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If the Bernie Sanders campaign searched the nation for its ideal microtarget, it might not find a more receptive audience than at Doe Bay Resort on idyllic Orcas Island in Washington. After all, this is a tolerant place, and if you're a vegan who owns a Prius and an extensive record collection but no TV, you won't feel out of place. I "felt the bern" Orcas style inside the resort's 102 degree soaking hot tubs on a recent visit, and wondered if I'd slipped off the map and into a kind of Ecotopia, filled with dense forests, rolling hills and naked people of all shapes and sizes. The soaking tubs are officially "clothing optional," but most get naked and it's easy to see why. Sitting inside one of the tubs, looking out at the tree lined contours of Doe Bay, it's hard to feel anything but relaxed. You're about as far off the map as you can get within the lower 48 states and, unless you're from Seattle, you probably don't have to worry about bumping into someone you know in the buff. Doe Bay has a tasty pescatarian restaurant serving organic food and produce from an on site garden, along with an egalitarian array of accommodation options: yurts, domes, cabins and a treehouse. Travelers can also pitch their own tents. You're as likely to meet a bike messenger as a tech entrepreneur. Like Ireland, Orcas Island is often called the Emerald Isle. It is one of 172 named islands and reefs that are collectively referred to as the San Juan Islands. Orcas arguably the most beautiful of the San Juans is shaped a bit like a basset hound's droopy ears. Orcas attracts plenty of visitors in the summer, but it retains a quiet, pastoral vibe that hints at the island's agrarian roots. There are no traffic lights, no fast food restaurants, and no chain establishments unless you count the Chevron station and a Key Bank location. Joe Symons is an Orcas resident who moved to the island in the mid 1980s to escape what he calls the "madness on the mainland." He said he has mixed feelings about the way tourism has exacerbated income inequality on the island and created a housing shortage for seasonal workers. But he still relishes the island's unique charms. "It's still very much like another country," said Mr. Symons, author of "Potholes in Paradise," a book about life on Orcas. "When I'm in line for the ferry and someone asks where I'm going, I say, 'back to America.' " In fact, it wasn't a foregone conclusion that Orcas and the other San Juan Islands would be a part of the United States until a German arbitrator settled a boundary dispute between the United States and Britain in 1872. Thirteen years earlier, the two nations nearly went to war after an American settler shot a pig owned by an Irishman who worked for the Hudson Bay Company. The so called Pig War set in motion a process that eventually placed the border at the Haro Strait, which separates San Juan Island from Vancouver Island in Canada. The geography of the place still creates a sense of space, a physical and psychological separation from the mainland. For those who are short on time, you can bridge that gap in a half hour on seasonal Kenmore Air flights from Seattle. But I took the hourlong ferry from Anacortes, Wash., (a 90 minute drive north of Seattle outside rush hour) and stood outside, relishing the fresh air and intimate views of Lopez, Decatur and Blakely Islands. "As soon as you get on that boat a weight lifts from your shoulders," said Bruce Pavitt, the founder of the Sub Pop record label, who has lived on Orcas since 1997 and now commutes to Seattle regularly for his new job at 8Stem, an interactive audio format that allows listeners to remix music. "When I come here there is zero stress." Orcas can indeed be quiet but it's not without cultural offerings. There is a growing food scene that includes a Saturday farmers' market in the summer, and popular establishments like Brown Bear Baking, where you can feast on artisan bread and pastries, and New Leaf cafe at the Outlook Inn, which has seafood omelets and fresh seafood pots. And on the music front, there are the Orcas Island Chamber Music Festival and the Doe Bay Fest, both in August, and the Imagine Festival, which is focused mostly on electronic music, in September. Orcas is popular with hikers, who are rewarded with sweeping sea views at the peak of Mount Constitution in Moran State Park and on Turtleback Mountain, among other places. Cyclists frequent sleepy, relatively flat Lopez Island. San Juan Island is a bit more mainstream than Lopez and Orcas and tends to attract tourists who like more action and amenities. If you want a taste of one of the uninhabited islands, book a charter excursion to Sucia Island, which is just a few miles north of Orcas and has more than 10 miles of hiking paths, along with places to camp. I did a bit of hiking at Moran State Park on Orcas but I was mostly content to lounge around in Doe Bay's soaking tubs, walk the trails in the area and eat the kind of ridiculously healthy vegetarian fare I rarely consider ordering on the mainland. Orcas is a seductive place and many are tempted to extend their stay on the island. Mr. Pavitt said he first came for a visit in 1993 and quickly realized he wanted to live on the island. Over the years, he has seen plenty of others fall under the same spell. One was the singer of a Sub Pop band that was about to become famous. After spending time on Orcas, he asked Mr. Pavitt if he could help him find a landscaping job on the island. "I told him, 'I don't think you're going to have to do that,' " he recalled. "He liked Orcas that much. I don't think he knew he was about to sell a half million records." Mr. Symons prefers to politely steer people away from Orcas. "Of all the places on the planet, this has got to be one of the sweetest places in the world," he said. "But if you print that, we might have too many people coming here." If You Go Doe Bay Resort and Retreat, 107 Doe Bay Road, Olga, Wash.; doebay.com | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Travel |
Next week Lil Wayne's "Tha Carter V" is projected to debut at No. 1 on the Billboard album chart, a validation of the intensity of Lil Wayne's fandom, especially given that this album has been in a sort of legal purgatory for around four years. Lil Wayne persisted, and his fans held on. The reasons for his longevity have roots that run all the way back to the New Orleans of the 1990s, when Lil Wayne was an aspiring rapper hanging on at the fringes of the emerging Cash Money Records empire. He started as the youngest member of that crew, grew into its most popular, and after that, into the most vexing and incisive rapper of the mid to late 2000s, making him one of hip hop's elite and also an unorthodox pop star. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Music |
The Federal Communications Commission is joining the Trump administration, Congress and other government agencies that have targeted Huawei, China's giant telecommunications equipment maker, as a national security risk. Ajit Pai, chairman of the commission, on Monday proposed a rule to tighten restrictions on companies building internet infrastructure in the United States. Part of the rule's impact may be to further crimp Huawei's meager sales in America by potentially affecting some deals with small and rural carriers, analysts said. The proposed F.C.C. rule would prohibit carriers from using money from the Universal Service Fund to buy gear from companies deemed to pose national security risks. The 8.5 billion fund subsidizes phone, wireless and broadband service to poor and remote communities. Its money comes from small monthly fees on consumers' phone bills. A first draft of the proposed rule will be published on Tuesday, starting a public comment period. An initial vote on the proposed rule will take place at an agency meeting on April 17. The proposed rule does not mention Huawei by name. Instead, it says it would apply to any telecom supplier or subcontractor defined as a security risk. The agency also said it had not yet determined how it would identify companies that posed a risk to telecom systems, particularly as spying tools. But there was no doubt that Huawei was a target of the proposal. The commission said it might decide to follow the lead of intelligence agencies and Congress. In its military spending authorization, Congress has prohibited the Pentagon from buying network equipment from either Huawei or ZTE, another Chinese equipment maker. American government policies and regulations, going back years and motivated by security concerns, have already hobbled Huawei's access to the American market. The big Chinese company had worldwide revenue of more than 90 billion last year. In the United States, its sales were 200 million to 300 million, analysts estimate. Most of the American sales are smartphones, though it does sell some network equipment to small and rural telecom carriers. "This is one more step in the broader confrontation with China," said Doug Brake, director of telecom policy at the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, a nonpartisan research organization. The Russian software company Kaspersky Lab is also on the banned list, after accusations that its antivirus software was a back door for surveillance by Russia's intelligence agencies. Kaspersky has denied those accusations. The F.C.C. proposal adds to recent moves by Washington to limit the reach of foreign tech companies in the United States. This month, President Trump blocked Broadcom's 117 billion takeover bid for Qualcomm, a leading maker of smartphone chips. In his order, Mr. Trump said "credible evidence" had led him to believe that if Singapore based Broadcom acquired control of Qualcomm, it "might take action that threatens to impair the national security of the United States." Huawei animated those concerns. The administration's theory was that to make the costly deal pay off, Broadcom would cut back research spending by Qualcomm, undermining its ability to be a leader in next generation wireless technology, so called 5G. And that would further open the door for Huawei to win the race for 5G, a critical technology for the economy and for national security. Mr. Pai, a Republican, was encouraged to take action by Congress, specifically in a letter on Sept. 20 from Senator Tom Cotton, an Arkansas Republican. Later briefings with intelligence agencies added to Mr. Pai's determination to propose the rule, senior F.C.C. officials said. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Technology |
A House Near the Beach, With Room for Friends John Minardo and Jeff Sniggs live in a one bedroom duplex in a co op building in the Chelsea section of Manhattan. For a few years, they spent summer weekends at the Jersey Shore, where Mr. Minardo, who is from Staten Island, had gone as a child. Over time, friends started turning toward East Hampton, N.Y., so they switched, too. Mr. Minardo, 42, a lawyer for a pharmaceutical company, decided that the summer rent was so high that they might as well buy a place. Mr. Sniggs, 37, who is from Utah and pursuing a doctor of pharmacy degree, liked the idea of escaping from the city on weekends year round. Two years ago, checking out a two bedroom cottage that he had his eye on, Mr. Minardo met Raymond Lord, a salesman at Douglas Elliman's East Hampton office. "They were looking for a starter second home," Mr. Lord said. Though many Hamptons buyers own a city apartment, "when they buy a real house, it is a totally different ballgame." The couple's first offer, close to the asking price of 879,000, was for a house in the Northwest Woods section of East Hampton. It was being flipped, and was in move in condition, with three bedrooms and a den. "I was willing to stretch the budget because it was turnkey," Mr. Minardo said. "We even negotiated for the furniture." But the seller accepted a better offer, 885,000. They considered a four bedroom in Springs, another hamlet in East Hampton. Mr. Minardo loved the garage, not a given for the area. But the house had almost no yard. The occupant smoked. That one was listed at 850,000 and sold for 800,000. The couple's budget was proving to be too low. So they raised it, and decided to concentrate on Northwest Woods, with its larger lots and lower taxes. "Ray said R.O.I. to me about a million times and I eventually got it," Mr. Minardo said. (R.O.I. stands for Return on Investment.) Mr. Sniggs preferred a house on the small side. "A three bedroom was enough for us and the occasional friend," he said. On guest heavy weekends, things might be tight, but they would make do. "We needed a fourth bedroom for maybe 5 percent of the time," Mr. Sniggs said. "A house that was suitable for our needs was more important to me than a house for special occasions." But he checked it out for his clients. The house, though dated, included well over an acre of land with a pool. Mr. Sniggs loved the big yard, the open layout and the midcentury feel. Mr. Minardo balked. The house had its original avocado color appliances and a bathroom with chipped pink tiles. "Everything was locked in time," he said. "I was put off by the amount of work it was going to need." Mr. Lord reminded him of the R.O.I. Still, they went to see a four bedroom place in East Hampton Village Fringe, near Amagansett, for 885,000. This one also needed work. On the plus side, it was within bicycle distance of the beach. "If you really listened, you could sort of hear the ocean," Mr. Minardo said. "The bathrooms were from the '80s as opposed to the '60s." Ultimately, they didn't love it enough. "You have to be comfortable in the house," Mr. Minardo said. So they bought the locked in time house for 795,000 a year ago and set to work. They tried to paint one room every time they were there, and ended up doubling their 50,000 repair budget. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Real Estate |
TOO MUCH INFORMATION Understanding What You Don't Want to Know By The announced thesis of 's "Too Much Information" is simple: People should be given information only when it would significantly improve their lives. Arguing that the welfare of citizens should be the yardstick for deciding whether or not to disclose, Sunstein sets out to re examine everything from mandatory food labels to rules about declaring the origins of "conflict minerals" to the government's broad authority to ask people for their data (a burden he calls "sludge"). The book represents a change of heart. Sunstein administered the Federal Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs for most of President Obama's first term. Then he was on the side of full disclosure, including forcing restaurants and movie theaters to let customers know exactly how many calories were in their food. That achievement prompted an email from a friend: "CASS RUINED POPCORN." "Too Much Information" is an attempt to take that offhand remark seriously; if your measure is whether information helps or hurts people's lives, much current disclosure, including mandatory calorie counts in movie theaters, starts to look more complicated. Sunstein launches his argument using data from a small survey he conducted. Among his respondents, preferences for more information varied widely: Knowing the date of their death appealed to a little over a quarter of those surveyed, knowing whether their partners were cheating appealed to over half, knowing if there is life on other planets appealed to nearly three quarters. There was also great variation in reported willingness to pay for that information, with median bids ranging from 1 for credit card late fee disclosure to 200 to know if heaven exists. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Books |
It's been 15 fruitful years since the Mark Morris Dance Center planted itself in Fort Greene to bring high quality dance to Brooklyn. The organization hosts its annual open house with a day of free activities on Saturday, Sept. 10, beginning at 9 a.m. with coffee and pastries. (Dancing does require sustenance.) Events continue throughout the day with classes for children and adults in a wide variety of styles: ballet, modern, Gaga, salsa, tap and Afro Caribbean. Participants will also have the opportunity to learn sections from Mr. Morris's holiday classic, "The Hard Nut," which returns to the Brooklyn Academy of Music in December. But for those who prefer to watch, there is a special attraction: The Mark Morris Dance Group will perform Mr. Morris's ravishing 1995 dance "Pacific" at 1 and 3 p.m. After each performance, there will be appearances by students from the company's Urban Rhythms and Arts Immersion programs. And there's a beer garden, courtesy of Sixpoint Brewery, on the center's fourth floor terrace. Cross your fingers for sun. (mmdg.org/openhouse.) | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Dance |
Given a choice between Mitch McConnell and Mr. Pokee the Instagram Hedgehog, which would you vote for? Mitch McConnell is up for re election this year, and the idea of him losing is as seductive as oh, I don't know. Dinner in a real restaurant? Obviously, it's hard to pay attention to anything but the presidential race when John Bolton is revealing that Donald Trump did not seem to know Britain was a nuclear power and wondered if Finland was part of Russia. But next week Democrats are going to pick a nominee to run against McConnell, and it's a real contest, full of all the same battles we went through over Biden versus Bernie. I think it would be a good idea for us to take a look at what's going on. Really, your friends know you pay attention to this stuff and they are going to expect you to be able to give them a quick briefing over cocktails, if we ever reinvent cocktail parties. Kentucky went for Trump by 30 points in 2016. But last year voters elected a Democratic governor, Andy Beshear, who had the advantage of running against a truly terrible incumbent, Matt Bevin. (After Bevin lost, he famously rewarded big donors by issuing 428 pardons and commutations to folks who had been convicted of everything from raping a child to murdering a parent.) The Democratic Party leaders feel they have a Senate winner in Amy McGrath, a moderate former Marine fighter pilot. In passing we'll mention that McConnell dodged military service on a medical issue something called optic neuritis. "Those things used to matter," said John Heyrman, a political science professor at Berea College. But now, he said, it never comes up. And optic neuritis certainly doesn't sound any more questionable than bone spurs. Still, McGrath has run some terrific ads about her youthful dream to "fly fighter jets," her discovery that girls couldn't get those kinds of jobs, and the letter she sent seeking help from her senator (guess who), which was never answered. Her campaign started with a splash, drawing in tons of donations from hopeful Democrats around the country. But the follow up was a bit mixed. For instance, when Brett Kavanaugh was up for Supreme Court nomination, McGrath first told a local paper that she would have supported him if she was in the Senate. Hours later she changed her tune "upon further reflection." "Talking to her, she's pretty good one on one," said Ryland Barton, the state capitol bureau chief for Kentucky Public Radio Network. But, he added, "she kind of seems consulted to death." Meanwhile, up popped Charles Booker, a 35 year old African American state legislator. Candidate of the Bernie Bros and endorsed by A.O.C. He's been running a more exciting campaign, and Kentucky's two largest newspapers have endorsed him, mainly on the basis of his being ... not boring. But it's hard to know how Kentucky will take to Medicare for All and a Green New Deal. "It's certainly gotten a lot more interesting," said Barton. Can a black progressive rally a huge turnout of liberals and minorities that compensates for any fallout in the middle? If there's a moment, it might be now. Kentucky is another state with a hideous racial incident in its recent past Breonna Taylor, a 26 year old black emergency medical technician, was shot eight times by the police who broke into her home while she slept, searching for a drug suspect who wasn't there. Either candidate could certainly run a smart campaign, and it's hard to know how all the national trauma is affecting voters' attitudes. "There's been no polling. Nobody really knows what the state of the race is," said Heyrman. Here we have the classic dilemma for the 2020 Democrats. Who would you want nominated for this difficult race in a purple to red state? B) Exciting newcomer who might be able to move the public left. C) Anybody who can beat Mitch McConnell and I don't care if it's Mr. Pokee the Instagram Hedgehog. OK, you're right. Mr. Pokee would be an improvement. McConnell is, of course, the guy who brags about having refused to schedule even a hearing for almost any judicial nominees during the Obama administration. Whose race to fill up the vacant court seats with Trump appointees should climax this week when he makes his Republicans vote to confirm Justin Walker, a 38 year old family friend with minimal experience, to the second highest court in the land. McConnell, whose wife, a member of a family that controls a massive shipping organization, was conveniently named Trump's secretary of transportation. This is hardly the only Senate race you're going to want to pay attention to this year. The Democrats have a bunch of exciting candidates. (And, as usual, a few accidents they'll just ignore. I'm thinking of the nominee they're trying to get rid of in Nebraska the owner of a cupcake bakery who sent out a group text to his team describing how he imagined one of the staffers would behave during group sex.) So, who can maul Mitch? I know you're focused on the presidential race who isn't? But this will give you something to think about once you've exhausted your contemplation of Donald Trump's sense of geography. The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We'd like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here's our email: letters nytimes.com. Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter ( NYTopinion) and Instagram. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Opinion |
There is a man sized rat suit sitting in one corner, worn by Mr. Arunanondchai and others in the film. He said that the character was inspired by the rat's prominence in Elizabeth Kolbert's book "The Sixth Extinction," which addresses the mass disappearance of species. "It would be a dominant species after we're gone," said Mr. Arunanondchai, who said he often contemplates "the collapse of nature." He mixes the rat images with footage of his grandparents, looking back with uncertainty about the world's future. "I'm from Thailand, and I'm always thinking about Buddhism," he said. "When you talk about life, it's always about transforming." After growing up in Bangkok, Mr. Arunanondchai moved to the United States to attend the Rhode Island School of Design, then earned an M.F.A. from Columbia. Now he lives in Chinatown and keeps a studio in Ridgewood, Queens. His multimedia approach has been successful, with a solo show at MoMA PS1 in 2014. Klaus Biesenbach, the director there, calls Mr. Arunanondchai a "synesthetic" artist. "He combines music, sound, fashion, painting, sculpture, cinema in a plot that is both cinematic and biographic," Mr. Biesenbach explained. "In his live performances, you nearly have the impression you can hear the colors." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Art & Design |
Small Land Rovers are nothing new, Evoque and LR2 have been around for a few years. This is the 2's replacement Discovery Sport. Competing with BMW X3, Audi Q5, and Volvo XC60, I'm happy to see Land Rover ditch forgettable alphanumeric nomenclature for words that people understand. There's a concept. (ON CAMERA) Discovery Sport and Evoque are built on the same bones but Disco here is nine inches longer with a more traditional roofline. Starting at 38 thousand bucks, this top shelf HSE LUX model retails for 50 large. All wheel drive is standard, I'd hope so considering the brand. There's 8.3 inches of ground clearance. (SUPER) Premium fuel is specified The Ford sourced turbo 2.0 liter four cylinder (SOUND UP) has 240 horsepower and (SOUND UP) 251 lb ft of torque. The tranny has nine speeds, a sport mode, and manual ability. Terrain Response is the Garanimals of off roading, call up the surface you want to cross and the all wheel drive system optimizes accordingly. Most Sports will live their life on pavement (SOUND UP) 0 60 in just under 8 seconds is quick enough, it's the way the power is delivered (ON CAMERA) I'm in standard drive mode. Drop the throttle... and there's an awful lot of lag. Not fun in cut and thrust city driving. Sport mode improves response. The 9 speed aggressively upshifts for best fuel economy. On center feel is locked down. The ride quality is firm, not harsh. (ON CAMERA) It's quiet for long road trips, surprisingly comfortable. (SUPER) E.P.A. Fuel economy is 20 city, 26 hwy Cornering is controlled. Safety tech includes automatic emergency braking. The lane departure system discreetly warns with steering wheel vibration. I'll call Jeep Cherokee a competitor since it (SOUND UP) and Discovery Sport play where soft roaders can't. It doesn't break a sweat on this moderate closed course. (ON CAMERA) I have to question how many people are really going to off road a vehicle this expensive but a guy's got to test. Fjord water nearly two feet deep, the doors are watertight. Disco has moves. Approach (SOUND UP) breakover and departure angles are quite good. Don't try this in a Lexus NX. Monitor the wheels and differential while slogging through the sloppy stuff. Discovery isn't a rock crawler like Wrangler but it does more than most families need. And the clan will enjoy the cabin that's roomy for the class. Solid materials aren't as impressive as top shelf Range Rovers but hey, those can be twice the price. An improved user interface is stylish and straightforward, though lethargic at times. There are storage hooks and nooks including a hiding spot under this removable cup holder for small stuff. Leather seats are vented and heated. (ON CAMERA) Discovery Sport's back seat is a far friendlier place than Evoque. There is a lot more headroom. Choose between maximum legroom and maximum cargo room. Phone charging is no problem, unless you forget a cord. Toast your buns and enjoy the view, the fixed glass roof is dramatic. Two can stretch out, three will be okay. (ON CAMERA) Discovery Sport is available with an optional third row of seating. I'm assuming it's for very small children. It eliminates the storage space under the cargo floor. Land Rover doesn't skimp on details and there's a good amount of space, the in class average is 8 bundles, Discovery scores an 11. Design cues from Evoque are a nice touch. It's fun to add your own in brown to show the neighbors you can tackle tough stuff. Some find this shape too ordinary, and not Range Rover y enough. And for those concerned with reliability, the warrantee covers 50,000 miles. Discovery Sport gives you the ability to make them mild or (SOUND UP) wild. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Automobiles |
Never miss a pop music story: Sign up for our weekly newsletter, Louder. Mr. Barr grew up on the Lower East Side and took the name Onyx Collective from a prewar block of houses in the East Village where his uncle, the H.I.V./AIDS activist David Barr, lived for many years. After being expelled from Millennium High School as a freshman (he declined to say why), Mr. Barr attended the Institute for Collaborative Education, a progressive secondary school on East 15th Street. While studying saxophone there he came under the tutelage of Mr. Nathanson, a leader in the free jazz scene of the 1970s and '80s. "Isaiah is so heartfelt," Mr. Nathanson said in a phone interview. "There's something very kind about Onyx Collective's vibe, too, something very inclusive about it and it reminds me more of the Lower East Side that I knew in its collective spirit." After high school, Mr. Barr met Mr. Williamson and Mr. Benitez in a jazz program at York College in Queens, and both became regular members of Onyx Collective. Just one year later, Onyx Collective picked up a time slot on the Lower East Side community radio station Know Wave, and used its newfound platform to play improvisational jazz live on air and bring a rotating cast of musicians into the studio, including Mr. Soto and the bassist Felix Pastorius. It was through the Know Wave community that Onyx Collective built relationships with artists like the English songwriter, producer and performer Dev Hynes (who records as Blood Orange), the New York rappers Wiki and Princess Nokia and the soul singer Nick Hakim, all of whom have become collaborators onstage and in the studio. "They have so many different ensembles of what the group is and so many different aspects of music," Mr. Hakim said in a phone interview. "They're trying to create this limitless outlet and fighting against being put into a single genre." The group's debut LP, "Lower East Side Suite Part Three," out on Friday, is an album of dizzying, frenetic jazz that follows a vinyl only live recording and a pair of EPs. Its song titles pay tribute to locations that qualify as New York cultural landmarks to some (Chatham Square, the Bowery, the Ukrainian restaurant Veselka) and Mr. Barr said its sense of place is key to its aesthetic. "We wanted to record it in one place and we wanted a place that had that sacred spirit of downtown," Mr. Barr said. The group chose the Magic Gallery, a studio and artist space on the 5th floor of a walk up building on Canal Street. "This is a home. It's not a studio," he said. "It's the opposite of stale. It's this rooted place." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Music |
In early March, as the coronavirus was spreading across the United States and testing capacity was already a problem, Bill Phillips had an idea. Phillips is the chief operating officer of a medical device company, Spectrum Solutions, that provides saliva test kits for companies like Ancestry.com. He wondered if Spectrum's kits which require customers to spit in a tube and ship their samples through the mail could work with detecting this new virus. "I just threw it out there: Why don't we test our device to see if we can use it as a transport medium to get it to the lab?" Phillips recalled in a recent telephone interview. Spectrum, based outside Salt Lake City, teamed up with a laboratory at Rutgers University, made a few tweaks and found that the effectiveness of their saliva test kit was comparable to the nasopharyngeal test, or the long swab, that was already in widespread use. By mid April, the Food and Drug Administration granted the Rutgers lab an emergency use authorization. A month later, it received approval for the test kit to be used at home. That saliva kit is now a key part of Major League Baseball's plan to return to play, and has also been used by other revived sports leagues, including the PGA Tour and Major League Soccer. With sports leagues desperate to salvage their seasons and profits, testing was always crucial even more so now as the number of cases rises nationwide. But there was no blueprint, so a patchwork of businesses and labs, all with entirely different missions before the pandemic, converged to meet the need. A version of Spectrum's spit test, once used to help figure out family trees, is now spotting infections. Vault Health, a telehealth company that was focused on sexual health and weight loss therapies for men, is now using Spectrum's saliva kit and the Rutgers lab to help leagues conduct wide scale testing. And the Sports Medicine Research and Testing Laboratory in Utah, which previously handled antidoping testing for M.L.B., is now processing coronavirus saliva tests for the league. Dr. Daniel Eichner, the president and laboratory director of SMRTL, the shorthand name for the Utah lab doing M.L.B.'s coronavirus testing, acknowledged that there was "nothing good about this virus." But, he said, he was proud of his team's ability to pivot to this new challenge, like other companies. "It's a beautiful American story: When the chips are down, people jump in to contribute as best they can," Dr. Eichner said. Navigating the rapidly evolving world of coronavirus testing has been far from a simple task for professional sports leagues. They have had to weigh the efficacy and speed of various tests and companies, all while trying to ensure they would not be taking away resources from those who needed them more. "It was incredibly complicated," said Andy Levinson, the PGA Tour's senior vice president of tournament administration. When leagues began exploring their options Levinson said the tour consulted laboratory directors and its own medical advisers saliva based tests emerged as a popular choice. They could be done almost anywhere, with minimal assistance from a medical professional and without much personal protective equipment, and some studies found saliva was a reliable alternative to the more common nasopharyngeal swabs. Another benefit: Spitting in a tube is much less painful than a swab shoved deep into the nasal cavity. "We call it the brain tickler," said Jason Feldman, the chief executive of Vault Health. When the pandemic hit the U.S., Feldman, like many business owners, feared the potential economic effects on his company. But then he realized he was sitting on a wealth of resources that would be useful amid the crisis: He had a relationship with both the Rutgers lab, known as RUCDR Infinite Biologics, and Spectrum Solutions for other products, and a virtual consultation platform that would provide a safe way to talk to patients. Vault Health devised an at home saliva testing package, which is supervised via a Zoom video call and mailed overnight to the Rutgers lab, that could produce a result within 48 to 72 hours. It costs 150 out of pocket. "When sports leagues started calling us," Feldman said, "they said almost universally, 'We have athletes who want to come back to practice and we need a plan that could safely bring them back.'" While Feldman said sports leagues make up a small percentage of his company's testing clientele, he said Vault had supplied tests to the PGA, L.P.G.A., M.L.S., and N.H.L., as well as a small portion of the N.B.A.'s testing operation. A M.L.S. spokesman said Vault had provided testing for 13 teams during training, while BioReference Laboratories would do so at the league's restricted site tournament that recently began outside Orlando, Fla. An N.H.L. spokesman said the league wasn't prepared to disclose its testing company, and the N.B.A. did not respond to a request seeking comment. But the tour needed a speedier solution for on site testing to monitor individuals' health during the events without clogging up local labs. For that, Levinson said, they enlisted Sanford Health, a South Dakota organization that was already a title sponsor of a PGA Tour Champions event. Sanford Health converted leftover medical trucks into three mobile laboratories, Levinson said, which can return results from the nasopharyngeal swab test in less than two hours. Who should get a booster shot? It depends, Dr. Scott Gottlieb says. Virginia's new lieutenant governor elect says she won't force vaccines. Phillips, the Spectrum Solutions executive, said that he had talked with nearly all of the professional sports leagues in the U.S., including the National Women's Soccer League and U.F.C., because many compare notes. "It was just a cascading effect," he said. "One called me then another and another." M.L.B., he said, came to him in April and was expecting to use 275,000 of his kits by the end of the year. To meet the sudden demand, Phillips said recently that Spectrum Solutions' factory was working around the clock to make 3.5 million saliva test kits this month. He hoped to double that number, and his staff, to about 500, by August. Thanks to automation, Dr. Andy Brooks, the chief operating officer of RUCDR, said his lab in Piscataway, N.J., could handle 50,000 tests per day, with more room to grow. He said they had five 2 million modules robots, essentially each handling about 10,000 tests, and each requiring about 25 people to run. "We are the McDonald's of molecular lab services," he said. "We build a process and make it efficient." Throughout the pandemic, public health experts have questioned whether sports leagues were jumping to the front of the line for tests at the expense of the general population. Phillips said his company has donated kits to emergency medical workers in Utah and sold them to whoever wants them, trying to fill the void created by what he called the government's uneven response to the pandemic. "There's a shortage of product, but there's an even bigger shortage of approved labs," he said, alluding to the F.D.A.'s backlog in emergency use approvals for labs that could potentially handle such tests. "If we made 100 million, we can sell 100 million." Unlike other leagues, M.L.B. opted to use SMRTL, the antidoping lab in Utah, to conduct its testing. Dr. Eichner said SMRTL followed the Rutgers lab's model for its saliva testing. Why SMRTL, a nonprofit, morphed from an antidoping testing and research lab into one focusing mostly on coronavirus testing has to do with Dr. Eichner's background: He has a P.h.D. in viral immunology from the Australian National University. And as the coronavirus raged through the U.S. in March, he foresaw that the demand for antidoping testing would decrease as sports stopped, and the need for coronavirus testing would skyrocket. "We had a lot of really good, smart scientists, a lot of good instruments and we didn't want to sit idle," he said, adding later, "I knew we could do this test." As Dr. Eichner explored ways to use SMRTL to add to the country's testing capacity, M.L.B. was looking for return to play testing. The league paid to convert SMRTL into a coronavirus testing site, Commissioner Rob Manfred has said and luckily for SMRTL, it had moved to a new facility in early March that is three times as large as its previous site. To test the saliva coronavirus samples, the lab also needed to clear several federal hurdles. Dr. Eichner said SMRTL used to dealing with anonymous athlete samples boosted its secure network to meet federal medical privacy laws for handling patient information. While SMRTL is awaiting formal approval from the F.D.A. on its application for an emergency use authorization, Dr. Eichner said they were allowed to operate in the meantime. But M.L.B.'s testing got off to an uneven start as teams began formal training again this month. At least six M.L.B. teams, including last year's World Series participants, the Washington Nationals and the Houston Astros, canceled or postponed workouts during the first week because of delays in receiving test results. Test collectors also reportedly failed to show up in some instances. M.L.B. said "unforeseen delays" in shipping over the July 4 holiday weekend had affected only a limited number of results and that it had since addressed the testing issues. Before the delays became public last weekend, Dr. Eichner explained that SMRTL had promised M.L.B. a 24 hour turnaround on test results from the moment they receive the saliva shipments. "We've got no control on collection or shipping of the sample," he said. In the wake of those hiccups, an M.L.B. spokesman said in a statement on Friday that a portion of its nonplayer tests were expected to be handled by the Rutgers lab, and not solely SMRTL as originally planned. The spokesman said the decision had nothing to do with SMRTL's capacity to handle the necessary testing. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Sports |
There is so much recycled material in "Fatal Affair" that its carbon footprint must have been zero. That's the good news in this Netflix dance of deja vu, one with scarcely a camera move, plot swerve or line of dialogue that hasn't already graced myriad romantic thrillers and special victim police procedurals. At its center is the aspirational marriage and luxurious beachfront home of Ellie (Nia Long) and Marcus (Stephen Bishop, likely lamenting his far juicier role as a playboy in the ridiculously entertaining BET series "Being Mary Jane"). Ellie is a lawyer who's rarely to be found lawyering; instead, she has sex (in a shower, in front of a fireplace) and near sex (in a public bathroom). This last occurs after an ill advised slow dance with David (Omar Epps), an old friend from school hired by her firm as a technical consultant. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Movies |
No two people did more to build Fox News Channel into a powerful cultural political force than Roger Ailes and Bill O'Reilly. Mr. Ailes, the founding chairman of Fox News, envisioned a news network that would speak for those forgotten Americans who thought the rest of the media was talking down to them while abetting a liberal takeover of their country. He found one of those concerned citizens in the person of a midcareer, midlevel broadcaster named Bill O'Reilly, of Levittown, Long Island. With a white working class background, and a perfectly perched chip on his shoulder, Mr. O'Reilly was the ideal personality for Mr. Ailes to build his network around. Mr. O'Reilly quickly climbed to the top of the cable ratings, then pulled the rest of the network along with him as he became one of the biggest stars in television news history. In so doing, he empowered Mr. Ailes to build Fox News into more than America's No. 1 cable news network. Much more significantly, Mr. O'Reilly helped Mr. Ailes turn it into the beating heart of a new, populist conservative movement, one that reshaped the political landscape while making its parent company, 21st Century Fox, billions. And, finally, it became an important vehicle in the conservative convoy that delivered their mutual friend Donald J. Trump to the White House. With Mr. O'Reilly's forced ouster on Wednesday, following that of Mr. Ailes last summer both over sexual harassment cases that resulted in at least 35 million in total settlements it's as if that vehicle collapsed at a busy intersection outside 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. The network remains stalled there. And Fox, along with 21st Century Fox, remains vulnerable to treacherous traffic flows that pose the most serious threats to its standing since it became the No. 1 cable news network some 15 years ago and claimed its "Most Powerful Name in News" mantle. First there is Mr. O'Reilly's own audience, which steadfastly stuck with him and then some as the revelations about sexual harassment first emerged in The New York Times. For as long as he has been "looking out for" them as he puts it he has sworn to beat back the "secular progressive" forces of political correctness. His fans told interviewers they doubted the allegations against him, describing him as an "easy target" for liberal groups and the same mainstream media he has made a career of lambasting. Now here was Fox News, the network they trust above all others, refusing on Wednesday to stand behind Mr. O'Reilly in the face of what he called "unfounded claims" in the same way that they do. "Generally, the Fox audience is not going to be happy the network fired him," said Chris Ruddy, chief executive of a smaller Fox News rival, Newsmax Media. "They're going to think it was unfair." Retail earnings and Black Friday: the week in business. Elizabeth Holmes will resume her testimony in her fraud trial. But, really, where will Mr. O'Reilly's viewers go in his absence? There simply aren't any real alternatives, on TV at least. Mr. Ruddy's network reaches about 10 million television homes; Fox News is in 90 million. But there are new alternatives to Fox News online, and even on cable, that play to different parts of the conservative movement. Foremost is Breitbart News, which throughout last year took pot shots at Fox News when it viewed it as being anti Trump, especially its former host Megyn Kelly. Breitbart's coverage showed that new alternatives were emerging as the conservative media moved into more complicated territory, along with its adherents. Breitbart, for instance, positioned itself as a purer "antiglobalist" alternative to Fox, where Mr. O'Reilly was as unpredictable as he was conservative leaning and various contributors were solidly in the "Never Trump" camp. (On Wednesday Breitbart treated Mr. O'Reilly's firing as a capitulation to the opposition, with a headline reading "Activist Left Gets Monster Scalp.") None of that is to diminish the dominance of Fox News, given its full cable distribution and the way its shows pepper the top ratings slots. That includes Sean Hannity, whose 10 p.m. program has become a central clearinghouse for pro Trump talking points in a way Mr. O'Reilly's never did. Still, Mr. O'Reilly was in no small way responsible for the success of the rest of the prime time schedule; he held what is known as a "tentpole" position at 8 p.m., where his ratings could feed into later shows. Whether the new, hastily made schedule that Fox announced on Wednesday with Tucker Carlson succeeding Mr. O'Reilly; the ensemble talk show "The Five" moving to 9 p.m.; and Mr. Hannity remaining at 10 p.m. winds up being more permanent than temporary remains to be seen. And while executives have been heartened by Mr. Carlson's strong ratings since replacing Ms. Kelly, who has left to join NBC, he no longer has what was the best lead in in cable news. (Last week, for instance, Mr. O'Reilly had an average weekday audience of nearly four million people.) And his exit from the Fox prime time lineup creates the biggest jump ball in cable news in more than 16 years. In large part thanks to Mr. Ailes and Mr. O'Reilly, the media world is far different than the one they decided to upend when they started at Fox in the mid 1990s. The audience's sense of alienation from the mainstream media is no less intense maybe it's even more so. But its sense that it has too few places to turn has abated. The conservative media is now as robust and diverse as the prevailing, and increasingly competing, strains of conservatism. The emergence of those strains explained why Fox News occasionally appeared to be at war with itself over the past year. Those who were in the more traditional conservative and neoconservative camps lined up against Mr. Trump or, at least, were not enthusiastically behind him and those who were more aligned with Mr. Trump's brand of nationalism lined up behind him. Will Fox News embrace the more traditional conservatism represented by Dana Perino, the former Bush press secretary and co host of "The Five," who has won high marks as a substitute for Mr. O'Reilly over the past few days? Or will it do more to highlight the more populist, antiglobalist brand of her "Five" co host Eric Bolling, who will take over the 5 p.m. time slot and won't join Ms. Perino and his other co hosts in prime time? The family that will ultimately decide, the Murdochs, has its own funhouse mirror version of those competing strands. There is the founding executive chairman and family patriarch, Rupert Murdoch, who after being suspicious of Mr. Trump, has swung solidly but not blindly behind him. Then there are his successors in waiting, James Murdoch, said to be the most liberal leaning of the three, and Lachlan Murdoch, said to be somewhere in between them, according to those who know them. People briefed on the internal discussions said it was James Murdoch whose wife, Kathryn, once worked at the Clinton Climate Initiative who first saw Mr. O'Reilly's removal as essential, followed by Lachlan and finally Rupert, who despite his own promotion of women in his companies showed the most willingness to stand behind Mr. Ailes and then Mr. O'Reilly as the allegations piled up. But Fox's ultimate look in the post Ailes, post O'Reilly era and therefore, its place in the conservative media movement will come down to the two things all three of them always agree on: ratings and revenue. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Media |
David Joel Stern was born in Manhattan on Sept. 22, 1942. It was the day after Yom Kippur, the Jewish Day of Atonement, and the Nazi march east through Europe was grinding to a halt outside Stalingrad. Closer to home, the Dodgers topped the Giants, 9 8, in extra innings at Brooklyn's Ebbets Field. The Knicks, the team Stern would root for as a boy, wouldn't exist for another four years. By the time Stern died on Wednesday, at the age of 77, basketball had become inexorably woven into the narratives of African Americans and Jewish Americans, of fans growing up in rural Indiana and in America's cities. It had been exported to the farthest reaches of the globe and then back again; the N.B.A.'s most valuable player last year was a Greek born to Nigerian immigrants and its champion a Canadian team with contributors from three continents. Stern had many detractors, especially later in his tenure as commissioner, but his influence is clear. The story of the N.B.A. is the story of David Stern's life. Free Agency and the Salary Cap (1976 and 1983) Upon graduating from Columbia Law School in 1966, Stern joined Proskauer, Rose, Goetz Mendelsohn, which was then and still is the N.B.A.'s law firm. He first garnered public attention for his work on the Oscar Robertson antitrust case in 1976, which resulted in both the creation of free agency and the transfer of four teams from the upstart American Basketball Association to the N.B.A. Stern benefited greatly from a historic convergence of great players. Bird and Johnson were already stars, and Stern's first draft as commissioner saw Hakeem Olajuwon, Michael Jordan, Charles Barkley and John Stockton all chosen. Though Jordan was selected third, some were already envisioning greatness for him. Few could have seen, however, how Jordan's effortless style, boundless athleticism and vicious competitiveness not to mention his and Nike's marketing savvy would captivate the public. The 1985 draft would add to the rich talent pool, as Patrick Ewing, Chris Mullin, Karl Malone and Joe Dumars were all chosen. The players who would lead the league toward the new millennium had arrived. In 1980, The Los Angeles Times reported that cocaine use was widespread in the N.B.A. It was a problem that repeatedly plagued the league. Overseas exhibition tours increased in frequency, and in 1990 the league held its first regular season game abroad, in Japan. "David will never be happy until he's able to walk down the street in Peking and see on every kid's head an N.B.A. cap," said Pat Williams, the general manager of the Orlando Magic, in 1990. "And don't think he won't do it." Magic Johnson suddenly retired before the 1991 92 season, announcing he had received a diagnosis of H.I.V., the virus that causes AIDS. But as major symptoms failed to manifest, Johnson decided he wanted to play again. Because All Star ballots needed to be printed well in advance, he was the leading vote getter that season. He asked Stern if he could play in the game in Orlando, and Stern said yes. Stern campaigned to make it happen, having doctors visit each team to educate players on the disease and telling wary owners they could be subject to a lawsuit if they barred Johnson from playing. After starting lineups were announced in Orlando, each member of the East team walked over to Johnson and hugged him. He scored 25 points, leading the West to a 40 point victory, and was named the game's most valuable player. Nothing catapulted the N.B.A. to world attention like the 1992 Dream Team, the first group of basketball professionals to compete at the Olympics. The United States brought 11 future Hall of Famers (and Christian Laettner) to the Barcelona Games, where they won by an average of 44 points and didn't call a single timeout. The stories about that team like the vicious practices in Monte Carlo where Jordan and Johnson would go at each other have become basketball folklore. Usually the visionary, Stern didn't see this coming. The United States voted against allowing professionals to play in the Olympics. "We said to FIBA that we weren't gung ho to play in the Olympics, but we would try to be good soldiers to support basketball," Stern told GQ Magazine. After the decline of Magic's Lakers and Bird's Celtics, and a brief interlude by Detroit's Bad Boys, the N.B.A. belonged to Jordan. His Bulls won three straight championships and look primed for more, and then the unthinkable happened: Jordan retired from basketball in 1993, at age 30. Jordan, tired of the toil of being a superstar, had publicly contemplated retirement before, but he ultimately made the decision two months after the murder of his father. "Five years down the road, if the urge comes back, if the Bulls will have me, if David Stern lets me back in the league, I may come back," he said in announcing his retirement. The wait would be less than two years. After playing minor league baseball for a season, the pull of basketball lured Jordan back. He retired for a second time in 1998, after winning three more championships with the Bulls, then came back to play for the Washington Wizards from 2001 03. The good feelings from the 1983 collective bargaining agreement could only last so long. Disputes in 1995 and 1996 were a prelude for what was to come: The owners locking the players out for seven months in 1998 and 1999, with an abbreviated 50 game schedule finally played. It ended with a win for the owners, who established the first maximum salary limit in American pro sports, largely because of Stern's tactics. "You've got to give David Stern a lot of credit," said Will Perdue in an oral history of the lockout. "He did a good job of dividing players, dividing agents, and dividing players from agents. Players didn't know who to believe." But it came at a cost. Fan interest in the game plummeted, and the early to mid 2000s were down years for the N.B.A. before LeBron James and a new generation of stars revitalized the league. The most famous brawl in N.B.A. history started routinely enough. With 45.9 seconds remaining in an early season game between the Pistons and the Pacers at The Palace of Auburn Hills, Detroit's arena, Ben Wallace and Ron Artest got into an altercation following a heavy foul. Artest went to lie down on the scorer's table while the referees huddled to discuss punishment when a fan hit Artest in the chest with a cup of Diet Coke. In response, before the 2005 season, Stern unveiled a dress code that required players to wear business casual clothing at team and league events. The racial subtext was glaring, especially when people like Lakers Coach Phil Jackson said the quiet part out loud: "I think it's important that the players take their end of it, get out of the prison garb and the thuggery aspect of basketball that has come along with hip hop music in the last seven or eight years." In an interview with ESPN, Stern defended the implementation of the dress code and said it didn't bother him when he was called racist: Race is always an issue, and that's just the way it is. And the N.B.A. has always been on the edge of discussions of race. At every collective bargaining negotiation, I was accused of having a plantation mentality. The worst on court scandal in Stern's tenure kicked off on July 20, 2007, when The New York Post reported that an unnamed N.B.A. referee was under investigation for betting on basketball games he officiated. A month later, the referee Tim Donaghy pleaded guilty to two felony charges, and admitted to passing information to bookies. Stern called it the "worst situation that I have ever experienced," but insisted it was an isolated incident, while over the years Donaghy has said fellow referees and the league itself were complicit in improperly influencing the outcome of games. A decade later, debate still rages as to whether Donaghy was the only rogue referee or the N.B.A. had missed or ignored more evidence of misconduct. When the Sonics owner Howard Schultz couldn't get as much public financing as he wanted for a new arena in Seattle, he sold the team to Clay Bennett and a group from Oklahoma City in 2006. The buyers had recently helped the Hornets temporarily relocate from New Orleans to Oklahoma City after Hurricane Katrina. So while the new Sonics owners said all the right things about respecting Seattle, it was clear their eventual plan was to move the team to Oklahoma. After settling a protracted court battle, Bennett did just that in 2008, leaving Seattle without an N.B.A. team after 41 seasons. Stern's lack of effort to prevent the move and his years of saber rattling in an effort to get Seattle to pay for a new Sonics arena left him persona non grata in Seattle. Thirteen years after the 1998 lockout, the owners did it again. Claiming a majority of teams were losing money, the owners demanded more of the revenue pot, and eventually got it, winning an increase in their share from 43 percent to 50 percent. So what if they had to skip 16 regular season games to achieve it? Unlike the 1998 lockout, the 2011 version didn't put a damper on the N.B.A.'s popularity. Fans wanted to watch the Heat superteam, the talented Lakers, Celtics and Bulls, and the upstart Thunder. Stern retired in 2014 after 30 years, turning the job over to his longtime deputy, Adam Silver. In his first eight months Silver banned Donald Sterling, the owner of the Los Angeles Clippers, for making racist remarks, and signed a landmark 24 billion television deal. The N.B.A. is now firmly Silver's league. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Sports |
Belgian activists, including some who once worked with the acclaimed multidisciplinary artist Jan Fabre, have demanded New York University do more to address allegations of sexual harassment against Mr. Fabre as his company prepares to perform at N.Y.U. on Saturday. Former members of Mr. Fabre's company have accused him of demanding sex for solos, asking a dancer to masturbate in front of him, and generally running a performing arts company where "humiliation is a daily bread," as they stated in an open letter published on a Belgian magazine's website. Mr. Fabre has denied all the allegations, which are being investigated by the Belgian authorities. On Saturday, Mr. Fabre's company, Troubleyn, is performing a 24 hour show, "Mount Olympus," at the N.Y.U. Skirball Center. It features 27 performers portraying characters from Greek tragedy who fight, engage in simulated orgies, as well as dance, sing and take naps. Tickets cost from 100 to 275. The Skirball Center discusses the allegations on its website on a page providing notes for the show. They are not mentioned on the main ticketing page for "Mount Olympus." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Dance |
