.m., the kick is available with a tap of the right toe. Offsetting that rush are the equally impressive brakes, simply the best I have ever experienced even with the standard iron rotors, not the optional carbon ceramic set. For higher speeds, an air brake is mounted on the rear. No less a jaw dropper is the suspension system that McLaren calls ProActive Chassis Control. Beyond the conventions of coil springs and double wishbones, the 12C takes a considerable departure from common practices. What looks like shock absorbers are a set of linked hydraulic cylinders that work with a pair of pressure accumulators to soak up bumps and distribute forces. There are no antiroll bars: the task of keeping the car level through turns is handled entirely by hydraulics. In action something revealed in an abrupt evasive maneuver on the motorway as well as on the tight curves of local two lanes the ride can be both limousine smooth and brilliantly controlled. Here's the takeaway: the performance is there, but no sacrifice is demanded. The 12C manages to excel in every measure without the penalties of harshness or uncivilized behavior. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Automobiles |
As the 13 year old Chengxi (Joseph Huang) relates his circumstances in the Netflix original "Dear Ex," his doodles animate the screen, obscuring and enhancing the live action imagery beneath. The film's twee qualities shouldn't be taken for fatuousness, however. It is a remarkably affecting and cogent picture. Following the death of his father (Spark Chen), Chengxi finds himself caught between his mother, Sanlian (Hsieh Ying hsuan), and Jay (Roy Chiu), a man for whom his father left his family. Chengxi has been written out of his late father's insurance policy, and all of the money will now go to Jay as soon as Sanlian signs off on it. Chengxi copes with the resulting fight by moving in with Jay (to the displeasure of both adults), drawn to the man's mercurial nature and relationship with his father. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Movies |
IT breaks Randall Wallace's heart to have to sell Glen Tonche, the 35 acre estate he owns on top of Mount Tonche in the Catskill Mountains. The 18,000 square foot compound can be reached only by means of a six minute drive on a private switchback road. But the reward at the end is sweeping views of the surrounding mountains and the Ashokan Reservoir, from a place of which Mr. Wallace says, "It's like being Zeus, high above the clouds." The 1928 estate was built a few miles from Woodstock by Raymond Pitcairn, an heir to the Pittsburgh Plate Glass fortune, but Mr. Wallace gave it musical renown when he built recording studios there that attracted the likes of Norah Jones, David Bowie and Natalie Merchant. Mr. Wallace, a photographer and musician, is about to put Glen Tonche on the market for 8 million because "it's paradise and I don't like the idea of owning paradise and not being able to live there." He moved out to California in 2005 to share custody of his children with his ex wife, and since then has been able to spend only a few weeks a year at his mountaintop retreat. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Real Estate |
Andreas Vlachos, a computer scientist at the University of Sheffield in England, is one of a growing number of researchers looking for ways to use artificial intelligence to combat fake news. LONDON In the battle against fake news, Andreas Vlachos a Greek computer scientist living in a northern English town is on the front lines. Armed with a decade of machine learning expertise, he is part of a British start up that will soon release an automated fact checking tool ahead of the country's election in early June. He also is advising a global competition that pits computer wizards from the United States to China against each other to use artificial intelligence to combat fake news. "I'm trying to channel my research into something that is useful for everyone who's reading the news," said Mr. Vlachos, who is also an academic at the University of Sheffield. "It's a positive way of moving artificial intelligence forward while improving the political debate." As Europe readies for several elections this year after President Trump's victory in the United States, Mr. Vlachos, 36, is one of a growing number of technology experts worldwide who are harnessing their skills to tackle misinformation online. The French electorate heads to the polls in the second round of presidential elections on May 7, followed by votes in Britain and Germany in the coming months. Computer scientists, tech giants and start ups are using sophisticated algorithms and reams of online data to quickly and automatically spot fake news faster than traditional fact checking groups can. The goal, experts say, is to expand these digital tools across Europe, so the region can counter the fake news that caused so much confusion and anger during the United States presidential election in November, when outright false reports routinely spread like wildfire on Facebook and Twitter. "Algorithms will have to do a lot of the heavy lifting when it comes to fighting misinformation," said Claire Wardle, head of strategy and research at First Draft News, a nonprofit organization that has teamed up with tech companies and newsrooms to debunk fake reports about elections in the United States and Europe. "It's impossible to do all of this by hand." Researchers have tried to learn from the United States' run in with fake news, but the problem in Europe has mutated, experts say, making it impossible to merely replicate American responses to the issue. European countries have different languages, and their media markets are smaller than those in the United States. That means groups that set up fake news sites in the United States, seeking to profit from online advertising when false claims were shared on social media, are less prevalent in Europe. So far, outright fake news stories have been relatively rare. Instead, false reports have more often come from Europeans on social media taking real news out of context, as well as from fake claims spread by state backed groups like Sputnik, the Russian news organization. But with fake news already swirling around Europe's forthcoming elections, analysts also worry that technology on its own may not be enough to combat the threat. "There's an increased amount of misinformation out there," said Janis Sarts, director of the NATO Strategic Communications Center of Excellence, a think tank in Riga, Latvia, that will hold a hackathon with local coders in May to find potential tech solutions to this trend. "State based actors have been trying to amplify specific views to bring them into the mainstream." Calls for combating fake news have focused on some of the biggest online players, including American giants like Facebook and Google. After criticism of its role in spreading false reports during the United States elections, Facebook introduced a fact checking tool ahead of the Dutch elections in March and the first round of the French presidential election on April 23. It also removed 30,000 accounts in France that had shared fake news, a small fraction of the approximately 33 million Facebook users in the country. Since last year, Google also has funded almost 20 European projects aimed at fact checking potentially false reports. That includes its support for two British groups looking to use artificial intelligence to automatically fact check online claims ahead of the country's June 8 parliamentary election. It similarly has teamed up with French newsrooms to create digital tools, including ways to track trending topics during that country's election. David Dieudonne, head of the company's news lab in France, said the project had debunked 43 reports since February (arguably a relatively small figure), including claims that Saudi Arabia was funding the campaign of Emmanuel Macron, the leading candidate. "We're trying something new," Mr. Dieudonne said. "There's no easy answer for this complicated issue." Not all potential solutions, though, are being driven by Silicon Valley's big beasts. David Chavalarias, a French academic, has created a digital tool that has analyzed more than 80 million Twitter messages about the French election, helping journalists and fact checkers to quickly review claims that are spread on the social network. After the presidential election in the United States last year, Dean Pomerleau, a computer scientist at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, also challenged his followers on Twitter to come up with an algorithm that could distinguish fake claims from real news. Working with Delip Rao, a former Google researcher, he offered a 2,000 prize to anyone who could meet his requirements. By early this year, more than 100 teams from around the world had signed on to Mr. Pomerleau's Fake News Challenge. Using a database of verified articles and their artificial intelligence expertise, rival groups a combination of college teams, independent programmers and groups from existing tech companies already have been able to accurately predict the veracity of certain claims almost 90 percent of the time, Mr. Pomerleau said. He hopes that figure will rise to the mid 90s before his challenge ends in June. "This is just Round 1 of what we want to do," said Mr. Pomerleau, who expects the teams to share their work with fact checking groups worldwide. "Next, we want to move toward multimedia content like videos." In the rush to find solutions to fake news, some within the industry are taking a decidedly more low tech approach. Jimmy Wales, the founder of Wikipedia, recently started a crowdfunding campaign to create a news organization that would combine professional journalists with digital volunteers, who would contribute to reports in a way similar to how articles are created on Wikipedia. Part fact checking site, part traditional newsroom, the project called Wikitribune was inspired by the effect of misinformation on the United States presidential election. Mr. Wales said his project would choose subject areas based on the interests of the community of volunteers and paying subscribers to the service, relying more on traditional reporting techniques than high tech wizardry. "The real impetus for this was fake news," he said. "We want people to get behind topics, and then we'll hire staff to cover them." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Technology |
BALTIMORE Heroin has ravaged this city since the early 1960s, fueling desperation and crime that remain endemic in many neighborhoods. But lately, despite heroin's long, deep history here, users say it has become nearly impossible to find. Heroin's presence is fading up and down the Eastern Seaboard, from New England mill towns to rural Appalachia, and in parts of the Midwest that were overwhelmed by it a few years back. It remains prevalent in many Western states, but even New York City, the nation's biggest distribution hub for the drug, has seen less of it this year. The diminishing supply should be a victory for public health and law enforcement alike. Instead, in cities like Baltimore, longtime users who managed to survive decades injecting heroin are now at far higher risk of dying from an overdose. That is because synthetic fentanyl, a deadlier drug that is much cheaper to produce and distribute than heroin, has all but replaced it. The dramatic rise of fentanyl, which can be 50 times stronger than heroin, has been well documented. But its effect on many older, urban users of heroin, who had been able to manage their addiction for years, has been less noticed. The shift from heroin to fentanyl in cities has contributed to surging overdose deaths among older people and African Americans and deeply unnerved many like William Glen Miller Sr., who first tried heroin as a 13 year old in West Baltimore. "It doesn't take a second for it to hit you," said Mr. Miller, 64, describing the unfamiliar punch of fentanyl. "All I remember is pushing in the needle, and three hours later I am getting up off the ground." He was speaking from a nursing home bed in northern Baltimore, where he spent several recent months recovering from pneumonia and contemplating addiction treatment in another state. Heroin had a lulling effect, he and others said, but fentanyl is killing many of their peers. The claim is backed by federal data showing that the rate of overdose deaths involving fentanyl increased by nearly 54 percent in 2017 for people ages 55 to 64 more than for any other age group. "Clients we've known for years are dying," said Derrick Hunt, director of the Baltimore City Needle Exchange Program, which has two vans that serve 17 locations around the city. "Everywhere I go, this person passed, that person passed." This is not an elegy for heroin, a dangerous drug in its own right that spread from cities into suburbs and rural areas about a decade ago, when addictive prescription painkillers became harder to get. But for longtime urban users like Mr. Miller, many of them African American, its disappearance is taking a particular toll. From 2016 to 2017, the fatal overdose rate from fentanyl and other synthetic opioids increased by 61 percent among black Americans, compared with a 45 percent increase for whites. The number of overdose deaths involving heroin has been dropping, even as overdose deaths over all have kept climbing because of fentanyl. In Maryland, deaths involving heroin fell by 38 percent from 2016 through 2018, according to preliminary data. In Massachusetts, heroin or likely heroin was present in 71 percent of opioid related deaths in 2014; in the third quarter of 2018, it was present in only 34 percent. And in New Hampshire, which did not have a robust heroin market until the painkiller fueled crisis of the past decade, the drug has almost completely vanished. Only four of the 397 opioid deaths in New Hampshire last year involved heroin, according to preliminary data; 363 involved fentanyl . "In this situation, heroin looks protective compared to the fentanyl," said Dr. Daniel Ciccarone, a family physician and researcher at the University of California, San Francisco, who has studied both drugs. Nationally, there were 7 percent fewer deaths involving heroin in the year ending in September 2018 than there were in the previous year, according to preliminary data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The smaller overall decline may be a reflection of heroin's continued strong presence in Western states like California and Arizona. Data on drug seizures similarly suggest a diminishing of heroin. Here in Baltimore, Todd C. Edwards, a spokesman for the Drug Enforcement Administration's local district office, said law enforcement was now seizing more fentanyl than heroin. And in a Philadelphia neighborhood called Kensington, which has been hit particularly hard by opioid addiction, users report that "they can't find heroin anymore," said Patrick Trainor, a spokesman for the D.E.A. there. "It's pretty much been replaced." Each person took a paper bag full of needles and Narcan, the overdose reversal drug. The vans now also offer test strips, which people can use to check their drugs, including cocaine, for fentanyl. But some clients don't see the point. "Most people, they're not using no test strips," said Mr. Miller, who helped start a local group that hands out fentanyl strips and naloxone. "Because fentanyl is in daggone everything now." Fentanyl may still be mixed with heroin or other drugs, but increasingly, it arrives pure either as powder or pressed into counterfeit pills resembling Percocet or Xanax. It can be diluted with more filler than heroin can, because it takes far less fentanyl to have a powerful effect. "At the dealer level right now, fentanyl is like a magic dust it's a moneymaker," said Jon DeLena, the associate special agent in charge of the D.E.A.'s New England field division. "We were hearing people start to say, 'I want the old stuff again, I want the brown,' meaning heroin," he continued. "But traffickers just started mixing fentanyl with something that had a brown tinge to it. They're never, ever, ever going to go back to selling heroin around here again." Mexican poppy cultivation reached a high in 2017, according to the D.E.A. But several news outlets have reported that the price of opium paste the part of the poppy that gets turned into heroin has dropped sharply over the last year, a sign that criminal organizations are increasingly focused on fentanyl. Ray Donovan, who leads the D.E.A.'s New York office, said he believed China's recent decision to ban all variants of fentanyl as a class could ultimately force traffickers to refocus on heroin. But because China has not banned many of the precursor chemicals needed to make fentanyl, others believe the effect could be minimal. Tino Fuentes, a former heroin user who teaches people how to test their drugs for fentanyl, said only half of the samples he tests in New York these days are positive for heroin much less than even a year ago. "I have people telling me all the time, 'If you find something that's heroin, let me know,'" Mr. Fuentes said. Still, law enforcement officials are continuing to seize heroin coming across the border. From January through April, Customs and Border Protection officers seized 1,585 pounds of heroin at official ports of entry, along with 921 pounds of fentanyl. "The notion that heroin is disappearing altogether is false," said Katherine Pfaff, a spokeswoman for the D.E.A., adding that the drop in heroin related deaths could be a result of Narcan saving more heroin users. Still, she said, there is definitely more demand now for fentanyl than heroin in some regions, including New England. That could be because most users in those regions took up heroin only after crackdowns on prescribing opioids took hold, and were just as happy with fentanyl, Mr. DeLena said. Not so for Mr. Miller and many other longtime heroin users. "I'd rather have the straight heroin from back in the day," said Duane Coleman, 67, who was among those seeking needles from the health department van. "The fentanyl comes on you too strong. Thank God I'm still holding on." Even if heroin were to proliferate again, Mr. Miller said, the high it provided would not suffice for most users because the fentanyl they have gotten used to is so much more potent. Mr. Miller said he had had to use fentanyl 10 times a day to avoid withdrawal, up from two or three times a day for heroin. At the Baltimore needle exchange, Wayne Hall, 65, accepted a handful of strips to test his drugs for fentanyl, along with his batch of clean needles. He had gone to the emergency room recently, he said, after injecting what he assumes was fentanyl. He had woken up trembling, with his heart racing. "When I was doing heroin I never shook like that," he said, leaning on a cane, his paper bag of supplies tucked under his arm. "I do miss it." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Health |
An elevator at the A4 Arts Foundation in Cape Town, South Africa, is one of the new sites of the global group exhibition of Felix Gonzalez Torres's 1990 work "Untitled" (Fortune Cookie Corner). Hundreds are staging a tribute to Felix Gonzalez Torres's edible sculpture. It addresses the grief of today's pandemic just as it did the AIDS crisis. It is a quiet homecoming: a mound of fortune cookies on a Havana rooftop overlooking a wide, green river. Art lovers come in ones and twos, cracking open a cookie to read their fortunes, sometimes popping the treat in their mouths. The cookie pile is part of "Untitled" (Fortune Cookie Corner), a 1990 work by Felix Gonzalez Torres that has been installed, mid pandemic, as a collective work in hundreds of locations around the world. It is the first work by Gonzalez Torres, who was born in Cuba but identified as American, to be made on the island, according to the Felix Gonzalez Torres Foundation. "It's like he's here, looking at Cuba, at the landscape, at his orishas," said Jorge Fernandez Torres, director of Cuba's National Museum of Fine Arts, referring to the deities of Santeria, the syncretic religion practiced by many Cubans. Mr. Fernandez, who spoke by phone from Havana, was one of 1,000 people invited by Andrea Rosen Gallery and David Zwirner Gallery to participate in the project. "Untitled" (Fortune Cookie Corner) originally involved 10,000 cookies and was one of the first in a series of edible sculptures mainly made from candies. The two galleries, which represent the artist's estate, invited friends, artists, curators and fans of Gonzalez Torres's work to create a collective installation, each piling 240 to 1,000 cookies and exhibiting them from May 25 to July 5. The piles are to be replenished once, on June 14. Ms. Rosen said she came up with the project in April, when much of the world was locked down, hoping that it would prompt people to reflect on notions of public and private space, loss and regeneration, and the value of our existence when we are shut away at home. Gonzalez Torres, who was born in Guaimaro, Cuba, in 1957 but left as a child, spent much of his career in New York. Apparently simple a stack of paper, a pile of candies, a beaded curtain Gonzalez Torres's work is "made to make complications," Ms. Rosen said. Carlos Basualdo, senior curator of contemporary art at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, said that Gonzalez Torres's work speaks to the isolation and grief of today's pandemic much as it did during the AIDS crisis as well as the boiling anger at racial injustice. "There are works, when you subject them to the pressures of today, they become silent," he said. "But not Felix's. The work is still alive." The edible sculptures remind us that, despite the pandemic's uneven toll, we are "deeply connected" to others, said Mr. Basualdo, who is not participating in the project. "It is both joyful and playful but extremely consequential," he said. So far, some 320 people from Cape Town, South Africa, to Knoxville, Tenn., have installed the work, according to a tally by Andrea Rosen Gallery, which has published photos, video and text from about 70 locations on its website. Some participants have placed the cookies in a public space Shanghai's gleaming Hongqiao transportation hub; a dry fountain in Rome while others installed them in their bedroom or in a shuttered gallery. Bill T. Jones, artistic director of New York Live Arts, which placed a fortune cookie pile in its lobby in Chelsea, on Thursday opened the center's doors for a pop up event in which he read aloud poetry, political writings and history. Elsewhere, participants chose a spot that was semipublic, like a bike basket or the open trunk of an S.U.V. Amenda Tate, an artist based in West Des Moines, Iowa, filled a newspaper honor box with cookies and placed a camera inside, filming passers by as they squirt hand sanitizer and reach inside for a cookie. Brianna Calello, chief registrar and operations manager at Andrea Rosen Gallery, fills the basket of her bicycle with fortune cookies each day and leaves it outside her home in Bedford Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, with hand sanitizer. As she sat on the stoop, several passers by glanced at the cookies without taking one. But by evening, Ms. Calello said, the basket was empty. "It just felt really good after this time of being so isolated to be able to share with people," she said. Michel Otayek, an art historian and curator who stacked 997 cookies in the corner of his living room in Berlin, is holding online discussions of Gonzalez Torres's work; this week, he left hundreds of stickers around Berlin bearing the words, "Would you take one?" and the address of a website explaining the project. Speaking over Skype, Mr. Otayek said he wanted the installation to create "random encounters" despite being shown in his home. Katrin Wittig, a friend of a friend of Mr. Otayek, saw his photos on Instagram and made her own fortune cookies from printed cotton. She sent some to Mr. Otayek because we all "need a bit of fortune," she said. Those who contact Mr. Otayek will have to chance to ask him to open a cookie for them and read them their fortune, he said. Gonzalez Torres's work "lends itself to new stagings," Mr. Otayek said. Some disagree. Mr. Basualdo said that while he finds the work "super relevant," he turned down Ms. Rosen's invitation to install it because doing so in a space where the public could not gain access to it detracted from its purpose. Carolina A. Miranda, a writer for The Los Angeles Times, wrote last week that she too declined an invitation to take part. She dismissed the project as an insensitive publicity stunt in the midst of an economic and public health crisis and of protests against racial injustice. Inviting people to make the installation on their own dime, she wrote, was "tone deaf at best and foolhardy at worst." Ms. Rosen said the gallery did not want to impose on people and that participants could buy the minimum number of fortune cookies for about 20. She observed that, since she developed the idea, the social context has shifted from strict lockdown to an eruption of outrage at the killing of George Floyd in police custody in Minneapolis. Either way, she said, the project is no financial benefit to the gallery. The simplicity of staging the work also meant it was feasible to include Cuba, Ms. Rosen said. Artistic exchanges between the United States and Cuba can be fraught with logistical and legal complications, in part because of the decades old economic embargo. All that was required in this case was a bunch of cookies. But on an island beleaguered by shortages, the crescent shaped cookies were nowhere to be found. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Art & Design |
THE HEAD OF A COMPANY that sells ads emblazoned on billboards, kiosks and transit shelters has quietly traded a penthouse in SoHo for a larger, brand new one in TriBeCa, with lots of outdoor space and cityscape vistas. And at 22,210,782.50, the new purchase was the most expensive closed sale of the week, according to city records. Drew Katz, the chief executive of Interstate Outdoor Advertising of Cherry Hill, N.J., bought the duplex, PHB, the largest of three penthouses at the Sterling Mason condominium, at 71 Laight Street, about 15 months after selling a co op, also PHB, at 420 West Broadway for 17 million. Mr. Katz, who also runs the Rachel and Drew Katz Foundation, made the TriBeCa purchase through the limited liability company Latekat. Bruce Ehrmann, Reid Price and Christopher Morales of Douglas Elliman Real Estate were the listing brokers; there was no buyer's broker. Mr. Katz's father, Lewis, also a noted philanthropist, was killed in a plane crash two years ago; he was an owner of a media company whose holdings include the Philadelphia Inquirer. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Real Estate |
Onstage, Clifton Brown is a force: a dancer with enormous presence, a strong theatricality and a large scale, lush physicality. His long, graceful arms seem to embrace the world, and he has a way of tilting his face upward so it catches the light, giving him the air of someone illuminated by thought. These qualities made him a favorite at Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, which he joined in 1999 at 19, and left in 2011. "Ailey is kind of an island," he explained on a recent morning, "and I'd never had the opportunity to see what the outside world was like." He went on to dance for the modern dance choreographer Lar Lubovitch, and then, more lastingly, for Jessica Lang, a contemporary dancemaker who was in the process of putting together an ensemble. He stayed with Ms. Lang for six years, becoming her rehearsal director. But now he is returning to the Ailey fold. I caught up with him at the company's studios; he had been back only two weeks and was preparing for the troupe's Lincoln Center run, which opens on Wednesday. He looked focused, and a little tired. At Lincoln Center, he'll be easing back into old roles in Ailey's signature work, "Revelations": the arduous solo "I Wanna Be Ready," the high energy trio "Sinner Man," and the prayerful duet "Fix Me, Jesus." Then, during the company's coming tour, he'll take on more repertory, including Christopher Wheeldon's pas de deux "After the Rain." In conversation, Mr. Brown is as soft spoken and introspective as he is imposing on the stage. These are edited excerpts from our discussion. Is 'Revelations' still in your bones? I don't think I could forget it even if I wanted to. In a way, it's like riding a bike, but I have a new perspective on it as well. You realize a lot of things you thought were so important are really not so important. Like in "I Wanna Be Ready," the way it looks, the picture, is important, but it's also a means to an end. Each time you rise up a little bit further, and each time there is a giving up or a defeat. You have to find out how to get there, to have an internal reason. I have a little more insight into the reasons behind it because I've had time to think about the architecture of it. How did the time away change you as a dancer? I feel that I have more understanding of the importance of the work from the side of the choreographers. Being a dancer in a rep company, you're always trying to do your best on each program, but it's hard to get the specific intention for each piece and each style. But I feel like I have a different kind of approach now. What drew you to dance for Jessica Lang? Her movement style changes from piece to piece, which is good, especially for a choreographer whose work you're doing all the time. And her movement feels good; it's beautiful but it's simple. It has simplicity combined with richness. And from the outside, it's stunning to look at. How about Mr. Lubovitch what do you like about his style? His movement is so organic and so fluid; I actually feel like that's close to my natural movement quality in general. In working with Ailey, I learned to have more attack and more staccato. Why did you decide to return to Ailey now? When I left Ailey, I was hoping to experience other things, but not leave forever. So this just felt like the right time to do it. I wanted to see what it's like, with largely a different group of dancers and a new director Robert Battle , now that the company is taking this slightly different direction. It's kind of a familiar, but also a new, experience. So, what's it like to dance 'Sinner Man' at 37? Laughs. It's a great quick twitch muscle workout, like being shot out of a cannon. It takes anticipation. You have to be ready. It's about conjuring up the feeling of Judgment Day, so you've got to run. And then at the end, you're just really out of breath. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Dance |
A Polish Museum Turns to the Right, and Artists Turn Away WARSAW Piotr Bernatowicz is one of the most talked about figures in Poland's art world this winter, for one reason: Many artists say he's about to destroy a leading Warsaw art museum. On Jan. 1, Mr. Bernatowicz, 46, became the director of the Ujazdowski Castle Center for Contemporary Art, a reconstructed palace in the city center. For the past 30 years, the museum has put on shows by Poland's leading experimental artists, and hosted work by international stars like Barbara Kruger, Nan Goldin and Kara Walker. Its exhibitions have often had a political dimension. One current show, for instance a retrospective of work by Karol Radziszewski (through Mar. 29) addresses the experiences of gay men in Eastern Europe. Mr. Bernatowicz is interested in politics, but those politics are different from many in the art world, which he said in an email interview was "dominated by a left wing, precisely neo Marxist ideology." (He declined to be interviewed in person.) Artists are expected to make work about fighting climate change and fascism, or promoting gay rights, he added. "Artists who do not adopt this ideology are marginalized," he said. Mr. Bernatowicz wants to change that and promote artists who have other views: conservative, patriotic, pro family. His plans are transforming the museum into the latest battleground in Poland's culture wars, which pit liberals against the governing populist Law and Justice Party, as well as other conservative groups. Piotr Rypson, the chair of the Polish branch of the International Council for Museums, said that, for 30 years, the Ujazdowski had been "a real freedom center in the middle of Warsaw." A petition against the appointment of Mr. Bernatowicz was signed by Olga Tokarczuk, the Polish novelist who was awarded the delayed 2018 Nobel Prize in Literature, along with a Who's Who of the Polish art world. He would "go down in history as the gravedigger of this institution," wrote a commentator in Krytyka Polityczna, a highbrow left wing magazine. Mr. Bernatowicz said he was aware of the criticism, but was undaunted. "Why shouldn't I try?" he said. The Law and Justice Party has tried to orientate Poland's cultural institutions in a nationalist populist direction since it was elected in 2015. Piotr Glinski, Poland's culture minister, who appointed Mr. Bernatowicz at the Ujazdowski, said in an emailed statement that the government was "restoring the right balance and building a fair system, in which every artist, regardless of his/her views, can count on the support of the state." Other government appointed art administrators have caused controversy, too. In April, Jerzy Miziolek, the director of the National Museum in Warsaw, removed three contemporary artworks, all by women, from its walls after he received an email from a visitor who said her child had been left traumatized by them. The works included a photo series by Natalia L.L., a feminist artist whose career began in Poland under Communism, that showed a woman seductively licking and sucking a banana. Demonstrators ate bananas outside the museum in protest at its removal. (Mr. Miziolek resigned in December after a series of labor disputes at the museum.) The culture ministry's appointment of Mr. Bernatowicz at the Ujazdowski has caused concern because it is for a term of seven years far longer than normal and was made without a competition. The museum director's politics weren't always on the right. At university he studied art history, writing his dissertation on Picasso's reception behind the Iron Curtain. After graduation, he ran a monthly art magazine and taught at a university in Poznan, a city in the west of the country. He was seen as a typical member of that city's art scene, according to Mr. Radziszewski, the artist whose retrospective is on display at the Ujazdowski. "We were friends he was in my films," Mr. Radziszewski said. "And he's just become crazy." Mr. Bernatowicz said he had once been a liberal, but his worldview changed in 2010 after Poland's president and dozens of the country's top political and military leaders died in a plane crash in Russia. He became concerned about Russian interference in Poland, and Poland's position in the world, he said. Around the same time, he said, he came to feel "extreme identity movements" had overtaken the art world, and that accusations of "hate speech" were being used to censor work that went against their ideology. It reminded him of Communist rule, he added, when artists had to do as they were told. In 2014, Mr. Bernatowicz became director of Arsenal, an art museum in Poznan, and reflected his new outlook in some shows. He curated several exhibitions of local painters, but also a group show "Strategies of Dissent" that included posters by Wojciech Korkuc, a designer whose work many found offensive. One poster, addressed to gay men, included the slogan "don't homosexualize minors." Another told feminists to "use your brain before intercourse." "I was accused of presenting offensive artworks in a public gallery, but what about freedom of speech and tolerance?" Mr. Bernatowicz said. He was not homophobic or anti feminist, he added. Mr. Bernatowicz pointed out that a prestigious theater in Poland had recently put on a play, "The Curse," that had offended people in the Roman Catholic church. (It features a scene in which a woman performs fellatio on a sex toy attached to a statue of Pope John Paul II.) "According to them, Catholics should be more tolerant and open to art," Mr. Bernatowicz said. "My exhibitions reveal the hypocrisy of the art world." Mr. Bernatowicz has yet to reveal any exhibitions for the Ujazdowski. But a manifesto, published in November, named four "important artists" Mr. Bernatowicz said were not getting the attention they deserved. They included Mr. Korkuc, the poster designer, and three artists who were key figures in Polish art world in the 1980s, when opposition to Communist rule was growing. One of those, Jaroslaw Modzelewski, a painter who teaches at Warsaw's Academy of Fine Arts, said in an email that he didn't feel excluded from Poland's art scene. "My art is involved in human questions," rather than political concerns, he said. But some art world figures said it will be difficult to find enough right wing works to show. "I don't know what a conservative artist is," Malgorzata Ludwisiak, the Ujazdowski's previous director, said. "If it means painting like in the 19th century a lady on a horse well, it's not contemporary art." Mr. Bernatowicz seemed to realize he might have a struggle on his hands. "If you ask, 'How many conservative avant garde artists are there now?' My response is: five in Poland and maybe one in Belarus," he said, riffing on a famous remark by Marcel Duchamp. But, he added, "I hope within the next seven years, the situation will change." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Art & Design |
