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It is a new frontier of the anti abortion movement: laws banning abortion at 20 weeks after conception, contending that fetuses can feel pain then. Since 2010, a dozen states have enacted them, most recently Texas. Nationally, a bill passed the Republican dominated House of Representatives in June. The science of fetal pain is highly complex. Most scientists who have expressed views on the issue have said they believe that if fetuses can feel pain, the neurological wiring is not in place until later, after the time when nearly all abortions occur. Several scientists have done research that abortion opponents say shows that fetuses can feel pain at 20 weeks after conception. One of those scientists said he believed fetuses could likely feel pain then, but he added that he believed the few abortions performed then could be done in ways to avoid pain. He and two other scientists said they did not think their work or current evidence provided scientific support for fetal pain laws. Some scientists' views have evolved as more research has been done. Dr. Nicholas Fisk, a senior maternal fetal medicine specialist at Royal Brisbane and Women's Hospital in Australia, said he once considered early fetal pain "a major possibility" after finding that fetuses receiving blood transfusions produced increased stress hormones and blood flow to the brain, and that painkillers lowered those levels. But Dr. Fisk, a former president of the International Fetal Medicine and Surgery Society, said neurological research has convinced him that pain "is not possible at all" before 24 weeks. Supporters of fetal pain laws also say that surgeons' use of anesthesia and painkillers when operating on fetuses in the womb proves fetuses feel pain. "If the child who is waiting for surgery can feel pain, the child who is waiting for abortion can also feel pain," said Mary Spaulding Balch, the National Right to Life Committee's state policy director, who pioneered fetal pain laws. She does not advocate performing abortions with anesthesia or painkillers "to have a painless death," but rather wants those abortions prevented because a "member of the human family has reached a point where they are capable of feeling pain." But fetal surgeons say that the drugs are given for reasons other than fetal pain. Anesthesia is given to the mother, reaching the fetus, said Dr. Scott Adzick, a fetal surgeon at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia. Fetuses receive muscle relaxants and narcotics. The drugs are given to prevent maternal pain, immobilize the fetus, relax the uterus, and block harmful effects of a fetus's hormonal stress response, he said. Asked if fetuses would feel pain without these drugs, Dr. Adzick said he did not know. Dr. Mark Rosen, who pioneered anesthesia in fetal surgery, said if fetuses could experience surgery related pain, it would be postoperatively, because during surgery anesthesia from the mother is so strong. Painkillers given to fetuses would prevent postsurgical pain if it exists, but the known scientific reason for them is "it promotes healing," he said. "The fetus is going to go on and develop and live." Fetal pain laws usually prohibit abortions at 20 weeks after conception, about 22 weeks gestational age as measured by scientists from the last menstrual period, since conception cannot be pinpointed. By far most abortions occur before 24 weeks because the Supreme Court has said they may be performed until fetuses can be viable outside the womb, which doctors say is around 24 weeks. So the laws banning abortions about two weeks before the 24 week threshold affect very few; 98.5 percent of abortions occur before 21 weeks, according to the Guttmacher Institute, a research group that supports abortion rights. Later cases often involve just discovered birth defects. Still, both sides consider the laws, which have been challenged and blocked in Arizona, Georgia and Idaho, broader efforts to narrow abortion options and build opposition. Scientists with varying views of pain development said they did not consider their work applicable to fetal pain laws or the highly charged abortion debate. For example, one of the main scientists whose work is cited as support for the laws is Dr. Kanwaljeet Anand, a professor of pediatrics, anesthesiology and neurobiology at the University of Tennessee's Health Science Center. Dr. Anand said he considered fetal pain likely at 18 to 24 weeks. But he added that the "issue of fetal pain does not have much relevance for abortion, since most abortions are performed before the fetus is capable of experiencing pain" and that for the "very few" abortions that occur after that time, techniques could be used that he believed would prevent pain. Because so much about pain is undetermined, most scientific discussions eventually run into theoretical territory. Much research involves children or adults, making implications for fetuses unclear. Scientists say characterizing responses as pain is difficult; some fetal reactions are simply reflexes or stress hormones. Some researchers say pain sensing ability depends on consciousness, which may itself emerge gradually. "There's far more we don't know than we do know," said Dr. Rosen, who in 2005 co wrote an influential analysis of many studies, which appeared in the Journal of the American Medical Association. It concluded that fetal pain was unlikely before the third trimester, which begins at about 27 weeks. The report said pain sensation required neural connections into the cortex. The cortex begins emerging around the 23rd week, is not functionally developed until the 26th or later, and continues developing after birth, Dr. Rosen said. In 2010, another large review, by a diverse panel appointed by Britain's Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, said "most neuroscientists believe that the cortex is necessary for pain perception" so "the fetus cannot experience pain in any sense prior" to 24 weeks. In 2012, the American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists endorsed this reasoning, saying studies cited by fetal pain law supporters were not persuasive "when weighed together with other available information." Fetal pain law advocates argue the cortex is unnecessary to feel pain, and the thalamus, developed around 20 weeks, is sufficient. Ms. Balch, of the National Right to Life Committee, cites as a strong impetus for the laws a 2007 article in the journal Behavioral and Brain Sciences by Dr. Bjorn Merker, a Swedish neuroscientist. It included observations of five children with hydranencephaly, in which most or all of the cortex is missing, replaced with fluid. Dr. Merker wrote that they appeared to smile and cry, and theorized that "the tacit consensus concerning the cerebral cortex as the 'organ of consciousness' " may "be seriously in error." Ms. Balch said this research, involving children ages 1 to 5, "is persuasive evidence that the unborn child feels pain at 20 weeks." But Dr. Merker said by e mail that his research had only "marginal bearing" on fetal pain and "did not deal with pain specifically." He added, "I was not aware that I had been cited in connection with the abortion issue," and would not elaborate because politics has "infected" the issue. Dr. Anand believes the cortex is not necessary for fetal pain, saying some adults have continued feeling pain after cortex tissue removal, and others have had pain eliminated when just thalamus nerves were removed. "It seems that the cortex is not that important even in the adult," he said. "Why do you think it is so important in the fetus?" But Dr. Rosen, a professor emeritus of anesthesiology, obstetrics and gynecology at the University of California, San Francisco, said pain involves "complex feedback loops between different structures," so pain receptors must extend through the spinal cord and thalamus into the cortex. "You can make a telephone call, but not till wires that connect our phones exist," he said. "You can say the wire now exists, but nobody's turned the service on." On both sides, viewpoints continue evolving. Stuart Derbyshire, a psychologist at the National University of Singapore, is a leading voice against the likelihood of fetal pain. Appointed to the British panel, he strongly supports its main conclusion, but increasingly doubts another suggestion in the report, that the uterine environment may keep fetuses in "continuous sleeplike unconsciousness or sedation." That, he said, was "a really appealing argument, but unfortunately I don't think it quite works." Dr. Anand's fetal pain theories grew from research he did with premature infants about 25 years ago showing that the practice of not anesthetizing infants undergoing surgery caused hormonal stress responses and impeded recoveries. This did not prove the infants felt pain, but it contributed to making anesthesia standard, because lowering stress responses helped babies survive. He said he thought the responses reflected pain, possible in infants as premature as 22 weeks. Most premature infants are older than fetuses the laws refer to, with more developed brains. But Dr. Anand said he believes fetuses may feel pain through different pathways, possibly the subplate, a way station for budding neurons, which later folds into the cortex. Dr. Rosen said the subplate theory was "unsubstantiated conjecture," likely too simplistic for pain sensation. In 2004, Dr. Anand testified about fetal pain in trials on laws banning late term procedures, which opponents call partial birth abortions. In 2005, he testified before a Congressional committee considering fetal pain legislation. Recently, he said he had intended to highlight science, not support anti abortion views. Since 2005, "I've been asked to testify many, many times, and I've turned it down," he said. "I feel it's just gotten completely out of hand." He said women and their doctors should make abortion decisions case by case. "In the very few abortions where fetal pain could possibly occur," he said, "consider what can be done to avoid inflicting a lot of pain on the fetus." He said a common method used after 20 weeks injecting amniotic fluid or fetuses with heart stopping medication before removing the fetus "would be fine, really, from a point of view of fetal pain," a "compassionate way to do it." Anti abortion advocates disagree, equating the injections with heart attacks.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Health
WASHINGTON As news outlets round the world continued to publish revelations from the Panama Papers, the nonprofit organization that coordinated the project was preparing to move out of its offices here in an effort to cut costs. The organization, called the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, was already forced to part with three contract journalists who had helped its small staff shepherd the project. And three other budgeted positions, it was told, would have to be left unfilled for now. Its brief shining moment in the journalistic spotlight was being complicated by much more familiar issues. Like so many of its peers in nonprofit journalism, the consortium is subject to the financial headwinds buffeting the industry as a whole. In this case, it is feeling ripple effects from the financial struggles of its parent organization, the Center for Public Integrity, the venerable nonprofit investigative news organization that controls the consortium's budget. The financial pinch has created dual realities for the consortium, damping morale and escalating long simmering tensions with its parent, even as the impact of the Panama Papers has dramatically increased its global profile. The consortium's problems also represent a potential setback in the search for new ways to finance and pursue journalism at a time when traditional news organizations, and even new digital operations, are seeking workable business models. In the nonprofit segment of the industry, which has inspired hope as a way forward, it has exposed a particularly hard truth: Financing even the most successful investigative reporting unit is hard and often inconsistent. "You always want more staff and more funding," the consortium's director, Gerard Ryle, said. "But I have to accept the situation as it is. My job is to get on with things no matter what." Financial uneasiness is nothing new for the Center for Public Integrity, which ran yearly operating deficits from 2005 to 2007, and again in 2011. Peter Bale, who took over the organization last year after a stint at CNN International, said the organization was still trying to recover from that legacy including a 2.1 million deficit in unrestricted net assets that he said he had inherited from his predecessor, whose editorial gambles have drawn criticism. That deficit, which the board has said cannot grow, has forced him to make cuts, Mr. Bale said, while honoring funding agreements and the center's editorial imperatives. But Bill Buzenberg, who led the center from 2007 to 2015, disputed that assessment, saying that a deficit in general support is not unusual for nonprofits. It becomes a problem, he said, when annual fund raising from specific programs and objectives declines. "I kept telling them, you have to raise money like crazy this year for next," Mr. Buzenberg said. "I'm not sure that happened." The center is expected to raise 9.3 million this year, down from around 11 million last year, Mr. Bale said, noting that grants to the center are often paid out over multiple years. He has had to consider cuts anywhere he can find them, not just at the consortium. The Center for Public Integrity laid off two prizewinning senior investigative reporters of its own in May and is delaying hiring for open positions. The financial woes have strained the relationship between two organizations that David E. Kaplan, who ran the consortium from 2008 to 2011, says have always been awkward partners. The consortium was founded in 1997 as a branch of the center to focus on international investigations, but it quickly developed its own ethos. Netflix buys a visual effects company in a move to support its global ambitions. 15 minimum wage for federal contractors will take effect Jan. 30. "These are two different organizations in culture, structure and methodology," said Mr. Kaplan, who resigned in protest in 2011 during a period of particular tension between the groups. The differences have only intensified as the consortium has grown under Mr. Ryle, an Irish born investigative journalist who worked in Australia before taking the position. Its budget has roughly tripled, to almost 2 million this year, and its staff has grown threefold, to about a dozen, including contractors, after the cuts. It has also deliberately moved away from the journalistic model of its parent organization, in search of a more effective way to investigate and distribute stories across borders at a relatively low cost. The model, in which the consortium coordinates teams of reporters around the world to work collaboratively on a single big source base, has been increasingly successful, aiding in investigations of international interest, like "Lux Leaks," which in 2014 exposed how Luxembourg had helped hundreds of international companies cut their taxes through preferential deals, and "Swiss Leaks," which a year later exposed how HSBC helped the rich evade taxes. With the Panama Papers, the consortium assembled its largest team to date, carefully coordinating with almost 400 journalists from 70 countries to pore over a single enormous leak of documents. Using research tools developed by the consortium, the team exposed a vast network of offshore banks and shell companies used by the world's powerful and rich to hide their wealth. Their findings have prompted investigations in dozens of countries, forced political ousters including the prime minister of Iceland and inspired policy debates around the world. The Panama Papers also brought a new level of renown to the consortium. And it prompted peers and supporters to wonder whether the organization could provide a model for a segment of the journalism industry particularly hard hit by shrinking budgets and other market forces. "Given the need to operate within the budgets we have, I.C.I.J. has done an astounding job," Mr. Bale said of the consortium, adding that he hoped the Center for Public Integrity could incorporate some of its techniques. Mr. Bale acknowledged that tensions between the two groups had increased and might fan the desire by some at the consortium to spin off into a separate organization. That, he said, would be a mistake; the center's board opposes such a move. Fund raising could help, and both Mr. Bale and Mr. Ryle said they hoped the consortium's increased profile would attract support to help stabilize the center's overall finances. But for now, the cutbacks at the consortium are particularly painful. The group has spent much of the last two weeks moving up five floors from its own offices into the center's. And though Mr. Ryle said he hoped to be able to hire back some of the contractors he had let go, for now, he said, he would have to make do with less. "It gives you an enormous amount of freedom in the journalism," Mr. Ryle said of the nonprofit model, "but you have to accept that there is a cost sometimes on the other side." For Ryan Chittum, one of the three contractors who left last month after more than a year working on the Panama Papers, the timing is as frustrating as it is ironic. "There's still a lot to do on that story it's just kind of an unfortunate commentary on the fragility of journalism," Mr. Chittum said. "It's not like I make huge dollars, but we don't have money to do it right now."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Media
She put her runway, in other words, where her future ambitions are. Track pants loose, striped up the side, in primary colors came under argyle patterned satin and sequined shirts; polo shirts were paired with shearling; and bomber jackets with lame. Less gym ready, but similarly worked out, were brightly striped eel skin skirts, geometric wool coats, paisley silks (shades of Altuzarra in the colors and prints; one more like minded collection and we will have a trend) and patterned peekaboo lace dresses: a little Morocco by moonlight; a little Eric Rohmer in the afternoon. Oh, and there were some centurion print satin crepes for evening because ... well, horses, you know. Ms. Burch grew up riding (it's part of her creation myth), and she is unquestionably empire building. She is to open her first stand alone Tory Sport flagship store next month. Just follow the sparkling bread crumbs.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Fashion & Style
For a moment it appeared as if reality had come home to roost in the White House. The president, who has long denied the severity of Covid 19, who waved away a question about a thousand Americans dying every day ("It is what it is"), who hawks quackery and discourages preventive measures like mask wearing, contracted the virus last week, along with several others in his orbit. Soon, a chaotic, queasily familiar farce ensued. The president's personal physician admitted misleading the public with his rosy reports on Trump's health; his chief of staff couldn't keep his stories straight. Even as confusion persists about the seriousness of the president's symptoms, when exactly he came down with the virus and how many others he has exposed to it, he breezed out of Walter Reed National Military Medical Center and returned to the White House. On Monday evening, he delivered a macabre video address, triumphantly pulling off his mask and claiming domination over the virus, all the while noticeably struggling to breathe. In the midst of the clamor and speculation, the occasional forlorn question: Where is Dr. Fauci? Anthony Fauci has been at the helm of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases through the emergence of H.I.V., SARS, avian bird flu, swine flu, Ebola, Zika. He is "America's doctor," Michael Specter, a staff writer at The New Yorker, says in his new audiobook, "the essential first biography," according to its publishers. "We don't have an actual leader," Specter said in April. "Fauci is the closest thing." Before being sidelined in recent weeks, he was regarded as the adult in the room, with his quaint fondness for facts and evidence based science. Of recent events, he noted with wry, habitual circumspection: "I think it's obvious that I have not been involved." Biography might be a generous description of this book. "Fauci" faithfully follows Specter's profile of the doctor published in The New Yorker this spring. The White House tightly controlled his access to Fauci; despite knowing each other for decades, the men were not able to meet in person. It is the story of the public life we receive, delivered in broad, reverent strokes, frank hagiography. Fauci is "the nation's indispensable man," "the Enlightenment's human shield." (Fauci has paid the price. He and his family have endured death threats from conspiracy theorists accusing him of undermining the president.) There might not be enough fresh revelation or psychological insight to satisfy my nosiness, but Specter shapes the available evidence into a stirring, and very American, morality play. Fauci was born on Christmas Eve, 1940. The front page headline in The Times that day read: "President to Give Emergency Facts to Nation on Radio." A Brooklyn boy, the son of the local pharmacist, he was granted admission to one of New York's most prestigious high schools, but sports were his first love. At 5 foot 7, however, he found his dreams of a basketball career dashed. The humanities called to him. His family was full of artists, and he took to classical languages and philosophy. Science began to sing to him, too the thrill of discovery. Medicine could combine the two, he thought he could interpret science and bring it to people. Want to keep up with the latest and greatest in books? This is a good place to start. None Learn what you should be reading this fall: Our collection of reviews on books coming out this season includes biographies, novels, memoirs and more. See what's new in October: Among this month's new titles are novels by Jonathan Franzen, a history of Black cinema and a biography by Katie Couric. Nominate a book: The New York Times Book Review has just turned 125. That got us wondering: What is the best book that was published during that time? Listen to our podcast: Featuring conversations with leading figures in the literary world, from Colson Whitehead to Leila Slimani, the Book Review Podcast helps you delve deeper into your favorite books. He worked in construction while in college. One summer, he took a job building a new library at the Cornell Medical College in Manhattan. On his lunch break, he crept into the school's auditorium for a quick look. A guard ordered him and his dirty boots out. Fauci told him he would be attending the school the next year. "Right, kid," the guard laughed. "And next year I am going to be police commissioner.'" Fauci would graduate first in his medical school class. From there, he moved to the N.I.H. in 1968, where he has remained. It's a story of drive, discipline and smooth ascension. The antagonist has yet to arrive. In the early 1980s, reports began to surface of gay men dying of a form of pneumonia. Although Fauci was quick to raise the alarm and to investigate the role of the immune system in the new syndrome, he became the public face of the medical establishment's sluggishness and indifference to the plight of gay men, the poster boy for the agency that denied dying men experimental drugs. The playwright and Act Up founder Larry Kramer was relentless in his criticism. Fauci was a murderer, he raged. Fauci was Eichmann. Michael Specter, the author and narrator of the new audiobook "Fauci." Fauci did embody the paternalism of medicine at the time, Specter writes. Patients were rarely consulted in their treatment, not even AIDS activists so formidably self educated about the disease. But their anger made an impression on the doctor. He flinched from it, yet wanted to understand. Fauci began to listen. He went to Act Up meetings. He heard stories of desperation, of men boiling their blood and shooting it back into their veins. Fauci changed course, confounding his colleagues. He advocated for the activists, and revamping the clinical trial system. He was persuaded by the facts, Specter says, "a vanishing art in this country." "They were all New York guys," Fauci has recalled of the activists. "I had a little affinity to them because I'm a New Yorker. And I said, 'What would I do if I were in their shoes?' And it was very clear: I would have done exactly the same thing." They're all New York guys in this story Fauci, Trump, Kramer. The reason to listen to, rather than read, this story is for the texture of the voices, the archival audio that distills the panic and resolve of the era. Specter's own voice a bit breathless, a bit reedy rather surprisingly turns out to be one of the book's most effective instruments. On the page, he can be as professionally impassive as Fauci at a news conference. But in the recording, there is no tamping his emotion and exasperation. The book becomes an indictment of Fauci's great adversary, the adversary he shares with Kramer and with Specter, too. That adversary is not a virus or a particular administration. It's apathy. "Our continued existence depends on just how angry you can get," Kramer wrote in a fiery 1983 editorial, addressing gay men. "Unless we fight for our lives we shall die." In his milder way, Fauci has been making the same point for years where viral epidemics are concerned. Why aren't we more prepared? Why isn't there a universal vaccine for the flu, which kills tens of thousands of Americans each year? A vaccine of this kind could defend against all strains and provide a decade of protection, like a tetanus shot. Where is the political will to make this a reality? Why has America suffered so many lucky breaks spared the worst of avian flu and SARS while learning nothing? As incredible as it may be to imagine, this pandemic will pass; will we learn nothing again? How close to extinction must we come? It's the question Specter himself has posed in his work, that he poses again here, in telling the story of a celebrated physician and the heroic trait of changing one's mind.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Books
The first visible light image from TESS, showing the combined view from all four of the instrument's cameras on Aug. 7, 2018. A newly confirmed planet, HD 21749b, is in the lower left quadrant of the third section in this image. NASA's new planet hunting machine, the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite, or TESS, is racking up scores of alien worlds. Less than a quarter of the way through a two year search for nearby Earthlike worlds, TESS has already discovered 203 possible planets, according to George R. Ricker, an astrophysicist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and the leader of the project. Three of those candidates already have been confirmed as real planets by ground based telescopes. On Monday afternoon, Dr. Ricker and his colleagues issued a progress report on humankind's latest search for friends or at least neighbors. The mission, they said at a meeting of the American Astronomical Association in Seattle, was well on track to its official goal of finding and measuring the masses of at least 50 planets that are no larger than four times the size of Earth. "The torrent of data has already begun," Dr. Ricker said. All of these worlds would be located within 300 light years from here, our cosmic backyard, and close enough to be inspected by future telescopes, such as NASA's ever upcoming James Webb Space Telescope, for signs of atmospheres, habitability and, perhaps, life. These worlds are the next frontier beyond our own solar system for answering the haunting question of whether life, in whatever form it might be recognized, has arisen elsewhere in the universe. The most recently confirmed of these planets received star billing in Seattle. In the words of its discoverer, Diana Dragomir of M.I.T., the planet is a "weird" ball or rock and some gas about three times the size of Earth. Every 36 days it orbits a dwarf star called HD 21749, about 53 light years away in the constellation Reticulum. According to calculations by Dr. Dragomir, the planet is close enough to its star that its surface temperature is about 300 degrees Fahrenheit. That gives it one of the coolest surface temperatures found around such a star, but a bit toasty for life as we know it. The planet's nature is a puzzle. Its size puts it in a category called sub Neptune, of which no examples exist in our own solar system. But it is much denser than Neptune (though not as dense as the Earth), Dr. Dragomir explained, suggesting that the new planet was mostly rock with a relatively small dense atmosphere. Intriguingly, the team also detected hints of what might be a second planet circling the same star in a much closer orbit. It appears to be even smaller than the Earth, which would make it the smallest planet Tess has yet found. "We haven't measured the mass of a planet the same size Earth yet," Dr. Dragomir said. If this second observation holds up, the Reticulum system would become an attractive target for astronomers studying the architecture of exoplanet systems. That is an understatement of astronomical proportions. In the last three decades, and aided by NASA's planet hunting Kepler spacecraft, astronomers have concluded that there are billions of planets, including potentially habitable rocky worlds like Earth, in the Milky Way galaxy. The closest one, astronomers calculate, could be just 10 or 15 light years from here. TESS was designed and built to reveal such planets, by monitoring the light from stars for any periodic dimming or blinking, which would indicate that planets are passing in front of them. For the purposes of the survey, the sky has been divided into 26 segments that resemble orange slices. The spacecraft's four small cameras stare at each segment in turn for 27 days. In the first year, the researchers will survey the entire southern hemisphere of the sky; in the second year, they will stitch together the northern sky. TESS will measure the brightnesses of nearly 200,000 stars every two minutes, and record an image of the entire swath of sky in the segment every half hour. That cadence is perfect for finding and studying the exoplanets most likely to be habitable, said Sara Seager, an M.I.T. planet expert and a member of the TESS team. Most of the stars on TESS's watch are so called red dwarfs, smaller and dimmer than the sun, Dr. Seager said. Planets in the habitable zones of such stars orbit them in a matter of days or weeks, not the 365 days of our own year. Dr. Dragomir and her team went to great effort to infer the existence of the new Reticulum planet. The team initially detected only one telltale dip in the light from HD 21749, the red dwarf in Reticulum. That was not enough information: Three dips are the standard for establishing the potential signal of an exoplanet. But a signal that repeated every 36 days would not reappear in a 27 day observing window. And the star is erratic, prone to outbursts that can mimic a planet transit. Dr. Dragomir opted for a second opinion, and looked at data collected from the High Accuracy Radial velocity Planet Searcher, or Harps, an instrument in Chile that detects and weighs exoplanets by the jiggles they impart to their home stars as they orbit. The Harps team had observed the star HD 21749, but had never concluded whether or not a planet was there, too. Dr. Dragomir found a signal in the Harps data with a 36 day period, and calculated that if the dip that TESS saw was real, it should reappear 36 days later in data from an adjacent sector of the sky. (The sectors overlapped slightly.) Dr. Dragomir was chagrined to then discover a glitch in that part of the data. Swallowing disappointment, the team re examined the data more carefully and found what looked like the last part of a transit signal after all. Mathematically, it was a perfect match to the first transit they had seen. Add another oddball planet, if not a future home for humans, to the record of nature's inventiveness. "There was quite some detective work involved, and the right people were there at the right time," Dr. Dragomir said. "But we were lucky, and we caught the signals, and they were really clear."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Science
Lisa Patrice Goldstein and Peter Andrew Nosal were married April 20 at the Providence Public Library in Providence, R.I. Sister Margaret Dempsey, a Roman Catholic nun and the bride's great aunt, became a Universal Life minister to officiate at the event. The bride, who is 32 and taking her husband's name, is an associate specializing in investment funds at Proskauer Rose, a law firm in Manhattan. She graduated magna cum laude from the University of Vermont and received a law degree, also magna cum laude, from George Mason University. She serves on the board of directors of Mercy Home for Children, a nonprofit organization that provides essential services for children and adults with developmental disabilities in Brooklyn, Queens and Long Island. She is a daughter of Eileen Goldstein and Jeffrey Goldstein of Ridgewood, N.J. The bride's father was until 2017 a special representative for collective bargaining at the United Federation of Teachers in Manhattan. Her mother was until 2016 a senior systems analyst at Peoples Education, an educational publishing firm in Saddle Brook, N.J. The groom, also 32, is a luxury sales manager at Remote Lands, a tour operator in Manhattan that specializes in luxury travel to Asian countries. He also graduated from the University of Vermont. He is a son of Maureen Nosal and Andrew Nosal of Providence. The groom's mother is a literacy coach for the Providence Public School System. His father is the owner of the Map Center, a maps store in Providence. Though the couple lived in the same dorm at the University of Vermont, they did not meet until they were introduced through the dating app Bumble in July 2016. Ms. Goldstein, who has a passion for travel, said she was "intrigued," by the many places that Mr. Nosal had visited as she perused his dating profile. Included were photos of the pyramids in Egypt, camels in Thailand and tropical beaches in South Korea, where Mr. Nosal lived from 2011 to 2013. "He seemed liked this really adventurous guy," she said. Mr. Nosal said he was "a bit shocked at first" when Ms. Goldstein reached out to him. "This was a beautiful woman, and a lawyer no less," he said. "I wasn't even in her league." A week later, they went on the kind of first date that Ms. Goldstein had not been on in her 18 months of online dating: a sunset ferry ride on the East River and a picnic in Brooklyn Bridge Park. "Every first date was an invite for drinks," she said. "I was completely impressed with his creativity and thoughtfulness." In a month's time they were dating steadily. "I loved his goofy, clever sense of humor," Ms. Goldstein said. "I appreciated his ability to be endlessly enthusiastic about any situation. He was just a lot of fun to be around." In May 2018, Mr. Nosal took Ms. Goldstein, who has loved elephants since she was a child, to an elephant camp on the border of Thailand, Laos and Myanmar. Though Ms. Goldstein had a notion that Mr. Nosal would ask her to marry him on that trip their second visit to Thailand she did not know that one of the elephants would get in on the act. Moments later, as Ms. Goldstein posed for a photo with Mr. Nosal and several of the elephants, Mr. Nosal surreptitiously slipped a box over to Yuki, a middle age female elephant. When one of the elephant guides called out a command, Mr. Nosal pointed to Yuki and told Ms. Goldstein that she had a present for her. Yuki then turned her trunk, on which a box holding the engagement ring rested, toward Ms. Goldstein, who slowly reached out to take it while Mr. Nosal dropped to one knee and did the rest. "I rolled the dice by placing a lot of trust in that elephant to not eat the ring," he said, laughing. "But in the end, I was really happy the way things turned out."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Fashion & Style
By blocking users on Twitter, President Trump has violated the First Amendment, a federal judge ruled on Wednesday. The lawsuit was brought by seven Twitter users including a Texas police officer, a New York comedy writer and a Nashville surgeon who claimed that Mr. Trump's Twitter feed was an official government account and that preventing users from following it was unconstitutional. In her ruling, Judge Naomi Reice Buchwald wrote that the plaintiffs who sought to view and engage with Mr. Trump's tweets alongside those who were not restricted were "protected by the First Amendment." The judge, though, did not require the president or Twitter to unblock anyone. The number of users blocked from the president's account realDonaldTrump, which has more than 52 million followers, is known only to Mr. Trump, to those who have access to his account and to Twitter. On Wednesday, a spokeswoman for Twitter said that the company would not comment on the ruling, and stressed that Twitter was not a party to the lawsuit on either side. The Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University, which joined the plaintiffs in the suit, posted personal statements from some of them on its website, including one from Rebecca Buckwalter Poza, a legal analyst from Washington. On Wednesday, Ms. Buckwalter Poza tweeted: "I sued the President, and I won." Here's what six other Twitter users who were not part of the lawsuit had to say about their experience of being blocked by the president, and what this ruling means to them. When Dani Bostick, a 40 year old schoolteacher and Army wife from Winchester, Va., discovered Twitter, she felt it was a great opportunity to have her voice heard. As a self described introvert who isn't fond of crowds, she liked the idea of being able to express her dissent on social media. "This is genius," she remembered thinking. Getting blocked made her feel muzzled and disenfranchised, she said. She had noticed many others getting barred, those she'd previously conversed with, but she never thought it would happen to her because she said she never made insulting comments. She later noticed that users who had targeted her with violent threats were still commenting on the president's posts. "This was viewpoint discrimination, an injustice and a violation of my rights," she said. The verdict on Wednesday was "incredibly vindicating," she said. "It shows that it wasn't just a wacky perspective that I had." 'Every tweet in which we protest Trump's abuses of his office is important' Anne Rice, a 76 year old author most famous for her series "The Vampire Chronicles," has long been a vocal critic of the president and was blocked years ago, she said on Wednesday. With this ruling, she hopes to be unblocked. "Every tweet in which we protest Trump's abuses of his office is important," she said. "If we can respond to Trump's own tweets directly, we can reach some of his 'base.'" 'What he's done is create an echo chamber' William LeGate, a tech entrepreneur, engaged with President Trump's Twitter posts until he was blocked for suggesting the president had a crush on Hillary Clinton. William LeGate, a 23 year old tech entrepreneur living in Los Angeles, started interacting with President Trump's tweets in January 2017, and quickly grew fond of replying to the president and others in the forum beneath Mr. Trump's posts. When he was blocked six months later for suggesting that the president had a crush on Hillary Clinton, he had a "feeling of disbelief that the person with the highest authority in the land is censoring." "That's the primary method he communicates official government information," he said. "His tweets are official statements." Mr. LeGate, who's now the digital director for a congressional campaign, said the issue of the president's blocking users is not superficial. "What he's done is create an echo chamber, and it makes it seem that public opinion of him is much better than it is," Mr. LeGate said. "Once he started blocking people, it changed the perception." She combed through her posts to see what may have irritated him, but found nothing, Ms. Kwee said on Wednesday. Maybe it was because she was gay, or maybe it was because she worked in tech, she had wondered. Maybe an automated bot did the culling? She never found out why. "It was kind of a joke, at first, almost like an honor that someone way more powerful than me would take the time," she said. But now that he's become the president, "I find it frustrating," she said. Instead of using a roundabout way to see his tweets, "I would like to be able to verify these things myself," she said. As for the ruling, "I can't imagine that this will be an instant change," but she hopes it will help clarify what's acceptable on social media. 'He didn't want other people to see what I was writing' When Caroline Orr, a 32 year old researcher from Richmond, Va., tweeted that she had been blocked, it resonated with thousands of people on the platform.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Media
Computers, long a symbol of the digital age, are now moving into a more earth friendly future: California's state energy agency voted unanimously Wednesday to approve new regulations for energy efficiency in desktop computers and monitors. The rules, passed by the agency, the California Energy Commission, are the country's first attempt to regulate the energy use of desktop computers and represent another step in the state's efforts to drastically lower its greenhouse gas emissions to address climate change. Computers use more energy than many other consumer electronics the electricity used to power all of the computers in the country is the equivalent of the output of 30 large power plants emitting 65 million metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent every year, according to estimates from the Natural Resources Defense Council. The new standards, some parts of which go into effect Jan. 1, 2018, would ultimately reduce carbon dioxide emissions in California by an estimated 730,000 tons, less than 1 percent of total statewide emissions, and save consumers about 370 million on electric bills annually, based on the most recent emissions data. The energy commission projects that the standards will save about as much electricity as 350,000 households use in a year.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Science
Iran's Qassim Suleimani was an engine of mayhem in the Middle East. His business model was to go to Syria, Lebanon, Yemen and Iraq and recruit Arab Shiites to kill Arab Sunnis (and Americans and Israelis) and to create pro Iranian statelets inside Iran's Arab neighbors to weaken them from the inside. I followed this man closely. No one should mourn his passing. So why do I still question the wisdom of his assassination? Because it was done without a clear strategic or moral framework. And the biggest lesson I learned from covering the U.S. interventions in Lebanon, Iraq and Afghanistan is: When administrations are not constantly forced to answer hard questions from the outside about what they're thinking strategically and morally when questioners are dismissed as unpatriotic that administrations' inside thinking gets sloppy, their intelligence gets manipulated and trouble follows. Never assume that people who are in charge know what they are doing just because they are in charge. What is President Trump's strategic framework? One day, without any consultation with allies or our commanders, he ordered U.S. troops out of Syria, where they were serving as a critical block on Iran's ability to build a land bridge to Lebanon and were a key source of intelligence. In the process, he abandoned our most important allies in fighting ISIS: the Syrian Kurds, who were also creating an island of decency in their region, where islands of decency are the most we can hope for. And then, a few weeks later, Trump ordered the killing of Suleimani, an action that required him to shift more troops into the region and tell Iraqis that we're not leaving their territory, even though their Parliament voted to evict us. It also prompted Iran to restart its nuclear weapons program, which could well necessitate U.S. military action. But it also may have set in motion forces of popular discontent in Iran that will further delegitimize the regime a good thing. So what's our priority: take advantage of Iran's weakened regime to secure a better nuclear deal or urge its people to topple it? And how will we react if the regime mows down Iranians we've encouraged to rise? Not clear at all. But Trump also has no moral framework. He ordered the killing of Suleimani a depraved Iranian warrior just a few weeks after he gave a moral pass to a depraved U.S. warrior. How so? Guess who the Trumps had over to Mar a Lago during the Christmas holidays and who they didn't invite? They welcomed Navy SEAL Edward Gallagher and his wife. During the summer, Gallagher was tried in a military court on war crimes. A member of his platoon told investigators, "You could tell he was perfectly O.K. with killing anybody that was moving." That assessment was published by The Times a few days after the Trumps warmly received the Gallaghers. It was part of a trove of leaked combat video, text messages and confidential interviews with members of SEAL Team 7 that revealed in chilling detail why Gallagher, their platoon commander, had been on trial for his actions in Iraq. Here is how The Times once described some of Gallagher's military exploits in 2017: His unit had captured and wounded a young ISIS fighter "a scraggly teenager in a tank top with limbs so thin that his watch slid easily off his wrist." They sedated him and performed an emergency procedure to help him breathe. "Then, without warning, according to colleagues, Chief Gallagher pulled a small hunting knife from a sheath and stabbed the sedated captive in the neck." Gallagher "later posed for a photograph holding the dead captive up by the hair" and shared the deer kill photo with others. Gallagher was eventually turned in for this and other incidents by his fellow SEALs. He was charged with 10 offenses under the Uniform Code of Military Justice. Weeks after Gallagher stabbed the ISIS captive, according to an Associated Press report in June from his trial, two SEALs testified that he "gunned down a young girl and an old man in Iraq in 2017 from his sniper's perch, though neither witnessed him pulling the trigger. The SEALs said shots came from the tower where Special Operations Chief Edward Gallagher was posted and they watched through their scopes as the civilians fell to the ground. "Dalton Tolbert," The A.P. continued, "said he and another sniper were in a neighboring tower in Mosul, on June 18, 2017, and had fired warning shots to scatter civilians by the Tigris River because the Islamic State was operating in the area. An old man in a white tunic began running and then Tolbert heard a third shot come from the neighboring tower where Gallagher was positioned and saw the man fall. Over the radio, he heard Gallagher say: 'You guys missed him, but I got him.'" The article also reported: "Another witness, Joshua Vriens, said on another day that he saw Gallagher shoot at a group of adolescent girls in floral hijabs, hitting one in the stomach and sending two scattering. Vriens said he watched through his scope as a fourth girl dragged the wounded girl over a berm and under a bridge to escape." Gallagher's defense got him acquitted because no witness reported seeing him actually pull the trigger in those incidents and because, as The Times reported, a medic testified that he watched Gallagher stab the prisoner in the neck, "but that the stab wound did not appear to be life threatening" and that afterward the medic pressed his thumb over the captive's breathing tube until he died. Furious Navy prosecutors said the medic never suggested in six interviews that he had suffocated the captive. "They said he changed his story after receiving the grant of immunity," The Times wrote. The Navy still demoted Gallagher for posing with the dead captive. That was until some Gallagher pals and Fox News got Trump to reverse the punishment, restore his rank and block the Navy from upholding its moral code by stripping Gallagher of his Trident pin, signifying his membership in the elite SEALs. For Trump, the idea that in war or diplomacy there would be an ethical code that we'd impose on ourselves is an utterly alien concept. Trump has never lived by any code in any context not in real estate and not as president. Codes are for suckers and sissies in Trump's view. He thinks that what makes American soldiers great is that they're killers. And his view is let killers be killers. And anyway, for Trump, if an Iraqi girl wearing a hijab got shot by accident, who cares, they're all scum anyway. As Andrew Sullivan put it in an essay on this subject in New York magazine last week: "A president who believes a war criminal is among the finest fighters the U.S. has and suggests he will pardon him after his trial is, quite simply, unique in the history of the U.S." But Gallagher's SEAL teammates, by calling him out, said that what makes our military unique and respected is that we operate by a code and that code operates even in the most heated of firefights. That code is our moral framework under pressure, and by holding each other to it we keep our unit and our country strong. That's why they blew the whistle. But Trump hates whistle blowers who take seriously their oath to defend the Constitution. That's why the same president who invited the cowardly Gallagher and his wife to Mar a Lago not the heroic SEALs who had the courage and integrity to step forward to defend their code, our code was the same president who used the cowardly Rudy Giuliani to secretly push out the high integrity U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, who had the courage to defend our code in diplomacy and try to prevent the spread of corruption in Kyiv. Why does it all matter, you ask? Ask the family of the next American soldier captured by terrorists after his captors declare, "We're going to do to your soldier just what Trump excused Gallagher for doing to one of ours." The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We'd like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here's our email: letters nytimes.com. Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter ( NYTopinion) and Instagram.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Opinion
When I think of people who'd fall hard for the Chrysler 300 SRT8, names come to mind: Kojak, Mannix, Rockford, Starsky and Hutch. Trivia lovers will note that the private detective Jim Rockford was a Firebird man, and that Starsky and Hutch favored a white striped Ford Torino. And it's the 300's sister car, the Dodge Charger, that's been recruited for actual police work. But on the gritty streets of Brooklyn and New Jersey, the broad shouldered Chrysler always seemed a step away specifically, a step on the gas pedal from a tire burning cop show chase. Or, alternately, a video game appealing to characters on either side of the law. And there is nothing virtual about Chrysler's new Performance Pages, which engages drivers in real life competition. Displayed on the 8.4 inch UConnect infotainment screen in the center of the dash, this computer animates and records this Chrysler's feats of acceleration, braking and handling. My best score was a fleet 4.8 second run from 0 to 60 miles per hour, accomplished without the aid of the electronic launch control, which is standard on this 2013 model, though I didn't engage it. The 300's name can be traced to the C 300 of 1955, the first American sedan whose V 8 engine produced 300 horsepower. The father of that car was Virgil Exner, the industrial designer and lover of tailfins. But the modern 300 can claim two daddies: the car is perhaps the most successful melding to emerge from the shortlived union of Chrysler and Mercedes Benz, and it is still genetically related to the Mercedes E Class. The 300's combination of American street style and German breeding made it a cultural and showroom hit. Now, a reworked line of 300s help to carry the torch for the post bankruptcy Chrysler controlled by Fiat. The 300 is one of several models whose cabins suggest that Chrysler after decades of cheap plastic eyesores is finally turning the corner with competitive, attractive interiors. A touch of Italy never hurts: the car I tested was outfitted with 2,500 worth of Poltrona Frau leather on its upper doors, instrument panel and center console. Even without the fancy Italian hides, the handsome cabin breathes new life into a big sedan that feels more rewarding than pedestrian front drive cars like the Toyota Avalon and Ford Taurus. It helps that the 300, like the Mercedes, was designed as a rear drive car despite an all wheel drive option (though not for the SRT8). For most 300 buyers, the combination of a new 8 speed automatic and a Pentastar V 6, with 292 horses and a highway economy rating of 31 m.p.g., is the smart app. A 5.7 liter Hemi V 8 raises the horsepower to 363 and surely that's enough, right? But no, say the muscle heads at Chrysler. The engineers of the SRT division, which produces the Viper sports car and high performance versions of the Jeep Grand Cherokee, Dodge Charger and Dodge Challenger have created a small batch of SRT8s. The tuner edition of the 300 adds a raging bull of a Hemi, with 6.4 liters, 470 horsepower and 470 pound feet of torque, coupled to a 5 speed automatic. The SRT's interior features real carbon fiber trim and a heated, chrome spoke, flat bottom steering wheel with paddle shifters. For 1,995 you can add a 900 watt 19 speaker Harman Kardon audio system. Also available is a two tone interior with red leather seats, faux suede inserts and heated cushions for the front and rear. The Performance Pages readouts add a range of analog style engine and transmission gauges. One vivid screen animates real time horsepower and torque output. Another highlights the g forces affecting the car in acceleration, braking and cornering. I kept finding excuses to goose the Chrysler, just to watch the horsepower gauge explode from roughly three horsepower the Hemi's output at idle to 400 and beyond. Just remember to keep one eye on the blurry road ahead; the car runs a quarter mile in roughly 12.7 seconds. Top speed is said to be 175 m.p.h. The SRT's reworked body looks ready for undercover duty. The car is half an inch lower than a standard 300, with dual four inch exhaust outlets and 20 inch wheels. The SRT's approach to performance is as subtle as a blackjack to the skull. But while the Hemi provides the blunt force and basso soundtrack of a big block Motown V 8 with equally oversized, track worthy Brembo brakes the Chrysler tempers that force to become a surprisingly comfortable, compliant daily driver. The Hemi can shut down 4 cylinders to save fuel, though it remains thirsty, with an E.P.A. mileage rating of 14/23 m.p.g., drawing a 1,000 gas guzzler tax. The adaptive suspension now features three selectable modes. The stiffest Track setting commands the transmission to hold gears at high revs while the driver manually controls the shift paddles or console stick. Yet that 5 speed transmission remains the weak link, especially in light of the 8 speeds in other verisons of the 300. The SRT8's starting price of 49,990 can seem iffy at first, and more so after options. (My test car checked in at 57,750.) The closest comparison for the Chrysler may be Cadillac's CTS V, a 556 horsepower beast available as a sedan, coupe or wagon. But even that formidable Caddy costs about 15,000 more than the 300. Still, smaller German supersedans like the Mercedes E63 AMG and BMW M5 cost 100,000 and more. With its accurate but relatively light steering, the Chrysler isn't as precise, agile or luxurious as the Mercedes or BMW. But on the mean streets, it gets the job done in remarkably similar fashion. The Chrysler delivers 90 percent of the German cars' performance for barely half their price. And I'll swear this on a stack of Gutenbergs: the Chrysler is more fun and more visceral than BMW's flawed new M5, though not as sensational as the Mercedes. And if valet attendants don't respond as quickly to the Chrysler, you can always try flashing a badge.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Automobiles