IT'S common practice for companies to inject new products with a frisson of dare by naming them for gutsy pursuits or enticing destinations. But a Rolex Submariner may never plumb the ocean's depths, and a Kia Sedona won't always be traversing red rock landscapes in Arizona. The Honda Africa Twin comes by its name honestly, though. The motorcycle is a go anywhere adventure bike that is the consumer market descendant of a racing machine with a heroic resume. The original Africa Twin made its reputation by surviving, among other perils, thousands of miles of African desert and mountains to win the brutal Paris Dakar Rally four times in the 1980s. (Because of terrorist attacks, the off road race moved to South America in 2009 and is now called the Dakar.) While a devoted following for the civilian version of the Africa Twin grew, the model never came to the United States, and the name fell into disuse more than a dozen years ago. The arrival of a new Africa Twin, which made its American debut in the summer and is now becoming more widely available, is well timed to a surge of interest in bikes suited to long distance treks, pavement optional. Part mountain goat and part gazelle, the Africa Twin "twin" refers to the two cylinders fosters the image of pounding across the Serengeti and then ascending the lower reaches of Mount Kilimanjaro. If only I'd had one of these on my own African motorcycle trip a father daughter crisscrossing of Uganda three years ago. For that trip, I rented an old Honda XLR 250, a single cylinder off road bike. My daughter Julia, who works for a health care foundation in East Africa, was on her own usual form of transportation, a Yamaha TTR, which is a similar dual purpose road and trail bike. As delivered by Ali of the rental shop, my Honda was missing its compression release and choke control, which made kick starting the engine a trying experience. The poor thing had suffered much neglect in its lifetime, and I had to trust that it would carry me across the savanna and into the foothills of the Rwenzori Mountains, skirting the border of the Democratic Republic of Congo, then south toward Rwanda and back to Kampala, the Ugandan capital. The lithe XLR proved adept at dodging the swarms of two wheel taxis in Kampala, a chaotic city where even the sidewalks have speed bumps to discourage their use as detours around traffic. Pushing into the countryside, we stopped several times at settlements with roadside repair shops to lube the chains baptism by used engine oil and I managed to shore up a floppy clutch handle with a few washers from a local scrap dealer. Still, the prospect of a breakdown loomed. Although the cellphone coverage was flawless in even the most remote areas, there would be no cheerful roadside assistance service to rescue me. I told myself over and over: "It's a Honda. It'll get me there." Beyond the developed areas, travel in Uganda means coping with long unpaved stretches, usually called gravel roads though they are typically hard packed dirt. In these conditions, the Africa Twin would excel, with its long legged suspension capable of gliding over potholes. The reality of Uganda and other parts of Africa is that in reaching many of the more interesting sights inside national parks or on the way to the picturesque lodges where we overnighted on the eight day trip, there may barely be any road at all. The deep ruts and rocky paths at Lake Mburo sent Julia and me into low speed spills. Happily, the bikes and riders were largely undamaged, and at least in this one instance I was happy to lift upright a slim single cylinder, 250 cc machine rather than a two cylinder, 530 pound, 1000 cc brute like the Africa Twin. I was recalling all this while taking a reviewer's ride of the new Africa Twin recently in Cairo. (Admittedly, it was Cairo in upstate New York, but forgive an old biker's reveries.) Among the features of the modern Africa Twin that might have been appreciated on the Uganda ride is the optional 6 speed, dual clutch transmission essentially an automated manual gearbox. The feature adds 700 to the 12,999 base price, before a destination charge of 350. Typically, automatic shifting has been the answer to a question that few motorcycle riders ask. I'm perfectly satisfied to shift myself; in fact, there can be a state of Zen in achieving perfectly rev matched shifts. But I can imagine the Africa Twin's dual clutch transmission being useful off road, by letting the rider pay more attention to surfaces and obstacles. The Honda Africa Twin motorcycle was featured at the Indian Auto Expo 2016 in New Delhi. Gear changes can be fully automatic there's no clutch to pull on the handlebar, nor is there a foot lever for shifting or they can be manually actuated by using levers at the left handgrip. A "D" mode can be selected for relaxed riding. And there is an "S" choice for sportier situations, with three levels of responsiveness offered. I found this transmission to be nearly seamless in operation on the road. (It did take a few miles before I quit searching for the shift lever when approaching a stoplight.) The "D" setting proved to be the least intrusive, as the sportier choices seemed to hold the gears unnaturally long, unwilling to upshift. But Honda says this is the way the software was designed to work. Where the automatic transmission didn't work for me was at parking lot speeds. Its engagement seemed tentative, robbed of the operator control afforded by a practiced hand on the clutch lever and throttle. Like other large adventure class bikes, the Africa Twin asks riders to make a long reach to put both feet flat on the ground, a consequence of its standard 34 inch seat height. But the seat can be installed on a secondary set of latches that lower it almost an inch, and an even thinner seat can be ordered from Honda. I'm not a large man. So, combined with the narrow "waist" section behind the gas tank, the low seat made riding this decidedly tall machine far less daunting for me. That ratty rental bike did make the full trip. And after my constant fiddling, if I say so myself, it was returned running far better than when we embarked on our journey. Making that trek on an Africa Twin would have required less of the man machine rapport explored by Robert M. Pirsig in his 1974 book, "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values." Mr. Pirsig's book chronicled the author's meandering journey philosophical and physical from Minnesota to California, accompanied by his young son, on a much smaller Honda. I suppose my road trip with Julia could be called "Swahili and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance." Doing it astride a Honda Africa Twin would have made it easier. But maybe my African rental Honda made it more memorable. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Automobiles |
Last Halloween, the American Ballet Theater principals James Whiteside and Daniil Simkin took a class dressed as stars from the troupe's past, to the delight of observers. Mr. Simkin was Mikhail Baryshnikov. But Mr. Whiteside turned heads as the ballerina Gelsey Kirkland, with leotard and skirt, pointe shoes and fake hair in a bun. The choreographer Jessica Lang, scouting for dancers, was impressed: "He's not afraid to push boundaries." Pushing boundaries is something of a habit for Mr. Whiteside, 32, who joined American Ballet as a soloist in 2012 and became a principal a year later. Yes, he professionally plays Prince Charmings, but he also leads alternative artistic lives: as a pop singer, JbDubs, and drag queen, Uhu Betch. Ballet remains rather traditional when it comes to romantic pairings, gender roles and sexual expression. "I became very aware of the hetero normative standard in ballet very early," said Mr. Whiteside, who realized he would mainly play straight men onstage. "And that made me sad. I will never get to express myself as my true self." JbDubs and Uhu Betch help fill that gap. Those characters have helped Mr. Whiteside attract an eclectic collection of fans on social media, including young, gay male ballet dancers who tell him his presence is reassuring. Some older ballet fans, however, are perplexed, and at times dismissive. "When I post a drag photo," Mr. Whiteside said, "or if I post something off color or nontraditional, I notice that I lose followers." Mr. Whiteside will be busy during American Ballet's fall season, beginning Wednesday, Oct. 19, including Ms. Lang's premiere. His ballet accomplishments have given him courage in his other endeavors. "Right now, I'm so happy with where I am professionally that I find myself caring less about propriety," he said in a recent interview. "I want to be true to my artistic visions multiple because I know exactly what I want to do, and why should I have to change myself to fit society's needs?" "I play a straight character every role I do. I don't have the luxury of choice. Hopefully, someday we will." As a teenager, Mr. Whiteside said, he dreamed of joining Ballet Theater. On the surface, his affinity for the traditional romantic ballets that constitute much of the company's repertory seems at odds with the glee he takes in scrambling gender roles through his alter egos. "He's unabashedly himself and completely recognizes when his unabashed self doesn't fit with what it is he's trying to do," said Kevin McKenzie, the artistic director of Ballet Theater. The way Mr. Whiteside sees it, Romeo, Conrad, Albrecht and the other seducers in the ballet canon are characters as fun to play as anything else. "Out of context, I couldn't care less about how I appear on the spectrum of masculinity," he said. But tradition compels him to play it straight onstage. "I do pas de deux with women all day, every day. Always with women. So I choose to create this character, to create this story, to make it relatable to the masses and artistically sensible." "Drag tells you exactly what is wrong with the world in a really, really creative, glamorous, funny, sexy way." Mr. Whiteside and his friends had been going out in drag for years when they created the group the Dairy Queens at a Cheesecake Factory in Boston, where Mr. Whiteside was dancing for the Boston Ballet. Mr. Whiteside became Uhu Betch, below, a play on his favorite childhood drink, Yoo hoo; his boyfriend, Dan Donigan, a professional drag queen who appeared on "RuPaul's Drag Race," had adopted the name Milk; and two Boston Ballet dancers became Skim Burley and Juggz Au Lait. When Mr. Whiteside joined Ballet Theater, the Queens caught the eye of the night life impresario Susanne Bartsch, who hired them for club nights and parties. "They reminded me of a modern version of the '80s," she said. "As a ballet dancer, I don't get to really play the type of music I love listening to, which is club music, pop music, rap music, basically anything but the music I dance to in my professional ballet career." As a child growing up in Fairfield, Conn., Mr. Whiteside played his father's records on a toy turntable and spent hours at the Virgin Megastore in New York City. In his early 20s, he started experimenting with songs on his computer, eventually developing a style he calls "sassy rap," with sexually explicit lyrics and a dancehall beat. He corralled fellow dancers from Boston Ballet, where he worked at the time, to join him at clubs and in music videos, including for the 2012 song "I Hate My Job," which made a splash on YouTube and streaming sites. This fall, JbDubs, right, will release "NYC Piece of Me," a song inspired by Britney Spears, which he recorded in Los Angeles on a day off from dancing Ballet Theater's "The Nutcracker" in December. The new song, which will have a video featuring several Ballet Theater company members, "is about being too gay, being not gay enough," Mr. Whiteside said, and confronts the recent loss of his mother to cancer. "I find JbDubs to be less 'JbDubs' and more James as time progresses, because I find myself caring less about separating my interests," Mr. Whiteside said. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Dance |
It felt like the sky was falling on the Yankees just over a week ago. They had dropped their fifth straight game on Sept. 8 to fall to 21 21, the first time since the strike shortened 1995 season they were .500 or worse in September. They were clinging to the eighth and final spot in the American League playoffs. Their hitting and pitching was sputtering. General Manager Brian Cashman made a rare address to the entire team. Standouts Giancarlo Stanton, Aaron Judge and Gio Urshela were still recovering from injuries. Luke Voit, the Yankees' blunt first baseman, summed up the team's frustrations at the time better than anyone: "I feel like teams aren't really scared of us right now, and it's kind of a sad thing because we're the New York Yankees." So much has changed in a week. After Tuesday's 20 6 thrashing of the Toronto Blue Jays New York's sixth straight win the Yankees leapfrogged their division rival and grabbed the A.L.'s fifth seed. Their pitching and hitting have stabilized, aided by the recent returns of Gleyber Torres, Urshela and Stanton from the injured list. Judge, too, was back with the team on Wednesday. Perhaps the Yankees are, once again, scary? "We're back to being the Bronx Bombers, and I don't think people want to play us in the playoffs," Voit said after Tuesday's game. When he first got hurt, Judge was the team's leading power hitter. Voit has since taken that mantle for the Yankees as well as for the rest of baseball. With his two home runs on Tuesday and another on Wednesday, Voit led the major leagues with 19 homers more than the perennial All Stars Nelson Cruz and Mike Trout. More impressive, Voit has produced this home run tear despite nagging foot pain. Hitting the balls over the fence might actually be better for his foot: he doesn't have to sprint. (He still sometimes jogs around the bases with a slight limp.) "That helps," he said with a smile. "But I'm just going to fight through that, man. Just keep grinding. It's something that lingers. I have good days and bad days." At the plate, Voit has had plenty of good days since the Yankees called him up on Aug. 2, 2018, a few days after acquiring him in what was then considered a minor trade with the St. Louis Cardinals. Since then, one advanced metric rated Voit the 10th most productive hitter in the major leagues, on par with 2019 National League most valuable player Cody Bellinger of the Los Angeles Dodgers. "He's really becoming a great hitter in this league, and it's consistent with what we've seen since we got him in '18," Yankees Manager Aaron Boone said. "He's been an impact player." The Yankees got two more potentially impactful hitters back before Tuesday's game, as Urshela and Stanton plus pitcher Jonathan Loaisiga returned from the injured list. While Urshela missed only 11 games because of pain in his throwing elbow, Stanton had missed 32 games since Aug. 8 with a left hamstring strain. His ailment was concerning given the multiple injuries he had during the 2019 season and how much the Yankees have invested in him (more than 200 million is left on his contract after this season). "I've got a new warm up and a new midgame routine if certain things happen in the game," Stanton said Wednesday. "Like if I'm D.H. ing and I don't run the bases for two at bats, that's an hour and a half of no movement, so I've got to do more in between at bats, which is obvious and has been done, but got to switch it up." Even as Torres sat out on Tuesday and Wednesday to nurse what Boone called minor quadriceps discomfort, the Yankees looked little like the team that dropped two of three games to the Blue Jays in Buffalo last week. The Yankees batted around in three consecutive innings on Tuesday. Urshela went 3 of 4 and played his usual dazzling defense at third base. Struggling catcher Gary Sanchez drove in four runs, three on one home run. "It's been a while since we had fun like that," Sanchez said. LeMahieu and Voit the two hitters who have carried the Yankees' offense all season each drove in five runs. Stanton was the only batter in Tuesday's starting lineup without a hit. (He did walk once.) Deivi Garcia, the 21 year old rookie who has pitched like a veteran in his first four major league starts, tossed seven stout innings, continuing a trend of strong starting pitching that has fueled the Yankees' recent turnaround. Since Sept. 8, the Yankees' rotation which is still without James Paxton has a 1.24 E.R.A. over nearly 44 innings. "A handful of those days the offense has stepped up, but I think it has all started with the starting pitchers," Boone said after Tuesday's game. Boone said the Yankees would gradually ease Stanton and Judge back into action. Because Stanton received only about a dozen at bats at the team's alternate site in Moosic, Pa., before his return, Boone said he planned to mix in days off for Stanton early on so that he could be ready to play several days in a row by the end of next week. That would be fortuitous for the Yankees, since the playoffs begin on Sept. 29. As far as postseason seeding, Voit made his goal clear: He wants to play the first round of the playoffs, a best of three series, in the Bronx, which would require the Yankees finishing the regular season as a top four seed. (The following two rounds would be in a neutral site bubble in Southern California.) | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Sports |
Viewership for the Oscars plunged to a new low on Sunday night, with an audience of 23.6 million tuning in to watch the broadcast on ABC, according to Nielsen. That's a 20 percent drop from last year, and roughly three million fewer than the number of people who tuned in for the 2018 ceremony, the previous low. Those numbers do not include viewers who watched the broadcast on streaming platforms. Plenty of theories on the ratings collapse will be floated: Does the annual extravaganza need to go back to having a host? Was the show scheduled too close to other major live television events? Can viewers in the streaming era stomach a program that runs three and a half hours and includes more than 40 minutes of commercials? Two weeks ago, the Grammys hit a 12 year low in viewership, but their declines were more modest: The show lost just 5 percent of its audience. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Media |
'You Will Not Live to See Your Next Birthday' New Year's Eve, 1943. Lajos Stillmann is celebrating his 22nd birthday with friends in a Budapest apartment. Someone suggests paying a visit to a nearby palm reader. Stillmann goes along, reluctantly. The palm reader takes a look at his hand, then tells him she would rather not say what she's seen. He insists, and she relents. "You will not live to see your next birthday," she says. New Year's Eve, 1944. Hungary's puppet Nazi regime has handed Stillmann and other Jews over to the Germans. He is put to work as a slave laborer, digging trenches and tank traps along the Austrian border. A young soldier from an S.S. unit accuses someone in Stillmann's work crew of stealing a pair of gloves. He orders the workers to line up in rows and threatens to kill the 10th man in each row if the gloves don't materialize. Stillmann casts a sideways glance down his row and counts. He's the 10th man. The soldier draws his pistol, turns to Stillmann, asks whether he has the gloves. Right then, a German officer arrives and orders the soldier to holster his weapon and move along. Stillmann is spared. The thought runs through his mind: "I shouldn't be so dismissive of fortune tellers." That evening, Stillmann and other prisoners are put on a train, headed west. Afterward they are marched in darkness until they reach a gate that opens to a plaza surrounded by barracks. Stillmann learns where he is: Mauthausen, a concentration camp near Linz. Soon after his arrival he runs into Jancsi, his best friend from their childhood in the town of Kiskunfelegyhaza. His friend is filthy, skeletal, stinking. Stillmann gives him a spare pair of underpants and tells him he will look for him the next day. Jancsi dies overnight. Stillmann is put to work in the camp's rock quarry. The guards have become lethargic. They don't torture the prisoners, but they barely feed them. He tries to conserve his strength and waits for the end to come, either the war's or his own. A few months later he is forced to march again, this time toward a sub camp called Gunskirchen. Along the way, at night, he is stopped at gunpoint by an S.S. officer. "Here we go again," Stillmann tells himself. "You are a Jew," the officer says. "I am not a Jew, I'm Portuguese," Stillmann replies. He produces a falsified passport obtained the previous summer thanks to a family relative working in Lisbon's embassy in Budapest. "Swear that Germany is winning the war and I'll let you go," the officer says. "Germany has already won the war," he answers. Between 60 and 70 percent of Hungary's Jews have already perished in the Holocaust. The officer puts away his gun. They are not long in the new camp before it is liberated by elements of the 71st Division and the African American 761st Tank Battalion. The date is Friday, May 4, 1945. Prisoners, half crazed with hunger, crawl toward their liberators over ground that is a putty of mud, urine and feces. Stillmann, with an infected leg wound, makes his way to a nearby American field hospital. He weighs 83 lbs. He recovers and serves a stint as an interpreter for the Americans. He meets George Patton. After several months he decides to go home. In his hometown he finds survivors who had been with his mother at Auschwitz. She had passed the initial selection, then got sick and vanished. One night, in a dream, he sees his father bury family heirlooms under a lilac tree in the garden. In the morning he takes a shovel to the spot he dreamed about and finds the heirlooms. Russian troops are quartered in his family home. He slips across the border to Austria, where he shuffles between displaced persons camps while looking for a country that might take him. A visa from Mexico comes through, and Lajos becomes Luis. There he meets Buba, also a Hungarian refugee and an Auschwitz survivor. Together they raise a thriving family. In time he becomes a pharmaceutical executive and a pillar of the Mexican Jewish community. I've known Luis nearly my whole life, thanks to his friendship with my parents. When I see him and say, "I'm so happy to see you," he's fond of replying, "You have no idea how happy I am to see you." At 98, he cherishes his grandchildren and great grandchildren, slips effortlessly between cultures and languages, dispenses sound medical advice to his friends, propounds historical counterfactuals, has an endless stock of anecdotes (some heartbreaking, many hilarious), and is always good for a joke. He's the most positive man I've ever met. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Opinion |
A Singer in Search of a Home of Her Own After graduating from Berklee College of Music in Boston in 2010, Tansu Akman Duffy came to New York. Her housing situation was unsettled. After a bad experience with Lower East Side bedbugs, she drifted between her parents' house in Darien, Conn., and Bushwick, Brooklyn, where she cat sat for a touring musician friend. Buying an apartment meant the stability of a real home as well as a good investment. About two years ago, Ms. Akman Duffy went on the hunt for a two bedroom, two bathroom place, planning to have a roommate to defray expenses. "My mother finds comfort in me living with someone," she said. What's more, "if my life changes, that two bedroom is able to accommodate it." She needed an elevator so her elderly father could visit. Her budget was up to 1 million. First up was Williamsburg, Brooklyn, where she had many friends; she sought help from Jacob Cohen, a college friend and a salesman at the Corcoran Group. But she was ambivalent about the neighborhood, crowded with hipsters and transients. "Everyone was there because it was a place to be seen, not a place they were from," she said. "As a renter, you don't think of it as your long term neighborhood because you can just move." Buying, however, made for a different mind set. "I wanted to come home and say 'hi' to people I knew." She liked the music scene of Lower Manhattan. She found a Chinatown duplex for 1.08 million. Monthly charges were under 1,100. "The photos look terrible and it's been on the market for a long time, but the layout is great," Mr. Cohen said. The building's passenger elevators were out of service temporarily, according to the listing agent. They took the stairs to the 10th floor. "Wow, this is worth the climb," Mr. Cohen said. The view was mesmerizing. Ms. Akman Duffy returned with her mother, who hoofed it up the stairs and noted "a few creaks and dents," she said. "I was too excited to even be worried about the elevator." Her offer of the asking price was accepted. She insisted on an inspection, which uncovered many issues, including a leaky dishwasher, a non flushing toilet and broken doors. "We couldn't get a firm grasp on what was wrong with the elevator," she said. Alarmed, she rescinded her offer. "To live on the 10th floor with a nonfunctioning elevator is not really an option." A friend had moved to Harlem and urged Ms. Akman Duffy to consider the neighborhood. On West 126th Street, she liked a fully renovated unit that covered the entire ground floor of a brownstone. It was listed for 819,000, making a bidding war inevitable. Monthly charges were less than 1,100. "It was so underpriced," Mr. Cohen said. "It was difficult for my client to stomach the idea of offering so much above the price." Ms. Akman Duffy was indeed put off. "If it was worth so much, why wasn't it listed for more?" she said. "There is always a catch. I was unprepared for the real estate blood bath that is New York." In the end, the place sold for 977,000. On StreetEasy, she saw ads for the newly constructed Aurum in Central Harlem. Battle weary, she had resigned herself to raising her budget and paying the mansion tax on units over 1 million, and what she called the "new construction tax," or the high taxes and closing costs common to new condos. She liked Aurum, choosing a two bedroom, two bath with an L shaped terrace for 1.16 million and monthly charges of 1,125. She closed in the winter and is now looking for a roommate. "I've done the whole friends of friends thing, and it hasn't worked," she said. She was surprised that even new buildings have maintenance issues hers included a leak in the living room and creaky floors. It was easy to add floor coverings. "Because I'm Turkish, my mother had a lot of Turkish carpets to give me," she said. She has been learning about the neighborhood and meeting her neighbors. "I have my bar, my bodega, my McDonald's," she said. "As a lover of blues and jazz, I was excited to move to Harlem and find it a humbling experience as a musician, because everybody is so good." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Real Estate |
The twin birthrate has declined in the United States after rising for years, a new report said this week. One theory researchers have put forward to explain the change is that fertility therapies that previously involved transfers of multiple embryos are less common. The National Center for Health Statistics said in the report that the twin birthrate had declined by an average of 1 percent a year from 2014 through 2018, when the rate was 32.6 per 1,000 births. That was the lowest rate in more than a decade, it said. The number of twin births more than doubled from 1980 to 2007, when there were 138,961 such births, the peak level, the report said. The number fluctuated until 2014, when there were 135,336. In 2018, there were 123,536 twin deliveries. "It is trending downward for the first time in three decades," said the report's lead author, Joyce A. Martin, a statistician with the N.C.H.S. "What we don't have is a good explanation of why these rates might be declining. However, the data do suggest one possibility." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Health |
DORM living was both expensive and crowded, so Julia Collier, along with her friend and roommate Karen Olsoy, decided they would rather have a place of their own. The two, now seniors at New York University, are both from the Seattle suburbs. They lived together their sophomore year, along with two other roommates, in two connected dorm rooms. They calculated that the cost, for all four, was 4,600 a month, or 2,300 per room. "We were kind of piled on top of each other and realized we could be living on our own outside of the university system," Ms. Collier said. She began looking. An agent showed her two places, a small one bedroom for 2,200 a month on Carmine Street and a small studio for 2,275 a month on Grove Street. Ms. Olsoy's father signed as guarantor. Both women's parents split the broker fee of 15 percent of a year's rent, or just over 4,000, horrified at "the giant fee just to have someone help you find an apartment," Ms. Collier said. The studio was large enough for two full size beds and some bookcases. At the time, the apartment represented "the most perfect location in the world to us," Ms. Olsoy said. Across the street was the building filmed for the introduction to the TV show "Friends." In fact, their apartment might have been occupied by Ugly Naked Guy. "It was pretty exciting," Ms. Collier said. "My parents are convinced that 'Friends' is why I was set on moving to New York in the first place." But in reality, "Ugly Naked Guy's apartment was not as nice as they made it seem on the show." In the studio, they were forced to adhere to the same sleep wake schedule. One room living "puts you completely on the other person's clock," said Ms. Collier, the later riser. "In the next apartment over," Ms. Olsoy recalled, "if they were fighting, we could hear every word they were saying. If they weren't fighting, we could hear a bass sound if their TV was on. The TV was the worst part." As new young market rate renters, they felt out of place. Most of their neighbors, building residents for decades, paid low regulated rents. "One of the older gentlemen made a comment that, 'I don't want to even guess what you are paying for rent and I won't tell you what I am paying,' because he moved in in 1964," Ms. Collier said. Suffering from cabin fever, they sublet their studio over the summer and waited tables in Nantucket. At summer's end, Ms. Olsoy returned briefly to Seattle while Ms. Collier returned to New York to hunt for another apartment. "I felt like it was going to be so much easier the second time," Ms. Collier said. "We knew what to expect. I was so wrong." Friends lived in Yorkville, on the far Upper East Side, where they knew rents were lower than rents downtown. Ms. Collier found a small two bedroom there for 2,400 a month. But the landlord's demands, involving several fees and notarized letters, struck her as excessive. Ms. Olsoy's father, back in Seattle, was to be a guarantor, but the landlord wanted him to come to New York to sign the lease. Ms. Collier backed out. Time was short. Ms. Collier remembered seeing a signboard in front of Miron Properties on East 10th Street, so she ran over, encountering Matthew Williams, an agent there. "Doors," Ms. Collier said. "I kept repeating: 'Doors. All we need is doors.' " Mr. Williams took Ms. Collier to a sixth floor walk up in Chinatown, for just 2,300 a month. The floor sagged. She thought of herself as easy to please, and felt guilty turning the place down. "I would just be so sad to come home," she said. Still, there were possibilities within their budget in Yorkville. A two bedroom on East 84th Street was 2,350 a month. But it was railroad style, lacking the requisite bedroom doors. Could they make it work? No. Ms. Collier refused to replicate their previous mistake. "We were done making do," she said. A true two bedroom was nearby, on Second Avenue in the high 80s, where the new subway line was coming through. The rent was suspiciously low, 2,400 a month. The rooms were enormous. The two departing tenants were on hand. Ms. Collier asked about noise from the subway construction. "They said, 'We hear the occasional explosion, but it's usually in the daytime, so it's fine,' " she reported. What about noise from the back patio of the bar on the ground floor? Closing the windows took care of that, they said. Ms. Collier called Ms. Olsoy and told her she had found their new home. Both friends signed the one year lease. Three of four parents are listed as guarantors. The parents split the broker fee again, 15 percent of a year's rent, or around 4,300 and are also paying the rent. "Because we were students," Ms. Collier said, "the owner wanted a three month security deposit. I don't understand how anyone who doesn't have a supportive parent base can live here." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Real Estate |
Empathy and forgiveness a plea for more and climate change were recurring themes, as well as issues political and personal. Here are condensed selections. Add your own ideas in the comments section at the bottom of this page (student submissions will be highlighted). Photos and drawings that interpret the question can be submitted via email, to edlife nytimes.com. If I were the president of the world, I would first prevent girls from marrying at a young age. One of the reason I want to prevent girls from marrying at a young age is because the girls who are marrying quickly are not able to spend their childhood and they have to stay inside the house. And the second reason is that it is violating the international Declaration of Human Rights article 16, which says that men and women have right to marry. So if I were the president of the world, I would prevent more creation of child brides. By looking at Malala Yousafzai , I got to learn about lots of women not getting education in Pakistan and also other countries. I want to fix this problem. Human Rights article 26 says that everyone has their rights to have education, just being a woman doesn't changes that. Some people think that women should stay at their house and do housework while men gets to study and get jobs. Well, it's WRONG! Men and women are same humans who only has different gender. So if I become the president, I want to fix the discrimination between girls and boys. If I were in charge, I would spread the word that there is strength in empathy. Those who can step into the shoes of another are powerful. They can imagine what it is like to lose a child to gun violence, to plead for your husband's life at the hands of police. They can imagine what it is like to come to a new country as a kid. They can see the loneliness of a soul struggling alone against a powerful, raging addiction. Our country is made stronger when we help each other lighten our loads. Let's rise together not fall apart. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Education |
Computer systems from Ukraine to the United States were struck on Tuesday in an international cyberattack that was similar to a recent assault that crippled tens of thousands of machines worldwide. In Kiev, the capital of Ukraine, A.T.M.s stopped working. About 80 miles away, workers were forced to manually monitor radiation at the old Chernobyl nuclear plant when their computers failed. And tech managers at companies around the world from Maersk, the Danish shipping conglomerate, to Merck, the drug giant in the United States were scrambling to respond. Even an Australian factory for the chocolate giant Cadbury was affected. It was unclear who was behind this cyberattack, and the extent of its impact was still hard to gauge Tuesday. It started as an attack on Ukrainian government and business computer systems an assault that appeared to have been intended to hit the day before a holiday marking the adoption in 1996 of Ukraine's first Constitution after its break from the Soviet Union. The attack spread from there, causing collateral damage around the world. The outbreak was the latest and perhaps the most sophisticated in a series of attacks making use of dozens of hacking tools that were stolen from the National Security Agency and leaked online in April by a group called the Shadow Brokers. Like the WannaCry attacks in May, the latest global hacking took control of computers and demanded digital ransom from their owners to regain access. The new attack used the same National Security Agency hacking tool, Eternal Blue, that was used in the WannaCry episode, as well as two other methods to promote its spread, according to researchers at the computer security company Symantec. The National Security Agency has not acknowledged its tools were used in WannaCry or other attacks. But computer security specialists are demanding that the agency help the rest of the world defend against the weapons it created. "The N.S.A. needs to take a leadership role in working closely with security and operating system platform vendors such as Apple and Microsoft to address the plague that they've unleashed," said Golan Ben Oni, the global chief information officer at IDT, a Newark based conglomerate hit by a separate attack in April that used the agency's hacking tools. Mr. Ben Oni warned federal officials that more serious attacks were probably on the horizon. The vulnerability in Windows software used by Eternal Blue was patched by Microsoft in March, but as the WannaCry attacks demonstrated, hundreds of thousands of groups around the world failed to properly install the fix. "Just because you roll out a patch doesn't mean it'll be put in place quickly," said Carl Herberger, vice president for security at Radware. "The more bureaucratic an organization is, the higher chance it won't have updated its software." The Ukrainian government said several of its ministries, local banks and metro systems had been affected. A number of other European companies, including Rosneft, the Russian energy giant; Saint Gobain, the French construction materials company; and WPP, the British advertising agency, also said they had been targeted. Ukrainian officials pointed a finger at Russia on Tuesday, although Russian companies were also affected. Home Credit bank, one of Russia's top 50 lenders, was paralyzed, with all of its offices closed, according to the RBC news website. The attack also affected Evraz, a steel manufacturing and mining company that employs about 80,000 people, the RBC website reported. In the United States, the multinational law firm DLA Piper also reported being hit. Hospitals in Pennsylvania were being forced to cancel operations after the attack hit computers at Heritage Valley Health Systems, a Pennsylvania health care provider, and its hospitals in Beaver and Sewickley, Penn., and satellite locations across the state. The ransomware also hurt Australian branches of international companies. DLA Piper's Australian offices warned clients that they were dealing with a "serious global cyber incident" and had disabled email as a precautionary measure. Local news reports said that in Hobart, Tasmania, on Tuesday evening, computers in a Cadbury chocolate factory, owned by Mondelez International, had displayed ransomware messages that demanded 300 in bitcoins. Qantas Airways' booking system failed for a time on Tuesday, but the company said the breakdown was due to an unrelated hardware issue. The Australian government has urged companies to install security updates and isolate any infected computers from their networks. "This ransomware attack is a wake up call to all Australian businesses to regularly back up their data and install the latest security patches," said Dan Tehan, the cybersecurity minister. "We are aware of the situation and monitoring it closely." A National Security Agency spokesman referred questions about the attack to the Department of Homeland Security. "The Department of Homeland Security is monitoring reports of cyberattacks affecting multiple global entities and is coordinating with our international and domestic cyber partners," Scott McConnell, a department spokesman, said in a statement. Computer specialists said the ransomware was very similar to a virus that emerged last year called Petya. Petya means "Little Peter," in Russian, leading some to speculate the name referred to Sergei Prokofiev's 1936 symphony "Peter and the Wolf," about a boy who captures a wolf. Reports that the computer virus was a variant of Petya suggest the attackers will be hard to trace. Petya was for sale on the so called dark web, where its creators made the ransomware available as "ransomware as a service" a play on Silicon Valley terminology for delivering software over the internet, according to the security firm Avast Threat Labs. That means anyone could launch the ransomware with the click of a button, encrypt someone's systems and demand a ransom to unlock it. If the victim pays, the authors of the Petya ransomware, who call themselves Janus Cybercrime Solutions, get a cut of the payment. In just the last seven days, Mr. Suiche noted, WannaCry had tried to hit an additional 80,000 organizations but was prevented from executing attack code because of the kill switch. Petya does not have a kill switch. Petya also encrypts and locks entire hard drives, whereas the earlier ransomware attacks locked only individual files, said Chris Hinkley, a researcher at the security firm Armor. The hackers behind Petya demanded 300 worth of the cybercurrency Bitcoin to unlock victims' machines. By Tuesday afternoon, online records showed that 30 victims had paid the ransom, although it was not clear whether they had regained access to their files. Other victims may be out of luck, after Posteo, the German email service provider, shut down the hackers' email account. In Ukraine, people turned up at post offices, A.T.M.s and airports to find blank computer screens, or signs about closures. At Kiev's central post office, a few bewildered customers milled about, holding parcels and letters, looking at a sign that said, "Closed for technical reasons." The hackers compromised Ukrainian accounting software mandated to be used in various industries in the country, including government agencies and banks, according to researchers at Cisco Talos, the security division of the computer networking company. That allowed them to unleash their ransomware when the software, which is also used in other countries, was updated. The ransomware spread for five days across Ukraine, and around the world, before activating Tuesday evening. "If I had to guess, I would think this was done to send a political message," said Craig Williams, the senior technical researcher at Talos. One Kiev resident, Tetiana Vasylieva, was forced to borrow money from a relative after failing to withdraw money at four automated teller machines. At one A.T.M. in Kiev belonging to the Ukrainian branch of the Austrian bank Raiffeisen, a message on the screen said the machine was not functioning. Ukraine's Infrastructure Ministry, the postal service, the national railway company, and one of the country's largest communications companies, Ukrtelecom, had been affected, Volodymyr Omelyan, the country's infrastructure minister, said in a Facebook post. Officials for the metro system in Kiev said card payments could not be accepted. The national power grid company Kievenergo had to switch off all of its computers, but the situation was under control, according to the Interfax Ukraine news agency. Metro Group, a German company that runs wholesale food stores, said its operations in Ukraine had been affected. At the Chernobyl plant, the computers affected by the attack collected data on radiation levels and were not connected to industrial systems at the site, where, although all reactors have been decommissioned, huge volumes of radioactive waste remain. Operators said radiation monitoring was being done manually. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Technology |
In 2007, Peggy Whitson set off on her second trip to the space station and soon became its first woman commander. At the time, she was one of only three women to have lived on the I.S.S. Sunita Williams later commanded it in 2012, and Dr. Whitson had command again in 2017. They are the only women ever to take command of the station. Both women are amazing, but why did it take so long to have a woman commander. And why have there been just two? Partly it's statistics: Only 66 women have been into space, compared to just over 500 men. When approximately 90 percent of space travelers are men, it's easy for years to pass in which the space station is populated by all male crews. The record for the number of women in space simultaneously is four; that was set when the Space Shuttle Discovery visited the I.S.S. in 2010. At the time, there were nine men and four women in space. That year also was the first time that two women served on the space station simultaneously but it took another five years for the feat to be repeated. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Science |
Our wedding had over 300 people in attendance. When we got the pictures back, we saw a picture of two girls dancing. No one in our wedding party knew who they were, and we just figured they were plus ones of friends that we didn't get to talk to, given there were so many people. Later we found out that they were crashers and one of our friends actually kicked them out. At least it looked like they had a good time. These hikers were invited to join a rehearsal dinner. 2. They Hiked All This Way We had two Appalachian Trail hikers crash our rehearsal dinner. It was an amazingly authentic Vermont experience. We invited them to join us and they immediately dropped their packs, grabbed a beer and joined in the celebration. Some of our friends from New York even asked if we had hired them to make it a more "real" Vermont experience. Having them crash was a highlight of the day 3. Oh, This is YOUR Wedding?! Ted Nugent was the speaker at a hunting event next door to our wedding reception and his attendees (about 10 to 15 people in the span of about an hour) crashed our wedding reception, and more specifically, the open bar. I watched one guy walk the perimeter of the reception room trying to blend in, wearing a Hawaiian shirt and cargo shorts, and then make a beeline for the bar. A couple came in and started dancing together on the dance floor, and then slowly, step by step, they danced closer to the bar. One guy was about to order a drink and I introduced myself and he feigned surprise saying, "Ohhhhh is this YOUR wedding?!" I responded, "did my DRESS give it away?" and showed him the door. 4. Does He Work Here? We had our wedding on Labor Day at the Lightship Frying Pan, which at the time was docked on Pier 63 in New York. A few days before the wedding, we got a call from the staff that the ship had been inspected by the city and because of the large number of guests attending we couldn't have the ceremony or festivities on the actual boat but we were welcomed to use the pier. It was a public pier, but we were assured that there would be a person on staff checking names and making sure only guests would be admitted. There was no such person. The weather was warm and sunny in the morning, but in the afternoon during the ceremony the pier began to move. Just as a big wave crashed over the pier we heard a man yell, "God wants them to be happy!" My almost husband and I turned to look and there was a man dressed in a red apron holding both of his hands up to the sky. It was a pleasant interruption, and everyone laughed. The boat was red so we thought the man may have been be part of the staff. We didn't realize until after the ceremony that he was a crasher. I was brought up Jewish, although we had a nondenominational ceremony, and I always loved the tradition of setting the table at Passover and leaving a place for a stranger called Elijah, so when people show up uninvited I think of it as a gift. I remember asking a friend to make sure he got something to eat. Later he showed up in many of our wedding photographs and in a video that our friend Gene Temesy made. The first thing I need to explain about Israeli weddings is that invitations are extended more widely and generously than at your typical American affair. When the co workers you don't know all that well have implied plus ones, you can hardly apply the term "crash" to your grandfather's second cousin, even if you've never met her. Standing with me and my about to be husband were our parents, siblings, nieces, nephews, grandparents, and, apparently my grandfather's second cousin. I didn't notice at the time. Then the pictures came back. My grandfather's second cousin is featured in just about every photo of our marriage ceremony. In many of them, it appears that either a slip or skirt had fallen around her ankles. Almost 10 years later, I'm so glad she was there. Julie and Nick's wedding guest book featured a drawing of the wedding crasher in a polka dot dress. Our wedding crasher had made her entrance toward the end of the evening, when a couple of other guests were headed out. Clearly intoxicated, she made herself known by hitting the bar hard and then hitting the dance floor harder for some awkward dancing and flirting with married friends. When our day of coordinator asked who she was at the wedding with, her story morphed from being "with the family" to "working at the building." At some point in that conversation, she seemed to become aware that she was somewhere she should not have been, saying "I need to go, don't I?" She suddenly took off, her legs wobbling like a little lamb's as she tried to run away in her heels. We remember her fondly and have event cemented her memory in our guest book. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Fashion & Style |
THE HOUSE OF THE DEAD Siberian Exile Under the Tsars By Daniel Beer Illustrated. 464 pp. Alfred A. Knopf. 35. The title of "The House of the Dead" Daniel Beer's history of the vast penal system Russia created in Siberia in the 19th century comes from the novel Fyodor Dostoyevsky wrote about his own experience of exile. His banishment, following a mock execution in St. Petersburg in 1849 for the crime of associating with subversives, lasted a decade and included four years in a wretched labor camp in Omsk. "Notes From the House of the Dead" (also translated, imprecisely, simply as "The House of the Dead") was, as Beer observes, one of the first accounts to document "the unsavory realities of Siberian exile": the squalor, the violence, the moral depravity that hundreds of thousands endured in this "vast prison without a roof." Dostoyevsky's descriptions appear so often in Beer's book that it seems fair to ask whether one ought to read or reread the original instead. Or read Anton Chekhov's reportorial bombshell from 1893, "Sakhalin Island," which The New Yorker not long ago called the greatest work of journalism of the 19th century and which Beer also cites extensively. Or "Siberia and the Exile System," an exacting, if less literary chronicle written at roughly the same time by the American travel writer George Kennan, whose distant cousin with the same name became one of the United States' most distinguished diplomats, best known for his policy of containment of the Soviet Union half a century later. These writers not to mention Pushkin and Tolstoy are the reasons Siberia occupies the place in the popular imagination it does to this day, as a metaphor for suffering and deprivation, where the forsaken are cast out and left to suffer a "civil execution," removed from society itself. "The very name 'Siberia' is enough to terrorize a Russian," as an early 19th century explorer put it. 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. Beer, however, has done more with his own "House of the Dead" than merely reprise the accounts of great writers before him. A senior lecturer at the University of London, he has mined an impressive trove of resources, including state archives in St. Petersburg, Moscow and two Siberian cities that became hubs for the expanding penal system, Tobolsk and Irkutsk. From these rich lodes emerges a history with the sort of granular details there's an entire chapter, for example, devoted to the knout, the lash and other tools of corporal punishment that make the terror of the "very name 'Siberia' " so vividly, so luridly clear. As Chekhov wrote, describing one thrashing: "The area where he has been beaten is dark blue crimson from bruises and is bleeding. His teeth are chattering, his face is yellow and wet, his eyes are wandering. When he is given medicinal drops, he bites the glass compulsively." Chekhov went on to note that the man had been whipped for the crime of murder; he faced yet another round for trying to escape from Sakhalin, the island off Russia's Pacific coast where the penal camps reached their dystopian worst. In Beer's account, the escalating brutality that was needed to control the penal system deeply infected the society it was meant to protect, a legacy that one could argue lingers in Russia today under President Vladimir V. Putin. Worse, the system of exile and penal labor that was constructed ultimately failed its original purpose. Instead of protecting imperial Russia, it incubated the revolution that would topple it. "The House of the Dead" opens with a Gogolian story about a church bell from Uglich, one of the ancient towns dotted along the Volga River. In 1591, residents rang the bell in alarm after the heir of Ivan the Terrible, then 9, was found with his throat slit. Boris Godunov, the regent suspected by some of complicity, crushed the incipient rebellion by ordering the execution of 200 people who answered the bell's peals and the banishment of the rest. With a symbolic flourish, he ordered the bell into Siberian exile with them, removing its clapper to silence it. Siberia was then, like the American West, "unknown" territory that was destined, in the view of the czars, to be absorbed into an expanding empire. The conquest that began with Ivan the Terrible at the end of the 16th century reached the Pacific by the end of the 17th. From the start, it was clear that Russia would face a persistent shortage in the number of farmers, laborers and other settlers who were necessary for its vast and sparsely populated Asian territory. "Punishment and colonization became intertwined," Beer writes. At first only serious crimes merited exile, but later petty crimes and even previously innocent activities like vagrancy became justification enough. Soon, "prostitutes, thieves, drunks and beggars were periodically rounded up in Russian cities and marched off to Siberia." Between 1801 and 1917, more than one million subjects would be banished there. Beer's book concentrates on those years, and on the last of the Romanovs: Nicholas I, Alexander II, Alexander III and Nicholas II. It was under these men that Russia turned Siberia into a vast penal system. The goal was to cauterize dissent by expunging it from the "civilized" parts of the empire in European Russia. And it worked for a while. The famous Decembrists, well connected military officers who botched an attempt to overthrow Nicholas I in December 1825, feature prominently here. So do the lesser known waves of Poles banished to Siberia for resisting Russian rule. Exile stifled those rebellions, but the Decembrists and the Sybiracy (the Polish word for "Siberians") became inspirations for future generations of revolutionaries. Beer makes it clear that Russia's modernization also contributed to Siberia's failure as a penal colony. As railroad travel made Asian Russia more accessible, Siberia was no longer the inescapable natural prison it once seemed. The dispersal of criminals and the hardening of those who weren't violent to begin with undercut genuine economic development as roaming bands of freed or escaped brigands tormented settlers, along with the indigenous peoples of Siberia (who get very little attention in Beer's book). The circulation of accounts about the horrors of Siberia (Beer cites a New York Times article from 1890 about a camp massacre in Yakutsk with the headline "Men Shot Down Like Dogs") undermined the authority of the czarist governments and led to greater demands for reforms and broader freedoms. Even czarist officials began to plead that Siberia no longer serve as "a deep sack into which we tossed our social sins." In 1900, Nicholas II eased up somewhat, though he retained the use of exile for political crimes. By then, Beer writes, "Siberian exile had become a revolutionary rite of passage." One of those banished was Vladimir Ulyanov, who kept up a "voluminous correspondence" with activists who would later follow him under his more familiar name, Vladimir Lenin. The attempted revolution of 1905 dispatched a new wave of revolutionaries to the incubator Siberia had become. Of the 100 leaders of the October Revolution 12 years later, Beer notes, more than 60 had been exiled there. Though the Bolsheviks revered the survivors of Siberia and granted amnesty to tens of thousands of prisoners when Nicholas II abdicated, the scars were deep. The collapse of czarist rule, Beer concludes convincingly, merely planted the seeds for the "fratricidal bloodletting" of the 1930s and for the "ruthless exploitation of convict labor on an industrial scale" in the Siberia that Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn would bring to the world's attention. By then it had become the sea in which "The Gulag Archipelago" would rise. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Books |
Joseph Shabalala, the gentle voiced South African songwriter whose choir, Ladysmith Black Mambazo, brought Zulu music to listeners worldwide, died on Tuesday in a hospital in Pretoria. He was 78. The cause was not immediately known, but his health had deteriorated after he had back surgery in 2013, said the group's manager, Xolani Majozi, who announced the death. Mr. Shabalala began leading choral groups at the end of the 1950s. By the early '70s his Ladysmith Black Mambazo in Zulu, "the black ax of Ladysmith," a town in KwaZulu Natal Province had become one of South Africa's most popular groups, singing about love, Zulu folklore, rural childhood memories, moral admonitions and Christian faith. Ladysmith Black Mambazo's collaborations with Paul Simon on his 1986 album "Graceland," on the tracks "Homeless" and "Diamonds on the Soles of Her Shoes," introduced South African choral music to an international pop audience. Joseph Shabalala his full name was Bhekizizwe Joseph Siphatimandla Mxoveni Mshengu Bigboy Shabalala was born on Aug. 28, 1941, near the town of Ladysmith, where his parents, Jonathan Mluwane Shabalala and Nomandla Elina Shabalala, worked on a white owned farm. In 1958 he left to find factory work in the port city of Durban, about 200 miles to the southeast. There he sang with the group Highlanders before returning to Ladysmith and starting a group, the Black Ones, with some of his brothers and cousins in 1960. Mr. Shabalala often said that a series of dreams he had in 1964 had led him to reshape the music of the group, which became Ladysmith Black Mambazo. He refined an a cappella Zulu choir style called isicathamiya "stalking style" which had grown out of song and dance competitions in hostels for migrant mineworkers, an urban adaptation of rural traditions. Ladysmith Black Mambazo triumphed at local competitions in the 1960s. In 1970, it performed for a live radio broadcast from Johannesburg. That performance soon led to a recording contract, and the group released dozens of albums on South African labels, adapting Zulu traditional songs. The group was invited to perform at festivals in Germany beginning in 1980, and it appeared in "Rhythm of Resistance," a documentary about South African music by Jeremy Marre, which is where Mr. Simon first heard them. When he met Mr. Shabalala in Johannesburg, Mr. Simon invited him to collaborate. "He came to me like a child asking his father, 'Can you teach me something?,'" Mr. Shabalala recalled of Mr. Simon in the liner notes to the expanded 2016 reissue of "Graceland." "He was so polite. That was my first time to hug a white man." The group recorded "Homeless," merging Mr. Simon's material with a Zulu wedding song, at Abbey Road Studios in London in 1985. The next year, in May, Ladysmith Black Mambazo performed the song, which had not yet been released, with Mr. Simon on "Saturday Night Live." The group resumed its own recording and touring career with vastly expanded opportunities. Through the next decades, Ladysmith Black Mambazo appeared on "Sesame Street" and "The Tonight Show." It performed when Nelson Mandela received his Nobel Peace Prize in 1993 and a year later at Mr. Mandela's inauguration as president of South Africa. The group appeared on Broadway providing music for a 1993 play about apartheid, "The Song of Jacob Zulu," and Mr. Shabalala collaborated with the Steppenwolf Theater Company of Chicago and the playwright Ntozake Shange on a musical based on one of his songs, "Nomathemba." Ladysmith Black Mambazo also recorded steadily, collaborating with pop and rock musicians on the 2006 album "Long Walk to Freedom" and reaching back to Mr. Shabalala's childhood with "Songs From a Zulu Farm" in 2011. He announced his retirement from Ladysmith Black Mambazo in 2014; three of his sons Sibongseni, Thamsanqa and Thulani are in the current lineup of the group. Mr. Shabalala's wife of three decades, Nellie, was murdered in 2002. In addition to his three sons, his survivors include his wife, Thokozile Shabalala; two daughters; four more sons; and 36 grandchildren. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Music |