In September, the latest Trump tell all hit bookshelves. "Melania Me" by Stephanie Winston Wolkoff is billed as an inside look at "the rise and fall" of a close friendship with the first lady, whose opaque mien, willingness to buck White House convention and occasional startling sartorial choices have made her one of the most unknowable figures in the current administration. And then, in October, the author released audio tapes of Melania Trump, in which the first lady expressed frustration with criticism of Ms. Trump and her husband. The third of the big unauthorized Melania explainers, after "Free, Melania" by Kate Bennet in 2019 and "The Art of Her Deal" by Mary Jordan, which was published earlier this year, "Melania Me" may also be the most revealing. Here's why. Ms. Winston Wolkoff grew up in the Catskills along with two brothers (one of whom is the actor Randall Batinkoff). Her mother, Barbara Batinkoff, was a homemaker, and her father, Barry Batinkoff, was a photographer from a line of chicken farmers. Her parents got divorced when she was in high school, and Ms. Winston Wolkoff stopped speaking to her father. Her mother later married Bruce Winston, the son of the jeweler Harry Winston. He adopted Stephanie, and she took his name which came with all of the related associations. She is married to David Wolkoff, a real estate developer, has three children and lives on the Upper East Side. She is also a black belt in martial arts and active on the charity circuit. She and Mrs. Trump became friends back in 2003, and she attended the Trump wedding and Mrs. Trump's baby shower; Mrs. Trump came to her 40th birthday celebration. They used to have monthly lunches at places like the Mark Hotel in Manhattan. Sometimes, though a lot fewer times, they met up as couples. So what does a Trusted Advisor do and what happened with the Trumps? Shortly after the inauguration, which Ms. Winston Wolkoff helped organize, Ms. Winston Wolkoff joined Mrs. Trump's office the first hire made by the first lady, even before the more official roles of chief of staff and communications director were filled. Ms. Winston Wolkoff was, however, unpaid, and for a long time her actual title was nebulous. It was a job that Ms. Winston Wolkoff portrays in the book as large part protector (the West Wing was full of plotters! Many of them against Melania!), part shadow chief of staff, and part friend and mentor. According to Ms. Winston Wolkoff, she was instrumental in helping create Mrs. Trump's child focused Be Best campaign (though she disavows the name), and she tried hard to get Mrs. Trump to wear American designers, and to see that perhaps there was something hypocritical about adopting the fight against cyberbullying as a cause, though those efforts were largely unsuccessful. This all ended in February 2018, when Ms. Winston Wolkoff resigned after revelations that her firm was paid nearly 26 million to plan the inauguration. She called the media's coverage of the payout "completely unfair," and in the book asserts that it was inaccurate and she left because she had been scapegoated and used by the administration. "Was I fired? No," Ms. Winston Wolkoff said more than a year later. "Did I personally receive 26 million or 1.6 million? No. Was I thrown under the bus? Yes." Why is her book such a big deal? Although a number of former aides to President Trump have written tell all books, this is the first insider look at Mrs. Trump's life in the White House (and before). The first lady has maintained a tight control on her aides and social circle, and as a result, and because of the general mystique surrounding her, her choices, and her life, have remained an impenetrable puzzle to most of the world. So what is going on behind the mask? It's not pretty. Ms. Winston Wolkoff goes from writing of the first lady, "Being with her was like having the sister I never had before but a really confident, perfectly coiffed, ultimate older sister," to writing, "Her selfishness is so deep, it enables her to keep her distance from the rest of the world." Ms. Winston Wolkoff writes that Mrs. Trump mostly shrugs about her reputation. Her attitude, according to Ms. Winston Wolkoff, is: "Pleasing anyone else is not my priority." Mrs. Trump's famous jacket that said, "I really don't care. Do U?" on the back may have been a questionable thing to wear, but it fairly captured her attitude toward her detractors, Ms. Winston Wolkoff says. The book also suggests that Mrs. Trump is as interested in image as her husband is, and kept insisting on being called "first lady elect" in inauguration materials, despite the fact she had not actually been elected. So how did the friendship come to be? According to her book, Ms. Winston Wolkoff met Mrs. Trump in 2003 at Vogue when Mrs. Trump was still Melania Knauss. Both women were 32, and Mr. Trump was trying to engineer a splashy debut in New York society for Melania, then his girlfriend; he thought Anna Wintour could help. (Mr. Trump and Ms. Wintour were "friendly," the book says, and Ivanka had been offered a job at Vogue.) Andre Leon Talley, Vogue's editor at large at the time, took Melania under his wing and engineered a makeover, which, Ms. Winston Wolkoff writes, transformed her from "a brunette Marilyn Monroe" to "editorial worthy." The 2004 Met Gala was deemed to be the right context for an unveiling, even though, according to Ms. Winston Wolkoff, Mr. Trump always bought the cheapest tickets: the individual ones, for a mere 1,500 each. Melania wore Versace, and a giant engagement ring, since Mr. Trump had just proposed. She then attended the couture shows with Mr. Talley in order to pick a wedding gown, and appeared on the cover of Vogue in her Dior by John Galliano dress in February 2005. Sure, maybe Mrs. Trump repeatedly referred to one of Ms. Winston Wolkoff's sons by the wrong name, Ms. Winston Wolkoff writes, and was always asking for favors. But before the election a time when most of the fashion world and New York society was distancing itself from the Trumps Ms. Winston Wolkoff strongly defended her friend, warning people to not underestimate the future first lady. Even after Inauguration gate, Ms. Winston Wolkoff was quoted in The Washington Post calling Mrs. Trump "dignified" (referring, in particular, to the first lady's habit of dodging the president's public displays of affection). Mrs. Trump's chief of staff, Stephanie Grisham (whom Ms. Winston Wolkoff calls an "underminer and all around bad apple" in the book), told reporters the friendship had been "overstated." Ms. Grisham also said, in response to reports that Ms. Winston Wolkoff used secretly recorded conversations with Mrs. Trump for the book, that "it's really unfortunate to take advantage of somebody's trust like that while being a friend." What do the author's other friends say about her? "She's everything you want to hate in a girl," her friend Kim Gardner told The New York Times for Ms. Winston Wolkoff's wedding announcement in 2000. ''She's tall, she's accomplished, she's athletic, she's thin, she's in, she's hip, she works at Vogue. But she's a sweetheart. You can't hate her. You have to love her.'' Over the years there have been snipes about her use of the name Winston, with suggestions that Ms. Winston Wolkoff was trying to erase her past to upgrade her resume. "I am who I am," she said to The Times in 2017, adding that the reason she doesn't describe Mr. Batinkoff as her father is "because I've seen him twice in 20 years and because Bruce adopted me." At Vogue, Ms. Winston Wolkoff was respected for her ability to hustle and get things done. Ms. Wintour, her former boss, referred to her as "General Winston." When she worked on the Met Gala, she reportedly told people who wanted to go to the after parties that admission wasn't free: "no money, no come y." So why open this can of worms? What does Ms. Winston Wolkoff get out of it? Besides what was probably a pretty good advance? A chance to tell her own story her way, defend her actions, re emerge in the public sphere via news and talk shows, and salvage her reputation, both in general and in New York society, where a toxic antipathy prevails toward the Trumps and anyone who works with them. In the meantime, Ms. Winston Wolkoff and Ms. Trump no longer speak. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Style |
The title "Black Narcissus" has the sound of a hothouse flower a dark bloom luring you to an uncertain fate and the story, as set out by Rumer Godden in her 1939 novel, is indeed exotic, in both the traditional and the pejorative modern senses. Early in the 20th century, five British nuns are sent into the Himalayas to establish a school, hospital and convent in a decrepit mansion perched on a cliff. Exposure to the dramatic landscape and to the down to earth locals unhinges them, in different ways and to various degrees, and the project ends in tragedy. If "Heart of Darkness" had a much more genteel cousin, it would be "Black Narcissus." Godden's novel has its orientalist and melodramatic elements, but it's also marked by the subtle psychology of its portrayals of the nuns and its lyrical evocations of India, where Godden lived as a girl. It's a sharp and levelheaded book Black Narcissus turns out to be a cologne that a wealthy Indian character orders in from London that would be a footnote in literary history if it hadn't been turned into an effectively campy and lushly pictorial film in 1947 by the British directing team of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, who went all in on the exoticism and gleefully pumped up the story's sexual undertones. The enduring critical esteem enjoyed by the film slightly mystifying to me, but enthusiastically supported by the likes of Martin Scorsese and Francis Ford Coppola is probably the reason we now have a new "Black Narcissus," a three part mini series showing in its entirety Monday on FX. (It was produced in Britain by FX and the BBC.) This television version walks a fine line between book and film, keeping the film's crowd pleasing emphasis on the titillating aspects of the plot (depicted in a more restrained, "Masterpiece Theater" style) but incorporating more of the book's practical business about the realities of establishing a convent in a remote Indian outpost. Unlike the film, it inserts actual Himalayan locations and casts Indian actors in all the Indian roles (though they remain secondary to the interloping British characters). | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Television |
Maroon 5 a quasi soul, quasi rock, utterly funkless band was the main attraction at the Super Bowl halftime show at Mercedes Benz Stadium in Atlanta, likely the third or eighth or maybe 14th choice for a headliner. In a year in which the Super Bowl halftime show has become a referendum on political mindfulness, in which the N.F.L. has become a staging ground for conversations about racial justice in America, Maroon 5 was a cynically apt choice. It is neutral, inoffensive, sleek without promising too much. For nearly two decades, it has been wildly popular without leaving much of a musical mark, as easy to forget as mild weather. And the band did no better during its 13 and a half minutes onstage, in a performance that was dynamically flat, mushy at the edges, worthy of something much worse than derision: a shrug. It was an inessential performance from a band that might have lost some moral authority if it had any moral authority to lose. Perhaps for the N.F.L., which probably sought to make the halftime performance as anodyne as possible, this was a victory. But what saddles Maroon 5 as a band its propensity to pretend lithe things are thumping, its commitment to thinning out the soul and rock of the 1970s and 1980s until they're so brittle they might snap doomed this performance, which blithely skated through a half dozen of the band's hits. Never miss a pop music story: Get our weekly newsletter, Louder. And in a year in which the political valence of the halftime show mattered more than ever, the band's stubborn resistance was glaring. The N.F.L. canceled the traditional news conference for performers this year, looking to avoid a fiasco. But the frontman Adam Levine did do an interview with "Entertainment Tonight" in which he suggested that the choice to perform at the halftime show triggers in some an "insatiable urge to hate a little bit." "No one thought about it more than I did," he added, not very reassuringly. "I'm not in the right profession if I can't handle a little bit of controversy." But the decision of whether to perform was now oriented around the protests of Colin Kaepernick and other N.F.L. players, who in 2016 began taking a knee during the national anthem (or otherwise not standing at attention) as a means of drawing attention to the systemic oppression of black people in this country. The halftime show one of the biggest stages in pop, and also an unpaid performance on behalf of the N.F.L. became radioactive. Perform, and be perceived as a shill for the league. (Kaepernick is pursuing a grievance against the N.F.L., accusing team owners of colluding to keep him from playing in the league.) Ultimately, Maroon 5 a band that hasn't had a Top 20 hit without a black or Latina guest performer in four years was joined by Travis Scott, hip hop's most energetic performer, but not one much troubled by political concerns. (Last month, Scott announced he would, in partnership with the N.F.L., donate 500,000 to a nonprofit organization, Dream Corps.) Also added to the performance was Big Boi one half of Outkast, and an Atlanta rap elder which felt like an attempt at moral cover. Online petitions requested all of the performers take a knee in support of Kaepernick and his goals. No one did. For what it's worth, the toxicity of being associated with the Super Bowl didn't appear to extend beyond the halftime performance. Chance the Rapper performed in a Doritos commercial (with the Backstreet Boys); 2 Chainz was entertaining in an ad for Expensify; Cardi B and Lil Jon tag teamed in a Pepsi ad. Both of the pregame performances were by black artists: a taut, controlled reading of "America the Beautiful" by Chloe x Halle and an impressive, if Disney saccharine, national anthem from Gladys Knight, who before the game criticized Kaepernick for making the anthem a site of protest. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Music |
Bill Weld, the former Massachusetts governor and current long shot make that, loooooooong shot candidate for the Republican Party's presidential nomination, is a keen student of New Hampshire politics. In an interview with me this week, he noted the following fact: Every time an incumbent president of either party faced a significant primary challenge in the Granite State, he failed in his bid for re election. It happened to George H.W. Bush in 1992 after Patrick Buchanan took 38 percent of the New Hampshire vote. It happened to Jimmy Carter in 1980 after Teddy Kennedy took 39 percent. It happened to Gerald Ford in 1976 after Ronald Reagan took 48 percent. It happened to Lyndon Johnson in 1968 after Eugene McCarthy took 42 percent. It happened to Harry Truman in 1952 when Estes Kefauver beat him outright, 55 percent to 44. So, Weld reasons, why not try to make it happen to Donald J. Trump, too? That's the hopeful thought in what otherwise seems to be Weld's hopeless bid to derail a president whose support among Republicans was 89 percent last month, according to Gallup. Weld is too much a politician to admit publicly that he sees no shot for himself of winning a Messiah complex lies at the root of many monumental ambitions. But he's also wise enough to know that losing well can achieve great things, like bringing down a president who, he said, "regards the law as something to be evaded." Can that be done between now and Feb. 11, the date of the New Hampshire primary? Weld rests his hopes on two things: New England Republicanism, which remains alive and well despite reports of its demise; and Trump's trial in the Senate, whose result may not yet be a foregone conclusion. On the former, note that Vermont, Massachusetts and New Hampshire all have G.O.P. governors, who, like Weld, are relative moderates compared to the rest of the party. New England Republicans can also be fickle in their loyalties, and late to make up their minds: Buchanan was also seen as a nonstarter against Bush Sr. just weeks before the 1992 primary. On the latter, Weld knows a lot about the impeachment process, having worked on the House Judiciary Committee's staff as a young lawyer in 1974 as it considered articles against Richard Nixon. Nixon, Weld recalled, "was essentially forced to withdraw from the presidency because he had been caught lying on television to the American people on one topic" a foothill of a deception compared to Trump's Karakoram range. Weld also knows how quickly things can turn in the course of a trial. "Cases don't look the same at the end as they do at the beginning," he noted, recalling his prosecutions of public corruption in the 1980s as United States attorney for the District of Massachusetts, where he won 109 convictions in 111 corruption cases. He believes that if four Republican senators join Democrats in voting to call witnesses Ohio's Rob Portman could provide the decisive vote then anything is possible. "The one sport where the unthinkable can become the inevitable in a matter of weeks or even days," Weld said, "is national politics, not the National Football League." Maybe that's right, assuming devastating testimony from John Bolton, the former national security adviser; former Rudy Giuliani associate Lev Parnas; and who knows who (or what) else. Not that any kind of testimony is likely to sway the 67 senators needed for a conviction. But it's not quite out of the question that it might, in the coming weeks, sway a large fraction of New Hampshire Republicans to vote against the president, thereby setting into motion forces that could bring him down. That's the hope, at any rate. The odds against? I'd say 20 to 1 which is to say, still worth a shot. If it fails, Weld said he would not run as an independent. Unlike in 2016, when he ran with Gary Johnson on the Libertarian ticket (and won 4.5 million votes) he has no interest in playing the spoiler to anyone in the race except Trump. The larger question if it fails is what becomes of the G.O.P. Weld compared the party to the late stage Whigs of the early 1850s, which were riven between the nativist Know Nothing faction and the antislavery wing that would become the Republican Party of Abraham Lincoln. Fortunately, the good side won that time. And this time? The best conservative case for rooting for a Democrat to win this fall any Democrat, including Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren is that it might be the only way to save the Republican Party from itself. That could happen if a critical mass of conservatives repudiates Trumpism or forms a new party on the Lincoln model. Weld calls it the Liberty Party. Alternatively a Sanders or Warren victory could send the G.O.P. to even further extremes. In politics, as in nature, forces always come in pairs. Democrats who want to see Republicans recover their center need to protect their own. In the meantime, wish Bill Weld well in his Granite State carom shot. The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We'd like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here's our email: letters nytimes.com. Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter ( NYTopinion) and Instagram. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Opinion |
Soul baring and furious, the documentary "One Child Nation" takes a powerful, unflinching look at China's present through its past. The main subject is the decades old policy that the country embraced in the late 1970s to limit population growth. In Dec. 1982, China ratified a constitution that decreed, "Both husband and wife have the duty to practice family planning." Another blandly worded constitutional article suggested the threat that hung over this duty: "The state promotes family planning so that population growth may fit the plans for economic and social development." In 89 minutes , the directors Nanfu Wang and Jialing Zhang unpack that threat and what it meant existentially for citizens and especially women with clarity, concision and strategically restrained outrage. It's a tough movie; at times, it feels almost unbearable. There are images here that you wish you'd never seen. I've watched "One Child Nation" twice, at times through tears, but there's nothing in it that's gratuitously exploitative. It is instead an essential account of one battle in the continuing war over women's bodies, one that, Wang forcefully observes, is in no way limited to China. (In 2015, China ended the one child policy, allowing married couples to have two children.) Wang serves as both the narrator and an engaging way into the story. (She also edited the movie and shares the cinematography credit with Yuanchen Liu. ) After some preliminary text, the filmmakers deftly commence chronicling Wang's story, which wends through the documentary, wedding the personal to the political. (Both Wang and Zhang were born in China.) Speaking in English and using a combination of archival and originally shot material, Wang introduces her family, including the younger brother who would have been abandoned if he had been born a girl. Born in 1985, Wang now is based in New York but the birth of her son brought her emotionally back to China. "Becoming a mother," she says with unforced feeling, "felt like giving birth to my memories." As she sifts through her past, Wang speaks about her parents, including the father who died young, and explains the significance of her name. Nan means man, she says, and Fu means pillar. "They hoped for a boy," she says, reminiscing over a series of childhood photographs. "When I was born a girl they named me Nanfu anyway," she continues, "hoping that I would grow up strong like a man." Her voice doesn't express any obvious editorializing; it doesn't have to. This intimate, inviting narration has its tactical uses, and dovetails with the deceptively casual manner in which "One Child Nation" unfolds. After her son is born, Wang returns to her hometown in the Jiangxi province of eastern China. Before long she is chatting with her mother about ordinary life ("Everything is a lot better," Mom declares); at another point soon after, Wang visits some wary locals, including a former village chief, now in his 70s, who describes how the one child policy was executed. These conversations, in turn, open into a larger, complex exploration of government policy and politics that grows more unsettling with each revelation. The history the filmmakers excavate is complex and the personal stories are often brutal. To administer the one child policy, China instituted a national task force that included family planning workers and relied on propaganda, surveillance and worse. Enforcement could be draconian. Families that didn't cooperate had their homes destroyed and their possessions seized. Women endured forced sterilizations and late term abortions; a midwife says she performed tens of thousands of sterilizations and abortions, adding, "Many I induced alive and killed." Families found their own ways of dealing with the policy, including abandoning infant girls in hopes that the next child would be a boy. Rural families could have a second child if the first was a girl. Wang's mother tells her that "when I was about to give birth to your brother," her grandmother said: "If it's another girl, we'll put her in the basket and leave her in the street." It's ghastly, and while you may want to look away, Wang and Zhang keep you watching. The documentary's personal quality, it turns out, isn't simply appealing; it also establishes a tight, empathetic bond between you and the filmmakers particularly Wang that grows stronger as the story progresses. As they begin looking into the history of the one child policy and its ramifications a horrific chapter involves abandoned newborns, kidnapped children, human trafficking and orphanages you are not just following Wang down an investigative rabbit hole. You are also worrying about someone poking around in official government business. (Wang's documentary "Hooligan Sparrow," about a Chinese activist, provoked similar concerns.) Wang's outrage over the one child policy remains at a steady simmer but is raw and palpable. That's never truer than when she addresses how everyone, family members and officials alike, insist they had no choice but to comply with the policy. Her anger at this cultivated passivity "this shared sense of helplessness," as she puts it is stark and very moving. Despite this, she and Zhang refuse to demonize those they interview, setting their sights on a larger target. It's to that end, and perhaps to prevent misunderstandings about their movie, they also remind you of the parallels between China and the United States. Each tries to police a woman's sovereignty over her body. Rated R for brutal stories and images of dead fetuses. Running time: 1 hour 29 minutes . | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Movies |
Tom Brady's six Super Bowl victories will keep him in the discussion of greatest N.F.L. players forever, but he has done something rarer in sports: He came to personify an entire region. In New England, where iconoclasm has been a virtue since the 1700s, Brady, a discarded college quarterback, was the plucky and ultimately beloved savior that turned the laughable New England Patriots into pro football's greatest dynasty. But on Tuesday, a momentous day in N.F.L. history, Brady announced that his time in New England was ending. An unrestricted free agent for the first time, Brady, 42, did not come to new contract terms with the Patriots and will soon begin the epilogue to his Hall of Fame career in another N.F.L. city. Late Tuesday night, a person familiar with Brady's plans who requested anonymity said that a deal with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers was expected to be finalized. That Brady's exit came on a St. Patrick's Day in Boston when the bars were closed will only further dampen the spirits of Patriots Nation. To his fans, Brady was more than the cynosure of a pro football powerhouse, he was a favorite son worthy of insular protection. When the N.F.L. made him the subject of a quizzical, protracted investigation about the inflation pressure of the team's footballs in 2015, New Englanders furiously rebelled as if the league were disputing the legend of Paul Revere. At the same time, the Patriots were often chastised for skirting at the edges of league rules: fined for illegally videotaping an opponent, suspected of falsifying injury reports and accused of skulduggery while substituting players during games. In time, everything about Brady, from his noted sense of fashion embodied by his marriage to the supermodel Gisele Bundchen to his health regimen, which includes Transcendental Meditation, yoga and strict diet choices, was a source of nationwide mockery. Now the Brady phenomenon, unrivaled in American sport, will find a new home. "My football journey will take place elsewhere," Brady, the 199th pick of the 2000 N.F.L. draft, who has won four Super Bowl Most Valuable Player Awards and never had a losing season as a starting quarterback, said in a statement posted to his social media accounts. "It is time for me to open a new stage for my life and career." "My first choice was to keep him," Kraft said. "If he wanted to be with us, we could have worked something out." None Week 11 Predictions: Here are our picks against the spread. N.F.L. Tightens Covid Protocols: As cases rise and Thanksgiving approaches, the league is requiring masks inside team facilities and increasing testing. The Packers' Defense Is Their M.V.P.: Green Bay's oft overlooked defense has kept the team from falling out of the Super Bowl chase. The Long Path to the Super Bowl: With 18 weeks in the regular season and fewer teams earning byes in the playoffs, the Super Bowl is still a long way off. Playoff Simulator: Explore every team's path to the postseason, updated live. Kraft added, "But anyone who's spent 20 years with us and won six Super Bowls earned the right to his freedom." Kraft said Brady was "like a son," and described their conversation as positive but "very emotional." It is Belichick, however, who oversees personnel moves for the Patriots and who had months to extend Brady's New England career but declined to do so. This week, with Brady's contract set to expire on Wednesday, Belichick spent the available money under the Patriots' salary cap to sign other free agents instead. There were still ways to find more contract money, if Brady was willing to make some financial sacrifices, which he had done for the team several times. But for months, Brady, a California native, has been signaling he might weigh a different path this year and was looking forward to free agency and the new possibilities it might hold. "Who knows what the future holds, so we'll leave it at that," Brady said after his final game in January, a shocking loss to the Tennessee Titans in the wild card playoff round. Belichick and Brady combined to win more Super Bowls than any other quarterback coach pairing in history. Belichick will now be under pressure to prove that his handling of Brady's only opportunity at unrestricted free agency the coach's most notable, meaningful personnel decision was as astute as the dozens of successful choices that preceded it. The Patriots will now move on to a younger quarterback. Brady's backup last season was Jarrett Stidham. In a statement issued by the Patriots, Belichick called Brady "the greatest quarterback of all time." "Tom was not just a player who bought into our program he was one of its original creators," Belichick said. The coach continued: "Tom and I will always have a great relationship built on love, admiration, respect and appreciation. Nothing about the end of Tom's Patriots career changes how unfathomably spectacular it was." Brady's career always seemed laced by a bit of folklore. In interviews years after he left the University of Michigan, he described how he ran from his California home crying as he watched the 2000 N.F.L. draft unfold on television, crestfallen that he was passed over in all the top rounds of the event. (Ultimately, he was taken in the sixth, or second to last, round.) And just as dramatically, there is a perhaps apocryphal story often told by Kraft that Brady, carrying a pizza box, had a chance meeting with Kraft in the parking lot of the team's home stadium after a preseason practice in 2000. Brady, Kraft said, told the owner, "I'm the best decision this organization has ever made." It was a presumptuous remark, but in the end, not inaccurate. The Patriots at the time had never won an N.F.L. championship and played in Foxborough, Mass., a remote, sleepy town roughly an hour from Boston. Practically an afterthought in pro football, the Patriots gave Brady his chance to start at quarterback only because of an injury to the team's star. But Brady had been undervalued, and he had an almost cosmic aura about him. When he led the Patriots to the 2001 playoffs in his first season at the helm of the team's offense, it appeared they would narrowly lose on a Brady miscue in the waning moments of a home game played in a snowstorm. Instead, an extremely obscure rule nullified Brady's transgression and he improbably led the Patriots to an unscripted, overtime victory. Soon, the Patriots were in the Super Bowl, albeit as two touchdown underdogs, but Brady stunned the vaunted St. Louis Rams to become the youngest quarterback in N.F.L. history to win a Super Bowl. Even more improbably, he would win three Super Bowls in his first four years as a starter. His every move off the field was noted as he achieved a celebrity status akin to Derek Jeter, LeBron James or Roger Federer's. When he tore a knee ligament on a legal hit to start the 2008 season and could not play for the rest of the year, the league altered its rules prohibiting the kind of collision that had caused the injury. Brady appeared on television shows, made movie cameos and pocketed millions of dollars for sponsoring everything from luxury watches to UGG boots. He became a fixture internationally with Bundchen, who, he liked to joke, earned more than twice what he did. The Patriots, meanwhile, grew into one of the N.F.L.'s most profitable teams. A new Patriots stadium, enveloped by a shopping mall, commercial district and hotels, made tiny Foxborough a household word synonymous with recurring championships. Brady, who arrived unheralded 20 years ago, did not fade away even as he aged, winning Super Bowls in three of his final five seasons. Last season, the Patriots lost in the first round of the playoffs. Brady's last pass of that game was uncharacteristically intercepted and returned for a touchdown. After the game, he was twice asked if he wanted to return to the Patriots, or expected to, and both times he referred to his Patriots experiences in the past tense. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Sports |
YOU WILL NEVER BE FORGOTTEN Stories By Mary South A virus snaking across the globe, headlines and viral tweets spreading conspiracy theories and panic, warnings not to touch one another or gather in person: Anxieties about a seemingly unstoppable pandemic would fit right into her debut collection, "You Will Never Be Forgotten," which examines the myriad ways technology deteriorates our mental and physical well being. Each of South's self contained, bleak and tightly wrought chapters centers on themes of isolation, loneliness and how screens aren't just a constant presence in our daily interactions, they're directing them. Virtual interactions, she suggests, are wrecking our sense of community, our relationships and even our bodies. The universes she conjures skate between science fiction like dystopia and an all too familiar present reality saturated by bad news, selfish people and endless memes. Jobs are meaningless, interactions hollow; a mordant humor underscores each character's essential bitterness. South is fixated in particular on women and the challenges they face in this always online era how they and their bodies can be manipulated, distorted, abused. Her depictions of pregnancy and childbirth bring to mind a Margaret Atwood esque darkness. As does her treatment of assault: In the title story, a woman stalks her rapist, first online and then in person. He's a successful venture capitalist; she does content moderation at a search engine, weeding out hate speech, pornography and terrorist executions from the public domain. Her obsession with him is so bleakly relatable it's almost comical: She doesn't follow him on social media, so "when the woman accidentally liked a post, she reached a new personal best in self hatred, just as the rapist was reaching a new personal best in his triathlon." Other stories zero in on characters' sad, and always failed, attempts to connect. One is set at a nursing home where caregivers eavesdrop on their elderly patients having phone sex. Another takes place at a camp where teenagers go to be weaned from their addictions to internet trolling. There's an architect whose daughter's birth defect is creative fodder for her "ravaging style," and a mother who believes she's birthed the same child again, a decade later. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Books |
Coursera, the California company that offers free college classes online, is forming partnerships with 10 large public university systems and public flagship universities to create courses that students can take for credit, either fully online or with classroom sessions. The move could open online classes to 1.25 million students at public institutions across the United States, and could help increase graduation rates by making introductory and required classes often a bottleneck because of high demand more widely available. Joining Coursera will be the State University of New York system, the Tennessee Board of Regents and the University of Tennessee systems, the University of Colorado system, the University of Houston system, the University of Kentucky, the University of Nebraska, the University of New Mexico, the University System of Georgia and West Virginia University. Some systems plan to blend online materials with faculty led classroom sessions. Others will offer credit to students who take the courses online followed by a proctored exam on campus. Some will use existing Coursera materials developed by faculties at elite universities, but others expect that their own faculties will develop materials for the Coursera platform, making them available at campuses systemwide and beyond. Faculty members will be able to customize existing courses, adding their own lessons and refinements, the company said. Coursera's fees will vary, depending on the size of the class. For a large course, universities would pay about 8 a student to use the Coursera platform. In addition, for use of content developed at a different university, Coursera would charge 30 to 60 per student per course. At SUNY, which has 468,000 students at 64 campuses, the Coursera partnership is tied to Chancellor Nancy L. Zimpher's announcement this year of Open SUNY, an online effort to enroll 100,000 new students and make it possible for a quarter of them to earn a degree in three years. Students could take courses at any campus, or at other universities on the Coursera platform, toward a degree at their home campus. Dr. Zimpher said it would be some time before a decision about how many of the system's online offerings, and which ones, would use the Coursera platform. Houston Davis, the chief academic officer of the University System of Georgia, with 314,000 students, said that while the system would start with just a handful of Coursera courses next fall, he hoped a full menu of general education courses the gateway classes usually taken in a student's first two years would eventually be available online through Coursera, for sharing by all the campuses. "As I've told the faculty, we're not outsourcing content delivery or casting students to the winds," he said. "But there are thousands and thousands of students in Georgia with a high school diploma, or some college but no degree, and we need to explore new ways to reach them." The partnerships represent a new direction for Coursera, and for the "massive open online courses," known as MOOCs, that have galvanized higher education over the last year, as millions of students worldwide registered for free classes that carried no credit. "Our first year, we were enamored with the possibilities of scale in MOOCs," said Daphne Koller, one of the two Stanford computer science professors who founded Coursera. "Now we are thinking about how to use the materials on campus to move along the completion agenda and other challenges facing the largest public university systems." Initially, Coursera recruited as partners only the elite research universities in the Association of American Universities. Now the company is eager to work with a broader range of institutions, to see how its materials can help more students complete their degrees. Other leading online providers, too, have begun projects with public universities: edX, the nonprofit collaboration founded by Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, has teamed with the University of Texas and some California State University campuses, and Udacity, another Stanford spinoff, with San Jose State University. Some faculty resistance has emerged recently against using online materials, even if they are blended with classroom work. This week, 58 Harvard professors wrote a letter seeking the creation of a new committee to consider the ethical issues related to edX and its impact on higher education. Both Dr. Koller and university officials involved in the new partnerships said that they had no intention of undercutting faculty control over course content and that the provision allowing faculties to customize online materials or put their own courses onto the Coursera platform was critical to the project's success. "We hope this will help public universities do more with the less they're getting in state support," Dr. Koller said. William G. Bowen, the former Princeton president and founding chairman of Ithaka, a nonprofit organization that studies online education, sees promise in the arrangement. "We have encouraged Coursera to work with the large state university systems, and the large state university systems to work with Coursera, because that's where the numbers are, and that's where there are the biggest issues in terms of cost, completion and access," said Dr. Bowen. "It's still exploratory, but this partnership has the potential to make real headway in dealing with those issues." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Education |