CITY OF DEVILS The Two Men Who Ruled the Underworld of Old Shanghai By Paul French 299 pp. Picador. 28 Shanghai in the 1930s. Anyone familiar with detective novels or noir cinema knows exactly what that phrase means: smoke filled nightclubs, back alley gambling houses and dark, seedy opium dens, all frequented by a motley assortment of Chinese mobsters, White Russian emigres, fugitive criminals of all nations and at least one gorgeous femme fatale with a past. Designated an international treaty port after the 19th century Opium Wars, Shanghai eventually became a kind of global melting pot of the Seven Deadly Sins what one writer called "a tawdry city of refugees and rackets" largely controlled by foreigners determined to fleece the town of every copper yuan or Mexican silver dollar it could yield. By the 1930s, Shanghai was the fifth largest city in the world and, to hear some tell it, a corrupt and drug addled place like no other. Just how much of this notorious reputation is historical fact and how much is Hollywood (or neocolonialist) fantasy is hard to say, and "City of Devils," Paul French's new narrative history of the city, is not likely to clear matters up. Though the book shows signs of being exhaustively researched, much of the material, by the author's own admission, has been freely embroidered. "'City of Devils' is based on real people and real events," French writes in his preface, but because of the sub rosa nature of the episodes described, "assumptions have been made." Translation: Details have been invented. Even reproductions of newspaper articles have been punched up "with one or two minor additions in the interest of advancing the narrative." And since French includes no endnotes or even a list of sources, it's impossible to know just where the facts end and the folklore begins.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Books
HONG KONG A bevy of manufacturing indexes from around the world on Wednesday underlined the uneven and shaky nature of the global recovery, with activity picking up a notch in the economic powerhouse of China, but cooling in the eurozone and several other Asian countries. The mixed picture reflected the uncertainties haunting the global economy. U.S. unemployment and household debt remain high and the country's property market is still fragile. At the same time, much of the Asia Pacific region continues to stand out with buoyant, although moderating growth. Growth in China, which this year leapfrogged Japan to become the second largest economy in the world, behind the United States, has been supported by a giant government stimulus package and ample lending by state controlled banks. The pace of expansion in China has somewhat moderated in recent months, as the government has instructed banks to lend less and as various tools designed to curb speculative investments in the soaring property market have stalled excessive price increases in the sector.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Global Business
We should probably talk about Kara Young and how this woman can fit what feels like a mountain of blood, heart, sinew and febrile emotional response into a frame that can't stretch past five feet. Young ("Syncing Ink") is now starring in "All the Natalie Portmans," a top heavy coming of age dramedy by C.A. Johnson at MCC Theater. She plays Keyonna, a queer teenager grappling with an alcoholic mother, a dead father, an overburdened older brother, a complicated crush and the threat of eviction. It's too much, but somehow Young meets that too muchness with a restless, vital performance, all busy hands and tight lips and twitching eyelids. Could Natalie Portman do that? Set in Washington in 2009, the play tracks a tumultuous few months in Keyonna's life. A charter school student with a spotty attendance record and an obsession with white actresses, she shares a small apartment with her brother, Samuel (Joshua Boone), who works nights at a local bar, and her mother, Ovetta (Montego Glover), who cleans hotel rooms and occasionally disappears for days on end, sunk at the bottom of a bottle. Keyonna soothes herself with collaged vision boards and '90s movies, and dreams of writing screenplays for Natalie Portman, or someone like her. "Smart, but sweet," Keyonna says. "And kinda sexy in an untouchable way. Like one part princess, one part stripper, one part Russian spy." A woman cannot live on DVDs and dry cereal alone, but Keyonna gives it her best shot. When she needs extra comfort, she imagines a Portman character emerging from the bedroom, through the front door or, chillingly, out of the fridge just to hang or battle with lightsabers. This could suggest a dissociative disorder; Johnson treats it as a quirk.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Theater
Stockard Channing wields weapons of deflection like a master samurai in Alexi Kaye Campbell's "Apologia," which opened on Tuesday night at the Laura Pels Theater in Manhattan. The pre emptive put down, the obscuring fog of abstraction, the barbed aside, the motorized monologue such are the tools expertly deployed by Ms. Channing's character, a celebrated art historian who has trained herself to live on the defensive. Her name is Kristin Miller, and she is described by the more temperate of her two sons as "a bloody nightmare." Since it is Kristin who is the host of the birthday celebration (hers) at the play's center, and since it is Ms. Channing who is portraying her, you can expect it to become an Olympic event for the hurling of slings and arrows of high wit and low cunning. But anyone who has followed Ms. Channing's four sparkling decades on the New York stage from her Tony winning turn in Peter Nichols's "A Day in the Death of Joe Egg" (1985) to her portrait of a Hollywood wife with a secret in Jon Robin Baitz's "Other Desert Cities" (2011) knows that there's always more to her interpretations than her fabled way with an epigram. A sharp tongue invariably guards a fragile heart in the Channing portrait gallery, which is what makes her work so affecting. That means that Kristin and Ms. Channing are a perfect match. And her performance in "Apologia," a Roundabout Theater Company production directed a bit stiffly by Daniel Aukin, goes some distance in disguising the labored exposition of a work that never quite achieves a natural flow or moves you as much as it should. In "Apologia," that's "the traditionally male dominated bastion of art history," as Kristin's dear friend Hugh (John Tillinger) puts it in a birthday toast. He also praises her, with tongue only partly in cheek, as "Pioneer of Arts and Letters, Champion of the Voiceless and Redemptive Savior of the Western world." The American born Kristin came of age in the late 1960s amid the youth fueled political protests of Western Europe, and she adheres rigidly to the ideals of that era. The younger guests at her birthday party are judged by those standards and found seriously wanting. They include her two British sons, Peter, a banker, and Simon, a writer (both played convincingly by an agile Hugh Dancy) and the women in their lives: Trudi (Talene Monahon), Peter's chirpy American fiancee; and Claire (Megalyn Echikunwoke), the actress who lives with Peter. That Trudi is a devout Christian and Claire the star of a soap opera become subjects of Kristin's withering dismissals. But as insults and recriminations turn a festive occasion into the birthday dinner from hell, it becomes clear that Kristin's attacks on the values of those around her are in part smoke screens for her own most vulnerable spot. That would be her failings as her mother. She has recently published an autobiography, which shares the title of Mr. Campbell's play, and her sons find it all too revealing that it does not include a single mention of them. Kristin was separated from her sons by their father when the boys were 9 and 7, and Peter and the mentally unstable Simon have never forgiven her. Or as Simon, who shows up after the party has crashed and burned (and after Mr. Dancy's other character has conveniently gone to bed), puts it: "I woke up one morning and realized that pretty much everything we are and everything we do is a response against you." How does a mother respond to such an annihilating accusation? In Kristin's case, by shutting down, by changing the subject, by going as numb as she possibly can. This scene, which begins the second act and is the play's most stirring, both cruelly and compassionately lays bare the mechanics of one woman's defense system. Mr. Campbell is posing exciting and enduringly relevant questions here, about the price for women of achieving and sustaining professional success in a male dominated world that sees motherhood as sacred. If Kristin has become a monster, she has perhaps had little choice. Celebrity makes at least semi monsters of most of its possessors, but men still seem to wear that status far more comfortably than women. The layers of Ms. Channing's interpretation, with its core of lacerating anguish, are more intriguing than the plot that builds to an anticlimactic reveal. Kristin explains to the unsophisticated Trudi (it would be with an "i") that the word apologia means "a formal, written defense of one's opinions or conduct," adding it is "not to be confused with apology." All the characters wind up presenting their own apologias, often with descriptions of pasts that explain their present. When someone says, "Did I ever tell you about my father?," you wince in anticipation of the monologue you just know is going to follow.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Theater
It's a ridiculous result of the restrictions of livestreamed theater that one of the best performances to emerge from the new medium is also one you might never get to see. But having caught the Saturday evening performance for critics on closing day of a three day run I have to tell you about it anyway. In the hourlong monologue "Three Kings" by Stephen Beresford, Zoomed from the Old Vic in theater deprived London, the Irish actor Andrew Scott seems to squeeze all the roles for which he's become known, from a thin skinned Hamlet to the so called Hot Priest in "Fleabag," into one soulful, awful, sorry excuse for a man. Or boy, as we find him: an 8 year old named Patrick, enthralled and sickened upon meeting his wastrel father for the first time. Dad is a charmer with several wives overboard and several more to come; he's the kind of man who, showboating for a child he abandoned at birth, thinks it's good parenting to teach him a coin trick that is sure to make him a hit in pubs. "One can be touched and moved, one can be touched and not moved, one can be moved but not touched," he says, describing the three kings (that is, coins) of the title. The challenge is to reorder them in a specific way despite the daunting limitations. The prize if Patrick succeeds? His father will someday visit again. But do not cry for the unloved boy, or not much; he eventually masters the trick too well. Yes, the coin metaphor is heavy handed: Patrick will spend his life seeking and avoiding contact and engagement. But Scott nevertheless makes the scene expressive, investing fully in the boy's need to please and also, switching voice, stance and tone, in the father's need to dominate. Even without listening you can tell which character is which, by the position of Scott's eyes and by the arc of his hands as they test or fondle the air. Yet you want to listen; until it becomes heartbreaking, Beresford's script is nasty fun. As Patrick grows up, and his father grows more erratic, their few interactions become venomous and mutually pathetic. Even worse are their non interactions, when Patrick discovers through others a fixer, a dumped wife, another guy named Patrick he meets in a pub just how little someone can care for his offspring. This is a story about the corruption of souls: men's souls in particular as if toxic disregard were a spiritual birthright from the parent who could not give physical birth. The women in Patrick's life, whom Scott sketches with equal finesse but no unwarranted sympathy, are mostly enablers and patsies. (One ex blames Patrick for ruining his father's life.) If you were to judge humanity from this play's samples of it, you would flunk men flat out but not score women much higher. And you would avoid judging children only long enough to watch them become adults. Patrick's transition from lovesick boy to careworn man is central to the shock and strength of Scott's performance. In the brief pauses between scenes, as the director Matthew Warchus carefully adjusts his camera angles and sometimes splits the screen as if Patrick were coming apart, Scott fearlessly leaps from one stage of his fragmenting personality to another. The abused 8 year old is suddenly the blase college student; the angry young man is soon the emotional dropout, nearly as bad as his father and halfway pickled in gin. When Scott shows us Patrick opening his heart, it is only long enough to permit a satisfying click as he snaps it shut again. At the end of the road for Patrick lies perpetual alienation, and you feel sorry for him even though he offers no excuses. The push pull is marvelous; as Warchus fades to black excruciatingly, leaving Scott's eyes to burn demonic pinpoint holes in the dark, you don't know whether to cry or run. Or clap for now there is a loud ovation, well deserved but (like the audience hubbub preceding the top of the show) profoundly confusing. "Three Kings" was streamed live, as part of the Old Vic's In Camera series, from the company's otherwise shut down theater, with no customers in its red and gold auditorium. Who is applauding? For that matter, who is the announcer announcing to when she says, five minutes before the start, "Ladies and gentlemen, please take your seats"? And why is the virtual audience limited to the 1,000 or so the Old Vic accommodates live? It could surely sell many more online tickets if it chose. To me these strange details betray unnecessary uncertainty about whether In Camera productions really "count" as theater. (The name of the series, which began in June with Claire Foy and Matt Smith in "Lungs," seems to underline that doubt.) Yes, "Three Kings" uses film techniques not just the split screens but cross fades and edits to help tell the story, but the story itself is conceived as no film would be, with no scenery, minimal music and one man playing all the roles. Scott's performance is likewise scaled not to the camera's small eye but to the huge empty space he's actually in. The roar of pain he lets loose near the end would tear a movie screen off its wall. So let's stop quibbling about or finessing the genre. Let plays be plays. But can we not take just one great thing from the movies: the chance to see them again? We are missing enough these days as it is. Three Kings Performed Sept. 3 through 5 via Zoom; oldvictheatre.com.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Theater
Joe Flacco Is Reportedly Headed to the Broncos. But Mum Is the Word. On Wednesday afternoon, the lead story on DenverBroncos.com was about Joe Flacco. So were the website's top three featured videos. The team also posted about Flacco on Twitter and Facebook. All of that happened while Flacco, a Super Bowl winning quarterback, was still officially a member of the Baltimore Ravens. In the Broncos' latest attempt to solve their quarterback problems, they are expected to trade for Flacco, but the N.F.L. calendar does not allow the deal to be completed until March. That leaves the team in the awkward position of trying to acknowledge the move without stating that it happened. Flacco, 34, got off to a 4 5 start last season with Baltimore before missing some time with an injury, then lost his job because of a remarkable performance by his substitute, Lamar Jackson, whom the Ravens had chosen in the first round of the 2018 draft. Flacco, a first round pick by the Ravens in 2008, had started 157 of Baltimore's 163 games leading up to the hip injury that effectively ended his time with the team. His tenure included five 10 win seasons and reached its peak in 2011, when he led a thrilling run through the playoffs that culminated in a win over the San Francisco 49ers in Super Bowl XLVII. None Week 11 Takeaways: Here is what we learned this week. N.F.L. Tightens Covid Protocols: As cases rise and Thanksgiving approaches, the league is requiring masks inside team facilities and increasing testing. The Jets Lose Again: Falling to the Miami Dolphins, the Jets' receiver Elijah Moore offered consolation. The Long Path to the Super Bowl: With 18 weeks in the regular season and fewer teams earning byes in the playoffs, the Super Bowl is still a long way off. Playoff Simulator: Explore every team's path to the postseason, updated live. The Broncos, who signed Keenum as a free agent last off season, finished 6 10 in 2018, the third consecutive year in which they failed to make the playoffs. Despite having John Elway, a Hall of Fame quarterback who won two Super Bowls with the Broncos, running the team's football operations, Denver has struggled considerably at the position in recent years. Peyton Manning was a shell of himself as the Broncos' quarterback in 2015, but the defense and running game did enough to dominate the Carolina Panthers in Super Bowl 50. A parade of quarterbacks since Trevor Siemian, Paxton Lynch, Brock Osweiler and Keenum have all started games have failed to live up to that standard, combining to go 20 28. Now the Broncos appear to be turning to Flacco, who has no guaranteed money left in his contract but has base salaries over the next three years of 18.5 million, 20.25 million and 24.25 million The notion that Flacco is an upgrade from Keenum is debatable. In his lone season with Denver, Keenum, 30, completed 62.3 percent of his passes, with 18 touchdowns, 15 interceptions and an adjusted yards per pass figure of 6.1. Those numbers were well below what he had produced as a fill in starter for Minnesota in the previous season. But the numbers make him, at the very least, competitive with Flacco, who is more than three years older and had 12 touchdowns, six interceptions and 6.4 adjusted yards per pass. Keenum, who is guaranteed 7 million of his 18 million salary next season, will presumably be shopped to other teams. The move, while somewhat questionable for Denver, makes sense for Baltimore. The team was in a tailspin when Flacco was injured, and it appeared that Coach John Harbaugh's job was in jeopardy. After Jackson stepped in, the offense was reborn as a run first attack unlike anything the league had seen in decades. Jackson went 6 1 as a starter, and while his passing clearly needed work, he ran for 695 yards, or 4.7 yards a carry. Despite a devastating wild card round loss to the Los Angeles Chargers, the Ravens were presumably already committed to Jackson as their starter. The Broncos are expected to send the Ravens a fourth round draft pick, giving Baltimore a decent return on a player who had gone just 24 27 over the last four seasons.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Sports
Accepting the Democratic presidential nomination, Joe Biden said: "Character is on the ballot. Compassion is on the ballot. Decency, science, democracy." The first, character, is the most important for without it the rest are mere words. Donald Trump has given America the definitive lesson in the scourge of indecent narcissism. Russia was about him. Race was about him. The virus was about him. You can't sculpt in rotten wood and you can't rule from a rotten core. Biden's speech did not soar. That was good. America, after its season of lies, is ready for simple declarative sentences. Truth is on the ballot, too. The Democratic nominee conveyed who he is: a plain spoken American schooled from his Scranton youth in the nation's can do spirit, deepened by suffering, consoled by faith, driven to end the carnage of the president's self obsession. Biden left no doubt that he has lived this presidency as an offense to America and to himself. "We will choose hope over fear, facts over fiction, fairness over privilege," Biden said. Each of those goals is important. Truth is fundamental to democracy. Lies are the stuff of authoritarian regimes, which is why Trump likes them. But fairness is the most relevant compass for Biden because the Democratic Party has failed in the 21st century to place fairness before privilege and in 2016 Americans made clear they were done with that game. Mark Penn and Andrew Stein write that "only a broader course correction to the center will give Democrats a fighting chance in 2022" and beyond. Tory Gavito and Adam Jentleson write that the Virgina loss should "shock Democrats into confronting the powerful role that racially coded attacks play in American politics." Ezra Klein speaks to David Shor, who discusses his fear that Democrats face electoral catastrophe unless they shift their messaging. Ross Douthat writes that the outcome of the Virginia gubernatorial race shows Democrats need a "new way to talk about progressive ideology and education." Biden came across as genuine. He spoke not from calculation but his core. This was his task; he succeeded. On character, he delivered. The nomination came his way because Americans were not ready for a revolution. They wanted an anchor in a world upended. Trump triumphed in 2016 as an impostor. He won as the voice of the dispossessed, the mouthpiece of the unsayable. Exploiting fear, he restored violence to a wan political stage of PowerPoint slides. He cut through the anesthetized language of globalized elites. He attacked money wooed Democrats estranged from their white, blue collar constituencies. He aimed a howitzer at what the Clintons' Democratic Party had become. Because Biden was so much a part of what the Democratic Party had become, I wrote in May last year that he was not the candidate to beat Trump. Three months later, I wrote that the who can beat Trump test led to Kamala Harris, because "she's tough, broadly of the center, has a great American story, is passionate on issues including immigrants, African Americans and women." I quoted her calling Trump a "predator" and calling predators "cowards." In the end, a Biden Harris ticket is the best pick for the Democratic Party, its best hope to fire Trump. Because the pandemic prioritized a safe pair of hands; because Biden, prodded by Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, has adjusted leftward without losing centrist Democrats; because Biden no longer looks like the tired restoration of an old order but an essential pivot to sanity, decency and competence, and because the ticket embodies ideas of racial justice, generational balance and reconciliation (between the two candidates and all Americans). "We don't need a tax code that rewards wealth more than it rewards work," Biden said. That's scarcely rocket science. If elected, Biden will be measured on whether he can change the tax code, a foundation of the growing inequality and injustice in a fractured America whose ability to cohere has been lost. This is the America of five million infected with the Covid 19 virus, of 170,000 dead in the pandemic, of over 50 million unemployment claims, of, as Biden said, "by far the worst performance of any nation on earth." And, as Biden failed to say, of major United States stock indexes at or close to record highs. The virus, destroying small businesses, has completed the financial money game's takeover of the economy. Trump is counting on this, and on blather about Democrats' "socialism," to win. His chances should not be discounted. The state of a 401(k) is a significant vote indicator. But less so, I think, in this desperate America of Trump's making. In recent weeks, I have been watching the United States from a Europe orphaned of its American ally. "It's not this bad in Canada. Or Europe," Biden said. It's not. Confronting a crisis with a plan does help. Under Trump, an American passport in Europe has become a good thing not to have. Biden understands an alliance undergirded by values. The passion in his voice rose as he said: "I will be a president who will stand with our allies and friends. I will make it clear to our adversaries the days of cozying up to dictators are over." Hope is often unfounded, but it is not an irrational response to human experience. The miracle of a peaceful Europe today is built on joint American European defiance, in freedom's cause, of fascism and totalitarianism. Biden quoted the Irish poet Seamus Heaney on how, every now and again, "hope and history rhyme." Gazing this week at the beauty of Florence, where my uncle Bert Cohen, of the Sixth South African Armored Division, 19th Field Ambulance, came from Johannesburg in 1944 to join the fight for freedom, I thought, yes, they do. After Biden's sober speech the chances they will again in November have risen. The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We'd like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here's our email: letters nytimes.com. Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter ( NYTopinion) and Instagram.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Opinion
GRINNELL , Iowa All paths seem to cross at Saints Rest, a downtown coffee shop that opened in 1999. In the early morning, retirees amble over for kaffeeklatsch; later, professors from the college here meet students, who hunker down with laptops. Teenagers come by after school. The shop's name stems from a term of derision for the teetotaling, lecture friendly Congregationalists who settled the town in the 1850s. Those days are long over. Grinnellians now tend to keep any impulse to hector one of their neighbors under wraps. Pete Brownell, a well known and well liked local philanthropist, sometimes stops by Saints Rest for coffee on his way to work. He and his wife, Helen Redmond, have supported many projects in town, including a public library renovation and a residency program run by a local artists' collective. He is also the third generation C.E.O. of Brownells, a major firearms company whose headquarters are here, which calls itself the country's "leading supplier of firearm accessories, gun parts, and gunsmithing tools." Brownells sells and manufactures guns and ammunition. For much of the last year, Mr. Brownell also served as chairman of the board of the National Rifle Association. The second thing people say is that they want to protect the family's privacy. Mr. Brownell's family did not choose his occupation, people point out. Besides, Ms. Redmond, who is president of the board of the Grinnell Newburg Community School District, votes Democratic and supported Hillary Clinton's 2016 presidential campaign. She has donated to the progressive state level political action committee her neighbors created last year. Everyone is clear that Pete Brownell's politics are his own. The third thing is that they don't have a problem with guns. "We all agree people have the right to own guns, and that using them for hunting is great and that's fine," said Tim Dobe, an associate professor of religion at Grinnell College. "No one challenges that." "I am in favor of the Second Amendment," said The Rev. Wendy Abrahamson, rector of St. Paul's Episcopal Church, right across the street from the college library . Her father was a hunter; she has also lost a loved one to gun violence. And while Ms. Abrahamson quietly resigned from the board of a community arts center when she realized that the group has accepted money from the Brownells, she did not say so at the time. But over the last few years, the gun company in the middle of everything here became harder to ignore. In December 2012, The Los Angeles Times reported that Brownells sold several years' worth of high capacity ammunition magazines in the 72 hours after the mass shooting at the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn. (There have been more than 100 F.B.I. designated active shooter incidents since.) She noted that about two thirds of annual firearms deaths are suicides. This, too, has a local connection; mental health resources in the city and state are dismal. Poweshiek County's mental health center closed in 2013. Iowa ranked 47th in practicing psychiatrists per capita in 2016, and last among all states in per capita psychiatric bed availability. Ms. Klepfer told her congregation that, the day before the store opened, she had approached Brownells seeking financial support for a new behavioral health program that was having a cash flow crisis. She subsequently withdrew the request. "I'm ashamed," she told her congregants. It had become clear to her that "we like them when they pump our community full of money, we turn our eyes when they pump our communities full of guns." She has since told another mental health organization she works with that she believes they should not take donations from Brownells. Ms. Klepfer, the church's leader for over a decade, may be the person with the strongest principled objection to what she sees as the community's complicity in the firearms industry. She may also be the person who struggles least with the moral complexity and social risk of raising such objections. "There's a reason we're not a big church," she said, "and it's mostly me." The Pulse shooting also moved Janet Carl, the recently retired director of the college's writing center, to action. Ms. Carl, who represented Grinnell in the Iowa Assembly for six years in the 1980s, said that the shooting prompted her to submit a letter to the Grinnell Herald Register, the first she had ever written. After it ran, she was contacted by three other people who wanted to become more active on gun safety, colleagues who had had no idea that they shared her concerns. This was the origin of an ad hoc organizing group, which grew after the 2017 Las Vegas shooting. The group planned several weeks of protests and educational events to coincide with the five year anniversary of the Sandy Hook shooting, including a silent walk to the Brownells facility. Since then, several states have passed laws banning them, and the Justice Department has said it may reverse a 2010 decision and ban them under federal law. In May, Slide Fire Solutions, the largest bump stock manufacturer, which holds a patent on the devices, closed operations. (Its inventory is still being sold online.) For gun control advocates, this seems like a victory, and it may be or it may not. State and local bump stock bans face legal challenges, and local ordinances banning the devices in Ohio have been overturned. More to the point, Mr. Hardeman said that he or most anyone at the bar could rig a semiautomatic firearm to simulate an automatic fire rate in 15 minutes, no bump stock needed. Brownells continues to carry parts and accessories that achieve similar results, including binary trigger modification parts, which ship to 44 states. Mr. Hardeman told me a familiar story. He is proud that he was able to contribute to his impoverished household in his boyhood by hunting small game. When he hears that gun owners are irresponsible, he tells me, he's affronted. To him, his neighbors are lumping him and his friends in with a group to which they don't belong. He said it seems impossible to talk with them. "Liberals want to take my guns," he said. Virtually everyone in Grinnell has taken great care to say that they do not want to take anyone's guns. This includes Ms. Abrahamson and Ms. Scott, who says that the distinction between gun control and gun safety matters. "Many of us are gun owners," Ms. Scott said. "We don't want to challenge the Second Amendment. We just want to know if there's safety where there are guns. This is not an anti movement." "But it's what I hear all the time," Mr. Hardeman said, throwing up his hands. Before I could ask, the bartender set another frosted mug in front of me. "No, someone else got it for you," she said when I tried to pay. When Do We Talk? After all this not talking, few people seem to have thought about what they might actually say to Pete Brownell. "People keep telling me they want to have a conversation," said Don A. Smith, an emeritus professor of history, emphasizing the last three words. "When I ask them what they wish to have a conversation about, they say they don't know!" Many people I spoke to brought up the concept of "Iowa nice" in our conversations. During my visit, I ferried four hardy senior ladies back downtown after a protest across the highway from Brownells. I asked them whether there's any difference between Iowa, Midwestern and Minnesota nice. Everyone laughed, and someone piped up from the back seat, "No, but ours is better!" "Iowa nice" could be the solution or the problem. The social contracts of small town life seem rather less sturdy these days. No amount of moral clarity or urgency has made it possible to overcome the hurdle of getting people "on all sides" to talk to one another, even as they talk to one another about dozens of other things every day. "It's painful," Ms. Abrahamson said. "I don't want his family hurt and I mean in their spirit. I don't even know if we have that kind of effect on them or not. But I just think in a small town you just have to be more careful with each other." The person who circulates among and across all these local tribes with the most ease is Mr. Brownell certainly because of his wealth, if not also because of his fluency in the cultures that collide or coexist here.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Style
If you are looking for an app that notes when you go off schedule and can help you recalculate your dosage times, a recent update to the free, well reviewed Round Health iOS app records when you last took a pill so you can do the math needed for timing the next dose. The app reminds you to take your scheduled pills with pop up alerts. The Medisafe app for Android and iOS is another popular pill reminder program with good reviews from users on both platforms; the app is free but offers in app purchases for more features. MyTherapy Pill Reminder Medication Tracker (free for Android and iOS) includes a journal function and can create PDF reports to share with a doctor. Before committing so much personal information to an app, read its privacy policy and be aware where your data is stored, especially if it can sync content between devices. You should also enable the available security features on your phone, like a passcode.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Technology
Last year, dance companies around the world celebrated the centennial of Merce Cunningham's birth by performing some of his vast repertory. Now, over the next few months, more than a dozen of those performances will be viewable online, the Cunningham Trust announced today. The idea germinated when New York Theater Ballet, whose 40th anniversary performances were canceled because of the pandemic, asked Patricia Lent, the trust's director of licensing, for permission to stream some of its recent renditions of Cunningham works. The trust's standard licensing agreements allow for the streaming of short clips, not full works. Ms. Lent would have to get the other rights holders composers, designers to sign off. Ms. Lent was inclined to make the arrangements, she said as an exception. "But then I thought, wait a minute, nobody can do a live performance right now," she recalled. "And there are these videos out there. Might other companies also be interested in streaming right now?"	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Dance
The student run La Escuela is a restaurant and bakery serving inexpensive dishes from remote regions like the Choco and Arauca. Certain districts of Bogota, like the Zona G, seem to have more types of restaurants than they do people. There are Southern style BBQ joints that look straight out of Brooklyn; gastro pubs with cocktail gardens; and a chain of crepe restaurants that has set up shop in nearly every neighborhood. Yet regional Colombian fare from outside the capital has long been the city's weak spot. Until now. As Bogota has increasingly become a melting pot of cultures from every part of Colombia, restaurants focusing on regional dishes and ingredients are opening with regularity. Leonor Espinosa has been exploring rural Colombian flavors for a decade at her upscale restaurant Leo Cocina y Cava, but in late 2014 she opened the less pricey Misia, a fresh take on traditional snack spots, in a space decorated with hand painted clay tiles and recycled fruit crates turned lampshades. The restaurant showcases the popular cuisine of Colombia's Caribbean coast with coconut milk ceviches and house made cured meats, like blood sausages, and longanizas, made from smoked hen. The star plate is the posta negra, based on a family recipe of Ms. Espinosa's, which features an eye of round roast doused in a rich, dark sauce made with garlic, various spices and an unrefined cane sugar called panela. Each table is set with bottles of house made hot sauces and chile infused vinegars, which can be bought on the way out. It has been such a success that a second location was opened in the Zona G last February. At El Panoptico, located a short walk from Misia inside the sprawling Museo Nacional, the chef Eduardo Martinez clipped herbs from a pot in the courtyard. Mr. Martinez, an agricultural engineer who also owns the restaurant Mini Mal in the Chapinero Alto neighborhood to the north, has worked with several foundations to foster culinary diversity in the country. With El Panoptico, which opened in 2013, he looks to neglected regional ingredients, many of them from the Andes or the Amazon, like aji negro, a fermented and reduced yuca extract. Mr. Martinez thinly slices a forgotten native tuber called guatila like a carpaccio, in the hopes of reintroducing it to local kitchens. "Many don't like it," he said. "They call it the 'potato of the poor,' or 'food for pigs.' All of these tubers seem strange to many people. They aren't in supermarkets. We try to present them in a way they'll understand." Some ingredients have been overlooked for so long that few can even remember how to use them. The recipe for a corn and peanut soup called samai, in fact, comes from a grandmother named Mercedes Tisoy, who serves it during celebrations in the high altitude Sibundoy Valley, in the southwest of the country. You can smell the freshly baked pan de bono, a corn based cheese bread typical of Cali, Colombia's second largest city, as you walk past Escuela Taller, a school for high risk youth just down the street from Bogota's Capitolo Nacional, the capital building. It houses the student run La Escuela, a restaurant and bakery serving inexpensive dishes from remote regions like the Choco and Arauca. Inside, 60 students enrolled in a two year program do a range of tasks, like roasting their own coffee, which is sold in the cafe; working the register; and deep frying plantains to make fritters. The lunch only menu offers dishes like fried Magdalena River fish, called mojarra, with coconut rice, or the chuleta valluna, a breaded pork chop typical of the rural Cauca Valley outside Cali. The young servers also help decipher the long list of freshly pressed juices like araza or camu camu. Colombia's undeveloped and rarely visited Pacific Coast has a set of ingredients all its own, like a shark called a toyo, and an herb called cilantro cimarron; if you wanted to taste them, however, you were probably better off going to the port town of to Buenaventura. Now Rey Guerrero has established himself as Bogota's ambassador to the recipes of that region, which have gained recognition since his appearance on the Colombian TV cooking show "La Prueba" in 2014. His Bogota restaurant, Rey Guerrero Pescaderia Gourmet, a single, large dining room painted with vibrant Afro Colombian murals on the walls, serves a long list of fish and shellfish heavy dishes, like the arroz tumbacatre, a spicy regional version of arroz con mariscos, or seafood rice. "In Europe they have foie gras, in the Pacific we have piangua," he said, referring to the region's flavorful, nutrient rich black clam, with which he makes a ceviche. "Esto es puro Pacifico."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Travel
In Tennessee, Following the Rules for Evaluations Off a Cliff MURFREESBORO, Tenn. Last year, when Tennessee was named one of the first two states to win a federal Race to The Top grant, worth 501 million, there was great joy all around. Education Secretary Arne Duncan, who has the job of implementing President Obama's signature education program, praised Tennessee officials for having "the courage, capacity and commitment to turn their ideas into practices that can improve outcomes for students." Gov. Bill Haslam, a Republican, called his state "the focal point of education reform in the nation." Tennessee's new motto is "First to the Top." So you would think that educators like Will Shelton, principal of Blackman Middle School here, would be delighted. The state requires that teachers be evaluated by their students' test scores, and that principals get into classrooms regularly to observe teachers. Mr. Shelton is a big believer in both. But not this. "I've never seen such nonsense," he said. "In the five years I've been principal here, I've never known so little about what's going on in my own building." Mr. Shelton has to spend so much time filling out paperwork that he's stuck in his office for long stretches. The new rules, enacted at the start of the school year, require Mr. Shelton to do as many observations for his strongest teachers four a year as for his weakest. "It's an insult to my best teachers," he said, "but it's also a terrible waste of time." Because there are no student test scores with which to evaluate over half of Tennessee's teachers kindergarten to third grade teachers; art, music and vocational teachers the state has created a bewildering set of assessment rules. Math specialists can be evaluated by their school's English scores, music teachers by the school's writing scores. "One of my teachers came to me six weeks ago and said, 'Will, morale is in the toilet,' " Mr. Shelton recalled. "This destroys any possibility of building a family atmosphere. It causes so much distrust." If ever proof were needed for the notion that it's a good idea to look before you leap, it's the implementation of Race to the Top in Tennessee. "I don't know why they felt they had to rush," said Tim Tackett, a member of the school board here who was a teacher and principal for 32 years. "Clearly this wasn't well thought out." Federal officials said that they did not pressure Tennessee to rush, and that the other 10 states that won grants, as well as the District of Columbia, have routinely been given time extensions. Kelli Gauthier, a spokeswoman for the state's Education Department, wrote in an e mail that the state spent a year developing the evaluation system after consulting administrators and teachers around the state. At meetings in Nashville last week, state officials seemed to be giving ground and spoke about tweaking the requirements. On Friday, Tennessee's education commissioner, Kevin S. Huffman, asked the State Board of Education for modifications to the evaluation rules that are intended to reduce the amount of time principals must spend on them. "We have said from the beginning that we will listen and respond to feedback from educators on this evaluation model, and that is exactly what we're doing," Mr. Huffman told state legislators. "This adjustment made sense, and if approved, our evaluation system will be stronger because of it." But tweaking the rules may not be nearly enough. A recent article in Education Week said essentially that things were so bad in Tennessee, there was a danger that the grant program would be undermined elsewhere. He must have copies of his evaluations ready for any visit by a county evaluator, who evaluates whether Mr. Shelton has properly evaluated the teachers. He is required to do at least four observations a year for the 65 teachers at his school, although the changes suggested last week would save paperwork by allowing two of the observations to be done back to back. Teachers have it worse. Half of their assessment is based on their students' results on state test scores, a serious problem for those who teach subjects with no state test. To solve that, the state is requiring teachers without test results to be evaluated based on the scores of teachers at their school with test results. So Emily Mitchell, a first grade teacher at David Youree Elementary, will be evaluated using the school's fifth grade writing scores. "How stupid is that?" said Michelle Pheneger, who teaches ACT math prep at Blackman High and is also being evaluated in part based on writing scores. "My job can be at risk, and I'm not even being evaluated by my own work." For 15 percent of their testing evaluation, teachers without scores are permitted to choose which subject test they want to be judged on. Few pick something related to their expertise; instead, they try to anticipate the subject that their school is likely to score well on in the state exams next spring. It's a bit like Vegas, and if you pick the wrong academic subject, you lose and get a bad evaluation. While this may have nothing to do with academic performance, it does measure a teacher's ability to play the odds. There's also the question of how a principal can do a classroom observation of someone who doesn't teach a classroom subject. The answer is, the principal still has to observe them teaching something. Erin Alvarado, a librarian at Central Magnet, a combined middle and high school, picked eighth grade descriptive writing. One of the rubric variables is how well the teacher knows her students. There are 938 students at Central, and she knew few in that class by name. "Fortunately, the teacher put all the names on index cards for me," Ms. Alvarado said. "I'd take a quick peek down at the card, pick a name, look around and hope the student was there." This would all be hilarious, except these evaluations can cost people their jobs. In September, the school board here sent a letter to the education commissioner requesting that these state policies be "reviewed immediately." "Doesn't seem to make a lot of sense, does it?" said Mr. Tackett, who drafted the letter. State officials have said that by next year, they will develop ways to assess teachers in subjects with no state test. Mr. Tackett is skeptical. "I'll be interested to see how they evaluate a band director," he said. In the end, it's all about distrust: not trusting principals to judge teachers, not trusting teachers to educate children. Like a lot of principals, Mr. Shelton has always done "pop ins," quick, unannounced visits that can be as short as two minutes, as long as 15. He says he used to get into every classroom several times a week, every day if a teacher was having problems. After 23 years as an educator, he said, it doesn't take him long to spot trouble. He says the new state policies put everyone under stress, are divisive and suck the joy out of a building. "What I need to make my school better is pretty simple," he said. "I want everybody to be happy. If they're happy, they will do a better job."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Education
On a frigid Saturday in February, Etta Nichols strutted proudly into Hall B1 of the Spokane Convention Center in Washington to undertake her third deadlift of the day. This lift is five kilos more than "two times her body weight," an M.C. boasted over the public announcement system, eliciting a roar of cheers from the crowd. Etta crouched into proper form, per her triweekly training with Eric Cafferty, her coach, and confidently exhaled as she lifted a chalk dusted barbell bearing 143 pounds off the floor. For the past seven months, Etta has been fully engaged in the sport of powerlifting and has just set 12 new American records. She is 11 years old and weighs 65 pounds. Damiyah Smith, also 11, and from Commerce, Okla., began powerlifting in fourth grade and goes by the nickname "The Powerhouse Princess." She's become a staple on the youth circuit, earning 22 world records over the course of two years and starting her own fitness brand for children, Powerhouse Athletics. After getting into weight training at the age of 8 to enhance his performance in other sports, Garrett Stinchcomb, now 12, of Broken Arrow, Okla., found his way into powerlifting. Over three years of competing, he's accumulated 26 national titles, nine world records, and two gold Junior Olympics medals. And Luma Valones, who is just 5, has been performing weighted dead lifts, squats and bench presses since she was 3. Luma, who is in kindergarten, has her own private Instagram page, "HappyLuma," where her mother, Nicole Lacanglacang, 36, a graphic designer who lives in Hayward, Calif., shares videos of her triumphantly raising a set of pink weights over her chest. Ms. Lacanglacang, a powerlifter herself, began training her daughter on a homemade PVC pipe barbell sporting 3.5 pounds out of her garage in February 2016. Luma's dead lift maximum is now 53 pounds, 18 more than her total body weight. Ms. Lacanglacang said powerlifting has made her daughter self confident and is helping her to foster a positive body image. "She tells me she wants to get bigger, that she doesn't want skinny arms just big muscles," she said. Luma seconds that, exuberantly declaring that she wants "to be the strongest person in the universe." In recent years, child powerlifting has become more prominent thanks in part to organizations like USA Powerlifting ("America's Choice for Drug Free Strength Sport"), based in Anchorage, which hosts the annual youth national competition in which Etta Nichols recently participated. "It's like the Super Bowl of powerlifting," Etta said. The USAPL began holding the event in 2015, for ages 8 to 13, following growing demand from children and their parents across the nation. Another organization, the United States Powerlifting Association of Irvine, Calif., has a current roster of 1,500 children, ages 13 and above, competing at its meets. And the Amateur Athletic Union of Lake Buena Vista, Fla., which has hosted competitors ages 5 and up at its powerlifting events dating back to 1994, continues to see a steady stream of youth participants. Veterans of the sport say it has grown more popular thanks in part to its newfound visibility on, what else, social media. Children like Etta, who posts her latest adventures in the gym on her personal Instagram page, ponytailsandbarbells, have become unofficial ambassadors for juvenile powerlifters. Youngsters like Luma Valones look up to YouTube fitness moguls like "Meg Squats," a.k.a. Meg Gallagher, who gives regular shout outs to her squadron of Strong Strong Friends. And youth powerlifting has its own trending hashtags, like " KidsWhoPowerLift." Priscilla Ribic, the executive director and chair of the woman's committee for USAPL, said that powerlifting has proved particularly popular among girls; the 2018 USA Powerlifting Nationals competition was over 75 percent female, she said. "I have never seen females outnumber the males, so it was really kind of awesome," Ms. Ribic said. Martin Drake, the national chairman of AAU Strength Sports, which is hosting a Junior Olympics of powerlifting in Des Moines this summer, believes there has been a trickle down effect from grown up gyms, where strength training, once the exclusive province of Biffs building muscles, has extended to Betties as well. "It has become very en vogue for young ladies to be athletic and strong," he said. Many members of the industry rave about the sport's potential benefits for its young participants. "Powerlifting helps children develop connective tissue, including ligaments and tendons, muscles and bones, and also helps to build a foundational strength," said Tom DeLong, the director of science education for the National Council for Certified Personal Trainers (NCCPT) and the USPA. But some medical professionals and others are not so keen on the trend. "As both a pediatric orthopedic surgeon and a mother, this would not be my first choice of an activity for my child," said Dr. Abigail Allen, chief of pediatric orthopedic surgery at the Mount Sinai Hospital in New York. "Powerlifting condones lifting heavier and heavier weights," Dr. Allen added, noting that the potential dangers of the sport include "putting too much stress on the growth centers and causing growth anomalies." "The key is the right coach," Mr. Nichols said. "Just like in football, you get a coach who teaches a kid to tackle by leading with the head; you're going to have problems. If you teach a kid to dead lift or squat with a rounded back, they are probably going to get hurt." His daughter Etta, who is in fifth grade, agreed. She said that she recently sprained her thumb playing basketball but has yet to sustain an injury related to lifting. Nor are sports her sole interest. "She loves anything with bling. Her room is Paris themed and her favorite color is pink," Mr. Nichols said. But at the Mecca Gym in Meridian, Idaho, where she trains in custom pink Aesthreadics lifting belt and Wonder Woman socks, Etta is a star. She has three older brothers, and none of them powerlift. "She's always trying to defy odds," said her mother, Natalie Nichols, 41, an administrative assistant. "Lifting has helped Etta realize her strengths," said Mr. Cafferty, 27, her coach, who owns the Mecca Gym. "Not only is she physically strong and coordinated for her age but she has learned a lot about herself through powerlifting how hard she can push herself, how she can accomplish things she puts her mind to and how success is not given, its earned." Next, Etta wants to tackle AAU's annual Powerlifting World Championship next September in Laughlin, Nevada. But her greater goal is to inspire her peers to embrace the sport. "Sometimes when I'm lifting, I will see a kid staring at me like I'm some famous person and then they go ask their parents if they can do stuff like me," she said. "A lot of people look at a sport like powerlifting and think that girls can't do that and I want to prove them wrong."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Style