When should I be tested for coronavirus? Ideally, you should be able to get a coronavirus test whenever you want it. But in the United States, test availability varies around the country. In some places, you still need a doctor's prescription to get tested. In other communities, you can get tested easily by walking in to a clinic or even using a home test kit. There are four main reasons to get a test. Symptoms: Feeling sick is the most urgent reason to get tested. A dry cough, fatigue, headache, fever or loss of sense of smell are some of the common symptoms of Covid 19. (Use this symptom guide to learn more.) While you're waiting for your results, stay isolated from others and alert the people you've spent time with over the last few days, so they can take precautions. Many tests are most reliable during the first week you have symptoms. Exposure: Did you find out that you recently spent time with an infected person? Were you in a risky situation, like an indoor gathering, or a large event or in an airport and airplane? You should quarantine and get tested. If testing isn't widely available and you have only one chance to take a test, it's best to get tested five to six days after a potential exposure to give the virus the opportunity to build up to detectable levels in the body. Test too early, and you might get a false negative result. If you're in a city where it's easy to get a test, get tested a few days after the exposure and, if it's negative, get tested again in three or four days. If you think you've been exposed to the virus, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention advises you quarantine for at least seven days and receive a negative test result before returning to normal activity. Precautions: Some people get tested as a safeguard. Hospitals may require you to be tested before certain invasive medical procedures or surgery. Visitors to nursing homes may be given a rapid test before they are allowed to enter. Many colleges and boarding schools test students frequently and suggest they be tested before leaving campus and when they return. If you must travel, it's a good idea to be tested before you leave, and a few days after you arrive. A negative test result is never a free pass to mingle with others, but knowing your infection status will lower the chance that you are unknowingly spreading the virus. Check on the turnaround time at the testing site in your area, and try to time it so you get a result as close as possible to the event or visit. Even if your test result is negative, you still need to wear a mask, maintain distance from others and take other precautions. Community testing: In some cases, local health officials will encourage widespread testing for everyone, offering tests at health clinics, pharmacies and drive through testing sites. Testing lots of people helps measure the level of spread in an area and can help slow or stop the spread in areas where known infections have occurred. In New York City, for instance, a health department advertising campaign is encouraging people to be tested often, even if they feel fine. "We learned that one of the ways we can control this virus effectively is by making sure as many people as possible are tested at a given time, so we can pick up people who are infected but don't yet know they have the infection," said Dr. Jay K. Varma, deputy commissioner for disease control at the New York City Health Department. What type of test should I get? Virus tests are categorized based on what they look for: molecular tests, which look for the virus's genetic material, and antigen tests that look for viral proteins. The various tests all use a sample collected from the nose, throat or mouth that may be sent away to a lab or processed within minutes. Testing should be free or paid for by your insurance, although some testing centers are adding extra charges. Here are the common tests and some of the pros and cons of each. Laboratory molecular test: The most widely available test, and the one most people get, is the P.C.R., or polymerase chain reaction, test, a technique that looks for bits of the virus's genetic material similar to a detective looking for DNA at a crime scene. Pros: This test is considered the gold standard of coronavirus testing because of its ability to detect even very small amounts of viral material. A positive result from a P.C.R. test almost certainly means you're infected with the virus. Cons: Because these tests have to go through a laboratory, the typical turnaround time is one to three days, though it can take 10 days or longer to get results, which can limit this test's usefulness, since you may be spreading virus during the waiting period. Like all coronavirus tests, a P.C.R. test can return a false negative result during the first few days of infection because the virus hasn't reached detectable levels. (One study showed that among people who underwent P.C.R. testing three days after symptoms began, 20 percent still showed a false negative.) Another frustration of P.C.R. testing is that it sometimes detects the virus's leftover genetic material weeks after a person has recovered and is no longer contagious. The tests are also expensive, costing hospitals and insurers 50 to 150 per test. Rapid antigen test: An antigen test hunts for pieces of coronavirus proteins. Some antigen tests work sort of like a pregnancy test if virus antigens are detected in the sample, a line on a paper test strip turns dark. Pros: Antigen tests are among the cheapest (as little as 5) and speediest tests out there, and can deliver results in about 15 to 30 minutes. Some college campuses and nursing homes are using rapid tests to check people almost daily, catching many infectious people before they spread the virus. Antigen tests work best when given a few times over a week rather than just once. "It tells you, am I a risk to my family right now? Am I spreading the virus right now?" said Dr. Michael Mina, an epidemiologist at Harvard University's School of Public Health and a proponent of widespread rapid testing. Though, he cautioned, "if the test is negative, it doesn't tell you if you're infectious tomorrow or if you were infectious last week." Cons: An antigen test is less likely than P.C.R. to find the virus early in the course of the infection. One worry is that a negative rapid test result will be seen as a free pass for reckless behavior like not wearing a mask or attending an indoor gathering. (The White House Rose Garden event is a good example of how rapid testing can create a false sense of security.) A negative antigen test won't tell you for sure that you don't have the coronavirus it only tells you that no antigens were detected, so you're probably not highly infectious today. (In one study, a rapid antigen test missed 20 percent of coronavirus infections found by a slower, lab based P.C.R. test.) Antigen tests also have a higher rate of false positive results, so a positive rapid test should be confirmed. Rapid molecular test. Some tests combine the reliability of molecular testing with the speedy results of a rapid test. Abbott's ID Now and the Cepheid Xpert Xpress rely on a portable device that can process a molecular test right in front of you in a matter of minutes. Pros: These tests are speedy and highly sensitive, and they can identify those exposed to coronavirus about a day sooner in the course of an infection than a rapid antigen test. A rapid molecular test isn't quite as accurate as the laboratory version, but you'll get the result much faster. Cons: Depending on where you live, rapid molecular tests might not be widely available. They are also less convenient and often slower than many antigen tests. And like all coronavirus tests, a negative result isn't a guarantee you don't have the virus, so you'll still need to take precautions. Like its laboratory cousin, a rapid molecular test can detect leftover genetic material from the virus even after you've recovered. How do I get a test? How long will it take? Roughly 2 million coronavirus tests are run in the United States every day. But testing availability varies considerably from state to state, even city to city. Tests are generally less available in rural areas or in communities where cases have surged and medical and laboratory resources are stretched. The best way to find out about testing in your community is to check your local public health department website or call your doctor or a local urgent care clinic. Some cities and towns have also set up drive in community testing sites. If your doctor or local public health clinic offers rapid testing, you usually can get the result in 15 to 30 minutes. But a positive rapid result might need to be confirmed by an additional test, especially if you don't have symptoms. In some communities, it can still be difficult to get the results of a laboratory P.C.R. test quickly. A survey from Northeastern University and Harvard Medical School found that this fall, patients had to wait days just to schedule a test and even more time to get results. On average it's been taking six or seven days after symptoms start to find out if you have the virus, and by then most people are on their way to recovery, making the test pretty useless. (In some parts of the country, people have had to wait as long as two weeks to get test results.) The research also found that Black patients, on average, had to wait almost two days longer to get results than white patients. Testing turnaround times are improving in some cities. In New York City, for instance, you can get a P.C.R. laboratory test result in about a day. If rapid testing is available in your area, you can get the result in minutes, but rapid tests work best when taken a few times over the course of a week. What do the results mean for me? A virus test can produce one of three results: positive (or virus detected), negative (or virus not detected) or inconclusive. Here's what the results really mean. How to get a coronavirus booster shot in New York City. Just a few storms cloud the U.S. travel forecast for a second pandemic Thanksgiving. Several moves by the U.S. over the last week aim to shift the course of the pandemic. Positive: A positive test result means you should continue to stay home and isolate, and alert people you spent time with over the past few days. If you feel sick, contact your primary care doctor for guidance, and monitor your symptoms at home, seeking medical attention when needed. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says that you still should wait at least 10 days after symptoms started, and go 24 hours without a fever, before ending isolation. For some people who are severely ill, this timeline might be longer. Negative: If your test result is negative, it's reassuring, but it's not a free pass. You still need to wear a mask and restrict social contacts. False negatives happen and could mean that the virus just hasn't reached detectable levels. (It's similar to taking a pregnancy test too early: You're still pregnant, but your body hasn't created enough pregnancy hormones to be detected by the test.) "A negative result is a snapshot in time," said Paige Larkin, a clinical microbiologist at NorthShore University HealthSystem in Chicago, where she specializes in infectious disease diagnostics. "It's telling you that, at that exact second you are tested, the virus was not detected. It does not mean you're not infected." Inconclusive: Sometimes a test comes back inconclusive because the sample was inadequate or damaged, or a sample can get lost. You can get retested but, depending on how much time has passed, it might be easier to just finish 10 days of quarantine. If you are sick but receive a negative or inconclusive test, you should consult your health care provider. If I get tested, can I see my family for the holidays? Sorry, but a negative test does not mean you can safely visit another household or travel for the holiday to see friends and family. A lot can go wrong between the time you took the test and the moment you hug a family member. False negatives are common with coronavirus testing whether it's a laboratory P.C.R. test or a rapid antigen test because it takes time for the virus to build up to detectable levels in your body. It's also possible that you weren't infected with the virus when you took the test, but you got infected while you were waiting for the results. And then consider the risk of catching the virus in an airport, on a plane or from a taxi driver or rental car agent and you may end up bringing the virus home with you for the holidays. "I don't want somebody to have a negative test and think they can go visit grandma," said Dr. Ashish Jha, dean of Brown University's School of Public Health. Despite these limits, if you feel you must travel, it's a good idea to get tested. If you're using rapid testing, try to take more than one test over the days leading up to your visit, including a test on the day you plan to see a vulnerable person. If you're getting a laboratory test, check the turnaround time and try to schedule it as close as possible to your visit. While the test doesn't guarantee you're not infected, a negative result will lower the odds that you'll be spreading the virus. And, of course, a positive test tells you that you should cancel your plans. A test "filters out those who are positive and definitely shouldn't be there," said Dr. Esther Choo, an emergency medicine physician and a professor at Oregon Health and Science University. "Testing negative basically changes nothing about behavior. It still means wear a mask, distance, avoid indoors if you can." Is home testing an option? Is it reliable? Communities around the country, including in California, Minnesota and New Jersey, are starting to roll out home testing kits. The cost typically is covered by the government if it's not covered by your personal insurance. To find out if home testing is available in your area, check your state or local health department website or ask your doctor. Two types of home tests are currently available. Several companies offer customers the option of spitting in a test tube at home, and then shipping the sample to a laboratory for processing. Results are delivered electronically in a day or two. In November, the Food and Drug Administration issued an emergency green light for the first completely at home coronavirus test, made by Lucira. The Lucira test kit allows a person to swirl a swab in both nostrils, stir it into a vial, and use a battery powered device to process the test and get a result in 30 minutes. The test kit requires a prescription and is not yet widely available. Several companies have rapid home tests in development but still need F.D.A. approval. Some experts are concerned that widespread home testing is impractical. Even if a new generation of home tests is approved, they question whether people would use the tests correctly or as frequently as recommended, and whether they would isolate if they test positive. But home testing also has several prominent supporters, among them Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, the country's top infectious disease expert. Dr. Fauci notes that home tests from home pregnancy tests to home H.I.V. tests have long prompted skepticism, and that when home H.I.V. test kits were first developed, many experts worried that people would become despondent if they got a positive result while home alone and act brashly. "That's a standard pushback against home tests," he said. But Dr. Fauci and other proponents of home testing say that simple, cheap home kits could allow people to take daily tests before going to work in an office, grocery store or restaurant or before going to school (although it's still not clear how well the tests work in children). Rapid testing at home a few days a week could potentially identify an infection even before a person develops symptoms. "I have been pushing for that," Dr. Fauci said. "I think home testing is the same as a pregnancy test and should be available to people. As long as there is some Covid around, then I think a home test would be useful." Should I get an antibody test? This blood test is designed to detect antibodies that signal you were infected with coronavirus in the past, but shouldn't be used to diagnose a current infection. It can take one to three weeks after infection for your body to begin producing antibodies. Blood is taken by pricking the finger or drawing blood from your arm through a needle. You can get the test through a doctor's office, many urgent care clinics or a local public health clinic. You may be offered a free antibody test when you donate blood as well. The waiting time for results varies from a few days to two weeks. Pros: An antibody test can tell you if you were infected with coronavirus in the past. But experts warn against assuming too much about what a positive result says about immunity to the virus. Scientists generally agree that the presence of antibodies most likely indicates some level of protection, but they don't know to what extent or for how long. Although reinfections are thought to be rare, they have occurred, and experts stress that a positive result on an antibody test should not give someone a free pass to shirk masks or mingle with others. Cons: Many antibody tests are inaccurate, some look for the wrong antibodies, and even the right antibodies can fade over time. Some tests are notorious for delivering false positives indicating that people have antibodies when they do not. These tests may also produce false negative results, missing antibodies that are present at low levels. An antibody test should not be used by itself to determine whether a person is currently infected. If you do decide to get an antibody test, the result should not change your behavior. You still need to take all public health precautions and assume that you can still contract or spread the virus. If you know you had the coronavirus, and it was confirmed by a diagnostic test at the time you were ill, you may be eligible to donate convalescent plasma, which can potentially help patients still suffering from Covid 19, who can get an infusion of your antibodies to accelerate their recovery time. More than 200 tests for the coronavirus have been given emergency green lights by the F.D.A., with many more likely to come. Experts think some of the next wave of tests will include more products that can be self administered from start to finish at home. As the nation speeds toward the winter months, combination flu/coronavirus tests, which can search for both types of viruses at the same time, are likely to become increasingly common. Many of these tests are already available in doctors' offices and clinics. Researchers are also exploring other types of tests that might be able to measure other aspects of the immune response to the virus. More testing is needed to stop the spread of the coronavirus. The more testing we do and the faster we get the results back whether it's a P.C.R. test or a rapid test the more information we have to make good choices and keep those around us safe. Tests are useful when used correctly, and when you know the limits of the information they give you. A positive test of any kind should keep you home and isolating. (If you have good reason to doubt the result, get tested again.) A negative test is not a free pass to drop your mask and socialize in groups. It's a snapshot in time. A negative P.C.R. test tells you that you were negative a few days ago when you took the test. A negative rapid antigen test tells you that you're probably not infectious right now, but it's better to take a few more tests over the next few days to be sure. In both cases it's possible you still have the virus (just as it's possible to get a negative pregnancy test and still be pregnant). In general, if you have symptoms, your doctor will order a P.C.R. test to confirm if you have Covid 19. If you're living on a college campus, or going to work in a factory or grocery store every day, frequent rapid testing can be a useful way to monitor your health regularly. Because testing has not been consistently available around the country, you may not have the option for getting either type of test quickly. Wearing a mask, maintaining your distance and restricting contact with people outside your household remain essential to stopping the spread of the coronavirus. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Well |
Have you met Vera Stark? Quick: There she is, in her pert maid's uniform, running lines with her actress employer. There she is, just off the streetcar, swaying to the radio in dingy rented rooms. There she is, in black and white, a maid again, and much later, in bleary color, in a dress that looks like a Pucci self detonated, singing "Fly Me to the Moon" on some forgotten talk show. By the time the lights go up on Lynn Nottage's 2011 satire, "By the Way, Meet Vera Stark," revived by the Signature Theater Company, you'll have spent nearly two and a half hours watching Vera. Or watching other characters watch her. You may not know her at all. In this barbed and booby trapped comedy, that might be the point. This is a play, often a very funny one, about representation and erasure. A decade ago, Ms. Nottage became fascinated by African American film actresses of the 1930s and 1940s like Theresa Harris, Hattie McDaniel and Louise Beavers. They almost always played maids in parts that tended to confirm racial stereotypes; even racy, pre Code Hollywood couldn't imagine black women otherwise. She wondered who these actresses were and who they might have become if Hollywood had met them with the parts they deserved. In Depression era Hollywood, Vera (Jessica Frances Dukes) tidies up after Gloria (Jenni Barber), a kitten voiced vulgarian billed as "America's little sweetie pie." (Pay attention to the dialogue and you'll learn they're more than mistress and maid.) Vera is an actress, too. Or she would be if she could book an audition. As her roommate Lottie (Heather Alicia Simms, splendid as ever) says, "You gotta be high yella mellow or look like you crawled outta Mississippi cotton patch to get work in this rotten town." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Theater |
SHRILL Stream on Hulu. Season 1 of this comedy series ended with its main character, Annie (Aidy Bryant), hurling a flower pot through a window of an internet troll's Cadillac S.U.V. She also quit her job. And she couldn't be happier. "I'm maybe the best I've ever been in my life," she declares at the beginning of the new, second season. Adapted from Lindy West's memoir of the same name, the series has been praised for its social commentary, and for Bryant's performance. "She radiates the wounded hopefulness of someone who's ready for the next chapter of her life," Margaret Lyons wrote in her review of Season 1 for The New York Times, "and by the end of the six episode season, she's there." What that next chapter contains is something the second season will have to answer. BEFORE SUNRISE (1995) Rent on Amazon, Google Play, iTunes, Vudu and YouTube. "I almost fell in love with him right there, but then Rick said cut." That's Julie Delpy speaking in a recent interview with The Times, talking about the experience of filming this indie romance, in which Delpy plays a French student who has a whirlwind romance in Vienna with a visiting American (Ethan Hawke). Directed by Richard Linklater, the film celebrates its 25th anniversary this month. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Television |
Lewis Hamilton and Nico Rosberg, teammates on the Mercedes Benz Formula One team, finished one two, a second apart, in the Spanish Grand Prix on Sunday, continuing Mercedes's distinct superiority so far this season. Daniel Ricciardo, in the Red Bull Infiniti, came in a distant third, followed by Sebastian Vettel, his teammate and the defending series champion. Hamilton, who started on the pole, managed to stay just in front of his teammate through an especially gripping and close final lap. The victory was Hamilton's fourth in a row this season, the 26th of his Formula One career, and it finally inched him ahead of Rosberg in the series points standings, 100 to 97. Valtteri Bottas, of Williams, was fifth, followed by the two Ferrari drivers, Fernando Alonso and Kimi Raikkonen. Jeff Gordon played late race strategy to his advantage and held on for a victory over a fast closing Kevin Harvick in the Nascar Sprint Cup race at Kansas Speedway on Saturday. It was the 42 year old Gordon's 89th victory in a Nascar career spanning more than two decades, and will most likely qualify him for the end of season Chase for the Championship playoff. The playoff pits the year's race winners and highest points gatherers in a 10 race elimination format. For good measure, Gordon also leads the points standings. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Automobiles |
From the outside, Bounden may look like two people arduously inspecting the same iPhone: twisting and turning while grasping opposite ends of the device, eyes fixed on the screen. And essentially that's what it is, though, if done right, those twists and turns have the elegance of choreography. Created by the Dutch design studio Game Oven, this recently released app steers users through entwining duets choreographed by Ernst Meisner of the Dutch National Ballet. To replicate the swinging, circular moves, you and your partner maneuver an icon along arcing, ever shifting pathways, inevitably getting tangled. If we can't put down our phones, Bounden exploits that isolating tendency to bring us closer physically, at least. It's fun, especially at early levels, where good dancing isn't the point. As the game advances, it becomes trickier, monitoring your accuracy and flashing "Hurry up!" if you fall behind the music, like a good natured ballet master. Videos, featuring dancers from Dutch National Ballet's junior company, offer something to aspire to. (gameovenstudios.com.) | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Dance |
The dancer and choreographer talks about his collaborations with Arnie Zane, Keith Haring and Robert Mapplethorpe and the time the Vatican denounced him. "There are a lot of emotions in these stories," the choreographer, dancer and director Bill T. Jones said one evening this summer as he rummaged through some of the hundreds of folders and document boxes that make up the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Company Archive, which had just been acquired by the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts. There were the outlines of a pathbreaking dance career that took Mr. Jones from the outer edge of the avant garde to the cover of Time magazine to Broadway to the artistic leadership of New York Live Arts in Chelsea and time capsules of New York's recent artistic history. As he rifled through document boxes part of a collection that includes photos, production notes, costume designs, film and audio materials, and even T shirts Mr. Jones, 67, told some of those stories contained in the archive, whose acquisition was announced by the library on Tuesday. He spoke about the politically charged, beautiful dance s exploring race and sexuality that he made with Arnie Zane, his partner in art and life, who died of AIDS related lymphoma in 1988. About his interactions with other artists at the intersection of the avant garde and the New Wave in 1980s New York, including Keith Haring and Robert Mapplethorpe, and the toll taken by the AIDS crisis . And, somewhat reluctantly, about one of the great controversies of his career: how "Still/Here," his monumental 1994 meditation on mortality, was dismissed as undiscussable "victim art" by The New Yorker critic Arlene Croce. BILL T. JONES Blauvelt is a town in Rockland County where Arnie and I who met at the State University of New York at Binghamton lived after we left Binghamton, where we had been members of a collective called the American Dance Asylum, one of those crazy counterculture collectives asylum in the sense that you could take refuge, and a place you could be as insane as you want to be. We were very impressed by Robert Wilson's "Ka Mountain" performed near Shiraz, Iran, over a week in 1972 , with the Shah and all of these millionaires, so we grandly named ours "Blauvelt Mountain " just a duet for these two men. This was synthesizing contact improvisation, the choreographer Steve Paxton and Arnie's love for German constructivist theater. These costumes we wanted to be exaggerated, but ultimately for some reason we did not use them. There are two things going on in this picture. Mapplethorpe had wanted to do my photo, and as you know, he made a celebrated series of naked black men. Arnie Zane organized that the photo be taken but he couldn't show my penis . And what's more, it was not just another bit of rough trade or black boy flesh: This is Bill T. Jones. Arnie was very concerned that I be understood as a choreographer, and not a model. And Arnie was very concerned that he be strong, not the little guy being lifted around by the black guy all the time. He wanted this picture. And he's dressed in what he loved, jodhpurs. He's like the circus master. Willi Smith. Keith Haring. Arnie Zane. Bill T. Jones. Peter Gordon. That is the '80s. Opening night of "Secret Pastures" was Cool Central Andy Warhol was in the audience with Madonna, who were good friends of Keith's, at BAM. Arnie's mother and father came, and they had not had an easy time of it, but they finally were impressed when they saw Andy Warhol was sitting two rows back and the place was sold out. It was a very big, important moment. What more can I say? The obvious is that three out of five of us are no longer here. Keith had a show at the Robert Fraser gallery in London. He took four and a half hours, and he meticulously painted me with white body paint, and then he said, "Oh, by the way, the press is coming." You can't see it, but the paint, he started from the top down, so the top was already beginning to crack by the time they came in. The photographer Tseng Kwong Chi was the one telling me to do flattened figures, as flat as possible, so I credit him: That's why they're kind of stylized like this. There was a concern Jesse Helms was on the floor of the Senate, waving Mapplethorpe's book, talking about filth and so on. And at places we toured, board members quit because they heard this immoral show, anti family show, was coming. So it became: "Last Supper at Uncle Tom's Cabin/The Promised Land." The Promised Land: a place where we were no longer afraid to be together, naked. It ended with a stage full of people, standing naked, bathed in a golden light and singing Julius Hemphill's "Children's Song." Here's a story for you. You see those lyrics to "Wayfaring Stranger?" We were invited to bring the piece to Spoleto. We were performing in a 16th century chapel. This one section was called "The Supper." The dancers are all doing an accumulated series of gestures, moving from chair to chair some of them suggest prayer, some of them suggest sex, all sorts of thing. And I'm singing "Wayfaring Stranger": "I'm just a poor wayfaring stranger." Vincent Tullo for The New York Times There was always an improvisation which could spin in any way, a vocal improvisation on my part. And that night, I began to ask the question in front of this very Italian audience: "Where is the pope tonight? Tonight, I am the pope." I think that's what it was. And of course, this piece ended with all these naked people. The next day, I was denounced by the Vatican. I thought: We're doing a piece about the journey of the body. We're born. We grow. If we're fortunate, we find someone who we fall in love with, we reproduce and then we die. That's a kind of a noble arc. That's what it was going to be about: mortality that unites us. But it started an even bigger controversy because of that article, the "victim art." And it seemed so unfair, because it was not trying to say that we were victims. Rather, the people who did the workshops, people came to me, I told them: I am a man. I am not a practitioner of any kind. I'm just someone who needs his hand held, trying to understand , myself how can I live knowing what I know about my own body and life and death? And people were very generous. It was not supposed to be people who were sick wanting unsick people to feel sorry for them. It was supposed to be giving information, it was supposed to be about mortality and how mortality connects us. And the rest of it is kind of history, about how it came out. Something that was very divisive and very hurtful. In some ways, I'm still recovering from it now. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Dance |
From left, Michael Dellon, Andrew Cataldo and Christos Livanos found a spacious apartment they could afford. The one drawback? Two of the bedrooms aren't technically bedrooms, as they lack windows. A year after moving to New York, Michael Dellon and Christos Livanos felt almost as if they were still living in their suburban hometown, Armonk, N.Y. "I don't think there was a day that went by that we didn't see someone from high school," Mr. Livanos said. With at least four people from their old high school living in their Kips Bay apartment building, that wasn't surprising. But they were also constantly crossing paths with acquaintances from college Mr. Dellon went to Syracuse University and Mr. Livanos to Cornell and craved some of the distance that usually comes with a move to a major metropolis. "It had a very dorm vibe," Mr. Livanos said of their building. "Which is O.K. the first year out of college, but we definitely wanted a little bit of an upgrade." At a social gathering at the apartment where Mr. Livanos's older brother lived, they found out that one of his close friends, Andrew Cataldo, was planning to leave his place in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, because of the impending L train shutdown (which has now been canceled). Mr. Cataldo also grew up in Armonk, but was two years older and part of a different social circle , so he seemed like a good fit for the more adult lifestyle they were seeking. As they soon discovered, however, while they could leave their building in Kips Bay behind, the dormlike atmosphere was likely to follow them, as most Manhattan doorman buildings in their price range had a similar feeling. "We were finding a lot of flex three bedrooms," Mr. Dellon said, describing the common practice of allowing renters to create an extra bedroom by putting up a partition. "But that usually means cutting off the natural light in the living room." Occupations: Mr. Cataldo is a product development and innovation manager at Mastercard; Mr. Dellon is an ad sales executive at Zillow; and Mr. Livanos is a new market specialist at Mint House, a hotel start up. Being down by the water: After the bustle of Kips Bay and Williamsburg, Brooklyn, all three appreciate the calm of living at the bottom of Manhattan. "The Seaport is one of my favorite parts of the city," Mr. Livanos said. "Something about the cobblestones and smelling the ocean really brings me away from downtown Manhattan." Not that it's a ghost town: "There's a big happy hour scene and a bunch of good restaurants," Mr. Dellon said. Best apartment feature: The popcorn maker Mr. Dellon's mother bought as a housewarming present. "We use it all the time," he said. "It's great for when you watch a movie, and kind of healthy." The hangout apartment: "When people come in, they always say, 'Wow, it's really nice," Mr. Cataldo said. "I think there's always an unspoken agreement amongst your friends about who has 'the apartment' the place everyone wants to hang out." Some management companies also seemed wary about renting to three men in their mid 20s. At one luxury building, they were passed over for an apartment that they qualified for financially. "We noticed that the building had an older demographic," Mr. Dellon said. "I think they didn't want three young guys living there." Then Mr. Cataldo toured an apartment at 20 Broad Street, a new rental building next to the New York Stock Exchange, in the financial district. (Before it was converted into apartments, it housed offices for the Stock Exchange.) "It was so much nicer than any other place we saw," Mr. Cataldo said. The building was also eager to have them: As it had opened just a month earlier, the management was offering concessions to tenants who signed while some of construction was still being finished. In many ways, the space was ideally suited to their needs. At about 1,400 square feet, it was much larger than other places they had seen, with a large living room that had good natural light. The apartment also had a quirk that other renters might find unappealing, but that didn't particularly bother them: It was technically a one bedroom, with a large master bedroom that had an en suite bathroom, and two windowless "home offices." "We were skeptical at first about not having windows in two of the bedrooms," Mr. Livanos said. "But we realized we'd mostly hang out in the living room. And sunless alarm clocks are only, like, 20." They moved in last September, signing a 24 month lease with two months free, bringing their rent down to 6,041 a month. Mr. Cataldo, the resident elder statesman, got the master bedroom, as he is two years further along in his career and could afford to pay more. But Mr. Livanos and Mr. Dellon agreed that sharing the other bathroom still represents an upgrade from their previous place, where three people shared a single bathroom. And the bathroom has two sinks, which they see as a nice touch. Having a washer and dryer in the apartment is another. The open kitchen is far more high end than those in the other apartments they saw a feature much appreciated by Mr. Cataldo, who moonlights as a private chef when he is not working in product development at Mastercard. "Kitchens are usually kind of an afterthought in New York apartments," he said. And the roommates have already had several dinner parties, with Mr. Livanos and Mr. Dellon acting as sous chefs. Wanting the decor to rise to the level of their new apartment, they laid out everyone's wall art soon after moving in and decided what to hang in the common spaces. An iron wall sculpture that Mr. Livanos's parents bought years ago at the Armonk art show got a prize position above the sofa; two autographed Yankees posters and a poster from the Newport Jazz Festival are also in prominent places. One thing that gave them pause was a print of a wolf in a suit, with dollar bills in the background, passed down from Mr. Livanos's brother. It seemed a little too on the nose for three guys living in a former Stock Exchange building, they agreed. "We didn't want to be the bros who put 'The Wolf of Wall Street' up," Mr. Cataldo said. Still, it seemed a shame not to hang the wolf somewhere, so they compromised and put him at the end of a hall. At a New Year's Eve party they gave this year, their friends didn't hesitate to embrace the cliche, bringing bottles of Fireball whiskey, which now clutter the otherwise tastefully stocked bar cart. "Everyone was taking pictures in front of the wolf," Mr. Livanos said. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Real Estate |
A new talent competition show brings together RuPaul, Faith Hill and Drew Barrymore as judges. And "Hillary," a series about one of the first climbers to reach Mount Everest's summit, is available to stream. THE WORLD'S BEST 8 p.m. on CBS. This outrageous new reality show, hosted by the comedian James Corden, holds its second night of auditions. International musicians, dancers, martial artists, gymnasts, singers and more will compete for the judges RuPaul, Faith Hill and Drew Barrymore, as well as a panel of 50 experts from 38 countries, for the chance to win 1 million and the title of "The World's Best." The competition show, which debuted after the Super Bowl, is the latest spin on flashy TV talent shows like "The Masked Singer" and "The Voice." FORGED IN FIRE 9 p.m. on History. In a very different kind of reality show competition, the sixth season of "Forged in Fire" brings together bladesmiths who show off their weapon making skills for the chance to win 10,000. The show is hosted by Wil Willis, a former Army Ranger; J. Neilson, a veteran knife maker; Doug Marcaida, the hand to hand combat specialist; and David Baker, a swordsmith well versed in ancient weaponry. As its name suggests, the series features a lot of fire, so it's best not to try to replicate the action at home: In 2017, one aspiring bladesmith caused a massive blaze. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Television |
The slot at an apartment complex in San Leandro, Calif., where monthly rent payments are deposited or may not be. On Wednesday, as on the first day of any month, many companies and households will have bills to pay. This time, a lot will simply pile up. Angela Rogan is unlikely to make the rent on her apartment in the San Francisco Bay Area. Katherine Anderson, who owns a cafe bakery in Seattle, isn't going to pay her 30,000 a month lease. Even the Cheesecake Factory, a multibillion dollar company, has told landlords not to expect an April remittance. The trajectory of the U.S. economy will largely rest on how many payments go unmade, which bills are put ahead of others and the terms on which they are settled. The 2 trillion relief package passed by Congress amounts to a grand attempt to flush the economy with cash so that the obligations of corporations and minimum wage earning tenants alike can be met as usual. But much of the money will take weeks to arrive too late for many and once it does, the big question hanging over the economy will be how many unpaid rent notices, water bills and mortgage payments remain after the virus subsides and commerce resumes. Should a significant portion be curtailed through negotiation or absorbed by the government altogether such as loans that allow businesses to make payroll the next few months but can be forgiven when traffic returns a coronavirus recession could be followed by a robust recovery in which commercial life looks something like normal. Should they linger and turn into long term debt hanging over businesses and households, it will curb future spending and lead to a weaker recovery as the damage produces more layoffs, more spending cutbacks and more unpaid bills. Consider the metal lockboxes in the 110 apartment buildings owned by Bridge Housing, a nonprofit affordable housing developer that manages about 12,000 subsidized units in California, Oregon and Washington. On Wednesday, Bridge's 30,000 tenants, most of them hourly workers with little or no financial cushion, will start dropping their April rent checks in the boxes. The checks will be opened by workers in latex gloves, and scanned into a software program that logs each payment. Those checks, in turn, will be used to pay overhead, maintenance and mortgages. Usually, no more than 3 percent of Bridge's tenants fail to pay. But in anticipation of a disastrous April, Cynthia Parker, Bridge's chief executive, had her finance team analyze possibilities that would have seemed unthinkable weeks ago: What if only half the residents pay their rent? What if only a third do? Bridge is already trimming expenses, like cutting consultants on future projects and putting off computer purchases for the office. But if rent collections lag for long, it will have to look at more severe measures, like laying off workers. Even with a healthy cash cushion, the company can go only so long with such a steep revenue decline. "We're running models right now to look at how long we can last on operating reserves," Ms. Parker said in an interview. "We're in the middle of it, but it's anywhere from three to six months before this starts impacting loans." That the United States is careening toward recession is now a given. That this recession will be brutal is also a given: Economists are projecting that gross domestic product could fall as much as 30 percent in the second quarter, which would rival the worst months of the Great Depression. The depth and suddenness of that fall have forced swift decisions by businesses and households about which payments to make. Those decisions set off their own economic ripples, as laid off workers cut back spending and landlords struggle to pay their mortgages. "These are cascades that, once they get going, are very hard to stop," said Claudia Sahm, director of macroeconomic policy for the Washington Center for Equitable Growth, a progressive think tank. "You're already seeing it." 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. You can see it with Owen Rice, a commercial real estate broker who runs the Seattle office of Hughes Marino and is furiously negotiating to lower his clients' rent bills or get deferrals and extended payment plans. "It's about 'How do I survive, how do I keep people employed?' and they're looking to renegotiate so they can get through the next 90 days," he said. To blunt the economic pain, governments of all sizes have proposed some measure of relief to households and businesses. Several cities have put moratoriums on evictions of both residential and commercial tenants, while dozens of banks including JPMorgan Chase and Wells Fargo have agreed to halt new foreclosures and temporarily waive mortgage payments for borrowers whose finances have been affected by the virus outbreak. On top of all this is the congressional move to address the crisis. It gives cash to most American households and extra help to those who have lost jobs, though not in time for next month's rent. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin has said most people will get their money within three weeks. For businesses, the package aims to create a lifeline by delaying at least some decisions about which bills to pay and which debts to forgive. For instance, it gives small businesses access to forgivable loans that they can use to pay their rent and workers. And the potential forgiveness, not just the funds, may be crucial for many to survive. "Everyone is resisting the word bailout, but how about nobody has to pay rent for the months they were closed?" said Ms. Anderson, owner of the London Plane in Seattle. "It's not as if you're going to make up the money for that rent that you didn't get." There is wide agreement that the crisis demands a unique solution not a traditional stimulus that would spur people to go out and spend, but the economic equivalent of a medically induced coma, a way to prevent permanent damage until the underlying health crisis can be solved. Progressives, including Representative Alexandria Ocasio Cortez of New York, have called for moratoriums on rent and other financial obligations. And even conservatives, despite concern about government initiatives already costlier than those in the 2008 9 financial crisis, have said this is a case where it makes sense to provide grants not merely loans to individuals and businesses. Michael R. Strain, director of economic policy studies at the right leaning American Enterprise Institute, said that corporations might be able to afford to take on extra debt to carry them through a period of lost revenue, but that most small businesses, particularly in the service sector, could not. "A manufacturing company could come back to a backlog of orders, but if you're a services business, you've just lost this revenue," he said. "People are not going to go out to eat six times as often when this is over." If businesses have to take on huge debt burdens to survive the crisis, Mr. Strain said, "that situation leads to a much more prolonged downturn." For workers, weathering more than a few weeks without pay may be a challenge. The 11 year economic expansion left record low unemployment, but it did less to ensure financial stability. The Federal Reserve reported last year that four in 10 Americans would have difficulty covering an unexpected expense of 400. Cori Aitken, 34, lost one job as a sales representative at Temescal Brewing, a small brewery in Oakland, Calif., and another job tending bar. Now she's looking to cut her 1,900 monthly expense budget, which includes about 1,000 in rent and 300 for utilities, along with a phone bill, car insurance and loan payments. "I'm worried about May 1 and June 1," she said. As restaurant and retail traffic have come to a near standstill nationwide, many small businesses have tried to bring in revenue by selling their services online or recasting themselves as delivery and takeout businesses. Bars are selling to go cocktails. Exercise studios are conducting fitness classes over the internet. Restaurants that used to require reservations are delivering to doorsteps. But for most, it's not enough. Ms. Anderson, from the London Plane, started delivering popular items like pasta Bolognese with a bottle of red wine and a loaf of bread. After a week of haphazardly sending out boxed meals that generated about 10 percent of normal sales, she decided to stop and lay off the rest of her employees. With a 20,000 tax payment and a 30,000 rent bill coming due, she had to decide how to spend what little was left. "We're prioritizing our employees and offering them an extra week of pay," she said. "The landlord can probably wait." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Economy |
Fergal Mullen, a venture capitalist in Europe, spent the end of May resigned to a sobering prospect: The varsity men's cross country and track and field teams at Brown, where he had been a team captain in 1988, would be shut down. But as he browsed a private Facebook group from his home in Geneva, he came across a dazzling presentation: a crisp, data fueled rebuttal to the university's surprise decision to relegate the men's running programs to club status. It would be enough, he was certain, to persuade Brown's leaders to think again. "I see companies presenting themselves every day of the week and entrepreneurs trying to put together tens of millions" of dollars, Mullen said. "I looked at that deck and said, 'Game over.'" On Tuesday, Brown spared the men's running programs after almost two weeks of anger, strategy sessions and back channel talks that spanned the globe. The 12 day campaign was a speedy show of how people tied to Brown an Ivy League university in Rhode Island's capital that is steeped in history, wealth and power could marshal extraordinary resources to upend a decision that university leaders depicted as considered and final. Yet the effort, whose swiftness, precision and organization surpassed that of some campaigns for public office, hardly offers a template for other student athletes whose teams are cut, an increasing possibility during the coronavirus pandemic. Few students and alumni networks, experts said, would have the means to pressure a university so forcefully so quickly, especially to salvage teams that draw little attention. Interviews and internal documents show that the effort benefited from financial weight, a web of well connected alumni, students willing to publicly challenge their university and retired coaches who could offer support. Events beyond Providence also shaped the debate, with national turmoil over racial injustice and George Floyd's death in police custody elevating questions about why Brown would demote teams with diverse rosters. Brown, despite outrage from other student athletes, is still planning to demote eight teams to club status: fencing, golf and squash for both men and women, as well as women's equestrian and women's skiing. Two club teams, coed sailing and women's sailing, will become varsity sports. Brown's president, Christina H. Paxson, declined to be interviewed. A Brown spokesman, Brian E. Clark, said university officials were "not surprised by the campaign that emerged." "What we did not fully appreciate until hearing from our community was the transformative impact of varsity track and field and cross country on the lives and the experiences of students," he said. The initial verdict came without warning. Other colleges have shuttered teams during the pandemic. Among them, Akron cut men's cross country, men's golf and women's tennis; Furman closed down baseball and lacrosse; and East Carolina eliminated its tennis, swimming and diving teams. Brown, though, has been weighing the size of its athletic program among the nation's largest, in terms of the number of teams for years, recently with help from outside consultants. Although the university declined to release its advisers' findings, it said they thought the number of teams hurt Brown's ability to be competitive in each sport. In secret, university leaders and a handful of Brown supporters considered a path forward. Then, on May 28, the university told athletes that some teams would move to club status. The pandemic's financial effects, Brown officials insisted, were not a factor. Instead, they argued the move would let the university devote greater resources to the sports that remained. The men's running teams were cut to remain in compliance with Title IX, the gender equity law, and a legal settlement specific to Brown. Clark said "a large volume of the calls and emails" after the plan's announcement was "tremendously supportive" of the new strategy, but the university's explanations baffled students. "When a major Division I football team isn't winning enough, they make changes to the recruiting process and scouting and facilities," said the distance runner Dominic Morganti, who will be a senior in the fall. Morganti and his teammates began considering whether to transfer or stay and surrender what remained of their athletic careers. "I'm not willing to let the university take away my opportunities to receive an Ivy League degree," Eric Ingram, a runner, said on June 2. "If that means losing one extra year of competition, that's sad, but that's the choice I'm willing to make." In those first hours, though, their GroupMe conversation crackled with anger and frustration. The plans to push back took shape. The news spread among infuriated students and alumni, and urgency soon replaced surprise. "I felt like part of me was eviscerated, and President Paxson basically made me feel for the first time that I was not welcome at Brown," said David Loeb, a sprinter at Brown before he earned his degree in 1981. Brynn Smith, who graduated 30 years later and was a thrower, organized a Zoom call to talk through the announcement's implications for a university with a rich history of coordinated protests. Her initial expectation 20 people to organize a letter to administrators proved too modest. The call reached a 100 person limit within minutes. It was clear that a haphazard process would not do. "You're going to die in like three days if you don't get organized," Jordan Mann, a volunteer coach, recalled telling Smith. They created committees, with their tasks, like fund raising and statistical analyses, detailed in writing. One group, called Disrupt and Annoy, identified lobbying targets and considered how to argue the strengths, affordability and diversity of the running programs. "There were a lot of people, a lot of ideas and a lot of emotions, especially in those first 24 hours," she said. "We created the structure of a nonprofit in 24 hours." A strategy of public and private pressure took shape, but Mann worried about disjointed or predictable messages. "There are 50 alums that are writing testimonials over why it's sad, but the university knew people were going to be sad," he said. "We had to be focused and clear in what we were saying." An early salvo came the day after the university's announcement, when Melissa Perlman, a publicist who ran at Brown, sent journalists a current student's essay. He accused Brown of undermining diversity as it sacrificed a program that had molded Olympians. Two of Brown's most celebrated running figures, Bob and Anne Rothenberg, longtime coaches who had retired years earlier, were already working in the background to offer counsel and the organizational prowess that came with having directed hundreds of meets. The Facebook group's ranks swelled, and many of its members began devoting four or more hours a day to the cause. Some donors warned Brown that they would suspend future gifts. Raw data became graphics and charts. A website and at least three social media accounts went online. Outside supporters wrote letters and signed a petition. (Clark, who suggested that internet petitions can draw inauthentic support, said that "petitions generally don't drive decisions at Brown, and certainly did not in this specific case.") And coaches and athletes at Ivy League rivals warned that the demise of men's varsity running programs at Brown could imperil other teams. "The implications of this decision could have set a really bad precedent for other institutions to follow," said Russell Dinkins, who ran track at Princeton and wrote a widely shared essay that questioned Brown's commitment to racial justice. As the campaign brewed, the national agonizing over race was an inescapable factor in the debate, especially online. Some of Brown's athletes said they did not believe the university acted with malice, but the issue still resonated. "I wouldn't say they were going out of their way to take away opportunities or be blatantly racist," Ingram, who is black, said. "This obviously isn't a Black Lives Matter issue, but the implications are a subset of that: Removing access to higher education, whether systematic or not, is just another way that black people have been oppressed in this country." But about 7 p.m. Tuesday, the men's running teams joined a call with Paxson. Paxson, athletes said, offered an apology, and then an explanation. As they listened, the runners exchanged messages, debating what would ultimately come of the meeting. Then Paxson announced the teams' reinstatement. "It didn't seem real for a minute," Morganti said. "I kept listening, and, sure enough, it was the real deal." That evening, Brown supporters received an email that said men's running would survive the purge that would otherwise go on unabated. "It takes a lot of bravery and leadership when you're president of the university to go all in on a major decision and then walk it back that quickly," Loeb said. "She made a mistake, flat out. They fixed it. That's a lot harder to admit than just saying, 'Well, we're sorry.'" | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Sports |
RICHARD GOODE at Alice Tully Hall (April 17, 7:30 p.m.). The distinguished pianist performs a mix of the expected and the surprising on this program, with Bach's English Suite No. 6 and Beethoven's Op. 101 Piano Sonata on the one hand, and music by Byrd and Debussy on the other. 212 721 6500, lincolncenter.org/great performers JUILLIARD ORCHESTRA at David Geffen Hall (April 16, 7:30 p.m.). My colleague Zachary Woolfe recently wrote that in a time when we ought to rethink our very idea of what a conductor could and should be, Alan Gilbert's tenure at the New York Philharmonic was "more of a model than I recognized." Perhaps so, though I still have more doubts about the caliber of the performances he put in. Either way, here's a chance to listen again, hard, as Mr. Gilbert conducts the young players of the Juilliard Orchestra in Barber's Essay No. 1, Rouse's Flute Concerto (with the soloist Giorgio Consolati) and Brahms's Symphony No. 1. 212 799 5000, juilliard.edu MATA FESTIVAL at the Kitchen (April 13, 8 p.m.). A greatest hits parade of some of the most important music to come out of this crucial festival in its first 20 years, including Randy Hostetler's "P(l)aces," Carlos Gutierrez Quiroga's "Jintili," Kate Moore's "Sensitive Spot" and Eric Wubbels's "Viola Quartet (IJVER)." matafestival.org NEW YORK PHILHARMONIC at David Geffen Hall (April 19, 7:30 p.m., through April 24). Mozart and Bruckner are on the bill this week, with Till Fellner playing the Piano Concerto No. 22 and Christoph Eschenbach conducting it, and Bruckner's frightening, unfinished Symphony No. 9. 212 875 5656, nyphil.org | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Music |
1. Prepare a hot or medium hot grill or heat a grill pan to medium hot. Cut figs in half. 2. In a large bowl, whisk together balsamic vinegar and olive oil. Add figs to the bowl and gently toss until they are thoroughly coated. 3. Place on grill or grill pan flat side down. Grill for 2 to 3 minutes (depending on the heat), until grill marks appear. Turn over using tongs or a spatula and grill for another 2 to 3 minutes on the other side. 4. Remove to a platter or sheet pan and brush each fig on the cut side with pomegranate molasses (you don't need much). 5. Arrange 2 slices of goat cheese and 2 to 3 whole figs (4 to 6 halves, to taste) on each of 6 serving plates, garnish with mint leaves, and serve. Advance preparation: You can make this through Step 4 hours before you wish to serve, but you will have to reheat the figs, which you can do in a low oven. They should be warm. If you do this, you might want to brush with additional molasses. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Health |