HONG KONG Adroitly alternating the threat of a trade war with the lure of its huge import market, China appears to have driven a deep wedge between Germany and the rest of the European Union. And it may even have caused a rift within the German business world. As Chinese and European trade officials stare each other down over next week's scheduled imposition of big tariffs on the 27 billion worth of solar panels China sells to Europe each year, Germany has come down on China's side. Notably, Berlin is backing Beijing, even though Europe's biggest producer of solar equipment, SolarWorld, is a German company that desperately wants the European Union to impose tariffs on the Chinese equipment. Unless the bloc backs off under German pressure, tariffs averaging nearly 50 percent would go into effect June 6, to punish China for the ostensible "dumping" of solar panels at below cost in Europe. "Europe cannot succumb to blackmail dumping is illegal, and the E.U. is obliged to defend itself by applying the international trade law," said Milan Nitzschke, a spokesman for SolarWorld and the president of ProSun, a lobbying group for the European solar energy industry. But many other German companies, which rely more heavily than other European manufacturers on China as a significant market for their exports whether Volkswagen cars or Siemens factory equipment or various other goods fear that the dispute over solar panels could lead to an all out trade war with China, which would be disastrous for their businesses. So far, the German government appears to agree. And little wonder. Germany is China's most important trading partner in Europe and China is Germany's leading partner in Asia. The Federation of German Industry estimates that one million German jobs are dependent on exports to China. Of those, the German solar industry has about 99,000. For half a century, Germany has been one of the most loyal and enthusiastic supporters of European unity. And since the advent of the European Union two decades ago, Berlin has advocated giving Brussels greater scope in the range of issues it handles. But the solar tariff showdown illustrates the way domestic priorities can sometimes trump pan European loyalties. Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany played host last weekend to Prime Minister Li Keqiang of China. More than a dozen trade agreements were signed, including between VW, Siemens, BASF and their Chinese partners, all supporting further expansion for German industry in the Chinese market and further investment by the Chinese in Germany. Special privileges that China offered German companies in its agricultural and recycling industries were clearly aimed at trying to win Berlin's support. After her meeting with Mr. Li, Ms. Merkel told reporters on Sunday that her government would lobby against the solar tariffs, saying the situation was "rather complicated." "Germany will do everything possible to resolve the conflicts that we have in trade," Ms. Merkel said, "through as many discussions as possible to prevent it from falling into a sort of conflict that ends in the raising of tariffs from both sides." Germany's economics minister, Philipp Rosler, said Monday that Germany had told the European Commission in Brussels that it was voting against the imposition of preliminary tariffs on Chinese solar panels. While the commission routinely consults member countries on preliminary tariffs, in the past that has tended to be more of a formality, and opposition has been infrequent. But on Tuesday, a trade official in Europe with direct knowledge of the matter said it appeared that a majority of the governments were officially opposed to preliminary tariffs on Chinese solar imports. And yet, the European commissioner for trade, Karel De Gucht, could still go ahead on June 5 and impose the preliminary duties the next day without any further approvals. That deadline was established at the opening of the commission's investigation in September. Whether Mr. De Gucht proceeds with the preliminary duties remains to be seen. But he "will not be intimidated in any way" and "will not bend to external pressure," Mr. De Gucht's spokesman, John Clancy, said at the commission's daily news conference Tuesday. The high cost of gas is forcing families to cut back on activities and essentials. Clearview AI does well in another round of facial recognition accuracy tests. Elizabeth Holmes will resume her testimony in her fraud trial. Preliminary tariffs, which would last six months, in the past have tended to be imposed as a negotiating ploy before the European Commission decides whether to impose so called final tariffs that last for five years. A voting majority of member nations could overturn the preliminary tariffs, although such a move would be unprecedented. Formal settlement talks with the Chinese could begin later in the year, even if Mr. De Gucht did impose the preliminary duties. "His door has been open for approximately one year in terms of trying to find an amicable solution to the solar panels case," Mr. Clancy said, referring to the informal discussions Mr. De Gucht has held with the Chinese. "The door is still open." The Chinese premier, Mr. Li, is clearly aware of Germany's power within the European economic bloc. Germany was the only member country he visited during his first trip to Europe since taking office in March, spending three days in Berlin before heading to Brussels for what proved to be blustery trade talks. During his Berlin visit, Mr. Li said China was willing to offer preferential treatment to German investors in its fast growing logistics, education and health care sectors. "China and Germany have a shared position of opposition to trade protectionism, and we have expectations that Germany will play an active role and promote a resolution of the frictions through dialogue and consultation between the European Union and China," Mr. Li said. Zhong Shan, China's vice minister of commerce and chief international trade representative, issued a strong warning to Brussels late Monday after his latest trade talks there failed to produce a compromise on solar panels. If the bloc proceeded with antidumping duties on solar panels, "the Chinese government would not sit on the sideline, but would rather take necessary steps to defend its national interest," Mr. Zhong said in a statement. The trade office in Brussels complained publicly in a statement late Monday about China's pressure on member governments. "It is the role of the European Commission to remain independent, to resist any external pressure and to see the 'big picture' for the benefit of Europe, its companies and workers based upon the evidence alone," said Mr. Clancy, the spokesman. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Global Business |
The triple bill "Chroma," "Multiverse" and "Carbon Life," running through Saturday suggests all of that, but it also reveals some of the characteristic weaknesses of Mr. McGregor's work. The movement is fascinating, unexpected and virtuosic. But it is all too often without the structural underpinning that organizes the viewer's eye, so that the intricacy and detail get lost in a blur of relentless activity. Intriguing ideas often remain the province of program essays rather than imbuing the dance. "Chroma," newly energized at these performances by the participation of members of the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater (which has the ballet in its own repertory), holds its own. Performed to a shimmering orchestral score by Joby Talbot and Jack White of the White Stripes and against a white, minimalist set designed by John Pawson, the dance seems to take place in a heaven of fiercely committed struggle and resolution. On Monday, it was invigorated by the Ailey Royal Ballet contrast of raw physicality and balletic finesse, and by the sheer scale lent to the movement by the height and muscularity of Jamar Roberts (terrific in a duet with a superb Lauren Cuthbertson) and Jeroboam Bozeman. In "Chroma," Mr. McGregor shows an ability to parse his material in ways that are easy to read, evolving between duets, solos and ensemble sections, with just enough speed, surprise and sensory overload to feel thrilling. He is less successful in "Multiverse," his 15th ballet for the company, which is a strange mix of compelling and dull. The ballet begins extremely well, with a grippingly difficult duet for two men (Luca Acri and Marcelino Sambe on Monday) set to one of Mr. Reich's earliest pieces, "It's Gonna Rain" (1965), which Mr. McGregor asked to use when the composer's new piece, "Runner," turned out to be just 15 minutes. The juxtaposition of this early work two recorded loops of a preacher's apocalyptic account of Noah's flood that are played in and out of sync and the new, more melodic, composition is a terrific one. And the fiercely mathematical structure, timing and precision of the male duet perfectly replicates the tension and fear evoked by the music. In the second section of "It's Gonna Rain," 14 dancers pour onto the stage, shaped in a V by grid patterned walls that then fill with fragmented images of Theodore Gericault's "Raft of the Medusa," and photographs of refugees spilling out of boats. (The set design is by Rashid Rana.) The allusions and correspondences are clear but feel theoretical; Mr. McGregor keeps the dancers going at such a relentless pace through a succession of pas de deux and interwoven group movements that after a while it is hard to really see, or feel, anything at all. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Dance |
Irish folk songs, princess gowns, a harp and 20 bouquets: The soprano Aprile Millo's concert on Wednesday at Zankel Hall, her first solo program in New York in 10 years, had it all, and then some. Ms. Millo, 60, who has rarely sung in public recently, says she still has her heart set on a return to the Metropolitan Opera, where she was among the reigning Verdi singers of the 1980s and '90s. So this was something of a trial run, and for the raucously adoring audience it was an exposure to an artist beloved as a keeper of the old fashioned flame of Italian opera that most people at Zankel hadn't heard live in years. Can the diva who once ruled the Met make a comeback? Joshua Barone and Zachary Woolfe, two of our classical music critics, were at the event, presented by New York City Opera, and they compared notes on the unique experience. WOOLFE So this wasn't your average song program. BARONE I couldn't tell whether I was at a rock concert or a recital, with the cheers of "Millo, Millo!" and "We love you, Aprile!" It began with a rose thrown to the stage, and I counted no fewer than five standing ovations from her (very vocal) fans throughout the night. What throwback glamour! WOOLFE Throwback glamour, too, in her gowns, which for the first half rendered her an emerald color, Isolde type medieval Irish queen and, after intermission, made her a sapphire vision out of "Frozen," complete with glittery cape. She coughed; she drank from a water bottle; she cracked jokes; she announced that she was cutting the scheduled first act aria from "Adriana Lecouvreur" because "Anna Netrebko sang it so beautifully I'm going to leave it to her." And the crowd ate it up. BARONE Her charisma certainly goes far, even if the banter pushed the evening to just over two and a half hours. And it made her all the more endearing that she wore reading glasses to read music from a stand, because, as she said, "Mother's memory isn't what it used to be." But did you notice a disconnect between her ease speaking to the crowd and the palpable tension in the opening numbers, six Italian songs she assembled for a rough narrative about the arc of a relationship? WOOLFE I don't like speculating about what artists are feeling, but I can imagine that, after so many years away, she was a little nervous, to say the least. So no, I didn't think that opening set really bloomed vocally. Throughout the evening, actually, her breath wasn't ample enough to fill out long phrases; her tone in the middle was a little grainy, the low register cloudy. But there was some big, velvety sound in what I'd call the upper middle range, and wistful eloquence when she went soft. The traditional Irish songs were lovely; I think everyone got the poignancy of "The Kerry Dance," "gone, like our youth, too soon." BARONE Those four Irish tunes, delicately accompanied by the pianist Inseon Lee and the harpist Merynda Adams, were the highlight of the night, or at least when her allure as a recitalist was at its peak. Like a cabaret singer, she blended Irish American family history and song "The Kerry Dance" was even more moving because Ms. Millo said her mother used to sing it to her at night. In "Danny Boy," her voice was raspy and not completely at ease in the lower range of the opening verse. But it blossomed, gloriously, into a moment out of Ms. Millo's salad days, rising from a fine quiet into a lushly phrased climax: "I'll be here in sunshine or in shadow." WOOLFE I also thought there was steady passion in a set of Rachmaninoff songs, which she dedicated to the Russian baritone Dmitri Hvorostovsky, who died in 2017. She offered another tribute, to old school italianita, with a spirit seeing monologue from Licinio Refice's "Cecilia," a vehicle for the great soprano Claudia Muzio. BARONE These tributes throughout the night were reminders of Ms. Millo's former colleagues and another time, when she was the diva du jour at the Met Opera and accumulating the passionate fan base we saw screaming in support of her on Wednesday. The big question, of course, is whether after being away from the Met for more than a decade she'll sing there again. WOOLFE I don't know if that's in the cards; the soprano baritone duet from Act III of "Aida," while expressive at Zankel, didn't make me confident that there was an evening length leading role in her voice, at least not right now. But who cares? She could bring a lot of joy to people doing concerts like this. There is clearly an audience hungry for her charm, her phrasing, her sincerity, the community she's gathered around her. (Her encore was a singalong "O Sole Mio.") Those things can sometimes feel missing from the New York opera scene these days, and Wednesday conjured the art form as it's meant to be: scrappy but also transcendent, both informal and grand. And brava for that. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Music |
MESA, Ariz. The final swing of David Ross's career produced a home run in Game 7 of the 2016 World Series. His Chicago Cubs teammates carried him off the field on their shoulders, and it was not the first time he had experienced glory. Three years earlier, as the Boston Red Sox catcher, Ross squeezed the final strikeout to end the season as a champion. "Every year before I come to spring training, I watch the two World Series videos, so it hits me hard," Ross said the other day, before a morning practice at the Cubs' spring training complex. "I laugh and cry. Every year, it never fails. The emotions pour out. It gets me excited for baseball, because I know that's what it's all about." The last three years, Ross reported to camp in a different capacity, as a special assistant to the Cubs' front office and an analyst for ESPN. He also wrote a book, competed on "Dancing with the Stars," and helped raise his three children. But Ross wanted a more direct connection to the game he had played for 15 seasons. Broadcasts were fun and he loved being part of a team, but he said he wanted a job with a clear result each day. He could find that only in the dugout. "That's where my heart was getting pulled," Ross said. "And who turns down the job to manage the Chicago Cubs? Not this guy." The Cubs have not returned to the World Series since that night in Cleveland when they ended their epic title drought. They have, in succession, lost the National League Championship Series; lost the N.L. wild card game; and lost their spot in the postseason. A nine game losing streak last September doomed the Cubs to an 84 78 record, five games out of the playoffs, and brought an end to Joe Maddon's tenure as manager. It is a discouraging trend line, if not too surprising. "Not to bring up a sore subject, but the Cubs went 108 years without winning we've gone three," starter Jon Lester said of the current team. "I don't want to bring light to losing, but I think it's the ebbs and flows of the game. Other teams get better." "When they won it in '16, you're starting to think dynasty," said Jason Kipnis, the Indians' second baseman in that World Series. "These guys were going to be good for a long time. They are good, they just haven't won it. It's hard to win it all the time. But this is still a very good team. I think they're more than capable of accomplishing anything they want to." 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. Kipnis joined the Cubs on a nonroster deal this winter to compete for the second base job, part of a surprisingly quiet off season. Theo Epstein, the president of baseball operations, suggested last spring that he could make major changes if the Cubs regressed. Instead, he mostly restructured the scouting and player development systems and hired Ross to erase the nagging sense that the core of the team had peaked. Nine players remain from the 2016 World Series roster. "We just haven't managed to get the most out of ourselves," Epstein said. "We haven't quite had the same intensity, focus, hunger, ability to overcome adversity and sort of lock in from Day 1." He added: "I think as a whole, as an organization, we haven't handled winning the World Series really well. Every team that wins it has to find a way to be just as passionate. It takes some longer than others, and we just haven't responded that well. Not to put everything on David Ross, but I think he's uniquely positioned to really reach these guys." The Cubs are running out of time. Four high impact players second baseman Javier Baez, third baseman Kris Bryant, first baseman Anthony Rizzo and left fielder Kyle Schwarber are eligible for free agency after the 2021 season. They remain productive but now have an understanding of how it feels to be humbled. "It's not like: 'Look what we did. And somehow they're doubting us?'" Rizzo said. "Anything people write, we've got to go out and change the narrative. It's on us. When things are going well, it's easy to be happy and joyful, everyone loves you. But when you're kicked in the teeth, how fast are you going to come back?" To Ross, 42, managing former teammates will simply be an extension of the role he filled as a player. As celebrated as he was for his cuddly "Grandpa Rossy" persona, Ross was also an enforcer in the clubhouse. "The players I know laugh when they hear: 'How is he going to tell these guys the truth?'" Ross said. "I didn't shy away from that, because at the end of my career, I knew I was on the way out the door and I just wanted to win. As much as these guys are my friends, I shot them straight." Lester, who won with Ross in Boston and Chicago, said camp had not seemed much different from the way it was under Maddon, who now manages the Los Angeles Angels. The Cubs carefully orchestrated their break from Maddon before the final game of last season, with Epstein and Maddon speaking to reporters together and pledging lifelong friendship. Maddon has since said that the Cubs' front office grew more controlling as his five year tenure wore on, and Epstein responded by saying he never wants to subvert his manager's authority. But he is counting on Ross to be blunt and direct in a manner that perhaps only an ex teammate can. "He can be harsh and brutally honest and hold players to a really high standard, but the players are still drawn to him and keep coming back for more," Epstein said. "There's a little bit of magic to his personality where he can cut right to the core of an issue and sometimes cut deeply but do it without wounding feelings." The core of this Cubs team might never add another championship ring. The rotation looks ordinary beyond Yu Darvish and Kyle Hendricks; closer Craig Kimbrel struggled last season; and the 2019 offense tied the lowly Detroit Tigers for worst contact percentage in the majors, according to Fangraphs. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Sports |
THREE recent stories got me thinking about a concept that is central to money, wealth and ultimately contentment but that is overlooked this time of year: knowing how much is enough. First, Mathew Martoma, a former portfolio manager at SAC Capital Advisors who is accused of insider trading, used a computer program to change some grades at Harvard Law School from B's to A's. Then Bank of America sent out a memo telling junior investment bankers to take at least four weekend days off a month. Last year, Goldman Sachs proposed that junior staff members take off the entire weekend, while this week Credit Suisse told the same group to take Saturdays off, unless they were working on an imminent deal. Lastly, there was the story about the efforts of Dominic Barton, the managing director of McKinsey Company, the consulting firm, to change the firm's culture. He was doing so to make sure the company was not linked to more scandals like the one involving a former executive, Rajat K. Gupta. Mr. Gupta was said to be worth 100 million when, according to authorities, he risked his reputation and freedom to supply insider information to his billionaire friend, Raj Rajaratnam, who ran the Galleon Group, a hedge fund, and had talked of investing in an idea Mr. Gupta had. While these three events may seem different at first glance, I think there is an underlying link around the notion of what is enough. (Having this discussion at all, of course, presumes someone is not just getting by.) In the cases of Mr. Martoma and Mr. Gupta, it was that desire for more, be it prestige or future wealth. For the senior executives at Bank of America, it seems to have been the realization that the most coveted jobs for college graduates were less about Wall Street and more about Silicon Valley, where working weekends comes with special perquisites that technology jobs have become known for. Those stories, coupled with the start of a new year when some people may have debt from the holidays and others have just received big bonuses seemed to make this a good moment to consider why some people have a sense of enough, while others never do. Mr. Martoma said he had changed his grades to impress his parents. "That's a bit immature to blame it on them," said Ellen Miley Perry, managing partner at WealthBridge Partners and author of "A Wealth of Possibilities: Navigating, Family, Money and Legacy." "But I understand where it is coming from." Ms. Perry, who advises families, said one of the crucial drivers for people lacking a sense of enough was feeling pressure from families to be better, smarter, richer. Even when it is not stated explicitly, she said, children of high achieving parents feel it. "I'm telling my clients to shrink the shadow," she said. "Talk to them about your failures and struggles. All they see is the neon lights of their parents' success." And when it comes to what the children are doing, parents would do better to instill a sense of enough in their children by taking the celebrations of success down a notch. "Get rid of the headline moments and embrace the small ones," she said. What Mr. Martoma did with his grades speaks to an incessant striving that starts in the affluent enclaves of America. This is the time of year when high school seniors who applied for early decision to their top choice of college but were deferred are scrambling to polish essays for all the other schools they hoped not to have to apply to. John Bogle, the founder of Vanguard Mutual Funds and author of "Enough: True Measures of Money, Business and Life," said one of his teenage granddaughters spent last summer with him and his wife, working a summer job. At the end, he asked her how she liked it. "She said, 'I liked it, but I didn't learn anything,' " said Mr. Bogle, who created the first widely available index mutual fund. "I said, You've learned all you needed to know. You learned to get to work on time. You learned to do an honest day's work for an honest day's pay. You learned that sometimes bosses are unreasonable and sometimes the customer is wrong but you have to pretend they're right." Yet Mr. Bogle, who worked in high school and through Princeton University, said his own sense of enough came from not wanting very many things in life, even after creating the second largest mutual fund company in the world, next to Fidelity Investments. "I am not saying in any way that I've taken vows of poverty," he said. "I just don't need any more." What Bank of America has proposed for young bankers tries to tackle the sense of enough from a different perspective: making banking desirable to its candidates who are turning to other options, like working for a technology start up. In the memo I saw, which was confirmed by a bank spokesman, the bank's head of global corporate and investment banking, Christian Meissner, wrote: "While we do not encourage weekend work, effective immediately, we recommend that analysts and associates take a minimum of four weekend days off per month." This is something banks have never had to do with their junior bankers, who were expected to work all the time and did. But the brightest ones have plenty of other options that allow for time outside the office. Eric Dammann, a Manhattan psychologist, said the memo meant well but missed the mark. "What's so paradoxical is it's trying to give them perspective, but it's giving them perspective from people who have no perspective," he said. "The problem is not that they're not taking Sunday off. The problem is that you have to tell them to take Sunday off." Those young bankers may be asking themselves questions about what is enough that previous generations did not and still don't, he said. "When you ask people what's your number, they'll throw one out, say 10 million," he said. "When they get there, I can't tell you how many people say, 'Well, maybe I need to work another couple of years to get to 12 or 15 million.' When you ask them what changed, they're baffled. They don't know." This leads to McKinsey, where cultural changes were precipitated by Mr. Gupta and a lower level consultant who shared nonpublic information. It would be easy to say that Mr. Gupta's lack of enough came from comparing his wealth to that of Mr. Rajaratnam, who was considered a billionaire before his insider trading conviction. That could be true. But Mr. Gupta's story also raises the broader question of how many people continue their quest for more without thinking why they are doing it. "There are lots of things that drive people down this particular road," said Robert Skidelsky, the author with his son Edward of "How Much Is Enough? The Love of Money, and the Case for the Good Life." "But they're not quite sure why, except that if you spend a lot of time doing things that you like instead of making lots of money, you're not judged as successful by society." And while Mr. Skidelsky, who is best known as John M. Keynes's biographer, advocates more leisure, he said that persuading people that they have enough when their neighbor has more is an age old problem that is tough to solve. "A lot of people want to be successful in what they do it's a perfectly noble aspiration," he said. "If you live in a society where success is measured mainly in money, that means you want more money." Dr. Dammann agreed that often people's sense of not having enough comes from a failure to think about how what they are doing compares with what they want. "If you're spending 98 percent of your waking time going to the office and you say, 'I want to be a better father,' you can show how that doesn't match up," he said. This is a good time of the year to make sure that what you say you want matches up with what you actually want. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Your Money |
Volkswagen will recall about 62,000 Tiguan sport utility vehicles from the 2009 11 model years because they can lose exterior lighting, the automaker informed the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. The action is part of a worldwide 2.6 million vehicle recall for lighting and transmission problems, Volkswagen announced Thursday morning in Germany. Prompted by complaints from 26 owners, N.H.T.S.A. opened an investigation into the lighting problem on Nov. 4. In a report to the safety agency, also on Thursday, Volkswagen said the problem stemmed from a fuse socket that could overheat and "cause a partial loss, but not a complete failure, of the vehicle's exterior lighting." However, some owners had complained to the agency of a complete loss of exterior lights. Volkswagen is not aware of any accidents or injuries related to the problem, the automaker said. Volkswagen will also recall 3,900 Jetta hybrids from the 2013 14 model years equipped with direct shift automatic transmissions with a DQ200 designation in the United States the automaker reported to N.H.T.S.A. Volkswagen says the synthetic fluid used in the gearbox can cause electrical problems by allowing corrosion of the internal lead frame of the gearbox. That could cause a loss of power to the front wheels. The synthetic fluid will be replaced with a mineral based oil. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Automobiles |
Fred Rogers first encountered a television in 1951 during his senior year at Rollins College. He hated it. "I saw people throwing pies in each other's faces, and I thought: This could be a wonderful tool for education! Why is it being used this way?" Rogers said in an interview in 1999. Intrigued by the medium's potential, he told his parents that he wanted to postpone his plans to become a Presbyterian minister in order to pursue a career in television. "They said, 'You've never even seen it!'" Rogers said. "And I said, 'Well, I've seen enough of it here that I'd like to try.'" His decision would have a profound impact. Rogers started in 1963 with a Canadian Broadcasting Corporation children's program. Three years later, in Pittsburgh, he created a regional show, "Mister Rogers' Neighborhood." In 1968 it began its run of more than three decades on national public television, where it became a gently instructive, supportive safe harbor for generations of children. To mark the 50th anniversary of the premiere, PBS will present a special on Tuesday called "It's You I Like," featuring celebrities like Michael Keaton, Sarah Silverman and others discussing Rogers's legacy and influence. The anniversary and special come at a time that finds Rogers, who died in 2003, re emerging as a pop culture figure. "Won't You Be My Neighbor?," a documentary about his life, made its debut earlier this year at Sundance, and an coming biopic, titled "You Are My Friend," will star Tom Hanks as the genial host. This month the United States Postal Service will release a stamp bearing Fred Rogers's portrait. The key themes of "Mister Rogers' Neighborhood" were kindness, civility and empathy, Margy Whitmer, a longtime producer, said. Another message: It's O.K. to make mistakes. "Fred thought it was important that kids understood that you've got to make mistakes so you get better and that making mistakes helps you grow," she said in a phone interview. A 10 year old visitor in an episode that aired on Feb. 18, 1981, led to one of the show's most famous segments. The child, Jeffrey Erlanger, a quadriplegic, described his treatment for a tumor discovered when he was 7 months old, and Rogers asked him to demonstrate how his electric wheelchair worked. "Fred was so intrigued with the fact that he was comfortable talking about what was going on with his body," Ms. Whitmer said. "He really wanted the audience to see that." Many years later, Mr. Erlanger surprised Rogers by appearing onstage at Rogers's Television Hall of Fame induction in 1999. Rogers jumped out of his seat, in a mixture of joy and shock, and ran onstage to greet him. "When you tell people that 'It's You I Like,' we know that you really mean it," Mr. Erlanger said to Rogers, who knelt next to his wheelchair. "And tonight, I want to let you know that, on behalf of millions of children and grown ups, it is you that I like." One of Rogers's biggest fans wasn't actually human. Koko, the celebrity gorilla known for her ability to communicate using sign language, watched his show regularly, and the Gorilla Foundation approached Rogers about doing a segment. The piece aired July 28, 1998, as part of a weeklong series called "You and I Together." "We had all these rules we had to follow," Ms. Whitmer said of the shoot. "'Koko likes kittens, so bring stuff of kittens.' And 'She loves red. You can't look her in the eye.'" Typically, only Koko's trainers were allowed into her environment. But Koko recognized Rogers when he walked in and almost immediately warmed to him, unzipping his sweater and blowing on a harmonica that Rogers brought as a gift. The most memorable moment from the visit was when Koko told Rogers that she loved him. "He just accepted Koko and was very relaxed with her and really showed no fear," Ms. Whitmer said. It was after this visit that Rogers met the writer Tom Junod for a now famous Esquire magazine profile. The article is the basis for the biopic. "I explained my idea, and he replied that it fit perfectly with a series he was filming about parents going away," Mr. Worden wrote in his book, "Falling to Earth." The first meeting was a 1971 field piece at Cape Canaveral, where Rogers interviewed Mr. Worden a few days before his prelaunch quarantine period. Mr. Worden displayed the inner workings of a spacesuit as "Fred worked through a long list of kids' questions about astronaut experiences," Mr. Worden wrote. "I would answer many of them, but I had to confess that I couldn't answer others until after the flight. I asked Fred to let me take the list into space," he wrote. "I would think about them during the flight, I promised, and then answer when I returned." In follow up segments Mr. Worden also shared space food and described flying for three days by himself in orbit while the rest of his team was on the moon's surface. "Fred was doing this when the space program was very new," Ms. Whitmer said. In 1981, Rogers devoted several episodes to an unusual topic for a children's show: divorce. His staff convinced him that parental separations had become common enough that children needed to understand how to deal with the potentially traumatic experience. During an episode that aired Feb. 16, Mr. McFeely the postman from the Speedy Delivery Service played by David Newell becomes visibly uncomfortable in discussing divorce and hurries out of Rogers's house. At this point, Rogers, in his genial, friendly manner, explained the concept to children, a soft piano tinkling in the background. "I know a little girl and a little boy whose mother and father got a divorce," he said. "And those children cried and cried. You know why? Well, one reason was that they thought it was their fault. But of course, it wasn't their fault. Things like weddings and having babies and buying houses and cars and getting divorces are all grown up things." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Television |
KAOHSIUNG, Taiwan The problem with bananas, for the Taiwanese farmers who grow them, is that they are not pineapples. Taiwan's banana exports have fallen sharply, and prices the farmers get have fallen, too. The solution would seem simple: better marketing, as has been done for almonds, raisins or pomegranates in the United States. The Taiwan Banana Research Institute wants to make the banana a luxury product. It hopes consumers will consider the Pei Chiao bananas, the Cavendish variety most often grown in Taiwan, a delicacy for which they will pay a premium price. "Our goal is to position Taiwanese bananas as a brand and appeal to consumers who are willing to pay extra for fruit because it tastes better and was grown using safer farming methods," said Chao Chih ping, director of the institute. But so far, the country's efforts have fallen short. Taiwan's banana industry needs to discover a hit product that will increase demand and raise prices. Banana farmers look to the example of the pineapple cake, the snack savior of Taiwan's pineapple industry. In 2006, the Taipei city government began promoting the pastry as a souvenir of Taiwan, holding annual baking competitions and marketing it to tourists. That year, total revenue earned by Taiwan's pineapple cake industry was 2 billion Taiwan dollars, about 67 million, according to the Taipei Bakery Association. By 2012 revenue had grown to 39 billion Taiwan dollars, driven by bakeries like SunnyHills, which ships pineapple cakes to buyers in mainland China, Hong Kong, Japan and Singapore. "We hoped that banana cake could be the next pineapple cake, but that hasn't happened," said Chuang Lao da, a director at the Council of Agriculture's Agriculture and Food Agency. Taiwan's surplus bananas have also been turned into chips, puddings and a domestically consumed liquor. Unlike the hearty American version, which is made with mashed bananas, Mr. Wu's recipe features slices of fruit. Though many of Mr. Wu's baked goods are sold online, his banana bread cannot be shipped because the fruit will lose its texture and flavor. It is available only at his Kaohsiung bakery, where about 30 small loaves are baked each day and sold for 80 Taiwan dollars, about 2.70 each. Open or closed on Thanksgiving? Here are stores' plans for Thursday and Friday. "People in Asian countries aren't used to baked goods made with bananas. They have to become accustomed to the flavor, which we hope to do by gradually promoting our banana bread," he said. Mr. Chao thinks researchers could extract tryptophan, an amino acid, from surplus bananas for use as an antidepressant. Peels may be a source of antioxidants and fiber can be harvested from stems and turned into textiles. The American corn industry may be a better model for Taiwan's banana farmers than pineapple cakes. Most corn is turned into ethanol, animal feed or high fructose corn syrup, but it can also be used in the manufacturing of cosmetics, pharmaceuticals and textiles. "We're looking at products like nutritional powder made from processed bananas, which is becoming more popular in Japan as a health and weight loss aid," said Mr. Chuang, the government agriculture official. Lu Ming, a farmer, has given up waiting for the banana's ascendence. In 1967, Mr. Lu decided to switch from farming rice to bananas. For two decades Mr. Lu, 76, cultivated his banana trees in the Qishan district, rising at 5 a.m. and working until sunset. He earned enough money to hire workers who helped harvest the fruit and package it for shipment. Farmers could not compete with lower labor costs in the Philippines, however, and exports of Taiwan bananas began to plunge. According to the Council of Agriculture in Taiwan, banana exports to Japan, a major market, plummeted to 9,161 tons in 2012 from 42,600 tons in 1967. By the early 1980s, Mr. Lu could no longer afford laborers, and he and his wife began selling candy from sidewalk stalls to make ends meet. Now Mr. Lu, who still farms and works odd jobs, says there are years when his banana harvest earns less than 100,000 Taiwan dollars far below the average annual income in Taiwan of 452,400 Taiwan dollars, about 15,200. Businesses have sprung up around the memories of the boom times. Once a warehouse for bananas before they were loaded onto ships destined for Japan, the Banana Pier in Kaohsiung is now a seaside entertainment complex. Banana New Paradise in Taichung appeals to nostalgic diners by combining a restaurant with an indoor re creation of a 1960s Taiwan village. The Qishan based rock group Youthbanana organizes tours and working holidays at nearby farms, including the fields belonging to Mr. Lu. He says he never wanted to stop cultivating bananas, even as it became less profitable. "When I was younger, we'd roast bananas like yams, feed the peels to pigs and use the leaves to steam buns or fold them into toy boats for our children," he said. "It wasn't just about growing and selling. It's a culture that I want to survive." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Global Business |
SAN FRANCISCO After leaving Harvard's doctorate program in systems biology to join Google as a software engineer in 2013, James Damore joked on his Facebook page that he knew he had made the right move as he enjoyed a morning smoothie with oats. It was the type of workplace perk that is standard for Google employees. That initial assessment of Google seemed far removed from the contentious memo written by the 28 year old Mr. Damore last week that has enraged advocates of greater diversity in the technology industry. The memo has also served as a rallying cry for conservatives and the alt right who view Google and Silicon Valley as a bastion of groupthink where people with different opinions are shamed into silence. His 10 page memo, titled "Google's Ideological Echo Chamber," argued that "personality differences" between men and women like a woman having a lower tolerance for stress help explain why there were fewer women in engineering and leadership roles at the company. He said efforts by the company to reach equal representation of women in technology and leadership were "unfair, divisive, and bad for business." Google fired Mr. Damore on Monday and said that he had violated the company's rules by "advancing harmful gender stereotypes." In a short email exchange on Monday after his firing, Mr. Damore, who was a senior software engineer in Google's search division, said he had not expected this type of reaction when he shared his missive last week. "As far as I know, I have a legal right to express my concerns about the terms and conditions of my working environment and to bring up potentially illegal behavior, which is what my document does," he said. Mr. Damore said he would probably take legal action against the company. Like many new hires at Google, Mr. Damore boasted an impressive academic background. A competitive player of chess and computer strategy video games, he studied molecular and cellular biology at University of Illinois Urbana Champaign, according to an online resume. He conducted research in computational biology at Harvard, Princeton and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology before joining a Ph.D. program at Harvard. He dropped out before completing the program. In a footnote for his memo, Mr. Damore said he considered himself a "classical liberal," an ideology associated with advocacy of free market economics and libertarianism. Mr. Damore's memo was rebuked by a number of his fellow employees. Few Google employees came out publicly in defense of him, but some surreptitiously showed their support by leaking screenshots from internal Google posts of employees saying they planned to create blacklists of people who did not support the company's diversity efforts. The screenshots appeared on Breitbart News, which has championed Mr. Damore's memo. "Despite what the public response seems to have been, I've gotten many personal messages from fellow Googlers expressing their gratitude for bringing up those very important issues which they agree with but would never have the courage to say or defend because of our shaming culture and the possibility of getting fired," Mr. Damore wrote in an addendum to his original memo. "This needs to change." Others outside the company came to Mr. Damore's defense. Eric Weinstein, a managing director at Thiel Capital, an investment firm run by Peter Thiel, a billionaire and supporter of President Trump, said Google was sending the wrong message to women. Women only account for 31 percent of Google's work force and 20 percent of its technical staff, according to the company's latest diversity reports. But the company does have a rich history of fostering top technology talent like Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook's chief operating officer; Marissa Mayer, Yahoo's former chief executive; and Susan Wojcicki, who runs YouTube. Megan Smith, a former vice president at Google who recently served as the chief technology officer for the United States under President Barack Obama, said the views promoted by Mr. Damore were common in Silicon Valley. "It's insidious and it's all around the culture," Ms. Smith said in an interview with Bloomberg Television. The flap over Mr. Damore's criticism of Google's diversity efforts comes as the company has tangled with the Labor Department over its pay practices. The department has not charged Google with any wrongdoing, but a department official said there was evidence that the company systematically paid women less than men. Google denies this is the case. Mr. Damore's comments also raised another issue around Google's peer review system. Employees at the company are expected to judge their colleague's work in a peer review process that is essential to deciding whether someone gets promoted. By expressing certain beliefs such as that women are more prone to anxiety the concern was that he could no longer be impartial in judging female co workers. For a company steeped in a rich history of encouraging unconventional thinking, the problem was not that he expressed an unpopular opinion, but a disrespectful one, according to Yonatan Zunger, who left Google last week after 14 years at the company to join a start up. "We have a long history of disagreement over everything from technical issues to policy issues to the most mundane aspects of building management, and over all, that has been tremendously valuable," Mr. Zunger said in an email. "The problem here was that this was disrespectful disagreement and there's really no respectful way to say, 'I think you and people like you aren't as qualified to do your job as people like me." Wesley Chan, a venture capitalist at Felicis Ventures and an early Google employee who left the company in 2014, said Google had no choice but to fire Mr. Damore. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Technology |