The rain forests of Indonesia and Malaysia have long had enigmatic residents in their canopies of trees. They are the orangutans, who have always fascinated with their shocks of orange fur, remarkable vocal abilities as well as the 97 percent of the DNA they share in common with human beings. The two distinct species of the primates living on the islands of Borneo and Sumatra are surviving members of the family of six species of great apes, along with Eastern and Western African gorillas as well as chimpanzees and bonobos, which also live in Africa. But new research some two decades in the making is now upsetting that conventional scientific wisdom and suggesting that there is a seventh great ape species: the Tapanuli orangutan, from upland forests on Indonesia's island of Sumatra. An international team of scientists announced their findings in a paper published Thursday in the journal Current Biology. "I discovered the population south of Lake Toba in 1997, but it has taken us 20 years to get the genetic and morphological data together that shows how distinct the species is," said Dr. Erik Meijaard, a conservation scientist affiliated with Australian National University and an author of the paper. Researchers used measurements and the overall shape of a specimen's skull, jaw and teeth, as well as genetic analysis, to distinguish the Tapanuli orangutans from two other species. Orangutans are an endangered species, with populations in some areas critically endangered. The new species, Pongo tapanuliensis, or the Tapanuli orangutan, was described as living only in an area of forest about 425 square miles in size. The team researching the Tapanuli orangutan contends that it's the most endangered of all surviving great apes, with only about 800 left. In 2013, researchers involved in conservation efforts in an area of North Sumatra province known as the Batang Toru ecosystem recovered parts of a skeleton from an adult male orangutan killed by local residents. They were surprised to find singular characteristics that consistently differed from other Sumatran orangutans, including in the measurements and overall shape of its skull, jaw and teeth, said Matthew G. Nowak, a conservation biologist with the Sumatran Orangutan Conservation Program, an organization involved in the research. "When we realized that Batang Toru orangutans are morphologically different from all other orangutans, the pieces of the puzzle fell into place," said Dr. Michael Krutzen, a professor at the University of Zurich and a member of the research team. Researchers then conducted what they called the "largest genomic study of wild orangutans to date," comparing the genes from the recovered orangutan with data collected in the past from other field sites on Sumatra. They found that the Tapanuli population had become isolated from other Sumatran orangutan populations sometime in the last 10,000 to 20,000 years. They also found that the Tapanuli's orangutan's lineage was ancient between three and three and one half million years old and that they appeared to be direct descendants of the orangutan ancestors that crossed into what is now Indonesia and Malaysia from mainland Asia. "We have learned how little we actually knew about orangutan evolution despite many decades of research and how much more there is to learn," Dr. Meijaard said. "Orangutans are ancient creatures, as old as the very first members of our own genus Homo." The researchers acknowledged that there are limitations in their study, as they had access to only a single skeleton and two individual genomes. But they noted that other species have been defined with a single specimen. Dr. Birute Mary Galdikas, a Canadian primatologist who has studied orangutans for 46 years and led conservation efforts on the neighboring island of Borneo, said she was pleased but not necessarily surprised by the announcement. "It was the talk 50 years ago, that there were two types, including one that had long fingers," she said of descriptions made by residents of that area of Sumatra. . "So what they have done is solidified the evidence, using anatomical evidence and genetic evidence, and evidence from the population."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Science
Jacinda Davis found her latest true crime story because she wanted to go to a record store. As a longtime (and Emmy Award winning) producer of true crime television, Davis finds herself on the road much of the time. Searching for material for a new series, titled "The Killer in Question," she looked to Michigan, because that's where Jack White of the White Stripes has one of his Third Man Records shops. A little Googling and up popped an intriguing case: Jeff Titus, a former Marine and police officer, imprisoned for nearly two decades for the murder of two hunters in Michigan that the original detectives on the case were convinced he didn't commit. Susan Simpson, an attorney turned podcaster, heard about Titus from Davis. On her podcast, "Undisclosed," Simpson and her co hosts, Rabia Chaudry and Colin Miller, are "looking for times when the system got it wrong, where something needs to be fixed," she said, "and where through us telling the story we can help advance the cause of justice." Now Davis and Simpson are telling the same tale. The new season of "Undisclosed" will cover the Titus case beginning Oct. 26 and running through January. And on Nov. 1, the debut episode of "Killer in Question," a two hour documentary, will air on Investigation Discovery. This collaboration is an unusual one. The more typical path sees a popular podcast adapted into a TV show, like "Dirty John," or a TV show spun off from a podcast for a deeper dive. And occasionally, projects on the same subject are released around the same time think of Joe Exotic, subject of both a podcast and a Netflix series but whose creators don't work together. "It's a unique scenario," said Kevin Fitzpatrick, president and executive producer at Red Marble Media, where Davis is an executive producer. "I could tell that Susan and Jacinda are of the same cloth. They are people who want to tell a great story. I knew that we could make a better television show with her help, and I think she believes she can make a better podcast with our help." "We felt that we would be able to generate more interest in the story if we all did it," Fitzpatrick added. Talking, texting and then teaming up. Simpson and Davis first met at a rooftop bar in Washington, where Simpson lives, in the summer of 2019. They had heard of each other's work and were getting together to talk about a different case that Simpson was working on for "Undisclosed." "We had a couple of drinks and talked murder for a long time," Davis said. At some point, Davis brought up Titus, whose case she had been working on for several months; Simpson was fascinated. They agreed to keep in touch. Simpson and her colleagues found themselves stymied in fleshing out the stories they were considering for the podcast. But Davis was willing to share the reporting she'd already done on the Titus case, and Simpson felt confident enough in his innocence to pursue it for her podcast. The pair began texting and talking about the case, and in late September, they headed to Kalamazoo County, to jointly interview witnesses, detectives and anyone with anything to say about the case. They're not the most obvious collaborators. Simpson, 35, has misgivings about the true crime genre. So much of it is "really sensational," she said. Growing up in Atlanta, she thought she might become a paleontologist so she could "sort and analyze bones." Instead, she said, she ended up going to law school. For her part, Davis, 48, who lives in Montclair, N.J., isn't a huge podcast fan. "I don't have a lot of time to listen," she conceded. But Davis is captivated by true crime stories. Her first internship after college was at "America's Most Wanted," and any plans to be a psychologist or social worker disappeared. Her three teenage sons are used to her macabre obsessions. "A lot of times the dinner conversation is about serial killers or murders," she said. Still, the two have found lots in common a shared passion for storytelling, for ferreting out the truth, for following a case wherever it may lead and after just a few weeks of reporting together in Michigan, they share the easy banter of longtime colleagues, finishing each others's sentences during a joint interview. Both are intensely curious Simpson is dying to check out a park for abandoned pet alligators that they keep driving by. Both are unflappable: Davis got flashed one day while the two women were interviewing a witness who came to the door of his trailer wearing nothing but a bathrobe, and then proceeded to sit down as his robe gaped. Simpson was spared the sight. "I was making eye contact," she said with a laugh. Both women told me, separately, about their shared discovery of the pastry called elephant ears, sold out of a small shop they drove past. "It's like funnel cakes but covered in butter and cinnamon sugar," Davis explained. "My new favorite food," declared Simpson. Is it right to have so much fun researching such an ugly story? The ethics of true crime are a frequent topic among those who write about it. In Sarah Weinman's recent anthology, "Unspeakable Acts," crime narratives share space with essays that raise objections to the genre itself, especially in its sensationalized "damsel in distress" iteration. Stories about crime that merely titillate can strike readers, viewers and listeners as voyeurism, with all the attraction and revulsion that implies. But work like "Undisclosed," with its focus on exoneration, inhabit a different landscape than shows like "Snapped," the Oxygen channel stalwart that seems to valorize murder, when undertaken by abused wives. "There's definitely two worlds of true crime," Simpson said. Programs like "Snapped," seem to her "really sensational. It's not my thing. I would not be interested in working with someone who was portraying cases in that way." Simpson prefers to do work that includes "an examination of the criminal justice system," she added. It's into this more nuanced space that Davis's new show arrives. Rather than simply recap a cut and dried case, "Killer in Question" will ask whether the man in prison actually committed the crime, and if one set of detectives got the story very wrong. For Davis, the true crime work that she does is more about exploration than exploitation. "These are very personal stories told by people who were affected, who want to share their journey," she said. "And on a broader more human level," she added, "these are essentially stories of loss and tragedy, of forgiveness and redemption. They're stories we all know and experience but probably not on such a tragic level and it's those emotional undercurrents that I think really resonate with women. It's not really about the crime at all." "I can't think of another case where there are two sets of detectives that don't agree," Davis said. "The original detectives in this case absolutely, 100 percent cleared Jeff Titus and believe he is not guilty. They are the ones who took the case to the Michigan Innocence Clinic. And the cold case team is the opposite. They believe beyond a doubt that they have the right man." Two days after the murders, Titus found a gun belonging to one of the victims. It had been wiped clean. The first set of detectives found that odd; the cold case team found it implicating. Titus's co workers at the hospital testified that he told them that he hated to see hunters walk across his land. There were plenty of witnesses against him; it seems he wasn't well liked. Of course, as Simpson pointed out, "people who are unlikable are often easy targets for wrongful conviction." But Titus had an alibi. He had been hunting 27 miles away when the crimes were committed. Two witnesses saw a car stuck in a ditch right after two gunshots were heard, and offered to help the driver get out. One witness, a neighbor of Titus's, said it definitely wasn't him. Both contributed to a police sketch, which looks a lot like Thomas Dillon, a serial killer who was active in Ohio, the next state over, at the time. His modus operandi: killing hunters, fishermen and other outdoorsmen. (Dillon died while in prison for the murder of other hunters.) Both Simpson and Davis hope their stories will prompt more people to come forward with information about the Estes and Bennett murders. "Once we start, word gets around," Simpson said. "In some cases people start calling in with information, which we can incorporate as time goes on." Davis agrees. "People want to talk, I think," she said. "Memories change. Little details get lost. But over all, people remember." Naturally, the two have formed an opinion about Titus's guilt. "The evidence in this case struck me as underwhelming to begin with," Simpson said, "but you never know what's going to turn up once you start investigating. After a month in Kalamazoo, everything I've found has confirmed the conclusions reached by the case's initial investigators: The evidence for Jeff Titus's guilt just isn't there." Davis was cagier. "I flip flopped over the last year but definitely have a solid opinion now, but I want people to come to their own conclusions based on what they see in the show," she said. "Ask me again after it airs."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Television
Mr. Siegel, 59, is the president of the recently established New York City brokerage office of Engel Volkers, a real estate company based in Hamburg, Germany, with around 600 offices in 38 countries. Before starting Engel Volkers New York in May, Mr. Siegel was a founder and principal of Ore Hill Advisors, and he served as the president and chief executive of Sotheby's International Realty from 1991 to 2006. Q. How is business so far at the new office? A. Things are going very well. The progress we have made has really exceeded expectations. We've had very strong results recruiting and bringing in seasoned sales associates. Q. How many sales associates do you have now? Q. Most of them have come from other brokerages. A. All of them except for two. They have come to us, in many cases, without a lot of real estate experience but spectacular international sales experience. One of our folks worked for a family watch company in Geneva and was head of marketing there. Q. There's a tremendous amount of competition in New York, particularly in the luxury market, Engel Volkers's main focus. Is there enough business to go around? A. There really is enough business to go around. This is a start up, but it's a start up that's part of a company that has spent the last 35 years building its brand globally. The client base basically created the opportunity and the need for a New York Engel Volkers business. We are a global, European brand coming to the U.S. Q. Are most of your clients foreigners looking to buy in New York? A. One side of the transaction is usually with a non New York buyer or seller. Q. How many transactions have you done so far? A. You know, we're a private company, so we don't release transaction volume or sales figures. But we have had a number of transactions. If you had said to me at the end of February, "Where would you be in November?" I would have never imagined. We're working on several large listings, but we have a spectacular offering at 10 Gracie Square. It's on 84th, between East End and the river. That's 3.5 million. Q. Are you taking mainly luxury listings? A. I'll take anything that represents quality, and that represents realistic pricing and a motivated seller. There could be an extraordinary 250,000 studio in Williamsburg. Luxury for me is not automatically determined by price. We might have a client who'll say, I want a 250,000 studio either for my kids or as an investment. And we have this happening right now. That person is simultaneously looking at a 5 million to 7 million flat. Q. Can we expect to see other New York offices? A. Most definitely in Manhattan and the tristate area. Will we be thousands of agents? Absolutely not. Will we be 25, 30 offices? No. But we could be 10 offices. We could be 12 offices. Q. So why did you leave Sotheby's? A. We sold the company to Cendant, and the successor company became Realogy. I stayed with Realogy for over two years, but I had several opportunities to go out on my own and start this advisory business. I advised primarily families, family offices, private and very closely controlled companies primarily for investments in hospitality and luxury destination resorts. I worked for the Ferragamo family, for example. The advisory firm is still in existence. It's being run by my partners. Q. What made you decide to return to the residential brokerage business? A. If you had asked me seven years ago: Would I be back in a founding brokerage role? I would say never. But it's in our gene pool. The brand represents a lot of opportunity that's not yet recognized in the New York market. and I wanted to be part of that. The relationship with Christian Volkers goes way back. And when I decided to move back to the U.S., he approached me. We actually ran into each other quite serendipitously on Columbus Circle Thanksgiving weekend. My wife and I are walking along Columbus Circle we live on 60th Street and my wife leaned to me and said, "You know, I think somebody is staring at us." And I turn around, and lo and behold, it's Christian. I said, "Christian, what are you doing here?" He said, "What are you doing here? I thought you were in Switzerland." I said, "Well, I think I'm going to come back and see what's happening in the New York market." And I said to him, "What are you doing here in New York?" He said, "I'm looking for a C.E. ..." My wife says she saw this little glitter in both our eyes.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Real Estate
The number of vaping related lung illnesses has risen to 530 probable cases, according to an update on Thursday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and a Missouri man became the eighth to die from the mysterious ailments. During a news briefing, Dr. Anne Schuchat, principal deputy director of the C.D.C., said officials expect more deaths because some people are suffering from severe lung illnesses. But the nation's public health officials said they still were unable to pinpoint the cause, or causes, of the sicknesses that have resulted in hundreds of hospitalizations, with many in intensive care units. Dr. Schuchat said some patients are on ventilators and therefore are unable to tell investigators what substances they vaped. "I wish we had more answers," she said. The C.D.C. provided the first demographic snapshot of the afflicted: Nearly three quarters are male, two thirds between 18 and 34. Sixteen percent are 18 or younger. "More than half of cases are under 25 years of age," Dr. Schuchat said. Illnesses have now been reported in 38 states, and one United States territory. In the most recent case, in St. Louis, officials said on Thursday that a man in his mid 40s who had chronic pain had begun vaping last May. He was hospitalized Aug. 22 with respiratory problems and died on Wednesday. "He started out with shortness of breath and it rapidly progressed and deteriorated, developing into what is called acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS)," said Dr. Michael Plisco, a critical care pulmonologist at Mercy Hospital St. Louis. "Once the lungs are injured by vaping, we don't know how quickly it worsens and if it depends on other risk factors." He and other officials said they did not know what substance the patient had been vaping, but Dr. Plisco said in an interview that tissue samples from his lungs showed cells stained with oil. Some products include oils that if inhaled even small droplets can cling to the lungs and airways and cause acute inflammation, doctors have said. The first case in Canada also emerged this week. Officials there released information about a teenager in Ontario who was put on life support in an intensive care unit, but has now recovered. The spate of illnesses this summer, coupled with the rising popularity of teenage vaping, has led a few states and the Trump administration to propose outlawing flavored e cigarettes. Public officials hope restricting flavors that hold particular appeal for youth may discourage teenage use and adoption of vaping. Early results of an annual survey released on Wednesday show that teenage vaping has doubled since 2017. Is it time to quit vaping? Vaping typically entails inhalation of aerosolized substances, usually nicotine or THC the psychoactive ingredient in marijuana mixed with solvents or other chemicals. The C.D.C. reiterated that many of the people who have gotten sick have used THC based products, some obtained on the street, rather than from retailers in states where recreational or medical marijuana is legal. But C.D.C. officials continued to emphasize they have not identified a single clear chemical or cause of the outbreak. The officials said patients have reported using THC, THC and nicotine and for some, just nicotine. The C.D.C. has said that to be safe for the time being, people should not vape anything at all. The lack of answers has begun to elicit frustration from various camps, including consumers, policy experts and industry groups. Since mid August, when public health officials first disclosed that nearly three dozen people had gotten sick, a clear cause has not been identified. The agencies have pointed to the complexity of testing products and challenges of getting detailed history from patients about their behavior. At the same time, a growing number of critics have said, there should be clearer results from the massive machinery of the federal investigation more than 80 people at the C.D.C. working on the issue and a Food and Drug Administration lab in Cincinnati working with more than 150 samples from patients who got sick. "We are not getting specific information we need to protect the public," said Dr. Michael Siegel, a pediatrician at Boston University who has been a strong advocate for the use of e cigarettes as a less dangerous alternative to traditional smoking. He said that the government has heavily implied that the problem is largely resulting from the use of illicit THC related vaping products made but has not exonerated e cigarettes, creating confusion. "They're not releasing the number of cases involved with THC," he said. "That's information they should be releasing." Eric Lindblom, an expert in tobacco policy at Georgetown Law School and a former F.D.A. senior adviser, said that the F.D.A. has the authority to ban the sale of THC vaping liquid, or THC vape pens, even in states where recreational marijuana is legal or to ban sales that include any solvents other than ones known to be safe. "They need to do something," he said. "They should just take action to stop these things. It's a no lose situation." Mitchell Zeller, director of the F.D.A.'s Center for Tobacco Products, said it would be premature to take further action until "we get answers to these questions." "We are in desperate need of facts and evidence," he said during a news briefing with the C.D.C. on Thursday. He said that there were multiple compounds showing up in the vaping mixtures, including Vitamin E acetate and other additives. He said that Vitamin E did not appear to be the sole factor but did not elaborate on other substances involved. Mr. Zeller also said that the F.D.A.'s office of criminal investigations has begun "parallel investigative efforts." He declined to specify any target of those efforts or whether an enforcement action is forthcoming, but he did say that particular arm of the FDA has gotten involved because it "has special investigative skills. Dr. Schuchat from the C.D.C. said she understood the desire for more precise information. "We absolutely want to do that," she said but added that in providing partial information, officials might "prematurely reassure" consumers about the safety of a product that ultimately turns out to be problematic. One outstanding question, for instance, is whether there might be any connection between the recent bust in Wisconsin of an alleged vaping ring and the outbreak of illnesses. The bust involved seizing 57 Mason jars filled with liquid thought to be THC, or contain it, and thousands of empty vaping cartridges. The bust and the outbreak come against a backdrop of tremendous uncertainty, even confusion, at the federal level over the governance of both e cigarettes and, more so, marijuana. With e cigarettes, the F.D.A. has for years been developing regulations and policy about what products to allow into the market and under what circumstances. Recently, a federal court ruled that the F.D.A. must demand that e cigarette makers provide evidence by May of next year about their public health benefits or be pulled from the market. The issue is even trickier with marijuana, which the federal government still considers to be a Schedule 1 drug, a category it shares with such deadly substances as heroin. Yet with nearly a dozen states having legalized marijuana, and nearly three dozen allowing medicinal use, the federal government has essentially stood on the sidelines, trying to balance the growing political momentum behind legalization as well as a burgeoning industry of cannabis and hemp products against the uncertain health effects and longstanding federal policy.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Health
BRAXTON COOK at Rough Trade (Nov. 3, 8 p.m.). After a few years in the trumpeter Christian Scott aTunde Adjuah's band, Cook is starting to make his name as a bandleader. A Juilliard grad, he has unimpeachable bebop chops on the alto saxophone but he embeds them in a personal brand of refined neo soul (he refers to his sound as "future jazz soul"). Cook's svelte singing voice gives him another key tool, making him the rare virtuoso instrumentalist who doesn't need to rely on a guest singer to win a crossover audience. At this show, Cook will draw from his latest album, "No Doubt," with Andrew Renfroe on guitar, Julius Rodriguez on keyboards, Henoc Montes on bass and Curtis Nowosad on drums. roughtrade.com WHIT DICKEY at 244 Rehearsal Studios (Nov. 1, 7 p.m.). A mainstay of the New York avant garde, this drummer is best known for his membership in two standard bearing free jazz groups: the bygone David S. Ware Quartet and the still active Matthew Shipp Trio. But this summer he put out an ambitious album of his own, "Peace Planet Box of Light: The Tao Quartets," featuring two groups. Dickey, who brings high level sensitivity and humor to even the most rambunctious, freewheeling excursions, will play one set on Friday with one of those quartets (Rob Brown on alto saxophone, Steve Swell on trombone and Michael Bisio on bass) and another in duet with the cornetist Kirk Knuffke. whit dickey.eventbrite.com 'ECM RECORDS AT 50' at the Rose Theater (Nov. 1 2, 8 p.m.). Among the most illustrious labels in jazz and Western classical music, Germany's ECM Records has over the past half century fostered the careers of such diverse talents as the drummer Jack DeJohnette, the composer Meredith Monk, the trumpeter Enrico Rava and the pianist Vijay Iyer. They are among the dozens of artists who will take the stage at Jazz at Lincoln Center this weekend as part of what will be an uncommonly grandiose celebration for a label that's always been devoted to understatement and minimalism. 212 721 6500, jazz.org REMY LE BOEUF'S ASSEMBLY OF SHADOWS at the Jazz Gallery (Nov. 1 2, 7:30 and 9:30 p.m.). If not for the overwhelming beauty of Le Boeuf's harmonies and his crafty combinations of reeds and brass, it would be all too easy to grow dizzy while listening to the music of his Assembly of Shadows, a big band that is about to release its debut album. From moment to moment, these whirling, airborne arrangements call to mind the jazz bandleader Maria Schneider, the modernist composer Benjamin Britten and the maximalist film scorer Hans Zimmer. But Le Boeuf, a saxophonist, has a clear vision of his own and an ace ensemble of young musicians to help him carry it off. 646 494 3625, jazzgallery.nyc ARTURO O'FARRILL THE AFRO LATIN JAZZ ORCHESTRA WITH ANA TIJOUX AND TELMARY DIAZ at the Hostos Center for the Arts and Culture (Nov. 2, 8 p.m.). The Afro Latin Jazz Orchestra, among the tightest and most infectious big bands in New York today, kicks off its 18th season with this special concert at the Hostos Center in the South Bronx. Titled "Songs of Love Resistance," the show will include the premiere of a new composition by the Grammy winning ensemble's leader, the pianist Arturo O'Farrill, as well as guest appearances from the Chilean vocalist and rapper Ana Tijoux, the Cuban rapper and poet Telmary Diaz, the Bronx born turntablist D.J. Logic and others. 718 518 4455, hostos.cuny.edu/culturearts MICHELE ROSEWOMAN AND NEW YOR UBA at Zinc Bar (Nov. 2 and 8, 7:30 and 9 p.m.). Since the early 1980s this pianist and composer has led New Yor Uba, a large ensemble that unites jazz instrumentalists of various persuasions with some of New York's finest Afro Cuban musicians. Five years ago the band finally came forth with its first album, "New Yor Uba: 30 Years," one of the most impressive (and accessible) Latin jazz records of this young millennium. It testifies in particular to Rosewoman's talents as an arranger of lushly braided horn harmonies, which fit oddly but just right into the wobbly flow of the group's three bata drummers. At Zinc Bar this Saturday and next Friday, New Yor Uba will celebrate the release of "Hallowed," its sophomore album, which features a nearly 50 minute suite, "Oru de Oro," with individual pieces dedicated to different orishas (deities in the Yoruba spiritual tradition). 212 477 9462, zincjazz.com GIOVANNI RUSSONELLO	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Music
PARIS The scene at Charles de Gaulle Airport on Tuesday underscored an all too familiar trope about France. With air traffic controllers on strike, tourists from around the world arrived in Paris to find themselves stranded, many unable to make connecting flights to other parts of the Continent. The three day strike, which began Tuesday, sought to protest a proposal to accelerate the integration of air traffic management systems across the Continent. But for some it mainly served to highlight France's stubborn singularity, which has made the country increasingly uncompetitive in European and global marketplaces. "These strikes always happen, especially during the months of June and July," said Britt Marie Stromer, a 70 year old Swedish retiree. "It doesn't work like this in other European countries." Some 1,800 flights roughly half of all scheduled flights were canceled across the country Tuesday, while hundreds more were delayed and disrupted by the spillover in Europe. French aviation officials said they expected as many as 50 percent of flights to be canceled again Wednesday until at least midday Thursday. The controllers are protesting Brussels's plans to accelerate the integration of the European Union's fragmented air space, meant to improve transportation efficiency and lower the cost of air travel. The terminals at Paris area airports were largely calm, because most airlines had managed to warn passengers well in advance. But many travelers still had not gotten the word. But many passengers said they could not comprehend why France, one of Europe's biggest tourist destinations, appeared so resistant to changes that economists say have the potential to bolster travel and, with it, economic growth. "I'm on vacation, which is supposed to be a relaxing time," said Brittany Beaton, a 28 year old social worker from Canada who had planned to fly to Barcelona. An alternative flight Air France offered her was too expensive, she said, "so I'm going to try to take a train." French airports, airlines and traffic controllers tend to have the reputation of being more strike prone than their European peers. In reality, analysts say, a number of similarly disruptive labor actions have been undertaken in recent years by workers in Germany, Spain and Britain. Nonetheless, Tuesday's events seemed to follow mounting opposition by workers in other sectors of the French economy who continue to resist structural changes aimed at shaving labor and operating costs. While it was hard to tell on Tuesday, the government of France's Socialist president, Francois Hollande, says it actually strongly supports the idea of a unified regional airspace. But French officials do not like the way Brussels is trying to cajole its 27 member states toward that goal. 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. Since the fall, Siim Kallas, the European transport commissioner, has been trying to turn up the heat on member states like France that are seen to be dragging their feet. It was a decade ago that European officials proposed legislation to replace a crazy quilt of air traffic control fiefs that officials say account for about 6.5 billion in unnecessary costs each year. The measure was passed by the European Parliament in 2009 and subsequently endorsed by France and all other member states. Last year, Mr. Kallas threatened legal action and fines against member states for not meeting key milestones of the legislation. On Tuesday, he proposed ways to to inject fresh momentum into the process by granting significant new decision making powers to Eurocontrol, an agency in Brussels that is already responsible for coordinating air traffic flows across the Union and an additional 12 nearby countries. His proposals include a measure to separate national regulation of air travel from traffic management services, as well as a mandate that state owned monopoly providers of navigation, weather forecasting, surveillance and other services be privatized. But Mr. Kallas's proposals require approval from the European Parliament and member states. It is these proposals that have angered Paris. In an interview Tuesday, France's transport minister, Frederic Cuvillier, said the initiative amounted to "regulatory harassment." He accused Brussels of trying to rush through one size fits all changes that did not take into account differences in the way member states have historically managed their own airspace. "It is necessary that these things happen in a spirit of respect for differences in national organization," Mr. Cuvillier said. "We have to give it time." And just to show France was not alone, Mr. Cuvillier said he had persuaded his German counterpart, Peter Ramsauer, to sign a joint letter to Mr. Kallas, asking him to delay presenting his new proposals to the European Parliament. But Mr. Kallas said France, Germany and others have already had plenty of time. "Our airlines and their passengers have had to endure more than 10 years of reduced services and missed deadlines," he said Tuesday in Strasbourg. "We need to boost the competitiveness of the European aviation sector and create more jobs in the airlines and at airports." For passengers like Alexander Eliassem, a 38 year old Norwegian, patience with France's philosophy was wearing thin on Tuesday. He and his exhausted family were off to search for a place to stay for the night after their Lufthansa flight to Oslo was canceled. "I have a 9 year old child with me so, yes, it's a little difficult," Mr. Eliassem said. He said the airline would partly reimburse him, but only if he stayed in a hotel of no more than three stars in the notoriously generous rating system. "This is France, so that isn't saying much."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Global Business
TOULOUSE, France Just what was the appeal of tiny sculpted and carved skulls to an elegant French socialite married into the Rothschild banking dynasty? Almost a century after her death, the question of what drove Mathilde de Rothschild's passion for macabre artifacts remains an enigma. Was it because she trained as a nurse and rubbed shoulders with death in a hospital during World War I? She had a passion for hunting would that explain it? Or was she simply acutely aware that worldly pleasures were futile, and that death was always around the corner? Born in the early 1870s, Mathilde married Baron Henri de Rothschild in 1895. When she died in 1926, the baroness bequeathed her grisly 180 piece collection without explanation to the Musee des Arts Decoratifs in Paris. "It's all very mysterious" Sophie Motsch, a curator at the museum, said in an interview. "It is not the baroness's choice of macabre artifacts that is surprising, but the fact that it was a woman collecting them," Ms. Motsch said. "I know of no other woman to have done so," she added, noting that although the actress Sarah Bernhardt slept in a coffin and made still life paintings with skulls, "she didn't collect." Now, for the first time, the baroness's collection has been given its own show, "Meme Pas Peur!" "Not Even Scared!" at the Fondation Bemberg in the southern French city of Toulouse through Sunday. Some of the pieces can be viewed as simple curiosities; others are remarkable and rare works of art. Ms. Motsch, who curated the show, chose some favorites. Here are edited extracts in which she explains their allure. The baroness owned 21 tiny Japanese artifacts. Art from Japan flooded the West after the country opened up in the late 19th century. Okimonos were ornaments made for display in an alcove or on a little shelf. This skeleton, made from walrus ivory, rides a skull while being attacked by a giant toad. In another of the ornaments, a large snake emerges from the eye socket of a skull. Japanese culture often had a different relationship with death than the usual Western tradition. Skeletons and skulls regularly appear in folk tales as ghostly, comical characters. These okimonos were also meant to keep death at bay. They had no religious purpose. This 18th century drawing, originally attributed to Jean Baptiste Le Prince but later identified as a work by Pierre Antoine Baudouin, shows a banker confronting Death. He gestures in horror as Death, draped as an old woman, brandishes an hourglass to signify that the banker's time has come. You can't help seeing the irony and the baroness's sense of self deprecation, considering the family into which she married. It's not hard to imagine that this piece might even have been badly received by her in laws. This is a really very beautiful, very subtle object, sculpted with great virtuosity. The devil is duplicitous, he holds forth the torch of love while hiding the skull of death behind his back. His loins are covered in scales, he has wings like a bat, claws on his toes and horns in his spiky hair. I think it is a late 17th or early 18th century French piece, meant for collectors. It was probably for meditating upon, but it would also have been an amusing, even funny, piece. Many pieces of the baroness's collection were Catholic artifacts, which is curious for a Jewish family. But then, the Rothschilds were not particularly religious and what seemed to matter to the baroness were the skulls. This exquisite statue of Christ as a child bestowing his benediction was made in Sri Lanka in the 17th or 18th century. He has Asian features and curls on his head like a Buddha's. His foot rests on a small skull to show that he overcame death.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Art & Design
WASHINGTON After careful analysis of oil prices and months of negotiations, President Obama on Friday determined that there was sufficient oil in world markets to allow countries to significantly reduce their Iranian imports, clearing the way for Washington to impose severe new sanctions intended to slash Iran's oil revenue and press Tehran to abandon its nuclear ambitions. The White House announcement comes after months of back channel talks to prepare the global energy market to cut Iran out but without raising the price of oil, which would benefit Iran and harm the economies of the United States and Europe. Since the sanctions became law in December, administration officials have encouraged oil exporters with spare capacity, particularly Saudi Arabia, to increase their production. They have discussed with Britain and France releasing their oil reserves in the event of a supply disruption. And they have conducted a high level campaign of shuttle diplomacy to try to persuade other countries, like China, Japan and South Korea, to buy less oil and demand discounts from Iran, in compliance with the sanctions. The goal is to sap the Iranian government of oil revenue that might go to finance the country's nuclear program. Already, the pending sanctions have led to a decrease in oil exports and a sharp decline in the value of the country's currency, the rial, against the dollar and euro. Administration officials described the Saudis as willing and eager, at least since talks started last fall, to undercut the Iranians. One senior official who had met with the Saudi leadership, said: "There was no resistance. They are more worried about a nuclear Iran than the Israelis are." Still officials said, the administration wanted to be sure that the Saudis were not talking a bigger game than they could deliver. The Saudis received a parade of visitors, including some from the Energy Department, to make the case that they had the technical capacity to pump out significantly more oil. But some American officials remain skeptical. That is one reason Mr. Obama left open the option of reviewing this decision every few months. "We won't know what the Saudis can do until we test it, and we're about to," the official said. Worldwide demand for oil was another critical element of the equation that led to the White House decision on sanctions. Now, projections for demand are lower than expected because of the combination of rising oil prices, the European financial crisis and a modest slowdown in growth in China. As one official said, "No one wants to wish for slowdown, but demand may be the most important factor." Nonetheless, the sanctions pose a serious challenge for the United States. Already, concerns over a confrontation with Iran and the loss of its oil Iran was the third biggest exporter of crude in 2010 have driven oil prices up about 20 percent this year. A gallon of gas currently costs 3.92, on average, up from about 3.20 a gallon in December. The rising prices have weighed on economic confidence and cut into household budgets, a concern for an Obama administration seeking re election. But in a conference call with reporters, senior administration officials said they were confident that they could put the sanctions in effect without damaging the global economy. Iran currently exports about 2.2 million barrels of crude oil a day, according to the economic analysis company IHS Global Insight, and other oil producers will look to make up much of that capacity, as countries buy less and less oil from Iran. A number of countries are producing more petroleum, including the United States itself, which should help to make up the gap. Most notably, Saudi Arabia, the world's single biggest producer, has promised to pump more oil to bring prices down. "There is no rational reason why oil prices are continuing to remain at these high levels," the Saudi oil minister, Ali Naimi, wrote in an opinion article in The Financial Times this week. "I hope by speaking out on the issue that our intentions and capabilities are clear," he said. "We want to see stronger European growth and realize that reasonable crude oil prices are key to this." By certifying that there is enough supply available, the administration is also trying to gain some leverage over Iran before a resumption of negotiations, expected on April 14. The suggestion that Saudi Arabia is prepared to make up for any lost Iranian production is intended to remove Iran's ability to threaten a major disruption in the world oil supply if it does not cede to Western and United Nations demands to halt uranium enrichment. However, administration officials concede that it is unclear how the oil markets will react to Iranian threats even with the president's latest certification that there is sufficient oil to fill the gap. "We just don't know how much negotiating advantage we have gained," said one senior administration official who has been involved in developing the policy.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Global Business
The directors Steven Soderbergh and Amy Seimetz had prepared for a significant spring. Her new film "She Dies Tomorrow" was intended to debut at the South by Southwest film festival in March, after which she'd fly to Detroit to act in Soderbergh's crime drama "Kill Switch." Those plans were made pre pandemic, of course. As the spread of the coronavirus in the United States reached alarming levels, South by Southwest was canceled, and "Kill Switch" was halted two weeks before shooting. Hollywood had come to a standstill. "I knew nothing was going back to normal anytime soon," Seimetz said. "It was an interesting process to watch everyone face the facts." "'Contagion' is relentlessly objective in its style and its formal structure whereas Amy's film, by design, is this sort of fever dream in both its style and its storytelling," Soderbergh told me this week during a pandemic focused Zoom call with Seimetz. "It's interesting to me as an example of how you can give artists the same central idea and they will go off on two completely different tangents just because of who they are." These are edited excerpts from our conversation. What were the first few months of lockdown like for both of you? STEVEN SODERBERGH I knew in January from talking to my friends in the world of epidemiology that this was serious. I would call them and say, "So what do you think?" and their entire quote was "It's going to be bad." But you're trying to balance these very conflicting, primal reactions to what's happening with the virus and your own career advancement, so it's a really strange collision of your civic duty and your ego. I had moments of trying to check myself. AMY SEIMETZ Another thing that's evolved is my conversations with executives. At the beginning of this, they were like, "We're not in the office anymore, so we're just going to call you all the time and ask when things will be ready." It's been interesting to see how those calls all dropped off in silence, which I prefer because it allows me to do the work. The other side product of this is that I have an entire freezer full of vegetable stock from the beginning of quarantine. Like, huge lifetime supplies of lentils. What did you make of all the people who were drawn to "Contagion" during the early days of the pandemic? SODERBERGH It does pose a larger question about why we've had this attraction to disaster movies. Why is this kind of imagery, this spectacle of destruction, so compelling to us? Is it pure fantasy, or is it something darker that's wound into us that we don't fully understand? SEIMETZ I have a theory about that, because I actually witnessed myself doing this. When the pandemic first started, in order to not feel anxious, I was binge watching completely mindless crap like "Too Hot to Handle" and "Love Is Blind," and I was like, "Why do I feel so ill after? I'm just trying to take my mind off things." And then I was like, "I'll watch 'After Life,' with Ricky Gervais," and I was just sobbing the entire time, but I felt so much better! I needed to feel those emotions, like loss and sadness and fear. I think suppressing them sort of makes you more anxious, so there's a cathartic element to watching something like "Contagion," which I found strangely comforting. SODERBERGH Oh wow! That's nice. We tried to be really rigorous about the science, obviously, and I think I can defend most of that. The biggest conceit that we indulged in was how quickly the vaccine was found we compressed that timeline greatly, especially given what was technologically possible then. Is there anything happening now that you didn't foresee when making the film? SODERBERGH What I couldn't have predicted was the fracturing of society that it would generate, and all of the things it would expose when the tide goes out, so to speak. I didn't anticipate that it would reveal so starkly the sort of economic disparity that we're aware of intellectually but that a lot of us are able to insulate ourselves from being directly affected by. Now, nobody escapes this. There are very few people whose lives will not be completely altered by Covid. The other thing we're all dealing with, that the movie doesn't address because of its focus, is the general psychological effect on the public because of an event like this. A cure, a vaccine, mitigating therapies all that stuff is hugely important, but there's going to be an incredible psychological toll that we're going to have to figure out how to address. It's not like we can just turn a switch and have it be like it never happened. Amy's film is more about that psychological toll, and how quickly anxiety can become contagious itself. SEIMETZ The tricky thing about anxiety is sharing that you have it can make other people anxious, and there's a feeling that you're burdening them by doing so. Your anxiety then becomes their anxiety, in a way that's very literal in this movie. It's happened with the news cycle, too: I found myself becoming completely addicted to the news, getting anxious from it, and then compulsively watching it more. So it's also about news cycles spreading panic and the addiction to panic. That reminds me of the Jude Law character from "Contagion," who capitalized on the country's panic to hawk a fake miracle cure. I've seen people reference that character when President Trump touts the unproven hydroxychloroquine as a cure for the coronavirus. SODERBERGH It was amusing to me that at one point, there was a suggestion from outside the creative team that we cut that character out of the film. We'd have these test screenings and people would hate him! The cards would come back and I'd say, "I know! He's supposed to be polarizing." But we felt pretty confident that the issues brought up by Jude Law's character in this film would be very central to the narrative when this thing does happen. He's also not wrong all the time, like with his rant on the park bench where he describes how they're rushing the trials for the vaccine and how the pharmaceutical companies are going to be the ones who benefit. Look, I'm obviously pro vaccine, but when you're talking about putting something into the bodies of everyone on the planet, that's a very, very serious thing. You could have a side effect that goes down to a decimal point you can barely see, but if you're going to give it to everyone, that can still be tens of millions of people that have a negative reaction. In everybody's rush to get to the other end of this, we really do have to be careful here. With baseball, they got it back up and running but there's already been a pretty significant outbreak. Could Hollywood face the same risk? SODERBERGH Having spent a lot of the weekend very happily watching baseball, I was not happy about the Marlins, but I think that's a much more difficult situation than we're confronting because of the nature of the game and the fact that they're traveling all over the place. We have an ability on a project to control how we move, where we move, how many people come with us it's something that can be manipulated to keep people safe. I think if we can withstand the economic surcharge that's going to come with keeping a project safe which I estimate is between 15 to 20 percent of the budget, depending on the project and if we can scale this quickly enough, then I know we can keep people safe. If you follow these protocols we're about to finish up with, I feel pretty confident saying that you're not going to get sick at work. If you got sick on one of our projects, it was during the 12 to 14 hours when I didn't have you and I couldn't control your behavior. That's going to be the trick, is all of this downtime when you don't know what people are up to. But what happens if people do get sick in that downtime and then come to set? SODERBERGH Look, it's complex, but Joel Coen is shooting "Macbeth" in L.A. right now, and there's a crew member who's been keeping a pretty detailed diary. And it seems to be working! They're using the rapid testing, which isn't as accurate as the full blown nasal PCR test, but they're making up for that by testing a lot, eight times for every five day workweek. That's a good approach. Amy, is the surcharge Steven mentioned going to limit the amount of independent films that can be made over the next year? SEIMETZ I think there's going to be a conversation with unions to ease up on some of the crewing mandates, because you can't really shoot with a larger crew when you don't have enough of a budget for those protocols. From talking to other filmmakers, they're thinking about small crews and small casts and shooting outside, so there's ways to do it. With "She Dies Tomorrow," the Directors Guild was very gracious in allowing me to have a pared down crew of about six people we were pretty much following protocol long before there was a protocol. What about bigger films? How will "Kill Switch" change when you resume shooting that? SODERBERGH I'll tell you in eight weeks. A lot of this is all abstract until you get on set and actually see how this stuff works, and I intend to be very public in my experience of making that movie in order to educate people. I'm sure I'm going to learn a lot, and I'm sure a lot of the assumptions that we're making will turn out to need adjustment. This is a living thing, and it's going to have to evolve, but in what way won't be clear until we get out there.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Movies
Through two matches at the United States Open, Naomi Osaka is staying on message. Osaka, the 2018 champion from Japan, reasserted herself as the favorite in the top half of the women's singles draw with a dominant 6 1, 6 2 victory over Camila Giorgi of Italy in an hour and 10 minutes on Wednesday night. The fourth seeded Osaka advanced on a day in which many of the other top seeds her half of the draw stumbled, with No. 1 Karolina Pliskova, No. 12 Marketa Vondrousova and No. 13 Alison Riske all losing. After Pliskova's exit, Osaka is the only player in the top 10 of the WTA singles rankings remaining in the top half of the draw; six top 10 players, including world No. 1 Ashleigh Barty and No. 2 Simona Halep, did not enter this year's tournament. Osaka's left leg was heavily taped during her match, but she appeared unburdened despite admitting that the hamstring injury that forced her out of Saturday's Western Southern Open final was not healing as rapidly as she hoped. "I feel like I want to be the player that you can't tell I'm in pain," Osaka said in a post match interview on ESPN. Osaka's steadiness through physical pain is complemented by her steadfastness highlighting police violence against Black people. She has found her voice in that campaign in recent months, which led her to provoke a one day stoppage in the Western Southern Open last week, simultaneously drawing praise from many around the sport and stunning several other players remaining in the tournament. "I don't feel like I'm being brave; I just feel like I'm doing what I should be doing," Osaka said last week. "So honestly, when people say 'courageous' or anything, I don't really resonate that well with it. This is what I'm supposed to be doing in this moment." Osaka said she didn't think her prominence came with pressure. "A lot of people ask me if I feel more stressed out ever since I started speaking out more; to be honest, not really," Osaka said Monday. "At this point, like, if you don't like me, it is what it is. You know what I mean? I'm kind of here for pride. I don't have to be here. So for me, I'm just here to, hopefully, beat people." In comments to the Japanese news media during her news conference on Wednesday night, she explained that she wanted to take what some see as an American issue to a worldwide audience. "The biggest thing I can gain off of international viewers watching is for them to, like, Google the name, research the story, find out exactly what's going on," Osaka said. "Racism isn't just an American thing; like, it's all over the world. It affects people literally every day." One of the international players who has been affected by Osaka's messaging is her Greek friend Stefanos Tsitsipas, the fourth seeded men's player who won his match, 7 6 (2), 6 3, 6 4, over American wild card Maxime Cressy in the finale of the night session. Tsitsipas wore a Black Lives Matter T shirt as he watched matches from his suite inside Arthur Ashe Stadium, next door to Osaka's. "I'm super proud of him," Osaka said. "I'm very glad that his first response when everything started happening was to ask me questions. For me, I feel like I like to get knowledge; for him to do the same thing, to start branching out and asking questions on topics he's not so sure of, is very mature and intelligent." Though tennis players have typically been encouraged by coaches and athletes to remain mum on social and political issues, Osaka's increasingly vocal stances have been supported both by her agent, Stuart Duguid, and her coach, Wim Fissette. Fissette said that despite her high profile social and commercial endeavors, Osaka's attention has been "100 percent focused on the tennis" during their training blocks together this year. He marveled at her ability to change her relaxed, quiet personality to a single minded intensity during training sessions.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Sports