W. Bradford Gary spent 10 days trapped inside a cruise ship cabin off the coast of Brazil in March while health authorities in several countries scrambled to figure out what to do with a vessel full of older people who had potentially been exposed to the coronavirus. But when faced with the question of whether he'd ever cruise again, he doesn't hesitate. "We are very anxious to get back on board," he said, and he believes he's not alone: "There are people like us who want to do this." Mr. Gary, 70, a retired corporate executive who lives in Palm Beach, Fla., imagines the cruise ship of the near future equipped with special disinfecting ultraviolet lights and air flow contraptions commonly used in sterile laboratories. He envisions larger cabins, fewer passengers and a lot more outdoor spaces. "We want to know everything is safe," he said. With more than 20 million passengers a year, the 45 billion global cruise industry has a particularly vexing challenge: Its most loyal customers, older people, also happen to be the key demographic at risk for the new illness that has swept the planet, killing more than 450,000 people. Cruises also have the very things that help the coronavirus spread: large gatherings, confined spaces and workers who live in tight shared quarters. More than three months after the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued a no sail order for all United States cruises, interviews with health officials, loyal passengers, industry experts, cruise executives and maritime lawyers made clear that restarting operations would require rethinking cruising itself from the number of passengers onboard to how they are fed, housed and entertained and that the government and the cruise lines are not close to figuring it out. Last week, the Cruise Lines International Association (CLIA), the cruise industry's trade group, said that it was voluntarily extending the no sail period from U.S. ports until Sept. 15. Earlier, Carnival Corporation, the world's biggest cruise company, had suggested that it could start sailings by Aug. 1. According to Martin Cetron, the C.D.C.'s director for the Division of Global Migration and Quarantine, cruise ships offer fertile ground for the "seeding, amplification, and dissemination" of Covid 19, worsened by the fact that crew members often transfer from one ship to another, taking diseases with them. Breaking that chain of infection is key. But as restaurants, casinos, movie theaters and theme parks are poised to reopen, with plans in place to prevent the spread of the highly infectious disease, the cruise industry has not publicly laid out its strategy. Bari Golin Blaugrund, a spokeswoman for CLIA, said, "The cruise industry is taking a holistic approach to planning for Covid 19 safety, when sailing is allowed, that would ideally entail a door to door strategy beginning at the time of booking through the passengers' return home." The coronavirus hit the cruise industry hard. Passengers were stranded for weeks while people on board got sick and were quarantined in their staterooms. A Miami Herald analysis showed at least 80 people died worldwide. New data from the C.D.C., released in response to a Freedom of Information Act request by The Times shows that more than 100 ships in the U.S. jurisdiction alone had outbreaks on board, sickening nearly 3,000 people, including more than 850 passengers. The C.D.C.'s figures count cases that were "clinically compatible" with Covid 19, but not confirmed in a lab, and hundreds that occurred among crew after passengers disembarked. The C.D.C. records show Carnival, which had 47 ships on which people fell ill across its nine brands, was most affected. Through a spokesman, Carnival disputed the figures, saying the C.D.C.'s methodology resulted in overcounting. If only cases with a lab confirmation were included, the number of Carnival ships affected would be 15. Royal Caribbean had 28 ships with coronavirus cases almost half its fleet. Only 15 of the 121 cruise ships that entered U.S. waters after March 1 did not have the disease on board, the records show. The coronavirus marked the first time the agency issued a travel advisory against a particular mode of travel, as opposed to a geographic area, Martin Cetron, the C.D.C.'s director for the Division of Global Migration and Quarantine, said. The C.D.C.'s initial advisory, which recommended against cruise travel but did not ban it, was issued March 8, after more than 700 people got sick aboard the Diamond Princess ship in Japan. The advisory turned into a no sail order after it became clear that companies were continuing to embark on voyages and passengers were not canceling in large numbers, Dr. Cetron said. "This situation wasn't responding to self regulation." When cruises resume, some changes are likely inevitable, such as thermal scanners at terminals to check for elevated temperatures, disinfection foggers to clean boats between cruises and upgraded ventilation systems. Self serve buffets may be a thing of the past. The Times asked 10 of the biggest cruise lines to outline their preparations for resuming sailings. Only one, Genting Cruise Lines, a Hong Kong based company that mostly operates in Asia, agreed to talk about its plans in detail. While Princess Cruises, part of Carnival Corporation, did not respond directly, it posted a seven page health advisory outlining some of the steps it plans to take, including increasing the temperature of washers and dryers for better disinfection of bedding and towels. Stateroom surfaces will be cleaned twice a day. Carnival said it was still too soon to offer any details. In a conference call with journalists in April, Carnival's chief executive, Arnold W. Donald, said he would let medical experts decide whether to require medical clearances for older passengers. Royal Caribbean's chief executive, Richard Fain, said in a May earnings call that he planned to unveil a "healthy return to service program" that would focus on upgraded health screenings for passengers before boarding, as well as new procedures for dealing with infections on board. But that plan has not yet been released. Arthur L. Diskin, who was a Carnival cruise ship doctor for 18 years, said the adjustments will likely be tailored to each company's market. Longer cruises, for example, tend to have passengers who are much older, so changes should account for that. "Maybe they don't have a disco," he said. "Maybe they adapt to have more outdoor dining venues so people can be adequately spaced." But none of those changes address the biggest questions of how to prevent a disease that has generally been checked by isolation and social distancing on cruise ships carrying thousands of passengers expecting to party and enjoy themselves. Will they keep people six feet apart? Will they make them wear masks? The first step, said Mattia Jorgensen, a naval architect and marine engineer with the Finnish company Foreship, which specializes in ship design and engineering, is a thorough analysis of how the virus gets on board ships and spreads. "We need to really look at how we don't get it on board, and in the event it gets on board, how do we contain it," he said. Mr. Jorgensen said several large cruise ship companies hired his firm to help design solutions, but the process cannot be completed until the C.D.C. shares its own guidance. One of the biggest problems cruise companies are expected to tackle is how to manage their staff. Crew often transfer from one ship to another and take illnesses with them. Companies are expected to make changes that will limit crew movement between ships. James Walker, a lawyer in Miami whose practice is focused on suing cruise companies, said ships are going to have to seriously examine how much time they spend cleaning ships between voyages. Cruise companies do not make money while in port, and are always anxious to head off to another voyage, he said. A review of the C.D.C.'s preliminary list of affected ships that came to U.S. ports show they sometimes ended one cruise and began another on the same day. One ship, the Carnival Valor, had three back to back cruises on which passengers contractedCovid 19. The ship is designed to carry almost 3,000 passengers in 1,487 staterooms. On quick turnarounds, ships come in to port at 7 a.m. and head out with new passengers at 4 p.m. "There's never enough time to clean," Mr. Walker said. "And cruise lines all know. It's not like they bring in professional cleaning crews that do exhaustive work. They use the same cabin attendants who have to be there to greet the guests when they show up." Ms. Golin Blaugrund, the CLIA spokeswoman, said that "Cruise ships are cleaned and sanitized, under normal circumstances, with a frequency that is nearly unparalleled in other settings. Multiple times daily, crews clean and sanitize surfaces known for transmitting germs, such as handrails, door handles and faucets. At the end of a voyage and before a new one begins, ships are cleaned completely from top to bottom." As part of the industry's Vessel Sanitation Program, she said, "Cruise ship crews are trained in sanitation and public health practices and ships undergo unannounced inspections twice a year." Sheri Griffiths, a video blogger who runs CruiseTipsTV, a YouTube channel, with her husband, said the industry also needs to rethink its cancellation policies. In the past, those who canceled had to forfeit their payments often thousands of dollars which could lead people to travel even if they are feeling unwell. "That's a huge and significant change to the future of cruising, and it's critical they do that For people to feel safe, they need to feel that the passengers around them won't be boarding the ship sick, and they need to know the crew will be held to a high standard of wellness," Ms. Griffiths said. Princess Cruises' advisory said that it would issue full refunds or credits to passengers who had to cancel because they were not well or had been exposed to the virus. As for Ms. Griffiths: "I will get on a cruise when the C.D.C. says that I don't have to self quarantine when I get off a ship," she said. Those looking for a blueprint as to how the cruise companies might respond could look to Genting Cruise Lines's plan. In April, Genting worked with local port officials and industry trade groups to come up with an eight part safety guide outlining disinfection procedures and rules for social distancing. In an interview, Kent Zhu, the company's president, said the guidelines were designed to market the company's cruises to wary passengers and provide a template for other companies. "The passengers needed to know what actually a cruise line would be able to do to make sure they feel comfortable," he said. "They want to be reassured that it's safe." Mr. Zhu said the company is aiming to begin cruising by the middle of the summer with limited itineraries to countries that have the virus under control. Under the new guidelines, the company will use infrared temperature screenings on the gangway to weed out sick travelers and require passengers 70 and older to provide a "doctor's certificate of fitness for travel." The plan allows guests to cancel up to 48 hours before a sailing without financial penalty; in an interview, Mr. Zhu said Genting would offer refunds to those who failed health screenings. The guide also outlines stringent sanitation protocols, including a twice daily wipe down of passenger cabins and hallways. Elevators will be disinfected every two hours. And in the ship's theater, crew members will clean each pair of 3 D glasses before and after passengers use them to watch movies. Crew members will wear face masks, undergo temperature checks twice a day and will no longer transfer to different ships. Epidemiologists say the most important change the cruise lines could make is more difficult: reducing the number of passengers on each cruise. "Of course, that has all kinds of implications for the industry financially and otherwise," said William Schaffner, an infectious disease expert at Vanderbilt University. "But the notion of spacing people apart starts with having fewer people on board." Genting is taking that step: Its boats will sail with up to 40 percent fewer passengers. "We will not be able to make the same money anymore," Mr. Zhu said. "As long as we can keep our operations going when we resume enough to keep the company going we will be happy enough for a few months." Dr. Schaffner called the Genting guidelines "pretty comprehensive," though he said that masks might need to be part of the equation. (Genting's plan does not require passengers to wear masks or stay any distance apart from each other onboard.) "They have decided, and if we were running the cruise industry, we might come to the same decision: If we require passengers to wear masks, that's not the cruise experience, that goes a step too far," he said. But at the very least, he said, companies should offer to provide passengers with masks when they get off the ship for day trips and mingle with people on shore. "That's a time period people should be very much encouraged" to wear masks, he said. Fred Kantrow and his wife were among the passengers who fell ill with coronavirus after sailing aboard the Celebrity Eclipse, a cruise ship owned by Royal Caribbean. Their daughter, who picked them up from the airport on their return home, got sick too. Mr. Kantrow, 59, a lawyer from Smithtown, N.Y., sued Celebrity after the experience, saying they had not done enough to prevent the onboard outbreak of the disease. The Eclipse was forced to sail for two extra weeks when Chile refused to let passengers disembark; during that time the ship continued to host crowded parties, photographs included in Mr. Kantrow's lawsuit show. The C.D.C. records show 92 people from that ship tested positive for Covid 19, and Mr. Kantrow's suit claims two died. "I don't know that they are going to be able to do anything to get me back," he said. "It's really hard to trust them. In two or three years will my position change? Maybe. But when we got off ship, my wife said, 'Yeah, I'm not doing that again.'" Mr. Kantrow's lawyer, Michael Winkleman, who has filed seven Covid related lawsuits against cruise companies, said Congress should use the pandemic to better regulate the cruise industry, which does not have to abide by U.S. labor laws or pay full corporate taxes, because almost all of the companies are foreign corporations. The Death on the High Seas Act, for example, limits how much families can claim when someone dies on a cruise. The industry's track record, he said, shows they will not make proactively make changes that will hurt their bottom line. (CLIA's spokeswoman, Ms. Golin Blaugrund, disputed that idea saying that the cruise lines "have repeatedly demonstrated their willingness to invest in public health and safety onboard and that the industry "voluntarily suspended operations globally.") "I think there are two forces stronger than the virus," Mr. Winkelman said, "the love that people have for cruises because it's such a unique product, and the fact that the companies have so few hurdles and roadblocks in front of them." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Travel |
Detail of "Earth's Skin" (2009) at Mr. Anatsui's show at Haus der Kunst in Munich evokes layers of African history and postcolonial culture through its recycled materials.Credit...Laetitia Vancon for The New York Times Detail of "Earth's Skin" (2009) at Mr. Anatsui's show at Haus der Kunst in Munich evokes layers of African history and postcolonial culture through its recycled materials. MUNICH I find it so hard to describe them: as vast, undulant tapestries, each one rippling and fluttering like a flag by the seashore? Or as heavy, defensive tessellations of metal, like the plate armor of soldiers in medieval Europe or Japan? As monumental mosaics, as landscapes of metallic bits and bobs? The wall mounted sculptures of El Anatsui here at the Haus der Kunst cry out for metaphorical comparisons but no metaphor ever seems enough to sum up these commanding artworks, each intricate enough to leave you gasping. Mr. Anatsui, born in Ghana and based in Nigeria, was already an acclaimed artist and teacher in West Africa when he hit, 20 years ago, on a technique that would propel him to create some of the most extraordinary sculptures of this new century. On a wander one afternoon, he came across a plastic bag full of aluminum bottle caps, left for trash. Leaving behind his previous work in wood , he began to flatten, fold and fasten these caps into mutable wall mounted compositions, lying somewhere between sculptures and textiles. Each massive work takes thousands of man hours to produce, and bears traces of the lives of countless tipplers, revelers and serious drunks . Their puckers and pleats convey the oceanic sweep of history, and his abstract compositions bristle with attention to trade, slavery, consumerism, and the environment. Sixteen of them are on display in "El Anatsui: Triumphant Scale," an exhibition of overwhelming power and beauty. It's almost certainly the largest solo presentation ever of a black African artist in Europe, and "triumphant" is very much the word for this show, which continues through the end of July at what was originally a show palace for the Nazis, now a major German museum with an uncertain curatorial future. (The show then travels from the Haus der Kunst to museums in Doha, Qatar; Bern, Switzerland; and Bilbao, Spain.) It flanks the bottle cap works with Mr. Anatsui's ceramics, wood sculptures and works on paper from the 1970s to 1990s, plus remarkable new commissions, including a 66 part maze of free hanging curtains and a frieze made of German and Nigerian printing plates bolted to the museum's facade. I came to Munich to see this towering exhibition after admiring several previous shows of Mr. Anatsui, including one at the Brooklyn Museum in 2013. But my pilgrimage was also an act of remembrance for its co curator: Okwui Enwezor, who served as director of the Haus der Kunst from 2011 until last summer, and who died on March 15, a week after this show's opening. He was only 55. (Though he worked until the very end from his Munich hospital room, Mr. Enwezor who organized this show with his friend and colleague Chika Okeke Agulu, a professor of art history at Princeton University and a former student of Mr. Anatsui in Nigeria was not able to see it.) His efforts to forge a unique abstract language out of both European and African influences began in the early 1970s, with painted wood discs whose rims were incised with his own idiosyncratic glyphs. He left Ghana in 1975 to take a teaching position at the University of Nigeria in Nsukka, where he still lives and works, and where he has trained a whole generation of pioneering artists and curators. When he began to work with bottle caps, Mr. Anatsui undertook a substantial upshift in scale, and in artistic ambition. First the aluminum caps, as well as the thin tamper evident bands beneath them, are fashioned into fixed shapes: flattened into long hexagonal strips, pounded into squares, cut and twisted into O rings, or crumpled like a pie tart. Then they are tied into sheets via tiny loops of cooper wire, and those sheets combine into sweeping compositions of 1,000 square feet or more. Though resplendent, they do not glimmer; the aluminum is dull and matte, and on most caps you can still see the brand names of Nigerian liquor companies like Castello or Headmaster. Like his earlier works in wood, these sculptures are essentially reliefs, composed of interchangeable parts that bulge and buckle from the wall and sometimes run onto the floor. Look at the ravishing monochrome works "Red Block" and "Black Block" (both from 2010, each more than 16 feet tall), and you can see how Mr. Anatsui and his assistants transform the bottle caps into a sculptable material that permits endless possible forms. In each, the panels can be pleated like a bed skirt, draped like a toga or cinched like a sausage link and Mr. Anatsui isn't fussy about their display. I had seen "Earth's Skin" (2009) in Brooklyn, where it hung mostly flat; here in Munich, its thousands of gold, red and yellow and black components are bunched more densely, and flaps extend from two sides. Yet Africa is not a monolith, and great African art interweaves form and meaning in as complex a fashion as the European and American art our museums call "universal." The curators' insistence that Mr. Anatsui merits just as thorough an exhibition as Georg Baselitz or Louise Bourgeois (two recent solo shows at the Haus der Kunst), with all the technical, historical, and symbolic analysis that museums afford such western artists, constitutes its own act of justice. Still, Mr. Anatsui's art also displays an intense involvement with the postcolonial experience, first in the glyphs and nicks of the wood sculptures, and later in each bottle cap. Though the alcohol the caps once stoppered is made in Nigeria, the drinks carry vestiges of centuries of cultural exchange; beer comes from Egypt and the Middle East, gin from the distilleries of England, and rum from West Indian plantations worked by slaves brought from Mr. Anatsui's home continent. Not everything went well here; budgetary troubles arose, and attendance for "Postwar" was lower than expected. But after Mr. Enwezor's resignation last year, for health reasons, the Haus der Kunst's interim director canceled several shows he had programmed, replacing them with innocuous German painters; the local press reports that the next director, unlike Mr. Enwezor, will have to speak German. It's hard not to see this as a repudiation of Mr. Enwezor, who fought for a global Haus der Kunst even from his deathbed. Now, amid a distressing nativist reaction taking hold in Germany and across Europe, is the time for museums to reaffirm the values of global perception and cultural exchange that he embodied. They come through like a clarion call in Mr. Enwezor's final exhibition wide as the world, blazingly beautiful. Let it stand as his epitaph. Through July 28 at the Haus der Kunst, Munich; hausderkunst.de. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Art & Design |
Last week, the global cruise line industry all but ground to a halt, with the biggest companies suspending operations, at least in the United States, for 30 days. The decision, announced by the Cruise Lines International Association (CLIA), came after the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the State Department urged Americans to avoid cruise ships, and the United States banned most travel from Europe. Thirty two million passengers were expected to embark on ocean cruises in 2020, according to CLIA, though that number will certainly drop given the coronavirus pandemic. People over 60, an important cruise customer demographic, are especially at risk from the virus. When sailings begin again, travelers can expect increased passenger health and travel screenings and changes in cleaning and food service procedures; loosened trip cancellation and change policies may also stay in effect. Approximately 40 ships and 90,000 passengers were at sea at the time new sailings were suspended. Two of those ships, the Costa Luminosa and the Braemar, operated by the Fred Olsen Cruise line, are known to have had passengers or crew infected with the coronavirus and have had trouble finding ports that will accept them. Cuba finally allowed the second ship to dock. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Travel |
College friends Olivia Passarelli and Kimberly Chok, trained dancers who are both 22, had planned to move to New York after graduating this spring. The pandemic delayed their plans for a few months, but with limited professional opportunities in their hometowns, they didn't want to wait any longer to come to the city. Two recent college grads are working and dancing from their new Brooklyn home during the pandemic. The normal deluge of recent college graduates moving to New York in the late spring and early summer slowed to a trickle this year. Between broad work from home policies and employers reluctant to extend job offers, many new grads elected to stay in the childhood homes they had moved back to in March, when college campuses shut down. But Kimberly Chok and Olivia Passarelli, friends from Montclair State University in New Jersey who majored in dance, didn't want to wait out the coronavirus to make a move to the city. "A lot of our friends are waiting until next year, but we wanted to get a head start on our careers," said Ms. Passarelli, 22, who is from Fairfield, Conn. "There isn't really a market for what we do where our parents live." "We also wanted to take advantage of rents being lower now, so when companies start opening up again we can focus on auditioning versus trying to find a place and getting all our paperwork together," said Ms. Chok, also 22, who grew up near Atlantic City, N.J. But with much of their income coming from freelance work in addition to dancing, Ms. Passarelli creates social media content and blogs about dance; Ms. Chok does French translation work, sells customized clothing on Depop and takes baking commissions their rental budget was tight: 2,200 or less for a two bedroom. "The job market has been extremely challenging, so we had to get creative with our income," Ms. Passarelli said. "We both want to find something more stable, and look for jobs every day, but there's not much out there, especially for new college graduates." They also had to find an apartment large enough to take dance class at home, since studio practice is still out of the question. "Our general impression was that in our budget everything was really small," Ms. Passarelli said. "And in the neighborhoods where there were a lot of young people and nightlife, things in our budget were really not great. You either get the neighborhood with a lot going on or you get the apartment." Other Brooklyn neighborhoods like Prospect Lefferts Gardens and Bedford Stuyvesant were more affordable, but still too expensive for them to get sufficient space. And while they didn't have a pressing need to move by a particular date, at the end of a fruitless four day push in August they were starting to think that maybe they would have to wait to move to the city, after all. "We were exhausted and starting to feel like, 'Is there a point behind this?'" Ms. Passarelli said. They were feeling so defeated about their rental prospects after their fourth straight day of apartment hunting that they almost passed, sight unseen, on an apartment that Ms. Chok's father told them about. It belonged to a family friend in Dyker Heights, a south Brooklyn neighborhood known for its spectacular Christmas displays. Their expectations were so low that they didn't bother to ask what the rent was before getting on the subway to see it that afternoon. When they arrived, however, they were amazed. Compared with everything else they had seen, it was huge: an entire floor of a two story house with a very large living room, a recently renovated kitchen and bathroom, ample closet space and two good sized bedrooms. Perhaps best of all, the rent was the cheapest they had encountered: 1,750 a month, with utilities and Wi Fi included. Occupation: Dancers; Ms. Passarelli has been dancing with a modern dance company in Hartford, Conn., and Ms. Chok does musical theater work and recently started taking some small acting gigs. Taking class at home: "I've liked having the opportunity to try training in different styles," Ms. Passarelli said. "It's also been really interesting to take classes with people from all over the world in different time zones." Dyker Heights wasn't initially on their radar: "But the space is really nice, and it works well for our situation," Ms. Chok said. On living together: "The main thing that surprised us was how well we get along," Ms. Chok said, adding that they had expected a few hiccups as they adjusted to sharing a space. "But we get along great." It also had a piano, owned by the landlord, who lives in the downstairs unit with his wife a nice perk for Ms. Chok, who plays the piano and is focusing on musical theater work. Ms. Passarelli does modern and contemporary dance, and recently started submitting videos of her work to choreography festivals. "We knew we weren't going to find something below our budget that was this much space again," Ms. Passarelli said. They agreed to take it on the spot and moved in on Sept. 1. Ms. Chok is engaged in what she calls a "war of hospitality" with the landlord, which started when he brought the women and their families fruit platters while they were moving in. The next day, Ms. Chok carried down banana muffins she had baked to thank him. But then he left brown sugar boba Popsicles. Ms. Chok countered with cinnamon doughnuts. Grapes arrived in return and continue to show up. Ms. Chok is close to admitting defeat. She baked Halloween cupcakes, to which the landlord quickly responded with more Popsicles. And while Dyker Heights may not be known for its nightlife, the women said that the neighborhood felt just right for them at this particular time. "It's very family oriented and so quiet, it doesn't even sound like a New York City neighborhood," Ms. Passarelli said. "Obviously, everything is different because of the pandemic, but it's a nice steppingstone into the city. It's definitely homier than Manhattan." "And we both prefer a quiet, clean, spacious space over a younger, party ish neighborhood," Ms. Chok said. "We feel very, very fortunate. We had both expected moving to New York to be a harsher transition." And now, she added, they have some company: Several college friends moved to the city in October. To Bushwick, not Dyker Heights, but the subway is just a short walk away. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Real Estate |
AFTER years of litigation against the side of his family that controlled his grandfather's coffee business, Steven D. Crowe woke up on New Year's Day 2004 with a lot of money in the bank 111 million, according to reports at the time. Having developed and managed real estate for decades, he said he knew little about the stock market, so he invested the money broadly for his mother and sister and his own family. He was content with the returns of a balanced portfolio until the point in the financial crisis when 30 percent of his family's fortune was gone. That experience changed how Mr. Crowe looked at investing, but not in an expected way. "In 2010, I figured this could happen again and it could be not as bad or it could be worse," said Mr. Crowe, who was living in Los Angeles where his grandfather's company, Farmer Brothers, was based. "I harkened back to owning apartment buildings. I never worried about economic cycles." Today, Mr. Crowe has half of his family's money in a fund that owns four large apartment buildings in Texas. "I felt it was a far safer investment," he said. "Why should I worry about the stock market? It's affected by psychology." A growing number of people, wealthy and less so, are investing directly in companies, projects or private equity funds instead of buying stocks and bonds on the open markets. This week, I'll focus on how the wealthiest families make those investments; next week, I'll look at a subset of affluent investors who are using their retirement accounts to invest in similar but smaller ways. Ward S. McNally, managing partner of McNally Capital, which advises wealthy families on private equity investments, said that in a study of families with 500 million to 25 billion, which it will release next month, the firm found that 79 percent of them had made direct investments. That is up from 59 percent in 2010, when McNally Capital conducted a similar survey. In direct investments, the investor buys a portion, if not all, of a private company with the expectation of receiving income from it or selling it at a profit one day. "Families have come to the conclusion that if they want to generate real wealth they have to make direct investments," he said. He added that 49 percent of respondents wanted to have control over their investment, as opposed to 17 percent who preferred to be more passive. According to Tiger 21, a membership organization of 250 people who have at least 10 million to invest, the shift toward allocating money to private equity has been substantial since the financial crisis. Their members had 9 percent of their money in private equity at the start of 2008; it is now 20 percent. "After 2008 many of our members became more concerned about the public markets, which seemed more like a casino than a true weighing machine of a company's value," said Michael Sonnenfeldt, founder of Tiger 21. "Private equity is where long term value has been built." A desire for control and a distrust of Wall Street are not uncommon sentiments today. But investing directly in companies or private equity funds is no free pass to riches. It carries risks that may be easy for even the wealthiest families to overlook. Investing too much in any asset class is never a great idea. "Invariably the pendulum always swings too far," said Charles Buckley, managing director and head of UBS's global family office. "I hope everyone is looking at the balance between liquidity and illiquidity." In Mr. Crowe's case, the other half of his family's money is in equities and high yield corporate bonds. Buckley said many wealthy families were fed up with traditional private equity funds because of the high management fees and percentage of profits they take. While their preference to invest alone or in groups may save them fees, it may not earn them the returns they expect. "With some of these things, if you're wrong you may not be proven wrong for five years," he said. "These things take a long time to play out." Most individuals also fall prey to investing in ideas that land in their lap. Mr. McNally said his study found that 85 percent of people were brought deals from family and friends. And 48 percent of them look at fewer than 50 deals before investing. This may be the biggest disadvantage faced by wealthy individuals who invest in private deals on their own, in comparison to large private equity firms, which pass on hundreds of investments before making one. Speaking at UBS's global family office forum in New York this week, Hamilton E. James, who is known as Tony and is the president of the Blackstone Group, one of the most successful private equity firms in the world, discussed the advantages that a firm like his had over individuals. "Our size gives us a massive, consistent advantage that drives consistently high returns," he said, before listing off several multibillion dollar deals the firm was able to do because of its size, like the 39 billion acquisition of offices from Sam Zell. "What we do is buy it, fix it and sell it," Mr. James said. "If we just buy it, we won't make any money." Beyond talking up his own book of business, he discussed the seven areas he was personally investing in through his own family office. These included energy production around the world, real estate in Europe and Asia and infrastructure in Brazil. Yet Mr. James, a billionaire in his own right, said he had the ability to invest as an individual alongside Blackstone deals. Few have an advantage like that. But where families are giving themselves the best chance of success is where they are investing in areas they know from past careers. Mr. Crowe said he learned from previous mistakes he had made as a real estate developer that it was better to invest in apartment buildings with at least 200 units and little debt. The four properties he has invested in have 1,250 units. "I knew what I wanted to invest in," he said. "Our income has been great." William E. Bindley, who has sold two health care companies, Priority Healthcare and Bindley Western, for billions each, focuses his investment strategy on acquiring and building health care companies and using innovative financing techniques. "We're either leveraging our knowledge in a space like health care services, or we're leveraging our capital where others can't," said Thomas J. Salentine, president of Bindley Capital Partners, which invests Mr. Bindley's money. "Anyone can come in and buy a health care services company. We can leverage our knowledge." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Your Money |
Michael R. Jackson playwright, composer, lyricist and superfan sang along to every single song at the recent Liz Phair concert in Brooklyn's Prospect Park. He even knew the obscure "Ant in Alaska ." He took photos and beamed, he offered learned asides about alternate lyrics. When Ms. Phair launched into "Divorce Song," Mr. Jackson let out a piercing scream that may still be echoing in the wilds of Park Slope. Mr. Jackson, 38, said that Ms. Phair, along with Tori Amos and Joni Mitchell, meant a lot to him when he was a teenager in Detroit. "All the white women rockers I grew up listening to helped me tap into my cultural blackness because they were so independently themselves," he said in a conversation a few days later, quoting the opening of Ms. Phair's song "Strange Loop": "'The fire you like so much in me/Is the mark of someone adamantly free.'" The title of Mr. Jackson's acclaimed new musical, now playing Off Broadway, is very close: "A Strange Loop." It refers to the song but also to a theory of consciousness and self by the cognitive scientist Douglas Hofstadter. The voluble, funny and self examining Mr. Jackson clearly has much in common with his voluble, funny and self examining protagonist. When we met at New York SongSpace, he was even wearing the same T shirt as Usher, one that celebrated bell hooks, the African American scholar and activist. Yet he describes "A Strange Loop" as self referential rather than autobiographical one reason he does not appear in it. The director, Stephen Brackett, said that distinction was crucial in the show's evolution. "It was very important for both of us to underline a sense of universality," Mr. Brackett said in a phone interview. "We wanted to avoid the pitfall of only thinking about this as a loose knit memoir." Mr. Jackson said he believes the distancing mechanism may also help audience members feel the story more and mentioned a lesson from early in his days at N.Y.U. "One of the first plays I saw as an undergrad was 'Death of a Salesman' with Brian Dennehy, and I remember crying my eyes out," he said. "Not because I understood anything about being an older white man in the 1950s, but because of the message that in America you're worth more dead than alive." By the same token, he said he asked himself, "'What if I can make an old white man empathize with what it might be like to be a young, black, gay man and suffer and not because he's being killed by the police or destroyed in some way like that, but it's actually an emotional journey from the inside?'" When it was time to cast Usher, about four years ago, the role went to Larry Owens, who has a growing reputation of his own as a comedian. Mr. Owens recalled that Mr. Jackson posted on Facebook that he was seeking "an overweight black boy who could sing but was like Mary Louise Parker." "I was like, 'I think I can do this until you find the right person,'" Mr. Owens said in a phone interview. "Very humble," he added, laughing. "Mary Louise Parker meets Annie Baker, that was sort of the job description." "A Strange Loop" is essentially a torrential monologue by Usher, but it is rendered as agitated conversations with his "extremely obnoxious Thoughts," portrayed by six versatile actors. In a further hall of mirrors twist, a couple of the Thoughts also act as Usher's judgmental parents. It's worth noting that a sequel to "A Strange Loop" might have a rosier outlook: Mr. Jackson's folks loved the show, for instance. "Their take on it was almost like I'd given them a Sardi's caricature of themselves, and they were honored by it, in a weird way," he said. And he is seeing someone new. "It was a surprise, but it's good," he commented in a rare bashful moment. The self loathing Usher is not there yet, however, and frequently directs pointed barbs at his inadequacies and malaise. He does save the sharpest attacks for the moralists who propagate hurtful misinformation and stereotypes chief among them church leaders and the work of Tyler Perry, antipathies Mr. Jackson shares. During our chat, he grew especially animated discussing Mr. Perry's oeuvre his customarily wide, gap toothed grin receded temporarily; his brow furrowed. Mr. Jackson considers his films bad "on their own dramatic terms," and says they have an irresponsible attitude toward sexuality and AIDS. He vividly remembers the rage triggered by the 2013 film "Temptation: Confessions of a Marriage Counselor," a sentiment that made its way into a key song in "A Strange Loop" a blistering, angry parody of a homophobic sermon. "It's just this core ignorance and this unwillingness to have self inquiry or empathy," Mr. Jackson said. "That's whe re the first iteration of 'AIDS Is God's Punishment' came from: I had to address it." The second time he became impassioned at SongSpace was when he discussed, at length, a close friend and collaborator who died of AIDS related complications in February, after having hidden his H.I.V. status for years. "A lot of what I think killed him is what I call the four S's: silence, secret, stigma and shame," Mr. Jackson said forcefully. "Until H.I.V. negative people do the work of destigmatizing, I think that kind of thing is going to continue." In Mr. Jackson's work, activism takes the form of truth telling and is often delivered via the subversion of sexual and cultural tropes and their racial associations. Part of what makes "A Strange Loop" so giddily exciting is its wide range of references. The same is true of a discussion with Mr. Jackson as he veers from praising Erika Slezak's work in the soap opera "One Life to Live," to the 1973 musical "Raisin" and the fantasy writer Neil Gaiman the last "a huge influence in terms of multilayered storytelling, especially on my next show, 'White Girl in Danger.' " Then there is "Accounts Payable," a commission from LCT3 (Lincoln Center Theater's program for emerging artists) that Mr. Jackson describes as "a sort of dystopian comedy set 20 years in the future, in an office in a world that's postliberal, postconservative, post Republican." (The show is partly inspired by his years working at an ad agency, an experience he remembers as "horriiiiiiiible.") "A Strange Loop," in the meantime, runs at Playwrights Horizons, in association with Page 73, through July 28. When Mr. Jackson talks about his projects, the dominant themes are curiosity, positivity and humor but also an irrepressible appetite for the possible. "Bell hooks talks a lot about the imagination as a space for liberty, and I believe in that," he said. "Black artists, our imaginations are limitless. I want to create an expansive world that isn't just about my own potential destruction. I'm actually going to do the opposite of that: to talk about the potential for creation and for living and for dealing with the problems of the world, for laughing and for joy." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Theater |
Google said on Monday that it had not used its multibillion dollar deals with other large tech firms to protect its position as the dominant online search engine, in the company's first formal rebuttal to the Justice Department's accusations that those deals violated antitrust laws. The filing, a 42 page document, is a paragraph by paragraph and sometimes sentence by sentence denial of the claims made by the government and a group of states that have joined its lawsuit. In the filing, Google says it "developed, continually innovated and promoted" its search product as part of its mission to "organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful." "People use Google Search because they choose to, not because they are forced to or because they cannot easily find alternative ways to search for information on the internet," the company said. The filing is Google's most significant so far in its antitrust battle with the Justice Department, but it will be far from its last. The judge hearing the case, Amit Mehta, said last week that the trial would not start until 2023. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Technology |
It looks a bit like a toothless beaver, but instead of a nose, it has what looks like a rubber flipper. It lays eggs like a duck; it lactates like a cow. The male has venomous spurs on its back ankles. It lives a semiaquatic life in streams, rivers and ponds in Australia the driest continent on Earth besides Antarctica. Until recently, the platypus wasn't something conservationists were much concerned about. Despite its peculiarity, it was common. But with indications that populations were declining, the International Union for Conservation of Nature in 2016 updated the platypus's conservation status to "near threatened." "There is some indication that some populations appear to be declining, while others appear to be healthy in number," Jaime Gongora, a wildlife geneticist at the University of Sydney, wrote in an email. "However, the overall picture is unclear." That's because the platypus is not easy to pin down. The animal is active mainly at night and notoriously elusive, and it lives in tropical and temperate habitats across the continent. The platypus doesn't live in big groups. It moves between water and land, but spends half its time on land in burrows. In the water, the platypus is often below the surface. Scientists trying to get a population count are urging citizens to report sightings and evaluating whether detecting remnants of platypus DNA in waterways might substitute for capturing them. Learning more about their health, behavior, genetic diversity and reproductive patterns is essential, because the platypus has a fragmented conservation history. In the 19th century, hunting led to a decline, but after the government protected the animals, populations bounced back. Today's threats are loss of habitat, dams, pollution, nets and even hair ties that can entangle and kill the animals. "I don't think they're on the verge of extinction by any means,'' said Joshua Griffiths, a wildlife ecologist who monitors platypuses living around Melbourne with a research group called Cesar. "But they are under threat, and we don't understand the extent of it yet." The end of a decade long drought has brought recovery to the populations Dr. Griffiths monitors, but avoidable stressors are taking a toll. In May, for example, illegal nets deployed to trap big crayfish called yabbies instead caught platypuses, wiping out half of a vulnerable population. Platypuses disappearing from local pockets like this could increase extinction risk for the species over all, despite their occupation of a swath of territory that hasn't changed for 200 years. "That broad distribution starts looking like Swiss cheese, affecting their overall vitality," he said. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Science |
COOLING fans that could poke holes in the radiators of Dodge Chargers and Magnums, and cases of possible coil spring corrosion in Hyundai and Kia crossovers, are among the mechanical ailments covered in the latest technical service bulletins. The bulletins, compiled by alldatapro.com, offer automakers' insights into some recurring problems with various models. The bulletins, known as T.S.B.'s, are not recalls; they are information provided by manufacturers to dealers' service departments and mechanics. Unless otherwise noted, the carmakers do not offer payment assistance for these repairs beyond normal warranty coverage. Alldata.com sells a more comprehensive version of the bulletins to consumers. Here are a few recent examples: BMW Gear oil from the front differential may stain the driveways of owners of some BMW X3 crossovers. In T.S.B. 310111 issued on June 1, BMW said the leak from the differential vent may be caused by too much internal pressure. Replacing the vent line with a modified part should stop the dripping. DODGE New right side door latches may be in the offing for some 2010 Dodge Journey and 2010 11 Dodge Nitro models (and the similar 2010 11 Jeep Liberty as well). In T.S.B. L15 issued on June 30, Chrysler said the vehicles may develop a ratcheting sound when using the power door locks. The latches will be replaced free; owners should receive letters regarding the fix. FORD A high speed vibration may be causing shakes in 2009 10 Ford Escapes and Mercury Mariners. In T.S.B. 11 5 25 issued on May 31, Ford said the vibration was from the rear driveshaft. Replacing its center bearing assembly should clear up the problem. GENERAL MOTORS Some 2008 9 Chevrolet TrailBlazer and GMC Envoy S.U.V.'s may be eligible for an extended warranty on exhaust manifolds. In T.S.B. 11150 issued on July 25, General Motors said a crack may develop in the manifolds of 4.2 liter V 6 engines, causing excessive exhaust noise. The warranty will now be 10 years or 120,0000 for the part, up from 3 years or 36,000 miles. Owners of affected vehicles should receive letters regarding this extended warranty. Also, some 2011 Buick LaCrosses may need a new battery. In T.S.B. 11186 issued on July 1, General Motors said the batteries on some vehicles may not provide enough voltage, which would prevent the LaCrosse from starting. Owners of affected vehicles should receive letters regarding this repair. HYUNDAI AND KIA Added coil spring protection may be needed on some 2011 Hyundai Santa Fe and Kia Sorento crossovers. Hyundai's T.S.B. 11 01 021, issued on June 23, (and T.S.B. SC091 for Kia models, issued on the same date) said that the springs may collect rocks at the bottom where the spring mounts on the strut, damaging the anti rust coating and leading to a squeaking noise. Installing a spring protection tube should do the trick. LEXUS Inconsistent brake pedal response may concern drivers of some 2008 9 Lexus LX570 S.U.V.'s. In T.S.B. L SB 0035 11 issued on June 23, Lexus said the first brake pedal application after the vehicle had been sitting for an extended period may require a longer pedal stroke than normal. The problem is linked to a master cylinder reservoir cap with inadequate venting. Replacing the cap should restore the correct feel. SUBARU Some 2010 11 models may need a new timing belt and belt guide. In T.S.B. 02 120 11 issued on July 25, Subaru said some 2010 11 Impreza WRX and STI 2.5 Turbo MT models may chirp from the right side of the engine. Replacing the timing belt and belt guide should stop the noise. TOYOTA Noisy idler pulley bearings may grate on the owners of some 2006 8 RAV4 crossovers. In T.S.B. 0056 11 issued on June 20, Toyota said the pulley bearing assembly needs to be replaced with an updated version of the part. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Automobiles |
"Makes my skin crawl," another commenter from Memphis wrote. "Grown women wear underpants." (Underpants, though, was mentioned by several people as an unpleasant word itself.) Researchers have been exploring what is known as "word aversion," a phenomenon that causes people to be repelled by common words. Late last week, we asked Times readers to share those that inspired disgust in them, avoiding "moist," which was already the focus of one of the studies. A commenter from New York said, "I have a 'slacks' aversion and always have since I was a child." "I didn't realize it was a common aversion word. I remember when I was a child I had a relative who would use 'slacks' and I would refuse to even know what she was talking about unless she said 'dress pants.' I was trying to train her never to use the word in my presence." A great deal of the words mentioned in the comments section were related to body parts and bodily functions. Terms for male and female genitalia appeared multiple times, as did groin, crotch, belly, flesh, flabby, tummy, turd, pimple, pustule, piehole, fart and flatulence. Other words seemed only to summon images related to the body, including chunks, discharge and plop. Words describing various sorts of vocalizations were mentioned so frequently that they could be cataloged in alphabetical order. The G's alone would include the words gulp, gargle, grunt, groan and gasp. Some readers strung together multiple words to form aversive sentences. "I read this just after stroking my moist slacks to remove phlegm that must have come from a crevice on the luggage in my Ford Probe," wrote Clyde, from North Carolina, adding "It left me in a lather." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Science |
Brewing giant Anheuser Busch InBev, one of five alcohol companies underwriting a 100 million federal trial on the health benefits of a daily drink, is pulling its funding from the project, saying controversy about the sponsorship threatens to undermine the study's credibility, the company announced Friday. The company announced its decision in a letter to Maria C. Freire, president and executive director of the Foundation for the National Institutes of Health, a nongovernmental entity that is authorized to raise money from the private sector for N.I.H. initiatives and manages the institutes' public private partnerships. The N.I.H. last month suspended enrollment in the 10 year clinical trial on the health benefits of moderate drinking after The New York Times reported that N.I.H. officials and scientists met directly with alcohol groups to solicit funds and strongly hinted that the study's results would favor moderate drinking. Anheuser Busch InBev had committed 15.4 million to support the trial, representing nearly one quarter of the 66 million in funds pledged by beer and liquor companies to date. The payments were being channeled through the Foundation for the N.I.H. in 10 annual installments, and payments started three years ago. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Well |
Microbes may be the friends of future colonists living off the land on the moon, Mars or elsewhere in the solar system and aiming to establish self sufficient homes. Space colonists, like people on Earth, will need what are known as rare earth elements, which are critical to modern technologies. These 17 elements, with daunting names like yttrium, lanthanum, neodymium and gadolinium, are sparsely distributed in the Earth's crust. Without the rare earths, we wouldn't have certain lasers, metallic alloys and powerful magnets that are used in cellphones and electric cars. But mining them on Earth today is an arduous process. It requires crushing tons of ore and then extracting smidgens of these metals using chemicals that leave behind rivers of toxic waste water. Experiments conducted aboard the International Space Station show that a potentially cleaner, more efficient method could work on other worlds: let bacteria do the messy work of separating rare earth elements from rock. "The idea is the biology is essentially catalyzing a reaction that would occur very slowly without the biology," said Charles S. Cockell, a professor of astrobiology at the University of Edinburgh. On Earth, such biomining techniques are already used to produce 10 to 20 percent of the world's copper and also at some gold mines; scientists have identified microbes that help leach rare earth elements out of rocks. Dr. Cockell and his colleagues wanted to know whether these microbes would still live and function as effectively on Mars, where the pull of gravity on the surface is just 38 percent of Earth's, or even when there is no gravity at all. So they sent some of them to the International Space Station last year. The results, published Tuesday in the journal Nature Communications, show that at least one of those bacteria, a species named Sphingomonas desiccabilis, is unfazed by differing forces of gravity. At the space station, Luca Parmitano, a European Space Agency astronaut, placed some of them in a centrifuge spun at speeds to simulate Mars or Earth gravity. Other samples experienced the free floating environment of space. Additional control experiments were conducted on the ground. After 21 days, the bacteria were killed, and the samples returned to Earth for analysis. For two of the three types of bacteria, the results were disappointing. But S. desiccabilis increased the amount of rare earth elements extracted from the basalt by roughly a factor of two, even in the zero gravity environment. "That surprised us," Dr. Cockell said, explaining that without gravity, there is no convection that usually carries away waste from the bacteria and replenishes nutrients around the cells. "One might then hypothesize that microgravity would stop the microbes from doing biomining or it would stress them to the point where they weren't doing biomining," he said. "In fact, we saw no effect at all." The results were even somewhat better for the lower Mars gravity. Payam Rasoulnia, a doctoral student at Tampere University in Finland who has studied biomining of rare earth elements, called the BioRock experiment's results interesting, but noted that the yields were "very low even in the ground experiments." Dr. Cockell said BioRock was not designed to optimize extraction. "We're really looking at the fundamental process that underpins biomining," he said. "But certainly this isn't a demonstration of commercial biomining." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Science |
Silhouetted against pastel colored shophouses in the historic Chinatown district of Singapore, Daniel Goh leaned forward at a lime green table on the second floor of the Chinatown Complex to take a break from his animated critique of the city state's rapidly developing craft beer scene. "The thing most people don't know," he said, "is that people used to come here to die." Mr. Goh referred to nearby Sago Lane, which was called "Death Alley" in the first half of the 20th century because of its many funeral parlors and coffin shops, and the grim custom of some Chinese citizens going to these so called death houses when they were about to die. The government outlawed such places in 1961, and many of the area's funerary traders had long vanished by the time much of Sago Lane was leveled to make way for the labyrinthine Chinatown Complex, whose exterior is brightly adorned with incandescent Chinese paper lanterns strung in zigzags above the busy street below. Home to hundreds of food stalls and sundries shops, the structure is one of Singapore's older hawker centers, or open air food courts. The government built more than 100 of them from 1971 to 1986 while authorities, citing waste management and public health issues, enticed the island's tens of thousands of food vendors from the streets to these facilities with multiple stalls and promises of low rent. Though the move robbed Singapore of the lively street food culture celebrated in many other parts of Southeast Asia, today the rough and tumble hawker centers thrive as community gathering spaces and lively eating houses. Here local chefs serve myriad foods hot, fresh and cheap, from Singaporean specialties like laksa (a rich, spicy, coconut broth based soup) and chicken rice to Indian, Thai, Indonesian and even Western staples like hot dogs and spaghetti. It was the affordable Chinatown Complex rent, minimal start up cost and the chance to pair beers with all these local foods that in 2011 inspired Mr. Goh, 40, to open the Good Beer Company, Singapore's first hawker stall specializing in craft brews. Offering a choice of some 60 imported bottles, the stall proved so successful that in January 2014 Mr. Goh partnered with a fellow beer merchant, Meng Chao, 47, to set up another stall, Smith Street Taps, right next door. While Good Beer Company deals in bottled beers, Smith Street Taps began as the first Singapore stall hawking craft on tap. "It was a risk," said Mr. Chao. "Bottles can sit on shelves, but with draft we have to turn kegs around quickly." Thus far that hasn't been a problem. Now up to 11 taps from its initial seven, Smith Street Taps fast became the de facto center of Singapore's nascent craft beer scene, going through its 20 to 30 liter kegs within two or three days. Some beers, such as the Bomb! imperial stout from the Oklahoma based Prairie Artisan Ales, last less than a night. "People come for beers they'll never, ever get to try, sometimes even if they travel to their source," Mr. Goh said. At Smith Street Taps, many local importers introduce overseas breweries to Singapore via tap takeovers, when a range of beers from a single brewery flow from most taps. Siren Craft Brew (Berkshire, Britain), Baird Beer (Numazu, Japan) and Modern Times Beer (San Diego, Calif.) are among those that have been featured at such periodic events. "It was a great night; we showed up early and stayed late," said Matt Walsh, the head brewer at Modern Times, who traveled to Singapore for the occasion. "I was really impressed with the knowledge and enthusiasm of everybody there." Aside from its world class tap list and compelling, nontraditional setting, Smith Street Taps succeeds by selling premium beers at prices far lower than those found at brick and mortar competitors. They can do so, in part, because their overhead is much lower. According to Singapore's National Environment Agency, as of Dec. 31, 2014, 87 percent of hawker stalls rent for less than 1,500 Singapore dollars (about 1,065) a month, a fraction of what many centrally located bars pay. Of course, now that the pair has kick started this craft beer hawker phenomenon, the model has caught on. At Chinatown Complex, for instance, the brothers Patrick Lim, 61, and Steven Lim, 63, opened OnTap a few stalls from Smith Street Taps in late 2014. The approach is similar, though the Lims pour only OnTap's own beers and ciders, brewed in small batches less than 10 miles away in central Singapore. OnTap now manages stalls in the Chomp Chomp and Sun Court hawker centers, too. As far as Mr. Chao is concerned, upstarts like OnTap aren't necessarily competition they're a sign of progress. "It's still about growing the market and just getting more people drinking good beers," he said. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Travel |