Say hello to this little reunion. The 35th anniversary of Brian De Palma's "Scarface" will be celebrated at the Tribeca Film Festival this year, organizers announced Monday. The film will play April 19, followed by a conversation with Mr. De Palma and the stars Al Pacino and Michelle Pfeiffer. And on April 26, the festival will hold a 25th anniversary screening of the Holocaust drama "Schindler's List," including a conversation with its director, Steven Spielberg, and the actors Liam Neeson, Ben Kingsley and Embeth Davidtz. The festival also announced its Tribeca Talks series, conversations with artists from film, television and music. Participants this year include Robert De Niro (a founder of the festival, being interviewed by Bradley Cooper), John Legend, Sarah Jessica Parker, Spike Lee and Alec Baldwin. This year's edition runs April 18 29. For more information, go to tribecafilm.com. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Movies |
On a cold and rainy night earlier this year, I found myself at Hoyaken, a matchbook size bar in Matsuyama, a city in the southwest corner of Shikoku, the least visited of Japan's four main islands. In Shikoku dialect, Hoyaken means "but anyway," and there at the bar, chopsticks rested on a perfectly still peanut shell, while sake and literary conversation flowed. The bar's owners, husband and wife Tomoko and Satoshi Kadoya, talked to me about their favorite poets, both Japanese and American. But haiku was never far from their minds. Hoyaken is stocked with magazines and bilingual glossaries of "kigo," haiku words used to connote the season like cicada for summer, scarecrow for autumn and the winter blooming camellia. It is an ideal setting to write these 17 syllable seasonal poems using the classic 5 7 5 syllable stanzas or to drop the syllable form altogether and go freestyle as most haiku enthusiasts do these days. This year, to celebrate Shiki's 150th birthday, the city launched a program of haiku related events, including a recent haiku photo contest, a haiku sensory trail where you can experience the hourly chimes and dancing figurines of the Botchan Karakuri wind up clock or the scent of incense at Ishite Ji temple, and the haiku bar trail, where you can hone your haiku techniques while nursing a boozy concoction inspired by your own verse. The idea of the haiku bars comes from the Matsuyama resident Kim Changhee, a haiku writer, illustrator and editor of Haiku Magazine's 100 Year Haiku Plan . "New Orleans has its jazz bars, so Matsuyama should have haiku bars," he said in terms as simple as a haiku itself. Three bars have joined the haiku trail so far and a few hotels in nearby Dogo Onsen, an outlying neighborhood known for its ancient hot baths, are expected to join in 2018. At each location, visitors are expected to write their own haiku. Haiku pen names are given for free and it's 900 Yen (about 8) to experience a haiku inspired cocktail. I tried my hand last winter at Bar Caravan, a now defunct bar in the city center. Instead of a drink, the bespectacled bartender Chieko gave me a pen and paper. I wrote on it: I handed it to the bartender. She read it, looking puzzled, then exclaimed "Ah, Kawasemi!" Kawasemi is Japanese for the colorful kingfisher bird. She scurried away and returned, smiling with a martini glass filled with the unmistakable crystalline blue Curacao liquor and vodka. By day, Chieko is a member of a jazz haiku group, but by night she pours spirits in exchange for verse. She now serves haiku cocktails at Riff Bar, a few blocks from Hoyaken. Haiku cocktails run the gamut some are subtle and emphasize local liqueurs made in Shikoku's Ehime Prefecture, known for its unique varietals of citrus like iyokan, mikan and even yuzu, while others feature technicolor concoctions using Midori and Curacao. (Unless you love those syrupy spirits, be careful which colors you wax poetic about.) In addition to experiencing the haiku bars, I dropped by a haiku jazz bar called Monk with a group of haiku writers where we listened to the all female Japanese jazz quintet Ladybird. I also spent a few days exploring the city's haiku trail, stopping to write additional verse at some of the 93 haiku boxes (including 10 new ones) around the city's historic sites and parks, like hilly Dogo Park, with its ponds, cherry trees and Shinto shrine lined trails. It was there that I spent a gray afternoon bird watching for Kawasemi, the common kingfisher who would later inspire my haiku . Haiku boxes can be found at the 7th century hilltop Hogon ji Temple, at an ice cream stand on the trail along the 400 year old stone walls outside Matsuyama Castle, one of Japan's 12 original castles, and outside the famed Dogo Onsen, a vintage bathhouse that inspired Studio Ghibli's anime classic Spirited Away. At each box , there's a pen and paper for visitors to compose haiku and deposit it in a drop box where it will later be collected. Every two months, the best Japanese haiku are chosen and presented in the local newspaper, Ehime Shinbun. The best haiku by foreign enthusiasts like myself are only selected once a year. A man and his kingfisher can dream. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Travel |
A federal panel of medical experts on Friday sharply rejected arguments in support of a closely watched new Alzheimer's drug, saying the evidence wasn't persuasive enough for the drug to be approved as the first new Alzheimer's therapy in nearly two decades. The nonbinding vote by an advisory panel for the Food and Drug Administration does not mean the agency won't approve the drug, aducanumab, made by Biogen. But it signals that many experts in the field are not convinced of its effectiveness, another major setback in the long journey to find a treatment for Alzheimer's that works. In a seven hour virtual meeting on Friday, the panel showed pointed skepticism, which contrasted markedly with a presentation by Dr. Billy Dunn, director of the Food and Drug Administration's office of neuroscience, who said that "the evidence supporting its approval appears strong." "There are literally a dozen different red threads that suggest concerns about the consistency of evidence," said one member, Dr. Caleb Alexander, a professor of epidemiology and medicine at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. He said he could not understand "how the F.D.A. could conclude that there is substantial evidence of effectiveness." Ten of 11 panel members voted that it was not "reasonable" to consider the research presented as "primary evidence of effectiveness of aducanumab for the treatment of Alzheimer's disease." The 11th member said he was uncertain. It was a stunning turn of events, coming two days after the F.D.A. had posted documents that suggested most of the agency's reviewers considered the evidence convincing, a development that sent Biogen's stock price soaring by more than 40 percent. Most of Friday's votes occurred after the financial markets had closed. Nearly six million people in the United States and roughly 30 million globally have Alzheimer's disease, a number that is expected to more than double by 2050. Aducanumab which is given as a monthly intravenous infusion and would cost about 50,000 per year would be the first medication to address cognitive decline by attacking the core biology of Alzheimer's disease. It has been considered a potential medication for the roughly two million Americans estimated to have mild Alzheimer's related cognitive decline. The drug's path through clinical trials has been rocky, with only one of two Phase 3 trials showing positive results and those results emerged only from an analysis of additional data after the trials were stopped in March 2019 by an independent data monitoring committee because the drug didn't appear to be working. The F.D.A. usually requires two convincing studies for a drug to be approved, although the agency has made exceptions, especially for severe or deadly diseases for which little or no treatment is available. Samantha Budd Haeberlein, a Biogen senior vice president and head of neurodegeneration development, told the panel that "the benefit risk profile for aducanumab is favorable and potentially prolonged patients' independence by several months." Dr. Dunn of the F.D.A. said the single positive study was "highly persuasive" and provided "substantial evidence of the effectiveness of aducanumab." The positive study found that patients on a high dose of the drug, 10 milligrams per kilogram, declined at a rate 23 percent slower than in people who had received a placebo. Dr. Dunn said the agency's analysis concluded that the results of the negative study, which did not show that patients on the high dose benefited, did not contradict the successful study or show that the drug was ineffective. Some members of the panel were uncomfortable with the idea that successful results of one trial should be considered over unsuccessful results of the other trial. Dr. Scott Emerson, a professor emeritus of biostatistics at the University of Washington, said that having to ignore the negative study was like saying, "I'm going to, you know, choose two numbers and only tell you what the highest number I chose was." He later added that he was "very disturbed" that the F.D.A. seemed to be "starting out with the assumption that the treatment works" and then trying to figure out why the other study failed. He said the agency's position seemed "weighted" toward the drug company, adding that "all of this was just terrifically one sided." Of the 11 voting committee members, eight said that they did not even think the single study provided strong evidence that the drug was effective. Two members said they were uncertain. The only member to vote that the single study's evidence was convincing was the committee chairman, Dr. Nathan Fountain, a professor of neurology at the University of Virginia. "I think there are lots of small issues with it, but the trends, I think, are all in the right direction," he said. There are currently five medications that have been approved to treat cognitive and memory symptoms, but they typically delay decline for only several months. The last new drug was approved in 2003, and none of them address the specific disease process of Alzheimer's. Aducanumab is a monoclonal antibody that targets the beta amyloid protein that clumps into plaques in Alzheimer's disease. Many other drugs that reduce amyloid accumulation have not been shown to slow symptoms, so if aducanumab is determined to be effective, it would support a long held theory that attacking amyloid can help if done early enough in the disease process, when memory and cognitive difficulties are still mild. Some experts said that if aducanumab were approved, it would make it less likely that patients would participate in studies for other Alzheimer's drugs that might ultimately work better. "I think if we approve something where the data is not strong that we have a risk of delaying, good treatment and effective treatment for more than a couple of years for many years," said another panel member, Dr. Joel Perlmutter, a professor of neurology at the Washington University School of Medicine. "I think there's a huge danger in approving something that turns out not to be effective." Several experts, including a Mayo Clinic neurologist who was a site investigator for an aducanumab trial, have said that another rigorous clinical trial should be conducted before a decision is made on whether the drug should be made available. "Perfection may be the enemy of the good, but for aducanumab, the evidence doesn't even rise to 'good,'" the neurologist, Dr. David Knopman, wrote in a comment submitted to the panel before Friday's hearing. Dr. Knopman, who sits on the advisory panel but was recused from the hearing because of his work with the aducanumab trials, added, "Contrary to the hope that aducanumab will help Alzheimer patients, the evidence shows it will offer improvement to none, it will harm some of those exposed, and it will consume enormous resources." Documents posted by the F.D.A. in advance of the hearing gave the impression that most of the agency's reviewers were satisfied that data from the successful trial was strong and that safety issues, which mostly involved a type of brain swelling, were manageable. But another F.D.A. reviewer expressed concerns in the documents. Tristan Massie, an F.D.A. mathematical statistician, wrote that he believed "there is no compelling, substantial evidence of treatment effect or disease slowing and that another study is needed." Other experts said that the degree of benefit the trial claims to show is slight, slowing cognitive decline over 18 months by half a point on a 3 point cognitive scale, the primary measurement in the study. "My view is that it doesn't do anything," said Dr. Michael Greicius, medical director of the Stanford Center for Memory Disorders. At Friday's hearing, Dr. Budd Haeberlein said that based on another scale used as a secondary measure, the drug might prolong decline in a person's daily functional ability by seven months in an 18 month period. Patients' groups argued forcefully for approval, citing the devastation caused by the disease. "While the trial data has led to some uncertainty among the scientific community, this must be weighed against the certainty of what this disease will do to millions of Americans absent a treatment," the Alzheimer's Association wrote in a letter to the panel. "The potential to delay decline would be denied to millions, and that time lost for those spouses, partners, moms, dads, grandmothers, grandfathers, aunts, uncles, friends, and neighbors cannot be recovered. In the balance of these considerations, we urge approval." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Health |
Credit...Sasha Arutyunova for The New York Times Like many first time parents, Jon Borgese, a tech executive in Manhattan, had heard the buzz around the Baby Brezza formula maker, a countertop device that automatically dispenses warm bottles of formula at the touch of a button. The 200 machine, widely available at retailers like Amazon, Target and Buy Buy Baby, markets itself as the "most advanced way" to mix powdered baby formula and water "to perfect consistency." But after Mr. Borgese and his wife, Nicole, started giving the machine mixed formula bottles last year to their 2 month old daughter, Lily, she became fussy and began to look thin, he said. The couple rushed her to the pediatrician, who confirmed that Lily was losing weight and sent her for medical tests to determine the cause. The problem was the Baby Brezza gadget, which had dispensed watery formula with insufficient nutrients for the baby, said Dr. Julie Capiola, Lily's pediatrician. Mr. Borgese said he had since filed two class action lawsuits against the machine's maker, claiming the device was defective. "You don't want any baby or any parent to go through this," he said, adding that Lily gained weight once the family stopped using the formula maker. "It was very, very upsetting." Mr. Borgese was one of many parents who have reported issues with the Baby Brezza formula machine, which was the top selling baby feeding accessory in the United States over the last two years, according to the NPD Group, a market research company. On Amazon, Facebook, Better Business Bureau and parenting forums, people have posted more than 100 complaints saying the machines dispensed incorrect or inconsistent amounts of water or baby formula. Separately, five pediatricians described to The New York Times how they had recently treated babies whose parents had fed them Brezza dispensed bottles for failure to thrive, a condition caused by lack of nutrients. The doctors said the health risks could be even more severe because infants' digestive systems aren't developed enough to process formula that is too watery or too concentrated. David Contract, marketing team lead for the Betesh Group, a private company in Newark that makes the Baby Brezza devices, said the company had carefully calibrated the machines to work with more than 2,000 types of baby formulas and regularly tested the devices for precision. He said people must clean the machines frequently to prevent powder buildup, which could cause the systems to dispense watery formula requirements he compared to installing infant car seats correctly. "We are confident our machine works properly and accurately when it's used right," he said. He later added, "I do think there are people who don't use it properly, who get a bad outcome, who get a watery bottle because they're not cleaning, they're not using the right settings." Mr. Contract said the Betesh Group believed that the lawsuits were an "attempt by a plaintiff's lawyer to troll for additional plaintiffs by seeking media attention." The Brezza machine had no other insurance claims or lawsuits against it, he said. The problems that families said they have had with the Brezza machines illustrate the risks of adopting novel health related devices before they are on the radar of federal regulators. While the Food and Drug Administration regulates infant formula as a food and the Consumer Product Safety Commission oversees the safety of "durable" baby products like cribs, each agency initially said the other was responsible for vetting possible inaccuracies with automated baby formula dispensing machines. "Is anybody overseeing devices like this?" said Dr. Gayle S. Smith, a pediatrician in Richmond, Va., who said she had treated a Brezza fed baby for failure to thrive. Or, she added, "is it babies who are supposed to fail to thrive in large enough numbers" before regulators intervene? Mr. Contract said the machines were safe and met F.D.A. requirements for materials that come into contact with food. Dr. Jacqueline Winkelmann, a pediatrician in Orange, Calif., said she had seen babies admitted to a hospital for weight loss because they were given bottles that had been mixed incorrectly by hand. "I believe the Baby Brezza Formula Pro is a great way to ensure baby gets the right amount of nutrients in every bottle," said Dr. Winkelmann, who consults for the Betesh Group. The Betesh Group began selling automated formula dispensing machines in 2013. The devices took off in 2018 when the company introduced a new model, the Baby Brezza Formula Pro Advanced. About half a million of the Brezza machines have been sold in the United States, the company said. Several similar machines are also available, with brand names like Baby EXO and Zomom. To use the Brezza machine, people fill compartments for water and infant formula powder. They also set the machine to their desired number of ounces and specific type of formula. Mr. Contract said the devices can save parents several minutes per formula bottle, a welcome convenience in the middle of the night. On BabyList, a popular site for expectant parents, more than 60,000 people or about 6 percent of users included the Brezza machines on their baby gift registries last year. Many parents swear by the devices. "Instead of stumbling around in the middle of the night, you go into the kitchen, press a button on the machine, go get the baby and, by the time you get back to the kitchen, the warm bottle is ready," said Linda Murray, senior vice president of consumer experience at BabyCenter, a pregnancy information site where parents have debated the pros and cons of the devices. But Mr. Borgese and some other parents said that even when they carefully cleaned, set and filled the machines, the devices seemed erratic sometimes producing opaque, milky looking formula and other times dispensing watery looking, translucent formula. In a federal class action case he filed on Feb. 12, Mr. Borgese argued that the Betesh Group knew the devices did not mix the appropriate amount of formula and failed to warn parents and physicians. The Better Business Bureau has posted an F rating, a failing grade, for the Betesh Group, partly because of many complaints against the company and how long it took to respond. Mr. Contract said the company had resolved most of the complaints submitted to the Better Business Bureau and believed that they were generally not "an accurate reflection of our customers' satisfaction with our products." He added that the company's customer service agents provide extensive troubleshooting, often helping people solve user errors like insufficient cleaning. As a precaution, he said, the machines are programmed to stop working and beep after every fourth bottle when they need to be cleaned. The Betesh Group is developing a third generation "smart" version of the device, which will be introduced this summer. Mr. Contract said it would include an app that enabled parents to direct the Brezza machine to prepare formula bottles from their smartphones. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Technology |
Won't you be his neighbor? David Byrne doesn't actually make that request in "American Utopia," his cloud sweeping upper of a touring show, which opened on Broadway at the Hudson Theater on Sunday. Yet when the silvery, gray suited pop star poses another musical question "Will you breathe with me?" you may find yourself thinking of the theme song of "Mister Rogers' Neighborhood." I'm not the first person to note similarities between Fred Rogers the cardigan wearing children's television host (and the subject of a new Tom Hanks movie) and Byrne, the New Wave musician who writhed into the spotlight performing "Psycho Killer" in the 1970s. But as I watched "American Utopia," the comparison felt especially apt. Rogers was a benevolent, ditty dispensing educator in civic virtue and human tolerance, who hymned the miracles of beautiful days and kindly friends, while acknowledging the fallibility of us all. So, I would argue, is the David Byrne of today. He just happens to infuse his teaching with a beat that turns everyone into a spasmodic St. Vitus dancer . For the generation that came of age listening to Talking Heads, the band that Byrne fronted, he was a cool emblem of alienation, a sexy geek who always seemed to be dancing with himself. But Byrne has now passed middle age (he's 67), as have those who first saw him flailing like a dervish at the Manhattan punk palace CBGB. In "David Byrne's American Utopia" an expansive, dazzlingly staged concert he emerges as an avuncular, off center shepherd to flocks of fans still groping to find their way. Like him, or the version of himself he presents here, they're heading into the twilight, wondering why the hell they haven't grown up yet. Byrne has some prescriptions for them and, by extension, for a United States that has, to borrow from one of his vintage songs, stopped making sense: Reach out, make a close study of people other than yourself, and please do not forget to vote in the next elections. (A voter registration team is stationed in the lobby.) This advice comes free of medicinal aftertaste or agitprop. Byrne puts the central tenet of making contact with a world outside your mind into dynamic, sensory practice onstage. He begins the show, Hamlet like and alone in an all gray set, contemplating a model of the human brain. Singing with solemn wonder, he itemizes its different parts. This strange, mazelike organ would seem to encourage a state of endless interiority. Yet there is the possibility of "connection to the opposite side." Enter the opposite side, person by person, through the magically porous, shimmering gray curtains that encase the stage. The musicians and backup singers materialize as a multiplying, multinational ensemble. Annie B Parson's exacting, exultant and altogether astonishing choreography often has them moving in a single, tidal wave. Yet each of these gray clad beings is irreducibly individual, and even with Byrne center stage, you want to watch everyone else all the time, too. Fans of Byrne will recognize this device of an empty stage being gradually populated and animated by the arrival of music makers from the great 1984 Jonathan Demme concert film "Stop Making Sense." There's a difference, though. In that film, even when he's sharing a mic with another singer, Byrne registers as an isolated being, in radioactive communion with himself alone. (He has spoken of probably being on the milder end of the autism spectrum.) In "American Utopia," he's in propulsive dialogue with everyone onstage, and with the audience, too. In recent years, Byrne has become fascinated with color guards, those precision tooled marching band units. (The infatuation was translated into a 2017 documentary.) The ensemble in "American Utopia" is as synced as any military corps. And the marvel of what these musicians do while playing their instruments skip, hop, leap, run in circles and bend like Gumby, always (like Byrne) in bare feet. Gospel call and response is translated into a physical conversation, rapturously underscored by Rob Sinclair's lighting. And yes, there is room for the manic flailing steps that are Byrne's signature. ("I dance like this, because it feels so damn good/If I could dance better, well, you know that I would.") Though the name of the sitting president is never spoken, our topsy turvy political climate is acknowledged by the performance of a nonsense song by the Dadaist artist Hugo Ball, prefaced by a description of the confusing, dangerous era from which it emerged (in 1930s Berlin). And the ensemble brings a flaming rage to Janelle Monae's protest song, "Hell You Talmbout," an angry, invigorating memorial to African Americans killed by police officers. Like Bruce Springsteen's smash Broadway show of two seasons ago, "American Utopia" repositions a onetime rebel as a reflective elder statesman, offering cozy cosmic wisdom. The angry young Byrne is acknowledged here with rousing versions of the classics "Burning Down the House" and "Once in a Lifetime." Time hasn't exactly mellowed these songs. But they now sound oddly hopeful in their bewilderment. When Byrne and company perform the 1985 hit "Road to Nowhere" as an encore, there's the jubilant reassurance that if the journey still has no destination, at least we're all in it together. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Theater |
Just more than a week after the Rangers bought out the last year of his contract, goaltender Henrik Lundqvist signed with the rival Washington Capitals on Friday, the first day of N.H.L. free agency. Lundqvist, 38, had played his entire 15 year career with the Rangers, setting nearly every franchise goaltending record including 459 wins and 64 shutouts in 887 games. Lundqvist signed a one year, 1.5 million contract with the Capitals, whom he defeated in the playoffs three times, including a seven game series in 2015. He will become teammates with Alex Ovechkin, who has scored 706 goals over his 15 seasons with the Capitals. Both players were rookies along with Pittsburgh's Sidney Crosby in the 2005 6 season after the previous season was canceled because of a labor dispute. "At this point in my career, I want to have a chance to win,'' Lundqvist said during a Zoom news conference. "I have to say the Capitals checked every box; a team that understands winning, a great coaching staff and an opportunity to play some games. Those were the main factors for me." Lundqvist became an unrestricted free agent after the Rangers decided to buy out the final year of his contract on Sept. 30. He will share goaltending duties in Washington with the 23 year old Russian Ilya Samsonov, who won 16 games as a rookie in 2019 20. Braden Holtby, who helped the Capitals win the Stanley Cup in 2018, left for the Vancouver Canucks via free agency. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Sports |
The Shed Is Finally Open. Here's What You Need to Know. None The lights inside the McCourt Theater at the Shed, which opens on Friday. Steve McQueen's five concert series, "Soundtrack of America," an exploration of the influence of African American music on contemporary culture, will be performed here. Mark Wickens for The New York Times Part of what makes this weekend's official opening of the Shed so momentous is the sheer breadth of its programming. That is also what makes it a bit overwhelming. Over the course of its inaugural season, the Shed the low lying, eye catching, 475 million arts center amid the towers of Hudson Yards will present concerts by Bjork, a history of African American music and exhibitions featuring the works of emerging New York City artists. It will pair Gerhard Richter with Steve Reich, Ben Whishaw with Renee Fleming, kung fu with the songs of Sia. Here, we offer a guide to navigating the Shed, which officially opens on Friday: what's on each floor, where to pause for a meal or a drink, and even how to get inside the building in the first place. Mark Wickens for The New York Times ENTRANCES Take your pick. The main entrance, on the south side of the building at West 30th Street, leads to the Shed's lobby, restaurant and shop. It's situated directly underneath the High Line. There is another entrance on the north side, facing the Hudson Yards plaza. COAT CHECK The north entrance will take you directly here. SUBWAY The closest line is the 7; the entrance is just north of the Shed, between 33rd and 34th Streets, on the Hudson Yards plaza. ESCALATORS These run along the south side of the building. Stairs and elevators are also available. Above and below, a numbered guide to some of the highlights of the Shed. 1. LOBBY Here you'll find ticket sales for the Shed's programming, along with a shop (by McNally Jackson) and Cedric's at the Shed, a restaurant and bar by Danny Meyer's Union Square Hospitality Group. Cedric's will be open to the public throughout the day. 2. LEVEL 2 GALLERY Saturday through June 2, this capacious space will host "Reich Richter Part," an installation that pairs the visual art of Gerhard Richter with live musical performances of original scores by Steve Reich and Arvo Part. The Richter Part collaboration is an import from the Manchester International Festival; but Mr. Reich's contribution, a musical analogue of Mr. Richter's "Patterns" series, is a premiere. Inside the Shed's lobby, visitors will find Cedric's, a restaurant and bar by the star chef Danny Meyer's Union Square Hospitality Group. Mark Wickens for The New York Times 3. THE McCOURT When the Shed's signature shell is extended over the plaza, the building adds a cavernous space ideal for big concerts. (This is where Bjork will perform in May.) And that's exactly how the Shed officially opens on Friday: with the five concert series "Soundtrack of America," an exploration of the influence of African American music on contemporary culture. It was conceived by Steve McQueen, will spotlight up and coming musicians, and runs through April 14. 4. THE PLAZA If the shell is nested over the building, however, the plaza is in the open air, and open to the public. Here the Shed has a permanent installation, Lawrence Weiner's text based work "IN FRONT OF ITSELF." 5. LEVEL 4 GALLERY Opening here on Saturday, and on view through May 30, is an exhibition of new and recent work by the artist Trisha Donnelly. 6. KENNETH C. GRIFFIN THEATER Inaugurating this 500 seat space is "Norma Jean Baker of Troy," which runs from Saturday through May 19. The genre blurring work, by the poet Anne Carson, is a monologue for Ben Whishaw, with sung interludes by the superstar soprano Renee Fleming. Above and below, a numbered guide to some of the noteworthy sights near the Shed. 7. THE SHOPS Beyond this retail space's razzle dazzle are dining options from reliably talented chefs like Thomas Keller (TAK Room), David Chang (Kawi), Costas Spiliadis (Estiatorio Milos) and Jose Andres (Mercado Little Spain). The Snark Park offers changing exhibitions, and more art is to be found inside Neiman Marcus (including a wall of photographs by Bill Cunningham). 8. THE VESSEL Thomas Heatherwick's Instagram magnet requires tickets for timed entry. (They can be booked online.) It has been compared to a shawarma and a trash can; what will it look like to you? 9. EDGE The observation deck at 30 Hudson Yards a spear shaped cantilevered balcony that sticks out 65 feet from the skyscraper is opening soon. 10. THE HIGH LINE Before Hudson Yards there was the High Line, designed in part by Elizabeth Diller, the same architect behind the Shed. Visitors can come and go from the elevated park, whose northernmost stretch surrounds Hudson Yards, near the Shed's main entrance at 30th Street. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Art & Design |
When Dr. Jennifer Kemp's husband got advanced rectal cancer, she got an unexpected patient's eye view of her profession. Her husband was having scans every three months, terrified each time that they might reveal bad news. Dr. Kemp, a Denver radiologist, would sit down with her husband's radiologist afterward. Even so, it could be an hour before a scan was ready to be viewed. "I couldn't believe how anxiety provoking it was to wait even an hour," she said. "Sometimes he would get a scan I didn't feel comfortable interpreting and he had to spend 24 hours waiting and I had connections," she added. "That was absolute torture." What must other patients go through, she wondered. Is there any reason that results are a private communication between a radiologist and referring physician? Is there any reason that patients end up waiting days, sometimes weeks, for their doctors to reveal what scans showed? Could radiologists actually talk to patients and give them results immediately? It seemed to be a problem that could be solved, Dr. Kemp said. She now heads a committee of the Radiological Society of North America that strives to make radiologists more accessible to patients, including by giving test results right away if asked, by either meeting with patients or talking to them on the phone. Dr. Kemp does that and gives all her patients and their doctors her direct telephone number. The American College of Radiology has a similar initiative. The groups say the time is right patients are more and more insistent on knowing how and why doctors make decisions about their care. And more and more medical centers and doctors' offices are allowing patients to log on and see their medical records, which can include reports on scans. Neither group is advocating laws requiring radiologists to tell patients their results. Instead they hope to make their case by demonstrating how some radiologists have successfully managed to communicate with patients and by letting radiologists know this is something patients want. The groups discussed their ideas with members and published them in journals and on their websites. But many people never consider asking to speak to a radiologist and many doctors seem to have no relationships with radiologists they just hand patients a prescription for a scan and let them get it wherever they want. So change might take some doing. And some radiologists say talking directly to patients is anathema. A radiologist, despite an M.D. degree, cannot answer questions about drugs or surgery and without knowing the clinical history may not know if abnormalities are important. And would doctors even refer patients to a radiologist who blurts out a scan's results? For now with one big exception how quickly a patient gets the results of a scan, including M.R.I.s, PETs, CTs or ultrasounds, can be idiosyncratic and depend on the particular doctor and the particular patient. Yet patients want to hear from radiologists, the groups say. One admittedly unscientific indicator was patients' comments to the American College of Radiology on Twitter. They said they did not want to wait for results and could not understand why a radiologist would tell a doctor their results but not them, said Dr. Geraldine McGinty, chairwoman of the group's commission on economics. Nonetheless, Dr. McGinty said, if a scan shows something really serious or unexpected, she tries to contact the referring doctor before telling the patient. "If this is not possible and the patient asks to speak directly with me, I'll make the call to the other doctor as soon as possible, ideally before the patient leaves my office," she said. The exception is mammograms, where most radiologists meet with women immediately after their scan and those who don't send women their report. They have to, notes Dr. McGinty, herself a mammographer. The Mammography Quality Standards Act of 1992 requires that women get their results from a radiologist and says that if the scan indicates a woman needs a biopsy, the radiologist has to have a face to face conversation with her. But despite the efforts of the two radiology groups, many radiologists remain sequestered in dark rooms, reading scans, sending reports to doctors within 24 hours, and letting the referring doctors decide how and when to talk to patients. Radiologists just do not have time to meet with many patients, Dr. Beaulieu said, adding that he and others especially worry about what happens when the news is bad. "At that point the radiologist may be capable of transmitting the information but the obvious next question for the patient is, 'What do I do now?' which, as nontreating physicians, radiologists are not trained to answer." Patients in that situation could panic, frantically calling their doctor, who may not even have seen the result yet. Dr. Beaulieu deals mostly with orthopedic surgeons who, he says, "don't want some radiologist telling them or their patients what is wrong or what to do." Changing the system, Dr. McGinty says, requires a culture shift. It starts, she says, with radiologists getting to know referring doctors. "It can mean getting on the phone and talking to physicians." She does that and says her referring doctors "are comfortable with me speaking to the patients because they know who I am." The radiology group also posts videos that show radiologists how to talk to doctors and patients. Dr. McGinty suggests that patients who want to speak to a radiologist should simply ask. "Most radiologists certainly should be available," she says, adding that at her own institution, Cornell, they are. Patricia Pede, a 33 year old melanoma patient in Dallas, said it never occurred to her to speak to a radiologist. She has frequent scans, and is always scared while she waits days and, once, as long as two weeks, for her doctor to get back to her. "It's hard to keep it off your mind," she says. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Health |