The riotous hoots of nearby youngsters threatened to drown out his comments, but Mark Lee was unfazed. Mr. Lee, the former chief executive of Barneys New York, seemed keyed in to their mood in the courtyard of the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual Transgender Community Center in Greenwich Village. Since stepping down from his post this year to sit on the Barneys' board of directors, he has redoubled his efforts in support of that youthful community: He is co chairman of Fashion Centered and its benefit gala on Sunday night, held to support the center. Working alongside Glennda Testone, its executive director, he is intent on raising awareness of this 34 year old New York institution. We recently caught up with Mr. Lee, who talked about his engagement with the center and life after Barneys. This interview has been condensed and edited. You're putting a lot of energy into this gala. What drives you? I was thinking about the arc of my life. I'm very lucky to have what I call a very happy gay life. I grew up in San Francisco in the '70s, I came out to my mom when I was 13, and it was not a big deal. I had a supportive loving family. I moved to New York. I survived the AIDS crisis of the '80s, and having lost a lot of friends, I consider myself very lucky to be alive.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Fashion & Style
GARRICK OHLSSON at the 92nd Street Y (April 28, 3 p.m.). Ohlsson continues his survey of the piano works of Brahms with a concert focusing on works dedicated to, or in part about, Clara Schumann. The music stretches across Brahms's life, as did his infatuation: the Sonata in F sharp minor, Op. 2; the Handel Variations, Op. 24; and the late, reflective sets of miniatures, Op. 117 and Op. 118. 212 415 5500, 92y.org THE ORCHESTRA NOW at Carnegie Hall (May 2, 7 p.m.). Only Leon Botstein, the conductor, could have come up with something like this a concert made up of four settings of Psalm 130, "De Profundis," all completely different. Virgil Thomson's is for an a cappella choir, sung by the Bard Festival Chorale; Joachim Raff's is for an orchestra, an eight part choir and a soprano (here, Elizabeth de Trejo); Lera Auerbach's is a violin concerto, with the soloist Vadim Repin; and, best of all, there's a chance to hear the mighty version by Lili Boulanger, a prodigy who died far too young, at just 24, in 1918. 212 247 7800, carnegiehall.org 'LA SUSANNA' at BAM Fisher (May 2, 8 p.m.; through May 5). Heartbeat Opera has made a specialty of reinterpreting operas from the past in light of the present, and their staging here of Alessandro Stradella's 1681 oratorio is no exception: It's a tale of sex and power rethought for the MeToo moment. Opera Lafayette provides the music, under the direction of Ryan Brown and Jacob Ashworth, with a cast that includes Sara Couden as Testo, the narrator who is recast here as a feminist scholar analyzing the piece in real time. Lucia Martin Carton is Susanna, Ariana Douglas is Daniel, and Patrick Kilbride and Paul Max Tipton are the Judges. 718 636 4100, bam.org	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Music
Kathleen Rehl, a financial planner in Land O'Lakes, Fla., plans to redirect her time in 2012 so that she can reach many more people than the 55 or so clients she regularly works with. One of the best, most revelatory money maxims is one that comes from Tim Maurer, an author, radio host and financial planner in Hunt Valley, Md. Personal finance is more personal than it is finance. Strip away the numbers and the returns and the 50 page financial plans, and what you're left with is people and all of their associated baggage. It is their raw emotions fear, greed, guilt that drive most financial decisions for better or (frequently) for worse. So this column is by the people the most interesting ones who turned up in the Your Money column and the stand alone reports we co produced with American Public Media's Marketplace Money radio show in 2011. And it's for the people who have set a personal goal in 2012 to do just a bit more to keep their emotions in check and their money under control. This is how some of those characters from columns past intend to do it. DEBT When we last met Mino Caulton, a 19 year old in Shutesbury, Mass., he was weighing financial aid offers from a variety of expensive universities. He ultimately decided to attend none for the foreseeable future. Though his family was able to demonstrate a great deal of need during the financial aid application process, even the local state university was going to cost them 2,000 out of pocket and require 7,000 in student loans in Year One. "I heard that and got this aching, stabbing pain in my forehead," he said. "I definitely think it's a stupid idea to get into debt when I don't have to." Rather than blindly following his high school classmates heading immediately to college, he spent much of 2011 focusing on two areas of career interest. He works for his local fire department and recently completed his probationary period. And he coached a local soccer team. In the spring, he hopes to take an emergency medical technician course at the local community college, which would cost him nothing; he qualifies for free tuition. Mr. Caulton knows that to advance in coaching in particular, he'll probably need a college degree. But he's in no rush to get one, especially if it means putting himself five figures in the hole. More high school graduates should be thinking precisely as he does, testing their career interests, dipping a toe in community college and living at home to keep debt at a minimum. UNEXPECTED EXPENSES For people who do graduate with debt, being mindful of expenses is crucial. Michaela Fortin, 22, is one of the luckiest recent college graduates in that respect. She has a job as a sales and marketing coordinator for the Middlebury Inn in Middlebury, Vt., that allows her to afford her 320 in monthly loan payments. And she has training, having worked as senior peer adviser at her alma mater, Champlain College in Burlington, Vt., as part of the college's personal finance training program, which every student must complete. What she didn't have until this year, however, was much real world experience. And it was a bit like having cold water splashed in her face. "Being unable to predict the unexpected has been the biggest challenge," she said. There were big things, like the need for a car, which then needed new tires. And little things, like the fees for the birth certificate and a replacement Social Security card she needed to start her job. "I want to budget for savings, saving before I have the money," she said, in effect tricking her mind into thinking that the money was never available for everyday spending in the first place. BETTER HALVES To be an entrepreneur is to break many of the rules of personal finance. It means making a big bet. It can mean a lot of credit card debt, too, as Mike Alfred discovered. He is a co founder of BrightScope, a company that ranks and provides data on 401(k) plans and investment advisers, and he recently finished paying off about 50,000 of that debt. It can also mean blowing off retirement savings for a while. Putting away 10,000 a year is fine, but most people in start ups figure it's best to put all their available cash into the business in the hope they can sell it later for enough to retire on right then and there. Here, Mr. Alfred diverts from the standard all in strategy as he recently began saving in his own company's retirement plan. In one sense, this may be about perceptions it might not look so good if Mr. 401(k) was not participating in his own retirement plan. Mike Alfred is investing in his firm's 401(k). Sandy Huffaker for The New York Times But Mr. Alfred, 30, chalks this up to something else the fact that his girlfriend moved to San Diego this year so the two could move in together. "When you get older, you may have a spouse or significant other that is more conservative than you," he said. "And you need to make sure that they feel comfortable building a relationship with a risk taker. It is a little bit of a compromise, and she convinced me to start again." Alan Wenker, the 48 year old controller in Maplewood, Minn., who spent a decade hunting for a better 401(k) plan for himself and his co workers, plans to spend part of 2012 putting things in better order in the event that he dies unexpectedly. "My wife could find all of the stuff she needed by digging around in a file cabinet and piecing it all together," he said. "But it really shouldn't be something that should be that hard to get." So he's committing to making a better just in case spreadsheet in 2012, one with all of the relevant accounts and phone numbers on it. "These are the easiest things in the world to put off," he said. TIME Kathleen Rehl, 64, a financial planner in Land O'Lakes, Fla., has devoted much of the latter part of her professional life to helping women who have already lost their spouses. In 2012, she plans to redirect her time so that she can reach many more people than the 55 or so clients she regularly works with. Time is money, true, but how you spend that time also contributes to your overall happiness. So she will meet with her clients twice instead of three times and help them via phone at other times, as needed. CHILDREN It is hard to say no to your children, especially bright and ambitious teenagers with potentially enriching, but incredibly expensive, educational goals. For Mr. Wenker, it's the desire of his eldest child to study abroad while still in high school, before college tuition bills even hit, that inspired another goal for next year. What he realized was that the bill for this, if she ultimately decides to go, could allow for a teaching moment for both of his children. He is a bit of a thrift shop junkie, and there are many good ones near his office. Meanwhile, for years, he's been collecting vintage backpacking equipment and has a basement stuffed full of it. So the plan for 2012 is to make a family business of selling some of some of his finds on eBay. The children can do the photography. He'll write the listings, and his wife can handle shipping. "The kids will get some idea of what it takes to do these things, to start a spreadsheet showing revenue and going from there," he said, figuring that the family could clear 5,000 or more for the overseas tuition if everyone is reasonably diligent. "Then all we have to do is drop her off at the airport and sob uncontrollably," he said. "Other than the heartache, it's all manageable."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Your Money
If gaps in knowledge are the seeds of curiosity, exploration is the sunlight. Hundreds of studies with thousands of students have shown that when science, technology and math courses include active learning, students are less likely to fail and more likely to excel. A key feature of active learning is interaction. But too many online classes have students listening to one way monologues instead of having two way dialogues. Too many students are sitting in front of a screen when they could be exploring out in the world. Leaving a desk isn't just fun; it can promote a lasting desire to learn. In one experiment, researchers randomly assigned thousands of students to take a museum field trip. Three weeks later, when the students wrote essays analyzing pieces of art, those who had visited the museum scored higher in critical thinking than those who did not make the trip. The museum goers made richer observations and more creative associations. They were also more curious about views that differed from their own. And the benefits were even more pronounced for students from rural areas and high poverty schools. When field trips aren't possible, teachers can still take students on virtual tours and send them off to do hands on learning projects. In the past few months, our kids have been lucky to learn from social studies teachers who challenged them to survey people about their stereotypes of the elderly, computer science teachers who invited them to design their own amusement parks, and drama teachers who had them film their own documentaries. Meaning is the final piece of the motivation puzzle. Not every lesson will be riveting; not every class discussion will be electrifying. However, when students see the real world consequences of what they are studying, they're more likely to stay engaged. Psychologists find that when college students have a purpose for learning beyond the self, they spend more time on tedious math problems and less time playing video games and watching viral videos. And high schoolers get better grades in STEM courses after being randomly assigned to reflect on how the material would help them help others. That's a question every teacher can ask and answer, even over Zoom: Why does this content matter? When the answer to this question is clear, students are less likely to doze through class with one eye open. Or, in the case of dolphins, with one side of their brains open. They can put one hemisphere of their brains to sleep and leave the other alert. That's how they stay active for two weeks straight. The purpose of school is not just to impart knowledge; it's to instill a love of learning. In online schools and hybrid classrooms, that love doesn't have to be lost. One good thing about virtual school is that children are building skills that will serve them well throughout their lives. Although learning how to mute and unmute himself is not something we ever thought our kindergartner would need to know, it's one of many new skills from online classes that will continue to come in handy. And for those adults who are still having trouble with that particular skill (you know who you are), he's available for online instruction. Adam Grant is an organizational psychologist at Wharton and contributing opinion writer. Allison Sweet Grant is a psychiatric nurse practitioner and writer. They are married and co authors of the new children's book "Leif and the Fall." The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We'd like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here's our email: letters nytimes.com. Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter ( NYTopinion) and Instagram.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Opinion
IN THE GARDEN OF THE FUGITIVES By 305 pp. Farrar, Straus Giroux. 27. 's third book, "In the Garden of the Fugitives," is an elegant at times, deceptive narrative that sifts through the selected memories of two characters. Royce is an elderly wealthy man nearing the end of his life in Boston. Vita, a middle aged South African woman, once a recipient of his generous fellowship, now lives in a small outback town in Australia. The narrative structure reflects an epistolary exchange (well, email), but the stories Royce and Vita tell each other move beyond the perceived boundaries of the digital missives, almost as if the characters are writing past each other as they reconstruct their somewhat broken personal histories. During the novel's opening pages, the reader learns that 17 years earlier, Vita had written Royce and told him never to contact her again, but given his imminent death, he has decided to reach out anyway. Thus begins this bifurcated, confessional like narrative. Royce largely recounts his unrequited relationship with Kitty Lushington, a college friend whom he followed to Pompeii during the 1970s as she pursued archaeological research at the Garden of the Fugitives, where 13 ancient bodies were entombed under the rain of volcanic ash. Vita also writes about her earlier years as a college student. Like Dovey, she is a white South African who was born during apartheid, and later moved between Australia and her home country before attending an American university (though unnamed, the school is easily identified as Harvard, where Dovey was an undergraduate). There, Vita grapples with the cultural origins of her identity and her creative pursuits as a filmmaker. "I felt the old vortex of lethargy suck at my soul at being asked to account for myself, my life, with the meaningless markers of dates and geography," writes Vita. Dovey, a recipient of the National Book Foundation's 5 Under 35 award, has written a novel, "Blood Kin," and a story collection, "Only the Animals," both of which animated fictional, allegorical worlds that were removed from her own life experience. With her stories, she crafted inventive narratives told through first person voices of animals as a way to illuminate moments of human conflict while paying homage to various authors (for example, a mussel speaking in Kerouac like syncopations right before the bombing of Pearl Harbor). With "In the Garden of the Fugitives," Dovey pivots the narrative lens onto her own life, and many of the questions that Vita is asking seem to be questions the author is considering herself.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Books
The writer and illustrator Jerry Craft won this year's John Newbery Medal for "New Kid," the first graphic novel to receive the prize for the most outstanding contribution to children's literature. "New Kid" is about a 12 year old boy named Jordan who lives in New York City's Washington Heights and dreams of going to art school, but his parents instead enroll him in a prestigious private school where he is one of the few students of color. Published by HarperCollins, "New Kid" marks a shift from Craft's previously self published work and reflects changing attitudes about the literary merits of graphic novels. "The Undefeated," illustrated by Kadir Nelson and written by Kwame Alexander, won the Randolph Caldecott Medal for the most distinguished American picture book for children. An ode to African American life and accomplishments, it includes references to slavery, the civil rights movements and black heroes such as Langston Hughes, Gwendolyn Brooks and others. "New Kid" and "The Undefeated" both received Coretta Scott King awards, which recognize African American authors and illustrators. "The Undefeated" was also named a Newbery Honor Book along with three others: "Scary Stories for Young Foxes," written by Christian McKay Heidicker and illustrated by Junyi Wu; "Other Words for Home," by Jasmine Warga; and "Genesis Begins Again," by Alicia D. Williams. Alexander had previously won the Newbery Medal for his novel "The Crossover" in 2015.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Books
The Online Ad World Is Murky. A Group of Companies Wants to Fix That. A group of 16 companies including leading ad tech firms, ad agencies and publishers is trying to help clean up the murky world of digital advertising. On Wednesday, the companies called for more visibility into where each dollar is spent in the online advertising supply chain. They committed to standards and practices for sharing data on fees and authenticating content, and urged others to move in the same direction. The move, industry executives and analysts say, is an effort to bolster digital advertising outside the domains of Google and Facebook, whose ad businesses are being scrutinized by federal and state investigators for anticompetitive behavior. The group, which includes Oracle and News Corporation, also hopes to apply pressure on the digital ad powers to pry open their "black box" marketplaces, by disclosing fees and other information. Publishers routinely complain that the opaque nature of the digital ad pipeline is inefficient and expensive, with middlemen taking an outsize share of ad spending. Newspaper and magazine publishers, by some estimates, collect only 30 to 40 cents of every dollar spent on their ads online, compared with about 85 cents in the pre internet days. "We're trying to create new terms of trade to modernize the business," said Joe Zawadzki, chief executive of MediaMath, an ad tech company. "Seeing where every dollar goes that doesn't exist today." The initiative is led by MediaMath, which makes automated ad buying and data analysis tools for advertisers and ad agencies. The group's members also include IBM Watson Advertising, White Ops, Havas Media and Business Insider. The companies are all looking for a path to prosperity in an industry criticized for a lack of transparency, for hidden fees and for rampant ad fraud. The companies in the initiative, called Source, are trying to demonstrate that a more efficient, more open marketplace can exist. They want to be a viable alternative to Google and Facebook, which supply tools for ad buyers and sellers and run the auctions within their digital walls. The tech giants, which are able to offer advertisers huge audiences, increasingly hold sway. "This is just one effort, but it is trying to address the larger issue of whether the digital advertising business will be more like the open internet, open to many, or will it be dominated by a few walled gardens?" said Randall Rothenberg, chief executive of the Interactive Advertising Bureau, which is aware of the initiative but is not directly involved. Nearly all the Source participants, as well as Google and Facebook, are members of the trade group. "We're trying to crack open the black box and compete on a different playing field than the walled gardens," said Mark Zagorski, chief executive of Telaria, a company whose software is used by digital TV services like Hulu and Sling to maximize ad revenue. The members of the initiative are making commitments to share data. Publishers and video distributors, for example, will have to verify the type of content they are supplying to meet quality and authenticity standards to guard against fraud. And ad tech companies will have to disclose their fees. Moving to more open digital ad markets, giving buyers and sellers ample information on pricing and auctions, will take time, said Chris Guenther, a senior vice president at News Corporation, which owns The Wall Street Journal and The New York Post. "But this initiative is a step in the right direction toward transparency," Mr. Guenther said. Even without Google and Facebook, the companies say, the effort could help open up the digital ad business because it is in step with market demand. "Buyers and sellers are looking to take more control of their business," said Adam Soroca, an executive at the Rubicon Project, which provides tools to buyers and sellers of digital ads. MediaMath has held discussions with Google about possibly joining the initiative, but not Facebook, the company said.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Technology
This obituary is part of a series about people who have died in the coronavirus pandemic. Read about others here. Arnie Robinson Jr., one of the world's top ranked long jumpers who won the gold medal in the event at the 1976 Summer Olympics in Montreal, died on Dec. 1 at his home in San Diego. He was 72. His death was confirmed by his son, Paul, who said the cause was complications of Covid 19. After placing third in the long jump at the 1972 Summer Olympics in Munich, where he wore an anti Vietnam War armband as he accepted his bronze medal, Robinson set his sights on winning gold four years later in Montreal. Robinson, who had represented the Army when he qualified for the Munich games, left the service the following year and set about training in earnest. He dashed up the steps at Balboa Stadium in San Diego until his legs ached, while living off the earnings of his wife, Cynthia, and money from his parents. When abdominal problems upended his training, a chiropractor helped him get back into form, he told The New York Times in 1976.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Sports
Yes, You Can Play With Your Clothes Eighteen months ago , Alexandra Connell, who has attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, introduced the online marketplace Patti Ricky, which bills itself as "fashion for people of all abilities." Among the products is a line of "discreet" sliding bead fidget jewelry from Love Dawne aimed at those with A.D.H.D. and anxiety who need a beautiful, socially acceptable way to fidget. The jewelry's aesthetic becomes the focus of attention, rather than the behavior. "My fidget jewelry helps with my own A.D.H.D. and anxiety, and people who compliment it are always surprised to hear it was designed to serve a purpose," said Ms. Connell, 31, who has a master's degree in disability studies from Columbia University Teachers College and lives in Denver. "Then they want to buy one for themselves, because who isn't anxious these days? Society is moving toward understanding that fidgets can inspire concentration, focus and brainstorming but you can't pull out a fidget spinner in a board meeting." "I'm always fidgeting with these necklaces," Ms. Serwer said. "They help me focus when I'm stressed out, plus they make me feel closer to my kids." Retail therapy has a new, more literal, meaning. Fidget spinners may be so 2017, but their explosive sales revealed, in part, our compulsive need for something (anything) to occupy our hands, calm our nerves and focus our thoughts. Especially when we can't grab our phones. Enter Fidget Fashion: the dangling fringe, reversible sequins, jingly charms and sliding jewelry that is suddenly ubiquitous at brands including Paco Rabanne, Altuzarra, Gucci and Loewe. The pieces are the equivalent of "modern day worry beads to take your mind off the moment and mentally unwind," said Ken Downing, the senior vice president and fashion director of Neiman Marcus, who traces the genesis of fidget fashion to the popularity of handbag charms a few years ago. According to Ingrid Wright, a psychotherapist, "fidgets help reduce anxiety, and can almost be compared to a child's baby blanket." Johnson Hartig, the founder and designer of Libertine, a label that sells many embellished pieces, said: "With fashion being so fast and images instantly available there is something to say about a tactile interactive garment it's comforting somehow." On the artisanal side, craftier styles with a D.I.Y. bent are on the rise for spring, with designers putting a high end spin on 1970s style macrame fringe and rope accessories, all ready made for fingers to absent mindedly braid or knot. Philosophy di Lorenzo Serafini, a fashion house in Milan, even added sliding wooden beads on its multistrand rope belts. Leslie J. Ghize, the executive vice president of Tobe, a consumer culture and creative think tank, believes this ratcheting up of fidgety, tactile design serves as a reality check or antidote to the fakeness of the virtual realm. "Even seeing texture and dimension makes people feel closer to the real world," she said. Yet, one of the results of the boom in fidget fashion and accessories meant to calm our social media frenzied minds has been a surge in Boomerang posts and slow motion videos of people twirling in super swingy fringe skirts or brushing reverse sequin fabrics and down.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Fashion & Style
HARRIET (2019) Stream on HBO Max. When audiences are introduced to the title character of "Harriet," a biographical drama directed by Kasi Lemmons, Harriet Tubman isn't yet called Harriet Tubman; she's Minty Ross, an enslaved woman in 1840s Maryland. The film tracks Minty's transformation into Harriet a name Ross chooses after escaping enslavement and then Harriet's transformation into an icon through her leadership in the underground railroad. Cynthia Erivo plays Tubman, alongside a cast that includes Leslie Odom Jr. and Janelle Monae as antislavery activists. The result, A.O. Scott wrote in his review for The New York Times, is a "rousing and powerful drama, respectful of both the historical record and the cravings of modern audiences." GREAT PERFORMANCES: SHE LOVES ME 9 p.m. on PBS (check local listings). Zachary Levi and Laura Benanti star in this production of the dreamy 1960s musical "She Loves Me," about a pen pal romance between two unwitting employees of a 1930s Budapest perfumery. An extravagant revival staged by the Roundabout Theatre Company in 2016, this version of the show, directed by Scott Ellis, preserves the Broadway spectacle of the original, giving its cast which also includes the comic actress Jane Krakowski many opportunities for classic, old fashioned showmanship. "She Loves Me" is "the great vanilla ice cream musical," wrote Ben Brantley, who named the show a Critic's Pick, in his review for The New York Times. "Let me hasten to add that the ice cream I'm talking about isn't the kind that comes in frost rimed cartons in chain stores, but the hand cranked, homemade variety that at its best is a transcendent marriage of human labor and carefully mixed ingredients."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Television
Welcome to Best of Late Night, a rundown that lets you sleep and lets us get paid to watch comedy. What do you think of it? What else are you interested in? Let us know: thearts nytimes.com. If The Washington Post's lie tracker is to be believed, President Trump recently told the 2,000th untruth of his presidency. Jimmy Kimmel christened the moment "Lie2K," and he presented a mini documentary to mark the milestone. "According to The Washington Post which has been keeping track, I guess yesterday Trump told his 2,000th lie since taking office. So happy Lie2K, everybody. Two thousand lies in 11 months. He's averaging 5.6 false claims a day, which is impressive, considering the fact he's only working about 2.6 hours a day." JIMMY KIMMEL	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Television
A half hour before a Bernie Sanders rally on Saturday night in Iowa, a line snaked around the nearly 900 seat Ames City Auditorium, but no one else was being let in: The theater was full. Inside, the Grammy winning indie rock band Portugal. The Man was playing. Rows of people were assembled on risers behind the musicians, waving Bernie signs. Sanders fans, most of them young, crowded the aisles; The Iowa State Daily reported that 1,400 people had crammed into the auditorium, with another 400 in an overflow room. The air buzzed with the intoxicating collective energy unique to social movements on the rise. Sanders has a reputation for focusing on class to the exclusion of all else; as David Frum put it in The Atlantic, "'Left but not woke' is the Bernie Sanders brand." On the ground in Iowa, however, it is not the brand of his campaign. Sanders isn't just running the most economically left campaign; he's running the most unapologetically left campaign, period. And it's surging, with Sanders leading in recent polls in both Iowa and New Hampshire. It's no longer far fetched to think that he could be the Democratic nominee. When the band was done, three Indigenous women took the stage to pay respects to the Native Americans forced off the land that became Iowa. The filmmaker Michael Moore came on and described Donald Trump as the endpoint of a country founded "on genocide and built on the backs of slaves." (The next day, at a campaign stop in Perry, Moore called women's underrepresentation in Congress a form of "gender apartheid.") Alexandria Ocasio Cortez spoke, saying, "I'm here because Senator Sanders has actually committed to breaking up ICE."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Opinion
It all looks exquisite. Though it's projected here in high definition video, "O Peixe" was shot on color rich 16 millimeter film, and precise sound editing, amplified in the New Museum's tricky ground floor gallery, emphasizes the rustling wind and bobbing of longboats on the lazy river. The intercutting of unhurried river scenes and sensuous close ups invokes a contentious tradition of ethnographic cinema, in which (white, European) filmmakers would reveal the "true lives" of black or indigenous people. Yet the conceit of "O Peixe" is that this fishing technique is a pure invention. Those of us who usually encounter fish under beurre blanc and capers might romanticize these scenes of interspecies encounter performed, of course, by people of color. But Mr. de Andrade made it up. What appears at first as a tender gaze on an anthropological idiosyncrasy turns out to be a slipperier, and more critical, interrogation of cinema's ethnographic ruses. It becomes more complicated. While the ritual of embracing fish is an invention, the performers are real fishermen, hired by Mr. de Andrade from villages in Alagoas. (On his website, the artist identifies them by first names only Menezes, Ronaldo or by such nicknames as Irmao, "brother.") They are acting in a fiction of Mr. de Andrade's devising, but they do so with total naturalism. As they stroke the dying fish, they turn their labor into a private, emotional act. They are exoticizing themselves, but they're doing it for a reason: to short circuit our ethnographic hunger with false rituals. The power, but also the danger, of "O Peixe" lies in the intimacy of this fictional ethnography an intimacy that often turns prurient. The fishermen wear nothing but clingy mesh shorts, and Mr. de Andrade is not shy about filming their biceps, thighs, buttocks and abdominals, glistening with sweat and river water. Mr. de Andrade's own racial identity hardly invalidates the difficult questions around voyeurism and objectification that accompany depictions of the black male body, especially as art audiences in both the United States and Brazil remain all too monochromatic. Several sexy man on fish sequences in "O Peixe" recall the erotic character of much colonial photography, which allowed uptight Europeans to project sexual fantasies on the racial other. Mr. de Andrade knows this, of course. But I'm really not sure whether "O Peixe" succeeds in critiquing the ways black bodies are sexualized, or whether it ends up reaffirming them. Mr. de Andrade was born in 1982 and lives in Recife, the cultural powerhouse of northeastern Brazil. He has sexed up poor black northeasterners before, in his noted project "Museu do Homem do Nordeste" ("Museum of the Man of the Northeast"), for which he created fake posters for a real ethnographic museum, featuring men he contacted through classifieds or met on the street. (New Yorkers saw that series in "Under the Same Sun," an exhibition of Latin American art at the Guggenheim in 2014.) At Alexander Bonin, a short new two screen video called "O Caseiro" ("The Housekeeper") continues his engagement with anthropology and race. On the left of the screen are scenes from a 1959 documentary about the life of the sociologist Gilberto Freyre, who founded that Recife museum, and whose concept of democracia racial the dubious claim that Brazil, through miscegenation and immigration, developed a racial harmony unique in the Americas still has adherents. On the right we see a new film, shot in Freyre's old house, in which a fictional black caretaker works to keep the place in order. Freyre lounges in a hammock, the caretaker repairs a stereo; Mr. Freyre's cook prepares fish, while the caretaker makes a simple meal of farofa, Brazil's staple grain.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Art & Design
When you work from home, digital accessories, notebooks and office supplies have a way of multiplying and migrating into other rooms, creating a mess. That's where a rolling storage cart can help. With shelves, drawers or baskets to contain the clutter and casters that allow it to move between rooms a cart can go where you need it and serve multiple functions. "It can be tucked under a desk," said Alda Ly, a New York based architect who has designed a number of offices, including multiple outposts of the Wing, a co working company. "Or you can pull it up in front of the sofa and use it as a laptop stand." Some also double as stools. To find the right cart for your needs, consider how and where you'll use it. In a proper home office, "something like a filing cabinet on casters might make a lot of sense," Ms. Ly said, to hold reams of documents. "But if you're working from your couch or your dining room, something that matches the aesthetic of your space is more appropriate. It doesn't have to look like a filing cabinet."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Real Estate
New York Live Arts, which has seen quite a bit of administrative turnover since it was born five and a half years ago with the merger of the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company and Dance Theater Workshop, has announced more changes to its programming staff. Thomas O. Kriegsmann, the organization's director of programs since November 2014, is leaving. Janet Wong, who has worked with Mr. Jones, the noted choreographer and the organization's artistic director, for more than 20 years at his dance company, will now work with him as the associate artistic director of Live Arts. "The new structure of New York Live Arts will represent one consistent artistic and management team," the organization said in a statement. It added that Ms. Wong's "extended, deeply devoted, and at once solid and imaginative involvement with the dance world and her close relationships with national as well as international artists, make her the perfect match for this new position." Mr. Kriegsmann was the founder and president of ArKtype, a management and production company specializing in new work, before joining Live Arts. He did not respond to an email seeking comment.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Dance
In 2014, Sheila Heti, Heidi Julavits and Leanne Shapton released "Women in Clothes," a book that considers, as they put it, "the questions we ask ourselves while getting dressed." They interviewed more than 600 women about their wardrobes and tastes, but the project began with a survey. One question asked simply: "What is dressing about, for you?" How does one answer such a thing in lockdown? When contacted, Ms. Shapton, an artist, said that, like many others, she was re evaluating her relationship with clothes thanks to the pandemic. Since moving with her young daughter in July, she has been tearing up her old garments and using their fabrics to make rugs, inspired by the knotted Japanese nuno zori slippers that have become her house shoes of choice. "Instead of my unworn beloved clothes, I have a 40 pound knotted rug of them," she said. Ms. Shapton's project includes garments by Rachel Comey, Stella McCartney, Hermes, Prada, Petit Bateau, Oscar de la Renta and Dries Van Noten, among others. It was created entirely by hand (Ms. Shapton couldn't figure out to how to use a rug hoop; "the ripping up was cathartic," she said) in front of reruns of "The Simpsons" and various children's movies. To her, the process recalls "Break Down," by Michael Landy, an artwork that involved the destruction of every one of his 7,227 possessions over a two week period. " I think about it an awful lot, because of my own preoccupation with objects and meaning, and it's always in the back of my mind when I'm tearing up clothes," Ms. Shapton said. At the heart of Ms. Shapton's rug making impulse are the bond between owner and object a force that compels us to keep rather than discard and the isolation, boredom and abstention from shopping prompted by the pandemic. For months, most of us have gone without the experience of anxiously yet mindlessly plucking items from a store rack, emerging from a changing room to a barrage of comforting lies from a sales associate. Instead, we have been forced to look closer at what we already own, rather than what we might. We have become anthropologists in our own closets, finding comfort, security, relief, meaning and, on occasion, answers. Clothes are so often about that odd intersection between our fantasies and our insecurities: who we want to be publicly. When image and pretense are removed, they become about our inner worlds. Remember that hoodie the one handed to you by a one night stand to get home, years ago, and left in the back of your closet, now redolent with former freedoms, flirtations and hands touching across an unwiped bar top? Remember the grainy feeling of sand, still lingering, in a pair of slip on sandals? (Remember holidays? Remember beaches?) For me, the garment has been a Peanuts T shirt that I have owned since the age of 14 (that's 16 years of wear). It is white, or once was, and decorated with a picture of Snoopy gesturing animatedly at a toaster, with the text "Time for Breakfast." The caption is vaguely optimistic, encouraging as if a day can be made special just by breakfast, which suits a time when monotony is high and mealtime is a milestone. And it reminds me of being young: of being idealist and ignorant, unaware that those teenage years were the moment I would inevitably, eventually, be nostalgic for. It recalls falling asleep furious or incredulous or heartbroken and how much I cared about so many humdrum things. For Eliot Haworth, the deputy editor of Fantastic Man, a style magazine, lockdown life has meant "wearing the same thing over and over again, wearing weird or ugly things, dressing strangely, dressing incredibly boring." He has found himself attired "like someone's dad on a campsite," he said, in a zip up thermal top, sandals and socks. He pilfered a gray Boggi Milano sweater from his father's house, which he would wear at some point most days. He also found himself forming an odd attachment to a "hideous" fishing top from Worldwide Sportsman, with a huge swordfish leaping out of the sea on the back. In 2014, Emily Spivack published a book on the joy of old clothes, "Worn Stories," which begins with a 1968 quote from Louise Bourgeois: "I cannot separate myself from my clothes nor Alain's the pretext is that they are still good it is my past and as rotten as it was I would like to take it and hold it tight in my arms." Later, Greta Gerwig reflects on a blue shirt, given to her at 18 by a crush, which she now wears to write. "It makes me feel like I have a secret," she says. The filmmaker Jeff Zimbalist pays tribute to a shirt he wore while getting kidnapped. Piper Kerman, whose memoir inspired the TV show "Orange is the New Black," writes about the eBay bought vintage skirt suit she wore in court for her sentencing. But in lockdown, old clothes don't quite represent "an evolving archive of experiences," as Ms. Spivack describes. Our garments cannot be activated or charged by events or occasions (no wild holidays or first dances to spark associations); instead millions of garments will be imbued with that same association the clothes of the summer of 2020. My Snoopy T shirt is the T shirt of my youth, but it is also the T shirt of Zoom and masks and waking up inundated with live news updates and spending 23 hours of the day at home, panicking. And yet, quieter moments with our clothing can create opportunities for catharsis. Alistair Hall, an actor in London, has found that increased time at home, with familiar things, has helped with the process of grieving his father, who died of cancer before lockdown. Some of his belongings include his father's clothes: checked pajama bottoms, a leather jacket and a pair of blue knitted socks that his father wore when he died in hospital. "I wore them to bed every night for months, until they fell apart entirely," Mr. Hall said. "The socks, they mold around your feet," Mr. Hall continued. "My dad and I had very similar feet, so when I look at the shapes that's left when I take them off, I think, 'Oh that's my dad's feet.'" To him, getting dressed became part of a mourning ritual. "I've made my space dad's space during lockdown," Mr. Hall said. "He's everywhere in my room. He gave me a lot of things toward the end, and I think one of the reasons he did that is he wanted so much to be remembered and not forgotten. We had a complicated relationship, but whatever was going on in the family, I always like his clothes." Sarah Raitz got stuck in Thailand for months with one hand luggage. Here she is wearing a bedsheet as a sarong. For others, a committed relationship with a handful of garments has been a necessity, rather than a choice. At the start of March, Sarah Raitz, a teacher, flew from London to Thailand for a holiday that was meant to last three and half weeks. She took only carry on luggage. About two weeks in, when she realized it would be prudent to get back, flights were being canceled left and right. She ending up stuck for four months, living in a small hut on a bay in the Gulf of Thailand with the dozen or so clothing items she packed, most of which she said were "useless" in the summer heat. She was glad to have her favorite sarong. "It's the kind of green that looks like it's been dyed with moss," she said. "I've had it for about 20 or 25 years. When I took it away it already had holes in it. It's rotting now." When other travelers, who had also been stranded, managed to find a flight out, they would donate items to her; she ended up with a couple of extra vests, with holes, "a long, thin dressing gown thing" that she wore as a dress, and a battered pair of harem pants. "To me, they were so precious," she said. "My new trousers!" She'll keep them, now part of a greater, shared experience some clothes will come to represent for us all: the pandemic.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Style
One early design for Mr. Indiana's "BRAT" sculpture before it was fabricated. Monumental in scale, like his "LOVE," this tribute to bratwurst was commissioned by one of the country's major sausage makers. The odd, isolated end of Robert Indiana's life included a lawsuit filed in his final days that accused two associates of taking advantage of the elderly artist in his later years by churning out inauthentic works under his name. Some friends and art experts joined in the debate, questioning whether Mr. Indiana, who died on Saturday at 89, was really the creative force behind a series of prints from 2016 that included images of Bob Dylan lyrics and a sculpture this year titled "WINE." That conversation is likely to escalate with the discovery Thursday that Mr. Indiana's last monumental sculpture was a tribute to bratwurst. It was commissioned by the owners of Johnsonville Sausage, in Wisconsin, that is one of the country's largest producers. Kathleen Rogers, who worked for Mr. Indiana as a publicist, was one of several people who had trouble identifying the artist with the work, which was built by fabricators in upstate New York. "He had been branded a commercial artist after the success of 'LOVE,'" Ms. Rogers said. "He worked so hard to separate himself from that. He would never agree again to this commercialism." But Michael McKenzie, a New York art publisher and an associate of Mr. Indiana, who worked with the fabricators on the sculpture, said in text messages on Thursday that the concept was indeed Mr. Indiana's and that it had been his last monumental work. "The big thrill for Bob with 'BRAT' was the scale," Mr. McKenzie said. "He's really into major scale and 'BRAT' was out of the box." He said Mr. Indiana, who took the surname of the state where he was born he lived in Vinalhaven, Me. also felt a connection with the Wisconsin company. "BRAT and Johnsonville are like him," he said, "Midwest people made good with their things all over the world, including Vinalhaven." In the federal lawsuit filed last week, a company that had long acted as Mr. Indiana's business agent, Morgan Art Foundation, accused Mr. McKenzie and the artist's caretaker in Maine of isolating him from his old friends and business connections so they could market unauthorized or adulterated versions of his work. Mr. McKenzie has said it was the Morgan company that had been mistreating Mr. Indiana by not paying him the proper royalties on works he and the company had jointly agreed to sell, a charge the company denied. Mr. McKenzie said that all of the artwork he helped Mr. Indiana create and distribute in recent years had been conceived and authorized by the artist. "I don't forge stuff," he said in an interview last week. Jamie L. Thomas, the man who helped care for Mr. Indiana at home on Vinalhaven, an island off the coast of Maine, has not responded to phone calls and emails. The dispute drew a federal investigator to the island on Tuesday, according to Sean Hillgrove, 49, who worked for Mr. Indiana for many years, often as a driver or maintenance man or as a helper in his studio with his art. Mr. Hillgrove said the F.B.I. agent had spoken to him for more than hour, asking questions that largely tracked with the accusations in the lawsuit and included whether he knew if some of Mr. Indiana's most recent works had been unauthorized forgeries put forward by people close to the artist. Mr. Hillgrove said he did not know. The agent was also concerned with assessing whether many of Mr. Indiana's artworks had recently been taken from the house, he said. The future of those works and other property owned by Mr. Indiana is now certain to be a matter of debate. Mr. Indiana was not married and had no children. A lawyer for Morgan Art Foundation, Luke Nikas, said that Mr. Indiana had, until a few years ago, intended to create a foundation directed by a New York attorney that would have included his art and house, Star of Hope, a former chapter headquarters of the Independent Order of Odd Fellows on Main Street. But in 2016, Mr. Indiana granted power of attorney to Mr. Thomas, which gave him the authority to make decisions, and the New York attorney was let go. Mr. McKenzie said that Mr. Thomas had created a foundation, also called Star of Hope, to protect Mr. Indiana's legacy. He said that Mr. Thomas had simply been following the artist's own wishes to be left alone in recent years and to limit visitors to his home. Emails between Mr. McKenzie and the foundry where "BRAT" was created indicate that the full design of the sculpture had not been settled as of May 2017, but the plan was to create it out of aluminum and then send it to an airbrushing company to be painted. Images of the proposed artwork, contained in an email sent to Mr. McKenzie by KC Fabrications Inc. in Gardiner, N.Y., show two versions of the work with different bases, but both were painted in several shades of red. Mr. Nikas said the Morgan company does not believe Mr. Indiana conceived the new sculpture. "We do not believe that the "BRAT" sculpture is consistent with the artistic vision behind Indiana's known works," he said.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Art & Design
BRUSSELS Facing a bank crisis in Spain and the prospect of outbreaks in other major countries, European leaders have pledged to establish a new agency aimed at curbing problems afflicting lenders in the euro zone. Yet for now the proposal amounts to little more than a vague statement of intent, one that has prompted more questions than answers. Will the new regulator have the power to rein in risky practices and hold offending banks accountable, for example, and will it be willing to exercise that power? Or will it be weak and overly beholden to national political factors that have too often gotten in the way of making bank supervision effective in Europe? It is not a moot point, given that two rounds of stress tests by another Pan European agency gave passing grades to most banks in countries that use the euro currency, including some that turned out to be deeply troubled and in need of bailouts, contributing to a crisis of confidence in Europe's financial system. "Creating a common supervisor is an important step in the right direction, but we still don't know whether it will be a brand new agency or an existing one with minor changes," said Antonio Garcia Pascual, chief economist for Southern Europe at Barclays in London. "What's important is that this agency ends the inadequate examination of lenders, from national champions to small savings banks, due to factors like local resistance and political interference." European officials say they understand these concerns, adding that their latest move represents an attempt to move away from reliance on national regulators that have failed to detect systemic faults. Making it work is critical. In the short term, a signal of tighter regulation in the future along with bailouts for troubled banks is needed to stem the flight of capital from countries with banking problems, which threatened to spread to financial institutions throughout Europe. In the longer term, by agreeing to cede power over banks, European countries hope Germany will trust them more and eventually stand ready to share euro zone debt, which could help them ease austerity measures and adopt pro growth plans to revive their struggling economies. The plan for a stronger, Europewide bank regulator, the result of an all night session held during a summit meeting of European Union heads of state and government last week, called for an "effective single supervisory mechanism" for banks in the 17 nations using the euro. The proposal was a "major breakthrough" in efforts to solve Europe's economic woes, said Herman Van Rompuy, president of the European Council, representing the union's leaders. The agreement buoyed markets, but investors will be watching to see whether European authorities deliver as promised. The next step is for the European Commission, the executive office of the union, to draw up draft legislation in close coordination with euro zone finance officials. European leaders would meet to complete the arrangements before the end of the year. To work properly, the new authority will need far greater powers than the European Banking Authority, which itself is less than two years old. The banking authority lost credibility after it conducted two rounds of stress tests on European banks but failed to highlight the sector's looming problems, particularly those in Spain. The plan agreed to on Friday in Brussels envisions the involvement of an institution that has a reputation for rigor: the European Central Bank. The central bank is also the one institution in Europe with enough financial firepower to ward off an economic catastrophe. After the summit meeting, Mario Draghi, the central bank's president, told reporters that "allowing the E.C.B. to take up supervisory tasks for the euro area" was among decisions made by leaders that were "fully in line" with the bank's mandate. Today in On Tech: Imagine not living in Big Tech's world. Dollar Tree will raise prices to 1.25 by the end of April. Placing a head office for the new agency at the European Central Bank, and delegating officials from the agency to work alongside national supervisors to ensure that systemic problems are detected sooner, could mean hiring hundreds of staff members to cope with hands on duties like on site visits at banks. "Considering the options, the E.C.B. probably is the best choice for this supervisory role, yet this also could be a poisoned chalice for the E.C.B.," said Daniel Gros, director of the Center for European Policy Studies, a research organization. "We know there are pockets of weakness in European banking, and uncovering that there's more dirt in those balance sheets doesn't exactly make you popular," Mr. Gros said. "My guess is that the E.C.B. has some very hard choices in front of it about the extent of its supervisory role." To succeed, the European Central Bank will have to do a much better job than the European Banking Authority, whose powers have been severely limited by its structure and its lack of a mandate to carry out direct supervision of banks. "The E.B.A. has lost a bit of credibility, frankly, after the stress tests didn't detect such grave problems, particularly in Spain," Mr. Pascual of Barclays said. The plan announced on Friday was part of a larger bargain at the two day summit meeting. Countries led by Germany agreed to allow a new, permanent European bailout fund to recapitalize banks directly a crucial demand by Italian and Spanish leaders, who want aid for their lenders without deepening their public debt. In exchange, Germany and its allies won more rigorous centralized authority over lenders. The bailout fund the European Stability Mechanism, which is to have effective firepower of about 500 billion euros ( 633 billion) should go into effect in coming weeks, once it is ratified by countries making up 90 percent of the fund's capital. The European Union has also been drawing up plans for a so called banking union, which would include rules to shore up or wind down troubled banks in the euro zone. Those proposals would require member states that have not yet done so to set up so called resolution funds, possibly in concert with other euro zone countries. National authorities would be required to intervene in troubled banks by firing management or forcing sales.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Global Business