Life is strange these days. We wear face masks, stand six feet apart, and have reluctantly become experts at video conferencing into meetings. Sports are trying to come back in stutter steps. So it was kind of nice, if even normal, to watch the racehorse Tiz the Law turn in a transcendent performance in the 152nd running of the Belmont Stakes. The race, traditionally the last leg of the Triple Crown, instead kicked off the series for the first time in history on Saturday. It marked the return of big time sports to New York, but on a smaller scale allowed by the coronavirus pandemic. Even better, Tiz the Law was bred in New York and is owned, trained and ridden by New Yorkers. Does Sackatoga Stable sound familiar? How about Barclay Tagg? They should back in 2003 another New York bred by the name of Funny Cide won the Derby and the Preakness before having a Triple Crown bid denied right here at this grand old racetrack on Long Island. On Saturday, however, Belmont Park was not so grand. Instead of 100,000 fans filling the grandstands, there was only a bare bones staff of grooms, trainers and assistant starters less than 100 in all, or just enough to get the horses and their jockeys through the day. All wore masks or bandannas and gloves all week, making the paddock look like a cross between a medical center and a waiting room for desperadoes. There were no hot dogs or beer. No buffets in the dining room. And there were no betting windows open. Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo gave the traditional "Riders Up" call via a television screen. Sam "The Bugler" Grossman was deemed essential personnel and sounded the Call to Post. A scratchy recording of Frank Sinatra belting "New York, New York" accompanied the 10 horse field to the track. Then, nothing but the sound of birds chirping. Lots of them, loudly. Tagg was not complaining. He is 82 now, so much a creature of routine that he told the NBC television presenter to hurry up and get the trophy presentation underway. He had work to do. As Tiz the Law pounded down the stretch like he was bouncing from one trampoline to another, Tagg understood how fortunate he was to have another shot at the Triple Crown. "I'm just glad I lived long enough to get a horse like this," said Tagg, who became the oldest trainer to win the Belmont. He did so by entrusting a horse of a lifetime to 25 year old Manny Franco, who would be riding in his first Belmont. More seasoned riders wanted the mount on Tiz the Law, but Tagg stayed with Franco. On Saturday, Franco was grateful. And nervous. "I can't lie to you," he said. "But I knew what I had underneath me. I'm in good hands with Barclay." Up in Saratoga Springs, the mecca of New York racing, Jack Knowlton, the managing partner of the stable, was at a party with about half of Tiz the Law's 35 partners. Sackatoga Stable was born in Sackets Harbor, N.Y., when six old high school buddies sat on the front porch of the village's former mayor and acknowledged they were approaching midlife crises. Five of them were small businessmen and one a teacher, and their careers had been good to them. So they got into the horse business. Knowlton had landed in Saratoga Springs as a health care consultant in the early 1980s, hence the name. The group, now with additional partners, captured the imagination of sports fans by arriving at each Triple Crown race in an old yellow school bus and with coolers full of beer. Unfortunately, Empire Maker upset their bid to sweep the series in the Belmont Stakes. They do not spend a lot of money on horses and they spread the risk among partners. Tiz the Law cost 110,000 at auction. "We buy New York breds," Knowlton said. "We give them to Barclay because he knows what to do with them." The group has employed Tagg as their trainer for 25 years. The Belmont had not been good to New York breds in the past. The last one to win this race was Forester in 1882. Now, 138 years later, Tiz the Law graced the winner's circle of the Big Apple's biggest race. It was the fifth victory in six starts for the son of Constitution, and the 535,000 first place check pushed his career earnings past 1.4 million. He ran the mile and an eighth distance in 1:46:53 and paid his backers 3.60 for a 2 bet. But the Belmont was hardly the Test of the Champion that horse racing aficionados have come to know and love. Instead of its grueling mile and a half distance, the race was shortened to a mile and an eighth and the start was placed at the end of the turn on the backstretch, which meant horses and riders only had to navigate one turn. It did not matter. New York was in the sporting spotlight once again and, for a few minutes at least, we got to see what we had missed. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Sports |
Researchers studied 46,877 Finnish children who were evacuated to Sweden during World War II, between 1940 and 1944. They tracked the health of their 93,391 male and female offspring born from 1950 to 2010. The study, in JAMA Psychiatry, found that female children of mothers who had been evacuated to Sweden were twice as likely to be hospitalized for a psychiatric illness as their female cousins who had not been evacuated, and more than four times as likely to have depression or bipolar disorder. But there was no effect among male children, and no effect among children of either sex born to fathers who had been evacuated. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Well |
WHAT IS IT? The familiar roadster with a radically downsized engine. HOW MUCH? 49,525 base price. As tested, 58,225 including M Sport package ( 3,900), premium package ( 3,300), metallic paint ( 550) and premium sound ( 950). WHAT MAKES IT RUN? A 2 liter turbo 4 with 240 horsepower and a lusty 260 pound feet of torque. HOW FAST IS IT? Quicker than the 6 cylinder model it replaces, at an estimated 5.5 seconds from 0 to 60 m.p.h. IS IT THIRSTY? Federal estimates aren't final, but BMW expects a mileage gain of 15 to 20 percent, to roughly 21/32 m.p.g. in city and highway. LET the experiment begin: with its new 4 cylinder engine, BMW is betting that Americans can focus on the green road ahead rather than what's under the hood. BMW, the Zen master of the in line 6, is going the downsizing, fuel saving route in the Z4 roadster, switching out its base engine a 3 liter, naturally aspirated smoothie for a 2 liter turbo 4. It's the Bavarians' first attempt to sell a 4 banger in the United States since 1999. As guinea pigs go, they don't get much more cuddly than the Z4, a pretty hardtop convertible that's especially suited to this 4 cylinder tryout. The test gets trickier in October, when BMW will offer this TwinPower engine in the much larger 528i, the lowest priced version of the 5 Series sedan. For BMW fans addicted to 6 cylinders who would howl "bait and switch," the company has technology and numbers on its side. The new engine is stronger, smaller, lighter and drinks much less. TwinPower's bag of tricks includes direct injection and a slick twin scroll turbocharger: exhaust gases from pairs of cylinders are kept separate and fed into dual turbine scrolls, reducing turbulence and the lag between a punch of the gas pedal and a whistling rush of turbo power. And that's some rush. With 240 horsepower, the engine has 15 fewer horses than the former 6, but has gained 40 pound feet of torque. Its 260 pound feet peaks at a remarkably low 1,250 r.p.m., compared with 2,750 for the 6. BMW next bolted on its excellent 8 speed automatic transmission, although a 6 speed manual is optional. Fuel conservation measures include a start stop system that shuts down the engine at traffic lights, though it restarts with a ragged feel; the driver can bypass the system with a button. BMW says the engine, with the 6 speed manual, shaves 0.1 second from the old model's 0 to 60 m.p.h. time, at 5.5 seconds. The company claims a 0.4 second gain, at 5.6 seconds, with the automatic. Spur the engine as intended and there's surprising muscle either around town or on the open road. And this 4 banger sounds terrific; a chesty 7,000 r.p.m. rasp replaces the 6 cylinder's soothing chamber music. Considering the engine's happy tune and flexible power, I'm curious whether this Z4 will create a "don't ask don't tell" situation: if customers don't inquire, or peek under the hood, will sales associates happily sell this Z4 without mentioning the missing 2 cylinders? For relatively brisk duty, the BMW's lovely silhouette, deluxe interior and smooth ride make for a fine companion. Yet the Z4 chassis still isn't fully in tune with the rest of the car. The harder you push, the more the BMW loses the thread. The body rolls, the steering goes light and surrenders, the back end bobbles. Even with my test car's M Sport package including larger 18 inch wheels and driver adjustable suspension, steering and throttle the BMW couldn't match the hang on thrills of the Porsche Boxster or the new, remarkably agile Mercedes SLK. The unfathomable part is how BMW routinely designs two ton sport sedans and 2.5 ton S.U.V.'s that deliver pure handling magic, but cannot manage the trick with a small two seater. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Automobiles |
LONDON If you're going to revive a young man's play, why not cast it with young people? That seems to be the thinking behind the peculiar new West End production of "The Philanthropist," the Christopher Hampton play that was written when its author, now age 71, was 23. The director Simon Callow's revival is at Trafalgar Studios through July 22. Since its Royal Court debut, Mr. Hampton has won a Tony Award (for the musical "Sunset Boulevard") and an Oscar (for "Dangerous Liaisons," adapted from his own play "Les Liaisons Dangereuses"), and has been feted as the English language translator of Yasmina Reza and Florian Zeller both of whom are Broadway and West End names. But in revisiting a play that received its own Tony nomination upon its 1971 Broadway premiere, Mr. Hampton has acceded to Mr. Callow's idea to cast the parts younger than usual, in some cases by a decade or more. (In an interview in the program, Mr. Hampton makes the point that his own script calls for actors of the generation sought by Mr. Callow, even if the received wisdom over time has aged the roles upward.) While the approach might be expected to enliven a bittersweet piece about an emotionally clotted academic named Philip (played here by Simon Bird) all but done in by his benign impulses, the result in practice lessens the import of a tricky text that needs delicate handling if it is to land. Itself an inversion of Moliere's "The Misanthrope," the classic account of a societal truth teller who can't help but spread bile, "The Philanthropist" considers how it might feel to be maligned for being agreeable. What happens when that same docile individual turns out to be nursing intensifying self doubt? Its last London outing, at the Donmar Warehouse in 2005, delivered a stealthy but undeniable sting, due in no small measure to leading actor Simon Russell Beale's indrawn pathos in the central role. This time around, the bulk of the heavy lifting falls to Mr. Bird, who seems still to be circling the role of Philip, as if not yet entirely sure where he and it connect. (This is a production one can imagine gaining in assurance as the run continues.) An anagram happy philologist who is engaged to one woman but ends up spending the night with another, Philip finds against expectation that his affability and decency prove an affront to others. "What do you mean?" appears to be Philip's default response to more or less any situation, his genial obtuseness a prompt for others to lay into him by return; even his fiancee, Celia (a brittle Charlotte Ritchie), finds him "as emotional as a pin cushion." Provoked to take a stand on something or merely to respond, Philip retreats behind his inoffensive veneer: "I always like things," he maintains near the start, and it isn't until later that we clock the extent to which this character's greatest misgivings anger, even are reserved for the affectless man of words that is Philip himself. The actors tend to adopt one tone and stick with it. Playing a fellow academic don by the name of Don, Tom Rosenthal deliver his lines as if keeping time with some unseen machine gun, while Matt Berry as the vainglorious Braham a novelist who revels in his own obnoxiousness brays more or less throughout and makes one wonder what he might be like as Bottom in "A Midsummer Night's Dream." The happy exception is the round faced model and actress Lily Cole, whose nuanced portrayal of Philip's casually discarded Araminta hints at a tragic seeming past that exists in marked contrast to Philip's hollowed out present. Indeed, in a play defined by violence in the world just out of view the prime minister, we're told, has been assassinated, along with most of his cabinet Cole's Araminta suggests someone wise beyond her years who has known her fair share of upset, some of it quite shocking. Raising a long leg on to the sofa as if staking out her perch, her very presence testifies to the vagaries of experience, in contrast with a fleeting bedmate in Philip who has yet to live. If violence exists on the periphery of "The Philanthropist" and, in one startling instance, at its very center the tone elsewhere on London stages is flat out abject. "Whisper House," the Duncan Sheik Kyle Jarrow musical at The Other Palace through May 27, represents the first British outing for a venture that was introduced in San Diego in 2010 between Mr. Sheik's two Broadway forays with "Spring Awakening" (2006) and "American Psycho" (2016). I can't imagine much onward life for its current iteration, if a recent sparsely attended matinee is any gauge. A ghost story set in and around a Maine lighthouse during World War II, Adam Lenson's production couples gloomy portentousness (the set looks like a cesspool) with much intoning of lines to the effect that we're "better off dead." While the story of a young boy sent to live with his termagant of an aunt tips the musical terrain toward Benjamin Britten infused pop, what's on view largely wastes a talented cast, who are forced to deal with lines like "we'll be like lighthouses, you and me." As musicals go, "Whisper House" is awfully wispy. At another point during "Whisper House," we are informed that the world is ending, which probably wouldn't come as a surprise to the restless, wild eyed presence that is the actress Maureen Beattie, as she paces the intimate confines of the Royal Court Theater Upstairs in Simon Stephens's new play, "Nuclear War." An experimental offering from the Tony winning author of "The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time" and "Heisenberg," the play, which closed on Saturday, yoked its apocalyptic title to a dance theater tone poem a dramatic shard, really spoken by Ms. Beattie. One thinks inevitably of Beckett, had the Irish master written about Facebook, waffles, and "erotic zombies." Four black clad performers, who appear masked or barefoot or both as required, engage in a sort of call and response with Ms. Beattie and flesh out what Mr. Stephens describes in the published text as a "series of suggestions for a piece of theater." Interpretation will vary, especially among those looking for some version of Armageddon to surface in Ms. Beattie's ruminations. Instead, the performance, directed and choreographed by Imogen Knight, struck an incantatory mood and elicited an expectant, respectful hush from its audience. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Theater |
She later walked off the court, still visibly in distress, and was treated by a tournament physician. But after a lengthy discussion with tournament referee Soeren Friemel at the net, Djokovic was defaulted, as disqualifications are known in the sport. "This whole situation has left me really sad and empty," Djokovic said in an Instagram post in the early evening. "I checked on the linesperson and the tournament told me that thank God she is feeling ok. I'm extremely sorry to have caused her such stress. So unintended. So wrong." Djokovic continued: "I need to go back and work on my disappointment and turn this all into a lesson for my growth and evolution as a player and human being. I apologize to the US Open tournament and everyone associated for my behavior." Djokovic's exit delivered an immediate blow to the tournament, which was considered unlikely to take place when New York was one of the epicenters of the coronavirus. The tournament is being held without spectators for the first time and with players and their teams tested daily and restricted to their lodging and the Billie Jean King National Tennis Center. Djokovic was the only member of the "Big Three" in men's tennis to play the event this year, with Roger Federer out for the season after two knee surgeries and reigning champion Rafael Nadal choosing to remain in Spain and prepare for the rescheduled French Open and other clay court tournaments. Djokovic only decided to come to New York last month after lengthy negotiations with tournament officials over quarantine rules. But his default deprives the men's event of the only player remaining who has won a Grand Slam singles title. Djokovic has won 17 major singles titles. Men's tour officials have been eager for a new champion to emerge to challenge the dominance of the Big Three, but this was certainly not the way anyone expected it would happen. Some television viewers expressed puzzlement online at how a mere gesture of frustration, without intent to harm anyone, could lead to a disqualification when so many of the tournament's historic losses of composure, like one involving Serena Williams in the 2018 U.S. Open final, carried penalties that were less severe. Williams received a series of conduct violations for coaching, for racket abuse and for verbal abuse of the chair umpire and was docked a point and then a game but not defaulted. The Grand Slam rules bar players from the abuse of balls as well as unsportsmanlike conduct, and tournament officials have the authority to disqualify a player immediately if they deem a case sufficiently serious. Players can be defaulted for "hitting a ball or throwing a racket without intent to harm" if someone is injured on the court, said Gayle David Bradshaw, a retired ATP Tour vice president for rules and competition. "In this case, there was no intent, but there was harm, and the officials had no choice but to do what they did," he said. "Based on the fact that it was angrily, recklessly hit, and the line umpire was hurt clearly and in pain, he had to be defaulted." Friemel said. "We all agree he didn't do it on purpose, but he hit her, and she was hurt." Friemel said the discussion was lengthy with Djokovic because of the significance of the decision. "Defaulting a player at a Grand Slam is a very important, very tough decision," Friemel said. "You need to get it right." During a warm up tournament for the U.S. Open that was staged at the same site, Aljaz Bedene, a Slovenian player, inadvertently hit a cameraman with a ball that he tapped in frustration and received a warning but was not defaulted because the cameraman immediately made it clear that he had suffered no injury. Carreno Busta, who is the 20th seed and from Spain, advanced to the quarterfinals with the default. Djokovic left the stadium without speaking to news reporters. "If it would have landed anywhere else, we're talking about a few inches, he would have been fine," said Alexander Zverev, a German player who was watching inside Arthur Ashe Stadium. In a statement, the United States Tennis Association said that because of the default Djokovic would be fined the prize money he would have earned in addition to any fines that will be levied because of the incident. He faces a fine of up to 20,000 for skipping his mandatory post match news conference. Djokovic, 33, has won five of the last seven Grand Slam singles titles and had dropped just one set in his first three matches at the U.S. Open. But the first set against Carreno Busta was a tight affair, and Djokovic was testy. At one stage earlier in the set, he smashed a ball in frustration toward the side of the court, hitting no one. He failed to convert three set points on Carreno Busta's serve in the 10th game, But when serving at 5 5, Djokovic fell hard on the second point while shifting direction and got up wincing and grabbing at his left shoulder. He received treatment in his chair, returned to the court trailing by two points and then lost the game, still looking uncomfortable with his two handed backhand and resorting to a one handed drop shot on two occasions. Miffed, he smacked another ball in frustration, then extended his left arm in apology toward the line judge as soon as he saw she had been struck. Goran Ivanisevic, Djokovic's coach, slumped in his seat in the players box in the cavernous, nearly empty stadium, seemingly aware of the implications. Andreas Egli, a Grand Slam supervisor, and Friemel soon arrived on court to investigate the situation and discuss the incident with Djokovic and the on court officials, including chair umpire Aurelie Tourte. "I know it's tough for you whatever call you make," Djokovic said to Friemel as they talked at the net. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Sports |
Credit...Nick Hagen for The New York Times StockX is one of several online marketplaces that have turned resales of shoes into a big and highly valued business. Nic Wilkins started selling parts of his sneaker collection online two years ago as a way to make some extra cash in college. The hobby took off, and this year he expects to move 10,000 pairs of shoes. His anticipated take is a 25 percent profit from over 1 million in sales. The main website enabling Mr. Wilkins's now full time business? StockX, a site that treats coveted consumer goods like sneakers as tradable commodities. Sneaker collecting and trading "just keeps growing," said Mr. Wilkins, a 24 year old San Francisco resident who recently hired a business partner to manage his shoe inventory at a warehouse in upstate New York. "It is absolutely wild." StockX is part of a burgeoning group of online marketplaces that have turned resales of sneakers into a kind of currency and an increasingly big business. Other sites like GOAT Group, Stadium Goods and Bump, which also resell sneakers, streetwear and other goods, have raised more than 200 million in venture capital funding. On Wednesday, StockX said it had hired a new chief executive to expand its business and garnered a fresh 110 million in financing that values it at more than 1 billion. The fervor for sneakers has been fueled by "sneakerheads" and others who regard the shoes as investment assets. All told, the market for resale sneakers and streetwear in North America is projected to reach 6 billion by 2025 from 2 billion today, according to Cowen, an investment bank. "The internet and eBay made reselling into a cottage industry," said Matt Powell, an analyst at NPD Group. "Platforms like StockX made it into a business." For sneaker brands like Nike and Adidas, sites like StockX add a twist to the ecosystem around their most desired shoes, like Jordans and Yeezys. So far, the companies have taken a hands off stance to the online marketplaces, with Nike's chief financial officer saying in March that the company was not focused on reselling and had no partnership plans or business strategy for it. Nike teased the resale market last November when it released a pair of 160 Jordan 1s that bore a message: Their tongues said "WEAR ME," their toeboxes said "PLEASE CREASE," and their midsoles said "NOT FOR RESALE." In a few cases, shop owners required buyers to wear the shoes out of the store, a move that damaged their resale potential since most of the resale sites sell unworn sneakers. But the attention only fueled demand: The Jordan 1s immediately appeared on StockX and have sold for prices as high as 1,000. Scott Cutler, the new chief executive of StockX, said more brands would eventually have to pay attention to resellers. "Nike, Adidas, Louis Vuitton, Gucci, Rolex, whatever it is, they're certainly not ignoring marketplaces and are not naive to the fact that their distribution channels are evolving," he said. StockX grew out of Campless, a website that Josh Luber, a former I.B.M. consultant, built in 2012 to track sneaker resale prices on eBay. After Mr. Luber delivered a popular TED Talk titled "Why sneakers are a great investment," Dan Gilbert, owner of the Cleveland Cavaliers, and a co founder, Greg Schwartz, acquired Campless. On StockX, that played out with buyers bidding on items or purchasing them for the lowest asking price from sellers. Once a bid was accepted, sellers shipped their items to one of StockX's four authentication centers, which make sure the shoes are not fake brands and then send them to the buyer. StockX makes money by charging sellers a transaction fee. The company said its revenue had more than doubled in the last year, with gross product sales topping 100 million a month. It has expanded into streetwear and luxury goods like handbags and has more than 800 employees. The site does not carry user profiles and ratings, but includes detailed sales and pricing history for each item, making it more like a stock market than eBay. In total, StockX has raised 160 million, with its newest investors including General Atlantic, DST Global and GGV Capital. One customer has been Usman Hasib, a 32 year old in Houston. A sneaker collector since he was 13, Mr. Hasib has used StockX to amass 56 pairs of shoes worth around 25,000, according to StockX's "portfolio" tracker. He rarely sells his purchases. "I try to wear a different one every day," he said. When Mr. Hasib recently was unable to score Nike's Off White Jordan 1 sneakers in retail stores, he paid around 1,050 for a pair on StockX. Prices later surged to nearly 3,000 on the site. "It literally is like playing a stock market," he said. Mr. Cutler, who previously worked at eBay, StubHub and the New York Stock Exchange, became an adviser to StockX in 2016. That was when he read about the company's plans to create a Big Board for commerce and products, modeled after marketplaces like eBay and StubHub. So he decided to offer his help. "I immediately reached out and said, 'Interestingly enough, I am the one person on the Earth that knows all of those companies intimately well,'" he said. He said StockX planned to use the new 110 million in capital to expand internationally and push into selling newly released products. Mr. Luber, StockX's founder, said he was stepping down as chief executive but would continue to be the company's public face. In a phone call from Paris, where StockX was involved in Fashion Week, he said he now had an even bigger vision than dropping new Jordans on StockX: He wants to replace static retail prices an "antiquated concept," he said with a stock market style of shopping. In this setup, shoppers place bids on new items and prices are determined entirely by supply and demand. Mr. Luber said he recognized the concept might initially be a stretch. "To tell all these brands that our idea is to get rid of retail prices is crazy, but that's the slow, big idea behind it," he said. StockX is already moving ahead with the notion. In January, it held an "I.P.O." that's initial product offering for a limited run of slide sandals created by Ben Baller, a celebrity jewelry designer. The company used a complicated Dutch auction to determine which bidders got to buy the sandals and at what price. It resulted in an average price of 210 a pair three times as much as they would have cost at retail, but lower than the majority of the bids. After the release, other brands inquired about similar deals. StockX now has half a dozen such releases in the works with other designers, Mr. Luber said. "It's not going to be an overnight thing, but it is absolutely logical," he said. In the meantime, StockX is expanding further into secondhand sales of luxury goods such as handbags and watches, an area currently topped by The RealReal, a San Francisco start up that plans to go public this week. Mr. Wilkins, the power seller of sneakers, said he didn't plan to trade the shoes forever, but "right now it's awesome income." There is one drawback, he acknowledged. Once his hobby became a business, he lost interest in getting the hottest shoes for himself. "The more and more you sell shoes, the more and more you dislike shoes," he said. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Technology |
With only one episode remaining, it's unlikely "Game of Thrones" will tie up every loose end for us. But doesn't the show owe us some degree of resolution to its major mysteries, and a judgment on the new villain its onetime hero has suddenly turned out to be? Read our ultimate guide to "Game of Thrones." Sign up for our Watching newsletter for film and TV recommendations. This is a tall order for one episode, but here are some things we really want to know: What's going on in Daenerys' head? There are so many theories about why Dany "snapped" and scorched King's Landing. People in Westeros might say it was because of a Targaryen predisposition toward mental illness (although most purported earlier examples had other explanations). The showrunners claim the havoc wreaking was a spur of the moment decision, but Dany actually telegraphed it in words and actions long before. Or maybe the cause was Varys's poison, if it had the time to to take effect after all. (Basilisk blood, in the books, is easily hidden in cooked meat and produces violent madness.) Or it could be somehow connected to her ineffable, magical bond with Drogon? Whatever the case, Dany now needs to provide us with an explanation in words, not just unhinged facial expressions. Can she explain why the city's surrender to her wasn't enough to stay her hand? Does she realize that her picture will now be positioned in the Westerosi dictionary next to the word "overkill"? Is she too far gone to care? Someone (Tyrion? Jon? Grey Worm?) needs to talk to her about this. Who can oppose her? "Who's lord of Storm's End now?" Dany wondered during the post battle feast at Winterfell, before she bestowed that title upon Gendry. This was a necessary honor: too long had power vacuums kept the various kingdoms in disarray. (We didn't even know there was a new prince in Dorne until the last war council meeting.) So who is in control of what right now? Sansa Stark rules Winterfell, of course, in the absence of Jon Snow, the Warden of the North, making her the de facto leader of the North. Meanwhile, Sansa's cousin, Robin Arryn, is not only Lord of the Eyrie but Defender of the Vale and Warden of the East (although Lord Royce has been the commander of Robin's forces and generally acting on his behalf). Theoretically, Sansa's uncle Edmure, as Lord Paramount of the Trident, could return the Riverlands to Tully control; his status is unclear, however is he still being held prisoner by House Frey? Fans are betting on the outcome of the fight for the throne. A legitimized Gendry Baratheon, now lord of Storm's End, would rule the Stormlands, while The Reach would most likely be the preserve of House Tarly. Sam's mother, Lady Melessa, might have been acting as Warden of the South after the deaths of Randyll and Dickon; if Sam heads back to Horn Hill, can he finally ascend to the lordship he had been denied? And what about Tyrion Lannister might he not also still want to claim Casterly Rock as his birthright, and with it, the title of Warden of the West? And finally, Yara Greyjoy should have the Iron Islands under her command by now. Before Dany destroyed King's Landing, she should have been able to count most of these Houses as allies (save the Tarlys). We don't know who Varys wrote to, or how many ravens he was able to send before his death or if his "little bird" Martha knew to send them after. But if word spreads of Dany's genocide and Jon Snow's lineage, many of Dany's alliances will crumble. The question is, would that make a difference? Even if the other regions are able to assemble fresh forces (and that would be difficult for those who just fought alongside Jon Snow), it might not be enough. One dragon can wipe out an army. If Varys were smart which he generally was he would have also notified the Citadel, the Iron Bank, the House of Black and White, the Red Temple any institution in Westeros and Essos with any sort of influence or power. Remember Varys's riddle: Power resides where people believe it resides. There are effective ways to resist tyranny (and dragons). But if Dany is to be eliminated quickly, an assassin might be required. Someone she trusts, and who can get past the fearsome Drogon. Arya Stark went to assassin school in Braavos, where she picked up some very useful skills. But she hasn't utilized one of the most important ones in quite a while. Which is to say, where are all her faces? Did she bring any with her from Winterfell? How was she expecting to get past Cersei, her original target? And if she decides to select a new target, does she have spare faces to help out? Will Tyrion face one last trial? Twice in this series, Tyrion Lannister has been accused of crimes murders and attempted murders that he did not in fact commit. In attempting to defend himself against such charges, he usually resorted to trial by combat. But if Dany accuses him of treason for freeing his brother Jaime, her prisoner Tyrion actually would be guilty. How will he talk himself out of this one? Will anyone break the wheel? Dany promised to destroy the metaphorical wheel of power in order to create a better world. But she never said how she intended to do that. (Somebody should have asked.) If she were to be defeated, will Jon pursue his claim or abdicate the throne? Will the throne be destroyed? (Hopefully Drogon will live long enough to melt it.) What about the idea of monarchy? What form of government could best replace the current one? Will anyone suggest, as Tyrion once did, adopting the democratic methods of the Night's Watch or the Iron Islands? Will anyone dig back in Westerosi history and suggest the re establishment of a Great Council? Or how about glancing at the political setup in Essos, across the Narrow Sea? Or maybe something altogether new ... What do the common people think? For all of the actions taken on behalf of the "common people," it's rare that the commoners themselves are consulted. Which leaves us to wonder: How much do they really know about what has happened? Do they even know who Daenerys Targaryen is? Did they consider Queen Cersei a tyrant? These are people who once rioted in the streets (in Season 2) and ripped the High Septon limb from limb when they thought the monarchy was failing them. How do the survivors of the Sack of King's Landing, if there are any, feel about it now? (We can probably guess the answer to that one.) How much did Bran know? Did Bran Stark know about the blood bath in advance? He has had troubling visions since Season 4, including Drogon cruising over a smoking King's Landing and an ashy throne room (which matched Dany's own vision from Season 2). Both Bran and Dany had glimpses of the future, but perhaps didn't recognize what they were seeing at the time. (What turned out to be ash looked in these visions like snow.) Unlike Dany, though, Bran has had a chance to pause and rewind. Did he watch more of the horror unfold? Did he recognize what Dany was going to do, and if so, why did he not share this information with anyone? Was it an ethical dilemma for him? (If so, we need to see him wrestle with that.) Also, could Bran actually intervene in the timeline? Or, remembering the repercussions with Hodor, would he choose not to meddle? How could he justify remaining silent about a disaster that has claimed thousands of lives, while at the same time nudging Jon Snow into a position where he could claim the throne afterward? What is Bran's agenda? Do prophecy and magic even matter? For that matter, what good is an ability to see into the future in this world? Melisandre's visions, when she backed Stannis, also caused disasters but they nudged Arya to kill the Night King as well. Cersei's downfall can in part be attributed to her obsession with Maggy the Frog's fortunetelling (which turned out to be mostly accurate); if Cersei hadn't perceived Margaery Tyrell to be the promised threat (instead of Dany), perhaps she wouldn't have accumulated so many enemies. Dany, too, obsessed about a witch's words she thought they meant she would never have children again. How much did that perhaps erroneous belief shape her path and enable her savior complex? The Prince/Princess Who Was Promised, the Stallion Who Mounts the World are these prophecies real, or is it dangerous to believe in any such cryptic concepts, real though they might actually turn out to be? | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Television |
The new musical "Hadestown" dominated the Tony nominations Tuesday, getting nods in 14 categories. Read the full list of nominees. "To Kill a Mockingbird" and "Network," two costly dramas that have been big hits at the box office, were not nominated in the best new play category. Among the bold faced names nominated were Annette Bening, Bryan Cranston, Jeff Daniels, Adam Driver, Elaine May and Laurie Metcalf. "Hadestown," a folk and blues inflected musical reimagining the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice, led the Tony nominations on Tuesday, winning nods in 14 categories and becoming a front runner in the hotly contested, and financially significant, race for the season's best new musical. An unconventional show nurtured by the downtown theater scene sung through, poetic, packed with emotion and politics "Hadestown" will now face off against four others for the big prize. "Ain't Too Proud: The Life and Times of the Temptations," an exuberantly sung and danced jukebox musical, garnered 12 nominations; "Tootsie," a musical comedy adapted from the popular film but updated to reflect today's gender politics, got 11. "Beetlejuice," another movie adaptation, scared up eight nominations; and "The Prom," about egotistic New York actors who insert themselves into a debate about sexuality at an Indiana high school, received seven. "I can't believe this is real I never expected that this road was going to lead here," said the singer songwriter Anais Mitchell, who fell in love with the Greek myth as a child and then, a dozen years ago, adapted it for the stage in a DIY production that she packed into a silver school bus and toured around community theaters in Vermont. Now she is a two time Tony nominee, for the show's book and score. "I just got captivated by the idea that there's this character who believed that if he could make a piece of art beautiful enough, he could change the world," she said. The nominations, which come at the end of a lucrative Broadway season notable for the plethora of nonmusical plays, were striking not only for those recognized but also for those snubbed. Neither "To Kill a Mockingbird" nor "Network," two costly dramas that have been hits at the box office, was nominated in the best new play category. They did not come away empty handed "Mockingbird" was nominated for nine awards, and "Network" five but it was clear that the nominators preferred fully original work in the best play category. (Aaron Sorkin based "Mockingbird" on the 1960 Harper Lee novel, while Lee Hall's "Network" follows the plot of the 1976 film.) The race for best new play is now likely to be a face off between "The Ferryman," Jez Butterworth's gripping family drama set in a troubled Northern Ireland in 1981, and "What the Constitution Means to Me," an autobiographical piece by Heidi Schreck inspired by her adolescent experience giving speeches about the Constitution to win scholarship money. "Choir Boy," "Gary: A Sequel to Titus Andronicus" and "Ink" are the other contenders for best new play. "I'm a little bit speechless," said the "Choir Boy" playwright Tarell Alvin McCraney, a critically celebrated presence Off Broadway whose Broadway debut came thanks, in part, to his winning an Academy Award for the screenplay of "Moonlight." "Choir Boy," about a gay teenager struggling with his status in the choir of an all male high school, was inspired, he said, "by growing up and learning the history of Negro spirituals" and also by "really wanting to investigate being queer and black and also loving my community and my people." Our chief theater critics, Ben Brantley and Jesse Green, discuss the nominations. A group of 42 theater experts, who saw the 21 plays and 13 musicals eligible for awards, determined the nominations. The nominators are not allowed to have any financial relationship with the eligible shows. Now begins the campaigning. Many acting categories appear to be hotly contested the featured performances were especially strong this season so watch for a lot of politicking, Tonys style, over the next few weeks. The nominees will be showing up for gala dinners and fancy luncheons and giving a lot of interviews as they try to remind voters of their charm and skill. The 831 Tony voters actors, producers, writers, directors, designers and others active in the theater community, some with financial interest in the nominated shows have until noon on June 7 to cast their electronic ballots. The winners are to be announced on June 9 at the 73rd annual Tony Awards, held at Radio City Music Hall, hosted by James Corden, and broadcast on CBS starting at 8 p.m. Eastern. The Tony Awards, formally called the Antoinette Perry Awards, are presented by the Broadway League and the American Theater Wing. A few artists had especially big days Tuesday. The 26 year old actor Jeremy Pope, who had never appeared on Broadway before, accomplished the rare feat of being nominated for work in two shows as a gifted student in the play "Choir Boy," and as a magnetic member of the Temptations in the musical "Ain't Too Proud." And Ms. Schreck, who is 47 and also making her Broadway debut, was nominated both as the writer and the star of "What the Constitution Means to Me," a personal look at how American law has treated women. Five musicals "Hadestown," "Tootsie," "The Prom," "Ain't Too Proud" and a revival of "Oklahoma!" dominated the performance categories, recognizing actors both veteran and new. For example: The musical comedy mainstays Brooks Ashmanskas and Beth Leavel were nominated for "The Prom," but so was 27 year old Caitlin Kinnunen, a Broadway newbie. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Theater |
L.G.B.T.Q. people are everywhere. It is a simple and seemingly obvious fact, but one you will be forgiven for not fully realizing. Even the most well intentioned person can fall into the trap of the dominant narrative. Through the repetition and limitation of the stories we see and the voices we hear, we have been conditioned to think of a very specific set of experiences when a particular community or identity is evoked. We create a limited stereotype of life that glosses over a broader diversity. In doing so, we leave far too many behind. We hear "transgender" and we think of a transgender woman, much like myself. We hear "L.G.B.T.Q." and we think of a white gay man. And, no matter the letter we are referring to, we almost exclusively envision lives lived in coastal, blue state cities. But part of the beauty of the L.G.B.T.Q. community and one of the factors that have fostered change is that we exist everywhere, in all our rainbow glory, across region, class, race. 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. In 's "Sissy: A Coming of Gender Story," and Samantha Allen's "Real Queer America: LGBT Stories From Red States," these two young authors bust through the dominant L.G.B.T.Q. narratives with poise and pride to further reveal the community's wide diversity. While different in style and tone, these books share the common thread of highlighting parts of a marginalized population that too often remain invisible and ignored. Despite the predominant focus in politics and entertainment on transgender men and (particularly) women, many in the transgender community actually identify outside of the gender binary: between 25 percent and 35 percent, according to a recent survey. These nonbinary identities have existed throughout time, but in contemporary media they are just beginning to receive the visibility they deserve. Tobia, a nonbinary writer, activist and actor who uses the pronouns they/them/their, combines incisive wit and undeniable intelligence to invite readers into their personal journey as a gender nonconforming young person in North Carolina. Tobia makes clear early on that this book will not be your traditional "Transgender 101." Even so, through evocative rhetoric, the memoir subtly educates even the most uninformed reader about the spectrum of nonbinary identities by recounting Tobia's various coming out experiences, their initial refuge in their Methodist faith and their gradual self discovery and advocacy as a visible student at a Southern university. It is in Tobia's often self deprecating humor that "Sissy" is most transformative, and where it most departs from other trans memoirs. The seriousness of the topic never feels glossed over, which allows for an organic and seamless journey from tears on one page to laughing aloud on the next. If Tobia aspires to the ranks of comic memoirists like David Sedaris and Mindy Kaling, "Sissy" succeeds. Allen's powerful book of memoir and reportage, "Real Queer America," is decidedly more serious in tone, but it's no less entertaining. The Daily Beast reporter gathers stories from L.G.B.T.Q. people she met in conservative states across the country on a road trip she took in July 2017, the first summer of the Trump presidency. An anthology of testimonials might feel disjointed, but Allen's never does. She connects each stop and story by weaving in her own personal journey, from a closeted Mormon missionary and student at Brigham Young University to one of the nation's most prominent openly transgender reporters (who, while on the road for this very book in Texas, covered reactions to what she calls the "dystopian development" of Trump's tweeted ban on transgender troops). It is difficult to capture universality in a way that also celebrates uniqueness. Allen does so through the diversity of the individual stories she uplifts, giving any reader an entry point into L.G.B.T.Q. lives. Tobia achieves the same thing through humor while avoiding the "Trans Narrative(c)." Both writers do so with a vulnerability and humility as approachable and accessible as it is profoundly moving. On one stop along Allen's journey, she returns to her former college town of Provo, Utah. Ten years before, deep in the closet, she would escape the conservative town for late night solo drives through the mountains, "searching the city's plentiful parking lots for isolated corners where I could apply makeup and change into women's clothing unseen." Fast forward a decade, and Allen, now living openly as a transgender woman, visits Provo's L.G.B.T. youth center. There she meets young people and their loving families doing what once seemed impossible to her: living boldly, and authentically, in a place where Allen used to feel completely alienated. That is the shared beauty of these books: They demonstrate that progress and pride in red state America is a tangible reality. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Books |
They flow ceaselessly through the text panels on our smartphones, these ubiquitous ideograms used to convey facts or feelings or perhaps nothing at all. They have come to infiltrate both our memes and our dreams. They appeared on Nippon Telegraph and Telephone mobile devices in the '90s, went global when Apple made them standard on iPhones and have become so universal that Sony has turned them into an animated movie. And now emoji, it seems, are a medium for fine art. That is how the Los Angeles creator Yung Jake (real name: Jake Patterson) has come to use them, creating a show of appealingly retrograde three dimensional "Emoji Portraits" that opened at the Tripoli Gallery in Southampton, N.Y., the week during which tragic but true hardly anyone celebrated the red letter nonevent of World Emoji Day (July 17). Depicting celebrities like Justin Bieber, Leonardo DiCaprio, Willow Smith and Kim Kardashian West (with strawberry lips and Magic 8 Ball eyes), Yung Jake's paintings are sprightly renditions of digital images he began making in 2015 with an application developed by Vince McElvie, a business partner and friend. Using emoji.ink as his tool, Yung Jake found he could "paint" pointillist portraits assembled from hundreds of goofy images of movie cameras, rabbits, moons, clouds, smiley faces, honey pots and, yes, poop. "I just happened to be good at it, so I did a bunch of celebrities," Yung Jake said in a text message, his preferred form of communication. "I sent a lot to my famous friends knowing they'd post." Sometime YouTube rapper, sometime art world darling, sometime digital explorer, Yung Jake was raised, as he claimed, in "Bridgehampton, Bali, Sag Harbor and New Zealand" ("we traveled around a lot growing up cause my family surfed," he wrote) and educated at, among other places, Bridgehampton High School. He attended the California Institute of the Arts, from which he graduated in 2012, taking with him the Yung Jake persona he had begun developing in 2011 with music videos like "Unfollow." In it, wearing pink pants and a bucket hat, he raps in a drowsy monotone about unfollowing an ex on social media. The video gained some traction on the art world circuit, and in the years since, he has emerged as one among a crop of compelling millennial artists whose digital works are developed almost entirely for or on the internet. Still, while his augmented reality artwork "Datamosh" was a buzzy hit at the digital salon of the 2013 edition of the Sundance Film Festival, it is the emoji pictures that have brought Yung Jake a measure of mainstream attention. In January, a booth dedicated to those images at the Zona Maco contemporary art fair in Mexico City sold out; less than a week after his new show opened at the Tripoli Gallery, all but four of the 13 emoji paintings were accounted for. "I think of the art just as life and the things I do are all just part of it," Yung Jake wrote, as a way of explaining his relaxed and hyphenated art practice. Fusing Page Six celebrity with the kiddie fun of emoji, Yung Jake has conjured up a genre that may not be "very deep ... or high concept like my other stuff," as he said, and yet one that remains as mindlessly irresistible as a smiley face. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Style |
This is how the muzzling starts: not with a boot on your neck, but with the fear of one that runs so deep that you muzzle yourself. Maybe it's the story you decide against doing because it's liable to provoke a press bullying president to put the power of his office behind his attempt to destroy your reputation by falsely calling your journalism "fake." Maybe it's the line you hold back from your script or your article because it could trigger a federal leak investigation into you and your sources (so, yeah, jail). Or, maybe it's the commentary you spike because you're a publicly supported news channel and you worry it will cost your station its federal financing. In that last case, your fear would be existential a matter of your very survival and your motivation to self censor could prove overwhelming. We no longer have to imagine it. We got a real life example last week in San Antonio, where a PBS station sat atop the slippery slope toward censorship and then promptly started down it. It's a single television station in a single state in a very big country. And the right thing ultimately happened. But only after a very wrong thing happened. The editorial misfire bears retelling because it showed the most likely way that the new administration's attempts to shut down the free press could succeed, just as it shows how those attempts can be stopped. The story began with a Jan. 24 speech that Representative Lamar Smith, Republican of Texas, gave on the House floor regarding what he described as the unfair way the national media was covering President Trump. He said for instance that the media ignored highs in consumer confidence, which of course it did not. And he ended with an admonition for his constituents: "Better to get your news directly from the president. In fact, it might be the only way to get the unvarnished truth." His remarks caught the notice, and the ire, of a longtime San Antonio area journalist and commentator, Rick Casey, who hosts a weekly public affairs program "Texas Week" on KLRN. He ends each week's show with his own commentary, which also runs in The San Antonio Express News. Mr. Casey has been able to work for "40 years as a professional smart ass," he told me, because "I'm not really a bomb thrower I've watched politicians for so many years that I know how to be strong about something without being unfriendly." Retail earnings and Black Friday: the week in business. Elizabeth Holmes will resume her testimony in her fraud trial. But Mr. Smith's comments bothered him enough that he wrote up a stemwinder of a closing commentary. "Smith's proposal is quite innovative for America," it went. "We've never really tried getting all our news from our top elected official. It has been tried elsewhere, however. North Korea comes to mind." All set to go, the commentary was mentioned in a Facebook promotion for the show, which in turn caught the eye of Mr. Smith's office, which called the station to inquire about the segment. Forty minutes before the show aired, the station's president and chief executive, Arthur Rojas Emerson, left a message for Mr. Casey saying he was pulling the commentary and replacing it with an older one. Mr. Casey told me he missed the call, but saw what happened with his own eyes. At a meeting the next Monday, Mr. Casey said, Mr. Emerson expressed concern "that the Corporation for Public Broadcasting was under attack and that this would add to it." The Corporation for Public Broadcasting provides financing for public stations, including KLRN, and Mr. Trump's election has heightened fears that its financing will be cut. It also happens that Mr. Emerson had left journalism for several years to run his own advertising firm and that Mr. Smith had at one point been a client. Mr. Casey says he asked Mr. Emerson if he'd be willing to come on the program and discuss it all, but Mr. Emerson declined. And that seemed to be that. But as we're learning this year, journalism has a safety net in the people who appreciate it, and the people who work in it. First, when Mr. Casey's commentary ran as planned in The San Antonio Express News, astute readers noticed it was different than the previous night's televised commentary. The story of what happened began traveling around San Antonio journalism circles, making its way to the Express News columnist Gilbert Garcia, who shared the details last Friday. Another titan of Texas journalism, Evan Smith, who co founded The Texas Tribune and regularly appears on Mr. Casey's program, noticed Mr. Garcia's column while he was in Washington. "I had a hot coffee in my hand and I came very close to dropping it," Mr. Smith told me. "Holding people accountable in public life is so fundamentally important that this idea that somehow we're going to stop doing that because we're worried about what the government's going to do to us, I so unbelievably reject that." As it happened, Evan Smith was in Washington for a meeting of the PBS national board, on which he sits, and "I certainly got into the board room and talked to people in the system." He also called Mr. Emerson, and told him "I didn't see why The Tribune or I should continue to be associated with this show or this station." By late last week, Mr. Emerson had agreed to let Mr. Casey's original segment run this Friday, as long as it included a new "commentary" label that will run with his opinion segments. When I caught up with Mr. Emerson this week he acknowledged making "a mistake" that should not tarnish a career spent mostly in broadcast news, starting in a 1.25 an hour job as a cameraman. "I had to make a decision in what was about 20 minutes," he said. He acknowledged that "clearly we always worry about funding for public television," but said that wasn't the "principal reason" for his decision to hold back the commentary. "We have to protect the neutrality of the station somebody could have looked at it as slander," he said. The "commentary" label, he said, would take care of it. Mr. Casey is satisfied with the result. But he acknowledged that it was a close call and that he was uniquely qualified to push back in a way others might not be. "I'm lucky to be in the position of being 70 years old, and not in the position of being 45," he said, meaning that job security was not the same issue. "There's no level of heroism here." In a week in which Congress is calling for a leak investigation into stories in The Washington Post, The New York Times and CNN that led to Michael T. Flynn's forced resignation as national security adviser, heroism is what's called for. Hopefully there's enough of it to go around. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Media |
In the decade since entered the literary mainstream with a best selling debut essay collection, "I Was Told There'd Be Cake," reviews of her writing from the most gushing endorsements to the unnecessarily cruel pans have had the rare distinction of sharing at least one point of consensus: Crosley is an absolute master of the one liner. And while her third book of personal insights, "Look Alive Out There," is poised to continue this legacy, its one liners do far heavier existential lifting than their predecessors. Where Crosley's first collections were dense with zingers made to deliver laughs, the most memorable lines in this one are built to break hearts. That reflects a similar shift in the author's storytelling priorities: Crosley has changed focus from the mild absurdities of day to day existence to quiet but universal devastations. In "Outside Voices," Crosley recalls the turmoil caused by the endless noise of an adolescent neighbor's 24/7 party. Crosley's self deprecation is evident in clever but exaggerated metaphors that cast her as the beleaguered victim of teenage tyrants. When the neighbor, Jared, leaves the music on even while away, she casually notes it as "a tactic generally employed by war criminals." She compares Jared's friends to "cicadas without the bonus years of dormancy" who were "multiplying like gremlins." This flippant incredulity in the story's setup only renders its true significance all the more gut wrenching. When the teenagers go miraculously silent ("Had my dreams of their alien abduction come true?"), Crosley investigates from her window to find more than a handful of them dancing and laughing in the kitchen, Jared swooping in and, in seemingly one fluid motion, delighting one female friend by spinning and dipping her. "And for a full minute, I was so in love with all of them, I almost couldn't stand it," Crosley writes to close the scene conceding with genuine admiration that the actual terror inflicted by the young is the evidence they offer of how pure and big joy can be. In "The Grape Man," Crosley reflects on the death of her downstairs neighbor Don, an older, single man who tended an elaborate garden outside his apartment. "To live alone can be a glorious thing. Between jags of crippling loneliness and wretched TV, it's an education in self sufficiency, self actualization and self tanner. But it is possible to have too many rooms of one's own," Crosley remarks, with some regret for never having taken full inventory of this man's solitude. Don had occupied for her the strange and unlabeled space between the palpable, but mostly passive, affection between neighbors, and the solid, certain affections between actual friends. The essay's sadness derives not just from Don's isolation, but from the author's reminder that nearly everyone we know in some way occupies that same mysterious liminal space. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Books |