Up on the Roof, Flesh and Blood Dancers Move and Connect The dancer Chelsea Ainsworth stood before a small outdoor audience on Friday night, about to perform live for the first time in 25 weeks. Beneath her tap shoe clad feet was a plywood stage that she and her husband, the visual artist Kyle Netzeband, had spent the past two days constructing by hand. The elevator in their East Village building was broken, so they had to lug materials up six flights of stairs. But that wasn't going to stop them: They were determined to bring dance to a live audience, on the rooftop where the finished stage now stood. "It's time to put people in front of other people and really connect with one another, even if that means we're six feet apart and wearing masks," Ms. Ainsworth, 32, said in an interview earlier that evening. "That's what we're good at." In just a few minutes, she would change into costume and begin welcoming guests with an infrared thermometer, hand sanitizer, waiver forms and disinfected pens to the first dance event of Arts on the Roof, a new performance series affording some of the few opportunities to watch live dance in New York this summer and fall. Four years ago, Ms. Ainsworth and Mr. Netzeband, together with the singer Adrian Rosas, founded Arts on Site, a multidisciplinary arts center on St. Marks Place (in the same building that housed the once bustling, now permanently shuttered school Yoga to the People). Largely advertised through word of mouth, the space became home to frequent performance parties, during which audience members would crowd into one of the three studios, drinks in hand, around a small clearing for performers. (Since March, the parties have been held online twice a month.) When the coronavirus pandemic brought in person performance to a halt in New York, Ms. Ainsworth and Mr. Netzeband, who live in the Arts on Site building, migrated upstate, where they run a more rural arts residency and retreat center near New Paltz. While quarantining there with a group of artists, Ms. Ainsworth, a Juilliard School graduate, created a dance film with her friend and collaborator Jessica Smith. But she felt eager to get back in front of a live audience. "I'm not trained to show my work on a screen, to reach through the screen," she said. "I'm trained to perform on a stage." In looking for ways to safely present live dance, Ms. Ainsworth and Mr. Netzeband requested rooftop access from their landlord, thinking he would say no. "Normally it's like, 'Don't ever go on the roof,'" Ms. Ainsworth said. But to her surprise, he agreed to their proposal for an outdoor performance series, provided they took certain precautions. They now have performances scheduled through September a mix of music and dance and permission to use the roof through November. For the inaugural dance shows, Ms. Ainsworth chose the Bang Group, a percussive ensemble led by David Parker (with whom she has danced since 2010), and Dual Rivet, her collaborative duo with Ms. Smith. Mr. Parker, 61, whose troupe appeared on Friday in a serendipitous break between rain showers, hadn't performed since January 2019 because of a knee replacement surgery, a hiatus that was supposed to have ended in April. He returned with a version of Merce Cunningham's "50 Looks," a collection of poses, mostly for the upper body, to which he added an undercurrent of tapping feet. "I realized I don't like to make decisions in some sort of abstract mental space," he said in an interview after the show, reflecting on "Sparkle Again," a new piece he presented. "I like to be working things out with the dancers." In tap shoes, point shoes and bare feet, the work's cast of six follows a score by Pauline Kim Harris, written for shoes as rhythmic instruments. To create it, Mr. Parker met with the dancers in pairs, bringing the full group together for only two rehearsals. While Dual Rivet, on Sunday, offered works full of daring physical contact Ms. Smith and Ms. Ainsworth have been living together for five months, making them comfortable throwing, catching and climbing all over each other the members of Bang Group didn't touch. In their first moments onstage, several masked dancers stood silently in a circle and raised their arms, fingertips nearly meeting but not quite, an apt metaphor for the evening's reconvening. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Dance |
Sarah Fuller, With a Kickoff, Is the First Woman to Play Football in a Power 5 Game None Sarah Fuller became the first woman to play during a regular season game in one of college football's Power 5 conferences by booting a kickoff on Saturday for Vanderbilt to start the second half against Missouri. Fuller, a senior and the starting goalkeeper for Vanderbilt's women's soccer team, was tapped to play football this week after every member of the Commodores' kicking squad was forced to stop practicing when at least one of them came into contact with someone who tested positive for the coronavirus. Fuller wore the No. 32 the same number she wears on her soccer jersey and a helmet with the phrase "Play Like a Girl." "It's just so exciting that I can represent the little girls out there who wanted to do this or thought about playing football or any sport, really," she said after the game. Fuller helped Vanderbilt clinch its first Southeastern Conference women's soccer title since 1994 with a 3 1 victory over Arkansas last Sunday. She was planning to head home to Wylie, Texas, for the Thanksgiving holiday when her soccer coach called her with the opportunity to kick this weekend, she told reporters after the game. "I'll be there within the hour," she recalled saying to Ken Masuhr, the team's associate head coach. Fuller gave the team a pep talk during halftime, when Missouri led 21 0, and said she wanted to see more energy on the sidelines. But she added that she had to keep herself calm to avoid getting too pumped up. "Football is a lot slower, there's a lot of lull time," she said of the difference between the two sports. "In soccer, it's just one after the other, you're constantly engaged." "I was just really calm," she added about making the kick. "The SEC championship was more stressful." With her parents watching from the stands while wearing handmade "Play Like a Girl" masks provided by one of Fuller's friends, Fuller opened the second half with a low kick that bounced to the 35, where Missouri pounced on it for no return. The play was by design, Vanderbilt football Coach Derek Mason said. Mason said he was impressed with Fuller's willingness to try something new, especially when so many of the team's players had either gone home for the holidays or been forced to quarantine. "She could have easily said no, but instead she prepared all week and did what she was supposed to do," he said. "She was as prepared as anyone for this game." Fuller is not the first woman to play college football in the top tier of Division I, the Football Bowl Subdivision: Katie Hnida was the first woman to score in an F.B.S. game as a place kicker for New Mexico in August 2003, and April Goss scored while playing for Kent State in 2015. Ashley Martin is credited as the first woman to score in any N.C.A.A. Division I football game for Jacksonville State University, which is in the Football Championship Subdivision. And Becca Longo became the first woman to receive an N.C.A.A. football scholarship to a Division II school when she signed to Adams State as a kicker in 2017 (she never kicked for the school because of injury, transferring to the Gila River Hawks of the Hohokam Junior College Athletic Conference in 2019). Vanderbilt was blown out by Missouri, 41 0, and Fuller did not have an opportunity to attempt a field goal. Vanderbilt is 0 8 this season. Fuller's hasty addition to the team was one example of many of the virus's impact on college football this season. The Commodores were originally supposed to play the University of Tennessee, but that game was postponed to accommodate for several postponements elsewhere in the SEC as teams struggle to contain the virus. Other conferences, like the Big Ten and Mountain West, have simply canceled games amid outbreaks, while the Ivy League halted fall and winter sports this year altogether. "Contact tracing continues to be the biggest contributing factor to game interruptions," SEC Commissioner Greg Sankey said in a news release about the schedule on Monday. "We will continue to manage the remaining weeks of the football schedule to allow for as many games to be played as possible." The virus has surged across the country in the past few weeks. In Tennessee, where Vanderbilt is located, hospital leaders published an open letter to residents on Wednesday urging them to limit gatherings and wear masks. The letter, signed by Dr. Wright Pinson, the chief health system officer at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, said that over the past month, hospitals in Middle Tennessee have had a 72 percent increase in Covid 19 patients and that they expected only more increases in weeks to come. "If this trend continues, our hospital systems could soon be overwhelmed, and that would compromise the ability to serve all patients, not just those with Covid 19," the doctors said in the letter. Football players and female athletes alike offered Fuller words of encouragement posted to social media, among them Billie Jean King, Dak Prescott and Nick Folk, a New England Patriots kicker. "Be as confident as you can, don't worry about anything," Folk said in a video posted to Twitter by the Patriots. When asked after the game if the team would have Fuller kick against Georgia next week, Mason said: "If she wants to kick and she's available, we'd love to have her." Fuller seemed up to the challenge. "I would love to get out there and score a field goal," she said. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Sports |
The class was supposed to be temporary, a quick dive into the link between literature and anthropology. The professors had no idea if students would even come. It wasn't mandatory, they wouldn't get credit and it was taking place at night. Friday night. So no one was more surprised than Kara Wittman and Joanne Nucho when 24 people showed up for their "Essay as Resistance" class, which had its debut at Pomona College in March 2017 and ran for three 90 minute sessions. "We were shocked that it was so popular," said Ms. Wittman, an assistant professor of English at Pomona, in Claremont, Calif., who taught the class with Ms. Nucho, an assistant professor of anthropology there. But that's exactly the appeal of the so called pop up class, an experiential, interdisciplinary, extracurricular workshop that appears briefly and usually vanishes. "It was a time when our community on campus and nationally was divided around issues of race, and we wanted to give our students the opportunity to discuss some of these challenging topics," said Kimoi Seale, assistant dean of students, who taught the "White Privilege" class. Pop ups have appeared in various incarnations for a while, but are often traced to Stanford University's Hasso Plattner Institute of Design, commonly called the D.school, for seasoned instructors to try out new course content. More recently, the D.school's University Innovation Fellows program began to use pop ups as tools for students to be more engaged in their own learning environments. The D.school's pop ups have since become "Pop Outs," which have a narrower focus. Timothy Moore, 25, was a University Innovation fellow in 2015. After being introduced to the idea of pop ups, he brought the concept back to James Madison University in Harrisonburg, Va., from which he graduated that year. The university's X Lab has since held pop ups in everything from building ukuleles to ice cream making using liquid nitrogen. "A lot of teachers don't realize that the pop up will make their curriculum stronger," said Mr. Moore, who now works at Claremont College's Hive, a program at the school that brings students together across disciplines to practice human centered approached to real world problems. "They're a low risk way to try out a class." The beauty of the pop up is that anything goes. Some classes last a few weeks; others run for a day or weekend. Some are faculty led; others are taught by students, administrators or even local businesspeople. Some are for credit; others are strictly for fun or, at least, personal enlightenment. And sometimes the classes are so popular that they return as full fledged, for credit courses, which is what happened with the "Essay as Resistance" class. "Our goal here is to enhance the creative capacity of our students and teach them to navigate ambiguity, and to foster experimental learning," said Fred Leichter, founding director of the Hive, officially the Rick and Susan Sontag Center for Collaborative Creativity. "The pop ups are designed as a way to offer things that are often mash ups between different disciplines. To me it's one of the purest forms of learning. Both parties are there to create something together." Here is a look at some pop ups at schools around country. When fires ravaged Southern California last summer and major flooding followed soon after, Char Miller took notice. Mr. Miller, director of environmental analysis at Pomona College, has been teaching about fire for over two decades. "But the particular dynamic between fires and flood, which was so horrifying this winter we have this incredible opportunity to show students on the ground what that actually means," he said. "It's a way for students to understand that they live in a particular place and that the natural systems here function differently than from wherever they come." To be taught this fall by Mr. Miller and Jeff Groves, an English professor at Harvey Mudd College. The next subject, in a class running this month and next: eviction. "Most of the people who get evicted don't take any steps to fight their notices in court. That means there's more eviction notices because it's easier for landlords to use the court system without opposition," she said. "If we can inform people of their rights in responding to an eviction notice, we might get more protection to them. To use the process. So the class is a lab where my students, legal aid and the court help them think through what interventions they can send out to encourage people to take action." Antonia Messuri, the assistant dean for academics at St. Michael's in Colchester, Vt., regularly counsels students who are stuck in their lives. "Often our students are coming from a place of being told what to do, how to do it and when it's due their whole lives," she said. This class, which runs through April, "is an opportunity for them to say, 'This is my life, my education.' " Students will read articles on self determination and Buddhist writings, with a focus on meditation, resilience and grit. The bulk of the pop ups at James Madison are designed to be a mix of science and technology. In this class, on April 20, students learn the basic rules for safe flying, practice flight controls and then test their skills by flying through something they can relate to: a Quidditch course. "It's designed to expose them to lightweight drones and the opportunity to take the full drone class where they learn how to use drones to solve real world problems," said Nick Swayne, founding director of the university's X Lab. "We will also have small model rockets available for students to try. These rockets are used extensively by our geology department to increase student interest in atmospheric studies." 'After Parkland: Gun Culture, Gun Violence and the Shifting Politics of Gun Control," Bennington College Since the spring of 2015, Bennington College in Bennington, Vt., has been offering pop up courses. In this course, taught by State Senator Brian Campion, who is also the director of public policy programs in the Center for the Advancement of Public Action, students will explore gun culture, gun policy, the continuing work of policymakers at the state's Capitol, and whether or not such actions are likely to be the most effective to keep citizens safe. The course, which runs through April, will bring in guests with different perspectives. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Education |
A year after James S. Snyder announced his decision to step down as director, the Israel Museum in Jerusalem has chosen his successor: , currently the director of the David Azrieli School of Architecture at Tel Aviv University, will begin the position on Feb. 19. Mr. Snyder, who served for 20 years and becomes director emeritus, will continue in the newly created role of international president, developing the museum's network of organizations, programming, collections and facilities. Mr. Neuman is also the founder of the Azrieli Architectural Archive at the Tel Aviv Museum of Art and the co founder of Open Source Architecture, an international research collaborative. "Eran is someone who knows how to build institutional resources, create collaborative initiatives and bring new ideas to life," Mr. Snyder said in a statement. "He is both an innovator and a scholar." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Art & Design |
During earthquakes, spider webs of faults open up below ground, allowing gases deep within our planet to percolate upward. Researchers have now compiled the first long term record that shows a relationship between earthquakes and the release of carbon dioxide gas. While the amount of carbon dioxide released by tectonic activity is a pittance compared with the billions of tons that human activity pumps into the atmosphere each year, the research published Wednesday in Science Advances sheds light on the planet's climate controlling carbon cycle. "It's modulating Earth's climate on geological time scales," said James Muirhead, a geologist at the University of Auckland in New Zealand, not involved in the research who praised the data set a team of Italian scientists had collected. The results could also potentially pave the way toward forecasting seismic activity. The region around Italy's central Apennine Mountains, roughly an hour east of Rome, is riddled with faults. Devastating earthquakes have repeatedly struck the area, including the L'Aquila earthquake in 2009. That temblor, which killed hundreds of people, made headlines again in 2012 when a judge ruled that seven Italian earthquake experts were guilty of manslaughter because they had failed to warn nearby residents of the potential risk. The area's seismic activity has been linked to escaping carbon dioxide. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Science |
LOS ANGELES Last spring, John B. Quinn, the founder of the litigation firm Quinn Emanuel Urquhart Sullivan, took his extended family to Croatia. Over the course of eight days, he and his second wife, five grown daughters, their boyfriends, husbands, and children rumbled through the country in a bus. In the riverfront city Zagreb, a tour guide mentioned a regional highlight: the Museum of Broken Relationships, a crowd sourced art installation started in 2010 by former lovers Drazen Grubisic and Olinka Vistica. Mr. Quinn was intrigued. "A museum of broken relationships? You've kind of got to go see that," he said recently here at the downtown headquarters of Quinn Emanuel. On display were the relics of romances gone wrong: a wedding dress from a three year marriage, red heels worn by a dominatrix who realized she was servicing her high school boyfriend, a teddy bear holding an "I Love You" heart. Mr. Quinn, a hard driving lawyer whose yearly firm wide hikes have been called death marches, was moved. "I thought more people should see this," he said. "This is something that a lot of people can relate to, maybe, especially, in L.A. A lot of people here come pursuing dreams, and a lot of wreckage ends up here." Within days, he sent an email to Mr. Grubisic and Ms. Vistica. "It was very short," Ms. Vistica said. "'You have a wonderful museum and I want to bring it to L.A.' It was straight to the point." This is how Mr. Quinn ended up, last month, celebrating the opening of the Museum of Broken Relationships on Hollywood Boulevard, an extension of the Croatia concept that he funded and founded. More than 100 exhibits range from everyday artifacts (a spare key never given to its intended recipient, a mirror that didn't go with an ex's decorating scheme) to signifiers of deeply troubled unions (a pair of silicone breast implants a woman got at her boyfriend's urging). Some radiate sorrow, like the blue chiffon blouse a wife wore the day her husband told her he was moving out. All objects are submitted anonymously and come with stories explaining their significance. Despite the museum's bright white walls and high ceilings, it's hard not to walk out with a heavy heart, the remnants of so many soured relationships trailing like baggage. But on opening night, Mr. Quinn, 65, fizzed like champagne, snacking on canapes by Wolfgang Puck and clinking glasses with high profile well wishers such as Dawn Hudson, the chief executive officer of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, which Mr. Quinn has represented since 1987. "This is knowing him on another level," said Ms. Hudson, standing under a Calder esque mobile of origami cranes (made by a man for his ex girlfriend). What kind of lawyer decides to open a museum? To understand Mr. Quinn's latest quixotic endeavor, it helps to look at one from his past: in 2013, he persuaded Hiroyuki Naruke, a sushi chef he met in Tokyo, to leave Japan and open Q, a stark 26 seat omakase restaurant around the corner from his law firm. But the motives behind Mr. Quinn's memorializing love and loss are more mysterious than his scheme to get five star sushi on his lunch break. Asked why he's fascinated by the rubble from relationships gone wrong, he said: "They're human stories. We've all had broken relationships. We all know these experiences. Without going into a lot of detail about myself, this is not an unknown phenomenon for me." Born in Virginia, Mr. Quinn's family moved to Connecticut when he was 2, and the proximity to New York made him a museum enthusiast. One of his older sisters (he is one of eight siblings) would take him to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, where he gaped at towering canvases by Rembrandt and Velazquez. Mr. Quinn found comfort in collecting and cataloging things: rocks, stamps, coins and birds. Determined to escape Utah for college, he worked a variety of jobs to fund a private out of state tuition, and came back to them during breaks while attending Claremont McKenna College in Southern California. "You name it," he said."I was a night watchman. I cranked doughnuts over a vat of oil. I worked in a steel fabrication facility. I worked on a press to make guardrail. I got a job hanging guardrail on the highways of Utah." There were lawyers in his extended family, and Mr. Quinn said he thought he'd be good at that line of work. He went from Claremont to Harvard Law School ("They didn't have gap years back then," he said) and scored a job offer from the prestigious firm Cravath Swaine Moore in New York after his graduation in 1976. But Mr. Quinn also received a fellowship from Harvard to study and travel. This time, he took the year off, doing a grand tour of Europe and lingering among the ruins in Greece. Back in New York, he quickly found that fast paced work centric Manhattan life wasn't for him. Southern California beckoned again. After several false starts, by 1986, Mr. Quinn had a steady flow of clients, and with three associates, he opened what is now Quinn Emanuel. Mr. Quinn's love of art is well known. In 2015, when work hit a lull, he sent a memo to all the firm's lawyers suggesting that they "do some fun stuff," listing more than a dozen exhibitions he would check out if he had the time. Before the Museum of Broken Relationships Los Angeles opened, offices on Quinn Emanuel's second floor were occupied by the curatorial team Mr. Quinn had hired (with the help of paralegals) and the objects they culled through online submissions (including a three foot tall dinosaur pinata). The office displays his ever growing art collection: Hanging on a wall of a 10th floor conference room is a floor to ceiling portrait of a man clutching a naked woman. "As you can see, her nipples are exposed," Mr. Quinn said. "I wasn't sure if there would be issues with putting this in an office, so I put it in a conference room and sent an email to all personnel: 'Come and see it. If one person objects, we won't hang it.'" (No one objected.) There's one thing Mr. Quinn does not like to talk about: his first marriage, which lasted nine years. He cites his daughters two from his first marriage, two with his wife, Shannon Quinn, whom he married in 1983, and one from Ms. Quinn's previous marriage all of whom were raised without distinctions, he said. (Photos of them line nearly every flat surface of his office.) But it's a part of his past that is hard to ignore, given that he's built a museum about heartbreak. Asked how he could encourage the brokenhearted to open up about their checkered pasts without elaborating on his own, Mr. Quinn said: "People submit things to the museum anonymously. People share their stories anonymously. It's not something I'm comfortable talking about." He admitted that his wife isn't the biggest fan of the museum, but that's mainly because she holds the purse strings. "My paycheck, I just give it to her," he said. "Mostly, on the occasions where I've said I have a bright idea about what to do with some money, it hasn't turned out to be so great." Despite its location on a hokey stretch of Hollywood Boulevard (a block from Madame Tussauds, across the street from Ripley's Believe It or Not!) and the building's recent past as a Frederick's of Hollywood lingerie store, Mr. Quinn wants it to be taken as seriously as the city's other arts institutions. "We've invested a lot of money in improving the space, in making it aesthetically attractive," he said. "It does have an upside: a lot of street traffic." The night of the opening, onlookers thronged the rented red carpet duct taped by the doors. Inside, "Stand Back" by Stevie Nicks bumped from a D.J.'s booth. Mr. Quinn worked the room, enthusiastically introducing guests to his wife and two of his daughters, who witnessed the start of this very expensive hobby last year in Zagreb. If Mr. Quinn was hesitant to elaborate on his personal connection to the museum, they were less so. His daughter Megan Quinn, 34, speculated that the recent passing of two of Mr. Quinn's brothers (one fought in the Korean War and inspired a fund to preserve the Korean War Veterans Memorial in Washington, another side project of Mr. Quinn's) and his desire to have a legacy beyond his law firm fueled the project. "He's softened and started embracing new things," she said. Mr. Quinn lit up with ideas about what this could all lead to: interactive exhibits, content culled from social media, experiments like "breakup insurance." "So if you break up, you can call a number, someone will come and get you in a car, take you to a bar, buy you a drink and spend two hours talking to you," he said. "And of course, we want to have outreach, and a speaker series. What more can this be? How can we take this outside of the four walls of this museum?" He looked at the crowd. A more immediate concern came up. "We still need some more benches," he said. "Because, really, if you're going to look at everything and read and all, this is an hour and a half." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Fashion & Style |
To capture history, you have to be present for it. "Hip Hop at the End of the World: The Photography of Ernie Paniccioli" (Rizzoli; 40) is filled with photos only Paniccioli has because, from the mid 1970s forward, only Paniccioli thought to be there and was permitted in the room. (That's an underappreciated photographic skill: not getting kicked out.) As a chronicler of hip hop's formative years, Paniccioli is essential; his voluminous archive was acquired by Cornell. His work is casual and on the fly. Many of the photos in the book are snapshots literally the sort of crammed into the frame group pictures you take of friends you might not see for a while. Many of these pictures seem shot in a hurry, before the moment slipped away. Occasionally though, Paniccioli puts his subjects in dialogue with their surroundings: Fat Joe morosely standing atop a crushed car, or KRS One posing sternly in front of the United Nations, or Nas, shot from below, arms wide open, in front of ecstatic clouds and a wide, blue, boundless sky. While Paniccioli shot for some magazines, including Word Up!, he largely predated the era in which hip hop was considered the stuff of serious artistic photographic attention. "Contact High: A Visual History of Hip Hop" (Clarkson Potter; 40), edited by Vikki Tobak, overlaps slightly with his era, but mostly picks up where he leaves off. This anthology shows hip hop's growth from the perspective of those charged with photographing it, mostly via magazine portraits and album covers. The photos are of varying intensity, by photographers with varying degrees of intimacy with their subjects. Each image is paired with a brief anecdote from the photographer Glen E. Friedman, Jamil GS, Barron Claiborne, Danny Clinch, and many more about the shoot. Clinch's photos for Big L's debut album are particularly moving, the rapper and 20 of his friends crammed onto one stoop. The images are accompanied by contact sheets, showing the just before and the just after, emphasizing that these are largely posed, not spontaneous, images. That's the real value of "Contact High": capturing hip hop's transition from improvisation to construction, from thrown together fashion to stylists, from naturalism to poses. By the 1990s, when many of these photographs were taken, rap's young stars were as meticulous about developing their visual images as much as their musical ones. (Though there is one great pseudo candid here: XXL magazine's 1998 A Great Day in Hip Hop shoot in Harlem, by Gordon Parks, which gathered almost 200 of the genre's leading lights for a giddy group shot.) Now, more than four decades after hip hop began, it is a minter of stars, a driver of style, a billion dollar business. But it is also a lived culture, inhabitable not just by its celebrities, but also by those who are young, with dreams of their own. "Ferris Bueller: Catharsis" (which will be released in January via Steidl; 37.95) captures the personal collections of Rodney Bailey (known as Ferris Bueller), who parlayed a Roc A Fella Records internship into creative work with Kanye West, the Diplomats and others. His childhood aspirations are all here, captured in photos by Alex Bohn: worn out cassettes, rough at the edges posters, magazines, party fliers, broken old cellphones. But the most affecting photos are of sneakers. His old pairs are decayed from honest wear in their cracks and creases you can see ambition and hustle. There is both a comfort and a wisdom in these photos, a reminder that hip hop is something you could watch, but also own, and then build into a new life. JON CARAMANICA BOBBIE GENTRY: 'THE GIRL FROM CHICKASAW COUNTY: THE COMPLETE CAPITOL MASTERS' UMC; 8 CDs and hard bound book, 109.99 Bobbie Gentry's 1967 debut single and biggest hit, "Ode to Billie Joe," was about a suicide; the narrator of another hit, "Fancy," was an unrepentant hooker. Gentry's songs brought telling unconventional detail to her Mississippi roots; she was also musically sophisticated and more ambitious than her label could quite handle. After her 1968 masterpiece (and commercial flop) "The Delta Sweete," a borderline psych folk concept album haunted by death and spirituality, she veered toward blander pop, but she took over songwriting and production for her last album, "Patchwork," in 1971, a suite of elaborately orchestrated character study songs. This completist box includes all of her albums and Capitol singles along with demos, unreleased sessions (including some convincing jazz standards) and a full disc of BBC live recordings. Gentry gave her last performance in 1981 and has been out of public view since 1982; this set offers good reason to miss her. JON PARELES Lefty Frizzell (1928 1975) taught generations of country singers how to sound casual and natural through honky tonking, hard times and especially heartache. The influence of Frizzell's stoic drawl, liquefied syllables and tightly controlled ornaments is so pervasive that it's often equated with classic country style. This box holds Frizzell's entire career, from early demos to his first hit the 1950 country standard "If You've Got the Money (I've Got the Time)" and all of his studio recordings, along with songs recorded for radio broadcast and an eight CD audiobook biography by Lefty's brother David Frizzell. Lefty Frizzell was a hard drinker another subject he sang about but his aplomb rarely faltered; his decline becomes audible only in some 1970s songs. From the 1950s, when he wrote most of his own material, through the 1960s and 1970s, when he largely relied on other songwriters, long stretches of his catalog are anatomies of melancholy, jealous, bitterness and regret. PARELES DEBEN BHATTACHARYA: 'PARIS TO CALCUTTA: MEN AND MUSIC ON THE DESERT ROAD' Sublime Frequencies; 4 CDs and hard bound book, 65.99 This is a travel diary from 1955, in prose and audio, by Deben Bhattacharya, an Indian writer turned ethnomusicologist who made a trip by van from the Bosporus to Bengal with a tape recorder: through Greece, Turkey, Syria, Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan and India. A single LP from these recordings was released in 1956 as "Music on the Desert Road: A Sound Travelogue," an album that left an impression on Frank Zappa, among others. Bhattacharya recorded professionals and amateurs performing classical and folk, secular and religious music, as well as Bedouin workers rhythmically grinding coffee and a ninth century Persian epic poem intoned, with drumming, to pace an exercise routine. Bhattacharya's journals are atmospheric period pieces, and his field recordings are mono but vivid and often raw, capturing music that was far more geographically and culturally isolated back in 1955. PARELES It's still startling that Fleetwood Mac toured in 2018 without Lindsey Buckingham, the guitarist and songwriter whose complex sparkling guitar parts and melodic architecture were absolutely essential to the band's sudden 1970s superstardom; his guitar solos were onstage climaxes. Buckingham's solo recordings can play like research and development for his contributions to Fleetwood Mac a virtuoso on his days off. He toys with guitar tones and production strategies; he takes more liberties with his vocals; he leaves things less glossy. And while Fleetwood Mac may have commandeered most of his poppiest hooks, he kept some for himself including "Trouble" and "Holiday Road." The three CD and six LP configurations include two previously unreleased songs and more than a dozen live band performances. PARELES 'THE ART ENSEMBLE OF CHICAGO AND ASSOCIATED ENSEMBLES' ECM; 21 CDs, 300 page book, 108.98 The Art Ensemble of Chicago a trailblazing group equally dedicated to minimalism and excursion, Pan African folklore and avant garde improvising had been around for about a decade when it began releasing albums on ECM in 1978. The German label recorded the ensemble with an ear for detail and depth, making sure each vibraphone chime and trumpet slash came through with distinction, and fed into a spacious sound. This monumental box collects the Art Ensemble's albums from the late 1970s and '80s, plus group members' various other ECM projects over the years, including some of the trumpeter Lester Bowie's standout albums with Brass Fantasy and a number of the saxophonist Roscoe Mitchell's finest recordings under his own name. GIOVANNI RUSSONELLO | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Music |
To hear more audio stories from publishers, like The New York Times, download Audm for iPhone or Android. In February and early March, America's political and business leaders began to face a crisis of potentially catastrophic proportions. Many failed the test. As the coronavirus crisis emerged, the president dithered and downplayed, promising a magical end to a problem he did not appear to understand. The mayor of New York reveled in unscientific happy talk, assuring his citizens that life would remain normal. And many in the pundit class, including yours truly, got the earliest calls disastrously wrong. This is the story we know a story of institutional failure, of chaos and incoordination, a tragedy that has seemed to unmake the most powerful country in the world. I asked them all a simple question: How did you get the coronavirus so right so early, when so many other leaders missed the boat? Here's what we can all learn from their success. You can't respond to a crisis if you don't recognize the crisis. This sounds obvious, but it was an unusual superpower for the leaders who moved quickly: They kept their eyes open. They were lucky enough to get an early peek at the disaster, and they were wise enough to take the warning seriously. Sometimes the signs were unmissable Microsoft had insight into the virus because of its extensive operations in China, Smith told me. But other indicators were murkier. For Newsom, the first hint of trouble was repatriation in January, the federal government began bringing back Americans from affected areas of China, many to military bases in California. Newsom told me that working on the issue got him and the state's other top officials thinking seriously about what was to come. The repatriations, Newsom said, "underscored a sense of curiosity and significance that this crisis is about to hit our state." Again, obvious, and again, so rare: These leaders understood the limits of their own knowledge, and when faced with tough choices, they deferred to the experts. "I didn't do very well in school in science," DeWine told me. But after a long career in politics DeWine has served in the U.S. House and Senate, and was elected to the governor's office in 2018 he'd learned to recognize the value of expertise. "When I've made decisions that I've regretted," DeWine said, it was often because "I didn't have enough facts, I didn't ask enough questions, I didn't ask the right people." Last year, DeWine appointed Amy Acton, a well regarded physician and public health academic, as the director of the Ohio Department of Health. As the virus approached, Acton alerted him to the threat posed by the Arnold Sports Festival, a bodybuilding gathering founded by Arnold Schwarzenegger that had been scheduled to take place in Columbus in early March. "We looked at all the facts, and we came to the conclusion that it did not make any sense to have 60,000 spectators come into Columbus for four days," DeWine said. Canceling the event was a huge move few gatherings had been shut down anywhere in the country, and the economic impact was in the tens of millions. Festival organizers resisted the decision, and Ohio got a court order to shut down the event. "That was, frankly, a very gut wrenching decision," DeWine said. "But we made that decision based on the evidence." All these leaders understood that slowing the virus required asking people to make huge disruptions to their lives to stop everything, stay inside, to forget about school and work. They knew they couldn't ask it all at once; they would have to prepare the public, over weeks, for a new reality. "Part of what I tried to do from the very beginning," Breed told me, "is to reassure the public that, look, it's just a matter of time." Though it might be easier to tell people that there was nothing much to worry about, that wouldn't help anyone in the long run. "I wanted people to start to get ready, because it's going to hit San Francisco, and it's going to impact our city in a significant way," she said. "We had the benefit of enlightened business and community leaders," Inslee said, referring to Microsoft and other large Seattle area companies. Smith, of Microsoft, echoed this sentiment: "Too often, people in the tech sector think that they can find the answer to anything, because they've been smart and successful and I thought it was of fundamental importance that we not think that we're as smart as the experts, and so we turned to the public health experts in King County and listened to them on Day 1." In that vein, there was something else very unusual in the places that moved first, too actual bipartisanship. DeWine worked with Ohio's biggest cities, many run by Democrats, to impose social distancing; Inslee and Newsom had to consult with many Republican officials. "It's the science of the lifeboat," Inslee told me. "When you're all in the same lifeboat, there just isn't room. When you're in the middle of a storm, you got to keep the lifeboat afloat." This planet of ours is a lifeboat, too, and vast parts of it are growing uninhabitable. To fix it, we'll have to learn from the leaders who are curious enough to recognize the coming dangers, and brave enough to take them on. Farhad wants to chat with readers on the phone. If you're interested in talking to a New York Times columnist about anything that's on your mind, please fill out this form. Farhad will select a few readers to call. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Opinion |