The internet did little to disrupt it. Globalization could not shut it down. But while the McCall Pattern Company, the home sewing brand founded in 1863, may seem like a business that time forgot, it finds itself newly fashionable. The company's headquarters have the look of a corporate environment in the days before digital culture banished clutter. There on the 34th floor of the Equitable Building, a 1915 skyscraper in Manhattan's financial district, you will find rooms filled with buttons and zippers, bolts of fabric on work tables and metal file drawers stuffed with paper pattern packets. There is a patternmaking room, where muslin is fitted to dress forms; a dressmaking room, where women at sewing machines make sample garments; and a photo studio, where models pose for simple shoots that emphasize the clothes, rather than sex or sizzle. For the 80 or so employees, home sewing is not so much a retro thing as it is a timeless pursuit. "I've done this long enough to know that people have it in their hearts," said Carolyne Cafaro, the creative director. "There could be one pattern company left in the world, but I do think people will always sew." Ms. Cafaro's brief is to oversee the creation of some 700 patterns each year for the four lines that fall under the McCall Pattern Company banner. Each of the lines McCall's, Butterick, Kwik Sew and Vogue Patterns (its name licensed from Conde Nast) has its own catalog, which sewing enthusiasts find at fabric shops. Meg McDonald, who two years ago became the company's first social media manager, said she was troubled recently when she came across a photo of one of McCall's distinctively illustrated envelopes in a nostalgic "Do You Remember?" post on Facebook. There it was, a representation of the company she works for, alongside rotary phones and carousel slide projectors taken from the collective cultural attic. "So here's a perfect example of the 'Huh, you guys are still in business?' thing that happens to us all the time," Ms. McDonald wrote in an email. But if there is a sense in the broader culture that the McCall Pattern Company belongs to the Betty Draper past, the opposite view is held among 21st century sewers. The patterns created here are blueprints, essential enablers for do it yourself minded women and men who want to look stylish without plunking down thousands at a department store or the latest pop up shop. "Going to a Jo Ann's and seeing those same old metal filing cabinets with the McCall's and Butterick patterns inside you know, the tissue, the instructions and the little envelope I found it enormously comforting," Ms. Hirsch said. Considerable emotion is attached to the process of making a garment from scratch. In an essay published last year on Lena Dunham's online newsletter, Lenny, Jenna Lyons, the creative director of J. Crew, wrote lovingly of a watermelon skirt she made in seventh grade using a Butterick pattern. It was a creative act that boosted her self esteem, increased her social status among her classmates and set her on her career path, she wrote. A new appreciation for artisanal crafts has led the Etsy generation to embrace sewing. Once done mainly out of economic necessity, making clothes at home is back in fashion, relatively speaking. Places like Brooklyn Stitchery teach newbies, and a four day sewing retreat called Camp Workroom Social is held each year in the Catskills. Vintage McCall patterns licensed from designers like Diane von Furstenberg or Dior command hundreds of dollars on eBay. The New York designer Rachel Comey has licensed her patterns to McCall since 2010, where they appear under the Vogue Patterns brand. She didn't do it for the money. "I just like the tradition of it," Ms. Comey said. "Sewing is a great craft. It's exciting and confidence building. I wanted to support it." Famous faces jump out on almost every page. There's Iman and Christie Brinkley modeling sportswear at the dawn of their careers in October 1977. There's Alexander Liberman, the legendary Conde Nast art director, on the masthead in an issue in 1958. And isn't that a baby faced Marc Jacobs posed beside a girl wearing the striped jacket and pants he designed for Perry Ellis in 1990? Vogue Patterns was always the high fashion bible for the advanced sewer, and the work from the star designers that appeared in its pages, including Givenchy, Christian Dior and Valentino, dispelled the notion that homemade clothing was frumpy or for the members of religious cults. For those who love the substance of fashion more than the hoopla that surrounds it, working for Vogue Patterns was and is the ultimate. "This is going to sound corny, but Vogue Patterns was my dream job," Ms. Cafaro said. "My mother and grandmother sewed and taught me to sew when I was young. I really loved it." But the energetic Ms. Cafaro may be better suited to the more wide ranging job of creative director. "I have the attention span of a gnat," she said. She started in the industry in the late 1970s, selling Vogue Patterns in Bloomingdale's, and she remembers with fondness the luxe days, when she and her colleagues traveled to Europe to meet with designers. "We would take 10 to 12 day trips to Paris, London, Milan," she said. "Life was good." Part of the goal of posting the archive images, said Ms. McDonald, is to spark curiosity among young people, many of whom were not taught sewing in school. To liven up its product, McCall has struck deals with popular sewing bloggers and turned them into designers. Ms. Hirsch, who blogs under the name Gertie and dresses in a retro rockabilly way, has appeared on the cover of the Butterick catalog and releases "Patterns by Gertie." Another blogger turned designer, who works for the McCall's line, is Nikki Brooks Revis, 36. She began sewing only four years ago, she said, after amending her long held view: "My thought was old people sew. Young, hip people did not sew." Ms. Brooks Revis started a personal fashion blog and discovered sewing as a way to produce an ever changing wardrobe on a budget. She loved the way she could alter a pattern and customize a garment. Sewing patterns were, in a sense, the original fast fashion: a quick, affordable, stylish option before the advent of the 20 H M dress. One of the company's greatest hits is the Walkaway dress, a Butterick pattern from 1952. "It was called the Walkaway dress because you could sit down at a sewing machine in the morning and walk away wearing it to lunch," Ms. Cafaro said. The pattern is still available in the Butterick catalog, reissued for a new generation. Behnaz Livian, an Iranian immigrant and director of the patternmaking department, has worked at McCall for 26 years. Gwenn Wright, a dressmaker, has been there 33 years. Frank Rizzo, the chief executive, used to work with Ms. Cafaro at Simplicity patterns, a rival company. After all these years he can't operate a sewing machine. "Don't bring it up," he said. "They threatened to make me learn to sew." Penny Payne, who oversees the fabric library, went to work for Vogue Butterick in 1987 after a modeling career. One recent afternoon, wearing a blue Donna Karan dress, a Vogue Patterns design she picked up at the office sample sale, Ms. Payne sat at a work table. A bright space filled with large flip boards affixed with the latest swatches, buttons, zippers and other notions, the library is the hub of the McCall office, a crucial resource for the designers, fashion editors and patternmakers, who must know what's available on the market for home sewers. The pattern business is a dynamic crossroads of several industries, Ms. Payne said. "The timing and the schedules feel like publishing," she said. "It's trend and fashion, so it's like a magazine. But we actually produce something." Behind her were color trend boards from a presentation she gave the day before to representatives from the crafts chain Hobby Lobby. "My skill set has so many different layers, and all of it would not be used at another company," Ms. Payne said. "I feel blessed to be a part of it." The four staff designers expressed a similar satisfaction, despite the workload: At any time they may be focused on 20 to 30 pattern styles, each with three or four variations. They have also faced business challenges due to changes in how people shop. Last February, the chain Hancock Fabrics filed for bankruptcy, closing 185 stores. The cause, in part, was the consumers' shift to buying online. Smaller independent fabric stores have also closed, leaving McCall ever more reliant on the big craft chains like Jo Ann and Hobby Lobby. Budget and staff cuts have caused its employees to take on more roles. The trips to the fashion capitals of Europe are a thing of the past. Five months after the Hancock bankruptcy, McCall employees were still digesting the fact that one of their largest retail partners was kaput. Nevertheless, they had to get on with the work of turning out those 700 patterns. Ms. Cafaro met in her office with a merchandising manager, Leslie Sondy, and a veteran designer, Doree Epstein, to choose the spring 2017 patterns for the Butterick line, which, Ms. Cafaro noted, is "retro" in style. Pinned to a large board were printouts of some 35 looks, from prom gown to athleisure top. Except for the cut of the clothes and a computer program that aids in patternmaking, little about the process was different from the days when the Walkaway was first produced. When the final 25 styles were selected, Ms. Cafaro and her team would work with the patternmaking and dressmaking departments to produce sample garments. Then the patterns would be sent to the McCall facility in Manhattan, Kan., where they would be printed on tissue paper.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Fashion & Style
"The world looks at the Boston Marathon as a prestigious event for elite athletes you have to qualify to run but Boston looks at it as a big block party." So Katharine Q. Seelye, chief of the New England bureau of The New York Times, summed up the event. This year the marathon is scheduled for Monday, April 20; it's held each year on Patriots' Day, a state holiday in Massachusetts, which means offices and schools are closed. The Red Sox always play a game that day at Fenway Park (start time is 11:05 a.m.), and later in the afternoon crowds stream out of the stadium to join the masses of spectators along the route, which runs from the town of Hopkinton to the finish line in front of Boston Public Library. All of Boston is out in the streets which makes it a perfect time for a tourist to visit. "It is a uniquely Boston celebration," Ms. Seelye said. "You can live in New York and not even know the New York City Marathon is going on, but that's not true in Boston. The whole town goes berserk." A full time Bostonian since 2012, Ms. Seelye is now covering the trial of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, charged with 30 counts for his role in the marathon bombing in 2013. At last year's race, she wrote about the sense of relief and jubilation the crowd felt as runners crossed the finish line peacefully.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Travel
HOUSTON The honeymoon began, as so many do for golf obsessed newlyweds, with 18 holes. The skies were blue, the sun was warm and the Spanish moss hung from the oak trees like nature's tinsel, draping the scene in tranquillity. What better way to officially launch a shared lifetime of come what mays than as competitors at the 75th United States Women's Open? For Alena Sharp, 39, a soft spoken Canadian, and her U.S. born caddie and wife, Sarah Bowman, life in the cumulus cloud that is 2020 has come with a powerful ray of light. Sharp's first round four over 75 at Champions Club's Cypress Creek course was the couple's first competitive appearance since they were married in the backyard of their Arizona home on Nov. 23. For a union sealed in the middle of a pandemic, there are worse qualities to bring to the table than positivity and resiliency. Bowman said: "People always talk about meeting someone that makes you want to be better in every way, and I always thought that was so stupid, but then I met Alena. And I can't believe I'm saying it, but it's real. She honestly makes me feel that way." Sharp and Bowman met in the face off circle at a Chandler, Ariz., ice rink in 2013. They were opposing centers in a women's recreational hockey league game. "She'd always win them," said Sharp, who exacted her revenge with some well executed forechecks. "She laid me out a few times," Bowman said. Sharp played hockey as a child and turned to it to as an adult to escape her overactive golf mind and its constant churn of negative thoughts. Bowman, 44, a one time competitive skier from Pittsburgh, was looking for an escape from her work at a neuro oncology lab where she was laying the foundation or so she thought for a doctorate in psychology. Aware that Sharp was a professional athlete, Bowman initially misread her shyness as arrogance. "I thought she was full of herself," said Bowman, who realized how badly she had misread Sharp when they met for a mountain bike ride. Their friendship deepened in 2014 after Sharp found herself in between caddies. On a whim, she asked Bowman if she'd fill in at a local event on the Symetra tour, the L.P.G.A.'s minor league circuit. Bowman recovered from an inauspicious start, leaving a crumb like trail of clubs that spilled out of the bag as she proceeded down the first fairway, to help Sharp to a two stroke victory. They already were dating, but within months they became partners professionally, too, but only after they made a pact. "We said that if the working arrangement ever affects our relationship, I'll find another caddie," Sharp said. They have had no regrets. They have traveled the world together and been Olympians together. They represented Canada at the 2016 Games in Rio de Janeiro and are looking forward to competing in the delayed Tokyo Games next summer. Bowman's greenness as a caddie when she started out forced Sharp to take ownership of her game and trust her instincts. Bowman was a quick study, progressing lickety split from not being able to watch when Sharp putted because she was so invested in the outcome to reading the greens for her. The 99th ranked Sharp, who joined the L.P.G.A. in 2005, has 14 career top 10 finishes. She is still searching for her breakthrough victory, though, and it won't come here: She posted an even par 71 Friday for a 36 hole total of 4 over, missing the cut by one stroke. Her lack of a victory is not because of any lack of physical skills. Her talent has never been called into question, except by Sharp, who is quick to doubt herself. That's where Bowman is at her best. No one is better at reading Sharp's mind and recasting the negative thoughts. "We can say things to each other that I would never say to another caddie," Sharp said. "I can tell her, 'I just don't trust myself right now.' Or 'I'm not confident.' I feel like I can be totally vulnerable out there." Sometimes when things are going sideways on the course, Sharp will become so emotional her eyes will fill with tears. When that happens, Bowman will remind her that golf is what Sharp does, not who she is, and that no matter her score, she is abundantly loved. "It's good to be able to get those emotions out when I'm feeling not great and I'm not being nice to myself," Sharp said. After seven years of dating, the couple decided to get married and planned their wedding in three short weeks, their sense of urgency spurred by the seating on the Supreme Court in late October of Justice Amy Coney Barrett, a conservative who alarmed L.G.B.T.Q. advocates at her confirmation hearing when she declined to say whether the court's landmark ruling in 2015 allowing same sex marriage was correctly decided. "Her nomination was really the driving force," Sharp said. Barrett's use of the term "sexual preference" during her confirmation hearings particularly pricked the ears of Bowman, who has never considered her sexual orientation a matter of choice. As a young adult she said she contemplated killing herself, so great was her struggle to accept her identity.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Sports
Phyllis Somerville, whose scores of stage, television and film roles included a cranky bigot in the 2018 Broadway adaptation of "To Kill a Mockingbird" and a cranky neighbor of the main character in the Showtime series "The Big C," died on July 16 at her home in Manhattan. She was 76. Paul Hilepo, her manager, announced the death. No cause was specified. Ms. Somerville, though rarely the lead, thrived in secondary roles and ensemble work. She began turning up on New York stages in the 1970s, making her Broadway debut in "Over Here!," a musical about life on the home front during World War II. She was rarely idle over the next 45 years. Ms. Somerville made her film debut in 1981 in a small role in "Arthur," the Dudley Moore Liza Minnelli vehicle, and beginning in the early 1990s she turned up regularly on television, appearing in episodes of "NYPD Blue," "The Sopranos," "Kidnapped" and other series.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Television
In early January, Joy Ann Reid invited Pastor Mark Burns to be a guest on her MSNBC show to discuss disparaging comments that President Trump had made about Haitian and African immigrants. The pastor, a defender of Mr. Trump, refused to acknowledge a vulgarity the president had applied to those countries, as confirmed by two senators. Mr. Burns interrupted Ms. Reid when she spoke and talked over her when she tried to argue. Not one to brook insults from a guest, Ms. Reid called for a "time out" and told Pastor Burns he was wasting her time. "Oh, well, then, if I'm wasting your time," she said, "then goodbye." In the Trump era, Ms. Reid, the daughter of immigrants, has emerged as a heroine of the resistance to his leadership. And her forceful questioning style, matching that on conservative outlets like Fox, has resonated with MSNBC's viewers. She is popular on social media with fans who fondly call themselves reiders. Her morning show on Saturday averages nearly 1 million weekly viewers and, for the last four months, she has bested MSNBC's competitor CNN, according to Nielsen, which tracks television ratings (granted, her competition then is general newsroom updates rather than another headline personality). "Our prime directive is to constantly remind people that this is not normal and not to allow it to become mundane," Ms. Reid said in a recent interview at MSNBC's studios in Midtown Manhattan, referring to the architecture of the Trump presidency. Each week she makes sure to discuss the investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 election. "We feel like one of our duties is to keep that story top of mind because it's fundamentally about whether we truly choose our own leaders," she said. Ms. Reid was born in Brooklyn and raised in Denver alongside two siblings mostly by their mother, a college professor and nutritionist from Guyana; their father left the family when she was a child for his native Democratic Republic of Congo. "He was a phone father," Ms. Reid said. At 17, she was accepted to Harvard University, where she planned to study medicine. But her mother died of breast cancer three weeks before school started. "I failed a bunch of classes," Ms. Reid said. "I was just depressed." She took a year off, returned to Brooklyn staying with an aunt and working a temp job at Columbia Pictures and then switched her major to documentary filmmaking. "I was thinking Hollywood movies," she said. "Come to find out Harvard doesn't do that. So I had to study documentary." Ms. Reid had also always been captivated by politics. In the late 1990s she moved to Miami to write for a local television morning show. There, she became a fixture among South Florida lawmakers. She was involved in minority outreach for voter education and blogged. In 2005 she met James Thomas, a longtime disc jockey and radio veteran known as James T, who hired her to produce a talk radio show for listeners in the black community. "I had to convince her of the power we had in radio in Miami," Mr. Thomas said in an interview. "We were going to go to places people didn't want to go." This included Opa locka, a town marred by gang violence and political corruption whose residents she interviewed. "We had Lou Dobbs on and Marco Rubio," Mr. Thomas said, laughing, referring to the conservative Fox Business Network host and the Republican Florida senator. "She loved to debate." In 2011, Ms. Reid was named managing editor of theGrio.com, a news and analysis website aimed at an African American audience. (By then she was also writing op ed columns for The Miami Herald and appearing as a commentator on cable news.) Chris Witherspoon, now a correspondent for the movie ticket seller Fandango.com, was rewriting news briefs for the site when she arrived. "Joy said, 'You are way too fabulous to be behind your desk,'" he recalled. She promoted him to entertainment editor. When the singer Whitney Houston died in 2012, MSNBC called Ms. Reid to speak about it on camera, Mr. Witherspoon said. "Joy said, 'I think you should do it,'" he recalled. He did so for a week and went on to appear on other talk and news shows. Ms. Reid, he said, "gave me my voice when I didn't have one of my own." Despite a hectic schedule, Ms. Reid makes time for an extended family. "She is very girlfriend y," said Jacque Reid, a television personality who is not related to Joy but has been close with her for a long time. She remembered a party her friend, who lives in Brooklyn, had in December. There were some celebrities, sure. "She also had the women who helped raise her, her cousins and their children. Those are the V.I.P.s in her life." Ms. Reid got her television break in 2014 when she was hired by MSNBC to create a daily show called "The Reid Report." It was short lived, though, canceled the next year because of poor ratings (along with Ronan Farrow's). "It was stressful because it was daily," Ms. Reid said. "There was a lot more management eyes on us. And when it ended, you know, it was not fun. But it did enable me to do something I hadn't done in my career, which was to actually be a field reporter." Many of her stories focused on race in America. In 2015, she went to Mississippi to investigate the death of a man found hanging from a tree, suspended by a bedsheet, which some people said could have been a lynching. "I literally have never had an experience where I felt almost like I was waking through a haunting," she said. "You could just feel the ghosts of Mississippi past everywhere you went." A few months later, Ms. Reid investigated why black churches were being burned down in Southern states, visiting a church in South Carolina that was across the street from a dark forest. "You could almost transport yourself back to the 19th century and see the enslaved people running, you know?" she said. "Everything about it had this omnipresent sort of pallor that I think America doesn't want to deal with." She traveled to 10 states in eight months. "I think it was good for her," said Phil Griffin, president of MSNBC. "I tried to explain that to her. I said, 'You've got talent. Don't worry.'" In May 2016, she was named the host of "AM Joy." The show replaced one hosted by Melissa Harris Perry, who got into a fight with MSNBC over remarks Ms. Harris Perry made in an email accusing the cable network of trying to silence her and take editorial control, with suggested "racial implications." Ms. Reid has hardly neglected the topic of race, but she also focuses on gender and culture. At the 2016 Republican National Convention in Cleveland she said she watched men walking up and down the street with semiautomatic rifles "because they wanted us to know they had guns" ("us" meaning the media). She recalled a white woman on the elevator praising Mr. Trump for his anti immigration stance. "I should have known then that Trump would win," Ms. Reid said. In her class for Syracuse, which she teaches in Manhattan, Ms. Reid addresses the precarious definition of what the president calls "fake news," and why it is a dangerous concept. "Now, something is 'true' because you like it," she said. "If the information is displeasing to you or makes you uncomfortable, or is in opposition to your ideology, then it is 'fake.'" She is concerned consumers of news will isolate themselves, believing only what makes them feel good. "That's the problem," she said. For her, Twitter is a tool to combat critics. Of Mr. Trump's State of the Union address, she tweeted that his goal appeared to normalize his presidency by using church, family and the military as "the tropes of 1950s era nationalism." The president's son Donald Trump Jr. weighed in, saying his father embraced values hated by liberals. Her response? "Trump doesn't actually embody any of the values he's harkening back to," she wrote. Still she conceded that she shares a characteristic with the president: Some people criticize her for being too reactive on Twitter. She laughed when asked about it. "I probably tweet too much and tweet my sort of reactions to things sometimes too quickly," she said. "And MSNBC agrees." Recently Ms. Reid got into a spat with David French, a conservative writer, after she mischaracterized a story he wrote about the risk of a nuclear attack on urban centers. "'Don't worry, it will only kill Democrats and minorities,'" she wrote in a tweet, which has since been deleted. Mr. French shot back that she had misconstrued his comments. Ms. Reid had not read his article, but a summary from another news outlet. She apologized. "Everybody's human," she said. "We all are guilty of skimming the articles or reading the headlines."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Style
I'm always impressed by Roxane Gay's impassioned and eloquent writing, but in "Remember, No One's Coming to Save Us" (Sunday Review, May 31) she goes somewhat astray when she impugns white people for their capacity to "fret over the destruction of property" when citizens of color are being abused and killed in acts of systemic racism. Certainly, one can't compare the value of money or property with that of a human life. Even so, is it appropriate to dismiss the looting and torching of a merchant's business when that merchant had nothing to do with the murder in question, especially when the owner of that business is a person of color himself or herself? If violence is emerging out of indigence and injustice, how does it help anyone (the murder victim included) to deprive another innocent victim of the savings and livelihood on which he or she has relied? The anger behind the recent demonstrations is absolutely justified, and yet the violence, especially when directed against those not responsible for the crime that precipitated them, can at best be rationalized but never excused. I'm pained that The Times and other media continue to present the looters who have pillaged SoHo and Herald Square in New York City as a rogue element of those who are protesting George Floyd's very public murder.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Opinion
What lesson should we draw from the success of Uber? Customers have flocked to its service. In the final three months of last year, its so called driver partners made 656.8 million, according to an analysis of Uber data released last week by the Princeton economist Alan B. Krueger, who served as President Obama's chief economic adviser during his first term, and Uber's Jonathan V. Hall. Drivers like it, too. By the end of last year, the service had grown to over 160,000 active drivers offering at least four drives a month, from near zero in mid 2012. And the analysis by Mr. Krueger and Mr. Hall suggests they make at least as much as regular taxi drivers and chauffeurs, on flexible hours. Often, they make more. This kind of exponential growth confirms what every New Yorker and cab riders in many other cities have long suspected: Taxi service is woefully inefficient. It also raises a question of broader relevance: Why stop here? Just as limited taxi medallions can lead to a chronic undersupply of cabs at 4 p.m., the state licensing regulations for many occupations are creating bottlenecks across the economy, raising the prices of many goods and services and putting good jobs out of reach of too many Americans. Sometimes professional licenses make sense, ensuring decent standards of health and safety. I'm reassured that if I ever need brain surgery, the doctor performing it will have been recognized by the profession to be up to the task. We don't want to return to the 19th century, when barbers pulled teeth and freelance doctors with no certification peddled miraculous cures. But like taxi medallions, state licenses required to practice all sorts of jobs often serve merely to cordon off occupations for the benefit of licensed workers and their lobbying groups, protecting them from legitimate competition. This comes at a substantial social cost. "Lower income people suffer from licensing," Professor Krueger told me. "It raises the costs of many services and prevents low income people from getting into some professions." In a study commissioned by the Brookings Institution's Hamilton Project, Morris Kleiner of the University of Minnesota found that almost three out of 10 workers in the United States need a license from state governments to do their jobs, up from one in 20 in the 1950s. By cordoning off so many occupations, he estimates, professional licensing by state governments ultimately reduces employment by up to 2.8 million jobs. The trend worries the Obama administration. The president's budget, to be unveiled on Monday, will include 15 million for states to analyze the costs and benefits of their licensing rules, identify best practices and explore making licenses portable across state lines. "We would like all states to ask whether licensing requirements meet a cost benefit test," said Betsey Stevenson of the president's Council of Economic Advisers. Jeffrey Zients, who heads the National Economic Council, added, "Ultimately, a worker that can do the job should be able to get the job." The budget will also include 500 million to develop industry recognized credentials that community colleges could teach to and employers could use for hiring, potentially reducing the need for state sanctioned licenses in the future. For starters, state governments might try to agree on just how much protection the public needs. Only a handful of occupations are licensed in every state, according to a report by the Institute of Justice, a free market advocacy group opposed to many occupational licenses. What happened on Day 2 of Elizabeth Holmes's testimony. Kevin Spacey was ordered to pay 31 million to the 'House of Cards' studio after sexual harassment allegations. Locksmiths must be licensed in only 13, upholsterers and dental assistants in seven and shampooers in only five. Iowa requires 490 days of education and training to become a licensed cosmetologist; New York requires 233. In the final three months of last year, Uber's driver partners made 656.8 million, according to data released this week. Victor J. Blue for The New York Times Among the tangle of regulations, it is not hard to find rules that defy common sense. An athletic trainer must put in 1,460 days of training to get a license in Michigan. An emergency medical technician needs only 26. Licenses carry benefits to those who have them. Workers in licensed occupations can make up to 15 percent more than unlicensed workers with similar skills, according to research by Professors Kleiner and Krueger. But the claim that they protect consumers often rings hollow. A study of regulations for mortgage brokers, for instance, found that states with licensed brokers did not enjoy fewer foreclosures but did suffer more expensive mortgages. Nurse practitioners can prescribe medicines in Arizona but not in Alabama. In Alabama, doctors must write them. While the tougher restrictions add to the cost of care, they do not have any discernible effect on its quality: Well child medical exams cost 3 to 16 percent more in states where nurses cannot issue prescriptions, according to one study, but their infant mortality rates are no better. Malpractice premiums, a measure of safety, are about the same. "Professional organizations that push for licenses can't say, 'We want to erect a fence around our occupation,' so they say it is to protect public health and safety," said Dick M. Carpenter II, research director at the Institute for Justice. "It is an assertion with zero evidence." Licenses do serve as legal cudgels to protect practitioners from competition. "Cosmetologists are putting hair braiders out of business," Mr. Kleiner said. "Veterinarians are going after people who file horse teeth, saying they need a veterinary license." By the end of last year, Uber's service, summoned with a smartphone and competing with licensed taxicabs, had grown to over 160,000 active drivers offering at least four drives a month. The Obama administration will have a hard time overcoming the power of professional associations, particularly given that many states receive significant revenue from licensing fees. There might be another way, however, to loosen the grip of professional lobbies on the economy. In October, the Supreme Court heard arguments in an antitrust case pitting the Federal Trade Commission against North Carolina's board of dental examiners, which is trying to drive unlicensed teeth whitening services out of business in the state. To hear the dentists, the case is simply about the state's right to regulate as it sees fit: That six of eight members on the dental board are dentists elected by other dentists who stand to lose money to unlicensed rivals should have no bearing on the decision. But it is hard to overlook the pecuniary interests at stake. The American Academy of Cosmetic Dentistry reported that in 2006 its members performed, on average, 70 teeth whitening procedures for annual revenue of 25,000, or 350 a pop. Unlicensed rivals do it for 150. One study by Mr. Kleiner and Rubert T. Kudrle of the University of Minnesota suggests that tighter licensing of dentists does not improve the quality of dental health. It does reduce the number of dentists. Crucially, it improves their earnings. The issue goes beyond teeth. Associations for osteopaths have come out in support of North Carolina's dental board; so have anesthesiologists, midwives, optometrists and even engineers and surveyors. Supporting the dental board are the International Conference of Funeral Service Examining Boards, the National Association of State Boards of Accountancy, the Federation of State Massage Therapy Boards and the American Association of Veterinary State Boards. For them, as for the taxi drivers battling Uber, the most important issue is whether they can maintain a lock on their professions and legally keep competition at bay. But is that a legitimate reason for the public to bear the cost of such cartels?	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Economy
Donald Moffett first gained renown as an artist in the 1980s, when he was responding to a crisis that was frustrating researchers, polarizing lawmakers and threatening lives around the world. More than three decades later, he is still doing exactly that. The causes, however, have changed. Fiercely dedicated to fighting the AIDS epidemic then, Mr. Moffett is battling climate change now. "The activisms of both rely on science as ally and protagonist in the struggle," Mr. Moffett wrote in an email after a recent interview at his studio in Staten Island . "And both activisms faced or face a similar political resistance of knuckleheads as the prime antagonists." Mr. Moffett, 64 , has never been shy about letting you know who he thinks those knuckleheads are. What may be his most famous creation, the 1987 lithograph "He Kills Me," features an orange and black target symbol next to a black and white photograph of a simpering Ronald Reagan; the title words are emblazoned in orange capitals beneath the president's face. Marching AIDS activists used to carry posters of the piece, which is now in the collections of five major museums, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Today, a large sticker that he designed, which Mr. Moffett calls a "naughty little work," is on his studio wall. Equally searing, it has a blue background and huge white capital letters that read, "Break His Little Twitter Finger." Mr. Moffett, who had the piece pasted around New York, signed it with the words "Unhinged Homos," referring to gay men, like him, who object to President Trump's policies. "It's a little meanspirited," he said with a chuckle. Neither work, however, looks remotely like the art Mr. Moffett has destined for his new show, "ILL (nature paintings)," which will open on Nov. 7 at the Marianne Boesky Gallery in Chelsea. Abstract, sculptural and sometimes huge, these paintings and the artist insists on that term began as digital designs. They were then cut out of one or more layers of wood, covered with paint and coated with a resin that is sometimes so glossy that the results appear almost succulent. Incorporating holes and curves and occasionally edged with tiny spikes, the shapes can evoke anything from Hindu symbols to paramecia. But they carry as much of a message as any of his other art. "The language within the gallery is a special language," said Mr. Moffett, who lives in Manhattan with his longtime partner, the artist Robert Gober . "It can involve irony in a serious way and humor but still make significant points." When he created posters of "He Kills Me," which he initially pasted to New York buildings in the middle of the night, he was making art that shouted. This is also true of "Think Science," a billboard in Lexington, Ky., that he created last year for the organization For Freedoms, whose 50 State Initiative enlisted artists nationwide to make public works encouraging civic engagement. "There's a much subtler didactic undercurrent to this work in the gallery than to something on the street," he said. His latest art is more inclined to whisper, though it can whisper insistently. Consider " Lot 082519 (cocoa brain), " part of the new show. (The lot number, part of his cataloging system, refers to the date he started working on a piece.) This four part chocolate colored work, about eight feet tall, is based on a photograph of a cross section of the human brain. You could say that it is a charitable representation of what Mr. Moffett thinks fills the minds of climate change skeptics. It's about "the stupidity of half the conversation around the climate crisis," he said. "'Cocoa brain' somehow describes that. It is the idiocy, lunacy, tragedy of the climate crisis deniers." Of course, people looking at the work may not immediately think that it concerns global warming. Or that the shiny green tentacled piece " Lot 072419 (the new pippin)" refers to Pippin apples and the way contemporary food is processed and engineered. Or that " Lot 091819 (the pentagonal oak) ," which was inspired by an 1883 specimen of oak leaves that Mr. Moffett found in the botany collection at the Staten Island Museum, reflects the decline of species. But the titles of the show and of the individual works provide clues. "The title is really important," said Mr. Moffett, a San Antonio native whose work reflects his dual university degrees in biology and art . Naming his pieces, he said, "brings language to these abstract forms," and the words and the art "find each other somewhere in the middle." Marianne Boesky , whose gallery has represented Mr. Moffett for nearly 20 years, said that he could communicate "very layered messages," but that it was up to viewers to discover them. Or, she added, you can look at the pieces, which sell individually for about 40,000 to as much as 250,000 or 300,000, "and just revel in how beautifully they're made." "Painting is what people have said is dead every decade, but Donald can make it so fresh and exciting," Ms. Boesky said. She added that she hoped the show's visitors would investigate its meanings: "If you lift the hood a little, there's a lot to talk about." That includes subjects other than the environment. With its perforations and sweeping curves, the art also alludes to gun violence and sexuality, other topics Mr. Moffett has explored. But even though he said he expected scientific progress to prevail in the climate crisis, as it had with AIDS, he said the threats to nature would continue to be the most important theme for his art. "The dilemmas that we face and the problems that we face in relationship to the natural world call for, I would suggest, all of our attention," Mr. Moffett said, "but certainly the attention of an artist who brings as much from our world into the studio as I take out of the studio into the world."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Art & Design
Before some of the biggest names in fashion, film, music and the arts hit the red carpet for the Met gala on Monday night, they had to prep. And the most ardent fans know exactly where that happens: the Mark and the Carlyle hotels. Just blocks from the Metropolitan Museum, these hotels are the preferred locations for many celebrities to get their looks together. Here's who we spotted exiting in their trains and taffeta this year, dressed in their "Sunday best."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Fashion & Style
Job seekers in line at a job fair in Chicago. Economists say joblessness damages physical and mental health, breeds poverty and affects the structure of families. On Sept. 15, 2008, the investment bank Lehman Brothers collapsed after a long struggle to avoid bankruptcy, paralyzing the world's financial networks and tipping the United States economy into an abyss from which it has not yet fully emerged. More than five years later, there is still no answer to perhaps the most critical question raised by the man made disaster: How much did it all cost? In July, three economists at the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, Tyler Atkinson, David Luttrell and Harvey Rosenblum, gave it a shot, at least as far as the United States economy goes. Their analysis cautious and tentative, critically dependent on debatable assumptions underscores how difficult it is, still, to accurately tally the costs of the most severe economic catastrophe since the Depression of the 1930s into a coherent, conclusive measure of loss. "It is not difficult to understand why such accounting exercises are rare," they wrote. "They require comparing a world in which no financial crisis occurred to what actually happened and what is likely to transpire." Most strikingly, their examination offers a panoramic view of the variety of ways in which the financial crisis diminished the nation's standard of living. At a bare minimum the crisis cost nearly 20,000 for each American. Adding in broader impacts on workers' well being an admittedly speculative exercise could raise the price tag to as much as 120,000 for every man, woman and child in the United States. With this kind of money we could pay back the federal debt or pay for a top notch college education for everyone. The portrait of loss, tentative as it is, suggests that even the most far reaching measures might be justified to ensure it never happens again. But you wouldn't know that from the current debate. In December, the American Bankers Association sued to stop a provision of the Volcker Rule, part of the Dodd Frank financial reform law, and intended to stop banks from engaging in risky trading on their own account. It pretty much won, convincing regulators that forcing banks to get rid of a complex debt security used by smaller institutions to raise capital would impose immediate and unnecessary costs on small community banks. Separately, the Securities and Exchange Commission has taken a legal battering at the hand of business friendly judges arguing that the agency has not adequately assessed whether the benefits of its rules justify the costs. This has largely stopped the agency's rule making. Regulators creating international banking standards in Basel, Switzerland, have also faced a drumbeat of criticism from bankers who argue that proposed rules to increase the capital cushion international banks must amass to buffer against losses would slice 3.5 percent from the world's economic output and cost 7.5 million jobs. This month, as American regulators watered down the Volcker Rule in response to the bankers' lawsuit, regulators in Basel agreed to soften some of their capital requirements, too. Over all, almost half the rules required by the Dodd Frank legislation have yet to be written. But the financial industry would love to slow regulation further. "Our goal is to press the pause button on the multitude of regulations and rules, to give the industry time to digest them," said James Ballentine, executive vice president for congressional relations for the banking association. "The industry should have an opportunity to determine what is working and what is not." Elizabeth Holmes Hones Her Defense in Day 2 of Testimony Kevin Spacey was ordered to pay 31 million to the 'House of Cards' studio after sexual harassment allegations. The bankers' points are not necessarily wrong. Regulation does impose costs. Some banking rules and regulations might make loans scarcer or more expensive. Restrictions on banks' businesses are likely to eat into their profitability. Nonetheless, the legal attack on the new regulation is disingenuous. Increasing the industry's costs and reducing its profits is an objective of the regulation overhaul, not a bug. The goal is to ensure that banks internalize the costs of their risky business rather than have them borne by the rest of society. "Regulatory agencies are being sued to prevent that the law be put in place because it will cause the industry that crashed the world to lose money," said Dennis Kelleher, who heads Better Markets, a nonprofit formed after the financial crisis to press for stricter regulation of the banking sector. "But Congress made the decision of who was going to bear the costs." Indeed, even if financial regulation imposes broader economic costs, what matters is how they measure up against the benefit of preventing another financial disaster. The position taken by bankers, business friendly judges and many Republicans in Congress is that every new financial rule must justify its existence based on a narrow monetary tally of costs and benefits. But the approach ignores the far greater benefits promised by the entire regulatory package. To start, the economists at the Dallas Fed modeled how much economic activity would be lost by the time the nation returned to its growth path before the crisis. In their study, they initially assumed that the economy would return to its previous path by 2023, and concluded that the total loss would amount to 40 percent to 90 percent of a year's worth of economic output. That's about 6 trillion to 14 trillion in today's money or 19,000 to 45,000 per person. Others have used different methods and come up with similar estimates. Better Markets estimated that the crisis cost 12.8 trillion in lost output. But what if the path is not recovered so quickly? So far, the economy has made up little if any of the ground it lost. Perhaps the shock from the crisis slowed the nation's growth rate for good. Under a more pessimistic assumption, the Dallas Fed economists estimated that the cost could be 65 percent to 165 percent of annual output. The upper limit amounts to about 25 trillion, almost 80,000 per American. But even that might be an underestimate. Using a different method of analysis, the economists also looked at how Americans cut back on purchases of consumer goods. They concluded that the expectations of the lifetime income of working age adults fell by almost 150,000, on average. Most tallies stop there. But that is not because this covers the entire fallout from the crisis. Rather, it is because the rest is even harder to measure. Consider joblessness, which damages physical and mental health and breeds poverty, which contributes to crime. It affects the structure of families. Only about 500,000 new households were formed each year from 2007 to 2010, a third of the average pace during the previous decade. It is impossible to put an accurate dollar sign on these social costs. Still, the economists at the Dallas Fed tried. Recent research suggests that a jobless worker's well being declines 15 times as much as would be justified by the loss of income alone. Based on that number, Mr. Luttrell, who remains at the Dallas Fed, and Mr. Atkinson and Mr. Rosenblum, who have left, concluded that the unemployment spike between 2008 and 2012, which reduced aggregate wages by 900 billion, had the same effect on workers' well being as having lost 14 trillion, approximately another year of economic production in the United States. Finally, estimates of the costs of the crisis would be incomplete without an assessment of the government's role. And the Dallas economists borrowed an old estimate by the International Monetary Fund that direct support above and beyond the previously existing public safety net totaled 82 percent of the nation's G.D.P. about 12.6 trillion. This is about the size of the federal government's debt to the public. While all those numbers shouldn't be taken at face value, the damages potentially add up to a staggering total. Even acknowledging that they are imprecise, speculative proxies of the true costs of our financial mess, they underscore how estimates of loss based solely on lost G.D.P. are far too conservative. The Fed economists refrained from adding up the disparate costs from their analyses which could risk double counting losses. But simply adding the cost from the drop in well being of the unemployed to the impact on G.D.P. would take the price tag to up to 120,000 a person. And that still leaves out many other measures of loss. Every time you hear about the need to balance the costs of new financial regulations against their benefits, it might do well to think about that.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Economy
The chemicals started flowing early and soon defined Vaughan's daily life almost as much as his guitar. "The drug induced mayhem and chaos was endless," says Chris Layton, the drummer in Vaughan's band, Double Trouble. But after bottoming out on tour in Germany in 1987, Vaughan not only got clean, he became a shining example to his peers and an outspoken advocate for the A.A. program. Of course, we know how the story ends, which makes the tragedy that much worse: he avoided Overfamiliar Rock Roll Death No. 1, an overdose, only to fall victim to Overfamiliar Rock Roll Death No. 2, a vehicle crash. An oral history is only as good as its sources, and "Texas Flood" is thorough and far reaching, with Vaughan's bandmates, crew and family taking center stage. Especially fascinating is his complicated relationship with his older brother, Jimmie, himself a spectacular guitarist with the Fabulous Thunderbirds ("Stevie would never love another guitarist more than Jimmie," says the crew member Cutter Brandenburg), and Vaughan's ill fated role in David Bowie's band, an apparent big break that he quit because he was told he couldn't promote his forthcoming debut album. If there's a disappointment in the book, it's the lack of Vaughan's own voice. Aledort interviewed him several times during his lifetime, but since those conversations were focused on specific projects, the quotes pulled for "Texas Flood" don't leave much impression. Both authors are accomplished musicians and longtime contributors to Guitar World magazine, so occasionally things get a little gear heavy. It's hard to think of anyone since Vaughan who has generated the same excitement around the guitar. Maybe those days are gone. But the burning intensity of his playing hasn't dulled in the almost 30 years since his death. "He was probably the most fierce of the bluesmen I've ever heard," says Bonnie Raitt. "He was playing as if his life depended on it, and it did."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Books