ATHENS No matter what happens in this weekend's elections, Greece is rapidly becoming an isolated economy. Carrefour, the giant French supermarket and retail group, said on Friday that it was selling its entire stake in Greece at a loss to its local franchise partner, so it could concentrate "on markets where it sees growth," a spokesman said. Coca Cola's operations in Greece were also downgraded by Moody's Investors Service, which cited the increased likelihood that Greece could exit the euro zone. A day earlier, the French bank Credit Agricole said it was ring fencing its Greek operations to protect itself should that happen. Two of the world's largest import export insurers, Euler Hermes and Coface, have recently refused to cover transactions involving companies in Greece, imperiling the import of basic goods. Global businesses and investors are retreating both because of the uncertainty on whether they might be paid someday in a devalued currency, and because domestic consumption has plunged after three years of painful austerity. Nearly a quarter of the people are out of work. Buying power has shriveled. Sales of clothing and pharmaceuticals have slumped, and even gas purchases are down as people drive less to save money. Companies short on cash have stopped paying one another. Amid rows of unsold screws, drills and power tools at his hardware store here, Deodoris Diamadis is one of many Greeks awaiting elections that he hopes could bring much desired economic improvement. "Commerce in Greece is down to almost nothing because of all the economic and political uncertainty," Mr. Diamadis said grimly on a recent weekday as he watched the occasional customer flit in and out without buying anything. "We're hoping that a new government will resolve this crisis." Those hopes are likely to be dashed, given the bleak outlook. Even the strongest parts of the economy are suffering badly. Tourism, which accounts for nearly 20 percent of all jobs in Greece, is expected to plunge by about 15 percent this year as dire headlines leave visitors uneasy about planning vacations. The shipping business here has been losing steam to China, and its profitability fading, especially in the last year. "The economic international isolation of Greece is growing progressively day by day," said Vassilis Korkidis, the president of the National Confederation of Greek Commerce. Even if a new government wanted to remain in the euro, allaying concerns that the euro zone was breaking apart, it would have to satisfy the demands of the international community for financial aid. Though its coffers are running dry, the Greek government must find 15 billion euros in savings by the end of the month under the terms of its bailout. The state power agency is warning of imminent electricity blackouts because it can't pay its bills. And Gazprom, the Russian gas giant, has threatened to cut Greece off unless it is paid by June 22. Alexis Tsipras, the left wing leader who is emerging as a front runner in Sunday's elections on promises of repudiating Greece's loan agreement, said in an interview Thursday that growth would mainly be restored by reversing the harsh austerity measures required by the international community for Greece's bailout. He promised initiatives to stimulate the economy, without specifying what those initiatives would be or where the money would come from aside from taxing wealthy businesses and individuals more, collections that have failed repeatedly in this tax evasive culture. Greece needs to get its finances in order, he added, "but if we annihilate growth while doing it, what's the point?" Kevin Spacey was ordered to pay 31 million to the 'House of Cards' studio after sexual harassment allegations. Netflix buys a visual effects company in a move to support its global ambitions. Global companies have been wary about the country for a while, but their concerns shot to new heights last month after Greeks voted in large numbers for Mr. Tsipras's left wing party, stoking fears that his willingness to tear up the country's 130 billion euro bailout agreement could lead Greece to exit the monetary union. Qatar recently froze a 5 billion euro investment because it wanted to see if Greece was staying in the euro, George A. Papandreou, Greece's former prime minister, said in an interview. Such stalling characterizes the financial decisions of everyone from foreign investors down to families, explained Mr. Papandreou. "Every single household said, 'Are we going to be in, or not? Should we consume? No, we shouldn't. Should we borrow? No, let's take the money out of the banks.' The banks said, 'Should we lend? No, we shouldn't.' " The political upheaval has just deepened the problem. "We would have had much more growth, much more economic activity, if there was certainty," he said. At the port of Piraeus, one of Europe's largest shipping ports, Nikolas Manesiotis's 93 year old spice import business abuts docks where cloves, cinnamon and pepper arrive on ships from India and other faraway lands. Despite decades long relationships with his family, suppliers have started demanding cash upfront in lieu of letters of credit for shipments that take three months to arrive. "They say 'It's not personal, but our insurance companies will no longer cover business we do with Greek firms,' " Mr. Manesiotis said. That means he must get cash from the Greek businesses he supplies before he can deliver the goods and many of them have little or no money sitting around. On a recent afternoon, Mr. Manesiotis was preparing to drive around 180 miles to collect money he was owed by a client. "I need to get my cash from him, and if I have to drive four hours to do it, I will," he said. Throughout Greece, these problems have turned the basic laws of the market upside down. The economy is suspended by a long chain of arrears. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Global Business |
Mr. Vance and a team of investigators working under him, including members of the Major Economics Crimes Bureau, uncovered misrepresentations of Newsweek's finances that included a fictitious accounting firm called Karen Smith L.L.P., prosecutors said. Money ostensibly borrowed for office equipment was used for other purposes, according to the charges. Journalists at Newsweek, including two top editors and a reporter, were fired in 2018 after they looked into IBT Media's financial dealings and legal troubles in the weeks after the raid. Several others resigned. The district attorney's office filed criminal charges against Mr. Uzac and Mr. Anderson in October 2018, accusing them of a multimillion dollar fraud and money laundering conspiracy. The charges also named IBT Media, which bought Newsweek from IAC/InterActive in 2013. IBT Media pleaded guilty on Tuesday and agreed to forfeit 30,000. In a statement on Friday, Mr. Vance called the crime "a massive fraud scheme through which a group of sophisticated criminals illegally moved tens of millions through our Manhattan marketplace by brazenly overstating the financial health of their companies." An attorney for IBT Media and Mr. Uzac, Marc Agnifilo, said in a statement on Friday, "IBT Media is pleased to close this matter and looks forward to continue to grow the business." He added, "We agreed to a resolution that does not involve jail and allows Mr. Uzac and all defendants the ability to put this chapter behind them." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Media |
A North Atlantic right whale known as Bayla died after becoming entangled in fishing lines. The young female's stress hormone levels skyrocketed, a new study shows. In one more sign that North Atlantic right whales are struggling, a new study finds sky high levels of stress in animals that have been caught in fishing nets. Researchers determined the stress hormone levels of more than 100 North Atlantic right whales over a 15 year period by examining their feces. Sometimes guided by sniffing dogs, researchers followed the animals, collecting waste samples that they then analyzed in their lab at the New England Aquarium. Results from the feces of 113 seemingly healthy whales helped establish a baseline of stress hormone levels, which had never before been known for the species. "We have a good idea of what normal is now," said Rosalind Rolland, who developed the research technique and is the lead author of the study published in the journal Endangered Species Research. One whale, a young female named Bayla, showed stress levels eight times higher after she was found entangled in synthetic fishing ropes in January 2011. Several biologists trained in disentanglement couldn't get all the gear off her, so they sedated the emaciated animal and gave her antibiotics. Two weeks later, an aerial survey team found her corpse floating at sea, possibly after being attacked by sharks, which typically leave healthy animals alone. A necropsy conducted a few days later found rope embedded in the back of Bayla's throat, that possibly prevented her from eating. "This highlights the extreme physical suffering these animals are going through when they're entangled in fishing lines," said Dr. Rolland, a senior scientist in the Ocean Health and Marine Stress Lab at the Anderson Cabot Center for Ocean Life at the New England Aquarium. Because hormone levels take several hours to rise after a stressful event, Dr. Rolland said that tests on five animals that died quickly when hit by ships showed stress levels similar to those in healthy animals. This has been a disastrous year for the North Atlantic right whale, whose population now hovers below 450. Sixteen or 17 animals have died since the beginning of the summer and only five have been born, according to Charles "Stormy" Mayo, director of the Right Whale Ecology Program at the Center for Coastal Studies in Provincetown, Mass., who was not involved in the new study. Although once considered a species conservation success story, the population of North Atlantic right whales has been falling since about 2010, he said. "The arrow at the end of the curve is pointing at zero." Although the reasons for the deaths are varied, and some remain mysterious, it seems like the animals are exploring new areas in search of food, putting them in direct conflict with ships and heavy fishing lines, Dr. Rolland said. The Gulf of Maine, which has long been central to their habitat, is one of the fastest warming bodies of water on earth, she said. North Atlantic right whales, which can weigh as much as the space shuttle, exclusively eat nearly microscopic creatures called zooplankton. About 80 percent of the animals carry scars from past entanglements or ship strikes. These "urban whales" are also stressed by noise from shipping and other sources, Dr. Rolland said. Analyzing hormones in feces in addition to newer efforts to study the vapor exhaled from the animals' blowholes provides scientists an objective way to test what is stressing the whales and whether efforts to improve their habitats are working. "If you can get a measure from the animal itself, it's far better than us trying to interpret an animal's behavior," she said. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Science |
TAMPA, Fla. During the idle time of spring training, Miguel Andujar pulls out his cellphone and calls up a video. He has seen this footage already, but if he wants to fulfill his dream of becoming one of baseball's elite third basemen, he needs to keep watching and emulating. Andujar, who turned 24 on Saturday, wants to field like Nolan Arenado, Alex Bregman and Manny Machado. And more than anything, he wants to be like his hero, Adrian Beltre, another third baseman, who recently retired after a distinguished 21 year career that included five Gold Gloves and four All Star appearances. "I love the way he throws the ball and positions himself on defense," Andujar said in Spanish after a recent afternoon at the Yankees' spring training site. "And how he prepares before a pitch, in the ready position and with a little hop." There are several reasons the Yankees did not seriously pursue Machado during his high profile free agency. They wanted to spread money around on various improvements, rather than spending in a single chunk, and Machado's 10 year 300 million contract with the San Diego Padres proved to be the second largest free agent deal in North American sports history. Beyond money, there was also the fact that the team already possessed a talented young third baseman in Andujar, who finished second in the American League rookie of the year voting last season despite his defensive warts. "We recognize there are players playing all around the game that might be better than what we have here, but that's fine too," Yankees General Manager Brian Cashman said recently. "You can't have them all." He added later: "The product is a strong one. And we want it to be the best it possibly can be. If it's not good enough, judge me on my recommendations to ownership." And long before the Yankees decided not to formally make an offer to Machado, they were already working to improve Andujar's defense. In 149 games, Andujar posted an .855 on base plus slugging percentage and hit .297, topped only by the Washington Nationals star Anthony Rendon among major league third baseman. Andujar's 27 homers and 92 runs batted in trailed only Giancarlo Stanton on the Yankees. None Everyone Loves Ohtani: The Angels' two way star was a unanimous pick for A.L. M.V.P. and his superfans redefine devotion. Phillie Phavorite: Bryce Harper truly committed to Philadelphia and now he's back on top of baseball, winning the N.L. M.V.P. Cy Young Winners: Milwaukee's Corbin Burnes and Toronto's Robbie Ray had hit rock bottom before they worked their way up to stardom. Baseball Is Stuck in Neutral: The potential of a lockout has a star studded group of free agents waiting for the dust to settle. Free Agency Tracker: Get the latest updates on signings, contract extensions and trades. But in the field, Andujar was shaky. While he committed 15 errors and last year's A.L. Gold Glove winner at the position, Oakland's Matt Chapman, was charged with 20 Andujar struggled in other regards. Advanced defensive metrics rated him the worst fielding third baseman among those with at least 900 innings last season. In the do or die Game 4 of the A.L. divisional series against the Boston Red Sox, Yankees Manager Aaron Boone opted for Neil Walker at third base instead of Andujar. "He exceeded his developmental projections, on defense especially," Cashman said of Andujar. "We just have to give him time and be patient and give him the chance to close those gaps. The old adage of 'Where there's a will, there's a way,' and he has a lot of will." So to enact all the desired changes for this season, the Yankees and Andujar recognized that he needed extra instruction over the winter. A month after the Yankees were knocked out of the playoffs by the Red Sox in October, Andujar spent a few days with Boone and the Yankees' infield instructor, Carlos Mendoza, both former infielders, at the Yankees' complex in Tampa. Afterward, Andujar returned to the Dominican Republic and continued his off season training with private trainers to improve his agility. In January, Mendoza and Boone, on a trip to see several Yankees players, worked with Andujar at the Yankees' academy and checked on his progress. The Yankees zeroed in on two areas for Andujar: how he throws the ball and how he uses his feet. They saw that Andujar had a tendency to throw sidearm. That is fine when charging a chopping ground ball or throwing from an awkward angle. But on routine plays, the Yankees believed it was affecting his accuracy. Sidearm throws can sail to the side as they approach first base. So the Yankees have continually reminded Andujar to set his feet properly and throw the more traditional overhand way on routine plays, which he did with ease during pregame fielding drills even last year. "It's about comfort level for him," Mendoza said. "So when the game started, he got away from it. But now, we want that work that he's doing before games to show in games this year." In terms of refining Andujar's footwork, the Yankees taught him not only to get into an athletic position at third base bent at the knees and hands out, ready to field but to make a slight hop on the balls of his feet before each pitch is delivered. Mendoza likened it to a tennis player waiting to receive a serve. "We talk about guys' hands all the time, but really, the great fielders have great feet and are able to keep athletic and create hops" for themselves, Boone said. Even something as small as a little bounce can be significant. "It'll help the accuracy of his first step," Mendoza said. "Last year, he was a step too late. A tick of a second. In the big leagues, that's the difference between an out and a double past you." Willie Randolph, a longtime Yankees second baseman and coach who serves as a guest spring training instructor, said young players sometimes had mental lapses in which they forgot to be in an athletic fielding position on every single pitch and were caught flat footed when the ball was hit their way. "The difference I see from this year to last year: He's starting to dance now," he said. "He's starting to feel the rhythm of the position." Much as Cashman and Mendoza did, Randolph advocated patience with Andujar. He pointed to the Yankees' 100 wins last season despite Andujar's defensive lapses and said that the total might improve as his fielding did. How much, if at all, will be a question hovering over the 2019 season. "I always have trusted in my work, and I thank the team for believing in me and my talent, although I haven't been here long," Andujar said. "I'm thankful to be here and to show them every day that I can do it." Perhaps more than anyone, Andujar wants the narrative about him to change. The skepticism hovering over his defense has persisted so much since last season that he occasionally looks a tad annoyed answering more questions about it this spring. He answers them nonetheless. Yet the day after Arenado, who could have been a Yankees free agent target next winter, agreed to an eight year, 260 million extension with the Colorado Rockies, Andujar smiled when asked for his opinion. Although his English is improving, Andujar usually uses an Spanish interpreter when speaking with reporters. This time, he blurted out an answer in English about one of the fielders he admires. "Good for him," Andujar said. "I want to be like that one day." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Sports |
In Carmen Maria Machado's memoir, "In the Dream House" her debut story collection, "Her Body and Other Parties," was a finalist for the 2017 National Book Award doorknobs recur not as a clumsy or coercive symbol, but as evidence of Machado's gift for narrative patternmaking. Through repetition, she arranges the full arc of her traumatic relationship with an abusive woman, who volleys between tender manipulation and explosive rage. Machado blueprints a framework for love turned sick bay. She is careful not to collate the terms "house" and "home." She seldom abandons an image, as if waiting for it to serve its central purpose, which it always eventually does. Read an excerpt from "In the Dream House." Partway through, in a chapter titled "Dream House as Inner Sanctum," Machado recalls a childhood fight with her parents during which she locked herself in her bedroom. So her parents did something about it: "All I remember is the cold sensation in my body as the doorknob a perfect little machine that did its job with unbiased faithfulness shifted from its home as the screws fell away. ... How, when it fell, I realized that it was two pieces, such a small thing keeping my bedroom door closed." Later, in a chapter titled "Dream House as Sanctuary," an adult Machado locks herself in a bathroom while her apoplectic girlfriend is chasing her. "I remember sitting with my back against the wall, pleading with the universe that she wouldn't have the tools or know how to take the doorknob out of the door." The bathroom momentarily becomes her safe space, until the memory resurfaces. Terror is twofold for Machado it sidelines her, but it also shepherds her. Machado's wit and compulsive post mortem approach configure her story into a wildly propulsive memoir, an ambulatory survey of the genre. This book was one of our most anticipated titles of November. See the full list. In it we find Disney villains, "Star Trek" and fairy tales, all organized only slightly more rigorously than the freewheeling elements of Marguerite Duras's "Practicalities." There's the second person narration, the repercussive sound of "You." There's a sweet gym class memory involving dandelions (evocative of both desire and destruction) and a time lapse that underscores how inconsequential we are. There's du Maurier, "I Love Lucy" and plenty of driving but not like in a road trip movie, more like in a nightmare where the road is barely lit, the car swerves, strangers stay strangers. A deer makes eye contact. There's a bildungsroman chapter about a blurred relationship with a pastor. A Florida chapter makes a good argument for how everything bad happens in Florida. There's a deja vu ingeniously applied on the page, a cinematic telling of predawn light. A history of queer domestic abuse includes the largely untold story of Debra Reid, the only black woman and the only lesbian in the Framingham Eight, a group of women convicted of killing their abusive partners in the '90s. Machado recounts how when Reid was finally released on parole, she said, "I just want to get an apartment and turn my own little doorknob and use my own bathroom and eat my own food." Machado tells us that she can't forget Debra and her doorknob: "I hope she got what she needed." Machado writes about enormity somatically: the gut, the rush of blood, the fluids and the feelings, the commotion in our chests "the simultaneous leap of excitement yanked back by a leash of panic." It's easy for writers to prioritize the mind and forget about the body, with its cracks and chronic thrum; but Machado's work is an aide memoire for corporeality. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Books |
Since the last major stock market plunge, back in 2008 and 2009, a new type of investment adviser has arrived on the scene. The robo advisers, as they are commonly known, hold a lot of promise: They can potentially save investors from themselves in volatile markets by providing access to professionally managed portfolios of low cost investments. They run on autopilot, cost just a fraction of traditional advisers' fees and are typically available to people with small amounts to invest. But in most cases, investors won't be assigned to a warm blooded professional who will be on call should markets plummet, as they have done in attention getting fashion for most of this year. Instead, customers may receive a video message via email from a well seasoned adviser, imploring them not to panic, though they can also reach someone at the company via online chat or phone. The robo advisers have quickly attracted a growing number of investors. They have also caught the attention of established financial players. Digitally driven investment providers were estimated to hold 53 billion at the end of 2015, according to the Aite Group. That's up from 2 billion in 2013, though at least half of the growth is from existing firms like Vanguard. And it's still a small fraction of the 20 trillion in retail investors' total investable assets. With few exceptions, these services share the same widely established investing philosophies: Create a low cost diversified portfolio for the long run; don't ever ever! time the market; and focus on meeting goals, be it for retirement, a down payment or college. But the services can vary greatly in their overall approach. Some view your financial life more holistically, taking into account money in, say, a 401(k) held elsewhere. And while the actual investment recommendations should be relatively easy, the suggested portfolios differ widely enough to warrant closer inspection. What really matters is whether investors are comfortable sticking with a particular recommendation when the markets sour. There could be a significant difference in how much risk the robots believe you can afford to take and what your stomach can truly handle. Betterment, an automated advisory service introduced in 2010 that manages 3.2 billion, said less than half of 1 percent of its 135,000 customers made a change to their portfolios over the last two weeks. But upon closer inspection, some of the robo advisers' portfolios appeared aggressive, at least from the perspective of one personal finance reporter. Some of the initial recommendations strayed far from the 65 percent in stocks that I'm comfortably invested in now, an allocation decided upon after consulting with a certified financial planner who charged a flat fee for her advice. One robo adviser initially suggested a 90 percent stock allocation, which, in theory, younger and midcareer investors may be able to handle because their portfolios still have many years to recover from a precipitous decline. But it could be a rocky ride. Here's a closer look inside two of the larger start ups, as well as two other established players that introduced automated services over the last year: BETTERMENT This is probably among the more comprehensive services available, particularly for individuals saving for retirement. Its RetireGuide tool, introduced in August, factors in all of your retirement accounts, including, say, a spouse's 401(k) held elsewhere, expected Social Security benefits and where you want to retire. Users can connect all of their other savings and investing accounts to see them in one place. Locast, a nonprofit streaming service for local TV, is shutting down Capital One's chief executive was fined after being called a 'repeat offender.' Then, the service's tool will estimate how much an individual may need to spend in retirement each year, and thus how much users will need to save, which accounts to save in (including maxing out a 401(k) still in use) and how to improve tax efficiency. A retirement income tool calculates how much retirees can safely spend each month, then automatically deposits that amount into a checking account. Users can adjust their investment mix, but they will need to know themselves well enough to select a final allocation that won't feel too risky in tumultuous markets. Betterment's chief executive, Jon Stein, said that it did not build portfolios around customers' emotional tolerance for risk, but instead presents, say, potential annual spending amounts available in retirement. It then lets investors move the dial. For a 50 year old investor, it might suggest 75 percent in stocks, and the remainder in a broad collection of bonds largely using Vanguard exchange traded funds. WEALTHFRONT While the service builds and manages portfolios for the long term in all types of accounts, some of its most sophisticated automated services are tailored for investors with taxable money. Users with more than 100,000 in taxable investments can sign up for its direct indexing service, which enables investors to directly own the stocks in a major index and harvest any losses to offset capital gains. Withdrawing money is also done in a tax efficient manner, while the programs are continuously looking for opportunities in taxable accounts for so called tax loss harvesting. Its newest tool, Portfolio Review, will evaluate portfolios held elsewhere, analyzing fees and how well it is invested. For a 50 year old with a moderate risk tolerance using a traditional I.R.A., Wealthfront suggests a portfolio mix that includes 65 percent in stock funds and 12 percent in real estate. Another 15 percent is suggested in a corporate bond fund and 8 percent in emerging markets debt. That may not provide the steady ballast that some investors want. But Wealthfront argued that the increased volatility of those assets is more than compensated for by their higher returns. VANGUARD Vanguard's Personal Adviser Services are a bit of a hybrid, combining both a technology driven program with the guidance of a human adviser, who is reachable via phone or videoconference. With the human adviser's assistance, investors who must have at least 50,000 to invest can create a comprehensive plan involving any number of goals. It also takes into account any money held outside of Vanguard and can build recommendations for much of your finances. The investment gurus at Schwab argued that all investments had trade offs and that these bonds, for example, were less sensitive to rising interest rates. Over the long run, they said, they were confident these bonds would be less volatile than stocks. Perhaps. But before selecting an investment mix at any of these services, investors should consider how a particular portfolio might feel if this latest downturn or the next one were to become a replay of 2008 and 2009. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Your Money |
In late January, as the new coronavirus was beginning to spread from China's Hubei Province, a group of lay Buddhists traveled by bus to a temple ceremony in the city of Ningbo hundreds of miles from Wuhan, center of the epidemic. It was a sunny day with a gentle breeze, and the morning service was held al fresco, followed by a brief luncheon indoors. A passenger on one of the buses had recently dined with friends from Hubei. She apparently did not know she carried the coronavirus. Within days, 23 fellow passengers on her bus were also found to be infected. It did not matter how far a passenger sat from the infected individual on the bus, according to a study published in JAMA Internal Medicine on Tuesday. Even passengers in the very last row of the bus, seven rows behind the infected woman, caught the virus. The only factor that may have mitigated the risk of infection was sitting near a window that could be opened, or near the door. The incident adds to a large body of evidence indicating that the coronavirus can be transmitted by tiny particles that linger in the air, and not just through large respiratory droplets that fall quickly to the ground. The World Health Organization acknowledged the virus may be airborne in July and that these particles may seed superspreader events in closed spaces like restaurants and workplaces. The new study "adds strong epidemiological evidence that the virus is transmitted through the air, because if it were not, we would only see cases close to the index patient but we see it spread throughout the bus," said Linsey Marr, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at Virginia Tech and a leading expert on airborne viruses. The two buses carrying passengers to the event had cooling units that were recirculating air inside the vehicles. "That would facilitate the virus in the air and spread it around the bus," Dr. Marr said. None of the 60 passengers on the second bus was infected. Dr. Muge Cevik, an expert on infectious diseases and virology at the University of St. Andrews School of Medicine in Scotland, said that the outbreak was likely caused by a combination of factors: a long trip, a confined environment, a crowded bus and an individual who was probably extremely contagious because she was in the early stages of the infection. "There isn't really a dichotomy between aerosol and droplet transmission," Dr. Cevik said. "There have to be multiple things happening at the same time for this type of high risk transmission to occur. This was the wrong place, the wrong time, the wrong person." The study's authors, who are physicians with the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, concluded that "future efforts at prevention and control should consider the potential for airborne spread of Covid 19." The study was published previously online as a preprint. The outing to the Buddhist temple was what scientists refer to as a natural experiment. It took place on Jan. 19, when there were still no confirmed Covid 19 cases reported in Ningbo. The circumstances conveniently allowed for a comparison between similar passengers on two different buses. Some 300 people attended the temple ceremony, but only 128 made the 50 minute trip by bus. One bus carried 68 passengers, including the individual who was infected, while the second bus carried 60 people. None of the worshipers wore masks. The paper in JAMA Internal Medicine does not describe the infected individual and says the person did not have symptoms until after returning from the temple. But a version of the study published in China says the individual was a 64 year old woman and that she developed symptoms on Jan. 18, a day after dining with guests from Hubei and a day before going to the temple. She took medicine but did not see a doctor. Like the Science Times page on Facebook. Sign up for the Science Times newsletter. "The Chinese paper says the index case was unwell the day before going to the temple, so she was probably very infectious, because we know that viral load is really high around the time of symptom onset," Dr. Cevik said. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Health |
Q. On Android, how do I add caption information to individual pictures I have stored online in a Google Photos album? The text edit tool in the Google Photos Help guide seems to just add a caption on the whole album. A. You can add a personal caption to individual images in the Google Photos album by tapping the thumbnail of each picture to open it to the full screen view. When the picture expands, tap the Info button at the bottom; the icon looks like an "i" in a small circle. When you are on the picture's Info screen, you should see an "Add a description" line at the top. Tap it to type in your caption information. Tap the Back button when you're done. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Technology |
Neither Thought They'd Marry Again. Then They Spent a Pandemic Together. By the time Luis Solis met Hailey Nicole Terrell last December, he had been divorced for 10 years and had become a master of the short term relationship. Mr. Solis, 62, said he developed several "relationship management policies," for keeping the people he was dating at a comfortable distance. He avoided the word "girlfriend" and instead used terms like "close friend," "dear friend," "fun friend" or "sporty friend." He didn't allow anyone to keep clothes at his place. "I lived in the moonshot realm in my business and social career, in terms of friends, networks and doing fun stuff," Mr. Solis said. "When it came to relationships, I limited that to hitting a bunt. I was terrified of getting hurt." He met Ms. Terrell, 43, at a New Year's Eve party at the Shine Restaurant and Potion Bar in Boulder. Like him, she had been divorced for 10 years and was wary of love. She said the men she had recently dated "all found ways to break my heart." Ms. Terrell, who grew up in Norman, Okla., and graduated from Southern Methodist University, doesn't shy away from big changes in her life or career. After her divorce, she got a job selling art on cruise ships. "When I'm in pain the answer is usually travel," she said. And this summer she opened Get Outta Hair, an electrolysis salon in Boulder. While in Aspen, they "recognized a likeness in each other," Ms. Terrell said. Both are a combination of entrepreneurial and soulful, thoughtful and constantly busy. Ms. Terrell had a stroke when she was 35, followed by a difficult recovery, and is now determined to make up for lost time. "She packs more things into one day than humanly possible," said Pamela Jackson, her mother. Both love to dance, without inhibition. "I was absolutely stunned by our connection," Mr. Solis said. "Call her a unicorn, an exception, different, call her unique, call her quirky, she is my kind of outlier." Sign up for Love Letter and always get the latest in Modern Love, weddings, and relationships in the news by email. In January and February, each traveled a lot he for work and music festivals (he estimates he attends about 18 a year) and she for electrolysis training in California. They talked often on the phone for hours. "Luis is not the kind of guy who answers questions in one sentence," she said. By early March, both were back in Boulder and they went to dinner. "I'm thinking we are going to be planning our lives together and he was like, 'I don't see this relationship continuing,'" she said. "He basically pulled back the reins, a lot. He said, 'We'll still hang out. I just see us as being dear friends.' I was like, 'I don't want to be your 'dear friend!'" She and Mr. Solis still stayed in touch and when her stove and refrigerator suddenly broke down in late March, she called him for help. By then, stay at home orders had been instituted in Boulder, because of the coronavirus pandemic, and all of his consulting jobs had been canceled or postponed. He invited her over. "It took eight weeks to replace those appliances," Mr. Solis said. "So we just hung out at my house watching every possible thing on Netflix and doing a lot of cooking. It created an incredible foundation." In retrospect, both think the combination of Covid 19 and broken appliances were the universe's way of making sure they got back together. (Mr. Solis's cooking also helped; he calls himself a "paella wizard" and "a stir fry maniac.") While Mr. Solis initially feared she might get on his nerves, she instead calmed his nerves. "Her outlook of choosing to live fully in the face of massive uncertainty and disruption, that was incredibly seductive to me," he said. "I do believe that's one major secret to happiness: Just stop worrying. Hailey is exceptional at that." She loved his interesting questions and creative ideas for indoor activities. "There was one point where he put together a 100 word statement and said, 'This is who I am, can you describe yourself in 100 words?'" she said. "He challenges me more than anyone else ever has." Over time, he stopped wishing he could fly off for one of his intense brainstorming sessions with a group of business people. "I had a major shift," he said. "Now, I want to sit still and do nothing and just hold her hand." He also loves seeing her clothes next to his in his closet. In late July, he proposed with an amber ring. "Amber is very, very important to the Mayan people," said Mr. Solis, who practices some Maya rituals like burning copal (for clarity) and drinking cocoa with friends (for deeper connection). "He's an entrepreneur and well educated and charismatic," Ms. Terrell said. "He's not that guy you're embarrassed to bring to a party. I'm so proud he's by my side." Many people asked if they were rushing into marriage. This was Mr. Solis's response: "We think there's normal time and there's Covid time. Covid is different time. We call it the convection oven of romanticism. Covid is 24/7 with someone in existential crisis mode where we're sort of wondering, 'Am I going to live?' Every month feels like a year." On Sept. 26, the couple were married at the Boulder Adventure Lodge, a woodsy, thoughtfully updated hotel with a sign inside that sums up the feeling of the place (and the couple): "Be Dareful Out There." The Love Train Weeks before the wedding, the couple took a trip they dubbed the Love Train, to introduce each other to family and friends. They rented a Tesla and drove from Boulder to Edmond, Okla., to visit her father, David Terrell, and Keller, Texas, to see her mother, Ms. Jackson. They flew to Wilmington, Del., for lots of catching up and reminiscing with his brothers, Rene and Oscar Solis. "Isn't that what we discovered with Covid?" the groom said. "It's all about connection." The Vows The bride and groom each wrote a set of promises, and both vowed to accept the other "as you are and as you are not." The Dinner After the ceremony, guests lined up for Mexican food served out of a bright pink food truck. The Dogs The bride's dog, Camden, a 5 year old Biewer terrier, and the groom's, Bella, a 13 year old Tibetan spaniel, were in attendance. Every morning, the couple and their dogs take a quiet walk together. "Nature does the speaking," Mr. Solis said. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Fashion & Style |
The rising number of nonperforming loans has been a problem in China's economy; last year ended with almost the highest percentage of loans outstanding in over a decade. President Trump's tariffs were having a real effect on the Chinese economy. It brought its leaders to the table to deal with vital issues like China's theft of American intellectual property and its blocking of market access for American manufacturers. But now this part of the agreement with China throws open the gates to American capital. They now get to keep up their exploitation, with our money. For decades, China has used Wall Street's hunger for profit to lure American capital into a trap: the Communist Party's clear intent of displacing the United States as the world's economic and military superpower. This accord will result in American capital flowing to the government owned companies that China props up to undermine our country. This is not a win. Investing American capital in China may earn better returns in the short term. But it will come at a tremendous cost in the long term. American dollars aren't being invested in Chinese companies that succeed based on their honest business model and ability to grow. They are being invested in companies that exist to serve a Chinese Communist Party intent on undermining America, human rights and religious liberty. Allowing the savings of Americans to be linked to the success of the Chinese government and Communist Party is a grave error we will come to regret. Beijing's state planners couldn't have written the financial services section better if they tried. They'll get to finance their industrial ambitions with the deepest, most liquid capital markets in the world our own. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Opinion |
This one's for the hedonists . All you party people should know that the Al Hirschfeld Theater has been refurbished as an opulent pleasure palace, wherein decadence comes without hangovers. That's where the euphoric "Moulin Rouge! The Musical" opened on Thursday night in a shower of fireworks, confetti and glittering fragments of what feels like every pop hit ever written. Inspired by the 2001 Baz Luhrmann film and directed with wicked savvy by Alex Timbers, this "Moulin Rouge" is a cloud surfing, natural high of a production. It has side effects, for sure, including the vertigo that comes from having your remembrance of songs past tickled silly and the temporary blockage of any allergies to jukebox musicals. But for its plump, sleek two and a half hours of stage time, "Moulin Rouge" which stars a knockout Karen Olivo, with Aaron Tveit and Danny Burstein doing their best Broadway work to date has the febrile energy you may associate with the wilder parties of your youth, when gaudy nights seemed to stretch into infinity. Or rather, it's like the memory of all those parties merged into one streamlined fantasy. The team behind "Moulin Rouge" which includes the brilliant arranger and orchestrator Justin Levine and the choreographer Sonya Tayeh know that familiar music opens the floodgates of recollection like few other stimuli. Though it is set in fin de siecle Paris, "Moulin Rouge" uses as both its score and its lingua franca roughly 70 songs, most of them chart toppers of the past several decades. And since the majority of them concern the extreme joys and sorrows of being in love (or lust), they are likely to have figured in the soundtrack of your own romantic history. These are numbers that many of us fell in love to, made love to and fell out of love to, and they've kept playing in our heads ever since. At the same time, Mr. Timbers's production, which features a strategically cliched book by John Logan, translates the shimmery illusions of cinema into the grit and greasepaint of live theater. It picks up on the outmoded idea of show people as close kin to panderers and prostitutes, emphasizing the transactional relationship between live entertainers and their audiences. Thus when you enter the Hirschfeld you will immediately encounter variations on the idea of love for sale. Derek McLane's dazzling nightclub set of the title that's the same Moulin Rouge associated with Toulouse Lautrec, and yes, he's a character here is a gasp inspiring nest of valentine hearts, cushioned nooks and outsize exotica, illumined in shades of pink and red by the lighting designer Justin Townsend. Lissome men and women, wearing little more than corsets and stockings, stare down the audience. (A top form Catherine Zuber has dressed the cast sumptuously, in clothes designed to ravish.) Men in top hats and tails, cigars clamped between their lips, assess the human flesh on offer. And a splendidly seedy master of ceremonies greets us with flattering insults. That's Harold Zidler, played with rouged cheeks, suspicious eyes and an all embracing leer by a marvelous Mr. Burstein. "Welcome, you gorgeous collection of reprobates and rascals, artistes and arrivistes, soubrettes and sodomites," he says. "No matter your sin, you are welcome here." In contrast, there's our other host, who says he's summoning a cherished chapter of his life for our delectation. That's the open faced, virginal Christian (Mr. Tveit), newly arrived in Paris from Lima, Ohio, who asks us to "think back" and "try to remember your first real love affair." The object of Christian's adoration is Satine, a nightclub chanteuse and demimondaine, almost past her prime and riddled with consumption. On screen, Nicole Kidman portrayed her as a gossamer spun apparition. Ms. Olivo, in a performance that sends her into the constellation of great musical actresses, gives us a figure of palpable flesh, who deploys a coquette's arsenal of wiles and illusions to conceal illness, desperation and a hard lived past. The wide eyed Mr. Tveit covers the "gee whiz" part of the equation with appealing exuberance and a gleaming voice. He has been given two lively sidekicks the Argentine tango dancer Santiago (the vibrant Ricky Rojas) and the painter and, uh, show within the show director Toulouse Lautrec (a charmingly melancholy Sahr Ngaujah). As Christian's romantic rival, the Duke of Monroth, Tam Mutu swaggers suavely and menacingly. He introduces himself to Satine by singing (wouldn't you know) "Sympathy for the Devil." The stuff of radio wallpaper has been repurposed here, but it's never performed as karaoke throwaways. When Ms. Olivo sings the Katy Perry chart topper "Firework" or Mr. Tveit does Adele's "Rolling in the Deep," it's with an uncompromising, personal passion. Ms. Tayeh's choreography expertly performed by a delightful and delighted polymorphous ensemble is a perpetual motion machine of often bruising sensuality. Standard period fare like the cancan (bien sur) and La Danse Apache is reinterpreted with electric wit. Mr. Rojas and a snarling Robyn Hurder lead the sensational Act II showstopper, an angry blend of Lady Gaga's "Bad Romance" and Britney Spears's "Toxic." (Ms. Hurder is also part of the fab quartet of divas along with Jacqueline B. Arnold, Holly James and Jeigh Madjus who give torrid life to "Lady Marmalade.") When Mr. Burstein makes his jubilant entrance at the top of the show, you may find yourself thinking of another insinuating M.C., from another European nightclub, from another Broadway musical. I mean, of course, the immortal "Cabaret." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Theater |
A sprawling 14th floor apartment at 10 Madison Square West, the Witkoff Group's condominium conversion of a century old showroom building at the International Toy Center, sold for 14,255,500 and was the most expensive closed sale of the week, according to city records. The 3,309 square foot sponsor unit, No. 14D, at Broadway and West 24th Street, overlooks Madison Square Park, with sweeping cityscape views from its oversize windows. Its monthly carrying costs total 7,546. There are four bedrooms and four and a half baths. The large master suite, with east facing exposures that look out at the park, contains three walk in closets and a spalike bath with a double vanity and a soaking tub. The apartment, with wide plank oak floors and ceiling heights of nearly 11 feet, is entered through a foyer that leads to a sizable gallery that separates the master suite from the other en suite bedrooms. There is also a utility closet with a side by side washer and dryer. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Real Estate |
Not long ago, a tattoo shop in Brooklyn got a bad review on Yelp. A customer was angry not about his new ink, but about the soundtrack that accompanied his trip there. "Why are you playing Sade," he wrote, inserting an expletive. This was music he found fit for "a plastic surgeon's waiting room," not a cool tattoo parlor. One can sort of understand where he was coming from. Before record stores neared extinction, Sade was often stocked in the easy listening section. The band's breakout success in the 1980s owed much to the advent of adult contemporary radio, where huge hits like "Smooth Operator" and "The Sweetest Taboo" eventually got sandwiched between selections from Michael Bolton and Kenny G. The band's trench coat favoring Nigerian born frontwoman, Helen Adu, known to the world just as Sade, is more responsible for the popularizing of gold hoop earrings than an entire industry of jewelry executives. She did not so much wear polka dots as single handedly rescue them from the dustbin of Upper West Side frumpiness. As a generation turned, house D.J.s turned remixes of Sade ballads into club classics, and a raft of hip hop artists repeatedly sampled her. So when the owners of East River Tattoo fired back on Instagram, posting a screen shot of the Yelp review beside a caption that said, "Proud to be shattering your expectations of what a tattoo shop should be, every day of the week," obviously an army of Sade obsessives rushed to the store's side. "All that says is your understanding of the world and what's happening in it... Is shall we say, limited lol," one wrote. Sade is one of the most relentlessly quiet famous people on the planet. But in her extended silences, her place in the pantheon of cultural influence has only grown more enormous. The most famous Sade tattoo, however, belongs to Drake. He premiered it on Instagram this March. In it, Ms. Adu's hair is hidden, Nina Simone like, beneath a turban. In February 2017, the street wear brand Supreme put Ms. Adu's image on a coveted limited edition T shirt. In March, Reese Witherspoon's Type A character on "Big Little Lies" established her remove from pop culture when she hears Sade at a dinner party and mistakes it for Adele. Demand for T shirts from Sade's 1992 and 2001 tours has so outstripped supply that vintage sellers like Chico's Closet in Los Angeles have largely abandoned eBay (and its commission fees) and moved to Instagram, where the mere act of hashtagging Sade leads to whack a mole like sales. Some of this Sade fever can be traced to Patrick Matamoros, 41, a high end dealer who finds rare T shirts, distresses them to perfection and then places them on to the backs of celebrity clients such as Rihanna, Diplo and Mark Ronson. Two years ago, Mr. Matamoros sold a tee from Sade's 1993 Love Deluxe tour to Kanye West. "I'd sold Sade shirts to famous people before that, but something happens when Kanye wears a shirt that I still don't understand," Mr. Matamoros said on a recent afternoon. This conversation was in his Lower East Side apartment, and he was in a Run DMC shirt and a Sade crew hat that he sells for as much as 600. He picked up a vintage Phil Spector shirt and poked a hole through one of the sleeves with his big toe. "I used to say to people about Sade, 'This isn't going to impress everyone in the room," Mr. Matamoros said. "Get an Iron Maiden shirt if that's what you want. Sade was for two people in the room, but it was the right two people." Not anymore. Now, everyone wants them and Mr. Matamoros says even he rarely gets them without paying at least 300 a pop, which happens to be more than any other female singer alive today. Much of the current fascination with Sade derives from the fact that her fans know so little about her, starting with the pronunciation of her name. (Many Americans believe it's pronounced Shar day; it's Sha day.) In an era that rewards people less for their talent than for their associations with other famous people and the ability to leverage those associations over Instagram and Twitter, Sade's disinterest in self promotion has had a reverse effect. Her longstanding lack of interest in speaking about herself makes the world more likely to want to speak about her. For college, Ms. Adu went to what is now called Central Saint Martins, in London, then and now the world's most prestigious fashion school. To make extra money, said Albert Watson, who photographed the covers of the band's "Love Deluxe" and "Lover's Rock" albums, Ms. Adu took a job selling clothes at the Camden Street Market. She began singing backup in a local band, and moved to frontwoman only reluctantly. "The lead singer left," she later said. It turned out she was great, with a breathy voice that was heard by Stuart Matthewman and Paul Denman, playing in a band called Pride. They asked Ms. Adu to start singing with them. In 1982 or 1983, Mr. Matthewman and Mr. Denman left Pride and formed a group around Sade. They signed to Epic Records, where executives quickly realized they were dealing with an artist with no direct historical precedent. "She was one of those rare artists I fell completely in love with because she came just the way she is now," said Susan Blond, a former vice president and publicity director at Epic who now heads an agency where clients have included Aerosmith, Will.I.Am and Morrissey. "She was very young, but she was very sophisticated," Ms. Blond said. "She didn't follow anyone else's style. No one was as beautiful or had as sleek of a look as her. She didn't mind designer clothes, but you'd never ever look at her and say, 'Oh that's a Chanel outfit.' She never looked like a brand. And her songs seemed to become classics immediately." In a way, Ms. Adu's sphinx y stare, keen fashion sense and interest in Afro Caribbean rhythms owed a debt to Grace Jones, but her pensive lyrics and languid delivery of them flipped the script by placing romance above sex. When Ms. Adu sang about a male gigolo on her breakout hit, "Smooth Operator," she was lamenting what happens when "sentiment is left to chance." The saxophone signaled sorrow. Ms. Adu wasn't asking as Ms. Jones did for a guy to "drive it in between." Shortly before Sade won the 1986 Grammy for best new artist, she appeared on "Saturday Night Live" with Tom Hanks, who recalled the experience in an email: "It was the first time I did 'SNL,' which is a major event an anyone's life, a heady week of being surrounded by all that history. I'd never been in 30 Rock, much less invited to work on the 17th floor or in Studio 8 H. I thought the big talisman for being on 'SNL' was the job of saying 'Ladies and Gentlemen, Sade.' which is actually written on a cue card, by the way.' Calling her elusive or mysterious might color her as unkind or remote. She was not that. She was, rather, just very comfortable in her command of her art, as well as her presence. Having very little in common with her, save the close approximation of dressing quarters, a bit of me yearned to be as cool and composed as Sade. She remains a Smooth Operator, no?" Dan Beck, a former senior vice president at Epic who worked on the United States promotion for Sade's first four albums, said, "There was grace to everything she did." Although Ms. Adu looked forward to the publicity campaigns of record releases about as much as one would a root canal, Mr. Beck said, this wasn't because she was temperamental or diva ish. She merely regarded the project of explication with suspicion. She seemed to operate according to the principle that narcissism was not the precondition for artistic exploration, but was instead its enemy. "She never enjoyed promotion of any type," Mr. Beck said. "It was painful for her. Eventually, I flew over to London to see her and we struck a deal. I said that if she would commit to giving me three weeks of nonstop publicity for each album, everything but the kitchen sink, VH1 and radio stuff and photo shoots, I would go back to my counterparts at the label and get them to put everything they needed into that time period. I said, 'You'll hate it but we'll get it all done and when you're done you're done.' And she laughed, and that's what we did for the next two albums after that." As the years went by, the break between albums stretched ever longer. She wanted to have normal relationships. She wanted to record when she actually had something to say. Sade's 1992 album, "Love Deluxe," arrived four years after "Stronger Than Pride." Ms. Adu smiled as she told Mr. Beck she might not have gone back into the studio to record except the guys in the band wanted to return to work, he said. "I thought that was so sweet." (In a 1992 interview she said, "It's good that we stopped and didn't try to make another one off the back of the previous album. You get some perspective on why you're making a record.") Then, she did the photo shoot for the album and Mr. Watson, a contributor to Vogue who directed a number of Sade's videos, proposed shooting her topless with metallic body paint, her hands covering her chest. "She said, 'I don't mind. I'll do that for you, but I don't want it to be anywhere near the album cover,'" Mr. Watson said. "I said, 'The shoot is for you. You control all the images.' Then she looked at it and said it was too sexy." Eventually, in conversation with the band, she agreed to use it, but the image remains an outlier in the way she has chosen to display herself. A year later, Sade declined to release a house remix of "Pearls," perhaps because there was something a little unseemly about people dancing to a song about the Somalian civil war. Then, a bootleg of it began making the rounds to D.J.s such as Junior Vasquez and Frankie Knuckles, who turned it into one of the era's defining club tracks. In 1995, a marriage to the Spanish film director Carlos Pliego ended. Ms. Adu later said the pair had a difficult time navigating the demands of global fame with their private relationship. For a time, she lived in Jamaica with Bob Morgan, and they had a child. An eight year stretch between albums yielded "Lover's Rock," which had lots about romance but also brought a quiet force to songs about issues facing black people. The video for "King of Sorrow" was a masterstroke of Sade ness, where she wore ball gowns and a bandanna, scrubbing a child's shoe clean. Was it a cautionary tale for single parenthood or a fashion spread devoted to it? Who could say. It was lovely. Even with so little of her, you can see her look everywhere. Just last week, T:, The New York Times Style Magazine put Nicki Minaj on a cover, her hair in a black ponytail, a pair of gold hoops dangling. Lauren Tabach Bank, the magazine's entertainment director, didn't hesitate when asked whom they were channeling. "Sade," she said. "You never know how someone's going to react, but Sade is universally respected and lauded by musicians of all genres. Nicki saw the images and was like, 'Sade, Oh my God. I love it.' It felt expensive, cool and timeless." There's talk of a Sade album coming next year, but even Mr. Watson, who sees her with some regularity, says he isn't sure. "It's always like that with Sade," he said. "Time will go by and she'll start working on it. For her, it's like getting out of bed on a Sunday morning. You know you don't want to do it, but at some point you just do it." "When we were having our first success with her, I said, 'This lady could have a hit album when she's 90 years old.' Most artists try too hard," Mr. Beck said. "And consciously or unconsciously, I think people have a special appreciation for someone who isn't out there waving their resume at you every five minutes. She's completely unique." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Style |
The reaction to the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences saying on Friday that it was taking steps to double the number of female and minority members by 2020 was varied. Some members lauded the move, saying it was necessary in the wake of a second straight year in which no minority actors were cited among the 20 acting nominees. Other members were critical and wondered how older members of the academy would be affected. Stephanie Allain, a producer of "Beyond the Lights" (2014) and "Hustle Flow" (2005) "I think it's great they responded so quickly. I think, just from my cursory read of it, it is a really great way to go." She said she was especially impressed with the addition of three members to the Board of Governors who would, she assumed, would be women or people of color. "We're so visible that we should play a leadership role," she said, adding, "The world is watching, basically, so what are we going to do? Are we going to do the right thing? And I think that we have." She also said, "The Academy is the endgame. But the beginning of the game is the industry responding to the curated talent that comes through programs like Film Independent, the folks that go through the Sundance Film Festival and the LA Film Festival. They just need jobs. That's how we're really going to solve the problem not by more programs or committees, but by jobs." Kieth Merrill, who won an Oscar in 1974 for his documentary "The Great American Cowboy" and was nominated for best documentary short in 1997 15 minimum wage for federal contractors will take effect Jan. 30. Jeff Bezos gives 100 million to the Obama Foundation. Mr. Merrill, 75, said he found the changes and the logic behind them outlandish. "I'm sure I'll sound racist, I'm sure I'll sound prejudiced, and I'm not. I think it's completely ridiculous to bring in ethnicity to the evaluation of creative performances and filmmaking and acting," Mr. Merrill said, noting several times that he had an adopted black daughter and four black grandchildren. "We're supposed to be evaluating talent in categories, and one of the categories is 'what is their ethnicity?' " he said. "To make it one of the categories is ridiculous." Michael Moore, Oscar winner in 2003 for best documentary for "Bowling for Columbine" "These are good changes, but what's amazing is how swiftly the Academy has reacted," Mr. Moore said in an email. "A change like this in the old days would've taken years (if at all), not days. Now let's hope that the real culprit in keeping Hollywood so white and male the industry itself will make similar changes." Michael Moore, documentary filmmaker: "These are good changes, but what's amazing is how swiftly the Academy has reacted," He added that six years ago, "doubling the number of African Americans in the doc branch would have meant doubling the number zero to ... zero. I and others began an effort to change this in 2010 and now we have around a dozen in our branch. I'm going to propose at the next meeting we double that number THIS year, not by 2020." Sam Weisman, director of films like "George of the Jungle" and "Bye Bye Love" "I judge the Nicholl fellowships and the student Academy Awards, but am I not qualified to vote?" asked Mr. Weisman, referring to academy mentorship programs in which he has been involved. How the academy deals with the intricacies of "activity" in the film business, he noted, may raise complex questions. Mr. Weisman's last feature credit was "Dickie Roberts: Former Child Star" in 2003, though he has done extensive television work since then. If, like Mr. Weisman, a director has had development deals that did not result in a film, will he be ruled out? "This is a way to get this off their plates in advance of the awards show," Mr. Weisman said, referring to the controversy over the lack of diversity among this year's nominees. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Media |