At first glance, "Territory of Light" seems part of the same cultural moment that has produced recent novels exploring, with unapologetic honesty, the raw interior of the female psyche. Could the Japanese novelist Yuko Tsushima have been inspired by the works of Jenny Offill and Elena Ferrante, whose protagonists young mothers negotiating life in the wake of marital betrayal mirror that of Tsushima's own book? The answer is no. Tsushima, who died in 2016, first published monthly installments of what would become "Territory of Light" a full four decades ago, when she too was a single mother struggling to eke out an existence in Tokyo. The fact that the novel, which has been elegantly translated into English by Geraldine Harcourt, seems to be in direct dialogue with contemporary novels of motherhood, however, suggests both its deep prescience and the enduring relevance of its insights. Tsushima chronicles one year in the life of a young mother and daughter, beginning on the evening when the unnamed narrator is forced to look for an apartment after her husband leaves her. She finally chooses a building named "Fujino," which is also her husband's surname and causes her to be "constantly mistaken for the proprietor." This is not exactly a coincidence, the narrator admits: "It is possible that the building's name evoked the closeness of my ties to my husband and that I impulsively yielded to that sensation." The sensation seems to envelop the narrator, as if in a thick fog, through which she feebly tries to find her way. Apprehension of her new life feels like "an invisible, rickety, misshapen mass that not only kept its precarious balance but was actually sending out roots and even tentative new shoots." It grows to consume and paralyze the narrator, who staggers through daily chores, barely able to keep herself from dissolution. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Books |
As President Obama visits Kenya, concerns about security during his two day stay will limit his movements to the capital, Nairobi. The trip, his first there as president, is a homecoming of sorts for Mr. Obama who visited the African nation and the birthplace of his father in 1987 and again in 2006 as a senator. Given the constraints of presidential security, Mr. Obama won't have much chance to visit a country that has plenty to offer, including Africa's second highest mountain, wildlife reserves and an elephant rescue center. Here are five places that travelers to Kenya including President Obama should consider: The "Great Migration" has just arrived in Kenya's Masai Mara National Reserve, and there's no better time to see the spectacle of some 1.4 million wildebeest, 250,000 Burchell's zebras and a smattering of trailing Thomson's gazelles making the yearlong, round trip trek from Tanzania's Serengeti to the Masai Mara. Marett Taylor, a travel expert at upscale trip outfitter Abercrombie Kent who has spent half her life in Kenya, said that a hot air balloon ride is the best way to take in its magnitude. The Lewa Wildlife Conservancy, a Unesco World Heritage site in northern Kenya, is home to 12 percent of Kenya's black rhinoceros population and the largest single population of Grevy's zebras in the world. The best way to discover this is in a mobile tented camp, likely the most authentic form of safari, and a true immersion into the sights and sounds of the bush, said Ms. Taylor. Daphne Sheldrick's Orphanage just outside Nairobi is the place to go to see young elephants lovingly interact with their handlers. It is run by the David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust, a pioneering organization that looks after orphaned elephants. These elephants are usually abandoned because members of their herd have been killed by poachers. The organization has rescued more than a 150 baby elephants that might not have survived otherwise. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Travel |
As dusk fell over Staten Island on a recent evening, about 10 people sat around a large wooden table in a communal kitchen, listening to Van Morrison and painting terra cotta flowerpots. Houseplants were suspended from the room's high wood beamed ceilings, and the smell of freshly baked bread hung in the air. A hippie house share? Not quite. It was crafts and cocktails night at Urby Staten Island, an upscale rental complex where the demographic skews more young professional than drum circle enthusiast. Nonetheless, the complex has features that might make that crowd feel right at home: In addition to the communal kitchen, there's a 5,000 square foot urban farm, a 20 hive apiary both tended by live in farmers/beekeepers and a kombucha workshop planned for later this summer. "Live cultures are really something people are responding to," said Brendan Costello, the complex's in residence chef, as he wiped the last of the bread crumbs and black maple butter from the countertops. He has already taught well attended workshops on making sauerkraut and kimchi. Just as Birkenstocks and bee pollen have come back in style, so have crunchy lifestyle concepts, from yoga and meditation to composting and home fermentation. And with veganism, Waldorf schools, doulas and healing crystals shifting from far out to very much in fashion, a growing number of New York luxury buildings have embraced the hallmarks of 1970s hippiedom with a high end twist. Look for amenities like rooftop gardens, kitchen composters, art and meditation studios, bike shares, infrared saunas, even an adult treehouse. At Pierhouse, the Toll Brothers City Living condo in Brooklyn Bridge Park in Brooklyn, every kitchen has an in unit composter, a first for a Toll Brothers development. "If we were deciding between a compost unit and a wine chiller, we'd probably go with the wine chiller since more people would be interested," said David von Spreckelsen, the president of Toll Brothers City Living division. "But here we had large kitchens and a lot of the units have outdoor space, so we thought people could compost in their kitchen and go right out to their garden." While such amenities might be aspirational for some, others are yearning to get their hands dirty. Christine Blackburn, an associate broker at Compass real estate, said that for a woman to whom she recently sold a condo at 144 North Eighth Street in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, the roof garden was the most important amenity. "She didn't care about the gym, she didn't care about the garage," Ms. Blackburn said. "They live in a 2 million condo, but for her to be able to grow tomatoes with her son, that was it. "The garden plots in that building are tiny," she added, "but it makes some people feel like they're not living in a high rise." Public green space has always been a priority, of course, and let's not forget that large swaths of all five boroughs were once farmland. Green rooftops have some historical antecedents in the city: The Ansonia, on the Upper West Side, kept 500 chickens on its rooftop farm in the early 20th century, with eggs delivered daily to the tenants, according to "The Sky's the Limit," a book by Steven Gaines. But the roof was shut down by the Department of Health after just a few years, in 1907. And for the past century, it was accepted that living in New York meant leaving nature, and local honey, behind. "It definitely used to be an either/or mentality," said Rick Cook, a founder of the architecture firm CookFox and a designer of 550 Vanderbilt, who moved to New York from a small town upstate in 1983. But after studying abroad in Florence, Italy, he said, "I understand you could have both. That, in fact, the highest quality of life is to have both." Indeed, the explosion of the wellness industry has left many craving a different kind of New York lifestyle. For a younger generation, practices like organic gardening and meditation may not carry any whiff of the counterculture. "Being green is modern, being organic is modern," said Jordan Horowitz, 26, an assistant manager of Enterprise Rent a Car who grew up gardening in suburban New Jersey and was excited to get a studio at Urby, where residents have an entire city block of gardens. But he is equally enthusiastic about the pool, the giant bean bags strewn across the grounds and learning to make Vietnamese cuisine from scratch in Mr. Costello's cooking classes. That many such offerings tend to be far more upscale than their 1970s counterparts no doubt helps to remove any lingering hippie vibe. Rather than a stable of rusty Schwinns, for example, 50 West, in the financial district, allows residents to pedal out on Porsche bikes that cost 3,700 a pop. "Yes, it's sharing, but in a luxury manner," said Javier Lattanzio, the sales manager at the condo. The adult treehouse at One Manhattan Square on the Lower East Side, likewise, is hardly primitive, with Wi Fi and a staircase. As for all those rooftop herb gardens, asked if they are actually used, one broker replied that they definitely were, though not necessarily for a Moosewood recipe: On a recent trip to 338 Berry in Williamsburg, she saw people with Aperol spritzes clipping herbs to put in their cocktails. Frank Monterisi, a senior vice president of the Related Companies, emphasized that the new generation of renters and buyers "like to see sustainability, they like to see rooftop gardens." At Hunter's Point South, Related's massive affordable housing complex in Long Island City, Queens, residents can receive deliveries of fresh vegetables from a C.S.A. community supported agriculture. There are also an apiary, about 2,300 square feet of rooftop gardens and a waiting list for the gardening club. "Everyone wants to garden now. I think New Yorkers have gotten comfortable with the amount of concrete we have, but they also want to see green," said Joyce Artis, a retired Port Authority worker who helps organize the gardening program at the complex and grows microgreens and lemon trees in her apartment. Ms. Artis said that when she was growing up in Brooklyn, she was sent to visit relatives in North Carolina in the summer, and hated having to get up early to weed. "But then as I got older, I started missing it," she said. "And I started growing things in my apartment. No matter how small your space I always say: 'You can grow one thing.'" Ms. Blackburn, the Compass broker, said that gardening, for some, is a version of meditation. "Maybe they're not sitting there with a meditation app, but sticking their hands in the soil it doesn't matter if someone's making 10 million a year it can be very therapeutic." She expects the enthusiasm to continue and intensify. "I wouldn't be surprised in a year if a luxury building had a chicken coop," she said. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Real Estate |
Re "Alexei Botyan, 103, Soviet Spy Hailed as 'Hero,' Just Not by the Poles or Historians" (obituary, March 12): You try to question the battle merits of the Soviet World War II hero Alexei Botyan, presenting them as a myth. Mr. Botyan saved not only Krakow. He and the Red Army saved the Polish nation. Mr. Botyan said in one of his last interviews: "Several groups took part in saving Krakow. Both mine and the one led by Yevgeny Bereznyak. We had the only task: secure rapid advance of the Soviet troops to Krakow. "Its saving is the most important achievement of my life. "The Soviet Union not only helped liberate Poland, preserve its rich culture and traditions, but also restored its economy. Hitler sought to turn all inhabitants of the occupied Polish territories into slaves. Those who were not fit for these goals were planned for extermination. Such things should be remembered. "The 75th anniversary of our Great Victory shared with other nations will be celebrated soon. We must shield it from all kinds of lies." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Opinion |
Sam Hunt's debut album made him one of Nashville's brightest rising stars. But he hit pause on his career to win back the love of his life.Credit...Whitten Sabbatini for The New York Times Sam Hunt's debut album made him one of Nashville's brightest rising stars. But he hit pause on his career to win back the love of his life. NASHVILLE Every time country and hip hop collide, the Sam Hunt bat signal goes up. So it was no surprise that last month Hunt found himself in the home studio of his longtime producer Zach Crowell, spitballing melodies and lyrics with the young Atlanta singer rapper Breland, who was then just a couple of weeks into the viral spread of his country rap thumper "My Truck." For Breland, working with Hunt was an immediate stamp of Nashville approval. For Hunt, it was a rare opportunity to collaborate with someone who approached the country rap divide from the other side. After a few days of sessions, they were winding down over Chinese food. Hunt told Breland that "My Truck" reminded him of "All My Rowdy Friends (Have Settled Down)," the 1981 Hank Williams Jr. chestnut. They discussed old Drake songs, and how hip hop beefs have evolved over the years. Hunt, a methodical songwriter, marveled at how quickly and freely Breland improvised melodic lines. The following day, Hunt tall, broad and gentle, like a considerate bear was driving around Nashville in his black GMC Denali, sipping cold coffee and detailing his restless craving to innovate. "I'm always feeling like I'm not quite reaching my potential," he said. "And so that's kind of what I'm searching for more than anything." Hunt, 35, has long been established as the most progressive and musically polyglot mainstream performer in Nashville. Working with artists like Breland, he said, provides crucial injections of creative energy, and highlights new pathways that aren't always open to country artists: "I think now more than ever, if you're somebody who has interest in doing different stylistic things, you can do both without people being confused as to, you know, which one is you." The night before, while they were chatting in the studio with ESPN on in the background, "My Truck" was played on the channel. This moment of mainstream acknowledgment was a reminder that country coexisting with hip hop, still an outlier idea when Hunt first came to Nashville a decade ago, was now on the verge of becoming utterly normal. But even though the music world caught up to Hunt, much has changed since his triple platinum 2014 debut, "Montevallo." Just as Hunt was reaching the peak of his breakthrough, he found himself miserable. Before embarking on his career, he'd split from Hannah Lee Fowler, the love of his life, choosing his career over her. ("Montevallo" is named after her hometown.) After two years of nonstop touring and promotion for that album, a stretch that put him squarely in Nashville's top tier and set him up for a wider breakout, he more or less hit eject. Rather than continue his career at a breakneck pace, he tried to win Fowler back, and succeeded. Though Hunt chipped away at new music initial interviews for this story took place in 2017 and he spent time experimenting with pop and hip hop producers, he didn't fully begin work on his follow up album, "Southside," until last year. The jolting "That Ain't Beautiful" features his signature talk rapping and his seamless switching between speaking and singing. "Hard to Forget," with its recurring Webb Pierce sample and boom bap drums, is pure "Yo! Brother, Where Art Thou?" "Breaking Up Was Easy in the 90's" takes the gratuitously shaggy Nashville party songs of the last decade and reframes them as casual conversation, with a chorus that's sung loosely and convincingly, as if Hunt just thought of the joke. "Nothing Lasts Forever" is a sensual R B plea, and "Let It Down" has some of the pluck of 1990s pop country. But there is a seriousness to this album, too, shaped in part by the saga of Hunt and Fowler. "She was under the impression, and I had sure expressed this to her at some point, that she was the number one priority. I would choose her over everything," he said of the time before his rise, when he set out in a van to give his performing career a shot. "And then it sort of turned around and I said, actually, I want to choose this." They'd been in sporadic communication over the years when he was in the Nashville bubble of fame, but she'd moved on. When Hunt sought her out, she was living in Hawaii, and he flew there several times to prove his dedication. Unofficially, the beginning of Hunt's second career phase came on the New Year's Eve that rang in 2017. That night, he was set to release "Drinkin' Too Much," a melancholic apology for a life gone awry in the vein of Drake's "Marvin's Room." It was a startling hard reset for someone on an accelerated path to country stardom. Before uploading it to SoundCloud itself an unusual choice for a major label country artist he and Fowler went to Crowell's studio. Fowler, who is a nurse, not a professional musician, sat down at a keyboard and, with Hunt's arms around her, played a bit of the traditional hymn "How Great Thou Art." Crowell recorded it, appended it to the end of the song and uploaded it to the world. "We started writing that song before they were back together," Crowell recalled. "For her to then join the process and be there when we finished was very spiritual." He added, "Jesus was in the room, I promise." Just how intense had the prior years been? For some idea, check the "Southside" opener "2016," a wrenching track about regret that's phenomenally structured, damp with sadness and as classic a country song Hunt has ever recorded. I'd put the whiskey back in the bottle Put the smoke back in the joint Look up at the sky and say, "OK OK OK, think you made your point" I'd cover up the pool at Skymont I'd take some girls out of my phone Give the night life back to Nashville, one night at a time 'til all the regret's gone Being able to write a song like that required Hunt to recuse himself from the hamster wheel of Nashville fame. "Do I want to live in this bubble for 10 to 20 years?" he recalled thinking, likening his "existential" struggle to King Solomon in Ecclesiastes. "How is the talking about myself all the time, taking pictures of myself, being on these red carpets, going to these award shows, making money doing this thing is that really benefiting anybody other than myself?" He found himself thinking about a life with Fowler, marriage, children: "Who do I want that kid's dad to be?" After reuniting with Fowler, he hit reset. He quit drinking (for around a year). They traveled the world. In April 2017, they got married. Two months later, he began his first headlining arena tour, with Fowler in tow. Hunt wanted to show her what his life had become in the years without her. They were also trying to rebuild their relationship, and time for healing conversation proved scarce. "I know that wore on her," he said. But Fowler kept Hunt honest, encouraging him to be more present in his day to day life, and more personal in his songwriting. "One of my biggest concerns was for her not to ever think that I was trying to exploit anything from her or our relationship," he said, but "she likes to hear the person that she knows in the songs." Hunt was raised in Cedartown, a small town in northwest Georgia, around 60 miles from Atlanta close enough to be influenced by the city, but also a world away. A touted quarterback he was the starter at the University of Alabama at Birmingham in 2006 and 2007 he grew up with both black and white friends, and his musical interests developed accordingly. In addition to country, he was raised on hip hop, especially Southern rap, and R B: 112, K Ci JoJo, Pressha's timeless "Splackavellie." When Hunt first came to Nashville, he got shuffled into the deck of songwriters who are the city's bedrock. But as someone with a more ambitious set of references, he found that work limiting. When he met Crowell, a Nashville songwriter and producer who'd cut his teeth making hip hop beats for Southern rappers, they immediately clicked. In 2013, before Hunt signed a record deal, they released "Between the Pines," a mixtape of country originals with hip hop accents, some of which would later get repurposed for "Montevallo." At the time, Hunt wasn't the only Nashville performer deploying hip hop references, but he was by far the most comfortable; his fluency didn't call attention to itself with of the second slang or overbearing beats. "Montevallo" (and "X2C," the EP that preceded it) was the first album from Nashville to fully meet younger fans where they were already at familiar with hip hop's textures and rhythms, and not flustered at all by its inclusion in country. It topped the Billboard country album chart, and included three No. 1 country hits ("Leave the Night On," "Take Your Time," "House Party") and two No. 2 singles ("Break Up in a Small Town," "Make You Miss Me"). So he waited for the right inspiration to strike. "I didn't want to just chuck out a record that I wasn't proud of just to maintain momentum," he said. "The industry kind of looks at it like, you've got to be great to get in the game, and you've just got to be mediocre to stay. That's not for me." Besides, others were infringing on his turf. The label president Mabe, who describes Hunt as one of Nashville's first streaming success stories, said that his uniqueness made him a ripe target for copycats: "People come in the door right behind you trying to take your exact same lane." "Southside," Hunt said, is the result of "leaning way back into something that was easier to accomplish than trying to stay out in front." It includes the place holder singles that he's released over the last few years: "Body Like a Backroad" (which went to No. 1 on the Billboard country chart), "Downtown's Dead" and "Kinfolks." It also closes with "Drinkin' Too Much," bringing the era full circle. Most of the new songs were written in three songwriting retreats over the last year. In the past, Hunt had written "from that single guy perspective and the whole thing was kind of centered around that." But then he got married. "It took me a minute to figure out, how do you know what to write about? I didn't have anything to really say," he said, and added, "I want to be free to play the parts." Hunt has largely settled down in the past two years; and though he spends many nights staying up to the wee hours watching bluegrass jam videos on YouTube, teaching himself the licks so he can play along, in November he was arrested in Nashville for driving under the influence. "I don't drink too much anymore," Hunt said. "Typically a moment like that happens at the end of a rope for somebody. Like they've been going down a road and they all of a sudden hit bottom, whereas for me it was completely random." His wife, he said, was vexed: "She's with me every day, so she saw it, like, 'What in the world? How in the heck did this happen?'" A perfect, risky, possibly slightly outre blend of hip hop and country was what he had been searching for during his explorations in 2017 and 2018. With Charlie Handsome in particular, he felt like there was potential unreached. "I felt like we could do it if we had time," Hunt said. "I kind of had to step away from that a little bit because it wasn't a sure thing that we were going to nail it. And it's one of those things where you miss by an inch, you miss by a mile." Crowell, his longtime collaborator, knows that Hunt has still more appetite for experimentation in him. "I know deep down he has urges to do other stuff," he said. "I don't think he's found the recipe quite yet." And so as sturdy and faithful as "Southside" is in the Hunt canon, it only reflects part of his ambition. "I went as extreme as I could back then, but I felt like I can go even more," he said. "I kind of wanted to know what the too far was. I never found the cliff." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Music |
The trip began years before we met, when Sara wrote a short story about the perfect marriage. It started like this: " and I are moving to Europe to paint and make love, right after he finishes his diamond floor. We will live in a gigantic home filled with magic and passion. One of our favorite things to do in the summer will be to drive our '68 Ferrari to the end of Italy and take a boat to a tiny island with nothing on it. There, we will have a picnic at sunset, fall asleep with blankets and small furs and wake up in the morning and go home. ..." Two years after she wrote the story we fell in love. Two years after that, my name filled the . And two years later, we finally got around to planning our honeymoon. I hadn't yet started the diamond floor, but I suggested we recreate the story anyway: We would fly to Venice, take the train to Tuscany, rent a vintage car, hop a boat to Sicily. It would be a dream come true, an old fashioned, three week bridal tour through the most romantic country in the world. It was extravagant, but that's what honeymoons are supposed to be. The whole notion of honeymoons has been fanciful, if not bizarre, since they came into fashion. The tradition may or may not have been handed down from the ancient custom of "bride kidnapping." The Norse word "hjunottsmanathr" means to "go into hiding," and some historians say that it referred to the period between abducting a woman and the moment her family stopped looking for her. Deuteronomy 24:5 is more generous, stating that a newly married man should "be free at home one year, and shall cheer up his wife which he hath taken." The phrase "hony moone" appeared in the mid 16th century. Some connect this to a supposed Babylonian practice of giving the bride and groom a month's supply of honey wine and sending them away for a cycle of the moon to conceive a child. Thomas Blount's 1656 "Glossographia" describes the more accepted, and fatalistic, definition, declaring that a new marriage, "is honey now, but will fade as the moon." A lot has changed since then. More than three quarters of couples asked whether they'd be taking a honeymoon said they would, according to the Knot's research on its members in recent years. The average length is eight days. Most couples pay for their own honeymoon, and most trips are international, costing more than 5,000. More than half of them check Facebook from their trips. The number of couples who go on their dream honeymoon is about one in four. We were no Vikings but this would be a chance for us to both vanish while at the same time live out a dream version of our life. Our love was still beaming when we boarded a flight to Venice in April. The T.S.A. and a jam packed 767 dimmed it for the next 12 hours, but a middle aged woman holding our newly shared surname on a placard in Marco Polo Airport lifted us from the malaise. I hadn't used a travel agent in 20 years but a friend, thankfully, advised it. It was the first week of April. The sea breeze was cool, and the sun was powerful. We passed the auburn terra cotta roofs of Murano and the grassy fields of Le Vignole. Our captain, who hardly seemed to notice that we had climbed aboard his boat, pointed to the east and we watched the rambling skyline of the Bride of the Sea lift above the horizon. A white jacketed concierge met us at the Belmond Hotel Cipriani dock. The Cipriani sits on the island of Giudecca, a five minute boat ride from Piazza San Marco. Margaret Thatcher, Jimmy Carter and a half dozen other heads of state slept there. George Clooney was married there. Giacomo Casanova himself was said to court maidens in the gardens around the Cipriani spa. Three footmen carried our bags from the boat, and another guided us to a 30 foot buffet of croissants, cured meats, biscuits, salads, fresh fruit and 20 platters that I didn't, and still don't, have names for. There was Champagne. There were five cheese wheels. There was something that looked like souffle but wasn't. There were 13 varieties of bread. We ordered omelets and mimosas and sat in the sun, fully immersed in the dream. Venice has been a sanctum of decadence since the Middle Ages. After fleeing from the Goths, Avars and Huns in the fifth and sixth centuries, Venetian merchants built a maritime empire on the city's 117 islets and ruled the Adriatic for half a millennium. Venetian businessmen traded with India, China and Persia for the most precious jewels, fabrics, spices and goods. The finery drew businessmen, royalty and travelers from all over the world. When lovers during the belle epoque reworked the classic "voyage a la facon anglaise" a painful, very British honeymoon tradition popularized in the early 19th century, in which the entire wedding party traveled around the country visiting guests who could not make it to the wedding many boarded trains and steamers for Venice. Rules of the new honeymoon: drink, eat, sleep in and practice, as the Bible puts it, "acts of the flesh." That night we ate at an old style restaurant called Antiche Carampane. A sign in the window warned "No Tourist Menu." We ordered bay scallops caught in the lagoon, roasted fennel, artichoke salad and baby squid with pasta in ink sauce. The waiter told us how the walls of Venetian buildings are built like boats: three layers of wood and a lacquer finish. Once a month, he said, during the full moon, the ocean fills the restaurant with three feet of salt water. The staff puts chairs and rugs on the tables the night before and comes to work early to mop up the place before opening for business. There had been at least 5,000 people in Piazza San Marco all day. At midnight that night it was empty. I happened to have our wedding mix saved on my phone and played it from my shirt pocket as we danced over the polished cobblestones. The air smelled like wood smoke and we could hear the low rumble of vaporetti cruising the Grand Canal. San Marco's bell tower was a dark obelisk against the silvery moonlight. As we twirled over the scaffolding the buskers use during the day, I felt happy and hopeful and thought of a favorite line from "Jane Eyre": "our honeymoon will shine our life long: its beams will only fade over your grave or mine." We felt like one of the lucky couples on a dream honeymoon the next morning, traveling 175 miles an hour on a train through the farmland surrounding Padua, Ferrara and Bologna. Travel agents are soothsayers in a sense, and Cindy had, correctly, predicted a hangover after our weekend in Venice. Instead of bickering our way across the city on three hours of sleep, we glanced at our itinerary, ate breakfast at the Cipriani and waited for a private motoscafo to take us to the train station. Ermanno Gallo met us in Chiusi, Tuscany, four hours later. He was a tall man with what looked like a volleyball hidden under his shirt. He works for Zephyrus Classic Car Rental and handed me something that changed our lives for the next three days: the keys to a 1981 Fiat 124 Spider convertible. My father drove the same car in his later years and, since he died before Sara met him, I thought she could commune with him on a kind of spiritual voyage a la facon anglaise. Classic cars sit somewhere between the pope and Leonardo da Vinci in Italy, especially one that Enzo Ferrari's chief engineer helped design. Children on the side of the road yelled, "Bella macchina!" as the 124's double overhead cam purred through vineyards and cattle ranches in Val di Chiana. The swath of farm country is two hours south of Florence and runs north south on the border of Arezzo and Umbria. We hung a right near Il Passaggio up a cyprus lined driveway to the Villa di Piazzano, the regional cardinal's old headquarters and our home for the next two days. Tuscan villas haven't changed much since the Renaissance. They are cold and austere in early April. We dropped our bags in our room and were back in the Fiat 30 minutes later. Ermanno had given us driving gloves, for me, and a scarf, for Sara, but no map. We didn't need one. The 360 degree view with the top down was so perfect, so reminiscent of driving scenes in our favorite Fellini and Antonioni movies, we simply followed the road wherever it went. Hollywood posters and memorabilia from the 1950s hung from the walls, and a giant picture window looked out at the green spine of the pre Apennine mountains running northwest toward Florence. The bartender set out goat cheese and figs, tapenade bruschetta and mini slices of pizza and served us 3 glasses of the best merlot we had the entire trip. The scene was ridiculously picturesque, straight out of a 1990s romantic comedy. We were both travelers me a writer, Sara a photographer who had somehow wandered into each other. And here we were, together, on the greatest journey of our lives. The International Encyclopedia of Marriage and Family states that: "More than an initiation into marital roles, the postindustrial honeymoon is a ritual that is socially framed as the most romantic juncture in one's life. The honeymoon is about forming one's self identity as romantic, and couples make honeymoon choices as a means to secure their individual and shared romantic identities." A few days later on the Ponte Vecchio in Florence, steps from a store where my father bought my mother a ring shortly after they were married, we were happy that we chose to act out Sara's story. It came from a dream, and in many ways the ritual of the honeymoon is a fantasy. It is an escape from your life, job, stress and every other hassle associated with modern life. It is a chance to be together, undistracted, and not much else. As the "hony moone" myth suggests, it might be your last to do just that. My uncle, who lived in Italy for years, taught us the Italian word for newlyweds: "sposini." If you are sposini, he said, everyone in the country will treat you as if it is your birthday. The word came in handy a few days later when we followed the final leg of our fantasy on a ferry bound for Sicily. We had spent a couple of days on the Amalfi Coast walking Ravello's gardens that inspired Richard Wagner, touring Capri and hiking between medieval cliff towns that Norman kings once ruled and the car rental return was more complicated than expected. I ended up pulling the sposini card to get a security officer to let me on the boat, 18 minutes before it departed. Discount airlines have decreased ferry traffic considerably in Italy, excluding an exceptionally colorful group of elderly and teenage working class travelers who crowded a blue carpeted lounge bar that night. We ordered negronis and retired to the poop deck, where we watched the sparkling lights of Capri slide past the gunwales. A blasting horn woke us in our family cabin double bed, bathroom, shower, TV at 6 a.m. the next day. Mount Pellegrino stood above Palermo harbor, alongside a half dozen other forested mountains. The air and sky are different in Sicily bigger, wider, like Montana in a way. D. H. Lawrence and his wife, Frieda, lived on the island longer than anywhere else the embattled couple holed up during Lawrence's self imposed exile. The raw scenery, laid back Sicilians and history dating back thousands of years are exotic and fascinating. Of sailing into Palermo, Lawrence wrote in "Sea and Sardinia": "The fantastic peaks behind Palermo show half ghostly in a half dark sky. The dawn seems reluctant to come. Our steamer still smokes her cigarette meaning the funnel smoke across there. So, one sits still, and crosses the level space of half dark water. Masts of sailing ships, and spars, cluster on the left, on the undarkening sky." We walked from the ferry terminal to our hotel, dropped our bags and kept walking. The marina was crammed with fishing boats and weather beaten sailboats. The streets around Dominico Square were as narrow as a refrigerator. Structures were a pastiche of Norman, Gothic and Greek architecture, most old and layered with grime. Beneath the tarnish, Palermo is the kind of city where you stumble across exquisite things. We almost stepped on a late Roman mosaic, "The Four Seasons," while looking for a public bathroom. We found the bathroom a half hour later, in the largest opera house in Italy. We saw the 17th century Quattro Canti, an intersection with sculptures of four kings of Sicily, one on each corner. The air smelled like lilacs and the ocean in the Orto botanical garden, and we bought an old canteen at a sprawling flea market in Piazza Marina. That afternoon we haggled for groceries at the 1,000 year old Ballaro market, where fishmongers cut crimson slabs of swordfish to order and vendors sold blood oranges, pecorino fresco and marble size capers. It is bizarre how swiftly the days go by on a vacation, in life. It's nothing new, but you feel it more on a special trip. I remember my parents talking about their honeymoon as if it were a thousand years ago. Ours was right here, and there was some pressure to end it as perfectly as it began. We drove to Cefalu early the next morning for our last few days in Italy. The headland that the little fishing village is named for lurches up 850 feet from the center of town and holds the ruins of every culture that ever settled there. We had rented a tiny apartment with a large deck that looked out on the mile long beach extending from town. We made pasta alla norma the first night, a Sicilian classic with sauteed eggplant, penne and ricotta salata, and watched the ocean morph from blue to indigo to silver to charcoal. I'd filled the old canteen we bought at the flea market with wine, and we sipped it and ate eggplant sandwiches wrapped in foil while a hawk glided just above the canopy. The ocean reflected blue light through the pines, and a sea breeze hissed through tall grass on the mountainside. There were no small furs or blankets, and we were not going to sleep under the stars as in Sara's story. But we had lived close to the fantasy for a moment and that was enough for us. Love waxes and wanes. Life is a dream. Sometimes you get to live as if you're in one, too. If You Go Traveling from north to south in Italy requires a plane, train, car and boat. Venice's airport is terrific and typically inexpensive to fly into, and the city's Santa Lucia and Mestre train stations connect to just about everything south with high speed and local service. Trains don't go to the Amalfi Coast, so rent a car in Naples. Most ferries to Sicily leave from Naples as well. Be sure to reserve a sleeper cabin as most trips are overnight. The Belmond Hotel Cipriani (Giudecca 10, belmond.com/hotel cipriani venice) is the gold standard in Venice. Four minutes from Piazza San Marco, it is an oasis of gardens and far from the tourists and people who sell trinkets that mob the piazza. The Olympic size saltwater pool is the hotel's centerpiece during the day George Clooney named a few of the drinks at the pool bar and the newly renovated Oro Restaurant is a hub for foodies and celebrities at night. The Villa Di Piazzano (Localita Piazzano, C.P. 6, villadipiazzano.com) is in a 15th century manor house set in the rolling farmland of southeast Tuscany. The rooms are huge, with 600 year old beams and modern bathrooms. The hotel offers a cooking school, alfresco dining on the terrace and hiking trails through the mountains. The Palazzo Avino (Via San Giovanni del Toro 28, palazzoavino.com) in Ravello is worth the drive up the hill from Amalfi. Built in what was once a 12th century private villa 1,000 feet above the Tyrrhenian Sea, the hotel has 32 strikingly appointed rooms and 11 suites. Get one with an ocean view and burn off your love handles at the outdoor gym, then relax in a pair of hot tubs on the roof deck. Trattoria Antiche Carampane (San Polo 1911, antichecarampane.com) is set close to the Rialto Bridge in Venice, but is well off the tourist map. The tiny storefront and modest decor are fitting for a 30 year old local favorite. The simple but perfect scallops and branzino are house specialties, as is the cellar full of local Veneto wine. There aren't many restaurants like La Mescita (Via degli Alfani, 70; 39 333 650 0273) left in Florence. The place is tiny, with 24 seats, and serves "plates" like homemade tortellini in a sauce made from fresh veal, cheese, mushrooms and tomatoes. Steps from Florence's Galleria dell'Accademia, it's not uncommon to see students sharing a plate of salami toscano, mortadella, pecorino Romano and prosciutto crudo served with heaps of Tuscan bread. Going to Cumpa Cosimo (Via Roma, 44, 39 089 857 156) in Ravello is like going to your grandmother's. Netta Bottone has been serving traditional Ravello dishes in the 300 year old cantina for more than six decades. The lasagna and misto a pesto with whatever pasta Netta feels like making are out of this world and the salads are fresh and feed the whole table. Meats come from Netta's own butcher shop next door and tiramisu might be on the house, if you're nice. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Travel |