Jack Dorsey, Twitter's chief executive, testified on Wednesday before the House Energy and Commerce Committee about the moderation of online content. The hearing took a more political tone than a Senate hearing earlier in the day, but he avoided taking sides. Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook's chief operating officer, and Mr. Dorsey testified at the Senate hearing about their companies' response to foreign interference in elections and the moderation of online content. Larry Page, the chief executive of Google's parent company Alphabet, was also invited to the Senate hearing but the company declined to send him. Several senators noted that no one from Google was there. Jack Dorsey, Twitter's chief executive officer, was asked by Representative Greg Walden of Oregon, the Republican chairman of the committee, how algorithms could be suppressing conservative views on the service. It was a stark change from the morning hearing, when Senate Intelligence Committee members were more collegial and appeared to share similar concerns with Facebook and Twitter over disinformation and foreign influence on their site. The top Democrat in the House hearing, Representative Frank Pallone of New Jersey, accused his Republican counterparts on the committee of having political motives behind their accusations. "President Trump and many Republicans have peddled conspiracy theories about Twitter and other social media platforms to whip up their base and fund raise," Mr. Pallone said. "I fear the Republicans are using this hearing for those purposes instead of addressing the serious issues raised by social media platforms that affect Americans' everyday lives." Representative Joe Barton, a Republican of Texas, said: "We wouldn't be having this discussion if there wasn't a general agreement that your company had discriminated against conservatives." Mr. Dorsey, who read opening remarks from a phone while live tweeting, said the company has found no evidence of political bias. "Looking at the data, we analyzed tweets sent by all members of the House and Senate, and found no statistically significant difference between the number of times a tweet by a Democrat is viewed versus a Republican, even after our ranking and filtering of tweets has been applied," Mr. Dorsey said. Representative Mike Doyle, a Democrat of Pennsylvania, accused Representative Kevin McCarthy, the majority leader, of sounding the alarm of anti conservative bias for political gains. He described those accusations as a "load of crap." As House lawmakers threw political jabs in the hearing, Mr. Dorsey managed to steer clear of taking sides. Representative Kathy Castor, Democrat of Florida, asked Mr. Dorsey if he felt manipulated by Republican politicians who have raised accusations of anti conservative bias for fund raising purposes. "I do believe there is growing concern around power companies like ours hold," Mr. Dorsey said. "People do see us as a digital public square and that comes with certain expectations." Representative Ben Lujan, Democrat of New Mexico, asked Mr. Dorsey to compare the number of bot accounts Twitter took down that followed President Trump versus President Obama. Mr. Lujan knew the answer to his own question. (Two million follower accounts for Obama were taken down versus 320,000 for Mr. Trump, a sign, Mr. Lujan suggested, that Twitter was not biased against Republicans.) Mr. Dorsey, however, did not weigh in the issue. "Not sure of those details," Mr. Dorsey said. "But it was a broad based action across Twitter." An Interruption, Followed by Auctioneering Roughly 90 minutes into the afternoon hearing, right wing activist Laura Loomer stood up from her seat in the back of the room and began yelling over committee members to "stop the bias." Holding up her cellphone camera so that she could film her own interruption, Ms. Loomer accused tech companies of holding a bias against conservative voices. As committee members asked her to take her seat so that they could resume their discussions, one lawmaker decided to take matters into his own hands. Representative Billy Long, Republican of Missouri, imitated an auctioneer's patter, running a live auction as Ms. Loomer repeated her accusations in an ever louder voice. Mr. Long owned an auction business for decades. Leaning close into his microphone and speaking in a steady, rapid fire voice, Mr. Long called out, "Fifty cents, a dollar!" as Ms. Loomer was escorted from the room. Mr. Long's performance drew laughs from lawmakers of both parties. A Glossary of Terms Used in the Hearing Lawmakers and Mr. Dorsey are using a lot of jargon in Wednesday afternoon's House hearing. Here are explanations of some of those terms. Shadow banning Shadow banning is a moderation tactic for online discussions that hides an individual's comments from other users involved in the conversation without letting the person know that their comments are hidden. The practice is intended to limit the impact of trolls and abusers without instigating them to create fresh accounts to continue their behavior. Conservative Twitter users have recently rallied around claims that Twitter shadow bans users based on their politics. In July, President Trump tweeted that he would look into the "discriminatory and illegal practice." However, Twitter says it does not shadow ban users. Twitter's algorithmic timeline ranks tweets based on a number of factors, causing some tweets to appear higher in the timeline than others. Signal Twitter ranks tweets based on what the company calls signals. Signals include a user's actions on Twitter, as well as actions that other accounts make when interacting with a user's account. Signals are often specific to a particular user's account for instance, if you follow a certain celebrity or politician, their tweets might appear higher in a search than tweets from other users. Twitter also considers signals of authenticity, such as whether a user has verified his phone number or email address, when ranking tweets. If a user is blocked or muted by a large number of accounts, their tweets might appear lower in search or in the Twitter timeline. Bot A Twitter bot is an automated account that publishes tweets without human intervention. Some bots publish useful information like automated earthquake alerts, but bots are also used in some harassment and misinformation campaigns to amplify certain messages over the voices of human users. Downranking This is the practice of displaying particular tweets or users lower in timeline and search. When Twitter introduced its service, it displayed all tweets in chronological order. As the service grew, Twitter switched to a timeline ordered by an algorithm. In the new timeline, Twitter attempts to rank tweets based on quality and relevance. Tweets that Twitter's algorithm flags as low quality are downranked. Twitter also sometimes hides tweets behind a warning that tells the user that the content could be abusive or offensive. Senator Joe Manchin III, Democrat of West Virginia, asked the executives about their responsibilities to control harmful behavior on their platforms. He noted that the illegal sale of opioids on their platforms still exists. Mr. Manchin asked if the companies felt that they should bear some responsibility for deaths related to opioid sales on their platform. Neither Mr. Dorsey nor Ms. Sandberg answered that question directly, and they stressed the importance of laws that protect internet platforms from lawsuits. The executives said they could be open to further reforms to a law that provides a safe harbor from liability to internet companies, Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. The law, passed in 1996, is considered the Holy Grail of internet policy, providing broad protections that are credited with the rapid growth of Silicon Valley. But they said that the protection also allows them greater freedom to police bad behavior without fear of legal actions. "We benefit from a lot of protections it gives," Mr. Dorsey said. "The safe harbor of 230 has been very important in enabling companies like ours to do proactive enforcement without increasingly our liability," Ms. Sandberg said. "So we would like to work very closely on how this is enacted." How Do You Tell Users Something Is Fake? Lawmakers pressed the two executives on how their platforms notify users of foreign influence campaigns. Ms. Sandberg said Facebook is getting better at letting users know of fake accounts and ads. She raised the example of an event in Washington, D.C., that was promoted by an inauthentic account. When Facebook detected the account, the company took down the event and notified users who indicated their interest in attending. Ms. Sandberg and Mr. Dorsey's opening statements before the Senate hearing displayed their obvious differences. Ms. Sandberg, who was born in Washington, and spent years living there during her time at the Treasury Department, appeared confident in her opening remarks. Speaking clearly and with practiced pacing, she complimented the committee's previous work on election interference. Mr. Dorsey stumbled during his opening, forgetting to turn on his microphone and reading from a cellphone he held in his hand. He added that he was also live tweeting his opening remarks through his Twitter account. While Ms. Sandberg made consistent eye contact with the senators, Mr. Dorsey appeared to be reading from his phone between questions.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Technology
Two documentaries shine a light on the lives of celebrated writers: the groundbreaking playwright Arthur Miller and the inimitable film critic Roger Ebert. ARTHUR MILLER: WRITER (2018) 8 p.m. on HBO; also on HBO streaming platforms. The director Rebecca Miller first started shooting videotapes of her father, the playwright Arthur Miller, when she was just 21. More than 30 years later, Ms. Miller has woven that footage with intimate interviews and decades' worth of archival gems for this new documentary. "I realize, you know, that this is my sixth film, but it's also my first film," she said in an interview with The New York Times. "I spent 18 months cutting it. It was quite an emotional process for me." The portrait covers the traumatic events that affected the writer early on, his relationship with Marilyn Monroe and his 40 year marriage to the Magnum photographer Inge Morath.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Television
A few days after Donald J. Trump won the presidential election, the founders of Skedaddle, a bus start up, began seeing some unusual activity. Their tiny company, which makes an app that lets individuals collectively commission private bus rides, was suddenly hit by a surge in bookings. Some of the bookings originated from places where Skedaddle has done little business before, including Wichita, Kan.; Madison, Wis.; and Macon, Ga. All of the reservations were for travelers to arrive the same day, Jan. 21, at the same destination, Washington. There was another twist. Many of those booking the bus trips were women. The Skedaddle founders realized that the prospective riders were all going to Washington to be part of the Women's March on Washington. That is an event being held on Saturday, the day after Mr. Trump's inauguration, where people plan to gather to send a message about upholding their civil rights. "We're bringing people to D.C. from as far away as Kansas," said Adam Nestler, one of the founders of Skedaddle, which is based in Boston and New York City. The company said that on Friday and Saturday, it will transport more than 11,000 people to the Women's March, or about 5 percent of the 200,000 people expected to attend. That is the largest ever two day period of business for the 19 person company. The spike in bookings makes Skedaddle one of the unlikely beneficiaries of the presidential inauguration. Across Washington, hotels and restaurants are set to be packed over the weekend, and other companies are also trumpeting what they expect to be a rise in their business. Airbnb, the online room rental service, said on Friday that it has more than 15,100 guests booked in Washington for inauguration weekend. And Uber said it has been working to ensure that its ride hailing services work smoothly in the city during inauguration week. Other bus start ups are also tapping into the inauguration demand. Skedaddle's main rival is Rally, which was started in 2010 to transport people to the Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear, a political gathering hosted by the comedians Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert. Rally, which provided bus transportation to specific events but now lets people make their own routes, said it is bringing 50,000 people to the Women's March, as well as buses of Trump supporters to the inauguration. "This is a once in a generation event in terms of numbers, and no single organization can move them all," said Numaan Akram, a founder and the chief executive of Rally. Unrecognized tech start ups have been lifted by presidential inaugurations before. In 2009, for President Obama's first inauguration, Airbnb was largely unknown and the practice of paying to sleep in a stranger's home was relatively uncommon. But most Washington hotels were sold out, and word of Airbnb spread quickly among people desperate for a place to stay. Airbnb now operates in more than 34,000 cities worldwide and is valued at 30 billion. Skedaddle may see some similar inauguration benefits. The company was founded in 2015 by Mr. Nestler, his brother Craig, Brad Werntz and Louis Harwood, who had met through a combination of school and previous work at start ups. None of the founders are over 29, and this is the first company any of them have started. The four founded Skedaddle to allow people to create bus routes to wherever they please, with a mission of letting users "ride to amazing destinations with inspiring people." Once a route has at least 10 people, Skedaddle works with a local transportation company to provide the appropriate van or bus. The company works with higher end, luxury transportation companies. Skedaddle makes money by securing a discounted rate from the transportation providers for bringing in a higher volume of customers. The average price of a ride on Skedaddle is 45 to 50. As a route fills with more people, the company's margins grow. Skedaddle has raised more than 3 million from investors. Riders can book, track and rate their transportation providers on Skedaddle, just as they can with Uber or Lyft. But in contrast with Uber and Lyft, all of the vehicles and drivers that Skedaddle contracts with are licensed and insured for commercial operations. While Skedaddle aims to someday replace established bus services like Greyhound and Peter Pan, much of its early business has focused on getting people out of cities for trips like weekend getaways. It has partnerships with 17 ski resorts and with music festivals like Bonnaroo, and it has been moving an average of 50,000 riders a month. "Today Skedaddle appeals to self selecting groups, like music lovers and skiers," said Paige Craig, an investor in Skedaddle who was also an early investor in Lyft. "That inherently social aspect of the company is a big advantage." The Women's March on Washington is just the sort of grass roots, viral event that Skedaddle was built for. The march began with a Facebook post by Teresa Shook, a retired lawyer in Hawaii who, the day after the election, urged women to make their presence known in Washington. With the march and other inauguration activities happening, transportation emerged as a key issue for the event's organizers. "When we were trying to hire charter buses, there were big questions about insurance and upfront payments," said Lauren North, an organizer of the march who is based in Louisville, Ky. "We were having a hard time moving all of these people to D.C."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Technology
Fresh off a Tony nominated performance in "A Doll's House, Part 2," Condola Rashad will take on the title character of George Bernard Shaw's classic play "Saint Joan" in a new Broadway production. The play depicts the rise and fall of Joan of Arc in 15th century France, with such heavyweights as Judi Dench, Diana Sands and Imelda Staunton having taken on the formidable role. "I'm brilliantly nervous, which is how I like it to be," Ms. Rashad said in a telephone interview, adding that she won't be watching any past performances, or reading about how the actresses before her approached the role, in effort to create her own version of the character. "As amazingly daunting as it is, I only have what I have in front of me, in terms of the writing, and my instincts. I'm really excited," she said.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Theater
For a week starting Monday, the 16th annual New York Comedy Festival will feature more than 100 events spread across the five boroughs. This year's headlining shows include Stephen Colbert, Norm Macdonald and the long running "Stand Up for Heroes," a fund raiser for military veterans that features Jon Stewart and Bruce Springsteen. The festival also has its share of rising talent from across the globe, representing a diverse new wave of solo stand up, podcasts and more. Cat Cohen, Larry Owens and "Butterboy," the red hot Brooklyn weekly show will be among the new favorites on hand. Here are nine shows that will be the best bets to become headliners of future festivals. Tickets and additional information is available at nycomedyfestival.com. Ignoring an uncomfortable issue guarantees no solution will be found. And if an issue feels too widespread or intractable? Might as well get in some laughs. Yedoye Travis is a master at mixing frankness with the funny on his podcast featuring a panel of black comedians assessing a white comedian pitching corrective measures to counteract racism. Think social justice meets "Shark Tank ." Whether working on the Jon Stewart or David Letterman television shows or Adult Swim's decidedly hard edge "Soft Focus With Jena Friedman," this stand up has never been one to mute her opinions or shy from controversial takes. Her new live show, "Miscarriage of Justice," is no exception. Last year on "Conan," she deplored the rise of Nazis ; Friedman's current material squarely tackles misogyny, police brutality and the abuse of political power. She's outraged and her comedy may not be for everyone. But that's exactly how Friedman prefers it. This New York scene staple is as fearlessly old school as they come. Kirson unleashes an arsenal of characters (Jewish and otherwise), recalls sexual escapades aplenty and derives a devilishly unfettered pleasure from letting her frayed nerves fire at will. (The title of her new podcast, "Relatively Sane," proves self explanatory.) Kirson has been seen on late night TV and sitcoms; her long overdue debut hour special, "Talking to Myself," premieres Dec. 6 on Comedy Central. Most comedy fans know improv's golden rule: "Yes, and ...," in which one performer agrees to another's established scenario before adding new information. Fewer civilians are aware that stand ups help each other create new material via a collective writing craft game nicknamed "Joke Machine." Joe Zimmerman and Emmy Blotnick bring this behind the scenes tradition in front of a crowd as comic guests hunt for more powerful premises, stronger segues and tighter taglines. Sometimes less is more. Hollering, pulling faces and stool humping don't necessarily cement authentic connections with audiences. In the case of the "Daily Show With Trevor Noah" writer Josh Johnson, a Louisiana background informs his measured, low key delivery, while his theater kid background taught him to coax laughter from extended pauses that could send other comics sprinting to the next punch line. Johnson's self deprecating narratives detail personal battles with allergies, arthritis, insomnia, panic attacks, rat attacks, possum attacks and even a gang that kicked him out for being too polite. Slow burn, aw shucks storytelling at its finest. The concept is simple: The names of novice comics are pulled from a bucket. The quaking hopefuls perform for one minute. The host Tony Hinchcliffe, the producer Brian Redban and celebrity guest judges offer quips, critiques, questions, outright condemnation or a combination thereof. With a live band led by Jeremiah Watkins, insults aplenty and killer callbacks, the Deathsquad network's popular podcast and YouTube livestream has evolved from the Main Room of the Comedy Store in Los Angeles to sold out international dates, all featuring an unflinching brand of controlled chaos. At the intersection of stand up and visual art there's "Portrait of the Artist Seated With Grapes" : Max Wittert turning his pen (and brushes) on his own life as a TV actor, comedy writer and illustrator of projects that include fashion models or comic book characters (and occasionally comic book characters posing as fashion models). Just how style focused will this show be? Wittert tweeted that attendees are encouraged to dress in ball gowns, and he might not be joking. Prohibited from joining the cheerleading squad in high school, young Zach Zimmerman's life changed when he became the first member of his Roanoke, Va., family to attend college. While his mother dismissed the experience as "liberalizing" and "heathenizing," he recognized it as the freedom to be himself. His father was a Southern Baptist preacher who also managed a steakhouse; Zimmerman became a vegetarian atheist. These days Zimmerman tackles religion, racism, homophobia and fatal tragedy on his journey to finding self love. He won rave reviews for his recent Edinburgh Festival Fringe show, confirming he's on the right path.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Television
LONDON Works by female artists of African origin created the highest energy moments in Phillips's summer sale in London Thursday. It was the last of the evening auctions that are the traditional finale of the contemporary art market's hectic seasonal cycle. The British Ghanaian painter Lynette Yiadom Boakye and the more established South African painter Marlene Dumas both had paintings sell to telephone bidders for about twice their estimates. "There's been a correction. Buyers are looking to discover something new," Cheyenne Westphal, the chairwoman of Phillips, said, referring to how price growth for some established male artists, particularly abstract painters, has stalled. "There's a return to figuration, and the artists are very diverse," she added. "A global audience responds to that." Ms. Dumas's haunting 1988 canvas, "Losing (Her Meaning)," which depicts a nude woman floating face down in a pool, has been included in some 18 public exhibitions, but had never been offered at auction. One of the few true museum quality works in the summer sales, this piece climbed to PS1.2 million, or about 1.5 million, double its high estimate. Phillips's sale raised PS35.9 million, or about 45.5 million, from 36 lots, slightly above last year's London total. The Wednesday night sale at Sotheby's reflected a similar shift: Toyin Ojih Odutola's self portrait on paper, "Compound Leaf," sold for PS471,000, or 597,000. It was a record price for a work by her at auction, and one that far exceeded the work's high estimate of PS150,000 (or 191,000). Tuesday at Christie's, when "Out of Body," a 2015 oil and fabric collage of stylized female figures by the young African American artist Tschabalala Self, came up, Jussi Pylkkanen, the auctioneer and global president of the auction house, told those assembled, "There are 19 bidders on the telephone, so be brave with your bidding." And they were. Intense competition from telephone bidders led the buyer, the New York collector, dealer and market influencer Jose Mugrabi to pay PS371,250, or about 415,000, for the piece. It was a new auction high for the artist and more than six times the Christie's estimate of PS40,000 to PS60,000. Dealers have lengthy waiting lists of buyers seeking work by the hottest names, so when these works appear on the auction market, they can fetch far more than gallery price tags. At Art Basel this year, for example, Pilar Corrias, Ms. Self's London gallerist, said she sold a new work for less than 100,000. Such gulfs between "primary" and "secondary" market prices inevitably encourage speculation. "I am trying to keep a level head in regard to the auction prices," Ms. Self said in an email Thursday. "I do not personally base the value of my work on these results." Ms. Self is currently an artist in residence at the Studio Museum in Harlem and recently designed a limited edition handbag for Louis Vuitton. London hosts three series of high end contemporary auctions each year. But the continuing uncertainties surrounding Brexit have made collectors reluctant to consign trophy works here, particularly in the summer. Christie's held no evening contemporary auctions in London for two years before returning this June. Sourcing top quality material remains a problem, dealers say. "It's very mixed. Not a strong sale. You wouldn't come back from holiday for this," Ivor Braka, a private dealer and collector based in London, said of the 32 works up for auction at Christie's Tuesday. In the absence of a Gerhard Richter abstract painting, Christie's offered one of his large scale abstract tapestries from an edition of eight created in 2009. It sold in line with its estimate for PS1 million, or 1.3 million. Thanks to blue chip 20th century pieces like Jean Dubuffet's vibrant 1961 painting "Ceremonie," bought for PS8.7 million (about 11 million) by Daniella Luxembourg, a London and New York art dealer, Christie's raised a respectable total of PS45.2 million , or 57 million. It was a far cry from the record PS137.4 million ( 174 million) the company achieved in March 2018. The 42 lot sale at Sotheby's on Wednesday evening raised PS69.6 million (about 88 million), 37 percentage points less than the equivalent sale raised last year. Like Christie's and Phillips , Sotheby's lined its galleries with the sort of big statement pictures that appeal to today's wealthy art collectors, if not biennial curators. Jenny Saville's nine foot high canvas, "Shadow Head" (2013), sold to a bidder for PS4.2 million ( 5.3 million). A barely less monumental "Self Portrait With Empty Hands" (1998) by Albert Oehlen a German painter who will be the subject of an exhibition at London's Serpentine Gallery in October took PS6 million ( 7.6 million) from Per Skarstedt, a New York and London dealer. Sotheby's said after the auction that it had achieved a price of "PS92,500 per square inch" for a small Francis Bacon self portrait from 1975 , which sold for a single bid of PS16.5 million. But otherwise, this auction settled into a metronomic session of middling value works by "investment grade" names valued between 300,000 and 3 million. Each attracted only one or two bidders. "It was business as usual tonight," said Alex Branczik, the European head of contemporary art at Sotheby's . "It was a sale of established names that are the mainstays of the art market."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Art & Design
Some eight million metric tons of plastic waste makes its way into the world's oceans each year, and the amount of the debris is likely to increase greatly over the next decade unless nations take strong measures to dispose of their trash responsibly, new research suggests. The report, which appeared in the journal Science on Thursday, is the most ambitious effort yet to estimate how much plastic debris ends up in the sea. Jenna Jambeck, an assistant professor of environmental engineering at the University of Georgia and lead author of the study, said the amount of plastic that entered the oceans in the year measured, 2010, might be as little as 4.8 million metric tons or as much as 12.7 million. The paper's middle figure of eight million, she said, is the equivalent of "five plastic grocery bags filled with plastic for every foot of coastline in the world" a visualization that, she said, "sort of blew my mind." By 2025, she said, the amount of plastic projected to be entering the oceans would constitute the equivalent of 10 bags per foot of coastline. The researchers, from the United States and Australia, derived their estimates through a complex calculation that began with the overall mass of waste produced per person annually in 192 nations that have coastlines, worked through the proportion of that waste likely to be plastic, and how much of the plastic could end up in the ocean because of each nation's waste management practices. The researchers then projected the amount of waste going forward based on population growth estimates. "This is a significant study," said Nancy Wallace, director of the marine debris program at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, who saw the paper before it was published. Ms. Wallace applauded what she considered the sophisticated use of available data to estimate the amount of plastic entering the marine environment, both collectively and country by country. "Of course we know these aren't absolute numbers, but it gives us an idea of the magnitude, and where we might need to focus our efforts to affect the issue," she said. The research also lists the world's 20 worst plastic polluters, from China to the United States, based on such factors as size of coastal population and national plastic production. According to the estimate, China tops the list, producing as much as 3.5 million metric tons of marine debris each year. The United States, which generates as much as 110,000 metric tons of marine debris a year, came in at No. 20. While Americans generate 2.6 kilograms of waste per person per day, or 5.7 pounds, to China's 1.10 kilograms, the United States ranked lower on the list because of its more efficient waste management, Professor Jambeck said. Plastics have been spotted in the oceans since the 1970s. In the intervening decades, masses of junk have been observed floating where ocean currents come together, and debris can be found on the remotest beaches and in arctic sea ice. The problem is more than an aesthetic one: Exposed to saltwater and sun, and the jostling of the surf, the debris shreds into tiny pieces that become coated with toxic substances like PCBs and other pollutants. Research into the marine food chain suggests that fish and other organisms consume the bite size particles and may reabsorb the toxic substances. Those fish are eaten by other fish, and by people. Cleaning up the plastic once it is in the oceans is impractical; only a portion of it floats, while most disappears, and presumably what does not wash ashore settles to the bottom. Any collection system fine enough to capture the smaller particles would also pick up enormous amounts of marine life. So the best option, Professor Jambeck and others suggest, is to improve waste management ashore.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Science
2. Break the eggs into a bowl and beat with a fork or a whisk until they are frothy. Whisk in the milk, salt, pepper, parsley, chives and the remaining garlic. 3. Heat the 8 inch nonstick omelet pan again over medium high heat. Add 2 teaspoons olive oil. Hold your hand an inch or two above the pan, and when it feels hot, pour the eggs into the middle of the pan, scraping every last bit into the pan with a rubber spatula. Swirl the pan to distribute the eggs evenly over the surface. Shake the pan gently, tilting it slightly with one hand while lifting up the edges of the omelet with the spatula in your other hand, to let the eggs run underneath during the first few minutes of cooking. 4. As soon as the eggs are set on the bottom, sprinkle the mushrooms and Parmesan or Gruyere down the middle of the egg "pancake," then jerk the pan quickly away from you then back toward you so that the omelet folds over onto itself. If you don't like your omelet runny in the middle (I do), jerk the pan again so that the omelet folds over once more. Cook for a minute or two longer. Tilt the pan and roll the omelet out onto a plate, and serve. Another way to make a 2 egg omelet is to flip it over before adding the filling. Do this with the same motion, jerking the pan quickly away from you then back toward you, but lift your hand slightly as you begin to jerk the pan back toward you. The omelet will flip over onto the other side, like a pancake. Place the filling in the middle. Then use your spatula to fold one side over, then the other side, and roll the omelet out of the pan. Advance preparation: The cooked mushrooms will keep for 4 or 5 days in the refrigerator.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Health
Alice Wolowitz, a student nurse, began her shift at a hospital one morning in Philadelphia. She fell sick during the shift, rapidly declined and was dead that night. That was 1918, and people were collapsing and dying everywhere from a Spanish flu pandemic. Philadelphia's 31 hospitals were full and turning away patients, who offered huge bribes to get in. Police officers with surgical masks were sent to pick up bodies from homes, but 33 police officers died within weeks. "In virtually every home, someone was ill," John M. Barry writes in his book about that pandemic, "The Great Influenza." "People were already avoiding each other, turning their heads away if they had to talk, isolating themselves. The telephone company increased the isolation: With 1,800 telephone company operators out, the phone company allowed only emergency calls." Sports events were canceled. Theaters closed. Shaking hands was made illegal in Prescott, Ariz. Philadelphia hurriedly set up six more morgues. Families put crepe paper on doorways to signal a death inside and crepe was everywhere. That Spanish flu epidemic of 1918, which killed at least 50 million people worldwide, has been the benchmark for pandemics ever since. For decades public health experts have called for preparations for another "big one" yet adequate preparations were never made. Nobody knows if the coronavirus will be a "big one," for it may still fizzle. As of this writing, only one person is known to have died from it in the United States, while thousands routinely die annually from the seasonal flu. But increasingly, experts are saying that we should get ready just in case. "Are we seeing a replay of 1918?" asked The New England Journal of Medicine, a publication not associated with alarmism. Bill Gates, who for years has been warning presciently about the danger of pandemics, bluntly cautions that this virus could be a "once in a century pandemic." "I hope it's not that bad, but we should assume that it will be until we know otherwise," Gates said, and that seems prudent. While figures are uncertain, the coronavirus may kill 2 percent of those infected; if correct, that would be similar to the lethality of the 1918 flu (it's also possible that many more people are infected without significant symptoms, which would make the death rate quite a bit lower). Another similarity with 1918 is that the United States and the world are unready for a pandemic. "We're amazingly unprepared," Dr. Irwin Redlener, a Columbia University professor and director of the National Center for Disaster Preparedness, told me. President Trump exaggerates threats from caravans of migrants or from a hobbled Iran, and he has diverted billions of dollars from the military to build a border wall that smugglers hack apart with 100 saws. But he has not been attuned to pandemic threats: In 2018 the White House removed the position on the National Security Council to fight pandemics, while seeking to scale back anti pandemic work to about 10 countries from 49. Experts warned at the time that this was dangerously shortsighted. At a time when we need wise, scientifically informed leadership, we find ourselves with a president with little credibility and an antagonistic relationship with scientists. It doesn't help that during the Ebola crisis of 2014, Trump was one of the most fiery critics of evidence driven policies that actually succeeded in ending the outbreak. The United States is also vulnerable because of longstanding deficiencies in our health care system. We are the only major rich country without universal health insurance and paid sick leave, and we have fewer doctors per capita than peer countries. Consider a Florida man, Osmel Martinez Azcue, who returned from China and found himself becoming sick. As The Miami Herald reported, he might normally have gone to a drugstore and bought over the counter flu medicine. But because of the risk of coronavirus he did the responsible thing and sought medical attention: He went to a hospital for testing. In the end, it turned out not to be coronavirus but he was billed 3,270. We must ensure that no one is deterred from seeking help by the costs. The White House and Congress should immediately establish a system to ensure that patients need not pay for coronavirus testing and treatment. We should also ensure paid sick leave. Do we really want to go to a restaurant where a coughing, sneezing food preparer still goes to work out of financial need? William A. Haseltine, president of a think tank called Access Health International, told me that a vaccine might take at least six to eight months to develop and test some other estimates are longer and this should involve an immediate federal investment through Project BioShield. We also need better diagnostics and treatment as well as more ventilators to keep people alive. Dr. Peter Jay Hotez, an expert on global health at Baylor University, emphasized to me the need to support front line health workers and keep them from becoming infected. "If we see a situation in the U.S. like we saw in Wuhan more than 1,000 cases among hospital workers and five or six deaths it's game over," he said. "Health workers lose confidence, and things start to fall apart." Hotez said that one crucial step is simply ensuring that all health workers have enough personal protective equipment.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Opinion
In a landmark move bound to further shake the tobacco industry, the Food and Drug Administration plans to propose a ban on menthol cigarettes next week as part of its aggressive campaign against flavored e cigarettes and some tobacco products, agency officials said. The proposal would have to go through the F.D.A. regulatory maze, and it could be several years before such a restriction took effect, especially if the major tobacco companies contest the agency's authority to do so. None of the major tobacco companies would comment on the possibility of barring menthol cigarettes at this early stage. But such a move has been long awaited by public health advocates, who have been especially concerned about the high percentage of African Americans who become addicted to menthol cigarettes. Dr. Scott Gottlieb, the agency's commissioner, would not comment publicly on the proposal on Friday. But in a recent interview, he said the F.D.A. was revisiting the issue, one that had been weighed in previous administrations. "It was a mistake for the agency to back away on menthol," he said earlier this fall. Canada has already imposed a ban on menthol cigarettes, and the European Union's ban is set to go into effect in 2020. Earlier this year, San Francisco passed a prohibition against the sales of menthol cigarettes and flavored e cigarettes. The menthol proposal is just one of several initiatives the F.D.A. plans to announce sometime next week, including a ban on sales of most flavored e cigarettes, except menthol and mint, at retail stores and gas stations across the country. The products, which include such flavors as chicken and waffles and mango, would be mainly relegated to sales online, at sites where the agency hopes to impose strict age verification to ensure that minors could not buy them. As e cigarettes became a booming business and extremely popular among teenagers and young people, health officials, parents and others became alarmed at the soaring use of nicotine addicting products that were considered alternatives to traditional smoking for adults. The F.D.A. began targeting the major manufacturers of e cigarettes, focusing in particular on Juul Labs, the maker of a popular, flashy product that has become nearly ubiquitous in schools and on the streets. Just a day after agency officials began issuing details of next week's plan to ban some sales, Juul Labs indicated on Friday that it had decided to pull several of its wildly popular flavored e cigarette pods off store shelves, according to several people briefed by the company. The vaping giant will continue to sell its liquid nicotine pods in mint, menthol and tobacco flavors in brick and mortar stores, but will restrict other flavors that could be appealing to younger people to online sales. Juul Labs launched the device, which resembles a flash drive, in 2015, and now has about 77 percent of the United States e cigarette market. Last month, a competitor, Altria, said it would discontinue most of its flavored e cigarettes and support federal legislation to raise the age of purchase to 21 for any tobacco and vaping product. Senator Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York, had been an advocate of such restrictions. "While more must be achieved to fully regulate e cigs like actual cigarettes, Juul's effort is a good step in snuffing out kid friendly flavors that have fueled the spiking nicotine addiction amongst America's youth and can make a difference," Mr. Schumer said in an email. Lisa David, president and chief executive of Public Health Solutions, a New York based nonprofit group specializing in health issues for low income and immigrant families, said she opposed keeping mint and menthol flavors easily available in stores, especially given the gateway effect for young people who start vaping and then move to traditional cigarettes. "Menthol makes it seem less harsh, and also makes the body absorb more nicotine," she said. "That means it's easier to start smoking and harder to quit." Ms. David also wondered if Juul's restriction might be too late, because of the many similar devices, called "Juul alikes," already on the market. "Juul clearly was a contributor to the really significant uptake of young people using e cigarettes," Ms. David said. "At this point there are a bunch of other versions of the 'Juul alikes.' They have similar shapes and flavors and are appealing to the same audience." The battle against menthol cigarettes has continued for decades. According to the N.A.A.C.P.'s Youth Against Menthol campaign, about 85 percent of African American smokers aged 12 and up smoke menthol cigarettes, compared with 29 percent of white smokers, which the organization calls a result of decades of culturally tailored tobacco company promotion. The most popular menthol brand in the United States is Newport, which is the second largest selling cigarette brand in the industry, according to the R. J. Reynolds Tobacco Company. Imperial Brands has two strong sellers, Kool and Salem. Altria's best selling cigarette, Marlboro, is also available in menthol, as is R.J.R.'s Camel. A spokesman for R. J. Reynolds declined to comment. Altria and Imperial Brands could not be immediately reached. In a joint statement on Friday, the Campaign for Tobacco Free Kids, the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Lung Association and several other public health groups said that action on menthol cigarettes was long overdue. "There is overwhelming scientific evidence that menthol cigarettes have had a profound adverse effect on public health in the United States, resulting in more death and disease," the organizations said. Although federal health officials released new reports this week that indicated traditional smoking had reached a record low since 1965, smoking related deaths still number about 480,000 in the United States every year.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Health
If you're looking to save some money this holiday season, data researchers have gotten pretty good at determining the best times to book air travel as well as when to fly. Yet there is not one rule of thumb to follow when trying to make cost effective holiday travel plans. For example, booking your air travel for the Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays too early can be really expensive, but waiting too long can be just as financially painful. Confused yet? Not to worry. The following are answers to the questions you should be asking yourself as you look to finalize your holiday travels. How Long Can I Wait Before Prices Rise Significantly? For Thanksgiving travel, you're in friendly booking territory during the month of October. But make sure you have Halloween circled on your calendar if you want to lock in the lowest fares. You'll start to see prices climb slowly beginning in November, and then more so as the month progresses. "Prices will really begin spiking by 10 per day during the final two weeks leading up to Thanksgiving," Patrick Surry, the chief data scientist for Hopper said. If you're traveling around the Christmas holiday season, the window for the lowest airfare has already closed (the first week of October). But you'll want to book before you hit about 10 days out from Christmas Day, Mr. Surry said. "Based on Hopper's historical data, the best time to book Christmas flights is about 83 days before departure, which is the first week of October. Prices begin rising by about 4 per day around Thanksgiving, and then by about 7 per day in the final two weeks," Mr. Surry said. Does It Matter Which Day I Book? There are several different theories about which day of the week, and time of day, has the most affordable fares. For example, Priceline.com data shows that the cheapest day of the week to purchase is Friday, despite the majority of tickets being purchased on a Tuesday. But there might not be a whole lot to gain from focusing on the day of the week. "Pricing is extremely nuanced," Mr. Surry said. "Everyone wants a golden rule about when to buy, but it really depends on your route, dates and demand." Does It Matter Which Day I Fly? Yes, this one you'll want to think about carefully, and also ask yourself: How flexible is my holiday travel? "If you have flexibility, in general it will pay to extend your trip," Mr. Surry said. Regarding Thanksgiving, the most expensive day to depart is the Wednesday before, which should not come as a surprise as it's also one of the busiest travel days of the year. But if you are able to leave on the Monday or the Thursday of that week you can save around 50 on the first leg of your trip. The same goes for your return day. The busiest and most expensive day to come back is Sunday. But you can save around 160 by returning on Wednesday, Nov. 29, instead, Mr. Surry said. For Christmas this year, the cheapest days to depart are Saturday, Dec. 16, or Tuesday, Dec. 19, which can save you about 110 compared to traveling on the busiest day, which is Friday, Dec. 22. The most popular return day is New Year's Day, and returning on Thursday, Jan. 4, instead could save you around 100, according to Hopper's data. Does It Matter Where I'm Going? Yes, data for domestic flights show that some destination cities are more expensive to travel to than others, which can be tied to demand. Priceline.com found that the most popular travel route for both Thanksgiving and Christmas is New York City to Florida (Miami, Fort Lauderdale and Orlando). For Christmas travel, these destination cities are also among the ones with the highest "holiday premium," as Hopper terms it, meaning the greatest increase in price compared to non holiday travel. No matter where you are traveling from for the Christmas holiday, you can expect to pay up to 82 percent more for a fare to Miami ( 383 instead of 211), according to Hopper. Fort Lauderdale and Orlando see spikes of over 60 percent. For Thanksgiving, you can expect to spend 40 percent more than usual for trips to Denver and Boston.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Travel
The Kentucky Derby known for its atmosphere as much as its thoroughbred racing is keeping its fans this year for betting, mint juleps, and to see and be seen with elaborate millinery and seersucker suits. There will be fewer spectators and new health precautions because of the coronavirus outbreak, but fans will indeed be on hand Sept. 5, race organizers said Thursday, to see if Tiz the Law can win the second leg of this year's untraditional Triple Crown. The new measures include masks for fans and employees, fewer interactions throughout the venue and spaced out guest areas. The plan, developed with the local health and labor departments, encourages guests to wash their hands frequently and remain socially distant. But it was not clear how many guests would be allowed at Churchill Downs, the venue in Louisville, Ky., that has hosted the race since 1875 and welcomed more than 150,000 fans for the Derby last year. General admission could be cut as much as 60 percent, the racetrack's president, Kevin Flanery, said Thursday. It was also unclear how the protocols would be enforced, though officials said they would "severely" limit access throughout the facility. General admission tickets would be sold only for the track's infield, and "guests will be consistently and frequently encouraged to wear a mask at all times unless seated in their reserved seat or venue," the plan said. Flanery said in an interview that employees at the track would be required to wear masks in accordance with state protocols at the time of the race. Masks are not required, but are heavily encouraged in Kentucky right now. "It's going to be a very different experience, and we want to be respectful moving forward in a responsible way," Flanery said. "But it will be different and we're relying on spectators coming together with us to make this a unique and safe experience." For now, there aren't expected to be daily health screenings for racegoers. Still, gambling, drinks made with bourbon and culinary delights will still reign throughout the racetrack, just with adjustments. Food will be served individually, rather than at chefs' tables; concession lines and betting tellers will be spread out with queued lines, and gamblers will be encouraged to wager from their phones. Gamblers wagered nearly 251 million on the entire Kentucky Derby slate of races last year, with 48.4 million wagered online through TwinSpires, the official online and mobile betting site for Churchill Downs. Tickets purchased for the Derby's original date in May were automatically valid, the announcement said. Staff plan to individually contact ticketholders to determine whether they plan to attend. And Flanery said they would work with state officials to update protocols if circumstances change during the outbreak. "We really are a very unique event and a unique facility we don't fit into the mold of an arena or a golf course," he told reporters during a news conference. "So that gives us the flexibility to work on those issues." Coronavirus cases have plateaued in Kentucky recently despite rising counts across the nation. The state has had at least 14,564 cases and 564 deaths, with Gov. Andy Beshear confirming 229 new cases in a news briefing Wednesday just a week before "just about everything in the state will be open in some capacity." Typically the starting race for the Triple Crown, the Derby was moved from May 2 to September because of the pandemic. The only other time the race has been delayed was at the end of World War II. The movement of the Derby and the Preakness Stakes, which was delayed from May 16 until Oct. 3, meant that the Belmont Stakes was the first leg of the Triple Crown this year. Tiz the Law won that race on Saturday in front of empty stands. Tiz the Law's trainer, Barclay Tagg, said it was calmer and quieter for the horses, but there was something missing. "Horse racing thrives off the spectators," Tagg, 82, told The Times. "If there are no spectators, there will be no horse racing down the line."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Sports
, the author of "The Marshall Plan: Dawn of the Cold War," has been named the winner of the New York Historical Society's Barbara and David Zalaznick Book Prize, awarded each year to the best work in the field of American history or biography. The 600 plus page book, published last year by Simon and Schuster, chronicled America's contribution to the reconstruction of Europe in the emerging post World War II world order. Timothy Naftali, writing in The New York Times Book Review, called it "trenchant and timely," adding that "the architects of America's global engagement after World War II would have been appalled that future generations let alone a future president might think they had been acting in anything but the national interest." In a statement, Mr. Steil, the director of international economics at the Council on Foreign Relations, echoed that point, indirectly linking his book to today's debates about trade, global alliances and America's place in the world.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Books
WASHINGTON An increasingly vocal minority of Federal Reserve officials want the central bank to retreat more quickly from its stimulus campaign, arguing that the bank has largely exhausted its ability to improve economic conditions. The debate, reflected in an account of the Fed's most recent policy making meeting published on Wednesday, is likely to dominate the gathering of central bankers and economists at Jackson Hole, Wyo., Thursday through Saturday. Fed officials are convinced that the economy is gaining strength after the years of false starts, but a majority of policy makers, led by the chairwoman, Janet L. Yellen, favors a slow retreat from the Fed's efforts to encourage job creation. They note that millions of people still cannot find jobs, while inflation remains relatively weak. At the July meeting, however, a number of officials described a growing risk that the Fed's control of inflation is being loosened by its focus on job creation. They note that the economy has improved more quickly than expected in recent months. The remaining damage caused by the Great Recession, in this view, can no longer be repaired by keeping interest rates low through the Fed's primary policy tool. Officials, in other words, disagree about the proximity of the finish line. "Participants generally agreed that both the recent improvement in labor market conditions and the cumulative progress over the past year had been greater than anticipated and that labor market conditions had moved noticeably closer to those viewed as normal in the longer run," according to the account, released after a standard three week delay. "Participants differed, however, in their assessments of the remaining degree of labor market slack and how to measure it." Some analysts saw evidence that the Fed's internal critics were exerting growing influence over the course of policy, suggesting that the Fed was becoming a little more likely to raise interest rates before the middle of 2015, now considered the most likely time for the Fed to begin raising rates from the near zero level it has maintained since late 2008. "Some of the centrists appear to be acknowledging the rapid improvement in labor market conditions," wrote Paul Dales, senior United States economist at Capital Economics. Others said the debate was merely becoming more polarized, with the majority remaining firm in its views. "We continue to believe that the Fed will not move until at least mid 2015 despite some of the hawkish rhetoric which has recently grown louder," wrote Michael Dolega, senior economist at the TD Bank Group. Investors, too, appeared to share the uncertainty about the meaning of the minutes. The yield on the benchmark 10 year Treasury note rose after the Fed released the minutes at 2 p.m., then disgorged some of those gains, but still closed up for the day at 2.43 percent. Stocks first fell, then rebounded to pass the earlier high. The Standard Poor's 500 stock index ended at 1,986.51, up 0.25 percent on the day. Ms. Yellen is scheduled to speak Friday morning at Jackson Hole, and she is expected to discuss the state of labor markets. The annual conference, hosted by the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, has sometimes served as a platform for Fed leaders to signal policy changes, but more often as a highly publicized chance to explain their views. One potential motivation for an earlier retreat has lost some of its urgency. The account said officials did not see much evidence that markets were overheating. "Participants noted evidence of valuation pressures in some particular asset markets, but those pressures did not appear to be widespread and other measures of vulnerability in the financial system were at low to moderate levels," it said. 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." But the unemployment rate has fallen more quickly than the Fed predicted at the beginning of the year. It stood at 6.2 percent in July. Price inflation has lately shown some signs of reviving, although it remains below the 2 percent annual pace the Fed regards as healthy. Most officials, according to the minutes, take the view that the unemployment rate overstates progress in the labor markets, because an unusually large number of Americans have stopped looking for work but are likely to resume their searches as the economy improves. Ms. Yellen has frequently espoused this view. Wage growth also remains slow. The Fed for the first time described the slow pace of wage gains as a threat to growth.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Economy
Welcome to Best of Late Night, a rundown of the previous night's highlights that lets you sleep and lets us get paid to watch comedy. If you're interested in hearing from The Times regularly about great TV, sign up for our Watching newsletter and get recommendations straight to your inbox. After a shooting left 17 people dead at a Florida high school last week, Stephen Colbert expressed solidarity on Tuesday with the students who are calling for gun control legislation. And he lashed out at politicians who oppose these measures. "The adults aren't cutting it anymore. I think we need to change the voting age. Until we do something about guns, you can't vote if you're over 18." STEPHEN COLBERT "I hope these kids don't give up, because this is their lives and their future. Someone else may be in power, but this country belongs to them. And there is reason for hope: Look at the MeToo movement. A lot of men in power did not see that coming, but it proved that change can happen overnight. And this is an election year so if you want to see change, you have to go to the polls and tell the people who will not protect you that their time is up." STEPHEN COLBERT On "The Daily Show," Trevor Noah expressed disgust with commentators on Fox News who suggested that gun control measures would not prevent school shootings. Noah mocked them for suggesting more creative and, he thought, harebrained solutions. "The problem is school shootings, right? So let's just get rid of the schools. Stick with me, people. You can't school shoot without a school! Everyone gets home schooled that way, no one can shoot their friends. Because home schooled kids don't have any friends. Problem solved!" TREVOR NOAH On Tuesday's "Late Show," Colbert also took a moment to highlight the most recent allegations of infidelity that have emerged against President Trump. The New Yorker recently published a report that the onetime Playboy model Karen McDougal had engaged in an affair with Trump in 2006, the same year he allegedly started an affair with the pornographic film actress known as Stormy Daniels. "McDougal wasn't attracted to Trump because of his money. In her notes she writes, 'I was into his intelligence and charm. Such a polite man.' O.K., now this story's falling apart. And according to the article, Trump complimented McDougal by saying that she was similar to his daughter Ivanka. O.K., now the story's starting to feel real again." STEPHEN COLBERT Colbert was particularly amused that The National Enquirer reportedly paid 150,000 for the story, but decided not to run it. "Welcome to Trump's America, where if the story is too steamy and trashy for The National Enquirer, you'll find it in The New Yorker." STEPHEN COLBERT "Russian curler, guy named Alexander Crushanitski which is a real person is under investigation for alleged use of a banned substance while curling. Of all of the sports to cheat in, the one where you sweep? I mean, who juices to get better at that? If my housekeeper started doing steroids, I wouldn't ban her, I'd give her a raise." JIMMY KIMMEL "'Black Panther' broke all sorts of records this weekend. It had the largest solo superhero opening of all time, the largest ever box office in February, and the most white people seeing a movie starring a black person who is not Will Smith." STEPHEN COLBERT "This is the Twitter beef we have all been waiting for: It's the leader of the free world versus Donald Trump." JAMES CORDEN, on Trump's recent tweet attacking Oprah Winfrey Jimmy Kimmel was caught on camera laughing during Fergie's now infamous performance at the N.B.A. All Star Game. On Tuesday, he gave his side of the story.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Television