What to keep, and what to throw away? That question can come up in any creative process, but in "Assemblage," Rebecca Serrell Cyr essentially waves it aside. Why not keep everything? According to press notes about the work, which had its premiere at Jack in Clinton Hill, Brooklyn, on Thursday, Ms. Cyr made "a radical decision not to edit anything out." That "anything" encompasses a sprawling inventory of objects pompoms, tennis rackets, tinsel, carrots, a rubber snake, a bubble machine, the list goes on and, more evanescently, artistic influences. Ms. Cyr is best known as a Bessie Award winning dancer in the work of other choreographers, including Anna Sperber, RoseAnne Spradlin and Donna Uchizono. "Assemblage" is a reckoning with all the aesthetics that can inhabit the same body, a wild sifting through of kinesthetic information. But while some of that information is familiar, especially the prevalence of kitsch, Ms. Cyr, joined by the fantastic dancers Alex Escalante, Aretha Aoki and Eleanor Hullihan, conjures her own kind of magic: euphoric, funny, searching, personal. Even not editing requires editing, and one moment tumbles into the next as if there was no other way. Upon arriving, each audience member receives an LED flashlight. The only light source, these illuminate tinfoil covered walls (a decorative feature of Jack that suits "Assemblage"), a dollhouse, a dancer on a shiny mat (Mr. Escalante) and an unidentifiable heap where, we'll soon discover, Ms. Aoki is hiding. The piece begins as Ms. Cyr instructs us to shut off our lights and plop them into metal buckets. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Dance |
For the past year, the San Francisco socialite has been fending off those who would like to see her forced out of the museums she has lavished with her time and money for two decades. That, at least, is how Ms. Wilsey, 72, describes the recent turmoil. During lunch at her Napa Valley estate, a white Maltese sat on her lap, sniffing a plate of sliced peaches and cantaloupe. "You can't beat me," Ms. Wilsey said, stroking the dog, Dazzle. The top of its head was stained pink from her lipstick kisses. "You will see me prevail. That's what you will see." Never mind that the state attorney general's office is investigating whether a 2014 payment to a colleague authorized by Ms. Wilsey violated laws governing nonprofits. Never mind that the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco recently paid out 2 million to settle a whistle blower case. Never mind that, in April, two board trustees resigned in protest, one telling a reporter Ms. Wilsey ran the organization "like a personal fiefdom." On this pleasant late summer afternoon, Ms. Wilsey, who wore a wrap of oyster size pearls around her neck, was still wondering about those press reports in July holding that she had resigned her post as president of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, which oversees her favored de Young, as well as the Legion of Honor museum. The story of her resignation was simply not true, she said, and she had a recording of a June board meeting on her iPhone to prove it. Her coal eyes flashed when she was asked to identify the anonymous wag who had told a reporter her run had come to an end. "I have no idea, and I'd like to kill them," Ms. Wilsey said. No one was going to run her out, she added. She would remain, overseeing politics and fund raising. And to her detractors she would like to say: "You will look like a bunch of idiots. And I am going to laugh myself silly." San Francisco has long had its share of society scandals to titillate everyone from the bohos of Haight Ashbury to the swells on Nob Hill. People here still recall when the oil scion Gordon Getty revealed in 1999 that he had a second family in Los Angeles while married to his wife, Ann. But nothing in the recent past has captivated the city's gossips more than the travails of Diane Wilsey, known as Dede, a daughter of privilege who moved to San Francisco in 1965 and made a name for herself as one of the city's most prominent fund raisers. Her name is on the Diane B. Wilsey Center for the Opera. She raised funds to restore Grace Cathedral, one of the city's fabled landmarks, and a Catholic girls school in the Mission District. But Ms. Wilsey is best known for her patronage of the de Young in Golden Gate Park. Many people credit her with saving it after the original 1919 structure was damaged in the 1989 earthquake. She led the campaign to raise 208 million to build a new one, donating 10 million herself and sweet talking or strong arming the balance through her deep connections to Northern California's aristocrats. But friends and others who acknowledge her charitable works say she can be dismissive of less prominent peers, especially those who clash with her. Her stepson, Sean Wilsey, cast her as a ruthless gold digger in his acclaimed 2005 memoir, "Oh, the Glory of It All." "She can laugh and joke with anyone, even a truck driver," said Harry Parker, the Fine Arts Museums' director from 1987 to 2005. "Her failing is that she has not always listened to what people told her if they didn't have social standing." In the end, Ms. Wilsey believes, her critics will be silenced. With the millions of dollars she has given to San Francisco institutions, she believes she should be praised, not pilloried. "I personally feel they should be erecting a statue to me," she said. "I know you are in town, and I know why you are calling," said the husky voice on the other end of the telephone. "But I don't talk about my friends." Speaking was Denise Hale, one of the city's grande dames, whose late husband earned a fortune running department stores. San Francisco society is dominated by wealthy families who settled there generations earlier. They include the Bechtels (who made their money in construction), the Hellmans (finance), the Gettys (oil), the Fishers (retail) and the Wilseys (real estate). The people who are part of this small, exclusive world close ranks when a scandal breaks. "I think people are loath to criticize society people because of the money," said Lois Lehrman, who owned the society magazine Nob Hill Gazette for three decades. A number of philanthropists refused to be interviewed for this article, including Vanessa Getty, a socialite and museum trustee with Ms. Wilsey, and the heiress Charlotte Mailliard Shultz, San Francisco's chief of protocol. And politics is something Ms. Wilsey understands all too well. She was born in Washington, D.C., in 1944, the second of three children of Wiley T. Buchanan Jr., the chief of protocol under President Dwight D. Eisenhower. Her father also served as ambassador to Luxembourg and Austria. Ms. Wilsey's mother, Ruth, 98, is an heir to the Dow Chemical fortune. As a girl, Ms. Wilsey accompanied her parents to Europe, where they dined with royal families and heads of state. She summered at the family's estate, once owned by the Vanderbilts, in Newport, R.I. "I sort of always had social standing because my parents did," she said. At her Napa Valley estate, Dazzle frolicked on the grass with another Maltese, Twinkle. A fountain gurgled. The outdoor table was set with pink monogrammed linens framed by nosegays of fragrant pink roses. To Ms. Wilsey's left was a brass bell. She rang it when she wanted the cook's attention. Picking at a skewer of grilled chicken, she said she was overweight as a child and vowed never to be fat again. "I'm a middle child," she said. "I was also the one nobody listened to." That caused tension, she said, with her older sister, Bonnie, whom she looked up to. "My father would say: 'This is my pretty daughter, Bonnie. And this is my smart daughter, Dede.' Do you think I wanted to be 'smart'? I just wanted to be dumb and pretty. I just wanted once to have him say, 'This is my dumb, pretty daughter, Dede.'" Beauty, though, is relative. Ms. Wilsey was on the cover of Town Country in June 1962, her svelte figure wrapped in yards of fabric and white lace. She was a debutante, and her father wrote in the magazine about her coming out. At 1 a.m., the guests gathered at "Dede's Peppermint Lounge," a custom made dance club designed by Valerian Rybar, a prominent interior decorator at the time. The Bo Diddley Trio played that night; guests did the step that was all the rage at the time, the twist. Three years later, she married John Traina Jr., a shipping executive from San Francisco, "despite her parents' objections," according to press reports at the time. Across 15 years of marriage, they had two sons, Trevor and Todd. After the divorce was final, she married Al Wilsey, a real estate magnate and former husband of a good friend, Pat Montandon, then a society columnist in San Francisco. By all accounts, Ms. Wilsey found a forgiving patriarch in her second husband. He would whisk her off by helicopter to Mendocino, Calif., for picnics. He didn't mind her razor sharp tongue. "Never feel guilty for anything you ever did to me," she said he told her once, "because you make these snarky comments once in awhile." And every Christmas, they kicked off the social season with a party at their Pacific Heights mansion for about 300 of San Francisco's elite. Mr. Brown, the former mayor, was a regular. "It was mandatory," he said. "If you ever get an invitation, you have to go. If you don't get invited, that is even worse." Guests in tuxedos and Oscar de la Renta gowns gathered in a receiving line to pay their respects to the Wilseys. The guest list for the event functioned as an annual measure of social status. "She was very definitive about who was on the list," Mr. Parker said. "It was her statement about who really mattered." Ms. Wilsey has continued to hold the party more than a decade after Mr. Wilsey's death. But such soirees are more than an opportunity to mingle with society friends; they also provide her with a setting where she can shake down her connected friends for money to benefit the institutions she treasures. "Mom and I were dancing at a formal event," said her son Trevor, a technology entrepreneur, "and she said, 'Dance me over to that man over there.' She reached over to the person and said to me, 'He is going to give me 1 million for our museum.' The man said, 'I am?'" A month later, she got a 1 million check from the man in question. Ms. Wilsey's living room tables in Rutherford are cluttered with photos of her sons, their families, her parents and her two former husbands. When asked who her good friends were, she named Todd and Trevor. "My husbands," she added. "They were my best friends." Mr. Traina's ashes are stored in a wooden box near the hearth. "My sons said he liked people and belonged in the living room," she said. Mr. Wilsey's ashes are in a stone urn in a private garden visible through a picture window. She was elected board president in 1998 and named chief executive of the Fine Arts Museums in 2011. The chief executive title fell to her after John Buchanan, the former museum director who brought a populist sensibility to the de Young, told her he had cancer and was going to die. During his tenure, he ran the museum while she raised the funds to attract the traveling blockbuster exhibits celebrating King Tut and Yves Saint Laurent. But while Ms. Wilsey is applauded for her ability to bring in coin, she is less exalted for her managerial skill absent a strong partner like Mr. Parker, Mr. Buchanan or the newly appointed director, Max Hollein, an art historian and museum administrator from Vienna who was hired in March. "A lowly staff member does not command her attention," Mr. Parker said. "There is a master servant relationship that gets in the way of things." Ms. Wilsey denied the characterization. Still, several curators and others have bristled under her leadership. Robert Flynn Johnson, the museum's curator emeritus, said he and other curators were asked to wear suits and ties to a gala dinner for the opening of the new de Young in 2005. When he arrived, though, he said, he found that he wasn't invited for the dinner portion of the evening, only for cocktails. He was irked, too, when Ms. Wilsey paid 1,000 apiece to have the names of her dogs posted on a donor wall meant for patrons unable to lay out huge sums. "Some people had to save 100 a month," Mr. Johnson said. "It was a sacrifice. My parents' names are on that wall. She has a whole court named after her." Ms. Wilsey's woes began in earnest in 2014, when she approved that a check be cut from the museum's coffer to pay a retired city lighting engineer, Bill Huggins, who had worked at the museum and was ailing. Ms. Wilsey was friendly with Therese Chen, Mr. Huggins's wife and a de Young employee. Ms. Wilsey said she did not initiate the payment, nor did she need board approval for it. She said she could not discuss the amount of the check, but press reports put it at roughly 450,000. It was co signed by Michelle Gutierrez, the museum's chief financial officer at the time. In 2015, though, Ms. Gutierrez filed a complaint with the city and the state attorney general's office, saying the payment was improper. After doing so, she was dismissed. Ms. Gutierrez, Ms. Wilsey and others involved are not allowed to discuss the situation as part of a settlement agreement. But according to press reports, when trustees involved in the Fine Arts Museums' organization learned about the payment last year, they expressed concern that it was made without the board's knowledge or approval. Bernard Osher, a friend of Ms. Wilsey's who attends her annual Christmas party, resigned from the board. (He did not return a call seeking comment.) According to Mr. Parker, Mr. Osher "thought the action was outrageous and couldn't support it." More recently, Louise Renne, San Francisco's former city attorney, was one of two other trustees to resign, saying she could not "fulfill her fiduciary duty," given the board's management. "The old guard can't stay around forever, and it shouldn't," Ms. Renne said. In July, the museum settled with Ms. Gutierrez for 2 million to avoid a potential wrongful termination lawsuit. The money given to Mr. Huggins was repaid to the museum by unnamed donors. (Ms. Wilsey declined to say if she was one of them.) Ms. Wilsey said she expects her detractors to be surprised when they find out that she is not leaving. But in a new arrangement, she said, she will share more management responsibility with six other trustees, a move she has been advocating for months. While accepting the change, Ms. Wilsey said: "There is no way if I were a man I would be the victim. A man who gives as much money as I do?" As lunch wound down, she recalled a time when her granddaughter, Daisy, hit her head on a glass table at the age of 2. "I heard this horrible crash," Ms. Wilsey said, "and she came out from under the table with this big bang on the head. And I said to her: 'Daisy, this is not going to be the last time you hit your head on a glass ceiling. But you did the right thing. Never cry. Never show that it hurts. That's the most important thing you can learn from hitting your head today.'" | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Fashion & Style |
Every Friday, pop critics for The New York Times weigh in on the week's most notable new songs and videos. Just want the music? Listen to the Playlist on Spotify here (or find our profile: nytimes). Like what you hear? Let us know at theplaylist nytimes.com and sign up for our Louder newsletter, a once a week blast of our pop music coverage. The sweet spot at the intersection of Selena Gomez and the K pop stars Blackpink involves a kind of singing that's a little playful, a little taunting, a little distant. "Ice Cream" is all of those things, a relentlessly bouncy and chipper song about being the object of other peoples' hunger. JON CARAMANICA Some al fresco rapping from Cam'ron still a mercilessly precise rapper at 44 filmed in a Harlem parking lot, prompted by a friend's nudging and posted on Instagram. The rhymes are spry and wry: "Y'all know Harlem belong to me/I don't want it, it's too gentrified/I'm from the era of genocide, bodies are unidentified, alibis are memorized." CARAMANICA Ivan Neville's commanding New Orleans funk band, Dumpstaphunk, marks the 15th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina with "Where Do We Go From Here," only to have Hurricane Laura hit Louisiana this week; lately, Neville has also been livestreaming from his home while recovering from Covid 19. The new song's lyrics aren't particularly pointed: "Let's take it slow, no fear," it counsels, adding, "It all comes down to love." But the full band groove with horns, backup singers, Neville's organ and Dumpstaphunk's deep in the pocket rhythm section, including two basses infuses a slinky funk backbeat with gospel determination and the will to persevere for a steamy eight minute jam. JON PARELES The victorious assurance of "Woman" comes through in its unhurried backbeat, in the shimmery tones that usher in the chorus and in the unpatterned, utterly cooperative way Lianne La Havas and the higher voiced Nao share and trade bits of both verses and choruses. "Take my mirror out the bag and fill it with confidence," Nao sings; "A woman's worth is everything without you baby," Le Havas adds. There's no need to be combative; they've won. PARELES The magnificently prolific songwriter, singer and producer Georgia Anne Muldrow calls herself Jyoti when she turns toward jazz, as she does on her new album, "Mama, You Can Bet!" Although the music sounds like it was made by jazz groups interacting live, Muldrow multitracked all the instruments and vocals herself as a one woman studio band. "Ancestral Duckets" is a sly waltz that roams purposefully through chromatic chord changes and sprouts a multitude of Muldrow's vocals: harmonizing, scatting, riffing, taking over the melody and then playfully sailing above it. PARELES On her album released on Friday, "Inner Song," the Welsh songwriter Kelly Lee Owens uses the chilly, artificial electronic vocabulary of techno for songs about love: strained, lost, possibly found anew. In "On," she stacks up choirlike vocals as she moves on from a romance: "We can't go forward," she decides, as a double time club beat ticks quietly behind her. But three minutes into the song, the throbbing bass line suddenly cranks up, staggered against programmed hi hats, a blooping synthesizer line and cascading, wordless vocals; she can dance her way free. PARELES The New Orleanian trumpeter Christian Scott aTunde Adjuah recently became chief of the Xodokan Nation, a group from the city's Black masking tradition. (More widely known as Mardi Gras Indians, Black community leaders in the tradition don ornate regalia for holiday marches, honoring the Indigenous people who often sheltered African Americans escaping bondage in the 18th and 19th centuries.) Masking celebrations involve an explosion of color, music and movement. So the blazing, kaleidoscopic effect of the music on "Axiom" the trumpeter's new live album with his septet, recorded at the Blue Note in New York just before the coronavirus lockdown makes a special kind of sense. On the first track, "X. Adjuah (I Own the Night)," Corey Fonville's drumming blurs with Weedie Braimah's djembe strokes, conjuring a hail of blows from a boxer, or perhaps simply the sound of energy being unloosed. Though slower and more measured, the glowing notes that Adjuah plays above them are no less packed with muscle and force. GIOVANNI RUSSONELLO Even better than the improved rapping from teen breakout Lil Tecca richer in melody and density than before is the luscious beat by Z3N and Sean Turk, with echoes of 1990s New York rap sprinkled atop its contemporary smeared production. CARAMANICA There's a sense of historical unity in the saxophone playing of J.D. Allen: The elegance of Coleman Hawkins and the spiraling power of John Coltrane come together. The ludic energy of, say, Rahsaan Roland Kirk and the spry focus of Michael Brecker, too. On "Toys/Die Dreaming," Allen's latest album, his stil newish trio shows how much it has grown together since last year's "Barracoon." On the closing track, the Allen original "Elegua (The Trickster)," the young bassist Ian Kenselaar and the drummer Nic Cacioppo make a briskly swinging bed for Allen's forceful playing, as wily and powerful as the tune's namesake. RUSSONELLO | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Music |
"Judas Returning the Thirty Pieces of Silver" (1629), by Rembrandt, is the centerpiece of an exhibition called "Jews, Money, Myth" at the Jewish Museum in London. LONDON Wrapped in a turban and a mink lined robe, the old man sits in his opulent home, smiling wryly. The pouch in his hand is full to bursting. Gold coins are scattered across his desk. The elderly figure is pictured at the center of a board game called the New and Fashionable Game of the Jew, which was popular in early 19th century England. An 1807 original is on view at an exhibition running through July 7 at the Jewish Museum in London called "Jews, Money, Myth." The show explores the ways in which Jews have been associated with money over the past 2,000 years. Displays include objects that belonged to British Jews buried medieval coins, tally sticks used as proof of loans, soup kitchen tokens and representations of Jews in painting; in literature, such as Shakespeare's "The Merchant of Venice" and Charles Dickens's "Oliver Twist"; in caricatures; and in fascist propaganda. "I've never done anything in my life where people have been so scared," she said in an interview at the museum. "Even the title scares people." She and her team noticed "a real shift" in anti Jewish sentiment over the last two or three years, Ms. Morris said. Negative comments were now constant, rather than sporadic and linked to news coverage of Israel, she noted. "My contention is, it's there, it's getting bigger," she said. "Not drawing attention to it won't make it go away." The exhibition draws primarily on the museum's own collection of historical objects from Britain, though there are also many from elsewhere in Europe. It opens with an entry from the 1933 Oxford English Dictionary that lists one of the definitions of the word "jew" as a verb meaning "to cheat." The myth of Jews and money can be traced back to the biblical figure of Judas, who betrayed Christ in exchange for some silver coins. In the show's star attraction, Rembrandt's "Judas Returning the Thirty Pieces of Silver," on loan from a private collection, Judas is pictured on his knees, begging a group of priests for forgiveness. By the 19th century, Jews were regularly portrayed as beggars or poverty stricken peddlers the exhibition describes how most Jews in England at that time were economic migrants with limited financial means who were forced to scrape together a living any way they could. Conversely, Jews were also portrayed as greedy bankers. One of the financiers who came in for much negative representation was Nathan Mayer Rothschild, who arrived from Germany in 1798, opened his namesake bank soon after, and went on to finance British military campaigns. The exhibition includes an 1837 portrait of Rothschild as well as an 1829 caricature depicting him as an overweight figure with a sack of money slung over his shoulder, titled, "The Man Wot Knows How to Drive a Bargain." As well as historical items, "Jews, Money, Myth" features two works of contemporary art specially commissioned for the exhibition, including one by a Turner Prize winner, Jeremy Deller. Mr. Deller's contribution is a film: a compilation of excerpts from homemade propaganda videos from the United States and Europe, cartoons, televangelist programs, presidential speeches and political campaign ads, all of which make oblique or overt references to Jews and money. "If you go down to Parliament Square, you don't have to try too hard or wait around too long before you see or maybe hear someone talking about Jews," Mr. Deller said in an interview. Anti Semitism "is here: It's very much on the streets." Pictured in his film and elsewhere in the exhibition is a 2012 mural in the East End of London that shows six elderly financiers seated around a Monopoly board that rests on the backs of what appear to be naked slaves. When the mural's creator complained of its removal by local authorities in 2012, he was defended on Facebook by the Labour leader Mr. Corbyn, stoking the criticism of his party's attitudes toward Jews. Mr. Corbyn later apologized and said he had not examined the image closely, describing the mural as "deeply disturbing and anti Semitic." David Feldman, a professor of history at Birkbeck, University of London who is director of the Pears Institute for the Study of Anti Semitism (which was consulted for the exhibition), said the left sometimes did not initially identify certain patterns of behavior as racist or anti Semitic. Jews are "predominantly a middle class population in Britain, so they don't fit the idea of what a victim of racism ought to look like," Professor Feldman said. "There is an expectation that the victims of racism are people of color, that they're poor, and that in the case of Europe, either they or their forebears were colonial subjects." Professor Feldman added that anti Jewish sentiment was creeping more into the mainstream. "We have a situation in which people with anti Semitic views are becoming bolder and more visible," he said. "It is this which creates concern." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Art & Design |
"Small Country," by Gael Faye, is about a boy, living in Burundi during the war between the Hutus and Tutsis, who loses his innocence in spite of desperately wanting to cling onto it. PARIS "It felt like an injustice to me," said the rapper and novelist Gael Faye, about having to leave civil war torn Burundi in 1995 to come live in France. Mr. Faye, who was 13 at the time, had to contend with the shock of a new culture and moving with his younger sister into the cramped space of his mother's apartment in Versailles. Months went by without unpacking his suitcases. "When I went to school I used to take what I needed and put it back afterward," the 36 year old author said in a recent interview in Paris. "I'd convinced myself that any day my father would ring up and tell us that the war had ended and we could come back. But the war ended up lasting until 2005 by which time I was an adult." In his first novel, "Small Country" a huge hit in France when it was published in 2016 and where it sold 700,000 copies Mr. Faye wrote with a rare and subtle yearning about his youthful escapades in and around Bujumbura, the capital of Burundi. It has now been translated from French into English by Sarah Ardizzone and is being released by Hogarth on June 5. "Small Country," which in its original language shares the title of one of Mr. Faye's most popular songs, "Petit Pays," is told from the perspective of Gabriel, a 10 year old boy with a French father and a Rwandan mother (the same mixed race parentage as Mr. Faye). He is part of a gang of young boys sneaking beers in cabaret bars and stealing mangoes from local gardens to sell on the black market. This mischievous idyll comes crashing down when Burundi's first democratically elected president, Melchior Ndadaye, is assassinated in 1993 after winning a landmark election. Hutus and Tutsis who had previously lived peaceably start killing each other in a frenzy of recriminations for ancient slights. The violence spills over to startling effect in neighboring Rwanda, where members of Gabriel's Tutsi family are caught up in a blood bath. Mr. Faye's apartment in Paris, where we met earlier this month, is decorated with several framed photographs. They mark the 24th anniversary commemoration of the Rwandan genocide, which began in April 1994 and lasted 100 days. Some 800,000 people, mostly Tutsi, were killed. There is a picture of Mr. Faye's French Rwandan wife's Tutsi grandmother, who was killed after taking refuge in a church, and another of a gacaca community court roughly meaning "justice among the grass" where a perpetrator of the genocide is being tried. 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. Two years ago Mr. Faye left Paris with his wife and two young daughters to live in Kigali, the capital of Rwanda. He is now temporarily back in Paris with his family to promote foreign versions of his novel (it has been translated into 35 languages) and prepare for a tour of his music in France. Not for one second though did Mr. Faye give the impression of being harried. The author's connection with Rwanda dates back to his mother, who was born there in 1959 but fled to Burundi with her family four years later after an anti Tutsi pogrom broke out. In "Small Country" Gabriel reflects on a part of the world where earthquakes are a regular feature of living on the axis of the East African Rift. "The people of this region mirrored the land," Mr. Faye writes. "Beneath the calm appearance, behind the facade of smiles and optimistic speeches, dark underground forces were continuously at work, fomenting violence and destruction that returned for successive periods, like bad winds." Didn't this knowledge put Mr. Faye off moving with his family to Kigali? "No, Rwanda today is at peace and has been stable for a long time," he replied. "When I'm over there I can feel this energy, which I instantly want to be a part of. We're not the only ones who have decided to move over there. There are a lot of young people who have done the same." Mr. Faye was already living in Kigali when "Small Country" was published in France. Its success, which included winning several French literary awards, took him by surprise. "To be honest I was expecting it to sell about 500 copies and then I would quietly go back to my music," he said. The road to publication had been curious to say the least. Mr. Faye had not set out to write a novel but his songwriting talent came to the attention of Catherine Nabokov, an independent French editor. About five years ago Ms. Nabokov's teenage son, a keen fan of French rap, played her some of Mr. Faye's music. "It was quite a jolt," Ms. Nabokov said in a telephone interview. "I thought the lyrics were very well written and also some of his songs were built like narratives, in particular "L'ennui des apres midis sans fin" (The boredom of afternoons without end)." Ms. Nabokov eventually managed to get hold of Mr. Faye's email address and wrote to see if he'd be interested in meeting her. "We saw each other regularly over several months and he told me a lot about his life," Ms. Nabokov said. "Then one day he sent me ten pages which were the beginning of a novel and I thought 'wow!' He told me that he'd decided to write a novel and not a memoir because he felt it gave him more freedom." Those first 10 pages begin with a child's fascinating disquisition on the state of Burundian noses. First Gabriel asks his father whether the Hutus and Tutsis are at war on account of them not sharing the same land. Then he asks whether it's because they don't speak the same language or don't have the same God. "No" his father replies to all of these queries. "So why are they at War?" Gabriel insists. "Because they don't have the same nose," his father replies. In many ways "Small Country" is about a boy who loses his innocence in spite of desperately wanting to cling onto it. One of the novel's most chilling side notes is the way that classical music is played on Burundian radio whenever a coup is underway. In 1966, it had been Schubert's Piano Sonata No. 21; in 1976, Beethoven's Seventh Symphony; in 1987 Chopin's Bolero in C Major; and on Oct. 21, 1993, it was Wagner's "The Twilight of the Gods." Later Mr. Faye learned that it's not just something that happens in Burundi. "A Haitian friend told me that the same thing happens in Haiti," he said. More recently, Mr. Faye met a Rwandan woman in Nice, at a commemoration for the genocide. "She told me about when she arrived in France for the first time," he said. "When she switched on the radio and it was playing classical music she immediately thought that there had been a coup d'etat and Chirac had been assassinated." After musing on the absurdity of this situation, Mr. Faye tells me that he has begun working on a new novel. "It takes place far from Rwanda and Burundi," he said. "I'll go back to that but I've decided my next book is going to be about a rock star. I wanted to do something completely different." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Books |
The state of our union is divided. Half the country believes, as the founders did, that virtue and character matter profoundly in the office of the president and that Donald Trump's pressuring a foreign government to dig up dirt on his political opponent was an egregious abuse of power. The other half shrugs their shoulders and wants to move on. In this vein, the president's State of the Union address did nothing to bridge the divide. It resembled a political rally, with Mr. Trump lying about the economic recovery he was handed by President Obama and lying about wanting to protect the health care of Americans with pre existing conditions when his administration is in court trying to take those protections away by dismantling Obamacare. The president's supporters cheered him on. But that wasn't enough. Mr. Trump went so far as to award the Presidential Medal of Freedom to a divisive figure Rush Limbaugh who has spent his career encouraging hate of the "other." The State of the Union address is an improper venue for such a controversial act. But this is where we are. Sadly, the state of our union cannot be strong and hopelessly divided at the same time. Surely we can do better. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Opinion |
As regulators seek ways to curb the company's power, there is more focus on the vast index hundreds of billions of web pages behind its search engine. Google Dominates Thanks to an Unrivaled View of the Web OAKLAND, Calif. In 2000, just two years after it was founded, Google reached a milestone that would lay the foundation for its dominance over the next 20 years: It became the world's largest search engine, with an index of more than one billion web pages. The rest of the internet never caught up, and Google's index just kept on getting bigger. Today, it's somewhere between 500 billion and 600 billion web pages, according to estimates. Now, as regulators around the world examine ways to curb Google's power, including a search monopoly case expected from state attorneys general as early as this week and the antitrust lawsuit the Justice Department filed in October, they are wrestling with a company whose sheer size has allowed it to squash competitors. And those competitors are pointing investigators toward that enormous index, the gravitational center of the company. "If people are on a search engine with a smaller index, they're not always going to get the results they want. And then they go to Google and stay at Google," said Matt Wells, who started Gigablast, a search engine with an index of around five billion web pages, about 20 years ago. "A little guy like me can't compete." Understanding how Google's search works is a key to figuring out why so many companies find it nearly impossible to compete and, in fact, go out of their way to cater to its needs. Every search request provides Google with more data to make its search algorithm smarter. Google has performed so many more searches than any other search engine that it has established a huge advantage over rivals in understanding what consumers are looking for. That lead only continues to widen, since Google has a market share of about 90 percent. Google directs billions of users to locations across the internet, and websites, hungry for that traffic, create a different set of rules for the company. Websites often provide greater and more frequent access to Google's so called web crawlers computers that automatically scour the internet and scan web pages allowing the company to offer a more extensive and up to date index of what is available on the internet. When he was working at the music site Bandcamp, Zack Maril, a software engineer, became concerned about how Google's dominance had made it so essential to websites. In 2018, when Google said its crawler, Googlebot, was having trouble with one of Bandcamp's pages, Mr. Maril made fixing the problem a priority because Google was critical to the site's traffic. When other crawlers encountered problems, Bandcamp would usually block them. Mr. Maril continued to research the different ways that websites opened doors for Google and closed them for others. Last year, he sent a 20 page report, "Understanding Google," to a House antitrust subcommittee and then met with investigators to explain why other companies could not recreate Google's index. "It's largely an unchecked source of power for its monopoly," said Mr. Maril, 29, who works at another technology company that does not compete directly with Google. He asked that The New York Times not identify his employer since he was not speaking for it. A report this year by the House subcommittee cited Mr. Maril's research on Google's efforts to create a real time map of the internet and how this had "locked in its dominance." While the Justice Department is looking to unwind Google's business deals that put its search engine front and center on billions of smartphones and computers, Mr. Maril is urging the government to intervene and regulate Google's index. A Google spokeswoman declined to comment. Websites and search engines are symbiotic. Websites rely on search engines for traffic, while search engines need access to crawl the sites to provide relevant results for users. But each crawler puts a strain on a website's resources in server and bandwidth costs, and some aggressive crawlers resemble security risks that can take down a site. Since having their pages crawled costs money, websites have an incentive to let it be done only by search engines that direct enough traffic to them. In the current world of search, that leaves Google and in some cases Microsoft's Bing. Google and Microsoft are the only search engines that spend hundreds of millions of dollars annually to maintain a real time map of the English language internet. That's in addition to the billions they've spent over the years to build out their indexes, according to a report this summer from Britain's Competition and Markets Authority. Google holds a significant leg up on Microsoft in more than market share. British competition authorities said Google's index included about 500 billion to 600 billion web pages, compared with 100 billion to 200 billion for Microsoft. Other large tech companies deploy crawlers for other purposes. Facebook has a crawler for links that appear on its site or services. Amazon says its crawler helps improve its voice based assistant, Alexa. Apple has its own crawler, Applebot, which has fueled speculation that it might be looking to build its own search engine. But indexing has always been a challenge for companies without deep pockets. The privacy minded search engine DuckDuckGo decided to stop crawling the entire web more than a decade ago and now syndicates results from Microsoft. It still crawls sites like Wikipedia to provide results for answer boxes that appear in its results, but maintaining its own index does not usually make financial sense for the company. "It costs more money than we can afford," said Gabriel Weinberg, chief executive of DuckDuckGo. In a written statement for the House antitrust subcommittee last year, the company said that "an aspiring search engine start up today (and in the foreseeable future) cannot avoid the need" to turn to Microsoft or Google for its search results. When FindX started to develop an alternative to Google in 2015, the Danish company set out to create its own index and offered a build your own algorithm to provide individualized results. FindX quickly ran into problems. Large website operators, such as Yelp and LinkedIn, did not allow the fledgling search engine to crawl their sites. Because of a bug in its code, FindX's computers that crawled the internet were flagged as a security risk and blocked by a group of the internet's largest infrastructure providers. What pages they did collect were frequently spam or malicious web pages. "If you have to do the indexing, that's the hardest thing to do," said Brian Schildt Laursen, one of the founders of FindX, which shut down in 2018. Mr. Schildt Laursen launched a new search engine last year, Givero, which offered users the option to donate a portion of the company's revenue to charitable causes. When he started Givero, he syndicated search results from Microsoft. Most large websites are judicious about who can crawl their pages. In general, Google and Microsoft get more access because they have more users, while smaller search engines have to ask for permission. "You need the traffic to convince the websites to allow you to copy and crawl, but you also need the content to grow your index and pull up your traffic," said Marc Al Hames, a co chief executive of Cliqz, a German search engine that closed this year after seven years of operation. "It's a chicken and egg problem." In Europe, a group called the Open Search Foundation has proposed a plan to create a common internet index that can underpin many European search engines. It's essential to have a diversity of options for search results, said Stefan Voigt, the group's chairman and founder, because it is not good for only a handful of companies to determine what links people are shown and not shown. "We just can't leave this to one or two companies," Mr. Voigt said. When Mr. Maril started researching how sites treated Google's crawler, he downloaded 17 million so called robots.txt files essentially rules of the road posted by nearly every website laying out where crawlers can go and found many examples where Google had greater access than competitors. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Technology |
Nearly 18 years have passed since the artist and activist Tania Bruguera first mounted or attempted "Untitled (Havana, 2000)" at the 7th Havana Biennial. Critical of the post revolutionary politics of Cuba, it was shut down by censors within hours. Much has changed in the interim. Fidel Castro, the revolutionary turned authoritarian leader whose image is at the center of her installation, which includes black and white video images, died in 2016. And art institutions have fully embraced the kind of performance and participatory art Ms. Bruguera makes, which uses live human bodies as a medium. "Visceral," "sensorial" and "immersive" are words Ms. Bruguera or MoMA have used to describe "Untitled (Havana, 2000)," which is recreated here. These have become keywords to describe not just art works, but arguments for how art itself should be experienced. Ms. Bruguera also claims that she is "not representing the political but provoking the political" and that we as viewers need to "stop looking and start thinking." To experience the work you'll probably start by standing. The wait for viewing is about 45 minutes. Four people at a time are allowed into the dark space. You approach an arch and a faux cement atrium with rust stains, simulating the old fort in Cuba where "Untitled" was originally mounted. You walk on sugar cane, which crunches underfoot. As your eyes adjust, you see four naked men along the wall, bowing and brushing themselves off, as though brushing off history. A museum guard stands in the corner, like a sentry. "Untitled (Havana, 2000)" has a rich and complicated history. Ms. Bruguera, a native of Cuba, made several proposals leading up to the 2000 Biennial all of which were rejected by official censors. Finally, she proposed a performance inside the tunnels of the Cabana Fortress, an 18th century structure in Havana that had been used to house and torture prisoners from the colonial period to the early years after the Cuban revolution. Her original title, "Engineers of the Soul," was cribbed from the First Congress of the Union of Soviet Writers in Moscow in 1934, where Stalin declared that "the production of souls is more important than the production of tanks" and that artists were the "engineers of the soul." This later became a rallying cry for state sponsored Socialist Realism. Ms. Bruguera says in the MoMA exhibition materials that the censors prohibited this title. She chose the name "Untitled" in homage to Felix Gonzalez Torres, an exiled Cuban artist known for his post minimalist works and who died from AIDS related causes in 1996. At the Biennial in 2000, word of Ms. Bruguera's work spread quickly. Visitors lined up to experience it before it was closed. All that remained was the tunnel with the sugar cane, a kind of installation memorial to its brief life. The current iteration recreates that work but is, by necessity, an ersatz version. The tunnel at MoMA is a plaster recreation of the Cabana Fortress. I was informed that a scent firm was consulted to create (or enhance) the artificial smells of sugar cane and damp basement. "Untitled (Havana, 2000)" borrows aesthetic motifs from earlier art, like the nude figures in the infernos of medieval and Renaissance painting and the heightened, theatrical video and picture installations of Bill Viola and Alfredo Jaar. Ms. Bruguera's tableau vivant engages historical themes and makes you feel uneasy, vulnerable and empathetic for the victims of Castro and other regimes. However, the claims around this kind of work "being" rather than representing politics, and producing active rather than merely passive viewers are rather grand. Is performance and participatory work truly more affecting and galvanizing than, say, Francisco Goya's "The Disasters of War" etchings (1810 1820) or his "May 3, 1808" (1814), which recounted the wreckage inflicted by Napoleon's armies. Or Picasso's iconic "Guernica" (1937), painted during the Spanish Civil War? In recent years the art world has enlisted philosophers like Jacques Ranciere and Jean Luc Nancy to help us think through some of these issues, considering not just what art is in an image saturated age, but what we mean exactly by active and passive viewing, human subjects, community and political engagement. For Ms. Bruguera's part, "the political" clearly spills out of the gallery. Along with the installation, she held workshops in what she calls "Art Util" utility art for activism. The museum also took out a full page advertisement in The New York Times with the text, "Dignity Has No Nationality," linking to her social practice work in partnership with the City of New York and the Queens Museum, in creating immigrant projects that have been both lauded and criticized for not always connecting with established (non art) immigrant rights organizations. Embraced by historians and critics of contemporary art, Ms. Bruguera is often used as an example of an artist like Thomas Hirschhorn whose work goes beyond representation and individual contemplation and activates viewers. While I was standing inside "Untitled (Havana, 2000)," a fellow visitor leaned over and whispered in my ear, "What do we do now?" Just walk to the end of the tunnel, I suggested. But the question could be extended much further: Invited into these conversations about politics, immigration and art, and viscerally provoked, what do we do now? | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Art & Design |
The Common Core, a set of standards for kindergarten through high school that has been ardently supported by the Obama administration and many business leaders and state legislatures, is facing growing opposition from both the right and the left even before it has been properly introduced into classrooms. Tea Party conservatives, who reject the standards as an unwelcome edict from above, have called for them to be severely rolled back. Indiana has already put a brake on them. The Michigan House of Representatives is holding hearings on whether to suspend them. And citing the cost of new tests requiring more writing and a significant online component, Georgia and Oklahoma have withdrawn from a consortium developing exams based on the standards. At the same time, a group of parents and teachers argues that the standards and particularly the tests aligned with them are simply too difficult. Those concerns were underscored last week when New York State, an early adopter of the new standards, released results from reading and math exams showing that less than a third of students passed. "I am worried that the Common Core is in jeopardy because of this," said Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers. "The shock value that has happened has been so traumatic in New York that you have a lot of people all throughout the state saying, 'Why are you experimenting on my kids?' " Supporters worry that opposition could start to snowball as states face new exams in 2014 15. "The danger here is that you have two kinds of problems going on," said Kati Haycock, president of the Education Trust, a nonprofit group that works to close achievement gaps. "One is a Tea Party problem, which doesn't have deep roots but does have lots of political muscle behind it, and then you've got a bit of anti test rebellion coming from the left. The question is what's going to happen if they both get together. That's the more terrifying prospect." The standards, which were written by a panel of experts convened by governors and state superintendents, focus on critical thinking and analysis rather than memorization and formulas. The idea is to help ensure that students generally learn the same things in public schools across the country. One goal is to reduce high remediation rates at colleges and universities and help students compete for jobs that demand higher levels of skills than in previous generations. According to some estimates, about 40 percent of students entering college must take remedial courses before they can enroll in credit bearing classes. Nancy L. Zimpher, chancellor of the State University of New York, said the system spends about 70 million a year conducting catch up courses for students. The Obama administration promoted the Common Core by giving priority to states that adopted "college and career ready" standards when it awarded grants under its Race to the Top program. By last summer, 45 states and the District of Columbia had adopted the standards. But even many who support them are wary about how they have been adopted. David Cohen, an English teacher at Palo Alto High School in California who described the standards as "reasonable," said that among colleagues, "the resistance and the anger and frustration are still coming largely, but not entirely, from the process." Secretary of Education Arne Duncan has repeatedly emphasized that states, districts and teachers have broad flexibility to devise their own curriculums and lesson plans based on the standards. Speaking about the Common Core to the American Society of News Editors in June, Mr. Duncan said: "The federal government didn't write them, didn't approve them, and doesn't mandate them. And we never will. Anyone who says otherwise is either misinformed or willfully misleading." Last year Kentucky became the first state to give new math and reading tests based on the Common Core, and as in New York, the levels of students deemed proficient fell sharply compared with a year earlier. Such results have spooked teachers watching from afar, particularly as more states are moving to evaluate teachers in part on student test scores. "Looking at the types of questions on these tests, I'm scared for my kids," said Lisa Mims, a fifth grade teacher at Pleasantville Elementary School in New Castle, Del. "It just seems to me that it's what they're asking us to do in such a little bit of time, and then saying we're going to test this." In an interview, Mr. Duncan acknowledged that the transition would be difficult. "It's easier to keep saying everything's looking great," he said. "Potemkin village, whitewash the walls. That's the easy way to do it, but I'm not quite sure that changes kids' lives or helps our country remain competitive economically." According to a report from the Center on Education Policy at George Washington University, teachers in 30 states are already teaching some lessons based on the standards. But only 10 states reported that more than three quarters of teachers had received any Common Core training in the most recent school year. Supporters of the new standards say critics are too impatient. "It's going to take time, and it's going to take a lot of work," said David Driscoll, former commissioner of education in Massachusetts, which raised its own standards in the late 1990s and faced a falloff in state test scores before seeing them steadily climb. Today, Massachusetts leads the country in scores on exams administered by the federal Department of Education and ranks close to some countries frequently cited as world leaders in academic performance. Several states have conducted teacher training as well as public outreach. In Tennessee, state education officials offered sessions to about 30,000 teachers this summer, and in Delaware, Mark Murphy, the secretary of education, said that school districts would be hosting "back to school" nights where legislators can "take part in a Common Core lesson to see and experience the type of learning that the students will be getting." Some critics say the new standards are simply unrealistic. "We're using a very inappropriate standard that's way too high," said Diane Ravitch, an education historian who served in President George W. Bush's Education Department but has since become an outspoken critic of many education initiatives. "I think there are a lot of kids who are being told that if they don't go to college that it will ruin their life," she said. "But maybe they don't need to go to college." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Education |
Matthew DeFazio, center, a medical student at Boston University, asks a fictional patient, portrayed by Ric Maure, right, about his drug use. Dr. Bradley M. Buchheit coaches. Most Doctors Are Ill Equipped to Deal With the Opioid Epidemic. Few Medical Schools Teach Addiction. BOSTON To the medical students, the patient was a conundrum. According to his chart, he had residual pain from a leg injury sustained while working on a train track. Now he wanted an opioid stronger than the Percocet he'd been prescribed. So why did his urine test positive for two other drugs cocaine and hydromorphone, a powerful opioid that doctors had not ordered? It was up to Clark Yin, 29, to figure out what was really going on with Chris McQ, 58 as seven other third year medical students and two instructors watched. "How are you going to have a conversation around the patient's positive tox screen results?" asked Dr. Lidya H. Wlasiuk, who teaches addiction awareness and interventions here at Boston University School of Medicine. Mr. Yin threw up his hands. "I have no idea," he admitted. Chris McQ is a fictional case study created by Dr. Wlasiuk, brought to life for this class by Ric Maure, a keyboard player who also works as a standardized patient trained to represent a real patient, to help medical students practice diagnostic and communication skills. The assignment today: grappling with the delicate art and science of managing a chronic pain patient who might be tipping into a substance use disorder. How can a doctor win over a patient who fears being judged? How to determine whether the patient's demand for opioids is a response to dependence or pain? Addressing these quandaries might seem fundamental in medical training such patients appear in just about every field, from internal medicine to orthopedics to cardiology. The need for front line intervention is dire: primary care providers like Dr. Wlasiuk, who practices family medicine in a Boston community clinic, routinely encounter these patients but often lack the expertise to prevent, diagnose and treat addiction. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, addiction whether to tobacco, alcohol or other drugs is a disease that contributes to 632,000 deaths in the United States annually. But comprehensive addiction training is rare in American medical education. A report by the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University called out "the failure of the medical profession at every level in medical school, residency training, continuing education and in practice" to adequately address addiction. Dr. Timothy Brennan, who directs an addiction medicine fellowship at Mount Sinai Health System, said that combating the crisis with this provider work force is "like trying to fight World War II with only the Coast Guard." Now, a decade long push by doctors, medical students and patients to legitimize addiction medicine is resulting in blips of change around the country. A handful of students has begun to specialize in the nascent field, which concentrates on prevention and treatment of addictions and the effect of addictive substances on other medical conditions. In June, the House of Representatives authorized a bill to reimburse education costs for providers who work in areas particularly afflicted by addiction. There are only 52 addiction medicine fellowships (addiction psychiatry is a separate discipline), minuscule compared to other subspecialties. In August, the first dozen finally received gold standard board certification status from the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (by contrast, there are at least 235 accredited programs in sports medicine). While most medical schools now offer some education about opioids, only about 15 of 180 American programs teach addiction as including alcohol, tobacco and other drugs, according to Dr. Kevin Kunz, executive vice president of the Addiction Medicine Foundation, which presses for professionalization of the subspecialty. And the content in all schools varies, he noted, ranging from one pharmacology lecture to several weeks during a third year clinical rotation, usually in psychiatry or family medicine. Programs rarely go deeper. But Boston University braids addiction training into all four years. This 75 minute session to teach B.U. students the nuances of assessing a pain patient is already unusual. What also distinguishes it is the presence of an addiction medicine fellow, Dr. Bradley M. Buchheit of Boston Medical Center. Asking about cocaine use When you are a twenty something medical student, fists clenching nervously in the pockets of your white medical coat, learning to get gruff, grizzled Chris McQ to disclose uncomfortable truths is not readily gleaned from a textbook. Mr. McQ is crusty and defensive. As students resorted to the same chirpy rejoinder "Awesome!" he tried not to flinch. The man just wanted pain meds. In each small group session, a student had 15 minutes to assess Mr. McQ and make a plan. Mr. McQ once had a cocaine problem. His girlfriend was taking hydromorphone, known as Dilaudid, for back pain. Was he at risk for misusing opioids? "Ask him about his pain first," Dr. Wlasiuk told the students. "Language matters. Avoid saying, 'I found this out.' Instead, say, 'This was in your urine screen.' You want to keep that conversation going, not shut it down." The students had learned about "motivational interviewing," a technique that encourages patients to articulate health goals. As medicine moves away from doctor knows best paternalism, students are being schooled in engaging the patient with a joint decision making, team approach. Before Mr. McQ entered the classroom, the students debated: Was he selling Percocet to buy cocaine? Stealing his girlfriend's Dilaudid? Dr. Buchheit cautioned: "Substance use disorder is a chronic, relapsing disease. So is diabetes. Diabetics don't follow a diabetic diet 100 percent of the time. If they were to have a slip up, we would figure out what went wrong and say 'Is there anything else we can do?'" Despite the urgent need for addiction medicine education, there are considerable barriers to establishing it. Hours of training have already been meted out to conditions deemed critical. Making time in a jammed schedule can mean another subject has to be shrunk. Because addiction medicine is young, most medical schools can't rely for expertise on fellows post graduate students who steep themselves in a subspecialty. Fellows would typically consult on addiction related cases in hospitals and clinics, educate medical students and supervise residents in primary care fields where these patients first appear: family medicine, emergency medicine, obstetrics. And so the field of addiction medicine struggles to perpetuate itself. Dr. Daniel Alford, a professor and associate dean at Boston University, is a driving force behind its curriculum. "The biggest challenge now is how do you sustain it?" he said. "Who keeps updating it? When faculty leave, who will replace them?" There is not much incentive to specialize in addiction medicine. According to a 2017 study, insurance disparities can be striking. Insurance views addiction treatment as an afterthought to mental health therapy, which itself trails reimbursement for physical health care. The reasons for resisting this career are also cultural. The stigma that attaches to patients also clings to doctors who treat them. The patients are often dismissed as manipulative and incurable; caring for them is seen as a thankless endeavor. "I really enjoy working with these patients," Dr. Buchheit told the students. "They have often been kicked to the curb by the formal medical system. They don't trust us. So for them to walk into a room and have a doctor say, 'It's great to see you, thank you for coming in,' is very powerful. And then you can see them get better with treatment. It can be very rewarding work." The students tried out approaches on Mr. McQ. "You called our office and wanted an early refill on your Percocet," said one. "But it's important that you come in. I'm glad you're here and we can maintain our relationship." Mr. McQ told one student that his pain had worsened that he ran through his prescription, tried to get more and took some of his girlfriend's Dilaudid. Mr. McQ suggested that the doctor switch him to Dilaudid. "Time out!" Mr. Yin, the student, said, turning to the class. "What are you struggling with?" Dr. Wlasiuk asked him. Mr. Yin replied that he didn't want to reward the patient's behavior with a prescription for stronger medication, but also didn't want to drive the patient away. "I trust the patient's story about pain," he said, "but I don't want to be naive." Another student asked: "By increasing his dose, are you protecting him from getting the drugs off the street?" Dr. Wlasiuk said that although medical training typically urges students to come up with absolute answers, treating these patients often means getting comfortable with ambiguity. The students brainstormed with her and Dr. Buchheit. Some offered to raise the Percocet dose if he agreed to frequent office visits; others urged him to try physical therapy and acupuncture. A few remembered to caution Mr. McQ about opioids. ("Percocet is an opioid?" Mr. McQ responded. "I'm not one of those people!") The first patient, Brooke Anglin, 28, had had a rough ride. During a turbulent relationship when she was sagged down by depression and severe anxiety, she soothed herself with opioids. After the birth of her second child, she lost both her job as a supermarket cake decorator and custody of her two children. Under Dr. Wlasiuk's care, she gradually weaned herself off the opioids. As Dr. Wlasiuk looked on, Ms. Anyikwa began careful questioning. "How have things been going?" she asked the patient. Not great, Ms. Anglin replied. Earlier that week she had been evicted. Ms. Anglin said she'd had a resurgence of anxiety. That was enough for Dr. Wlasiuk to step in. "Is your heart racing? Are you feeling panicky?" "Have you felt you wanted something for it from your friends?" Dr. Wlasiuk gently pressed. "What's stopped you?" Dr. Wlasiuk grasped Ms. Anglin's hands. "I am amazed by your strength," she said. "I want to treat your anxiety until things settle down. What are your thoughts?" They agreed on temporary anti anxiety medication. Dr. Wlasiuk also taught her breathing exercises. After the patient left, Dr. Wlasiuk remarked, "Primary care is the right place for treating substance misuse. We have the privilege of getting to know our patients well. How can you treat addiction in a vacuum?" The next up was Sharon, 61, who brought along a toddler grandchild. Both Sharon and her daughter, the child's mother, take Suboxone, a medication that can ease opioid craving. "Sharon has been clean for years," Ms. Anyikwa began. Vigilant about language and stigma, Dr. Wlasiuk interrupted her. "Clean" is eschewed by many in the field, because it implies that those in the throes of addiction are, by extension, "dirty." Educating new practitioners requires painstaking deconstruction of old reflexive thinking, careful building of fresh approaches. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Health |