Travelers can reserve an Insidr phone online and pick it up at Paris Orly Airport or Charles de Gaulle Airport, or have it mailed to them anywhere in the city. The company was founded by Ben and Nina Forlani, a brother and sister team and Parisian natives. "We didn't want tourists to Paris to feel like they weren't getting an authentic perspective of the city because they didn't know French," Mr. Forlani said. Rental prices start at five euros a day, and Insidr concierges speak English, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Thai, Spanish, Russian and Portuguese. The City Helpline, a mobile app for Apple iPhones and devices running Google's Android operating system, gives travelers access to a concierge, either via live messaging or by phone, who can help them with a variety of requests. The concierge, for example, can help them find the right bus and bus stop that will take them to the Louvre, recommend a guide who can give them a street art tour, connect them with a an English speaking babysitter and even share a list of restaurants that serve dishes suited to their gluten free diet. Plus, they can also assist in emergencies such as if a traveler gets sick and needs to see a doctor. Right now, the concierge service is available Monday through Saturday from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. local time, but the company has plans to have 24 hour service before the end of the year. A subscription to use the app costs five euros a day. Concierges speak English, Mandarin, Spanish, Portuguese and Italian. Theatre in Paris translates French theater performances into English in 10 playhouses in Paris, including Theatre Mogador, currently showing French productions of "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer" and the musical "Grease," and Theatre de Ranelagh, currently showing the play "Ruy Blas" by Victor Hugo, "Cyrano de Bergerac" and more. The company placed a projection screen above the stages in these theaters that displays an English translation of the words being spoken on the stage. Those who buy a ticket through Theatre in Paris are assigned seats that will give them the best vantage point of both the stage and the screen; they're also met at the theater by a company employee who gives them a program in English. Tickets start at about 25 euros. Carl de Poncins, the app's founder, said that he came up with the idea for the projection screens because he had an Australian roommate who loved theater but knew little French. "He never used to go to performances because he couldn't understand what was going on," he said. "Why should language get in the way of seeing the incredible theater Paris has?" | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Travel |
We traveled more than 3,000 miles from the Arctic Circle to the Atlantic Ocean in nine days, visiting six countries. We saw nine museums, sang on a live television show, went on three walking tours and lingered over glasses of red wine while hurtling past grassy hills in the moonlight. And once we started our trip, we never stood in an airport security line. We did it all using Europe's exemplary train system. The excursion was inspired by a 2011 rail adventure. After traveling to Istanbul for work, Susan, a university professor, celebrated a professional milestone by taking trains west to Paris. We initially thought of redoing that trip from the opposite direction but decided a less familiar route might be more fun. If not Europe from west to east, how about Europe from north to south? Consulting rail maps, we decided to start about 90 miles above the Arctic Circle, in Kiruna, the northernmost town in Sweden with regular passenger service. Where to conclude? We considered various southern European destinations but settled on Lisbon. The pleasure, we decided, would be in the process. We would think of trains not as mere modes of transit but as relaxing destinations in themselves. During our stops in Stockholm, Copenhagen, Cologne, Paris, Barcelona and Madrid we would resist the urge to hit every tourist destination. But in each city we would take in culture and eat or drink something typical. We landed at Kiruna's tiny airport on a Sunday afternoon. Beginning our travels then made perfect sense until we learned that we had missed, by a day, Kirunafestivalen, a three day event that attracted pop acts known throughout Europe. Ah, there was a reason that a city of 23,000 felt as if nearly everyone had just left. It was true. Once settled into our hotel, we put on jackets the end of June high was 53 degrees and walked to the russet red Kiruna Church, completed in 1912 in a park of birch trees south of the city center. The late afternoon sun, which never quite set, brilliantly lit the interior of the church, designed by the architect Gustaf Wickman to evoke a goahti, the wooden arched hut used by the Sami people of northern Sweden, Norway and Finland into the 1800s. Someday, however, the church will go to pieces. It stands between the center of Kiruna and the reason for the city's existence: the world's largest iron ore mine, which is slowly encroaching on the ground beneath the town. In 2004, the mine's owner, Luossavaara Kiirunavaara AB, notified the city that mining would eventually render part of the town unstable. There was a choice: close the mine or move the center. So the church will be disassembled and moved, beam by beam, as part of a gradual shift of the city center estimated to displace about 3,000 homes. Susan saw part of the mine the next day, on a hard hat tour of a section preserved as a museum that would satisfy almost any traveler's quest for information about the "sublevel caving" method of ore extraction. Meanwhile, John headed to the basement Sami Museum, a collection of cultural artifacts from as long ago as the 17th century. The mine tour, at 345 krona (about 42), was not for the faint of wallet or the claustrophobic but the museum visit was a bargain: 20 kronor, which lunchtime visitors could leave in a wooden honor box. By midafternoon, we were at the Kiruna station, waiting for the train to Stockholm, eager to meet the strangers we would sleep with that night. We had hoped to book a private, two bunk compartment for the 16 hour trip, but by the time we made our travel arrangements, those accommodations were sold out. So we had selected two bunks in a couchette. The compartment had six seats, which converted to padded bunks. We and our travel companions an Austrian couple who appeared to be in their 60s and two Swedish college students who had been camping at the music festival each received two clean sheets, a blanket, a pillow and drinking water. For the next eight hours, we enjoyed the passing landscape, chatted, read and made trips to the cafe car, which served drinks, snacks and simple meals. The Austrians, the first to turn in, converted the seats. So by the time we finished a last glass of wine as the cafe car closed at 11 p.m. with the sun still well above the horizon all we had to do was climb into our top bunks. No one snored too loudly, and we wished our travel companions good journeys as we parted in Stockholm at breakfast time. Our hotel room was ready immediately, so we were able to get a shower before heading to Djurgarden Island to lunch on smorgas, open faced salmon and shrimp salad sandwiches, and tour the Vasa Museum. There we spent hours marveling at a wooden ship retrieved from Stockholm's harbor in 1961, more than 300 years after it sank on its first voyage. When John headed to the ABBA Museum dedicated to the 1970s pop music of Agnetha Faltskog, Bjorn Ulvaeus, Benny Andersson and Anni Frid Lyngstad Susan chose a walk around the island and found herself at the entrance to Skansen, a park sheltering historic buildings from throughout Sweden. The ticket seller said that admission included "a concert," which turned out to be "Allsang pa Skansen," an hourlong variety show that takes place every summer Tuesday and has been broadcast live since 1979. John caught up to watch some of the musicians we had missed in Kiruna, including Tomas Ledin, a singer songwriter whose career is well into its fifth decade. We heard girls and their moms scream for the 29 year old singer Mans Zelmerlow as he performed "Heroes," the number with which he had just won the annual Eurovision Song Contest. We bought the "Allsang" songbook and sang along enthusiastically and phonetically to a tune called "Trettifyran," which we learned was a Swedish version of "This Ole House," recorded by Rosemary Clooney in the 1950s. The next morning, we continued south to Malmo and Copenhagen over the stunning 10 mile Oresund Bridge inspiration for the hit Swedish Danish TV police drama "The Bridge," which has spawned British/French and American remakes. In Copenhagen, we took a guided walking tour of the Christianshavn neighborhood that ended at an alternative community, Christiania, and learned that climbing 250 steps to the base of the spire of Our Savior's Church would, for the next week, exact a toll on our hamstrings. Over the next two days, we crossed from Rodby, Denmark, to Puttgarden, Germany, on one of the few European trains carried by a ferry; took a fast German InterCityExpress to Cologne, where we viewed Roman ruins and drank kolsch; and rode a high speed Thalys train to Paris, where we visited museums and had two lovely meals. One was lunch at La Bulle, an elegant and yet homey spot on Rue Louis Blanc in the 10th Arrondissement, where we had excellent ratatouille and lieu, a white fish. We even did laundry at a French coin operated lavarie before taking a TGV, or train a grande vitesse, to Barcelona for two nights. There, we ate tapas, attended Mass in the 12th century church of St. Anna, wandered through the Barri Gotic, and took a walking tour of the architectural marvels of Antoni Gaudi. There were times when it paid to be patient. A few hours north of Cologne, the German ICE train air conditioning failed as the temperature outside hit 97 degrees. Passengers were taken off at Dortmund and placed on other trains. Ours pulled into Cologne 70 minutes behind our original schedule the only time in 14 long distance and local train segments that we arrived significantly late. (Match that statistic by flying!) Two days later, in the Gare de Lyon in Paris, the platform for our train to Barcelona was not announced until 12 minutes before departure, leaving hundreds of people scurrying to find their cars. Boarding stress dissipated, however, as the train sped along at 185 miles per hour and we watched for landmarks the 13th century cathedral of Beziers, France, the beaches near Sete while listening to a member of the train crew do Donald Duck impressions for the children onboard. We didn't see everything we would have liked in the cities we visited. After congratulating ourselves for getting to view 10 Picasso paintings on loan to the Prado Museum during a brief stop in Madrid, we realized we had missed the artist's antiwar masterpiece, "Guernica," at the nearby Reina Sofia Museum. Overall, though, we were heartened to find that by choosing hotels close to center city train stations, we had designed a trip especially suitable for anyone who likes to explore cities by walking, and for older travelers who may find it a challenge to move around. In Copenhagen, for example, the Savoy Hotel was three blocks from the train station and a two minute walk from Mikkeller, a convivial craft beer bar. In Cologne, we were delighted to find that the relatively inexpensive and ever reliable Ibis chain had a hotel in the train station. For the final international leg of the trip, from Madrid to Lisbon, we boarded the Lusitania Trenhotel, operated by the Spanish rail company Renfe. We had reserved an ingeniously designed first class, two berth cabin with a sink. The Lusitania's cafe was open all night, and we passed midnight there, sharing red wine and savoring the cheerful hum of conversations. Such delights are dwindling. There is no longer a sleeper train between Paris and Madrid. Amsterdam has lost a direct overnight route to Warsaw. The Paris to Rome sleeper John took in July 2013 was discontinued the following winter. One reason is that high speed trains have eliminated the need for overnight travel on routes such as Paris to Zurich. And yet Mark Smith whose website, the Man in Seat Sixty One, is an indispensable guide to train travel points out that there remain routes with no good daytime high speed service, including Nice to Rome (more than eight hours) and Paris to Madrid (about nine hours). Smart marketing, Mr. Smith said, could bolster demand for sleepers as an alternative to low cost airlines. Instead of spending four hours to take a one hour flight, he said, travelers could leave in the evening and wake up refreshed at their destination, having saved the price of a hotel room. "Why should you have to go to an airport as if you were flying to the States just to go a few hundred miles down the road? I think the market is there." Well rested after our overnight trip from Madrid, we took a three hour walking tour of Lisbon's older neighborhoods. We then heeded our guide's advice to seek lunch in a nondescript place that seemed oblivious to tourists, and we found it in the Reviravolta, where we sat at a decidedly unglamorous Formica table and devoured plates of expertly grilled sea bass and sardines. But Lisbon was not quite our final stop, as it lies on the Tagus River. To complete the journey, we rode a suburban train 45 minutes west to the beach town of Cascais, where a cabdriver cheerfully agreed to take us four and a half miles to Praia do Guincho, a rocky beach on the Atlantic Ocean. Gusts of 40 knots or more blew sand into our eyes as we made our way gingerly to the water. A windsurfer told us he was giving up for the day because the wind was too strong. We touched our toes to the sea and then headed back to the waiting taxi. We had one more train trip to make, back to Lisbon. We looked out the windows on that final journey, satisfied that we had solved the conundrum of European travelers with limited vacation time: Is it better to cover a lot of ground or focus on relaxing? Over nine days, watching from comfortable second class seats as the countryside changed from birch forests to olive groves, we had done both. IF YOU GO Point to point tickets for the itinerary from Kiruna, Sweden, to Lisbon can be purchased online from the railway companies of Sweden (SJ,sj.se), Denmark (DSB, dsb.dk/om dsb/in english), Germany (Deutsche Bahn, bahn.com), France (SNCF, sncf.com), Spain (Renfre,renfe.com) and the multinational company Thalys (Thalys.com), which runs the high speed train we took from Cologne, Germany, to Paris. All have English language versions of their websites. Hotell Kebne, Konduktorsgatan 7, Kiruna, Sweden; hotellkebne.com.Clean, friendly and an easy walk from most of Kiruna's attractions. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Travel |
Lisa Phillips, the director of the New Museum in Lower Manhattan, walked into a cafe on Broadway one late winter afternoon trying to steal a few minutes for lunch it was 4:30, almost sundown. She had looked at her phone, and her eyes widened at a piece of news just then ricocheting around the art world, that Thomas P. Campbell, the director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art for eight years, had resigned under pressure amid budget and leadership problems. "I don't have any idea what the circumstances are," Ms. Phillips said, "but, look, no matter what, it's just a very hard job." And she should know: At 63, Ms. Phillips has been running an art museum in New York longer than anyone except Glenn Lowry at the Museum of Modern Art (she took over in 1999, he in 1995.) She is one of only two directors in the city who has overseen the construction of a brand new building (the New Museum's unorthodox Bowery home, opened in 2007; Adam Weinberg, at the Whitney Museum of American Art, opened his new building in the meatpacking district two years ago.) And she is now in the midst of an 80 million capital campaign to double her museum's size, a project notable at least so far for its sotto voce nature, in sharp contrast to the expansion Mr. Lowry is overseeing, which has involved the widely criticized razing of the former home of the American Folk Art Museum. "Even with the expansion, it's not about bigger being better, which has become the reflex position," she said. "Yes we need space. But it's more about using the space and the money we raise to think about what the museum needs to become in the 21st century." As her institution celebrates its 40th anniversary, Ms. Phillips has fully entered the dean stage of a museum career. Yet she remains one of the least publicly recognized members of the museum leader tribe, owing in part to a constitutional aversion to chest thumping that has left her standing somewhat in the shadows of her contemporaries. (She has, for example, over more than 30 years as a curator and director, never been profiled by this publication, and I could find only one extensive magazine article devoted to her.) But her molding of the New Museum from a near guerrilla, artist beloved operation founded by another woman, Marcia Tucker, into what it is today a highly regarded, still nimble institution that has shaped its own unmistakable personality in the world's most overcrowded city for contemporary art has earned her the respect of those who compete with her for shows, patrons and attention. During Ms. Phillips's tenure as director, after 22 years as a well regarded curator at the Whitney, the New Museum's numbers have all risen the way they must for any museum to be considered successful today: an increase in annual attendance to more than 400,000, from 60,000, since the museum moved from a smaller SoHo location in 2007; a quadrupling of exhibition space, staff and budget; a larger board, with veterans; and a steady infusion of young trustees with means. But Ms. Phillips said she considered her true accomplishments the things that could not be easily quantified. For one, an eclectic, at times unsettling, exhibition program (a heavy focus on technology, art from the Middle East, work by outsider artists and strident social activists, work by underrecognized women) that does not put thoughts of the gate first. And highly experimental programs like an urban think tank and a tech business incubator, the first of its kind for a museum that seem so far afield as to be strange but that have tapped a pent up desire for museum expertise on issues like socially progressive commerce and city planning. "This museum has always thought of itself as another model, and I think right now especially, in these times, another model is the right thing to be," she said one recent afternoon, visiting start ups at the incubator, New Inc, in a warehouse building next door to the museum, where the museum will expand into new, raw exhibition space beginning in the fall. (As just one example of the incubator's growing reach outside of the museum world, this year's Sundance Film Festival featured four virtual reality projects that were nurtured on the Bowery.) Massimiliano Gioni, the museum's artistic director, told me that when Ms. Phillips first interviewed him for a job 11 years ago, "the first question she asked me was 'What do you envision a museum is going to be in the 21st century?'" James Keith Brown, president of the museum's board, also told me: "It's still pretty hard for people in the straight visual arts to grasp why something like an incubator is important." Ms. Phillips has been a champion of women in the museum field, initiating the first study to collect salary data by gender for museum directors in the United States and Canada finding, no surprise, that women running large museums earned about a third less than male counterparts. An update released this year found improvement but not much. As of the last publicly available figures, from 2015, Ms. Phillips earned 619,000, less than Mr. Weinberg at the Whitney ( 870,000), or Richard Armstrong, the director of the Guggenheim ( 843,000), though their museums and budgets are far bigger. Her road hasn't been without some bumps. She was accused of art world myopia when the museum initiated a 2010 show of the prized private collection of a trustee, Dakis Joannou, curated not by museum staff but by Mr. Joannou's most prized artist, Jeff Koons. Ms. Phillips defended it as prime New Museum territory taking risks, showing provocative, important art the public might not see otherwise but it didn't help. The show was pummeled; Jerry Saltz in New York magazine wrote that "in playing to its largest audience to date, the New Museum is not only pandering, but trying to trump the competition with the undeclared game of 'collect the collector.'" (Ms. Phillips hasn't done anything remotely like it since.) The museum's unusual building, designed by the Japanese firm Sanaa before the acclaim that came with its Pritzker Prize, also hasn't worn particularly well, with critics complaining about poor crowd circulation, a lack of seating and a tendency to deaden some kinds of art problems she hopes the expansion will help solve. But Ms. Phillips a tall, elegant woman with a tendency to laugh when speaking about herself, as if doing so is a bit tactless has weathered these trials, mostly through a determination not to overreact to criticism, a composed resolve that friends say has been a trademark since she was young. "She was always a beacon of calm for me in a very crazy world," said the critic Hilton Als, who met her in the 1980s when the art world "was newly full of drugs and money before rich people started spending their money on trainers." "She was incredibly even keeled and never lost her sense of what was important to her," he said, "which was artists and preserving what they made." Her adult life has been inextricably tied up with art. Her first husband was the Venezuelan painter and sculptor Meyer Vaisman, whose studio was above the Mudd Club, the raucous late 70s TriBeCa watering hole of artists like Jean Michel Basquiat and Kathy Acker. ("It's surprising sometimes when she comes out with these stories about places like that, and you're like 'Wow, Lisa, you were there?'" the artist Cindy Sherman said.) With her second husband, Leon Falk, a film producer, she has twin daughters (now teenagers) with whom she became pregnant just after starting the job as New Museum director, while simultaneously curating her last large show for the Whitney. "I had been trying to get pregnant for a long time," she said. "I thought of it all as good luck." Her sense of a public persona and the fickleness of public opinion came early, as the daughter of a career newspaperman, Warren H. Phillips, who rose from the copy desk of The Wall Street Journal to become chairman of Dow Jones Company. She grew up well off in Brooklyn Heights and talks about two profoundly different formative experiences. One was a sailboat wreck off the coast of Virginia, with her family when she was 8. "It was a waterspout," she said. "My parents didn't have life vests on, and my sister and I did, but somehow we all got back to shore." She added, almost dispassionately: "The lesson from that, from my family, was you get over it by getting back on a boat and continuing to sail. You don't let fear get you." The other story is about a painted copy of Velazquez's famous portrait of the Infanta Margarita Teresa in a blue dress, an image that hung in her family's home and fascinated her as a child. "Then in college, in Vienna, I saw it in the Kunsthistorisches Museum," she said, "and I was stunned that this picture I knew so well was in a place like that, immortalized. It was really powerful." Her first experience in contemporary art was less felicitous, but no less powerful. As an intern at the Whitney, she was charged with sitting on the gallery floor inside a 1975 exhibition of the work of Richard Tuttle, art so minimal and humble it infuriated many viewers and was a factor in the firing of the curator, Ms. Tucker, who promptly went out and started the New Museum in two small temporary rooms in TriBeCa. "People would come into the galleries, and they'd be not just confused but mad," Ms. Phillips recalled, "and me, this young woman, my job was to try to explain to them why this was art and why it mattered." "I don't know if I was good at explaining it," she added, "but doing it made me into a convert, a true believer." She added, smiling: "It also made me realize that when people have hostile reactions to things, it's a good sign they might be important." (Jennifer Russell, a New York museum veteran who worked at the Whitney, the Museum of Modern Art and the Met, said: "Even when the material might be abrasive, Lisa never is. She always gets away with it somehow.") As she approaches what is sometimes retirement age for museum directors, Ms. Phillips only occasionally, half jokingly, mentions thoughts of winding down, of retiring to Long Island to become a gentlewoman farmer. I asked her if she had ever considered going to a larger museum the Met job is, after all, open and its previous occupant, Philippe de Montebello served until he was 72. "There are still so few women running those kinds of major museums, and more women should be in those positions, and one day I'm sure they will be," she said. "But I think women are also sometimes a little wiser than men in understanding what they need and want, in defining their own version of success. And just because the world says that's the goal might not mean it's so, at least not for everybody." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Art & Design |
Re "What You Should Know Before You Need a Ventilator," by Kathryn Dreger (Op Ed, nytimes.com, April 4): My fellow physician Dr. Kathryn Dreger details the realities of being intubated and ventilated. The bigger question that she raises is what each of us wants at the end of life, and what is important to us. Death will come to each of us, whether in the normal course of time or now, in the Covid 19 pandemic. We cannot escape that. But how we die is something we can sometimes influence. We have the ability to make choices about what and how much intervention we would want. For many of us, these choices do not get made until the middle of a crisis, and most often that is because we haven't taken the time to talk with our loved ones about what we would want. If we haven't thought that through and shared our thoughts with those who will care for us, then the path of least resistance, at least initially, is usually full intervention, full support, including the intubation and ventilation that Dr. Dreger details. The picture painted by Dr. Dreger ought to make us stop and think, "Is this really what I would want to go through if I get this disease?" And if not, the time is now to have the conversations, to be clear about our choices. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Opinion |
From the press box, I covered the Baltimore Orioles' hosting the Chicago White Sox in an empty stadium on April 29, 2015, an afternoon of eerie quiet and desolation at Camden Yards. It was believed to be the first major league game played without spectators. Balls leaving bats produced hollow echoes. No one scrambled to retrieve a home run or a foul ball and hand the souvenir to an excited child. The official attendance was announced as zero. As mainstream sports begin to return during the coronavirus pandemic, social distancing will be vital. Filling a stadium to capacity would be reckless and probably lethal. At the same time, that barren game five years ago raises doubts about whether sports can fully sustain our devotion, or maintain their television audiences, if played for many weeks or months in front of empty seats. Sure, social media, gambling and fantasy leagues stir fan interest. U.F.C., NASCAR, golf, German soccer and some other sports are holding competitions without fans on hand. And baseball leagues in South Korea and Taiwan have found early season television audiences despite empty stadiums. But without live spectators for an extended period, traditional games risk being reduced to mathematics with trading cards, especially once the novelty of sports' return wears off. Inside the park, a sense of absence and loss was leavened by humor. Davis tossed balls to nonexistent fans between innings. Caleb Joseph, then the Orioles catcher, gave imaginary high fives and signed make believe autographs. But bullpen phones could be heard ringing more than 400 feet from the dugouts. And players could hear the voices of broadcasters while on the field. This only heightened the feeling of vacancy. Of course, sports have long learned to adapt and experiment, from baseball games recreated in radio studios in the 1950s to NBC's announcer less N.F.L. game in 1980. When sports resume, networks could try to alleviate the silence with piped in crowd noise, as Fox is considering, along with digitized fans. But this would further enhance the sense of artificiality, as do the sex dolls and the placards of faux, masked fans in South Korean soccer stadiums and the robot drummers in Taiwan's baseball league. Cooped up Americans in general are eager to watch live sports, according to a recent poll conducted by Seton Hall. But one in five who consider themselves devoted sports fans said they would be less interested in watching broadcasts of games without spectators present. "I'd hate to think that I'm going to do a broadcast and 20 percent of the people are already turned off," said Gentile, the poll director. "I'm not sure that the viewing audience would be sustainable without a crowd at the event." Scores will be kept. Winners and losers will be declared. But without fans, the games might soon feel sterile. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Sports |
Dr. Esserman before performing a surgery in July, holding a sheet of song lyrics. Her preparation often includes singing to her patients as they go under anesthesia. She takes requests. Late one afternoon this summer, Dr. Laura J. Esserman, a breast cancer surgeon at the University of California, San Francisco, sat in a darkened room scrutinizing a breast M.R.I. With a clutch of other clinicians at her side, she quickly homed in on a spot smaller than a pencil eraser. She heard the words "six millimeter mass." Her response was swift: Most doctors, including the radiologist seated next to her, would have said yes. But Dr. Esserman, who has dedicated much of her professional life to trying to get the medical establishment to think differently about breast cancer, foresaw only unnecessary anxiety for the patient, who had had several biopsies in the past all benign. Dr. Esserman, 58, is one of the most vocal proponents of the idea that breast cancer screening brings with it overdiagnosis and overtreatment. Her philosophy is controversial, to say the least. For decades, the specter of women dying for lack of intervention has made aggressive treatment a given. But last month, her approach was given a boost by a long term study published in the journal JAMA Oncology. The analysis of 20 years of patient data made the case for a less aggressive approach to treating a condition known as ductal carcinoma in situ, or D.C.I.S., for which the current practice is nearly always surgery, and often radiation. The results suggest that the form of treatment may make no difference in outcomes. Dr. Esserman, who directs the Carol Franc Buck Breast Care Center, is one of only a few surgeons in the United States willing to put women with D.C.I.S. on active surveillance instead of performing biopsies, lumpectomies or mastectomies. She and other critics of vigorous intervention point to the potential side effects and risks of sometimes disfiguring treatments for premalignant conditions that are unlikely to develop into life threatening cancers. She has also challenged the conventional wisdom surrounding screening, arguing that while mortality from breast cancer has decreased over the past three decades, the approach to screening needs to change. She points out that the most lethal breast cancers appear between screens, while mammograms are finding more slow growing cancers with a very low chance of metastasis. In addition, screening has revealed a reservoir of D.C.I.S., also known as Stage 0, which now accounts for 20 percent to 25 percent of all breast cancer diagnoses. So convinced is Dr. Esserman that most patients will not benefit from early detection of such lesions that she has recommended to the National Cancer Institute that for many D.C.I.S. lesions, the ominous word "carcinoma" be dropped from the medical term for them and that they be renamed "indolent lesions of epithelial origin," or IDLEs. Much of this unsettles cancer specialists, who believe that aggressive treatment is prudent given that D.C.I.S. can be a precursor to invasive cancer in some patients. "What do you do if you hear a gunshot duck or not?" asked Dr. Larry Norton, medical director of the Memorial Sloan Kettering Evelyn H. Lauder Breast Center, who nonetheless said he admired Dr. Esserman's professionalism and rigor. In an era of 15 minute doctor visits, Dr. Esserman is known to spend hours with a patient (a practice that can be maddening to those in the waiting room) even if it means staying at the office until 10 p.m. She sends late night text messages to patients and calls whenever she can. One recent Sunday afternoon, she stood in the large, art filled kitchen of her house in the Ashbury Heights district of San Francisco, rehearsing the song "Defying Gravity" from the musical "Wicked." It was a request from a patient. Tissue from a patient with ductal carcinoma in situ. For nearly two decades, Dr. Esserman has sung to her patients as they go under anesthesia. With enough notice, she takes requests. "Ask for an aria and I might need a week, but most songs take about 15 minutes to learn," she said. "Unlimited. My future is unli mi ted," she sang full throated in her kitchen, for a visitor. Then she stopped. "You see, that's the thing," she said, her gaze intense enough to double as a Vulcan mind meld. "You have to believe in the possible. The minute you think your future is limited, it is." Dr. Esserman received national attention five years ago with an innovative, adaptively randomized drug trial called I SPY 2, aimed at reducing the cost and time required to test new medications for breast cancer. The trial matches drugs with patient subtypes, allowing drugs from different companies to be assessed simultaneously, and much earlier in the disease process, while quickly phasing out those that do not appear to be working. Trials for drugs to treat other cancers, as well as Alzheimer's disease and Ebola, have adopted the design, said Donald Berry, a statistician at M.D. Anderson in Houston who designed I SPY 2 with Dr. Esserman. "The whole idea catapulted the concept of adaptive clinical trials and precision medicine," said Dr. Richard Schilsky, chief medical officer of the American Society of Clinical Oncology. Dr. Esserman's approach to D.C.I.S. has been much slower to gain acceptance in the medical community. "Laura is one of the people who's actively engaged in research in this area and will help us push the field forward to determine whether or not there is a group of people for whom surveillance will be appropriate," said Dr. Elisa Port, chief of breast surgery at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York and author of "The New Generation Breast Cancer Book." "But no one has these tools now to know whether or not it's safe, and the biggest factor is we know that when we do surgery on D.C.I.S., about 10 percent of the time, commingled with the D.C.I.S. is invasive cancer." She added: "When we talk about watching and waiting with D.C.I.S., the question is, 'How do we know it's just D.C.I.S.?' The answer is that we don't." But Dr. Esserman's minimally invasive approach is beginning to win some converts in clinical settings. One of the highest compliments she has received, she said, came recently from a colleague at U.C.S.F., Dr. Barbara Fowble, a radiation oncologist who has tended to favor more conventional treatment. When asked about the remark by a reporter, Dr. Fowble laughed. "Yes," she said. "I think we've both influenced each other. She was willing to do more surgery, and I was willing to back off on the radiation." "She advances us forward," Dr. Fowble said of Dr. Esserman. "And you can either go with her or live in the past. I would rather go with her." One day last January, Ilene Katz, a registered nurse at the university, went to see Dr. Esserman. It was not about work. Ms. Katz had just learned that she had a 12 centimeter tumor in her breast. Frightened and in shock, she told Dr. Esserman she wanted to have both breasts removed. The appointment lasted three hours. Scans showed that the tumor was self contained. That night Dr. Esserman called her new patient again, with pointed questions. "She asked me why I was going to hurt my body when it wouldn't do any additional good," Ms. Katz, 45, recalled. "She asked me a bunch of questions that really made me think." By the next day, she decided to have breast reduction surgery instead. Several weeks later, Ms. Katz got a call from Dr. Esserman at 9:30 p.m. Dr. Esserman had just sat down to dinner. "I could tell she couldn't stand knowing I was confused and scared," Ms. Katz said. "She wouldn't hang up until she was sure I felt better. She was talking between bites." Peggy MacDonald, 51, is currently under Dr. Esserman's care, on a watch and wait course. She was diagnosed with D.C.I.S. in April 2013. "I didn't even know what it was," she recalled. "But there was cancer in the word and it was scary." The first surgeons Ms. MacDonald saw in Portland, Ore., where she lives, immediately discussed surgery as a given. Then Ms. MacDonald heard about Dr. Esserman and flew to San Francisco for another opinion. Before the appointment, Dr. Esserman requested a few additional tests, including a high resolution M.R.I. and blood tests to check hormone levels. "She walked into the room and sat down and said, 'I don't think there's anything urgent going on here. We have time,' " Ms. MacDonald said. Dr. Esserman put Ms. MacDonald on a course of ovarian suppression drugs and a hormonal agent. Last December, nearly two years after the diagnosis, Dr. Esserman told Ms. MacDonald that an M.R.I. showed no evidence of D.C.I.S. "I found myself being angry at having a double mastectomy for not having cancer," said Ms. Hollander. She sent Dr. Esserman an email and Dr. Esserman replied that night. Ms. Hollander's D.C.I.S. did not respond to hormone therapy as hoped, and she is now planning to have a mastectomy. "I didn't rush her into surgery," Dr. Esserman said. "And I think that's the essence of it. People don't want to think that a mastectomy is the first choice." Dr. Esserman did not grow up around physicians. Her father was a car dealer in Miami, her mother a teacher. Gifted in science, she worked in a research lab at the University of Miami while still in high school, then went to Harvard. Even then, her assertiveness was hard to miss. Dr. H. Gilbert Welch, a professor of medicine at Dartmouth, has known Dr. Esserman since they were undergraduates at Harvard, and he coached her on an intramural crew team. "I cannot tell you who else I coached in that boat, but I never forgot coaching Laura," Dr. Welch said. "It was a lot of fun, but it wasn't quiet." After Dr. Esserman finished her surgical training at Stanford University in 1991, she was recruited to the university's business school. She earned a master's in business while remaining part time on the School of Medicine surgical faculty and caring for her infant daughter, Marisa, the first of two children with her husband, Michael Endicott, a professional photographer and environmental activist. In 2009, the United States Preventive Services Task Force revised its breast cancer screening guidelines, recommending that women wait until age 50 to start regular screening, and that women 40 to 49 who were at a high risk for breast cancer discuss with their physicians the best time to start getting mammograms. Dr. Esserman and others had been pushing for such changes for years, but the revised guidelines were met with outrage from breast cancer support groups, as well as some researchers and physicians, who argued that early detection had saved millions of lives. (The American Cancer Society continues to recommend regular mammograms starting at age 40.) Asserting the need for better evidence about the value of screening, Dr. Esserman paused briefly from her salmon deboning. "The only way to do better is to know better," she said, crediting the poet Maya Angelou for that thought as she waved her small tool in the air. "The point is to try to move the field and do right by our patients." To this end, Dr. Esserman has embarked on an ambitious project a multiyear trial involving some 100,000 participants. Called "Women Informed to Screen Depending on Measures of Risk," or Wisdom, the five year study will test participants for genetic markers and other factors that point to a risk of breast cancer, and screen those at risk more frequently than the current federal task force guidelines. Those deemed at less risk will receive fewer mammograms. A control group will receive annual mammograms. Dr. Esserman is careful to point out that no one in the trial will receive screening that is less aggressive than the task force guidelines. "We'll stay within the bounds," she said, "but over time the goal is to learn what risk factors are the most important and how we can adapt screening accordingly." Even Dr. Esserman's most outspoken critics respect her. "I think fundamentally she's on the right track, and I'd be delighted to be disproved," said Dr. Daniel Kopans, a professor of radiology at Harvard Medical School, who has long disagreed with Dr. Esserman about screening. Dr. Kopans, who specializes in breast imaging, cited studies showing that death rates of breast cancer patients who were not screened had declined at a much lower rate than those who were screened. "Mammography isn't the answer to breast cancer, by any means," he said. "But don't give up on mammography. And don't stop screening because we haven't figured out how to treat D.C.I.S. properly." As for her own screening, Dr. Esserman is aware that her risk for breast cancer is increasing with age. She said she planned to participate in the Wisdom trial. "I'm asking everyone else to be randomized, so I'll probably be randomized," she said. "I try to design trials that I would want to participate in." Dr. Esserman has received her share of angry letters, particularly from women with D.C.I.S. who chose to have mastectomies. "People have said, 'How could you invalidate everything I've gone through?' " she said. Every time she performs surgery, she hopes to help one more woman survive. One morning earlier this summer, Dr. Esserman entered an operating room at UCSF Medical Center at Mount Zion, carrying a printout of the lyrics to the Beatles' "With a Little Help From My Friends." Ms. Katz had requested the song for a second surgery on her breast to remove any residual tumor cells. As the anesthesiologist fit a mask to the patient's face, Dr. Esserman cupped Ms. Katz's hand tightly around her own, and together the physician and her frightened patient broke into song. Even after Ms. Katz had lost consciousness, Dr. Esserman kept singing, while stroking her patient's cheek. She switched briefly to one of her favorites: "Sweet dreams that leave all worries behind you. But in your dreams, whatever they be, dream a little dream of me." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Health |