HONG KONG China's factories are beginning to hum again. Its consumers are opening their wallets. Its trade tensions with the United States are easing. On paper, the world's second largest economy looks as if it may be shrugging off its worst slowdown in nearly three decades. China reported economic growth figures on Friday that suggest its economy is stabilizing after a year of consecutive quarterly declines. Wall Street has already been celebrating. Dig a little deeper, however, and difficult problems quickly become apparent. China's economy, a major engine of global growth, still faces some of its biggest challenges since it began opening up to the outside world four decades ago. Some of China's economic figures look better in part because they were notably weak a year earlier. The initial trade deal signed on Wednesday in Washington still leaves untouched American tariffs on hundreds of billions of dollars' worth of Chinese made goods. Perhaps most important, the Chinese economy is still struggling to kick an addiction to borrowing that has loaded the country with trillions of dollars in debt. "Right now, we are looking at the glass half full. The markets are extremely optimistic, and they are inclined to see the positive side," said Hao Zhou, a senior economist at Commerzbank. He added, "We have to keep in mind that the glass is also half empty." China on Friday reported annual growth of 6.1 percent, the slowest pace in 29 years. Economists, however, are likely to pay closer attention to figures that indicate that the economy stabilized in the final three months of last year. The figures show that the Chinese economy grew 6 percent in the fourth quarter, compared with the same period a year earlier, matching the pace of the July to September period. In the wake of the partial trade truce, Friday's economic figures paint a more positive picture for China's leaders. Strong economic performance helps the Communist Party keep an iron grip on China's political system. Big growth numbers have become more difficult to reach as the economy matures the once poor country is now the world's largest manufacturer and accounts for more than 14 trillion in annual output. But the lift from the trade pact is likely to be small. The deal preserves the bulk of President Trump's tariffs on 360 billion a year in China made goods, which will keep pressure on Chinese factories over the long term. In the short term, the trade war's impact on the Chinese economy has been smaller than expected by many, chipping about half of a percentage point off China's 2019 gross domestic product, S P Global, the research firm, estimated. "The trade deal takes the tail risk off the table," said Shaun Roache, chief economist at S P Global. "This is not going to be enough to change the underlying dynamic in China," he said. The economy's biggest pressure point may be self imposed by Beijing. Years of driving growth by lending and spending has loaded Chinese companies and local governments with huge amounts of debt. China has taken steps to curb excess lending and let careless borrowers fail, hurting growth in the short term. China's leaders appear to be open to taking that risk. The state news media has signaled a willingness for growth this year to fall below 6 percent for the first time since 1990. Economists have been ratcheting down their own growth estimates. Mr. Zhou, of Commerzbank, estimates growth will fall to 5.8 percent this year. S P estimates growth will fall to 5.7 percent. The lowered expectations reflect other pressing headwinds. One of the biggest is the deteriorating health of China's corporate sector. Businesses across the country, from toymakers to start ups to carmakers, are strapped for cash and struggling to pay their bills. 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. In the last three months of 2019, the number of late payments by companies to their clients, employees and creditors reached a record high, according to China Beige Book, the economic consulting firm. Some sectors were hit particularly hard. In China's auto industry, the world's largest, sales dropped more than 8 percent last year compared with 2018, according to a state owned industry association. The property industry, a key economic driver in a country where households park a great deal of their wealth in housing, is also showing signs of struggle. Short on cash in 2019, more and more Chinese companies issued i.o.u.s known as commercial acceptance bills instead of paying their bills in cash. By midyear, there were some 200 billion of these i.o.u.s circulating. A brisk trade in the i.o.u.s has developed. Some companies paid in commercial acceptance bills sell them at a discount when they experience their own financial problems, spreading the potential risk to other parts of the economy if the issuer ultimately cannot pay up. Other signs indicate that Chinese companies are having problems paying their bills. A record number of Chinese firms defaulted on bonds to local and foreign investors in 2019, including some high profile companies like a giant state run commodities firm and a conglomerate backed by the country's most prestigious university. Over the next two years, these companies will owe hundreds of billions of dollars to lenders and investors around the world. If they cannot pay, Chinese companies may find it getting more expensive to borrow money in the future. China's new restraint on lending has kept it from injecting vast amounts of money into the financial system and launching hugely expensive infrastructure projects to keep the economic gears spinning. At the same time, it is still freeing up money for companies to borrow, through steps like lowering the amount of cash from deposits that it requires China's banks to keep in reserve for unexpected emergencies. Those steps have not helped the economy much, which is a troubling trend, said Leland Miller, the chief executive of China Beige Book. A lot of money did make it to the 3,300 companies that his firm surveys, but their performance did not improve much. "The fact that you aren't seeing an 'oomph' is concerning," Mr. Miller said. What's more, he added, many of these firms are still swimming in debt.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Economy
"I know Uber made some substantial changes in terms of eliminating, quite decisively, some of the activities that were done more in secret and saying, that's just not part of who we are going forward," Mr. Olsen said. "That was my reaction when I learned about some of these activities: 'That just doesn't make sense to me.'" Increasing transparency and unifying the security team which is split into two groups, one focused on online security and one on physical security threats facing riders and drivers will be top priorities, Mr. Olsen said. "I think they understand the need to be transparent and ethical, and vigilant in complying not just with the laws and regulations that apply, but the norms and standards that Uber customers and stakeholders expect of the company," he said. The challenge, Mr. Olsen said, will be earning trust as Uber seeks to establish itself as safe, in the physical world as well as online. The company serves millions of riders each day and handles a wealth of personal data, making it a rich target for attackers.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Technology
Andrew White for The New York Times	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Style
Want more basketball in your inbox? Sign up for Marc Stein's weekly N.B.A. newsletter here. There have been three coaching changes in the N.B.A. this season. New York teams have accounted for two of them. It's just the third time in their N.B.A. histories that the Knicks and the Nets have made changes on the bench during the same season. Consider that bit of trivia courtesy of the Elias Sports Bureau in the wake of Coach Kenny Atkinson's sudden exit from the Nets one of the better illustrations of how funky 2019 20 has been for Gotham basketball. While Los Angeles basks in the Lakers' renaissance and the Clippers' bid to outperform the league's most glamorous franchise for the eighth consecutive season, it has been a downbeat slog on the other side of the country. The Knicks, of course, have been Knicks ing in earnest since a woeful start in November. Yet everything that has happened since their disastrous free agent summer should not obscure the fact that the Nets proclaimed by some to have won the N.B.A.'s off season have generated their own steady stream of unflattering headlines capped by Atkinson's leaving. Alarm bells were sounded recently after heavy losses to Atlanta and Memphis, but Atkinson's Saturday morning departure made roughly zero sense to outsiders on a performance basis especially since it so closely followed Caris LeVert's 51 point eruption in an overtime victory at Boston and a Friday night rout of San Antonio. In coaching circles, mind you, there was less surprise. That's because Atkinson was increasingly regarded as a prime candidate to be fired after the season, in the belief that some within the Nets want to hire a more high wattage name to oversee Kevin Durant's likely return next season from an Achilles' tendon tear. Rumblings about Atkinson's shaky job security had been circulating to such a degree that numerous league observers have seemed willing to buy the Nets' notion that the parting with Atkinson was as "mutual" as it gets. Such proclamations from teams are typically greeted with considerable skepticism, but in this case there is a sense that Atkinson had cause to ask out now if he knew the end was near anyway. That's even after Atkinson had steered the Nets into playoff position despite a 2 12 skid just after Christmas and an array of injuries that limited his three best players (Kyrie Irving, LeVert and Spencer Dinwiddie) to less than 100 minutes on the floor together. Knee and shoulder issues, remember, limited Irving to 20 games in his debut season as a Net. The Knicks' woes certainly run far deeper, given the state of their starless roster and the latest public relations disaster they absorbed in the Spike Lee flap. And, no, disaster is not too strong. Even if you find Lee's protests about which Madison Square Garden entrance he is allowed to use to be unbecoming rants from an entitled celebrity, be advised that such a takeaway probably does not mesh with how Lee's anger landed with players around the league. To that crucial audience, it surely appears as though the Knicks are mistreating their most loyal supporter with memories of Charles Oakley being thrown out of the Garden also still painfully fresh. I get so many messages from Knicks fans asking why the news media focuses so much attention on their team's missteps, but it is not done for sport. The intensity of this coverage stems from the fact that, with James L. Dolan as determined as ever to keep hold of the franchise "I am not selling," he wrote in a Feb. 6 statement it is a two decade pattern that shows no signs of abating. Dolan made his "I am not selling" statement while the recent hiring of Leon Rose as the newest Knicks president was still underway. Among the reasons Rose was chosen, I'm told, is that Dolan had grown sick of people telling him he needed to pursue an experienced executive such as Toronto's Masai Ujiri and turned to Rose instead after a decade of frequent business between the Knicks and Rose's former employers at Creative Artists Agency. You'll recall, though, that the Garden drama began long before we ever heard Rose's name. A 2 8 start this season had led to an unplanned news conference in which Steve Mills, then the team president, revealed that he felt "an obligation" to speak to reporters and announced that the front office was "not happy" with the team's start. No Knicks official has spoken publicly since, but David Fizdale was fired as coach soon thereafter, and Mills's own ouster followed, two days before the trade deadline in February. The Knicks then cannibalized the first win of the Rose era, over Houston on March 2, by alienating Lee and escalating the conflict after Lee criticized Dolan in a "First Take" interview with ESPN. Dolan's new branding consultant, Steve Stoute, likewise had a rocky interview on the same ESPN show just before the All Star Game, which earned a rebuke of its own through a Knicks statement. Yet it's only right that the Nets, after their own run of foibles, are kept under the microscope, too. Landing Durant and Irving in a same day swoop remains a glorious achievement. It's the sort of rebrand that has eluded the Knicks for ages, but the Nets still have plenty to fix, starting with the hiring of a coach (Tyronn Lue?) who can get the most out of Durant's eventual partnership with the mercurial Irving. Joe Tsai, the Nets' owner, is passionate and is said to hunger for championship contention. Sean Marks, the general manager, remains a well regarded lead executive despite the unconvincing explanations he has offered in the wake of the Atkinson announcement. But the culture and stability that the Nets have been touting since last season, which presumably helped them lure Durant and Irving, have been utterly rocked. The turbulence in Brooklyn began when Wilson Chandler was hit with a 25 game suspension in August for taking "small doses" of a banned growth hormone that the league named as Ipamorelin. David Levy, the prominent former television executive, lasted less than two months as the Nets' chief executive before the sides parted company in November under murky circumstances. In between fell the N.B.A.'s China controversy sparked by a tweet from Houston Rockets General Manger Daryl Morey in support of pro democracy protesters in Hong Kong. In the initial stages, Tsai received some backlash for writing a Facebook post that was critical of Morey and supportive of the Chinese government. The Nets may have moved into a different stratosphere after beating out Dolan to Durant and Irving's signatures, but after what we've seen over the past six months it is certainly fair to ask: Are they ready for the big step up? Can these Nets really manage two A listers now that they have them? Does the return of Durant, if he is sufficiently healthy, fix everything? How much is Tsai pushing for moves to try to speed up the timetable comfortable questions. It's not just the Knicks who have to face uncomfortable questions. Not after this season. Upon rejoining the Spurs, Popovich predictably declined to explain his reasoning, describing the process of selecting his replacement in his usual secretive manner. "It's basically our business and nobody else's," Popovich said. The following, then, are my own best deductions. The Spurs never announced this, and Popovich hasn't said so to me or publicly to any other reporter, but I believe he has considered Duncan his top assistant from the start. San Antonio shocked the league in July with a matter of fact news release announcing that Timmy was coming out of retirement to join Pop's staff. Hammon certainly has more coaching experience than Duncan. Ditto for Will Hardy, San Antonio's other on the bench assistant coach, who worked last summer as part of Pop's U.S.A. Basketball staff. But Duncan is the most important figure in Spurs history. He was the fulcrum for five championship teams. So the theory here is that Duncan became Pop's top aide no matter how thin his coaching resume was as soon as he agreed to fill the void on San Antonio's staff created by Ettore Messina's return to European basketball with Olimpia Milano. There are lots of Hammon fans out there who undoubtedly saw Duncan's one night elevation as a significant slight to the first woman to land a coaching job in N.B.A. history. I understand that viewpoint and imagine that my theory may only add to the disappointment for some. Hammon, on pure coaching merit, has certainly earned a shot and didn't get it. Yet I can't say, as a longtime Spurs observer, that I was stunned by how this played out. By bypassing Hammon, Popovich has invited a fresh round of criticism in what has been a difficult season, with San Antonio's run of 22 consecutive playoff appearances in jeopardy. But you can never be surprised, in the Spurs' universe, when Duncan is at the front of Pop's line. Whatever the circumstances. Q: The Bucks have been destroying their opponents this season, so close games have been few and far between. Could that be a bad thing? Could a limited amount of crunchtime during the regular season cause late game issues in the playoffs? Mike Chamernik (Chicago, Ill.) Stein: I am the sort of alarmist who, yes, sees this as a potential issue. I've asked a handful of coaches, and the majority disagree. The Bucks are known for having a pretty clear offensive identity devoid of execution issues so long as Giannis Antetokounmpo is healthy and in the lineup. The (purportedly) impartial observers I consulted didn't echo your concern. But I stubbornly cling to the antiquated notion that every team has a crunchtime persona, good or bad, no matter how many times analytics experts tell me there is more randomness to one possession basketball games than old guard reporters care to acknowledge. Entering Tuesday's play, Milwaukee had played a league low four games decided by 3 points or fewer, going 3 1. The other seven teams in the East which currently hold a playoff spot have all played at least nine. Please remind me to revisit this in June so we can evaluate how much it did (or didn't) affect the Bucks to so rarely face a push in the regular season. Q: You wrote in last week's newsletter how "no one feels sorry for the rich owners of big time sports franchises." I would suggest that no one is much interested in them, either. So could you tell me why do you feel compelled to write about them? John Mundie (Ottawa, Canada) Stein: It would appear that John was not a fan of my recent missive about Wes Edens, who doubles as a co owner of the Milwaukee Bucks and a co owner of Aston Villa in the English Premier League. I am particularly fascinated any time the N.B.A. and top level international soccer intersect, or when the N.B.A. and tennis intersect, because those are my three favorite sports. I reject the notion that no one wants to read about N.B.A. team owners, but even if I were to agree with you, these would have qualified as special circumstances. This is just the third time since the Nets joined the N.B.A. for the 1976 77 season, according to the Elias Sports Bureau, that both the Knicks and the Nets have made in season coaching changes. In 2003 4, Lenny Wilkens replaced Don Chaney (and the interim coach Herb Williams) with the Knicks and Lawrence Frank replaced Byron Scott with the Nets after Scott had made back to back trips to the N.B.A. finals. In 2015 16, Kurt Rambis replaced Derek Fisher with the Knicks and Tony Brown replaced Lionel Hollins with the Nets. Bradley Beal's recent scoring tear in Washington has doubled the number of players averaging at least 30 points per game this season, though it is highly unlikely that he can catch Houston's James Harden for the N.B.A. scoring title. Harden entered Tuesday's play at 34.3 points per game, with Beal up to 30.4 after averaging 36.2 points in 10 games since the All Star break. Although Houston has stumbled to an 0 4 start in March, Russell Westbrook's February production deserves another citation here after he lost out to the Los Angeles Lakers' LeBron James for Western Conference player of the month honors. The much maligned Westbrook, 31, played some of the best basketball of his career last month, averaging 33.4 points, 7.3 rebounds, 6.0 assists and shot 54.9 percent from the field in eight games. Miami's Duncan Robinson, with 240 3 pointers and counting, has already set a record for made 3s in a season by an undrafted player. Six other undrafted players, according to Basketball Reference, have made at least 200 3 pointers in a season: Damon Jones (225 for Miami in 2004 5), John Starks (217 for the Knicks in 1994 95), Raja Bell (205 for Phoenix in 2006 7), Joe Ingles (204 for Utah in 2017 18), Robert Covington (203 for Philadelphia in 2017 18) and Wes Matthews (201 for Portland in 2013 14).	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Sports
While France's Cannes Film Festival and New York's Tribeca Film Festival have been felled by the pandemic, the Toronto International Film Festival announced Wednesday that it planned to go forward with socially distanced screenings for its films in September. Organizers of the festival, which usually offers the first chance to see some potential Oscar contenders, said the 2020 event would be a smaller affair with fewer films 50 new features compared with its typical 250 to 400 and a mix of physical, outdoor, drive in and digital screenings. The festival unveiled the first eight films on Wednesday, which included Halle Berry's directing debut, the mixed martial arts focused "Bruised." Also on the schedule are "Ammonite," which stars Saoirse Ronan and Kate Winslet as lovers; "Concrete Cowboys" with Idris Elba; and "Good Joe Bell," starring Mark Wahlberg. The opening night film is set to be announced later this summer. All 50 titles will premiere as physical, socially distanced screenings over the first five days of the 10 day festival, which is set for Sept. 10 19. Virtual red carpets, interactive talks, cast reunions and Q As with cast members and filmmakers will also be in the mix.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Movies
The biographical jukebox musical of which "Jersey Boys" provides a shining example, thanks to all the Brylcreem is the cockroach of Broadway. It has a small head, a primitive nervous system and will probably outlast the apocalypse. Even by that standard, "Summer: The Donna Summer Musical," which opened on Monday at the Lunt Fontanne Theater, is a blight. Despite the exciting vocalism of a cast led by the formidable LaChanze, it reduces the late Queen of Disco and pioneer of electronica to a few factoids and song samples that make her seem profoundly inconsequential. You could learn more (and more authentically) by reading a thoughtful obituary while listening to her hits "Hot Stuff," "Last Dance," "She Works Hard for the Money," among many others online. But then you would not be contributing to the music publishing enterprise that keeps jukebox musicals coming no matter how hard they get stomped on by critics. Among the producers of "Summer" are Tommy Mottola, who helped reboot a version of the label that released Ms. Summer's early hits, and Universal Music Group, which oversees her catalog. (Universal also has a hand in "Mamma Mia!" and "Escape to Margaritaville.") I don't doubt the sincerity of their interest in brands that can still make them millions. It's the sincerity of their interest in musical theater I question. That's because I found myself asking throughout the show's intermission less 100 minutes: Can't they do any better than this? Certainly Ms. Summer's life merits a more sophisticated treatment. Born LaDonna Adrian Gaines in Boston in 1948, she sang in church, dropped out of high school to try her luck in New York and by 1968 was playing Sheila in the Munich company of "Hair." While in Germany she not only married (briefly) the man who would provide her last name and first child but also met Giorgio Moroder and Pete Bellotte, who would produce 11 of her 20 albums. In 1975 they recorded the song "Love to Love You Baby," which in a 17 minute, 22 orgasm dance mix became her first hit and made her world famous. The story of Ms. Summer asking the two men to dim the lights and close their eyes while she writhes on the studio floor singing the hypersexed number is too good not to stage, and yet apparently not too good to stage poorly. The director Des McAnuff, who with Colman Domingo and Robert Cary also wrote the musical's book, skitters away from it after about 10 seconds, just as the show over all skitters away from almost everything even slightly awkward or troubling and thus interesting about Ms. Summer's life and career. It totally botches, for instance, her relationship with the gay community, which instantly embraced her on the radio and the dance floor for reasons the show doesn't explore. Comments that Ms. Summer later made about God not creating "Adam and Steve" (let alone others she denied making about AIDS as a punishment for sin) left many gay men feeling betrayed a betrayal they attributed to her resurgent Christianity. Rather than dramatizing this fascinating conflict head on, the musical brushes it aside as an ancient misunderstanding and uses Ms. Summer's gay publicist as an alibi. (Singing "Friends Unknown," she mourns his death to show she couldn't have been homophobic.) It does not even mention her 1979 announcement that she was born again; she sings "I Believe in Jesus" instead. Similarly, "Summer" sketches years of sexual abuse by her pastor with little more than a leer, a shoehorned number ("Pandora's Box") and a few vague remarks. It's dramaturgy by song hook. At the core of all of these missed opportunities is the split between Ms. Summer's manufactured image as a sex goddess and her self image as a good girl. The musical makes its only stab at conceptual expressiveness by dividing Ms. Summer into three avatars to theatricalize that split: the mature Diva Donna (LaChanze), the young adult Disco Donna (Ariana DeBose) and, a bit desperately, the preteen Duckling Donna (Storm Lever). This is hardly new. "Lennon" gave us five John Lennons; "The Cher Show," scheduled to open on Broadway in December, has three title characters. But as used in "Summer," the triple casting comes off as a gimmick, possibly necessary to spare any one performer a grueling sing but always dissipating whatever narrative energy the authors manage to gin up. Still, I welcomed the division, because the script is otherwise appallingly banal, taking as its format the line of least resistance: a "concert of a lifetime" in which Ms. Summer recalls her highs and lows. None of them, including a 1976 suicide attempt and a homicidal ex boyfriend, are dwelled upon long enough to register. That shortchanges both the drama and the songs, which are already attenuated by a program favoring breadth (23 titles) over depth (many are just quick snippets). They thus provide little sense of what made the originals, with their hypnotic builds, so exciting. "Summer" does give you a sense of what makes Broadway singing so exciting, though; along with Pavlovian nostalgia, that's probably what had the audience cheering the night I saw it. (Also cheering: recorded voices shouting "We love you, Donna!" and "The queen is back" to sweeten the opening scenes.) LaChanze is incapable of musical insincerity, however insincere the script may be, and delivers the songs thrillingly, if not in the ethereal, seemingly tossed off Summer manner. Ms. DeBose and Ms. Lever connect less convincingly to the material, but neither they nor the hardworking ensemble mostly women, often playing men are the problem. The problem is in part the jukebox form; disco music, with its skimpy lyrics and lack of development, is especially unfit for narrative use. And trapped within the arena concert format, the choreographer Sergio Trujillo can show us only a little of what dancing to Ms. Summer's tunes at Studio 54 or the Paradise Garage was like. Another difficulty is the show's quasi authorized nature; her second husband, the musician Bruce Sudano, is credited as a story consultant, which may be why all the rough edges have been removed. But the main problem is Mr. McAnuff's lowest common denominator style. "Summer" is neither as slick as his production of "Jersey Boys" nor as tacky as his "Doctor Zhivago" yet it seems to want to imitate both. (Mr. Domingo's own plays, including "Dot," aim much higher.) Robert Brill's scenic design consists mostly of light boxes on which Sean Nieuwenhuis projects absurdly literal images, including a lipstick tube for a scene in which Duckling Donna puts on lipstick and a box of Marlboros when she lights up a cigarette. Apparently the show is pitched to the duckling in all of us. If ever there were a diva unsuited to the expurgated, down talking children's book treatment, it's Donna Summer. Her conflicts were adult ones, the stuff of real drama; her music more original and, to those who loved it, more liberating than it ever seems in "Summer."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Theater
Our guide to plays and musicals coming to New York stages and a few last chance picks of shows that are about to close. Our reviews of open shows are at nytimes.com/reviews/theater. 'CURSE OF THE STARVING CLASS' at the Pershing Square Signature Center (in previews; opens on May 13). In Sam Shepard's brutal and funny rural California psychodrama, revived by Signature and directed by Terry Kinney, family life is rough on doors, artichokes, a chicken, a lamb and most every person involved. Maggie Siff and David Warshofsky play Mom and Dad. 212 244 7529, signaturetheatre.org 'DYING CITY' at the Tony Kiser Theater at Second Stage Theater (previews start on May 14; opens on June 3). Christopher Shinn directs a revival of his 2006 play about wars, both public and private. Mary Elizabeth Winstead stars as a therapist mourning her husband (Colin Woodell, who also plays the husband's twin). Reviewing the play's New York premiere in 2007, Ben Brantley wrote that its initial mysteries spawn "other, deeper questions that stay with you into the night." 212 246 4422, 2st.com 'HAPPY TALK' at the Pershing Square Signature Center (in previews; opens on May 16). Though the playwright Jesse Eisenberg usually writes about awful people, he's centering his latest New Group play on a less awful one. Under Scott Elliott's direction, Susan Sarandon stars as Lorraine, a woman caring for her addled family, and her mother's home health aide, while rehearsing the role of Bloody Mary in "South Pacific." Will it be some enchanted evening? 212 279 4200, thenewgroup.org 'LITTLE WOMEN' at the Cherry Lane Theater (previews start on May 15; opens on June 4). Meg, Jo, Beth (poor Beth) and Amy are taking their unparalleled sister act to Primary Stages. Kate Hamill, who has created lively versions of "Pride and Prejudice" and "Vanity Fair," adapts the March sisters to the stage. Sarna Lapine directs, and Hamill stars as Meg, with Kristolyn Lloyd as Jo. 866 811 4111, primarystages.org 'LONG LOST' at City Center Stage I (previews start on May 14; opens on June 4). David and Billy are long estranged brothers. Should they stay that way? In a new play from Donald Margulies, a poet of strained friendships and family relations, Billy (Lee Tergesen) suddenly shows up in the Wall Street office of David (Kelly AuCoin). Annie Parisse and Alex Wolff also star. Daniel Sullivan directs for Manhattan Theater Club. 212 581 1212, nycitycenter.org Read about the events that our other critics have chosen for the week ahead. 'PROOF OF LOVE' at the Minetta Lane Theater (in previews; opens on May 14). See it with your eyes before you hear it through your earbuds. In this Chisa Hutchinson play, produced by Audible and New York Theater Workshop, Brenda Pressley stars as a middle class matriarch facing the devastation of her marriage, family and life. Jade King Carroll directs. 800 982 2787, proofoflovetheplay.com 'THE SECRET LIFE OF BEES' at the Atlantic Theater Company at the Linda Gross Theater (previews start on May 12; opens on June 13). A new musical from Lynn Nottage, Duncan Sheik and Susan Birkenhead swarms into the Atlantic. Based on Sue Monk Kidd's novel, set in South Carolina in 1964, it follows a young girl and her housekeeper who take refuge with three sisters (LaChanze, Eisa Davis and Anastacia McCleskey). Sam Gold directs. 866 811 4111, atlantictheater.org 'MRS. MURRAY'S MENAGERIE' at Greenwich House Theater (closes on May 11). This play, devised by the Mad Ones troupe, is about a children's television show going off the air in 1979. Jesse Green had particular praise for the acting and the characters, created by the ensemble and Lila Neugebauer. "The whole project," Green wrote, "depends on an understanding of how people expose cannot help exposing their truest selves in every gesture and utterance they make." arsnovanyc.com 'NORMA JEANE BAKER OF TROY' at the Shed (closes on May 19). Anne Carson's cryptic meditation on Euripides' "Helen," directed by Katie Mitchell, reaches the end of its run at the new arts center in Hudson Yards. Ben Whishaw stars as a businessman anxious to prove the parallels between Marilyn Monroe and Helen of Troy, with Renee Fleming as his faithful stenographer. Ben Brantley found the play abstruse, however, he wrote, "the precise calibration of the physical production holds your attention." theshed.org	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Theater
If you had the word "crisis" in your presidential address drinking game, my sympathies. In President Trump's first televised address from the Oval Office, and the rebuttal from Representative Nancy Pelosi and Senator Charles Schumer, there was a lot of crisis talk: "Crisis of the heart," "Manufacturing a crisis." The president cast the crisis as a dire, dangerous wave of immigration coming across the Mexican border. For the Democrats, the crisis was the extended government shutdown, precipitated by Mr. Trump's insistence on funding for his promised border wall. What there was not, after two days of media drama, was a convincing argument for why this needed to be a prime time event at all. There was no news. There was no new argument. There was just a wall of sound, and the American viewing audience paid for it. Nor was there much compelling television, unless you're an avid maker of internet memes. This was not a friendly setting for either party. The Oval Office, which can confer gravitas on a typical president, simply saps this atypical one. Mr. Trump comes alive playing off a crowd, like the ones he drove wild with promises that Mexico would pay for the wall. Plopped behind a desk, sniffling, reading sleepily from a teleprompter, he was a comedian playing an empty room. Ms. Pelosi and Mr. Schumer, meanwhile, shared a lectern in a hallway, side by side, one glaring as the other spoke, looking unfortunately like a cross between Grant Wood's "American Gothic" and the twins from "The Shining." There was a bit of new rhetoric from Mr. Trump (his prepared speech referenced morality, something he rarely does off the cuff), and a few sound bites from the opposition ("We don't govern by temper tantrum," Mr. Schumer said). But you heard nothing you couldn't absorb from a few minutes surfing cable news, or political Twitter, any time of the day. So what did all this accomplish? Well, it got Mr. Trump on TV, his true home. After a run of headlines for the new Democratic House, it gained him two days of newscasts about him, him, him. Cable reporters gave hourly updates on whether the president might declare a national emergency. He became the protagonist again, the home audience hanging on for the dramatic reveal. Whatever the semantics, the networks know they can't trust Mr. Trump to tell the truth. They know this because he went on live TV twice last week in a Cabinet meeting and in a long Rose Garden ramble and said numerous things about this very topic that were demonstrably, empirically false. Assessing whether a source is credible isn't bias. It's not political. It's journalism. In this case, the networks had more evidence than Charlie Brown did about Lucy and her football. (This comparison may be unfair to Charlie Brown, who did not act out of fear that the football would tweet mean things about him.) Instead, the broadcast networks carried Mr. Trump's address live, and without the real live, onscreen fact checking that news outlets have experimented with in other speeches. ABC scrambled to cram in speed talking fact checks between speeches, its correspondents correcting information about the number of illegal border crossings, fact checking Mr. Trump's claim that Mexico would pay for the wall and noting that most heroin comes into the U.S. through legal border crossings. NBC and CBS focused more on the politics of the shutdown, going forward. (The cable networks, of course, had all night to debate and speculate.) CBS's screen graphics were especially friendly to the president. The chyrons under its analysis read "President Trump: 'The Border Wall Will Pay for Itself'" with no assessment of the claim "President Trump: Border Wall Is 'Just Common Sense'" and "Pres. Trump: Securing Border a 'Choice Between Right and Wrong.'" There were no captions quoting the Democratic rebuttal. Live airtime for Oval Office addresses isn't an entitlement. The broadcast networks declined to air a 2014 speech by Barack Obama on immigration! on the grounds that it would be essentially political. They could have done the same for Mr. Trump, then covered the news he made, if there was any, with context and fact checks.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Television
SAN FRANCISCO After the news that one of Silicon Valley's stars secretly funded a lawsuit to bring down a gossip site, the overwhelming response in the tech community has been: More power to him. Peter Thiel Facebook investor, PayPal co founder and a billionaire with a highly developed instinct for revenge is being hailed by the Valley's elite for his stealthy actions against Gawker Media, whose Valleywag gossip blog outed him as gay and irritated other important tech people during its brief existence. The suit, brought by the professional wrestler Hulk Hogan over a sex tape, resulted in a 140 million verdict against Gawker. With its response, the tech community's message is clear: Treat us the way we want to be treated or we might retaliate. Even though Silicon Valley professes to be for free speech this is where Twitter was invented, after all the reaction opens a window into the thinking of the digerati, who are becoming more guarded and elusive even as their products make the world more transparent. Given Mr. Thiel's "beliefs and objectives, I can't fault him for his approach," Parker Thompson, a partner at the venture capital firm 500 Startups, said in an interview. Mr. Thompson was just one of dozens of techies in Silicon Valley who talked or tweeted their approval of Mr. Thiel and their disapproval, or worse, of Gawker and Valleywag in the last few days. "Click bait journalists need to be taught lessons," said the billionaire Vinod Khosla, whose efforts to close off public access to a beach on his property were covered by Valleywag. Gawker "desperately persisted in trying to destroy people without basis. No accountability," said the venture capitalist Chris Sacca. "Thank you peterthiel," wrote Jessica Livingston, co founder of the influential start up incubator Y Combinator, which was occasionally tweaked by Valleywag. At least one tech billionaire, however, is on Gawker's side. Pierre Omidyar, founder of eBay, tweeted, "People who oppose even the slightest common sense limits on Second Amendment should understand the same principle applies to First." Late Friday, First Look Media, which was founded by Mr. Omidyar, said that in keeping with its mission to protect the First Amendment, it would be helping to organize supporting briefs for Gawker's appeal. "The possibility that Gawker may have to post a bond for 50 million or more just to be able to pursue its right to appeal the jury's verdict raises serious concerns about press freedom," Lynn Oberlander, general counsel for First Look, said in a statement. "We welcome the support at the appellate level," Gawker said in its own statement. In some ways Silicon Valley's reaction is not surprising. A journalist's job, at least in theory, is to ask questions and print the truth, which means it is less than loved in citadels of power. But in Silicon Valley, even the media hates the media. "Gawker can burn in hell," the TechCrunch founder Michael Arrington said on Twitter, though he also called Mr. Thiel "cowardly" for not being open about financing the lawsuits against Gawker. TechCrunch began as a site that worked hand in hand with start ups to chart their progress. For Ken Shotts, who teaches ethics and strategy at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, Mr. Thiel's secret campaign against Gawker brought to mind General Motors' pursuit of Ralph Nader 50 years ago. G.M. set private detectives on Mr. Nader to get the dirt on him that would nullify his criticism of its Corvair car. G.M. went beyond the pale, and was punished. The president of G.M. was forced to appear before Congress and apologize for harassing and intimidating the company's critic. "Companies face constraints," said Mr. Shotts. "That's a good thing. Individuals are less constrained, and billionaires hardly at all." From this perspective, what Mr. Thiel did was less of an aberration and more of that old Silicon Valley stand by: a new product launch. It is now out of stealth mode and getting good reviews among potential users. As a result, Mr. Shotts said, "I wouldn't be surprised to see more cases like this." The situation is complicated by the fact that these days rich tech companies, their owners or venture capitalists are as much the owners and producers of the media as the subject. With the traditional media in a weakened state, it is a trend that seems to be accelerating. Andreessen Horowitz, one of Silicon Valley's most prominent venture firms, owns a stake in BuzzFeed and recently increased its investment in Medium, a platform that also produces content. Facebook came under scrutiny this month after reports from Gizmodo, a Gawker property, that it was playing down conservative news. "Gawker tried to have it both ways," Venky Ganesan, managing director of the venture capital firm Menlo Ventures, said in an interview. "They wanted to be taken seriously as journalists, yet they didn't follow all the norms." Twenty five years ago, tech coverage was the domain of geeks and trade reporters people who understood their way around a motherboard, were excited by it and wouldn't dream of crossing certain boundaries. Now, with tech at its zenith, much of the coverage of the industry is still done by enthusiasts. Combine this with the need to get the power players to come to the media's conferences and there is a real reluctance to look behind the scenes. Elizabeth Spiers, who was the first Gawker writer and is now an entrepreneur, noted on her blog that the "tech press is largely fawning toward successful entrepreneurs and venture capitalists, and mostly unintentionally." The result, she wrote, is "a sense of entitlement in the industry where denizens of Silicon Valley expect the media to actively support them and any negative portrayals are met with real anger and resentment, even when they're 100 percent accurate." Sam Altman, the president of Y Combinator, tried to chart a middle ground between Gawker and Mr. Thiel in a series of posts on Twitter. "Gawker is disgusting for outing people, publishing sex tapes, etc.," he wrote, but also posted that "it'd be bad if rich people could start silencing the media." He concluded by blaming the legal system.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Media
The god of dreams is an apt subject for any dance, where reality is seldom the main focus. In "Morphia Series," the Melbourne dancer and choreographer Helen Herbertson and the designer Ben Cobham present a morsel of a piece inspired by Morpheus, that god. Before it starts, audience members are offered an actual morsel: blue brie, passion fruit mascarpone, nectarine and a rose petal on polenta. You know that odd sensation when a dream feels like a long journey, but probably lasted only a few minutes? In its best moments, "Morphia Series," which opened at the Baryshnikov Arts Center on Tuesday and is performed for 12 people at a time, occurs in that surreal place and clocks in at a brisk 18 minutes. Is it dense or wispy? In the end, "Morphia Series," part of the Coil festival and presented by the arts center and Performance Space 122, relies more on effect than on substance. It does, however, create the spooky sensation of being swallowed by darkness. Audience members are guided to their seats in the pitch black theater. Some distance away, a square box is illuminated; inside is Ms. Herbertson, standing still, in silhouette, amid swirling fog. She stretches her arm out until it resembles a serpent. This duet of darkness and depth morphs from one dreamscape to the next. After a blackout, Ms. Herbertson this time her body etched more faintly is surrounded by rosy light. Throughout the production, natural sounds, like rustling wind, chirping birds and lapping water, seep into the space as a voice over recites wistful lines like, "She wanted to stand in the midst of a mighty storm protected by glass."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Dance
LOS ANGELES As N.B.A. teams migrate to Florida for the N.B.A.'s scheduled restart later this month, players have expressed a range of concerns. They are concerned about the coronavirus, and Florida's status as one of the pandemic's hot spots. They are concerned about being separated from their families. They are concerned about being stuck inside the so called bubble at Walt Disney World near Orlando for several weeks, if not months. And they are concerned about diverting attention from social justice issues. LeBron James, who has not spoken publicly since the league's plans were formalized last month, may share some of those concerns. But it is also clear at least to his Los Angeles Lakers teammates that he wants this restart to succeed. He is 35, on the back edge of his prime. He has a clear shot at another ring, what would be his fourth. The circumstances are odd, but the hunger is the same. "We know what's at stake here, and we might not get it again," the shooting guard Danny Green said Tuesday in a Zoom conference call with reporters. "If you have a special group, you better take advantage of it." The Lakers, who were expected to depart for Florida on Thursday, hope to be marooned inside the N.B.A.'s private campus at Disney World until early October, through the end of the finals. They are scheduled to play the first of their eight "seeding" games on July 30 (against the Los Angeles Clippers, another championship contender) before the playoffs start in mid August. That is the plan, anyway. With coronavirus cases spiking in Florida and a handful of teams shutting down their local practice facilities before traveling, it is a fragile experiment. An outbreak within the bubble could conceivably shut the whole thing down. "I would be lying to you if I told you everybody was completely comfortable and had no ill feelings toward how it's going to be," said Jared Dudley, a forward who did not express a great deal of excitement about being quarantined in his hotel room for his 35th birthday on Friday. "I think we all know it's a risk." During the nearly four month pause in the season, teammates said, James kept in peak physical condition while moonlighting as one of the team's social chairs. On group chats, he relayed information about which gyms were available. He offered guidance to teammates on how they could use their voices effectively amid the civil unrest that gripped the country. But he also kept the mood light, sustaining the team's sense of camaraderie. More recently, James was a persistent presence at the Lakers' practice facility, where players cycled in and out for individual workouts. "He's in the gym early, he's leaving late and he's the last guy working and probably working the longest and the hardest," Green said. "He hasn't changed at all, man." His consistency is all the more striking considering how unusual this season has been for the N.B.A. and for the Lakers, in particular. Green likened it to being on a "roller coaster in a cave." Before the season even started, James waded into a geopolitical storm involving China and the N.B.A. In January, Kobe Bryant and his 13 year old daughter, Gianna, were among nine people who died in a helicopter crash, a tragedy that devastated the Lakers organization. Less than two months later, the season was suspended because of the coronavirus pandemic. At the time, James had the Lakers primed for a title run. At 49 14, they had the best record in the Western Conference, and James was playing some of the most complete basketball of his career, averaging 25.7 points and a league best 10.6 assists a game. Now, James has flecks of gray in his quarantine beard. He has been fairly bionic during his 17 year career. But he had a significant groin injury last season, and no athlete not even James can be dominant forever. Despite the season's idiosyncrasies, he seems determined to seize the opportunity before him. "It gives me a great deal of confidence," Vogel said. But the Lakers will not be whole at Disney World. Avery Bradley, the team's best perimeter defender, opted out of the restart for family reasons. To fill the empty spot on the roster, the Lakers last week signed J.R. Smith, who has own shared history with James. As teammates with the Cleveland Cavaliers, James and Smith made four straight trips to the N.B.A. finals, helping the team win it all in 2016. But their partnership imploded in 2018, when Smith forgot the score during a critical possession of Game 1 of the finals against the Golden State Warriors. In one of the more meme able moments in league history, James glared at Smith at midcourt with his arms outstretched. The Cavaliers wound up getting swept, and James signed with the Lakers a few weeks later. Now, they have the chance for a reset together again, this time in a bubble, vying for another crack at a title. Smith said he would bring his keen understanding of The LeBron James Experience with him wisdom he could share with younger teammates in a playoff setting. "I know 'Bron can get pissed," Smith said, "and people are not going to know how to deal with it." Smith last appeared in uniform during the 2018 19 season, when he played in 11 games for the Cavaliers. His time in Cleveland came to an end after he accused the team of intentionally losing games. He remained unsigned this season as a free agent, though he had a tryout with the Lakers in February. They opted to sign Dion Waiters instead. In a conference call with reporters this week, Smith said he went through a deep period of depression when he thought his career was finished. "And it lasted a few months," he said. "I'm a big video gamer, and I didn't even play '2K' anymore."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Sports
Eric Goode, 59, is a New York entrepreneur who is an owner of downtown establishments like the Bowery Hotel and the Waverly Inn. He was a creator of Area, the art gallery nightclub from the 1980s. He is also a conservationist with something of an obsession for turtles. And now he is the plaintiff in a federal lawsuit that accuses President Trump of violating the Emoluments Clause of the Constitution, a once obscure provision intended to prevent federal officials, including the president, from falling under the influence of foreign powers. Mr. Goode is an unlikely, reluctant and unusually prominent plaintiff in the high stakes constitutional lawsuit. "I do question the wisdom of it," he said over a cappuccino in the lobby of the Bowery Hotel, which looks like a British manor's library with a rain forest growing in it. "Hopefully I am not going to get audited and harassed for the next three years, but it seemed like the right thing to do. I'm worried about veiled forms of retribution." He was just back from a Rainforest Trust board meeting in Virginia and was headed to the West Coast outpost of his Turtle Conservancy in Ojai, Calif., where Galapagos tortoises and other creatures, some of which he has helped rescue from the black market, roam safely. His celebrity friends come there to roam, too. Their specific breeds, he doesn't want to mention. Back to the Constitution. The foreign Emoluments Clause prohibits federal officials from accepting payment from foreign governments without the consent of Congress. It was written in the day when the founding fathers worried about kings trying to buy the favor of officials, and about such employees trying to make money off their positions. It hasn't been talked about much in the past 200 years. But because Mr. Trump maintains an ownership stake in the Trump Organization, with vast hotel, residential and commercial real estate holdings that foreign governments can direct business to, emoluments are once again a flash point. The White House directed requests for comment about the suit to the Trump Organization, where a spokeswoman did not respond to emails. Sheri Dillon, a lawyer who represents the Trump Organization, has disputed that the Emoluments Clause applies to hotel rooms being rented by representatives of foreign governments, arguing that payments based on market rates for services do not represent an emolument. But in a news conference held just before Mr. Trump's inauguration, she said that the company would donate profits derived from foreign governments to the Treasury. Mr. Goode, whose hotels have catered to foreign dignitaries, isn't buying that argument. "You can't say you are going to donate the money from foreign dignitaries because it's their collective entourages. How can you even quantify that?" he said. "The notion that the presidency doesn't benefit your business is really absurd." Of particular interest is the Trump International Hotel in Washington. The Kuwaiti ambassador to the United States, for example, held a party there in February, according to NPR. And Politico has reported that a lobbying firm working for Saudi Arabia paid for a room at the hotel after Inauguration Day. Last month, a Washington artist named Robin Bell managed to project the words "Pay Trump Bribes Here" onto the hotel's facade. Mr. Goode had no hand in this, he said, but it tickled him. "I love it," he said. "Reminds me a little of what Louie Psihoyos does." The emoluments lawsuit was originally filed on Jan. 23 by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, a liberal government watchdog group whose board includes constitutional scholars and former White House ethics lawyers. Some have argued, however, that the organization, known as CREW, lacked standing to file the case, saying that it is not sufficiently injured. CREW disputes that it lacks standing. But it went looking for additional plaintiffs, which was not an easy sell. "We spoke to a number of hotel owners. Eric was the only appropriate hotel owner willing to join the suit," said Jordan Libowitz, a spokesman for CREW. Suing the president "is a difficult decision for any person to make," said Noah Bookbinder, the group's executive director. In April, the suit was updated to add as plaintiffs Restaurant Opportunities Centers United, a union that represents restaurant workers and owners, as well as Jill Phaneuf, an event booker for the Glover Park Hotel, which is near embassies in Washington. Then it landed Mr. Goode. "We really respect someone who is willing to stand on principle and take that plunge," Mr. Bookbinder said. Laurence H. Tribe, a constitutional scholar who is among the lawyers representing CREW, said the addition of Mr. Goode helped buttress the suit's legitimacy. "It makes it inconceivable that this lawsuit would be tossed out," he said, offering a bit wishful thinking, as the Justice Department, which is representing Mr. Trump, will almost certainly try to move at some point to have the case dismissed. Then Mr. Tribe's legal theory will really be tested. The lawsuit argues that Mr. Goode cannot compete in attracting hotel guests and diners representing foreign governments who believe they may gain favor with Mr. Trump by staying at his establishments. "As a hotel and restaurant owner, Mr. Goode will be harmed due to a loss of revenue by defendant's ongoing financial interest in businesses which receive payments from foreign states, the United States, or state or local government."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Style