Pound for pound, spider silk is stronger than steel and tougher than Kevlar. But it doesn't start out that way. The silk starts out in a liquid form called dope (literally, dope). But in fractions of a second, this goopy, liquid slurry of proteins is transformed. And it doesn't just turn into a solid. On their way out of a spider's bottom, the protein building blocks in silk, called spidroins, fold themselves and interlace, creating a highly organized structure without guidance from any outside force. This remarkable process of self assembly is about as strange as a garden hose spitting out a stream of perfect snowflakes. Scientists have spent years trying to mimic it in the hopes that it will someday revolutionize the construction of ultra strong, sustainable materials. "You can really generate materials with unique properties by exploiting this self assembly process," said Ali Malay, a structural biologist and biochemist at the Riken Center for Sustainable Resource Science in Japan. Dr. Malay doesn't yet have the entire process figured out. Neither does anyone else. But in a paper published Wednesday in Science Advances, he and his colleagues lay out a new way to tackle the spider silk puzzle, mimicking its orderly exit from the spinneret with chemical tools in the lab. A crucial part of spinning, the researchers found, requires the spidroins to separate themselves from the watery buffer that swaddles them inside silk glands a step that hyper concentrates the proteins. An influx of acid then prompts the proteins to securely interlock. The paper uses a simplified laboratory model in place of real spiders. But the research is remarkable for providing a glimpse into the sausage making behind silk spinning, "from liquid dope to fiber," said Angela Alicea Serrano, a spider silk researcher at the University of Akron who wasn't involved in the study. "We've seen a lot of the beginning of this process and the end, but not the in between." The metamorphosis spider silk must undergo as it exits an arachnid cannot be overstated, said Anna Rising, a spider silk expert at the Karolinska Institute in Sweden who was not involved in the study. While still in the gland, spidroins have to stay suspended in a liquid form at "really extreme concentrations," Dr. Rising said. "It's viscous, almost like a toothpaste." If the silk hardens too soon, it could clog the spider's glands with a nightmarishly webby form of constipation. Too late, and the arachnid might spew only shapeless liquid. That makes both timing and efficiency central to the silk spinning process. Luckily for spiders, millenniums of evolution have made spidroins versatile. The proteins, Dr. Rising explained, are structured like barbells: a long, disorderly string capped on each end by a bolt like blob. In the silk glands, these barbells are thought to naturally pair up at one end, creating V shaped duos that slosh around in the dope. To form the more stable architecture required of solid silk, the spidroins need to link up in chains, using the other ends of the barbells. That seems to happen under the influence of a couple of chemical cues, said Jessica Garb, a spider silk researcher at the University of Massachusetts, Lowell who was not involved in the study. As the spidroin slurry is extruded through a labyrinth of increasingly narrow ducts, the spider cells pump acid into the mixture, making the free ends of the barbells stick together. The journey through these tapering tubes also tugs and squeezes the silk into its final form. Dr. Malay and his colleagues found that this sculpting and self assembly could not happen if the liquidy spidroins weren't dehydrated as they moved through the spider's anatomy. Further experiments showed salts made the proteins rapidly distance themselves from the liquid surrounding them, like oil and vinegar in a salad dressing. This allows the spidroins to more easily interact, said Cheryl Hayashi, a spider silk researcher at the American Museum of Natural History who wasn't involved in the study. Freshly thickened, the stew of spidroins then shapes itself into an increasingly stringy structure. The silk extrusion pipeline might sound a bit cumbersome. From an engineer's perspective, though, it's extraordinarily elegant, said Keiji Numata, a Riken scientist who led the study. Scientists can build superstrong polymers in the lab through brute force, coercing materials to come together in ways they otherwise wouldn't. But given the right ingredients, under the right conditions, the recipe that is spider silk essentially cooks itself. Researchers still don't know enough about this process to fully recreate it. There are also many ways to spin spider silk, which varies between species, and even within the same spider, Dr. Garb said. Although silks might be best known for their roles in web building, they can also be used to lure mates, protect eggs or even help wayfaring spiders hitch a ride on a passing breeze. This study focused on the proteins found in dragline silk, which serves as a sort of bungee cord for spiders dangling from their webs or ceilings. "But there's still a lot more that nature has figured out that we don't know about," Dr. Hayashi said. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Science |
The young British choreographer Liam Scarlett still looks cherubic: curly haired, wide eyed, with a touch of puckishness. What's curious is that his mind, by contrast, repeatedly turns to subjects of darkness, death and the dead. His first creation for the Royal Ballet in London, in 2010, was called "Asphodel Meadows." In Greek mythology, the asphodel meadows are part of the underworld; ancient Greek sources differ about whether those meadows were happy. A later work he created for that company, "Sweet Violets" (2012), was about the connections among murder, sexuality and art in late Victorian and Edwardian London. Now, in his intense but murky debut creation for New York City Ballet that received its world premiere on Friday night at the David H. Koch Theater, Mr. Scarlett returns to the Greek underworld. Its name is "Acheron," after one of the five rivers that ran through the realm of the dead. The music is the Concerto for Organ, Strings and Timpani by Poulenc, the composer employed by Mr. Scarlett in "Asphodel Meadows." Poulenc, who completed this organ concerto in 1938, was inspired by the death of a musical colleague and friend; the score led him to attain a new maturity. It is easy to connect it to thoughts of death and the dead: It starts with drastically harsh organ chords and features consolatory strings. The organ part, sounding lighter at the Koch Theater than I have heard it in other contexts, was vividly played on Friday by Michael Hey, a guest. (Clotilde Otranto conducted.) This score also accompanies Glen Tetley's ballet "Voluntaries" (1973), made for the Stuttgart Ballet in memory of the choreographer John Cranko. "Voluntaries" though by no means universally admired and often considered unmusical and manipulative has been staged by a wide number of companies worldwide. "Acheron," like "Voluntaries," opens with sustained dancing in silence. Soon after the curtain rose on "Acheron," I remembered how Tom Stoppard's play "The Invention of Love" begins on the banks of another river of the Greek underworld, the Styx, with its ferryman, Charon. The protagonist, the classics scholar A. E. Housman, starts by saying: "I'm dead, then. Good. And this is the Stygian gloom one has heard so much about." Mark Stanley's lighting for "Acheron" is both somber and shadowy. Men are bare chested, in tights ending just beneath the knee. Women, wearing dresses, have bare shoulders and arms. Mr. Scarlett has designed the costumes, on which all color is seen to fade into gray. So it's certainly correct to call Mr. Scarlett's work "Acherontic," a word whose dictionary meanings include "infernal, gloomy, waiting to cross Acheron, moribund." The ballet is led by three male female couples (Sara Mearns and Adrian Danchig Waring, Rebecca Krohn and Tyler Angle, Ashley Bouder and Amar Ramasar), a lone male soloist (Anthony Huxley) and five supporting male female couples. A recurring overhead lift seems to refer to Act II of "Giselle," in which the ghostly heroine maintains a rising arc above the hero's head as he holds her aloft. Since "Asphodel Meadows," Mr. Scarlett has been known for his skill in handling large groups. That's in evidence again here at every point you know you're seeing Choreography but it's hard to distinguish a Scarlettian individuality: Much about "Acheron" looks generic. While it's short of lively footwork, it goes overboard on partnering (all heterosexual). Ms. Mearns, Ms. Krohn and Ms. Bouder are seldom allowed to move without their partners propping them up; though some of the lifts are novel, the ethos of feminine dependency is depressingly familiar. The most striking solo dancing comes from Mr. Huxley, a distinguished classical soloist, who here makes the most impact with undulations above the waist. Are these characters dead, as the title "Acheron" implies? They're still creatures of sexual and sensual behavior. In one motif, Mr. Danchig Waring, standing behind Ms. Mearns, runs his hands down her shoulders and upper arms; Mr. Angle, also from behind, plants an emphatic kiss on Ms. Krohn's neck; and in one incident all three couples seem to nuzzle each other, heads and necks interlocking fondly. Odder is the way the female dancers, lifted or supported, keep opening their groins at the audience. Near the end, for example, a number of women, lifted from behind and facing the audience, have their knees tensely bent and held together; then, suddenly, they part their thighs for our benefit. This is one of several images of behavior that are never resolved in terms of poetic meaning. Another puzzle is Mr. Scarlett's musicality. He hears the music, but seldom makes an intimately revealing response to it. (And City Ballet has the world's highest standards for close connection between music and dance.) His opening shows that he isn't one of the rare choreographers who can authoritatively handle the awkwardness of dancing in silence before the music starts. Though he responds to the concerto's sharp mood changes, he doesn't make the most of some of the most striking. While Poulenc's score doesn't obviously prompt a dance response, it's notable that on those occasions when it does switch into metric vitality, Mr. Scarlett doesn't rush to respond. In one sequence, the music suddenly provides a series of pulsating iambs; but they've been sounding quite a few times before Ms. Bouder, hanging from Mr. Ramasar's arms, finally matches them with iambic footwork. "Acheron" will be danced seven more times through March 1. (The Peter Martins premiere planned for February has been postponed; "Acheron" performances replace it.) It is the final item on the triple bill "New Combinations," which demonstrates that although City Ballet is best known for its treasury of ballets by George Balanchine and Jerome Robbins, no company anywhere in the world matches it for its record of commissioning new ballets from rising and established choreographers from many countries. The program's other two works are "Vespro" (2002) by Mauro Bigonzetti (Italian) and "Spectral Evidence" (2013) by Angelin Preljocaj (French). Alas, this European threesome does not make the American dancegoer long to swap continents. Gloom pervades. One saving grace is Bruno Moretti's commissioned score for "Vespro," featuring piano, mezzo soprano and soprano saxophone. This music like Poulenc's otherwise very dissimilar concerto commutes fascinatingly between Baroque and Modernist thoughts. But Mr. Bigonzetti's movements are just quaint strivings for effect. And Mr. Preljocaj's vaguely vampiric "Spectral Evidence" to items by John Cage with some techno rock passages that sound distinctly un Cagean is creepy, grim and tedious. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Dance |
It was cheaper rent that initially drew Jesse Warner Levine, 34, and Hallie Nickelson, 33, to Wallabout, a fairly isolated Brooklyn neighborhood on the fringe of Clinton Hill near the Brooklyn Navy Yard. But it was bicycling that made them stay. The two bedroom one bath walk up they moved into three years ago for 1,800 a month had windows on three sides and was cheaper and more charming than previous apartments they had shared with roommates in other parts of Brooklyn. Yet the closest subway line the G, which requires a transfer to get to Manhattan was half a mile away and erratic, turning what should have been a 25 minute commute into 45 minutes or more, depending on when the train showed up. As an alternative, they turned to their bikes, heaving them up and down three flights of stairs each day in exchange for a faster, more reliable commute. Now, they say, they can't imagine using any other transportation to get around the city. Last month, they renewed their lease for one more year at 2,050 a month, in part to keep their rent manageable but also to preserve their biking habit. "We talked about moving," Ms. Nickelson said, "but now it's like we need to live near the bridges because we're so committed to commuting with bikes." As the search for more affordable real estate in New York City pushes deeper into neighborhoods that were once considered out of the way, bicycle lanes are taking on new importance. Since 2007, the city has carved out more than 350 miles of bike lanes in the five boroughs, according to the Department of Transportation. As a result, the distance from the nearest subway or bus stop has become less of a drawback for the two wheeled set, particularly in transit challenged areas of Brooklyn like Red Hook, Greenpoint and parts of Bushwick. In a twist to the real estate catch phrase, location, location, location, brokers say, bicycling is beginning to influence some real estate decisions. Mr. Warner Levine and Ms. Nickelson heave their bikes up and down three flights of stairs each day. Michael Appleton for The New York Times "Your housing options change when you buy a bike and use it," said Lyon Porter, a sales and leasing director of Town Residential, who relied heavily on a fixed gear Dutch cruiser when living in Williamsburg several years ago and continues to cycle frequently around the city. "People get so much more for their money in this tight, compressed market," when freed from the need to be near a train line, he said. "Your definable boundaries are different on a bike." Without one, he said, "your map changes." By zipping along Flushing Avenue's bike lanes and across the Manhattan Bridge, Mr. Warner Levine, a retail wine salesman, found he could make it to his job in Lower Manhattan in 18 minutes flat. His wife, Ms. Nickelson, takes about 30 minutes pedaling up First Avenue to get to United Nations Plaza, where she works in administration for Unicef. He carries his bicycle to the basement of the wine shop. She chains hers up on the sidewalk outside her office. Apart from work, the couple from Wallabout were soon cruising to SoHo for brunch or Greenpoint for drinks, roughly a 20 minute ride from their apartment in either direction. "Most of my friends use bikes to get around Brooklyn," Ms. Nickelson said. "It's the best and most direct way for everyone to meet up at a central point." Getting together with friends at a bar in Prospect Heights from Greenpoint, for example, can take nearly an hour by bus or train versus half an hour by bicycle. "I noticed my friends who don't ride bikes," she said, "it's more of a hassle for them." Last month, Dana Johns, a physician assistant, doubled her living space and cut her rent by 20 percent by moving from a two bedroom in the East Village she shared with a roommate to a two bedroom, two bath she also shares at 110 Green Street, a luxury rental building in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, that advertises "bike storage" and "bike friendly streets" on its website. Ms. Johns has a Bianchi Pista and a Brompton folding bike she stores indoors, but to ease her commute, she bought a vintage ocean coaster at a flea market in Bushwick for 75. The two locks she uses to tie it up on the street, she said, cost more. Now, instead of "waiting forever for the G" and transferring in Queens to the E to get to her office on 48th Street in Manhattan, she said, "I take my beater bike in the morning across the Pulaski Bridge and park it at the 7." By hopping the train one stop to Grand Central, she said, she avoids showing up to work sweaty. With the weather getting nicer, she added, "I'm working toward biking over the Queensboro Bridge to go direct to work." Bicycle commuters are still vastly in the minority in New York City, where most people use subways and buses to get around. But their numbers are growing. Since 2000, the ratio of people who biked to work in New York increased from 0.5 percent to 0.8 percent, according to 2008 2012 statistics from the American Community Survey. (The survey did not specify how often a bike was used to commute to work.) Nationally, 0.6 percent bike to work, according to the latest data from the United States Census Bureau. Of the 27,759 New Yorkers who indicated they use a bicycle to get to work in the 2008 2012 survey, nearly half live in Brooklyn, including districts that encompass the neighborhoods of Fort Greene and Clinton Hill; Greenpoint and Williamsburg; Carroll Gardens and Red Hook; Northern Crown Heights and Prospect Heights; and Bushwick, according to an analysis by Andrew A. Beveridge, a sociology professor at Queens College. David Ortiz, who opened Dave's Wear House in Little Italy with partners about three years ago, has seen those statistics reflected in his business, which began primarily as a sneaker store but quickly found a niche serving cyclists after bike sales took off. "We get a lot of customers using bikes as an alternative to mass transit, especially in neighborhoods like Brooklyn Navy Yard and Clinton Hill, where it only takes about 20 minutes to ride to Manhattan and there isn't a convenient subway option," he said. "The subway costs about 5 a day and our bikes cost about 400, so we tell customers if they ride the bike 80 times, the bike paid for itself." As more businesses have moved to fairly sequestered Brooklyn neighborhoods like Dumbo, Gowanus and the Navy Yard, said Victoria Hagman, the broker owner of the Realty Collective in Brooklyn, she has noticed more people relying on bicycles. "It's so difficult to get around Brooklyn by train or bus," she said. "If you work in Dumbo and you're living in Fort Greene, there's no point in hopping on the subway. You're going to be hopping on your bike." Depending on where you live in Fort Greene, she noted, you can take the C line or a bus to Dumbo in about 20 minutes, if you time it exactly right. Biking cuts that time in half and puts you on your own schedule. There are also side benefits. Not only is biking eco conscious, cyclists say, it's healthy. "From a personal level, it makes my life better," said Mr. Warner Levine, the wine salesman. "I'm in a better mood when I arrive to work and I'm certainly in a better mood when I arrive home from work." Spotting a way to market neighborhoods often viewed as remote because of transportation limitations, some real estate companies, including StreetEasy.com, AptsandLofts.com and Halstead Property have begun incorporating the location of nearby Citi Bike stations to the list of public transportation options for online real estate listings. Separately, Citi Bike provides an online map that shows how many bikes are checked into each station at a given moment. "Many potential buyers and renters place bicycle related requirements higher and higher on their list of must haves," wrote Gene Keyser, an avid bicyclist and a broker at Halstead Property, in a post last year on his blog titled "The Velocipede Effect: Bikes Sway Home Prices." "Unlike years past, some are choosing to pass on properties purely because bicycle storage is difficult or unavailable." At least one broker, Elliot Bogod, the managing director at Broadway Realty, is offering a 95 annual Citi Bike membership to the buyer of a 1.295 million penthouse duplex condo for sale in Battery Park City, partly to remind those concerned with its relative isolation at the southern tip of Manhattan that cycling is an easy transit alternative. "Now since the city is so bike friendly," Mr. Bogod said, people can hop on a Citi Bike from one of four stations in the vicinity and pedal along the Hudson River Park Bikeway, which runs from Battery Place to West 59th Street, where it connects with Riverside Park South. "I just met someone going to Fort Lee from Battery Park City to work," Mr. Bogod said. Pedaling along the Hudson on a breezy spring day is one thing. Relying on a bike as your main mode of transportation is another. There is a resoluteness required to ride in the sticky summer heat, in the wet months of spring and as temperatures drop below freezing in winter. Gear whether it be fleece lined bicycling tights or gloves coated with beeswax to make them water resistant is important. So is a place to change once you get to work. Yet die hard commuters shrug off such discomforts. "In the hottest months it's a little gross, but most of the year you're not that sweaty," said Joe Eisman, 45, a labor union organizer who has commuted five days a week by bike from Brooklyn to Manhattan for seven years, most recently about 65 miles a week to the Flatiron district and back. "I think you get dirtier sitting down in the subway." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Real Estate |
President Trump's first State of the Union address drew an audience of 45.6 million, about two million fewer than the number who watched his speech to a joint session of Congress a year ago. The viewership figure, tallied by Nielsen from the broadcast networks and cable channels that aired the 80 minute address on Tuesday night, reflects Mr. Trump's preferred manner of watching television: the old fashioned way, on a TV set, in real time. It does not include streaming data. The television audience was also smaller than the one for President Barack Obama's first State of the Union address in 2010, which had 48 million viewers. Mr. Trump's joint session speech last year drew 48 million viewers, according to Nielsen, about four million fewer than the 52 million who watched Mr. Obama's joint session speech in 2009. The comparison, though, is complicated by the fact that more people stream these days than they did even five years ago. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Media |
To hip hop artists, he was the supplier of endless beats and grooves. To Stephen Sondheim acolytes, he was the composer of the show that beat "Follies" for the Best Musical Tony Award. And to generations of musical theater fans, Galt MacDermot was the guy who looked out of place in a picture on the back of the "Hair" cast recording. MacDermot, who died Dec. 18 at the age of 89, had far less hair than his "Hair" co creators, James Rado and Gerome Ragni. His was cut in a high and tight style that fit perfectly with his necktie and white dress shirt and that completely clashed with his Dionysian collaborators. But while he resembled a wallflower at the free love orgy, MacDermot spent the next 50 years cultivating a reputation as one of the funkiest composers Broadway had ever seen. His layered, sinuous grooves were catnip for such rap legends as Busta Rhymes and J Dilla, who sampled his music. He spiced up Shakespeare in the 1971 musical "Two Gentlemen of Verona" (the show that won instead of "Follies") and gave the 1970 proto blaxploitation film "Cotton Comes to Harlem" a glut of wah wah pedals. Still, with its seemingly endless bounty of timeless songs, "Hair" remains the defining work in MacDermot's career. Generations of musical theater composers have integrated rock music into their own scores with a freedom and stylistic flexibility that he helped make possible. Here several of those songwriters, along with a few other theater and hip hop notables, share their memories and appreciations of MacDermot. These are edited excerpts from their comments. There wasn't a corny bone in his body. He was my kind of composer because he cherished the hook while also understanding how to serve the melody. Even when I was 8 years old, I looked at that picture of him next to Rado and Ragni on the album cover, and I said, "You know what? That's the cool guy." To me, that's what a real musician looked like. When sampling got big in hip hop production, every producer was trying to position themselves as the most original when it came to beats. Galt had the naked drums, the isolated horns and bass lines: Everyone wanted those, especially after Pete Rock sampled him for Run DMC's "Down With the King." I once got a ton of sealed Galt records at the store I had in the late '90s, Footwork, and I was selling them for, like, 75 apiece. Other record shops down the street would snatch them up and resell them for way more. If you just read the lyric "Ripped open by metal explosion" from the "Hair" song "3 5 0 0" , it sounds almost journalistic, with all sorts of numbers and data. But the way Galt set it gives it an emotional center. His melodies always imply the harmony behind them. Your ear just travels. We worked together for more than 50 years. We used to have breakfast every Friday for almost 10 years straight. Galt's music was my music he did everything that I wanted to do. I thought "Who is Silvia?" from "Two Gentlemen" was like heaven. What I truly responded to about his music was not that he was some kind of rock visionary (which he wasn't), but that he was a jazz guy who had a large number of tools at his disposal and used them to create scores that bounced from style to style in completely authentic ways without being what I would pejoratively call "pastiche." And I have to mention the bridge of "Easy to Be Hard," when it pops up a step for "Do you only care about the bleeding crowd?"; it's a thrilling bit of melody and harmony, unexpected and deeply satisfying. He sat next to me for all the auditions of the first "Hair" concert in Central Park in 2007 . After each singer, he just had about three words for each singer: "She moved me." "Didn't move me." There was nothing technical. It was purely visceral. That was how he responded to the music and responded to the singers, and you feel that in his music. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, he had his pulse on the country. He knew what we wanted to hear, and he knew how to say it musically. He was also incredibly loyal to the people he worked with. At one point during the Broadway run of "Hair," we came to difficulties with a musician Galt had a long working relationship with, and it got to where we were talking about firing him. Galt asked to meet me in my office, and he said, "I'm pulling the rights to this show and closing it if you fire him." And he meant it. He would shut down a Broadway hit for the sake of someone he knew. That incentivized me to work things out. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Theater |
CHANGSHU, China China has long used access to its giant customer base and cheap labor as bargaining chips to persuade foreign companies to open factories within its borders. Now, corporate executives say, it is using its near monopoly on certain minerals in particular, scarce metals vital to products like hybrid cars, cellphones and energy efficient light bulbs to make it difficult for foreign manufacturers of high tech materials to build or expand factories anywhere except China. Companies that continue making their products outside the country must contend with tighter supplies and much higher prices for the materials because of steep taxes and other export controls imposed by China over the last two years. Companies like Showa Denko and Santoku of Japan and Intematix of the United States are adding factory capacity in China this year instead of elsewhere because they need access to the scarce metals, known as rare earths. "We saw the writing on the wall we simply bought the equipment and ramped up in China to begin with," said Mike Pugh, director of worldwide operations for Intematix, who said the company would have preferred to build its new factory near its Fremont, Calif., headquarters. While seemingly obscure, China's policy on rare earths appears to be directed by Prime Minister Wen Jiabao himself, according to Chinese officials and documents. Mr. Wen, a geologist who studied rare earths at graduate school in Beijing in the 1960s, has led at least two in depth reviews of rare earths this year at the State Council, China's cabinet. During a visit to Europe last autumn, he said that little happened on rare earth policy without him. China's tactics on rare earths probably violate global trade rules, according to governments and business groups around the world. A panel of the World Trade Organization, the main arbiter of international trade disputes, found last month that China had broken the rules when it used virtually identical tactics to restrict access to other important industrial minerals. China's commerce ministry announced on Wednesday that it would appeal the ruling. No formal case has yet been brought concerning rare earths because officials from affected countries are waiting to see the final resolution of the other case, which has already lasted more than two years. Shen Danyang, a spokesman for the commerce ministry, reiterated at a news conference on Wednesday in Beijing that China believed that its mineral export policies complied with W.T.O. rules. China's legal position, outlined in W.T.O. filings, is that its policies qualify for an exception to international trade rules that allows countries to limit exports for environmental protection and to conserve scarce supplies. But the W.T.O. panel has already rejected this argument for the other industrial minerals, on the grounds that China was only curbing exports and not limiting supplies available for use inside the country. China mines 94 percent of the world's rare earths and accounted for 60 percent of the world's consumption by tonnage early this year. But if factories continue to move to China at their current rate, China will represent 70 percent of global consumption by early next year, said Constantine E. Karayannopoulos, the chief executive of Neo Material Technologies, a Canadian company that is one of the largest processors in China of raw rare earths. For the last two years, China has imposed quotas to limit exports of rare earths to about 30,000 tons a year. Before that, factories outside the country consumed nearly 60,000 tons a year. China has also raised export taxes on rare earths to as much as 25 percent, on top of value added taxes of 17 percent. Rare earth prices have soared outside China as users have bid frantically for limited supplies. Cerium oxide, a rare earth compound used in catalysts and glass manufacturing, now costs 110,000 a metric ton outside China. That is more than four times the price in China, and up from 3,100 two years ago, according to Asian Metal, an industry data company based in Pittsburgh. Companies do that math, and many decide it is more cost effective to move to China to get cheaper access to the metals. "When we export materials such as neodymium from China, we have to pay high tariffs," said Junichi Tagaki, a spokesman for Showa Denko, which announced last month that it would sharply expand its production of neodymium based magnetic alloys, used in hybrid cars and computers, in southern China. The company saves money by manufacturing in China instead of Japan because the alloys are subject to no Chinese export taxes or value added taxes, he said. Big chemical companies are also shifting to China the first stage in their production of rare earth catalysts used to refine oil into gasoline, diesel and other products. They are moving after Chinese state controlled companies grabbed one sixth of the global market by offering sharply lower prices, mainly because of cheaper access to rare earths. Chemical companies are also working on ways to cut the percentage of rare earths in catalysts while preserving the catalysts' effectiveness. Production of top quality glass for touch screen computers and professional quality camera lenses, now done mostly in Japan, is also shifting to China because it requires rare earths. Factories are moving despite worries about the theft of trade secrets. Intematix takes elaborate precautions at a factory completed last month here in Changshu, 60 miles northwest of Shanghai, where the company manufactures the rare earth based phosphors that make liquid crystal displays and light emitting diodes work. While Intematix hired Chinese scientists to perfect the industrial processes here, only three know the complete chemical formulas. China's timing is excellent, said Dudley J. Kingsnorth, a longtime rare earth industry executive and consultant in Australia. Mines being developed in the United States, Australia and elsewhere will start producing sizable quantities of rare earths in the next few years, so China seems to be using its leverage now to force companies to move. "They're making the most of it, and they're obviously having some success," he said. Until Western governments, business groups and media began pointing out the W.T.O. issues, Chinese officials had repeatedly stated that the rules were intended to encourage companies to move production to China. They switched to emphasizing environmental protection as the trade issues became salient. China stepped up enforcement this summer of mining limits and pollution standards for the rare earth industry, which has reduced supplies and pushed up prices in China, although not as much as for overseas buyers. The crackdown may help China argue to the W.T.O. that it is limiting output for its own industries. But other countries are likely to say that the crackdown is temporary and that previous crackdowns have been short lived. Charlene Barshefsky, the former United States trade representative who set many of the terms of China's entry to the W.T.O. in 2001, wrote in an e mail that one problem was that W.T.O. panels did not have the power to issue injunctions. So countries can maintain policies that may violate trade rules until a panel rules against them and any appeal has failed. Even then, the W.T.O. can order a halt to the offending practice, but it usually cannot require restitution for past practices except in cases involving subsidies, which are not directly involved in the rare earth dispute. China is offering carrots as well as sticks to persuade foreign companies to move factories to China. Under China's green industry policies, the municipal government of Changshu let Intematix move into a newly built, 124,000 square foot industrial complex near a highway and pay no rent for the first three years. Intematix pays 400 to 500 a month (2,500 to 3,000 renminbi) for skilled factory workers like Wang Yiping, the 33 year old foreman on duty on a recent morning here. It pays 500 to 600 a month (3,000 to 3,500 renminbi) for young, college educated chemical engineers like Yang Lidan, a 26 year old woman who examined rare earth powders under an electron scanning microscope in a nearby lab. It was also relatively cheap to buy the factory's 52 foot long blue furnaces, through which rare earth powders move on extremely slow conveyor belts while superheated to 2,800 degrees Fahrenheit. With many Chinese suppliers competing, Intematix paid 10 to 20 percent of American equipment prices, said Han Jiaping, the factory's vice president of engineering. Still, Mr. Pugh said that the company's decision to build the factory in China was based not on costs but on reliable access to rare earths, without worrying about quotas or export taxes. "I think this is what the Chinese government wanted to happen," he said. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Global Business |
It's the alcohol that almost kills him, but the charisma doesn't help. Steven, the high functioning, hard core alcoholic at the center of Sean Daniels's harrowing comedy " The White Chip ," is the kind of guy whose abundant scruffy charm allows him to get away with far too much. Well, that and the fact that he's a stage director, careening his way through a flourishing career, day drunk on the vodka he mixes into his bottles of Diet Coke in the morning. As long as he keeps delivering the hits, it's easy enough for his employers to look the other way. And, hey, Steven tells himself, some of the greats of American drama were serious drinkers, too. "You're an artist," one of the voices in his head soothes, like a devil on his shoulder. "You're expected to be eccentric." Daniels, the artistic director of Arizona Theater Company, knows whereof he speaks. In a fizzily fast paced production by Sheryl Kaller at 59E59 Theaters, this is an autobiographical play. Dad's Garage Theater Company in Atlanta, where Daniels spent a decade as artistic director and co founder, is among the companies that make appearances. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Theater |
Surely you know that telltale moment, at the start of many great Golden Age musicals, when the curtain rustles, the lights glow warmer and the violins start churning out the schmaltz. Whatever sadness the story has in store, the sound from the pit tells you all will be well. There's a wonderful moment like that in "Soft Power," which opened at the Public Theater on Tuesday in a coproduction with the Center Theater Group of Los Angeles. A golden curtain sweeps away to reveal, silhouetted on a scaffold in a cloud of vermilion light, a 22 piece orchestra , digging into the opening notes of Jeanine Tesori's triple creme score. If an audience ever sighed as one, it does here. What's strange is that this musical moment does not arrive until 20 minutes into the show, by which point we have already seen twice a main character being stabbed in the neck and left to die on a Brooklyn street. The character will survive; we know that because he is based on the playwright , David Henry Hwang, who survived just such an attack in 2015. Even so, the promise of those violins turns out to come with lots of provisos. Such is the cleverness, and confusion, of "Soft Power," which the authors call a "play with a musical." Bristling with ideas that rarely get dramatized, let alone in such imaginative form, it is something of a miracle but also something of a muddle, the ideas scrambling over one another for prominence and the ingenious form unable to corral them. Still, those ideas about the betrayals inherent in love, democracy and musicals themselves are too exciting and important to dismiss by quibbling them to death. That doesn't make "Soft Power" any easier to parse than it is to praise; I'm not sure even its authors and hard working director, Leigh Silverman, have mastered all the whirligig tricks of perspective they've set in motion. It's the kind of show that deserves, and unfortunately needs, to be seen at least twice. What's clear enough, in those opening 20 minutes, is that a lightly fictionalized Chinese American playwright also named David Henry Hwang (Francis Jue) agrees to write a musical for a prominent Shanghai producer, Xue Xing (Conrad Ricamora). Based on a hit Chinese movie that champions marital fidelity even at the cost of unhappiness, the musical is to bear the same unpromising title: " Stick With Your Mistake." But as Hwang collapses after the possibly racist attack the timeline is jimmied a bit so that the stabbing takes place just after the election of Donald J. Trump he imagines a different musical, the one we proceed to see. This one, called "Soft Power," written by Chinese artists instead of Americans, is both a rueful romance like "Stick With Your Mistake" and a gleeful riposte to Rodgers and Hammerstein's "The King and I," inverting that Golden Age classic's fallacies and stereotypes to hilarious and pungent effect. The "I" in the dream musical, which jumps back to the weeks before the election, is Xue Xing himself; his arrival in the United States, like Anna's arrival in Siam in "The King and I," is depicted with dozens of erroneous details. Xue lands at "New York Airport," with its glorious view of the Golden Gate Bridge. (It's rare for a set design, in this case by Clint Ramos, to get such big laughs.) The Americans Xue immediately encounters are violent, gun toting lowlifes, played by Asian actors in whiteface and sporting absurd regional accents. The "King" to Xue's "I" is none other than Hillary Rodham Clinton, portrayed, like the 1951 musical's King Mongkut , as a natural leader trapped in a primitive culture. Forced to pimp herself out for votes, Mrs. Clinton (Alyse Alan Louis) first appears at a fund raiser at "the most famous American restaurant of all": a McDonald's misunderstood as a glamorous Busby Berkeley nightclub. In a production number reminiscent of "Trouble" from "The Music Man," she strips off her red spangled pantsuit, revealing a Wonder Woman outfit beneath. It isn't enough; as Xue instructs her and as circumstances subsequently bear out democracy is a degrading and unreliable system. Voting itself is a backward Western ritual; it takes a patter song modeled on Gilbert and Sullivan to explain the idiocy of the Electoral College. When Xue suggests that the certainty of communism produces much better results, Mrs. Clinton naturally takes offense but cannot, of all people, argue the point. Even so, when Mrs. Clinton, in a song reminiscent of "The Rain in Spain" from "My Fair Lady," finally learns to pronounce Xue's name, a romance sparks between them. This first gets expressed in a delicious polka (choreographed by Sam Pinkleton) that winkingly salutes "Shall We Dance?" Though not imitations of Golden Age hits, Tesori's songs are loving tributes that swim in and out of currents of familiarity. Orchestrated by Danny Troob for that unusually large orchestra, they sound marvelous, and yet they don't quite do the trick. It would take the brilliancy of Sondheim, especially in the lyrics Hwang's are bare bones, devoid of panache to pull off the necessary double act here: to succeed as worthy successors to the originals and satires of them at the same time. Without that, the inner musical of "Soft Power" just isn't in the same class as the classics it needles. In any case, in the second act (after a truly hilarious interlude I won't spoil) the book goes haywire, spinning out its political thread but cutting short the romantic one. (Mr. Trump, called "Dear Leader" and set to drop bombs on "Cheatin' China," sucks up all the narrative air, even if he's not physically represented.) The armature of "The King and I," which helped maintain structure, is largely abandoned. The cast works hard to keep the story standing. Jue makes a delightfully wry impression as Hwang; Ricamora is dreamy as Xue in the inside musical and subtly duller in the outside one. As Mrs. Clinton, Louis is apt but underpowered, a problem likely built into the role. It would take a Jennifer Holliday to pull off her 11 o'clock number, a full out screamer of a tribute to democracy. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Theater |
Camping in the wild with all the comforts of a deluxe hotel, including real beds, plush furnishings and attending stewards, has been around since 19th century African wildlife safaris. Now known as glamping short for glamorous camping the hybrid of camp and resort has exploded, bringing a wave of new glamping destinations this year in a variety of price ranges. For travelers, the camps offer convenient access to nature without an investment in equipment or the chores of firewood gathering and the common camping hazards of splinters, sleeping in the rain and waking up cold. "People nowadays desire real change from the grind of their daily commutes, the dreary workplace environment with its ever present noise pollution and the constant invasion of smartphones," said George Morgan Grenville, the founder and chief executive of Red Savannah, a high end travel company. "Glamping is the ultimate realization of 'disconnect to reconnect.'" Indicative of glamping's growth, the biggest American camp collectives are on an expansionist spree. Both Under Canvas and Collective Retreats recently secured new funding, 17 million and 10 million, respectively. The 37,000 acre Resort at Paws Up in Montana, one of the earliest, in 2005, to erect fancy tents with framed art on the canvas walls, rugs on the wood floors and downy duvets on the log frame beds, introduced glamping's first three bedroom, two bathroom tents last summer. Popular glamping sites are expanding in ways that resemble more traditional hotels, too. Firelight Camps in Ithaca, N.Y., plans to open a Catskills location next fall that will include a restaurant from its co founder and chef Emma Frisch, who recently published a cookbook, "Feast by Firelight," which includes recipes served at the camp's daily breakfast s and occasional dinners. Glamping.com lists nearly 800 locations worldwide, including lodges, tree houses and cabins essentially, any accommodation in a natural setting with luxury level service but the following new glamping sites follow the classic definition: tent based. Light pollution, noise and nocturnal pests, human and otherwise, haven't discouraged glamping entrepreneurs from setting up in cities. The most significant camp to put down city stakes, Collective Governors Island, will feature 37 tents on the car free island in New York Harbor once it's fully open in July (from 150). The company Collective Retreats has been setting up seasonal camps since 2015 when it opened in Vail, Colo. The New York camp will have its own restaurant, offer massage services and equip some tents with their own bathrooms. Others will share facilities but all will have furnished porches and wood frame beds with 1,500 thread count linens. A spate of luxury hotels is newly offering glamping on the private terraces of its top suites, including the Gwen Hotel in Chicago, the Beverly Wilshire, a Four Seasons Hotel in Beverly Hills, Calif., and Le Meridien Denver Downtown, running between 3,500 and 15,000 a night. Under Canvas operates seasonal glamping resorts near national parks, among them Yellowstone, Zion and Glacier. Last month, it opened Under Canvas Rushmore in South Dakota through Oct. 1. The solar powered forest compound of 80 four person tents, each with a wood stove and some with attached bathrooms, offers views of Mount Rushmore (from 209). Guests can eat hearty breakfasts and campfire dinners of smoked, grilled and roasted meats on site, and the kitchen packs box lunches for those heading out to climb, bike or take Jeep safaris. On Aug. 30, Under Canvas Great Smoky Mountains will open in Gatlinburg, Tenn., with 54 tents on 200 acres near the national park (from 199). Collective Hill Country, the second opening this summer of a glamping resort by Collective Retreats, will spring up on a 225 acre ranch near Austin, Tex., offering activities like horseback riding and winery tours. Guests in its 12 tents will dine on campfire dishes like jalapeno and Cheddar grits and wild boar osso buco (from 400). On the Hudson River in Kingston, N. Y., Terra Glamping is slated to open this month at Hutton Brickyards, a riverside event venue, with 25 tents featuring memory foam mattresses, down bedding, Turkish towels and robes (from 225). Guests can borrow bikes, kayaks and stand up paddleboards, as well as lanterns and flashlights after dark. For beach lovers, Wild Lotus operates a tented camp on the Caribbean island of Antigua. Tents come with blowup mattresses, coolers and ice, and guests have access to showers at a neighboring beach bar (from 149). Or you can glamp at the company's rain forest camp on nearby Montserrat. Among the truly glamorous new glamping facilities, the Rosewood Luang Prabang opened in March in a forested setting near the Laotian city with six deluxe tents among its 23 accommodations (from 724). While residing closer to nature, guests of the tent suites have access to the resort's many amenities: a pool, tented spa villas, restaurant and activities such as cooking classes and Mekong River cruises. Tents were created to provide shelter in the wilderness and upscale versions can be found increasingly in remote locales accessible on multiday trips. This summer, Off the Map Travel is introducing three night trips on Norway's Lofoten Islands, a mountainous and fjord filled region above the Arctic Circle, based in tepee tents decorated in the style of the indigenous Sami people. Itineraries include kayaking, hiking and whale watching (three night trips, June through August, from 1,499 pounds, or about 1,995). In September, Peru Ecocamp will open with five deluxe camps strung out along the Salkantay trail leading to Machu Picchu. Guests will hike between the high altitude, solar powered camps, which will feature dome shaped sleeping tents with bathrooms, showers and wood stoves. Each camp will operate a dining dome, organic garden and bar tent (seven night trips from 3,791). This year, REI Adventures will expand its Signature Camping program, which brings deluxe mobile camps to remote locales, with the addition of Mount Kilimanjaro. Two different routes up Africa's highest peak will feature overnights in camps set up ahead of arriving guests and include sizable tents with cots and lighting as well as a furnished communal area and staff cooks (10 days from 4,999). To celebrate the spring and fall equinox, Hotel Chaco in Albuquerque, N.M., and the tour operator Heritage Inspirations are offering two day trips to the Pueblo ruins at Chaco Canyon National Historic Park. After a five course dinner, stargazing and sleeping in furnished tents, guests rise to track the sunrise, which aligns with the east west orientation of the astronomically influenced sandstone and timber buildings. The next tour departs Sept. 22 ( 750), though private tours are also available. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Travel |
Gerard M. O'Neill, far left, with other members of The Boston Globe's Spotlight Team in 1972, after they learned that they had won a Pulitzer Prize for uncovering corruption in Somerville, Mass., a Boston suburb. Gerard M. O'Neill, an investigative reporter and editor for The Boston Globe whose exposes included the revelation that James (Whitey) Bulger , Boston's notorious crime boss, was an informant for the F.B.I., died on Thursday at his home in Boston. He was 76. The cause was interstitial lung disease, his son Shane said. Mr. O'Neill, who spent 35 years at The Globe, was one of three original reporters on the paper's Spotlight Team , the full time investigative strike force that was modeled after the Insight Team of The Sunday Times of London. Two years after its founding in 1970, Spotlight with the 29 year old Mr. O'Neill on the team won a Pulitzer Prize for its first major investigation, which uncovered rampant corruption in Somerville, a Boston suburb. Later, as chief of the unit, Mr. O'Neill would help report, write and edit investigations that swept numerous awards, landed multiple Massachusetts officials in jail and led to reforms. Mr. O'Neill's biggest quarry was Mr. Bulger, the murderous mobster who ran the city's underworld while maintaining a Robin Hood image on the streets of South Boston. Mr. Bulger, who was killed in prison in October 2018, would mow down adversaries in broad daylight and yet miraculously never be arrested, making it appear that he was a step ahead of the law. In 1988, Mr. O'Neill's Spotlight Team dropped a bombshell: While Mr. Bulger was committing his crimes, he was snitching to the F.B.I., which in turn was protecting him from his enemies. "That stopped time in Boston," said Stephen A. Kurkjian, another of the original Spotlight reporters, who worked for years with Mr. O'Neill and won three Pulitzer Prizes . Mr. Kurkjian said that just before the series was published, the F.B.I. told The Globe's editor, Jack Driscoll, that it was making a big mistake and would be humiliated. Mr. Driscoll called in Mr. O'Neill and asked him how he knew that Mr. Bulger was an informant. Mr. O'Neill walked him through the evidence and assured him that the articles were accurate. Based on Mr. O'Neill's word, the presses rolled. "It was a nerve racking moment," said Dick Lehr, a Spotlight reporter who worked on the series with Mr. O'Neill. But he and Mr. O'Neill both had sources within the F.B.I. who confirmed that Mr. Bulger was an informant a fact that the F.B.I. and the Justice Department took 10 years to acknowledge publicly. "Black Mass" was the first of two books that Mr. O'Neill and his Globe colleague Dick Lehr wrote about the mobster James (Whitey) Bulger. It was later made into a movie starring Johnny Depp. Mr. O'Neill and Mr. Lehr would go on to write three books together, including two about Mr. Bulger: "Black Mass: The Irish Mob, the FBI , and a Devil's Deal" (2000), which was made into a 2015 movie starring Johnny Depp as Bulger, and "Whitey: The Life of America's Most Notorious Mob Boss" (2013). Through their years of collaboration, Mr. Lehr said, Mr. O'Neill was calm and steady. "When you confirm something important, it's exciting, but he knew not to get too high or too low because these things take a long time," he said. "That was a good way to learn how to manage these in depth projects." Gerard Michael O'Neill was born on Sept. 1, 1942, in Boston to Richard and Mary Claire (Sweeney) O'Neill. The family soon moved to Stoughton, a Boston suburb, where his father became a postal inspector and his mother worked as an operating room nurse. Mr. O'Neill graduated from Stoughton High School and attended Stonehill College in Easton, Mass., graduating in 1964 with a degree in English. While there, he met Janet Reardon , a fellow student, whom he married in 1968. In addition to his son Shane, she survives him, as does another son, Brian; his sister, Maureen Dennis; and two grandchildren. After college, Mr. O'Neill briefly attended George Washington University Law School in Washington. But he was not happy there and returned to Boston, where he got a job as a copy boy at The Globe and earned a master's degree in journalism from Boston University in 1970. While still working on his degree, Mr. O'Neill wrote about the corrupt business dealings of a school committeeman. "He was a kid reporter, maybe 25, and this landed on the front page and caused a big stir," Mr. Kurkjian said. He said the committeeman sued The Globe and put a lien on the O'Neill s ' house, which upset his wife. "Gerry told her not to worry about it" because his reporting was solid, Mr. Kurkjian said. "Gerry in his bones was a very tough, very confident and very meticulous reporter, and all that blew over." "This wasn't training he'd gotten at The Globe," he added. "This was something inside him. This was his character. And it showed for the next 40 years." Mr. O'Neill in 2015. The investigative team he led won numerous awards and landed multiple Massachusetts officials in jail. Mr. O'Neill spearheaded numerous investigations and articles that took a lot of digging and a lot of time sometimes months, sometimes more than a year. They included a five hour grilling of Senator Edward M. Kennedy in 1974, on the fifth anniversary of the drowning death of Mary Jo Kopechne at Chappaquiddick, and the meticulous examination of thousands of records at the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard, which showed elevated rates of cancer and leukemia. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Media |
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