Mary Boone in 2016. Lawyers for the art dealer cited the trauma of an impoverished childhood in a court filing that seeks to help her avoid prison for tax evasion. Mary Boone, a veteran gallerist who has been a fixture in the New York art world for decades, pleaded guilty Wednesday to filing false federal income tax returns, law enforcement officials said. The Mary Boone Gallery's 2012 tax forms reported a false business loss for the previous year of about 52,000 although the gallery actually made a profit in 2011 of about 3.7 million, according to documents filed by the United States attorney's office. Ms. Boone used business funds to pay for more than 1.6 million in personal expenses, including remodeling a Manhattan apartment, and then falsely claimed those personal expenses as business deductions, prosecutors said. They added that she failed to report on her personal tax forms her profit from the gallery, instead using the bogus losses to offset what she had declared as her personal income. In a statement, Geoffrey S. Berman the United States attorney in Manhattan, described Ms. Boone as "playing a shell game with bank accounts to hide her true assets," adding: "As Boone has learned, tax laws are not abstract." The charges and guilty plea constituted a jarring and perhaps humbling turn of events for Ms. Boone, who over four decades running one of New York City's premier galleries has often courted attention and sometimes seemed to relish controversy. "This is the worst day of my life," she wrote in an email message in response to an inquiry from The New York Times. "I have learned from my mistake and I am working very hard to put it behind me." Ms. Boone opened her gallery in SoHo in 1977 and rose to prominence while showing the work of artists like Julian Schnabel, David Salle, Jean Michel Basquiat and Ross Bleckner. That male dominated lineup drew criticism from some, including the Guerrilla Girls, an activist feminist art collective who plastered SoHo with posters denouncing Ms. Boone. In 1987, the Boone gallery began representing its first woman, Barbara Kruger. In 1999, Ms. Boone was arrested after the police were told that she was offering gallery visitors live ammunition as mementos of a one man show by the sculptor Tom Sachs. The police seized the cartridges and a sculpture consisting of four shotguns and two pistols. After a night in jail, Ms. Boone appeared before a judge wearing a sleeveless orange dress and high heels, and told reporters that her arrest was "an outrageous attack" on artists' rights. The charges against her were eventually dropped. Then, in 2016, the actor Alec Baldwin sued Ms. Boone saying that she had deceived him by promising a painting, "Sea and Mirror," by Mr. Bleckner, that had been sold at Sotheby's to a Los Angeles collector, but actually supplied him with another similar Bleckner painting, also called "Sea and Mirror." The case was settled last year with Ms. Boone paying Mr. Baldwin what was described at the time only as "a seven figure sum." Over the years Ms. Boone, a flamboyant figure, whose assistants sometimes referred to her as "Scary Spice," remained a constant in the ever changing art world. In 1996 she moved her gallery from SoHo to Fifth Avenue and 57th Street. Four years later she opened a space in Chelsea. And she continued to champion the work of young painters and organize shows that drew respectful reviews. On Wednesday Ms. Boone pleaded guilty to two counts of filing a false federal income tax return, each of which carries a maximum sentence of three years in prison. She is scheduled to be sentenced in January. Prosecutors said that she agreed to pay restitution to the Internal Revenue Service in the amount of at least 3 million, which represents the additional tax due and owing as a result of her filing of false individual and corporate income tax returns for the calendar years 2009, 2010, and 2011. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Art & Design |
LOS ANGELES A two hour prime time special on ABC. Cupcakes the size of cars at Disneyland Paris. Collaborations with a dozen fashion designers, including Marc Jacobs. More than 30 books, including one from Taschen so big it comes with a carrying handle. Small and subtle are not the Walt Disney Company's style. But a new effort to focus attention on one of its oldest characters, Mickey Mouse, is truly something to behold. Disney is using Mickey's 90th birthday as a monstrous marketing moment, with the company's cross promotional machine revved up to what may be its highest level yet. Every corner of the 168 billion company is contributing to the campaign, which will intensify on Sunday when ABC runs "Mickey's 90th Spectacular." Disney theme parks will be hosting events into next year. Unless lawmakers intervene, as they have in the past, Disney's control of the Mickey copyright will expire in five years. So there's no time like the present to rally around him. Disney has billions of dollars in merchandise sales to consider. Mickey and his friends (Minnie, Pluto, Goofy) make up Disney's top selling consumer products franchise, generating annual retail sales of at least 3.2 billion, according to The Licensing Letter, a trade publication. That tally does not include the Disney Store chain or outlets at Disney's theme parks. Disney does not disclose sales information, although a spokeswoman said the franchise had been growing both domestically and overseas. There are challenges, however, the result of a shifting retail marketplace (the demise of the Toys "R" Us chain) and declining television viewership. Disney's child focused cable channels are important Mickey engines, serving up animated specials, shorts and series. Mickey also has strong competitors in the preschool market "Paw Patrol" on Nickelodeon, for instance. "The challenge for any character, but especially for Mickey since he's so historic, is maintaining relevancy," said Marty Brochstein, a senior vice president at the International Licensing Industry Merchandisers' Association. "And the adults are almost more important than the kids in that way. The grown ups decide what the money gets spent on." Here are some of the components of Mickey palooza: Associating older characters with of the moment artists is a tried and true way to demonstrate relevancy. That strategy appears to be part of the thinking behind "Mickey: The True Original Exhibition." This Disney created exhibit, running Thursday to Feb. 10 in a 16,000 square foot space in Manhattan, features Mickey inspired creations by contemporary artists like Amanda Ross Ho, Shinique Smith and Daniel Arsham. "With the scale of Disney and who Mickey Mouse has become, a lot of people forget that Walt Disney was a real artist," Mr. Arsham said in a statement. "Being able to make my own mark on his legacy is a real dream." "We wanted to celebrate how this little character transcends boundaries," Mr. Mischer said by phone after the taping. "He's an everyman who sometimes fails but keeps trying. Who can't relate to that?" But it was tricky to find the right tone, said Charlie Haykel, another producer. "We didn't want a history lesson," he said. "And we didn't want it to turn too sentimental." Mickey's popularity has remained remarkably stable over the years, according to Henry Schafer, executive vice president for the Q Scores Company, which measures the popularity of celebrities, brands and licensed properties. A springtime poll by the company showed that 26 percent of the United States population ranked Mickey as a favorite cartoon character, far above the average. Mr. Schafer said Mickey's appeal was particularly high among Latinos, 39 percent of whom said he was a favorite. Disney's vast theme park operation is one reason the squeaky voiced rodent has remained so embedded in the culture. The parks, which attracted more than 150 million visitors last year, offer the masses a touch point quite literally. Walking around Mickeys sign autographs and pose for photos. For the current campaign, the Disney parks will stock commemorative merchandise, sell "limited edition" desserts and host a dizzying number of events billed as the World's Biggest Mouse Party. Hong Kong Disneyland will hand out birthday stickers to guests as they enter, for instance, and Disneyland Paris has those colossal (inedible) cupcakes on display. Starting in mid January, Disney World in Florida will introduce a Mickey focused "street jubilee." Poor Minnie. Always in the shadow of her boyfriend. But Disney has not left her out entirely. She dances with Mickey on the ABC special and is front and center in the Mouse Party theme park events. Disney also arranged for her to receive a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. (Mickey got his 40 years ago.) The sidewalk plaque was unveiled in January by Mr. Iger and Katy Perry, who wore polka dots in the character's honor. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Media |
A high end audio system that's fun to drive? Jaguar's 2014 F Type snarls like the Rolling Stones and tracks as precisely as a needle in a groove. Tom Voelk recommends a good set of headphones. Firesand Orange is what Jaguar calls the paint that flashed from the F Type sports car that I recently drove. The crowd pleasing shade recalled such things as a pumpkin, a traffic cone and a hunter's vest. What it didn't remind people of was a Jaguar, with several New Yorkers professing love for the car but surprise at its British nameplate. Their reaction was understandable: the 2014 F Type is Jaguar's first pure two seat sports car in 40 years. Also, like every new Jaguar, the F Type looks and sounds nothing like the genteel coaches that have come to characterize the brand, especially after it moved away from racing and sports cars like the E Type, the F Type's classic predecessor of 1961 74. But if the people on the street couldn't always identify the badge at first glance, it didn't stop bystanders from drooling and draping themselves over the Jag, sometimes literally: I cringed when I found a group of teenagers engaged in a curbside photo shoot, taking turns posing atop the front fender for maximum Flickr effect. The car has flaws, including a relatively steep price, flabby curb weight, mildly uncommunicative steering and the lack, for now, of a manual transmission option. But for an initial salvo against the Porsche 911 Cabriolet, and to a lesser extent the Porsche Boxster and Corvette Stingray, the F Type made a crater size impression. And this British built roadster reminded me that when a sports car nails the sex, sound and speed equation, it's easy to forgive the little things. In a bit of reverse colonialism, in 2008 Tata Motors of India plucked the Jaguar and Land Rover brands from Ford for 2.3 billion, partly to wedge its way into China's luxury car market. Of the two marques, Land Rover has long carried more than its weight. But critically praised new models are finally giving Jaguar a lift, with American sales up 36 percent this year and global sales rising 38 percent. Befitting its brand name, the Jaguar F Type is a snarling, clawing animal especially in the guise of the supercharged 495 horsepower F Type V8 S, starting at 92,895. That's 40 more horses than the new Stingray, 95 more than the 911 Carerra S Cabrio. A dash from standstill to 60 miles per hour takes just over four seconds, with a peak speed of 186 m.p.h. But just as important is how the F Type gets there and how it returns to a stop: with a such a fusillade of popping, backfiring exhaust noise that civilians might dive for cover. The rumble is faintly ridiculous, yes, but also inspired and incendiary. It is simply one of the best V8 engine sounds in the business, aided by a driver adjustable adaptive exhaust (on V8 and V6 S models) and four artillery size exhaust outlets. I didn't drive the V6 S, but I have heard it. That car's 380 horsepower, 3 liter supercharged engine has its own sonic charms along with a lower base price of 81,895. Drivers who prize roadster style and fun over sheer velocity can dip down to 69,985 for the basic F Type V6, with a 340 horse version of the supercharged V6. But there's no getting around it: even that 340 horse "starter" F Type costs 13,000 more than the 455 horsepower Stingray convertible and nearly 7,000 more than the Boxster S. The 6 cylinder Jaguars are still quick, with 0 to 60 times of 5.1 seconds for the base V6 and 4.8 seconds for the V6 S. All three versions share a well insulated fabric top, which I repeatedly popped open while driving around New York City and points north it operates at speeds up to 30 m.p.h. during a recent period of spectacular fall weather. The roof tucks away without stealing space from the petite 7.1 cubic foot trunk. My large wheeled carry on just fit, with side room to spare. But you can load two carry ons in the Corvette convertible's roomier hatch and three in the 911, with its front trunk and bonus rear seat storage. But people who love the Jag's English flair won't be taking a tape measure to the trunk. The car's classic oval grille, flared hips and beautifully drawn rear deck reminiscent of the exotic BMW Z8 push all the right buttons for sports car fans. Like its modern stablemates, this Jaguar looks fast, desirable and just a bit dangerous. (A coupe version of the F Type, to be unveiled Nov. 19 at the Los Angeles Auto Show, goes on sale in the spring.) Hidden door handles extend automatically when you unlock the car, a nice technical touch. An interior button deploys the rear spoiler at a cocky angle. The cabin doesn't fool around, aiding the driver with simple rotary climate knobs, handsome toggles and well assembled, starkly luxurious materials: dark aluminum, glossy piano black trim and nary a slice of old timey woodgrain in sight. A central touch screen for navigation, audio and settings is only intermittently cumbersome, a huge step up from the digital abominations in some recent Jaguars. First rate sport seats, including power adjustable bolsters, are borrowed from the mighty XKR S. But the leather is a letdown in texture and quality. The F Type eschews the rotary dial transmission controller found in other Jags. Instead there is a console shifter shaped like a ray gun, which falls smoothly to hand but resists smooth operation from a stop, requiring you to pull a trigger as you select Reverse or Drive. As in BMWs, the electronic shifter tends to get hung up in neutral, leaving you revving the engine, red faced and going nowhere fast. On the prowl, that shifter forges a fast, satisfying connection to an 8 speed ZF automatic transmission. Hit the toggle switch for Dynamic mode and the gauges glow red around a bull's eye that displays an animated numeral of the selected gear. Dynamic mode punches up parameters including the steering, engine, transmission, exhaust and three levels of stability control; drivers can also configure individual settings. Steering wheel paddle shifters are plastic, not metal, but they work well. This is the fourth generation of Jaguar's aluminum intensive architecture, but despite the structure's weight saving properties the car is mystifyingly heavy, about 3,700 pounds with the V8. That's some 700 pounds more than a Boxster S and 350 more than the Stingray convertible. Though Jaguar has stuck with hydraulic steering, as opposed to the electrically assisted units on the Porsches and the Corvette, there's little payoff in road feel. Yet the F Type is still an exuberant partner on road and track alike, with deft balance that spurs a driver to push harder. That grip and confidence are bolstered by an adaptive suspension, electronic rear differential and optional 20 inch wheels and tires. Track workouts aside, this car lives for public roads and the public eye. And if there were such as thing as the public ear, the F Type's gas fired soundtrack might top the charts. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Automobiles |
In July, David J. Pecker, the chairman of the company that owns The National Enquirer, visited his old friend President Trump at the White House. The tabloid publisher took along a special guest, Kacy Grine, a French businessman who advises one of Saudi Arabia's richest men and sometimes acts as an intermediary between Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and Western businesses. The two men and other Pecker associates chatted with the president in the Oval Office and briefly met with Mr. Trump's son in law and Middle East envoy, Jared Kushner. Before moving on to dinner with the group, the president had a photographer snap pictures of the guests standing with him behind his desk. Mr. Pecker has long used his media empire to protect Mr. Trump's image. During the 2016 presidential campaign, Mr. Pecker's company, American Media Inc., suppressed the story of a former Playboy model who claimed to have had an affair with Mr. Trump. The night of the dinner, Mr. Pecker got something from Mr. Trump: an unofficial seal of approval from the White House. It was an opportune moment for Mr. Pecker to showcase his White House connections. He was considering expanding his media and events businesses into Saudi Arabia and also was hunting for moneyed partners in acquisitions. Mr. Pecker's company, American Media Inc., published a glossy magazine that is essentially a promotional brochure for Saudi Arabia and the crown prince. The intersection of the tabloid publisher with the Saudis, enhanced by the White House visit, is a previously untold chapter in the long, symbiotic relationship between the president and Mr. Pecker, which was forged in the 1990s. At the time, Mr. Trump was celebrating a real estate comeback after his casino bankruptcies and was both the subject and the source of much gossip in New York. Mr. Pecker, who had known Mr. Grine only for a few months, invited him to the dinner to thank him for advice he had provided about investing in the Middle East, according to someone who knew of the invitation. Word soon traveled back to Saudi Arabia about the dinner: It signaled Mr. Pecker's powerful status in Washington. Two months later, he was in Saudi Arabia, meeting with Mr. Grine and the crown prince about business opportunities there, according to A.M.I. And by January, Mr. Pecker was confident enough about his growing rapport with Saudi investors that he sought their help bankrolling a possible acquisition of Time magazine, which he had long coveted, according to two people with direct knowledge of the talks. A.M.I. disputed that. The White House did not respond to a request for comment. The people briefed on the interactions between A.M.I. and Saudi Arabia requested anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly. The outcome of Mr. Pecker's efforts to do business with the Saudis remains unclear. But he is still working to cultivate ties. This week, he and Mr. Grine both attended events in New York featuring Prince Mohammed, who is on a tour across the United States. 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. Ahead of that visit, A.M.I. published a 97 page glossy magazine that is essentially a promotional brochure for Saudi Arabia and the crown prince. It makes no mention of anything troubling, like the Saudi led military campaign in Yemen, human rights concerns or the crown prince's arrest last fall of many extended royals, including Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, an influential client of Mr. Grine's. The magazine which refers to Saudi Arabia throughout as "the Magic Kingdom" includes an interview with Mr. Grine, accompanied by a photo of him posing with Mr. Trump in the Oval Office, taken during his visit with Mr. Pecker. It talks up the relationship between Mr. Trump and the Saudis, noting that Mr. Trump "endorsed the crown prince's high profile anticorruption" crackdown. A.M.I. has said it produced the magazine to "capitalize" on interest in the crown prince, who is next in line to the throne, and has been careful to say it received no input or guidance from Saudi officials. That carries important legal implications: Foreign direction or control of such a purely promotional publication may require disclosure to the Justice Department. The Saudi government did not respond to a request for comment. The magazine 200,000 copies distributed in Walmart and other outlets, with a cover price of 13.99 and no advertising provided a unique welcome mat for the prince, whose visit comes as the Trump administration is trying to establish tighter ties with the kingdom. Both countries are touting cross border investment opportunities, including a pledge by the Saudi government to put 20 billion into a fund that will invest in American infrastructure projects. The kingdom is also nearing a deal to buy American made missiles and other military equipment. Mr. Grine, a 30 year old French citizen, has helped broker deals between Saudi investors and companies in France, Senegal and the United States. He and Mr. Pecker were introduced last spring by Ari Emanuel, chief executive of Endeavor, the huge talent, entertainment and sports company based in Beverly Hills, Calif. Mr. Trump with Karen McDougal, a former Playboy model who claims they had an affair. Mr. Pecker's company suppressed the story during the presidential campaign. Mr. Grine and Mr. Pecker soon had a series of discussions about the investment landscape in Saudi Arabia, according to a person briefed on the talks. Mr. Pecker extended the White House dinner invitation shortly afterward. A.M.I. would not say who else was among the "select group of friends" Mr. Pecker took to the White House at the president's invitation. During the evening, the Middle East and the recent French elections came up. In a statement, A.M.I. said, "The entire conversation was social, with the exception of a couple very brief mentions of current events." Mr. Pecker is best known for The Enquirer, but his media empire is wide ranging. A.M.I.'s titles include Men's Journal, Hers, Flex and Muscle Fitness. The publisher has used the company at times to protect close friends, including Mr. Trump. Karen McDougal, a former Playboy model, recently filed a lawsuit alleging that Mr. Trump's lawyer was secretly involved when A.M.I. tried to bury her story about an affair with Mr. Trump. A.M.I. bought the rights to her story during the presidential campaign for 150,000 but never published it. In the world of gossip media, such a maneuver is known as a "catch and kill" operation. Mr. Trump's lawyer Michael D. Cohen and A.M.I. have denied the allegations. Mr. Trump's representatives say the affair never happened. During the campaign, The Enquirer also published scathing articles about Mr. Trump's rivals, as well as perceived antagonists like the television host Megyn Kelly. In promoting Mr. Trump, The Enquirer endorsed a candidate for the first time in its history. "David Pecker would be a brilliant choice as CEO of TIME Magazine nobody could bring it back like David!" Mr. Trump wrote in a Tweet in 2013. Asked about Mr. Pecker's interest in Time, A.M.I.'s chief content officer, Dylan Howard, said, "Any media executive worth his or her salt must look at any acquisition opportunity in today's media climate." A.M.I. has struggled financially. It went through a series of restructurings in the last decade, including a bankruptcy in 2010 in which the company reported up to 1 billion in debts, before being acquired four years ago by two private equity funds. The company said in a statement that it was "in an incredibly stable financial position." Mr. Pecker has continued to hunt for new acquisitions. Last year, he bought Us Weekly from Wenner Media. But money remained scarce, according to A.M.I.'s financial advisers. When Mr. Pecker's friend Harvey Weinstein suggested last fall that they team up to purchase Rolling Stone, Mr. Pecker expressed little interest. "I can not contribute any cash," he wrote in an email obtained by The New York Times. In that same Sept. 28 exchange, he wrote to Mr. Weinstein: "I am in Saudi Arabia on business. Can't call from here." During the visit to Saudi Arabia, Mr. Grine arranged for himself and Mr. Pecker to meet with Prince Mohammed, who is the chairman of the kingdom's deep pocketed Public Investment Fund. At the meeting, Mr. Pecker described his vision for expanding his events business, which includes the Mr. Olympia bodybuilding competition, into Saudi Arabia. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Media |
Equifax introduced a free consumer service Wednesday that allows people to lock access to their credit files from a mobile phone. It didn't work. After cyberthieves gained access to 145 million Social Security numbers in a breach at Equifax disclosed last fall, the company's consumer facing technology melted down. Websites froze, tools to check your potential vulnerability did not work, and people trying to freeze their credit files or temporarily lift the freezes spent hours at the task. Amid that mess came a promise from Equifax that it would create a simple app that allowed people to "lock" their credit files without all the hassle and without a fee. That is what the company introduced Wednesday. It was supposed to be simple: You download the app and swipe the lock to the right, which restricts access to your file. Except that's not what happened. We started by downloading the app with my (Tara's) husband's credit file as the guinea pig for the test. The home screen said, "Your Equifax credit report you're in charge." (Nope, not until we can opt out of the credit reporting system altogether. But we digress.) Before you start trying to lock your credit, you can be diverted and given an option to remove your name from the lists that the credit bureaus give to credit card and insurance companies. That's something you would probably want to do so you're not inundated with marketing offers. Is it easy? Heh. Here, you have a few choices. You can opt in (which is already selected), you can opt out electronically for five years, or you can opt out permanently by printing the opt out form. From your phone. Then, you need to walk to the nearest mailbox and send it to Equifax. But first, you'll need Barbie sized fingers to fill out the opt out form, because it isn't optimized for mobile phones and makes typing difficult. So I (Tara) put on my Barbie fingers, and began. I filled out the entire form and then emailed it to myself so I could print it (after all, is your mobile phone hooked up to a printer?). As it turns out, I emailed myself a blank form. So I had to fill out the entire thing again, but at least I could do that from the luxury of a regular sized keyboard. I turned back to my phone and continued on the app. Next, you're asked to enter your name, date of birth, Social Security number, mobile number and address (that's O.K., because most of those are already exposed, right?). After you confirm you're not a robot, you create a password. The user agreement and privacy policy come next. Don't click on them! At least not from your phone. If you actually try to read them, as I tried to, when you press "done" you may be kicked back to the home screen. And you'll need to start over name, date of birth, Social Security number and so on. Back to creating the account. Once you enter your personal information, you're sent a numeric passcode via text to confirm your identity. My husband read it to me from his phone. The numerals 4, 5 and 6 did not follow. Phew. I entered the code. Now, all I had to do was slide to the right and voila! his credit file would be locked. The lock was circling, but I figured it would take 10 seconds. After all, there are roughly 200 million individual credit files. That could take a while. But several more seconds passed, and I started counting. I got to 90 before I was booted back to the sign in screen. I gave it another try. And another. And another still. That's when we told Equifax. About 90 minutes later, a spokeswoman said the company had identified the issue and resolved it. Except that it hadn't. The locking mechanism still wouldn't lock. A company spokeswoman said Equifax had not experienced widespread issues with the service, but, as with any new product, there had been isolated problems they were working to resolve. She also offered to put me on the phone with a technical support representative. Why go to all of this trouble to cut off access to your credit file? Credit card issuers, mobile phone companies and others generally won't do business with you without first checking your credit report with at least one of the three major bureaus: Equifax, Experian and TransUnion. If companies can't get to your file, they won't issue credit. That protects you when thieves get access to your information and then try to open new accounts in your name. Equifax declined to promise that its push toward locks would not cause the loss of legal or regulatory protections. Shutting companies out of your credit files has traditionally meant initiating something called a credit freeze. It often costs a few dollars and you have to use a PIN which you may not remember or could lose to temporarily lift the freeze when you do want to authorize access to your credit file. Getting a new PIN takes a fair bit of tedious work. (For a longer primer, see our consumer guide to the Equifax breach.) Freezes are also subject to a variety of state laws. Equifax's new app offers a lock instead of a freeze. Locks works similarly to freezes both restrict access to your credit file but it should be easier to unlock your credit file since you can do it from your phone with a swipe, and doesn't require a 10 digit pin or a fee. What is not clear, however, is what disadvantages may come with locks. Many state laws exist that govern freezes, offering consumers protection. By creating locks, the companies avoid them. "Freezes are a right mandated by law and not conditional on terms set by companies," said Mike Litt, consumer campaign director at U.S. Public Interest Research Group. "Your rights as a consumer are on firmer ground with a freeze." It isn't clear, however, what if any practical implication this will have. We offered Equifax the opportunity to promise that their push toward locks will not cause the loss of legal or regulatory protections. The company declined. The lock's user agreement does explicitly promise to never add an "arbitration provision" to that agreement. But Equifax reserves the right to change any other terms and also wipes its hands clean of any liability, through another legal clause, should things go wrong. "Bottom line," said Chi Chi Wu, a lawyer at the National Consumer Law Center, "if the 'lock' fails and you become a victim of identity theft, you have no recourse." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Your Money |
WASHINGTON Against the backdrop of mounting evidence that the global economy is weakening, President Trump is caught between his desire to pursue the trade war with China he promised to win and his need to keep the economy humming as the 2020 election approaches. That conflict explains some of the messaging from Mr. Trump in public and on social media in recent days as market gyrations undermine the confidence of investors. The president has insisted that his tariffs on Chinese imports are hurting only China, telling reporters on Thursday that "the longer the trade war goes on, the weaker China gets and the stronger we get." The main thing threatening American prosperity, he has said repeatedly on Twitter, is the Federal Reserve and its refusal to act expeditiously to lower interest rates. But economists say the tariffs are causing damage unacknowledged by the administration, with slowing growth in China and an economic downturn in Germany, a big exporter to China, becoming apparent this week. Sticking with the trade war could bet the health of the economy on the Fed's ability to provide a sufficient buffer if a global downturn sets in. "The president seems to be playing a dangerous game," by stirring "stuff up just enough to get the Fed to cut interest rates," said Phil Levy, the chief economist at Flexport, a freight company. Official administration forecasts continue to project that the economy will grow even faster this year than it did last year, when it was fueled by tax cuts. That outlook is rosier than any mainstream private forecaster has offered. Several forecasters have increased the odds of a recession's hitting next year. After the German and Chinese economic reports, the bond market responded with trading patterns that have often presaged a recession. And economic data from the United States on Thursday showed that industrial production declined in July and that the manufacturing sector had shrunk over the last year. Outwardly, administration officials have been sanguine. A senior administration official said in an interview on Wednesday evening that analysts and investors were "going overboard" on recession fears. The administration points to economic data underscoring the strength of the American consumer, like retail sales numbers released on Thursday morning. The figures showed consumers spent at a hotter pace in July than expected, driven in part by a sale for Amazon Prime members. In an email on Thursday, the acting chairman of the White House Council of Economic Advisers, Tomas Philipson, said, "The U.S. economic outlook remains strong despite slowing global growth." He cited the strength of the services sector, which makes up the bulk of the American economy, and strong consumer spending powered by increased wage and productivity growth. Still, White House officials were paying close attention to the movements of the bond market on Thursday for additional signs of strain, according to a person familiar with the matter. Officials said they remained hopeful that the economy could still meet the administration's growth targets if they continued their deregulation efforts, if Congress passed a new trade deal with Canada and Mexico, and if some kind of agreement was reached with China. On Twitter on Thursday, Mr. Trump cited the economy's health while accusing journalists of "doing everything they can to crash" it. He insisted it was too strong for that to happen. Peter Navarro, the White House trade adviser, told Fox News on Wednesday that the "underlying fundamentals of the U.S. economy are solid as a rock" but criticized the Fed for keeping interest rates too high. He said Mr. Trump's decision this week to delay putting some tariffs on Chinese goods would, by helping to keep consumer prices in check, "give the Federal Reserve more room to run in terms of lowering rates." When Mr. Trump postponed the planned duties on electronics and toys, softening the full force of his next round of tariffs on 300 billion of Chinese imports, he cited the potential impact on consumers heading into the holiday shopping season. But some of his advisers and aides immediately started thinking about how the move would play out at the Federal Reserve, according to people familiar with the discussions. The theory was this: The tariff delay, by helping hold down inflation, might make the Fed more likely to cut interest rates. Mr. Trump often says lower rates would put the United States on a more level playing field with global competitors, many of which have rock bottom borrowing costs that keep their currencies comparatively cheap, an advantage for exporters. Delaying some of the tariffs, however, may actually have taken pressure off the Fed to act by increasing the chances that China and the United States will reach some sort of a deal before the full set of penalties take effect. In fact, while Wall Street forecasts had begun to point to a half percentage point rate cut in September, expectations of just a quarter point cut increased after the tariff delay was announced. Covid's impact on the supply chain continues. The pandemic has disrupted nearly every aspect of the global supply chain and made all kinds of products harder to find. In turn, scarcity has caused the prices of many things to go higher as inflation remains stubbornly high. Almost anything manufactured is in short supply. That includes everything from toilet paper to new cars. The disruptions go back to the beginning of the pandemic, when factories in Asia and Europe were forced to shut down and shipping companies cut their schedules. First, demand for home goods spiked. Money that Americans once spent on experiences were redirected to things for their homes. The surge clogged the system for transporting goods to the factories that needed them and finished products piled up because of a shortage of shipping containers. Now, ports are struggling to keep up. In North America and Europe, where containers are arriving, the heavy influx of ships is overwhelming ports. With warehouses full, containers are piling up. The chaos in global shipping is likely to persist as a result of the massive traffic jam. No one really knows when the crisis will end. Shortages and delays are likely to affect this year's Christmas and holiday shopping season, but what happens after that is unclear. Jerome Powell, the Federal Reserve chair, said he expects supply chain problems to persist "likely well into next year." Fed policy was not crucial to the decision to delay tariffs that centered on consumers and the economy, according to people familiar with the deliberations but the report that it is on advisers' minds is noteworthy. It suggests that for at least some White House advisers, one consideration in shaping and selling trade policy is keeping the central bank pointed toward interest rate cuts. The Fed cut rates in July for the first time in more than a decade, partly in response to mounting risks from the trade war and a global economic slowdown. It signaled that it might make further cuts if global risks persisted and inflation stayed low. Administration economists have continued to predict, as recently as July, that the economy will grow at a 3.2 percent rate this year, up from 2.5 percent last year. (Officials will complete a revised forecast at the end of October.) But if economic growth continues at its current pace through the fall, Mr. Trump will need a rapid acceleration to more than 5 percent growth in the fourth quarter to hit his administration's initial target for this year. On Wednesday, Mr. Trump wrote on Twitter: "China is not our problem, though Hong Kong is not helping. Our problem is with the Fed. Raised too much too fast." But the main threat to United States growth, most economists say, is slowing economic expansion abroad and the possibility that Mr. Trump's trade war will intensify the global pullback and chill investment and expansion domestically. "I don't know if he's necessarily doing this just to get the Fed to cut," said Gennadiy Goldberg, senior United States rates strategist at TD Securities, but the trade war "puts the Fed between a rock and a hard place," because it wants to avoid playing into politics but must also protect the economy. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Economy |
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