Not long after bulldozers began pushing aside dirt for a new waterfront housing complex on South Korea's southern coast last year, construction was halted and paleontologists were called in. South Korean law mandates that new construction sites in the region, already famous for the fossilized tracks of dinosaurs, ancient turtles, frogs and lizards, make accommodations for fossil discoveries and this was a big one. Underneath the topsoil, the bedrock yielded large, pristine footprints over 100 million years old. Kyung Soo Kim, a professor of paleontology at Chinju National University of Education in South Korea, took samples back to his laboratory. Initially, he thought the tracks were made by a pterosaur, one of the large winged reptiles that ruled the skies during the age of dinosaurs. But in November, he picked up his colleague, Martin G. Lockley, at the airport and they drove straight to Dr. Kim's lab. There, Dr. Lockley, a specialist in fossilized tracks at the University of Colorado Denver, quickly determined the tracks belonged to an undiscovered species, a large prehistoric ancestor of modern crocodiles that moved about on only two feet. "I was very surprised, and I did not believe him at first," Dr. Kim said. "But he was right. The tracks prove they were bipedal." Today's semiaquatic crocodiles are decidedly quadrupedal low to the ground, durable, fearsome and fast. But strong evidence showed that this prehistoric creature got around on two feet. While the tracks for the back feet were clearly defined from heel to toe and are found in regular formation, no tracks for the front limbs were discovered. That suggests bipedalism, much like you and me. Dr. Lockley and Dr. Kim estimate that the type of ancient crocodylomorph that made the tracks were roughly nine feet long from snout to tail, with their heads likely raised a few feet up from the ground, able to see prey and predators from a distance. They lived and hunted alongside dinosaurs, and based on the low frequency of fossilized track evidence, they were not a dominant species of the era. The report was published last week in the journal, Scientific Reports. Mark A. Norell, the chairman of paleontology at the American Museum of Natural History in New York, was struck by the size of the animal that left the tracks, and agrees that it was likely bipedal. "For that time period, in that part of the world and the size of the animal," said Dr. Norell, who did not participate in the study, "it's definitely a new species." The species itself has no name yet, as there are no fossilized bones to confirm its existence. But the researchers named the tracks Batrachopus grandis. Unlike today's crocodile tracks, which are made from animals with feet splayed more to the outside, the track way of this ancient biped is narrow and well defined. "If you put down a chalk line, these things would pass the sobriety test," Dr. Lockley said. Some could argue that the reason there are no front footprints is that the animal may have been wading through a body of water. But Dr. Lockley countered that tracks left by a partially submerged animal would only have shown the front claws of their feet as they pushed themselves along, not the heels. These imprints clearly show the full foot, Dr. Kim said, and in some the cases the impressions of skin are seen, too. When first presented with the tracks, Dr. Lockley noticed they were the same shape as tracks made by another crocodylomorph, which was the size of a house cat, over 100 millions years before. But a quadruped made those tracks. "All we've done is find exactly the same type of track 100 million years later with two differences," Dr. Lockley said. "One, the tracks are huge. And try as we might, we can find no evidence for the front footprints. The tracks are proof that they were bipedal."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Science
Bill and Melinda Gates handed the world a report card last week, assessing its progress on 18 global health indicators: infant mortality, AIDS, vaccine use, smoking rates and so on. Called "Goalkeepers," the report was a huge statistical effort, three years in the making, aimed squarely at the world leaders gathering at the United Nations General Assembly this month. To draw extra attention to it, the Gateses will hold an awards dinner and a public release this week featuring former President Obama. In a series of recent interviews, they delivered several messages. Progress has been great, but donor fatigue could be lethal to millions who could easily be saved. Only the United States is rich enough and generous enough to lead, and private charities, including theirs, cannot possibly cover the deep cuts in global aid that President Trump has proposed. Health journalists are sunk in negativism, they say, focusing on failures in a sea of global health successes. In conversation, Mr. Gates displays such a deeply impressive grasp of the science fueling the discoveries he underwrites, and of the politics of the countries where they are deployed, that one forgets he was once a software geek. At 61, he could speak with the avuncular magniloquence of a professor emeritus; instead, he layers on supporting data like a star pupil seeking an A plus. He rebuts skeptical inquiries and insists on teaching from his own syllabus and on flicking his own birch switch. The report card will be issued annually, Mr. Gates said. He gave himself only a C on the first draft, promising sharper analytics in the future. He isn't actually handing out grades to the world's health authorities but is sending them home with a note for mom. Your kid has real potential but is becoming a discipline problem. In some areas, like infant mortality, he considers the progress made "pretty miraculous." In 1990, more than 11 million children died before their fifth birthday; now, fewer than 6 million do. AIDS deaths have plummeted since 2004, and malaria deaths since 2005. Rates of childhood stunting, mothers dying in childbirth, and the miseries wrought by rare tropical diseases all have gone steadily down. In poor countries, vaccine use is way up, though only about 75 percent of children get all the shots they need. More people have toilets these days. Progress in other areas has been slower. Smoking is down, but tobacco companies are fighting back. Contraceptive availability is up, but almost half the women who want birth control still lack it. Access to basic health care is up, according to the new report. But the gap between rich and poor countries remains vast, because too much money goes to top hospitals instead of rural clinics. One key finding: Most of the progress was not bought by donors, but came organically as hundreds of millions of people scrambled out of the most abject tiers of penury. In 1990, 35 percent of the world lived below the international poverty line (currently 1.90 a day); now, only 9 percent do. Most of the great leap upward was in just two economic powerhouses: China and India. The report's scarier themes lie in its projections for the next 15 years. Assuming economic progress continues, improvements in most health categories will churn dutifully on, or at worst plateau. But since the 2008 economic crisis, donors have been losing their will to give. If that persists, the report says, chaos threatens. H.I.V. infections could double, returning to levels not seen since the 1990s. And malaria could climb back to the peak hit in 2005. H.I.V. and malaria are particularly vulnerable to fluctuations in funding because they are concentrated in Africa, where economic progress has been slower than in Asia or Latin America and where birthrates remain high, producing a big pool of potential victims each year. Malaria has a history of rebounding as soon as pressure is eased; both the mosquitoes and the parasites quickly evolve resistance genes. The world's birthrate is now peaking probably forever at about 134 million babies a year. "But it's mind blowing how much the shift in where kids are being born makes things hard for us," Mr. Gates said. Keeping infants alive gets tougher when they are born in lands with civil wars, dirt roads and healers who reject Western medicine. Surprisingly, the new report was not a reaction to Mr. Trump's threats to slash the foreign aid budget by 32 percent. According to Dr. Christopher J.L. Murray, director of the University of Washington's Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, which gathered the data, it was initiated three years ago because Mr. Gates feared the world was losing its focus on health. "Goalkeepers" refers to a metric that the world ignores but the Gateses do not: the targets periodically set by the United Nations, namely the 2000 Millennium Development Goals and the 2015 Sustainable Development Goals. The first sharply emphasized poverty and health. But the latter comprise 169 targets for everything from reducing overfishing to bringing clean energy and decent jobs for all they have an "I want a pony too" air about them. The world prefers simple goals, like declaring war on smallpox. But war talk has stung Mr. Gates. Calls for an "AIDS free generation" all the rage six years ago were "premature," he said, and he was "embarrassed" by claims that malaria could be eliminated by 2015. He prefers "Microsoft type thinking" to set realistic goals. "People expect a certain degree of honesty," he said. "They want to know, do Bill and Melinda track this stuff?" Essentially, he is tracking the world's pursuit of his own goals as he helps it reach them. In early interviews, Mr. Gates refrained from criticizing Mr. Trump but gave the clear impression that he believed Congress would ignore most of the president's proposed cuts. Congress appears to be doing just that. To hear Mr. Gates tell it, even the staunchest backers of an America First ideology, which he called "selfish," succumb to his fusillades of data. Before Stephen K. Bannon, the president's chief strategist, resigned, Mr. Gates met him in the White House. "He said, 'Africa has always been a mess,'" Mr. Gates said. "I went through the numbers on its progress with him. He was impressed." The new report's weakness is that it cannot, for example, foretell how many more Ugandans would die of AIDS if American donations dropped 20 percent, in the way that the Congressional Budget Office can calculate how many Americans will lose insurance under a particular health care bill. There are too many unpredictables in global health. A country would not just brutally take 20 percent of its H.I.V. patients off treatment, Mr. Gates noted. It might cut its military budget; it might try to stretch supplies of the drugs it got, triggering shortages. Buried in the graphics heavy report are some fun anecdotes that show how ingenuity can be just as important in the field as money. In Ethiopia, for example, pregnant women were given a special stretcher to help them reach birth clinics; they had feared regular stretchers because villagers carried away on them usually died. And an imam in Senegal described how he got other imams to accept birth control: by citing a saying from the Prophet Muhammad implying that children should be born about two years apart.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Health
Fairmont City, Ill., is as good a place as any to stop to eat. Some of the best food is at a roadside stand serving Mexican dishes typical to Michoacan. The addition of a large tarp not only covered the license plate, but made the truck look like something a motorized hobo would drive. The contents of this storage unit, once piled high, all fit easily into the back of the pickup. On my way from Denver, where I'd bought the truck, to Boulder, where my gear was stashed, I hit my first patch of bad weather. For an old truck, the seat was in good enough shape, and I liked the simplicity of the interior. Bob, a 69 year old Vietnam veteran, sold me the truck, although he expressed mild surprise that I wanted to immediately drive it all the way to New York. He made me promise to e mail him when I arrived so that he and his wife knew I'd made it. I didn't have much furniture to move, but that didn't keep me from filling the back of this truck with books, memories and even a Subaru engine. I didn't have much furniture to move, but that didn't keep me from filling the back of this truck with books, memories and even a Subaru engine. After living here and there for a few years, the time finally came for me to consolidate my things and move them all to one place. The problem? All of my things had ended up in Boulder, Colo., and I live in Brooklyn. That meant I needed a moving truck, and moving trucks can be pretty pricey to rent for a cross country move. Mulling over my dilemma, I came to some conclusions. First, renting a U Haul truck would cost more than 1,000. Second, because U Haul won't rent cargo vans for trips that long, the resulting box truck would be getting terrible gas mileage. (When I had moved from Virginia to California years ago, I kept track of the fuel economy on the box truck I was driving, which hovered from 7 to 10 miles per gallon.) Third, I'd have to give back the truck after spending all that money on it, which equates throwing money out the window on a breezy day. So I decided to buy my own moving truck. It was a simple idea, really. I could see on the Denver Craigslist ads that it would be pretty easy to get a used Econoline van for less than 1,200. I'm a pretty decent mechanic, so I figured that with a small tool set on board, I'd be able to keep the thing running across two thirds of the continent. Upon arrival in the Big Apple, I could then unpack my things and sell the van for the same price I'd bought it for or a little more to a vendor or service worker in need of a strong running, rust free Western vehicle. I was going save a ton of money on this move. But that skill with tools comes from an affinity for old cars, and prudence quickly gave way to fancy. The long lists on Craigslist and eBay of drab white Econolines that would undoubtedly have been suitable for my move and for subsequent duty with a New York food vendor began to morph into searches for "Chevrolet pickup" and "Suburban" and, worse yet, "full size wagon." I began looking for vehicles from the '90s, but as the days wore on, '90s became '80s. Soon, the clock swung to the '70s. I have a thing for old General Motors trucks and almost pulled the trigger on a mid 1980s Suburban with a 454 cubic inch V 8 engine. I had convinced myself that the utility of such a capable tow rig outweighed the folly of driving something so thirsty 1,800 miles. Luckily, I found what I was looking for in a more reasonable guise. It was a light blue 1980 Chevrolet 3/4 ton pickup with the sort of patina you only see in the West. A rust colored haze peeked out from beneath its faded blue paint here and there. It had a 350 cubic inch V 8, 4 speed manual transmission and a single 4 by 10 speaker in the middle of the dash for listening to its AM radio. The ad said it had exhaust headers, dual exhaust and glass pack mufflers. A burly steel mesh brush guard nearly as old as me adorned its front end. It appeared to be the perfect moving truck. I called the owner Bob, a 69 year old Vietnam veteran who said that he had bought the truck as a project, but discovered that at his age, he could scarcely lift its heavy, 16.5 inch steel wheels off the ground to change a tire. That's when he knew it was time to move on. Sounded reasonable to me, so I talked him into holding on to the truck for a few days until I could get it. I was the first person to call, but he had that old school do the right thing Americana tinge to his voice that made me feel certain that he wouldn't sell it before I arrived on his doorstep. My hunch about Bob turned out to be right, and the truck was sitting in his driveway when I showed up almost a week later. It looked just like it had in the photos. The bench seat, covered in blue houndstooth patterned vinyl, was only torn in few places, and as I slid into the driver's seat, turned the ignition key and listened to the engine roar to life, I knew I'd made a good choice. O.K., so Bob was asking for a little more than a U Haul would have cost, but I could sell the truck when I was done with it, after all. Besides, the flat sweep of the truck's wide dashboard, its round analog dials, its triangular vent windows, its impossibly long shifter handle and the commanding view from which I surveyed the world from the driver's seat all made me smile. I installed a rear bumper I had picked up at a junkyard (the old one was mysteriously absent), changed the oil and, with a few boards from a lumber yard, built stake sides for the bed. Then I emptied the storage unit where my things had been stashed into the back. Somehow, it all fit, with only a slight protrusion of surfboard fins extending above the roofline. With a Walmart tarp tied around the top and sides to keep out water from potential storms, I was ready to hit the road. It takes awhile to drive through Kansas, and by the time I reached Topeka, it was night. The tarp I had tied to the top and sides of the stake bed with at least 20 pieces of nylon rope tied at odd angles and giving the truck a modern day "Beverly Hillbillies" appearance was in tatters. Keeping my speed at a conservative 60 miles per hour meant that the truck was getting more than 13 miles per gallon better than a U Haul box truck, in my experience but even at that speed, the force of rushing air had damaged the violently fluttering tarp. So I stopped at a Home Depot in the suburbs outside of Topeka, chatting with a talkative man with huge sideburns, a sweet Midwestern lady and a soldier stationed at Fort Riley as I secured a new, heavier duty tarp to the bed with a 12 set of ratchet straps I'd bought at the store. The weather report was calling for rain to garnish the tornadoes, and I didn't want to risk my things getting wet. The resulting mutlitarp configuration was enough to have made Jed Clampett utter a "Dang" in admiration, and I was hopeful it would be sufficient for the rest of the drive. As I pulled the last strap tight, the wind picked up. It wasn't like what I was used to, where it begins to blow steadily, getting a little stronger with each gust. This wind was violent, whipping up leaves and debris in impatient, angry jerks as a couple of lightning bolts streaked across the night sky. I wanted to stay ahead of the worst part of the storm, so it was time to get going. I drove nearly all night, heeding the meteorologist's report that the storm was moving east the same direction I was headed at 40 miles per hour. I pressed the gas pedal down a little deeper, picking up speed to 65. I didn't dare go faster in a fully loaded truck while the wind was so strong and unpredictable, but I had every intention of outrunning the cluster of tornados the radio said were hitting parts of the plains. At one point, I saw a 15 passenger van that had passed me earlier in a ditch on the median, pointed in the wrong direction; a good example of why not to drive too fast in a tall vehicle when it's windy. I stopped for fuel in Kansas City, noting that the air was still once more. But again, as I put on the gas cap, the angry wind returned, kicking up dust and fear. I took off again on Interstate 70, slicing through Kansas City and out of the gustiest wind again. After I'd driven out of the truculent air, a cloud of modified American sports cars began to form around me. They had all been driving much faster, but one by one they took position near one another. There were a couple of Mustangs, a Challenger, a Camaro; I braced myself for the inevitable. With the suddenness of the tornado whipped wind, they all took off down the dark highway with a roar, making it appear as though all the other vehicles on it myself included were standing still. It wasn't until a few hours later, when I was too tired to drive further, that I stopped again. After buying more fuel, I drove down a darkened country road somewhere in Missouri looking for a place to spend the night. For a guy of my height, an old truck's bench seat makes a perfect bed, and I had stumbled upon a rural campground that would do just fine as a stopping place. With no storm to occupy my thoughts the next day, I tuned the AM radio to something other than weather. There's really not much on AM radio anymore, and there's only so much Rush Limbaugh a person can listen to. I'm not sure what other people do on long drives when there's no music and no one else to talk to, but I sing. I started with individual songs and then graduated to entire albums. As I was singing Reb Tevye's "If I Were a Rich Man" foot stomping and fist shaking and all a family in a minivan pulled alongside, looking at me with "Should we call a doctor for you?" looks. Because I was driving by myself, I stopped for reasons that a group traveling together would never agree to. I took pictures of the '49 Ford in the Kansas field. I stopped in Fairmont City, Ill. near East St. Louis looking for something to eat, and found some delightful Michoacan fare at a roadside stand set up near a cluster of buildings that looked abandoned. I paused in Wheeling, W.V., and swam in the Ohio River, figuring that most of the pollution from upstream had settled to the bottom years ago. It was a Monday, and taking a stroll around town, I noted that there were quite a few young men sitting on porches, not working. Eventually, I entered New Jersey, closing in on the home stretch. As the truck crested the last long ridge before beginning the descent toward Manhattan, the air changed, as did the airwaves. Cool, crisp air turned warmer and more humid, and all conservative talk radio all the time which I had switched back on just for something to break up the hum of large tires on asphalt faded as I swung the dial to WNYC and then to a station vacillating between Bachata and what sounded like Catholic sermons in Puerto Rican Spanish. The truck's barely muffled exhaust boomed as I accelerated out of the Holland Tunnel like a big, rusty bullet, and Manhattan's quiet nighttime streets offered an easy route to the Brooklyn Bridge and home. That trip was a few months ago, but I still haven't gotten around to selling the truck. Its spartan charm still makes me smile, and I like seeing it parked out on the street in front of my apartment building. It was also great for beach trips over the summer. I didn't end up saving much money on the move, but neither did I spend much more than I would have on a U Haul. But I got something more out of it an experience that felt less sterile than the one size fits all aesthetic of rental van travel. The truck an old farm vehicle now sitting on a cobblestone street in America's largest city had been the answer to my moving problem. But in its out of placeness, it has found a niche as a conversation piece. That, and I've never in my life had so many people ask me to help them move large objects.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Automobiles
The path that led Candice Retas from an interest in studying music and the arts to a career in nursing was one that just unfolded. "I definitely did not map this out," Ms. Retas, 26, said with a laugh. "It was kind of one step at a time." Actually, it was one credential, one academic building block at a time. The first was the associate degree from Nassau Community College that Ms. Retas, who is from Elmont, N.Y., earned in 2012. "I'd originally wanted to have a career in music and painting," she said. "But then I took this biology class and really liked it, and did well in it." With the encouragement of her colleagues, Ms. Retas decided to pursue a bachelor of science degree in science, technology and society at Farmingdale State College. She expects to graduate in December, then go to nursing school from there, it will be a master's in nursing and ultimately a career as a nurse practitioner. "It's a lot of work, but I'm actually enjoying it," said Ms. Retas, who takes her classes online and at night while working full time at Northwell, a major New York area hospital system. "The four year undergraduate experience is often out of reach for large segments of our population," said Kemi Jona, associate dean for digital innovation and enterprise learning at Northeastern University in Boston. Moreover, he said, "the idea of getting that one degree and you're set for life doesn't really hold water anymore. Then the question becomes, 'how do we make it easier for working adults and people who need to pick up new kinds of tools and technologies?'" The answer: stackable credits, which Cassandra Horii, director of Caltech's center for teaching, learning and outreach, defined as "a more bite sized piece of education that stands on its own and has value in the workplace." But "if you continue on your educational trajectory, that piece fully counts towards your next educational step." The stackable term itself, noted Jimmie Williamson and Matthew Pittinsky in an article in "Inside Higher Education," is "clever, invoking the image of Lego blocks and the metaphor of assembly." "This requires an unprecedented level of cooperation between colleges and universities with credential providers and industry associations and employers," said Mr. Pittinsky, an assistant research professor at Arizona State University and chief executive of Parchment, an educational technology company. "That is ultimately going to be the major pacing factor for this trend." "It's a different way for those of us in academia to think," agreed Dr. Horii, who is also president of the POD Network, a 1,400 member organization focused on improving higher education. "We're used to looking at a degree as this large monolithic thing." Industry seems to be embracing the idea. "Increasing the digital skills of current employees is a critical component of many companies' digital strategies, and mini credentials are integral to that strategy," said Brian Fitzgerald, chief executive of the Business Higher Education Forum in Washington. One school well known for its success in helping students compile a string of credits, particularly those from low income communities, is Pasadena City College in California, through its acclaimed PCC Pathways, which Dr. Horri said "has been very successful with closing achievement gaps for students of color and speeding up time to graduate." The Pathways program helps students transition from high school to college, and with a number of "articulation" agreements in place with local four year schools that recognize P.C.C. credits, the two year college helps make transferring to the next rung on the academic ladder a smoother process. That is how one former P.C.C. student, Anthony Lopez, began stacking the building blocks of his career. Mr. Lopez and his younger brother were raised by a single mother in a tough neighborhood in Huntington Park, a city in southeastern Los Angeles County. He decided to attend P.C.C. after being rejected by eight schools. "It turned out to be one of the best decisions I ever made," he said. Originally interested in accounting, he took a class in the college's Design Technology Pathway a concentration that typically leads to an engineering degree. Mr. Lopez, now 21, found both the professor and the subject so inspiring that he switched his major. He earned a certificate in computer aided design software and went on to earn two associate degrees from the college in engineering and natural science. Mr. Lopez is now a junior at California State Polytechnic University, Pomona, where he hopes to earn his bachelor of science in mechanical engineering next year. After that, he said, "I plan on going to grad school for my master's or Ph.D." There will also, no doubt, be additional certifications he might need. But, like Ms. Retas, he said he doesn't have a grand strategy. "I've never looked at it as stacking my credentials," Mr. Lopez said. "I'm looking at it as trying to get my family out of Huntington Park and into a better life."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Education
WASHINGTON The Trump administration said on Tuesday that 11.8 million people had signed up for health insurance through the Affordable Care Act marketplaces for 2018 roughly 400,000 fewer than last year. The drop was relatively small, given that Mr. Trump had sharply cut federal outreach efforts and the open enrollment period was half as long as in past years. Virtually the entire decrease came in the 39 states that use the marketplace run by the federal government, HealthCare.gov. In the 11 states that sell coverage for the Affordable Care Act popularly known as Obamacare through their own marketplaces, enrollment remained the same as last year. Seema Verma, the administrator of the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, congratulated her agency in a Twitter post on "the most cost effective and successful open enrollment to date!" Yet Ms. Verma, who frequently echoes Mr. Trump's attacks on the health law, also said on Twitter that "Americans continue to experience skyrocketing premiums and limited choice" under the law. According to the agency's final enrollment report, monthly premiums for federal marketplace customers before any subsidy was applied rose by 30 percent this year, to 621 from 476. Subsidies are covering about 86 percent, on average, of the premium cost for those who qualify.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Health
Do Men Think They're Better at Science Than Women Do? Well, Actually ... It's no secret that men are overrepresented in certain technical disciplines. So is their self confidence, a new study suggests. The study, published this past week in the journal Advances in Physiology Education, found that male egos eclipse those of women among students asked to compare themselves with their classmates. A male student with an average grade, for example, was predicted to see himself as smarter than 66 percent of his class, according to the study. A female student with the same grade was expected to see herself as smarter than only 54 percent of her class. That difference is even more pronounced when students compare themselves with individual peers: Men were more than three times as likely as women to say they were smarter than the classmate with whom they worked most closely. The findings are particularly noteworthy given that they are based on students studying biology, one of the few scientific disciplines where women are overrepresented. "It's not simply enough to count up the number of students in the class and say, 'Well, we have representation of women; women's experiences in biology are exactly the same as men,' because what we're seeing is they're not," said Sara Brownell, an assistant professor at the Arizona State University School of Life Sciences, who wrote the study with Katelyn Cooper, a graduate student at the school. The findings contribute to a growing body of evidence that points to a large gender gap in fields related to science, technology, engineering and mathematics, known collectively as STEM fields. While the study was based on students in a single class, it underscored how differently men and women in science perceive their abilities. Such self perceptions can have cascading effects on motivation, participation and confidence. For the study, the authors focused on 202 students in an upper level physiology class at the university that employed an active learning approach, emphasizing participation, particularly in small group discussions. Of the group, 130 students were women, 70 were men and two identified in a separate category. After asking the students to compare their own academic ability to that of their classmates, the authors then asked how the students made those assessments. They found little difference by gender, with the two most common cited factors being who answered more questions correctly and who had a better understanding of the materials. Those considerations, the authors said, could help efforts to close the disparity in how men and women compare themselves with their peers. For example, instructors could encourage women to participate more and answer more questions. "Maybe contributing and maybe hearing their own voices and maybe hearing other students build on their own ideas might be really important factors in enhancing how a student perceives their own ability," Ms. Cooper said. The researchers cautioned against overgeneralizing the findings until the study could be replicated in different classes and schools. "Different contexts and different instructors and different students could potentially change what these gaps actually look like," Professor Brownell said.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Science
The usual praise for a musician who plays a recital in a big hall is that he or she makes that big hall feel small. But on Thursday, the pianist Yuja Wang made Carnegie Hall seem even vaster than normal: big, empty, lonely. Through her concert's uncompromisingly grim first half and its wary, stunned second, Ms. Wang charted wholly dark, private emotions. She was in no way hostile toward an adoring (if slightly disoriented) audience, but neither did she seem at all interested in seducing it. After the playbills had been printed, Ms. Wang who will have a Perspectives series at Carnegie next season revised her program. She subtracted two of the four Rachmaninoff preludes she'd planned to give before intermission and added an extra three of his later, even less scrutable Etudes Tableaux. Ms. Wang played none of these pieces in a way that made them seem grounded or orderly; she even seemed to want to run the seven together in an unbroken, heady minor key span, a choice that most but not enough of the audience respected by not clapping in between. Even divided by light applause, these pieces blurred into and stretched toward one another. Doing nothing that felt exaggerated or overwrought, Ms. Wang emphasized unsettled harmonies and de emphasized melodic integrity. The Etude Tableau, in E flat Minor (Op. 33, No. 6) wasn't the juxtaposition of one hand's abstraction and the other's clear etching. No, she was telling two surreal tales at once. The martial opening of the Prelude in G Minor (Op. 23, No. 5) swiftly unraveled into something woozy and bewildering. The washes of sound in the Etude Tableau in C Minor (Op. 39, No. 1) were set alongside insectlike fingerwork neurotic, insistent, claustrophobic.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Music
"Also today, it was announced that, due to coronavirus, the music festival Coachella has now been postponed until October. In fact, headliner Rage Against the Machine has already changed their name to Rage to Get the Vaccine. And that's not the only musical act that plans to be in Coachella in October. You can also count on Miley Virus, Justin Fever, the Flu Fighters, Pandemic! at the Disco we got like a hundred of these. The only band yet to confirm is the Cure." JAMES CORDEN "Today, 'Wheel of Fortune' filmed without an audience as a protective measure against the coronavirus. Things are so bad over there, Vanna is now turning all the letters with her elbow." JIMMY FALLON "Meanwhile, because of the virus, the mayor of Boston announced their annual St. Patrick's Day Parade has been canceled. Yeah, the mayor asked if instead of drinking, puking and blacking out in the streets, people could make the mature choice and do it at home." JIMMY FALLON "Harvard just announced they're sending all their students home until further notice, and they'll take classes online. Now if you meet someone who says they went to Harvard, you can be like, 'Oh, that online college?'" JIMMY FALLON "Meanwhile, students at U.S.C. are also being told to stay home, because their rich, famous parents are still under investigation for bribery." JAMES CORDEN	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Television
Other citations speak to the sometimes deadly legacies of government action. The citation for Wyandotte National Burying Ground in Kansas City, Kan., describes it as "tangible evidence of the consequences of federal American Indian removal policy to a tribal population and its identity." The citation for the Kent State site, where the Ohio National Guard shot and killed four students and wounded nine other people during a protest against the Vietnam War, refers to subsequent rulings by the Supreme Court that "the executive branch of government does not enjoy absolute immunity for its actions." A number of the sites are recognized for what may seem to be more straightforward significance as architecture or engineering, like the Neutra Studio and Residences in Los Angeles (associated with the modernist Richard Neutra), and the Davis Ferris Organ, at a Methodist camp in Round Lake, N.Y. The instrument is cited as "an example of the technical and mechanical achievements in the pre Civil War American organ building industry." But even the designations for some seemingly straightforward sites might be seen as resonant with contemporary politics. The New York State Barge Canal, begun in 1905, is called "an embodiment of a Progressive Era emphasis on public works," which was "built explicitly to counter the growing monopoly of railroad corporations." Kevin Young, the director of the Schomburg Center, a division of the New York Public Library in Harlem, said in an email that he was "especially pleased" that the announcement had noted the center's social mission of promoting "intellectual freedom and social equality." He also noted the reference to the Afro Latino roots of its namesake, the self taught immigrant bibliophile Arturo Schomburg. "Our focus on the entire African Diaspora has been important ever since our start 92 years ago," said Mr. Young, who took over leadership at the center in December. "I am looking forward personally to exploring the Afro Latino connection, both in our collections and lively programming."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Books
She Died After Collapsing on a Plane the Pilot Refused to Divert. Now Her Family Is Suing. Brittany Oswell suddenly felt ill about three hours into her flight from Hawaii to Texas. She was dizzy, disoriented and slurring her speech. Then she briefly fainted. A flight attendant on the American Airlines flight in April 2016 tracked down a doctor on board who examined her. She may have had a panic attack, the doctor said. But it soon became clear her condition was far worse. About an hour later, Ms. Oswell, 25, collapsed in a lavatory, defecated and vomited on herself, and threw up on flight attendants who had come to check on her. The doctor returned and this time issued an urgent request to the flight crew: The pilot must land the plane immediately. The frenzied efforts by her husband and the doctor to save Ms. Oswell, who died three days later in a hospital of a pulmonary embolism, were detailed in a wrongful death lawsuit filed this month by her family against American Airlines. The lawsuit alleges that the airline was negligent and ultimately contributed to her death because the pilot did not heed the doctor's pleas to divert the plane and an onboard defibrillator and blood pressure monitor were faulty. The lawsuit, which was filed in federal court in South Carolina on April 18, was brought by Ms. Oswell's parents, Chris and Tina Starks, and her widower, Cory Oswell. In an interview on Friday, her parents said they were still struggling with her death two years later. "A decision was made not based on the human life that was on board or based on safety," Ms. Starks said. "Frustration doesn't really describe how disappointed and heartbroken and just immensely discombobulating it has been." Mr. Starks said the pilot faced an obvious choice when his daughter was gravely ill. "They should have landed at the very next possible opportunity," he said. A spokesman for American Airlines declined to discuss the specifics of the case. "We are deeply saddened by this event, and our thoughts and prayers continue to go out to Ms. Oswell's family," he said. "We are taking a look into the details of the complaint." Flight 102 was supposed to be the start of a new chapter for the Oswells, who had just wrapped up about a year living in Hawaii. Mr. Oswell, 27, who was in the Army, was medically discharged, and the couple were headed back to their home state, South Carolina, where they planned to live with her parents in Columbia, the capital. After Ms. Oswell boarded the plane and sat down in her window seat, she called her mother to check in and said she would call again when they landed at Dallas Fort Worth International Airport for their connecting flight. But the next call came from her husband. "I could detect in his voice that it was very different," Ms. Starks said. "He said, 'Ms. Starks, something happened.'" Within several hours, her parents were by her hospital bed in the intensive care unit of a Dallas area hospital. Ms. Oswell had limited brain activity and was unconscious and on life support, her parents said. Doctors determined she had suffered a pulmonary embolism a clot that blocks blood flow to the lungs on the flight and then had multiple heart attacks. She died three days later. "We still feel as though we are in a dream," Ms. Starks said. "Everything still feels very surreal." Through his lawyer, Mr. Oswell declined to comment about the lawsuit. The parents said their sadness turned to anger a few months after her death, when they heard the full story of what had happened on the flight. The doctor on board, who was not named in the lawsuit, told them about her frustrating attempts to use the plane's faulty medical equipment and to get the pilot to land. After Ms. Oswell collapsed in the lavatory, the doctor attempted to take her blood pressure, but the cuffs did not work, the lawsuit says. Then the pilot summoned the doctor to the cockpit, where she relayed the severity of Ms. Oswell's condition and recommended the plane be diverted, according to the suit. At that point in the flight, the lawsuit says, the plane was over New Mexico, with about two hours remaining in the flight. Her parents argued on Friday that the plane should have diverted to Albuquerque. Soon after the doctor left the cockpit and returned to Ms. Oswell, she stopped breathing and lost a pulse, the lawsuit says. The doctor opened the plane's automated external defibrillator, attached the pads to her chest and tried to revive her with a shock, the lawsuit says. But despite three attempts, the device did not deliver a shock. The lawsuit does not explain why the defibrillator malfunctioned. "The doctor on board the plane informed us that the equipment was not operational," a lawyer for the family, Bradford W. Cranshaw, said in an interview. "Those are questions we have for American Airlines."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Travel
You Know What London Looks Like. But Have You Really Heard It? On the NASA website, LJ Rich's profile lists "recreational lock picking" as a hobby. She has glossy dark hair, a compact build, a master's degree from Oxford and synesthesia: an unusual condition that blurs and blends sense perception. A synesthete might report that the sound of the letter B tastes like mashed potatoes. Or that magenta smells like cedar wood. The incoming stimulus of one sense jumps its lane to trigger perception in another. For LJ, shapes, colors, textures and flavors set off a concert in her head. LJ presents for the BBC in London, covering music and tech. She's also part of a NASA program called Datanauts, where she's working on a technique to sonify data: to communicate through melody what might be more traditionally expressed with a chart or a scatter graph. Melody has been an unrelenting part of LJ's life; in a TEDx talk she delivered in Tokyo, she told her audience, "I hear music everywhere, whether I like it or not." I first met LJ in 2014, at a fancy professional conference. Accomplished lawyers, writers and business people were chatting in small groups aboard a chartered bus, waiting to depart for the evening activity. One person thought to bring a flask and was, briefly, our hero. But then LJ arrived. She wore a glittering silver dress and a backpack from which she pulled a bag of marshmallows. As she proceeded down the aisle, she offered a marshmallow to the occupant of every seat and these decorated adults melted into the grade school versions of themselves, happily sinking a hand into LJ's cellophane bag. I make my living as performing musician, so I can say authoritatively that LJ works a room with professional skill. Armed with two bucks' worth of aerated sugar, she became the most admired member of the traveling party. This spring, I set out on a long headlining tour. The routing looped through London, so I dropped LJ a note. We arranged to meet in the Shoreditch neighborhood for a walk down Brick Lane. I had visited the area before and remembered it as full of cafes, boutiques and street art Brooklyn with cobblestones. This walk with LJ, however, would be unlike any other I'd taken in London, or anywhere else for that matter. We'd be doing what LJ called "glitching." Using an iPad, special microphones, a digital amplifier and some music software, LJ would manipulate the sounds of Brick Lane adding reverb, echoes, EQ filters and melodies and then share this altered audio with me through earbuds. According to LJ, the experience can simulate synesthesia for a neurotypical person. Adding music to my world could make it more like the one she lives in. LJ carried a small black bag full of electronic equipment. She also brought a pair of four and a half inch rhinestoned heels. She said they were to elevate her ears to roughly the same plane as Matthew's and mine. After strapping them on, she announced, "That's a little better acoustically." Together we set out toward Brick Lane, chatting a bit before the glitching began. LJ said she had been a "weird prodigy kid." For her, perfect pitch had been a nightmare. The whole world seemed out of tune. But then teachers introduced her to Indian ragas, Gamelan music and compositions with quarter tones, unfamiliar modes and atonal structures. As her musical horizons expanded, her anxiety dissipated. (She remains exceedingly sensitive to pitch, though. Her refrigerator, for example, hums in A flat. Working from home, I hear my fridge running 12 hours a day. Blindfolded, I'm not sure I could pick the thing out of a lineup of three other refrigerators.) LJ walked with the careful steps of someone wearing very high heels, in sharp contrast to Matthew's unusual gait. He's got a bouncing, long limbed stride that swings both arms in large, pendular arcs. I happen to know this springiness was drilled into him by a basketball coach, to keep him on the balls of the feet. But it's become a signature feature, and it suits him. Matthew seems to live quite comfortably in his body takes the time to stretch and run on tour, delights in a nice perfume worn by someone walking by, happily pays cocktail prices for Whole Foods juices. Meanwhile , my body sometimes feels like the spacesuit I use to chauffeur my mind from room to room. I've done enough science writing to know that kind of mind body dualism is garbage; there's no clean partition. All of our systems work in a dynamic concert; even perception isn't just the passive reception of information. Our brains and bodies work together to make meaning from the hurricane of sensory input that whirls around us night and day. Synesthesia is so fascinating because it underscores the fact that people experience the world in profoundly different ways and some might be living in richer, more interesting hurricanes. When I learned that goldfish could see infrared radiation I had a pang of FOMO, a flash of anxiety that this creature was somehow getting more of the world than me. A creature, mind you, that lived in a bowl. LJ routed us through Arnold Circus, a tiny park set in a roundabout. Arnold Circus is tiered like a wedding cake (if you were inclined to make a cake out of asphalt and frost the sides with wood chips and leafy perennials) and topped with a bandstand. LJ led us to the center of the bandstand, which had green railings and a low wooden ceiling beneath a peaked roof. "Clap your hands," she instructed. Matthew and I complied, setting off a shimmer of quick echoes that collided with one another as they bounced off the ceiling and the floor and back and again in a strange, rubbery effect. "Oh my God," Matthew said. I stamped. Cool. Matthew noted there was a tremolo to the sound; something about the space made the pitch of the echoes wobble up and down as they repeated. In a tour guide voice, LJ announced, "The acoustically interesting spaces of London!" Despite the jokey tone, she made an interesting point: It's remarkable how few sonic experiences we seek while traveling. We lean into our adventures with wide eyes and open mouths, hunting for photographic vistas and authentic local meals. It's a rare story that leads with another sense. (I do remember an Indian acquaintance saying that when she stepped off the plane into the U.S., she was startled by the report of her nose: "It smelled like nothing. Nothing!") But we could travel as sonic tourists if we were so inclined. In a 2016 report called "City of London Noise Strategy," I found a ranked list of London's iconic sounds. Attractions included St. Paul's bells, open outcry trading and boats on the Thames. In the acoustic funhouse of the bandstand, Matthew and I let out little vocal yelps, listening to the how the bass in his voice resonated more dramatically than mine. None of the strange reflections were audible outside the railings, so to the people sunning on the grass nearby, we were just easily delighted idiots. "O. K., would you like to plug in?" LJ pulled the iPad out of her bag and wrestled with a knot of wires, getting all her digital equipment in order. Her headphones were binaural, which meant they recorded in 3D, for a full surround sound. Matthew and I handed over the jacks for our earbuds. Connected, we had to stay close, effectively leashed together by the ears. LJ warned that we might feel disoriented at first. She snapped her fingers near her right ear and I heard it in mine. The sounds around us began to echo in tight repetitions; every chirping bird triggered a treble cascade, like ripples of a stone thrown into still water. A little girl kicked a bottle cap through the bandstand; the metal skittering across the asphalt became an extended iridescent tinkle. LJ pressed play on a soft prerecorded musical track she'd composed. I hadn't expected that; I thought we'd be working only with environmental sounds. The music layered with the echoes coming from all directions made it difficult to speak at a normal rate. Deliberately, LJ said simply, "Sound ... changes." The rolling delays felt like a cinematic representation of intoxication, I thought. Like a sober mushroom trip. The three of us stepped out of the bandstand and went glitching into the sunlight. LJ cued up another composition, specifically inspired by Brick Lane. Brick Lane is a narrow one way lined with cafes, vintage shops, curry houses, bars and salons. Most walls are blond brick, though some have been coated with so many layers of thick, glossy paint that they shine as if perpetually wet. I imagine that a core sample taken from one of these painted walls a little cylinder the width of mechanical pencil lead, say could be analyzed like tree rings. There'd be a complete history in the tiny stack of colored wafers: the coats of paint applied when London born daughters took over from their immigrant fathers, when the first wave of Bangladeshi arrived, the Jews before them, the French all the way down to the brick itself, made by masons whose factories on the lane gave it its name. The three of us walked slowly, on account of both the wires and the sensory bombardment. An old man, leaning drunkenly on a stoop, heard me mutter "Oh my God" and mimicked me. LJ's microphones picked him up and his voice ricocheted with mine in our ears. After we'd passed, I couldn't tell if he continued to parrot me or if the echoes were generated by the software. I wondered if LJ sometimes found it difficult to discern raw signal from synesthetic effects in her daily life. Matthew, LJ, and I hummed, making chords. Both of them are more musical than me, and I felt embarrassed to always offer up the most predictable note, the vanilla pop chord; never finding an exotic minor triad like they did. Glitching seemed to offer a portal into LJ's musicality her facility with improvisation and her attraction to found sounds but I wasn't sure if I was getting a better understanding of her synesthesia. What features of a particular road or roundabout determined the sounds she heard while traveling it? The lines, the colors, the shapes? When I asked her later, even LJ wasn't totally sure. We left Brick Lane for a tranquil path, lawn on one side and elevated train tracks on the other. LJ stopped. She wanted to hear the train come by one of her favorite sounds. A train and a plane passed over at the same moment, the engine noises rising like a slow ocean. It felt lucky. It was midafternoon; soon Matthew and I would have to leave for our show. The three of us disconnected and the world went regular again, though I found myself still sensitized to sound of people's footsteps. LJ took us to a place we could debrief before parting ways. We followed her beneath an overpass where every inch of concrete was covered with full color spray painted murals. We passed through a small gate and the Nomadic Community Gardens opened around us: a rush of art and anarchy. Tiny wooden lean tos were arranged in ragged rows, strewn with silk flowers, strands of lights, hand painted signs. Some held small groups of chatting drinkers. One had a wooden piano missing two black keys, like it lost them in a fistfight. One housed a healthy looking, butterscotch colored dog. Sun bleached boards were lashed together to serve as planters for unruly flowers that climbed over one another, trying to escape. In one corner, a wooden boat had been converted into a jungle gym, an aluminum slide rammed through its hull. The Nomadic Community Garden closes at night, but if permanent residents were permitted, Jack Sparrow would be their mayor. LJ and I bought cups of tea from a woman running a cafe out of a three wheeled vehicle. I told LJ truthfully that I'd enjoyed glitching. But I was still keen to home in on the particulars and parameters of her synesthesia. Did she hear specific notes when she ate? I asked. "Sushi tastes like power chords on acoustic guitar," she answered. Excellent! This was exactly the sort of one to one effect I'd been hoping to learn about. But LJ went on to explain that while not all flavors had sonic resonance, her synesthesia allowed her taste each individual ingredient in a dish and reverse engineer the recipe. Wait, I thought, was there anything necessarily synesthetic about a discerning palate? Later, a Google search revealed synesthetes are, in fact, often hypersensitive, but in that moment LJ's response seemed to frustrate my attempt to snap a clear picture of her synesthesia. Every time I had it framed up nicely, it darted out of the shot or something else dove in. A half dozen questions later, I still didn't have a satisfying portrait. On my ride with Matthew back to our hotel, and in the following days, I came to believe my approach was flawed: it was impossible to isolate LJ's synesthesia from the rest of her, because none of us can be disassembled into our component parts. I can't tour London as a woman without also traveling as an American; those lenses don't come uncoupled. The question "What would it be like not to be me?" is maddening because it's answerable only in fragmentary secondhand reports. We use the best and only tools at our disposal conversation, art and travel but nobody can break into another mind. Still, we try and try to pick the lock. Dessa's essay collection, "My Own Devices," will be published in September. In November, she will tour Britain as a musician in support of her record "Chime."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Travel

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